In 1917, Stalin had known Lenin for twelve years and many of the others for over twenty. So this is not just a biography but the chronicle of their milieu, a pre-history of the USSR itself, a study of the subterranean worm and the silent chrysalis before it hatched the steel-winged butterfly.1
List of Characters
FAMILY
Vissarion “Beso” Djugashvili, cobbler, father
Ekaterina “Keke” Geladze Djugashvili, mother
STALIN, Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, “Soso,” “Koba”
GORI
Yakov “Koba” Egnatashvili, Gori wrestling champion, merchant, possible father
Ivan “Vaso” Egnatashvili, son of Yakov, lifelong friend of Stalin
Alexander “Sasha” Egnatashvili, son of Yakov, courtier of Stalin, “the Rabbit”
Damian Davrichewy, police officer of Gori and possible father
Josef Davrichewy, son of Damian, Stalin’s childhood friend, political bank robber, and later pilot, spy and memoirist in France
Josef Iremashvili, childhood friend in Gori and Tiflis Seminary, Menshevik memoirist
Father Christopher Charkviani, Gori priest, protector and possible father, and his son, Kote Charkviani
Peter “Peta” Kapanadze, Gori and Tiflis Seminary, priest and lifelong friend
Giorgi Elisabedashvili, Gori friend, Bolshevik
Dato Gasitashvili, Beso’s cobbling apprentice
THE SCHOOLMASTERS
Simon Gogchilidze, Stalin’s singing teacher and patron at the Gori Church School
Prince David Abashidze, Father Dmitri, “Black Spot,” priestly pedant at the Tiflis Seminary and Stalin’s hated persecutor
THE GIRLS
Natalia “Natasha” Kirtava, landlady and girlfriend in Batumi
Alvasi Talakvadze, protégée and girlfriend in Baku
Ludmilla Stal, Bolshevik activist and girlfriend in Baku and St. Petersburg
Stefania Petrovskaya, Odessan noblewoman, exile, mistress and fiancée in Solvychegodsk and Baku
Pelageya “Polia” Onufrieva, “Glamourpuss,” schoolgirl mistress in Vologda
Serafima Khoroshenina, mistress and partner in Solvychegodsk
Maria Kuzakova, landlady and mistress in Solvychegodsk, mother of Constantine
Tatiana “Tania” Slavatinskaya, married Bolshevik and mistress
Valentina Lobova, Bolshevik fixer and probable mistress
Lidia Pereprygina, thirteen-year-old orphan seduced by Stalin in Turukhansk and mother of two children by him, fiancée
COMRADES, ENEMIES AND RIVALS—TIFLIS AND BAKU
Lado Ketskhoveli, Gori priest’s son, Stalin’s Bolshevik mentor and hero
Prince Alexander “Sasha”Tsulukidze, rich aristocrat, Stalin’s Bolshevik mentor and hero
Mikha Tskhakaya, founder of Georgian SDs (Social-Democrats), early Bolshevik, Stalin’s patron
Philip Makharadze, Bolshevik and Stalin’s sometime ally
Budu “the Barrel” Mdivani, actor and Bolshevik terrorist, Stalin’s ally
Abel Yenukidze, early Bolshevik, friend of Alliluyevs, Svanidzes and Stalin
Silibistro “Silva” Jibladze, ex-seminarist, Menshevik firebrand
Lev Rosenblum, “Kamenev,” well-off Tiflis engineer’s son, moderate Bolshevik
Mikhail “Misha” Kalinin, peasant, butler, early Bolshevik in Tiflis
Suren Spandarian, son of well-off Armenian editor, Bolshevik, womanizer, Stalin’s best friend
Stepan Shaumian, well-off Armenian Bolshevik, Stalin’s ally and rival
Grigory “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze, poor nobleman, nurse, Bolshevik hard man, Stalin’s longtime ally
Sergo Kavtaradze, young henchman of Stalin in western Georgia, Baku, St. Petersburg
WIVES AND IN-LAWS
Alexander “Alyosha” Svanidze, seminarist, Stalin friend, early Bolshevik and later brother-in-law
Alexandra “Sashiko” Svanidze, sister of above and Stalin friend
Mikheil Monoselidze, Sashiko’s husband and Bolshevik ally of Stalin
Maria “Mariko” Svanidze, sister of Sashiko and Alyosha
Ekaterina “Kato” Svanidze Djugashvili, youngest of family, Stalin’s first wife and mother of
Yakov “Yasha” or “Laddie” Djugashvili, Stalin’s son
