Death In The Kremlin | Part 5

It was a weird, ugly structure. From a distance silhouetted against the setting sun of the South Pacific, it looked exactly like a shabby out of the way radio station, just a square box of a building with a pretty unimpressive radio tower right next door, like something you might have seen in the 50s out in the middle of West Texas. These structures were a long, long way from West Texas. The buildings may have been shabby, but the location was stunning. Nothing but the sound of Pacific swells breaking on the beautiful sandy beaches of the enormous circular A-tall known as Innoe Talk. Seen in the early morning, it was about as quiet and peaceful a place as you could imagine. But twice before, things had gotten pretty loud on this little island housing the boxy building in the adjacent tower, during the late Cretaceous period, the top of an underwater volcano blew itself to atoms, leaving the thinnest sliver of islands surrounding the caldera. A bit over two square miles of island, enclosing almost 400 square miles of lagoon, a turquoise bulls eye with a 50-mile circumference. Now significantly less impressive was the roar made by the guns of the battleships Colorado, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, which opened fire from offshore on the very northern tip of this spidery island chain just before 7am on February 18th, 1944. The big guns of the United States Navy softened up the uppermost island in Jebby, and then less than two hours later, two battalions of the 22nd Marine Regiment won a shore. They met minimal resistance from the Japanese on on Jebby, and the island was declared secure by three o'clock that afternoon. By the gruesome standards of Guadalcanal and Tarot, already captured, and by the almost unimaginable horror of Iwo Jima and Okinawa yet to come, the capture of in Jebby was a bargain, although it wouldn't seem so to the 85 American Marines in the 1276 Imperial Japanese soldiers who died that gorgeous February day. Just a rifle shot to the west of in Jebby, a hop over the beautiful brilliant turquoise blue, sit four even smaller islands, Bogan, Titer, Bogaric, and Lujula. A simple makeshift causeway connected these islands, separated by about a tenth of a mile or so, and that causeway cut right through the dead center of all four islands before terminating at the Box and Tower structures on Lujula. On the morning of November 1st, 1952, this Box and Tower were greeting the already brilliant tropical sun rising over the South Pacific. It was just a bit after 7.15 am. Not a sound, except the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore. A few millions of a second later, it was gone. The building was gone, the tower was gone, and the entire island of Lujula was gone too. The only answer to communism is a massive offensive. Back in 1848, British scientist William Thompson was tired of having to use negative numbers below zero numbers for temperature. He calculated the hypothetical coldest temperature that could exist anywhere in the universe, and he set that to zero. That meant that every possible temperature would be some kind of positive numbers, some degree above absolute zero. A few seconds after 7.15 in the morning, the air temperature on Lujula was a bit under 90 degrees Fahrenheit. That translated to about 360 degrees above absolute zero on the scale invented by William Thompson, otherwise known as Lord Kelvin. One millisecond later, the temperature had climbed from 360 degrees to well over 1 million degrees Kelvin. Those atoms comprising the box building, the radio tower, the causeway, and much of the island of Lujula itself had been transformed into million degree plasma and what had escaped instant vaporization was now rising into the upper stratosphere carried by a fireball two miles wide, a mushroom cloud that went from ground level to twice the height of a commercial jetliner in under two minutes. Aerial photos taken a few days later showed bogan, bogeric, and tighter, and a ghostly trace of what had been the causeway between them. But Lujula is gone. It's missing. Not a trace of it remains. Its existence masked by the dark blue inkblot of a crater more than a mile in diameter carved out of the shallow lagoon. At 7.15 am on the morning of November 1st, 1952, a sun had been born inside the squat building atop the sands of Lujula. Halfway around the world, Edward Teller, the primary designer of this man-made sun, knew his device had worked as advertised. Long before the telephone confirmation had arrived, Teller, knew his hydrogen bomb had worked by watching the seismometer needles jump at Berkeley thousands and thousands of miles away. Every single conventional bomb, Axis and Allied, dropped during the entire course of World War II, came to about 2,500,000 tons of TNT. In a fraction of a second, Ivy Mike, the test of the world's first hydrogen bomb, released 10 million tons of TNT. That's four times the explosive power of every bomb dropped in the largest and most destructive war in human history. I don't know why, but I guess some people just say they really appreciate hearing it, and I guess it does mean something to some people. I'm not