Stalin (1879-1953) Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on December 21, 1879, in the village of Gori, Georgia. He was born to Vissarion and Yekaterina Dzhugashvili. His father Vissarion, was an unsuccessful cobbler who drank heavily and beat him savagely. When Iosif was 7, he caught smallpox, which scarred him for life, and then he came down with septicemia, which left his left arm slightly crippled for life. He lived in the 1920's a normal life, surrounded by many relatives who spoke their minds freely in the family circle, and he had good personal friends among the Soviet leadership. His life began to change, though, after the suicide of his second wife Nadezhda Allililuyeva in 1932, who left a letter incriminating him personally and politically. After that he became very paranoid, suspecting others-even those with whom he had been friends with for years. A complex man, he centered his life completely in his office. Although, he did allow public worship of himself on a scale rarely matched in any country in the 20th Century. In his personal life, he withdrew almost completely, living either in his Kremlin apartment or in his new country house at Kuntsovo, constantly surrounded by officers and bodyguards until his death. Frantic to catch up with the West in 1928, Stalin and his men launched a set of policies known as the "five-year plans," designed to turn backward Russia into an industrial and military world power, which he accomplished in only one decade. Though this was a great success, the peasants paid dearly, most with their lives. Most of starved to death from famine. Those that survived were killed off in Stalin's "purges" to rid him of opposition.
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             Stalin's birthplace, the village of Gori.
             · Stalin's birth name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili.
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