After the war, Abkhazia was devastated. That is always catastrophic, especially for a country largely dependent on tourism, but Abkhazians are still incredibly proud of their country’s attractions. We follow local advice and take a taxi to tourist attraction number one, Novi Afon, a coastal town just west of Sukhumi. The car stops at one of Abkhazia’s brilliant but bizarre bus stations, monstrous creations designed to look like shells, sea monsters, octopuses and waves. The bus stations often seem to have been restored, which is even stranger. After all, the rest of the country is in ruins and we have scarcely seen any buses. From the bus stop and up into the hills, everything is geared towards tourism. Old women stand next to the path with honey and strings of nuts in congealed grape juice, and a restaurant offers the option to cross the lake in a pedal boat shaped like a swan. On top of the hill the domes of the Novi Afon - New Athens - monastery gleam. The Orthodox faith never vanished completely. During the Soviet era the monastery was incorporated into the local kolchoz, but continued to attract hordes of tourists. Monks now live here again and the complex is gradually being restored. Between the wooden scaffolding tourists and visitors burn candles and murmur their prayers. The monastery has great value due to Simon the Zealot, one of Christ’s 12 Apostles, who lived nearby in a cave. Behind the monastery is a medieval-looking village of primitive houses, pigs, chickens and a 20th-century car wreck. Further up in the mountains are Europe’s deepest cakes, we read in our old travel guide. This is one of the most beautiful places in Abkhazia. It is no wonder, then, that the most notorious Soviet tyrant built one of his dachas here. A priest shows us the way. Through a rusty gate next to the monastery we find ourselves on a path winding between the mandarin trees. We pass citrus orchards full of fruit, navigate around a couple of stray cows and knock on the door of the dacha. When a woman answers we ask in our clumsy Russian whether this is Stalin’s house. She nods stiffly and lets us in. In the front room we wait until the group in front of us finishes the tour. To kill time we use the jet-black, Bakelite telephone through which the small Georgian who ruled the Soviet Union for so long with a rod of iron - no steel - must have barked the most horrific orders. The tourists who come back from the tour appear to be Russians who introduce themselves as ‘friends of Stalin’. This admiration for Stalin is remarkable. In recent years the extreme rightwing Russian politician Zhirinovsky - one of Stalin’s biggest fan - also visited the dacha, they tell us. Russian television showed him and a group of friends in the house as they indulged in a bout of heavy drinking. Zhirinovsky called on every Russian to follow his example and to come and breathe some good, clean air on the Abkhazian coast. And voila, here they are. We walk through rooms with light wooden panelling up to the ceiling. The whole place feels like a low-budget James Bond film. As the tour is in Russian and we don’t have an interpreter with us, many stories go over our heads. But one thing is clear. Every object – be it a wall, a table, an out-of-tune piano or a
Stalin, Novi Afon & the UN
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