Read The Stalin Epigram for Free Online

time.) The men close to Comrade Stalin—his
longtime secretary, his chief of staff, assorted members of the Politburo, even Yagoda—had another take on the situation. For them, the boss’s obsession with forcing the peasantry onto
collectives had come home to haunt him. Tales of deserted Ukrainian villages, of cattle cars filled with starving peasants, of rampaging mobs burning seed grain and killing livestock, circulated in
the Kremlin. The forbidden word famine was being spread about. Was Comrade Stalin, the man of steel who had held fast during the roll of the dice we referred to as the Revolution , as
well as the brutal Civil War that followed, losing his nerve? Was he afraid the chaos he had unleashed would spiral out of control; that the Ukrainian breadbasket would be lost forever to the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics; that his Politburo colleagues, faced with the collapse of Bolshevik power, would plot behind his back to strip him of his leadership role—or his life?
    The cigarette tobacco in his pipe seemed to settle the boss’s nerves. Sinking into the seat to the right of Gorky, he even managed to chat stiffly with the writers and editors nearest him.
“That’s a good question—our history books skim over this period of Stalin’s life because it would be unseemly for a Bolshevik to draw attention to it,” he told a
writer, speaking a rich Russian with a thick Georgian accent, using the third person form of speech he favored in public appearances like this one. “His mother—Ekaterina, thank God, is
still very much alive—is a certified saint. In those days the family lived in a dilapidated shack behind a church in Gori, a dreary sprawl of a town in a mountainous backwater of Georgia next
to the Kura River, which was so muddy fish drowned in it. She made ends meet keeping house for a local priest and taking in washing from the bourgeois housewives who lived on the side of town with
paved streets and garbage collection. The last time Stalin visited his mother—you’re not going to credit this—she asked him what he did for a living. Stalin explained that he
worked in the Kremlin and helped govern the country. She shook her head in disgust and said he would have done better to finish the seminary and become a priest. Can you imagine Stalin, a devout
atheist, as a priest!”
    The khozyain tapped the toes and heels of his boots on the floor in a little jig, a sign that he was beginning to enjoy the conversation. One thing my boss relished was talking about
himself. It was hard to get him started, but once started, it was harder to stop him. “As for Stalin’s late and very lamented father, Vissarion,” he went on, “he was a
shoemaker by trade, a hardworking breadwinner and a model proletarian, though there is little chance he ever knew the meaning of the word. He struggled selflessly to make life better for his wife
and children. Vissarion, to Stalin’s everlasting regret, died before he could really get to know him, but his father remains a shining example of what a man should be. You asked about
Stalin’s names—his mother called him Soso when he was a kid, which is the Georgian equivalent of Joey. Later, when Stalin went underground and began his revolutionary activities, he
called himself Koba after a fictional Caucasian outlaw.”
    “And where did the name Stalin originate?” a fat editor asked.
    Around us the waiters were serving chilled white Georgian wine to the guests. Yusis came over with a bottle he’d selected at random from the cartons in the kitchen, uncorked it in front of
the boss’s eyes and half filled his glass. The khozyain wet his lips on the wine. “Koba began using the underground name Stalin in 1913, I think. Yes, yes, it was 1913. He took
the name from a bosomy apple-cheeked Bolshevik whose bed he was sharing at the time. Her name was Ludmilla Stal. He transformed the Stal into Stalin .”
    “Stalin—man of steel,” Gorky said