Issue 1, 2013 February-March - Investor.ge

wounded the head of the police. Teacherswere beaten and one, Shio Chitadze,was killed.In 1918, the building was home toseveral government ministries, includingthe Ministry of Defense. The Sovietgovernment turned it into the TranscaucasianEmergency Commission and,between 1926 and 1934, the rooms onthe first floor were used as prison cellswhile torture and executions took placein the basement.Likely built at the turn of the 20thcentury, 11 Machabelis Street is notablebecause for seven years, from 1931 to1938, it was home to Lavrenti Beriawhen he served as First Secretary of theCommunist Party of Georgia, before wasnamed head of the NKVD, the secretpolice.All information about the buildingwas considered a state secret – eventoday, according to SovLab, the nameof the architect is off-limits.One detail has emerged, however:Beria, who was quite the builder duringhis time in Tbilisi – the parliament andthe former Institute of Marxism and Leninismwere among his projects – had undergroundtunnels put in the yard, whichwere rumored to lead to an undergroundbunker and to the parliament building.Today, the building is the headquartersfor the Georgian National OlympicCommittee.The house was built at the turn of the20th century, and housed the first ambassadorof the Russian Socialist SovietRepublic to Georgia, Sergei Kirov.Its most famous resident, however,was Sergo Orjonikidze. A close friendof Joseph Stalin, Orjonikidze lived in thehouse from 1921 to 1926. Orjonikidzeled the Bolshevik invasion of Georgia in1921 and is credited with crafting policythat seriously reduced Georgian autonomywithin the USSR, including thedecision to combine Georgia, Armenia,and Azerbaijan as Transcaucasian SFSR,instead of allowing Georgia to have fullmember status in the USSR.