Stalin: A Biography

PERSONAL LIFE: birth date; official biography (1938); baptised, ref4; rumoured illicit ancestry, ref5; childhood and upbringing, ref6; smallpox as child, ref7; schooling; works in Tbilisi shoe factory; attitude to father; injured in accident with carriage, ref14; youth in Gori, ref15; adopts name Koba; witnesses hangings in Gori, ref18; attends Tiflis Spiritual Seminary; learns Russian, ref22; singing; knowledge of ancient Greek; early poetry in Georgian; leaves Tiflis Seminary, ref34; abandons religious faith, ref35; works at Physical Observatory in Tbilisi, ref36; dress; on run in Tbilisi; in Batumi, ref44; detained in prison; journalism and writings; exiles in Siberia; appearance; courtship and marriage to Ketevan, ref61; birth of children; and death of wife Ketevan; visits Berlin, ref66; attitude to Jews; begins to write in Russian, ref72; learns Esperanto, ref73; sexual conquests and illegitimate children; moves to Vologda; adopts pseudonym Stalin, ref78; escapes to St Petersburg, ref79; in Vienna; fishing, ref81; rejected for military service, ref82; returns to Petrograd (1917); in hiding with Alliluevs in Petrograd; shaves off Lenin’s beard and moustache, ref85; edits Rabochii put; marriage to Nadezhda Allilueva; appendicitis; health problems and treatments; revisits Georgia (1921); abuses Krupskaya; Krupskaya softens attitude to; criticised for inadequate Russian; marriage relations; adopts Artëm Sergeev, ref106; diet; homes and family life; holidays; hunting; improves languages and studies Marxist philosophy; unpopularity; personal security concerns, ref120; and Nadya’s suicide and funeral; builds new dacha at Kuntsevo; recreations; cultural values and reforms; socialist ideals; and films; accompanies Svetlana on Metro ride, ref131; avoids contacts with people; writing; biographies of; remains in wartime Moscow; relations with sons and daughter; sends money to former Georgian friends; ill-health in war; drinking; social life with male friends; and women, ref147; billiards playing; Western adulation of; use of nicknames, ref151; relations with Churchill and Roosevelt, ref152; exchange with Alan Brooke; and Roosevelt’s death, ref154; postwar public view of; collected works published; death; persecutes members of family; seventieth birthday celebrations, ref161; Western disparagement of; on linguistics; mistrust of medical doctors; health decline; entertaining in old age; seventy third birthday party; suffers stroke; autopsy document lost; embalmed; funeral; book collection dispersed after death; reburied below Kremlin Wall