Stalin: A Biography

The government was watching with concern as the slogans of Bolshevism attracted discontented factory workers, and Bolsheviks like Stalin were a threat to the Imperial order as the industrial strike movement expanded. Stalin’s convict record was also noted. The Minister of Internal Affairs had no reason to show indulgence to this leading revolutionary who had escaped several times from previous places of exile. He and his comrades were sent to Turukhansk District in Yenisei Province in Siberia’s far north-east. Turukhansk’s reputation was a dreadful one. It was the place of detention for those revolutionaries in previous decades who had broken their terms of punishment. Stalin’s periods in exile in Novaya Uda, Solvychegodsk, Vologda and Narym were going to seem pleasant in comparison. No place under Imperial administration was bleaker than Turukhansk.²

At nearly six hundred thousand square miles, Yenisei Province was larger than Britain, France and Germany combined. It stretched from the town of Yeniseisk north down the River Yenisei to the Arctic Ocean. Population was sparse in Turukhansk District. Before the First World War there were fewer than fifteen thousand inhabitants and most of these belonged to tribes which had lived there for centuries. Monastyrskoe, the district capital, had fewer than fifty houses (although the New York and Montreal fur company Revillion had a branch there and graphite mining took place further north).³ The climate was harsh. Winter with its frequent snowstorms lasted nine months; the temperature sometimes fell to sixty degrees below zero and the daylight was of short duration. Summer brought its own discomforts because the sun hardly set and the mosquitoes bit through clothing. Agriculture was impossible since the ground remained frozen regardless of season. Flour and vegetables were imported from Russia’s gentler climes and livestock husbandry was unknown. The people of Turukhansk District hunted and fished for subsistence.⁴

Escape from the far-flung villages was exceptionally difficult. The telegraph line, ending at Monastyrskoe, facilitated police surveillance.⁵ The tundra was so heavy that flight west to the River Ob or east to the River Lena was not a realistic option. Those trying to flee by river faced hazards of a different nature. The route to the north was arduous, especially in the vast stretch above the Arctic Circle. Authorities checked the identities of all passengers, boats were few and the water melted for only a few weeks annually. The southward alternative was little better. The steamship was under constant watch; and when anyone took a boat or dog-sleigh from village to village, peasants were under orders to report this to the police.⁶ It was over six hundred miles from Monastyrskoe to Yeniseisk and 170 miles from Yeniseisk to Krasnoyarsk. The chances of getting unnoticed all the way upriver to Krasnoyarsk were small. As a place of detention, Monastyrskoe was almost as effective as Devil’s Island or Alcatraz.⁷ Stalin and his fellow prisoners had plenty of time to ponder this on the journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway until they reached Krasnoyarsk.

From there they travelled downriver by steamship. Stalin had been preceded to Monastyrskoe by Yakov Sverdlov, fellow member of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee and an acquaintance from an earlier period of exile. Both were assigned by administrative order to villages around Monastyrskoe: Stalin went to Kostino, Sverdlov to Selivanikha.⁸ Kostino was ten miles and Selivanikha three miles from Monastyrskoe.

A large colony of revolutionaries lived in the neighbouring villages. Most had recently arrived. Until the 1905 Revolution the Ministry of Internal Affairs had sent such convicts to Tobolsk, Narym or Yakutia. Such places had proved easy to flee from. Ill-paid policemen and impoverished peasants were seldom difficult to suborn with a small bribe. Turukhansk District had been used fitfully in the 1890s — the future Menshevik leader Yuli Martov had served his sentence there. By the time Stalin arrived, the revolutionary colony had grown. Resident exiles belonged mainly to those parties regarded as the greatest threat to political and civil order; these included not only Bolsheviks and Mensheviks but also Anarchists and Socialist-Revolutionaries. Monastyrskoe was consequently a hive of ideological variety. Dispute usually took place without undue polemics. Exiles had made up their mind about party allegiance. Each party maintained shared books and facilities among its members. Messages from Russia were passed on; pleas were made on behalf of individuals who were in poor health or who ran out of money. The revolutionaries kept intellectually alert in anticipation of eventual return to political work upon release.