Yakov Dzhugashvili

Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili ( – 14 April 1943) was a Georgian-born Soviet engineer and Red Army officer. He was the eldest son of Joseph Stalin, and the only child of Stalin's first wife, Kato Svanidze, who died nine months after his birth.

His father, then a young revolutionary in his late 20s, left the child to be raised by his late wife's family. In 1921, when Dzhugashvili had reached the age of 14, he was brought to Moscow, where his father had become a leading figure in the Bolshevik government, eventually becoming head of the Soviet Union. Disregarded by Stalin, Dzhugashvili was a shy, quiet child who appeared unhappy and attempted suicide several times as a youth. Married twice, Dzhugashvili had three children, two of whom reached adulthood.

Dzhugashvili studied to become an engineer, then – on his father's insistence – he enrolled in training to be an artillery officer. He finished his studies weeks before Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Sent to the front, he was captured and imprisoned by the Germans and died at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943 after his father refused to make a deal to secure his release.

Early life

Georgia Dzhugashvili was born on in Baji, a village in the Kutais Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Georgia). His mother, Kato Svanidze, was from Racha and a descendant of minor Georgian nobility. His father, Ioseb Dzhugashvili, was from Gori and was a Bolshevik revolutionary. A few months after Dzhugashvili's birth, his father was involved in a high-profile Tiflis bank robbery, and the three of them fled to Baku to avoid arrest. They rented a "Tartar house with a low ceiling on the Bailov Peninsula" just outside the city right on the sea. They returned to Tiflis in October that year as Svanidze was quite ill. She died on , having likely contracted typhus on the trip back. Ioseb left Tiflis immediately after her death, abandoning eight-month-old Iakob to be raised by his Svanidze relatives. Ioseb, who later adopted the name Joseph Stalin, did not return to visit his son until several years later, and Iakob was raised by his aunts for the next 14 years.

Moscow In 1921, Dzhugashvili was brought to Moscow to live with his father. His half-siblings Svetlana and Vasily were born after he moved. This proved difficult for Dzhugashvili as he did not understand Russian and his father was hostile to him, even forbidding him from adopting the name "Stalin". It is not clear why Stalin had hostility towards his son, but it is believed that he reminded Stalin of Svanidze, which was one of the happier times in Stalin's life. A kind individual, Dzhugashvili was close to his half-siblings, as well as his step-mother Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who was only six years older than him.

Though Dzhugashvili was interested in studying at a university, Stalin did not initially allow it, and it was not until 1930 when he was 23 that Dzhugashvili was admitted. He graduated from the Institute of Transport in 1935, and for the next few years worked as a chimney-sweep engineer at an electric plant factory named after his father. In 1937, he entered the Artillery Academy, and graduated from there on 9 May 1941. Dzhugashvili spent several months in the hospital recovering from this ordeal, though the couple did ultimately marry and moved to Leningrad.

After his return to Moscow, Dzhugashvili was rumoured to be marrying Ketevan Orakhelashvili, the daughter of Mamia Orakhelashvili, the First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. However, Dzhugashvili was shy around her so she instead married Evgeni Mikeladze, a prominent orchestra conductor, earning ridicule from Stalin. A son, Yevgeny was born on 10 January 1936, after Golysheva returned home. Dzugashvili only learnt of his son in 1938 and ensured he took his surname, though Stalin never recognised Yevgeny as his grandson.

Dzhugashvili married Yulia Meltzer, a well-known Jewish dancer from Odessa. After meeting Meltzer at a reception in a restaurant, Dzhugashvili fought with her second husband, an NKVD officer called Nikolai Bessarab, an aide to Stanislav Redens, the head of the Moscow Oblast NKVD and brother-in-law of Stalin.

Second World War Capture

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and its allies launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin ensured that Dzughashvili and Artyom Sergeyev, his adopted son and fellow artillery officer, went to the front lines. Serving as a lieutenant with a battery of the 14th Howitzer Regiment of the 14th Tank Division near Vitebsk, Dzhugashvili was captured on 16 July during the Battle of Smolensk. The circumstances of his capture are disputed: Sergeyev later said that "the Germans surrounded Yakov's battery. The order was given to retreat. But Yakov did not obey the order. I tried to persuade him... but Yakov answered: 'I am the son of Stalin and I do not permit the battery to retreat." Other sources, including Soviet prisoners interrogated, claimed that they willingly gave up Dzhugashvili as they hated the Soviet system. Material from the Russian archives also suggests that he surrendered willingly.

The Germans announced the capture of Dzughashvili on 19 July. Stalin reacted negatively to the news: he had previously ordered that no soldiers were to surrender, so the idea that his own son had done so was seen as a disgrace. He was angry that Dzughashvili had not killed himself instead of being captured, and suspected that someone had betrayed him. Meltzer, his wife, was not immediately told the news and, suspicious of her motives and the idea that Dzhugashvili surrendered, Stalin had her arrested. With Meltzer imprisoned, Svetlana took care of Galina. During the interrogation, Dzughashvili openly criticised his division and other units of the Red Army, saying they were unprepared for the war, and further commented that military commanders behaved poorly.

German 1941 propaganda saying: "This is Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin's son and artillery officer... who on 16 July has surrendered near Vitebsk, together with thousands of other soldiers and officers... Follow his example – he is alive and well, and feels great... Why do you fight to the death when even the son of your leader has surrendered?"

The Germans intended to use Dzhugashvili in their propaganda against the Soviets. He was pictured on leaflets dropped over Soviet soldiers, shown smiling with his captors. The back of the leaflet was part of a letter he wrote to Stalin shortly after his capture: "Dear Father! I have been taken prisoner. I am in good health. I will soon be sent to a camp for officers in Germany. I am being treated well. I wish you good health! Greetings to everyone. Yasha." He was subsequently moved to a guarded villa in Berlin, where Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, hoped to use him on Russian-language radio broadcasts. When that failed to materialise, Dzhugashvili was moved to Oflag XC Lubeck then to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

While interned there, Dzhugashvili was constantly frequented by visitors who wanted to meet and photograph the son of Stalin, meetings which began to distress him. He also quarrelled with the British prisoners, and would frequently get in physical altercations with them. Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister Vyacheslav Molotov also recounted that Stalin refused to swap his son for Paulus because "All of them [Soviet prisoners of war] are my sons." According to Nikolai Tolstoy, there was a proposal from Adolf Hitler to exchange Dzhugashvili for his half-nephew Leo Raubal, but this was not accepted either.

Death On 14 April 1943, Dzhugashvili died at the Sachsenhausen camp. Initially, the details of his death were disputed: one account had him running into the electric fence surrounding the camp. However, it had also been suggested that he was shot by the Germans; Kun speculated that it is "conceivable that he committed suicide: he had suicidal tendencies in his youth". Dzhugashvili was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, first class in 1977, although this was done secretly and the family was not allowed to collect the medal.