14. A. J. Rieber, ‘Stalin as Georgian: The Formative Years’ in S. Davies & J. Harris (eds), Stalin: A New History, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2005 p.36.
15. According to the 1922 chronology prepared by his staff, Stalin was excluded from the seminary for ‘unreliability’.
16. RGASPI, F.558, Op.4, D.65; M. Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait, CEU Press: Budapest 2003 p.31.
17. J. Stalin, Works, vol.2, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1953, p.368.
18. Cited by R. Boer, ‘Religion and Socialism: A. V. Lunacharsky and the God-Builders’, Political Theology, 15/2 (March 2014) p.205. See also S. Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organisation of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1970 pp.4–5. For context and the relationship between the contemporaneous ‘God-seeking’ and ‘God-building’ movements see E. Clowes, ‘From Beyond the Abyss: Nietzschean Myth in Zamiatin’s “We” and Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago”’ in B. Glatzer Rosenthal (ed.), Nietzsche and Soviet Culture, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1994.
19. He may have read a review of the 1911 volume published in the January 1912 issue of the Bolshevik journal Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment) and underlined the reviewer’s phrase that, for Lunacharsky, ‘Marxism is a religion’. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.274, p.86 of the journal. This copy of Prosveshchenie is one of nineteen in Stalin’s library. Dating from 1911 to 1914, they contain quite a few scattered markings but, as Yevgeny Gromov pointed out, it is not certain that they all belong to Stalin (Stalin: Iskusstvo i Vlast’, Eksmo: Moscow 2003 p.59). The best bet is that the marking of several articles on Marxism and the National Question (including his own piece) are Stalin’s. Certainly, these particular markings correspond to the arguments and points that Stalin subsequently made in discussions about this question. Boris Ilizarov (Pochetnyi Akademik Stalin i Akademik Marr, Veche: Moscow 2012 p.113) believes Stalin may have had these copies of the journal with him in Turukhansk and then brought them home with him, but more likely is that he obtained them soon after he returned to Petrograd from exile in 1917.
20. For detailed studies of Bolshevik policy on religion during the Stalin era, see I. A. Kurlyandskii, Stalin, Vlast’, Religiya, Kuchkovo Pole: Moscow 2011, and A. Rokkuchchi, Stalin i Patriarkh: Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ i Sovetskaya Vlast’, 1917–1958, Rosspen: Moscow 2016. Roccucci’s (sic) book is also published in Italian: Stalin e il Patriarca: La Chiesa Ortodossa e il Potere Sovietico, Einaudi: Turin 2011.
21. See J. Ryan, ‘Cleansing NEP Russia: State Violence Against the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922’, Europe-Asia Studies, 65/9 (November 2013).
22. D. Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless, Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY1998 p.39.
23. J. Stalin, Works, vol.10, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1954 pp.138–9.
24. See L. H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions, 1918–1929, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1992.
25. V. Smolkin, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2018 p.46.
26. Ibid., pp.47–9.
27. F. Corley (ed.), Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, Macmillan: Basingstoke 1996 doc.89.
28. See Smolkin, A Sacred Space is Never Empty, chap.2.
29. R. Boer, ‘Sergei and the “Divinely Appointed” Stalin’, Social Sciences (April 2018) p.15.
30. Smolkin, A Sacred Space is Never Empty, p.53.
31. See S. Merritt Miner, Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945, University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill 2003.
32. Ibid., p.6. See also Boer’s Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power, Springer: Singapore 2017.
33. J. Stalin, Works, vol.4, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1953 p.406.
34. In relation to communism as a political religion I have followed closely the argument of Erik van Ree in his ‘Stalinist Ritual and Belief System: Reflections on “Political Religion”’, Politics, Religion and Ideology, 17/2–3 (June 2016).
35. I owe the Napoleon reference to Patrick Geoghegan’s Robert Emmet: A Life, Four Courts Press: Dublin 2004. According to Donald Rayfield, Stalin wrote ‘stupidity!’ beside this remark in one of Konstantine Gamsakhurdia’s historical novels: ‘If brought up by the path of historical patriotism, we can make a Napoleon out of any bandit.’ D. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, Viking: London 2004 p.16.
36. Stalin, Works, vol. 1, p.57.
37. See E. van Ree, ‘The Stalinist Self: The Case of Ioseb Jughashvili (1898–1907)’, Kritika, 11/2 (Spring 2010).
38. Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, p.138. For the purposes of quotation, I have changed the order of this passage.
39. R. M. Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore 1987.
40. Stalin, Works, vol.1 pp.133–9.
41. S. Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 2007. For a more sober treatment of the Tbilisi robbery, see Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, chap.17.
42. Cited by Suny in ibid., p.361.
43. L. Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification, Pioneer Publishers: New York 1962 p.181.
44. See J. Ryan, Lenin’s Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence, Routledge: London 2012 chaps 1–2.
45. On the Malinovsky affair see I. Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928, University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh 2007 pp.1–17.
46. I. Deutscher, ‘Writing a Biography of Stalin’, The Listener, https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1947/writing-stalin.htm (25 December 1947).
47. See Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, chap.23. Roy Medvedev suggests that later in life Stalin had trouble writing in Georgian and that this explains the paucity and brevity of his letters to his mother in the 1920s and 1930s. See his essay on ‘Stalin’s Mother’ in R. & Z. Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin: His Life, Death and Legacy, Overlook Press: Woodstock NY 2004. At school and in the seminary Stalin studied ancient Greek but his command of that language is uncertain.
48. For a comprehensive collection of Stalin’s writings on the national question, see J. Stalin, Marxism and the National-Colonial Question, Proletarian Publishers: San Francisco 1975.
49. For the view that Stalin’s philosophical and political differences with Lenin were greater than suggested here see R. C. Williams, The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904–1914, Indiana University Press: Bloomington 1986 pp.119–23.
50. Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, pp.415–19.
51. For Onufrieva’s testimony and the police reports on Stalin’s library visits: RGASPI, F.558, Op.4, D.647, Ll.52–8. A copy of Stalin’s dedication on the front page of the Kogan book may be found here: RGASPI, Op.1, D.32. I was drawn to this source by Y. Gromov, Stalin: Iskusstvo i Vlast’, Eksmo: Moscow 2003 pp.36–8. See also Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, pp.465–7.