Simon Montefiore - Stalin

“I’m going to sleep,” he cheerfully told Khrustalev. “You can take a nap too. I won’t be calling you.” The “attachments” were pleased: Stalin had never given them a night off before. They closed the doors.

At midday that Sunday morning, the guards waited for the Boss to get up, sitting in their guardhouse that was linked to his rooms by a covered passageway twenty-five yards long. But there was “no movement” all afternoon. The guards became anxious. Finally, at 6 p.m., Stalin switched on the light in the small dining room. He was obviously up at last. “Thank God, we thought,” said Lozgachev, “everything’s all right.” He would call for them soon. But he did not.

One, three, four hours passed but Stalin did not appear. Something was wrong. Colonel Starostin, the senior “attachment,” tried to persuade Lozgachev to go in to check on the old man. “I replied, ‘You’re senior, you go in!’” recalled Lozgachev.

“I’m afraid,” said Starostin.

“What do you think I am? A hero?” retorted Lozgachev. They were not the only ones waiting: Khrushchev and the others expected the call to dinner. But the call did not come.

At around 10 p.m., the CC mail arrived. The short, burly Lozgachev, gripping the papers, stepped nervously into the house, going from room to room. He was especially noisy because “we were careful not to creep up on him… so he’d hear you coming.” He “saw a terrible picture” in the small dining room. Stalin lay on the carpet in pyjama bottoms and undershirt, leaning on one hand “in a very awkward way.” He was conscious but helpless. When he heard Lozgachev’s steps, he called him by “weakly lifting his hand.” The guard ran to his side: “What’s wrong, Comrade Stalin?”

Stalin muttered something, “Dzhh,” but he could not speak. He was cold. There was a watch and a copy of Pravda on the floor beside him, a bottle of Narzan mineral water on the table. He had wet himself.

“Shall I call the doctor maybe?” asked Lozgachev.

“Dzhhh,” buzzed Stalin. “Dzhhh.” Lozgachev picked up the watch: it had stopped at 6:30 when the stroke had hit him. Stalin gave a snore and seemed to fall asleep. Lozgachev dashed to the phone and called Starostin and Butuzova.

“Let’s put him on the sofa, it’s uncomfortable… on the floor,” he told them and the three lifted him onto the sofa. Lozgachev kept vigil—“I didn’t leave the Boss’s side”—while Starostin telephoned MGB boss Ignatiev, in charge of Stalin’s personal security since Vlasik’s dismissal in May 1952. He was too frightened to decide anything. He had the power to call doctors himself but he had to act carefully. He ordered Starostin to call Beria and Malenkov. He probably also warned his friend Khrushchev because he needed protection against Beria who blamed him for the Doctors’ Plot and the Mingrelian Case, and wanted his head. Beria was probably the last to find out.

Meanwhile the “attachments” moved Stalin onto the sofa in the main dining room where the famous dinners took place, because it was airier there. He was very cold. They covered him with a blanket and Butuzova rolled his sleeves down. Starostin could not find Beria, probably entangled with his mistress somewhere, but contacted Malenkov who said he would search for him. Half an hour later, he called back: “I haven’t found Beria yet,” he admitted.

After another half-hour, Beria called: “Don’t tell anybody about Comrade Stalin’s illness,” he ordered, “and don’t call.” Lozgachev sat anxiously beside Stalin. He said his hair went grey that night.

Malenkov had also called Khrushchev and Bulganin: “The Chekists have rung from Stalin’s place. They’re very worried, they say something’s happened to Stalin. We’d better get out there…” Yet Khrushchev claimed that when they arrived at the guardhouse, they “agreed” not to enter but to leave this sensitive matter to the guards. Stalin was now sleeping and would not want to be seen “in such an unseemly state. So we went home.” The guards do not remember this visit. It seems more likely that Khrushchev, Bulganin, and probably Ignatiev, after frantic consultations, sent in Beria and Malenkov to find out if anything was really wrong. Somehow, during the night, the anti-Semitic campaign in Pravda was halted by someone—or was it Stalin’s deliberate pause? [310] Perhaps the other two waited outside in their ZiS. Ignatiev must also have been present. But already, it seems, Beria had taken control. No one knows who stopped the anti-Semitic media campaign that night. Suslov was the CC Secretary in charge of Ideology, but who ordered him to put it on hold? It remains a mystery.

At 3 a.m. the morning of Monday 2 March, this little delegation arrived at Kuntsevo, over four hours after Starostin’s first call to Malenkov. Both men acted in character: Beria was the dynamic, keyed-up (possibly drunk) adventurer, Malenkov, Stalin’s measured, nervous clerk. While Beria marched into the hall, Malenkov noticed to his horror that his shoes were creaking and slipped them off. “Malanya” tucked his shoes under his arm and tiptoed forward in his socks with the grace of a flabby dancer.

“What’s wrong with the Boss?” They looked at the sleeping Generalissimo, snoring under his blanket, and then Beria turned on the “attachments.”

“What do you mean… starting a panic?” he swore at Lozgachev. “The Boss is obviously sleeping peacefully. Let’s go, Malenkov.”

“Malanya” tiptoed out in his socks while Lozgachev tried to explain that “Comrade Stalin was sick and needed medical attention.”

“Don’t bother us, don’t cause a panic and don’t disturb Comrade Stalin!” The worried guards persisted but Beria swore: “Who attached you fools to Comrade Stalin?”

The limousine drove away to meet the waiting Khrushchev and Bulganin. The bargaining for power surely started that night. Lozgachev returned to his vigil while Starostin and Butuzova went to sleep in the guardhouse.

Dawn broke over the firs and birches of Kuntsevo. It was now twelve hours since Stalin’s stroke and he was still snoring on the sofa, wet from his own urine. The magnates surely discussed whether to call doctors. It was extraordinary that they had not called a doctor for twelve hours but it was an extraordinary situation. This is usually used as evidence that the magnates deliberately left Stalin without medical help in order to kill him. But in their fragile situation, at a court already bristling with spy-mania against the killer-doctors, it was not just hyperbole to fear causing panic. Stalin’s own doctor was being tortured merely for saying he should rest. If Stalin awoke feeling groggy, he would have regarded the very act of calling doctors as an attempt to seize power. Furthermore, they were so accustomed to his minute control that they could barely function on their own.

But the Four had those hours to divide power. The decision to do nothing suited everyone. Beria and Malenkov, Stalin’s first deputies, in the government and Party respectively, were legally in charge until a full meeting of the Politburo and then of the Central Committee. If Stalin was dying, they needed time to tie up power. Possibly for the same reasons, it was in the interests of Khrushchev and Bulganin to delay medical help until they had protected their position. They seem to have promised to protect Ignatiev and promote him to the CC Secretariat.

Beria, the only one of the Four fearing for his life at that time, had every reason to hope the hated Stalin would die. (Molotov and Mikoyan did not yet know Stalin was ill.) Yet Beria was never alone with Stalin—he took care that Malenkov was with him. He was not in control of the MGB, nor the Doctors’ Plot, nor the bodyguards, hence his comment, “Who attached you fools to Comrade Stalin?” Even though Beria has always been blamed for the delay, Khrushchev and Ignatiev may actually have been the cause of it.