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At around 10 p.m., the CC mail arrived. The short, burly Lozgachev, gripping the papers, stepped nervously into the house, going from room to room. He was especially noisy because “we were careful not to creep up on him . . . so he’d hear you coming.” He “saw a terrible picture” in the small dining room. Stalin lay on the carpet in pyjama bottoms and undershirt, leaning on one hand “in a very awkward way.” He was conscious but helpless. When he heard Lozgachev’s steps, he called him by “weakly lifting his hand.” The guard ran to his side: “What’s wrong, Comrade Stalin?”
Stalin muttered something, “Dzhh,” but he could not speak. He was cold. There was a watch and a copy of Pravda on the floor beside him, a bottle of Narzan mineral water on the table. He had wet himself.
“Shall I call the doctor maybe?” asked Lozgachev.
“Dzhhh,” buzzed Stalin. “Dzhhh.” Lozgachev picked up the watch: it had stopped at 6:30 when the stroke had hit him. Stalin gave a snore and seemed to fall asleep. Lozgachev dashed to the phone and called Starostin and Butuzova.
“Let’s put him on the sofa, it’s uncomfortable . . . on the floor,” he told them and the three lifted him onto the sofa. Lozgachev kept vigil—“I didn’t leave the Boss’s side”—while Starostin telephoned MGB boss Ignatiev, in charge of Stalin’s personal security since Vlasik’s dismissal in May 1952. He was too frightened to decide anything. He had the power to call doctors himself but he had to act carefully. He ordered Starostin to call Beria and Malenkov. He probably also warned his friend Khrushchev because he needed protection against Beria who blamed him for the Doctors’ Plot and the Mingrelian Case, and wanted his head. Beria was probably the last to find out.
Meanwhile the “attachments” moved Stalin onto the sofa in the main dining room where the famous dinners took place, because it was airier there. He was very cold. They covered him with a blanket and Butuzova rolled his sleeves down. Starostin could not find Beria, probably entangled with his mistress somewhere, but contacted Malenkov who said he would search for him. Half an hour later, he called back: “I haven’t found Beria yet,” he admitted.
After another half-hour, Beria called: “Don’t tell anybody about Comrade Stalin’s illness,” he ordered, “and don’t call.” Lozgachev sat anxiously beside Stalin. He said his hair went grey that night.
Malenkov had also called Khrushchev and Bulganin: “The Chekists have rung from Stalin’s place. They’re very worried, they say something’s happened to Stalin. We’d better get out there . . .” Yet Khrushchev claimed that when they arrived at the guardhouse, they “agreed” not to enter but to leave this sensitive matter to the guards. Stalin was now sleeping and would not want to be seen “in such an unseemly state. So we went home.” The guards do not remember this visit. It seems more likely that Khrushchev, Bulganin, and probably Ignatiev, after frantic consultations, sent in Beria and Malenkov to find out if anything was really wrong. Somehow, during the night, the anti-Semitic campaign in Pravda was halted by someone— or was it Stalin’s deliberate pause?310
At 3 a.m. the morning of Monday 2 March, this little delegation arrived at Kuntsevo, over four hours after Starostin’s first call to Malenkov. Both men acted in character: Beria was the dynamic, keyed-up (possibly drunk) adventurer, Malenkov, Stalin’s measured, nervous clerk. While Beria marched into the hall, Malenkov noticed to his horror that his shoes were creaking and slipped them off. “Malanya” tucked his shoes under his arm and tiptoed forward in his socks with the grace of a flabby dancer.
“What’s wrong with the Boss?” They looked at the sleeping Generalissimo, snoring under his blanket, and then Beria turned on the “attachments.”
“What do you mean . . . starting a panic?” he swore at Lozgachev. “The Boss is obviously sleeping peacefully. Let’s go, Malenkov.”
“Malanya” tiptoed out in his socks while Lozgachev tried to explain that “Comrade Stalin was sick and needed medical attention.”
“Don’t bother us, don’t cause a panic and don’t disturb Comrade Stalin!” The worried guards persisted but Beria swore: “Who attached you fools to Comrade Stalin?”