talking about when the house is on fire, if you're really in trouble, you need things like a help line or something like this, but this is really kind of different and kind of important. Our friends over at BetterHelp have something that's kind of like defragging the hard drive. All of those bad little scripts that run in the back of your head and slow you down and cause you all kinds of trouble. This is what this is about. BetterHelp is not a crisis line, it's not self-help, it's a professional counseling service, it's done securely online, and there's a broad range of expertise in BetterHelp's counselor network, which may not be locally available in many areas. The system is available for clients worldwide. You can basically log into your account, talk to counselors, and get a sense of getting ahead of your problems instead of being behind them. As a person who's suffered with all sorts of emotional issues in the years before I became the internationally famous celebrity I am today, I can tell you that it's very lonely out there sometimes, but aside from the dark side, think about the upside. How many negative thoughts and how many negative impressions do you carry around with you every day? How many fears, false expectations accepted is real. Do you let rule your life? Well, your friends over at BetterHelp can help you find out, help you get some of these things out of your system. It's more affordable than traditional offline counseling. Financial help is available and BetterHelp wants you to start living a happier life today. Visit BetterHelp.com/sau. For days after the Ivy Mike Test, Dwight David Eisenhower, former commander of the European theater and a man who had decided where a fair amount of those conventional bombs were to fall, was elected as the 34th president of the United States. An exhausted and unpopular Harry Truman still mired in the stalemate in Korea, head withdrawn from the race, Truman had authorized the use of the two atomic bombs that had ended World War II. Uranium-based little boy used on Hiroshima exploded with the force of about 16,000 tons of TNT, Fatman, the plutonium implosion bomb used on Nagasaki, went off with the force equivalent to about 22,000 tons. Ivy Mike had exploded with 263 times the energy of both atomic bombs combined. Truman had walked the tightrope of a world with nuclear weapons. Eisenhower would have to do the same with thermonuclear weapons 1,000 times more powerful. On Tuesday, January 20th, 1953, Eisenhower was inaugurated as his custom on the side of the Capitol building overlooking Washington. Eight years earlier, he'd stood on a very different platform. form in a very different place, atop the tomb of Vladimir Lenin overlooking Red Square in Moscow. It had been August 13th, 1945, less than a week after the surrender of the Japanese in Tokyo Bay, half a world away. Ike had stood with Avril Hariman, then US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, atop the harsh, minimalist, granite balcony, so different than the ornate, white, classical architecture of the US Capitol building. Ike was looking calm and sharp and superb in his eponymously named Waste Cut Jacket. Off to Eisenhower's right, stood Joseph Stalin, resplendent in his new white Marshalls uniform, and surrounding him were the ennigmas that had made up the Soviet power structure for over a decade. Stone faced foreign minister Molotov, who had signed the infamous Nazi Soviet treaty that had ended with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Adolf Hitler, the exceedingly dense military expert Clement Voroshilov, whose friendship was Stalin during the Russian Civil War was forged at Tsaritsyn, a town later to be known as Stalin-Grid. Beria was there too, standing by himself. As was Stalin's unlikely deputy, Georgy Malenkov, the fat, ruffled apparatchek, who would someday find himself leader of the Soviet Union. And there, sandwiched between the old timers, McCoyan and Keganovich and Kalinin, was a relative newcomer named Nikita Khrushchev, who'd been responsible for much of the cajoling, flattery, threats, and executions that had allowed the Red Army to turn the tide at Stalin-Grid. You know, one wonders whether I remembered that moment in Red Square eight years before, as he was being sworn in as president of the United States of America. You wonder if you remembered the parades of gymnasts and peasants and traditional costumes, dancers, and floats, followed by a seemingly endless line of Soviet tanks, artillery pieces, and perfect ranks of proudly marching soldiers as Russian aircraft blotted out the sky above. If you look at him on film, I'd looked cheerful back then. And no wonder either, for these were the Russian men and material that had parried the brunt of the Nazi war machine in the East before I, himself, would direct the destruction of Nazi Germany from the West. In 1945, those endless rows of armored might had been allied tanks for Eisenhower and for America, but that seemed a lifetime ago. The H-Bomb had raised the stakes dramatically, and as Eisenhower descended the platform to begin his presidency, he was facing the possibility of real Armageddon, the possible destruction