26. THE DEATH OF NADYA
Stalin became ever more isolated from daily life in the USSR as concern for his personal security grew. He no longer kept open office in the Secretariat. He visited no collective farm. While on vacation in Abkhazia allegedly he once went to inspect a market; but the Sukhum authorities, eager to impress him, got the stallholders to lower their prices for the duration of his visit: thus he was prevented from discovering the high cost of living.1 In any case, he never inspected the factories and mines being constructed; and when he went to inspect the White Sea Canal, his trip was announced in the press only days after it had taken place.2 The OGPU had picked up a potential assassin, Yakov Ogarev, outside the Kremlin in November 1931. Ogarev, however, had been so surprised by Stalin’s unexpected appearance on Red Square that he failed to pull out his revolver.3 Security concerns alone did not explain Stalin’s withdrawal from view. The fact was that he had set up a political structure which no longer required him to get out and about. Whether in the Kremlin office or at his dachas, he could give his orders and prod his subordinates into carrying them out.
Political cloistering did nothing to lessen the strains in his family. His son Yakov tried to kill himself in 1929; it was a botched attempt which earned Stalin’s contempt rather than sympathy. Marital relations with Nadya were tense. He was extremely gruff to her and never admitted to fault. Quite possibly Stalin continued to have the odd fling with young communists; and, even if he was faithful to Nadya, she did not always believe him and was driven mad with jealousy. Yet it had never been his way to compromise in personal relationships, least of all with women. Joseph’s attitudes were not the only reason why she got angry. Another factor was her mental condition. Although its precise nature remains unclear, probably it would nowadays be categorised as some kind of schizophrenia. Days of quietude alternated with explosive aggression. Stalin could never be sure what awaited him in the Kremlin flat or at the Zubalovo dacha — and his insensitivity to her plight was driving her to despair. Nadya had always been strong-willed. Stalin had been the love of her life, and, unlike others in her family, she did not have extramarital dalliances. Feeling rejected and underappreciated, she could take it no more in 1926 and decamped to Leningrad, intending to divorce Joseph.4
Yet she yielded to his pleadings and gave the marriage another try. She wanted no more children; according to her daughter, she had already had two abortions.5 Stalin had not obstructed her from registering as a student at the Industrial Academy. Letters between husband and wife were tender. His routine was established: every summer he would go to the south of the RSFSR. Usually the destination was Sochi on the northeast coast of the Black Sea. Nadya filled her letters with news of the children, the household, the weather and her progress as a student.
The Stalins decided to consult over her mental condition with foreign medical experts. Since the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 it had been normal for members of the Soviet elite to go to German clinics and spas. Stalin was one of the few who spurned this privilege; distrusting doctors and disliking foreign countries, he never considered travelling abroad for his healthcare. Georgi Chicherin, his Foreign Affairs Commissar, rebuked him: ‘How good it would be if you, Stalin, were to change your appearance and travel for a certain time abroad with a genuine interpreter rather than a tendentious one. Then you’d see reality!’6 But Stalin approved of Nadya’s trip. No less than his wife, he urgently wanted her to get cured. Even for her, however, permission had to come from on high. The Party Orgburo and Secretariat took from April to July 1930 to process her request, supported by her physicians in Moscow, to spend a month in Germany. The final sanction was signed by Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich and I. N. Smirnov.7 Stalin arranged for Nadya to send him personal letters through the diplomatic post.8 She met her brother Pavel and his wife Yevgenia on her trip; and after seeing the doctors she returned in time for the start of the Industrial Academy term in September.9
The medical papers are missing;10 but according to Nadya’s niece Kira Allilueva the diagnosis was a fusion of the cranial seams.11 Joseph wrote affectionate letters to her. Throughout these months — before, during and after her journey — he used the sentimental code they had developed over the years, dropping particular letters from phrases like ‘deep kisses many times’.12
Her health, though, did not improve. In 1932 she turned to Soviet physicians for advice on what appear to have been abdominal complaints. It has been mooted that they resulted from an earlier abortion.13 What seems to have happened is that a planned surgical operation was postponed on medical grounds. This was what she confided to her Kremlin maid Alexandra Korchagina.14 Nadya fretted as much as ever; and although she made no further attempt to break free from her husband, the marriage remained an unsettled one. He could hardly be bothered with her. In a period where he and his propagandists were touting the importance of films, Joseph did not bestir himself by taking her to the cinema. When he was not drinking with his uncouth comrades, he went on flirting with women. The children brought no solace to Nadya. Severe and demanding, she gave them little of the cuddling normal in other families. Only when they were apart did Joseph and Nadya get back on affectionate terms. This was little comfort for a woman who was expected to give the maximum of psychological support to her husband without ever being able to count on his reciprocation.
