The Museum of the Soviet Occupation is a history museum in Tbilisi

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

, Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

, documenting the seven decades of the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 rule in Georgia (1921-1991) and dedicated to the history of the anti-occupational, national-liberation movement of Georgia, to the victims of the Soviet political repressions throughout this period. It was established on May 26, 2006. The Museum is a part of the Georgian National Museum

Georgian National Museum

The Georgian National Museum is a museum network in Georgia that brings together several leading museums from various parts of the country. The Georgian National Museum was established within the framework of structural, institutional and legal reforms aimed at modernizing the management of the...

 (GNM).

Exhibition

The Museum is located in Rustaveli Avenue

Rustaveli Avenue

Rustaveli Avenue - is an avenue in central Tbilisi named after the medieval Georgian poet, Shota Rustaveli. The Avenue starts at Freedom Square and extends for about 1.5 km in length, before it turns into an extension of Kostavas Kucha...

, Tbilisi’s main thoroughfare, and is administered as a part of the Georgian National Museum

Georgian National Museum

The Georgian National Museum is a museum network in Georgia that brings together several leading museums from various parts of the country. The Georgian National Museum was established within the framework of structural, institutional and legal reforms aimed at modernizing the management of the...

. Being the third such museum in the post-Soviet states

Post-Soviet states

The post-Soviet states, also commonly known as the Former Soviet Union or former Soviet republics, are the 15 independent states that split off from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its dissolution in December 1991...

, it was inspired, at least partially, by the examples of similar exhibitions in Tallinn

Tallinn

Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

 (Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

) and Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

 (Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

). It was inaugurated in the framework of Georgia’s Independence Day celebration on May 26, 2006. The necessary financing was primarily provided by the Presidential Fund, an extra-budgetary source of revenue controlled by the administration of the President of Georgia

President of Georgia

The President of Georgia is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Government of Georgia. Executive power is split between the President and the Prime Minister, who is the head of government...

. Total space of the display is 700 m² and the number of exhibited items exceeds 3,000.

The Museum of Occupation is a permanent exhibition displaying archive documents, photo and video materials following the timeline of Georgia’s history from the short-lived independence

Democratic Republic of Georgia

The Democratic Republic of Georgia , 1918–1921, was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia.The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 between 1918 and 1921 to the Soviet army

Soviet Army

The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...

 crackdown on the pro-independence rally in 1989 and the declaration of Georgia’s independence in 1991. Other exhibits include protocols of dissidents’ examinations, orders to shoot or exile, personal files of the repressed people, artifacts from Soviet-era prison cells. In addition to the Soviet security (KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

) and Communist Party

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

 archival reserves, which have survived to be evacuated from Georgia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...

, many documents and visual material have been provided by several public organizations and the dissidents’ families. The museum publishes thematic collections and regularly invites historians to deliver public lectures on Georgia’s 20th-century history.
In 2006-2008 Director of the Museum was David Tskhadadze, since December, 2008 the Museum is managed by Dr. Levan Urushadze.

Reactions

The symbolism and timing of the museum’s opening irked several politicians in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, who denounced the museum as a "purely nationalist propaganda." The President of Russia Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

 complained to his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili

Mikheil Saakashvili

Mikheil Saakashvili is a Georgian politician, the third and current President of Georgia and leader of the United National Movement Party.Involved in the national politics since 1995, Saakashvili became president on 25 January 2004 after President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned in a November 2003...

, at their meeting in St. Petersburg in June 2006, pointing out that many of the leading Soviet leaders such as Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 and Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....

 came from Georgia. According to a source in the Georgian government Saakashvili’s response was to suggest offering funds for Russia to open a Museum of the Georgian Occupation in Moscow. Later, Saakashvili asserted that the museum was not directed against anyone: "this is a museum of the Soviet occupation, not of a Russian occupation of Georgia... If someone, somewhere, at some level, takes this personally, that is their problem and not ours."

In March 2007, the Museum was visited by the President of Ukraine

President of Ukraine

Prior to the formation of the modern Ukrainian presidency, the previous Ukrainian head of state office was officially established in exile by Andriy Livytskyi. At first the de facto leader of nation was the president of the Central Rada at early years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, while the...

 Victor Yuschenko who suggested opening a similar museum

Museum of Soviet occupation (Kiev)

The Museum of Soviet occupation in Kiev, Ukraine, is devoted to portraying the crimes of the Soviet regime in Ukraine from 1917 to 1991. It was established in November 2001 by the Vasyl Stus branch of Memorial Society as an exhibition "Not to be forgotten: The Chronicle of Communist inquisition."...

 in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

.