DEEP THROAT

(Please, bear in mind that this entry is not about the actual identity of Watergate’s Deep Throat, of which I have no certain knowledge even today, after the alleged exposure of Mr. Felt as the one, which frankly I am still rather skeptical about. This entry is about perceptions only, and as the strictly unofficial perceptions of the Watergate scandal in official Moscow of that time do represent a certain historical value, for the record, it is only with this purpose in mind that I am presently performing this minor public service.)

Dr. Henry Kissinger as the Nixon-slayer, that is, the Deep Throat of Watergate?!

This may be another one of the too many items which may never be published, due to their explosive nature, but as a statement of record in a book whose pressing objective doesn’t include immediate publication, this is something that ought not to be withheld.

There was never any doubt among my high-placed Soviet colleagues in Moscow as to the proper identity of the person denoted by the code word Deep Throat of Watergate fame. “It is not accidental,” they chuckled, “that the phrase Deep Throat has a double (and if we wish to be uncharitable, triple) meaning. Why call a person Deep Throat if his deep-throated voice has not struck you as his most distinctive physical feature?”

With this argument in mind, adding some perfectly pertinent professional observations to the whole picture, all fingers inevitably pointed in the direction of Henry Kissinger, and I am convinced that despite the recent most disingenuous attribution of the Deep Throat fame to Mark Felt of the FBI, the latter’s lame confession could not change a single mind in Moscow as to the identity of the real Deep Throat.

… Maybe a few years down the road, after Dr. Kissinger’s inevitable demise (we all have to go some day!), Mr. Bob Woodward will write another mystery thriller on the true identity of his celebrated source?

KISSINGER: A SUPERMAN AND A SCHOLAR

(The jocular title here is an obvious parody of the “gentleman and scholar” cliché. For the record, my personal attitude toward Dr. Kissinger has always been markedly benign, and whatever presumably unflattering I am going to say about  him in this and the next entry, has nothing to do with any kind of subjectivity on my part... And, mind you, this entry was written several years ago, and presently I see no particular need to update its dated elements.)

So far, I have devoted a few pleasant words, here and there, to Dr. Henry Kissinger, the professor emeritus of superpower pageantry and feel-good cold war atmospherics. It is time, perhaps, to dedicate a whole entry to this important man, whose personal impact has not lost weight even after more than three decades out of public office, and whose symbolic value will not lose currency for as long as other public servants, like him, successfully aspire to places of top consequence in American foreign policy.

His outstanding role in Russian-American affairs has recently been highly praised by Vladimir Putin ipse, during a short press conference in the Kremlin on the occasion of their one-on-one meeting, that may not have been their last. These days, Henry Kissinger is regularly sitting vis-à-vis another elder, his friend and counterpart Yevgeni Primakov, on the recently-hatched American-Russian Council on Bilateral Relations. All is well, in so far as the Kissinger legacy is concerned.

Very few people, if any, on the American side of the Atlantic, realize, however, the true reasons for such an unprecedented distinction for a has-been Secretary of State, who has long been singled out (unfairly, I dare say) as a “war criminal” in certain ultra-liberal circles of Western Europe for his role in Washington’s decision-making in the closing phase of the American military involvement in South-East Asia, broadly known as the Vietnam War.

In one of my more provocative, but immensely important, entries, I have discussed the prevailing attitude in the Kremlin, which emerged circa 1967, toward the American Jews in foreign policy as the fifth column, or the weakest, most vulnerable link in this country’s political establishment, that is, most open and vulnerable to direct Soviet influence and manipulation. This attitude was best articulated by my former boss Dr. Georgi Arbatov (himself an ethnic Jew), in this immortal dictum: “When they (Americans of Jewish descent) look at you (meaning all non-Jewish Soviet officials), they see their Soviet adversary; but when they look at me, they see a fellow Jew!”

It is therefore in this capacity, as an American high-placed Jew, that Dr. Kissinger was cultivated the most by the old Soviet government, and is presently symbolically cultivated by the Russian government of Putin and Medvedev. This is not to detract anything from Kissinger’s personal competence and from all his other admirable qualities, which may well be prodigious. But to fail to understand the main reason for Moscow’s attraction to this man then and now, is to fail to understand the dynamic substance of the key political game going on in the world today, and to lose it, for sure, in the end. (Which is probably going to happen anyway, as there are no brave souls in America today, willing to learn, or to admit to having learned from this.)

EXPECTO PATRONUM: KISUNKO AND BASISTOV

The Khrushchev subsection has now come to an end, but the present entry preserves its continuity, as it talks about the successful Soviet ABM program, concluded under Brezhnev in the 1970’s, but, like all other ambitious military, nuclear, and space programs, having its roots in the hard-toiled and blood-irrigated soil of Stalinism.

The entry’s title invokes a playful reference to Harry Potter’s magic spell, but its content is hardly a joking matter. I am talking about the ABM defense ring around Moscow originally conceived in general terms and also commanded by my father General Artem Fedorovich Sergeev-Artem.

There were actually two fiercely competing Chief Designers of alternative defense systems, namely Grigori Vasilievich Kisunko and Anatoly Georgievich Basistov. Artem was obviously on excellent terms with them both, but betwixt the two of them they could not stand each other. I met them both too, naturally separately. (Social conversation only!) Whether their mutual enmity was some kind of act on their part, or the real thing, I could never figure out…

In case my reader has not figured out so far the meaning of Expecto Patronum, in this entry, both men were chief producers of the ‘magic spell’ called out for Moscow’s defense against a nuclear attack. Their designs (patronuses) were different in principle, reflecting their two approaches to the problem of strategic defense. Kisunko designed the fairly inoffensive method of some kind of metallic mist to be introduced into the path of the incoming offensive missiles. Basistov was far more aggressive, basing his design on intercepting the incoming missiles by a preventive nuclear explosion along their earlier trajectory.

Initially, Kisunko’s design was favored by the Kremlin, as sufficiently effective for Moscow’s defense, yet innocuous enough to avoid a nuclear explosion. Ironically, it is Basistov’s aggressive design now being adopted by the Russian defense forces. The reason for this is plain and simple. During Cold War, a nuclear response to an attack on Moscow could have produced a nuclear explosion over the territory of, say, Poland who was then a Soviet ally. These days, Russia lacks the protective padding of the Warsaw Pact countries, but on the bright side of it, she would no longer mind such an explosion to take place in the skies over some unfriendly NATO country…

“COMRADE CHÉ”

The joke contained in the title will probably escape those who are unaware of the tautology here. The word Ché means friend, pal, and such, as it was frequently used by Guevara in his personal Argentinean idiolect, from which comes his well-known appellation as El Ché.

The “Cuban series” (already mostly posted on October 19^th, 20^th, and 22^nd, 2011) of the Khrushchev subsection starts with this prelude devoted to the extraordinary man who had become an international legend after his death, whereas in life he was a major nuisance to his future worshipers.

