Why Is Russia Bringing Stalin Back—and Who Was He Before Power?
Asked in 2017 why Stalin was being brought back, Putin called excessive demonization a way to attack Russia. The episode examines today's rehabilitation politics, then turns to the man before power: who Stalin actually was, and how an obscure functionary became the figure Russia is re-litigating.
Contents 10 sections
Introduction
In May 2025 a new bas-relief of Joseph Stalin appeared in a Moscow metro station, an exact replica of one torn down in the 1960s, and the question it raises is the question of this episode of Empire: why is today's Russia bringing Stalin back, and who exactly was the man before the power? William Dalrymple and Anita Anand trace the Georgian shoemaker's son who could have been a priest or a poet, and became first a bandit and then, quietly, one of the most feared dictators of the twentieth century. The installation was reported by The Moscow Times in May 2025; Dalrymple described the relief itself as a new bas-relief of Joseph Stalin gone up in pure 1920s Soviet kitsch, Stalin three times life size, hand on chest, towering over children who look like Bolshoi dancers.
Why Putin Is Bringing Stalin Back
Asked directly by the director Oliver Stone in 2017 why Stalin was being brought back, Putin replied: "Excessive demonization of Stalin is one of the ways to attack the Soviet Union and Russia." The exchange was reported at the time by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In Dalrymple's account, Putin does not deny the deaths and the terror; he simply says Stalin was an effective manager, a phrase the hosts note now appears in Russian history textbooks. For a record of famine and terror that took, by the most serious estimates, 15 to 30 million lives, Dalrymple called that the mildest possible description. Putin's accompanying argument, that Britain keeps its monuments to Oliver Cromwell despite his ambiguous role, struck Anand as a fair counterargument: from an Irish perspective, Cromwell is responsible for rivers of blood too.
Two Birth Dates For One Dictator
The episode opens on an odd fact: nobody knows for sure when Stalin was born. The parish register of the Church of the Assumption in Gori records December 18, 1878, a date confirmed by his seminary certificate, the tsarist police file, and his own handwriting decades later. After coming to power, Stalin promoted a different birthday, December 21, 1879, celebrated with parades. The biographer Robert Service, Dalrymple noted, wrote that "Forgery came easily to him", and argued, while admitting it cannot be proven, that the change helped the young Stalin avoid conscription.
A Georgian, Not A Russian
Stalin was not born Stalin. He was born Iosif Dzhugashvili in Georgia, and being Georgian, Anand emphasized, was not a variation of being Russian: Georgia sits in the Caucasus beside Armenia, north of Iran and Turkey, with its own language, its own alphabet, and its own church, Georgian Orthodox, not Russian Orthodox. Ruled from Moscow, Georgia felt colonized, and Georgians never reconciled themselves to it. A Georgian coming to power in Moscow, she said, is as unlikely as an Irish Catholic from Limerick taking power in London.
A Childhood Of Violence In Gori
The childhood landscape Anand described was brutal. Stalin's father, Besarion, was a Gori shoemaker, good at his craft but unwilling to move on from Cossack boots to European shoes; he grew bitter, drank, and the neighborhood called him crazy Beso. His violence fell mainly on his wife Keke and the boy Joseph. Stalin himself, Anand recounted, told his daughter Svetlana that when his drunken father was beating his mother, he threw a knife at his father, missed, and hid with the neighbors for days. The father eventually left, which changed little for Keke but reduced the cruelty in the house.
Fragile Boy Or Little Thug?
Looking at a photograph of the six- or seven-year-old Stalin, the hosts split. Anand said, "I see someone very fragile", a child with sad eyes who needed a hug. Dalrymple saw a little East End thug, ears sticking out, chin forward, hardened early. The boy survived smallpox at six, which left permanent scars; two older brothers had already died in childhood, and his mother was too poor for a doctor. A runaway horse-drawn carriage broke his nose and his left arm, which healed shorter. Smallpox, his father, and the carriage all failed to kill him; apart from his mother's love, all he knew was hardship.
The Poet In The Seminary
Towards the end of his adolescence two things happened: he starts writing pretty good poetry, and he entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1894. Anand read one of the poems, which closes, "Blossom, oh my Georgia, let peace reign in my native land" — the voice of a proud Georgian, not an amorphous tsarist subject. Behind the boy stood his mother Keke, devout and ambitious, wanting him to become a priest and rise. The seminary itself was, by all accounts, a harsh regime created for Russification, with written reports on whether the students were good supporters of the tsar.
Banned Books And The Name Koba
Under that surveillance, young Joseph read what would have horrified the tsar: Marxism arrived, along with banned books such as Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? and the Georgian novel The Patricide by Alexander Kazbegi, whose hero is a mountain bandit called Koba. Stalin took the name while still in seminary, Anand noted, citing Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: friends called him Koba. He then became, Dalrymple observed, what the name symbolized.
From Public Hangings To A Bank Robbery
What turned the seminarian into a bandit, Dalrymple argued, was the atmosphere in Georgia: two mountain bandits who shot a policeman over a stray cow were sentenced to death and publicly hanged in the center of Gori, and Stalin, told not to go, watched anyway. He had left the seminary, married the devout Kato in 1906, and had a son, Yakov, in 1907. That same year his gang ambushed a bank carriage on Yerevan Square in Tiflis, almost within sight of the seminary: bombs from the rooftops, pistol fire, Stalin the organizer and leader. The take was a quarter of a million rubles in canvas bags, yet not one ruble could be spent, because the bank had circulated the serial numbers of the large bills. Detained briefly for his first police photo, he came out, in Dalrymple's phrase, dry from the water.
