Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  She bore him a son. A son is a great happiness for a Georgian. Life was indeed kind to him. He wrote to Demyan Biedny in 1923, “I am glad you are feeling so cheerful. The American Whitman has neatly expressed our philosophy: ‘We are alive, and our crimson blood seethes with the fire of unexpended strength.’ ”

  There was, however, another boy in the house. A reminder of the other life that had vanished. In 1921 Kirov had brought back from the Caucasus the forgotten son Yakov. Bazhanov wrote, “In Stalin’s apartment lived his older son, who was never called anything but ‘Yasha.’ He was a secretive youth, he looked cowed. He was always absorbed in his inner life. You could speak to him and he wouldn’t hear, he always had a faraway look.”

  There are many stories about Nadya taking pity on Yasha, about what almost amounted to a love affair between them; there’s no end to this nonsense. In fact she did not like her stepson, a painfully shy and rather obtuse boy. She wrote to his aunt Maria Svanidze that she had “given up all hope that he will ever start behaving sensibly. There is a complete absence of interest or purpose. I’m very sorry, and very upset for Joseph, he feels it keenly at times when he’s talking to comrades.”

  V. Butochnikov, who made friends with this tongue-tied adolescent when they were both at the Kremlin Military School, tells us that “Yasha hardly ever joined in a lively conversation. He was exceptionally reserved, but also hot-tempered.”

  So there were three hot-tempered people under the same roof. The weakest of them was the first to give under the strain. Yasha could not indefinitely endure his father’s unrelenting contempt. He was as sensual as all Georgians, and he decided to marry early. His father not only forbade it, he ridiculed him. Yasha attempted to shoot himself, but must have taken fright at the last moment and escaped with a flesh wound. After that he refused to stay at home, and made his escape to the Alliluyevs in Leningrad.

  On April 9, 1928 Stalin wrote to Nadezhda, “Tell Yasha from me that he is behaving like a hooligan and a blackmailer, with whom I have, and can have, nothing in common. Let him live where and with whom he likes.”

  After the birth of her son Nadya gave up work and lived in seclusion. Stalin was always at work. He lived in a tight, all-male community of his own, forever surrounded by his comrades-in-arms. She tried to resume work as a secretary. Ordzhonikidze took her into his secretariat. But the work was boring and she loathed it. She gave up work again, but this time she had an excuse of sorts—she was carrying another child.

  In those days the Svanidzes were fairly frequent visitors (Alyosha Svanidze was Joseph’s first wife’s brother). They had only recently returned to Moscow, and Alyosha’s wife, a middle-aged singer from Tiflis, was drawn to Nadezhda by her own loneliness. Each complained to the other of her joyless and lonely existence, surrounded by aging female ex-revolutionaries, the wives of the Kremlin leaders.

  Among Maria Svanidze’s papers in the President’s Archive I found this letter from Nadya:

  11.1.26. I have absolutely nothing to do with anybody in Moscow. It seems strange at times to be without friends or close relations for so many years. But it obviously depends on one’s character. It is strange, though, that I feel closer to non-Party people—women, of course. The obvious reason is that they’re more easygoing.… There are a terrible lot of new prejudices. If you don’t work you’re just a “baba” (housewife), although your reason for not working may be that you don’t consider unskilled labor worthwhile.… You can’t imagine how unpleasant it is doing any old job just for the pay. You have to have some qualification, so that you needn’t always be at someone’s beck and call, which is what usually happens if you do secretarial work.… Joseph sends his greetings, he’s very well disposed to you (says you’re a “sensible baba”). Don’t be angry—“baba” is his usual expression for people like us.

  Rough masculine behavior characterized the family life of all real Bolsheviks. There was no bourgeois sentimentality. “Hard,” “iron-hard,” “steely”—this was the new complimentary language of the new order. What would you call a nonworking wife who could not be a Party comrade? A “baba” of course. Just a “baba.”

