Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  PART EIGHT

  War: The Triumphant Genius 1942–1945

  39

  The Supremo of Stalingrad

  During Stalingrad, the Supremo usually fell asleep wearing all his clothes on the metal camp bed that stood under the stairs that led to the second floor at Kuntsevo. If there was an emergency, the “bald philanthropist” Poskrebyshev, who slept in his office, would call. He awoke around eleven when Shtemenko called from the Operations Department to give him his first report of the day. The Politburo and Staff had already been working for hours since they not only had to share Stalin’s insomnia but also had their own onerous empires to run: Mikoyan worked from 10 a.m. until almost 5 a.m., napping in his office.

  At noon, Stalin ate a light breakfast, served by Valechka, often remaining at home, whether at Kuntsevo or the Kremlin, to work in the early afternoon. But wherever he was, the Supremo, now sixty-three, would spend the next sixteen hours running the war. He now received bulletins from all his roving Stavka plenipotentiaries, who had to report twice a day, noon and 9 p.m.: Vasilevsky in Stalingrad was the most eagerly awaited that day. Stalin turned very nasty if his envoys neglected to report. When Vasilevsky once failed to do so, Stalin wrote:

  It’s already 3:30 . . . and you have not yet deigned to report . . . You cannot use the excuse that you have no time as Zhukov is doing just as much at the front as you yet he sends his report every day. The difference between you and Zhukov is that he is disciplined . . . whereas you lack discipline . . . I am warning you for the last time that if you allow yourself to forget your duty . . . once more, you will be removed as Chief of General Staff and sent to the front.

  Malenkov was always punctilious in his reports but even the meticulous Zhdanov was sometimes distracted by battle, provoking another reprimand: “It’s extremely strange that Comrade Zhdanov feels no need to come to the phone or to ask us for mutual advice at this dangerous time for Leningrad.” Independence was dangerous in Stalin’s eyes.

  At 4 p.m., General Alexei Antonov, “young, very handsome, dark and lithe,” who became his trusted Chief of Operations, after Vasilevsky’s promotion, and after trying a series of officers all of whom were swiftly sacked, arrived with the next report. Antonov was a “peerlessly able general and a man of great culture and charm,” wrote Zhukov. Stalin was a stickler for accurate reporting and would, recalled Shtemenko, “not tolerate the slightest . . . embellishment.” Antonov handled him deftly: always calm, “a master at assessing the situation,” he graded the urgency of his files by colour and “knew when to say, ‘Give me the green folder.’ ” Then Stalin smilingly replied: “Well now, let’s look at your ‘green file.’ ”

  In the early evening, Stalin arrived in the Kremlin in his convoy of speeding Packards or else walked downstairs from his flat to the Little Corner where the “cosy” anteroom, with its comfortable armchairs, strictly policed by Poskrebyshev, was already full. Visitors found themselves in a world of control, sparseness and cleanliness. There was nothing unnecessary anywhere. Everyone had shown their papers repeatedly and been searched for weapons. Even Zhukov had to surrender his pistol. “The inspection was repeated over and over again.” Poskrebyshev, now in NKVD General’s uniform, greeted them at his desk. They waited in silence though regulars greeted one another before falling quiet. It was tense. Those who had never met Stalin before were full of anticipation but as one colonel recalled, “I noticed that those . . . not here for the first time, were considerably more perturbed than those . . . here for the first time.”

  At around 8 p.m., when Stalin arrived, a murmur passed through the room. He said nothing, but nodded at some. The colonel noticed “my neighbour wiped drops of sweat from his brow and dried his hands on a handkerchief.” A small room, a cubbyhole, contained the last bodyguards at a desk before the office. Stalin entered that “bright spacious room,” with its long green table. At the other end of the room was his desk, on which there was always a heap of documents in their papki , a broad-frequency telephone, a line of different-coloured telephones, a pile of sharpened pencils. Behind the desk, there was a door that led to Stalin’s own lavatory and the signal room which contained easy chairs, all the Baudot and telegraph equipment to connect Stalin to the fronts, and the famous globe at which he had discussed Operation Torch with Churchill.

