10 Weird Facts You Didn't Know About Stalin
‘Stalin takes care of each of us from the Kremlin’, Viktor Govorkov, 1940, Iskusstvo (Moscow, Leningrad) via Australian National University In today's post we're going to get close and personal with Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. Here are 10 weird yet wonderful facts you probably didn't know about Stalin. 1. Joseph Stalin was not his real name. He was actually called Josef Dzhugashvili, or Soso to his family. He first used his pseudonym 'Stalin' when writing for the St Petersburg based Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, in 1912. Many historians believe that he took the name as it was similar to 'Lenin'. The meaning of 'Stalin' is steel or man of steel which I can never get out of my head when I think of the famous Superman movie, Man of Steel . 2. He came from a violent family. Given Stalin's violent nature, it probably wont surprise you that he was beaten by his father as a child. However, his violent upbringing goes further than t