Stalin: A Biography

They had to travel to Achinsk. This was a town lying a mile north of the Trans-Siberian Railway and a hundred miles to the west of Krasnoyarsk. Stalin, Kamenev and other Bolsheviks — as well as scores of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Anarchists in exile in Turukhansk District — had to make the arduous journey up the Yenisei to Krasnoyarsk in north Siberia’s coldest months. It would take weeks. None of the selected men supported the Imperial government’s military objectives (although many Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries would have readily supported a democratic post-Romanov government in defending the country).¹

Stalin said his goodbyes in Kureika and set off for Monastyrskoe. There is no sign that he gave any thought to the emotional wreckage he left behind in the Pereprygin family. In Monastyrskoe he joined a group of fellow potential conscripts. The police chief lined them up on the street, and they were cheered by comrades who knew they might never see them again. Steamships could not operate in the winter and the trip up the Yenisei would be made by dog-drawn sleighs from village to village. Before the departure someone ran over to them. This was the deputy accountant in the Revillion company office who had fetched a mandolin and a guitar which the Bolsheviks had forgotten to take.² Stalin loved to sing. The trip was not going to be without recreation. Yet the temperature was always several degrees below zero and the wind cut into the faces of the travellers. The long journey from Kureika to Achinsk was one of the most exhausting that Stalin ever made. On reaching Achinsk, he was leaner than for many years; and the long nights of the deep north in winter had given his complexion a distinct pallor.³ But he had enjoyed himself. The party had stopped at many small hamlets. Stalin had sung to his heart’s content and, despite the rules, delivered political speeches at open meetings.⁴

His mood sank on his arrival in Krasnoyarsk as he faced the possibility of conscription. He had just one option left. This was to ask permission from his guard Kravchenko to spend a week there before moving on to the enlistment headquarters.⁵ The request was granted. (Did he bribe Kravchenko?) Yet he worried in vain. Army doctors rejected him for military service because of his damaged right arm. He never carried a rifle for Tsar and Motherland.

Since his term of exile was due to end in mid-1917 he was allowed to stay in Achinsk with other revolutionaries rejected for military service. These included his friend Lev Kamenev. Stalin went frequently to Kamenev’s rented house. The Bolshevik Anatoli Baikalov later gave an unappealing picture of the scene. Stalin had his pipe perpetually on the go. He stuffed it with makhorka, the pungent tobacco favoured by workers and peasants. The smoke and smell annoyed Kamenev’s wife Olga. According to Baikalov, ‘she sneezed, coughed, groaned, implored’ Stalin to put out his pipe, but he ignored her. This was typical behaviour. He turned curmudgeonly conduct into an art form when women made unwelcome demands. He expected admiration and compliance from them — and then he could be charming. But no one in a skirt, not even pretty Olga, was going to order him around.⁶ It may not have helped that Olga was intelligent and articulate and that she was the sister of Trotski, sworn enemy of the Bolsheviks. The end of his isolation in Kureika had not improved his mood or his manners; his uncouthness increased in direct proportion to the lowering of the appreciative respect he craved.

His acquaintances found little to appreciate. Stalin was taciturn and morose. Although he listened intently, he barely contributed to discussions on the war and international relations. Instead Baikalov was attracted to Kamenev’s lively presence and grasp of the arguments;⁷ and writing over two decades later, Baikalov recalled that Kamenev dismissed Stalin’s rare comments ‘with brief, almost contemptuous remarks’.⁸