192 Facts About Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 until his death.

Joseph Stalin initially governed as part of a collective leadership, but consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s.

Joseph Stalin raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda.

Between 1936 and 1938, Joseph Stalin executed hundreds of thousands of his real or perceived political opponents in the Great Purge, after which he had absolute control of the government.

Germany broke the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, leading Joseph Stalin to join the Allies.

Joseph Stalin presided over post-war reconstruction and the first Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949.

Joseph Stalin was one of the 20th century's most significant figures.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Joseph Stalin has retained a degree of popularity in some post-Soviet states as an economic moderniser and victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union as a major world power.

Joseph Stalin's parents were Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze; Stalin was their third child and the only one to survive past infancy.

In 1888, Joseph Stalin enrolled at the Gori Church School where he excelled.

Joseph Stalin faced health problems: an 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars, and at age 12 he was seriously injured when he was struck by a phaeton, causing a lifelong disability in his left arm.

In 1894, Joseph Stalin enrolled as a trainee Russian Orthodox priest at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, enabled by a scholarship.

Joseph Stalin initially achieved high grades, but lost interest in his studies.

Joseph Stalin began attending secret workers' meetings, and left the seminary in April 1899.

Joseph Stalin attracted a group of socialist supporters, and co-organised a secret workers' meeting where he convinced many to strike on May Day 1900.

Joseph Stalin helped plan a demonstration in Tiflis on May Day 1901 at which 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities.

Joseph Stalin's militant rhetoric proved divisive among the city's Marxists, some of whom suspected that he was an agent provocateur.

Joseph Stalin began working at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes.

Joseph Stalin was arrested in April 1902 and sentenced to three years exile in Siberia, arriving in Novaya Uda in November 1903.

Joseph Stalin, who detested many Mensheviks in Georgia, aligned himself with the Bolsheviks.

Lenin and Joseph Stalin disagreed with this, and privately discussed continuing the robberies for the Bolshevik cause.

Joseph Stalin married Kato Svanidze in July 1906, and in March 1907 she gave birth to their son Yakov.

Joseph Stalin's operatives ambushed the convoy in Erivansky Square with guns and homemade bombs; around 40 people were killed.

Joseph Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son, where Mensheviks confronted him about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but he ignored them.

Joseph Stalin secured Bolshevik domination of Baku's RSDLP branch and edited two Bolshevik newspapers.

In March 1908, Joseph Stalin was arrested and imprisoned in Baku.

Joseph Stalin led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants.

Joseph Stalin was sentenced to two years of exile in Solvychegodsk in northern Russia, arriving there in February 1909.

In June, Joseph Stalin escaped to Saint Petersburg, but was arrested again in March 1910 and sent back to Solvychegodsk.

In June 1911, Joseph Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda where he stayed for two months.

Joseph Stalin then escaped to Saint Petersburg, where he was arrested again in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three years of exile in Vologda.

In February 1912, Joseph Stalin again escaped to Saint Petersburg, where he was tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda into a daily, Pravda.

In January 1913, Joseph Stalin travelled to Vienna, where he researched the "national question" of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the Empire's national and ethnic minorities.

In February 1913, Joseph Stalin was again arrested in Saint Petersburg and sentenced to four years of exile in Turukhansk in Siberia, where he arrived in August.

Joseph Stalin was required to serve four more months of his exile and successfully requested to serve it in Achinsk.

Joseph Stalin assumed control of Pravda alongside Lev Kamenev, and was appointed as a Bolshevik delegate to the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, an influential workers' council.

Joseph Stalin smuggled Lenin out of the paper's office and took charge of his safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to nearby Razliv.

In Lenin's absence, Joseph Stalin continued editing Pravda and served as acting leader of the Bolsheviks, overseeing the party's Sixth Congress.

Joseph Stalin, who had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the situation, had not played a publicly visible role.

Joseph Stalin supported Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

Joseph Stalin became part of an informal leadership group alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov, and his importance within the Bolshevik ranks grew.

