When he banqueted with his henchmen, clean plates, cutlery, and wineglasses stood near a luxurious buffet. It was self-service, so that there would be no servants to overhear their conversation. From time to time he would call for a clean tablecloth. The servants would appear, take the festive tablecloth by its four corners, and make a bundle of it—crockery, uneaten food, and all. All would then hear the sound of fine cut glass breaking. Every dish was accompanied by a certificate: “No poisonous substances found.” A doctor retained for this purpose periodically tested the air. I. Orlov, commandant of the dacha, said that “portraits of the Politburo hung in the room where they gathered. He liked each of them to sit under his own portrait.” The portraits of Voznesensky and Kuznetsov had by then been removed. Molotov was no longer invited, but, knowing that staying close to the Boss meant survival, turned up anyway looking dejected, like a faithful dog. The Boss now openly sneered at the former head of government, calling him an “American spy.” He knew that several of the portraits would shortly vanish.
They whiled away the small hours by telling dirty jokes. Among his henchmen he liked using obscene language. He made his guests drink too much. They dared not refuse: to do so meant that they had something to hide and were afraid that drink would loosen their tongue. They would play practical jokes of the sort his daughter Svetlana describes—put a tomato on someone’s chair as he stood up to propose a toast, sprinkle salt in a neighbor’s wineglass. Or push someone into the shallow pond on the grounds. They were happy: as long as he was making fun of them it meant that he was not angry. He sucked his pipe and watched the humiliation of the living dead. The feasting would end at 4:00 A.M. After that he allowed the exhausted buffoons to go home to bed. His own lonely night was not yet over.
After they had gone he would work in his study, or in the garden. He liked cutting flowers at night, using pruning shears by lamplight. His guards would pick up the severed heads. But his hands were not what they had been. They trembled, and he often cut himself. When a paramedic was called in to dress the cuts, his hands trembled too with fear. Stalin would laugh and bandage his finger himself. Toward morning he slept a little—sometimes, in the summer, on a trestle bed under the stairs to the second floor, covering his face with his cap so that the early morning sun would not disturb him. In winter he liked tobogganing on the grounds. But he did this less often. His rheumatism was getting worse, his legs hurt, and he had become very irritable.
Of the many rooms in the dacha he chose one and practically lived there. The servant Valechka made up his bed on the sofa, and he took his meals at his desk, clearing a little space among the clutter of books and papers. A portrait of Lenin hung on the wall. The ex-seminarist kept a lamp burning beneath it day and night: the eternal flame illuminating the God Lenin’s face.
When the Politburo clowns were not around, he liked talking to his guards. These semiliterate people were now his best friends: he discussed things with them, and told stories about his years in exile, exaggerating as old men do. He lived more and more in the past. “He was lonely, I felt sorry for him, he showed his age,” one former member of his guard told me.
This pathetic old man was in fact the beast of prey he always had been. The aged leopard was resting, preparing to spring. The great purge he had planned was already under way, throughout the country.
As in 1937, members of his own bodyguard began disappearing. “The old fellow couldn’t prove his innocence,” he would say sadly. He really was sorry for them. But that was the way it had to be. All the old hands had to disappear. Vlasik would shortly have to go, like Pauker before him. The man who had commanded his guard for many years and was burdened with so many secrets would be arrested in 1952.
The year 1950, however, was a quiet one of secret murders. One August night, on Stalin’s orders, dozens of high officers, including Gordov and Rybalchenko, were shot. They were followed in autumn by a large number of people arrested in connection with the Leningrad affair. The crematorium near the Donskoi Monastery worked overtime, and the ashes of fresh victims were regularly tipped into the bottomless grave number 1.
STORM CLOUDS
Meanwhile preparations for the next big show had already begun.
A number of doctors employed in the clinic of the Stalin Automobile Works (ZIS), the largest in the country, were arrested, together with some senior ZIS executives, a few bureaucrats, and even a woman journalist who had written about ZIS. The names of those arrested told their own story: Aron Finkelstein, David Smorodinsky, Miriam Eisenstadt, Edward Lifshits. They were all Jews.
