After the war, these visits to the south alternated with long periods when Stalin barely left his Moscow dacha. Visits to his Kremlin office became increasingly rare, primarily due to his deteriorating health. He continued to suffer from stomach pain and intestinal disturbances, accompanied by fever, throat problems, colds, and influenza. His atherosclerosis was progressing.
43
Despite scattered attempts to do so, he was by now simply incapable of changing his sedentary lifestyle. The copious fare served at his frequent late-night dinner gatherings was surely not good for him. According to Milovan Djilas, who visited Stalin’s dacha several times in the 1940s, “The selection of food and drink was huge, with an emphasis on meat dishes and hard liquor.”
44
The leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, Matyas Rakosi, recalled the following:
The atmosphere at these dinners was free and easy; people told jokes—often even dirty ones—to the raucous laughter of everyone present. Once they tried to get me drunk, but wine doesn’t affect me, which earned me recognition and a bit of surprise from those in attendance. Our last dinner together was in the fall of 1952. When Stalin left the room at three in the morning, I commented to the Politburo members, “Stalin is already 73; aren’t such dinners, stretching so late into the night, bad for him?” His comrades assured me that Stalin knew his limits.
45
Stalin brought up his age and the importance of cultivating a new generation of leaders with increasing frequency.
46
Deep down, however, he must have hoped for the best. In November 1949, when the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha expressed the wish that Stalin would live to one hundred, the Soviet leader joked: “That’s not enough. Back home in Georgia we have old people still alive at 145.”
47
As Stalin’s daughter Svetlana attested, “In later years he wanted to continue in good health and live longer.”
48
In 1952, Stalin did not travel south. Even though he remained in Moscow, he visited his Kremlin office only fifty times, an average of less than once a week. On 21 December 1952, for his seventy-third birthday, his daughter Svetlana made her final visit to her father’s dacha. “I was worried at how badly he looked,” she recalled. “He must have felt his illness coming on. Maybe he was aware of some hypertension, for he’d suddenly given up smoking and was very pleased with himself.… He’d been smoking for fifty or sixty years.”
49
By this time his atherosclerosis was well advanced. The autopsy performed two and a half months later showed that damage to the arteries had greatly impeded blood flow to the brain.
50
To what extent was Stalin’s death hastened by a lack of professional care? It is widely believed that he did not see any doctors during the final months of his life due to arrests at government hospitals in connection with the Doctors’ Plot (see chapter 6 below). Svetlana Allilueva writes:
He was probably aware of an increase in his blood pressure, but he hadn’t any doctor to take care of him. Vinogradov [a renowned doctor who had treated Stalin], the only one he trusted, had been arrested and he wouldn’t let any other doctor near him.
Somewhere or other he got hold of some quack remedies, and he’d take some pills or pour a few drops of iodine into a glass of water. Moreover, he himself did a thing no doctor would ever have allowed: Two months after I last saw him and just twenty-four hours before his stroke he went to the bathhouse near the dacha and took a steam bath, as he’d been accustomed to doing ever since Siberia.
51
Allilueva’s testimony has to be taken with a grain of salt. She rarely saw her father and knew little about his life. Her reminiscences offer a subjective view of events. No archival documents have been found to clarify whether Stalin was under the care of doctors during the final months of his life. Nothing has been written about the quality of his health care at that time. Perhaps no treatment in the world would have helped.
We are equally in the dark about another complex question: the effect Stalin’s ailments had on his decisions and actions. Without solid evidence, speculation on this subject remains just that. What we do know is that Miasnikov, one of the doctors summoned to his deathbed, believed that the extensive damage to Stalin’s cerebral arteries uncovered during his post mortem must have affected his character and behavior:
I believe that Stalin’s cruelty and suspiciousness, his fear of enemies and loss of the ability to assess people and events, his extreme obstinacy—all this was the result, to a certain extent, of atherosclerosis of the arteries in his brain (or rather, atherosclerosis exacerbated these traits). Basically, the state was being governed by a sick man.… Sclerosis of the blood vessels in the brain developed slowly, over the course of many years. Areas of cerebral softening that had originated much earlier were discovered in Stalin.
