They cross over and kill our people.

We cross over and sing to them.

G. Kekelidze 

At the beginning of 1937, the newspaper Pravda informed the entire Soviet Union that a Decade of Georgian Art would commence in Moscow on 5 January. For two weeks, prominent representatives of Georgian culture were to perform several times a day without pause, presenting their art to Russian audiences so that Moscow’s political and social elite could glimpse, behind Georgian dances and games, the rich culture of Joseph Vissarionovich’s^[1] homeland.

The Decade was dedicated to the fifteenth anniversary of Georgia’s Sovietisation and had originally been conceived in the spring of 1936.^[2] Other Soviet republics had also been tasked with organising Decades of National Culture. Ukraine led the way in March 1936, followed by Kazakhstan in May; Georgia was the third. From the outset, Lavrentiy Beria attached particular importance to the event. In 1935, to ensure its success, he appointed his classmate and trusted associate, Akaki Chkonia — “gifted with a humanistic approach and with the qualities and skills of an administrative-economic official…”^[3] — as director of the Tbilisi Opera House.

From Journalism to Culture

Akaki Chkonia came to the field of culture from journalism. According to his party autobiography,^[4] typed in Russian on a typewriter, he was born in 1898 in Batumi, into the poor family of a former serf, Maxime Chkonia, and a peasant woman from Tskhinvali. The family of eight children, headed by a railway conductor, lived in poverty. Nevertheless, in 1909, his parents managed to enrol Akaki in a two-grade Georgian school and would have prepared him for a career in blacksmithing, were it not for Maya Ivashkevich — a seamstress close to the family — whose insistence and assistance enabled him to continue his education at a gymnasium.

Although his autobiography does not specify which gymnasium he graduated from, according to his niece, the singer Lamara Chkonia, Akaki was a classmate of Lavrentiy Beria and such a close friend that they would even exchange clothes.^[5] Lavrentiy Beria is known to have studied at the Sukhumi Higher Primary School (Сухумская Высшая Начальная Школа).

Group photograph of the Sukhumi Gymnasium, Akaki Chkonia’s class. Undated. Lavrenti Beria is presumably depicted fourth from the right in the front row during his gymnasium years. Akaki Chkonia’s hand is resting on him. Central Archive of Tbilisi.

The gymnasium-type school — where boys aged 10 to 25 would often sit in the same class — was considered the best in the city at the time. It had no boarding facilities, and the Chkonia family struggled to afford the tuition fees. As a result, a group of parents (the Parents’ Circle) covered his education costs until the fifth grade, recognising him as an impoverished but gifted pupil. From the fifth grade onwards, Akaki began tutoring others himself, and spent the summer months working as a labourer on the railway.

Akaki Chkonia during his gymnasium years. Central Archive of Tbilisi.

While still a student, Chkonia joined the Young Marxists (Mensheviks) in 1914. Later he would repent of this “sin” and even boast that he not only actively participated in the struggle against his former Menshevik comrades-in-arms in 1922, but also in 1924 took up arms “against the August adventure of Jordania and others.”^[6]

After graduating from high school in 1918, he worked for a while at a railway depot, and in 1921 became a student at the medical faculty of Tbilisi University. In his autobiography, written on 8 February 1936, when he was director of the Tbilisi State Opera, he cites the separation of Transcaucasia from Russia by the Mensheviks as the reason why he stayed in Georgia to study, and indirectly alludes to his longing for Russia.

After the Sovietisation of Georgia, Akaki Chkonia left the Young Marxists organisation, abandoned his medical studies, and departed from Tbilisi. In 1922, he moved to Russia, where he began studying at the Faculty of International Relations at Moscow State University. In 1923, following the abolition of the faculty (in Komvuz^[7]), he transferred to the Institute of Journalism, from which he graduated in 1925. From that time onwards, he worked in Georgia in various positions.

In 1923, the party organisation of the Institute of Journalism admitted him as a candidate member of the Communist Party, and he became a full member in 1926.