of his nation on a scale of biblical proportions. What he didn't know was that in the biblical span of precisely 40 days and 40 nights later, the board would be turned upside down yet again. By early 1953, the group of Stalin's sycophants that had made up the Politburo were not just nervous, they were terrified. Some of them, like Voroshilov, had managed to survive the purges and the war by being essentially harmless, Clem Voroshilov didn't have the brains or the initiative to mount a coup, and even if he had, he lacked the charisma and ruthlessness needed for anyone to join him in one. McCoyan and Keganovich could be counted on to do what was expected of them and to be grateful to keep their heads at the end of the day. For several years, the actual governance of the country had been handled by what was known as the Four, Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin, and Khrushchev. Kenny, ruthless intrigures all, they'd managed to stay alive when all around them had been shot dead. But the unmistakable signs that they were next, the signs that had preceded all of the others as Stalin set them up for the kill, began to become more and more apparent. Things were definitely changing. Things were changing because Stalin was changing fast. Stalin himself said that the war had finished him after his victory over Adolf Hitler, Stalin never recovered the quickness on his feet, the mental agility that had kept him atop a pyramid of experienced murderers and plotters. And that pyramid went back a very long way. Vladimir Lenin had died in January of 1924. He had been and would continue to be the untouchable Marxist God King. He'd survived having been shot on the street in an assassination attempt back in 1918. But in May of 1922, he suffered the first of several major strokes, which had left him unable to speak and completely paralyzed on his right side. While he had largely recovered by July, in December of '22, he endured a second stroke. He continued to be the titular leader of the Soviet Union, although by this time, his mental condition had deteriorated so badly that it took Lenin two hours to solve the mathematical question of 12 divided by four. Now, Stalin had been virtually invisible as Lenin and Trotsky had picked up what they called power laying in the streets during the October Revolution. For a while, Lenin continued to rule from Petrograd, now St. Petersburg, where the revolution took place before moving the capital back to the more remote and more secure. Ancient fortress in the center of Moscow, known as the Kremlin. While Lenin tried to hold the Soviets to stay together politically, Leon Trotsky, the only other revolutionary who had anything like Lenin's charisma and personal magnetism, toward the countryside in an armored train, successfully leading the Communist Red Army in the long and bitter civil war against the white Russian forces of the former Tsar. With the revolution and civil war safely over, the key revolutionaries staked out their turf in various government ministries. Stalin, a gray, forgettable figure who had quietly done a lot of the dirty work in the background, was virtually unknown and was without question, the least well-known of the men's surrounding Lenin in his new workers' paradise. But Stalin had the soul of a spider. He volunteered to take on the seemingly insignificant and trivial role of General Secretary of the Communist Party. The position had no power at all except for the power to appoint new officials. It was representative of Stalin's genius for intrigue and his patience as well, that he was willing to take on this almost embarrassingly minor post because it allowed him in a very short time to see that most of the officials in critical positions had been chosen and were therefore loyal to him personally. It also ensured that as Comrade Lenin continued to decline, it was Comrade Stalin who was responsible for his daily care. No one got to see Lenin without going through Stalin and Stalin could afford to be patient since his daily contact with Lenin made it clear that he was not going to have to wait long. Then in March of 1923, Lenin had yet another debilitating stroke. The man whose rhetoric had won him an empire would never speak clearly again. The rest of the leadership was in a panic. They were so concerned about Lenin's health that they printed special copies of the Communist Party newspaper, Provda, specifically for Lenin, having removed any news items that might cause him the slightest stress or irritation. On January 21st, 1924, Lenin fell into a coma and he died later that day. Stalin, against the vehement objections of Lenin's wife, Kripskaya immediately ordered that the body be embalmed permanently. The people need a god. He told the rest of the Soviet leaders moving with confidence, speed and absolute assurance. Stalin sought to it that his arch-nemesis Trotsky was given false information regarding the date of Lenin's funeral. Stalin and the other Bolshevik leaders carried Lenin's coffin through the Moscow snow, making Trotsky more than conspicuous by his absence. Oh, parenthetically, during the embalming process, Lenin's brain had been removed and turned