- Stalin, Josef Vissarionovich Leader of Russia during WWII. -
21-12-1979, Gori, Georgië. - 05-03-1953, haemorrhage, age 73.
Kremlin Wall, Moscow. Joseph Stalin, born 21-12-1879 in Gori,
Georgie, the man who turned the Soviet Union from a backward
country into a world superpower at unimaginable human cost.
Stalin was born into a dysfunctional family in a poor village in
Georgia. Permanently scarred from a childhood bout with smallpox
and having a mildly deformed arm, Stalin always felt unfairly
treated by life, and thus developed a strong, romanticized
desire for greatness and respect, combined with a shrewd streak
of calculating cold-heartedness towards those who had maligned
him. He always felt a sense of inferiority before educated
intellectuals, and particularly distrusted them. Sent by his
mother to the seminary in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, to
study to become a priest, the young Stalin never completed his
education, and was instead soon completely drawn into the city's
active revolutionary circles.