GEORGIA III

Stalin's Museum in Gori, Georgia

The citizens of Gori are still proud of being the birthplace of a monster. The museum is a relic of the Stalinist era, located in Stalin Avenue. Like in every other museum you may buy souvenirs with his image, etc. The pictures in the exhibition were doctored so that the hero is a little higher than others, many friends from the revolutionary times were erased from the pictures (not only Trotzky) to adapt the pictures to the political "correct views". Apparently almost all of the revolutionary leaders of the Communist Revolution were despicably bourgeois contra revolutionary spies. More of this at the end of this note.

On the lawn you can visit Stalin's personal armor plated railway carriage. A sign at the entrance informs you that the museum is fake history, from the communist era but nothing was changed inside after independence, something that makes it more interesting yet! This way, the tourist can appreciate the change. Regrettably, during my more recent visit to Rusia, I could find that the big difference is that instead of a picture of Stalin you find one of Putin riding bare-chested, Putin with children, Putin playing the piano, Putin with world leaders, Putin in vases, bottles, keyholders, plates. You see the difference!

If you happen to be around the Black Sea, it's worth a visit.

This is Stalin Avenue. The open water drainage makes parking a car a little adventurous, especially if you had a bottle of vodka.

Stalin Avenue has a bureaucratic catch: numbers 32 and 34 are in the same place

The entrance

The main building

The lady at the entrance counter will first sell you a ticket, she will then cross the ticket with a stamp before giving it to you, and the same lady will moments later collect from you the ticket back. Efficiency!

The grand entrance is full of marbles and statues of Stalin young, middle aged and old. You cannot miss the message. A great man!

Some "doctored" pictures (more at the end).

The map of the Bagration operation during the second world war.

You can buy, like in any museum local wine, vases, medals, keyholders, plates, pipes (so characteristic of Stalin) etc. with the name or the picture of this son of... Georgia.

• I cannot find between my pictures those from Stalin's armor plated train so I borrowed some from the Net. Next pictures are all from the Net.
• The carriage is situated on a rail on the premises of the Museum. Stalin was afraid of flying. So, all the conferences he joined during the war were accesible by train. By this carriage Stalin went to Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences to meet Churchill and Roosevelt. The carriage was built in Saint-Petersburg before the revolution. It’s armored and it’s weight is 83 tons. It’s interior is decorated with red wood. There is a kitchen, a compartment for the officer on duty, two compartment for accompanying people, Stalin’s personal compartment, his bathroom and a meeting room inside of the carriage. I could not find a shower on the carriage.

• Stalin was not interested in personal gain. He was really a communist and all his actions were for the advancement of Communism. It's difficult to understand his complete luck of moral restrain and disdain for human life. He knew that he could send anyone to his dead with impunity and did so to millions of regular citizens. In many cases he would murder not only his comrades but also their family, including children. Stalin, with Hitler and Mao caused that the XX century will be remembered most of all for the butchery they committed.   

All of it very austere.

Part of the gallery. A picture copied from the Museum's site in the Net.

 Old fake pictures in service of the oppressed proletariat revolutionary masses:

Stalin with Molotov and Nicolai Yezov, from the secret police, in charge of the "purges" and later assassination of hundred of thousands, later also purged from this planet and from this picture. 

Stalin with 3 comrades in the tumultuous times of the revolution. As time went by the picture changed and changed till Stalin was left alone in the colorized picture. 

 

A meeting of the St. Petersburg chapter of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class in February 1897. From left to right (standing) : A.L. Malchenko, P. K. Zaporozhets, Anatoly Vaneyev. (sitting) : Victor V. Starkov, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov. 

 Alexander Malchenko has been edited out. He was arrested in 1929 as a counter-revolutionary, shot and erased from the 1897 picture in 1930. Was  posthumously rehabilitated after Stalin's death in 1958. BUT the only one that made it to old age was Gleb K..., most probably helped by his anti-Semitic policy in Academia.

 

Famous picture of Lenin with Trotzky guarding the stairs. 

Same opportunity, a few moments later, PUFF! No more Trotzky.

All this nonsense of airbrushing "enemies of the Soviet People" from old pictures was necessary to erase any memory of fallen personalities and to unify the communist policy over the vast extensions of the Soviet empire and behind. Even after the death of Stalin this policy remained in place. Following the execution of Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD in 1953, the Soviet Encyclopedia mailed subscribers a letter instructing them to cut out and destroy the three-page article on Beria and paste in its place enclosed replacement pages expanding the adjacent articles.