Stalin: A Biography

Not only popular culture but also Georgian literature had an influence on him. He loved the national classics, especially the thirteenth-century epic poetry of Shota Rustaveli (who was revered by Georgians as their Dante).¹⁶ Another favourite was Alexander Qazbegi’s story The Patricide, which had been published to much acclaim in 1883: Joseph loved it. The main character was called Koba. The plot involved episodes from the history of the great resistance led by Shamil against Russian Imperial power in the 1840s. Koba was an abrek. The term implies not just a robber but a man of the mountains with fearless hostility to all authority. Abreks live by their cunning as well as violence but do not prey upon ordinary people. Their code of honour allows and encourages them to be ruthless. What they punish is treachery. They do not expect life to be easy or God to rescue them from misfortune; and The Patricide suggested that betrayal by friends and acquaintances is something only to be expected. But revenge is sweet; the abreks will always pursue to the death those who have wronged them. Koba declares: ‘I’ll make their mothers weep!’

The abreks caused greater damage to civil society than Qazbegi allowed. As a Georgian urban story-teller he strove to suggest that the old ways of the Caucasus had a certain nobility. Russian writers such as Pushkin, Lermontov and Tolstoi also put Caucasian robbers into their works but seldom — until Tolstoi’s Hadji Murat in 1912 — gave a convincing interior view of the mind of mountain outlaws. Qazbegi was not in their class as a literary figure, but his immediate popularity with Georgian readers was enormous. His treatment of the Shamil resistance ignored reference to its Islamist purpose. He provided Georgians with a sense of national worth. Qazbegi was offering an admiring portrait of the violent traditions of the mountains: blood feud, vengeance, personal honour and life beyond the law. This was a romantic view more extreme in its particular aspects than anything offered in Walter Scott, Lord Byron or Alexander Pushkin. Qazbegi implied that the dominant values in cities and towns in Georgia — Christianity, commerce, education, law and administration — were inferior to the savage beliefs and customs of the mountains.

Gori lies in a valley and its inhabitants were not the rough mountaineers who lived by thievery, kidnapping and murder. One of his school friends, however, recalled how impressed Joseph was by Qazbegi’s work:¹⁷

Koba was Soso’s ideal and the image of his dreams. Koba became Soso’s God, the meaning of his life. He wanted to be the second Koba, a fighter and hero — like him — covered with glory… From then onwards he called himself Koba, he absolutely didn’t want us to call him by any other name.

Works of literature allow for diverse interpretations. Qazbegi’s story is unusually straightforward, and Stalin’s subsequent preoccupation with revenge and personal honour indicate that the basic message was successfully transmitted.

It is in this connection that one of the most gruesome events of Joseph’s childhood should be interpreted. While he was a schoolboy, two ‘bandits’ were hanged on the gibbet in the centre of Gori.¹⁸ The event left a deep imprint on the boy’s mind, and many years later — when biographical details about him were published — he allowed an account of the hanging to be reproduced. His biographers have frequently adduced his remembrance of the events as evidence of his psychological peculiarity. That Joseph developed a gross personality disorder can hardly be denied. But he was not alone in witnessing or remembering the hanging. It was the most remarkable event in Gori of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. What happened was as follows. Two men of the mountains were being pursued by a policeman on horseback who tried to take possession of their cow. They resisted. In the ensuing altercation they shot him. Strife between brigands and the police was not unknown in Gori and the surrounding area. Shoot-outs occurred not infrequently. Urban inhabitants more often than not took the side opposed to the police. Hatred of the authorities was widespread. Defence of family, property and native village was thought justifiable regardless of Imperial legislation. So when the captured brigands were sentenced to death, the popular interest — and not just Joseph’s — was intense.¹⁹