Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  DEPARTURE OF THE SACRED REMAINS

  While all was in collapse, and hundreds of thousands were encircled and doomed to die, Zbarsky, custodian of the Body of Lenin, was summoned to the Kremlin. The presence of Molotov, Kaganovich, Beria, and Mikoyan in the Boss’s office underlined the importance of the meeting. Zbarsky was informed of the Politburo’s decision to evacuate the precious Body deep into the rear—to distant Tyumen. Zbarsky later recounted the story to the playwright A. Stein, who wrote about it in his memoirs:

  “What will you need?” [they asked Zbarsky.]

  “I shall need a coffin.”

  “What size?”

  “We’re the same size.”

  “Take his measurements” [Mikoyan said to his aide.]

  While the custodian was reverently measured, he spoke at length on the Body’s requirements. There was a lot to be done. They would have to equip a freight car with the mechanism necessary to maintain the optimum microclimate, and with special shock absorbers to prevent jolting. With chaos and panic all around him, the Boss gave orders that the Body was to want for nothing, and shortly afterward a special-purpose train left Moscow in the utmost secrecy. The Body arrived in Tyumen and was secretly housed in a former tsarist modern school. For secrecy’s sake all the scientists on the Body’s staff lived with it in the school. Sentries, however, were still mounted at the Mausoleum, to conceal the Body’s departure. In those October days of praise and evacuation Moscow had to go on believing that “Lenin is with us.”

  The Boss, too, was due to leave the capital soon afterward. Members of his bodyguard recall how his daughter, Svetlana, helped with the packing. His library had already been transferred to Kuibyshev, along with his personal papers. Maria Svanidze’s diary was evacuated with them. The nearer dacha was booby-trapped. A secret train awaited him in a siding. Four planes and his own Douglas aircraft stood ready at the airfield. And then he made a startling decision.

  “WE WILL NOT SURRENDER”

  Severe cold had set in. “General Frost” was helping Russia. Field intelligence reported that German tanks were stalling, that men were already dying from frostbite. Meanwhile, Stalin had concentrated a powerful striking force just outside Moscow. A woman who lived in the village of Nikolina Gora recalled how “on the eve of the battle Siberian troops were stationed right there in our woods. Lads with fat, red faces, wearing newish white sheepskin coats. They contrived to sleep, standing up, leaning against trees. The snoring was terrible.” Molotov recalled that “at this juncture all the subunits were calling for reinforcements. Operations in the Moscow area were under Zhukov’s command. But however hard he begged, Stalin wouldn’t give him so much as a battalion. He just told him to hold on at any price. Stalin then had five armies up to full strength and equipped with modern arms [including the new, heavily armored T34 tank]. We thought at the time that Stalin was making a terrible mistake. But when the Germans had lost enough blood he activated these units.” His soldiers had already died in the millions wearing the enemy down. He had already appeased the War God’s hunger. His strategy was triumphing. As in the wars between ancient empires, he first exhausted the enemy and then prepared to throw in the troops whose strength he had husbanded. And to do it beneath the very walls of the capital.

  His son Vasily’s family, his son Yakov’s daughter, and his daughter, Svetlana, were now moved to Kuibyshev. He himself had a secret bunker ready there. The People’s Commissariats and the General Staff were already working in Kuibyshev.

  Moscow was being prepared for the arrival of the Germans. Smoke from bonfires hung over the capital—they were burning archives. Prisoners were hastily shot in the cellars of the Lubyanka. On the night of October 15–16 Beria called a meeting of leading Party personnel and ordered them to “evacuate everybody who is unable to help defend Moscow. Foodstuffs in the shops should be distributed to the population so as not to fall into enemy hands.” The highway was choked with people leaving the city. Special trains carried women and children to the rear. Thieves were busy in deserted apartments. House managers often told them which were the wealthy ones. Pictures and jewelry were sold dirt cheap.

