Speaker Lashes out at Tolerance Center, SovLab, CSOs, USAID Over Stalin’s Image in Church
Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili held a special brief at the Parliament to condemn “the wave of disinformation, manipulation, and hysteria,” which, he claimed, accompanied unprecedented “attacks on the Church and its parish.” He said, “The firm perception is being shaped, that these attacks are planned in advance and coordinated” and “is reaching the dangerous limit beyond which the irreparable damage to civic peace may occur.”
The Speaker was speaking about the public outcry regarding the discovery of Stalin’s image on one of the icons in Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, apparently gifted by the nativist, anti-Western party leaders. He did not, however, mention the reason for the outcry, framing the event as an attack against the Church.
He lashed out at SovLab (an NGO that studies Georgia’s Soviet past) and its project manager Giorgi Kandelaki, who was one of the first to share information on Facebook about the image of Stalin on the icon in the Sameba church, saying: “It is particularly worrying that so-called civil society organizations are involved. Moreover, Giorgi Kandelaki, a representative of one of the non-governmental organizations “Sovlab”, fueled the hysteria surrounding the icon placed in the Holy Trinity Cathedral.”
- Background: Stalin’s Depiction in Cathedral Stokes Passions
He also called out Beka Mindiashvili, head of the Tolerance Center at the Public Defender’s Office, as an “active member of this campaign” who has “distinguished himself by hostile rhetoric towards the Georgian Orthodox Church.” Speaker decried that Mindiashvili’s office is “apparently” not organizationally incorporated in the Public Defender’s Office but is “appropriating the name of Constitutional body” while being in reality funded by the program of USAID, “Unity through Diversity” [Due disclosure: “Unity through Diversity” is run by the UN Association of Georgia, the parent organization of Civil.ge]. The website of the Public Defender’s Office reads that the Tolerance Center has been active since 2005.
In connection with the Speaker’s comments about the Tolerance Center, the Public Defender of Georgia Levan Ioseliani explained that the Center is not a structural unit of his office. According to Ioseliani, the Tolerance Center “is an independent organization which has an independent source of income,” so the Public Defender cannot be responsible for the statements of the Center’s head.
More than a week after the issue surfaced, the Public Defender also belatedly addressed the controversy over Stalin’s image in the Holy Trinity Church. Ioseliani said it was unacceptable for him to see Stalin in a church. As for the defacing of the icon of the Matrona of Moscow depicting Stalin, he said it was “absolutely unacceptable.” However, he also noted that no matter how unacceptable someone’s actions may be, freedom of expression should never be met with retaliation.
Referring to his own earlier claims, Papuashvili said, “This is not the first time USAID finds itself in the epicenter of scandal linked to the program it funds” and that he “expects that the leadership of USAID would soon bring clarity into this issue and act in the best interests of the American and Georgian people.” He argued Georgia’s “NGO sector is almost fully dominated by politicians who are conducting propaganda with foreign funding.”
In this connection, the Speaker revived the issue of transparency of CSO funding and lamented “the absence of the legislation on transparency of foreign funding.” The ruling party passed the draft law with this title at the first hearing in March 2023 but withdrew it following the public protest.
Speaker Papuashvili called on the donor community to check “whether the money of their taxpayers is funding projects and people that act contrary to our shared values in the human rights field and are aimed at the radicalization of society.”
On January 20, USAID responded to a request for comment from the Public Broadcaster of Georgia. The organization states: “The U.S. government, through USAID, works with many organizations to promote tolerance as part of its assistance to and for the benefit of Georgia. We have ongoing, open, and transparent communications with the Georgian government about how our programs support Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations.”
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