Razhden Arsenidze

Razhden Arsenidze (Georgian: რაჟდენ არსენიძე) (October 1, 1880 – May 24, 1965) was a Georgian jurist, journalist, and politician.

He was involved with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and sided with its Menshevik wing in 1903. He later engaged in revolutionary journalism and was exiled by the Imperial Russian administration to Siberia whence he was able to return only after the 1917 February Revolution toppled down the Tsar’s government. Arsenidze was one of the authors of the May 26, 1918 Act of Independence of Georgia and was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Georgia in 1919. The same year, he became a Minister of Justice in the cabinet of Noe Zhordania, and held this post until being succeeded by Evgeni Gegechkori in 1921. At the same time, he functioned as a secretary of the Central Committee of Georgian Social Democratic Party. The Red Army invasion of Georgia of 1921 forced him into exile to France where he published his memoirs about Stalin (frequently cited in the works of a prominent U.S. Sovietologist Robert C. Tucker) and produced a study of the 18th-century Georgian code of King Vakhtang VI (both works published in Paris, 1963).

Arsenidze died in Paris and was buried at the Leuville Cemetery.

Works

Lang, David Marshall (1962), A Modern History of Georgia, p. 162. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Stephen F. Jones (2005), Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917, pp. 119-120, 157, 178. Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674019024.
The history of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. Ministry of Justice of Georgia. Accessed on November 20, 2007.

Preceded by Shalva Aleksi-Meskhishvili	Minister of Justice of Georgia 1919-1921	Succeeded by Evgeni Gegechkori