The Institute of Red Journalists (ИКЖ — Институт Красных Журналистов), one of the first komvuz institutions, had been training future Soviet propaganda journalists since 1919. Although it changed its name several times, it eventually became known as the Communist Institute of Journalism (CIJ—КИЖ). Despite the reorganisations, it never departed from its original purpose: to train peasant and worker correspondents as party journalists.

In addition to newspaper work, students also studied the theory of the party press. The curriculum was heavily loaded with courses such as political economy, history of the revolutionary movement, art and Marxism, and similar ideological subjects. The practical component of the programme involved cooperation with Moscow’s party newspapers and journals.

Armed with this knowledge, Comrade Chkonia returned from Moscow to Tbilisi in 1925 and immediately took up the position of deputy editor at the newspaper Kommunisti. He later served as director of various research institutes, where his primary responsibility was the implementation of party policy.

From May 1935, following his appointment as director of the State Opera, Akaki Chkonia began applying the knowledge he had acquired at the journalistic komvuz to the cultural sphere. He collected signatures from opera staff for participation in socialist competitions and for their formal registration as “shock workers.”^[8] Each signatory was required to declare themselves a shock worker and, in order to enhance their political awareness, to join one of the political study circles.^[9]

Before becoming director of the State Opera, in 1934, while working for the newspaper Collectivisation, Chkonia initiated a folk poetry project entitled Shota Rustaveli’s Cultural March, which brought many peasant poets into the spotlight. Their poems were published in newspapers and later in collections of folk poetry.

Chkonia’s method of discovering peasant poets was, of course, part of the broader cultural policy of the Soviet Union, most clearly reflected in literature through the creation of an entire generation of worker-writers. Comrade Chkonia sought to replicate the same method at the State Opera. From 1935 onwards, he began searching for operatic voices in villages and factories, presumably driven by the belief that the vanguard of culture in a socialist country must be drawn from the working class.

As director of the Opera, he took particular pride in discovering non-professional singers and bringing them to perform on the stage of the State Opera.

In his 1936 report Facing a Serious Test, Chkonia, while discussing Tbilisi’s operatic tradition, seizes the opportunity to highlight the contribution of the Soviet authorities, who, “from the very first days, breathed life into the creative/artistic potential of the Georgian people and the working masses.” He contrasts this with the “bastardized existence”” of the Tbilisi Opera during Tsarist rule, and underscores the role of the Communist Party — particularly that of Lavrentiy Beria — in its revival.^[10]

He also explains the motivation for the opera company’s journey to Moscow:

We are leaving for Moscow and firmly believe in our triumph. We want to show once again, by our example, one of the greatest achievements among the achievements of the friendly nations of the Soviet Union.^[11]

Alongside the artistic leadership — Mikeladze, Tsutsunava, Virsaladze, Kobuladze — Chkonia also pays tribute to the opera chorus, which, in his words, “consists of young people with high voices, drawn from factories, collective farms, and the conservatory.”^[12] As theatre director, he proceeds to list the individual singers discovered by the opera team, drawing particular attention to their social backgrounds:

Who are these people? How did they come to the opera?… For example, the artist of the first cast, Komsomol member Misha Q’varelashvili, a boy from a Kakhetian village who came to the theatre straight from a shepherd’s hut. It was not easy for him to work in such a stressful and unfamiliar job, but within 3 to 4 years he made a remarkable leap forward and is now one of the leading singers in our troupe. He performs principal roles in all the national operas: Alfred in La Traviata, the Duke in Rigoletto, and others.

In another case, there is Datiashvili, a worker at the ferromanganese plant in Zestaponi and a Komsomol member, who stood out among his peers as one of the best connoisseurs and performers of folk table songs. He was selected for our theatre by a specially organised team. He is now working hard on the development of his skills and shows great promise.

Then there is E. Tsaguria, a tram conductor and communist — a wonderful dramatic tenor who performs the demanding role of Abesalom [the opera Abesalom da Eteri by Z. Paliashvili].

