Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Stalin was not the dreary bureaucrat that Trotsky wanted him to be. It was certainly true that he was a gifted organizer. He “never improvised” but “took every decision, weighing it carefully.” He was capable of working extraordinarily long hours—sixteen a day. But the new archives confirm that his real genius was something different—and surprising: “he could charm people.” He was what is now known as a “people person.” While incapable of true empathy on the one hand, he was a master of friendships on the other. He constantly lost his temper, but when he set his mind to charming a man, he was irresistible.

  Stalin’s face was “expressive and mobile,” his feline movements “supple and graceful”: he buzzed with sensitive energy. Everyone who saw him “was anxious to see him again” because “he created a sense that there was now a bond that linked them forever.” Artyom said he made “we children feel like adults and feel important.” Visitors were impressed with his quiet modesty, the puffing on the pipe, the calmness. When the future Marshal Zhukov first met him, he could not sleep afterwards: “The appearance of JV Stalin, his quiet voice, the concreteness and depth of his judgements, the attention with which he heard the report made a great impression on me.” Sudoplatov, a Chekist, thought “it was hard to imagine such a man could deceive you, his reactions were so natural, without the slightest sense of him posing” but he also noticed “a certain harshness . . . which he did not . . . conceal.”

  In the eyes of these rough Bolsheviks from the regions, his flat quiet public speaking was an asset, a great improvement on Trotsky’s oratorical wizardry. Stalin’s lack of smoothness, his anti-oratory, inspired trust. His very faults, the chip on the shoulder, the brutality and fits of irrational temper, were the Party’s faults. “He was not trusted but he was the man the Party trusted,” admitted Bukharin. “He’s like the symbol of the Party, the lower strata trust him.”5 But above all, reflected the future secret police chief, Beria, he was “supremely intelligent,” a political “genius.” However rude or charming he was, “he dominated his entourage with his intelligence.”

  He did not just socialize with the magnates: he patronized junior officials too, constantly searching for tougher, more loyal, and more tireless lieutenants. He was always accessible: “I’m ready to help you and receive you,” he often replied to requests.6 Officials got through directly to Stalin. Those lower down called him, behind his back, the Khozyain which is usually translated as “Boss,” but it means much more: the “Master.” Nicholas II had called himself “ Khozyain of the Russian lands.” When Stalin heard someone use the word, he was “noticeably irritated” by its feudal mystique: “That sounds like a rich landowner in Central Asia. Fool!”7

  His magnates saw him as their patron but he saw himself as much more. “I know you’re diabolically busy,” Molotov wrote to him on his birthday. “But I shake your fifty-year-old hand . . . I must say in my personal work I’m obliged to you...”8 They were all obliged to him. But Stalin saw his own role embroidered with both Arthurian chivalry and Christian sanctity: “You need have no doubt, comrades, I am prepared to devote to the cause of the working class . . . all my strength, all my ability, and if need be, all my blood, drop by drop,” he wrote to thank the Party for acclaiming him as the Leader. “Your congratulations, I place to the credit of the great Party . . . which bore me and reared me in its own image and likeness.” Here was how he saw himself.9

  Nonetheless, this self-anointed Messianic hero worked hard to envelop his protégés in an irresistible embrace of folksy intimacy that convinced them there was no one he trusted more. Stalin was mercurial—far from a humourless drone: he was convivial and entertaining, if exhaustingly intense. “He was such fun,” says Artyom. According to the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas, his “rough . . . self-assured humour” was “roguish” and “impish” but “not entirely without finesse and depth” though it was never far from the gallows. His dry wit was acute but hardly Wildean. Once when Kozlovsky, the court tenor, was performing at the Kremlin, the Politburo started demanding some particular song.

  “Why put pressure on Comrade Kozlovsky?” intervened Stalin calmly. “Let him sing what he wants.” He paused. “And I think he wants to sing Lensky’s aria from Onegin.” Everyone laughed and Kozlovsky obediently sang the aria.18

  When Stalin appointed Isakov Naval Commissar, the admiral replied that it was too arduous because he only had one leg. Since the Navy had been “commanded by people without heads, one leg’s no handicap,” quipped Stalin. He was particularly keen on mocking the pretensions of the ruling caste: when a list of tedious worthies recommended for medals landed on his desk, he wrote across it: “Shitters get the Order of Lenin!”

