“Hold his hand properly!” Beria snapped at Lukomsky.
The clothes had to be cut away with scissors. “I ripped open the shirt,” recalled Lozgachev. They began to examine the patient “lying on a divan on his back, his head turned to the left, eyes closed, with moderate hyperaemia of the face… There had been involuntary urination, [his clothes were soaked in urine.]” His pulse was 78; heartbeat “faint”; blood pressure 190 over 110. His right side was paralysed while his left limbs quivered sometimes. His forehead was cooled. He was given a glass of 10 percent magnesium sulphate. A neuropathologist, therapist and nurse stood vigil. The doctors asked the guards who had seen what. The guards now feared for their lives too: “We thought, this is it then, they’ll put us in a car and it’s goodbye, we’re done for!”
Stalin had suffered a cerebral catastrophe or, in their words, “middle-left cerebral arterial haemorrhaging… The patient’s condition is extremely serious.” It was official at last. Stalin would not be able to work again.
The bodyguards stepped back and faded into the furniture. There was little the doctors could actually do. They recommended: “Absolute quiet, leave the patient on the divan; leeches behind the ears (eight now in place); cold compress on the head… No food today.” When he was fed, it was to be with a teaspoon “to give liquid when there is no choking.” Oxygen cylinders were wheeled in. The doctors injected Stalin with camphor. They took a urine sample. The patient stirred. “Stalin tried to cover himself.”
Svetlana, who had celebrated her birthday the night before, was called out of a French class and told, “Malenkov wants you to come” to Kuntsevo. Khrushchev and Bulganin, both in tears, waved her car to a stop and hugged her.
“Beria and Malenkov will tell you everything.” It was again clear who was in charge. The bustle and noise astonished her: Kuntsevo had always been so quiet. She noticed that the doctors were strangers. When she came to the bedside, she kissed Stalin, realizing “I loved my father more tenderly than I ever had before.”
When he was summoned, Vasily was so scared of his father that he thought he would have to present his work and pitifully arrived with his air-force maps. He was soon drunk. Throughout the next two days, he lurched in and out of the quiet sickroom, shouting: “You swine haven’t saved my father!” Svetlana was embarrassed to hear him.
The leaders wondered whether to remove this loose cannon but Voroshilov took Vasily aside, soothing him: “We’re doing all we can to save your father’s life.”
Once it was proved that he was incapacitated, Beria “spewed forth his hatred of Stalin” but whenever his eyelids flickered or his eyes opened, Beria, terrified that he would recover, “knelt and kissed his hand” like an Oriental vizier at a Sultan’s bedside. When Stalin sank again into sleep, Beria virtually spat at him, revealing his reckless ambition, and lack of tact and prudence. The other magnates observed him silently but they were weeping for Stalin, their old but flawed friend, longtime leader, historical titan, and the supreme pontiff of their international creed, even as they sighed with relief that he was dying. Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags. Yet, after so much slaughter, they were still believers.
At about ten, the entire old Politburo, from Beria and Khrushchev to Molotov, Voroshilov and Mikoyan, headed to the Kremlin where they met at 10:40 a.m. in the Little Corner to agree on a plan. Stalin’s seat stood empty. They had restored themselves to power. For ten minutes, Dr. Kuperin, the new Kremlevka chief, and Professor Tkachev nervously presented the report quoted above to the confused, upset and pent-up magnates. Afterwards, no one spoke, which made Kuperin even more nervous. It was perhaps too early to discuss what would happen next.
Finally, Beria, who had already emerged as the most active leader, dismissed the doctors with this ominous order: “You’re responsible for Comrade Stalin’s life. Do you understand? You must do everything possible and impossible to save Comrade Stalin!” Kuperin flinched, then withdrew. Malenkov, with whom Beria seemed to be coordinating everything, read out a decree for twenty-four-hour vigils by the leaders in pairs. Then Beria and Malenkov sped back to Kuntsevo to watch over the patient. Molotov and Mikoyan were not asked to keep vigil: Beria ordered Mikoyan to stay in the Kremlin and run the country.
Back at Kuntsevo, when Malenkov was on vigil with Beria, they requested the doctor’s prognosis. Kuperin displayed a chart of the blood circulation: “You see the clotted blood vessel,” he lectured the Politburo as if to medical students. “It’s the size of a five-kopeck piece. Comrade Stalin would remain alive if the vessel had been cleared in time.”
