Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Nadya laughed that the students at the Academy were divided into “Kulaks, middle-peasants and poor peasants,” but she was joking about the liquidation of over a million innocent women and children. There is evidence that Nadya happily informed Stalin about his enemies, yet that was changing. The rural struggle divided their friends: her adored Bukharin and Yenukidze confided their doubts to her. Her fellow students had “put me down as a Rightist,” she joked to Stalin, who would have been troubled that they were getting to his wife at a time when he was entering stormy waters indeed.32

  On holiday in the south, Stalin learned that Riutin, an Old Bolshevik who had been in charge of Cinema, was trying to create an opposition to dismiss him. He reacted fast to Molotov on 13 September: “with regard to Riutin, it seems it’s impossible to limit ourselves to expelling him from the Party . . . he will have to be expelled somewhere as far as possible from Moscow. This counter-revolutionary scum25 should be completely disarmed.”33 Simultaneously, Stalin arranged a series of show trials and “conspiracies” by so-called “wreckers.” Stalin redoubled the push for collectivization and race to industrialize at red-hot speed. As the tension rose, he stoked the martial atmosphere, inventing new enemies to intimidate his real opponents in the Party and among the technical experts who said it could not be done.

  Stalin frantically ordered Molotov to publish all the testimonies of the “wreckers” immediately and then “after a week, announce that all these scoundrels will be executed by firing squad. They should all be shot.”34

  Then he turned to attacking the Rightists in the government. He ordered a campaign against currency speculation which he blamed on Rykov’s Finance Commissars, those “doubtful Communists” Pyatakov and Briukhanov. Stalin wanted blood and he ordered the cultivated OGPU boss, Menzhinsky, to arrest more wreckers. He told Molotov “to shoot two or three dozen saboteurs infiltrated into these offices.”35

  Stalin made a joke of this at the Politburo. When the leaders criticized Briukhanov, Stalin scribbled to Valery Mezhlauk, reporting on behalf of Gosplan, the economic planning agency: “For all new, existing and future sins to be hung by the balls, and if the balls are strong and don’t break, to forgive him and think him correct but if they break, then to throw him into the river.” Mezhlauk was also an accomplished cartoonist and drew a picture of this particular torture, testicles and all.36 Doubtless everyone laughed uproariously. But Briukhanov was sacked and later destroyed.

  That summer of 1930, as the Sixteenth Congress crowned Stalin as leader, Nadya was suffering from a serious internal illness—so he sent her to Carlsbad for the best medical treatment and to Berlin to see her brother Pavel and his wife Zhenya. Her medical problems were complex, mysterious and probably psychosomatic. Nadya’s medical records, that Stalin preserved, reveal that at various times, she suffered “acute abdominal pains” probably caused by her earlier abortion. Then there were the headaches as fierce as migraines that may have been symptoms of synostosis, a disease in which the cranial bones merge together, or they may simply have been caused by the stress of the struggle within the USSR. Even though he was frantically busy arranging the Congress and fighting enemies in the villages and the Politburo, Stalin was never more tender.

  4

  Famine and the Country Set: Stalin at the Weekend

  Tatka! What was the journey like, what did you see, have you been to the doctors, what do they say about your health? Write and tell me,” he wrote on 21 June. “We start the Congress on the 26th... Things aren’t going too badly. I miss you... come home soon. I kiss you.” As soon as the Congress was over, he wrote: “Tatka! I got all three letters. I couldn’t reply, I was too busy. Now at last I’m free . . . Don’t be too long coming home. But stay longer if your health makes it necessary... I kiss you.”1

  In the summer, Stalin, backed by the formidable Sergo, guided one of his faked conspiracies, the so-called “Industrial Party,” to implicate President Kalinin, and seems to have used evidence that “Papa,” a ladies’ man, was wasting State funds on a ballerina. The President begged for forgiveness.2

  Stalin and Menzhinsky were in constant communication about other conspiracies too. Stalin worried about the loyalty of the Red Army. The OGPU forced two officers to testify against the Chief of Staff, Tukhachevsky, that gifted, dashing commander who had been Stalin’s bitter enemy since the Polish War of 1920. Tukhachevsky was hated by the less sophisticated officers who complained to Voroshilov that the arrogant commander “makes fun of us” with his “grandiose plans.” Stalin agreed they were “fantastical,” and so over-ambitious as to be almost counter-revolutionary.3

