Yakov Dzhugashvili

Born in 1907 to Joseph Stalin and Kato Svanidze, Yakov lost his mother nine months later; his father, then a young revolutionary, left him to be raised by her family. At 14 he was summoned to Moscow, where Stalin had risen to lead the Bolshevik government, but the reunion brought no warmth — shy and unhappy, the boy attempted suicide multiple times. He trained as an engineer, married twice, fathered three children, then at his father's insistence enrolled as an artillery officer. He finished weeks before the Nazi invasion in 1941, was sent to the front, and captured by the Germans. Stalin refu…