Uncle Joe
Tbilisi, Georgia 2016
Stalin was born in the town of Gori, Georgia. He attended an Orthodox Seminary in Tbilisi which I walked past several times.
On our way to the Caucasus Mountains, we ate lunch in the village of Gori, Stalin’s home town. If I’d realized that we weren’t going to visit his birthplace, I’d have skipped lunch and gone there on my own. The others weren’t interested because Stalin was a monster, but they would have wanted to visit Dracula’s home if it had been nearby, don’t you bet?
I did get a glimpse of Stalin’s private railroad car. It stood neglected in a park in the middle of the village, the dull green paint peeling in huge flapping sheets. Someone in Gori remembered him, though. His larger than life portrait was painted above a grocery store. Our guide said the people of Gori, deny that Stalin was a murderer. But he was.
Perhaps one day, when enough time has passed…like centuries… there will be many of these little mementos of Stalin in shop windows and tourists will take them home as souvenirs as visitors to Romania bring home mementos of Dracula.
Maybe you don’t “get” the Uncle Joe reference. But that is what FDR used to call Stalin. We needed Russia’s help to defeat the Nazis in WWII, and FDR was fond of Stalin. When he, Stalin and Churchill met, FDR used to make jokes about Churchill to curry favor with Stalin. Read “The ForgottenMan” by Amity Shales, an excellent book.