The Kakheti-Hereti Expeditions of Giorgi Bochoridze

Abstract

The topic concerns the great Georgian scientist, one of the founders of the National Archives, a prominent representative of our historical society, a repressed scientist Giorgi Bochoridze, and the expeditions he conducted in Kakheti and Hereti.

Giorgi Bochoridze was Ivane Javakhishvili's best student, who formed him as a historian, scientist-researcher, and mastered epigraphy, ethnography, and art history, which played an important role in his later life.

As soon as he started working at the Central Archives in the twenties, he began to organize scattered historical sources, managed to transfer unprotected and neglected written sources in various agencies to the Central Archives, and bring them into scientific order. This was an extremely laborious task. As we read in his biography, in 1922-1923, he brought to the Central Archive the most interesting archives from 23 institutions, vital to national history. Under his direct leadership and participation, the archives returned from Russia, which were transferred from the Tbilisi Central Railway Station and preserved in the National Archive: 4 wagons from Krasnodar, 7 wagons from Stavropol, 1 wagon from the Caucasus. He described more than 30 churches, chapels, book depositories and archives in the capital.

After arranging such difficult matters in the capital, he decided to use his knowledge and experience in the regions of Georgia. In 1923-1936, he traveled to Racha-Lechkhumi, Kakheti, Imereti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, Saingilo, Kartli. He studied and described historical, material monuments, epigraphic inscriptions from various parts of the country, and collected ethnographic material scattered among the people. He described many churches that no one had seen before, but which were destroyed over time due to neglect.

In the nineties of the last century, a description of the historical monuments of Tusheti, Racha-Lechkhu­mi, Imereti, and in 2011, Kartli was published. The material found during his expeditions to Kakheti and Hereti in 1923-1929 has not been published to this day. The purpose of this topic is to provide information on the unpublished material of Giorgi Bochoridze's personal fund, preserved in the National Archives of Georgia, since it is impossible to fully present the results of his work in a conference topic.