Photos De-Glorifying Stalin Inside His Own Museum

This article originally appeared on VICE Belgium.

In late 2021, Belgian photographer Thomas Driesen was road tripping with friends across Eastern Europe. The group had already travelled around the region, but this time they decided to make a stop in Gori, a small Georgian town of 45,000 people that also happens to be the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. They visited a museum dedicated to the notorious dictator, who is treated – in Gori, at least – as something of a local star.

Joseph Stalin was born in 1878 in the Russian Empire. In his early 20s, he joined the Bolshevik revolutionaries, an underground communist group following the teachings of Karl Marx, and quickly rose through their ranks. By 1917, the Bolsheviks had overthrown the empire, installing a communist state governed by their leader, Vladimir Lenin. Seven years later, Lenin died of disease, passing the baton to 46-year-old Stalin, who led the newly-formed Union of Soviet Republics (USSR) from 1924 until his death in 1953. 

Under his dictatorship, the USSR transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower through a series of five-year plans. Whether you were a political dissident or just a farmer who refused to comply, any opponent to the state was identified thanks to a surveillance system composed of a powerful special police and citizen-spies. They would then either be shot or sent into forced labour camps known as gulags. 

Between his regime of terror and the famines resulting from the forced collectivisation of the economy, Stalin is responsible for the death of tens of millions – even upwards of 20 million, according to some official sources. But not everyone agrees the dictator should be remembered as one of the bloodiest rulers in history.

“For some, Stalin and the USSR are symbols of pride and still represent a bygone golden age,” says Driesen, referring to conversations he had with locals during the trip. Indeed, the museum – which has remained untouched since its creation in 1951 – is essentially a collection of glorified representations of Stalin. The only evidence of his tyranny is relegated to a small basement room, where the Gulags and totalitarianism are mentioned only in passing.

Driesen walked away from the exhibition with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he says it was weird to be surrounded by tourists and a handful of locals who were perhaps a little too nostalgic. But, walking through those corridors, he noticed a host of small, crude details clashing with the general celebratory atmosphere of the space, giving the museum an eerie – even grotesque – twist.

Amidst the general indifference of the staff, Driesen spent several hours capturing these dissonant details – the faded walls, the surveillance cameras above paintings, a wobbly socket under a bust, the water fountain in the background. “I wanted to break this hero figure by focusing on these small, absurd details,” he says.

The resulting photo book, Stalin Unglorified, was ready in early 2022, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made Driesen temporarily put off publication. “I didn't want to put myself out there at that time,” he says. “I don't claim to be particularly political, especially since I'm not an expert on the subject.” 

The resulting images portray the time-capsule aesthetic of the museum, while highlighting the anachronism of Stalin’s cult of personality, which is now largely a thing of the past.

Scroll down to see more pictures from the book: