There are many words that can describe Joseph Stalin. Most people, especially those who lived under his reign, would have explained him in negative terms. People close to him were either loyal to him, or pretended to be for their own good. The only ones that truly loved him were his family members, but even they had to face the consequences of his regime. Some of which had to pay with their lives. It is fair to say the Joseph Stalin was a complicated man. He was someone who was hard to predict and hard to understand; no one could ever anticipate what his next words or his next move would be. This makes him one of the most interesting men to study. His family was mostly isolated from him, especially his children after the death of his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Stalin's family life and his childhood might have helped to answer why he was so ruthless. When we think of Stalin we think of violence and terror, but did that reflect on his family life, or was it just a cover up for his ego as the Man of Steal. .
Family Life.
The man whom the world would come to know as Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, on December 21, 1879, in the Georgian village of Gori, a small town in the southern reaches of the Russian Empire. He was the third child born to Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a poor shoemaker, and his wife Yekaterina, who increased her family's income by working as a domestic servant1. Joseph was the only one of their offspring to survive infancy. Vissarion was an abusive, hard-drinking man, who eventually failed as an independent artisan and left his family to work in a factory in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, when his son was five years old. He used to physically abuse Joseph and his mother. One time after another night of drinking he got abusive with Joseph and beat him very hard. The injuries that he sustained made a permanent dysfunction of his left arm2. For the rest of his life Joseph could not fully extend his elbow and tried to hide his injury.