ABSTRACT
All Stalin’s biographers have insisted that his father, Vissarion Dzhugashvili, died in 1890. They refer to a statement by Koba’s childhood friend, Iosif Iremashvili, who in his memoirs, published in 1932 in Berlin, mentioned in passing Vissarion’s death in Tiflis in 1890.1 Iremashvili did not know Vissarion personally. He met Koba for the first time at the end of September 1890 in the first grade of the Gori Ecclesiastical School, soon after Koba’s return from Tiflis. They became friends and Iremashvili often visited Koba’s home. Koba and his mother never mentioned Vissarion in Iremashvili’s presence, but he heard stories from Gori residents about the brutal beatings to which Vissarion had subjected Koba and Keke. He thought that they had nothing good to say about Vissarion and interpreted their silence in the light of the old custom of not speaking ill of the dead. This deduction led him to surmise that Vissarion had died in Tiflis during Koba’s sojourn there in the summer of 1890.
