Simon Montefiore - Stalin

On 31 January 1949, in great secrecy, Mikoyan reached Mao’s headquarters in Xibaipo in Hopei province where he met Mao and Chou En-lai and presented Stalin’s gifts. One present was typically venomous: Mikoyan had to tell Mao that an American at his court was a spy and should be arrested. Stalin (Comrade Filipov) kept in contact with Mikoyan (Comrade Andreev) through Mao’s Russian doctor, Terebin, who doubled as decoder. The visit was a success even though Mikoyan admitted that he had hoped for a rest from Stalin’s nocturnal habits, only to find that Mao kept the same hours.

On his return, Mikoyan found a shock awaiting him. Stalin sacked Molotov and Mikoyan as Foreign and Foreign Trade Ministers, though both remained Deputy Premiers. Then he accused Mikoyan of breaking official secrecy about his Chinese trip. Mikoyan had only told his son Stepan: “Did you tell anyone about my Chinese trip?” Mikoyan asked Stepan.

“Svetlana,” replied Stepan.

“Don’t blab.” An innocent comment by Svetlana to her father had endangered the Mikoyans. Stalin had not forgotten the arrest of Mikoyan’s children in 1943. They were still under surveillance.

“What happened to your children who were arrested?” Stalin suddenly asked Mikoyan ominously. “Do you think they deserve the right to study at Soviet institutions?” Mikoyan carefully did not reply—but he understood the threat, particularly after Polina’s arrest. He expected the boys to be arrested, yet nothing happened. Stalin started to mutter that Voroshilov was “an English spy” and hardly saw him [284] On 22 August 1946, Stalin listened to the weather forecast and was infuriated to hear that it was completely wrong. He therefore ordered Voroshilov to investigate the weather forecasters to discover if there was “sabotage” among the weathermen. It was an absurd job that reflected Stalin’s disdain for the First Marshal who reported the next day that it was unjust to blame the weather forecasters for the mistakes. while the diminished Molotov and Mikoyan just hung on. But now Stalin’s chosen successors succumbed to the brutal vendetta of Beria and Malenkov in a sudden blood-bath. 2

The “two scoundrels” played for only the highest stakes: death. But Stalin himself was always ready to scythe down the tallest poppies—those gifted Leningraders—to maintain his own paramountcy.

Stalin’s heir apparent as Premier, Nikolai Voznesensky, “thought himself the cleverest person after Stalin,” recalled the Sovmin manager, Chadaev. At forty-four, the youngest Politburo member distinguished himself as a brilliant planner who enjoyed an unusually honest relationship with Stalin. However, this made him so brash “that he didn’t bother to hide his moods” or his strident Russian nationalism. Rude to his colleagues, no one made so many enemies as Voznesensky. Now his patron Zhdanov was dead, his enemy Malenkov resurgent. Beria “feared him” and coveted his economic powers. Mikoyan loathed him. Voznesensky’s arrogance and Stalin’s touchiness made him vulnerable.

During 1948, Stalin noticed that production rose in the last quarter of the year but dipped in the first quarter. This was a normal seasonal variation but Stalin asked Voznesensky to level it out. Voznesensky, who ran Gosplan, promised he would. However, he failed to do so and, afraid of Stalin, he concealed the statistics. Somehow this legerdemain was leaked to Beria who discovered that hundreds of secret Gosplan documents had gone missing. One night at Kuntsevo, Beria sprung it on Stalin, who, observed Mikoyan, “was astonished,” then “furious.”

“Does it mean Voznesensky deceives the Politburo and tricks us like fools?”

Beria then revealed the damning secret about Voznesensky that he had treasured ever since 1941: during Stalin’s breakdown, Voznesensky had told Molotov, “Vyacheslav, go forward, we’ll follow you!” That betrayal clinched it. Andreyev, that relentless bureaucratic killer, was brought in to investigate. Frantic, Voznesensky called Stalin but no one would receive him. Sacked from the Politburo on 7 March 1949, he spent his days at his Granovsky flat writing an economics treatise. Once again, that dread duo, Malenkov and Abakumov, took over the Gosplan Case.

