Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  The NKVD reports are still in his files: “A large number of professional beggars have turned up in Arzamas region. The largest concentration of beggars is round the ‘Dawn’ refinery. The refinery disposes of its waste products to the local population as animal feed. The beggar element now uses these waste products as food. Up to 20,000 people so far have visited the territory of the refinery.—L. Beria.” The beggars helped to reinforce the camp population.

  The country desperately needed a dose of terror. The counterespionage service zealously intercepted letters from the front, Beria regularly reported their contents, and the Boss saw that the worst had happened: together with a sense of personal responsibility, the war had reawakened independent thought. A relentless struggle with independent thinking would soon follow.

  VENGEANCE

  He also solved the problem of prisoners of war liberated from German camps. They had to pay for disobeying his orders to die on the battlefield. They had dared to survive as prisoners. And of course he had in mind the dangerous ideas they would have “picked up” (a favorite phrase in his propaganda) in multinational camps.

  Their fate, then, was decided in advance. These unfortunates, who had survived years of nightmare as prisoners, and lived to see their country victorious, were to be sent straight from German to Soviet prison camps.

  Marshal Zhukov told a plenary meeting of the Central Committee in 1957 that “126,000 officers who returned from captivity were stripped of their rank and sent to the camps.”

  A sad fate also awaited civilians forcibly deported to Germany by the Germans. In Stalin’s logic anyone in contact with foreigners was infected with an incurable disease. These plague victims had to be segregated from healthy people. They too were destined to swell the population of his camps.

  Many of those due to return were in areas occupied by the Allies. They knew that, according to the Boss, only “traitors to their homeland let themselves be taken prisoner” and begged not to be dispatched to the USSR. But the Boss, as always, had provided for this. At the Yalta conference he had concluded an agreement with Roosevelt and Churchill under which all Soviet citizens taken prisoner or interned by the enemy during the war must be returned to the USSR.

  The Allies relentlessly carried out this agreement. In his book Victims of Yalta, Count Nikolai Tolstoy-Miloslavsky, great-nephew of Lev Tolstoy, presents evidence collected from eyewitnesses and from participants in the tragedy. Sergeant D. Lawrence (one of the British military escort for motor vehicles carrying Soviet citizens to be handed over to Soviet representatives) told the following story: “When the former prisoners arrived at Graz (Austria), where the Soviet reception point was located, a woman rushed to the parapet of the viaduct over the River Mur … threw her child into the water and then jumped in herself.… Men and women were herded together into a huge concentration camp fenced with barbed wire.… That nightmare will remain with me for as long as I live.”

  But these were citizens of the USSR. And as the Boss’s favorite hero, Ivan the Terrible, wrote about his subjects: “The tsar is free to reward them and free to punish them [put them to death] also.”

  The Boss also succeeded in claiming another set of victims. Thousands of his former enemies, who had fought in the White armies during the Civil War and then fled from Russia, found themselves in countries now occupied by his armies: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. His secret police sought them out and deported them to the USSR, to the camps.

  Some of his former foes, however, were in areas of the defeated German Reich occupied by the Western Allies. But although only “those who had been Soviet citizens before being deported to Germany or taken prisoner” were supposed to be repatriated, he obtained from his allies what should have been impossible: the Cossack General Krasnov, General Shkuro (awarded the British Order of the Bath for his feats of valor against the Bolsheviks in the Civil War), General Solomatin, and General Sultan-Girei were handed over by the British.

  In vain did Sultan-Girei don the uniform of a tsarist general, in vain did General Kuchuk-Ulugai flourish his Albanian passport before a British officer’s eyes. They were handed over by the British to officers of the NKVD. The Boss had compelled his allies to do his bidding.

  When they heard what had happened, thousands of Cossack émigrés in Austria fled to the mountains. But British patrols hunted down the refugees and handed them over to the Soviet authorities.

  The Boss’s old enemies, the Civil War heroes Andrei Shkuro (now sixty) and Peter Krasnov (now seventy-eight) were put on trial, anathematized by the press, condemned, and hanged.

