Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“All’s clear,” replied Leningrad. “Goodbye Comrade Stalin. That helps. Great gratitude!”²

Zhdanov took control of every facet of Leningrad life, declaring famously: “the enemy is at the gates.” Now plump, asthmatic and exhausted, always chain-smoking his Belomor cigarettes, clad in an olive-green belted tunic, pistol in holster, Zhdanov ran the front from the third floor of the right wing of the Smolny Institute from an office hung with pictures of Stalin, Marx and Engels. His long table was covered in red baize just as Stalin’s was in green. His desk was set with Urals stone, a present from some Leningrad factory. He drank tea, like Stalin, from a glass held in a silver holder, chewing sugar lumps and, like him, slept on his office divan. He wrote the newspaper editorials, personally allocated every volt of electricity, threatened “panic-mongers” with instant death, and shared command of the front.³

Voroshilov meanwhile displayed the admirable courage that he had shown at Tsaritsyn. When he appeared at the front at Ivanovskoye, the soldiers watched as the First Marshal pranced around under heavy shellfire:

“That’s him! Voroshilov! Klim!” gasped the soldiers. “Look how he stands as if he grew out of the earth!” A few miles away, the Marshal came upon some troops who had broken under a German attack. He stopped his staff car, pulled out his pistol and led the troops against the Germans to the shout of “Hurrah!” The old cavalryman could buckle his swash but was unable to stabilize the front.⁴

Stalin was unmoved by the heroic ineptitude of this beau sabreur . His warmth towards Zhdanov was cooling fast. When the Leningraders referred respectfully to their boss as “Andrei Alexandrovich,” Stalin answered icily: “Andrei Alexandrovich? Now which Andrei Alexandrovich do you mean?” The terrified agreement to his own orders did not help matters: “If you don’t agree,” he told Zhdanov, “say it straight.” But he also showed his sarcastic irritation, scribbling in his red pencil: “You didn’t answer the proposal. You didn’t answer? Why not?… Is it understood? When do you begin the attack? We demand an immediate answer in two words: “Yes” will mean a positive answer and swift implementation and “No” will mean a negative. Answer yes or no. Stalin.” Nonetheless he resisted any attempt to dismiss Zhdanov even though he was staggering under the burden of Leningrad’s plight. ⁵

On the 21st, Stalin, realizing the desperate situation, ordered Molotov and Malenkov, armed with his full authority, to descend on Leningrad and designate a scapegoat, marking Zhdanov’s fall from grace. “To Voroshilov, Malenkov, Zhdanov… Leningrad Front thinks of only one thing: any way to retreat… Isn’t it time you got rid of these heroes of retreat?”⁶ But they also had a bigger unspoken mission: should Leningrad be abandoned?

Their journey itself was an adventure: they flew to Cherepovets where they took a special train westward but suddenly the train could go no further and stopped at the little station of Mga, twenty-five miles east of the city. The magnates could see a German bombing raid up ahead but they did not realize this was the beginning of the German advance that would encircle Leningrad only two days later: Mga had been the last way in. Molotov and Malenkov were unsure what to do. They walked along the tracks towards Leningrad until they found a suburban trolleybus which they boarded like commuters. They were met further up the line by an armoured train.

They found Zhdanov just about holding things together, but comforting himself with drink and struggling against his asthma. Zhdanov was never the strongest of Stalin’s men: “a bit spineless,” thought Molotov. Alcohol became the one flaw in this perfect Stalinist. He was now close to collapse, admitting openly to Stalin that he had at one point lost his nerve, panicked during the bombardment and hidden, drinking, in the Smolny bunker. But the very confession helped keep Stalin’s favour. He worked like a man possessed but his health never recovered.

Malenkov enjoyed spreading the story of Zhdanov’s alcoholic cowardice while boasting that he never reported it to Stalin, which is hard to believe. Zhdanov got on well with Molotov but had despised Malenkov since the late thirties. It was he who had coined the nickname for that fat, eunuch-like bureaucrat: “Malanya.” The mutual hatred of these two noble scions of the provincial intelligentsia would seethe until it ended in a massacre. Malenkov probably proposed Zhdanov’s arrest but Beria, knowing Stalin’s fondness for “the Pianist,” said this was no time for courtmartialling Politburo members. Molotov agreed: “Zhdanov was a good comrade” but he was “very dejected.”

