On 9 May, Moscow celebrated Victory Day but the curmudgeonly conqueror was wearily impatient with the jubilation. Stalin was furious when a junior general signed the German surrender at Reims and, pacing the floor, ordered Zhukov to sign a proper surrender in Berlin, “whence German aggression sprang.” But the glory days of the generals were over: Vyshinsky arrived to “handle political matters” and spent the entire ceremony “bobbing up to whisper instructions in Zhukov’s ear.” Stalin closely watched Zhukov and his supposed delusions of grandeur. Later in the year, he summoned him to the Kremlin to warn him that Beria and Abakumov were gathering evidence against him: “I don’t believe all this nonsense but stay out of Moscow.”
That was not a problem since Zhukov was Stalin’s proconsul in Berlin. Stalin despatched his satraps to rule his new empire. Mikoyan flew in to feed the Germans. Malenkov and Voznesensky arrived to fight about whether to loot German industry or preserve it to build a Soviet satellite regime. Zhdanov held court in Finland, Voroshilov in Hungary, Bulganin in Poland, Vyshinsky in Romania. When Khrushchev called to congratulate him, Stalin cut him off for “wasting his time.”
A call from Svetlana cheered Stalin: “Congratulations on victory, Papa!”
“Yes we’ve won,” he laughed. “Congratulations to you too!”
At 8 p.m. on 24 May, Stalin hosted a banquet for the Politburo and marshals, singers, actors and even Polish miners, in the Georgevsky Hall. There was a traffic jam of limousines all the way to the Borovitsky Gate. The guests found their seats and waited eagerly. When Stalin appeared, “ovations and shouts of ‘Hurrah’ shook the vaulted halls… with a deafening roar.” Molotov toasted the marshals who clinked glasses with the Politburo. When Admiral Isakov, who had lost his leg in 1942, was toasted, Stalin, still a master of the personal touch, walked all the way over to his distant table to clink glasses. Then Stalin praised the Russian people and referred to his own mistakes: “Another people could have said to the government: you have not justified our expectations, go away and we will install another government which will conclude peace with Germany and guarantee us a quiet life.”
Later, Stalin asked Zhukov and the marshals: “Don’t you think we should celebrate the defeat of Fascist Germany with a victory parade?”
Stalin decided to take the review on horseback. He could not ride but his hunger for glory still burned and he started secretly training to ride a white Arabian stallion, chosen by Budyonny. Around 15 June, a week before the parade, a spurred and booted Stalin in jodhpurs, apparently accompanied by his son Vasily, mounted the steed. He jerked his spurs. The horse reared. Stalin grabbed the mane and tried to stay in the saddle but was thrown, bruising his shoulder. Pulling himself to his feet, he spat: “Let Zhukov take the parade. He’s a cavalryman.” At Kuntsevo, he asked Zhukov if he had forgotten how to ride.
“I haven’t,” replied Zhukov. “I still ride sometimes.”
“Good… You take the parade.”
“Thanks for the honour. But… you’re the Supremo and by right you should take it.”
“I’m too old… You do it. You’re younger.”
Zhukov would ride a white Arabian stallion which Budyonny would show him. The next day, Zhukov was reviewing the rehearsals at the central airfield when Vasily Stalin buttonholed him: “I’m telling you this as a big secret. Father had himself been preparing to take the parade but… three days ago, the horse bolted…”
“And which horse was your father riding?”
“A white Arab stallion, the one on which you’re taking the parade. But I beg you not to mention a word of this.” Zhukov mastered the Arabian.
At 9:57 a.m. on 24 June, Zhukov mounted the stallion at the Spassky Gate. It was pouring with rain. The clocks struck ten: “Parade-shun!”
“My heart beat faster,” wrote Zhukov. Simultaneously, Marshal Rokossovsky was waiting on Budyonny’s own black charger, appropriately named Polus—the Pole—at the Nikolsky Gate. Stalin, in his greatcoat, showing no expression, walked clumsily, slowly, out on his own then lightly bounded up the steps to the Mausoleum, with Beria and Malenkov sweating breathlessly in their efforts to keep up. When the crowds saw him, hurrahs resounded across the Square. The rain poured, the water running down his vizor. He never wiped his face. As the chimes rang out, Zhukov and Rokossovsky rode out, both soaked, the bands played Glinka’s “Slavsya!”—Glory to You—and tanks and Katyushas rumbled over the cobblestones. Silence fell on Red Square. “Then a menacing staccato beat of hundreds of drums could be heard,” wrote Yakovlev. “Marching in precise formation and beating out an iron cadence, a column of Soviet soldiers drew nigh.” Two hundred veterans each held a Nazi banner. At the Mausoleum they did a right turn and flung the banners, emblazoned with black and scarlet swastikas, at Stalin’s feet where the downpour soaked them. Here was the climax of Stalin’s life.
As soon as it was over, Stalin and the top brass poured into the room behind the Mausoleum for a buffet and drinks. It was here, according to Admiral Kuznetsov, that one of the marshals, probably Koniev, first proposed promoting Stalin to Generalissimo. He waved this away but then declared that he was now sixty-seven and weary: “I’ll work another two or three years, then I’ll have to retire.”
The Politburo and the marshals cried out on cue that he would live to rule the country for a long time yet. During the hard-drinking festivities, Stalin laughed as Poskrebyshev slipped the ceremonial dagger out of Vyshinsky’s diplomatic uniform and replaced it with a pickle. Much to Stalin’s amusement, the pompous ex-Procurator strutted around for the rest of the day oblivious of the vegetable in his scabbard, and the smirks of the magnates.
That night, at a banquet for 2,500 officers, Stalin, who was already thinking about how to tighten discipline and bind the Union together, toasted the “Russian people…” and the “screws,” the ordinary people, “without whom all of us, marshals and commanders of fronts and armies… would not be worth a damn.”
In these carefully phrased toasts, Stalin set down a marker for his courtiers. The marshals were “not worth a damn” compared to the Russian people whom only the Party (Stalin) could represent. His talk of retirement unleashed a brutal struggle among ruthless men to succeed a twentieth-century emperor who had no intention of ever retiring. Within five years, three of the contenders would be dead.2
Koniev’s proposal to Molotov and Malenkov that they promote Stalin to Generalissimo to differentiate him from the marshals was not completely Ruritanian—Suvorov had been Generalissimo—but there was now something of the South American junta about it. Stalin was against the idea. He was endowed with all the prestige of a world conqueror, a “deity… an ungainly dwarf of a man who passed through gilded and marble Imperial halls,” but the magnates were determined to honour him with the gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union, another Order of Victory, and the rank of Generalissimo.
“Comrade Stalin doesn’t need it,” he replied to Koniev. “Comrade Stalin has the authority without it. Some title you’ve thought up! Chiang Kai-shek’s a Generalissimo. Franco’s a Generalissimo—fine company I find myself in!” Kaganovich, proud inventor of “Stalinism,” also suggested renaming Moscow as Stalinodar, an idea that had first been suggested by Yezhov in 1938. Beria seconded him. This simply “outraged” Stalin: “What do I need this for?”
The wise courtier senses when his master secretly wants him to disobey. Malenkov and Beria had Kalinin sign the decree. Three days after the parade, Pravda announced Stalin’s new rank and medals. He was furious and summoned Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Zhdanov and old Kalinin, who was already extremely ill with stomach cancer. “I haven’t led regiments in the field… I’m refusing the star as undeserved.” They argued but he insisted. “Say what you like. I won’t accept the decorations.” But they noticed that he had taken care to accept the Generalissimo.