The young man is pale with a burning gaze now.  V.Ya.Bryusov

If anything, this was now an age test.

But if this is “A line from Oksimiron’s song,” then I’m afraid I have sad news. Oksimiron plagiarizes!) Well, or quotes, as you like.

It was the children who enlightened me now. Tenth grade, so you understand. We can probably make allowances for the fact that the Silver Age in the modern literature program takes place just at the beginning of the second quarter of ten. I hope this does justice to young minds.

Because otherwise a very depressing picture emerges.

I'll leave the poem here. Let it be. I love him!

To the young poet

A pale young man with a burning gaze,

Now I give you three covenants:

First accept: don’t live in the present,

Only the future is the domain of the poet.

Remember the second: do not sympathize with anyone,

Love yourself infinitely.

Keep the third: worship art,

Only to him, thoughtlessly, aimlessly.

A pale young man with a confused look!

If you accept my three covenants,

I was on the ground very often when I served in the 5th detachment. Both under Hirako and when he himself was captain. We did not always arrive on the ground in Karakura. No. For example, they roamed all over Japan, catching empty ones. I can’t say that it gave me great pleasure. Especially if Hirako or Momo was nearby. This is constant grumbling, stupid conversations, absolutely meaningless assurances and screams. But somehow we caught a huge empty one in another country, a huge one, it seems, it was called Russia. I don't remember, to be honest. I no longer want to remember or remember anything. I just want to die. I don’t want to think about the lost hogiyoku, or about the fact that my strength was leaving me so quickly that it’s easier to track the speed of light. Neither the sentence, nor this imprisonment... I don’t want to. So I don’t think... I can only think about this... About a shinigami who is no longer there... It hurts, but it reminds me that I’m still alive... This makes me feel even worse...
Then, about a hundred years ago, Hirako and I got out onto the ground, into that same Russia... We still couldn’t find the Empty. I somehow lost my way and Hirako and I missed each other. I came across some old building, pretty shabby and worn out by life. I walked in, sensing the Reiatsu of a Hollow nearby, but it wasn’t in the house. The inside of the house was as pathetic as the entire Gotei 13 now. Peeling walls, a creaky floor, the smell of dampness penetrating into all corners... And on the floor there were books, quite old ones. When I picked one up to look at it, it fell apart. I picked up a few sheets of paper. One of them had a poem on it. Having become interested, I read it, but then all my thoughts were interrupted by a rather boring voice: “Izeeeeeeen! Where the fuck are you?! I have already dealt with this empty thing, and here you are toiling around with bullshit. Everyone went!". And for another week he muttered to me about the fact that he would no longer take me to the ground, because I was no good at all.
I would have forgotten about that poem if he had not joined our detachment... When he was introduced to me... Skinny, short, but... there was something in him that I did not see in any of the nonentities that surrounded me.

A pale young man with a burning gaze...

Such a sweet, seemingly harmless boy. Skinny, fragile. At first I had the impression that it might break like some beautiful old vase. But the vase is far from its elegance. Not at all human grace. Not animal. No... This is a superman. The one who deserves the highest share. Fortunately, he understood this. I always understood. Otherwise, I would not have left my childhood friend. For me? Don't think. He strived. He looked ahead. As I. This is probably what brought us closer.

Now I give you three covenants

We often spent time together. Not necessarily for training. Just. Drink tea. Read together. I don’t remember when we crossed the line of ordinary friendship. He was sitting in my room once again, and I finally saw his eyes. I was amazed at how much they talked. More than any words, more than any gestures. Small, fragile. But at the same time, strong, fearless, capable of killing not so much out of a desire to advance in his career, but rather out of a desire to see my reaction - he made the right decision. I was delighted. And from that moment on, I decided that no matter what, we will reach the end. Yes, we are. Exactly us. It’s just that at some point we stopped existing separately. One day there was a wild downpour. Gin and I were sitting in my room and he suddenly asked me: “Aizen-san, what do you want more than anything in the world?” I grinned: “Take a place in this sky.” “Ugh, how corny! What do you need it for? - his gaze was not mocking. He said what he thought. He always said what he thought. Although they spoke of him as the most distinguished hypocrite. I ruffled his hair: “What are you suggesting?” He smiled even more: “Nothing! We’re already doing well!” He climbed onto my lap and pressed his lips to mine. He did this often. We played like kittens. But... That night it didn't work out that way. He didn't leave my lips. And what happened happened. People in the time of that very poet, whose poems I found on the ground, called it “depriving of honor.” I am laughing. What honor? This is Gin... He lazily lay on me and stroked my face, while I lazily ran my palms along his back...
“Aizen-sama... I... Behind you...” he whispered and fell asleep. I had no doubt about his answer. This is Gin...

