DEBT TO MOTHERS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3151, 3 August 1942, Page 2

DEBT TO MOTHERS

WHAT WAR LEADER'S OWE RUSSIA’S “MAN OF STEEL” (By Allan Powell, in the Melbourne Sun.) On December 21, 1879, a young woman of 20, by name Ekaterina, married to one Vissarion Djugashoili, * cobblei* in the town of 'Gori, in Russian Georgia, gave birth to a boy. Although so young, she had alreadyhad three children, each of whom had died after only a few hours of life. One can imagine, then, with what anxious devotion she gazed, on this last born, who was destined to be “Stalin,” Russia’s “Man of Steel.” Ekaterina, as well as being a strong character, was a devout one. The baby, despite a certain frailty of physique, showed a tenacious grip on life. She called him Josef, and dedicated him to the Church.

Henri Barbusse, in describing her, tells us that she had “a beautiful, serious face and eyes so black that they seemed to overflow into dark bruises on the skin around them.” And, if we can judge from portraits executed in recent years,, even age was powerless to detract from the almost classic beauty of feature that was hers.. -

“I didn’t want Josef to be anything but a priest,” she declared, simply, as • recently as 1930, when talking to an interviewer. And to this end she worked. iShe sent him to the local church school when he was nearly eight and when he was admitted to the theological seminary in Tiflis, where she and he had moved in 1893, a great joy, it is said, gave an incandescent glow to her face. After some years in the seminary, however, Josef broke away from the church and started to work on socialistic revolutionary lines. In an interview with Emil Ludwig, after he had become Russia’s leading citizen, Stalin spoke of his mother in the following glowing terms: “As for my mother .... I not only loved her, but revered her. She exercised a. powerful influence over my life, but she never tyrannised over me. That was not her way.” No better testimony than this can be needed to assess the relations that existed between Ekaterina and her son.

Josef always had a wholesome respect for her wishes. An outstanding instance of this was in 1937, when the trial of “the seventeen” was. taking place. It is alleged that the mother’ of Radek, who was one of the most prominent of the accused, communicated with Ekaterina, begging her to use her maternal influence with 'Stalin in winning from him a pardon for Radek. It is significant that, out of the 17, only the latter and one other were not executed.

It was, however, the last submission that the mother of the “Man of Steel” was to exact. Death claimed her soon after.