Noe Zhordania was born into a noble family in Kutaisi governorate. He graduated from Tiflis Theological Seminary, studied at the Warsaw Veterinary Institute (did not complete the course), where he became acquainted with Marxism. Upon his return to Georgia, he became a leader of the social democratic organization Mesame Dasi (“Third Group”). Since 1898, he was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). A Delegate of the 2nd Party Congress (1903) Zhordania joined the Mensheviks. In 1906, he was elected an MP to the First State Duma, the leader of the Social-Democratic fraction of the Mensheviks. In July 1906, he signed the “Vyborg Appeal” by the deputies of the dissolved Duma. During World War I, Zhordania was an advocate of oboronchestvo [defencism]. He collaborated with Georgy Plekhanov’s magazine Samozashchita [Self-defense].

After the February Revolution of 1917, he was the chairman of Tiflis Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. His attitude to the October coup of 1917 was negative. Zhordania advocated Georgia’s independence and the federation of Transcaucasian states. At the end of 1917, he headed the Presidium of the National Council of Georgia. On February 10, 1918, on the day of the convocation of the Transcaucasian Seim (the date was chosen to emphasize the separation of Transcaucasia from Russia), by order of the Georgian Social Democrats Noe Zhordania, Noe Ramishvili, and Evgeni Gegechkori, the many-thousand protest rally was shot in Tiflis.

On May 26, 1918, after the collapse of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federal Republic and the dissolution of the Transcaucasian Seim, he signed the Declaration of Independence of Georgia and headed the interim parliament of the Georgian Democratic Republic.

From July 1918 to March 1921, Zhordania was Head of the government of the Georgian Democratic Republic. In June 1919, he signed an agreement on a joint anti-Bolsheviks struggle with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, Anton Denikin. After the defeat of the Whites, he was an initiator of the conclusion of the treaty and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Georgia and the Russian SFSR (signed in May 1920).

Since March 1921, after the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army entered Georgia within the framework of “Sovietization” [imposing Soviet power] of Georgia, he lived overseas, where he headed the Government of Georgia in exile. Zhordania died in France.