Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Zhdanov, on one of his visits, was accompanied by his son Yury, Stalin’s ideal son-in-law. Stalin often telephoned him to give career advice: “People say you spend lots of time on political activities,” he had once told Yury, “but I want to tell you politics is a dirty business—we need chemists!” Yury qualified as a chemist then took a master’s degree in philosophy.

Now twenty-eight, Yury and one of his aunts were driving along by the Black Sea and as they passed the road to the Gagra dacha, they were surprised to see a number of guards running towards them: “Comrade Stalin summons you, Comrade Zhdanov!” they said.

Yury sent a message that he was with his aunt and the guard ran back: “Both invited.” On the enclosed veranda, a suntanned, relaxed Stalin awaited them. After asking about his father’s health, Stalin, pouring the wine, came to the point: “Maybe you should work for the Party.”

“Comrade Stalin,” replied Yury, “you once told me politics was a dirty business.”

“This is a different era. Times change. You’ll do Party work, you’ll travel and see the regions. You’ll see how we make decisions and how they disagree with them immediately.”

“I’d better consult my mother and father,” said Yury Zhdanov who knew that no magnate wanted his children in the snakepit of Stalin’s court. But Zhdanov agreed: Stalin appointed Yury to the important job—for such a young man—of Head of the CC Science Department. Unwittingly, Yury was placing his head inside the jaws of the crocodile at the very moment that the battle for succession was about to burst into blood-letting. “I didn’t fear him,” says Yury now, “I knew him since childhood. Only later I realized that I should have been afraid.”

Yury did not have to stay, but another young man was less fortunate and endured nine days before he managed to escape. That October, Oleg Troyanovsky, a Foreign Ministry interpreter of twenty-six, was sent down to Gagra to interpret for Stalin at a meeting with some British Labour MPs. [278] Stalin had stayed with Troyanovsky’s father Alexander in Vienna in 1913, appointed him first Soviet Ambassador to Washington and protected him during the Terror. Stalin liked but never quite trusted Troyanovsky who was an ex-Menshevik. Once he crept up on him, put his hands over his eyes and whispered, “Friend or foe?” In 1948, young Troyanovsky’s career as Stalin’s interpreter came to an abrupt end when Molotov suddenly moved him in order to protect him. His father, the old diplomat, had been playing bridge and criticizing the leadership, with the indomitable Litvinov. It was a dangerous time. Later Troyanovsky became Khrushchev’s foreign affairs adviser. This account is based on an interview with him. He died in 2003.

Handsome, brown-haired and erudite, Troyanovsky was another child of the élite. When Stalin first met young Troyanovsky, he liked him so much that he put on the Red Indian accent from Last of the Mohicans : “Send my regards to pale-faced brother from leader of redskins!” When Stalin had seen off the British MPs, he said to Troyanovsky: “Why don’t you stay on and live with us for a while. We’ll get you drunk and then we’ll see what sort of person you are.”

This was so unexpected and alarming that Troyanovsky stammered that surely it would be “a burden to Comrade Stalin,” but he insisted. Troyanovsky was understandably uneasy but Stalin summoned him to play billiards a few times, a game he played extremely well without even seeming to aim at the ball. They mainly met at dinner where they were sometimes joined by Poskrebyshev or Politburo members. The host personally served Troyanovsky. The conversation was “never awkward, no silences,” even though Troyanovsky was shrewd enough to ask no questions and proffer few opinions. Stalin did the talking, reminiscing about his stay with Oleg’s father in Vienna in 1913, his “first time with a Western-style family.” Otherwise Stalin just told him to rest but “it was hardly possible to describe anything to do with Stalin as restful.”

Troyanovsky, like every other guest, fretted about how to escape without offending Stalin. After nine nights, he plucked up the courage to ask Stalin if he could leave. Stalin seemed surprised until Troyanovsky explained that he was returning to Moscow to become a Party member.

“An important event,” said Stalin. “Good luck.” Presenting Troyanovsky with a basket of fruit, there was an awkward but telling moment as he saw him off: “It’s probably boring for you here. I’ve got used to loneliness. I got accustomed to it in prison.” 3

On his return to Moscow on 21 November, this genial old host ordered Abakumov to murder the Yiddish actor, Mikhoels. Nine days later, he supported the UN vote for the creation of Israel.

The Stalin Prize Committee sent Mikhoels to Minsk to judge plays at Belorussian theatres. When this was reported to Stalin, he verbally ordered Abakumov to murder Mikhoels on the spot, specifying some of the details with Malenkov present. Abakumov gave the task to his deputy, and the Minsk MGB boss, invoking the Instantsiya. Abakumov’s plan was to “invite Mikhoels to visit some acquaintances in the evening, provide him with a car… bring him to the vicinity of [Belorussian MGB boss] Tsanava’s dacha and kill him there; then take the corpse to a deserted street, place it across the road leading to the hotel and have a truck run over it…” The plan has all the hallmarks of the clumsy, gangsterish games that Stalin used to devise with Beria to liquidate those too celebrated to be arrested. Tsanava passed the orders down the line, always dropping the magic word— Instantsiya.

On 12 January, Mikhoels and his friend Vladimir Golubov-Potapov, a theatre critic and MGB agent, spent the day meeting actors, then dined at their hotel. At 8 p.m. they left the hotel to meet Golubov’s “friend.” Presumably the MGB car took them to Tsanava’s dacha where Mikhoels was probably injected with poison to stun him, another job for the MGB’s doctors. Perhaps he fought back. This exuberant artist, the last connection with the intellectual brilliance of Mandelstam and Babel, loved life and must have struggled. He was smashed on the temple with a blunt object, and shot too. Golubov, the duplicitous bystander, was killed as well. The bodies were then driven into town, run over with a truck and left in the snow. [279] The man in charge of the operation was Lavrenti Tsanava, black-haired with a dapper moustache, one of the Georgians Beria had brought to Moscow. Like so many in the Cheka, he was a criminal. Those who knew him well could only say that “he was a beast.” His real name was Djandjugava and he had been convicted for murder until Beria rescued him and he became boss of the Belorussian MGB. He did not prove a particularly loyal protégé since he was now close to Abakumov. After Stalin’s death, he was arrested and executed.

Stalin was informed of the killings probably before the bodies had been dumped in the street, and just as Svetlana was arriving to visit him at Kuntsevo. Stalin was on the phone, most likely to Tsanava: “Someone was reporting to him and he listened. Then to sum up, he said, ‘Well, a car accident.’ I remember his intonation very well—it was not a question, it was a confirmation… He was not asking, he was proposing it, the car accident.” When he had put down the phone, he kissed Svetlana and said, “Mikhoels was killed in a car accident.”

At seven the next morning, two bodies were found sticking out of the snow. Mikhoels’s body was returned to Moscow and delivered to the laboratory of Professor Boris Zbarsky, the ( Jewish) biochemist in charge of Lenin’s mummy: noticing the damaged head and the bullet hole, he was ordered to prepare the victim of the “road accident” for the lying-in-state in the Jewish Theatre, where no one was fooled by his “broken face” and “mutilated features made up with greasepaint.”