Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  To be precise, he heard it not from the Boss but from the attachment Khrustalev. It was Khrustalev who passed on the order, and left the dacha next morning. The order came as a surprise to Lozgachev and the other guard, Tukov, because the Boss insisted on strict observance of standing regulations. Those alleged words of his were a breach of his sacrosanct routine: they authorized the attachments not to guard his rooms. And not to keep an eye on each other.

  Lozgachev said, “Next day was Sunday. At 10:00 A.M. we were all in the kitchen as usual, planning the day’s work.”

  Lozgachev, then, obeyed the order, and conscientiously slept through to 10:00 A.M. He obviously could not know what his comrades were doing during the night. What, for instance, was Khrustalev doing, between transmitting the Boss’s improbable order and leaving for home next morning? Lozgachev continued his account:

  At 10:00 A.M. there was “no movement” in his rooms—that was the expression we always used when he was sleeping. 11:00 A.M. came, 12:00—still no movement. It began to seem strange. He usually got up between 11 and 12, but he was sometimes awake as early as 10.

  1:00 P.M. came, and there was still no movement. We began to be alarmed. 3:00 P.M., 4:00 P.M.—no movement. People may have been trying to ring him, but when he wanted to sleep his calls were usually put through to other rooms. I was sitting there with Starostin, and he said: there’s something wrong, what shall we do? We wondered whether to go in there. But he had given the strictest possible orders that if there was “no movement” no one should enter his rooms. He would punish severely anyone who did. So we sat there in our staff quarters—which were connected with his rooms by a corridor twenty-five yards long, entered through a separate door—for six hours, wondering what to do. Suddenly there was a ring from the sentry out in the street. “I see the light’s gone on in the little dining room.” Thank God, we thought, everything’s all right. We were all at our posts, all ready for action … and still nothing happened! 8:00 P.M.—still nothing. We didn’t know what to do. 9:00 P.M.—“no movement.” 10:00 P.M.—still none. I said to Starostin—“You go, you’re in charge of the guard, you ought to be getting worried.” He said “I’m afraid.” I said: “You’re afraid—what do you think I am, a hero?” About then they brought the mail—a packet from the Central Committee. It was usually our job to take the mail straight to him. Or rather mine, the mail was my responsibility. Oh well, I said, I’ll go, if anything happens, guys, don’t let me down. I had to go. As a rule we were careful not to creep up on him, in fact you sometimes knocked on the door specially loudly, so that he’d hear you coming. He reacted very badly if you went into his rooms quietly. You had to walk with a firm step. You didn’t have to look embarrassed, and you didn’t have to stand at attention. If you did he’d say, “Why are you standing at attention like the good soldier Schweik?” Well then, I opened the door, and walked noisily along the corridor, and there’s a room where we put the documents, just before you get to the little dining room, and I went into that room, and looked through the open door to the little dining room, and there was the Boss lying on the floor holding up his right hand like this [here Lozgachev showed me—crooking his arm and raising it slightly]. I was petrified. My hands and legs wouldn’t obey me. He had probably not yet lost consciousness but he couldn’t speak. He had good hearing, he’d obviously heard me coming, and probably raised his hand slightly to call me in to help him. I hurried up to him and said: “Comrade Stalin, what’s wrong?” He’d—you know—wet himself while he was lying there, and was trying to straighten something with his left hand. I said, “Shall I call the doctor, maybe?” He made some incoherent noise—like “Dz—dz …,” all he could do was keep on “dz”-ing. His pocketwatch and a copy of Pravda were lying on the floor. When I picked the watch up the time it showed was 6:30, so 6:30 was when it must have happened to him. I remember there was a bottle of Narzan mineral water on the table, he’d obviously been going to get it when the light in his room went on. While I was questioning him, maybe for two or three minutes, he suddenly gave a little snore, like a man snoring in his sleep. I raised the receiver of the house phone. I was trembling, I broke into a sweat, I rang Starostin: “Come over quick, I’m in the house.” Starostin came, he was dumbstruck, too. The Boss was unconscious. I said, “Let’s put him on the sofa, it’s uncomfortable for him on the floor.” Tukov and Motya Butusova arrived after Starostin. We all helped to lift him onto the sofa. I said to Starostin: “Go and ring them all up—without exception.” He went to ring. I didn’t leave the Boss’s side. He was lying motionless, just snoring. Starostin rang Ignatiev at the Ministry of State Security first, but Ignatiev was frightened and referred him to Beria and Malenkov. While he was ringing, we talked it over and decided to move him onto the large sofa in the big dining room.… We moved him because there was more air in there. We all helped put him on the sofa, and covered him with a rug, we could see he’d got very cold, lying there since 7:00 P.M. Butusova rolled his shirtsleeves down—he must have felt cold like that. In the meantime Starostin had put in a call through to Malenkov. Roughly half an hour later Malenkov rang us and said: “I haven’t found Beria yet.” Another half an hour went by, and Beria rang to say: “Don’t tell anybody about Comrade Stalin’s illness.”

