Stalin

by Ian Grey

  His arrival in Georgia coincided with an increase in revolutionary activity. Preparation went ahead for the May Day demonstration in 1901, which, as Koba had urged in the previous year, was to be held not in the mountains, but in the center of Tiflis. The Okhrana was, however, well informed about these plans. On March 21, 1901, Kurnatovsky and some fifty of the leading Social Democrats were arrested. On the same evening, police raided the rooms of Koba and his colleagues at the observatory. Koba had been about to go to his room at the time of the search, but noticing that the building was surrounded by police, he had walked the streets of the city and had returned only when it was safe.

  After this raid, Koba “went underground,” according to the official account. But apparently he worked at the observatory the following week, which suggests the police were not overly concerned about him. As a precaution, however, he moved from Tiflis and became a fugitive revolutionary, calling himself Koba and other names, and was meagerly housed and fed by workers and comrades who were almost as poor as he was. It was a harsh but exciting life in which he was both hunter and hunted.

  The immediate task was to press ahead with the May Day preparations. On the day of the event, some 2,000 workers gathered at the Soldatsky Bazaar near the Aleksandrovsky Gardens in the center of Tiflis. The police and detachments of Cossacks were waiting with sabers drawn and whips in hand. Fighting broke out at once. Fourteen workers were wounded and more than fifty arrested.

  After the demonstration, Koba eluded the police and went into hiding in Gori or the nearby mountains. He secretly visited the apartment of Iremashvili, where he talked excitedly about the violence and about the need to provoke greater violence in future demonstrations.

  Koba was exhilarated by the open declaration of war on the autocracy rather than by the shedding of blood. He was tired of the unending talk and disputation which dominated the lives of so many revolutionaries: He craved action. Indeed, Lenin took a similar enthusiastic interest in “the blood-letting side of the business,” and expressed the same attitude: “We must want to fight and we must learn how to fight. Words are not enough!”

  The news of the demonstration delighted Lenin and his comrades in Germany. Iskra pronounced that “the event that took place on Sunday, 22 April, at Tiflis is of historical importance for the entire Caucasus - this day marks the beginning of an open revolutionary movement in the Caucasus.” Though Kurnatovsky and many of the leading members of the movement were in prison and soon to be banished to Siberia and the demonstration had been suppressed, to Lenin, as to Stalin, any violent confrontation of workers with police was of great importance, and the greater the violence and bloodshed the greater the importance.

  Lado Ketskhoveli had escaped arrest in Tiflis and had made his way to Baku. There he managed to set up a printing press in the Muslim quarter. Nina, the code name for the press, began functioning in summer 1901, but soon ran into difficulties. It was an antiquated flat-bed press, noisy to operate in secrecy; and, lacking a printer’s license, Ketskhoveli was unable to obtain sufficient type, ink, and paper.

  At this point, Leonid Krasin, one of the most remarkable members of the Russian revolutionary movement, took it in hand. Tall and distinguished, with broad forehead and intelligent face, and possessing great charm, he was a man of driving energy and extraordinary abilities.

  As industrial manager in the Baku oil refinery, he gathered around him workers who shared his Marxist convictions. Sergei Alliluyev was one of his recruits, as also were most of the members of the local Social Democratic Party Committee. He was in touch with Lenin, who made him responsible for party affairs throughout Transcaucasia. This included the smuggling of copies of Iskra sent by sea from Marseille to Batum. It was a complex and wasteful system, and Krasin set about printing it locally.

  Within weeks, Krasin had reorganized the press, which was soon running off copies of Iskra as well as Brdzola (The Struggle), the first illegal revolutionary newspaper to be published in Georgian, and Yuzhny Rabochii in Russian. Certain sources later claimed that “Ketskhoveli conducted all his varied revolutionary work in Baku under the direction of the Tiflis leadership group of the Russian Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party and Comrade Stalin.”

