4. POET AND REBEL
Joseph Dzhughashvili, aged fifteen, left for Tbilisi in September 1894. This time he went not to the Adelkhanov Shoe Factory but to the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary. Tiflis was the conventional foreign variant of the Georgian name Tbilisi; it was used not only in Russian but also in other European languages. Founded by the Russian Imperial authorities, the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary was at the top of Pushkin Street in the heart of the city. Although provided with board and lodging free of charge, Joseph Dzhughashvili had to pay for his tuition. This would have been a problem if he had not been able to earn a regular five rubles for singing in the Zion Cathedral down by the River Mtkvari.1 He was not the only alumnus of the Gori Spiritual School who left for Tbilisi. Along with him at the Seminary were friends of his own age from Gori, including Peter Kapanadze, Joseph Iremashvili, Vano Ketskhoveli and M. Davitashvili.2 (Joseph Davrishevi, whose father earned a decent salary, could afford the fees at the First Classical Gimnazia in Tbilisi.) Loneliness was not going to be a problem for Joseph Dzhughashvili.
He was arriving in the capital of Russian Imperial power in the south Caucasus. Tbilisi at the end of the nineteenth century was the largest city in that region of the Russian Empire with 350,000 inhabitants — only Baku on the Caspian Sea with 220,000 came remotely near in size. The Viceroy lived there and governed the dozens of peoples of the region, from the northern slopes of the Caucasus range down to the Ottoman border, on behalf of Emperor Nicholas II. The east Georgian kings had chosen Tbilisi as their capital for good reason. Like Gori, it straddled the River Mtkvari, which ran north from the mountains of Turkey; still more important in earlier centuries had been the fact that it lay across one of the ancient caravan routes that had enabled trade between central Asia and Europe. Consolidating Georgia’s permanent place in the Russian Empire, the St Petersburg government built the Georgian Military Road from Vladikavkaz to Tbilisi. This route went from north to south. (The railway linking the south Caucasus with Russia went from Baku up the Caspian coast.) Two army corps were based in the garrison on Tbilisi’s east bank. Having completed the conquest of the region in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Romanovs allocated the personnel, communications and force needed to retain it.
Tbilisi, unlike Gori, had a multinational population wherein the Georgians themselves were a minority. Along with them were Russians, Armenians, Tatars, Persians and Germans. Russians lived in the centre on the west bank. Armenian and Persian bazaars lay near by. Georgians had their district on the other side of the river. To the north of them lived German immigrants who had moved there, mainly from Württem-berg, at Emperor Alexander I’s invitation.
Joseph therefore faced a conflict of cultures much more intense than in Gori. The Russian quarter in the centre contained the City Hall, the Viceroy’s Palace, the General Staff headquarters, the Orthodox Cathedral and other churches, the Imperial Bank, the Public Library and the Military Museum. The streets were straight, the buildings tall and recently built. The German quarter was distinguished by its cleanliness and social order. The Armenians and Persians, who were the city’s great entrepreneurs, had noisy, bustling bazaars trading in silverware, carpets and spices. Georgian shopkeepers specialised in groceries, fish and footwear. On the south-eastern side of the town there were the factories and the prison which were familiar from his time working for Adelkhanov. There was also a large railway depot and repair works in the capital’s Didube district. The city bustled with high-booted Russian soldiers, Tatar men in their green and white turbans (and their becowled wives) and Germans carefully attired in the mid-European style. These inhabitants themselves were outshone by the resplendence of the traders from the heights of the Caucasus in their traditional costumes: Ossetians, Kabardians, Chechens and Ingush.
Georgians had only a limited influence over the city’s affairs. St Petersburg’s appointees, usually Russians, ran the administration and led the armed forces. Banking was in Russian and Jewish hands and the largest commercial enterprises were owned by Armenians. The Russian hierarchy dominated the Georgian Orthodox Church since, in 1811, Emperor Alexander I had sanctioned its incorporation into the Russian Orthodox Church. The Tiflis Spiritual Seminary entered by Joseph was subject to the ecclesiastical authorities in St Petersburg.
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.