Stalin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Then a voice called out: “We must elect Comrade Stalin General Secretary!”

  “No,” replied Stalin. “Excuse me from the posts of General Secretary and Chairman of the Council of Ministers [Premier].” Malenkov stood up and ran forward, chins aquiver, with the desperate grace of a whippet sealed inside a blancmange. His “terrible expression” was not fear, observed Simonov, but an “understanding much better than anyone else of the mortal danger that hung over all: it was impossible to comply with Stalin’s request.”

  Malenkov, tottering on the edge of the stage, raised his hands as if he was praying and piped up: “Comrades! We must all unanimously demand that Comrade Stalin, our leader and teacher, remain as General Secretary!” He shook his finger, signalling. The whole hall understood and began to cry out that Stalin had to remain at his post. Malenkov’s jowls relaxed as if he had “escaped direct, real mortal danger.” But he was not safe yet.

  “One doesn’t need the applause of the Plenum,” replied Stalin. “I ask you to release me . . . I’m already old. I don’t read the documents. Elect yourselves another Secretary.”

  Marshal Timoshenko replied: “Comrade Stalin, the people won’t understand it. We all as one elect you our leader—General Secretary!” The cheering went on for a long time. Stalin waited, then, waving modestly, he sat down.

  Stalin’s decision to destroy his oldest comrades was not an act of madness but the rational destruction of his most likely successors. As Stalin remembered well, the ailing Lenin had attacked his likely successor (Stalin himself) and proposed an expanded Central Committee with none of the leaders as members. It was now that the magnates realized “they were all in the same boat” because, Beria told his son, “none of them would be Stalin’s successor: he intended to choose an heir from the younger generation.” There was probably no secret heir: only a “collective” could succeed Stalin.304

  Stalin was satisfied by Molotov’s ritual submission but asked him to return the secret protocols of the Ribbentrop Pact, clearly to form part of the case against him.

  As for Mikoyan, Stalin was shocked at his defiance. At Kuntsevo, in the absence of his two bugbears, Stalin grumbled to Malenkov and Beria: “Look, Mikoyan even argued back!” In the days after the Plenum, Molotov and Mikoyan continued to play their usual roles in the government but Stalin was now supervising the climax of his Doctors’ Plot, burning with fury against Professor Vinogradov for recommending his retirement. Yet it was typical of this stealthy old conspirator that he had suppressed his anger and waited eleven months to gather the evidence to destroy his own physician.

  Now it all came bursting out. Ordering Ignatiev to arrest Vinogradov, he shouted: “Leg irons! Put him in irons!”1

  On 4 November, Vinogradov was arrested, touching every Politburo family because, as Sergo Beria wrote, he was “our family doctor.”

  Three days later, Svetlana, now entangled in another dangerous relationship, this time with Johnreed Svanidze, the son of those executed “spies” Alyosha and Maria, brought over her two children to play with their grandfather. It was the Revolution holiday, the twentieth anniversary of Nadya’s suicide. At the height of the Jewish Terror, Stalin really “hit it off” with his half-Jewish grandson, Joseph Morozov, now seven, with his “huge shiny Jewish eyes and long lashes.”

  “What thoughtful eyes,” said Stalin, pouring the children thimbles of wine “in the fashion of the Caucasus.” “He’s a smart boy.” Svetlana was touched. He had recently met Yakov’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Gulia Djugashvili, whom he delighted by letting her serve the tea.

  “Let the khozyaika do it!” he said, tousling her hair, kissing her. Gulia, better than anyone, catches his febrile excitement at the great enterprise of a new struggle: “His face was very tired but he could hardly stay still.”

  Stalin was infuriated by Riumin’s slowness in beating the evidence out of the doctors, calling the MGB a herd of “hippopotamuses.” He shouted at Ignatiev: “Beat them! What are you? Do you want to be more humanitarian than Lenin who ordered Dzerzhinsky [founder of the Cheka] to throw Savinkov out of the window? . . . Dzerzhinsky was no match for you but he didn’t shirk the dirty work. You work like waiters in white gloves. If you want to be Chekists, take off your gloves.” Malenkov repeated Stalin’s orders to use “death blows.”