Finally, take Misha Khelaia, a hairdresser from Poti, whom we unfortunately discovered somewhat late. He is now 35 years old and possesses exceptional vocal qualities. He is often compared to some of the greatest names on the opera stage. Despite having worked here for only 6 to 7 months, he has already achieved great success.^[13]

Later, having just returned from the Decade, Chkonia was once again concerned about the problem of finding new singers. In a letter published in the newspaper Kommunisti, when asked where the Opera should look for new talent, the director gave a clear answer:

From where the workers of all the districts of socialist construction come — from the people, from the village, and from the city. Last summer, when the Opera House began preparations to leave for Moscow, voice selection teams were sent to our towns and villages. They travelled to only a few places, worked for a day or two at each, and found many very promising young singers. There is no doubt that if we work hard ourselves, go out to seek voices, and do not miss the fortunate day when a singer will come to us, we can achieve a great deal.^[14]

Preparations for the First Decade of Georgian Art

In Tbilisi, preparations for the first Decade of Georgian Art in 1937 began well in advance.^[15] Alongside opera and ballet productions, concerts of Georgian folk music were planned to be held in Moscow as a showcase of national culture and identity. Georgian folk singing was not unfamiliar to the Russian stage; Georgians had previously participated in folk art Olympiads held in Moscow and Leningrad. However, the Decade held incomparably greater significance and, accordingly, its scale and budget were increased.

It was decided that Georgian folklore would be presented to the Moscow public not by a few traditional folklore groups, but by two ethnographic ensembles created especially for the Decade, whose repertoire would encompass the entirety of Georgia. Documents preserved in the Opera Fund of the National Archives, relating to the preparatory work for the Decade, show that folklore groups from across Georgia were invited to take part in a selection performance for the event.

A special commission, headed by Ermile (Erik) Bedia, editor of the newspaper Kommunisti, regularly auditioned ethnographic choirs from various regions and decided which were suitable to be sent to the Decade and which were not. For example, from the verbatim record of one meeting, we learn that the commission rejected the Rachan bagpipe players because their songs were considered “no longer of any value,” although they deemed it appropriate to record them on a gramophone disc.^[16] The Megrelidze and Akobia ensembles were also barred from performing at the closed concert organised for the commission’s evaluation. Evgeni Mikeladze’s ambiguous comment about the latter — “Everything is revolutionary, nothing is folk”^[17] — while unclear as to whether he referred to the ensemble’s style or content, nevertheless reveals Mikeladze’s own conception of folk music and the perceived incompatibility between these two concepts.

After the audition of the folklore groups, a meeting of the commission was held; its members included both the artistic leadership of the Opera and party functionaries. As is known, two groups were eventually selected for the trip to Moscow: one was the ethnographic group of East Georgia led by Sandro Kavsadze, and the other was the ethnographic group of West Georgia led by Kirile Pachkoria. The commission listened to their performances several times and, each time, alongside various comments and recommendations, issued requests and instructions. These instructions concerned both the creative challenges of traditional music and the party line —harmonising and making folk music compatible with Soviet policy.

Although there had been a tradition of performing folk songs on stage in Georgia before, many of the opinions expressed at the commission’s meetings proved fateful for Georgian folk music. In the lively exchanges between musicians and party officials, a kind of “standard” for folk songs was formed, which later spread for decades as an unwritten law for any folk ensemble. The Communist Party’s participation in the Decade’s work left a significant imprint on the shaping of musical folklore; even professional musicians who fully understood the specifics of Georgian folklore were compelled to acquiesce to the political climate and were swept into the current of this grand Decade. In fact, it was at these meetings that the fate of Georgian musical folklore was decided, its future form determined, and, to some extent, its content as well.

