Young Stalin (67 page)

Many others helped me in Georgia: Peter Mamradze, another old friend from the turbulence of recent politics, found me new witnesses and shared his knowledge of the Stalin folklore in Georgia. My friend Professor Zakro Megrilishvili again helped me access the unpublished Kavtaradze manuscript, his stepfather’s memoirs, and work out the Tiflis bank robbery. Thanks too to Professor Nugzar Surgoladze. I am deeply grateful to another friend, George Tarkhan-Mouravi, who helped me out of pure friendship and a spirit of curiosity and offered me his contacts, his vast knowledge of sources and his family anecdotes. Professor Vahtang Guruli shared his unique archival research with me. Gia Sulkanishvili helped in small and big matters, and as ever I owe him much. Nick
Tabatadze, the head of Rustavi-2, the Georgian television station, gave encouragement and help; his station’s TV report helped me find more witnesses and sources. Thanks to Tamara Megrilishvili, who let me advertise for sources/witnesses in her bookshop, Prospero’s Books, the best between Moscow and Jerusalem; to Leka Basilieia; in Gori, to the director of the Stalin Museum, Gaioz Makhniashvili.

In the archives of Batumi, Adjaria, Memed Jikhashvili, an excellent historian of Transcaucasia but also a piece of history himself, as the nephew of Nestor Lakoba, Stalin’s Abkhazian viceroy, helped me find new sources and pictures that were immensely important for the book.

In Abkhazia, I must thank Slava Lakoba, outstanding historian of Bolshevism, Abkhazia and Caucasia, who was extremely generous in sharing his work and above all his sources. George Hewitt and Donald Rayfield both helped me in this quest, as did Dr. Rachel Clogg.

In Baku, Azerbaijan, thanks to Fuad Akhundov, another old friend and expert on the oil boom and millionaires; to Fikret Aliev and Zimma Babaeva, director and deputy director of the Azeri State Archive (GIA AR and GA AR); and to Memed Jikhashvili too.

In Berlin and Baku, I owe much to Professor Jorg Baberowski, the chief expert on Baku and the violent culture of the Caucasus, who was very generous to me with his knowledge; and to Alexander Freese, for translating from German.

In Vienna, thanks to HSH Prince Karel Schwarzenberg, Peter and Lila Morgan, and Georg Hamann. Lisa Train visited the flat where Stalin stayed and took fine photographs. In Finland, thanks to my editor for his help with Tampere research, Aleksi Siltala; to Vuokko Tarpila; to the writer Aarno Laitinen; and to the Finnish expert on Lenin, Stalin and Finland Antti Kujola. In Sweden, thanks to Per Faustino and all my editors at Norstedts/Prisma, to Martin Stugart of
Dagens Nyheter
, to researcher Jenny Lankjaer, to Karen Altenberg, to Per Mogren. In Holland, thanks to two distinguished Dutch Stalin scholars, Erik van Ree and Marc Jansen, for their sharing of research. In Cracow, Poland, thanks to the London filmmaker Wanda Koscia and her friend Marta Szostkiewicz for her help.

In Russia, neither of my books on Stalin would have been possible without the generosity, help, encouragement and knowledge of Oleg Khlevniuk, the doyen of Stalin historians, senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), and Alexander Kamenskii, professor of Early and Early-Modern Russian History at Moscow’s Rus
sian State University for Humanities. The chief Russian source for both my Stalin books is the Presidential Archive of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI): so my gratitude to the director Dr. Kirill M. Anderson, the deputy director Dr. Oleg V. Naumov and the head of section and expert on Stalin’s papers/handwriting, Larisa A. Rogovaya, is limitless. But I owe the biggest thanks to Dr. Galina Babkova, a distinguished lecturer on eighteenth-century history at Moscow University, who has helped me as much on this book as she did on its predecessors.

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
Western Mail
.

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
Sunday Times;
and to the
Sunday Times
picture editor, Ray Wells; Miklos Kun; Len Blavatnik; Clare and Raymond (Viscount) Asquith; John and Victoria Hyman; David King; Andrew Cook, for his inquiries into Special Branch; Rair and Tatiana Simonyan; Geoffrey Elliott; Dr. Dan Healey, expert on sex and crime in Tsarist/Stalinist Russia; Rosamond Richardson; Dr. Catherine Merridale, on Kamenev; Mark Franchetti; Sergei Degtiarev-Foster; Nata Galogre; Jon Halliday; Ingaborga Dapkunaite; Laurence Kelly; Lady Alexandra Gordon-Lennox; David Stewart-Hewitt; Lord Bruce Dundas; Hon. Olga Polizzi; Antony Beevor; Stephen Nash, HM’s first Ambassador to Georgia; Andrew Meier; Donald Maclaren, HM Ambassador to
Georgia, and his wife, Maida; and my trainer Stewart Taylor of
www.bodyarchitecture.co.uk
, who keeps me sane. Thanks as ever to Charles and Patty Palmer-Tomkinson for their support and encouragement.

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 Hervé 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
ménage à quatre
with those brilliant charmers Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin but has found the blood-soaked presence of Stalin in our marriage a trial of endurance. As we finally enter our own period of de-Stalinization, I must thank Santa for her sunny encouragement, serene charm and golden bounty of creativity, laughter and love.

Source Notes

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 naïve 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 even though he was already dictator and they themselves were in his inner circle.

A word on the killings of traitors and the bank robberies: Stalin was keen to suppress these details. He sued Yuli Martov in 1918 to stop their publication and continued to suppress them once he was in power. Yet throughout the memoirs, despite official discouragement, we find details of Stalin’s role that confirm the importance of this “black work” in his early life. When he finds a traitor, the memoirs usually state that the traitor was killed without specifying that anyone ordered the killing. But it is clear that the order involved Stalin. The same is true of cases of arson.

Many ordinary folk were unconsciously revealing, particularly Stalin’s girlfriends, who could not be open about their personal connections with the Leader even when they had borne his children.

Many of these tales of childhood, exile, revolutionary battle and bank robberies are, I hope, useful finds for historians. Keke’s memoir is especially telling. One senses that Stalin would have hated the memoir, which, again as far as I know, was not copied to Moscow and has not been published in Russian or English. I guess that Stalin was never informed that it had been set down. But there is also a wealth of other materials that tell us much about young Stalin.

In Georgia, I managed to unearth various unpublished memoirs from private family archives. Again all the usual rules must apply, particularly guarding against the vainglory of those who claim intimacy with the great and famous. But some were written secretly without direct intimidation. In the case of the Minadora Ordzhonikidze Toroshelidze memoirs, she and her husband were arrested in 1937—he was shot, she released—whereupon she cut sixteen pages out of the manuscript.