Of a noble family, Tsulukidze served in the Imperial Russian army and was promoted to the rank of major-general in World War I. He then commanded a brigade in a newly independent Democratic Republic of Georgia after whose fall to the Soviets (1921) he became one of the leaders of an underground independence movement. Tsulukidze was arrested by the Cheka along with his associates and shot at the outskirts of Tbilisi on 19 May 1923.