Kakutsa Cholokashvili - Partisan Leader

Partisan Leader

The Soviet invasion early in 1921 led to the fall of independent Georgia and the establishment of the Georgian SSR ruled by a Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee (Revkom). Cholokashvili did not follow many of his compatriots into emigration, but withdrew into mountains to organize guerrilla resistance to the new regime. In March 1921, he led a small partisan group "The Conspirators of Georgia" which engaged in a series of skirmishes with the Red Army and Cheka units in his native region of Kakheti. After a clash at Sighnaghi in June 1922, Cholokashvili moved to the mountainous district of Khevsureti where he rallied local peasants against the Soviet government. The Red Army, supported by aviation, overran the area, but Cholokashvili managed to escape to neighboring Chechnya whence he made an inroad into Georgia in November 1922. His brother, Simon, was killed in action, while his family members were arrested and his father-in-law was later executed by the Cheka.

The most intense fighting erupted during the August Uprising in Georgia in 1924, the banner of which was entrusted to Cholokashvili. He took the town Manglisi in a surprise attack on August 29, but could not get reinforcement and moved to the eastern Georgian mountains where he seized control of Dusheti and crushed the Red Army units at Svimoniant-Khevi on September 3. Despite the uprising was generally unsuccessful and brutally suppressed, Cholokashvili refused to surrender and tried to organize, though vainly, sortie to Tbilisi on several occasions. He fought his last engagement at Khev-Grdzela in Kakheti in mid-September and could escape unbeaten despite being vastly outnumbered and shelled by the Red Army artillery. Eventually, the partisans' forces exhausted and Cholokashvili had to flee to Turkey where he was joined by several emigrants and moved to France.

He lived a hard life in France and died of tuberculosis in 1930. Buried initially at the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen he was moved in a few years to the Leuville Cemetery at Leuville-sur-Orge, a burial ground of the Georgian emigration to France.