Gamsakhurdia, Zviad (1939-1993)

Georgian politician, president 1990-92. He was a fervent nationalist and an active anticommunist. After nationalist success in parliamentary elections when Georgia achieved independence in 1991, he was elected head of state by a huge margin. His increasingly dictatorial style of government and his hostile attitude to non-ethnic Georgians led to his forced removal and flight to neighbouring Armenia in 1992. He returned to western Georgia in 1993 to lead a rebellion against Edvard Shevardnadze's presidency, but Shevardnadze, with Russian help, destroyed his ill-equipped supporters, and the deposed president was later reported dead, although uncertainty remained as to whether he had committed suicide or been killed by Russian troops.

Born in Tbilisi, the son of the Georgian novelist Konstantin Gamsakhurdia, he was a highly literate scholar who became a university lecturer in American studies, translated Shakespeare into Georgian, and spoke Russian, German, and French.

He became politically active in the 1950s but was not at ease in the bureaucratic communist state of the USSR. He founded the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in Georgia in 1974. With the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev's concept of perestroika, he saw the future of Georgia entirely in nationalist terms and pressed for complete independence. When this was achieved in 1991 he became his country's first democratically elected president. However, his vision of a single-ethnic Georgia became an obsession, and his dictatorial methods brought him many enemies.