Egnate Fomich Ninoshvili

(pen name of E. F. In-gorokva). Born Feb. 17, 1859, in the village of Kela, present-day Lanchkhuti Raion, Georgian SSR; died May 12, 1894, in the village of Chirchveti. Georgian writer.

Ninoshvili worked as a teacher, telegrapher, typesetter, and manual laborer. His first works were publicistic articles for the Georgian literary and political newspaper Iveriia (1887).

In his short stories and novellas, Ninoshvili vividly depicted the life of the oppressed peasantry, exposing the class stratification of the Georgian village, the daily life of the degenerate gentry, and the greed of tsarist officials. These themes are encountered in the short stories “Gogia Uishvili” (1890), “Lake Paliastomi” (1891), “Simona” (1892), “Kristine” (1893), and “A Knight of Our Fatherland” (1894), as well as in the novella Mose the Scrivener (1894). Ninoshvili’s historical novel, The Guria Uprising (1888–89; published 1902), deals with the peasant disturbance in Guria (Georgia) in 1841.

Ninoshvili early abandoned his Narodnik (Populist) illusions and became a Marxist. He was one of the founders of the Georgian Marxist organization Mesame-dasi.