Akaki Mgeladze

Akaki Mgeladze (Georgian: აკაკი მგელაძე; Russian: Ака́кий Ива́нович Мгела́дзе; 1910 – 1980) was a Soviet politician. He served as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party from 1952 to 1953, and before that was First Secretary of the Abkhazian Communist Party from 1943 until 1951, as well as previously leading both the Georgian and Abkhazian Komsomol and Gruzneft.

Life and career

Born in the Guria region of Georgia, Mgeladze had grown up in Abkhazia and was serving with the military on the Transcaucasian Front when he was appointed head of the Abkhazian Communist Party by Josef Stalin. Under Mgeladze, Georgian was made the language of instruction in Abkhazia, replacing Abkhaz and Russian at the start of the 1945–46 academic year. Ethnic Georgians also increased greatly in terms of comprising the Abkhazian Communist Party under his tenure, peaking at 70% of new members in 1950. In April 1952 Mgeladze was appointed First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, and held that position until he was forced out by Lavrenti Beria in April 1953. Forced to admit that he took bribes while head of the Abkhazian Communist Party, Mgeladze was only able to remain a Party member because his successor in Georgia, Aleksandre Mirtskhulava, refused to expel him. After that he served as the chairman of the Bibnisi collective farm, located in the Kareli district of Georgia. Mgeladze would write a memoir, Сталин Каким я его знал: Страницы недавнего прошлого (Stalin How I Knew Him: Pages of the Recent Past) and died in 1980. For his efforts Mgeladze was twice awarded with the Order of Lenin, as well as the Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, Order of the Patriotic War, and others.

Sources

• Mgeladze, Akaki. Сталин Каким я его знал: Страницы недавнего прошлого (Stalin How I Knew Him: Pages of the Recent Past), 2001.
• Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.