Noe Ramishvili

First head of the Georgian government, killed in Paris

1881–1930

Noe Ramishvili (1881-1930) was born in Ozurgeti in Guria and became one of the leaders of Georgian social democracy. On the twenty-sixth of May 1918 he signed the Act of Independence and on the same day was elected the first chairman of the provisional government of Georgia.

He led the government only briefly, replaced in June by Noe Zhordania, but throughout the republic he held the ministry of the interior, and in 1919 he was minister of defence as well. That was the hardest part of the work: the police, the Guard, the putting down of revolts, the dealings with the Bolshevik underground.

After Sovietisation he went into exile and joined the Committee for the Independence of Georgia, which prepared the August uprising of 1924; the uprising was crushed. On the seventh of December 1930 Ramishvili was shot dead in Paris. The killer was a Georgian émigré, and a Soviet hand was seen behind the attack. He is buried in the cemetery at Leuville, where Zhordania was later buried too.