Com­mu­nists facts

Bank robbery. Before the Russian Revolution, Communist paramilitaries were often raising money through robberies and ransom kidnappings. Particularly notable was the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, in which Stalin participated (playing minor role). The robbery resulted in 40 deaths and the theft of 341,000 rubles (equivalent to around US $3.4 million today).

Pablo Picasso. In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party (he lived in France), attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso’s interest in Soviet politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death.

Georgian. Stalin's original Georgian name was "Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili". The surname means son of Juga, and is derived from Georgian djuga, meaning "steel". This later became the root of his adopted name "Stalin", from the Russian word for "steel".

Vladimir Lenin. Vladimir (1870-1924), better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1922 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party.

Dzerzhinsky. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, nicknamed Iron Felix, was a Bolshevik revolutionary, leader and statesman. From 1917 until his death in 1926, Dzerzhinsky led the first two Soviet state security organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing a secret police for the post-revolutionary Soviet government.