Stalin was born to a cobbler in the town of Gori, Georgia. At seven, he contracted smallpox, which permanently scarred his face. At ten, he began attending CHURCH SCHOOL where the Georgian children were forced to speak Russian. By age twelve, two horse-drawn carriage accidents left his left arm permanently damaged. At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a Tiflis (Tbilisi) THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, where he rebelled against the imperialist and religious order. Though he performed well, he was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams. The seminary`s records suggest he was unable to pay his tuition fees.


The information card on "I. V. Stalina", from the files of the Tsarist secret police in Saint Petersburg, 1911
Shortly after leaving the seminary, Stalin discovered the writings of Vladimir Lenin and decided to become a Marxist revolutionary, eventually joining Lenin`s Bolsheviks in 1903. After being marked by the Okhranka (the Tsar`s secret police) for his activities, he became a full-time revolutionary and outlaw. He became one of the Bolsheviks` chief operatives in the Caucasus, organizing paramilitaries, inciting strikes, spreading propaganda and raising money through bank robberies, ransom kidnappings and extortion. In the summer of 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina Svanidze, who later gave birth to Stalin`s first child, Yakov. Stalin temporarily resigned from the party over its ban on bank robberies, conducted a large raid on a bank shipment resulting in the death of 40 people and then fled to Baku, where Ekaterina died of typhus. In Baku, Stalin organized Muslim Azeris and Persians in partisan activities, including the murders of many "Black Hundreds" right-wing supporters of the Tsar, and conducted protection rackets, ransom kidnappings, counterfeiting operations and robberies.
Stalin was captured and sent to Siberia seven times, but escaped all but the last of these exiles. After release from once such capture, in April 1912 in Saint Petersburg, Stalin created the newspaper Pravda from an existing party newspaper. He eventually adopted the name "Stalin", from the Russian word for steel, which he used as an alias and nom de plume in his published works.
During his last exile, Stalin was conscripted by the Russian army to fight in World War I, but was deemed unfit for service due to his damaged left arm.

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