Stalin's Last Days

[Music] Hello and welcome to your Asian knot time, your host, John Gilary. No russana today because this is a last minute release that I thought of in lieu of today's anniversary. So just before I get to that, let me just say that the Eurasian knot is sponsored by the Center for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and you patrons out there who help us out every month with contributions to invest in this show and help it keep it going. You can become a patron by going to patreon.com/yura-knot. So Joseph Stalin died 73 years ago today and I thought it would be a good idea to dig out an old interview I did with Joshua Rubenstein way back from 2018 about Stalin's final days and the reaction within and outside the Soviet Union to his death. It's a pretty interesting conversation. I thought it was a good idea to listen to it once again on the day of Stalin's death and I hope you enjoy it and let me go ahead and introduce Joshua. Joshua Rubenstein is an associate of the Davis Center for Russian in Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and he's written many books on Soviet history and other topics but his most recent is the last days of Stalin published by Yale University Press. Here's Joshua Rubenstein. So your book, The Last Days of Stalin looks at the moments leading up to and after Stalin's death in 1953. So what inspired you to write about this period? I've already done several books on Soviet history and began by writing about the Soviet human rights movement which concerns the years of the 1960s into the 1980s mostly under the regime of Lenin Brezhnev and then I did a biography of Leon Trotsky, a concise interpreted biography for the Jewish live series of Yale University Press and this really involved the good deal of research into the Stalin period. And that peaked my interest and I had interest among editors at Yale Press to do a book about Stalin and we decided a book about his last days would be a useful prism into his regime as a whole. So this is not a biography of Stalin. It does not pretend to tell the full story of his 25 years in office or his 74 years of life. It looks at a very concentrated piece of time from the fall of 1952 when he had his last public speech and at the 19th party Congress in Moscow. That was in October through his death in March and then to the aftermath of the death into the summer of 1953 with the riots in East Berlin and then the arrests of Leverendi Beria, a Stalin's long time security chief. So it's a very focused book on this very dramatic set of months. Why would you feel it was important to illuminate these set of months? I mean most books of course take a much longer view of say you know Stalin's rule and post-war or Stalin's rule in the 1930s or his rise to power in the 1920s. What is crucial about these months for you? It's clear that by the end of his life Stalin was still in control that his his closest collaborators, his lieutenants, they like to call themselves his comrades and arms and use this kind of a Gus phrasing. They were still in fear of him. Stalin retained the right to kill until the end of his life. Two members of the uh, Polypyr of Azasensky and Kuznetsov were arrested and killed at the end of the 1940s. No one knows why exactly but they uh, got into trouble with Stalin. He no longer trusted them and he had them executed. So that could happen to anybody else and they understood that. So when he collapsed and the guards called for help, they didn't know what to do at first and there's some feeling that they understood Stalin was definitely ill. They probably had a stroke, maybe a heart attack or both. And they wanted nature to take its course but when he didn't die immediately and the guards raised the second alarm hours later in the morning, they only then were the doctors called. The doctors were not called at the first sign of trouble, which is always a very suspicious move. But no one can say for sure the story is that the guards found them on the floor that he was seen paralyzed. He couldn't breathe properly. He had soiled his pants with his own urine. They called the leaders like Mull and Coffin Beria and Beria said, "Look, he's sleeping. He's storing. He's fine. Where are you alarmed?" And to a layman like you and me, maybe we can't tell the difference between someone who's sleeping but is otherwise okay and someone who's sleeping has had a stroke. So they went away and the guards, the doctors, were not called and the guards called several hours later by six or seven in the morning and said, "Look, something's wrong." The comrades Stalin, we need the doctors here. Interestingly, they did not some of the doctors themselves. They had to do it through the political leadership, which is in and of itself very odd. And only then were the doctors called. They immediately understood Stalin and head of severe stroke. There is nothing they could do. It's unlike their Western medicine. Could have done anything. There was no, there we did not have then the kind of drugs for hypertension that we have now. He had suffered from high blood pressure for years. There's some thought they had had strokes or heart attacks at the end of World War II, but no one can say for sure. The very fact that he took ill at the Dachia 10 miles out of Moscow and when the leadership made the announcement about his collapse said that he took ill at his Kremlin apartment showed