The following helped me in Russia: Vladimir Grigoriev, publisher and politician, Anatoly Cherekmasov and Zoia Belyakova in St. Petersburg, Dmitri Yakushkin, Eduard Radzinsky, Roy and Zhores Medvedev, Boris Ilizarov, Arkady Vaksberg, Larissa Vasilieva, Masha Slonim, Dmitri Khankin, Anastasia Webster, Tom Wilson, David Campbell, Marc and Rachel Polonsky and Dr. Luba Vinogradova. I am grateful to the director of the Smolny Institute Museum and Svetlana Osipova of the Alliluyev Museum in Petersburg. In Achinsk, I thank the director of the Achinsk Regional Museum; in Vologda, thanks to the director of VOANPI (Archive of Modern History of the Vologda Region) and to the director of GAVO (State Archive of the Vologda Region).
In America, thanks to Professor J. Arch Getty of UCLA for his generous sharing of Yezhov’s dossier; to Professor Ron Suny; to Dr. Charles King of Georgetown; and to Roman Brackman, for kindly sharing some of his original sources with me. I am also very grateful to Prince David Chavchavadze and Princess Marusya Chavchavadze, to Redjeb Jordania and Nicole Jordania, to Musa Train Klebnikov, and her husband, the late, unique, much missed Paul Klebnikov, who encouraged me so much; and to Prince and Princess Constantine and Ann Sidamon-Eristoff.
In Stanford, California, thanks to Carol A. Leadenham and Irina Zaytseva, for their help with the Okhrana and Boris Nikolaevsky archives; to Alex Doran and Dr. Boris Orlov in Israel; and in Paris, thanks to Dr. George Mamoulia.
Perhaps the most exciting witness interviewed was Mariam Svanidze, aged 109, a relative of Stalin’s wife who still remembers her death in 1907. For their interviews, memoirs, and family anecdotes, thanks to Sandra Roelofs Saakashvili (whose book tells the story of how her husband’s family sheltered Stalin), Eteri Ordzhonikidze (daughter of Sergo), General Artem Sergeev (Stalin’s adopted son), Galina Djugashvili (Stalin’s grand daughter), Stalin’s nephews and niece Leonid Redens, Kira Alliluyev and Vladimir Alliluyev (Redens), General Stepan Mikoyan (son of Anastas) and his daughter Ashken Mikoyan, Stalin’s son-in-law Yuri Zhdanov (son of Andrei), Izolda Mdivani (widow of Budu’s son), Susanna Toroshelidze (daughter of Malakia and Minadora), Zakro Megrilishvili (stepson of Shalva Nutsubidze), Martha Peshkova (daughter-in-law of Beria, granddaughter of Gorky), Vyacheslav Nikonov (grandson and biographer of Molotov), the late Maya Kavtaradze (daughter of Sergei Kavtaradze), the late Oleg Troyanovsky (son of Alexander), Katevan Gelovani (cousin of the Svanidzes), Memed Jikhashvili (nephew of Nestor Lakoba), Redjeb Jordania (son of Noe), Tanya Litvinova (daughter of Maxim), Guram Ratishvili (grandson of Sasha Egnatashvili), Gia Tarkhan-Mouravi, Tina Egnatashvili, Vajha Okujava, Shalva Gachechi-ladze (grandson of Father Ksiane), Serge Chaverdian (Shaverdian), Thamaz Naskidachvili, Irakli de Davrichewy, Alexandre de Davrichewy and Annick Davrichachvili (two grandsons and wife of another grandson of Josef “Soso” Davrichewy) and Julian Z. Starosteck.
In Britain, Dr. John Callow, director of the Marx Memorial Library (www.marx-memorial-library.org) and the ruling expert on Lenin in London, helped me greatly on 1907 and Stalin’s Welsh tourism, as did Andy Brooks, General Secretary of the New Communist Party; Francis King of the Socialist History Society; Tony Atienza; Paul Barratt and Duncan Higgitt of the
In Britain and France, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild placed the Rothschild archives at my disposal, where Melanie Asprey investigated Stalin connections for me: thanks to both.
Thanks for help in small or large ways to Andrew Roberts; Ronald Harwood; John Witherow, editor of the
Special gratitude is due to my Russian teacher, Galina Oleksiuk.
I wish to thank my English editor, Ion Trewin of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, who has genially, wisely edited all my history books; editorial assistants Anna Herve and Bea Hemming; Alan Samson, publishing director; the brilliant king of copy editors, Peter James; the index by Douglas Matthews and maps by David Hoxley. Thanks also to my paperback editor, Susan Lamb of Phoenix. In New York, I would like to thank my American editor, the peerless Sonny Mehta, and his senior colleague, Jonathan Segal, at Alfred A. Knopf.
My agent, Georgina Capel of Capel & Land, remains tirelessly exuberant and highly effective. I owe special thanks to Lord and Lady Weidenfeld, and to Anthony Cheetham, for their wisdom, support and friendship over many years.
I must as ever thank my parents, Dr. Stephen and April Sebag-Montefiore, first for their subtle medical and psychological analysis of Stalin; second for judicious (if ruthless) editing skills; lastly for being the most wonderful friends and tender parents anyone could wish for.
This book is dedicated to my son, Sasha, but I must mention the other shining light in my life, my daughter, Lily. Both, I am ashamed to say, were able to recognize Stalin’s portrait before that of Thomas the Tank Engine. My children’s delightful nanny, Jayne Roe, made working at home a pleasure.
Last but first, my darling wife, Santa, enjoyed the romantic
A NOTE ON SOURCES
This book is based overwhelmingly on archival research, mainly in the Stalin archives of the Communist Party’s Marxism-Leninism Institute, the archives of RGASPI in Moscow, Russia, and of GF IML in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia, as well as the GARF State Archive in Moscow, the archive of the Stalin Museum in Gori, the archives in Batumi, the State Archive in Baku of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and the Nikolaevsky archives and those of the Paris Office of the Okhrana, both at Stanford University, California.
I have been hugely fortunate in finding new sources, often unpublished or partly unpublished and barely used previously by historians. Archival sources are more reliable than oral history, but of course they too have their dangers and must be analysed carefully. But the anti-Stalinist histories often turn out to be just as unreliable.
Many of the archives used in this book, for example, were recorded by official Party historians during the period of Stalin’s rise to power, cult of personality and Terror, from the 1920s to the 1950s. Those recorded in the 1930s were presumably collected in Georgia by apparatchiks working under Stalin’s terrifying Transcaucasian First Secretary Lavrenti Beria. Therefore one must be constantly aware that they are recorded under massive pressure to present Stalin in a good light. At all times, one has to be aware of the circumstances and try to penetrate the Bolshevik language to see what the witnesses are really trying to tell us.
Yet those recorded before the Terror in 1937 are often astonishingly frank, tactless or derogatory about Stalin: a derogatory story about Stalin in an official memoir is almost certainly true. Many of the witnesses were so naive or honest that their memoirs were unusable at the time, or only usable in small sections. Such memoirs were not destroyed but were simply preserved in the archives. Many were edited, then copied and sent to Stalin’s Moscow archive, so there are differences between versions. But the originals usually survived in the local archive.
Many witnesses were interviewed several times, so that we have sometimes three ver sions by the same witness with important differences. Almost always, the first version is the most revealing. Certain witnesses were tactful yet pointed in their criticisms: the Svanidze memoirs, which as far as I know remain mainly unpublished (except for the diaries of Maria Svanidze, Alyosha’s wife, but they cover the 1930s) are amazingly critical of Stalin
