Summertime chez Stalin: natty Mikoyan in whites with the “young, handsome” and doomed Kuznetsov, Molotov and Poskrebyshev in uniform.
At his seventieth birthday gala on stage at the Bolshoi, Stalin stands between Mao Tse-tung and Khrushchev, whom Stalin summoned from Ukraine to offset Malenkov and Beria.
He effectively ruled Russia for months on end from his new house at New Athos in the late forties—this was his favourite (top). He also returned to a house where he had enjoyed a happy holiday with Nadya after Vasily’s birth in 1921—the Likani Palace, which once belonged to Tsar Nicholas II’s brother Grand Duke Michael (middle). When Khrushchev and Mikoyan visited, they had to share a room. He spent weeks in this remote house at Lake Ritsa (bottom). Stalin was now so frail that his guards built these green metal boxes (inset) containing special phones so that he could call for help if he was taken ill on his daily strolls.
All his life, Stalin slept on the big divans that were placed in virtually every room of all his houses. This is the sofa at Kuntsevo on which he died on 5 March 1953.
Plotting the destruction of Molotov and Mikoyan, the aging but determined Stalin watches Malenkov give the chief report at his last public appearance at the Nineteenth Congress in 1952. While organising the anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot, he ordered his secret police to torture the doctors: “Beat, beat and beat again!” he shouted. But he still found time to play with his grandchildren…
The fight for power began over Stalin’s deathbed. On the right Khrushchev and Bulganin (alongside Kaganovich and Mikoyan) face Beria and Malenkov (alongside Molotov and Voroshilov) across Stalin’s body. Beria seemed to have won the struggle for succession, but he fatally underestimated Khrushchev.
Stalin at the 1927 Congress: unshaven, pockmarked, sardonic, sarcastic and utterly vigilant, the supreme politician, the messianic egotist, fanatical Marxist, and superlative mass murderer, in his prime.
About the Author
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian specializing in Russia. Born in 1965, he read History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. His book Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography Prizes in Britain. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar was awarded the History Book of the Year Prize at the 2004 British Book Awards and is being published in over twenty languages. Author of two novels and presenter of television documentaries, he is married with two children and lives in London.
ALSO BY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner
Copyright
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2005
Copyright © 2003 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Montefiore, Simon Sebag [date]
Stalin: the court of the red tsar / by Simon Sebag Montefiore.
p. cm.
1. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953. 2. Heads of state—Soviet Union—Biography. 3. Soviet Union—History—1925–1953. I. Title.
DK268.S8M573 2004
947.085’2’092—dc22
2003027390
eISBN: 978-0-307-42793-9
v3.0