Stalin by Oleg V. Khlevniuk Read Free Book Online Page B

taking care of his need for both money and housing.
    Continuing to work with revolutionary groups, he soon aligned himself with the radical wing of the Tiflis Social Democratic organization, which rejected agitation through legal propaganda and instead favored fomenting strikes and demonstrations. Given the twenty-two-year-old rebel’s record at the seminary and his friendship with such revolutionaries as Lado Ketskhoveli, his turn toward radicalism is hardly surprising.
    The years 1900 and 1901 saw a wave of strikes in Tiflis, followed by crackdowns. Under threat of arrest, Jughashvili left the weather station and went underground. There was no turning back; he had become a professional revolutionary.
    Whatever their backgrounds, Russian revolutionaries tended to have one thing in common. Their break with ordinary life and move underground took place in a moment of hatred and decisiveness: hatred for the existing order and a decision to combat it. In the Russian Empire, there was no shortage of either emotion. An authoritarian regime and social injustices created a breeding ground for rebels. The persecution to which radicals were subjected radicalized them still more. The hatred felt by Ioseb Jughashvili, aroused by the arbitrariness and obscurantism that prevailed at the seminary, was further inspired by the propaganda and actions of his more experienced comrades, those who had chosen the path of revolution before him. His decisiveness was both a feature of his character and a product of the milieu into which he was born. Anyone with social origins like his had little to lose.
    In exploring the sources of Stalin’s rebelliousness and ruthlessness, many historians have pointed to the atmosphere that reigned in the outlying regions of the Russian Empire. Alfred Rieber has called him a “man of the borderlands.” 31 The Caucasus, a roiling cauldron of social and ethnic conflict where industrial enclaves emerged amid tribal traditions, would inevitably have played a role in shaping Stalin’s character. Jörg Baberowski has written that Stalin and his comrades-in-arms “brought into the party, both at the center and edges of the empire, the culture of violence of the Caucasian periphery, the blood feud and archaic conceptions of honor.” 32 Such opinions are supported by Boris Nicolaevsky, a Social Democrat who later became a well-known historian. Before the revolution, Nicolaevsky had spent time in Transcaucasia and had even met with Jughashvili. He described the future dictator as “exceptionally vicious and vindictive” and capable of applying “the most extreme measures” in his struggle to dominate the party. Yet many of Jughashvili’s opponents within the Social Democratic movement were no different. Nicolaevsky said he was told that these traits resulted from “the injection of Caucasian mores into the intraparty struggle.” 33
    It is not unreasonable to take into account the mentality forged by the hardships and tragic history of the Russian borderlands. Yet the entire Russian Empire was one vast borderland: between Asia and Europe, between the promises of modernization and the deteriorating traditional ways of life, between the city and the country, between authoritarianism and democratic strivings, between the obscurantism of the regime and the bloodthirstiness of many revolutionaries. Whatever features may be particular to the Caucasus must be seen within the context of the Russian culture of extremism and violence, which merely provided an outlet for the impulse. Such a context does not, of course, relieve young Jughashvili of personal responsibility for his choices.
    Revolutionaries are not all cut from the same cloth. Many throw themselves into the fight under the influence of youth, ardor, and thrill seeking. These factors were probably not what led Stalin onto this path, though they should not be discounted entirely. The future dictator could be described as a calculating revolutionary, the sort who