First accept: don’t live in the present,
Only the future is the domain of the poet.

Since then he has changed a little. He became my lieutenant after I killed Hirako. We were closer than anyone else. Not just friendly conversations and hours spent together. No. Joint plans. For the future. For our future. We were romantics. It's hard to believe, right? I realized this only now. Did Gin understand? No, Gin never understood this. A romantic will consider himself a cynic until the end of his days, and a cynic will reproach himself for excessive sentimentality. I just never thought about it myself. I looked to the future and thought about what each of my actions would entail. And now I only think about what happened before. That it will never come back to me again. But you know what? I do not regret anything. Neither about the fact that he inspired Gin to go to his death, nor about the fact that he destroyed himself. My only regret is that I thought too much. It wasn’t worth it... It was necessary to act...

Remember the second: do not sympathize with anyone,
Love yourself infinitely.

You can't even imagine how amazing he was. His silver hair enveloping his head, framing his face. A beautiful silver face, sweet eyes - no, not hypocritical, but sweet. He seemed to glow from his aspirations, from the fact that he had finally gotten rid of the tormenting everyday passions, from this routine. And every day, every single day, our communication became even closer: we learned so many new things from each other... And only now I understand that it was not necessary. It was necessary to leave everything as it was at the first stage of our acquaintance. I got too attached to Gin. At that moment, when he was pierced by several Zanpakuto at once in a Bankai state, I thought: “What is this little world for me?” In a rage, I killed almost all the lieutenants and captains. And then he bent over a guy so handsome that it seemed that he was not dead. I just fell asleep and a tear rolled down my cheek. When I raised my face to the shinigami, I found an oil painting: Abarai twitching his eye, Kuchiki looking displeased and this painted dick, it seemed, did not know how to control his eyes. I stroked Gin’s face and wanted to attack, but the strength, as it turned out, had left me. They left me along with Gin...
And now I remember... When we were lying on the futon in my room after another sex, he ran his hands over my face and asked: “Maybe you shouldn’t do anything? You don’t like the captain’s position that much?” “I want to grow taller, Gin,” I stroked his hair and kissed him on the lips. We kissed, but I felt that he was trying to tell me something: “I...I don’t want to, Aizen is a taicho. It’s not worth it...” he whispered interspersed with kisses. But I didn’t let him finish. I crushed him under me and for the next half hour we didn’t think about it.
But now I understand - he loved. Not me, but rather ourselves and our future. He understood me better than I understood myself. I thought that you need the whole world to be happy. But it turned out that it was not much. I'm not talking about love. I'm saying that the whole world is nothing to me. He was my whole world - understanding, admiration, selfishness, and arrogance. He was just like me. Power is good... But he convinced me of other things, for example, of affection. My Gin... Why? I want to be yours again.
But he won't hear me. Now he doesn't need me anymore. I'm not me anymore.

Keep the third: worship art,
Only to him, thoughtlessly, aimlessly.

"Tear to death, Shinsou!" - how many times have I heard this phrase from Gin’s lips? More often in training than in battle. This is his grace. Superhuman grace. He was always graceful - in battle, in training, in conversations, and in sex. He always gave his all, gave without looking back. If he killed, then impartially, if he spoke, then beautifully, if he fucked, then passionately. Now I understand that he was just living. Lived And I just thought, reflected, made plans. But I just had to live. How is he. And he just lived when he followed me to Hueco when he was fighting. Not for me, but because I saw life in this... Not because I wanted to rise higher, but because I wanted to live even more colorful and brighter...
Gin... You will always be a star burning in my sky... Even though we will never be together...

One memory flashes through my head. Before going to Seiretei, Gin told me: “Aizen –ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo What will you do if I die? I was surprised. Gin never asked such questions. “Gin...” Gin made a dissatisfied face: “Taicho... I need to know!” By God, he’s capricious like a little child... “Gin... I’ll probably be sorry to lose you... But life goes on! I will live on!” He hugged me and said: “That means everything is fine, that means I can be calm.” Then I thought that he wouldn’t die, he’s strong... I was so wrong...

