The Bolshevistskiy Tsentre

[Zanthorus]

According to Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin, the prologue of which I flicked through after seeing it on the shelf in my local library, Lenin organised a secret three-man cabal called the Bolshevik Centre to raise money for the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party through expropriations, heists and other instances of violent crime. The prologue to the book (Which can be read online here (http://www.powells.com/biblio?show=TRADE%20PAPER:USED:9781400096138:7.95&page=excerpt)) gives details of one heist apparently carried out by Stalin in June 1907.

Does anyone have any info on this?

[Adil3tr]

No, but its hilarious

[28350]

Not on hand, but I have read that Stalin robbed a lot of banks for the Bolsheviks in the early days.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Kleber mentioned something about the Bolsheviks money laundaring practices in a thread on here a while ago. I'm keen to hear more about this. I think it's really interesting.

Nic.

[el_chavista]

This "historian" Simon Se Montefiore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sebag-Montefiore even has done fiction with Stalin: My Affair with Stalin, 2004 :lol:

[Red Future]

Read it before I was a lefty and even then found Young Stalin sensationalist and storylike rather than historical other biographies are far more informative of Stalin. I wouldnt bother reading it.It appears Mr Montefiore is quite the Tory chum too!!!

[ComradeOm]

Bolshevik policy towards "expropriations" tended to be ambiguous. On the one hand they were clearly ruled out as a revolutionary tactic, ie a means for carrying out social revolution. This differentiated them from the anarcho-communists and the Socialist Revolutionaries. On the other hand, they were a valuable source of funding for the party, and so tended to be tolerated as long as they remained just that - a profitable side show. The Mensheviks were less keen and put a dampener on their activities in the years after 1906

As for this particular raid, I'm not sure if its entire accurate. Alan Woods (http://www.marxist.com/bolshevism-old/part3-3.html) gives a different date for the heist and states that they actually got away with 250k roubles

Personally though, and whatever his merits as an historian, Sebag Montefiore's style is enough to put me off. There is a time and a place for narrative history but this is just bad. Seriously - "well-dressed Georgian girls who twirled gaudy parasols – while fingering Mauser pistols hidden in their dresses". Ugh