102. Tolf, The Russian Rockefellers. Mantashov had been born in Tiflis and raised in Iranian Tabriz. Esadze, Istoricheskaia zapiska ob upravlenii Kavkazom; Mostashari, On the Religious Frontier.
103. Arsenidze, “Iz vospominaniia o Staline,” 220–1.
104. Not long thereafter, around New Year’s 1902, a fire broke out at the mechanized factory, which was followed by a small strike, then a big one. The rumor that the twenty-four-year-old Jughashvili instigated the fire at Rothschild’s, and then used a workers’ strike to extort funds for revolutionary coffers in exchange for damping down incidents of arson, is fanciful. In fact, the Rothschild workers had put out the blaze, yet only bosses were awarded extra compensation, provoking anger; also, the first big walkout took place at A. I. Mantashov, beginning on January 31, 1902, when a worker got docked pay allegedly for talking on the job with coworkers. By February 18, 1902, with the workers’ demands over work conditions and the punishment regime partly satisfied, Mantashov resumed operation.
105. The military boss of the Caucasus ordered an internal investigation into workers’ living conditions, producing the historical source material: Makharadze and Khachapuridze, Ocherki, 137–8 (archival report dated March 28, 1903).
106. A large party of protesting Mantashov workers were deported to their native villages, many in Guria (western Georgia), which magnified a developing peasant movement there from 1902 to 1906. Jones, Socialism, 102, 129–58.
107. After the strike began, the Kutaisi province military governor demanded the workers resume operations; they refused. Thirty-two were arrested, pending deportation. Other workers marched to the prison, singing revolutionary songs and demanding either their coworkers’ release or the arrest of everyone. These workers were tricked into entering the barracks at the transit prison. Anger seethed, leading to the deadly confrontation. Batumskaia demonstratsiia, 9–11, 99–103 (Teofil Gogoberidze), 177–202, 203–41 (at 207); Arkomed, Rabochee dvizhenie, 110–8.
108. GARF, f. 102, op. 199, d. 175, l. 47–8.
109. At some point Jughashvili may have returned to Tiflis, to his friend Kamo’s apartment, for help in setting up an illegal printing press. “Kamo was a specialist in such things,” enthused Grigory Elisabedashvili. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 174–80; Zhvaniia, Bol’shevistkaia pechat’ Zakavkaz’ia nakanune, 70; Chulok, Ocherki istorii batumskoi kommunisticheskoi organizatsii, 39–52. A railway conductor, Mshviobadze, supposedly smuggled Stalin from Batum to Tiflis, disguised in a conductor’s uniform and hat, with a lantern. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 655; Kun, Unknown Portrait, 4.
110. Van Ree, “The Stalinist Self,” 270 (citing RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1931, l. 11: Todriia recollections); Batumskaia demonstratsiia, 98–9 (Todriia).
111. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 26; Kun, Unknown Portrait, 59; Alliluyeva, Vospominaniia, 37, 168.
112. Pokhlebkin, Velikii psevdonim, 47–50. Montefiore, employing memoirs, depicts Jughashvili as “the kingpin of Batumi Prison, dominating his friends, terrorizing the intellectuals, suborning the guards and befriending the criminals.” Montefiore, Young Stalin, 103. Compare the emigre memoir of Uratadze: “When we were let outside for exercise and all of us made for this or that corner of the prison yard, Stalin stayed by himself and walked backwards and forwards with his short paces, and if anyone tried to speak to him, he would open his mouth into that cold smile of his and perhaps say a few words.” Uratadze, Vospominaniia, 65.
113. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 194; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 619, l. 172, reprinted in Sochineniia, XVII: 7–8.
114. The doctor was Grigol Eliava. In early 1903, awaiting deportation into exile, then aged twenty-five, Jughashvili may have been conscripted into the tsarist army, but then excused owing to the intervention of an influential family friend. Dawrichewy, Ah: ce qu’on, 31.
115. Alliluev, Proidennyi put’, 109.
116. The atmosphere was further poisoned because his sudden return followed closely on the heels of mass arrests in Tiflis of Social Democrats. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 212–6; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 537, l. 21 (M. Uspenskii); Perepiska V. I. Lenina, II: 114–5.
