ーずっと後になって、ジュガシヴィリ自身が社会主義に投じた動機を次のように回想した。「私がマルクス主義者になったのは私の社会的地位（父は製靴工場の労働者で、母も働く女であった）のためだが、あと一つの理由は神学校内で容赦なく私をいためつけたジェズイット（訳注、宗教改革に対抗して、ロロラが１５３４年創設したカトリック教の一派。徹底した中央集権的組織、絶対服従、約１３年におよぶ厳格な訓練がその主な特徴で、海外布教に従事した。日本にきた宣教使ザビエルもこの宗派の一人である。）的な規律と過酷で不寛容な精神であった。・・・私の生活を覆っていた空気はツァーリの弾圧に対する憎悪にみたされていた。」外界の事件が決定的刺激を与えた。当時、チフリスには労働者による激しいストーコーカサスの首都における最初のストが戦われていた。ストの労働階級と急進的インテリに対する影響は、今日ではほとんど想像できないほど強かった。後にストは普通となり、ストがもたらす興奮はそれが繰り返されるというだけで失われた。だが、最初のストは労働者に予期されない力が隠されていることを示した。ストは社会的闘争での新しい武器だった。新しい武器が大抵の場合そうであるように、ストは実際以上の期待と恐怖を呼び起こした。支配者も被支配者もストは差し迫っている大事件、劇的な変革の兆候であると感じた。－ロシアに関する限り、彼らは誤っていなかった。
ーチフリスは当時、小規模な産業革命の中心だった。その生活は東洋的、部族的、封建的コーカサスに対する産業資本の新しい圧迫を反映していた。「農奴解放後数年間は人口稀薄で、山の住民に占められ、世界経済の発展、いな歴史からさえも取り残されていたこの地方は石油業者、ぶどう酒の商人、穀類加工業者、煙草製造業者の舞台と変りつつあった。」当時まだ名を知られていなかったレーニンは１９世紀末のこの地方の状態を以上のように述べた。バクー、バツーム（バトゥーミ）の石油業者はイギリス、フランスの資本の援助で開発中だった。チアトゥリの優良なマンガン鉱の採掘がレーニンの挙げた産業活動に間もなく加えられた。１８８６－７年には、チフリス、クタイスのグルジア両地区の産業生産の総額はわずか１千万ルーブルだったのが、４年間に３倍以上ふえ、１８９１－２年には３千２百万ルーブルに達した。同じ期間に、鉄道従業員を除く産業労働者の数は１万２千人から２万３千人にふえた。チフリスはカスピ海沿岸と黒海、バクーとバツームを結ぶ外コーカサス鉄道の主要な連絡駅であった。鉄道工業はチフリスの重要産業の一つであり、まだ芽生えはじめていたコーカサスの秘密労働運動の最も重要な中枢となった。これらの工場と騒々しいアジア的露天市はチフリスの生活の対照的な二つの要素であった。若いジュガシヴィリはアジアの商人のやり方や慣習を観察しながら時を過ごしたこともあっただろう。－彼らのやり方は確かに彼の心に跡を残している。だが“歴史からさえも取り残された”こうしたアジア的世界は彼にはあわなかった。彼はコーカサスの生活の新しい要素にひきつけられた。牧師になりそこねて革命家となった２，３人がすでに先輩として彼を指導していた。メサメ・ダシの参加者のなかで指導的人物だったシルヴェステル・ジブラッゼはえらすぎて新参のジュガシヴィリの親しい友とはなれなかったが、会うにはよく会った。このほか彼がよく会ったのはサーシャ・ツルキッゼ（訳注、アレクサンドル（サーシャは愛称）・Ｇ、１８７６－１９０５、グルジア出身でモスクワ大学に学ぶ、１８９５年、メサメ・ダシに参加、１９０５年逮捕され、肺病で獄死す。）とラド・ケツホヴェリだったが、この２人は彼にとって友人であると同時に先生でもあった。ジュガシヴィリよりわずか３つ年上のツルキッゼはすでにメサメ・ダシ参加者の間である程度認められた文筆活動家であった。彼は情熱的に主義のため尽くしたが、彼自身結核にむしばまれ、５，６年後には遂に不帰の客となった。彼が現地のグルジアの諸新聞に発表した論評と論文は社会学について彼が広い知識を持っていることを示すばかりでなく、真に傑出した才能と文学的筆致のひらめきをみせている。彼が執筆したもののなかには、マルクス経済理論についての注目すべき通俗的解説がある。サーシャ・ツルキッゼとともに、ジュガシヴィリはときどきクヴァリ紙の編集局を訪れ、これらの半ば自由主義的、半ば社会主義的編集者の語る賢い言葉を、はじめはえりを正して、後には半ば皮肉な微笑を浮かべながら傾聴した。
ー彼にとってあと１人の教師兼友人であったケツホヴェリは文筆の士ではなかった。彼はずっと実際的な心の持主だった。新しい信念を抱いたケツホヴェリは他人にもこれを抱かせる必要な手段に主として関心を注いだ。彼はすでにコーカサス以外の世界もかいまみていた。１８９４年神学校から追放された”８７人組”の１人である彼は、放校後、精神的、政治的生活の古い中心地で、チフリスほど田舎じみていないキエフに赴いた。ここで彼は数年間を過し、秘密社会主義者グループと接触した。このグループはペテルブルグにいる同じ思想傾向の人々ばかりでなく、スイス、フランス、イギリスにいる亡命者の指導者たちとも連絡をとっていた。彼は、何かしようという気持ち、彼の故国の労働運動をゆりかごのうちから取り出そうという気構えに燃えてコーカサスにもどってきた。彼は秘密印刷所説立の可能性を打診した。彼の考えによれば、どんな革命的宣伝グループにとっても、これが最初に固めなければならない現実的基盤であった。グルジアの半ば社会主義的、半ば自由主義的現地紙は無用の長物であった。これらの編集者は一言書いてはまた思い返してみるといった慎重な書き方をしなければならなかった。そのうえ、書いた記事はすべてツァーリの検閲官に提出しなければならなかった。彼らに許されていた、こんな気の抜けた引っ込み思案の宣伝はだれをも納得させず、なんの効果もなかった。若い世代の革命家は、どんな代価を払っても検閲からの自由を獲得しなければならなかった。これは秘密印刷所を意味した。ケツホヴォリが、メサメ・ダシに入ってきたジュガシヴィリの考えを向かわせた対象はこのような実際的問題であった。
ーケツホヴェリとツルギッゼは革命運動への新入生ジュガシヴィリにいくつかの労働者学習グループの指導という一定の任務を与えるよう取りはからった。彼の仕事は煙草労働者、錬瓦工、石工、製靴工、織工、印刷工、鉄道馬車の御者に社会主義を講義することだった。集まってくる労働者は１度に１２，３人かせいぜい２０人の少人数のグループだけだった。自発的にメサメ・ダシに参加を申し出た学生はだれもがこのような役割を与えられるのだった。この若い組織には、その主義を説明した本やパンフレットも読めない加入者の啓発を喜んで引き受ける人々を大いに必要としていたからである。この集りは建てこんだ労働者貧民外内で開かれ、鼻をさすようなマホールカ（訳注、安煙草の一種）の煙りと汗と汚物の匂いがあたりにたちこめていた。参加者の１人は他のものの安全が警官の出現で危険にさらされないよう、表の通りを見張るのだった。神学生の講師は恐らくこの仕事に多くの精神的満足を見出したであろう。彼の勢力は自己の地位向上という満足感で報いられた。表面的には、僧侶アパシッゼの監督下に置かれた従順な羊の群の一匹にすぎない彼が、ここでは帝国と教会の土台に精神的ダイナマイトを仕掛けているのであった。彼はしばしば彼より年上の労働者からも謹聴され、彼らの権威指導者として受け入れられた。このような会合ののち急いでうっとうしい神学校内に駆けもどり、僧侶に弁明し、いつもより長い外出の口実を見つけ出し、信者らしい仮面をかぶって他の仲間たちと一緒に礼拝堂で祈りを唱えなければならないということは辛かったし、屈辱的でさえあった。これは二重の意味での二重生活だった。非信仰者が正統な信仰を詐称しなければならなかったばかりではない。街ではすでにひとかどの人間で公人として行動しはじめていた革命家が神学校では元の立場に舞いもどり、まだ一人前ではないというので目上のものにあちこち命令され、いじめつけられる学生の役割を演じなければならなかった。彼はいつまでこんなことを続けてゆくことができただろうか。
