page_title: Early life of Joseph Stalin
section_title: Tiflis Robbery: 1907–09
hierarchical_section_title: Early life of Joseph Stalin / Childhood / Tiflis Robbery: 1907–09
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Сольвычегодск. Вид на северо-восток с колокольни Благовещенского собора
context_page_description: The early life of Joseph Stalin covers the life of Joseph Stalin from his birth on 6 December 1878 until the October Revolution on 25 October 1917. Born Ioseb Jughashvili in Gori, Georgia to a cobbler and a house cleaner, he grew up in the city and attended school there before moving to Tiflis to join the Tiflis Seminary. While a student at the seminary he embraced Marxism and became an avid follower of Vladimir Lenin, and left the seminary to become a revolutionary. After being marked by Russian secret police for his activities, he became a full-time revolutionary and outlaw. He became one of the Bolsheviks' chief operatives in the Caucasus, organizing paramilitaries, spreading propaganda, raising money through bank robberies, and kidnappings and extortion. Stalin was captured and exiled to Siberia numerous times, but often escaped. He became one of Lenin's closest associates, which helped him rise to the heights of power after the Russian Revolution. In 1913 Stalin was exiled to Siberia for the final time, and remained in exile until the February Revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of the Russian Empire.
context_section_description: After returning to Tiflis, Stalin organized the robbing of a large delivery of money to the Imperial Bank on 26 June 1907. His gang ambushed the armed convoy in Yerevan Square with gunfire and homemade bombs. Around 40 people were killed, but all of Jughashvili's gang managed to escape alive.
  It is possible that Stalin hired a number of Socialist Revolutionaries to help him in the heist. Around 250,000 roubles were stolen. Service described it as "their greatest coup".
  After the heist, Stalin took his wife and son away from Tiflis, settling in Baku. There, Mensheviks confronted Stalin about the robbery but he denied any involvement. These Mensheviks then voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but Stalin took no notice of them.
  In Baku, he moved his family into a seafront house just outside the city. There, he edited two Bolshevik newspapers, Bakinsky Proletary  and Gudok ("Whistle"). In August 1907, he travelled to Germany to attend the Seventh Congress of the Second International, which took place in Stuttgart. He had returned to Baku in September, where the city was undergoing another spate of ethnic violence. In the city, he helped to secure Bolshevik domination of the local RSDLP branch. While devoting himself to revolutionary activity, Stalin had been neglecting his wife and child. Kato fell ill with typhus, and so he took her back to Tiflis to be with her family. There, she died in his arms on 22 November 1907. Fearing that he would commit suicide, Stalin's friends confiscated his revolver. The funeral took place on 25 November at Kulubanskaya Church before her body was buried at St Nina's Church in Kukia. During the funeral, Stalin threw himself onto the coffin in grief; he then had to escape the churchyard when he saw Okhrana members approaching. He then left his son with his late wife's family in Tiflis.
  There, Stalin reassembled the Outfit and began publicly calling for more workers' strikes. The Outfit continued to attack Black Hundreds, and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. One of the robberies carried out in this period was of a ship, the Nicholas I, as it docked in Baku harbour. Not long after, the Outfit carried out a raid on Baku's naval arsenal, during which several guards were killed. They also kidnapped the children of several wealthy figures in order to extract ransom money. He also co-operated with Hummat, the Muslim Bolshevik group, and was involved in assisting the arming of the Persian Revolution against Shah Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar. At some point in 1908 he travelled to the Swiss city of Geneva to meet with Lenin; he also met the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, who exasperated him.
  On 25 March 1908, Stalin was arrested in a police raid and interred in Bailov Prison. In prison, he studied Esperanto, then regarding it as the language of the future. Leading the Bolsheviks imprisoned there, he organised discussion groups and had those suspected of being police spies killed. He planned an escape attempt but it was later cancelled. He was eventually sentenced to two years exile in the village of Solvychegodsk, Vologda Province. The journey there took three months, over the course of which he contracted typhus, and spent time in both Moscow's Butyrki Prison and Vologda Prison. He finally arrived at the village in February 1909. There, he stayed with in a communal house with nine fellow exiles. There, he repeatedly got into trouble with the local police chief; the latter locked Stalin up for reading revolutionary literature aloud and fined him for attending the theatre. While in village, Stalin had an affair with an Odessan noblewoman and teacher, Stefania Petrovskaya. In June, Stalin escaped the village and made it to Kotlas disguised as a woman. From there, he made it to St Petersburg, where he was hidden by supporters.
caption: Stalin was exiled to the village of Solvychegodsk
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