Stalin: A Biography

This was happening while Stalin and his fellow exiles could have no part in the campaign waged by Lenin and his supporters against Russian participation in the war against the Central Powers. Indeed Lenin from the safety of Switzerland urged all Marxists to work for the defeat of Nicholas II’s forces. Strikes were organised in factories, especially in the capital (which was renamed Petrograd because St Petersburg was thought to sound too Germanic). Bolsheviks sent antiwar propaganda to Russian POWs in German and Austrian camps. The leading Bolshevik writers debated the political and economic motivations of the belligerents in the Petrograd press. The Okhrana was active in retaliation, and the local Bolshevik groups were repeatedly broken up; and although Lenin was indefatigable, he lost many supporters to demoralisation as well as to the prison system.

Stalin, however, did not worry about such dangers; he wanted to get back into action in Russia and was intensely frustrated by his continued exile. He wrote to Malinovski appealing for help from the party:²⁶

Greetings, friend!

I feel a bit uncomfortable writing, but needs must. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced so terrible a situation. All my money’s gone, I’ve got some sinister cough along with the worsening freezes (37 degree below), a general rundown in health; and I’ve no store of bread, sugar, meat, kerosene: all my money has gone on running expenses and clothing and footwear. Without such a store everything here is so dear: rye bread costs 4B kopeks a pound, kerosene 15 kopeks, meat 18 kopeks, sugar 25 kopeks. I need milk, I need firewood, but… money, I haven’t got money, friend. I don’t know how I’ll get through the winter in such a condition… I don’t have wealthy relatives or acquaintances and have absolutely no one to turn to, so I’m appealing to you, and not only to you but also to Petrovski and to Badaev.

He requested that these Bolshevik Duma deputies — Malinovski, Petrovski and Badaev — should send money from the ‘fund of the repressed’ which they and the Menshevik deputies maintained. Perhaps they could send him sixty rubles?

Stalin expressed his hope that Nikolai Chkheidze — leader of the Menshevik Duma deputies — might look kindly on him as a fellow Georgian.²⁷ This was a message of despair: no one was more hated by the Georgian Mensheviks than Stalin. Meanwhile he was sorting out his thoughts in Siberia. He read voraciously; there was no time to feel sad about his fate.²⁸ Co-opted to the Central Committee in 1912, he continued to receive financial assistance by bank transfers from Petrograd. Despite the Okhrana’s persecuting attentiveness, the Bolshevik faction did not cease to tend to Stalin, Sverdlov and others.²⁹ The local police oversaw such transactions. The regularity of the transfers, being no secret to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, naturally gave rise to the suspicion that Stalin was secretly planning an escape. He would need to bribe policemen and pay for rail tickets if this was to be successful.

If ever he made it back to Petrograd, he knew he could count on help from Sergei and Olga Alliluev (whose youngest daughter Nadya was to become his second wife after the October Revolution). He wrote affectionately to Olga on 25 November 1915:³⁰