He survived Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s, which claimed the lives of many of his fellow writers, friends and relatives, but came under heavy pressure from the Soviet authorities.

Although his very first book, influenced by Symbolism, garnered acclaim in 1914, he took longer than the other Georgian symbolists from the Blue Horns group to attract recognition.

Most of his writings were impregnated with themes of isolation, lovelessness, and nightmarish presentiments, as seen in his masterpieces "Without Love" (1913), "I and the Night" (1913), "Azure Horses" (1915), and "The Wind Blows" (1924).

During the repressions of 1937, Tabidze's wife Olga Okudzhava,[1] from a family of Old Bolsheviks, was arrested and later executed with other inmates of Oryol Prison in Medvedev Forest massacre in 1941.

His long silence and solitude saved him from the purges however; he continued to receive titles and awards, and published new poems, but the poet’s life was completely distorted.