STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR

BY

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

PART THREE

ON THE BRINK 1934–1936

 

12. “I’m Orphaned”: The Connoisseur of Funerals

Poskrebyshev answered Stalin’s telephone in his office. Kirov’s deputy, Chudov, broke the terrible news from Leningrad. Poskrebyshev tried Stalin’s phone line but he could not get an answer, sending a secretary to find him. The Vozhd, according to his journal, was meeting with Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Zhdanov, but hurriedly called Leningrad, insisting on interrogating the Georgian doctor in his native language. Then he rang back to ask what the assassin was wearing. A cap? Were there foreign items on him? Yagoda, who had already called to demand whether any foreign objects had been found on the assassin, arrived at Stalin’s office at 5:50 p.m.

Mikoyan, Sergo and Bukharin arrived quickly. Mikoyan specifically remembered that “Stalin announced that Kirov had been assassinated and on the spot, without any investigation, he said the supporters of Zinoviev [the former leader of Leningrad and the Left opposition to Stalin] had started a terror against the Party.” Sergo and Mikoyan, who were so close to Kirov, were particularly appalled since Sergo had missed seeing his friend for the last time. Kaganovich noticed that Stalin “was shocked at first.”[1]

Stalin, now showing no emotion, ordered Yenukidze as Secretary of the Central Executive Committee to sign an emergency law that decreed the trial of accused terrorists within ten days and immediate execution without appeal after judgement. Stalin must have drafted it himself. This 1st December Law—or rather the two directives of that night—was the equivalent of Hitler’s Enabling Act because it laid the foundation for a random terror without even the pretence of a rule of law. Within three years, two million people had been sentenced to death or labour camps in its name. Mikoyan said there was no discussion and no objections. As easily as slipping the safety catch on their Mausers, the Politburo clicked into the military emergency mentality of the Civil War.

If there was any opposition, it came from Yenukidze, that unusually benign figure among these amoral toughs, but it was he who ultimately signed it. The newspapers declared the laws were passed by a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee—which probably meant Stalin bullying Yenukidze in a smoky room after the meeting. It is also a mystery why the craven Kalinin, the President who was present, did not sign it. His signature had appeared by the time it was announced in the newspapers. Anyway the Politburo did not officially vote until a few days later.

Stalin immediately decided that he would personally lead a delegation to Leningrad to investigate the murder. Sergo wanted to go but Stalin ordered him to remain behind because of his weak heart. Sergo had indeed collapsed with grief and may have suffered another heart attack. His daughter remembered that “this was the only time he wept openly.” His wife, Zina, travelled to Leningrad to comfort Kirov’s widow.

Kaganovich also wanted to go but Stalin told him that someone had to run the country. He took Molotov, Voroshilov and Zhdanov with him along with Yagoda and Andrei Vyshinsky, the Deputy Procurator, who had crossed Sergo earlier that year. Naturally they were accompanied by a trainload of secret policemen and Stalin’s own myrmidons, Pauker and Vlasik. In retrospect, the most significant man Stalin chose to accompany him was Nikolai Yezhov, head of the CC’s Personnel Department. Yezhov was one of those special young men, like Zhdanov, on whom Stalin was coming to depend.[2]

The local leaders gathered, shell-shocked, at the station. Stalin played his role, that of a Lancelot heartbroken and angry at the death of a beloved knight, with self-conscious and preplanned Thespianism. When he dismounted from the train, Stalin strode up to Medved, the Leningrad NKVD chief, and slapped his face with his gloved hand.

Stalin immediately headed across town to the hospital to inspect the body, then set up a headquarters in Kirov’s office where he began his own strange investigation, ignoring any evidence that did not point to a terrorist plot by Zinoviev and the Left opposition. Poor Medved, the cheerful Chekist slapped by Stalin, was interrogated first and criticized for not preventing the murder. Then the “small and shabby” murderer himself, Nikolaev, was dragged in. Nikolaev was one of those tragic, simple victims of history, like the Dutchman who lit the Reichstag fire with which this case shares many resemblances. This frail dwarf of thirty had been expelled from, and reinstated in, the Party but had written to Kirov and Stalin complaining of his plight. He was apparently in a daze and did not even recognize Stalin until they showed him a photograph. Falling to his knees before the jackbooted Leader, he sobbed, “What have I done, what have I done?” Khrushchev, who was not in the room, claimed that Nikolaev kneeled and said he had done it on assignment from the Party. A source close to Voroshilov has Nikolaev stammering, “But you yourself told me . . .” Some accounts claim that he was punched and kicked by the Chekists present.

“Take him away!” ordered Stalin.

The well-informed NKVD defector, Orlov, wrote that Nikolaev pointed at Zaporozhets, Leningrad’s deputy NKVD boss, and said, “Why are you asking me? Ask him.”

Zaporozhets had been imposed on Kirov and Leningrad in 1932, Stalin and Yagoda’s man in Kirov’s fiefdom. The reason to ask Zaporozhets was that Nikolaev had already been detained in October loitering with suspicious intent outside Kirov’s house, carrying a revolver, but had been freed without even being searched. Another time, the bodyguards had prevented him taking a shot. But four years later, when Yagoda was tried, he confessed, in testimony filled with both lies and truths, to having ordered Zaporozhets “not to place any obstacles in the way of the terrorist act against Kirov.”

Then the assassin’s wife, Milda Draul, was brought in. The NKVD spread the story that Nikolaev’s shot was a crime passionnel following her affair with Kirov. Draul was a plain-looking woman. Kirov liked elfin ballerinas but his wife was not pretty either: it is impossible to divine the impenetrable mystery of sexual taste but those who knew both believed they were an unlikely couple. Draul claimed she knew nothing. Stalin strode out into the anteroom and ordered that Nikolaev be brought round with medical attention.

“To me it’s already clear that a well-organized counter-revolutionary terrorist organization is active in Leningrad . . . A painstaking investigation must be made.” There was no real attempt to analyse the murder forensically. Stalin certainly did not wish to find out whether the NKVD had encouraged Nikolaev to kill Kirov.

It is said that Stalin later visited the “prick” in his cell and spent an hour with him alone, offering him his life in return for testifying against Zinoviev at a trial. Afterwards Nikolaev wondered if he would be double-crossed.[3]

The murkiness now thickens into a deliberately blind fog. There was a delay. Kirov’s bodyguard, Borisov, was brought over to be interrogated by Stalin. He alone could reveal whether he was delayed at the Smolny entrance and what he knew of the NKVD’s machinations. Borisov rode in the back of an NKVD Black Crow. As the driver headed towards the Smolny, the front-seat passenger reached over and seized the wheel so that the Black Crow swerved and grazed its side against a building. Somehow in this dubious car crash, Borisov was killed. The “shaken” Pauker arrived in the anteroom to announce the crash. Such ham-handed “car crashes” were soon to become an occupational hazard for eminent Bolsheviks. Certainly anyone who wanted to cover up a plot might have wished Borisov dead. When Stalin was informed of this reekingly suspicious death, he denounced the local Cheka: “They couldn’t even do that properly.”[4]

The mystery will never now be conclusively solved. Did Stalin order Kirov’s assassination? There is no evidence that he did, yet the whiff of his complicity still hangs in the air. Khrushchev, who arrived in Leningrad on a separate train as a Moscow delegate, claimed years later that Stalin ordered the murder. Mikoyan, a more trustworthy witness in many ways than Khrushchev and with less to prove, came to believe that Stalin was somehow involved in the death.

Stalin certainly no longer trusted Kirov whose murder served as a pretext to destroy the Old Bolshevik cliques. His drafting of the 1st December Law minutes after the death seems to stink as much as his decision to blame the murder on Zinoviev. Stalin had indeed tried to replace Kirov’s friend Medved and he knew the suspicious Zaporozhets who, shortly before the murder, had gone on leave without Moscow’s permission, perhaps to absent himself from the scene. Nikolaev was a pathetic bundle of suspicious circumstances. Then there were the strange events of the day of the murder: why was Borisov delayed at the door and why were there already Moscow NKVD officers in the Smolny so soon after the assassination? Borisov’s death is highly suspect. And Stalin, often so cautious, was also capable of such a reckless gamble, particularly after admiring Hitler’s reaction to the Reichstag fire and his purge.

Yet much of this appears less sinister on closer analysis. The lax security around Kirov proves nothing, since even Stalin often only had one or two guards. The gun is less suspicious when one realizes that all Party members carried them. Stalin’s deteriorating relationship with Kirov was typical of the friction within his entourage. Stalin’s swift reaction to the murder, and his surreal investigation, did not mean that he arranged it. When, on 27 June 1927, Voikov, Soviet Ambassador to Poland, was assassinated, Stalin had reacted with the same speed and uninterest in the real culprits. In that case, he told Molotov that he “sensed the hand of Britain” and immediately ordered the shooting of scores of so-called “monarchists.” The Bolsheviks always regarded justice as a political tool. The local NKVD, desperate to conceal their incompetence, may well have arranged Borisov’s murder. So much can be explained by the habitual clumsiness of totalitarian panic.

However, it is surely naïve to expect written evidence of the crime of the century. We know that in other murders, Stalin gave verbal orders in the name of the Instantsiya, an almost magical euphemism for the Highest Authority, with which we will become very familiar.[5] The direct involvement of Yagoda seems unlikely because he was not particularly close to Stalin but there were many Chekists, from Agranov to Zaporozhets, who were both personally trusted and amoral enough to do anything the Party asked of them. It is unlikely to have been a Henrician “Rid me of this turbulent priest”: Stalin had to micromanage everything. So he may have read Nikolaev’s letter to him and exploited his loser’s resentment against Kirov.[6]

Stalin’s friendship with Kirov was one-sided and flimsy but there is no doubt that “Stalin simply loved him,” according to “Iron Lazar,” who added that “he treated everyone politically.” His friendships, like teenage infatuations, meandered between love, admiration and venomous jealousy. He was an extreme example of Gore Vidal’s epigram that “Every time a friend succeeds, a little bit of me dies.” He had adored Bukharin whose widow explains that Stalin could love and hate the same person “because love and hate born of envy . . . fought with each other in the same breast.” Perhaps Kirov’s betrayal of his sincere friendship provoked a rage like a woman scorned, followed by terrible guilt after the murder. But even with his “friends,” Stalin cultivated his privacy and detachment: he wanted to be supremely elusive.[7]

Stalin was always a more loyal friend to those he knew much less well. When a schoolboy of sixteen wrote to him, Stalin sent him a present of ten roubles and the boy wrote a thank-you letter. He was always indulging in bursts of sentimentality for the friends of his youth: “I’m sending you 2000 roubles,” he wrote in December 1933 to Peter Kapanadze, his friend from the Seminary who became a priest, then a teacher. “I haven’t got more now . . . Your needs are a special occasion for me so I send my [book] royalties to you. You’ll [also] be given 3000 roubles as a loan . . . Live long and be happy” and he signed the letter with his father’s name, “Beso.”

One strange unpublished letter illustrates this distant warmth: during 1930, Stalin received a request from the head of a collective farm in distant Siberia as to whether to admit a Tsarist policeman who claimed to have known Stalin. This old gendarme had actually been Stalin’s guard in exile. But Stalin wrote a long, handwritten recommendation: “During my exile in Kureika 1914–16, Mikhail Merzlikov was my guard/police constable. At that time he had one order—to guard me . . . It’s clear that I could not be in ‘friendly’ relations with Merzlikov. Yet I must testify that while not being friendly, our relations were not as hostile as they usually were between exile and guard. It must be explained why, it seems to me, Merzlikov carried out his duties without the usual police zeal, did not spy on me or persecute me, overlooked my often going away and often scolded police officers for barring his ‘orders’ . . . It’s my duty to testify to all this. It was so in 1914–16 when Merzlikov was my guard, differing from other policemen for the better. I don’t know what he did under Kolchak and Soviet power, I don’t know how he is now.”

There, in a man who killed his best friends, was true friendship. Whether or not he killed Kirov, Stalin certainly exploited the murder to destroy not only his opponents but the less radical among his own allies.[8]

Kirov lay in state in an open casket, wearing a dark tunic and surrounded by the red banners, inscribed wreaths and tropical palms of the Bolshevik funeral amid the Potemkinian neoclassical grandeur of the Taurida Palace.[9] At 9:30 p.m. on 3 December, Stalin and the Politburo formed the honour guard, another part of Bolshevik necro-ritual. Voroshilov and Zhdanov appeared upset but Molotov was stony. “Astonishingly calm and impenetrable was the face of JV Stalin,” noted Khrushchev, “giving the impression that he was lost in thought, his eyes glazing over Kirov’s bullet-struck corpse.” Before departing, Stalin appointed Zhdanov as Leningrad boss while remaining a CC Secretary. Yezhov also stayed behind to oversee the investigation.

At ten, Stalin and the others bore Kirov’s coffin to a gun carriage. The body travelled slowly through the streets to the station where it was loaded onto the train that was to take Stalin back to Moscow. Draped in garlands, this death train shunted into the darkness after midnight, leaving behind Kirov’s brain which was to be studied for signs of revolutionary brilliance in the Leningrad Institute.[10]

Even before the train arrived in Moscow, Agranov, the Chekist running the investigation, interrogated the assassin: “Stubborn as a mule,” he reported to Stalin.

“Nourish Nikolaev well, buy him a chicken,” replied Stalin, who so enjoyed chicken himself. “Nourish him so he will be strong, then he’ll tell us who was leading him. And if he doesn’t talk, we’ll give it to him and he’ll tell . . . everything.”[11]

At Moscow’s October Station, the casket was again transferred to a gun carriage and deposited in the Hall of Columns for the funeral next day. Soon afterwards, Stalin briefed the Politburo on his unconvincing investigation. Mikoyan, who had loved Kirov, was so upset that he asked how Nikolaev had twice escaped arrest with a pistol and how Borisov had been killed.

“How could it happen?” Stalin agreed indignantly.

“Someone should answer for this, shouldn’t they?” exclaimed Mikoyan, focusing on the strange behaviour of the NKVD. “Isn’t the OGPU Chairman [Yagoda] responsible for Politburo security? He should be called to account.” But Stalin protected Yagoda, concentrating on his real targets, the Old Bolsheviks like Zinoviev. Afterwards, Sergo, Kuibyshev and Mikoyan were deeply suspicious: Mikoyan discussed Stalin’s “unclear behaviour” with Sergo, probably on their walks around the Kremlin, the traditional place for such forbidden chats. Both were “surprised and amazed and could not understand it.” Sergo lost his voice with grief. Kuibyshev is said to have proposed a CC investigation to check the one being carried out by the NKVD. It is surely doubtful that Mikoyan, who still fervently admired Stalin and served him loyally until his death, believed at that time that his Leader was responsible. These Bolsheviks were accustomed to self-delude and double-think their way out of such nagging doubts.[12]

That night, Pavel Alliluyev replayed his role after Nadya’s death by staying with Stalin at Kuntsevo. Leaning on his hand, Stalin murmured that after Kirov’s death, “I am absolutely an orphan.” He said it so touchingly that Pavel hugged him. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his anguish that someone had done this to Kirov—or that they had needed to do it.

