atheist he disdained to acknowledge the contribution made by the Imperial regime and the Orthodox Church to his personal development. Frugality with facts served a further purpose. By wrapping himself in mystery in the eyes of Soviet citizens, Stalin hoped to enhance popular admiration for himself as a ruler. From his studies of Russian history he knew that the most effective tsars had restricted knowledge about their private lives and opinions. By limiting what his biographers could write, he aspired to rise in the esteem of Soviet citizens.
Falsification came easily to him. The first sentence of that official biography was a lie because Joseph Dzhughashvili entered this life not on 21 December 1879 but on 6 December 1878. The truth has been ascertained by searches in the parochial records in Gori.3 It is uncertain why he practised this deceit. But it was not a mistake: Stalin was always careful about such details. We can only speculate at this distance in time. Apparently he started to fib about his birthday after leaving the Spiritual Seminary in Tbilisi, and it may be that his motive was to avoid military conscription: certainly many Georgians in those years tampered with the records for this purpose. Another possibility is that he was simply trying to confuse the police as to when he entered the revolutionary movement.4
About some things he told the truth. His father Besarion (or Vissarion in Russian) was indeed a cobbler married to Ketevan (or Yekaterina in Russian) and they lived in Gori. The Dzhughashvilis were subjects of the Russian tsars. The completed conquest of the Caucasus region had occurred only in the mid-1860s after the capture of the Islamist rebel Shamil from Dagestan Imperial forces in 1859. Parts of Georgia had not altogether lost their autonomous status until the second half of the nineteenth century. It had been the east Georgian ruler Irakli II who in 1783 had requested that his kingdom should become a Russian protectorate. Further territorial adhesions followed from the territory of the Georgians. Steadily the tsars repealed the agreements to grant exemptions from the pattern of rule in the rest of their empire. Garrisons were established. The Georgian Orthodox Church’s autocephaly was abolished in 1811. Russian peasants were given land in Georgia. The teaching of the Georgian language was restricted in schools and seminaries. The Georgian press was cramped. Georgians were robbed of their national dignity by the Russian administrators and commanders sent to the south Caucasus.
The little town of Gori in central Georgia lies by the fast-flowing River Mtkvari (or Kura, as the Russians call it). It is surrounded by hills. On the highest of them, to the north, there perches a large medieval fort — Goristikhe — which in the nineteenth century was almost as big as the town it overlooked: its crenellated walls and towers stretch like a huge octopus down the slopes. The valley is wide at Gori and the nearby hills are wooded with hazel, walnut, fir and chestnut trees. On clear days the mountains of the Caucasus are visible in the distance. When Joseph was a boy, the population tipped a little over twenty thousand. Most churches in the town belonged to the Georgian Orthodox Church; but many Armenians, a few hundred Russians and some Jews also lived there — and there was even a religious colony of Dukhobors.5 The best local education, available only to boys, was offered at the Spiritual School. Most employment in Gori was connected to trade with peasants who came to the town with sacks of grapes, potatoes, tomatoes, nuts, pomegranates and wheat as well as their cattle, pigs and sheep. The town is over fifty miles by road from the Georgian capital Tbilisi, which it took two days to reach on foot. There was much poverty in Gori. This had been the norm for peasants for centuries; but most nobles too in the late nineteenth century had fallen on hard times.
Gori had no large enterprises; its economy was dominated by handicrafts and trade. Onions, garlic, cucumbers, sweet peppers, cabbages, radishes, potatoes and aubergines grew in a perfect climate, and the Atenuri wine produced from the Ateni grape was highly appreciated. The sheep and cattle kept on the little hillside farms were famous for their succulence. In Gori itself there was a flourishing commerce in leather and wool, and craftsmen made shoes, coats and carpets. Shops and stalls were everywhere. Most of the owners were tailors, cobblers and carpenters. Professional employment was mainly confined to the priests and teachers. Policemen kept order. There were several taverns where men took solace in the bottle. It was a scene that had changed little since the Russians had entered Georgia at the request of its various rulers from the late eighteenth century. Yet even Gori was changing. In 1871 it acquired a railway station down by the River Mtkvari. The trains enabled passengers to get to Tbilisi in two or three hours. Commercial and industrial penetration of the area was just a matter of time.