My reason for placing this entry in the Lady section is not to reveal some secret history, but mainly to draw attention to certain commonly ignored facts about him, such as the fact that while posthumously hailed as a legend, he used to be a real thorn in Moscow’s side, and had the American CIA been more imaginative and nuanced, they should have taken deliberate measures to keep him alive, rather than directly contribute to his capture and execution in 1967, in Bolivia, assuring his historical immortality as a symbol of anti-American anti-Imperialist struggle of the third-world nations, most conspicuously throughout America’s backyard in Latin America. Not at all surprisingly, today’s unabashedly socialist and unmistakably nationalist nation of Bolivia makes a convincing case as to who, these days, has been winning the Ché Guevara war on the formerly uncontestable American-owned continent.

At this point, it makes sense to introduce an external information source, for the reader’s quick reference, This is what is commonly known about the poster child of world revolution Ché Guevara. (The paragraphs in teal font below are mostly digested from the Wikipedia.)---

Ernesto “Ché” Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Ché Guevara, El Ché, or simply Ché, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerilla leader, military theorist, an international statesman, and a major figure of the Cuban Revolution. Since his death, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol and global insignia within popular culture.

As a young medical student, he traveled throughout Latin America, and was transformed by the endemic poverty that he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region’s ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being the world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala’s social reforms under President Jacobo Guzman whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow would solidify Guevara’s radical ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raul and Fidel Castro, and, joined their 26^th of July Movement, invading Cuba aboard the Granma, with the intention of overthrowing the U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents. He was promoted to second in command and played a pivotal role in the successful two year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.

Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviews of appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian reforms, as minister of industries, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuba’s socialism. Such positions allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces which repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis..

(Those familiar with my narrative of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis, will be instantly aware that the last paragraph was too wide of the mark, to treat it with as much as the minimum of credulity.)

...Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions, first-- unsuccessfully-- in Congo-Kinshasa, and later, in Bolivia, where he was captured by the CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed.

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination as the subject in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. The Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico, has been declared the most famous photograph in the world.

What is demonstrably missing from this biographical summary is the fact that much of Guevara’s activity in the early years was oriented (not quite too obviously, of course, as he was a bona fide firebrand and an independently-minded revolutionary) toward his recognition and appreciation by Moscow. The latter, he, naturally, but still naively, hoped, could provide him with the necessary support, without which his actual struggle would be doomed to fail. (He was right, as his last year in the Bolivian jungle was plagued by inadequate logistics and paucity of elementary resources and supplies.) But Moscow wasn’t too eager to embrace any Latin American revolutionary, firmly and logically believing in the concept of spheres of influence. Furthermore, it saw Guevara as a trouble-making loose cannon, who wanted to fight world imperialism by his own rules, and not by the rules coordinated and agreed upon with Moscow. Eventually, Guevara understood that the Soviets would not be an ally of his, but rather a hindrance to his revolutionary ambition, and he tried to court the Chinese, who, however, refused to take his bait, although also at odds with Moscow at the time. Eventually, he was made feel unwelcome even in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where all the talk about him being number two in the revolutionary hierarchy was nonsense, as, in effect, he was removed from any position of power and influence. Thus, at the end he was practically forced to flee Cuba in 1965, and basically left on his own, which ultimately resulted in his demise.

After his death, everything, naturally, changed. A dead revolutionary is the ideal revolutionary, transcending from a flawed personality of a mortal to the perfection of a fallen martyr (death bestowing a sainthood of sorts upon the dead).

As a result of his martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a new man driven by moral, rather than material incentives, Ché Guevara evolved into a quintessential icon of the leftist movements. An array of notable individuals have viewed him as a hero; for example, Mandela referred to him as “an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom” while Sartre described him as “not only an intellectual, but also the most complete human being of our age.” Guevara remains a beloved national hero to many in Cuba, where his image adorns the $3 Cuban Peso, and school children begin each morning by pledging “We will be like Ché.” In his native homeland of Argentina, where high schools bear his name, numerous Ché museums dot the country, which in 2008 unveiled a twelve-foot bronze statue of him in his birth city of Rosario. Additionally, Guevara has been sanctified by some Bolivian campesinos as “Saint Ernesto,” to whom they pray for assistance.

…Sic venit gloria mundi!

AN AWKWARD DANCE: MY FATHER AND KHRUSHCHEV. PART II.

…Khrushchev was hoping to establish connection with Artem on several grounds. First and foremost, he was trying to promote his connection to Comrade Artem, my grandfather. Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka, in the Province of Kursk, not too far from the village of Glebovo, in the same Province where Comrade Artem had been born eleven years earlier. Furthermore, Khrushchev claimed that his professional roots had been in Donbass, the heart of Comrade Artem’s territory. Khrushchev alleged that his own father had worked in Donbass as a coal miner, and that he himself had started his professional career there, first as a tinker, then as a mechanic.

Everybody knew of course that Khrushchev had “cheated on his résumé,” like most other people had done, as a matter of standard practice. Prior to the Civil War, which he had joined in 1919 as a soldier in Stalin’s private army, his background had been entirely peasant. This fact left undoctored, would have stigmatized his budding political career. (Curiously, in Kalinin’s case, the fact that everybody knew that the man was a bona fide blue collar worker allowed his legend to stress his peasant roots, but Khrushchev would not have been able to get away with promoting his peasant origin.) In a proletarian dictatorship, as Lenin had called the Soviet political system, Khrushchev simply had to be a proletarian. So, of course, he just had to invent all that proletarian stuff about Donbass, etc.

It was not a big deal, and, as I said before, it was common practice among Khrushchev’s peers. Khrushchev did not expect my father to believe his lies, but only to appreciate his profound respect for Comrade Artem, in choosing Donbass for his résumé. But General Artem stubbornly refused to acknowledge Khrushchev as a “paisano.” He told me a very popular joke circulated in Donbass during the so-called “glorious decade” of Khrushchev’s stay at the helm:

“Why do the coal miners of Donbass carry flashlights brighter than their brethren elsewhere?” -- “Because they are searching for traces of Comrade Khrushchev’s Donbass heritage.”

This rather square joke represents the general level of disrespect Khrushchev used to be treated with, from the start of his political career to its very end, in 1964. I personally find this contemptuous attitude grossly unfair. At least Uncle Nikita had a character; he was a colorful individual, a perennial newsmaker. I would take him any time against the lifeless, humorless nobodies of the Brezhnev-Kosygin-Chernenko ilk.

The Donbass connection was not the only one where Khrushchev was expecting to find common ground with Artem. In 1955, he called him for the proverbial walk in the countryside. He started their conversation on a personal note, telling Artem about his meeting in Peking the previous year, with my mother and me. Having completed this conditioning stage of the conversation, Khrushchev then fired his big gun, blaming Stalin for the Aerowagon wreck, which in 1921 had taken the life of Comrade Artem.

From this point on, the purpose of their conversation ought to be clear to the reader. In the next few months Khrushchev would be making his bold political move denouncing Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech” at the upcoming Communist Party Congress. In doing so, he wanted Artem explicitly on his side. In return, he would personally guarantee Artem’s fast promotion to Marshal, and also help Artem dissolve his grotesque Spanish marriage, and rejoin his Russian family.

