Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version

A plan to demolish a memorial in the city of Kutaisi to the hundreds of thousands of Georgians who died fighting the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union has led to outrage in Russia and opposition protests in Georgia.

Reportedly the memorial is to be dynamited on 21 December - the birthday of former Soviet dictator Joesph Stalin.

The Georgian authorities say the memorial is being demolished to make way for a new parliament building which will bring jobs and some desperately needed prosperity to the city. But on the Russian side, and for many Georgians, the suspiscion is that the memory of the war is being dishonoured because the Georgian authorities cannot bear to tolerate anything that is positive about the Red Army.

However, the Georgian government says it intends to create a new memorial.

But while "Victory Day" - 9 May when the Soviet side signed the German instruments of surrender and the principal public occassion for remembering the war - is marked in Georgia it is of less significance than in many other ex-Soviet countries.

There are sensitivities on both sides. The Red Army invaded Georgia and overthrew its democratic government in 1921 and in the subsequent Bolshevisation of the country many thousands were killed as class enemies of the new regime.

On the other hand as much as half of all Georgian men of fighting age served in the Red Army during the "Great Patriotic War" of 1941 - 45 and around half of those who did were killed. Although the Nazis made a symbolic assault on Mount Ebrus they did not cross into Georgia, as their 1942 offensive targeted the oil fields of the North Caucasus.

A tiny number of Georgian men served in the SS but there is no Georgian tradition, as there is in some other former states of the Soviet Union, of honouring their memory as anti-Russian fighters. Nor is there is there the sort of significant anti-Semitic politics that allows Russian leaders to celebrate the victory over Nazism with one breath while inviting believers in Jewish conspiracies to meetings in the next.

In 2007 the removal of a Soviet war memorial from the centre to the outskirts of the Estonian capital Tallinn led to significant violence and at least one death.