  And then Stalin decided that the time had come. As A. Rybin, one of his guards, reported, after his usual long, long day at headquarters he set off for the nearer dacha, which was already mined. The guards were amazed to see him. There were no lights burning, and they were about to blow the place up. He played the scene to perfection. Why, he wanted to know, were there no lights? He was told why. He shrugged and said simply “Clear the mines at once, and light the stove. I’ll get on with some work in the meantime.” He informed the astonished guards that he was “not leaving Moscow for anywhere else, and you are staying with me. We will not surrender Moscow.” He sat down in the summer house to work. That same night, men in the familiar NKVD uniform appeared in house managers’ offices. One house manager in ten was arrested and shot. The following morning they were shooting people trying to loot shops. Everyone realized immediately that the Boss was still in Moscow.

  His daughter wrote to him from Kuibyshev on September 19: “Dear, dear Papa, my precious joy, hello, how are you, I’ve settled down comfortably here. But oh, Papa dear, how I long to come to Moscow, just for one little day! Papa, why do the Germans keep creeping nearer and nearer all the time? When are they going to get it in the neck, as they deserve? After all, we can’t go on surrendering all our industrial towns to them.… Dear Papa, how I long to see you. I’m hoping for your permission to fly to Moscow if only for two days.”

  People could be shot for asking some of these questions. But he was confident that he would soon be able to answer her. The battle of Moscow was about to begin. Moscow was a symbol, and he was resolved to save it.

  He allowed Svetlana to fly in for two days. The Germans were already scrutinizing the city through their field glasses, and he received her in the recently completed air-raid shelter. She was happy and wanted to talk, but he was irritable and got angry with her for distracting him.

  As soon as Svetlana had left he put on his brilliant propaganda show. It was a sort of sequel to his dacha stunt. Hitler had already informed the world of the fall of Moscow. The Boss’s reply was to celebrate the approaching anniversary of the October Revolution with the traditional meeting in the Bolshoi Theater. The world, and the country, must see the customary ceremonies in his capital. He summoned the senior city officials three days before the anniversary and they discussed it in detail. There was an enormous bomb crater in the Bolshoi Theater, where the gala and the traditional Red Square parade usually took place. They decided to hold it instead underground, at the Mayakovsky Square Metro station, disguised for the occasion as the Bolshoi. They erected a stage like that of the Bolshoi, and brought in the familiar rostrum, seats, and flowers. Two thousand NKVD men acted the part of an audience. Trains standing at the platforms served as dressing rooms and buffet bars.

  That night German planes tried for five hours to breach the city’s air defenses, but failed. Stalin rose to speak at 7:30. His speech was followed by the traditional concert. Meanwhile, preparations for the parade went on in deep secrecy. It would take place under the open sky, a stone’s throw from the enemy. It was timed to begin two hours earlier than usual. A field hospital was set up in GUM, in case the parade was bombed. He gave orders that it should not be canceled even if the bombers broke through. Those taking part in the parade did not know themselves what they were rehearsing for. They thought that these were normal training exercises. The parade was marshaled by Artemiev, the Kremlin commandant, and inspected by Marshal Budenny, a great favorite with the public. Troops taking part were already lined up on Red Square at 5:00 A.M. A cold wind was blowing. But God came to the rescue again. As it got light, a heavy snowfall set in, which camouflaged the troops and made flying impossible. Budenny rode out from the Kremlin gate on his white horse. The marshal had put on weight, but had not forgotten how to ride. He rode gracefully over the slippery cobblestones.

>   The Boss’s famous speech to these troops, addressed “from the Mausoleum,” was in fact recorded in a Kremlin studio. On film, the fact that his breath did not steam as it left his mouth was a giveaway. In this speech he recalled the victorious military leaders of the tsarist empire, then sent the troops straight from the parade ground to the front.

  THE BATTLE

  Zhukov, now Commissar for Defense in place of Timoshenko, was bold and above all ruthless, very like the Boss himself. He would see to it that the troops would “shrink from no sacrifices for the sake of victory.”

  When Hitler launched his attack on Moscow on December 1 his soldiers had already come more than five hundred miles: what could a mere twenty more mean to them? Just one final spurt was needed. A German reconnaissance battalion was—with difficulty—forced back from the Khimki Bridge. They were practically in Moscow. The panicky city was haunted by rumors of German motorcyclists breaking through to Sokolniki Park—twenty minutes’ drive from the Kremlin.