The limousine drove away to meet the waiting Khrushchev and Bulganin. The bargaining for power surely started that night. Lozgachev returned to his vigil while Starostin and Butuzova went to sleep in the guardhouse.
Dawn broke over the firs and birches of Kuntsevo. It was now twelve hours since Stalin’s stroke and he was still snoring on the sofa, wet from his own urine. The magnates surely discussed whether to call doctors. It was extraordinary that they had not called a doctor for twelve hours but it was an extraordinary situation. This is usually used as evidence that the magnates deliberately left Stalin without medical help in order to kill him. But in their fragile situation, at a court already bristling with spy-mania against the killer-doctors, it was not just hyperbole to fear causing panic. Stalin’s own doctor was being tortured merely for saying he should rest. If Stalin awoke feeling groggy, he would have regarded the very act of calling doctors as an attempt to seize power. Furthermore, they were so accustomed to his minute control that they could barely function on their own.
But the Four had those hours to divide power. The decision to do nothing suited everyone. Beria and Malenkov, Stalin’s first deputies, in the government and Party respectively, were legally in charge until a full meeting of the Politburo and then of the Central Committee. If Stalin was dying, they needed time to tie up power. Possibly for the same reasons, it was in the interests of Khrushchev and Bulganin to delay medical help until they had protected their position. They seem to have promised to protect Ignatiev and promote him to the CC Secretariat.
Beria, the only one of the Four fearing for his life at that time, had every reason to hope the hated Stalin would die. (Molotov and Mikoyan did not yet know Stalin was ill.) Yet Beria was never alone with Stalin—he took care that Malenkov was with him. He was not in control of the MGB, nor the Doctors’ Plot, nor the bodyguards, hence his comment, “Who attached you fools to Comrade Stalin?” Even though Beria has always been blamed for the delay, Khrushchev and Ignatiev may actually have been the cause of it.
Whatever their motives, the Four delayed calling a doctor until morning. We will never know if this was medically decisive or not. There was the possibility of an operation to clear the blood clot but doctors agree that it had to take place within hours of the stroke and who would have dared to authorize it? In the fifties, there was a remote chance of such an operation being successful: it was more likely to kill the patient. Melodramatic accounts of Stalin’s death, of which there are no shortage, claim that Stalin was murdered. It is most likely that the denial of medical care made not the slightest difference. But Beria clearly thought it had: “I did him in!” he later boasted to Molotov and Kaganovich. “I saved you all!”
Recent research has suggested that he could have spiked Stalin’s wine with a blood-thinning drug such as warfarin, which, over several days, might cause a stroke. Perhaps Khrushchev and the others were accomplices, hence the cover-up suited them all—but there is no such evidence.
The Four now returned home to sleep, saying nothing to their families. At the imperial bedside, Lozgachev was desperate. He awoke Starostin and told him to call the Politburo—“otherwise he’ll die and it’ll be curtains for you and me.” The terror that prevented the leaders calling the doctors now made the guards demand them. They phoned Malenkov who told them to send in Butuzova to take another look. She announced it was “no ordinary sleep.” Malenkov called Beria.
“The boys have rung again from Stalin’s place,” Malenkov told Khrushchev. “They say there really is something wrong with Comrade Stalin. We’ll have to go back again. We agreed the doctors would have to be called.” Beria and Malenkov were making all the decisions but which doctors to call? So they asked Tretyakov, Minister of Health, to select some Russian (not Jewish) doctors. Khrushchev arrived at Kuntsevo to tell the relieved “attachments” the doctors were on their way. Colonel Tukov called Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov, another sign that the Four had never approved of their exclusion.
“Call the Politburo. I’m on my way,” Molotov replied. When the phone rang in Voroshilov’s home, the old Marshal was transformed: “He became strong and organized,” wrote his wife in her unpublished diary, “as I saw him in dangerous situations in the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars . . . I understood unhappiness was coming. In great fear through running tears, I asked him, ‘What happened?’ He embraced me. ‘Don’t be afraid!’”
