Written in History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Farewell…farewell.

  Winston Churchill to his wife, Clementine, 17 July 1915

  As the world careened into the First World War in 1914, Winston Churchill, aged forty-one, was serving in the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty in the charge of the fleet of the world’s paramount sea power. Like everyone else in Europe, he was horrified by the purblind, feverish stagger into war, writing to his wife, Clementine, in July 1914: “I cannot feel that we in this island are in any serious degree responsible for the wave of madness which has swept the mind of Christendom. No one can measure the consequences. I wondered whether those stupid Kings and Emperors could not assemble together and revivify kingship by saving the nations from hell but we all drift on in a kind of dull cataleptic trance.” Once the initial German attacks against France and Russia had failed to knock them out of the war, the war descended into a murderous trench warfare, which Churchill tried to solve in an imaginative way by suggesting an attack on the weakest link among Germany’s allies, the Ottoman Empire, thereby relieving pressure on the Russians and hopefully capturing Istanbul. This was a sensible idea, but it was appallingly executed, and it became the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Churchill was removed from the Admiralty and demoted. He resigned in November 1915 to serve in the trenches as a lieutenant-colonel, returning to the government in July 1917.

  It is during his political limbo preparing to enlist that he writes this letter to Clementine to be opened “in the event of my death.” Mentioning his son Randolph as his heir, Churchill treats Clementine with a characteristic combination of political pragmatism, bumptious self-confidence, romantic love, and a chivalric, even spiritual, open-mindedness, especially his promise that “if there is anywhere else I shall be on the lookout for you.”

  In the event of my death.

  I am anxious that you should get hold of all my papers, especially those which refer to my Admiralty administration. I have appointed you my sole literary executor….There is no hurry; but some day I should like the truth to be known. Randolph will carry on the lamp. Do not grieve for me too much. I am a spirit confident of my rights. Death is only an incident, and not the most important which happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, especially since I met you my darling one, I have been happy, and you have taught me how noble a woman’s heart can be. If there is anywhere else I shall be on the lookout for you. Meanwhile look forward, feel free, rejoice in life, cherish the children, guard my memory. God bless you. Goodbye. W

  Nikolai Bukharin to Josef Stalin, 10 December 1937

  A letter of devotion and submission from a man to his killer. This is one of the strangest letters in this book, both heartbreaking and horrific, reflecting the bizarre murderous frenzy of the Great Terror in Soviet Russia. In the late 1920s, Josef Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin had been intimate friends and political allies in ruling the Soviet Union. Their wives were friends; their families ran in and out of each other’s houses. Bukharin was an intellectual described by Lenin as “the darling of the Party.” But in 1929, Stalin turned against Bukharin, who in turn plotted with Stalin’s enemies and continued to be friends with Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda. Nadezhda Stalin committed suicide in 1932. As for Bukharin, he divorced his own first wife, also named Nadezhda, and married Anna, the teenage daughter of a well-known Party leader. During the thirties, Stalin toyed with Bukharin until 1936, when he launched a purge of the Bolshevik leadership, orchestrating the destruction of his former friend. The Terror intensified as Stalin arranged the arrest, torture, and execution of around a million people. Finally, Bukharin was arrested and forced to confess to crimes he did not commit.

  Knowing he is likely to be shot by the remorseless Stalin, he writes a final letter from prison. Yet, as a Bolshevik devoted to the Marxist-Leninist mission before everything, even his own life, he expresses devotion to Stalin—his friend, “Koba”—and to the Communist Party and admires the big idea of a brutal purge. Bukharin is clearly exhausted, desperate, almost feverish, and rambling as he dreams of meeting his own wife, Nadezhda, again; begs to see his young wife one last time; fears the bullets; and requests morphine. The letter is extraordinary in its mixture of love and humiliation—and in Bukharin’s readiness to die for the Party, confessing crimes he never committed. Stalin wanted Bukharin to die, and he was executed after his public trial on 15 March 1938. Stalin is said to have kept this letter in his desk for the rest of his life.

  VERY SECRET

  PERSONAL

  REQUEST NO ONE BE ALLOWED TO READ THIS LETTER WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF I.V. STALIN.

  Josef Vissarionovich:

  This is perhaps the last letter I shall write to you before my death. That’s why, though I am a prisoner, I ask you to permit me to write this letter without resorting to officialese, all the more so since I am writing this letter to you alone: the very fact of its existence or nonexistence will remain entirely in your hands.

  I’ve come to the last page of my drama and perhaps of my very life. I agonized over whether I should pick up pen and paper—as I write this, I am shuddering all over from disquiet and from a thousand emotions stirring within me, and I can hardly control myself. But precisely because I have so little time left, I want to take my leave of you in advance, before it’s too late, before my hand ceases to write, before my eyes close, while my brain somehow still functions.

