A powerful bomb was thrown in front of a convoy carrying money from the post office to the Tiflis Branch of the State Bank. The bomb destroyed the horses pulling the carriage, killed several by-standers, and wounded more than fifty children and adults. In the hysteria which followed, the moneybags containing 341,000 rubles (about $170,000) were snatched from the carriage by the bomb-throwers and hurriedly carried away.
The crime reflected such complete disregard for human life that authorities both inside and outside of Russia attempted to run down every possible clue which would disclose the identities of the criminals. Finally, the money was found in the possession of a close associate of Stalin named Maxim Litvinov (the man Stalin later sent to the United States in 1933 to seek U.S. recognition for Soviet Russia). Litvinov and a companion were arrested in Paris by the French authorities when they tried to change the rubles into francs before sending the money on to Lenin. Details of the crime were finally unraveled by the authorities, and the names of original perpetrators were disclosed. Nevertheless, Stalin succeeded in remaining at large for several more years and continued his revolutionary activities.
Stalin as a Union Organizer, Writer and Bolshevik Leader
The years 1907-1913 were pick-and-shovel years for Joseph Stalin. No one could accuse him of being merely an “intellectual Communist” as they sometimes described Lenin. Stalin learned every trick of propaganda, pressure politics, mass communications, strike techniques and labor agitation. Some of his most significant experiences occurred in the highly active industrial district at Baku. There he was assigned to organize tens of thousands of oil well and refinery workers. To do this he set up a triple-system of legal, semi-legal, and totally illegal organizations. He imposed his leadership so completely on the workers in this large industrial center that he was able to organize a powerful industrial soviet (workers’ council) dominated from top to bottom by his own loyal Bolshevik colleagues.
Stalin was never very effective as a speaker because of his strong Georgian accent, but between 1907 and 1913, he became proficient as a revolutionary writer. For awhile he edited a Socialist newspaper in Tiflis called Dio (Time) in which he aroused astonishment even among Bolsheviks because of his bitterness in attacking the Mensheviks. In 1910 he went to St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) and wrote for the Social Democrat, the Zvezda (Star), and later for Pravda (Truth). It was in these periodicals that Joseph Djugashvili first became known by his pen name, “Man of Steel,” or Stalin.
In 1912 Stalin received special recognition when Lenin broke away completely from the Social Democrats and set up an independent Bolshevik Party. In the new organization Lenin appointed Stalin to the Central Committee.
The very next year, however, Stalin’s career was interrupted when he was arrested and sent to Siberia. For Stalin it was an old story. Since 1903 he had been arrested eight times, exiled seven times, and escaped six times. But there was to be no escape on this latest arrest. He was sent to one of the most remote regions of Siberia.
With the arrival of World War I, Stalin had no particular desire to escape. He told his friends he would relax and enjoy his “vacation” in Siberia since escape might result in his being drafted into the armed services. He wanted no part of military service.
The Role of Russia in World War I
It will be recalled that the year 1914 found all the major nations of Europe flexing their military muscles. It was inevitable that the slightest miscalculation in diplomatic relations might turn loose a churning volcano of human destruction. The spark in the powder keg was the assassination of the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne by a member of a Serbian secret society. This occurred June 28, 1914.
Austria-Hungary had been looking for an excuse to take over Serbia, and therefore her troops began marching in. This angered the Tsar because Serbia was on his own calendar of conquest so he declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany came to the defense of Austria-Hungary and declared war on Russia. At the time France was an ally of Russia, so Germany used this as an excuse to declare war on France. This brought England into the War as an ally of France. Thus the machine of war began to roll.
From the point of view of the Russian Tsar, the First World War did not come as any particular surprise. For years he had been busily preparing for it by building a powerful military machine. Nevertheless, the Russian people were not psychologically prepared for war.
For nearly a decade there had been a growing tension between the people and the Tsar because he had failed to provide them with the constitutional government which he had promised in the October Manifesto of 1905. Of course, when the people were threatened by attack at the outbreak of World War I, they instinctively banded together in the common defense, and Tsar Nicholas promptly took this as an omen that they would support him loyally throughout the conflict.
But within a few months the strain of war began to tell. By 1915 there were widespread complaints, and by 1916 the Tsar’s war machine was sputtering and jerking as it bordered on collapse. In three years Russia had mobilized more than 13,000,000 fighting men, but of these approximately 2,000,000 were killed, approximately 4,000,000 were wounded, and 2,500,000 were taken prisoners. For 24 months the news from the front was consistently bad. Russian armies were pushed out of Galicia, Russian Poland, and part of Lithuania, Serbia and the Dardanelles.
When the Ottoman Empire entered the war it cut Russian foreign trade to a trickle and thereby isolated Russia from the arms and munitions of her allies. Replacement troops sent to the front were often so ill-equipped that some of them had to pick up their rifles from dead soldiers along the way. Lack of ammunition often forced commanding officers to restrict the infantry to a daily ration of no more than four shells per gun.
At this juncture the Tsar was warned by the British Ambassador that the whole Eastern Front might collapse if things did not improve. Desertions from the Russian Army] had reached scandalous proportions and the workers and peasants were threatening revolt. Food shortages were growing because the government was buying grain with paper money which was practically worthless. In the cities the cost of living had tripled while wages had risen only slightly.
But the Tsar could not see any reason for alarm. He had ridden out the revolt of 1905; he intended to do the same now. To demonstrate his complete confidence in the situation, he announced that he would go to the front to cheer the troops with his presence.
What he seemed to forget was the fact that conditions among the people were almost identical with those which precipitated the revolution of 1905. It was far too late to cheer the troops with the Tsar’s presence Already the reign of the Tsar was doomed. Though he did not know it, Nicholas II was going to lose the throne in a matter of months, and shortly thereafter, his life.
CHAPTER SIX
How Russia Became a Communist World Power
The history of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the twenty years that followed might well be called the modern New Testament of Marxism. The Communists present it as their historic proof that the theories of Marx can be carried out successfully. Interestingly enough, however, some of the strongest proof against Communism is also revealed in this same epic of history. All of the pertinent facts have been brought together in this chapter so that the student might judge for himself.