At one of the meetings, the newly formed ethnographic choir of East Georgia gave another performance. The members of the commission appreciated the well-chosen voices and the truly folk character of several songs. Grigol Kokeladze, who prioritised “true folk art,” criticised Kavsadze’s choir for being too academic: “We have an ethnographic choir here, and my comrades thought that this is not an ethnographic choir, but an academic one.”^[18] Almost all of the members of the commission rightly shared Kokeladze’s view that folk singing should retain its naturalness and that a folk choir should not resemble a classical choir.

According to Evgeni Mikeladze as well, the choir gave the impression of being more academic than ethnographic, especially when conducted by Sandro’s son, the young Data Kavsadze. He attributed this tendency towards academicism to the excessive diligence and professionalism of his talented pupil (Data had studied with Mikeladze himself), although he criticised the misdirection of the colossal work undertaken by Kavsadze:

You cannot work with an ethnographic choir in the same way as with an academic choir; you cannot demand such nuances from people who have untrained voices, and yet he has them singing pianissimo and fortissimo. I don’t think folk songs are performed like that. […] Such a performance is unacceptable for an ethnographic choir.^[19]

The director of the opera theatre, Aleksandre Tsutsunava, did not see a problem with a slight “academic patina,” noting that “the tradition of academicism did exist in Georgian choirs, and we should not shy away from it, but rather encourage it to some extent.” According to Tsutsunava, when a person sings under the influence of wine, they tend to stretch and lengthen the sound slightly, so “a sense of moderation is necessary, and an academic touch would not be unwelcome.”^[20]

Mikeladze agreed with the idea of preserving the authenticity of folk songs, emphasising that, as a result of the conductor’s vision, folk songs should not be affected by unnecessary, even folk-like, nuances and details, nor should the “charm of folk songs” be lost due to choir members having “forgotten folk songs because of city life.” However, the great maestro’s primary objection — that folk songs lost their “charm” due to excessive embellishment — was directed less at the father-son Kavsadze duo and more at the alteration of the traditional mode of performance. In this context, Mikeladze identifies two primary, mutually incompatible issues that stem from one another: improvisation and conducting. “The charm of folk songs lies in one or two voices improvising solo, while the others accompany. They [Kavsadze’s choir] lack improvisation.”^[21] Indeed, it is hardly surprising that singers recruited from factories, and even conservatory students, could not improvise; and even if they could, how could a conductor possibly allow it within a group of at least fifty members? Mikeladze sees the root of the problem precisely in the alteration of tradition when he states that traditionally “folk choral singing very rarely submitted to the conductor’s baton or hand,”^[22] yet he nowhere addresses the fundamental reason that gave rise to the need for a conductor in folk song.

Grigol Kokeladze essentially expresses the same idea when discussing Gurian songs performed by the West Georgian ethnographic choir led by Kirile Pachkoria: “I wanted to talk about conducting. The Gurian choir sings, the comrade Pachkoria assists, and you say that he conducts. This is of great importance to the listeners. He should not conduct while the Gurian choir sings.”^[23] Kokeladze once again indirectly points to the issue of improvisation for the audience —folk song should be an expression of folk talent, not the skill of the choirmaster. However, he overlooks the fact that the party’s demand for the creation of large-scale ethnographic choirs had significantly altered the situation. Pachkoria and Kavsadze found themselves caught between two fires: on the one hand, they were obliged to fulfil the party’s directives, and on the other, they had to consider the creative recommendations of Kokeladze and Mikeladze. Indeed, Kokeladze’s remark would have been justified if it had not been aimed at the large-scale choirs created specifically for the Decade, whose members learned to sing not in the traditional manner but in rehearsals, and for whom singing was more an obligation than a way of life. In this context, neglecting the conductor’s role made the directors’ task even more difficult, as they were forced to justify themselves to the commission. For example, Pachkoria noted that choir members had difficulty singing independently and, despite several months of work, still required “some rhythmic coordination.”^[24]

