Chikoidze, Mikhail Nikolaevich

Born 1853, in the village of Patara-Medzhruskhe, Tiflis Province; died Nov. 24 (Dec. 6), 1897, in Kurgan. Narodnik (Populist) revolutionary.

The son of a nobleman, Chikoidze entered the Mikhail Artillery School in 1872, but he fell ill and was unable to complete the course of study. In 1874 he went abroad. In Switzerland he joined the Georgian student organization known as the Kavkaztsy, one of whose founders was I. S. Dzhabadari.

In December 1874, Chikoidze returned to Russia, where he helped draft the charter of the All-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization. Arrested in Moscow on Apr. 4,1875, he was a defendant in the Trial of the 50. He was exiled to Kirensk, in Irkutsk Province. In May 1881, Chikoidze escaped from his place of exile and joined the People’s Will. He was arrested again in 1882, however, and was sentenced in December 1883 to three years at hard labor for having escaped from Kirensk. He served the sentence in the Kara Penal Colony. From 1885, Chikoidze was required to live in a remote area of the country.