ー神学校に在学した最後の１，２年間、ジュガシヴィリはしばしばこの問題に思いをひそめたに違いない。彼は最も厚顔にまた最も偽善的に僧侶を欺いていた。だが彼は少しも気にしたり、気にとがめたりしなかった。彼はいつわりに対していつわりをもって答えているに過ぎなかった。僧侶たちは彼をスパイし、彼の不在中持物を点検しなかったであろうか。彼らの教えることは途方もないいつわりではなかっただろうか。彼自身の偽善は彼らの偽善に対する回答に外ならなかった。このうそとごまかしのやり合いで彼は確かに勝者であった。この勝利とそれが与える面白さがほとんど耐え難い境遇に甘んずることをある程度容易にしたに違いない。もちろん、彼は思い立った日に持物をまとめ、僧侶たちに”サヨナラ”をいうことができたであろう。だがその後はどうだろう。彼は神学校外では生活手段を持たなかった。メサメ・ダシはひどく貧乏で彼を助けることはできなかった。彼は母の重荷となることは望まなかった。また工場労働者か事務員になるという見通しは決して彼の心を惹くものではなかった。どんなに神学校が不愉快なところであるにせよ、ここにおれば論争し、夢想し、読書する時間が十分彼に残されていた。こうしたものは彼を容易に手放そうとはしなかった。もっと衝撃的かあるいは理想に対してもっと野心的な青年であったならば、神学校のドアをばたんとしめて後はどうにでもなれといったであろう。だが、彼は元農奴のむすこだった。全国民の生活を変革するため働いているとはいえ、彼の血のなかには、変化に対する恐怖心から生れた、農民らしい腰の重さと惰性にひかれる気持ちがある程度引き継がれていた。神学校に留っておれば絶えず隠したいり偽ったりしなければならないのは確かだが、これは彼が小さいときからしなけければならなかったことで、彼にとってはもうほとんど第二の天性のようになっていた。
ーだが、彼の立場はますます困難になっていった。彼が神学校にいた最後の数ヶ月間に操行簿に書き入れられた報告は彼が社会主義宣伝を行なったということに全然触れていない。彼はどうにかしてこの面での活動を隠しおおせたようである。だが彼と学校当局とはいよいよ鋭く対立するようになった。１８９８年９月２９日の報告は述べる。「午後９時、一群の学生が食堂でヨシフ・ジュガシヴィリの固りに集まり、ジュガシヴィリは彼らに学校当局の認めない本を読んできかせた。このため学生たちの身体検査を行なった。」これから数週間に次のような記入がある。「学生の身体検査中・・・ヨシフ・ジュガシヴィリはたびたびの身体検査に不満を表明し・・・このような身体検査は他の神学校では一度も行なわれたことがないと主張して・・・しばしば論争しようと試みた。概して、ジュガシヴィリは学校当局者に対して敬意を欠き、粗暴である・・・」彼がメサメ・ダシに加入してからわずか数ヶ月後には、彼は僧侶たちのお陰でこのジレンマから脱することができた。１８９９年５月２９日、彼は”わけのわからない理由”で試験を受けなかったとのことで、神学校から追放された。彼自身は後に”マルクス主義宣伝”のため追い出されたと述べている。これは神学校当局が挙げている理由ではないが、学校当局が政治的危険思想の疑いをかけたことは確かであろう。学校からほおり出された彼は重要な５ヶ年間を過した半ば僧院、半ば兵舎的校舎と別れをつげるときにもほとんど心残りを感じなかった。
ージュガシヴィリ・スターリンの両親が農奴として生まれたということは他のほとんどすべてのロシア革命の指導的人物と彼との間に一線を　する。彼らの大部分は貴族、中産階級、インテリゲンチャという全く異なった社的階層の出身であった。大学生としてレーニンは鋭い知的好奇心をもって農民生活を身近かに観察した。だが、貴族の称号を与えられた視学官のむすこである彼は農民生活のなかにいた人でもなければ、またその生活感情を持った人でもなかった。トロツキー（訳注、レフ・Ｅ（本姓ブロンシテイン）１８７７－１９４０、ユダヤ系ロシア人。１８９６年、社会民主労働党に入党。シベリア流刑から海外に亡命し、１９０３年にメンシェヴィキにくみす。１９０５年の第一次革命にはペテルブルグ・ソヴィエト議長として活躍し、逮捕、追放される。後亡命して社会民主労働党諸派の統合を主張し、レーニンの独裁的やりかたに反対する。第一次世界大戦中、平和運動でフランスから追放され、アメリカに赴き、２月革命後帰国。ボルシェヴィキに入党し軍事革命委員会議長として１０月革命を指導する。革命後、外務、軍事人民委員を歴任、赤軍建設に尽す。１９１９－２７年まで政治局員。スターリンとの権力闘争に敗れて、１９２７年党から除名。１９２８年中央ロシアに追放された。１９２９年ソヴィエト国内から退去を命ぜられた。１９４０年メキシコで暗殺された。「ロシア革命史」「わが生涯」その他著書多数あり。）は１代で身上を築きあげたユダヤ人の地主のむすこであり、彼がはじめて貧困と搾取を見たのは地主屋敷の窓からであった。ジノヴィエフ（訳注、グレゴリー・Ｅ（本姓ラドムイスリスキー）１８８２－１９３６、ユダヤ系ロシア人で１９０１年社会民主労働党に入党。１９０３年ボルシェヴィキを支持し、１９０５年の第一次革命後に亡命してレーニンのよき協力者となる。２月革命後帰国。レーニンの武装蜂起に反対したが、１０月革命後レニングラード・ソヴィエト議長、政治局員、コミンテルン議長など要職につく。レーニン死後、スターリン、カーメネフとともにトロツキーを排撃し、トロツキー没落後はカーメネフととともにスターリン、ブハーリンを排斥したが敗れて要職から追われた。１９３５年、１０年の刑を受けたが、１９３６年再度の粛清で処刑された。）カーメネフ（訳注、レフ・Ｂ（本姓ローゼンツェルド）１８８３－１９３６、ユダヤ系ロシア人、１９０１年社会民主労働党に入党。亡命して１９０９－１４年までジノヴィエフとともにレーニンに反対したが、１０月革命後ソヴィエト中央執行委員会議長、モスクワ・ソヴィエト議長、人民委員会議副議長（副首相）政治局員の要職につく。レーニン死後ジノヴィエフと行動をともにし、一時駐伊大使に転出したが、１９３５年５年の刑を受け、１９３６年の粛清で処刑された。）ブハーリン（訳注、ニコライ・Ｉ，１８８９－１９３８，モスクワ、ウィーン両大学に学び、１９０６年入党、１７年党中央委員、１８－２９年プラウダ紙主筆、党政治局員、コミンテルン執行委員、対独講和には共産党左派としてレーニンに反対、一国社会主義では右派としてスターリンを支持したが、２９年反対派を結成して除名され、３８年粛清で死刑に処せられた。