Ekvtime Takaishvili’s Letters to Akaki Shanidze and some other Materials

Relationships between Ekvtime Takaishvili and Akaki Shanidze have always been professional, friendly, collegial, full of mutual respect and E. Takaishvili’s 16 letters, maintained in Ak. Shanidze’s personal archive at the National Archive of Georgia, clearly demonstrate this. These letters have never been published before. Here we publish also some documents written by the historian and those associated with him. Contents of these documents are related with the above letters supplement one another and therefore, we have placed and numbered them in common chronological sequence.
The first letter from E. Takaishvili to Ak. Shanidze deals with the initial stage of scientific research by the latter. It is not dated and supposedly it was written in 1913, describing the period of Ak. Shanidze’s travel in Georgian mountain regions to study Georgian dialects; reports about the course of this expedition were submitted to N. Marr, in St. Petersburg. Other letters from E. Takaishvili to Ak. Shanidze (15 letters in aggregate) were written in 1948-53, mostly describing the process of work of the outstanding historian on his last monograph “Archeological Expedition of 1917 in Southern Provinces of Georgia” [in Russian ] and containing many interesting details related to this. The letter clearly shows the social and political environment of that period posing additional difficulties to the author and his friends and colleagues taking care about the publication of his work, among them, Ak. Shanidze’s efforts should be particularly admitted. It is apparent, from the letters that E. Takaishvili paid great attention not only to the publication of his other works but also to the issues facing him or arisen by the others from time to time.
Work on monograph describing expedition of 1917 brought to E. Takaishvili the idea of publication of his works. The venerable scientist made this offer in his letter to K. Charkviani, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, providing large-scale publication plan-project of his works. D. Mchedlishvili, a staff member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party was requested to respond to the mentioned letter to K. Charkviani. The latter assigned G. Chubinashvili, who consulted with the venerable scientist and regarding the significance of the historian’s works, developed the plan-project different from the previous one. Unfortunately, the issue of publication of E. Takaishvili’s works was not followed to its logical end, though the Academy of Sciences of Georgia intended to publish the book about the expedition of 1902.
Provided materials clearly describe the situation at the end of E. Takaishvili’s life. It was known before that reprisal against E. Takaishvili commenced with the arrest of his adopted daughter, Lidia Takaishvili-Poltoratskaya (6. 12. 1951). But now it turned out that the historian faced the first problems in 1950, when his driver was arrested. In addition, it turned out that the soviet intelligence has interrogated the scientists not two times, as known before but three times, with the first interrogation immediately upon the arrest of his adopted daughter.
Here is provided also Ak. Shanidze’s characteristic of E. Takaishvili’s scientific and public activities, written in Russian, the scientist’s necrology and some other notable materials significant for studying of the historian’s biography