World War II Behind Closed Doors (62 page)

Immediately after the war, even Soviet women who had married Allied servicemen were denied exit visas – and the consequent
personal suffering was, of course, enormous. Hugh Lunghi, an officer with the British military mission in Moscow had fallen in love with a young Russian woman called Dina and wanted to marry her and take her back to Britain. But when he put in a request to the Soviet authorities he ‘heard nothing more. It was the usual treatment one got – one just didn't hear anything more. We called it the cotton wool treatment. You'd make a request and they'd say: “Yes, we're dealing with it,” and then you'd hear nothing more’.

Dina had already suffered as a result of her relationship with Lunghi. She had admitted from the start of their friendship that the NKVD had told her to spy on him – something that he was relaxed about, given that he felt he had nothing to hide. But ‘they were disappointed, presumably, that she didn't supply them with enough interesting material’, and as a result she was briefly imprisoned twice during the war. But in the years immediately following the end of the conflict, she was subjected to greater persecution, and in 1947 was sent to a labour camp. Lunghi saw her when she emerged, and was horrified to see her ‘broken…terribly, terribly depressed and appalled by it’.

Lunghi came to despise the Soviet regime with its ‘doublespeak’. ‘The Soviet media used language [like] “the freest, the most democratic constitution in the world was the constitution drawn up under Stalin in the 1930s”…. And there was always the catchphrase [that] these “bourgeois freedoms” [in the West] are not the same as our freedoms – Soviet socialist freedoms – which are the real freedoms’.

All this suffering and cynicism led him to believe that, although ‘we received from ordinary people nothing but kindness and hospitality and friendship’, the Soviet regime itself was at least as bad as Nazism. But Lunghi recognized that the Soviets were ‘the Ally we could not do without. The war would have gone on far longer and possibly Hitler would have invaded the United Kingdom if they had not been our Allies’, nonetheless, ‘here we were fighting [together] with someone who was actually worse – we really came to think that Stalin was worse than Hitler, if that were possible. I mean, it's like one devil being blacker than another’.

Stalin was not just suspicious of foreigners – he was jealous of his colleagues. In particular, he wanted to prevent his generals taking credit for the success of the Red Army during the war. Ever since the Tehran Conference, where he had arrived in military uniform, he had attempted to reposition himself as the military genius who had won the war for the Soviet Union. It was a performance that reached its zenith eighteen months later at Potsdam, when Stalin had been resplendent in the white outfit of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union. But he, and those closely around him, knew the truth. Not only had his military acumen not won the war, it was only after he had reduced his interference in the detailed tactical decisions of his generals that the Red Army had prospered.

At the Soviet Victory Parade, held in Red Square on 24 June 1945, the rumour was that Stalin had wanted to consolidate this false impression of military brilliance by taking the salute of the massed ranks of soldiers personally – on horseback. But after falling off his horse while practising for the parade, he had been forced to give up the idea. As a result, Marshal Zhukov took centre stage instead, and rode confidently in front of the assembled troops. ‘The Victory Parade was a brilliant event in the life of the Soviet Union’, says Svetlana Kazakova,
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then a communications officer in Zhukov's headquarters and someone who knew Zhukov personally. ‘I can still see it in my mind's eye. It was a summer day – it was raining, but Red Square was decorated with red banners. People were wearing medals and orders, and they were shining so much that the light from them was reflecting on the whole of the Red Square. As the hands of the clock moved close to ten everyone stood at attention, and then there were chimes, Kremlin chimes, and at that moment Georgy Zhukov, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, rode into the square on a white horse. He sat on the horse as elegantly as if he was a junior lieutenant’. Forced merely to watch the glamorous figure of Zhukov trotting back and forth on his white horse, Stalin not surprisingly felt envy flowing through his veins. More than that, he watched Zhukov with an ever-growing sense of misgiving. Stalin, a keen student of history,
was well aware of the immense popular power that a successful general could generate – had not Napoleon used his victories on the battlefield to usurp the French Revolution and snatch power from the politicians?

