The cloak of personal secrecy which has always masked Soviet Dictator Stalin was ripped up one side fortnight ago by United Pressman Eugene Lyons, slit down the other side last week by New York Timesman Walter Duranty, and finally slashed to tatters from the rear by New York Evening Postman H. R. Knickerbocker.
Mother. The Dictator's rear is Tiflis. His mother lives there in two rooms of what was once the palace of Tsar Nicholas' viceroy of Georgia—the land where Stalin was born. Primarily the palace is now occupied by the Soviet government of the transCaucasian Republic, plastered with posters and slogans relating to the Five-Year Plan. Correspondent Knickerbocker was told that Georgian schoolchildren speak of Stalin as "the man who annexed Russia to Georgia."
A middle-aged woman answered the correspondent's knock, went to fetch Mme Ekaterina Dzhugashvili. Lenin called her son "Stalin" ("Steel") for short, and the name has stuck, but the Man of Steel's proper name is Josef Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili.
When Stalin's grey-haired mother appeared, she wore a common Georgian peasant dress of grey wool, peered at her unexpected U. S. visitor and his Georgian interpreter, dropped them a curtsey, motioned hospitably toward chairs, apologized for having no tea or coffee to offer, apologized also for speaking only Georgian.
When the strangers began to ask about her son, Mme Dzhugashvili at once brightened, settled down to an obviously favorite subject.
"Soso was always a good boy!" she began.
"Excuse me—who is Soso?"
"Soso? Why that's my son Josef. Soso is our Georgian pet name for Josef. Yes, he was always a good boy. I never had to punish him."
As everyone knows, the Tsarist courts had to punish Stalin for everything from advocating Communism to carrying out a daring series of bank robberies to obtain funds for his fellow revolutionists. From 1913 until the collapse of tsardom this "ferocious criminal" languished in exile near the Arctic Circle, having escaped from other jails in 1903, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912.
"I want you to correct one thing," said Mme Dzhugashvili, manifesting some excitement. "They talk a lot about Soso's being born in Lilo, but that's entirely wrong! . . . Soso was born in Gori. . . . I'm his mother and I ought to know! . . . Soso will be 51 eight days after Christmas old style. I don't know what date it would be by the new way of reckoning.* I never could learn it."
"Did you ever dream your son would become what he is today?"
"Well, no!'' said the Dictator's mother uneasily. "I didn't want him to be anything but—a priest."
Today, of course, the Man of Steel is doing his stern best to stamp religion ("Opium for the People") out of Russia.
"Are you still religious, Mme Dzhugashvili?" asked thunderstruck Correspondent Knickerbocker.
"Well—I'm afraid—I'm afraid I'm not as religious as I used to be. My son has told me so much!" . . .