Museum of Soviet Occupation

History museum documenting seven decades of Soviet rule in Georgia

The Museum of Soviet Occupation occupies a hall in the main building of the Georgian National Museum on Rustaveli Avenue. It documents the seven decades of Soviet rule in Georgia from 1921 to 1991, with a particular emphasis on the human cost: the deportations, the executions, the suppression of the Georgian language and culture, and the names and faces of those who were killed.

The exhibits are emotionally powerful rather than architecturally impressive — photographs, personal documents, artefacts from the gulag, and explanatory panels in Georgian and English. It is a sobering counterpoint to the archaeological treasures on the other floors. Admission is included with the main museum ticket.

things to do museum
A story
Georgia was one of the last Soviet republics to be incorporated into the USSR — the Red Army invaded in February 1921, just three years after Georgia had declared independence from the Russian Empire. The museum documents not just the occupation itself but the resistance: the August 1924 uprising, the purges of the 1930s that wiped out the Georgian intelligentsia, and the national liberation movement that eventually forced Moscow's hand.

Other places in Things to Do