Stalin liked working in the afternoon and at night; nothing would change in his routine until he finally collapsed in 1953. He never learned to swim and seldom descended the 826 steps to the road by the coast. His place of pleasure was the garden. At Kholodnaya Rechka he could distract himself from the political concerns that bothered his waking hours. From the balcony at the garden’s edge he could gaze at the Black Sea, calm and almost waveless in the late summer months. Fancying himself as a gardener, he planted lemon and eucalyptus trees in front of the house. The lemon tree was the only plant to survive the bitter winter of 1947–8; it remains there to this day.8 In his Abkhazian dachas he could make his political calculations without fuss. He could also enjoy the kind of Caucasus he wanted for himself. This was a Caucasus without the bright human diversity and hectic activity of the towns of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan or Abkhazia. At Kholodnaya Rechka or up by Lake Ritsa there was nothing but the dachas, the mountains, the sky and the sea. This was a controlled, secluded Caucasus where the only intrusions were those which he told Poskrebyshev and Vlasik to allow.
Whether restoring himself in the south or relaxing at Blizhnyaya, Stalin strove to keep his decline a secret. He weighed himself regularly. He swallowed pills and iodine capsules — without medical supervision — to perk himself up.9 He took the waters at the Black Sea spas and enjoyed occasional saunas in Moscow (which he regarded as equivalent to physical exercise: he had long given up active recreations). Stalin made it a point of pride on ceremonial occasions to ascend the Mausoleum steps on Red Square briskly before waving to the crowd.10 Soviet citizens were encouraged to believe that the country’s ruler remained hale and hearty. Stalin himself poked fun at those in his entourage who had let themselves go physically. He baited Khrushchev and Malenkov for their corpulence. He ridiculed others on grounds of taste. Bulganin’s goatee beard amused him. He laughed at Beria for refusing to wear a tie even though he himself would never wear one; he also objected to Beria’s pince-nez: ‘It makes you look like a Menshevik. Only a little chain is needed to complete the picture!’11
Age failed to soften his temper. Whenever he admitted he was feeling his age, his underlings protested that he was simply indispensable. But he went on mooting the possibility of stepping down from power despite his brutal treatment of Vinogradov for making that very suggestion. In 1946 he had told Politburo members to think about how to prepare the next generation to take power. According to Kaganovich, he also expressed a wish to retire. Molotov was his intended replacement: ‘Let Vyacheslav do the work.’12 This caused consternation: Kaganovich did not like the prospect of yielding to Molotov. Yet Stalin’s favour, once given, could anyway be withdrawn. He played like a cat with the Politburo mice. In 1947 he told each of its members to select five or six subordinates who might eventually replace them. Mikoyan supplied the required list of names while arguing that the individuals were being promoted too early. There was no incentive for veterans to be helpful to newcomers; indeed they could have been forgiven for deliberately obstructing them, and this is probably what happened. Within a year the newcomers, their inexperience having been exposed, were eased out of office.13 They could count themselves lucky they were still alive.
While teasing his leading subordinates, however, Stalin genuinely wished to shed many burdens; in particular, he delegated the routine management of the Soviet economy and administrative order to subordinates. He cut down the number of days he received visitors from 145 in the last year of the war to thirty-seven in 1952.14 But he was determined to remain Leader.15 He not only retained oversight of general policy but also reserved the capacity to intervene in particular affairs at his whim; and ailing though he was, he never let any great decision on international relations be taken without him. He continued to receive piles of papers from Moscow while he stayed by the Black Sea. Security police affairs remained one of his preoccupations.16 Always he was accompanied by Alexander Poskrebyshev, the head of the Special Department of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee. Poskrebyshev had been awarded the rank of major- general in the war and Stalin liked to josh him by addressing him as ‘Supreme Commander’.17 Their master-and-dog relationship was crucial for Stalin. Poskrebyshev dealt with the telegrams coming to the dacha and decided which ones needed Stalin’s attention. If an emergency arose, Poskrebyshev was empowered to interrupt his master’s dinner regardless of other guests and consult him about the desirable response.18
On his lengthy Abkhazian sojourns Stalin kept a lavish table ready for visitors. Most of them were politicians from Moscow or the Caucasus. Conversations were held on a wide variety of topics. His dinners and late breakfasts remained a fulcrum of his despotism. He used them to deliberate with his associates, to give precedence to one or other of them and to strike fear and incite jealousy among the rest. Among the accepted traditions from the late 1940s were elaborate toasts to his health and to his achievements. It was thought impolite to fail to stress his crucial part in preparing the USSR for the Second World War and in leading it to victory in 1945. At each dacha he arranged for a bounteous supply of wines, brandy and champagne; he also kept a store of cigars and cigarettes. Stalin, a lifelong pipe-smoker, remained partial to a puff on a cigarette.19 He especially liked the company of young local officials and was an eager raconteur of his early life. In his declining years, especially in the presence of new acquaintances, he could not resist embroidering the stories with fanciful exaggeration; and his charm and sense of humour captivated them.
