Nadya did genuinely sympathize with Bukharin. Anna Larina, Bukharin’s wife, said, “She secretly shared his views on collectivization and found a convenient occasion to tell him so.” And Molotov knew all about it. He told the poet Chuyev, “That she became Bukharin’s follower is very unlikely. But she did, of course, allow herself to be influenced by him.”
So if Polina ran after Nadya, it was more probably out of a sense of duty. The second lady in the land must comfort the first. If she tried to comfort her at all, she may have gone about it in a peculiar way. Polina may well have known a certain secret, any hint of which might be fatal for Nadya.
We find a trace of this secret in Maria Svanidze’s diary, which I have read in the President’s Archive.
“NOW THAT I KNOW EVERYTHING”
This was the Maria who had confessed her loneliness to Nadya. Alyosha and Maria Svanidze were arrested in 1937, and Maria’s papers were passed to Stalin. He kept them in his apartment, in his personal archive. With good reason.
Maria Svanidze had dared to make an entry in her diary which strangers could not possibly be allowed to read: “4.11.34. Saw J. [Joseph] again yesterday after a three-month interval. He got back from Sochi on the 29th. He looks fine, but has lost a lot of weight. We—I myself, Nyura [Anna, Nadya’s sister], and Zhenya [Pavel Alliluyev’s wife] … walked over to see him at 7:00 P.M., but he was not at home.… We spent some time with the children, and were sitting in Vasya’s room when Joseph suddenly came down the corridor wearing a summer overcoat; in spite of the cold weather he never likes changing his clothes with the seasons and goes on wearing the summer clothes he is used to, and it’s the same story in spring, when winter garments are left off and others have to be worn.… He invited us to a meal. He spoke to me kindly, asked after Alyosha, teased Zhenya about getting fat again. He treated her very affectionately. Now that I know everything I have watched them closely. They opened some champagne, and we drank toasts.”
Zhenya, the wife of Nadya’s brother, was a dream woman: a tall Russian beauty with light brown tresses and flushed cheeks. Her daughter, Kira Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya, said, “Mama’s nickname was ‘the rose of the Novgorod fields.’ She was [five feet nine inches] tall. Just before she went into labor she split some logs—then she went off and gave birth to me.”
Maria Svanidze’s entry was made in 1934, long after Nadya’s death. But the infatuation may have begun earlier. Here is another excerpt from my conversation with Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya:
Myself: I’ve often read that Stalin sent all the Alliluyevs packing after his wife’s death.
Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya: On the contrary, he took us all to live in his dacha at Zubalovo. We lived there from 1932, Grandma, Grandpa, Seryozha [Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya’s brother], and Mama and Papa, who came for weekends.… Stalin was generally stern and reserved, but he noticed when women dressed well. He used to say to Mama—“Zhenya, you ought to teach Soviet women how to dress.”
Yes, he was under her spell before 1934. And if we remember how weary he had been of all those rows with his wife, of the eternal strife between them.…
Perhaps it is not too much to speculate that Zhemchuzina, when she was “calming” Nadya, only had to drop the slightest hint to make Nadya’s gypsy blood boil. She ran, no, raced home and, most probably, sat waiting, ready for a furious argument with him, to avenge herself by pouring out her resentment. He arrived the worse for drink. There was an argument in her room, then he, inevitably, treated her to a few soldier’s oaths and went off to bed. She threw her rose after him. In her rage and despair, she seized Pavel’s present. The very thing! She had heard the rumors about Pavel’s Zhenya, now she would seek help from Pavel’s revolver.
When he heard the shot he knew at once what had happened. He saw her on the bed, covered with blood.… She was beyond help. So he decided to pretend that he was sleeping. Afterward, it all went as the nurse described it. The housekeeper went into her room. They woke him up. He realized that his enemies might say that he had killed her. It would be difficult to explain why he had not heard the shot in the silence of the night. It was then that he thought up the story, which everyone would have to repeat—the story which made poor Korchagina say, “Even you, Comrade Kalinin, know that Comrade Stalin was with Comrade Molotov out of town at his dacha that evening.” The servants knew that he was in the apartment. And it was this strange divergence from the official version that gave rise to dreadful rumors.
