Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  Perhaps the answer was to be found in the Boss’s love of movies. So when Stalin invited the barber to join him to see a film that Koba had commissioned—a comparison of Stalin and Houdini, who had died in 1926—Razan agreed. He followed the Vozhd and his guards to an elevator, where they all descended into the Kremlin courtyard, proceeded through the old winter gardens, where the pruned stalks poked through the snow like skeletal fingers, and entered the Great Kremlin Palace. On Razan’s first visit to the Kremlin, he had been given a tour of the yellow-and-white stone palace on the crest of Borovitsky Hill, but he had never visited Stalin’s luxurious cinema built on the second floor. A musty smell pervaded the first floor.

  “It comes,” Stalin said with a smile, “from the rottenness in the west wing, where the imperial family used to keep private apartments.” As if to prove his physical fitness, the Boss ascended the stairs two at a time and flung open the door of the cinema like a child expecting to find inside a delicious treat. His guards automatically took up positions on either side of the room, with the thinner of the two men positioning himself in a small alcove next to a table spread with wine and mineral water and cigarettes and cigars, as well as boxes of imported chocolates. A screen was mounted on the far wall and, in front of it, eight rows of padded chairs, one upholstered in plush, which Stalin took. So excited was the Boss at seeing the film that he never once offered Razan a drink or a sweet. The Vozhd even neglected to ask the barber to sit. When Razan, in deference to the Boss, retreated to a back row, Stalin said he wanted him within sight.

  “Sit here.” He patted the chair next to him. “I asked Eisenstein to produce it and have Isaac Babel write the screenplay. But Sergei refused and Babel, I learned, was in prison. Ah, these artists, they all want to be individualists instead of collectivists.”

  Razan felt sorry for the minister of cinema, Ivan Bolshakov. A pale retiring fellow, whom Stalin called Ivan or I. B., he was on call day and night, as was the projectionist, Aleksandr Ganshin, for Stalin’s favorite entertainment. It was whispered that the Vozhd took his political inspiration from films. Before being suppressed, the writer who had lived on the embankment next door to Razan had said that Stalin ruled the Soviet Empire by means of “cinematocracy”—rule by cinema. At the time, Razan thought the comment ridiculous. But seeing the Boss’s euphoria, he now wondered.

  “I. B. is my minister of cinema,” Stalin exclaimed, leaning back in the plush chair and resting his legs on an ottoman. “He behaves like a scared rabbit. Do you know why?”

  “Do you mean why he’s the minister of cinema or why he’s scared?”

  Stalin smiled. “His predecessor was an enemy of the people. I had him shot. Relax, Comrade barber!” Koba exclaimed. “I can see that you’re nervous. Ivan also translates the films for me, though I suspect he’s not always accurate. At least that’s what Molotov says.”

  “A good reason to feel scared,” said Razan, “given the importance of words and where a mistake can lead.”

  Luxuriating in his overstuffed chair, Stalin stroked his newly trimmed mustache.

  “Usually, after I have met in the little corner of my office with my advisors, we come here. For some reason, they always leave the first row empty. I find that strange, don’t you?”

  Razan wanted to say that perhaps his lackeys feared to seat themselves in front of him lest they appear presumptuous, but the barber said only, “Maybe they’re all farsighted.”

  Stalin slapped Razan on the back and roared, “You really are quite a wit. A wonderful pun. I must remember it. Farsighted.” He paused just long enough to cause Razan to worry. Then Stalin said in a voice so flat that it sounded monotonic, “Apparatchiks, yes-men, functionaries . . . that’s all they are. Farsighted! They can’t find the front row of a cinema or an idea even when I lead them.”

  As the silent film began, photographs of Harry Houdini and Iosif Stalin appeared side by side. Razan made a point of noting which Stalin photograph had been selected for the film. Subtitles explained the similarities between the two men: virtually the same height; physically strong; fluent in two languages; obscure immigrants who had known great poverty, Harry in Hungary, and Stalin in Georgia; book and signature collectors; crowd pleasers; adored and even revered; famous, and for essentially the same reason, their magical abilities.

