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.