Sergei Alliluyev, railway and electrical manager, early Bolshevik, Stalin ally in Tiflis, Baku and St. Petersburg
Olga Alliluyeva, wife of Sergei, early Stalin friend, possibly mistress, later mother-in-law
Pavel Alliluyev, son of Olga
Anna Alliluyeva, daughter of Olga
Fyodor “Fedya” Alliluyev, son of Olga
Nadezhda “Nadya” Alliluyeva, daughter of Sergei and Olga, Stalin’s second wife
GANGSTERS, MASTERMINDS AND FIXERS
Kamo, Simon “Senko”Ter-Petrossian, Stalin’s friend, protégé, then bank robber and hitman
Kote Tsintsadze, Stalin’s hitman and brigand in western Georgia and later bank-robbery chief
Leonid Krasin, Lenin’s master of bomb-making, money-laundering, bank robberies and elite contacts, later fell out with Lenin
Meyer Wallach, “Maxim Litvinov,” Bolshevik arms-dealer and money-launderer
Andrei Vyshinsky, well-off Odessa pharmacist’s son, brought up in Baku, Stalin’s enforcer and later Menshevik
THE TITAN OF MARXISM
Georgi Plekhanov, father of Russian Social-Democracy
THE BOLSHEVIKS
Vladimir Illich Ulyanov, “Lenin,” or “Illich” to his intimates, Russian SD leader and founder of Bolsheviks
Nadezhda Krupskaya, his wife and assistant
Grigory Radomyslsky, “Zinoviev,” Jewish milkman’s son, Lenin’s sidekick in Cracow, then ally of Kamenev
Roman Malinovsky, burglar, rapist and Okhrana spy, Bolshevik leader in the Imperial Duma
Yakov Sverdlov, Jewish Bolshevik leader and Stalin’s roommate in exile
Lev Bronstein, “Trotsky,” leader, orator and writer, independent Marxist, Menshevik Chairman of the Petersburg Soviet in 1905, joined Bolsheviks in 1917
Felix Dzerzhinsky, Polish nobleman, veteran revolutionary, joined Bolsheviks in 1917
Elena Stasova, “Absolute” and “Zelma,” noblewoman and Bolshevik activist
Klimenti Voroshilov, Lugansk lathe-turner, Bolshevik friend of Stalin, roommate in Stockholm
Vyacheslav Scriabin, “Molotov,” young Bolshevik and founder with Stalin of Pravda
THE MENSHEVIKS
Yuli Tsederbaum, “Martov,” Lenin’s friend then bitter enemy, founder of Mensheviks
Noe Jordania, founder of Georgian Social-Democracy and leader of Georgian Mensheviks
Nikolai “Karlo” Chkheidze, moderate Menshevik in Batumi and later in St. Petersburg
Isidore Ramishvili, Menshevik enemy of Stalin
Said Devdariani, Seminary friend then political enemy and Menshevik
Noe Ramishvili, tough Menshevik enemy of Stalin
Minadora Ordzhonikidze Toroshelidze, Menshevik friend of Stalin and wife of Bolshevik ally Malakia Toroshelidze
David Sagirashvili, Georgian Menshevik and memoirist
Grigol Uratadze, Georgian Menshevik and memoirist
Razhden Arsenidze, Georgian Menshevik and memoirist
Khariton Chavichvili, Menshevik memoirist
Note
STALIN
Stalin did not start to use his renowned name until 1912: it only became his surname after October 1917. His real name was Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili. His mother, friends and comrades called him “Soso” even after 1917. He published poems as “Soselo.” He increasingly called himself “Koba,” but he used many names in the course of his secret life.
For the sake of clarity, “Stalin” and “Soso” are used throughout the book.
NAMES AND TRANSLITERATIONS
I have followed the same principles as I did in my other books on Russia. Wherever possible, I have tried to use the most recognizabl
e, best-known and most easily transliterated versions of the Georgian and Russian names. Of course, this leads to many inconsistencies—for example, I call the Georgian Menshevik leader Noe Jordania, not Zhordania, and use Jibladze, not Djibladze, yet I feel I must spell Stalin’s real name Djugashvili because it is so well known by that spelling. I use the French spellings of Davrichewy and Chavichvili (instead of Davrishashvili and Shavishvili) because their memoirs are published under these names. I apologize to the many linguists who may be appalled by this.
