Noe Zhordania

Head of the government of the First Republic

1868–1953

Noe Zhordania (1868-1953) was born in Lanchkhuti in Guria and became the central figure of Georgian social democracy. In March 1917 he headed the Tbilisi Soviet, and from the twenty-fourth of July 1918 until the end of the republic he was head of the Georgian government.

Under him the land reform was carried through and land handed to the peasants, the Tbilisi university and the conservatoire were opened, Georgian was made the state language. Georgia was recognised de jure both by Soviet Russia and by the Western powers: in the whole of Transcaucasia only Georgia achieved that.

On the eighteenth of March 1921, after the Red Army came, the government went into exile. Zhordania settled in France and led the government in exile until his death, publishing newspapers and speaking of Georgian independence. He died at Leuville-sur-Orge near Paris and is buried in the cemetery there.