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…