Earlier this year I read ‘Young Stalin‘ by Simon Sebag-Montifiore – the book was published nearly twenty years ago but is still an interesting read. (The book is still in print and second hand copies are available online for a few dollars.)

Police mugshot following his arrest in 1908

To an extent the book humanises the monster and shows Stalin to be a more complex individual than the standard caricature – Stalin apparently liked to grow flowers in his garden and to read novels, besides having a string of lovers as a young man.

Not quite what you expect of a man who sent millions to their deaths, at times almost on a whim.

Stalin was not well travelled – unlike some of the other revolutionaries he simply did not have the money or connections to exile himself abroad, although he did live for a time in Vienna, and spent a few weeks in London in the run up and during the 1907 RSDLP congress.

The rest of his time he was either on the run, in prison, or sentenced to internal exile, at one time to a remote indigenous community in the Arctic.

Stalin’s command of English was poor – he may have understood more than he let on, but he certainly was not fluent, and relied on interpreters later in life.

There’s a comment in Sebag-Montifiore’s book that in London, Stalin would often attend Anglican high church services, ostensibly to improve his English by listening to the priest’s homily.

But the question is, why Anglican services, and not some preachy wordy methodist or protestant church?

And I think the answer is simple, and again humanises the monster.

Stalin was alone, with little money and could barely speak English. Maybe he did go to Anglican services to improve his English, but perhaps also as he’d nearly become a priest after several years in the Orthodox seminary in Tblisi, he also missed the colour and spectacle of an Orthodox mass, and settled for the smells and bells of Anglicanism to soothe his homesickness and loneliness, while surrounded by the damp greyness of London.

Strange to think of a strange bearded man standing at the back of a very middle class English event – one wonders what the very middle class church goers of suburban London would have thought if they realised that that strange man would one day be the leader of the Soviet Union…