Stalin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  “Let’s stretch our legs a little, I feel sort of limp,” said Stalin. As they walked, Stalin talked about his childhood for an hour. “Let’s get back and have tea. I want to talk something over with you.” Encouraged by this surprising intimacy, Zhukov asked about Yakov: “Have you heard about his fate?”

  Stalin did not answer. His son Yakov tormented him.

  After about a hundred steps in silence, he answered in a “subdued voice”: “Yakov won’t be able to get out of captivity. They’ll shoot him, the killers. From what we know, they’re keeping him separately . . . and persuading him to betray his country.” Stalin was silent again, then he said, “No, Yakov would prefer any kind of death to betraying the Motherland.” He was proud of his son at last but did not know he had been dead for almost two years. Stalin did not eat but sat at table: “What a terrible war. How many lives of our people borne away. There’ll probably be few families who haven’t lost someone dear to them.” He talked about how he liked Roosevelt. Yalta had been a success.

  Just then Poskrebyshev arrived with his bag of papers and Stalin turned to Berlin: “Go to Stavka and look at the calculations for the Berlin operation . . .” Three weeks later, on the morning of 1 April, Stalin held a conference with his two most aggressive marshals, Zhukov of the First Belorussian Front and Koniev of the First Ukrainian, at the Little Corner. “Well. Who’s going to take Berlin: we or the Allies?”

  “It’s we who’ll take Berlin!” barked Koniev before Zhukov could even answer.

  “So that’s the sort of man you are,” Stalin grinned approvingly. Zhukov was to assault Berlin from the Oder bridgeheads over the Seelow Heights; Koniev to push towards Leipzig and Dresden, with his northern flank thrusting towards southern Berlin parallel to Zhukov. The Supremo of ambiguity allowed them both to believe that they could take Berlin: “without saying a word,” Stalin drew the demarcation line between the fronts into Berlin—then stopped and erased the line to the south of Berlin. Koniev understood this allowed him to join in the storming of Berlin—if he could. “Whoever breaks in first,” Stalin teased them, “let him take Berlin.” That very day, in what one historian has described as “the greatest April Fool in modern history,” Stalin reassured Eisenhower that “Berlin has lost its former strategic importance.” Two days later, the two marshals actually raced to the airport, their planes taking off within two minutes of each other. Such, Koniev admitted, was “their passionate desire” to take the prize.

  As they were marshalling their forces, Roosevelt died, the end of an era for Stalin. Their entente had won his paltry trust and roused his meagre human sympathy. Molotov “seemed deeply moved and disturbed.” Harriman had “never heard Molotov talk so earnestly.” Stalin, “deeply distressed,” received Harriman, holding his hand for thirty seconds. Years later, Stalin, on holiday at his New Athos dacha, judged “Roosevelt was a great statesman, a clever, educated, far-sighted and liberal leader who prolonged the life of capitalism . . .”

  At 5 a.m. on 16 April, Zhukov unleashed a barrage of 14,600 guns against the Seelow Heights. The two marshals wielded 2.5 million men, 41,600 guns, 6,250 tanks and 7,500 aircraft, “the largest concentration of firepower ever assembled.” But the Heights were a well-defended obstacle. Zhukov’s losses were punishing. At midnight, he telephoned Stalin, who taunted him: “So you’ve underestimated the enemy on the Berlin axis? Things have started more successfully for Koniev.”

  The Supremo then phoned Koniev: “Things are pretty hard with Zhukov. He’s still hammering at the defences.” Stalin stopped. Koniev, who understood the workings of the Supremo, kept silent until Stalin asked: “Is it possible to transfer Zhukov’s tank forces and send them to Berlin through the gap on your front?” Koniev replied excitedly that his own tank forces could turn on Berlin. Stalin checked the map. “I agree. Turn your tank armies on Berlin.” Zhukov was determined to take Berlin himself: ignoring tank lore, he stormed the Heights with tanks which became stuck in a churning swamp of pulverized earth and corpses. He lost 30,000 men. Stalin did not call him for three days.

  On 20 April, Zhukov reached Berlin’s eastern suburbs. Both marshals fought, house by house, street by street, towards Hitler’s Chancellery. On the 25th, Koniev ordered an assault towards the Reichstag. Three hundred yards from the Reichstag building, Chuikov, who was leading Zhukov’s thrust, encountered Russian forces—Koniev’s tanks. Zhukov himself sped up and shouted at Rybalko, Koniev’s tank commander: “Why have you appeared here?”