Accusing Stalin of Comrade Artem’s death, Khrushchev had naturally assumed that Comrade Artem’s son must bear a deep personal grudge against his father’s murderer, whoever that may be. After all, isn’t blood thicker than water? He obviously intended to strike a welcome chord in General Artem’s heart, but instead, achieved the opposite effect of alienating him even further.

Both Khrushchev and Artem badly underestimated each other. Khrushchev failed to realize the strength of Artem’s admiration for his late adoptive father Stalin. On his part, my father uncompromisingly despised this extraordinary peasant, whose clever mask, worn by him all his life, Artem had mistaken for the real face.

AN AWKWARD DANCE: MY FATHER AND KHRUSHCHEV. PART I.

In one of his newspaper interviews, my father Artem was asked about his relationship with Khrushchev. It is inconceivable, the interviewer said, that Khrushchev didn’t know about Stalin’s adoptive son. Even more inconceivable, I might add, that Khrushchev would not know that the great Dolores Ibarruri, La Passionaria of the Spanish Civil War and subsequently, the Queen of International Communism, had a much decorated Soviet General and Stalin’s adoptive son (!!!) for her one and only son-in-law, married to her sole surviving issue Amaya Ibarruri-Ruiz. And yet, Artem responded to the question with a firm, but perfectly enigmatic denial:

“He did not know me, Khrushchev, did not know me at all. And Brezhnev did not know me either!”

I guess it is quite possible to know about a person and to meet him on an almost regular basis without really knowing him, without really knowing him at all. In this sense, Artem may not have crossed the line between the truth and a categorical falsehood, but nevertheless, his answer was extremely disingenuous. There was a continual string of one-on-one meetings and other communications between Khrushchev and Artem all the way up to the very end of Khrushchev’s political career, and we shall touch upon these occasions in various storylines of the Khrushchev subsection. In this connection, the reader is advised to read the already posted entries In Memoriam (March 5, 2011); The Man Who Destroyed The Soviet Union (January 26, 2011, under the umbrella title La Forza Del Destino); Khrushchev: Politics And ‘Marshal’ Arts (October 17-18, 2011), and definitely the Cuban diptych (October 20 and 22, 2011).

Being able to shoot yourself in the foot is an incredible luxury that very few people can afford. My father’s relationship with Khrushchev was bizarre from the early beginning. After Stalin’s death, Artem’s life and career depended in great measure on Khrushchev’s good graces. Yet each time Khrushchev would stretch out his hand in an offer of friendship, Artem would turn him down.

During his first four years at the helm of the Soviet Union, from 1953 to 1957, Khrushchev's position was precarious. He had been installed at the top in a hurry, and almost in jest, by people who despised him. The sole reason for his promotion to First Secretary was that among all other contenders he appeared the easiest to unseat whenever the real leader was to emerge out of the real power struggle. But Khrushchev refused to think of himself as a figurehead. He felt very comfortable at the top, and wanted to stay there, and now he cleverly solicited every friend he could get, to help the puppet fight and defeat the puppeteers.

In his young thirties, General Artem was a singular figure in the Soviet military-political establishment. As Stalin’s adopted son, he had become a powerful magnet, attracting men of much older age and much greater prominence than himself. He was a symbol, the rallying point. Had he agreed to play a supporting role, he would have made himself unstoppable, career-wise. But he was too arrogant, and not ambitious enough, to seek political alliances as a necessity of life…

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

THREE BULLETS POINTBLANK. PART III OF 3.

...Following the assassination at the Kremlin, there was an even greater conspiracy of massive cover-up. The Soviet leaders did not wish to be seen like some Mafia hit men in the eyes of the world and of their own public. With the full complicity of the military, they preferred to manufacture and release the rather cumbersome story of Beria’s arrest, secret trial, and execution. This course of justice lasted for months, with huge piles of paperwork issued, and crimes imaginable and unimaginable assiduously listed. Among the Party leaders, Khrushchev took personal credit for the removal of Beria, with Mikoyan only too happy to be “cheated out” of this most dubious honor. But these two were by no means the only ones who infinitely enjoyed the prolonged circus of vengeance against their dead foe.

This circus, however, had a very legitimate reason. It would not have been enough to declare Beria’s death a tragic accident, a suicide, or some enemy act of terrorism. As I said before, Beria had commanded a vast sinister organization, which needed to be completely dismantled and destroyed. Without publicly declaring Beria a dangerous criminal, an enemy of the Soviet Union, and an imperialist spy to boot (that last charge was particularly effective, and, historically speaking, not altogether false!), the anxiously anticipated drastic purge of the police and security apparatus would not have been possible.

Despite a very elaborate effort at creating some virtual reality, made by Khrushchev and other members of the Presidium, even the basic facts of the authorized version do not quite add up. For instance, describing one pivotal detail in his version of Beria’s “arrest,” Khrushchev is alleging that “Comrade Bulganin was instructed [by the conspirators] to see that the marshals and generals [opposed to Beria and participating in the plot] were allowed to bring their guns with them [into the Kremlin].” This explanation is just plain ludicrous. Even though Bulganin was Soviet Defense Minister at the time, he, just like everybody else, had no authority over the police and the Kremlin guard, who were all without exception Beria’s exclusive domain. Would these hardcore professionals ever allow Khrushchev’s “marshals and generals” to smuggle weapons into the Kremlin against the official stated policy? I don’t think so!

Yes, Beria was one of those men in history who could never be impeached. His arrest would have required the use of such force which none of the conspirators could even dream of. The only way to get rid of Beria was a very quick and very lethal inside job.

THREE BULLETS POINTBLANK. PART II OF 3.

Having promoted Malenkov to the pinnacle, Beria sat back and enjoyed the show, watching the extremely uncomfortable Malenkov deal with the resentful Presidium comrades, who almost immediately called for Malenkov’s dismissal from the top Party post. Beria did not mind that at all.--- Le Roi s'Amuse.--- Allowing Malenkov, theoretically the most powerful man in the USSR, to be so easily dismissed, he only proved the point to everybody that, on his watch, titles meant nothing: Beria was the real boss.--- Le Roi le Veult. Meanwhile, the terribly underestimated Nikita Khrushchev was installed as Malenkov's "safe" replacement, by consensus.

Of the crowd of the Kremlin insiders, Beria showed special partiality to Mikoyan. His old friend had more access to Beria now, both formal and informal, than anyone else in the Kremlin pack, including Malenkov. But Mikoyan, more than everybody else, was terrified, and in fear for his life… He obviously understood that, in view of their past history together (see my entry The Twenty-Seventh Commissar, posted on August 4-6, 2013), he had more reason to be afraid than all the rest of them put together…

Caeterum censeo, [Beria] delendum (sic!) esse! Beria had become too much, and had to be destroyed. In his great arrogance, he was making it too obvious that everybody’s lives were in his hands. No one could feel safe, while Beria was alive. The situation was even worse than at any time during Comrade Stalin’s Golden Age. At least Stalin had his cronies, who stuck with him through thick and thin, and could expect their loyalty to the Master to be rewarded. Beria was an outsider who had joined the Kremlin inner circle fairly recently, in 1938, and had never developed any followers or commitments among the old-timers.

