Obviously contact with the central leadership of the Bolshevik faction grew ever trickier in the Great War. In 1915 Stalin and Suren Spandaryan, a fellow Central Committee member, wrote to Lenin. Stalin’s part of the letter went as follows:42
My greetings to you, dear Vladimir Ilich, the very warmest greetings! Greetings to Zinoviev, greetings to Nadezhda Konstantinovna! How are things, how is your health? I live as previously, I munch my bread and am getting through half the sentence. It’s boring but what can be done about it? And how are things with you? You must be having a gayer time… I recently read Kropotkin’s articles — the old scoundrel has gone completely off his head. I’ve also read a little article by Plekhanov in Rech — what an incorrigible, blabbing old woman! Eh!… And the Liquidators with their [Duma] deputy-agents of the Free Economic Society? There’s no one to give them a beating, the Devil knows! Surely they won’t remain unpunished like this?! Cheer us up and inform us that soon there’ll be an organ to give them a right good thrashing straight in their gobs — and without respite.
This was the rant of a man wanting to show off his militant style to his leader. The references to beating were repetitious. The frustrations of exile leaped off the page. Stalin hoped to impress on Lenin that, when his term of exile ended, he could be a useful right-hand man for him in the Russian political underground; but he did not miss the opportunity to remind Lenin how different their circumstances were.
Exile had its bright moments for Stalin, but generally it brought the worst out of him. He was an emotionally needy person: people around him were also liable to be subjected to the lash of his tongue or simply to daily insensitivity and egotism. He belonged to a revolutionary party which made a virtue of placing individual satisfaction below the needs of the collective good. It was a party which also cherished comradely good humour. Stalin was not really unsociable. He had friends. He liked a joke and was an amusing mimic. But his friends had to acknowledge his primacy. Stalin had a deep need to dominate. This was why his fellow exiles found him exasperating. At close quarters he was painful to deal with; the Siberian sojourn concentrated everyone’s attention on the uncongenial sides of his character which in other circumstances they overlooked because of the perceived benefits he brought to the cause of Revolution.
11. RETURN TO PETROGRAD
The kaleidoscope of Stalin’s life was given two abrupt twists in the winter of 1916–17. The first was an unpleasant experience, the second brought delight. In December, as the Imperial Army replenished itself with fresh levies, the government threw the net of conscription wider. Ministers decided to use even political convicts. This was a difficult step. Such people had been exempted from call-up in the war on the ground that they would conduct hostile propaganda among the troops. Compulsory enlistment had always been problematic. In 1915 the conscription of Moslems had touched off an uprising in Russian central Asia. Meanwhile the fighting against the Central Powers had settled down to a fairly static contest and the losses were enormous on both sides of the trenches. Yet morale in the Imperial Army remained robust. The early bottlenecks in military production, transport and supply had been unblocked. The Supreme Command was planning to innovate in a bid to organise a successful offensive, and General Brusilov was being given his chance to prove himself. There was no shortage of food or equipment at the front. But more men were needed. Stalin was among those revolutionaries ordered to submit himself for a medical check with a view to his inclusion in the army of Nicholas II.
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
The Kamenevs and Baikalov had prejudices that disabled them from appreciating that Stalin was no ignoramus. They were fluent conversationalists. They came from well-to-do families in which such exchanges were normaclass="underline" Kamenev’s father was an engineer and businessman, Baikalov’s the owner of a gold mine. Both Kamenev and Baikalov had been educated in gimnazias.9 They were culturally confident in public whereas Stalin still spoke haltingly in Russian,10 and four years among the Ostyaks had done nothing to enhance his linguistic facility. Baikalov deplored Stalin’s failure to be witty. (Intellectuals were meant to be scintillating conversationalists.) Kamenev and Baikalov also underestimated the virtues of silence. When listening to Kamenev, Stalin felt he was learning. All his life he devoted himself to accumulating knowledge. His attentiveness, memory and analytical skill were razor-sharp even if he did not brag about this to others; and although his Marxism lacked the range of other Bolshevik leaders, he was working to extend himself. At any rate when Stalin was among individuals who encouraged him to relax, he was a delightful purveyor of jokes and mimicry. He also understood Russian perfectly on the page and was an excellent editor of Russian-language manuscripts.11 He was undervalued, and quietly he resented the fact.12