Thanks to everyone at my publishers, Transworld, and in particular to Bill Scott-Kerr and Deborah Adams for her copy-editing skills. I have been most blessed by the brilliant, expert, sensitive and meticulous work of my editor, Selina Walker.
My parents, Stephen and April Sebag-Montefiore, edited and improved the book. My wife Santa, an accomplished novelist as well as a loving best friend, gave me golden advice on character and plot. And the exuberant charm of my beloved children – daughter Lily and son Sasha – constantly encouraged and inspired me.
Simon Montefiore
December 2007
A Note on Names and Language
Places in Russia tend to change their names with the tides of history. St Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and was known as such until 1914, when Nicholas II changed its Germanic sound to Petrograd, ‘Peter’s city’. In 1924, the Bolsheviks renamed it Leningrad. In 1991 it became St Petersburg once again. Tiflis is now known as Tbilisi, the capital of independent Georgia.
The rulers of Russia were called Tsars, though in 1721 Peter the Great declared himself Emperor and thenceforth the Romanovs were known as both.
Russians use three names in a formal context: a first name, a patronymic (meaning son/daughter of) and a surname. Thus Sashenka’s formal name is Alexandra Samuilovna Zeitlin and Vanya is Ivan Nikolaievich Palitsyn. But Russians (and Georgians) usually also use diminutives as nicknames: Sashenka is the diminutive of Alexandra and Vanya is the diminutive of Ivan, etc.
In the Pale of Settlement, the Jews spoke Yiddish as their vernacular, prayed in Hebrew and petitioned in Russian. The Georgian language is totally different from Russian and has its own alphabet and literature.
Cast of Characters
The names of historical figures are marked with an asterisk.
The Family: the Zeitlins
Sashenka (Alexandra Samuilovna) Zeitlin, schoolgirl at the Smolny Institute
Baron Samuil Moiseievich Zeitlin, St Petersburg banker and Sashenka’s father
Baroness Ariadna (Finkel Abramovna) Zeitlin, née Barmakid, Sashenka’s mother
Gideon Moiseievich Zeitlin, Samuil’s brother, journalist/novelist
Vera Zeitlin, his wife, and their two daughters,
Vika (Viktoria) Zeitlin and
Mouche (Sophia) Zeitlin, actress
The Family: the Barmakids
Abram Barmakid, Rabbi of Turbin, Ariadna and Mendel’s father
Miriam Barmakid, Ariadna and Mendel’s mother
Avigdor Abramovich ‘Arthur’ Barmakid, Ariadna and Mendel’s brother who left for England
Mendel Abramovich Barmakid, Ariadna and Avigdor’s brother, Bolshevik leader
Natasha, a Yakut, Mendel’s wife and Bolshevik comrade
Lena (Vladlena), only daughter of Mendel and Natasha
The Zeitlin Household
Lala, Audrey Lewis, Sashenka’s English governess
Pantameilion, chauffeur
Leonid, butler
Delphine, the French cook
Luda and Nyuna, parlourmaids
Shifra, Samuil’s old governess
St Petersburg, 1916
Peter de Sagan, Captain of Gendarmes, officer of the Okhrana, penniless Baltic nobleman
Rasputin,* Grigory the ‘Elder’, peasant healer and the Empress’s ‘friend’
Anya Vyrubova,* Empress’s close friend and Rasputin supporter
Julia ‘Lili’ von Dehn,* Empress’s close friend and Rasputin supporter
Prince Mikhail Andronnikov,* well-connected influence-peddler
Countess Missy Loris, Ariadna’s American friend, married to Count Loris, St Petersburg aristocrat
Boris Sturmer,* Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916
D. F. Trepov,* penultimate Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916
Prince Dmitri Golitsyn,* last Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916–17
Alexander Protopopov,* syphilitic politician and last Tsarist Minister of the Interior
Ivan Manuilov-Manesevich,* spy, fraudster, journalist and fixer for Premier Sturmer
Max Flek, Baron Zeitlin’s lawyer
