Nikoladze, Niko

(also Nikolai Iakov-levich Nikoladze). Born Sept. 14(26), 1843, in Kutaisi; died Apr. 1, 1928, in Tbilisi. Georgian and Russian public figure, publicist, and literary critic.

Nikoladze entered the University of St. Petersburg in 1861. He was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for taking part in student disturbances. His works appeared in print for the first time in 1860 in the Georgian journal Tsiskari (Dawn). Later, his works were published in the St. Petersburg journals Iskra (The Spark) and Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and the newspaper Narodnoe bogatstvo. He was acquainted with N. G. Chernyshevskii.

Nikoladze went abroad in 1864 and was associated with the Young Emigration. In 1865 he published the article “Liberation of the Peasants in Georgia” in the Russian revolutionary newspaper Kolokol (The Bell). In Geneva, using the pen name Nikifor G., he printed the pamphlet The Government and the Young Generation (1866), which was occasioned by D. V. Karakozov’s attempt to assassinate Alexander II. In 1868, with M. K. Elpidin, Nikoladze published the journal Podpol’noe slovo (The Underground Word), and with L. I. Mechnikov he published the journal Sovremennost’ (Contemporary Life). He helped prepare the first edition of the collected works of Chernyshevskii. In 1868, Nikoladze received a Ph.D. in law from the University of Zürich for his dissertation Disarmament and Its Socioeconomic Consequences (Geneva, 1868; in French).

Returning to Georgia, Nikoladze lived in Tbilisi under police surveillance. He contributed to the Georgian newspapers Droeba and Krebuli. In 1878, Nikoladze became editor and publisher of the Tbilisi liberal Russian-language newspaper Obzor, which was suppressed in 1880 for printing antigovernment articles. Nikoladze was exiled to Stavropol’.

In 1881, Nikoladze settled in St. Petersburg, where he contributed to the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski (Fatherland Notes). In 1882 he was a mediator in negotiations between the Sviashchennaia Druzhina (the Holy Host, a body founded to struggle against revolutionaries in the early 1880’s) and the People’s Will. In 1886, Nikoladze settled in Tbilisi, where he was a leader of the Meore Dasi (Second Group) movement.

Nikoladze was an ardent supporter of Chernyshevskii’s realistic aesthetics. His views on literature were reflected in his articles on S. Rustaveli, N. Baratashvili, I. Chavchavadze, G. Orbeliani, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Byron, and W. M. Thackeray.

The Nikoladze House-Museum opened in Didi-Dzhikhaishi in 1951.