Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Stalin: Man of Steel, Episode 2

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Joseph Stalin was born the third, but only surviving son, to his parents Keke and Beso. His mother begged God to let him live, and when he did, she told her son he would devote his life to God. His family and friends called him Soso, and while his mother doted on him, he was often the victim of his father’s alcohol-fueled rages. Soso learned early that violence got results, a lesson that would carry through to every facet of his life as an adult. This little boy, raised in poverty, growing angrier by the day, would one day rule all of Russia.  Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson Writers/researchers: Mandy Reid, Amy Watkin, Kari Anton, Sharon McMahon, Melanie Buck Parks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first-come, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. Here's where it gets interesting is now available ad-free. www.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca. Man of Steel. In our first episode, we walked you through the fall of Imperial Russia and the murder of the Tsar, his wife, and five children. And now, from the opulence of the Russian royal family to their violent end at the hands of the Bolsheviks, we're heading to gory Georgia, where the subject of this series, Joseph Stalin, took his first steps. And no, not the state of Georgia. Georgia, the region in the Russian Empire.

Tsar Nicholas was 10 years old, visiting his grandparents in their royal palaces, when a baby boy was born in Gori, and his mother begged God to let him live. In the town where Stalin was born, locals told a version of the story of the Greek god Prometheus. This god's name was Amaran. He was larger than life and he was evil. Captain Chains on the summit of one of the mountains that bordered the town, Amaran could not be allowed to escape. It was said that the enormous, strangely spherical stone at the top of a cliff overlooking the town was Amaran's plaything.

The people of the village held an ancient custom where once a year all of the blacksmiths hammered on their anvils in the dark of night, making a terrible racket so that Amaran would not drop his huge ball of stone and come down from the mountain to destroy them all. But the townspeople were too focused on a mythical creature to see the real evil that would grow up in their midst. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Stalin's early years can be hard to track, especially because Stalin himself changed so many details and stories throughout his life that it's actually difficult to verify

which ones are true. And even when biographers asked for information from anyone who knew him years after his death, people were still too scared of Stalin to sign their names to their written memories. The first thing that's not true about Stalin's life is his official birth date. Even close family members later in his life didn't know his actual birthday, although Stalin told everyone it was December 21st, 1879. That's not the day he was born, but it's when his family and his country were told to celebrate his birthday. Yosef Vissarionovich Jugashvili was actually born on December 6th, 1878. His name was not Joseph Stalin yet. He'd go by many names in his lifetime, and with each name change, Stalin tried to erase the

previous version of himself. The baby who grew into the man that the world would forever associate with Russia and the Soviet Union was actually born in what is now an entirely different country, Georgia. Even though it was technically part of Russia back when Soso, that's what Stalin was called when he was young, was born, Georgia was a region with its own culture and history distinct from Russia's. Soso's parents were reportedly very good-looking. His father, Beso, was a cobbler, or shoemaker, and he was well-dressed in his long belted coat and his baggy pants tucked into his high boots with a mustache that many admired. His mother, Kek, had big eyes and chestnut hair, and she worked as a seamstress.

A little more than nine months after their wedding, Keck gave birth to a baby boy named Mikhail. She later said that her husband, Beso, was, quote, almost mad with happiness, but then overcome with grief when the baby died two months later. Beso turned to alcohol. The next year, Kek was pregnant again, and another baby boy was born. But this child, named Jorgi, died of measles when he was only six months old. And Beso drank even more. He and Kek thought maybe they'd prayed to the wrong saint, so they brought different icons into the house and climbed the mountain that overlooked the town so that they could pray in the church up there. Keck swore that if she could just give birth to a baby that would survive, she would make the 45-mile pilgrimage to Gary, Georgia, to thank God at the famous St. Georgie's Church there.

