Things Fall Apart
Excerpt from Vozhd by Roy Medvedev
By 1956 Stalin was a very sick man. 50 years of heavy smoking had left Stalin with atherosclerosis, a disease in which the white blood cells in the arteries thicken and stick to the artery wall, cutting off blood flow. This was almost certainly the reason that in November 1955 the toes on his left foot had become gangrenous and had to be amputated. It was also probably the main factor in Stalin’s mental decline. Bulganin recalled a meeting in late 1955 where Stalin “gazed off into space for a minute or two. After we got his attention he turned to Ignatyev and said “Semyon Denisovich, how have the interrogations of Bukharin and Yezhov progressed?” Ignatyev sat there speechless, clearly wondering how to tell Stalin that both men had been executed years ago.” Stalin’s paranoia and mood swings had also gotten much worse. He had never trusted doctors, and now every time a new course of treatment was proposed he would have to be convinced (usually by Malenkov or Suslov) that it wasn’t a plot to kill him. Another result of his smoking was emphysema. If Stalin spoke for too long he would have to stop and catch his breath, and as his daughter Svetlana remembered “He often had these horrible coughing fits. For up to a minute he would be bent over hacking his lungs out, and once it had passed he seemed drained.” Finally, Stalin’s heavy drinking and eating, combined with a lack of exercise due to the paralysis of his legs, meant that he had gained a significant amount of weight.
On February 12th, 1956 Stalin complained that he was having serious difficulty breathing. He was diagnosed with pneumonia. Although the doctors worked frantically the condition worsened, and by the 17th Stalin was in the hospital. He would spend most of the next month hooked up to a breathing machine. He was also heavily sedated to maintain comfort and keep him from hurting himself. Without Stalin the government was effectively paralyzed. At every level the nomenklatura was too terrified to sign orders or solve problems, leaving only the most basic functions intact. It is a testament to Stalin’s stranglehold over the USSR that he maintained power even as he lay semi-conscious on a hospital bed. The only thing the Soviet apparatchiks were willing to do was plot against each other over who would succeed Stalin. Few expected him to live, a suspicion reinforced every time the doctors informed them that Stalin was getting worse. The three main contenders were Suslov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev. The plotting reached its climax on February 26th, when the doctors informed the Presidium that Stalin did not have long to live. His pneumonia had triggered a case of sepsis, and few thought his body was strong enough to fight the infection. Upon hearing the news the leadership began a discussion as to who would succeed Stalin. No one wanted to claim his mantle, since on the off chance that Stalin did live he would view such acts with suspicion. The next day Ignatyev issued a series of orders, all concerning routine matters which had been piling up during Stalin’s illness. It seems that the knowledge of Stalin’s impending death had broken Ignatyev’s fear of the dictator, as evidenced by the fact that when confronted by his patron Khrushchev Ignatyev told him “We can’t put off the business of governing waiting for a virtually certain event to happen.” Unfortunately for both men Stalin had the devil’s luck. After reaching death’s door on the 27th Stalin began to recover, and by March 6th he was well enough to hear a short report from Malenkov about the state of the country. Although he recovered the dictator never fully recovered from his bout of pneumonia. The disease had torn apart his lungs and worsened the emphysema, and Stalin was forced to take supplemental oxygen through a nasal cannula. His health in general was also severely damaged. Stalin would spend the rest of his life in and out of the hospital, and even when he wasn’t in the hospital he was surrounded at all times by doctors, who knew full well that even a minor flu could be deadly.
Excerpt from The Second Great Terror by Robert Conquest
In the aftermath of Stalin’s near-death the power struggle between his underlings turned deadly. The first sign that something was going to happen was the formation of an alliance between Malenkov and Deputy Minister of State Security Sergo Goglidze. The two were united in a mutual hatred of Ignatyev: Malenkov because Ignatyev was one of Khrushchev’s most powerful allies, and Goglidze because Ignatyev was all that was standing between him and control of the MGB. Before now Goglidze had kept a low profile, recognizing that his close association with Beria gave Ignatyev plenty of reason to destroy him should he try anything. However in signing orders while Stalin was incapacitated Ignatyev gave Goglidze enough rope to hang him. Goglidze gave the documents to Malenkov, who used them to convince Stalin that Ignatyev was a traitor. It was not a difficult task, since by this point Stalin’s paranoia had reached its apogee. On March 29th Stalin was finally able to work full time, convening a meeting with his top associates. At the meeting Stalin let Malenkov unleash a torrent of verbal abuse on Ignatyev, accusing him of “usurping authority, corruption, and sympathy with anti-Party elements.” By the time Malenkov was finished Ignatyev was white as a sheet, and immediately after the meeting he attempted to smooth things over with Stalin but was rebuffed. Over the next two weeks Ignatyev was subject to further abuse, including being attacked in a Pravda article titled “Failings Within the Security Organs.” Stalin refused to meet with him unless Goglidze was present (and several times Goglidze met with Stalin alone), and even Khrushchev distanced himself from the MGB director. Ignatyev became (in Tikhonov’s words) “a pathetic wretch, unable to function.” He was unable to sleep or eat, he stopped caring about personal hygiene, and began drinking heavily. Finally, at an April 7th meeting with Stalin Ignatyev broke down, falling to the floor and begging Stalin for forgiveness. The Soviet leader just stared at him with a look of utter disgust, before announcing that Ignatyev had been relieved of his duties as Minister of State Security and kicked out of the Presidium and Central Committee. According to Bulganin “he couldn’t even get up. He lay on the floor weeping until several guards dragged him out.” That night Ignatyev preempted the inevitable, hanging himself in his dacha[1].
