Josef Stalin statue goes bonk in dead of night

A dismantled statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin lies face down in the Georgian town of Gori. The 20-ft tall statue will be relocated to the courtyard of a museum dedicated to Stalin.

Authorities removed the towering 20-ft tall statue of Josef Stalin from the central square of his hometown in the dead of the night on Friday, carting away the monument to Georgia's most famous native.

In an unannounced operation that began after midnight and was over before dawn, municipal workers and police took the statue down from its stone pedestal in the small city 50 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi.

"It was very unexpected," Lado Bichashvili, a journalist with local television company Trialeti, told Reuters. "I think many people will be very angry."

He said police tried to prevent journalists from filming the process, in some cases beating them.

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