Kaikhosro "Kakutsa" Cholokashvili (; ; , Kaikhosro Chelokayev; 14 July 1888 – 27 June 1930) was a Georgian military officer and a commander of an anti-Soviet guerrilla movement in Georgia. He is regarded as a national hero in Georgia. Born of a noble family, Cholokashvili was a decorated officer of the Imperial Russian Army during World War I. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he served in the ranks of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Following the republic's overthrow in a Soviet invasion in 1921, Cholokashvili, with a band of followers, took to the mountains and fought a guerrilla campaign against the Soviet government in the province of Kakheti. After a failed August 1924 anti-Soviet rebellion, during which Cholokashvili commanded the largest single rebel contingent, he fled to France, where he died of tuberculosis in 1930. His remains were reburied, in a state funeral, from the Leuville Cemetery near Paris to the Mtatsminda Pantheon in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2005. Early life and career Kakutsa Cholokashvili was born into an aristocratic family of Prince Ioseb Cholokashvili at the family estate at Matani in the eastern Georgian province of Kakheti (then part of the Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire). The contemporary Russian administrative documents spelled his surname "Челокаев" (Chelokayev). Cholokashvili attended the Gymnasium for Nobility in Tiflis (Tbilisi), which was then directed by the historian Ekvtime Takaishvili. In 1909 he was drafted into the Russian military. He served in the 16th Tver Dragoon Regiment and returned to Georgia with the rank of podporuchik in 1912. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Cholokashvili was recalled to active duty and assigned to lead a cavalry squadron on the Austro-Hungarian front. Wounded later that year, he was transferred to the Caucasus Front. During the Battle of Sarikamish in December 1914, he commanded a cavalry squadron under General Vasily Gabashvili and distinguished himself by capturing and defending a strategic fortification known as "the Eagle's Nest" against the overwhelming Ottoman troops. He was severely wounded and awarded the Gold Sword for Bravery in 1916. After treatment at the St. Nino Hospital in Tiflis, he was enlisted in the nascent Georgian Cavalry Legion which marched into Persia as part of General Baratov's 1915–1917 expedition. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to the rank of podpolkovnik (lieutenant-colonel). Independent Georgia After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Cholokashvili returned to Georgia and became involved in Georgia's independence movement. He joined