Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

In Yugoslavia Tito neither hanged nor shot his Stalinists, but tens of thousands of pro-Soviet Yugoslav communists went to concentration camps to be broken physically and morally. The USSR did not intercede for these Yugoslavs; Stalin, Abakumov, Rukhadze, Riumin, and Ignatiev were preoccupied with their own purges in Leningrad and Mingrelia. By the end of 1951, when they looked west again, Zionism was the main foe, and in any case Viktor Abakumov was in prison and Moscow had nobody with Abakumov’s competence. It was left to Rákosi to make the running. He was equal to the task and produced a list of Jews to be removed which included those who had helped him torture the “Titoists.” The Czechoslovaks too were told by Moscow to eliminate their Jews. Rudolf Slánský was the ideal scapegoat, a Jew who had appointed other Jews and who could be blamed for economic failures in Czechoslovakia. Klement Gottwald was awarding Slánský the Order of the Republic on his fiftieth birthday when Stalin sent the order to arrest him. A year later, Gottwald met Stalin at the nineteenth plenum of the Soviet Central Committee in October 1952 and within a month Slánský and ten others had been hanged in Prague.

Only the Romanians dawdled. Gheorghiu-Dej told the Soviet ambassador that he knew of no Romanians linked to Slánský. When pressed, the Romanian leader threw three members of his Politburo— two Jews and one Hungarian—to the wolves. They were luckier than the Czechoslovaks: Stalin’s death let Gheorghiu-Dej off the hook. One victim died in prison; the other two were set free.

It is no wonder that Malenkov, Molotov, and Beria let thirteen hours pass before they called for doctors, when on March 2, 1953, they were summoned to Stalin’s semiconscious body, which had been lying on the floor in vest and pajama bottoms for over twenty-four hours. They waited to be sure that the stroke was fatal and then Beria called to his driver, “Khrustaliov, the car!” and raced off to the Kremlin.

Beria’s Hundred Days

“All power,” said a moron in his cups, “Tends inevitably to corrupt, And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Clever men should think astutely, And not repeat a thought so feeble, Power in fact is corrupted by people.

Iuri Andropov (KGB chairman 1967–82)³³

THERE WERE BROADLY THREE reactions to the news of Stalin’s death. Many workers, peasants, children, and students were hysterical with grief; they felt bereft of certainties and abandoned to the mercy of enemies and intriguers, domestic and foreign. GULAG prisoners smiled, laughed, tossed their caps into the air; this was their first ray of hope, the first time they had seen their guards discomfited. The party apparatchiks and hangmen calculated how power would be inherited and began a waiting game, while the leadership maintained, for the time being, the semblance of unity essential for their immediate survival.

Stalin’s achievement may be measured by the ease with which the state survived his demise. Four days after his death Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin, and Khrushchiov amicably reallocated power. The leaders from eastern Europe who came for Stalin’s funeral were reassured. Malenkov was “prime minister” on the Council of Ministers; Molotov took over foreign affairs, Beria internal affairs, and Bulganin was defense minister, with the former minister Marshal Vasilevsky staying on as his deputy. Khrushchiov ran the Central Committee of the party, which now became the servant not the master of the government. Mikoyan and Kaganovich had posts that preserved their self-esteem; Voroshilov basked in the empty title of head of state.

But Beria was taking the helm with formidable speed and fearlessness. Like the east European communists, he understood the Ministries of the Interior and of State Security to be the focus of power. He made the Ministry of State Security what it had been before 1941, a department of the Interior Ministry. Sergei Ignatiev quietly stepped aside. Beria first needed to win from his colleagues, the party, and the Red Army what they most begrudged him: trust and popularity. Immediately after Stalin’s funeral, he had Polina Zhemchuzhina flown back to Moscow to be remarried to Molotov. He rehabilitated Kaganovich’s brother Mikhail, and awarded his widow a pension. However, neither Molotov nor Kaganovich showed any gratitude.³⁴