  The OGPU interrogations accused Tukhachevsky of planning a coup against the Politburo. In 1930, this was perhaps too outrageous even for the Bolsheviks. Stalin, not yet dictator, probed his powerful ally, Sergo: “Only Molotov, myself and now you are in the know . . . Is it possible? What a business! Discuss it with Molotov . . .” However, Sergo would not go that far. There would be no arrest and trial of Tukhachevsky in 1930: the commander “turns out to be 100% clean,” Stalin wrote disingenuously to Molotov in October. “That’s very good.” 4 It is interesting that seven years before the Great Terror, Stalin was testing the same accusations against the same victims—a dress rehearsal for 1937—but he could not get the support.5 The archives reveal a fascinating sequel: once he understood the ambitious modernity of Tukhachevsky’s strategies, Stalin apologized to him: “Now the question has become clearer to me, I have to agree that my remark was too strong and my conclusions were not right at all.”6

  Nadya returned from Carlsbad and joined Stalin on holiday. Brooding how to bring Rykov and Kalinin to heel, Stalin did not make Nadya feel welcome. “I did not feel you wanted me to prolong my stay, quite the contrary,” wrote Nadya. She left for Moscow where the Molotovs, ever the busybodies of the Kremlin, “scolded” her for “leaving you alone,” as she angrily reported to Stalin. Stalin was irritated by the Molotovs, and by Nadya’s feeling that she was unwelcome: “Tell Molotov, he’s wrong. To reproach you, making you worry about me, can only be done by someone who doesn’t know my business.”7 Then she heard from her godfather that Stalin was delaying his return until October.

  Stalin explained that he had lied to Yenukidze to confuse his enemies: “Tatka, I started that rumour . . . for reasons of secrecy. Only Tatka, Molotov and maybe Sergo know the date of my arrival.”8

  Close to Molotov and Sergo, Stalin no longer trusted one of his closest friends who sympathized with the Rightists: Nadya’s godfather, “Uncle Abel” Yenukidze. Nicknamed “Tonton,” this veteran conspirator, at fiftythree, two years older than Stalin, had known Koba and the Alliluyevs since the turn of the century. Another ex–Tiflis Seminarist, he had, in 1904, created the secret Bolshevik printing press in Batumi. He was never ambitious and was said to have turned down promotion to the Politburo, but he was everyone’s friend, bearing no grudges against the defeated oppositions, always ready to help old pals. This easygoing Georgian sybarite was well-connected in the military, the Party, and the Caucasus, personifying the incestuous tangle of Bolshevism: he had had an affair with Ekaterina Voroshilova before her marriage. Yet Stalin still enjoyed Yenukidze’s companionship: “Hello Abel! What the devil keeps you in Moscow? Come to Sochi...”9

  Meanwhile, Stalin turned on Premier Rykov, whose drinking was so heavy that in Kremlin circles, vodka was called “Rykovka.”

  “What to do about Rykov (who uncontestably helped them) and Kalinin . . .?” he wrote to Molotov on 2 September. “No doubt Kalinin has sinned . . . The CC must be informed to teach Kalinin never to get mixed up with such rascals again.”10

  Kalinin was forgiven—but the warning was clear: he never crossed Stalin again, a political husk, a craven rubber stamp for all Stalin’s outrages. Yet Stalin liked Papa Kalinin and enjoyed the pretty girls at his parties in Sochi. The success of his “handsome” charms soon reached the half-indulgent, half-jealous Nadya in Moscow.

  “I heard from a young a
nd pretty woman,” she wrote, “that you looked handsome at Kalinin’s dinner, you were remarkably jolly, made them all laugh, though they were shy in your august presence.”

  On 13 September, Stalin mused to Molotov that “our summit of state is afflicted with a terrible sickness . . . It is necessary to take measures. But what? I’ll talk to you when I return to Moscow . . .” He posed much the same thought to other members of the Politburo. They suggested Stalin for Rykov’s job: “Dear Koba,” wrote Voroshilov, “Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Kuibyshev and I think the best result would be the unification of the leadership of Sovnarkom and to appoint you to it as you want to take the leadership with all strength. This isn’t like 1918–21 but Lenin did lead the Sovnarkom.” Kaganovich insisted it had to be Stalin. Sergo agreed. Mikoyan wrote too that in the Ukraine “they destroyed their harvest last year—very dangerous . . . Nowadays we need strong leadership from a single leader as it was in Illich’s [Lenin’s] time and the best decision is you to be the candidate for the Chairmanship . . . Doesn’t all of mankind know who’s the ruler of our country?”11

  Yet no one had ever held the posts of both General Secretary and Premier. Furthermore, could a foreigner,26 a Georgian, formally lead the country? So Kaganovich backed Stalin’s nominee, Molotov.

