Same ingredients, another recipe? Religion-related legislation and policies in Soviet and post-Soviet Georgia and their implications for religious minorities today

This article articulates similarities and differences regarding policies on religion and religious minorities in contemporary Georgia and the country’s early Soviet era. A comparison between developments in legislation and state apparatus shortly after 1921 and 1991 uncovers the policies and mechanisms limiting religious minorities in Georgia today, including the setting up of a State Agency for Religious Issues in 2014, as echoes of a painful past. In contrast to the Soviet regime, however, the main carrier of the dominant ideology responsible for this situation today is not the state itself, but the Georgian Orthodox Church.