Dzhugashvili enters Gori church school

Iosif (Joseph) Dzhugashvili was born in Gori, then part of the Russian Empire, to a working-class Georgian family. The commonly publicized Soviet birthday was 21 December 1879; parish-register...

Dzhugashvili moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi) for seminary education. There he encountered social inequality, censorship, and Marxist ideas circulating among students and workers.

After years of study and political activity, he left the seminary and turned toward revolutionary organizing. Accounts differ on the immediate circumstances; his transition reflects both personal...

Police arrested the labor organizer during a period of strikes and political agitation in the industrial port. His arrest began repeated cycles of imprisonment, internal exile, and escape.

A group of militants attacked an imperial bank carriage in Tiflis to obtain funds for the revolutionary movement. Stalin’s precise operational role remains disputed; the episode illustrates the...

At the Prague Party Conference, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders co-opted Stalin to the Central Committee while he was in exile. (The conference date is often given as 17 January Old Style; this...