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21 " poor as Soso, found themselves among the ‘arrogant sons of wealthy parents.27 We felt like the chosen few,’ wrote Iremashvili, because the seminary was ‘the source of Georgian intellectual life, with its historical grounds in a seemingly perfect civilisation’. "
― Simon Sebag Montefiore , Young Stalin
22 " 1894-5, he won straight 5s (A grades) for Georgian singing and language and scores like 4, 5, 4, 5 in scripture. He was a model student, earning an ‘excellent 5’ for behaviour. "
23 " Stalin impressed Trotsky, whose description reveals why he lost their struggle for power. ‘Stalin was very valuable behind the scenes,’ he wrote. ‘He did have the knack of convincing the average run "
24 " leaders, especially the provincials.’ He ‘wasn’t regarded as the official leader of the Party’, says Sagirashvili, another Georgian Menshevik in Petrograd throughout 1917, but ‘everyone listened to what he had to say, including Lenin - he was a representative of the rank and file, one who expressed its real views and moods’, which were unknown to émigrés like Trotsky. Soso was the ‘unquestioned leader’ of the Caucasians. Lenin, says Sagirashvili, ‘felt that behind him stood countless leaders from the provinces’.160 While Trotsky was prancing on the stage "
25 " around the streets, some of the troops started firing haphazardly at burzoi shoppers on Nevsky Prospect. Gunfights broke out. Out at the Kronstadt naval base, Bolshevik sailors rose up, murdered 120 officers, including their admiral, and then demanded that Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev give them their orders to take the capital. "
26 " obtain one’s objective.’ As Stalin later told Molotov, ‘Truth is protected by a battalion of lies. "
27 " The matter of the wine-cellars became especially critical,’ he recounts. Nicholas II’s cellars boasted Tokay from the age of Catherine the Great and stocks of Chateau d’Yquem "