But the next year Sukhova was implicated in Stalin’s trial of Ramzin and others. She appealed to him and he received her. “Is this the first time you’ve got into a scrape?” he asked, adding, “I’m always getting into trouble myself.” He then phoned her institute and protected her. “Henceforth you must fight for yourself.” They never met again.{256}
Stalin left at least two illegitimate children in his wake. Neither received any direct help from their father.
Constantine Kuzakov, the son of Stalin’s Solvychegodsk landlady, Maria, had the most interesting career of the two. When Kuzakova saw Stalin’s appointment to the government in 1917, she wrote to him asking for help. When she received no reply, she approached Lenin’s office, where Stalin’s, wife Nadya, still worked. Without telling Stalin, she increased Kuzakova’s benefits payments, but she informed the father afterwards.
Stalin must have helped get the boy into Leningrad University. In 1932, the NKVD made him sign a statement promising never to discuss his “origin.”
He taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, and was promoted to work in the CC apparat in Moscow by Andrei Zhdanov, the magnate closest to Stalin. Constantine later said that Zhdanov knew his “origin.” He never met his father, though “once Stalin stopped and looked at me and I felt he wanted to tell me something. I wanted to rush to him, but something stopped me. He waved his pipe and moved on.” During the Second World War, Constantine was a decorated colonel, but his mother died of starvation in the Siege of Leningrad.
In the summer of 1947, Kuzakov was called into Zhdanov’s office where he found the fearsome but flashy secret-police chief Victor Abakumov. They accused Kuzakov’s deputy of being an American spy, and Kuzakov was implicated. Stalin would not sanction his arrest, but Kuzakov was tried by a court of honour and dismissed from the Party. He had three children, but could not even get a job as a janitor.
After Stalin’s death and Beria’s arrest, he rejoined the Party and rose to become the longtime director of Soviet television in the Culture Ministry, dying in 1996.
Stalin left Lidia Pereprygina with a son, Alexander, probably born early in 1917. She then married a peasant fisherman, Yakov Davydov, who adopted Alexander as his own. Lidia became a hairdresser in Igarka and had eight more children. “Stalin never helped her,” reported KGB chief General Serov. Alexander “was told [the truth] by his mother Lidia years after her affair with Stalin,” says his son Yury. They “kept quiet about it and only the few locals in Kureika knew whose son he really was.”
Alexander became a postman and Komsomol instructor, but in 1935 the NKVD called him to Krasnoyarsk to sign a promise, similar to Kuzakov’s, never to talk about his origins. Then it was suggested he might move to Moscow, but he refused, “always scared of what could happen to him.” Alexander Davydov served in the Second World War as a private, was wounded thrice, then promoted to major after World War II. He ran the canteen in the mining-town Novokuznetsk, where he married and had three children, dying in 1987. “My father told me I was Stalin’s grandson,” says Yury, who lives with his family in Novosibirsk.{257}
Until Stalin organized the reconquest of Georgia in 1921,[187] his mother lived in a different country. Afterwards, Soso was reunited with Keke during his bitter visit to Tiflis, where he found himself hated as a bloody conqueror and former bandit.
Stalin wrote Keke regular letters, but kept his distance. “Lively and chatty,” she was the only person in Stalin’s world who dared ask: “I wonder why my son was not able to share power with Trotsky?” Stalin could never tolerate such independence.
Keke came on a short visit to Moscow and met Nadya. “This woman is my wife,” Stalin warned Keke. “Try not to give her any trouble.” She preferred to live in a two-room apartment in the old Viceroy’s Palace on Golovinsky Prospect in Tiflis. Nadya sent her letters with news and photographs of the children. When Stalin was climbing to power, his letters were short:
My Mama, Live 10,000 years!
Yours,
Kiss
Soso
1 January 1923
Keke grumbled that he did not pay her enough attention: “Mama, I know you’re disappointed in me but what can I do? I’m very busy and can’t write too often. Day and night I’m up to my neck in it. Yours. Kiss. Soso, 25 January 1925.” Or she ignored him and went on with her own life: “Mama, How are you? You didn’t write for a long time. Maybe you’re annoyed with me. But what to do? I’m so busy. I sent you 150 roubles, I can’t send more. If you need more, tell me how much. Yr Soso.”