The sessions were conducted in Russian. When the final word was given to Sandro Kavsadze, he responded to all the comments and promised to address the shortcomings. The stenographic record notes that at one point Kavsadze switched to Georgian, although we will never know what he said to the commission in his native language, as the stenographer did not record it. One can only assume that Kavsadze also replied to Kokeladze and Mikeladze’s remarks and probably identified the main problem as the fact that a folk song in a Georgian village or at a table was traditionally performed by five or six singers; when the number of singers on stage increased tenfold, its structure was disrupted, and the doubling of voices made improvisation impossible.^[25]

This assumption is supported by the comment of one of the commission members, Vladimir Mirtskhulava: “As for the idea that a large ensemble cannot perform a song originally sung by five or six people… there is some truth in that. The difficulty lies in the nature of the work. In other words, Tsutsunava was right in saying that the ensemble was formed quite recently, and high expectations cannot yet be placed upon it, but one cannot conclude that a large ensemble is incapable of performing folk songs.”^[26]

Mirtskhulava’s comment must have been in response to a remark made in a language other than Russian. It seems that Kavsadze was so emotionally affected by the comments that he was unable to collect his thoughts in Russian and instead expressed himself in his native language. What he was trying to convey was precisely this: that these mass folk-art concerts, commissioned by the state, were intended to be as grand and large-scale as the Soviet Union itself, with all its imperial and monumental form and style.

How were professional musicians supposed to resolve the central dilemma? How could they reconcile the government’s directives with the task of presenting on stage something that, by its very origin, function, form, and content, was never intended as performance art — let alone mass art?

Did they understand the fate that awaits folk songs and dances when they are torn from their natural environment — the village — and turned into spectacle? When transferred to the stage, what happens when the audience often cannot understand the content of the folk text, let alone its meaning? Perhaps Akaki Chkonia and Ermile Bedia, for whom the Decade of Georgian Art was merely another party assignment, did not grasp this. But Evgeni Mikeladze, Grigol Kokeladze, Sandro Kavsadze, and Kirile Pachkoria surely knew that folklore acquires meaning only within its native context — folk life — where its content is shared and internalised by the participants themselves.

Here, in the Tbilisi Opera, it was plain for all to see: dozens of singers stood on stage, the conductor was “jumping around with his baton,”^[27] yet the result fell far short of what one might hear in a typical peasant household, in a field, or at a village festival. It was equally evident that such a packed stage left no room for improvisation — the “chief charm” of folk singing — and what would be presented in Moscow would not be authentic Georgian folklore, but rather its surrogate, a counterfeit.

Whether this troubled the chairman of the meeting, Bedia, is unknown. What is clear, however, is that the editor of the newspaper Kommunisti dutifully followed instructions from above. He already knew what outcome was expected of him. For that reason, he allowed himself to speak harshly to Kavsadze: “Folklore does not mean primitivism. Folklore does not mean singing like they do in Outer Kakheti or the Sighnaghi region. There must be artistic refinement here — but in moderation. And you have been warned about this, and you will continue to be warned, because otherwise you will stray from the objectives of the ethnographic group, and that will be harmful.”^[28]

The leader of the West Georgian Ethnographic Choir, Kirile Pachkoria, adopted a different strategy for preserving the authenticity of folk songs and sought a solution by dividing the choir into smaller internal groups. At a closed concert, he assigned certain songs to specific micro-groups, arguing that “Megrelians cannot help Gurians because everyone has their own accent.”^[29] Nevertheless, he received harsh criticism from the commission, with Aleksandre Duduchava being particularly vocal: “Pachkoria’s choir does not stand up to criticism. This is the West Georgian Ethnographic Choir, and it seems that Gurian, Imeretian and Megrelian songs should be performed together. Here, the Megrelians sing Megrelian songs while the Gurians remain silent. Why such a division?”^[30]

Duduchava also criticised the style of Ali Pasha and Khasanbegura, and although he acknowledged his own lack of expertise in folk music, as a listener he found the Gurian songs laughable when compared to the performance of the Simonishvili choir.^[31]

Evgeni Mikeladze also criticised Pachkoria’s choir, though his critique focused on the absence of folk nuances, which, in his view, had stripped the performance of its folk character entirely. According to Mikeladze, what was excessive in Kavsadze’s choir was presented in a more restrained manner by Pachkoria.^[32] It seems that, unlike Kavsadze, Pachkoria took fewer risks in working with a choir of non-professional singers, even justifying himself by noting that the soloist had been unwell. However, no one approved of the Gurian krimanchuli — neither the musicians on the commission nor the party members.

