Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was an unkown man in the small town of Gori, Georgia. After years of revoulutionary activity and many times exiled to Siberia, he changed his name. A name that would threaten the Germans, ally with the Americans, and help the North Koreans. A name that came from the Russian word for steel, Joseph Stalin (Nash 2836).

             Joseph Stalin was born on 21 December 1877 to Ekaterina Georgievna and Vissarion Ivanovitch Dzhugashvili (Block 790). Vissarion, Stalin"s father, was a drunkered and very cruel to his young son. Ekaterina, Stalin"s mother, was a washer women to support the family. The first three of Vissarion and Ekaterina"s kids had died shortly after their birth, so Stalin grew up as an only child. When Stalin was still a young boy he got small pox, which left his face scared forever. His first school was a litlle church school in Gori (Marrin 825). .

             Gori was full of socialist movements and the Czarist goverment wanted to educate priests to fight the revoulutionary ideas. Stalin"s mother, therefore, a dedicated member of the Orthodox Church, entered her son into the Seminary at Tifilis (Block 790). He entered the school in 1894 for the study of priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church (Marrin 825) and on the birthday of Czar Alexander III, Stalin sung a solo in an Orthodox Church (Block 790). Soon Marixist ideas reached him. He knew little about Marx"s theroies and the revoulution, but never the less it amazed him. He soon started to get involved (Marrin 825).

             He joined the forbidden revolutionary moment when he was fifteen and three years later he was secretly leading a Marxist circle (Block 790). In May of 1899, he was expelled from the school for missing an examination (Marrin 825) but Offcial Communist literature says that he was expelled for "political balance". He soon joined the Tiflis branch of the Russian .

             Social-Democratic Wrokers" Party and it was not long before he was a professional agitator.