00:00 Georgians are divided after an icon depicting former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was defaced
00:07 in the capital's main cathedral on Tuesday.
00:10 Footage on social media showed blue paints splashed across the icon, which Georgian media
00:16 said has been displayed in Tbilisi's Holy Trinity Cathedral for several months.
00:22 As authorities began investigating, the case exposed deep fractures in Georgia over Stalin's
00:27 legacy in his homeland.
00:29 Stalin's supporters in Russia as well as in Georgia hail him as the man who defeated
00:34 Nazism in World War II.
00:36 "He was a big, big person.
00:41 On this, I can't even express myself as an ordinary person.
00:46 Stalin was a godsend and we need one like that."
00:50 But his critics see a bloodthirsty dictator who sent millions to the Gulag labor camps
00:56 and presided over the Great Terror of 1936-38, in which historians say up to 1.2 million
01:02 people died.
01:04 That sentiment was also evident on the streets of Tbilisi.
01:08 "I feel very insulted after what I saw at the church.
01:16 I think it's an insult for the Georgian society to have Stalin's icon at the church, because
01:21 Stalin brought many bad things to the people, ruined people's lives, and there is no place
01:27 for him here."
01:35 Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili in 1878 in the Georgian town of Gori.
01:40 There, a museum commemorating his life and work continues to attract a steady stream
01:45 of tourists, though his statue in the town square was removed in 2010.
01:51 After consolidating his power following the death in 1924 of Bolshevik leader Vladimir
01:55 Lenin, Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron hand until his death in 1953.
02:03 Stalin was an avowed atheist who violently repressed religion across the Soviet Union,
02:08 though the icon shares him being blessed by Saint Matrona of Moscow, a Russian Orthodox
02:13 saint during World War II.
02:15 A Georgian nationalist party called the Alliance of Patriots, which has also expressed pro-Russian
02:20 views, said it had gifted the icon to the cathedral.
02:23 The icon has since been cleaned and the cathedral placed under police guard.
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