Joseph Stalin's office was near Lenin's in the Smolny Institute, and he and Trotsky had direct access to Lenin without an appointment.

Joseph Stalin co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers, and co-chaired the committee drafting a constitution for the newly-formed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

Joseph Stalin supported Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the Red Terror, arguing that state violence was an effective tool for capitalist powers.

Unlike some Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin never expressed concern about the Cheka's rapid expansion and the Red Terror.

Joseph Stalin appointed Nadezhda Alliluyeva as his secretary, and married her in early 1919.

Joseph Stalin sent large numbers of Red Army troops to battle the region's White armies, resulting in heavy losses and drawing Lenin's concern.

In Tsaritsyn, Joseph Stalin commanded the local Cheka branch to execute suspected counter-revolutionaries, often without trial, and purged the military and food collection agencies of middle-class specialists, who were executed.

In December 1918, Joseph Stalin was sent to Perm to lead an inquiry into how Alexander Kolchak's White forces had been able to decimate Red troops there.

Joseph Stalin returned to Moscow between January and March 1919, before being assigned to the Western Front at Petrograd.

Lenin believed that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support an invasion, but Joseph Stalin argued that nationalism would lead them to support their government's war effort.

Joseph Stalin then returned to Moscow, where Tukhachevsky blamed him for the loss.

The Soviet government sought to bring neighbouring states under its domination; in February 1921 it invaded the Menshevik-governed Georgia, and in April 1921, Joseph Stalin ordered the Red Army into Turkestan to reassert Soviet control.

In mid-1921, Joseph Stalin returned to the South Caucasus, calling on Georgian communists to reject the chauvinistic nationalism which he argued had marginalised the Abkhazian, Ossetian, and Adjarian minorities.

Joseph Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes unacceptable in the position of General Secretary.

Joseph Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries, and the desire for promotion led many to seek his favour.

Joseph Stalin developed close relations with key figures in the secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.

Joseph Stalin's wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.

Joseph Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters within the Central Committee as the Left Opposition were marginalised.

In late 1924, Joseph Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions.

Joseph Stalin accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism, and thus instability.

The factionalist arguments continued, with Joseph Stalin threatening to resign in October and December 1926, and again in December 1927.

Joseph Stalin was now the supreme leader of the party and state.

Joseph Stalin entrusted the position of head of government to Vyacheslav Molotov; other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, with Stalin ensuring his allies ran state institutions.

Joseph Stalin's growing influence was reflected in naming of locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian city of Yuzovka became Stalino, and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad.

In 1926, Joseph Stalin published On Questions of Leninism, in which he argued for the concept of "socialism in one country", which was presented as an orthodox Leninist perspective despite clashing with established Bolshevik views that socialism could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.

Joseph Stalin had called for the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong, to ally itself with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang nationalists, viewing a CCP-KMT alliance as the best bulwark against Japanese imperial expansionism.

Joseph Stalin's government feared attack from capitalist countries, and many communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach.

At this point, Joseph Stalin turned against the NEP, which put him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev.

In early 1928, Joseph Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding grain and ordered them be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Joseph Stalin bringing much of the grain back to Moscow with him in February.

Joseph Stalin announced that kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest.

Joseph Stalin responded with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming violence on local officials.

The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers receiving privileges; Joseph Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism.

Joseph Stalin argued that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling during the Great Depression.

Joseph Stalin's rhetoric reflected his utopian vision of the "new Soviet person" rising to unparallelled heights of human development.

In 1928, Joseph Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed.

Joseph Stalin warned of a "danger from the right", including from within the Communist Party.

Joseph Stalin desired a "cultural revolution", entailing both the creation of a culture for the "masses" and the wider dissemination of previously elite culture.

Joseph Stalin oversaw a proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy.

