395. Stalin: The Rise of A Tyrant (Part 1)
Empire: World History
In this first episode of a new series on Joseph Stalin, historians Anita Anand and William Dalrymple explore the early life of one of history's most notorious dictators. The episode begins with the recent resurgence of Stalin's image in modern
Key takeaways
- Stalin deliberately falsified his birthdate to evade conscription, highlighting early patterns of deception that would define his rule.
- His Georgian heritage made his rise to power in Moscow highly improbable, underscoring the irony of a non-Russian becoming the Soviet Union's leader.
Main topics
- Stalin's early life in Georgia
- Childhood trauma and family violence
Notable quotes
"Falsification came easily to him," – Robert Service on Stalin's tendency to manipulate truth.
Conclusion
Stalin's rise to power began not with glory or charisma but through meticulous organization, political calculation, and personal
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by our friend Plaud, the world's number one AI note-taker brand. Now, when it comes to research, we all have our own methods, sitting for hours in the archive, reading the secondary works, capturing every detail, grilling top scholars. But often we have to lose material in order to remain engaged when doing an interview. We've all been there, sitting there with our notes, missing half the vital bits of conversation, and that no longer needed. happen ever again, because now you just put Plaud on your collar and bingo, it records everything you say and transcribes it into sensible action points that you can refer to afterwards. I only picked up Plaud a few weeks ago and already it's changing the way that I work. With OnePress, the device transcribes those real conversations and turns them into clear actions. It Speaker 3 (0:52) also has Speaker 4 (0:52) a brilliant feature called Ask Plaud. which calls up details of hazy, long-gone conversations in seconds. Empire listeners can go to uk.plaud.ai forward slash empire. That's uk.plaud.ai forward slash empire. And use the promo code empire to get 10 % off any Plaud device. Speaker 1 (1:24) Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And Speaker 4 (1:28) me, William Durampal. We Speaker 1 (1:30) are doing a story about a man who is in the news again, having sort of been disappeared for decades. So in May 2025, a new relief carving of Joseph Stalin went up in a station on the Moscow metro. And it was an exact replica, one that had been torn down in the 1960s. at a time when the Soviet Union was desperately trying to put Stalin and everything he represented far behind it. Speaker 4 (1:59) Now, Anita, you very sweetly sent me a picture of this new relief. And it's bonkers because it's not in any even remotely contemporary style. It's pure 1920s Soviet kitsch that looks almost balletic with sort of Stalin, who's about three times life size. towering above a group of adoring schoolchildren who appear to be sort of dancers in the Bolshoi. And Stalin's standing there with his hand on his chest, rather like certain images of Bertie Worcester standing against a fireplace in the Drones Club. What on earth is going on? And why is Putin indulging Stalin in this way? Speaker 1 (2:37) Okay, so you think it's giving sort of Bertie Worcester vibes. I think it's just a lot more, you know, fatherland, fatherland, you know, that scene from that cabaret. Because, you know, all the kids are, you know, sort of reaching up as if he's kind of godlike. And it's a really good question. Why is Putin putting him back? Well... Because, and you know what, he has said this when speaking to Oliver Stone, the filmmaker in 2017. And he was talking, you know, Stone just asked him straight out, why are you bringing... Stalin back and turning him into Grandad Joe, you know, sort of making him the nation's grandfather. And he said to Oliver Stone, excessive demonization of Stalin is one of the ways of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia. So he has sort of conflated in his mind the fact that, you know, we've apologized too much about the past. We have apologized too much about strongmen. And we've said this before, Putin has modeled himself and has always said, The people he looks up to are Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Stalin. You know, these are the sort of the role models of the strong man. Speaker 4 (3:46) Who between them are responsible for lakes of bloodshed stretching across the steps. But what's interesting here to me is that it isn't as if Putin denies the death and the horror of which, you know, there is so very much. He just says that Stalin was an effective manager, which is also bollocks, isn't it? Speaker 1 (4:08) So the phrase itself is in Russian history textbooks, an effective manager. And it is. It's got the mildest description for a man who, as you say, you know, lakes of blood, ran a famine and a terror that killed on most serious counts somewhere between... 15 and 30 million people. And Speaker 4 (4:30) if you'd like to know more about that, you can listen to our wonderful friend Anne Applebaum in our Russian series from two years ago, drawing on her Pulitzer Prize winning book on the Red Famine. Speaker 1 (4:45) Putin's other argument, by the way, is also interesting, particularly, I guess, for an Empire audience, because he said, look, Stalin, Oliver Cromwell. You know, Britain still has statues of Cromwell, despite what Putin called his very ambiguous role in our history. So if Britain can live with Cromwell on a plinth, the logic runs that Russia can live with Stalin on a plinth. So, you know, that is the argument. Speaker 4 (5:09) That's a good counter-argument, because certainly from an Irish point of view, Cromwell is someone who was, again, responsible for... like, locks of blood across Ireland. Speaker 1 (5:20) Shall we start? Because what we're trying to do, as we did with the Mao series that we did, is sort of getting under the bonnet of who this man was and then what he did. So we're going to start with something a bit strange because we don't actually know for certain when Stalin was even born. Speaker 4 (5:35) Right? There's a parish Speaker 1 (5:36) register of the Assumption Church in Gory that gives the 18th of December, 1878 as... his birthdate. That date is confirmed on his seminary certificate and it's on a Czarist police file. We'll come to that in a minute. And in his own handwriting on a 1920s questionnaire. But Stalin himself, when he came to power, gave another birthdate which was celebrated as Stalin's birthday, let's have a parade, the 21st of December 1879, a year and three days difference. So why did he do it? Speaker 4 (6:10) The great Bob Severs. has an idea, doesn't he? In his biography, he has this nice little line, falsification came easily to him, which is certainly a theme we'll see running through this entire series. Speaker 1 (6:23) Yeah, but he also has another theory, which you can't prove, but I think he makes a really compelling argument that changing the date helped him dodge the draft, dodge conscription. when he was a young man. So look, we don't know for sure. There are some things we do know for sure. We know he wasn't born Stalin. He was born Joseph Zhugashvili and he was born in Georgia. So he's a Georgian and that's very, very different to being a Russian at the time when he was born. Speaker 4 (6:51) When I was growing up and studying Stalin for A-level, it didn't mean much to me, the fact that he came from Georgia, because it just looked... as if in those days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, as if it was, you know, part of southern Russia, certainly the southern USSR. But it's worth giving this history. Georgia is in the Caucasus. It's next to Armenia. It's just north of Iran and Turkey. And it's a very long way from Russia. The religion of Georgia is Georgian Orthodox. It's different from Russian Orthodox. And for a Georgian, to rise to power in Moscow and someone from a Georgian Orthodox background is as improbable as in mid-20th century Britain, someone with an Irish Catholic background from Limerick or, you know, choose your remote part of Ireland coming to power in London. It's improbable. Speaker 1 (7:52) And Georgia has its own language. It has its own alphabet. So it's very different and distinct. And so for Georgians, when they were, you know, sort of being run from Moscow, it was as if, you know, they'd been colonized and some people didn't like it at all, never came to terms with it. Speaker 4 (8:11) And perhaps one other thing we should say is that in distant ancient times, Georgia was actually part of the Persian Empire. I mean, you know, that's the, you know, it's looking southwards to Mesopotamia rather than necessarily northwards to Russia for much of its history. So it's a long, long way from Moscow Central. Well, Speaker 1