Joseph Stalin and two mothers of the revolution.

Joseph Stalin served as leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Stalin is one of the most controversial and consequential figures of the 20th century. He rose to prominence within the Soviet Communist Party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin engaged in a power struggle with other top party leaders, including Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin. He eventually consolidated his power and became the General Secretary of the Communist Party, which was an atheistic regime. This was a position that allowed him to control the party apparatus.

Stalin implemented policies that drastically transformed the Soviet Union. He launched ambitious industrialization programs, known as the Five-Year Plans, to rapidly modernize the country. He also enforced collectivisation of agriculture, which forcibly consolidated small farms into collective farms, leading to significant social and economic changes.

 Despite these economic reforms, Stalin’s rule was marked by a reign of terror, known as the Great Purge, in which he ordered mass arrests, executions, and purges of perceived political opponents, real or imagined. This period of political repression and persecution resulted in the deaths of an estimated 60 million of his own people.

During World War II: Stalin played a crucial role in World War II as the leader of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union suffered enormous casualties but ultimately played a pivotal role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. This however culminated in the ‘Cold War’ between the Western world and the communist block of eastern Europe.

This story, however, is not about Stalin but about his mother and the mother of his head of the Soviet security and intelligence apparatus.

Joseph Stalin’s mother, Ekaterina “Keke” Geladze, was of Georgian descent and came from a religious background. She was a member of the Georgian Orthodox Church. However, Stalin promoted state atheism and suppressed religious practices during his rule. So, while his mother was a Christian, Stalin himself did not follow her devout religious beliefs. She worked hard when Stalin was young, to have him educated so that he could become a priest.

Gorbachev’s Glasnost (openness) exposed the full horrors of Stalin’s purges and one name cropped up again and again – Laevreanti Beria (1899 – 1953). He was the one who masterminded the purges of Stalin’s enemies and critics. He accumulated files on everybody and arranged the permanent and discreet “disappearance” of anyone who was not loyal. Beria played a central role in Stalin’s purges and the Great Terror of the 1930s, during which untold thousands of people were arrested, imprisoned, and executed. He was known for his ruthless tactics and brutal methods.

Beria built a power base so great that he did not have to liquidate his own family embarrassment, his mother.  Everyone on the OGPU (Grandfather of the KGB) knew that Beria’s mother was ultra pious. When Sunday came, Beria would send the secret police to her hometown. When the bells of the church rang out, men from the OGPU would seal the area. Beria’s mother would emerge and, on all fours, weeping as she went, she would make her way up the hill to the church.

With her hands and knees bleeding she would loudly proclaim her own sins and that of her son. She would urgently implore God to spare her the terrors of an eternally burning hell stoked to maximum heat. Her neighbours heard her pitiable cry to her ferocious implacable God, as big a horror to her as Stalin was to his subjects. By the time she arrived at the church, in a bloodied and tear-stained state of hysteria everyone new that her life was given to God. Unfortunately, she did not understand or trust Him to save her by His grace. She did not understand what the Bible teaches.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Beria briefly attempted to seize power but was arrested by his political rivals, and subsequently executed in December 1953. An atheist without hope.

To we who believe, the Bible is many things at the same time. It is an autobiography of God, as well as an autobiography of human behaviour. It is a historical account of sin. It is a counsellor’s manual and a textbook for life. It contains a telescope into the future. It is a storehouse of riches as well as a love letter from our Heavenly Father. It contains a library of answers out of the heart of a loving God, but more than anything else it is a manual on God’s revealed grace and the way of salvation. Despite this there are constant misconceptions on God and His way of salvation as provided through His Son. Beria’s mother missed all this and joins a long list of grace busters.

The last message to go to “every nation kindred tongue and people” is what Revelation calls the “Three Angels Messages” It is spearheaded by the everlasting gospel but carries everything else in its wake. (See Revelation 14:6-12). The gospel is good news not good advice. Good news is about something already done. Good advice is about something I should do. The law says do, the gospel says done! TBC