Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

to receive a dressing gown, slippers, razor and a set of Moskva soap, talc and scent (the proudest creation of Polina Molotova, now in jail).

In Pravda, Khrushchev hailed Stalin’s “sharp intransigence to rootless cosmopolitans,” the Jews. Poskrebyshev praised Stalin’s brilliance at growing lemons. The wives of the magnates brought their own presents—Nina Beria made walnut jam “as a little souvenir… of your mother,” to which Stalin wrote a thank-you letter:

“As I eat your jam, I remember my youth.”

Beria rolled his eyes: “Now you’ll be lined up for this chore every year.”

Famous artistes and elite children rehearsed their tributes. Parents had never been pushier: Poskrebyshev managed to land his daughter Natasha the plum role of reciting an idolatrous ditty then presenting Stalin (who had ordered the death of her mother) a bouquet. At the Bolshoi, ballerinas practiced “curtsies to the God.”

At the Little Corner, the night before, Stalin changed the placement so that he was no longer in the centre but Malenkov insisted he had to be in the front row. He pointedly placed himself between Mao and Khrushchev, the new favourite. Later he felt pressure on his neck, then staggered from a dizzy spell, but Poskrebyshev steadied him. He would not call the doctors. Poskrebyshev prescribed one of his remedies.

The next night, the packed Bolshoi awaited the magnates. Stalin’s exotic entourage, including Mao, Ulbricht of Germany, Rakosi of Hungary and Bierut of Poland, mingled in the avant-loge until everything was ready. When they trooped out, the audience applauded madly. Stalin sat to the left of centre under a jungle of scarlet banners and a giant portrait of himself. Then the endless speeches started, hailing the birthday boy as a genius. Stalin gestured to General Vlasik and whispered that guests were to speak in their own languages, an internationalist gesture by “the father of peoples.” Togliatti spoke in Italian which he translated into Russian himself. Mao’s address, in his surprisingly high-pitched voice, won a standing ovation. Stalin was exhausted from standing up so often. Then the schoolgirls, in their Pioneer dresses, emerged led by Natasha Poskrebysheva to recite their poem. Poskrebyshev winked at his daughter who scampered up and presented the bouquet of red roses: “Papa and Stalin both loved red roses,” she says.

“Thanks ryzhik, redhead, for the roses!” Stalin said and pointed at his devoted Poskrebyshev who beamed with pride.

The party reassembled for a huge banquet at the Kremlin’s Georgievsky Hall and for a concert starring the tenor Kozlovsky, the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and the soprano Vera Davydova. Vlasik personally checked their dressing rooms for assassins or bombs. When she danced, Maya noticed “the Emperor’s bewhiskered face in the first row at the long festive table facing away from the stage and half turned to me [with] Mao next to him.”²

Mao’s superlative sulk was wearing thin. Face had been saved. When he tried to call Stalin, he was told he “was not at home and it would be better to talk to Mikoyan.” Finally, on 2 January, Stalin sent Molotov and Mikoyan to begin negotiations. Chou En-lai[292] arrived on the 20th and started to negotiate with the new Foreign Minister, Vyshinsky, and Mikoyan. Mao and Chou were invited to the Kremlin only to be reprimanded by Stalin for not signing a critique of U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s recent speech.

When Mao grumbled about Stalin’s resistance to the treaty, Stalin retorted: “To hell with that! We must go all the way.” Mao sulked even more. In the limousine out to Kuntsevo, the Chinese interpreter invited Stalin to visit Mao.

“Swallow your words!” Mao hissed in Chinese to the interpreter. “Don’t invite him!” Neither of the titans spoke for the entire thirty-minute drive. When Stalin invited Mao to dance to his gramophone, a singular honour for a visiting leader, he refused. It did not matter: the game of poker was over. While reserving for himself the supreme priesthood of international Communism, Stalin allowed Mao a leading role in Asia.