they couldn't even share this one little nugget of truth. With the population as if it undercut the claim that Stalin was always working for the Soviet people. There's this story that's told that the light in his Kremlin office which faces the street or one could see from the street was always left on. As if that meant that Stalin was always working. Well of course he was always working. He spent months at a time at his Dachia in the South in the Crimea for rest, especially after the war. It was never publicly acknowledged. It's really interesting that at this moment in which he collapses, he's clearly, he's elderly, he's 73 when he dies or actually 74, but he had changed his birthday to seven. He's already elderly in terms of the life expectancy of even up an elite male in the Soviet system. It's interesting that at this moment in which A, there must have been some sense though maybe not acknowledged that people, they're going to have to start thinking about after Stalin. At this moment in which he's collapsed, it seems that they're kind of paralyzed by on the one hand, oh no, what do we do if he dies? Oh no, what if we do if he, what do we do to even show that he's human? And second, what if he actually survives? So they're stuck in this position. When they came in soy had collapsed. The doctors made clear to them that he would not recover. But they waited a couple of days to tell the population first because they wanted to put in place their own plans. What would the succession look like and that they would all agree to work together to reassure the population? Secondly, they wanted to make sure that he was going. They were very afraid that if he recovered or if he recovered only slightly but couldn't exercise power, they'd been a situation like the Soviet Union had been under Lenin. Lenin had his first stroke in May of 1922 and very slowly and inexorably grew weaker and weaker. A series of strokes afflicted him until he was completely incapacitated but he didn't die until January 1924. And this led to a very law and protract his struggle for power that Stalin eventually, you know, where he took control. They did not want that kind of long drawn out process. They wanted a clean break. So when it was clear he was going to die, then they could make the announcement that he was ill, reassure the population that it was getting the best care possible, which was true. But everyone understood that if they're going to tell us how ill he was, that means his death was imminent. So Stalin's death, I mean, it's a watershed in many ways, but in one way his death prevented what many suspected was another purge of the Soviet leadership, particularly after the 19th party Congress in August 1952. And then of course we have the doctor's plot and the anti-Semitic campaign, which will talk of more in detail in a bit. But first I want to ask you about the political atmosphere within and outside the USSR in the fall of winter 1952. And in particularly this suspected sense that another purge of the Soviet leadership was in the war. Well, in August of 1952, the Kremlin announced that the 19th party Congress would be held in October. According to party statutes, there should be a Congress every three years. The party Congress had taken place in the fall of 1939. 13 years had elapsed. We'd had all of World War II, the outset of the Cold War, one crisis after another, no party Congress. Secondly, it was announced that At the Brazidium, which was this nine or ten-man cabinet around Stalin, would be enlarged to as many as 25, and that a new group of leaders would be elevated to join Stalin's long-time veteran lieutenants, like Malenkov and Molotov and Kakinovych and Varashilov and now Khrushchev, Berya, who are part of the Politburo. And the Politburo name would be changed to the Brazidium. So the fear was that Stalin was elevating these new men than they were all men, in order to start the process of purging these previous leaders, the 1930s. And after all, they all knew what happened to Bucharin, to Zenoviyev, to Kaminyev, these long-time comrades of Lenin, who Stalin had arrested and murdered and executed during the Great Purges. And some of the leaders like Varashilov and Molotov, they were under a cloud in Stalin's eyes. Anyway, Molotov's wife, Palyna-Jemchuzina, had been arrested in 1949 and sent into exile. And he had been forced to divorce her. Palyan, Anastas Mikoyan, a leader from the Armenian Republic, long-time involved in foreign trade, was also under cloud. They were no longer being invited to the Dacha, for example. And Stalin was saying nasty things about the Mikoyan fear that they were going to face physical liquidation. So this process of enlarging the, what was called the Politburo into the Brazidium, was seen as a very worrying trend, a very worrying signal. That if you were going to purge two or three from a group of ten, that would be very noticeable. But if you were going to purge five from a group of twenty-five, that might not seem so noticeable. That's how Mikoyan explained it years later. So that was one thing set in motion by the Congress. Secondly, Stalin said that as the Soviet Union was maturing, getting closer to establishing communism, that the class struggle would sharpen. That the opponents of the class struggle, the opponents of communism would grow sharper in their critique and their attacks. So they were really thinking that the time