ソヴィエトの優秀な経済学者、理論家として多くの著書がある。）ラコフスキー（訳注、フリスチアン・ゲ、１８７３－１９３８、１８８９年、ブルガリアで社会主義運動に参加、１０月革命後はウクライナで活動。１９１９年、ウクライナ人民共和国人民委員会副議長、２３年、駐英大使、２５－２７年、駐仏大使、後反対派に加わり、２７年除名され、３８年粛清された。）ラデック（訳注、カール、１８９３年生まれ、ドイツ社会民主党左派で、１０月革命後ロシアに入り、ロシア共産党に入党した。ドイツ革命に活躍、またコミンテルンの指導者の１人でもあった。２７年トロツキー派として除名されたが、３０年復党、イズベスチヤ主筆として外交問題に健筆をふるったが、３７年の粛清裁判で１０年の刑を受けた。４１年出獄）ルナチャルスキー（訳注、アナトリー・Ｖ、１８７３－１９３３、若いときから革命運動に参加、はじめボルシェヴィキに入ったが、１９０９年、レーニンと分れてボグダーノフらとともにフベリュード派を組織し救神主義に同調した。２月革命後帰国してボルシェヴィキに加わり、１０月革命後２９年まで初代教育人民委員を勤め、教育の近代化に努力した。３３年スペイン大使に任命されたが赴任中パリで死亡。教育家としてばかりでなく、文芸批評家、作家として多くの著書がある。）チチェーリン（訳注、ゲオルギー・Ｖ、１８７２－１９３６、ペテルブルグ社会民主党に入党、メンシェヴィキの指導者となった。ヨーロッパ各国で労働運動に活躍、１０月革命後、ボルシェヴィキに入り、１８年、イギリスから釈放されて帰国、４年から３０年まで外務人民委員として活躍。２２年ドイツとラッパロ条約を結ぶなど平和外交に貢献した。病死。）その他多くのものも彼らが闘おうとした社会悪を非常に離れた所から知ったのであった。彼らの大部分にとっては、農奴制はもちろん資本家の搾取でさえも社会学上の方式であった。彼らはそれぞれ異なった洞察力をもってこの方式を探求したが、方式の裏に隠された現実は彼ら自身の個人体験外にあった。カリーニン、トムスキー、シリャプ二コフのような一部の著名なボルシェヴィキは労働者出身であった。だが、大部分のロシアの労働者がそうであったように、彼らは依然田舎に根を持っていた。
しかし彼らのなかにでさえ、青年時代に農奴制の空気を、ジュガシヴィリ・スターリンほどじかに痛々しく呼吸したものは１人もいなかった。
－２０歳のジュガシヴィリは確かに生まれついた環境より高い所に上った。彼はすでにインテリゲンチャの１人であた。だが、もちろんインテリゲンチャだとしても、社会における自己の地位と価値を十分に弁えてそこに腹をすえているインテリではなかった。自己の階級を捨てて半ば遊牧的にインテリゲンチャの周辺につきまとうインテリ層であった。だが、社会的ピラミッドの最下底にいる人々に対するほとんど肉感的な親近感を彼から奪うことはなにもできなかった。上流階級出身の革命家は個人的接触から労働階級の選ばれたものを知るだけだった。つまり、社会主義者の宣伝を受け入れる用意があり、理想主義的インテリとの交友を熱心に求める知的労働者だけに限られていた。これらの革命家は社会主義的考えに近づいてこない大多数の無気力な大衆は立ち遅れた無自覚のプロレタリア層だと呼んだ。マルクス主義的革命家はこうした立ち遅れの重圧をある程度意識していた。１世紀前の上流階級出身の多くの革命家が理想主義的立場から民衆のさなかにあって民衆の幸福のため尽そうとして”人民のなかへ”（訳注、ナロードニクの標語、ロシア語でヴナロードという）赴いたが、疑い深い農民のため残酷に殺されるか、憲兵隊に売り渡されるかに終わっただけだということを彼らは忘れていなかった。マルクス主義者は、こうした立ち遅れた無感覚の層でさえ宣伝と政治的経験を通じて終極的には社会主義にもたらされるだろうと期待した。だが、理論家または宣伝家とまだ目覚めていない大衆との間には真に共通な言葉というものがなかった。一方、上流階級の子弟を社会主義に走らせた最初の衝動は、大抵の場合、自己に対する罪悪感と人道主義的同情感がこもごもに働きかけたところからきていた。このような気持ちは被圧迫階級の高貴な精神と美徳そのものであると観じさせたのであった。
ー若いジュガシヴィリはロシアの生活と政治活動における後進的要素について、ほとんど本能的といえるほどの、極めて例外的な敏感さを持っていたに違いない。そしてこの敏感さは後年一層強まっていったのである。立ち遅れた大衆に近づいて従順と無気力から彼らをふるい立たせるためには先進的労働者を通じるより外に道はなかった。このためジュガシヴィリもまた先進的労働者に主な関心を注いだ。だが彼の心は労働階級についての理想主義的な一般論や楽観的な希望にうけることはなかった。彼は地主、資本家、聖職者、ツァーリの憲兵という抑圧者たちばかりでなく、彼みずからその代弁者をもって任じた農民、労働者の被抑圧者たちをも、懐疑的な不信の態度で取り扱った。彼の社会主義には罪悪感はなかった。そのひとかけらさえもなかった。彼が生まれついた階級に対して、ある程度の同情感を持ったことは疑いないが、有産階級、支配階級に対する憎しみははるかに強かった。上流階級出身の革命家が感じ、かつ説いた階級的憎しみは、彼のうちに芽生え、理論的確信によって育て上げられた。いわば二次的な感情であった。ジュガシヴィリにあっては、階級的憎悪は第二の天性ではなかった。－第一のそれであった。社会主義の教えが彼の心に訴えたのは、それが彼自身の感情を道徳的に是認するようにみえたからであった。彼の考え方にはセンチメンタルな所はひとからげもなかった。彼の社会主義は陶酔を知らず、冷たく荒々しかった。彼のこうした性格的特徴は、後に彼にとって大きなプラスとなった。だが、これはまた大きなハンディキャップを伴った。上流階級出身の革命家は、伝統的文化的遺産をもって社会主義運動に参加した。彼らは彼らの生まれついた環境の偏見と信条に反逆した。だが、彼らは革命的環境のなかに、彼ら自身の環境を価値づけていた、いくつかの勝れたものを導入した。それは知識ばかりではなかった。そのなかには思想、言論、挙動に磨きをかけることも含まれていた。彼らの社会主義的反逆そのものが道徳的敏感さに磨きをかけられた知性の産物であった。無惰な生活がジュガシヴィリのうちにはぐくまれなかったものは、まさにこうした素質であった。逆に、生活は彼の敏感さと趣向を鈍らせるに十分な、肉体的、精神的汚物を彼の進路に積み重ねた。他の指導者たちはほとんどすべてが社会的劣等感に悩まされなかった。彼らの大部分は、もし温室内のより平和な道を進んだならば、尊敬と光栄に包まれながら身を立てることができた人たちであった。レーニンのような天才は、どんな政権にあっても偉大な国民的指導者となることができたであろう。トロツキーは最高の名声に値する文筆の士であった。カーメネフ、ルナチャルスキー、ブハーリンに類する人は、学者の世界で高い地位にのぼり得たであろう。彼らはすべて、大きな才能に恵まれた弁舌家、文筆家、思想家で、奔放な生命力と偉大な想像力と独創性を持ち、これらの素質を驚くほど小さいときから示していた。青年ジュガシヴィリは鋭さと常識を多分に持ち合わせていたが、想像力と独創性は彼の性格のうちにはなかった。彼は少人数の労働者グループに、社会主義について、筋の通った講義をすることはできた。だが、彼は弁舌家ではなかった。また、その後の時が示したように、名文をつづる文筆家でもなかった。階級に捉われた、官僚的ロシアでは、グルジアの農民の子は、どんなに大きい野心と根強さと好運をもってしても、社会階層の上位によじのぼることはできなかった。教会に入れば、せいぜい第二のアパシッゼとなる程度だった。環境はいや応なしに、一種の劣等感を彼のうちに植えつけた。彼は社会主義的地下運動をするようになっても、この劣等感からのがれることができなかった。