As a result, the commission unanimously decided that, to strengthen the Gurian songs, Pachkoria’s 55-member choir would be supplemented by additional singers from Ozurgeti. The task of organising the search for singers was assigned to a member of the commission, the head of the Department of Arts, Boria Gordeladze, who delegated it to his deputy, Vladimir Machavariani, also present at the session. And when Mikeladze expressed the desire to take Simonishvili’s group to Moscow, Bedia gave a fateful response: “We do not decide who goes to Moscow. That is determined by the relevant authorities.”^[33]

And indeed, all matters related to the Decade — who would go to Moscow, with which cast, what repertoire to present, how many performances to give, and so on — were decided at the top. The leadership and session chairs merely voiced the decisions made by the Central Committee, and the musicians followed accordingly. One telling example: at the request of Lavrenti Beria, three singers were removed from the cast of one of the opera productions.^[34]

The Opera Fund of the National Archives contains minutes of meetings that reveal tensions between the director and both the opera conductor, Evgeni Mikeladze, and the chief stage director, Aleksandre Tsutsunava. The main point of disagreement concerned the number of performances to be held in Moscow. It appears that they had initially agreed to present 30 performances to the Moscow public. However, at the meeting on 4 July, Chkonia requested that The Nutcracker (by Tchaikovsky) be added to the morning sessions.^[35] According to the stenographic record of the Decade Commission’s session on 9 September 1936, the director of the Opera House proposed increasing the number of performances in Moscow to 35. This was considered unrealistic by the theatre’s artistic leadership, who prioritised quality. In contrast, the conductor and stage director called for increased rehearsal time, even if it meant reducing the number of performances.^[36]

After the Decade

The Decade of Georgian Art was an unprecedented success. More than 700 people took part in the event. As a result, many participants received honorary government awards, and the Z. Paliashvili Opera Theatre was awarded the Order of Lenin.^[37] Akaki Chkonia was also awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour.

On 16 January 1937, Zarya Vostoka reported that a reception for participants in the Decade of Georgian Art had taken place in the Kremlin on 14 January, attended by comrades Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Kalinin, Andreyev, Mikoyan, Yezhov, Beria, and others. The newspaper also informed its readers that additional opera performances had been scheduled from 15 to 18 January.

Singer Lamara Chkonia recalls in her memoirs that Joseph Stalin never missed Georgian performances in Moscow. After the final concert, “at a banquet held in the Kremlin, my uncle sat next to Stalin at the table. He gave many toasts. Akaki Chkonia greatly pleased Stalin with his talent, knowledge, and erudition. They spoke at length. In the end, they all sang ‘Fly, Black Swallow’ (Gaprindi Shavo Mertskhalo). Stalin summoned Uncle Akaki to his office the next day and had a long conversation with him.”^[38] 

Undated photograph preserved in Akaki Chkonia’s personal collection at the Central Archive of Tbilisi. The faces of the individuals seated next to him have been deliberately crossed out in the photograph.

Undated photo preserved in Akaki Chkonia’s personal fund at the Central Archive of Tbilisi. The faces of those seated next to Akaki Chkonia have been deliberately crossed out. 