for war with the West was approaching. That now that China had become a communist power, that the constellation of force has favored the Soviet Union not the West. And so Stalin had beefed up armed forces, he continued the war in Korea over the objections of the Chinese and the Koreans, who wanted the superpiece, they were fed up with the war, they were tired of it. But Stalin prolonged it. So there are very many worrisome things happening. And then of course in January, the Soviet press announced the unmasking of a doctor's plot, the Jewish doctors were plotting with impervious force and Zionist forces to undermine the health of Soviet leaders. And this led to complete chaos in the hospitals and the clinics, people not trusting Jewish doctors, Jewish health professionals, people being purged, being arrested. And so this created a lot of tension within the society and nowhere was headed. I want to ask you about the doctor's plot and the anti-calsma to fall within campaign and this really sharp turn to just open anti-semitic sentiment and within the press. It's a really mysterious moment at the end of Stalin's life. So what do you think was behind this anti-semitic turn against Soviet Jews? And also do you think that it might have been a reaction to the alignment of Israel more with say the United States in the late 40s? Well, Sean, that's a very good point. Let me expand on that. I did a couple of books, which I didn't mention earlier. One, Stalin's secret program, the post-war inquisition of the Jewish anti-fascist committee, which explores the role of the Jewish anti-fascist committee during the war and then how Stalin attacked it and attacked its members after the war. The Soviet Union voted at the United Nations to establish the Jewish state. When Stalin personally ordered the checks to send arms to Israel in '48, at the time of what the Israelis called the war of independence. When five Arab countries attacked Israel in the spring after Israel declared its independence, its establishment in May of 1948. And the Soviet government was the first to recognize Israel. So the Stalin lent substantial military and political support to Israel in those first very dramatic months. One golden year, at the end of August, beginning of September, leads the first Israeli delegation of diplomats to Moscow. They had the legation. It was not a full embassy. And the Soviet sent a diplomatic group to Tel Aviv as well. And golden year was greeted in the streets of Moscow by tens of thousands of Soviet Jews. When she walked to Sabbath services in September, when she went to services for Russia-Shaná, which was very late that year in October and on Rakyom Kipur, this was seen as a very provocative act. By the Kremlin and by Golden Meers Israeli colleagues who thought that this was a little too much. After all, these demonstrations were not taking place in New York or Paris or London. They were taking place in Stalin's kingdom. And they were an expression of the legions of solidarity, not just with another country, with a Jewish country. Now in a war against Hitler, Stalin understood he could trust his Jews. No Jew would betray Stalin for Hitler. But in a war against the United States, where every Jew was presumed to have an aunt in the Bronx, where it was known that Jews had many relatives and Molotov's wife had a brother in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for example. All of this made Stalin very suspicious of the loyalty of Soviet Jews. Jews were sending petitions to the Soviet government, asking to volunteer on behalf of Israel. These are men with military experience from the war. Including officers, this peak Stalin's paranoia. So the Jewish anti-fascist committee was held responsible for the demonstrations that committee was closed, its leadership arrested. And they were, they and others were put on trial in 1953 and '52 in the spring and summer and there were 13 executions, but all this was done in secret. It was not an open trial because in the end, the defendants didn't cooperate. They objected to the Renaissance. So there couldn't be an open show trial. So then the doctors plough was cooked up and it was probably targeted both at Soviet Jews and Israel. And at the security services who were blamed for not being on top of this conspiracy, for letting the conspiracy go on too long. So that was seen as an attack on Beria and the security services. Now the doctors ploughed itself as extremely opaque. There was this announcement on January 13th and then for another month or five weeks until February 20th, there was a tremendous amount of propaganda about Zionism, about the Jewish doctors, about this plot and this provoked a tremendous fear within the Soviet society and rumors began to circulate that Soviet Jews in the wake of the doctors, the wake of the trial of the doctors and their execution, supposed execution that they would then be deported on mass the central Asia or Siberia to remote areas of the country. This is widely held belief even today among Soviet Jewish emigres and obviously there is a million in Israel and many hundreds of thousands here in America. And they widely, they believe this sincerely and deeply. No one knows where Stalin was taking the doctors plot. The fact is on February 20th, all propaganda about the doctors plot ceased that could only have happened under Stalin's orders. So it's possible that he saw that things were