  As she became more adult, she began standing up to him more frequently, as his mother had stood up to his father. She no longer forgave his rudeness to her. There were rows, after which they might both sulk silently for days on end. She always addressed him politely as “You”; he called her “Thou.” On one occasion he stopped talking to her and it was some days before she found out why. He had taken offense because she always called him “You.” They were both good at taking offense and nursing grievances. Nonetheless, they loved each other. They were both strangely, indeed frighteningly unsuited to family life. Left alone together for any length of time they drove each other mad with their sulks. Yet when they were parted they could not do without each other. Fortunately, they were never alone together for long except on holiday, in the South. In Moscow he was hardly ever at home; he would return in time to drink tea and go straight to bed.

  Their second child was a daughter. She was light-haired, and he happily called her Svetlana. Russia’s Leader had to have a fair-haired Russian daughter. He loved his daughter, but bitter quarrels between the two difficult characters continued. On one such occasion Nadya took her children and left him, forever, to live with the Alliluyevs in Leningrad. It was strange how history had repeated itself. His mother had once fled from his father taking her children with her in exactly the same way.

  But once again they made peace. She had decided to change her way of life. She would take up a profession and cease to be a “baba.” He would no longer have to blush for her idleness. She knew how “morbidly proud” he was at all times. She decided to enroll at the Industrial Academy, acting on advice from Bukharin. He had been one of their closest family friends before civil war broke out within the Party. And since his capitulation he had started dropping in again. The children adored him. He had stocked his dacha with amusing animals—hedgehogs roamed the garden, and a tame fox lived up on the balcony.

  (Svetlana later wrote that Bukharin’s fox was still roaming around long after its master was shot.)

  In 1929, while Nadya was taking the entrance examination for the academy, Stalin was taking his usual autumn holiday in the Caucasus. Previously they had always spent their vacation together. But this time she had gone away earlier, because of her studies at the academy. They wrote to each other, and he kept most of her letters to the end of his days. Her letters go only to 1931. Nothing for 1932, the year of her mysterious death. His own letters, predictably, are very short. As he had told Demyan Biedny, he loathed letter writing. Another feature of the Party mentality: letters and diaries, like all that was merely personal, belonged to the world which they had destroyed.

  As I read these letters in the early nineties in the President’s Archive—housed in what was once the Boss’s own apartment—they seemed at first unrevealing. And yet, letters have this mysterious power: as you read them you begin to hear the voices of those who wrote them.

  01.09.29. Greetings, Tatka! [He sometimes affectionately used her childhood nickname.] It seems I very nearly caught pneumonia in Nalchick.… I have a crepitus in both lungs, and my cough never stops.… It’s all work, damn it.

  02.09.29. Greetings, Joseph. [Without sentimental adjectives, Party fashion. “Dear Joseph” occurs now and then, but the endearments seldom go further.] I’m very glad to hear you’re feeling better now you’re in Sochi. You ask how I’m getting on at the Industrial Academy. I had to be there at 9 this morning. I left the house at 8:30, of course, but the tram broke down. I stood waiting for a bus—but it never came. I decided to take a taxi, so as not to be late—and what do you think happened, it stopped when it had gone about 200 meters. Another breakdown. I found it all terribly funny. When I finally got to the academy I had to wait two hours for my exam to begin.

  Vestiges of the “Party norms” observed in the years immediately after the Revolution lived on: wives sti
ll traveled by tram.

  Tatka! How are things with you? It seems my first letter was mislaid and then delivered to your mother in the Kremlin. How stupid a person must be to accept and open other people’s letters! I’m getting better gradually. A kiss. Yours, Joseph.

  As soon as she got into the academy she attempted to interfere in Party matters. She wanted him to feel that she was no longer just a “baba.” He was purging the leadership of rightists at the time, including, of course, those planted on Pravda by its former editor Bukharin.

  Dear Joseph! Molotov said that the Party section of Pravda was not following the Central Committee’s line. [She goes on to plead for the head of the section, a certain Kovalev.] Sergo interrupted him, thumped the table in the traditional way, and said, “How long must this Kovalev nonsense on Pravda continue!” … I know that you greatly dislike me interfering, but I think you should intervene in this affair, which everyone knows is unjust.… Mama too you accused unfairly, it turns out that the letter was never delivered anyway.

