If ever he made it back to Petrograd, he knew he could count on help from Sergei and Olga Alliluev (whose youngest daughter Nadya was to become his second wife after the October Revolution). He wrote affectionately to Olga on 25 November 1915:30
I’m so very grateful to you, deeply respected Olga Yevgenevna, for your good and pure feelings towards me. I shall never forget your caring attitude to me! I look forward to the moment when I’m liberated from exile and can come to Petersburg [as the Bolsheviks continued to call the capital] and personally thank you and Sergei for everything. I’ve only got two years at most left.
I received the parcel. Thank you. I only ask one thing: don’t waste any more on me; you yourselves need the money. I’ll be happy if from time to time you send postcards with scenes of nature and the like. Nature in this accursed district is appallingly barren — the river in the summer and snow in winter are all nature provides here, and I’m driven mad with longing for scenes of nature even if they are only on paper.
Stalin did not often behave gracefully, but he could when he wanted.
He was not entirely removed from active politics. The trial of the Bolshevik Duma faction and its adviser Lev Kamenev in early 1915 in Petrograd had brought disruption to Bolshevism. The charges related to both politics and revolutionary etiquette. Instead of just denouncing the Imperial government, Kamenev had distanced himself from Lenin’s policy that the best result in the war for the European Marxist movement would be the defeat of the Russian armed forces by the Germans. Even so, Kamenev could not escape a sentence of Siberian exile. On arrival in Turukhansk District he was again put on ‘party trial’. The proceedings took place in Monastyrskoe, and Sverdlov and Stalin were present, as were the members of the Bolshevik Duma fraction. Most participants chose to support Lenin’s policy.31 Stalin was friends with Kamenev; they remained on these terms throughout their Siberian exile and for several years subsequently. Stalin, though, jibbed at Kamenev’s failure in open court in Petrograd to show solidarity with the faction’s official policy. Probably Stalin had reservations about Lenin’s calls for ‘European Civil War’ as a realistic policy both militarily and politically; but Kamenev needed to be pulled back into line. Discipline was discipline. Kamenev had committed an infringement and had to be punished.
Stalin started to enjoy life in Kureika. He took up fishing: this brought an enhancement of his diet as well as genuine pleasure. He had had lessons from the Ostyak men and soon, according to his own account, got better at it than the Ostyaks themselves. Supposedly they asked him what his secret was.32 In any case, he was locally accepted and became known as Osip (or, less pleasantly, as Pockmarked Oska).33
Fishing in Siberian exile could be dangerous, as he later recalled:34 ‘It happened that the tempest caught me on the river. At one time it seemed that I was done for. But I made it to the bank. I didn’t believe I’d get there: the river was in great tumult.’ On another occasion a snowstorm blew up. He had had a good day by the water along with Ostyaks from his village and had a large haul of sturgeon and sea-salmon.35 Foolishly he went off home before the others. The storm — known in Siberia as a purga — blew up suddenly. It was too late to turn back and it was a long way in nearly blinding conditions to Kureika. If he had been sensible, he would have abandoned the fish. But the fish were his food for the month; and anyway Stalin was stubborn. He trudged through the heavy snow, head down into the bitter wind. By the light of a new moon he thought he glimpsed shadowy figures near by; he called out to them, relying on the local tradition of helping strangers in a mess. But the figures moved on. They were in fact the villagers with their dogs whom he had left earlier; and when they saw the snow-covered, gesticulating form, they credulously assumed it was a water demon. Stalin himself was not sure that the figures had been human beings and did not try to catch up with them.36
He trudged on by himself. There was a distinct possibility he would not be able to find the village even if he survived the cold. But he got there. Unfortunately he was still an apparition in white, from his bearded face down to his boots. Dragging himself to the nearest hut, he was a bizarre sight. ‘Osip,’ one of the villagers cried, pressing himself against the wall in fright, ‘is that you?’ Stalin replied: ‘Of course it’s me. And it’s not a wood spirit!’37 For millions of peasants in the Russian Empire retained the ancient pagan superstitions even if they belonged to the Orthodox Church or some other Christian denomination. Belief in spirits, devils and witches was widespread, and in eastern Siberia the Church had made little impact upon popular notions. Stalin had yet again been reminded that he lived in a society where the ideas of the Enlightenment were as yet thinly spread. He thawed out; he ate and drank. Then he took to his bed and slept for eighteen hours.38
He told another of his stories many years later. At a 1935 Kremlin reception he narrated how he was sitting on the river bank as men of the village went off fishing at the start of the spring floods on the River Yenisei. When they returned, they were one man short. They did not draw attention to this; but Stalin questioned them and was told the missing man had drowned. What struck Stalin, he said, was how little they thought about the death. If he had not mentioned the subject, they would have gone back to their huts without comment. Stalin pondered the event. He felt sure that if a cow had been sick, they would have gone out and tried to save it. But the loss of a man for them was a ‘triviality’. The point was, he said, that it was easy to make a man whereas animals were a more complex task.39 This was nonsense. Perhaps Stalin thought so too; but the fact that he repeated it about two decades later meant that he either believed it or had invented it and decided it suited his current political interest: in the mid-1930s he wished to stress the importance of conserving Bolshevik cadres.40
Stalin remembered his time in exile with fondness. Despite what he claimed in his begging letters to party comrades, he was generally healthy. He was treated as a respected visiting member of a community. For the first time he was living closely for a lengthy period with non-Georgians and non-intellectuals. Most were Ostyaks, but a number were Russians. This experience would serve him well when, years later, he became their political overlord. For the rest of his life he talked about his days in Siberia, the fishing, the climate, the conversations and the people. These experiences, even though he was there against his will, uplifted him. He enjoyed the wonder and admiration shown him by the Kureika villagers. They knew he was a ‘southerner’, but had no idea where Georgia was. They saw he loved books: in a culture of oral tradition this in itself marked him off as a man apart. Even his pipe was an object of awe. Sitting in the hut in the evening, he would pass it round for others to take a puff. Visitors to the villagers popped round specifically to try out this locally unusual mode of smoking. Having chatted with the renowned revolutionary in their midst, they departed happy.41