Levan Cherkezishvili - Country of Liquid Sun
Thursday, April 9
Prince Levan Cherkezishvili (Cherkezo) was born in the village of Tokhliauri, Sagarejo district. He received his secondary education at the First Gymnasium in Tbilisi where he studied together with Ivane Machabeli. After finishing the Gymnasium, he continued his studies in the St-Petersburg University's Department of Agronomy. At that time in St-Petersburg, Ivane Machabeli and Ilia Chavchavadze were working on a translation on Shakespeare's King Lear. It is said that once, when Levan Cherkezishvili called on Machabeli and did not find him at home, he left a note. Chavchavadze liked his handwriting so much that he decided to ask him to copy King Lear. It was in this way that Levan Cherkezishvili and Ilia Chavchavadze became friends. Their friendship deepened even more and grew into a business relationship when Chavchavadze invited Cherkezishvili to work at the Princes Bank which he even headed with Chavchavadze for some years.
When discord occurred between Chavchavadze and Machabeli over Bank business, Cherkezishvili supported Chavchavadze. The situation became very tense even to the point of Cherkezishvili's teeth being broken in an altercation with supporters of Machabeli.
Time passed and Cherkezishvili's son, Ivane, met Ivane Machabeli's daughter, the beautiful Elene and fell in love. Vano admitted to his father that he was going to marry Machabeli's daughter and hope appeared that the hostility between the "Iliaists" and "Machablists" would come to an as a result of this event.
Levan Cherkezishvili never abandoned his basic profession and was eagerly engaged and involved with development of viticulture in Georgia. He had vineyards in Tokhliauri, Manavi, Badiauri and Kurdgelauri. When he was not at the Princes' Bank, he spent his spare time in his vineyards which he did until the loss of Georgia's independence and its emergence as a Soviet Republic. Cherkezishvili was married to Darya Vakhvakhishvili, the daughter of Konstantine Dadeshkeliani’s granddaughter, Nino Abfkhazi. Together, they had 12 children. Levan's mother was Barbare Makhashvili.
Levan Cherkezishvili’s sons, Ivane and Mikheil, were students at Petrograd University. They were so actively involved in the student rebellion against the Emperor of Russia that, on their coming to Georgia, they often held meetings in their father's vineyards where, standing on the barrels full of wine, they called upon the peasants to take them away, saying “Take them! Everything is yours, the land is yours and the vineyards are yours!” Obviously, the peasants fulfilled the young princes' "order" with pleasure although some of them also looked indignantly upon the young men. There was a case when peasants they tied the rebel princes and took them to Levan to teach them a lesson.
An abstract from the chronicles of the Sagarejo People's Theatre gives evidence of the many-sided activities of Levan Cherkezishvili: "Aleksandre Tskhvedadze decided to give the first performance in one of the large classrooms of the newly-built school and he began with the preparations. Rehearsals were conducted every day. The core of the theatre's troupe consisted of students of Petersburg University, just returned from Siberian exile, Levan Cherkezishvili, from Tokhliauri, alongside Maro Cherkezishvili, Aleksandre's brother, Ioseb Tskhvedadze and local residents Niko Kurdovanidze, Ioseb Gulisashvili and others. The troupe selected Aleksandre Tskhvedadze's Happy Marriage and Giorgi Eristavi's Stingy for staging with Levan Cherkezishvili undertaking the role of stage director”.
In 1921, when the Communists seized Levan Cherkezishvili's house in Tbilisi (it was located at 8, former Chernyshevsky Street) and all of his moveable and immoveable property, his friends advised him to see Filipe Makharadze with the request of returning his house but he refused and said that he would never go and see the man who killed Ilia Chavchavadze.
Levan Cherkezishvili died in Tbilisi in 1929.
