Shalva Zurabovich Eliava (Georgian: შალვა ელიავა; Russian: Ша́лва Зура́бович Элиа́ва, Shalva Zurabovich Eliava) (September 30, 1883 in Ganiri – December 3, 1937) was a Georgian Old Bolshevik and Soviet official who contributed to the Sovietization of Central Asia and Caucasus but fell victim to Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge.

In 1909, on the eve of the demonstration planned for May 1, the tsarist police destroyed the Bolshevik printing house where Eliava worked and arrested him along with his associates.

With great difficulty in the fall of 1909, Eliava managed to obtain permission to travel to Saint Petersburg to take state exams.

However, due to illness, he was sent to the Astrakhan province, and in December 1915 he moved under police supervision to Vologda, where he worked in the cooperative association Severo-Soyuz, while meeting with local and exiled leftists and with railway workers.

In March 1918, Eliava participated in the work of the Fourth Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Soviets, at which the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was approved.

Eliava moved to Moscow in December 1918 to serve as a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Trade and Industry, headed by Leonid Krasin.

However, Turkestan at that time was cut off from Central Russia by the Civil War, and the roads there were under the control of the White Guards of Alexander Kolchak.

At the congress, it was decided to unite the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSRs into the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

In March 1932 the Central Executive Committee of the TSFSR awarded Eliava the Order of the Red Banner of Labor for "strengthening Soviet power in Transcaucasia".

During 1927 to 1930, when he served as the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the TSFSR and chairman of the Supreme Economic Council of the republic, the Zemo-Avchalskaya, Shovskaya, Onskaya, Abashskaya and Nukhinskaya hydroelectric power stations were built and the construction of the Rionskaya, Dzoragetskaya and Verkhne-Zurnabadskaya hydroelectric power stations began.

In the field of agrarian policy, Eliava was a supporter of the creation of large collective farms in Transcaucasia and specialization in certain crops, and he wanted to turn the region itself into the largest Soviet center for animal husbandry and fruit growing.

And if we use electrical energy in our country, if we irrigate the vast steppes of Azerbaijan, which can give about 1,100 hectares for cotton as a result of irrigation work, if we drain our wetlands in the humid subtropical region in Georgia, which can give over 200 hectares for subtropical crops, for medicinal plants, if agriculture is armed with appropriate mechanical means, then Transcaucasia can move at a much faster pace than other regions of our union ... Transcaucasia should turn into Soviet socialist Florida and California along the line of fruit growing ... We have, comrades, the possibility of developing animal husbandry and along the line of pig breeding, and along the line of wool sheep breeding, and along the line of large dairy cattle, in which Transcaucasia at one time occupied first place in Russia and second place in Europe.

In May and August 1922, Eliava traveled to Turkestan, where he participated in the Sovietization of Central Asia, propaganda among the local population, elimination of the Basmachism and restoration of the national economy.

He was unable to actually travel to Turkey because of a serious bout of typhus, but nonetheless participated in negotiations with Atatürk's movement on behalf of Soviet Russia.

He also established personal contacts with representatives of workers and communists and with state and military figures of Turkey and Persia and spoke to the parliament in Tehran.

Eliava took an active part in meetings, receptions, and negotiations with other nations that began to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR and conclude trade agreements with it.

During the investigation, he was accused of participating in the creation of a "counter-revolutionary group of the right" in Georgia in 1928, which was allegedly organized by the directive of Alexei Rykov and Nikolai Bukharin.

In 1935, under the directive Rykov, transmitted through Eliava, the republican centers established contacts for a joint struggle against the party and the Soviet government with all the counter-revolutionary groups and organizations in Transcaucasia – Trotskyists, Mensheviks in Georgia, Dashnaks in Armenia and Musavatists in Azerbaijan ...

In fact, a united front of struggle against the party and Soviet power from all anti-Soviet forces inside Georgia and Transcaucasia ... All this bastardy was a monstrous interweaving of spies, traitors, wreckers, saboteurs, persons with the most diverse counter-revolutionary views and convictions, but united by bestial hatred for the leadership of the CPSU(b) and vile desire to overthrow the Soviet power.

The defendants in the case were also accused of establishing ties with England, France and Nazi Germany, and also trying to use terror against the leadership of the CPSU(b) and the government both in the center and in the field.

During the interrogation, Eliava confessed that he was an agent of the French, British and German intelligence services and one of the leading employees of the counter-revolutionary terrorist-sabotage organization of the right in Georgia.

In Moscow, he kept in touch with Bukharin, who gave him a directive to organize terrorist acts against Comrade Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich.

Eliava also maintained a close relationship with Gamarnik and Tukhachevsky, knew about the composition of the Ph.D. center of military organization, its work.

At the suggestion of Tukhachevsky, Eliava agreed to transfer to the German General Staff all espionage information of interest to him about the state of the Georgian units of the Red Army, about the situation in Georgia and other materials received by him for this purpose from G. Mgaloblishvili and Sh.