Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Stalin’s friendship was suffocating. After Nadya’s death, Sergei Kirov, the handsome, easygoing Leningrad boss, became Stalin’s closest friend—here, he holidays with Stalin and Svetlana at Sochi. But there was tension when Kirov became dangerously popular. Did Stalin arrange his death?

Even before Kirov’s assassination, Andrei Zhdanov, ebullient, burly yet frail, pretentious, self-important and ruthless, became Stalin’s favourite—the only other magnate who qualified as his “fellow intellectual.” Here Zhdanov joins the family, probably at the Coldstream dacha ( from left ): Vasily, Zhdanov, Svetlana, Stalin and Yakov. Right: On the same occasion, Stalin and Svetlana.

The Court of the Red Tsar in the mid-1930s. Stalin is surrounded by his male comrades and the circle of outspoken, bossy women who ultimately became over-familiar and paid the price. On 21 December 1934, still reeling from the assassination of Kirov, the courtiers, family and grandees gathered for Stalin’s birthday at his Kuntsevo dacha and were photographed by General Vlasik. Lakoba and Beria arrived late. ( Back row standing, from left ): Stan Redens; Kaganovich; Molotov; Alyosha Svanidze; Anna Alliluyeva Redens; Vlas Chubar; Dora Khazan (married to Andreyev); Andrei Andreyev; Zinaida Ordzhonikidze; Pavel Alliluyev. ( Middle Row ): Maria Svanidze; Maria Kaganovich; Sashiko Svanidze; Stalin; Polina Molotova; Voroshilov. ( Front row ): unknown, possibly Shalva Eliava; Lakoba; possibly Lakoba’s wife; Sergo Ordzhonikidze; Zhenya Alliluyeva; Bronislava Poskrebysheva; unknown; and ( at the bottom front ) Beria; Mikoyan and Poskrebyshev.

Stalin’s women: his beaming mistress Zhenya Alliluyeva sits at his feet in her lace collar; she said what she liked to Stalin and it made her enemies. Pretty Bronislava Poskrebysheva sits to the right of Zhenya. Bronislava’s daughter claims her mother was also Stalin’s mistress. Nonetheless she was liquidated.

Stalin micro-managed the theatre as he dominated cinema, literature and politics. The grandees ate in the avant-loge behind the box in between scenes. Here in the former imperial box at the Bolshoi sit ( from left ): Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Mikoyan and their wives.

Stalin’s mother Keke possessed the same sardonic and mocking wit as her son. They were not close but Stalin sent dutiful letters, leaving Beria to act as his surrogate son. Shortly before her death when Stalin was on holiday in Georgia, Beria arranged for him to visit the ailing Keke. Former friends, now bitter rivals, Beria and Lakoba sit behind mother and son in her bedroom.

Like three boulevardiers in the sun, Beria, the Caucasian viceroy ( centre ), hosts Voroshilov and Mikoyan ( right ) in Tiflis for the Rustaveli Festival at the height of the Terror, 1937.

A Jewish jeweller’s son with a knowledge of poisons and a ruthless ambition, Genrikh Yagoda was the NKVD boss who had reservations about the Terror. Stalin threatened to punch him in the face. Yagoda enjoyed the good life: collecting wines, growing orchids, courting Gorky’s daughter-in-law, amassing ladies’ underwear, and buying German pornographic films and obscene cigarette holders. Left to right: Yagoda in uniform, Kalinin, Stalin, Molotov, Vyshinsky, Beria.

Marshal Semyon Budyonny, swaggering Cossack horseman and hero of Tsaritsyn, famous for his handlebar moustaches, white teeth and equine level of intelligence, poses with Kaganovich ( on the left ) and Stalin among swooning females. Budyonny proved a better general than most of Stalin’s cavalry cronies, but he was happiest breeding horses, which he believed were more useful than tanks.

The two most depraved monsters of Stalin’s court. At the Seventeenth Congress in 1934 when they joined the leadership (but before their rise to supreme power), Beria and Yezhov, a rising Central Committee official, hug for the camera. Yezhov was an ambitious fanatic, good-natured, if prone to illness, a bisexual dwarf who was liked by everyone until he was promoted to NKVD boss in 1936 and became Stalin’s frenzied killer. Beria was an unscrupulous but able and intelligent secret policeman. In 1938, he was brought to Moscow to destroy Yezhov, whose execution he supervised.

Ascendant grandee Yezhov ( hugging his adopted daughter Natasha ) and his promiscuous literary wife Yevgenia, who slept with writers from Isaac Babel to Mikhail Sholokhov, entertain their powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death. Yevgenia Yezhova became the “black widow” of Stalin’s circle: many of her lovers, including Babel, died because of their connection to her. She sacrificed herself to try to save their daughter Natasha.

Sergo and Yezhov.

As the Terror gained pace, Sergo Ordzhonikidze clashed with Stalin. A shot rang out in Sergo’s flat. His mysterious death solved a problem for Stalin, who rushed to his Kremlin apartment where Sergo was lifted onto his table for this photograph. Stalin, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with the body. Kaganovich and Mikoyan were especially close to Sergo and look particularly shocked.

In 1937, at the height of the Great Terror, two young magnates join the leadership: Yezhov, now NKVD boss in full uniform as Commissar-General of State Security (second from right) and (far right) his friend Nikita Khrushchev, newly appointed Moscow boss and later one of Stalin’s successors, accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin. Stalin trusted the ruthless bumpkin Khrushchev, who described himself as the Leader’s “pet.” He idolised Stalin.