Joseph Stalin had several holiday homes built on the Black Sea coast, but the green mansion perched on the hillside at Gagra was his favourite. He'd come for weeks in the summer to relax, surrounded by 3,000 security guards assembled in three human rings around the property.
The squat, hirsute guard barked at me that he'd have to make calls to check that my permission to visit was genuine. "Imagine if I let you in and you were an impostor - I'd be shot," he said, without any trace of a smile.
Clearly, working in such a place leaves an impression on the psyche.
These days, the dacha (pictured overleaf) doubles as an official residence of Sergei Bagapsh, the president of the de facto republic of Abkhazia, hence the security concerns. Part of the Georgian republic of the Soviet Union, the Abkhaz fought for independence when the communist state  |
