Stalin: A Biography

His intelligence and diligence had been recognised. His peculiarities were noted by acquaintances: he was volatile, sly and resentful. But nobody yet felt that these features existed to an abnormal degree. He had had a rougher upbringing than most other boys in the town and much was forgiven him. It was only in retrospect that the cocktail of permanent harm to his personality became detectable. He was mistreated by his father, and detested him. At the same time his mother handled him as a very special person; much was expected of him. Being an only child, he was spoiled. This can only have increased his resentment at the way his father behaved towards him. The fuss made of him by Keke protected him for a while against the rough games of the local boys. But the will to prove himself had not been cosseted out of him, and his father’s recurrent violence gave him a competing model of the kind of man he wanted to be. Although he desired to become a priest, he also wished to prove his toughness. He had known no fairness from his father; he would show none to those contemporaries who got in his way. He was not the strongest fighter on his streets but compensated by using methods that others avoided. His constant wish was to get on top and stay there: this was one of the few attitudes shared by his father and mother, albeit in their different ways.

The upbringing of young Dzhughashvili did not predetermine the career of Joseph Stalin. There were too many contradictions in his personality and parental treatment for a single possible result to be predictable. A lot more had to happen before psychological settlement occurred, and this included his particular experiences as well as events in the wider world. Yet without the childhood experienced by Joseph there would have been no Stalin. For the tree to grow there had to be a seed.

3. THE SCHOOLING OF A PRIEST

Joseph took time to benefit fully from his educational opportunity. Not having spoken Russian at home, he stayed in the preparatory classes for two years. But he proved a quick learner and already knew enough of the language to leap over the beginners’ class. He started the full course in September 1890.¹ Beso Dzhughashvili had never liked the idea of his boy becoming a scholar. At some early stage of Joseph’s course at the Gori Spiritual School,² there was a terrible row between Beso and Keke. The angry Beso triumphed and took Joseph back to Tbilisi with him to work at the Adelkhanov Shoe Factory. Joseph was to become an apprentice and drop Keke’s plan for him to enter the priesthood.³ Beso was a drunk and a failed artisan; but his attitude was not unusual. He insisted that what was good enough for him in employment was equally appropriate for his offspring.

The authorities categorised the Adelkhanov Shoe Factory as among the most decent in Georgia towards its eighty workers since, unlike rival factories, it had its own medical facilities. Yet most people thought Emile Adelkhanov, who had opened his enterprise in 1875, a harsh exploiter of his workforce. Wages were low and the conditions were especially harsh for young boys — indeed the same authorities worried about the large number of youngsters employed by Adelkhanov and about the effects on their health and upbringing in the grim, rectangular building.⁴ Adelkhanov was no philanthropist. When the terms of trade turned against him at the end of the century, he instantly cut wages. The result was a bitterly fought strike.⁵ For Beso Dzhughashvili, however, Adelkhanov’s cost-cutting recruitment of minors was a definite attraction. The extra money, however small initially, would come in useful: Joseph could start to pay his own way. He would not see much of the centre of Tbilisi with its palaces, cathedrals and grand shops. They lodged in a cheap room in the Avlabari district on the left bank of the River Mtkvari and each day walked down past the Metekhi Prison and over the bridge into the winding, cobbled streets of the Ortachala district where the factory stood. Joseph’s first encounter with capitalism was raw, harsh and dispiriting.

Yet he cannot have failed to note how different Tbilisi was from Gori. A mixture of cultures existed around the Adelkhanov Shoe Factory. Apart from the rival Mantashëv Shoe Factory there were synagogues for the Tbilisi Jews, several Armenian churches and half a dozen Georgian churches. Near by there were the sulphur baths used by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin earlier in the century. The entire area, including the gently bubbling stretch of the River Mtkvari, lay across hot springs valued for their medicinal properties. During his time in the factory, Joseph Dzhughashvili was being shown that a wider world of experience existed than he could possibly have imagined as a schoolboy in Gori.