Niko Nikoladze was born in
Kutaisi, western Georgia (then part of the
Russian Empire) into
petite noble family of
Nikoladze. He was the son of a merchant, Iakob Nikoladze (1798–1871) and his wife, Princess Elizabeth
Lortkipanidze (1826–1878). He had three sisters: Anastasia, Olimpiada (d. 1883) and Efrosinya. After the graduation from
Kutaisi Gymnasium (1860), he enrolled the Faculty of Law at
St Petersburg University in 1861. In the same year he was excluded from the university for taking part in student protests. After leaving St. Petersburg he went to study in
Western Europe in 1864 and became the first Georgian to receive a doctorate (in law) from a European university, namely in
Zurich (1868). Like many other Georgian intellectuals of that time, he followed the evolution of Russian liberals to different versions of
socialism, establishing his own contacts with the Western leftist thinkers. Nikoladze was the first Georgian figure within this trend to gain position of influence in all-Russian liberalist movements. During his stay in Zurich, through
Paul Lafargue he met
Karl Marx, who asked Nikoladze to become the representative of the
International in
Transcaucasia. Nikoladze declined the offer because at that time his views were closer with the Russian revolutionary democrats,
Nikolai Chernyshevsky and
Nikolay Dobrolyubov, whom he had met in St. Petersburg. While in Europe, he briefly collaborated with
Aleksandr Herzen in his influential newspaper,
Kolokol (
The Bell), in 1865, but Nikoladze soon broke with Herzen when the latter sent a reconciliatory open letter to the
tsar. Back in his native Georgia, he became involved in national-liberation movement inspired by Georgia's most famous intellectual of that time Prince
Ilia Chavchavadze though Nikoladze's relations with Chavchavadze were not always easy. Nikoladze joined a more radical wing of this movement later named the Second Group (
meore dasi) and quickly became one of its most influential leaders. This group sought widely for a program, ranging from state-regulated
capitalism to various forms of "association" and
collectivism, and worked to introduce European learning and culture in Georgia. They became the first Georgian political team to stress the importance of the urban and economic life of Georgia. They actively implemented their ideas into practice and worked to keep the Georgians from being pushed aside by the
Russians and
Armenians who dominated the Georgian cities, particularly the capital,
Tiflis. He gained almost a scandalous name by publishing his sarcastic article, "A Thought on Likhi Mountain" (1871), where he compared Tiflis to an old whore, the wide, paved avenues, parks, and theaters being just her make-up, while the markets are her blackened teeth and the cemeteries and war-devastated fields her raddled body. Nikoladze's rhetoric attacks on the representatives of the older generation, who mostly chose to serve loyally to the Russian administration, further strengthened positions of the "men of the 60s," a backbone of younger Georgian intellectuals forming an opposition to the Tsarist regime. From 1871 to 1875, Nikoladze lived between Paris and Tbilisi, organizing several revolutionary periodicals such as
Krebuli in Tbilisi (1871),
Drosha in Paris (1873) and
Mimokhilva in Tbilisi. While he was in Paris, he married a Polish woman, Bogumila Zemaianskaia (also Bogumiła Ziemiańska), who had lived for a while in his hometown of Kutaisi. They had three children — a son who died young, and two daughters, Nino (born 1872) and Elizabeth, known as "Lolo". He returned to Tbilisi in 1875, but was arrested for his radical publications and expelled to
Stavropol in 1880. In 1884, Nikoladze and Guramishvili were living in Saint Petersburg, where their daughter
Rusudan (1884–1981) was born. From 1886, he led the liberal group
Meore Dasi Also living as part of their family was his eldest daughter Nino. Soon after the 1917
February Revolution in Russia, Nikoladze allied himself with more radical Georgian
intelligentsia, supporting Georgia's full independence from Russia. He was elected an honorary chairman of the National Democratic Party of Georgia. During the years of the first
Georgian republic (1918–1921), he was actively involved in the nation's social and economic life. In 1920 he led a delegation of the
Chiatura Manganese Exporting Society in Europe. He was still abroad, when the short-lived Georgian independence was terminated by the
Soviet Russia's military invasion in 1921. Yet Nikoladze decided to return to
Soviet Georgia, retreating into a world of theory, preaching education and reform instead of violent revolution. His daughters from his first marriage, Nino, married Levan Zurabishvili and Lolo married the Belgian writer and statesman,
Camille Huysmans. From his second marriage Rusudan became a chemist and married Russian historian Mikhail Polievktov. Giorgi became a mathematician and Tamara married one of Giorgi's colleagues,
Nikoloz Muskhelishvili. == References ==