Voroshilov joined Kaganovich, Molotov and Mikoyan at the bedside. Molotov noticed “Beria was in charge.” Stalin opened his eyes when Kaganovich arrived and looked at his lieutenants one by one—and then closed his eyes again. Unlike the overbearing Beria, Molotov and Kaganovich were deeply moved. Tears ran down their cheeks. Voroshilov reverently addressed the patient: “Comrade Stalin, we’re here, your loyal friends and comrades. How do you feel dear friend?”
Stalin’s face was “contorted.” He stirred but never fully regained consciousness. Khrushchev was “very upset, I was very sorry we were losing Stalin.” He rushed home to wash and hurried back to Kuntsevo with no one in his family asking any questions. According to his son, Beria called home and told his wife about Stalin’s illness: Nina burst into tears. Like most of the Politburo wives, even those about to be killed, she was inconsolable.
At 7 a.m., the doctors, led by Professor Lukomsky, finally arrived but they were a new team who had never worked with Stalin before. They were brought to the patient in the big dining room which must have reeked of stale urine. With their colleagues under torture, they were awestruck by the sanctity of Stalin and petrified by Beria’s Mephistophelian presence lurking behind them. Their examination of the powerless, once omnipotent patient was a comedy of errors. “They were all trembling like us,” observed Lozgachev. First, a dentist arrived to take out Stalin’s false teeth but “he was so frightened, they slipped out of his hands” and fell onto the floor. Then Lukomsky tried to take Stalin’s shirt off in order to take his blood pressure. “Their hands were trembling so much,” noticed Lozgachev, “that they could not even get his shirt off.” Lukomsky was “terrified to touch Stalin” and could not even get a grip on his pulse.
“Hold his hand properly!” Beria snapped at Lukomsky.
The clothes had to be cut away with scissors. “I ripped open the shirt,” recalled Lozgachev. They began to examine the patient “lying on a divan on his back, his head turned to the left, eyes closed, with moderate hyperaemia of the face . . . There had been involuntary urination, [his clothes were soaked in urine.]” His pulse was 78; heartbeat “faint”; blood pressure 190 over 110. His right side was paralysed while his left limbs quivered sometimes. His forehead was cooled. He was given a glass of 10 percent magnesium sulphate. A neuropathologist, therapist and nurse stood vigil. The doctors asked the guards who had seen what. The guards now feared for their lives too: “We thought, this is it then, they’ll put us in a car and it’s goodbye, we’re done for!”
Stalin had suffered a cerebral catastrophe or, in their words, “middle-left cerebral arterial haemorrhaging . . . The patient’s condition is extremely serious.” It was official at last. Stalin would not be able to work again.
The bodyguards stepped back and faded into the furniture. There was little the doctors could actually do. They recommended: “Absolute quiet, leave the patient on the divan; leeches behind the ears (eight now in place); cold compress on the head . . . No food today.” When he was fed, it was to be with a teaspoon “to give liquid when there is no choking.” Oxygen cylinders were wheeled in. The doctors injected Stalin with camphor. They took a urine sample. The patient stirred. “Stalin tried to cover himself.”
Svetlana, who had celebrated her birthday the night before, was called out of a French class and told, “Malenkov wants you to come” to Kuntsevo. Khrushchev and Bulganin, both in tears, waved her car to a stop and hugged her.
“Beria and Malenkov will tell you everything.” It was again clear who was in charge. The bustle and noise astonished her: Kuntsevo had always been so quiet. She noticed that the doctors were strangers. When she came to the bedside, she kissed Stalin, realizing “I loved my father more tenderly than I ever had before.”
When he was summoned, Vasily was so scared of his father that he thought he would have to present his work and pitifully arrived with his air-force maps. He was soon drunk. Throughout the next two days, he lurched in and out of the quiet sickroom, shouting: “You swine haven’t saved my father!” Svetlana was embarrassed to hear him.
