Irakli Tsereteli ( – 20 May 1959) was a Georgian politician and a leading spokesman of the Social Democratic Party of Georgia and later Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) during the era of the Russian Revolutions.
Tsereteli was born and raised in Georgia when it was part of the Russian Empire. A member of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP, Tsereteli was elected to the Duma in 1907, where he gained fame for his oratorical skill. Shortly after entering the Duma, Tsereteli was arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Tsarist government, and exiled to Siberia. A dedicated Social Democrat who believed in the Menshevik ideology, Tsereteli was one of the leading figures of the movement in Russia. In 1915, during his Siberian exile, Tsereteli formed what would become known as Siberian Zimmerwaldism, which advocated for the role of the Second International in ending the war. He also developed the idea of "Revolutionary Defensism", the concept of a defensive war which only allowed for the defence of territory, and argued it was not being utilized.
Returning to the government in the aftermath of the 1917 February Revolution, he took up a leading position in the Petrograd Soviet and accepted a position in the Russian Provisional Government as Minister of Post and Telegraph, and briefly as Minister of the Interior. Concerned that political fragmentation would lead to a civil war in Russia, Tsereteli strived to broker compromises between the various leftist factions in the Russian Revolution and was the force behind efforts to work together with the middle classes, to no avail. Renowned for his speaking ability, Tsereteli gained appreciation for his ability in this regard, giving impassioned speeches in the Duma and in the Petrograd Soviet.
After the Bolsheviks seized power of the Russian government during the October Revolution, Tsereteli returned to Georgia. He worked as a diplomat at the Paris Peace Conference, where he lobbied for international recognition and assistance for the newly independent Democratic Republic of Georgia; meaningful assistance largely failed to materialize before the Bolshevik-led Red Army invaded in 1921. An avowed internationalist, Tsereteli grew increasingly distant from the Georgian Mensheviks who gradually adopted more nationalist tendencies. He spent the rest of his life in exile, mainly in France, working with socialist organisations and writing on socialism, and died in New York City in 1959.
Early life Early years and education Tsereteli was born on in Gorisa, Kutais Governorate, in the Russian Empire (now in Imereti, Georgia), to a Georgian Orthodox Christian family, the third child of Giorgi Tsereteli, a radical writer from the noble Tsereteli family, and Olympiada Nikoladze, the sister of the journalist Niko Nikoladze. Tsereteli had one sister, Eliko, and brother, Levan. Both Giorgi and Niko were members of the meore dasi (მეორე დასი; Georgian for "second group"), a group of Georgian populists and socialists, and they greatly influenced Irakli's outlook. Tsereteli grew up in nearby Kutaisi and spent the summers at his family's estate in Gorisa; from a young age he noticed the inequality between his family and their servants and the local peasants, and desired to fix the imbalance.
When he was three, Tsereteli's mother died, so he and his siblings were sent to live with two aunts in Kutaisi, while Giorgi moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), the administrative centre of the Caucasus, occasionally visiting the children. Tsereteli would later move to Tiflis and attend a gymnasium. While there, he lived with his father who had since married Anastasia Tumanishvili, a Georgian writer and educator. Tsereteli's biographer W.H. Roobol suggests that due to Tsereteli's reserve towards Tumanova, Giorgi's influence over his son declined: "In any event, Giorgi Tsereteli was unable to imbue his son Irakli with his patriotic ideals." Nikoladze's views, which were more cautious against Georgian nationalism, also likely played a part in Tsereteli's shifting ideals. At the gymnasium Tsereteli distanced himself from Christianity, questioning death and its meaning, and was introduced to the writings of the British naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin, which also factored into his move away from religion. He completed his schooling in 1900, the same year as his father's death, and moved to Moscow to study law.
Entry into politics and arrests Soon after arriving in Moscow, Tsereteli became embroiled in the student protests that broke out that year; how involved he initially was is unclear, with the only certainty being he was not yet a Marxist. It was during these protests that Tsereteli first gained fame as a speaker, and he eventually became a leading figure in the student movement. He was arrested in the spring of 1901 and after a brief detention was allowed to return to Georgia. Though he had been arrested, he was allowed to return to Moscow in the autumn of 1901 to write his exams. There had been relative quiet in the universities until that point, but it again erupted into protests; this time Tsereteli took a leading role, and was regarded as one of the most important figures of the Moscow student movement.