  On 13 November, a few days after little Joseph’s visit, Stalin ordered the petrified Ignatiev to sack Riumin: “Remove the Midget!” As for the doctors, “Beat them until they confess! Beat, beat and beat again. Put them in chains, grind them into powder!” Stalin offered Vinogradov his life if he admitted “the origins of your crimes . . . You may address your testimony to the Leader who promises to save your life . . . The whole world knows our Leader has always kept his promises.” Vinogradov knew no such thing.

  “My situation is tragic,” the doctor replied. “I have nothing to say.” He tried to name dead people whom his testimony could no longer harm. Stalin then lashed out at Ignatiev himself for his backsliding. Ignatiev suffered a heart attack and took to his bed.305

  Now Stalin turned on his dogged retainer, Vlasik, destroying his debauched bodyguard just as he had the colourful Pauker in 1937. Vlasik had been on drinking terms with the homicidal doctors but he also knew too much, particularly that Stalin had been informed of Zhdanov’s mistreatment and done nothing about it. Vlasik himself had probably only ignored Timashuk’s letters on Stalin’s lead. But now he was arrested, brought to Moscow and accused of concealing the evidence with Abakumov. He never betrayed the Boss. But his arrest was a cunning move because Vlasik’s “treason” helped cover Stalin’s own role. All his mistresses and drinking cronies were arrested and questioned by Malenkov. Vlasik was tortured: “My nerves were broken and I suffered a heart attack. I had months without sleep.” Stalin knew that Poskrebyshev, his other devoted old retainer, was best friends with Vlasik: had he played some role in suppressing the evidence against the killer doctors? He had distrusted Poskrebyshev ever since his article on Stalin’s lemon-growing skills in 1949: was someone encouraging his grim amanuensis to step out of the shadows? But Stalin also learned that Poskrebyshev had shared Vlasik’s orgies. He was mired in “filthy affairs,” said Molotov. “Women can serve as agents!” Poskrebyshev arrived at Beria’s house in a panic: everyone ran to Beria for reassurance but he himself was in equal danger.

  Stalin sacked Poskrebyshev (his deputy, Chernukha, replaced him), moved him to be Secretary of the Presidium and received him for the last time on 1 December. He had removed his two most loyal servants.2 Stalin now had enough evidence to escalate the hysteria.

  After seeing the heart-broken Poskrebyshev, Stalin unveiled the horror of what he called “the killers in white coats” to the Presidium: “You’re like blind kittens,” he warned them at Kuntsevo. “What will happen without me is that the country will die because you can’t recognize your enemies.” Stalin explained to the “blind kittens” that “every Jew’s a nationalist and an agent of American intelligence” who believes “the U.S.A. saved their people.” He linked these killer-doctors to the medical murderers of Gorky and Kuibyshev and repeated his mantra-like justification for 1937. A Great Terror was again imminent. He turned to the secret police: “We must ‘treat’ the GPU,” he said. “They know they’re sitting in shit!”

  The magnates understood this ominous reference because an anti-Semitic trial was already underway in Prague where the Czech General Secretary, Rudolf Slansky, a Jew, was accused of “anti-State conspiracy.” Three days later, he and ten other mainly Jewish Communists were hanged. Stalin planned something similar in Warsaw for he asked Bierut about his Jewish lieutenants: “Who’s dearer to you—Berman or Minc?”

  Bierut to his credit replied: “Both equally.”

  Stalin ordered more schemes to assassinate Tito.3

  The Czech executions brought the noose closer to Molotov and Mikoyan who debated the court etiquette of condemned men. Stalin called them “American or British spies.” “To this day,
” Molotov reminisced, “I don’t know precisely why. I sensed he held me in great distrust.”

  They kept turning up for dinner as if nothing had happened. “Stalin wasn’t glad to see them,” noticed Khrushchev. Finally Stalin banned Molotov and Mikoyan: “I don’t want those two coming around anymore.” But the staff secretly told them when the dinners were taking place. So Stalin banned the staff from talking to them. Still, they kept turning up because Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov and Bulganin, the Four, alerted them—a sign of growing sympathy, because they appreciated that “they were trying to stay close to save themselves . . . to stay alive.”

  Mikoyan asked Beria’s advice: “It would be better if you lay low,” he suggested.

  “I’d like to see your face when . . . you’re sacked,” replied Mikoyan.

  “That happened to me years ago,” said Beria.

