Museum director flees warzone with Stalin collection
A Georgian woman leaves her damaged home in Gori . (Photo: REUTERS)
The director of the Josef Stalin museum in Gori, Georgia, says he had to flee to the capital of Tbilisi in his car loaded with authentic items from the museum during the Russian bombing of the country.
Gori, Stalin’s birthplace, was the first to be attacked by Russian troops in the brief war in August that followed a Georgian incursion into the pro-Russian province of South Ossetia, located just north of Gori. The town of 50,000 was also occupied by Russian troops during the conflict until August 22.
Interestingly, South Ossetia amd Abkhazia were definitively given to Georgia when the Soviet Union was formed, by Stalin’s decision. Those who insist that those territories must be returned to Russia consider themselves victims of Stalin’s rule of terror and therefore demand a return to the pre-revolutionary situation.
The institution, officially opened in 1959, is comprised of three buildings which circle Gori’s main square. With plenty of official portraits of the former leader, the museum also features the tiny brick and wood house on its grounds in which Soviet leader and dictator Josef Stalin was born in 1879.
During recent events the museum escaped relatively unscathed, save for a few smashed windows and lots of dust in the halls. Officials say the museum — which gets up to 25,000 visitors a year — is expected to re-open on September 8.
Each year, supporters of Soviet leader Josef Stalin hold a memmorial service for him outside the Stalin Museum, 80 kilometers from Tbilisi in Stalin’s hometown of Gori.
Read more (CBC News, September 1, 2008)
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