The Boss did not lay a finger on them either, for the present. He did, however, give them a warning. Prokofiev was then living at his dacha with his young second wife. His Italian ex-wife, Lina, a singer, lived in Moscow with their two sons. At the end of February both sons arrived at the dacha. Prokofiev realized at once what had happened. He went outside to talk to them, and they told him that Lina had been arrested. It was enough to frighten him once and for all.
Prokofiev’s son Svyatoslav said that “after all that, my father suffered from exhausting headaches and chronic hypertomia. He was a different man, he always looked sad and hopeless. His ex-wife, the Italian singer, was already in a prison camp, hauling slop buckets on a handcart. The writer Evgenia Taratuta, who was in the camp with her, remembered that she ‘sometimes stopped pulling the handcart and stood beside the slop buckets ecstatically telling us about Paris.’ ” Lina would outlive both Stalin and Prokofiev—she returned from the camp and died in 1991.
Shostakovich, too, tried to make the best of it. He wrote incidental music for propaganda films such as Meeting on the Elbe, The Fall of Berlin and Unforgettable 1919. He also wrote a symphony called 1905 and another called 1917. Stalin was already dead when Shostakovich addressed this statement to the party: “Recently I have felt more strongly than ever how much I need to be in the ranks of the Communist Party. In my creative work I have always been guided by the Party’s inspiring instructions.” So wrote the greatest composer of the century. He too had been frightened once and for all.
The Central Committee’s successive edicts on the arts were issued in pamphlet form, and the whole country studied them in “political education groups.” The intelligentsia trembled and were silent.
Against this background of ideological pogroms, arrests were already being made. The victims were relatives of the great ones of this world—chosen so that everyone would learn what was happening and be afraid.
Peter Shirshov, People’s Commissar for the Merchant Marine, had many titles. He was an academician, had won fame as a member of expeditions to the North Pole, and was a hero of the Soviet Union. He was married to a beautiful thirty-year-old actress, Zhenya Garkusha. They were madly in love with each other. In 1946 she was arrested, and he was not even told why. His daughter Marina has preserved Peter Shirshov’s diary.
In spite of everything I am writing because I can no longer bear the horror of it. Another Saturday has gone by, and at 4 A.M. I simply can’t find myself anything more to do in the Commissariat. I go home reluctantly, knowing that I shan’t be able to sleep anyway. It is a struggle to keep going, 13–14 hours at work—and then what? What can I do with myself when I’m alone, what can I do to get away from myself? …
Zhenya, my poor Zhenya.… It was Sunday, like now, and you whispered to me “Shirsh, we shall have another little Marina soon, but let’s hope for a boy this time!” Then you talked about the marvelous time we would have together in the South.… It was quite dark when we got up to leave the balcony, and as we went in you snuggled up to me and said “Shirsh! if only you knew how happy I am with you!” That was how our last day passed. Next morning there was the usual mad rush at work—telephones ringing, papers to sign, coded messages, telegrams. Then at 7 P.M. they sent for me and I was told Zhenya had been arrested. They were waiting for her on the riverbank. She was happy and laughing, and she was just as happy and full of life when she got in the car, with nothing over her light summer frock. Among strange, hostile people.… Once, in a tent on an ice floe, cut off from the world by a blizzard and the polar night, I listened to the wind howling and dreamt of a great love. I always believed in it and was always waiting for it to happen. And finally I’d got what I’d dreamt of—when I was a gray-headed idiot, still as naive as a little boy in my forties. Listen, that’s the wind whistling through the prison bars. How it howls over the roof of the crowded hut they’ve locked your poor Zhenya in.… It will soon be morning. For three months … I kept waiting for something to happen, for a miracle, I didn’t admit it even to myself, but I was expecting Zhenya to return. Time and time again the telephone has rung, my heart has missed a beat, I had a presentiment that it was Zhenya ringing from home—theyd released her! How often have I come home at night and gone into the bedroom quietly in case the miracle had happened—maybe she’s at home, maybe they just haven’t told me. For three months I’ve been trying my hardest to get them to tell me about her, tell me what’s happened to her, and every time I come up against a wall of silence. Nobody tells me anything, and they obviously don’t intend to. Why am I writing all this? I don’t know. I’ve got more than enough time ahead of me. I’m trying to hold out!… I must go on living for your mama’s sake, and yours, little Marina. But I hope you will never know what torment it can be to resist taking the easy way out.… I hope you’ll never know how hard it can be to wrench your hand away from a pistol that has gotten hot in your coat pocket.
