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Stalin's two-story Abkhazia vacation home, known as the Mysra dacha, sits at the end of a twisting 14-kilometer road amidst flowering magnolia, honeysuckle bushes and towering trees. The relatively modest, three-bedroom house offers little visual sense of the Stalin period, with most of the furniture having been shuttled to other buildings under ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The furniture the house now contains - set off in taupe and mustard tones - more closely resembles the decor of a 1960s-style motel.
Elizabeth Owen is EurasiaNet's regional news coordinator based in Tbilisi.
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