Born into a petite noble family in Abasha in western Georgian province of Mingrelia, then under the Imperial Russian rule, Gamsakhurdia received early education at the Kutaisi gymnasium and then studied in St. Petersburg, where he quarreled with Nicholas Marr.
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Konstantine Gamsakhurdia's son, Zviad, became a notable Soviet-era dissident who was subsequently elected the first President of Georgia in 1991, but died under suspicious circumstances in the civil war in 1993.