Documents circulating in Georgian samizdat accuse the present hierarchy of the Georgian Orthodox Church, together with leading officials of the Georgian SSR’s government and its KGB, of criminal activities [1].
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SEVEN ITEMS
[1]
KORIDZE’S REPORT
The most important such document is “A Report on Crimes Committed in the Georgian Patriarchate”. It was compiled by David Koridze, assistant procurator of the Tbilisi city’s Kirov district, who sent it to the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party.
The report describes the course of an investigation begun by the Procurator’s Office because of complaints by believers. In the course of the investigation, “a large number of people concerned about the fate of the Georgian Church were interrogated” and “documents providing conclusive evidence were discovered”.
Koridze reports that not long before the death of the Patriarch, Catholicos Efrem II, a great many treasures (national heirlooms) were stolen from the Patriarchate.
In addition, Koridze asserts that the will of the late Patriarch, in which he named as his successor Metropolitan Ilya Shiolashvili, then the rector of the Mtskheta seminary, was destroyed and replaced by a forged will which recommended the nomination of Khariton Devdariani, now David V, as Patriarch-Catholicos of all Georgia. After the death of Efrem II on 7 April 1972, this nomination was confirmed by the Synod; according to the ‘Report’, the Synod meeting was conducted with gross violations of the canon law.
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Koridze regards Bidzina Keratishvili, now Bishop Gaioz of Tsilkan, as the organiser of the robbery of the Patriarchate, of the forgery of the will and of the rigging of the elections.
He is a man with a murky past who managed to gain the confidence of the late Patriarch. Koridze asserts that the present Patriarch, David V, is a man of little education and experience and a puppet in the hands of Keratishvili.
According to the Report, Keratishvili’s accomplices were: (1) D. A. Shalutashvili, who in 1972 was Commissioner for Religious Affairs [2] with the Georgian government; and (2) Tvalchrelidze [3], a department head at the Georgian KGB. The protector of all three is Victoria Tyriskevich, wife of Mzhavanadze, former 1st Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party (1953-1972).
D.A. Shalutashvili, Tvalchrelidze and Victoria Tyriskevich all received “valuable gifts”, as Koridze puts it, from the Patriarchate treasury. In conclusion, he proposes a series of measures to bring the above-mentioned facts into the open.
The ‘Report’ is dated 19 March 1973.
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[2]
A second document on this subject, entitled “Evidence”, was written at the beginning of 1974 by historian Teimuraz Dzhvarsheishvili.
Dzhvarsheishvili names a number of people who are ready to corroborate and supplement his evidence. Among them are: Ilya Shiolashvili, Metropolitan of Sukhumi & Abkhazia; Avtandil Sarnkharadze, now Father Illarion, priest of the Zion church; Victor Shalamberidze, priest of a church in the small town of Mtskheta; and Valentina Pailodze (CCE 32.11).
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[3]
One of the potential witnesses just listed, Father Victor Shalamberidze, died on 11 February 1974 in a car crash.
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[4]
PAILODZE
Valentina Pailodze has written a letter from a labour camp to Eduard Shevardnadze, 1st Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party (1972-1985). In it she supports the accusations made against Keratishvili, Tvalchrelidze, Shalutashvili and others.
The letter named witnesses to the crimes, and it reports the pressure put on her even before her arrest, by Keratishvili and the authorities.
In the course of the investigation carried out by David Koridze, Pailodze reports, orders were issued twice for the arrest of Keratishvili and Shalutashvili. However, the case materials were demanded by Dzhibladze, a procurator of the republic, and the case was then closed.
Pailodze asks Shevardnadze to intervene in the case and to grant her a personal hearing, as she wants to give some evidence to him, but only in person.
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[5]
Yet another document on this subject is the article “The Situation of the Orthodox Church in Georgia”, dated 14 March 1974 and signed ‘A Group of Georgian Christian Believers’.
The article recounts the history of the Patriarchates of Efrem II and David V as a continuation of the State interference which has gone on since 1921 in the affairs of the Georgian Church.