The leaders wondered whether to remove this loose cannon but Voroshilov took Vasily aside, soothing him: “We’re doing all we can to save your father’s life.”
Once it was proved that he was incapacitated, Beria “spewed forth his hatred of Stalin” but whenever his eyelids flickered or his eyes opened, Beria, terrified that he would recover, “knelt and kissed his hand” like an Oriental vizier at a Sultan’s bedside. When Stalin sank again into sleep, Beria virtually spat at him, revealing his reckless ambition, and lack of tact and prudence. The other magnates observed him silently but they were weeping for Stalin, their old but flawed friend, longtime leader, historical titan, and the supreme pontiff of their international creed, even as they sighed with relief that he was dying. Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags. Yet, after so much slaughter, they were still believers.
At about ten, the entire old Politburo, from Beria and Khrushchev to Molotov, Voroshilov and Mikoyan, headed to the Kremlin where they met at 10:40 a.m. in the Little Corner to agree on a plan. Stalin’s seat stood empty. They had restored themselves to power. For ten minutes, Dr. Kuperin, the new Kremlevka chief, and Professor Tkachev nervously presented the report quoted above to the confused, upset and pent-up magnates. Afterwards, no one spoke, which made Kuperin even more nervous. It was perhaps too early to discuss what would happen next.
Finally, Beria, who had already emerged as the most active leader, dismissed the doctors with this ominous order: “You’re responsible for Comrade Stalin’s life. Do you understand? You must do everything possible and impossible to save Comrade Stalin!” Kuperin flinched, then withdrew. Malenkov, with whom Beria seemed to be coordinating everything, read out a decree for twenty-four-hour vigils by the leaders in pairs. Then Beria and Malenkov sped back to Kuntsevo to watch over the patient. Molotov and Mikoyan were not asked to keep vigil: Beria ordered Mikoyan to stay in the Kremlin and run the country.
Back at Kuntsevo, when Malenkov was on vigil with Beria, they requested the doctor’s prognosis. Kuperin displayed a chart of the blood circulation: “You see the clotted blood vessel,” he lectured the Politburo as if to medical students. “It’s the size of a five-kopeck piece. Comrade Stalin would remain alive if the vessel had been cleared in time.”
“Who guarantees the life of Comrade Stalin?” Beria challenged the doctors to operate if they dared.
“No one dared,” said Lozgachev. Malenkov asked for the prognosis:
“Death is inevitable,” replied the doctors. But Malenkov did not want Stalin to die yet: there could be no interregnum.
At 8:30 p.m., the leaders, chaired now by Beria, met again for an hour at the Little Corner. Kuperin’s official report did not present Stalin’s condition as hopeless but the patient had deteriorated. His blood pressure was now 210 over 120, breathing and heartbeat irregular. Six to eight leeches were applied around his ears. Stalin received enemas of magnesium sulphate, and spoonfuls of sweet tea.
That evening, Lukomsky was joined by four more doctors including the eminent Professor Myasnikov: the Politburo knew the top doctors were all in prison.
At Kuntsevo, Dr. Myasnikov found “a short and fat” Stalin lying there “in a heap . . . His face was contorted . . . The diagnosis seemed clear— a haemorrhage in the left cerebral hemisphere resulting from hypertension and sclerosis.” The doctors kept their detailed log, taking notes every twenty minutes. The magnates sat blearily in armchairs, stretching their legs, standing by the bedside, watching the doctors. These endless nights gave them the chance to plan the transfer of power.
“Malenkov gave us to understand,” wrote Myasnikov, “he hoped that medical measures would succeed in prolonging the patient’s life ‘for a sufficient period.’ We all realized he had in mind the time necessary for the organization of the new government.”
There were no more official meetings in the Kremlin until 5 March. While Beria and Malenkov whispered about the distribution of offices, Khrushchev and Bulganin wondered how to prevent Beria grabbing control of the secret police. Beria’s plans had been laid long before, probably with Malenkov: since no Georgian could rule Russia again, Malenkov planned to head the government while remaining Secretary. Beria would seize his old fiefdom, the MGB/MVD.