Dr Mathias Gemp, fashionable doctor
The Bolsheviks and others
Vladimir Illich Lenin,* Bolshevik leader
Grigory Zinoviev,* Bolshevik leader
Josef Vissarionovich Stalin,* né Djugashvili, nickname ‘Koba’, a Georgian Bolshevik, later General Secretary of Communist Party, Premier and Soviet dictator
Vyechaslav Molotov,* né Scriabin, nicknamed ‘Vecha’, Bolshevik, later Soviet Premier and Foreign Minister
Alexander Shlyapnikov,* worker and mid-ranking Bolshevik in charge of Party during February Revolution of 1917
Hercules (Erakle Alexandrovich) Satinov, young Georgian Bolshevik
Tamara, Satinov’s young wife
Mariko, Satinov’s daughter
Ivan ‘Vanya’ Palitsyn, worker, Bolshevik activist
Nikolai and Marfa Palitsyn, Vanya’s parents
Razum, Vanya’s driver
Nikolai Yezhov,* ‘the Bloody Dwarf’, secret police chief (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs – NKVD), 1936–8
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria,* a Georgian, Stalin’s secret police chief (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs – NKVD), 1938–46
Bogdan Kobylov,* Georgian secret policeman, Beria’s chief henchman, ‘The Bull’
Pavel Mogilchuk, NKVD Investigator, Serious Cases Section, State Security, and author of detective stories
Boris Rodos,* NKVD Investigator, Serious Cases Section, State Security
Vasily Blokhin,* NKVD executioner, Major, State Security
Count Alexei Tolstoy,* writer
Ilya Ehrenburg,* writer
Isaac Babel,* writer
Klavdia Klimov, deputy editor of Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping
Misha Kalman, features editor, Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping
Leonid Golechev, NKVD commandant of Special Object 110, Sukhanovka Prison
Beniamin ‘Benya’ Golden, writer
The Vinsky Family of the North Caucasus
Dr Valentin Vinsky, a Russian doctor in the village of Beznadezhnaya
Tatiana Vinsky, his wife
Katinka (Ekaterina Valentinovna), their daughter
Bedbug, Sergei Vinsky, Valentin’s father, a peasant
Baba, Irina Vinsky, Valentin’s mother, a peasant
The Getman Family of Odessa
Roza Getman, née Liberhart, widow from Odessa
Pasha (Pavel) Getman, Roza’s son, a billionaire oligarch
Professor Enoch Liberhart, Roza Getman’s father, Professor of Musicology at the Odessa Conservatoire
Dr Perla Liberhart, Roza Getman’s mother, teacher of literature at Odessa University
Moscow, 1990s
Maxy Shubin, historian of Stalin’s Terror
Colonel Lentin, Russian secret policeman, KGB/FSB, the Marmoset
Colonel Trofimsky, Russian secret policeman, KGB/FSB, the Magician
Kuzma, archivist in KGB/FSB archives
Agrippina Begbulatov, archive official
Apostollon Shcheglov, archivist
COMING 15 JUNE 2017
The epic new novel in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s acclaimed Moscow Trilogy
Read on for an extract from
RED SKY AT NOON
Prologue
The red earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards a horizon that was on fire. There are times in a life when you live breath by breath, jolt by jolt, looking neither forward nor backwards, living with a peculiar intensity, and this was one of those times.
They had come out of the clump of poplar trees where they had spent the night, sleeping on their horse blankets, their heads on their saddlebags, fingers curled around their pistols, saddles and rifles lying beside them. Their horses stood over them, soft muzzles savouring the air, their deep brown eyes watching their masters w
hom they knew so well.
The captain awoke them one by one. They saddled the horses, tightening the girths under their bellies, inspecting hooves and fetlocks, stroking withers or neck, talking to them in soft voices. The horses tossed their heads at the horseflies that tormented them, their chests shivering, tails swishing, rolling their eyes at what lay just beyond the trees.
