RUSSIA: Man of the Year, 1939

Man of the Year (See Cover)

On the year's shortest day, 60 years ago, in Gori, near Tiflis, a son was born to a poor, hard-working Georgian cobbler named Vissarion Djugashvili. The boy's pious mother christened him Joseph, after the husband of Mary, mother of Jesus.

But names were not to stick very long to this newest subject of the Tsar; he was to answer to Soso, Koba, David, Nijeradze, Chijikov and Ivanovich until at length he acquired the pseudonym of Stalin, Man of Steel.

Last week, as another Dec. 21 rolled around, the...