After the funeral it was time for his usual occupation: looking for the culprits. He had no difficulty in finding them. His enemies. The ones who had poisoned her mind, whispered slanders in her ear. He had always suspected it. Now he knew he was right. Let us remember Molotov’s previously quoted remark: “She [Nadya] did, of course, allow herself to be influenced by [Bukharin].” We can assume that he is echoing the Boss’s words. Further, the commander of Stalin’s bodyguard, N. Vlasik, told the historian Dr. N. Antipenko that Nadezhda once brought home and showed to Stalin a copy of Ryutin’s appeal to the Party which had been slipped to her in a class at the Industrial Academy, and in which Stalin was called an “agent provocateur” and much else. Anna Larina, Bukharin’s wife, wrote, “Nikolai Ivanovich remembered coming to the dacha at Zubalovo one day and walking in the grounds with Nadezhda Sergeevna. Stalin suddenly arrived, crept up to them, and looking straight at Nikolai Ivanovich said something terrible: ‘I’ll kill you.’ Nikolai Ivanovich took it as a joke, but Nadezhda Sergeevna shuddered and turned pale.” It was not, of course, jealousy. He was too sure of himself for that. And of her. It was the same old problem: Bukharin’s influence on Nadya. He was of course afraid of what Bukharin and his wife might say to each other about famine in the countryside and about Ryutin’s accusations. He was fed up to the teeth with her accusations, and could assume that many of them originated with Bukharin. So when he said “I’ll kill you”—he meant it. We can easily reconstruct his grim logic: the rightists had brought her to her doom, deliberately destroyed his home life and his family. Significantly, Ryutin’s conspiracy coincided with Nadezhda’s death. He remembered more and more frequently the fate of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and how the boyars in their struggle against him had poisoned his beloved wife. They had used poison, these others—poisoned words. Ivan, however, had taken a terrible revenge on them. His wrath too would be terrible. But he would not show his hand too soon. He was good at waiting.
Tsar Ivan the Terrible, as we shall see, would become his favorite historical character. It was he who commissioned the great Eisenstein to make a film about the terrible tsar. In the film, Ivan the Terrible, after losing his beloved wife as the result of the boyars’ intrigues, plans a “great and merciless work”—the extermination of the rebellious boyars.
He made no public appearances for the rest of that terrible year. He shut himself up, trying to get over her death. Sucking his pipe. Thinking. And all the time his faithful shadow, Molotov, was at his side.
The fifteenth anniversary of the GPU was celebrated at the end of the year. He did not emerge even for that, but confined himself to sending greetings.
He left it after the New Year to convene a plenary meeting of the Central Committee, at which he summed up the results of the Great Turn and declared industrialization a success: “We had no iron and steel industry—now we do; we had no automobile industry—now we do; we had no tractor industry—now we do.” He went on monotonously listing the new industries, to the inexhaustible applause of the audience: “We have moved into one of the top places in the production of electric power, oil products, and coal.… We have created a new iron and steel base in the East. Instead of an agrarian country we have become a mighty industrial country capable of producing all modern means of defense.… A country which was a hundred years behind had to be hurried up. The Party acted correctly in implementing a policy of accelerated growth.”
Millions had perished in that terrifying dash forward. But he knew that the Reformer Tsar, Peter the Great, had
also brought countless of his countrymen to their graves. Yes, millions had perished. But with their bodies he had paved the way to tomorrow, had brought the Great Dream closer to realization.
Now he needed a harvest. He sent seventeen thousand Party officials into the countryside to take the grain from the collective farms. And he got his harvest. The specter of famine receded. He had won.
A WARM SPELL
After his wife’s death he lived alone. From now on his was a male kingdom. Previously, leaders had sat with their wives in the government box at his favorite theater, the Bolshoi. After Nadya’s death, wives were not invited. The Boss had no wife, so his servants had no wives. The whole Politburo now celebrated the New Year in the Kremlin with only men at the main table. Wives sat apart.