  The “Tiflis leadership group” comprised only Koba, Lado Ketskhoveli, Sasha Tsulukidze, and a few others. Of them, Ketskhoveli was certainly the leading force, while in the background, Krasin provided advice and probably funds. The group was already in conflict with the moderate Messame Dassy, led by Noi Zhordania. The editorial of the first issue of Brdzola was concerned not with asserting socialist principles and revolutionary tactics, but with polemics against the moderates. Brdzola also declared that “the Georgian social democratic movement is not an isolated, exclusively Georgian, labour movement with its own programme. It goes hand in hand with the entire Russian movement and consequently subordinates itself to the Russian Social Democratic Party.” This statement was a criticism of the majority in Messame Dassy, who favored a separate Georgian party, associated with the Russian party but independent.

  Koba made some contribution to this first editorial. Later he laid claim to authorship by including it in his Collected Works. In style, however, it is unlike his other writings, and he probably collaborated with others in producing it.

  The next issue of Brdzola appeared in December 1901. Its main article, titled “The Russian Social Democratic Party and Its Immediate Tasks,” was his work. Koba was not a natural writer, but he learned to express himself with great effect. In his early articles and speeches, he wrote in a rhetorical style with the rhythms and repetitions of the Orthodox liturgy which struck familiar chords in the minds of the workers. In later writings, his style was more simple and direct.

  The first article, printed in Brdzola, contained the following typical passages:

  Many storms, many streams of blood have swept Western Europe in order that an end should be put to the oppression of the majority of the people by the minority; but the suffering has not yet been dispelled, the wounds have remained just as sore as before and the pain is becoming more and more unbearable every day. . . .

  Not only the working class has been groaning under the yoke of Tsardom. Other social classes, too, are strangled in the grip of autocracy. Groaning is the hunger-swollen Russian peasantry. . . . Groaning are the small town-dwellers, petty employees . . . petty officials, in a word, that multitude of small men whose existence is just as insecure as that of the working class and who have reason enough to be discontented with their social position. Groaning, too, is the lower and even middle bourgeoisie that cannot put up with the tsarist knout and bludgeon. . . . Groaning are the oppressed nationalities and religions in Russia, among them the Poles and Finns.

  The revolution must be led by the workers, for only in this way would it achieve “a broad democratic constitution, giving equal rights to the worker, the oppressed peasant and the capitalist.”

  Here Koba was following the orthodox Marxist line. His article gathered strength when he turned to the mechanics of revolution. This, not the battle of theories, was his real interest. Of all the weapons of the revolutionary, he held violent demonstrations to be the most effective. Accompanied by bloodshed, they aroused the anger of the people, turning them into militants. This propagation of violence was a response to the brutality of the tsarist police and Cossacks, but it was also a reflection of the inhumanity of the revolutionary ethic. Koba, like Lenin, was not concerned about human suffering, no matter how great in scale, so long as it advanced the cause of revolution.

  On November 11, 1901, Koba was elected to the first Tiflis committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party. This committee represented a group of twenty-five members who wanted more positive policies than those of Messame Dassy. Two weeks later Koba went to Batum. A secret police report noted: “In autumn 1901, the social democratic committee of Tiflis sent one of its members, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, formerly a pupil in the sixth form of the Tiflis seminary, to Batu
m for the purpose of carrying on propaganda among the factory workers. As a result of Dzhugashvili’s activities . . . social democratic organizations began to spring up in all the factories of Batum.” Other sources stated that the committee virtually expelled him from Tiflis.

  Batum, on the Black Sea coast, was a town of some 30,000 people, about half of whom were Turkish. The town and the subtropical coastal region had come into Russian possession only in 1878 as a result of the Russo-Turkish War. Batum was in character still a Muslim Turkish town. It had expanded rapidly, however, as a Russian industrial center. The Transcaucasian Railway, linking Baku and Batum, had been completed in 1883. Ten major industrial enterprises had been established there, including the Rothschild, Nobel, and Mantashev oil refineries. Workers numbered about 11,000; their pay was low, and conditions were oppressive.

