city. Hand-to-hand combat continued until Paulus gave himself up, and on 2 February 1943 German resistance ceased. Stalingrad was a Soviet city again. The German losses were greater than in any previous theatre of the Second World War: 147,000 of them had been killed and 91,000 taken captive. The Red Army had lost still more men. But it had gained much more in other ways. The myth of the Wehr-macht’s invincibility had been discredited. Hitler had visibly lacked basic skills of generalship. Whereas Soviet citizens had once doubted whether the Red Army could win the war, now everyone thought it might have a chance.
Stalin was generous to his commanders. Zhukov and five others were awarded the Order of Suvorov, 1st class. Stalin made himself Marshal of the Soviet Union. He convinced himself that he had been tested in the heat of battle and had achieved everything demanded of him. His real role had been as a co-ordinator and instigator. He drew together the military and civilian agencies of the Soviet state. The expertise was supplied by the commanders in Stavka, and the courage and endurance came from the officers and men of the Red Army in conditions of almost unbelievable privation. The material equipment was produced by poorly fed factory workers who toiled without complaint. Food was provided by kolkhozniks who themselves had barely enough grain and potatoes to live on. But Stalin was unembarrassed by self-doubt. Whenever he appeared in public and whenever pictures of him appeared on newsreels or in the press after Stalingrad, he donned the marshal’s uniform.
39. SLEEPING ON THE DIVAN
The German invasion deprived Stalin of the presence of his family. His sons Yakov and Vasili were on war service. Yakov was a lieutenant in the 14th Armoured Division, Vasili a very young air force commander. Yakov suffered a terrible fate. Captured near Vitebsk by the Wehrmacht in 1941, his identity was discovered and he was kept as a prized prisoner. Hitler sanctioned an offer to ransom him for one of the leading German generals. The Germans interrogated him in the hope of hearing things which might be used to embarrass his father. Yakov, despite his youthful misdemeanours, proved a stoical inmate and stood up for Stalin and the USSR. Stalin endured the situation and refused the German proposal point blank. Yet the situation deeply troubled him; he asked Svetlana to stay in his bedroom for several successive nights.1 Only Zhukov dared to enquire after Yakov. Stalin walked about a hundred paces before replying in a lowered voice that he did not expect Yakov to survive captivity. Later at the dining table he pushed aside his food and declared with a rare intimacy: ‘No, Yakov will prefer any death to the betrayal of the Motherland. What a terrible war! How many lives of our people has it taken away! Obviously we’ll have few families without relatives who have perished.’2
Order No. 270, which had been edited and sharpened by Stalin,3 prohibited Soviet servicemen from allowing themselves to be taken prisoner. Red Army POWs were automatically categorised as traitors. Yet Stalin exempted his son Yakov from blame. Nevertheless the iron was in his soul: he wanted the policy of no surrender to be taken seriously and could not afford to be seen indulging his son.
The relationship between Stalin and his sons had been poor long before the war. Yakov had continued to annoy his father, even refusing to join the communist party. Stalin sent for him and remonstrated: ‘And you are my son! What do I look like? Me, the General Secretary of the Central Committee? You can have all the opinions you wish, but do think of your father. Do it for me.’ This argument got through to Yakov and he joined the party.4 But they saw little of each other and Stalin was never slow to issue reprimands. It was a similar situation with his younger son Vasili, who took more than the normal time to qualify for the officer corps in the Soviet air force (which was the favourite section of the armed forces for the offspring of Politburo members). It is said that Stalin complained: ‘You should long ago have got your diploma from the Military Academy.’ Vasili is reported to have lashed back: ‘Well, you haven’t got a diploma either.’5 Perhaps the story is apocryphal. But it has the sound of psychological truth. Stalin was always trying to impress others as a man who understood armies and military strategy. Only his son would have dared to point out the amateurish foundations of his military knowledge.
Until the war Svetlana had been the apple of his eye. Nadya’s strict standards of behaviour were relaxed after her death,6 and Svetlana was fussed over by tutors and housekeeper Katerina Til. A nurse combed her hair. The general oversight of her daily schedule, though, was handed to Stalin’s chief bodyguard Nikolai Vlasik.7 Stalin was too busy to see a lot of her; in any case his opinion was that ‘feelings were a matter for women’.8 What he wanted from his children was that they should be a delight for him on those occasions when they spent time together. He in turn wished to be fun for them. Yakov and Vasili did not meet these specifications: neither of them worked hard at school or behaved with the mixture of respect and levity that he required. But Svetlana fitted the bill. He penned letters to her pretending to be her ‘first secretary comrade Stalin’. She wrote out orders to him such as ‘I hereby command you to permit me to go to the theatre or cinema with you.’ To this he replied: ‘All right, I obey.’9 As Maria Svanidze, Stalin’s sister-in law from his first marriage, recorded in her diary for 1934, Svetlana adored him: ‘Svetlana rubbed against her father the whole time. He stroked her, kissed her, admired her and fed her from his own spoon, lovingly choosing the best titbits for her.’10
Relations between father and daughter deteriorated after Operation Barbarossa. By her mid-teens she was interested in men, and this brought out his ill-tempered side. When she showed him a photograph of herself in clothes he thought immodest (and he had strict ideas on this subject), he snatched it from her and ripped it up.11 He hated her wearing lipstick. When she wanted to stay overnight at the Berias’ dacha, where she was a frequent visitor, he ordered her to return home immediately: ‘I don’t trust Beria!’12 Stalin was aware of Lavrenti Beria’s proclivities towards young women. Although it was Beria’s son Sergo she was visiting, Stalin took no chances and attached a security official — known to Svetlana as Uncle Klimov — to act as her chaperone.
Svetlana’s discomfort was increased by what she learned about her family’s history. Her aunt Anna told her, when she reached the age of sixteen, that her mother Nadya had not died of natural causes but had committed suicide. Svetlana was shocked by what she heard; her father had always avoided the topic.13 Anna did not tell Svetlana much more: she had already taken a large risk in breaching Stalin’s confidence. Svetlana proceeded to ask her father for further information. According to Sergo Beria, in whom she confided, Stalin’s response was hurtful. He resented the way Svetlana kept on examining pictures of Nadya. When she asked him whether her mother had been beautiful, he replied more insensitively: ‘Yes, except that she had teeth like a horse.’ He added that the other Alliluev women had wanted to sleep with him. This too may well have been true, but it was a painful message for Svetlana. He finished by explaining: ‘At least your mother was young, and she really loved me. That’s why I married her.’14
It was around this time that Svetlana started going out with film-writer Alexei Kapler. A more unsuitable boyfriend could not be imagined. Kapler was a womaniser who had had a string of affairs. He was over twice Svetlana’s age. He was also Jewish — and Stalin even before the war had been trying to identify himself and his family with the Russians. Kapler was incredibly indiscreet. He acquired Western films such as
Kapler made Svetlana feel desirable as a woman, and she fell head over heels in love with him.15 Stalin, on hearing about developments from Vlasik, knew how things might turn out. Hadn’t he himself seduced girls in Siberia? Hadn’t he taken a woman half his age off to Tsaritsyn in 1918 and exploited his mature charms? Something had to be done. Stalin decided that the best thing — for once — was not to have the man arrested but to send him as a