Lenin's Man Behind The Scenes
How did the failed bank robber become essential to the Bolsheviks? Through Lenin, a completely different character, radicalized when his older brother was hanged in 1887 for trying to assassinate the tsar. The Bolsheviks, Dalrymple explained, were the wing of the party that was about power: do it quickly, whatever the cost, and it will cost rivers of blood. Stalin's articles on the national question caught Lenin's attention, and in 1912 Lenin introduced him to the Bolshevik Central Committee as organized and systematic, able to do tedious work and secure funding. Yet in 1917 Stalin was not the man on the barricades: he was doing the behind-the-scenes work. Trotsky, Anand noted, dismissed him as an ordinary accountant while everyone else gave their lives — which, the hosts suggested, probably hurt him deeply. The next episode covers how the boring theorist became general secretary.
Episode Booklist
3 books
Red FamineWhyAnne Applebaum's Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the famine, basis of the podcast's earlier Russia series.04:48
What Is to Be Done?WhyBanned book the young Stalin read in seminary, on freedom and personality.18:55
Interview Highlights
7 exchanges- Q
What on earth is going on with this new Stalin bas-relief, and why is Putin so condescending to Stalin?
William Dalrymple asked02:35AAnita Anand answeredPutin answered this directly in a 2017 conversation with the director Oliver Stone. Asked why he was bringing Stalin back and turning him into 'Grandpa Joe,' the grandfather of the nation, he replied: 'Excessive demonization of Stalin is one of the ways to attack the Soviet Union and Russia,' adding that 'we apologized too much for the past' and 'for dictators.' Putin has named the men he looks up to as Peter I, Catherine the Great, and Stalin — examples of a strong hand. He does not deny the deaths and horrors; he simply says Stalin was an effective manager, an expression that itself appears in Russian history textbooks, a mild description for a man whose famine and terror took, by the most serious estimates, 15 to 30 million lives. Putin also argues that Britain keeps monuments to Oliver Cromwell despite calling his role very ambiguous, so Russia can live with Stalin on a pedestal — though from an Irish perspective, Cromwell is responsible for the rivers of blood shed in Ireland.
- Q
Why did Stalin change his own birth date?
William Dalrymple asked06:13AAnita Anand answeredIn his biography, Service aptly notes: 'Forgery came easily to him' — a theme running through the entire cycle. He has another theory, which cannot be proven but is convincingly argued: changing the date helped Stalin avoid being drafted into the army in his youth. So we don't know for sure.
- Q
Was the Georgian Orthodox Church really the center of resistance to Russification, or the other way around?
Anita Anand asked17:06AWilliam Dalrymple answeredBy name it is the Georgian Orthodox Church, but the church itself and the seminary at that time were under the control of the Russian Orthodox Church — an important distinction.
- Q
Where do you know the word 'Koba' from?
William Dalrymple asked19:18AAnita Anand answeredOne of Anand's favorite authors, Martin Amis, wrote a book about Stalin called Koba the Dread. Stalin took the name from the bandit hero, and it became his own name while still in seminary: friends would address him like 'Koba, come here,' 'Koba, we're late for class.' And then he became what that name symbolized — nominative determinism at work: he takes the name Koba, the name of the robber hero from the book, a brilliant name for a man in seminary preparing for the priesthood.
- Q
I always thought the Bolsheviks were strictly part of the Marxist world, but here it seems they were part of the Social Democratic Party. Explain this to me?
Anita Anand asked25:18AWilliam Dalrymple answeredThis is the radical wing of the organization that hoped to unite all these different views, but they were very wrong. Bolshevism will become one of the main motivations in Stalin's life: a young father and a failed bank robber, he begins to write about what the Bolsheviks think and what this country should be like.
- Q
What I would like to know is how the path of Lenin, radicalized by the execution of his brother, a high-ranking official in exile in Switzerland who was brought back to lead the revolution, intersects with that of a provincial bank robber from the Caucasus? What circumstances brought these two men from very different backgrounds and different corners of Russia together?
Anita Anand asked26:15AWilliam Dalrymple answeredThe way Stalin later told this story does not stand up to criticism — according to him, they both walked towards the revolution, holding hands. In reality, Lenin became the leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the predecessor of the Communist Party. The Bolshevik wing was even more radical, and that is where Lenin's heart beat — exactly what makes him attractive to Stalin. Stalin understood where power was concentrated: the Bolsheviks were the majority in the party; the Mensheviks were more intellectuals, while the Bolsheviks were primarily about power.
- Q
With Lenin at the helm and Trotsky standing on tanks calling people to the cause, where is Stalin in all this?
Anita Anand asked27:51AWilliam Dalrymple answeredStalin writes articles on the national question — what this new state will be like. He attracts Lenin's attention with his works, and Lenin introduces him to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks in 1912, noting that this man is quite organized, thinks systematically, and can do the tedious work of organization and securing funding — the behind-the-scenes work. While Trotsky and Lenin call on people to rise up in 1917, he is actually not there. He was not a good speaker; he is not the man who stands on the front lines.