We are not destined to see each other again... It’s a pity, I want to look again at his pale face and eyes, burning with the fire of life. The fire that left me. I bury my face in my hands...

The voice came as if from nowhere. I raised my head. Opposite me, on a wooden chair, sat a tall man in a suit. He had brown hair, a mustache and beard of the same color. He arched an eyebrow: “Why are you sitting there? Forgot the last lines? I blinked my eyes in surprise and the last verse came to mind in my memory... The stranger, as if reading my thoughts, calmly said:

A pale young man with a confused look!
If you accept my three covenants,
Silently I will fall as a defeated fighter,
Knowing that I will leave the poet in the world.

"CRAP!" - I scream in rage. How wrong I was! Gin... It’s so good that you asked then. And how good it is that I remember what the answer was... Gin... We are so similar... I grabbed Kyoka Suigetsu and cut the bars with one blow.

An hour later, the entire Seiretei was engulfed in flames. I didn't spare anyone. And then I opened a passage to Hueco and went there forever. There it will be easier for me to lick my wounds and move on with my life.

Aizen walked quite quickly and could not see the strange man smiling after him and saying: “A pale young man, with a burning gaze...”. For a minute, the man thought that a gray-haired, smiling teenager was walking next to Aizen, holding Aizen’s hand and muttering some kind of nonsense. He blinked, but the next moment Aizen was still walking alone. The man decided that it was just his imagination. “They will have everything,” he said after the retreating figure and disappeared into oblivion.

A pale young man with a burning gaze
From the poem “To the Young Poet” (1896) by the founder of Russian symbolism Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873-1924):
A pale young man with a burning gaze,
Now I give you three covenants.
First accept: don’t live in the present,
Only the future is the domain of the poet.
Used: as a humorous and ironic description of a very emotional, excited or enthusiastic person (not necessarily young).

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.

See what “A pale young man with a burning gaze” is in other dictionaries:

A punctuation mark that is placed: 1) at the end of an exclamation sentence. Oh, if only I could rise to the sky just once! (Bitter); 2) optionally in exclamatory sentences with homogeneous members after each homogeneous member to indicate... ... Dictionary of linguistic terms

Location of introductory words, addresses, particles, prepositions- 1. Not being members of a sentence, introductory words are freely located in it if they relate to the sentence as a whole; Wed: He seemed to have fallen asleep. “He seemed to have fallen asleep.” “He fell asleep, it seemed.” At the same time, it should be noted that the semantic... A reference book on spelling and style

A person who deliberately attacks an opponent who is obviously superior to him.

Origin of the word combination pale young man with a burning gaze

This is what the first line of Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov’s poem “To the Young Poet” looks like.

Belonging to the word combination: pale young man with a burning gaze

Youth slang.

An example of the use of the word combination pale young man with a burning gaze

Here a pale young man with a burning gaze came at me.

A pale young man with a burning gaze came out from point A to point B. On the way, he gained a little weight, drank away his armor, and married a laundress. This is every second person here, there is a swarm of them here, the squad will not notice the loss of a fighter.

When he was introduced to me... Skinny, short, but... there was something in him that I did not see in any of the nonentities that surrounded me. The young man is pale, with a burning gaze... Such a sweet, seemingly harmless boy.

Moreover, these people should not be very famous and not very wealthy, that is, they should be “pale young men with burning eyes.” So, without asking unnecessary questions.

“A pale young man with a burning gaze”

Georgians considered their country an oppressed kingdom of knights and poets. Stalin's poems in Iveria, published under the pseudonym Soselo, gained fame and became, if not first-rate, classics: they were published in anthologies of Georgian poetry before anyone knew the name Stalin. In 1916, Stalin’s first poem “Morning” was included in “Deda Ena,” a collection of primers for children published from 1912 to 1960. It was preserved in subsequent editions, sometimes attributed to Stalin, sometimes not, until the time of Brezhnev.

Now Stalin had a teenage tenor, and it was said that with his voice he could sing professionally. Poetry is another talent that could set him on a different path and take him away from politics and bloodshed. “One can only regret – and not only for political reasons – that Stalin chose revolutionary activity over poetry,” says Professor Donald Rayfield, who translated Stalin’s poems into English. Their romantic imagery is secondary, but the beauty of these poems lies in the sophistication and purity of rhythm and language.

