In exile, Stalin spent a lot of time before the October Revolution. He joined the Social Democratic movement in the winter of 1897, and since then he has always been on the pencil with the police, considered a dangerous revolutionary. He possessed charisma, participated in the work of various circles, gaining his authority, and in the eyes of the secret police became an increasingly dangerous representative of the Social Democrats.
Passion for the ideas of the Social Democrats
Stalin was led to links by his proximity to the Social Democratic movement. Having barely joined him, he begins to actively promote, gaining invaluable experience while communicating with workers in the apartment of the revolutionary Vano Sturua, and soon begins to lead a circle of young railway workers.
In the same year, Joseph became a member of the Third Social Group of Georgia’s Social Democratic organization, forming the core of its revolutionary minority together with Alexander Tsulukidze and Lado Ketskhoveli. The fact is that most members of this organization adhere to the positions of bourgeois nationalism and the so-called "legal Marxism".
Stalin himself in an interview in 1931 to the German journalist and writer Emil Ludwig admitted that he was opposed to the attitude of his students in the theological seminary, where he received his initial education. It was there that he first experienced the features of the mocking regime and Jesuit methods, and this led him to the supporters of revolution and Marxism.
Seminary Exclusion
In 1899, Stalin was expelled from the theological seminary, although he was already in his fifth year of study. According to the official wording, he did not appear for exams for an unknown reason. Most likely, the true reason for the expulsion was his activity in promoting Marxism among workers in railway workshops and students of the seminary. At the same time, Joseph Dzhugashvili, as he still called himself at that time, received a certificate in his hands that he could work as a teacher in elementary public schools.
After that, Dzhugashvili worked as a tutor for a while. Among the students was his childhood friend Simon Ter-Petrosyan, a famous future revolutionary who was nicknamed Kamo. At the very end of 1899, Joseph got a job at the physical observatory in Tiflis as a computer observer.
On April 23, 1900, Dzhugashvili, together with his closest associates, organized a work day for which up to five hundred people came. Joseph himself speaks at the rally. Historians say that this was his first public appearance before a large crowd of people.
In August of that year, he participated in the preparation of large protests by workers of Tiflis, in particular, in the organization of the clash, which employees of railway workshops come to. In this work, he is assisted by Kalinin, who by that time was expelled from St. Petersburg, Bochoridze, Alliluyev, Sturua, Okuashvili. In the first half of August, about 4,000 people took part in the strike, more than five hundred participants were arrested.
On March 21, 1901, the police searched the physical observatory, where he not only works, but also lives Dzhugashvili. However, at the last moment he manages to avoid arrest, after which he finally switches to an illegal underground position, turning into a real revolutionary.
In the fall of 1901, Dzhugashvili wrote an editorial for the first issue of the illegal newspaper "Struggle", which begins to appear in the Nina printing house, which Ketskhoveli organizes in Baku. This article becomes Stalin's first political work.
First link
In November 1901, Dzhugashvili at the conference of the Social Democratic organization, which takes place in Tiflis, was elected to the local committee of the RSDLP. On behalf of this committee, he leaves for Batumi already at the end of the month to create a social democratic organization there.
His activities in the new location attracted the close attention of the police. April 5, 1902 he was arrested. He sits first in prison in Batumi, and then in Kutaisi.
In the spring of 1903 he was elected in absentia to the Caucasus Union Committee of the RSDLP, everything happens at the first ever Congress of Caucasian Social Democratic organizations. By the fall of that year, the authorities decide his fate. From prison he is sent to the first link in his life. Stalin for three years goes to the village of New Uda, located in the Balagan district of Irkutsk province. Now it is the territory of modern Irkutsk region.
Dzhugashvili arrives in place on November 27, but after a month and a half he succeeds in escape, and by February he gets to Batumi, where he is in an illegal situation. In this article we will tell you in detail in which links Stalin was, as you see, the first of them turned out to be very short.
At the end of 1903, Stalin personally got acquainted with Lenin by correspondence, the future leader of the revolution himself notices an active member of the party and sends him a letter.
Suspicions in cooperation with the police
In Batumi, Dzhugashvili is faced with a hostile attitude of the local committee secretary Ramishvili, who even suspects him of collaborating with the police and treason. In order to clear his name, removing all suspicions, Stalin turns to one of the leaders of the Caucasian Union of the RSDLP Tskhakai. He decides to check the young member of the movement, introduces him to the program adopted at the Second Congress of the RSDLP and asks for his opinion.