  That night, Molotov, Beria and Malenkov, the perennial threesome, were waiting with Voroshilov and Kaganovich. Stalin nodded and opened the GKO with no chit-chat; its sessions continued until he left many hours later. Stalin sat at his desk and then paced up and down, returning to get his Herzogovina Flor cigarettes which he broke into pieces to fill his pipe. The civilians, as always, sat with their backs against the wall, looking up at the new portraits of Suvorov and Kutuzov while the generals sat on the other side of the table, looking up at Marx and Lenin, a deployment that reflected the constant war between them. The generals immediately spread their maps on the table and Stalin continued his pacing, waddling somewhat. “He would stop in front of the person he was addressing and look straight into his face” with what Zhukov called a “clear tenacious gaze that seemed to envelop and pierce through the visitor.”

  Poskrebyshev began calling in the experts from the anteroom: “soon my neighbour also rose . . . the receptionist called him by name, he went livid, wiped his trembling hands on his handkerchief, picked up his file . . . and went with hesitant steps.” As he showed them in, Poskrebyshev advised: “Don’t get excited. Don’t think about disagreeing with anything. Comrade Stalin knows everything.” The visitor must report quickly, no small talk, then leave. Inside the room, the grim troika of Molotov, Beria and Malenkov swivelled to peer coolly at the newcomer.

  Stalin exuded power and energy. “One felt oppressed by Stalin’s power,” wrote his new Railways Commissar who reported to him hundreds of times, “but also by his phenomenal memory and the fact that he knew so much. He made one feel even less important than one was.” Stalin drove the pace, restless, fidgeting, never far from an eruption. Most of the time he was laconic, tireless and icily cold. If he was displeased, wrote Zhukov, “he lost his temper and objectivity failed him.”

  The visitors could always sense the danger, yet they were also surprised by the genuinely collegiate argument at these sessions. Mikoyan looked back on the “wonderfully friendly atmosphere” among the magnates during the first three years of the war. The country was run in the form of the GKO through Stalin’s meetings with key leaders in the presence of whoever was in his office—usually the GKO with Mikoyan and, later, Zhdanov, Kaganovich and Voznesensky.

  “Sharp arguments arose,” recalled Zhukov, with “views expressed in definite and sharp terms” as Stalin paced up and down. Stalin would ask the generals’ opinions: “Stalin listened more” when “they disagreed. I suspect,” thought Admiral Kuznetsov, “he even liked people who had their own point of view and weren’t afraid to stand up for it.” Having created an environment of boot-licking idolatry, Stalin was irritated by it.

  “What’s the point of talking to you?” he would shout. “Whatever I say, you reply, ‘Yes Comrade Stalin; of course, Comrade Stalin . . . wise decision, Comrade Stalin.’ ” The generals noticed how “his associates always agreed with him,” while the military could argue, though they had to be very careful. But Molotov and the brash newcomer Voznesensky did argue with him: “The discussions were frank,” recalled Mikoyan. When Stalin, reading one of Churchill’s letters, said the Englishman thought “he had saddled the horse and now he can enjoy a free ride . . . Am I right, Vyacheslav?” Molotov replied: “I don’t think so.”

  Zhukov “witnessed arguments and . . . stubborn resistance . . . especially from Molotov when the situation got to the point where Stalin had to raise his voice and was even beside himself, while Molotov merely stood up with a smile and stuck to his point of view.” When Stalin asked Khrulev to take over the railways, he tolerated his refusal: “I don’t think you respect me, refusing my proposal,” he said, indulging the quarter
master, one of his favourites. Amid rows, Stalin insisted “Come to the point” or “Make yourself clear!”

  Once Stalin had formed his opinion and argument had ceased, he appointed a man to do the job with the usual death threat as an added incentive. “This very severe man controlled the fulfillment of every order,” recalls Baibakov, the oil engineer, “When he gave the command, he always helped you to carry it out so you received every possible means necessary to do it. Hence I wasn’t scared of Stalin—we were direct with one another. I fulfilled my tasks.” But Stalin had a “knack for detecting weak spots in reports.” Woe betide anyone who appeared before him without mastery of their front. “He would at once drop his voice ominously and say, ‘Don’t you know? What are you doing then?’ ”

