Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  From Maria Svanidze’s diary: “29.4.35. We started talking about the Metro, Svetlana expressed a wish to take a ride and we all agreed to go with her—myself, Zhenya, the nurse. Suddenly there was a commotion. J. [Joseph] had decided to take a ride with us. They sent for Molotov. Everybody was terribly excited. There was a lot of whispering about the danger of such an outing without proper preparation. Kaganovich was more agitated than anybody.… He suggested going at midnight when the Metro would be closed to the public.… But J. insisted on going right away. In Okhotny Ryad … the public rushed to greet the leaders.… They cheered, and ran along behind us. We got separated, and I was almost crushed against one of the columns. The enthusiasm and the ovations reached superhuman dimensions. J. was merry … the enthusiastic crowd overturned an iron lamppost.… I think that, austere as he is, he was touched by the people’s love for their leader. There was nothing contrived or formal about it. He once said of the ovations he received, ‘The people need a tsar,’ i.e., someone to reverence, someone to live and work for.”

  He mentioned the need for a tsar on various occasions. N. Chagin, an old Bolshevik, has recorded an episode at a dinner given by Kirov. On this occasion Stalin said: “Bear in mind that in Russia the people were under the tsar for centuries, the Russian people are tsarist, the Russian people are used to having one single individual over them.”

  Now, as he prepared to destroy the refractory Leninist old guard, his mind was on the monarchy of the future. One émigré aptly remarked after yet another bloody purge that “a lot of blood has to be shed to give birth to a Russian autocrat.”

  “YOU’D HAVE DONE BETTER TO HAVE BECOME A PRIEST”

  At the end of the year he went at last to see his mother. Throughout the year, as always, he had written to her regularly: “11.6.35. I know that you are not well. You mustn’t be afraid of sickness, be strong and it will pass. I’m sending my children to see you. Make them welcome and give them lots of kisses. They are good children. If I can manage it I’ll try to come and see you.”

  It was indeed high time for him to pay her a visit. She was frequently ill, and he had to see her while he could, the sooner the better. After he’d arranged just what he intended to do, it would be difficult for him to go to Georgia. Difficult and dangerous. He decided to let his mother see her Soso in all his glory now. Before he became anathema.

  His mother had been moved to Tiflis some years ago and installed, as befit the mother of a tsar, in the former palace of the Viceroys of Georgia. Grand dukes had once resided there. With all the palace to choose from, his mother had chosen one miserable little room away from the main building, a room quite like the hovel in which they had once lived.

  He had provided for Keke generously. Two female hangers-on in black caps waited on her. She lived on a pension, and a special doctor kept an eye on her health: Lavrenti Beria, Party leader in the Caucasus, saw to it personally that Keke wanted nothing.

  Molotov recalled meeting the young Beria more than once in Lenin’s office. He had joined the Party in 1917, but his rise really began under the Boss. Stalin made the young Chekist Beria a leader, and valued him more and more as time went by. On the Boss’s last birthday Beria had been among his guests.

  Beria skillfully turned the Boss’s meeting with his mother into an occasion of ideological significance. With his shrewd guidance, the newspapers published touching tales of the radiant love between the Great Mother and the Great Leader; the image of the Virgin Mary was clearly discernible in the pages of the press. “Seventy-five-year-old Keke is cordial and lively,” Pravda reported. “She seems to light up when she talks about the unforgettable moments of their meeting. ‘The whole world rejoices when it looks upon my son and our country. What would you expect me, his mother, to feel?’ ” In fact he was with her only briefly. As their meeting ended she asked him, “Joseph, what exactly are you now?” And he answered, “Do you remember the tsar? Well, I’m something like the tsar.”

  “You’d have done better to have become a priest,” she replied.

  During all this time he had not stopped thinking about the wife who had gone. Even after her death he went on quarreling with her passionately. “We got talking about Yasha [his son Yakov],” Maria Svanidze wrote in her diary. “He remembered again his (Yasha’s) despicable treatment of dear Nadya, his marriage, all his mistakes, his suicide attempt. Then he said, ‘Nadya was so down on Yasha for behaving like that—how could she then go and shoot herself? She did a very bad thing, she crippled me.’ [I said,] ‘How could she leave two children?’ [And he said,] ‘Never mind the children. They’d forgotten her a few days later. But she left me crippled for life.’ ”

  After her death, as though to revenge himself upon her, he changed completely the former pattern of his home life.