  He enjoyed practical jokes. During the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, he ordered his bodyguards to get “Ras Kasa on the phone at once!” When a young guard returned “half-dead with worry” to explain that he could not get this Abyssinian mountain chieftain on the line, Stalin laughed: “And you’re in security!” He was capable of pungent repartee. Zinoviev accused him of ingratitude: “Gratitude’s a dog’s disease,” he snapped back.10

  Stalin “knew everything about his closest comrades—EVERYTHING!” stresses the daughter of one of them, Natasha Andreyeva. He watched his protégés, educated them, brought them to Moscow and took immense trouble with them: he promoted Mikoyan, but told Bukharin and Molotov that he thought the Armenian “still a duckling in politics . . . If he grows up, he’ll improve.”11 The Politburo was filled with fiery egomaniacs such as Sergo Ordzhonikidze: Stalin was adept at coaxing, charming, manipulating and bullying them into doing his bidding. When he summoned two of his ablest men, Sergo and Mikoyan, from the Caucasus, they argued with him and each other but his patience in soothing (and baiting) them was endless. 12

  Stalin personally oversaw their living arrangements. In 1913, when he stayed in Vienna with the Troyanovsky family, he gave the daughter of the house a bag of sweets every day. Then he asked the child’s mother: to whom would the child run if they both called? When they tried it, she ran to Stalin hoping for some more sweets. This idealistic cynic used the same incentives with the Politburo. When Sergo moved to Moscow, Stalin lent him his apartment. When Sergo loved the apartment, Stalin simply gave it to him. When young, provincial Beria visited Moscow for the Seventeenth Congress, Stalin himself put his ten-year-old son to bed at Zubalovo. 13 When he popped into the flats of the Politburo, Maya Kaganovich remembered him insisting they light their fire. “No detail was too small.” 14 Every gift suited the recipient: he gave his Cossack ally Budyonny swords with inscribed blades. He personally distributed the cars and latest gadgets.19 There is a list in the archives in Stalin’s handwriting assigning each car to every leader: their wives and daughters wrote thank-you letters to him.

  Then there was money: these magnates were often short of money because wages were paid on the basis of the “Party Maximum,” which meant that a “responsible worker” could not earn more than a highly paid worker. Even before Stalin abolished this in 1934, there were ways round it. Food hampers from the Kremlin canteen and special rations from the GORT (government) stores were delivered to each leader. But they also received pakets, secret gifts of money, like a banker’s bonus or cash in a brown envelope, and coupons for holidays. The sums were nominally decided by President Kalinin, and the Secretary of the Central Executive Committee, the majordomo of all the goodies, Yenukidze, but Stalin took great interest in these pakets. In the archives, Stalin underlined the amounts in a list headed “Money Gifts from Funds of Presidium for group of responsible workers and members of their families.” “Interesting numbers!” he wrote on it.15 When he noticed that his staff were short of money, he secretly intervened to help them, procuring publishing royalties for his chief secretary, Tovstukha. He wrote to the publishing chief that if Tovstukha denied he was skint, “he’s lying. He’s desperately short of money.” It used to be regarded as ironic to call the Soviet élite an “aristocracy” but they were much more like a fe
udal service nobility whose privileges were totally dependent on their loyalty.

  Just when these potentates needed to be harsher than ever, some were becoming soft and decadent, particularly those with access to the luxuries like Yenukidze and the secret policeman Yagoda. Furthermore, the regional bosses built up their own entourages and became so powerful that Stalin called them “Grand Dukes.” But there was no Party “prince” as beneficent as he himself, the patron of patrons.

  The Party was not just a mass of self-promoting groups—it was almost a family business. Whole clans were members of the leadership: Kaganovich was the youngest of five brothers, three of whom were high Bolsheviks. Stalin’s in-laws from both marriages were all senior officials. Sergo’s brothers were both top Bolsheviks in the Caucasus where family units were the norm. A tangle of intermarriage20 complicated the power relationships and would have fatal results: when one leader fell, everyone linked to him also disappeared into the abyss like mountaineers tied together with one safety rope.16

  The backs of the peasants, in Stalin and Molotov’s chilling phrase, were indeed being broken but the scale of the struggle shook even their most ruthless supporters. In mid-February 1930, Sergo and Kalinin travelled to inspect the countryside and returned to call a halt. Sergo, who as head of the Party Control Commission had orchestrated the campaign against the Rightists, now ordered the Ukraine to stop “socializing” livestock.

