Speaker: Giorgi Maisuradze
The Soviet Republic of Georgia exploited the fact that Stalin was Georgian, in order to showcase its special symbolic status in the ‘Brotherhood of the (Soviet) Peoples’: Stalin as ‘Father of the People’ was a son of Georgia. Stalin was stylised as a Georgian national hero, whereby Stalin’s ‘greatness’ was conferred on his native country. This resulted in a Georgian Stalin cult, which continued beyond the dictator’s death in 1953 and the de-Stalinisation process initiated in 1956. Prof. Dr. Giorgi Maisuradze will describe the special attributes of the Georgian Stalin cult and its continuing influence into the present.