The Stalin Museum in Gori, Georgia

We flew to Tbilisi from Yerevan, a flight so short that we didn't even reach cruising altitude before they announced that the crew needed to prepare for landing. We rented a car at the airport, fought our way through Friday night Tbilisi traffic, slept at a downtown hotel and in the morning, after watching a Russian dude with the most epic belly ever eat all the bread at the breakfast buffet, headed north to Gori, the hometown of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, who eventually became Josef Stalin. Stalin’s hometown might be the only place left in the world with an intact Stalin monument outdoors. The statue is cleaned daily and stands in front of the Stalin Museum.

This is the house Stalin was born in. Not the faux-Roman pavilion. The tiny little house encased inside it.

The entrance to the museum. Hagiography much?

It was more a shrine than a museum. The cognitive dissonance is enormous; even though Stalin was from Georgia, Georgia lost tens of thousands in the purges. These kids are dressed in the traditional Georgian chokha; a wool coat with cartridge holders on the chest. I assume they are not visiting ironically but should they have been?

A bust of FDR purposely averting his gaze from a Stalin carpet.

After wandering through rooms filled with sundry likenesses of of Stalin in all media (carpets, wood carvings, statues, photos) the museum spits you into this room. We visited Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum in Hanoi and this felt eerily similar. Though there were no military guards the room is obviously designed to make you revere the death mask and, by extension, the man from whom the mask was made.

Stalin’s death is somewhat of a mystery. The official story is that he died on 5 March 1953 after suffering a stroke. BUT there are conflicting accounts of just what happened during his final days and how he died. Documents that could tell the story are missing. Some of the people who might have been there are missing too. AND Stalin was missing for 14 hours before he was discovered dead. There are 12 known copies of Stalin's death mask; one sold in England in 2018 also included casts of Stalin's hands; his left hand is withered and deformed due to a childhood injury The hands were not on display in Gori. Official portraits of Stalin always hid his left hand; Stalin and the Soviet leadership always wanted the people to see Stalin as strong and perfect.