Besarion Vanovis Jughashvili (Georgian: ბესარიონ ჯუღაშვილი; Russian: Виссарион Иванович Джугашвили;) (1849 or 1850 – 25 August 1909) was Joseph Stalin's father. A cobbler, Jughashvili married his wife, Ketevan Geladze when she was 17. The marriage bore three sons, but only the youngest, Joseph (Ioseb) lived to adulthood. While Jughashvili was able to open his own workshop in the 1880s in Gori, his recurrent drinking problem led to the destruction of his business. He also grew abusive towards his wife and son. He was eventually driven from Gori after he drunkenly assaulted the chief of police. He spent the rest of his life trying to force Joseph to take up the cobbler's trade. Instead Joseph first became a seminary student, at his mother's insistence, and then a revolutionary. While they met one last time in 1901, when Joseph came to the shoe factory where Besarion was employed to organize a strike, Besarion died in 1909 without having made any effort to contact Joseph.
