There are vague and inconsistent accounts by memoirists claiming that Ioseb Jughashvili’s rebellious behavior and break with religion dated to his days in Gori. Leon (Lev) Trotsky, one of Stalin’s first biographers (and hardly an impartial one), convincingly argues that Stalin’s former classmates are confusing the Gori period with events that took place later, in Tiflis.13 The best proof of the schoolboy Soso’s exemplary behavior and law-abiding attitude is the glowing assessment on his graduation certificate and the recommendation that he enroll in a seminary.
In September 1894, having successfully passed the entry examination, young Jughashvili enrolled in the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Ekaterine and her son enjoyed good fortune here as well. The seminary was more eager to have students born into the clerical estate, and others were required to pay tuition. But Ioseb’s abilities, along with the intercession of friends and relatives, earned him a free room and meals in the seminary cafeteria. He was required to pay only for his courses and clothing.14 Did the ambitious boy perceive this as a demeaning handout to a “poor relative”? Perhaps. But it is equally possible that this grant-in-aid was viewed as a recognition of past achievements.
Stalin spent more than four and a half years in the Tiflis seminary, from the autumn of 1894 to May 1899. The move to a large city undoubtedly brought a degree of stress. However, Ioseb had not come alone but with a group of friends and acquaintances from the Gori Theological School. Furthermore, he seems to have found the course work relatively easy. He ranked eighth in his class in his first year and fifth the next year. His behavior was assessed as “excellent.”15
Yet behind this promising façade lurked a growing dissatisfaction and insubordination. While there is no moment that stands out as marking his departure from the path of the law-abiding and well-adjusted student, we do have two well-known pieces of evidence attesting to the unbearable living conditions at the seminary. The first such testimony belongs to Stalin himself. In 1931, in an interview with German writer Emil Ludwig, he described the seminary’s role in pushing him toward insurrection: “In protest against the outrageous regime and the Jesuitical methods prevalent at the seminary, I was ready to become, and actually did become, a revolutionary, a believer in Marxism as a really revolutionary teaching.… For instance, the spying in the hostel. At nine o’clock the bell rings for morning tea, we go to the dining-room, and when we return to our rooms we find that meantime a search has been made and all our chests have been ransacked.”16 This account is supplemented by a widely cited description by one of Stalin’s classmates:
We were brought to a four-story building and put in huge dormitory rooms with 20–30 people each.… Life in the theological seminary was repetitious and monotonous. We arose at seven in the morning. First, we were forced to pray, then we had tea, and after the bell we went to class.… Classes continued, with breaks, until two o’clock. At three we had supper. At five there was roll call, after which we were not allowed to leave the building. We felt as if we were in prison. We were again taken to vespers, and at eight we had tea, and then each class went to its own room to do assignments, and at ten it was lights out, sleep.17
Having only Sundays free of this regimentation probably did not much brighten the seminarians’ lives, especially as the day was partially taken up by mandatory church services. It was a regime of constant surveillance, searches, denunciations, and punishments. Although the range of disciplines was somewhat broader than in Gori—in addition to scripture, church singing, Russian philology, and the Greek and Georgian languages, the curriculum included biblical and secular history and mathematics—intellectual life was constrained by dogmatism. The reading of secular literature was harshly punished and Russification was crudely enforced, insulting the national pride of Georgian seminarians. The strong undercurrent of resentment and rebellion among the students was hardly surprising. A strike had erupted the year before Ioseb enrolled. The seminarians stopped attending their classes and demanded an end to arbitrariness by the teachers and the firing of some of them. In response, the authorities closed down the institution and expelled a large number of students.
The firm suppression of unrest doubtless helps account for the lack of open protest during Ioseb’s years at the seminary. Any individual or group dissent was kept underground. At first the future dictator found an outlet in romantic literary heroes exemplifying the struggle for justice, especially those from Georgian literature. One of his first models came from The Patricide, a novel by Alexandre Kazbegi. This was a tale of the fearless and noble avenger Koba, scourge of Russian oppressors and the Georgian aristocracy.18 Koba became the future leader’s first pseudonym, one he treasured and allowed his closest comrades to use for him throughout his life.
His fascination with romantic rebellion flavored with Georgian nationalism predictably led young Stalin to try his hand at verse. After completing his first year at the seminary, he brought a sample of his poetry to the editorial office of a Georgian newspaper, which published five poems between June and October 1895. Another poem appeared in a different newspaper the following summer. The poems, written in Georgian, extolled service to the motherland and the people. During Stalin’s leadership of the Soviet Union, his poetry was translated into Russian, but these translations were not included among his collected works. He undoubtedly understood that his undistinguished and naive verse belied the image of the single-minded revolutionary:
A lark in the high clouds
Sang ever so sonorously.
And a joyous nightingale said this:
“Blossom, lovely land,
Exult, country of Georgians.
And you, Georgian,
Gladden your motherland with learning.”19
Although such lines do nothing to soften the image of Stalin the dictator, they do attest to the pure intentions of Jughashvili the seminarian, who found inspiration in the ideas of service to the motherland and the people. During his third year at the seminary, these vague, half-formed strivings did lead to one concrete step. Ioseb joined an illegal discussion group of seminarians and apparently assumed a leadership role within it. The books read by the group were perfectly legal but forbidden by the seminary. Entries in the journal used to keep track of the seminarians’ conduct record violations by Jughashvili involving the reading of forbidden books, including novels by Victor Hugo, in late 1896 and early 1897.20 Beginning in his third year, Ioseb’s grades began to decline, and he was caught violating rules with increasing frequency.
Ioseb Jughashvili was growing increasingly radicalized. He stopped writing verse and developed an ardent interest in politics. Participating in the discussion group was no longer enough. He longed to get involved in something “real,” a desire that led him to the Social Democrats, an interest in Marxism, and attendance at illegal meetings of railway workers. According to his official biography, in August 1898, while still enrolled in the seminary, Ioseb joined a Social Democratic organization and began working as a propagandist for small groups of workers. At this point, his knowledge of Marxism must have been fairly superficial, but his fascination with it was consuming. For the young seminarian, the all-encompassing nature of Marxism, almost religious in its universality, was tremendously appealing. It filled the gap in his worldview created by his disillusionment with religion. The belief that human history was governed by a set of laws and that humanity was inexorably advancing toward the higher stages of socialism endowed the revolutionary struggle with special meaning. But this fascination with Marxism hardly set young Jughashvili apart. Belief in Marxism was a veritable epidemic.