Stalin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Nonetheless, a Congress was not all business: the Great Kremlin Palace was suddenly filled with outlandish costumes as bearded Cossacks, silk-clad Kazakhs and Georgians paraded into the great hall. Here the viceroys of Siberia, the Ukraine, or Transcaucasia renewed their contacts with allies in the centre while the younger delegates found patrons.64 Lenin’s generation, who regarded Stalin as their leader but not their God, still dominated but the Vozhd took special care of his younger protégés.

  He invited Beria, his blond wife Nina and their son to the Kremlin to watch a movie with the Politburo. Sergo Beria,65 aged ten, and Svetlana Stalin, who would become friends, watched the cartoon Three Little Pigs with Stalin before they set off for Zubalovo where the Berias joined the magnates in feasting and singing Georgian songs. When Sergo Beria was cold, Stalin hugged him and let him snuggle into his coat lined with wolf fur before tucking him into bed. It must have been thrilling for Beria, the ambitious provincial entering the inner portals of power.

  “STALIN!” gasped Pravda when he attended the Bolshoi. “The appearance of the ardently loved Vozhd, whose name is linked inseparably with all the victories scored by the proletariat, by the Soviet Union, was greeted with tumultuous ovations” and “no end of cries of ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Long Live our Stalin!’ ”

  However, some regional bosses had been shaken by Stalin’s brutal mismanagement. A cabal seems to have met secretly in friends’ apartments to discuss his removal. Each had their own reasons: in the Caucasus, Orakhelashvili was insulted by the promotion of the upstart Beria. Kosior’s cries for help in feeding the Ukraine had been scorned. Some of these meetings supposedly took place in Sergo’s flat in the Horse Guards where Orakhelashvili was staying. But who was to replace Stalin? Kirov, popular, vigorous and Russian, was their candidate. In the Bolshevik culture with its obsession with ideological purity, the former Kadet and bourgeois journalist with no ideological credentials, who owed his career to Stalin, was an unlikely candidate. Molotov, as loyal to Stalin as ever, sneered that Kirov was never a serious candidate.

  When he was approached in Sergo’s apartment, Kirov had to consider fast what to do: he informed them that he had no interest in replacing Stalin but that he would be able to see that their complaints were heard. Kirov was still ill, recovering from flu, and his reaction shows that he lacked the stomach for this poisoned chalice. His immediate instinct was to tell Stalin, which he did, probably in his new apartment where he denounced the plot, repeated the complaints, and denied any interest in becoming leader himself.

  “Thank you,” Stalin is supposed to have replied, “I won’t forget what I owe you.” Stalin was surely disturbed that these Old Bolsheviks considered “my Kirich” his successor. Mikoyan, Kirov’s friend, stated that Stalin reacted with “hostility and vengefulness towards the whole Congress and of course towards Kirov himself.” Kirov felt threatened but showed nothing publicly. Stalin concealed his anxiety.

  In the Congress hall, Kirov ostentatiously sat, joking, with his delegation, not up on the Presidium, the sort of demagoguery that outraged Stalin, who kept asking what they were laughing about. His victory had been spoiled. Yet this constant struggling against traitors also suited his character and his ideology. No political leader was so programmed for this perpetual fight against enemies as Stalin, who regarded himself as history’s lone knight riding out, with weary resignation, on another noble mission, the Bolshevik version of the mysterious cowboy arriving in a corrupt frontier town.66

  There was no hint of any of this in the public triumph: “Our country has become a country of mighty industry, a country of collectivization, a country of victorious socialism,” declared Molotov, opening the Congress on 26 January. Stalin enjoyed the satisfaction of watching his enemies, from Zinoviev to Rykov, old and new, praise him extravagantly: “The glorious field marshal of the proletarian forces, the best of the best—Comrade Stalin,” declared Bukharin, now editor of Izvestiya. But when Postyshev, another Old Bolshevik hardman, newly promoted to run the Ukraine, called Kirov, Congress gave him a standing ovation. Kirov rose to the occasion, mentioning Stalin (“the great strategist of liberation of the working people of our country and the whole world”) twenty-nine times, ending excitedly: “Our successes are really tremendous. Damn it all . . . you just want to live and live—really, just look what’s going on. It’s a fact!” Stalin joined the “thunderous applause.”

