Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Vannikov was cruelly tortured about his recent post as deputy to Mikhail Kaganovich, Lazar’s eldest brother and Commissar for Aircraft Production. The air force was always the most accident-prone service. Not only did the planes crash with alarming regularity, reflecting the haste and sloppiness of Soviet manufacturing, but someone had to pay for these accidents. In one year, four Heroes of the Soviet Union were lost in crashes and Stalin himself questioned the air-force generals even down to the engineers working on each plane. “What kind of man is he?” Stalin asked about one technician. “Maybe he’s a bastard, a svoloch.” The crashes had to be the fault of “bastards.” Vannikov was forced to implicate Mikhail Kaganovich as the “bastard” in this case.

  Meanwhile, Vasily Stalin, now a pilot avid to win paternal love, usually by denouncing his superiors to his father, played some part in this tragedy. He remained so nervous that, Svetlana recalled, when his father addressed him at dinner, he jumped and often could not even reply, stammering, “I didn’t hear what you said, Father...What?” In 1940, he fell in love with a pretty trumpet-playing blonde from an NKVD family, Galina Bourdonovskaya, and married her. Yet he was truculent, arrogant, drunken and, while often bighearted, more often dangerous. In this peculiar world, the “Crown Prince” became, according to Svetlana, “a menace.”

  “Hello dear Father,” he wrote on 4 March 1941. “How’s your health? Recently I was in Moscow on the orders of Rychagov [the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Air Force], I wanted to see you so much but they said you were busy . . . They won’t let me fly . . . Rychagov called me and abused me very much saying that instead of studying theory, I was starting to visit commanders proving to them I had to fly. He ordered me to inform you of this conversation.” Vasily had to fly in old planes “that are terrible to see” and even future officers could not train in the new planes: “Father, write me just a couple of words, if you have time, it’s the biggest joy for me because I miss you so much. Your Vasya.”

  This subtle denunciation cannot have helped Pavel Rychagov, thirty-nine, a dashing pilot just promoted to the high command. He arrived drunk at a meeting to discuss the planes. When Stalin criticized the air force, Rychagov shouted that the death rate was so high “because you’re making us fly in coffins!” Silence fell but Stalin continued to walk around the room, the only sounds being the puffing of the pipe and the pad of soft boots.

  “You shouldn’t have said that.” He walked round the deathly quiet table one more time and repeated: “You shouldn’t have said that.” Rychagov was arrested within the week along with several air-force top brass and General Shtern, Far Eastern commander, all later shot. They, like Vannikov, implicated Mikhail Kaganovich.7

  “We received testimonies,” Stalin told Kaganovich. “Your brother’s implicated in the conspiracy.” The brother was accused of building the aircraft factories close to the Russian border to help Berlin. Stalin explained that Mikhail, a Jew, had been designated head of Hitler’s puppet government-in-waiting, an idea so preposterous that it was either the moronic solecism of an NKGB simpleton or, more likely, a joke between Stalin and Beria. Did they remember Ordzhonikidze’s fury on the arrest of his brother? Ordzhonikidze had been Kaganovich’s closest friend.

  “It’s a lie,” Kaganovich claimed to have replied. “I know my brother. He’s a Bolshevik since 1905, devoted to the Central Committee.”

  “How can it be a lie?” retorted Stalin. “I’ve got the testimonies.”

  “It’s a lie. I demand a confrontation.” Decades later, Kaganovich denied that he had betrayed his own brother: “If my brother had been an Enemy I’d have been against him . . . I was sure he was right. I protected him. I protected him!” Kaganovich could afford to give an opinion but he also had to make clear that if the Party needed to destroy his brother, his brother must die. “Well, so what?” he added. “If necessary, arrest him.”

  Stalin ordered Mikoyan and that sinister duo Beria and Malenkov to arrange a confrontation between Mikhail Kaganovich and his accuser, Vannikov, but “Iron Lazar” was not invited to attend.

  “Don’t make him anxious, don’t bother him,” said Stalin.

  Mikoyan held the “confrontation” in his office in the same building as the Little Corner where Mikhail defended himself “passionately” against Vannikov.

  “Are you insane?” he asked his former deputy who had spent nights at his home during the Terror, afraid of arrest.

  “No, you were part of the same organization with me,” replied Vannikov.

