Abstract:
After the occupation and annexation of the sovereign kingdom
of Kartli-Kakheti by the order of the Russian emperor in 1801, the
Georgian society found itself in a different environment. The process
of Russification of the country began, which was followed by
great resistance of the people left without power. Despite the religious-
Orthodox unity, the Russian socio-cultural and political space
was markedly different from the Georgian one. Georgian language
was banned: in schools, public institutions and churches. The king’s
government abolished the centuries-old autocephaly of the Georgian
Church and brought it under synodal rule. The humiliation of
the Georgian Church has alarmed the people, especially Armenians,
Catholics, Jews and Muslims who have maintained religious autonomy.
Through cultural imperialism was created the faithful clerical
elite of the empire, as well as the aristocracy, which was actively in volved in the production of colonial policies. Along with the Georgian
language, Christianity has been one of the markers of identity for
centuries, especially in relation to the Muslim world. From the 19th
century, Orthodoxy became a powerful tool for the degeneration of
the Georgians in the hands of the Russian enemy.
The goal of the renewed national movement in the 1860s was to
form a new Georgian nation. The king’s policy prevented the Georgian
nation from striving for national consolidation and created signs
of identity that would be acceptable to representatives of different
nationalities or religions living in Georgia. The imperial policy towards
the Muslim Georgians, who were forced to emigrate to Turkey,
was especially cruel. It was one of the forms and means of ethnic
cleansing by the Russians. The desire of the national movement was
to create a secular society. It was the result of both internal aspirations
and the influence of nationalism, and at the same time a kind
of reaction to the politics of tsarism. The notion of understanding
the nation was defined by the ideologues of the national movement,
where language, territory, laws, historical memory, common culture
played an important role and place, and where religion was considered
a more individual feeling. It was a kind of response to the
Russian Orthodox missionary ideology and policies, where they left
the Islamic world as the saviors of the “Georgian brothers” and tried
to emphasize the commonalities. From 1918 to 1921, the First Republic
was a secular state where religious identity was less important.
The religious policy of the Soviet Union, where Georgia was one of
the colonies, is interesting. The Soviet Union had a purely atheistic
policy, religion still played an important role in manipulating the Soviet
peoples. Religious identity disappeared (at the official level), it
was replaced by party identity and played an important role in the
formation of Soviet man.
One of the tools of Russian imperialist policy was religion, which
was used in different epochs (Romanov and Soviet eras) with different
intensities and content to subjugate and assimilate the conquered
peoples.
