Kato Svanidze

Born in Racha in western Georgia on 2 April 1885, Ekaterine Svanidze moved to Tiflis with her siblings and worked as a seamstress. Her brother Alexander, a confidant of the young revolutionary Ioseb Jughashvili, introduced them in 1905. They married in 1906; she gave birth to their son Yakov a few months later. The family fled to Baku to avoid arrest, but she fell ill there and returned to Tiflis in 1907, dying shortly after — likely from typhoid or tuberculosis — on 22 November, at twenty-two. Stalin, who had deeply cared for her, left Yakov to be raised by the Svanidze family and plunged ful…