With a new government in power in Georgia, monuments to the Soviet strongman and native son are finding their way back home.

Stalin, Restored

by Tamar Kikacheishvili
“Looking at that statue, I have the feeling that Stalin and his ideas are alive”

ZEMO ALVANI, Georgia | Shota Lazarishvili prays to a photo of Josef Stalin, wishing the photo was instead a proper monument to the man he views as a hero.

Two years ago, after earning 300 lari (about 150 euros) working at a seasonal job, Lazarishvili paid 80 lari for bronze paint and labor to repair the Stalin statue that stood in his hometown of Telavi, in eastern Georgia. Not long after it was restored, the Georgian government confiscated the statue on the grounds that it represented Soviet ideals.

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Elene Khoshtaria, a former deputy state minister for Euro-Atlantic integration and co-founder of Georgia’s Reforms Associates, a policy watchdog and think tank, has her own ideas about Stalin’s role in Georgian history.

“It is a tragedy that even a small part of our society wrongly evaluates the horrible era of Stalin,” she said. “It's important to know that these people perceive the new government as a way to return to Stalin.”

She called it sadly comical that modern Georgians would be spending money to burnish Stalin’s image.

“For me personally, restoring Stalin's statue is an insult because members of my family were killed on Stalin’s orders, among them my grandfather. Emotionally it is very disturbing to have a statue of the person who killed my close relatives,” Khoshtaria added.

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Read more: www.tol.org