Table of Contents
Stalin was born and raised in Gori, Georgia (formerly Georgia) The Amazing Roughness of Gori and the Birth of Stalin the Bookworm Stalin Biography ⑺.
Joseph Stalin (1878-1953)Wikipedia.
From "Reading the Biography of Stalin⑹," Sa.Imon Seberg MontefioriworkStalin, the Red Czar and His Courtiers.It is a sequel toStalin, Youth and Revolution.This is a sequel, but chronologically speaking, it comes before the previous one. This one is a sequel, but chronologically speaking, it comes before the previous one.
So let's get started.
The town of Gori in Georgia (Georgia) where Soso (Stalin) spent his childhood.
Soso was a typical Gori boy. The inhabitants of Gori were notorious throughout Georgia as "matrabajis" (big-robber, violent thugs).
Gori was one of the last towns to continue the "picturesque and barbaric custom". It was a free-for-all street brawl, with special rules, but no holds barred. All the bawling, praying and fighting were interconnected, with drunken monks acting as arbitrators. Gori's tavern was a stewpot of unruly violence and crime.
Russian and Georgian administrative authorities attempted to ban this dubious sport, which began as military training in the days when medieval Georgia was constantly at war.
Despite the presence of a Russian military barracks, the "Bristav" (local police chief) Davlicevi and his handful of officers could do little to deal with the situation - no one could quell Gori's unruly and lawless conditions.
In the midst of the fistfight, the horses galloped off, and it was not surprising that the carriage ran over the children on the street.
Psychohistorians blame much of Stalin's development on his drunken father. But this culture of street brawling was a formative factor as well.
Hakusuisha, Simon Seberg Montefiori, translated by Yukishige Matsumoto, Stalin: Youth and the Age of Revolution, P85-86
Some line breaks have been made.
Stalin was born in the Georgian (Georgia) city of Gori.
This city of Gori is just so intense. As I will quote later, it was a den of unbelievably rough and tumble people.
Soso's father was a poor shoemaker, a man who was drunk and violent toward him. This violence by his father is often credited with defining Stalin's life, but the author points out that environmental factors such as Gori also played a powerful role.
*Addition on July 14, 2023
I visited the Stalin Museum in Stalin's hometown of Gori in September 2022. Please refer to the following article where I talk about my experience there.
Gori's rough and tumble.
Street brawls, wrestling tournaments, and school-student brawls were the three major traditions of Gori competition.
The men of every household, down to the children, would parade through the town drinking wine and singing until nightfall. It was then that the real fun began.
This "freestyle boxing match" - "crivi" - was a "group confrontation with rules. First the three-year-old boys wrestled with the other three-year-old boys.
Next came the children fighting. Next came the teenage boys, and finally the grown men would engage in an "unbelievable brawl. By then, the town was completely out of control. The situation carried over to the next day - even in the schools, where class fought class. Stores were often looted.
A popular sport in Gori was the Georgian wrestling or "chidaoba" match between strongmen. The matches somewhat resembled the Old Testament story of Goliath. The matches were held in a specially elevated ring to the accompaniment of "zurna. It was a contest in which the winner was judged solely on the basis of his or her ability, regardless of rank, wealth, religion, or ethnicity.
Wealthy aristocrats like the local landowner, Marquis Amirahvari, merchants, and even individual villages allowed their own powerful players to compete. These strongmen were so respected that the title "paravani" was used when speaking to them.
Stalin's surrogate father Egnatashvili himself was one of the three powerful brothers. Now that he was older and richer, "Paravani" Egnatashvili had his own strongmen competing. Even in his old age, Stalin was still boasting about his father's martial arts victories.
Hakusuisha, Simon Seberg Montefiori, translated by Yukishige Matsumoto, Stalin: Youth and the Age of Revolution, P87-88
Some line breaks have been made.
It was a world unimaginable to those of us living in modern Japan, where brawls of any kind between small children and adults are traditionally held in the streets.
The important thing here is that the city especially demanded a strength-oriented mentality, with the value system that "merit alone is important, regardless of nobility, wealth, religion, or ethnicity.
You can imagine that the character of a person raised in such an environment would be very different from a person raised in an environment that emphasizes order and kindness.
Stalin's surrogate father is mentioned at the end of the quoted passage, but his violent father was so dangerous that he had to be separated from the Stalin family. However, since it was financially difficult for the mother alone to support the Stalin family, Eknatashvili was assigned to support the Stalin family as a de facto surrogate father.
Incidentally, Stalin's mother, Keke, was famous for her beauty, yet she was a friendly and serious person. She was also an educational mother who doted on Stalin. Keke wanted to make Stalin a priest, so she gave him an education. She never imagined that Stalin would become an educated man and later a dictator....
Stalin the Bookworm
Stalin went on to the seminary. At the time of the Russian Imperial Court, seminaries were forbidden to read Marxist books as they were revolutionary.
Furthermore, being a seminary, discipline was strict, and I was constantly monitored by a strict staff member nicknamed "Black Spot" to ensure that I did not read such books.
Stalin discovered Victor Hugo's novels, especially "1793". Its protagonist, the revolutionary monk Simurdan, would become one of his prototypes. Hugo, however, was strictly forbidden by the seminary teachers.