  As he saw it, the rightists were acting through her. There were many of them in the academy. Bukharin had known what he was doing when he influenced her choice. Stalin hit back.

  Tatka. I think you’re right. If Kovalev really is guilty of anything the Bureau of the Pravda Editorial Board is guilty three times over, and they obviously want to make Kovalev their scapegoat. A great big kiss for my Tatka. [He wrote “great big” as his daughter, Svetlana, who could not pronounce her r’s would have said it.]

  At first she was happy. She had helped him to understand the situation. Only later did she realize that as a result not only Kovalev had suffered—the whole editorial board had been ruthlessly purged.

  But the crucial point is that she had intervened on behalf of the rightists. And he had made a note of it.

  That the rightists had enormous influence in the Industrial Academy is not mere conjecture. Here is an excerpt from a penitent letter written by one of their leaders, N. Uglanov: “Throughout 1929 we endeavored to organize groups of supporters. We made a special effort to reinforce the right opposition in the Industrial Academy.” It was true. She herself made a joke about their influence in a letter to him dated September 27, 1929: “Students here are graded as follows: kulak, middle peasant, poor peasant. There’s any amount of laughter and argument every day.… They’ve put me down as a rightist.” It is doubtful whether he approved of such jokes. When he fought, he felt only hatred.

  In 1930 he sent her to Karlsbad. She needed treatment for a stomach complaint. It was obviously something fairly serious; otherwise he would never have sent her to German doctors. That was the year of his “coronation” at the Sixteenth Congress. As usual when they were parted, he was full of love and concern for her. Her illness alarmed him:

  21.06.30. Tatka! What was the journey like, what did you see, have you been to the doctors, what do they say about your health, write and tell me. We start the Congress on the 26th.… Things aren’t going too badly. I miss you very much, Tatka, I’m sitting at home, lonely and glum.… So long for now … come home soon. I kiss you.

  02.07.30. Tatka! I got all three letters. I couldn’t reply, I was very busy. Now at last I’m free. The Congress is over. I shall be expecting you. Don’t be too long coming home. But stay a bit longer, if your health makes it necessary.… I kiss you.

  Her health evidently did make it necessary. She did not get back to Moscow until the end of August. Meanwhile, she had seen a good deal of her brother Pavel.

  Kira Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya told me: “She came to see us in Germany. I remember those days in Germany.… Papa [Pavel] was a buyer for some agency, Mama also worked in the Trade Mission.”

  Voroshilov had found Pavel a place in the Trade Mission so that he could report on the quality of German aviation equipment. He evidently had other assignments too, like all Bolsheviks abroad. General Orlov, the intelligence officer, said vaguely that he and Pavel worked together for two and a half years.

  Kira continued, “It was Papa who gave her that little Walther revolver. She may have told him that she was having a hard time. I don’t know, and never said anything about it either.… Anyway, it was Papa who gave her the revolver. Perhaps she complained to him.… When it all happened Stalin kept saying ‘What a thing to give her.’ Of course, Papa felt guilty afterward. It was a great shock to him. He loved her very much.”

  All that was still in the future. In 1930, when Nadya got back from Germany, Stalin was on vacation in the South. She joined him, but returned to Moscow shortly afterward.

  10.09.30.… The Molotovs scolded me for leaving you alone.… I made my studies the excuse for leaving, but that of course was not the real reason. This summer I did not feel that you would like me if I prolonged my stay, quite the contrary. Last summer I felt very much that you would, but this time I didn’t. It obviously made no sense to stay on in that frame of mind. I don’t consider that I deserve reproaches, but as they see it, of course, I do.… You talk of coming back at the end of October. Surely you don’t mean to stay so long? Write, if my letter doesn’t make you cross—but please yourself. All the best. A kiss. Nadya.

  It was jealousy. Simple jealousy.

