German heritage in Georgia commemorated in street's name
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Joseph Stalin street in Asureti, the Tetritskaro Municipality of Georgia, has been renamed Swabians Street, the Union for the Protection of German Cultural Heritage in the South Caucasus reports.
The Swabians are a sub-ethnic German group living from southwest Bavaria, in Swabia.
Under an 1804 law, Russian Tsar Aleksandr I invited foreigners to live in Transcaucasia.
There, land plots were handed over to them for an indefinite term but not as private property. They were to cultivate land plots, how to make wine or different crafts. They were exempt from all taxes and mandatory military service.
The village of Asureti. Photo:on.ge.
1,400 German families settled in Kvemo Kartli. The settlement was called Elizabethal out of respect for the Russian Tsaritsa Elizabeth Alexeievna.
The vast majority of the people who emigrated to the area were Swabians – they also founded settlements in Tbilisi and Abkhazia.
The 1926 general census showed that 12,982 Germans lived across Georgia but part of them were deported in 1941 during the World War II.
Follow the link if you want to learn more about the German settlers in Georgia.
Well-known British TV presenter, journalist and writer Jeremy Clarkson is visiting Georgia to prepare an episode for a TV special about world dictators, this time with Stalin in the spotlight.
Unique documents and photo materials displaying the tragic events that took place in Georgia from 1937 to 1938 during Stalin’s Soviet Regime, otherwise known as the Great Terror, has been collected on the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia website.
A statue of Soviet-era dictator Josef Stalin has been taken down in Telavi, the main city of Georgia's eastern province of Kakheti.
