Ultimately, though, Stalin's defense of the region proved unsuccessful, the Red Army units in the area lost 60.000 men while he was there, and the Whites were later able to capture the city and hold it for an extended period. .
Nevertheless, Lenin was reportedly quite impressed by Stalin's display of personal initiative and decisiveness. Before the winter of 1918, Stalin had been recalled to Moscow by Lenin. In January of 1919, Lenin and Trotsky sent Stalin into Siberia to stop a major White advance westward, led by the former Tsarist officer Admiral Kolchak. Stalin was in Siberia until February, when he returned to Moscow after failing to do much to stop the advance (and after heavily criticizing both the local Red Army commander and Trotsky himself for the weaknesses of the Bolshevik forces he was in charge of). In May, Stalin was sent to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in order to stop a White offensive from Estonia (which consisted of some Finnish and British detachments). Stalin performed exceptionally well, winning a decisive victory on June 16 with the capture of two White-controlled fortresses. Shortly thereafter Stalin had 67 officers executed because they had disagreed with him over the handling of the Red Army counterattack. .
During the same year, 1919, Stalin was married for the second time. His second wife was named Nadya Allilueva; she had been serving as his secretary (and had accompanied him to Volgograd the previous year). She was seventeen when they married, and Stalin was 39. Nadya produced two more children for Stalin; Vasily (a son), born in 1921, and Svetlana (a daughter) in 1926. After a terrible argument with Stalin over the Ukrainian famine in November of 1932, she committed suicide. Vasily, an alcoholic and a chronic failure at nearly everything, died in 1962. Svetlana's first marriage was to Grigor Morozov (who was, much to Stalin's annoyance, a Jew), but she later divorced him and married a son of Andrei Zhdanov.
