Answer: Stalin was born Ioseb Jughashvili on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1879[1][a] in the town of Gori, in what is today the country of Georgia. He was baptised on 29 December [O.S. 17 December] 1878[2] and christened Ioseb, and known by the diminutive "Soso"[3][b][4] His parents were Ekaterine (Keke) and Besarion Jughashvili (Beso). He was their third child; the first two, Mikheil and Giorgi had died in infancy in 1876 and 1878 respectively [5]
Stalin's father, Besarion, was a shoemaker and owned a workshop that at one point employed as many as ten people,[6] but which slid into ruin as Stalin grew up.[7] Beso had specialised in producing traditional Georgian footwear and did not produce the European-style shoes that were becoming increasingly fashionable.[2] This, combined with the deaths of his previous two infant sons, precipitated his decline into alcoholism. The family found themselves living in poverty.[8] The couple had to leave their home and moved into nine different rented rooms over ten years.[9]
Besarion also became violent towards his family.[10] To escape the abusive relationship, Keke took Stalin and moved into the house of a family friend, Father Christopher Charkviani.[11] She worked as a house cleaner and launderer for several local families who were sympathetic to her plight.[12] Keke was a strict but affectionate mother to Stalin.[13] She was a devout Christian,[14] and both she and her son regularly attended church services.[15] In 1884, Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him with facial pock scars for the rest of his life.[16] Charkviani's teenaged sons taught Stalin the Russian language.[12] Keke was determined to send her son to school, something that none of the family had previously achieved.[17] In late 1888, when Stalin was ten, he enrolled at the Gori Church School.[18] This was normally reserved for the children of clergy, but Charkviani ensured that Stalin received a place by claiming that the boy was the son of a deacon.[19] This may be the reason why—in 1934—Stalin claimed to have been the son of a priest.[20] There were many local rumours that Beso was not Stalin's real father,[21] which in later life Stalin himself encouraged.[20] Stalin biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore nonetheless thought it likely that Beso was the father, in part due to the strong physical resemblance that they shared.[20] Beso eventually attacked a policeman while drunk which resulted in the authorities ejecting him from Gori.[22] He moved to Tiflis, where he worked at the Adelkhanov shoe factory.[23]
Although Keke was poor, she ensured that her son was well dressed when he went to school, likely through the financial support of family friends.[24] As a child, Stalin exhibited a number of idiosyncrasies; when happy, he would for instance jump around on one leg while clicking his fingers and yelling aloud.[25] He excelled academically,[26] and also displayed talent in painting and drama classes.[27] He began writing poetry,[28] and was a fan of the work of Georgian nationalist writer Raphael Eristavi.[29] He was also a choirboy, singing both in church and at local weddings.[30] A childhood friend of Stalin's later recalled that he "was the best but also the naughtiest pupil" in the class.[31] He and his friends formed a gang,[32] and often fought with other local children.[33] He caused mischief; in one incident, he ignited explosive cartridges in a shop,[34] and in another he tied a pan to the tail of a woman's pet cat.[32
When Stalin was twelve, he was seriously injured after having been hit by a phaeton. He was hospitalised in Tiflis for several months, and sustained a lifelong disability to his left arm.[35] His father subsequently kidnapped him and enrolled him as an apprentice cobbler in the factory; this would be Stalin's only experience as a worker.[36] According to Stalin's biographer Robert Service, this was Stalin's "first experience with capitalism", and it was "raw, harsh and dispiriting".[37] Several priests from Gori retrieved the boy, after which Beso cut all contact with his wife and son.[38] In February 1892, Stalin's school teachers took him and the other pupils to witness the public hanging of several peasant bandits; Stalin and his friends sympathised with the condemned.[39] The event left a deep and lasting impression on him.[40] Stalin had decided that he wanted to become a local administrator so that he could deal with the problems of poverty that affected the population around Gori.[29] Despite his Christian upbringing, he had become an atheist after contemplating the problem of evil and learning about evolution through Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.[29]