downfall of monsters also destroyed the innocent: Abakumov’s young wife, Antonina Smirnova, with whom he had a two-month-old son, had received 70,000 roubles’ worth of presents, including an antique Viennese pram. So she was arrested: the destiny of the girl and the baby are unknown.[295]
Abakumov, no longer a Minister but just a number, Object 15, spent three months shackled in the refrigerator cell, being viciously interrogated by his nemesis, the Midget: “Dear LP,” he wrote pitifully to Beria, “I feel so terrible… You’re the closest man to me, and I wait for you to ask me back… You will need me in the future.”
Abakumov had been destroyed for failing to push the Jewish Case. Ignatiev and the egregious “Midget” Riumin set about torturing the Jewish officials of the JAFC and the doctors to “substantiate the evidence of espionage and nationalistic activity.”1
The impresario of this theatre of plots and pain was now ageing fast. He sometimes became so giddy that he fell over in his Kremlin apartment. The bodyguards had to keep a close eye on him because “he didn’t look after himself.” He hardly bothered to read all his papers. Kuntsevo was strewn with unopened boxes. He still corrected Bulganin’s speeches like a schoolmaster but then forgot Bulganin’s name in front of the rest of the Politburo: “Look, what’s your name?”
“Bulganin.”
“Right yes… that’s what I meant to say.”
Riven by arthritis, diminished by raging arteriosclerosis, dazed by fainting spells, embarrassed by failing memory, tormented by sore gums and false teeth, unpredictable, paranoid and angry, Stalin left on 10 August for his last and longest holiday. “Cursed old age has caught up with me,” he muttered. He was even more restless than usual, travelling from Gagra to New Athos, Tsaltubo to Borzhomi and back. At Lake Ritsa, the woods, lakeside and paths were peppered with strange green metal boxes, containing special telephones so Stalin could call for help if taken ill on a stroll.
But dizzy spells were not going to stop him cleansing his entourage: “I, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov— we’re all old… we must fill… the Politburo with younger… cadres,” he ominously told Mgeladze. Yet his paranoia gave him no rest: “I’m finished,” he told Mikoyan and Khrushchev who, like all the magnates, were on holiday nearby so they could visit Stalin twice a week. “I don’t even trust myself.”
At dinner, he surveyed his courtiers and “puffing out his chest like a turkey,” he embarked on that favourite but lethal subject—his successor. It could not be Beria because he “wasn’t Russian,” nor Kaganovich, a Jew. Voroshilov was too old. He did not even mention Mikoyan (an Armenian) or Molotov. It could not be Khrushchev because he was a “country boy” and Russia needed a leader from the intelligentsia. Then he named Bulganin, the very man whose name he tended to forget, as his successor as Premier. None were ideologically qualified to lead the Party but he had not mentioned Malenkov who perhaps took this as an encouraging sign. He ordered books and started frantically studying.
“Well, Comrade Stalin requires me to study political science.” Malanya, caught reading Adam Smith, asked a colleague, “How long will it take to master?”
The magnates were convinced that Stalin was becoming senile but actually he was never more dangerous, determined and in control. He lashed out in every direction, at his comrades, Jews, Mingrelians, even banana importers. The story of the bananas sums up the governing style of the ageing Stalin.
Vlasik learned a shipment of bananas had just arrived and eager to soothe the bad teeth of the Master, he bought some for Stalin. At dinner at Coldstream with all the magnates, Vlasik proudly presented the bananas. Stalin peeled one and found it was not ripe. He tried two more. They too were not ripe. “Have you tried the bananas?” he asked his guests. Stalin summoned Vlasik: “Where did you get these bananas?” Vlasik tried to explain but Stalin shouted: “These crooks take bribes and rob the country. What was the name of the banana ship?”
“I don’t know,” said Vlasik, “I didn’t take an interest…”
“Take an interest! I’ll put you on trial with the rest of them!” bellowed Stalin. Poskrebyshev rushed off to find out the name of the ship and order arrests. Malenkov pulled out his notebook and took notes. Stalin ordered Mikoyan to sack the new Trade Minister. But Beria was eager to beat Mikoyan to the banana, as it were.