At 10 a.m. on the 5th, with Gorky Street closed and tight security under the command of Pauker (as at Nadya’s funeral), Stalin’s entourage gathered in the Hall of Columns. The funeral was an extravaganza of Bolshevik sentimental kitsch—with burning torches, scarlet velvet curtains and banners hanging all the way from the ceiling and more palm trees— and modern media frenzy, with a press pack snapping their cameras and arc lights illuminating the body as if it was a prop in a neon-lit theatre. The orchestra of the Bolshoi played the funeral marches. It was not only the Nazis who could lay on a brilliant funeral for their fallen knights; even the colours were the same: everything was red and black. Stalin had already declared Kirov his closest martyred comrade: his home town, Viatka, Leningrad’s Mariinsky Ballet and hundreds of streets were renamed “Kirov.”

The coffin rested on scarlet calico, the face “a greenish colour” with a blue bruise on his temple where he fell. Kirov’s widow sat with the sisters he had not seen or bothered to contact for thirty years. Redens, Moscow NKVD chief, escorted his pregnant wife, Anna Alliluyeva, and the Svanidzes to their places beside the Politburo wives. Silence fell. Only the click of the sentry’s boots echoed in the hall. Then Maria Svanidze heard the “footsteps of that group of tough and resolute eagles”: the Politburo took up position around the head of Kirov.

The Bolshoi orchestra broke into Chopin’s Funeral March. Afterwards, in the silence, there was the clicking and whirring of cine-cameras: Stalin, fingers together across his stomach, stood beside the swaggering Kaganovich, with a leather belt around the midriff of his bulging tunic. The guards began to screw on the coffin lid. But just like at Nadya’s funeral, Stalin dramatically stopped them by stepping up to the catafalque. With all eyes on his “sorrowful” face, he slowly bent down and kissed Kirov’s brow. “It was a heart-breaking sight, knowing how close they were” and the whole hall burst into audible weeping; even the men were openly sobbing.

“Goodbye dear friend, we’ll avenge you,” Stalin whispered to the corpse. He was becoming something of a connoisseur of funerals.

One by one the leaders wished Kirov adieu: a pale-faced Molotov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich leaned over but did not kiss Kirov, while Mikoyan placed his hand on the rim of the coffin and leaned in. Kirov’s wife collapsed and doctors had to give her valerian drops. For Stalin’s family, the loss of Kirov, “this completely charming person loved by all,” was linked to the death of Nadya because they knew he had “transferred all the pain and burden of loss” of his wife onto this dear friend.

The leaders left and the coffin was closed up and driven away to the crematorium where Pavel and Zhenya Alliluyev watched the casket disappear into the furnace. The Svanidzes and others returned to Voroshilov’s apartment in the Horse Guards, scene of Nadya’s last supper, for a late dinner. Molotov and the other magnates dined with Stalin at Kuntsevo.

Next morning, Stalin, in his old greatcoat and peaked cap, Voroshilov, Molotov and Kalinin carried the urn of ashes, cradled in an ornate mini– Classical temple the size of a coffin, piled high with flowers, across Red Square. There, a million workers stood in the freezing silence. Kaganovich spoke—another parallel with Nadya’s funeral, before trumpets blared out a salute, heads and banners were lowered, and that “perfect Bolshevik,” Sergo, placed the urn where it still rests in the Kremlin Wall. “I thought Kirich would bury me but it’s turned out the opposite,” he told his wife afterwards.[13]

The executions had already started: by 6 December, sixty-six “White Guardists” arrested for planning terrorist acts even before Kirov was assassinated were sentenced to death by the Supreme Court’s Military Collegium under the presidency of Vasily Ulrikh, a bullet-headed Baltic German nobleman who became Stalin’s hanging judge. Another twenty-eight were shot in Kiev. On the 8th, Nikolai Yezhov, accompanied by Agranov, returned to Moscow from Leningrad to report for three hours on their hunt for the “terrorists.”

Despite the tragedy and the dangerous signs that even Bolsheviks were soon to be shot for Kirov’s murder, the life of Stalin’s circle continued normally if sombrely. After the meeting with Yezhov, Molotov, Sergo, Kaganovich and Zhdanov dined with Stalin, Svetlana and Vasily, the Svanidzes and Alliluyevs at Stalin’s flat as usual on 8 December. Svetlana received presents to help her recover from the loss of her beloved “Second Secretary,” Kirov. Stalin “had got thinner, paler with a hidden look in his eyes. He suffers so much.” Maria Svanidze and Anna Alliluyeva bustled round Stalin. Alyosha Svanidze warned Maria to keep her distance. It was good advice but she did not take it because she thought he was just jealous of a relationship that possibly included an affair in the distant past. There was not enough food so Stalin called in Carolina Til and ordered her to rustle up more dinner. Stalin hardly ate. That night, he took Alyosha Svanidze, with Svetlana and Vasily, to spend the night at Kuntsevo while the others went on to Sergo’s flat.

Since Stalin had declared within a couple of hours of Kirov’s death that Zinoviev and his supporters were responsible, it was no surprise that Yezhov and the NKVD arrested a “Leningrad Centre” and a “Moscow Centre,” lists drawn up by Stalin himself. Nikolaev, interrogated to “prove” the connection with Zinoviev, admitted a link on 6 December. Zinoviev and Kamenev, Lenin’s two closest comrades and both ex-Politburo members who had saved Stalin’s career in 1925, were arrested. The Politburo were shown the testimonies of the “terrorists.” Stalin personally ordered Deputy Procurator-General Vyshinsky and Ulrikh to sentence them to death.[14]

All the witnesses remember that, as Yury Zhdanov puts it, “everything changed after Kirov’s death.” Security was massively tightened at a time when the informality of Stalin’s court with its sense of fun, its bustling ambitious women and scampering children, seemed more important than ever to comfort the bereaved Vozhd. Yet the atmosphere had soured forever: on 5 December, Rudzutak thought he saw Stalin pointing at him and accusing this proudly semi-educated Old Bolshevik of having “studied in college so how could his father be a labourer?” Rudzutak wrote to Stalin, “I wouldn’t bother you with such trifles but I hear so much gossip about me, it’s sad, it’s reached you.” Yan Rudzutak was an intelligent Latvian, a Politburo member and Stalin ally, an alumnus of ten years in Tsarist prisons, with “tired expressive eyes,” a “slight limp from his hard labour,” and an enthusiastic nature photographer, but he clearly felt a chill from Stalin who no longer trusted him.

“You’re wrong, Rudzutak,” Stalin replied. “I was pointing at Zhdanov not you. I know well you didn’t study at college. I read your letter in the presence of Molotov and Zhdanov. They confirmed you’re wrong.”[15]

Soon after the assassination, Stalin was walking through the Kremlin with a naval officer, past the security guards who were now posted at ten-yard intervals along the corridors, trained to follow every passer-by with their eyes.

“Do you notice how they are?” Stalin asked the officer. “You’re walking down the corridor and thinking, ‘Which one will it be?’ If it’s this one, he’ll shoot you in the back after you’ve turned; if it’s that one, he’ll shoot you in the face.”[16]

On 21 December, shortly before these executions, the entourage arrived at Kuntsevo to celebrate Stalin’s fifty-fifth birthday. When there were not enough chairs at the table, Stalin and the men started moving the places and carrying in other tables, adding more place settings. Mikoyan and Sergo were elected tamada. Stalin was still depressed by the loss of Kirov but gradually regained his spirits. Yet when Maria Svanidze prepared a poem to read, Alyosha banned her from reading it, perhaps knowing that its sycophancy, or its obvious request for a ladies’ trip to the West, would irritate Stalin.[17]

The dinner was shchi, cabbage soup, then veal. Stalin served soup for the guests, from the Molotovs, Poskrebyshev (with new wife) and Yenukidze, to his children. “Stalin ate his from his soup bowl, just using his fork and taking the meat,” remembers Artyom. Beria, and his former patron, deaf Lakoba, master of Abkhazia, arrived in the middle of dinner.

Stalin toasted Sashiko Svanidze, sister of his first wife Kato and Alyosha. This infuriated Alyosha’s wife, Maria Svanidze: there was a constant war among the women for Stalin’s favour. Then Stalin noticed the children and “he poured me and Vasily some wine,” recalls Artyom, “asking, ‘What’s wrong with you two? Have some wine!’ ” Anna Redens and Maria Svanidze grumbled that it was not good for them, like Nadya, but Stalin laughed: “Don’t you know it’s medicinal? It can cure all sorts of things!”

Now the evening took a maudlin turn: just as the family had thought of Nadya during Kirov’s funeral, now this female Banquo turned up at this feast too. Toastmaster Sergo raised a glass for Kirov: “Some bastard killed him, took him away from us!” The silence was broken by weeping. Someone drank to Dora Khazan, Andreyev’s wife, who was one of Stalin’s favourite women, and to her studies at the Academy.

This reminded Stalin of Nadya for he stood up: “Three times, we have talked about the Academy,” he said, “so let us drink to Nadya!” Everyone rose with tears running down their faces. One by one, each walked silently round the table and clinked glasses with Stalin who looked agonized. Anna Redens and Maria Svanidze kissed him on the cheek. Maria thought Stalin was “softer, kinder.” Later, Stalin played the disc jockey, putting his favourite records on the gramophone while everyone danced. Then the Caucasians sang laments with their all-powerful choirboy.

Afterwards, by way of relaxing after the sadness, Vlasik the bodyguard, who doubled as court photographer, assembled the guests for a photograph, a remarkable record of Stalin’s court before the Terror: even this photograph would cause more rows among the competitive women.

Stalin sat in the middle surrounded by his worshipful ladies—on his right sat the pushy Sashiko Svanidze, then Maria Kaganovich and the busty soprano Maria Svanidze, and on his left, the slim, elegant First Lady, Polina Molotova. Uniforms mixed with Party tunics: Voroshilov, always resplendent as the country’s senior officer, Redens in NKVD blue, Pavel Alliluyev in his military Commissar’s uniform. On the floor sat the laughing Caucasians Sergo, Mikoyan and Lakoba while Beria and Poskrebyshev just managed to squeeze in by lying almost flat. But at Stalin’s feet, even more noticeable when he posed again with just the women, sat a Cheshire cat smiling at the camera as if she had got the cream: Zhenya Alliluyeva.[18]

 

 

13. A Secret Friendship: The Rose of Novgorod

You dress so beautifully,” Stalin said admiringly to his sister-in-law Zhenya Alliluyeva. “You should make designing your profession.”

“What! I can’t even sew a button,” retorted the giggling Zhenya. “All my buttons are sewn on by my daughter.”

“So? You should teach Soviet women how to dress!” retorted Stalin.

After Nadya’s death, Zhenya almost moved in to watch over Stalin. In 1934, it seems, this relationship grew into something more. Statuesque and blue-eyed, with wavy blond hair, dimples, an upturned nose and wide, beaming mouth, Zhenya, thirty-six, was a priest’s daughter from Novgorod. She was not beautiful but this “rose of the Novgorod fields,” with golden skin and her quick mischievous nature, radiated health. When she was pregnant with her daughter Kira, she split some logs just before giving birth. While Dora Khazan dressed in austere shifts and Voroshilova got fatter, Zhenya was still young, fresh and completely feminine in her frilly dresses, flamboyant collars and silk scarves.

These women found Stalin all the more appealing because he was so obviously lonely after Nadya’s and now Kirov’s death: “his loneliness is always on one’s mind,” wrote Maria Svanidze. If power itself is the great aphrodisiac, the addition of strength, loneliness and tragedy proved to be a heady cocktail. However, Zhenya was different. She had known Stalin since marrying Nadya’s brother, Pavel, around the time of the Revolution, but they had been abroad a lot and returned from Berlin just before the suicide. Then a fresh relationship developed between Stalin the widower and this funny, blithe woman. The marriage of Pavel and Zhenya had not been easy. Unsuited to military life, Pavel was gentle but hysterical like Nadya. Zhenya grumbled about his weakness. Their marriage had almost ended in the early thirties, when Stalin ordered them to stay together. Despite having given the pistol to Nadya, Pavel often stayed with Stalin.

Stalin admired Zhenya’s joie de vivre. She was unafraid of him: the first time she arrived at Zubalovo after her return from Berlin, she found a meal on the table and ate it all. Stalin then walked in and asked: “Where’s my onion soup?”

Zhenya admitted she had eaten it. This might have provoked an explosion but Stalin merely smiled and said, “Next time, they better make two.”

She said whatever she thought—it was she, among others, who told him about the famine in 1932, yet Stalin forgave her for this. She was well read and Stalin consulted her about what he should read. She suggested an Egyptian history but joked that he “started copying the Pharaohs.” Zhenya made him laugh uproariously with her earthy wit. Their conversation resembled his banter with rough male friends. She was an expert singer of the chastushka, bawdy rhymes with puns that resemble limericks. They do not translate well but Stalin’s favourites were such gems as “Simple to shit off a bridge, but one person did it and fell off” or “Sitting in one’s own shit feels as safe as a fortress.”

Zhenya could not help tactlessly puncturing the balloons of the puffed-up Party women, and Stalin always enjoyed playing off his courtiers. When Polina Molotova, mistress of the perfume industry, boasted to the Leader that she was wearing her latest product, Red Moscow, Stalin sniffed.

“That’s why you smell so nice,” he said.

“Come on, Joseph,” interrupted Zhenya. “She smells of Chanel No. 5!” Afterwards, Zhenya realized she had made a mistake: “Why on earth did I say it?” This made the family enemies among the politicians at a time when politics was about to become a blood sport. Nonetheless she alone could get away with these comments because Stalin “respected her irreverence.”

When Stalin inaugurated the 1936 Constitution, Zhenya, who was late for everything, was late for that too. She crept in and thought no one had noticed until Stalin himself greeted her afterwards.

“How did you spot me?” she asked.

“I see everything, I can see two kilometres away,” replied Stalin whose senses were ferally acute. “You’re the only one who’d dare be late.”

Stalin needed female advice on his children. When Svetlana, maturing early, appeared in her first skirt, Stalin lectured her on “Bolshevik modesty” but asked Zhenya: “Can a girl wear a dress like that? I don’t want her to bare her knees.”

“It’s only natural,” replied Zhenya.

“And she asks for money,” said the father.

“That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“What’s the money for?” he persisted. “A person can live well on ten kopeks!”

“Come on, Joseph!” Zhenya teased him. “That was before the Revolution!”

“I thought you could live on ten kopeks,” murmured Stalin.

“What are they doing? Printing special newspapers for you?” Only Zhenya could say this sort of thing to him.

Stalin and Zhenya probably became lovers at this time. Historians never know what happens behind bedroom doors, and Bolshevik conspiratorial secrecy and prudish morality make these matters especially difficult to research.[19] But Maria Svanidze observed their relationship and recorded it in her diary, which Stalin himself preserved: that summer, Maria spotted how Zhenya went out of her way to be alone with Stalin. The following winter, she records how Stalin arrived back in his apartment to find Maria and Zhenya. He “teased Zhenya about getting plump again. He treated her very affectionately. Now that I know everything I have watched them closely . . .”

