from important posts… Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov?… Ministers’ work… demands great strength, knowledge and health.” So he was bringing forward “young men, full of strength and energy.” But then he unleashed his thunderbolt: “If we’re talking unity, I cannot but touch on the incorrect behaviour of some honoured politicians. I mean Comrades Molotov and Mikoyan.”
Sitting just behind Stalin, their faces turned “pale and dead” in the “terrible silence.” The magnates, “stony, strained and grave,” wondered “where and when would Stalin stop, would he touch the others after Molotov and Mikoyan?”
First he dealt with Molotov: “Molotov’s loyal to our cause. Ask him and I don’t doubt he’d give his life for our Party without hesitation. But we cannot overlook unworthy acts.” Stalin dredged up Molotov’s mistake with censorship: “Comrade Molotov, our Foreign Minister, drunk on
Then he pulled a piece of paper out of his tunic, and read out the thirty-six members of the new Presidium, including many new names. Khrushchev and Malenkov glanced at each other: where had Stalin found these people? When he proposed the inner Bureau, everyone was astonished that Molotov and Mikoyan were excluded.[303] Then, returning to his seat on the tribune, he explained their downfall: “They’re scared by the overwhelming power they saw in America.” He ominously linked Molotov and Mikoyan to the Rightists, Rykov and Frumkin, shot long before, and Lozovsky, just shot in August.
Molotov stood and confessed: “I am and remain a loyal disciple of Stalin,” but the Generalissimo cupped his ear and barked:
“Nonsense! I’ve no disciples! We’re all disciples of Lenin. Of Lenin!”
Mikoyan fought back defiantly: “You must remember well, Comrade Stalin… I proved I wasn’t guilty of anything.” Malenkov and Beria heckled him, hissing “liar,” but he persisted. “And as for the bread prices, I completely deny the accusation”—but Stalin interrupted him: “See, there goes Mikoyan! He’s our new Frumkin!”
Then a voice called out: “We must elect Comrade Stalin General Secretary!”
“No,” replied Stalin. “Excuse me from the posts of General Secretary and Chairman of the Council of Ministers [Premier].” Malenkov stood up and ran forward, chins aquiver, with the desperate grace of a whippet sealed inside a blancmange. His “terrible expression” was not fear, observed Simonov, but an “understanding much better than anyone else of the mortal danger that hung over all: it was impossible to comply with Stalin’s request.”
Malenkov, tottering on the edge of the stage, raised his hands as if he was praying and piped up: “Comrades! We must all unanimously demand that Comrade Stalin, our leader and teacher, remain as General Secretary!” He shook his finger, signalling. The whole hall understood and began to cry out that Stalin had to remain at his post. Malenkov’s jowls relaxed as if he had “escaped direct, real mortal danger.” But he was not safe yet.
“One doesn’t need the applause of the Plenum,” replied Stalin. “I ask you to release me… I’m already old. I don’t read the documents. Elect yourselves another Secretary.”
Marshal Timoshenko replied: “Comrade Stalin, the people won’t understand it. We all as one elect you our leader—General Secretary!” The cheering went on for a long time. Stalin waited, then, waving modestly, he sat down.
Stalin’s decision to destroy his oldest comrades was not an act of madness but the rational destruction of his most likely successors. As Stalin remembered well, the ailing Lenin had attacked his likely successor (Stalin himself) and proposed an expanded Central Committee with none of the leaders as members. It was now that the magnates realized “they were all in the same boat” because, Beria told his son, “none of them would be Stalin’s successor: he intended to choose an heir from the younger generation.” There was probably no secret heir: only a “collective” could succeed Stalin.[304]
Stalin was satisfied by Molotov’s ritual submission but asked him to return the secret protocols of the Ribbentrop Pact, clearly to form part of the case against him.
As for Mikoyan, Stalin was shocked at his defiance. At Kuntsevo, in the absence of his two bugbears, Stalin grumbled to Malenkov and Beria: “Look, Mikoyan even argued back!” In the days after the Plenum, Molotov and Mikoyan continued to play their usual roles in the government but Stalin was now supervising the climax of his Doctors’ Plot, burning with fury against Professor Vinogradov for recommending his retirement. Yet it was typical of this stealthy old conspirator that he had suppressed his anger and waited eleven months to gather the evidence to destroy his own physician.
Now it all came bursting out. Ordering Ignatiev to arrest Vinogradov, he shouted: “Leg irons! Put him in irons!”1
On 4 November, Vinogradov was arrested, touching every Politburo family because, as Sergo Beria wrote, he was “our family doctor.”
Three days later, Svetlana, now entangled in another dangerous relationship, this time with Johnreed Svanidze, the son of those executed “spies” Alyosha and Maria, brought over her two children to play with their grandfather. It was the Revolution holiday, the twentieth anniversary of Nadya’s suicide. At the height of the Jewish Terror, Stalin really “hit it off” with his half-Jewish grandson, Joseph Morozov, now seven, with his “huge shiny Jewish eyes and long lashes.”
“What thoughtful eyes,” said Stalin, pouring the children thimbles of wine “in the fashion of the Caucasus.” “He’s a smart boy.” Svetlana was touched. He had recently met Yakov’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Gulia Djugashvili, whom he delighted by letting her serve the tea.
“Let the
Stalin was infuriated by Riumin’s slowness in beating the evidence out of the doctors, calling the MGB a herd of “hippopotamuses.” He shouted at Ignatiev: “Beat them! What are you? Do you want to be more humanitarian than Lenin who ordered Dzerzhinsky [founder of the Cheka] to throw Savinkov out of the window?… Dzerzhinsky was no match for you but he didn’t shirk the dirty work. You work like waiters in white gloves. If you want to be Chekists, take off your gloves.” Malenkov repeated Stalin’s orders to use “death blows.”
On 13 November, a few days after little Joseph’s visit, Stalin ordered the petrified Ignatiev to sack Riumin: “Remove the Midget!” As for the doctors, “Beat them until they confess! Beat, beat and beat again. Put them in chains, grind them into powder!” Stalin offered Vinogradov his life if he admitted “the origins of your crimes… You may address your testimony to the Leader who promises to save your life… The whole world knows our Leader has always kept his promises.” Vinogradov knew no such thing.
“My situation is tragic,” the doctor replied. “I have nothing to say.” He tried to name dead people whom his testimony could no longer harm. Stalin then lashed out at Ignatiev himself for his backsliding. Ignatiev suffered a heart attack and took to his bed.[305]
Now Stalin turned on his dogged retainer, Vlasik, destroying his debauched bodyguard just as he had the colourful Pauker in 1937. Vlasik had been on drinking terms with the homicidal doctors but he also knew too much, particularly that Stalin had been informed of Zhdanov’s mistreatment and done nothing about it. Vlasik himself had probably only ignored Timashuk’s letters on Stalin’s lead. But now he was arrested, brought to Moscow and accused of concealing the evidence with Abakumov. He never betrayed the Boss. But his arrest was a cunning move because Vlasik’s “treason” helped cover Stalin’s own role. All his mistresses and drinking cronies were arrested and questioned by Malenkov. Vlasik was tortured: “My nerves were broken and I suffered a heart attack. I had months without sleep.” Stalin knew that Poskrebyshev, his other devoted old retainer, was best friends with Vlasik: had he played some role in suppressing the evidence against the killer doctors? He had distrusted Poskrebyshev ever since his article on Stalin’s lemon-growing skills in 1949: was someone encouraging his grim amanuensis to step out of