His mother, Keke, was told the official story, that Nadya had died of appendicitis. His mother believed in God and of course pondered over his second widowhood and God’s anger. She sent him jam and fruit from his little homeland, as before. And as before, he never went to see her when he was in Sochi, but wrote her short letters regularly.
Greetings, Mother dear. I got your letter. I also got the jam, the ginger, and the churkhcheli [Georgian sweets]. The children were very pleased and send you their thanks. I am well, don’t worry about me, I can endure my lot. I don’t know whether or not you need money. I’m sending you 500 rubles just in case. I’m also sending a photograph of me and the children.… Keep well, dear Mother, and keep your spirits up. A kiss. Your son Soso.
24.3.34. The children salute you. Since Nadya’s death my personal life is hard. But never mind, a brave man must be brave at all times.
His period of seclusion was over. On June 12, 1933, he put in an appearance at a grandiose new show, a physical culture parade. Those perfect bodies, lightly clad, were supposed to testify to the might of the proletarian state. He knew that his henchmen had acquired bourgeois habits, and would be making their selection from the pretty girls on parade. Well, let them have their fun. While the warm spell lasted.
In 1933 the trials came to a full stop. There was even a rumor that his wife’s death had changed him, that he had become much gentler.
He had succeeded in making the summer and autumn of 1933 a turning point. He deserved the credit for the excellent grain harvest. His cruel policies had forced people to work until they were exhausted. The collective farms obediently poured their grain into the state’s bins. And it was proving to be a turning point in the attitude of party functionaries: now they could see he had been right all along. The revolutionary path, through blood and famine, was the one by which the people could be led into the bright future. “Stalin has conquered” was heard more and more frequently from people who only yesterday were reading Ryutin’s program to each other.
His power would soon be absolute. The joke that follows dates from this time: “During the October holidays the Politburo is discussing what sort of present to give the Soviet people. One after another they suggest different concessions. Stalin speaks last: ‘I propose that the day of the October anniversary be declared a day of collective flagellation.’ His henchmen are horrified, but dare not object. On the October anniversary they assemble in the Kremlin fearing the worst. Shortly afterward they hear the buzz of a crowd. It gets nearer. By now the henchmen are cursing Stalin and hiding under the table. He is imperturbable. An excited security man rushes into the room. ‘Comrade Stalin,’ he says, ‘a delegation of workers in the arts has broken into the grounds. They are demanding to be flogged first.’ ”
A warm spell. The trial of the young Party members who had supported Ryutin ended with light sentences. Ryutin himself wrote to his wife from prison in November 1933 that “only in the USSR, under the leadership of a great genius like our beloved Stalin, have such unprecedented successes in socialist construction been achieved.” Ryutin had heard that Zinoviev and Kamenev had repented and been released, and he hoped for the same treatment.
Zinoviev and Kamenev had indeed been released, at the modest price of another recantation and a public glorification of the Boss. In a letter to Pravda in May 1933 Zinoviev acknowledged that he had deserved his punishment, and was ready to expiate his offense by working in any capacity. The Boss himself appealed to the Central Control Commission, humbly pleading for his enemies Kamenev and Zinoviev.
While he was thinking of the future, they had taken another step down the road to destruction. Their recent supporters now despised them. The Boss had them brought back to Moscow. The featherbrained coxcomb Zinoviev was given a job on the magazine Bolshevik, writing eulogies of the Leader in expectation of some senior Party post. The clever Kamenev, who had begun to understand the Boss’s elaborate game plan, clearly suspected that this was only the first move. He distanced himself from politics, and told all the world that he had done so. When Bukharin, convinced that Kamenev really had been forgiven, offered him a position as departmental editor on Izvestia, Kamenev’s reply was “I want to lead a quiet, untroubled life.… I want people to forget me, and I hope Stalin won’t even remember my name.” The former head of state now worked quietly in the Institute of World Literature.
Ryutin, however, the Boss could not forgive. He was left in jail.