Georgians like the Dzhughashvilis dressed plainly. Women wore long black skirts and, when they were in church, they donned head-scarves. The priests had black cassocks. The other men were no more colourful. Black jackets, shirts and trousers were customary and there was no pressure on working-class males to look smart. Men expected to rule their households with their wives’ complete obedience — and Besarion was notorious for his bad temper and violence. Women carried out all the domestic chores, including the cooking. This was one of the glories of old Georgia, whose cuisine was a stunning combination of the tastes of the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus. Outstanding dishes included sturgeon in pomegranate sauce, spicy pork kebabs and aubergines with walnut paste. The basic salads were also excellent. The Kutaisi combination of tomatoes, onions, coriander and ground walnuts was a meal in itself. But poor families, even if they retained links with the countryside, would rarely have the opportunity to eat such a diet in full. In fact people like the Dzhughashvilis would subsist mainly on beans and bread. Life for most inhabitants of Gori was hard and there was little prospect of betterment.
Besarion married nineteen-year-old Ketevan Geladze on 17 May 1874. Her father had died when she was young and she and her mother had had to get by as best they could in the little village of Gambareuli.6 Ketevan — known to family and acquaintances as Keke — quickly became pregnant. In fact she had two sons before Joseph’s arrival. The first was Mikhail, who died when only one year old. Then came Giorgi, but he too died young. Joseph alone survived early childhood. Taken to church on 17 December 1878, he was baptised by archpriest Khakhanov and catechist Kvinikadze.7
Christened Joseph, he was known to everyone by the diminutive Soso. Little else — in fact nothing at all — is known about the very earliest years of his life. It might have been expected that Joseph’s mother and father, having suffered the loss of two sons in infancy, would have treated their third with special care and affection. This would also have been in keeping with the Georgian tradition to dote on a new baby in the family. The Georgians are more like the Italians and Greeks than the peoples of northern Europe in child rearing. Besarion Dzhughashvili was an exception because he never showed his son any kindliness. Keke tried to make up for this. Though a strict and demanding mother, she made him feel special and dressed him as well as her finances allowed. Besarion resented this. Keke set her heart on Joseph becoming educated and entering the priesthood whereas Besarion wanted him to be a cobbler like himself. Almost from the beginning the Dzhughashvilis had an unhappy relationship; and far from alleviating the situation, Joseph’s arrival exacerbated the tension between them.
Besarion had a temperament that often flared up into angry violence against his wife. His commercial ambitions did not meet with success. His cobbler’s shop failed to move with the times by producing the European- style shoes — rather than traditional Georgian footwear — which were becoming the popular norm.8 Whatever he tried always ended in failure, and his lack of success as an independent artisan and his loss of local esteem probably aggravated his tendency to volcanic outbursts. His drinking got out of control. He spent more time guzzling wine at Yakob Egnatashvili’s tavern than tending to his family obligations.9
Keke according to most accounts was a devout woman. She attended church, consulted priests and was eager for her son to become one of them. But there were rumours which placed her in a different light. Sergo Beria, son of Stalin’s police chief from 1938, wrote that his grandmother — who befriended Keke in old age — told of a loose-living woman with a line in smutty talk: ‘When I was young I cleaned house for people and when I came upon a good-looking boy I didn’t waste the opportunity.’ When Besarion could not supply money for the family’s needs, Keke allegedly went out and sold her body.10 A less extreme version was that, although she was not serially promiscuous, she had an affair with one of Gori’s prominent personalities. The usual candidates were tavern keeper Yakob Egnatashvili and local police chief Damian Davrishevi.11 As is not unusual in such a situation, proof is lacking; but circumstantial evidence filled the gap for the gossip-mongers. When Stalin attained supreme power, he promoted the sons of Egnatashvili to high rank and this is sometimes taken as a sign of special kinship with them.12
Soso’s paternity was also sometimes ascribed to Damian Davrishevi. Damian’s son Joseph, a childhood friend of Joseph Dzhughashvili, could not help noticing their physical likeness; and in later life Joseph Davrishevi did not exclude the possibility that they were half-brothers.13 Enquiries were made in the late 1950s in order to gather damning evidence on Stalin; and the authorities were not averse to discovering whether the image of Keke as a God-fearing, simple peasant woman was a myth. If mud could be thrown at his mother, some of it would land on him. But nothing of the kind was found.
Yet if rumours of this kind were rife during Stalin’s childhood, they can hardly have calmed Besarion’s
