In the Mind of Stalin by James Greensmith & John Applemore

Author:James Greensmith & John Applemore [Greensmith, James & Applemore, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
Published: 2023-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Stalin and his Mother Ekaterina: His ‘Rock’

In the Stalin Museum in Gori (eastern Georgia), said Svetlana, she saw a ‘unique photograph taken during the last visit of Stalin to his mother, Ekaterina, who died on 4 June 1937. ‘Both were sitting at a table in her room: she is holding her arm around his shoulder – looking very pleased: he looks so happy and so relaxed that I gasped involuntarily. I have never seen my father in such an elated, in such an enlightened state.’1

His mother ‘eternally occupied a pre-eminent place in his heart. She was his eternal, positive, loving force, the only one he knew.’2 In fact, Ekaterina was a rare example of someone who could criticise Stalin, i.e. by telling him that he ought to have become a priest, without fear of reprisals!

As for Ekaterina, from the time that Stalin had been imprisoned in the Metekhi Prison in Tiflis in the year 1900, she said of Stalin: ‘My dear son, whenever a misfortune fell on me – whenever he was arrested or exiled to Siberia – he always informed me of what had happened to him through someone. But now I’m through with misfortunes. The entire world knows of my son “who has been in prison”. He is in good health, which makes me glad. I am happy that he has achieved his goal and become a benefactor and patron of all oppressed people. I wish Beso [her late husband Besarion] had also lived to see him become the pride of our country.’3 Besarion had died in 1910.

When Ekaterina wrote this in 1935, Stalin had been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) for thirteen years. She died in 1937, by which time Stalin had demonstrated that he had, in fact, become the very opposite of what his mother had hoped for: namely an oppressor of the most brutal kind, rather than a benefactor and force for good.

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