At the banquet at the Metropol Hotel on 14 February, after the treaty was signed, Stalin pointedly denounced Titoism—and Mao continued his heroic sulk. The two giants barely spoke: “sporadic” exchanges subsided into “endless pauses.” Gromyko struggled to keep the conversation going. Stalin may not have liked Mao but he was impressed: “Of the Marxist world, the most outstanding is Mao… Everything in his Marxist-Leninist life shows principles and drive, a coherent fighter.” The alliance was immediately tested on the battlefields of Korea.³

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Kim Il Sung, the young leader of Communist North Korea, now arrived in Moscow to ask Stalin’s permission to invade South Korea. Stalin encouraged Kim but shrewdly passed the buck to Mao, telling the Korean he could “only get down to action” after consulting with “Comrade Mao Tse-tung personally.” In Peking, the nervous Mao referred back to Stalin. On 14 May, Stalin cunningly replied, “The question should ultimately be decided by the Chinese and Korean comrades together.” He thus protected his dominant role but passed the responsibility. Nonetheless, his magnates were worried by his reckless challenge to America and failing powers of judgement. At 4 a.m., on Sunday, 25 June 1950, North Korea attacked the south. Driving all before them, the Communists were soon poised to conquer.

On 5 August, a weary, ageing Stalin departed by special train for his longest holiday so far. It was to be four and a half months, brooding on his anti-Jewish case, on his anger towards Molotov and Mikoyan, distrust of Beria, and dissatisfaction with the ruthlessness of Abakumov’s MGB—while the world teetered on the brink thousands of miles away in Korea.

No sooner had he arrived to rest than disaster struck in the faraway peninsula. Stalin had withdrawn from the UN to protest against its refusal to recognize Mao’s China instead of Taiwan as the legitimate government but President Truman called Stalin’s bluff by convening the Security Council to approve UN intervention against North Korea. The Soviet Union could have avoided this but Stalin wrongly insisted on boycotting the session, against Gromyko’s advice. “Stalin for once was guided by emotion,” remembered Gromyko. In September, the powerful U.S. counter-attack at Inchon, under the UN flag, trapped Kim’s North Koreans in the south and then shattered their army. Once again, Stalin’s testing of American resolve had backfired badly—but the old man simply sighed to Khrushchev that if Kim was defeated, “So what. Let it be. Let the Americans be our neighbours.” If he did not get what he wanted, Russia would still not intervene.

As the Americans advanced into North Korea towards the Chinese border, Mao desperately looked towards Stalin, fearing that if they intervened and fought the Americans, their Sino-Soviet Treaty would embroil Russia too. Stalin replied, with Nero-like nonchalance, that he was “far from Moscow and somewhat cut off from events in Korea.” But on 5 October, Stalin fired off a telegram of blunt realpolitik and shameless bluff: America was “not prepared… for a big war” but if it came to it, “let it happen now and not in a few years when Japanese militarism will be restored.” Thus Stalin pulled the sting out of Mao’s reservations and pushed his ally one step closer to war.

Mao deployed nine divisions but despatched Chou to Stalin’s holiday house, probably New Athos, to discuss the promised Soviet air cover for the Chinese troops. On 9 October, a tense Chou, accompanied by Mao’s trusted protege, the fragile but talented Lin Piao, later his doomed heir apparent, faced Stalin, Malenkov, Beria, Kaganovich, Bulganin, Mikoyan and Molotov.

“Today we want to listen to the opinions and thinking of our Chinese comrades,” Stalin opened the meeting. When Chou stated the situation, Stalin replied that Russia could not enter the war—but China should. Nonetheless, if Kim lost, he offered the North Koreans sanctuary. He could only help with military equipment. Chou, who had been counting on Soviet air cover, gasped. Afterwards, Stalin invited the Chinese to a Bacchanal from which only Lin Piao emerged sober.

This was one of the occasions when Beria disagreed with Stalin and, as ever, he was the most daring in expressing himself. When he came out of the meeting on sending Chinese forces into Korea, he found the Georgian boss, Charkviani, waiting outside: “What’s he doing?” Beria, who understood the nuclear threat, exclaimed nervously. “The Americans will be furious. He’ll make them our enemy.” Charkviani was amazed to hear such heresy.

“It’s hard for me to trust a man 100% but I think I can rely on him,” Stalin reflected to Mgeladze over dinner, having manoeuvred Mao into fighting the Americans without Soviet air cover.

On 19 October, Mao deployed his waves of Chinese cannon fodder to throw back the surprised Americans. Henceforth, even when the front finally stabilized along the 38th Parallel and the North Koreans begged for peace, Stalin refused to agree: attrition suited him. As he told Chou at a later meeting, in a phrase that illustrates Stalin’s entire monstrous career, the North Koreans could keep on fighting indefinitely because they “lose nothing, except