  “You should replace Rykov,” Stalin told Molotov. 12

  On 21 October, Stalin uncovered more betrayal: Sergei Syrtsov, candidate Politburo member and one of his protégés, was denounced for plotting against him. Denunciation was already a daily part of the Bolshevik ritual and a duty—Stalin’s files are filled with such letters. Syrtsov was summoned to the Central Committee. He implicated the First Secretary of the Transcaucasus Party, Beso Lominadze, an old friend of both Stalin and Sergo. Lominadze admitted secret meetings but claimed he only disapproved of comparing Stalin to Lenin. As ever, Stalin reacted melodramatically: “It’s unimaginable vileness . . . They played at staging a coup, they played at being the Politburo and plumbed the lowest depths ...”Then, after this eruption, Stalin asked Molotov: “How are things going for you?”13

  Sergo wanted them expelled from the Party but Stalin, who understood already from his probings about Tukhachevsky that his position was not strong enough yet, just had them expelled from the Central Committee. There is a small but important postscript to this: Sergo Ordzhonikidze protected his friend Lominadze by not revealing all his letters to the CC. Instead he went to Stalin and offered them to him personally. Stalin was shocked—why not the CC? “Because I gave him my word,” said Sergo.

  “How could you?” replied Stalin, adding later that Sergo had behaved not like a Bolshevik but “like . . . a prince. I told him I did not want to be part of his secret . . .” Later, this would assume a terrible significance.

  On 19 December, a Plenum gathered to consolidate Stalin’s victories over his opponents. Plenums were the sittings of the all-powerful Central Committee, which Stalin compared to an “Areopagus,” in the huge converted hall in the Great Kremlin Palace with dark wood panelling and pews like a grim Puritan church. This was where the central magnates and regional viceroys, who ruled swathes of the country as First Secretaries of republics and cities, met like a medieval Council of Barons. These meetings most resembled the chorus of a vicious evangelical meeting with constant interjections of “Right!” or “Brutes!” or just laughter. This was one of the last Plenums where the old Bolshevik tradition of intellectual argument and wit still played a part. Voroshilov and Kaganovich clashed with Bukharin who was playing his role of supporting Stalin’s line now that his own Rightists had been defeated: “We’re right to crush the most dangerous Rightist deviation,” said Bukharin.

  “And those infected with it!” called out Voroshilov.

  “If you’re talking about their physical destruction, I leave it to those comrades who are . . . given to bloodthirstyness.” There was laughter but the jokes were becoming sinister. It was still unthinkable for the inner circle to be touched physically, yet Kaganovich pressured Stalin to be tougher on the opposition while Voroshilov demanded “the Procurator must be a very active organ...”14

  The Plenum sacked Rykov as Premier and appointed Molotov.27 Sergo joined the Politburo and took over the Supreme Economic Council, the industrial colossus that ran the entire Five-Year Plan. He was the ideal bulldozer to force through industrialization. The new promotions and aggressive push to complete the Plan in four years unleashed a welter of rows between these potentates. They defended their own commissariats and supporters. When they changed jobs they tended to change allegiances: as Chairman of the Control Commission, Sergo had backed the campaigns against saboteurs and wreckers in industry. The moment he took over Industry, he defended his specialists. Sergo started constantly rowing with Molotov, whom he “didn’t love much,” over his budgets. There was no radical group: some were more extreme at different times. Stalin himself, the chief organiser of Terror, meandered his way to his revolution.

  Stalin refereed the arguments that became so vicious that Kuibyshev, Sergo and Mikoyan all threatened to resign, defending their posts: “Dear Stalin,” wrote Mikoyan coldly, “Your two telegrams disappointed me so much that I couldn’t work for two days. I can take any criticism . . . except being accused of being disloyal to the CC and you . . . Without your personal support, I can’t work as Narkom Supply and Trade . . . Better to find a new candidate but give me some other job . . .” Stalin apologized to Mikoyan and he often had to apologize to the others too. Dictators do not need to apologize.15 Meanwhile, Andreyev returned from Rostov to head the disciplinary Control Commission while Kaganovich, just thirty-seven, became Stalin’s Deputy Secretary, joining the General Secretary and Premier Molotov in a ruling triumvirate.

