Keke Geladze
Ekaterine "Keke" Giorgis asuli Geladze (1856/1858 – 4 June 1937) was the mother of Joseph Stalin.
Ekaterine Geladze | |
|---|---|
| ეკატერინე გელაძე | |
Geladze in 1892 | |
| Born | Ekaterine Giorgis asuli Geladze 1856/1858 |
| Died | 4 June 1937 (aged 78/81) Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Seamstress |
| Spouse | Besarion Jughashvili |
| Children | Mikheil Giorgi Ioseb |
| Parent(s) | Giorgi Geladze (father) Melania Khomezurashvili (mother) |
Born into a family of peasants outside of Gori, in modern Georgia, she married Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and had three sons; only the youngest, Ioseb, lived. Besarion would leave the family, leaving Geladze to raise her son. Deeply religious, she wanted Ioseb to become a priest, working as a seamstress in Gori in order to pay for his education. Geladze remained in Gori when Ioseb moved to the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary, and stayed there until his rise to power in the Soviet Union as Joseph Stalin. In her older age Geladze lived in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia; while Stalin wrote to her, he visited rarely, with the last visit in 1935. She died in 1937, and was buried in the Mtatsminda Pantheon in Tbilisi.