“Would you like to see our classrooms?” the principal asked.
“Yes, of course,” we said.
The classrooms were clean, and every one had a large photo of Stalin (the offices, too). Stalin looked young, vigorous, intelligent, and even handsome, like a Hollywood movie star. The latest school newspaper, a weekly, featured a photo of Stalin on its front page, even though there was no news-related reason to put one there. Beneath the photo was a poem about freedom that Stalin had supposedly written when he studied religion at a Tbilisi seminary (a building that was later converted into the Georgian State Museum). Stalin was born in 1878 in a village called Gory. His mother was a hardworking housekeeper, and his father was a drunk who often beat his wife. Stalin was a bright, promising student who one day might have become a priest—that was his mother’s dream—if it were not for his after-hours dedication to the rising revolutionary currents then sweeping through the Russian Empire. His seminary teachers kept warning him that he would be expelled if he did not stop his subversive activity, but Stalin either could not or would not stop, and he was soon expelled, much to his mother’s distress. From then on, Stalin devoted himself to Lenin’s revolution, ultimately riding his coattails to absolute power in the Kremlin.
Intourist must have alerted the Georgian State Museum of my impending visit, because a small team of docents backed by two MVD officers was waiting for me. “Welcome,” said one of the docents, an elderly man with a V-shaped beard and an elaborately etched cane. “We have something special for you.” Much to my surprise, he and the officers led me to a locked room in the basement, which when the doors opened proved to be a treasure chest of Georgian icons. I had never seen a collection so enchanting anywhere. The icons, crafted in Georgia, dated back to the seventh and eighth centuries, graphic evidence of a once-flourishing civilization. When we got to examples from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the quality of the icons seemed mysteriously to dip. The docent, sensing my unasked question, explained the dip with one word: “Mongols.” There was one other noticeable dip in quality. This time I could figure out the reason myself. When the Russians seized Tbilisi in the early nineteenth century, the Georgian craftsmen “lost” their creative passion.
I had one more question for the docent. “Why did you bring me here?”
He smiled broadly. “Three years ago Ambassador Bohlen visited our museum. He identified part of one icon we have here as the sister part of an icon in the United States. He was very excited, and so were we.” He leaned on his cane. “You see,” he went on, “we are now brother and sister.” When he learned that a visiting American diplomat wanted to see the Georgian State Museum, he remembered the Bohlen visit. I was the lucky beneficiary. I got to see this exceptional collection of Georgian art. The docent told me, his voice filled with pride, that a new generation of Georgian artists was studying this ancient art and hoping in this way to recapture the greatness of the Georgian renaissance, which he placed in the tenth through twelfth centuries. “That’s two hundred years before the Italian renaissance,” he noted with a broad smile.
After my visit to the museum I asked my Intourist guide if I could walk back to the hotel alone, and, miracle of miracles, he said yes. The guide went one way, and I another. I knew what was going to happen. Within a few minutes, I was positive, a young Georgian student would engage me in conversation, and so it happened. He was, like most other Georgian students, relatively tall and well dressed, and he had a thick mustache. He was a student at the Pedagogical Institute, and he had a special interest in America. He said someone at the hotel had told him an American was in town. “I was following you, waiting for you to be alone,” he said in good English. He did not give me his name, but in every other respect he seemed to be uninhibited. We sat down on a park bench, and we talked, and talked, and talked.
He asked me many questions about the United States, and I answered them with honesty and candor. Only when I sensed he was beginning to run out of questions did I ask him a few of my own about Georgia. I focused on the student uprisings that rocked Tbilisi in early March after Khrushchev’s startling denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress. I told him that in Moscow we had heard unconfirmed stories that thousands of students, many armed, had demonstrated against the government, that about a hundred had been killed, and that the Red Army had had to be called in to contain the crisis.
“That’s all true,” he said, “only it was worse. At least 150 students were killed, and hundreds more were wounded.” What happened was that on March 4, a day before the third anniversary of Stalin’s death, a student delegation asked the rector of the university for permission to stage a pro-Stalin demonstration on March 5, the day of his death. The rector’s response was no. According to a 1955 decree, such demonstrations could only be held on birthdates, not death dates. Nevertheless, groups of students began to gather around the huge Stalin statue in Tbilisi’s central park, more of them with each passing day. Police were brought to the scene in case of trouble. On March 8, two students were killed. No one was quite sure how.
The following day everything changed. Anger turned to violence. While the Georgian Communist Party, on orders from Moscow, staged a counterdemonstration, ostensibly to honor a new statue of Lenin, hundreds of Soviet troops entered Tbilisi. The main streets were lined with tanks and the main square was cleared. Students began to clash with troops, throw stones at passing cars, and disrupt communications. Troops opened fire. Many students were killed. Later that evening thousands of other students marched toward the main post office, which was one block from the headquarters of the council of ministers. Both buildings were now being guarded by troops with machine guns. The commanding officer, speaking through a bullhorn, pleaded with the protesting students to disperse and go home. One student shouted back, saying they wanted to send a telegram to the United Nations asking for help to fight the Russians. Another student said they wanted to send a telegram to Moscow, specifically to Molotov, a known supporter of the Stalin legacy, demanding an end to Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization drive. But the troops had their orders, and the students had only their anger. They resumed their march on the post office, and the troops again opened fire.
In Moscow Khrushchev kept a close eye on the student uprising, hoping that by the end of the day they would have “kick[ed] up a row and then calm[ed] down.” But when it became obvious that the student uprising was continuing and its message was spreading throughout Georgia, “we intervened very sharply,” Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, later recalled. Khrushchev feared that a successful anti-Soviet uprising in Georgia could quickly spread to other regions of the Soviet Union and threaten the regime itself.
For the next week Tbilisi was held in an iron grip, my student friend told me. A midnight curfew was imposed. Armed troops, supported by tanks, patrolled the streets. Schools were shut. Only the funeral parlors and the churches were busy, burying the dead. Tbilisi was the scene of the bloodiest uprising against Russian rule since the Basmachi awakening of the early 1920s.
I asked my new friend whether Georgians were still angry about the de-Stalinization drive. “We feel this very deeply,” he replied. “You are an American. You might not understand our feelings. But we are a proud people and a good people. When Stalin ruled Russia, we felt secure. Now our security has been shattered. We have never liked Russian rule. We don’t like it now. Only we are small, we are few in numbers. Will the Russians listen to us? They are so many. They don’t have to. But one thing I can assure you. They will not be able to treat us the way they treat others. We won’t allow it.”