Stalin in His Hometown and Beyond

Parliament passed on December 25 with its final reading amendments to the Liberty Charter aimed at actual enforcement of measure to prevent public display of symbols of totalitarian communist regime. The bill, co-sponsored by two GD lawmakers, was prompted by several cases of restoration of Stalin monuments in the provinces. Concerns over those cases of re-erecting Stalin statues were raised, both privately and publicly, before the Georgian authorities by some EU-member states, mainly by the Baltic and Eastern European states. Last year the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commissioned a survey to find out public attitudes towards Stalin in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia. While 45% of respondents in Georgia expressed a positive attitude toward Stalin and 68% called him a “wise leader who brought the Soviet Union to might and prosperity”, 63% responded negatively when asked if they would like to live in a country ruled by a person like Stalin. 53% of those surveyed in Georgia completely or mostly agreed with the statement “Stalin was a cruel, inhuman tyrant, responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people.”