Therefore, every member of the Presidium, without exception, wanted Beria dead, always on the lookout for the blessed opportunity to get rid of him. But the risk of being exposed was exorbitantly high, due to Beria’s ubiquitous informers and the listening devices, installed even in the shrubbery inside the Kremlin, along the favorite paths, where all of them liked to take walks.

Three months after Stalin’s death, Mikoyan approached Khrushchev about someone who wanted to make a proposition. He was Lieutenant General Pavel Batitsky, among other things, Beria’s bodyguard. There had been a time, in Stalin’s last years, when Beria started replacing all guards with pure Georgian natives. Stalin could not miss the opportunity to taunt Beria that any Georgian who could not rely on anybody, except his fellow Georgians, belonged back in Tbilisi, and not here in Moscow. The ever arrogant Beria was offended, and immediately proceeded to demonstrate that in his case it had not been so. Batitsky, therefore, was one of Beria’s recent acquisitions. Unlike Stalin’s Vlasik, he had not been tested in action, but the self-confident Beria could see no reason to question his loyalty.

Whether the offer presented to Khrushchev was Batitsky’s own idea, or suggested by the wily Mikoyan, the essence of it was simple. Batitsky was willing to assassinate Comrade Beria during an appropriate occasion at the Kremlin, should Comrade Khrushchev personally instruct him to do so. In return, he wanted a good job, giving him prestige and respect, and a series of automatic promotions-- all the way up to Marshal of the USSR…

Khrushchev gladly complied. If this good man could pull it off, he deserved everything he asked for. Soon thereafter, there was a government function at the Kremlin. During the recess, Batitsky calmly approached Beria, pulled out his gun, and put three bullets pointblank into him. The other guards, all Batitsky’s men, and none of them Georgians, did not move a finger.

(This is the end of Part II. Part III will be posted tomorrow.)

THREE BULLETS POINTBLANK. PART I OF 3.

(From my father Artem’s reminiscences of Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria:

“A dark impression… Whenever Beria would come, he was overpowering. But you cannot take it from him, he was a colossal figure. All atomic energy was on his shoulders. It wasn’t for nothing that Kurchatov asked, and even insisted, that, instead of Molotov, Beria ought to be at the head of the atomic project…”
…No, no matter what they say about Beria’s fall from power in the months following Stalin’s death, a man of such a colossal stature could never be arrested. The only way to get rid of him was to kill him.)

The following story is extremely unconventional, and I cannot fully vouchsafe for it, for the sole reason that I could not possibly have been a firsthand witness to it. Still, this story makes far more sense to me than the inept official version of Beria’s arrest, trial, and subsequent execution, and it is primarily in this capacity that I stand by it…

What does it take to become Marshal? Three bullets pointblank. This was the inside-the-Kremlin reference to a very important assassination performed by Lieutenant General Pavel Fedorovich Batitsky in June 1953, for which he was rewarded with a prompt promotion to the rank of Colonel General, the highly prestigious and much-coveted post of Air Defense Commander for the city of Moscow, and, eventually, with the rank of Marshal, and the title of Hero of the USSR. The man receiving three bullets pointblank was none other than Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, Stalin’s heir apparent.

Both during the Nineteenth Party Congress and afterwards, Stalin had become rather detached, and allowed Beria to run most of the show. Therefore, in the wake of Stalin’s death, in March 1953, there was never any power struggle in the Kremlin. Beria knew his business very well. He was the only man calling the shots.

Beria had all those unique qualities that Stalin had been looking for in his successor, making him capable of ruling the nation. Like Stalin, he was a natural-born prototype of the Machiavellian Prince; and, like Stalin, he had shown his deep political insight by establishing himself as the head of a vast criminal empire. And, also like Stalin, he was a Georgian…

Beria was not the Leader of the Communist Party, nor the Prime Minister, nor the President of the USSR. But after Stalin’s death, he epitomized the basic trademark qualities of the Soviet regime, gathering in his hands all the police power of the police state. No one among the rest of the Soviet leadership was able to challenge him. He reigned supreme over the Soviet “equivalents” of the federal, state, and local police, the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service. Wherever the party and government officials met: in the Kremlin, in the Bolshoi Theater, or elsewhere, they were always surrounded by Beria-controlled guards. Only Beria’s men were allowed to carry arms around the Soviet leaders. Even the senior military officers were routinely disarmed before entering the Kremlin, or attending any other official function.

Beria was conspicuously the one giant among dwarfs. A cunning and devious man, he manipulated people with relish. On his urging, one of the top contenders for political leadership, Georgi Malenkov, was made First Secretary of the Central Committee and Prime Minister, a powerful combination of the two highest posts in the nation. Yet Malenkov was only a powerless puppet in Beria’s hands, treated with suspicion by other Presidium members, who believed exactly what Beria wanted them to believe, which was that Comrade Malenkov was Beria’s spy…

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

CHRONOLOGICAL REFERENCE LIST FOR THE HISTORY ENTRIES. PART III.

(I have this ongoing list on my blog now, posted in installments, as the best way out of the serious predicament caused by sporadic postings of historical entries, to the detriment of chronological continuity.)

History Conventional And Unconventional. Generalized Interjection. Posted on February 16^th, 2011.

The Remarkable Case Of Rudolf Hess. Hess. 1919-1941. Posted on February 15^th, 2011.

Wallenberg As A Postscript To Hess. Hess, Wallenberg. 1941-1945 and beyond. Posted on February 17^th, 2011.

Stalin-Hitler Pact: We Fooled Them! Stalin, 1939. Posted on February 18^th, 2011.

Yamamoto: The Admiral Who Knew Too Much. Stalin, Yamamoto. 1935-1943. Posted on February 19^th, 2011.

Calculated Vengeance. Stalin. 1905-1945. Posted on March 21^st, 2013.

Richard Sorge: The Best Spy Of All Time. Sorge. 1918-1943. Posted on February 20^th, 2011.

Smetona’s Choice: The Better Of Two Evils. Stalin, Smetona. 1938-1944. Posted on February 22^nd, 2011.

La Passionaria Of The Spanish Gold. Stalin, Dolores Ibarruri. 1936-1939. Posted on March 15-16, 2013.

Franco: The Man Who Cheated The Odds. Franco. 1936-1975. Posted on March 17-18, 2013.

Father Frost: One Day In The Life Of General Milstein. Milstein. 1941. Posted on February 27^th, 2011.

Traitor-Hero. Stalin, Vlasov. 1941-1945. Posted on March 17^th, 2011.

Who Stole The A-Bomb? Stalin, FDR, Truman. 1941-1953. Posted on March 1-3, 2013.

Rokossovsky. Rokossovsky. 1896-1968. Posted on February 23^rd, 2011.

Zhukov. Zhukov. 1896-1974. Posted on February 25^th, 2011.

Kuomintang And Soviet Russia. Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek. 1911-1949. Posted on March 3^rd, 2011.

