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August 31, 2008 10:37 PM
By Mark Trevelyan
GORI, Georgia - When Russian bombs began falling on Gori, Robert Maglakelidze took a desperate decision: he loaded his car with a precious consignment and fled along the dangerous road to Tbilisi.
Stowed inside were the personal effects of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: his military greatcoat, peaked cap, pen, glasses, silver sword and pipe - in total some 50 unique items.
Maglakelidze, director of the Stalin museum in Gori, says bringing them for safekeeping in the Georgian capital was the only way to ensure their survival.
"I had to take the risk," he told Reuters. "Thank God, they didn't bomb the museum, but there was no guarantee. We said: 'Let's preserve these things for future generations'. These personal things can't be replaced."
Gori, Stalin's birthplace, was first bombed and then
occupied by Russian troops in the short war that followed
Georgia's ill-fated attempt on August 7-8 to recapture its
rebel, pro-Russian province of South Ossetia, just north of the
town.
The Russians have left Gori now, but scars from the
fighting remain. At the weekend, workmen were clearing rubble
and glass from several large apartment blocks heavily damaged
by bombing.
Yet the Stalin museum - an imposing, pale stone building
with a colonnade and a tall rectangular tower, crowned with a
red and white Georgian flag - escaped virtually unscathed.
"We're clearing up, there is a lot of dirt. There was thick
dust, the halls are filthy," said a museum official, Mziya
Naochashvili.
BROKEN WINDOWS
The museum was closed on Saturday, but managers allowed
reporters to look inside parts of it.
One window was smashed by the entrance, and three more
above the red-carpeted stairs leading to a white marble statue
of the dictator, Lenin's successor and Georgia's most notorious
son.
Paintings nearby show him in his various roles: the bearded
young revolutionary fronting a 1905 workers' demonstration; the
pensive leader reading papers by a desk; the dutiful son
alongside his mother.
Two marble busts survey a landing with more paintings: an
idealised portrait of a boy Stalin sitting outside with
friends, and Stalin the party leader greeting Communist
officials.
You can even buy a replica Stalin pipe for 12 lari ($9),
a small silver bust for 25, or a bottle of Georgian wine with
his portrait on the label for 20.
"Until the collapse of the Soviet Union there were lots of
visitors from the whole world, about half a million a year.
Today it's 18 to 25,000 a year," said Naochashvili, whose own
home was damaged in the bombing.
After 33 years working there, she said, "the museum is
virtually my life."
How does she feel personally towards the man whose shrine
she protects, and whom many in the former Soviet Union still
admire as a strong national leader and World War Two savior?
"I respect him for his intelligence, for his talent ... He
was a statesman. He didn't do anything against Georgia."
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