Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

  “Consider it settled!” Stalin rang off but immediately telephoned Bulganin: “You and Zhukov’re giving yourselves airs. But we’ll put a stop to that.”

  Afterwards Bulganin ran into Zhukov’s office: “Well, I got it really hard this time!” he said.

  The counter-attacks were subsumed in the grinding German offensive of 15 November, the last push to take Moscow. The Germans broke through. Again Stalin asked Zhukov: could he hold Moscow?

  “We’ll hold Moscow without doubt. But we’ve got to have at least two more armies and no fewer than two hundred tanks.” Stalin delivered the armies “but for the time being, we don’t have any tanks.” Zhukov fought the Germans to a standstill on 5 December, having lost 155,000 men in twenty days. Effectively, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg had failed. On 6 December, Stalin delivered three new armies to Zhukov and ordered a grand counter-offensive on the four nearest fronts.18 The next day, Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor.19

  Zhukov drove the Germans back two hundred miles. Yet even in such a desperate battle, the generals never forgot Stalin’s imperial vanity: just as Mekhlis had tried to win victory on Stalin’s birthday in Finland, so now Zhukov and Bulganin ordered Golubev, commander of the Tenth Army: “Tomorrow will be the birthday of Stalin. Try to mark this day by the capture of Balabanovo. To include this message in our report to Stalin, inform us of its fulfillment not later than 7 p.m. 21 December.” The Battle of Moscow was Stalin’s first victory, but a limited one. However, he was immediately dangerously over-optimistic, telling the visiting British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden: “The Russians have already been in Berlin twice and will be a third time.”200 It would take millions more dead and almost four years to reach Berlin. Zhukov was so exhausted that, even when Stalin telephoned, his adjutants had to tell him: “Zhukov is asleep and we can’t wake him.”

  “Don’t wake him up until he wakes himself,” answered the Supremo benevolently. “Let him sleep.”20

  On 5 January, the over-confident Supremo gathered Zhukov and the generals to hear the plan for a massive offensive from Leningrad to the Black Sea to capitalize on the German defeat before Moscow.

  “Who wishes to speak?” asked Stalin. Zhukov criticised the offensive, saying the army needed more men and tanks. Voznesensky was against it too, saying he could not supply the necessary tanks. Stalin insisted on the offensive, at which Malenkov and Beria attacked Voznesensky for “always finding insuperable and unforeseen” objections. “On that,” said Stalin, “we’ll conclude the meeting.” In Stalin’s anteroom, old Shaposhnikov tried to console Zhukov: “You argued in vain. These issues had been decided beforehand by the Supremo . . .”

  “Then why was our opinion solicited?”

  “I don’t know, dear fellow.”21

  The intelligent and indefatigable Beria, now forty-three, proved a voracious empire-builder in running the war, but he delivered the tanks and guns Stalin needed. Beria was keen to win points off Voznesensky, whom he loathed, and he soon outstripped Molotov and the older generation. No industry was too complex or too vast for Beria to master: he was in many ways not only the Himmler of Stalin’s entourage but also the Speer, another architect. He used the most colourful threats he could muster, asking his subordinates: “Do you care about seeing the sun rise and fall every day? Be careful!”

  In early January 1942, at his flat, Stalin consulted this top industrial troika, Beria, Malenkov and Mikoyan, about the armaments shortage.

  “What’s the problem?” exclaimed Stalin. Beria produced a diagram that showed how Voznesensky was failing to produce enough guns. “And what should be done?”

  “I don’t know, Comrade Stalin,” replied Beria artfully. Stalin immediately gave him control of this vital industry.

  “Comrade Stalin, I don’t know whether I can manage it . . . I’m inexperienced in this sort of thing . . .”

  “It’s not experience that’s needed here but a strong organizer . . . Use prisoners for labour.”

  The railways remained impossible to run, even by the energetic and bellowing Kaganovich. When one commissar, Baibakov, reported to Kaganovich, “the Locomotive” jumped up and shook him by the lapels. Beria reported Kaganovich’s table-thumping tempers to Stalin: “The railways deteriorate because [Kaganovich] won’t listen to advice . . . he just answers with hysterics.” Kaganovich was criticised for mismanaging the evacuations of industry and, twice, sacked “for being unable to cope with work under wartime conditions” but he was soon back.