52
These observations by a distinguished doctor are entirely consistent with the testimony of Stalin’s associates. Even the most devoted among them, Vyacheslav Molotov, admitted, “In my opinion, Stalin was not quite in possession of his faculties during his final years.”
53
A historian, as well, would have no trouble coming up with “oddities” and inappropriate responses in Stalin’s political behavior. But historians are not doctors. While keeping their subjects’ possible ailments in mind, they try not to dwell on them.
5 STALIN AT WAR
The 22 June 1941 surprise attack came with plenty of warning. The previous evening Moscow’s military leadership received a report: a sergeant in the German army had crossed the border with the news that an invasion would begin the following morning.
1
Stalin was immediately informed, and the military leaders and Politburo gathered in his office to decide how to respond. People’s Commissar for Defense Semen Timoshenko and Army Chief of Staff Georgy Zhukov, according to the latter’s memoirs, asked for a directive allowing them to bring troops to a state of combat readiness.
2
Stalin was doubtful: “Could it be that the German generals sent us this defector to provoke a clash?” After hearing out his military chiefs, he concluded, “It would be premature to issue such an order. The matter might still be resolved peacefully. We should issue a brief order indicating that an invasion could start with provocative actions by German units. To avoid complicating matters, forces in border districts should not give in to any provocations.”
3
The order reached troops shortly after midnight.
Stalin and the Politburo continued to discuss the alarming news until they finally parted ways, exhausted, around three o’clock in the morning. It was not long before Zhukov telephoned Stalin to report that German troops had launched an invasion. After briefly trying to refuse the general’s demand that the
vozhd
be summoned to the phone, his chief bodyguard finally went to wake him:
After about three minutes, I. V. Stalin came to the phone.
I informed him of the situation and asked for permission to commence an armed response. I. V. Stalin was silent. All I heard was his heavy breathing.
“Did you understand what I said?”
Again silence.
“Will there be orders?” I persisted.
4
Zhukov’s memoirs seem to suggest that Stalin withheld permission to respond to the attack and simply ordered Zhukov and Timoshenko to the Kremlin. But in 1956 Zhukov offered an important detail about this conversation that was never included in his memoirs. During the telephone call, he said, Stalin issued an order to the troops: “This is a provocation by the German military. Do not open fire to avoid unleashing wider action.”
5
There is no reason to disbelieve this account.
According to Zhukov, he and Timoshenko arrived at Stalin’s office at 4:30 a.m. to find the Politburo already there. This timing contradicts the log of visitors to Stalin’s office, which states that Timoshenko and Zhukov’s first visit on 22 June occurred at 5:45.
6
A simple explanation could be that the 4:30 meeting took place not in Stalin’s office but in his Kremlin apartment. In any event, after being updated by his military chiefs, Stalin again expressed doubts: “Couldn’t this just be a provocation by German generals? … Hitler surely doesn’t know about this.” He sent Molotov to meet with Germany’s ambassador, Friedrich von der Schulenburg.
7
As Zhukov describes it, he and Timoshenko asked Stalin to order a counterstrike, but Stalin told them to wait until Molotov returned.
The idea that the attacks were a conspiracy by German generals and were unknown to Hitler fit perfectly with Stalin’s thinking. Further evidence that the Soviet leaders harbored serious illusions about Hitler can be found in Molotov’s behavior during his meeting with Schulenburg, which began at 5:30 that morning. Obeying instructions sent by his government, Schulenburg, clearly upset, read Molotov the following brief notification: “In view of the intolerable threat to Germany’s eastern border posed by the massive concentration and readying of all the armed forces of the Red Army, the German government feels compelled to take military countermeasures.” Molotov’s reaction suggests that he did not understand what was actually happening. He began to dispute that Soviet forces were concentrated along the border and concluded with the almost desperate question: “Why did Germany sign a non-aggression pact only to break it so easily?”
