Stalin (6 page)

In exploring the sources of Stalin’s rebelliousness and ruthlessness, many historians have pointed to the atmosphere that reigned in the outlying regions of the Russian Empire. Alfred Rieber has called him a “man of the borderlands.”
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The Caucasus, a roiling cauldron of social and ethnic conflict where industrial enclaves emerged amid tribal traditions, would inevitably have played a role in shaping Stalin’s character. Jörg Baberowski has written that Stalin and his comrades-in-arms “brought into the party, both at the center and edges of the empire, the culture of violence of the Caucasian periphery, the blood feud and archaic conceptions of honor.”
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Such opinions are supported by Boris Nicolaevsky, a Social Democrat who later became a well-known historian. Before the revolution, Nicolaevsky had spent time in Transcaucasia and had even met with Jughashvili. He described the future dictator as “exceptionally vicious and vindictive” and capable of applying “the most extreme measures” in his struggle to dominate the party. Yet many of Jughashvili’s opponents within the Social Democratic movement were no different. Nicolaevsky said he was told that these traits resulted from “the injection of Caucasian mores into the intraparty struggle.”
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It is not unreasonable to take into account the mentality forged by the hardships and tragic history of the Russian borderlands. Yet the entire Russian Empire was one vast borderland: between Asia and Europe, between the promises of modernization and the deteriorating traditional ways of life, between the city and the country, between authoritarianism and democratic strivings, between the obscurantism of the regime and the bloodthirstiness of many revolutionaries. Whatever features may be particular to the Caucasus must be seen within the context of the Russian culture of extremism and violence, which merely provided an outlet for the impulse. Such a context does not, of course, relieve young Jughashvili of personal responsibility for his choices.

Revolutionaries are not all cut from the same cloth. Many throw themselves into the fight under the influence of youth, ardor, and thrill seeking. These factors were probably not what led Stalin onto this path, though they should not be discounted entirely. The future dictator could be described as a calculating revolutionary, the sort who doggedly and methodically—even cautiously—moved the revolution forward and later, when success came, had the best chance of solidifying power. He had just the right balance of decisiveness and caution, obsession and cynicism, to emerge unscathed through the revolution’s countless dangers.

An overview of the activities of the Tiflis Social Democratic organization found in the files of the local gendarme administration describes Ioseb Jughashvili as “conducting himself with complete caution and constantly looking over his shoulder as he walks.”
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He managed to avoid arrest for some time, giving him a significant advantage, since many members of the Social Democratic Party were in prison, and facilitating his rise within the Tiflis party leadership. Apparently to evade arrest, he moved from Tiflis to Batum, a major center of the empire’s petroleum industry. A propaganda campaign by him and his associates evidently had an effect, as Batum workers staged a spate of strikes and demonstrations. The government response was severe. On 9 March 1902, when workers stormed a prison where many of their comrades were being held, troops opened fire. At least thirteen people were killed and dozens were wounded. News of violence in Batum spread, and Jughashvili, one of the organizers of the demonstration, was arrested.

In an effort to avoid punishment, Jughashvili denied his guilt, asserting that he had been nowhere near Batum during the period leading up to the attack. In notes sent from prison, he asked his mother, friends, and relatives to give him an alibi by falsely testifying that he had arrived in Gori before mid-March.
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One such note fell into the hands of the police. The police in Batum still could not prove that Jughashvili was directly involved in organizing the storming of the prison, but in probing his background, they brought to light his activities in Tiflis. The investigation inched along. Languishing in prison, Ioseb did what he could to improve the outcome of his case. In October and November 1902, seven and eight months after his arrest, he sent two petitions to the offices of the administrator-in-chief for the Caucasus. Citing a “worsening asphyxiating cough and the helpless situation of my aged mother, who has been abandoned by her husband for 12 years now and sees me as the only person she can count on in life,” he asked to be released under police supervision. “I beseech the office of the Administrator-in-Chief not to neglect me and to respond to my request.” In January 1903 Ekaterine also submitted a request to the authorities that her son be freed. Her petition, written in Russian but signed in Georgian, stated that her son, “as the breadwinner for himself and his mother, has neither the time nor the occasion to participate in conspiracies or disturbances.”
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These entreaties proved ineffective. Ioseb remained in prison for several more months, suffering deprivation and harassment. Not until the fall of 1903, one and a half years after his arrest, was he finally sent into exile in eastern Siberia. Soon, in early 1904, he escaped from his place of banishment. Such an escape was not at all unusual. Lax security enabled many revolutionaries to flee their places of exile, although such escapes demanded careful preparation, courage, and physical endurance. Jughashvili learned from his first stint in exile and later had several opportunities to put that experience to use.