His stay at the Theological Seminary lasted from October 1894 till May 1899.  For his intellectual development these were decisive, formative years.  What broader influences were now to mould his mind?  In the last decade of the nineteenth century two problems agitated Georgian society: Georgian-Russian relations; and the consequences of the abolition of serfdom in the Caucasus.  Throughout the century Tsarist Russia was engaged in conquering the Caucasus and consolidating the conquest.  Georgia, which had been a Russian vassal since 1783, completely lost her independence.  The lot of the Georgian was in some respects similar to that of the Poles.  But unlike the Poles, who in every generation rose in arms to fight for their independence, the Georgians made no serious attempt to break away from Russia.   With them anti-Russian feeling combined with a relative indifference to national aspirations.  Their grievance against Russia was tempered by the consciousness that Georgia had no chance of maintaining her independence in any case, and that of all her possible conquerors Russia was to be dreaded least.  The last Georgian kings had surrendered to the Russian Tsar when Turkey and Persia had threatened to conquer their country.  Religious considerations determined the choice – Georgia, like Russia, belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church.  In Russian eyes the Caucasus was place d’armes against the Ottoman Empire, second in importance only to the Danubian countries.  Russia built the great Georgian military road and then the network of Caucasian railways, thereby stimulating industrial development in the province.  This was one of the redeeming features of Russian domination.　
　Another was Russia’s cultural influence upon Georgia.  Although the Georgians prided themselves on their ancient civilization, which was much older than the Russian, their outlook was that o an oriental half-tribal and half-feudal community Vis à Vis Georgia, Russia represented Europe.  ‘Under the influence of western European and especially Russian civilization,’ writes the historian G. Khachapuridze, ‘European customs and manners penetrated into the life of the upper classes of Georgia.’  The policy of the Tsar was full of contradictions.  On the one hand, they strove to Russify the country.  On the other, they tried to ensure the loyalty of the Georgian gentry and clergy.  The last Georgian dynasties were deported either to central Russia or to Siberia; but the sons of the deported kings were allowed to do valuable cultural work for their people – from St Petersburg.  Some of them, such as the brothers Bagrationi, became the spokesmen of Georgian, and acquainted Russian society with Georgian literature and history.  Tsar Nicolai I even appointed Teimuraz Bagrationi an honorary member of the Imperial Academy.
