Background
Nadibaidze Vardiko Mikhailovich was born on the 31st of March, 1939 in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz, Russian Federation).
government official military officer
Nadibaidze Vardiko Mikhailovich was born on the 31st of March, 1939 in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz, Russian Federation).
Vardiko Mikhailovich Nadibaidze went to school in Ordzhonikidze, but he was expelled. His father who worked in the Railway House of Vladikavkaz saved the situation by. He fixed his son to school No. 50, where railwaymen and servicemen children studied. At the end of the 7th grade, Vardiko entered the Vladikavkaz railway school for the telecommunications branch. Here again Vardiko intervened in a street brawl for his friend and classmate, the son of the head of the department of the North Caucasian Railway. Vardiko was expelled from the technical school and sent to the workers at the car-repair plant on condition that in a year, having positive characteristics, he will be reinstated to the second year. Vardiko worked in the foundry, he studied at the working youth evening school, in the evenings he went to the section of struggle in the locomotive depot. But he failed to reinstate at the technical school. He left the factory and worked for a year in the warehouse of teaching aids at the 2nd Vladikavkaz Military Aviation School. In 1958, Vardiko became a cadet of this military educational institution. In 1960 the school was disbanded and transferred to the Ryzan Motor Vehicle School, which he graduated in 1961.
In 1967, Vardiko Mikhailovich entered the Automobile Department of the Logistics and Transport Academy in Leningrad.
The young lieutenant was assigned to the Kiev Military District, to Chuhuiv, the commander of the third automobile platoon of the 219th separate motor transport company of the heavy tank division of the 6th Guards Red Banner Army with headquarters in Dnepropetrovsk. In May 1962, Vardiko Mikhailovich is appointed deputy commander of the company. Already in 1965 he became a company commander and in the same year declined to replace the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany for an equivalent position.He received military education in Soviet Russia and joined the Soviet Army as a motorised rifle officer in 1960. He served in Soviet units in Ukraine, East Germany, and Transcaucasia.
In 1972, after graduation from the Academy, Vardiko Mikhailovich was appointed chief of the automobile service of the 34th motorized rifle regiment of the 75th Motorized Rifle Division of the 4th Combined-Arms Army of the Transcaucasian Military District.
In 1974, his next promotion followed: Major Nadibaidze, bypassing the army link, became a senior officer in the supply of automobile services to the ZakVO. In 1975, Vardiko was appointed head of the military traffic police, in 1976 - senior inspector of the automobile service of the ZakVO. And in 1978 he was introduced to the post of deputy chief of the automobile service of the district. This post Nadibaidze held for seven years. In February 1986, Nadibaidze took general officer position.
In 1989, Vardiko Mikhailovich Nadibaidze was promoted to major general.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Nadibaidze continued his service in the Russian Army and, in 1992, was made the deputy commander of the Transcaucasian Military District headquartered in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. In the chaotic aftermath of the Georgian Civil War, in April 1994, Georgia’s head of state Eduard Shevardnadze appointed Nadibaidze Minister of Defense of Georgia after General Gia Karkarashvili was forced to resign. Nadibaidze dismissed nationalistically minded officers and introduced ethnic Georgians from the Russian army and with Soviet military experience.
Shevardnadze’s appointment of the Russian general (he could barely speak Georgian) to a key military post was seen in Georgia as a move which allowed Russia to control the Georgian military. Under Nadibaidze, the size of the army was reduced and the conscription system made more orderly. When Grachev was sacked in 1996, Aleksandr Lebed, Chairman of Russia's Security Council, alleged that Nadibaidze was among the Russian officers plotting a coup in support of Grachev. The allegations were dismissed by Nadibaidze. Nadibaidze was a target of criticism from the opposition, most prominently by Giorgi Chanturia, and some government officials, such as Vice-Premier Tamaz Nadareishvili, who accused him of mismanaging the military. After the 1998 attempt to assassinate Shevardnadze, with its revelations of army complicity, and with Shevardnadze looking to the West, Nadibaidze was replaced, in April 1998, by the United States-trained officer David Tevzadze.
In 1955 Vardiko Mikhailovich Nadibaidze joined the Komsomol and in 1958 became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Nadibaidze Vardiko Mikhailovich is married. He has a wife, a son, a daughter and granchilfren.