going too far that there was too much social turmoil that he wasn't prepared to carry out these deportations if they were planned. No one can say for sure. Stalin dies on March 5th. On April 4th, just a month later, the government announces that the doctors plot was fake, was a fabrication, the doctors are being released. On April 6th, another announcement is made that the doctors had been subjected to torture and that this is all the fault of rogue security elements. They couldn't say that it was Stalin who was responsible and his crime was greater than what the doctors had been accused of doing. And also I would say that I would assume that the part of the leadership wants to also get rid of Barrio. So it's extending that again. Well no, it's a little more complicated than that. Yes, they wanted to get rid of Barrio, but it was Barrio was behind the initiative to disavow the doctors plot and they went along with it. Barrio is making gestures that we have to acknowledge who were reform minded, releasing a million prisoners, disavowing the doctors plot, taking control of the gulag moving it from the security services that do the Ministry of Justice. There's a whole slew of gestures about domestic and foreign that were a break from Stalinism, absolute break from Stalinism. And this that they made these gestures as a way to appease the population, to reassure the population and as a gesture to the West, here we're willing to deal, we're willing to negotiate, come to us, talk with us. That was not something Eisenhower was willing to do. Let me ask you a bit more about this moment of the doctors' plan as anti-Semitic campaign, because one of the things you, one of the major themes in this book is how the international community, mostly the West, understood and looked at these events happening in the USSR. And one of the things that you point out is the difficult position that Israel is in all of this, because on the one hand, there is the Soviets' help for the Israeli independence. There is a strong, I think, cultural tie with Israel. And so, what was the reaction from Israel and also the Jewish diaspora in the United States to the news going on around this? Well, keep in mind several things. First, Stalin had this idea that because the new leadership of Israel led by David Ben Gurean, were East European socialists, with roots in the former Soviet Union in Poland, that they might be sympathetic to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, which was an illusion on his part. He was mistaken. On the other hand, Israel was a small, very vulnerable country and did not want to take sides in the Cold War. It got arms from the Soviet Union, not from the French, not from the Americans. The Americans didn't start supplying military aid until after the 6th day war, in 1967. So the Israelis needed good relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There were still millions of Jews who had survived the war. The Israelis needed an outpost these embassies, which could be listening posts, so they wanted diplomatic relations. They didn't want to be isolated. So when Stalin took anti-Semitic measures after World War II, some were public, some were more discreet. The Israelis did not respond vigorously. Jewish leaders in America did, and denounced the doctors' plot and other things that were happening. But the Israelis were very cautious. Abe Ben was the famous Israeli diplomat he's passed away now. He was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. And he was pressing Ben Gourian to be more outspoken. But Ben Gourian said, "Look, we want to keep diplomatic relations." And so I'm going to be very restrained. Of course I know what's going on. But then on February 9th, a bomb was set off at the Soviet legation until a wave, and there were injuries. And this was a bomb that was placed by right wing, re-route, very strong, far-right nationalist in Israel who were upset with the Soviet regime, understandably. And the Soviets immediately denounced the government, which was not responsible for this, the Israeli government, and broke diplomatic relations. This is a major step. It was very upsetting to Ben Gourian. He was furious with the right wing groups in Israel that supported this kind of action. But this was part of the momentum within the drama of the doctors' plot, this break with Israel, and this bombing until a wave. But then of course the Israeli press had to be a little more, a re-act more strongly, to the doctors' plot. But again, it was the initiative for breaking diplomatic relations came from the Kremlin, not from the Israelis. Like I said, a lot of your story does include the international reaction and the context of Stalin's final months and then his death. And one of the things I was struck by, but not surprised, but certainly struck by it, is the role of rumors. Rumor comes up as a constant source for both journalists who are working in Russia, but also even the American government seems to be quite reliant on or at least receptive to listening to rumor, to understand the regime itself and Stalin's last days. So talk about rumor as a source for trying to understand what's going on in the Soviet system at this period. Yeah. I think the rumor question certainly relates to how the Soviet population understood things or tried to understand things. I'm not sure rumor was as potent an issue in the West. I think the West simply was