The meter and rhyme of the poem “Morning” are beautifully maintained, but it is Stalin’s refined and precocious work with Persian, Byzantine and Georgian motifs that earns praise. “It is not surprising that the patriarch of Georgian literature and social thought, Ilya Chavchavadze, willingly agreed to publish “Morning” and at least four other poems,” writes Rayfield.

Socelo's next poem, a rapturous ode to “The Moon,” reveals even more about the poet. In a world of mountain glaciers ruled by divine providence, a frantic and oppressed outcast seeks the sacred moonlight. In the third poem, Stalin develops “the contrast between the riot of nature and man on the one hand and the harmony of birds, music, singers and poets on the other.”

The fourth poem is the most eloquent. Stalin creates the image of a prophet persecuted in his fatherland, a wandering poet, to whom his own people offer a cup of poison. Seventeen-year-old Stalin is already envisioning a “maniacal” world, where “only persecution and murder await the great prophets.” If in some poem by Stalin “there is avis au lecteur” (“a warning to the reader”), Rayfield believes, then this is certainly the case.

Stalin's fifth poem, dedicated to the beloved poet of Georgians, Prince Rafael Eristavi, brought him, along with “Morning,” the greatest poetic fame. It was this that made Stalin’s “insider” at the State Bank tell Stalin when to stage a robbery on Erivan Square. This poem was included in the collection for the anniversary of Eristavi in ​​1899. Both the strings of the lyre and the harvest with a peasant's sickle are mentioned here.

The last poem, “Elder Ninika,” which appeared in the socialist weekly “Kvali” (“Plow”), sympathetically describes the old hero who “tells fairy tales to his grandchildren.” This is an idealized image of a Georgian like Stalin himself in old age, who sat on the veranda by the Black Sea and regaled the youth with stories of his adventures.

Stalin's early poetry explains his obsessive, destructive interest in literature as a dictator, as well as his reverence—and jealousy—for brilliant poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak. The judgments of this “Kremlin highlander” about literature and his influence on it were, in the words of Mandelstam from his famous obscene anti-Stalin poem, “like pound weights”; “his thick fingers are like worms, fat.” But, oddly enough, behind the appearance of a boastful rude man and a stupid philistine hid a classically educated writer with unexpected knowledge. Mandelstam was right when he said: “Poetry is respected only here - people kill for it.”

The former romantic poet despised and eradicated modernism, but favored his own, distorted version of romanticism - socialist realism. He knew Nekrasov and Pushkin by heart, read Goethe and Shakespeare in translation, and quoted Walt Whitman. He talked endlessly about the Georgian poets he had read as a child, and he himself helped edit the Russian translation of Rustaveli’s “The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin”: he translated a few stanzas and modestly asked if his translation would be suitable.

Stalin respected artistic talent and preferred to kill party hacks rather than great poets. Therefore, after the arrest of Mandelstam, Stalin ordered: “Isolate, but preserve.” He “preserved” most of his geniuses, such as Shostakovich, Bulgakov and Eisenstein; He either called them and encouraged them, or denounced them and brought them to poverty. Once such telephone lightning from Olympus took Pasternak by surprise. Stalin asked about Mandelstam: “But he’s a master, a master?” Mandelstam's tragedy was predetermined not only by his suicidal decision to ridicule Stalin in poetry - that is, by the means by which the dictator himself conveyed his childhood dreams - but also by the fact that Pasternak was unable to confirm that his colleague was a master. Mandelstam was not sentenced to death, but he was not “saved” either, dying on the way to the hell of the Gulag. But Stalin “saved” Pasternak: “Leave this celestial being alone.”

The seventeen-year-old seminarian poet never admitted that he was the author of his poems. But later he told a friend: “I have lost interest in writing poetry because it requires all the attention of a person, the patience of the devil. And in those days I was like quicksilver.” The mercury of revolution and conspiracy, which has now seeped into the souls of Tiflis youth - and into the seminary 1 .

From the white steps of the “stone bag,” Soso saw the busy but dangerous Persian and Armenian bazaars around Erivan Square, “a network of narrow streets and alleys” with “open workshops of jewelers and gunsmiths; counters of confectioners and bakers, who have flat loaves in large clay ovens... shoemakers display colorful shoes... wine merchants' shops, where wine is stored in wineskins made of lamb or ox skin with the wool inside.” Golovinsky Boulevard was almost as good as the streets of Paris; the rest of the city was more like “Lima or Bombay.”

