Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, probably on December 6, 1878 to a religious housewife name Keke Geladze and a cobbler named Bessarion Dzugashvili.
In his youth, he spoke little to no Russian, and instead spoke Georgian — a language that is about as exotic to Russian as English.
Even though Stalin primarily spoke Georgian during his childhood, he was nonetheless able to learn the language well-enough to get a scholarship into a seminary school that required him to be fluent in Russian.
Most of his grades were regarded as excellent, with the exception of Ancient Greek, in which he usually never scored better than “good”.
Stalin in 1896 during his days as a seminary student
Following his joining of what would become the Bolshevik Party, Stalin began travelling about the Russian Empire, where he engaged in many terroristic activities, including the orchestrating of the Tiflis Bank Robbery in 1907 which claimed at least 40 lives and the injuries of 100 others.
Realising that he had become a major target of the Tsarist Okhrana Police, Stalin eventually fled to Vienna in 1913 — in the same Austrian neighbourhood that a young Hitler was residing — where he almost certainly picked up at least some of the German language, given his early interests in language learning, which was to also reportedly expand to English later in life (more on that later).
Aside from his school grades, knowledge of theology, philosophy, and foreign languages, Stalin was also know to be an avid reader who was seldom seen in public without at least one book nearby.
Despite starting out wanting to become a clergyman and poet, library records suggest that Stalin’s favourite subjects were in fact world history and political theory.
Though having read through a voluminous quantity of titles does not in itself equate to intelligence, his ability in winning over many higher-ranking officials, including none other than Vladimir Lenin himself, with his diplomacy, persuasion, and mindset, most certainly counts for something.
Romanticised communist painting showing Stalin meeting Lenin for the first time in 1905
After all, in the minds of the majority of Bolshevik Party Members, Stalin was still just a Georgian peasant.
Whereas the aristocratic-born Lenin came from a very affluent Russian family — an economic privilege shared by most statesmen — Stalin was an extreme exception to the norm, much like his political adversary, Adolf Hitler, was to prove to be.
Regardless of the intelligence and knowledge he may have been able to display, Stalin was nonetheless looked down upon by most of his “comrades” for his mannerisms, which were more commonly found in lower-ranking society, and not from the “intellectual” classes.
And yet, at the end of it all, Stalin was able to seize power all the same because he was able to act quickly when the opportunity presented itself — including his seizing Lenin’s letter urging members not to allow Stalin to succeed him, and hiding it, as well as intentionally giving Leon Trotsky the wrong date for the funeral so that he would miss it — and coming out on top.
One of the first public photographs of Joseph Stalin after becoming the new ruler of the Soviet Union
I am not going to say that it was raw intelligence that got Stalin this far into the game, since luck most certainly played its own role.
Nonetheless, it is very unlikely that an average person would have ever gotten anywhere near Lenin’s presence to begin with, and even less likely to rise up the party ranks and effectively control the Soviet Union with an iron hand for nearly three decades.
Contrary to popular belief, a country’s machine is not operated entirely by one individual who has everybody else under their feet.
Even a dictator like Stalin had to be skilled in making the right type of allies and knowing when to make and break relationships.
Though Stalin was an absolutist in the sense that he restricted nearly all political and economic freedoms to the average person, his absolutism was on the condition that he was able to win the loyalty of those tasked with carrying out his vision in practice.
According to those who knew Stalin, he was known to be on top of everything that happened within his borders, and even world political events that could pertain directly or indirectly to his empire, including the biographies of world leaders, daily economic charts, and even the transcripts of politically-charged trials among other examples.
One of Stalin’s house servants who later had a fallout even referred to him as a “computer”, due to how methodically he could conduct himself behind a desk from dawn to dusk with little to no emotion.
Elliott Roosevelt — son of the by-then deceased President Franklin Roosevelt — met Stalin to conduct a twelve-question interview at the Kremlin on December 21, 1946 and was surprised when Stalin acknowledged him not in Russian, or Georgian, but in English!
Stalin then explained to him that he had known English for many years, but that he had kept it a secret from both Winston Churchill and his father, because he wanted to eavesdrop on their conversations at Tehran and Yalta, and because it would give him more time to think of an answer while his assistants translated for him.
Though intelligence may be difficult to measure, I would not be surprised if Stalin was the most rigid and competent statesman in modern history.
That is not to say that he was the best in every political aspect — his knowledge in military matters was completely outweighed by those of Hitler’s, and this nearly cost him everything — but when his flaws and strengths are taken together and compared with other world leaders, one would be hard-pressed in finding somebody who truly stood over the shoulders of the ruler known to many as “The Man of Steel”.
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