Poetry of Joseph Stalin

Like many Georgian children, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili – who would later call himself Stalin – grew up with the national epic, The Knight in the Panther's Skin.

[1] At the Orthodox Seminary of Tiflis, where he was enrolled beginning in 1894, Jughashvili read Goethe and Shakespeare in translation, and could recite Walt Whitman.

In 1895, at the age of 17, Jughashvili's work impressed the noted poet Ilia Chavchavadze, who published five of them in his journal, Iveria, attributed to the pseudonym Soselo.

[1] One of these poems, "Morning" (dedicated to Prince Raphael Eristavi[1]), begins: Once Jughashvili entered revolutionary politics, and became Stalin, he stopped writing poetry regularly, telling a friend it took too much time.

[1] In his biography of Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore notes that the poems in Iveria "were widely read and much admired.