STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR

BY

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

I have been helped generously by many people in this enterprise from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Sukhumi, from Tbilisi to Buenos Aires and Rostov-on-Don. My aim here was simply to write a portrait of Stalin, his top twenty potentates, and their families, to show how they ruled and how they lived in the unique culture of his years of supreme power. This does not pretend to be a history of his foreign and domestic policies, his military campaigns, his youth or the struggle with Trotsky. This is a chronicle of his court from his acclamation as “the leader” in 1929 to his death. It is a biography of his courtiers, a study of high politics and informal power and customs. In a way, this is a biography of Stalin himself through his relationships with his magnates: he is never off-stage.

My mission was to go beyond the traditional explanations of Stalin as “enigma,” “madman” or “Satanic genius,” and that of his comrades as “men without biographies,” dreary moustachioed sycophants in black-and-white photographs. Deploying the arsenal of new archives and unpublished memoirs, my own interviews, and well-known materials, I hope Stalin becomes a more understandable and intimate character, if no less repellent. I believe the placing of Stalin and his oligarchs in their idiosyncratic Bolshevik context as members of a military-religious “order of sword-bearers” explains much of the inexplicable. Stalin was utterly unique but many of his views and features, such as dependence on death as a political tool, and his paranoia, were shared by his comrades. He was a man of his time, so were his magnates.

Molotov and Beria are probably the most famous of them but many are not well known in the West. Yezhov and Zhdanov gave their names to epochs yet remain shadowy. Some, such as Mekhlis, have hardly been covered even by academics. Mikoyan was admired by many; Kaganovich widely despised. They may have presented a grey mask to the outside world but many were flamboyant, dynamic and larger-than-life. The new access to their correspondence and even their love letters will at least make them live.

In telling their stories, this is inevitably a cautionary tale: of the many mass murderers chronicled here, only Beria and Yezhov were prosecuted (and not for their true crimes). The temptation has been to blame all the crimes on one man, Stalin. There is an obsession in the West today with the cult of villainy: a macabre but inane competition between Stalin and Hitler to find the “world’s most evil dictator” by counting their supposed victims. This is demonology not history. It has the effect of merely indicting one madman and offers us no lesson about either the danger of utopian ideas and systems, or the responsibility of individuals.

Modern Russia has not yet faced up to its past: there has been no redemption, which perhaps still casts a shadow over its development of civil society. Many modern Russians will not thank me for the intimate frankness of a history they would prefer to forget or avoid. While this book certainly does not diminish Stalin’s paramount guilt, it may discourage the convenient fiction of his sole responsibility by revealing the killings of the whole leadership, as well as their own sufferings, sacrifices, vices and privileges. In this chronicle of villains, the only heroes are a few brave poets—and a multitude of forgotten ordinary people.

I have been enormously fortunate in those who have helped me: this book was inspired by Robert Conquest, who has been the most patient, generous supporter and adviser throughout. I am superlatively grateful to Robert Service, Professor of Russian History, Oxford University, who has “supervised” my book with generous encouragement and outstanding knowledge, and whose detailed reading and editing of the text have been invaluable. In Russia, I have been “supervised” by the most distinguished scholar of Stalinist high politics, Oleg Khlevniuk, Senior Researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) who has steered and helped me throughout. I am fortunate too that on matters of the NKVD/MGB, I have been helped by Nikita Petrov, Vice-Chairman of Moscow’s Memorial Scientific Research Centre, the finest scholar of the secret police working in Russia today. On military matters, I was guided and helped, in both interpretation and archival research, by Professor Oleg Rzheshevsky and his associates. On diplomatic questions, I have treasured the knowledge, checking and charming acquaintance of Hugh Lunghi, who attended Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, and meetings with Stalin during the later 1940s. Sir Martin Gilbert has been generous with both his knowledge and contacts in Russia. On Georgian matters, my guides have been Zackro Megrelishvili, Professor (American Studies), Tbilisi Ilia Chavchavadze State University of Language and Culture; and Gela Charkviani. On Abkhazian affairs, I must thank the top scholar in Sukhumi, Professor Slava Lakoba. I am also grateful for the guidance and ideas of the following: Geoffrey Hosking, Professor of Russian History at the University of London; Isabel de Madariaga, Professor Emeritus of Slavonic Studies at the University of London; and Alexander Kamenskii, Professor of Early and Early-Modern Russian History at Moscow’s Russian State University for the Humanities. Roy Medvedev, Edvard Radzinsky, Arkady Vaksberg and Larissa Vasilieva also advised and helped me. I am most fortunate to be aided by such a towering cast and I can only humbly thank them; any wisdom is theirs; any mistakes my own.

