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Sabrina Campbell

Ms. Figueroa

World Literature - Block C

April 8, 2022

Young Stalin
By: Simon Sebag Montefiore

This book goes into extreme detail about Stalin's life from his birth in 1878 to
when he seized power in Russia in 1917. It talks about all of the hardships he
experienced as a child, including his dad who would beat him, his mother who had
to leave her husband to both save herself and her child and almost dying multiple
times.
It goes into all of those years going through education to become a priest,
Living in Gori and relaxing in the mountains with his friends to a seminary in Tiflis
with strict rules and many punishments. After many years at the seminary he left to
become a missionary, partially because the tuition was raised and he couldn’t pay for
it.
Later while he is still a beginner in the revolutionary world, he gains many
followers' names, Sosoists. Some of these Sosists were even friends from his
hometown, Gori. Slowly he started to gain more followers and more skills on how to
discreetly and effectively spread the revolutionary mission. While all of this is
happening Stalin was having many affairs, he kept on doing this for the rest of his life.
Later on Stalin was elected to go meet the leader of the revolutionaries, his hero,
Lenin, for the first time. Although he was fairly underwhelmed by Lenin’s presence
and frequently criticized him, he still respected him and worked with him throughout
his life.
Now Stalin needed somewhere to live and began to stay with a family of
seamstresses. The youngest, Kato, his future wife, was there to help and take care of
him. They very quickly fell in love with each other and decided to get married. Sadly,
she did not know how hard it was to be the wife of a revolutionary.. Stalin had got her
pregnant. Stalin was traveling for his revolutionary work even though he knew it was
not good for his wife or baby. After some time without proper care, Kato had died
from typhus.
A long while after Stalin was thrown into an excruciating exile in the extreme
cold. Many times he thought that he would have died. Things started to look up for
him while he had a lover, some close friends, and a dog. After his exile he was freed
and was now back on track to become a revolutionary leader. Although in 1917 he
then began to gain real power and grabbed a hold of Russia as a leader.
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1. What is Stalin’s occupation? What is he known for?

Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the USSR, also known as the Union of
Socialist Republics. He was best known for being a ruthless dictator and had
many people’s blood on his hands. Stalin “ruled by terror” (“Joseph Stalin” par
1). Despite this, he was able to grow the Soviet Union from a small rebel
community, to a globally known military organization (“Joseph Stalin” par 1).
Although he is most commonly known as the leader of the USSR, he was also
a tutor while in school. Later in his career he was known as part of the Big
Three, the Allied leaders. The three leaders were the American President
Roosevelt, Winston Churchill who was the British Prime Minister and the
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (“How the ‘Big Three’ Teed Up the Cold War at
the 1945 Yalta Conference” par 2). The Big Three were working together to try
to prevent Germany from starting another World War. Although all of these
different leaders had different opinions on what to do, Stalin thought they
should “...divide Germany to make it incapable of launching another war and to
use Eastern Europe as a buffer zone for additional protection” (“How the ‘Big
Three’ Teed Up the Cold War at the 1945 Yalta Conference” par 4).
Earlier in his life, Stalin was at the head of the Great Purge, also
referred to as the “Great Terror”, which had lasted from around 1934 to Stalin’s
death in 1953. During this time, Before solid evidence on the Soviet Union had
been declassified, it was believed Stalin was responsible for the deaths of “20
million or higher” (“Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.”
par 2). Now that we have concrete statistics we now know caused more
similarly to 9.8 million. Although he did execute many people and sent many
others to labor camps or gulags, about 6.5 deaths were caused by
ill-maintenance of his people known as the Soviet famine of 1932-1933.

2. What are his cultural origins? (where was he born and family ancestry)

Stalin was born into poverty in Gori, Georgia as Josef Vissarionovich

Djugashvili. His birth date was “...on December 18, 1878, or December 6, 1878,
according to the Old Style Julian calendar…” (“Joseph Stalin” par 4). His parents
were his father, Vissarion “Beso” Djugashvili who was twenty-two years old,
and seventeen year old Ekaterina “Keke” Geladze. Beso was a handsome man
whose career was as a cobbler. Keke was known to be very beautiful as well
with freckles and reddish brown hair. (Montefiore pg 19).

3. What is his personal history? (brief background including career, marriage,

and death)

Although Stalin didn’t have many jobs he did have a few. First, his father
forced him to be an apprentice cobbler and “...this was to be Stalin’s only
experience of a worker’s existence during a life devoted to the proletariat”
(Montefiore pg 47). He also worked as a tutor while attending a seminary in
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Tiflis. Even though he was a very good and well known tutor, his personality
was probably not a very good match for the job because he had a short
temper. The career he is most known for is being the dictator of the USSR.
While he was in this position he had a lot of power and was able to control all
of his people which ended up killing many people. His most recognized
spouse was Ekaterina “Kato” Svanidze, a beautiful seamstress. They had one
kid together named Yakov but Kato died when he was just an infant. Stalin
died from a stroke at the age of 74 on March 5, 1953.

