Merab Kostava

Dissident, leader of the independence movement

1939–1989

Merab Kostava (1939–1989) was a musician, poet and dissident, one of the leaders of the Georgian national-liberation movement. As early as 1954 he founded, together with Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the underground youth organisation «Gorgasliani».

He was arrested repeatedly for his human-rights work: he co-founded the Georgian Helsinki Group and in 1977, together with Gamsakhurdia, was sentenced to years of prison and exile in Siberia.

In 1989, at the height of the independence movement, Kostava died in a car crash under suspicious circumstances. In 2013 he was posthumously named a National Hero of Georgia.