Stalin

by Ian Grey

  Two events, affecting Stalin personally, reversed any slight trend that may have existed. On the night of November 8–9, 1932, Stalin, Nadya, and party dignitaries attended a banquet to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution. In the course of the evening, Stalin said to his wife in front of others, “Hey, you! Have a drink!” She was evidently in a nervous state. She was not allowed to touch alcohol and, in fact, had an obsession about the evils of drink. She constantly warned her children against it and strongly opposed her husband’s practice, in Caucasian fashion, of offering them wine at dinner. The invitation to drink, or the disrespectful way he spoke to her in public, angered her. She jumped to her feet. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” she screamed and ran from the room.

  Polina Molotov went outside to calm her. They walked around the Kremlin Palace in the cold winter air. Nadya had been depressed and overwrought for some days. She had complained that everything bored her, that she was “sick of everything - even the children.” She was then a student at the textile branch of the Industrial Academy and was looking forward to starting work, but her depression was deep-rooted. Talking with Polina, she gradually quietened down and seemed calm when she went off alone to her own apartment. During the night, she shot herself, using a small revolver which her brother, Pavel, had brought from Berlin.

  Stalin was stunned. He could not understand why she had taken her life. He worried about suggestions that he had been a hard and inconsiderate husband, asserting that he had always loved and respected her. He asked those around him whether it had really been important that he could not always go to the theater with her. The fact that she could have made this complaint indicates how far she was from understanding and supporting him in his work.

  He was hurt and angered, too, by the note she left for him. It was destroyed at once, but his daughter learned from those who read it that the note was full of reproaches and accusations not only on personal but on political grounds. This was a harrowing time when famine and violence were at their height in the countryside. She had probably heard many grim stories from fellow students at the academy. She was horrified and blamed him.

  For him, this last note from the woman he had considered his “closest and faithful friend” was a devastating betrayal. He was beside himself with grief and anger. “At the civil leave-taking ceremony he went up to the coffin for a moment. Suddenly, he pushed it away from him, turned on his heel and left. He didn’t even go to the funeral.” And believing that she had left him as a personal enemy, he refused to visit her grave in the Novo-Devichy cemetery. He moved to a different apartment in the Kremlin, because he could not bear to live in the rooms he had shared with her. The dacha at Zubalovo was haunted by memories, and while his children continued to go there, he had a new house built at nearby Kuntsevo, where he lived alone for the next twenty years. But he never forgot her, and in later years, he had enlargements of pictures of her taken in a happy mood, in the spring and summer of 1929, hung on the walls of his Kremlin apartment and of his country house. He would talk obsessively about her, seeking to understand why she had taken her life.

  Svetlana Alliluyeva, his daughter, has written that “my mother’s death was a dreadful crushing blow and it destroyed his faith in his friends and people in general.” His mistrust of people had deepened since the last months of Lenin’s life, but her death began the clouding of his mind and the numbing of his feelings.

  After Nadya’s death, a drastic change came in the running of Zubalovo and Kuntsevo. She had engaged the staff and maintained the household, keeping the security guards in the background. The housekeeper, cook, maids, and other staff had been like members of the family. Then gradually the old staff was replaced by employees of the NKVD. Only Svetlana’s old nurse remained. Stalin had been told she was “untrustworthy” and must go, but his daughter wept bitterly at the prospect of losing her. He could not stand tears, and growing angry, gave orders that the nurse should be left in peace. But the old aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends of Nadya were gradually excluded. They aroused unhappy memories. He even began to suspect them of some complicity in his wife’s betrayal and death, and certain of them were arrested and imprisoned for a time.

  The sudden death of Kirov in Leningrad on December 1, 1934, was the next great shock. On the night of November 30, Kirov had worked late on a report about the recent meeting of the party’s Central Committee, which he was to deliver to senior officials of the Leningrad party. He arrived at party headquarters in the Smolny Institute at about 4:30 p.m. He was on his way to a colleague’s office when his assassin, Leonid Nikolaev, appeared from around a corner and shot him in the back, killing him instantly. Nikolaev collapsed at the side of his victim and was seized.