  In order to avoid any misunderstandings, I will say to you from the outset that, as far as the world at large (society) is concerned: a) I have no intention of recanting anything I’ve written down [confessed]; b) In this sense (or in connection with this), I have no intention of asking you or pleading with you for anything that might derail my case from the direction in which it is heading. But I am writing to you for your personal information. I cannot leave this life without writing to you these last lines because I am in the grip of torments which you should know about….

  There is something great and bold about the political idea of a general purge. It is a) connected with the pre-war situation and b) connected with the transition to democracy. This purge encompasses 1) the guilty; 2) persons under suspicion; and 3) persons potentially under suspicion. This business could not have been managed without me. Some are neutralized one way, others in another way, and a third group in yet another way. What serves as a guarantee for all is the fact that people inescapably talk about each other and in doing so arouse an everlasting distrust in each other….In this way, the leadership is bringing about a full guarantee for itself.

  For God’s sake, don’t think that I am engaging here in reproaches, even in my inner thoughts. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know all too well that great plans, great ideas, and great interests take precedence over everything, and I know that it would be petty for me to place the question of my own person on a par with the universal-historical tasks resting, first and foremost on your shoulders….

  Permit me, finally, to move on to my last, minor, requests.

  a) It would be a thousand times easier for me to die than to go through the coming trial: I simply don’t know how I’ll be able to control myself—you know my nature: I am not an enemy either of the party or of the USSR, and I’ll do all within my powers [to serve my party’s cause], but, under such circumstances, my powers are minimal, and heavy emotions rise up in my soul….

  b) If I’m to receive the death sentence, then I implore you beforehand, I entreat you, by all that you hold dear, not to have me shot. Let me drink poison in my cell instead. (Let me have morphine so that I can fall asleep and never wake up.) For me, this point is extremely important. I don’t know what words I should summon up in order to entreat you to grant me this as an act of charity. After all, politically, it won’t really matter, and, besides, no one will know a thing about it. But let me spend my last moments as I wish. Have pity on me! Surely you’ll understand—knowing me as well as you do. Sometimes I look death openly in the face, just as I kno
w very well that I am capable of brave deeds. At other times, I, ever the same person, find myself in such disarray that I am drained of all strength. So if the verdict is death, let me have a cup of morphine. I implore you….

  c) I ask you to allow me to bid farewell to my wife and son. No need for me to say goodbye to my daughter. I feel sorry for her. It will be too painful for her. It will also be too painful for Nadya [Bukharin’s first wife] and my father. Anyuta, on the other hand, is young. She will survive. I would like to exchange a few last words with her. I would like permission to meet her before the trial. My argument is as follows: if my family sees what I confessed to, they might commit suicide from sheer unexpectedness. I must somehow prepare them for it. It seems to me that this is in the interests of the case and its official interpretation.

  d) If, contrary to expectation, my life is to be spared, I would like to request (though I would first have to discuss it with my wife)…That I be exiled to America for x number of years….But if there is the slightest doubt in your mind, then exile me to a camp in Pechora or Kolyma, even for 25 years….

  Josef Vissarionovich! In me you have lost one of your most capable generals, one who is genuinely devoted to you. But that is all past….I am preparing myself mentally to depart from this vale of tears, and there is nothing in me toward all of you, toward the party and the cause, but a great and boundless love. I am doing everything that is humanly possible and impossible. I have written to you about all this. I have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s. I have done all this in advance, since I have no idea at all what condition I shall be in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, etc. Being a neurasthenic, I shall perhaps feel such universal apathy that I won’t be able to even so much as move my finger.

  But now, in spite of a headache and with tears in my eyes, I am writing. My conscience is clear before you now, Koba. I ask you one final time for your forgiveness (only in your heart, not otherwise). For that reason I embrace you in my mind. Farewell forever and remember kindly your wretched

  N. Bukharin

  Franz Kafka to Max Brod, June 1924

  Franz Kafka wrote of alienation, secrecy, and persecution by sinister bureaucracies, and his last letter to his best friend, Max Brod, displayed all the themes of his works. Born in Prague, Kafka was a Jewish insurance official turned novelist who produced masterpieces such as The Trial and The Castle and was an obsessional womanizer, yet simultaneously he was tormented by the fear of literary and sexual failure. He therefore destroyed 90 percent of what he wrote. While he is dying of tuberculosis, he tells Brod to destroy all of his works, which he believed would ruin his literary reputation. Brod chose to ignore his friend’s request and between 1925 and 1933 published the work that spawned the term “Kafkaesque.”

  Dear Max,

  My last request: Everything I leave behind me…in the way of notebooks, manuscripts, letters, my own and other people’s, sketches and so on, is to be burned unread and to the last page, as well as all writings of mine or notes which either you may have or other people, from whom you are to beg them in my name. Letters which are not handed over to you should at least be faithfully burned by those who have them.

