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Video: Kato and Joseph: the first love of the "father of nations" that made him Stalin
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
An amazing fact - there is a lot about the personal life of the "father of nations", but at the same time little is known about his first wife. It must have been true love! Indeed, for the sake of his Kato Joseph, a man who dropped out of a prestigious theological seminary and joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, agreed to get married in a church.
Acquaintance and wedding
Young Kato was introduced to her future husband by her older brother, who had once studied with Joseph at a theological seminary. Just three days later, Joseph in love introduced his mother to his young chosen one.
Keke (the so-called Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze) approved the choice of her son and blessed the happy lovers for marriage. Then the maternal permission was still very important for the future Soviet dictator …
The wedding took place very late at night on July 16, 1906 on Mount Mtatsminda, where the monastery of St. David was located (near the city of Tiflis). The daughter of a simple Tiflis peasant that night became the legal wife of the son of a shoemaker from the city of Gori.
The wedding took place in the strictest secrecy, since Soso was already in an illegal position at that time due to his revolutionary activities. The secret wedding ceremony is conducted by an old and reliable friend and classmate of Joseph in the theological seminary. The young man was married not under his own, but under an invented surname - Galiashvili.
Married to a revolutionary
Just a couple of months later, young Catherine fully felt what it was like to be the wife of a revolutionary. In mid-November, the police knocked on their apartment - they were looking for Joseph. He was in Baku, and the gendarmes decided to arrest Kato. The formal reason for the arrest of the girl, who was already three months pregnant, was that the young wife showed her old (girl's) passport to the intruders, although in a small town her marriage was not a secret. She was released at the end of December, only after her relatives wrote a petition. Joseph also signed it, but was presented there not as a spouse, but as a cousin of the unfortunate arrested woman.
In mid-March 1907, a son was born to Joseph and Kato, who was named Jacob. But just three months later, the young family had to urgently flee their hometown because of the raid on the Tiflis postal carriage, which was allegedly organized by Joseph. The hijackers stole about 250 thousand rubles - a huge amount at that time. However, later it turns out that Soso was slandered, and the real organizer of such a large-scale robbery was the tsarist police. All the bills from that carriage were marked in advance, and later, when trying to exchange them abroad, many of the Bolshevik revolutionaries were caught and imprisoned. Miraculously, only Joseph escaped detention, because at that moment he was hiding in Baku.
However, the young spouses had to hide almost constantly. Kato asked her mother-in-law to keep little Jacob and look after him. But Keke flatly refused. Kato sent her son to her family, but she was very offended by her mother-in-law and called her nothing but "old woman."
And only death will part us …
In Baku, Yekaterina Svanidze suddenly fell ill with transient consumption. Soso secretly brought his wife to his native Tiflis, and he himself was forced to hide in Baku. He returned to Georgia literally a few hours before the death of his beloved wife. She died in his arms the next day. Their marriage lasted a little over a year, but according to the memoirs of contemporaries, Joseph Stalin truly loved only his Catherine. However, there were those who claimed that Joseph often came home drunk, beat his wife and reviled her with the last words.
At the funeral of Kato, which took place at the Kukia cemetery in Tiflis, Soso said to his old friend: “This gentle creature very much softened my stone heart; but alas, Kato died, and with her all my last warm feelings for people died forever. Witnesses recalled that when the coffin with the body of the young wife began to be lowered into the ground, Stalin rushed after him, and the friends barely managed to keep the inconsolable comrade.
According to one version, the pseudonym of Joseph is associated with the death of his beloved wife, with whom he later went down in history - Stalin. After all, his heart became cold and insensitive - steel. Now he was only interested in revolutionary struggle and politics.
Father of Nations
Alexander Svanidze, thanks to whom Joseph Dzhugashvili met his Kato, became an ardent revolutionary. He served as Minister of Finance of Georgia, worked in Geneva and headed the USSR Vneshtorgbank. He and his wife were the most trusted people in Stalin's house. But in 1937 Stalin mercilessly severed ties with the past - Svanidze was arrested and shot, and his wife, upon learning this, died of a broken heart. The last name of Svanidze was not mentioned in Stalin's house. Stalin started talking about his Kato only in the last years of his life, when he loved to remember his native Georgia, youth and his first love.
And another love story of the Soviet leader - personal tragedy of the wife of the leader of the revolution Nadezhda Krupskaya.
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