Simon Montefiore - Stalin

There, in a man who killed his best friends, was true friendship. Whether or not he killed Kirov, Stalin certainly exploited the murder to destroy not only his opponents but the less radical among his own allies. 7

Kirov lay in state in an open casket, wearing a dark tunic and surrounded by the red banners, inscribed wreaths and tropical palms of the Bolshevik funeral amid the Potemkinian neoclassical grandeur of the Taurida Palace. [75] The Taurida Palace had been the scene of Prince Potemkin’s extravagant ball for Catherine the Great in 1791 but it was also the home of the Duma, the Parliament gingerly granted by Nicholas II after the 1905 Revolution. In 1918, the palace housed the Constituent Assembly that Lenin ordered shut down by drunken Red Guards. It was thus both the birthplace and graveyard of Russia’s first two democracies before 1991. At 9:30 p.m. on 3 December, Stalin and the Politburo formed the honour guard, another part of Bolshevik necro-ritual. Voroshilov and Zhdanov appeared upset but Molotov was stony. “Astonishingly calm and impenetrable was the face of JV Stalin,” noted Khrushchev, “giving the impression that he was lost in thought, his eyes glazing over Kirov’s bullet-struck corpse.” Before departing, Stalin appointed Zhdanov as Leningrad boss while remaining a CC Secretary. Yezhov also stayed behind to oversee the investigation.

At ten, Stalin and the others bore Kirov’s coffin to a gun carriage. The body travelled slowly through the streets to the station where it was loaded onto the train that was to take Stalin back to Moscow. Draped in garlands, this death train shunted into the darkness after midnight, leaving behind Kirov’s brain which was to be studied for signs of revolutionary brilliance in the Leningrad Institute. [76] This brain study was part of the rationalist-scientific ritual of the death of great Bolsheviks. Lenin’s brain had been extracted and was now studied at the Institute of the Brain. When Gorky died, his brain was delivered there too. This was surely a scientific Marxist distortion of the tradition in the Romantic age for the hearts of great men, whether Mirabeau or Potemkin, to be buried separately. But the age of the heart was over.

Even before the train arrived in Moscow, Agranov, the Chekist running the investigation, interrogated the assassin: “Stubborn as a mule,” he reported to Stalin.

“Nourish Nikolaev well, buy him a chicken,” replied Stalin, who so enjoyed chicken himself. “Nourish him so he will be strong, then he’ll tell us who was leading him. And if he doesn’t talk, we’ll give it to him and he’ll tell… everything.” 8

At Moscow’s October Station, the casket was again transferred to a gun carriage and deposited in the Hall of Columns for the funeral next day. Soon afterwards, Stalin briefed the Politburo on his unconvincing investigation. Mikoyan, who had loved Kirov, was so upset that he asked how Nikolaev had twice escaped arrest with a pistol and how Borisov had been killed.

“How could it happen?” Stalin agreed indignantly.

“Someone should answer for this, shouldn’t they?” exclaimed Mikoyan, focusing on the strange behaviour of the NKVD. “Isn’t the OGPU Chairman [Yagoda] responsible for Politburo security? He should be called to account.” But Stalin protected Yagoda, concentrating on his real targets, the Old Bolsheviks like Zinoviev. Afterwards, Sergo, Kuibyshev and Mikoyan were deeply suspicious: Mikoyan discussed Stalin’s “unclear behaviour” with Sergo, probably on their walks around the Kremlin, the traditional place for such forbidden chats. Both were “surprised and amazed and could not understand it.” Sergo lost his voice with grief. Kuibyshev is said to have proposed a CC investigation to check the one being carried out by the NKVD. It is surely doubtful that Mikoyan, who still fervently admired Stalin and served him loyally until his death, believed at that time that his Leader was responsible. These Bolsheviks were accustomed to self-delude and double-think their way out of such nagging doubts. 9

That night, Pavel Alliluyev replayed his role after Nadya’s death by staying with Stalin at Kuntsevo. Leaning on his hand, Stalin murmured that after Kirov’s death, “I am absolutely an orphan.” He said it so touchingly that Pavel hugged him. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his anguish that someone had done this to Kirov—or that they had needed to do it.

At 10 a.m. on the 5th, with Gorky Street closed and tight security under the command of Pauker (as at Nadya’s funeral), Stalin’s entourage gathered in the Hall of Columns. The funeral was an extravaganza of Bolshevik sentimental kitsch—with burning torches, scarlet velvet curtains and banners hanging all the way from the ceiling and more palm trees—and modern media frenzy, with a press pack snapping their cameras and arc lights illuminating the body as if it was a prop in a neon-lit theatre. The orchestra of the Bolshoi played the funeral marches. It was not only the Nazis who could lay on a brilliant funeral for their fallen knights; even the colours were the same: everything was red and black. Stalin had already declared Kirov his closest martyred comrade: his home town, Viatka, Leningrad’s Mariinsky Ballet and hundreds of streets were renamed “Kirov.”

The coffin rested on scarlet calico, the face “a greenish colour” with a blue bruise on his temple where he fell. Kirov’s widow sat with the sisters he had not seen or bothered to contact for thirty years. Redens, Moscow NKVD chief, escorted his pregnant wife, Anna Alliluyeva, and the Svanidzes to their places beside the Politburo wives. Silence fell. Only the click of the sentry’s boots echoed in the hall. Then Maria Svanidze heard the “footsteps of that group of tough and resolute eagles”: the Politburo took up position around the head of Kirov.

The Bolshoi orchestra broke into Chopin’s Funeral March. Afterwards, in the silence, there was the clicking and whirring of cine-cameras: Stalin, fingers together across his stomach, stood beside the swaggering Kaganovich, with a leather belt around the midriff of his bulging tunic. The guards began to screw on the coffin lid. But just like at Nadya’s funeral, Stalin dramatically stopped them by stepping up to the catafalque. With all eyes on his “sorrowful” face, he slowly bent down and kissed Kirov’s brow. “It was a heart-breaking sight, knowing how close they were” and the whole hall burst into audible weeping; even the men were openly sobbing.

“Goodbye dear friend, we’ll avenge you,” Stalin whispered to the corpse. He was becoming something of a connoisseur of funerals.

One by one the leaders wished Kirov adieu: a pale-faced Molotov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich leaned over but did not kiss Kirov, while Mikoyan placed his hand on the rim of the coffin and leaned in. Kirov’s wife collapsed and doctors had to give her valerian drops. For Stalin’s family, the loss of Kirov, “this completely charming person loved by all,” was linked to the death of Nadya because they knew he had “transferred all the pain and burden of loss” of his wife onto this dear friend.

The leaders left and the coffin was closed up and driven away to the crematorium where Pavel and Zhenya Alliluyev watched the casket disappear into the furnace. The Svanidzes and others returned to Voroshilov’s apartment in the Horse Guards, scene of Nadya’s last supper, for a late dinner. Molotov and the other magnates dined with Stalin at Kuntsevo.

Next morning, Stalin, in his old greatcoat and peaked cap, Voroshilov, Molotov and Kalinin carried the urn of ashes, cradled in an ornate mini– Classical temple the size of a coffin, piled high with flowers, across Red Square. There, a million workers stood in the freezing silence. Kaganovich spoke—another parallel with Nadya’s funeral, before trumpets blared out a salute, heads and banners were lowered, and that “perfect Bolshevik,” Sergo, placed the urn where it still rests in the Kremlin Wall. “I thought Kirich would bury me but it’s turned out the opposite,” he told his wife afterwards. 10