Demobilized in 1946, he lived thereafter in Sukhumi working as a governmental shop manager. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1947. He lived in the city of Ochamchire, and later became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR. In 1965, together with Yegorov and Konstantin Samsonov, he carried the Victory Banner at the Moscow Victory Day Parade on Red Square. In the same formation, they carried the banner at the International Workers' Day demonstration in 1970. A year after the secessionist war in Abkhazia started, during which Kantaria's house in Ochamchira was destroyed, he moved with his family to Moscow, where he later died two months later in December 1993 in a Moscow hospital. In early January 1994, Kantaria was reburied in his native town Jvari, on the grounds of School #3.