Stalin is arrested and sent into Siberian exile

After years of study and political activity, he left the seminary and turned toward revolutionary organizing. Accounts differ on the immediate circumstances; his transition reflects both personal...

Police arrested the labor organizer during a period of strikes and political agitation in the industrial port. His arrest began repeated cycles of imprisonment, internal exile, and escape.

A group of militants attacked an imperial bank carriage in Tiflis to obtain funds for the revolutionary movement. Stalin’s precise operational role remains disputed; the episode illustrates the...

At the Prague Party Conference, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders co-opted Stalin to the Central Committee while he was in exile. (The conference date is often given as 17 January Old Style; this...

The Bolshevik daily Pravda began publication in St Petersburg. Stalin contributed to its editorial work; the paper became a channel for political education and agitation among urban workers, under...

The fall of the tsarist monarchy enabled Stalin and other exiles to return. He joined the Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd during a rapidly changing struggle over war, land, workers’ power, and the...

The October Revolution (25 October Old Style; 7 November Gregorian) overthrew the Provisional Government. Stalin was a party organizer, though not the central military leader of the uprising; the...

The new Soviet government assigned Stalin responsibility for nationalities. His office addressed the future of peoples and territories formerly ruled by the empire; later policy combined formal...

The treaty ended Russia’s participation in the First World War at the cost of extensive territory and population. Stalin supported the Bolshevik government as it faced military intervention, civil...

The Bolshevik leadership sent Stalin to help organize defense against White forces around Tsaritsyn. The Civil War brought mass violence, requisitioning, famine, and competing claims to political...