  Molotov and Mikoyan, realizing their lives were in danger, met in the Kremlin to decide what to do. Mikoyan had always trusted Molotov not to repeat his comments—and “he never let me down or used my trust against me.” Both were hurt, and angry.

  “It’s practically impossible to rule a country in your seventies and decide all issues at the dinner table,” Molotov said aloud at a meeting, a risky act of lèse-majesté that would have been unthinkable before the Plenum.306

  The magnates would all have assisted in the liquidation of Molotov and Mikoyan. Stalin was old, raging, vindictive, paranoid and in a hurry. Yet his sense of the possible, the patience and charm that balanced his cruelty and his roughness still worked, as he methodically, logically micro-managed the case. The unpredictable fury, frantic hastiness and implacable paranoia ironically drove the magnates closer together. Beria and Khrushchev were against Stalin’s changes. Malenkov comforted Beria who comforted Mikoyan; Khrushchev and Beria comforted Molotov. During whispered consultations in the Kuntsevo lavatories, the Four laughed off Stalin’s suspicions and mocked the Doctors’ Plot.

  “We should protect Molotov,” Beria told the other three, “he’s still needed by the Party.”

  December 21 was officially Stalin’s seventy-third birthday. Molotov and Mikoyan had not missed his birthday for thirty years. He rarely invited anyone—one just arrived for supper. The outcasts discussed what to do. Mikoyan thought that if they did not go, it would “mean that we had changed our attitude to Stalin.” They phoned the Four, who told them they had to come.

  So at 10 p.m. on the 21st, they arrived at Kuntsevo, where Stalin had hung plangent magazine photographs on the walls of children feeding lambs and famous historical scenes like Repin’s Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, his favourite picture. Svetlana was there too. Stalin was quiet but friendly, proud that he had given up smoking after fifty years. But he was already suffering from breathing difficulties. His face was livid and he had put on weight, suggesting high blood pressure. He sipped light Georgian wine. As Svetlana was leaving, Stalin asked her: “Do you need any money?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “You’re only pretending. How much do you need?” He gave her 3,000 roubles for herself and for Yakov’s daughter, Gulia, useful housekeeping money but Stalin thought it was millions. “Buy yourself a car but show me your driving licence!” Underneath, Stalin was “angry and indignant” that the Four had invited Molotov and Mikoyan.

  “You think I don’t realize you let Molotov and Mikoyan know? Stop this! I won’t tolerate it,” he warned Khrushchev and Beria. He ordered them to give this message to the outcasts: “It won’t work: he’s not your comrade anymore and doesn’t want you to visit him.”

  This really alarmed Mikoyan: “It was becoming clear . . . Stalin wanted to finish with us and that meant not only political but physical destruction.”

  The four last men standing decided, according to Beria’s son, “not to let Stalin set them against each other.” Stalin sometimes asked the Four: “Are you forming a bloc against me?” In a sense they were, but none of them, not even Beria, had the will. Mikoyan discussed, probably with Molotov, the murder of Stalin but, as he later told Enver Hoxha, “We gave up the idea because we were afraid the people and the Party would not understand.”4

  On 13 January 1953, after two, maybe even five, years’ patient plotting, Stalin unleashed a wave of hysterical anti-Semitism by announcing the arrest of the doctors in Pravda: “Ignoble Spies and Killers under the Mask of Professor-Doctors,” a phrase that he had personally coined and scrawled on to the draft article which he annotated carefully.307 On 20 January, Doctor Timashuk, Zhdanov’s cardiologist, was called to the Kremlin where Malenkov gave her Stalin’s personal thanks for her “great courage” and the next day, she received the Order of Lenin. But Stalin was still using Ehrenburg as his decoy when a week later, on 27 January, he awarded him the Stalin Prize. Meanwhile throughout January and February, the arrests intensified.

  The article revealed the lack of vigilance in the security services, a signal that Beria himself was a target. Not only were Beria’s allies arrested in Georgia; his protégés in Moscow, such as the Chief of Staff, Shtemenko, were sacked. His ex-mistress V. Mataradze was also arrested. He “expected the death blow . . . at any minute,” wrote his son. Beria “expressed his disrespect for Stalin more and more boldly,” noted Khrushchev, “insultingly.” He even boasted to Kaganovich that “Stalin doesn’t realize if he tried to arrest me the Chekists would organize an insurrection.”

