He was born in Tiraspol, Bessarabia (then part of the Russian Empire), and until his teens believed himself to be Russian. His father moved to Bulgaria after the war of liberation in 1879, and Georgi joined him three years later. He graduated from military school in Sofia, and was an officer in an artillery regiment for a short time, but did not care for this career and instead began to study law at Sofia University. For most of his life he worked as a judge.