  24.09.30. Tell Molotov from me that they are wrong. As for your assumption that your presence in Sochi was not wanted, your reproaches to me are as unfair as Molotov’s reproaches to you. Really, Tatka, I started the rumor that I might not return till October for reasons of secrecy. Only Tatka, Molotov, and maybe Sergo know the date of my arrival. Yours, Joseph.

  She refused to change the subject. She was furious with him, but tried to conceal it with a joke.

  6.10.30. I don’t seem to have had news of you recently. I heard from an attractive young lady that you are looking extremely well, she saw you at dinner at Kalinin’s place. She said that you were extremely jolly and made them all laugh, although they’d been shy in your august presence. I’m very glad.

  She was jealous. He had become a potentate, and she could not resign herself to the fact that women now flirted with him. She imagined that he wanted to be with those women and that she was simply in his way. That was why she had left the South in such a hurry.

  There was another series of furious quarrels that year.

  In autumn 1931 they went on holiday together. But, as was now usual, she left early. She had classes at the academy. Her letters were calm and matter-of-fact. She had finally made up her mind to be his informant, “the eye of the sovereign,” during his absence.

  Greetings, Joseph. I got back safely.… Moscow is looking better, but here and there it is like a woman trying to powder over her blemishes, especially when it rains and the paint runs down in streaks.… In the Kremlin everything is clean but the yard with the garage is ugly. The demolition of the church [of Christ the Savior] is going slowly.… Prices in the shops are very high, and stocks are very high as a result.

  This was how she tried to powder over her grievances. With her new businesslike manner.

  14.9.31. I’m glad you’ve learned how to write businesslike letters.… There’s no news from Sochi. The Molotovs have left.… Keep me informed.

  26.9.31. It’s raining endlessly in Moscow.… It’s damp and uncomfortable. The children of course have flu already, I evidently escape it by wrapping myself up warm.… By next post … I’m sending the book by Dmitrievsky (that defector) On Stalin and Lenin.… I read about it in the White press, where they say that it has very interesting material about you. Curious? That is why I asked them to get it for me.

  At this time talk of the famine, the results of de-kulakization, and his inevitable fall echoed through the academy. She knew the state he was in, and had been pleased to find the book in which Dmitrievsky, once a Soviet diplomat, glorified him and annihilated Trotsky: “Stalin represents the national-socialist imperialism which aspires to destroy the West in its strongholds.… Stalin represents the new, nameless wave in the Party which did the dark and cruel work of the Revolution.” (He had menti
oned this “defector” contemptuously at the recent Congress, but had not ordered his liquidation. Unlike many other defectors, the wily Dmitrievsky stayed alive.)

  This is his last answer to a letter of hers:

  29.09.31.… There was a fantastic storm here. The gale howled for two days with the fury of an enraged beast. 18 large oaks were uprooted in our grounds. A great big kiss, Joseph.

  They both knew what the fury of a wild beast was like.

  In 1932 they went to Sochi together, taking the children. She returned to Moscow early, but her letters to him have disappeared.

  There is, however, one letter written in this last year of her life. A letter to his mother.

  12.03.32. You are very angry with me for not writing. I didn’t write because I don’t like writing letters. None of my family get letters from me, and they’re all just as angry with me as you are.… I know you’re very kind, and won’t be angry with me for long. Things here seem to be all right, we’re all well. The children are growing up, Vasya is 10 now and Svetlana is 5.… She and her father are great friends.… Altogether, we have terribly little free time, both Joseph and I. You’ve probably heard that I’ve gone back to school in my old age. I don’t find studying difficult in itself. But it’s pretty difficult trying to fit it in with my duties at home in the course of the day. Still, I’m not complaining, and so far I’m coping with it all quite successfully. Joseph has promised to write to you himself. As far as his health is concerned I can say that I marvel at his strength and his energy. Only a really healthy man could stand the amount of work he gets through. I wish you all the best, and kiss you many, many times, may you have a long, long life.… Yours, Nadya.