1879: Born Iossif Vissarionovich Djugashvili on Dec. 21 ... was to be repeated seven times in the next 11 years. Six times Stalin escaped from exile in Siberia and northern Russia.

1879: Born Iossif Vissarionovich Djugashvili on Dec. 21, at Gori, Georgia, son of an alcoholic cobbler and a serf's daughter. Josef Stalin was one of the most ruthless and cold-blooded leaders in ...

(Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP) RIA leader Sergei Malinkovitch then added that "Numerous testimonies given by Stalin's contemporaries speak of the possibility that the leader of the Soviet ...