  The church also received his attention. By now he had forgotten his appeal to God. Soso’s youthful fears seemed ridiculous to Stalin. It was he—the God Stalin—who had won the war, the greatest war in history. It was he who had liberated the peoples.

  When he reinstated the Patriarchate he had arranged for close supervision of the church. The Council on Church Affairs watched its every move. Formally, the council was answerable to the Council of People’s Commissars (from 1946, the Council of Ministers). In practice, he put a very different body—the NKVD—in charge of the Council for Church Affairs and installed an NKVD colonel, G. Karpov, at its head. Karpov was also head of the Fifth Department of the NKVD, whose assignment was to combat the “counterrevolutionary clergy.” In the NKVD Karpov’s duty was to fight the church, in the council to assist it.

  But he also wished to show his gratitude. In 1947 he invited Metropolitan Ilya to the Soviet Union, and awarded him a Stalin Prize. The prelate would not accept it. He explained to the ex-seminarist that a monk did not need money, and donated $200,000, supplementing the Stalin Prize with money of his own, to a fund for the relief of war orphans.

  In July 1945 Stalin traveled by train to Potsdam for the peace conference. Seventeen thousand NKVD men were on duty along the route, six to fifteen security men for every kilometer of the line. Eight NKVD armored trains stood by. All this was a demonstration of the might of the God Stalin. The sacred train sped over the ruined land, filling his subjects with dread.

  25

  THE LEADER’S PLAN

  MOLOTOV AND “DRUZHKOV”

  Stalin’s fellow honeymooners were missing from the conference. Roosevelt was in his grave and Churchill flew from Potsdam to take part in a general election and did not return—the Labour Party, led by Attlee, had won. The Boss commented that Western democracy must be a wretched system if it could exchange a great man like Churchill for Attlee.

  The Western Allies, then, were represented by Truman and Attlee. Stalin had succeeded in outsmarting two Titans; what hope had these two against him?

  The partition of postwar Europe went on, at Potsdam and afterward, all through 1945. In the course of the negotiations the Western Allies were greatly impressed by Molotov. This was when the enigmatic Foreign Minister acquired a sort of charisma. The westerners were fascinated by his extraordinary taciturnity, his steely inflexibility, his cunning gamesmanship. Molotov mesmerized them with his slow responses, and at times perplexed them by refusing to say either “yes” or “no” to the simplest of questions. How did Molotov suddenly become a great diplomat? Documents in the President’s Archive gave me the answer to this riddle.

  It turns out that throughout 1945 Molotov received minutely detailed instructions from a certain “Druzhkov” in Moscow. These telegrams have not been published to this day. It is not difficult to work out who was hiding behind the pseudonym “Druzhkov.” Who would be giving orders to Molotov, the second man in the state? It was, of course, Stalin. By signing himself “Druzhkov” (which in Russian suggests “friendliness”) the Boss was evidently demonstrating his affection for Molotov. In these coded messages the Boss dictated literally every diplomatic move Molotov made, just as he had dictated his policies at home. Molotov the Soviet Metternich did not exist. There was only Molotov the transmitter of the Boss’s wishes, who dared not make a single decision independently. Hence his awe-inspiring le
isureliness, his enigmatic ambiguity in the simplest of matters.

  In the last days of Hitler’s Germany, while the Allies-and-rivals were engaged in their headlong race for Berlin, the future of Poland was also being decided. Truman and Churchill in a joint démarche had stood firm for a democratic Poland. Druzhkov ordered Molotov not to give ground, however, and even told him exactly what to say. “The joint message from President Truman and Churchill is mild in tone, but in content shows no improvement. If they question the general principles of the Polish program you may reply that these principles are set out in Stalin’s message, and that unless they are accepted you see no possibility of reaching an agreed decision. Druzhkov.”

  Before the conference, Harriman informed Truman that Stalin attached importance to aid from the Allies, that he needed to rebuild his ruined country, and that consequently pressure could be brought to bear on him at Potsdam. The Western Allies, and Truman in particular, who arrived as the Americans were about to carry out a successful test of the A-bomb, braced themselves to defend Poland and as much of Eastern Europe as possible.

