In 1924, Stalin's Communists Blew Up The Church Of Assumption Of Virgin Mary In Georgia

♱ Mamkoda Monastery - a monastery complex in eastern Georgia, in the Tskhvarichamia community of Mtskheta Municipality. It is located near Tbilisi, 5 km northeast of the village of Mamkoda, on the right side of the Gldani-Tianeti road.

The Mamkoda complex includes the Churches of the Mother of God and St. George, the bell tower, fragments of buildings of unknown purpose and the fence.

The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Church of St. George of Mamkoda date back to the 9th century.

In 1924, the communists blew up the St. George Church, bringing an end to the local monastic life for a long time. It was only in 2006 that restoration of the Mother of God Church was finished, allowing monks to return to serving in it..

According to the priest of the temple, Father Svimon, he greeted David the Builder before one of the battles here. According to legend, the name of the monument is also associated with David. It is said that these areas have often been the target of attacks and people have been horrified. When David the Builder saw the ruined village, he said: I was heartbroken by the plight of the people.

The Structure of Mamkoda Monastery

An impressive piece of architecture, the monastery contains a cross-dome church dedicated to the Mother of God, a hall-type church of St. George, a bell tower, and the remnants of various outbuildings and a defensive wall.

The churches were all built during the 9th century, while a convent was founded in the 19th century. Russian nuns also opened a small school and hospital here at around the same time. In addition, a medical repository is still preserved on the monastery grounds.

The Legend of Mamkoda Monastery

It is said that the famous king of Georgia, David Agmashenebeli (the Builder), prayed in this monastery before one of his battles.

After seeing what invasions have done to the place, the King said with great sorrow: "The suffering of people broke my heart".

Stalin and Lenin In Hell: The Communists Depicted Burning In Georgia's Churches

Any visitor casting their eyes over the vivid paintings inside a church in Sujuna, western Georgia, may get a surprise.

Among various generic sinners engulfed in the flames of hell is a clear depiction of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin pleading with three angels as they cast him into damnation.

The image is one of several paintings of Soviet leaders in churches that have come to light since a recent uproar broke out over the depiction of Josef Stalin inside Tbilisi's cathedral.

Davit Khidasheli was one of a group of artists who painted the interior of the Sujuna church in the 1990s, soon after Georgia regained its independence after 70 years of atheist Soviet rule. The icon painter told RFE/RL's Georgian Service the depiction of Lenin represents the Godlessness of the political system that "sacrificed millions of people and stifled the development of society."

More examples of explicit anti-Soviet paintings inside several churches across the Caucasus country.

In a church in an eastern suburb of Tbilisi named after monk Gabriel Urgebadze, an interior painting depicts a famous historical protest in which Urgebadze set fire to a giant propaganda poster of Vladimir Lenin during a parade in Tbilisi in 1965. The monk died in 1995 and was designated a saint in 2012.

Another political-religious painting has been slightly adapted from its original. A mural inside the cathedral of Rustavi, near Tbilisi, is almost identical to the Sujuna painting featuring Lenin, but also includes the ethnic Georgian Stalin.

Georgia is not the only formerly communist country whose artists have cast their former leaders into figurative hell. In Montenegro, an anonymous fresco painter depicted Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito suffering damnation inside Podgorica's Church of Resurrection alongside socialist godheads Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

A senior Russian Orthodox priest has called Vladimir Lenin an "even bigger villain" than Adolf Hitler and backed an effort to check his works for extremism.

Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, head of church relations with the armed forces and law enforcement, said in an interview that a closer study of Lenin's writings could drastically alter societal beliefs regarding the Bolshevik leader, who he described as an "unscrupulous and utter cynic and villain,"

Soviet authorities ruthlessly suppressed religion, confiscated church properties, and demolished holy sites over their decades in power, leading many church officials to view them with bitter resentment.

Archpriest Smirnov noted that Leninism, a communist ideology that promotes socialism and a "dictatorship of the proletariat," was also a kind of religion and that a check of Lenin's works would not affect how his staunch devotees viewed him.

Speaking about his belief that Russian cities needed to be rid of the ubiquitous images and place-names that include Lenin, Archpriest Smirnov referred to efforts in post-World War II Germany to eliminate Hitler's name from public spaces.

For him, Smirnov said, Lenin was "an even bigger villain than Hitler" because "Hitler treated his people much better."