There is evidence to suggest that during the first months after his return to Transcaucasia, Jughashvili was suspected of being a double agent.
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Social Democrats were being arrested throughout the region. Although these arrests cast a pall of suspicion over him, the lack of personnel began to facilitate his ascent within the underground movement. He rose through the ranks to the governing committee of the Transcaucasian Social Democratic organization. Other factors in his success were his active efforts in the underground and his ability to generate fiery prose. Rumors that he was collaborating with the police remained just that.

During the two years that Jughashvili spent in prison and exile, Russia’s Social Democratic Party had undergone major changes. While formally a single party, in actuality it was divided between the adherents of Lenin—Bolsheviks—and the more moderate Mensheviks. Lenin advocated the creation of a militant and cohesive underground party that would serve as an instrument of revolution. It was Lenin’s belief that the workers, who were to be the main force in the revolution, were not capable of developing proper revolutionary thinking on their own. They had to be taught by professional revolutionaries. Lenin’s teachings were aimed at hastening revolution and speeding up “historical time.” The Mensheviks felt that the party should be less rigid and accept among its ranks sympathizers as well as activists. The Mensheviks had greater respect for the workers and placed less emphasis on their own role as teachers. This approach was a natural byproduct of their core belief that the revolutionary process would move gradually and organically forward as the objective preconditions for socialism reached fruition. Jughashvili was temperamentally inclined to accept Lenin’s viewpoint and to embrace his radicalism and calls to action. Furthermore, as a member of the party intelligentsia, Jughashvili welcomed the idea that professional revolutionaries must lead the workers’ movement.
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To be leaders, to show the masses the way forward—surely this was the intelligentsia’s proper place within the revolution? Many of his articles were devoted to promoting Lenin’s ideas.

The first Russian Revolution, in 1905, initially intensified discord between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks but ultimately brought the two sides closer together. Both groups faced a common enemy—the government and its supporters—and both sides increasingly resorted to violence and brutality. In Transcaucasia, roiled by social and ethnic animosities, the situation was particularly dire. As usual, the government did not hesitate to use arms. In response, the revolutionaries murdered figures associated with the autocratic regime and committed arson against industrial enterprises. Ethnic pogroms fed the rush of carnage. Violence and bloodshed became commonplace. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks organized their own armed detachments and made generous use of terrorist methods.
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Jughashvili took an active part in these events, traveling across Georgia, helping to organize strikes and demonstrations, writing leaflets and articles, and helping set up an underground printing press and militant groups. He gradually reached the forefront of the Bolshevik leadership in Transcaucasia.

In October 1905, unrest compelled the tsar to make concessions. Russia was given its first parliament, the State Duma. Political freedoms were proclaimed: freedom of conscience, free speech and assembly, and the inviolability of the person. The revolution nonetheless continued to build, and it forced maneuvering by the Social Democrats as well as the tsar. Under pressure from the ranks, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks agreed to a reconciliation, restoring a superficial party unity. This newfound unity, however, did not advance the interests of the Bolsheviks in Transcaucasia, Jughashvili in particular, because it put the Mensheviks in charge of the region’s revolutionary organizations. The election of delegates to the party’s April 1906 “Unity Congress” in Stockholm put the Bolsheviks’ demeaning position on full display: the future dictator was the only Transcaucasian Bolshevik delegate elected. The next congress, in London the following May, was even more humiliating. At first, only Mensheviks were elected. The Bolsheviks had to arrange by-elections so they could send at least one representative. Again, they sent Jughashvili.

