Georgian Parliament Speaker says ongoing anti-Church campaign mirrors Bolshevik tactics

Georgian Parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Wednesday said that an ongoing campaign targeting the Church and the Patriarch is part of a broader attempt to replace traditional religion with a “pseudo-religious movement”.

In his interview with Imedi TV, Papuashvili argued that the campaign reflects a larger, coordinated scheme previously seen in Georgia.

He added that the campaign was not new, recalling that the late Patriarch Ilia II had already addressed similar concerns back in 2004.

“This is an attempt to replace the Church with a pseudo-religious movement. Overall, this is part of a broader scheme we witnessed in this country a hundred years ago. This is exactly how the Bolsheviks acted”, the speaker said.

“There is nothing new in this. Today I published the Patriarch’s 2004 interview, which shows the early stage of the anti-Church campaign - how it all began and how it later developed. Ultimately, the main reason lies in the fact that there are forces that see the Church as a competitor”, Papuashvili continued.

He further argued that, in a European context, the European Union - originally established as a political and economic bloc - “is increasingly being transformed by its bureaucracy into an ideologised, pseudo-religious union”.

“We see that Eurocrats are increasingly speaking about ‘values’, without specifying what those values are, attempting to address both member and candidate states from a moral pedestal. There is an effort to replace the Church with a pseudo-religious movement. This reflects the same scheme we witnessed a century ago, when Bolshevism - an ideology that, incidentally, also came from Europe in the form of socialism - sought influence”, the speaker noted.

Papuashvili added that recent developments require serious reflection, arguing that Brussels bureaucracy is attempting to gain ideological influence through pseudo-religious methods, with the Church emerging as its “natural competitor”.