Day: April 20, 2026
The ruling Georgian Dream party plans to withdraw its appeal from the Constitutional Court and submit a “corrected” version that adds the Federalists party to the list of the three opposition forces it already sought to ban in the original appeal, citing the formation of the Opposition Alliance.
Georgian Dream had appealed to the Constitutional Court in November 2025 to ban three major opposition forces – the United National Movement (UNM), Ahali/Coalition for Change, and Lelo/Strong Georgia – while warning that other smaller groups “closely related” to them could also be targeted. The Constitutional Court, widely seen as loyal to Georgian Dream, has had nine months to review the appeal.
Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze had earlier signaled that the appeal could be revised following the creation of the Opposition Alliance, claiming that all parties involved “have practically emerged from the ranks of the United National Movement,” which is already named in the case.
Announcing the ruling party’s decision at an April 20 press briefing in parliament, Papuashvili said the move follows the unification of what he described as “radical opposition parties” on March 2, referring to the Opposition Alliance of nine parties, including the Federalists, which signed a coordination document to work together against Georgian Dream, which remains in power amid a prolonged political crisis marked by its crackdown on dissent and anti-government protests.
Papuashvili claimed the goals of the parties in the Alliance are “to not recognize the Constitution, to not recognize the constitutional institutions, to undermine elections, and in general to not recognize democratic processes and democracy.”
“We said that this would be grounds for us to revise our constitutional appeal, given that we now have a unified grouping under this declaration that shares the same goals that formed the basis of the constitutional appeal.”
While the Alliance also includes smaller parties similar to the Federalists, such as Freedom Square, which is not being added to the appeal, Papuashvili said the ruling party weighs both “the extent to which a party’s goals are unconstitutional” and “how substantial their influence is on politics.”
“Today the leaders of this alliance are Mikheil Saakashvili, Giga Bokeria and Nika Gvaramia,” Papuashvili claimed, referring respectively to the jailed former president and UNM leader, one of the leaders of the Federalists, and the chair of the Ahali party.
“These are three senior officials of the criminal regime of the United National Movement, who today, once again in the form of a united UNM alliance, are trying to turn the country into a puppet state,” Papuashvili added.
Reacting to the decision, Tamar Chergoleishvili, one of the leaders of the Federalists party, said it “does not change anything” for the party, adding that “as long as one party is being banned, regardless of our attitude toward that party, we believe the political process is dying and we will not take part in any formal political processes and will not become part of regime decoration.”
Chergoleishvili argued that Georgian Dream “needed” to take this step “because the nine-month deadline expires,” during which the Constitutional Court may review the appeal. “They do not have the capacity to ban those three parties, so they need a new timeframe. That is why they withdrew the nine-month one and submitted a new one so that a new deadline can start running,” she said, calling the move “a demonstration of the regime’s weakness.”
The Federalists party was launched ahead of the October 2024 parliamentary elections after splitting from European Georgia due to internal conflict linked to party primaries. It did not take part in the elections as a result. The party is led by Tamar Chergoleishvili and her husband, Giga Bokeria, a former senior official in the UNM government. It was officially registered in March 2025 after an earlier rejection by the public registry, following a move in which the party deliberately submitted the same statute as Georgian Dream to complete the registration process.
Also Read:
Religion in Soviet Azerbaijan — Part 2
The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in February 1956, became a major event in the country’s political and social life. At a closed session on 25 February, the “secret” speech by General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, caused a wide public reaction.
Foreign guests were not invited to the session. However, it proved impossible to conceal what had taken place. Notably, while the congress’s decisions condemned Stalin’s cult of personality, they also gave new momentum to atheist propaganda. By the late 1950s, the campaign against religion in the USSR was being carried out in parallel with a crackdown on American jazz and youth subcultures.
Jamil Hasanli is a well-known Azerbaijani historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences and professor.
He is publishing the series Religion in Soviet Azerbaijan: Between Allah and the KGB on his Facebook page.
After the 20th Congress, one of the key tasks of the republic’s state security bodies remained the expansion of intelligence work within religious organisations operating in Azerbaijan and the monitoring of pilgrimage sites. To this end, the authorities conducted active agent operations among Muslim communities, as well as among Pentecostals, Subbotniks and Adventists.
In a 1956 report, the newly appointed KGB chairman, Fyodor Kopylov, expressed concern about growing activity during mourning events in the month of Muharram. According to his data, around 3,000 people gathered at the Taza Pir Mosque on the day of Ashura in 1956. He also described the participation of communists and Komsomol members in these rituals as alarming.
At the same time, Kopylov noted that the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Transcaucasia was under the control of the state security bodies, and that “reliable” individuals had been placed within its seven-member leadership council. According to available information, no anti-Soviet actions were recorded either during religious ceremonies or pilgrimages. However, secret KGB agents were embedded among the small number of pilgrims travelling to Mecca and Mashhad.
By the late 1950s, KGB reports pointed to an increase in religious activity in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The head of the regional KGB, Mammad Alizade, reported a rise in religious influence and the opening of unofficial mosques. He also noted that a bust of Ataga (Seyidali Mir Abutalib oghlu Mirmovsuzade, who lived in Baku between 1883 and 1950, a disabled man to whom some Azerbaijanis attributed miraculous powers) had been produced in Baku and later transported to a mosque in the village of Nusnus in the Ordubad district. Operational measures established that the bust had been made and transported by Hamid Ismailov, born in 1934, who had graduated from a university in Baku.