famous St. Georgi's Church there. Besos said, just let the child survive, and I'll crawl to Gary on my knees with the child on my shoulders. And on December 6th, 1878, Keck's prayers were answered when she had a third son. They rushed the christening in case this baby died too. They rushed the christening in case this baby died too. They named him Yosef, but called him Soso throughout his young life. Soso is the diminutive of Yosef, similar to Americans calling somebody who's named Joseph, Joey. Soso grew up in a brick two-room house. His mother cooked over a kerosene burner, and the three family members shared one bed. Theirs was one of the only homes in the poor neighborhood that wasn't made of mud, so the family felt privileged, even though their only major possessions were a samovar for heating up

water, a bed, a sofa, a table, a wooden baby cradle, and a lamp. Most of their smaller things were stored in a single trunk. The small house had spiral stairs leading down to the cellar where they kept Beso's cobbling tools and Keck's sewing supplies. One day, this tiny house would become a shrine with Corinthian columns and a stolen museum next door. Throughout his childhood, though, Soso's life remained humble. Kek and Beso ate beans, eggplant, and bread most of the time because they couldn't afford much meat. In general, Soso was a sickly baby. He was weak and thin, and always the first to catch whatever

illness was going around. Kek didn't have enough breast milk to keep Soso fed and healthy, so two of her friends also breastfed him. Keck and Beso put off their pilgrimage to Gary, but at just a few months old, Soso became sick enough to scare them into going. When they arrived after a very difficult journey, priests were performing an exorcism on another child, holding her over a precipice. Keck said that baby Soso became horrified and screamed until they left. As Soso grew, Keck and her mother would sit on opposite ends of the room and take turns holding out a chamomile flower to entice baby Soso to walk. She took toddler Soso to a wedding, and he grabbed a flower from the bride's veil. A family friend laughed and said,

If even now you want to steal the bride, God knows what you'll do when you're older. Of course, no one then had any idea how accurately those words foreshadowed the future. Kek was completely devoted to her surviving baby. Soso learned to speak at a young age, and he loved flowers and music. All his life, he had a special love for Georgian melodies and duduki pipes, which were a woodwind instrument similar to an oboe. But he was still a sickly child. similar to an oboe. But he was still a sickly child. As a young boy with auburn hair and freckles like his mother, Soso got smallpox. He survived, but he would carry scars on his hands and face for the rest of his life. One of his nicknames was Chopura, meaning the pockmarked. Despite Soso's

survival, Beso still drank too much. His clients sometimes paid him for their shoes in wine, which was common in a region where wine was often more readily available than cash. Keck begged him to stop drinking, but Beso seemed to drink even more, earning him the nickname Crazy Beso throughout the village. There was regular gossip that Beso was not actually Soso's father. Even Stalin himself later said that his father was a priest and not a cobbler, but this could have been wishful thinking or another attempt to erase his real history and replace it with fiction. Despite his regular drinking, Beso' business did well for a while.

At one point, he had 10 employees and some apprentices working for him. A friend of Bezos' family said that they always had butter in their house, which meant that they had enough money to eat reasonably well. Stalin later dismissed his father's success, saying that he was an exploiter and not a proper proletariat or member of the working class. But Stalin seemed to want it both ways, because he also boasted that his father could make two pairs of shoes a day, and one of the aliases Stalin would use as an adult was the name Bezosvili, which means son of Bezo. Despite his ability to feed his wife and child, Beso terrorized his family. One day when Soso was just four years old, Soso ran to a police officer's house screaming, help, come quickly, he's killing my mother. The police ran back to

find Beso strangling Keck, And she survived. But the trauma continued. People who knew him said Soso lost respect for his mother when she quote-unquote let Beso beat her. And this made his relationship with his mother very complicated. Back then, it was quite common to blame the woman when her husband or father beat her. But Beso's anger wasn't focused only on his wife. He regularly went into drunken rages, sometimes searching the house, shouting, Where is Keck's little bastard?

Hiding under the bed? On many days, Soso heard his father coming down the street and ran to his mother to ask if he could wait at the neighbor's house until Beso fell asleep. Keck wrote, When he saw the drunken father, his eyes filled with tears, his lips turned blue, and he cuddled me and begged me to hide him. But Soso couldn't always escape.

