The museum in Josef Stalin's hometown in Georgia is changing its focus to highlight the atrocities that were committed during the Soviet dictator's rule.

Georgian Culture Minister Nika Rurua said Monday the museum in Gori is incompatible with modern-day Georgia, which became independent in 1991.

The museum was built in 1937 and includes the small house where Stalin was born.

Stalin was born Iosif Dzhugashvili in Gori in 1878. He ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist from the early 1920s until his death in 1953.

Historians say that during Stalin's rule, millions of people were executed, died in prison camps, or starved to death in famines caused by the forced collectivization of agriculture.

But many older Russians revere Stalin as the man who defeated the Nazis in World War Two and turned the Soviet Union into a superpower.