Early life Stalin resided in the
Siberian village of
Kureika during his exile. Here, he had an affair with 14-year-old
Lidiya Platonovna Pereprygina while he was 35, and whom he promised he would marry once she became an adult. Pereprygina allegedly became pregnant with Stalin's child. The child was born in December 1914, but died soon after. At the age of 16, Pereprygina became pregnant again and gave birth to Alexander on 6 November 1917. Stalin was transferred out of Kureika and left Siberia altogether before Alexander was born. Pereprygina later married Yakov Semyonovich Davydov, a peasant fisherman who adopted Alexander. Stalin knew of Davydov's existence and allegedly tried twice to bring him to
Moscow. However, they never met.
World War II Davydov was drafted into the
Red Army in August 1940. He participated in the
Manchurian Campaign against the
Japanese between March and August 1945. He achieved the rank of major and the
Order of the Red Star.
Later life After his service in the Red Army, Davydov found work as a foreman for a construction site in
Krasnoyarsk and married, with his wife working in the supply department of construction. Davydov fathered a son named Eduard and another son named Yuri around 1948–1949. According to Yuri, Davydov moved his family from Siberia to
Novokuznetsk, where the Davydovs lived in a three-room apartment with another family. Davydov died in 1987. In interviews with
NTV and
The Siberian Times, Yuri stated that in the early 1970s Davydov and his wife "invited [Yuri] to a room for a 'serious conversation'", in which Yuri was informed of their relation to Stalin, but advised his son to not speak of it due to the influence of
Stalin's cult of personality. In 2016, Yuri Davydov took a DNA test that confirmed Alexander's father was Stalin, with a reported 99.98% accuracy.
Alexander Burdonsky, Stalin's grandson through his son
Vasily Stalin, provided the genetic material to confirm the relation. == Awards and honors ==