

Stalin graduated first in his class at the age of fourteen and began attending school next at the Tiflis Theological Seminary. At the age of eight, Stalin began his education in the Gori Church School, where instruction was conducted in Russian and he was mocked for his Georgian accent. His father was a cobbler who often beat his wife and young son. Stalin was born in 1878 to a poor Georgian family. His birth name was Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, but to the world he will always be known simply as Stalin ("man of steel" in Russian). A union of multiple subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. It was governed as a single-party state by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Marxist–Leninist state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 19.
