On 30 November, five Soviet armies attacked along the 800-mile border. Their frontal assaults on the Mannerheim Line were foiled by the ingenious Finns, who, dressed like ghosts in white suits, were slaughtering the Russians. The forests were decorated with frozen pyramids of Soviet corpses. The Finns used 70,000 empty bottles, filled with gasoline, against the Russian tanks—the first “Molotov cocktails,” one part of his cult of personality that the vain Premier surely did not appreciate. By mid-December, Stalin had lost about 25,000 men. He amateurishly planned the Winter War like a local exercise, ignoring the Chief of Staff Shaposhnikov’s professional plan. When Kulik’s artillery deputy, Voronov, later a famous marshal, asked how much time was allotted for this operation, he was told, “Between ten and twelve days.” Voronov thought it would take two or three months. Kulik greeted this with “derisive gibes” and ordered him to work on a maximum of twelve days. Stalin and Zhdanov were so confident they created a crude puppet government of Finnish Communists. After 9 December, the Ninth Army was decimated around the destroyed village of Suomussalmi.
Stalin’s military amateurs reacted with spasms of executions and recriminations. “I regard a radical purge . . . as essential,” Voroshilov warned the 44th Division. The need for the reform of the Red Army was plain to the cabinets of Europe. Yet Stalin’s first solution was to despatch the “gloomy demon” Mekhlis, now at the height of his power, to the front:
“I’m so absorbed in the work that I don’t even notice the days pass. I sleep only 2–3 hours,” he told his wife. “Yesterday it was minus 35 degrees below freezing . . . I feel very well . . . I have only one dream—to destroy the White Guards of Finland. We’ll do it. Victory’s not far off.”166 On the 26th, Stalin finally appointed Timoshenko to command the North-Western Front and restore order to his frayed forces who were now dying of hunger. Even Beria took a more humane stand, reporting to Voroshilov the lack of provisions: “139th Division’s in difficulties . . . no fodder at all . . . no fuel . . . Troops scattering.”
Stalin sensed the army was concealing the scale of the disaster. Trusting only Mekhlis, he wrote: “The White Finns published their operations report that claims ‘the annihilation of the 44th Division . . . 1,000 Red Army soldiers as prisoners, 102 guns, 1,170 horses and 43 tanks.’ Tell me first—is this true? Second—where is the Military Council and Chief of Staff of the 44th Division? How do they explain their shameful conduct? Why did they desert their division? Third, why does the Military Council of the 9th Army not inform us . . . ? We expect an answer. Stalin.”
Mekhlis arrived in Suomussalmi to find chaotic scenes which he made worse. He confirmed the losses and shot the whole command: “the trial of Vinogradov, Volkov and chief of Political Department took place in the open air in the presence of the division . . . The sentence of shooting was performed publicly . . . The exposure of traitors and cowards continues.” On 10 December, Mekhlis himself was almost killed when his car was ambushed, as he proudly recounted to Stalin: unlike many of Stalin’s commissars, Mekhlis was personally courageous, if not suicidally reckless, under fire, partly because, as a Jew, he wanted to be “purer than crystal.” Indeed, he took command of fleeing companies and led them at the enemy. Mekhlis and Kulik did not conceal the mess: “We lack bread in the army,” Mekhlis reported. Kulik agreed: “rigidity and bureaucracy are everywhere.” When Kulik rushed into a Politburo meeting to report yet more defeats, Stalin lectured him: “You’re lapsing into panic . . . The pagan Greek priests were intelligent . . . When they got disturbing reports, they’d adjourn to their bathhouses, take baths, wash themselves clean, and only afterwards assess events and take decisions . . .”
Yet Stalin was saddened by these disasters: “The snows are deep. Our troops are on the march . . . full of spirit . . . Suddenly there’s a burst of automatic fire and our men fall to the ground.” At times, he looked helplessly depressed. Khrushchev saw him lying on a couch, despondent, a rehearsal of his collapse in the early days of the Nazi invasion. The pressure made Stalin ill with his usual streptococcus and staphylococcus, a temperature of 38°C and an agonizing sore throat. On 1 February, his health improved as Timoshenko probed Finnish defences, launching his great offensive on the 11th. Soviet superiority finally took its toll on the plucky Finns. When the doctors re-examined Stalin, he showed them the maps: “We’ll take Vyborg today.” The Finns sued for peace. On 12 March, Zhdanov signed a treaty in which Finland ceded Hango, the Karelian Isthmus, and the north-eastern shore of Ladoga, 22,000 square miles, to insulate Leningrad. Finland lost around 48,000 soldiers, Stalin over 125,000.