117. Makharadze and Khachapuridze, Ocherki, 71; Chulok, Ocherki istorii batumskoi kommunisticheskoi organizatsii, 70–2.
118. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 214 (citing GF IML, f. 8, op. 2, d. 4, l. 53: Makharadze, and ch. 1, d. 6, l. 231: Boguchava); Arsenidze, “Iz vospominanii o Staline,” 218.
119. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 216 (citing GF IML, f. 8., op. 2, ch. 1, d. 43, l. 217: Sikharulidze); Montefiore, Young Stalin, 123 (citing GF IML f. 8, op. 2, ch. 1, d. 26, l. 22–6: Sikharulidze, and d. 26, l. 36–9: Sikharulidze).
120. Alliluev, Proidennyi put’, 108–9.
121. Machiavelli, Gosudar’.
122. Tun, Istoriia revoliutsionnykh dvizhenii v Rossii.
123. Makharadze, K tridsatiletiiu sushchestvovaniia Tiflisskoi organizatsii, 29.
124. Jones, Socialism, 183–4.
125. Davis, “Stalin, New Leader”; Davis, Behind Soviet Power, 14. For more on Davis, see chapter 13. In his Stalin biography, Robert Tucker rightly stressed Stalin’s Marxist convictions, but abstracted, and dramatized, the conversion to Marxism: “the grand theme of class war . . . [its vision] of past and present society as a great battleground where-on two hostile forces—bourgeoisie and proletariat—are locked in mortal combat.” In fact, just living in imperial Russia, as Stalin himself explained, made many a young person into a Marxist. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 115–21.
126. The first two entries in Stalin’s Collected Works date to 1901, in Brdzola, but both were unsigned. His first signed published essay, other than his romantic poems, dates to September 1, 1904. Sochineniia, I: 3–55.
127. Arsenidze, “Iz vospominaniia o Staline,” 235–6.
128. On Lado as “senior comrade,” see also Yenukidze, Nashi podpol’nye tipografii na Kavkaze, 5, 24; and Rieber, “Stalin as Georgian,” 36–7.
129. Alliluev, “Moi vospominaniia,” 173–5; Boltinov, “Iz zapisnoi knizhki arkhivista,” 271–5; Ulam, Stalin, 38. Ketskhoveli’s shooting warranted the appearance at the prison of the vice governor. A Cossack detachment evidently removed the body for immediate burial. Beriia and Broido, Lado Ketskhoveli, 201–18 (esp. 214).
130. Beriia and Broido, Lado Ketskhoveli, published in the Caucasus during Stalin’s terror; Guliev, Muzhestvennyi borets za kommunizm.
131. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 15421 (1937).
CHAPTER 3: TSARISM’S MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY
1. Ascher, “The Coming Storm,” 150. The attache, C. Kinsky, served under Ambassador Aloys Lexa von Aehrenthal (1854–1912).
2. Kabuzan, Russkie v mire.
3. Hughes, Peter the Great, 11.
4. Klyuchevsky, Peter the Great, 257, 262–5.
5. Cited in Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 210; translation from the German slightly amended.
6. Peterson, Peter the Great’s Administrative and Judicial Reforms; Anisimov, Reforms of Peter the Great; Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom.
7. The 1730 attempt by two noble clans to limit the tsar’s power—setting conditions for accession to the throne—failed largely because of opposition from the other clans. Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy.
8. Hellie, “Structure of Russian Imperial History.” Under Stalin, this service obligation would be extended beyond state functionaries and military officers to factory managers, collective farm chairmen, scientists, writers, musicians, even ballet dancers.
9. Raeff, “Bureaucratic Phenomenon”; Raeff, “Russian Autocracy”; Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, 82–90; Taranovski, “The Politics of Counter-Reform,” ch. 5; Lieven, Aristocracy in Europe. LeDonne argues that Russia did develop a self-conscious ruling elite. LeDonne, Absolutism and Ruling Class. See also Torke, “Das Russische Beamtentum.”
10. As
cited in Yanov, Origins of Autocracy, vii.
11. Vasil’chikov, Vospominaniia, 142–4, esp. 227–8; Lieven, “Russian Senior Officialdom,” 221.
12. Vitte, Vospominaniia [1960], III: 460.
13. Dickson, Finance and Government.
14. Robbins, “Choosing the Russian Governors,” 542; Robbins, Tsar’s Viceroys; Keep, “Light and Shade.”
15. Otchet po revizii Turkestankogo kraia, 38, 47; Khalid, Politics of Cultural Reform, 60. Slavs were often sent to Turkestan as punishment and the region came closest of any to being an outright colony. The tsarist regime sought to make Tashkent city into a showcase of its rule, but in the late nineteenth century it was probably easier to go from London to India than from St. Petersburg to Turkestan.
16. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel’stvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIX v., 221–2; Troitskii, Russkii absoliutizm i dvorianstvo v XVIII veke, 212–6; Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernization, 49–50; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 46. Doctors, university professors, engineers, and many other professionals were, technically, state officials, leading to imprecision in the figures and comparisons. By another rendering, as of 1900 there were 524,000 people in the civil service. Freeze, “Reform and Counter-Reform,” 170–99 (at 186). As of 1912, Russia was said to have one functionary for every 60 urban inhabitants, and one for every 707 rural inhabitants. Rubakin, Rossiia v tsifrakh, 64.
17. Hoetzsch, Russland, 270.
18. Hafner, Gesellschaft als lokale Veranstaltung. See also Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government.
19. Yevtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province.
20. Polovtsov, Dnevnik, I: 477; Suvorin, Dnevnik, 25, 327; Lamzdorf, Dnevnik, 310. See also Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernization, preface.
21. See the observations of Kokovtsov, quoted in Lieven, “Russian Senior Officialdom,” 209 (citing TsGIAL, f. 1200, op. 16/2, d. 1 and 2, s. 749); Lieven, Russia’s Rulers, 292. The nobility fought against the examinations introduced under Alexander I; they were abandoned in 1834.
22. Tatishchev, Imperator Aleksandr Vtoroi, I: 140.
23. Baumgart, Crimean War; Stephan, “Crimean.”
24. Rieber, “Alexander II”; Rieber, Politics of Autocracy.
25. Miliukov, Ocherki po istorii Russkoi kul’tury, I: 145–9. On Russian liberalism, see Leontovitsch, Geschichte des Liberalismus; Fischer, Russian Liberalism; Karpovich, “Two Types of Russian Liberalism,” 129–43; Raeff, “Some Reflections”; Pipes, Peter Struve; Shelokhaev, Russkii liberalizm.
26. Valuev, Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, I: 181. One fear was that a parliament would be a springboard for Polish nobility.
27. Pravilova, Zakonnost’ i prava lichnosti; Wortman, “Russian Monarchy and the Rule of Law.” A state functionary (chinovnik) could only be indicted and placed on trial with the sanction of his superior. Korkunov, Russkoe gosudarstvennoe pravo, II: 552.
28. On the long-term consequences of the failure to introduce a constitution and legislature in the 1860s and again in the 1880s, see George F. Kennan, “The Breakdown of the Tsarist Autocracy,” in Pipes, Revolutionary Russia, 1–15.
29. Makarov, Sovet ministrov Rossiiskoi Imperii, 41.
30. Dolbilov, “Rozhdenie imperatorskikh reshenii.”
31. Chavchavadze, The Grand Dukes, 128.
32. Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 57–74. See also Laporte, Histoire de l’Okhrana; Monas, The Third Section, 40–1; Hingley, The Russian Secret Police; Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police; Ruud and Stepanov, Fontanka 16; Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii; and Shchëgolëv, Okhranniki i avantiuristy.
33. Vasilyev, Ochrana, 41, 55, 57. There were seven black cabinets as of 1913. Kantor, “K istorii chernykh kabinetov,” 93. The head of okhranka cryptology was later employed by the Soviet secret police. Hoare, Fourth Seal, 57. The Kiev okhranka operative Karl Zivert invented a device to remove letters without unsealing the wax, a technique that would be passed on to the KGB. Kahn, Codebreakers. In Tiflis, whose black cabinet was briefly closed in 1905, there were seven people on staff.
34. When Durnovó became interior minister in late 1905, he found a copy of an intercepted letter he had written instructing that his own mail should not be read. Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 122. See also Gurko, Features and Figures, 109. Mail perlustration was technically illegal under Russian law; the black cabinet staff used code to refer to themselves. But they were outed in 1908, by a former senior employee, M. E. Bakai.
35. Daly, Autocracy Under Siege, 105. Russia’s most populous police, the gendarmes, numbered between 10,000 and 15,000.
36. Monas, “The Political Police,” 164–90. Zubatov, chief of the Moscow okhranka, introduced up-to-date record keeping, anthropometric archives, and provincial branches. He shot himself in 1917. Zhilinskii, Organizatsiia i zhizn’ okhrannago otdeleniia, 120.
37. Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 167, n77.
38. Vasilyev tells the story of one Sletov, who arrived with a group in St. Petersburg to murder Nicholas II. One of Sletov’s acquaintances was an okhranka informer. But although Sletov’s designs were brought to the attention of the highest police authorities, they did not arrest him. The police reasoned that others of his conspiracy might be unknown to the okhranka. Instead, the police had someone warn Sletov that he had been found out, thereby hoping to facilitate and observe the flight of the entire band. The immediate danger to the emperor was averted, and though some of the escapees would in the future be able to attempt political assassinations, now at least the police would feel confident that they knew them all. Vasilyev, Ochrana, 71–2.
39. Vasilyev, Ochrana, 71–2; Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 221; Ruud and Stepanov, Fontanka 16, 125–51. Vasilyev explained that because recruited agents led a double life, at some point they would snap, so that “police officials were often murdered by agents in their service who had till then proved absolutely trustworthy” (Ochrana, 77–8).
40. Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 90–1. In 1905, a separate security agency (okhrana) was created for the court; the far larger Okhrannoe otdelenie (okhranka) was not called the okhrana. Stalin would meet not only with his police chiefs but even with assassins.
41. Pipes, The Degaev Affair. The first official congress of the united Socialist Revolutionary Party did not take place until December 1905 through January 1906, in Russian Finland. Sletov, K istorii vozniknoveniia partii sotsialistov revoliutsionerov, 76–8.
42. Levine, Stalin’s Great Secret; Smith, Young Stalin; Brackman, Secret File. Despite strenuous efforts, neither Nikolai Yezhov nor Lavrenti Beria seem to have managed to find persuasive compromising documentation on Stalin’s alleged okhranka work. Meanwhile, others, like Roman Malinowski, were outed for their okhranka ties while they were still alive. Montefiore, Young Stalin, xxiii.
43. Trotsky would be accused of having betrayed the St. Petersburg Soviet to the police in 1905, and to have been an okhranka agent since 1902. Shul’gin, Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsia, 281; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 40. Stalin did not use the material—reported by Yezhov and Beria—in the indictment of Trotsky, perhaps because it was too evocative of the rumors about Stalin. Yakov Sverdlov, too, fell under suspicion. Lipatnikov, “Byl li agentom okhranki Sverdlov?” Later, Kamenev would also be accused of okhranka ties. Trotsky, Stalin, 221; Slusser, Stalin in October, 201–4.
44. Vasilyev, Ochrana, 96. See also Daly, Autocracy Under Siege, 117–23.
45. “The old regime,” one scholar aptly summarized, “never came to terms with the needs of a modern industrial economy.” Gatrell, Government, Industry, and Rearmament, 326. On tsarist economic performance, in comparative terms, see Gregory, Russian National Income.
46. Gann, “Western and Japanese Colonialism,” at 502.
47. Kotkin, “Modern Times.”
48. Fridenson, “The Coming of the Assembly
Line to Europe,” 159–75; Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production.
49. Conant, Wall Street and the Country; Feis, Europe: the World’s Banker.
50. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts.
51. Cotton, New India, 83.
52. Headrick, Tools of Empire.
53. Russia’s industrial output was a mere 10 percent of that of the United States. Gregory, Before Command, 17–22.
54. When William Fuller asks “how and why was the Russian regime so successful in translating its military resources into power in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and so unsuccessful in the very same undertakings thereafter,” he seeks an answer in Russian domestic considerations. But in effect, he could be referring to advances among the other great powers. Russia’s success or unsuccess, in military terms, too, was always relative. Fuller, Strategy and Power, xiv.
55. Kingston-Mann, “Deconstructing the Romance of the Bourgeoisie.” In 1893, under a pseudonym, Danielson published his own answer, a Russian interpretation of Marx: Nikolai-on, Ocherki nashego poreformennogo obshchestvennogo khoziaistva.
56. Rossiia: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, 192–209. In December 1903, Arthur Balfour, the British prime minister, noted the obvious, that “Russia’s strong point is her vast population and the unassailable character of her territories. Her weak point is finance.” Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 242.
57. In 1888, annual imperial expenditures for Georgia were estimated at 45 million rubles, against revenues of only 18 million. Kondratenko, Kratkii ocherk ekonomicheskogo polozheniia Kavkaza po noveishim ofitsial’nym i drugim otchetam, 77.
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