Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary (Georgian: თბილისის სასულიერო სემინარია; Russian: Тбили́сская духо́вная семина́рия) is a spiritual training institution, which operated from 1817 to 1919 in the Georgian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. When Joseph Stalin was fourteen in 1894, he received a scholarship. The language of instruction was Russian, and the Georgian language was disparaged by the Russian priests who taught there. Stalin was a voracious reader in both languages. He turned into a cultural nationalist for Georgia. He participated in student politics and anonymously published poetry in Georgian in the local newspaper. Although his performance had been good, he was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams.^[1]

In 1993 it reopened as a higher educational institution of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

References

Bibliography

Jones, Stephen F. (2005), Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy 1883–1917, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-67-401902-7
Kotkin, Stephen (2014), Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, New York City: Penguin Press, ISBN 978-1-59420-379-4