Zhenya Garkusha was sent to the gold mines to pan for gold, work so dangerous to human health that women were not normally made to do it. She was thirty-three when she died in the camp. Shirshov remained at his place of work, and held his tongue, as any good Communist should, or any slave. He never found out why she had been arrested. He died of cancer in 1953.
The Boss did not overlook what was left of the Alliluyev family. He had stopped seeing them long ago. They belonged to a forgotten life. Now they would help him reinstate Terror. Beria informed him that Zhenya Alliluyeva, of whom he once had been so fond, was spreading the rumor that her husband had been poisoned. He had never forgiven her for spurning his advances, and for remarrying in a hurry. Beria went to work and in a little while a counterrumor crept around: Pavel had indeed been poisoned, but by his wife! Zhenya had been living with another man and wanted to get rid of her husband, the story went.
Svetlana wrote to her father on December 1: “Papa dearest, about Zhenya. I think your doubts about her arose because she remarried too quickly. She herself has told me more or less why it happened like that.… I shall certainly tell you when you get here … remember that people have said all sorts of things about me too!” Papa dearest, however, was already taking action.
Zhenya’s daughter, Kira Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya, recalled: “It happened on December 10, 1947.… I had just graduated from drama school, and life was beautiful. Then came that ring at the door. I opened it. There were two of them standing there: ‘Can we see Evgenia Alexandrovna?’ I shouted, ‘Mama, two citizens want to see you,’ and went back to my room. A little later I heard Mama walk along the corridor and say loudly, ‘Prison and poverty can’t be kept waiting.’ When I heard that I dashed out. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and left the apartment. When she came back from the camp I asked why she’d walked out so quickly. She said: ‘I realized it was the end, and meant to throw myself down the stairwell from the eighth floor, so that they couldn’t torture me when they got me there.’ [She knew kind Joseph only too well.] But they grabbed her and took her away. Some time later the bell rang in the night. Two men in uniform came in and said, ‘Get dressed and take some warm clothes and 25 rubles, just in case.’ ” That was only a month after her mother’s arrest.
He pinned a charge of conspiring against Stalin on Anna Sergeevna, his wife Nadya’s older sister, and had her jailed. When she returned she was mentally ill and suffered from auditory hallucinations. In 1948 he banished Dzhonik Svanidze, the son of the friends he had executed. The explanation he gave Svetlana was laconic but honest: “They knew too much and chattered too much. And that helps our enemies.”
All Moscow was horrified by these arrests, wondering whether 1937 was about to begin all over again.
1937 REDUX
He had already opened fire on his headquarters staff. The destruction of his henchmen had begun.
Who were these henchmen of his? “The all-powerful favorite” Zhdanov was in reality a hopeless drunkard, a lackey on whom the Boss regularly vented his bad temper. Cunning Beria? It doesn’t say much f
or his cunning that a hundred days after Stalin’s death he failed to spot the very first conspiracy directed against himself. If he can be called cunning at all it is for his skill in divining the Boss’s wishes, and creating the spurious conspiracies which Stalin wanted to see. Beria, like all of them, was a willing workhorse, and no more. Malenkov, that “fat, flabby, cruel toad,” as one of his colleagues called him, was left high and dry when his Leader died. They all had a paranoid fear of the Boss, and observed his first commandment: no thinking for yourself. We need only look at Stalin’s “special files.” Beria reported absolutely everything that happened in the capital, even the discussion of a play in the Maly Theater or the visit of a foreign delegation to a high-rise building—it was all reported to him, read by him, double-checked by him—by the Boss in person. The slightest sign of independence could be fatal. When in 1951 Khrushchev took the initiative in proposing the amalgamation of collective farms into larger units, a bellow of rage followed immediately. Khrushchev had to write a schoolboy letter of apology: “Dear Comrade Stalin—you have perfectly correctly pointed out the mistakes I have made.… I ask you, Comrade Stalin, to help me correct my gross mistake and to minimize the damage done to the Party by my erroneous statement.” Shortly afterward, an attempt to act without authorization destroyed Voznesensky.