At a meeting of student protesters on 9 February 1902 Tsereteli was arrested; considered one of the most radical leaders, he was one of two students given a sentence of five years' exile in Siberia, the longest sentence given to the protesting students. Though the government quickly backtracked and offered him the chance to serve it in Georgia, Tsereteli refused, seeing it as a pardon and considering "its acceptance as being in conflict with [his] views", as he explained in a letter. This refusal, which was publicised with other exiles, cited social democracy as advocated by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), and effectively confirmed Tsereteli's support for the ideology by this point. After declining the offer to return to Georgia, Tsereteli arrived in the village of Tulun in early 1902, located about from Irkutsk, Siberia's administrative centre. However, by late summer he was permitted to move to Irkutsk. It was during this exile that Tsereteli became familiar with the Russian Social Democrats, particularly Marxism; Tsereteli read Vladimir Lenin's What Is To Be Done?, though he disliked the view Lenin espoused. Indeed, the RSDLP would split into two main factions in 1903 over factional differences.
On his release from exile Tsereteli returned to Georgia and aligned himself with the RSDLP's Georgian branch, later known as the Georgian Mensheviks, the minority faction within the party. He also began working as an editor for his father's former publication, Kvali (კვალი; Trace), writing most of their leading articles. However, in January 1904 he was again arrested, and spent two months in the Metekhi prison in Tiflis. Two months later Kvali was banned. Tsereteli was allowed to leave Georgia, likely due to the influence of his uncle, and he moved to Berlin to resume his law studies, spending 18 months in Europe. Suffering from a form of haemophilia, Tsereteli became seriously ill in the autumn of 1905, but was unable to quickly return home for rest as the 1905 Revolution broke out in the Russian Empire. It was only in May 1906 that he returned to Georgia.
Second Duma
Tsereteli remained in Georgia throughout the summer of 1906 recovering from his illness, and was not politically active. Even so, he was invited to stand as the Social Democratic candidate for the Russian legislative elections in January 1907, representing the Kutais Governorate, his home region. He was encouraged to do so by a fellow Georgian Menshevik, Noe Zhordania, with whom Tsereteli later became a political opponent, disagreeing on nearly every topic. Zhordania would later recall in his memoirs "that this was the only time that Irakli ever listened to me." All seven seats in Georgia were won by the Social Democrats.
Despite being the youngest member of the Imperial Duma—at 25, the minimum age required for membership—Tsereteli took a leading role. He immediately gained recognition as a great orator. In particular he was noted for three speeches in which he outlined the Social Democrats' views and heavily criticised the government. The first speech, which opened with him stating that the "government has fettered the nation in the chains of a state emergency, which imprisons its best sons, reduces the people to beggary and fritters away the pennies collected for the hungry and destitute. Today, there spoke to us the old feudal Russia, personified by the government." It went on to call for the opposition not to work with the government regarding the agrarian reforms of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, stopping just short of calling for an armed insurrection.
The speech gained Tsereteli immediate respect among his peers. He strived to unite the opposition parties, though he faced considerable opposition both from the Kadets, a liberal group who had previously opposed the government but were now more amicable to them, and the Bolsheviks, the larger faction within the RSDLP, who worked to discredit the Mensheviks in the Duma. He sought out an alliance with the other leftist factions, namely the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Trudoviks, a splinter group from the Socialist Revolutionaries. Stolypin grew increasingly tired of the opposition from the Social Democrats, and feared that his reforms would not be passed.
Arrest and Siberian exile Arrest
The Duma was dissolved on 2 June 1907 and shortly after midnight on 3 June the government arrested several of the Social Democrats, including Tsereteli. They were charged with trying to overthrow the government; this was a fabrication of the government that allowed Stolypin to have them expelled from the Duma, leaving it free to implement his policies. Tsereteli was convicted in November, and sentenced to five years' hard labour, though on account of his poor health it was commuted to time in prison. The first year of his prison term was spent in St. Petersburg, and in the winter of 1908–1909 Tsereteli was moved to Nikolayev in southern Ukraine; after four years in Nikolayev he was again moved, sent to the Alexandrovsky Central Prison in Irkutsk. In the autumn of 1913 Tsereteli was permitted to move to Usolye, a village about from Irkutsk and easily accessible owing to its location on a branch line of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Tsereteli would later reflect fondly on this period of exile: there were several other exiles in the region, and in the summers they would meet in Usolye, which had a favourable climate. On occasion Tsereteli was also able to visit Irkutsk, engaging in political talks. Both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were involved in these discussions, and engaged with each other cordially, leading Tsereteli to believe the two factions could eventually reunite. This was in stark contrast to the situation outside Siberia, where the two factions had been increasingly distancing themselves.
Siberian Zimmerwaldism