Gegechkori, Aleksei

(party pseudonym, Sasha). Born Nov. 23 (Dec. 5) 1887, in the village of Naogalevi, in present-day Gegechkori Raion; died June 7, 1928, in Tbilisi. Soviet state and party figure, active in the revolutionary movement in the Caucasus. Born into a dvorianstvo (noble or gentry) family.

Gegechkori began working in the revolutionary movement in 1902 and joined the Communist Party in 1908. He conducted party work in Baku, Tbilisi, Mingrelia, Cheliabinsk, and Rostov-on-Don. He was repeatedly subjected to repression. After the February Revolution of 1917 he participated in setting up the Bureau of the Bolsheviks in Kutaisi. In 1918 he was chairman of the combat staff of the West Georgian Party Committee and one of the leaders of uprisings against the Menshevik government in Georgia. In the fall of 1918 he was severely wounded in battles against the White Guards in Terek Oblast. From 1921 to 1922, Gegechkori was chairman of the Tbilisi Revolutionary Committee and a member of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee. From 1922 to 1923 he was people’s commissar of internal affairs; in 1924 he became people’s commissar of agriculture and simultaneously in 1922 vice-chairman of the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) of Georgia. He was a delegate to the Eleventh and Fifteenth Congresses of the ACP (Bolshevik). He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.