THE GEORGIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND ATHEISTIC PROPAGAN DA METHODS IN THE SOVIET GEORGIA (20-30S OF THE 20TH CENTURY)

Abstract

After the creation of the USSR in 1921, Georgia became part of a totalitarian state whose ideological basis was atheism. The Soviet “cultural revolution”, the concept of “socialist realism”, and the formation of a new person meant the struggle against religion and the church. The article analyzes the peculiarities of the anti religious policy in Soviet Georgia in the 1920s-30s, the contradictions between the State and the Georgian Orthodox Church; Methods and results of atheistic propa ganda in Georgia. Also, it clarified its stages and character.
The government tried to replace the traditional church with a „New Church“. He also supported „Renovationism“ („Obnovlenchestvo“) as an instrument for the adaptation of the Georgian Orthodox Church to the Socialistic Revolution which
threatened the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church restored in 1917. 
However, this movement could not be established in Georgia. Abolition and destruction of churches and holy places, insulting of clergy, repression, banning of church holidays and their replacement with communist events became a common state-encouraged event in Soviet Georgia. From 1925 to 1947, the Soviet Union operated an anti-religious propaganda organisation - the “Union of Godless” which was renamed the “Union of the Militant Godless” in 1929. The regional office of this union existed in Georgia from 1929 to 1947. Press, literature, theatre, radio, painting, education system, and museology were used as
tools of anti-religious campaigns and propaganda to influence the broad masses of the society.
The study revealed that in 1922-1924 the anti-religious campaign and pressure on the church were particularly acute and powerful, in 1925-1927 it became relatively soft and loyal, while at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s the antireligious campaign and atheistic propaganda took extreme forms.