  In one frame, Harry and his father sat side by side at a workbench cutting neckties; in another frame, Stalin and his father sat side by side at a workbench cobbling shoes. As the screen changed to show Harry trussed and nailed into a wooden crate lowered by a crane into a river, Razan tensed. After a few minutes, Harry surfaced—free! Razan sighed. In the next scene, the barber watched Stalin escape from a Tsarist prison camp, tramp through the snow, take a sledge, board a train, and slip off as it slowed toward its destination, a railroad platform in Tiflis. Razan read the subtitle: “Both men escaped from every prison cell and shackle in the world. How? Through careful planning. They never left a single thing to chance, always looking after each detail.”

  In the next series of paired scenes, the admiring workers questioned first Houdini and then Stalin.

  “Mr. Houdini, people say your chains are unshackled by angels. They say you can shrink and slide through keyholes, and that you can dematerialize yourself and pass through solid wood planks and stone walls. But you say it’s all done by trickery and training. To us, it looks like you have supernatural powers! Who should we believe?”

  Houdini answered, “America is needle and thread, backaches, and ten cents an hour. Believe me, I am special! Just think of all the people who aren’t.”

  “Comrade Stalin, the people say that because you are beloved by the workers of the world, you embody their combined strength. Is that how you have managed to escape from imprisonment, make a revolution, suppress the enemies of the people, and bring prosperity to our great motherland? If you are not supernatural, then you are Herculean.”

  Stalin answered, “Capitalists and landowners want to crush the workers and rule the world. Yes, it takes great strength to overcome the bloodsuckers. But I will prevail, and the proletariat will rule!”

  Near the end, in a scene Razan never forgot, Stalin and Houdini discuss socialism, though in reality the two men never met.

  STALIN (sympathetically): Your beloved mother is dead, Harry.

  HOUDINI: I adored her. She was my source of life and sustenance.

  STALIN: Now you must believe in something else. I can help you.

  HOUDINI: No! No! She was a saint. Without her, what else is there? I must defeat death and reach her. Otherwise I’m alone.

  During Stalin’s next speech, Houdini’s mixed emotions—despair and hope—express themselves in anguished gestures.

  STALIN: Not alone, Harry. The people are behind you. Together we can all create a better world. You and I together.

  HOUDINI: I hate politics.

  STALIN: We must show death that life is stronger. Socialism gives life and plentiful harvests. You can smell the fertility. The scent is in the air, Harry, and the wonder.

  HOUDINI: You’re trying to mislead me.

  STALIN: Why would I do that? The people love me. You know that what I say is true. Just look at the Soviet paradise.

  HOUDINI: I can’t see it.

  STALIN: Open your eyes. Don’t resist, Harry. Heaven is not above but below your feet.

  HOUDINI: Oh, Mama, what’s happening to me? I’m being mesmerized.

  STALIN: Your mother’s dead, but I’m here. You need me. I embrace you, comrade.

  Stalin holds Houdini in a bear hug.

  HOUDINI: You’re suffocating me!

  STALIN: No, this is just the beginning. We can show death that life is stronger. You and I, Harry, through socialism: one mind, one body. It’s all possible, Harry.

  HOUDINI (dazed): When, mother, when will you return?

  STALIN: Never.

  HOUDINI: No!

  He extricates himself from Stalin.

  STALIN: You can’t escape
the truth. Socialism is the answer. It alone can conquer death.

  HOUDINI: I don’t believe you.

  STALIN (calmly): Your mother’s in her grave, Harry, but I am here.

  As they watched the film, Stalin anticipated the subtitles, repeating them from memory. He even gesticulated as he spoke, ostensibly engaging in a dialogue with the silent movie. It appeared to Razan, from Stalin’s subsequent comments, that he couldn’t tell the difference between the movie and real life. He actually seemed to believe that he and Houdini had engaged in a conversation, and that he had convinced Houdini of the rightness of the socialist cause.

