This book, Young Stalin, tells the story of Stalin's childhood, his career as a revolutionary, his time as a gangster, a poet, a trainee priest, a husband and a passionate lover, and a man who fathered an illegitimate child and abandoned women and children.
The reason I want to tell the story of the 'young' Stalin is to gain a deeper and more unbiased understanding of his atrocious later life and the events that shook world history by looking into the first half of his life.
Moreover, through this we can glimpse the essence of Russian society represented by the Bolsheviks.
The author of this book is Simon Sebag Montefiore, who wrote “Jerusalem Chronicles,” which received great attention from major domestic and international media outlets and readers.
True to his reputation for producing masterpieces through extensive research and a tenacious pursuit of depth, he has once again produced a monumental work about Stalin's youth.
Through extensive research and detailed interviews across 23 cities and nine countries, including newly opened archives in Moscow, Tbilisi, and Batumi, Stalin's early life is brought to life.
In particular, this book contains many contents that have been made public for the first time, including parts of Stalin's mother's memoirs.
From the most trivial anecdotes to long-held misconceptions, the most detailed and fascinating account of Stalin unfolds.

There is little written about Stalin's early years (compared to the numerous books on Hitler's youth).
I think it was because there was little data.
But now things are different.
Hidden in newly opened archives are new documents that vividly tell the story of his childhood, his career as a revolutionary, his time as a gangster, a poet, a trainee priest, a husband and a passionate lover, and a man who fathered an illegitimate child and abandoned women and children.
Georgia's often overlooked archives were a particular treasure trove.
Stalin's early years are shrouded in darkness, but by all accounts they were quite unusual.
It was even more turbulent than the childhood of Lenin or Trotsky.
His childhood prepared him for the triumphs and tragedies, as well as the beastly nature, that come with supreme power, and the destruction it can bring.
--- From the "Preface" on p.11-12

How was the element of empathy missing from Stalin's upbringing, allowing him to kill so easily and prepare so well for political life? How did the man born the son of a shoemaker in 1878 and an idealistic seminarian in 1898 end up becoming a bank robber in 1907, a hunter in oblivious Siberia in 1914, a fanatical Marxist mass murderer in the 1930s, and the conqueror of Berlin in 1945? --- From the "Preface" on pp. 13-14

For a century afterward, Stalin's role that day was questioned but never proven.
But now, with the opening of archives in Moscow and Tbilisi, it has been revealed that he orchestrated the entire operation and had infiltrated the bank months earlier.
His executioner, Sashiko Svanidze, has unpublished memoirs in Georgian archives, in which he publicly admits that Stalin himself masterminded the entire operation.
Stalin excelled at the “dirty business of politics,” the conspiratorial drama of revolution.
When he became the dictator of Soviet Russia, he even fondly recalled, in a cryptic manner, the game of "Kazaki I razboyniki", a Russian version of "Cossacks and Robbers" or "Police and Thieves".
But he never went into detail about anything that might damage his credibility as a politician.
--- pp.50-51 From "Prologue_Bank Robbery"

Aside from these absurd rumors, who was Stalin's biological father? Egnatashvili was clearly the family's guardian, comforting his wife and caring for his son from behind the scenes.
He was married, had children, and lived a comfortable life. He was a successful wine merchant in a town with many successful taverns and a winery.
Not only that, but this lanky wrestler with a glossy mustache was considered the first wrestler in a land that worshipped fighters.
As already pointed out, Keke himself writes that he “always tried to help our family.”
Unfortunately, this may contain some hidden meaning.
It's unlikely that what she said was literally true, but could it be that she was trying to reveal something? --- p.80 From "Chapter 1_Keke's Miracle, Soso"

Throw into this seething cauldron of suspicion the accusations of his being a traitor, dating back to 1902, his secret police connections, and his escapes from exile and prison, and the theory that he was a spy for the Tsarist regime begins to seem plausible.
Was the future high priest of international Marxism a delusional, unprincipled traitor? If Stalin were a spy, wouldn't the entire Soviet experiment have been a fraud? And was everything he did, especially the Great Purges, an attempt to cover up his own guilt? It's a compelling story.
This was especially true during the Cold War.
--- p.413 From “Chapter 25_ Was Stalin a spy for the Tsarist regime?”

Lydia's memoir contains a story about a drinking party that ended in a drunken stupor.
So we get a glimpse of Stalin and Lidia going out for a drink together and staggering back.
“Whenever he had time, Stalin went dancing in the evening.
He could have been a very interesting person.
He was very fond of singing and dancing.
Especially 'I am guarding the gold, the gold.
I'm burying gold, I'm burying gold.
Guess where it is.
I liked the song 'Pure Lady with Blonde Hair'.
He was also a frequent guest at birthday parties,” wrote the memoirs of Stalin’s thirteen-year-old lover, written twenty years later, at the height of his dictatorship.
At that time she was a housewife living in Siberia.
The official who recorded her old memories would not have dared to record the incident of seduction, but he could not completely erase its traces from his memoirs.
“He liked to drop by someone’s house.” “Someone” was referring to himself.
"And we drank too." Did he seduce her in this way? Or did she seduce him? Women in places like Kureika grow up early.
And judging by what she said, it seems Lydia wasn't the shy, cowering type.
--- pp.522-523 From "Chapter 34_ 1914: Sex Comedy in the Arctic Circle"

Stalin moved his residence five times during the three days Kerensky was pursuing the commander (Lenin).
Trotsky and Kamenev were arrested, but Lenin returned underground under Stalin's escort.
The police raided Lenin's sister's house.
Krupskaya hurried to Stalin and Molotov's house on Shirokaya Street to find out Lenin's whereabouts.
On the night of July 6, Stalin moved Lenin to the fifth hiding place.
It was the Alliluyev family's neat new apartment at 10 Rozhdestvenskaya Street.
There was a uniformed guard and a maid in the house.
“Tell me all the entrances and exits,” Lenin said as he checked the attic as soon as he arrived.
“We gave him Stalin’s room,” Olga said.
Lenin was surprisingly cheerful during the four days he spent in the midst of tension.
When Anna Alliluyeva returned home, she found her apartment full of anxious strangers.
“I immediately recognized the person I was introduced to,” Lenin said, “sitting on the sofa in a shirt, vest, light-colored shirt and tie.” In the “unbearably hot” room, Lenin questioned her in detail.
What did you see on the street? --- p.590-591 From "Chapter 40_ Autumn 1917: Soso and Nadiya"

Even at this moment, a game of tactical humility, a game of ascetic denial that had become part of Bolshevik culture, was being played out.
Lenin offered Trotsky the premiership.
But a Jew could not become Prime Minister of Russia.
Trotsky refused, insisting that Lenin should become Prime Minister.
It was probably Lenin who suggested to Stalin that he take up the post of People's Commissar for Nationality.
According to what Yenukidze later told Sagirashvili, Stalin also humbly declined, saying that he was inexperienced, that the Central Committee was too busy, and that he was happy just doing the party's work.
It was probably Stalin who made Lenin laugh when he said this.
“Which of us do you think has experience in this kind of thing?” Lenin kept insisting, and Stalin accepted his first real job, his first since working as a meteorological clerk seventeen years earlier.
In fact, it didn't look real.
Some members of the Central Committee even considered this cabinet formation exercise a joke.

--- pp.623-624 From "Chapter 42_ Glorious October 1917: The Uprising in Disarray"