Seit Devdariani

Seit Devdariani (Georgian: სეით დევდარიანი) (1879, Kutaisi – 21 September 1937, Tbilisi) was a Georgian philosopher and political activist who was executed during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

Karl Kautsky with the Georgian Social-Democrats, Tbilisi, 1920.
In the first row: S. Devdariani, Noe Ramishvili, Noe Zhordania, Karl Kautsky and his wife Luise, Silibistro Jibladze, Razhden Arsenidze;
in the second row: Kautsky's secretary Olberg, Victor Tevzaia, K. Gvarjaladze, Konstantine Sabakhtarashvili, S. Tevzadze, Avtandil Urushadze, R. Tsintsabadze

Devdariani graduated from the Tbilisi Theological Seminary in 1898. He was involved in Menshevik Party in 1900. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, he was a leading Menshevik in Kharkiv. He was a member of the Georgian National Council from 1917 to 1919 and of the Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia for the Social-Democrats from 1919 to 1921. After the fall of the Georgian republic, Devdariani became involved in anti-Soviet opposition. Between 1921 and 1924 he was a Chairman of the underground Central Committee of the Georgian Social-Democratic party, in 1922-1924 member of the underground Committee of Independence of Georgia. In 1937, he was arrested in Tbilisi and executed by the Soviet government.[1]

Devdariani was the author of several works on philosophy, including a three-volume history of Georgian thought which was lost after his execution. Only one chapter, that on the 18th-century Catholicos Anton I, survived to be published in 1989.[2]