Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Just across from the Kremlin, the hideous colossus, the House on the Embankment, with its own cinema, built for the government in the early 1930s, was decimated during the 1937 Terror when many of its inhabitants were shot. In the morning the doorman told the survivors who had been arrested overnight. Here Natalya Rykova saw her father off for the last time. Stalin’s family, such as Pavel and Zhenya Alliluyev, lived here; after the war Svetlana and Vasily had flats here.

In 1949, death stalked the elegant, pink Granovsky apartment block close to the Kremlin where the younger magnates lived in palatial apartments: Khrushchev and Bulganin on the fifth floor, Malenkov on the fourth. Beria was often seen waiting at the gates in a black limousine for his friends Khrushchev and Malenkov.

His main Moscow house, Kuntsevo, from 1932 and the place where he died. Like most of his residences, it was painted a gloomy khaki green.

His favourite holiday house before the war: Sochi (viewed from outside the security gate), and (inset) inside the courtyard.

The centre of all his houses was always the vaulted dining room where he enjoyed long Georgian feasts with his henchmen, this one at Sochi. On the left is Stalin’s specially built paddling pool since he did not like swimming.

Stalin’s post-war holiday headquarters, Coldstream; the millionaire’s mansion in Sukhumi; and Museri.

Over-promoted, alcoholic, unstable, cruel and terrified, General Vasily Stalin abandoned two wives whom he treated abysmally and tried to win his father’s favour by denouncing air force officers, often with fatal results. Stalin, ashamed of his son’s wartime debauchery and hijinks, demoted him. Vasily feared that after his father’s death Bulganin and Khrushchev would kill him: he preferred the bottle or suicide. Girls flocked to the “Crown Prince.”

After the war, General Vasily Stalin persuaded General Vlasik to give him his exquisite town house not far from the Kremlin.

Power and family: the heir apparent Zhdanov. At the end of the war, a tired but cheerful Stalin sits between the two rivals: the flabby, vicious and pusillanimous “clerk,” Malenkov—who was nicknamed “Melanie” for his broad hips—and (right) the smiling, alcoholic Zhdanov. Kaganovich sits on the left. (Back row, left to right): unknown, Vasily Stalin, Svetlana, Poskrebyshev. Stalin pushed Svetlana to marry Zhdanov’s son. But the struggle between Zhdanov and Malenkov ended in a massacre.

After victory, Stalin fell ill with a series of minor strokes or heart attacks. Here, the clearly ailing Generalissimo arrives to rest, accompanied by the porcine Vlasik.

On 12 August 1945 Generalissimo Stalin cheerfully leads his magnates for the victory parade—Mikoyan, Ukrainian viceroy Khrushchev, Malenkov, Beria in Marshal’s uniform, Molotov ( with Vlasik behind him ).

Zhdanov, in Colonel-General’s uniform, was Stalin’s heir apparent and cultural supremo who attacked the arts after the war. Stalin promoted his son Yury and wanted him as his own son-in-law. But the charlatan geneticist Trofim Lysenko ( far left ) proved the nemesis of the Zhdanovs.

The exhausted Stalin gloomily leads Beria, Mikoyan and Malenkov through the Kremlin to the Mausoleum for the 1946 May Day parade. In this nest of vipers, they walked arm in arm, but their friendships were masks: each was ready to liquidate the others. Stalin now loathed Beria and mocked Malenkov for being so fat he had lost his human appearance. After Beria tormented the dapper Mikoyan at Stalin’s dinners by hiding tomatoes in his well-cut suits and squashing them, Mikoyan started bringing a spare suit.

As the struggle for the succession builds up, Stalin leads the mourning at Kalinin’s funeral in 1946. ( Front row, from left ): Beria, Malenkov, Stalin and Molotov. Behind Molotov ( to the right ) stands the ill and frail Zhdanov at the height of his power. Zhdanov’s two protégés, Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, are both to the right behind Malenkov’s shoulder. Kaganovich is behind Molotov.

The death of Zhdanov, Stalin’s friend and favourite, here in open coffin, unleashes the vengeance of Beria and Malenkov against his faction. Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich follow the coffin. That night, at the funeral supper, Stalin became drunk: with Zhdanov gone, he had lost his only intellectual equal.

Here, in late 1948, Stalin sits with the older generation, Kaganovich, Molotov and Voroshilov, while an intrigue is being prepared behind them among the younger. After ten years without a single top leader being shot, Beria ( second row, far left ) and Malenkov ( second row, second from left ) helped Stalin murder his two appointed successors, Kuznetsov ( second row between Molotov and Stalin ) and Voznesensky ( second row between Stalin and Voroshilov ) in the “Leningrad Case.”

Summertime chez Stalin: natty Mikoyan in whites with the “young, handsome” and doomed Kuznetsov, Molotov and Poskrebyshev in uniform.

At his seventieth birthday gala on stage at the Bolshoi, Stalin stands between Mao Tse-tung and Khrushchev, whom Stalin summoned from Ukraine to offset Malenkov and Beria.