Joseph Stalin had a criminal past doing what?

The story behind the answer

Robbing Trains is correct because, before becoming Soviet leader, Stalin (then known as “Koba”) organized armed “expropriations” to fund the Bolsheviks—hold-ups of banks, cash convoys, and mail trains across the Caucasus. These robberies supplied revolutionary coffers at a time when the party had no legal funding. Stalin helped plan daring hits, working with the militant Kamo to ambush shipments and escape with large sums.

A famous example was the 1907 Tiflis heist, which used bombs to seize hundreds of thousands of rubles from a government money transport. Remember it this way: before he controlled a vast state, Stalin financed revolution by robbing the state’s rails—turning trains and transit into his piggy bank. This criminal past foreshadowed his later ruthlessness in consolidating power.