To start off this new community, let’s look into the date of Stalin’s birthday. You might remember that there was a post celebrating Stalin’s birthday on Dec. 18, which is the common date you’d find with a quick internet search.

But if you go to CPR’s website (Communist Party of Russia), they have a banner and article that says Stalin’s birthday is on Dec. 21 of 1879, making it the 144th anniversary this year.

(Note that December 6 is mentioned in various sources below, this is a date from the old Julian calendar, which corresponds to December 18 in the Gregorian calendar we use today.)

There’s an article titled Why did Stalin have 2 birthdays? from Russia Beyond that mentions this:

In 1990, ‘Izvestiya TsKKPSS’ (“News of the CPSU Central Committee”) published a report, stating that the metric book of the Assumption Church in the town of Gori, Georgia, contains the record of the peasant Vissarion Ivanovich and Ekaterina Gavrilovna Dzhugashvili having a son, Iosif, on December 6, 1878. (December 18, according to the New Style).

The same date of birth (December 6, 1878) can be found in Iosif Dzhugashvili’s graduation certificate from Gori Theological College, and in the notice of the St. Petersburg Governor’s Gendarmerie Department in 1911 on Stalin’s political stance. Moreover, in 1920, Stalin personally filled in a questionnaire, handed to him by the Swedish newspaper ‘Folkets Dagblad Politiken’ (“Daily People’s Political Newspaper”). Here, the date of birth is also 1878.

They provide an archive photo with caption:

The metric book of the Assumption Church in Gori, stating that Stalin was born on December 6, O.S.

This article doesn’t give a definitive answer as to why Stalin used 1879 later in his life, but does try to give reasons why speculation about avoiding conscription was not probable.

The first version that comes to mind is that Stalin reduced his age by a year so he would not be drafted into the army. However, it is known that Stalin was an only child, and after his father’s early death, he remained his mother’s sole breadwinner, which exempted him from military service. Therefore, he wouldn’t have had to change the year of his birth, at least on account of that.

Stalin’s Wikipedia page lists references to:

• Robert Services’s Stalin: A Biography, which paints Stalin as a habitual liar:

  • Stalin (Dzhughashvili), Joseph Vissarionovich was born on 21 December 1879

  • Falsification came easily to him. The first sentence of that official biography was a lie because Joseph Dzhughashvili entered this life not on 21 December 1879 but on 6 December 1878. The truth has been ascertained by searches in the parochial records in Gori.[3] It is uncertain why he practised this deceit. But it was not a mistake: Stalin was always careful about such details. We can only speculate at this distance in time. Apparently he started to fib about his birthday after leaving the Spiritual Seminary in Tbilisi, and it may be that his motive was to avoid military conscription: certainly many Georgians in those years tampered with the records for this purpose. Another possibility is that he was simply trying to confuse the police as to when he entered the revolutionary movement.[4]

• Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Young Stalin, which mentions this in the footnote:

  • On 6 December 1878, she gave birth to a third son.[6] *

  • * Stalin later invented much about his life: his official birthday was 21 December 1879, over a year later, an invented date. He generally stuck to 6 December 1878 until an interview in 1920 with a Swedish newspaper. In 1925, he ordered his secretary Tovstukha to formalize the 1879 date. There are several explanations, including his desire to re-create himself. Most likely, he moved the date later to avoid conscription.

As the focus on this fact check isn’t to speculate baselessly on why Stalin uses the 1879-12-21 birthday, I will not dive deeper into that area.

On Dec. 21, 1949, CPC’s (Communist Party of China) party newspaper People’s Daily dedicated 4 pages to celebrating Stalin’s 70th birthday, with this being the front page:

On Dec. 21 1979, China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications released two postage stamps to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Stalin’s birth:

Whether or not it is factually accurate that Stalin’s birthday is on 1878-12-18, we can certainly afford to celebrate his birthday twice here on Lemmygrad, especially when his 1879-12-21 birthday has been and continues to be celebrated to this day, after all what’s stopping us?

As this is the first fact check of this working group (of one person), there is no rigid structure or process. If your comments include certain claims, please make sure to provide links to a source. If your claims are from personal experience or anecdotes, please make sure to indicate that.