ABSTRACT
Beginning in July 1926, when his Okhrana file was found in the old archives, Stalin’s behavior markedly worsened. He had always been irritable and quicktempered, but now members of his own family suffered from his increasing intolerance and angry outbursts. In August 1926, his relations with his wife Nadezhda Allilueva deteriorated to such an extent that Nadezhda left Stalin, taking along their 6-month-old daughter Svetlana and their 7-year-old son Vasily to live with her parents in Leningrad. Yakov, Stalin’s 18-yearold son from his first marriage, stayed with his father but grew so unhappy that he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest in the kitchen of their now deserted Kremlin apartment. The wound was not fatal, and doctors at the Kremlin hospital saved Yakov’s life. ‘He can’t even shoot straight’, was Stalin’s heartless comment.1
