particular torture, testicles and all.36 Doubtless everyone laughed uproariously. But Briukhanov was sacked and later destroyed.
That summer of 1930, as the Sixteenth Congress crowned Stalin as leader, Nadya was suffering from a serious internal illness—so he sent her to Carlsbad for the best medical treatment and to Berlin to see her brother Pavel and his wife Zhenya. Her medical problems were complex, mysterious and probably psychosomatic. Nadya’s medical records, that Stalin preserved, reveal that at various times, she suffered “acute abdominal pains” probably caused by her earlier abortion. Then there were the headaches as fierce as migraines that may have been symptoms of synostosis, a disease in which the cranial bones merge together, or they may simply have been caused by the stress of the struggle within the USSR. Even though he was frantically busy arranging the Congress and fighting enemies in the villages and the Politburo, Stalin was never more tender.
4. FAMINE AND THE COUNTRY SET
“Tatka! What was the journey like, what did you see, have you been to the doctors, what do they say about your health? Write and tell me,” he wrote on 21 June. “We start the Congress on the 26th… Things aren’t going too badly. I miss you… come home soon. I kiss you.” As soon as the Congress was over, he wrote: “Tatka! I got all three letters. I couldn’t reply, I was too busy. Now at last I’m free… Don’t be too long coming home. But stay longer if your health makes it necessary… I kiss you.”1
In the summer, Stalin, backed by the formidable Sergo, guided one of his faked conspiracies, the so-called “Industrial Party,” to implicate President Kalinin, and seems to have used evidence that “Papa,” a ladies’ man, was wasting State funds on a ballerina. The President begged for forgiveness.2
Stalin and Menzhinsky were in constant communication about other conspiracies too. Stalin worried about the loyalty of the Red Army. The OGPU forced two officers to testify against the Chief of Staff, Tukhachevsky, that gifted, dashing commander who had been Stalin’s bitter enemy since the Polish War of 1920. Tukhachevsky was hated by the less sophisticated officers who complained to Voroshilov that the arrogant commander “makes fun of us” with his “grandiose plans.” Stalin agreed they were “fantastical,” and so over-ambitious as to be almost counter-revolutionary.3
The OGPU interrogations accused Tukhachevsky of planning a coup against the Politburo. In 1930, this was perhaps too outrageous even for the Bolsheviks. Stalin, not yet dictator, probed his powerful ally, Sergo: “Only Molotov, myself and now you are in the know… Is it possible? What a business! Discuss it with Molotov…” However, Sergo would not go that far. There would be no arrest and trial of Tukhachevsky in 1930: the commander “turns out to be 100% clean,” Stalin wrote disingenuously to Molotov in October. “That’s very good.” 4 It is interesting that seven years before the Great Terror, Stalin was testing the same accusations against the same victims—a dress rehearsal for 1937—but he could not get the support.5 The archives reveal a fascinating sequel: once he understood the ambitious modernity of Tukhachevsky’s strategies, Stalin apologized to him: “Now the question has become clearer to me, I have to agree that my remark was too strong and my conclusions were not right at all.”6
Nadya returned from Carlsbad and joined Stalin on holiday. Brooding how to bring Rykov and Kalinin to heel, Stalin did not make Nadya feel welcome. “I did not feel you wanted me to prolong my stay, quite the contrary,” wrote Nadya. She left for Moscow where the Molotovs, ever the busybodies of the Kremlin, “scolded” her for “leaving you alone,” as she angrily reported to Stalin. Stalin was irritated by the Molotovs, and by Nadya’s feeling that she was unwelcome: “Tell Molotov, he’s wrong. To reproach you, making you worry about me, can only be done by someone who doesn’t know my business.”7 Then she heard from her godfather that Stalin was delaying his return until October.
