Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, known as Stalin, the man of steel, is the most famous Georgian in the world. His years at the helm of the Soviet Union, beginning in 1924, were marked by industrialization, victory over Nazi Germany, and the iron-fisted suppression of dissent. He left a profound legacy in the former Soviet Union and in his native Georgia. Even today, his tenure remains the subject of uncomfortable debate. In Gori, the city where the tyrant was born, there is a street named after him in the heart of the city, and a museum dedicated to his career.
nostalgia
His legacy is not simple in Russia, where part of the population currently defends him with cloak and sword while the other part despises him. Among his supporters are especially those who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union, as well as people who appreciate its role in World War II. On the other side are the descendants of intellectuals and deported minorities (such as the Kalmyks and Chechens who were sent to concentration camps, which were concentration camps).
In Georgia, Stalin’s legacy is a bit more complicated. It is a source of national pride that one of the most important figures of the 20th century was a Georgian, and nearly 40 percent of his countrymen see it positively. But everyone knows about the purges, concentration camps and murder of millions that marked his rule.
Although Gori is a small town (population 50,000), rivers of tourists pass by here to see the place where the tyrant was born. Near the museum dedicated to him is the house where he was born in 1878, which has been perfectly preserved. There are still some statues of him in the vicinity, although the largest was removed a few years ago to avoid protests by his supporters, and now stands in an abandoned landfill.
Several guides who speak English, Japanese or Vietnamese accompany foreign visitors and explain details about the documents, photos and objects that fill the museum’s exhibition. Once inside, in the first part, you can already see one of the quotes attributed to him. “There were many mistakes, but also many successes […]“They will put a layer of rubbish on my grave, but the winds of history will eventually erase it,” reads the poster in the first room. He himself knew that his “mistakes” would be remembered for generations, just as the evidence. Everything written about him.
The road to power
In the room dedicated to his early years, in which Djugashvili’s revolutionary activity is central, you can see some of the many photographs in the museum; in this case, from when he was a young man who wanted to set the world on fire. This is where the repression against Georgian intellectuals is already mentioned in a series of photographs that commemorate some of the artists who suffered reprisals and died in concentration camps in the 1930s.
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This persecution of dissent is remembered by the inhabitants of their hometown. Sandro, a young man from Gori, explains that during his tenure he remembers there was “a lot of repression”. Although he does not hesitate to use this word, he expresses a certain insecurity about the subject and affirms that “in high school we prefer to study other things, even though we are told something about that time”. Maya, a middle-aged woman, takes a similar view and believes that her legacy “was more negative than positive”.
Although details of the ruler’s tyranny are mentioned, the beginning of the exhibition focuses largely on how a boy who was studying to become an Orthodox priest ended up becoming the absolute leader of a socialist power.
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