The horsemen scanned the plains fretfully, each knowing that their future was as ominous as the land was boundless. Their struggle under the burning sun made no sense – they were hunted as well as hunters – yet their thoughts were not hopeless, not at all, for each of them had known hopelessness before, and this was far better. Here they could be redeemed by the blood of their mission: they believed this with a baleful conviction, and for some of them it was the first decent thing they had ever done …
They turned to their horses, whom they loved above all things, giving them some fodder and hay that they carried in a net on the saddles. The horses needed calming, but the grooming, the loving care, the routine of so many mornings, reassured the animals.
The swab of sun had turned the sky a pinkened yellow yet the horizon behind them was jet black with a slow-billowing plume of smoke so solid in appearance that it resembled the domes of a dark cathedral. In the distance the crumps of explosions were deep yet they ignored them. It was already hot, burning hot, and there were jewel-drops of sweat on every man’s nose and upper lip. There was a wind but it too was burning, a swirl of blackened straws of stubble and the chaff of wheat. The grass had turned blond with the slanting golden rays of invincible summer.
Pantaleimon, the oldest of the band, extinguished the night’s campfire, treading the ashes into the earth, and packed the coffee pot into his saddlebags, which were a sort of Aladdin’s Cave of food and tools and supplies. ‘Never throw anything away,’ he would say. ‘Everything has its moment, brother, everything’s useful in the end.’
The Cossacks called each other ‘brother’ just like the Communist Party members called each other ‘comrade’. Pantaleimon, always known as ‘Panka’, pressed Benya Golden on the shoulder. ‘Be cheerful, Golden,’ he said. ‘It’s always sunny on the steppe.’ Then they checked the sabres were in their scabbards, the guns over their shoulders, the zinc ammunition boxes packed into the leather pouches, the dried meat, bread and sugar and rolled-up horse blankets in the bags behind the saddles. They had left nothing behind … nothing, that is, except the body that lay down the slope from them, with the blood blackening like a ridge of tar on its throat. Benya glanced at it but only for a moment; he had become accustomed to the dead.
‘I don’t think he’s going to miss us, do you?’ said Mametka in his high-pitched voice. He was tiny – he claimed to be five foot – with the rosebud lips of a faun and a voice so girlish and eyes so childishly tameless that the Criminals in the Camps had nicknamed him ‘Bette Davis’.
They were lost behind enemy lines and Benya Golden sometimes felt they were the last men left alive in the world. But their little squad wasn’t a typical Red Army unit. These were sentenced men, and the rest of the army called them the Smertniki, the Dead Ones. Yet these men would never die in Benya’s mind. Later, he found they were always with him, lifelike, in his dreams – just as they were that day. Some had been in prison for murder or bank robbery, some for stealing a husk of a maize, many merely for the misfortune of being surrounded by German forces. Only he, Benya, was a Political and this meant he had to be even more careful: ‘My name is Nothing, my surname is Nobody,’ was his motto. This discretion had once been a challenge for him; now they were all beyond the control of the Organs or even the military.
It was July 1942 and the Red Army was falling apart, Stalin’s Russia was on the verge of destruction, and the distrust and paranoia of the Camps still gnawed at each of them. Having broken through enemy lines at a terrible cost, adrift on the endless blond sea of the grasslands, they had one more mission to pull off.
Benya tested the girth of his horse, Silver Socks: ‘Better to forget your pants and ride naked than forget your girth,’ the older man, Panka, had taught him. ‘A loose girth means a ride with the angels!’
They were ready. Their captain, Zhurko, gestured with a small motion of his head: ‘Mount your horses. Time to ride out.’
Prishchepa, his spiky hair gilded into a metallic sheen by the sun, had lost none of his easy, feral joy. Spurs chinking, he vaulted into the saddle, laughing, and his horse, Esperanza, as playful a daredevil as he, tossed her head with the game. Benya wondered at Prishchepa’s capacity for happiness, even here: wasn’t that the greatest gift on earth? To be happy anywhere.