  Molotov fared no better at running tank production. “How’s [Molotov] managing?” Stalin asked Beria, again accompanied by Malenkov and Mikoyan.

  “He has no communication with the factories, doesn’t manage them properly . . . and holds endless meetings . . .” replied Beria, who added tanks to his empire. Molotov lost the tanks but gained the world. 22

  36

  Molotov in London, Mekhlis in the Crimea, Khrushchev in Collapse

  On 8 May, the Foreign Commissar took off in a four-engine bomber for London. Stalin instructed him to win a promise of a Second Front—and to clinch recognition of the Soviet borders of 1941, including the Baltics.

  He personally charged his favourite air-force general, Golovanov, to plan the route. “Stalin was a great conspirator,” recalled Golovanov. “The journey was planned in total secrecy. I had to hide a map of the route in my desk even when my assistant entered my office. Stalin . . . told me ‘Only the three of us know about this—you, Molotov and me.’ ”

  “Mr. Brown,” Molotov’s code name, landed in Scotland and was greeted by Eden with whom he took a train from Glasgow to London. When he learned the Second Front was out of the question, Molotov refused to discuss Eden’s proposal of a treaty that did not mention the Soviet borders. Molotov immediately reported this to Stalin: “We consider the treaty unacceptable . . . an empty declaration,” but the Supremo changed his mind:

  “1. We don’t consider it an empty declaration but regard it as important . . . Not bad perhaps. It gives us a free hand. The question of borders will be decided by force. 2. It is desirable to sign the treaty as soon as possible and fly to America.”

  Meanwhile Molotov also got a taste of English country-house life: he had requested to be lodged outside London, perhaps for security reasons, so Churchill handed over Chequers, his official country mansion. “Mr. Brown” was unimpressed by its Tudor elegance. “Not a fancy old building,” he mused. “Some sort of small garden. Apparently some nobleman201 had given it to the government.” Stalin and Molotov were infinitely snobbish about the superiority of Russian grandeur: after all, they lived and worked in Catherine the Great’s palaces. However, Molotov had an eye for bathrooms: he remembered the lavatories long after he had forgotten the negotiations. “There was a bathroom,” he complained, “but no shower.” As soon as he arrived, his guards asked “for the keys to all the bedrooms” and he locked himself in every night. “When the staff at Chequers succeeded in getting in to make the beds,” wrote Churchill, “they were disturbed to find pistols under the pillows. At night, a revolver was laid out beside his dressing gown and his despatch cases.” When Molotov was out, his “maids” guarded his bedroom like Cerberus.

  After signing the treaty on 26 May, Molotov flew to Washington to meet President Roosevelt who presented him with a signed photograph, framed in green silk, that read: “To my friend Vyacheslav Molotov from Franklin Roosevelt 30 May 1942.” Finding FDR “sociable and pleasant,” he was more impressed by the White House than Chequers, especially in the bathroom department: “Everything there was as it should be,” he said. “It had a bathroom with a shower too.”

  On 9 June, he stopped in London on his way home. Before he left on his dangerous return journey, there was a moment of sentiment when Churchill stood talking with the iron-arsed Russian at the garden gate of 10 Downing Street: “I gripped his arm,” wrote Churchill, “and we looked each other in the face. Suddenly he appeared deeply moved. Inside the image, there appeared the man. He responded
with equal pressure. Silently we wrung each other’s hands . . . We were all together and it was life or death for the lot.”

  Molotov admitted to getting on well with Churchill: “Yes, we drank a glass or two,” he reminisced. “We talked the whole night long.” But he could never forget that Churchill was “an Imperialist, the strongest, the cleverest among them . . . 100% Imperialist. So I came to be friends with the bourgeoisie.” He returned with the vague promise of a Second Front, an invaluable Lend-Lease treaty with America, and an alliance with Britain: “My journey and its results were a great victory for us.” On the flight back to Moscow, Molotov’s plane was attacked by enemy fighters and then by Russian ones.1

  As Molotov set off for the West, Stalin was launching a wave of counter-attacks along the entire front. He quite reasonably presumed that Hitler would again attack Moscow but the Führer actually planned a powerful summer offensive to seize the grain of the Ukraine and, more importantly, the oil of the Caucasus. But Stalin’s real fault lay in his raging overconfidence: he lacked the resources for this vast enterprise which, instead of capitalizing on his Moscow victory, handed Hitler the constellation of stunning victories that led to the ultimate crisis of Stalingrad.