DATES
Dates are given in the Old Style Julian Calendar, used in Russia, which ran thirteen days behind the New Style Gregorian Calendar used in the West. When describing events in the West, both dates are given. The Soviet government switched to the New Style Calendar at midnight on 31 January 1918 with the next day declared 14 February.
MONEY
In early-twentieth-century rates, 10 roubles = £1. The simplest way to convert this into today’s money is to multiply by five to get pounds sterling and by ten to get U.S. dollars. A couple of examples: as a labourer in the Rothschild refineries in Batumi, young Stalin received 1.70 roubles per day, or 620 per annum ($6,000 or £3,000 per annum today). Tsar Nicholas II paid himself a personal allowance of 250,000 roubles a year while the bodyguard of the Tsarevich Alexei was paid a salary of 120 roubles a year ($1,200 or £600 per annum today). Yet these numbers are meaningless: the figures give little idea of real buying power and value. For example, Nicholas II was probably the richest man in the world, certainly in Russia. Yet his entire personal wealth of land, jewels, palaces, art and mineral deposits were calculated in 1917 as being worth 14 million roubles which, transferred into today’s money, is a mere $140 million or £70 million—clearly an absurdly small figure.
TITLES
There are not always equivalents of Tsarist titles and ranks but I have tried to use as close an equivalent as possible. For the Russian autocrats, I use “Tsar” and “Emperor” interchangeably. Tsar Peter the Great crowned himself “Emperor” in 1721. The title of the ruler of the Caucasus varied. Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaievich, son and brother of emperors, was the viceroy. His successor, Prince Grigory Golitsyn, in office during Stalin’s seminary days, had the lesser rank of governor-general. His successor Count Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov would again be viceroy in 1905–16.
DISTANCES/WEIGHTS
10 versts = 6.63 miles
1 pud = 36 lb.
Prologue
The Bank Robbery
At 10:30 a.m. On the sultry morning of Wednesday, 26 June 1907, in the seething central square of Tiflis, a dashing moustachioed cavalry captain in boots and jodhpurs, wielding a big Circassian sabre, performed tricks on horseback, joking with two pretty, well-dressed Georgian girls who twirled gaudy parasols—while fingering Mauser pistols hidden in their dresses.
Raffish young men in bright peasant blouses and wide sailor-style trousers waited on the street corners, cradling secreted revolvers and grenades. At the louche Tilipuchuri Tavern on the square, a crew of heavily armed gangsters took over the cellar bar, gaily inviting passers-by to join them for drinks. All of them were waiting to carry out the first exploit by Josef Djugashvili, aged twenty-nine, later known as Stalin, to win the attention of the world.1
Few outside the gang knew of the plan that day for a criminal-terrorist “spectacular,” but Stalin had worked on it for months. One man who did know the broad plan was Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party,* hiding in a villa in Kuokola, Finland, far to the north. Days earlier, in Berlin, and then in London, Lenin had secretly met with Stalin to order the big heist, even though their Social-Democratic Party had just strictly banned all “expropriations,” the euphemism for bank robberies. But Stalin’s operations, heists and killings, always conducted with meticulous attention to detail and secrecy, had made him the “main financier of the Bolshevik Centre.”2
The events that day would make headlines all over the globe, literally shake Tiflis to its foundations, and further shatter the fragmented Social-Democrats into warring factions: that day would both make Stalin’s career and almost ruin it—a watershed in his life.
In Yerevan Square, the twenty brigands who formed the core of Stalin’s gang, known as “the Outfit,” took up positions as their lookouts peered down Golovinsky Prospect, Tiflis’s elegant main street, past the white Italianate splendour of the Viceroy’s Palace. They awaited the clatter of a stagecoach and its squadron of galloping Cossacks. The army captain with the Circassian sabre caracoled on his horse before dismounting to stroll the fashionable boulevard.
Every street corner was guarded by a Cossack or policeman: the authorities were ready. Something had been expected since January. The informers and agents of the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, and his uniformed political police, the Gendarmes, delivered copious reports about the clandestine plots and feuds of the gangs of revolutionaries and criminals. In the misty twilight of this underground, the worlds of bandit and terrorist had merged and it was hard to tell tricks from truth. But there had been “chatter” about a “spectacular”—as today’s intelligence experts would put it—for months.
