Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union's Dictator and General Secretary, was born in Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire, in 1878.
On December 18, 1878, he was born in Gori, Georgia. Losif Jughashvili was his birth name. Stalin's parents were impoverished, and he had a difficult upbringing. He contracted smallpox when he was seven years old. He lived, but his skin was scarred. He eventually went to seminary to become a priest, but he was booted because he was a radical. Stalin joined the Bolshevik revolutionaries after leaving the seminary. This was an underground movement founded by Vladimir Lenin that adhered to Karl Marx's communist theories.
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