The Knight in the Panther's Skin
Like many Georgian children, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili – who would later call himself Stalin – grew up with the national epic, "The Knight in the Panther's Skin". As a child, Jughashvili knew the poem by heart and passionately read the other popular poems of the time, notably those by Raphael Eristavi, Akaki Tsereteli and – once he learned Russian – Nikolay Nekrasov.