Kote Tsintsadze

Kote Tsintsadze (კოტე ცინცაძე, Котэ Цинцадзе) (1887-1930) was a Georgian Bolshevik involved in the Russian revolutions and the Sovietization of Georgia. He was purged under Joseph Stalin as a member of the Left Opposition within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Tsintsadze joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904, and sided with its Bolshevik faction. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he was closely associated with the famous revolutionary fighter Kamo and served as head of the Bolshevik armed detachments that engaged in expropriation and robbery. Later, he was involved in the underground Bolshevik activities in the Caucasus, and became the first permanent chairman of the Georgian Cheka, which was established in February 1921, immediately following the Soviet invasion of Georgia. At the same time, he was a member of the Communist Party Central Committee and of the Central Executive Committee of the Georgian SSR. Although ruthless against the widespread anti-Soviet opposition in Georgia, he was a strong proponent of Georgian sovereignty from Moscow and, during the 1922 Georgian Affair, engaged in a bitter political confrontation with Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze whom the Georgian moderate Communists accused of "Great Russian chauvinism". As a result, Tsintsadze was denounced as a "national deviationist" and removed from his posts later that year, being replaced by E. A. Kvantaliani, who was more compliant with the centralizers' policy. Having joined the Left Opposition in 1923, Tsintsadze was excluded from the Communist Party in 1927 and arrested in 1928. He died in prison of tuberculosis.