Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Vlasik and Poskrebyshev did not always dine with the Boss but the chef de cabinet invited guests with the drear words: “Stalin awaits you.”

When Poskrebyshev shepherded the guests to the door, Stalin joked: “So how’s our Commander-in-Chief?” Sunburnt, grey-haired, with a bald patch, thin-faced with a pot belly and sloping shoulders, Stalin met them on the veranda like an affable Georgian countryman, wearing a civilian suit like a safari costume. When it was very hot, there was a sprinkler on the Coldstream terrace that cooled the air, spraying an arch of water over the roof.

Sometimes, the housekeeper pointed the guests down the garden where they found Stalin wielding a spade, weeding his lemon trees assisted by General Vlasik: “I’m showing you how to work!” He showed off his lemons and roses: “he was a romantic about nature,” wrote Mgeladze.

But his favourite flower, the mimosa, was an organic metaphor for his own secretive sensitivity for when touched, it closed like a mouth. “The mimosa’s the earliest flower that anticipates the coming of spring,” Stalin told Mgeladze. “How Muscovites love mimosas, they stand in queues for them. Think how to grow more to make the Muscovites happy!” They often went for walks and sometimes even strolled through Sukhumi where Stalin asked schoolchildren questions like: “What do you want to do when you’re grown up?”

At the Georgian feast often laid up outside, Stalin genially opened the bottles. The “endless meals” were agonizing for the magnates but fascinating for the younger Georgians. Maps were brought in, empires admired, characters from the past discussed, jokes told, toasts raised.

Poskrebyshev toasted Stalin for destroying Bukharin and Rykov: “You were right, Comrade Stalin—if they’d won…” Poskrebyshev could afford a certain levity with Stalin who often appointed him “ tamada .” “Now you’ll drink to my health!” Poskrebyshev ordered. Stalin obeyed.

Molotov hailed Stalin elaborately: “If you weren’t Stalin,” Iron Arse toasted, “the USSR would not have beaten Trotsky, won the war, gained the Bomb or conquered such an Empire for Socialism.” This pleased the host. The drinking often turned nasty when the Politburo or foreign vassals were guests but with the Georgians, it was much more cheerful and nostalgic.

When Stalin sang, Poskrebyshev and Vlasik provided the harmonies like a pair of grotesque choirboys. After dinner the guests usually stayed the night. Stalin could be unsettlingly kind: when Mikoyan’s brother Artyom, designer of the MiG (Mikoyan-Gurev) aircraft, suffered angina and was put to bed, he was aware of someone coming into his room and tenderly laying a blanket over him. He was amazed to see it was Stalin.

One thing united virtually all his guests: the desire to escape this strange nervy old man with his alternation of vicious, dangerous explosions, self-pitying regrets and excruciatingly boring reminiscences. Their frantic and creative efforts to find excuses to leave their all-powerful but super-sensitive host, without causing offence, provide a comical theme to these long nights. 1

That year, Svetlana was one of the first guests, staying for three weeks in her own smaller house. She found the awkward dinners with Beria and Malenkov tedious. Escape was easier for her but nonetheless a struggle: once at dinner with Molotov, Mikoyan and Charkviani, she suddenly asked: “Let me go back to Moscow!”

“Why’re you in such a hurry?” replied her hurt father. “Stay ten days. Is it boring here?”

“Father, it’s urgent! Please let me go!”

Stalin became angry: “Stop going on about it! You’ll stay!” Then later, Svetlana started again.

“Go if you want!” barked Stalin. “I can’t make you stay!” He could not grasp the extent to which his political murders had sterilized and poisoned his world but perhaps he sensed it when he pathetically told Svetlana: “You aren’t in a stranger’s house.” Svetlana was still there when Zhdanov arrived. She managed to depart on good terms, sending “Father” a warm letter to which he replied: “Hello Svetka… It’s good you haven’t forgotten your father. I’m well… I’m not lonely. I’m sending you some little presents—tangerines. A kiss.”

Zhdanov came to help work out Stalin’s policy for securing his hold over Eastern Europe. Molotov’s tendency to negotiate with the West had ended with the rejection of the Marshall Plan. Now Zhdanov seemed to gain ascendancy in foreign as well as domestic policy, or rather he was naturally closer to his master’s voice. Their relationship remained almost paternal. Stalin marked Zhdanov’s speeches with schoolmasterly notes: “Must put in Lenin quotations!” he scrawled in brown crayon on one.

Together they created Zhdanov’s speech that divided Europe into “two camps,” the ideological basis for the Iron Curtain over the next forty years. To counteract the Marshall Plan and the discomforting independence of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Stalin ordered Zhdanov to create a new Communist International, the Cominform, to enforce Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe.

Zhdanov, accompanied by his hated rival Malenkov, recently recalled to a lower post, then flew up to the Polish town of Szklarska Poreba where the ruling Communist Parties from Poland to Yugoslavia awaited Moscow’s instructions. The conference took place in a secret police convalescent home, with Zhdanov and the rest of the delegates staying upstairs. Apart from giving his “two camps” speech on 25 September, Zhdanov behaved with all the blustering arrogance of an imperial viceroy. When Berman, one of the Polish leaders (the one who had waltzed with Molotov), expressed doubts about his Cominform, Zhdanov arrogantly replied, “Don’t start throwing your weight around. In Moscow we know better how to apply Marxism-Leninism.”

At every stage, “Comrade Filipov,” or Stalin on holiday, instructed “Sergeev and Borisov” (Zhdanov and Malenkov) on how to proceed. This was the high point of Zhdanov’s career and his greatest lasting achievement, if it can be called that. It was appropriate that the meeting was held in a sanatorium because, by the end of it, “the Pianist” was collapsing from alcoholism and heart failure. He may have triumphed over Molotov, Malenkov and Beria but he could not control his own strength. Zhdanov, only fifty-one but exhausted, knew “he wasn’t strong enough to bear the responsibility of succeeding Stalin. He never wanted power,” asserts his son. He flew back to the seaside to recover near Stalin, where the two called on each other, but then he suffered a heart attack. [277] Zhdanov was not the only one: Andreyev, just fifty-two, fell ill in 1947 though he remained an active Politburo member until 1950; he lost his position in 1952.

Zhdanov’s illness created a vacuum that was keenly filled by Malenkov and Beria who became so close, they even sent their greetings to Stalin jointly that November, writing “we derive great happiness from working under your rule… Devoted to you, L. Beria and G. Malenkov.” Yet their friendship was always political: Beria really thought Malenkov “spineless… nothing but a billy goat!” Nonetheless, Zhdanov noticed their resurgence, telling his son: “A faction has been formed.” Resting until December, he was too weak to fight this vicious battle. 2

Once Molotov and Mikoyan, fresh from their recent humiliations, had also been to stay, Stalin found himself alone. He longed for the company of young people. Beria, according to his son, thought that Stalin’s loneliness was an act. He wanted his associates around him “to keep an eye on them, not from fear of solitude,” but this does not explain his yearning for the companionship of unimportant youngsters. “While everyone talks about the great man, genius in everything,” Stalin muttered to Golovanov, “I have no one to drink a glass of tea with.”