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[6]
KORIDZE (2)
On 7 October 1974, O. Tskaroveli, a KGB official, came to David Koridze’s place of work and told him that the KGB had obtained a copy of his report on the theft at the Patriarchate, in the Russian language. He asked Koridze if he knew who had translated the report and how it had got abroad.
Koridze replied that he did not know. Then Tskaroveli said that the authorities suspected Zviad Gamsakhurdia, son of the well-known Georgian writer Konstantin Gamsakhurdia. Koridze replied that he had shown the report to Gamsakhurdia, but many officials of the Party Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Procurator’s Office had also read the report: it had passed through many hands.
Koridze added that the KGB should be assisting the investigation into the robbery and giving practical help to the Procurator’s office — rather than establishing how the report was translated into Russian. Koridze expressed dissatisfaction that the KGB officials who had taken part in the robbery of the Patriarchate had not been punished. Tsakroveli’s only reply was silence.
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At the end of October, David Koridze was taken from his home and driven to KGB headquarters.
There he talked with Aleksi Inauri, Georgian KGB chairman, and his deputy, Sh. Zardalishvili. They told him that the report on the robbery of the Patriarchate, which he had sent to the Party Central Committee, had been broadcast by five foreign radio stations. The KGB also feared that the Pope might make a protest on the subject.
Inauri threatened Koridze with expulsion from the Party and arrest.
David Koridze objected that he had not committed any crime, and had only carried out his official duty.
“Why did you show the report to that anti-Soviet type, Z.K. Gamsakhurdia?” they asked.
Koridze replied that he had no information that Gamsakhurdia was ‘an anti-Soviet type’. He knew that Gamsakhurdia was working for the Department for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments; and he considered his interest in the investigation of the robbery at the Patriarchate to be natural.
In addition, the document was not secret, so Koridze did not consider he was breaking the law by showing it to someone interested in the investigation.
Koridze was reproached for allegedly having become ‘an anti-Sovietist’ and ‘a religious believer’.
Koridze replied that unmasking a robbery was not an “anti-Soviet act”. Besides, he was the son of a manual worker. He had been a Party member for 30 years; worked for 34 years; took part in the wartime Battle of Kerch (1941-1942); and graduated from the Higher Party School in Moscow.
If, after all this, he was considered an ‘anti-Sovietist’ and a ‘religious believer’, the Soviet State was in a bad way.
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At the end of October, David Koridze was forced to retire on pension.
His application for admisson to the Collegium of Lawyers, i.e., the Bar Association, is lying unanswered at the Georgian Ministry of Justice. Koridze is a senior legal adviser, and has worked for about thirty years as an investigator of Especially Important Cases.
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[7]
From the Soviet Press
On 10 December 1974, the Molodyozh Gruzii [Georgian Youth] newspaper published “She Got What She Deserved”, an article by L. Mamaladze about the trial of Valentina Pailodze. (The trial took place on 26 June, CCE 32.11).
The article states that Pailodze pleaded not guilty and justified her actions by reference to her religious faith.
In connection with this, the author writes:
“We must remember that in our country the Church is separated from the State. Therefore, we understand freedom of conscience as freedom to carry out religious rituals in church, in a congregation, but never as freedom of propaganda….”
The article reports that a large group of intellectuals had gathered near the court building and were excitedly discussing the case. “I do not wish to name all these respectable persons,” writes the author. “I do not want their names to appear beside that of V. Pailodze.”
The article does not clearly state how the assembled intellectuals regarded Valentina Pailodze’s case.
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NOTES
- For the background and extracts see P. Reddaway, “The Georgian Orthodox Church: Corruption and Renewal”, in Religion in Communist Lands, 4/5, 1975; also issues 6 (1975) and 1 (1976).
See also CCE 34.18 [23] about the general level of corruption in the Georgian SSR.
↩︎ - In 1972, D.A. Shalutashvili was Commissioner for Religious Affairs [2] with the Georgian government.
↩︎ - ?//Tvalchrelidze, a department head at the Georgian KGB .
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