Tbilisi, December 31 (Interfax) - A Josef talin monument erected a couple of months ago next to a WW2 memorial was dismantled in Telavi, the administrative center of Kakhetia in eastern Georgia, on Tuesday.
The Georgian media said the dismantlement of the monument was authorized by the town administration on the grounds that it was illegal.
Police guarded the deconstruction works.
Stalinist public organization head Shota Lazariashvili said it was an act of vandalism. “Governments come and go and Stalin lingers on, and it is a shame that the monument to [former U.S. President Ronald] Reagan still stands in Tbilisi and Gori and Telavi are fighting Stalin,” he remarked.
The Stalin monument was ceremoniously unveiled in Telavi on September 1. The Stalinist public organization and the Georgian Union of Veterans raised funds for the monument but it appeared later that they had no permission to install it.
Fans of “the leader of all peoples” sporadically restore Stalin monuments across Georgia but NGO activists stain the monuments with red paint, and the Telavi monument was not an exception.