“The streets,” says Baedeker’s guide, “are mostly inclined and so narrow that two carriages cannot pass on them; the houses, mostly decorated with balconies, stand one above the other on the mountain slope, like steps of a staircase. From dawn to dusk, the streets are crowded with a wide variety of people and animals... Here you can meet Georgian greengrocers with large wooden trays on their heads; Persians in long caftans and tall black fur hats (they often have hennaed hair and nails); Tatar seid and mullah in flowing robes, green and white turbans; representatives of mountain tribes in beautiful Circassian coats and shaggy fur hats... Mohammedan women in veils... and horses carrying waterskins, led by brightly dressed drivers.”

The city of hot sulfur springs (and the famous sulfur baths) was built on the slopes of the Holy Mountain and on the banks of the Kura, under the Georgian church with a pointed dome and the gloomy towers of the Metekhi fortress-prison, which Iremashvili called the Tiflis Bastille. A majestic church rose above the cobbled paths of the Holy Mountain - now Keke is buried there, among poets and princes.

160,000 people lived in Tiflis: thirty percent Russians, thirty percent Armenians and twenty-six percent Georgians; the remainder were Jews, Persians and Tatars. Six Armenian newspapers, five Russian and four Georgian were published in the city. Tiflis workers mostly worked in the railway depot and small workshops; wealth and power here were held by Armenian magnates, Georgian princes and Russian officials and generals close to the court of the imperial governor. The water carriers of Tiflis were Rachinites, from the region to the west, the masons were Greeks, the tailors were Jews, and the bathhouse attendants were Persians. It was “a mess of people and animals, sheep’s caps and shaved heads, fezzes and pointed caps... horses and mules, camels and dogs... Screams, roars, laughter, swearing, jostling, songs...<раздаются>in the hot air."

In this multinational city with theaters, hotels, a caravanserai, bazaars and brothels, Georgian nationalism and international Marxism were already in full swing. They began to penetrate into the closed galleries of the seminary. 2 .

Soso and another student, Seid Devdoriani, were moved from the dormitory to a smaller room due to poor health. Devdoriani was older and was already a member of a secret circle where young men read forbidden socialist literature. “I invited him to join us - he agreed with great joy,” says Devdoriani. There Stalin also met his friends from Gori - Iremashvili and Davitashvili.

At first they read not inflammatory Marxist works, but harmless books banned in the seminary. The boys illegally became members of the “Cheap Library” book club and took books from the store, owned by the former populist Imedashvili. “Remember the little bookstore? – he later wrote to the all-powerful Stalin. “How we thought and whispered in it about great insoluble questions!” Stalin discovered the novels of Victor Hugo, especially “Ninety-Three.” The hero of this novel, Simurdain, a revolutionary priest, will become one of Stalin's role models. But the monks strictly forbade Hugo.

At night, the Black Spot walked the corridors, checking to see if the lights were off and if anyone was reading (or indulging in other vices). As soon as he left, the students lit candles and returned to reading. Soso usually “over-exerted himself and hardly slept, looked sleepy and sick. When he started coughing,” Iremashvili “took the book from his hands and blew out the candle.”

Inspector Hermogenes caught Stalin reading “Ninety-third” and ordered him to be punished with “a long punishment cell.” Then another spy priest discovered another Hugo book in his possession: “Dzhugashvili... it turns out that he has a subscription sheet from the “Cheap Library,” the books from which he uses. Today I confiscated from him the work of V. Hugo “Toilers of the Sea”, where I found the named sheet. Assistant Inspector S. Murakhovsky.” Hermogenes noted: “I was already warned about the extraneous book “The Ninety-Third Year” by V. Hugo.”

The young Stalin was even more influenced by Russian writers who excited radical youth: the poems of Nikolai Nekrasov and Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?”. His hero Rakhmetov was for Stalin an example of an unbending ascetic revolutionary. Like Rakhmetov, Stalin considered himself a “special person.”

