Venturing into the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, one might stumble upon a peculiar relic of Soviet history: the Museum of J. Stalin’s Underground Printing Press. This unassuming site, a time capsule from the Bolshevik era, offers a glimpse into the clandestine world of “underground printing” and the early revolutionary activities of Joseph Stalin, long before he became the infamous dictator. My visit to this museum, alongside my wife, a Russian sociologist, and our daughter, was an unexpected journey into a world of secret operations and revolutionary fervor, far removed from the grand narratives of Soviet power.
The museum, located on a quiet side street in Tbilisi’s Avalbari neighborhood, is housed in a modest brick building, marked only by a bright red door adorned with hammer and sickle symbols. Stepping inside felt like entering a forgotten corner of the Soviet past. We were greeted by Zhiuli Sikmashvili, the museum’s director and a deputy chairman of the Communist Party of Georgia, a man embodying a steadfast adherence to Stalinist ideology. He welcomed us into a space filled with Soviet-era artifacts – portraits of Lenin and Stalin, wartime posters, and faded maps, all underscored by the low hum of a radio. Despite the unheated rooms and sparse visitors, Sikmashvili’s enthusiasm for the museum and its subject matter was palpable. He eagerly shared stories of the museum’s past glory, recalling times when it was a major tourist attraction, drawing crowds eager to witness this piece of Soviet history.
A Time Capsule of Revolutionary Secrecy
In its heyday, particularly in the 1970s, the museum was a pilgrimage site for Soviet tourists, a testament to the curated narrative of Stalin’s revolutionary beginnings. Sikmashvili recounted waiting in three-hour lines as a schoolboy, a stark contrast to the quiet we experienced during our visit. As we explored the exhibits, with my wife translating Sikmashvili’s Russian explanations, I tried to engage our daughter by focusing on the intrigue of the underground operation, the “cops-and-robbers” aspect of revolutionary life, rather than the heavy ideological weight.
The museum’s initial focus is on the revolutionary scene in Tiflis (Tbilisi’s former name) at the dawn of the 20th century. It meticulously details the activities of a young Ioseb Dzhugashvili, the future Stalin, then known by various aliases like “Sosa,” “Koba,” and “Soselo.” These exhibits, frozen in time, showcase images of revolutionary committees and old Tiflis, painting a picture of a city at the crossroads of the Southern Caucasus, a vibrant hub where a shrewd individual like young Stalin could rise through the ranks of the Bolshevik movement.
Stalin’s affiliation with the Bolsheviks, Lenin’s faction advocating for a vanguard of professional revolutionaries over gradual social change, is highlighted. The displays illustrate the clandestine nature of his life – constantly on the move across the region and even internationally, punctuated by periods of imprisonment. Crucially, in Tiflis, he was at the helm of the underground printing press, a vital tool for disseminating revolutionary messages, and was involved in audacious acts like the 1907 state bank robbery. The printing press, central to the museum, was instrumental in producing socialist propaganda in Georgian and Armenian until its location was compromised, and the authorities destroyed the premises.
The Lingering Echoes of Soviet Storytelling
Encountering Soviet-era narratives within the museum is a stark reminder of the enduring power of carefully constructed historical accounts. It’s akin to visiting Moscow, my wife’s hometown, where Soviet symbols subtly persist, evoking a sense of the past’s lingering presence. While time has moved forward, and Russia has undergone significant transformations, the figure of Stalin remains complex and multifaceted.
In Georgia, Stalin’s legacy is particularly nuanced. Beyond the global condemnation of his atrocities, there’s a lingering sense of local pride in a Georgian who ascended to immense power. In Tbilisi’s craft markets, you can still find images of a benevolent, grandfatherly Stalin, a far cry from his brutal reality.
However, this sentiment is distinct from public veneration. Georgia, independent since 1991, has navigated a complex post-Soviet path, marked by political shifts and a westward orientation. While Soviet-era architecture remains, overt Soviet symbols have largely vanished, replaced by symbols reflecting Georgia’s contemporary alliances. The presence of streets named after George W. Bush and Lech Kaczynski near the museum underscores this shift.
The museum, in this context, stands as an “island of grim consistency,” stubbornly preserving a particular version of history amidst ongoing debates about Stalin’s legacy. Scholarly works endlessly dissect his complexities, attempting to quantify his culpability and compare his evils to figures like Hitler.
Deconstructing the Stalin Myth
Dispelling simplistic portrayals of Stalin is crucial. He was not the one-dimensional figure often depicted. Like many Bolsheviks, he was intellectually engaged, a voracious reader with a penchant for writers like Walt Whitman. He possessed a sharp mind for simplifying complex issues, honed by his seminary education, and was a skilled political operator, adept at building alliances and maintaining a strategic distance from direct conflicts. Yet, his unwavering ideological conviction and ruthless pragmatism were undeniable.
These traits propelled his rise to power after Lenin’s death in 1924, enabling him to forge a superpower under his absolute rule. The most chilling aspect of Stalin’s authoritarianism was his ability to manipulate reality through a self-contained system of logic and control. The initial revolutionary zeal was twisted into rigid bureaucracy and state power. As Guy Debord noted, ideology transformed from a tool into an unchallenged falsehood, blurring the lines between reality and totalitarian dogma.
Dismantling this totalitarian system required confronting the meticulously constructed Stalinist narrative. Even quantifying the scale of the atrocities has been a protracted and contentious process. Estimates of victims vary, with some figures suggesting around 20 million, and a staggering proportion of the Soviet population subjected to arrest. The sheer magnitude of falsified data underscores the profound importance of individual stories in understanding this era.
