Who might be interested in the Stalin Museum in Gori? Of course, this personality is ambiguous, and in addition to historians and admirers of politics, many people regard the figure of Stalin with indignation. However, this museum will be useful to visit for everyone who would like to see and touch the realities of that time, to look at the sides of the cult of personality and cruel dictatorship. All information and a description of the Stalin Museum in Gori - further in the article.
basic information
In the city of Gori (Georgia), the Stalin Museum is the main and almost the only attraction. Therefore, almost everyone who travels in Georgia calls in Gori just to visit this museum. It was opened in 1937, that is, during the lifetime of Joseph Vissarionovich. Initially, the entire exposition provided by Stalin's mother was in a small house in which the future "leader of the people" was born and lived until four years old. In 1951, the construction of a huge room in the style of the Stalinist Empire began near this house. At that time, the building was listed as the future museum of history, however, after Stalin's death, the museum in Gori ended already as its absolute memorial. To this end, the small house was literally surrounded by the walls of the museum, becoming part of the museum's exposition.
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on December 18, 1878, but officially the years of Stalin's life 1879-1953. It is not known why he deleted one year from his life. He led many commissariats and actually led the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953. For most Soviet residents of that time, Stalin was a national hero, a cult personality, a demigod. He was associated with victory in the war and the rapid growth of the country's development. At present, the personality of a politician is mainly associated with repressions, mass sweeps in the ranks of objectionable people, executions, and hunger. Both sides are true - he really was a great politician, but at the same time a terrible person. And the Stalin Museum in Gori helps to see it from each of these sides - this is how its exposition is conceived.
Address
The Stalin Museum in Gori is located at 32 Stalin Avenue. Those who travel in Georgia by car and want to visit the museum, it is best to include it in the route from Tbilisi to Batumi or Kutaisi. Check in to Gori will take about an hour, of course, without taking into account the time of visiting the museum. If the journey takes place without a personal car, you can get from Gori to Tbilisi either by minibus or by rail - by train or train. The first option is feasible from Didube bus station in Tbilisi. In Gori, the bus station is located on Chavchavadze Street - it is near the city center, and the museum is located in the very center, so not far. The city's railway station is located not much further - one kilometer from the center. The following train and train routes are suitable: from Tbilisi to Borjomi, to Poti and to Zugdidi. All of them follow through the Gori railway station. And in order not to get lost in search of a museum, a map with the exact location is presented below.
Ticket price and mode of operation
The Stalin Museum in Gori is ready to receive its visitors every day, seven days a week. Opening hours - from 10:00 to 18:00. In winter, the visit ends one hour earlier, that is, until 17:00. And how much does it cost to visit the Stalin Museum in Gori? The ticket price is the same for all visitors - 10 GEL. Translated into Russian rubles, this is approximately 240 units.
Main hall
The main hall of the museum is a luxurious room decorated in the Stalians style - a designation that combines the symbiosis of the Baroque, Neo-Gothic, Classicism and Empire styles, spreading in the architecture of the Stalin period. It's no secret that the “leader of the peoples” adored such luxury - that is why the facades of the museum and the main hall are made in this style. Visitors are greeted not only by magnificent columns, wide staircases lined with red carpets, and crystal chandeliers, but also staff dressed in the strict military uniforms of that era. This allows visitors to feel in a time capsule.
In general, the exposition of the main hall is dedicated to the years of Stalin's life, his achievements and various moments from his life and government. There are his portraits and photos, a military oath, a huge number of propaganda paintings and posters from the series "Stalin and the Children", "Stalin and the People" and so on.
In the same room there are many personal belongings of Joseph Vissarionovich - for example, his favorite cigars and pipes, as well as the complete furnishings of Stalin’s office, transported from the Kremlin and recreated in great detail.