  The last duty of a Congress was to elect the Central Committee. Usually this was a formality. The delegates were given the ballot, a list of names prepared by the Secretariat (Stalin and Kaganovich) who were proposed from the floor: Kirov had to propose Beria. The voters crossed out names they opposed and voted for the names left unmarked. As the Congress ended on 8 February, the delegates received their ballots but when the vote-counting commission started work, they received a shock. These events are still mysterious, but it seems that Kirov received one or two negatives while Kaganovich and Molotov polled over 100 each. Stalin got between 123 and 292 negatives. They were automatically elected but here was another blow to Stalin’s self-esteem, confirming that he rode alone among “two-faced double-dealers.”

  When Kaganovich, managing the Congress, was informed by the voting commission, he ran to Stalin to ask what to do. Stalin almost certainly ordered him to destroy most of the negative votes (though naturally Kaganovich denied this, even in old age). Certainly 166 votes are still missing. On the 10th, the 71 CC members were announced: Stalin received 1,056 votes and Kirov 1,055 out of 1,059. The new generation, personified by Beria and Khrushchev, became members while Budyonny and Poskrebyshev were elected candidates. The Plenum of this new body met straight afterwards to do the real business.

  Stalin devised a plan to deal with Kirov’s dangerous eminence, proposing his recall from Leningrad to become one of the four Secretaries, thereby cleverly satisfying those who wanted him promoted to the Secretariat: on paper, a big promotion; in reality, this would bring him under Stalin’s observation, cutting him off from his Leningrad clientele. In Stalin’s entourage, a promotion to the centre was a mixed blessing. Kirov was neither the first nor the last to protest vigorously—but, in Stalin’s eyes, a refusal meant placing personal power above Party loyalty, a mortal sin. Kirov’s request to stay in Leningrad for another two years was supported by Sergo and Kuibyshev. Stalin petulantly stalked out in a huff.

  Sergo and Kuibyshev advised Kirov to compromise with Stalin: Kirov became the Third Secretary but remained temporarily in Leningrad. Since Kirov would have little time for Moscow, Stalin reached out to another newly elected CC member who would become the closest to Stalin of all the leaders: Andrei Zhdanov, boss of Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), moved to Moscow as the Fourth Secretary.

  Kirov staggered back to Leningrad, suffering from flu, congestion in his right lung and palpitations. In March, Sergo wrote to him: “Listen my friend, you must rest. Really and truly, nothing is going to happen there without you there for 10–15 days . . . Our fellow countryman [their code name for Stalin] considers you a healthy man . . . nonetheless, you must take a short rest!” Kirov sensed that Stalin would not forgive him for the plot. Yet Stalin was even more suffocatingly friendly, insisting that they constantly meet in Moscow. It was Sergo, not Stalin, with whom Kirov really needed to discuss his apprehensions. “I want awfully to have a chat with you on very many questions but you can’t say everything in a letter so it is better to wait until our meeting.” They certainly discussed politics in private, careful to reveal nothing on paper.4

  There were hints of Kirov’s scepticism about Stalin’s cult: on 15 July 1933, Kirov wrote formally to “Comrade Stalin” (not the usual “Koba”) that portraits of Stalin’s photograph had been printed in Leningrad on rather “thin paper.” Unfortunately they could not do any better. One can imagine Kirov and Sergo mocking Stalin’s vanity.5 In private,67 Kirov imitated Stalin’s accent to his Leningraders.6

  When Kirov visited Stalin in Moscow, they were boon companions but Artyom remembers a
competitive edge to their jokes. Once at a family dinner, they made mock toasts: “A toast to Stalin, the great leader of all peoples and all times. I’m a busy man but I’ve probably forgotten some of the other great things you’ve done too!” Kirov, who often “monopolized conversations so as to be the centre of attention,” toasted Stalin, mocking the cult. Kirov could speak to Stalin in a way unthinkable to Beria or Khrushchev.

  “A toast to our beloved leader of the Leningrad Party and possibly the Baku proletariat too, yet he promises me he can’t read all the papers—and what else are you beloved leader of ?” replied Stalin. Even the tipsy banter between Stalin and Kirov was pregnant with ill-concealed anger and resentment, yet no one in the family circle noticed that they were anything but the most loving of friends. However, the “vegetarian years,” as the poetess Anna Akhmatova called them, were about to end: “the meat-eating years” were coming.7

  On 30 June, Adolf Hitler, newly elected Chancellor of Germany, slaughtered his enemies within his Nazi Party, in the Night of the Long Knives—an exploit that fascinated Stalin.

  “Did you hear what happened in Germany?” he asked Mikoyan. “Some fellow that Hitler! Splendid! That’s a deed of some skill!” Mikoyan was surprised that Stalin admired the German Fascist but the Bolsheviks were hardly strangers to slaughter themselves.