  Nikolaev was thirty years old at this time. He had fought in the Civil War and had been admitted to membership of the party at a young age. He was an official of the Kommissariat of Inspection in Leningrad until its abolition in January 1934. He was given some other post, but, claiming vehemently that he had been unfairly demoted, he came into conflict with party officials and was expelled from the party. He was readmitted some two months later on giving an oath to observe party discipline. It was clear, however, that he was unbalanced, like many people of his generation who had endured the horrors of the Civil War and the furies of the first plan period. Although a party member, he evidently had a burning sense of injustice, and political assassination was a means of expressing his protest.

  Stalin was informed immediately of Kirov’s death. He decided to conduct the investigation personally and left Moscow by train for Leningrad on the same evening, accompanied by Voroshilov, Molotov, and Kaganovich. The murder of his close colleague had demonstrated with terrible clarity that enemies surrounded him within the party. After Nadya’s death, he had been obsessed with finding the reasons for her action. Her death had been a personal suicide, but Kirov’s death was a political murder. He reacted violently. He could not accept the possibility that it might have been the act of a crazed individual, seeking revenge or making a personal protest. He saw conspiracy, treason, and betrayal in every act of protest.

  The assassination of Moisei Uritsky and the attempt on Lenin’s life by Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918 had been political acts, and part of a conspiracy to overturn Bolshevik power. He was convinced that the murder of Kirov was also rooted in political conspiracy and that investigation would uncover the assassin’s links with the oppositionists and especially with Trotsky. The response of the party must be a campaign of terror and a thorough purge of the membership. He would discover the enemies and liquidate them to a man. He knew that, as a surgeon cutting away a malignant growth from a patient would also cut surrounding healthy tissue in case it, too, was infected, innocent people would suffer in the process, but such casualties were inevitable and would not deter him.

  Kirov’s assassination opened a dark and terrible chapter in Stalin’s reign. Like the collectivization campaign, the terror developed a furious momentum of its own. Every organ of government and every segment of society were drawn into the vortex. Stalin eviscerated the party, purged all government offices, and preyed upon the people. Arrests ran into millions. Few of those who were executed or sentenced to forced labor were guilty of any crime. For some four years, the terror raged.

  In launching this terror and allowing it to go to such tragic extremes, Stalin was acting not from cruelty or lust for power, but from the conviction that all real or potential opposition, or, as he interpreted it, treason, must be uprooted and destroyed. It was a time of crisis, when war was threatening, and he had to act ruthlessly. He had to ensure that the party was a strongly tempered monolithic organization, capable under his leadership of meeting any challenge and of leading Russia to strength and socialism. He was absolutely single-minded in his concentration on these objectives. At the same time, he was increasingly paranoid about his role as the leader, the man of history, destined to lead Russia to these goals.

  Another f
actor in Stalin’s decision to unleash the terror may have come from his study of history. He read widely and was familiar with Russia’s history, particularly the reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Tsar Ivan had been notorious for his use of terroristic methods and for the oprichniki, who served as his security force. Ivan saw his duties as autocrat in terms expressed by “Ivashka, son of Semeon Peresvetov,” who wrote down his political views and proposals in his “Great Petition,” which he boldly presented to the tsar. Peresvetov urged the need for a strong autocratic ruler, for the centralization of power, and for the creation of a permanent army. Two recurrent themes in his petition were the importance of justice and the equality of all the tsar’s subjects. His ideal of justice was harsh, but in keeping with Ivan’s outlook and, indeed, the customs of the time. “There cannot be a ruler without terror,” he wrote. “Like a steed under the rider without a bridle, so is a realm without terror.”