“Stalin was in love with my mother,” asserts Zhenya’s daughter Kira. Daughters perhaps tend to believe great men are in love with their mothers but her cousin Leonid Redens also believes it was “more than a friendship.” There is other evidence too: later in the thirties, Beria approached Zhenya with an offer that sounds like Stalin’s clumsy proposal of marriage. When she remarried after her husband’s death, Stalin reacted with jealous fury.

Stalin himself was always gently courteous with Zhenya. While he barely telephoned Anna Redens or Maria Svanidze, Svetlana remembered how he often phoned her for a chat, even after their relationship was over.

Zhenya was far from the only attractive woman around Stalin. During the mid-thirties, he was still enjoying a normal social life with an entourage that included a cosmopolitan circle of young and flighty women. But for the moment, it was Zhenya who sat at Stalin’s feet.[20]

Just after the party, on 28 and 29 December, the assassin Nikolaev and his fourteen co-defendants were tried by Ulrikh in Leningrad. That reptilian hanging judge called Stalin for orders.

“Finish it,” the Vozhd ordered laconically. Following the 1st December Law, they were shot within an hour—and their innocent families soon after. In the month of December, 6,501 people were shot. ² Stalin had no precise plan for the growing Terror, just the belief that the Party had to be terrorized into submission and that old enemies had to be eradicated. Opportunistic and supersensitive, Stalin meandered towards his goal. The NKVD could not link Leningrad to the “Moscow Centre” of Zinoviev and Kamenev but it had the means to persuade its prisoners to do so. By mid-January, they had indeed encouraged a prisoner to implicate Zinoviev and Kamenev who were sentenced to ten and five years respectively. Stalin distributed a secret letter that warned that all the opposition had to be “treated like White Guards” and “arrested and isolated.” The flood of arrests was so huge that the camps were deluged by “Kirov’s Torrent,” yet, simultaneously, Stalin orchestrated a jazz-playing “thaw”: “Life has become merrier, comrades,” he said. “Life has become better.”[21]--[22]

On 11 January 1935, Stalin and most of the Politburo attended a gala celebration of the Soviet film industry at the Bolshoi which was a sort of “Oscars without the jokes.” The directors were handed Orders of Lenin.

“For us,” Lenin had said, “the most important of all the arts is cinema,” the art form of the new society. Stalin personally controlled a “Soviet Hollywood” through the State Film Board, run by Boris Shumiatsky with whom he had been in exile. Stalin did not merely interfere in movies, he minutely supervised the directors and films down to their scripts: his archive reveals how he even helped write the songs. He talked about films with his entourage and passed every film before it was shown to the public, becoming his own supreme censor. Stalin was Joseph Goebbels combined with Alexander Korda, an unlikely pair united by love of celluloid, rolled into one.[23]

He was an obsessional movie buff. In 1934, he had already seen the new Cossack “Eastern” Chapaev and The Jolly Fellows so often he knew them by heart. Directed by Grigory Alexandrov, the latter was personally supervised by Stalin. When this director finished The Jolly Fellows,[24] Shumiatsky decided to tantalize Stalin by showing only the first reel, pretending the second was unfinished. The Vozhd loved it: “Show me the rest!”

Shumiatsky summoned Alexandrov, nervously waiting outside: “You’re wanted at court!”

“It’s a jolly film,” Stalin told Alexandrov. “I felt I’d had a month’s holiday. Take it away from the director. He might spoil it!” he quipped.

Alexandrov immediately started a series of these happy-go-lucky light musical comedies: Circus was followed by Stalin’s all-time favourite, Volga, Volga. When the director came to make the last in the series, he called it Cinderella but Stalin wrote out a list of twelve possible titles includingShining Path which Alexandrov accepted. Stalin actually worked on the lyrics of the songs too: there is an intriguing note in his archive dated July 1935 in which he writes out the words for one of the songs in pencil, changing and crossing out to get the lyric to scan:

A joyful song is easy for the heart;

It doesn’t bore you ever;

And all the villages small and big adore the song;

Big towns love the tune.

 

Beneath it, he scrawls the words: “To spring. Spirit. Mikoyan” and then “Thank you comrades.”[25]

When the director Alexander Dovzhenko appealed for Stalin’s help with his movie Aerograd, he was summoned to the Little Corner within a day and asked to read his entire script to Voroshilov and Molotov. Later Stalin suggested his next movie, adding that “neither my words nor newspaper articles put you under any obligation. You’re a free man . . . If you have other plans, do something else. Don’t be embarrassed. I summoned you so you should know this.” He advised the director to use “Russian folk songs—wonderful songs” which he liked to play on his gramophone.

“Did you ever hear them?” asked Stalin.

No, replied the director, who had no phonograph.

“An hour after the conversation, they brought the gramophone to my house, a present from our leader that,” concluded Dovzhenko, “I will treasure to the end of my life.”[26]

Meanwhile, the magnates discussed how to manage Sergei Eisenstein, thirty-six, the Latvian-German-Jewish avant-garde director of Battleship Potemkin. He had lingered too long in Hollywood and, as Stalin informed the American novelist Upton Sinclair, “lost the trust of his friends in the USSR.” Stalin told Kaganovich he was a “Trotskyite if not worse.”[27]

Eisenstein was lured back and put to work on Bezhin Meadow, inspired by the story of Pavlik Morozov, the boy-hero who denounced his own father for kulakism. The tawdry project did not turn out as Stalin hoped. Kaganovich loudly denounced his colleagues’ trust: “We can’t trust Eisenstein. He’ll again waste millions and give us nothing . . . because he’s against Socialism. Eisenstein was saved by Vyacheslav [Molotov] and Andrei Zhdanov who were willing to give the director another chance.” But Stalin knew he was “very talented.” As tensions rose with Germany, he commissioned Eisenstein to make a film about that vanquisher of foreign invaders, Alexander Nevsky, promoting his new paradigm of socialism and nationalism. Stalin was delighted with it.

When Stalin wrote a long memorandum to the director Friedrich Emmler about his film The Great Citizen, his third point read: “The reference to Stalin must be excluded. Instead of Stalin, mention the Central Committee.”[28]

Stalin’s modesty was in its way as ostentatious as the excesses of his personal cult. The leaders themselves had promoted Stalin’s cult that was the triumph of his inferiority complex. Mikoyan and Khrushchev blamed Kaganovich for encouraging Stalin’s concealed vanity and inventing “Stalinism”:

“Let’s replace Long Live Leninism with Long Live Stalinism!” Stalin criticized Kaganovich but he knew Stalin better and he continued to promote “Stalinism.”

“Why do you eulogize me as if a single person decides everything!” asked Stalin. Meanwhile he personally supervised the cult that was flourishing in the newspapers: in Pravda, Stalin was mentioned in half the editorials between 1933 and 1939. He was always given flowers and photographed with children. Articles appeared: “How I got acquainted with Comrade Stalin.” The planes that flew over Red Square formed the word “Stalin” in the skies. Pravda declared: “Stalin’s life is our life, our beautiful present and future.” When he appeared at the Seventh Congress of Soviets, two thousand delegates screamed and cheered. A writer described the reaction as “love, devotion, selflessness.” A female worker whispered: “How simple he is, how modest!”

There were similar cults for the others: Kaganovich was celebrated as “Iron Lazar” and the “Iron Commissar” and in thousands of pictures at parades. Voroshilov was honoured in the “Voroshilov Rations” for the army and the “Voroshilov Marksman’s Prize” and his birthday celebrations were so grandiose that Stalin gave one of his most famous speeches at them. Schoolchildren traded picture postcards of these heroes like football players, the dashing Voroshilov trading at a much higher price than the dour Molotov.[29]

Stalin’s modesty was not completely assumed: in his many battles between vainglory and humility, he simultaneously encouraged eulogy and despised it. When the Museum of the Revolution asked if they could display the original manuscripts of his works, he wrote back: “I didn’t think in your old age, you’d be such a fool. If the book is published in millions, why do you need the manuscript? I burned all the manuscripts!”[30] When the publishers of a Georgian memoir of his childhood sent a note to Poskrebyshev asking permission, Stalin banned Zhdanov from publishing it, complaining that it was “tactless and foolish” and demanding that the culprits “be punished.” But this was partly to keep control of the presentation of his early life.[31]

He was aware of the absurdities of the cult, intelligent enough to know that the worship of slaves was surely worthless. A student at a technical college was threatened with jail for throwing a paper dart that struck Stalin’s portrait. The student appealed to Stalin who backed him: “They’ve wronged you,” he wrote. “I ask . . . do not punish him!” Then he joked: “The good marksman who hits the target should be praised!”[32]

Yet Stalin needed the cult and secretly fostered it. With his trusted chef de cabinet, he could be honest. Two notes buried in Poskrebyshev’s files are especially revealing: when a collective farm asked the right to name itself after Stalin, he gave Poskrebyshev blanket authority to name anything after himself: “I’m not opposed to their wish to ‘be granted the name of Stalin’ or to the others . . . I’m giving you the right to answer such proposals with agreement [underlined] in my name.”[33] One admirer wrote to say, “I’ve decided to change my name to Lenin’s best pupil, Stalin” and asked the titan’s permission.

“I’m not opposed,” replied Stalin. “I even agree. I’d be happy because this circumstance would give me the chance to have a younger brother. (I have no brother.) Stalin.”[34] Just after the film prize–giving, death again touched the Politburo.

 

 

14. The Dwarf Rises; Casanova Falls

On 25 January 1935, Valerian Kuibyshev, who was forty-seven, died unexpectedly of heart disease and alcoholism, just eight weeks after his friend Kirov. Since he had questioned the NKVD investigation and allied himself with Kirov and Sergo, it has been claimed that he was murdered by his doctors, an impression not necessarily confirmed by his inclusion in the list of those supposedly poisoned by Yagoda. We are now entering a phase of such devious criminality and shameless gangsterism that all deaths of prominent people are suspect. But not every death cited as “murder” in Stalin’s show trials was indeed foul play: one has to conclude there were some natural deaths in the 1930s. Kuibyshev’s son Vladimir believed his father was killed but this heroic drinker had been ill for a while. The magnates lived such an unhealthy existence that it is amazing so many survived to old age.[35]

Nonetheless it was well-timed for Stalin who took the opportunity on 1 February[36] to promote two younger stars who were the very spirit of the age. As Kaganovich took over the colossal job of running the railways, he handed over Moscow to Nikita Khrushchev, the semi-literate worker who would one day succeed Stalin.[37]

Kaganovich met Khrushchev during the February 1917 Revolution in the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka. Despite a flirtation with Trotskyism, Khrushchev’s patrons were unbeatable: “Kaganovich liked me very much,” he recalled. So did both Nadya (“my lottery ticket,” said Khrushchev) and Stalin himself. Resembling a cannonball more than a whirlwind, Khrushchev’s bright porcine eyes, chunky physique and toothy smile with its golden teeth exuded primitive coarseness and Promethean energy but camouflaged his cunning. As the capital’s First Secretary, he drove the transformation of “Stalinist-Moscow”: his creation of the Metro, aggressive building programme and vandalistic destruction of old churches won him a place in the élite. Already a regular at Kuntsevo, this pitiless, ambitious believer regarded himself as Stalin’s “son.” Born in 1894, son of a peasant miner, this meteoric bumpkin became Stalin’s “pet.”[38]

It was Kaganovich’s other protégé who suddenly emerged as the coming man. Yezhov was already the overlord of the Kirov case. Now he was promoted to Kirov’s place as CC Secretary, and on 31 March was officially designated to supervise the NKVD.[39] Soon to be notorious as one of history’s monsters, “the bloody dwarf,” and a ghost whom no one remembered even knowing, Yezhov was actually liked by virtually everyone he met at this time. He was a “responsive, humane, gentle, tactful man” who tried to help with any “unpleasant personal matter,” remembered his colleagues. Women in particular liked him. His face was almost “beautiful,” recalled one lady, his grin wide, his eyes a bright clever green-blue, his hair thick and black. He was flirtatious and playful, “modest and agreeable.” Not only was he an energetic workaholic; this “small slender man, always dressed in a crumpled cheap suit and a blue satin shirt” charmed people, chattering away in his Leningrad accent. He was shy at first but could be fun, exuberant with a keen sense of humour. He suffered from a slight limp but he had a fine baritone, played the guitar and danced thegopak. However, he was skinny and tiny: in a government of small men, he was almost a pygmy, 151 centimetres tall.[40]

Born in 1895 to a forest warden, who ran a tearoom-cum-brothel, and a maid, in a small Lithuanian town, Yezhov, like Kaganovich and Voroshilov, only passed a few years at primary school before going to work in Petersburg’s Putilov Works. No intellectual, he was another obsessive autodidact, nicknamed “Kolya the book lover”—but he possessed the Bolshevik managerial virtues: drive, hardness, organizational talent and an excellent memory, that bureaucratic asset described by Stalin as a “sign of high intelligence.”[41] Too short to serve in the Tsarist Army, he mended guns, joining the Red Army in 1919: in Vitebsk, he met Kaganovich, his patron. By 1921, he was working in the Tartar Republic where he aroused hatred by showing his contempt for the local culture and fell ill, the first of many signs of his fragility. He would now have met Stalin. In June 1925, he rose to be one of the Secretaries of Kirgizia. After studying at the Communist Academy, he was promoted to work at the CC, then to Deputy Agriculture Commissar. In November 1930, Stalin received him in his office. At Kaganovich’s suggestion, Yezhov began to attend the Politburo. In the early thirties, he headed the CC Personnel Assignments Department and helped Kaganovich purge the Party in 1933, flourishing in a frenzy of exhausting bureaucratic dynamism. Yet already there were signs of danger and complexity.[42]

“I don’t know a more ideal worker,” observed a colleague. “After entrusting him with a job, you can leave him without checking and be sure he would do it,” but there was one problem: “He does not know how to stop.” This was an admirable and deadly characteristic in a Bolshevik during the Terror but it also extended to Yezhov’s personal life.

