Simon Arshaki Ter-Petrosian (Russian: Симон Аршакович Тер-Петросян, romanized: Simon Arshakovich Ter-Petrosyan; Armenian: Սիմոն «Կամօ» Տէր Պետրոսեան; 27 May 1882 – 14 July 1922), better known by his nom de guerre of Kamo (Russian: Камо), was an Old Bolshevik revolutionary and an early companion to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

He is best known for his central role in the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, organised by Bolshevik leaders to raise funds for their party activities.

[1] Kamo was buried and had a monument erected in his honor in Pushkin Gardens, near Yerevan Square, but, following the rise to power of Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Georgia in 1991, a threat arose to the safety of the burial of the famous Bolshevik, and relatives transferred Kamo's ashes to the Vakiskoe cemetery, to the grave of his sister Javair.

[5] In 1892, when he was 10 years old, he witnessed a public execution of two people in Gori, ordered to hang by the local Georgian noble.

[7] Kamo's grandfather, a priest, wanted to send him to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, but his mother felt he was too young to go away to school.

As a result, Kamo stayed at home and was enrolled in 1895 in a local school, where he remained for three years until being expelled.

In Tiflis, Ter-Petrosian met Joseph Stalin (real name, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili), whose mother, Ketevan, was a friend of Kamo's father.

He was given the tasks of distributing leaflets, organizing meetings, gathering outlawed publications, and moving illegal printing presses.

After being moved, Kamo caught malaria and as part of his therapy, was allowed to walk in the prison yard during the morning.

After escaping from the prison, Kamo quickly hailed a passing carriage and was able to meet up with fellow revolutionaries.

Lenin's widow Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote, years later that: This fighting man, with his colossal courage, his unwavering strength of will and his fearlessness, seemed at the same time an extraordinarily unsophisticated fellow, a rather naive and gentle comrade.

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ("RSDLP") were split between more moderate Mensheviks who favored disarming, and the hard line Bolsheviks, who kept their weapons.

Kamo led the defense of the Bolshevik stronghold in Tiflis against the police and army, commanded by General Fyodor Gryazonov.

To fund revolutionary activities, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin endorsed the use of "expropriations", a euphemism for armed robbery of state banks.

For his band of "expropriators", Kamo recruited young Georgian women who used their looks to gain information about transfer of State Bank funds.

[18] In April 1907, high ranking Bolsheviks decided that Stalin and Kamo should organize a robbery in Tiflis to obtain funds to purchase arms.

[19] Through his connections, Stalin managed to discover from an old friend that there was going to be a large shipment of money by horse-drawn carriage to the Tiflis Bank on 26 June 1907.

[24][25][17] Kamo was confined to his bed for a month due to intense pain, and had not fully recovered by the time of the robbery.

[24][25][17] On the day of the robbery, the robbers all took their places in Yerevan Square dressed as peasants and waited on street corners with revolvers and grenades.

[24] In contrast to the other robbers, Kamo was disguised as a cavalry captain and came to the square in a horse–drawn phaeton, a type of open carriage.

[32] Instead of turning away, Kamo pretended to be part of the security forces and shouted to the deputy that "the money's safe.

[26][28][33] The authorities stated that only three people had died, but documents in the Okhrana archives reveal that the true number was around forty.

[25] Lenin had been hoping to help the man who had successfully executed the robbery, but unintentionally turned Kamo over to a double agent.

[25] Zhitomirsky had been secretly working as an agent of the Russian government and quickly informed the Okhrana about his encounter with Kamo.

[25] When they did so, they found a forged Austrian passport and a suitcase with 200 detonators, which he was planning to use in another large bank robbery.

[37][39][40] In order to make sure that Kamo was not faking his condition, German doctors stuck pins under his nails, struck him in the back with a long needle, and burned him with hot irons, but he did not break his act.

[39][41] After all of these tests, the chief doctor of the Berlin asylum wrote in June 1909 that "there is no foundation to the belief that [Kamo] is feigning insanity.

[44][45] The court eventually found that he was sane when he committed the Tiflis robbery, but was presently mentally ill and should be confined until he recovered.

[46] In August 1911, after feigning insanity for more than three years, Kamo escaped from the psychiatric ward of the Tiflis prison by sawing through his window bars and climbing down a homemade rope.

"[53] He paced the halls of the Kremlin until he was allowed to create his own band of men who would help raid money on the other side of the Eastern Front to support the country.