Georgia votes to restore Stalin monument

A bronze statue of Soviet-era dictator Josef Stalin will soon rise five stories over the museum dedicated to his brutal legacy in the small Georgian town of Gori, where he was born in 1878, the Culture Ministry in the former Soviet republic announced Tuesday.

The 20-foot-tall statue was toppled in the dark of night three years ago as vestiges of the totalitarian era in the Caucasus republic were eradicated by pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili. It has since been lying on the grounds of a military base in Gori.

The monument previously stood in Gori’s central square, but plans for its reinstatement indicate it will be erected in the yard of the Museum of Stalinism adjacent to the small home in which the dictator was born.

Saakashvili said he was outraged by the town’s decision and the Culture Ministry’s approval of the plan to have the controversial statue back in place by Dec. 21, the day Gori’s local government recognizes as Stalin’s date of birth.

“Restoring the Stalin monument in the 21st century is an unimaginably barbaric, anti-Georgian, anti-national, anti-state act because it puts Georgia in international isolation,” the president, who leaves office in October, was quoted as saying by a website that provides English-language news from Georgia.

Saakashvili and his United National Movement Party led the independent republic’s purge of Stalin tributes throughout the past decade. But the president’s authority has been substantially weakened by a constitutional reform that shifted power to the prime minister’s office.

Statues were erected across Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe in homage to the Georgian strongman who ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953 and was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people. Most of the statues were removed during the anti-communist uprisings two decades ago, when Stalin’s crimes against perceived opponents and the truth about the deadly consequences of collectivizing agriculture were exposed.

But in his native Georgia, many still regard Stalin as the guiding force that propelled the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and built it into a superpower to rival the United States.