Iraklii Tsereteli

Born Nov. 20, 1881, in Kutaisi; died May 20, 1959, in New York City. Russian political figure and Menshevik leader. Member of the social democratic movement from 1902. Son of the Georgian writer G. E. Tsereteli.

In 1903,1. G. Tsereteli became the editor of Kvali (Furrow), a journal published by the Georgian Social Democrats. In 1907 he was a deputy to the Second State Duma and the leader of the Social Democratic fraction. After the coup d’etat of June 3 he was sentenced to hard labor, and in 1912 he was exiled to Siberia.

In 1917, Tsereteli returned to Petrograd; he served as minister of postal and telegraph service in the bourgeois Provisional Government from May to July and minister of internal affairs after the July Days. He was a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee elected by the First All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. In August 1917 he took part in the Moscow State Conference. Tsereteli headed the antisoviet bloc in the Constituent Assembly and in 1918 became one of the leaders of the Georgian Mensheviks.

After the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia in 1921, Tsereteli emigrated to France. In 1940 he moved to the United States. Tsereteli was a leader of antisoviet activities, a representative of the Georgian Social Democrats in the International Socialist Bureau, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Second International.