  In reality the German attack was getting nowhere. Zhukov’s armies were fighting to the death and the attack had begun to run out of steam. Guderian’s tanks were brought to a standstill by the fierce cold. The whole two-hundred-mile-long arc of the attacking German forces came to a halt, paralyzed by the cruel frost. That was when Zhukov brought in his fresh reserves, and the battle for Moscow began in earnest. Carnage on such a scale had never before been seen. More than one hundred divisions were involved in the battle. Fresh units fought beside those hardened by bloody retreat. The Germans could not withstand the shock.

  The blitzkrieg was in ruins, and Hitler’s army was facing a winter for which it was unprepared. It was the turning point of the war. There were still victories ahead for Hitler, but he would never recover from this blow.

  THE SUPREME COMMANDER

  Unlike his comrades-in-arms from the Civil War, Voroshilov and Budenny, Stalin had succeeded in becoming a modern military leader. The price of this knowledge was millions of lives, and he paid it without turning a hair. His office at GHQ was the heart of the army. His marshals have portrayed him at work there. Konyev has written: “His body language was extraordinarily limited, and it was impossible to guess from the look on his face what he was thinking.… There was never a superfluous gesture, his carefully contrived manner had become second nature. He maintained his reserve even at times of victory and rejoicing.” And Zhukov observed: “Usually calm and reasonable, he lapsed occasionally into extreme exasperation … his looks became grim and harsh. I don’t know many people who would have been brave enough to stand up to his anger.”

  He spent whole days, and often nights as well, at headquarters. Zhukov wrote: “In discussion he made a powerful impression.… His ability to summarize an idea precisely, his native intelligence, his unusual memory … his staggering capacity for work, his ability to grasp the essential point instantly, enabled him to study and digest quantities of material which would have been too much for any ordinary person.… I can say without hesitation that he was master of the basic principles of the organization of front-line operations and the deployment of front-line forces.… He controlled them completely and had a good understanding of major strategic problems. He was a worthy Supreme Commander.”

  Stalin and his marshals together went on to devise a new strategy that would win the major battles in that great war. The essence of their strategy was the coordination of timing and objectives for armies operating simultaneously on a number of fronts, all obeying his will alone. The zone in which Soviet armies assumed the offensive was sometimes as much as four hundred miles long. These gigantic operations involved thousands and thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of planes, hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the field of battle, tens of thousands of whom would shortly be in their graves.

  The next great milestone in the war was the city that bore his name—Stalingrad. This was the key to the oil and grain of the South. He had once commanded the defense of that city; now the outcome of the war was to be decided there. He turned the city into a wasteland stuffed with scrap iron and corpses, but he would not let it be surrendered. By December 1942 he had prepared a counterattack that defied belief, with a huge number of troops and thousands of tanks and planes. His armies to the north and south clasped the German armies in their embrace and held them while hunger and cold slowly forced them to their knees. Field Marshal Paulus sat helpless, at his wits’ end, in the basement of a department store, the command post of his dying army. On February 2, 1943, the German army at Stalingrad ceased to exist.

  Stalin provided his fellow Muscovites with a new entertainment. I can still remember the cry heard in my childhood: “They’re bringing them!” We war children would rush out to see German prisoners of war led along Gorky Street, ragged, dejected, unshaven, in filthy greatcoats. We were his pupils, and we happily threw stones at them. The militiamen lining the street scolded us with a friendly smile.… We took that as encouragement, and resumed pelting the prisoners with well-aimed stones.

  THE SPECTRAL CITY

  Three cities became symbols in that war: Moscow, Stalingrad, and the city named after the first God-Man, Leningrad. There was fierce fighting around the former capital of the tsarist empire. The fascists thought it a good idea to drive captured women, children, and old people before their attacking forces. Soviet soldiers were reluctant to open fire, but a typical Stalin edict was issued immediately: “Hit the Germans and their delegates, whoever these may be, with all you have, mow down your enemies, no matter whether they are voluntary or involuntary enemies.” Children, old people, the sanctity of human life, these things had long since ceased to mean anything to him. Nothing mattered except his goal, and victory.

