Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Ignoring the fall of Uncle Abel, Svetlana decided she wanted to go to the dacha at Lipki, which had been Nadya’s choice for a holiday home, all decorated in her style. Stalin agreed, even though “it was hard for Joseph to be there,” wrote Maria. The whole wider family, along with Mikoyan, set off in a convoy of cars. Stalin was very warm towards Mikoyan. Svetlana asked if she could stay up for dinner and Stalin let her. Vasily too was often at dinner with the adults.

In his entourage, Stalin even called Bukharin “Shuisky,” according to Kaganovich, referring either to the Shuisky family of boyars who lorded it over the young Ivan, or the so-called “ Boyars’ Tsar” after Ivan’s death. Either way, Stalin was identifying his own position with that of Ivan against his boyars .

When he received no reply, again showing the attitude of the local bosses to the centre, Poskrebyshev chased up the Kazakh First Secretary: “We have not received confirmation of our order.” This time, the local boss replied instantly. But this only illustrates how the regional viceroys ignored Moscow in small matters and great, following the old Russian tradition of apparent obedience while avoiding actual execution of orders.

Khozyaika means mistress, the female of Khozyain , boss, master, Stalin’s nickname among the bureaucracy, though it also usually means “housewife.”

In case we have forgotten that this was a state based on repression, Zhdanov and Mikoyan were inspecting the NKVD’s slave labour projects in the Arctic such as the Belomor Canal: “the Chekists here have done a great job,” Zhdanov wrote enthusiastically to Stalin. “They allow ex-kulaks and criminal elements to work for socialism and they may become real people…”

An old trick: Kuibyshev had suggested printing false issues of Pravda to deceive the dying Lenin.

Many of the ruling families employed ethnic Germans as housekeepers and nannies: Carolina Til managed Stalin’s house; another Volga German ran Molotov’s and the Berias employed Ella as their nanny-housekeeper. They would all prove vulnerable to the anti-German Terror of 1937.

Not all the off-stage cast behaved so conveniently. At 5:46 p.m. on 22 August, Stalin received the following telegram from Kaganovich, Yezhov and Ordzhonikidze: “This morning Tomsky shot himself. He left a letter to you in which he tried to prove his innocence… We have no doubt that Tomsky… knowing that now it is no longer possible to hide his place in the Zinoviev-Trotskyite band had decided to dissemble… by suicide…” As ever, the press release was the most important thing.

Stalin had just sent Mikoyan on a 12,000-mile tour of the American food industry. The shrewd Armenian made sure Stalin knew that he supported the verdict, writing to “dear Lazar” Kaganovich from Chicago: “Don’t forget to write in your next letter to him that I send my warmest greetings to Our Master. How good that we have so quickly got rid of the Trotskyite gang of Zinoviev and Kamenev!” Mikoyan met Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington, D.C., discussed manufacturing with Henry Ford—and inspected Macy’s in New York. The trip had two effects: Mikoyan gave the Russians American hamburgers and ice cream, and he lost his taste for wearing the Party tunic, sporting natty American-style suits for the rest of his career.

There were many Chekists who sometimes doubled as executioners but Blokhin himself, assisted by two murderous brothers, Vasily and Ivan Zhigarev, handled important cases. V. M. Blokhin, a veteran of the Tsarist army in the First World War and a Chekist since March 1921, had risen to head the Kommandatura Branch that was attached to the Administrative Executive Department. This meant he was in charge of the internal prison at Lubianka; among other things, he was responsible for executions. Major-General Blokhin was retired after Stalin’s death and praised for his “irreproachable service” by Beria himself. After Beria’s fall, he was stripped of rank in November 1954 and died on 3 February 1955.

When he was arrested they were found among his belongings and passed on to Yezhov who also kept them until his downfall.

Zinoviev seems unlikely to have recited the Shema prayer, the holiest in Jewish faith, since he, like all the Jews among these internationalist Bolsheviks, despised religion, but equally he would have remembered it from his childhood.

On the subject of Stalin’s “barrow boy” tendencies, he was always interested in discounts in his foreign dealings: “How much was the purchase of the Italian warship?” he wrote to Voroshilov. “If we buy two warships, what discount can they give us? Stalin.”

Stalin had started to use this charmingly small house, a picturesque yellow bungalow on the hillside at Novy Afon, in 1935. There were walks up the hill to a summerhouse where Stalin held barbecues. Later he would build another house next to the first that would become one of his favourite residences in old age. Now used by the President of Abkhazia, it is fully staffed. When the author visited in 2002, the manageress invited him to stay and offered to hold a banquet in his honour in Stalin’s dining room.

Interestingly, none of these candidates are ethnic Russians but a Jew, an Armenian and an Abkhazian. Some historians believe there had always been a secret policy of placing Poles, Balts and Jews and other minorities to perform the unsavoury roles in the NKVD. This is credible but it is true that Stalin desperately needed NKVD officials he trusted: he was often closest to his fellow Caucasians. He had no interest in provoking Russian resentment of Georgians in high positions. Besides, three of his secret-police chiefs were Russians (including Yezhov).

In West Siberia, there was a regional show trial of “wreckers” accused of trying to murder the local leader Eikhe—and of trying to assassinate Molotov during his earlier trip there. His driver testified that he planned to sacrifice himself and kill Molotov by driving over a precipice but he lost his nerve and only managed to capsize the car in a muddy rut. No doubt this cock-and-bull story consoled Molotov for being left off the list for the Zinoviev trial.

“Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that,” wrote Oscar Wilde in De Profundis about Robbie Ross waiting among the crowd at Reading Station and being the only one to step forward and raise his hat as the disgraced writer travelled to Reading Gaol. The stakes were even higher for Sergo.

Stalin’s political and personal obsessions often found a parallel in his favourite operas: he constantly attended performances of the opera Ivan Susanin by Glinka but only waited until the scene when the Poles are lured into a forest by a Russian and freeze to death there. He would then leave the theatre and go home.

Ekaterina Voroshilova wrote twenty years later in her diaries: maybe Zinaida “was right that Ordzhonikidze was a man of great soul but on this I have my own opinion.” Sergo’s daughter Eteri recalled how Stalin called a couple of times to comfort the widow and then no one called them. Only Kaganovich still visited them. Years later, Khrushchev praised Sergo at Kuntsevo. Beria was insulting about him. Stalin said nothing. But when they left, Malenkov pulled Khrushchev aside: “Listen, why did you speak so carelessly about Sergo? He shot himself… Didn’t you know? Didn’t you notice how awkward it was after you said his name?” Nonetheless the city of Vladikavkaz, in the Caucasus, was renamed Ordzhonikidze.