Hall with gifts
For gifts that were endowed with politics by both ordinary people and important people, including politicians from other countries, the museum has a whole separate room. As one of the visitors jokingly remarked in his online review, “it's like a museum of the Field of Miracles program, only a bigger scale.” Indeed, probably, none of the politicians received so many unusual gifts, signs of attention and souvenirs. Among the most interesting is the button accordion with the inscription lined with rhinestones: “To the Leader of the Peoples I.V. Stalin on the Day of the 70th Anniversary” from one of the work collectives. And so there are caskets, and watches, and vases with portraits of Joseph Vissarionovich, and dishes, and many portraits - even in the form of embroidery on a wall carpet. The smallest exhibit is a grain of rice, a gift from India. The peculiarity of the grain is that the oriental craftsmen were able to put a text with 382 printed characters on it.
Hall of Repression
Of particular interest to visitors to the Stalin Museum in Gori is the so-called repression hall, which differs sharply in appearance and design from the rest of the museum halls. Here, people fascinated by the red-gold cult of the leader, as if they should wake up and look at the back of the “leader’s medal”. Gray walls, extensions and portraits of Lenin and Stalin, an interrogation table over which a leather cloak and a cap of Chekists hang on a hook, a pre-trial detention center. Everything is recreated with such details that cold runs through the skin - despite the fact that the hall is completely fake, the atmosphere is as if it was here that the “enemies of the people” were interrogated, tortured and sent to death. Of course, some exhibits of this hall, such as furniture and personal items, are indeed taken from the famous offices of the basements of the Lubyanka, where a huge number of sometimes innocent people were tortured or sentenced to be shot or exiled.
Personal carriage
But the most interesting thing, oddly enough, is the exposition outside the walls of the museum. In addition to the monument to Stalin, which used to be on the central square of Gori, the Stalin Museum on the outside includes a personal politician car and the house where he was born.
It is known that the "leader of the peoples", for some reason, in recent years, the authorities really did not like to go beyond the borders of not only the Soviet Union, but also the Moscow region. He was probably afraid of attempts or something like that. But if it was impossible to do without a trip, he traveled only by rail and only in a personal carriage, fully equipped for the maximum convenience of Joseph Vissarionovich.
This car was used by a politician since 1941, and it was in it that he once came to conferences in Tehran and Yalta. After the death of Stalin and until 1985, the car was located at one of the terminal stations of the North Caucasus Railway. In 1985, the car was transferred to the Stalin Museum in Gori. Outside, of course, the car is nothing special. Inside, there is an office with a desk, a bed for Stalin himself and a few more for his companions, a bathroom with a bathtub, a shower and a washbasin, a wide dining room - like a restaurant car, but only with a table in the middle and other amenities, apparently necessary in travels both to Stalin himself and to those who were honored to accompany him on trips. The whole atmosphere of the carriage is designed in the same style as the personal cabinet and other work rooms of the leader — Soviet modernism of the 30s, mixed with late classicism (as much as you could arrange it in the train carriage).
Stalin's House
And finally, that part of the museum that was originally the museum as a whole. As mentioned above, back in 1937, a collection of his personal belongings was transferred to Stalin's hometown - such a gift was made by Ekaterina Geladze, mother of Joseph Vissarionovich. She also advised the creators of the first exhibition on the situation during their life there. Of course, the Dzhugashvili family did not occupy the whole house, but only one of his rooms and the basement.
The basement is closed with a grate and for some reason it is impossible to go there. You can go to the house itself as part of the tour, as everything in it is very dilapidated, and the owners of the museum fear for the safety of the exhibits if visitors go there unaccompanied.
The internal exposition is designed in the style of a classic museum-apartment. Ekaterina Geladze, and later Joseph Vissarionovich himself, confirmed the authenticity of the recreated atmosphere of the leader’s childhood home. Here you can see the interior of the second half of the 19th century, typical of a Georgian village - modest furniture, pottery, a few carved luxuries - such as shutters, mirrors, a clothes chest. A visit to this room will become interesting even more likely not as an element of Stalin’s life, but as an illustration of the life of ordinary peoples of Georgia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.