Stalin explained that he had lied to Yenukidze to confuse his enemies: “Tatka, I started that rumour… for reasons of secrecy. Only Tatka, Molotov and maybe Sergo know the date of my arrival.”8
Close to Molotov and Sergo, Stalin no longer trusted one of his closest friends who sympathized with the Rightists: Nadya’s godfather, “Uncle Abel” Yenukidze. Nicknamed “Tonton,” this veteran conspirator, at fiftythree, two years older than Stalin, had known Koba and the Alliluyevs since the turn of the century. Another ex–Tiflis Seminarist, he had, in 1904, created the secret Bolshevik printing press in Batumi. He was never ambitious and was said to have turned down promotion to the Politburo, but he was everyone’s friend, bearing no grudges against the defeated oppositions, always ready to help old pals. This easygoing Georgian sybarite was well-connected in the military, the Party, and the Caucasus, personifying the incestuous tangle of Bolshevism: he had had an affair with Ekaterina Voroshilova before her marriage. Yet Stalin still enjoyed Yenukidze’s companionship: “Hello Abel! What the devil keeps you in Moscow? Come to Sochi…”9
Meanwhile, Stalin turned on Premier Rykov, whose drinking was so heavy that in Kremlin circles, vodka was called “Rykovka.”
“What to do about Rykov (who uncontestably helped them) and Kalinin…?” he wrote to Molotov on 2 September. “No doubt Kalinin has sinned… The CC must be informed to teach Kalinin never to get mixed up with such rascals again.”10
Kalinin was forgiven—but the warning was clear: he never crossed Stalin again, a political husk, a craven rubber stamp for all Stalin’s outrages. Yet Stalin liked Papa Kalinin and enjoyed the pretty girls at his parties in Sochi. The success of his “handsome” charms soon reached the half-indulgent, half-jealous Nadya in Moscow.
“I heard from a young and pretty woman,” she wrote, “that you looked handsome at Kalinin’s dinner, you were remarkably jolly, made them all laugh, though they were shy in your august presence.”
On 13 September, Stalin mused to Molotov that “our summit of state is afflicted with a terrible sickness… It is necessary to take measures. But what? I’ll talk to you when I return to Moscow…” He posed much the same thought to other members of the Politburo. They suggested Stalin for Rykov’s job: “Dear Koba,” wrote Voroshilov, “Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Kuibyshev and I think the best result would be the unification of the leadership of Sovnarkom and to appoint you to it as you want to take the leadership with all strength. This isn’t like 1918–21 but Lenin did lead the Sovnarkom.” Kaganovich insisted it had to be Stalin. Sergo agreed. Mikoyan wrote too that in the Ukraine “they destroyed their harvest last year—very dangerous… Nowadays we need strong leadership from a single leader as it was in Illich’s [Lenin’s] time and the best decision is you to be the candidate for the Chairmanship… Doesn’t all of mankind know who’s the ruler of our country?”11
Yet no one had ever held the posts of both General Secretary and Premier. Furthermore, could a foreigner,[26] a Georgian, formally lead the country? So Kaganovich backed Stalin’s nominee, Molotov.
“You should replace Rykov,” Stalin told Molotov. 12
On 21 October, Stalin uncovered more betrayal: Sergei Syrtsov, candidate Politburo member and one of his proteges, was denounced for plotting against him. Denunciation was already a daily part of the Bolshevik ritual and a duty—Stalin’s files are filled with such letters. Syrtsov was summoned to the Central Committee. He implicated the First Secretary of the Transcaucasus Party, Beso Lominadze, an old friend of both Stalin and Sergo. Lominadze admitted secret meetings but claimed he only disapproved of comparing Stalin to Lenin. As ever, Stalin reacted melodramatically: “It’s unimaginable vileness… They played at staging a coup, they played at being the Politburo and plumbed the lowest depths …” Then, after this eruption, Stalin asked Molotov: “How are things going for you?”13
Sergo wanted them expelled from the Party but Stalin, who understood already from his probings about Tukhachevsky that his position was not strong enough yet, just had them expelled from the Central Committee. There is a small but important postscript to this: Sergo Ordzhonikidze protected his friend Lominadze by not revealing all his letters to the CC. Instead he went to Stalin and offered them to him personally. Stalin was shocked—why not the CC? “Because I gave him my word,” said Sergo.
“How could you?” replied Stalin, adding later that Sergo had behaved not like a Bolshevik but “like… a prince. I told him I did not want to be part of his secret…” Later, this would assume a terrible significance.
On 19 December, a Plenum gathered to consolidate Stalin’s victories over his opponents. Plenums were the