Beso once threw Soso still just child to the floor hard enough that there was blood in the boy's urine for several days. Faso could occasionally be a gentle father who told his young son stories of Georgian heroes who fought the rich. But he also filled Soso with hate. A childhood friend said, undeserved beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as the father himself. Soso became so stubborn and hard to discipline that Keck started beating him too. As Stalin approached middle age, he once asked his mother why she had beaten him so often. She replied,

Didn't do you any harm. Soso learned a different kind of hate from his father, too. Beso constantly complained that the Jewish cobblers were better at making shoes than he was, and he hated them for it. Soso soaked it in. Keck, on the other hand, worked as a housekeeper for wealthy Jewish families and often brought Soso with her to their homes so he could get to know them. At one house in particular, the man who lived there loved to see Soso. The man gave him money and bought him

books. And the man later said, I loved him like my own son, and he reciprocated. But Soso's father taught him to resent money from Jews. So while Soso seemed to have kept the money, he never forgot how poor it made him feel because his father said that Jews had no right to be better than them. Decades later, that Jewish man who'd loved young Soso traveled to Moscow and went to visit him, but he didn't find the same boy that he had once loved. The man he met that day was Joseph Stalin, already a political leader who had invited him into his office, not to catch up, but so that the man could see Stalin was now richer and better than he had ever been. The poor part of town where Soso grew up was called the Russian Quarter because Russian soldiers stayed in the nearby barracks.

Throughout his childhood, other children called Soso the Russian, perhaps because of where he lived. But the name seems to have stuck in Soso's mind, forming a part of his identity. Even young Soso had one foot in Georgia and one in Russia, it seemed, never really fitting into either place. Stalin never felt a strong connection to Georgia, or if he did, he quashed it down and promoted only a Russian identity. Most of his nicknames and aliases he used throughout his life were Russian and not Georgian. And later in life, he would call his birthplace only that small area of Russia, which calls itself Georgia. Soso and his mother often visited the bazaar or marketplace in Gori, where they would see people playing a board game called nardi that's similar to chess.

Tailors measured their clients by sprinkling soot on the ground, having the client lay in the soot, and then sitting on them to make sure their dimensions were firmly impressed into the soot. Next to that, there might be someone getting a tooth pulled with pliers or someone else getting a haircut. The town madman, as he was known to those in the village, might stumble through, always followed by a group of boys laughing and teasing him. According to a childhood acquaintance, Soso never teased the town madman. He would push and scowl at the boys to make them stop. The Jewish merchant that Soso's mother did laundry for would give Soso money whenever he saw this kindness towards the so-called madman, and Soso would share the money

with his friends so that they could all buy sweets. But life for Soso and Keck was never really smooth sailing for long. Beso was drinking and not working enough, so they could no longer afford their little house. Over the next ten years, they had at least nine different homes. Often, Keck and Soso stayed with relatives or friends, always with Bezo promising to get their old life back, and always failing at it. According to Keck, Soso became very reserved, frequently sat alone, and didn't go out to play with the other children anymore. He said he wanted to learn to read, and I wanted to send him to school, but Beso was against it.

Beso said, no, being a cobbler was good enough for his son. had prayed for a surviving baby and made a pilgrimage to give thanks once he arrived, was determined that he'd go to school to become a priest or even a bishop. Wanting him to learn as much as possible, Keck invited the teenage sons of family friends to teach So-So Russian, and it seemed like he was a very quick learner. Even later in life, though, once he became Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, he still spoke Russian with a Georgian accent. He just couldn't shake. Sometimes Bezo would find him at these lessons and drag him back by his ear to shoemaking. But when he left, Soso ran back, focused on learning as much as he could. Mother and son had learned to fight back, and that's what they had to do for years.

