Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori

The Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori- in the foreground, the house where Stalin was born

The Joseph Stalin Museum is a museum in Gori, Georgia dedicated to the life of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, who was born in Gori. The Museum retained until recent years its Soviet-era characteristics.

Organization

The museum has three sections, all located in the town's central square. It was officially dedicated to Stalin in 1957. With the downfall of the Soviet Union and independence movement of Georgia, the museum was closed in 1989, but has since been reopened, and is a popular tourist attraction.

Stalin's house

Enshrined within a Greco-Italianate pavilion is a small wooden hut, in which Stalin was born in 1878 and spent his first four years. The hut is a duplex, and Stalin's father Vissarion Jughashvili, a local shoemaker, rented the one room on the left hand side of the building and maintained a workshop in the basement.

Stalin Museum

The main corpus of the complex is a large palazzo in Stalinist Gothic style, begun in 1951 ostensibly as a local history museum, but clearly intended to become a memorial to Stalin, who died in 1953. The exhibits are divided into six halls in roughly chronological order, and contain many items actually or allegedly owned by Stalin, including some of his office furniture, his personal effects and gifts made to him over the years. There is also much illustration by way of documentation, photographs, paintings and newspaper articles. The display concludes with one of twelve copies of the death mask of Stalin taken shortly after his death.

Stalin's railway carriage

Stalin's personal railway carriage at the Stalin Museum, Gori

To one side of the museum is Stalin's personal railway carriage. The green Pullman carriage, which is armour plated and weighs 83 tons, was used by Stalin from 1941 onwards, including his attendances at the Yalta Conference and the Tehran Conference. It was sent to the museum on being recovered from the railway yards at Rostov-on-Don in 1985.

Planned reorganization

In the aftermath of the 2008 South Ossetia war, on September 24, 2008, Georgia’s Minister of Culture Nikoloz Vacheishvili announced the Stalin museum would be reorganized into the Museum of Russian Aggression in the nearest future.^[1] In recent years a banner was placed at the entrance stating: "This museum is a falsification of history. It is a typical example of Soviet propaganda and it attempts to legitimise the bloodiest regime in history."^[2] However, on 20 December 2012, the municipal assembly of Gori voted to put an end to plans to change the museum's content.^[3][4]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stalin Museum, Gori.

• The Stalin Museum official website
• Laurence Weinbaum, "Georgia, in the shadow of Stalin and Putin" i24, April 14, 2014
• The Town Where They Still Love Stalin (Marc Bennetts, RIA Novosti)

Joseph Stalin History and politics Overviews Early life Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet War Rise Rule as Soviet leader Cult of personality Chronology August Uprising Anti-religious campaign (1921–1928)/(1928–1941) Collectivization Kolkhoz Sovkhoz Chinese Civil War First Five-Year Plan Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) 16th / 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Second Five-Year Plan Spanish Civil War Soviet invasion of Xinjiang Soviet–Japanese border conflicts 1937 Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang 1937 Soviet Union legislative election 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Invasion of Poland Winter War Moscow Peace Treaty Occupation of the Baltic states German–Soviet Axis talks Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact World War II Soviet atomic bomb project Tehran Conference Yalta Conference Potsdam Conference Ili Rebellion Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance 1946 Iran crisis 1946 Soviet Union legislative election Turkish Straits crisis First Indochina War Cold War Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance Eastern Bloc Cominform Greek Civil War 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Tito–Stalin split Berlin Blockade Comecon 1950 Soviet Union legislative election 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Korean War Concepts Stalinism Neo-Stalinism Korenizatsiya Socialism in One Country Great Break Socialist realism Stalinist architecture Aggravation of class struggle under socialism Five-Year Plans Great Construction Projects of Communism 1936 Soviet Constitution New Soviet man Stakhanovite Transformation of nature Controversies National delimitation in the Soviet Union Demoliton of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour Great Purge Holodomor Gulags Decossackization Dekulakization Population transfer (Nazi–Soviet) Forced settlement Great Break Soviet war crimes Rootless cosmopolitan Night of the Murdered Poets Doctors' plot Moscow Trials Allegations of antisemitism NKVD prisoner massacres Murder of Sergey Kirov Katyń massacre Medvedev Forest massacre 1937 Soviet Census Deportations (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina Koreans) Operation "North" Georgian Affair Mingrelian Affair Leningrad Affair Relationship with Shostakovich Lysenkoism Japhetic theory Suppressed research in the Soviet Union Censorship of images Operation "Lentil" in the Caucasus Operation "Priboi" Vinnytsia massacre Kurapaty 1946–1947 Soviet famine Nazino affair 1941 Red Army purge 1906 Bolshevik raid on the Tsarevich Giorgi 1907 Tiflis bank robbery Soviet offensive plans controversy Works "Marxism and the National Question" "The Principles of Leninism" "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia" "Ten Blows" speech Alleged 19 August 1939 speech Falsifiers of History Stalin Note The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) 1936 Soviet Constitution Stalin's poetry Dialectical and Historical Materialism Order No. 227 Order No. 270 "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics" De-Stalinization 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Pospelov Commission Rehabilitation Khrushchev Thaw On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences Gomulka thaw (Polish October) Soviet Nonconformist Art Shvernik Commission 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Era of Stagnation Criticism and opposition Stalin Epigram Lenin's Testament Ryutin Affair Anti-Stalinist left Trotskyism True Communists Russian Liberation Movement (Russian Liberation Army Russian Corps) Ukrainian Liberation Army Darkness at Noon Animal Farm Nineteen Eighty-Four Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism The Soviet Story Remembrance How the Steel Was Tempered Friends of the Soviet Union Iosif Stalin tank Iosif Stalin locomotive Generalissimus of the Soviet Union Stalin statues Pantheon, Moscow 1956 Georgian demonstrations Stalin Monument in Budapest Stalin Monument in Prague Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori Batumi Stalin Museum Places named after Stalin Yanks for Stalin Stalin Prize Stalin Peace Prize Stalin Society Stalin Bloc – For the USSR Name of Russia Family Besarion Jughashvili (father) Ketevan Geladze (mother) Ekaterina Svanidze (first wife) Yakov Dzhugashvili (son) Konstantin Kuzakov (son) Artem Sergeev (adopted son) Nadezhda Alliluyeva (second wife) Vasily Dzhugashvili (son) Svetlana Alliluyeva (daughter) Yevgeny Dzhugashvili (grandson) Galina Dzhugashvili (granddaughter) Joseph Alliluyev (grandson) Sergei Alliluyev (second father-in-law) Alexander Svanidze (brother-in-law) Yuri Zhdanov (son-in-law) William Wesley Peters (son-in-law) Friends Ioseb Iremashvili Kamo (Bolshevik) Kliment Voroshilov Vyacheslav Molotov Lazar Kaganovich Grigory Ordzhonikidze Anastas Mikoyan Residences Tiflis Spiritual Seminary Kuntsevo Dacha Mayakovskaya (Moscow Metro) Sochi Dacha Blizhnyaya Dacha Category Commons Brezhnev Era template Soviet Union portal Communism portal

Coordinates: 41°59′14″N 44°06′49″E / 41.98722°N 44.11361°E / 41.98722; 44.11361