  The Germans had already reached the outskirts of Leningrad, and Lake Ladoga, in July 1941. The city was cut off. Only a pathetic little trickle of foodstuffs reached it over the icebound lake. The siege that followed lasted nine hundred days. But Stalin did not surrender the city.

  Olga Friedenburg, a scholar of some note who lived through the blockade, wrote in her diary at the time: “People stand in line in the fierce cold waiting for a delivery of horrible bread wet through after ten hours in a biting frost. The electricity was cut off long ago, the streetcars aren’t running, apartments, pharmacies, office buildings are all shrouded in darkness. If you go into a shop you have to grope for the end of the line, or wait till you hear a voice. The salespeople work by the light of a stinking candle.… There are no matches in the city, the piped water supply came to an end long ago, and toilets cannot be flushed. There is no fuel, and so no electricity. There are air raids every day, night and day, with only short breaks.… The noise of bombs exploding round the clock drives people mad.” Every day thousands of hungry people collapsed in the streets. “They would go to visit friends for half an hour, sit down, and die. They would leave home on business and die on the way. Thousands of people sat down on the ground for a rest, couldn’t get up, and froze to death. The militia immediately stole their ration cards.”

  These spectral creatures, scarcely able to crawl, had to sign up in citizens’ militia units. “They were sent for and invited to volunteer,” Friedenburg recalled. “Their fear prevailed over their weakness, they marched and marched, fell down in the ranks, and died. There was no limit to what Soviet man could take, he could be stretched like a thing made of elastic.… No suffering inflicted on a living people … nothing whatsoever could have made the regime surrender that city. True to the usual law, omnipotence trampled human beings under foot, and spoke of patriotism and the heroism of the besieged.”

  This monologue of despair was unfair, in that if Stalin had surrendered Leningrad the lives of the besieged would not have been saved. Witness Hitler’s directive of September 29, 1941: “The Führer has vowed to wipe St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. The objective is to approach the city as closely as possible and destroy it totally by artillery fire and constant attacks from the air. Requests to be allowed to surrender will
be rejected.… We have no interest in preserving any part of the population of that large city.”

  And another question: could the Boss have broken the blockade earlier? The answer seems to be yes. But, for tactical reasons, he used the slavish patriotism of people who died without complaint for ninety days and nights. Perhaps no other nation in the world could have tolerated this—only this people trained by him to be so meekly obedient. Was it really true, then, that only one form of totalitarianism could destroy another? And save humanity?

  INTERLUDE: A FAMILY IN WARTIME

  HIS DAUGHTER’S “TERRIBLE DISCOVERY”

  In a letter from Sochi just before the war, Svetlana told Stalin: “I’m not going to write any more ‘orders.’ I’m no longer a child to amuse myself in that way.”

  Stalin’s daughter was fifteen on the eve of war. She had grown up, and her father knew it. Svetlana describes how furious he was when he saw her with bare knees and arms. He scolded her, gave orders that her skirts should be longer, that she should wear trousers. She did not realize that he was jealous, that he did not want to share her with any other man. After all, Lenin’s sister had devoted her whole life to that great leader! But Stalin understood his daughter’s temperament. He attached an NKVD watchdog to her. She went everywhere under escort—to school, to concerts, to the theater. He told her that it was for her safety.

  Evacuated to Kuibyshev, she pined for Moscow. “I don’t like this city.… There are such a lot of … lame people, blind people, cripples of all sorts. Every fifth person you see in the streets is a cripple.” The men who weren’t cripples were in his army.

  Stalin did not allow his daughter to come home for good until the summer of 1942, when the Germans had been driven back from Moscow. Unknown to him, she was a different Svetlana. In the preceding winter she had, as she later wrote, been overwhelmed by a terrible discovery. Someone had thoughtlessly given her a British magazine to read, and her mother’s suicide was mentioned as a generally known fact. She was “stunned.” She didn’t believe her eyes.