ABSTRACT
Koba and a fellow exile, Yakov Sverdlov (who had also been arrested in February 1913), arrived in Turukhansk by the end of September 1913. Lenin asked Malinovsky to arrange Koba’s and Sverdlov’s escape. Malinovsky reported Lenin’s request to Director Beletsky, who ordered the chief of the Yeniseisk Okhrana, Captain V.F.Zhelezniakov, to transfer Koba and Sverdlov to Kureika, a small settlement near the Arctic Circle. An escape from Kureika was considered virtually impossible.1 As all political exiles, Koba received a monthly stipend sufficient to live on modestly. Occasionally, he wrote to Sergey Alliluev, who sent him parcels through the Red Cross. The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 did not affect his way of life.
