Stalin as the arbiter of the Grand Alliance, playing Roosevelt against Churchilclass="underline" here at Teheran in 1943, a grinning Voroshilov stands behind his master while General Alan Brooke (behind Churchill and Roosevelt) glances sardonically at their unsavoury ally.
Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, followed by General Vlasik.
At the Potsdam Conference, Stalin, resplendent in his white Generalissimo’s uniform, poses with Churchill, who was about to be thrown out by the British electorate, and the new U.S. President Harry Truman, who informed him that America had the Bomb. Stalin despised Truman, missed Roosevelt, and thought Churchill the strongest of the capitalists.
At Teheran, Churchill presented the Sword of Stalingrad to an emotional Stalin, who passed it to Voroshilov, who dropped it. Stalin sent Voroshilov to apologise to Churchill. A blushing Voroshilov grabbed Hugh Lunghi, a young English diplomat, to interpret. Voroshilov apologised, then wished Churchill a happy birthday. The British Prime Minister thought the Marshal was angling for a party invitation.
At Potsdam, Stalin placed Beria in charge of the race to get the Bomb, the greatest challenge of his career—he could not afford to fail. Here Beria and Molotov visit the sights in the ruins of Hitler’s Berlin, flanked by secret policemen Kruglov (left) and Serov, the expert on deportations.
Beria and family around 1946. Beria was a rapist and sadist—but a delightful father-in-law and grandfather. His blond, clever and long-suffering wife, Nina (second from left), was the most beautiful of all the grandees’ spouses—Stalin treated her like a daughter. Svetlana Stalin was in love with Beria’s handsome, dashing son Sergo (far left), whom Stalin also liked. But Sergo married Gorky’s lissome granddaughter Martha Peshkova (far right), much to Svetlana’s ire.
In 1938, when Stalin promoted Beria to NKVD boss and brought him to Moscow, the dictator chose Beria’s house himself. Only Beria was allowed this sumptuous nobleman’s mansion (now the Tunisian Embassy). His wife and son lived in one wing; his own rooms and offices were in another: here many of his female victims were raped. When one refused him and was presented by a guard with the usual bouquet, Beria allegedly snarled: “It’s not a bouquet, it’s a wreath.”
Just across from the Kremlin, the hideous colossus, the House on the Embankment, with its own cinema, built for the government in the early 1930s, was decimated during the 1937 Terror when many of its inhabitants were shot. In the morning the doorman told the survivors who had been arrested overnight. Here Natalya Rykova saw her father off for the last time. Stalin’s family, such as Pavel and Zhenya Alliluyev, lived here; after the war Svetlana and Vasily had flats here.
In 1949, death stalked the elegant, pink Granovsky apartment block close to the Kremlin where the younger magnates lived in palatial apartments: Khrushchev and Bulganin on the fifth floor, Malenkov on the fourth. Beria was often seen waiting at the gates in a black limousine for his friends Khrushchev and Malenkov.
His main Moscow house, Kuntsevo, from 1932 and the place where he died. Like most of his residences, it was painted a gloomy khaki green.
His favourite holiday house before the war: Sochi (viewed from outside the security gate), and (inset) inside the courtyard.
The centre of all his houses was always the vaulted dining room where he enjoyed long Georgian feasts with his henchmen, this one at Sochi. On the left is Stalin’s specially built paddling pool since he did not like swimming.
Stalin’s post-war holiday headquarters, Coldstream; the millionaire’s mansion in Sukhumi; and Museri.
Over-promoted, alcoholic, unstable, cruel and terrified, General Vasily Stalin abandoned two wives whom he treated abysmally and tried to win his father’s favour by denouncing air force officers, often with fatal results. Stalin, ashamed of his son’s wartime debauchery and hijinks, demoted him. Vasily feared that after his father’s death Bulganin and Khrushchev would kill him: he preferred the bottle or suicide. Girls flocked to the “Crown Prince.”
After the war, General Vasily Stalin persuaded General Vlasik to give him his exquisite town house not far from the Kremlin.
Power and family: the heir apparent Zhdanov. At the end of the war, a tired but cheerful Stalin sits between the two rivals: the flabby, vicious and pusillanimous “clerk,” Malenkov—who was nicknamed “Melanie” for his broad hips—and (right) the smiling, alcoholic Zhdanov. Kaganovich sits on the left. (Back row, left to right): unknown, Vasily Stalin, Svetlana, Poskrebyshev. Stalin pushed Svetlana to marry Zhdanov’s son. But the struggle between Zhdanov and Malenkov ended in a massacre.
1945–1953
After victory, Stalin fell ill with a series of minor strokes or heart attacks. Here, the clearly ailing Generalissimo arrives to rest, accompanied by the porcine Vlasik.
On 12 August 1945 Generalissimo Stalin cheerfully leads his magnates for the victory parade—Mikoyan, Ukrainian viceroy Khrushchev, Malenkov, Beria in Marshal’s uniform, Molotov (with Vlasik behind him).
Zhdanov, in Colonel-General’s uniform, was Stalin’s heir apparent and cultural supremo who attacked the arts after the war. Stalin promoted his son Yury and wanted him as his own son-in-law. But the charlatan geneticist Trofim Lysenko (far left) proved the nemesis of the Zhdanovs.
The exhausted Stalin gloomily leads Beria, Mikoyan and Malenkov through the Kremlin to the Mausoleum for the 1946 May Day parade. In this nest of vipers, they walked arm in arm, but their friendships were masks: each was ready to liquidate the others. Stalin now loathed Beria and mocked Malenkov for being so fat he had lost his human appearance. After Beria tormented the dapper Mikoyan at Stalin’s dinners by hiding tomatoes in his well-cut suits and squashing them, Mikoyan started bringing a spare suit.
As the struggle for the succession builds up, Stalin leads the mourning at Kalinin’s funeral in 1946. (Front row, from left): Beria, Malenkov, Stalin and Molotov. Behind Molotov (to the right) stands the ill and frail Zhdanov at the height of his power. Zhdanov’s two protégés, Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, are both to the right behind Malenkov’s shoulder. Kaganovich is behind Molotov.
The death of Zhdanov, Stalin’s friend and favourite, here in open coffin, unleashes the vengeance of Beria and Malenkov against his faction. Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich follow the coffin. That night, at the funeral supper, Stalin became drunk: with Zhdanov gone, he had lost his only intellectual equal.
Here, in late 1948, Stalin sits with the older generation, Kaganovich, Molotov and Voroshilov, while an intrigue is being prepared behind them among the younger. After ten years without a single top leader being shot, Beria (second row, far left) and Malenkov (second row, second from left) helped Stalin murder his two appointed successors, Kuznetsov (second row between Molotov and Stalin) and Voznesensky (second row between Stalin and Voroshilov) in the “Leningrad Case.”