Uncyclopedia:Featured articles/February 27

To understand Stalin you have to recognise that he started out in life as Ioseb (Joseph) Besarionis dze Jughashvili, born in a backwater's backwater in 1878 in Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. He spoke Georgian, a language so tough for outsiders to understand and write (as they had their own alphabet too) that Joseph took years trying to downplay his obvious outsider status. Stalin only started to learn Russian when he was 12 and it was a language he was never fully at ease with. He kept his native language only for his most immediate cronies if they came from Georgia but otherwise Stalin had nothing but contempt for his native tongue.

Known at this time as Jughashvili, Stalin trained to be a priest but he was forever getting into trouble. His looks at this time also marked him out, the large shock of thick black hair and narrow eyes made it difficult for him to hide or blend in. In other times Jughashvili/Stalin's wild looks would have earned him a life as a career criminal but by chance he read a newspaper article about a certain Lenin and his call for a new society based on socialism and finger wagging. This appealed to Stalin who around this time adopted his mock-heroic moniker. Joseph liked the sound of Stalin which promised hardness and an anticipation of the industrial revolution then hitting Russia. It was a name that drew strength from the past but also looked ahead to the future. (Full article...)