　Parallel with these influences Russian revolutionary ideas spread into the Caucasus.  The man who conquered the province for the Tsar was General Yermolov, the hero of the battle of Borodino in 1812.  This ‘pro-Consul of the Caucasus’ showed some leaning towards the Decembrists, the leaders of the Liberal revolt which took place in St Petersburg in December 1825.  He sheltered great writers who had been mixed up with the rebels:  Pushkin and Griboyedov, who was his minister and political adviser Bestuzhev(Marlinsky), and others.  A whole regiment which had taken part in the rebellion was deported to the Caucasus;  and in it many cashiered officer-intellectuals served as privates.  The deportee kept in touch with the few educated Georgians and strongly influenced them.  They sympathized, of course, with Georgian patriotism, and , more advanced than their Georgian friends, they advocated the emancipation of the Georgian peasants. 
　These early contacts prepared the ground for a continuous  influence of Russian liberal and revolutionary ideas.  The Tsars themselves greatly, though unwittingly, contributed to this, in as much as they chose the Caucasus as one of the places to which political offenders were deported.  In every generation new Russian revolutionaries, and new ideas, made their appearance at Tiflis, Kutais, and elsewhere in the province.  The military rebels and writers of the early part of the century were succeeded by Narodniks.  Agrarian Socialists, from the ranks of the Russian aristocracy and civil service.  Then came Polish insurgents and Russian terrorists, to be followed, towards the end of the century, by a quite new revolutionary types, Marxist factory workers deported from central Russia.  Among the latter were Mikhail Kalinin, the future President of the Soviet Union, and Sergo Alliluyev, Bolshevik organizer and Djugashvili-Stalin’s father in-law.  While the Russian opposition thus exported its advanced ideas into the Caucasus, the Tsars did their utmost to keep the social structure of the country as backward as seemed compatible with strategic interest.  In Russia serfdom was abolished in 1861.  The emancipation of the Georgian peasants was delayed until 1864-9, and even after that – and, indeed, until 1912 – serfdom, in the form of ‘temporary servitude’, lingered in Georgia.  The Russian administration, anxious to retain the support of the Georgian gentry, postponed reform.  It was compelled to tackle it only when news of the emancipation of the Russian peasants and spread into the Caucasian country side.  The serfs were in a rebellious mood; and in view of their long record of jacquerie, it was too dangerous to delay their emancipation any longer. But reform there was much more favorable to the landlords than it was even in Russia.  The peasants obtained personal freedom, but  roughly half the land they had held as serfs was taken from them.  They had to pay compensation altogether beyond their means for the land they were allowed to retain.  The economic dependence of the peasants on their landlords presently expressed itself either in share-cropping, as it did in the South after the abolition of slavery in America, or in agreements on ‘temporary servitude’.  As late as 1911 an authority by no means inimical to Tsardom wrote:
　In Russia chattel-slavery is now remembered as a nightmare that has long passed into history.  But in Transcaucasia, especially in Georgia, no law has yet been passed to stop temporary servitude. . . The economic dependence of out peasants . . . has grown in the last fifty years and assumed a new form of serfdom.
Serfdom thus permeated the whole atmosphere in which the young Djugashvili lived.  It weighted heavily not only upon the peasants directly affected by it but also upon human relations at large, upon family, Church, and school, upon psychological attitude, upon the whole manner of life. *Up to a point this was, of course, true of the whole of the Tsarist Empire.  Comparing the abolition of serfdom in Russia with the emancipation of the American Negroes, Lenin pointed out that the Russian reform of 1861 had been much less thoroughgoing than its American counterpart: ‘Therefore now, half a century later, ‘ he concluded, ‘the Russians show many more marks of slavery than the Negroes.’  In this biter remark Len undoubtedly exaggerated.  The exaggeration was natural to the revolutionary propagandist who was impatient to see Russian society shedding once for all the legacy its feudal past.  But what was not quite true of the Russians was still true of the Caucasians.  Their social existence showed all too many and all too fresh ‘marks of slavery’.  Crude and open dependence of man upon man, a rigid undisguised social hierarchy, primitive violence and lack of human dignity, characterized the way of life that had grown out of serfdom.  Dissimulation, deception, and violence were the chief weapons of the oppressed, who had been kept in darkness and were as a rule incapable of defending themselves by open, organized action. 
       The Theological Seminary of Tiflis was a strange institution.  It was the most important, though not the only, high school in Georgia  and, indeed, in the whole of the Caucasus.  It was the main breeding-ground of the local intelligentsia.  It was also something like a spiritual preserve of serfdom.  It was here that advanced social and political ideas most directly infiltrated and clashed with feudal-ecclesiastical habits of mind.  The seminary looked like a barrack.  Inside, life was strictly regimented by austere monks.  Once the door closed behind the entrant he was expected to sever himself entirely from the out-side world.  Seminarists were supposed to stay indoors day and night, though two hours’ leave could be obtained on application to the monk in charge of the class.  The day’s programme was filled with lectures on scholastic theology and prayers, endless prayers.*The Georgian poet G. Leonidze, who has written an adulatory epic poem on Stalin’s childhood and youth, suggests that Stalin’s serf-grand-father was tortured to death by his landlord.  Pupils from poor homes led a half-hungry existence, and twenty to thirty students were herded together in one dormitory.  Spiritually, the school was half monastery and half barrack.  ‘Life was sad and monotonous,’ says an ex-student.  ‘Locked in day and night within barrack walls, we felt lie prisoners who must spend years there, without being guilty of anything.  All of us were despondent and sullen.  Stifled in the rooms and corridors . . . youthful joy almost never asserted itself.  When from time to time youthful temperament did break through, it was immediately suppressed by the monks and monitors.’  Students were not allowed to borrow books from secular libraries; only literature authorized by the monks was to be read.  The seminary was, of course, also an instrument of Russification.  Any infringement of regulations was punished by confinement to the cells.  The monks assiduously spied on the thoughts and the doings of their pupils, searching their belongings, eavesdropping, and denouncing them to the Principal on the slightest suspicion. 
This grim seminary was, however, also an important centre of political opposition.  Many men who were to become national figures and leaders of public opinion, not only Georgian but Russian public opinion, spent their formative years within its walls.  In 1930 the historical faculty of the Transcaucasian Communist University published the archives of the Tiflis gendarmerle containing reports on manifestations of ‘political disloyalty’ in the seminary.  These reports, covering a period of twenty years, rom 1873 up to the time when Djugashvili was admitted, give a good insight into the ferment of ideas among the students.