over to a scientific institute where they attempted to determine if there was anything physically unique about the organ that it housed the great mind. Lenin's official cause of death was listed as severe sclerosis, the hardening of the blood vessels. Lenin's sclerosis had been so extreme that when the doctors and attendants tapped the outside of Lenin's cerebral blood vessels, they made an audible, crunching and tinkling sound. In the long months and years after Lenin's death, Stalin became one of seven people leading a coalition that governed the fledgling communist state. Old Bolsheviks who'd been with Lenin well before the revolution. Now, none of the other six. Zenovia Kaminov, Ukarin, Rykov, Tomsky or Trotsky. Or can you enough to realize that virtually the entire top level of government had been slowly and quietly filled by Stalin appointees. Young, quiet, ruthless and not inclined to view the old guard with a sense of awe. Playing each against the other, Stalin teamed with Zenovia Kaminov to form a Troika. Both of them despised Stalin, But they've got to be. They formed the alliance nevertheless in order to outweigh the charisma of Trotsky. It would take 16 years, but by 1940 all of them would be dead. Killed by Stalin. First, Stalin maneuvered Trotsky his most hated enemy out of the government, forcing him from Moscow in disgrace. After multiple rejections by European governments, Trotsky finally found a asylum for a while in Mexico. During the Czecha, the secret police instituted by Lenin, Stalin had his former partners, Zenoviyev and Kamenev, framed and then arrested for treason. They were the stars of the first of the massive show trials, strictly scripted public courtroom sessions where both confessed to multiple crimes in exchange for Stalin's promise that he would let them live. Now, shortly after their conviction in 1936, Zenoviyev and Kamenev were told that they were going to be taken away and shot. Kamenev, with a far clearer eye, had long known that Stalin would renegade on the deal, and so he walked stoically to the execution room but Zenoviyev, became so hysterical, sobbing and collapsing and grabbing onto the legs of the guards that they simply took him to the first empty room and shot him then and there. Both of them had sent many innocent men to their deaths, and both of them knew they'd been innocent when they did so. Mikhail Tomsky, implicated by Zenoviyev and Kamenev at the show trial, decided not to wait for the knock on the door by the checkup by now renamed the NKVD. He shot himself in his dacha, his country home, just outside of Moscow. Fully established as a dictator by this point, Stalin then toyed with Rykhov and especially the brilliant and popular Bukaran for a full two years. Bukaran, who had loudly praised the executions of Zenoviyev and Kamenev in 1936 out of sheer terror, sent dozens of letters to Stalin written in pencil from his prison cell, admitting to failure to maintain the correct party attitude and pleading desperately for his life. After another even grand or show trial, both he and Rykhov were found guilty of treason. Despite intercession from prominent leftists from all around the world, he and Rykhov were shot without ceremony on March 15, 1938. Which left only Trotsky? Brilliant and arrogant Trotsky, a genuine architect of the revolution alongside Lenin and a man who never tired of reminding Stalin just how much smarter and well-loved he was compared to the unknown Pock Mark bandit from Georgia. Literally regretting his decision to allow Trotsky to leave the Soviet Union and live in exile, Stalin launched multiple assassination attempts on his archival. From the outset, Trotsky had been a vocal proponent of terror as a means of government and had personally sent thousands of innocent people to their deaths. It was his utter ruthlessness to deploy terror that had brought him power, adoration, and worldwide fame. Trotsky repaid his debt to terror with interest. Trotsky's brother Alexander was shot by Stalin in 1938. His wife, Alexandra, was shot in 1938 as well at the height of the great terror. Trotsky's sister Olga was executed in 1941. His daughter Zanada committed suicide in 1933. His son Sergei, who'd been imprisoned, was shot on Stalin's orders in 1937. His older brother, Lev Trotsky's secretary, business partner and eldest son, was assassinated by Stalin's agents the following year in Paris. Two of Trotsky's sons-in-law, husbands to his daughter Zanada, were shot in 1936 and 1937. Two of his grandchildren, the son and daughter of his other girl Nina, disappeared without a trace sometime after 1937. Trotsky's daughter-in-law, Anna, who had married Lev, was shot in 1938. Their only child Trotsky's grandson also named Lev likewise disappeared without a trace sometime after 1937. In January of that year, Trotsky arrived in Mexico, living in the home of famed left-wing Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Trotsky managed to find some comfort in an affair with Rivera's wife, the painter Frida Kalo, while still a guest at the house before he and Rivera had a falling out for some unknown reason, resulting in Trotsky moving to a fortress-like villa not far