Know thy heroes ! - would you consider Bank robbers as National
heroes ?
After
starting a fire in a nearby warehouse as a diversion, the five robbers—Leah
Dillon; her sister, Vee; their brother, Michael; Kramer, the safecracker; and
Cyrus, the muscle—initiate a bank robbery. An officer inside the bank tries to
call for help on his police radio. Detective Tom Iger, who had just been in the
bank, hears the call and decides to check it out. While walking back to check
on the bank, he hears another anonymous call on his radio about the robbery. The robbers find only $70,000 in the vault.
Leah wants to leave, but Vee and Cyrus demand more money. The assistant manager
Ed Maas says he will tell them where $6 million is stored as long as they do
not hurt anyone. He tells them the money is in the basement vault which is a
part of the old bank and hands them the key to the access door.
By now,
police are stationed outside the bank and Leah is confused as to how they knew
about the heist. - The Vault is a 2017 American horror film
directed by Dan Bush, written by Dan Bush and Conal Byrne, and starring
Francesca Eastwood, Taryn Manning, Scott Haze, Q'orianka Kilcher, Clifton
Collins Jr., and James Franco.
A story
of love and heist – a Tamil film at that - printed currency from the Govt Press – of a
huge value, a container load – getting stolen by a foreign operative – access card
gets into possession of a singer – incomes some locals too – hot chase and all
stuff. The CBI officer is the burly SP
Balasubramanian – two small time burglars, on the run comes in between – the
container gets hidden behind straw ..
the movie ‘Thiruda thiruda’ at that time was interesting – though Mani
Ratnam’s films of those days when seen now look a bit comical and ordinary !!
Vladimir
Ilyich Ulyanov [1870 – 1924] – most would know him better as Lenin, a
Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of
government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 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.
Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism known as Leninism.
Joseph
Vissarionovich Stalin [1878 – 1953] was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet
politician who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until 1953 as the
general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and
premier of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Despite initially governing the Soviet
Union as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to
become the country's de facto dictator by the 1930s. A communist ideologically
committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these
ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are known as Stalinism.
The decision to create a
State Bank of the Russian Empire was made by Emperor Peter III in May 1762,
which was modelled on Bank of England and would have the right to issue bank
notes. However, due to the coup in 1762
and the murder of the Czar, the project was not implemented. The outbreak in
1768 of the Russian-Turkish War and deficit of the state budget forced
Catherine II, in turn, refer to the idea of issuing a paper money, and in
December 1768 she formed the State Assignation Bank, which existed until 1818
and was replaced by the State Commercial Bank, but the first central banking
body in Russia was established in 1860
as The State Bank (GosBank) of the Russian Empire. According
to the statutes, it was a state-owned bank, intended for short-term credit of
trade and industry.
The Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), the predecessor of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, was formed in 1898. The goal of the RSDLP was to carry out a
Marxist proletarian revolution against the Russian Empire. As part of their revolutionary activity, the RSDLP and
other revolutionary groups (such as anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries)
practised a range of militant operations, including "expropriations", a euphemism for armed robberies of government or private funds to support revolutionary
activities.
From 1903 onwards, the
RSDLP were divided between two major groups: the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
After the suppression of the 1905 Revolution, the RSDLP held its 5th Congress
in 1907 in London with the hopes of resolving differences between the
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. One issue that still separated the two groups was the
divergence of their views on militant activities, and in particular,
"expropriations". The most
militant Bolsheviks, led at the 5th Congress by Vladimir Lenin, supported
continuation of the use of robberies, while Mensheviks advocated a more
peaceful and gradual approach to revolution, and opposed militant operations.
At the 5th Congress, a resolution was passed condemning participation in or
assistance to all militant activity, including "expropriations" as
"disorganizing and demoralizing", and called for all party militias
to be disbanded. This resolution passed
with 65 per cent supporting and 6 per cent opposing (others abstained or did
not vote) with all Mensheviks and some Bolsheviks supporting the resolution.