　As early as 1873 a colonel of the gendarmerie  informed his superiors that intercepted letters showed that some of the students had read the works of Darwin, Buckle, Mill, and Chernyshevsky.  A search was ordered and two more ‘seditious’ books were found: Renan’s La Vie de Jesus and Hugo’s napoleon le Petit.  It was ascertained that three teachers lectured to their classes ‘in a liberal spirit’, a crime for which the Principal dismissed them and denounced them to the gendarmerie.  A number were convicted, some because they had known of the offences and refrained from imforming against the culprits.  The report emphasizes that the offenders were animated by Georgian patriotism. 
*The students were set essays on such subjects as “In what language did Balaam’s ass speak?’alleges one of Stalin’s biographers.
　　The ferment led to a dramatic event in June 1886, when Joseph Lagiyev, a student expelled for his anti-Russian attitude, assassinated the Principal, Pavel Chudetsky.  The assassin was the son of a priest in the country of Gori.  The chief of the Tiflis gendarmerie reported  : ‘In comparison with the Russian seminaries the Tiflis Seminary finds itself in the most unfavorable conditions.  The pupils who come to seminary. . .often show. . .an anti-religious frame of mind and are hostile to the Russian element.  It is often impossible to reform such pupils, because of the extreme irritability and the morbit amour prope of the natives. ‘  He added that several Georgian newspapers, just banned, had incited the public against Russia and made the seminary a rampant of Georgian patriotism.  The seminary was closed for several months.  A curious part was played in this incident by His Eminence the Exarch of Georgian.  Paul, who suggested to the chief of the gendarmerie that the assassination was deed not of an individual but of a secret organization.   He mentioned a certain Sylvester Djibladze, who himself had assailed the Principal a year before, as the chief suspects.  Djibladze was to become one of the founders of a Social Democratic organization and one of Djugashvili’s political tutors.  Among the students expelled in 1886 was also Mikhail Tskhakaya, th e son of a priest and afterwards a friend of Lenin, a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, and President of Soviet Georgia. 
　A formal strike of all Georgian pupils at the seminary occurred only a few monthes before Djugashvili’s admittance.  On 4 December 1893 General Yankovsky of the Tiflis gendarmerie cabled to St Petersburg: ‘The majority of pupils of the Orthodox Seminary has declared a strike, demanding the removal of several tutors and the establishment of a Chair for Georgian literature.’  The Exarch of Georgia spent a whole day with the pupils, trying in vain to dissuade them from the strike.  The Principal asked the police for help.  The police closed the seminary and compelled the pupils to return to their homes.  But its chief reported uneasily that ‘many intelligent people consider the closing of the seminary to be an act of injustice towards the pupils who defended their national interests, according to their ideas.’  On leaving school, the students took an oath of solidarity.  Eighty-seven of them, however, were expelled from the seminary before the end of the term.  Mikhail Tskhakaya was again mentioned as the chief organizer of the revolt.  Among the expelled was Lado Ketsk-haveli, a former pupil of the Gori school, only three years older than Djugashvili, soon to become Djugashvili’s political mentor.  In none of these reports in there any mention of Socialist propaganda.  Outraged Georgian patriotism was the main motive of the demonstration.　　　　　　
　　When the fifteen-year-old Djugashvili appeared in the seminary, the echoes of the last strike were kill very fresh.  Pupils must have discussed the event and commented on the expulsion of the eighty-seven, and the newcomer could not but sympathize with the demand that his native literature be taught in the seminary.  He was thus from the beginning affected by the political ferment.  But as in Gori so here he was a model pupil, able, diligent, attentive.  Doubtless he watched his new surroundings with avid curiosity.  The principal was the Russian monk Hermogenes; the Inspector was the Georgian Abashidze, who, precisely because he was Georgian, was anxious to ingratiate himself with the Russian authorities by an extravagant display of servility.  Here the young Djugashvili could observe at close quarters the workings of autocratic rule on a small scale.  Those in authority themselves lived in tension and fear: the Russian Principal remembered his assassinated predecessor; the Georgian Inspector was as terrified at the slightest sign of his superiors’  displeasure as at the thought of the plots that might be hatched in the corners of the long and dark corridors and in students’ dormitories.  Yet the closer the monks watched their pupils, the more assiduously they eves-dropped o them, the more frequently they searched the pupils’ coats and cases for forbidden books, the more effectively did heresy spread within the walls of the seminary.  The recently expelled students acquired a moral authority in the eyes of the younger pupils, and they somehow managed to keep in touch with their former colleagues and to make their influence felt inside the ecclesiastical fortress.   　　　　　　While he was still in the first form, Djugashvili must have made frequent half-stealthy excursions into town and got in touch with the members of the opposition.  This can be seen from the fact that a poem by him was published in the Georgian periodical Lberya, edited by the liberal patriot Ilya Chavchavadze, on 29 October 1895, almost exactly a year after Djugashvili’s arrival at Tiflis.  He dedicated the verses, patriotic in character but colored with social radicalism, to a well-known Georgian poet, R.  Eristavi.  They appeared under the signature ‘Soselo’ (‘little Joe’), for the author must have been anxious to conceal his identity from the seminary authorities. His other offence was to borrow books from a circulating library in town.  Apart from Georgian poetry, the masterpieces of Russian and European literature were his favorite reading.  Most of all he enjoyed the three great Russian satirical writers, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gogol, and Chekhov, whom he afterwards frequently quoted in speeches and articles.  Victor Hugo’s novels and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, in Russian translations, figure among the foreign books he read.  Of greater importance to his development were popular books on Darwinian biology, on economics and sociology.  At that time positivist and materialist conceptions of nature and society exercised a strong influence upon young Liberals and Socialists.  Nearly all the memoirists, whether friendly or hostile to Stalin, agree with the impression of him given by G. Glurdjidze, one of his school-fellows, who in the thirties was still a teacher as Gori:
We would sometimes read in chapel during service, hiding the book under the pews.  Of course, we had to be extremely careful not to be caught by the masters.   Books were Joseph’s inseparable friends; he would not part with them even at meal times. . . When asked a question, Joseph would as a rule take his time in answering.  One of our curious pleasures in the unbearably stifling atmosphere of the seminary was singing.  We were always overjoyed when Soso arranged us in an improvised choir and, in his clear and pleasant voices, struck up our favorite folk-songs.