  The autocrats, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, were the forerunners on whom Stalin directly patterned himself. They were part of the Russian tradition. Lenin had invoked their example when he had unleashed the Red Terror, set up labor camps, and demanded the ruthless suppression of all opposition. Ivan and Peter had both devoted their energies to transforming Russia into a strong and advanced nation and had not hesitated to wield power ruthlessly to this end. What they had done in the feudal era, Stalin would do in the advanced socialist era of the twentieth century. Peter had established light and heavy industry in Russia; he had taken the first steps in creating effective administrative machinery and had promoted educational and social reforms. Stalin was now directing a similar but more far-reaching revolution in Russian life. At the same time, he shared Peter’s belief that the people must be driven into the new era; left to themselves, they would wallow in the old traditional ways.

  With Ivan, the first Russian tsar, who had struggled to establish the absolute power of the autocrat and to make Russia strong, Stalin felt a special affinity. Ivan had been surrounded by conspirators and traitors, the princely families and boyars. He had used terror to eliminate these enemies. It was his example that encouraged Stalin in the ruthless tactics he used against the opposition.

  Obsessed with possible threats to his grand design, Stalin saw enemies all around him. He had reached the stage of believing that all who failed to support him wholeheartedly or were critical of his policies were enemies and as such they were allies of the imperialist camp and potential destroyers of the new Soviet Russia. Trotsky was still the archenemy, and here again, the betrayal of Tsar Ivan by Andrey Kurbsky provided a precedent; Trotsky was his Kurbsky. Trotsky was representative of the internationalism and cosmopolitanism, which were still characteristic of the old Bolsheviks, despite their acceptance of “socialism in one country.” Although held now on the small island of Prinkipo by agreement with the Turkish government, Trotsky remained a threat. He was publishing Byuleten Oppozitsii (The Bulletin of the Opposition), which showed that up-to-date information was reaching him through his agents inside Russia. The Bulletin’s criticisms and proposals were similar to those set out in Ryutin’s platform, but the emphasis was on changing the party leadership and carried all the force of Trotsky’s bitter personal hatred.

  Stalin was deeply suspicious of the old party members, the old Bolsheviks, among whom Trotsky would find supporters. Many were uneasy about his methods during the First Five-year Plan. But they had no alternative policies to advance, and always at party meetings, they supported the Stalinist line. They were not a direct threat and had no one around whom they could rally in opposition. Moreover, they were overawed and afraid of Stalin. But they exerted a divisive influence, and he watched them with cold suspicion.

  The assassination of Kirov decided him on action. He would no longer tolerate these members who, he had convinced himself, were actively or passively against him; he would liquidate them. In their place, he would bring young men of the new generation, educated and trained for managerial tasks, and completely loyal to him.

  Before leaving in haste from Moscow on December 1, 1934, he approved a decree which was published the following day and was to provide the basic authority for the terror. In Leningrad, the immediate action taken was that Nikolaev, who had shot Kirov, and thirteen alleged accomplices were tried in secret on the charge of organizing a Leningrad center to plot assassinations. All were found guilty and shot. A hundred or more people, arrested before Kirov’s death on charges of counterrevolution, were declared guilty of terrorism and shot. In the first months of 1935, several thousand Leningrad citizens were arrested on suspicion of holding opposition sympathies and were deported to Siberia. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their principal associates were imprisoned in Verkhne-Uralsk. A few months later, they were tried in secret on the charge of plotting to murder Stalin. Two of the accused were shot, and the others, including Zinoviev and Kamenev, were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. This secret trial set an ominous precedent, for it was the first time that political opposition by party members had been tried and judged as a criminal act. But this was only the beginning of the terror and the great purge.

  Screening of the party membership had become a routine exercise. In 1933, members and candidate members had numbered more than 3.5 million. In May 1935, a few months after Kirov’s murder, the Central Committee directed that all party documents should be verified. By January 1, 1937, the number of members and candidates was below 2 million. In three years, more than 1.5 million members and candidates had lost their party standing.

