According to a transcript published by the Soviet news agency T < SMALL > ASS </ SMALL >, Gamsakhurdia spoke of " how wrong was the road I had taken when I disseminated literature hostile to the Soviet state.

Gamsakhurdia published his first poems, and short stories early in the 1910s, influenced by German Expressionism and French Post-Symbolist literature.

In 1925, Gamsakhurdia published his first and one of the most impressive novels The Smile of Dionysus ( დიონისოს ღიმილი ), which took him eight years to write.

Another major feature of Gamsakhurdia ’ s writings is a new subtlety he infused into Georgian phrasing, imitating an archaic language to create a sense of oldness.

The junction was again blocked, this time by the new government of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, in March-April 1991 in an attempt to exert pressure on the central Soviet authorities.

Their imprisonment attracted international attention, leading to members of the United States Congress nominating Gamsakhurdia and Kostava for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 ( though it went to Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin instead ).

Elected to the Supreme Council of Georgia the same year, he was closely associated with Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a Soviet-era dissident who went on to become the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council and eventually the President of Georgia in 1991.

Tengiz Kitovani () ( born June 9, 1938 ) is a retired Georgian politician and military commander with high-profile involvement in the Georgian Civil War early in the 1990s when he commanded the National Guard of Georgia and served as a Defense Minister until being gradually sidelined by Eduard Shevardnadze who had earlier been invited to lead the nation after a successful coup d ' etat launched by Kitovani and his allies against President Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

However, they gave origin to a new generation of dissidents, such as Merab Kostava and Zviad Gamsakhurdia, both teenage participants of the March 1956 rally, who would lead Georgia into its struggle for independence in the 1980s.

A stand-off followed because former National Guard leader Tengiz Kitovani's armed supporters withdrew to the outskirts of Tbilisi where they remained until late December 1991 when the power struggle intensified with the opposition claiming that President Gamsakhurdia had left no chance to peaceful settlement of the crisis.

The protesters, led by the Independence Committee ( Merab Kostava, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Giorgi Chanturia, Irakli Bathiashvili, Irakli Tsereteli and others ) organized a peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes, demanding the punishment of Abkhaz secessionists and restoration of Georgian independence.

However, when Gamsakhurdia proposed to abolish Adjarian autonomy, Abashidze called Adjarians, especially the Muslims of the region, to rise in protest.

In September 1993, Zviad Gamsakhurdia took advantage of the struggle in Abkhazia to return to the city of Zugdidi, western Georgia, and rally enthusiastic but disorganized Georgians in Samegrelo region against the demoralized and unpopular government of Eduard Shevardnadze.

Gamsakhurdia refused to compromise, and his troops forcibly dispersed a large opposition rally in Tbilisi on September 2, 1991.

When the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated his policy of glasnost, Gamsakhurdia played a key role in organizing mass pro-independence rallies held in Georgia between 1987 – 1990, in which he was joined by Merab Kostava on the latter's release in 1987.

Gamsakhurdia was elected President in the election of May 26 with 86. 5 % per cent of the vote on a turnout of over 83 %.

On December 27, 1991, U. S. based Helsinki Watch NGO issued a report on Human Rights violations made by the government of Gamsakhurdia.

A civil war in western Georgia broke out in 1993 between supporters of Gamsakhurdia and Shevardnadze but was ended by Russian intervention on Shevardnadze's side and the death of ex-President Gamsakhurdia on 31 December 1993.

After Georgia formally seceded from the Soviet Union on April 9, 1991, the Supreme Council voted, on April 14, to create the post of executive President, and appointed Zviad Gamsakhurdia to the office pending the holding of direct elections.

In the nationwide elections to this post, on May 26, 1991, Gamsakhurdia won a landslide victory, becoming the first President of the Republic of Georgia.

" It declared independence on April 9, 1991, under Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

At the height of the Stalinist terror, Gamsakhurdia turned to the more favored genre of historical and patriotic prose, embarking on his magnum opus, the novel The Right Hand of the Grand Master ( დიდოსტატის მარჯვენა, 1939 ), set in the early 11th century around the legend of the building of the Cathedral of Living Pillar against a broad panorama of 11th-century Georgia.