Nadya did not limit her assistance to family matters but also supported him politically. Stories spread that, like her confidant Bukharin, she detested the agricultural collectivisation campaign. In fact she was a wife who jealously guarded her husband’s political position. On 2 May 1931 she wrote to Sergo Ordzhonikidze about Industrial Academy affairs. Her claim was that Stalin’s injunction for the right sort of ‘technical specialists’ to be trained was being ignored. Yet she insisted that her fellow students were not to know and the letter was to be destroyed.15 She was snitching on people in the Industrial Academy in support of the line of the country’s ruling clique.
Yet the dual problems of her medical condition and her relationship with Joseph had her on the brink of eruption. The only surprise is that no one properly understood this. Close friends like Tamara Khazanova (by now married to Andrei Andreev) and Molotov’s wife Polina Zhemchuzhina knew of her troubles but failed to understand the depths of her misery. Nadya felt terribly lonely. She found certain kinds of social situation very disturbing. She tended to get distressed when Joseph got together with his cronies and their wives. The ruling group’s tradition was to gather for supper at the Voroshilovs’ Kremlin flat for a celebration of the October Revolution anniversary on 7 November. (Sovnarkom had adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, moving the date by thirteen days and thereby changing the month in which the Revolution had taken place.) Always there was excessive drinking and a lot of crude banter. In 1932 Nadya made a special effort to dress up to look her best. It made no difference to Joseph’s behaviour. Late in the evening he flirted with the wife of Alexander Yegorov, who had served with him in the Soviet–Polish War. Natalya Yegorova was wearing a glamorous frock and behaving coquettishly. Apparently he did his crude trick of rolling a bit of bread into a ball and flicking it at her. Nadya was seized with jealousy, and stormed out of the gathering. Witnesses dismissively put this down to her ‘Gipsy blood’.16
There are other versions of what happened before she left. One story has it that Stalin yelled across at Nadya using the familiar ‘you’ form in Russian and that she took exception to this. Another is that he threw a lighted cigarette at her. But the likeliest version is that he was indeed making eyes at Natalya Yegorova and that Nadya could take it no longer. What happened next is more definitely recorded. Polina Zhemchuzhina ran after her into the cold night air. Nadya was extraordinarily tense and Polina walked her around the Kremlin grounds in an attempt to calm her down. Then Nadya went by herself to the family flat while Polina went back to the party.17
Nadya’s thoughts plunged into existential darkness. Some years previously her brother had made her the present of a gun; despite looking like a toy pistol (as Stalin later recalled), it was a lethal weapon.18 Seating herself on the bed, she pointed it at her heart and shot herself. Her corpse was found by the morning maid. The panicking household staff made a call to Abel Enukidze. As Central Committee member and administrator of the Kremlin site, he would have the authority to decide on appropriate action. As it happened, Enukidze was also Nadya’s godfather.19 Without hesitation he ordered that Stalin should be roused. The Stalins had taken to sleeping in separate rooms and Joseph was seemingly unaware of the consequences of his misbehaviour the night before. Doctors were summoned to ascertain the cause of death. This was not going to be a lengthy task: Nadya had shot herself through the heart. When Professors Rozanov and Kushner carried out the postmortem after midday, the body was laid out on the bed. Near by was the small revolver. Death must have been instantaneous and, they concluded, had occurred eight to ten hours previously. Nadya had taken her own life. Rozanov and Kushner started to write their brief report at one o’clock.
The politicians were deciding what to reveal to the public.20 It was thought inappropriate to tell the truth for fear of diminishing Stalin’s prestige. Instead
