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Leo Kereselidze
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leo Kereselidze (Georgian: ლეო კერესელიძე) (1878-1942) was a Georgian general and politician involved in the national liberation movement against the Russian and later Soviet occupation.
In the early 1910s, he was among a group of Georgian patriots who organized the Committee of Independent Georgia in Europe. In 1914, at the eve of the World War I, the Committee moved to Germany and sought the German aid in restoring the independence of Georgia from the Imperial Russia.
In 1915, approximately 1500 Georgians organized a voluntarily unit, the Georgian Legion, within the German army. Promoted to Major General, Kereselidze was put in command of this Legion based in Samsun, Turkey. In 1918, he was with the mission of Baron Kress von Kressenstein to Georgia, and helped to create the national army of the recently established Democratic Republic of Georgia.
The Red Army invasion and establishment of a Soviet rule forced Kereselidze into exile in 1921. He lived thereafter in Germany. One of the founders and secretary general of the right-wing patriotic organization Tetri Giorgi in 1926, he was somewhat close to the Nazis in the 1930s. Just before his death in 1942, he helped to found a new political organization, the Union of Georgian Traditionalists, which would later play an important role in the Georgian national liberation movement.