- Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori
The Joseph Stalin Museum in
Gori, Georgia is dedicated to the life of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known asJoseph Stalin , the leader of theSoviet Union , who was born in Gori.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 closed in 1989, but has since been reopened, and is a popular tourist attraction.
talin'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.talin Museum
The main corpus of the complex is a large
palazzo in Stalinist Gothic style, begun in1951 ostensibly as a local history museum, but clearly intended to become a memorial to Stalin, who died in1953 . 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 thedeath mask of Stalin taken shortly after his death.talin's railway carriage
To one side of the museum is Stalin's personal railway carriage. The green Pullman carriage, which is
armour plate d and weighs 83 tons, was used by Stalin from 1941 onwards, including his attendances at theYalta Conference and theTehran Conference . It was sent to the museum on being recovered from the railway yards atRostov-on-Don in1985 .Planned reorganization
In the aftermath of the
2008 South Ossetia war , onSeptember 24 ,2008 , Georgia’s Minister of CultureNikoloz Vacheishvili announced the Stalin museum would be reorganized into the Museum of Russian Aggression in the nearest future. [ru icon [http://www.gazeta.ru/news/lenta/2008/09/25/n_1274649.shtml В Гори появится музей российской оккупации (Museum of Russian aggression will appear in Gori)] . "Gazeta.ru ".2008-09-25 .]References
External links
* [http://www.stalinmuseum.ge/ The Stalin Museum official website]
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