away. In 1940, a team of Stalin's assassins sprayed the compound with machine gunfire, and what could have easily been a scene from the godfather? Trotsky and his wife miraculously managed to survive by laying flat against the floor, beside the bed, as bullets riddled the walls and the mattress. Stalin, who'd been stalking Leon Trotsky for 16 years, had finally run out of patience. He instructed Beria that he wanted Trotsky, who continued to write well-publicized anti-Stalin screeds, dead within a year. Beria recruited a Spanish-born and KVD agent named Ramón Mercader, who, posing as the son of a Belgian diplomat, befriended and then seduced, Soviet Agilov, a young American left-winger and an aide to Trotsky. Mercader took his time, occasionally dropping off and picking up Agilov at the now heavily-defended Trotsky compound. Trotsky never asked to see inside the compound and he never talked politics, and so slowly, over time, he began to befriend the guards by running errands and making small talk. Over time he too, slowly, became one of Trotsky's extended family. By mid-summer, his presence inside the compound no longer caused any concern, but on August 20, 1940, he casually walked into the study where Trotsky, as usual, was hunched over his pen and paper. Mercader then removed a small ice axe he'd concealed on his person and sank it into the back of Leon Trotsky's head. Trotsky bellowed in rage and pain, but witnesses said the sound was more like exasperation than agony, as if he'd realized at that moment that he'd been foolish to let down his guard. Trotsky's guards burst into the room and nearly beat Mercader to death before being restrained by Trotsky himself. He was taken to a hospital where he died the next day. Mercader remained in Mexican prisons until 1961 when he returned to Russia and received the country's highest decoration, "Hero of the Soviet Union." Mercader eventually died of lung cancer in 1978, and his dying words were reported to have been, "I hear it always, I hear the scream, I know he's waiting for me on the other side." So this then was the kind of environment that Stalin's polypuro found itself in as they watched Eisenhower being sworn in across the Atlantic. Although always deadly, there had been for much of their careers moments of genuine warmth and camaraderie. A former choir boy with an excellent voice, Stalin and his cronies would often sing old Russian folk songs deep into the night. In fact, for many years, this hair trigger mouse trap had functioned as a deadly kind of fraternity party. There were so many instances of rotten tomatoes being placed on chairs or in pockets that Khrushchev brought extra pairs of pants to the long evening sessions at Stalin's Dacha in Konsebo, a 20-minute drive out from the Kremlin. These drunken reveries would commence shortly after sundown and generally end around 4 a.m. After a movie or two and then four hours of feasting, more drinking, and copious vomiting before the members of the polypuro were stuffed into their cars by their NKVD drivers who would often have to carry them upstairs, undress them, and tuck them into their beds. Stalin himself had once written an obscene word on a piece of paper, then taped it to Khrushchev's back to great hilarity. The staggeringly drunk Baria, Khrushchev and Malenkov had pushed each other into the small pond at the Dacha so frequently that the NKVD eventually filled it in as a safety precaution. But that had been before the war, since then, Stalin had grown fatter. His hair thinner, his arteries harder, and his fear of death more acute by the day. Formerly dynamic, he now ruled by hints and suggestions, stewing alone in the Konsebo Dacha, wondering who it was, who would finally do him in. The familiar all night sessions with his minions continued, but whatever camaraderie there had been before the war had utterly evaporated by the beginning of 1953. Now, the call that Stalin was awaiting them for dinner filled his accolades with dread and disgust. Another evening of the same old stories told by Stalin night after night as he slipped into his paranoia and senility. And always he kept them on their toes. Khrushchev said long after that for many years he never knew if an evening would end with him in bed or in a prison cell awaiting execution. This then was what had kept the communist empire together all these long years. Fear. absolute terror with death always right around the corner and no rules to play by to keep oneself safe. Fear radiated out of the Greenwald Duchess spreading like a miasma through Moscow and from there out into the provinces of the largest country on earth. Millions of people fearing hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats fearing scores of ministers fearing seven members of the Politburo all of them fearing Stalin in their very bones. The Stalin's pact with fear like Trotskys would exact a price in return. 