Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

a terrible struggle” in which he had to destroy “ten million [kulaks]. It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary… It was no use arguing with them. A certain number of them had been resettled in the northern parts of the country… Others had been slaughtered by the peasants themselves—such had been the hatred for them.”¹²

The peasants understandably attacked Communist officials. Sitting on the terrace of the Sochi dacha in the baking heat, an angry, defensive Stalin seethed about the breakdown of discipline and betrayal in the Party. At times like this, he seemed to retreat into a closed melodramatic fortress surrounded by enemies. On 14 July, he put pen to paper ordering Molotov and Kaganovich in Moscow to create a draconian law to shoot hungry peasants who stole even husks of grain. They drew up the notorious decree against “misappropriation of socialist property” with grievous punishments “based on the text of your letter.”[45] On 7 August, this became law. Stalin was now in a state of nervous panic, writing to Kaganovich: “If we don’t make an effort now to improve the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine.” Stalin blamed the weakness and naivety of his brother-in- law, Redens, Ukrainian GPU chief, and the local boss Kosior. The place “was riddled with Polish agents,” who “are many times stronger than Redens or Kosior think.” He had Redens replaced with someone tougher.

* * *

Nadya returned early to Moscow, perhaps to study, perhaps because the tension in Sochi was unbearable. Her headaches and abdominal pains worsened. This in turn can only have added to Stalin’s anxieties but his nerves were so much stronger. Her letters do not survive: perhaps he destroyed them, perhaps she did not write any, but we know she had been influenced against the campaign: “she was easily swayed by Bukharin and Yenukidze.”

Voroshilov crossed Stalin, suggesting that his policies could have been resisted by a concerted effort of the Politburo. When a Ukrainian comrade named Korneiev shot a (possibly starving) thief and was arrested, Stalin thought he should not be punished. But Voroshilov, an unlikely moral champion, looked into the case, discovered the victim was a teenager and wrote to Stalin to support Korneiev’s sentence, even if he only served a short jail term. The day he received Klim’s letter, 15 August, Stalin angrily overruled Voroshilov, freed Korneiev, and promoted him.¹³

Six days after Voroshilov’s stand, on 21 August, Riutin, who earlier had been arrested for criticizing Stalin, met with some comrades to agree on their “Appeal to All Party Members,” a devastating manifesto for his deposition. Within days, Riutin had been denounced to the GPU. Riutin’s opposition, so soon after the Syrtsov– Lominadze affair and Voroshilov’s waverings, rattled Stalin. On 27 August, he was back in the Kremlin meeting Kaganovich. Perhaps he also returned to join Nadya.¹⁴

Whatever the ghastly situation in the country, her health alone would have been enough to undermine the morale of a strong person. She was terribly ill, suffering “acute pains in the abdominal region” with the doctor adding on her notes: “Return for further examination.” This was caused not just by psychosomatic tension due to the crisis but also by the after-math of the 1926 abortion.

On 31 August, Nadya was examined again: did Stalin accompany her to the Kremlevka clinic? He had only two appointments, at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., as if his day had been deliberately left open. The doctors noted: “Examination to consider operation in 3–4 weeks’ time.” Was this for her abdomen or her head? Yet they did not operate.¹⁵

On 30 September, Riutin was arrested. It is possible that Stalin, supported by Kaganovich, demanded the death penalty for Riutin but the execution of a comrade—a fellow “sword-bearer”—was a dangerous step, resisted by Sergo and Kirov. There is no evidence that it was ever formally discussed—Kirov did not attend Politburo sessions in late September and October. Besides, Stalin would not have proposed such a measure without first canvassing Sergo and Kirov, just as he had in the case of Tukhachevsky in 1930. He probably never proposed it specifically. On 11 October, Riutin was sentenced to ten years in the camps.

Riutin’s “Platform” touched Stalin’s home. According to the bodyguard Vlasik, Nadya procured a copy of the Riutin document from her friends at the Academy and showed it to Stalin. This does not mean she joined the opposition but it sounds aggressive, though she might also have been trying to be helpful. Later it was found in her room. In the fifties, Stalin admitted that he had not paid her enough attention during those final months: “There was so much pressure on me… so many Enemies. We had to work day and night…”¹⁶ Perhaps literary matters proved a welcome distraction.

