A Bolshevik-organized armed robbery netted 241,000 rubles to fund revolution, exposing internal party conflict and leading to international arrests.
Key Facts
- Amount stolen
- 241,000 rubles
- Deaths
- 40 people
- Injured
- 50 people
- Date of robbery
- 26 June 1907
- Lead perpetrator
- Simon Ter-Petrosian (Kamo)
- Location
- Erivansky Square (now Freedom Square), Tiflis
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
The Bolsheviks, a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, needed funds to finance their revolutionary activities. Top party figures including Lenin, Stalin, Litvinov, Krasin, and Bogdanov organized the operation, despite the 5th Congress of the RSDLP having explicitly banned such expropriations only weeks before the attack.
On 26 June 1907, a Bolshevik group led by Simon Ter-Petrosian (Kamo) attacked a bank stagecoach transporting money through Erivansky Square in Tiflis using bombs and guns. The assault killed forty people, injured fifty, and allowed the robbers to escape with 241,000 rubles intended for the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire.
The robbery caused outrage within the RSDLP, prompting Lenin and Stalin to distance themselves from it. Police records of the stolen banknotes' serial numbers prevented the Bolsheviks from spending most of the funds; a coordinated attempt to cash the notes across Europe in 1908 resulted in arrests and international scandal. Kamo was captured in Germany but avoided trial by feigning insanity, and was eventually released after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Economic Impact
The stolen rubles could not be circulated freely because police held records of the serial numbers; a failed attempt to cash the banknotes across Europe in January 1908 caused widespread arrests and discredited Bolshevik financing operations internationally.