Soviet Bunkers in Tbilisi: First-ever Legal Soviet Bunker Tour in Tbilisi

There is an underground world of Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi that many locals don’t even know about. A network of tunnels, chambers, and bomb shelters are scattered across the capital, most of which are not accessible to the public. However, one group of diggers managed to get permission from the government to open it to the public and offer the first-ever legal Soviet bunker tour. 

The history of Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi

Bunkers and bomb shelters are not a novelty to the world. I believe every country had some, but they were an integral part of Soviet rule. Every post-Soviet country has a network of these bunkers in the major cities, and Tbilisi is no exception. For instance, Albania and its capital have over 173,000 such bunkers.  

Since constructing these bunkers was top-secret, no documented facts exist to study them. Consequently, this secrecy led to the creation of legends and inaccurate information.  

According to an article published in Georgia Today, most of these Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi were built by notorious Lavrenti Beria, a head of the Secret Police between 1938 and 1945 and a right hand of Stalin in many acts of brutality and cruelty. 

State archives don’t have much information on Beria’s underground world, and even large-scale Soviet maps of Tbilisi don’t indicate them either. However, the proof of the existing tunnels and bunkers reflects the city development that Beria was in charge of, including the sewage system in Tbilisi and the several famous Soviet architectural buildings on today’s Rustaveli Ave. 

The article also states that besides being used as shelter in case of a bomb or nuclear attack, some Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi were torture chambers used by Beria. 

There are secret Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi that could be around 2km long, leading to the territory of Rustaveli metro station. These undocumented facts leave scholars to assume for what purpose Beria built them. The reasonable theory is secretly transporting prisoners from Tbilisi via these train tunnels. 

Around a decade after World War II and during the Cold War, the Soviet government administered a large budget to prepare for bomb and nuclear attacks. There are around 482 Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi alone, one of which is well maintained, open to the public, and the focus of this blog post. 

The majority of Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi built during the Cold War aimed to safeguard the capital’s citizens during bomb or nuclear attacks. 

What happened to bunkers in Tbilisi after the collapse of the USSR

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, these bunkers in Tbilisi and Georgia were abandoned, robbed, or even privatized. Today, most of these bunkers require special permission to visit. 

!! Note !! Entering these Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi or Georgia independently is dangerous without special equipment or a guide, as many are damaged and partly collapsed. Some are flooded and might have poisonous substances, rats, and bats inside. 

The first-ever legal tour of the Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi

There’s one more sight to be added to your list of things to do in Tbilisi if you are a Soviet things lover like me. While walking down the streets of Tbilisi, Soviet brutalist architecture is evident, but what happens underground is the mystery that the network of Tbilisi’s diggers recently uncovered for the general public. 

Diggers are adventurous Georgians who visit these secret underground tunnels and occasionally share their findings in social media groups. However, they rarely disclose the exact locations of these spaces for the safety of many reckless citizens. Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, some bunkers in Tbilisi are only accessed via special permission from the government. 

I found Tornike Kapanadze, one of the diggers, via his Facebook page, Wise Guy – თხუნელა by accident, who advertised the first-ever legal Soviet bunker tour in Tbilisi and I immediately contacted him. 

If you are uncomfortable contacting him directly, WT Georgia also offers occasional organized tours to this same Tbilisi bunker. You can get 10% off on your spot on their tours by emailing them a code: Red Fedora. 

Tornike leads tours to one of the most well-preserved Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi built as a supervisory point, which also could have been used for civic safety and defense in case of any attacks.  

Most of such Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi, as Tornike tells me, are built for the safety of citizens. Still, only a few had a different purpose, like the one he organizes tours at and another much more extensive one Soviets made for the staff members of the government. 

According to his information, a Russian engineer Pavle Groves, a prisoner of Soviet rule, planned out some of these bunkers in Tbilisi. German captives and death-sentenced prisoners were used as a labor force to prevent them from publicizing the locations. 

What to expect in the Soviet bunker tour

This bunker, nestled around 10 meters deep underneath Tbilisi, has several hermetic doors to seal the place, diesel generators to produce electricity, a ventilation system of fresh air, a water supply, communication machinery, and an emergency exit. He tells me that the bunker controlled the entire Gldani-Nadzaladevi neighborhood. 

Probably built in the 1950s, this bunker has never been listed on Tbilisi’s so-called secret bunkers list, making a visit here even more exciting and unique.

During the tour, Tornike debunks the myth that bunkers were full of food and that people could live there for weeks and years without going out. In reality, unless there was a thread, these bunkers never stored food and could only supply people for a month time. 

Every wall, inch, door, and layout of these bunkers, in general, served some purpose. For instance, between two closed hermetic doors, there’s a sealed hallway used for a person who’d go above the ground during an attack to bring food and water supplies down. But before entering the space, he/she’d be disinfected not to get any poison or disease inside. 

The bunker consists of several rooms, where every writing, poster, or plaque on the door is in Russian, and nothing is in the Georgian language. 

One of the rooms has a massive communications box with plenty of buttons and two headsets. Staff used the box to communicate with other Soviet bunkers in Tbilisi, Georgia, Russia, and elsewhere in the post-Soviet countries or any governmental organizations of that time. 

Above the communication box, several paper posters present the schedule, names, surnames of people working here, their home numbers and addresses, and other numbers of bunkers or organizations to call. 

This bunker also has a rare find – a diesel generator to supply the place with electricity. Most of these diesel generators were taken out from those bunkers after the collapse of the Soviet Union when people started robbing them. 

Here, you can also see ventilation system pipes that filter fresh air into the bunker. 

There is also a conference room with dark green lights, old wooden chairs, a big table with a few documents and old bottles, and a world map hanging on the wall. Honestly, this room looks explicitly quite creepy. 

In addition, there is a first-aid room with all the necessary equipment from the past to treat the patients on-site. 

You can also see comics-like brochures on what to do during the nuclear attacks, what are the symptoms of atomic exposure, and different ways to bury a person. Therefore, the bunker also has Soviet-era equipment to measure the surface’s nuclear levels. 

Tornike says that most of the items represented in the bunker have originally been here, but some are brought from other bunkers or donated by somebody for display purposes. He also adds that they try to keep it as natural as possible for the guests to travel in the time of Soviet Tbilisi and feel the tensions of the Cold War. 

How to visit the Soviet bunker in Tbilisi

Tours are held on demand, and they don’t have a particular schedule at the moment. You can contact Tornike on this Facebook page, he is very responsive, and you can schedule a time with him directly. 

Alternatively, join WT Georgia on an organized tour. You can get 10% off on your spot on their tours by emailing them a code: Red Fedora. 

The tour lasts around 30-40 minutes, but it can be slightly longer depending on the questions and interests of the group. 

He is attentive to every question and answers it as thoroughly as he can. He also explains everything in detail, how the Soviet Union worked in terms of Civic Education and Defense, giving a brief history of the governmental state of that time, before going into details of the bunker system.  

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