Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Stalin’s tonsillitis flared again. He lay on the dining room table so the professors could examine his throat. Then the Politburo joined Stalin and the doctors for dinner. There were toasts and after dinner, the doctors were amazed to see the leaders dancing. But Stalin’s mind was on the brutal tasks of that terrible year. He toasted Soviet medicine, then added that there were “Enemies among the doctors—you’ll find out soon!” He was ready to begin. 20

The legal melodrama opened on 23 January and immediately expanded the Terror to thousands of new potential victims. Radek, who may have been coached personally by Stalin, revelled in his black humour, joking that he was not tortured under interrogation; on the contrary, he had tortured his investigators for months by refusing to cooperate. Then he delivered what were probably Stalin’s own lines: “But there are in our country semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth Trotskyites, people who helped us [Trotskyites], not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us.” The message was clear and when it is combined with Vyshinsky’s own notes, the mystery of the crazy randomness of the Terror is solved. Those without blind faith were to die.

At 7:13 p.m. on 29 January, the judges retired to confer and at 3:00 next morning, they returned. Thirteen of the defendants, including Pyatakov, were sentenced to death but Radek received ten years. Blokhin again supervised the executions. Yezhov was rewarded with the rank of Commissar-General of State Security, and a Kremlin apartment.

In Moscow, 200,000 people, bedazzled by propaganda, massed in Red Square, despite temperatures of –27°C, bearing banners that read: “The court’s verdict is the people’s verdict.” Khrushchev addressed them, denouncing the “Judas-Trotsky,” a line that strongly implied that Stalin was the metaphorical Jesus. (We know from Yury Zhdanov that he jokily compared himself to Jesus.) “By raising their hand against Comrade Stalin,” Khrushchev told the crowds, “they raised their hand against all the best that humanity has, because Stalin is hope… Stalin is our banner. Stalin is our will, Stalin is our victory.” The country was swept by the emotional effervescence of hatred, fear and blood-lust. Maria Svanidze wrote in her diary that Radek’s “human baseness… exceeded all imagination. These moral monsters deserved their end… How could we so blindly trust this band of scoundrels?”

Today it seems impossible that virtually every factory and railway line was being sabotaged by Trotskyite terrorists within their management, but Soviet industry was riddled with mistakes and cursed with thousands of accidents thanks to poor management and the breakneck speed of the Five-Year Plans: for example, in 1934 alone, there were 62,000 accidents on the railways! How could this happen in a perfect country? “Enemies” among the corrupt élite had surely caused the failures. The arrest of saboteurs and wreckers in the industrial factories and railways spread. The staffs of Sergo and Kaganovich were again hit hard. 1

Stalin carefully prepared for the Plenum that would formally open the Terror against the Party itself. On 31 January, the Politburo appointed the two industrial kingpins to speak about wrecking in their departments. Stalin reviewed their speeches. Sergo accepted that wreckers had to be stopped. But he wanted to say that now that they had been arrested, it was time to return to normality. Stalin angrily scribbled on Sergo’s speech: “State with facts which branches are affected by sabotage and exactly how they are affected.” When they met, Sergo seemed to agree but he quietly despatched trusted managers to the regions to investigate whether the NKVD was fabricating the cases: a direct challenge to Stalin.

An ailing Sergo realized that the gap between them was widening. He faced a rupture with the Party to which he had devoted his life.

“I don’t understand why Stalin doesn’t trust me,” he confided to Mikoyan, probably walking round the snowy Kremlin at night. “I’m completely loyal to him, don’t want to fight with him. Beria’s schemes play a large part in this—he gives Stalin the wrong information but Stalin trusts him.” Both were baffled, according to Mikoyan, “about what was happening to Stalin, how they could put honest men in prison and then shoot them for sabotage.”

“Stalin’s started a bad business,” said Sergo. “I was always such a close friend of Stalin’s. I trusted him and he trusted me. And now I can’t work with him, I’ll commit suicide.” Mikoyan told him suicide never solved anything but there were now frequent suicides. On 17 February, Sergo and Stalin argued for several hours. Sergo then went to his office before returning at 3 p.m. for a Politburo meeting.

Stalin approved Yezhov’s report but criticized Sergo and Kaganovich who retired to Poskrebyshev’s study, like schoolboys, to rewrite their essays. At seven, they too walked, talking, around the Kremlin: “he was ill, his nerves broken,” said Kaganovich.

Stalin deliberately turned the screw: the NKVD searched Sergo’s apartment. Only Stalin could have ordered such an outrage. Besides, the Ordzhonikidzes spent weekends with the Yezhovs, but friendship was dust compared to the orders of the Party. Sergo, as angry and humiliated as intended, telephoned Stalin.

“Sergo, why are you upset?” said Stalin. “This Organ can search my place at any moment too.” Stalin summoned Sergo who rushed out so fast, he forgot his coat. His wife Zina hurried after him with the coat and fur hat but he was already in Stalin’s apartment. Zina waited outside for an hour and a half. Stalin’s provocations only confirmed Sergo’s impotence, for he “sprang out of Stalin’s place in a very agitated state, did not put on his coat or hat, and ran home.” He started retyping his speech, then, according to his wife, rushed back to Stalin who taunted him more with his sneering marginalia: “Ha-ha!”

Sergo told Zina that he could not cope with Koba whom he loved. The next morning, he remained in bed, refusing breakfast. “I feel bad,” he said. He simply asked that no one should disturb him and worked in his room. At 5:30 p.m., Zinaida heard a dull sound and rushed into the bedroom.

Sergo lay bare-chested and dead on the bed. He had shot himself in the heart, his chest powder-burned. Zina kissed his hands, chest, lips fervently and called the doctor who certified he was dead. She then telephoned Stalin who was at Kuntsevo. The guards said he was taking a walk, but she shouted: “Tell Stalin it’s Zina. Tell him to come to the phone right away. I’ll wait on the line.”

“Why the big hurry?” Stalin asked.

Zina ordered him to come urgently: “Sergo’s done the same as Nadya!” Stalin banged down the phone at this grievous insult.

It happened that Konstantin Ordzhonikidze, one of Sergo’s brothers, arrived at the apartment at this moment. At the entrance, Sergo’s chauffeur told him to hurry. When he reached the front door, one of Sergo’s officials said simply: “Our Sergo’s no more.”

Within half an hour, Stalin, Molotov and Zhdanov (that hypochondriac comically sporting an anti-headache bandanna around his head) arrived from the countryside to join Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Yezhov. When Mikoyan heard, he exclaimed, “I don’t believe it” and rushed over. Again the Kremlin family mourned its own but suicide left as much anger as grief.

Zinaida sat on the edge of the bed beside Sergo’s body. The leaders entered the room, looked at the corpse and sat down. Voroshilov, so soft-hearted in personal matters, consoled Zina.

“Why console me,” she snapped, “when you couldn’t save him for the Party?” Stalin caught Zina’s eye and nodded at her to follow him into the study. They stood facing each other. Stalin seemed crushed and pitiful, betrayed again.