Every once in a while people will bring up this picture of a young Joseph Stalin and remark on his looks and hair (here are some examples I found quickly: 1, 2). While it's probably questionable taste, at the very least, to joke about a brutal dictator's looks, it did make me wonder what the reality was. I'm assuming no one has detailed records of Stalin's personal hair care, but what might a young Georgian man in the early 1900s have done to care for and style his hair, if anything?
In the 10 years before the revolution Stalin was only ‘free’ for a total of just over a year, the rest of the time he was imprisoned or exiled. In Robert Service’s biography he’s described as arriving to exile with only a small bag carrying some bed sheets and a spare change of clothes. At one point he arrives in Siberia without even a winter coat so I cant imagine he had any special hair care products.
In his last exile before the revolution, near the arctic circle, there is letters from him to other communists and his mother begging for any amount of money or clothes because he has no food, is sick and feels like he is going to fade away into nothing. So it seems to me he would have too many other worrys just surviving to bother much with his hair. I think its just great genetics.
In the book Young Stalin by Simon Montifieore he writes about how whenever Stalin arrived in a new town he had no trouble attracting girlfriends, which was strange because he was extremely short, thin with a scarred face and deformed arm and no money or possessions. The only thing he had going for him was his hair... proof that wonderful hair can help you overcome all kinds of problems.
