Stalin in Georgia: The Specter of the Great Leader

ZBetween a red plastic slide and the statue of a Soviet soldier on a plinth painted bright green – a memorial to those who died in World War II – there is a small bronze bust of Stalin on a metal pole. Right next to the war memorial, under a fir tree, is a covered table with two benches, on which lies a worn backgammon board. When it warms up again, the residents of Muchrani meet here in the evenings to chat, play and have a drink. Stalin is then in the middle of life – at eye level with the small children who are romping around the slide.

In the years of Stalin’s rule it would have been life-threatening in the Soviet Union to erect such a monument. Back then, Stalin had to tower and outshine everything and everyone. Cities were named after him, in all cities the largest streets and squares bore his name. He was revered as the “great leader” of the Soviet Union, the “father of the peoples” and the “great teacher”. Quotations from the “brilliant scholar” adorned works of all scientific disciplines, poets attributed supernatural powers to him. People disappeared into Siberian penal camps for years simply for not applauding enthusiastically enough at the mention of Stalin’s name.

A Stalin monument like the one in Mukhrani would have been seen at the time as a sacrilegious mockery of the great leader. But this small bust is a genuine expression of admiration for Stalin. Mukhrani is a small village about forty kilometers northwest of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. The people here erected the memorial a few years ago on their own initiative with their own funds. And because Georgia is poor, it was only enough for this small bust in Muchrani.

“We must overcome Stalin”

Mukhrani is not the only place in Georgia where a new monument to Stalin has been erected or an old one restored in the past decade. Stalin was Georgian and many Georgians are proud of him, the most famous Georgian of all time. A true Georgian patriot should be proud of Stalin’s origins, said half of those polled in a survey at the end of 2021. Two-thirds agreed that Stalin was a wise leader, bringing power and prosperity to the Soviet Union.

But if you only look at these numbers, you are going astray. In reality, the relationship of Georgian society to Stalin is complicated and full of contradictions: in the same poll, a majority also said that Stalin was a tyrant, responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people. Stalin is rarely talked about in everyday political life, and committed Stalinists are considered a curious marginal phenomenon. And yet Stalin is always there as an invisible entity.

“We have to overcome Stalin, otherwise we can never become a nation of citizens,” says Giorgi Kandelaki. He belongs to an organization called SovLab – the acronym stands for “Laboratory for the Study of the Soviet Past”. It was founded in 2010 by historians, journalists, writers and descendants of victims to initiate public debate about the history of Georgia in the Soviet Union. SovLab wants to record the fates of people under communist rule that have not been told until then and thus contribute to the country breaking away from the legacy of the dictatorship.