We drove a long way across Georgia yesterday from west to east as we headed back to the airport to drop off Nikhil who returned to India last night. We decided to stop in Gori, the birthplace of Stalin. Despite feeling squeamish about it, we decided that we should visit the museum there, built in 1957, the year after Kruschev denounced him and his crimes. The museum was closed in 1989 although school parties continued to be shown around. All pretence of closure has now been cast aside and the museum (relatively expensive for Georgia) is fully open, complete with ‘souvenir shop’.
The house where Stalin (then Iosef Jugashvili) was born still stands under some sort of Doric temple structure erected by Beria in 1939:
Around the side is his armour-plated train which had six axels because it was so heavy:
The museum entry is ludicrous:
There wasn’t much to understand because all the signs were in Russian and Georgian but room after grandiose room ‘celebrated’ Stalin’s history and triumphs:
Everything was creepy but the pinnacle of the museum was Stalin’s death mask, displayed as a symbolic ‘lying in state’ (according to our guidebook), which had a Voldemort quality to it.
The museum also had a number of gifts that Stalin had been given – taste definitely not required:
A tiny room the size of a broom cupboard recounted something about Stalin’s crimes with minimal coverage of the terror in the Gulags. For those interested, Stalin was responsible for the death of between 7 million and 20 million of his country’s people as a result of the gulags, collectivisation and executions.
Our next stop was much more fun: the UNESCO site of Sveti Tskhoveli – the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles which, being Sunday, was awash with pilgrims, wedding parties and tourists. The name means ‘life-giving column of light’ which could be quite pagan in origin. The church was originally built in the 11th century, damaged by an earthquake and rebuilt in the fifteenth century.
I know I shouldn’t laugh about Stalin but your blog made me both howl with laughter and squirm in horror. Honestly, that table lamp! Hope you bought lots of souvenirs.
Just some very cherished memories! Somehow a Stalin souvenir is just a step too far…
Good job getting through the Stalin homage – certainly not something most of us will ever see inside and then we’d miss the gold plated tank lamp! I’m bewildered that Georgia continues to maintain the place.
Well, views of Russia, and by extension Stalin, are pretty mixed and he has been rehabilitated in the last few years as a great War hero. Also, it has to be said, Gori is pretty poor and scruffy – Stalin is the biggest thing ever to come out of Gori…
The cathedral is a nice counterpoint to all the Gori stuff. I think a gold plated tank lamp is something we all need in our lives. I could manage quite well without the death mask though. Are there still statues of Stalin and Lenin around and about?
Yes, one outside the museum and one at the top of the stairs inside. People pose next to them for photos. There was apparently a very big statue – like huge – but it’s been removed and is stored in a car park somewhere waiting a decision on its future
The Stalin museum is fascinating – such an uneasy mix of the sinister and the laughably self-important. Did you visit the gift shop?
Well, you couldn’t really visit it as it was guarded by quite a fierce woman- I think you were meant to just point at the mug or T-shirt you wanted and pay in roubles. We did see some rather fetching Stalin socks in a market but really just couldn’t bring ourselves to buy them.
Taking tea with a friend who has fond memories of the Stalin museum. They seem to have bribed a matronly lady to take them round, who encouraged them to look away from the horrors and instead at the various gifts Stalin had been given. When asked what people felt about Stalin, she, apparently nervously, said he had made some small mistakes. He was generally very good… look at all the presents he got! We are keen to know what is in the souvenir shop, only b&w photos in earlier years.
Well, it’s true he did get lots of presents, many of a similar quality to the tank lamp stand. The souvenir shop, as I explained to Jonathan and Alkarim, wasn’t really a place to enter freely. It seemed to have some quite fetching T-shirts and plates, possibly even a snow globe gulag?