Georgiy Aleksandrovich Atarbekov , born Atarbekiyan (December 2, 1892 – March 22, 1925) was an Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

n Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 and Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 security police official.

Born in Echmiadzin

Echmiadzin

Mother Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin is a 4th century Armenian church in the town of Ejmiatsin, Armenia. It is also the central cathedral of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin of the Armenian Apostolic Church....

 (near Yerevan

Yerevan

Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...

, Armenia), then part of the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, Atarbekov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...

 in 1908 and studied at the Moscow University from 1910 to 1911. During the Russian Revolution of 1917

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

 and the ensuing Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

, he took part in the Bolshevik attempts at gaining footholds in Alexandropol

Gyumri

Gyumri is the capital and largest city of the Shirak Province in northwest Armenia. It is located about 120 km from the capital Yerevan, and, with a population of 168,918 , is the second-largest city in Armenia.The name of the city has been changed many times in history...

 and Sukhumi

Sukhumi

Sukhumi is the capital of Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast. The city suffered heavily during the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict in the early 1990s.-Naming:...

. He then worked for the North Caucasus

North Caucasus

The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....

 Cheka

Cheka

Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...

 and took part in fighting with the White Russian

White movement

The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...

 forces and the Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 insurgents in the region. Afterwards he served as a VeCheKa plenipotentiary in Kuban

Kuban

Kuban is a geographic region of Southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, Volga Delta and the Caucasus...

, and Baku

Baku

Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...

; then chaired a revkom for northern Armenia and finally, after the final sovietization

Sovietization

Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....

 of the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

, received a post of People's Commissar for Post and Telegraph in the Transcaucasian

Transcaucasian SFSR

The Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , also known as the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian SFSR and the TSFSR for short, was a short-lived republic of the Soviet Union, lasting from 1922 to 1936...

 government.

An ally of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 and – in the words of the modern British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 scholar Donald Rayfield

Donald Rayfield

Donald Rayfield is professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police...

 – "Stalin's favourite killer of the Caucasus", Atarbekov was one of those responsible for repressions during the Russian revolution and the civil war. Thus, he machine-gunned a train-load of Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 medical stuff returning to Georgia from the World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 fronts; and organized mass killings in prisons in Pyatigorsk

Pyatigorsk

Pyatigorsk is a city in Stavropol Krai on the Podkumok River, about from Mineralnye Vody. Since January 19, 2010 it has been the administrative center of the North Caucasian Federal District of Russia...

 and Armavir

Armavir

Armavir is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the left bank of the Kuban River. Population: 144,000 . Armavir was formerly the second-largest industrial center of Krasnodar Krai, after Krasnodar....

.

Atarbekov died in an airplane crash near Tiflis together with Solomon Mogilevsky

Solomon Mogilevsky

Solomon Grigorevich Mogilevsky headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service, the INO of the GPU, from 1921 until May 1922, when he was sent to head the GPU in the South Caucasus region where had been involved in the suppression of the 1924 August Uprising in the Georgian SSR...

 and Alexander Myasnikov

Aleksandr Myasnikyan

Aleksandr Teodorosi Myasnikyan a.k.a. Aleksandr Fyodorovich Myasnikov was a prominent Bolshevik of Armenian descent....

. According to one version, a young Georgian airman, who was piloting the plane crashed deliberately, killing himself and his high-ranking passengers to avenge for the heavy-handed suppression of the 1924 revolt in the Georgian SSR. Another hypothesis suggests Lavrenty Beria’s role in arranging the catastrophe.