The Georgia Spectator/Gori Details
Pleszczynski, Wladyslaw
THE GEORGIA SPECTATOR Nine years ago in Kiev a Russian friend said to me, with a shrug, "Vezde luchshe gdie nas niet"-verbatim, "Everywhere it's better where we aren't," but which I took as an...
...He behaves not as a part, but as the epicentre of things...
...The place is aglow and even its Mediterranean-like mountains seem to refract in the sky...
...She is particularly loving in her comments on the young Stalin: a "poetic" child, with a "velvety" singing voice and "beautiful" looks...
...Coming in from the airport 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986...
...Their language, culture, and history predate Muscovy's by centuries, and just as important they have never been isolated from the spirit of enter-prise...
...The fact that every Georgian knows Russian tells all you need to know about who calls the shots...
...Is this what the Russians called "cult of personality...
...Something is immediately wrong...
...Speaking in Russian the enthusiastic Georgian curator of the museum tells my group: "I'm very happy you've come to pay tribute to our Stalin...
...Before the Revolution, one in seven men on the streets of Tbilisi was rumoured to be a prince...
...Throughout Georgia major streets are still named . after him, his figure appears on the bas-relief of a few buildings, and his picture hangs inside museums of Marxism-Leninism...
...There is of course the Hermitage, where on any Sunday you can observe mile-long lines of locals waiting to get inside for a glimpse of the West through its art...
...While the Russian sits back and whines about his unique Slavic soul, the Georgian is out making deals and pretending to be free...
...What I failed to appreciate is that you don't have to leave the Soviet Union to see the truth of my interpretation...
...Instead I get a live hook-up with two cosmonauts who've been circling the earth for some time now...
...Not in all things, obviously...
...As I learned in April, you can always travel to (Soviet) Georgia...
...Recent figures have them comprising less than 9 percent of Georgia's population, which seems generous...
...But there's no denying our curator's devotion to her subject...
...George Jean Nathan has gone to Club Med to peddle influence...
...you are stunned by the number of private cars zipping along brightly lit avenues (under a street lamp two children are playing a netless game of badminton...
...The Leningrad airport terminal itself hasn't many years left, having been constructed in the middle Brezhnev period...
...Not a word, though, that Yuri is no longer among the living, nor that his flight took place during the glory of Nikita Khrushchev...
...A teenagerin-the-street asks them what they think about "Reagan's star wars...
...And everyone around him knew this...
...Try Leningrad, for starters, a sullen ghost town of 5 million dead souls that is fast . disappearing in sand and mud...
...Suddenly I wish I were back in Tbilisi.—WP Then one evening you are landing in Tbilisi (the Georgian capital...
...Let me translate: "Stalin couldn't stand fussiness...
...For my part, I think they like him because they are free not to take him seriously...
...But unlike the Soviet Russians, Georgians have the where-withal to make the best of a bad situation...
...The city's only point of pride is that it was once called St...
...In Moscow a few days later I observe official celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the first flight in space by man—who happened to be a Soviet Russian, Yuri Gagarin...
...many times now...
...The Russian pays him the highest compliment by holding his kind in ill-disguised contempt...
...Except don't come until you've had a taste of the real (Soviet) Russia, preferably in the early spring when the ravages of Russian winter nicely complement the ravages of Soviet rule...
...The commander answers: "You know, we've flown over the U.S...
...These cars come in all col-ors and many of them have whitewalls, that ultimate tribute to private owner-ship...
...In Leningrad you will understand why Dostoevsky found the area's white nights a source of endless gloom...
...The center of the Stalin cult is the town of Gori (35 miles north-west of Tbilisi), Stalin's birthplace and the site of the only public statue of Stalin and Stalin museum this side of Albania...
...One myth has it that Georgians like Stalin because he went easy on them, another because he killed more Russians than Georgians...
...Our Georgian guide, evidently embarrassed, translates this into "I'm very happy you're here...
...Better still, a major statue or two of Lenin notwithstanding, you see no Russians...
...Petersburg and that some of the architecture from that period hasn't yet crumbled to the extent that it can't be shown to American tourists...
...For the Georgian is the Russian's anti-thesis," English traveler Colin Thubron remarked a few years ago...
...Let me tell you, it's a very nice country from up here—but it's not as big as the people living there think it is...
...Such trifles aside, there's nothing in the museum's five rooms that doesn't correspond to the official Soviet line: absolute praise for industrialization, collectivization, and Stalin's wartime leadership—and not a hint of Trotsky, famine, deportation, purges, or Ribbentrop-Molotov...
...When he made a decision, he would say so [and] instruct [that it be carried out]—it had to be carried out exactly on time, without any delay...
...Other than that, there really is little to see in Leningrad, and even less light to see it with (this includes the blacked-out restaurants in which Intourist will have you fed...
...And so I am amused that someone let the following slip through, a description of Stalin by some obscure Bolshevik that accompanies one of the few entries at the Gori museum from the 1930s...
...He will resume this column next month...
...THE GEORGIA SPECTATOR Nine years ago in Kiev a Russian friend said to me, with a shrug, "Vezde luchshe gdie nas niet"-verbatim, "Everywhere it's better where we aren't," but which I took as an admission that you're better off to live where there are no (Soviet) Russians...
...From what you notice in your short time there and from what you read and hear when you get back, the conclusion is inescapable: these people are left alone...
...In this light it's hard to know what to make of Georgia's unusual if over-blown devotion to the memory of favorite son Joseph Stalin...
...He has a hugely heightened sense of self...
...Flying in from Finland you'll first be struck by the chalky, burned-out look of what travel guides call the city's countryside...
Vol. 19 • June 1986 • No. 6