His humour was oafishly puerile: he presided over competitions to see which trouserless Commissar could fart away handfuls of cigarette ash. He cavorted at orgies with prostitutes, but was also an enthusiastic bisexual, having enjoyed avid encounters with his fellow tailoring apprentices, soldiers at the front and even high Bolsheviks like Filipp Goloshchekin, who had arranged the murder of the Romanovs. His only hobby apart from partying and fornicating was collecting and making model yachts. Unstable, sexually confused and highly strung, he was too weak to compete with bulldozers like Kaganovich, not to mention Stalin himself. Yezhov suffered constant nervous illnesses, including sores and itchy skin, TB, angina, sciatica, psoriasis (a nervous condition he probably shared with Stalin) and what they called “neurasthenia.” He often sank into gloomy depression, drank too much and had to be nurtured by Stalin, just to keep him at work.[43]

Stalin embraced him into his circle: Yezhov had exhausted himself so Stalin insisted on more rest cures. “Yezhov himself is against this but they say he needs it,” he wrote in September 1931. “Let’s prolong his holiday and let him sit in Abastuman for two more months.”[44] Stalin gave nicknames to his favourites: he called Yezhov “my blackberry” (yezhevika). Stalin’s notes were often curt personal questions: “To Comrade Yezhov. Give him some work,” or “Listen and help.”[45] Yet he instinctively understood the essence of Yezhov: there is an unpublished note from August 1935 to his lieutenant in the archive that sums up their relationship. “When you say something,” Stalin wrote, “you always do it!” There was the heart of their partnership.[46] When Vera Trail, whose memoir of her encounter remains unpublished, met him at his peak, she noticed Yezhov was so perceptive of the wishes of others that he could literally “finish one’s sentences.” Yezhov was uneducated, but also sly, able, perceptive and without moral boundaries.[47]

Yezhov did not rise alone: he was accompanied by his wife who was to become the most flamboyant and, literally, fatal flirt of Stalin’s entourage. It happened that Mandelstam, the poet, witnessed their courtship. In one of those almost incredible meetings, the encounter of Russia’s finest poet with its greatest killer, Mandelstam found himself staying at the same sanitorium in Sukhumi as Yezhov and his then wife Tonya in 1930. The Mandelstams were in the attic of the mansion in Dedra Park that was shaped like a giant white wedding cake.[48]

Yezhov had married the educated and sincerely Marxist Antonina Titova in 1919. By 1930, Tonya was sunbathing in a deckchair at the Sukhumi mansion, reading Das Kapital and enjoying the attentions of an Old Bolshevik while her husband rose early every morning to cut roses for a girl, also married, who was staying there too. Cutting roses, pursuing adulterous romances, singing and dancing the gopak, one gets an idea of the incestuous world of the Bolsheviks on holiday. But Yezhov’s new mistress was no Old Bolshevik but the Soviet version of a flapper who had already introduced him to her writer friends in Moscow. Yezhov divorced Tonya that year and married her.

Slim with flashing eyes, Yevgenia Feigenberg, at twenty-six, was a seductive and lively Jewess from Gomel. This avid literary groupie was as promiscuous as her new husband: she possessed the amorous enthusiasm of Messalina but none of her guile. She had first married an official, Khayutin, then Gadun, who was posted to the Soviet Embassy in London. She went too but when he was sent home, she stayed abroad, typing in the Berlin legation. It was there that she met her first literary star, Isaac Babel, whom she seduced with the line of so many flirtatious groupies meeting their heroes: “You don’t know me but I know you well.” These words later assumed a dreadful significance.

Back in Moscow, she met “Kolya” Yezhov.[49] Yevgenia yearned to hold a literary salon: henceforth Babel and the jazz star Leonid Utsesov were often chez Yezhov. It was she who asked the Mandelstams: “Pilniak comes to see us. Whom do you go to see?” But Yezhov was also obsessionally devoted to Stalin’s work—writers did not interest him. The only magnate who was a friend of both Yezhovs was Sergo, as was his wife Zina: photographs show the two couples at their dachas. Sergo’s daughter Eteri remembers how Yevgenia “was much better dressed than the other Bolshevik wives.”[50]

By 1934, Yezhov was once again so weary that he almost collapsed, covered in boils. Stalin, on holiday with Kirov and Zhdanov, despatched Yezhov to enjoy the most luxurious medical care available in Mitteleuropa and ordered Poskrebyshev’s deputy, Dvinsky, to send the Berlin Embassy this coded note: “I ask you to pay very close attention to Yezhov. He’s seriously ill and I cannot estimate the gravity of the situation. Give him help and cherish him with care . . . He is a good man and a very precious worker. I will be grateful if you will inform the Central Committee regularly[51]on his treatment.”[52]

No one objected to Yezhov’s rise. On the contrary, Khrushchev thought him an admirable appointment. Bukharin respected his “good heart and clean conscience” though he noticed that he grovelled before Stalin—but that was hardly unique.[53]“Blackberry” worked uneasily with Yagoda to force Zinoviev, Kamenev and their unfortunate allies to confess to being responsible for the murder of Kirov and all manner of other dastardly deeds.[54]

It was not long before Blackberry’s chain-mail fist reached out to crush one of Stalin’s oldest friends: Abel Yenukidze. That genial sybarite and seigneur of the Bolshoi flaunted his sexual affairs with ever younger girls, including teenage ballerinas. Girls filled his office, which came to resemble a sort of Bolshevik dating agency for future and cast-off mistresses.

Stalin’s circle was already abuzz with his antics: “Being dissolute and sensual,” Yenukidze left a “stench everywhere indulging himself to procure women, breaking up families, seducing girls,” wrote Maria Svanidze. “Having all the goodies of life in his hands . . . he used this for his own filthy personal purposes, buying girls and women.” She claimed Yenukidze was “sexually abnormal,” picking up younger and younger girls, sinking to children of nine to eleven years old. The mothers were paid off. Maria complained to Stalin who surely began to listen: Stalin had not trusted him as early as 1929.

Nadya’s godfather crossed the line between family and politics in Stalin’s life and this proved a dangerous fence to straddle. A generous friend to Left and Right, he may have objected to the 1st December Law but he also personified the decadence of the new nobility. Abel was not the only one: Stalin felt himself surrounded by pigs at the trough. Stalin was always alone even among his convivial entourage, convinced of his separateness and often lonely. As recently as 1933, he had begged Yenukidze to holiday with him. In Moscow, Stalin often asked Mikoyan and Alyosha Svanidze, who was like “a brother” to him, to stay overnight. Mikoyan stayed a few times but his wife was unhappy about it: “How could she check whether I was really at Stalin’s?” Svanidze stayed more often.[55]

The catalyst for Yenukidze’s fall was Stalin’s favourite subject: personal history for the Bolsheviks was what genealogy was for the medieval knights. When his book The Secret Bolshevik Printing Presses was published, it was eagerly sent to Stalin by his weasel-faced Pravda editor, Mekhlis, with a note that “some parts are . . . marked.” Stalin’s marginalia in his copy show his almost Blimpish irritation: “That’s false!”, “fibs” and “balderdash!” When Yenukidze wrote an article about his activities in Baku, Stalin distributed it to the Politburo peppered with “Ha-ha-ha!” Yenukidze made a grievous mistake in not lying about Stalin’s heroic exploits. This was understandable because the outstanding part in the creation of the Baku movement had been played by himself.

“What more does he want?” Yenukidze complained. “I am doing everything he has asked me to do but it is not enough for him. He wants me to admit he is a genius.”⁸

Others were not so proud. In 1934, Lakoba published a sycophantic history of Stalin’s heroic role in Batumi. Not to be outdone, Beria mobilized an array of historians to falsify his On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in the Transcaucasus which was published later in the year under his own name.

“To my dear, adored master,” Beria inscribed his book, “to the Great Stalin!”[56]

Now Nadya’s death caught up with Yenukidze: a terrorist cell was “uncovered” by Yezhov in the Kremlin, which Abel ran. Kaganovich raged, Shakespearean style, “There was something rotten there.” The NKVD arrested 110 of Yenukidze’s employees, librarians and maids, for terrorism. Stalinist plots always featured a wicked beauty: sure enough, there was a “Countess,” said to have poisoned book pages to kill Stalin. Two were sentenced to death and the rest from five to ten years in the camps. Like everything that happened around Stalin, this “Kremlin Case” had various angles: it was partly aimed at Yenukidze, partly at clearing the Kremlin of possibly disloyal elements, but it was also somehow connected to Nadya. A maid, whose appeal to President Kalinin is in the archives, was arrested for gossiping with her friends about Nadya’s suicide. Stalin had surely not forgotten that Yenukidze had “swayed” Nadya politically, and been the first to see the body.

Yenukidze was sacked, made to publish a “Correction of Errors,” demoted to run a Caucasian sanatorium and viciously attacked by Yezhov (and Beria) at a Plenum. Blackberry first raised the stakes: Zinoviev and Kamenev were not just morallyresponsible for Kirov’s murder—they planned it. Then he turned to poor “Uncle Abel” whom he accused of political blindness and criminal complacency in letting the “counter-revolutionary Zinoviev-Kamenev and Trotskyite terrorists” feather their nests inside the Kremlin while plotting to kill Stalin. “This nearly cost Comrade Stalin his life,” he alleged. Yenukidze was “the most typical representative of the corrupt and self-complacent Communists, playing the ‘liberal’ gentleman at the expense of the Party and State.” Yenukidze defended himself by blaming Yagoda: “No one was hired for work without security clearance!”

“Not true!” retorted Yagoda.

“Yes it is! . . . I—more than anyone else—can find a host of blunders. These may be indignantly characterized—as treason and duplicity.”

“Just the same,” intervened Beria, attacking Yenukidze for his generous habit of helping fallen comrades, “why did you give out loans and assistance?”

“Just a minute . . .” answered Yenukidze, citing an old friend who had been in the opposition, “I knew his present and past better than Beria.”

“We knew his present situation as well as you do.”

“I didn’t help him personally.”

“He’s an active Trotskyite,” retorted Beria.

“Deported by the Soviet authorities,” intervened Stalin himself.

“You acted wrongly,” Mikoyan added.

Yenukidze admitted giving another oppositionist some money because his wife appealed to him.

“So what if she starves to death,” said Sergo, “so what if she croaks, what does it have to do with you?”

“What are you? Some kind of child?” Voroshilov called out. The attacks on Yenukidze’s lax security were also attacks on Yagoda: “I admit my guilt,” he confessed, “in that I did not . . . seize Yenukidze by the throat . . .”

On the question of how to punish Yenukidze, there was disagreement: “I must admit,” Kaganovich said, “that not everyone found his bearings in this matter . . . but Comrade Stalin at once smelled a rat . . .” The rat was finally expelled from the Central Committee and the Party (temporarily).[57]

Days afterwards, at Kuntsevo, a grumpy Stalin suddenly smiled at Maria Svanidze: “Are you pleased Abel’s been punished?” Maria was delighted at his overdue cleansing of the suppurating wound of depravity. On May Day, Zhenya and the Svanidzes joined Stalin and Kaganovich for kebabs, onions and sauce but the Vozhdwas tense until the women started bickering. Then they toasted Nadya: “She crippled me,” reflected Stalin. “After condemning Yasha for shooting himself, how could Nadya kill herself ?”[58]--[59]

 

 

15. The Tsar Rides the Metro

A mid the Yenukidze Case, Stalin, Kaganovich and Sergo attended the birthday party of Svetlana’s beloved nanny at his apartment. “Joseph has bought a hat and wool stockings” for the nanny. He cheerfully and lovingly fed Svetlana from his own plate. Everyone was filled with excitement and optimism because the great Moscow underground, named the Kaganovich Metro, a magnificent Soviet showpiece with marble halls like palaces, had just opened. Its creator Kaganovich had brought ten tickets for Svetlana, her aunts and the bodyguards to ride the Metro. Suddenly Stalin, encouraged by Zhenya and Maria, decided he would go too.

This change of plan provoked a “commotion” among Stalin’s courtiers which is hilariously described in Maria’s diary. They became so nervous at this unplanned excursion that even the Premier was telephoned; almost half the ruling Politburo was involved within minutes. All were already sitting in their limousines when Molotov scurried across the courtyard to inform Stalin that “such a trip might be dangerous without preparation.” Kaganovich, “the most worried of all, went pale” and suggested they go at midnight when the Metro was closed but Stalin insisted. Three limousines of magnates, ladies, children and guards sped out of the Kremlin to the station, dismounted and descended into Kaganovich’s tunnels. Once they arrived on the platform, there was no train. One can only imagine Kaganovich’s frantic efforts to find one fast. The public noticed Stalin and shouted compliments. Stalin became impatient. When a train finally arrived, the party climbed aboard to cheers.

They got out at Okhotny Ryad to inspect the station. Stalin was mobbed by his fans and Maria almost crushed against a pillar but the NKVD finally caught up with them. Vasily was frightened, Maria noticed, but Stalin was jovial. There was then a thoroughly Russian mix-up as Stalin decided to go home, changed his mind and got out at the Arbat where there was another near-riot before they all got back to the Kremlin. Vasily was so upset by the whole experience that he cried on his bed and had to be given valerian drops.[60]

The trip marked another decline in relations between the leaders and the Svanidze and Alliluyev ladies, those un-Bolshevik actresses, all “powder and lipstick” in Maria’s words. Kaganovich was furious with the women for persuading Stalin to travel on the Metro without any warning: he hissed at them that he would have arranged the trip if only they had given him some notice. Only Sergo would have shaken his head at this ludicrous scene. Dora Khazan, working her way up the Light Industry Commissariat, thought they were “trivial women who did nothing, frivolous time wasters.” The family began to feel that “we were just poor relations,” said Kira Alliluyeva. “That’s how they made us feel. Even Poskrebyshev looked down on us as if we were in the way.” As for Beria, the family, with fatal misjudgement, made no bones of their dislike of him. The women interfered and gossiped in a way that Nadya never had. But in the stern Bolshevik world, and especially given Stalin’s views of family, they went too far. Maria, who had sneaked to Stalin about Yenukidze’s amours, boasted to her diary, “They even say I’m stronger than the Politburo because I can overturn its decrees.”

Worse, the women pursued vendettas against each other: The photograph of the 1934 birthday party now caused another row that undermined Stalin’s trust. When Sashiko Svanidze stayed with him at Kuntsevo, she found the photograph on Stalin’s desk and borrowed it in order to print up some copies, the sort of pushy behaviour often found in ambitious women at imperial courts, suggesting that these ladies regularly read the papers on Stalin’s desk. Maria, who loathed Sashiko’s brazen climbing, discovered this, warning Stalin: “You can’t let her make a shop out of your house and start trading on your kind-heartedness.” It was a rare occasion indeed when Stalin was criticized for his big-heartedness.

He became irritated, blaming his secretaries and Vlasik for losing the photographs. Eventually he said Sashiko could “go to Hell” but his fury applied equally to all the family: “I know she did wonderful things for me and other Old Bolsheviks . . . but nonetheless, she always takes offence, writes letters to me at the drop of a hat, and demands my attention. I have no time to look after myself and I couldn’t even look after my own wife . . .” Nadya was constantly on his mind at this time.

Sashiko was dropped, to Zhenya and Maria’s delight, yet they themselves took liberties. The Svanidzes still acted as if Joseph was their kind-hearted paterfamilias, not the Great Stalin. When Stalin invited the Svanidzes and Alliluyevs to join him for dinner after watching the Kirov Ballet, “we badly miscalculated the time and did not arrive until almost midnight when the ballet ended at ten. Joseph does not like to wait.” This understates the case: it is hard to imagine anyone forgetting the time and leaving an American president waiting for two hours. Here we see Stalin through the eyes of his friends before the Terror turned him into a latter-day Ivan the Terrible: we find him “stood up” by his dinner dates for two hours, left at Kuntsevo to play billiards with the bodyguards! Stalin, his sense of historic and sacerdotal mission despoiled, must have reflected on the disrespect of these Soviet aristocrats: they were not remotely afraid of him.

When they arrived, the men went off to play billiards with the disgruntled Stalin who was distinctly unfriendly to the women. But after the wine, he shone with pride about Svetlana, recounting her charming ayings like any father. Nonetheless they would pay for their tardiness.[61]

Stalin had loved his unscheduled Metro ride, telling Maria how moved he was “by the love of the people for their leader. Here nothing was prepared and fixed. As he said...the people need a Tsar, whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work.”[62] He had always believed the “Russian people are Tsarist.” At various times, he compared himself to Peter the Great, Alexander I and Nicholas I but this child of Georgia, a Persian satrapy for centuries, also identified with the Shahs. He named two monarchs as his “teachers” in his own notes: one was Nadir Shah, the eighteenth-century Persian empire builder of whom he wrote: “Nadir Khan. Teacher.” (He was also interested in another Shah, Abbas, who beheaded a father’s two sons and sent him their heads: “Am I like the Shah?” he asked Beria.)