　Another writer, Iremashvili, stresses, however, a less pleasant aspect of Djugashvili’s character.  He, too, describes Djugashvili as one of the chief debaters among the seminarists, more know-ledgeable than most of his comrades, and able to advance his argument with much stubbornness and polemical skill.  But in his craving for prominence, Djugashvili could not easily bear to be overshadowed by others.  He would become fretful whenever his arguments were effectively challenged, and would become incensed and sulky at the slightest set-back in debate.  Sometimes, so a few of his classmates were to recollect, he would nurse a grudge against a successful opponent and seek to revenge himself by malignant gossip and slander.  Such behavior, though not perhaps exceptional among boys of his age, made him a difficult companion.  It was only a the beginning of his third year at the seminary that the monks began to notice that their promising pupil was going astray.  In November 1896 one of them made the following entry in the conduct-book: ‘It appears that Djugashvili has a ticket to the Cheap Library, from which he borrows books.  Today I confiscated Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea in which I found the said library ticket.’  The Principal acknowledged the report with the remark: ‘Confine him to the punishment cell for a prolonged period.  I have already warned him once about an unsanctioned book, Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo.’  Indeed, Hugo’s famous novel on the French Revolution could hardly have helped to prepare its young reader for the career of a priest.  Similar entries appeared in the conduct-book more and more frequently: ‘At 11pm.  I took away from Joseph Djugashvili Letourneau’s Literary Revolution of the Nations, which he had borrowed from the Cheap Library. . .Djugashvili  was discovered reading the said book on the chapel stairs.  This is the thirteenth time this students has been discovered reading books borrowed from the Cheap Library.  I handed over the book to the Father Supervisor.’  This was written in March 1897, only four months after the first complaint.  The principal decreed: ‘ Confine him to the punishment cell for a prolonged period with a strict warning.’  The complaints mention no socialist, let alone Marxian, books found on the delinquent.  But, to judge from the reminiscences of his cotemporaries and  from his own subsequent doings, he must have made his first acquaintance with Socialist and Marxian theories while he was in the upper forms. It was then, too, that he joined a secret debating circle within the seminary itself and a clandestine Socialist organization in town called Messame Dassy.  He joined the latter in August 1898.  Socialist books were apparently too dangerous to be brought into the seminary.  Nowhere they readily available.  Only one copy of Marx’s Capital in a Russian translation, Yarostavsky tells us, was then obtainable in Tiflis, and the young Socialists copies from it by hand.  One  may assume that Djugashvili read or scanned books and pamphlets by Socialist writers in those few hours which he managed to spend outside the seminary.
    Messame Dassy, the organization He jointed which he was nearly nineteen, was founded in 1893.  This was one of the final Social Democratic groups in Tiflis, although its outlook was still tinged with Georgian patriotism.  It assumed the name Messame Dassy(The Third Group) to distinguish itself from Meori Dassy(The Second Group, a progressive Liberal organization Which had led the Georgian intelligentsia in the eighties.  Among the founders of Messame Dassy were Noah Jordania, K. Chkheidze, and G. Tseretelli, who were soon to become well known outside Georgia as the spokesmen of moderate socialism.  One of the energetic promoters was Sylvester Djibladze, the same that had been expelled from the seminary for an assault on the Principal.  The leaders of Messame Dassy expounded their views in the columns of the Liberal newspaper Kvali(The Furrow).  Much later Djugashvili himself thus recalled the motives of his adherence to socialism: ‘I became a Marxist because of my social position(my father was a worker in a shoe factory and my mother was also a working woman), but also. . . because of the harsh intolerance and Jesuitical discipline that crushed me so mercilessly at the Seminary. . . The atmosphere in which I lived was saturated with hatred against Tsarist oppression.’  Events outside provided the final stimulus.  In those years there were turbulent strikes by the Tiflis workers, the firs strikes in the capital of the Caucasus.  Their effect on the working class and the radical intelligentsia can hardly be imagined now.  In later years strikes were to become common; their sheer frequency was to deprive them of their exiting quality.  But the first strikes were a revelation of unsuspected strength in Labor; they were a new weapon in the social contest; and, as new weapons usually do, they evoked exaggerated hopes and fears.  Rulers and ruled alike saw in them the sign of great events impending and of dramatic changes – and, as far as Russia was concerned, they were not wrong. Tiflis was then the centre of an industrial revolution on a small scale.  Its life reflected the fresh impact of industrial capitalism on the oriental, tribal, and feudal Caucasus.  ‘The country, sparsely populated in the years after the Reform, inhabited by highlanders and staying aloof from the development of world economy, aloof even from history, was becoming transformed into a country of oil industrialist, wine merchants, grain and tobacco manufacturers.’  Thus the still unknown Lenin described the state of the country by the end of the century.  The oil industries at Baku and Batum were being developed with the help of English and French capital.  To the industries enumerated by Lenin, the maning of the rich manganese ore of Chiaturi was soon to be added.  In 1886-7 the total value of industrial production of two Georgian regions, Tiflis and Kutais, amounted to only 10 million roubles.  Within four years its value was more than trebled.  In 1891-2 it amounted to 32 million roubles.  In the same period the number of industrial workers rose from 12,000 to 23,000, not counting railwaymen.  Tiflis was the main junction on the Transcaucasian railway connecting the Caspian coast with the Black Sea, Baku with Batum.  The railway workshops became the main industry of Tiflis itself, and the most important nerve-centre in the clandestine Caucasian labor movement that was now springing up.  These workshops and noisy Asiatic bazaars were the two contrasting elements in the life of the town.  The young Djugashvili may have spent some hours observing the ways and habits of Oriental traders – these were certainly to leave an imprint on his mind.  Nevertheless, that oriental world, ‘aloof even from history’, was not for him.  He was attracted by the new element in Caucasian life.    
   Two or three of the would-be clerics, turned revolutionaries, had already become his mentors.  Apart from Sylvester Djubladze, a leading figure among the adherents of Messame Dassy and too important to be the novice’s intimate friend, he used to meet two others who were his tutors as well as friends.  They were Sasha Tsulukidze and Labo Ketskhoveli.  Tsulukidze, only three years older than Djugashvili, was already a man of letters of some standing among the Messame Dassyists.  He served the cause with fervor but was himself devoured by the tuberculosis that was to kill him five or six years later.  His essays and articles published in local Georgian newspaper showed his wide knowledge of sociology and were written with genuine brilliance and literary flair.  Among his works there was a notable popularization of Marx’s economic theory.  Together with Sasha Tsulukidze, Djugashvili sometimes visited the editorial offices of Kvali and listened, at first respectfully and later with a half-ironical smile, to the words of wisdom spoken by its semi-Liberal and semi Socialist editors.
