Vissarion Jughashvili

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Vissarion (Beso) Ivanovich Jughashvili (Виссарион (Бесо) Иванович Джугашвили in Russian; ბესარიონ ჯუღაშვილი Besarion Jughashvili in Georgian) (1853 or 1854 - 1909, other sources give a much later date for his death) was Joseph Stalin's father. His surname (also known as Dzhugashvili) is derived from Georgian village Jugaani, where his predecessors came from.

The little information available on Vissarion Jughashvili is sometimes contradictory. He is known to have been born into an Orthodox Christian peasant family from the village of Didi Lilo in Georgia, most likely in 1850. He seems to have been of Ossetian ancestry. His father's name was Vano and he had a brother called Georgy. According to the Arsoshvili family (Jughashvili's relatives and longtime residents of Didi Lilo), Jughashvili couldn't afford paying a three-ruble tax and had to move to Gori in search of employment.

In Gori, he lived in a house of an Ossetian named Kulumbegashvili. Here, Jughashvili found a job as a cobbler and married Ekaterina (Keke) Geladze on May 30 1872.^[1] It is known that their first two children (Mikheil and Giorgi) died as infants. Jughashvili eventually opened his own workshop, and for a time he and his family were prosperous. He soon developed a severe drinking problem, however. He became violently abusive towards his young son, Joseph. His ability to work also suffered, to the point that his workshop was kept alive only by his apprentices. Although Jughashvili wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a cobbler, his mother instead had him enrolled in school to be educated as a priest. This upset him greatly; in a drunken rage, he vandalized a local tavern and attacked the town police chief. For this he was expelled from Gori. He moved to Tiflis, where he found work in a shoe factory, whilst his wife and son stayed in Gori.

Vissarion died on August 25 1909 in Mikhailovsky Hospital in Tiflis, suffering from tuberculosis, colitis and chronic pneumonia.^[1]

[edit] Posthumous reputation

His effect on the young Joseph has been the subject of speculation, especially amongst psychologists both trying to explain Stalin's brutality, and trying to prove their psychological theories that a brutal father will create a brutal son.