Before Joseph Stalin sent millions to labor camps and rewrote the map of Eastern Europe, he was a promising theology student in a Georgian seminary who wrote romantic poetry. The transformation from aspiring priest to architect of the Soviet terror state remains one of the most chilling metamorphoses in modern history.

This episode traces Stalin from his brutal childhood in Gori through his radicalization as a Marxist bank robber to his patient, methodical seizure of power after Lenin’s death — revealing how a man dismissed as a dull bureaucrat outmaneuvered every rival.

• How Stalin’s violent childhood and seminary education shaped his ruthless worldview
• His years as a revolutionary bank robber funding the Bolshevik movement
• The political maneuvering that let him outflank Trotsky and seize total power
• How the Great Purge and collectivization campaigns killed millions of Soviet citizens