“The Red Army was good for nothing,” Stalin later told Churchill and Roosevelt.2 Stalin was incandescent and he was not alone: Khrushchev later blamed Voroshilov’s “criminal negligence,” sneering that he spent more time in the studio of Gerasimov, the court painter, than in the Defence Commissariat. At Kuntsevo, Stalin’s anger boiled over. He started shouting at Voroshilov, who gave as good as he got. Turning red as a turkey-cock, Voroshilov shrieked at Stalin, “You have yourself to blame for all of this. You’re the one who annihilated the old guard of our army, you had our best generals killed.”
Stalin rebuffed him, at which Voroshilov “picked up a platter of roast suckling pig and smashed it on the table.” Khrushchev admitted, “It was the only time in my life I witnessed such an outburst.” Voroshilov alone could have got away with it.
On 28 March 1940, Voroshilov, who became Stalin’s “whipping boy” for the Finnish disasters, confessed, at the Central Committee, “I have to say neither I nor General Staff . . . had any idea of the peculiarities and difficulties involved in this war.” Mekhlis, who hated Voroshilov and coveted his job, declared: he “cannot simply leave his post—he must be severely punished.” But Stalin could not afford to destroy Voroshilov.
“Mekhlis made a hysterical speech,” he said, restraining his creature. Instead he held a uniquely frank, sometimes comical, Supreme Military Council in mid-April. One commander admitted that the army had been surprised to find forests in Finland, at which Stalin sneered: “It’s time our army knew there were forests there . . . In Peter’s time, there were forests. Elizabeth . . . Catherine . . . Alexander found forests! And now! That’s four times!” (Laughter) He was even more indignant when Mekhlis revealed that the Finns often attacked during the Red Army’s afternoon nap. “Afternoon nap?!” spat Stalin.
“An hour’s nap,” confirmed Kulik.
“People have afternoon naps in rest homes!” growled Stalin, who went on to defend the campaign itself: “Could we have avoided the war? I think the war was inevitable . . . A delay of a couple of months would have meant a delay of twenty years.” He won more territory there than Peter the Great but he warned against the “cult of the traditions of the Civil War. It brings to mind the Red Indians who fought with clubs against rifles . . . and were all killed.” On 6 May, Voroshilov was sacked as Defence Commissar and succeeded by Timoshenko.167 Shaposhnikov was sacked as Chief of Staff even though Stalin admitted he had been right in the first place, “but only we know that!” He raised military morale, restoring the rank of General and the single command by soldiers, whose tasks had been made incomparably harder by sharing control with interfering commissars. He freed 11,178 purged officers who officially returned “from a long and dangerous mission.” Stalin asked one of them, Konstantin Rokossovsky, perhaps noticing his lack of fingernails, “Were you tortured in prison?”
“Yes, Comrade Stalin.”
“There’re too many yes-men in this country,” sighed Stalin. But some did not come back: “Where’s your Serdich?” Stalin asked Budyonny about a mutual friend.
“Executed!” reported the Marshal.
“Pity! I wanted to make him Ambassador to Yugoslavia...” 3
Stalin attacked his military “Red Indians” but then turned to his own tribe of primitive braves who remained obsessed with cavalry and oblivious to modern warfare. Budyonny and Kulik believed tanks could never replace horses. “You
won’t convince me,” Budyonny had recently declared. “As soon as war comes, everyone will shout, ‘Send for the cavalry!’ ” Stalin and Voroshilov had abolished special tank corps. Fortunately, Timoshenko now persuaded the Vozhd to reverse his folly. 4
Nonetheless, Mikoyan called the dominance of these incompetents “the triumph of the First Cavalry Army” since they were veterans of Stalin’s favoured Civil War unit. Despite the tossing of the suckling pig, Voroshilov was promoted to Deputy Premier for “cultural matters” which Mikoyan regarded as a joke, given the Marshal’s love of being painted.
Mekhlis, who also became Deputy Premier, fancied himself a great captain: he harassed Timoshenko to ask Stalin to reappoint him as Deputy Defence Commissar. Stalin mocked Timoshenko’s naïvety: “We want to help him but he doesn’t understand. He wants us to leave him Mekhlis. But after three months, Mekhlis will chuck him out. Mekhlis wants to be Defence Commissar himself.” Mekhlis enjoyed Stalin’s “unbounded confidence.” Kulik, the buffoonish artillery chief, who encouraged his subordinates by shrieking “Prison or medal,” was an ignorant Blimp. He despised anti-tank artillery: “What rubbish—no rumble, no shell holes . . .” He denounced the invaluable new Katyusha rockets: “What the hell do we need rocket artillery for? The main thing is the horse-drawn gun.” He delayed the production of the outstanding T-34 tank. Khrushchev, whom Stalin liked for his cheek, questioned Kulik’s credentials.
