Zviad Konstantines dze Gamsakhurdia (Georgian: ზვიად კონსტანტინეს ძე გამსახურდია; Russian: Звиа́д Константи́нович Гамсаху́рдия, romanized: Zviad Konstantinovich Gamsakhurdiya; 31 March 1939 – 31 December 1993) was a Georgian politician, human rights activist, dissident, professor of English language studies and American literature at Tbilisi State University, and writer who became the first democratically elected President of Georgia in May 1991.
A prominent exponent of Georgian nationalism and pan-Caucasianism, Zviad Gamsakhurdia was involved in Soviet dissident movement from his youth. His activities attracted attention of authorities in the Soviet Union and Gamsakhurdia was arrested and imprisoned numerous times. Gamsakhurdia co-founded the Georgian Helsinki Group, which sought to bring attention to human rights violations in the Soviet Union.
He organized numerous pro-independence protests in Georgia, one of which in 1989 was suppressed by the Soviet Army, with Gamsakhurdia being arrested. Eventually, a number of underground political organizations united around Zviad Gamsakhurdia and formed the Round Table—Free Georgia coalition, which successfully challenged the ruling Communist Party of Georgia in the 1990 elections. Gamsakhurdia was elected as the President of Georgia in 1991, gaining 87% of votes in the election. Despite popular support, Gamsakhurdia found significant opposition from the urban intelligentsia and former Soviet nomenklatura, as well as from his own ranks. In early 1992 Gamsakhurdia was overthrown by warlords Tengiz Kitovani, Jaba Ioseliani and Tengiz Sigua, two of which were formerly allied with Gamsakhurdia. Gamsakhurdia was forced to flee to Chechnya, where he was greeted by Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev. His supporters continued to fight the post-coup government of Eduard Shevardnadze. In September 1993, Gamsakhurdia returned to Georgia and tried to regain power. Despite initial success, the rebellion was eventually crushed by government forces with the help of the Russian military. Gamsakhurdia was forced into hiding in Samegrelo, a Zviadist stronghold. He was found dead in early 1994 in controversial circumstances. His death remains uninvestigated to this day.
After the civil war ended, the government continued to suppress Gamsakhurdia's supporters, even with brutal tactics. After Eduard Shevardnadze was overthrown during the 2003 Rose Revolution, Gamsakhurdia was rehabilitated by the president Mikheil Saakashvili.
Zviad Konstantinovich Gamsakhurdia was born in the Georgian capital Tbilisi on 31 March 1939; his father, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, was a prominent Georgian writer during the 20th century. Konstantine held nationalist views and was imprisoned in the 1920s, but evaded the Stalinist purges and became influential as a historical novelist. He and his circle of fellow writers promoted Georgian culture and ethnic particularism in the Soviet centre. Zviad was raised in an intellectual setting, which encouraged attention to traditional Georgian history, culture and national identity.
At 16, Gamsakhurdia established an underground nationalist youth group called Gorgasliani. In 1956 he participated with his fellow students, including future ally Merab Kostava, in the demonstrations in Tbilisi against de-Stalinization. He and a group of friends began distributing anti-communist Georgian nationalist pamphlets in December; they were caught and taken to court. He was arrested again in 1958 for distributing anti-communist literature and was confined to a mental hospital in Tbilisi for six months, although his familial status protected him from further sanctions. In mental hospital, Gamsakhurdia was diagnosed as suffering "psychopathy with decompensation", becoming an early victim of the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.
After his release, he continued studying Western languages and literature at Tbilisi State University, eventually graduating with a degree in philology and becoming a lecturer of English language and American literature at Tbilisi State University in 1963. He also found employment at the Institute of Literature of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, and joined the Georgian Writers' Union in 1966. As an academic, Gamsakhurdia turned his focus to promoting Georgian culture, criticizing falsification of history, and supporting the Georgian Orthodox Church.
In the 1970s, Gamsakhurdia and his dissident intellectual circle began making contact with Russian dissidents and with the Western press. In mid-1974, he co-founded a Human Rights Defense Group with Kostava and others; in 1977 they established the Georgian branch of the Helsinki Rights Watch Group. It worked with the Moscow Helsinki Group and other Helsinki Groups throughout the country, all set up to monitor the Soviet implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Agreement, which was co-signed by Leonid Brezhnev and called for protection of human rights such as freedom of thought, conscience, religion and national self-determination. Gamsakhurdia was also active in the underground network of samizdat publishers, contributing to a wide variety of underground political periodicals. In their publications, Gamsakhurdia and Kostava denounced corruption, treatment of cultural heritage, the prison system, deportation of Meskhetian Muslims, and other controversies. Although he was frequently harassed and occasionally arrested for his dissidence, for a long time Gamsakhurdia avoided serious punishment, probably as a result of his family's prestige and political connections.
Despite being an insider in the Georgian Writers' Union, Gamsakhurdia was expelled from the Union on 1 April 1977 after they had received information from the prosecutor's office about his illegal dissident activities. Later that month, Gamsakhurdia was arrested along with Kostava; they were accused of anti-Soviet activities, including illegal distribution of books and periodicals. They spent a year imprisoned before both being convicted and sentenced to three years in prison and two in exile. Following their imprisonment, the Georgian Helsinki Group ceased to exist. In 1978, Gamsakhurdia was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1979, he was released after publicly denouncing his dissident activism. His supporters, family and Merab Kostava claimed that his recantation was coerced by the KGB. Unlike Gamsakhurdia, Kostava did not recant and remained in prison until 1987, and Gamsakhurdia's reputation suffered. Following his release, Gamsakhurdia returned to his literary work and organizing. He continued his dissident activity, contributing to samizdat periodicals and campaigning for the release of Kostava. Gamsakhurdia was arrested again in October 1981 after attending a human-rights demonstration in Mtskheta. He was placed under house arrest from 1982–1983 for his campaigning on Kostava's behalf.
As the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev launched his glasnost reform which allowed for greater freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, the grass-roots political activism increased and eventually became commonplace in Georgia and other Soviet republics. In the spring of 1985, the Georgian Helsinki Group was restarted and in 1987, as Merab Kostava and other dissidents were released from prison, the dissident movement, which had been gaining steam, was strengthened by new leadership. Gamsakhurdia was attacked in the press as the authorities attempted to undermine the nationalist movement. In the context of glasnost, the nationalist discourse among the intelligentsia was heightened, but still sharply divided on the issue of independence.
In 1988, Gamsakhurdia became one of the founders of the Society of Saint Ilia the Righteous (SSIR), a religious-political organization which became the basis for his own political movement. Through the SSIR and the Helsinki Group, which was transformed into the Georgian Helsinki Union party in September 1989, Gamsakhurdia took part in organizing almost all of the mass protest actions demanding the independence in late 1980s. On 9 April 1989, the brutal suppression by Soviet forces of a large peaceful demonstration held in Tbilisi, proved to be a pivotal event in discrediting the continuation of Soviet rule over the country.