GORI, Georgia — A museum that has honored Josef Stalin in Georgia since 1937 is being remodeled to exhibit the atrocities that were committed during the Soviet dictator’s rule.
Georgian Culture Minister Nika Rurua said Monday that his nation, which became independent in 1991, can no longer host a museum “glorifying the Soviet dictator.”
The gigantic museum includes the house where Stalin was born and some 47,000 exhibits, including his personal belongings and death masks.
It remained open despite the de-Stalinization campaign and denunciation of his personality cult. But in post-Soviet Georgia, whose pro-Western government has been actively removing traces of Soviet past, the museum seemed like an anachronism that mostly attracted foreign tourists and a few die-hard Communists.