  So an hour had passed, and still no one was hurrying to the dying (former) Boss. Only the attachments sat at his bedside, waiting.

  KHRUSHCHEV’S VERSION

  Only one of Stalin’s comrades-in-arms has described that nocturnal tragedy—Nikita Khrushchev. And a very strange story he tells.

  I suddenly got a call from Malenkov. “The Chekists” (he mentioned a name) “have rung from Stalin’s place. They’re very worried, they say something’s happened to Stalin. We’d better get out there. I’ve already phoned Beria and Bulganin. Go straight out to Stalin’s place, I’ll be on my way, and so will the others.” I called for a car immediately.… We agreed not to go straight up to the dacha, but to call at the duty room first.

  So, according to Khrushchev, all four of last night’s guests set off immediately.

  We looked in at the duty room and asked, “What’s wrong?” They explained that Stalin always rang at about 11 in the evening, and asked for tea.… This time he hadn’t. The Chekists said they’d sent Matryona Petrovna [Butusova] to reconnoiter—she waited at table, a person of very limited intelligence, but honest and devoted to Stalin. She came back and said that Comrade Stalin was lying on the floor, and that the floor under him was wet, he’d wet himself. The Chekists had picked Stalin up and put him on the couch in the little dining room. When they told us what had happened, and that he was now asleep, we thought that it would be rather embarrassing if we turned up there while he was in such an unseemly state. So we went back home.

  According to Khrushchev, then, they went out there immediately, but tactfully withdrew, all four of them, when they were told about the Boss’s “unseemly state.”

  Lozgachev told me otherwise: “At 3:00 A.M. I heard a car drive up.” Nearly four hours had passed since that first telephone call. Lozgachev recounted:

  Beria and Malenkov had arrived. [And there was no Khrushchev!] Malenkov’s shoes creaked, and I remember him taking them off and tucking them under his arm. They came in: “What’s wrong with the Boss?” He was just lying there, snoring.… Beria swore at me, and said, “What d’you mean by it, starting a panic? The Boss is obviously sleeping peacefully. Let’s go, Malenkov.” I told them the whole story, how he was lying on the floor, and I asked him a question, and he could only make inarticulate noises. Beria said to me: “Don’t cause a panic, don’t bother us. And don’t disturb Comrade Stalin.” Then they left.

  So, then—after declaring that a seventy-four-year-old man, who had been lying for 4 hours (or possibly longer) in a pool of his own urine, was “sleeping peacefully,” his comrades-in-arms drove off, leaving the Boss still without help.

  “I TOOK HIM OUT”

  Lozgachev: “I was on my own again, I thought I’d b
etter call Starostin and tell him to get them all up again. I said, ‘Otherwise he’ll die, and it’ll be curtains for you and me. Ring and tell them to come.’ ”

  N. Khrushchev: “After a short time there was another ring. Malenkov was on the line. He said, The boys have rung again from Comrade Stalin’s place. They say there really is something wrong with Comrade Stalin. Matryona Petrovna did say, when we sent her in, that he was sleeping peacefully, but it isn’t an ordinary sleep.’ We shall have to go again. We agreed that the doctors would have to be called in.”

  Lozgachev: “Around 8:00 A.M. Khrushchev put in an appearance. [This then was his first appearance.] Khrushchev said, ‘How’s the Boss?’ I said, ‘Very poor, something’s happened to him,’ and told him the whole story. Khrushchev said, ‘The doctors will be here right away.’ I thought, ‘Thank God!’ The doctors arrived between 8:30 and 9:00 A.M.

  He had been lying there, without help, for thirteen hours.

  We will never know for sure what happened that night in the Boss’s locked rooms. But there are only two possible versions. Either the Boss suddenly lost his mind, ordered everybody to bed, and then had a stroke in the night, or Khrustalev was ordered by somebody to send his subordinates to bed so that he, or someone unknown to us, could be alone with the Boss.

