Ekaterine "Kato" Svanidze (2 April 1885 – 22 November 1907) was the first wife of Joseph Stalin and the mother of his eldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili.
Born in Racha, in western Georgia, Svanidze eventually moved to Tiflis with her two sisters and brother, and worked as a seamstress. Her brother Alexander was a confidant of Stalin, then still known by his birth name of Ioseb Jughashvili, and introduced him to Svanidze in 1905. They were married in 1906 and she gave birth to son Yakov a few months later. The family moved to Baku to avoid arrest, though Svanidze got quite ill there and returned to Tiflis in 1907, dying shortly after her return, likely from typhoid or tuberculosis. Her death had a profound effect on Stalin, who deeply cared for Svanidze. He abandoned Yakov to be raised by the Svanidze family, and rarely saw them again, fully immersing himself in his revolutionary activities.
Svanidze family
Ekaterine Svanidze was born in Baji, Georgia, a small village in Racha, a region of Georgia, which was then part of the Kutais Governorate within the Russian Empire. Her parents were Svimon, a railway worker and landowner, and Sephora Dvali, both descendants of an impoverished minor Georgian nobility. She had two sisters, Aleksandra (Sashiko; c. 1878–1936) and Maria (Mariko; 1888–1942), and a younger brother, Alexander (Alyosha; 1886–1941).
Early life in Tiflis
While their parents would move to Kutaisi, the four Svanidze siblings moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi) and lived together in a house near Erivan Square (now Freedom Square) and behind the South Caucasus military district headquarters. The three sisters took up working at an atelier for a French seamstress, Madame Hervieu, making uniforms and dresses for military officers and their wives. Sashiko would marry Mikheil Monaselidze, another Bolshevik who also knew Jughashvili when they were students at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary. The atelier was frequented by the sisters' upper-class clientele, which combined with its central location, made it ideal for a hideout. "Our place above the suspicion of the police. While my fellows did illegal stuff in one room, my wife was fitting the dresses of generals' wives next door," Monaselidze later wrote.
Jughashvili was soon interested in Svanidze; he would later describe her to his daughter Svetlana as "very sweet and beautiful: she melted my heart." According to Iremashvili, Svanidze herself "worshipped [Jughashvili] 'like a demigod' but understood him. She was fascinated by [Jughashvili], and enchanted by his ideas," finding him charming. Monaselidze eventually found a priest willing to perform the service, Kita Tkhinvaleli, who had also been a classmate of Jughashvili at the Seminary. However, Tkhinvaleli only agreed to do it if they held the wedding late at night. The wedding took place around 2:00am on 16 July 1906, in a church next to the Svanidze residence.
Despite the law requiring marriages to be recorded in one's internal passport, Svanidze did not do so, ostensibly to protect Jughashvili, who was known to the Okhrana, the imperial Russian secret police. She also continued to actively help the Bolsheviks, and in November 1906 hosted a contact from Moscow. This individual was a double agent and after he left, Svanidze and her cousin, Spiridon Dvali, were arrested on 13 November. Svanidze was jailed while Dvali, charged with making bombs, was sentenced to death. After six weeks in prison, Svanidze was released; she was let go both due to her condition (four months' pregnant), and Sashiko asking her clients from the atelier for help; Dvali's sentence was also commuted, and he was given a reduced sentence. Though released from prison, Svandize was not allowed back home, but instead housed at the police chief's home for two months. Jughashvili would frequently visit her, as the officers did not recognise him.
On 18 March 1907, Svanidze gave birth to a son, Iakob,