4. What is the history of his country? (during his lifetime) How did the history
impact his success or failure?

During this time, capitalism started to rise in Georgia. This concerned

the nobles because this helped the Armenian middle class and started to feel
threatened. At the beginning of the 19th century a national liberation
movement started to form because of the combination between the rise in
Armenian success and the Tsarist autocracy. This impacted Stalin’s success
because, the more people that will be upset and join the movement, the more
people will be on his side and under his power.

5. What group is associated with him?

He was associated with the Bolshevik political party. The people who
made up the party “…were a far-left, revolutionary Marxist faction…”
(“Bolsheviks” par 1). The Bolsheviks used to be part of the Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party before they split off from the Mensheviks, the other
part of the RSDLP, in 1898. (“Bolsheviks” par 1). The leader of this party was
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, most commonly known as Lenin. During the 1905
Revolution, many members of either the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks
decided to switch to the opposite party. (“Bolsheviks” par 13). The Mensheviks
thought that the Bolsheviks what to much of a rough approach to the
revolutionary cause. They actually called Stalin a “bandit” (Montefiore pg 185).
A perfect representation of this is that the Bolsheviks were called “hards” and
the Mensheviks were called “softs”. (“Bolsheviks” par 7).

6. What are the practices/traditions of the group associated with him? (from #5)

Bolsheviks were opposed to the World War and wanted the soldiers
who were fighting to turn against all of their leaders and revolt. After a while
many of them did, partially because the war didn’t not turn out nearly as well
for Russia as they thought it would. In 1917 the soldiers were striking because
of the lack of food and they started to join the Bolsheviks in the cause. Soon
after “Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, ending centuries of czarist rule”
(“Bolsheviks revolt in Russia” par 5). After the war he was able to travel to
Sweden from going through Germany, they kicked him out so he had to go to
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FInland, but he made a good impact there. The majority of Petrograd soviets
had liked Lenin and sometime later he returned to Petrograd and proclaimed
soviet rule. (“Bolsheviks revolt in Russia”)

7. Did he practice a religion, philosophy, belief system or other devotion? (the

person you chose not the group)

Stalin was raised Catholic and even was put through school to become
a priest. He was a star student and had a beautiful voice in the choir. Many of
his teachers didn’t like him because he was a very troublesome kid and did
not follow the rules. He was not allowed to speak in Georgian or read banned,
revolutionary, books. Once he grew up he went to the top seminary in south
Georgia in Tiflis. The rules were much more strict there and Stalin had a hard
time in this seminary. He started to be even more rebellious than before and
constantly got caught reading prohibited books. One of the priests at the
school, Father “Black Spot” was constantly on his tail. He was always raiding
and going through young Stalin's belongings, never caring about his privacy.
(Young Stalin) He believed in communism, he wanted to be in control of all of
his people’s lives. Because of this communist belief an unbelievable amount
of his people died. (Young Stalin)

8. What impact has he had on the world?

The impact he has had on the world is still here. For years the USSR
was still in control of Russia even after Stalin’s death. Even now Russia is still
trying to recover from the severe oppression they were put through. Many
groups of people were completely wiped out because of Stalin and some
countries are still communist countries. It will still take many years to fully
recover from Stalin’s “Great Purge” it is achievable.

9. Would you be interested in meeting him? Why?

I would definitely be interested to meet him in person, only if I am

guaranteed safety to say anything to him. This is because he is a very
interesting person. I would like to ask him why he did all of these insane things
that he did. Not only that, I would want to know more about his tragic
childhood and his father because that must have been unbelievable to go
through as a young child. I am also intrigued by his close friend Kamo and
would like to know more of how deteriorated his mental state actually was.
Knowing more about his wife and how he treated her and her family after she
died would be sad, but needed to capture his love for her.
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Works Cited

“Joseph Stalin.” A&E Networks. November 12, 2009. Web. March 27, 2022.

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/joseph-stalin

“How the ‘Big Three’ Teed Up the Cold War at the 1945 Yalta Conference.” A&E

Networks. June 25, 2020. Web. April 7, 2022.

https://www.history.com/news/yalta-conference-big-three-wwii-cold-war

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Young Stalin. Vintage Books. 2007. Print.

“Great Purge.” A&E Networks. March 15, 2018. Web. April 7, 2022.

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/great-purge

“Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.” Wikipedia Foundation.

Web. April 7, 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_J

oseph_Stalin

“Bolsheviks.” Wikipedia Foundation. Web. April 8, 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks

“Bolsheviks revolt in Russia.” A&E Networks. February 9, 2010. Web. April 8, 2022.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bolsheviks-revolt-in-russia

“Vladimir Lenin.” Wikipedia Foundation. Web, April 8, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin

“History of Georgia (country).” Wikipedia Foundation. Web. April 8, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Georgia_(country)

“Bolshevism.” Wikipedia Foundation. Web. April 8, 2022