  11

  Assassination of the Favourite

  That summer, their own repression seemed to be easing. In May 1934, the Chairman of the OGPU, Menzhinsky, a shadowy scholar who had been permanently ill and spent most of his time in seclusion studying ancient manuscripts in any of the twelve languages of which he was master, died. The press announced that the hated OGPU had perished with him, swallowed by a new People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs—the NKVD. This aroused hopes that the dawning jazz age really did herald a new freedom in Russia—but the new Commissar was Yagoda who had been running the OGPU for some time.

  The illusion of this thaw was confirmed when Yagoda came to Stalin and recited a poem by Osip Mandelstam, who, with his friend, the beautiful Leningrad poetess Anna Akhmatova, wrote verses with a searing emotional clarity which still shines through that twilight of humanity like beams of heart-rending honesty. Naturally they found it hard to conform with Soviet mediocrity.

  Yagoda paid Mandelstam the back-handed compliment of learning the verse by heart, sixteen lines of poetry that damned and mocked Stalin as a bewhiskered “Kremlin crag-dweller” and “peasant-slayer” whose “fat fingers” were “as oily as maggots.” The poet Demian Bedny had complained to Mandelstam that Stalin left greasy fingermarks on the books he constantly borrowed. His fellow leaders were a “rabble of thin-necked bosses,” a line he wrote after noticing Molotov’s neck sticking out from his collar and the smallness of his head. Stalin was outraged—but understood Mandelstam’s value. Hence that heartless order to Yagoda that sounds as if it concerned a priceless vase: “Preserve but isolate.”

  On the night of 16–17 May, Mandelstam was arrested and sentenced to three years’ exile. Meanwhile the poet’s friends rushed to appeal to his patrons among the Bolshevik magnates. His wife Nadezhda and fellow poet Boris Pasternak appealed to Bukharin at Izvestiya, while Akhmatova was received by Yenukidze. Bukharin wrote to Stalin that Mandelstam was a “first class poet . . . but not quite normal . . . PS: Boris Pasternak is utterly flabbergasted by Mandelstam’s arrest and nobody else knows anything.” Perhaps most tellingly, he reminded Stalin that “Poets are always right, history is on their side . . .”

  “Who authorized Mandelstam’s arrest?” muttered Stalin. “Disgraceful.” In July, knowing that news of his interest would spread like ripples on a pond before the coming Writers’ Congress, Stalin telephoned Pasternak. His calls to writers already had their ritual. Poskrebyshev called first to warn the recipient that Comrade Stalin wished to speak to him: he must stand by. When the call arrived, Pasternak took it in his communal apartment and told Stalin he could not hear well since there were children yelling in the corridor.

  “Mandelstam’s case is being reviewed. Everything will be all right,” Stalin said, before adding, “If I was a poet and my poet-friend found himself in trouble, I would do anything to help him.” Pasternak characteristically tried to define his concept of friendship which Stalin interrupted: “But he’s a genius, isn’t he?”

  “But that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point then?” Pasternak, who was fascinated by Stalin, said he wanted to come for a talk. “About what?” asked Stalin.

  “About life and death,” said Pasternak. The baffled Stalin rang off. However, the most significant conversation took place afterwards, when Pasternak tried to persuade Poskrebyshev to put him through again. Poskrebyshev refused. Pasternak asked if he could repeat what had been said. The answer was a big yes.

  Stalin prided himself on understanding brilliance: “He’s doubtless a great talent,” he wrote about another writer. “He’s very capricious but that’s the character of gifted people. Let him write what he wants, and when!”

  Pasternak’s whimsy may have saved his life, for, later, when his arrest was proposed, Stalin supposedly replied: “Leave that cloud-dweller in peace.”1

  Stalin’s intervention is famous but there was nothing new about it: as Nicholas I was for Pushkin, so Stalin was for all his writers. Stalin pretended he considered himself just a casual observer: “Comrades who know the arts will help you—I am just a dilettante”2 but he was both gourmet and gourmand. His papers reveal his omnipotent critiques of writers, who wrote to him in droves.

