Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

interviewing Leopoldo Bravo and his family.

Thanks for having me to stay during my visits to Moscow and elsewhere: Masha Slonim, who turned out to be Maxim Litvinov’s granddaughter; Marc and Rachel Polonsky who live in Marshal Koniev’s apartment on Granovsky where many events in the book happened; Ingaborga Dapkunaite, David Campbell, Tom Wilson in Moscow; the Hon. Olga Polizzi and Julietta Dexter in St. Petersburg.

A special thank-you to two of the wisest historical minds: my father Dr. Stephen Sebag-Montefiore MD who has been as brilliant in reading the psychology of Stalin as he was with Potemkin; and my mother April Sebag- Montefiore for her flawless gifts of language and psychology.

In London, I must thank my agent Georgina Capel; Anthony Cheetham; my publisher Ion Trewin; and Lord and Lady Weidenfeld. Thanks for answering questions and helping in small or large ways to: Andy Apostolou, Bernadette Cini, Professor Derek Beales, Vadim Benyatov, Michael Bloch, Dr. David Brandenburger, Winston Churchill, Pavel Chinsky, Dr. Sarah Davies, Ellen, Lady Dahrendorf, Mark Franchetti, Lisa Fine, Sergei Degtiarev Foster, Dr. Dan Healy, Yelena Durden-Smith, Levan and Nino Gachechiladze, Professor J. Arch Getty, Nata Gologre, Jon Halliday, Andrea Dee Harris, Mariana Haseldine, Laurence Kelly, Dmitri Khankin, Anne Applebaum, Joan Bright Astley, Maria Lobanova, V. S. Lopatin, Ambassador of the Republic of Georgia and Mrs. Teimuraz Mamatsashvili, Neil McKendrick, the Master, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, Catherine Merridale, Princess Tatiana Metternich, Edward Lucas, Charles and Patty Palmer-Tomkinson, Martin Poliakoff, Professor Richard Overy, David Pryce-Jones, Alexander Prozverkin, Antony Beevor, Julia Tourchaninova and Ernst Goussinksi, Professor E. A. Rees, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Count Fritz von der Schulenburg, Professor Boris Sokolov, Lady Soames, Geia Sulkanishvili, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, Prince George Vassiltchikov, Dr. D. H. Watson, Adam Zamoyski. I owe much to my Russian tutor, Galina Oleksiuk. Thanks to Jane Birkett, my valiant copy editor, to John Gilkes for the maps, to Douglas Matthews for the index and mountainous thanks to Victoria Webb for the heroic job of collating the proofs. In New York, thanks to my editor, Sonny Mehta, to Vrinda Condillac, Kathy Hourigan, Maria Massey, Soonyoung Kwon, and all the team at Knopf.

Last but first, I must lovingly thank my wife Santa Montefiore, not only for translating materials on Leopoldo Bravo from the Spanish but above all for tolerating and even sometimes welcoming, for years on end, the brooding presence of Stalin in our lives.

List of Illustrations

1929–1934

Stalin kisses his daughter Svetlana on holiday, early 1930s.¹

Nadya holds Svetlana.¹

Stalin and his driver in the front, with Nadya in the back of one of the Kremlin limousines.²

The Stalins on holiday on the Black Sea, with the plodding Molotov and his clever, passionate, Jewish wife, Polina.³

Stalin carries Svetlana in from the garden at Zubalovo, their country house near Moscow.¹

Stalin chats behind the scenes at a Party Congress in 1927 with allies Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Premier Alexei Rykov.²

At a Party Congress, Stalin holds court among his grandees.²

After her tragic death, Nadya lay in state.²

Nadya’s funeral.²

Stalin leaving the Kremlin’s Great Palace with two of his closest allies: Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Mikhail “Papa” Kalinin.⁴

Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s deputy in the 1930s, leads an expedition into the Siberian countryside to search for grain hidden by peasants.²

The magnates were so close they were like a family: “Uncle Abel” Yenukidze with Voroshilov.²

Stalin’s holiday in 1933: Stalin and Voroshilov go camping; weeding at his Sochi dacha; setting off on a hunting expedition with Budyonny, Voroshilov and bodyguard; Lavrenti Beria offers to help weed the gardens; Stalin embarking on a fishing and shooting trip on the Black Sea, which was to end in a mysterious assassination attempt.²

Molotov, Premier during the 1930s, plays tennis with his family.²

Stalin ruled his empire informally: sitting out in the sun at the Sochi dacha.²

1934–1941

Sergei Kirov holidays with Stalin and Svetlana at Sochi.³

Stalin with Svetlana.³

Andrei Zhdanov joins the family, probably at the Coldstream dacha. ³

The Court of the Red Tsar in the mid-1930s.²

Stalin’s women.²

Stalin with his grandees and their wives in the former imperial box at the Bolshoi.²

Stalin (with Beria and Lakoba) visits his ailing mother, Keke, shortly before her death.³

Beria hosts Voroshilov and Mikoyan in Tiflis for the Rustaveli Festival at the height of the Terror, 1937.²

Yagoda, Kalinin, Stalin, Molotov and Beria.²

Marshal Semyon Budyonny poses with Kaganovich and Stalin, among swooning women.²

Beria and Yezhov—the two most depraved monsters of Stalin’s court. ²

Yezhov and his wife Yevgenia entertain their powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death.²

Stalin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with Sergo Ordzhonikidze’s body.²

Yezhov and his friend Nikita Khrushchev accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin.²

Stalin takes tea with the novelist Gorky.²

Poskrebyshev with Bronislava, the pretty, glamorous and well-educated doctor, with whom he fell in love, and her sister.⁵

Alexander Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s chef de cabinet for most of his reign. ⁵

General Nikolai Vlasik with Stalin’s doomed son Yakov, just before the war.³

Svetlana in her early teens, sporting her Young Pioneers’ Uniform. ¹

1941–1945

Stalin runs the war, assisted by his magnates and generals.⁶

In 1945, Stalin with Zhukov, Voroshilov and Bulganin.⁴

Stalin as the arbiter of the Grand Alliance, playing Roosevelt against Churchill: at Teheran in 1943.⁷

Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, followed by General Vlasik.⁸

At the Potsdam Conference, Stalin poses with Churchill and U.S. President Harry Truman.⁴

Words exchanged between Voroshilov and Churchill at the Teheran Conference. ⁹

Beria and Molotov visit the sights in the ruins of Hitler’s Berlin, flanked by secret policemen Kruglov and Serov.¹⁰

Beria and family around 1946.¹⁰

Beria’s house in Moscow, chosen for him by Stalin (now the Tunisian Embassy). ¹⁰

The House on the Embankment, built for the government in the early 1930s. ¹⁰

The Granovsky apartment block close to the Kremlin, where the younger magnates lived in palatial apartments.¹⁰

Stalin’s residences: his main Moscow house, Kuntsevo;⁸ his favourite holiday house before the