This is based on Charkviani’s memoirs. Mgeladze’s memoirs, that almost rank alongside Mikoyan’s for their intimacy, have only just been published in Georgia. The Georgian and Abkhazian bosses were naturally rivals: in the case of Beria versus Lakoba, the Tbilisi boss destroyed the Sukhumi boss but it worked the other way round with Charkviani and Mgeladze.
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Zhdanov was not the only one: Andreyev, just fifty-two, fell ill in 1947 though he remained an active Politburo member until 1950; he lost his position in 1952.
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Stalin had stayed with Troyanovsky’s father Alexander in Vienna in 1913, appointed him first Soviet Ambassador to Washington and protected him during the Terror. Stalin liked but never quite trusted Troyanovsky who was an ex-Menshevik. Once he crept up on him, put his hands over his eyes and whispered, “Friend or foe?” In 1948, young Troyanovsky’s career as Stalin’s interpreter came to an abrupt end when Molotov suddenly moved him in order to protect him. His father, the old diplomat, had been playing bridge and criticizing the leadership, with the indomitable Litvinov. It was a dangerous time. Later Troyanovsky became Khrushchev’s foreign affairs adviser. This account is based on an interview with him. He died in 2003.
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The man in charge of the operation was Lavrenti Tsanava, black-haired with a dapper moustache, one of the Georgians Beria had brought to Moscow. Like so many in the Cheka, he was a criminal. Those who knew him well could only say that “he was a beast.” His real name was Djandjugava and he had been convicted for murder until Beria rescued him and he became boss of the Belorussian MGB. He did not prove a particularly loyal protege since he was now close to Abakumov. After Stalin’s death, he was arrested and executed.
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The “Aunties” were in Vladimir prison. Zhenya Alliluyeva wanted to commit suicide and swallowed stones but survived. Like so many others, she was kept alive by the kindness of strangers. A Polish prisoner in the neighbouring cell knocked in prison code “Live for your children.”
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Perhaps Stalin was affected by Zhdanov’s death. He re-named the dead man’s birthplace, Mariupol on the Black Sea, Zhdanov. According to the bodyguards, after Zhdanov’s funeral, Molotov was worried about Stalin’s health and asked them not to let him garden. When Stalin discovered this interference in his private life, he mistrusted Molotov all the more.
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Some Jews were sacked. Kaganovich continued as Deputy Premier and Politburo member but his elder brother Yuli lost his job. Like Polina, Kaganovich’s grandson recalls that Lazar too remembered the Yiddish of his childhood: when he met the German Communist Ernest Thalman he tried to use it. The “second lady of the state,” Andreyev’s wife Dora Khazan, was sacked as Deputy Minister of Textiles and General Khrulev’s Jewish wife was arrested. Mekhlis, like Kaganovich, continued as Minister of State Control and only retired in 1950 after a stroke. The Jewish Boris Vannikov continued to run the First Directorate of Sovmin in charge of the nuclear project.
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Shamberg “was heartbroken,” according to his friend Julia Khrushcheva. Both Svetlana Stalin and Volya Malenkova are adamant that they ended unhappy marriages but there can have been no greater incentive to end an unhappy Jewish marriage than the seething anti-Semitic paranoia of Stalin. Stalin did not need to say a word. The young people knew what to do. To Malenkov’s meagre credit, he managed to protect the Shambergs themselves, hiding the boy’s father Mikhail in the provinces. “Volya” was a name invented by Malenkov, meaning “Will” as in the People’s Will.
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On 22 August 1946, Stalin listened to the weather forecast and was infuriated to hear that it was completely wrong. He therefore ordered Voroshilov to investigate the weather forecasters to discover if there was “sabotage” among the weathermen. It was an absurd job that reflected Stalin’s disdain for the First Marshal who reported the next day that it was unjust to blame the weather forecasters for the mistakes.
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These dangers were perfectly demonstrated in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin used his Russian Presidency to demolish Gorbachev’s USSR. The moving of the capital back to Leningrad, city of Zinoviev and Kirov, had been a deadly issue in Russian politics ever since Peter the Great. Men died for it in the eighteenth century and they would die for it in 1949. Stalin was also suspicious of the popular heroism of Kuznetsov and the city of Leningrad itself during WWII. It represented an alternative totem of military patriotism to himself and Moscow.
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Meanwhile just across the landing, in another apartment at Granovsky, a similar discussion in this tiny world was going on: Rada Khrushcheva, whose father was still in Kiev, was staying with her father’s friends the Malenkovs. She wanted to go to the wedding, but Malenkov, who knew how doomed Kuznetsov was, refused to give