  “A great man, that Houdini,” said Stalin. “I can feel myself hugging him. A sad and unnecessary death, especially for a man who planned his every move. He wasn’t ready. Houdini loved boxing and knew the sport inside and out. He had stomach muscles like iron. I know. I’ve read everything printed about him. But when a university student came backstage and asked for permission to test him, his pride wouldn’t let him say no. It was all so stupid. Houdini was lying down. As he started to get up, the young man hit him before he could flex his muscles. Ruptured his appendix. He died several days later.” Stalin reflected for a moment and then continued. “Now you know why I rarely let a person touch me. You are one of the few, the very few, so don’t abuse the privilege.”

  * * *

  On returning from a mission to Perm, Dimitri found a message to see Lavrenti Beria, whom Stalin had recalled to Moscow, with all his Georgian thugs, to head the secret police. With Ezhov, for no apparent reason, having fallen out of favor, Beria was appointed to direct the ministry of State Security, checking on the loyalty of Soviet officials. Headquartered in Lubyanka Prison, Beria had at his disposal brutal interrogators and prison cells. His office doubled as a torture chamber and a brothel; the latter he used for raping schoolgirls who were kidnapped by his bodyguards.

  His receding hairline, large distinctive forehead, round face, thin lips, and pince-nez gave him the appearance of an intellectual. But his college education—he was trained as an architect—had not mitigated his ruthlessness. It was he, in his capacity as principal policeman in Transcaucasia, who had declared, “Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of the party of Lenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed.” He had secured his place in Stalin’s affection with his fawning oration, “On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia,” which shamelessly distorted the truth and asserted that Stalin was the originator and sole leader of Transcaucasian Bolshevism. The Vozhd showed his appreciation by making Beria a member of the Politburo and one of his most trusted subordinates. Calling him “The Prosecutor,” Stalin charged Beria with suppressing any signs of opposition, at home or abroad. Beria replied that every man was guilty.

  Dimitri knew Beria only by reputation. A Georgian friend had called him a “butcher,” and now he was sitting calmly at his desk peering through his pince-nez at Dimitri, who had no idea why he’d been summoned. As with almost all secret-police interrogations, a file lay open on the desk; but Beria failed to take into account that Dimitri had already mastered the tricks of the trade.

  “Comrade Lipnoskii,” said Beria, turning over several sheets of paper, “your record is good, but your family history should have earned you the death penalty under my predecessor.”

  “I fail to understand . . .”

  “Don’t interrupt. Your brother Gregori . . . we sent him to Rome to spy for us, and he came back a shpik for Mussolini. A double agent. He has been sent to Solovki.” Beria used the revolutionary vernacular, the street word for spy, no doubt to show his personal contempt for Gregori. “When did you last speak to your brother?”

  “It’s been years.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  As Dimitri thought of how to prove a negative, Beria tapped his fingers on the desk. Finally, Dimitri replied, “If you had intercepts or taped phone calls, you would have shown them to me. But you have nothing. And for good reason. My brother and I have long been estranged.” He pointed to the file. “As you know, I despise his religious convictions.”

  “They’ll beat those ideas out of him in Solovki. A wonderful irony, isn’t it? As the Vozhd says, we use an old monastery to reeducate priests to the truth of atheism.” Beria laughed and repeated, “A wonderful irony.” He removed his glasses and, wiping them, said, “Normally, we take no chances. Most families would have been exiled for having a traitorous son. But you have been a faithful agent, and then, too, there’s your stepfather. As long as he has the Vozhd by the throat, so to speak, we will believe what you say: that you and your brother hate one another.”

  Dimitri, whose cramped breath had tightened his chest, began to relax. But his relief was ephemeral. Beria turned a page and said with a feigned smile, “You can go now, but I want to see you tomorrow.”

  Ah yes, thought Dimitri, the wait-and-sweat technique. Let the victim leave and stew over the insinuations, in the hope that on his return, he will change his story and confess all. But Dimitri knew preciously few details about Gregori’s activities and decided it was best not even to inquire. Silence, he told himself, never deceives.

  Outside Lubyanka Prison, he passed the long line of family members waiting to inquire about their loved ones. They carried parcels of food, string baskets with books, and bundles of clothing. The question that all of them hoped to have answered at the front gatehouse was whether the person they sought was even in Lubyanka Prison. If not, where then?

