Besarion Jughashvilli
It was a bitterly cold night in the winter of 1878 when the woman was about to give birth in a place that was little more than a stable. She was in a fearful state and had much to fear, having lost three previous sons in childbirth .
She worried too for her future should they both live. Being married to
a violent alcoholic, Besarion Jughashvilli, a shoemaker, who despaired at her previous efforts
to give him a heir or a daughter, controlled every moment of that
fear. The painful spasms started suddenly as the midwife exhorted her
to push. When the pushing finally stopped she had at last given birth
to a son.
The next day when the father saw his son, he became strange and suspicious. His wife feared for a moment that he was thinking that she had been un-faithful to him but it was the infant’s feet the father was fixated on.
"You have given birth to the devil." Jughashvilli screamed.
The mother struggled to her feet desperately searching for what he had found. The infant’s right foot had two webbed toes that were joined together. She became terrified and cried when he said drunkenly: “He has a cloven foot. It is the mark of the devil.”
As the boy grew up, the drunken shoemaker would not stop trying to beat that devil out of him. When he had become a teenager, he joined the priesthood. The old man seemed content for a while but was always a victim of old habits in drinking and wife beating even as he slowly became fearful of his son. The father abandoned his family before they could abandon him.
The years wore on and the old man died alone and buried in a pauper’s grave, unmourned and unloved. Those same years would see the son leave the priesthood and enter politics. Destiny's child had grown up and the world beckoned.
He would go on to become the leader of Russia and be responsible for over 25,000,000 of Russian deaths. His name was Joseph Stalin
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