  The social democratic movement in Batum was led by Nikolai Chkheidze, a former student of the Tiflis seminary, widely respected for his learning and his powers as an orator. He was a forceful personality, but like the majority of Social Democrats in Georgia, he favored “Legal Marxism” and deplored violent revolutionary activity. He was to become chairman of the Petrograd Soviet after the February Revolution in 1917 and welcomed Lenin and his party on their arrival at the Finland station, warning him against destroying the Revolution by violence. He was brushed aside.

  As a friend of Dzhibladze in Tiflis, Chkheidze probably had some notice of Koba’s arrival, but this did not prepare him for the furious activity of the young revolutionary. He was horrified when he learned Koba’s plans, and approached him several times personally and then through friends with pleas to abandon his militancy. Finding his pleas rejected, he condemned Koba as a “disorganizer” and a “madman.”

  Arriving in Batum in November 1901, Koba had begun at once to organize and incite the workers. On December 31, 1901, under the cover of a New Year’s party held in the rooms of a worker, a new Batum social democratic organization was formed. Koba also managed to set up a simple printing press, which he later expanded with equipment brought from Tiflis; it was soon producing leaflets and manifestoes. By the end of February 1902, eleven social democratic circles had been organized among workers in the main factories. All pointed to a new force at work in Batum.

  On February 27, 1902, a strike at the Rothschild oil refinery led to a march by more than 6,000 workers on the offices of the military governor. Troops opened fire, killing fifteen and wounding fifty-four workers. A further 500 were arrested. News of the violence and bloodshed spread rapidly. An official inquiry revealed that the demonstration had been spontaneous, and there was no mention of Koba or any other revolutionary leaders. But Soviet sources were to relate how Koba had organized the strike and demonstration. Yaroslavsky later wrote of him as being “in the midst of the turbulent sea of workers, personally directing the movement.” Another report stated that Koba organized a further demonstration at the time of the funeral of the victims.

  To Stalin, this demonstration had been a dramatic revolutionary achievement. Lenin, too, hailed it as an event of major significance in the Caucasus. The workers and moderate Social Democrats in Batum, however, were appalled by the violence and the suffering which appeared to achieve nothing.

  The police made every effort after the Batum demonstration to find the secret printing press. To escape detection, Koba moved it to an Abkhazian village on the outskirts of the town where the narrow streets and crowded houses of the Muslim quarter gave cover. Workers, dressed as Caucasian women, wearing the long veil, or chadra, would come to the house to collect the leaflets, printed by the press. Neighbors began to suspect the press was forging paper money and demanded a share of the proceeds. It took some time to disabuse them and persuade them to help.

  The Batum demonstration on March 9, the defiance of the workers, and the bloodshed, coming as the explosive culmination of unrest in industrial centers throughout Transcaucasia, stirred the police to action. They began rounding up the revolutionaries. For the first time, Koba found himself under arrest. According to Yaroslavsky’s account: “On Friday night, April 5, 1902, Kotsia Kandelaki and he visited the home of Darakhvelidze, who had arranged a social gathering. Soso (Koba) was twenty-two years of age, still slender, with a black beard and moustache. He resembled a ‘romantic student’ with dark, wind-blown hair. Someone in the party suddenly realized that the Batum Okhrana had not only surrounded the house but had also placed informers in the basement. Soso (Koba), smoking a ‘papirosa’ and talking with Kandelaki, was unperturbed. He calmly remarked “It’s nothing” and continued smoking. Shortly thereafter the police charged into the room and arrested the Darakhvelidze brothers, Kandelaki, and Soso.”

  Imprisonment, like exile, was accepted as an inevitable stage in the career of the professional revolutionary. Tsarist prisons away from the Russian cities were usually ramshackle buildings, run in a rough-and-ready style, and the crowded Batum prison was no exception. Political prisoners were treated leniently on the whole and allowed privileges unless they were disorderly; some revolutionaries felt a compulsion to be rowdy and to make life as difficult as possible for their jailers, and this led to outbreaks of temper and violence on both sides.

  Koba did not indulge in provocation. He wanted to be left to pursue his own interests. During the year he spent in Batum prison (April 5, 1902 to April 19, 1903), he was quiet and well-behaved. He was self-sufficient and disciplined, rising early in the morning, keeping fit by exercise, and spending most of the day in study.