  “Brash and masculine,” tall and strong with black hair, long eyelashes and “fine brown eyes,” Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a workaholic always playing with amber worry beads or a key chain. Trained as a cobbler with minimal primary education, he looked first at a visitor’s boots. If he was impressed with their workmanship, he sometimes forced the visitor to take them off so he could admire them on his desk where he still kept a specially engraved tool set, presented to him by grateful workers.

  The very model of a macho modern manager, Kaganovich had an explosive temper like his friend Sergo. Happiest with a hammer in his hand, he often hit his subordinates or lifted them up by their lapels—yet politically he was cautious, “quick and clever.” He constantly clashed with plodding Molotov who regarded him as “coarse, tough and straitlaced, very energetic, a good organizer, who floundered on . . . theory.” But he was the leader “most devoted to Stalin.” Despite the strong Jewish accent, Sergo believed he was their best orator: “He really captured the audience!” A boisterous manager so tough and forceful that he was nicknamed “The Locomotive,” Kaganovich “not only knew how to apply pressure,” said Molotov, “but he was something of a ruffian himself.” He “could get things done,” said Khrushchev. “If the CC put an axe in his hands, he’d chop up a storm” but destroy the “healthy trees with the rotten ones.” Stalin called him “Iron Lazar.”

  Born in November 1893 in a hut in the remote village of Kabana in the Ukrainian-Belorussian borderlands into a poor, Orthodox Jewish family of five brothers and one sister, who all slept in one room, Lazar, the youngest, was recruited into the Party by his brother in 1911 and agitated in the Ukraine under the unlikely name of “Kosherovich.”

  Lenin singled him out as a rising leader: he was far more impressive than he seemed. Constantly reading in his huge library, educating himself with Tsarist history textbooks (and the novels of Balzac and Dickens), this “worker-intellectual” was the brains behind the militarisation of the Party state. In 1918, aged twenty-four, he ran and terrorised Nizhny Novgorod. In 1919, he demanded a tight dictatorship, urging the military discipline of “Centralism.” In 1924, writing in clear but fanatical prose, it was he who designed the machinery of what became “Stalinism.” After running the appointments section of the CC,
“Iron Lazar” was sent to run Central Asia then, in 1925, the Ukraine, before returning in 1928, joining the Politburo as a full member at the Sixteenth Congress in 1930.

  Kaganovich and his wife Maria met romantically on a secret mission when these young Bolsheviks had to pretend to be married: they found their roles easy to play because they fell in love and got married. They were so happy together that they always held hands even sitting in Politburo limousines, bringing up their daughter and adopted son in a loving, rather Jewish household. Humorous and emotional, Lazar was an athlete who skied and rode, but he possessed the most pusillanimous instinct for self-preservation. As a Jew, Kaganovich was aware of his vulnerability and Stalin was equally sensitive in protecting his comrade from anti-Semitism. Kaganovich was the first true Stalinist, coining the word during a dinner at Zubalovo. “Everyone keeps talking about Lenin and Leninism but Lenin’s been gone a long time . . . Long live Stalinism!”

  “How dare you say that?” retorted Stalin modestly. “Lenin was a tall tower and Stalin a little finger.” But Kaganovich treated Stalin far more reverently than Sergo or Mikoyan: he was, said Molotov disdainfully, “200% Stalinist.” He so admired the Vozhd, he admitted, that “when I go to Stalin, I try not to forget a thing! I so worry every time. I prepare every document in my briefcase and I fill my pockets with cribs like a schoolboy because no one knows what Stalin’s going to ask.” Stalin reacted to Kaganovich’s schoolboyish respect by teaching him how to spell and punctuate, even when he was so powerful: “I’ve reread your letter,” Kaganovich wrote to Stalin in 1931, “and realize that I haven’t carried out your directive to master punctuation marks. I’d started but haven’t quite managed it, but I can do it despite my burden of work. I’ll try to have full stops and commas in future letters.”16 He respected Stalin as Russia’s own “Robespierre” and refused to call him by the intimate “thou”: “Did you ever call Lenin ‘thou’ ?”17