deteriorate. It is a possibility since all of them were potential purge victims. But perhaps his political subordinates were simply too scared to intervene any earlier. If he recovered, they would pay a heavy price for acting as if they were in charge of the country. This is a credible hypothesis. Yet they were surely dilatory to a culpable extent — and perhaps they were already more aware of the chronic nature of his ill health than they let on.
The doctors found Stalin drenched in his urine. They undressed and wiped him clean with a vinegar-based solution. At some point he vomited blood; Cheynes-Stokes respiration ensued with its characteristic gasping and irregularity. The seriousness of his condition was obvious. The medical experts themselves were functioning under the stress of knowing what happened to doctors who failed to satisfy Soviet politicians. They quickly found out the worst. Stalin’s right extremities were totally paralysed. Although they did what they could, his prospects were poor. Before midday they administered enemas, even though no one seriously anticipated a positive effect.17
The problem for the Presidium was that, if Stalin recovered, they could be damned if they had failed to assist his recovery and damned if they had intervened without his permission. Caution was vital. It was clearly essential to discover more about his condition. Unfortunately, after the Doctors’ Plot arrests, the finest medical expertise in Moscow was to be found in the cells of the Lubyanka. What followed was a tragicomedy. The incarcerated professors (who allegedly were among the most evil traitors) were approached and asked the likely consequences for a patient diagnosed as having Cheynes–Stokes respiration. After weeks of torture they were bewildered by the unusual turn taken by their interrogators. Yakov Rappoport answered concisely that this was a very ‘grave symptom’, implying that death was the likeliest result.18 Whether medical steps were taken on the basis of such information is not known. But Presidium members had at least gained the assurance that they were free to plan for the political succession. The evidence of their eyes was anyway pretty conclusive: Stalin was in a ghastly condition and the doctors attending him were clearly pessimistic. Now the country’s most distinguished physicians, held in the Lubyanka, had independently confirmed their impression.
On 4 March they started to make their arrangements. There was no procedural tradition and no rules; Stalin had studiously kept the matter off the agenda. The main leaders sensed that legitimacy would accrue to them only if they could pretend to continuity, and they convoked an emergency session of the Party Central Committee. This enabled the Presidium veterans to bypass the threat from the members promoted since the Nineteenth Congress in October 1952. Some veterans were better placed than others. Molotov could not claim supreme power after Stalin’s attack on him in October 1952. Malenkov and Beria took the initiative. Flanked by the Presidium veterans (with the exception of Bulganin, who was on duty by Stalin’s bedside), Malenkov opened the session by announcing that Stalin was seriously ill and that the prognosis was poor even were he to survive the current medical crisis. The Central Committee listened silently and anxiously. Then the lectern was ceded to Beria, who proposed that Malenkov should take over Stalin’s post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers with immediate effect. This was agreed and the short session was declared closed.19
Yet Stalin had not yet passed away and Presidium members sped back to Blizhnyaya dacha where he was sinking irretrievably. They were watching their past lives flash before their eyes: the Five-Year Plans, the Great Terror and the Great Patriotic War. Stalin personified their collective career. They had been active in the consolidation of the Soviet state, its military and industrial power as well as its territorial expansion and political security. With the possible exception of Beria, they were in awe of Stalin’s intelligence and experience at the same time as they simply feared him. He had bewitched them even while traumatising them. As he lay prostrate on the divan, they could not be confident that by some superhuman effort he would not revive and return to dominate public life again. These very individuals who had sent millions to their deaths in the Gulag under Stalin’s leadership trembled at the sight of an old man, semi-conscious and inert, whose life was slipping away. To the end he held them in thrall. There was still the possibility that he might recover sufficiently, if only for a moment, to order the destruction of all of them. Even a dying Stalin was not to be trifled with.