  But the moment Truman began asking Stalin to make concessions he was met, to his amazement, with a peremptory and unconditional “nyet.” “Nyet” because his armies had occupied Eastern Europe; “nyet” because he had purchased that “nyet” with the lives of millions of Soviet soldiers. “Nyet,” Molotov echoed, and went on repeating relentlessly, until Stalin had installed his protégé Bierut in Poland.

  On August 9 Stalin joined in the war against Japan. His timing was perfect. Soviet troops shattered the Japanese army in Kwantung. They annexed the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin, avenging tsarist Russia’s defeat by Japan in 1905. What was more, the defeat of Japan and the occupation of Manchuria made it possible for Stalin to support Mao Tse-tung openly. Soviet experts and Soviet weapons helped Mao seize control of Northern and Central China. China, with its enormous reserves of manpower, was about to join in realizing the Great Dream.

  Haggling over the future of Europe continued at the London session of the Council of Foreign Ministers. On September 12 Druzhkov instructed Molotov that “it is essential that you stand firm. No concessions with regard to Romania.” Molotov consulted Druzhkov at every step. “Molotov to Druzhkov. In cipher. 15.9.45. Invited by Attlee this evening to dinner at the Prime Minister’s residence. Attlee and Bevin (Foreign Secretary) were present with their wives. Dinner and after-dinner conversation passed off in a relatively relaxed atmosphere. Attlee, and more particularly Bevin, suggested expanding unofficial contacts between Russian and English peoples. He recommended sending Soviet football teams, and an opera and ballet group to London. It would be good if I could give them more definite answers on both of these matters.” Without instructions from Druzhkov the minister could give no “definite answer” even in the matter of the ballet dancers. He could only maintain his enigmatic silence.

  Druzhkov was assiduous in his fine-tuning. “Should the Allies show signs of intransigence in regard to Romania, Bulgaria, etc., convey to [U.S. Secretary of State James F.] Byrnes and Bevin that the government of the USSR will have difficulty in agreeing to the conclusion of the peace treaty with Italy.”

  Toward the end of the conference of foreign ministers Druzhkov ordered his minister to launch a determined attack: “It would be better to let the Council of Foreign Ministers collapse rather than make substantial concessions to Byrnes. I think we can now tear off the veil of amity, some semblance of which the Americans are so eager to preserve.”

  HONEYMOON OVER

  Molotov, however, still did not fully understand how his master’s mind was working. He knew as well as Harriman that the USSR needed aid from its allies. He continued reporting Western proposals and mentioning possible compromises. And the answer was always an ear-splitting “no.” “27.9.45. The Allies are putting pressure on you to break your will, force you into making concessions—obviously you must be absolutely inflexible. The conference may end in complete failure. Even if it does we need shed no tears.”

  Molotov finally began to understand. It was desperately important for him to anticipate the Boss’s secret wishes. His very life depended on it. Druzhkov wanted the foreign ministers’ conference to end in failure. He did not intend to cooperate with the Allies any longer. The honeymoon with the capitalists was over. Molotov immediately became icily arrogant. Harriman was mistaken: in 1945 Stalin not only did not want help from the Allies, he was eager to part company with them. But why?

  There were several reasons. One was that he wanted to hold on to occupied Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and to forget his promises about “percentages of influence.” He intended to create a powerful, integrated socialist camp opposing the West. Molotov changed his tune. He quarreled openly, and often, with the other foreign ministers and repulsed every attempt to moderate his demands.