“You don’t even know Kulik,” roared Stalin. “I know him from the Civil War when he commanded the artillery in Tsaritsyn. He understands artillery.”
“But how many cannons did you have there? Two or three? And now he’s in charge of all the artillery in the land?” Stalin told Khrushchev to mind his own business. Higher than all of them, Zhdanov was now Stalin’s artillery and naval expert.5 “There were competent people,” wrote Mikoyan, “but Stalin was increasingly distrustful of people so trust was more important than anything.” Stalin wavered, meandered and reversed his own decisions. It is remarkable any correct decisions were made at all.
In May, Stalin ordered the kidnapping of Kulik’s wife, Kira, at whose house he had been a guest in November. In the name of the Instantsiya, Beria commissioned “the Theoretician” Merkulov to arrange it. On 5 May, Kobulov, the prince-assassin Tsereteli and a favoured torturer Vladzimirsky trailed Kira on her way to the dentist, then bundled the beauty into a car and took her to the Lubianka. Stalin and Beria evidently shared a playful sadism and perverse taste for these depraved games. The reason for the kidnapping is a mystery because no charges were made against her, but Mekhlis built a file against the Kuliks which catalogues Kira’s nobility as well as Grigory’s drunken indiscretions, incompetence, anti-Semitism, Social Revolutionary past, complaints about the Terror, and connections with Trotskyites. Was she kidnapped for appealing to Stalin or was she denounced by her latest lover, another victim of prudery? The most suspicious mark against her in Stalin’s eyes may have been Kulik’s dangerous tendency to give “orders in front of” his various wives.168
Two days after Kira’s kidnapping, on 7 May, Stalin promoted her husband to Marshal, along with Timoshenko and Shaposhnikov, in what can only be called a stroke of ironical sadism. Next day, Kulik’s delight at his Marshalate was tempered by worry about his wife. He called Beria, who invited him to the Lubianka.
While Kulik sipped tea in his office, Beria called Stalin: “Marshal Kulik’s sitting in front of me. No, he doesn’t know any details. She left and that’s all. Certainly, Comrade Stalin, we’ll announce an all-Union search and do everything possible to find her.” They both knew that Kira was in the cells beneath Beria’s office. A month later, Countess Simonich-Kulik, mother of an eight-year-old daughter, was moved to Beria’s special prison, the Sukhanovka, where Blokhin murdered her in cold blood with a shot to the head. Kobulov complained that Blokhin killed her before he arrived. Stalin perhaps took comfort or pleasure in the promotion of cronies such as Kulik while knowing, as they did not, the fate of their beloveds.
The public search for Kira Kulik continued for twelve years but the Marshal himself had long since realized that her dubious connections had destroyed her. He soon married again.6
Meanwhile Stalin and his magnates debated the fate of the Polish officers, arrested or captured in September 1939 and held in three camps, one of which was close to Katyn Forest. When Stalin was undecided about an issue, there was surprisingly frank discussion. Kulik, commander of the Polish front, proposed freeing all the Poles. Voroshilov agreed but Mekhlis was adamant there were Enemies among them. Stalin stopped the release but Kulik persisted. Stalin compromised. The Poles were released—except for about 26,000 officers whose destiny was finally decided at the Politburo on 5 March 1940.
Beria’s son claimed that his father argued against a massacre, not out of philanthropy, but because the Poles might be useful later. There is no evidence for this, except that Beria often took a practical rather than ideological approach. If so, Beria lost the argument. He dutifully reported that the 14,700 officers, landowners and policemen and 11,000 “counter-Revolutionary” landowners were “spies and saboteurs . . . hardened . . . enemies of Soviet power” who should be “tried by . . . Comrades Merkulov, Kobulov and Bashtakov.” Stalin scrawled his signature first and underlined it, followed by Voroshilov, Molotov and Mikoyan. Kalinin and Kaganovich were canvassed by phone and voted “For.”
