Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

  On 2 March, Vasily Stalin was promoted to Major-General. On 18 March, Beria and Malenkov, the two wartime potentates, were promoted to full Politburo membership—just as the Aviators’ Case nipped at their heels. Then Shakhurin and Air Marshal Novikov were arrested and tortured. Their agonies were carefully directed to kill two birds with one stone: the overlord of aircraft production was Malenkov.

  Abakumov, the Smersh boss and Stalin’s protégé, arranged the Aviators’ Case which was also aimed at Beria. Stalin’s old fondness for the Mingrelian had long since turned to a surly disdain. Beria’s theatrical sycophancy and murderous creativity disgusted Stalin as much as his administrative genius impressed him. Stalin no longer trusted “Snake Eyes.” His first rule was to maintain personal control over the secret police. “He knows too much,” Stalin told Mikoyan. Stalin’s resentment burned slowly. They were strolling in the Kuntsevo gardens with Kavtaradze when Stalin hissed venomously at Beria in the Mingrelian dialect (which no one except Georgians understood): “You traitor, Lavrenti Beria!” Then he added “with an ironic smile”: “Traitor!” When he dined at Beria’s house, he was charming to Nina but dismissive of Lavrenti: in his toasts, he damned Beria with the faintest of praise. Beria reminisced about his first meeting with Stalin in 1926.

  “I don’t remember,” Stalin replied crushingly. Beria’s attempt to speak Georgian to him at meetings now irritated Stalin: “I keep no secrets from these comrades. What kind of provocation is this! Talk the language everyone understands!”

  Stalin sensed, correctly, that Beria, the industrial and nuclear magnifico, wanted to be a statesman. “He’s ambitious on a global scale,” he confided in a Georgian protégé, “but his ammunition isn’t worth a penny!” Stalin decided something was rotten in the Organs. During his holiday, he asked Vlasik about the conduct of Beria. Vlasik, delighted to destroy Beria, denounced his corruption, incompetence and possibly his VD. At a dinner in the south, Stalin told a joke about Beria: “Stalin loses his favourite pipe. In a few days, Lavrenti calls Stalin: ‘Have you found your pipe?’ ‘Yes,’ replies Stalin. ‘I found it under the sofa.’ ‘This is impossible!’ exclaims Beria. ‘Three people have already confessed to this crime!’ ”

  Stalin relished stories about the power of the Cheka to make innocent people confess. But he became serious, “Everyone laughs at the story. But it’s not funny. The law breakers haven’t been rooted out of the MVD!”

  Stalin moved swiftly against him: Beria was retired as MVD Minister in January, but remained curator of the Organs with Merkulov as MGB boss. Then Merkulov was denounced by his secretary. Beria washed his hands of him. On 4 May, Stalin, backed by Zhdanov, engineered the promotion of Abakumov to Minister of State Security: his qualifications for the job were his blind obedience and independence from Beria. When Abakumov modestly refused, Stalin jokingly asked if he would “prefer the Tea Trust.”

  Abakumov remains the most shadowy of Stalin’s secret-police bosses just as the post-war years remain the murkiest of Stalin’s reign, although we now know much more about them. The coming atrocities were Abakumov’s doing, not Beria’s, even though most histories blame the latter. Beria, who, as Deputy Premier in charge of the Bomb and the missile industry, now moved his office from the Lubianka to the Kremlin, was henceforth “sacked” from the Organs. He bitterly resented it.

  “Beria was scared to death of Abakumov and tried at all costs to have good relations . . .” recalled Merkulov. “Beria met his match in Abakumov.” Like a rat on a sinking ship, Beria’s pimp Colonel Sarkisov denounced the sexual degeneracy of the Bolshevik “Bluebeard” to Abakumov who eagerly took it to Stalin: “Bring me everything this arsehole will write down!” snapped Stalin.

  48

  Zhdanov the Heir and Abakumov’s Bloody Carpet

  Abakumov, tall with a heart-shaped, fleshy face, colourless eyes, blue-black hair worn broussant, pouting lips and heavy eyebrows, was another colourful, swaggering torturer, amoral condottiere and “zoological careerist” who possessed all Beria’s sadism but less of his intelligence.256 Abakumov unrolled a blood-stained carpet on his office floor before embarking on the torture of his victims in order not to stain his expensive Persian rugs. “You see,” he told his spy Leopold Trepper, “there are only two ways to thank an agent: cover his chest with medals or cut off his head.” He was hardly alone in this Bolshevik view.