In response to this, Dzhugashvili writes an article "How Social Democracy Understands the National Question." She makes a good impression on Tskhakaya; he sends Joseph to Kutaisi district as the official representative of the Caucasian Union Committee.
During this period, almost all of Dzhugashvili’s work, which adjoins the Bolsheviks, is devoted to confrontation with the Mensheviks. He also participates in the organization of an underground printing house in Chiatura, the December strike in Baku in 1904.
The first Russian revolution
During the revolution of 1905, Dzhugashvili actively distributes leaflets, publishes Bolshevik newspapers, travels to cities promoting the activities of the party, visits Gori, Novorossiysk, Batumi, Chiatura, Kutaisi.
In February 1905, he participated in the supply of arms to workers in Baku to prevent clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Caucasus. In the autumn of the same year, he was among the invaders of the Zeikhauz in Kutaisi. It is not possible to take possession of a weapons warehouse. But in Tiflis Dzhugashvili organizes a fighting squad.
In December, he participates in the first conference of the RSDLP, which takes place in Tammerfors in southern Finland, where he first meets and meets Lenin for the first time.
In the spring of 1906, at the Fourth Congress of the RSDLP in Stockholm, he began relations with the future leaders of the revolution and the Soviet state - Dzerzhinsky, Voroshilov, Sergeyev, Frunze. At the congress, Stalin entered into a polemic with Lenin, disagreeing with him on the agrarian question. All this makes him a figure of all-Russian scale, now they know about him not only in the Caucasus. In 1906, the famous Georgian socialist Kaladze even called Stalin "Caucasian Lenin", his popularity is growing so much.
In July 1906, an important event took place in the life of Dzhugashvili, in a church in Tiflis he married his bride Ekaterina Svanidze. This is secretly done by his classmate at the Theological Seminary, Christios Hinvaleli, who by then had become a priest. Toastmaster at the wedding was Tskhakaya. Researchers note that the marriage was partly forced, because Catherine by that time was already pregnant. The marriage did not last long, at the end of 1907, Joseph's wife died of typhus. Seeing her on her last journey to the cemetery, Stalin admitted to his comrades that his heart was now a cold stone. It was from this marriage that his eldest son Jacob appeared.
From 1906 to 1907, Stalin continued his active revolutionary activity, engaging in armed robberies for the needs of the revolution, the Social Democrats call this expropriation. Joseph with associates acts in the Caucasus.
In 1907, Dzhugashvili was sent as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP in London, and since 1907 he has been one of the leaders of the Baku Committee.
Tiflis expropriation
Most scholars and historians are inclined to believe that Stalin was directly involved in the so-called Tiflis expropriation, when in the summer of 1907 an armed attack was made on the treasury carriage. The operation was led by the revolutionary Camo.
A large sum of money was stolen, which was intended for the needs of the party. It is noted that even then qualities such as paranoid and a tendency to violence began to manifest in it.
Second arrest
For the second time, Stalin was arrested on March 25, 1908. This is happening in Baku. He is being placed in the Bail prison. In February 1909 he was sent to the second exile in his life, to the Vologda province. It is located in the city of Solvychegodsk. But this time, for a long time, he does not stay there either; already on June 24 he succeeds in a successful escape.
In March 1910 he was again arrested, he ended up in the Bailovskaya prison, and after Stalin’s exile to Solvychegodsk was resumed. This time he spends there from October 29 to July 6, 1911. After the third successful escape, he is clandestinely working in St. Petersburg.
The end of 1911, Dzhugashvili was again arrested. A new place for Stalin's exile is Vologda. Once in this city in December, on the night of February 29, 1912, he makes another escape.
Work in St. Petersburg
Since 1912, Joseph has been actively working in St. Petersburg, becoming one of the key employees of the newspaper Pravda, which is quickly turning into the first mass periodical of the Bolsheviks.
On May 5, when the very first issue of the newspaper comes out, Dzhugashvili is arrested. This time he is exiled to the Narym Territory. He is serving his sentence in Narym, now it is the village of the same name in the Tomsk region. Stalin’s exile to Siberia is one of the shortest. The fifth escape in his prison career succeeds in exactly 39 days. September 12, he again triumphantly returns to the capital of the Russian Empire.
