Stalin: A Biography

began by organising strikes and came to supplant the official bodies of self-government. Peasants moved against the landed gentry by illegal pasturing of livestock and stealing wood from forests. In Poland and Georgia the authorities were coming close to losing control. On advice from Count Witte, Nicholas II issued his ‘October Manifesto’ promising reform. In subsequent weeks it became clear that this would involve an elected parliament to be known as the State Duma as well as a Basic Law which would establish the framework that would define and constrain the powers of the Emperor, the government and the Duma. These concessions bought time and support for the monarchy; and although the Bolsheviks proceeded to organise an insurrection in Moscow, the armed forces steadily reasserted authority across the empire.

Stalin’s revolutionary impatience had not faded: he continued to argue for uncompromising adherence to the strategy of Bolshevism. Such was his growing success in Tbilisi that he was a natural choice as delegate to the factional conference held by the Bolsheviks in Tampere (Tammer-fors) in Finland in mid-December 1905. It was there he met Lenin at last. According to his later account, he was taken aback by the unprepossessing appearance of the leader of Bolshevism. Dzhughashvili had been expecting a tall, self-regarding person. Instead he saw a man no bigger than himself and without the hauteur of the prominent emigre figures.⁶ The Tampere Conference proved awkward for Lenin. Most Bolsheviks, including Dzhughashvili, rejected his preference for the faction to take part in the elections to the State Duma. They aimed at armed insurrection and the establishment of a ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’, and they saw no point in wasting energy on elections called on Nicholas II’s terms. Lenin’s demand for tactical finesse left them cold. Having become Bolsheviks because they liked Leninist radicalism, they were disappointed that their leader was already compromising with the institutions of the Imperial order. Lenin himself backed down rather than lose his following at the Conference.⁷

Dzhughashvili was infused with the current factional mood. He was still developing as a politician. His difficulties with fellow Georgian Bolsheviks in 1904 showed that he was not lacking in strategic flexibility (and he continued to suggest compromises in policy in the years ahead). But in 1905 he lived and breathed ideas of armed insurrection and revolutionary dictatorship. He genuinely thought that the Imperial monarchy could be replaced. He therefore refused to countenance a policy of settling for a political order prescribed by Nicholas II. In fact a growing number of Bolsheviks came to recognise their mistake in not following Lenin’s advice. Lenin himself decided to put further pressure on his faction by agreeing to reunification with the Mensheviks at a Party Congress — he could not stand so many Bolsheviks purporting to be more ‘Leninist’ than himself. Such a move was also precipitated by the fact that the two factions, despite maintaining a separate existence in emigration, often co-operated in the Russian Empire.

The venue chosen for this Fourth Party Congress was Stockholm. Dzhughashvili was the only Bolshevik among sixteen delegates selected to represent Georgia. They made their way secretly via Moscow and St Petersburg to Helsinki. From there, disguised as teachers on an excursion, they took a steamer to the port of a bo. At that point they split into smaller groups.⁸ Dzhughashvili caught the steamship Wellamo and sailed to the Swedish capital. Arrangements had been made for him to stay at the Hotel Bristol with fellow Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov. Bolshevik ‘conspiratorial’ schemes had been rumbled by the Stockholm police. Scores of alien-looking newcomers without obvious commercial or professional purposes were bound to attract attention. Dzhughashvili was apprehended and interrogated by Commissioner Mogren, a constable and an interpreter called Alexei. He gave his name as Ivan Ivanovich Vissarionovich and claimed he was a political refugee and a national democrat. He reassured the police that he was not being funded by Finns (which was a worry for the Swedish security agencies in those years). He also promised to report regularly to them during his stay. He indicated that he intended to go to Berlin before returning home. Dzhughashvili, like others, was released as a harmless visitor.⁹

