Levan Berdzenishvili

[1] Berdzenishvili was born in Batumi in 1953, and is the older brother of David Berdzenisvhili, also a politician.

[2] In June 1983, he was arrested by the Soviet authorities and served several years in prison, as a dissident.

[3] Berdzenishvili has described his experiences in an autobiographical novel, Sacred Darkness: The Last Days of the GULAG, published in English in 2019.

[4] In the book, Berdzenishvili describes the years in prison as his "best years" because of the "people that surrounded me, people the KGB had so zealously brought together.”[3] His book includes short sketches of fellow dissidents that he was imprisoned with, including Vadim Yankov, Rafael Papayan, Henrikh Altunyan, and others.

[7] Shortly after the Rose Revolution, Berdzenishvili and the Republican Party split from the governing faction, in June 2004.