Mao The Long Marcher. Mao. 1934-1961. Posted on March 6^th, 2011.

Stalin’s Korean Charade. Stalin, Kim Il-Sung. 1949-1953. Posted on March 8^th, 2011.

Marlboro Man. Churchill. 1874-1965. Posted on March 19-20, 2013.

Operation Unthinkable. Churchill. 1945. Posted on February 26^th, 2013.

Secret History Of The Iron Curtain. Churchill, Stalin. 1945-1946. Posted on March 1^st, 2011.

Comrade Stalin’s Last Hurrah. Stalin. 1949-1953. Posted on March 27^th, 2011.

CALCULATED VENGEANCE

This entry is a sort of postscript to the one on Yamamoto and Japan. (See my entry Yamamoto, posted on my blog on February 19^th, 2011.)

The fact that Stalin was sore at Japan for the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war was evident in his very special passion for the old valse triste On the Hillocks of Manchuria (its author was the military band musician and decorated war hero Ilya Alexeevich Shatrov) and the heroic patriotic song Varyag (surprisingly, its original author was the Austrian poet and writer Rudolf Greinz) about the sinking of the Russian war cruiser Varyag, both pieces relating to the tragic events of that war. It is only natural that his will for belated vengeance was a factor in his quasi-friendly dealings with Japan during World War II.

I do believe that the Soviet complicity in the death of the former partner Admiral Yamamoto, and the Soviet unwillingness to serve as a mediator between Japan and the United States at the end of the war, at Japan’s request (what a cool irony that would have been for Stalin to reenact the role of Teddy Roosevelt, in 1905, mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the war between Russia and Japan) may have been symptomatic of that old hostility, particularly on Stalin’s part. I am quite sure that he was privately satisfied when the two American bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. By the same token, it was obvious to Stalin that, because of the two bombs, Japan would now become an eternal enemy to the United States, and, as everybody knows, an enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But Comrade Stalin had yet another good reason to be content. As a result of that fateful action, the United States suddenly found itself “disarmed,” as it had possessed only these two weapons in its nuclear arsenal prior to that particular time, and now that these had been gone, it would take some time to replenish the stock. In the meantime, America would not be able to use its nuclear superpower status as a “bargaining chip” against the USSR, before the Russians acquired nuclear weapons of their own. A triple triumph for Stalin here: to punish Russia’s erstwhile nemesis for the past humiliation, to disarm the current nemesis, and to set them both against each other, all with one devastating blow, in which Russia ostensibly had no part, and therefore could not take the blame.

How far had he been able to calculate this? It shouldn’t have been too difficult, after all. He must have seen, with his celebrated foresight, the Japanese samurai fighting the war to the death… Only the two superbombs dropped by the US on Japan could in effect put an end to the samurai’s dogged resistance... Et voilà!

MARLBORO MAN. PART II.

…Among the less known, or completely unknown, details about Churchill’s life is the fact that his mother Jennie Jerome (1854-1921) was the daughter of an American millionaire Leonard Jerome, and she is claimed to have been Jewish by several reputable Israeli sources, thus bestowing Yiddishkeit on Winston Churchill himself, despite the disparaging accusation that his active role in the postponement of the Second Front in Europe in WWII until 1944 had allowed the Holocaust, which would not have happened, had the Second Front been opened in 1942. Thus putting upon both Churchill and FDR a large share of the blame for Hitler’s extermination of six million Jews, mainly during the period of 1943-1945, has become a very important part of the historical Jewish lore, alongside the bestowal of the honorary title of righteous Gentile upon Stalin for his role in saving the lives of some two million Jews of Eastern Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine by having moved them far to the East, thus out of harm’s way, right before Hitler’s eastward aggression in June 1941.

Churchill’s peculiar personal relationship with Stalin began indirectly in 1941 and directly in June 1942. An opinion, particularly prevalent among the American scholars, is that the relationship on Churchill’s part was a disingenuous “pact with the devil,” using his famous phrase that he would make such a pact with the devil if it helped him defeat Hitler. But in reality, Churchill had great respect for Stalin, and he believed that their personal relationship could greatly benefit the world if only “they could dine together at least once a week.” Stalin on his part reciprocated the respect element, which however did not prevent him from collecting some compromising evidence against Churchill (apparently regarding the latter’s sexual adventurism and indiscretion), which he intended to blackmail him with in their postwar negotiations about the future of Europe. But when Churchill lost the 1945 election to Clement Attlee, Stalin (who refused to believe that democracy may have had something to do with it) was convinced that Churchill “lost it deliberately,” so that he could no longer be blackmailed by Stalin.

With regard to the authorship of the Iron Curtain, this matter was covered in my entry Secret History Of The Iron Curtain, posted on my blog on March 1, 2011, explaining there that this was all Churchill’s idea. I do not believe, however, that Stalin was opposed to it too much. After all, had Europe remained whole, the United States could still have found a pretext for keeping her physical presence on the continent, but for Stalin it would have presented a much bigger challenge to keep the Soviet troops west of the USSR state border. Thus, even on the tricky question of the Iron Curtain, Stalin managed to triumph in the end too, resulting in a sprawling, albeit objectively temporary, Soviet global empire…

MARLBORO MAN. PART I.

This entry opens a short sub-subsection within the Stalin subsection, centering on Winston Churchill (1874-1965). I have nicknamed him Marlboro Man, reflecting both on his Anglo-American heritage, and on his generally pro-American stance. The next two Churchillian entries have been posted already. They are Operation Unthinkable (February 26^th, 2013), and Secret History Of the Iron Curtain (March 1^st, 2011).

There is little need in recounting Churchill’s biography, except perhaps for this fairly unusual summary at the official sight of the Nobel Prize Committee (Nobelprize.org), posted on account of his recipience of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953:

The Right Honorable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and an American mother, was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. After a brief but eventful career in the army, he became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900. He held high posts in both Liberal and Conservative governments during the first three decades of the century. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, a post which he had earlier held from 1911 to 1915. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, remaining in office till 1945. He took over the premiership again in the Conservative victory of 1951 resigning in 1955. However he remained a Member of Parliament until the general election of 1964, when he did not seek reelection. Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him the dignity of Knighthood, and invested him with the insignia of the Order of the Garter in 1953. Among other countless honors and decorations he received special mention should be made of the honorary citizenship of the United States, which President Kennedy conferred on him in 1963.

Churchill’s literary career began with campaign reports: The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899), an account of the campaign in the Sudan and of the Battle of Omdurman. In 1900 he published his only novel Savrola, and, six years later, his first major work, the biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. His other famous biography, the life of his great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, was published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938. (…Randolph Churchill; Duke of Marlborough… I wonder why he was not too eager to pursue world history on his mother’s side?..) His history of the First World War appeared in four volumes under the title The World Crisis (1923-1929); and his memoirs of the Second World War ran to six volumes (1948-1953/54). After his retirement from office, Churchill wrote a History of the English-speaking Peoples (in 4 volumes, 1956-1958). His magnificent oratory survives in a dozen volumes of speeches, among them The Unrelenting Struggle (1942), The Dawn of Liberation (1945), and Victory (1946).

