introduction from the viceroy or to local princes are of limited use in “surmounting difficulties that arise: these can be successfully met only by a resolute bearing”—and probably with the help of the revolver mentioned earlier.
* Hugo’s hero Cimourdain had “never been seen to weep . . . [he had an] inaccessible and frigid virtue. A just but awful man. There are no half-measures for a revolutionary-priest [who] must be infamous and sublime. Cimourdain was sublime . . . rugged, inhospitably repellent . . . pure but gloomy.”
* These young Marxists would copy out Marx by hand and distribute the manuscripts. When his Gori friend Kote Khakhanashvili came home with some Marx volumes, Stalin borrowed them but then refused to return them: “Why do you need them? They’re being passed through many hands and people are learning from them.” He also purloined a German-language textbook. Yet his English and German studies never led to fluency: even in the early 1930s he was asking his wife, Nadya, to send him an English textbook to study on holiday.
7
Battle of the Dormitories:
Soso versus Father “Black Spot”
B y early 1897, Stalin was at war with the Black Spot. The school journal records that he was caught thirteen times reading banned works and had received nine warnings.
“Suddenly inquisitor Abashidze,” says Iremashvili, started launching raids on their footlockers and even their dirty laundry baskets. The maniacal “Black Spot” Abashidze became obsessed with catching Stalin reading his forbidden books. At prayers, the boys had the Bible open on their desks and read Marx or Plekhanov, the sage of Russian Marxism, on their knees. In the courtyard stood a huge pile of firewood in which Stalin and Iremashvili would hide the banned works and where they would sit and read them. Abashidze waited for this and then sprang out to catch them, but they managed to drop the books into the logs: “We were locked up in the detention cell at once, sitting late into the evening in darkness without food, but hunger made us rebellious so we banged on the doors until the monk brought us something to eat.” 1
When it was time for the holidays, Stalin went to stay with a younger friend, the priest’s son Giorgi Elisabedashvili, in his village (anything rather than spend time with his mother). The priest hired Stalin as a tutor to get Giorgi ready for the seminary’s entrance examinations. He alwayshad a strong pedagogic instinct, but he was more interested in converting the boy to Marxism. Arriving on the back of a cart perched atop a pile of illegal books, the two made mischief in the countryside, laughing at peasants, whom Stalin “mimicked perfectly.” When they visited an old church, Stalin encouraged his pupil to pull down an old icon, smash it and urinate on it.
“Not afraid of God?” asked Stalin. “Good for you!”
Stalin’s pupil failed his exams. Father Elisabedashvili angrily blamed the tutor. But the boy got in on a second attempt—and later became one of Stalin’s Bolsheviks. 2
Back at the seminary, Stalin was in constant trouble: in the school journal, the priests recorded that he was rude, “failed to bow” to a teacher and was “confined to the cell for 5 hours.” He declined to cut his hair, growing it rebelliously long. Challenged by the Black Spot, he refused to cut it. He laughed and chatted in prayers, left Vespers early, was late for the Hymn of the Virgin, and pranced out of mass. He must have spent much of his time in the punishment cell. In December 1898, he turned twenty, much too old for boarding-school, and a year older than anyone else (because of time wasted recovering from his accidents). Small wonder he was frustrated.
He had outgrown the seminary. Seminarists were meant to kiss one another, like brothers, thrice whenever they met, but now, embroiled in factional struggles with Devdariani and devoted to Marxism, he distrusted this chivalrous humbug. “Such embracing is
* Hugo’s hero Cimourdain had “never been seen to weep . . . [he had an] inaccessible and frigid virtue. A just but awful man. There are no half-measures for a revolutionary-priest [who] must be infamous and sublime. Cimourdain was sublime . . . rugged, inhospitably repellent . . . pure but gloomy.”
* These young Marxists would copy out Marx by hand and distribute the manuscripts. When his Gori friend Kote Khakhanashvili came home with some Marx volumes, Stalin borrowed them but then refused to return them: “Why do you need them? They’re being passed through many hands and people are learning from them.” He also purloined a German-language textbook. Yet his English and German studies never led to fluency: even in the early 1930s he was asking his wife, Nadya, to send him an English textbook to study on holiday.
7
Battle of the Dormitories:
Soso versus Father “Black Spot”
B y early 1897, Stalin was at war with the Black Spot. The school journal records that he was caught thirteen times reading banned works and had received nine warnings.
“Suddenly inquisitor Abashidze,” says Iremashvili, started launching raids on their footlockers and even their dirty laundry baskets. The maniacal “Black Spot” Abashidze became obsessed with catching Stalin reading his forbidden books. At prayers, the boys had the Bible open on their desks and read Marx or Plekhanov, the sage of Russian Marxism, on their knees. In the courtyard stood a huge pile of firewood in which Stalin and Iremashvili would hide the banned works and where they would sit and read them. Abashidze waited for this and then sprang out to catch them, but they managed to drop the books into the logs: “We were locked up in the detention cell at once, sitting late into the evening in darkness without food, but hunger made us rebellious so we banged on the doors until the monk brought us something to eat.” 1
When it was time for the holidays, Stalin went to stay with a younger friend, the priest’s son Giorgi Elisabedashvili, in his village (anything rather than spend time with his mother). The priest hired Stalin as a tutor to get Giorgi ready for the seminary’s entrance examinations. He alwayshad a strong pedagogic instinct, but he was more interested in converting the boy to Marxism. Arriving on the back of a cart perched atop a pile of illegal books, the two made mischief in the countryside, laughing at peasants, whom Stalin “mimicked perfectly.” When they visited an old church, Stalin encouraged his pupil to pull down an old icon, smash it and urinate on it.
“Not afraid of God?” asked Stalin. “Good for you!”
Stalin’s pupil failed his exams. Father Elisabedashvili angrily blamed the tutor. But the boy got in on a second attempt—and later became one of Stalin’s Bolsheviks. 2
Back at the seminary, Stalin was in constant trouble: in the school journal, the priests recorded that he was rude, “failed to bow” to a teacher and was “confined to the cell for 5 hours.” He declined to cut his hair, growing it rebelliously long. Challenged by the Black Spot, he refused to cut it. He laughed and chatted in prayers, left Vespers early, was late for the Hymn of the Virgin, and pranced out of mass. He must have spent much of his time in the punishment cell. In December 1898, he turned twenty, much too old for boarding-school, and a year older than anyone else (because of time wasted recovering from his accidents). Small wonder he was frustrated.
He had outgrown the seminary. Seminarists were meant to kiss one another, like brothers, thrice whenever they met, but now, embroiled in factional struggles with Devdariani and devoted to Marxism, he distrusted this chivalrous humbug. “Such embracing is
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