The Stalinist Self: The Case of Ioseb Jughashvili (1898–1907)

Abstract

This article explores sense of self exhibited by Ioseb (Soso) Jughashvili, Stalin in statu nascendi, during 1898-1907 period, when he served Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) as an activist mainly based in Tiflis. Taken in its most abstract form, self is part of human condition. People of all cultures and times are aware of their separate existence. Our minds do not telepathically merge with that of our neighbors. On a more concrete level, though, senses of self vary widely from one cultural context to another. (1) The present article explores young Stalin's self-identification in its sociological aspect, by focusing on question of social classes with which he identified. I argue that he not only obviously identified himself as an intelligent but also throughout period under discussion here continued to assign leading in party committees to intelligenty. In acting as a strong defender of intelligentsia section of party, Jughashvili was inspired by a particular form of Enlightenment discourse that centered on primacy of knowledge, science, and consciousness and remained characteristic of him even as Soviet dictator. At danger of simplifying often subtle analyses, two schools on this question can be distinguished. On one hand, Lev Davidovich Trotskii treats young Stalin as a 'committeeman' par excellence, disinclined to promote workers to leading positions. (2) Isaac Deutscher's Jughashvili belonged to semi-nomad fringe of declasses of intelligentsia. Despite sense of closeness to workers that he brought along from his humble background, he nurtured an attitude ofsceptical distrust toward them. (3) Ronald Suny's treatment of Soso as a consistent defender of party's prerogatives over those of labour organisations can be placed in this tradition. (4) On other hand, a revisionist chord has been struck recently. Robert Himmer argues that Soso took great pride in his own lower-class origins, claimed a proletarian status for himself, and hoped to see intelligentsia segment of party replaced by workers. (5) Alfred Rieber's analysis of Soso's synthetic Georgian-Russian identity included a presentation of self as a proletarian. Jughashvili's claim to be a proletarian would mainly be evinced by his identification with the tendency of 'proletarian steadfastness' (Bolshevik) as opposed to tendency of 'the intelligentsia to vacillate' (Menshevism). (6) Himmer's and Rieber's suggestion that Jughashvili associated himself with allegedly proletarian values to point of creating a proletarian self-presentation seems out of proportion. Whatever he may have written about proletarian virtues, I know of no occasion that Soso was claiming a proletarian status for himself. (7) As a former student of Tiflis Seminary, he was perceived by his comrades as an intelligent, and so he was invariably described in police informers' reports. The work of social historians confirms that it would be unlikely for Jughashvili to have claimed a proletarian status for himself. Revolutionary intellectuals served as a cultural role model for workers in social-democratic movement. (8) Reginald Zelnik traces this pattern back to 1870s, when idea arose that a worker might be shaped by intelligenty into a new kind of person, resembling themselves ... a worker-intelligent. Fluid crossover identities were not uncommon in movement, but students tended only to flirt with externalities of proletarian life? Strikingly, many workers who were dissatisfied with intelligentsia dominance of RSDWP believed they could manage on their own only when they felt they had achieved an intelligentsia status of their own. An intelligent presenting himself as a worker would have struck others as odd. His actions and writings suggest that Jughashvili identified himself with an existing discourse in which members of intelligentsia were seen as agents of Enlightenment and teachers of socialist consciousness. …