Young Stalin (85 page)

Batumi, 1902: “I got a job with the Rothschilds!” crowed Stalin. Next day, the Rothschild refinery
(above)
was on fire (
top:
a similar blaze at another refinery). Stalin, aged twenty-four, unleashed mayhem in the oil port of Batumi: He ordered his first killings of traitors, embarked on love affairs, provoked a massacre and printed his writings with the help of a friendly Muslim highwayman, Hashimi Smirba
(right)
.

Above:
On his first arrest, Stalin dominated the prison, killing enemies and defying the authorities. In Kutaisi Prison, the long-haired Marxist arranged this photograph before his comrades were sent to Siberian exile, placing himself centre top (number 4).
Below left:
In Novaya Uda, his first exile, he caroused with his criminal friends—and prepared to escape.
Bottom left and right:
Kutaisi Prison—outside and Stalin’s cell.

Even as an obscure penniless revolutionary, Stalin was never without a string of girlfriends: married, unmarried, young, old, peasants, intellectuals and noblewomen. One of the first was a beautiful married woman, Natasha Kirtava
(top left)
, but he was furious when she refused to move in with him. Half Gypsy Olga Alliluyeva
(top right)
, wife of Stalin’s Bolshevik comrade Sergei, was notoriously promiscuous and probably had an affair with Stalin, to whom she remained devoted. Olga was also his future mother-in-law—seen below with her children, Pavel, Fyodor, Anna—and Nadya.

1910–1917

Two Caucasian rogues: Stalin
(right)
with his best friend, Suren Spandarian, a well-educated Armenian playboy, merciless Bolshevik and ally in Baku—where Spandarian was said to have fathered half the children under three years old. Here the friends meet up in Siberia, 1915.

Astonishingly promiscuous in exile, Stalin seduced women and planned escapes.
Top left:
The happiest affair was with saucy schoolgirl Pelageya (code-named Glamourpuss by the Okhrana). He sent her passionate postcards illustrated with lovemaking couples
(top right). Middle left:
His postcard to another mistress, the teacher Tatiana Sukhova.
Below:
His landlady-cum-mistress Maria Kuzakova in old age during the 1950s with Constantine, her son by Stalin, and his baby.

Stalin, now rising to the top of the Bolshevik Party, arrested again in 1911.

Left:
Vienna, 1913—Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky and Tito lived in the same city. Stalin’s luxurious apartment block, now a boardinghouse, bearing his plaque.
Right:
Cracow, 1912–13—Stalin stayed in Lenin’s flat.