Before this treatise appeared (1914), however, Stalin was sent to Siberia .
In 1917, Stalin managed to escape from Siberia and immediately headed for Petrograd, (modern St. Petersburg) upon hearing that the February Revolution had brought about the abdication of the Tsar and the installation of the Provincial Government. There he resumed the editorship of Pravda. Until Lenin arrived in April, Stalin and Lev Kamenev dominated all party decisions. Stalin argued strongly for the continuation of the war and for cooperation with the Provisional Government. When Lenin arrived back in Petrograd from his exile in Switzerland, on April 3, 1917, he strongly criticized Stalin for printing both of these opinions and demanded an immediate reversal in policy. Nevertheless, Stalin was re-elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party on April 27, 1917.
After a Bolshevik-sponsored insurrection in July, Lenin went into hiding and Trotsky was arrested, leaving Stalin and Yakob Sverdlov (another prominent Bolshevik) temporarily in charge of the Bolsheviks. After Lenin's return several months later, Stalin's influence rapidly declined (due to his failure to completely agree with all of Lenin's positions, including his advocacy of an "armed revolution" to overthrow the Provisional Government). This decline only proved temporary, however. .
On November 7, 1917 (October 25 on the Soviet calendar), the Bolsheviks seized power in a relatively bloodless coup, overthrowing the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky. Although Stalin apparently had no role in the October Revolution itself, he was shortly thereafter appointed, by Lenin, to the position of People's Commissar for Nationalities within the new Bolshevik government. Stalin's job was, basically, to manage relations between the various ethnic groups of the former Russian Empire and to develop some sort of coherent policy toward the questions of national secession and civil rights.
