Armenian, Suren Spandaryan, the editor of Nor Dar (New Century) and son of a typesetter. Spandaryan was, until his death in 1916, one of the few people Stalin might have called a friend and whose death he, if perfunctorily, mourned.
In early 1902 Tbilisi’s social democrat revolutionaries were crushed by the police. In Batumi, however, the strikes that Stalin had helped foment were victorious. By April 1902, though, Jughashvili was arrested for ‘incitement to disorder and insubordination against higher authority’. He was cursorily examined by a doctor, Grigol Eliava, who gave the first objective description of Stalin: ‘height 1.64, long, swarthy, pock-marked face, second and third toes on left foot joined… missing one front, right lower molar tooth… mole on left ear’. 19
Stalin was no prison hero. In autumn he implored Prince Golitsyn, the viceroy of the Caucasus: ‘An increasingly choking cough and the helpless position of my elderly mother, abandoned by her husband twelve years ago and seeing me as her sole support in life, forces me to address the commander-in-chief’s chancellery for the second time and humbly request release under police supervision…’ A major of Tbilisi’s gendarmerie warned against clemency (making the young Stalin sound like an asset to the police force): ‘at the head of the Batumi organization is Ioseb Jughashvili, under special police supervision, Jughashvili’s despotism has enraged many people and the organization [in Batumi] has split…’
In spring 1903, Stalin roused prisoners to protest against a visit by the exarch of the Georgian Church. He was moved a hundred miles east, to Kutaisi, where he was described by the social democrat Grigol Urutadze: ‘a beard, long hair combed back. An insinuating gait, in little steps. He never laughed with an open mouth… He was absolutely imperturbable.’ The gendarmerie proposed exiling him to eastern Siberia for six years.
It took the bureaucracy until the winter of 1903-04 to send Jughashvili, with two dozen other social democrats, in summer clothing, across theBlack Sea and the Urals to Siberia, to a village forty miles from the railway. After two months Jughashvili persuaded a peasant (who was flogged for complicity) to drive him to the railhead from where he escaped back to the Caucasus. He was sheltered in Tbilisi by a fellow student of Suren Spandaryan, an engineer’s son who would become a key figure in Lenin’s entourage, Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld). For some days, before he himself fled north to St Petersburg, Kamenev protected Jughashvili, a comradely gesture which he must have bitterly regretted twenty years later. Few people suffered such scorpion-like ingratitude as Kamenev had from Stalin.
Not for the last time Stalin was suspected of being a police collaborator, a provocateur. So fast a return from Siberia unsettled Jughashvili’s associates. How had he got the hundred roubles for the fare from Siberia? Jughashvili said that he had forged a certificate that he was a police agent. But where had he found forms and stamps in the Siberian swamps? He went to Baku but was ostracized. He flitted to Tbilisi and back again. On May Day 1904 he was beaten up. He hid with a maternal uncle in Gori for two months. Only in August was he rehabilitated by the party, which was too short of educated activists to persist with its suspicions.
Using the name Koba, Stalin climbed ranks thinned by arrests and soon came to dominate the Caucasian Social Democrats. After the split between moderate Mensheviks and intransigent Bolsheviks at the second Social Democrat Party congress in 1903, the Bolsheviks felt free to act violently. In Geneva, Lenin, his spouse Krupskaia, Rozalia Zemliachka and other extremists called for a new congress to endorse revolutionary action. At last Stalin had a policy he could impose on his Caucasian colleagues with enthusiasm. With Lado Ketskhoveli dead, nobody had more charisma and authority than Koba among the
In early 1902 Tbilisi’s social democrat revolutionaries were crushed by the police. In Batumi, however, the strikes that Stalin had helped foment were victorious. By April 1902, though, Jughashvili was arrested for ‘incitement to disorder and insubordination against higher authority’. He was cursorily examined by a doctor, Grigol Eliava, who gave the first objective description of Stalin: ‘height 1.64, long, swarthy, pock-marked face, second and third toes on left foot joined… missing one front, right lower molar tooth… mole on left ear’. 19
Stalin was no prison hero. In autumn he implored Prince Golitsyn, the viceroy of the Caucasus: ‘An increasingly choking cough and the helpless position of my elderly mother, abandoned by her husband twelve years ago and seeing me as her sole support in life, forces me to address the commander-in-chief’s chancellery for the second time and humbly request release under police supervision…’ A major of Tbilisi’s gendarmerie warned against clemency (making the young Stalin sound like an asset to the police force): ‘at the head of the Batumi organization is Ioseb Jughashvili, under special police supervision, Jughashvili’s despotism has enraged many people and the organization [in Batumi] has split…’
In spring 1903, Stalin roused prisoners to protest against a visit by the exarch of the Georgian Church. He was moved a hundred miles east, to Kutaisi, where he was described by the social democrat Grigol Urutadze: ‘a beard, long hair combed back. An insinuating gait, in little steps. He never laughed with an open mouth… He was absolutely imperturbable.’ The gendarmerie proposed exiling him to eastern Siberia for six years.
It took the bureaucracy until the winter of 1903-04 to send Jughashvili, with two dozen other social democrats, in summer clothing, across theBlack Sea and the Urals to Siberia, to a village forty miles from the railway. After two months Jughashvili persuaded a peasant (who was flogged for complicity) to drive him to the railhead from where he escaped back to the Caucasus. He was sheltered in Tbilisi by a fellow student of Suren Spandaryan, an engineer’s son who would become a key figure in Lenin’s entourage, Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld). For some days, before he himself fled north to St Petersburg, Kamenev protected Jughashvili, a comradely gesture which he must have bitterly regretted twenty years later. Few people suffered such scorpion-like ingratitude as Kamenev had from Stalin.
Not for the last time Stalin was suspected of being a police collaborator, a provocateur. So fast a return from Siberia unsettled Jughashvili’s associates. How had he got the hundred roubles for the fare from Siberia? Jughashvili said that he had forged a certificate that he was a police agent. But where had he found forms and stamps in the Siberian swamps? He went to Baku but was ostracized. He flitted to Tbilisi and back again. On May Day 1904 he was beaten up. He hid with a maternal uncle in Gori for two months. Only in August was he rehabilitated by the party, which was too short of educated activists to persist with its suspicions.
Using the name Koba, Stalin climbed ranks thinned by arrests and soon came to dominate the Caucasian Social Democrats. After the split between moderate Mensheviks and intransigent Bolsheviks at the second Social Democrat Party congress in 1903, the Bolsheviks felt free to act violently. In Geneva, Lenin, his spouse Krupskaia, Rozalia Zemliachka and other extremists called for a new congress to endorse revolutionary action. At last Stalin had a policy he could impose on his Caucasian colleagues with enthusiasm. With Lado Ketskhoveli dead, nobody had more charisma and authority than Koba among the
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