Stalin

Stalin’s personal dictatorship—known as the party’s “secret department”—got a new director on July 22, 1930: Alexander Poskryobyshev (b. 1891), whose father, like Stalin’s, had been a cobbler and who had trained as a nurse before the revolution. “One day,” the shaven-headed Poskryobyshev would recall, “Stalin summoned me and said, ‘Poskryobyshev, you have a frightful look about you. You’ll terrify people.’ And he engaged me.”²²⁸ On July 23, Stalin departed for his annual southern holiday, taking Poskryobyshev with him. Molotov was left to mind the store in Moscow. Nadya, after visiting her brother Pavel Alliluyev, the Soviet trade representative in Berlin, had returned from Germany and joined her husband. On July 26, Stalin’s Rolls-Royce, exiting the territory of the Puzanovka dacha, crashed into a car from the nearby resort Red Storm. Nadya, Budyonny, and Stalin’s main bodyguard, Ivan Jūsis, were also in the vehicle. A piece of flying glass cut Stalin’s left eyebrow.²²⁹

Stalin had been suffering occasional dizziness and a flaring of nerves, and doctors confirmed a diagnosis of neurasthenia.^{230, 231} His medical record for 1930, signed by Usher Leib “Lev” Levin, a top Kremlin physician who had taken care of Lenin, characterized the ruler’s living conditions (“good”), diet (“good”), work conditions (“intellectual, significant, interesting, indeterminate number of hours in the day”), drinking (“rare”), and smoking (“a lot”). It listed his appendectomy, which had left a scar, and illnesses over the years (chest pains, flu, polyarthritis, chronic tonsillitis, coughing). Stalin’s outward appearance was noted as “fatigued”; his liver and spleen as not enlarged. He was said to have frequent pain in his left shoulder muscles, which were atrophying, a result of a childhood contusion. Down south, he had his usual joint and muscle aches and undertook sulfur baths at Matsesta, near Sochi, which worked wonders. “After the course of baths, K. E. Voroshilov came over for a walk, and they drank cold, naturally carbonated water,” Stalin’s physician, Ivan Valedinsky, recalled. “After the walk Stalin’s throat hurt, [and he developed] so-called follicular sore throat with attacks and flaring.” Stalin’s temperature reached 102. It took four days to drop. After that, he complained of pains in his left leg. Valedinsky saw his patient every day for three weeks, and the dictator appreciated his company, speaking to him on a wide variety of topics: labor discipline, collective farms, the intelligentsia. When it was time for Valedinsky to depart, Stalin inquired how he could recompense him. “I asked for help in changing my apartment, which was a former merchant’s horse stable,” the doctor recalled. “Stalin smiled after this conversation. When I returned to Moscow, I was called by the Central Committee and told they would show me an ‘object,’ which turned out to be a five-room apartment.”²³²

Stalin cherished his recuperative time on the Black Sea. On August 13, 1930, he notified Molotov, back in Moscow, “P.S. Bit by bit I’m getting better.” Exactly one month later, he would write, “I’m now completely recovered.”²³³ But, as always, this was a working holiday, and he received ciphered telegrams every day, and fat packets of longer documents eight to twelve times a month. Many of the far-reaching changes to the country and the regime he set in motion the previous winter and spring were now consolidated.²³⁴ The secret police enjoyed a further ballooning in personnel.²³⁵ Strangely, there had been a reversal of fortunes between agriculture and industry. Meat and dairy production had fallen off a cliff, but the grain harvest—ultimately fixed at 77.2 million tons—turned out to be the best in Soviet history to date.²³⁶ With the agricultural cooperatives that had been marketing peasant products transformed into collectors of grain, and machine tractor stations also facilitating collections, the regime would procure a whopping 22 million tons at state-set prices. (The peasants ate or sold the rest on the market.)²³⁷ All the while, however, from July through September 1930, critical metal-producing and fuel industries declined, undermining industry as a whole. Labor supply became tight, railways devolved into bottlenecks, and inflation proceeded unabated. Glaring underproduction of tractors compared with plan targets and mass loss of livestock cast doubt on agriculture’s future, too.