Ketskhoveli, Vladimir Zakharevich

(also Lado Ketskhoveli). Born Jan. 2 (14), 1876, in the village of Tlia, in present-day Dzhava Raion, Iuzhnaia Osetiia AO; died Aug. 17 (30), 1903, in Tbilisi. Figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. Bolshevik.

From 1883 to 1893, Ketskhoveli, the son of a priest, studied at the Gori Divinity School and at the Tbilisi Seminary. He was expelled from the latter in 1893 for organizing a strike of seminarians. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Kiev Seminary. Active in Social Democratic circles, Ketskhoveli was arrested in April 1896 and exiled to his homeland, where he was kept under police surveillance.

In September 1897 he joined the Georgian Social Democratic organization Mesame-dasi in Tbilisi. Working as the manager of a printing shop, Ketskhoveli studied printing and became one of the organizers of the party’s underground press. From 1898 to 1900 he led and participated in a number of demonstrations and strikes in Tbilisi and was a member of the Tbilisi Committee of the RSDLP. In 1900 he helped found the party organization in Baku and became a member of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP. In 1901, Ketskhoveli organized the underground printing shop Nina in Baku. He was arrested in September 1902. He was killed in the Metekh prison fortress in Tbilisi by a jailer, who shot at him through a window.