Tsarist authorities arrest Stalin in Batumi

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...

His mother secured schooling for him in Gori. Education in the imperial borderland opened a path beyond poverty while placing a Georgian child inside institutions linked to Russian Orthodox authority.

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...

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...

The Bolshevik daily Pravda began publication in St Petersburg. Stalin contributed to its editorial work; the paper became a channel for political education and agitation among urban workers, under...

After returning to underground work, Stalin was arrested again and banished to the Turukhansk region. He remained in remote exile until the overthrow of the tsar in 1917.

The fall of the tsarist monarchy enabled Stalin and other exiles to return. He joined the Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd during a rapidly changing struggle over war, land, workers’ power, and the...