  Until Stalin swooped down to make him his own Chekist, Victor Abakumov was a typical secret policeman who had won his spurs purging Rostov in 1938. Born in 1908 to a Moscow worker, he was a bon viveur and womanizer. During the war, he stashed his mistresses in the Moskva Hotel and imported trainloads of plunder from Berlin. His splendid apartment had belonged to a soprano whom he had arrested and he regularly used MGB safehouses for amorous assignations. He loved jazz. The band-leader Eddie Rosner played at his parties until jazz was banned.

  Abakumov dealt directly with Stalin, seeing him weekly, but never joined the dining circle: “I did nothing on my own,” he claimed after Stalin’s death. “Stalin gave orders and I carried them out.” There is no reason to disbelieve him. He cultivated Stalin’s children. At one Kremlin dinner, “he suddenly started, jumped up and obsequiously inclined his head before a short and reddish-haired girl”—Svetlana Stalin. Stalin’s grandeur was such that people now bowed to his daughter. Abakumov went drinking with Vasily Stalin. Together, they fanned the Aviators’ Case. Vasily purloined Novikov’s dacha while the “father of the Soviet air force” was tortured. Stalin asked for Abakumov’s recommendations:

  “They should be shot.”

  “It’s easy to shoot people,” replied Stalin. “It’s more difficult to make them work. Make them work.” Shakhurin received seven years’ hard labour, Novikov ten years—but their confessions implicated bigger fish.

  On 4 May, Malenkov was abruptly removed from the Secretariat. His family remembered that they had to move out of their dacha. Their mother took them on a long holiday to the Baltic. Malenkov was despatched to check the harvest in Central Asia for several months, but never arrested. Beria tried to persuade Stalin to bring him back, which amused the Generalissimo: “Why are you taking such trouble with that imbecile? You’ll be the first to be betrayed by him.”

  Beria had lost his Organs and his ally, Malenkov, so the success of the Bomb was paramount. Later in the year, he rushed to Elektrostal at Noginsk, near Moscow, to see Professor Kurchatov’s experimental nuclear reactor go critical, creating the first Soviet self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Beria watched Kurchatov raise the control rod at the panel and listened to the clicks that registered the neutrons rise to a wail.

  “It’s started!” they said.

  “Is that all?” barked Beria, afraid of being tricked by these eggheads. “Nothing more? Can I go to the reactor?” This would have been a delicious prospect for millions of Beria’s victims but they dutifully restrained him, so helping to preserve the diminished Beria.

  The reversal of fortunes of Beria and Malenkov marked the resurrection of their enemy, Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s special friend, that hearty, pretentious intellectual who, after the stress of Leningrad, was a plump alcoholic with watery eyes and a livid complexion. Stalin openly talked about Zhdanov as his successor. Meanwhile, Beria could hardly conceal his loathing for Zhdanov’s pretensions: “He can just manage to play the piano with two fingers and to distinguish between a man and a bull in a picture, yet he holds forth on abstract painting!”1

  “The Pianist” had become a hero in Leningrad where he was apt to boast that the siege had been more important than the battle for Stalingrad. Sent as Stalin’s proconsul in Finland in 1945, he mastered Finnish history, displayed an encyclopaedic knowledge of Helsinki politics and even charmed the British representative there. When he pushed to annex Finland (a Russian duchy until 1917), Molotov reprimanded him: “You’ve gone too far . . . You’re too emotional!” But none of this harmed his standing with Stalin who recalled him from Leningrad and promoted him to Party Depu
ty in charge of both Agitprop and relations with foreign Parties, making him even more powerful than he had been before the war. His family, particularly his son Yury, became close to Stalin again. Indeed, they wrote to him en famille: “Dear Joseph Vissarionovich, we cordially congratulate you on . . . the anniversary of Bolshevism’s victory and ask you to accept our warmest greetings, Zinaida, Andrei, Anna and Yury Zhdanov.”

  Zhdanov had played his cards cleverly since returning in January 1945. He consolidated his triumph over Malenkov and Beria by persuading Stalin to promote his own camarilla of Leningraders to power in Moscow: Alexei Kuznetsov, the haggard, long-faced and soft-spoken hero of the siege, received Malenkov’s Secretaryship. Zhdanov understood that Stalin did not wish Beria to control the MGB so he suggested Kuznetsov to replace him as curator of the Organs. It was “naïve” of Kuznetsov to accept this poisoned chalice; “he should have refused,” said Mikoyan, but he was “unworldly.” Kuznetsov’s promotions earned him the undying hatred of the two most vindictive predators in the Stalinist jungle: Beria and Malenkov.

