Stalin: A Biography

was leaner than for many years; and the long nights of the deep north in winter had given his complexion a distinct pallor.³ But he had enjoyed himself. The party had stopped at many small hamlets. Stalin had sung to his heart’s content and, despite the rules, delivered political speeches at open meetings.⁴

His mood sank on his arrival in Krasnoyarsk as he faced the possibility of conscription. He had just one option left. This was to ask permission from his guard Kravchenko to spend a week there before moving on to the enlistment headquarters.⁵ The request was granted. (Did he bribe Kravchenko?) Yet he worried in vain. Army doctors rejected him for military service because of his damaged right arm. He never carried a rifle for Tsar and Motherland.

Since his term of exile was due to end in mid-1917 he was allowed to stay in Achinsk with other revolutionaries rejected for military service. These included his friend Lev Kamenev. Stalin went frequently to Kamenev’s rented house. The Bolshevik Anatoli Baikalov later gave an unappealing picture of the scene. Stalin had his pipe perpetually on the go. He stuffed it with makhorka, the pungent tobacco favoured by workers and peasants. The smoke and smell annoyed Kamenev’s wife Olga. According to Baikalov, ‘she sneezed, coughed, groaned, implored’ Stalin to put out his pipe, but he ignored her. This was typical behaviour. He turned curmudgeonly conduct into an art form when women made unwelcome demands. He expected admiration and compliance from them — and then he could be charming. But no one in a skirt, not even pretty Olga, was going to order him around.⁶ It may not have helped that Olga was intelligent and articulate and that she was the sister of Trotski, sworn enemy of the Bolsheviks. The end of his isolation in Kureika had not improved his mood or his manners; his uncouthness increased in direct proportion to the lowering of the appreciative respect he craved.

His acquaintances found little to appreciate. Stalin was taciturn and morose. Although he listened intently, he barely contributed to discussions on the war and international relations. Instead Baikalov was attracted to Kamenev’s lively presence and grasp of the arguments;⁷ and writing over two decades later, Baikalov recalled that Kamenev dismissed Stalin’s rare comments ‘with brief, almost contemptuous remarks’.⁸

The Kamenevs and Baikalov had prejudices that disabled them from appreciating that Stalin was no ignoramus. They were fluent conversationalists. They came from well-to-do families in which such exchanges were normal: Kamenev’s father was an engineer and businessman, Baikalov’s the owner of a gold mine. Both Kamenev and Baikalov had been educated in gimnazias.⁹ They were culturally confident in public whereas Stalin still spoke haltingly in Russian,¹⁰ and four years among the Ostyaks had done nothing to enhance his linguistic facility. Baikalov deplored Stalin’s failure to be witty. (Intellectuals were meant to be scintillating conversationalists.) Kamenev and Baikalov also underestimated the virtues of silence. When listening to Kamenev, Stalin felt he was learning. All his life he devoted himself to accumulating knowledge. His attentiveness, memory and analytical skill were razor-sharp even if he did not brag about this to others; and although his Marxism lacked the range of other Bolshevik leaders, he was working to extend himself. At any rate when Stalin was among individuals who encouraged him to relax, he was a delightful purveyor of jokes and mimicry. He also understood Russian perfectly on the page and was an excellent editor of Russian-language manuscripts.¹¹ He was undervalued, and quietly he resented the fact.¹²

This would not have mattered in the annals of Russian and global history if a second event had not spun him around in the winter of 1916–17. The cause was political tumult in Petrograd. Nicholas II spent an unhappy Christmas. The one bright spot was Brusilov’s December 1916 offensive, which pushed the Germans back several miles. It was a long-overdue Russian military success. But the rest of the news was grim. Leaders of the conservative and liberal parties in the Fourth State Duma murmured ever more openly about the need for a change of regime if the armed forces were ever to defeat the Central Powers. One of them, Alexander Guchkov, sounded out the generals for a coup d’etat. The dynasty’s reputation was in tatters. Rasputin, the ‘holy man’ who had helped to alleviate the effects of the haemophilia of the heir to the throne Alexei, had been assassinated in December but the stories about him — his gambling, philandering, blaspheming and political venality — continued to cling to Nicholas and Empress Alexandra. In fact it is doubtful that the liberals or conservatives could have done much better. The prolongation of the war put immense and inevitable strain on transport and administration; it also made unavoidable the printing of money to finance the war effort, and this was bound to cause inflation. Nicholas II dispersed the Duma on 26 February 1917. He was determined to keep hold of the situation.

