Gori is famous for being the birthplace of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, therefore the Stalin Museum is located here. He was the leader of the Soviet Union between 1925 and 1953. During this time, many events took place in the USSR. There are many diametrically opposite opinions about it. People can hold different points of view, but the scale of the personality of Joseph Stalin is undeniable. He is certainly one of the greatest statesmen in world history.
The Joseph Stalin Museum is located on the site of a small house in the center of Gori, where Joseph Dzhugashvili was born on December 6, 1878. His father Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili was a shoemaker, his mother - Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze (Keke) was a dressmaker.
The idea of creating a Museum of Stalin appeared in the 1930s. A small memorial was unveiled in the house where Stalin was born. However, really large-scale work on the creation of the Museum began in 1949 under the direction of architect Archil Kurdiani. The Museum was opened 6 years later, in 1955. By that time, 2 years had passed since the death of the "leader of the peoples".
It is noteworthy that in February 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party was held, where Nikita Khrushchev made a speech about debunking the cult of Stalin`s personality, however, the newly opened monumental Museum of Stalin in Gori continued its work without any changes. In fact, they were not required, since they stated facts from the life of Stalin and milestones from the history of the Soviet Union.
Stalin house in Gori
One of the most interesting exhibits of the Stalin Museum in Gori is the small house where Stalin was born. It is located under a monumental portico with marble columns. The walls of houses of this type were built close to each other. The street had a window and a small open veranda where the owners could sit and chat with passers-by, and the shoemaker Vissarion Dzhugashvili could lay out his tools and work on orders.
In the process of creating the Museum, neighboring houses were demolished, and the marble pavilion was built over the house. On the verandah of the Stalin house, you can come to window and look into a small room. Here Soso (diminutive of Joseph) Dzhugashvili was born and lived until the age of 4.
The Stalin family occupied this room, which is about 10 meters in size, and an even smaller basement. It was used as a utility room. The room still has modest furniture: a bed, a table and a nightstand. This is what the house looked like when the future leader of the Soviet Union was born here.
Main building of the Stalin Museum
The building of the Stalin Museum in Gori is built in the architectural style of a Venetian Palazzo, similar to the Doge`s Palace in Venice. The exhibition dedicated to the life of Stalin and the history of the Soviet Union is located in 9 halls.
There is a monument to Stalin in front of the Museum. During the heyday of the "cult of personality" of Stalin, there were slightly fewer such monuments throughout the country than there were monuments to Lenin. Until 1991, there were about 14,000 monuments to Lenin in the cities of the Soviet Union. It is not known how many monuments to Stalin there were, but there were several thousand of them. After the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, all of them were dismantled in a short period of time. The most famous monuments to Stalin now remain in the Muzeon Park in Moscow and in the Leninsky Hills of the Moscow region. But there they stand without pedestals, and the marble monument to Stalin in front of the Museum in Gori is preserved in all its glory.
The front foyer of the Stalin Museum is made in the monumental style, which in the former Soviet Union is called "Stalinist". The staircase, columns and walls of the foyer are finished in marble. In the halls of the Museum, several tens of thousands of exhibits related to Stalin are displayed. There are many photos, documents and personal belongings of Joseph Stalin.
In the first halls of the Museum of Stalin, you can see his photos as a child and youth. In 1897, at the age of 19, he became imbued with the ideas of the social democratic party and joined the revolutionary movement.
Places where Stalin was in exile are marked on the map of Russia. His first exile was in 1903 to the village of New Uda in the Irkutsk region. He tried to make an escape. After getting frostbite on his hands and feet, he was forced to go back. The next exile was to the town of Solvychegorsk, Vologda region (1908-09). A year later, he escaped, but was captured and returned. After completing his term, he was obliged to live in Vologda, but in 1911 he escaped from there as well. In 1913, Stalin was exiled to Turukhansk (the village of Monastyrskoe), and then even further, to the village of Kureika. This is the northernmost part of the Krasnoyarsk territory on the Yenisei river. From where it was impossible to escape. The World War I helped. Stalin was granted Amnesty for conscription. In 1917, he was in St. Petersburg, on the eve of the October Revolution, and did not get to the front.
Due to constant arrests and escapes, Iosif Dzhugashvili used a large number of aliases, but two of them were used most often: Koba and Stalin. In 1912, he finally adopted the surname Stalin.
In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina Svanidze. She was already pregnant and soon gave birth to her first son, Yakov Dzhugashvili. However, a few months after giving birth, in 1907, Ekaterina Svanidze fell ill with typhus and died. Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva for the second time in 1919. He had two children with Nadezhda: son Vasily and daughter Svetlana. Also in the family of Stalin grew up adopted son Artem Sergeev. In the Museum you can see photos and memoirs of contemporaries about Stalin`s wives and children.
One of the halls of the Museum is dedicated to the World War II. It tells about all stages of the war: the most difficult years of 1941-42, the turning point of the war during the battle of Stalingrad, the Kursk Bulge, the Yalta conference, the German Capitulation in Berlin.
The last halls are dedicated to the numerous gifts that Stalin received from foreign guests and Soviet labor collectives. There are also Stalin`s personal belongings in the Museum: Smoking pipes, Herzegovina Flor cigarettes, overcoat, boots, and much more. Stalin museum in Gori obtained furniture from the Museum in the Lenin hills, therefore Stalin`s Kremlin workroom was recreated here.
Stalin`s Railway Car
In the courtyard of the Stalin Museum in Gori, you can see another interesting exhibit-Stalin`s railway car, which he used to travel around the country. This car was made for Stalin in 1941. It was transferred to the Stalin Museum in 1985.
The six-axle saloon car, which we can see in the Stalin Museum in Gori, was made in 1915, and before the war (in 1940) it was upgraded at the Leningrad plant of Yegorova. The design of such a car is called "Vladikavkaz". According to the project, cars of this type were covered with steel sheets from the floor to the level of the Windows. In addition to rigidity, this protected the cars from automatic weapons fire. All the passengers had to lie down on the floor.
During the German offensive on Moscow in 1941, the train with this in Stalin`s carriage was standing at the railway station ready for departure. Finally, Stalin decided not to go to Samara for evacuation. This city was chosen as the “reserve capital” in case of the occupation of Moscow. The construction of the Stalin Bunker, which was ready by 1942, was in full swing there.
Now it is one of the main attractions of Samara. The first time Joseph Stalin used this car for a trip to the Tehran Conference in 1943. Stalin was afraid to fly planes and almost never did. In his life, he boarded a plane only twice, when he had to fly to a conference in Tehran and back. He did not Board a plane in Moscow to fly to Tehran. Stalin took the train to Baku, and only there got on the plane. In the same way, he returned.
The second time Stalin used this car, when he went to the Crimea for the Yalta conference, which was held in the Livadia Palace. It resolved the issue of the post-war world order. Stalin used this car both for a trip to the Potsdam conference in Germany in 1945, and for a few trips around the country after the war. The entire interior of the car, Stalin`s compartment, meeting room, and even the bathroom is preserved unchanged as used by Joseph Stalin.
