Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore Read Free Book Online Page A

out of the seminary, under cover of darkness, to attend their first meetings with real railway workers at little hovels built into the Holy Mountain. This first spark of conspiracy lit a fire that was never extinguished.
    Stalin became bored by the worthy educational discussions of Devdariani’s seminary club: he wanted to push the circle towards moreaggressive action. Devdariani resisted, so Stalin launched a campaign against him and started to create his own group. 6
    The two remained friendly enough for him to stay in Devdariani’s village for the Christmas holidays of 1896. Perhaps Stalin, always a master of “dosage” and soon to be a skilful abuser of hospitality, delayed the final rift so that he had somewhere to stay for the holidays. On the way, the boys visited Keke, who lived in a “little hut,” where Devdariani noticed legions of bedbugs.
    “It’s my fault, son, that we eat without wine,” said Keke over supper.
    “Mine too,” said Stalin.
    “I hope the bedbugs let you sleep?” Keke asked Devdariani.
    “I didn’t notice any such thing,” lied Devdariani tactfully.
    “Oh he felt them all right,” Stalin said to his poor mother. “He was wriggling his legs all night.” Keke noticed how Soso “avoided me, he tried to speak as little as possible.”
    On his return to the seminary in 1897, Stalin broke with Devdariani. “Major and not altogether harmless feuds . . . were usually stirred up by Koba,” says Iremashvili, who remained with Devdariani. “Koba thought it natural to be the leader and never tolerated any criticism. Two parties formed—one for Koba, and one against.” It was a pattern to be repeated throughout his life. He found a tougher mentor, meeting up again with the inspiring Lado Ketskhoveli from Gori, who had been expelled from both the Tiflis and Kiev Seminaries, arrested and now released. Soso respected no one like Lado.
    His mentor introduced his younger friend to the fiery black-eyed Silibistro “Silva” Jibladze, the legendary seminarist who had beaten up the rector. Jibladze and an elegant nobleman named Noe Jordania had, with some others, founded a Georgian socialist party, the Third Group (Mesame Dasi), in 1892. Now these Marxists reassembled in Tiflis, taking over the Kvali newspaper and starting to sow revolution among the workers. Jibladze took the teenager to the apartment of Vano Sturua, who recalls that “Jibladze brought an unknown youngster.”
    Eager to contribute, Stalin called on the group’s forceful leader, Noe Jordania, just returned from exile, at Kvali , which had published his last poem. Jordania, tall, with “a graceful and handsome face, black beard . . . and aristocratic habits and demeanour,” patronizingly suggested that Soso should study more. “I’ll think it over,” replied the truculent youth. Now he had an enemy to fight. He wrote a letter criticizing Jordania and Kvali . They refused to publish it, whereupon Stalin insulted theeditorial staff for “sitting in there for days without expressing a decent opinion!”
    Lado was also frustrated with Jordania’s gentility and it must have been he who introduced Stalin to the mainly Russian workers’ circles that were just starting to mushroom among the many small workshops of Tiflis. They met secretly at the German cemetery, at a little house beside a mill, and near the Arsenal. Stalin suggested they rent a room on Holy Mountain, “where we used to gather twice a week after dinner before call-over. It cost 5 roubles that we took from pocket-money our parents sent.” Stalin started to keep a “handwritten journal in Georgian about their discussions” which was passed from hand to hand among his followers in the seminary. 7
    He was already crossing the line from rebellious schoolboy to a revolutionary who was, for the first time, of interest to the secret police. When another Marxist activist named Sergei Alliluyev, a skilled railway worker and Stalin’s future father-in-law, was