Barsov was a senior leader in the Bolshevik movement in Georgia, having been active in revolutionary politics since 1880.

However, Tskhakaya made Stalin write a credo renouncing his views and attend a series of his lectures on Marxism.

[2] On September 9, Tskhakaya and Stalin were among just six Bolsheviks at the Social Democratic conference in Tbilisi (the other 36 were Mensheviks).

[3] They shared a room at the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London.

In 1907, after a series of arrests and deportations, he went into exile in Switzerland, where he visited Lenin in Geneva.