Mingrelian Affair

The Mingrelian Affair, or Mingrelian Case (Russian: Мингрельское дело, mingrel’skoe delo; Georgian: მეგრელთა საქმე, megrelt’a sak’me), was a series of criminal cases fabricated in 1951 and 1952 in order to accuse several members of the Georgian SSR Communist Party of Mingrelian extraction of secession and collaboration with the Western powers.

Initiated on the personal orders of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the affair apparently aimed at eliminating the influence of Lavrentiy Beria, of whom Stalin was getting increasingly suspicious. The fabricated accusations of forming the "Mingrelian nationalist ring", separatism, collaboration with the "Western imperialists", and the Georgian émigré centre in Paris, were followed by a purge, which delivered a hard blow to the Georgian party organization, and specifically targeted its Mingrelian (a subethnic group of the Georgians) members, mostly Beria's protégés. Many leading officials were removed from their posts and arrested; thousands of innocent people were subjected to repressions. Candide Charkviani, who at the time occupied the position of the first secretary of the Georgian SSR, also suffered during the Mingrelian Affair. For years historians erroneously thought that Candide Charkviani was Mingrelian and that he was punished because of his links with Beria. However, the newly opened archives in Georgia provide evidence that Charkviani, who was Lechkhumian (from the Lechkhumi region of Georgia) and not Mingrelian or Svan, was accused because he allegedly failed to “detect and repress the criminal nationalist ring of counter revolutionaries within the ranks of the Georgian Communist Party”. Moreover, it has emerged that Charkviani's relations with Beria had always been strained and that Beria tolerated Charkviani only because the latter was supported by Stalin. Immediately following Stalin's death, all Beria's clients who suffered during the Mingrelian Affair were restored. Yet Charkviani, on Beria's orders, was separated from his family and moved to Central Asia into exile.

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