The Question of Identifying the Members of Sandro Akhmeteli’s Revolutionary Detachment
Abstract
During the Revolution of 1905, revolutionary detachments were formed throughout the Russian Empire with the aim of fighting the tsarist regime. These groups were affiliated with various political parties. Although their ideologies and political convictions differed, the methods they employed in their struggle often brought them closer to one another.
Archival materials indicate that from 1906 a revolutionary group operated on Tumanov Street in Tbilisi, which the Okhrana referred to as “anarchist-extortionists.” The leader of the group was identified as Aleksandre Akhmetelov, at that time a secondary-school student and later the renowned theatre director Sandro Akhmeteli. The archival file also contains information about the identities of other members of the group.
Using archival materials and memoir literature, the study reconstructs the biographies of several members of the group, examines their activities, and traces the subsequent fate of the revolutionary detachment as a whole.
Keywords: 1905 Revolution; Sandro Akhmeteli; Niko Rostomashvili; Okhrana; Russian Empire.