Stalin: A Biography

day by the water along with Ostyaks from his village and had a large haul of sturgeon and sea- salmon.³⁵ Foolishly he went off home before the others. The storm — known in Siberia as a purga — blew up suddenly. It was too late to turn back and it was a long way in nearly blinding conditions to Kureika. If he had been sensible, he would have abandoned the fish. But the fish were his food for the month; and anyway Stalin was stubborn. He trudged through the heavy snow, head down into the bitter wind. By the light of a new moon he thought he glimpsed shadowy figures near by; he called out to them, relying on the local tradition of helping strangers in a mess. But the figures moved on. They were in fact the villagers with their dogs whom he had left earlier; and when they saw the snow-covered, gesticulating form, they credulously assumed it was a water demon. Stalin himself was not sure that the figures had been human beings and did not try to catch up with them.³⁶

He trudged on by himself. There was a distinct possibility he would not be able to find the village even if he survived the cold. But he got there. Unfortunately he was still an apparition in white, from his bearded face down to his boots. Dragging himself to the nearest hut, he was a bizarre sight. ‘Osip,’ one of the villagers cried, pressing himself against the wall in fright, ‘is that you?’ Stalin replied: ‘Of course it’s me. And it’s not a wood spirit!’³⁷ For millions of peasants in the Russian Empire retained the ancient pagan superstitions even if they belonged to the Orthodox Church or some other Christian denomination. Belief in spirits, devils and witches was widespread, and in eastern Siberia the Church had made little impact upon popular notions. Stalin had yet again been reminded that he lived in a society where the ideas of the Enlightenment were as yet thinly spread. He thawed out; he ate and drank. Then he took to his bed and slept for eighteen hours.³⁸

He told another of his stories many years later. At a 1935 Kremlin reception he narrated how he was sitting on the river bank as men of the village went off fishing at the start of the spring floods on the River Yenisei. When they returned, they were one man short. They did not draw attention to this; but Stalin questioned them and was told the missing man had drowned. What struck Stalin, he said, was how little they thought about the death. If he had not mentioned the subject, they would have gone back to their huts without comment. Stalin pondered the event. He felt sure that if a cow had been sick, they would have gone out and tried to save it. But the loss of a man for them was a ‘triviality’. The point was, he said, that it was easy to make a man whereas animals were a more complex task.³⁹ This was nonsense. Perhaps Stalin thought so too; but the fact that he repeated it about two decades later meant that he either believed it or had invented it and decided it suited his current political interest: in the mid-1930s he wished to stress the importance of conserving Bolshevik cadres.⁴⁰

Stalin remembered his time in exile with fondness. Despite what he claimed in his begging letters to party comrades, he was generally healthy. He was treated as a respected visiting member of a community. For the first time he was living closely for a lengthy period with non-Georgians and non-intellectuals. Most were Ostyaks, but a number were Russians. This experience would serve him well when, years later, he became their political overlord. For the rest of his life he talked about his days in Siberia, the fishing, the climate, the conversations and the people. These experiences, even though he was there against his will, uplifted him. He enjoyed the wonder and admiration shown him by the Kureika villagers. They knew he was a ‘southerner’, but had no idea where Georgia was. They saw he loved books: in a culture of oral tradition this in itself marked him off as a man apart. Even his pipe was an object of awe. Sitting in the hut in the evening, he would pass it round for others to take a puff. Visitors to the villagers popped round specifically to try out this locally unusual mode of smoking. Having chatted with the renowned revolutionary in their midst, they departed happy.⁴¹

Obviously contact with the central leadership of the Bolshevik faction grew ever trickier in the Great War. In 1915 Stalin and Suren Spandaryan, a fellow Central Committee member, wrote to Lenin. Stalin’s part of the letter went as follows:⁴²

My greetings to you, dear Vladimir Ilich, the very warmest greetings! Greetings to Zinoviev, greetings to Nadezhda Konstantinovna! How are things, how is your health? I live as previously, I munch my bread and am getting through half the sentence. It’s boring but what can be done about it? And how are things with you? You must be having a gayer time… I recently read Kropotkin’s articles — the old scoundrel has gone completely off his head. I’ve also read a little article by Plekhanov in Rech — what an incorrigible, blabbing old woman! Eh!… And the Liquidators with their [Duma] deputy-agents of the Free Economic Society? There’s no one to give them a beating, the Devil knows! Surely they won’t remain unpunished like this?! Cheer us up and inform us that soon there’ll be an organ to give them a right good thrashing straight in their gobs — and without respite.