  Beria and Malenkov told Mikhail to wait in the corridor while they interrogated Vannikov some more. Mikhail went into Mikoyan’s private lavatory (one of the perks of power). There was a shot.8 The three of them found Kaganovich’s brother dead. By killing himself before his arrest, he saved his family. Lazar passed the test. A scapegoat for the aircraft blunders had been found.173

  As these commissars travelled from Kremlin to torture chamber and back, the Germans surreptitiously deployed their legions along the Soviet frontier while Stalin channelled much of his energy into reasserting Russian influence in the Balkans. But by March, Hitler had managed to lure Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia into his camp. Then, on 26 March, the pro-German government in Yugoslavia was overthrown, probably with the help of the NKGB and the British secret service. Hitler could not afford such a sore on his flank so the Germans prepared to invade Yugoslavia, which delayed Operation Barbarossa by a month.

  On 4 April, Stalin threw himself into negotiations with the new Yugoslav government, hoping this glitch in Hitler’s plan would either drive Berlin back to the negotiating table or, at the very least, delay the invasion until 1942. When he signed a treaty with the Yugoslavs just as the Wehrmacht began to bombard Belgrade, Stalin cheerfully dismissed the threat: “Let them come. We’ve strong nerves.” But Yugoslavia was Hitler’s most successful Blitzkrieg of all: ten days later, Belgrade surrendered. Events were moving faster than the erosion of Stalin’s illusions.

  That same day, Yosuke Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, arrived in Moscow on his way back from Berlin. As the Wehrmacht crushed the Yugoslavs, Stalin realized that he required a fresh path back to Hitler. But he was also aware of the priceless benefit of a quiet Far Eastern front if Hitler invaded. Zhukov’s victory in the Far East had persuaded Tokyo that their destiny lay southwards in the juicier tidbits of the British Empire. On 14 April 1941, when Matsuoka signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, Stalin and Molotov reacted with almost febrile excitement, as if they had single-handedly changed the shape of Europe and saved Russia. Stalin exclaimed how rare it was “to find a diplomat who speaks openly what is on his mind. What Talleyrand told Napoleon was well known, ‘the tongue was given the diplomat so that he could conceal his thoughts.’ We Russians and Bolsheviks are different . . .” For once, Stalin unwound at the resulting Bacchanal, while Molotov tossed back the champagne until both were as drunk as Matsuoka.

  “Stalin and I made him drink a lot,” boasted Molotov later. By 6 a.m., Matsuoka “almost had to be carried to the train. We could barely stand up.” Stalin, Molotov and Matsuoka burst into song, rendering that Russian favourite, “Shoumel Kamysh” that went: “The reeds were rustling, the trees are crackling in the wind, the night was very dark . . . And the lovers stayed awake all night,” to guffaws. At Yaroslavsky Station, the assembled diplomats were amazed to see an intoxicated Stalin, in his greatcoat, brownvizored cap and boots, accompanied by Matsuoka and Molotov who kept saluting and shouting: “I’m a Pioneer! I’m ready!”—the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scout’s “Dib! Dib! Be prepared!” The Bulgarian Ambassador judged Molotov “the least drunk.” Stalin, who had never before seen any visitor off at the station, hugged the staggering Japanese but since neither could speak the other’s language, their new intimacy was expressed in embraces and grunts of “Ah! Ah!”

  Stalin was so excited that he jovially punched the minuscule bald Japanese Ambassador-General on the shoulder so hard that he “staggered back
three or four steps which caused Matsuoka to laugh in glee.” Then Stalin noticed the tall attaché Colonel Hans Krebs and, abandoning the Japanese, tapped him on the chest:

  “German?” he asked. Krebs stiffened to attention, towering over Stalin who slapped him on the back, wrung his hand and said loudly, “We’ve been friends with you and we’ll remain friends with you.”

  “I’m sure of that,” replied Krebs, though the Swedish Ambassador thought he “did not seem so convinced of it.”174 Finally lumbering back to the Japanese, Stalin again embraced the much-hugged Matsuoka, exclaiming, “We’ll organize Europe and Asia!” Arm in arm, he led Matsuoka into his carriage and waited until the train departed. Japanese diplomats escorted Stalin to his armoured Packard while their Ambassador, “standing on a bench, waved his handkerchief and cried in a strident voice, ‘Thank you thank you!’ ”

  The celebration was not over for Stalin and Molotov. As he got into the car, Stalin ordered Vlasik to call the dacha at Zubalovo and tell Svetlana, now fifteen, that she was to assemble the family for a party: “Stalin’s arriving any minute.”

