Stalin: A Biography

regarded as Soviet puppet ensembles. Countries in western Europe displayed intermittent irritation at the USA’s hegemony; but the anger at the USSR’s rule was wider and deeper in eastern Europe. Without the Soviet military occupation and the penetration by the MVD, no communist regime would have endured more than a few days by the early 1950s. Stalin had acquired the regional buffer zone he craved, but only at the price of turning those countries into a region of constant repressed hostility to his purposes. His political victory in 1945–8 was bound in the end to prove a Pyrrhic one.

48. STALINIST RULERSHIP

Putting aside his Stavka work in 1945, Stalin had picked up the routines of his social life. His options had been narrowed by his own actions. In the mid-1930s he had turned for company to the extended families of the Alliluevs and Svanidzes. But then he had killed or arrested several of them, and the survivors were in a state of psychological shock not conducive to a dinner-party atmosphere.

The Germans had shot Yakov. Vasili was an over-promoted wastrel who irritated fellow officers in the Soviet Air Force and whose drunken parties earned ostracism from his father. Svetlana brought little joy. After breaking with Kapler she set out to inveigle Beria’s son Sergo into marriage — an unlikely venture since Sergo was already married. Thwarted, she instead married Grigori Morozov against Stalin’s wishes in 1943. The marriage was stormy and a divorce was agreed in spring 1947. That summer Stalin invited her to spend some weeks with him at Kholodnaya Rechka by the Black Sea.¹ He had a dacha built for her down the steep slope from his own much bigger dacha.² Although this was a pleasant gesture, they were not going to share an abode: they were edgy in each other’s company. Soon she turned her attentions to Zhdanov’s son Yuri, and the couple married in 1949. Stalin showed little enthusiasm even for this unexceptionable match and declined to attend the ceremony; and although he had Svetlana’s children to the dacha, his interest in them was fleeting. Svetlana and Yuri quickly fell out and separated. She exasperated Stalin. Individuals whom he wanted to integrate in his emotional world had to comply with his expectations or be cast from his affections.

Stalin remained a needy person: solitude did not suit him. He coped by joking with his dacha bodyguards. He teased his bodyguard chief Vlasik and his chief aide Poskrebyshev. He chatted with his housekeeper Valentina Istomina; and even if the rumours of her having been his mistress remain unproven, he derived comfort from her companionship.

Yet these contacts did not make him a happy man, and his thoughts reverted to earlier periods in his life. In 1947 he wrote to a certain V. G. Solomin whom he had known in Turukhansk District in the First World War:³

I still haven’t forgotten you and friends from Turukhansk and indeed must never forget them. I’m sending you six thousand rubles from my [Supreme Soviet] deputy’s salary. It’s not so great an amount but it will still be of use to you.

On vacation at Kholodnaya Rechka in autumn 1948, he got downright nostalgic and ordered arrangements to be made to enable his Gori schoolmates to stay with him. Peter Kapanadze, M. Titvinidze and Mikhail Dzeradze were invited. There was initial embarrassment when they arrived. Kapanadze broke the ice by expressing his condolence about the death of that ‘poor boy’, Stalin’s son Yakov. Stalin replied that he was but one parent among millions who had lost a relative. Kapanadze, who had business to attend to, left after a few days. There was much singing on subsequent evenings but Titvinidze and Dzeradze got fidgety before a week was up. Stalin asked whether they were bored. Titvinidze replied that they knew he had much work to do. Stalin took the hint. Soon they were packing their bags and, after a warm farewell, were driven home to Georgia.⁴ He recognised that the past could not be restored by artificial means, and he never saw his friends again.

His Politburo subordinates were keener guests by the Black Sea or at the Blizhnyaya dacha. His dinner parties were now nearly always allmale affairs. For the politicians, an invitation signified continued favour and prolonged life. Hours of eating and drinking would usually be followed by a film-show. Stalin also still liked to sing those Church trios with Molotov and Voroshilov — accompanied by Zhdanov at the pianoforte — even though his voice had lost its strength and accuracy.⁵ Otherwise, though, the dinners were raucous. As previously, he tried to get his guests hopelessly pickled. Endless toasts would be given to distinguished visitors, and Stalin, despite his demurrals, liked to receive praise.

