Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Title Page
Epigraph
List of Characters
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part Three
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part Four
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Part Five
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
History
Copyright
About the Book
If your children were forced to testify against you, what terrible secrets would they reveal?
Moscow 1945. As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, shots ring out. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl lie dead.
But this is no ordinary tragedy and these are no ordinary teenagers, but the children of Russia’s most important leaders who attend the most exclusive school in Moscow.
Is it murder? A suicide pact? Or a conspiracy against the state?
Directed by Stalin himself, an investigation begins as children are arrested and forced to testify against their friends – and their parents. This terrifying witch-hunt soon unveils illicit love affairs and family secrets in a world where the smallest mistakes can be punished with death.
About the Author
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history books are world-wide bestsellers, and are published in over 40 languages. Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (USA), Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France) and the Kreisky Prize for Political Literature (Austria), and is currently being developed as a tv mini-series. Jerusalem: The Biography won the Jewish Book of the Year Prize (USA) and was number one bestseller in the UK. He is the presenter of the BBC TV series Jerusalem, Making of a Holy City 2011 and Rome, History of the Eternal City.
A Visiting Professor at Buckingham University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. For more information, see: www.simonsebagmontefiore.com
Also by Simon Sebag Montefiore
FICTION
Sashenka
NON-FICTION
Jerusalem: The Biography
Catherine the Great and Potemkin
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Young Stalin
Titans of History
One Night in Winter
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Not a soul knew about it and . . . probably no one would ever know. He was leading a double life: one was undisguised, plain for all to see and known to everyone who needed to know, full of conventional truths and conventional deception, identical to the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another which went on in secret. And by some strange, possibly fortuitous chain of circumstances, everything that was important, interesting and necessary for him, where he behaved sincerely and did not deceive himself and which was the very essence of his life – that was conducted in complete secrecy.
Anton Chekhov, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’
List of Characters
Major characters are underlined; historical characters are marked with an asterisk*
THE CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS
The Romashkin family
Constantin Romashkin, scriptwriter and poet, married to:
Sophia ‘Mouche’ Gideonovna Zeitlin, film star
Serafima Romashkina, 18, their only child
Sashenka Zeitlin, Sophia’s cousin, arrested 1939, fate unknown
The Satinov family and household
Hercules (Erakle) Satinov, Politburo member, Central Committee Secretary, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, married to:
‘Tamriko’, Tamara Satinova, English teacher at School 801
Mariko Satinova, 6, their daughter
Satinov’s sons by an earlier marriage in Georgia:
‘Vanya’, Ivan Satinov, pilot, killed 1943
David Satinov, 23, pilot
‘George’, Georgi Satinov, 18
Marlen Satinov, 17, School Komsomol Organizer
Colonel Losha Babanava, Comrade Satinov’s chief bodyguard
Valerian Chubin, Comrade Satinov’s aide
The Dorov family
Genrikh Dorov, Chairman, Central Control Commission, and Minister of State Control, married to:
‘Dashka’, Dr Daria Dorova, Minister of Health, cardiologist
Their children:
Sergei Dorov, 20, army officer
‘Minka’, Marina Dorova, 18, schoolfriend of Serafima
Demian Dorov, ‘the Weasel’, 17, Organizer of Young Pioneers
‘Senka’, Semyon Dorov, ‘the Little Professor’, 10
The Blagov family
‘Nikolasha’, Nikolai Blagov, 18
Ambassador Vadim Blagov, his father, diplomat
Ludmilla Blagova, his mother
The Shako family
Rosa Shako, 18, schoolfriend of Serafima
Marshal Boris Shako, her father, Soviet Air Force Commander
Elena Shako, her mother
The Titorenko family
Vladimir Titorenko, 17
Ivan Titorenko, his father, Minister of Aircraft Production
Irina Titorenka, his mother
The Kurbsky family
Andrei Kurbsky, 18, a newcomer to the school
Peter Kurbsky, his father, Enemy of the People, arrested in 1938, sentenced to twenty-five years ‘without right of correspondence’
Inessa Kurbskaya, his mother
THE TEACHERS OF THE JOSEF STALIN COMMUNE SCHOOL 801
Kapitolina Medvedeva, Director (headmistress) and history teacher
Dr Innokenty Rimm, Deputy Director, political science/Communist morals teacher
