Later Stalin put on a record, on which the coloratura chirrup of the singer was accompanied by the howling and barking of dogs. He laughed with an exaggerated, excessive amusement.… (Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin)
Stalin put on dance music and we began to dance. The only good dancer among us was Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan. Mikoyan danced, then Voroshilov danced. Everyone danced. I never move my feet, I dance like a cow on ice, but I too danced. Kaganovich danced. He too is a dancer of a class no better than mine. Same with Malenkov. Bulganin used to dance, probably in his youth; he tapped something Russian with his foot to the beat of the music. Stalin also danced — he shuffled his feet and spread his arms.… We sang. We sang, meaning we accompanied the records that Stalin put on. Later, Svetlanka appeared.… Stalin immediately ordered that she dance. After a time she grew tired, I could see that she was just barely moving … Stalin himself was already staggering, but he said: “Well, Svetlanka, dance!” And she: “But I’ve already danced, daddy, I’m tired.” But Stalin grabbed her like this, by the hair, a whole fistful, I mean by her forelock, as it were, and pulled, you understand, very hard … pulled, jerked and jerked. (Nikita Khrushchev, Memoirs)
I WAS WALKING in the direction of the Palace of the Senate when suddenly two men appeared in front of me. Young, well built, in gray suits. I do not know where they came from; it was instantaneous. Instantaneous, resolute, imperious. One of them raised his hand, giving the signal — stop. Nothing more, but it all looked very serious and final. They didn’t ask a single question — it was a scene without words. I stood for a moment, deliberating what I should do, then turned around and started to walk in the direction of the Arsenal.
I walked, and the setting sun shone in my eyes. Maybe that is why I saw the two men in front of me so late. Young, well built, in gray suits. The same as their predecessors, even identical, but of course different. One of them raised his hand in the practiced gesture — stop. I stopped, again seconds of hesitation, but then I turned to one side. They vanished at once.
I did not know where to go, what to do with myself — I knew the Kremlin only from photographs. But I spotted the rectangular silhouette of the Palace of Congresses, familiar to me from pictures. I set off in that direction. The Congress of the Siberians, however, must have been located in another building, for as soon as I walked up closer, two young men materialized before me. Well-built, in gray suits. The interior of the palace, moreover, was dark, all entrance doors closed. I decided to go south, for I saw in that direction the glittering cupolas of the Orthodox churches and cathedrals. I was hoping that there, perhaps, they would let me go in somewhere and see something.
At this stage of my wandering I theorized that I could succeed in my expedition if I walked everywhere with a determined step and even with a certain haste, moving in a straight line from point A to a previously selected point B.
But even this method did not save me from encounters with ever new pairs of well-built men in gray suits. It was as if, walking, I were inadvertently pressing down on some secret stone and releasing an invisible spring, which continually flung in my direction pairs of men who resembled each other as closely as twins. I retreated or turned to one side, and they — as quickly as they appeared — vanished.
IT WAS STILL empty everywhere.
An early evening wind had arisen, and in the silence that prevailed here I heard only its sporadic murmurs and laments. I was walking across Cathedral Square, having passed along the way the enormous Uspienski Cathedral and the towering belfry of Ivan the Great. Everywhere here man feels small, crushed by the immensity of these temples, stunned by the uniqueness of their architecture.
Finally I reached the Borovitskaya Tower, closely guarded because the top leadership drives into the Kremlin through its gate. I wanted to see this place, for I was just reading a book about Beria, and on June 26, 1953, Beria entered the Kremlin this way for the last time. Stalin had already been dead for four months. His place had been taken by Khrushchev. Khrushchev was afraid that Beria would shoot him and seize power himself; therefore he wanted to forestall the blow and had Beria arrested. In the book I mentioned (Beria: The End of the Career), the then commander of the Moscow district, Marshal K. G. Moskalenko, recalls: “On June 25 at nine o’clock in the morning Khrushchev called me. He said that I should take some trusted people and come to the Kremlin, to the office of Premier Malenkov, in which Stalin once officiated. He added that I should bring maps, and also some cigars. I told him that I don’t smoke, that I had given up smoking during the war. Khrushchev started to laugh and said that there would be a need for cigars, but not the kind I’m thinking of. Only then did I understand that I was supposed to bring weapons.”
Khrushchev was speaking about cigars, and not about pistols, because everyone was eavesdropping on everyone else and the whole plot might have come to light.
At eleven Moskalenko and his people arrived at the Kremlin in the limousine of Marshal Bulganin (then the minister of defense). They waited.
After several minutes Khrushchev, Bulganin, Malenkov, and Molotov came out to meet us. They started to tell us how lately Beria had been behaving insolently toward the other members of the Political Bureau, spying on them, eavesdropping on telephone conversations, snooping, watching to determine who went to see whom, whom the members of the Bureau were meeting with, treating them in a boorish manner, etc. They told us that the Political Bureau was about to convene and that at a given signal we were to enter and arrest Beria.
Marshal G. K. Zhukov relates further:
Together with Moskalenko, his aide-de-camp, and the generals Niedielin and Batick I was sitting in a room and waiting for the two rings that were the agreed upon signal. I was forewarned that Beria was physically strong and knows jujitsu.
“That’s nothing,” I answered, “I am strong too.”
An hour passed, and no ringing. I started to worry whether by chance Beria hadn’t outsmarted everyone. But then the rings. I got up, we went to the hall of the Bureau meetings. Beria was sitting at the table, in the center. My generals encircled the table. They approached Beria from the rear and ordered:
“Get up! You are under arrest!”
Beria hadn’t yet had time to get up when I twisted his arms to the rear and pulled them up, so that he wouldn’t be able to tear them away. I looked at him, and he was pale, very pale. And stunned.
We led him into the waiting room, then into another room. Here we searched him thoroughly. Oh, I forgot. In the moment when I twisted Beria’s arms, I quickly reached for his belt, to check whether by chance he wasn’t armed.
We held Beria in the locked room until ten in the evening, and then under cover of darkness we drove him out of the Kremlin, wrapped in a carpet and thrown upon the car floor. The point was for the Kremlin guard not to notice him and not to inform his people.
Then they tried Beria — not for his crimes, but for wanting to seize power. And they immediately shot him.
Moskalenko drove Beria out of the Kremlin through the gate in the Nikolskaya Tower, situated closest to the city.
I now walk out through that same gate onto Tverskaya Street (formerly Gorky Street). Some young people are demonstrating, and I come up closer to hear what they are chanting. They are marching, holding hands, and shouting: “Coca-Cola hurrah!!!”
Moving in the same direction, up Tverskaya Street, are the tired and hungry people who today stood in line for several hours to get into the mausoleum and see Lenin. They are now getting in a second line — the one for McDonald’s, for hamburgers with ketchup and fries.