After returning from Moscow, the theatre resumed normal operations. The Opera Theatre began preparing for the Third Five-Year Plan, and one of the last meetings chaired by Akaki Chkonia addressed this issue on 17 May 1937.^[39] On 28 May of the same year, the head of the Opera was murdered at the theatre. This mysterious incident has survived in various retellings among Chkonia’s family and friends. Lamara Chkonia recalls:

Soon after one of the performances had ended, Akaki Chkonia, as usual, went on stage to make sure everything was in order. At that moment, a certain Mamaladze, the theatre’s party commissar at the time, suddenly appeared on stage and fired several bullets into Akaki Chkonia’s back. My uncle somehow regained consciousness, raised himself slightly, looked at Mamaladze and said: “What do you want, boy, what have I done to you?” To which the killer apparently responded by shouting: “Ah! You’re still alive?” and fired several more shots. In total, he was hit by six bullets. At that time, the theatre’s chief director, Al. Tsutsunava, hid in the stalls. Mamaladze, as became known later, was arrested the following morning and executed without trial.^[40]

Kandid Charkviani recounts the murder of Akaki Chkonia with different details. According to him, Mamaladze — who had been caught distributing Trotskyist literature and summoned by the district committee to explain himself — told Akaki Chkonia: “I don’t know, maybe I really did distribute Trotskyist literature back in 1927.”

Noticing something suspicious in Mamaladze’s words, Chkonia reported the content of their conversation to the District Committee. Later, when Mamaladze was confronted with the informant, Chkonia repeated his words to him verbatim and advised him to confess everything before the Party.

Following this, by the sole decision of the Raikom secretary, Mamaladze was dismissed from his post, and his responsibilities were handed over to Chkonia, who was a member of the party committee. To carry out this decision, the three of them went to the Opera Theatre. The lights in the party committee’s office were off, and as Chkonia stepped into the corridor to call the inspector, Mamaladze approached, cocked his Browning pistol, and shot him four times. The wounds proved fatal.^[41]

The entire opera company bid farewell to Akaki Chkonia; everyone praised his exceptional organisational talent and spoke of his contribution to the success of the Decade of Georgian Art. However, even behind the scenes, no one discussed the circumstances of his murder. The newspapers, without providing details, informed the public of the tragic death of the Opera director at the hands of a class enemy.

On 31 May 1937, six-year-old Lamara Chkonia was taken to her uncle’s funeral by her aunt and held in her arms during the procession as Akaki Chkonia was carried out of the Opera House and buried in Vake Cemetery. The family always suspected that someone had wanted to remove Akaki Chkonia from their path, and the singer often heard her grieving aunt Valia say, “Damned Lavrenti [Lavrenti Beria] could not forgive Akaki’s talent.”^[42] 

The funeral procession of Akaki Chkonia from the Opera Theatre. National Library.

It is unclear why Lavrenti Beria would have felt threatened by the success of his classmate and comrade. Nor do we know what Kandid Charkviani truly thought in his heart; his memoirs exclude Beria’s guilt, as Charkviani relies on party archive records and narrates the story through Bolshevik discourse. When Charkviani’s memoirs were first published in 1985, Beria’s successors made no attempt to investigate the case or to personally disclose their “experiences and thoughts.” Like almost all memoirists of the era, Charkviani flirts with half-truths before the reader. He knew better than anyone how the Bolsheviks treated their comrades with particular cruelty and then kept many personal incidents as closely guarded secrets. Charkviani had more access to archival records than anyone else; yet, as we know, there is not even a protocol of interrogation of the suspect in the murder case, since the day after Chkonia’s murder, he was shot without trial. Thus, we will never know whether Mamaladze acted on Beria’s orders or of his own free will, or whether he was truly the killer of the Opera House director. It would have been easy for Lavrenti Beria to declare his classmate an enemy of the people and so rid himself of him — if not for the caution dictated by Chkonia’s personal relationship with Stalin. Beria’s hand can still be observed in this mysterious affair: what he needed, he used; what he suspected, he eliminated.  

