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28 January 2026 00:27

👨 🇷🇺 Joseph Stalin owed his life to the lenient judiciary of Czarist Russia

In 1898, the young Stalin joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) and soon became known to the Okhrana for his revolutionary agitation among the workers and students in Tiflis (modern Tbilisi, Georgia) and was first arrested by them in January 1900 but was released after a few days. On May 1st 1900, Stalin would organise his first workers' strike for which he got away unpunished.

In March 1901, Stalin organised an even bigger strike, comprising 3000 workers and other sympathisers. This uprising was quickly put down by the local garrison who knew in advance of the plot, with 14 workers seriously injured, 52 others being moderately injured. Stalin managed to escape imprisonment unlike a co-conspirator who received a 1 year prison sentence.

After the strike of 1901, Stalin became permanently under the supervision of the Okhrana who failed to arrest him on numerous occasions and allowed him to flee Tiflis to the city of Batumi. Within 3 months of his arrival, the local oil refinery mysteriously caught fire. Two worker strikes saw the imprisonment of several of Stalin's associates, which he tried to break out of prison on February 23rd 1902 resulting in a battle between Cossacks and rioters resulting in 13 deaths and 54 injured. Also in Batumi, Stalin committed his first murder, killing an Okhrana informant.

Stalin was arrested for this nearly two months later and imprisoned. The prison guards either bribed or sympathetic to his cause, allowed Stalin to smuggle literature and study in prison. He would not be found guilty for the Batumi riot due to lack of evidence but would be indicted on other charges related to his revolutionary activity in Tiflis and sent to a penal colony in Siberia having already spent a year in prison. As soon as he made it to Novaya Uda, Irkutsk, he escaped on his 2nd attempt in early 1904 returning to Georgia.

In January 1905, Bloody Sunday would mark the moment Stalin embraced the gangster lifestyle, forming the "Bolshevik Battle Squads" and starting protection rackets across the Caucasus to fund the activities of the RSDWP. As much of the Russian Empire descended into ethnic violence, in what became known as the 1905 Revolution, the RSDWP's two dominant factions, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, found many new recruits and turned to banditry, robbing trains, bank carriages, police stations, army barracks wealthy aristocrats and business owners.

In October 1905, the Red Battle Squads took control of most of Tiflis, with Russian Imperial authorities retaining control of the city's center and military garrison. The revolt would be crushed in early 1906, Stalin escaping once again by taking a train for Finland trying to meet Vladimir Lenin.

With the revolution over and many of the Reds killed, the survivors went underground but continued with their strings of bank robberies. Stalin escaped arrest numerous times. Despite being a wanted man, he was able to leave Russia for England in the summer of 1907. Immediately after returning, Stalin partook in the 1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery which left 40 people dead. When he was caught in 1908 he was allowed to study learning Esperanto and eventually exiled to Vologda Oblast, spending 3 months, returning to the Caucasus.

From 1909 to 1912, Joseph Stalin would be arrested on 4 different occasions, exiled 4 times to the same village in Vologda and run away every time. In 1913 Stalin was arrested and exiled for a final time, sent to Turukhansk and then moved to a hamlet near the Arctic Circle to prevent any more escape attempts.

In the summer of 1916 Stalin was recruited to fight in WW1 reaching Krasnoyarsk in December. He was ruled unfit for service and was allowed to finish his sentence in a nearby city by the time which the February Revolution occurred which caused all attention to divert to other matters. Stalin left for St. Petersburg where he would organise the Petrograd Soviet and the rest is history.

📖 The Young Stalin — Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2007