In 1917 he was among the founders and professors of the
Tbilisi State University (TSU). He lost his tenure both in the parliament and at the TSU in 1921, when
Bolshevik Russia's 11th Red Army put an end to Georgia's independence. He followed the Georgian government in their
French exile, taking the Georgian national treasury – numerous precious pieces of Georgian material
culture - with him to Europe. The treasury, filling 39 immense boxes, was shipped to
Marseille and placed in a bank depository. Subsequently, this precious cargo was transferred to one of the banks in
Paris. Although the treasury was officially the property of the Georgian government-in-exile, it was actually Ekvtime Takaishvili who supervised this huge collection. In the early 1930s, Takaishvili won a lawsuit against Salome Obolenskaya, daughter of the last
Mingrelian prince
Niko Dadiani, who also laid claim to a part of the treasury taken from the former
Dadiani Palace in
Zugdidi, Georgia. Despite numerous attempts by various
European museums to purchase portions of this treasury, and extreme economic hardship, Takaishvili never sold a single piece of the priceless collection to live on and guarded it until 1933, when the
League of Nations recognized the
Soviet Union; the Georgian embassy in Paris was abolished and transformed into the "Georgian Office". The treasury passed into the possession of the French state. In 1935 Takaishvili urged the French government to hand the collections to Georgia, but it was not until the end of the
World War II when he was able, in November 1944, to attract the attention of the Soviet ambassador Aleksandr Bogomolov to the fate of the Georgian treasury.
Joseph Stalin's good relations with General
Charles de Gaulle enabled Takaishvili to bring the treasury back to Georgia. However, Takaishvili had to spend his long days in Tbilisi under house arrest, seemingly considered to be too old to be imprisoned. On 21 February 1953 Takaishvili died of a
heart attack. == Legacy ==