Zhukov would have to pay a price for his popularity. And payment began in the wake of the arrest in early 1946 of Alexander Novikov, the commander of the Soviet air force. He was pressured by the NKVD into ‘confessing’ that he had become ‘embroiled in a web of crimes’ relating to the acceptance of ‘various goods from the front for my personal gain’.
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This was a ‘crime’ that was ubiquitous and tolerated – unless, as in this case, Stalin wanted to find an excuse to punish someone who was, in his eyes, getting above himself. Novikov also confessed to ‘politically dangerous’ conversations with Zhukov. ‘First and foremost’, he said, ‘I would like to say that Zhukov is an exceptionally power-loving and narcissistic individual; he loves to be treated with honour, respect and servility and is intolerant of any opposition’. In addition, revealed Novikov: ‘Zhukov is not afraid of inflating his own role in the war as a senior commander, going so far as to declare that all the fundamental plans for military operations were developed by him’.

Despite the ministrations of the NKVD, Novikov could not point to any concrete examples of Zhukov plotting against Stalin. But the picture of Zhukov that emerged from the forced confession was of a man who was hungry for military success and personal honour, vain, egotistical and intolerant of failure in others (a description that also fitted many of the most successful Western commanders). Couched in these terms, it ought to have been enough to send Zhukov to the Gulag – which is why what actually happened is so curious. At first, Zhukov's denunciation went according to the Stalinist norm. At a meeting in the Kremlin on 1 June 1946, after the substance of the accusations in Novikov's confession had been read, Molotov and Malenkov considered Zhukov ‘guilty’ of the charges, and Beria added that: ‘Zhukov's problem is that he is not grateful – as he should be – to Comrade Stalin for all he has done. He respects neither the Politburo nor
Comrade Stalin and he should be put in his place’.
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So far, so predictable. But then Marshal Konev, Zhukov's bitter rival, especially in the last months of the war, began to speak. He had a good deal to gain from the removal of Zhukov, but although he declared that Zhukov was ‘a very difficult person’ to work for, he ‘categorically refused the accusation about political dishonesty and lack of respect of Central Committee. I consider Zhukov a person loyal to the party, to the government and personally to Stalin’. This was a view supported by Marshal Pavel Rybalko, the brilliant Soviet tank commander: ‘It is not true that Zhukov is a conspirator. He has his faults, as everyone does, but he is a patriot, which he proved during the Great Patriotic War [Second World War]’. Significantly, Rybalko also said that he believed ‘the time has come to stop giving credence to testimony extracted by force in the prisons’.

The brave support of these two marshals – and one can only stand in awe at the courage necessary to speak out against the word of the NKVD – meant that Zhukov could form with his military colleagues a united front against Stalin. Zhukov told the Soviet leader that ‘such accusations are without foundation. Ever since I joined the Party I have served it and the Motherland honourably. I have never been connected with any conspiracy’. Moreover, said Zhukov, he was certain that the evidence against him was ‘lies’ obtained ‘under torture’.

Stalin's considered judgement at the end of the meeting was not that Zhukov be taken away to the cells of the Lubyanka, but merely that he needed ‘to leave Moscow for a while’. He was removed from his post as military governor of the Soviet Zone of Germany and subsequently appointed commander of the Odessa military district on the Black Sea, far away from the Soviet capital. ‘Stalin decided to remove him, to send him away, and long joyless days began’, says Svetlana Kazakova, who together with her husband kept in touch with Zhukov in his exile. ‘Some people, toadies, immediately stopped making phone calls to him, but other people who were decent people were afraid to phone him because they knew the secret police were listening to the phone calls. You could only talk outside the house…. We were very hurt on behalf
of Zhukov. In our hearts we were very upset, but we all kept silent. Our feelings could not change anything…. I think badly about this system because this cruel treatment was unfair, it wasn't justified, and the country did not benefit in any way. It lost a man who could have retained the army in a much better condition’.

