When you think of Joseph Stalin, rarely do the words family man come to mind.

Perhaps that's because so many of the propaganda images of old Coba seem to be so solitary.

He's either standing by himself, his eyes cast off to the distance, suddenly suggesting

that he sees the glorious communist future right around the corner.

Or he's pictured within a dooring crowd or a group of patriotic workers or soldiers

that he's directing with an outstretched hand.

There are many images that depict Stalin with children, but it's always clear that they're

not his children.

These were the anonymous children of the USSR who were spontaneously thanking their leader

for, quote, a happy childhood, or at least so the propaganda would have us believe.

If we just looked at these images, it would be easy to think that Stalin had no family

of his own, that the Soviet citizens were his only children.

But Joseph Jugashvili certainly did have a family, and by all accounts it was kind of dysfunctional.

The death of his first wife famously devastated Stalin, but not so much that he didn't find

love again.

A few years after the death of his first wife, Stalin married for a second time.

This time to a woman named Nazeda Aliaheva.

She would bear Stalin to children, a son Vasili and a daughter Svetlana.

However, this marriage was also destined to end in tragedy.

In 1932, Nazeda shot herself and died in her bedroom.

The reasons for this suicide have never been accurately determined.

Some have speculated that the suicide came after years of neglect from her husband.

...