Is it true that Stalin once robbed banks?

On the morning of June 13, 1907, in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), two dozen Bolsheviks attacked a State Treasury carriage. The party was in need of money to wage its revolutionary struggle.

They bombed the convoy and opened fire with pistols, killing several Cossacks and dozens of innocent bystanders. The robbers managed to escape with a substantial sum of 350,000 rubles (about $15 million today).

The so-called ‘Tiflis Expropriation’ became one of the most high-profile and notorious robberies in the history of the Russian Empire. Discussions continue to this day about the role played in it by Stalin (then still known as Joseph Dzhugashvili), who was in the city at the time.

According to British historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Dzhugashvili was the organizer and an active participant in the robbery. He wrote about this in his book ‘Young Stalin’, which will be adapted for the screen in 2026. However, there is no real evidence to support this version of events.

"Stalin was the supreme leader of the combat organization. He personally took no part in any undertakings, but nothing was done without him," claimed Tatyana Vulikh, a former Bolshevik Party member and émigré. However, she made no mention of him in her detailed description of the Tiflis events.

Historian Boris Nikolaevsky believed that Stalin was aware of the Tiflis combat group's activities and "covered for it before the local party organization", but "was not its leader in any way".

During the Soviet era, the attack on the treasury carriage was presented as a heroic act. It is depicted as such in the 1957 movie ‘Personally Known’. The leading role in the robbery was attributed to Simon ‘Kamo’ Ter-Petrosyan, Stalin's friend and comrade. But, it was never associated with the name of the Soviet leader himself.