Young Stalin (66 page)

Molotov served as Premier from 1930 to 1941 and Foreign Commissar from 1939 until 1949. Stalin started to view him as a potential successor and, in 1952, viciously denounced his old partner. Chosen for liquidation,
^*
Molotov was saved by Stalin’s death but remained devoted to him. He became Foreign Minister again but failed to overthrow Khrushchev in 1957. Exiled as Ambassador to Mongolia, he lived until 1985, still seeing Stalin in his dreams.
¹⁰

Until his last day, Stalin never ceased trying to glorify his past and conceal his early mistakes. The cult served his shameless vainglory and contributed to his political potency, yet he liked to assume a becoming modesty in front of colleagues. At heart, he was too intelligent not to appreciate that many of the paeans to his youth were ridiculous. When he saw Georgian writer Gamsakhurdia’s
Youth of the Leader
, he wrote: “I ask you to prohibit publication of Gamsakhurdia’s book in Russian. J. Stalin.”

He was even more outraged by Fedorov’s
Kartvelian Novelties
, published in 1940, scribbling in green pencil: “Comrade Pospelov was idiotic and tactless to approve Fedorov’s book about me without my agreement
and knowledge. Fedorov’s book must be pulped—and Pospelov must be punished. Stalin.”

When Samoilova, an Old Bolshevik acquaintance from Baku days, asked if she could exhibit proofs of Stalin’s earlier books and articles in her museum, she received this handwritten note: “I never thought you’d be so stupid in your old age! If the book’s published in millions, why’d you need the manuscript? I
burned
all the manuscripts!” When a book was compiled of memoirs from 1905, Soso wrote three words: “Don’t publish! Stalin.”
¹¹

At dinner in his seaside villa, the ageing Stalin told stories to his old friends about these people from the past, some of whom had perished in their beds, many of whom had died in his dungeons with a bullet in the back of the head.

The old men had their say too. “They complained,” observes Molotov, “about bribery and corruption everywhere.” Another of these old Georgians “of whom Stalin was particularly fond,” says Khrushchev, “told Stalin about the bad situation among youngsters in Georgia.” Stalin was incensed and launched a purge of his homeland.

Presently the old men, several of whom had sung with Soso in the Gori and seminary choirs in white surplices, started to sing. “Georgian songs were heard late at night wafting from the Coldstream villa, sometimes accompanied by the host—a good old singer with a sweet voice . . .”

Soso was old, sclerotic and forgetful, yet until his death aged seventy-four, on 5 March 1953, the ageing choirboy remained the peerless politician, paranoid megalomaniac and aberrant master of human misery on a scale only paralleled by Hitlerite Germany. Responsible for the deaths of around 20 to 25 million people, Stalin imagined he was a political, military, scientific and literary genius, a people’s monarch, a red Tsar.

Perhaps the young Stalin should have the last word. In August 1905, Soso, aged twenty-seven, mocked just such a deluded megalomaniac in a rarely read but weirdly self-prophesying article for
Proletariatis Brdzola
. “Before your eyes,” he writes, “rises the hero of Gogol’s story who, in a state of aberration, imagined he was the King of Spain. Such,” concluded the young Stalin, “is the fate of all megalomaniacs.”
¹²

*
Since he used Vasily as his Party alias, he in some ways named his son after himself.

*
Sukhova’s later memoirs are unpublished. Natasha Kirtava and Alvasi Talakvadze became Party workers in Batumi and lived into old age, revered for their early association with Stalin. Stefania Petrovskaya, his fiancée in Baku, remained a Party member and was implicated in the Slepkov Case of 1932–33. Slepkov himself was spared in 1932, then shot in 1937, but her fate is unknown. Serafima Khoroshenina, Stalin’s partner in Vologda, was alive in the 1930s and recorded her memoirs, but her fate is likewise unknown.

*
Georgia caused Stalin’s schism with Lenin. Menshevik Georgia became independent in 1918. The Old Man was content to leave Georgia, but in 1921 Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze arranged a successful invasion. The dashing, merciless Sergo rode triumphantly into Tiflis on a white horse, but he soon earned the nicknamed “Stalin’s Ass” for his brutal suppression of the country. When it came time to define the status of Georgia, Stalin insisted that it join a Transcaucasian Federation, but the local Bolsheviks, led by the flamboyant Mdivani and the ideologue Makharadze, both associates of Stalin’s for decades, demanded a separate Georgian republic. In the ensuing row between the Stalinists and the so-called deviationists, Sergo punched one of their opponents. This outraged Lenin, who now supported the Georgians against Stalin and Sergo. This led to Stalin’s insulting Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya. Lenin wrote his Testament, which demanded Stalin’s removal from the General Secretaryship. But it was too late. Lenin suffered another stroke. Stalin survived.

*
The Mensheviks enjoyed a strange trajectory: Karlo Chkheidze, as we saw, became the most powerful man in the early 1917 Revolution as Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, while his fellow Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli became a powerful Russian minister during the summer of 1917. But when the Bolsheviks seized power, Chkheidze, Jordania, Tsereteli and Noe Ramishvili became the leaders of the independent Georgia. When the Bolsheviks invaded, they managed to flee into exile. Chkheidze committed suicide in 1926, Ramishvili was murdered in Paris in 1930. Jordania, Uratadze, Arsenidze, Sagirashvili and Nikolaevsky all survived in exile and wrote their memoirs. Sukhanov, who called Stalin a “grey blur,” was shot in the Great Terror.

