made it to Tyret Station and may have gone to Irkutsk before heading back along the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The Siberian stations, even during holidays, were patrolled by uniformed Gendarmes and Okhrana spies, sometimes professionals, frequently informing freelancers, watching for escapees. But Stalin had procured not just the usual “boots” but the ID card of a police agent. In faraway Siberia (as in the Caucasus), any papers could be bought, but this was unusual. Stalin boasted that at one of the stations a real spook was on his tail, following him until the escapee approached a Gendarme, showed him his false ID and pointed out the police spy as an escaping exile. The policeman arrested the protesting spook while Stalin calmly boarded the train for the Caucasus. It is a story that demonstrates the layers of murkiness in which Stalin blossomed. If Soso really was a police spy, it is unlikely he would have told the story at all and, in any case, he might have invented it. But it certainly added to the mystique (and suspicion) of this ace of conspirators. 7
Within ten days, he was back in Tiflis. When he burst into a friend’s apartment, they barely knew who he was, as he had lost weight in Siberia.
“Don’t you recognize me, you cowards!” he laughed, whereupon they greeted him and rented him a room.
Stalin’s timing was impeccable. That January 1904, Russia stumbled into war. The Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in the Far East. The Emperor and his ministers were convinced the primitive Japanese “monkeys” could not defeat civilized Russians. Yet Nicholas’s army was antiquated, his peasant soldiers ill armed, his commanders hapless cronies.
“I remember,” says Stalin’s roommate, “that he was reading History of the French Revolution.” He knew how war and revolution, those horses of the apocalypse, often gallop together.
· · ·
Georgia was seething. “Georgians are such a political nation,” reflected Stalin later, “I don’t think there’s a Georgian alive who isn’t a member of some political party.” Young Armenians joined the Dashnaks, Georgians joined the Socialist-Federalists, and many others joined the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Anarchists or the SRs—the latter were conducting a vicious terrorist campaign against the Tsar and his ministers. As the war strained the sinews of the Empire, the Okhrana tried to suppress the restlessness by arresting droves of revolutionaries.
Not every comrade was delighted at the return of the truculent, aggressive Soso, and his enemies devised a way to rid themselves of him. There was a problem with Stalin’s Marxist orthodoxy: Lenin had defeated the Bundists because he believed in an internationalist party for all the peoples of the Empire. Even Jordania preached Marxism for the whole Caucasian region. Yet young Stalin, clinging to the romantic dreams of his poetry, insisted eccentrically on a Georgian SD Party. So his enemies accused him of Bundist tendencies, not a Marxist internationalist at all. At this time, Stalin adapted Marx to his own instincts. He quoted Marx, observed David Sagirashvili, “but always in his own peculiar way.” Challenged at one meeting, Soso “wasn’t in the least perturbed,” simply saying, “Marx is the son of an ass. What he wrote should be written as I say!” With this, he stormed out.
Fortunately Stalin was vigorously defended by Georgia’s first Bolshevik, Mikha Tskhakaya, one of the founders of Mesame Dasi, who now supported Lenin’s radical approach. Stalin respected the energetic, older Tskhakaya, with his goatee-beard and ideological gravity. He later mocked him, but he was as grateful as a man could be who regarded “gratitude as a dogs’ disease.”
Tskhakaya pleaded for Stalin, saving him from expulsion, but he made him undergo a new introduction to Marxism. “I can’t trust you with much,” he lectured Soso. “You’re still young and need a foundation of stable
The Siberian stations, even during holidays, were patrolled by uniformed Gendarmes and Okhrana spies, sometimes professionals, frequently informing freelancers, watching for escapees. But Stalin had procured not just the usual “boots” but the ID card of a police agent. In faraway Siberia (as in the Caucasus), any papers could be bought, but this was unusual. Stalin boasted that at one of the stations a real spook was on his tail, following him until the escapee approached a Gendarme, showed him his false ID and pointed out the police spy as an escaping exile. The policeman arrested the protesting spook while Stalin calmly boarded the train for the Caucasus. It is a story that demonstrates the layers of murkiness in which Stalin blossomed. If Soso really was a police spy, it is unlikely he would have told the story at all and, in any case, he might have invented it. But it certainly added to the mystique (and suspicion) of this ace of conspirators. 7
Within ten days, he was back in Tiflis. When he burst into a friend’s apartment, they barely knew who he was, as he had lost weight in Siberia.
“Don’t you recognize me, you cowards!” he laughed, whereupon they greeted him and rented him a room.
Stalin’s timing was impeccable. That January 1904, Russia stumbled into war. The Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in the Far East. The Emperor and his ministers were convinced the primitive Japanese “monkeys” could not defeat civilized Russians. Yet Nicholas’s army was antiquated, his peasant soldiers ill armed, his commanders hapless cronies.
“I remember,” says Stalin’s roommate, “that he was reading History of the French Revolution.” He knew how war and revolution, those horses of the apocalypse, often gallop together.
· · ·
Georgia was seething. “Georgians are such a political nation,” reflected Stalin later, “I don’t think there’s a Georgian alive who isn’t a member of some political party.” Young Armenians joined the Dashnaks, Georgians joined the Socialist-Federalists, and many others joined the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Anarchists or the SRs—the latter were conducting a vicious terrorist campaign against the Tsar and his ministers. As the war strained the sinews of the Empire, the Okhrana tried to suppress the restlessness by arresting droves of revolutionaries.
Not every comrade was delighted at the return of the truculent, aggressive Soso, and his enemies devised a way to rid themselves of him. There was a problem with Stalin’s Marxist orthodoxy: Lenin had defeated the Bundists because he believed in an internationalist party for all the peoples of the Empire. Even Jordania preached Marxism for the whole Caucasian region. Yet young Stalin, clinging to the romantic dreams of his poetry, insisted eccentrically on a Georgian SD Party. So his enemies accused him of Bundist tendencies, not a Marxist internationalist at all. At this time, Stalin adapted Marx to his own instincts. He quoted Marx, observed David Sagirashvili, “but always in his own peculiar way.” Challenged at one meeting, Soso “wasn’t in the least perturbed,” simply saying, “Marx is the son of an ass. What he wrote should be written as I say!” With this, he stormed out.
Fortunately Stalin was vigorously defended by Georgia’s first Bolshevik, Mikha Tskhakaya, one of the founders of Mesame Dasi, who now supported Lenin’s radical approach. Stalin respected the energetic, older Tskhakaya, with his goatee-beard and ideological gravity. He later mocked him, but he was as grateful as a man could be who regarded “gratitude as a dogs’ disease.”
Tskhakaya pleaded for Stalin, saving him from expulsion, but he made him undergo a new introduction to Marxism. “I can’t trust you with much,” he lectured Soso. “You’re still young and need a foundation of stable
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