TBILISI -- A controversial icon of St. Matrona of Moscow with an image of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has been removed from the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, following a public outcry and an attempt to deface the work.
The icon featured a painting of St. Matrona of Moscow on its main panel, which is surrounded by scenes of her life on smaller panels, including one showing Stalin, an avowed atheist, standing next to the mystic and saint of the Russian Orthodox Church who died in 1952.
David Tarkhan-Mouravi, the leader of the right-wing populist Alliance of Patriots of Georgia, who donated the icon to the church, told RFE/RL on January 17 that it will be repainted to remove Stalin's image and replace it with a picture of a woman cured of cancer.
Tarkhan-Mouravi added that it was not him who removed the icon, adding that he "connected" the Georgian Patriarchate with the author of the icon.
It is not clear if the repainted icon will be returned to the Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Last week, the Georgian Patriarchate issued a statement saying the donors of the icon must change the panel portraying Stalin, warning that if they don’t, the Georgian Orthodox Church will make the change itself.
The patriarchate said on January 11 that "due to the lack of evidence proving that J. Stalin and St. Matrona ever met, such a meeting has not been included in the canonic text about her biography."
Because a meeting has not been recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church, the patriarchate added, it is "necessary to change the depiction of the mentioned episode."
On January 10, an angry mob in Tbilisi swarmed the house of activist Nata Peradze after she posted a video online showing blue paint splattered on the icon in question in the cathedral. The crowd threatened to "carry out what the state and law failed to."
But police prevented a possible attack on Peradze, who later told RFE/RL that she was the person who threw the paint on the icon, though the panel where Stalin was depicted was unharmed.
Photos of the icon that started circulating on the Internet in early January sparked outrage among many Georgians, who condemned the appearance of the image in one of Georgia's main churches of a Soviet dictator who brutally oppressed clerics and religion in general while in power.
Despite massive campaigns of political killings and the destruction of churches during his rule from 1924 until his death in 1953, Stalin, who was an ethnic Georgian, is still viewed with pride by many Georgians. Several public monuments to the communist dictator remain standing across the former Soviet republic.