Candide Charkviani - The Mingrelian Affair and Exile 1952-58

The Mingrelian Affair and Exile 1952-58

Charkviani was accused during the Mingrelian Affair (1952), a conspiracy aimed against Lavrenti Beria's protégés in Georgia. For years historians erroneously thought that Candide Charkviani was Mingrelian and that he was punished because of his links with Beria. However, the newly opened archives in Georgia provide evidence that Charkviani, who was Lechkhumian (from the Lechkhumi region of Georgia) and not Mingrelian or Svan, was accused because he allegedly failed to “detect and repress the criminal nationalist ring of counter revolutionaries within the ranks of the Georgian Communist Party” . Moreover, it has emerged that Charkviani’s relations with Beria had never been smooth and that Beria tolerated Charkviani only because the latter was supported by Stalin .

As a result of Mingrelian Affair, in April 1952 Charkviani was demoted to a minor position at the Central Committee in Moscow. Immediately following Stalin’s death, all Beria’s clients who suffered during the Mingrelian Affair were restored. Yet Charkviani, on Beria’s orders, was separated from his family and moved to Central Asia where in 1953-1958 he managed a state construction company in Tashkent. In 1958 he was finally allowed to return to Georgia.