Stalin's childhood and adolescence - L'histoire en anglais

Tout au long de sa vie, Staline est resté très discret sur son enfance et ses origines. Une vie très pauvre dans un petit village de Géorgie, bien loin de ses années à la tête de l’URSS…

La jeunesse de Staline (texte en anglais)

On december 6, 1878, Joseph Vissarionovich Jughashvili, alias Stalin, was born at Gori in Georgia, part of the russian empire. In Saint Petersburg, the capital, a long line of Romanov has been ruling for three centuries and the czar, Nicholas II, is weak and religious. Thanks to his scolarship, he enters the seminary at sixteen. He's noticed for his exceptionnal memory and his singing voice. A seminarian education was the wish of his mother, a pious woman. She doesn't want him to become a cobbler as his alcoholic and violent father, but a bishop. Stalin looses his faith while he's a student at the seminary. In this greeding ground of revolutionaries, he learns from the mean orthodox priests and their alcoholic guards, technics of repression. Stalin lists: surveillance, spying, invasion of one's inner life, violation of one's feelings. But he also learns the vertue of silence : to Stalin, it will always be better to listen than to speak.