Biography of Stalin - 2- Molotov
In Datum, Stalin at once flung himself into revolutionary work: he established contact with politically-advanced workers, formed Social-Democratic study circles, some of which he conducted himself, set up a secret printing plant, wrote, printed and distributed stirring leaflets, directed the struggle of the workers at the Rothschild and Mantashev plants, and organized revolutionary propaganda in the countryside. He formed a Social-Democratic Party organization in Batum and a Batum Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., and led several strikes. He organized and directed the famous political demonstration of the Batum workers on March 9, 1902, himself marching at the head of the columns, thus giving a practical example of the combination of strikes with political demonstrations.
Thus, in this period, a strong Leninist Iskra-isl organization grew up in Transcaucasia, carrying on a determined and implacable struggle against op- portunism. Its chief organizer and leader was Stalin, who was already known among the Batum workers as the ''workers' teacher." This organization was founded on the sound principles of proletarian inter- nationalism, uniting, as it did, proletarian militants of different nationalities Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanians and Russians. In later days, Lenin time and again cited the Transcaucasian Party or- ganization as a model of proletarian internationalism.
The rising militancy of the Batum workers was a cause of serious uneasiness to the government. Police sleuths scoured the city, looking for the "ring- leaders." On April 5, 1902, Stalin was arrested. But even while in prison (first in Batum, then in Kutais a jail notorious for the severity of its regime, to which he was transferred on April 19, 1903 and then hack again in Batum), Stalin's contacts with revolutionary activities were not interrupted.
In the early part of March 1903 the Caucasian Social-Democratic organizations held their first congress, at which a Caucasian Union of the R.S.D.L.P. was set up. Although in confinement, Stalin was elected to the Committee of the Caucasian Union. It was while in prison that Stalin learned from dele- gates returned from the Second Party Congress of the profound dissension between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. He took his stand without hesita- tion on the side of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
In the autumn of 1903, Stalin was banished for three years to Novaya Uda, a village in the Balagan District, Province of Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia. He arrived there on November 27 9 1903. While in exile he received a letter from Lenin.
"I first became acquainted with Lenin in 1903," Stalin subsequently related. "True, it was not a per- sonal acquaintance; it was maintained by correspond- ence. But it made an indelible impression upon me, one which has never left me throughout all my work in the Party. I was in exile in Siberia at the time. . . . Lenin's note was comparatively short, but it con- tained a bold and fearless criticism of the practical work of our Party, and a remarkably clear and con- cise account of the entire plan of work of the Party in the immediate future."* | |
Stalin did not stay in exile long. He was impa-tient to be back at liberty, to set to work to carry out Lenin's plan for the building of a Bolshevik Party. On January 5, 1904, he escaped from exile, and in February 1904 he was back again in the Caucasus, first in Batum, and then in Tiflis. * Stalin on Lenin, pp. 40-41, Moscow, 1946. | |
| STALIN HAD SPENT almost two years in ^ prison and exile. During this period the rev- olutionary movement had made steady progress in the country. The Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. had taken place, at which the victory of Marxism over "Economism" had been consolidated. But those old opportunists, the "Economists," smashed by the Party, were superseded by a new type of opportunists, the Mensheviks. After the Con- gress Lenin and the Bolsheviks launched a fierce struggle against the Mensheviks, against their oppor- tunist ideas and their attempts to split and disorgan- ize the Party. With the outbreak of the Russo-Jap- anese War and the gathering revolutionary storm, this struggle took on an even more acute form. Lenin considered that only a new congress (the third) could settle the crisis in the Party. To secure the convoca- tion of this congress was now the principal task of all the Bolsheviks. In the Caucasus, Lenin's faithful lieutenant in this campaign was Stalin, the leader of the Trans- Caucasian Bolsheviks. During this period he con- centrated his energies on the fierce fight against Menshevism. A member of the Caucasian Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., he, together with Tskhakaya, was the virtual director of its activities. He was in- defatigable: he periodically toured Transcaucasia, visiting Batum, Chiaturi, Kutais, Tiflis, Baku and the rural districts of Western Georgia, strengthening the old Party organizations and forming new ones, tak- ing an active part in the heated controversies with the Mensheviks and other enemies of Marxism, stoutly upholding the principles of Bolshevism, and exposing the political chicanery and opportunism of the Mensheviks and of those who were prone to compromise with them.
"Under the leadership of Stalin and Djaparidze, in December 1904 there was a huge strike of the Baku workers, which lasted from December 13 to 31 and ended with the conclusion of a collective?
agreement with the oil owners, the first of its kind in the history of the Russian working-class move-
ment. The Baku strike heralded a rise in the tide of revolution in Transcaucasia. It served as the 'signal for the glorious actions in January and February all over Russia' (Stalin) ."*
"This strike," says the History of theC.P.S.U.(B.), "was like a clap of thunder heralding a great revolu- tionary storm."
* L. Beria, On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia, p. 19, Moscow, 1939.
2* 19 Stalin persistently worked for the furtherance of Lenin's guiding principles. He advocated and ex- plained the Bolshevik ideas to the masses, and or- ganized a campaign for the convocation of a Third Party Congress. Close contact was maintained be- tween Lenin and the Caucasian Committee all through this period. It was Stalin who led the ideo- logical and political fight of the Caucasian Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, nationalists and anarchists in the period of the first Russian Revolution. A most effective weapon of the Bolsheviks in this fight was their Party literature;
and practically every Bolshevik publication that came out in the Caucasus owed its origin to Stalin's
initiative and efforts, thanks to which the production of illegal books, newspapers, pamphlets and leaflets attained dimensions unprecedented in- tsarist Russia.
Biography of Stalin - 3 Molotov |
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