Satenik Avoyan – Struggle for the autonomy restoration of Georgian Church (1906 – 1907)

Satenik Avoyan – Struggle for the autonomy restoration of Georgian Church (1906 – 1907). – The first bourgeois democratic revolution which began in 1905 in Tsa­rist Russia also left a deep imprint upon the Georgian peoples’ religious consciousness. Among the religious lea­ders matured the necessary requirement to restore the au­to­no­my of their church, which obviously opposed to Georgian ekzarkhat. The restoration of the autonomy of Geor­gian Church was discussed during <the pre-parliamentary works> ses­sions created by the Holy Synod, during which the Orthodox Georgians’ religious as­pi­rations for au­to­no­my intensified. But it is important to note, that during this sessions through which Geor­gian Church was initially pinned hopes, the issue of the Georgian Church was dis­cus­sed only hypothetically. The Georgian Church tried to prove in any way with the jus­ti­fi­cations of historical past, the legal and moral point of view, that the res­toration of the autonomy of Georgian Church is the Georgian peoples’ right, but Rus­sia tried to prove that “the autonomous movement is only revolutionary, political, se­ces­sionist which combined the religious careers and revolutionary-democrats, that drea­med about the independence of Georgia. Nevertheless, pre-parliamentary works didn’t give any po­sitive result for Georgians and as soon as the revolution faded in Em­pire (June 1907), also weakened the publication of the issue. Many people expressed the opi­nion that Geor­gian autonomy will spoil the political unity and it contradicts Rus­sina’s state in­te­rests. The Georgian religious issue wasn’t resolved.