In June, Zhdanov, back from Bucharest, suffered another cardiac crisis and a minor stroke, resulting in breathing difficulties and paralysis of the right side. “I’ve been told to have medical care and rest,” he told a protégé. “I don’t think I’ll be away for long.” On 1 July, Stalin replaced Zhdanov with his nemesis, Malenkov, as Second Secretary. He was a useful scapegoat but, in Stalin’s orbit, there was no need to destroy Zhdanov to promote Malenkov: it suited Stalin to run them in parallel. Zhdanov fainted on his way back from Kuntsevo: now, desperately ill, he could no longer perform his duties. Yury explains that his father “wasn’t dismissed—he simply fell ill and couldn’t defend his interests,” which is confirmed by the doctors: “Comrade Zhdanov needs two months rest, one in bed,” Professor Yegorov told Stalin in a Top Secret report on which Stalin wrote: “Where vacation? Where treatment?”
Stalin, recalls Yury, “became worried. Father’s illness caused a change in the balance of power.” Mikoyan confirmed this. Indeed Zhdanov’s allies, Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, remained ascendant. Yury kept his job.
Stalin sent his own doctors to supervise Zhdanov who was moved to a sanatorium at Valdai, near Novgorod. Nonetheless, Zhdanov felt power slipping through his sclerotic fingers: when, on 23 July, Shepilov called to update him on Malenkov’s return, Zhdanov shouted into the phone. That night, he had a heart attack. Stalin sent his deputy Voznesensky and his own physician Vinogradov to visit the patient.
Zhdanov’s obvious symptoms of arteriosclerosis and heart failure were misdiagnosed. Instead of daily cardiograms and total rest, he was prescribed exercise and harmful massages. On 29 August, he had another severe attack. Once again Stalin sent Vinogradov and ordered Voznesensky and Kuznetsov to check the treatment. Before the politicians arrived, a row broke out over the patient. Dr. Lydia Timashuk, the cardiographer, diagnosed a “myocardial infarction” (a heart attack), and she was almost certainly right, but the distinguished professors made her rewrite her report to specify a much vaguer “dysfunction due to arteriosclerosis and hypertension” in a typical piece of bureaucratic infighting. The doctors poohpoohed her grave diagnosis and prescribed walking in the park. Hence, Zhdanov suffered another heart attack.
Timashuk denounced her superiors and had Zhdanov’s chief bodyguard deliver the letter to General Vlasik to give personally to Stalin. When nothing happened, Timashuk, an MGB agent, wrote to the secret police. Abakumov forwarded the letter to Stalin that same day. Stalin signed it, wrote “Into the archive,” but did nothing. But he was “very anxious and sent back Voznesensky to check on Father,” says Yury who was already there.
On the 31st, Stalin’s fallen favourite got out of bed to visit the lavatory and died of a massive coronary. On Poskrebyshev’s orders, the post-mortem was carried out in an ill-lit, shoddy bathroom in Kuznetsov’s presence. The professors were terrified that their misdiagnosis and cover-up would be exposed so they sacked and denounced Timashuk who then wrote more damning letters to Stalin and Kuznetsov, MGB curator. But this time, Vlasik did not deliver the letter and Kuznetsov ignored his.
Timashuk became the villainess of the Doctors’ Plot because her letters were later used by Stalin but this was ironic since she was medically correct. Zhdanov may have been mistreated but the rumours of murder seem unlikely. The Kremlevka was meant to be the finest Soviet hospital but was so ruled by fear of mistakes, scientific backwardness and political competition that incompetent decisions were made by committees of frightened doctors. Famous patients, from Mekhlis to Koniev, were routinely mistreated. Even in democracies, doctors try to cover up their mistakes. If Stalin had really wanted to murder Zhdanov, it would not have taken five heart attacks over years but a quick injection. Zhdanov’s widow and son were convinced he was not killed: “Everything was simpler,” Yury recalls. “We knew his doctors well. Father was very ill. His heart was worn out.”
