Gori, Uplistsikhe

The town of Gori, population 50,000, is the famous the birthplace of Iosif Jughashvili. His childhood friends nicknamed him "Stalin" or "strong like steel" (according to my guide) and it stayed with him for the rest of his relatively long life. In front of the museum is a modest mud and stone house enclosed by a temple-like superstructure (below).

The Stalin museum is fascinating in its scale and reframed narrative of Stalin's life as a Georgian hero. There is no mention of gulags or mass murders by guides and likewise no photographic evidence. Stalin, like Napoleon, Lenin and Hitler, was a short man-- 1.6 meters, 64 in or 5' 3". He also was a man of vanity: like many contemporary public figures, Stalin understood the value of public image. Having chicken pox as a child, Stalin's private photographers did some serious photo retouching to conceal the craters in his face. Yet, one American journalist happened to get a close up. My guide said he also wore woman's make up. I said to my guide, a young woman, fashioned dressed in all black and stilletos (black hair and eyeliner), "Was Stalin good for the Georgians?" She replied smiling, " Stalin was good for the Russians."


Above is the uber-creepy death mask made from a plaster cast from Stalin's face from his casket. This copy of the cast (original in Moskow) calls attention to his considerably well-aged visage (he was 74 when he died) and an unbelievable thick, full head of hair.


Uplistsikhe is a cave dwelling 20 minutes from Gori founded in 1000 BC. According to my overly eager guide (I was one of two visitors there at 3 pm) the city was 9000 years old, but then again, he also claimed that his grandfather was a childhood friend of Stalin and also this Georgian region is graced with 340 days of sun in one year.