Letter from Tbilisi: Democracy is having a hard time taking root in Georgia. But perhaps that is only to be expected in the birthplace of Stalin.
Even today, such is their national pride that many Georgians will not disown the Great Dictator, despite all the revelations about him since the secret speech by his successor Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.
At a street market in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, I was offered framed pictures of the country's most famous (or infamous) son. This was the later Stalin, plump and well-fed, sporting the generalissimo look that he developed during the second World War.
But pictures of the dictator at all stages of his career, from schoolboy to his final exit from this life, are on display at the Stalin Museum, in Gori, just outside Tbilisi.
According to my guidebook, produced as the Soviet era was drawing to a close, the museum was generally shut. But I had no problem gaining access this week; indeed I had the whole place to myself. The entrance fee was the equivalent of 40 cents.
You could buy Stalin postcards for the same price, a brochure about the museum cost five Georgian Lari (€2), and the pièce de résistance was a Stalin keyring for three Lari.
My helpful guide, Tamara Mindiashvili, brought me upstairs to see the show. The first item on view was Stalin's office furniture from the Kremlin, including his desk, chair and telephone. The phone was a large white one, like something from a Fisher-Price toy-set, but I wondered how many times Uncle Joe had used it to transmit orders for his latest enemy to be imprisoned or executed.
In his lifetime Stalin was revered by many people, who should of course have known better, and some of the presents they sent him are on display. From China, there are portraits of Stalin, made of finely-threaded and coloured silks. There is a set of cups and saucers from the Ukraine featuring Stalin's image, a fur coat from another set of admirers and, from Italy, an imitation white dove - which looked more like a parrot - in honour of "Giuseppe Stalin, campione della pace".
Stalin began his adult life as a seminarian in Tbilisi but soon fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up in jail for his subversive activities, which included bank-robbery. There are dozens of old photographs of the "Great One" with his political associates, but with one notable exception. Feeling mischievous I asked where was Trotsky? "Trotsky? No." The guide shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "It's nothing to do with me." Copies of Stalin's works in different languages are arrayed in a glass case as well as some personal memorabilia, such as his pipe and shaving gear.
"Original," the guide stressed.
The museum was opened in 1957, when de-Stalinisation was meant to be under way in the Soviet Union. Its centrepiece is a circle of white stone pillars surrounding the dictator's death-mask. A solitary light shines on the face of the dead man who looks remarkably peaceful and unconcerned about the fate of his many victims.
In the grounds of the museum, a second guide, Mrs Olga Topchishvili, takes over and shows me the interior of the house where Stalin was born in December 1879. Daddy was a shoemaker, Mummy a dressmaker and the Dzhugashvilis (Stalin, or "Man of Steel", was a party name) rented a single room in the house, the owner lived in the other part. But Mr Dzhugashvili had a workshop in the basement, with stone steps leading down to it.
You may have associated Trotsky with a military train, but Stalin had one too, which he used from the time of the Nazi invasion in 1941, until his death in 1953. Mrs Topchishvili, who has a very pleasant manner and speaks excellent English, told me how the carriage was more or less abandoned until 1985 when it was brought to Gori. About 30 metres in length, the carriage has several compartments, including a meeting-room with table and chairs, a kitchen, and rooms for subordinates.
Stalin's private quarters have a desk, bed and bathroom, including a toilet with wooden seat. You can even look in the mirror that Stalin used when he was shaving. The light isn't good and, for a minute, you think the dictator's eyes are staring back at you.
On the way back to town, we passed several cars with the new Georgian red-and-white flag fluttering from the windows. Another car had a big wooden crucifix on the roof. Stalin would have been disgusted with these unbridled displays of nationalism and religious feeling and would, no doubt, have had all the people concerned shot at dawn.