Churchill, a gifted amateur painter, wrote Painting as a Pastime (1948). An autobiographical account of his youth, My Early Life, appeared in 1930.

(This is the end of Part I. Part II, consisting of my own take on Churchill, will be posted tomorrow.)

FRANCO: THE MAN WHO CHEATED THE ODDS. PART II.

…Stalin had reliable information that Generalissimo Franco was on his way out. There were millions of progressive men and women in Spain, who were profoundly dissatisfied and offended by the regime of this Hitler’s stooge. One of these days, Herr Franco would be assassinated.

Yes, Franco was clever. In 1947, to appease America, he had introduced the so-called Law of Succession, which would “officially” restore monarchy in Spain on the day of his death. But as Comrade Stalin’s legal experts had assured him, it could well be argued that all Franco’s pronouncements should be declared null and void after the fall of his regime, just as the laws of Nazi Germany had been abrogated at the end of the Third Reich. No more kings in Spain, thank you.

As soon as Spain got rid of her fascist dictator, Dolores Ibarruri would be returning to Madrid. With Soviet help she had a great chance, in the subsequent “democratic” elections, to become President of Spain. Artem must realize that Ibarruri’s success was practically a foregone conclusion, because it was so categorically vital to the Soviet interests. Moscow had already spent millions of its Spanish dollars, and was prepared to spend many millions more, to ensure it.

When La Passionaria becomes Head of State in Spain, Artem by virtue of his marriage to Amaya should be superbly positioned to establish a powerful personal presence in Spain. It would be then his job to ensure a continued mutually-beneficial relationship between the two nations, and to thwart any attempts by Western agents to make Spain deviate from the course of unflinching friendship and cooperation with the USSR.

In other words, it would be insane to trust our Spanish Comrade Dolores in anything, but Stalin would rely on Artem to safeguard the Soviet interests in Spain and, having the vast resources of the Soviet superpower behind him, to take control in the country.

...My father complied. How could he ever say no to Comrade Stalin?

…But Franco did not comply.

The reason why Stalin’s grand strategy in Spain did not work was that Franco’s much-decorated persona had become one of the most prized possessions of the post-war Western civilization. His physical survival received a top priority among Western intelligence communities, particularly, with the recently established Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. All Stalin’s active and potential agents in a one hundred mile radius of the Caudillo had been efficiently liquidated, or replaced, along with Franco’s own loyal bodyguards, by specially-trained commandos in the US service. For this very reason one of Stalin’s most reliable assassins, the legendary Kim Philby, for instance, was never allowed to get close to the Spanish dictator after the war, despite his previously cultivated personal ties to Franco, a cause of great pain for Philby’s wounded pride.

…In other words, among the loud salvos of public brouhaha over Turkey, and Greece, where the Russians had absolutely no interest in, or the slightest control of, the local communist insurgency, the real Cold-War Battle of Europe, taking place in Spain, was quietly fought, and quietly won by the West.

FRANCO: THE MAN WHO CHEATED THE ODDS. PART I.

(The story of how, after World War II, Generalissimo and Caudillo of Spain Francisco Franco survived against the odds. This is my second and last Spanish entry in this particular sequence, for the same reason as was stated in the note to the previous entry.)

At the end of World War II, an all-new conflict was shaping up between the two formerly allied sides, now divided by the Iron Curtain. The crucial role of Spain in this new “cold war” conflict has never been openly admitted, and its sweeping extent has never been made public by either side. The Russians are never keen on revealing any secrets, as a matter of principle. The West hardly felt proud of its support for the double-dealing fascist thug Francisco Franco, even if for the greater cause of protecting the war-weakened democracies of Free Europe from the “peril” of Soviet totalitarianism.

Franco’s exceptional political savvy had kept him out of the War Tribunals. Everybody knows, of course, that his so-called wartime “neutrality” had been pretty heavily loaded in Hitler’s favor, but, walking a very thin line, he had stopped short of becoming a legally-defined “war criminal.” This tiny legal loophole was surely enough for the United States and Great Britain to allow Franco to remain in power in Spain after the war. Even France, formerly staunchly anti-Franco, could not say “no,” when her senior Western allies had firmly put their foot down.

Franco was as anti-Soviet as they come: This was his best, and perhaps his only lifesaving qualification that would allow him to live to a ripe old age, with all his titles and bonuses intact, and to die a death of natural causes. Stalin definitely underestimated the extent and intensity of the Western support for that “little Spanish bug,” whom he had confidently intended to squash with his left pinkie. (Unlike my unabashedly chauvinistic step-grandmother Dolores Ibarruri, Stalin did not care about Franco’s Jewishness, but the fact that La Passionaria did, did not make her necessarily anti-Semitic, as she did not like the Russians either…)

Yet, in 1949, Stalin was still extremely confident that, paraphrasing Mayakovski, Franco was eating his last pineapple dessert, before his brains would be splashed all over the shiny parquet of his Madrid palace, and La Passionaria entered the city gate on a white horse. For this reason, he invited my father to his Kuntsevo (“Nearby”) abode, to have a private talk.

He reassured my father that he himself was constantly forced to do things which he would never have done for his own private interest. However, as a statesman, charged with the advancement of the public good, he had a different set of moral imperatives.

Stalin said that he appreciated the fact that Artem had a family. Artem’s wife Nina was a good person, she and her son, Artem’s son, would be well taken care of. Artem need not worry about it. However, the Soviet national interest demanded that Artem and Nina’s marriage now be dissolved, so that Artem would be able to perform a new major function of vital importance to the country, by marrying a certain Amaya Ibarruri-Ruiz.

For my reader’s information, Dolores Ibarruri, and her slightly demented husband Julian Ruiz, were both living in Moscow, although separated. They had given birth to several children, but only two of them had survived beyond infancy. Ruben, the son, had been killed in action at Stalingrad during the war, and now Amaya, the daughter, remained their only living offspring. By marrying Amaya, Artem was becoming the principal male member of the Dolores Ibarruri family. Here’s why this was so vitally important:

The international situation had become very tense, with the creation of NATO. As Stalin and Artem were talking, Russia was on the verge of becoming an atomic superpower, having successfully tested her first atomic bomb. The strategic military balance had been restored in the world, but the superpower struggle of Russia and America was just about beginning, and so, the role of Spain in determining the future of Europe was now becoming pivotal…

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

LA PASSIONARIA OF THE SPANISH GOLD. PART II.

In October 1936, the loyalists were having an increasingly hard time defending their dwindling status quo against the relentless forces of General Franco. As the latter was about to lay siege to Madrid, the frazzled Republican government decided to move the Spanish capital from its current location in Central Spain, to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, where prompt evacuation by ship would be possible and the danger of encirclement, unlike in Madrid, was practically nonexistent. First, they moved their government offices to Valencia, and later to Barcelona.

In the process of moving the capital, the Gold Reserve of Spain was supposed to be moving too, in bullion and coin worth well over three quarters of a billion US dollars in the currency of the 1930’s.

