Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

sensibilities, Mikhoels’s dream of a Jewish Crimea became a sinister Zionist/American Trojan horse,[271] a Hebraic Marshall Plan. Zionism, Judaism and America became interchangeable in Stalin’s mind. He was obviously supported by his magnates: even after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev sympathetically explained to some Polish Communists, “We all know Jews; they all have some connection with the capitalistic world because they have relatives living abroad. This one has a granny… The Cold War began; the imperialists were plotting how to attack the USSR; then the Jews want to settle in the Crimea… here’s the Crimea and Baku… Through their connections, the Jews had created a network to carry out American plans. So he squashed it all.” This view was held not only in Stalin’s councils: his nephew, Vladimir Redens, agreed with complaints that “the Committee was giving off terrible Zionist propaganda… as if the Jews were the only people who suffered.” Stalin’s anti-Semitism dovetailed with his campaign of traditional nationalism. Even his prejudices were subordinate and complementary to realpolitik .

Stalin ordered Abakumov to gather evidence that Mikhoels and the Jewish Committee were “active nationalists orientated by the Americans to do anti-Soviet work,” especially through Mikhoels’ American trip when “they made contact with famous Jewish persons connected with the U.S. secret service.” Mikhoels played into Stalin’s hands.

Mikhoels, the Yiddish actor out of his depth in this duel with the Stalinist Golem, wanted to appeal to Stalin. He called the second most influential Jew after Kaganovich, Polina Molotova, to ask whether to appeal to Zhdanov or Malenkov.

“Zhdanov and Malenkov won’t help you,” replied Polina. “All power in the country’s in Stalin’s hands alone and nobody can influence him. I don’t advise you write to Stalin. He has a negative attitude to Jews and won’t support us.” It would have been unthinkable for her to speak in such a way before the war.¹

Mikhoels made the tempting but spectacularly ill-timed decision to reach Stalin through Svetlana. Stalin was already brooding about Svetlana’s taste for Jewish men. After Kapler, there was Morozov whom she had married on the rebound from Sergo Beria. Stalin had nothing against Morozov personally, “a good fellow,” he said, but he had not fought in the war, and he was Jewish. “The Zionists have pulled one over you,” Stalin told her. Malenkov’s daughter Volya had just married the Jewish grandson of Lozovsky, who ran Mikhoels’ Jewish Committee. Molotov proposed Mikhoels’ Jewish Crimea letter and his wife Polina’s brother was a Jewish American businessman. These American agents were everywhere. Now it got worse.

Mikhoels, frantic to protect the Jewish community, asked Zhenya Alliluyeva who mixed with the Jewish intelligentsia, if he could meet Svetlana. The elite children were wary of suitors using them for their connections: “One of the unpleasant things of being daughter of a chinovnik was that I couldn’t trust young people around me,” says Volya Malenkova. “Many wanted to marry me. I didn’t know if they wanted me or my father’s influence.”

The Alliluyevs warned Zhenya against meddling in dangerous Jewish matters: “All stirred together in this pot,” says Vladimir Redens. “We knew it wasn’t going to end well.” But it seems that Zhenya did introduce Mikhoels to Svetlana and Morozov. Stalin heard about this immediately[272] and erupted in a rage: the Jews were “worming their way into the family.” Furthermore, Anna Redens was once again irritating Stalin, publishing a tactless memoir of his early days and nagging Vasily who complained to Stalin. Thus Mikhoels innocently stumbled into a hornets’ nest.

Stalin ordered Abakumov to investigate the Alliluyev connection to American-Zionist espionage, muttering to Svetlana that Zhenya had poisoned her husband Pavel in 1938. Shrewd people began to divorce their Jewish spouses. Svetlana Stalin divorced Morozov: every history book repeats that Stalin ordered this and Svetlana’s cousin Leonid Redens also claims that he did. But she herself explained, “My father never asked me to divorce him,” adding in more recent interviews that she had not been in love with Morozov: “We divorced because I wasn’t in love with him.” This rings true as far as it goes: Leonid Redens adds that “there were many men in Svetlana’s life; she’d had enough of Morozov.” But Stalin himself told Mikoyan that “if she doesn’t divorce Morozov, they’ll arrest him.” She left Morozov: “No one would have left me,” said this Tsarevna. It seems that Stalin got his son to fix the matter. “Vasily took Morozov’s passport,”[273] says Redens, “and brought him a new one without the wedding stamp.”

