Simon Montefiore - Stalin

“I pardon that remark only on account of the bravery of Russian troops,” replied the Prime Minister, who then launched into a magnificent Churchillian soliloquy on the Western commitment to the war. When Churchill poked his unsatisfactory interpreter Dunlop: “Did you tell him this? Did you tell him that?” Stalin finally smiled: “Your words are of no importance. What’s important is your spirit.” But the conviviality was ice-thin: Stalin’s insults infuriated Churchill, who afterwards stalked Kuntsevo, no stranger to gloom and malice, threatening to go home. 2

Still angry and sullen, Churchill had to appear at the Catherine Hall for the Bacchanalian banquet Stalin held in his honour. Stalin sat in the centre with Churchill on his right, Harriman on his left, then an interpreter followed by General Alan Brooke, Chief of Imperial General Staff, and Voroshilov. Molotov kept the toasts coming for over three hours as nineteen courses were piled onto the table, which was “groaning with every description of hors d’oeuvre and fish etc.,” wrote Brooke, “a complete orgy… Among the many fish dishes was a small suckling pig… He was never eaten and, as the evening slipped by, his black eye remained fixed on me, and the orange peel mouth developed a sardonic smile!”

Stalin was at his most charming, making it clear that “he wanted to make amends,” thought Clark Kerr, “but the PM… cold-shouldered him.”

Stalin tried backhanded flattery: “Some years ago, we had a visit from Lady Astor,” Stalin recounted mischievously. When she suggested inviting Lloyd George to Russia, Stalin had replied: “Why should we invite… the head of the Intervention?” Lady Astor corrected him: “That’s not true… It was Churchill.” Stalin told Astor: “If a great crisis comes, the English… might turn to the old warhorse.” Besides, he added, “we like a downright enemy better than a false friend.”

“Have you forgiven me?” asked Churchill.

“All that is in the past,” replied the ex-seminarian, “and the past belongs to God. History will judge us.” There was then a crash as Churchill’s bodyguard, Commander Thompson, slumped backwards knocking the ice cream out of a waiter’s hand, which then narrowly missed Stalin himself.

“Then,” recorded the Soviet interpreter Pavlov portentously in his notes, “Stalin spoke.” During the Supremo’s toasts, Voroshilov, whom Brooke thought “a fine hearty old soul, willing to talk about anything with great vivacity” though with the military expertise of a “child,” spotted the Ulsterman was drinking water instead of vodka. Voroshilov ordered yellow pepper vodka, with an ominous chilli floating in it, with which he filled both their glasses: “No heel taps,” he said—but Brooke managed to sip his glass. Voroshilov then downed two glasses of this firewater: “The result did not take long to show itself. His forehead broke out in beads of perspiration which soon started to flow down his face. He became sullen and quiet sitting with a fixed stare straight to his front and I wondered whether the moment had arrived for him to slip under the table. No, he retained his seat…” But just as this cherubic inebriate subsided into peppery oblivion, Stalin, who noticed everything, “descended straight on him” with a toast the irony of which was missed by the Westerners.

“One of the main organizers of the Red Army was Marshal Voroshilov and he, Stalin, would like to raise a toast to Marshal Voroshilov.” Stalin grinned roguishly like a wicked old satyr because, as Molotov and the others knew well, it was only three months since he had denounced Voroshilov’s “bankruptcy.” Voroshilov struggled to his feet, holding on tightly to the table with both hands, “swaying gently backwards and forwards with a distant and vacant look in his eyes.” When Stalin raised his toast, Voroshilov tried to focus and then lurched forward, just managing to clink glasses. As Stalin swaggered off to toast Shaposhnikov, “Voroshilov, with a deep sigh, sank back onto his chair.”

After dinner, Stalin invited Churchill to watch a film— The German Rout before Moscow —but Churchill was too angry and tired. He said goodbye and was halfway across the crowded room before Stalin hurried after him and accompanied him to his car. 3

Churchill awoke as sulky as “a spoilt child” according to Clark Kerr who arrived at the dacha to discover that “the PM had decided to pack up and go.” Sporting “a preposterous ten-gallon hat,” surely the most bizarre headgear ever seen at Kuntsevo, Churchill stomped into the garden and turned his back on Clark Kerr who found himself addressing “a pink and swollen neck.” The Ambassador explained that Churchill “was an aristocrat and a man of the world and he expected these people to be like him. They weren’t. They were straight from the plough or the lathe.”

“This man has insulted me,” retorted Churchill. “From now on, he can fight his battles alone.” Finally he stopped: “Well, and what do you want me to do?”

Within the hour, Churchill’s entourage was calling the Kremlin to ask for a tête-à-tête with Stalin. The only response was that “Stalin was out walking,” surely a diplomatic promenade since Churchill’s tantrum coincided with momentous events that would lead directly to the Battle of Stalingrad: at 4:30 that morning, the German Sixth Army had attacked and smashed the Fourth Tank Army in the loop of the Don River, a more immediate crisis than a pinguid Englishman fulminating in a “ten-gallon hat.”

At 6 p.m., Stalin agreed to meet. Churchill bade Stalin goodbye in the Little Corner. When he was about to leave, Stalin “seemed embarrassed” and then asked when they would meet again: “Why don’t you come to my house and have a little drink?”

“I replied,” wrote Churchill, “that I was in principle always in favour of such a policy.” So Stalin led Churchill and his interpreter, Major Birse, “through many passages and rooms till we came out into a still roadway within the Kremlin and in a couple of hundred yards gained the apartment where he lived.” Stalin showed the Englishman round his “simple, dignified” four-room apartment with its empty bookshelves: the library was in Kuibyshev. A housekeeper, not Valechka, since Churchill described her as “ancient,” started to lay up dinner in the dining room. Stalin had planned this dinner: that afternoon, Alexandra Nakashidze called Zubalovo and announced that Stalin had ordered Svetlana to be ready that evening “to be shown off to Churchill.” Stalin brought the conversation round to daughters. Churchill said his daughter Sarah was a redhead. So is mine, said Stalin who had his cue: he asked the housekeeper to get Svetlana.

A “handsome red-haired girl” arrived and kissed her father, who rather ostentatiously presented her with a little present. He patted her on the head: “She’s a redhead,” he smiled. Churchill said he had been a redhead as a young man.

“My father,” wrote Svetlana, “was in one of those amiable and hospitable moods when he could charm anyone.” She helped lay the table while Stalin uncorked the wine. Svetlana hoped to stay for dinner but when the conversation returned to “guns and howitzers,” Stalin kissed her and “told me to go about my business.” She was disappointed but dutifully disappeared.

“Why shouldn’t we have Molotov?” Stalin asked. “He’s worrying about the communiqué. We could settle it here. There’s one thing about Molotov—he can drink.” When Molotov joined them, followed by a parade of heavy dishes, culminating in the inevitable suckling pig, Stalin started to tease his Foreign Commissar “unmercifully.”

Churchill joined in: “Was Mr. Stalin aware that his Foreign Secretary on his recent visit to Washington had said he was determined to pay a visit to New York entirely by himself and that the delay in his return was not due to any defect in the aeroplane but because he was off on his own?”