Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

List of Illustrations

Stalin kisses his daughter Svetlana on holiday, early 1930s.¹

Nadya holds Svetlana.¹

Stalin and his driver in the front, with Nadya in the back of one of the Kremlin limousines.²

The Stalins on holiday on the Black Sea, with the plodding Molotov and his clever, passionate, Jewish wife, Polina.³

Stalin carries Svetlana in from the garden at Zubalovo, their country house near Moscow.¹

Stalin chats behind the scenes at a Party Congress in 1927 with allies Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Premier Alexei Rykov.²

At a Party Congress, Stalin holds court among his grandees.²

After her tragic death, Nadya lay in state.²

Nadya’s funeral.²

Stalin leaving the Kremlin’s Great Palace with two of his closest allies: Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Mikhail “Papa” Kalinin.⁴

Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s deputy in the 1930s, leads an expedition into the Siberian countryside to search for grain hidden by peasants.²

The magnates were so close they were like a family: “Uncle Abel” Yenukidze with Voroshilov.²

Stalin’s holiday in 1933: Stalin and Voroshilov go camping; weeding at his Sochi dacha; setting off on a hunting expedition with Budyonny, Voroshilov and bodyguard; Lavrenti Beria offers to help weed the gardens; Stalin embarking on a fishing and shooting trip on the Black Sea, which was to end in a mysterious assassination attempt.²

Molotov, Premier during the 1930s, plays tennis with his family.²

Stalin ruled his empire informally: sitting out in the sun at the Sochi dacha.²

Sergei Kirov holidays with Stalin and Svetlana at Sochi.³

Stalin with Svetlana.³

Andrei Zhdanov joins the family, probably at the Coldstream dacha. ³

The Court of the Red Tsar in the mid-1930s.²

Stalin’s women.²

Stalin with his grandees and their wives in the former imperial box at the Bolshoi.²

Stalin (with Beria and Lakoba) visits his ailing mother, Keke, shortly before her death.³

Beria hosts Voroshilov and Mikoyan in Tiflis for the Rustaveli Festival at the height of the Terror, 1937.²

Yagoda, Kalinin, Stalin, Molotov and Beria.²

Marshal Semyon Budyonny poses with Kaganovich and Stalin, among swooning women.²

Beria and Yezhov—the two most depraved monsters of Stalin’s court. ²

Yezhov and his wife Yevgenia entertain their powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death.²

Stalin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with Sergo Ordzhonikidze’s body.²

Yezhov and his friend Nikita Khrushchev accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin.²

Stalin takes tea with the novelist Gorky.²

Poskrebyshev with Bronislava, the pretty, glamorous and well-educated doctor, with whom he fell in love, and her sister.⁵

Alexander Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s chef de cabinet for most of his reign. ⁵

General Nikolai Vlasik with Stalin’s doomed son Yakov, just before the war.³

Svetlana in her early teens, sporting her Young Pioneers’ Uniform. ¹

Stalin runs the war, assisted by his magnates and generals.⁶

In 1945, Stalin with Zhukov, Voroshilov and Bulganin.⁴

Stalin as the arbiter of the Grand Alliance, playing Roosevelt against Churchill: at Teheran in 1943.⁷

Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, followed by General Vlasik.⁸

At the Potsdam Conference, Stalin poses with Churchill and U.S. President Harry Truman.⁴

Words exchanged between Voroshilov and Churchill at the Teheran Conference. ⁹

Beria and Molotov visit the sights in the ruins of Hitler’s Berlin, flanked by secret policemen Kruglov and Serov.¹⁰

Beria and family around 1946.¹⁰

Beria’s house in Moscow, chosen for him by Stalin (now the Tunisian Embassy). ¹⁰

The House on the Embankment, built for the government in the early 1930s. ¹⁰

The Granovsky apartment block close to the Kremlin, where the younger magnates lived in palatial apartments.¹⁰

Stalin’s residences: his main Moscow house, Kuntsevo;⁸ his favourite holiday house before the war, Sochi;¹¹ the vaulted dining room where he enjoyed long Georgian feasts;¹¹ his specially built paddling pool;¹¹ his post-war holiday headquarters, Coldstream;¹⁰ the millionaire’s mansion in Sukhumi;¹⁰ and Museri. ¹⁰

General Vasily Stalin: over-promoted, alcoholic, unstable, cruel and terrified. ¹

After the war, General Vasily Stalin persuaded General Vlasik to give him his exquisite town house not far from the Kremlin.¹⁰

At the end of the war, a tired but cheerful Stalin sits between the two rivals, Malenkov and Zhdanov.²

After victory, Stalin fell ill with a series of minor strokes or heart attacks.³

On 12 August 1945, Generalissimo Stalin cheerfully leads his magnates for the parade.⁸

Zhdanov and the charlatan Trofim Lysenko.¹⁰

The exhausted Stalin gloomily leads Beria, Mikoyan and Malenkov through the Kremlin to the Mausoleum for the 1946 May Day parade.⁴

Stalin leads the mourning at Kalinin’s funeral in 1946.²

Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich follow Zhdanov’s coffin at his funeral. ²

In late 1948, Stalin sits with the older generation, Kaganovich, Molotov and Voroshilov, while an intrigue is being prepared behind them among the younger.²

Mikoyan and others at Stalin’s house in the summer.³

At his seventieth birthday gala, on stage at the Bolshoi, Stalin stands between Mao Tse-tung and Khrushchev.¹⁰

Stalin’s restless last holiday in 1952: his new house at New Athos; ¹⁰ the Likani Palace, which once belonged to Tsar Nicholas II’s brother Grand Duke Michael;¹⁰ his remote house at Lake Ritsa, where he spent weeks;¹⁰ green metal boxes containing phones were built by his guards so that Stalin could call for help if he was taken ill on his daily strolls.¹⁰

The sofa at Kuntsevo on which Stalin died on 5 March 1953.¹⁰

The ageing but determined Stalin watches Malenkov give the chief report at his last public appearance at the Nineteenth Congress in 1952.⁶

Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Beria, Malenkov, Molotov and Voroshilov face each other over Stalin’s body.⁴

Stalin at the 1927 Congress: in his prime.²

The author and the publishers offer their thanks to the following for their kind permission to reproduce images:

¹ Alliluyev Family Collection

² RGASPI

³ Vlasik Family Collection

⁴ AKG

⁵ Poskrebyshev Family Collection

⁶ David King Collection

⁷ Camera Press

⁸ Stalin Museum, Gori, Republic of Georgia

⁹ Hugh Lunghi Collection

¹⁰ Photographs by the author/Author’s own collection

¹¹ Victoria Ivleva-Yorke