“No, you were part of the same organization with me,” replied Vannikov.
Beria and Malenkov told Mikhail to wait in the corridor while they interrogated Vannikov some more. Mikhail went into Mikoyan’s private lavatory (one of the perks of power). There was a shot.8 The three of them found Kaganovich’s brother dead. By killing himself before his arrest, he saved his family. Lazar passed the test. A scapegoat for the aircraft blunders had been found.[173]
As these commissars travelled from Kremlin to torture chamber and back, the Germans surreptitiously deployed their legions along the Soviet frontier while Stalin channelled much of his energy into reasserting Russian influence in the Balkans. But by March, Hitler had managed to lure Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia into his camp. Then, on 26 March, the pro-German government in Yugoslavia was overthrown, probably with the help of the NKGB and the British secret service. Hitler could not afford such a sore on his flank so the Germans prepared to invade Yugoslavia, which delayed Operation Barbarossa by a month.
On 4 April, Stalin threw himself into negotiations with the new Yugoslav government, hoping this glitch in Hitler’s plan would either drive Berlin back to the negotiating table or, at the very least, delay the invasion until 1942. When he signed a treaty with the Yugoslavs just as the Wehrmacht began to bombard Belgrade, Stalin cheerfully dismissed the threat: “Let them come. We’ve strong nerves.” But Yugoslavia was Hitler’s most successful Blitzkrieg of alclass="underline" ten days later, Belgrade surrendered. Events were moving faster than the erosion of Stalin’s illusions.
That same day, Yosuke Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, arrived in Moscow on his way back from Berlin. As the Wehrmacht crushed the Yugoslavs, Stalin realized that he required a fresh path back to Hitler. But he was also aware of the priceless benefit of a quiet Far Eastern front if Hitler invaded. Zhukov’s victory in the Far East had persuaded Tokyo that their destiny lay southwards in the juicier tidbits of the British Empire. On 14 April 1941, when Matsuoka signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, Stalin and Molotov reacted with almost febrile excitement, as if they had single-handedly changed the shape of Europe and saved Russia. Stalin exclaimed how rare it was “to find a diplomat who speaks openly what is on his mind. What Talleyrand told Napoleon was well known, ‘the tongue was given the diplomat so that he could conceal his thoughts.’ We Russians and Bolsheviks are different…” For once, Stalin unwound at the resulting Bacchanal, while Molotov tossed back the champagne until both were as drunk as Matsuoka.
“Stalin and I made him drink a lot,” boasted Molotov later. By 6 a.m., Matsuoka “almost had to be carried to the train. We could barely stand up.” Stalin, Molotov and Matsuoka burst into song, rendering that Russian favourite, “Shoumel Kamysh” that went: “The reeds were rustling, the trees are crackling in the wind, the night was very dark… And the lovers stayed awake all night,” to guffaws. At Yaroslavsky Station, the assembled diplomats were amazed to see an intoxicated Stalin, in his greatcoat, brownvizored cap and boots, accompanied by Matsuoka and Molotov who kept saluting and shouting: “I’m a Pioneer! I’m ready!”—the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scout’s “Dib! Dib! Be prepared!” The Bulgarian Ambassador judged Molotov “the least drunk.” Stalin, who had never before seen any visitor off at the station, hugged the staggering Japanese but since neither could speak the other’s language, their new intimacy was expressed in embraces and grunts of “Ah! Ah!”
Stalin was so excited that he jovially punched the minuscule bald Japanese Ambassador-General on the shoulder so hard that he “staggered back three or four steps which caused Matsuoka to laugh in glee.” Then Stalin noticed the tall attaché Colonel Hans Krebs and, abandoning the Japanese, tapped him on the chest:
“German?” he asked. Krebs stiffened to attention, towering over Stalin who slapped him on the back, wrung his hand and said loudly, “We’ve been friends with you and we’ll remain friends with you.”