  Operation Uranus seemed to refresh Stalin who, observed Khrushchev, started to act “like a real soldier,” considering himself “a great military strategist.” He was never a general let alone a military genius but, according to Zhukov, who knew better than anyone, this “outstanding organizer . . . displayed his ability as Supremo starting with Stalingrad.” He “mastered the technique of organizing front operations . . . and guided them with skill, thoroughly understanding complicated strategic questions,” always displaying his “natural intelligence . . . professional intuition” and a “tenacious memory.” He was “many-sided and gifted” but had “no knowledge of all the details.” Mikoyan was probably right when he summed up in his practical way that Stalin “knew as much about military matters as a statesman should—but no more.”1

  At about 10 p.m., Antonov made his second report. There were limits to the friendly spirit that Mikoyan described. War was the natural state of the Bolsheviks and they were good at it. Terror and struggle, the ruling Bolshevik passions, pervaded these meetings. Stalin liberally used fear but he himself lived on his nerves: when the new Railways Commissar arrived, Stalin simply said, “Transport is a matter of life and death . . . Remember, failure to carry out . . . orders means the Military Tribunal” at which the young man felt “a chill run down my spine.” When a train was lost in the spaghetti of fronts and railways, Stalin threatened, “If you don’t find it as general, you’ll be going to the front as a private.” Seconds later the Commissar, “white as a sheet,” was being shown out by Poskrebyshev who added, “See you don’t slip up. The Boss’s at the end of his tether.”

  Stalin was always pacing up and down. There were various warning signals of a black temper: if the pipe was unlit, it was a bad omen. If Stalin put it down, an explosion was imminent. Yet if he stroked his moustache with the mouthpiece of the pipe, this meant he was pleased. The pipe was both a prop and a weather vane.210 His tempers were terrifying: “he virtually changed before one’s eyes,” wrote Zhukov, “turning pale, a bitter expression in his eyes, his gaze heavy and spiteful.” When some armies complained that they had not received their supplies, Stalin berated Khrulev: “You’re worse than the enemy: you work for Hitler.”

  The three guard dogs of the Little Corner, Molotov, Malenkov and Beria, “never asked questions, just sat there and listened, sometimes jotting a note . . . and looking at either Stalin or whoever came in. It was as if Stalin needed them either to deal with anything that came up or as witnesses to history.” Their purpose was to preserve the illusion of collective rule and terrorize the generals. Stalin and the magnates all regarded themselves as amateur commanders and shared their Civil War suspicion of “military experts.”

  “Look at an old coachman,” Mekhlis explained. “They love and pity the animals but the whip is always ready. The horse sees it and draws its own conclusions.” There in a nutshell, from one of Stalin’s mini-dictators, was the essence of the Supremo’s style of command. “We could all remember 1937,” said Zhukov. If anything went wrong, they knew “you’d end up in Beria’s hands and Beria was always present during my meetings with Stalin.” The generals’ sins were recorded: Mekhlis had accused Koniev of having kulak parents in 1938. Rokossovsky and Meretskov were naturally keen not to return to Beria’s torture chambers. Stalin received information, complaints and denunciations from the secret police and from his generals.

  When they wrote their memoirs in the sixties, the generals presented themselves as Beria’s innocent victims. They were certainly under the constant threat of arrest but were themselves avid denouncers. Timoshenko had denounced Budyonny and Khrushchev. Even now, Operation Uranus was launched in a fever of denunciations: Golikov (the hapless pre-war spymaster), denounced the commander Yeremenko. Stalin simultaneously used Malenkov to watch Khrushchev and Yeremenko. When Stalin accused Khrushchev of wanting to surrender Stalingrad, the Commissar started to distrust his own staff. But Khrushchev himself was no slouch at denouncing generals, having blamed Kharkov on Timoshenko. Simultaneously at Stalingrad, a member of the rising General Malinovsky’s staff had committed suicide, leaving a note emblazoned “Long Live Lenin” but not mentioning Stalin: perhaps Malinovsky, who had served in the Russian Legion in France during World War I, was an Enemy?

  “You’d better keep an eye on Malinovsky,” Stalin ordered Khrushchev, who protected the general.

  The magnates fought ferociously for power and resources with one another and with the generals. When Beria requested 50,000 extra rifles for the NKVD, General Voronov showed the request to Stalin.

  “Who made this request?” he snapped.

  “Comrade Beria.”

  “Send for Beria.” Beria arrived and started trying to persuade Stalin, speaking in Georgian. Stalin interrupted him angrily and told him to speak Russian.

