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. prison in Tiflis, 1904 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 , like Tsereteli a Georgian Menshevik. Though the two disagreed on many topics, Zhordania encouraged Tsereteli to stand for election in 1907, later stating it was the "only time that Irakli ever listened to me." Tsereteli remained in Georgia throughout the summer of 1906 recovering from his illness, and was not politically active. 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. 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==