Benya Golden, Russian literature teacher
Tamara Satinova, English teacher (see Satinov family above)
Apostollon Shuba, physical education teacher
Agrippina Begbulatova, assistant teacher
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THE LEADERS
Josef Stalin,* Marshal, General Secretary (Gensec) of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Master, the Instantsiya
‘Vaska’, Vasily Josefovich Stalin,* 24, his son, air force officer, ‘Crown Prince’
Svetlana Stalina,* 19, his daughter, student
Vyacheslav Molotov,* Foreign Minister, Politburo member
Lavrenti Beria,* secret policeman, Minister of Internal Affairs (NKVD/MVD) 1938–45, Deputy Chairman of Council of Ministers, Politburo member
Georgi Malenkov,* Politburo member
Andrei Vyshinsky,* Deputy Foreign Minister
‘Sasha’, Alexander Poskrebyshev,* Stalin’s chef-de-cabinet
Vsevolod Merkulov,* Minister of State Security (MGB)
Victor Abakumov,* Chief of Military Counter-intelligence (SMERSH: Death to Spies), then Minister of State Security (MGB)
THE GENERALS
Marshal Georgi Zhukov,* Deputy Supreme Commander
Marshal Ivan Konev*
Marshal Constantin Rokossovsky*
THE SECRET POLICEMEN
Colonel Pavel Mogilchuk, investigator, Serious Cases Section MGB
General Bogdan Kobylov,* ‘the Bull’, MGB
Colonel Vladimir Komarov,* investigator, SMERSH/MGB
Colonel Mikhail Likhachev,* investigator, SMERSH/MGB
THE FOREIGNERS
Averell Harriman,* US Ambassador to Moscow
Captain Frank Belman, diplomat, deputy military attaché, interpreter
To my parents April and Stephen and my son Sasha, the oldest and the youngest
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the following friends and sources whose stories have helped inspire this novel with the elixir of passion and the detail of authenticity: Hugh Lunghi, Gela Charkviani, Nestan Charkviani, General Stepan Mikoyan and his daughter Aschen Mikoyan, Sergo Mikoyan, Stanislas Redens, Galina Babkova, Rachel and Marc Polonsky; and Sophie Shulman.
First: Hugh Lunghi. Hugh and I became friends while writing my books on Stalin because he translated for Churchill at some of the Big Three meetings with Stalin. He kindly told me the entire story of his Russian love affair which inspired Serafima’s story. Without him the book could not have been written.
Gela Charkviani, son of Kandide Charkviani, Stalin’s First Secretary of Georgia 1938–51, shared his elegant memoirs of élite life, Memoirs of a Provincial Communist Prince. Sophie Shulman kindly let me read her fascinating memoirs, Life Journey of a Secular Humanist. Gela Charkviani and Sophie Shulman answered my questions about their schooldays in Stalin’s Russia. General Stepan Mikoyan, air force pilot, and Sergo Mikoyan, sons of Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, were both arrested (Sergo was fourteen) in the real Children’s Case and both talked to me about their experience, as did Stanislas Redens, Stalin’s nephew, who was also arrested.
Thanks to the Polonskys who had me to stay in Molotov’s apartment in the Granovsky building.
I am hugely grateful to my brilliant, tireless and meticulous editor and publisher, Selina Walker, and to the irrepressibly superb Georgina Capel, the best agent in town. Thanks to my parents for editing this.
Above all, thanks to my wife Santa for the supreme gifts of serene love and best friendship; and for shrewd advice on this book; and to my adored children Lily and Sasha, who have inspired the children in both my Russian novels.
SSM
Prologue
June 1945
Just moments after the shots, as Serafima looks at the bodies of her schoolfriends, a feathery whiteness is already frosting their blasted flesh. It is like a coating of snow, but it’s midsummer and she realizes it’s pollen. Seeds of poplar are floating, bouncing and somersaulting through the air in random manoeuvres like an invasion of tiny alien spaceships. Muscovites call this ‘summer snow’. That humid evening, Serafima struggles to breathe, struggles to see.
Later, when she gives her testimony, she wishes she had seen less, knew less. ‘These aren’t just any dead children,’ slurs one of the half-drunk policemen in charge of the scene. When these policemen inspect the IDs of the victims and their friends, their eyes blink as they try to measure the danger – and then they pass on the case as fast as they can. So it’s not the police but the Organs, the secret police, who investigate: ‘Is it murder, suicide or conspiracy?’ they will ask.
What to tell? What to hide? Get it wrong and you can lose your head. And not just you but your family and friends, anyone linked to you. Like a party of mountaineers, when one falls, all fall.
Yet Serafima has a stake even higher than life and death: she’s eighteen and in love. As she stares at her two friends who had been alive just seconds earlier, she senses this is the least of it and she is right: every event in Serafima’s life will now be defined as Before or After the Shootings.
