Simon Montefiore: Stalin

A month later, the editor of Izvestiya prepared a special photographic album which he sent to Poskrebyshev: “Esteemed Alexander Nikolaievich, I send you the photographs of the Crimean conference for J. V. Stalin.” Its front was embossed in big letters to him. Stalin was a shabby sight next to the dapper Molotov: his Yalta photo album shows the poorly darned pockets of his beloved but rumpled old greatcoat. The porcine Vlasik was always just a step behind him, beaming affably, but Stalin’s security was as tight as ever. Once when Bohlen noticed Stalin visit the lavatory, two Soviet bodyguards ran around, yelling, “Where’s Stalin! Where’s he gone?” Bohlen pointed to the W.C.

The President was exhausted and ailing. His suite had a living room, a dining room (the Tsar’s billiard room), bedroom and bathroom. His closest adviser Harry Hopkins was so ill that he spent most of the time in bed. According to Alan Brooke, General Marshall “is in the Tsarina’s bedroom” and Admiral King “in her boudoir with the special staircase for Rasputin to visit her!” ‡ Stalin told his version to Enver Hoxha, the Albanian leader.

There is an intriguing note in the archives concerning Churchill: a General Gorbatov reports to Beria on 5 May that orders had been sent to the NKVD with Marshal Malinovsky’s army in Hungary to find a relative of Winston Churchill named Betsy Pongrantz and she had been found. The meaning is not precisely clear but none of the Churchills have heard of this “relative.” Sir Winston’s surviving daughter Lady Soames is unaware of the existence of this possibly Hungarian kinswoman: “Perhaps Mr. Beria and the NKVD had just got it wrong!” she suggests.

If there was a sell-out, it had probably occurred much earlier at the Moscow Foreign Minister’s Conference in October 1943. Nonetheless, Stalin was surely delighted to leave Yalta with Foreign Secretary Eden’s signature on the agreement to return all “Soviet” ex-POWs, many of them White Cossack émigrés from the Civil War who had fought for the Nazis. Many were either shot or perished in Stalin’s Gulags.

In the higher levels of the Bunker, Hitler’s secretary discovered “an erotic fever seemed to take possession of everybody. Everywhere even on the dentist’s chair, I saw bodies interlocked in lascivious embraces. The women had discarded all modesty and were freely exposing their private parts.”

The jawbone and a portion of skull were kept in Moscow; the rest of his cadaver was tested by Smersh and then buried beside a garage at a Soviet army base in Magdeburg where it remained until KGB Chairman Yury Andropov ordered it cremated and the ashes scattered in April 1970.

The NKVD had mended all the electrical systems of Babelsberg and, as at Yalta, they even brought their own fire brigade. More than that, Stalin had his own “organized store of economic supplies with 20 refrigerators… and 3 farms—a cattle farm, a poultry farm and a vegetable farm” plus “2 special bakeries, manned by trusted staff and able to produce 850 kg of bread a day.”

Beria had also secured as much uranium as possible in a special operation in the ruins of Berlin: he and Malenkov reported to Stalin they had found “250 kgs of metallic uranium, 2 tons of uranium oxide and 20 litres of heavy water” at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, rounded up key German physicists, and spirited all this treasure back to the USSR. Roy Medvedev in his Neizvestnyi Stalin claims Beria did not tell Stalin about the American test until 20 or 21 August but we do not know the precise date.

Stalin was a regicide who constantly compared himself to monarchs: he even joked with his Yugoslav visitors, “Maybe Molotov and I should marry princesses,” a prospect that no doubt sent a shiver through the Almanac de Gotha. He was happy to use monarchies when necessary, urging Tito to restore the young Yugoslav King: “You can always stick a knife in his back when no one’s looking.”

This may be the reason this story appears in none of Mountbatten’s biographies and is told here for the first time. I am grateful to Hugh Lunghi for both his interview on the episode and his generous gift of his unpublished official minutes.

Many of the Soviet leaders had their own zoos or menageries: Bukharin had collected bear cubs and foxes. Khrushchev had fox cubs and deer; Budyonny, Mikoyan and Kaganovich kept horses.

On 17 January 2003, the Russian Prosecutor confirmed the existence of forty-seven volumes of files on Beria’s criminal activities which were gathered on his arrest after Stalin’s death. Even though the case against him was entirely political, with trumped-up charges, the files confirm the dozens of women who accused him of raping them. The State television network RTR was allowed to film the handwritten list of their names and telephone numbers. The files will not be opened for another twenty-five years.

To this day, Beria’s illegitimate children are well known among Moscow and Tbilisi society: they include a highly respected Georgian Member of Parliament and a Soviet matron who married the son of a member of Brezhnev’s Politburo. After the war, Stalin changed the People’s Commissariats to Ministries so that the NKVD and NKGB became the MVD and MGB. The State Defence Committee, the GKO, was abolished on 4 September 1945. The Politburo once again became the highest Party body though Stalin ruled as Premier, leaving the Party Secretariat to Malenkov.

Recently, Beria’s house—now the Tunisian Embassy—has yielded up some of its secrets: in 2003, the 50th anniversary of Beria’s death, the Tunisian Ambassador confirmed that alterations in the cellars had exposed human bones. Who were they? Tortured Enemies or raped girls? We shall probably never know. There is of course no proof that Beria is to blame—but anything, no matter how diabolical, seems possible in his case.

I am fortunate that Martha Peshkova, Gorky’s granddaughter, Svetlana’s best friend and Beria’s daughter-in-law, helped with her unique memories and introduced me to the Gorky/Beria family including Beria’s granddaughters (see Postscript). As a wedding present, Stalin gave Sergo and Martha a copy of Rustaveli’s The Knight in the Panther Skin , wich he had edited himself with Professor Nutsibidze, including it teasingly: “You’d do better to form bonds with the Georgian intelligentsia!”

Mercury poisoning had a special pedigree at Stalin’s court: Yezhov had sprayed his own office with mercury and claimed that Yagoda was trying to poison him.

A recent biography of John Wayne claimed the film star’s symbolism as an American hero and enemy of Communism infuriated Stalin, who suggested that “Duke” should be assassinated. When Khrushchev visited Hollywood in 1958, he is said to have explained to Wayne: “That was the decision of Stalin in his last mad years. When Stalin died, I rescinded the order.” The story is based on rumor; it sounds like the sort of grim joke Stalin favoured in his cups. If true, it is hard to imagine why Wayne survived—and why Khrushchev did not use the tale against Stalin in his memoirs.

Bolshakov survived Stalin to serve Khrushchev as Deputy Trade Minister. He died in 1980.