Some thoughts:1. Georgia is really far away from Moscow or St. Petersburg. Stalin grew up in a very different world.
2. Georgia was a pretty wild place in those days; probably still is.
3. Bolsheviks needed money, and Stalin had a knack for organizing large-scale heists with his trusted, and so-wild, Georgian comrades. A bank robber before a politician.
4. His oft-noted seminary days - possibly a religious calling, mostly because this was the one place where some education could be obtained. Stalin was not good at obeying authority. Forbidden books, such as Balzac, Thackeray, Schiller, etc. Even Gogol and Chekhov were banned there.
5. A poet!
6. Infighting among Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Czarist secret police were actually pretty effective at infiltrating all groups. Led to climate of suspicion, finger-pointing, witch-hunts - premonitory of Stalin in the 1930s.
7. Amazing adventures during several exiles to Siberia; the last time, all the way up in a tiny village well north of Arctic Circle (Kureika - living with aboriginal tribesmen).
8. Where he managed to twice impregnate an underage girl. Seemed there was a trail of affairs wherever he went. All skillfully covered up in later years. But not very good at conducting his marriage - neglected a young wife who died.
9. Early conflicts with Trotsky. Didn't end until the ice pick incident.
10. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin living in Vienna simultaneously in 1913.
11. His amazing willingness to slaughter - developed during these early years presumably - photo section has an interesting example of the way that group photos changed over the years in Soviet Union as group members fell out of favor over the years.
12. Very interesting summary of Bolsheviks taking power from Kerensky government; this was an extremely close-run thing. Not inevitable! Lenin with incredible will power; Stalin always ended up going along.
All this very much larger than life, interesting throughout.
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