“Who guarantees the life of Comrade Stalin?” Beria challenged the doctors to operate if they dared.
“No one dared,” said Lozgachev. Malenkov asked for the prognosis:
“Death is inevitable,” replied the doctors. But Malenkov did not want Stalin to die yet: there could be no interregnum.
At 8:30 p.m., the leaders, chaired now by Beria, met again for an hour at the Little Corner. Kuperin’s official report did not present Stalin’s condition as hopeless but the patient had deteriorated. His blood pressure was now 210 over 120, breathing and heartbeat irregular. Six to eight leeches were applied around his ears. Stalin received enemas of magnesium sulphate, and spoonfuls of sweet tea.
That evening, Lukomsky was joined by four more doctors including the eminent Professor Myasnikov: the Politburo knew the top doctors were all in prison.
At Kuntsevo, Dr. Myasnikov found “a short and fat” Stalin lying there “in a heap… His face was contorted… The diagnosis seemed clear—a haemorrhage in the left cerebral hemisphere resulting from hypertension and sclerosis.” The doctors kept their detailed log, taking notes every twenty minutes. The magnates sat blearily in armchairs, stretching their legs, standing by the bedside, watching the doctors. These endless nights gave them the chance to plan the transfer of power.
“Malenkov gave us to understand,” wrote Myasnikov, “he hoped that medical measures would succeed in prolonging the patient’s life ‘for a sufficient period.’ We all realized he had in mind the time necessary for the organization of the new government.”
There were no more official meetings in the Kremlin until 5 March. While Beria and Malenkov whispered about the distribution of offices, Khrushchev and Bulganin wondered how to prevent Beria grabbing control of the secret police. Beria’s plans had been laid long before, probably with Malenkov: since no Georgian could rule Russia again, Malenkov planned to head the government while remaining Secretary. Beria would seize his old fiefdom, the MGB/MVD.
Late at night, Mikoyan looked in on the dying man. Molotov was ill but he appeared from time to time, thinking of his Polina whom he hoped was alive in exile. He did not know she was being interrogated in the Lubianka. But that evening, on Beria’s orders, her interrogations abruptly stopped. The interrogations of the doctors continued, however. The factotum of the Doctors’ Plot, Ignatiev, was noticed nervously peering at the prone Stalin from the doorway. He was still terrified of him.
“Come in—don’t be shy!” said Lozgachev. The next morning Khrushchev popped home to sleep and told his family that Stalin was ill.
There were moments when Stalin seemed to regain consciousness: they were feeding him with soup from a teaspoon, when he pointed up at one of the mawkish photographs on the wall of a girl feeding a lamb and then “pointed at himself.” “He sort of smiled,” thought Khrushchev. The magnates smiled back. Molotov thought it was an example of Stalin’s self-deprecating wit. Beria fell to his knees and kissed Stalin’s hand fervently. Stalin closed his eyes, “never to open them again.” At 10:15 that morning, the doctors reported that Stalin had worsened.
“The bastards have killed Father,” Vasily lurched in again. Khrushchev put his arm round this tiny terrified man, guiding him into the next room.
Beria, who went home for some lunch, was open about his relief. “It will be better for him to die,” he told his family. “If he survives it will be as a vegetable.” Nina was still weeping about Stalin’s death: “You’re a funny one, Nina. His death has saved your life.” Nina visited Svetlana daily to comfort her.
Late on the 4th, Stalin started to deteriorate, his breathing becoming shorter and shallower, the Cheyne- Stokes breathing pattern of a patient losing strength. Beria and Malenkov checked up on their Second Eleven of doctors. That night, three surprised prisoners, tortured daily in the Doctors’ Plot, were led off for another session. But this time, their torturer was not interested in the Zionist conspiracy but politely asked their medical advice.
“My uncle is very sick,” said the interrogator, and is experiencing “this Cheyne-Stokes breathing. What do you think this means?”
“If you’re expecting to inherit from your uncle,” replied the professor, who had not lost his Jewish wit, “consider it’s in your pocket.” Another distinguished professor, Yakov Rapoport, was asked to name the specialists