He then enjoyed himself with the rest of the Bolshevik factional delegation. His modest expenses were covered by the party. This was the first period he spent outside the Russian Empire. The party had fraternal relations with the Swedish social-democrats and with their help had obtained the use of the People’s House for the Congress proceedings. Little attempt was made to prevent the Okhrana from knowing about the event — and anyway the Okhrana had plenty of informers and received detailed reports on proceedings at the apex of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party regardless of precautions taken by the revolutionaries. Each faction discussed its internal affairs. There were also negotiations among the factions. The atmosphere was convivial even though there was no time for delegates to see much of the city beyond their hotels and the People’s House. For Dzhughashvili, though, this did not matter. He had read articles by the luminaries of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party — Plekhanov, Axelrod, Lenin, Martov, Bogdanov and Maslov — over many years. (Alexander Bogdanov, a philosopher and organiser, had become almost as influential among Bolsheviks as Lenin himself.) Now Dzhughashvili saw them gathered together in a single large hall. The agreed task was to sort out the problems between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks as well as to settle a common set of policies, and Dzhughashvili was able to play his part.

While advocating reunification, Lenin did not disarm himself politically. He maintained a Bolshevik Centre separate from any party body involving the Mensheviks. He also continued to sanction armed robberies by Bolsheviks as a means of raising cash for political purposes. The Fourth Congress prohibited both these things. Lenin and his associates acceded in public while ignoring the ban in reality — and Dzhughashvili, as the main organiser of the Bolshevik campaign of robbery and extortion in Georgia, was an integral figure in this systematic deceit.

It was at the Fourth Congress that Dzhughashvili — using Ivanovich as his pseudonym — advanced his claim to be taken seriously by the ascendant party leaders. He was elected to the commission which checked the mandates of delegates. He also challenged the reliability of Georgian Menshevik reports on the situation in Georgia. This stirred controversy. His own speech, though, was questioned by Mensheviks and he was asked to justify himself. He shouted back: ‘I’ll give you my answer in my own time!’¹⁰ He declared: ‘It’s no secret to anyone that two paths have been marked out in the development of Russia’s sociopolitical life: the path of qua si- reforms and the path of revolution.’ For Dzhughashvili, the Mensheviks had foolishly adopted ideas diverting them from a Marxist strategy:¹¹

On the contrary, if the class interests of the proletariat lead to its hegemony and if the proletariat must go not at the tail but at the head of the current revolution, it is self-evident that the proletariat cannot hold back either from active participation in the organisation of armed insurrection or from a seizure of power. Such is the ‘scheme’ of the Bolsheviks.

With a zealot’s confidence he freely attacked veterans of the Russian Marxist movement, including Plekhanov and Axelrod.¹²

He also participated robustly in the debate on the ‘agrarian question’, and his contributions were mentioned by other contributors.¹³ The Menshevik specialist Petr Maslov had proposed campaigning for the ‘municipalisation’ of the land as a means of appealing to the peasantry. Such a scheme would transfer arable soil to the property of district councils. Lenin by contrast had expanded his ideas by suggesting land nationalisation; he wanted the central government to own the land. Both Maslov and Lenin desired to expropriate the landed gentry without compensation and to put all fields cheaply at the disposal of the peasantry. They aimed to stipulate the terms of this tenure. But most Bolsheviks, following a certain S. A. Suvorov, regarded Lenin’s proposal as being as impractical as Maslov’s. Among them was Dzhughashvili. Stepping up to the platform, he made a case for simply letting the peasants take over the land without restrictions. This would enable the alliance of working class and peasantry to become a reality, and Marxists would succeed in competing with the Socialist-Revolutionaries for rural popular support.¹⁴ Suvorov and Dzhughashvili wanted the land to be declared ‘the common property of the entire people’. The internal Bolshevik dispute, however, did not get out of hand because the Mensheviks held a majority at the Congress and land municipalisation became official party policy.

Yet again Dzhughashvili had spoken confidently for Bolshevism without automatically consenting to everything advocated by Lenin. He acknowledged him as his faction’s leader. But his obedience was not blind: Dzhughashvili thought his direct daily experience of the Russian Empire kept him in closer touch with revolutionary possibilities than the emigres.

There was anyway a reason outside politics for Dzhughashvili to feel cheery: he had found a woman he wanted to marry. He was in his late twenties and most of his friends were already in wedlock. The woman who