  Six weeks after his arrest, the police opened a file on Koba. It contained photographs, full face and in profile, and the following description: “Height: 2 arshins 4½ vershoks [approximately 5 feet 4 inches]. Body: medium. Age: 23. Second and third toes of the left foot fused. Appearance: ordinary. Hair: dark brown. Beard and moustache: brown. Nose: straight and long. Forehead: straight and low. Face: long, swarthy and pockmarked.”

  Each detail, as set down in his file, seemed to emphasize ordinariness and what Trotsky called “the general colourlessness of his physical and moral countenance.” In fact, it was a distinctive, handsome face, strong in character. The police knew him as Ryaboi, “the pock-marked,” and took no special interest in him. They even failed to record his shortened left arm. Like others at this time and later, they misjudged this small, quiet man.

  On April 19, 1903, Koba was transferred to the prison in Kutais, some eighty miles away, where he was held for some six months. A moderate Social Democrat who was in the prison at the time recalled in later years that Koba moved stealthily like a cat and only occasionally smiled in a restrained calculating manner, but never shouted or lost his temper. Already he was remarkable for the self-control and the mask of imperturbability which were to characterize him as he moved toward supreme power.

  Of those involved in the Batum demonstration some were brought to trial; others, including Koba and Kandelaki, found their cases decided by administrative decree. On July 9, 1903, Koba was sentenced to three years’ exile, to be passed in the Irkutsk province of Siberia in the village of Novaya Uda.

  Exile to Siberia, as distinct from penal servitude, was no longer the harsh punishment that it had been in the past. The prisoners usually made the long journey under guard but by easy stages, and no longer on foot and in chains. Indeed, in February 1897, when sentenced to three years in Siberia, Lenin had obtained permission to travel independently at his own expense and without guards from St. Petersburg. He had been able, too, to break his journey in Moscow to spend a few days with his mother.

  Once he had arrived at his place of exile, the prisoner could live with considerable freedom, hunting, fishing, visiting friends, and carrying on reasonable correspondence. With his small government allowance, he would rent a room in the house of a local inhabitant, but he needed money from family or friends to buy special food, tobacco, and similar items. In fact, Siberia offered a quiet, healthy way of life, which suited Lenin and many other revolutionaries.

  Koba mad
e the long journey to Siberia by way of Novorossisk, Rostov, Tsaritsyn, Samara, and then to Irkutsk. It was not until November 27 that he reached Novaya Uda. All his life he had lived in the heat of Georgia, and the Siberian winter must have proved an ordeal. It did not deter him, however, from making his escape, and he was soon back in Georgia, reaching Tiflis in February 1904. He went directly to the apartment of Micho Bochoridze, a Social Democrat, and there he met Sergei Alliluyev, who recalled their meeting in his memoirs. Koba related how he had tried to escape a few days after arriving at Novaya Uda but was ill prepared for the cold. He was caught in a “buran,” the dreaded Siberian blizzard, and nearly froze to death. He had turned back in time with frostbitten face and ears but had finally got away on January 5, 1904.

  About this time, Koba married Ekaterina Svanidze from the village of Didi-Lilo. She was probably the daughter of Semyon Svanidze, a Social Democrat employed on the railway. Her brother, Aleksandr, had attended the Tiflis seminary, and Joseph may have met her through the father or brother. He himself never spoke of his marriage. Revolutionaries were expected to treat such matters as private, and also he was naturally reticent about his personal life. Nearly all that is known about this first marriage comes from Iremashvili’s recollections.

  Ekaterina was apparently untouched by the revolutionary ideas of her father and brother and remained a typical Georgian woman for whom her husband and her child, Yakov, born in 1908, were her whole life. She was married in the Orthodox Church and was, like her mother-in-law, very devout. Iremashvili relates that “she tended to her husband with all her heart, spending her nights in fervent prayer while awaiting her Soso busy at his meetings, praying that he might turn away from ideas displeasing to God and revert instead to a quiet home life of labor and contentment” She died young in 1910 and was buried with the full rites of the Church.