  By February 1946, with Stalin in semi-retirement, Zhdanov seemed to have control of the Party as well as cultural and foreign policy matters, and to have neutralized the Organs and the military.257 Zhdanov was hailed as the “second man in the Party,” its “greatest worker,” and his staff whispered about “our Crown Prince.” Stalin toyed with appointing him General Secretary. During 1946, Zhdanov signed decrees as “Secretary” alongside Stalin as Premier: “the Pianist” was so important that the Yugoslav Ambassador noticed how, when a bureaucrat entered his office, he bowed “to Zhdanov as he was approaching” and then retreated backwards, managing to cover “six or seven yards and in bowing himself out, he backed into the door, nervously trying to find the doorknob with his hand.” At the November parade, Zhdanov, in Stalin’s absence, took the salute with his Leningrad camarilla filling the Mausoleum.

  Yet his health was weak.258 Zhdanov never wanted to be the successor. During Stalin’s serious illnesses, he was terrified at the prospect, telling his son, “God forbid I outlive Stalin!” 2

  Stalin and Zhdanov picked up where they had left off before the war, debating how to merge the patriotic Russianness of the war with the Bolshevism of the Revolution in order to eradicate foreign influence and restore morality, pride and discipline. Like two crabby professors, obsessed with the greatness of nineteenth-century culture and repulsed by the degeneracy of modern art and morals, the old seminarist and the scion of provincial intelligentsia reached back to their youths, devising a savage attack on modernism (“formalism”) and foreign influence on Russian culture (“cosmopolitanism”). Poring over poetry and literary journals late into the night, these two meticulous, ever-tinkering “intellectuals,” who shared that ravenous Bolshevik appetite for education, cooked up the crackdown on the cultural freedom of wartime.

  Steeped in the classics, despising new-fangled art, Zhdanov embarked on a policy that would have been familiar to Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I. Victory had blessed the marriage of Russianness and Bolshevism: Stalin saw the Russians as the binding element of the USSR, the “elder brother” of the Soviet peoples, his own new brand of Russian nationalism very different from its nineteenth-century ancestor. There would be no new freedoms, no foreign influences, but these impulses would be suppressed in an enforced celebration of Russianness.

  The Leningrad journals were the natural place to start because they published the works of the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, whom Stalin had once read to his children, and the poetess Anna Akhmatova, whose passionate verses symbolized the indestructible dignity and sensitivity of humanity in terror and war. Zhdanov’s papers reveal in his own words what Stalin wanted: “I ask you to look this through,” Zhdanov asked the Master, “is it good for the media and what needs to be improved?”

  “I read your report. I think it’s perfect,” Stalin replied in crayon. “You must hurry to publish it and then as a book. Greetings!” But “there are some corrections”—which expressed Stalin’s thinking: “if our youth had read Akhmatova and been educated in such an atmosphere, what would have happened in the Great Patriotic War? Our youth [has been] educated in the cheerful spirit able to win victory over Germany and Japan . . . This journal helps our enemies to destroy our youth.”259

  On 18 April, Zhdanov launched his cultural terror, known as the Zhdanovshchina, with an attack on the Leningrad journals. In August, the literary inquisitor travelled to Leningrad to demand: “How weak was the vigilance of those citizens in Leningrad, in the leadership of the journal Zvezda, for it to publish, in this journal, works . . . poisoned with the venom of zoological hostility to the Soviet leadership.” He castigated Akhmatova as this “half-nun, half-harlot or rather harlot-nun whose sin is mixed with prayer,” a grotesque distortion of her own verses. He followed this up with attacks on film-makers and musicians. At a notorious meeting with Shostakovich and others, “the Pianist” tinkled on the piano to demonstrate easily hummed people’s tunes, a vision as absurd as Joseph II admonishing Mozart for writing “too many notes.” Yury Zhdanov went to the theatre with his father and Stalin. When they talked to the actors afterwards, the cast boasted that their show had been acclaimed in Paris:

  “Those French aren’t worth the soles of your shoes,” replied Stalin. “There’s nothing more important than Russian theatre.”