Socialist realism was promoted throughout the arts, while Joseph Stalin wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Joseph Stalin expressed patronage for scientists whose research fit within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed the research of agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific.

Joseph Stalin personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H G Wells, both of whom were impressed with him.

In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Joseph Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself in the heart.

Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Joseph Stalin concealed the real cause of death from his children.

Joseph Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.

Joseph Stalin did not acknowledge his policies' role in the famine, which was concealed from foreign observers.

In 1936, Joseph Stalin oversaw the adoption of a new constitution with expansive democratic features; it was designed as propaganda, as all power rested in his hands.

Joseph Stalin declared that "socialism, the first phase of communism, has been achieved".

Joseph Stalin initiated confidential communications with Hitler in October 1933, shortly after the latter came to power.

Joseph Stalin admired Hitler, particularly his manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives.

Joseph Stalin nevertheless recognised the threat posed by fascism and sought to establish better links with the liberal democracies of Western Europe; in May 1935, the Soviets signed treaties of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia.

Joseph Stalin aided the Chinese as the KMT and the Communists suspended their civil war and formed his desired United Front against Japan.

Joseph Stalin issued a decree establishing NKVD troikas which could issue rapid and severe sentences without involving the courts.

In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became head of the NKVD, after which Joseph Stalin move to orchestrate the arrest and execution of his remaining opponents in the Communist Party in the Great Purge.

Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Joseph Stalin, to avoid becoming victims.

In May 1937, Joseph Stalin ordered the arrest of much of the army's high command, and mass arrests in the military followed.

Joseph Stalin initiated all key decisions during the purge, and personally directed many operations.

Joseph Stalin feared a domestic fifth column in the event of war with Japan and Germany, particularly after right-wing forces overthrew the leftist Spanish government.

Joseph Stalin sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and the United Kingdom would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe.

Joseph Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in haste many of its officers were poorly trained.

Between 1940 and 1941 Joseph Stalin purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war eventually broke out.

Joseph Stalin seemingly focused on appeasement in order to delay conflict.

Plans were made for the Soviet government to evacuate to Kuibyshev, although Joseph Stalin decided to remain in Moscow, believing his flight would damage troop morale.

Joseph Stalin purged the military command; several high-ranking figures were demoted or reassigned and others were arrested and executed.

Joseph Stalin issued Order No 227 in July 1942, which directed that those retreating unauthorised would be placed in "penal battalions" and used as cannon fodder.

Joseph Stalin permitted a wider range of cultural expression, notably permitting formerly suppressed writers and artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich to disperse their work more widely.

Soviet military industrial output had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Joseph Stalin had moved factories well to the east of the front, safe from invasion and aerial assault.

When Joseph Stalin learnt that people in Western countries affectionately called him "Uncle Joe" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified.

Joseph Stalin scarcely left Moscow during the war, frustrating Roosevelt and Churchill with his reluctance to meet them.

In November 1943, Joseph Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran, a location of Joseph Stalin's choosing.

Joseph Stalin was impatient for the UK and US to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off the East; they eventually did so in mid-1944.

Joseph Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it had occupied in 1939, which Churchill opposed.

Privately, Joseph Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence.

The Red Army withheld assistance to Polish resistance fighters battling the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, with Joseph Stalin believing that any victorious Polish militants could interfere with his future aspirations to dominate Poland.

Joseph Stalin placed great emphasis on capturing Berlin before the Western Allies, believing that this would enable him to bring more of Europe under long-term Soviet control.

Joseph Stalin was pressed by his allies to enter the war and wanted to cement the Soviet Union's strategic position in Asia.

Joseph Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Harry Truman and Churchill, who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for the Western powers.

Joseph Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations.

In June 1945, Joseph Stalin adopted the title of Generalissimo and stood atop Lenin's Mausoleum to watch a celebratory parade led by Zhukov through Red Square.

Joseph Stalin was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes.

Joseph Stalin was concerned about his returning armies, who had been exposed to a wide range of consumer goods in Germany, much of which they had looted and brought back with them.