He watched as Panka, who must have been at least sixty, laid a light hand on his mount’s withers and mounted Almaz without bothering with the stirrups. He had a slight paunch but he was sinuous, strong, effortless. Not all of them were so gentle with the horses and it showed. When Garanzha approached Beauty, she flattened her ears and rolled her eyes. All the horses were scared of ‘Spider’ Garanzha and no wonder; Benya was scared of him too. His lumpy, shapeless head looked as if it had been hewn out of wood by a wild blind man with an axe; his mouth was a tiny-teethed scarlet gash and he was covered from head to foot in long, straight black hair. He never rushed but moved with a hulking slowness that always stored the energy of concentrated menace. And then there was ‘Smiley’, the Chechen, who from a distance was lean with noble features and that prematurely grey hair which make Caucasian men so handsome – until he was happy enough or angry enough, and then, thought Benya Golden, you knew …
Benya was last, always last. Agonizingly stiff, his thighs were chafed and arse bruised by so long in the saddle. He had only learned to ride properly during his short spell of training, and now he placed his booted left foot in the stirrup and huffed as he pulled himself up and into the saddle.
‘Careful, Granpa!’ Young Prishchepa caught him by the shoulder and held him with an iron grip until Benya was steady.
Panka, whose white whiskers and topknot placed his youth before the first war, chewed a spod of tobacco and sucked on his moustache vigorously, usually a sign of amusement.
Men rode as differently as they walked and their horses each had life stories, charges and retreats, crises and triumphs on this frontier that their riders knew and understood, as if they were their children. And as they moved off, each whispered their own salutations. ‘Klop, klop, graceful lad,’ said Panka to Almaz, his roan stallion, while Prishchepa leaned close to blow over Esperanza’s white-tipped ears, which perked forward and then flattened with pleasure. Benya, a Muscovite who had spent some of his life in Spanish cafés and Italian villas, chanted catechismic praise like a rabbi’s haunting prayers to Silver Socks, his high-handed dark chestnut Don mare with the white blaze on her forehead and white front legs that earned her the name. Silver Socks turned her gleaming neck round towards Benya, and he stretched forward, slipping his arms around her. He loved this horse as much as he had ever loved a person. Besides, he reflected, he had never needed anyone as much as he needed Socks now.
Captain Zhurko raised his hand, his shirt already stained with sweat, his peaked summer cap low over his spectacles. ‘If you’re scared, don’t do it,’ he called to his men. ‘If you do it, don’t be scared!’
For a moment the seven men looked out over the scorched steppe. Their faces were already coated with dust: dust was in their eyes, in their mouths and nostrils, in their clothes. Pungent eye-watering dust hung in the air as they rode over clover and lavender and meadow grass.
Captain Zhurko wiped his spectacles and stared out. ‘I was thinking about my son,’ he said to Benya, the member of the unit with whom he had most in common. ‘His mother tells him he doesn’t have to work at his studies. I blame her …’ How quaint it sounded to Benya to hear a man grumble about normal things amidst this pandemonium.
But Benya was thinking about the body. They had all seen it, understood what it meant and nobody said a word, no surprise, no questions. They
had known him well, after all. But they knew death well too. In the Camps, death came fast as a breath. Bodies loomed dark out of the snow as the ice thawed – where they had fallen or been shot in the back of the head by a guard. Sometimes men walked with death on their shoulder for days: there was something about the glassiness of their eyes, the beakiness of their noses, the sunkenness of their cheeks, and they were dead in the morning lying in their bunks in the barracks with their mouths wide open. Benya knew they would not let the body with its tracks of brown-black blood spoil their concentration or distract them from their mission.
Zhurko was still talking about his son’s laziness – his refusal to study, heavy smoking, and his seemingly indefatigable self-abuse. Benya looked around him. His fellow mavericks might never be as at home in a family as they were in this unit. All across the steppe, on both sides, strange misfits had found a place in the hierarchies of this cruel chaos. Benya wondered if there had ever been a more terrible moment on earth than this one. Zhurko was the one straight man in this posse, the only one who, if he lived, could return to a normal job in civilian life, an accountant or manager, someone wearing a suit, the sort of guy you might see on the Moscow Metro swinging a briefcase. He was fair to the men and imperturbable under fire and it was a measure of his coolness that he did not bother to comment on what he had seen.