Early life and ancestry Prokofy Dzhaparidze was born in Schardometi village of
Racha,
Kutais Governorate in the
Russian Empire (present-day
Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti,
Republic of Georgia) into the untitled petite branch of the
House of Japaridze, then part of the
Georgian nobility. He was the son of Aprasion Dzhaparidze, a landowner,
dvoryanin of
Kutaisi and his wife, Anna
Gotsiridze. As his father died very early, the family soon became impoverished. Prokofy had to go to a village school and learnt the profession of a
bootmaker. He was educated at the Alexandrovsk Teachers Institute in
Tbilisi, Dzhaparidze joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. He participated in the preparation of the May Day demonstration in 1900. He was arrested and held in jail 11 months, and then was sent home. In 1901, he led a strike of tobacco workers in Kutaisi. In 1904 he moved to Baku, became one of the founders of
Gummet organization, set up to do political work amongst
Muslims, which grew into a mass organisation, drawing large masses of Muslim people behind the Bolsheviks. Some of its most known members included
Meshadi Azizbekov,
Nariman Narimanov and
Sultan Majid Afandiyev. He led delegate of the Caucasian Union of the RSDLP at the 3rd Congress of the RSDLP in London. He was one of the leaders of the December strike of the workers in Baku, also actively participated in the publishment of the Bolshevik journals and magazines
Bakisnkie Rabochi,
Gudok and
Bakinski prolitari. In 1909 he was arrested and exiled to the
North Caucasus for five years. He lived in
Rostov-on-Don. In 1913 he returned to
Tbilisi, present-day capital of Georgia. In preparation for the 1915 May Day demonstration was exiled to Vologda Province, where in 1916 he fled to
Petrograd, and then to Tbilisi.
Baku Commune ). After the
February Revolution of 1917, Dzhaparidze was a member of the
Baku Committee of the Bolshevik Party (
see Baku Commune); as a delegate to the 6th congress of the Bolshevik Party, he was selected as a candidate member of its
Central Committee, and became a member of Caucasian Border Committee. From December 1917 Deputy Chairman, during January–July 1918 the chairman of the executive committee of the Baku
Soviet. During March, Dzhaparidze was the member of the Committee of Revolutionary Defense in Baku; from April, he was the
Commissar for Internal Affairs in Baku, and, from June, he also served as Commissar for Food. During this time, he was actively involved in
March Events, as he tried to spread the communist ideology to
Azerbaijan and the whole
South Caucasus in general. After the fall of Baku to the Azerbaijani-Turkish
Army of Islam in the
Battle of Baku, he fled to
Krasnovodsk. On September 20, 1918, he was one of the
26 Baku Commissars shot by the local government of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party. His legacy was appreciated highly across the
Soviet Union. However, in post-Soviet Azerbaijan, the places named after Dzhaparidze were renamed and his monument was demolished. His grave was also relocated along with the other commissars in Baku, which was strongly opposed by the
Azerbaijan Communist Party and other local left-wing politicians. In his native Georgia, the name of Dzhaparidze was also removed almost everywhere. ==See also==