RUSSIA: Stalin’s Past

The youth and ominous “past” of Dictator Josef Stalin of Soviet Russia are kept shrouded in perpetual mystery by his iron censorship of all Soviet information sources. The very names of his wife and child are well-guarded secrets. Stalin dwells in the seclusion of an Oriental Potentate, because, say his friends, his parents were Asiatic and the reticence of the East is his birthright. Naturally the enemies of Comrade Stalin tell another story.

Last week the “other story” was told at length by the Berlin newspaper Tageblatt, a renowned Independent organ. The Tageblatt’s informant, one Essad Bey, a purported friend of Stalin’s youth, wrote:

“Twenty years ago, in a poor saloon on the outskirts of Baku, near the factory quarters, one could meet a badly dressed young man with crooked nose, low forehead and coal-black hair. He was a Georgian, the publisher of the workmen’s paper. He called himself Koba, Nischeradse, Tschischikov, Ivanovitsch, and, lastly, Stalin. His real name was Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili.

“In the evenings, Georgians, Ossets, Inguschs and Armenians used to assemble in front of the bar in their colorful costumes, and in the morning the workmen’s newspaper was better informed about the events in Caucasia than the larger papers in town. . . .”

All this was at the time when the transCaucasian “activists” were first forming themselves. “Their members belonged to small nations from all over Caucasia, mostly wild illiterates, nomads, warriors who could remember the days of the holy Imam Schamil. . . .

“The real Marxists in Russia used to frighten their opponents by mentioning the transCaucasian activists. Soon Stalin, the ‘unconsecrated,’ became leader of the activists.

“Stalin is no theorist of communism, he was never a dreamer or a romantic hero. He is a cold-blooded man of deeds, uneducated in manner, and disliked by the European communists. He never considers anything which does not concern the near future.”

Corroborative of all this reactionary gossip is the fact that M. Dzhugashvili, whom Lenin nicknamed “Stalin” [“Steel”], was five times exiled to Siberia by the Tsarist regime for various high crimes and misdemeanors, but he five times escaped. In the war of “Whites” and “Reds” which followed the Russian revolution Comrade “Steel” valiantly defended the town of Tsaritsin, which is now called Stalinsk.