STALIN’S PRIVATE TOUR FROM TBILISI

We were shocked how much there is to explore in Georgia, in Stalin’s life, in the non-Russian Soviet era as we designed this tour. The brutalist architecture of Tbilisi will leave you speechless, together with the story of Georgia and its independence. Get a secret access to Stalin’s Underground Printing House Museum, located in the basement of an old private house and meet the director of the museum – a dedicated communist. See the famous rusty Tbilisi skybridge, but we will not let you walk on it as it is in bad shape and in a bad neighborhood. Explore the derelict Architecture Museum of Tbilisi where the only object to see…is the museum itself.

DAY 2

Pick your new car in the old Soviet car museum and maybe you get a chance to drive an old Lada car. However we will take you with an A/C van to the city of Gori, the birthplace of Iosif Dzhugashvili….Wait who? Oh, that’s the real name of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Find out how the childhood, abuse, and fear of flying shaped the once most powerful leader of Europe. Visiting his museum is a must, as it has stayed the same since his death in the 1950s, and you will experience a brand new perspective on this tyrant who left at least 5 million Soviet people perished of hunger. We will not bore you to death with the 60 thousand artifacts from Stalin’s life (what a modest work-class life collection), instead let’s escape for a while to the forgotten times by exploring the nearby Uplistsikhe – “Lord’s Fortress” and it’s an abandoned rock-hewn town that is more than 3000 years old.

DAY 3

If you dedicate more than just a weekend to exploring Georgia’s hidden secrets, let’s go somewhere where Joseph Stalin recruited workers into the Communist party. For this you will step into the shoes of the Soviet working class and become a citizen for one day in the industrial mining city of Chiatura. Joseph Stalin felt so sorry for the weary miners who had to scramble up and down the steep cliffs to reach their work and their homes, that when becoming the fearful leader of the USSR, he invested into a special public transportation system. Until today the cable cars are operational. They are not nicknamed “flying coffins” anymore as most of them were renovated, rebuilt, and upgraded. Let’s try a few in order to get to some abandoned and creepy corners of Chiatura where time has stopped. By the way, Stalin did not feel that sorry for all workers as he canceled weekends in the USSR for nearly 11 year.

Hard to understand? Let’s dive even deeper to the times by visiting an abandoned railway station, former pioneer palace or Chiatura’s local mining museum or the local football stadium. If you felt helpless in the Soviet Union, you could escape the reality by finding an isolated place to stay, just like the monks did on Katskhi pillar – one of the most inaccessible and remote places on this planet to live. Breathtaking. 

DAY 4

The maximum Program of your tour includes a stay in a spa. No, we did not turn this tour into a wellness weekend for the weak, but with a HERO package you deserve a full VIP spa access with options for treatments that all Soviet leaders were coming for. The legendary Stalin’s spa is half abandoned with architecture like from a fairy tale.  You peek into Stalin’s private suite and bath and even Stalin’s Dacha (weekend house)! You explore the abandoned or half-abandoned sanatoriums, theaters and hotels with inner gardens, as well as abandoned swimming pools and bathhouses.
Just imagine staying at a cozy spa hotel, which has more space for exploring than hotels in Chernobyl! Tskaltubo is the one in a lifetime experience of the Soviet spa industry for prominent guests. Nowadays, parts of the sanatoriums are inhabited by refugees from the conflict in Georgia’s pro-Russian region of Abkhazia. Get first hand stories of people who were lucky to flee this 2008 conflict.

Whether you choose 1, 2, 3 or the full 4 day programme, you will leave Georgia with goosebumps, not just hundreds of pictures or the new favorite dishes you will try to cook at home. The intense program of Stalin’s Georgia Tour is flexible, non-touristic, breath-taking. And you make it live. You bring life into the derelict places, leaving a footprint in the continuous story of Post-Soviet Georgia.