In defense of Stalin

TIBLISI, Georgia -- At first glance, the family resemblance is unmistakable. Jacob Jugashvili has the same short frame and barrel-chested build of his great-grandfather, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, a.k.a. Josef Stalin, the iron-fisted dictator who ruled the Soviet Union for 31 years.

But the similarities end there.

Jugashvili's pale blue eyes are friendly and inquisitive; his personality disarmingly humble. Steering his red Jeep through Tbilisi's narrow, snow-covered streets in a bulky, plaid lumberjack shirt, Jugashvili could pass for a backwoods camper.

He's a struggling artist in a poor nation that was once the jewel in the former empire created by his infamous ancestor. His modest ambitions are light years from the grand designs Stalin envisaged for a workers' paradise that would stretch from Asia to Eastern Europe and beyond.

Now 35, Jugashvili doesn't remember a time when he wasn't asked about his family background. Once the source of pride during the Soviet era, his family tree became a shame during his teenage years when the Soviet Union crumbled and the full scope of Stalin's tyranny came to light.

The burden followed him abroad, to art school in Scotland, where he hid his identity to all but his closest friends. Now, he wears his family lineage with pride.

Stalin, he has concluded after years of reading, was not the murderous villain who killed millions of opponents including intellectuals, peasants, and artists like him. Jugashvili said his great-grandfather was one of civilization's great leaders.

"Did Stalin kill millions? No. Absolutely not. ...," he said in an interview at a cafe atop a Tbilisi hillside.

Jugashvili's ferocious defense of Stalin's legacy seems out of context in this small mountainous country, which is trying to carve a democratic tradition out of the ruins of the former Soviet Union.

It appears doubly out of character coming from this soft-spoken artist who was earlier peering intently at the artwork on the cafe walls, commenting that he too would like to display his paintings here.

Unlike many other Georgians of his generation, Jugashvili is still mourning the death of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"It was the most unique, most successful, event in the history of mankind, at least in written history," Jugashvili said, his eyes flashing with conviction.

"What we did in a short period of 50 or 60 years -- we've done what the Western world like England, France and Netherlands, they needed 150 years. Why? Because the Soviet Union knew the full potential of the whole society."

He goes on to rail about Western capitalism, democracy, NATO and even the concept of elections, which he says are wrong-minded because most of the population is ill informed.

While Jugashvili's views are out of step with the current line on Stalin's ruthless legacy, his thinking isn't unique in this part of the world.

After Stalin's death in 1953, his mythic status began to crumble when his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced his "cult of personality" and purges. But today, in Russia, Stalin's reputation has been partly restored under Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even in Georgia, his legacy is mixed.

At Stalin's birthplace in Gori, an hour's drive north of Tbilisi, some older villagers still refer to him as "Papa Joe." His personal artifacts are preserved in a small museum.

The museum's director, Mzija Naochashvili, said Stalin was indeed a dictator, but that is not necessarily a criticism. Only a dictator, she said, could "run such a country. Nobody can name me any other great country without a dictatorship."

As for his victims? "Yes there were some mistakes, even crucial mistakes, but the USSR was the first "state in the world since the first days of humanity," Naochashvili said. "Only these mistakes let the USSR beat the fascists."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)