Zviad Gamsakhurdia

Zviad Gamsakhurdia spent his youth in the Soviet dissident movement, arrested and imprisoned repeatedly for his Georgian nationalism and human rights work, co-founding the Georgian Helsinki Group to document abuses. He organized pro-independence protests through the 1980s; after one was crushed by the Soviet Army in 1989, underground opposition groups coalesced around him into the Round Table - Free Georgia coalition, which defeated the Communist Party in the 1990 elections. His landslide presidential victory the following May crumbled quickly: significant opposition from urban intelligentsia, former Soviet elites, and fractures in his own camp left him vulnerable, and in early 1992 two former allies joined another warlord to overthrow him. He fled to Chechnya, then returned in September 1993 to retake power by force; the rebellion gained ground at first but Russian-backed government troops crushed it, driving him into hiding in Samegrelo. He was found dead there in early 1994. The government suppressed his supporters with brutal tactics for years, and it wasn't until the Rose Revolution toppled his successor that Gamsakhurdia was officially rehabilitated.