Trotsky’s former court poet, Radek, was also given new posts. The Boss respected Radek’s talent as a journalist: let him work while the sunny spell lasts, there’s still plenty of time. The cynic Radek worked all out, condemning Trotsky and lauding the Boss. Now he was Stalin’s bard. In 1933 he published a book called The Architect of Soviet Society, a hymn to Stalin, that “son of poverty who rebelled against the life of servitude in a seminary.… The waves of love, and of the people’s trust lap against the serene, rocklike figure of our Leader.” Yagoda, who had once personally arrested the oppositionist Radek, now respectfully quoted these panegyrics. Though some people thought that Radek was really ridiculing his subject.
Radek became one of the editors of Izvestia, working under Bukharin. The Boss had made Bukharin chief editor of that newspaper, the second most important in the country, and shortly afterward delegated to him the task of drafting a new constitution.
Not only his disarmed enemies but his faithful lackeys in the Politburo took it all seriously. He went to the Caucasus on vacation in autumn 1933, leaving Molotov, as usual, to look after “the business.” During a Politburo meeting the new State Prosecutor, A. Vyshinsky, launched a routine attack on experts in industry. In reply, the Boss’s friend Sergo Ordzhonikidze (People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry) and Y. Yakoviev (People’s Commissar for Agriculture) got the Politburo to censure Vyshinsky. The Boss wrote to Molotov immediately: “I consider Sergo’s outburst in the Vyshinsky business the behavior of a hooligan. How could you give in to him? What does it all mean?”
The faithful servant took the point: the weather mustn’t warm up too much too soon.
Throughout 1933 Stalin was busy organizing celebrations. The White Sea–Baltic Canal—constructed by convict labor and hymned by his writers—was completed. The country rejoiced. Together with his closest comrade-in-arms, Kirov, Stalin proceeded on board ship along the newly dug canal. His icebreakers were opening up the northern sea route. One old icebreaker, the Chelyuskin, got stuck in the ice, and Stalin turned the rescue of the crew into a magnificent piece of theater. The eyes of the whole country were on these events. He organized a sumptuous reception in Moscow for the rescued sailors. All through 1933 loudspeakers pumped out deafening marches, and radio announcers extolled the Boss’s latest victories. It was as if he was trying to forget his personal tragedy in the din of martial music and servile praise. A huge airplane was built, the Maxim Gorky, biggest in the world. Stalin approved the design for a Palace of the Soviets. It was meant to be a structure unlike any ever known. A building 1,300 feet high would be crowned with a 300-foot statue of Lenin. A grandiose hall would seat an audience of 21,000 for the Leader’s speeches. Bolshevism’s greatest shrine would rise on the site of the demolished Church of Christ the Savior.
That shrine, for all his orders and decrees, would never be built. The reason commonly given is shortage of funds. But in times when labor cost nothing and the Boss’s will was law, this is no explanation. We are left with the explanation preferred by the people at large: “The Lord forbade it.”
STALIN IN CARPET SLIPPERS
For years now the Boss had been fashioning a new lifestyle for Bolshevik leaders. Gone never to return were the democratic ways of the early years after the Revolution, when the families of Kremlin bigwigs traveled by public transport, stood in line with their fellow citizens, and were short of money. (“Joseph, send me 50 rubles or so if you can, they won’t give me any money at the Industrial Academy until October 15 and right now I haven’t a single kopeck,” Nadya wrote to her husband in a postscript to a letter dated September 17, 1929.) The Boss’s children were now taken to school in limousines, with bodyguards. Massive villas for the use of the rulers were erected outside Moscow, each in its own spacious grounds and with its own security guards. Academician E. Varga, an eminent economist and Comintern activist, noted sadly that “they have gardeners, cooks, maidservants, special doctors and nurses working for them—sometimes a staff of fifty or so—and all this at state expense. They have special trains, personal airplanes, personal guards, fleets of cars to service them and their families.… They get all their provisions and household goods for next to nothing. To live at this level in America you would have to be a multimillionaire.” Varga, an old Comintern hand, could not help remembering Lenin’s promise to create a society in which leaders would “receive the same salary as an average worker.”
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