Chapter Two - The Little Priest

CHAPTER TWO

The Little Priest

SOSO JUGHASHVILI DIDN’T set out to become a revolutionary. He was supposed to become a priest.

His mother worked hard to get him into the seminary in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia. It was one of the most respected Orthodox schools in the region, and she saw it as his best shot at a stable future. A priest had status. A priest was safe. It was everything his father wasn’t.

At first, he went along with it. He was a good student. Quiet, disciplined, and always reading. He could quote Scripture from memory, wrote essays that impressed his teachers, and kept his head down. He looked like the model seminarian.

But that didn’t last.

The seminary was strict. The rules were harsh. The curriculum was outdated and the teachers were more interested in obedience than thought. The school banned most modern literature, especially anything political or scientific. So Soso did what a lot of smart kids do in rigid systems, he started reading the banned books anyway.

He found Darwin. He found Victor Hugo. Then he found Marx.

That was the turning point.

Marxism gave him a new worldview. It explained why people like his mother worked themselves to death while the upper class sat in luxury. It explained the poverty, the violence, the control. And it gave him a solution. Not prayer. Revolution.

At the same time, he started writing poetry. Good poetry. Romantic, lyrical stuff. It was published in Georgian journals, and for a while, it looked like he might go down that path of being a writer, a thinker, maybe even a teacher.

But that version of him didn’t last either.
The politics took over.

He became more defiant. He skipped class. He joined underground reading groups. He passed around illegal pamphlets. He got called in for disciplinary hearings and was eventually expelled. Though in later years he claimed he left voluntarily as a matter of principle. Either way, he was out.

And once he walked out of the seminary, he never looked back.

He dropped religion. Dropped the name Soso. Dropped the poetry.

He became something else. Something harder.

Soon, he’d stop using his real name altogether.
He was ready to disappear and reemerge as someone new.