At this point, he takes one of the leading roles in the party, although he cannot move to a legal position, because he is on the run. At the same time, Dzhugashvili leads the election campaign of the Bolsheviks in the elections to the State Duma of the fourth convocation. As one of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, Alexei Badayev recalls, Stalin arrived in Petersburg just a few days before the election of commissioners at the factories, immediately plunging into the thick of things.
At the end of 1912, he manages to travel abroad to personally meet with Lenin. After Malinovsky and Petrovsky are elected to the State Duma, and Belostotsky and Goloshchekin are arrested, Dzhugashvili becomes the only member of the Central Committee of the party, which remains illegal underground. By that time, there were many places where Stalin was in exile, but he always managed to quickly return and continue revolutionary activity.
During a trip abroad in 1913, Dzhugashvili took part in the preparation of the article "Marxism and the National Question", which is published in the journal "Enlightenment". This publication he first signed by K. Stalin, it becomes his new most famous party pseudonym.
Turukhansk Stalin's Link
Once again, Stalin was arrested in March 1913. The arrest took place at a party that was hosted by the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks on the premises of the Kalashnikov Exchange. After that, he was sent to the stage.
He is imprisoned and sent to the Yenisei province. Turukhansk Stalin’s exile continues until the end of autumn 1916. It turns out to be the longest in his biography, this time it is not possible to quickly escape.
Stalin's exile to Siberia begins with the fact that he was brought to Krasnoyarsk in July 1913. Already from there he was sent to the village of Monastyrskoye of the Turukhansk Territory. In addition to the village of Monastyrskoe, Dzhugashvili is changing several more settlements of his exile. Stalin stops in the city of Turukhansk, the village of Kostino. There he is detained from September 1913 until next March, then is under police surveillance in the village of Kureyka.
The meeting with the Bolshevik Sverdlov becomes important for Stalin in exile in the Turukhansk Territory . He comes to him in September 1913 in the village of Selivanikha. Throughout the exile, Stalin maintains contact with Lenin, constantly corresponded with him.
When the First World War begins, prisoner Dzhugashvili comes forward with a special appeal condemning defense. In exile, Dzhugashvili reads a lot, translates the works of Rosa Luxemburg into Russian. In July 1915, he participated in a meeting with other Bolshevik deputies who were exiled. In particular, these are Kamenev and Badayev. They are found in the village of Monastyrsky. Now you know how many times Stalin was in exile. His conclusion in Turukhansk was the sixth.
Hope for release
In the midst of the First World War, the tsarist government decides to send all administrative exiles to serve. At the very end of 1916, Stalin’s exile in Turukhansk temporarily ends, he is transferred to Krasnoyarsk.
But he never goes to the front, in February 1917 he was released from military service due to problems with his hand. The left arm at the elbow cannot be fully extended, this is recognized as a sufficient basis for declaring it unfit for military service.
He continues to serve his sentence in exile in the city of Achinsk, from where on March 12, 1917, he arrived in transit through Krasnoyarsk to Petrograd. Thus, the years of Stalin's exile in Turukhansk took place from 1913 to 1917.
Only after the success of the October Revolution, he was able to move from an underground position to an official one, having become a de facto leader of an educated Soviet state in a few years.
From this article, you learned in all details where Stalin was in exile, how often he was under the supervision of the police and how many times he managed to make bold shoots organized in the shortest possible time.
It is worth noting that until 1917, Joseph Dzhugashvili used a large number of nicknames and pseudonyms. This was caused by necessity, since he was constantly in an illegal underground position, hiding in every way from the tsarist police. In different years, he called himself Nizheradze, Besoshvili, Ivanovich, Chizhikov. Their two pseudonyms became their most famous - this is Koba, which means “indomitable,” and Stalin, under this name, he went down in history, becoming the head of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shortly after Lenin's death.
The basis of this pseudonym is not just the concept of "steel," as many believe, but the name of the translator of one of Rustaveli's most famous works of the poem "The Knight in the Tiger Skin" - Stalin. In 1912, Joseph finally takes the pseudonym Stalin, until his death he appears only under that name.