Stalin's Hole

Because Dictator Stalin was born, as his mother says, "almost on Christmas day" (Dec. 21), she named him piously after Mary's great and good Joseph. In

Moscow last week the Dictator's 54th birthday came and went as usual amid much work while to U. S. editors was re leased a picture of Mme Djugashvili, his 74-year-old mother, apropos of the first moving picture of her ever made. "Where is America?" she asked the picture maker. "I only know it is beyond the ocean." This was at Tiflis, where, as every Rus sian knows, the Dictator's mother lives in two rooms of the Palace of the former Tsarist Governor of Georgia, now a Soviet Republic (TIME, Dec. 8, 1930). Questing on to find Josef Stalin's birthplace in near by Gori, Camerawoman Margaret Bourke-White was shown a hole in the ground. In this hole, commodious enough once one walks in, still lives Stalin's great-aunt. After merrymaking over bread and wine, she raised her glass, gave this thoughtful toast: "To the honored guest! To the illustrious relative who has gone to Mos cow! And to my venerable self who, as the eldest of this company, needs wine most!"

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