Young Stalin

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“All young people are the same,” said Stalin, “so why write… about the young Stalin?” Yet he was wrong: he was always different. His youth was dramatic, adventurous and exceptional. When in old age he reflected on the mysteries of his early years, he seemed to change his mind. “There are,” he mused, “no secrets that won’t be revealed for everyone later.” For me as a historian unveiling his clandestine life up to his emergence as one of Lenin’s top henchmen in the new Soviet government, he was right about the secrets: many of them can now be revealed.

There are few works on early Stalin (compared to many on young Hitler), but this is because there seemed to be so little material. In fact, this is not so. A wealth of vivid new material that brings to life his childhood and his career as revolutionary, gangster, poet, trainee priest, husband and prolific lover, abandoning women and illegitimate children in his wake, lay hidden in the newly opened archives, especially those of often-neglected Georgia.

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