According to Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin always enjoyed great success with women, even before he came to power. It was said that this was one of the reasons why he decided to marry at the age of 25, which was relatively late for that time.
Joseph Stalin's Two Marriages. The second one allegedly "began" with rape
Joseph Stalin was married twice. His first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, died in 1907, four years after their wedding. She succumbed to a severe illness, most likely typhus. Their son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, was not even a year old at the time. He lost his mother and then his father, who left him in the care of his grandparents to go and organize the revolution. Stalin was so busy that for years he did not visit or show any interest in his firstborn son.
In 1919, Joseph Stalin remarried - this time to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who was 22 years younger. Nadezhda's sister, Anna, claimed that their "relationship began with rape" on a train. Nadezhda's father even wanted to kill Stalin, but he promised to marry the much younger woman. Nadezhda, however, was not the wife the dictator had envisioned - she did not clean or cook, though she took great care of the children. She also worked as Lenin's secretary and had access to secret files, which she refused to disclose to her husband.
In 1921, their son Vasily was born. By then, 14-year-old Yakov had come to live with them, not having seen his father for 13 years. The family also included Artyom Sergeyev, a boy adopted after his father, Stalin's friend, died testing "new technologies." In 1926, Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana, was born when he was nearly 50 years old.
Despite having a large family, the "Red Tsar" paid no attention to his children. One biography recounts an anecdote about a conversation with comrade Yenukidze, who, during Stalin's monologue about the superiority of the party's good over the family's, asked what about his own children. Stalin pointed to his wife Nadezhda and shouted: "Those are her children!".
The children rarely saw their father. Stalin showed no affection towards his sons and treated them with great reserve. Historians report that he showed special care and attachment only to Svetlana. This somewhat changed after Nadezhda's suicide in 1932. Stalin tried to spend more time with the children, taking them to the theater and sending them gifts. However, his high expectations of his sons remained unchanged.
Stalin's Sons. The dictator did not help one of them escape captivity
The hardest hit was his first son, Yakov, who was treated with disdain by his father. Stalin told his colleagues that his firstborn was a "slug" and a "loser," treating Yakov's calm nature as a weakness (Yakov was quiet because he spoke poor Russian - his native language was Georgian). Stalin even mocked Yakov's suicide attempt - Yakov tried to take his life when his father refused to accept his first wife, who was the daughter of a priest. Yakov shot himself in the chest, but the bullet only grazed him. Stalin ridiculed his son's "aim," writing to his second wife, who showed more understanding to the 18-year-old, "Tell Yakov that I think he behaved like a hooligan and a blackmailer. This loser couldn't even shoot himself properly. From now on, I don't want to have anything to do with him".
After this attempt, Yakov left Moscow for eight years. He earned a degree in electrical engineering, although his father pressured him to become a soldier. At Stalin's request, he joined the academy, graduating two years later as a senior lieutenant. He only gained his father's respect when he showed himself to be "a real man" - Yakov divorced his first wife and won over a married dancer.
In June 1941, he volunteered for the front. He fought in Belarus, where he was captured by the Germans in July. When the Nazis realized who their prisoner was, they used it for propaganda purposes. Yakov was also unsuccessfully persuaded to cooperate with the Third Reich - even torture did not help. After an escape attempt, he was sent to Lübeck, where he met imprisoned Polish officers who shared their food parcels with him. In 1943, the Germans proposed an exchange to Stalin, but he replied that "he did not have a son in German captivity." He explained to his colleagues that "one does not exchange a soldier for a field marshal".
In captivity, Yakov fell into depression and refused to eat. In April 1943, he threw himself against an electric fence and was subsequently shot by a guard. This made Stalin describe him as "a true man and a noble and righteous person".
Vasily used his surname. He behaved like a celebrity
Vasily, on the other hand, was often beaten by his father, whom he both feared and revered almost like a god. The boys were taken care of daily by nannies and bodyguards, who, on Stalin's orders, were not allowed to spoil them or accustom them to material goods or any luxury. For Vasily, his "second father" was bodyguard Nikolai Vlasik, to whom the boy presented his girlfriends for approval.