Concerning this gold, Dolores Ibarruri had a wonderful brainstorm, which would have made the following adventure an all-time classic, had it not been too hot for the printing presses. To make a long story short, amidst certain confusion and even panic in some Republican quarters, she used her authority as a Member of the Spanish Government, to commandeer the Gold shipment, then in the process of being evacuated, to the Spanish port city of Cartagena. There, it was loaded onto a ship, and taken across the Mediterranean, through the Straits, into the Black Sea, and into the Soviet port of Odessa.

To cut the long story short, Dolores delivered it all to Stalin, in exchange for his promise to assist her with every possible means available in becoming one day soon President of the new Spanish Republic. Finding it very much in concert with his own thinking, Stalin was quite happy to oblige.

The loss of the nation’s Gold Reserve became a shocking embarrassment for the Republican Government . The Socialist Prime Minister of Spain Francisco Largo Caballero suspected Stalin’s direct complicity in the theft, and would become so bitterly anti-Soviet, that he had to be replaced by the equally disgusted Finance Minister Juan Negrín, who was however somewhat better capable of concealing his feelings. Then, President Manuel Azaña y Díaz secretly appealed to Stalin, begging him to help to remedy the situation. The Republic was now practically penniless. But how could the miserable victim take the robber to court, when the robber was the only friend the victim had, while any judge or jury looking at the victim would have only murder in mind!

Stalin chose to be “generous,” and offered Sr. Azaña a nice way out. Of course, he was not going to return even one ounce of his loot to the legitimate owner. But he would happily consider all this Gold of Spain as payment-in-full for all Soviet expenses on weapons and troops made in the course of the war. You can see vintage Stalin in this vignette.

Their deal did not mean, however, that Stalin would expedite a single military shipment to the Republican Government. The historians of the Spanish Civil War have been puzzled by the pathetic ineffectiveness of Stalin’s help to his Socialist friends. My readers should be well equipped by now to solve this “mystery” for themselves.

As for Dolores Ibarruri, she returned to the war-ravaged Spain, to remain extremely active in the Civil War business. She had little to worry about, well-protected by a whole regiment of dedicated Communists, who now saw her safety as their best insurance for a safe retreat to Russia, after losing the war, as expected. Her Republican colleagues, whom she had so shockingly swindled, could not complain, because she was now under Stalin’s personal protection, and Stalin was still their only remaining hope to survive.

But no matter what, in 1939 Franco emerged victorious, Dolores found herself permanently settling down in Moscow as the Queen of all displaced foreigners… and World War Two had not even officially begun.

LA PASSIONARIA OF THE SPANISH GOLD. PART I.

…She has been called the most fascinating woman of the twentieth century, and also the most enigmatic. To me, she has also been my step-grandmother. Imposingly always dressed in black, she has been the origin of many famous dictums, among them: “¡No Pasaran!” and “Better to die standing than to live on your knees.”

She lived a long life, and these days, as I am unstoppably becoming an old man myself, she has been dead for many years already. Her name was Dolores Ibarruri.

One day not too soon I may sit down to write a personal story about her, but in this entry she is the central character of the less personal, but still little-known (yes!) historical episode called the Spanish Civil War…

Textbook history relates how the Socialists came to power in Spain in 1931, when the people voted monarchy out of existence. How the country’s diehard monarchists plotted to overthrow the Republic, in a series of initially unsuccessful attempts. How in 1936 the Rightist General Francisco Franco led a successful revolt against the Republican government, and in the ensuing war was supported by Hitler, Mussolini, and the Pope (Pius XI), while the Loyalist Republican forces were supported by Stalin and by the so-called International Brigades, organized by some liberally-minded Western romantics (Ernest Hemingway prominently among them as a war reporter on the Republican side), with considerable Soviet help.

But what textbook history failed to notice, however, was that, with friends like Comrade Stalin, the Spanish Republic had been doomed from the very start, enemies or no enemies. Just like Lenin before him, Stalin hated all socialists and independent communists much more than any of his capitalist adversaries. In so far as Spain was concerned, Stalin secretly rooted for Franco, while openly opposing him; and, while openly supporting the Republicans, secretly wished them all to drop dead. (Go figure that out!)

Thus, Stalin’s grand strategy in the Spanish Civil War was to bring the Left to ruin, to let the Ultra-Right win, and then to try to take control of the pendulum swinging back to the Left, with the help of the pro-Soviet Spanish clients.

Stalin was convinced that Franco would make a much easier mark to bring down than any of the Republican leaders. His logic was fine, considering Franco’s association with such unsavory characters as Der Führer and Il Duce. Had El Caudillo not managed to cleverly distance himself from the Axis Powers, by declaring Spain’s formal “neutrality” in World War Two, and had he not made himself indispensable to the free world by virtue of his anti-Soviet credentials, he would surely have had a great fall, just as Stalin had predicted.

In the meantime, Stalin did not have to look too far for “our man in Madrid.” She came to him. My future step-grandmother Dolores Ibarruri, indeed, made herself extremely useful to Stalin, displaying, along with her undisputed revolutionary pathos, an acute opportunistic brilliance.

She had become a romantic leader in Spain, in her own right. Always dressed in black, she appealed to the crowds with a self-reinforcing image. Her thinking in this matter of constancy in appearance was precisely like Hitler’s, who had several dozens of exactly the same clothes, with the intent of developing a lasting visual bond with the public.

Being a Communist member of the Republican Government, soon to become Vice President of the Cortés, La Passionaria, as she was called, enjoyed sufficient political clout to be able to pull off what was undoubtedly the most amazing heist of the twentieth century. I am referring now to the untold story of the Spanish Gold…

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

THE STORY OF THE SOVIET ANTHEM

[For my reader’s information, the music and words of La Marseillaise, mentioned in this entry, were written by the Frenchman Claude Joseph Rouget de Lille in 1792. As for L’Internationale, its words were written in 1871 by the French socialist poet Eugène Pottier, at first, to the tune of La Marseillaise, but later (in 1888) provided with its original music by Pierre De Geyter. It is so ironic that although L’Internationale is one of the most famous songs ever written, very few people actually know the names of its authors.

…And one more thing. The current National Anthem of Russia happens to be a faithful reincarnation of the old Soviet Anthem, to the same music by Alexander Alexandrov and a slightly retouched set of lyrics by their original creator Sergei Mikhalkov.]

There are actually two curious stories here: one about the making of the Anthem itself, and the other about Voroshilov’s reminiscences around it.

It is a well-known fact that for the first quarter of a century of its existence, Soviet Russia/the USSR did not have an authentic national anthem. The first semi-official substitute for the Tsarist Anthem God Keep The Tsar, discarded after the abolition of the Russian Monarchy, was the Workers’ Marseillaise, with somewhat modified Russian words (as compared to the original French lyrics), but with its distinctive music intact. It was in use between 1917 (surprisingly adopted by the… Russian Provisional Government) and early 1918, but it was naturally a temporary thing. The colossal Russian admiration for the French Revolution notwithstanding, the song was not only a foreign invention, but was, besides, the national anthem of another (plus unfriendly) country. Tchaikovsky had used its music to symbolize Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. Thus, it was a controversial musical symbol of anti-Russian aggression, and for all these reasons it could not be sustained, except as a stirring revolutionary song.

