Stalin, Volume 1

Neoclassical seminary building, dubbed the Stone Sack, where for a time Stalin lived as well as studied under a regimen of surveillance and snitching.

Lado Ketskhoveli (1877–1903), Stalin’s first mentor in Marxism and revolution. Lado was killed by prison tsarist officials, a fate that befell many leftists and could have befallen Stalin.

Meteorological Observatory in Tiflis, where Stalin worked from December 1899 through March 1901 (photographed by TASS in 1939). His stint as a meteorologist was, essentially, the only legal paid employment he held until being named a people’s commissar in 1917, at age thirty-nine.

A close-up of Stalin from a group photograph, Kutaisi prison (Georgia), 1903.