- Rehan Fazal
- BBC reporter
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(BBC Tamil publishes information about ancient traces, important events and lesser-known people in history in the name of ‘Historical Records’ every Sunday. This is the 50th article in that series.)
On 21 December 1952, Stalin held his birthday party at the Pilsnaya farmhouse. All those close to him were invited.
Folk music and dance songs were playing on the gramophone. Stalin himself chose the soundtracks. There were at least two guests who didn’t like it at all.
One of them was Nikita Khrushchev. He hated dancing. To tease him, Stalin asked him to dance the Ukrainian ‘Kobak’ dance. Stalin had no mastery of dance moves. So he makes others who don’t know how to dance make them dance and makes them uncomfortable.
Another who disliked the evening was Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter.
He was 26 years old at that time. But by then he was divorced twice. Svetlana can’t stand being told to do something by anyone.
When Stalin offered to dance with her, Svetlana refused.
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Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva
Stalin holding Svetlana’s hair
Stalin could not tolerate this refusal. He was very angry.
He grabbed his daughter by the hair and pulled her forward. Svetlana’s face was flushed with shame and tears welled up in her eyes.
“Stalin was not so cruel to cause trouble for Svetlana. In fact, it was out of affection for Svetlana. But others saw him as cruel. Stalin often did such things,” wrote Nikita Khrushchev in his autobiography, Khrushchev Remembers.
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Stalin with his daughter
Party at Stalin’s farmhouse
Two months later, on February 28, Stalin invited four of his senior colleagues, Georgy Melankov, Beria, Khrushchev, and Bulganin, to his farmhouse to watch a film.
After watching the film, everyone was served good food and wine.
Party leaders did nothing to displease Stalin. The party ended at 4 am on March 1.
At that time no one knew that Stalin was unwell.
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‘Stalin was fine when we left there. He was mocking us. He poked my stomach with his fingers several times. “He deliberately called me ‘Mikita’ in the Ukrainian accent,” Khrushchev noted.
Instruct the guards not to enter the room
Later, Stalin told his guards that he was going to sleep.
‘Stalin told us not to enter his room until called by him,’ one of his bodyguards, Pavel Loskachev, told his biographer (Edward Radzinsky).
‘All through March 1 there was no sound from Stalin’s room. Each bodyguard had a two-hour ‘shift’. After that he rests for two hours and then comes back to work. “This arrangement was made so that the guards would always be alert and not let down,” writes Robert Service, another biographer of Stalin.
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No noise from the room all day
Stalin used to ask for a cup of tea with a slice of lemon when he woke up in the morning.
“We were all a little worried because Stalin hadn’t asked for a cup of tea all day,” Marshal Alexander Yokorov, one of his bodyguards, later reported.
Some people thought that he did not ask for tea because he was drinking tea from a thermos.
The house lights were put on at 6.30 pm. But even then Stalin did not come out of the room.
He neither asked for food to eat nor ordered anything to be done.
Around 10pm Stalin received a packet from the Central Committee office in Moscow. The guards, after discussing among themselves, decided that Pavel Loshkachev would go to Stalin’s bedroom with the packet.
Pavel was stunned when he entered the bedroom.
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Stalin on the ground
“Stalin had fallen on the ground. His arm was slightly raised. He was not completely unconscious. But he could not speak. He had urinated in his pyjamas. There was a ‘Pravta’ newspaper and a bottle of mineral water nearby. The guards speculated that Stalin must have fallen while trying to put on a lamp,” the police said. Stalin’s biographer Edward Radzinski writes.
Despite all that had happened, no one felt the need to call a doctor.
The bodyguards telephoned Interior Minister Sergei Ignatiev, who was in Moscow. Ignatiov informed Melankov and Beria.
Beria was with one of his female friends at the time.
Both Volkokonov and Radzinsky write that Beria ordered Stalin’s biography not to say anything about his illness.
Meanwhile, those at Stalin’s farmhouse awaited instructions from higher up. Meanwhile, the only thing they did was lift Stalin off the floor and put him on the bed and wrap him in a blanket.
After a while, they moved Stalin to another bed in the dining room.