Late at night, Mikoyan looked in on the dying man. Molotov was ill but he appeared from time to time, thinking of his Polina whom he hoped was alive in exile. He did not know she was being interrogated in the Lubianka. But that evening, on Beria’s orders, her interrogations abruptly stopped. The interrogations of the doctors continued, however. The factotum of the Doctors’ Plot, Ignatiev, was noticed nervously peering at the prone Stalin from the doorway. He was still terrified of him.
“Come in—don’t be shy!” said Lozgachev. The next morning Khrushchev popped home to sleep and told his family that Stalin was ill.
There were moments when Stalin seemed to regain consciousness: they were feeding him with soup from a teaspoon, when he pointed up at one of the mawkish photographs on the wall of a girl feeding a lamb and then “pointed at himself.” “He sort of smiled,” thought Khrushchev. The magnates smiled back. Molotov thought it was an example of Stalin’s self-deprecating wit. Beria fell to his knees and kissed Stalin’s hand fervently. Stalin closed his eyes, “never to open them again.” At 10:15 that morning, the doctors reported that Stalin had worsened.
“The bastards have killed Father,” Vasily lurched in again. Khrushchev put his arm round this tiny terrified man, guiding him into the next room.
Beria, who went home for some lunch, was open about his relief. “It will be better for him to die,” he told his family. “If he survives it will be as a vegetable.” Nina was still weeping about Stalin’s death: “You’re a funny one, Nina. His death has saved your life.” Nina visited Svetlana daily to comfort her.
Late on the 4th, Stalin started to deteriorate, his breathing becoming shorter and shallower, the Cheyne-Stokes breathing pattern of a patient losing strength. Beria and Malenkov checked up on their Second Eleven of doctors. That night, three surprised prisoners, tortured daily in the Doctors’ Plot, were led off for another session. But this time, their torturer was not interested in the Zionist conspiracy but politely asked their medical advice.
“My uncle is very sick,” said the interrogator, and is experiencing “this Cheyne-Stokes breathing. What do you think this means?”
“If you’re expecting to inherit from your uncle,” replied the professor, who had not lost his Jewish wit, “consider it’s in your pocket.” Another distinguished professor, Yakov Rapoport, was asked to name the specialists who should treat this “sick uncle.” Rapoport named Vinogradov and the other doctors under arrest. But the interrogator asked if Doctors Kuperin and Lukomsky were good too. He was shocked when Rapoport replied, “Only one of the four [doctors treating Stalin] is a competent physician but on a much lower level than the men in prison.” The interrogations continued but the investigators had lost interest. Sometimes they fell asleep during the sessions. The prisoners knew nothing.
At 11:30 p.m. Stalin retched. There were long pauses between ragged breaths. Kuperin told the assembled grandees, who watched in awed silence, that the situation was critical.
“Take all measures to save Comrade Stalin!” ordered the excited Beria. So the doctors continued to struggle to keep the dying Generalissimo alive. An artificial respirator was wheeled in and never used but it was accompanied by young technicians who stared “goggle-eyed” at the surreal things happening all around them.
On the 5th, Stalin suddenly paled and his breathing became shallower with longer intervals. The pulse was fast and faint. He started to wiggle his head. There were spasms in his left arm and leg. At midday, Stalin vomited blood. The latest research has uncovered a first draft of the doctors’ medical notes, which reveal that his stomach was haemorrhaging, a detail deleted from the final report. Perhaps it was cut because it might suggest poisoning. Warfarin might well have caused such bleeding, which does indeed look suspicious, but it may just have marked the collapse of a sick old body.
