Conversations with Stalin Read online

  Nor did he say anything at the dinner for the inner circle, in the Kremlin. After dinner we looked at movies. Because of Stalin’s remark that he was tired of gunfire, they put on, not a war film, but a shallow happy collective-farm movie. Throughout the showing Stalin made comments—reactions to what was going on, in the manner of uneducated men who mistake artistic reality for actuality. The second film was a prewar one on a war theme: “If War Comes Tomorrow” (“Esli zavtra voina . . .”). The war in that film was waged with the help of poisonous gas, while at the rear of the invaders—the Germans—rebellious elements of the proletariat were breaking out. At the end of the film Stalin calmly remarked, “Not much different from what actually happened, only there was no poisonous gas and the German proletariat did not rebel.”

  Everyone was tired of toasts, of food, of films. Again without a word, Stalin shook hands with me too, but by now I was more nonchalant and calm, though I could not say why. Perhaps because of the easier atmosphere. Or was it my own inner determination and resolution? Probably both. In any event—life is possible without Stalin’s love.

  A day or two later there was a formal dinner in Catherine Hall. According to Soviet protocol at the time, Tito was seated to the left of Stalin and to the right of Kalinin, then President of the Supreme Soviet. I was seated at Kalinin’s left. Molotov and Šubašić sat opposite Stalin and Tito, while the other Yugoslav and Soviet officers sat around in a circle.

  The stiff atmosphere seemed all the more unnatural because all present, except Dr. Šubašić, were Communists, yet they addressed one another as “Mister” in their toasts and adhered strictly to international protocol, as though this was a meeting of the representatives of differing systems and ideologies.

  Aside from the toasts and the protocol, we acted like comrades toward one another, that is, like men who were close to one another, men who were in the same movement, with the same aims. This contrast between formality and reality was all the more drastic because relations between the Soviet and Yugoslav Communists were still cordial, unmarred by Soviet hegemonism and competition for prestige in the Communist world. However, life is no respecter of desires or designs, but imposes patterns which no one is capable of foreseeing.

  Relations between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies were still in their wartime honeymoon, and the Soviet Government wished, by observing this formality, to avoid complaints that they were not treating Yugoslavia as an independent nation just because it was Communist. Later, after it had become entrenched in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Government was to insist on dropping protocol and other formalities as “bourgeois” and “nationalist” prejudices.

  Stalin broke the ice. Only he could do it, for only he was not exposed to the danger of being criticized for a faux pas. He simply stood, lifted his glass, and addressed Tito as “Comrade,” adding that he would not call him “Mister.” This restored real amity and livened up the atmosphere. Dr. Šubašić, too, smiled happily, though it was difficult to believe that he was doing so sincerely; pretense was not lacking in this politician, who was without ideas and without any stable foundations whatever.

  Stalin began to make jokes, to direct sallies and thrusts across the table, and to grumble cheerfully. Once revived, the atmosphere did not flag.

  Old Uncle Kalinin, who could barely see, had difficulty finding his glass, plate, bread, and I kept helping him solicitously the whole time. Tito had paid him a protocol visit just an hour or two before and had told me that the old man was not entirely senile. But from what Tito had reported, and from the remarks Kalinin made at the banquet, one could conclude the opposite.

  Stalin certainly knew of Kalinin’s decrepitude, for he made heavy-footed fun of him when the latter asked Tito for a Yugoslav cigarette. “Don’t take any—those are capitalist cigarettes,” said Stalin, and Kalinin confusedly dropped the cigarette from his trembling fingers, whereupon Stalin laughed and his physiognomy took on the expression of satyr. A bit later none other than Stalin raised a toast in honor of “our President,” Kalinin, but these were polite phrases obviously picked for someone who for long had been nothing more than a mere figurehead.

  Here, in a rather broader and more official circle, the deification of Stalin was more palpable and direct. Today I am able to conclude that the deification of Stalin, or the “cult of the personality,” as it is now called, was at least as much the work of Stalin’s circle and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own doing. Of course, the relationship changed. Turned into a deity, Stalin became so powerful that in time he ceased to pay attention to the changing needs and desires of those who had exalted him.

  An ungainly dwarf of a man passed through gilded and marbled imperial halls, and a path opened before him, radiant, admiring glances followed him, while the ears of courtiers strained to catch his every word. And he, sure of himself and his works, obviously paid no attention to all this. His country was in ruins, hungry, exhausted. But his armies and marshals, heavy with fat and medals and drunk with vodka and victory, had already trampled half of Europe under foot, and he was convinced they would trample over the other half in the next round. He knew that he was one of the crudest, most despotic personalities in human history. But this did not worry him one bit, for he was convinced that he was executing the judgment of history. His conscience was troubled by nothing, despite the millions who had been destroyed in his name and by his order, despite the thousands of his closest collaborators whom he had murdered as traitors because they doubted that he was leading the country and people into happiness, equality, and liberty. The struggle had been risky, long, and all the more underhanded because the opponents were few in number and weak. But he succeeded, and success is the only criterion of truth! For what is conscience? Does it even exist? It had no place in his philosophy, much less in his actions. After all, man is the product of productive forces.