  Agents of the secret police now took charge of the household. Nikolai Vlasik, who commanded his bodyguard, now supervised the upbringing of Stalin’s children. Vlasik had emerged from the depths of rural Russia to serve in the ranks of the Cheka, and from there had been seconded to Stalin’s bodyguard on Menzhinsky’s recommendation. Vlasik was assisted in his task of supervising the children by S. Yefimov, an NKVD officer and commandant of the dacha at Zubalovo, where Vasya and Svetlana spent the summer months.

  The effects of this regime on Vasya soon showed themselves. In the President’s Archive we find Yefimov’s reports to Vlasik, who promptly submitted them to the Boss. “22.9.35. Greetings, Comrade Vlasik. I write to inform you how things are with us. First, Svetlana and Vasya are in good health and feel well. Svetlana is taking her schoolwork seriously, Vasya is neglecting his lessons.… He stayed away from school altogether, saying that he had a sore throat, but he would not let the doctor look at it.”

  From Maria Svanidze’s diary: “17.11.35. At dinner we talked about Vasya. He’s doing badly at school. J. [Joseph] has given him 2 months to show an improvement, and threatened to turn him out of the house and adopt three able lads instead.”

  Vasya was afraid of his father, but knew how to defend himself. Yefimov reported to Vlasik that “On 19.10.35 he (Vasya) wrote his name on a sheet of paper, and wrote down below: ‘Vasya Stalin, born 1921, died 1935.’ This inscription is worrying. Has he got something in mind?”

  Vasya evidently knew (had probably overheard) something about his mother and was using this as a weapon to alarm his father. Maria Svanidze wrote in her diary: “J. knows them both [Svetlana and Vasya] inside out.… What an analytical mind he has, what an exceptional psychologist he is.” For once her enthusiasm may have been justified.

  What follows is the Boss’s description of Vasily in a letter to Oleg Martyshin, his teacher (published in Uchitelskaya Gazeta, Teachers’ Newspaper, in 1988):

  To Comrade Martyshin, Schoolteacher. I have received your letter about the misbehavior of Vasily Stalin. I am very late in answering because of an excessive workload. Please forgive me. Vasily is a spoiled youth, of average ability, a little savage (a sort of Scythian), not always truthful, he likes to blackmail weak supervisors, is often insolent, has a weak, or rather disorganized will, has been spoiled by all sorts of “godfathers and godmothers” who sometimes make too much of the fact that he is “Stalin’s son.” I am glad that in you he has at least one teacher with self-respect, who insists on the impudent boy complying with general school rules. Vasily gets spoiled by headmasters like the one you mention, spineless creatures who do not belong in a school, and if Vasily does not succeed in ruining himself it will be because there are in our country some teachers who will not give way to young master’s caprices. My advice is to be stricter with Vasily, and not to fear a spoiled boy’s blackmailing threats of suicide. Unfortunately I have no time to spend on Vasily, but I promise to give him a good shaking every now and then—Yours J. Stalin. 8.4.38.

  The son about whom he wrote so pitilessly was the one he loved. His other—unloved—son also sprang a surprise on him.

  From Maria Svanidze’s diary: “17.11.35. Yasha has got ma
rried for the second time. To Yulia Isaakovna Bessarb. She is quite pretty, somewhere between thirty and thirty-two, a bit of a flirt, talks nonsense self-confidently she had made up her mind to leave her husband and make a career … and she has done just that.… Her things are still at her former husband’s place. I don’t know how J. will take it!… 4.12.35. J. now knows about Yasha’s marriage. His attitude is that of a loyal—but ironical—father. After all, Yasha is twenty-seven or twenty-eight!”