  Stalin had lost control. The masterful tactician bowed before the magnates and agreed to retreat—with resentful prudence. On 2 March, he wrote his famous article “Dizzy with Success,” in which he claimed success and blamed local officials for his own mistakes, which relieved the pressure21 in the villages. 17

  Stalin had regarded his allies as his “tightest circle” of “friends,” a brotherhood “formed historically in the struggle against . . . the opportunism” of Trotsky and Bukharin. But he now sensed the Politburo was riddled with doubt and disloyalty as the “Stalin Revolution” turned the countryside into a dystopian nightmare. 18 Even in stormy times, Politburo meetings, at midday on Thursday round the two parallel tables in the map-covered Sovnarkom Room in the Yellow Palace, could be surprisingly light-hearted.19 Stalin never chaired the Politburo, leaving that to the Premier, Rykov. He was careful never to speak first, according to Mikoyan, so that no one was tied by his opinion before they had stated their own. 20

  There was much scribbling across the table at these meetings. Bukharin, before he lost his place, drew caricatures of all the leaders, often in ludicrous poses with rampant erections or in Tsarist uniforms. They were always teasing Voroshilov about his vanity and stupidity even though this hero of the Civil War was one of Stalin’s closest allies. “Hi friend!” Stalin addressed him fondly. “Pity you’re not in Moscow. When are you coming?”

  “Vain as a woman,” no one liked uniforms more than Voroshilov. This proletarian boulevardier who sported white flannels at his sumptuous dacha and full whites for tennis, was a jolly Epicurean, “amiable and fun-loving, fond of music, parties and literature,” enjoying the company of actors and writers. Stalin heard that he was wearing his wife’s scarf because of a midsummer cold: “Of course, he loves himself so much that he takes great care of himself. Ha! He even does exercises!” laughed Stalin. “Notoriously stupid,” Voroshilov rarely saw a stick without getting the wrong end of it.

  A locksmith from Lugansk (renamed Voroshilov), he had, like many of Stalin’s leaders, barely completed two years at school. A Party member since 1903, Klim had shared a room with Stalin in Stockholm in 1906 but they had become friends at Tsaritsyn. Henceforth Stalin backed this “Commander-in-Chief from the lathe” all the way to become Defence Commissar in 1925. Out of his depth, Voroshilov loathed more sophisticated military minds with the inferiority complex that was one of the moving passions of Stalin’s circle. Ever since he had delivered mail on horseback to the miners of Lugansk, his mind was more at home with the equine than the mechanized.

  Usually described as a snivelling coward before his master, he had flirted with the oppositions and was perfectly capable of losing his temper with Stalin whom he always treated like an old buddy. He was only slightly younger than Koba and continued to call a spade a spade even after the Terror. Fair-haired, pink-cheeked, warm eyes twinkling, he was sweet-natured: the courage of this beau sabreur was peerless. Yet beneath his cherubic affability, there was something mean about the lips that revealed a petulant temper, vindictive cruelty, and a taste for violent solutions.22 Once convinced, he was “narrow-minded politically,” pursuing his orders with rigid obedience.

  His cult was second only to Stalin’s: even in the West, the novelist Denis Wheatley published a panegyric entitled The Red Eagle—“the amazing story of the pitboy who beat professional soldiers of three nations and is now Warlord of Russia.”21

  In one note passed round the table, Voroshilov wrote: “I cannot make the speech to the brake-makers because of my headache.”

  “To let off Voroshilov, I propose Rudzutak,” replied Stalin, suggesting another Politburo member.

  But Voroshilov was not escaping so easily: Rudzutak refused so Kalinin suggested letting him off, providing Voroshilov did the speech after all.

