Levan Berdzenishvili is a member of the Georgian parliament and the founder of the Republican Institute of Georgia. He is also a Doctor of Philology, is well versed in ancient literature and translates it as well. Levan Berdzenishvili has been the general director of the Ilia Chavchavadze National Parliamentary Library of Georgia for many years, and is often invited to give public lectures, which are attended by thousands at universities in Europe and America and broadcasted on radio and television. He is also well known for being a Soviet dissident: He spent several years in a camp in Mordovia near the Volga (where Andrei Sinyavsky or Alexander Ginzburg also were incarcerated), and was one of the last political prisoners of the USSR who was convicted for anti-Soviet propaganda – in his case for founding the Republican Party of Georgia.