  He certainly did not help matters by granting draconian powers to his crew of military amateurs. Apart from Stalin himself, no one contributed more to these defeats than the brave, indefatigable and blood-thirsty Mekhlis, now at the height of his power. “The Shark” could never resist showing off his privileged access: “When he arrived in the anteroom to Stalin’s office,” remembered one commissar, Mekhlis “didn’t even wait for an invitation to go in, he crossed the waiting room and went straight in.” But “he never hid anything from Stalin . . . who knew this and trusted him.” This gave him the power to get things done: “If Mekhlis wrote to the Supremo, the measures were very quick.” Yet his antics were always uneasily suspended between the farcical and the diabolical: once when Stalin asked which front needed supplies, the generals were silent except for Mekhlis who piped up to criticize the quartermaster Khrulev. Stalin angrily looked up and asked who was complaining.

  “Mekhlis most likely,” replied Khrulev to peals of laughter. Stalin asked Mekhlis to list his needs. “We lack vinegar, pepper and mustard,” retorted Mekhlis. Even Stalin laughed.

  When Mekhlis learned that an arsenal of German pornography had been captured, he immediately launched a new front against Nazi erotica, writing a leaflet called “How Hitler Corrupts His Army.” His advisers suggested that pornography was natural in a bourgeois army and their nocturnal reading habits were not dictated by Hitler personally, but Mekhlis ignored them and printed eleven million copies of this much mocked document. 2

  He started the year with a visit to the Volkhov Front which had been ordered to relieve the Siege of Leningrad. It was in no shape to launch an offensive which predictably ended in disaster. Mekhlis arrived to investigate, arrest and shoot the culprits. Stalin then offered the front to Voroshilov who courageously, having finally realized his limits, refused it. This outraged Stalin who dictated a sarcastic denunciation of Klim’s “bankruptcy of leadership.” The conclusion was humiliating but not fatal: “That Comrade Voroshilov be posted . . . to the rear.”202 By the end of June, none of these murderous amateurs could save the Volkhov Front: the army was lost along with its talented young General Vlasov. Exhausted and sickened by Stalin’s blunders, he turned traitor. Stalin raged about the betrayal to Beria and Molotov, who asked revealingly:

  “How did we miss him before the war?” Stalin tried to blame Khrushchev for Vlasov but the Ukrainian boss argued back “that Stalin had put him in charge of the Moscow counter-offensive.” Stalin, who reacted well to courageous defiance, let the matter drop.3

  Voroshilov had finally been discredited but Mekhlis and Kulik, despite the latter’s string of disasters, still rode high. In October 1941, Kulik had failed to relieve Leningrad; in November at the opposite end of the front, he had been sent to save the city of Kerch in the Crimea. Kulik arrived late and Kerch was temporarily lost to Manstein, one of Hitler’s finest captains. Now Stalin considered shooting Kulik and scribbled a note: “Today. Kulik to Siberia?” but finally settled for demoting him to Major-General and sending Mekhlis to investigate Kulik’s late arrival.

  “The Gloomy Demon” exposed Kulik’s hedonistic junket involving his own DC-3 plane, barrels of wine and vodka, a missing 85,898 roubles and the Marshal’s new teenage wife. Kulik had soon recovered from the disappearance of his last wife and swiftly romanced this friend of his daughter, a misalliance that Stalin mocked as cradle-snatching. He sacked Kulik as Deputy Commissar yet Zhukov interceded for him. This primitive but popular martinet was reprieved again and, amazingly, promoted. However, his old friendship with Stalin would not end well.4

  That March, Stalin ordered an assault from Kerch towards the centre of the Crimea to relieve the besieged Sebastopol. Mekhlis, who like his amateur Supremo believed himself a true soldier, gleefully took over the command of these 250,000 men, terrorizing their general, Kozlov, and ignoring the front commander, Budyonny. In this sensitive and complicated battle, Stalin had exchanged an inept and corrupt drunkard for an inept and incorruptible maniac. As Stalin pressured Mekhlis to launch the offensive on time, “the Shark” replied that his ammunition was low but “I’ll arrest [the officer] if he doesn’t straighten out the situation in two days . . . We’re organizing the big music for the Germans!”

