Simon Montefiore: Stalin

Last but first, I must lovingly thank my wife Santa Montefiore, not only for translating materials on Leopoldo Bravo from the Spanish but above all for tolerating and even sometimes welcoming, for years on end, the brooding presence of Stalin in our lives.

Stalin kisses his daughter Svetlana on holiday, early 1930s. 1

Nadya holds Svetlana. 1

Stalin and his driver in the front, with Nadya in the back of one of the Kremlin limousines. 2

The Stalins on holiday on the Black Sea, with the plodding Molotov and his clever, passionate, Jewish wife, Polina. 3

Stalin carries Svetlana in from the garden at Zubalovo, their country house near Moscow. 1

Stalin chats behind the scenes at a Party Congress in 1927 with allies Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Premier Alexei Rykov. 2

At a Party Congress, Stalin holds court among his grandees. 2

After her tragic death, Nadya lay in state. 2

Nadya’s funeral. 2

Stalin leaving the Kremlin’s Great Palace with two of his closest allies: Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Mikhail “Papa” Kalinin. 4

Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s deputy in the 1930s, leads an expedition into the Siberian countryside to search for grain hidden by peasants. 2

The magnates were so close they were like a family: “Uncle Abel” Yenukidze with Voroshilov. 2

Stalin’s holiday in 1933: Stalin and Voroshilov go camping; weeding at his Sochi dacha; setting off on a hunting expedition with Budyonny, Voroshilov and bodyguard; Lavrenti Beria offers to help weed the gardens; Stalin embarking on a fishing and shooting trip on the Black Sea, which was to end in a mysterious assassination attempt. 2

Molotov, Premier during the 1930s, plays tennis with his family. 2

Stalin ruled his empire informally: sitting out in the sun at the Sochi dacha. 2

Sergei Kirov holidays with Stalin and Svetlana at Sochi. 3

Stalin with Svetlana. 3

Andrei Zhdanov joins the family, probably at the Coldstream dacha. 3

The Court of the Red Tsar in the mid-1930s. 2

Stalin’s women. 2

Stalin with his grandees and their wives in the former imperial box at the Bolshoi. 2

Stalin (with Beria and Lakoba) visits his ailing mother, Keke, shortly before her death. 3

Beria hosts Voroshilov and Mikoyan in Tiflis for the Rustaveli Festival at the height of the Terror, 1937. 2

Yagoda, Kalinin, Stalin, Molotov and Beria. 2

Marshal Semyon Budyonny poses with Kaganovich and Stalin, among swooning women. 2

Beria and Yezhov—the two most depraved monsters of Stalin’s court. 2

Yezhov and his wife Yevgenia entertain their powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death. 2

Stalin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with Sergo Ordzhonikidze’s body. 2

Yezhov and his friend Nikita Khrushchev accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin. 2

Stalin takes tea with the novelist Gorky. 2

Poskrebyshev with Bronislava, the pretty, glamorous and well-educated doctor, with whom he fell in love, and her sister. 5

Alexander Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s chef de cabinet for most of his reign. 5

General Nikolai Vlasik with Stalin’s doomed son Yakov, just before the war. 3

Svetlana in her early teens, sporting her Young Pioneers’ Uniform. 1

Stalin runs the war, assisted by his magnates and generals. 6

In 1945, Stalin with Zhukov, Voroshilov and Bulganin. 4

Stalin as the arbiter of the Grand Alliance, playing Roosevelt against Churchill: at Teheran in 1943. 7

Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, followed by General Vlasik. 8

At the Potsdam Conference, Stalin poses with Churchill and U.S. President Harry Truman. 4

Words exchanged between Voroshilov and Churchill at the Teheran Conference. 9

Beria and Molotov visit the sights in the ruins of Hitler’s Berlin, flanked by secret policemen Kruglov and Serov. 10

Beria and family around 1946. 10

Beria’s house in Moscow, chosen for him by Stalin (now the Tunisian Embassy). 10

The House on the Embankment, built for the government in the early 1930s. 10

The Granovsky apartment block close to the Kremlin, where the younger magnates lived in palatial apartments. 10

Stalin’s residences: his main Moscow house, Kuntsevo; 8his favourite holiday house before the war, Sochi; 11the vaulted dining room where he enjoyed long Georgian feasts; 11his specially built paddling pool; 11his post-war holiday headquarters, Coldstream; 10the millionaire’s mansion in Sukhumi; 10and Museri. 10

General Vasily Stalin: over-promoted, alcoholic, unstable, cruel and terrified. 1

After the war, General Vasily Stalin persuaded General Vlasik to give him his exquisite town house not far from the Kremlin. 10

At the end of the war, a tired but cheerful Stalin sits between the two rivals, Malenkov and Zhdanov. 2

After victory, Stalin fell ill with a series of minor strokes or heart attacks. 3

On 12 August 1945, Generalissimo Stalin cheerfully leads his magnates for the parade. 8

Zhdanov and the charlatan Trofim Lysenko. 10

The exhausted Stalin gloomily leads Beria, Mikoyan and Malenkov through the Kremlin to the Mausoleum for the 1946 May Day parade. 4

Stalin leads the mourning at Kalinin’s funeral in 1946. 2

Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich follow Zhdanov’s coffin at his funeral. 2

In late 1948, Stalin sits with the older generation, Kaganovich, Molotov and Voroshilov, while an intrigue is being prepared behind them among the younger. 2

Mikoyan and others at Stalin’s house in the summer. 3

At his seventieth birthday gala, on stage at the Bolshoi, Stalin stands between Mao Tse-tung and Khrushchev. 10

Stalin’s restless last holiday in 1952: his new house at New Athos; 10the Likani Palace, which once belonged to Tsar Nicholas II’s brother Grand Duke Michael; 10his remote house at Lake Ritsa, where he spent weeks; 10green metal boxes containing phones were built by his guards so that Stalin could call for help if he was taken ill on his daily strolls. 10

The sofa at Kuntsevo on which Stalin died on 5 March 1953. 10

The ageing but determined Stalin watches Malenkov give the chief report at his last public appearance at the Nineteenth Congress in 1952. 6

Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Beria, Malenkov, Molotov and Voroshilov face each other over Stalin’s body. 4

Stalin at the 1927 Congress: in his prime. 2

The author and the publishers offer their thanks to the following for their kind permission to reproduce images:

1Alliluyev Family Collection

2RGASPI

3Vlasik Family Collection

4AKG

5Poskrebyshev Family Collection

6David King Collection

7Camera Press

8Stalin Museum, Gori, Republic of Georgia

9Hugh Lunghi Collection

10Photographs by the author/Author’s own collection

11Victoria Ivleva-Yorke

Joseph Stalin, born Djugashvili, known as “Soso” and “Koba.” Secretary of Bolshevik Party 1922–1953 and Premier 1941–1953. Marshal. Generalissimo