Sturua, Georgii Fedorovich

Sturua, Georgii Fedorovich 

Born June 6 (18), 1884, in the village of Kulashi, now Nabakevi, Samtredia Raion, Georgian SSR; died Apr. 1, 1956, in Tbilisi. Soviet party and state figure. Member of the CPSU from 1901.

The son of peasants, Sturua worked from 1903 in Bolshevik underground printing shops in Baku and Moscow. He was repeatedly arrested and in 1914 was exiled to the Narym territory; he escaped in 1916 and resumed his activities in Baku. In 1917–18 he was a member of the Caucasus Krai committee of the RSDLP(B) and a member of the Baku soviet. At the time of the Baku Commune of 1918, he was commissar of the Baku-Petrovsk front. In late 1918 and early 1919 he served as deputy people’s commissar of internal affairs of the Terek Soviet Republic. An organizer of the uprising against the Menshevik government of Georgia in October-November 1919, Sturua was arrested in 1920 and exiled to Azerbaijan.

After the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia in 1921, Sturua worked in the party and in the government. He was secretary of the Abkhazian oblast committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Georgia in 1925–27. Between 1929 and 1931 he served as people’s commissar of justice of the Georgian SSR and then of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (TSFSR). He was chairman of the Council of Trade Unions of Georgia in the years 1931–33, 1934–37, and 1953, first deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Georgian SSR from 1938 to 1941, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR from 1942 to 1948, and deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 1946 to 1948. From 1954 to 1956 he served as director of the Tbilisi branch of the V. I. Lenin Museum.

Sturua was elected a member of the central executive committees of the Georgian SSR, the TSFSR, and the USSR. He was also elected a deputy to the second convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and to the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR, a delegate to the Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Congresses of the ACP(B), and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.

REFERENCE

Lomashvili, P‘. Giorgi Sturua: Biogr. narkvevi. Tbilisi, 1966.