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| Patriarchate of Georgia calls the image of Stalin on the icon acceptable |
| 2024-01-08 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. [KavkazUzel] An icon depicting Joseph Stalin was spotted in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi, a researcher at the Sovlab Institute reported. This is an icon of St. Matrona, not Stalin, and portraits of “the great persecutors of the church” are sometimes depicted on icons, the Patriarchate of Georgia said. As the "Caucasian Knot "wrote, in Georgia, according to the conclusions of historians of the "Laboratory for the Study of the Soviet Past", there is a revival of the cult of Stalin, at least 11 monuments and busts have been erected, often with the support of local authorities, and the Stalin Museum is functioning in Gori. An icon depicting Joseph Stalin was spotted in the Holy Trinity Cathedral (Tsminda Sameba) in Tbilisi. A video of the icon depicting Joseph Stalin was published on his Facebook page* by Georgiy Kandelaki, a researcher at the SovLab Institute for the Study of the Soviet Past. “The icon of Joseph Stalin - the initiator of the destruction of Georgian independence, the murderer of thousands of clergy and the creator of the Soviet totalitarian system - in the Trinity Cathedral. Another success of the Russian information war machine,” he wrote. The head of the public relations service of the Patriarchate of Georgia, Archpriest Andria Dzhagmaidze, did not answer questions on whose initiative and when this icon appeared in the cathedral, but stated that the topic was not accidentally raised on Christmas, writes Georgia News. “This is not the first time they want to mar the holiday with a scandal, so that instead of joy they can sow hatred in people’s hearts,” the agency quoted him as saying. At the same time, the representative of the Patriarchate noted that there is nothing special in the image of Stalin on the icon, since this is an icon of St. Matrona, not Stalin. According to him, there are precedents when “great persecutors of the church,” for example, Diocletian, are depicted on icons, but this does not mean their glorification. Jamgaidze called the Russian trace in the iconography depicting Stalin “a secondary issue,” the publication says. For many Georgians, Stalin remains an important symbol, but he lacks serious political content . Rather, he becomes an object of local patriotism and popular worship. A portrait of Stalin (the son of a shoemaker, like the “patron saint of shoemakers”) hangs in every shoemaker next to the icon of the Mother of God. Georgian society for the most part is not prone to reflection and remains conservative, while such sentiments are intensifying. Citizens of Georgia avoid discussions on painful topics; reassessment of values is difficult for them. As it turned out, the established myth of Stalin as the “great son of the Georgian people” was never abandoned, the Carnegie Endowment noted in 2013** in its report on the results of a survey on attitudes towards Stalin in the Caucasus. Many Georgians are unaware of the scale of Stalin's repressions and are proud of Stalin as a fellow countryman who held the highest office in the Soviet Union, historians said on August 2, 2020. Some Georgian residents interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" confirmed their sympathy for Stalin. |
| Posted by:badanov |