Joseph Stalin ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through "filtration" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors.

Joseph Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to retain the churches it had opened during the war, and academia and the arts were allowed greater freedom.

Joseph Stalin's health deteriorated, and he grew increasingly concerned that senior figures might try to oust him.

Joseph Stalin demoted Molotov, and increasingly favoured Beria and Malenkov for key positions.

The Allies demanded that Joseph Stalin withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran.

Joseph Stalin initially refused, leading to an international crisis in 1946, but relented one year later.

Joseph Stalin sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on its Security Council.

In 1948, Joseph Stalin edited and rewrote sections of Falsifiers of History, published as a series of Pravda articles in February 1948 and then in book form.

Joseph Stalin erroneously claimed that the initial German advance in the early part of the war, during Operation Barbarossa, was not a result of Soviet military weakness, but rather a deliberate Soviet strategic retreat.

Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Joseph Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments in Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries.

Joseph Stalin was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis.

Joseph Stalin demanded that war reparations be paid by Germany and its Axis allies Hungary, Romania, and the Slovak Republic.

Aware that the countries of Eastern Europe had been pushed to socialism through invasion rather than revolution, Joseph Stalin called them "people's democracies" instead of "dictatorships of the proletariat".

Joseph Stalin had a particularly strained relationship with Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito due to the latter's continued calls for a Balkan federation and for Soviet aid for the communist forces in the ongoing Greek Civil War.

Joseph Stalin ordered several assassination attempts on Tito's life and even contemplated an invasion of Yugoslavia itself.

Joseph Stalin suggested that a unified, but demilitarised, German state be established, hoping that it would either come under Soviet influence or remain neutral.

Joseph Stalin gambled that the Western powers would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade.

Privately, Joseph Stalin revealed that he had underestimated the Chinese Communists and their ability to win the civil war, instead encouraging them to make another peace with the KMT.

Joseph Stalin was concerned that Mao might follow Tito's example by pursuing a course independent of Soviet influence, and made it known that if displeased he would withdraw assistance; the Chinese desperately needed said assistance after decades of civil war.

Joseph Stalin wanted to avoid direct Soviet conflict with the US, and convinced the Chinese to enter the war to aid the North in October 1950.

Joseph Stalin was further angered by Israel's growing alliance with the US After Stalin fell out with Israel, he launched an anti-Jewish campaign within the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.

Joseph Stalin took increasingly long holidays; in 1950 and again in 1951 he spent almost five months on holiday at his Abkhazian dacha.

Joseph Stalin nevertheless mistrusted his doctors; in January 1952 he had one imprisoned after they suggested that he should retire to improve his health.

Joseph Stalin ordered that the doctors be tortured to ensure confessions.

In 1951, Joseph Stalin initiated the Mingrelian affair, a purge of the Georgian Communist Party which resulted in over 11,000 deportations.

From 1946 until his death, Joseph Stalin only gave three public speeches, two of which lasted only a few minutes.

In 1950, Joseph Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood.

On 1 March 1953, Joseph Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha.

Joseph Stalin was moved onto a couch and remained there for three days, during which he was hand-fed using a spoon and given various medicines and injections.

Joseph Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place.

Joseph Stalin believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoisie in which the working classes would prove victorious and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state.

Joseph Stalin believed that this proletarian state would need to introduce repressive measures against foreign and domestic "enemies" to ensure the full crushing of the propertied classes, and thus the class war would intensify with the advance of socialism.

Joseph Stalin respected Lenin, but not uncritically, and spoke out when he believed that Lenin was wrong.

Joseph Stalin viewed nations as contingent entities which were formed by capitalism and could merge into others.

Joseph Stalin was of the view that if they became fully autonomous, then they would end up being controlled by the most reactionary elements of their community.

Joseph Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into Eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism.

Ethnically Georgian, Joseph Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language, and did not begin learning Russian until age eight or nine.

