What follows is based on "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar," by a British historian and writer, S. S. Montefiore. As a young man I glorified Stalin; as an old man I am condemning him. But this item is neither glorification nor condemnation. Stalin, born in 1879, was a Georgian. His first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, from a cultured Georgian family, was a sister of a revolutionary friend. They married in 1906. But she died in 1907, at the age of 22, after giving birth to their son Yakov. That child, raised by the Svanidze family in Georgia, was subsequently sent to Moscow. But his relations with Stalin were not good. Maria Kuzakova was another woman in Stalin's life. They met in Siberian exile, where he was sent after one of his arrests for revolutionary activities. Their out-of-wedlock child, Konstantin Kuzakov, was born after Stalin's escape. After returning to Georgia, Stalin met Olga Allilyuev, the wife of his fellow Russian revolutionary, Sergei. Close relations between Stalin and Olga are mentioned by Montefiore. It is interesting that the daughter of Sergei and Olga, Nadia, became Stalin's second wife, fifteen years later. She was 18 and he was 39. They had two children, Vasily and Svetlana. But that was not an easy marriage; Nadia killed herself in 1932. Some believe that she was actually killed by Stalin, to free himself of his interfering and neurotic wife. Subsequently, Stalin had casual relations with many young women: actresses, ballerinas, opera singers, etc. But his last love affair, with a simple Russian peasant woman, Valentina Istomina, was long-lasting. Officially she was his housekeeper, beginning in 1934, when she was 19. But she became a devoted mistress, and a second mother to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana. One might say that Valentina, whom he called Valechka, was, in effect if not in fact, Stalin's third wife.