Soon Stalin was caught reading another banned book “on the church stairs” - for this he received “by order of the rector a long-term punishment cell and a stern warning.” He “adored Zola” – his favorite “Parisian” novel was “Germinal”. He read Schiller, Maupassant, Balzac and Thackeray's Vanity Fair in translation, Plato in the original Greek, the history of Russia and France; he shared these books with other students. He was very fond of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Chekhov, whose works he memorized and “could quote from memory.” He admired Tolstoy, but he was “bored by his Christianity” - later, in the margins of Tolstoy’s discussions about the atonement of sins and salvation, he wrote: “Ha-ha!” He covered with notes Dostoevsky's masterpiece about revolutionary conspiracy and betrayal - “Demons”. These volumes were smuggled in and hidden under the surplices of the seminarians. Stalin later joked that he “expropriated” – stole – some books for the cause of the revolution 3 .

Hugo was not the only writer who changed Stalin's life. Another novelist changed his name. He read the forbidden novel by Alexander Kazbegi “The Patricide,” where the classic Caucasian robber-hero nicknamed Koba was depicted. “Soso and I were impressed by Georgian works that glorified the Georgians’ struggle for freedom,” writes Iremashvili. In the novel, Koba fought the Russians, sacrificing everything for his wife and his homeland, and then unleashing terrible revenge on his enemies.

“Koba became a god for Soso, the meaning of his life,” says Iremashvili. He would like to become the next Koba.<…>Soso began calling himself Koba and insisting that we call him that only. Soso’s face beamed with pride and joy when we called him Koboi.” This name meant a lot to Stalin: the revenge of the Caucasian mountaineers, the cruelty of bandits, the obsession with loyalty and betrayal, the willingness to sacrifice personality and family for the sake of a great goal. Even before that, he loved the name Koba: that, short for Yakov, was the name of his “adoptive father” Egnatashvili. The name Koba became his favorite revolutionary pseudonym and nickname. But his loved ones still called him Soso 4 .

His poems had already appeared in newspapers, but at the age of seventeen, in the fall of 1896, Stalin began to lose interest in spiritual education and even poetry. In terms of academic performance, he moved from fifth to sixteenth place.

After lights out, the students, looking out to see if the dreaded inspector was coming, argued in a half-whisper, but heatedly, about the great questions of existence. The seventy-year-old dictator Stalin recalled these disputes with laughter. “I became an atheist in my first year of seminary,” he said. He had arguments with classmates, for example with his devout friend Simon Natroshvili. But, after thinking for some time, Natroshvili “came to me and admitted that he was mistaken.” Stalin listened to this with pleasure until Simon said: “If God exists, then there is hell. And there is always hellfire burning there. Who will find enough wood to burn hellish fire? They should be endless, but is there really endless firewood?” Stalin recalled: “I burst out laughing! I thought that Simon came to his conclusions using logic, but in fact he became an atheist because he was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough wood in hell!”

From simple sympathy with revolutionary ideas, Soso moved towards open rebellion. Around this time, his uncle Sandal, Keke's brother, was killed by the police. Stalin never spoke about this, but it probably played a role.

Stalin quickly - “like mercury” - moved from French prose writers to Marx himself: for five kopecks, the seminarians borrowed “Capital” for two weeks 5 . He tried to study German so he could read Marx and Engels in the original, and English - he had a copy of The English Workers' Struggle for Freedom. Thus began his efforts to learn foreign languages, especially German and English, which would continue throughout his life.

Soon Stalin and Iremashvili began to slowly make their way out of the seminary under the cover of darkness. In small shacks on the slopes of the Holy Mountain their first meetings took place with real workers - railway workers. From this first spark of conspiracy, a fire was lit that was not destined to go out.

Stalin was bored with decent educational discussions in Devdoriani’s seminary club: he wanted the circle to move on to active action. Devdoriani resisted, so Stalin began to fight him and found his own circle 6 .

However, they remained friends: Soso spent the Christmas holidays of 1896 in the village of Devdoriani. Perhaps Stalin - he always knew how to dose out friendliness and soon learned to cleverly abuse hospitality - was postponing the final break so that he would have a place to stay during the holidays. On the way, the comrades stopped by Keke, who lived in a “small hut.” Devdoriani noticed that there were a lot of bedbugs in it.

“It’s my fault, son, that we don’t have wine on the table,” Keke said at dinner.

“And I’m to blame,” Stalin replied.

– I hope the bedbugs didn’t bother you at night? – she asked Devdoriani.

“I didn’t notice anything like that,” he lied out of politeness.

