Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Anastas Mikoyan, Armenian Old Bolshevik, Politburo member, Trade and Supply Minister

Vyacheslav Molotov, known as “Iron-Arse” and “our Vecha,” Politburo member, Premier, Foreign Minister, married to

Polina Molotova nee Karpovskaya, known as Comrade Zhemchuzhina, “the Pearl,” Jewish, Fishery Commissar, perfume boss

Grigory Ordzhonikidze, known as Comrade Sergo and as “Stalin’s Arse,” Politburo member, Heavy Industry chief

Karl Pauker, ex-barber of Budapest Opera, Stalin’s bodyguard and head of Security

Alexander Poskrebyshev, ex-medical orderly, Stalin’s chef de cabinet , married to

Bronka Metalikova Poskrebysheva, doctor, Jewish

Mikhail Riumin, “Little Misha,” “the Midget,” MGB Deputy Minister and manager of the Doctors’ Plot

Nikolai Vlasik, Stalin’s bodyguard and head of Guards Directorate

Klim Voroshilov, First Marshal, Politburo member, Defence Commissar, veteran of Tsaritsyn, married to

Ekaterina Voroshilova, diarist

Nikolai Voznesensky, Leningrad economist, Politburo member, Deputy Premier, Stalin’s anointed heir as Premier

Genrikh Yagoda, NKVD chief, Jewish, in love with Timosha Gorky

Abel Yenukidze, “Uncle Abel,” Secretary of Central Executive Committee, Georgian, bon viveur, Nadya’s godfather

Nikolai Yezhov, “Blackberry” or “Kolya,” NKVD boss, married to

Yevgenia Yezhova, editor, socialite, Jewess

Andrei Zhdanov, “the Pianist,” Politburo member, Leningrad boss, CC (Central Committee) Secretary, Naval chief, Stalin’s friend and heir apparent, father of

Yury Zhdanov, CC (Central Committee) Science Department chief, married Svetlana Stalin

GENERALS

Grigory Kulik, Marshal, Artillery chief, womaniser and bungler, veteran of Tsaritsyn

Boris Shaposhnikov, Marshal, Chief of Staff, Stalin’s favourite staff officer

Semyon Timoshenko, Marshal, victor of Finland, Defence Commissar, veteran of Tsaritsyn; his daughter married Vasily Stalin

Alexander Vasilevsky, Marshal, Chief of Staff, priest’s son

Georgi Zhukov, Marshal, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Stalin’s best general

ENEMIES AND FORMER ALLIES

Nikolai Bukharin, “darling of the Party,” “Bukharchik,” theorist, Politburo member, Stalin’s co-ruler 1925–29, friend of Nadya, Rightist, chief defendant in last show trial

Lev Kamenev, Leftist Politburo member, defeated Trotsky with Stalin, with whom ruled 1924–25, Jewish. Defendant in first show trial

Alexei Rykov, “Rykvodka.” Rightist Politburo member, Premier and co-ruler with Stalin and Bukharin 1925–28. Defendant in last show trial

Leon Trotsky, genius of the Revolution, Jewish, War Commissar and creator of Red Army, “operetta commander” in Stalin’s words

Grigory Zinoviev, Leftist Politburo member, Leningrad boss, Jewish. Triumvirate with Stalin and Kamenev 1924–25. Defendant in first show trial

“ENGINEERS OF THE HUMAN SOUL”

Anna Akhmatova, poet; “harlot-nun,” said Zhdanov

Isaac Babel, author of Red Cavalry and friend of Eisenstein, Mandelstam

Demian Bedny, “the proletarian poet,” boon companion of Stalin

Mikhail Bulgakov, novelist and playwright, Stalin saw his Days of the Turbins fifteen times

Ilya Ehrenburg, Jewish writer and European literary figure

Sergei Eisenstein, Russia’s greatest film director

Maxim Gorky, Russia’s most famous novelist, close to Stalin

Ivan Kozlovsky, Stalin’s court tenor

Osip Mandelstam, poet; “Isolate but preserve,” said Stalin

Boris Pasternak, poet; “cloud dweller,” said Stalin

Mikhail Sholokhov, novelist of Cossacks and collectivization

Konstantin Simonov, poet and editor, friend of Vasily Stalin, favourite of Stalin

Prologue THE HOLIDAY DINNER 8 November 1932

At around 7 p.m. on 8 November 1932, Nadya Alliluyeva Stalin, aged thirty-one, the oval-faced and brown- eyed wife of the Bolshevik General Secretary, was dressing for the raucous annual party to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Revolution. Puritanical, earnest but fragile, Nadya prided herself on her “Bolshevik modesty,” wearing the dullest and most shapeless dresses, draped in plain shawls, with square-necked blouses and no makeup. But tonight, she was making a special effort. In the Stalins’ gloomy apartment in the two-storey seventeenth-century Poteshny Palace, she twirled for her sister, Anna, in a long, unusually fashionable black dress with red roses embroidered around it, imported from Berlin. For once, she had indulged in a “stylish hairdo” instead of her usual severe bun. She playfully placed a scarlet tea rose in her black hair.

The party, attended by all the Bolshevik magnates, such as Premier Molotov and his slim, clever and flirtatious wife, Polina, Nadya’s best friend, was held annually by the Defence Commissar, Voroshilov: he lived in the long, thin Horse Guards building just five steps across a little lane from the Poteshny. In the tiny, intimate world of the Bolshevik elite, those simple, cheerful soirees usually ended with the potentates and their women dancing Cossack jigs and singing Georgian laments. But that night, the party did not end as usual.

Simultaneously, a few hundred yards to the east, closer to Lenin’s Mausoleum and Red Square, in his office on the second floor of the triangular eighteenth-century Yellow Palace, Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party and the Vozhd—the leader—of the Soviet Union, now fifty-three, twenty- two years Nadya’s senior, and the father of her two children, was meeting his favoured secret policeman. Genrikh Yagoda, Deputy Chairman of the GPU,[1] a ferret-faced Jewish jeweller’s son from Nizhny Novgorod with a “Hitlerish moustache” and a taste for orchids, German pornography and literary friendships, informed Stalin of new plots against him in the Party and more turbulence in the countryside.

Stalin, assisted by Molotov, forty-two, and his economics chief, Valerian Kuibyshev, forty-five, who looked like a mad poet, with wild hair, an enthusiasm for drink, women and, appropriately, writing poetry, ordered the arrest of those who opposed them. The stress of those months was stifling as Stalin feared losing the Ukraine itself which, in parts, had descended into a dystopia of starvation and disorder. When Yagoda left at 7:05 p.m., the others stayed talking about their war to “break the back” of the peasantry, whatever the cost to the millions starving in history’s greatest man-made famine. They were determined to use the grain to finance their gargantuan push to make Russia a modern industrial power. But that night, the tragedy would be closer to home: Stalin was to face a personal crisis that was the most wounding and mysterious of his career. He would replay it over and over again for the rest of his days.

At 8:05 p.m., Stalin, accompanied by the others, ambled down the steps towards the party, through the snowy alleyways and squares of that red-walled medieval fortress, dressed in his Party tunic, baggy old trousers, soft leather boots, old army greatcoat and his wolf shapka with earmuffs. His left arm was slightly shorter than the other but much less noticeable than it became in old age—and he was usually smoking a cigarette or puffing on his pipe. The head and the thick, low hair, still black but with specks of the first grey, radiated the graceful strength of the mountain men of the Caucasus; his almost Oriental, feline eyes were “honey-