For many decades, the question of when Stalin was born had a definite answer: "In 1879, December 21." And about the place of birth of the great dictator of discrepancies was not supposed. The homeland of Stalin is the Georgian city of Gori. Joseph Vissarionovich himself indicated this date, and in 1949 the seventieth anniversary of the leader of all peoples was solemnly celebrated. However, some facts suggest that the year of birth is not indicated correctly in official sources.
The discrepancies began already in 1921. Even then, between the 10th and 11th congresses of the RCP (B.), The party secretary was an extremely busy man. He looked modestly among the members of the Leninist guard, who shone with oratory. Kollontai, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Shlyapnikov and others, sparkling with eloquence, solved, as it seemed to them, very important issues. Someone fought with the "workers' opposition", others warmly supported her, and the gray "secretary" was preparing to become General. The position, at first glance, is unenviable, but it made it possible to "concentrate immense power." And at this crucial moment, one of the deputies, filling in the questionnaire of Joseph Vissarionovich, wrote the number 44 in the "age" column. Probably, the employee forgot when Stalin was born. It seems to be a trifle, a mistake, but it was personally corrected by a delegate to the congress at 42.
The book of records of the Gori Cathedral Church contains information about the birth on December 6, 1878 in the Orthodox family of Ekaterina Gabrielovna and Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili son, baptized on the 17th of the same month by Joseph. Happy afternoon, the difference is small, in the new style it is only three days. But where did the whole year of the life of the baby go, who was to become the ruler of the Soviet empire?
The question of when Stalin was born was not so scary to ask in the twenties, even to himself. He was asked by official biographers, having discovered a contradiction between the data in the metrics and personal profiles of the post-October period. The answer was not Stalin's vague. According to eyewitnesses, Joseph Vissarionovich smiled and said that they write as they want, but he could just advise you to turn to documents, no matter which: compiled with your own hand or metric records. Moreover, a copy of the extract from the church book was kept in the Central Archives of the RCP (B.).
Young Dzhugashvili I.V. graduated from the Gori Theological College, as evidenced by a record in the archive of this educational institution, along with profiles of all graduates. The year 1878 is also indicated here, and the date is written by the student himself.
There is one more confirmation of the correctness of this date. Its value is that the document is not stored in Georgia or in Moscow, where historians searched for the artifacts they needed, but quite unexpectedly in Saratov. The fact is that His Grace Hermogenes, who served as vicar from 1901 to 1903 in the county town of Volsk, was previously the rector of a seminary in Tiflis. He left behind a rich archive in which there is one explanatory note. Its author is Dzhugashvili I.V. And she proves that already in 1893, and not in 1894, he entered the Tiflis seminary.
So, in the official biography, the information about when Stalin was born is distorted. The fact that this was done with the knowledge and at the request of the Secretary General is beyond doubt. Only one question remains: why? After all, the wrong person was to do something just like that.
The pseudo-historians of perestroika times, fulfilling a social order and fabricating the image of an ignorant and stupid Stalin who killed true Bolshevik-Leninists for their own pleasure, did not rack their brains for a long time. It seemed to them that one of the greatest dictators of human history behaved like a capricious lady at a critical age, and tried to look younger. Another explanation was that this was an ordinary petty scam. It’s hard to agree, Stalin only played with big bets.
In fact, the origin of the date of December 9, 1879 is simply explained. Soviet documents after the October coup were issued on the basis of a passport with a double-headed eagle on the cover. For Stalin, he was false, like for many underground workers, and his birth year was indicated in 1879. He had many surnames, but this one reflected, as it seemed to him, the essence of the inflexibility of revolutionary will. Most likely, he just liked her, and he, ceasing to be Dzhugashvili, turned into Stalin, whom he himself, in the words of people who knew him well, called in the third person “he”. Joseph Vissarionovich adopted a new image, of which the date of birth became a part.