At night, the "black spot" patrolled the hallways, constantly checking to see if the lights were out, if they were reading, or indulging in other self-defeating vices. As soon as he was gone, the students lit their candles and resumed reading.
Soso was typical: "He read so much that he hardly slept at all, his eyes were shaky and he was pale. When he began to cough," Iremashvili "took the book from his hands and blew out the candles. [omitted)
The young Stalin was even more influenced by Russian writers who created a sensation among radical youth - Nikolai Nekrasov's poetry and Chernyshevsky's novel What to Do.
The latter's protagonist, Rakhmatov, became for Stalin the prototype of the resolutely ascetic revolutionary. Like Rakhmatov, Stalin came to regard himself as a "special man."
Soon after, Stalin was seized "on the steps of the school" while reading another forbidden book, for which he received "extra time in the lockup and a severe reprimand by order of the principal.
He "worshipped Zola." His favorite novel by this Parisian writer was Germinard. He read Schiller, Maupassant, Balzac, and Thackeray's City of Vanity in translation, Plato in the original Greek, and Russian and French history.
He then passed these books around to other students. He adored Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Chekhov, and memorized their works. And he "could recite them by heart.
He admired Tolstoy, but was "bored by his Christianity." In later years he would write "ha ha ha" alongside Tolstoy's meditations on redemption and salvation.
I marked a lot of books on one of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, "Evil Spirits," about revolutionary intrigue and treachery.
These books were brought in secretly, tucked under the surplices of the theology students. Stalin later joked that some of these books had to be "taken" (shoplifted) from bookstores for the revolution.
Hakusuisha, Simon Seberg Montefiori, translated by Yukishige Matsumoto, Stalin: Youth and the Age of Revolution, P121-123
Some line breaks have been made.
The young Stalin's fearsome appetite for reading can be seen here. He continued to read even into his later years, and his education was said to rival that of the best cultured people.
And it is interesting that this is a book that Stalin was reading.
Chernyshevsky's "What to Do" was also a favorite of Lenin as his bible. Stalin was likewise greatly influenced by this book.
Hugo's "1793,zoras "Germinal" has been previously featured on this blog.
Belief in Marxism leads to a respect for science and rationality. In this respect, it may have been compatible with Zola's work. In fact, "Germinal," a story of an oppressed worker's struggle, was a favorite of Marxists as well.
BalzacandSyrah, ,GogolThe "Stalinist" and "Stalinist" are the royal pattern of the Russian reading public, just as Dostoevsky followed the same path. And the young Stalin and his contemporariesChekhovIt is also interesting to note that he preferred the
He wrote "ha ha ha" in response to Tolstoy's works, and conversely, he wrote "ha ha ha" in response to Dostoevsky'sevil spiritHe made a lot of marks against 'The Greatest of All'. This point also cannot be overlooked in knowing Stalin.
*August 15, 2023 added.
August 2023 by Jeffrey RobertsStalin's Library."was released by Hakusuisha.
This book is a novel biography that looks at the Soviet dictator Stalin from the perspective of "reading".
This is a very stimulating book that looks at Stalin from the perspective of "reading" to find out why he was able to become a dictator and what was behind his success. The author's courage to attack from a minor angle, "reading," which in a sense is not easily associated with dictatorships, is nothing short of amazing. It is very innovative.
This is a very interesting book to think about Stalin and reading. Why not pick up a copy?
Stalin and "Evil Spirits
Stalin, who was becoming a Marxist revolutionary, dropped out of the seminary and became a gangster.
Finally, he becomes involved in a shooting. As a result, he ended up in a place from which there was no turning back.
The shooting signified the start of a new era in which, as the then well-read nihilist Nechayev's book "The Revolutionary Doctrinal Questions and Answers" put it, "all tender feelings of family, friendship, love, gratitude, and even honor, must be crushed by a single-minded passion for revolutionary activity. It was a start.
A supermoral code that is not bound by judgments of right and wrong - or rather, the absence of the code itself - is termed "conspirazia" (conspiracy) by both sides of the conflict.
It is the "other world" that is vividly depicted in Dostoevsky's novel "Evil Spirits. It is impossible to understand the Soviet Union itself without understanding "Conspirazia" - for Stalin was never disconnected from this world.
Conspirazia" became the dominant spirit of his Soviet state and of his psychological condition.
From then on, Stalin carried his pistol in his belt. Secret police officers and revolutionary terrorists were now professional secret warriors facing off in a duel for the Russian Empire.
Hakusuisha, Simon Seberg Montefiori, translated by Yukishige Matsumoto, Stalin: Youth and the Age of Revolution, P155-156
Some line breaks have been made.
It was precisely because Dostoevsky took this danger of Necheyev seriously that he wrote "Evil Spirits" to warn the world.
Dostoevsky depicts with surprising realism how such revolutionaries and terrorists are propelled into the underworld.
Stalin found himself there, and rather than detest it, he used it to feed himself.
be unbroken
Next Article.
Click here to read the previous article.
Click here for a list of "Reading Biographies of Stalin" articles. There are 14 articles in total.
Related Articles
