Background
He was born to a Georgian Catholic family in Kutaisi, western Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia).
He was born to a Georgian Catholic family in Kutaisi, western Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia).
Since 1960 until his death, he headed the Department of the Byzantine Studies at the Institute for Oriental Studies in Tbilisi. Under Joseph Stalin, he was persecuted by the Soviet authorities, being sacked twice, in 1938 and 1953, but survived the Great Purge. He also translated and critically edited a collection of Byzantine sources on Georgia and Georgians published as Georgica in eight volumes from 1934 to 1970.