Adam Hochschild’s account of Vladimir Glebov, son of Lev Kamenev, a prominent Bolshevik leader executed in the purges, exemplifies this. Glebov’s life, marked by the execution of both parents, name changes, Siberian orphanages, and eventual imprisonment despite attempts to remain inconspicuous, poignantly illustrates the human cost of Stalinist repression.
Organizations like Memorial have played a vital role in recovering and sharing these individual narratives, challenging the official silences surrounding the repressions. However, even this work is sometimes overshadowed by the dominant narrative of the Great Patriotic War, which, while acknowledging immense suffering, also offers a narrative of heroic triumph and national redemption.
Considering the tumultuous history of 20th-century Russia, survival itself seems miraculous. Amidst the grand narratives and vast statistics, the reality for most individuals was a complex mix of enduring hardship and persevering through daily life. Even during the darkest periods, life continued, with moments of joy and connection interwoven with the pervasive shadow of fear and repression. My wife’s family photo, capturing a moment of happiness on a balcony in the late 1940s, against the backdrop of post-war devastation and looming Cold War anxieties, speaks volumes about this human resilience.
As Yuri Slezkine argued in The House of Government, the Soviet Union’s rapid collapse stemmed from inherent contradictions within its system. The Bolsheviks’ failure to fully extend their revolution into personal life and their inability to reconcile ideological certainty with practical failures created fundamental flaws.
Repeated attempts to rewrite history and recapture revolutionary fervor proved futile. The press museum itself is a manifestation of this historical revisionism, an attempt to glorify Stalin’s early career. Biographers now recognize Stalin’s mastery of underground tactics – manipulation, self-promotion, and ruthlessness – yet these early actions offered little indication of the horrors to come.
Lavrenty Beria, the Soviet chief in the Caucasus in the early 1930s, recognized the need to reshape the narrative of Stalin’s early years, ensuring a more prominent role for him. This led to the transformation of Stalin’s hometown of Gori into a pilgrimage site and the rebuilding of the underground press’s safe house in 1937. This act of historical revisionism proved to be a career-defining move for Beria, propelling him to head the NKVD in 1938.
Visiting the Heart of “Underground Printing”
Back at the museum, near the entrance, a guestbook fashioned from an old trade union award book reveals recent entries primarily in Chinese. Sikmashvili mentioned a steady stream of Chinese visitors, eager to explore this piece of Soviet history. The guestbook itself only dated back to 2015, the original having mysteriously disappeared, suspected to have been taken by the National Museum during its brief control of the site in the 1990s.
Sikmashvili also recounted the press’s state of disrepair due to years of flooding in the cellar caused by nearby construction. A visit from a high-ranking Chinese general, who expressed outrage at the press’s condition and promised to intervene, apparently led to the cessation of the flooding, a somewhat surreal anecdote in the museum’s narrative.
He then guided us to the restored safe house, a modest and cozy space filled with period details – books, Stalin portraits, and furnishings, including a roped-off bed where Stalin purportedly slept. Despite the horrors of the Great Terror under Stalin, this “Bolshevik theme park” remained operational throughout the Soviet era, persisting until its collapse in 1991.
My wife’s stories of growing up in the “Evil Empire” offer a personal perspective on this era. Her generation was the first to experience a loosening of Soviet control, a growing curiosity about the West, even as Cold War rhetoric painted starkly opposing images. While American narratives emphasized Soviet oppression, Soviet ideology preached global worker solidarity, albeit within a system of its own constraints.
For me, understanding Russia involves moving beyond simplistic narratives of Cold War victory. Spending time in Moscow with family reveals a more nuanced picture of Soviet nostalgia. While desires for “freedom” and democracy were prevalent, so was a concern for social safety nets like healthcare and education. The post-Soviet transition, in many respects, did not fulfill these broader aspirations.
Putin’s enduring popularity, in part, stems from channeling this sense of wounded pride and unmet expectations. Figures like Sikmashvili represent a small but persistent segment of the population who cling to a belief in the Soviet system’s merits, often downplaying or dismissing its dark aspects. When questioned about the repressions, Sikmashvili dismissed them as “fake news” or exaggerations, acknowledging only the presence of “enemies.”
Reflecting on my experiences in Russia, engaging with its history and diverse perspectives, underscores the importance of confronting the complexities of figures like Stalin. This is not solely due to external pressures but because acknowledging the potential for even leftist ideologies to devolve into extreme authoritarianism is crucial. While my own political leanings have shifted leftward in response to contemporary global challenges, the shadow of Stalinism serves as a constant reminder of the dangers of unchecked power and ideological dogmatism.
The museum’s centerpiece, the most revered artifact in this carefully constructed Bolshevik narrative, is the underground bunker housing the printing press. Originally accessed via a well, a rusty spiral staircase now leads down to this subterranean space. A bell system, used to signal the printers above – one ring for silence, two for all clear, and three for mealtime – highlights the clandestine nature of the operation.
The bunker is a small, dimly lit concrete cellar. The printing press, a rusted hulk, dominates the space. Closer inspection reveals faint details, like an 1893 label, but its functionality remains largely obscured. In its current state, the press transcends its mechanical purpose, becoming a potent symbol of the power of words, of the enduring struggle for freedom of expression, even as it emerged from one form of tyranny only to contribute to another.
Christopher Marcisz
