When Stalin was in his late 20’s he met a young woman named Kato Svanitze through his good friend and confidant Alexander “Alyosha” Svanitze. Kato and Alexander were siblings. Stalin fell head over heels in love with Kato, and they got married in 1906. Within a few months, they were expecting a son who they named Yakov.
A few months after Yakov’s birth, Stalin became involved in a high-profile bank robbery organized by the Bolsheviks who were still a revolutionary group during the Russian Empire. He his wife, and their newborn son fled Tiflis, Georgia, for Baku, Azerbaijan. As Stalin was frequently away from home doing his political work and in a country she was unfamiliar with alone, her isolation and the warmer climate took a toll on Kato’s health. In October 1907, her health declined so much she moved back to Tiflis.
However it is thought that on her way back home, she consumed contaminated water and contracted typhus. In Tiflis she began to hemorrhage blood as death loomed. Stalin only visited her once. On November 22, 1907, Kato Svanitze died.
Stalin reportedly stated at her funeral that "This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity." During the burial, Stalin reportedly threw himself into her grave and had to be dragged out. He also would later tell a girlfriend that he “was so overcome with grief that [his] comrades took [his] gun away from [him]."
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| Stalin (right) at the funeral of his first wife. |
Stalin’s son was left to the care of the Svanitze family and Stalin would not visit his son again for several years. Stalin would also fair a great many relationships including marriage and many more kids later on in his life.
Also, I’m just gonna put it out there… Stalin was the same height as me.
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This blog was really interesting to read. I had no idea Stalin was like this in his personal life! I feel like people don't really talk about his personal life nor relationships, and we often only see the serious, stone-faced political side of him. When I think of Stalin, I think of a commanding dictator/leader, not the "head over heels" falling in love kind of person you write about in your blog! After doing a bit of research about Stalin's other relationships, I learned that he had a relationship Lidia Pereprygia, a thirteen year old at the time while he was around 36 years old. At the time, she was one year younger than the legal age of consent in Tsarist Russia. She ended up giving birth to two of his children, one of whom died in infancy. I found this fact extremely shocking and disgusting. It seems that Stalin's personal life was pretty horrifying, which is also shown in your blog as he only visited his sick wife once and his did not visit his own son for years.
ReplyDeleteIt was fascinating to learn about the personal life of someone who, like many other historical figures, is only generally talked about with regards to how they impacted the world. However, this aspect of Stalin's life was just as sickening as his political life. It was awful to find out that Stalin only saw his wife once when she had typhus and was in critical condition, and that he called her a "creature" at her funeral.
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