  After Vlasik’s arrest, Beria had of course recruited support for himself among Stalin’s guard, which was no longer under proper supervision. The Boss had always thought he could count on Beria because he was a man of straw. He had miscalculated. Beria had seized his last chance of survival. Was it Khrustalev himself who ventured into the Boss’s room? Or someone else? Perhaps they gave the Boss, who was fast asleep after his Madzhari, an injection? Perhaps the injection caused his stroke? Perhaps the Boss managed to wake up when he felt ill and tried to save himself? But the injection took effect before he got any farther than the table? If that is how it all happened we can easily understand why his henchmen so bravely refrained from rushing to his aid. It looks as though they knew exactly what had happened, and that the Boss was no longer dangerous.

  Even if we prefer the first variant, the four of them calmly and deliberately denied Stalin help and left him to die.

  In either case, then, they killed him. Killed him like the cowards they had always been. Beria had every right to say to Molotov—as Molotov later told Chuyev—“I took him out.”

  TIMETABLE OF A DEATH

  Lozgachev explained: “Well, the doctors were all terrified.… They kept looking at him.… They were all trembling, like us. They had to examine him, but their hands were shaking. A dentist came to take out his false teeth, and they slipped out of his hands, he was so frightened. Then professor Lukomsky said: “We’ll have to take his shirt off, to measure his blood pressure.” I ripped open the shirt. They started measuring. Then they all took a good look and asked us who was there when he fell. We thought, This is it then, they’ll put us in a car and it’s goodbye—we’re done for! But the doctors, thank God, came to the conclusion that he’d had a hemorrhage. Then a lot of people started arriving, and from that moment we were really out of it all. I stood in the doorway There were crowds of people behind me, people who’d just come. I remember that Ignatiev, the minister, was afraid for some time to come in. I said, ‘Come on in, there’s no need to be shy.’ ”

  On March 2 Svetlana was brought in, as she recalled: “They called Vasily in as well, but he was drunk and hurried off looking for the guards. I heard him out there in the staff quarters shouting that they’d killed Father.… Then he went off home. They applied leeches, and x-rayed his lungs. The whole Academy of Medical Sciences met to try and decide what else they could try. An artificial respirator was brought in. The clumsy machine stood there unused, while the young technicians looked goggle-eyed at what was going on around them.”

  He died in the atmosphere he had created, surrounded by fear and false pretenses.

  His comrades-in-arms left him dying and drove to Moscow. Straight to his office.

  The Boss’s office had continued to function while he was dying. On March 2 at 10:40 A.M., according to an entry in Stalin’s visitors’ book, the trio who returned from the dacha—Beria, Malenkov, and Khrushchev—assembled there. The four who had fallen out of favor—Molotov, Mikoyan, Voroshilov, and Kaganovich—together with the other members of the Presidium, officeholders of the second rank, joined them. They began dividing his power among themselves, there in his office. After which Beria and Malenkov, together with the newly confident Voroshilov and Mikoyan, set out again for the dacha to keep an eye on the dying man.

  At 8:30 P.M., according to the visitors’ book, they reassembled in Stalin’s office and continued discussing the division of power.

  The following morning they returned to the dacha.

  That was now their daily routine.

  The eminent physician A. L. Myasnikov was one of the experts assembled to determine the cause of Stalin’s death. He recalled that “Stalin lay there in a heap. He turned out to be short and rather fat. His face was contorted.… The diagnosis seemed clear—a hemorrhage in the left cerebral hemisphere resulting from hypertonia and sclerosis.… The consultants had to answer Malenkov’s question: What is the prognosis? There could be only one answer: ‘Death is inevitable.’ ”

  He was helpless, scarcely breathing, close to death, but they still had need of him. Myasnikov recalled: “Malenkov gave us to understand that he hoped that medical measures would succeed in prolonging the patient’s life ‘for a sufficient period.’ We all realized that he had in mind the time necessary for the organization of the new government and the preparation of public opinion. Stalin groaned from time to time. For just one short minute he seemed to be looking at those around him and recognizing them. Voroshilov said: ‘Comrade Stalin, we are here—your loyal friends and comrades. How do you feel, dear friend?’ But by then there was no expression on his face. On March 5 we spent the whole day giving injections and writing bulletins. Members of the Politburo approached the dying man’s bedside. Those of lower rank looked in through the door. I remember that Khrushchev also kept to the doorway. The order of precedence was strictly observed. Malenkov and Beria were in front. Then came Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Bulganin, and Mikoyan. Molotov was unwell, but looked in briefly two or three times.”

