Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili criticized the government's plans to restore the monument to Iosif Stalin in the city of Gori.
“Information that the government intends to restore the monument to Stalin in Gori emerged today. I am outraged with this,” Saakashvili said on Tuesday after a meeting with Polish politician Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
“At the urging of Stalin, the 11th army entered Georgia and put an end to its independence,” Saakashvili said.
Stalin “cut lands from Georgia and gave to other Soviet republics,” the Georgian president said. “Stalin created time bombs in Abkhazia and so-called South Ossetia,” he said.
“Restoring the monument to Stalin in the 21st century is a barbaric and anti-Georgian act,” Saakashvili said.
Some Georgian mass media outlets reported on Tuesday that the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection had upheld a request submitted by a public organization to restore the monument to Stalin in Gori.
At the same time, this decision was made at the appropriate governmental level several months ago and included the installation of the monument to Stalin, dismantled in 2010, in the Stalin House-Museum in Gori.
The six-meter bronze monument to Stalin is currently laying flat on the ground in the open at a Georgian Defense Ministry military base in Gori.
