Gela Charkviani

Who is Gela Charkviani?

Gela Charkviani is Georgian diplomat, educator and television personality.

Gela Charkviani was born in Tbilisi in 1939 into the family of Candide Charkviani, a leader of the Georgian Communist Party who had been accused in the Mingrelian Affair under Joseph Stalin, and his ophthalmologist wife Tamar Jaoshvili. He studied architecture at the Georgian Polytecnic University and eventually graduated from the Chavchavadze Institute of Foreign Languages. Gela Charkviani's post-graduate studies included a semester at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour in 1970, a period regarded as the peak of the Youth Revolution in the United States. The time spent at Ann Arbour, in Charkviani's opinion, has caused a major shift in his worldview.

For 25 years thereafter Gela Charkviani taught English and later on, Sociology at the Chavchavadze Foreign Languages Institute and Tbilisi State University. From 1976 to 1994 he anchored the Georgian TV's monthly Globe program featuring profiles of the world nations. His five-part documentary Georgians in the Kremlin was aired by Rustavi-2 TV in September/October 2004.

From 1984 to 1992 Gela Charkviani was Vice-President of the Georgian Society for Cultural Relations.