All the accused were shot in November 1950.
He was warming up, in preparation for the “Kremlin doctors” event. It would give the interrogators a little practice. The “ZIS case,” as some called it, attracted no publicity whatsoever.
In his last years he published two pamphlets, one concerned with Marxism and linguistics, the other with the economics of socialism.
It had been a long time since he had treated the country and the Party to one of his excursions into Marxist theory. The war had prevented it. But Leninist tradition demanded that the Leader should be a great theorist.
Did he write these two pamphlets himself? No. In both cases the original idea was his, but he graciously permitted his academicians to do some of the work for him. He was, however, far from idle. He rewrote them both, from start to finish, and also added certain previously undisclosed ideas of his own.
In Economic Problems of Socialism, for instance, he had a great deal to say about the struggle for peace. He called on a favorite ploy of his: as he prepared for war, he praised the “peace partisans,” who were active in several countries under the tutelage of Soviet secret agents, secretly implying that they were meant to become a fifth column in the rear of his future enemy. “In some countries,” he wrote, “the struggle for peace will develop into a struggle for socialism.” In “in-depth language” this meant: “through the peace movement we shall promote rebellion and revolution.”
He dealt also with the likelihood of war, arguing in particular that war between capitalist countries was inevitable. In “in-depth language” this meant: “we shall set them on each other as we did in Hitler’s day.” At the same time he tried, as had Lenin, to reassure the Western “deaf-mutes.” He declared that “war between capitalist countries is more likely than war between the socialist and capitalist camps,” but went on to say that war was not inevitable once imperialism was destroyed. Only when the Great Dream prevailed would the miseries of the human race come to an end.
As soon as these works were published, they were extravagantly praised. Eminent philologists and economists wrote innumerable articles on the renascence of their disciplines. Dissertations and multivolume studies were planned.
The campaign expanded, and shortly all branches of scholarship were reporting that Stalin’s pamphlets had marked a major turning point. The God on earth had vouchsafed his worshipers a revelation. He had done so not only to gratify his vanity. Like the Short Course in the History of the Communist Party, which had appeared after the Great Terror, these works were intended to mark the beginning of a new era. He was writing for the future, for those who would survive the great bloodletting.
The destruction of his top people was about to begin. In 1952 he convened the Nineteenth Party Congress after an interval of thirteen years. He himself spoke only at the end of the Congress. Everyone knew that he was feeling ill. Khrushchev recalled that “he spoke for five to seven minutes and said to us afterward: ‘There you are—I can still do it!’ We looked at our watches: he’d spoken for five to seven minutes. If that was all he could manage, we came to the conclusion that he was physically very weak.”
He had deceived his wretched associates yet again. A plenary meeting of the Central Committee took place immediately after the Congress, and there the “physically weak” Stalin made a long and passionate speech. The writer Konstantin Simonov, who was present, described the occasion in his memoirs.
Many years later he still remembered it with horror:
October 16, 1952. Kremlin. The Sverdlov Hall. He entered from the rear door, accompanied by the other members of the Politburo, and looking grimly purposeful. People began applauding, but he raised his hand to stop them. Malenkov presided, and called on Stalin to speak. His manner was stern and humorless. He spoke without notes.
He fixed his audience with an unwavering gaze. The tone and content of his speech left them numb and dazed. The meeting went on for two hours, and Stalin’s speech took up three-quarters of that time. His main theme was that he was old and that the time was approaching when others would have to carry on his work. “But for the present the job has been entrusted to me, and I’m doing it,” he said bluntly, almost savagely. He called for courage and firmness, the Leninist firmness of 1918. He recalled how Lenin had “thundered away in an incredibly difficult situation, he thundered on, fearing nothing, he just thundered away.” He repeated the word “thundered” three times. He mentioned Lenin—he said—because of the conduct of “certain comrades.”