Yet the soft potency of hospitality at the dachas could harden in an instant. As his political guests knew all too well, the Boss used occasions of hospitality to loosen tongues. Many needed little encouragement. Pravda editor Leonid Ilichev never forgot the last occasion he went to Blizhnyaya. Stalin had called him at midnight, inviting him over to discuss a forthcoming article. There he came upon Beria, Malenkov and Molotov relaxing with the Leader. After an hour’s work all moved to a lavishly prepared dinner table. Ilichev was poured a glass of Georgian wine while Beria helped himself to a brandy and proposed a toast to Stalin. Prudently, because he had not yet eaten, Ilichev swigged only half the glass and picked up a bite to eat. But Beria had spotted a breach of etiquette: ‘You should drain your glass when drinking to comrade Stalin.’ When Ilichev muttered his excuse, Beria exclaimed in a tragic tone: ‘Comrade Stalin, will you permit me to drink your health by draining his glass?’ Stalin’s eyes glistened derisively but he said nothing. Ilichev gripped his glass tight. Beria tried to snatch it off him shouting: ‘I wish to drink to comrade Stalin!’ But Ilichev held on to the glass and drank its contents.

Stalin acidulously announced that the next toast should be to Beria and asked why Ilichev appeared reluctant to join in. The Pravda editor was speechless with fear. ‘Well, then, comrade Ilichev,’ ventured the teasing Stalin, ‘I’ll drain your little glass and drink to our much respected friend Lavrenti.’ Ilichev could not afford to stay out of the toasting round and, after getting plastered, became the butt of everyone’s ridicule. As light dawned, Malenkov helped him into his coat and his waiting car.

Stalin asked the Politburo members what they thought of Ilichev as an editor. He was using tomfoolery to make a professional assessment. Beria opined that Ilichev talked too freely; Malenkov added that a ‘more solid’ kind of person was needed. After sobering up, the editor found he had been sacked.⁶ Yet he never blamed Stalin; he failed entirely to understand that it was by this social device that Stalin scrutinised and demeaned his minions. Those closer to Stalin were more aware of what was going on. So long as he kept the Politburo divided, his dominance was secure. Jealousy, misunderstanding and dispute were in the despot’s regular tool-kit. Politburo members understood all this but could do nothing about it short of assassinating him. If ever such a thought crossed the mind of his subordinates, they swiftly dismissed it. The gamble would have been altogether too risky because he was guarded by men personally devoted to him. Even if a group of the politicians had got together in a conspiracy, there was always the probability that the others would gang up against them. Arrest would have been certain.

Stalin’s actions remained brutal regardless of attempts to placate him — and he systematically undermined the position of those who had authority and prominence after the war.⁷ His methods were characteristically devious. Molotov’s wife Polina Zhemchuzhina was arrested in 1949. Zhemchuzhina was Jewish and Stalin objected to the warmth of her welcome for Israeli envoy Golda Meir in Moscow.⁸ Molotov abstained in the Politburo vote on her expulsion from the party, but then apologised to Stalin:

I declare that, having thought over this question, I vote for this Central Committee decision which corresponds to the interests of party and state and teaches a correct understanding of party-mindedness. Moreover, I confess my heavy guilt in not restraining Zhemchuzhina, a person close to me, from erroneous steps and links with anti-Soviet Jewish nationalists like Mikhoels.⁹

Molotov was not the only leader deprived of his marital partner. Yelena Kalinina and Tamara Khazan — wife of Andrei Andreev — had long been in labour camps (although Kalinina was released in time for her husband’s death).¹⁰

Soviet politicians had to become masters of ingratiation. After a contretemps with Stalin in December 1945, Molotov assured him: ‘I shall try by my deeds to become worthy of your trust, a trust in which every honourable Bolshevik sees not only personal trust but the party’s trust which is dearer to me than my life.’ His ‘crude,