But he regarded Ivan the Terrible as his true alter ego, his “teacher,”[63] something he revealed constantly to comrades such as Molotov, Zhdanov and Mikoyan, applauding the Tsar’s necessary murder of over-mighty boyars. Ivan too had lost his beloved wife, murdered by his boyars. This raises the question of how his grandees could have claimed to be “tricked” by Stalin’s real nature when he openly lauded a Tsar who systematically murdered his nobility.[64]

Now, in late 1935, he also began to reproduce some of the trappings of Tsardom: in September, he restored the title Marshal of the Soviet Union (though not Field Marshal), promoting Voroshilov, Budyonny and three other heroes of the Civil War: Tukhachevsky whom he hated; Alexander Yegorov, the new Chief of Staff, whose wife had so upset Nadya on the night of her suicide; and the legendary Vasily Blyukher. For the NKVD, he created a rank equivalent to Marshal, promoting Yagoda to Commissar-General of State Security. Sartorial splendour suddenly mattered again: Voroshilov and Yagoda gloried in their uniforms. When Stalin sent Bukharin on a trip to Paris, he told him, “Your suit is threadbare. You can’t travel like that . . . Things are different with us now; you have to be well dressed.” Such was Stalin’s eye for detail that the tailor from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs called that afternoon.

More than that, the NKVD had access to the latest luxuries, money and houses. “Permit me 60,000 gold roubles to buy cars for our NKVD workers,” wrote Yagoda in a pink pen to Molotov on 15 June 1935. Interestingly Stalin (in blue) and Molotov (in red) signed it but reduced it to 40,000. But that was still a lot of Cadillacs. Stalin had already ordered that the Rolls-Royces in the Kremlin be concentrated in the “special garage.”[65]

Stalin had become a Tsar: children now chanted, “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood,” perhaps because he now restored Christmas trees. But unlike the bejewelled Romanovs, identified so closely with the old Russian village and peasantry, Stalin created his own special kind of Tsar, modest, austere, mysterious and urban. There was no contradiction with his Marxism.[66]

Sometimes Stalin’s loving care for his people was slightly absurd. In November 1935, for example, Mikoyan announced to the Stakhanovites in the Kremlin that Stalin was taking great interest in soap. He had demanded samples, “after which we received a special Central Committee decree on the assortment and composition of soap,” he declared to cheers. Then Stalin moved from soap to lavatories. Khrushchev ran Moscow with Mayor Nikolai Bulganin, another rising star, a handsome but ruthless blond ex-Chekist with a goatee beard: Stalin nicknamed them the “city fathers.” Now he summoned Khrushchev: “Talk it over with Bulganin and do something . . . People hunt around desperately and can’t find anywhere to relieve themselves . . .”[67] But he liked to play the Little Father intervening from on high for his people. In April, a teacher in Kazakhstan named Karenkov appealed to Stalin about losing his job.

“I order you to stop the persecution of teacher Karenkov at once,” he ordered[68] the Kazakh bosses.[69] It is hard to imagine either Hitler or even President Roosevelt investigating urinals, soap or that smalltown teacher.

The dim but congenial Voroshilov initiated another step deeper into the mire of Soviet depravity when he read an article about teenage hooliganism. He wrote a note to the Politburo saying that Khrushchev, Bulganin and Yagoda “agree there is no alternative but to imprison the little vagabonds . . . I don’t understand why one doesn’t shoot the scum.” Stalin and Molotov jumped at the chance to add another terrible weapon to their arsenal for use against political opponents, decreeing that children of twelve could now be executed.[70]

On holiday in Sochi, Stalin was still infuriated by the antics of fallen friends and truculent children. The relentlessly convivial Yenukidze was still chattering about politics to his old pal, Sergo. Once a man had fallen, Stalin could not understand how any loyalist could remain friends with him. Stalin confided his distrust of Sergo to Kaganovich (Sergo’s friend): “Strange that Sergo . . . continues to be friends with” Yenukidze. Stalin ordered that Abel, this “weird fellow,” be moved away from his resort. He fulminated against “the Yenukidze group” as “scum.” The Old Bolsheviks were “ ‘old farts’ in Lenin’s phrase.” Kaganovich moved Abel to Kharkov.[71]

Vasily, now fourteen, worried him too: the greater Stalin’s absolutism, the worse Vasily’s delinquency. This mini-Stalin aped his Chekist handlers, denouncing his teachers’ wives: “Father, I’ve already asked the Commandant to remove the teacher’s wife but he refused . . .” he wrote. The harassed Commandant of Zubalovo reported that while “Svetlana studies well, Vasya does badly—he is lazy.” The schoolmasters called Carolina Til to ask what to do. Vasily played truant or claimed “Comrade Stalin” had ordered him not to work with certain teachers. When the housekeeper found money in his pocket, Vasily would not reveal where he had come by it. On 9 September 1935, Efimov reported chillingly to Stalin that Vasily had written: “Vasya Stalin, born in March 1921, died in 1935.” Suicide was a fact in that family but also in the Bolshevik culture. As Stalin cleansed the Party, his opponents began to commit suicide, which only served to outrage him more: he called it “spitting in the eye of the Party.”

Soon afterwards, Vasily entered an artillery school, along with other leaders’ children including Stepan Mikoyan; his teacher also wrote to Stalin to complain of Vasily’s suicide threats: “I’ve received your letter about Vasily’s tricks,” wrote Stalin to V. V. Martyshin. “I’m answering very late because I’m so busy. Vasily is a spoilt boy of average abilities, savage (a type of Scythian), not always honest, uses blackmail against weak ‘rules,’ is often impudent with the weak . . . He’s spoilt by different patrons who remind him at every step that he’s ‘Stalin’s son.’ I’m happy to see you’re a good teacher who treats Vasily like other children and demands he obey the school regime . . . If Vasily has not ruined himself until now, it’s because in our country there are teachers who give no quarter to this capricious son of a baron. My advice is: treat Vasily MORE STRICTLY and don’t be afraid of this child’s false blackmailing threats of ‘suicide.’ I’ll support you...”[72]

Svetlana, on holiday with her father, remained the adored favourite “my little sparrow, my great joy” as Stalin wrote so warmly in his letters to her. As one reads Stalin’s letters to Kaganovich (usually about persecuting Yenukidze), one can almost see her sitting near him on the veranda as he writes out his orders in his red pencils, enthroned in his wicker chair at the wicker table with piles of papers wrapped in newspaper which were brought daily by Poskrebyshev. He often mentions her. Kaganovich seemed to have replaced Kirov as Svetlana’s “Party Secretary,” greeting her in his letters to Stalin and adding: “Hail to our Mistress[73] Svetlana! I await instructions . . . on postponement by 15/20 days of the school term. One of the Secretaries LM Kaganovich.” Vasily was “Svetlana the Mistress’s colleague.”

Three days later, Stalin informed Kaganovich that “Svetlana the Mistress . . . demands decisions . . . in order to check on her Secretaries.”

“Hail Mistress Svetlana!” replied Kaganovich. “We await her impatiently.” When she was back in Moscow, she visited Kaganovich who reported to her father: “Today our Mistress Svetlana inspected our work...” Indeed, Stalin encouraged her interest in politics: “Your little Secretaries received your letter and we discussed its contents to our great satisfaction. Your letter enabled us to find our way in complicated international and domestic political questions. Write to us often.” Soon she was commanding Stalin in her “Daily Order No. 3. I order you to show me what happens in the Central Committee! Strictly confidential. Stalina, the Mistress of the house.”[74]

Then Stalin heard from Beria that his mother Keke was getting frailer. On 17 October, he headed across to Tiflis to visit her for only the third time since the Revolution.

Beria had taken over the responsibility for caring for the old lady like a courtier looking after a dowager empress. She had lived for years in comfortable rooms in the servant’s quarters of the palace of the nineteenth-century Tsarist governor, Prince Michael Vorontsov, where she was accompanied by two old ladies. All of them wore the traditional black headdress and long dress of Georgian widows. Beria and his wife Nina called on Keke frequently, recalling her spicy taste for sexual gossip:

“Why don’t you take a lover?” she asked Nina. Stalin was a negligent son but still wrote his dutiful notes: “Dear Mother, please live for 10,000 years. Kisses, Soso.” He apologized, “I know you’re disappointed in me but what can I do? I’m busy and can’t write often.”

Mother sent sweets; Soso, money; but, as the son who had replaced her husband as the man of the family, he always played the hero, revealing his dreams of destiny and courage: “Hello my mama, the children thank you for the sweets. I’m healthy, don’t worry about me . . . I’ll stand up for my destiny! You need more money? I sent you 500 roubles and photos of me and the children. PS the children bow to you. After Nadya’s death, my private life is very hard but a strong man must always be valiant.”[75]

Stalin took special trouble to protect the Egnatashvili brothers, the children of the innkeeper who was the benefactor of his mother. Alexander Egnatashvili, a Chekist officer in Moscow (supposedly Stalin’s food taster, nicknamed “the Rabbit”), kept this old link alive: “My dear spiritual mother,” Egnatashvili wrote in April 1934, “yesterday I visited Soso and we talked a long time . . . he’s put on weight . . . In the last four years, I had not seen him so healthy . . . He was joking a lot. Who says he’s older? No one thinks he’s more than 47!” But she was ailing.

“I know you’re ill,” Stalin wrote to her. “Be strong. I’m sending you my children . . .” Vasily and Svetlana stayed at Beria’s residences and then visited the old lady in her “tiny room,” filled with portraits of her son. Svetlana remembered how Nina Beria chatted to her in Georgian but the old lady could not speak Russian.

Now Stalin recruited his old brother-in-law Alyosha Svanidze and Lakoba to visit his mother with him while Beria briskly made the arrangements. He did not stay long. If he had looked around the rooms, he would have noticed that not only did she have photographs of Stalin but she also had a portrait of Beria in her bedroom. Beria had his own cult of personality in Georgia but more than that, he must have become like a son to her.

Stalin’s real feelings for his mother were complicated by her taste for beating him and alleged affairs with her employers. There is a clue to this possible saint-whore complex in his library where he underlined a passage in Tolstoy’s Resurrection about how a mother is both kind and wicked. But she also had the tendency of making tactless, if drily witty, comments. She wondered why Stalin fell out with Trotsky: they should have ruled together. Now when Stalin sat smiling beside her, he revealingly asked her: “Why did you beat me so hard?”

“That’s why you turned out so well,” she replied, before asking: “Joseph, what exactly are you now?”

“Well, remember the Tsar? I’m something like a Tsar.”

“You’d have done better to become a priest,” she said, a comment that delighted Stalin.

The newspapers reported the visit with the queasy sentimentality of a Bolshevik version of Hello! magazine: “Seventy-five-year-old Keke is kind and lively,” gushed Pravda. “She seems to light up when she talks about the unforgettable moments of their meeting. ‘The whole world rejoices when it looks upon my son and our country. What would you expect me, his mother, to feel?’ ”

Stalin was irritated by this outbreak of Stalinist Hello!-ism. When Poskrebyshev sent him the article, Stalin wrote back: “It’s nothing to do with me.” But then he penned another Blimpish note to Molotov and Kaganovich: “I demand we ban petit bourgeoistidbits that have infiltrated our press . . . to insert the interview with my mother and all this other balderdash. I ask to be freed of the incessant publicity din of these bastards!” But he was glad his mother was healthy, telling her, “Our clan is evidently very strong” and sending some presents: a headdress, a jacket and some medicine.[76]

Back in Moscow,[77] Stalin decided to reopen and expand the Kirov Case that had subsided with the shooting of Nikolaev and sentencing of Zinoviev and Kamenev in early 1935. Now the two Old Bolsheviks were reinterrogated and the net of arrests was spread wider. Then a former associate of Trotsky’s named Valentin Olberg was arrested by the NKVD in Gorky. His interrogation “established” that Trotsky was also involved in the murder of Kirov. More arrests followed.[78]

 

 

16. Take Your Partners; Mount Your Prisoners: The Show Trial

Oblivious of these lengthening shadows, Stalin’s birthday party, attended by the magnates, Beria and the family, was “noisy and cheerful.” Voroshilov was resplendent in his new white Marshal’s uniform while his dowdy wife stared jealously at Maria Svanidze’s dress from Berlin. After dinner, there were songs and dancing like old times: with Zhdanov on harmonies, they sang Abkhazian, Ukrainian, student and comic songs. Stalin decided to order a piano so Zhdanov could play. Amid general hilarity, Postyshev, one of the Ukrainian bosses, slow-danced with Molotov—and “this couple very much amused Joseph and all the guests.” Here was the first example of the notorious stag slow dancing that was to become more forced after the war.

Stalin took over the gramophone and even did some Russian dancing. Mikoyan performed his leaping lezginka. The Svanidzes did the foxtrot and asked Stalin to join them but he said he had given up dancing since Nadya’s death. They danced until four.[79]

In the spring of 1936, the arrests of old Trotskyites spread further and those already in camps were resentenced. Those convicted of “terror” offences were to be shot. But the real work was the creation of a new sort of political show: the first of Stalin’s great trials. Yezhov was the supervisor of this case—this hopeful theoretician was even writing a book about the Zinovievites, corrected personally by Stalin.[80] Yagoda, Commissar-General of State Security, who was sceptical about this “nonsense,” remained in charge but Yezhov constantly undermined him. This process exhausted frail Yezhov. Soon he was once again so debilitated that Kaganovich suggested, and Stalin approved, that he be sent on another special holiday for two months with a further 3,000 roubles.[81]

The chief defendants were to be Zinoviev and Kamenev. Their old friends were arrested to help persuade them to perform. Stalin followed every detail of the interrogations. The NKVD interrogators were to devote themselves body and soul to achieving the confessions. Stalin’s instructions to the NKVD were suggestive of this terrible process: “Mount your prisoner and do not dismount until they have confessed.”

The NKVD defector Alexander Orlov left the best account of how Yezhov rigged up this trial, promising the “witnesses” their lives in return for testifying against Zinoviev and Kamenev who refused to cooperate. Stalin’s office phoned hourly for news.

“You think Kamenev may not confess?” Stalin asked Mironov, one of Yagoda’s Chekists.

“I don’t know,” replied Mironov.

“You don’t know?” said Stalin. “Do you know how much our State weighs with all the factories, machines, the army with all the armaments and the navy?” Mironov thought he was joking but Stalin was not smiling. “Think it over and tell me?” Stalin kept staring at him.

“Nobody can know that, Joseph Vissarionovich; it is the realm of astronomical figures.”

“Well, and can one man withstand the pressure of that astronomical weight?”

“No,” replied Mironov.