  After the Americans dropped the atomic bomb, victory went to their heads. Since they were obviously about to lose China, they concentrated on the future of Japan. The Boss resented what he saw as an attempt to sideline him, and he let loose one of his famous “raucous no’s”: “26.9.45. To Molotov. In cipher. I consider it the height of impudence on the part of the Americans and the British, who regard themselves as our allies, that they have refused to give us a proper hearing on the question of the Control Commission in Japan.” His recommended remedy (one of his favorites) was blackmail: “We have information that the Americans have laid hands on gold reserves in Japan estimated at 1–2 billion dollars, and have made the British their accomplices. You must drop a hint that we see this as the reason why the Americans and British are opposed to the organization of a Control Commission, and are unwilling to allow us any part in matters Japanese.” Shortly after this telegram, Harriman presented Molotov with a note on the Control Commission: “30.9.45. An Allied Military Council will be established under the presidency of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. The members of the Council will be the USSR, China, and the British Commonwealth.” Stalin had won again, in spite of the bomb.

  THE BOMB

  The Potsdam conference had been timed to coincide with the first test of the twentieth century’s superweapon, the nuclear bomb. At the conference, Truman was delighted to hear that “the baby has been born.” The hegemony of Stalin’s war machine was no more. Truman’s great moment had arrived: he triumphantly informed Stalin that the superweapon had been tested. But Stalin was remarkably unperturbed by Truman’s announcement. The president could only suppose that the aged generalissimo had failed to understand how powerful the new weapon was.

  If the Boss appeared unmoved by Truman’s announcement it was because he had been kept informed about the “baby’s” progress long before its birth. How this grand old man of the theater must have smiled to himself when Truman moved in to stun him with the news. In fact, the damnable new weapon had troubled him all along. It meant life or death to the Great Dream. He had been frantically trying to catch up in the nuclear race for some time. He had started very late, but, as always, he was determined to catch up with a single bound.

  In the Gorbachev period, the Archive of the October Revolution took over from the KGB “Comrade Beria’s Special Files.” These files included position papers and reports, stamped “Top Secret,” meant for the eyes of the almighty head of the NKVD. One of these files, for 1946, contained an inspector’s progress report on construction projects No. 817 (Kurchatov’s) and No. 813 (Kikoin’s). Isaac Kikoin and Igor Kurchatov were Soviet physicists engaged in developing a nuclear bomb.

  In 1946, Stalin divided Beria’s all-powerful NKVD department into two ministries—State Security and Internal Affairs. Beria, as a Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers, continued to have overall responsibility for both top-secret departments. His loyal henchman Merkulov was in charge of State Security at first. But the Boss did not like this arrangement, and he replaced Merkulov with someone unconnected with Beria, Viktor Abakumov, the former head of Smersh (the army’s security organiza
tion). Smersh had not confined itself to counterespionage, but had kept a sharp lookout for political unreliability, had intervened in the appointment of commanders, and had earned notoriety with its ruthless executions at the front.

  It was to Beria and his secret departments that the Boss had thought it best to entrust the creation of the bomb. In this context Beria was like Molotov in his diplomatic activity—merely a workhorse driven by the Boss.

  When he joined the nuclear race, his scientists were far behind. Well before the war, physicists such as Y. Zeldovich, Y. Khariton, G. Flerov, and A. Rusinov had made advances in nuclear research. But neither Stalin nor any other member of the leadership had realized the importance of this work. They were preoccupied with the weaponry of the coming war—tanks, airplanes, big guns. The oscillating needles of laboratory apparatus which so thrilled physicists left them unmoved. When Zeldovich and Khariton worked out the conditions necessary for a nuclear explosion, and estimated its potential force, Stalin was not even informed.

  But then Soviet intelligence relayed from London an item of news which startled him. It came from a theoretical physicist named Klaus Fuchs, a Communist émigré from Germany working in Britain with a team which was trying to develop an atomic bomb. When Fuchs learned that this work was kept secret from the USSR, he began passing information to the Soviet embassy in London. Soviet intelligence contacted him, and this was when the Boss at last appreciated the potential of the new weapon. He decided that the quickest way to close a dangerous gap was to put Beria in charge of a Soviet nuclear program. Beria’s spies would obtain the necessary information. Moreover, Beria’s department had unlimited resources. Many brilliant scientists were held in the sharashki, the prisons which were also scientific research establishments. The total secrecy of everything to do with Beria’s department guaranteed the secrecy of the nuclear program.