Joseph Stalin remained proud of his Georgian identity, and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian.

Joseph Stalin rarely spoke before large audiences and preferred to express himself in writing.

Joseph Stalin's left arm had been injured in childhood which left it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility.

Joseph Stalin was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes.

Joseph Stalin holidayed in the south USSR every year from 1925 to 1936 and 1945 to 1951, often in Abkhazia, being a friend of its leader, Nestor Lakoba.

Trotsky and several other Soviet figures promoted the idea that Joseph Stalin was a mediocrity, a characterisation which gained widespread acceptance outside of the Soviet Union during his lifetime.

Joseph Stalin was a diligent worker and an effective and strategic organiser, with a keen interest in learning.

Joseph Stalin was skilled at playing different roles depending on the audience, as well as in deception.

Joseph Stalin could be charming and enjoyed cracking jokes when relaxed.

At social events, Joseph Stalin encouraged singing and drinking, hoping others would drunkenly reveal secrets to him.

Joseph Stalin lacked compassion, possibly exacerbated by his repeated imprisonments and exiles, though he occasionally showed kindness to strangers, even during the Great Purge.

Joseph Stalin could be self-righteous, resentful, and vindictive, often holding grudges for years.

Rees believed it was psychopathy that bred Joseph Stalin's tyranny, citing a 1927 diagnosis by neuropathologist Vladimir Bekhterev that described him as a "typical case of severe paranoia".

Joseph Stalin protected certain Soviet writers, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, even when their work was criticised as harmful to his regime.

Joseph Stalin enjoyed classical music, owned around 2,700 records, and often attended the Bolshoi Theatre in the 1930s and 40s.

Joseph Stalin's taste was conservative, favouring classical drama, opera, and ballet over what he dismissed as experimental "formalism", and disliked avant-garde in the visual arts.

An autodidact, Joseph Stalin was a voracious reader who kept over 20,000 books, with little fiction.

Joseph Stalin died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.

In exile in Solvychegodsk in 1910, Joseph Stalin had an affair with his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, who in 1911 gave birth to his alleged second son, Konstantin Kuzakov, who later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Joseph Stalin.

Joseph Stalin gave birth to their alleged son, Alexander Davydov, in around April 1917.

Joseph Stalin was raised as the son of a peasant fisherman; Stalin later came to know of the child's existence but showed no interest in him.

Joseph Stalin suspected he was unfaithful, and committed suicide in 1932.

Joseph Stalin regarded Vasily as spoilt and often chastised his behaviour; as Joseph Stalin's son, he was swiftly promoted through the Red Army and allowed a lavish lifestyle.

Conversely, Joseph Stalin had an affectionate relationship with Svetlana during her childhood, and was very fond of Artyom.

Joseph Stalin disapproved of Svetlana's suitors and husbands, which put strain on their relationship.

The historian Robert Conquest stated that Joseph Stalin perhaps "determined the course of the twentieth century" more than any other individual.

In under three decades, Joseph Stalin transformed the country into a major industrial world power, one which could "claim impressive achievements" in terms of urbanisation, military strength, education and Soviet pride.

Conversely, the historian Vadim Rogovin argued that Joseph Stalin's purges "caused losses to the communist movement both in the USSR and throughout the world from which the movement has not recovered to this very day".

Joseph Stalin ensured that these works gave very little attention to his early life, particularly because he did not wish to emphasise his Georgian origins in a state numerically dominated by Russians.

Under Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet administration various previously classified files on Joseph Stalin's life were made available to historians, at which point he became "one of the most urgent and vital issues on the public agenda" in the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin has been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer of ethnic minorities across the Soviet Union and the Holodomor famine.

Joseph Stalin repeated these denunciations at the 22nd Party Congress in October 1962.

In October 1961, Joseph Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, the location marked by a bust.

Admiration for Joseph Stalin has remained consistently widespread in Georgia, although Georgian attitudes have been very divided.