Keck slapped, hit, and kicked Beso to protect her child, and Soso defended his mother, once throwing a knife at his father. And Beso was just as much of a menace to the townspeople as he was to his family. He'd get drunk and go about town smashing tavern windows, and once even stabbed a policeman with one of his cobbler's tools. He wasn't arrested because people felt bad for Keck, and Beso eventually ended up leaving town. Maybe this humiliation was what pushed him out. Regardless of the reason, though, he was finally gone.

what pushed him out. Regardless of the reason, though, he was finally gone. Some say Beso got a job and even sent Keck money occasionally, asking to get back together, and she refused. It's hard to say exactly what's true and what's not, because Stalin deliberately changed the details of his life story so often, as if to erase his entire childhood, or maybe just certain parts of it. Keck wanted Soso to immerse himself in the church and live a holy life. Despite Keck's insistence that Soso follow a path into the church, there were certainly hints that Soso was maybe not cut out for that kind of life. A childhood friend remembered his grandmother reading a Bible story to the two boys, telling them the story of Judas's kiss when he betrayed Jesus. Instead of being properly dismayed about Judas's betrayal, Young Soso asked, but why didn't Jesus draw his saber?

His friend's grandmother patiently explained that Jesus wouldn't use violence. He was only going to turn the other cheek and, quote, sacrifice himself for our salvation. Keck lived under the constant stress of trying to figure out how to save enough money to send Soso to school. She took in laundry, and they continued to live with friends and family. She wrote, how many nights did I spend in tears? I didn't dare cry in the child's presence for it worried him so much. So-so used to embrace me, peering fearfully into my face and saying, mommy, don't cry or I'll cry too. So I'd control myself, laugh and kiss him, and then he'd ask again for a book. She straightened her back and worked harder, more determined than ever,

that Soso would be the first person in the family to attend school, and gory church school had a great reputation. Hek got a job at a private women's clothing shop, saying she was earning money to make him at Gory Church School, a two-story red brick building that still stands today. He was able to learn reading, math, and more Russian. He was an outstanding student. Keck was determined that two things would happen. Her son would attend the school so that she could start paying God back for keeping her third baby alive. And he would be the

best dressed child there. She did not want him to be the poor kid at the nice school, so Keck took in more work laundering clothes and cleaning the homes of the teachers at the school to make sure that Soso could hold his head up in the schoolyard. For his first day of school, Soso wore a long coat down to his knees, cinched at the waist with tall boots, a pleated shirt, a scarf, and a red school bag. Overdressed wasn't in his mother's vocabulary. But Soso made up for his overly fancy appearance by being the toughest kid in the school. He wasn't big, but he had become fierce. People started avoiding him because they were afraid of him. It's not that Soso wasn't big, but he had become fierce. People started avoiding him because they were afraid of him. It's not that Soso wasn't happy. Apparently, he often expressed happiness, in fact, by snapping

his fingers, hollering loudly, and then hopping around on one leg. He also still loved music, and his teachers appreciated his strong singing voice. At every church service, three students were chosen to sing the prayers. Soso was always one of the three singers. There is one incident that happened right around his start at the church school that may answer the question that followed Stalin throughout his life. What happened to his left arm? In photos, you'll often see that arm holding a pipe or tucked into a pocket. He did this to conceal a deformity in that arm, and it's become another part of his life that is difficult to figure out. One story Stalin later told was that he and his friends were playing chicken with horse-drawn carriages, trying to grab the axle between the back wheels. Soso was knocked unconscious playing this dangerous game, and it's

possible that his arm was injured as well. Since the village barber was also the doctor, historians think maybe the arm was broken and didn't heal correctly without proper treatment. This is what Stalin later told one of his wives, anyway. But Stalin also told at least six other stories to explain what happened to his arm. He said it was a sledding accident, the result of an infection, an injury from being beaten by his father, a birth defect, a wrestling injury, and the result of a fight over a woman. And Stalin's mother didn't offer any clarity in her memoir either. What we know for sure is that the shorter left arm kept Stalin from having to fight in World War I, and it also made him self-conscious enough to try to hide it throughout his life. Rarely do you see

a photo of him standing with his arms straight down at his sides. Add to that the fact that the second and third toes of his left foot were webbed, and you can see why Soso was reluctant to swim in the river with his friends. A schoolmate remembered teasing Soso for having the devil's hoof in his shoe. Evidently, Soso did not say a word, but he had learned his childhood lessons well. Always hit back harder. This short, pockmarked boy with a webbed foot, a deformed arm, and rumors that he was illegitimate was starting to find methods of fighting back that he would use all of his life. methods of fighting back that he would use all of his life. Soso had street smarts and book smarts and used both to get what he wanted. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey.

