Nikoladze declined the offer because at that time his views were closer with the Russian revolutionary democrats, Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov, whom he had met in St. Petersburg.

This group sought widely for a program, ranging from state-regulated capitalism to various forms of "association" and collectivism, and worked to introduce European learning and culture in Georgia.

He gained almost a scandalous name by publishing his sarcastic article, "A Thought on Likhi Mountain" (1871), where he compared Tiflis to an old whore, the wide, paved avenues, parks, and theaters being just her make-up, while the markets are her blackened teeth and the cemeteries and war-devastated fields her raddled body.

Nikoladze's rhetoric attacks on the representatives of the older generation, who mostly chose to serve loyally to the Russian administration, further strengthened positions of the "men of the 60s," a backbone of younger Georgian intellectuals forming an opposition to the Tsarist regime.

The climax of Nikoladze's activity was his successful negotiations in the mid-1880s with Alexander III and his government that reduced the nationwide repressions and saved Vera Figner from the gallows and Chernyshevsky from exile.

[5] From 1886, he led the liberal group Meore Dasi[2] and though his family lived in Didi Jikhaishi, in the Imereti region of western Georgia,[3][4] Nikoladze served as the editor of Novoe obozrenie in Tbilisi.

[4] As a notable public benefactor, Nikoladze was responsible for a number of social and economic projects, including the expansion of railway systems in Georgia and the construction of the Grozny-Poti pipeline.

During his tenure as a mayor, he made this small portal town on Georgia's Black Sea coast an important maritime city and trading center.