  Stalin’s birthday had come round again. From Maria Svanidze’s diary: “26.12.35. Twenty-one of us wrote J. a little letter. (We congratulate dear Joseph on his birthday. There are no words to express all the beautiful things we wish him.) He was in a splendid mood. Everybody was noisy and full of fun at dinner. J. turned to Alyosha and said, ‘But for you none of this would be happening. I’d completely forgotten the day’ ”

  How he enjoyed himself. With those soon to die!

  16

  “THE PEOPLE OF MY WRATH” DESTROYED

  Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury. Against a godless nation I send him and against the people of my wrath I command him.

  —Isaiah 10:5–6

  I slew your young men with the sword … yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.

  —Amos 4:10

  A NECESSARY ILLUSION

  It was 1936. He was planning to hold bloody show trials at home, but his foreign policy seemed quite enlightened. He enjoyed moving in opposite directions simultaneously. While he was turning his country into a closed and unassailable fortress, he established diplomatic relations with the United States. He joined the League of Nations and became the main champion of collective security. The constitution then in preparation, with its promises of democratic freedoms, was intended to palliate the coming bloody purge. Against the background of the show trials the constitution served to create the necessary illusion that a democratic state, free of those terrible Leninists, was being created in Russia. He knew that the West would have to further that illusion. Hitler had lived up to his hopes: Germany had rearmed, and the West had fallen behind. They had realized at last that without that dreadful Stalin they would never defeat Hitler. Luck was on his side. During the trials, Hitler would be on the rampage all over Europe, and Franco would raise a rebellion in Spain. In the Spanish general election of 1936, victory went to the parties of the left, and General Franco, supported by Hitler, led a revolt against the government of the Republic. In the cruel Civil War which followed, antifascists all over the world helped the Republican army. Stalin’s reaction was instantaneous and, once again, enlightened: Soviet advisers, tanks, and planes were rushed to the aid of democracy in Spain—together with a large number of NKVD agents. All this coincided with a good harvest, and the people were getting their breath back after the years of upheaval. He had chosen a good year for his carefully planned offensive. Its objective was the destruction of the Party.

  “CONSPIRACY”

  The NKVD held a conference of its highest officials. They were informed that a gigantic conspiracy had been uncovered, with Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and a number of other opposition leaders at its head. It appeared that they had set up terrorist groups in every large town. All those attending the conference were seconded to a secret political department of the NKVD to assist in the investigation. The Leader himself would supervise their work. The Leader would be assisted by Yezhov.

  The whole gathering of course realized that there was no conspiracy But they also knew the “in-depth” language. They had been told that the Party must have a conspiracy It was essential for success in the struggle with world imperialism and the schismatic Trotsky.

  In conclusion, a secret circular from Yagoda was read. The People’s Commissar warned them that the use of illegal methods of interrogation such as threats and torture would not be tolerated. In “in-depth language” this meant that such methods were necessary because the accused must be ruthlessly “broken.”

  Some hundreds of miscellaneous oppositionists were taken from prisons and places of exile and delivered to Moscow. They were required to admit their participation in terrorist acts and to play their parts in a show trial. After the recent trials of intellectuals the public would not be greatly surprised by the bloody theatrical event ahead. The great difference was that those cast as murderers and spies were the old Leninist guard, yesterday’s Party leaders. They would lead the way, marching as leaders should at the head of the old Party—leading it to its death.

  FOR THE PARTY’S SAKE

  Meanwhile Zinoviev, who was to play the lead in the forthcoming production, was writing letter after letter to his onetime ally, now the Boss. There is a well-known story that when Zinoviev and Kamenev were brought to Moscow, the Boss himself tricked them into performing at the trials by promising to spare their lives. And that Zinoviev was tortured by deprivation of air and so on. But we need only read Zinoviev’s harrowing letters, recently made available.

  April 14 [1936]. In my soul there is one burning desire—to prove to you that I am no longer an enemy. There is no demand with which I would not comply to prove it to you.… I have reached the point at which I spend a long time gazing on pictures of you and other members of the Politburo in the newspapers, and thinking, dear friends, look into my soul, surely you can see that I am no longer your enemy, that I belong to you body and soul, that there is no demand with which I would not comply to earn forgiveness, clemency.