The other anointed heir was “young handsome” Kuznetsov, who had helped Zhdanov remove Malenkov in 1946 and replaced Beria as curator of the MGB, thus earning their hatred. Sincere and affable, Kuznetsov was the opposite of Voznesensky: virtually everyone liked him. But decency was relative at Stalin’s court: Kuznetsov had aided Zhdanov in anti-Semitic matters and forwarded Stalin a report on the sexual peccadilloes of Party officials. He worshipped Stalin, treasuring the note he had received from him during the war—yet he did not understand him. He made the mistake of examining old MGB files on Kirov’s murder and the show trials. Kuznetsov’s blundering into such sensitive matters aroused Stalin’s suspicions.

Simultaneously, Malenkov alerted Stalin that the Leningrad Party had covered up a voting scandal and held a trade fair without government permission. He managed to connect these sins with a vague plan mooted by Zhdanov to create a Russian (as opposed to a Soviet) Party alongside the Soviet one and make Leningrad the Russian capital. These trivialities may hardly sound like crimes punishable by death but they masked the fault lines in the Soviet Imperium and Stalin’s dictatorship. [285] These dangers were perfectly demonstrated in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin used his Russian Presidency to demolish Gorbachev’s USSR. The moving of the capital back to Leningrad, city of Zinoviev and Kirov, had been a deadly issue in Russian politics ever since Peter the Great. Men died for it in the eighteenth century and they would die for it in 1949. Stalin was also suspicious of the popular heroism of Kuznetsov and the city of Leningrad itself during WWII. It represented an alternative totem of military patriotism to himself and Moscow. Besides, a Russian Party could not be led by a Georgian. Stalin championed the Russian people as the binding force of the USSR but he remained an internationalist. Voznesensky’s nationalism worried the Caucasians: “For him not only Georgians and Armenians but even Ukrainians aren’t people,” Stalin told Mikoyan. Beria must have worried about his future under the Leningraders.

Malenkov had shrewdly amassed a collage of mistakes that touched all Stalin’s sensitive places. “Go there and take a look at what’s going on,” Stalin ordered Malenkov and Abakumov who arrived in Leningrad with two trains carrying five hundred MGB officers and twenty investigators from the Sled-Chast , the department “to Investigate Especially Important Cases.” When “Stalin orders him to kill one,” Beria said, “Malenkov kills 1,000!” Malenkov attacked the local bosses, stringing together disparate strands into one lethal conspiracy. The arrests began, but Voznesensky and Kuznetsov lingered at their flats in the pink Granovsky block, convinced that Stalin would forgive them: 1937 seemed a long time ago. Even Mikoyan thought blood-letting was a thing of the past.

He had reason to hope so because his youngest son Sergo, now eighteen, was engaged to Kuznetsov’s “charming, beautiful” daughter Alla.

When her father fell, Alla gave Sergo the chance to avoid marrying an outcast: “Does it change your intentions?” But Sergo loved Alla and his parents had come to adore her “like our own daughter.” Mikoyan supported the marriage.

“And you allow this marriage? Have you gone crazy?” the pusillanimous Kaganovich whispered to Mikoyan. “Don’t you understand that Kuznetsov’s doomed? Stop the marriage.” Mikoyan was adamant. On 15 February 1949, Kuznetsov was sacked as Party Secretary and accused of “non-Bolshevik deviation” and “anti-State” separatism. Three days later, the couple got married. Kuznetsov was cheerfully oblivious, “a courageous man,” thought Mikoyan, “with no idea of Stalin’s customs.” Mikoyan gave the couple a party at Zubalovo but Kuznetsov, finally realizing his plight, telephoned Mikoyan to say he could not come because he had an “upset stomach.”