Stalin: A Biography

Abroad his re clusiveness worked even better. Little was known about him. He had baffled even many Moscow-based diplomats before the war.⁹ Interest had been greatest among communists, but loyal members of the Comintern did not stray beyond the pieties offered in the official biography; and renegades such as the Trotskyists, who knew a lot more, were a vociferous but ignored minority. The general public in the West were hardly better informed after the Nazi–Soviet pact in August 1939. David Low, cartoonist for London’s Evening Standard, produced wonderful images of Stalin and Hitler embracing while each hold a dagger behind the other’s back. Stalin was represented as a baleful tyrant. Yet it was Hitler rather than Stalin who held the attention of Western commentators. This remained the situation until Operation Barbarossa. It was then that Stalin became the hero of the anti-Nazi belligerent countries. The same fact reduced the incentive to pry into the dark corners of Stalin’s career. If his Red Army was fighting back, he had to be supported and his communist loyalists in Western countries needed to be treated as patriots rather than subversives. British diplomats and journalists ceased any criticism. Stalin was their new idol.

When the USA entered the war in December 1941, the adulation crossed the Atlantic. In the following year Time magazine named Stalin its Man of the Year. The commendation noted brightly:¹⁰

The trek of world dignitaries to Moscow in 1942 brought Stalin out of his inscrutable shell, revealed a pleasant host and an expert at playing his cards in international affairs. At banquets for such men as Winston Churchill, W. Averell Harriman and Wendell Wilkie, Host Stalin drank his vodka straight, talked the same way.

More generally the editorial declared:

The man whose name means steel in Russian, whose few words of English include the American expression ‘tough guy’, was the man of 1942. Only Joseph Stalin fully knew how close Russia stood to defeat in 1942, and only Joseph Stalin fully knew how he brought Russia through.

This comment set the tone for Western descriptions of him for the rest of the war. He had already won Time magazine’s accolade as Man of the Year at the beginning of 1940.¹¹ But whereas earlier he had been praised as a master of clever, pragmatic manoeuvres, the current emphasis was upon straightforwardness and steadfastness. He was being hailed as a statesman with whom the West could do business. Churchill kept his reservations to himself in the interests of the Grand Alliance. The cult at home acquired its affiliate shrines in the lands of capitalism — and it was just as vague and misleading in the West as it was in its homeland.¹²

Beyond the public gaze Stalin was as complex an individual as ever. An accomplished dissembler, he could assume whatever mood he thought useful. He could charm a toad from a tree. The younger public figures promoted in the late 1930s were particularly susceptible. One such was Nikolai Baibakov. What struck Baibakov was Stalin’s ‘businesslike approach and friendliness’. While discussion took place in his office, he would pace around and occasionally direct a penetrating gaze at his interviewees. He had several tricks up his sleeve. One of them was to set up a debate between experts without revealing his preference in advance. Baibakov also recalled that Stalin never held discussions until he had studied the available material. He was well informed about many matters. He seldom raised his voice and scarcely ever bawled at anyone or even expressed irritation.¹³

Baibakov was looking back through rose-tinted spectacles; the rest of his account indicates that interviews could be terrifying affairs. Stalin, when putting him in charge of the oil installations of the Caucasus, spelled out his terms:¹⁴

Comrade Baibakov, Hitler is bursting through to the Caucasus. He’s declared that if he doesn’t seize the Caucasus, he’ll lose the war. Everything must be done to prevent the oil falling into German hands. Bear in mind that if you leave the Germans even one ton of oil, we will shoot you. But if you destroy the installations prematurely and the Germans don’t grab them and we’re left without fuel, we’ll also shoot you.

This was hardly the most ‘businesslike and friendly’ of injunctions; but Baibakov in retrospect thought that circumstances required such ferocity. Plucking up courage in Stalin’s presence, he had quietly replied: ‘But you leave me no choice, comrade Stalin.’ Stalin walked across to him, raised his hand and tapped his forehead: ‘The choice is here, comrade Baibakov. Fly out. And think it over with Budenny and make your decision on the spot.’¹⁵

Another incident was overheard by General A. E. Golovanov in October 1941. He was at Stavka when Stalin took a phone call from a certain Stepanov, Army Commissar on the Western Front. Stalin’s telephone receiver had a built-in amplifier and Golovanov was able to listen to the exchange. Stepanov, on behalf of the Western Front generals, asked permission to withdraw staff headquarters to the east of Perkhushkovo because of the proximity of the front line. This was the sort of request which enraged Stalin, and the conversation went as follows:¹⁶

Stalin: Comrade Stepanov, find out whether your comrades have got spades.

Stepanov: What’s that, comrade Stalin?

Stalin: Do the comrades have spades?

Stepanov: Comrade Stalin, what kind of spades do you mean: the type used by sappers or some other?

Stalin: It doesn’t matter which type.

Stepanov: Comrade Stalin, they’ve got spades! But what should they do with them?

Stalin: Comrade Stepanov, pass on to your comrades that they should take their spades and dig their own graves. We here are not leaving Moscow. Stavka will remain in Moscow. And they are not going to move from Perkhushkovo.

He did not usually have to bother with sarcasm. The memory of the Great Terror was enough to discourage most military and political personnel from making such an approach to him.

The atmosphere of fear and unpredictability choked nearly everyone into compliance with whatever Stalin was demanding. Just a few Soviet leaders dared to object to what he said. Two of these were Georgi Zhukov and Nikolai Voznesenski. Yet Stalin intimidated even Zhukov. He also exasperated him. Stalin, Zhukov noted, had taken time to understand the need for careful preparation of military operations by professional commanders. He was like a ‘fist-fighter’ in discussion when better results could have been obtained by more comradely methods.¹⁷ He was also arbitrary in his appointment and replacement of commanders, acting on the basis of partial information or of mischievous suggestions. The morale of commanding officers would have been higher if he had not meddled in this way.¹⁸

Stalin’s other subordinates had learned to keep their heads down. ‘When I went to the Kremlin,’ said Ivan Kovalev about his wartime experience in the post of People’s Commissar of Communications,

Molotov, Beria and Malenkov would usually be in Stalin’s office. I used to feel they were in the way. They never asked questions, but sat there and listened, sometimes jotting down a note. Stalin would be busy issuing instructions, talking on the phone, signing papers… and those three would go on sitting there.¹⁹

Stalin’s visitors’ diary makes it clear that these three saw him more frequently than any other politicians. Mikoyan had a theory about this. He hypothesised that Stalin kept Molotov in his office because he feared what Molotov might get up to if he was allowed to be by himself.²⁰ Mikoyan had a point even if he exaggerated it. Stalin had to include others in affairs of state and they in turn had to know what was afoot. Needless to add, he did not give a damn that the main state leaders would be dog-tired by the time they got to their People’s Commissariats and started at last to deal with their own business.

He trusted none of his politicians and commanders. Even Zhukov, his favourite military leader, was the object of his disquiet: Stalin instructed Bogdan Kobulov in the NKVD to put a listening device in his home. Seemingly