Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death. Yevgenia Yezhova became the “black widow” of Stalin’s circle: many of her lovers, including Babel, died because of their connection to her. She sacrificed herself to try to save their daughter Natasha.

Sergo and Yezhov.

As the Terror gained pace, Sergo Ordzhonikidze clashed with Stalin. A shot rang out in Sergo’s flat. His mysterious death solved a problem for Stalin, who rushed to his Kremlin apartment where Sergo was lifted onto his table for this photograph. Stalin, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with the body. Kaganovich and Mikoyan were especially close to Sergo and look particularly shocked.

In 1937, at the height of the Great Terror, two young magnates join the leadership: Yezhov, now NKVD boss in full uniform as Commissar-General of State Security (second from right) and (far right) his friend Nikita Khrushchev, newly appointed Moscow boss and later one of Stalin’s successors, accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin. Stalin trusted the ruthless bumpkin Khrushchev, who described himself as the Leader’s “pet.” He idolised Stalin.

Stalin regarded himself as an intellectual. He persuaded the famous novelist Gorky to return to the Soviet Union to become the regime’s great writer, giving him a mansion in Moscow and two dachas outside. Gorky’s house became the literary venue for the Politburo, who visited regularly. There Stalin told writers to become “engineers of human souls.” Here Stalin and Molotov (second from left) take tea with Gorky. When Stalin became disenchanted with Gorky, his death in 1936 proved convenient.

When she tipsily dropped a cream cake on his tunic, Poskrebyshev fell in love with a pretty, glamorous and well-connected young doctor, Bronislava, who became familiar with Stalin and his family. But her Jewish Lithuanian origins, her friendship with Yezhov’s wife and, worst of all, her distant connection to Trotsky led to her arrest by Beria and her execution. Poskrebyshev wept when he heard her name, but remained working at Stalin’s side, on good terms with Beria—and managed to remarry. Poskrebyshev with Bronislava (right) and her sister.

More powerful than many a magnate, Alexander Poskrebyshev (right) was Stalin’s chef de cabinet for most of his reign. This former male nurse and master of detail ran the office and kept the secrets, while at the Leader’s dinners Stalin challenged him to drinking contests, nicknamed him the “commander-in-chief” and laughed when he was dragged vomiting from the table.

Poskrebyshev ran the politics but General Nikolai Vlasik, Stalin’s chief bodyguard and court photographer, ran his home life. This hard-drinking debauchee with a harem of “concubines,” also acted as Vasily Stalin’s father figure. Here, just before the war, is Vlasik (on the left), with Stalin’s doomed son Yakov, probably at Kuntsevo.

Stalin remained close and affectionate with Svetlana, but by her early teens at the end of the 1930s, she was maturing early and this alarmed her father. When she sent him this photograph of her sporting her Young Pioneer’s uniform, he sent it back with a note saying, “Your expression is not suitable for someone your age.” When she fell in love with an older man in the middle of the Second World War, Stalin was appalled and it destroyed their relationship forever. Henceforth his fondest epithet to her was “You little fool.”

1941–1945

Stalin was shocked and bewildered by Hitler’s attack, but after a crisis Stalin assumed the role he believed was made for him: supreme warlord. Initially, Stalin worked with his magnates and generals in an almost collegiate atmosphere before success allowed him to play the military genius. Here Stalin runs the war assisted by (standing, from left): Bulganin (in uniform), Mikoyan, Khrushchev, Andreyev, Voznesensky, Voroshilov (in uniform) and Kaganovich; (seated, from left): Shvernik, Molotov, Beria and Malenkov.

The outstanding military partnership of the war: in late 1942, after his bungles had caused a series of unnecessary disasters, Stalin appointed Georgi Zhukov his deputy. He admired his military gifts, energy and brutal drive. Zhukov played a decisive role in the victories of Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad and Berlin. At the victory parade, Stalin allowed Zhukov to take the salute, but afterwards, jealousy and paranoia led him to demote and humiliate his greatest general. Here in 1945, Stalin places Zhukov on his right, but is flanked on the other side by his “political” Marshals, Voroshilov, who proved brave but inept, and Bulganin, who rose ruthlessly but without trace to become heir apparent.

Stalin as the arbiter of the Grand Alliance, playing Roosevelt against Churchill: here at Teheran in 1943, a grinning Voroshilov stands behind his master while General Alan Brooke (behind Churchill and Roosevelt) glances sardonically at their unsavoury ally.

Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, followed by General Vlasik.

At the Potsdam Conference, Stalin, resplendent in his white Generalissimo’s uniform, poses with Churchill, who was about to be thrown out by the British electorate, and the new U.S. President Harry Truman, who informed him that America had the Bomb. Stalin despised Truman, missed Roosevelt, and thought Churchill the strongest of the capitalists.

At Teheran, Churchill presented the Sword of Stalingrad to an emotional Stalin, who passed it to Voroshilov, who dropped it. Stalin sent Voroshilov to apologise to Churchill. A blushing Voroshilov grabbed Hugh Lunghi, a young English diplomat, to interpret. Voroshilov apologised, then wished Churchill a happy birthday. The British Prime Minister thought the Marshal was angling for a party invitation.

At Potsdam, Stalin placed Beria in charge of the race to get the Bomb, the greatest challenge of his career —he could not afford to fail. Here Beria and Molotov visit the sights in the ruins of Hitler’s Berlin, flanked by secret policemen Kruglov (left) and Serov, the expert on deportations.

Beria and family around 1946. Beria was a rapist and sadist—but a delightful father-in-law and grandfather. His blond, clever and long-suffering wife, Nina (second from left), was the most beautiful of all the grandees’ spouses—Stalin treated her like a daughter. Svetlana Stalin was in love with Beria’s handsome, dashing son Sergo (far left), whom Stalin also liked. But Sergo married Gorky’s lissome granddaughter Martha Peshkova (far right), much to Svetlana’s ire.

In 1938, when Stalin promoted Beria to NKVD boss and brought him to Moscow, the dictator chose Beria’s house himself. Only Beria was allowed this sumptuous nobleman’s mansion (now the Tunisian Embassy). His wife and son lived in one wing; his own rooms and offices were in another: here many of his female victims were raped. When one refused him and was presented by a guard with the usual bouquet, Beria allegedly snarled: “It’s not a bouquet, it’s a wreath.”

Just across from the Kremlin, the hideous colossus, the House on the Embankment, with its own cinema, built for the government in the early 1930s, was decimated during the 1937 Terror when many of its inhabitants