In the biography of the "leader of the peoples" Joseph Stalin, there are enough vague episodes that cause controversy among historians. One of them concerns the question of Stalin's actual birthday. During the lifetime of the leader of the Soviet Union, it was believed that he was born on December 21, 1879. However, there is evidence that Stalin was actually born a year earlier.
When was Stalin born?
Reference books, encyclopedias and dictionaries of the Soviet era contain indications that Joseph Stalin was born on December 21, 1879. All jubilee celebrations during the life of the leader of the nation were tied precisely to this date.
And yet there is a document that indicates a completely different date of Stalin's birth. We are talking about the birth register of the Dormition Church in the city of Gori, where information about those born and died was recorded. The book contains a record that on December 6, 1878, a son named Joseph was born to Orthodox Christians Vissarion and Ekaterina Dzhugashvili. A few days later, the boy was baptized in the same church, which was also recorded.
How can you explain this discrepancy in dates? It turns out that in fact Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was born a year earlier than the officially recognized date.
Historians have at their disposal numerous questionnaires that were filled out by Stalin's assistants and his secretaries. There is no doubt that the date stamped there - December 21, 1879 - was agreed with Stalin. But the reliability of the metric record was also quite high at one time. In addition, other sources were found to confirm the church record.
In June 1894, Joseph Dzhugashvili received a certificate of completion of the course at a theological school located in the city of Gori. As indicated in this document, its owner was born on December 6, 1878. It is unlikely that we can talk about the mistake of those who wrote out the certificate.
One of the valuable sources for shedding light on Stalin's biography is the archives of the Russian police department. The gendarmerie conducted constant surveillance of those citizens who were found to be unreliable. A special dossier was compiled for each revolutionary.
The documents of the gendarme department contain data on the date of birth of Dzhugashvili - December 6, 1878, which fully corresponds to the entry in the church book.
The secret of the personality of Joseph Stalin
In 1920, Stalin personally filled out a questionnaire for one of the Swedish newspapers published in Stockholm. Here, 1878 is indicated as the year of birth. Two years later, a short article was even published, which outlined some facts of the biography of Joseph Stalin, who at that time became the head of the party. The questionnaire in question is considered the only autobiographical document written by Stalin himself. All other questionnaires, as a rule, were filled out by his assistants.
Researchers in the life and work of I. V. Stalin, it is noted that in the middle of the 20s of the last century, 1878 disappears from his biographical documents (See: Izvestia of the Central Committee of the KPSS, "When IV Stalin was born", I. Kitaev, L. Moshkov, A. Chernev, November 1990). The official date of birth of the country's leader is December 21, 1879. How and why was a new legend born? What caused this replacement? The materials at the disposal of historians do not shed light on this question. Obviously, to reveal the secret, new research and painstaking work in the archives will be needed.