40 days and 40 nights after the inauguration of President Eisenhower Joseph Stalin retired after yet another evening maintaining this chain of fear. At around 4 a.m. on Sunday March 1st 1953 Stalin teetered unsteadily as he watched his entourage disappear in a cloud of limousine smoke. I'm going to sleep he said to his NKVD security chief Colonel Ivan Vasilyovich Krustalov adding you can take an app too I won't be calling you. Then he staggered into his bedroom shut the door and turned out the light leaving a delighted Colonel Krustalov who in all of his years of service to Stalin had never been given the night off before. Stalin generally rose around noon but when 3 p.m. and then 4 p.m. passed without a sound the guards began to worry. Under strict orders not to enter Stalin's bedroom under any circumstances they were enormously relieved when a light came on in the bedroom right around six o'clock that evening. The boss was a wake at last. "Thank God" we thought said Logan chief one of his guards everything's alright but things weren't alright. An hour passed then another and then a third and still no sign of Stalin. Something was clearly wrong another member of the security detail a Colonel Starrozen tried to convince Luska chief to go in and check up on the red czar. "You're senior you go in" said Luska chief. "I'm afraid replied Starrozen to which Luska chief replied what do you think I am a hero?" and so the night dragged on as Stalin's inner circle each in their own dacha waited for the dreaded phone call summoning them to dinner but the call never came. At 10 p.m. the regular meal from the Central Committee arrived as usual from the Kremlin. It had been Luska chief's duty to present these important documents to Stalin upon their arrival and that routine duty finally gave him the cover of not the courage to gently knock on Stalin's door but no one answered. So Luska chief made his way into Stalin's chambers trying to breathe and walk and cough as loud as possible so as not to startle the notoriously skittish supremo. As he turned the corner into the small dining room he was horrified to see Stalin lying on his side on the floor. He was wearing an undershirt and pajama bottoms. He was conscious but unable to move or speak and he had wet himself. Luska chief asked to be should call a doctor but the only sound Stalin could make was "Jeeh, jeeh." As the guards moved the dictator by now very cold to the touch onto a couch Colonel Starrozen tried to reach Burya but Burya by this time was deep into his nocturnal predations and couldn't be found but Malenkov did come to the phone and promised to find Burya as soon as he could. About an hour later Luska chief picked up the phone it was Burya. "Don't tell anyone about comrade Stalin's illness," he shouted and then added "and don't call." Luska chief hung up the phone. He later claimed his dark hair had turned completely grey that evening. At 3am on March 2nd nearly 24 hours after Stalin had entered his bedroom Burya and Malenkov arrived at the dacha. Burya bold his way into the room but the timid Malenkov was so nervous he took off his shoes so as not to make any noise. What's wrong with the boss bark Burya? As Stalin asleep and snoring now lay under a blanket on the couch. Burya spun on the terrified NKVD men who if such a thing were possible were even more afraid of Burya than they were of Stalin. "What do you mean starting a panic?" Burya. The boss is obviously sleeping peacefully. Let's go Malenkov. So they left. And as they were walking out the front door Burya added "Don't bother us. Don't cause a panic and don't disturb comrade Stalin." The stunned NKVD men were now certain that they were going to be hung out to dry executed in a basement by someone just like them. Meanwhile Burya, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin returned to the Kremlin and began to bargain for power. And so the hours continued to pass. That was well known that Stalin had long feared being murdered by a doctor if one of his security team had the courage to call a doctor. Even the remote possibility that Stalin would somehow wake up hung over with a potential murderer looking him in the face was enough to cure them of any idea about that kind of initiative. Only at the end of the second day when it was finally clear that there was no doubt that Stalin could not survive, did the magnates finally call for medical aid. At 7 a.m. on the morning of March 3rd, a professional team led by one professor Lukomsky finally arrived at the Konsevo. Now these were the finest doctors in the Soviet Union, men of long experience, but the first to actually touch Stalin was trembling so badly that he fumbled Stalin's false teeth as he tried to remove them and they slid across the floor. Their hands were trembling so much that they could not get a shirt off, said Luzgechev. Lukomsky tried to take Stalin's pulse but his hand was shaking so badly that Burya had to shout "Hold his hand properly!" It took five days for Stalin to die. One by one, Molotov, Foreshilaf, McCoyan and all the others gathered around Stalin as well as his daughters Fetlana and son Fesili. Burya could not contain his glee. I did him in and he would later boast to Molotov, who appeared to be the first head about to roll before Stalin had collapsed. "I saved you all!" he hissed. But that was later. Every now and then, Stalin would regain consciousness and the instant Burya saw Stalin open his eyes, he