  Returning to his narrow room in the Kremlin, Dimitri picked up his well-marked copy of Antigone and remembered what the police instructor had said when he had distributed copies to the class of neophyte agents.

  “The great social struggle of our age is the one between individualism and communalism. Of course, every person should share in the freedoms and fruits of a great society. But an excess of individualism leads to greed and a destructive self-reliance that ignores the plight of others. Communalism can be equally pernicious if it snuffs out individual creativity and impresses upon the people a detestable conformity. Antigone is the first great work of literature to engage this philosophical divide. Although the title refers to Oedipus’s daughter, the play is really about Creon’s struggle to balance individual rights against the needs of the state.”

  Dimitri turned to the words that his instructor had often quoted:

  You can never know what a man is made of,

  His character or powers of intellect,

  Until you have seen him tried in rule and office.

  The next day, Beria stared at him coldly. “We have another reason to question you. The hairdresser Yuri Suzdal. You told him that he would be arrested unless he fled. He told us so himself.”

  Dimitri knew that interrogators make numerous accusations, proceeding from the rule that you can tell whether a person is lying if, one, he yells and shouts his innocence, and two, he never changes his language or alibi or excuse. Skillfully, Dimitri framed his excuses in different words and cited several alibis. Beria shortly realized that the usual interrogatives wouldn’t work, and that he would have to try another tack. After exhibiting hardness, he now became soft: bad cop, good cop.

  “I suppose, Comrade Lipnoskii, you know the joke currently making the rounds?” Dimitri shook his head no. “What’s the highest building in Moscow? It’s the Lubyanka Prison. Because from the top floor, you can see all the way to Siberia.”

  Dimitri forced a smile but couldn’t bring himself to laugh.

  “Not funny?” said Beria disappointed, immediately dropping the mask of cheerfulness and returning to what he knew best: hardness. “We have a photograph of you and Yuri Suzdal at the railroad station.”

  He handed it to Dimitri. But since the two lovers had never stood together on a train platform, either to leave on a holiday or for any other reason, Dimitri knew that the NKVD Photographic Department had used separate snapshots—ironically, perhaps his own—to juxtapos
e him and Yuri. The background railroad setting had been clearly staged. In fact, the forgery was so careless that the men were clothed for different seasons of the year, Suzdal, winter, and Dimitri, summer.

  “Comrade Beria,” he said, returning the photo, “you and I both know it’s a forgery. Just look at what we are wearing.”

  Beria studied it a moment, bewildered, as if he’d failed to scrutinize it before, and then he barked, “The fools! They can’t competently perform the simplest tasks.” He smirked and added, “Comrade Lipnoskii, you are to be complimented for identifying shoddy work. You have just proved your worthiness for the most difficult assignment you have yet to undertake. We want you to conduct a full surveillance—mail, phone, personal contacts, taps, informers—to establish that Razan Shtube and his wife, Anna, are working for the Albanian government as Fascist spies.”

  Dimitri could feel along his veins a thickening anger, but before he could respond, Beria said, “What better way to show your loyalty to the country? And who has greater access to these people than you?”

  His temper barely under control, Dimitri leaned his elbows on Beria’s desk and said icily, “Someone has made a mistake.”

  An irate Beria, apparently having already forgotten about the picture, fumed, “You dare to call the work of the NKVD a mistake?”

  “As fraudulent as the photograph.”

  “We have arrested a courier who entered the country illegally. He left Tirana last week and was uncovered in Voronezh, before he could make his way to Moscow. Among his papers we found documents incriminating your parents.”

  Beria reached under his desk, and a distant scream indicated that a prisoner was being tortured; or, more likely, that a recording from a previous interrogation was being played for Dimitri’s benefit.

  “I understand the point, Comrade Beria, I have used the same methods myself.”

  “The fact remains that we have apprehended an Albanian courier.”

  “Everyone knows that half the population of Voronezh are secret police, always willing to perjure themselves for promotion.”