  Apart from their fears for their own lives, the magnates were worried about nuclear war with America: Stalin, who was still stoking the Korean War, inconsistently swung between fear of war and the ideological conviction that it was inevitable. Beria, Khrushchev and Mikoyan feared the effect on America of Stalin’s alarming unpredictability.308 Stalin ringed Moscow with anti-aircraft missiles. As his own campaign inspired fear of American attack, he even discussed it with his bodyguards: “What do you think—will America attack us or not?” he asked Kuntsevo’s Deputy Commandant, Peter Lozgachev.

  “I think they’d be afraid to,” replied the officer, at which Stalin suddenly flared up: “Clear out—what are you doing here anyway? I didn’t call you.”

  But he was sensitive to the guards in a way that was unthinkable with the politicians. He called in Lozgachev: “Forget that I shouted at you but just remember: they will attack us. They’re Imperialists, and they certainly will attack us. If we let them. That’s the answer you should give.”

  Stealing sleep on his sofas like “a gundog,” Stalin calmed himself by repeatedly playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23. Visitors found him “greatly changed”—a “tired old man” who “talked with difficulty” between “long pauses”—but he managed his Terror tenaciously.5 Stalin orchestrated the drafting of a letter, to be signed by prominent Soviet Jews, begging for Jews to be deported from the cities to protect them from the coming pogrom. The letter itself has never been found but Mikoyan confirmed that “the voluntary-compulsory eviction of Jews” was being prepared. Kaganovich was hurt when he was asked to sign it but found a loyal way of refusing.

  “Why won’t you sign?” asked Stalin.

  “I’m a member of the Politburo, not a Jewish public figure, and I’ll only sign as a Politburo member.”

  Stalin shrugged: “All right.”

  “If it’s necessary, I’ll write an article.”

  “We might need an article,” said Stalin.

  Even Kaganovich complained about Stalin, confiding in Mikoyan:

  “It’s so painful for me that I’ve always been consciously struggling against Zionism—and now I have to ‘sign off on it.’” Khrushchev claimed that Kaganovich “squirmed” but signed the letter. (Neither Kaganovich nor Khrushchev is a truthful witness when it comes to their own roles.) However, Ehrenburg, who saw it and managed to avoid signing by appealing to Stalin, said it was addressed to the Politburo and signed by “scholars and composers” which suggests that Kaganovich had managed to “squirm” successfully. The latest evidence shows that two new camps were being built, perhaps f
or the Jews. 6

  Stalin closely read the testimonies of the tortured doctors, sent daily by Ignatiev. He ordered the likely star in his Jewish Case, Object 12 (otherwise known as Polina Molotova), brought back to Moscow and interrogated. But the Jewish Case was not Stalin’s only business during these weeks.

  He rarely saw diplomats, but on 7 February, he received the young Argentine Ambassador, Leopoldo Bravo, who thought Stalin “healthy, well-rested and agile in conversation.” Stalin admired Peron, offering generous loans because, despite his Fascist past, he appreciated Peron’s anti-Americanism. But he was most interested in Eva Peron.309

  “Tell me,” he asked Bravo, “Did she owe her rise to her character or her marriage to Colonel Peron?” Bravo was the second-last outsider to see Stalin alive.7

  Seven days later, at 8 p.m. on 17 February, Stalin visited the Little Corner for the last time to receive the Indian diplomat K. P. S. Menon. Stalin’s mind was on his plots for he spent the half-hour sketching wolves’ heads on his pad, reflecting, “The peasants are right to kill mad wolves.” At 10:30 p.m. Stalin left with Beria, Malenkov and Bulganin, probably for dinner at Kuntsevo.

  He was still working up a case against Beria and his other Enemies: he ordered his new Georgian boss Mgeladze to get Beria to sign an order to attack the MGB, effectively against himself. Beria was not happy but had to agree. One of the Premier’s last meetings was to order another assassination attempt on Tito.

  At 8 p.m. on 27 February, Stalin arrived alone at the Bolshoi to watch Swan Lake. As he left, he asked his “attachment,” Colonel Kirillin, to thank the cast for him, speeding to Kuntsevo where he worked until about 3 a.m. He rose late, read the latest interrogations of the Jewish doctors and the reports from Korea, walked around the snowy garden and ordered Commandant Orlov: “Brush the snow off the steps.”