These younger men of party and government avidly ascertained his desires. Abkhazian party boss Akaki Mgeladze asked Stalin about his preferences in wine. Among red wines the Leader mentioned his favourite as Khvanchkara produced by peasant methods. This surprised Mgeladze, who had assumed that Stalin would go for the renowned Atenuri or Khidistavi of his native Gori. (Georgians are proud of the grapes of the locality where they are brought up.) Stalin explained that it was really for Molotov’s benefit that he stocked Khidistavi. His other favoured red wine was Chkhaveri.20 For breakfast he took a simple porridge in a milky bouillon; for lunch and dinner he preferred soups and fish — unusually for a man of the Caucasus he had no great longing for meat.21 He adored bananas (and he got very cantankerous when presented with ones of inferior quality).22 When everything was prepared, he played host in the Georgian manner and often dispensed altogether with servants. Guests served themselves from a buffet. Drinks were set out on adjacent small tables.23
The mischievous aspects of Stalin’s dinner parties persisted. Vodka was poured into glasses instead of wine. Sometimes pepper would surreptitiously be shaken into someone’s dish. It was not just horseplay. As before, Stalin wanted to keep people on edge. He loved it if a drink-sodden guest blurted out something indiscreet. He wanted to have dirt on everybody.24 Yet he could also behave with gallantry. When the Georgian actor Bagashvili opined that Beria’s wife Nina needed to escape ‘her gilded cage’, Beria declined to react despite the implication that she was living a life deprived of dignity. She felt and looked insulted. Stalin understood her reaction. Crossing the room he took her hand. ‘Nina,’ he said, ‘this is the first time I have kissed a woman’s hand.’ Beria received a marital reprimand that evening and Stalin had earned an angry woman’s gratitude.25 He may well have been acting hypocritically; but if so, his behaviour was effective; and since he was a man of despotic power, he was usually given the benefit of the doubt by those he sought to charm.
Yet steadily Stalin rid himself of those who had been his intimates since the mid-1930s. Even Vlasik was sacked in April 1952 and Poskre-byshev in January 1953. Another target for Stalin was Beria. Ostensibly the two were on fine terms. Stalin honoured him in 1951 by entrusting him with the main address on Red Square at the October Revolution anniversary celebrations. Beria suspected that Stalin was up to no good. What worried him was the Leader’s remark that he did not need to show him the text of the address in advance.26
Beria surmised he was being set up to say something that could be used against him. He knew Stalin’s methods only too well, and events quickly proved that he was right to be circumspect. Two days after the anniversary parade, a Central Committee resolution denounced a ‘Mingrelian nationalist group’. Beria was not named in the resolution, but his Mingrelian origin exposed him to further action — and indeed the resolution specified that a Paris-based Menshevik organisation led by Yevgeni Gegechkori, who was the uncle of Beria’s wife, was running an espionage network in Georgia.27 The Mingrelians are a people with a language so distinct from ‘standard’ Georgian that Stalin had never understood it.28 (This, of course, did nothing to allay his newly developed suspicions about them.) Beria had several of them among his political clients, and — with Stalin’s consent — he had given land to Mingrelians in Abkhazia at the expense of the Abkhazians. As arrests of prominent Mingrelians proceeded in the winter of 1951–2, Beria anticipated that he would soon join them. Although Stalin had stopped the purge by spring 1952, Beria noted that he was usually more polite than amicable. These were unpleasant omens. The former head of the NKVD feared that he might return to the Lubyanka in circumstances not of his choosing.29
In September several Kremlin doctors were arrested, the first of many. This followed a confidential denunciation of the treatment of Andrei Zhdanov, who had died in 1948. The writer was Dr Lidia Timashuk. Her