The “certain comrades” shortly acquired names:
He pitched into Molotov, accusing him of cowardice and defeatism. He spoke of Molotov at length and unsparingly, citing examples of his behavior which have escaped my mind.… I realized that Stalin’s white-hot anger made these accusations a direct threat.… Then he turned on Mikoyan, and his words became angrier and ruder still. There was a terrible silence in the hall. The faces of all the Politburo members were rigid, petrified. They were wondering whom he would attack next. Molotov and Mikoyan were deathly pale. Having demolished Molotov, Stalin mentioned his age again, and said that he could no longer cope with the task entrusted to him. He asked therefore to be relieved of his post as Secretary General, while remaining Chairman of the Council of Ministers. As he said it he stared at the audience. I saw a look of dread on Malenkov’s face—that of a man who realizes that he is in deadly danger. His face, his gestures, his eloquently raised hands beseeched those present to reject Comrade Stalin’s request. And voices behind Stalin’s back hastily called out “No! Please stay!” At once the whole hall was abuzz with calls of “Please, please, stay!”
I remember a play by Brecht in which as people are killed their faces are daubed with white paint, and they stand motionless on the stage until the end of the act. Molotov’s ghastly white face … Malenkov’s sudden pallor … Simonov is right: if they had granted the Boss’s request, Malenkov would have been the first to answer with his head. But it is difficult to imagine what it would have cost the rest of the audience. He needed a repetition of the Seventeenth Congress. He needed traitors, so that he could destroy them wholesale. They dared not oblige. He had trained them too well. But they were doomed just the same.
Then came the elections. In preparation for the massacre, he enlarged the Politburo and changed its name to Presidium. It was, in fact, a facade for a small inner group which now performed the functions of the former Politburo. Neither Molotov nor Mikoyan was admitted to it. Everyone considered them as good as dead.
CROSSES AND QUESTION MARKS
After Stalin’s death Sharapov, an employee of the Party Archive, was sent to sort out the Boss’s library. In one room he found a thick, black-bound volume containing the stenographic record of the next to last Congress, the Eighteenth, in 1939. On the eve of the Nineteenth Congress in 1952 Stalin had looked through the list of those elected to membership or candidate membership of the Central Committee in 1939. He had put crosses against the names of those who, at his own wish, had since ceased to live. He had also generously distributed question marks among the survivors. The first wave of those soon to be purged.
He had acquired an amusing habit. When he destroyed one of his henchmen he gave the victim’s dacha to the next in line. Thus, Beria now had Chubar’s dacha, Molotov had Yagoda’s, Vyshinsky had Serebryakov’s. They all would soon be handing over their dachas to new occupants.
We are now entering the last four and a half months of his reign, the terrible months of preparation for Apocalypse.
At the beginning of the fifties the Boss had authorized Abakumov, the Minister of State Security, to arrest a large number of Georgians from Beria’s native province, Mingrelia, people whom Beria had planted in important posts. When he began the operation the Boss had told Abakumov in so many words to “look for the big Mingrel in the plot.” But progress was slow. Abakumov was obviously afraid to collect evidence against his overlord. The Boss saw how frightened he was, and Abakumov was doomed.
Abakumov was working at the time on the “case of the Kremlin doctors.” Back in 1948 Lidia Timashuk, senior electrocardiographer at the Kremlin Clinic, had reported that Zhdanov was not receiving the appropriate treatment. The Author of the 1936–1937 thriller had remembered her letter, and now saw how it could help his story line. Professor Vovsi, for instance, one of the Kremlin doctors, was related to Mikhoels. This prompted the idea of a proliferating Jewish conspiracy utilizing the world’s most humane profession. Stalin had vivid memories of the anti-Semitic tracts devoured by the mob in his youth—Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the outpourings of the Union of the Russian People. With his mind always on the Great Dream he knew that there were two emotions which could unite society: fear, and hatred of the Jews. His “anticosmopolitan” campaign had been instructive. The results had surpassed his expectations. The public had joined wholeheartedly in vilifying Jews, deliberately distorting the names of their victims. He remembered particularly the enthusiasm of the workers in that factory at the time of the ZIS affair. As one Russian writer put it: “Anti-Semitism makes your vodka stronger and your bread more appetizing.” Before leading his people to the Apocalypse he would bestow on them a great claim to superiority: the most downtrodden of Russians would rejoice in the fact that he was not a Jew.
