Stalin: A Biography

The Imperial authorities were crushing the revolutionary movement. Peasant rebels were subjected to courts martial and executed. Industrial strikes were suppressed. Mutinies in the Imperial Army and Navy were savagely put down. Where provinces remained restless, emergency powers were granted to governors and military commanders. Revolutionary agitation was ruthlessly quelled, and the main leaders of the socialist parties — the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries — returned to Switzerland and other European countries to regroup their forces until the next great political crisis.

Nicholas II did not revoke the Basic Law he had sanctioned in early 1906. But he regretted allowing an electoral system which returned a large socialist contingent in both the First and Second State Dumas. On 3 June 1907 Pëtr Stolypin, his Prime Minister, redrafted the system so as to produce a conservative majority in the Third State Duma which would convene in November. Stolypin, however, also saw that agrarian reform was essential. Having worked as a governor in Saratov Province, he saw the village land commune as a source of chronic social instability; he introduced legislation to allow peasants to set up by themselves as independent farmers. He financed schemes to encourage migration to virgin lands in Siberia. Stolypin with the Emperor’s consent strove for a working relationship with the Third State Duma, especially with the Octobrist party led by Alexander Guchkov. He also permitted the continued existence of local trade unions and a press which was no longer as hobbled as before 1905. Out-and-out revolutionary propaganda and organisation, however, continued to be quashed. Stolypin’s rule was a forceful, intelligent attempt to conserve the Imperial order. He was detested not only by the revolutionaries but also by those at court who suspected that his collaboration with the Duma derogated from the powers of the Emperor. But Stolypin survived. The Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, which had 150,000 members in spring 1907, was quickly reduced to a handful of thousands as the state resumed control.⁶

Dzhughashvili’s was an existence populated by comrades, spies, policemen, girlfriends and peasant landlords. Everything was done on the assumption that an unwary word might result in arrest. Friendly acquaintances might turn out to be police informers. The Okhrana, despite being a small organisation, husbanded its resources well and infiltrated all the revolutionary parties. Dzhughashvili could trust only his oldest friends and his immediate family.

He had got used to fending for himself; and although he had a wife and baby son, his party duties continued to keep him away from home after his return from the Fifth Party Congress. Such domestic peace as he had was abruptly brought to an end on 22 November 1907 when Ketevan, after weeks of suffering, died. The probable cause was tuberculosis. Joseph and Ketevan had been married for less than two years. Her death shattered his poise. His schoolmate Joseph Iremashvili accompanied him at the church funeral, and recorded the scene in Tbilisi when the widower took him firmly by the arm: ‘Soso, this being softened my heart of stone; she’s passed away and with her have gone my last warm feelings for people!’ Then Dzhughashvili laid his right hand across his chest and declared: ‘In here everything is so empty, so unutterably hollow!’⁷ Iremashvili concluded:⁸

I expressed my condolences to Koba. It was as honestly and sincerely offered as I could do it, but I knew that thereafter Koba was bereft of any moral restraint and that he would from then onwards surrender himself entirely to his fantastic plans, which were dictated solely by ambition and vengeance.

Bereavement, according to Iremashvili, had the profound consequence of hardening his attitudes to the rest of humanity.⁹