This massacre was a chunk of “black work” for the NKVD who were accustomed to the Vishka of a few victims at a time, but there was a man for the task: Blokhin travelled down to the Ostachkov camp where he and two other Chekists outfitted a hut with padded, soundproofed walls and decided on a Stakhanovite quota of 250 shootings a night. He brought a butcher’s leather apron and cap which he put on when he began one of the most prolific acts of mass murder by one individual, killing 7,000 in precisely twenty-eight nights, using a German Walther pistol to prevent future exposure.7 The bodies were buried in various places—but the 4,500 in the Kozelsk camp were interred in Katyn Forest.169
That June, the Führer unleashed his Blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France. Stalin still had a profound respect for the power of France and Britain, whom he counted on holding up Hitler in the West. On 17 June 1940, France sued for peace, a shock that should have made Stalin reassess his alliance with Hitler though it was also now the only game in town. Molotov congratulated Schulenburg “warmly” but through gritted teeth, “on the splendid success of the German Wehrmacht .”
A rattled Stalin “cursed” the Allies: “Couldn’t they put up any resistance at all?” he asked Khrushchev. “Now Hitler’s going to beat our brains in!”8
Stalin rushed to consume the Baltic States and Bessarabia, part of Romania. As troops moved across the borders, Soviet bombers flew Stalin’s proconsuls to their fiefdoms: Dekanozov to Lithuania, Deputy Premier (the former “shoot the mad dogs” Procurator) Vyshinsky to Latvia, and Zhdanov to Estonia. Zhdanov drove through the Estonian capital, Tallinn, in an armoured car flanked by two tanks and then nominated a puppet “Prime Minister,” lecturing the Estonians “that everything will be done in accordance with democratic parliamentary rules ...We’re not Germans!” For some Baltic citizens, they were worse. A total of 34,250 Latvians, almost 60,000 Estonians and 75,000 Lithuanians were murdered or deported. “Comrade Beria,” said Stalin, “will take care of the accommodation of our Baltic guests.” The NKVD put icing on Stalin’s cake on 20 August, when Beria’s agent Ramon Mercader shattered Trotsky’s skull with an icepick. Trotsky might have undermined Stalin’s foreign policy but really his death simply closed the chapter of the Great Terror. Vengeance was Stalin’s. 9
Stalin had seized a buffer zone from the Baltic to the Black Sea but he now started to receive intelligence of Hitler’s intention to attack the USSR. He redoubled his attentions to the Germans. Yet he also laughed at the Nazis with Zhdanov by putting on Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries directed by the Jewish Eisenstein.
“And who’s singing
Wotan?” Zhdanov joked with Stalin. “A Jewish singer.” These Hebraic Wagnerians did not restrain Hitler from gradually moving troops eastwards. Stalin instinctively distrusted the intelligence from the new chief of GRU, military intelligence, General Filip Golikov, an untried mediocrity, and from the NKVD under Beria and Merkulov. He regarded Golikov as “inexperienced, naïve. A spy should be like the devil; no one should trust him not even himself.” Merkulov, head of the NKVD Foreign Department, was “dextrous” but still scared in case “someone will be offended.” It was understandable they were afraid of offending “someone.” All their predecessors had been murdered.170
Stalin and Molotov’s suspicions of their own spies reflected their origins in the murky Bolshevik underground where many comrades (including the Vozhd himself ) were double or treble agents. They evaluated the motives of others by the standards of their own paranoid criminality: “I think one can never trust intelligence,” Molotov admitted years later. “One has to listen . . . but check on them . . . There are endless provocateurs on both sides.” This was ironic because Stalin possessed the world’s best intelligence network: his spies worked for Marx not Mammon. Yet the more he knew, the less he trusted: “his knowledge” writes one historian, “only added to his sorrow and isolation.” However insistent the facts of the German military build-up, the Soviet spymasters were under pressure to provide the information that Stalin wanted: “We never went out looking for information at random,” recalled one spy. “Orders to look for specific things would come from above.”
Stalin reacted to this uneasiness by aggressively pushing the traditional Russian interests in the Balkans which in itself alarmed Hitler, who was weighing up whether to attack his ally. He decided to invite Molotov to Berlin to sidetrack the Soviets into a push for the Indian Ocean. The night before Molotov left, he sat up late with Stalin and Beria, debating how to maintain the Pact. In his handwritten directive, Stalin instructed Molotov to insist on explanations for the presence of German troops in Romania and Finland, discover Hitler’s real interests and assert Russian interests in the Balkans and Dardanelles.10 Molotov meanwhile told his wife, “my pleasure honey,” that he was studying Hitler: “I’ve been reading Rauschning’s Hitler Spoke to Me . . . Rauschning explains much that H is carrying out now . . . and in the future.”