Young Stalin

Read Young Stalin Online

Authors: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Tags: #History, #Biography, #Non-Fiction, #Politics, #War

ALSO BY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner

To my darling son,
Sasha

Contents

List of Illustrations

Stalin Family Tree

Maps

Introduction

List of Characters

Note

Prologue:
The Bank Robbery

PART ONE

1.
Keke’s Miracle: Soso

2.
Crazy Beso

3.
Brawlers, Wrestlers and Choirboys

4.
A Hanging in Gori

5.
The Poet and the Priesthood

6.
The “Young Man with the Burning Eyes”

7.
Battle of the Dormitories: Soso versus Father “Black Spot”

8.
The Weatherman: Parties and Princes

9.
Stalin Goes Underground:
Konspiratsia

10.
“I’m Working for the Rothschilds!”—Fire, Massacre and Arrest in Batumi

PART TWO

11.
The Prisoner

12.
The Frozen Georgian: Siberian Exile

13.
Bolshevik Temptress

14.
1905: King of the Mountain

15.
1905: Fighters, Urchins and Dressmakers

16.
1905: The Mountain Eagle—Stalin Meets Lenin

17.
The Man in Grey: Marriage, Mayhem (and Sweden)

18.
Pirate and Father

19.
Stalin in London

20.
Kamo Goes Insane: The Game of Bandits and Cossacks

21.
The Tragedy of Kato: Stalin’s Stony Heart

22.
Boss of the Black City: Plutocrats, Protection-Rackets and Piracy

23.
Louse Racing, Murder and Madness—Prison Games

24.
“River Cock” and the Noblewoman

25.
“The Milkman”: Was Stalin a Tsarist Agent?

PART THREE

26.
Two Lost Fiancées and a Pregnant Peasant

27.
The Central Committee and “Glamourpuss” the Schoolgirl

28.
“Don’t Forget That Name and Be Very Wary!”

29.
The Escapist: Kamo’s Leap and the Last Bank Robbery

30.
Travels with the Mysterious Valentina

31.
Vienna, 1913: The Wonderful Georgian, the Austrian Artist and the Old Emperor

32.
The Secret Policeman’s Ball: Betrayal in Drag

PART FOUR

33.
“Darling, I’m in Desperate Straits”

34.
1914: Arctic Sex Comedy

35.
The Hunter

36.
The Robinson Crusoe of Siberia

37.
Stalin’s Reindeer-Propelled Sleigh and a Siberian Son

PART FIVE

38.
1917 Spring: Floundering Leader

39.
1917 Summer: Sailors on the Streets

40.
1917 Autumn: Soso and Nadya

41.
1917 Winter: The Countdown

42.
Glorious October 1917: The Bungled Uprising

43.
Power: Stalin Out of the Shadows

Epilogue:
An Old Tyrant—in Remembrance of Things Past
Stalin’s Names, Nicknames, Bylines and Aliases
Acknowledgements
Source Notes
Select Bibliography

Illustrations

1878–1904

Mugshot of Stalin, 1912
1

School photo, late 1880s
2

Stalin’s birthplace in Gori
1

Official photo of Beso, Stalin’s father
3

Stalin’s mother, Keke
1

Koba Egnatashvili
18

Sasha Egnatashvili
18

Damian Davrichewy
4

Stalin in 1893, aged sixteen
5

Stalin in 1896
1

Seminary photo, late 1890s
1

Fire at an oil refinery
6

Rothschild oil refinery, Batumi
6

Hashimi Smirba
6

Group photo in Kutaisi Prison, 1903
6

Novaya Uda
6

Kutaisi Prison
6

Stalin’s cell
6

Natasha Kirtava
6

Olga Alliluyeva
3

Olga and her children
3

1905–1910

Kamo
3

Stalin’s network of street children, 1905
7

Okhrana agents pose in their street costumes
3

Stalin, ca. 1905–6
5

Trotsky
5

Lenin, ca. 1905
5

Kato Svanidze
1

Kato Svanidze, headshot, from gravestone, Tbilisi
3

Daily Mirror
extract, 16 May 1907
8

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party agreement
3

Daily Mirror
extract, 27 June 1907
8

Daily Mirror
extract, 15 May 1907
8

Mugshot of Kamo from the police files, ca. 1908
1

Sergo Ordzhonikidze
1

Baku oil fountain
5

Nagayev’s Palace in Baku
9

Burning oil wells, Baku, 14 September 1903
10

Murtuza Mukhtarov and his wife, Liza
11

Stalin with Kato’s family beside her dead body, 1907
1

Alvasi Talakvadze
6

Ludmilla Stal
11

Stalin
1

Stalin when he was arrested in 1910
1

1910–1917

Stalin with Spandarian in 1915
1

Backs of postcards
12

Front of postcard
1

Maria Kuzakova with her son Constantine and his baby
3

Mugshot of Stalin when he was arrested in 1911
1

Stalin’s apartment block in Vienna
13

Lenin’s flat in Cracow
1

Roman Malinovsky
3

Stalin in 1913
1

Tatiana Slavatinskaya
16

Kureika, photographed in the 1930s
1

Ostyak tribesman with reindeer on the Arctic Circle
14

Alexander Davidov
17

Lidia Pereprygina
17

Bolshevik exiles photographed at Monastyrskoe in the summer of 1915
1

Vera Shveitzer
14

KGB boss Serov’s memo to Khrushchev in 1956, about the investigation into Stalin’s affair with thirteen-year-old Lidia Pereprygina
12

Taurida Palace
3

Soldiers in St. Petersburg, February—March 1917
3

1917–1918

Lenin addresses the crowds from Kseshinskaya’s palace in St. Petersburg, July 1917
3

July Days coup
3

Nadya Alliluyeva
1

Stalin’s bedroom in the Alliluyev apartment
3

Lenin
1

Smolny and new Soviet government, 1917
3

The first meeting of the new government
15

Lenin’s orders to his guards on access to his office
15

Stalin
5

Alexandra Kollontai and Pavel Dybenko ca. 1917
5

Stalin, ca. 1917
5

The author and publishers offer their thanks to the following for their kind permission to reproduce images:

1. David King Collection

2. Stalin House Museum, Gori

3. Author’s collection

4. Davrichewy Family Collection

5. RIA Novosti

6. Khariton Akhvlediani State Museum, Batumi

7. Georgian Filial Institute of Marxism-Leninism (GF IML)

8. Mirrorpix

9. Getty

10. Roger Viollet / Topfoto

11. Azerbaijan International Magazine

12. RGASPI

13. Lisa Train

14. Dr. Piers Vitebsky

15. Smolny Institute Museum

16. Achinsk Regional Museum (ARM)

17.
The Sunday Times
(London)

18. Egnatashvili Family Collection

While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be happy to acknowledge them in future editions.

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