One of the most serious incidents occurred in Tbilisi on June 24, 1992, when armed Gamsakhurdia supporters seized the state television center.

It was later reported that Gamsakhurdia had shot himself on December 31, in a village Jikhashkari ( Samegrelo region of Western Georgia ).

Ioseliani, as well as Gamsakhurdia ’ s supporters and some independent observers, claimed that Kitovani hired some Soviet / Russian troops stationed in Tbilisi to join the attack on the government.

Noghaideli became a deputy in the Parliament of Georgia in 1992, elected following the overthrow of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and chaired the Parliamentary Committee on Environment Protection and Natural Resources during 1992-1995.

However, a day later, the Georgian SSR Supreme Soviet revoked the decision and on 23 November, thousands of Georgian nationalists led by Zviad Gamsakhurdia and other opposition leaders marched to Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, to hold a meeting there.

Although Gamsakhurdia and Chanturia did not agree on how to deal with the secessionist demands of the Ossetians, they were both more opposed to the Communists and continuing membership of the USSR.

After Gamsakhurdia ’ s fall, he became Prime Minister in the Georgian interim government ( Military Council, later transformed into the State Council ) which was joined by Eduard Shevardnadze ) on 6 January 1992.

Zviadist rebels were defeated and Gamsakhurdia was probably murdered on 31 December 1993.

Following Georgia's first democratic parliamentary and presidential elections, President Zviad Gamsakhurdia appointed Aslan Abashidze as the head of the Adjara's Supreme Council on March 15, 1991 hoping that the latter would assist in canceling the autonomous status of the region.

* 1991 – Armed opposition groups launch a military coup against President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

* 1992 – Leaders of armed opposition declare the President Zviad Gamsakhurdia deposed during a military coup in Georgia.

* 1992 – President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia flees the country as a result of the military coup.

* 1991 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia becomes the first elected President of the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet era.

** Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of Georgia ( b. 1939 )

** Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of Georgia ( d. 1993 )

* December 22 – Armed opposition groups launch a military coup against President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

Zviad Gamsakhurdia (, ( March 31, 1939 — December 31, 1993 ) was a dissident, scientist and writer, who became the first democratically elected President of the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet era.

In Georgia, the government of Eduard Shevardnadze ( who was then First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party ) arrested Gamsakhurdia and his fellow dissident Merab Kostava.

On November 14, 1990, Zviad Gamsakhurdia was elected by an overwhelming majority as Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia.

After his election as Chairman of the newly renamed Supreme Council, Gamsakhurdia denounced the Ossetian move as being part of a Russian ploy to undermine Georgia, declaring the Ossetian separatists to be " direct agents of the Kremlin, its tools and terrorists.

According to George Khutsishvili, the nationalist " Georgia for the Georgians " hysteria launched by the followers of Gamsakhurdia " played a decisive role " in " bringing about Bosnia-like inter-ethnic violence.

A pro-Gamsakhurdia faction managed to convene for a few times in exile and again in Georgia during Gamsakhurdia ’ s failed attempt to regain power later in 1993.

The newly independent Republic of Georgia elected as its first president a leader of the national-liberational movement, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a famous scientist and writer, who had been imprisoned by Shevardnadze's government in the late 1970s.

When Shevardnadze joined the Georgian state council in 1992 in the chaotic aftermath of the coup against Zviad Gamsakhurdia, he presented himself as being the best candidate to guide Georgia through its difficult rebirth as an independent nation.

He briefly worked as a human rights officer for the interim State Council of Georgia following the overthrow of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia before receiving a fellowship from the United States State Department ( via the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program ).

On 26 January, in a ceremony held at the Tbilisi Kashueti Church of Saint George, he promulgated a decree granting permission for the return of the body of the first President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, from Grozny ( Chechen Republic ) to Tbilisi and renaming a major road in the capital after Gamsakhurdia.

In September 1991 his party joined the opposition to the government of the first post-Soviet President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

The first President of the post-Soviet Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was a Megrelian.