badly informed. When you read the minutes of the National Security Council on March 4, for example, just in the hours after the announcement of Stalin's collapse, when he's still alive, they all assumed that things would grow worse. They all assumed that Stalin had been an ameliorating force within the Politburo, that with him Golan, Moll and Koiv and Molotov would be more outspoken, more against the working with the West, that things would grow worse in the Soviet Union. They didn't understand that first there was all Stalin's power. He wasn't under any pressure from them. And secondly, he was the extreme voice in the Politburo, not them, and that as soon as he died, things would inevitably get better. They didn't understand that. That's clear from what Nixon says, what Eisenhower says, the vice president and the president and fussed through dollars and the others. They were not prepared for the peace gestures and the domestic reform gestures that the new leader, the heirs to Stalin made in March and April and May in the Soviet Union. They were not prepared at all. They thought this was some kind of a play acting, trying to fool the West. And there was incident after incident where the journalists are trying to say, no, something substantial is happening. Even US diplomats in Moscow are saying to the State Department back in Washington, something serious is going on here. You have to respond. You have to take this seriously. Don't dismiss it. But Eisenhower and dollars just were not prepared to meet with Soviet leaders on the terms that were being presented. Do you feel that this was a missed opportunity? Yes. No one can say for sure what would have been accomplished. No one can say for sure that the Cold War would have been severely diffused. But for example, the war in Korea came to an end that was a Soviet initiative. Two weeks after Stalin died, the leadership made clear to the Chinese and Koreans that they would restart peace talks with the West. And the Chinese and Koreans absolutely wanted that. And the talks began again in April at Pumunjohn and led to the armistice in July. And that's the same armistice that governs the peninsula today. It's not perfect. The North Korean regime in particular is very extreme, very bella coast, very dangerous. But as yet, we don't have outright fighting. And that's a good thing. So Stalin dies in March 5, 1953 and his death, of course, reverberates throughout the Soviet Union and also throughout the world. So how did Soviet citizens react to Stalin? Well, it makes some generalizations, but it was each person responded in their own unique way. But generally speaking, there was a great deal of fear. Not that things would grow worse, but that there would be turmoil, something that the population feared. And hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Moscow to view Stalin's body in the hall of columns in the House of Unions just off the Kremlin, off Kremlin Square. And the regime did not control the crowds properly. So Krushchev later said that over 100 people were trampled to death and crushed to death. We believe the figures far higher, but no one knows for sure. But this was a symbol of the turmoil that followed the death that the regime feared would overtake society. Many people cried, even people who understood the nature of the system, because Stalin was so inside all of them that the idea of going on without him was too much to bear. Other people understood that it was time to celebrate, time to hug each other for surviving. The way we recalled the very dramatic pictures of soldiers and sailors celebrating the end of World War II, they were going to live. They were not going to the front. They were not going to have to invade Japan. The war in Europe was going to be over. They were all celebrating. There was that kind of expression of, you know, we made it. In the gulag, there was some confusion. There were people who mourned because everything was dependent on Stalin. Another is cheered, understanding that things were going to change dramatically. So it was a very mixed kind of response. And of course, there was the histrionics of teachers telling students how terrible it was and we should all cry and ordering their students to cry. People making all kinds of foolish statements that a teacher comes in and says, "Oh, my daughter asks us, how are we going to live?" Now the comrades Stalin is dead and these kind of empty statements. People knew not to take seriously, but that's what the regime expected. And what was the international reaction? Well, that's very mixed. You know, I did a survey of what's in the press. I was very disappointed at some of the coverage. There was some sympathy for Stalin after all he died just eight years after the end of World War II. He'd been one of the leaders of the Western Alliance after initially siding with Hitler. So there is some modicum of respect for his role during the war, which I think affected the general reaction in obituaries and editorials, which I point out both in the New York times and in the London times. I thought the French press was much more down to earth in calling him out as a dictator that he was. In Eastern Europe, the regimes that he'd established in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, Budapest, in Romania, they gathered hundreds of thousands of people in central squares on the day of the future. in March 9th to Mark Stalin's