We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays,

we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. group of friends that he called the Three Musketeers. Soso's musketeers not only defended him from bullies teasing him about his foot, arm, or face, they beat up other kids just for fun.

One of Soso's favorite games was called Krivi, which was sort of like boxing. Two teams would fight, one from the lower part of town where the rich people lived, and one team from the upper part of town where poor kids like Soso were from. Soso was not strong or big, but he was sneaky, darting amongst the fighters and popping up unexpectedly. The lower town kids always won, of course, because they were not as scrawny as the hungry kids from upper town. Still, even when he was invited to join the rich kid's team because of his prowess in fighting, Soso refused. He would rather be the best fighter on a losing team than the weakest fighter on the winning one. Soso's three musketeers were some of the only people from Stalin's childhood he did not either erase or punish

later in life. During the war, when everyone in the country was hungry, he sent his three childhood friends money, always signing his notes from Soso. But despite his friends and the pleasure he took from fighting, there was one person Soso could not seem to defeat. Soso's father reappeared in gory, still very against the idea of his son becoming educated. His parents argued bitterly, but the fight ended with Beso taking Soso out of school and bringing him to Tiflis, a city about 50 miles away. He got young Soso a job at a shoe factory, fetching and carrying for the older workers. Soso was unhappy with this working man's life. He was only around 12 years old, already living an existence filled with working for only a tiny wage, sleeping in a dank little room with his father and seeing almost nothing but the inside

of the rooms where he worked and slept. Luckily for Soso, Keck was not about to see her dreams of her son's education die. She later wrote, I raised the entire world, my brothers, godfather, the teachers, and the priests to go to Tiflis with me and restrain Soso's father, and Beso returned my son to me. Beso never reappeared in the town where his wife and child lived, and everyone assumed that he died. Young Soso went back to classes and studied hard for another two years at Gory Church School, but he learned some of his biggest life lessons outside of his school books. One of their teachers made the boys sit perfectly still with their hands on their desks, looking the teacher directly in the eyes. If they flinched

or looked away, he wrapped their knuckles with a wooden rod, saying, if your eyes wander, it means you're up to something nasty. Soso seemed to carry around that advice his entire life, as you can see in his unrelenting gaze in photographs of him. Often it looks like he's challenging the photographer, staring him down. Another formative experience at Gorey Church School occurred when Soso was 14, and the teachers took their students to a public hanging. The point was to scare the boys into following rules once they saw the consequences of breaking them. But what Soso actually learned was that even God's commandments, like, Thou shalt not kill, could be broken.

God's commandments, like thou shalt not kill, could be broken. Those dark lessons would seem bright and sunny compared to what was in store for Soso when he left gory church school to attend Tiflis Seminary. Getting Soso into seminary wasn't easy. Only the children of priests were officially allowed to attend the seminary school, but Keck had many friends and called in favors. Only the children of priests were officially allowed to attend the seminary school, but Keck had many friends and called in favors. A local priest and friend of Keck's was willing to lie and tell the school that Soso's father was a deacon. The priest's lie stirred up old rumors about Soso's real father,

and some people said that the priest actually whispered to school officials that he was Soso's biological father. Regardless of rumors, the priest's assertion was enough for the school to allow Soso to take the entrance exam. He passed near the top of his class. Keck was thrilled, of course, because her only child was fulfilling her dream of him becoming a man of God. But the students had to live at the school like monks, with a literal wall between them and the rest of the world. The four-story white marble building with columns towering over its front steps was imposing, seemingly designed to keep people in as much as to keep people out. They could only go outside with the priest's permission at scheduled times. Students woke early for prayers, spent a full day in the classroom, prayed again, ate very little,