“Well then . . . Don’t come to report to me until you have in this briefcase the confession of Kamenev.” Even though they were not physically tortured, the regime of threats and sleeplessness demoralized Zinoviev, suffering from asthma, and Kamenev. The heating was turned up in their cells in midsummer. Yezhov threatened that Kamenev’s son would be shot.[82]

While the interrogators worked on Zinoviev and Kamenev, Maxim Gorky was dying of influenza and bronchial pneumonia. The old writer was now thoroughly disillusioned. The dangers of his Chekist companions became obvious when Gorky’s son Maxim died mysteriously of influenza. Later, Yagoda would be accused, with the family doctors, of killing him. After his death, Maxim’s daughter Martha remembers how Yagoda would visit the Gorky household every morning for a cup of coffee and a flirtation with her mother, on his way to the Lubianka: “he was in love with Timosha and wanted her to return his affection,” said Alexei Tolstoy’s wife.

“You still don’t know me, I can do anything,” he threatened the distraught Timosha: the writer Alexander Tikhonov claimed they began an affair; her daughter denies it. When Stalin visited, Yagoda lingered, still in love with Timosha and increasingly worried about himself. After the Politburo had left, he asked Gorky’s secretary: “Did they come? They’ve left now? What did they talk about? . . . Did they say anything about us . . .?”[83]

Stalin had asked Gorky to write his biography, but the novelist recoiled from the task. Instead he bombarded Stalin and the Politburo with crazy proposals such as a project to commission Socialist Realist writers to “rewrite the world’s books anew.” Stalin’s apologies for late replies became ever more extreme: “I’m as lazy as a pig on things marked ‘correspondence,’ ” confessed Stalin to Gorky. “How do you feel? Healthy? How’s your work? Me and my friends are fine.” The NKVD actually printed false issues ofPravda especially for Gorky, to conceal the persecution of his friend, Kamenev.[84] Gorky himself realized that he was now under house arrest: “I’m surrounded,” he muttered, “trapped.”

In the first week of June, Gorky slept much of the days as his condition worsened. He was supervised by the best doctors but he was failing.

“Let them come if they can get here in time,” said Gorky. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov were pleased to see that he had recovered—after a camphor injection. Stalin took control of the sickroom: “Why are there so many people here?” he asked. “Who’s that sitting beside Alexei Maximovich dressed in black? A nun, is she? All she lacks is a candle in her hands.” This was Baroness Moura Budberg, the mistress Gorky shared with H. G. Wells. “Get them all out of here except for that woman, the one in white, who’s looking after him . . . Why’s there such a funereal mood here? A healthy person might die in such an atmosphere.” Stalin stopped Gorky discussing literature but called for wine and they toasted him and then embraced.

Days later, Stalin arrived only to be told that Gorky was too ill to see him: “Alexei Mikhailovich, we visited you at two in the morning,” he wrote. “Your pulse was they say 82. The doctors did not allow us to come in to you. We submitted. Hello from all of us, a big hello. Stalin.” Molotov and Voroshilov signed underneath.

Gorky started to spit blood and died on 18 June, of TB, pneumonia and heart failure. Later it was claimed that his doctors and Yagoda had murdered him deliberately: they certainly confessed to his murder. His death was convenient before Zinoviev’s trial but his medical records in the NKVD archives suggest that he died naturally.[85]

Yagoda was skulking in the dining room at Gorky’s house but Stalin had already turned against him. “And what’s that creature hanging around here for? Get rid of him.”[86]

Finally in July, Zinoviev asked to be able to talk to Kamenev on his own. Then they demanded to speak to the Politburo: if the Party would guarantee there would be no executions, they would confess. Voroshilov was itching to get at the “scum”: when he received some of the testimonies against them, he wrote to Stalin that “these bad people . . . all typical representatives of petit bourgeois with the face of Trotsky . . . are finished people. There’s no place for them in our country and no place among the millions ready to die for the Motherland. This scum must be liquidated absolutely . . . we need to be sure the NKVD starts the purge properly . . .” Here, then, was one leader who genuinely seemed to approve of a terror and the liquidation of the former oppositions. On 3 July, Stalin replied to “dear Klim, did you read the testimonies . . . ? How do you like the bourgeois puppies of Trotsky . . . ? They wanted to wipe out all the members of the Politburo . . . Isn’t it weird? How low people can sink? J.St.”

Yagoda accompanied these two broken men on the short drive from the Lubianka to the Kremlin, where they had both once lived. When they arrived in the room where Kamenev had chaired so many Politburo meetings, they discovered that only Stalin, Voroshilov and Yezhov were present. Where was the rest of the Politburo?

Stalin replied that he and Voroshilov were a commission of the Politburo. Given Klim’s venom, it is easy to see why he was there, but where was Molotov? Perhaps the punctilious Iron-Arse was worried about the etiquette of lying to Old Bolsheviks: he certainly did not object to killing people.

Kamenev begged the Politburo for a guarantee of their lives.

“A guarantee?” replied Stalin, according to Orlov’s version. “What guarantee can there be? It’s simply ridiculous! Maybe you want an official treaty certified by the League of Nations? Zinoviev and Kamenev forget they’re not in a market-place haggling over a stolen horse but at the Politburo of the Bolshevik Communist Party. If an assurance by the Politburo is not enough, I don’t see any point in talking further.”

“Zinoviev and Kamenev behave as if they’re in a position to make conditions to the Politburo,” exclaimed Voroshilov. “If they had any common sense, they’d fall to their knees before Stalin . . .”

Stalin proposed three reasons why they would not be executed—it was really a trial of Trotsky; if he had not shot them when they were opposing the Party, then why shoot them when they were helping it; and finally, “the comrades forget that we are Bolsheviks, disciples and followers of Lenin, and we don’t want to shed the blood of Old Bolsheviks, no matter how grave their past sins . . .”

Zinoviev and Kamenev wearily agreed to plead guilty, provided there were no shootings and their families were protected.

“That goes without saying,” Stalin finished the meeting.[87]

Stalin set to work on the script for the Zinoviev trial, revelling in his hyperbolic talent as a hack playwright. The new archives reveal how he even dictated the words of the new Procurator-General, Andrei Vyshinsky, who kept notes of his leader’s perorations.[88]

Stalin issued a secret circular of 29 July which announced that a terrorist leviathan named the “United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre” had attempted to assassinate Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Kirov, Sergo, Zhdanov and others. These lists of purported targets became a bizarre honour since inclusion signified proximity to Stalin. One can imagine the leaders checking the list like schoolboys rushing to the noticeboard to make sure they are in the football team. Significantly, Molotov was not on the team, which was interpreted as a sign of opposition to the Terror but it seems he was indeed temporarily out of favour because of a different disagreement with Stalin. Molotov boasted, “I’d always supported the measures taken,” but there is one intriguing hint in the archives that Molotov was under fire from Yezhov. The NKVD had arrested the German nurse of his daughter Svetlana Molotova[89] and the Premier had grumbled to Yagoda. A Chekist denounced Molotov for “improper behaviour . . . Molotov behaved badly.” On 3 November, Yezhov sent Molotov the denunciation, perhaps a shot across his bows.[90]

Yezhov was Stalin’s closest associate in the days before the trial while Yagoda, now in disfavour for his resistance to it, was received only once. Stalin complained about his work: “You work poorly. The NKVD suffers a serious disease.” Finally he called Yagoda, shouting that he would “punch him in the nose” if he did not pull himself together. We have Stalin’s notes from his 13 August meetings with Yezhov, which catch his mood. In one, he considers sacking an official: “Get him out? Yes, get him out! Talk with Yezhov.” Again and again: “Ask Yezhov.”[91]

The first of the famous show trials opened on 19 August in the October Hall upstairs in the House of Unions. The 350 spectators were mainly NKVD clerks in plain clothes, foreign journalists and diplomats. On a raised dais in the centre, the three judges, led by Ulrikh, sat on portentous throne-like chairs covered in red cloth. The real star of this theatrical show, the Procurator-General Andrei Vyshinsky, whose performance of foaming ire and articulate pedantry would make him a European figure, sat to the audience’s left. The defendants, sixteen shabby husks, guarded by NKVD troopers with fixed bayonets, sat to the right. Behind them was a door that led to the suite that might be compared to the “celebrity hospitality green room” in television studios. Here in a drawing room with sandwiches and refreshments sat Yagoda who could confer with Vyshinsky and the defendants during the trial.

Stalin was said to be lurking in a recessed gallery with darkened windows at the back where the orchestras once played for aristocratic quadrilles and whence puffs of pipe smoke were alleged to be emanating.

On the 13th, six days before the trial began, Stalin departed by train for Sochi, after a meeting with Yezhov. It is a mark of the impenetrable secrecy of the Soviet system that it has taken over sixty years for anyone to discover that Stalin was actually far away, though he followed the legal melodrama almost as closely as if he had been listening to it in his office. Eighty-seven NKVD packages of interrogations plus records of confrontations and the usual pile of newspapers, memos and telegrams arrived at the wicker table on the veranda.

Kaganovich and Yezhov checked every detail with Stalin. The protégé was now more powerful than his former patron—Yezhov signed his name ahead of Kaganovich in every telegram. While the will of the great actor-manager controlled all from afar, the two in Moscow doubled as PR-men and impresarios. On the 17th, Kaganovich and Yezhov reported to the Khozyain that “we’ve fixed the press coverage . . . in the following manner: 1. Pravda and Izvestiya to publish a page-length account of the trial daily.” On the 18th, Stalin ordered the trial to proceed next day.

The accused were indicted with a fantastical array of often bungled crimes ordered by the shadowy conspiracy led by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev (“The United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre”) that had successfully killed Kirov but repeatedly failed to kill Stalin and the others (though never bothering with Molotov). For six days, they confessed to these crimes with a docility that amazed Western spectators.

The language of these trials was as obscure as hieroglyphics and could only be understood in the Aesopian imagery of the closed Bolshevik universe of conspiracies of evil against good in which “terrorism” simply signified “any doubt about the policies or character of Stalin.” All his political opponents were per se assassins. More than two “terrorists” was a “conspiracy” and, putting together such killers from different factions, created a “Unified Centre” of astonishing global, indeed Blofeldian, reach: this reveals much about Stalin’s internal melodrama as well as about Bolshevik paranoia, formed by decades of underground life.[92]

While these crushed men delivered their lines, Procurator-General Vyshinsky brilliantly combined the indignant humbug of a Victorian preacher with the diabolical curses of a witch doctor. Small with “bright black eyes” behind horn-rimmed spectacles, thinning reddish hair, pointed nose, and dapper in “white collar, checked tie, well-cut suit, trimmed grey moustache,” a Western witness thought he resembled “a prosperous stockbroker accustomed to lunching at Simpson’s and playing golf at Sunning-dale.” Born into an affluent, noble Polish family in Odessa, Vyshinsky had once occupied a cell with Stalin with whom he shared hampers from his parents, an investment that may have saved his life. But as an ex-Menshevik, he was absolutely obedient and ravenously bloodthirsty: during the thirties, his notes to Stalin constantly propose shooting of defendants, usually “Trotskyites preparing the death of Stalin,” always ending with the words: “I recommend VMN—death by shooting.”

Vyshinsky, fifty-three, was notoriously unpleasant to his subordinates but cringingly sycophantic to his seniors: he used the word “Illustrious” in his letters to Molotov and even Poskrebyshev (whom he cleverly cultivated). Even his subordinates found him a “sinister figure” who, regardless of his “excellent education,” believed in the essential rule of Stalinist management: “I believe in keeping people on edge,” but he was always on the edge himself, suffering bouts of eczema, living in fear and helping to breed it. Alert, vigorous, vain and intelligent, he impressed Westerners as much as he chilled them with his forensic mannerisms and vicious wit: it was he who later described the Romanians as “not a nation, but a profession.” He was very proud of his notoriety: presented to Princess Margaret in London in 1947, he whispered to the diplomat introducing them, “Please add my former title as Procurator in the famous Moscow trials.”[93]

Every day, Yezhov and Kaganovich, who must have been listening to the trial in the “hospitality suite,” reported to Stalin on the proceedings like this: “Zinoviev declared that he confirms the depositions of Bakaiev on the fact that the latter had made a report to Zinoviev on the preparation of a terrorist act against Kirov...” They revelled in recounting to the actor-manager-playwright the successful “unfolding” of this theatrical piece.

However, there was severe doubt among many of the journalists, exacerbated by the NKVD’s comical blunders: the court heard how Trotsky’s son, Sedov, ordered the assassinations in a meeting at the Hotel Bristol in Denmark—yet it emerged that the hotel had been demolished in 1917.

“What the devil did you need the hotel for?” Stalin is said to have shouted. “You ought to have said ‘railway station.’ The station is always there.”[94]

This show had a wider cast than the players actually onstage because others were carefully implicated, raising the prospect of other famous “terrorists” appearing in later trials. The defendants took great care to implicate a couple of military commanders and then both Leftists, such as Karl Radek, and Rightists, such as Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky. Vyshinsky announced that he was opening new cases against these celebrated names.

The members of this off-stage cast performed their roles very differently: the gifted journalist Karl Radek, a famous international revolutionary who cut an absurd figure with his round glasses, whiskers, pipe, leather boots and coats, had been close to Stalin during the early thirties, advising him on German politics. Writers always imagine they can write their way out of danger so Radek offered his pen to the Master. Now Stalin decreed that “although not very convincing, I suggest to delay for the moment the question of Radek’s arrest and to let him publish in Izvestiya a signed article . . .” Opportunities, even temporary indulgence towards old friends, could change Stalin’s meandering progress.[95]

On the 22nd, the accused refused to plead for their defence. The Politburo—Kaganovich, Sergo, Voroshilov and Chubar—along with Yezhov, asked for instructions: “It’s not convenient to authorize any appeal,” Stalin retorted, at 11:10 the next night giving exact instructions on the press coverage of the sentences. Revealingly, the playwright thought the verdict required a little bit of “stylistic polishing.” Half an hour later, he wrote again, worrying that the trial would be regarded as just a “mise-en-scène.”[96]

Stalin’s spin doctors engineered public outrage against the terrorists. Khrushchev, rabid supporter of the trials and shootings, arrived one evening at the Central Committee to find Kaganovich and Sergo bullying the poet Demian Bedny to produce a blood-Curdling ditty for Pravda. Bedny recited his effort. There was an awkward pause:

“Not what we had in mind, Comrade Bedny,” said Kaganovich. Sergo lost his temper and shouted at Bedny. Khrushchev glared at him.

“I can’t!” protested Bedny, but he could. His “No Mercy” was published the next day, while Pravda shrieked: “Crush the Loathsome Creatures! The Mad Dogs Must Be Shot!”

In the court, Vyshinsky summed up: “These mad dogs of capitalism tried to tear limb from limb the best of our Soviet land”—Kirov. “I demand that these mad dogs should be shot—every one of them!” The dogs themselves now made their pathetic pleas and confessions. Even seventy years later, they are tragic to read. Kamenev finished his confession but then rose again, obviously off-message, to plead for his children whom he had no other means of addressing: “No matter what my sentence will be, I in advance consider it just. Don’t look back,” he told his sons. “Go forward . . . Follow Stalin.”