Yet why did the manically paranoid Stalin ignore the denunciation? Zhdanov’s illness was obviously serious and Stalin may well have been content to leave treatment to the top Kremlin doctors: besides he was irritated with Zhdanov. But at a deeper level, these medical squabbles were an opportunity for Stalin. He had used medical murder himself and forced doctors in the thirties to confess to killing Kuibyshev and Gorky. This meticulous opportunist and patient conspirator, older but still a genius for creating complex machinations, would exploit Zhdanov’s death when he was ready to create the Terror he was convinced was necessary. A year later, his old comrade Dmitrov, the Bulgarian Premier, died while being treated by the same doctor. Walking in the Sochi garden with his Health Minister, Stalin stopped admiring his roses and mused, “Isn’t it strange? One doctor treated them and they both died.” He was already considering the Doctor’s Plot but it would take him three years to return to Timashuk’s letters.
Stalin helped bear Zhdanov’s open coffin at the funeral, showing kindness to the family. At dinner afterwards, Stalin became drunk.[281]
It was said that the Aragvi restaurant was full of Beria’s Georgians that night, toasting Zhdanov’s death.5
On 8 September, Stalin, delayed in Moscow by the Berlin crisis and Zhdanov’s funeral, started a three-month holiday, moving restlessly from Sukhumi to the Livadia, where he entertained the Czech President Gottwald. At Museri, the old dacha built by Lakoba, he was visited by Molotov and Mikoyan. At dinner, Poskrebyshev rose and denounced Mikoyan: “Comrade Stalin, while you’re here resting in the south, Molotov and Mikoyan have prepared a plot against you in Moscow.”
Mikoyan leapt up, black eyes flashing: “You bastard!” he yelled, raising his fist to punch Poskrebyshev.
Stalin caught his hand: “Why do you shout like that?” he soothed Mikoyan. “You’re my guest!” Molotov sat “pale as paper like a statue.” Mikoyan protested his innocence. “If so, don’t pay any attention to him,” Stalin added, having inspired Poskrebyshev in the first place.
Stalin declared that these veterans were too old to succeed him. Mikoyan, just fifty-two, much younger than Stalin, thought this silly but said nothing. The successor, said Stalin, had to be a Russian, not a Caucasian. Molotov remained “the obvious person” but Stalin was disenchanted with him. Then, in a lethal blessing, Stalin pointed at the benign, long face of Zhdanov’s protégé, Kuznetsov: “here’s the man” he wanted to succeed him as General Secretary. Voznesensky would succeed as Premier. Mikoyan sensed “this was a very bad service to Kuznetsov, considering those who secretly dreamed of such a role.”
Stalin himself was bound to become suspicious of any anointed successor, especially given the failure of his Berlin Blockade, which had to be called off when the West energetically supplied their zones with a remarkable airlift. This only fuelled Stalin’s seething paranoia, already stimulated by his own illness, Tito’s defiance and Zionist stirrings among Russian Jews. Beria and Malenkov sharpened their knives.6
Part Ten
THE LAME TIGER
1949–1953
53. MRS. MOLOTOV’S ARREST
While Stalin anointed successors in the south, the indomitable Envoy Extraordinary of the new State of Israel, Golda Myerson (known to history as Meir) arrived in Moscow on 3 September to tumultuous excitement among Soviet Jews. The Holocaust and the foundation of Israel had touched even the toughest Old Bolshevik internationalists like Polina Molotova. Voroshilov’s wife (née Golda Gorbman) amazed her family by saying, “Now we have our Motherland too.”
281
Perhaps Stalin was affected by Zhdanov’s death. He re-named the dead man’s birthplace, Mariupol on the Black Sea, Zhdanov. According to the bodyguards, after Zhdanov’s funeral, Molotov was worried about Stalin’s health and asked them not to let him garden. When Stalin discovered this interference in his private life, he mistrusted Molotov all the more.