In early 1918, yet another immensely popular French revolutionary song L’Internationale, composed in late nineteenth century, to become the international anthem of socialists, communists, anarchists, and other sorts of world revolutionists, was adopted by the Soviet government as Russia’s internationalist anthem, in lieu of a national anthem, to represent the “internationalist” character of the Bolshevik Revolution. The story of the Soviet Anthem goes faulty at this time, asserting that the decision to create a Soviet National Anthem would not be made until 1943, when in the midst of Russia’s Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany a national patriotic zeal was in particular demand.

But the truth of the matter is that the search for a Soviet National Anthem had started long before that, in the 1930’s, and a challenge of sorts was thrown to the Soviet composers to compete for the best proposal for it. Several proposals were indeed submitted (including one by Dmitri Shostakovich!). But it is also well known that by that time Stalin already had a favorite in the race, the composer Alexander Alexandrov, who was the organizer and artistic director-conductor, since 1928, of the exceptionally talented and magnificently spirited Red Army Song and Dance Ensemble, destined to become legendary. Alexandrov was also the composer of a number of excellent patriotic songs, having received the highest artistic title of The People’s Artist of the USSR in 1937. Therefore, Stalin had good grounds for being confident about Alexandrov’s eventual success in this endeavor.

The composer’s effort was crowned with the 1938 prototype Bolshevik Party Anthem, written together with the poet Vasili Ivanovich Lebedev-Kumach, often unfairly painted as a Communist hack, but objectively a solid, if straightforward and simple, writer of patriotic lyrics. Later on, in June 1941, it was again teamed up with Lebedev-Kumach, that Alexandrov would create the stirring masterpiece Holy War, which became the most celebrated song of the Great Patriotic War, sung by soldiers on their way to the front, bringing Russia to tears.

Stalin apparently loved the music of Alexandrov’s Bolshevik Party Anthem, and his 1943 decision to turn it into the National Soviet Anthem is evident from the fact that the latter’s words, written by Sergei Mikhalkov in a largely symbolic collaboration with the Armenian poet El Registan (Gabriel Arshaluisovich Arakelyan), were carefully fitted to Alexandrov’s 1938 musical gem, like an upgraded version of the Lebedev-Kumach lyrics… Such is the core story of the creation of the Soviet Anthem.

The next curious story, frequently and admiringly repeated by Voroshilov, sheds some light on the details of the first one, while bearing further testimony to Stalin seeing himself as Russia’s royalty. The event’s exact date is unclear here, but I would be more inclined to take it back to 1938, rather than to the later date of 1943.

…Marshal Voroshilov had not only been the commander of Stalin’s private army during the Civil War, and later Stalin’s War Minister. He also had a magnificent voice, at least in some credible opinions.

It was in this vocal capacity that Stalin summoned Voroshilov into his Kremlin office one day. At the same time, he invited the distinguished composer Alexander Alexandrov, who was of course both men’s favorite.

“We need a new national anthem,” said Stalin. “You write good music, Comrade Alexandrov. That’s why I have chosen you specifically to write it. And I want it to be just as good as the “God Keep the Tsar,” just as good, you understand?”

God Keep the Czar had been Russia’s old national anthem under the tsars. After the Bolshevik takeover, it was no longer in use, and the battle hymn of the Revolution L’Internationale was sung as its substitute. But now was the time for authenticity.

Stalin wanted to make sure that Alexandrov knew precisely what he meant by “just as good,” and he told the two men to start singing God Keep the Czar, in order to refresh their memory. Meanwhile, he himself sank into his big leather armchair and closed his eyes, as if taking a nap: his usual and well-known trick, when in fact he was closely watching his subjects.

The Marshal and the Composer, both dressed in full military uniform, standing at attention, began singing with strong, vibrant voices, and as they were singing that incredibly beautiful old Tsarist Anthem, tears of rapture were pouring down their cheeks. They were in Royal Presence, and felt exalted.

Stalin was sitting bemusedly for some time after they were finished. Then he looked at Alexandrov with a merry twinkle in his eye.

“Just as good!” he repeated, shaking his finger, and dismissed the composer.

HOLOCAUST AND THE SECOND FRONT

The focus of this entry is not on Stalin, but it is so organically linked to the previous entry by the subject of the USSR, the West, and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, that to place it anywhere else than right here would be unthinkable.

 “The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.” This sharp aphorism of Nietzsche’s offers the best explanation of what the Russians saw as the position of the West toward Hitler and Stalin, not only in the years and months immediately preceding World War Two, but also at the Teheran Big Three Conference, in 1943. Stalin saw this as the main reason why the Americans and the Brits were in no big hurry to open the Second Front. Let their two enemies, Russia and Germany, destroy each other!

Curiously, Stalin had a ready plan in place, developed as early as in 1941, to assassinate Hitler, as soon as the Allies would open the Second Front, provided this was done promptly enough. General Andrei Vlasov’s planted defection to the Germans in 1942 was actually, in part, designed to set the assassination in motion. (See the separate Vlasov entry Traitor-Hero, posted on my blog on March 17^th, 2011, for more.) But having realized that the Allies were not in a hurry to open the Second Front, Stalin wisely concluded that Hitler’s assassination in 1943 or later would be too dangerous for Russia, tempting the Allies to conclude a separate peace with post-Hitler Germany at Russia’s expense. The assassination plan was therefore abandoned, with tragic consequences for General Vlasov…

But that fateful American-British decision, not to open the Second Front in Europe early, had a remarkable historical consequence for many years to come, and perhaps for all time. This historical entry uncovers not so much the history of World War II, as the attitude to history, or rather, more specifically, to one of its most delicate pages, tying the worst excesses of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews to that deliberate procrastination on the part of Stalin’s rather questionable Allies.

In the opinion of most Russian Jews (whether they might be all anxious to share it with the Americans is an altogether different matter), and, even more importantly, of the Israeli Jews, be that the Holocaust survivors themselves, or the children of Holocaust survivors, such unconscionable procrastination had resulted in the war continuing for two years more than necessary, and so it made the Holocaust of six million Jews technically possible, thus putting an indirect, but harsh blame for the Holocaust on the United States and on the British, which in today’s terms amounts to putting the blame on America first and foremost. (Haven’t the Brits, they can ask dismissively, gotten their historical global comeuppance already, by losing their great British Empire, and becoming America’s poodles, so who cares about them anymore? But America, trying to sell herself to the Jews of the world as the staunchest friend of Israel, yet materially responsible for the Jewish Holocaust in World War Two, matters a lot in this respect… Never forget!)

There is thus a hidden, but very deep resentment for the United States in the hearts and minds of millions of Jews worldwide, and particularly, in Israel herself, whose status as the closest and dearest ally of the United States has been taken too much for granted by the “bipartisan” Washington, and probably by the American Jewish community at large, which is in itself exceedingly presumptuous and, even though emotionally understandable, still rationally flawed and politically inexcusable.