2021-05-26
We can assert that Giorgi Kvinitadze's dream has come true-Georgia is a free and independent state, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili stated at today's reinternment ceremony of General Giorgi Kvinitadze, at the Holy Trinity Cathedral.
According to the Head of Government, even as the red terror of communism raged in Georgia, General Giorgi Kvinitadze continued to hope and believe that his homeland would be free, because freedom and strife for freedom runs deep in our nation's blood.
"General Kvinitadze has returned to his homeland.
General Kvinitadze left our country in February of 1921, together with wounded cadets. How symbolic it is that, a century later, our celebrated general, returning to his homeland, is greeted by cadets born in independent Georgia. And he is greeted by Madam Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia's President and Commander-in-Chief who also has returned from immigration.
Consequently, we can assert that Giorgi Kvinitadze's dream has come true-Georgia is a free and independent state.
Even as the red terror of communism raged in Georgia, General Giorgi Kvinitadze continued to hope and believe that his homeland would be free, because freedom and strife for freedom runs deep in our nation's blood.
‘The army mirrors the characteristics of the people in that it is the people's offspring, flesh and blood,' these words belong to a man who was himself one of the main architects of independent Georgia's army, a prominent example of his people's inner strength, and our country's honorable son.
Forced out of his homeland, the general believed until his last breath that the innermost nature of Georgians, their spiritual values, and traditions of statehood, would surely lead us back into the European family.
I am confident that Giorgi Kvinitadze's another dream will also come true, and Georgia will become a full member of the great European family of nations. We understand that this is no easy path. It is difficult, but our country is strong and irreversible on the right track paved by our ancestors. And General Kvinitadze, one of the architects of this history, has returned to his homeland today. I bow down before him," Irakli Garibashvili said.
Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, together with President Salome Zourabichvili, Speaker of Parliament Kakhaber Kuchava, Defense Minister Juansher Burchuladze, Head of the Georgian Diaspora in France Otar Zourabichvili, and members of Giorgi Kvinitadze's family, attended the ceremony of the general reinternment at the Mtatsminda Pantheon.
100 years later, General Kvinitadze, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Georgia's Democratic Republic, returned to Georgia.
Giorgi Kvinitadze was born on August 21, 1874. He completed his military education in Tbilisi and Saint Petersburg. Prior to the establishment of the first Democratic Republic of Georgia, namely since the second half of 1917, he was actively involved in the forming of Georgia's Armed Forces. He made a tremendous contribution to the establishment of the Georgian Military School, subsequently serving as its Commandant. In 1918-1921, Kvinitadze was actively engaged in military actions on various frontlines. During the 1921 war between Russia and Georgia, on February 16, he was reappointed Commander-in-Chief. After Georgia's occupation by Soviet Russia, General Kvinitadze, together with other members of the Government and the High Command, emigrated and lived in France where he passed away in 1970.
Today, the Prime Minister, together with the President and Speaker of Parliament, and representatives of government, also visited the grave of the national hero Merab Kostava, to lay a wreath and commemorate his 82nd birthday anniversary.
Press Service of the Government Administration