Simon Montefiore - Stalin

“With him,” Stalin reflected, “you need a short leash.” When Khrushchev arrived in Moscow, he hurried to Beria’s house for further reassurance. There was a growing solidarity among Stalin’s courtiers. Beria comforted him too.

Stalin appointed Khrushchev CC Secretary and Moscow boss but confided, “things aren’t going very well… We’ve exposed a conspiracy in Leningrad. And Moscow’s teeming with anti-Party elements.” He wanted Khrushchev to “check it out.” As the Leningrad Case showed, the system encouraged Terror entrepreneurialism. The magnates could either douse a case or inflame it into a massacre: it was then up to Stalin to decide whether to protect the victims, save the evidence for later or slaughter them immediately.

“It’s the work of a provocateur,” Khrushchev replied. Stalin accepted his judgement. He soon placed him in charge of Agriculture. “Stalin treated me well.” Having destroyed the Leningrad connection, and undermined Molotov and Mikoyan, the “two scoundrels” were perfectly placed for the succession. Khrushchev was recalled to balance their power. However, this plan did not quite work because Khrushchev became “inseparable” from Beria and Malenkov. The Khrushchevs and the Malenkovs [289] They were now the heart of Stalin’s new inner “quintet,” along with Beria and Bulganin. Kaganovich enjoyed a partial return to favour. On Sundays, those two fat bureaucrat friends, Khrushchev and Malenkov, took bracing walks up Gorky Street, surrounded by phalanxes of secret policemen. lived close to one another at Granovsky while Beria’s limousine seemed to be constantly parked on the street waiting for them. Sometimes he hailed the young Khrushchevs as they went to school: “Look at you! The very image of Nikita!”

The threesome joked about Stalin’s plan while betraying one another to him. After Malenkov had failed to master the impossible job of Agriculture, Andreyev took it over but was then discredited and forced to recant, marking the end of his career. Now Khrushchev was in charge but his plan for gigantic agricultural centres, “agrotowns,” rebounded on him. Stalin, Beria and Malenkov forced him to recant publicly. Molotov and Malenkov wanted him sacked but Beria, who underestimated the “round-headed fool,” intervened to save him. Stalin protected Khrushchev, tapping his pipe on his head—“it’s hollow!” he joked.

On 5 September, Stalin began his holiday in Sochi where Beria joined him for a barbecue of shashlyks to celebrate the Bomb which, along with the destruction of the Leningraders, had temporarily returned him to favour. But it would not last. Stalin’s distrust of the men around him was now overwhelming. He moved south to New Athos, the smallest and cosiest of his houses, where he spent most of his last holidays.

When the Supreme Soviet announced the Soviet Bomb, Stalin mused to his young confidant Mgeladze about the new world order: “If war broke out, the use of A-bombs would depend on Trumans and Hitlers being in power. The people won’t allow such people to be in power. Atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world.” He was so happy that he burst into song, singing “Suliko” accompanied by Vlasik and Poskrebyshev, in a rendition that hit the notes perfectly, just like Beria’s Bomb.

“Chaliapin sang it a little better,” beamed Stalin.

“Only a little bit better,” chorused his companions.

Old Stalin was thinking more and more about Nadya. Walking in the gardens with Mgeladze, Stalin lamented his disasters as a parent. First there was Yasha: “Fate treated Yakov badly… but he died a hero,” he said. Vasily was an alcoholic: “He does nothing, but drinks a lot.” Then Svetlana, his feminine alter ego, “does whatever she wants.” This most destructive of husbands was sensitive enough about Svetlana’s marriages: “Morozov was a good fellow but for Svetlana, it wasn’t love… It’s just fun for her. She walked all over him… Naturally this made the marriage unsuccessful. Then she got married again. Who knows what next?… Svetlana can’t even sew on a button, the nannies didn’t teach her. If her mother had raised her, she’d be more disciplined. You understand, there was always too much pressure on me… No time for the children, sometimes I didn’t see them for months… The kids didn’t get lucky. Ekaterina!” He fondly mentioned his first wife Kato, then “Oh Nadya, Nadya!” Mgeladze had never seen Stalin so sad. “Comrade Wolf, I ask you not to say a word about what you’ve heard.” 3

On 7 December 1949, Stalin arrived back in Moscow in time for two momentous events: the arrival of the new Chinese leader, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and the celebration of his own seventieth birthday. At noon on 16 December, Mao, who had taken Peking in January, arrived at Yaroslavsky Station where he was met by Molotov and Bulganin in his Marshal’s uniform. [290] Mao had brought a treasure trove of Chinese gifts and several carriages of rice. The lacquer ornaments still hang on the walls of Molotov’s retirement flat on Granovsky and Stalin divided the rice among his courtiers. In return, Stalin presented him with the names of his Soviet agents in the Chinese Politburo. Back in Peking, Mao swiftly liquidated them. The visit started as awkwardly as it ended. Mao invited the Russians to a Chinese meal on the train but Molotov refused. Mao sulked, the beginning of a sulk as monumental in its way as the Great Wall itself. Over-awed by Stalin’s greatness but also contemptuous of his consistent lack of support and misreading of China, the tall, gangling Mao was taken directly to one of Stalin’s dachas, Lipki.

At 6 p.m., Mao and Stalin met for the first time at the Little Corner. The two Communist titans of the century, both fanatics, poets, paranoics, peasants risen to rule empires whose history obsessed them, careless killers of millions, and amateur military commanders, aimed to seal America’s worst nightmare: a Sino-Soviet treaty that would be Stalin’s last significant achievement. Yet they observed each other coolly from the Olympian heights of their own self-regard. Mao complained of being “pushed aside for a long time.”

“The victors are never blamed,” answered Stalin. “Any ideas or wishes?”

“We’ve come to complete a certain task,” said Mao. “It must be both beautiful and tasty.”

A cantankerous silence followed. Stalin appeared baffled by this enigmatic allusion which meant a treaty that was both symbolic and practical, standing for both world revolution and Chinese national interests. Stalin’s first priority was protecting his Far Eastern gains, agreed at Yalta and confirmed in the old Sino-Soviet Treaty. He would sign a new treaty if it did not alter the old one. Mao wished to save face before signing away Chinese lands. This was stalemate. Mao suggested summoning Chou En-lai, his Premier, to complete the negotiations.

“If we cannot establish what we must complete, why call for Chou?” asked Stalin.

They parted: Mao claimed Stalin refused to see him but he had his own reasons to wait. He remained miserably in Moscow for several weeks before the two sides came together, grumbling bitterly that there was “nothing to do there but eat, sleep and shit.” The prim Russians were shocked at Mao’s scatological jokes both in person and on their bugs.

“Comrades,” said Stalin, “the battle of China isn’t over yet. It’s only just beginning.” Beria joked to the others that Stalin was jealous of Mao for ruling a bigger nation.

Mao was not completely ignored: Molotov, Bulganin and Mikoyan visited him at the dacha. Stalin wondered if the Chinese enigma was a “real Marxist.” Like an abbot testing a novice, Molotov patronizingly tested Mao’s Marxist knowledge, deciding the Chairman was a “clever man, a peasant leader, something like a Chinese Pugachev” [291] Emelian Pugachev was the Cossack pretender claiming to be the dead Emperor Peter 111 who led a massive peasant rebellion against Catherine the Great in 1773–74. but not a real Marxist. After all, Molotov repeated prissily to Stalin, Mao “confessed he had never read Das Kapital .” 1