Young Stalin

Young Stalin reconstructs Joseph Stalin’s life before he became ruler of the Soviet Union, beginning with his childhood in Gori and education in the Georgian Orthodox seminary. Montefiore follows his emergence as a revolutionary organiser, writer, conspirator and bank robber within the underground politics of the late Russian Empire, using archival research and testimony from people who knew him during these formative years.

The book traces Stalin through the Revolution of 1905, repeated arrests and Siberian exile, factional struggles within Russian Social Democracy and his growing relationship with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It ends with the revolutionary transformation of 1917 that brought figures once hunted by the imperial police into power. The biography asks how the experiences and methods of the young revolutionary helped shape the later dictator.