This was the rant of a man wanting to show off his militant style to his leader. The references to beating were repetitious. The frustrations of exile leaped off the page. Stalin hoped to impress on Lenin that, when his term of exile ended, he could be a useful right-hand man for him in the Russian political underground; but he did not miss the opportunity to remind Lenin how different their circumstances were.

Exile had its bright moments for Stalin, but generally it brought the worst out of him. He was an emotionally needy person: people around him were also liable to be subjected to the lash of his tongue or simply to daily insensitivity and egotism. He belonged to a revolutionary party which made a virtue of placing individual satisfaction below the needs of the collective good. It was a party which also cherished comradely good humour. Stalin was not really unsociable. He had friends. He liked a joke and was an amusing mimic. But his friends had to acknowledge his primacy. Stalin had a deep need to dominate. This was why his fellow exiles found him exasperating. At close quarters he was painful to deal with; the Siberian sojourn concentrated everyone’s attention on the uncongenial sides of his character which in other circumstances they overlooked because of the perceived benefits he brought to the cause of Revolution.

11. RETURN TO PETROGRAD

The kaleidoscope of Stalin’s life was given two abrupt twists in the winter of 1916–17. The first was an unpleasant experience, the second brought delight. In December, as the Imperial Army replenished itself with fresh levies, the government threw the net of conscription wider. Ministers decided to use even political convicts. This was a difficult step. Such people had been exempted from call-up in the war on the ground that they would conduct hostile propaganda among the troops. Compulsory enlistment had always been problematic. In 1915 the conscription of Moslems had touched off an uprising in Russian central Asia. Meanwhile the fighting against the Central Powers had settled down to a fairly static contest and the losses were enormous on both sides of the trenches. Yet morale in the Imperial Army remained robust. The early bottlenecks in military production, transport and supply had been unblocked. The Supreme Command was planning to innovate in a bid to organise a successful offensive, and General Brusilov was being given his chance to prove himself. There was no shortage of food or equipment at the front. But more men were needed. Stalin was among those revolutionaries ordered to submit himself for a medical check with a view to his inclusion in the army of Nicholas II.

They had to travel to Achinsk. This was a town lying a mile north of the Trans-Siberian Railway and a hundred miles to the west of Krasnoyarsk. Stalin, Kamenev and other Bolsheviks — as well as scores of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Anarchists in exile in Turukhansk District — had to make the arduous journey up the Yenisei to Krasnoyarsk in north Siberia’s coldest months. It would take weeks. None of the selected men supported the Imperial government’s military objectives (although many Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries would have readily supported a democratic post-Romanov government in defending the country).¹

Stalin said his goodbyes in Kureika and set off for Monastyrskoe. There is no sign that he gave any thought to the emotional wreckage he left behind in the Pereprygin family. In Monastyrskoe he joined a group of fellow potential conscripts. The police chief lined them up on the street, and they were cheered by comrades who knew they might never see them again. Steamships could not operate in the winter and the trip up the Yenisei would be made by dog-drawn sleighs from village to village. Before the departure someone ran over to them. This was the deputy accountant in the Revillion company office who had fetched a mandolin and a guitar which the Bolsheviks had forgotten to take.² Stalin loved to sing. The trip was not going to be without recreation. Yet the temperature was always several degrees below zero and the wind cut into the faces of the travellers. The long journey from Kureika to Achinsk was one of the most exhausting that Stalin ever made. On reaching Achinsk, he