HIS LAST THRILLER
He had, then, composed his last thriller. The country would shortly learn its contents.
The storyline Stalin concocted went as follows: the sinister Jewish organization Joint was bent on destroying the Russian people. It had probably begun operations in the days of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. Later, its agents, Mikhoels and other loyal instruments of American imperialism, had infiltrated everywhere. Acting on instructions from Joint, the ubiquitous cosmopolitans were poisoning the country’s ideology. But that was the least of it. Traitorous doctors were killing statesmen. (The “murdering doctor” theme had been given an airing at the Bukharin trials. But that was all to the good: it conditioned the public to associate Jews and Terror.)
Zionists had infiltrated even the highest levels of the political elite. This was where Zhemchuzina came in. He had spared her, as he had once spared Zinoviev and Kamenev, for use in a public trial. She was the intermediary through whom Molotov had been recruited as an enemy agent. The Boss could go on from there to write group after group of conspirators into his story. In the early stages they would be destroyed by the Great Mingrel.
But he now had the “socialist camp” to think of, not just the Soviet Union. He therefore broadened the scene of action to embrace the “fraternal countries.” He could not forgive Dimitrov for his alliance with Tito. The Bulgarian leader, who had served him so well, was now dying, and the Boss could easily write his close associates into the thriller. One of them, Traicho Kostov, who was also one of the Cominform leaders, was shot. The charge against him was, of course, espionage.
The thriller also took on the required anti-Semitic complexion in the fraternal countries. In Czechoslovakia Slansky, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, was put on trial, and several other senior officials were tried with him. They had one thing in common: all of them were Jews. Slansky was shot as an agent of international Zionism.
Meanwhile the Boss was completing the recruitment of those who were to implement his terrorist scheme.
Abakumov’s hesitancy in dealing with Beria called for a decision. Abakumov, the cruel torturer who looked like a gallant guardsman
, was consigned to oblivion. Bobkov, the Vice-Chairman of the KGB (the Committee of State Security, which superseded the Ministry in 1953), later remembered “members of the staff wandering round the corridors stunned. They had heard news of Abakumov’s arrest and pored over the Central Committees edict.” The Boss, with his unfailing sense of humor, had removed the ruthless executioner for being insufficiently ruthless. The decree stated that “Chekists have lost their vigilance, they are working in white gloves.” That was enough. In the drive against the “white-gloved” brigade, many heads of departments and branches in the Ministry of the Interior were arrested. Abakumov’s, and so also Beria’s, protégés were routed. Ministry of State Security personnel were urged to “apply ruthless pressure to those under arrest.” Everyone finally realized that this was indeed 1937 all over again. The Boss appointed Ignatiev, a Party official unconnected with Beria, to the Ministry of State Security.
By then a large group of eminent Jewish doctors—Kogan, Feldman, Ettinger, Vovsi, Grinstein, Ginzburg, and others—had been arrested in readiness for the coming trial. Stalin’s story line, however, demanded that the conspiracy should be against himself. There was only one thing to do: he generously added his own doctor, Professor V. Vinogradov, to the list.
In January 1953 a team of secret police brought “Object Number 12”—Polina Zhemchuzina—from her place of banishment to a Moscow jail. A statement made by the “Object” is preserved in the case file: “What the government has decided upon is what must happen.” By then Vinogradov, Kogan, and Vovsi had made the required depositions, which also incriminated Zhemchuzina. The “Object” was taken to the Lubyanka for interrogation. Molotov’s future was no longer in doubt.
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