Simon Montefiore - Stalin

“What, Comrade Stalin?”

“Do they have spades?” The Commissar asked in the background if they had spades.

“What kind of spades, Comrade Stalin—ordinary ones or digging tools?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, we’ve got spades! What shall we do with them?”

“Tell your comrades,” replied Stalin calmly, “to take their spades and dig their own graves. We won’t leave Moscow. They won’t leave either…”

Even now Stalin’s courtiers bickered among themselves: Stalin ordered Molotov to travel down to Kuibyshev to check on Voznesensky, who was running the government there.

“Let Mikoyan come with me,” said Molotov.

“I’m not your tail,” Mikoyan shouted, “am I?”

“Why don’t you go too?” suggested Stalin. Five days later Stalin recalled them. 13

The Panzers were still advancing on the frozen snow and threatening to encircle Moscow. Zhukov had no reserves left. Having lost three million of his soldiers since June, Stalin’s notebook was virtually empty. Like a despotic shopkeeper, assisted by his fat accountant son, Stalin jealously guarded his secret reserves while Malenkov sat beside him, keeping tally. When Stalin asked one general what would save the capital, he replied, “Reserves.”

“Any idiot,” snapped Stalin, “could defend the city with reserves.” Stalin generously gave him fifteen tanks, at which Malenkov observed that this was all they had left. Amazingly, in just a few months, the vast military resources of this endless empire had been reduced to fifteen tanks in a notebook. In Berlin, the Reich Press Office declared that “Russia was finished,” but Stalin’s iron husbandry of his reserves, coupled with Zhukov’s brilliant and brutal fighting, was telling on the Germans whose machines were beginning to suffer from the mud and ice while their men were freezing and exhausted. They again halted to prepare for a final push, convinced that Stalin’s resources were exhausted. But there was a page in the notebook that they had forgotten.

Stalin’s Far Eastern Army, 700,000 strong, guarded against Japan, but in late September, Richard Sorge, the spy Stalin called a brothel-keeper, reported that Japan would not attack Russia. On 12 October, Stalin discussed this with his Far Eastern satraps who then confirmed Tokyo’s lack of hostile intentions from local intelligence. Kaganovich arranged non-stop trains that, within days and hours, rushed 400,000 fresh troops, 1,000 tanks and 1,000 planes across the Eurasian wastes, in one of the most decisive logistical miracles of the war. The last train left on the 17th and these secret legions began to mass behind Moscow. 14

Stalin moved into his new Kremlin bunker, an exact replica of the Little Corner, even down to the wood panelling, though its long corridors resembled nothing so much as a “railway sleeping car. To the right was a row of doors” with “a heavy security guard.” The officers waited in “one of the sleeping compartments to the left” until Poskrebyshev appeared and led them into a “spacious brightly lit room with a big desk in the corner” where they came up on the pacing Stalin, usually accompanied by his Chief of Staff, the ailing gentleman officer, Marshal Shaposhnikov.

Just younger than Stalin, with his thinning hair centre-parted and a tired, yellow face with Tartar cheekbones, Shaposhnikov seemed “propelled by some special act of Voodooism as he looked quite dead (at least 3 months gone) and must, even when alive, have been very very old,” according to a British diplomat. Shaposhnikov called everyone golubchik , dear fellow, and Stalin was charmed by the gentility of this Tsarist colonel. When some generals had not reported one day, Stalin angrily asked Shaposhnikov if he had punished them. Oh yes, retorted Shaposhnikov: he had given them a “severe reprimand.”

This did not impress Stalin: “For a soldier that’s no punishment!” But Shaposhnikov patiently explained “the old military tradition that if the Chief of Staff reprimands [an officer], the guilty party must offer his resignation.” Stalin could only chuckle at this old-worldliness. But Shaposhnikov was a survivor: he had attacked Tukhachevsky in the twenties, served as his judge in 1937 and even denounced a cook saboteur for over-salting the meat. He never signed anything without checking first. In Stalin’s presence, he was “without an opinion.” While he never renounced his views, he never objected to being overruled. He was the only general Stalin called by his name and patronymic, the only one allowed to smoke [199] No one else was ever invited to join Stalin in his constant smoking. This honour to Shaposhnikov resembles Queen Victoria graciously permitting the old Disraeli to sit during their audiences, the only Prime Minister to receive such a privilege. in his office. 15

The war had truly reached the Kremlin, which was now peppered by bomb craters. Mikoyan was knocked down by a bomb. On 28 October, Malenkov was working at Old Square when Stalin called him to the Kremlin: he had no sooner left than a German bomb destroyed the building. “I saved your life,” Stalin told him.

One day, Stalin insisted that he wanted to witness an artillery barrage against German positions. Beria, in attendance, was very anxious that he would be blamed if something went wrong. Stalin’s car and bodyguards set off down the Volokolamsk highway towards the front but as they were approaching the fighting, Vlasik refused to let them proceed any further. Stalin had to watch the explosions from a distance. Then a tank splashed his limousine, which sent his bodyguards into palpitations. Beria forced Stalin to change cars and go home. Yet Stalin had regained some spirit: he even let Svetlana visit him for a couple of days but then gruffly ignored her in the bunker, cursing the privileges of the “damned caste” of the élite in Kuibyshev. More importantly, the great actor-manager now devised a scene of reckless but inspired showmanship. 16

On 30 October, Stalin suddenly asked General Artemev: “How are we going to have the military parade?”

There could be no parade, answered Artemev. The Germans were less than fifty miles away. Molotov and Beria thought he was joking. But Stalin calmly ignored them: “A parade will be held on 7th November… I’ll see to it personally. If there’s an air raid during the parade and there are dead and wounded, they must be quickly removed and the parade allowed to go on. A newsreel should be made and distributed throughout the country. I’ll make a speech… What do you think?”

“But what about the risk?” mused Molotov. “Though I admit the political response… would be enormous.”

“So it’s decided!”

Artemev asked when the parade should begin. “See to it that no one knows, not even I,” said Stalin, “until the last hour.” A week later, German spies might have glimpsed the odd sight of Muscovites, supervised by Chekists, collecting chairs from the Bolshoi Theatre and carrying them down the stairs to the Mayakovsky Metro. That evening, the magnates caught the elevator down into Mayakovsky Station where they found a train parked on one side, with its doors open. There were tables inside with sandwiches and soft drinks. After these refreshments, they took their seats on those theatrical chairs. Then, in a slightly vaudevillian touch, Stalin, accompanied by Molotov, Mikoyan, Beria, Kaganovich and Malenkov, assembled at the next station, and caught the subway to Mayakovsky. They took their places on the Politburo rostrum to wild applause. Levitan the newsreader broadcast the programme from a radio-station carriage. The NKVD Ensemble played the songs of Dunaevsky and Alexandrov. Kozlovsky sang. Stalin spoke for half an hour in a tone of inspiring calm, warning: “If they want a war of extermination, they shall have one.” Afterwards, General Artemev approached Stalin: the parade was set for 8 a.m. Even the officers involved were not to know the full details until 2 a.m.