Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Mikhoels was an artistic hero to some of Stalin’s courtiers as well as to the public: on the 15th, the night before the funeral, Polina Molotova, who had rediscovered her Jewish roots during the war, quietly attended the lying-in-state and muttered, “It was murder.” After the funeral, Yulia Kaganovich, the niece of Lazar and daughter of Mikhail who had committed suicide in 1941, arrived at the Mikhoels’ and led his daughter into the bathroom. Here, with taps running, she whispered: “Uncle sends his regards,” adding an order from the anxious Kaganovich: “He told me to tell you—never ask anyone about anything.” The Jewish Theatre was renamed for Mikhoels; a murder investigation was opened. The Jewish Committee continued, and Stalin would be the first to recognize Israel.

However, out of the public eye, Mikhoels’ murderer, Tsanava, received the Order of Lenin “for exemplary execution of a special assignment from the government.” Zhenya Alliluyeva was sentenced to ten years, her daughter Kira to five years, “for supplying information about the personal life of [Stalin’s] family to the American Embassy.” Anna Redens also got five years. They were placed in solitary confinement. [280] The “Aunties” were in Vladimir prison. Zhenya Alliluyeva wanted to commit suicide and swallowed stones but survived. Like so many others, she was kept alive by the kindness of strangers. A Polish prisoner in the neighbouring cell knocked in prison code “Live for your children.”

The MGB now started to build a case against Deputy Foreign Minister Solomon Lozovsky and other prominent Jews: Polina Molotova was quietly sacked from her job. Stalin openly joked about his own antiSemitism, teasing Djilas about Jews in the Yugoslav leadership:

“You too are an anti-Semite, you too…” 1

Zhdanov, despite his “red puffy face and lively movements,” recovered his heartiness and power: “I might die at any moment and I might live a very long time,” he told Djilas. At dinners, he tried to resist alcohol and ate nothing but a plate of clear soup.

For a sick man, the next few months could hardly have been less restful: Stalin now encountered his first real opposition for almost twenty years. Marshal Tito was no vassal. His Partisans had fought valiantly against the Germans and not depended on the Red Army to liberate them. Now, the Yugoslavs bitterly denounced Zhdanov’s “dictatorial behaviour” at the Cominform conference. When Stalin read this, he could not believe the impertinence of it, scrawling in brown crayon: “Very queer information!”

Stalin had agreed to leave Greece to the West, reserving the right to choose when and where to confront America. Tito disregarded his orders and started to supply the Greek Communists. Stalin was determined to test American resolve in Berlin, not in some obscure Balkan village. The final straw was the planned Balkan federation agreed between the Bulgarian leader, (ex-Comintern chief) Dmitrov, and Tito, without Stalin’s permission. As the row heated up, Tito sent his comrades, Milovan Djilas and Edvard Kardelj, to negotiate with Stalin. At grisly Kuntsevo dinners, Stalin, Zhdanov and Beria tried to overawe Yugoslavia with Soviet supremacy. Djilas was fascinated but defiant. So, on 28 January, Pravda denounced Dmitrov’s plan.

On 10 February, Stalin summoned the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians to the Little Corner to humiliate them, as if they were impudent Politburo members. Instead of opposing the Bulgarian–Yugoslav plan, he proposed a collage of little federations, linking countries that already hated each other. Stalin was “glowering and doodling ceaselessly.”

“When I say no it means no!” said Stalin who instead proposed that Yugoslavia swallow Albania, making gobbling gestures with his fingers and gulping sounds with his lips. The scowling threesome—Stalin, Zhdanov and Molotov—only hardened Tito’s resistance.

Stalin and Molotov despatched an eight-page letter implying that Tito was guilty of that heinous sin—Trotskyism. “We think Trotsky’s political career is sufficiently instructive,” they wrote ominously but the Yugoslavs did not care. On 12 April, they rejected the letter. Stalin decided to crush Tito.

“I’ll shake my little finger,” he ranted at Khrushchev, “and there’ll be no more Tito!” But Tito proved a tougher nut than Trotsky or Bukharin. 2

At Kuntsevo dinners, Zhdanov, the heir apparent but increasingly a frail alcoholic with a sick heart, “sometimes lost the willpower to control himself” and reached for the drink. Then Stalin “shouted at him to stop drinking,” one of the rare moments he tried to restrain the boozing, a sign of Zhdanov’s special place. But at other times, the pasty-faced, sanctimonious Zhdanov, sitting prissily and soberly while Stalin swore at Tito and smirked at scatological jokes, outraged him: “Look at him sitting there like Christ as if nothing was any concern to him! There—looking at me now as if he were Christ!”

Zhdanov blanched, his face covered with beads of perspiration. Svetlana, who was present, gave him a glass of water but this was only a routine eruption of Stalin’s blazing temper that usually passed as suddenly as it struck. Nonetheless, Stalin was increasingly irritated by Zhdanov’s over-familiar smugness and independence of mind. Beria and Malenkov were aided in their vengefulness from a surprising quarter.

Chosen by Stalin, growing closer to Svetlana and, at twenty-eight, Head of the CC Science Department, Yury Zhdanov was cock of the walk. He took his science as seriously as his father took culture. Yury resented the absurd dominance of Trofim Lysenko in the field of genetics: the scientific charlatan had used Stalin’s backing during the Terror to purge the genetics establishment of genuine scientists.

“Yury, don’t tangle with Lysenko,” Zhdanov jokingly warned his son. “He’ll cross you with a cucumber.” But Zhdanov may have been too ill to stop him.

On 10 April, 1948, young Zhdanov attacked both Lysenko’s so-called creative Darwinism and his suppression of scientists and their ideas, in a speech at the Moscow Polytechnic. Lysenko listened to the lecture through a speaker in a nearby office. This experienced courtier appealed to Stalin, attacking Yury’s impudence in speaking for the Party “in his own name.” Lysenko copied the letter to Malenkov who supported him. Wheels were turning. Malenkov sent the lecture to Stalin who now believed himself the “Coryphaeus”—the “choirmaster”—of science. He read Yury’s lecture with mounting disdain: “Ha-ha-ha!” he scribbled angrily. “Nonsense!” and “Get out!”

The impertinent puppy had contradicted Stalin’s views on heredity and evolution, and usurped his personal authority. When Yury claimed that these were his own personal views, Stalin exclaimed: “Aha!” and forwarded his comments to a delighted Malenkov.

Frustrated by Yugoslav resistance, tension in Berlin, and Zionist intrigues, Stalin had decided this was the moment to challenge America in Europe. He demanded Party discipline; Yury had flouted it. In an Olympian flash that changed Soviet science and politics, Coryphaeus intervened.

On 10 June, Stalin held one of his set-piece humiliation sessions in the Little Corner. Andrei Zhdanov humbly took notes at the front, his son lurked at the back while Stalin, pacing, “pipe in hand and puffing frequently,” muttered: “How did anyone dare insult Comrade Lysenko?” Zhdanov miserably noted Stalin’s words in his exercise book: “Report is wrong. ZHDANOV HAS BEEN MISTAKEN.” Then Stalin stopped and asked: “Who authorized it?”

His gaze chilled the room. “There was the silence of the grave,” wrote Shepilov, a Zhdanov protégé. Everyone looked down. Shepilov stood up to admit: “The decision was mine, Comrade Stalin.”