Exhibition reveals life of Soviet Georgian political leader Vasil Mzhavanadze

Exclusive photos and the personal belongings of one of Georgia’s most influential political leaders of Soviet Georgia are now on display in capital Tbilisi.

An exhibition presenting the personal archive of the late Vasil Mzhavanadze, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), can now be enjoyed by the public.

The exhibition involving photographs, documents and personal items opened today at the Exhibition Hall of the Parliamentary National Library in Tbilisi. The exhibition will run for two days.

Mzhavanadze was in power of Georgian SSR for 19 years, from 1953 to 1972. He was dismissed after a corruption scandal and replaced by the late first president of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, who at the time was the Interior Minister of the Soviet Union.

Vasil Mzhavanadze in Rome, Italy, 1963. Photo by National Library of Georgia.

Mzhavanadze served in the Red Army as a political commissar during World War II. After the war, he became deputy commander for political affairs in the Kiev military district in the Ukrainian SSR, under the administration of Ukrainian Communist Party leader, later Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

As a close associate of Khrushchev, he managed the establishment of the Stalin Museum in the Georgian city of Gori.

Meanwhile all the personal photo archives of Mzhavanadze have been digitalised after his daughter Nini Mzhavanadze gifted them to the National Library.