In the aftermath of Ignatyev’s suicide Khrushchev became the primary target of the purge. It is unknown why Khrushchev was targeted. Perhaps Stalin had decided to destroy one of his potential successors as a way of keeping the others in line, or because the Soviet dictator’s paranoia led him to assume that Ignatyev and Khrushchev had been plotting something against him. Or perhaps Malenkov convinced Stalin to destroy Khrushchev, a move that would greatly expand Malenkov’s power. Whatever the reason on April 12th Demyan Korotchenko, a leader of the Ukrainian SSR, and Presidium member Leonid Brezhnev were arrested and accused of sabotage, Maoist and Titoist sympathies, and plotting to kill Stalin. Both men were protégées of Khrushchev, who was forced to denounce them (along with Ukrainian 1st Secretary Leonid Melnikov, who was arrested on the 16th). In typical Stalinist fashion Khrushchev didn’t fall right away. Rather, he was forced to endure a vicious smear campaign by the Soviet press, his access to Stalin was cut off, and on May 8th he was removed from the Presidium and arrested the next day. In prison he was presented with a forgery of Ignatyev’s suicide note, which named him as the leader of a “Maoist-Titoist conspiracy” that had tried to destroy the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was horribly tortured; according to some reports he finally broke and confessed after having been sodomized by a hot iron poker. From June 29th to July 3rd Khrushchev and his associates were placed on trial[2]. He was clearly a broken man, to the point that when his death sentence was announced Khrushchev didn’t even look up, choosing instead to stare at his hands.
Excerpt from The Sino-Soviet War by William Clinton
By May 1956 tension between the Soviet Union and China had reached a fever pitch. War was imminent, and part of Stalin’s preparations were housecleaning. As the Army had expanded throughout 1955 and 1956 Stalin had become increasingly worried about a coup, and he was convinced that Georgy Zhukov would lead it. Stalin had never forgotten that Zhukov had been willing to challenge him, nor did he forget that Zhukov was tremendously popular both within the Army and with the general populace. The fact that Zhukov was currently stationed in the hinterlands and had been stripped of most of his influence didn’t matter to Stalin. On June 26th Zhukov was ordered to return to Moscow. On the train to Moscow a high-level Party official offered to host Zhukov in his private car. The man was actually an MGB agent, and when Zhukov entered the car he was knocked to the ground and shackled. He was joined in Lubyanka by Chief of the General Staff Vasily Sokolovsky, an old friend, and Defense Minister Alexander Vasilevsky. Sokolovsky and Vasilevsky were victims of Stalin’s shakeup of the high command in preparation for the war. Not only would this shakeup bring more of Stalin’s creatures into the command, but it also served as a reminder to the other military leaders about what would happen if they lost his favor[3]. Stalin did not want a repeat of the Purges of the 1930s, which had devastated the Red Army and was one of the key factors behind the disastrous start of the Great Patriotic War. As Stalin told Malenkov “We cannot afford too much bloodshed in the Army, but someone will have to lose their head.” Rather than a public trial the three men were given a secret court martial. All of the Soviet Marshals and several generals were ordered to attend, and many of them were on the tribunal. The court martial lasted for only a few hours, and ended with all three defendants being sentenced to death. For an extra bit of humiliation Stalin had decided that the three would hang rather than be shot, and they were hanged in such a way as to induce strangulation rather than breaking their necks. As Zhukov was being led to the noose he turned to a picture of Stalin and said “Vyrodok[4].” The Soviet Union never admitted that these executions had taken place, but it quickly became a favorite subject of rumors.
[1] Goglidze's rise to power was accompanied by a purge of the MGB, in which Ivan Serov and Pavel Sudoplatov, amongst others, were executed.
[2] Defendants at the Khrushchev Trial:
Nikita Khrushchev: Sentenced to death
Leonid Brezhnev: Sentenced to death
Leonid Melnikov: Sentenced to death
Demyan Korotchenko: Sentenced to death
Konstantin Chernenko: Member of the Central Committee (a position he gained ITTL in 1955 through Brezhnev's patronage). Sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
Dmitry Shepilov: Editor-in-Chief of
Pravda. Sentenced to death.
Alexander Shelepin:1st Secretary of the Komsomol. Sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
Nikolai Podgorny: 2nd Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
Alexei Kirichenko: Member of the Secretariat. Sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
Andrei Kirilenko: 1st Secretary of the Stalingrad Regional Committee. Sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
[3] Sokolovsky also fell because of his friendship with Zhukov. Vasilevsky had been the one who liberated Manchuria and had helped the Chinese Communists solidify their control there. Despite doing this under Stalin's orders he was purged since Stalin feared his sympathies might lie with Mao.
[4] Vyrodok is a Russian insult which roughly translates as "monster." When someone calls another person a vyrodok they don't just mean that they're evil, but also that they're an abomination in the eyes of man and God.