I was most fortunate in my timing, for the opening of a chunk of the Presidential Archive in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) in 1999 meant that I was able to use a large amount of new, fascinating papers and photographs, containing the letters of Stalin, his entourage and their families, which made this book possible. In addition, I was able to access new military material in the Russian State War Archives (RGVA) and the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF) in Podolsk. Oleg Khlevniuk was my original sponsor in both RGASPI and GARF. My greatest thanks go to Larisa A. Rogovaya, Head of Section at RGASPI, the expert on Stalin’s papers and the pre-eminent interpreter of his handwriting, who helped me every step of the way. Thanks also to Dr. Ludmilla Gatagova, Researcher in the Institute of Russian History. But above all, I owe thanks to the uniquely talented scholar of the History Department of the Russian State Humanities University, Galina Babkova, who helped me as much here as she did on Potemkin.

I have been lucky to gain access to many witnesses of this time and often to their family papers, including their fathers’ unpublished memoirs. I am enormously grateful for this to Vladimir Grigoriev, Deputy Minister of Press, Television and Radio of the Russian Federation, proprietor of Vagrius publishing house; I owe special thanks to Mikhail Fridman and to Ingaborga Dapkunaite; to Galina Udenkova of RGASPI, who shared her unique contacts with me; Olga Adamishina, who arranged several of my interviews; and Rosamond Richardson, who generously gave me access to her Alliluyev family contacts and her tapes of her interviews with Svetlana Alliluyeva. Kitty Stidworthy allowed me to use Vera Trail’s unpublished reminiscence of Yezhov. My thanks to Dr. Luba Vinogradova for her efficiency, charm, empathy and patience in helping with many of my interviews. Special thanks to Alan Hirst and Louise Campbell for their introductions to the Molotovs. Lieut.-Gen. Stepan Mikoyan and his daughter Askhen were charming, hospitable, helpful and generous. The following also proffered their memories and their time: Kira Alliluyeva, Vladimir Alliluyev (Redens), Natalya Andreyeva, Nikolai Baibakov, Nina Budyonny, Julia Khrushcheva, Tanya Litvinova, Igor Malenkov, Volya Malenkova, Sergo Mikoyan, Joseph Minervin (Kaganovich’s grandson), Stas Namin, Vyacheslav Nikonov (Molotov’s grandson), Eteri Ordzhonikidze, Martha Peshkova, Natalya Poskrebysheva, Leonid Redens, Natalya Rykova, Lieut.-Gen. Artyom Sergeev, Yury Soloviev, Oleg Troyanovsky, Yury Zhdanov, Nadezhda Vlasik. I am grateful to my researcher Galina Babkova for arranging the interviews with Tina Egnatashvili and Gulia Djugashvili. I must thank the admirable Mark Fielder of Granada Productions, with whom it was a pleasure to work on the BBC2 Stalin documentary. In St. Petersburg, thanks to the Director and staff of the SM Kirov Museum.

