Young Stalin Read Online Free Page A
Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Tags: History, Biography, War, Non-Fiction, Politics
time. If he coveted a volume, he was happy to steal it from another schoolboy and run home with it. When he was about thirteen, Lado Ketskhoveli took him to a little bookshop in Gori where he paid a five kopeck subscription and borrowed a book that was probably Darwin’s Origin of Species . Stalin read it all night, forgetting to sleep, until Keke found him.
“Time to go to bed,” she said. “Go to sleep—dawn is breaking.”
“I loved the book so much, Mummy, I couldn’t stop reading . . .” As his reading intensified, his piety wavered.
One day Soso and some friends, including Grisha Glurjidze, lay on the grass in town talking about the injustice of there being rich and poor when he amazed all of them by suddenly saying: “God’s not unjust, he doesn’t actually exist. We’ve been deceived. If God existed, he’d have made the world more just.”
“Soso! How can you say such things?” exclaimed Grisha.
“I’ll lend you a book and you’ll see.” He presented Glurjidze with a copy of Darwin.
Soso’s dreams of handing down justice merged with the stories of popular bandit-heroes and the resurgent Georgian nationalism. He revered the poems of the Georgian nationalist Prince Raphael Eristavi, memorizing his masterpiece Khevsur’s Motherland . “That wonderful poem,” Stalin enthused in old age. The schoolboy was now writing his own romantic poems. All the boys hung around Stalin’s place avidly discussing these forbidden ideas and works. 3
By now, Stalin had fallen in love, another human moment that was cut out of the official memoirs and never published. His passion was for Father Charkviani’s daughter: he and his mother had rented rooms from the family. “In the third form, he fell in love with the Charkviani girl,” says Giorgi Elisabedashvili. “He used to tell me about this emotion and laugh at himself for the fact that he was carried away with the sentiment.” When she was learning Russian, “I often dropped by and took an interest in these lessons,” Stalin reminisced fifty years later. “Once when the pupil was in trouble, I gave her a hand . . .” We do not know whether the priest’s daughter returned his love, but the two of them had always been close in childhood as her brother Kote noticed: “He began to play dolls with my sister. He’d drive her to tears, but after a moment they’d reconcile and sit together with their books as real friends . . .” 4
One event—the “most remarkable occasion in Gori in the late nineteenth century”—made a deep impression on Stalin. On 13 February 1892, the teachers of the church school ordered all their pupils to attend a gruesome mise-en-scène that they hoped “would arouse fear and respect in the boys”: a hanging.
Three gallows were erected on a sunny winter’s day on the banks of the Kura River beneath the mountain fortress. Many of the Gorelis came to watch and the uniforms of the church school pupils were visible in the crowd. But the boys were “deeply depressed by the execution.”
The condemned men had stolen a cow and, in the ensuing pursuit, had killed a policeman. But the boys learned that the criminals were actually just three “peasants who had been so oppressed by landowners that they escaped into the forest,” petty Robin Hoods, attacking only local squires and helping other peasants. Stalin and Peter Kapanadze wondered how it could be right to kill the bandits given that the priests taught them the Mosaic commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” The two schoolboys were especially appalled to see a priest standing at the gallows with a big cross.
The boys were fascinated. “Soso Djugashvili, me and four other schoolboys climbed a tree and watched the terrifying show from there,” remembers one of the group, Grigory Razmadze. (Yet the police chief Davrichewy banned his own son from attending.) Another spectator whom Stalin would later befriend and promote was Maxim Gorky, then a journalist, soon to be
“Time to go to bed,” she said. “Go to sleep—dawn is breaking.”
“I loved the book so much, Mummy, I couldn’t stop reading . . .” As his reading intensified, his piety wavered.
One day Soso and some friends, including Grisha Glurjidze, lay on the grass in town talking about the injustice of there being rich and poor when he amazed all of them by suddenly saying: “God’s not unjust, he doesn’t actually exist. We’ve been deceived. If God existed, he’d have made the world more just.”
“Soso! How can you say such things?” exclaimed Grisha.
“I’ll lend you a book and you’ll see.” He presented Glurjidze with a copy of Darwin.
Soso’s dreams of handing down justice merged with the stories of popular bandit-heroes and the resurgent Georgian nationalism. He revered the poems of the Georgian nationalist Prince Raphael Eristavi, memorizing his masterpiece Khevsur’s Motherland . “That wonderful poem,” Stalin enthused in old age. The schoolboy was now writing his own romantic poems. All the boys hung around Stalin’s place avidly discussing these forbidden ideas and works. 3
By now, Stalin had fallen in love, another human moment that was cut out of the official memoirs and never published. His passion was for Father Charkviani’s daughter: he and his mother had rented rooms from the family. “In the third form, he fell in love with the Charkviani girl,” says Giorgi Elisabedashvili. “He used to tell me about this emotion and laugh at himself for the fact that he was carried away with the sentiment.” When she was learning Russian, “I often dropped by and took an interest in these lessons,” Stalin reminisced fifty years later. “Once when the pupil was in trouble, I gave her a hand . . .” We do not know whether the priest’s daughter returned his love, but the two of them had always been close in childhood as her brother Kote noticed: “He began to play dolls with my sister. He’d drive her to tears, but after a moment they’d reconcile and sit together with their books as real friends . . .” 4
One event—the “most remarkable occasion in Gori in the late nineteenth century”—made a deep impression on Stalin. On 13 February 1892, the teachers of the church school ordered all their pupils to attend a gruesome mise-en-scène that they hoped “would arouse fear and respect in the boys”: a hanging.
Three gallows were erected on a sunny winter’s day on the banks of the Kura River beneath the mountain fortress. Many of the Gorelis came to watch and the uniforms of the church school pupils were visible in the crowd. But the boys were “deeply depressed by the execution.”
The condemned men had stolen a cow and, in the ensuing pursuit, had killed a policeman. But the boys learned that the criminals were actually just three “peasants who had been so oppressed by landowners that they escaped into the forest,” petty Robin Hoods, attacking only local squires and helping other peasants. Stalin and Peter Kapanadze wondered how it could be right to kill the bandits given that the priests taught them the Mosaic commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” The two schoolboys were especially appalled to see a priest standing at the gallows with a big cross.
The boys were fascinated. “Soso Djugashvili, me and four other schoolboys climbed a tree and watched the terrifying show from there,” remembers one of the group, Grigory Razmadze. (Yet the police chief Davrichewy banned his own son from attending.) Another spectator whom Stalin would later befriend and promote was Maxim Gorky, then a journalist, soon to be