Guram Lursmanashvili successfully defended his PhD dissertation at the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Vienna (Austria), under the supervision of Professor Thomas Mark Németh. The dissertation is entitled “Stalin and the Orthodox Church of Georgia (OCG): Repressions, Adaptation, and Coexistence within the Soviet System.” Both the dissertation and its defense received the grade Excellent (sehr gut).
The dissertation is divided into four main chapters, which chronologically examine Stalin’s childhood and the religious factors associated with it; the persecution of the OCG during the early Soviet period and Stalin’s role in these repressions; the changes in Stalin’s religious policy during the Second World War; and, finally, the distinctive characteristics of ecclesiastical life in the OCG from the end of the Second World War until Stalin’s death.
In addition to these four chapters, the concluding section presents biographical notes on Georgian hierarchs and theologians of the Stalinist period and discusses Stalin’s influence on contemporary ecclesiastical developments and the ways in which his legacy is reflected in them.