In Tbilisi, Professor Megrelishvili arranged many interviews, recalled his memories of his stepfather Shalva Nutsibidze and introduced me to Maya Kavtaradze who shared her father’s unpublished memoirs with me. Gela Charkviani told me his memories of his youth and, above all, most generously gave me access to his father’s unpublished memoirs. I am also grateful to the following: Nadya Dekanozova, Alyosha Mirtskhulava, Eka Rapava, Nina Rukhadze. Thanks to Lika Basileia for accompanying me to the Likani Palace and Gori, and to Nino Gagoshidze and Irina Dmetradze for their energetic help; Nata Patiashvili for her help in translation and arranging interviews; Zurab Karumidze; Lila Aburshvili, Director of the Stalin Museum, Gori.

For my trip to Abkhazia, I must thank HM Ambassador to Georgia, Deborah Barnes Jones; Thadeus Boyle, Field Service Administrator, UNOMIG; the Abkhazian Prime Minister, Anri Djirgonia. It would not have been possible without Victoria Ivleva-Yorke. Thanks to Saida Smir, Director of the Novy Afon dacha and staffs of Stalin’s other residences at Sukhumi, Kholodnaya Rechka, Lake Ritsa, Museri and Sochi. In Buenos Aires, thanks to Eva Soldati for interviewing Leopoldo Bravo and his family.

Thanks for having me to stay during my visits to Moscow and elsewhere: Masha Slonim, who turned out to be Maxim Litvinov’s granddaughter; Marc and Rachel Polonsky who live in Marshal Koniev’s apartment on Granovsky where many events in the book happened; Ingaborga Dapkunaite, David Campbell, Tom Wilson in Moscow; the Hon. Olga Polizzi and Julietta Dexter in St. Petersburg.

A special thank-you to two of the wisest historical minds: my father Dr. Stephen Sebag-Montefiore MD who has been as brilliant in reading the psychology of Stalin as he was with Potemkin; and my mother April Sebag-Montefiore for her flawless gifts of language and psychology.

In London, I must thank my agent Georgina Capel; Anthony Cheetham; my publisher Ion Trewin; and Lord and Lady Weidenfeld. Thanks for answering questions and helping in small or large ways to: Andy Apostolou, Bernadette Cini, Professor Derek Beales, Vadim Benyatov, Michael Bloch, Dr. David Brandenburger, Winston Churchill, Pavel Chinsky, Dr. Sarah Davies, Ellen, Lady Dahrendorf, Mark Franchetti, Lisa Fine, Sergei Degtiarev Foster, Dr. Dan Healy, Yelena Durden-Smith, Levan and Nino Gachechiladze, Professor J. Arch Getty, Nata Gologre, Jon Halliday, Andrea Dee Harris, Mariana Haseldine, Laurence Kelly, Dmitri Khankin, Anne Applebaum, Joan Bright Astley, Maria Lobanova, V. S. Lopatin, Ambassador of the Republic of Georgia and Mrs. Teimuraz Mamatsashvili, Neil McKendrick, the Master, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, Catherine Merridale, Princess Tatiana Metternich, Edward Lucas, Charles and Patty Palmer-Tomkinson, Martin Poliakoff, Professor Richard Overy, David Pryce-Jones, Alexander Prozverkin, Antony Beevor, Julia Tourchaninova and Ernst Goussinksi, Professor E. A. Rees, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Count Fritz von der Schulenburg, Professor Boris Sokolov, Lady Soames, Geia Sulkanishvili, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, Prince George Vassiltchikov, Dr. D. H. Watson, Adam Zamoyski. I owe much to my Russian tutor, Galina Oleksiuk. Thanks to Jane Birkett, my valiant copy editor, to John Gilkes for the maps, to Douglas Matthews for the index and mountainous thanks to Victoria Webb for the heroic job of collating the proofs. In New York, thanks to my editor, Sonny Mehta, to Vrinda Condillac, Kathy Hourigan, Maria Massey, Soonyoung Kwon, and all the team at Knopf.

Last but first, I must lovingly thank my wife Santa Montefiore, not only for translating materials on Leopoldo Bravo from the Spanish but above all for tolerating and even sometimes welcoming, for years on end, the brooding presence of Stalin in our lives.