Aleksandre Mirtskhulava

Aleksandre Mirtskhulava or Aleksandr Iordanovich Mirtskhulava (Georgian: ალექსანდრე იორდანეს ძე მირცხულავა; Russian: Александр Иорданович Мирцхулава) (May 12, 1911 - 2009) was a Georgian politician who was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR from April to September 1953.

Mirtskhulava was born in the village of Khorga in the Khobi District of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti. In 1930, he graduated from the Pedagogical Technical School of Zugdidi. By 1931 he was a raikom secretary; he became First Secretary of the Communist Union of Mtskheta in 1933 and of Khoni in 1935.^[1] From 1941 to 1943 he was the second secretary of the Communist Party of Abkhazia, and from 1943 to 1947 Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Abkhazia, in effect head of the government of Abkhazia.^[2]

Mirtskhulava was Lavrenty Beria's Komsomol boss^[3] and a strong supporter of Beria,^[4] and when Beria briefly took power after the death of Joseph Stalin, he restored his clients who suffered during the Mingrelian Affair and appointed Mirtskhulava as First Secretary of the Georgian Party. Mirtskhulava was removed from the Central Committee bureau and expelled from the CC by a CC plenum held on September 20, 1953.^[5]

From 1953 until 1980 he held various responsible posts in the agricultural sector in Georgia.

References

1. ხსოვნა: ალექსანდრე მირცხულავა (obituary in Georgian).
2. Sergo Beria, Beria—My Father: Life Inside Stalin's Kremlin (Duckworth, 2003: ISBN 0-7156-3205-1), p. 337, n. 40.
3. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (Vintage, 2003: ISBN 1-4000-7678-1), p. 276, fn.
4. Sergo Beria, Beria—My Father, p. 308, n. 48.
5. Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant (Princeton University Press, 1995: ISBN 0-691-01093-5), p. 214.