would dash over to the couch, kneel beside Stalin and kiss his hand. But once Stalin closed his eyes again, Burya would leap to his feet, spewing ever more blatant hatred of the man he had murdered so many for and for so long. Stalin's end was not pretty. He began to turn blue and spent his final hours gasping and choking as he slowly drowned in his own fluids. Then just before the end, he opened his eyes and abject terror, slowly raising his left hand toward the ceiling and then, with the sound of air escaping from a wet inner tube, one of the greatest mass murderers in human history had finally had his fill. Everyone was crying. These men who like Stalin had sent tens of thousands of people to their deaths under their own signature, sobbed like children. When Molotov's wife Paulina already under arrest and soon to be executed in order to pave the way for her husband, was released from prison shortly after her first words were to inquire about Stalin's health. When Molotov told her that the only reason she was alive was because Stalin had died, Paulina fainted on the spot. Even many of the freezing, starving political prisoners, the Zex, who'd been left to die a far slower death found to their utter astonishment that they were crying too. He had always been there, some kind of towering endless thunderstorm, and yet now that he'd gone, most of the country, including those who had suffered most by his hand, suddenly found themselves lost, alone, frightened, and utterly unsure about what was coming next. Hundreds of thousands of Russians converged on Moscow for the state funeral and somehow, in the crush of all of that humanity, a spark of panic had spread and over a hundred people were trampled to death. Even from beyond the grave, Stalin had continued to do what he'd always done, and that was kill innocent Russians. The division of power among Stalin's successors went surprisingly smoothly at first. Likely, all of them, Beria included, were so relieved that they would likely live out the month that there seemed to be very little infighting at all. Beria and Malenkov, long allies against Khrushchev, and the veteran minions like Molotov, Mikhail and Keganovich, grabbed most of the spoils. Beria got what he most wanted, that being complete control of the organs, the various agencies of the secret police that had populated and run the Goulogs and execution chambers. After successfully delivering the A-bomb to Stalin, Beria had been stripped of much of this power, a sure sign that his neck was squarely on the chopping block. Malenkov, grossly obese by the standards of the day, had slowly risen through the ranks as a skilled administrator and bureaucrat. He alone seemed out of place in Stalin's nest of vipers. It was quiet, self-conscious, and unassuming. He seemed to be a pudgy out of his league oversized boy scout. But Malenkov had been as ruthless as any of them, and in what seems to be a paradox, it was his lack of personal charisma that earned him his place as Stalin's right-hand man and eventually his successor. Stalin had once famously said one man, one problem. No man, no problem. Malenkov was not the kind of man who would become a problem. Virtually all of those who were had been put up against the wall and shot long before. On March 6, 1953, the day after Stalin died, Malenkov was named Premier of the Soviet Union, and his name also appeared at the top of the list of the newly formed Presidium of the Central Committee, which was nothing more than an expanded and rebranded polypural. On March 7, his name was top of the list of the members of the Secretariat, a hat trick, which gave him all three of Stalin's former titles. Malenkov held the power that Stalin had wielded all of it, for exactly one week, before his rivals recovered their wits and stripped him of the Secretariat in a move to disperse power. Now the question was, in what new direction would the Kremlin move? Or perhaps there'd be no change in direction at all? That was certainly worthy of the inertia lay, but after years of an increasingly fossilized Stalin, new opportunities were afoot. The architect of the Cold War was dead, his embombed mummy lying beside Lenin's in Red Square just outside the Kremlin wall. Both the Soviet and American cards had been completely reshuffled, Stalin was dead, replaced by the enigmatic Malenkov, while Truman returned to Missouri as Eisenhower was swept into the White House. And as it turned out, there was indeed a window, a short one, where both of these new leaders might have been able to put the Cold War to bed thirty-seven years early. But that window was closing fast. The Cold War, what we saw, is written and presented by Bill Whittle, produced by Robert Sterling, directed by Jonathan Hay. Executive producer is Jeremy Boring. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our associate producer is Katie Swinerton. Post-production producer Alex Singaro, story producer, Jared Sashel, edited by Matthew Scheller, audio recorded by Mike Coramina, original music and mixed by Kyle Perrin, designed by Cynthia Angulo. The Cold War, what we saw, is an esoteric radio theater production, copyright esoteric radio theater 2020.