Death Only Wins

Early Stalin, the first volume in a forthcoming trilogy of historical fiction on the life of Joseph Stalin entitled Death Only Wins, tells the story of the future Soviet dictator in two parts, Caucasus and In And Out. It recounts Stalin's abysmal childhood, his mother's efforts to get him into the Orthodox priesthood, his ecclesiastical education, his expulsion from the Tiflis Theological Seminary, his life as an organizer of robberies to fund Lenin's revolutionary enterprises, his first marriage, the death of his wife, his love affairs, his trips abroad, and his many arrests, exiles, and escapes from Siberia. Always in the background of the novel is the land of Georgia with its splendid food and wine, spectacular beauty, literature, customs, and culture in general as well as the harshness of the Siberian landscape. A major purpose of the first volume is to provide clues to Stalin's behaviour as ruler of the Soviet Union, an explanation of how Stalin became Stalin.

Ravi Ravindranathan obtained his doctorate from Oxford University and taught modern Russian and European history in Canada and the United States for two decades before embarking on his Stalin trilogy. He has travelled extensively in Europe and Russia, including Siberia, and the Republic of Georgia. He is also the author of a book entitled Bakunin and the Italians. Among his teachers at Oxford were the late Sir Isaiah Berlin and Mr. Harry Willets, translator of a number of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's works into English.