walked around the city briefly, and then went to bed. A classmate of Soso's wrote, We felt like prisoners, forced to spend our young lives in this place. They were supposed to learn to follow rules and study holy texts. But in their short walks through town, Soso was learning about organizations that sounded far more interesting, and might get him closer to martyrdom or a godlike status than religion ever could. Soso was learning about the populist movement in Russia. movement in Russia. Around the same time Soso was born, young revolutionaries were traveling the country trying to incite a peasant revolt. Revolutionaries weren't really against the

communal system, but they wanted a communist society where everyone owned an equal share, no czars to take all their money and wield all of the power. One of the new ideas that Soso was reading about was that a full-scale revolution wasn't necessary, at least not in all-the-people-shall-rise-up-and-fight kind of way like the American or French revolutions. Now, writers were saying that a small group of leaders could change Russia's systems on their own. All they had to do was seize power from the Tsar. As Russian revolutionaries became well-known and broke more laws, they were forbidden from living in St. Petersburg because, with all the factories there, it was too easy for them to gather in big numbers, even while at work, and plan their rebellions. Passes were now required to get into the city,

and any known or suspected revolutionaries couldn't get a pass. So where did they go? Many moved to Tiflis, where they were often in contact with boys from the seminary who read their books and snuck out at night to talk about their revolutionary ideas. As Soso learned more about the world outside of the seminary walls, he stopped studying his required school books and became one of the students most often in trouble. His crime? Usually reading a forbidden text. The priests at Soso's seminary were famously brutal, often punishing students with solitary confinement.

But it didn't seem to intimidate Soso the way they'd hoped. He just went right back to finding more forbidden books once he was released from punishment. One of the forbidden books that Soso read while at seminary was Catechism by Sergei Nikhaev, founder of a secret society called People's Vengeance. Nikhaev wrote that revolutionaries needed to stop worrying about laws because, quote, our task is terrible universal destruction. A revolutionary must become more powerful than rich people, align himself with criminals,

and be merciless. Just as he'd been when learning Russian as a boy or learning how to hate Jews from his father, Soso was a good student of revolutionaries. Some of the boys at seminary started a secret book club called Cheap Library. They hid their books and candles when teachers came around at bedtime, but quickly lit their candles again as soon as the teachers left. Soso was so excited by what he was reading that he hardly slept. Yet even in this educated life that only upper-class boys were supposed to have,

Soso couldn't get rid of his past completely, because as it turns out, his father wasn't dead. his father wasn't dead. One night, very late, Soso was told Beso was there to see him. He had to step outside where his loud, drunk father was demanding money from his son. Who knows what Soso would have done if he had had any money to give to his father, but he had nothing. Beso didn't believe him and started yelling, and Soso couldn't help but remember those days in his childhood he'd worked hard to forget. The screaming, violent man was suddenly back in his life, and his mother wasn't there for him to run to for help. When Soso's pleading didn't quiet his father down, he threatened him by saying he'd call the police and have Beso taken away. Perhaps that unflinching stare that Soso had learned from his strictest teacher played a role here,

as Beso finally realized that his son was serious and staggered away. As far as historians know, Soso never saw his father again. Soso went back to his late night sessions reading works of fiction by writers like Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy. His favorite book, though, was called The Patricide by Georgian writer Alexander Kazbegi. Maybe it's not a surprise that Soso was drawn to a book about killing your own father. The book was about a love story gone wrong. When the young man in love is falsely imprisoned, his best friend Koba must break him out an exact revenge. Koba steals from the rich to give to the poor, holds friendship sacred, and fights for freedom and vengeance. And soon, you'll see how important

the character of Koba would become to Stalin. Soso also read Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, demonstrating that all species are related and evolve over time. This shocking new knowledge moved Soso even further away from religion. Apparently, God had not created living creatures. They had simply evolved. He showed the book to a friend, saying, there's no God. They're deceiving us. A seminary classmate of Soso's later wrote, no secular school produced as many atheists as the Tiflis Seminary. And Soso definitely became an atheist while studying to become a priest. Of course, he couldn't speak these thoughts to any of his teachers. He just answered their questions correctly without

