[1] Gogi Khoshtaria was also trained as an art historian at the Tbilisi State University[2] and pursued an academic career.

In the 1980s, he joined the dissident movement and became closely associated with Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who became the first post-Communist leader of Georgia and made Khoshtaria Minister of Foreign Affairs on November 26, 1990.

Khoshtaria worked with the Turkish government for closer Georgian–Turkish relations and resisted the Soviet attempts to bring these ties under control.

He also visited Germany and France in April and the United States in June 1991 to further the Georgian independence cause and lobby for closer economic relations.

He cited Gamsakhurdia's authoritarian tendencies and failure to immediately denounce the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt as the reasons behind the split.