Stalin: A Biography

The Seminary was a large building with a raised portico of Ionic columns surmounted by a pediment. Built by the sugar millionaire Zubalishvili, it had been bought from him in 1873 by the Russian Orthodox Church and converted to ecclesiastical use. The frontage was architecturally crude. There were no steps to the portico, which had been included for display rather than practical function. The peoples of the Caucasus were meant to be impressed with the grandeur of Imperial power, and the Seminary symbolised the suzerainty of the Romanovs over the spiritual as well as the temporal affairs of the region. The rest of the building was like a barracks.³ There were four floors. Near the entrance were the cloak room and the refectory. The first floor contained a large hall which had been converted into a chapel. The second and third floors consisted of classrooms and the fourth was given over to dormitories. The décor was plain and there was no privacy for the seminarists. An open corridor connected the dormitories; personal belongings were on open view. Cassocks, textbooks and Bible were standard issue. Like their fellows halfway down Golovin Prospect at the First Classical Gimnazia, the seminarists were being trained to serve God, Tsar and Empire.

At the time of Dzhughashvili’s arrival the Exarch of Georgia was Archbishop Vladimir. The Rector from 1898 was Germogen, a Russian. The Seminary Inspector was a Georgian called Abashidze. The Russian priesthood was not known for liberal political and social convictions. The appointees to the Georgian Exarchate were even more reactionary than the norm in Russia and several were to identify themselves publicly with the cause of Russian nationalism in later years. Many were virulent anti-semites propagating notions that can now be recognised as proto-fascist. While functioning in Georgia, they regarded it as their duty to stamp out signs of Georgian national assertiveness.⁴ They carried this intolerance to an extreme. The Georgian language was severely restricted in the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary and students were required to speak and write Russian or else face punishment. Archpriest Ioann Vostorgov, who influenced ecclesiastical educational policy across the Russian Empire, gave the rationale for this. He argued that Tbilisi was highly multiethnic and that there was no sense in privileging Georgian over other languages.⁵ Some priests less courteously referred to Georgian as ‘a filthy language’.⁶

The rules were strict. Seminarists were allowed into the city for just an hour a day. Gestures of respect were demanded for the Rector and his staff. Discipline was administered from Inspector Abashidze’s office to the left of the foyer. Miscreants were punishable by solitary confinement. The authorities recruited informers from among the seminarists to stamp out insubordination. Only approved books were allowed into the building. Regular inspections were made of the lockers. The food was plain, and only those who lived in lodgings got relief from a diet heavily reliant on beans and bread. Seminarists went to bed early in the evening and rose early in the morning. The shock to Joseph and his fellow newcomers can hardly be exaggerated. Always in Gori they could come and go as they pleased after school. Rector Germogen’s regime prohibited all that. What made things worse for Joseph was his age. He was already in the second half of his adolescence when he left Gori. Often the Seminary took in boys in their thirteenth year. Being three years older than the normal first-year seminarists, Joseph was less easily malleable.

His biographers have tended to underrate the quality of the curriculum. The reason is the usual one: they have uncritically reproduced what Stalin’s enemies in the revolutionary movement published on the topic. For them, he was an ignoramus with inadequate schooling. Stalin himself reinforced this impression. As a revolutionary he disliked drawing attention to the benefits he derived from the Imperial order. In fact only very bright boys were admitted to the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary and the schooling was pitched at a higher level than in less prestigious ecclesiastical institutions. There were two such seminaries in Tbilisi: one for Georgians, the other for Armenians; they attracted youths who lacked the finance to enter the First Classical Gimnazia. Indeed some parents entered their boys for the seminaries in the knowledge that the course could be used as a qualification to go on to secular higher education.