"[2] His most important literary works were: The Hermit, The Ghost, Otaraant Widow, Kako The Robber, Happy Nation, Letters of a Traveler and Is a man a human?!.

He coined the phrase "Ena, Mamuli, Sartsmunoeba" ("Language, Homeland, Faith"), which is a widely acknowledged slogan of Georgian nationalism.

Today, Georgians revere Chavchavadze as The Uncrowned King (უგვირგვინო მეფე, ugvirgvino mepe) and the "Father of the Nation."

Ilia Chavchavadze was born in Qvareli, a village in Kvareli,[5] located in the Alazani Valley, in the Kakheti province of Georgia, which was part of the Russian Empire at that time.

[citation needed] Chavchavadze was educated at the elementary level by the deacon of the village before he moved to Tbilisi where he attended the prestigious Academy for Nobility in 1848.

In his autobiography, Ilia refers to his mother, Princess Mariam Chavchavadze, who knew most Georgian novels and poems by heart and encouraged her children to study them.

In addition to his personal problems, the political situation in Georgia worsened under the harsh authority of the Russian Empire, which played a destructive role to the nation and its culture.

While in St.Petersburg, Ilia met Princess Catherine Chavchavadze, from whom he learned about the poetry and lyrics of the Georgian romantic Prince Nik'oloz Baratashvili.

During his journey back, Ilia wrote one of his greatest masterpieces, The Traveler's Diaries, in which he outlines the importance of nation-building and provides an allegorical comparison of Mt.

Even more subversive from the State's perspective, Chavchavadze also pushed for reviving the independence of the Georgian Orthodox Church from the control of the Russian Tsar and the Holy Synod.

In the 1860s, "Tergdaleulebi", the new generation of Georgian intellectuals, educated at Russian universities and exposed to European ideas,[6] promoted national culture against assimilation by the Imperial center.

Chavchavadze attacked Armenians for their mercantilism and condemned them in his newspaper Iveria for "eating the bread baked by someone else or drinking that which is created by another's sweat", as well as being "sly moneylenders and unscrupulous traders".

The SD's main aims were focused on toppling the Tsarist autocracy and upon an Atheist and Marxist transformation of a still unified Russian Empire.

His main literary works were translated and published in French, English, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian and other languages.

[citation needed] Prince Chavchavadze briefly acted as a literary mentor to a young Joseph Stalin, who was then an Orthodox seminarian in Tbilisi.

[citation needed] According to historian Simon Sebag Montefiore: "The Prince was sufficiently impressed to show the teenager's work to his editors.

On 28 August 1907, while travelling with his wife Olga from Tbilisi to Saguramo, Prince Ilia Chavchavadze was ambushed and murdered by a crew of six assassins in the small village of Tsitsamuri, near Mtskheta.

Following the unfortunate passing of Ilia, the news coverage pertaining to his assassination was primarily limited to a single newspaper called Isari (ისარი).

[citation needed] In 1907, the Tsarist authorities launched investigation into Chavchavadze's death and arrested four suspects: Giorgi Khizanishvili, Ivane Inashvili, Gigola Modzghvrishvili and Tedo Labauri.

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suspects, while Prince Chavchavadze's assassination may have been a rare instance of cooperation between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the SDLP, that Joseph Stalin may have been at least tangentially involved in the murder of his former publisher and literary mentor.

[citation needed] According to Montefiore: "The Bolshevik position in Georgia was undermined by the assassination of the hugely popular Prince Ilya Chavchavadze, in August 1907.

Stalin always praised Chavchavadze's poetry in his old age and there is no evidence that he ordered the hit, but he was very close to Sergo and he was certainly more than capable of separating literary merit from cruel necessity: politics always came first.

"[5] In October 1987 the Ilia Chavchavadze Society, an organisation that promoted Georgian national revival and political independence, was established by Soviet dissident intellectuals.

[citation needed] In 1989, during the anti-Soviet protests in Tbilisi, the poems, novels and political beliefs of Prince Ilia Chavchavadze became a driving force behind the Georgian struggle for independence.