“He noticed them very well,” Stalin told his poor mother. “I was spinning and kicking all night.”

It was not lost on Keke that Soso avoided her and tried to say as little as possible.

Returning to the seminary in 1897, Stalin broke with Devdoriani. “Serious and not always harmless enmity... was usually sown by Koba,” recalls Iremashvili, who remained on Devdoriani’s side. “Koba believed that he was born to be a leader and did not tolerate any criticism. Two parties were formed - one for Koba, the second against.” This situation repeated itself throughout his life. He found a more authoritative mentor: he again became close to Lado Ketskhoveli from Gori, who inspired him - he was expelled from both the Tiflis and Kyiv seminaries, arrested and now released. Soso did not respect anyone as much as Lado.

His mentor introduced his younger friend to the fiery, black-eyed Sylvester Dzhibladze, Silva, the same legendary seminarian who beat the rector. In 1892, Jibladze, together with the elegant aristocrat Noah Jordania and others, founded the Georgian socialist party “Third Group” (“Mesame Dasi”). Now these Marxists gathered again in Tiflis, got their hands on the newspaper “Kvali” and began to sow the seeds of revolution among the workers. Dzhibladze invited the teenager to the apartment of Vano Sturua, who recalls that “Dzhibladze brought an unknown young man.”

Wanting to take part in the work, Stalin turned to the influential leader of the group, Noah Jordania. He came to the editorial office of “Kvali”, where his last poems were published. Zhordania, tall, with “an elegant, beautiful face, a black beard... and aristocratic manners,” patronizingly recommended Soso to study more. “I’ll think about it,” answered the impudent young man. Now he has an enemy. Stalin wrote a letter criticizing Jordania and “Kvali”. The newspaper refused to publish it, after which Stalin said that the editors “sit all day long and cannot express a single worthy opinion!”

Lado was also disgusted by Jordania's softness. It was probably Lado who introduced Stalin to the circles of Russian workers that grew like mushrooms around the Tiflis workshops. They met secretly in a German cemetery, in a house behind a mill and near an arsenal. Stalin offered to rent a room on the Holy Mountain. “We met there illegally once, sometimes twice a week in the afternoon – until roll call.” The rent cost five rubles a month - the circle participants received “money for small expenses” from their parents and “from these funds... paid for the room.” Stalin began keeping “a handwritten student journal in Georgian, in which he covered all the controversial issues discussed in the circle”: this journal was passed from hand to hand in the seminary 7 .

From a rebel schoolboy, he was already turning into a revolutionary and for the first time came to the attention of the secret police. When another Marxist activist, Sergei Alliluyev, a skilled railway worker and future father-in-law of Stalin, was arrested, he was interrogated by the gendarmerie captain Lavrov. He asked: “Do you know any Georgian seminarians?” 8

The romantic poet became a “convinced fanatic” with an “almost mystical faith” to which he devoted his life and in which he never wavered. But what did he really believe?

Let's give him the floor. Stalin's Marxism meant that “only the revolutionary proletariat is called upon by history to liberate humanity and give the world happiness,” but humanity would undergo “many ordeals, torments and changes” before achieving “scientifically developed and justified socialism.” The core of this beneficial progress is “class struggle”: “the cornerstone ... of Marxism is the mass, the liberation of which ... is the main condition for the liberation of the individual.”

This teaching, according to Stalin, is “not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral worldview, a philosophical system,” similar to a scientifically based religion, the adherents of which were young revolutionaries. “I had the feeling that I was being included as a small link in a large chain,” Trotsky wrote about this. He, like Stalin, was convinced that “only what is won in battle is durable.” “Many storms, many bloody streams,” as Stalin wrote, had to sweep through “to destroy oppression.”

There is one big difference between Stalin and Trotsky: Stalin was a Georgian. He never ceased to be proud of the Georgian nation and culture. It was difficult for the small peoples of the Caucasus to accept true international Marxism, because oppression made them dream of independence. The young Stalin believed in the power of a mixture of Marxism and Georgian nationalism, which was almost the opposite of international Marxism.

Soso, who read Marxist texts, was rude to the priests' faces, but had not yet become an open rebel, like other seminarians before and after him. Stalin's propaganda later exaggerated his early revolutionary maturity: he was far from the first revolutionary in his generation. For now, he was just a young radical, just wading into the waters of the revolution. 9 .