Before he came to wield ultimate power over the Soviet Union, which he maintained with a network of terror, the young Joseph Stalin made his name as a highwayman and bank robber.
Stalin was born Ioseb Jughashvili in late 19th century Georgia, then a colony of the Russian empire. Resentful of Tsarist tyranny, he would eventually become attached to Leninism. But his work with the Bolsheviks followed a sideline in subterfuge and bank robbery.
After escaping with his mother from a violent, alcoholic father, Stalin was sent to a seminary in Tbilisi. But he was not the religious type. Instead, he became enamoured with revolutionary texts.
“I think it was becoming quite clear to him that the things he hated about his world, the poverty, the brutality of the Russian officers and the secret police could not be resolved through religion,” says Dr Pablo de Orellana.
De Orellana is one of the experts featured in Russia: The Rise of Stalin on History Hit, the third part in a new series.
“Initially, Stalin is more nationalist and wants to raise the place of Georgia, perhaps within the Russian Empire. But quite quickly he becomes a socialist.”
Stalin became convinced that things needed to change, and that change would have to be violent and revolutionary.
Stalin the highwayman
“His early activities seem to consist of worker strikes, writing pamphlets, organising labour movements,” says De Orellana. “He organises strikes by workers to demand rights to raise wages. He also raises money for revolutionary causes and starts making contacts with larger revolutionary groups.”
In the early 1900s, Stalin encountered the Mensheviks, the biggest revolutionary group in the Caucasus. He then became attached to Leninism. Lenin led the Bolsheviks, who sought immediate revolution by a cadre of dedicated revolutionaries.
Stalin became an important source of funding for the early Bolshevik party.
“Stalin seems to have had a knack for being a criminal organiser from the very beginning,” says De Orellana. “Stalin is a bit of a Robin Hood character.”
Though not a gifted public speaker, Stalin excelled at interpersonal relations and manipulation, an essential skill in a violent criminal enterprise.
“Stalin would have been an exceptional head of a mafia family. He had the charisma, the leadership, the incredible intelligence, the organisational know-how.”
He also kept violent thugs on-side, some of whom were themselves scared of Stalin, presaging his later regime’s network of terror.
However revolutionaries were constantly pursued by the Okhrana, the Tsarist regime’s secret police. After organising a strike involving some 6,000 workers in Georgia, the Okhrana caught up with Stalin and exiled him to Siberia. This raised his profile amongst the national Bolsheviks.
“He’s the man that raises money”
After he escaped Siberia In 1904, he met important Bolshevik figures. Eventually Stalin met Lenin in 1905 at the party congress in Finland. As Lenin’s relationship with Leon Trotsky cooled, Stalin emerged as the perfect ally.
“If Leninism is about immediate revolution, Stalin was the perfect man to make it happen,” says De Orellana.
Stalin became the most important Bolshevik in the Caucasus, already something of a local hero. In 1907, Stalin was involved in an armed robbery of a bank stagecoach in Erivansky Square, Tiblisi.
Watch NowYet amongst the other Bolsheviks, he was an outsider. “First of all, he’s not middle class, wealthy, and educated like most of the others,” says De Orellana. “He hasn’t written extensive philosophy, hasn’t studied heavily.”
“He had an accent. He wasn’t Russian, he didn’t speak French and German. He didn’t have an international outlook.”
But he proved his value.
“He’s the man that raises money,” says De Orellana. “He’s the man that illegally prints newspapers. He’s really good at moving illegally, escaping the secret police in ways that Trotsky and Lenin are not.”
Russia: The Rise of Stalin is available to watch now on History Hit.