  “Against!” voted Voroshilov, signing himself: “Voroshilov who has the headache and cannot speak!”22

  If Stalin approved of a leader’s speech, he sent an enthusiastically scatological note: “A world leader, FUCK HIS MOTHER! I’ve read your report— you criticized everyone—fuck their mother!” he wrote approvingly to Voroshilov23 who wanted more praise: “Tell me more clearly—did I fail 100% or only 75%?” Stalin retorted in his inimitable style: “it was a good . . . report. You smacked the arses of Hoover, Chamberlain and Bukharin. Stalin.”24

  Serious questions were decided too: during a budget discussion, Stalin verbally nudged Voroshilov to stand up for his department: “They’re robbing you but you’re silent.” When his colleagues went back to discuss something Stalin thought had already been decided, they received this across the table: “What does this mean? Yesterday we agreed one thing about the speech but today another. Disorganization! Stalin.” Appointments were made in this way too. Their tone was often playful: Voroshilov wanted to inspect the army in Central Asia: “Koba, can I go . . . ? They say they’re forgotten.”

  “England will whine that Voroshilov has come to attack India,” replied Stalin, who wanted to avoid all foreign entanglements while he industrialized Russia.

  “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” Voroshilov persisted.

  “That’s worse. They’ll find out and say Voroshilov came secretly with criminal intent,” scrawled Stalin. When it came to appointing Mikoyan to run Trade, Voroshilov asked, “Koba, should we give Fishing to Mikoyan? Would he do it?”25 The members often bargained for appointments. Hence Voroshilov proposed to Kuibyshev, “I was first to propose the candidature of Pyatakov in conversation with Molotov and Kaganovich, and I’ll support you as your second...”26

  The Politburo could sit for hours, exhausting even Stalin: “Listen,” he wrote to Voroshilov during one session, “let’s put it off until Wednesday evening. Today’s no good. Already it’s 4:30 and we’ve still got 3 big questions to get through . . . Stalin.” Sometimes Stalin wrote wearily: “Military matters are so serious they must be discussed seriously but my head’s not capable of serious work today.”27

  However, Stalin realized that the Politburo could easily unite to dismiss him. Rykov, the Rightist Premier, did not believe in his plans, and now Kalinin too was wavering. Stalin knew he could be outvoted, even overthrown.2328 The new archives reveal how openly Kalinin argued with Stalin.

  “You defend the kulaks?” scribbled Stalin. He pushed it across the table to Papa Kalinin, that mild-mannered former peasant with round spectacles, goatee beard and droopy moustache.

  “Not the kulaks,” Kalinin wrote back, “but the trading peasant.”

  “But did you forget about the poorest ones?” Stalin scrawled back.
“Did you ignore the Russian peasantry?”

  “The middling sort are very Russian but what about non-Russians? They’re the poorest,” argued Kalinin.

  “Now you’re the Bashkir President not the Russian one!” Stalin chided him.

  “That’s not an argument, that’s a curse!”29 Stalin’s curse did descend on those who opposed him during this greatest crisis. He never forgot Kalinin’s betrayal. Every criticism was a battle for survival, a question of sin versus goodness, disease versus health, for this thin-skinned, neurotic egotist on his Messianic mission. During these months, he brooded on the disloyalty of those around him, for his family and his political allies were utterly interwoven. Stalin had every reason to feel paranoid. Indeed the Bolsheviks believed that paranoia, which they called “vigilance,” was an almost religious duty.24 Later Stalin was to talk privately about the “holy fear” that kept even him on his toes.

  His paranoia was part of a personal vicious circle that was to prove so deadly for many who knew him, yet it was understandable. His radical policies led to excessive repressions that led to the opposition he most feared. His unbalanced reactions produced a world in which he had reason to be fearful. In public he reacted to all this with a dry humour and modest tranquillity but one finds ample evidence of his hysterical reactions in private. “You cannot silence me or keep my opinion confined inside,” Stalin wrote to Voroshilov during the struggles with the Rightists, “yet you claim ‘I want to teach everyone.’ When will these attacks on me end? Stalin.”30 It extended to the family. One of his letters to Nadya went missing. Stalin was obsessed with the secrecy of his letters and travel plans. He impulsively blamed his mother-in-law but Nadya defended her: “You unfairly accused Mama. It turns out the letter was never delivered to anyone . . . She’s in Tiflis.”31