8
He tried to convince Schulenburg that the USSR was innocent in this matter and that it was Germany that was being treacherous, although he must have understood that even if the German ambassador believed him, nothing could be done. Schulenberg was just the messenger.
This meeting took place right in the Kremlin, so by 5:45 Molotov was already back in Stalin’s office, along with Beria, Lev Mekhlis, Timoshenko, and Zhukov.
9
As Zhukov describes it, upon hearing from Molotov that Germany had declared war, Stalin “silently dropped into his chair and became immersed in thought. A long and painful pause ensued.” Stalin agreed to issue a directive ordering the destruction of the invading enemy and added, “So long as our troops, with the exception of aviation, do not violate the German border anywhere for now.”
10
This order was issued to the troops at 7:15 a.m., almost four hours after the invasion began.
11
It showed that the top leadership still did not understand what was happening. Stalin did not sign the order. It went out over the signatures of Timoshenko, Malenkov, and Zhukov.
In the hours that followed, Stalin conferred with his fellow leaders on several questions. Among the most pressing was how Soviet citizens would be informed that their country was at war. It was not just a matter of an official statement but of how the war was to be presented, what political slogans would be put into play, and what objectives were to be pursued. Stalin’s comrades felt strongly that he should be the one to speak to the country, but he refused. The job fell to Molotov. Of course Stalin understood the political drawbacks of this decision, but he simply did not know what to say. The situation was fraught with uncertainty. Molotov’s speech announced that the country was at war, emphasized that Germany was the aggressor, and expressed confidence that the Soviet Union would prevail. He ended with the words, “Our cause is just. The enemy will be crushed. Victory will be ours.” Throughout this horrific war, these watchwords were emblazoned on posters and banners and repeated over the airwaves.
The archives contain a version of the speech written and edited in Molotov’s hand.
12
The speech he actually delivered was somewhat different from this initial draft and added references to Stalin. It started with the introductory statement, “The Soviet government and its head, Comrade Stalin, have asked me to make the following announcement.” A paragraph was added toward the end calling on the people to “rally their ranks” around the party, the government, and “our great leader Comrade Stalin.” These references to Stalin were undoubtedly designed to preclude any doubts and rumors that might have arisen from his silence.
Molotov’s speech exposes a central political concern worrying Stalin during the war’s early hours. The brief remarks repeatedly emphasized the idea that the German aggression was completely unprovoked and that the USSR had meticulously adhered to the non-aggression pact. As the speech put it, “The German government was not once given grounds for complaining to the USSR that it was not fulfilling the agreement.” Molotov emphasized that Germany “is the invading side” and even called the German fascists “traitors.” Implicit in this word choice is the idea that there was an understanding between the two countries that could be betrayed.
The English historian John Erickson has suggested that Molotov’s speech exposed a sense of unease and even humiliation on the part of the Soviet leadership.
13
It was as if Molotov were taking the German explanation for the invasion at face value and defending the Soviet Union against charges of aggressive intent. Was this insistence on Soviet adherence to the pact intended for Hitler in the faint hope that the invasion had indeed been launched by rogue generals? Or was the idea of Soviet blamelessness meant to influence public opinion in the West, in whose eyes it was suddenly important to seem a victim, rather than a partner, of Nazism? Or was the speech meant purely for the domestic audience in an effort to fan indignation toward a treacherous enemy?
Five minutes after noon, Molotov left Stalin for twenty minutes, during which his voice was broadcast over the radio while Soviet officials streamed in and out of Stalin’s office. A general army mobilization was announced. The situation remained ambiguous. Stalin decided to send high-ranking emissaries to the front: Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, and Kulik.
14
The use of plenipotentiaries to represent him remained Stalin’s preferred method of overseeing the war throughout its duration.