  Bantering playfully, the omnipotent double act, Stalin and Zhdanov, held conversazione to guide writers and film directors. On the night of 14 May 1947, they received Stalin’s two favoured literary bureaucrats, the poet Simonov and the hack novelist Fadeev, the head of the Writers’ Union. Stalin first set the pay for writers. “They write one good book, build their dacha and stop working. We don’t begrudge them the money,” laughed Stalin, “but this can’t happen.” So he suggested setting up a commission.

  “I’ll join!” declared Zhdanov, showing his independence.

  “Very modest!” Stalin chuckled. As they discussed the commission, Zhdanov opposed Stalin thrice before being overruled, another example of how his favourite could still argue with him. Stalin teased Zhdanov fondly. When “the Pianist” said he had received a pitiful letter from some writer, Stalin joked: “Don’t believe pitiful letters, Comrade Zhdanov!”

  Stalin asked the writers: “If that’s all, I’ve a question for you: what kind of themes are writers working on?” He launched into a lecture about “Soviet patriotism.” The people were proud but “our middle intelligentsia, doctors and professors don’t have patriotic education. They have unjustified admiration for foreign culture . . . This tradition comes from Peter . . . admiration of Germans, French, of foreigners, of assholes”—he laughed. “The spirit of self-abasement must be destroyed. You should write a novel on this theme.”

  Stalin had a recent scandal in mind. A pair of medical professors specializing in cancer treatment had published their work in an American journal. Stalin and Zhdanov created “courts of honour,” another throw-back to the Tsarist officer class, to try the professors. (Zhdanov chaired the court.) Stalin set Simonov to write a play about the case. Zhdanov spent an entire hour giving literary criticism to Simonov before Stalin himself rewrote the play’s ending.260

  In August, Bolshakov, the cinematic impresario, showed Stalin a new movie, Ivan the Terrible, Part Two. Knowing from MGB reports that Eisenstein compared The Terrible with Yezhov, Stalin rejected this “nightmare,” hating its lack of Russian pride, its portrayal of Ivan (and the length of his kisses, and beard). Eisenstein shrewdly appealed to Stalin. At 11 p.m. on 25 February 1947, Eisenstein and his scriptwriter arrived in the Little Corner where Stalin and Zhdanov gave them a master class on national Bolshevism, a most revealing tour d’horizon of history, terror and even sex. Stalin attacked the film for making the Tsar’s MGB, the Oprichnina, resemble the Ku Klux Klan. As for Ivan himself, “Your Tsar is indecisive— he resembles Hamlet,” said Stalin. “Tsar Ivan was a great wise ruler . . . wise . . . not to let foreigners into the countr
y. Peter the Great’s also a great Tsar but treated foreigners too liberally . . . Catherine, more so. Was Alexander I’s Court Russian? . . . No, it was German . . .” Then Zhdanov gave his own view, with its interesting reflection on Stalin’s own nature:

  “Ivan the Terrible seems a hysteric in the Eisenstein version!”

  “Historical figures,” added Stalin, “must be shown correctly . . . Ivan the Terrible kissed his wife too long.” Kisses, again. “It wasn’t permitted at that time.” Then came the crux: “Ivan the Terrible was very cruel,” said Stalin. “You can show he was cruel. But you must show why he needed to be cruel.” Then Zhdanov raised the crucial question of Ivan’s beard. Eisenstein promised to shorten it. Eisenstein asked if he could smoke.

  “It seems to me there’s no ban on smoking. Maybe we’ll vote on it.” Stalin smiled at Eisenstein. “I don’t give you instructions, I merely give you the comments of a viewer.”261

  Zhdanov’s campaign to promote Russian patriotism was soon so absurd that Sakharov remembered how people would joke about “Russia, homeland of the elephant.” More ominously, the unleashing of Russian nationalism and the attacks on “cosmopolitans” turned against the Jews.

  49

  The Eclipse of Zhukov and the Looters of Europe: The Imperial Elite

  Early in the war, Stalin realized the usefulness of Soviet Jewry in appealing for American help but even then the project was stained with blood.262 Stalin then ordered Beria to set up the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, controlled by the NKVD but officially led by the famous Yiddish actor, Solomon Mikhoels, “short, with the face of a puckish intellectual, with a prominent forehead and a pouting lower lip,” whom Kaganovich had perform King Lear for Stalin. When Mikhoels toured America to raise support for Russia in April 1943, Molotov briefed him and Stalin emerged from his office to wave goodbye. The JAFC was supervised by Solomon Lozovsky, a grizzled Old Bolshevik with a biblical beard who was the token Jew in the highest echelons of Molotov’s Foreign Commissariat.