The Red Priest

The mother of Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953), dictator of Soviet Russia from 1927 until his death, intended her son to become a priest, not a revolutionary. In 1894, when the young Stalin was 14, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the theological Academy in Tiflis, the capital city of his native province of Georgia. According to his own account, he was expelled for preaching Marxism, but according to his mother, he left for reasons of health. At the time, Stalin was known by his original name of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. It was only later, after he became a revolutionary leader, that he adopted as an image-building alias the name by which he is known to history: Stalin, or ‘man of steel’.