  Koniev, disappointed, swerved west, leaving the Reichstag to Zhukov, but Stalin offered another prize: “Who’s going to take Prague?”

  Stalin waited at Kuntsevo, only appearing in the office for a couple of hours around midnight each day. On 28 April, in the Führerbunker , Hitler married Eva Braun, dictated his testament, and they drank champagne.233 Two days later, as Zhukov pushed closer, Hitler tested cyanide ampoules on his Alsatian, Blondi. Around 3:15 p.m., to the distant buzz of partying upstairs, Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself in the head. Eva took poison. Goebbels and Bormann made a final Hitler salute before the pyre of Hitler’s body in the Chancellery garden. At 7:30 p.m., an unknowing Stalin arrived at the office to meet Malenkov and Vyshinsky for forty-five minutes before returning to Kuntsevo.3

  In the early hours of May Day, the German Chief of Staff visited Chuikov, announcing Hitler’s death and requesting a cease-fire. Ironically, this was Hans Krebs, the tall German officer whom Stalin, seeing off the Japanese in April 1941, had told: “We shall remain friends.” Chuikov refused a cease-fire. Krebs left and committed suicide. In a reverse of 22 June 1941, Zhukov, eager to break this world-historical news, telephoned Kuntsevo. Once again, the security refused to help.

  “Comrade Stalin’s just gone to bed,” replied General Vlasik.

  “Please wake him,” retorted Zhukov. “The matter’s urgent and cannot wait until morning.”

  Stalin picked up the phone and heard that Hitler was dead.

  “So that’s the end of the bastard.”

  PART NINE

  The Dangerous Game of Succession 1945–1949

  44

  The Bomb

  Too bad we couldn’t take him alive,” Stalin told Zhukov. “Where’s Hitler’s body?”

  “According to General Krebs, his body was burned.” Stalin banned negotiations, except for unconditional surrender. “And don’t ring me until the morning if there’s nothing urgent. I want some rest before tomorrow’s parade.”

  At 10:15 a.m., Zhukov’s artillery bombarded the city centre. By dawn on the 2nd, Berlin was his. On 4 May, a Smersh colonel discovered the wizened, charred remains of Hitler and Eva. The bodies were spirited away. Zhukov was not told. Indeed, Stalin enjoyed humiliating the Marshal by asking if he had heard anything about Hitler’s body.234 Meanwhile Stalin was fascinated by the Nazi leadership: “I’m sending you . . . the correspondence of the top Germans . . . found in Berlin,” Beria wrote to him, listing Himmler’s letters to Ribbentrop.

  After the war, during a late dinner on the Black Sea coast, Stalin was asked whether Hitler was a lunatic or an adventurer: “I agree that he was an adventurer but I can’t agree he was mad. Hitler was a gifted man. Only a gifted man could unite the German people. Like it or not . . . the Soviet Army fought their way into the German land . . . and reached Berlin without the German working class ever striking against . . . the Fascist regime. Could a madman so unite his nation?”1

  On 9 May, Moscow celebrated Victory Day but the curmudgeonly conqueror was wearily impatient with the jubilation. Stalin was furious when a junior general signed the German surrender at Reims and, pacing the floor, ordered Zhukov to sign a proper surrender in Berlin, “whence German aggression sprang.” But the glory days of the generals were over: Vyshinsky arrived to “handle political matters” and spent the entire ceremony “bobbing up to whisper instructions in Zhukov’s ear.” Stalin closely watched Zhukov and his supposed delusions of grandeur. Later in the year, he summoned him to the Kremlin t
o warn him that Beria and Abakumov were gathering evidence against him: “I don’t believe all this nonsense but stay out of Moscow.”

  That was not a problem since Zhukov was Stalin’s proconsul in Berlin. Stalin despatched his satraps to rule his new empire. Mikoyan flew in to feed the Germans. Malenkov and Voznesensky arrived to fight about whether to loot German industry or preserve it to build a Soviet satellite regime. Zhdanov held court in Finland, Voroshilov in Hungary, Bulganin in Poland, Vyshinsky in Romania. When Khrushchev called to congratulate him, Stalin cut him off for “wasting his time.”