The judges withdrew to consider their pre-decided verdict, returning at two-thirty to sentence all to death, at which one defendant shouted: “Long live the cause of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!”[97]

Back in prison, the scared “terrorists” shakily appealed for mercy, remembering Stalin’s promise to spare them. As Zinoviev and Kamenev waited in their cells, Stalin, waiting in sunny Sochi, received a telegram at 8:48 p.m. from Kaganovich, Sergo, Voroshilov and Yezhov who informed him that the appeal of the defendants had been received. “The Politburo proposed to reject the demands and execute the verdict tonight.”[98] Stalin did not answer, perhaps congratulating himself on his imminent revenge, perhaps having dinner, but surely aware that the murder of two of Lenin’s closest comrades marked a giant step towards his next colossal gamble, an intense reign of terror against the Party itself, a slaughter that would consume even his own friends and family. Stalin waited for three long hours.[99]

---

[1] Kaganovich, pp. 71–2. Mikoyan, pp. 316–8. Kirov, pp. 199–201. Tucker, Power, p. 292.

[2] Eteri Ordzhonikidze. Khlevniuk, Ordzhonikidze, p. 67. Ginsburg in Kirov, p. 197. Kaganovich, pp. 71–2. Mikoyan, pp. 316–8. Kirov, pp. 199–201.

[3] Tucker, Power, pp. 294, 646. Kissing Kirov: Rybin, Ryadom, p. 88. “Take him away the prick”: Radinsky, p. 312. See also Orlov. Kirov, pp. 200–8, inc. Nikolaev.

[4][4] Tucker, Power, pp. 294–6. Vlasik saw Pauker “shaken” when breaking the news about Borisov in Kirov, pp. 205–9.

[5] Instantsiya derives from the nineteenth-century German usage of aller instanzen, meaning to appeal to the highest court.

[6] On Voikov’s assassination and Stalin’s reaction, see Chinsky, p. 83. On Instantsiya, thanks to Prof. Derek Beales. For verbal orders, see murder of Mikhoels.

[7] Stalin loved Kirov: Rybin, Ryadom, p. 87; Kaganovich , p. 72. Advice on Beria: Stalin quoted Kirov’s advice against Beria after the war to Mgeladze, p. 178. Larina, p. 291.

[8] RGASPI 558.11.773.81, Stalin to Chief of Kolkhoz, D. Emalinanova, on case of M. A. Merzlikov, 27 Feb. 1930. Peter Kapanadze, priest and present of 2,000 roubles: Charkviani, p. 45, letter 7 Dec. 1933. Present to Ukrainian boy: RGASPI 558.11.712, Ivan Boboshko to Stalin: “I received 10 roubles from you, thank you.”

[9] The Taurida Palace had been the scene of Prince Potemkin’s extravagant ball for Catherine the Great in 1791 but it was also the home of the Duma, the Parliament gingerly granted by Nicholas II after the 1905 Revolution. In 1918, the palace housed the Constituent Assembly that Lenin ordered shut down by drunken Red Guards. It was thus both the birthplace and graveyard of Russia’s first two democracies before 1991.

[10] This brain study was part of the rationalist-scientific ritual of the death of great Bolsheviks. Lenin’s brain had been extracted and was now studied at the Institute of the Brain. When Gorky died, his brain was delivered there too. This was surely a scientific Marxist distortion of the tradition in the Romantic age for the hearts of great men, whether Mirabeau or Potemkin, to be buried separately. But the age of the heart was over.

[11] Kirov’s Brain, Zhdanov, Agranov, Yezhov and the funeral: Kirov , pp. 214–5. Tucker, Power, pp. 294–5, 298. KR I, pp. 98–100.

[12] Svanidze diary, 5–13 Dec. 1934. Mikoyan, pp. 316–8. Kirov, pp. 5–8. Tucker, Power, pp. 301–2.

[13] Svanidze diary, 5–13 Dec. 1934. Kaganovich, pp. 71–2. Mikoyan, pp. 315–7. Tucker, Power, p. 298. Kirov, pp. 5–7 including Sergo quotation.

[14] Tucker, Power, pp. 297–9. Svanidze diary, IA , 5–13 Dec. 1934.

[15] RGASPI 558.11.800.113, Rudzutak to Stalin and Stalin’s reply 5 Dec. 1934. Larina, p. 173.

[16] Yury Zhdanov: “everything changed.” Also Artyom Sergeev: “Nothing was the same again.” Popovich quoted in Dedijer, Tito Speaks, p. 278. Isakov interviewed by Simonov in Znamya, vol. 5 (1988), p. 69.

[17] Maria’s poem reveals both the devotion and cheekiness of Stalin’s female courtiers: “We wish much happiness to our Dear Leader and endless life. Let the enemies be scared off. Liquidate all Fascists . . . Next year, take the world under your sway, and rule all mankind. Shame the ladies can’t go West to Carlsbad. It’s all the same at Sochi.”

[18] This account of 21 Dec. 1934 is based on the memories of two of the guests: Maria Svanidze’s diary, 23 Dec. 1934; interview Artyom Sergeev. We also have Maria’s poem from the archives and the photographs in two versions. I am grateful to Stepan Mikoyan, Natalya Andreyeva and Kira Alliluyeva, all of whose parents were there, for identifying the characters. Poem: RGASPI 44.1.1.361–6. Photograph: RGASPI 558.11.1653.22.

[19] Even today, those that know such secrets persist in believing, in the words of Stalin’s adopted son General Artyom Sergeev, now eighty, that his “private life is secret and irrelevant to his place in history.”

[20] Svanidze diary: July, Oct. and 23 Dec. 1934. Anecdotes of Stalin and Zhenya: Kira Alliluyeva. Also Artyom Sergeev and Leonid Redens. Svetlana RR. Richardson, Long Shadow, p. 99.

[21] Khlevniuk, Circle, pp. 149–50.

[22] Here was Stalin’s version of Harold Macmillan’s “You’ve never had it so good.”

[23] Kirov, p. 222.

[24] The star was his wife Liuba Orlova and the songs were by the Jewish songwriter Isaac Dunaevsky. The Russians, emerging from an era of starvation and assassination, flocked to see musicals and comedies—like Americans during the Depression. The style was singing, dancing and slapstick: a pig jumps onto a banqueting table, causing much messy hilarity with trotters and snout.

[25] RGASPI 558.11.27.88, Stalin as songwriter, 8 July 1935. Alexandrov story: Gromyko, Memoirs, pp. 328–9. Leda, p. 319. Kenez, pp. 95, 111, 131, 158–61. Taylor and Christie, The Film Factory, p. 384, quoted in Figes, Natasha, p. 477. See also Gromov, Vlast i Iskusstvo, G. V. Alexandrov, Epokha i kino, and G. Mariamov, Kremlevskii tsenzor: Stalin smotrit kino in later section on Stalin and cinema post-WW2.

[26] RGASPI 558.11.727.33, A. Dovzhenko’s conversation with Stalin, with Postyshev, Kosior and Kalinin in attendance, 27 May 1935. Also: Kenez, p. 133.

[27] Film: Jay Leyda, Kino: History of Russian and Soviet Film, p. 319. Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 95, 111, 131, 159. Beria in Sergo B, p. 17. Lenin quoted in Figes, Natasha, p. 451 and Soviet Hollywood, p. 477. Medvedev, p. 309. Svetlana OOY, p. 331. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 93–4.

[28] Eisenstein: Figes, Natasha, pp. 454–9, 477–81. Kirov and Counterplan: Leyda, p. 290. Kaganovich and Eisenstein: Kenez, p. 138. Stalin on Eisenstein: RGASPI 558.11.804.12, Stalin to Upton Sinclair Oct. 1931. Stalin to Kaganovich 12 Oct. 1931, inKaganovich Perepiska , p. 101. “Very talented”: Mgeladze, p. 212.

[29] Tucker, Power, pp. 330–1. Brooks, Thank You C. Stalin, pp. 64–6. Stalinism and Kaganovich: KR I, p. 75. Mikoyan p. 31. Cults of leaders: Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 72–4.

[30] RGASPI 45.1.803.1, Stalin to F. Samoilova 6 Dec. 1938.

[31] RGASPI 558.11.730.189, Stalin to Zhdanov and Pospelov 24 Sept. 1940. On K. Gamsakhurdia’s The Leader’s Childhood he wrote: “I ask you to prohibit publication in Russian.” RGASPI 558.11.787.2, Stalin to Zhdanov and Pospelov 24 Sept. 1940. RGASPI 558.11.730.188, Stalin to Zhdanov 14 Sept. 1940. When Old Bolsheviks wanted to publish their memories of his early days, Stalin ordered: “Don’t publish!” RGASPI 558.11.1496.17, Stalin to Mekhlis 21 July 1937. RGASPI 558.11.773.84, Stalin to Mekhlis 1930.

[32] RGASPI 558.11.717, Stalin to P. M. Vsiliev 3 Dec. 1930 or 1932.

[33] RGASPI 558.11.786.106, Stalin to Poskrebyshev July 1929.

[34] RGASPI 558.11.711.182, Stalin to Blokhin 29 July 1925.

[35] Sudoplatov, pp. 270–1. Tucker, Power, pp. 301–2.

[36] Mikoyan and Chubar, a senior official in Ukraine, as the two senior candidate members of the Politburo, were made full members, with Zhdanov and Eikhe, boss of West Siberia, taking their place as candidates.

[37] Kaganovich reshuffle: Rees, p. 132. Khlevniuk, Circle, pp. 172– 7.

[38] On Khrushchev: Oni, p. 171. KR I, p. 57; KR II, p. 151. Kaganovich, pp. 99–100. Early years: Iurii Shapoval, the Ukrainian Years 1894–1949 in Taubman, pp. 1–17. Pet: William Taubman, Khrushchev, Man and Era, p. 75.

[39] Yezhov’s rise: M. Jansen and N. Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner, People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895–1940, pp. 25–6. RGASPI 17.3.961.61. Yezhov was appointed to check the NKVD staff and Komsomol. He had been an effective NKVD supervisor for Stalin since December 1934 and soon succeeded Kaganovich as Chair of the Party Control Commission.

[40] “Humane, gentle” Yezhov—Yuri Dombrovsky in Jansen-Petrov, pp. 19–20. A. Polianski, Yezhov: Istoriya zheleznogo stalinskogo narkoma, pp. 1–40. Mandelstam, pp. 324–5. “Small slender man”—Lev Razgon, Plen v svoem otechestve, pp. 50–1. Women on Yezhov: beautiful blue eyes—Vera Trail, unpublished memoirs, pp. 5–11. Nikolai Ezhov, Moscow 1937. Blue-grey eyes, Bukharin’s views and teacher in Central Asia: Larina, pp. 250, 268. On Stalin’s Sukhumi dacha: author’s visit 2002. “Grey-green eyes clever as a cobra”: D. Shepilov, “Vospominaniya,” Voprosy Istorii, no. 4, 1998, pp. 3–25. Size: Jansen-Petrov, pp. 1–11, 14.

[41] Jansen-Petrov, pp. 1–11, 14, 22. Getty, pp. 156–7. Khlevniuk, Circle, pp. 175–7. Polianski, pp. 40–84. Memory: Stalin to Nutsibidze, Nakaduli, 2, 1993, pp. 96–100.

[42] Model yachts: Jansen-Petrov, p. 199. “I don’t know a more ideal worker”: I. M. Moskvin quoted in Razgon, pp. 50–51. RGASPI 558.11.89.156, Dvinsky to Stalin 17 Sept. 1935. On Yezhov’s bisexuality, drinking and farting: Yezhov’s confession, FSB 3.6.1, and Frinovsky Case, FSB N-15301.12, in Jansen-Petrov, pp. 18–19. Illnesses: Jansen-Petrov, p. 196.

[43] RGASPI 558.11.787.6, Stalin to Postyshev on Yezhov’s holiday, 9 Sept. 1931.

[44] RGASPI 558.11.818.3, Stalin to Yezhov 31 May 1935, and RGASPI 558.11.756.88, Stalin to Kaganovich and Yezhov 22 Sept. 1934. KR 1, p. 115.

[45] RGASPI 558.11.775. 35, Stalin to Yezhov 23 Aug. 1935.

[46] Trail, p. 8. Jansen-Petrov, p. 22.

[47] Jansen-Petrov, p. 16. Polianski, pp. 88–92. KGB Lit. Archiv, pp. 42–4.

[48] This dacha, built by a Jewish millionaire, later known as Dom (house of) Ordzhonikidze and now notorious as “Stalin’s house,” was a favourite of the leadership: the founder of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, often stayed there. Trotsky was recuperating there at the time of Lenin’s death when Stalin and Ordzhonikidze managed to ensure he missed the funeral. Stalin (and Beria) stayed here after World War II: the grand billiard room was installed specially for him and he took a great interest in the lush trees and flowers planted by local Party bosses up to his death. In one of the most sinister parts of the research for this book, the author stayed almost alone in this strange but historic house, probably in Mandelstam’s attic.

[49] Mandelstam, p. 113. Eteri Ordzhonikidze.

[50] RGASPI 558.11.83.16, Stalin via Dvinsky to Besanov, Berlin, 5 Aug. 1934.

[51] As Stalin wrote his history books with his dear friends Zhdanov and Kirov, he was receiving detailed reports on the health of his “precious” comrade. The Yezhov case is a classic illustration of the Party’s obsessive control over every detail of its leaders. “The radioactive baths of Badgastein” had improved Yezhov’s health, the embassy reported after five days. A few days later, the patient was feeling energyless after the baths, he was following a diet but he was still chain smoking—and the sores on his thighs and legs had almost disappeared. The CC voted to send him the huge sum of 1,000 roubles. Next he had pains in his appendix, but having consulted Moscow doctors, Kaganovich sent an order that he was not to undergo surgery “unless absolutely necessary.” After another rest in an Italian sanatorium, the Yezhovs returned that autumn.

[52] Bukharin’s views and Central Asian teacher: Larina, pp. 250, 268. KR 1, p. 115.

[53] RGASPI 558.11.83.50,51,93 and RGASPI 558.11.84.14,18,66,110, Berlin Embassy and CC telegrams on Yezhov’s health forwarded by Dvinsky to Stalin, Sochi, Aug. 1934.

[54] “Lonely as an owl” in Sochi: RGASPI 558.11.728.40, Stalin to Yenukidze, 13 Sept. 1933. Sashiko and the photograph, Yenukidze sexually abnormal, two hours late for dinner: Svanidze diary, 28 June 1935. Politburo: Svanidze diary, 11 Sept. 1933. Staying the night: Mikoyan, p. 356. Natalya Andreyeva. Kira Alliluyeva.

[55] RGASPI 558.11.728.67–107 and 114, RGASPI 558.11.728.40–2, Stalin to Yenukidze 13 Sept. 1933. Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations , p. 189.

[56] RGASPI 558.11.704.20, Beria, pp. 58–62.

[57] Plenum: Getty, p. 160–8. Khlevniuk, Circle, pp. 149–50. Kremlin Case: Jansen-Petrov, p. 30. APRF 57.1.273. Yenukidze’s fall: Jansen-Petrov, pp. 31–3. Y. N. Zhukov, “Tainy Kremlevskogo delo 1935 goda i sudba Avelia Yenukidze” in Voprosy Istorii, 2000, no. 9, pp. 83–113. “Something rotten”: Kaganovich in RGASPI 17.2.547 and RGASPI 17.3.963. Bukharin and Yenukidze “swayed” Nadya politically; MR, p. 173.