This might have worked if popular opinion had not been so hostile to the Romanovs. Peasants were complaining about fixed grain prices and about the deficit in industrial goods as the result of the priority given to the production of armaments and military equipment. Garrison soldiers disliked the possibility that they might be mobilised to the front. Workers were angry about the deterioration of living and working conditions. Even if they had gained higher wages, the effect was ruined by the devalued currency. Factory strikes occurred in December 1916 and were put down with severity. Yet the grievances remained.

Unbeknown to the revolutionaries in Achinsk, industrial conflict recurred in Petrograd in the last week of February 1917. Trouble erupted among female textile workers on International Women’s Day and quickly spread to the workforces in the Putilov armaments plant. The dispatch of garrison troops to control the crowds was counterproductive because soldiers took the side of the strikers and either joined them or handed over their weapons. Order collapsed in the capital. Police fled, generals panicked. The politicians in the dispersed Fourth State Duma sensed that an opportunity to settle accounts with the Romanov monarchy had at last arrived, but lacked the nerve to take action. Even the revolutionary parties were in a quandary. The suppression of the December strikes made them pause for thought. The clandestine networks of Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had not yet been repaired and morale was still at a low ebb. But the fervour of the strikers was unquenchable, and soon there were demands for the formation of a Petrograd Soviet.

Nicholas II was late in comprehending the scale of the opposition. Hurrying back from Mogilev towards Petrograd, he was told the game was already up. He took the advice of the Supreme Command; he consulted the speaker of the dispersed State Duma, Mikhail Rodzyanko. At first he wanted to preserve the dynasty by transferring the throne to his haemophiliac son Alexei. No one at court thought this sensible. Then he approached his brother Grand Duke Mikhail, but Mikhail refused the offer. Nicholas II succumbed and on 2 March abdicated to public delight across the empire. Euphoric crowds took to the streets of every town and city.

News travelled to Siberia along the telegraph lines faster than newspapers could be carried by rail. The Bolshevik group in Achinsk was jubilant. Nicholas the Bloody had been overthrown. The dynasty was at an end. The revolutionaries in the town gathered together regardless of party affiliation just after Grand Duke Mikhail’s refusal was made known. A spirited discussion followed. Feeling the need to contribute actively to the political outcome, many exiles signed a telegram congratulating the Grand Duke on his civic gesture. Stalin later claimed that his friend Kamenev appended his signature. Kamenev vehemently rejected the accusation; and even Stalin admitted that Kamenev had immediately regretted his action. In March 1917, in any case, Kamenev and Stalin agreed on their strategic objectives. A Provisional Government was formed on 3 March with the sanction of the Menshevik-led Petrograd Soviet. The Prime Minister would be the liberal Prince Georgi Lvov and liberals, especially the Constitutional-Democrats (or Kadets), dominated the cabinet. Only one socialist, the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerenski, became a minister. The original Bolshevik scheme for the establishment of a ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship’ had been thwarted, and Kamenev and Stalin were willing — like most Mensheviks, most Socialist-Revolutionaries and many Bolsheviks — to give the Provisional Government their support conditional on ministers promulgating the basic civil freedoms and limiting themselves to a defensive war against the Central Powers.

As quickly as they could get tickets, the Bolsheviks in Achinsk made their way from Krasnoyarsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow and then onwards to Petrograd. Chief among them were Kamenev, Stalin and former Duma deputy Matvei Muranov. The experience was very different from the earlier trip each had made towards their place of exile. They travelled as normal passengers rather than in the arrest wagon. Because of their recent detention near the main line they were going to reach Petrograd before most other leading exiles, not to mention the emigres. Kamenev and Stalin in particular were committed allies; they agreed on policy, and Stalin was not keen to resurrect the old business of Kamenev’s behaviour at the 1915 trial. Their intention was to seize control of the Bolshevik Central Committee in the capital. They aimed to make up for years lost in Siberian detention.

On 12 March 1917 the three of them stepped off the train at the Nicholas Station in east-central Petrograd. Light snow was falling, but Stalin and his companions hardly noticed. Kureika had accustomed them to a lot worse.