Eleonora Ter-Parsegova was born in an Armenian–Russian family in Tiflis, then part of the Russian Empire, and was married to the Georgian physician Vladimir Makhviladze. She joined Social Democratic Party in 1902. In 1905, Ter-Parsegova and her husband moved to live in Sukhumi, where she worked as a teacher and became involved in a revolutionary turmoil. Shortly after the October Manifesto, the Sukhumi branch of the Batumi Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, of which Ter-Parsegova was a member, took an effective control of the town, briefly replacing an Imperial administration. She was frequently seen marching at the head of demonstrations. She propagated revolutionary ideas among her students and taught them "La Marseillaise", which she altered to include a reference to the Russian tsar Nicholas II. After the revolution collapsed, she was imprisoned in 1908 and twice again until the 1917 revolution toppled down the Russian monarchy.