Baku and the oil industry also provided the training ground for a host of eventual Bolshevik leaders, including a future Soviet President, Mikhail Kalinin, and a future marshal of the Soviet Union, Klementi Voroshilov. The alumni included a still more important figure, a young Georgian, a former seminarian and son of a shoemaker. His name was Joseph Djugashvili, though he operated in the underground under the name “Koba”—Turkish for “Indomitable.” Only later did he begin to call himself Joseph Stalin. In 1901 and 1902, Stalin became the chief socialist organizer in Batum, masterminding strikes
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