Stalin: A Biography

As his time in the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary drew to an end, Joseph had become thoroughly alienated from the authorities. He had ceased to study hard from his second year when he became involved in writing and publishing.³⁰ He was also drawing back from the world of literature. Despite the patronage of Ilya Chavchavadze and Giorgi Tsereteli, he no longer sought to be a poet. He tossed aside the opportunity to join the Georgian cultural elite. Instead he intensified his studies of socialism, politics and economics. Having hurtled like a small meteor across the Tbilisi literary scene in 1895–6, he just as suddenly disappeared. It would appear that he entirely stopped composing poetry. Few people apart from his publishers and his close friends at the Seminary had an inkling that he had ever published any. (When Yakob Gogebashvili reprinted ‘Morning’ in 1912, it was under the original pseudonym.)³¹ Dzhughashvili searched for a different way of life from the kind offered either by the priesthood or Tbilisi literary circles. His alter ego as a rough-voiced militant from the depths of society was beginning to emerge; and as far as most people knew, this persona was the only Dzhughashvili who existed.

He detested the disciplinary regime at the Seminary. On 28 September 1898 he was the centre of a group found to be reading prohibited material. Joseph had even taken notes on it.³² Inspector Abashidze, exasperated by infringements, reported:

Dzhughashvili, Iosif (V.I.) in the course of a search of the possessions of certain fifth-year pupils spoke out several times to the inspectors, giving voice in his comments to discontent about the searches conducted from time to time among the seminarists. In one of them he asserted that such searches were not made in a single other seminary. In general, pupil Dzhughashvili is rude and disrespectful towards persons in authority and systematically fails to bow to one of the teachers (A. A. Murakhovski), as the latter has frequently reported to the inspectors.

Reprimanded. Confined to the cell for five hours by order of Father Rector.

Joseph’s behaviour was almost asking for trouble and the Rector’s reaction aggravated the tension in the young man. It was only a matter of time before Joseph threw up his priestly vocation.

He stuck it out almost to the end of the course. There were pragmatic reasons for this. A piece of paper attesting completion of the seminary training, even if he declined to enter the priesthood, would have given him the qualifications (if he had the necessary money) to become a student in one of the Russian Empire’s universities. But Joseph had no private source of income and had no connection with any organisation which might support him. He would have to make his living for himself from scratch. Consequently his disappearance from the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary in May 1899, as the last examinations were about to be sat, was an act of existential choice. He left no explanation of his decision to the authorities. In later years he pretended that he had been expelled for carrying out ‘Marxist propaganda’;³³ but the reality was that he had left of his own accord. His was a wilful spirit. He had lost his religious faith and was beginning to discover a different way of interpreting the world in Marxism. He was also impulsive. Joseph Dzhughashvili had had enough: he left the priestly environment on his own terms. Always he wanted the world to function to his wishes. If he left a mess behind him, too bad. He had made his decision.

He abhorred the Imperial authorities. He had national pride. In Tbilisi he responded to the intellectual effervescence of Georgian public life at the end of the nineteenth century. He already considered himself a man of outstanding ability. He had already shown his ambition by getting his poems published.