generals’ sins were recorded: Mekhlis had accused Koniev of having kulak parents in 1938. Rokossovsky and Meretskov were naturally keen not to return to Beria’s torture chambers. Stalin received information, complaints and denunciations from the secret police and from his generals.
When they wrote their memoirs in the sixties, the generals presented themselves as Beria’s innocent victims. They were certainly under the constant threat of arrest but were themselves avid denouncers. Timoshenko had denounced Budyonny and Khrushchev. Even now, Operation Uranus was launched in a fever of denunciations: Golikov (the hapless pre-war spymaster), denounced the commander Yeremenko. Stalin simultaneously used Malenkov to watch Khrushchev and Yeremenko. When Stalin accused Khrushchev of wanting to surrender Stalingrad, the Commissar started to distrust his own staff. But Khrushchev himself was no slouch at denouncing generals, having blamed Kharkov on Timoshenko. Simultaneously at Stalingrad, a member of the rising General Malinovsky’s staff had committed suicide, leaving a note emblazoned “Long Live Lenin” but not mentioning Stalin: perhaps Malinovsky, who had served in the Russian Legion in France during World War I, was an Enemy?
“You’d better keep an eye on Malinovsky,” Stalin ordered Khrushchev, who protected the general.
The magnates fought ferociously for power and resources with one another and with the generals. When Beria requested 50,000 extra rifles for the NKVD, General Voronov showed the request to Stalin.
“Who made this request?” he snapped.
“Comrade Beria.”
“Send for Beria.” Beria arrived and started trying to persuade Stalin, speaking in Georgian. Stalin interrupted him angrily and told him to speak Russian.
“Half’ll be enough,” ruled Stalin but Beria argued back. Stalin, “irritated to his limit,” reduced the numbers again. Afterwards, Beria caught up with Voronov outside.
“Just you wait,” he hissed, “we’ll fix your guts.” Voronov hoped this was an “Oriental joke.” It was not.
Stalin frequently acted as a conciliator in rows over resources: when he ordered that the artillery be given 900 trucks, Beria and Malenkov, who worked as a gruesome duo, caught up with Voronov: “Take 400 trucks.”
“I’ll go back and report to the Supremo,” threatened the general. Malenkov delivered the full quota of trucks.2
Living in this environment of fear and competition, the magnates themselves were tormented by mutual jealousies: “Molotov was always with Stalin,” wrote Mikoyan disdainfully, “just sitting in the office, looking important, but really discharged from actual business.” Stalin only needed him “as the second man, being a Russian” but kept him “isolated.” Molotov assisted on foreign policy but lacked the responsibilities of the others. Mikoyan was one of the chief workhorses, overseeing the rear, rations, medical supplies, ammunition, the merchant navy, food, fuel, clothing for the people and armies, while also as Commissar of Foreign Trade negotiating Lend- Lease with the Allies, a stupendous portfolio. “Only Molotov saw Stalin as often as I did,” he boasted, forgetting the tireless, omnipresent Beria.
The “terror of the Party,” Beria, who behaved like a villain in a
“Is Voronov at your place?” Beria replied that he would be back in two days. The generals are said to have coined a euphemism for these terrifying interludes: “Going to have coffee with Beria.” His minions watched the soldiers on every front, their reports pouring in to Beria and often to Stalin himself. In 1942, Stalin raised the surveillance another step by ordering Kobulov to bug Voroshilov, Budyonny—and Zhukov himself whose officers were harassed and arrested.
Yet Stalin was wary of Beria’s empire-building. When Beria got Kaganovich dismissed from the railways, he tried to nominate his successor.
“Do you think I’d agree to the candidate… Beria imposes on me? I’ll never agree to it…” But the railways were a constant headache and only Kaganovich, that “real man of iron” in Stalin’s admiring words, could perform the necessary miracles.3
For sixteen hours, Stalin never ceased “issuing instructions, talking on the phone, signing papers, calling in Poskrebyshev and giving him orders.” When he heard from Mikoyan and Khrulev that the soldiers were short of cigarettes, he made time during the battle of Stalingrad to telephone Akaki Mgeladze, Party boss of Abkhazia, where the tobacco was grown: “Our soldiers have nothing to smoke! Tobacco’s absolutely necessary at the front!” He personally drafted every press release, a master of succinct yet rousing phrases such as “Blood for blood!,” inserting quotations from Suvorov. Yet while jealously checking the kudos of his generals, he was punctilious in giving them credit for their victories.4
Stalin’s hours of pressure and work were awesome but his commissars and generals had invariably been up since dawn, a life that demanded “enormous physical and moral resources” with “nervous exhaustion” a real danger. Stalin legislated the lives of his generals, personally decreeing their rota of work and rest. Vasilevsky had to sleep from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. without fail. Stalin sometimes rang Vasilevsky like a strict nanny to check he was asleep. If he answered the phone, Stalin cursed him. Yet Vasilevsky found it impossible to attend Stalin’s nocturnal dinners and films and then do all his work, so he had to break the rules, stationing his adjutant at the telephone to reply: “Comrade Vasilevsky’s resting until ten.” Stalin’s other workhorses, Beria and Mikoyan, were expected to spend most nights with him while achieving a Herculean workload, yet they managed it, running sprawling and sleepless administrative empires on the adrenalin of war and patriotism, Bolshevik threats and the talent to survive.
Stalin drank little and expected others to be sober. Artillery general Yakovlev once arrived to report, fortified with cognac. Without raising his head from his desk, Stalin said: “Come closer, Comrade Yakovlev.” Yakovlev stepped forward. “Come closer.” Then: “You’re a little drunk, aren’t you?”
“Yes slightly, Comrade Stalin.” Stalin said no more about it.5
At midnight, Vasilevsky reported jubilantly from Stalingrad: Hitler’s Romanian allies were crumbling. As he listened, Stalin called Poskrebyshev and ordered tea. When the tea arrived in a glass in a silver ornamental holder, the commissar or general, usually Antonov, fell silent. All watched Stalin’s ritual as he squeezed his lemon into the tea, then slowly got up, opened the door behind his desk into the restroom, opened the cupboard, built into the wall, and took out a bottle of Armenian brandy. Then he returned, poured a half a teaspoon of this into the tea, replaced the brandy, sat, stirred it and said: “Carry on.”
In high spirits at this instant success, Stalin and his companions left the Little Corner and probably headed over to Kuntsevo for dinner and then a film, but these dinners were not the drunken carousals of later years. When the exhausted Berias and Molotovs staggered home with only a few hours until they had to start work again, Stalin read his history books on his divan until he fell asleep in the early hours.6
Within four days of the launch of Operation Uranus, the German Sixth Army, 330,000 men, was encircled in what Stalin called the “decisive moment of the war.” As the Russians tightened their grip, Manstein’s counter- attack failed to break through. The
“Why don’t you say anything?” he asked Zhukov, who had frowned.
“Yeremenko will be very hurt,” replied Zhukov.
“It’s no time for feeling hurt,” said Stalin. “We’re not schoolgirls. We’re Bolsheviks!”
On 10 January, Rokossovsky attacked the benighted Germans, slicing their pocket in half. The Sixth Army diminished daily. The military defeat became a human struggle for survival, as the Germans ate horsemeat, cats, rats, each other, and finally nothing. On 31 January, Field Marshal Paulus surrendered and 92,000 starving, frostbitten scarecrows, barely recognizable as men let alone soldiers, became prisoners. Stalin himself wrote out this news flash: “Today our armies trapped the commander of the Sixth Army near Stalingrad with all his
