Georgian Bolsheviks. Intermittently, he received moral and financial support from the Russian Bolsheviks: Kamenev returned to Tbilisi in September 1904; Lenin’s emissary Tsetsilia Zelikson came from Switzerland; Kamo Ter-Petrosiants escaped from Batumi prison and joined him. That year Stalin was always on the move across Transcaucasia. His contacts among the railway workers served him well: he was hidden in sealed goods vans for his journeys.
From 1900 discontent swept the urban workers of the Russian empire. Whenever the Tsar’s government gave an inch, the workers (as the reactionaries rightly warned) tried to take a yard. In 1900 a tram workers’depot was all that Stalin could shut down; in 1904, when the country was not only rapidly industrializing but also preparing for war with Japan, Koba’s Armenian and Azeri colleagues led a strike that paralysed the oilfields of Baku and, for the first time in Russian history, forced employers to yield to workers. The gendarmes and Okhranka (security service) arrested so many Bolsheviks that Tbilisi’s more law-abiding Mensheviks temporarily took over the Social Democrat Party.
Russia’s defeat by Japan, and the promised reforms wrung from the Tsar after unarmed workers were gunned down in St Peterburg’s notorious ‘Bloody Sunday’ of January 1905, gave revolutionaries a sense of power. In summer 1905 they roused the Baku workers to burn down half the oil wells of the city. Koba travelled thousands of miles, attending meetings, delegating work to new and old recruits. When nothing was demanded of him Koba was quarrelsome and surly, buried in books for months on end, and yet, in crises, he organized the feckless, persuaded the irresolute and conciliated the fractious, barely sleeping at all and rarely in the same place for more than a few days. Comrades overlooked his repellent personal manner, given his organizational genius.
At the age of twenty-five Stalin made the first of his few close attachments. He was hidden by his friend Mikhail Monaselidze, who had married into the Svanidze family. The three Svanidze sisters were dressmakers to the wives of army and gendarmerie officers; they lived close to the barracks and their house was the last place the police would search. Here Koba felt safe and here he courted Monaselidze’s sister-in-law Kato. Koba’s relationship with Kato Svanidze was as near as he came to commitment to another person.
In 1905 Stalin finally met the only man he ever recognized as his leader, Lenin. Koba went, under the name of Ivanovich, as one of three delegates from the Caucasus to a clandestine congress of the Russian Social Democrat Party, held at Tampere in Finland which, though in the Russian empire, offered some protection against arrest. In Tampere Koba met, most for the first time, forty other delegates of the Russian Social Democrat Party. He became known to some who would lead the Bolshevik uprising twelve years later: Lenin, Iakov Sverdlov, Leonid Krasin. Koba won praise from Lenin for his report on the Caucasus and for his hard-line stance. Back in Tbilisi early in 1906, Koba could proclaim himself as the ‘Lenin of the Caucasus’. He finally had authority.
The first murder in which Stalin was implicated occurred on 16 January 1906. General Griaznov, who had smashed down the the barricades erected during the workers’ insurrection in Tbilisi the previous month, was ‘sentenced to death’ by the party and killed. Koba had fallen off a tram and was lying up with head injuries when the police searched for him. Despite being a wanted escaped prisoner, Koba had had an extraordinarily easy journey to Finland and back. Understandably, other party members wondered if Koba was a police agent. He subsequently claimed to have been arrested early in April 1906 but his name is missing from Tbilisi’s Metekhi prison register. 20 Soon Koba was again off north, under the name of Vissarionovich, this time to Stockholm to the fourth Social Democrat
From 1900 discontent swept the urban workers of the Russian empire. Whenever the Tsar’s government gave an inch, the workers (as the reactionaries rightly warned) tried to take a yard. In 1900 a tram workers’depot was all that Stalin could shut down; in 1904, when the country was not only rapidly industrializing but also preparing for war with Japan, Koba’s Armenian and Azeri colleagues led a strike that paralysed the oilfields of Baku and, for the first time in Russian history, forced employers to yield to workers. The gendarmes and Okhranka (security service) arrested so many Bolsheviks that Tbilisi’s more law-abiding Mensheviks temporarily took over the Social Democrat Party.
Russia’s defeat by Japan, and the promised reforms wrung from the Tsar after unarmed workers were gunned down in St Peterburg’s notorious ‘Bloody Sunday’ of January 1905, gave revolutionaries a sense of power. In summer 1905 they roused the Baku workers to burn down half the oil wells of the city. Koba travelled thousands of miles, attending meetings, delegating work to new and old recruits. When nothing was demanded of him Koba was quarrelsome and surly, buried in books for months on end, and yet, in crises, he organized the feckless, persuaded the irresolute and conciliated the fractious, barely sleeping at all and rarely in the same place for more than a few days. Comrades overlooked his repellent personal manner, given his organizational genius.
At the age of twenty-five Stalin made the first of his few close attachments. He was hidden by his friend Mikhail Monaselidze, who had married into the Svanidze family. The three Svanidze sisters were dressmakers to the wives of army and gendarmerie officers; they lived close to the barracks and their house was the last place the police would search. Here Koba felt safe and here he courted Monaselidze’s sister-in-law Kato. Koba’s relationship with Kato Svanidze was as near as he came to commitment to another person.
In 1905 Stalin finally met the only man he ever recognized as his leader, Lenin. Koba went, under the name of Ivanovich, as one of three delegates from the Caucasus to a clandestine congress of the Russian Social Democrat Party, held at Tampere in Finland which, though in the Russian empire, offered some protection against arrest. In Tampere Koba met, most for the first time, forty other delegates of the Russian Social Democrat Party. He became known to some who would lead the Bolshevik uprising twelve years later: Lenin, Iakov Sverdlov, Leonid Krasin. Koba won praise from Lenin for his report on the Caucasus and for his hard-line stance. Back in Tbilisi early in 1906, Koba could proclaim himself as the ‘Lenin of the Caucasus’. He finally had authority.
The first murder in which Stalin was implicated occurred on 16 January 1906. General Griaznov, who had smashed down the the barricades erected during the workers’ insurrection in Tbilisi the previous month, was ‘sentenced to death’ by the party and killed. Koba had fallen off a tram and was lying up with head injuries when the police searched for him. Despite being a wanted escaped prisoner, Koba had had an extraordinarily easy journey to Finland and back. Understandably, other party members wondered if Koba was a police agent. He subsequently claimed to have been arrested early in April 1906 but his name is missing from Tbilisi’s Metekhi prison register. 20 Soon Koba was again off north, under the name of Vissarionovich, this time to Stockholm to the fourth Social Democrat
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