Looking at the bodies of her friends, she sees the events of the day with magnified vividness. It’s 24 June 1945. The day that Stalin reviews the Victory Parade. Yes, it’s one of those occasions when every Russian remembers where they are, like 22 June 1941, the day the Nazis invaded. The war’s over, the streets teem with drunken, singing crowds. Everyone is certain that a better, easier Russia will emerge from the war. But this depends on one man whose name is never uttered by sensible people except in reverent praise.
Serafima cares nothing for all this. She thinks only of love, even though her lover is a secret, and for good reason. Usually when schoolgirls nurture such a secret, they confide every detail to their closest girlfriends. This isn’t Serafima’s style: she knows from her own family that gossip can prove fatal in their age of witchhunting. She also knows that she’s somehow different even if she cannot quite decide why. Perhaps it’s growing up in her mother’s shadow. Perhaps it’s just the way she’s made. She is convinced that no one in all of human existence has ever known such a passion as hers.
This morning, she is woken by the oompah rhythms of the military bands practising their Glinka down the street, the rumble of tank engines, the clip of cavalry hooves on pavements, and she gets out of bed with the bruised feeling that she has scarcely slept.
Her father, Constantin Romashkin, knocks on her door. ‘You’re awake already? You’re excited about the parade?’
She goes to the window. ‘Oh no, it’s raining.’
‘It’ll stop for the parade.’ But it doesn’t. ‘Shall we wake your mother?’
Serafima walks along the parqueted, chandeliered corridor to her parents’ room, past the framed poster advertising the movie Katyusha, which is dominated by a statuesque woman in army uniform, toting a machine-gun against a military background. She has jet-black hair and smudges of gun oil on her cheeks like a Cherokee brave. Dramatic letters declare that the movie stars ‘SOPHIA ZEITLIN’ (Serafima’s mother); and its script is written ‘BY CONSTANTIN ROMASHKIN’ (Serafima’s father). Katyusha is the Soviet soldiers’ favourite film by Stalin’s top scriptwriter. Serafima has a strong impression that it was through such scripts that her papa had romanced her mama – it’s certainly the way he has kept her.
The bedroom. A heap of silk sheets. There lies ‘Katyusha’ herself. Long black hair, a bare plump arm. Serafima smells her mother’s familiar aura of French scent, French cigarettes, French face cream.
‘Mama, wake up!’
‘God! What time is it? I have to look good today – I have to look good every day. Light me a cigarette, Serafimochka.’
Sophia sits up; she’s naked; her breasts are full. Somehow though, she is already holding a cigarette in an ivory holder. Her father, anxious and fastidious, is pacing up and down.
HE We mustn’t be late.
SHE Stop bothering me!
HE You’re always late. We can’t be late this time.
SHE If you don’t like it, divorce me!
Finally, they’re dressed and ready. Serafima unlocks the front door just as the doors of all the capacious parquet-floored, high-ceilinged apartment
s are opening in the pink wedding cake of the Granovsky building (otherwise known as the Fifth House of the Soviets). The other élite families are coming downstairs too.
In the stairway: the voices of children tremulous with excitement; the creak of well-polished leather, the clip of boot-heels; the jiggling of medals, pistols clinking against belts with starred buckles. First, her parents greet the smug Molotovs – he’s in a black suit like a bourgeois undertaker, pince-nez on a head round as a cannonball, his tomahawk-faced wife Polina in mink. Just ahead of them: Marshal Budyonny of the waxed moustaches as wide as bicycle handlebars is singing a Cossack ditty (soused? At 8 a.m.?), a pretty new wife preening behind him.
On the first landing: Hercules Satinov is in his general’s dress uniform, red-striped trousers and scarlet shoulderboards with golden stars. Her mother embraces Hercules – a family friend since before the Revolution. The Satinov children nod at Serafima with the complicity of school conspirators. ‘What’s news?’ asks George Satinov eagerly. He always says that. She saw them last night at the Aragvi Restaurant and this afternoon they are going to do what they always do. They’re going to play the Game.
‘Communist greetings, Serafimochka,’ says Comrade Satinov. Serafima nods back. To her, he’s a chilly, passionless statue, typical of the leaders. Granite and ice – and hair gel. She knows he’ll soon be standing beside Stalin atop Lenin’s Mausoleum.
‘I think the rain will stop for Comrade Stalin,’ says Mariko, the Satinovs’ six-year-old daughter. She has braided hair and a toy dog under her arm.