  A call from Svetlana cheered Stalin: “Congratulations on victory, Papa!”

  “Yes we’ve won,” he laughed. “Congratulations to you too!”

  At 8 p.m. on 24 May, Stalin hosted a banquet for the Politburo and marshals, singers, actors and even Polish miners, in the Georgevsky Hall. There was a traffic jam of limousines all the way to the Borovitsky Gate. The guests found their seats and waited eagerly. When Stalin appeared, “ovations and shouts of ‘Hurrah’ shook the vaulted halls . . . with a deafening roar.” Molotov toasted the marshals who clinked glasses with the Politburo. When Admiral Isakov, who had lost his leg in 1942, was toasted, Stalin, still a master of the personal touch, walked all the way over to his distant table to clink glasses. Then Stalin praised the Russian people and referred to his own mistakes: “Another people could have said to the government: you have not justified our expectations, go away and we will install another government which will conclude peace with Germany and guarantee us a quiet life.”

  Later, Stalin asked Zhukov and the marshals: “Don’t you think we should celebrate the defeat of Fascist Germany with a victory parade?”

  Stalin decided to take the review on horseback. He could not ride but his hunger for glory still burned and he started secretly training to ride a white Arabian stallion, chosen by Budyonny. Around 15 June, a week before the parade, a spurred and booted Stalin in jodhpurs, apparently accompanied by his son Vasily, mounted the steed. He jerked his spurs. The horse reared. Stalin grabbed the mane and tried to stay in the saddle but was thrown, bruising his shoulder. Pulling himself to his feet, he spat: “Let Zhukov take the parade. He’s a cavalryman.” At Kuntsevo, he asked Zhukov if he had forgotten how to ride.

  “I haven’t,” replied Zhukov. “I still ride sometimes.”

  “Good . . . You take the parade.”

  “Thanks for the honour. But . . . you’re the Supremo and by right you should take it.”

  “I’m too old . . . You do it. You’re younger.”

  Zhukov would ride a white Arabian stallion which Budyonny would show him. The next day, Zhukov was reviewing the rehearsals at the central airfield when Vasily Stalin buttonholed him: “I’m telling you this as a big secret. Father had himself been preparing to take the parade but . . . three days ago, the horse bolted . . .”

  “And which horse was your father riding?”

  “A white Arab stallion, the one on which you’re taking the parade. But I beg you not to mention a word of this.” Zhukov mastered the Arabian.

  At 9:57 a.m. on 24 June, Zhukov mounted the stallion at the Spassky Gate. It was pouring with rain. The clocks struck ten: “Parade-shun!”

  “My heart beat faster,” wrote Zhukov. Simultaneously, Marshal Rokossovsky was waiting on Budyonny’s own black charger, appropriately named Polus—the Pole—at the Nikolsky Gate. Stalin, in his greatcoat, showing no expression, walked clumsily, slowly, out on his own then lightly bounded up the steps to the Mausoleum, with Beria and Malenkov sweating breathlessly in their efforts to keep up. When the crowds saw him, hurrahs resounded across the Square. The rain poured, the water running down his vizor. He never wiped his face. As the chimes rang out, Zhukov and Rokossovsky rode out, both soaked, the bands played Glinka’s “Slavsya!”—Glory to You—and tanks and Katyushas rumbled over the cobblestones. Silence fell on Red Square. “Then a menacing staccato beat of hundreds of drums could be heard,” wrote Yakovlev. “Marching in precise formation and beating out an iron cadence, a column of Soviet soldiers drew nigh.” Two hundred veterans each held a Nazi banner. At the Mausoleum they did a right turn and flung the banners, emblazoned with black and scarlet swastikas, at Stalin’s feet where the downpour soaked them. Here was the climax of Stalin’s life.

  As soon as it was over, Stalin and the top brass poured into the room behind the Mausoleum for a buffet and drinks. It was here, according to Admiral Kuznetsov, that one of the marshals, probably Koniev, first proposed promoting Stalin to Generalissimo. He waved this away but then declared that he was now sixty-seven and weary: “I’ll work another two or three years, then I’ll have to retire.”

