THE MUSEUM DEDICATED TO JOSEPH Vissarionovič Stalin in Gori, Georgia, has something of a reputation. This tribute to the late Soviet tyrant draws extreme reactions from people — often angry ones.
There’s nothing obviously wrong with Gori itself, the place of Stalin’s birth in 1878. A low-rise town of 50,000 residents (7,000 in Stalin’s day), it is surrounded by bold green mountains and is pleasantly leafy and quiet. Yet here Stalin — “Wise Leader and Teacher of Peoples” — had his tempestuous childhood and, since 1937, there has been a shrine to him, a tribute massively amplified after his death in 1953 when a palatial museum was built alongside it.
In front, a statue of the man stares fiercely out at you — taller than the 5’4” Stalin, but no more adamant. It’s slightly shocking to see such a thing at all. Even though there was a time when every town in the Soviet
