Tbilisi, Georgia
Original Chinese article
As a Soviet republic, Georgia's modern political history is inevitably branded with a sickle hammer. I believe that many of the older readers may hear that the first reaction to Tbilisi may not be European-style churches and squares, but the revolutionary sacred place written by Mao Dun in the 87th edition of the Chinese language textbook for Tbilisi. Underground Printing Office:
Many yards near the root of this yard make no difference. It is surrounded by a half-height wooden fence; on the left is an independent hut with a well in it; on the right are two main houses, each about a square foot, with a corridor in front; there is a basement below the main house, a half Exposed on the ground, it is used for the kitchen, walk down a small ladder.
So, after riding 1,640 kilometers from Istanbul, Turkey to Tbilisi, I can't wait to go there, look at the revolutionary shrine, and talk with the locals to see how they feel about that red history.
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There is a small yard outside Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia. The underground printing house set up by Stalin and his comrades was in this small courtyard in 1903.
Independent hut on the left
Two main houses and basement on the right
Newly Renovated Museum
Today, a museum is built next to the small yard, which displays relevant photos and documents of Stalin and the Soviet era. The curator of the museum is this old man who is spirited and an old member of the Georgian Communist Party. He is 79 years old this year.
Museum curator, vice chairman of the Georgian Communist Party, and probably the only commentator here
He warmly greeted each of these visiting tourists. When he learned that I was Chinese, he pointed me at a photo of Mao Zedong and Stalin meeting on the wall, and showed me the gifts that Chinese tourists gave to him when he came to visit. His bookmark.
The old grandfather now uses his savings to maintain this revolutionary shrine, hoping to use his insistence to continue the red light of Georgia. Hearing that I was a tourist coming by bicycle, he also took the key from the wall and personally took me to visit the underground printing house in Tbilisi.
Take the spiral ladder to visit the printing room located underground
... take a flashlight into the well, and you will find that the inner wall of the well is not very smooth, and there are some small nests on it ... not surprising. At that time, the wells were almost all like this, and the nests were cut for the convenience of the well workers. What's the secret of this?
But the secret is in this well.
Actual entrance to the underground printing house
If you step on those nests, you will find a tunnel on the side of the well wall at the height of 17 meters, which is enough to allow a person to climb in. About 4 meters, it is a vertical tunnel with a length of 10 meters. There is a wooden ladder inside. Climbing up the wooden ladder, there was a horizontal tunnel at the end, three meters long. Bent over the tunnel and saw a door. Upon entering the door, at first glance, I saw a printing press that had worked side by side with Joseph Stalin.
Illustrations stuck on the wall
Above this printing house is the basement that is used as a kitchen, with a two-meter thick layer of soil in between. Inside there was a folio printing press, a row of four types of typesetting racks, which did not feel narrow at all.
Today's printing presses
The newly built spiral staircase descends into the basement. There is a small house with a printing machine made in Germany in 1892. However, it is already rusty and can no longer be used. It silently tells the traces of time and the difficult course of the revolution. . After listening to Grandpa's introduction, the Georgian government after the collapse of the Soviet Union paid no attention to this historical site. The basement has been in disrepair for years. The floods after Georgia's independence in the 1990s flooded the entire basement, and the soaked printing machine was also rusty. Only he and several other Communists paid for their own money and used a water pump to drain the water overnight. Maybe this place is regarded as a worthless rundown place by others, but in their hearts it is undoubtedly an indestructible victory.
The two main houses in the courtyard are the lookout posts of the underground printing house, and the task of the lookout is Rachaz Pouchletz. She sat at the window every day to do needlework, and when she saw the gendarmerie police or some suspicious people coming out of the yard, she clicked the electric bell hidden under the window, and the people in the underground printing office immediately stopped the machine when she heard the bell, and the people on the ground could not detect it. And when they left, they rang the bell twice to signal the comrades below to continue working.
At the end of the explanation, Grandpa picked up an anti-NATO poster with the title:
Although there were wrinkles around his eye sockets, his eyes were full of energy, showing resolute anger. Thinking of today's Georgia becoming more and more inclined to the west, and in the past few years, I heard that there are plans to join NATO, so I want to hear what he thinks about the current country.
"Georgia is now in a very difficult situation. Our factory was not closed in the Soviet Union, we had ideas and raw materials from Russia, our factory was producing, but now we have nothing."
"Then what do you think Georgia's future development should be?"
"I think socialism is the future of this country, because socialism and communism are the best for human beings. People are fully developed, free education, free medical care, and everyone can be fully developed. People Friendship and brotherhood can also be cultivated. And those capitalists are the demise of all humanity. They only think for themselves. Now there are serious problems in the supply of raw materials around the world, which may lead to the next time. World War. NATO is a hostile international organization. "
Lenin's head in the museum
He gradually opened his voice box and became interested in my travels. When he learned that I was only 18 years old and started the ride, his face was full of surprise. I also want to know what kind of environment he grew up in and what he wanted to do when he was 18 years old.
"I was at the Rostov metallurgical school when I was 18 years old. I was learning how to become a steel worker and how to build socialism. Socialism represents an advanced mode of production, and it may be the same today. Development. I joined the Communist Party when I was 27 years old, and today I have 52 years of party life. Now, I am the vice chairman of the Georgian Communist Party, and I introduce tourists to the history of the Communist Party. "
Speaking of which, his eyes are full of glory and pride. We slowly walked back to his office in the museum. At the top of the wall is Lenin's head. The world map is still Soviet-era, and the clock has a red badge.
Seeing him still strong and strong, I asked, "What do you want to do now?"
"I love my homeland and the Soviet Union. I will not leave my country and I will not go anywhere. I, as the vice chairman of the Georgian Communist Party, are working with other Communist parties to create the Union of Communist Party. ), Fighting for the restoration of the previous alliance! "His tone gradually rose.
He took me to the picture wall at the entrance of the museum. One of them was the meeting of the Communist Party Alliance in Minsk (the capital of Belarus), with speeches from Communist Party representatives from various countries.
"Look, that's me." He pointed to a photo of a group of people protesting against the NATO flag.
Hearing the story of this old man, in fact, my heart is more complicated. Because the society he wants may not be the society that young Georgians want today. The vast majority of tourists who come here are not Georgians but Chinese or Russians who come from afar. That night when I was having dinner with another young man, I learned that their younger generations were basically negative about the Soviet era: the voices of the people were not freely expressed, countless people were persecuted, nepotism …. It also reminds me of a conversation with a grandma, a guide, at the Stalin Museum in Gori.
Like Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina), which became independent after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Georgia is also on the road to national transformation. Older generations generally have a collective memory of socialism. The people used to have jobs, free medical care, education, and housing. But after the disintegration of the country, the country ’s unemployment rate rose sharply, pensions fell, and democratic mechanisms were not mature enough. The old people generally missed the society before independence, but the young people generally felt no sense or even disliked the former socialism. The country is now being pulled by these two voices at the same time, struggling to find the future direction at the stage of transformation.
At the end of the visit, the old man asked me to provide some donations, and I also readily accepted them. After all, it was not easy for him to bear such a heavy history alone.
When I went out, I took a picture at the entrance. An old lady came over and said word by word:
"Everything was cheap, but now it's getting more expensive. I can't buy anything. I don't have anything to eat."
She was emaciated, dropped to her waist, and trembled to the other side of the street.
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Author's Note:
The dialogues appearing in this article are translated from Russian to English by Google Translator and are not professional;
The original "Underground Printing Office of Tbilisi (by Mao Dun)" was originally published in the first volume of the textbook "Language" in junior high school textbooks, People's Education Press, November 2nd edition, 1987
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