Jughashvili’s trips to these congresses undoubtedly expanded his sense of the world and the party, as well as his circle of contacts. There is evidence that in 1907, while traveling to London, he met with Lenin in Berlin.
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Returning from London, he spent several days in Paris, where he stayed with fellow Georgian Grigory Chochia, a student there. He returned to Russia using the passport of a friend of Chochia’s who had died. This arrangement enabled him to evade police surveillance and improved his personal safety. Forty years later, in May 1947, Chochia, then living in Leningrad, reminded Stalin of this: “In mid-1907, after you stayed with me for several days, I escorted you to the St. Lazare train station in Paris. You were so kind as to say to me, ‘I will never forget your help’ (you were referring to my giving you the international passport). Right now, I am greatly in need of your attention. I ask to be granted a 5–10 minute meeting with you.”
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The letter was filed away. Stalin rarely recalled his foreign travel. We do not know what he saw in Europe and how he perceived it. Did he bring any gifts to his young wife, Yekaterina Svanidze, whom he married in July 1906, or his son, Yakov, born in March 1907 (right before Ioseb left for Western Europe)? Undoubtedly, Jughashvili’s mind was on the revolution.

Immediately after he returned from the West, on 13 June 1907, a group of Transcaucasian Bolsheviks staged an armed robbery of money being transported to a bank in Tiflis; the robbery has become a part of the history of the Russian revolutionary movement. At the cost of several lives, it yielded a huge sum for Bolshevik coffers: 250,000 rubles. The ringleader of this “expropriation” was Jughashvili’s good friend Simon Ter-Petrosian, nicknamed Kamo. The obvious link between the two men has led some to suggest that Stalin was involved in organizing the heist and perhaps even took part in it, but there is no hard evidence.
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Boris Nicolaevsky, who completed a thorough study of the case in the course of chronicling the Social Democratic movement, concluded that Jughashvili was informed of the activities of Kamo’s group and “helped conceal them from the local party organization.” But “he was in no regard a ringleader.” Nicolaevsky found a document showing that Kamo was working directly with the Bolshevik center abroad, specifically an agreement between Kamo and Lenin’s Bolshevik center on the details of the robbery.
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It was Kamo, not Jughashvili, who signed this agreement.

Except for the amount stolen, the Tiflis holdup was nothing out of the ordinary. The robbery of government institutions and private individuals was widely practiced at the time, by the Bolsheviks as well as other groups. Although such actions generated income, they undermined the morals of the revolutionaries and damaged their reputation with the public. From time to time, ordinary criminals would join forces with the revolutionaries for personal gain. In fact, ideologically motivated thieves stealing to further the revolution, even if they did not take a kopeck for themselves, were sometimes hard to distinguish from the ordinary criminals. This state of affairs must have been deeply disturbing for the leaders of the Social Democratic Party. At the 1907 congress in London the Mensheviks passed a resolution prohibiting Social Democrats from conducting such robberies. This resolution did not stop Lenin and his followers. The Tiflis operation was already being planned, and they did not cancel it. That this robbery was carried out so soon after the party congress made it look particularly cynical. Controversy spread through the ranks of the Social Democrats. Not for the first time and knowing his association with Kamo, the Tiflis Mensheviks showed Jughashvili how displeased they were with him. He was forced to leave Tiflis for Baku.

In Baku, where the Mensheviks also dominated the party, Jughashvili could still rely on a stalwart group of Leninists. This major industrial center was ripe with opportunity for both agitation among the working class and combat against political opponents. Jughashvili managed to drive a wedge through the Baku organization, and the Bolsheviks took over the party leadership. But the joy of victory was overshadowed by personal tragedy. In Baku, Ioseb’s wife Yekaterina died. The couple’s infant son was taken in by the mother’s relatives. His father had no time for him.