Stalin micro-managed the theatre as he dominated cinema, literature and politics. The grandees ate in the avant-loge behind the box in between scenes. Here in the former imperial box at the Bolshoi sit (from left): Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Mikoyan and their wives.
Stalin’s mother Keke possessed the same sardonic and mocking wit as her son. They were not close but Stalin sent dutiful letters, leaving Beria to act as his surrogate son. Shortly before her death when Stalin was on holiday in Georgia, Beria arranged for him to visit the ailing Keke. Former friends, now bitter rivals, Beria and Lakoba sit behind mother and son in her bedroom.
Like three boulevardiers in the sun, Beria, the Caucasian viceroy (centre), hosts Voroshilov and Mikoyan (right) in Tiflis for the Rustaveli Festival at the height of the Terror, 1937.
A Jewish jeweller’s son with a knowledge of poisons and a ruthless ambition, Genrikh Yagoda was the NKVD boss who had reservations about the Terror. Stalin threatened to punch him in the face. Yagoda enjoyed the good life: collecting wines, growing orchids, courting Gorky’s daughter-in-law, amassing ladies’ underwear, and buying German pornographic films and obscene cigarette holders. Left to right: Yagoda in uniform, Kalinin, Stalin, Molotov, Vyshinsky, Beria.
Marshal Semyon Budyonny, swaggering Cossack horseman and hero of Tsaritsyn, famous for his handlebar moustaches, white teeth and equine level of intelligence, poses with Kaganovich (on the left) and Stalin among swooning females. Budyonny proved a better general than most of Stalin’s cavalry cronies, but he was happiest breeding horses, which he believed were more useful than tanks.
The two most depraved monsters of Stalin’s court. At the Seventeenth Congress in 1934 when they joined the leadership (but before their rise to supreme power), Beria and Yezhov, a rising Central Committee official, hug for the camera. Yezhov was an ambitious fanatic, good-natured, if prone to illness, a bisexual dwarf who was liked by everyone until he was promoted to NKVD boss in 1936 and became Stalin’s frenzied killer. Beria was an unscrupulous but able and intelligent secret policeman. In 1938, he was brought to Moscow to destroy Yezhov, whose execution he supervised.
Ascendant grandee Yezhov (hugging his adopted daughter Natasha) and his promiscuous literary wife Yevgenia, who slept with writers from Isaac Babel to Mikhail Sholokhov, entertain their powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death. Yevgenia Yezhova became the “black widow” of Stalin’s circle: many of her lovers, including Babel, died because of their connection to her. She sacrificed herself to try to save their daughter Natasha.
Sergo and Yezhov.
As the Terror gained pace, Sergo Ordzhonikidze clashed with Stalin. A shot rang out in Sergo’s flat. His mysterious death solved a problem for Stalin, who rushed to his Kremlin apartment where Sergo was lifted onto his table for this photograph. Stalin, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with the body. Kaganovich and Mikoyan were especially close to Sergo and look particularly shocked.
In 1937, at the height of the Great Terror, two young magnates join the leadership: Yezhov, now NKVD boss in full uniform as Commissar-General of State Security (second from right) and (far right) his friend Nikita Khrushchev, newly appointed Moscow boss and later one of Stalin’s successors, accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin. Stalin trusted the ruthless bumpkin Khrushchev, who described himself as the Leader’s “pet.” He idolised Stalin.
Stalin regarded himself as an intellectual. He persuaded the famous novelist Gorky to return to the Soviet Union to become the regime’s great writer, giving him a mansion in Moscow and two dachas outside. Gorky’s house became the literary venue for the Politburo, who visited regularly. There Stalin told writers to become “engineers of human souls.” Here Stalin and Molotov (second from left) take tea with Gorky. When Stalin became disenchanted with Gorky, his death in 1936 proved convenient.
When she tipsily dropped a cream cake on his tunic, Poskrebyshev fell in love with a pretty, glamorous and well-connected young doctor, Bronislava, who became familiar with Stalin and his family. But her Jewish Lithuanian origins, her friendship with Yezhov’s wife and, worst of all, her distant connection to Trotsky led to her arrest by Beria and her execution. Poskrebyshev wept when he heard her name, but remained working at Stalin’s side, on good terms with Beria—and managed to remarry. Poskrebyshev with Bronislava (right) and her sister.
More powerful than many a magnate, Alexander Poskrebyshev (right) was Stalin’s chef de cabinet for most of his reign. This former male nurse and master of detail ran the office and kept the secrets, while at the Leader’s dinners Stalin challenged him to drinking contests, nicknamed him the “commander-in-chief” and laughed when he was dragged vomiting from the table.
Poskrebyshev ran the politics but General Nikolai Vlasik, Stalin’s chief bodyguard and court photographer, ran his home life. This hard-drinking debauchee with a harem of “concubines,” also acted as Vasily Stalin’s father figure. Here, just before the war, is Vlasik (on the left), with Stalin’s doomed son Yakov, probably at Kuntsevo.
Stalin remained close and affectionate with Svetlana, but by her early teens at the end of the 1930s, she was maturing early and this alarmed her father. When she sent him this photograph of her sporting her Young Pioneer’s uniform, he sent it back with a note saying, “Your expression is not suitable for someone your age.” When she fell in love with an older man in the middle of the Second World War, Stalin was appalled and it destroyed their relationship forever. Henceforth his fondest epithet to her was “You little fool.”
1941–1945
Stalin was shocked and bewildered by Hitler’s attack, but after a crisis Stalin assumed the role he believed was made for him: supreme warlord. Initially, Stalin worked with his magnates and generals in an almost collegiate atmosphere before success allowed him to play the military genius. Here Stalin runs the war assisted by (standing, from left): Bulganin (in uniform), Mikoyan, Khrushchev, Andreyev, Voznesensky, Voroshilov (in uniform) and Kaganovich; (seated, from left): Shvernik, Molotov, Beria and Malenkov.
The outstanding military partnership of the war: in late 1942, after his bungles had caused a series of unnecessary disasters, Stalin appointed Georgi Zhukov his deputy. He admired his military gifts, energy and brutal drive. Zhukov played a decisive role in the victories of Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad and Berlin. At the victory parade, Stalin allowed Zhukov to take the salute, but afterwards, jealousy and paranoia led him to demote and humiliate his greatest general. Here in 1945, Stalin places Zhukov on his right, but is flanked on the other side by his “political” Marshals, Voroshilov, who proved brave but inept, and Bulganin, who rose ruthlessly but without trace to become heir apparent.