Soon after this incident, in Tbilisi, engulfed in the flames of the Great Terror, neither Akaki Chkonia nor his student brother, who was caught a few days after Akaki’s funeral and exiled for ten years for his passion for anti-Soviet jokes, were remembered. Tbilisi society would have soon forgotten the Decade, and it would have remained only in the memory of its participants, if not for the tradition that began in the early 1930s, which was strengthened by the First Decade of Georgian Art, thus playing an important role in the cultural memory of our country. The Soviet Union was a country that created and initiated traditions. However, the Decade seems to have canonised one of the strangest traditions — a tradition that still manifests itself today in various forms and expressions — best captured by Giorgi Kekelidze’s ironic phrase: “They cross over and kill our people. We cross over and sing to them.”

^[1] In Soviet-era Georgia, it was common to refer to people by their first name and patronymic (a practice borrowed from Russian tradition). However, in Georgian, this was not an official naming convention but rather an informal or bureaucratic habit influenced by Soviet/Russian norms.

^[2] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 10, p. 203

^[3] Charkviani, Kandid. 2004. An Experience and a Thought: Memoirs, 1906–1994 (განცდილი და ნააზრევი. 1906–1994: მოგონებები). Tbilisi: Merani. 96.

^[4] National Archives of Georgia, Akaki Maksime’s Son Chkonia’s Personal Fund 204, Inventory 1.

^[5] Chkonia, Lamara. 2007. On the Waves of Life. Tbilisi; p. 42.

^[6] National Archives of Georgia (NAG), Tbilisi Central Archive (TCA), Akaki Chkonia’s Fund 204, Inventory 1.

^[7] Комвуз — a Communist higher educational institution (Kommunisticheskoe vysshee uchebnoe zavedenie) in the Soviet Union, established for the training of Communist Party personnel.

^[8] Udarnichestvo (Ударничество) – one of the earliest and most widespread forms of socialist competition in the Soviet Union, aimed at increasing labour productivity, reducing production costs, and achieving high (“shock-worker”) labour tempo.

^[9] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 199, p. 19.

^[10] Referring to the Opera Theatre with such a pejorative epithet was linked to its bourgeois past. SEA Uitsa, Opera Fund 55, opis 1, file 203, p. 11.

^[11] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 203, p. 14.

^[12] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 203, p. 12-13.

^[13] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 203, p. 15.

^[14] Chkonia, Akaki. 1937. “Opera Before New Challenges” („ოპერა ახალი ამოცანების წინაშე.“). Kommunisti, 26 February, no. 46.

^[15] The Decade of Georgian Art was held twice in the Soviet Union — the first in 1937, and the second in 1958.

^[16] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 4.

^[17] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 14.

^[18] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 5.

^[19] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 6.

^[20] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 9.

^[21] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 6-7.

^[22] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 6.

^[23] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 5.

^[24] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 7.

^[25] Large choirs inherently rule out the possibility of improvisation, as they replace the individually sung upper voices of traditional folk performance practice with doubled voices — that is, multiple singers per upper part (ed.).

^[26] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 11.

^[27] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 12. These words were addressed to Sandro Kavsadze by Vladimir Machavariani during the discussion of the performance by Kirile Pachkoria’s choir.

^[28] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 12.

^[29] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 11.

^[30] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 7.

^[31] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 8.

^[32] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 208, p. 6.

^[33] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 16.

^[34] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 23.

^[35] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 217, p. 24.

^[36] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 206, p. 5.

^[37] Ioseliani, Avtandil. 1958. Georgia in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (1941–1945) (საქართველო საბჭოთა კავშირის დიდ სამამულო ომში (1941-1945). Tbilisi: Academy of Sciences Publishing.

^[38] Chkonia, Lamara. 2007. On the Waves of Life. Tbilisi; p. 43.

^[39] National Archives of Georgia, Opera Fund 55, Opis 1, File 222, p. 3-31.

^[40] Chkonia, Lamara. 2007. On the Waves of Life. Tbilisi; p. 43.

^[41] Charkviani, Kandid. 2004. Experienced and Reflected. 1906–1994: Memoirs (განცდილი და ნააზრევი. 1906–1994: მოგონებები). Tbilisi: Merani, 97.

^[42] Chkonia, Lamara. 2007. On the Waves of Life. Tbilisi; p. 43.