Guram Sharadze

Guram Sharadze ( _ka. გურამ შარაძე) (October 17, 1940 - May 20, 2007) was a Georgian philologist, historian, and politician. He was the leader of the Ena, Mamuli, Sartsmunoeba ("Language, Homeland, Religion") movement. He was assassinated in downtown Tbilisi.

Career

Sharadze was involved in the anti-Soviet Georgian national movement in the late 1980s and was closely associated with Zviad Gamsakhurdia who became, in 1991, the first elected President of Georgia. After Gamsakhurdia's ouster in the 1992 coup d'etat, Sharadze was in opposition to Eduard Shevardnadze's government. In 1995, he founded the nationalist "Ena, Mamuli, Sartsmunoeba" ("Language, Homeland, Religion") movement, and was elected to the Parliament of Georgia. In 2002, he spearheaded, though unsuccessfully, a drive to try to ban the Jehovah's Witness religious denomination from the country, [http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/world/BO52752/ Leader of Georgian opposition movement gunned down in Tbilisi, interior ministry says.] "WHDH-TV World News". May 20, 2007. Retrieved on May 21, 2007.] and was heavily criticized by the Georgian human rights activists and reformist politicians. In 2003, he joined Shevardnadze's election bloc "For A New Georgia" in the controversial parliamentary elections which were widely denounced as rigged and triggered mass demonstrations concluded with the bloodless Rose Revolution. Since then, Sharadze withdrew from politics, but attempted to organize a civic movement against Western influences in Georgia, denouncing the civil society work of philanthropist George Soros as potentially more pernicious to Georgia than the Bolshevik revolution.

In 2004, he was sentenced to fifteen days imprisonment for hooliganism, after he tore down posters of the Polish artist Rafal Olbinski at an exhibition at the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, labeling them as "pornographic". Next year, he was briefly arrested again for insulting the rector of Tbilisi State University who had launched a Western-modeled program of reforms. [http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=15150 Ex-MP Shot Dead in Tbilisi.] "Civil Georgia". May 21, 2007. Retrieved on May 21, 2007.]

Sharadze was a professor of philology at Tbilisi State University and a member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. He authored several works on Georgian literature and history, with a particular emphasis on the 1918-1921 Democratic Republic of Georgia and Soviet-era Georgian political emigration in Europe.

Assassination

On May 20, 2007, Guram Sharadze was assassinated on Melikishvili Avenue in central Tbilisi in front of the Aldagi Insurance Company office by Giorgi Barateli, an erstwhile friend of his son. Shortly thereafter, Barateli was arrested after a minor shootout with police.

References

External links

* [http://www.parliament.ge/pages/archive_en/parl99/sharadze_guram_e.htm Official profile of the Parliament of Georgia]
* [http://www.imedinews.ge/en/news_read/40637 Georgian former MP, Prof. Guram Sharadze murdered.] "Imedinews". May 20, 2007.