Their lack of intimacy was clearer after Nadya’s suicide:
Greetings Mother dear
I got the jam, the ginger and the chukhcheli [Georgian candy]. The children are very pleased and send you their thanks. I am well, so don’t worry about me. I can endure my destiny. I don’t know whether or not you need money. I’m sending you 500 roubles just in case. I’m sending also a photograph of me and the children….
Keep well dear Mother and keep your spirits up. A kiss.
Your son Soso
24 March 1934
P.S. The children bow to you. After Nadya’s death, my private life has been very hard, but a strong man must always be valiant.
When he visited her for the last time in 1936, she said she wished he had become a priest. This half-amused Stalin. He sent her medicines and clothes. When she deteriorated, he encouraged her. “Glad your health is good,” he wrote in 1937. “Evidently our clan is strong!” She died soon afterwards amid the Great Terror. Stalin did not attend her funeral, but his wreath read: “Dear and beloved mother. From her son Josef Djugashvili.” She was buried splendidly in the church on Holy Mountain.{258}
Stalin kept in contact with old friends from Gori and Tiflis. Sometimes he wrote them a note or just sent them money out of the blue. If they appealed to him, he liked to help. In 1933, he wrote to Kapanadze:
Hi Peta, as you see… I’m sending you 2,000 roubles. I haven’t got more now. This money is a publishing royalty and we don’t accept many royalties, but your needs are a special occasion for me… Apart from this money, you’ll be given a 3,000-rouble loan. I’ve told Beria about this…
Live long and be happy
During the war, Kapanadze and Glurjidze, both ex-priests, and Tseradze, his wrestling friend, got even luckier. On 9 May 1944, Stalin noticed the cash piling up in his safe (from his salaries as Party Secretary-General, Premier, Supreme Commander-in-Chief, People’s Commissar of Defence and Supreme Soviet deputy). He could not spend the money so he scrawled this note:
To my friend Peter Kapanadze—40,000 roubles;
30,000 roubles to Grisha Glurjidze;
30,000 roubles to Mikhail Tseradze.
The note to Glurjidze read: “Grisha! Accept this small gift from me. Your Soso.” He was indulgent to those who never dabbled in politics but it is unlikely he would have spared Iremashvili and Davrichewy. They opposed him politically.[188]
187
Georgia caused Stalin’s schism with Lenin. Menshevik Georgia became independent in 1918. The Old Man was content to leave Georgia, but in 1921 Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze arranged a successful invasion. The dashing, merciless Sergo rode triumphantly into Tiflis on a white horse, but he soon earned the nicknamed “Stalin’s Ass” for his brutal suppression of the country. When it came time to define the status of Georgia, Stalin insisted that it join a Transcaucasian Federation, but the local Bolsheviks, led by the flamboyant Mdivani and the ideologue Makharadze, both associates of Stalin’s for decades, demanded a separate Georgian republic. In the ensuing row between the Stalinists and the so-called deviationists, Sergo punched one of their opponents. This outraged Lenin, who now supported the Georgians against Stalin and Sergo. This led to Stalin’s insulting Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya. Lenin wrote his Testament, which demanded Stalin’s removal from the General Secretaryship. But it was too late. Lenin suffered another stroke. Stalin survived.
188
The Mensheviks enjoyed a strange trajectory: Karlo Chkheidze, as we saw, became the most powerful man in the early 1917 Revolution as Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, while his fellow Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli became a powerful Russian minister during the summer of 1917. But when the Bolsheviks seized power, Chkheidze, Jordania, Tsereteli and Noe Ramishvili became the leaders of the independent Georgia. When the Bolsheviks invaded, they managed to flee into exile. Chkheidze committed suicide in 1926, Ramishvili was murdered in Paris in 1930. Jordania, Uratadze, Arsenidze, Sagirashvili and Nikolaevsky all survived in exile and wrote their memoirs. Sukhanov, who called Stalin a “grey blur,” was shot in the Great Terror.