Stalin: A Biography

Although the conditions of detention were bad under the Romanovs, they were nowhere near as oppressive as Stalin made out in the 1930s. The revolutionaries could keep up their spirits through social gatherings. Someone even composed a ‘Turukhansk March’. Its words were more stirring than poetic and the refrain went as follows:⁹

Boldly, brothers, boldly
Let’s meet the evil storm
With our laughter
And a song that’s brave!

The ‘evil storm’ referred less to the local weather than to the oppressive tsarist regime. Every exiled militant, while yearning to leave Siberia and overthrow the Romanovs, easily found rooms to rent. Each had a stipend of fifteen rubles a month. This was enough to cover rent, which cost about two rubles, and basic food requirements.¹⁰ But game was plentiful and the revolutionaries bought the equipment to fish and trap. They could also work for local peasants.¹¹ Many exiles had family members in Russia who sent money; others — one of whom was Stalin — relied predominantly on being subsidised by their party. Turukhansk did not have the harshest penal regime, but it was not an easy one either.

Central Committee member Sverdlov welcomed Stalin. They knew and disliked each other from their shared exile in Narym District in 1912. Stalin was as self-absorbed as before and shut himself away from everyone. He ignored the custom of giving a detailed report on general politics and the prospects of revolution on the basis of recent direct experience in Russia. The other exiled Bolsheviks were deprived of up-to-date information which only he could supply.

Within months of Stalin’s arrival, both Stalin and Sverdlov were ordered further north. The new governor of Yenisei Province in mid-March 1914 transferred his two Bolsheviks to a still more distant place. He had been alerted to their plans to escape.¹² Stalin had tried to allay suspicion by writing to Malinovski on 10 April 1914:¹³

Apparently someone or other is spreading the rumour that I won’t stay in exile till the end of my sentence. Rubbish! I inform you and swear like a dog that I’ll remain in exile till the end of the sentence (till 1917). Sometimes I’ve thought of leaving but now I’ve rejected the idea, rejected it definitively. There are many reasons and, if you like, I’ll write about them in detail some time.

In the same letter he offered to supply articles to Pravda on ‘The Foundations of Marxism’ and ‘The Organisational Side of the National Question’.¹⁴ But the Okhrana was not fooled. Lenin wanted Stalin and Sverdlov to be helped to leave Siberia, and quantities of money had been arriving for them at Monastyrskoe from party comrades in Russia.¹⁵

Stalin and Sverdlov would have been better served if the Central Committee had sent money not directly to them but to intermediaries. In any case the Central Committee was penetrated by spies. Okhrana agent Malinovski, with whom Stalin corresponded, told the Department of Police in St Petersburg in November 1913 about the intention to organise an escape. Stalin and Sverdlov were important detainees. By administrative order they were to be moved to the bleak hamlet of Kureika.¹⁶ There they would be the sole convicts and most of the residents would be Ostyaks.

Both were depressed. Whatever chance they had of making it up-river to Krasnoyarsk would all but disappear in Kureika. Sverdlov had particular cause to feel downcast as he explained in a letter to his sister Sarra:¹⁷

Joseph Dzhughashvili and I are being transferred a hundred kilometres to the north, eighty kilometres within the Arctic Circle. There will be only the two of us at the spot, and we’ll have two guards. They have reinforced the surveillance and cut us off from the post. The post comes once a month with a courier who is often late. In practice there are no more than eight or nine deliveries a year.