But it could have been a great deal worse for Zhukov. Stalin had shown during the purges of the 1930s that he was prepared to have the most senior figures in the military tortured and killed. All of which leaves the intriguing question – why did Zhukov not suffer a similar fate? One answer that has been proposed is that Stalin felt a residual affection, even gratitude, to Zhukov for his part in winning the war, and so – when it came to the moment – he felt he could not destroy him. But this is surely a romantic idea.

One of the keys to Stalin's ability to function was his lack of genuine attachment to others. Unlike Hitler, for example, who always felt a sense of loyalty to those ‘Old Fighters’ like Hermann Göring who had been with him since the early days of the Nazi movement, Stalin saw all his comrades as potential rivals. For most of the time, their usefulness to him outweighed the threat he perceived. But this equation was always unstable, and could tip one way or another in an instant.

Thus the explanation for Stalin's relatively lenient treatment of Zhukov must almost certainly be that he judged that any immediate threat was not sufficient to justify torture and death. And since Zhukov had many loyal followers in the Red Army – as the solidarity of the Soviet marshals had demonstrated – Stalin thought it best to deal with Zhukov in stages. The first stage was his removal from his power base as military governor of Germany and banishment to the wilds of the Soviet Union. The next stage would depend on future circumstance. It could either be his trial and death, or his rehabilitation. After all, Zhukov might be needed in the future – suppose there was a sudden and unexpected war and his military talents were once again required? And so, having weighed the options available to him, and with an icy heart devoid of personal feelings of affection, Stalin resolved to send Zhukov not to the Lubyanka but to Odessa.

Having turned on the man who more than any other helped the Red Army win the war, Stalin then targeted his closest political comrade throughout the conflict, Molotov, by attacking his wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina. Stalin had long been suspicious of her – she was Jewish, and had family connections abroad, with a sister in Palestine and a brother in America. In December 1948 Stalin moved against her, in an action that he knew would shake her husband. Although the Soviet Foreign Minister had been given the nickname ‘Old Boot Face’ by British officials because of his intransigence and seeming lack of feelings, Molotov was very much in love with his wife, and any attack on her would also be an obvious and direct attack on him.

As a result of an NKVD ‘investigation’, a resolution was brought before the Politburo in December 1948 to expel Polina from the Communist Party. This was the traditional first step on the way to the Gulag. The Politburo decided that: ‘It has been established, through verification by the Commission for Party Control, that P. S. Zhemchuzhina has, for a considerable period of time, maintained links and close relations with Jewish nationalists, suspected of espionage and unworthy of political trust’.
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The less than convincing evidence quoted was that she had attended the funeral of one Jewish leader and been seen talking to another prominent Soviet Jew. In addition, she had ‘on 14 March 1945’ committed the offence of participating ‘in a religious ceremony in a Moscow synagogue’. Thus the Politburo concluded, ‘In spite of the warnings issued to P. S. Zhemchuzhina by the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party regarding her unscrupulousness in interactions with individuals undeserving of political trust, she infringed this party ruling and continued to conduct herself in a manner which was politically inappropriate. In connection with the above mentioned, P. S. Zhemchuzhina is henceforth expelled from the membership of the All-Russian Communist Party’.
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The resolution was signed by every member of the Politburo present except one. Molotov could not bring himself to condemn his own wife, and so he abstained. But over the next few weeks he
wrestled with the possible consequences of what he had done. After all these years of utter subservience to the will of Stalin, could he really make a stand against him – even on a point of principle related to the woman he loved? Ultimately, he decided he could not, and in January 1949 he wrote a letter to Stalin: ‘I acknowledge I made a political mistake when I abstained from the vote about the expulsion of P. S. Zhemchuzhina from the party. I would like to inform you that I have thought about this question and I am now voting for the decision of the Central Committee. The decision reflects the interests of the party and the state and it is in line with the correct understanding of communist party ideology. I acknowledge my heavy sense of remorse for not having prevented Zhemchuzhina, a person very dear to me, from making her mistakes in connection with anti-Soviet Jewish nationalists’.
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