  May 6. I am treated humanely in prison here. I get medical attention etc. But I am old and badly shaken. In the last few months I have aged twenty years. Help me. Trust me. Do not let me die in prison. Do not let me go mad in solitary confinement.

  July 12. My condition is very poor.… I fervently beg you to publish the book I wrote in Verkhne-Uraisk. I wrote it with my heart’s blood.… Also, may I be so bold as to put in a plea for my family, especially my son. You knew him when he was a little boy. He is a talented Marxist with a scholarly bent. Please help him. I am now yours heart and soul.

  Once he had lost power, tasted imprisonment, and undergone just a fraction of the torments to which he had doomed others, Zinoviev was a broken man. He was not tortured—on the contrary—“I am being treated humanely, I get medical attention etc.” There was no need, then, for further meetings with his onetime ally, the Boss. The old, formidable Zinoviev no longer existed. There was only this unhappy, sick slave yearning to serve his master. And willing to slander himself and others. “There is no demand with which I would not comply.” And no humiliation he would not accept: Zinoviev was ready for anything.

  In one of my articles I myself repeated the story that Zinoviev and Kamenev were tortured, and also that Stalin sent for them and used persuasion on them. I got one curious response: a letter amusingly signed N-K V.D.:

  You are mistaken, Comrade. No torture was used on Zinoviev. I don’t think that Stalin saw Kamenev and Zinoviev while the case against them was in preparation. I do know that his messengers talked to them. I have heard that Molotov was the one who talked to Zinoviev. He spoke in his usual cold, logical way. “How many times have you lied to the Party? How many times have your lies damaged the Party? You are now asked to calumniate yourself for the good of the Party. At a time when Trotsky is trying to split the workers’ movement, and the Germans are preparing to attack us, your lies will undoubtedly be of help to the Party. That is undeniable. So what is there to discuss? If the interests of the Party demand it, it is our duty to sacrifice not only our miserable reputations but our very lives. Although, objectively, you are not being asked to lie. Objectively, everything you did was a betrayal of the Party’s interests.” Zinoviev was, then, treated throughout with the greatest respect. He must have seen in that a possibility of forgiveness. He tried to persuade Kamenev. Kamenev was an intelligent man and he resisted for a while—so they did treat him roughly at times. But there was no torture. The setup was, I repeat, quite different. The prison was more like a clinic. The whole atmosphere suggested that
they would surely be pardoned. All they wanted was to be allowed to live. And all those fine words about the Party helped them to preserve, shall we say, their self-respect. They were allowed to stand trial as though they were carrying out a secret Party assignment. Molotov, however, made a mistake. He really believed that they ought to be pardoned. And dared to say so. He very nearly found himself on trial as a result. Especially as all his old friends on the Petrograd Committee, Shlyapnikov and Zalutsky included, were already in jail. We took the point immediately: the official account of the trial of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and the rest of them listed those leaders whom the “Zinovievite assassins” had planned to destroy, including the whole Politburo except Molotov. So when he was sent on vacation before the trial began we were all waiting for something to happen. People were usually picked up en route to somewhere. But Molotov returned after his month off, and was even in time for the opening of the trial. He had learned his lesson. After that, he did occasionally have an opinion of his own. But only when the Boss wanted him to.

  Perhaps, with “Stone Arse” away, Stalin had realized how much that indefatigable worker had done for him, and decided to keep him on. At subsequent trials Molotov would be mentioned among other intended victims of the “Trotskyist butchers.”

  Kamenev was a little harder to handle than Zinoviev. Orlov tells us that his interrogator, Chertok, yelled at him: “You’re a coward … Lenin himself said so.… you were a strikebreaker in October [1917]. You flitted from one opposition group to another.… While real Bolsheviks were carrying on the fight underground you were swanning around in Western cafés.… Do you imagine that you people are still icons to us, as you used to be? If we let you out the first Komsomol you meet will do you in on the spot. Ask any Young Pioneer who Zinoviev and Kamenev are and he’ll say ‘enemies of the people.’ ”