*
Tsintsadze joined the Georgian Cheka in 1921, and he too wrote his memoirs, at the same time as Kamo—but he was considerably more tactful. He joined the Georgian “deviationists” opposition to Stalin and was dismissed. Arrested as a Trotskyite, he died of TB in prison in 1930.

*
The Egnatashvilis had known Beria since 1918 in Baku, where he was a Bolshevik double-agent in the Azeri Musavist Party—or vice-versa. When Beria fell ill, the Egnatashvilis nursed their fellow Georgian. When Beria became Caucasian viceroy, then NKVD boss, he tried to keep a monopoly of information and influence in the Caucasus. Yet the Egnatashvilis were independent of Beria. Furthermore Sasha Egnatashvili served in Stalin’s Guards Department under chief bodyguard General Vlasik, which was also outside Beria’s power, a situation that Beria constantly tried to remedy. After the Second World War, Beria accused Vlasik of corruption in selling the gigantic quantities of food for Stalin prepared at the Base. Vlasik counteraccused Beria of corruption and managed to survive, but Egnatashvili, who ran the Base, would probably have been implicated. The duel between Beria and Vlasik for control of the guards lasted until Stalin’s death. This is the first time that the story of General Egnatashvili and his wife has been told. It fits into a pattern. After the suicide of his wife, Nadya, Stalin distrusted the spouses of his courtiers. The pretty young wives of Alexander Poskrebyshev, his
chef de cabinet
, and Marshal Kulik, his military crony, were shot; the wives of the head of state, Kalinin, and Foreign Minister, Molotov, were arrested. Yet all these men continued to serve him devotedly without a word. See
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
.

*
Mikha Tskhakaya, the greybeard who had promoted and protected Stalin in the early years before turning against Lenin and retiring to Genevan exile, survived to die in 1950 in his bed, an honoured Old Bolshevik. Inexplicably, Makharadze was allowed to survive the Terror. Stepan Shaumian, Stalin’s roommate in London and junior partner in the Tiflis bank robbery and then Baku, was the brutal master of the Baku Commune in 1918 when he oversaw the murder of around 15,000 Azeris. He was then overthrown and shot by the Whites and the British as one of the legendary Twenty-six Commissars. Stalin then adopted Shaumian’s son, Levan, and brought him up in his own household. Stalin’s Siberian roommate and Soviet head of state Yakov Sverdlov died of influenza in 1919.

*
His Jewish wife, Polina, was equally devoted to Stalin and became a Deputy Commissar in her own right, but her strident feminism irritated Stalin, while her friendship with Nadya made him uneasy. He almost destroyed her in 1939, considered having her murdered in a car crash and finally forced Molotov to vote for her arrest in 1949. The full story is in
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
.

Stalin’s Names, Nicknames,
Bylines and Aliases

Acknowledgements

I have been helped in my work on Stalin by many people in many countries and cities including my publishers all over the world, but especially in places visited by my subject. All have been extraordinarily generous to me in terms of time and knowledge. Needless to say, all the mistakes in this book are mine alone.

I must first thank my godfathers in the writing of Russian history, who have checked my work, improved on it and hopefully taught me how to write better: Isabel de Madariaga was and remains my first historical patroness and my books still, I pray, show the benefits of her strict but benign supervision of my first book on Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin.

In this book, I have been hugely fortunate that two titans of Soviet history, Robert Conquest and Professor Robert Service, have kindly read the text for errors. I owe much to the professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Mt. Holyoke College, Stephen Jones, the chief authority on Georgian socialism, who shared his work with me, answered my questions and diligently corrected the text. Dr. David Anderson, senior lecturer in Arctic Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, corrected my Siberian sections with great generosity and patience. Dr. Piers Vitebsky, head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, advised me on Siberian anthropology and allowed me to use one of his photographs. I must also thank Professor Donald Rayfield, who has generously shared with me his wide knowledge of
Russian literature, Georgian culture and Bolshevik political history, as well as his contacts in Georgia, and has allowed me to quote his superb translations of Stalin’s poetry in full.

I am very grateful to Professor George Hewitt for his kind help with the languages of the Caucasus and his contacts in Abkhazia, which have been invaluable. I cannot sufficiently thank Dr. Claire Mouradian, based in Paris, who, even though we have never met, placed at my disposal her encyclopaedic knowledge of Caucasian history and her wide contacts with the Georgian/Armenian émigré families, interviewed old witnesses and guided me to new sources.

The bulk of the new material in this work comes from the Caucasus. In Georgia, I must first thank the President and First Lady, Mikheil and Sandra Saakashvili. Tragically the archives of the Georgian Filial Institute of Marxism-Leninism (GF IML) have fallen into disrepair and only the personal decree of the President allowed me access to the sources that form the heart of this book. Natalia Kancheli, a senior aide to the President, and a great supporter, helped make this possible and I am eternally grateful. Gela Charkviani, an old friend and veteran of modern Georgian politics as well as the son of one of Stalin’s confidants, started helping me when I was a war correspondent in early 1990s Caucasia but also gave me access to the manuscript of his father’s memoirs, and found me all my helpers in Georgia. His niece Nestan Charkviani, herself a distinguished historian of Stalinism, helped me enormously in the archives, which she knows well, and in finding new sources and memoirs and interviewing new witnesses; she also read and corrected the text. I owe much to Nino Kereselidze, a fine historian, an industrious researcher and an impressive translator from Georgian. Thanks also to the GF IML’s chief archivist, Vazha Ebanoidze.