Simon Montefiore - Stalin

“If that’s so,” said Stalin, “Churchill must be the Holy Ghost. He flies about so much.” [228] Stalin made one joke about Maisky, the ex-ambassador to London, who was present, that was not translated. The Russians though laughed uproariously at it so Brooke asked him what was so funny. Maisky glumly explained, “The Marshal has referred to me as the Poet-Diplomat because I have written a few verses at times but our last poet-diplomat was liquidated—that is the joke.” The original Poet-Diplomat was the Russian Ambassador to Persia, Griboyedov, who was torn to pieces by the Teheran mob in 1829. Maisky was later arrested and tortured. When Churchill finally left on 19 October, having made little progress over Poland, Stalin personally came to the airport to see him off, waving his handkerchief. 5

Stalin was now enjoying the power of victory—and the bullying showman who emerged was not a pretty sight. His respectful gaiety with Churchill metamorphosed into threatening drunkenness with the less powerful such as Charles de Gaulle. In December, the Frenchman visited Moscow to sign a treaty of alliance and mutual assistance. In return, Stalin wanted French recognition of Bierut’s Polish government which de Gaulle refused to give. By the time of the banquet, the negotiations were stuck. This did not stop Stalin getting swaggeringly drunk, to the horror of the gloomy de Gaulle. Stalin complained to Harriman that de Gaulle was “an awkward and clumsy man,” but that did not matter because they “must drink more wine and then everything will straighten out.”

Stalin, swigging champagne, took over the toasts from Molotov. After praising Roosevelt and Churchill, while pointedly ignoring de Gaulle, Stalin embarked on a terrifying gallows tour of his entourage: he toasted Kaganovich, “a brave man. He knows that if the trains do not arrive on time”—he paused—“we shall shoot him!” Then: “Come here!” Kaganovich rose and they clinked glasses jovially. Then Stalin lauded Air Force Commander Novikov, this “good Marshal, let’s drink to him. And if he doesn’t do his job properly, we’ll hang him.” (Novikov would soon be arrested and tortured.) Then he spotted Khrulev: “He’d better do his best, or he’ll be hanged for it, that’s the custom in our country!” Again: “Come here!” Noticing the distaste on de Gaulle’s face, Stalin chuckled: “People call me a monster, but as you see, I make a joke of it. Maybe I’m not horrible after all.”

Molotov collared his French opposite number, Bidault, with whom he began arguing over the treaty. Stalin gestured at them, calling out to Bulganin: “Bring the machine guns. Let’s liquidate the diplomats.” Leading his guests out for coffee and movies, Stalin “kept hugging the French and lurching around,” noticed Khrushchev who was also present but had avoided a threatening toast. He was “completely drunk.” While the diplomats negotiated, Stalin drank more champagne. Finally in the early hours, when de Gaulle had gone to bed, the Russians suddenly agreed to sign the treaty without recognition of Bierut. De Gaulle was rushed back into the Kremlin where Stalin first asked him to sign the original treaty. When de Gaulle angrily retorted: “France has been insulted,” Stalin cheerfully called for the new draft which was then signed at 6:30 a.m.

As the fastidious Frenchman left, Stalin called for his interpreter and laughed: “You know too much. I’d better send you to Siberia!” De Gaulle looked back one last time: “I saw Stalin sitting alone at a table. He had started eating again.”

The same exuberant victor presided over a series of dinners and banquets for the visiting Yugoslavs that winter. Stalin was outraged that the Yugoslav Politburo member Milovan Djilas had complained about the rape and pillage of the Red Army. Stalin regarded any criticism of the army as an attack on himself. He drunkenly lectured the Yugoslavs about his army “which pushed its way across thousands of miles” only to be attacked “by none other than Djilas! Djilas whom I received so well!” In the absence of the man himself, Djilas’s wife, Mitra Mitrovic, one of the delegates, caught his eye and he “proposed toasts, joked, teased, wept” before kissing her repeatedly, jesting salaciously: “I’ll kiss you even if the Yugoslavs and Djilas accuse me of having raped you!”

When Stalin invited some American officials to the Kremlin cinema, he moved to sit between the leading Westerners but then he turned round to Kavtaradze: “Come on, boy, sit next to me!”

“How can I?” answered Kavtaradze. “You’ve guests.”

Stalin waved his hand, adding in Georgian: “Fuck them!”

That New Year’s Eve, Stalin and his magnates, along with General Khrulev, saw in 1945 with an all-night, singing and dancing Bacchanal. 6

When Stalin eyed the great prize of Berlin, he decided to change the way he ran the war: there would be no more Stavka representatives in charge of fronts. Henceforth, the Supremo would command directly.

Zhukov was to command the First Belorussian Front that was to fight the five hundred miles to Berlin. Six million Soviet soldiers were massed for the Vistula–Oder offensive. Two weeks later, Koniev was plunging into the “gold” of industrial Silesia, Zhukov had expelled the Germans from central Poland, and Malinovsky was fighting frenziedly for Budapest. The Second and Third Belorussian Fronts broke into East Prussia, Germany itself, in a fiesta of vengeance: two million German women were to be raped in the coming months. Russian soldiers even raped Russian women newly liberated from Nazi camps. Stalin cared little about this, telling Djilas: “You have of course read Dostoevsky? Do you see what a complicated thing is man’s soul… ? Well then, imagine a man who has fought from Stalingrad to Belgrade—over thousands of kilometres of his own devastated land, across the dead bodies of his comrades and dearest ones? How can such a man react normally? And what is so awful about his having fun with a woman after such horrors?”

Roosevelt and Churchill had been discussing the next Big Three meeting ever since July 1944. Stalin was reluctant: when, in September, Harriman suggested a meeting in the Mediterranean, Stalin retorted that his doctors had told him “any change of climate would have a bad effect,” this from a man who distrusted doctors intensely. Molotov could go instead. Molotov politely insisted that he could never replace Marshal Stalin.

“You’re too modest,” said Stalin drily. They agreed on Yalta. By 29 January, Zhukov was on the Oder. As German forces counter-attacked the Soviet bridgeheads, Roosevelt and Churchill were being greeted on 3 February at Saki air-force base in the Crimea by Molotov, in stiff white collar, black coat and fur hat, and Vyshinsky, resplendent in his diplomatic uniform, who hosted a “magnificent luncheon” on their way to Yalta. 1

Stalin himself had not yet left Moscow but he had approved Beria’s arrangements in a memorandum so secret that key names were left out and only filled in by hand. The conference would be guarded by four NKVD regiments and defended by arrays of AA guns and 160 fighter planes. Stalin’s security was described thus: “For the guarding of the chief of the Soviet delegation, besides the bodyguards under Comrade Vlasik, there are additionally 100 operative workers and a special detachment of 500 from NKVD regiments.” In other words, Stalin himself had a bodyguard of about 620 men but in addition, there were two circles of guards by day, three circles by night, and guard dogs. Five districts spanning twenty kilometres had been “purged of suspicious elements”—74,000 people had been checked and 835 arrested. With its towns deserted and ruined after the depredations of the Nazis and the deportation of the Tartars, it was no wonder Churchill dubbed Yalta “The Riviera of Hades.”