7. STALIN THE INTELLECTUAL

On 26 October 1932, a chosen elite of fifty writers were mysteriously invited to the art deco mansion of Russia’s greatest living novelist, Maxim Gorky.[46] The tall, haggard writer with the grizzled moustache, now sixty-four, met the guests on the stairway. The dining room was filled with tables covered in smart white cloths. They waited in excited anticipation. Then Stalin arrived with Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich. The Party took literature so seriously that the magnates personally edited the work of prominent writers. After some small talk, Stalin and his comrades sat down at the end table near Gorky himself. Stalin stopped smiling and started to talk about the creation of a new literature.

It was a momentous occasion: Stalin and Gorky were the two most famous men in Russia, their relationship a barometer of Soviet literature itself. Ever since the late twenties, Gorky had been so close to Stalin that he had holidayed with Stalin and Nadya.¹ Born Maxim Peshkov in 1868, he had used his own bitter (hence his nom de plume, Gorky) experiences as an orphaned street Arab, who had survived “vile abominations” living on scraps among outcasts in peasant villages, to write masterpieces that inspired the Revolution. But in 1921, disillusioned with Lenin’s dictatorship, he went into exile in a villa in Sorrento, Italy. Stalin put out feelers to lure him back. Meanwhile Stalin had placed Soviet literature under RAPP (the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), “the literary wing of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan for industry,” which harassed and attacked any writers who did not depict the Great Turn with ecstatic enthusiasm. Gorky and Stalin began a complex pas de deux in which vanity, money and power played their role in encouraging the writer to return. Gorky’s experience of the savage backwardness of the peasantry made him support Stalin’s war on the villages but he found the standard of RAPP literature to be dire. By 1930, Gorky’s life was already oiled with generous gifts from the GPU. ²

Stalin concentrated his feline charms on Gorky.[47] In 1931, he returned to become Stalin’s literary ornament, granted a large allowance as well as the millions he made from his books. He lived in the mansion in Moscow that had belonged to the tycoon Ryabushinsky, a large dacha outside the capital and a palatial villa in the Crimea along with numerous staff, all GPU agents. Gorky’s houses became the headquarters of the intelligentsia where he helped brilliant young writers like Isaac Babel and Vasily Grossman.

The magnates embraced Gorky as their own literary celebrity while the Chekist Yagoda took over the details of running Gorky’s household, spending more and more time there himself. Stalin took his children to see Gorky where they played with his grandchildren; Mikoyan brought his sons to play with Gorky’s pet monkey. Voroshilov came for sing-songs. Gorky’s granddaugher Martha played with Babel one day; Yagoda the next.

Stalin liked him: “Gorky was here,” he wrote to Voroshilov in an undated note. “We talked about things. A good, clever, friendly person. He’s fond of our policy. He understands everything… In politics he’s with us against the Right.” But he was also aware of Gorky as an asset who could be bought. In 1932, Stalin ordered the celebration of Gorky’s forty literary years. His home town, Nizhny Novgorod, was renamed after him. So was Moscow’s main street, Tverskaya. When Stalin named the Moscow Art Theatre after the writer, the literary bureaucrat Ivan Gronsky retorted: “But Comrade Stalin, the Moscow Art Theatre is really more associated with Chekhov.”

“That doesn’t matter. Gorky’s a vain man. We must bind him with cables to the Party,” replied Stalin.³ It worked: during the kulak liquidation, Gorky unleashed his hatred of the backward peasants in Pravda: “If the enemy does not surrender, he must be exterminated.” He toured concentration camps and admired their re-educational value. He supported slave labour projects such as the Belomor Canal which he visited with Yagoda, whom he congratulated: “You rough fellows do not realize what great work you’re doing!”⁴

Yagoda, the dominant secret policeman, followed in Stalin’s wake. “The first generation of young Chekists…