At the dacha the tension was intense. Beria, taking charge of security, put the zone around Blizhnyaya into quarantine as a watch was kept on the patient. On the morning of 5 March he again vomited blood.20 As the doctors later discovered, he had suffered a massive stomach haemorrhage. His general health had been poor for years and his arteries were hardened. Medical staff and politicians gathered at his bedside. Svetlana was the only close family member at the dacha. Turns were taken by those present to approach his recumbent body to pay their respects. They took his hand looking for some sign of his intentions toward them. Most remarkable was the behaviour of Beria, who slobbered on Stalin’s hand in an unctuous display of personal fidelity. At 9.50 a.m. the Leader choked on his last breath. He was gone.
Some fell into each other’s arms. The distraught Svetlana took comfort in the embrace of Khrushchev. Servants were allowed in to see the corpse. Even the Presidium members, who hours previously had been making dispositions for politics after Stalin, were affected. A whole period in their lives as well as in their country’s history had been terminated. They would not have been human if they had not been shocked by their experience. Only one person had full presence of mind. This was Beria, who behaved like an uncaged panther. No longer unctuous or doleful, he shouted: ‘Khrustalev! The car!’21 Beria raced to the Kremlin to complete an orderly political succession in which he would play a leading role. While others consoled Svetlana or wept by Stalin’s bedside, there was much to do and Beria set the pace. Unlike Molotov and Mikoyan, he had not been named as an undesirable potential leader. The Mingrelian Affair had not been mentioned at the Central Committee and, as far as its members knew, Beria had been in Stalin’s good books to the end. The battle for the succession was under way.
The security group became the guard of honour standing by the dead Leader. A black catafalque arrived at the dacha and the guards carried him into it for transfer to the special institute where the condition of Lenin’s corpse was regularly checked and Stalin’s corpse would be prepared for the funeral. Guard commander Khrustalev remained in charge.
At 8 p.m. on 5 March the Party Central Committee reconvened with Khrushchev in the chair. Presidium members knew they had to convince everyone present that Stalin had died of natural causes.22 The platform was given to USSR Minister of Health A. F. Tretyakov for a detailed medical explanation. Khrushchev, avoiding debate, announced the proposals from the Bureau of the Presidium. Malenkov was suggested as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Beria would be one of his First Deputies and would take charge of the Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD) and State Security (MGB). Khrushchev would remain a Secretary of the Party Central Committee. The older veterans were not ignored. Voroshilov was to be made Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Molotov, who retained his standing in the minds of fellow leaders despite Stalin’s attack on him, would become First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (as did not only Beria but also Bulganin). The key figures, however, were Malenkov, Beria and Khrush-chev. This was signalled in the decision to entrust them with the task of bringing Stalin’s papers ‘into necessary order’. Every proposal was unanimously approved and the meeting lasted only forty minutes.23 Stalin’s specific wishes were being repudiated. He had been plotting the downfall of Beria as well as Molotov and Mikoyan. Malenkov, however, saw Beria as a useful ally and Khrushchev temporarily accepted the
Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev had known Stalin in the years when he held the power of life or death over them. They had no experience of politics free of fear that he might order their arrest. Beria got his son Sergo to train as a pilot and learn the international air routes in case the family needed to flee.24 Beria, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan and Kaganovich had reason to bless Stalin’s parting with this earthly life. Others such as Khrushchev and Malenkov must have worried that Stalin’s menace might eventually be directed at them too. The entire Presidium had shivered with fear for months. Stalin’s closest subordinates had plenty of interest in his demise and in conspiring to hasten its occurrence. The reasons for death remain obscure. Although an autopsy was carried out, the report has never been found. This would be more than enough to induce suspicions. Furthermore, the ten doctors who cared for him at the end composed a history of his illness. Yet it was not completed until July (and has only recently become available).25 Its plausible conclusion was that Stalin died of natural causes. But the delay in composition was odd, as was the loss of the autopsy document: perhaps something important was being covered up.
The verdict must remain open. One possibility is that he was murdered, probably with the connivance of Beria and Khrustalev. Poison administered in Stalin’s food is the method usually touted; another suggestion is that Beria arranged for his men to enter the dacha and kill the Leader with a lethal injection. In one strange version it is alleged that the man who died at the Blizhnyaya house was not Stalin but his double; but this too is far-fetched speculation entirely without evidence (and indeed without an explanation of why, if the corpse belonged to a
