Simon Montefiore - Stalin

After seeing the heart-broken Poskrebyshev, Stalin unveiled the horror of what he called “the killers in white coats” to the Presidium: “You’re like blind kittens,” he warned them at Kuntsevo. “What will happen without me is that the country will die because you can’t recognize your enemies.” Stalin explained to the “blind kittens” that “every Jew’s a nationalist and an agent of American intelligence” who believes “the U.S.A. saved their people.” He linked these killer-doctors to the medical murderers of Gorky and Kuibyshev and repeated his mantra-like justification for 1937. A Great Terror was again imminent. He turned to the secret police: “We must ‘treat’ the GPU,” he said. “They know they’re sitting in shit!”

The magnates understood this ominous reference because an anti-Semitic trial was already underway in Prague where the Czech General Secretary, Rudolf Slansky, a Jew, was accused of “anti-State conspiracy.” Three days later, he and ten other mainly Jewish Communists were hanged. Stalin planned something similar in Warsaw for he asked Bierut about his Jewish lieutenants: “Who’s dearer to you—Berman or Minc?”

Bierut to his credit replied: “Both equally.”

Stalin ordered more schemes to assassinate Tito. 3

The Czech executions brought the noose closer to Molotov and Mikoyan who debated the court etiquette of condemned men. Stalin called them “American or British spies.” “To this day,” Molotov reminisced, “I don’t know precisely why. I sensed he held me in great distrust.”

They kept turning up for dinner as if nothing had happened. “Stalin wasn’t glad to see them,” noticed Khrushchev. Finally Stalin banned Molotov and Mikoyan: “I don’t want those two coming around anymore.” But the staff secretly told them when the dinners were taking place. So Stalin banned the staff from talking to them. Still, they kept turning up because Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov and Bulganin, the Four, alerted them—a sign of growing sympathy, because they appreciated that “they were trying to stay close to save themselves… to stay alive.”

Mikoyan asked Beria’s advice: “It would be better if you lay low,” he suggested.

“I’d like to see your face when… you’re sacked,” replied Mikoyan.

“That happened to me years ago,” said Beria.

Molotov and Mikoyan, realizing their lives were in danger, met in the Kremlin to decide what to do. Mikoyan had always trusted Molotov not to repeat his comments—and “he never let me down or used my trust against me.” Both were hurt, and angry.

“It’s practically impossible to rule a country in your seventies and decide all issues at the dinner table,” Molotov said aloud at a meeting, a risky act of lèse-majesté that would have been unthinkable before the Plenum. [306] Voroshilov, sacked and humiliated, seems to have respectfully resented Stalin too. His wife used to whisper that Stalin was jealous of Klim’s popularity—another unthinkable heresy.

The magnates would all have assisted in the liquidation of Molotov and Mikoyan. Stalin was old, raging, vindictive, paranoid and in a hurry. Yet his sense of the possible, the patience and charm that balanced his cruelty and his roughness still worked, as he methodically, logically micro-managed the case. The unpredictable fury, frantic hastiness and implacable paranoia ironically drove the magnates closer together. Beria and Khrushchev were against Stalin’s changes. Malenkov comforted Beria who comforted Mikoyan; Khrushchev and Beria comforted Molotov. During whispered consultations in the Kuntsevo lavatories, the Four laughed off Stalin’s suspicions and mocked the Doctors’ Plot.

“We should protect Molotov,” Beria told the other three, “he’s still needed by the Party.”

December 21 was officially Stalin’s seventy-third birthday. Molotov and Mikoyan had not missed his birthday for thirty years. He rarely invited anyone—one just arrived for supper. The outcasts discussed what to do. Mikoyan thought that if they did not go, it would “mean that we had changed our attitude to Stalin.” They phoned the Four, who told them they had to come.

So at 10 p.m. on the 21st, they arrived at Kuntsevo, where Stalin had hung plangent magazine photographs on the walls of children feeding lambs and famous historical scenes like Repin’s Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks , his favourite picture. Svetlana was there too. Stalin was quiet but friendly, proud that he had given up smoking after fifty years. But he was already suffering from breathing difficulties. His face was livid and he had put on weight, suggesting high blood pressure. He sipped light Georgian wine. As Svetlana was leaving, Stalin asked her: “Do you need any money?”

“No,” she answered.

“You’re only pretending. How much do you need?” He gave her 3,000 roubles for herself and for Yakov’s daughter, Gulia, useful housekeeping money but Stalin thought it was millions. “Buy yourself a car but show me your driving licence!” Underneath, Stalin was “angry and indignant” that the Four had invited Molotov and Mikoyan.

“You think I don’t realize you let Molotov and Mikoyan know? Stop this! I won’t tolerate it,” he warned Khrushchev and Beria. He ordered them to give this message to the outcasts: “It won’t work: he’s not your comrade anymore and doesn’t want you to visit him.”

This really alarmed Mikoyan: “It was becoming clear… Stalin wanted to finish with us and that meant not only political but physical destruction.”

The four last men standing decided, according to Beria’s son, “not to let Stalin set them against each other.” Stalin sometimes asked the Four: “Are you forming a bloc against me?” In a sense they were, but none of them, not even Beria, had the will. Mikoyan discussed, probably with Molotov, the murder of Stalin but, as he later told Enver Hoxha, “We gave up the idea because we were afraid the people and the Party would not understand.” 4

On 13 January 1953, after two, maybe even five, years’ patient plotting, Stalin unleashed a wave of hysterical anti-Semitism by announcing the arrest of the doctors in Pravda : “Ignoble Spies and Killers under the Mask of Professor-Doctors,” a phrase that he had personally coined and scrawled on to the draft article which he annotated carefully. [307] Stalin diligently added the following phrases in his handwriting: “For a long time, Comrade Stalin warned us our success had shadows… Thoughtlessness is good for our enemies who sabotage us…” They were the “slavemasters and cannibals of U.S.A. and England… What about the people who inspired the killers? They can be sure we’ll repay them… As long as there is wrecking, we must kill thoughtlessness in our people.” On 20 January, Doctor Timashuk, Zhdanov’s cardiologist, was called to the Kremlin where Malenkov gave her Stalin’s personal thanks for her “great courage” and the next day, she received the Order of Lenin. But Stalin was still using Ehrenburg as his decoy when a week later, on 27 January, he awarded him the Stalin Prize. Meanwhile throughout January and February, the arrests intensified.

The article revealed the lack of vigilance in the security services, a signal that Beria himself was a target. Not only were Beria’s allies arrested in Georgia; his protégés in Moscow, such as the Chief of Staff, Shtemenko, were sacked. His ex-mistress V. Mataradze was also arrested. He “expected the death blow… at any minute,” wrote his son. Beria “expressed his disrespect for Stalin more and more boldly,” noted Khrushchev, “insultingly.” He even boasted to Kaganovich that “Stalin doesn’t realize if he tried to arrest me the Chekists would organize an insurrection.”