  During these months, Stalin was moving into positions of authority several men whom he could trust in the savage period ahead. On February 1, 1935, A. I. Mikoyan, already known as a staunch Stalinist, and V. Ya Chubar, who was probably a moderate, were elected to the Politburo in place of Kirov and Kuibyshev, who had died suddenly of a heart attack on January 26, 1935. At the same time, A. Zhdanov, also a Stalinist, who had succeeded Kirov in charge of the Leningrad party organization, and Robert Eikhe, a moderate like Chubar, were elected as candidate members. The two moderates were soon to be eliminated.

  Ezhov took charge of the Control Commission in place of Kaganovich. He was to give his name to the worst period of the terror. Nadezhda, wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam, recalled Ezhov as “a modest and rather agreeable person.” He was small and had a lame leg which did not stop him dancing the gopak, a strenuous Cossack dance, and flirting with girls. She wrote that “it is hard to credit that we sat at the same table, eating, drinking and exchanging small talk with this man who was to be one of the great killers of our time.”

  Kaganovich had a genius for organization and for getting results, as he had demonstrated in directing the construction of the gigantic hydroelectric project of the Dnieprogres, the symbol of the new modernized Soviet Russia. He had a roving commission as one of Stalin’s toughest henchmen. On moving from the Control Commission, he took over the reorganization of the Kommissariat of Transport. He had watched Nikita Khrushchev, a burly Ukrainian peasant, at work in the Ukraine and had noted his energy and his readiness to apply brutal methods in resolving problems. In the 1930s, Kaganovich was in charge of the modernizing of Moscow, including the building of the Metro, the underground railway, in which Stalin took special interest - for he was determined that Moscow should outshine Leningrad and be a worthy capital of a great industrial nation. Kaganovich brought in Khrushchev to work as one of his deputies. In 1933, Khrushchev became deputy to Kaganovich in charge of the Moscow party organization. This rapid advance showed that he had become a member of the Stalinist elite.

  Two other men came into positions of power at this time. Georgy Malenkov became assistant director of the cadres department of the party secretariat and was to work closely with Ezhov. The other was Lavrenty Beria, an NKVD officer who was then serving as first secretary of the party in Transcaucasia. An evil man who managed to insinuate himself into Stalin’s confidence, he was one of the principal architects of the terror.

  In th
e background and closer to Stalin than these two men was Poskrebyshev. If Stalin trusted any man, he trusted Poskrebyshev, who alone, it was said, possessed a rubber stamp of Stalin’s signature which he used at his discretion. He was responsible in 1934 for setting up the Special Secret Political Section of State Security as part of Stalin’s personal secretariat. It was this Special Section, to which Ezhov, Matvei Shkiryatov, and later Malenkov belonged, that planned the great purge.

  On the surface of party life, all seemed calm. The severe reprisals expected after Kirov’s death had been limited in scale. The threat of terror seemed to have receded. Continued improvement in food supplies, the surging expansion of industry, and the constant pressures for greater, more heroic labors distracted people from their fears of the NKVD.

  Only two months after Kirov’s murder, the Seventh Congress of Soviets elected a commission to draft a new constitution. Stalin was the chairman. He presented the new constitution to the Eighth Congress, and it was proclaimed in press and radio as “the most democratic in the world.” It discarded Lenin’s electoral system, favoring the working class, and introduced direct secret voting. This advance was possible, he declared, because the first stage of communism had been achieved. It included guarantees of the rights of all citizens, which made the dread arm of the NKVD seem even more remote. But during these months of drafting a more liberal constitution, the great purge was getting under way. Arrests, usually secret and in the dead of night, were more frequent, but all maintained the pretense that life was normal.

  At the end of July 1936, party organizations throughout the country received a secret directive with the ominous title “On the terrorist activity of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite counterrevolutionary bloc.” It called for special vigilance in seeking out and denouncing enemies of the regime and ordered a new review of party membership.