Stalin’s statue in the garden of a nunnery provokes discussion – plenty of it – in a small Georgian village. Some of the locals used to know Stalin personally because he visited the village several times when he was young, and they continue to see him as a benign ruler from the good old days rather than the brutal dictator he was. Whenever an episode of purge shook the Soviet Union’s republics, th...

A refugee from Abkhazia, a separatist region of the Republic of Georgia which has declared independence, enlists in the Georgian army, passes though the training and becomes a professional soldier whose first vacation is interrupted by the war against Russia in Southern Osetia in 2008.