Otar Patsatsia

Patsatsia was born on 15 May 1929,[3] to Ambako Patsatsia and Luba Patsatsia, in the village of Ingiri, Zugdidi District in the Georgian SSR. Trained at the Leningrad Institute of Technology as an engineer, he became a Communist party functionary in Zugdidi, serving as the First Secretary of the local Communist Party Committee from 1955 until being sacked in 1965. In 1966, he became a Director of the Zugdidi Paper Factory, a large enterprise, which he led for nearly 25 years until 1990. In the last years of the Soviet Union, he was elected a Soviet People's Deputy from 1989 to 1990 and awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour.[4]

In 1992, Eduard Shevardnadze – a veteran Soviet politician who became Georgia's Head of State shortly after the violent overthrow of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia – appointed Patsatsia as the head of Zugdidi district administration.[4] Zugdidi was the principal powerbase of the Gamsakhurdia loyalists – the "Zviadists" – who continued their resistance, frequently with arms in hands, to the new regime and its undisciplined paramilitary groups. Shevardnadze's promotion of Patsatsia, a Zugdidi native with extensive ties with the local community, was an attempt to appease Gamsakhurdia's supporters.[2]

After the collapse of the government of Tengiz Sigua on August 5, 1993, Shevardnadze nominated Patsatsia as a new prime minister. He won approval in the parliament on August 20, 1993. He retained his post in the September 7, 1993, reshuffle of the cabinet.[2] The two years of Patsatsia's tenure were marked by an increasingly chaotic political environment, violent power struggles, amilitary setback in the secessionist war in Abkhazia, a full-scale civil war with the pro-Gamsakhurdia forces, and severe economic crisis, followed by controversial economic and military agreements with Russia. He was no reformer and had a conservative view of economic development, for example, privatization.[5] Patsatsia resigned on October 5, 1995, to stand for the parliamentary election, in which he ran as a non-party candidate from Zugdidi and won a majoritarian seat for the next four years.[6]

Patsatsia died from COVID-19 on 9 December 2021, at the age of 92 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Georgia.[7][8]