DZIRKOKI, Georgia -- Villagers unveiled a bust of Stalin in eastern Georgia on Friday in memory of the dictator who ruled the Soviet Union for the 30 years with an iron hand.


About 100 hundred villagers, farm workers, women and bored children gathered on a wintry morning for the unveiling ceremony in Dzirkoki, a settlement 120 kilometers east of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.


"I was six years old when Stalin died,'' said Givi Tsankashvili, 47, who erected the statue in front of the small office building of Dzirkoki's collective farm. "My mother was crying and I also cried.''


Tsankashvili rescued the statue that was smashed by unknown assailants in the nearby town of Gurdzhaani just before the 115th anniversary of Stalin's birth last week.


The bust was removed from a local kindergarten in 1961 when Stalin's successors began to quietly play down the late dictator's near-deity status in the Soviet Union.


Stalin was born the son of a cobbler in the Georgian city of Gori.


After pulling off some protective plastic sheeting, the head of the collective farm, Soso Songolashvili, 49, addressed the small audience.


"We are living on the foundations Stalin built," Songolashvili said. "We must follow his ideas to save this country, to save humanity.''


His words were met with a gentle round of applause and cries of "Health to Stalin, Health to Communism.''