  The Politburo and the marshals cried out on cue that he would live to rule the country for a long time yet. During the hard-drinking festivities, Stalin laughed as Poskrebyshev slipped the ceremonial dagger out of Vyshinsky’s diplomatic uniform and replaced it with a pickle. Much to Stalin’s amusement, the pompous ex-Procurator strutted around for the rest of the day oblivious of the vegetable in his scabbard, and the smirks of the magnates.

  That night, at a banquet for 2,500 officers, Stalin, who was already thinking about how to tighten discipline and bind the Union together, toasted the “Russian people . . .” and the “screws,” the ordinary people, “without whom all of us, marshals and commanders of fronts and armies . . . would not be worth a damn.”

  In these carefully phrased toasts, Stalin set down a marker for his courtiers. The marshals were “not worth a damn” compared to the Russian people whom only the Party (Stalin) could represent. His talk of retirement unleashed a brutal struggle among ruthless men to succeed a twentieth-century emperor who had no intention of ever retiring. Within five years, three of the contenders would be dead.2

  Koniev’s proposal to Molotov and Malenkov that they promote Stalin to Generalissimo to differentiate him from the marshals was not completely Ruritanian—Suvorov had been Generalissimo—but there was now something of the South American junta about it. Stalin was against the idea. He was endowed with all the prestige of a world conqueror, a “deity . . . an ungainly dwarf of a man who passed through gilded and marble Imperial halls,” but the magnates were determined to honour him with the gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union, another Order of Victory, and the rank of Generalissimo.

  “Comrade Stalin doesn’t need it,” he replied to Koniev. “Comrade Stalin has the authority without it. Some title you’ve thought up! Chiang Kai-shek’s a Generalissimo. Franco’s a Generalissimo—fine company I find myself in!” Kaganovich, proud inventor of “Stalinism,” also suggested renaming Moscow as Stalinodar, an idea that had first been suggested by Yezhov in 1938. Beria seconded him. This simply “outraged” Stalin: “What do I need this for?”

  The wise courtier senses when his master secretly wants him to disobey. Malenkov and Beria had Kalinin sign the decree. Three days after the parade, Pravda announced Stalin’s new rank and medals. He was furious and summoned Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Zhdanov and old Kalinin, who was already extremely ill with stomach cancer. “I haven’t led regiments in the field . . . I’m refusing the star as undeserved.” They argued but he insisted. “Say what you like. I won’t accept the decorations.” But they noticed that he had taken care to accept the Generalissimo.

  Since the marshals now resembled Christmas trees of braid and clanking medals, the Generalissimo’s uniform had to be completely over-the-top: the tailor of the élite, Lerner, created a gilded Ruritanian extravaganza with a golden cape. Khrulev dressed three strapping officers in these Göringesque outfits. When Stalin wandered out of his office to see Poskrebyshev, he snarled: “Who are they? What’s this peacock doing here?”

  “Three samples of the Generalissimo’s uniform.”

  “They’re not right for me. I need something more modest . . . Do you want me to look like a doorman?” Stalin finally accepted a white gilded high-collared tunic with black and red–striped trousers which made him look like a bandmaster,
if not a Park Avenue doorman. When he put it on, he regretted it, muttering to Molotov: “Why did I agree?”

  Malenkov and Beria were left with the gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union: how to get him to accept it? Here Stalin’s court dissolves into an opéra bou fe farce in which the cantankerous Generalissimo was virtually pursued around Moscow by courtiers trying to pin the medal on him. First Malenkov agreed to try but Stalin would not listen. Next he recruited Poskrebyshev who accepted the mission but gave up when Stalin resisted energetically. Beria and Malenkov tried Vlasik but he too failed. They decided it was best to ambush Stalin when he was gardening because he loved his roses and lemon trees so they persuaded Orlov, the Kuntsevo commandant, to present it. When Stalin asked for the secateurs to prune his beloved roses, Orlov brought the secateurs but kept the star behind his back, wondering what to do with it.

  “What are you hiding?” asked Stalin. “Let me see.” Orlov gingerly brought out the star. Stalin cursed him: “Give it back to those who thought up this nonsense!”

  Finally, he accepted the medal: “You’re indulging an old man. Won’t do anything for my health!” Stalin did not just accept the rank of Generalissimo in order to join Franco. Vanity merged with politics: it helped diminish the dangerously prestigious marshalate. On 9 July, he further watered down their honours by promoting Beria, their scourge, to Marshal, equal to Zhukov or Vasilevsky.