Tbilisi.
The Soviet dictator came from Georgia, the country is now heading west. How the city of Gori struggles with its own past.
If you want to become a dictator, you have to search a bit in Stalin’s birthplace Gori, around 85 kilometers from the Georgian capital Tbilisi. With a bit of luck you get the coordinates. Underhand, like they were a state secret. Located on a camp lot on the outskirts of town Josef Stalincalled “the steel one” – face down.
Dealing with his monument is a symbol of Georgia’s difficult relationship to its history. In a quick action, the city administration demolished the Stalin monument in the city center of Gori in 2010. Back then, after the war with Russia in 2008, when Georgia long since started to orient itself towards the EU. No memory of the country’s Soviet era should remain. Since then, the city has been arguing about the future of the monument.
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“It’s part of history,” says Ketevan Ahobadze, the head of the “Stalin Museum Foundation,” our editorial team. She would monument like to set up again, not in the city center but on the museum grounds. “There are many people who have experienced a lot of painful things and still haven’t forgotten the pain. Others see Stalin as part of Georgia’s history and want to confront it.”
Stalin: Museum in Gori is a magnet for tourists – especially for Russians
The Stalin Museum in Gori is a magnet for tourists. 89,000 visitors came last year, mostly visitors from Russia. Stalin was born in Gori in 1878, his birthplace stands on the museum grounds. Stalin, the son of a shoemaker, spent the first years of his life here. In 1957, four years after Stalin’s death, the museum was inaugurated.
It closed after the collapse of the Soviet Union – only to reopen a short time later. Then in 2008 came the . Russia supported the breakaway, internationally unrecognized republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russian soldiers fought against Georgia.
As a result, the then Georgian Minister of Culture, Nikolos Vacheishvili, wanted that Stalin-Museum into a “museum of Russian aggression”. For a number of years, a poster hung over the entrance saying that the museum was falsifying history. The poster is long gone. In 2012, the Gori Municipality voted against redesigning the exhibition.
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In the museum itself you will find numerous exhibits from Stalin’s life in six halls. Early poems, photographs, numerous gifts from others heads of state, even twelve of his death masks. The interior of his former office can be seen, as well as Stalin’s personal armored railway car weighing 83 tons. Pure Stalin glorification. Only in a small adjoining room is there an almost bashful reminder of Stalin’s reign of terror.
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Joseph Stalin stands for dictatorship, repression, the brutal suppression of all freedom of thought and expression, brutal purges. Millions of people died in the prison camps, the gulags, where the prisoners had to work under inhumane conditions. Parts of the Trans-Siberian Railway were built by prisoners, as was the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Many prisoners died of starvation and exhaustion. There was 300 grams of black bread and a bowl of soup per day – with the most difficult physical work. Supposed and actual opponents were arrested and sentenced in show trials.
But Stalin also stands for the victory over the Nazis in World War II, which is called the “Great Patriotic War” in Russia. Year after year, this victory is celebrated on May 9 with a grand military parade in Red Square Moscow celebrated. And since the “special operation” in Ukraine, which the Kremlin still does not call war, Stalin’s victory has a very special meaning. After all, the official narrative for the invasion is the “denazification” of Ukraine.
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In Putin’s new Russia, a kind of Soviet Union 2.0., the Stalin cult is playing an increasing role. Retro restaurants in Moscow are booming. For example, the restaurant “Soviet Time” in downtown Moscow. The restaurant is kept in the original Soviet style, with propaganda posters and photos from Stalin to Gorbachev hanging on the wall.
Georgia: People struggle with their past
Rather nostalgia. However, in Russia will also be new Stalin monuments inaugurated. For example in the city of Volgograd. Citizens there are campaigning for the city to be renamed Stalingrad by referendum. And the mayor refers to “certain countries that want to erase the memory of the great victory of the Soviet army today”. One would oppose that.
This is getting caught up in Putin’s new Russia. In Georgian Gori, on the other hand, people struggle with history, with the son of their city. The Museum abolish? Rather not. After all, you earn money with the many tourists. You can buy Stalin souvenirs everywhere. Small busts and stickers, even Stalin socks can be found in the range.
Soviet nostalgia in a country aspiring to join the European Union? “We’re always asked here whether we love Stalin,” says Ketevan Achobadze. “But that’s nonsense, because it’s all about the Story to preserve. My family and many others have suffered unimaginable suffering at the hands of Stalin’s policies.”
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