  Yours,

  Franz Kafka

  Walter Raleigh to his wife, Bess, 8 December 1603

  There is a certain sort of letter by a person who, facing death in the morning, nonetheless manages to write in a fearlessly jaunty tone, and this is one of the best. On 17 November 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh was sentenced to death for treason, thanks to his involvement in the “Main Plot” against the new king James I. The night before his execution he writes this letter to Bess, which contains matter-of-fact financial details, expressions of love for his wife and son, and reflections on death with sentiments of swashbuckling courage and unbearable sadness.

  A paragon of his age, Raleigh was a favorite of Elizabeth I—dashingly handsome, an adventurer, privateer, and admiral who founded the first colony in North America, raided Spanish possessions in Latin America, and co-commanded attacks on Spain itself. He was not just a man of action but of letters, too, an acclaimed poet and historian, and a chemist. The morning after this letter was written, Raleigh was taken out to be beheaded, then reprieved by the king at the last moment, but kept in the Tower of London for over a decade—until 1616—giving him the chance to write a history of the world and many other works. He persuaded the king to release him to go off in search of El Dorado (a legendary city of gold that he believed awaited discovery in today’s Venezuela). His expedition discovered no gold, which infuriated the king’s Spanish allies. The Spanish ambassador demanded Raleigh’s head. He was finally executed in 1618. Bess was said to have had Walter’s head embalmed and to have carried it around with her until her own death in 1647.

  WINCHESTER, 8 DECEMBER 1603

  You shall now receive (my dear wife) my last words in these my last lines. My love I send you, that you may keep it when I am dead, and my counsel that you may remember it when I am no more. I would not by my will present you with sorrows (dear Bess). Let them go to the grave with me and be buried in the dust. And seeing that it is not the will of God that I should see you any more in this life, bear it patiently, and with a heart like thy self.

  First, I send you all the thanks which my heart can conceive, or my words can express for your many travails, and care taken for me, which, though they have not taken effect as you wished, yet my debt to you is not the less: but pay it I never shall in this world.

  Secondly, I beseech you for the love you bear me living, do not hide your self many days, but by your travails seek to help your miserable fortunes and the right of your poor child. Thy mourning cannot avail me, I am but dust.

  Thirdly, you shall understand, that my land was conveyed bona fide to my child: the writings were drawn at midsummer twelve months. My honest cousin Brett can testify so much, and Dalberry, too, can remember somewhat therein. And I trust that my blood will quench their malice that have thus cruelly murthered me: and that they will not seek also to kill thee and thine with extreme poverty. To what friend to direct thee I know not, for all mine have left me in the true time of trial. And I plainly perceive that my death was determined from the first day.

  Most sorry I am, God knows, that being thus surprised with death I can leave you in no better estate. God is my witness I meant you all my office of wines or all that I could have purchased by selling it, half of my stuff, and all my jewels, but some of it for the boy. But God hath prevented all my resolutions, and even great God that ruleth all in all. But if you live free from want, care for no more, for the rest is but vanity.

  Love God, and begin betimes to repose your self upon him, and therein shall you find true and lasting riches, and endless comfort: for the rest when you have travailed and wearied your thoughts over all sorts of worldly cogitations, you shall but sit down by sorrow in the end. Teach your son also to love and fear God whilst he is yet young, that the fear of God may grow with him, and the same God will be a husband to you, and a father to him; a husband and a father which cannot be taken from you.

  Baylie oweth me 200 pounds, and Adrian Gilbert 600. In Jersey I also have much owing me besides. The arrearages of the wines will pay my debts. And howsoever you do, for my soul’s sake, pay all poor men. When I am gone, no doubt you shall be sought for by many, for the world thinks that I was very rich. But take heed of the pretenses of men, and their affections, for they last not, but in honest and worthy men, and no greater misery can befall you in this life, than to become a prey, and afterward to be despised. I speak not this (God knows) to dissuade you from marriage, for it will be best for you, both in respect of the world and of God.

  As for me, I am no more yours, nor you mine. Death hath cut us asunder and God hath divided me from the world, and you from me. Remember your poor child for his father’s sake, who chose you, and loved you in his happiest times.

 
; Get those letters (if it be possible) which I writ to the Lords, wherein I sued for my life. God is my witness, it was for you and yours that I desired life. But it is true that I disdained my self for begging of it. For know it (my dear wife) that your son is the son of a true man, and one who in his own respect despiseth death and all his misshapen and ugly formes.

  I cannot write much. God he knows how hardly I steal this time while others sleep, and it is also time that I should separate my thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body which living was denied thee; and either lay it at Sherburne (and if the land continue) or in Exeter-Church, by my father and mother. I can say no more, time and death call me away.