Vasily, whom his father called lazy, caused a lot of trouble and did not want to study at all. As a punishment, Stalin sent him to aviation school, where he often got drunk. Initially, Stalin's offspring were treated with more privileges, but when the dictator found out, he ordered them to stop the preferential treatment of Vasily.
However, Stalin did not want his son to be harmed, so he insisted that Vasily be assigned to ground duties. Stalin quickly removed him from this position for demoralizing the regiment - during a drunken party he organized, one of the officers was killed. Despite this, Vasily continued to party, have affairs, and behave more like a celebrity than a soldier.
At the age of 19, he decided to marry. Vasily later served in the Soviet Army, and at the age of 24, he became a general (eventually a lieutenant general). He was arrested after his father's death in 1953. In a show trial, he was also sentenced to eight years in prison for "slandering Soviet leaders, anti-Soviet propaganda, and criminal negligence". In 1960, he was released from his sentence, but after his release, he could not adjust to life. He also had to change his surname to Dzhugashvili.
Despite the sentence, he received a three-room apartment, compensation, a three-month rehabilitation trip, and a high pension from the Communist Party. However, he fell into alcoholism and died of natural causes just two years later.
Stalin's only daughter. As an adult, she accused her father of involvement in her mother's death
The apple of Stalin's eye was his red-haired and freckled daughter. Stalin called her "sparrow" or "butterfly", often hugging and kissing her. Svetlana sat at the table with her father and received the best dishes. When he was not at home, he frequently wrote letters to "Svetanka" and she quickly replied to "Papochka". They even had their own games, and sometimes Svetlana "ordered" not only her father but also members of the Central Committee.
Stalin treated his daughter the best out of his children, though not enough to avoid controlling her. He even created a double for her - Yolka, who was to be set as an example for Svetlana. On the other hand, a drunk Stalin often woke his daughter during nightly drinking sessions, dragged her to the table by her hair, and made her dance and sing. As an adult, Svetlana also tried to intercede for her maternal relatives who disappeared from her life after being declared "enemies of the people". She then heard her father's suspicious voice, saying that she was also falling into "anti-Soviet tones".
At the age of 16, Svetlana fell in love for the first time with a 40-year-old married Jewish director, Aleksei Kapler, who was soon accused of collaborating with British intelligence and sentenced to ten years of exile near the Arctic Circle. This happened after he, as a correspondent for "Pravda," sent a report along with a poorly disguised letter to Svetlana, which appeared on the front page of the newspaper.
At 17, she became infatuated with student Grigory Morozov, who also had Jewish heritage. Stalin reluctantly agreed to her marriage to this man. In 1945, their son Joseph was born, and two years later, the couple divorced. Svetlana's second husband was the son of a close associate of her father. They married in 1949, and a year later, their daughter Yekaterina was born, but their marriage fell apart shortly after the girl's birth. In 1962-1963, she was married to the nephew of Stalin's first wife, whose parents had earlier been sentenced to death by him.
After her father's death in 1953, she took her mother's maiden name and worked as a teacher and translator. She also learned English, and later received a pension from the communist authorities to care for her children. In 1967, Svetlana left the USSR for India, then to Switzerland and the USA. She did not take her children on this trip, which they always resented her for.
She immediately held a press conference condemning her father's regime and the Soviet government. She also accused him of causing her mother Nadezhda's suicide due to his affairs. She wrote two books, "Twenty Letters to a Friend on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the October Revolution" and "Only One Year".
In the States, she married a widower, with whom she had a daughter, but this marriage also quickly fell apart. In 1984, Svetlana returned to the USSR with her youngest daughter, surprisingly welcomed by politicians with enthusiasm. It was different with her children, with whom she could not reconnect. She then moved to Georgia, and in 1986, returned to the USA. She died in November 2011 in Richland Center.
