Ketevan Geladze

Ketevan ( Keke ) Geladse (Georgian ქეთევან ( კეკე ) გელაძე, Russian Екатерина Георгиевна Геладзе, Ekaterina Georgievna Geladse; * 1855 in Gambareuli in Gori, Inner Kartli, Georgia, † May 13, 1937 in Tbilisi ) was the mother of Joseph Stalin. She worked as a cleaner, housekeeper, laundress and seamstress.

Life

Geladse was born as a daughter of the peasant serfs Glacho Geladse. She had two brothers. The family was in 1861 released from serfdom, moved to Gori, where his father worked as a gardener. His father died early, and the brothers took over the living. The mother saw to it that she learned to read and write. As a young girl she worked as a cleaning lady.

On May 17, 1872 married two years older shoemaker Bessarion Dzhugashvili. With him she had three children: Mikhail ( born February 14, 1875), Giorgi ( born December 24, 1876) and Iosseb (December 6, 1878), the future leaders of the CPSU and dictator Stalin. The two first-born died a few months after birth. Only the Third Born survived.

Family life was initially marked by prosperity. Dzhugashvili became self-employed, employed ten workers and several apprentices. In the early 1880s, however, he became the cantankerous alcoholic, who laid out his money in liquor, his wife and son beat regularly. 1888 Dzhugashvili Geladse left without a divorce.

In order to finance the livelihood for herself and her child, Geladse already worked in their marriage time as a maid, laundress and seamstress for wealthy families. During this time she was said to have allegedly also extramarital relationships.

Geladse tried to make her son a Georgian Orthodox priest, enrolled him in 1888 at the church school in Gori. 1894 motivated him to change a scholarship at the Theological Seminary in Tbilisi. Since that time, she stood with him loosely correspond. He sent her photos, money and medicine.

After the Soviet invasion of Georgia in 1921 he quartered them in the palace of the former Russian viceroy, now the Palace of Youth, on Rustaveli Gamsiri in Tbilisi, where she shared a room. Georgia GPU chief Lavrenty Beria asked her: after 1927 several bodyguards. Visit the Son were rare. The last meeting took place in 1935 in Tbilisi, as his mother was a health badly bruised.

After her death Geladse was buried in the Pantheon on the mountain Mtazminda in Tbilisi. Stalin attended the funeral not participate, but only sent a wreath.