  Stalin’s ultimate pet writer was “the Proletarian Poet,” Demian Bedny, a Falstaffian rhymester, with good-natured eyes gazing out of a head “like a huge copper cauldron,” whose works appeared regularly in Pravda and who holidayed with Stalin, rendering an endless repertoire of obscene anecdotes. Rewarded with a Kremlin apartment, he was a member of the literary Politburo. But Bedny began to irritate Stalin: he bombarded him with complaints, and his egregious poems, in a long and farcical correspondence, while engaging in drunken escapades inside the Kremlin: “Ha-ha-ha! Chaffinch!” Stalin exclaimed on one such letter. Worse, Bedny stubbornly resisted Stalin’s criticisms: “What about the present in Russia?” Stalin scribbled to him. “Bedny leaves in the mistakes!”

  “I agree,” added Molotov. “Must not be published without improvements.” Stalin was tired of his drunken poet and expelled him from the Kremlin: “There must be no more scandals inside the Kremlin walls,” he wrote in September 1932. Bedny was hurt but Stalin reassured him: “You must not see leaving the Kremlin as being sacked from the Party. Thousands of respected comrades live outside the Kremlin and so does Gorky!”3

  Vladimir Kirshon was one of Gorky’s circle and another recipient of GPU funds who liked to send Stalin everything he wrote. When he was in favour, he could do no wrong: “Publish immediately,” Stalin scrawled on Kirshon’s latest article when returning it to Pravda’s editor.

  When Kirshon sent in his new play, Stalin read it in six days and wrote back: “Comrade Kirshon, your play’s not bad. It must be put on in the theatre at once.”4 But Kirshon was being rewarded for his political loyalty: he was one of the hacks who viciously destroyed Bulgakov’s career.

  However, after the creation of Socialist Realism, Kirshon wrote to Stalin and Kaganovich to ask if he was out of favour: “Why are you putting the question of trust?” Stalin replied by hand. “I ask you to believe the Central Committee is absolutely happy with your work and trusts you.”5 The writers also turned to Stalin to sort out their feuds: Panferov wrote to Stalin to complain that Gorky was mocking his work. Stalin’s comment? “Vain. File in my archive. Stalin.”6

  When he did not like a writer, he did not mince words: “Klim,” he wrote to Voroshilov about an article, “my impression: a first-rate chatterer who thinks he’s the Messiah. Yeah! Yeah! Stalin.”68 When the American novelist Upton Sinclair wrote to Stalin asking him to release an arrested movie-maker, Stalin commented: “Gree
n steam!” 7 Stalin’s favourite theatre was the Moscow Arts so he was gentler with its famous director, Stanislavsky, blaming his opinion on his colleagues. “I didn’t highly praise the play Suicide (by N. Erdman) . . . My nearest comrades think it empty and even harmful...”8

  His “nearest comrades,” much less literary than he, became unlikely literary tyrants too: Stalin, Molotov and Kaganovich (an uneducated cobbler) decided artistic matters. Molotov turned on Bedny, for example, with an absurd mixture of personal threat and literary criticism. Bedny, a gossip, even dared to play Stalin off against Molotov who lectured him gravely:

  “I read Stalin’s letter to you. I agree absolutely. It cannot be said better than by him . . .” Molotov warned him about rumours of disagreements between the leaders—“You did your bit too, Comrade Bedny. I didn’t expect such things. It’s not good for a proletarian poet . . .” Molotov even gave poetical advice: “It’s very pessimistic . . . you need to give a window through which the sun can shine (heroism of socialism).”9

  Stalin often informed Gorky and other writers that he was correcting their articles with Kaganovich, a vision that must have horrified them. At the theatres, Stalin evolved a pantomime of giving his judgement on a new play which was followed to the letter by Kaganovich and Molotov. In the Politburo’s loge and the room behind it, the avant-loge, where they ate between acts, Stalin commented on the actors, plays, even the décor of the foyer. Every comment became the subject of rumours, myths and decisions that affected careers.

  Stalin attended a new play on Peter the Great by Alexei Tolstoy, another newly returned émigré writer who, besides Gorky, was the richest author of the Imperium. Count Tolstoy, an illegitimate and renegade nobleman, had returned to Russia in 1923 where he was hailed as the “Worker-Peasant-Count. ” This literary gymnast specialized in understanding Stalin, boasting, “You really do have to be an acrobat.” His Peter the Great play, On the Rack, was attacked by Bolshevik writers. Stalin left shortly before the end, accompanied to his car by the crestfallen director. Sensing Imperial disapproval, the play was attacked viciously inside the theatre until the director returned triumphantly to announce: “Comrade Stalin, in speaking with me, passed the following judgement: ‘A splendid play. Only it’s a pity Peter was not depicted heroically enough.’ ” Stalin received Tolstoy and gave him “the right historical approach” for his next project, a novel Peter the Great.