“I’m sure of that,” replied Krebs, though the Swedish Ambassador thought he “did not seem so convinced of it.”[174] Finally lumbering back to the Japanese, Stalin again embraced the much-hugged Matsuoka, exclaiming, “We’ll organize Europe and Asia!” Arm in arm, he led Matsuoka into his carriage and waited until the train departed. Japanese diplomats escorted Stalin to his armoured Packard while their Ambassador, “standing on a bench, waved his handkerchief and cried in a strident voice, ‘Thank you thank you!’”
The celebration was not over for Stalin and Molotov. As he got into the car, Stalin ordered Vlasik to call the dacha at Zubalovo and tell Svetlana, now fifteen, that she was to assemble the family for a party: “Stalin’s arriving any minute.”
Svetlana ran to tell her aunt, Anna Redens, who was there with her children and Gulia Djugashvili, aged three, Yakov’s daughter: “Father’s coming!”
Anna Redens had not seen Stalin since the row about her husband’s arrest and certainly not since his execution. All of them gathered on the steps. Minutes later, the tipsy, unusually cheerful Stalin arrived. Throwing open the car door, he hailed the twelve-year-old Leonid Redens: “Get in—let’s go for a drive!” The driver sped them round the flower bed. Then Stalin got out and hugged the apprehensive Anna Redens, who was holding her younger son Vladimir, now six. Stalin admired this angelic nephew: “For the sake of such a wonderful son, let’s make peace. I forgive you.” Little Gulia, Stalin’s first grandchild, was brought out to be admired but she waved her arms and screamed and was swiftly taken to her room. Stalin sat at the table where he had once presided with Nadya over their young family. Cakes and chocolates were brought. Stalin took Vladimir on to his lap and started opening the chocolates: the little boy noticed his “very beautiful long fingers.”
“You’re spoiling the children by buying them presents they don’t even want,” Stalin reprimanded the staff but, Vladimir says, “in his gentle way that made him very loved by them.”
After tea, Stalin went upstairs for a catnap. He had not slept the previous night. Then Molotov, Beria and Mikoyan arrived for dinner[175] at which “Stalin threw orange peel at everyone’s plates. Then he threw a cork right into the ice cream” which delighted Vladimir Alliluyev. The family could not know that Hitler’s imminent invasion, and Stalin’s exhaustion and paranoia, would make this the end of an era. 9
This was an oasis of exhilaration in a darkening sky. Torn between the wishful thinking of his powerful will—and the mounting evidence—Stalin persisted in believing that a diplomatic breakthrough with Hitler was just round the corner, even though he now knew the date of Operation Barbarossa from his spymasters. When Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador, delivered a letter from Winston Churchill warning of the invasion, it backfired, convincing Stalin that Britain was trying to entrap Russia: “We’re being threatened with the Germans, and the Germans with the Soviet Union,” Stalin told Zhukov. “They’re playing us off against each other.” 10
Yet he was not completely oblivious: in the contest that Molotov called “the great game,” Stalin thought Russia might manage to stay out of the war until 1942. “Only by 1943 could we meet the Germans on an equal footing,” he told Molotov. As ever, Stalin was trying to read himself out of the problem, carefully studying a history of the German-French War of 1870. He and Zhdanov repeatedly quoted Bismarck’s sensible dictum that Germany should never face war on two fronts: Britain remained undefeated hence Hitler would not attack. “Hitler’s not such a fool,” Stalin said, “that he’s unable to understand the difference between the USSR and Poland or France, or even England, indeed all of them put together.” Yet his entire career was a triumph of will over reality.
173
Kaganovich was despised for not saving his brother but he buried him with honour as a Central Committee member in the Novodevichy Cemetery, not far from Nadya Stalin. Vannikov survived but remained in prison.
174
Krebs was Chief of Staff of the
175
On 13 May 1941, Svetlana wrote to her father, “My dear little Secretary! Why have you recently been coming home so late?… Nevermind, I wouldn’t make my respected Secretaries miserable with my strictness. Eat as much as you like. You can drink too. I only ask you not to put vegetables or other food on the chairs in the hope that someone will sit on it. It will damage the chairs…” This was an early hint of the brutish games that characterised Stalin’s dinners after the war. “We obey,” replied Stalin. “Kisses to my little sparrow. Your little Secretary, Stalin.”