  Svetlana ran to tell her aunt, Anna Redens, who was there with her children and Gulia Djugashvili, aged three, Yakov’s daughter: “Father’s coming!”

  Anna Redens had not seen Stalin since the row about her husband’s arrest and certainly not since his execution. All of them gathered on the steps. Minutes later, the tipsy, unusually cheerful Stalin arrived. Throwing open the car door, he hailed the twelve-year-old Leonid Redens: “Get in—let’s go for a drive!” The driver sped them round the flower bed. Then Stalin got out and hugged the apprehensive Anna Redens, who was holding her younger son Vladimir, now six. Stalin admired this angelic nephew: “For the sake of such a wonderful son, let’s make peace. I forgive you.” Little Gulia, Stalin’s first grandchild, was brought out to be admired but she waved her arms and screamed and was swiftly taken to her room. Stalin sat at the table where he had once presided with Nadya over their young family. Cakes and chocolates were brought. Stalin took Vladimir on to his lap and started opening the chocolates: the little boy noticed his “very beautiful long fingers.”

  “You’re spoiling the children by buying them presents they don’t even want,” Stalin reprimanded the staff but, Vladimir says, “in his gentle way that made him very loved by them.”

  After tea, Stalin went upstairs for a catnap. He had not slept the previous night. Then Molotov, Beria and Mikoyan arrived for dinner175 at which “Stalin threw orange peel at everyone’s plates. Then he threw a cork right into the ice cream” which delighted Vladimir Alliluyev. The family could not know that Hitler’s imminent invasion, and Stalin’s exhaustion and paranoia, would make this the end of an era. 9

  This was an oasis of exhilaration in a darkening sky. Torn between the wishful thinking of his powerful will—and the mounting evidence— Stalin persisted in believing that a diplomatic breakthrough with Hitler was just round the corner, even though he now knew the date of Operation Barbarossa from his spymasters. When Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador, delivered a letter from Winston Churchill warning of the invasion, it backfired, convincing Stalin that Britain was trying to entrap Russia: “We’re being threatened with the Germans, and the Germans with the Soviet Union,” Stalin told Zhukov. “They’re playing us off against each other.” 10

  Yet he was not completely oblivious: in the contest that Molotov called “the great game,” Stalin thought Russia might manage to stay out of the war until 1942. “Only by 1943 could we meet the Germans on an equal footing,” he told Molotov. As ever, Stalin was trying to read himself out of the problem, carefully studying a history of the German-French War of 1870. He and Zhdanov repeatedly quoted Bismarck’s sensible dictum that Germany should never face war on two fronts: Britain remained undefeated hence Hitler would not attack. “Hitler’s not such a fool,” Stalin said, “that he’s unable to understand the difference between the USSR and Poland or France, or even England, indeed all of them put together.” Yet his entire career was a triumph of will over reality.

  He persisted in believing that Hitler, the reckless gambler and world-historical “sleepwalker,” was a rational Bismarckian Great Power statesman, like himself. After the war, talking to a small group that included Dekanozov, his Ambassador to Berlin in 1941, Stalin, thinking aloud about this time, obliquely explained his behaviour: “When you’re trying to make a decision, NEVER put yourself into the mind of the other person because if you do, you can make a terrible mistake.”176

  Military measures were agonizingly slow. Zhdanov and Kulik proposed removing the old armaments from the Fortified Areas and putting them in the unfinished new ones. Zhukov objected: there was no time. Stalin backed his cronies, so the fortifications were unfinished when the onslaught came.

  On 20 April, Ilya Ehrenburg, the Jewish novelist whom Stalin admired, learned that his anti-German novel, The Fall of Paris, had been refused by the censors who were still following Stalin’s orders not to offend Hitler. Four days later, Poskrebyshev called, telling him to dial a number: “Comrade Stalin wants to talk to you.” As soon as he got through, his dogs started barking; his wife had to drive them out of the room. Stalin told him he liked the book: did Ehrenburg intend to denounce Fascism? The novelist replied that it was hard to attack the Fascists since he was not allowed to use the word. “Just go on writing,” said Stalin jocularly, “you and I will try to push the third part through.” It was typical of this strangely literary dictator to think this would alarm the Germans: Hitler was beyond literary nuances.