death. And these are of course completely artificial crowds. We know now that there were drunken parties throughout Poland and Romania celebrating is that that East Berliners are going into West Berlin to get updates of news from the Western press and popping courts of champagne that Stalin was dead. So there was the official response and there was the popular response, which were very different. Now you mentioned a bit ago about the break that the Stalin's lieutenants initiated after his death and particularly the role of Beria in attempt to push forward reforms. There's an amnesty of the gulag for many thousands of people. Talk a bit more in detail about the types of reforms that were put forward and what led to Beria's demise. Well, after all Beria was a very capable administrator. He was ruthless, he was a murderer, a mass murderer, but he was also very capable. Stalin had put him in charge of the Atomic Bomb Project in 1945 because he knew of his capabilities as an administrator. So the others were very afraid of Beria because they knew how smart he was. They knew how ruthless he was. So from the very outset, Khrushchev was rallying in the others to keep the Ryan Beria because if they didn't kill him, he would do away with them. That was the feeling. Beria at the same time wanted very much to improve his image within the population. So he initiated these reforms, both economic reforms, the release of over a million prison in the gulag at the end of March. He was behind the disavowal of the doctor's plot. And then of course they all agree, and there's something they all agree to, and then they're just used to the West. Ending the war in Korea, there are a host of small and large decisions. And there was a feeling that they were ready to deal over Berlin. They knew that East Germany was an artificial state, much smaller, much weaker than West Germany. Wanted to avoid West Germany becoming part of a military alliance of the West. That was their overriding concern. There's some feeling that they might have been willing to negotiate an end to the division of Germany. If Germany could be demilitarized and made neutral and not be permitted to join a Western military alliance, which we know today as NATO. But Eisenhower and Dallas were not up for that challenge, in my view. What could have been accomplished in Seyfor sure? So throughout the spring, Khrushchev, his leading conspiracy against Beria. And he used the riots in East Berlin, which had to be put down with Soviet troops to blame Beria for that. Beria had no more blame for that than anybody else. So on June 26th, Beria was arrested in the Kremlin. And keep in mind the Kremlin was controlled by his own guards, by his men. And he was in charge of communication. He was held in secret, taken out secretly to a bunker that no one knew about, and held there until December, when he was executed, there was a secret trial and he was executed. So they saw the need to get better at Beria, which they did. And finally, Stalin's death was indeed a pivotal watershed in the 20th century. And while there is a lot of evaluation of the legacy of his life, what do you think it is the legacy of his death? Well, the legacy of his death is it led very quickly to the end of outright terror in the Soviet Union. He remained a dictatorship of the party, but they were no longer going to carry out mass murder, mass arrests, which they didn't do. They gradually relaxed things with the West, not to a point where the Soviet Union are related to America the way Bermuda does, but became somewhat more open to Western culture. You could have tourism both in both directions, more access to Western culture, Western art, Western music, Western literature. We had the thaw period on the cruise chef, which was a time of hope of optimism. And all that came crashing down with cruise chefs outstair in October '64 in the installation of the Nibbredzhnav. So then you had decades of what is called the stagnation period. And then Gorbachev came in with another round of reforms, very dramatic reforms. The Soviet Union could not sustain itself in the wake of those reforms. And so the Soviet Union collapsed. Yeltsin took over, but he could not sustain his own democratic instincts. He dies eventually poot takes over who is now trying to reverse that thaw in a way that Gorbachev and Yeltsin initiated both inside the country and in turns of relations with the West. And so were the downturn of relations were the downturn of reform. And the killing of journalists, the killing of others, Joshua Rubenstein, the associate at the Davis Center for Russian in Eurasian studies at Harvard University. He's written several books on Soviet history and some other topics. But his most recent is the last days of Stalin published by Yale University Press. I'm your host Sean Gillery, and this is the Eurasian Knot. I hope you enjoyed this quick turnaround episode that I re-edited and mixed. And of course the Eurasian Knot is sponsored by the Center for Russian East European Eurasian studies at the University of Pittsburgh and listeners just like you. If you like this interview and like all of our others, please spread the word, help us out by becoming a patron or just write us a good review. We're always like to hear what people think of the show. So OK, until our regular release next week. Bye bye. [MUSIC - "Bubble in the Red Sea"] [MUSIC - "Bubble in the Red Sea"]