believing what he was saying. He learned that it was easy to deceive. Among all of these influential books, however, Soso also encountered the works that the Russian revolutionaries considered their Bible, the writings of Karl Marx. Marx preached that capitalism must be overthrown and private property abolished so that the working class or proletariat could rule. Soso soaked up these ideas and stopped studying his seminary texts. What was the point? It was a waste of time when they should all be working on ways to overthrow capitalism and ensure the rise of the proletariat. In 1898, at about the same time that Soso was encountering Marxist writings, the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party leaders met for the first time. They were

the revolutionaries that Soso was hearing about, and their group would soon split into two factions, the Bolsheviks, who would later go on to murder Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks wanted a disciplined, armed, violent revolution to overthrow capitalism, and the Mensheviks, or the minority, who wanted a revolution but only through legal methods. Soso became moody and sullen with sudden outbursts of anger. Other boys reported that So-So's eyes were small, almost beady, and glowed with a terrifying yellow light when he was outraged. And more often than not, So-So was outraged. Still, he slunk around the seminary, always carrying a book, dutifully attending class even though his heart and mind were no longer in it. He even published some poetry during his seminary years, all of it

dark. For example, a line of one poem says, the mob has set a vial filled with poison before the hounded man, crying, drink a cursed one. This may be the time period when a friend of his mother's described Soso as an embittered, insolent, rude, stubborn child with an intolerable character. Nothing could stop him from reading his forbidden books. He fought often and started speaking rudely to his teachers. It was as if he was daring them to expel him, all the while secretly hoping that they actually would. He couldn't just leave the seminary on his own because the only person he was still truly scared of was his mother, and he knew she would be furious. In 1899, when he was 21 years old, Soso was kicked out of seminary. You have to wonder if he was relieved. He later claimed that he was expelled for Marxist propaganda,

but the truth was not so flashy or even close. Reports from the school say that he was expelled for failure to sit for an examination. If his mom was going to be irate either way, better that Soso had to leave seminary for a mundane reason instead of a revolutionary one that might incense her even more. And yet his mother was distraught, speaking words that seemed to open a new chapter in her son's life, a harbinger of things to come. Keck said that now God was going to abandon her son, leaving room for the devil to move in. And yet, Soso's revolutionary life was just beginning. He made contact with the underground revolutionaries

and started leading workers in Marxist discussion groups. Soon, he would meet his other, most important teacher. Vladimir Ulyanov was only eight years older than Soso and exiled in Siberia while Soso was at school. This privileged intellectual could not be more different from scrappy young Soso who always had a chip on his shoulder. But the two young men were both devoted to Marxism and shared the philosophy that true revolutionaries were always merciless. Injustice could only be stopped by violence. Both of these young men would soon change their names. Soso and Ulyanov had to die in order for the revolution to begin. Vladimir

Ulyanov would change his name to Lenin, but Soso wasn't ready to become Stalin just yet. First, he would usher in the new century, working the only ordinary job he ever had, as a type of meteorologist. In 1899, there was no other way to record weather information, so humans were hired to watch the sky 24 hours a day, writing down what they saw. On New Year's Eve, 1899, So-So sat alone in the observatory, watching the stars, perhaps wondering what this new century would hold for him. He didn't know that in the coming years, he would become one of the world's most powerful, feared leaders. He didn't know that millions of people would die because of him. But perhaps he did already

know that in order to gain any power at all, young Soso had to be the first to die. It was time for Soso to take a different name and several different roles. A political organizer, a journalist, a politician, an editor. And it was also time for him to become an infiltrator, a bank robber, an enforcer, a gangster. And most importantly, it was time to start growing that mustache. I'll see you again next time. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck-ets Interesting. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck-Parks. The show is written and researched by Mandy Reed, Amy Watkin, Kari Anton, Sharon McMahon, and Melanie Buck-Parks. Our audio producer is Craig Thompson. And if you enjoyed this episode, sharing, rating, and subscribing helps podcasters

out so much. Thanks again for listening to Here's Work, It's Interesting, and I'll see you again soon.