The 1907 Tiflis Bank
Robbery, also known as the Erivansky Square expropriation, was an armed robbery
on 26 June 1907 in the city of Tiflis in the Tiflis
Governorate in the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire (now Georgia's
capital, Tbilisi). A bank cash shipment was stolen by Bolsheviks to fund their
revolutionary activities. The robbers attacked a bank stagecoach, and the
surrounding police and soldiers, using bombs and guns while the stagecoach was
transporting money through Erivansky Square (now Freedom Square) between the
post office and the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. The attack killed forty people and injured fifty others,
according to official archive documents. The robbers escaped with 341,000
rubles (equivalent to around US$3.96 million in 2018).
The robbery
was organized by a number of top-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin,
Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov, and
executed by a party of revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Simon Ter-Petrosian, also known as "Kamo" and "The Caucasian Robin-Hood". Because
such activities were explicitly prohibited by the 5th Congress of the Russian
Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), the robbery and the killings caused
outrage within the party against the Bolsheviks (a faction within the RSDLP).
As a result, Lenin and Stalin tried to distance themselves from the robbery.
The events surrounding the
incident and similar robberies split the Bolshevik leadership, with Lenin
against Bogdanov and Krasin. Despite the success of
the robbery and the large sum involved, the Bolsheviks could not use most of
the large bank notes obtained from the robbery because their serial numbers
were known to the police. Lenin conceived of
a plan to have various individuals cash the large bank notes at once at various
locations throughout Europe in January 1908, but this strategy failed,
resulting in a number of arrests, worldwide publicity, and negative reaction
from social democrats elsewhere in Europe.
Kamo was
caught in Germany shortly after the robbery but successfully avoided a criminal
trial by feigning insanity for more than three years. He managed to escape from
his psychiatric ward but was captured two years later while planning another
robbery.
Kamo was then sentenced to death for his crimes including the 1907 robbery, but
his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment; he was released after the 1917
Revolution. None of the other major participants or
organizers of the robbery were ever brought to trial.
On the day of the robbery,
26 June 1907, the 20 organizers, including Stalin, met near Erivansky Square
(just 2 minutes from the seminary, bank and viceroy's palace) to finalize their
plans, and after the meeting, they went to their designated places in
preparation for the attack. The gang
members mostly dressed themselves as peasants and waited on street corners with
revolvers and grenades. In contrast to the others, Kamo was disguised as a
cavalry captain and came to the square in a horse-drawn phaeton, a type of open
carriage. The Tiflis branch of the State
Bank of the Russian Empire had arranged to transport funds between the post
office and the State Bank by horse-drawn stagecoach. Inside the stagecoach was the money, two
guards with rifles, a bank cashier, and a bank accountant. The stagecoach made its way through the
crowded square at about 10:30 am. Kupriashvili gave the signal, and the robbers
hit the carriage with grenades, killing many of the horses and guards, and
began shooting security men guarding the stagecoach and the square. Bombs were
thrown from all directions. One of the injured horses harnessed to the bank
stagecoach bolted, pulling the stagecoach with it, chased by Kupriashvili,
Kamo, and another robber, Datiko Chibriashvili. After
securing the money, Kamo quickly rode out of the square; encountering a police
carriage, he pretended to be a captain of the cavalry, shouting, "The
money's safe. Run to the square.
The State Bank was not
sure how much it actually lost from the robbery, but the best estimates were
around 341,000 rubles, worth around 3.4 million US dollars as of 2008. A decade later, after the Bolshevik
Revolution of October 1917, many of those who had been involved in the robbery
became high ranking Soviet officials. Lenin went on to become the first Soviet
Premier, the post he held until his death in 1924, followed by Stalin as leader
of the Soviet Union until his own death in 1953. Maxim Litvinov became a Soviet
diplomat, serving as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1930–1939). Leonid
Krasin initially quit politics after the split from Lenin in 1909, but rejoined
the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution and served as the Soviet trade
representative in London and as People's Commissar for Foreign Trade until his
death in 1926. After Kamo's release from prison, he worked in the Soviet
customs office, by some accounts because he was too unstable to work for the
secret police. He died in 1922 when a
truck hit him while he was cycling; some
have theorized that Stalin ordered his death to keep him quiet.
Sad, I never
read these in my history classes and many hail these bank robbers as revolutionaries. What is your take ? – the facts of history
are stranger than fiction !
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
26.6.2020
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