The View from Tbilisi: Statue of Limitations

During the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, the city of Gori was briefly and infamously held by Russian and South Ossetian forces. Long before that, though, its name was bound up in the narrative of Georgian occupation. Josef Stalin was born in Gori in 1878, a fact that has long brought tourists to this city of about 50,000 some 50 miles from Tbilisi.

A museum now encompasses the wooden hut where the future Soviet leader was born, and a bronze statue of Stalin stands 6 meters high in the city center, right in front of City Hall. Erected in 1952, the year before its subject's death, it was one of the few such monuments to survive Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization.

In the early 1990s, with the Soviet Union's collapse and Georgia's independence, calls arose to dispose of the statue, but the post-communist government acceded to the wishes of Gori's citizens to leave it in place. International media coverage of the bombing of Gori in August 2008 refocused attention on the controversial symbol, however, and two months after the war the government announced plans to transform the current Stalin museum into a Gori branch of Tbilisi's Museum of Soviet Occupation and move the statue there.

Supporters of the initiative, such as Ilia State University philosophy professor Giga Zedania, argue that a symbol of Soviet repression should not retain pride of place in a Georgian city. Critics like historian and civic activist Lasha Bakradze contend that, for good or ill, the statue is part of the national memory, and removing it serves neither history nor anti-communism. In the latest video in TOL's collaboration with Liberali, they and a random selection of Tbilisi residents say their piece about what to do about Gori's most famous son.

Statue of Limitations from Transitions Online on Vimeo.

Nia Kurtishvili and Maka Machavariani are freelance journalists in Tbilisi and Liberali contributors. Funding for this project was provided by the Czech Foreign Ministry as part of the Czech Republic's Transition Promotion Program.

 

Next in The View from Tbilisi: Is Tbilisi's mayor handing out social benefits to buy votes in the city's first-ever direct election?