My life was heavily influenced by the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, as described in my autobiography (link is in the resource box below). That is why I am so interested in his life. As a young man I glorified him; like an old man I condemned him. Stalin, born to poor Georgian parents (in 1879), attended a Russian Orthodox seminary. But instead of becoming a priest, he became a revolutionary agitator. He helped organize strikes in Georgia and participated in terrorist activities, to raise funds for the Russian communist party created by Lenin. Detained several times and sent to Siberia, he managed to escape.

After the second Russian revolution (1917), Stalin became a close associate of Lenin. In 1922, after the civil war ended, Lenin promoted him to the post of general secretary of the Bolshevik party. That position allowed Stalin to become the supreme ruler of the country after Lenin’s death (1924). Stalin was a brutal fanatic leader responsible for the tragic death of millions of Soviets. My own father was one of his victims. This aspect of Stalin’s activities is described in many books. But most of these books focus on Stalinism as a political system, not on the private life of the Soviet leader. A more recent book, “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar”, by the British historian SS Montefiore, is an exception. The following is based on information in that book.

Stalin’s first wife, Ekaterina Svinadze, from a cultured Georgian family, was the sister of his revolutionary friend. They were married in 1906. But she died in 1907, at the age of 22, after giving birth to their son Yakov. That boy, raised by the Svinadze family in Georgia, was later sent to Moscow. But his relations with Stalin were not good.

Maria Kuzakova was another woman in Stalin’s life. They met in Siberian exile, where he was sent after one of his arrests for revolutionary activities. Their out-of-wedlock son, Konstantin Kuzakov, was born after Stalin’s escape. After returning to Georgia, Stalin met Olga Allilyuev, the wife of his fellow Russian revolutionary Sergei. Montefiore mentions the close relations between Stalin and Olga. It is interesting that Sergei and Olga’s daughter, Nadia, became Stalin’s second wife, fifteen years later. She was 18 and he was 39. They had two children, Vasily and Svetlana. But that was not an easy marriage; Nadia committed suicide in 1932. Some believe that she was actually murdered by Stalin, to free herself from his interfering and neurotic wife.

Subsequently, Stalin had casual relationships with many young women: actresses, dancers, opera singers, etc. But his last love story, with a simple Russian peasant girl, Valentina Istomina, was lasting. Officially she was his housekeeper, beginning in 1934, when she was nineteen years old. But she became a devoted lover and second mother to Stalin’s daughter Svetlana. One could say that Valentina, whom he named Valechka, was, in fact, if not in fact, Stalin’s third wife.