  “Half’ll be enough,” ruled Stalin but Beria argued back. Stalin, “irritated to his limit,” reduced the numbers again. Afterwards, Beria caught up with Voronov outside.

  “Just you wait,” he hissed, “we’ll fix your guts.” Voronov hoped this was an “Oriental joke.” It was not.

  Stalin frequently acted as a conciliator in rows over resources: when he ordered that the artillery be given 900 trucks, Beria and Malenkov, who worked as a gruesome duo, caught up with Voronov: “Take 400 trucks.”

  “I’ll go back and report to the Supremo,” threatened the general. Malenkov delivered the full quota of trucks.2

  Living in this environment of fear and competition, the magnates themselves were tormented by mutual jealousies: “Molotov was always with Stalin,” wrote Mikoyan disdainfully, “just sitting in the office, looking important, but really discharged from actual business.” Stalin only needed him “as the second man, being a Russian” but kept him “isolated.” Molotov assisted on foreign policy but lacked the responsibilities of the others. Mikoyan was one of the chief workhorses, overseeing the rear, rations, medical supplies, ammunition, the merchant navy, food, fuel, clothing for the people and armies, while also as Commissar of Foreign Trade negotiating Lend-Lease with the Allies, a stupendous portfolio. “Only Molotov saw Stalin as often as I did,” he boasted, forgetting the tireless, omnipresent Beria.

  The “terror of the Party,” Beria, who behaved like a villain in a film noir, blossomed in wartime,211 using the Gulag’s 1.7 million slave labourers to build Stalin’s weapons and railways. It is estimated that around 930,000 of these labourers perished during the war. But his NKVD was the pillar of Stalin’s regime, representing the supremacy of the Party over the military. After General Voronov had twice defied him in front of Stalin, Beria was finally allowed to arrest him. When Voronov did not appear at a meeting, Stalin casually asked Beria:

  “Is Voronov at your place?” Beria replied that he would be back in two days. The generals are said to have coined a euphemism for these terrifying interludes: “Going to have coffee with Beria.” His minions watched the soldiers on every front, their reports pouring in to Beria and often to Stalin himself. In 1942, Stalin raised the surveillance another step by ordering Kobulov to bug Voroshilov, Budyonny—and Zhukov himself whose officers were harassed and arrested.

  Yet Stalin was wary of Beria’s empire-building. When Beria got Kaganovich dismissed fr
om the railways, he tried to nominate his successor.

  “Do you think I’d agree to the candidate . . . Beria imposes on me? I’ll never agree to it . . .” But the railways were a constant headache and only Kaganovich, that “real man of iron” in Stalin’s admiring words, could perform the necessary miracles.3

  For sixteen hours, Stalin never ceased “issuing instructions, talking on the phone, signing papers, calling in Poskrebyshev and giving him orders.” When he heard from Mikoyan and Khrulev that the soldiers were short of cigarettes, he made time during the battle of Stalingrad to telephone Akaki Mgeladze, Party boss of Abkhazia, where the tobacco was grown: “Our soldiers have nothing to smoke! Tobacco’s absolutely necessary at the front!” He personally drafted every press release, a master of succinct yet rousing phrases such as “Blood for blood!,” inserting quotations from Suvorov. Yet while jealously checking the kudos of his generals, he was punctilious in giving them credit for their victories.4

  Stalin’s hours of pressure and work were awesome but his commissars and generals had invariably been up since dawn, a life that demanded “enormous physical and moral resources” with “nervous exhaustion” a real danger. Stalin legislated the lives of his generals, personally decreeing their rota of work and rest. Vasilevsky had to sleep from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. without fail. Stalin sometimes rang Vasilevsky like a strict nanny to check he was asleep. If he answered the phone, Stalin cursed him. Yet Vasilevsky found it impossible to attend Stalin’s nocturnal dinners and films and then do all his work, so he had to break the rules, stationing his adjutant at the telephone to reply: “Comrade Vasilevsky’s resting until ten.” Stalin’s other workhorses, Beria and Mikoyan, were expected to spend most nights with him while achieving a Herculean workload, yet they managed it, running sprawling and sleepless administrative empires on the adrenalin of war and patriotism, Bolshevik threats and the talent to survive.