toilet seat - belonged to Stalin, as evidenced by the guide’s gestures towards the objects and the simultaneous proclamation of Stalin’s name. The highlight of the tour is an enormous table at which Stalin gave his infamous banquets. From the head of the table you still look out at a beautiful landscape painting of Siberia. A When Stalin had one of his notorious paranoia attacks during dinner and the vodka had began to flow - we imagine - he must have regularly pointed to the painting with his short arm and shouted: ‘Beware! Otherwise I’ll send you there!’
A
Abkhazia was once known as the private property of the KGB, the Soviet security services. The entire country was filled with sanatoria and dachas for the leaders and senior officers. This was also the strategy of local party boss Lakoba B, who wielded power from 1921. By building dachas and holiday houses everywhere and lavishly wining and dining the Moscow leadership, Lakoba was able to protect Abkhazia to a certain degree from the widespread collectivisation of the ’20s and ’30s.
B
That changed when Stalin’s protégé and later head of the dreaded NKVD, Lavrenti Beria, was appointed head of Georgia. In 1931 Beria put an end to the autonomy within Georgia that Abkhazia had enjoyed until then. In 1936, during a sumptuous dinner in Tbilisi, he poisoned Lakoba and launched his policy of moving Georgian farmers to Abkhazia.
Stalin, Novi Afon & the UN
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