ugh she had very little money, Joseph’s mother made certain he attend the best elementary school ran by the Othrodox church. She pushed him to be the top student. With the help of his mother’s persistence, Joseph Stalin received a scholarship to enter the Orthodox theological seminary in Tbilisi, a major city in Georgia. Stalin began his studies as a believer in Othrodox Christianity. He made a quick shift from top student to a dropout when he was exposed to the radical ideas of fellow students. Stalin began to read illegal literature based on the works of German philosopher Karl Marx. Joseph joined other students in secret study groups that were opposed to the Russian tsarist government. In 1899, Stalin devoted his time to the revolution movement occurring against the Russian monarchy and gave up his religious education just as he was about to graduate. For the next 18 years, Stalin’s career slowly prospered, as a “professional revolutionary”. He became a member of the illegal Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP) and was living and working in the underground. The “professional revolutionary” began writing articles for Marxist newspapers, organizing strikes, and working as a propagandist among industrial workers. Stalin excelled at conspiratorial tasks and organized a number of notorious bank robberies, in order to raise funds and destabilize the tsarist regime. Consequently, Stalin was hunted down and arrested by police. A year later he was sentence to exile in the Russian region of Siberia. Yet, the intelligent Joseph managed to escape and was back in Georgia shortly after. Joseph Stalin’s career prospered further in 1903 after the RSDP separated into two. Stain support the more radical Bolsheviks led by VI Lenin, because he like Lenin’s military style. Two years later, Stalin married Yekaterina Svanidze, a Georgian woman. At the same time the newly wed, Joseph, pr...