  Molotov recollected: “I was called to the dacha. His eyes were closed, and whenever he opened them and tried to speak Beria rushed over and kissed his hand. After the funeral Beria said, ‘The Coryphaeus of Sciences, eh?’ and roared with laughter.”

  MARCH FIFTH

  Svetlana described his last moments: “Father’s death was slow and difficult.… His face was discolored and different … his features were becoming unrecognizable.… The death agony was terrible. It choked him slowly as we watched. At the last minute he opened his eyes. It was a terrible look—either mad or angry and full of the fear of death.… Suddenly he raised his left hand and seemed either to be pointing upward somewhere or threatening us all … then, the next moment, his spirit after one last effort tore itself from his body.”

  Each of those present had a different interpretation of that last gesture. The resuscitator G. Chesnokova said that, “the rhythm of his breathing changed abruptly, and signs of agitation appeared. His left hand rose as if in greeting. That was the death agony. Breathing ceased.”

  Lozgachev told me, “They say that when he died he raised his hand, as he had that other time, by the table, begging for help.… But who could help him!”

  Myasnikov noted, “Death took place at 21:50.”

  COMRADE STALIN CONTINUES TO FIGHT AGAINST DEATH

  Svetlana wrote, “Beria was the first to rush out into the corridor, and in the quiet of the room where we were standing in silence we heard him say in a loud, undisguisedly triumphant voice: ‘Khrustalev—the car!’ … Valechka Istomina, with her round face and snub nose, rested her head on the deceased’s breast and wept out loud.” This note of Svetlana’s has preserved for us Beria’s t
riumphant voice—and the fact that he addressed himself to Khrustalev! Of all the attachments he singled out Khrustalev.

  Beria was in a hurry. But the other comrades-in-arms stayed behind. To Beria, Stalin was just the Boss. To some of the others—Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov—he meant their youth, the friends they had betrayed for him, their hopes, their very lives.

  But they stayed only a little while before dashing to the Kremlin after Beria, to assume power. The Central Committee of the Party, the Council of Ministers, and the Supreme Soviet held a joint meeting in the Kremlin to legalize what they had already agreed on.

  The writer Konstantin Simonov, although he was a member of the Supreme Soviet, believed, like the rest of the country, that Stalin was still alive:

  I arrived in the hall forty minutes early, but everybody was already there. We all believed that Stalin was lying somewhere nearby in the Kremlin, unable to recover consciousness. We all sat in complete silence.… I would never have believed that three hundred people sitting so closely together could remain so silent for forty whole minutes. I shall never forget that silence. They emerged from a door at the rear of the hall—the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee, plus Molotov and Mikoyan. Malenkov made the introductory speech. The gist of it was that Stalin continued to struggle against death, but that even if he won the fight his condition would be so grave that.… The country could not be left without leadership. It was therefore necessary to form a new government.

  They did as they were told. There was then no point in prolonging the farce. After the meeting Simonov went off to the Pravda offices. The editor’s phone rang, and as he hung up he told Simonov that Stalin was dead. Lozgachev recalled: “They told us that they’d be taking him to the hospital right away to embalm him. Nobody called us in to say goodbye to the dead man, we went in without being asked. Svetlana was there briefly. Vasya was there too. I wouldn’t say he was drunk, but he was overexcited.… Then a car came with a stretcher, they put him on it and carried him out, with me watching. And that was it.… There was nobody else there—only ourselves standing and watching.” I asked Lozgachev whether it was correct that, as some people said, there was a bruise on the Boss’s body, as if someone had pushed him. He said “There was no bruise, and there could be no bruise.… Nobody pushed him. Khrustalev was there when they embalmed him, and told us they’d found something like a cinder in his lungs. Maybe something had got in when they were piping oxygen in. Otherwise there was nothing.” What, I asked, became of the attachments afterward? “Afterward they were all sent to different places.… One or another would be called in and sent out of Moscow—‘leave the city immediately and take your family with you.’ ” But Starostin, Orlov, and Tukov decided to go and see Beria and ask him not to send them away. When they got to him he said: “If you don’t want to be there—you’ll be there (pointing at the ground).” So off they went.