  Even Stalin’s inner circle could smell war now. It was so pervasive that Zhdanov suggested they cancel the May Day Parade in case it was too “provocative.” Stalin did not cancel it but he placed Dekanozov, the Ambassador to Germany, right next to him on the Mausoleum to signal his warmth towards Berlin.11

  On 4 May, he sent another signal to Hitler that he was ready to talk: Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier, promoting Zhdanov’s protégé, Nikolai Voznesensky, the brash economic maestro, as his deputy on the inner Buro. At thirty-eight, Voznesensky’s rise had been meteoric and this angered the others: Mikoyan, who was particularly sore, thought he was “economically educated but a professor-type without practical experience.” This good-looking, intelligent but arrogant Leningrader was “naïvely happy with his appointment,” but Beria and Malenkov already resented the acerbic technocrat: Stalin’s “promoting a teacher to give us lessons,” Malenkov whispered to Beria. Henceforth, Stalin ruled as Premier through his deputies as Lenin had, balancing the rivalry between Beria and Malenkov, on the one hand, and Zhdanov and Voznesensky, on the other. Stalin expressed his emergence on the world stage sartorially, discarding his baggy trousers and boots. He “started wearing well-ironed, untucked ones with lace-up bootkins.”12

  Finally, Stalin prepared the military for the possibility of war. On 5 May, he saw only one visitor: Zhdanov, just promoted to Stalin’s Party Deputy, visited him for twenty-five minutes. At 6 p.m., the two men walked from the Little Corner to the Great Kremlin Palace where two thousand officers awaited them: Stalin entered with Zhdanov, Timoshenko and Zhukov. President Kalinin introduced a “severe” Stalin who praised the modern mechanization of his “new army.” Then he eccentrically attributed the French defeat to amorous disappointment: the French were “so dizzy with self-satisfaction” that they disdained their own warriors to the extent that “girls wouldn’t even marry soldiers.” Was the German army unbeatable? “There are no invincible armies in the world” but war was coming. “If VM Molotov . . . can delay the start of war for 2–3 months, this’ll be our good fortune.” At the dinner, he toasted: “Long live the dynamic offensive policy of the Soviet State,” adding, “anyone who doesn’t recognize this is a Philistine and a fool.” This was a relief to the military: Stalin was not living in cloud cuckoo land. 13 The State was ready to fight, or was it? The State was not sure.177

  The magnates tried to steer a path between Stalin’s infallibility and Hitler’
s reality: the absurdity of explaining how the army had to be ready to fight an offensive war which was definitely not going to happen, while claiming this was not a change of policy, was so ridiculous that they tied themselves in knots of Stalinist sophistry and Neroesque folly. “We need a new type of propaganda,” declared Zhdanov at the Supreme Military Council. “There is only one step between war and peace. So our propaganda can’t be peaceful.”

  “We ourselves designed the propaganda this way,” Budyonny exploded, so they had to explain why it was changing.

  “We’re only altering the slogan,” claimed Zhdanov.

  “As if we were going to war tomorrow!” sneered the pusillanimous Malenkov, eighteen days before the invasion.14

  On 7 May, Schulenburg, secretly opposed to Hitler’s invasion, breakfasted with the Soviet Ambassador to Berlin, Dekanozov, whom he ambiguously tried to warn. They met thrice but “he did not warn,” said Molotov later, “he hinted and pushed for diplomatic negotiations.” Dekanozov informed Stalin who was becoming ever more bad-tempered and nervous. “So, disinformation has now reached ambassadorial level,” he growled. Dekanozov disagreed.

  “How could you allow yourself to argue with Comrade Stalin! He knows more and can see further than all of us!” Voroshilov threatened Dekanozov during a recess.15

  On 10 May, Stalin learned of Deputy Führer Hess’s quixotic peace flight to Scotland. His magnates, remembered Khrushchev who was in the office that day, were all understandably convinced that Hess’s mission was aimed at Moscow. But Stalin was finally willing to prepare for war, admittedly in a manner so timid that it was barely effective. On 12 May, Stalin allowed the generals to strengthen the borders, calling up 500,000 reserves, but was terrified of offending the Germans. When Timoshenko reported German reconnaissance flights, Stalin mused, “I’m not sure Hitler knows about those flights.” On the 24th, he refused to take any further measures.