The dinner ended at 5 a.m. At 6 a.m., Stalin called Beria to tell him to sack the Minister. When Mikoyan called Moscow just after 6 a.m., he found that Beria had already reprimanded the unfortunate. A few days later, Mikoyan arrived to say goodbye and Stalin was still talking about those bananas. The Minister was sacked. Charkviani wrote that this was typical of Stalin’s “eruptions leading to irrelevant decisions.” Stalin, concluded Mikoyan drily, “was simply very fond of bananas.”2
Stalin’s limbs ached but when he took the waters at Tsaltubo, the weather was too hot. He decided to take the waters at Borzhomi and visit a house with special memories. He had stayed at the Likani Palace, a neo-Gothic mansion owned by Grand Duke Michael, Nicholas II’s brother, overlooking the Kura River, with Nadya in happier times. It had become a museum and was barely habitable, without bedrooms, which suited Stalin. It suited his magnates less: he ordered Khrushchev and Mikoyan to stay too. They rushed over from Sochi and Sukhumi but, without beds, they had to camp together, sharing a room like Boy Scouts.
Stalin ate every day at a table laid under a tree by the Kura in idyllic lush countryside. When he went for walks, he cursed at the bodyguards, bumping into them by suddenly changing direction. He decided to visit Bakuriani but the locals mobbed his car, placing carpets and banqueting tables across the road. The supreme curmudgeon had to dismount and join his overexcited fans for a Georgian feast. “They open their mouths and yell like dunderheads!” he muttered, face twitching. He never made it to Bakuriani and returned to Abkhazia.
At the Palace, where Nadya had rested after Vasily’s birth, Stalin brooded on his family. Vasily, now pitifully ill with alcoholism, visited. “His health’s so poor, his stomach’s sick, he can’t even eat,” Stalin confided in Charkviani.
Like a Western millionaire booking his playboy son into the Betty Ford Clinic, Stalin intervened to enrol Vasily in a drying-out programme but here too he searched for a culprit and found one in the banana procurer: “Vlasik and his friends did it, they turned his drinking into an addiction!” Stalin had been cursing Vlasik’s corruption for years. A denunciation letter and Malenkov’s investigation into MGB venality revealed Vlasik’s orgies and shenanigans. Stalin was upset but felt mired in corruption. He finally sacked his most devoted retainer.[296]
Svetlana’s marriage to Yury was over after just two years. In a letter to her father, she called him a “heartless bookworm” and an “iceberg.” Stalin told Mgeladze that Svetlana wore the trousers:
“Yury Zhdanov’s not the head of that family—he can’t insist on anything. He doesn’t listen to her nor she to him. The husband should run a family… that’s the main thing.” But Yury himself would never dare ask Stalin for a divorce so Svetlana came to see him instead.
“I know what you want to say,” he said. “You’ve decided to divorce him.”
“Father,” Svetlana answered in a begging tone. Charkviani, who was present was embarrassed and excused himself but Stalin insisted he stay.
“So why’re you divorcing him?” Stalin asked.
“I can’t live with my mother-in-law. She’s impossible!”
“What does your husband say?”
“He supports his mother!”
Stalin sighed: “If you’ve decided to divorce him, I can’t change your mind, but your behaviour isn’t acceptable.” She blushed and left, walking out of the Zhdanov family and moving into a flat in the House on the Embankment with her two children.
“Who knows what next?” muttered Stalin.
“Stalin wasn’t too happy when it ended,” admits Yury, but he was not too surprised either. He did not hold it against Yury but invited him to stay at Lake Ritsa where they chatted half the night about Stalin’s visit to London in 1907. When they naturally talked about the campaign against cosmopolitanism, Zhdanov, who had played his own role in hunting out Jewish scientists, asked Stalin if he thought it was “assuming a lopsided national character,” meaning it was aimed too much against the Jews.
“Cosmopolitanism’s a widespread phenomenon,” replied Stalin. When he finally got up to go to bed in the early hours, he cited a Jewess he admired: “Maria Kaganovich—there’s a real Bolshevik! One should pay attention to social position, not national condition!” and he staggered off to sleep. In the morning the table was laid on the bank of Lake Ritsa and Yury watched Stalin peruse
