Besarion Ivanes dze Jughashvili was the father of Joseph Stalin. Born into a peasant family of serfs in Didi Lilo in Georgia, he moved to Tbilisi at a young age to be a shoemaker, working in a factory. He was invited to set up his own shop in Gori, where he met and married Ekaterine Geladze, with whom he had three sons; only the youngest, Ioseb, lived. Once known as a "clever and proud" man, Jughashvili's shop failed and he developed a serious drinking problem, wherefore he left his family and moved back to Tbilisi in 1884, working in a factory again. He had little contact with either his wife or son after that point, and little is known of his life from then on, except that he died in 1909 of cirrhosis.
Unconfirmed photo from Jughashvili's grave
Ioseb, Jughashvili's third son, and the only one who survived childhood, pictured in 1894. He would grow up and take the name Stalin.
Keke Geladze, Jughashvili's wife, pictured in 1892.
The Jughashvili home in Gori, as seen in 2016. The family lived in one room on the left, while Jughashvili's shop was set up in the basement. The building is now part of a museum dedicated to Stalin.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian-born Soviet politician and revolutionary who was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 until his death. Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, Stalin consolidated his power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically, he formalised his Leninist interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the political and economic system he implemented is known as Stalinism.
Stalin in 1943
In 1894, Stalin began his studies at the Tiflis Theological Seminary (pictured here in the 1870s).
Police photograph of Stalin, taken in 1902
Stalin first met Vladimir Lenin at a 1905 conference in Tampere, in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Lenin became "Stalin's indispensable mentor".