[1] Yenukidze was arrested twice in 1902, escaped from the Tiflis Metekhi Castle in 1903 and lived in a cellar with the illegal printing press in Baku in 1903–06.

He was arrested again in 1907, 1908, 1910 and 1911, but escaped every time, conducting party work in Transcaucasia, Rostov-on-Don, St. Petersburg and Finland during his periods of freedom.

As Secretary he signed the decree of the Central Executive Committee issued on the day of the murder of S. M. Kirov on December 1, 1934, that changed the Code of Criminal Procedure to provide for speeded-up investigation of those accused of preparing or carrying out terrorist acts, hearing their cases without allowing for a defense, and carrying out death sentences immediately in some cases.

In February 1935, he was removed from his post administering the Kremlin and appointed Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which would have meant sending him back to his native Georgia.

In May, Yenukidze—who apparently had not taken up his new job—pleaded with Ordzhonikidze and Voroshilov not to be made to move to Tiflis, on health grounds, and asked to be given a post either in Moscow or the North Caucasus.

[4] Two weeks after taking up this position, he returned to Moscow for a plenum of the CC CPSU, apparently unaware that it had been called to denounce him.

Nikolai Yezhov, the future head of the NKVD, made his debut as a recently appointed Secretary of the CC, accusing Yenukidze of having put Stalin's life at risk by allowing potential assassins to work in the Kremlin.

He was also attacked by his fellow Georgians, Ordzhonikidze and Lavrentiy Beria over his practice of giving money to former Bolsheviks who had been deprived of their livelihoods for opposing Stalin.

While the accusation of lax security in the Kremlin was the pretext for humiliating Yenukidze, the real reason may have been his failure to contribute adequately to the glorification of Stalin.

In particular, his memoirs published in the 1920s gave the late Lado Ketskhoveli credit for the creation of the illegal printing press in Baku at the turn of the century and made no mention of Stalin, who was then based in Tiflis.

Six months later, on July 22, 1935, Beria published a report, “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia”, which accused Yenukidze of having "deliberately and with hostile intent" falsified the record.

According to the memoirs of Grigori Tokaev, who was a member of an underground opposition group in the Soviet Union,[8] Yenukidze was "a convinced communist of the right wing" who tolerated "under him a handful—but no more—of men who were technically efficient and useful to the community but who were anti-communists."

"[9] On September 7, 1935, Stalin sent Kaganovich, Yezhov and Molotov a coded message in which he called Yenukidze's appointment to Mineralnye Vody a mistake.

Yenukidze for some time ignored the direct order of the Politburo to go to Kharkiv for the post of head of the office of the road transport department, but in the end he was forced to leave Mineralnye Vody.

He was also accused of participating in the so-called "military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army" ("the Tukhachevsky Case"), which supposedly aimed to carry out a military coup in the USSR and overthrow the power of the Bolshevik Party.

Apparently, Stalin intended to use Yenukidze as one of the defendants at the Third Moscow Trial, which was already being prepared at that time ("Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists"), but it was not possible to arrange this.

His co-defendants were said to have been the Armenian diplomat, Lev Karakhan, the former Georgian party secretary Mamia Orakhelashvili, two former leading officials from the North Caucasus, V.F.

"[12] And the French communist Victor Serge wrote that: He was a fair-headed Georgian, with a kind sturdy face lit up by blue eyes.

He was affable, humorous and realistic...In the discharge of these high offices, he proved himself a man of human feeling, and as liberal and large-hearted as it was possible to be in that age.

[15] A character named Arkady Apollonich Sempleyarov, 'chairman of the Moscow Theatres' Acoustics Commission', based on Yenukidze[16] appears briefly in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Fagotto's response is to reveal to the entire audience that Sempleyarov, whose wife is sitting alongside him, had secretly spent four hours the previous evening with an actress when he claimed to have been at a meeting.

Having in his hands all the blessings of life, unattainable for everyone, especially in the first years after the revolution, he used all this for personal dirty purposes, buying women and girls.