A shift to recognition of Germany as the enemy surfaced publicly on March 31, 1935, when Pravda published a sensational essay under Tukhachevsky’s byline: “The Military Plans of Today’s Germany.” Stalin had softened the title from the even more provocative “The Military Plans of Hitler.” Still, the article, quoting extensively from Mein Kampf, presenting figures on German rearmament, and spelling out new German war doctrines, exploded like a bomb.37
Tukhachevsky believed mid-1930s Europe to be in a state similar to that on the eve of the Great War, with Poland playing the role of Austria-Hungary, but whereas Germany in that war had made the mistake of attacking France before Russia, this time around it would strike the USSR first, believing it needed to go after the stronger force, then take on a weak France. Stalin twisted this around: Germany’s first strike would be against France and Czechoslovakia, and only after an Anschluss with ethnic German regions would Hitler attack the USSR. Thus, Tukhachevsky’s article, in a new ending the dictator had inserted, stated that behind the “convenient screen” of anti-Soviet fulminations, Germany was really plotting to attack in the west (France and Belgium, for ore and ports) and in the center (the Polish Corridor, Czechoslovakia, Austria). Stalin further inserted that “in order to realize its plans of revanche and conquest, Germany by this summer will have an army of 849,000, that is, 40 percent larger than that of France, and almost as large as that of the USSR. (The USSR has 940,000, considering all types of forces.) And that will be despite the fact that the USSR has 2.5 times the population and ten times the territory.”38 German diplomats indignantly protested to Moscow.39
Eden’s Moscow visit came to a close. Pravda (April 1, 1935) and The Times of London (April 1) published a joint communiqué: “Mr. Eden and MM. Stalin, Molotov, and Litvinov were of the opinion that in the present international situation it was more than ever necessary to pursue the endeavor to promote the building up of a system of collective security in Europe . . . in conformity with the principle of the League of Nations.” Eden’s telegrams to London reported that Stalin showed “a remarkable knowledge and understanding of international affairs,” that Stalin’s “sympathies seemed broader than those of M. Litvinov,” and that “he displayed no emotion whatever except for an occasional chuckle or flash of wit.” The dictator had struck Eden as “a man of strong oriental traits of character with unshakeable assurance and control whose courtesy in no way hid from us an implacable ruthlessness.”40 Later, in his memoirs, Eden amplified these impressions: “Stalin’s personality made itself felt without effort or exaggeration. He had natural good manners, perhaps a Georgian inheritance. Though I knew him to be a man without mercy, I respected the quality of his mind and even felt a sympathy which I have never been able entirely to analyze.” Eden concluded, “I have never known a man handle himself better in conference. Seldom raising his voice, a good listener, prone to doodling.”41
In Berlin on April 9, the Soviet trade representative, Kandelaki, and the Reichsbank president, Hjalmar Schacht, finally concluded the proposed loan agreement, which extended a 200-million-mark credit for five years, at 2 percent interest. Stalin had been right: the Germans, needing to supply the rearming Wehrmacht, had made the concessions. The USSR pledged to place new orders with German industrial firms, as well as to complete within eighteen months current orders for German industrial goods and contracts for German shipping. Soviet payments would take the form of 100 million marks in gold and foreign currency and 100 million marks’ worth of raw materials: naphtha, timber, furs, manganese ores.42 So much for Stalin’s warning to Eden not to supply Hitler. Sergei Bessonov, a counselor with a trade profile at the USSR’s Berlin embassy, who wore a Hitler mustache, reported to Moscow that “Schacht reiterated to both me and comrade Kandelaki that his course of rapprochement with the USSR was being carried out with the consent and approval of Hitler.”43 Only now did the French cabinet approve going forward with a treaty with the Soviets; Laval informed Potyomkin and issued a public statement.44
STAGING GROUNDS
On Red Square on May 1, 1935, upward of 30,000 tank drivers, artillerymen, cavalry, and infantry marched past the Mausoleum as 800 warplanes flew in a choreographed formation.45 The next day, Voroshilov presided over the annual banquet for select participants in the Grand Kremlin Palace.46 The palace had been built under Nicholas I and dedicated in 1849 as the residence of the tsars when they visited the old capital. Its construction had folded in parts of nine churches, including Moscow’s oldest extant structure, the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus (1393), and the Palace of Facets (1491), which had been used by Ivan the Terrible. The 150-foot-high building had two stories, despite appearing to have a third (the upper floor contained two sets of windows). Its main entranceway opened to a stunning sixty-six-step staircase and a gigantic mural by Ilya Repin, “Alexander III Receiving Rural District Elders in the Courtyard of Petrovsky Palace” (1886), which depicted the strapping sovereign in full-dress uniform. The ground floor, facing the front façade, was taken up by the royal apartments (where Voroshilov lived). One floor up were five dazzling halls named for the High Orders of the empire: the St. George, the Vladimir, the Alexander, the Andreyev, and the Catherine. The Soviets had combined the St. Andrew and St. Alexander, creating a larger, plainer space for party congresses. A raised stage was added to the St. George’s Hall, the main venue for banquets, which boasted dazzling white marble, fifty-foot ceilings, eighteen columns bearing allegories of imperial Russian military victories, and hundreds of marble plaques with the names of military heroes.47
Inside, no more than one in fifteen parade participants could be accommodated for an experience that would reverberate over a lifetime. Around 800 places could be set at tables in the St. George’s Hall, with spillover accommodated in the adjacent Facets (which could hold around 400) and the rose-marbled St. Vladimir Octagon, linking the two. Seats were preassigned, the most prestigious being those closest to Stalin’s table, known as the Presidium, where Molotov occupied seat number 2 and Voroshilov 3. Each table, holding twenty to thirty people, was piled with caviar, fish, game, fresh vegetables, and fruit, although the food could seem incidental to the finest-flavored vodkas, brandies, wines, and Crimean champagne. One or two NKVD officers in civilian dress sat at each table (identifiable by the glaring circumstance that they did not drink) and listened attentively to the conversations, but enough actresses and other eye candy were distributed about to counteract some of the intimidation. The well-lubricated affairs had been publicly, albeit laconically, reported in Pravda.48 The imperial splendor—giant fireplaces and mirrors, chandeliers, antique furniture, parquet floors polished to a brilliant shine—stirred embarrassment in the worker and peasant state.49 Stalin exhibited no such qualms.
N.B. (a thinly disguised Nikolai Bukharin) reported in Izvestiya that upon Stalin’s entrance “suddenly the applause, which grew like a snowstorm, covered everything, and became a blizzard, thunder, blustery spontaneous joy and ecstasy.” During the endless toasts, Stalin sipped red wine, a glass of mineral water nearby.50 (Voroshilov preferred vodka; after each shot he would cut off a slice of butter from a mound and swallow it.)51 The dictator customarily delivered a speech in the form of his own toast, and now proposed that glasses be raised to the health of the Red Army rank and file (“Bolsheviks in the party and non-party”). Then, trailed by his entourage, he made the rounds, personally greeting attendees. Suddenly, a few exuberant types lifted him up and carried him about the hall, putting him down at each table for a toast. Ubiquitous NKVD guards in full-dress uniform had proved powerless in the face of the hall’s fervor and Stalin’s desire to soak it up.52