On that dazzling steamy morning, the Oriental colour of Tiflis (now Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia) hardly seemed to belong to the same world as the Tsar’s capital, St. Petersburg, a thousand miles away. The older streets, without running water or electricity, wound up the slopes of Mtatsminda, Holy Mountain, until they were impossibly steep, full of crookedly picturesque houses weighed down with balconies, entwined with old vines. Tiflis was a big village where everyone knew everyone else.
Just behind the military headquarters, on genteel Freilinskaya Street, a stone’s throw from the square, lived Stalin’s wife, a pretty young Georgian dressmaker named Kato Svanidze, and their newborn son, Yakov. Theirs was a true love match: despite his black moods, Stalin was devoted to Kato, who admired and shared his revolutionary fervour. As she sunned herself and the baby on her balcony, her husband was about to give her, and Tiflis itself, an unholy shock.
This intimate city was the capital of the Caucasus, the Tsar’s wild, mountainous viceroyalty between the Black and the Caspian Seas, a turbulent region of fierce and feuding peoples. Golovinsky Prospect seemed Parisian in its elegance. White neo-classical theatres, a Moorish-style opera house, grand hotels and the palaces of Georgian princes and Armenian oil barons lined the street, but, as one passed the military headquarters, Yerevan Square opened up into an Asiatic potpourri.
Exotically dressed hawkers and stalls offered spicy Georgian lobio beans and hot khachapuri cheesecake. Water-carriers, street-traders, pickpockets and porters delivered to or stole from the Armenian and Persian Bazaars, the alleyways of which more resembled a Levantine souk than a European city. Caravans of camels and donkeys, loaded with silks and spices from Persia and Turkestan, fruit and wineskins from the lush Georgian countryside, ambled through the gates of the Caravanserai. Its young waiters and errand boys served its clientele of guests and diners, carrying in the bags, unharnessing the camels—and watching the square. Now we know from the newly opened Georgian archives that Stalin, Fagin-like, used the Caravanserai boys as a prepubescent revolutionary street-intelligence and courier service. Meanwhile in one of the Caravanserai’s cavernous backrooms, the chief gangsters gave their gunmen a pep talk, rehearsing the plan one last time. Stalin himself was there that morning.
The two pretty teenage girls with twirling umbrellas and loaded revolvers, Patsia Goldava and Anneta Sulakvelidze, “brown-haired, svelte, with black eyes that expressed youth,” casually sashayed across the square to stand outside the military headquarters, where they flirted with Russian officers, Gendarmes in smart blue uniforms, and bowlegged Cossacks.
Tiflis was—and still is—a languid town of strollers and boulevardiers who frequently stop to drink wine at the many open-air taverns: if the showy, excitable Georgians resemble any other European people, it is the Italians. Georgians and other Caucasian me
n, in traditional chokha—their skirted long coats lined down the chest with bullet pouches—swaggered down the streets, singing loudly. Georgian women in black head scarves, and the wives of Russian officers in European fashions, promenaded through the gates of the Pushkin Gardens, buying ices and sherbet along side Persians and Armenians, Chechens, Abkhaz and Mountain Jews, in a fancy-dress jamboree of hats and costumes.
Gangs of street urchins—kintos—furtively scanned the crowds for scams. Teenage trainee priests, in long white surplices, were escorted by their berobed bearded priest-teachers from the pillared white seminary across the street, where Stalin had almost qualified as a priest nine years earlier. This un-Slavic, un-Russian and ferociously Caucasian kaleidoscope of East and West was the world that nurtured Stalin.
Checking the time, the girls Anneta and Patsia parted, taking up new positions on either side of the square. On Palace Street, the dubious clientele of the notorious Tilipuchuri Tavern—princes, pimps, informers and pickpockets—were already drinking Georgian wine and Armenian brandy, not far from the plutocratic grandeur of Prince Sumbatov’s palace.
Just then David Sagirashvili, another revolutionary who knew Stalin and some of the gangsters, visited a friend who owned a shop above the tavern and was invited in by the cheerful brigand at the doorway, Bachua Kupriashvili, who “immediately offered me a chair and a glass of red wine, according to the Georgian custom.” David drank the wine and was about to leave when the gunman suggested “with exquisite politeness” that he stay inside and “sample more snacks and wine.” David realized that “they were letting people into the restaurant but would not let them out. Armed individuals stood at the door.”
Young Stalin Page 2
