Ilia Chavchavadze - Political Life

Political Life

Ilia’s main political and social goals were based on Georgian patriotism. He radically advocated the revival of the use of the Georgian language, the cultivation of Georgian literature, the revival of autocephalous status for the Georgian national church, and, finally, the revival of Georgian statehood, which had ended when the country became part of the Russian Empire. As the number of supporters for his ideas grew, so did opposition among the leading Social Democrats like the Menshevik Noe Zhordania; their main aims were focused on battling the Tsarist autocracy and a democratic transformation of the Russian empire. This did not include the revival of a Georgian state or of a Georgian self-identity. Ilia was viewed as bourgeois and as an old aristocrat who failed to realize the importance of the revolutionary tide.

In addition to his works described above, he was also the founder and chairman of many public, cultural and educational organizations (Society for the Spreading of Literacy Among Georgians, "The Bank of the Nobility", "The Dramatic Society", "The Historical-Ethnographical Society of Georgia", etc.). He was also a translator of British literature. His main literary works were translated and published in French, English, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian and other languages. Between 1906 and 1907, he was a member of the State Council (Gosudarstvennaya Duma) in Russia. His eclectic interests also led him to be a member of, among others, the Caucasian Committee of the Geographical Society of Russia, the Society of Ethnography and Anthropology of Moscow University, the Society of Orientalists of Russia and the Anglo-Russian Literary Society (London).

Prince Chavchavadze briefly acted as a literary mentor to a young Joseph Stalin, who was then an Orthodox seminarian in Tbilisi. According to historian Simon Sebag Montefiore,

"The Prince was sufficiently impressed to show the teenagers work to his editors. He admired Stalin's verse, choosing five poems to publish -- quite an achievement. Prince Chavchavadze called Stalin the, 'young man with the burning eyes.'"