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Lavrenty Beria
Beria sent the guards out
Beria and Melenko arrived there first.
‘Melenkov took off his shoes and took them in his hands. Because I heard the sound of shoes on the polished floor of Stalin’s room. As he and Beria approached Stalin, Stalin started snoring loudly. Instead of calling a doctor, Stalin sleeps well with the Beria guards. You all leave the room. May he rest in peace,'” writes Dmitri Volkokonov in his biography of Stalin, “Stalin – Triumph and Tragedy”.
Delay in calling a doctor
‘All the leaders started arriving at Stalin’s farmhouse on the morning of March 2. But even then no doctor was invited to see Stalin,’ writes Khrushchev in his autobiography.
Svetlana got the news at 10 am. He was in French class at the time.
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‘This reinforces the suspicion that Stalin’s health was deliberately allowed to deteriorate. “But if Stalin recovered, his political colleagues may have deliberately hesitated to make the decision for fear of incurring his wrath for taking over the leadership of the country when he was unwell,” Robert Service noted.
Another story is told behind this.
“In 1953, Stalin fainted several times and his blood pressure was very high. He stopped smoking. But to the end he did not trust his doctors and did everything he could to keep them away from his home,” writes Volkokonov.
Vomiting blood
When the doctors finally got there, Stalin had been sick for 12 hours.
They found urine stains on Stalin’s body. Stalin was stripped of his clothes and cleaned in a vinegar solution.
At the same time, Stalin vomited blood. Doctors then x-rayed Stalin’s lungs.
‘The doctors soon realized Stalin’s deteriorating condition. The entire right side of his body was paralyzed. They tried to give Stalin an enema before noon. But they knew it would be difficult to get results,” Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov noted in their book Stalin’s Doctor’s Plot.
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Georgy Melankov with Stalin
Stalin was similarly unconscious for three consecutive days.
Meanwhile two leaders of the party continued to sit by his bedside.
Beria and Melenkov were at his bedside during the day, Khrushchev and Bulganin at night.
On March 3, the doctors said that Stalin’s health was very critical and he could do whatever he wanted.
A meeting of key leaders
Meanwhile, the top leaders of the Soviet Union met on March 4. Doctors have already told them to prepare for bad news.
All the leaders except Phulkhan attended this meeting. (He was close to Stalin at the time.)
Melenkov said that Stalin’s health was very critical. Beria proposed that Melenkov immediately take over in Stalin’s place. A consensus was reached and the meeting ended.
But Stalin was not dead yet. All the members of the Presidium reached the farmyard where Stalin was lying.
Stalin was lying on the bed. Stalin’s closest comrades wondered to themselves whether Stalin could rise again. Even then the fear of the half-conscious man who was on his way to death had not left them.
Jonathan Brent and Naumov in their book ‘Stalin’s Doctor’s Plot’, ‘On March 5, Stalin again vomited blood. Blood started pooling in his stomach,” they write.
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Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva on the lap of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s security chief Beria
Stalin’s last minute
Meanwhile, all eyes were on Beria, who tried to give the impression of being very close to Stalin by holding his hand.
Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva later wrote in her autobiography, Twenty Letters to a Friend, that ‘his face had completely changed. His lips turned black and his face was unrecognizable. At the last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and looked at everyone in the room. He raised his hand as if to scold someone. The next moment he died,” he said.
It was 9.50 in the morning.
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All the leaders hugged each other and cried. Khrushchev hugs Svetlana and expresses his condolences.
All staff and bodyguards were allowed to have one last look at Stalin.
For two decades Stalin was considered the supreme leader of Russia.
The Soviet leadership decided to do to Stalin’s body as it had done to Lenin’s body in 1924.
It was decided to tan Stalin’s body for protection.
His funeral on 9 March 1953 was attended by Chinese Premier Chu En Lai, Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti and Manris Thores.
Stalin’s old enemies Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman sent their condolences.
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The newspapers of the communist countries wrote that ‘the man who made history is no longer among us’.
At the same time, the Western press, while recalling Stalin’s crimes against humanity, credited Stalin with the economic recovery of the Soviet Union and Russia’s victory over Hitler.
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