Stalin was infuriated by Riumin’s slowness in beating the evidence out of the doctors, calling the MGB a herd of “hippopotamuses.” He shouted at Ignatiev: “Beat them! What are you? Do you want to be more humanitarian than Lenin who ordered Dzerzhinsky [founder of the Cheka] to throw Savinkov out of the window?… Dzerzhinsky was no match for you but he didn’t shirk the dirty work. You work like waiters in white gloves. If you want to be Chekists, take off your gloves.” Malenkov repeated Stalin’s orders to use “death blows.”
On 13 November, a few days after little Joseph’s visit, Stalin ordered the petrified Ignatiev to sack Riumin: “Remove the Midget!” As for the doctors, “Beat them until they confess! Beat, beat and beat again. Put them in chains, grind them into powder!” Stalin offered Vinogradov his life if he admitted “the origins of your crimes… You may address your testimony to the Leader who promises to save your life… The whole world knows our Leader has always kept his promises.” Vinogradov knew no such thing.
“My situation is tragic,” the doctor replied. “I have nothing to say.” He tried to name dead people whom his testimony could no longer harm. Stalin then lashed out at Ignatiev himself for his backsliding. Ignatiev suffered a heart attack and took to his bed.[305]
Now Stalin turned on his dogged retainer, Vlasik, destroying his debauched bodyguard just as he had the colourful Pauker in 1937. Vlasik had been on drinking terms with the homicidal doctors but he also knew too much, particularly that Stalin had been informed of Zhdanov’s mistreatment and done nothing about it. Vlasik himself had probably only ignored Timashuk’s letters on Stalin’s lead. But now he was arrested, brought to Moscow and accused of concealing the evidence with Abakumov. He never betrayed the Boss. But his arrest was a cunning move because Vlasik’s “treason” helped cover Stalin’s own role. All his mistresses and drinking cronies were arrested and questioned by Malenkov. Vlasik was tortured: “My nerves were broken and I suffered a heart attack. I had months without sleep.” Stalin knew that Poskrebyshev, his other devoted old retainer, was best friends with Vlasik: had he played some role in suppressing the evidence against the killer doctors? He had distrusted Poskrebyshev ever since his article on Stalin’s lemon-growing skills in 1949: was someone encouraging his grim amanuensis to step out of the shadows? But Stalin also learned that Poskrebyshev had shared Vlasik’s orgies. He was mired in “filthy affairs,” said Molotov. “Women can serve as agents!” Poskrebyshev arrived at Beria’s house in a panic: everyone ran to Beria for reassurance but he himself was in equal danger.
Stalin sacked Poskrebyshev (his deputy, Chernukha, replaced him), moved him to be Secretary of the Presidium and received him for the last time on 1 December. He had removed his two most loyal servants.2 Stalin now had enough evidence to escalate the hysteria.
After seeing the heart-broken Poskrebyshev, Stalin unveiled the horror of what he called “the killers in white coats” to the Presidium: “You’re like blind kittens,” he warned them at Kuntsevo. “What will happen without me is that the country will die because you can’t recognize your enemies.” Stalin explained to the “blind kittens” that “every Jew’s a nationalist and an agent of American intelligence” who believes “the U.S.A. saved their people.” He linked these killer-doctors to the medical murderers of Gorky and Kuibyshev and repeated his mantra-like justification for 1937. A Great Terror was again imminent. He turned to the secret police: “We must ‘treat’ the GPU,” he said. “They know they’re sitting in shit!”
The magnates understood this ominous reference because an anti-Semitic trial was already underway in Prague where the Czech General Secretary, Rudolf Slansky, a Jew, was accused of “anti-State conspiracy.” Three days later, he and ten other mainly Jewish Communists were hanged. Stalin planned something similar in Warsaw for he asked Bierut about his Jewish lieutenants: “Who’s dearer to you—Berman or Minc?”
Bierut to his credit replied: “Both equally.”
Stalin ordered more schemes to assassinate Tito.3
The Czech executions brought the noose closer to Molotov and Mikoyan who debated the court etiquette of condemned men. Stalin called them “American or British spies.” “To this day,” Molotov reminisced, “I don’t know precisely why. I sensed he held me in great distrust.”
They kept turning up for dinner as if nothing had happened. “Stalin wasn’t glad to see them,” noticed Khrushchev. Finally Stalin banned Molotov and Mikoyan: “I don’t want those two coming around anymore.” But the staff secretly told them when the dinners were taking place. So Stalin banned the staff from talking to them. Still, they kept turning up because Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov and Bulganin, the Four, alerted them—a sign of growing sympathy, because they appreciated that “they were trying to stay close to save themselves… to stay alive.”
Mikoyan asked Beria’s advice: “It would be better if you lay low,” he suggested.
“I’d like to see your face when… you’re sacked,” replied Mikoyan.
“That happened to me years ago,” said Beria.
Molotov and Mikoyan, realizing their lives were in danger, met in the Kremlin to decide what to do. Mikoyan had always trusted Molotov not to repeat his comments—and “he never let me down or used my trust against me.” Both were hurt, and angry.
“It’s practically impossible to rule a country in your seventies and decide all issues at the dinner table,” Molotov said aloud at a meeting, a risky act of lèse-majesté that would have been unthinkable before the Plenum.[306]
The magnates would all have assisted in the liquidation of Molotov and Mikoyan. Stalin was old, raging, vindictive, paranoid and in a hurry. Yet his sense of the possible, the patience and charm that balanced his cruelty and his roughness still worked, as he methodically, logically micro-managed the case. The unpredictable fury, frantic hastiness and implacable paranoia ironically drove the magnates closer together. Beria and Khrushchev were against Stalin’s changes. Malenkov comforted Beria who comforted Mikoyan; Khrushchev and Beria comforted Molotov. During whispered consultations in the Kuntsevo lavatories, the Four laughed off Stalin’s suspicions and mocked the Doctors’ Plot.
“We should protect Molotov,” Beria told the other three, “he’s still needed by the Party.”
December 21 was officially Stalin’s seventy-third birthday. Molotov and Mikoyan had not missed his birthday for thirty years. He rarely invited anyone—one just arrived for supper. The outcasts discussed what to do. Mikoyan thought that if they did not go, it would “mean that we had changed our attitude to Stalin.” They phoned the Four, who told them they had to come.
So at 10 p.m. on the 21st, they arrived at Kuntsevo, where Stalin had hung plangent magazine photographs on the walls of children feeding lambs and famous historical scenes like Repin’s Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, his favourite picture. Svetlana was there too. Stalin was quiet but friendly, proud that he had given up smoking after fifty years. But he was already suffering from breathing difficulties. His face was livid and he had put on weight, suggesting high blood pressure. He sipped light Georgian wine. As Svetlana was leaving, Stalin asked her: “Do you need any money?”
“No,” she answered.
“You’re only pretending. How much do you need?” He gave her 3,000 roubles for herself and for Yakov’s daughter, Gulia, useful housekeeping money but Stalin thought it was millions. “Buy yourself a car but show me your driving licence!” Underneath, Stalin was “angry and indignant” that the Four had invited Molotov and Mikoyan.
305
The “Midget” plunged with the same speed that he had risen to an obscure desk in the Ministry of State Control and was replaced by SA Goglidze. Earlier, Stalin turned against his instrument in the Mingrelian Case, Georgian MGB boss Rukhadze, who had boasted of his intimacy with the
306
Voroshilov, sacked and humiliated, seems to have respectfully resented Stalin too. His wife used to whisper that Stalin was jealous of Klim’s popularity—another unthinkable heresy.