“Come quickly, Stalin’s had a setback!” Malenkov told Khrushchev. The magnates rushed back. Stalin’s pulse slowed. At 3:35 p.m., his breathing stopped for five seconds every two or three minutes. He was sinking fast. Beria, Khrushchev and Malenkov had received the Politburo’s permission to ensure that Stalin’s “documents and papers, both current and archival, are put in proper order.” Now, leaving the other two at the bedside, Beria sped into the Kremlin to begin the process of searching Stalin’s safe and files for incriminating documents. First there may have been a will: Lenin had left a testament and Stalin had talked of recording his thoughts. If so, Beria now destroyed it. The files were filled with denunciations and evidence against all the leaders. There would have been evidence of Beria’s dubious role in Baku during the Civil War and there would also have been the missing documents that revealed the bloody role of Malenkov and Khrushchev in the Great Terror, the Leningrad Case and the Doctors’ Plot. That afternoon, these three began the destruction of documents. This successfully protected the historical reputation of Khrushchev and Malenkov, even if Beria’s was already beyond repair.311
Beria returned. The doctors reported on the latest decline. An official meeting of the whole regime, three hundred senior officials, was set for that evening. Now the magnates gathered informally in one of the other rooms to form the new government. Beria and his “billygoat” Malenkov had prearranged the “collective leadership,” taking turns proposing the appointments. Molotov and Mikoyan returned to the Presidium, shrunk to its previous size. Molotov returned as Foreign Minister, Mikoyan as Minister of Internal and External Trade. Khrushchev remained one of the senior Secretaries but he was excluded from the government. Beria was dominant, reuniting the MVD and MGB while remaining First Deputy Premier. Malenkov succeeded to both Stalin’s posts of Premier and Secretary. Yet the military were also strengthened: Defence Minister Bulganin’s new deputies were the old paladins, Zhukov and Vasilevsky. Voroshilov became President. No wonder Beria was exultant.
The illegitimate Mingrelian, trained as an architect but seasoned in the police, was already dreaming of ruling the Imperium, one of the nuclear superpowers, and becoming an international statesman, not just a secret policeman anymore. He had survived against all the odds; he was free of fear. He could unleash his loathing of Stalin: “That scoundrel! That filth! Thank God we’re free of him!” He could expose that phoney Generalissimo: “He didn’t win the war!” he was soon telling his confidants. “We won the war!” Furthermore, “We would have avoided the war!” He harnessed the phrase “the cult of personality” to denounce Stalin. He would free the nationalities, open the economy, liberate East Germany, empty the labour camps with a beneficent amnesty and expose the Doctors’ Plot. He did not doubt for a moment that his superior intelligence and fresh anti-Bolshevik ideas would triumph. Even Molotov realized “he was a man of the future.”
If his policies seemed to prefigure Gorbachev’s reforms, Beria always remained “just a policeman,” in Stalin’s words, for he was itching to avenge himself on those, such as Vlasik, who had betrayed him. He was not the successor, merely the strongman in a “collective leadership.” But many of the new potentates feared him, his brutality and his bid for popularity by de-Bolshevizing the regime. Beria underestimated Khrushchev and the marshals. Nonetheless, it was a remarkable achievement.
Afterwards, the magnates gathered beside the wheezing patient. Beria approached the bedside and announced melodramatically like a Crown Prince in a movie: “Comrade Stalin, all the members of the Politburo are here. Speak to us!” There was no reaction.
Voroshilov pulled Beria back: “Let the bodyguards and staff come to the bedside—he knows them intimately.” Colonel Khrustalev stood by the bed and spoke to him. Stalin did not open his eyes. The leaders queued to bid goodbye, forming up in pairs like a crocodile of schoolchildren in order of importance, with Beria and Malenkov first, then Voroshilov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Mikoyan, followed by the younger leaders. They shook his hand ritually. Malenkov claimed that Stalin squeezed his fingers, passing him the succession.
Leaving just Bulganin at the bedside, the potentates then rushed to the Kremlin where the Presidium, Council of Ministers and Supreme Soviet Presidium gathered to rubber-stamp the new government: they removed Stalin as Premier but strangely left him as a Presidium member. The three hundred or so officials confirmed the prearranged deal. There was a sense of “relief” among the magnates.312
They expected a call from Bulganin to announce Stalin’s death but none came. Stalin was still holding out and they headed back to Kuntsevo. After 9 p.m., he started to sweat. His pulse was weak, his lips turned blue. The Politburo, Svetlana Stalin, Valechka, and the guards gathered round the sofa. The junior leaders crowded outside, watching from the doorway.
