Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Molotov and Voroshilov) across Stalin’s body. Beria seemed to have won the struggle for succession, but he fatally underestimated Khrushchev.

Stalin at the 1927 Congress: unshaven, pockmarked, sardonic, sarcastic and utterly vigilant, the supreme politician, the messianic egotist, fanatical Marxist, and superlative mass murderer, in his prime.

About the Author

^{SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE}

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian specializing in Russia. Born in 1965, he read History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. His book Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography Prizes in Britain. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar was awarded the History Book of the Year Prize at the 2004 British Book Awards and is being published in over twenty languages. Author of two novels and presenter of television documentaries, he is married with two children and lives in London.

ALSO BY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner

Copyright

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2005

Copyright © 2003 by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

Montefiore, Simon Sebag [date]

Stalin: the court of the red tsar / by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

p. cm.

1. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953. 2. Heads of state—Soviet Union—Biography. 3. Soviet Union—History—1925– 1953. I. Title.

DK268.S8M573 2004

947.085’2’092—dc22

2003027390

www.vintagebooks.com

www.randomhouse.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-42793-9

_v3.0

,

Endnotes

1

The Soviet secret police was first called the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, known as the Cheka. In 1922, it became the State Political Administration (GPU) then the United GPU: OGPU. In 1934, it was subsumed into the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). However, secret policemen were still known as “Chekists” and the secret police itself as “the Organs.” In 1941 and 1943, State Security was separated into its own Commissariat, the NKGB. In 1954, it became a Committee of State Security, the KGB.

2

She certainly cared for Stalin like a good baba: “Stalin has to have a chicken diet,” she wrote to President Kalinin in 1921. “We’ve only been allocated 15 chickens… Please raise the quota since it’s only halfway through the month and we’ve only got 5 left…”

3

The Poteshny Palace, where the Stalins lived, means “Amusement Palace” since it once housed actors and a theatre maintained by the Tsars.

4

One of the few attractive traditions of Bolshevism was the adoption of the children of fallen heroes and ordinary orphans. Stalin adopted Artyom when the child’s father, a famous revolutionary, was killed in 1921 and his mother was ill. Similarly, Mikoyan adopted the sons of Sergei Shaumian, the hero of Baku; Voroshilov adopted the son of Mikhail Frunze, the War Commissar who died suspiciously in 1925. Later, both Kaganovich and Yezhov, harsh men indeed, adopted orphans.

5

She became director of a gramophone factory from which she was sacked many years later for taking bribes. She lived until 1998 but never spoke about her short friendship with Stalin.

6

Another of his sweethearts was a young Party activist, Tatiana Slavotinskaya. The warmth of his love letters