• Revolutionary Evgeni Gegechkori, 1881
• Leader of the Mensheviks Akaki Chkhenkeli, 1874

He first entered the leftist student movement in 1903 during his studies at the Moscow University and soon joined the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. He was involved in the 1905 revolution in Georgia and was elected a member to the Third State Duma for the Kutais Governorate from 1907 to 1912. During the February Revolution in 1917, Gegechkori became commissar for the Russian Provisional Government in western Georgia. From November 28, 1917 to March 26, 1918, he chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat and served as minister of labor before leading the Transcaucasian Sejm and becoming its minister of war. After the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in May 1918, he became its Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1921, he briefly served as a Minister of Justice. After the Red Army invasion of Georgia, Gegechkori left for France in March 1921. From 1953 until his death, he headed the Georgian government in exile.

He was born in the town of Khoni, Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, to a noble family. A graduate from the universities in Kiev, Berlin and London, he was a lawyer and a literature expert. He joined the Social Democratic movement in 1898 and sided with the Menshevik faction in 1903. He was involved in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was briefly arrested in its aftermath. He was elected to the Fourth State Duma where he advocated self - determination for the peoples of Russia. After the February Revolution of 1917, he worked for the Special Transcaucasian Committee as a Commissar for Internal Affairs and was elected, in June 1917, a member of All - Russian Central Executive Committee.

On February 14, 1918, he became a Deputy Head and a Foreign Minister in the government of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, a short lived Armenian - Azerbaijani - Georgian federation. When the Democratic Republic of Georgia proclaimed independence on May 26 1918, Chkhenkeli assumed the position of Foreign Minister and remained on this post until being replaced with Evgeni Gegechkori in November 1918. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Georgia in 1919 and briefly functioned as an emissary to France in January 1921. The Soviet invasion of Georgia early in 1921 forced him into exile to Paris where he remained in émigré opposition to the Soviet Union until his death in 1959.