Joseph Stalin
Stalin's birth name in Georgian was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili . He was born an ethnic Georgian; Georgia was then part of the Russian Empire. The Russian-language version of his birth name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili .
Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878[2] in the town of Gori in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire (today in Georgia). His father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ketevan Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with numerous health issues. He was born with two adjoined toes on his left foot,[14] and his face was permanently scarred by smallpox at the age of 7. At age 12, he injured his left arm in an accident involving a horse-drawn carriage, rendering it shorter and stiffer than its counterpart.
Ioseb's father slid into alcoholism, which made him abusive to his family and caused his business to fail. When Ioseb's mother enrolled him into a Greek Orthodox priesthood school against her husband's wishes, Ioseb's enraged father went on a drunken rampage. He was banished from Gori after assaulting the police chief. Besarion moved to Tiflis, leaving his wife and son behind in Gori.
When Ioseb was sixteen, he received a scholarship to attend the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary, the leading Russian Orthodox seminary in Tiflis; the language of instruction was Russian. Despite being trained as a priest, he became an atheist in his first year. He was a voracious reader and became a Georgian cultural nationalist. He anonymously published poetry in Georgian in the local press and engaged in student politics. Although his performance had been good, he was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams. The seminary's records also suggest that he was unable to pay his tuition fees.Around this time, Ioseb discovered the writings of Vladimir Lenin and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, a Marxist group.
Out of school, Jughashvili briefly worked as a part-time clerk in a meteorological office, but after a state crackdown on revolutionaries, he went underground and became a full-time revolutionary, living off donations.
When Lenin formed the Bolsheviks, Jughashvili eagerly joined him. Jughashvili proved to be a very effective organizer of men as well as a capable intellectual. Among other activities, he wrote and distributed propaganda, organized strikes, and raised funds through bank robberies, kidnappings, extortion, and assassinations. Jughashvili was arrested and exiled to Siberia numerous times, but often escaped. His skill, charm, and street-smarts won him the respect of Lenin, and he rose rapidly through the ranks of the Bolsheviks.
Jughashvili married his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, in 1906, who bore him a son. She died the following year of typhus. In 1911, he met his future second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, during one of his many exiles in Siberia. Sometime between 1910 and 1912, he began using the alias "Stalin" in his writings.