No, the Boss’s henchmen were nothing without him. They were handpicked nonentities—chosen because they could not be a danger to him. The idea that they could engage in intrigues of their own is laughable. It was he who organized them in rival groupings and egged them on to destroy each other. One man and one man only stood behind each and every one of the Kremlin cliques: the Boss.
So he began his purge of the country by striking first at his lieutenants. He had grown tired of them. They had got on his nerves. They were overburdened with secrets, and too old. He needed new, obedient young cadres to carry out his will, to realize the Great Dream. The deafening crash of toppled leaders would signal the return of Terror.
As soon as the war was over he had begun harping on his age. His lieutenants, of course, were expected to deny that he was getting old. K. Popovich, one of the Yugoslav leaders who visited Stalin, described how he “took us out to the nearer dacha in the night. A woman served supper on silver dishes without saying a word. Supper, and toasting each other, took a whole hour. Then Stalin started putting gramophone records on and jigging to the music, while Molotov and the others kept calling out ‘Comrade Stalin, how fit you are!’ But his mood suddenly changed and he said: ‘No, I haven’t got long to live now.’ His comrades shouted ‘You’ll live a long time yet. We need you!’ But Stalin shook his head: ‘The laws of physiology are irreversible.’ Then he looked at Molotov and said: ‘But Vyacheslav Mikhailovich will still be around.’ ” Molotov must have broken into a sweat.
He evidently said this on other occasions. Molotov told Chuyev, the poet, that “after the war Stalin thought of retiring and once said at table: ‘Let Vyacheslav do some of the work now. He’s a bit younger than me.’ ” Molotov did not say what his answer was. But we can imagine how passionately he protested. He must surely have been terrified, and thought: It won’t be long now! Nor, indeed, did the Boss keep his lieutenants waiting.
He began by setting a trap. In the President’s Archive I read this telegram from the Boss to Molotov, who was in New York. “14.9.46. The academicians ask you not to object to your election to honorary membership in the Academy of Sciences. Please do agree. Druzhkov.”
Molotov sent a courteous telegram to the Academy expressing his profound gratitude and signing himself “Yours, Molotov.” An angry riposte in cipher followed immediately: “I was astounded by your telegram. Are you really in ecstasies over your election to honorary membership? What did you mean by signing yourself ‘Yours, Molotov’? It seems to me that you, as a statesman of the highest category, ought to show more concern for your dignity.”
Molotov knew then that it had begun. He hastened to do penance. “I can see that I have acted stupidly. Thank you for your telegram.” He knew the Boss’s habits. This was just a beginning. When the time came to destroy him, any excuse would be good enough. “Molotov’s proposed amendments to the draft constitution for Germany must be regarded as incorrect and damaging.” Stone Arse’s seat was getting wobblier all the time. But for the moment, as he undermined Molotov, the Boss was regularly promoting Voznesensky. Mikoyan recalled that “at Lake Ritsa in 1948 Stalin said that he had aged and was thinking about successors. He mentioned N. A. Voznesensky as a possible Chairman of the Council of Ministers and A. Kuznetsov as a possible Secretary General of the Central Committee.” Molotov, with all his experience, must have heaved a sigh of relief when he heard this: the bell had tolled for others. The Boss had fresher quarry in his sights.
The young Politburo member Voznesensky had come to the fore in the war years. An able economist, he was now First Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Stalin’s deputy in that body. Another young man, A. Kuznetsov, one of the Secretaries of the Central Committee, acted more and more frequently in alliance with Voznesensky. In some respects Kuznetsov resembled Kirov: he had great charm, he was honest, and he was a hard worker. And, like Kirov, he had previously led the Leningrad Communists. The Boss had brought him to Moscow as a secretary of the Central Committee, making him in effect second man in the Party hierarchy, and had entrusted him with supervision of Beria’s two ministries, State Security and Internal Affairs. Unlike Stalin’s other henchmen, Kuznetsov and Voznesensky were substantial figures, capable of making independent decisions. Such men had been needed during the war. But the war was now over—and they seemed incapable of understanding that fact.