  On 2 March, Mekhlis launched his “big music” in a fiasco that proved to be the insane apogee of terror applied to military science. He banned the digging of trenches “so that the offensive spirit of the soldiers would not be undermined” and insisted that anyone who took “elementary security measures” was a “panic-monger.” All were “mashed into a bloody porridge.” He bombarded Stalin with demands for more terror: “Comrade Beria,” Stalin wrote on one of Mekhlis’s notes. “Right! In Novorossisk, make sure that not one scum, not one scoundrel is breathing.”

  Mekhlis himself, speeding around the front in his jeep waving a pistol trying to stop the retreat, displayed “irreproachable personal courage and did nothing for his own glory” yet the “stupid tyranny and wildly arbitrary ways of this military illiterate,” in the words of the poet Konstantin Simonov, a witness, proved disastrous.

  On 7 May, Manstein’s counter-attack drove Mekhlis off the Crimea altogether, capturing an awesome bag of 176,000 men, 400 planes and 347 tanks. Mekhlis lashed about him, blaming Kozlov and begging Stalin for a great general, a Hindenburg.

  Stalin was beside himself: “You take the strange attitude of an outside observer not responsible for the Crimean Front,” he castigated Mekhlis. “It’s a very comfortable position—but it absolutely stinks! You’re not an outsider but the representative of Stavka . . . You demand the replacement of Kozlov by someone like Hindenburg. But . . . we don’t have any Hindenburgs . . . If you had used aviation against tanks and enemy soldiers and not for sideshows, the enemy would not have broken the front . . . You don’t have to be Hindenburg to understand this simple thing . . .” It was a mark of the obsolete standards of Stalin’s court that Hindenburg, the German hero of 1914, was still their paragon in 1942: they needed Guderians not Hindenburgs.

  On 28 May, a haggard Mekhlis was waiting in Stalin’s anteroom where one could always see the Supremo reflected in the attitudes of his assistants. Poskrebyshev ignored him, then said: “The Boss’s very busy today. Dammit, there are many troubles.”

  “Probably something’s gone wrong at the front?” asked Mekhlis disingenuously.

  “You’d know,” replied Poskrebyshev.

  “Yes, I want to report our unfortunate business to Comrade Stalin.”

  “Apparently,” said Poskrebyshev, “the running of the operation wasn’t equal to the task. Comrade Stalin’s very unhappy . . .”

  Mekhlis blushed. Young Chadaev joined in: “I suppose you think the defeat was caused by circumstances?”

  “What did you say?
” Mekhlis turned on the whippersnapper. “You’re not a soldier! I’m a real soldier. How dare you . . .” Then Stalin emerged from his office.

  “Hello Comrade Stalin, may I report . . .” said Mekhlis.

  “Go to hell!” snarled Stalin, slamming his door. Mekhlis, according to Poskrebyshev, later “almost threw himself at Stalin’s feet.” He was court-martialled, demoted, sacked as Deputy Defence Commissar.

  “It’s all over!” sobbed Mekhlis but Stalin remained amazingly loyal: twenty-four days later, he was appointed a Front Commissar and later promoted to Colonel-General.5

  As if Stalin, Kulik and Mekhlis had not wrought enough defeat, the worst was befalling the South-Western Front where Timoshenko and Khrushchev were launching their offensive from a Soviet salient to retake Kharkov, oblivious of Hitler’s imminent attack. Zhukov and Shaposhnikov wisely warned against it but Timoshenko, Stalin’s favourite fighting general, insisted on proceeding and the Supremo agreed.

  On 12 May, Timoshenko and Khrushchev, both uneducated, crude and energetic, successfully attacked and pushed back the Germans. If Stalin was delighted, Hitler could not believe his luck. Five days later, his Panzers smashed through Timoshenko’s flanks, enveloping Soviet forces in steel pincers so that the Russians were no longer advancing but simply burrowing deeper into a trap. The Staff begged Stalin to call off the operation and he warned Timoshenko of the German forces on his flank, but the Marshal jovially reassured him that all was well. By the 18th, 250,000 men were almost encircled when Timoshenko and Khrushchev finally realized their plight.

  Around midnight, Timoshenko, the “brave peasant” terrified of Stalin, persuaded Khrushchev to beg the Supremo to cancel their offensive. At Kuntsevo, Stalin asked Malenkov to answer the phone. Khrushchev asked to speak to Stalin.

  “Tell ME!” said Malenkov.

  “Who’s calling?” Stalin called out.