Egnatashvili, via Keke, and his Party comrades provided the money. But raising it was hardly unusual: between 1906 and 1909, over 18,000 obscure exiles out of a total of 32,000 somehow raised the money to escape.
Stalin made his record more suspicious by changing the number of his escapes and arrests in his own propaganda. Yet it turns out that he was arrested and escaped more often than he officially claimed. When he personally edited his Short Course biography in the 1930s, he signed off on eight arrests, seven exiles and six escapes, but when he re-edited the book in 1947, using his blue crayon, he reduced the numbers to seven arrests, six exiles and five escapes. In conversation, he claimed, “I escaped five times.” Amazingly, Stalin was being modest or forgetful. There were in fact at least nine arrests, four short detentions and eight escapes.
The last word belongs to Alexander Ostrovsky, expert on Stalin’s secret-police connections: “The fact of Stalin’s frequent escapes might be seen as surprising only to a person who is completely unfamiliar with the specifics of the pre-revolutionary exile system.”
Soso made his first, amateurish attempt after reading Lenin’s pamphlet in December 1903: his landlady and children gave him some bread for the trip. “Initially,” he told Anna Alliluyeva, “I didn’t succeed because the police chief had an eye on me. The freeze set in and then I collected winter supplies and set off on foot. My face almost froze!” As he got older, these tales grew taller. “I fell into a frozen river, the ice gave way,” he told his Soviet henchman Lavrenti Beria. “I was chilled to the bone. I knocked at a door,nobody invited me in. At the end of my strength, I had finally the luck to be welcomed by some poor people who lived in a miserable hut. They fed me, warmed me by the stove and gave me clothes to reach the next village.”
He managed to make it to Abram Gusinsky’s house in Balagansk, seventy versts away.
One night, when there were terrible frosts of—30, we heard a knock.
“Who’s there?”
“Unlock the door, Abram, it’s me, Soso.”
Then an ice-coated Soso entered, dressed very flippantly for Siberian winter in a felt cloak, a fedora and a dandyish Caucasian hood. My wife and daughter so admired the white hood that Comrade Stalin with Caucasian generosity took it off and gave it to them.
He already had the “necessary documents.” But he could go no farther.
“Suffering frostbite on his nose and ears,” according to Sergei Alliluyev, “he couldn’t get anywhere and returned to Novaya Uda.” No doubt, his convict friends warmed him up in the boozing stews of the frontier-town while he planned his second attempt.
Soso wrote to Keke, and she “sewed the right clothes and sent them as soon as she could. Soso escaped wearing them.” He had moved into another house belonging to Mitrofan Kungarov, who, on 4 January 1904, gave Stalin a lift out of Novaya Uda. Arming himself with a sabre, Stalin tricked Kungarov, claiming that he just wanted to reach nearby Zharkovo to complain about the police chief. Kungarov was probably the drunken sledge-driver who demanded to be paid in vodka at every stop. “We travelled in—40 temperatures,” recalled Stalin. “I wrapped myself in furs. The coachman actually opened his coat while driving to let the bitter freezing wind blow against his almost naked belly. Apparently alcohol warmed his body: what healthy people!” But when the peasant realized that Stalin was escaping, he refused to help and stopped the sledge. “At that moment,” said Stalin, “I opened my fur coat and showed my sword and ordered him to drive on . . . The peasant sighed and made the horses gallop!” *
Soso was on his way. Coming up to Orthodox Epiphany, he was hoping the police would be distracted by their celebrations. “Exiled Josef Djugashvili has escaped! Appropriate measures are taken to recapture him!” telegraphed the local police. He
Stalin made his record more suspicious by changing the number of his escapes and arrests in his own propaganda. Yet it turns out that he was arrested and escaped more often than he officially claimed. When he personally edited his Short Course biography in the 1930s, he signed off on eight arrests, seven exiles and six escapes, but when he re-edited the book in 1947, using his blue crayon, he reduced the numbers to seven arrests, six exiles and five escapes. In conversation, he claimed, “I escaped five times.” Amazingly, Stalin was being modest or forgetful. There were in fact at least nine arrests, four short detentions and eight escapes.
The last word belongs to Alexander Ostrovsky, expert on Stalin’s secret-police connections: “The fact of Stalin’s frequent escapes might be seen as surprising only to a person who is completely unfamiliar with the specifics of the pre-revolutionary exile system.”
Soso made his first, amateurish attempt after reading Lenin’s pamphlet in December 1903: his landlady and children gave him some bread for the trip. “Initially,” he told Anna Alliluyeva, “I didn’t succeed because the police chief had an eye on me. The freeze set in and then I collected winter supplies and set off on foot. My face almost froze!” As he got older, these tales grew taller. “I fell into a frozen river, the ice gave way,” he told his Soviet henchman Lavrenti Beria. “I was chilled to the bone. I knocked at a door,nobody invited me in. At the end of my strength, I had finally the luck to be welcomed by some poor people who lived in a miserable hut. They fed me, warmed me by the stove and gave me clothes to reach the next village.”
He managed to make it to Abram Gusinsky’s house in Balagansk, seventy versts away.
One night, when there were terrible frosts of—30, we heard a knock.
“Who’s there?”
“Unlock the door, Abram, it’s me, Soso.”
Then an ice-coated Soso entered, dressed very flippantly for Siberian winter in a felt cloak, a fedora and a dandyish Caucasian hood. My wife and daughter so admired the white hood that Comrade Stalin with Caucasian generosity took it off and gave it to them.
He already had the “necessary documents.” But he could go no farther.
“Suffering frostbite on his nose and ears,” according to Sergei Alliluyev, “he couldn’t get anywhere and returned to Novaya Uda.” No doubt, his convict friends warmed him up in the boozing stews of the frontier-town while he planned his second attempt.
Soso wrote to Keke, and she “sewed the right clothes and sent them as soon as she could. Soso escaped wearing them.” He had moved into another house belonging to Mitrofan Kungarov, who, on 4 January 1904, gave Stalin a lift out of Novaya Uda. Arming himself with a sabre, Stalin tricked Kungarov, claiming that he just wanted to reach nearby Zharkovo to complain about the police chief. Kungarov was probably the drunken sledge-driver who demanded to be paid in vodka at every stop. “We travelled in—40 temperatures,” recalled Stalin. “I wrapped myself in furs. The coachman actually opened his coat while driving to let the bitter freezing wind blow against his almost naked belly. Apparently alcohol warmed his body: what healthy people!” But when the peasant realized that Stalin was escaping, he refused to help and stopped the sledge. “At that moment,” said Stalin, “I opened my fur coat and showed my sword and ordered him to drive on . . . The peasant sighed and made the horses gallop!” *
Soso was on his way. Coming up to Orthodox Epiphany, he was hoping the police would be distracted by their celebrations. “Exiled Josef Djugashvili has escaped! Appropriate measures are taken to recapture him!” telegraphed the local police. He
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