As for the women in his life, their fates are often mysterious, but they received little favour when their lover became the Soviet leader.
“Glamourpuss,” the schoolgirl Pelageya Onufrieva, became a teacher, but in 1917 left her profession and married a mechanic named Fomin. Her father and brothers were targeted as kulaks during Stalin’s war on the peasantry in the early 1930s, and were exiled to Siberia. In 1937, her husband was arrested and held as a potential saboteur. As a result her son lost a scholarship to study at Leningrad University, whereupon she wrote to Stalin. The scholarship was restored. However, her husband was again arrested in 1947 and sentenced to ten years in prison as an Enemy of the People.
When she was interviewed in 1944 about the Leader, a secret policeman demanded the postcards and book given by Stalin. “But my life has been hard and nomadic,” she retorted, “I had a big family and I couldn’t keep everything, but I kept the book. So it’s a shame to give it to you because it’s my only memory, not so much of Stalin but of the man named Josef. That’s what I called him. I would say we were friends. The book’s precious to me and you can take it when I’m dead.” The apparatchik confiscated the book.
Ludmilla Stal worked for many years in the Central Committee, was decorated and helped edit Stalin’s works, dying before the Second World War. Tatiana Slavatinskaya prospered in the CC Secret Department, becoming a member of the Central Control Commission. But in 1937 her son-in-law, a general, was shot, her daughter and son arrested and exiled for eight years. She and her grandchildren were expelled from the House on the Embankment, where many of the elite lived. One grandson, Yury Trifonov, the writer, chronicled the experience in his novella
As far as we know, Stalin met up with only one of his girlfriends.[186] “In 1925,” recalls his companion in Solvychegodsk, Tatiana Sukhova, “I moved to Moscow and wanted to see Comrade Stalin very much. I wrote to him. I was very surprised to hear his voice on the phone that very evening.” Next day they met at his office on Old Square: “We talked about my work, our mutual friends and Solvychegodsk.”
In 1929, when Stalin was taking the waters in Matsesta, in the south, Sukhova, a teacher, contacted him again. “Three young men in white suits came and collected me” and took her to his villa, where she was welcomed by Nadya Alliluyeva and Stalin. They reminisced over supper. Nadya asked her about young Stalin in exile: “I described his appearance and said that Comrade Stalin was never parted from his white hood.” Nadya laughed, “saying she never imagined he was such a dandy!” Then Stalin proudly showed her his tomatoes in his vegetable garden and took her to a firing-range beside the house, where he hit a bull’s-eye with a rifle. He let her fire a “small English Montecristo” pistol—but she missed. “How will you defend yourself?” Stalin asked her. When she told him that she was badly treated at her resthouse, he muttered, “They must be reprimanded.”
But the next year Sukhova was implicated in Stalin’s trial of Ramzin and others. She appealed to him and he received her. “Is this the first time you’ve got into a scrape?” he asked, adding, “I’m always getting into trouble myself.” He then phoned her institute and protected her. “Henceforth you must fight for yourself.” They never met again.{256}
Stalin left at least two illegitimate children in his wake. Neither received any direct help from their father.
Constantine Kuzakov, the son of Stalin’s Solvychegodsk landlady, Maria, had the most interesting career of the two. When Kuzakova saw Stalin’s appointment to the government in 1917, she wrote to him asking for help. When she received no reply, she approached Lenin’s office, where Stalin’s, wife Nadya, still worked. Without telling Stalin, she increased Kuzakova’s benefits payments, but she informed the father afterwards.
Stalin must have helped get the boy into Leningrad University. In 1932, the NKVD made him sign a statement promising never to discuss his “origin.”
He taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, and was promoted to work in the CC
In the summer of 1947, Kuzakov was called into Zhdanov’s office where he found the fearsome but flashy secret-police chief Victor Abakumov. They accused Kuzakov’s deputy of being an American spy, and Kuzakov was implicated. Stalin would not sanction his arrest, but Kuzakov was tried by a court of honour and dismissed from the Party. He had three children, but could not even get a job as a janitor.
After Stalin’s death and Beria’s arrest, he rejoined the Party and rose to become the longtime director of Soviet television in the Culture Ministry, dying in 1996.
Stalin left Lidia Pereprygina with a son, Alexander, probably born early in 1917. She then married a peasant fisherman, Yakov Davydov, who adopted Alexander as his own. Lidia became a hairdresser in Igarka and had eight more children. “Stalin never helped her,” reported KGB chief General Serov. Alexander “was told [the truth] by his mother Lidia years after her affair with Stalin,” says his son Yury. They “kept quiet about it and only the few locals in Kureika knew whose son he really was.”
Alexander became a postman and Komsomol instructor, but in 1935 the NKVD called him to Krasnoyarsk to sign a promise, similar to Kuzakov’s, never to talk about his origins. Then it was suggested he might move to Moscow, but he refused, “always scared of what could happen to him.” Alexander Davydov served in the Second World War as a private, was wounded thrice, then promoted to major after World War II. He ran the canteen in the mining-town Novokuznetsk, where he married and had three children, dying in 1987. “My father told me I was Stalin’s grandson,” says Yury, who lives with his family in Novosibirsk.{257}
Until Stalin organized the reconquest of Georgia in 1921,[187] his mother lived in a different country. Afterwards, Soso was reunited with Keke during his bitter visit to Tiflis, where he found himself hated as a bloody conqueror and former bandit.
Stalin wrote Keke regular letters, but kept his distance. “Lively and chatty,” she was the only person in Stalin’s world who dared ask: “I wonder why my son was not able to share power with Trotsky?” Stalin could never tolerate such independence.
Keke came on a short visit to Moscow and met Nadya. “This woman is my wife,” Stalin warned Keke. “Try not to give her any trouble.” She preferred to live in a two-room apartment in the old Viceroy’s Palace on Golovinsky Prospect in Tiflis. Nadya sent her letters with news and photographs of the children. When Stalin was climbing to power, his letters were short:
My Mama, Live 10,000 years!
Yours,
Kiss
Soso
1 January 1923
Keke grumbled that he did not pay her enough attention: “Mama, I know you’re disappointed in me but what can I do? I’m very busy and can’t write too often. Day and night I’m up to my neck in it. Yours. Kiss. Soso, 25 January 1925.” Or she ignored him and went on with her own life: “Mama, How are you? You didn’t write for a long time. Maybe you’re annoyed with me. But what to do? I’m so busy. I sent you 150 roubles, I can’t send more. If you need more, tell me how much. Yr Soso.”
Their lack of intimacy was clearer after Nadya’s suicide:
Greetings Mother dear
I got the jam, the ginger and the chukhcheli [Georgian candy]. The children are very pleased and send you their thanks. I am well, so don’t worry about me. I can endure my destiny. I don’t know whether or not you need money. I’m sending you 500 roubles just in case. I’m sending also a photograph of me and the children….
