He graduated from Tbilisi State University in 1931 and attended the 1st Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934, when socialist realism was laid down as the cultural orthodoxy.
In 1960 he organized an expedition to the Georgian-built Monastery of the Cross at Jerusalem where his team rediscovered a fresco of Shota Rustaveli, a medieval Georgian poet.
He chaired the special academic commission for the Rustaveli studies since 1963 and became the founder and an editor-in-chief of The Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia in 1967.
His poetry was mostly patriotic based on Georgian cultural and religious values, but normally loyal to Soviet ideology.
He welcomed Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and supported the Soviet-era dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia when he came to power and led Georgia to the declaration of independence in 1991.