The Voznesensky-Kuznetsov partnership had obviously arrogated too much power. Stalin would aim his first murderous blow at them. Beria and Malenkov at once sensed what the Boss had in mind. Beria, in particular, resented Kuznetsov’s supervising role and could not wait to assail him. The dogs were straining at the leash.
When Stalin made V. Abakumov Minster of State Security, Kuznetsov welcomed his appointment in an enthusiastic speech. He did not know that, on the Boss’s orders, he himself was under investigation by the ministry which he nominally supervised. Abakumov would subsequently state that “the case against Voznesensky and Kuznetsov was dictated by the highest authority,” that is, by the Boss.
It began with a nonsensical quibble. The Leningrader Kuznetsov was, so it was said, spoken of as the city’s “chief,” and Leningrad Party members also called Voznesensky “chief.” The two of them decided, without informing the Boss, to organize an all-Russian trade fair in Leningrad. The fair itself was unimportant; it was the principle that mattered. From January 10 to 20, 1949, Leningrad hosted the trade fair. Malenkov promptly charged Kuznetsov, and certain senior officials in the city, of pandering to Leningrad’s self-importance and of organizing the fair without informing the Central Committee or the Council of Ministers. The Politburo immediately ruled that Kuznetsov had made a “demagogic bid for popularity” with the Leningrad organization, shown disrespect for the Central Committee, and attempted to “alienate the city from the Central Committee.” This nonsense was enough to deprive the previously all-powerful secretary of all his offices, while Voznesensky was reprimanded.
For thousands of Party functionaries the nonsense had an ominous ring. In “in-depth language” it meant: “Get ready!” Get ready for a repetition of the days they remembered so well—when the Zinovievite organization was destroyed. They braced themselves, and they were not disappointed in their expectations. The Boss was on the warpath.
While the case against Voznesensky and Kuznetsov was cobbled together, Stalin went on undermining Molotov, who might be thought by some to symbolize the previous foreign policy of the USSR and friendship with the West. His demise was meant to emphasize that friendship with the West was at an end. And someone had to answer for the alliance with Hitler!
A NEW POGROM
Moreover, Molotov’s wife was J
ewish. In the Boss’s new plan, a leading role was reserved for the Jews.
He began with the “cosmopolitans,” and the Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC), a symbol of close relations with the United States. As far back as October 1946 the Ministry of State Security had produced a secret memorandum on “nationalist manifestations among JAC personnel”: “The JAC makes international contacts with bourgeois public figures without observing the proper class approach … and exaggerates the Jewish contribution to the achievements of the USSR, which is a manifestation of nationalism.” The Boss gave orders to whip up a case against the JAC, but the great Mikhoels stood in his way; since the war he had become far too famous for the Boss’s liking.
Mikhoels’s death was surrounded by legends. In 1953, Beria would hasten to dissociate himself from his late master’s misdeeds by disclosing “breaches of legality.” The relevant documents, however, remained inaccessible for forty years. What follows is an extract from a letter written by Beria to the Presidium (the Politburo was so renamed in 1952) of the Central Committee:
A review of the documentation in the Mikhoels case has shown that … by order of the Minister of State Security, V. Abakumov, an illegal operation for the physical liquidation of Mikhoels was carried out in Minsk in February 1948. In this connection V. Abakumov was interrogated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.… Abakumov testified that “in 1948 Stalin instructed me to organize the liquidation of Mikhoels as a matter of urgency assigning special people to the case. We knew that Mikhoels, and a friend of his whose name I do not remember, had arrived in Minsk. When this was reported to Stalin he gave instructions that the liquidation was to be carried out there and then, in Minsk. When Stalin was informed that Mikhoels had been liquidated he expressed his appreciation and ordered that medals should be awarded, which was done. Various plans for the removal of Mikhoels had been suggested. The one adopted was to invite him, via the secret police, to a social gathering at night, send a car to his hotel, take him to the grounds of an out-of-town dacha belonging to L. F. Tsanava, Minister of State Security of the Belorussian Republic, liquidate him there, then take him to an unfrequented backstreet in the city, lay his body on the road leading to his hotel, and run over it with a truck. This was done. To ensure secrecy Golubov, the agent of the Ministry of State Security who took Mikhoels to the ‘party,’ was also liquidated.”
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