Simon Montefiore - Stalin

He often insisted on seeing two movies in a row and afterwards, around 2 a.m., would say: “Let’s go and get something to eat,” adding “if you have time” as if there was any choice in the matter.

“If that’s an invitation,” replied Molotov, “with the greatest satisfaction.” Then Stalin turned to his guests, often Tito or Bierut: “What are your plans for tonight?” as if they would have any at that hour. Stalin laughed. “Hmm, a government without a state plan. We’ll take a bite.” The average “bite” lasted the interminable six hours until dawn. 3

Stalin ordered the omnipresent Poskrebyshev to summon the cars but when they were delayed, he trembled “with rage, shouted, his features distorted, sharply motioned and poured invective into the face of his secretary who was… paling as if he had heart failure.” Poskrebyshev rounded up other guests. The guests had to prepare for the dinners, resting in the afternoon because “those sleeping at Stalin’s table came to a bad end,” said Khrushchev. [247] The magnates’ families recognized their tense waiting for the call to the cinema or dacha from Stalin’s secretaries. At weekends, the only chance they got to see their families, the leaders were especially tense whenever the phone rang. They did not eat during the day to leave room for the endless procession of dishes. But when the call came, Sergei Khrushchev noticed how hastily his father departed. Sometimes he invited his Georgian film directors and actors to liven up the party: “Do you know if Chiaureli and Gelovani are in Moscow now?”

Foreign guests rode with Stalin who always sat in the fold-up seat right behind the driver and sometimes turned on a light above him to read. Molotov usually took the other folding seat with the favourite, Zhdanov, and any other guests in the back seats. Beria and Malenkov, “that pair of scoundrels” as Stalin called them, always shared a car. [248] The chauffeurs of the leaders were very pleased when their bosses were invited to Stalin’s place. Voroshilov was now invited less often than before the war. “My old man ain’t invited there very much anymore,” his veteran chauffeur would complain. As the cars sped out of the city at the speed that Stalin relished, he planned the route, taking “strange detours” to confuse terrorists.

After driving ten miles up the Government Highway, they reached a barrier, turned left and approached a clump of young fir trees. After another checkpoint, they entered the gates of Kuntsevo. Once inside, they passed a big map in the hall where Stalin, Zhdanov and Molotov stopped to make grand geopolitical statements and capricious decisions. Zhdanov, his rival Malenkov and Voznesensky always had their notebooks ready to record Stalin’s orders while Molotov and Mikoyan, Old Bolsheviks, regarded themselves as above such sycophancy.

The lavatories were in the basement and when the guests washed before dinner, Molotov joked at the urinals: “We call this unloading before loading!” This lavatory was one of the only rooms in Moscow where the magnates could indulge in honest discussion: Beria and the others whispered to each other about the tedium of Stalin’s tales of his Siberian exile. When he claimed to have skied twelve kilometres to shoot twelve partridges, Beria, already coming to loathe Stalin, insisted, “He’s just lying!”

They entered the roomy dining room with a long table with about fourteen covered chairs along each side; there were comfortable chairs alongside it, high windows with long drapes, and two chandeliers and lights set in the walls. As in all Stalin’s houses, the walls, floors and ceilings were made of light Karelian pine panelling. It was so clean, so “dead quiet” and so “isolated from the other world,” that visitors imagined they were “in a hospital.”

Stalin always sat to the left of the head of the table with Beria at the end, often as tamada , and the guest of honour on Stalin’s left. As soon as they sat down, the drinking started. At first it was civilized, with a few bottles of wine, sometimes weak Georgian “juice” and some champagne, which Stalin greatly enjoyed. Mikoyan and Beria used to bring wine.

“Being Caucasian, you understand wine better than the others, try it…” Stalin would say: it was soon clear that he was testing the wines for poison so they stopped bringing it. Stalin provided his own wine and genially opened the bottles himself. As the evening went on, the toasts of vodka, pepper vodka and brandy became more insistent until even these iron-bellied drinkers were blind drunk. Stalin liked to blame Beria for the excessive drinking. At Georgian dinners, hosts customarily play at forcing their guests to drink, and then taking umbrage if they resist. But by now, this hospitality was grossly distorted and represented nothing but power and fear. After Stalin’s binges in 1944–45, Professor Vinogradov warned him to cut down on the drinking and he started to water down his drinks, diluting wine with mineral water. Nonetheless he occasionally over-imbibed and Svetlana saw him singing a duet with the legless but proud Health Minister. Forcing his tough comrades to lose control of themselves became his sport and a measure of dominance.

The drinking started with Stalin not Beria: he “forced us to drink to loosen our tongues,” wrote Mikoyan. Stalin liked the old drinking game of guessing the temperature. When Djilas was there, Beria was three degrees out and had to drink three vodkas. Beria, whom Svetlana called “a magnificent modern specimen of the artful courtier,” played up to Stalin’s longing to see his courtiers humiliate themselves, and policed the drinking, ensuring that no one missed a bumper.

“Come on, drink like everyone else does,” Beria tormented Molotov because he “always wanted to make a show in front of Stalin—he would never lag behind if Stalin said something.” Sometimes Stalin defended foreign visitors and he spared Kaganovich because “Jews weren’t great drinkers.” Even during these sessions, Beria’s mind throbbed with sexual imagery: after forcing Djilas to down a pepper vodka, he sneered that it was “bad for the sexual glands.” Stalin gazed at his guest to see if he was shocked, “ready to burst out laughing.”

Secretly, Beria hated these drinking sessions—he complained bitterly about them to Nina, Khrushchev and Molotov. Nina asked why he did it: “You have to put yourself on the same level as the people you’re with,” he replied, but there was more to it than that. Beria relished his power: in this, as in many other things, “I couldn’t resist it.” Khrushchev agreed that the dinners were “frightful.”

Sometimes the drinking at these Bacchanals was so intense that the potentates, like ageing, bloated students, staggered out to vomit, soiled themselves or simply had to be borne home by their guards. Stalin praised Molotov’s capacity but sometimes even he became drunk. Poskrebyshev was the most prolific vomiter. Khrushchev was a prodigious drinker, as eager to please Stalin as Beria. He sometimes became so inebriated that Beria took him home and put him to bed, which he promptly wet. Zhdanov and Shcherbakov could not control their drinking and became alcoholics: the latter died of the disease in May 1945 but Zhdanov tried to fight it. Bulganin was “practically an alcoholic.” Malenkov just became more bloated.

Beria, Malenkov and Mikoyan managed to suborn a waitress to serve them “coloured water” but they were betrayed to Stalin by Shcherbakov. After swallowing some colossal brandies, Mikoyan staggered out of the dining room and found a little room next door with a sofa and a basin. He splashed his face with water, lay down and managed to sleep for a few minutes, which became a secret habit. But Beria sneaked to Stalin who was already turning against the Armenian: “Want to be smarter than the rest, don’t you!” Stalin said slowly. “See you don’t regret it later!” This was always the threat chez Stalin. 4