[58] Svanidze diary, 9 May and 28 June 1935.

[59] Ignoring the fall of Uncle Abel, Svetlana decided she wanted to go to the dacha at Lipki, which had been Nadya’s choice for a holiday home, all decorated in her style. Stalin agreed, even though “it was hard for Joseph to be there,” wrote Maria. The whole wider family, along with Mikoyan, set off in a convoy of cars. Stalin was very warm towards Mikoyan. Svetlana asked if she could stay up for dinner and Stalin let her. Vasily too was often at dinner with the adults.

[60] Svanidze diary, 29 Apr. 1935.

[61] “Lonely as an owl” in Sochi: RGASPI 558.11.728.40, Stalin to Yenukidze 13 Sept. 1933. Two hours later for dinner, Sashiko, photograph: Svanidze diary, 28 June 1935. Stronger than the Politburo: Svanidze diary, 11 Sept. 1933. Staying the night: Mikoyan, p. 356. Natalya Andreyeva. Kira Alliluyeva.

[62] Svanidze diary, 29 Apr. 1935.

[63] In his entourage, Stalin even called Bukharin “Shuisky,” according to Kaganovich, referring either to the Shuisky family of boyars who lorded it over the young Ivan, or the so-called “Boyars’ Tsar” after Ivan’s death. Either way, Stalin was identifying his own position with that of Ivan against his boyars.

[64] “Russian people are Tsarist”: Radzinsky, quoting P. Chagin, p. 323. Molotov: on Ivan the Terrible in Volkogonov, p. 310. Mikoyan: on Ivan, p. 534. “Stalin Molotov i Zhdanov o vtoroy serii filma Ivan Grozni,” Moskovskie Novosti, no. 37, 7 Aug. 1988, p. 8. Budyonny, Notes, 8. Teacher and Ivan: RGASPI 558.3.350. Bukharin as “Shuisky” in Kaganovich, p. 74. Tucker, Power, pp. 104, 937. Nadir Shah: RGASPI 558.11.27.24, Stalin notes, 7 May 1929. Sergo B, p. 284. A. W. Harriman and E. Abel, Special Envoy (henceforth Harriman-Abel) on Alexander I: p. 178. Charkviani on Nicholas I: p. 35. Eisenstein: Kenez, p. 179.

[65] Cadillacs: RGASPI 82.2.897.7, Yagoda to Molotov and Molotov and Stalin to Yagoda 15 June 1935. Rolls-Royces: RGASPI 558.11.81.13, Stalin and Voroshilov to Kaganovich, 19 Sept. 1933, Kaganovich Perepiska, p. 350. Spending on luxuries: RGASPI 558.11.27.95, Stalin, 20 May 1936. There were now seven classes of salaries: a People’s Commissar got 500 roubles, Class One officials got 250 roubles, Tucker, Power, p. 324. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 93–7. Erickson, Soviet High Command, pp. 402–3. Bukharin’s suit: Larina, pp. 247–8.

[66] Trud, 30 Dec. 1936. Brooks, Thank You C. Stalin, p. 71.

[67] Tucker, Power, pp. 284–7. KR I, pp. 84–5.

[68] When he received no reply, again showing the attitude of the local bosses to the centre, Poskrebyshev chased up the Kazakh First Secretary: “We have not received confirmation of our order.” This time, the local boss replied instantly. But this only illustrates how the regional viceroys ignored Moscow in small matters and great, following the old Russian tradition of apparent obedience while avoiding actual execution of orders.

[69] RGASPI 558.11.754.101, Stalin and Poskrebyshev to Mirzoian 3 and 21 Apr. 1935, and his reply 23 Apr.

[70] Khlevniuk, Circle, pp. 154–6.

[71] RGASPI 81.3.100.91, Stalin to Kaganovich 8 Sept. 1935, and RGASPI 558.11.743.17, Kaganovich to Stalin 13 Sept. 1935. RGASPI 558.11.89.71–6 and 89, Stalin and Salinin to Kaganovich, Yezhov and Molotov 7 Sept. 1935, and Kaganovich to Stalin 10 Sept. 1935. RGASPI 558.11.90.55, Kaganovich to Stalin 23 Sept. 1935. Old farts: RGASPI 81.3.100.91–94. Stalin was also furious that Orakhelashvili was socializing with Yenukidze. Agranov was sending Stalin information on Yenukidze which he distributed to the PB. See also Kaganovich Perepiska, pp. 554–8. Chinsky, pp. 39–47.

[72] Nadezhada Vlasik. Letters of V. Stalin, Stalin, commandant S. Efimov, K. Pauker, 1932–37, quoted in Vasily, pp. 28–30, 51. On suicides: Getty, p. 21. Tucker, Power, pp. 265, 367. Conquest, Great Terror, pp. 86–7.

[73] Khozyaika means mistress, the female of Khozyain, boss, master, Stalin’s nickname among the bureaucracy, though it also usually means “housewife.”

[74] RGASPI 558.11.1743.1, Kaganovich to Stalin and Svetlana 16 Aug. 1935, Kaganovich Perepiska, p. 524. RGASPI 81.3.100.89, Stalin to Kaganovich 19 Aug. 1935. RGASPI 558.11.743.5, Kaganovich to Stalin 22 Aug. 1935. RGASPI 558.11.743.23, Kaganovich to Stalin 31 Aug. 1935.Kaganovich Perepiska, pp. 527, 530, 543. Stalin/Svetlana notes: RGASPI 558.1.5113/558.1.5132.

[75] RGASPI 558.11.1549.1–41, letters of Stalin and Nadya to E. Djugashvili. The letter quoted in full is RGASPI 558.11.1549.45, Stalin to Keke 24 Mar. 1934. Beria and Keke: Sergo B, pp. 20–1.

[76] RGASPI 558.1.92.22, Poskrebyshev to Stalin 21 Oct. 1929. RGASPI 558.11.92.82, Stalin to CC 29 Oct. 1935. RGASPI 558.11.1549.48–69, letters to E. Djugashvili from Stalin, Yasha Stalin, Sasha Egnatashvili and other relations, 1934–7. Svetlana, Twenty Letters, pp. 260–2. On her death: RGASPI 558.11.1549.74–92, Stalin’s note for wreath, Tass announcement approved by Poskrebyshev and contents of her house. Stalin’s conversation to Keke: Dr. N. Kipshidze, her doctor, quoted in Radzinsky, p. 23. Stalin and motherhood, Tolstoy: RGASPI 558.3.353. On her Trotsky comment and gossiping: Sergo B, pp. 20–1. On Stalin and Sasha Egnatashvili, “What do you expect from an innkeeper’s son”: Charkviani, pp. 4–5. “The Rabbit”: Brackman, p. 4. Interview Tina Egnatashvili.

[77] In case we have forgotten that this was a state based on repression, Zhdanov and Mikoyan were inspecting the NKVD’s slave labour projects in the Arctic such as the Belomor Canal: “the Chekists here have done a great job,” Zhdanov wrote enthusiastically to Stalin. “They allow ex-kulaks and criminal elements to work for socialism and they may become real people . . .”

[78] Real people: RGASPI 558.11.730.39, Zhdanov to Stalin 1 Sept. 1935. Getty, pp. 247–8. Tucker, Power, pp. 366–7. Conquest, Terror, pp. 90–105. Voprosy Istorii, no. 2, 1995, p. 17. Izvestiya TsK KPSS, no. 8, 1989, p. 85.

[79] Svanidze diary, 7 Dec. 1936.

[80] From Factionalism to Open Counterrevolution by Nikolai Yezhov, APRF 57.1.273. Yezhov to Stalin, 17 May 1935, Jansen-Petrov, p. 29. Yezhov’s role in the trial: Yezhov’s paper contains ten files on the trial—Jansen-Petrov, p. 46.

[81] Voplosy Istorii, no. 2 1995, p. 17. Izvestiya TsK KPSS, no. 8, 1989, p. 85. Getty, pp. 247–8. RGASPI 558.11.89.156, Dvinsky to Stalin 17 Sept. 1935.

[82] Orlov, p. 130.

[83] Pirozhkhova, p. 61. Larina, pp. 99–100. KGB Lit. Archive , pp. 262–99. Martha Peshkova.

[84] An old trick: Kuibyshev had suggested printing false issues of Pravda to deceive the dying Lenin.

[85] Martha Peshkova. How do you feel? RGASPI 558.11.720.107, Stalin to Gorky 21 May 1936. Svetlana and Stalin visit Gorky, OOY, p. 327. “On all questions touched in your letter including organization, we need to consult Comrade Stalin. Comrade Stalin is very interested in cultural problems and is personally managing the CC department that deals with this.” RGASPI 73.2.44.21–2, Gorky to Andreyev, Andreyev to Stalin, Stalin to Andreyev 30 Dec. 1935. Stalin corrected Gorky’s articles with Kaganovich. RGASPI 558.11.720.69, Stalin to Gorky, n.d. We visited you at two: RGASPI 558.11.720.120, Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov to Gorky, June 1936. KGB Lit. Archive, pp. 251–7, 267–75; Yagoda: Averbakh and Kryuchkov testimony, pp. 260–1.

[86] Serious disease: Chinsky, pp. 99–100. “That creature”: KGB Lit. Archive, p. 273. Tension: Yezhov and Vyshinsky vs. Yagoda. Vyshinsky frequently complained about Yagoda, obviously with Stalin’s backing. GARF 8431.37.70.134, Vyshinsky to Stalin and Molotov 16 Feb. 1935.

[87] RGASPI 74.2.37.104, Voroshilov to Stalin 25 June 1936. RGASPI 74.2.38.82, Stalin to Voroshilov 3 July 1936. Kaganovich also called them “scum” in his letter of 6 July when he was on holiday in Kislovodsk: RGASPI 558.11.743.53, Kaganovich to Stalin. On Molotov: Conquest, Terror, p. 103. Orlov, pp. 130–40. Tucker, Power, p. 368.

[88] RGASPI 558.2.155.104–7, Vyshinsky’s notes form the summing-up for the 1937 trial. Examples of Stalin’s insertions: Tucker, Power, p. 318.

 

[89] Many of the ruling families employed ethnic Germans as housekeepers and nannies: Carolina Til managed Stalin’s house; another Volga German ran Molotov’s and the Berias employed Ella as their nanny-housekeeper. They would all prove vulnerable to the anti-German Terror of 1937.

[90] RGASPI 82.2.8971.8,9,10, Yezhov to Molotov 3 Nov. 1936. Orlov, pp. 162–6. Khlevniuk, Circle, pp. 183–4. MR, pp. 255–60. Stalin–Molotov disagreement: D. H. Watson, Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom 1930–41, pp. 160–2.

[91] “You work poorly”: Larina, p. 94. RGASPI 558.11.27.97, Stalin notes, 13 Aug. 1936. RGASPI 558.11.27.106, Stalin notes, 13 Aug. 1936. Yagoda’s last meeting: IA, 1994: 4.

[92] RGASPI 558.11.93.20, RGASPI 558.11.93.2, Yezhov and Kaganovich to Stalin 17 and 18 Aug. 1936. Mekhlis, Vyshinsky and Agranov were involved in checking the newspaper articles. Chinsky, p. 102. Kaganovich and Yezhov’s telegrams appear inKaganovich Perepiska, pp. 629–40, and Chinsky, pp. 102–22. Orlov, p. 169. Tucker, Power, pp. 367–73. Radzinsky, pp. 332–5. Conquest, Terror, pp. 113–17. Stalin’s world of “terrorists” is brilliantly described in Tucker, Power , pp. 399–403.

[93] Vyshinsky: his description is based on A. Vaksberg, Stalin’s Prosecutor, The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky (henceforth Vaksberg), and quoting Fitzroy Maclean p. 115. Princess Margaret: Sir Frank Roberts quoted in Vaksberg, pp. 253–5. Career: pp. 172–5. Same cell as Stalin and Ordzhonikidze in Bailovka prison, Feb. 1908, pp. 19–21. “People on edge”/sinister, Gromyko, Memoirs, pp. 318–20. Joke on Romanians: Djilas, p. 140. Horn-rimmed specs and bright eyes: Enver Hoxha: Jon Halliday (ed.), Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, p. 119. Temper: Dobrynin, p. 20. Western admiration: Davies, p. 54. W. Bedell Smith, My Three Years in Moscow: charm, pp. 4–5. C. C. Bohlen, Witness to History, pp. 48–9, 285. Recommends shooting: GARF 8431.37.70.7–14. Vyshinsky to Stalin and Molotov 7 or 8 Jan. 1936. Illustrious Molotov: GARF 8431.37.70.103, Vyshinsky to Molotov: 1 Oct. 1935. Illustrious Poskrebyshev: GARF 8431.37.70.78, Vyshinsky to Poskrebyshev 31 Jan. 1936.

[94] RGASPI 558.11.93.32–3 and 42–6, Yezhov and Kaganovich to Stalin 19–20 Aug. 1936. RGASPI 558.11.93.35, Stalin to Kaganovich 20 Aug. 1936. Kaganovich Perepiska, pp. 629–40. Chinsky, pp. 102–22. Orlov, pp. 9–71, 169. Tucker, Power, pp. 367–73. Radzinsky, pp. 332–5. Conquest, Terror, pp. 113–7.

[95] Not all the off-stage cast behaved so conveniently. At 5:46 p.m. on 22 August, Stalin received the following telegram from Kaganovich, Yezhov and Ordzhonikidze: “This morning Tomsky shot himself. He left a letter to you in which he tried to prove his innocence . . . We have no doubt that Tomsky . . . knowing that now it is no longer possible to hide his place in the Zinoviev-Trotskyite band had decided to dissemble . . . by suicide . . .” As ever, the press release was the most important thing.

[96] RGASPI 558.11.93.35, Stalin to Kaganovich and Yezhov on Radek 19 July 1936. Tomsky: RGASPI 558.11.93.55, Kaganovich, Yezhov and Ordzhonikidze to Stalin 22 Aug. 1936. Mise-en-scène : RGASPI 558.11.93.65, Kaganovich and PB plus Yezhov to Stalin 22 Aug. 1936, and RGASPI 558.11.93.62–3 and 77–80, Stalin to Kaganovich 23 Aug. 1936.

[97] Bedny: KR I, p. 101. Tucker, Power, pp. 370–1. Conquest, Terror, pp. 116–7. Radzinsky, p. 334.

[98] Stalin had just sent Mikoyan on a 12,000-mile tour of the American food industry. The shrewd Armenian made sure Stalin knew that he supported the verdict, writing to “dear Lazar” Kaganovich from Chicago: “Don’t forget to write in your next letter to him that I send my warmest greetings to Our Master. How good that we have so quickly got rid of the Trotskyite gang of Zinoviev and Kamenev!” Mikoyan met Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington, D.C., discussed manufacturing with Henry Ford—and inspected Macy’s in New York. The trip had two effects: Mikoyan gave the Russians American hamburgers and ice cream, and he lost his taste for wearing the Party tunic, sporting natty American-style suits for the rest of his career.

[99] See note 1, chapter 17.