Stalin: A Biography

It would not be a surprise if the crisis strengthened maternal protectiveness. Keke’s disappointment in her husband was sublimated into high expectations of her Joseph — and the fact that he was her only surviving child intensified her preoccupation with him. Keke was a typical Georgian woman of the period. There was no realistic opportunity for her to break out of the vicious circle of poverty. The best she could do was to earn a little from cleaning and sewing for better-off families. This would alleviate the poverty. But basic improvement would have to wait until the next generation. Joseph was her sole hope.

Yet she could not keep him in the house for ever. Joseph had a mind of his own and wanted to be accepted by the other boys. Once Joseph started to go out on to the streets, however, he had to cope with another challenge. The boys in Gori formed gangs in each little district. There was a lot of rough-and-tumble. There was much mixing of the various national groups. Respect accrued to those lads who could look after themselves in wrestling contests organised out of sight of the adults. Fist fights were common. Joseph, who had been tied to his mother’s apron strings, took time to assert himself. His contemporary Kote Charkviani wrote: ‘Before he was enrolled at school, not a day passed without someone thumping him, and he would either go back home in tears or else he himself would rough someone up.’²¹ But as Charkviani noted, Joseph was determined to prevail. No matter how many times he was knocked down, he got back up and fought on. He broke the rules if it helped him to win. Joseph was sly. He was also ambitious: he wanted to lead the gang and was resentful when he did not get his way.

But his mother continued to adore him and point him in the direction of an ecclesiastical career; and he was obliged to conform whenever she was near him. Regular church attendance was obligatory. Soon he caught the attention of influential figures in the town. Joseph was God-fearing and bright. He was exactly the sort of boy whom the priests wanted to admit to the Gori Spiritual School, especially in the light of his mother’s wish for him to enter the clergy. Joseph was given a place in summer 1888 in his tenth year. His studies would start in September.

Poor though the Dzhughashvili family was, Joseph was being given a chance only a few dozen boys got in the town: he was going to be educated. He would receive a small stipend of three rubles a month.²² A portrait of him as he commenced his studies comes from a memoir by Vano Ketskhoveli:²³

I… saw that among the pupils was standing a boy I didn’t know, dressed in a long akhalukhi [a plain, cloth body-garment] which went down to his knees, in new boots with high tops. He had a thick leather belt tightly drawn around his waist. On his head was a black cloth peak-cap with a varnished peak which shone in the sun.

No one else wore either an akhalukhi or such boots, and the other pupils pressed around him out of curiosity. Obviously his mother was very eager to dress her son as well as possible; she had coddled him since birth. She herself had never been to school, and probably she did not understand that by dressing him up differently, she did him no favours with his fellow pupils.

Gradually he began to stand up to her. When out of her sight, he pulled off his white collar and mixed with the other boys on the streets.²⁴ He adopted the same routines at school. All first-hand accounts recorded his pugnacity towards rivals. But he was also devout, hard-working and determined to succeed, and the path on which he was stepping offered the chance for him to move out of the poverty he endured at home.