All his life, right until his sudden death in March 1953, Stalin was extremely careful in putting a stop to any attempt of researching, documenting and publishing his youth’s biography, because it would have damaged his later official biography. As such, Sebag Montefiore’s book, published by McArthur & Company in Toronto and bearing the title Young Stalin, is a worldwide premiere because it describes, in great detail, how the Georgian Osip Dzhugashvili, of Ossetia, became the Soviet dictator Joseph Vissaronovici Stalin. All the books about Stalin that have been published until today hardly relate his youth years spend in Georgia. The present book presents, in its 442 pages, only Osip’s young years spent in the Caucasus, before his self-imposed exile in the Russian Empire. Sebag Montefiore has become, incontestably, Stalin’s best documented Western biographer. This fact has been confirmed by known writers such as university professor Robert Service, of England, or American researcher Robert Conquest, both of whom have dedicated their lives to researching the USSR’s history. The first surprise this book brings is the completely new information that makes this biography an absolute worldwide premiere. People have been wondering where the author gathered so many intimate details and one-of-a-kind photographs. The answer lies in the last six pages of the books, filled with hundreds of names of people all around the world who have given him information and photos dating from Osip Dzhugashvili’s youth. The first to do so were Sandra and Mikhail Saakashvili, the presidential couple of Georgia. The author writes that the Georgian president has given a presidential decree in order to allow him access to Georgia’s secret archives. Even more useful was the invitation made to the Georgians themselves, by national television, that the people in possession of new details, intimate