At the same time, based on intelligence data, the KGB discovered that in the Julfa district of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a collective farm chairman — a member of the district party committee plenum and a deputy of the autonomous republic’s Supreme Soviet, M. Kasymov — had travelled with his family and relatives in a farm vehicle to visit the Ashabi-Kahf site. Despite the region’s border status and a high density of informants — 14 agents per KGB officer compared with an average of 11 across the republic — such cases could not be prevented.
As such cases became more frequent across Muslim republics, on 28 November 1958 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a resolution On Measures to Halt Pilgrimages to Holy Sites. The document, which criticised such practices, mentioned the Azerbaijan SSR alongside a number of other Muslim republics. It noted that so-called “holy sites” were widespread in Azerbaijan. For example, in the settlement of Shuvelan, dozens of believers visited the “Ataga” shrine (Mir Movsum Agha) every day, while during religious rituals and holidays the number of pilgrims reached 400 to 600.
Similar sites operated in other regions, including the “Pir Seyid” mausoleum in the Mashtaga district, the “Imamzadeh” in Barda, as well as the “Ashabi-Kahf”, “Nusnus” and “Imamzadeh” sites in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Despite this, local party bodies failed to carry out explanatory work among the population aimed at closing so-called “holy sites”, stopping pilgrimages and eliminating illegally operating religious structures.
On 12 June 1958, the newspaper Kommunist published a detailed article by Asad Asadov, head of a group of lecturers at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, titled On Religion and Religious Survivals. It stated that “there are around 4,700 cultural and educational institutions in the republic, yet the state of scientific atheist propaganda within them is unsatisfactory”. Despite the adoption on 5 August 1958 of a resolution On Measures to Strengthen Scientific Atheist Propaganda in the Republic, it proved impossible to stop pilgrimages to “holy sites”. As a result, on 30 December 1958, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan again brought the issue before its bureau.
By decision of the bureau, editorial offices of newspapers and magazines, the committee for radio and television, and publishing houses were instructed to expose those using “holy sites” for personal gain and organising pilgrimages. The resolution also stated that regional, city and district party organisations, together with the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR, were required to report on the implementation of these measures by 20 May 1959. The Central Committee’s propaganda and agitation department was tasked with preparing a report for the CPSU Central Committee by 25 May 1959.
Alongside Muslim believers, representatives of Christian sects in the republic were also subjected to persecution by the security services. As early as 23 August 1957, KGB chairman Fyodor Kopylov sent a detailed report to Imam Mustafayev stating that Baptists in the village of Khilmilli in the Shamakhi district were holding underground gatherings. The report noted that the group was led by Vasily Mikhailov, a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. However, despite the efforts of the party and the security bodies, the reforms under Khrushchev failed to halt the growth of religious influence in Soviet society, particularly in Muslim republics.
On 18 April 1959, the chairman of the USSR KGB, Alexander Shelepin, submitted a detailed report to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee titled On the Offensive Against Religious Survivals. It expressed concern about the participation of some scientists, artists and university professors in religious and church rituals, and proposed taking appropriate measures against them.
In 1959–1960, the Azerbaijan KGB prepared two major operations. The first, Operation “Surah Yasin”, was carried out on 26 December 1959 against Islam. The second, conducted in mid-June 1960, targeted youth subcultures, including Western-style fashion and jazz music.
In December 1959, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan instructed the republic’s KGB to identify the source behind the distribution of the brochure Surah Yasin, which was secretly produced using makeshift methods in Arabic with Cyrillic transcription and circulated in Baku (see: report by KGB officer Akif Bagirov on preventive measures of the Azerbaijan SSR KGB, 7 January 1960).
The KGB immediately activated agents embedded in religious circles, codenamed “Polezny” and “Mammadov”. Soon, agent “Polezny” established that the brochures were being distributed by Mammadbagir Suleyman oglu, born in 1884, who received them from a shoemaker, Safareli Aliyev. Further investigation by the agent network revealed that Aliyev, in turn, obtained religious literature from a pensioner, Aslan Aliyev, who lived in Baku on Mugtadir Aydinbekov Street.
During an operation carried out on 26 December, all three were “accidentally” detained. It was established that the publication of the religious material had been organised by a Baku resident, Habib Dadash oglu Almazov, born in 1918, an employee of the Azneftsupply administration. As a result of operational measures, Almazov was detained while printing the Surah Yasin brochures using improvised equipment. Officers seized 22 completed copies along with the printing tools. He explained that he had begun this activity in September 1959 due to his family’s financial difficulties. After a “preventive conversation”, all four were released, although Almazov remained under KGB surveillance and monitoring for a prolonged period.
Religion in Soviet Azerbaijan — Part 2
🇦🇿🇺🇸Section 907: Removing restrictions on Azerbaijan–US cooperation – Expert opinions on #Caliber.Az
#Azerbaijan #USA #Section907 #SouthCaucasucaliber.az/en/post/sectio…t7Xc
— Caliber English (@CaliberEnglish) Apr 20, 2026