Born in
Kakheti in 1846, Cherkezishvili went to study in
St. Petersburg, where he
Dmitry Karakozov and joined
Sergey Nechayev's
nihilist group, becoming one of Georgia's first "professional revolutionaries". For his radical activities, Cherkezishvili was tried and sentenced to
penal labour in
Siberia, but he escaped in 1876 and fled to
Switzerland. In exile, he initially became involved with the Russian emigre movement, but split with them over his support for Georgian independence. This attracted him towards
anarchism, due to its promise of
self-determination for small nations, and he became a disciple of the Russian anarchist
Peter Kropotkin. But his new-found anarchism also brought him into disagreement with other
Georgian nationalists, such as
Noe Zhordania, who he met in
London in 1897. In 1903, Kropotkin and Cherkezishvili joined
Georgy Gogelia's
Bread and Freedom group, established in order to distribute anarchist literature clandestinely throughout the
Russian Empire. They quickly attracted a following and received numerous requests for more literature to be sent, gaining particular popularity in areas of the
Pale of Settlement, such as Poland and Ukraine. Cherkezishvili himself contributed to the publication, penning a critical analysis of
Marxism. In the wake of the
Russian Revolution of 1905, Cherkezishvili, Gogelia and Kropotkin helped launched
Mikheil Tsereteli's anarchist periodical
Nobati in
Tbilisi, contributing critiques of
state socialism in an attempt to bring the Georgian revolutionary movement over to anarchism. But during their brief period of conflict with the
social democrats, to which a young
Joseph Stalin contributed critiques of anarchism, they were unable to build a popular organization and the Georgian anarchist movement slowly diminished. of Cherkezishvili with his Wife Freda Rupertus by Auguste Léon, 1919 In 1907, Cherkezishvili, alongside
Peter Kropotkin,
Rudolf Rocker and
Alexander Schapiro, helped organize the London Anarchist Red Cross, in order to aid political prisoners of the Russian Empire. The organization collected money and clothing, which they sent to prisoners in Russia, and circulated petitions in protest against the political repression in the Russian Empire. That year, Cherkezishvili himself presented a petition for Georgian independence to the
Hague Peace Conference, but it failed to garner any support. During this period, Cherkezishvili and Kropotkin often spoke at the Federation of Jewish Anarchists'
Jubilee Street Club. When Kropotkin expressed support for the
Allies of World War I, he was backed up by Cherkezishvili. In 1916, Cherkezishvili and Kropotkin, along with
Jean Grave,
Charles Malato,
Christian Cornelissen,
James Guillaume and ten others, signed the
Manifesto of the Sixteen in support of the Allied war effort. For this, they were fiercely criticised by anarchists of the internationalist position, including their former associate Georgy Gogelia, who denounced them as "anarcho-patriots". With the outbreak of the
Russian Revolution in 1917, Cherkezishvili returned to
Georgia, where he reunited with Gogelia and gradually fell out of contact with Kropotkin. Following the deaths of Kropotkin and Gogelia, Cherkezishvili returned to London, where he died in 1925. ==Notes==