　His other teacher-friend, Ketskhoveli, was no man of letters.  His was an altogether more practical mind.  Having embraced the new faith.  Ketskhoveli was mainly interested in the steps needed to make other embrace it.  He had already seen something of the world outside the Caucasus.  One of the ‘eighty-seven’ expelled from the seminary in 1894, he then went to Kiev, an old centre of spiritual and political life, less provincial than Tiflis.  There he spent several years and got in touch with clandestine groups of Socialists who had made contact with like-minded people in Petersburg and even with exiled leaders in Switzerland, France, and England.  He had come back to the Caucasus eager to do something to take the movement in his native province out of its swaddling-clothes.  He looked round to see whether it would not be possible to set up a secret printing press, in his view the first solid base for any group of revolutionary propagandists.   The local semi-Socialist and semi-Liberal Georgian newspapers were of no use: their editors had to look over their shoulders after every word they wrote, and to submit every article to Tsarist censorship.  Such timid and emasculated propaganda as they were able to make could convince nobody and led nowhere.  At all costs, they, the younger revolutionaries, must now gain their freedom from censorship.  That meant a secret press.  It was towards such practical matters that Ketskoveli turned Djugashvili’s mind when the latter became a member of Messame Dassy.  Ketskhoveli and Tsulukidze saw to it that the new apprentice to revolution was given a specific job, running a few workers’ study circles.  His task was to lecture on socialism to a few tabacco workers, mesons, shoemakers, weavers, printers, and conductors of the local horse-trams.  The workers would gather in small groups, a dozen or at most a score in each.  Every volunteer student would be given a similar assignment, for the young organization badly needed people ready to enlighten those of its members who could not afford to read the books and brochures that expounded its doctrine.  The circles met in the workers’ own overcrowded slum-dwellings and filled the air squalor, while one member watched the street outside to see that the safely of the others was not endangered by the police.  The lecturing seminarist probably got a lot of moral satisfaction out of the work.  His labors were rewarded by the satisfactory sense of his own promotion.  Here he was, ostensibly one of the meek flock shepherded by the monk.  Abashidze, laying spiritual dynamite at the foundations of Empire and Church.  He was respect fully listened to by workmen, often much older than himself, and accepted by them as their authority and guide.
     After such a meeting it was hard and even humiliating to have to rush back to the somber seminary, to explain himself to the monks, to invent excuses for his unusually long absence, to put on a pious mask, and join the rest of the flock at singing prayers in the chapel.  This was a double life in a double sense.  Nor only had the disbeliever to pretend orthodoxy; the revolutionary, already a somebody in the town and beginning to comport himself like a public figure, had to release into the role of a pupil, not yet grown up, ordered about and bullied by superiors.  How long could he go on?　During his last year or two at the seminary Djugashvili must often have pondered this question.  He was deceiving the monks most impudently and hypocritically; but this gave him no scruples or qualms.  He was only countering deception with deception.  Were they not spying on him and searching his belongings in his absence?  Were not their teachings one monstrous deception?  His own hypocrisy was only an answer to theirs.  In this duel of lies and hoodwinking he certainly came off the better; and no doubt his success and the amusement it afforded helped massacred by suspicious peasants or betrayed them to the gendarmes.  But the Marxists hoped that enlightenment and political experience would eventually bring to socialism even the backward and the unconscious.  Meanwhile they, the theorists and the propagandists, had really no common language with the still unawaken masses.  On the other hand, the first impulses that pushed young people from the upper classes towards socialism were usually those of humanitarian sympathy mixed with a sense of guilt.  Such feelings made them see the oppressed classes as the embodiment of virtue and nobility of spirit.
　The young Djugashvili must have had quite an exceptional, an almost instinctive, sensitiveness towards that element of backwardness in Russian life and politics, a sensitiveness that was to grow even stronger in future years.  Though he, too, would now be chiefly interested in the advanced workmen, because it was only through them that the backward mass could be approached and shaken from its meekness and inertia, he would not at heart give himself to sanguine hopes or idealistic generalizations about eh working class.  He would treat with skeptical distrust not only the oppressors, the landlords, the capitalist, the monks, and the Tsarist gendarmes, but also the oppressed, the workers and the peasants whose cause he had embraced.  There was no sense of guilt, not a trace of it, in his socialism.  No doubt he felt some sympathy with the class into which he had been born; but his hatred of the possessing and ruling classes must have been much stronger.  The class hatred felt and preached by the revolutionaries from the upper classes was a kind of secondary emotion that grew in them and was cultivated by them from theoretical conviction.  In Djugashvili class hatred was no his second nature -  it was his first.  Socialist teachings appealed to him because they seemed to give moral sanction to his own emotion.  There was no shred of sentimentalism in his outlook.  His socialism was cold, sober, and rough.  
    These feature of his character were to serve him well in the future.  But they were also bound up with important handicaps.  The revolutionaries from the upper classes came into the Socialist movement with inherited cultural traditions.  They rebelled against the beliefs and prejudices of their native environment, but they also brought into the milieu – not only knowledge, their Socialist rebellion was itself the product of moral sensitiveness and intellectual refinement.  These were precisely the qualities that life had not been kind enough to cultivate in Djugashvili.  On the contrary, it had heaped enough physical and moral squalor in his path to blunt his sensitiveness and his taste.  Few of the other leaders suffered any sense of social inferiority.  Most of them, had they chosen more peaceful and sheltered paths, could have made brilliant and respectable careers for themselves.  A man of Lenin’s genius might have become a great national leader in any regime.  Trotsky was a man of letters of the highest repute.  A Kamenev, a Lunacharsky, or a Bukharin could have risen to high standing in the academic world.  All were highly gifted orators or writers, thinkers with great elan, imagination, and originality, which they showed at a surprisingly early age.  Young Djugashvili had plenty of acumen and common sense; but imagination and originality were not his characteristics.  He could lecture coherently on socialism to small circles of workers; but he was not orator.  Nor, as time was to show, was he a brilliant writer.  In caste-ridden, official Russia the son of Georgian peasants could not climb high on the social ladder, even with much ambition, pertinacity, and good luck.  In the Church he would, at best, have become another Abashidze.  Circumstances inevitably bred in him a certain sense of inferiority, of which he would not rid himself even in the Socialist underground.