Abakumov started to arrest the Alliluyevs’ Jewish circle. On 10 December, he arrested Zhenya Alliluyeva, once so intimate with Stalin, accusing her of “disseminating foul slander about the Head of the Soviet Government.” Zhenya’s husband, her vivacious actress daughter Kira, and Anna Redens joined her. Prominent Jews were pulled in.

The Instantsiya, that dread euphemism for the sacred eminence in the Kremlin, believed the Jewish/Alliluyev set had “expressed interest in the personal life of the Head of the Soviet Government, backed by foreign intelligence.” Stalin permitted “methods of persuasion” to implicate Mikhoels. The “French wrestling,” as the torturers called it, was led by Komarov, a vicious anti-Semitic psychopath, who announced to his victims: “Your fate’s in my hands and I’m not a man, I’m a beast,” adding, “All Jews are lousy bastards!” Abakumov supervised this diabolical sadist, ordering the prisoners “a deadly beating!”

Goldshtein, who had introduced Mikhoels to the Alliluyevs, testified later how “they started to beat me with a rubber baton on the soft parts of my body and my bare heels… until I couldn’t sit or stand.” They beat his head so hard “my face was swollen terribly and my hearing affected. Exhausted by day- and night-time interrogations, terrorized by beatings, curses and threats, I fell into a deep depression, a total moral confusion and began to give evidence against myself and others.”

“So you say Mikhoels’s a swine?” Abakumov shouted.

“Yes he is,” replied the broken Goldshtein who admitted that Mikhoels had asked him to “notice all the small details of the relationship between Svetlana and Grigory… [to] inform our American friends.” When Stalin read this, it confirmed his worst fears about Mikhoels.

Vladimir Redens, at twelve, had now lost both mother and father. His young cousins, Zhenya’s boys, had lost their parents and sister. Vladimir rushed to tell Olga, his grandmother, who had continued to live in the Kremlin after the death of her husband Sergei in 1946. To his amazement, she had never forgiven Zhenya for marrying so fast: “Thank God!” she said on hearing about Zhenya’s arrest, and crossed herself. But she called Stalin about Anna’s arrest: “They were used by the Enemy,” replied Stalin.

When the family wished “someone would tell Stalin,” the old lady replied, “nothing happened without him knowing.” They naively blamed Beria, not realizing that Abakumov reported only to Stalin.

Svetlana tried to intercede for the “Aunties” but Stalin warned her “they talked too much. You make anti- Soviet comments too.” Kira Alliluyeva, Svetlana’s first cousin also arrested, claims that Stalin warned his daughter: “If you act as their defender we’ll also put you in jail.” Both she and Vasily cut dead the Alliluyev children.

* * *

Now that Svetlana was single again, Stalin started to talk about whom she should next marry, telling his magnates, “She said she’d marry either Stepan Mikoyan or Sergo Beria.” The Politburo fathers were alarmed. The Tsarevna did not seem to mind that both boys were not only already married but in love with their wives.

Stalin told the anxious Mikoyan and Beria: “I told her neither one nor the other. She should marry Yury Zhdanov.” Simultaneously, this clumsy, tyrannical matchmaker told Yury to marry Svetlana.

On 16 July, Stalin embarked on a road trip to meet the people and see the country, something he had not done since 1933. It was to be a reflective and nostalgic three-month holiday, a mark of his exhaustion and his new style as a distant but paramount leader. He left the indecisive Bulganin in charge.²

While Abakumov tortured Jews to create a new “American” conspiracy and destroy Mikhoels, Stalin and his convoy of armoured ZiS 110s headed south, accompanied by Valechka, towards Kharkov.

51. A LONELY OLD MAN ON HOLIDAY

The Generalissimo ordered that there was to be no tedious ceremony and all passed off “without any sensationalism—which greatly pleased Stalin,” wrote Vlasik, who found the expedition exhausting. Stalin himself had only slept for about two hours but he was “in a good mood which made us all happy.” He inspected everything, muttering that he would not have seen anything “from my desk.”

He even experienced some aspects of ordinary life: his car broke down near Orel. Stalin got out for a stroll,