Noe Zhordania - Early Career

Early Career

Returning to Georgia, he propagated Marxist ideas among the workers of Tiflis and in the 1890s emerged as a leader of the first legal Marxist organization in Georgia, Mesame Dasi (the Third Group). In 1894, he was tried by the Russian authorities for his participation in the "League of Freedom of Georgia". Elected a delegate to the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903, he sided with the Menshevik faction and gained significant influence among them. In 1905 he edited a Tiflis-based Georgian Menshevik newspaper Sotsial-Demokratia known for its fierce attacks on the Bolsheviks. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he went against the armed uprising and advocated the creation of a legal workers’ party. On the 4th Congress of the RSDLP in 1906, he supported the idea of land municipalization. The same year, he was elected to the First State Duma for the Tiflis Governorate and became a spokesman for the Social Democratic faction. The 5th Congress of the RSDLP elected him into the Central Committee where he maintained his post until 1912. Having signed the "Viborg declaration", a protest against the dissolution of the First Duma, in December 1907, he was sentenced to three months of imprisonment. In mid-1912, he edited a Baku-based legal Menshevik newspaper Nashe Slovo. In 1914, he collaborated with Leon Trotsky in the magazine Borba where he published a series of articles on the question of nationalities.