At 9:30 p.m., Stalin’s breaths were forty-eight a minute. His heartbeat grew fainter. At 9:40 p.m. with everyone watching, the doctors gave Stalin oxygen. His pulse virtually disappeared. The doctors proposed an injection of camphor and adrenalin to stimulate his heart. It should have been Vasily and Svetlana’s decision but they just watched. Beria gave the order. Stalin gave a shiver after the injection and became increasingly breathless. He slowly began to drown in his own fluids.
“Take Svetlana away,” commanded Beria to prevent her seeing this dread vision—but no one moved.
“His face was discoloured,” wrote Svetlana, “his features becoming unrecognisable . . . He literally choked to death as we watched. The death agony was terrible . . . At the last minute, he opened his eyes. It was a terrible look, either mad or angry and full of the fear of death.” Suddenly the rhythm of his breathing changed. His left hand rose. A nurse thought it was “like a greeting.” He “seemed either to be pointing upwards somewhere or threatening us all . . .” observed Svetlana. It was more likely that he was simply clawing the air for oxygen. “Then the next moment, his spirit after one last effort tore itself from his body.” A woman doctor burst into tears and threw her arms around the devastated Svetlana.
The struggle was not over yet. A Brobdingnagian doctor fell on the corpse and started artificial respiration, athletically massaging the chest.
It was so painful to watch that Khrushchev felt sorry for Stalin: “Stop it please! Can’t you see the man’s dead? What do you want? You won’t bring him back to life. He’s already dead,” Khrushchev called out, showing his impulsive authority in the first order not given by Beria or Malenkov. Stalin’s features became “pale . . . serene, beautiful, imperturbable,” wrote Svetlana. “We all stood frozen and silent.”
Once again they formed up in that uneasy crocodile: Beria darted forward and ritually kissed the warm body first, the equivalent of wrenching a dead king’s ring off his finger. The others queued up to kiss him. Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Bulganin, Khrushchev and Malenkov were sobbing with Svetlana. Molotov cried, mourning Stalin despite his own imminent liquidation and that of his wife. Mikoyan hid his feelings but “it may be said I was lucky.” Beria was not crying: indeed he was “radiant” and “regenerated”—a bulging but effervescent grey toad, glistening with ill-concealed relish. He strode through the weeping potentates into the hall.
The sepulchral silence around the deathbed was suddenly “shattered by the sound of his loud voice, the ring of triumph unconcealed,” in Svetlana’s words: “Khrustalev, the car!” he bellowed, heading for the Kremlin.
“He’s off to take power,” Mikoyan said to Khrushchev. Svetlana noticed “they were all terrified of him.” They looked after him—and then with frenzied haste, “the members of the government rushed for the door . . .” Mikoyan and Bulganin remained a little longer but then they too called for their limousines. The Instantsiya had left the building. The colossus had vanished, leaving only the husk of an old man on a sofa in an ugly suburban house.
Just the servants and family remained: “cooks, chauffeurs and watchmen, gardeners and women who waited at table” now emerged out of the background “to say goodbye.” Many were sobbing, with rough bodyguards wiping their eyes with their sleeves “like children.” A weeping old nurse gave them valerian drops. Svetlana watched numbly. Some servants started to turn off the lights and tidy up.
Then Stalin’s closest companion, the comfort of the cruel loneliness of this unparalleled monster, Valechka, who was now aged thirty-eight and had worked with Stalin since she was twenty, pushed through the crying maids, “dropped heavily to her knees” and threw herself onto the corpse with all the uninhibited grief of the ordinary people. This cheerful but utterly discreet woman, who had seen so much, was convinced to her dying day that “no better man ever walked the earth.” Laying her head squarely on his chest, Valechka, with tears pouring down the cheeks of “her round face,” “wailed at the top of her voice as the women in the villages do. She went on for a long time and nobody tried to stop her.”1