Apart from hunting scapegoats, Stalin’s plenipotentiaries hardly improved matters: “I fear,” Stalin wrote hysterically to Molotov and Malenkov, “Leningrad will be lost through imbecilic folly, and all Leningrad risks encirclement. What are Popov [front commander] and Voroshilov doing? They don’t even tell us of the measures they’re taking against the danger. They’re busy looking for new lines of retreat. As far as I can see, this is their only purpose… This is pure peasant fatalism … What people! I can’t understand anything. Don’t you think someone’s opening the road to the Germans in this important direction? On purpose? What’s this man Popov? What’s Voroshilov doing? How’s he helping Leningrad? I write about this because I’m disturbed by the lack of activity of Leningrad’s commander… return to Moscow. Don’t be late. Stalin.”⁷

On their return, the emissaries advised Stalin to scrap Voroshilov’s North-Western Axis and sack the First Marshal who spent “all his time in the trenches.” Meanwhile Schlusselberg, the fortress on the Neva, and Mga, fell. Voroshilov did not tell Moscow, and when Stalin discovered these prevarications, he was outraged.

“We’re so indignant about your conduct,” he told Voroshilov and Zhdanov. “You tell us only of losses but no word of measures to save towns… and the loss of Schlusselberg? What’ll be the end of our losses? Have you decided to surrender Leningrad?”⁸

On 8 September, Stalin summoned Zhukov to his flat where he was dining with his usual companions— Molotov, Malenkov and the Moscow boss, Alexander Shcherbakov.[192]

“Where will you be off to now?” Stalin asked casually.

“Back to the front,” replied Zhukov.

“Which front?”

“The one you consider most necessary.”

“Then go to Leningrad at once… The situation is almost hopeless there…” and he handed Zhukov a note to Voroshilov that read: “Hand over command to Zhukov and fly to Moscow immediately.” Stalin scrawled to Zhdanov: “Today Voroshilov’s recalled!” ⁹

Zhukov took command at Leningrad’s Smolny headquarters, combining professionalism with draconian ruthlessness, shouting at the staff: “Don’t you understand that if Antonov’s division doesn’t occupy the line… the Germans’ll break into the city? And then I’ll have you shot in front of the Smolny as a traitor.” Zhdanov, standing beside his new partner in command, frowned: he disapproved of swearing.

The crestfallen Voroshilov addressed his staff: “Goodbye comrades,” he said. “Stavka’s recalled me back.” He paused. “That’s what an old man like me deserves. This isn’t the Civil War. Now we have to fight differently… But don’t doubt for a minute that we’ll smash the Fascist scum!”¹⁰

Back in Moscow, Stalin admitted, “We might have to abandon ‘Peter.’” But Zhukov stiffened resistance to the German attack and then counter-attacked.¹¹ Zhdanov, working closely with Zhukov, now showed his steel, complaining that his “tribunals are being inactive against spreaders of false and provocative rumours… The Special Departments should arrange trials of provocateurs and rumour-mongers. The public should know how we regard these bastards.”¹² Whatever Stalin suggested was put into action.[193] On 13 November, Stalin told him that the Germans were constructing strongholds in the cellars of ordinary homes: “People’s Commissar of Defence Comrade Stalin gives the following instructions,” wrote Zhdanov. “When moving forward don’t try to capture one or other point but… burn to ashes these populated areas. So the German staffs and units will be buried… Toss away any sentiment and destroy all populated areas you meet on your way!”¹³

Zhukov and Zhdanov succeeded in making the storming of Leningrad very costly for the Germans. Hitler hesitated, cancelled the assault and ordered instead that Leningrad be starved into submission and then razed to the ground: the 900-day siege of the city had begun. Zhdanov had not lost the habit of writing Stalin personal letters with a fine ink pen: “The main cause of our failure was the weak performance of our infantry… We remembered what you told us during the Finnish War” but “our people have a bad habit of not finishing things and analysing them—and then running in different directions… Today we’re working strongly to change our style of attack… The worst is that the hunger is spreading.” ¹⁴

There were 2.2 million people trapped in Leningrad. That December alone, 53,000 died and there would be many more to follow. People dropped dead in the streets, in their beds, whole families died one by one. There were too many bodies and everyone was too weak to bury them. Cannibalism flourished: it was not rare to find a body lying in the hall of an apartment block with thighs and breasts carved off. Between the start of the siege and July 1942, it is estimated that a million people died in Leningrad.