What if Joseph Stalin had become a priest?

It is 1894. A short, intelligent adolescent with a pockmarked face (owing to a severe bout of smallpox) is kneeling in prayer in a dimly lit room of the Tiflis Theological Seminary in the distant country of Georgia. The air is thick with the scent of candle wax and the echoes of hymns sung in Georgian.

The boy’s name is Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known as ‘Joseph Stalin.’ Looking back at this point in time, it seems fantastic that Iosif, son of a cobbler, who would one day become one of the most ruthless dictators and change the course of world history, had once flirted with the idea of becoming a man of God.

The tantalizing question is what might the world have looked like had Stalin become a priest?

Yet, in a twist of fate that would alter the course of the 20th century, Stalin’s ambition took him down a different path—a path of revolution, bloodshed, and power.

The seminary, as his great biographer Stephen Kotkin suggests, was both a crucible and a battleground for young Stalin. It was here that he first learned the power of ideology (Marxist), the thrill of defiance, and the strength of iron discipline—traits that would later define his rule over the Soviet Union.

Had Stalin embraced the priesthood, his intellect and charisma could have propelled him to prominence within the church, perhaps even as a reformer or a nationalist leader rallying against the Tsarist regime.

Imagining a world where Stalin never left the seminary, one might envision a Russia where the Bolshevik Revolution still occurs, but without the brutal efficiency and paranoid purges that Stalin brought to the Soviet leadership.

Leon Trotsky, who Stalin would later exile and hunt down, might have steered the Soviet Union towards a different kind of socialism—one less steeped in the terror and cult of personality that Stalin cultivated. There would have been no Great Purge (1936-38) and no Gulags where millions of innocent Soviet citizens perished in the name of political consolidation.

On the international stage, Stalin’s absence could have dramatically altered the dynamics of World War II. A Soviet Union led by someone less ruthless than Stalin might have responded differently to Hitler’s advances.

Perhaps a less iron-fisted leader might have sought peace with Nazi Germany sooner, leading to a drastically different outcome in Europe.

The Cold War, too, might have unfolded with less intensity, devoid of Stalin’s paranoia-driven policies that shaped the Iron Curtain and defined the East-West divide.

The trajectory of global communism without Stalin’s iron grip would likely have been less monolithic and more fragmented. Stalin’s dogmatic imposition of Marxism-Leninism shaped not only Soviet policy but also the trajectories of countless communist movements worldwide.

His influence extended from Mao’s China to Castro’s Cuba, setting a template for authoritarian socialism that would not have taken root without him. Stalin’s spirit continues to influence authoritarian leaders in the world even today in the form of personages like Vladimir Putin.

The absence of Stalin’s personality cult could have allowed for a more pluralistic form of international communism.

Until his death at age 74 in 1953, Stalin pretty much dominated world history and his geopolitical policies continue to reverberate even today. Had he remained a priest in that Georgian seminary, the world would have been spared a dictator whose butcher’s bill exceeded that of Hitler’s or Mao’s.