  Poets were inspired by him, orchestras blared cantatas in his honor, philosophers in institutes wrote tomes about his sayings, and martyrs died on scaffolds crying out his name. Now he was the victor in the greatest war of his nation and in history. His power, absolute over a sixth of the globe, was spreading farther without surcease. This convinced him that his society contained no contradictions and that it exhibited superiority to other societies in every way.

  He joked, too, with his courtiers—“comrades.” But he did not do this exclusively out of a ruler’s generosity. Royal generosity was visible only in the manner in which he did this: his jokes were never at his own expense. No, he joked because he liked to descend from his Olympian heights; after all, he lived among men and had to show from time to time that the individual was nothing without the collective.

  I, too, was swept up by Stalin and his witticisms. But in one little corner of my mind and of my moral being I was awake and troubled: I noticed the tawdriness, too, and could not accept inwardly Stalin’s manner of joking—nor his deliberate avoidance of saying a single human, comradely word to me.

  5

  Still I was pleasantly surprised when I, too, was taken to an intimate dinner in Stalin’s villa. Of course Dr. Šubašić knew absolutely nothing about it. Only we Yugoslav Communist ministers were there, and, on the Soviet side, Stalin’s closest associates: Malenkov, Bulganin, General Antonov, Beria, and, to be sure, Molotov.

  As usual, at about ten o’clock at night we found ourselves around Stalin’s table. I had arrived in the car with Tito. At the head of the table sat Beria, to his right Malenkov, then I and Molotov, then Andrejev and Petrović, while to the left sat Stalin, Tito, Bulganin, and General Antonov, Assistant Chief of the General Staff.

  Beria was also a rather short man—in Stalin’s Politburo there was hardly anyone taller than himself. He, too, was somewhat plump, greenish pale, and with soft damp hands. With his square-cut mouth and bulging eyes behind his pince-nez, he suddenly reminded me of Vujković, one of the chiefs of the Belgrade Royal Police who specialized in torturing Communists. It took an effort to dis
pel the unpleasant comparison, which was all the more nagging because the similarity extended even to his expression—that of a certain self-satisfaction and irony mingled with a clerk’s obsequiousness and solicitude. Beria was a Georgian, like Stalin, but one could not tell this at all by the looks of him. Georgians are generally bony and dark. Even in this respect he was nondescript. He could have passed more easily for a Slav or a Lett, but mostly for a mixture of some sort.

  Malenkov was even smaller and plumper, but a typical Russian with a Mongol admixture—dark, with prominent cheekbones, and slightly pock-marked. He gave one the impression of being a withdrawn, cautious, and not very personable man. It seemed as though under the layers and rolls of fat there moved about still another man, lively and adept, with intelligent and alert black eyes. He had been known for some time as Stalin’s unofficial stand-in in Party matters. Practically all matters pertaining to Party organization and the promotion and demotion of officials were in his hands. He was the one who had invented “cadre lists”—detailed biographies and autobiographies of all members and candidates of a Party of many millions—which were guarded and systematically maintained in Moscow. I took advantage of my meeting with him to ask for Stalin’s work On the Opposition (Ob oppozitsii), which had been withdrawn from public circulation because of the numerous citations from Trotsky, Bukharin, and others it contained. The next day I received a used copy of the work, and it is now in my library.

  Bulganin was in a general’s uniform. He was rather stout, handsome, and unmistakably Russian, with an old-fashioned goatee, and extremely reserved in his expression. General Antonov was still young, very handsome, dark and lithe. He, too, did not mix into the conversation unless it concerned him.

  Seated across from Stalin, face to face, I suddenly gained confidence, though he did not turn to me for a long time. Not until the atmosphere had been warmed by liquor, toasts, and jesting did Stalin find the time ripe to liquidate the dispute with me. He did it in a half-joking manner. He filled for me a little glass of vodka and bade me drink to the Red Army. Not understanding his intention immediately, I wished to drink to his health. “No, no,” he insisted, while smiling and regarding me probingly, “but just for the Red Army! What, you won’t drink to the Red Army?”

  I drank, of course, though even at Stalin’s I avoided drinking anything but beer, first, because alcohol did not agree with me, and, second, because drunkenness did not agree with my views, though I was never a proponent of temperance.

  Thereupon Stalin asked me about the affair of the Red Army. I explained to him that it had not been my intention to insult the Red Army, but that I had wished to call attention to irregularities of certain of its members and to the political difficulties they were creating for us.

  Stalin interrupted: “Yes, you have, of course, read Dostoevsky? Do you see what a complicated thing is man’s soul, man’s psyche? Well then, imagine a man who has fought from Stalingrad to Belgrade—over thousands of kilometers of his own devastated land, across the dead bodies of his comrades and dearest ones! How can such a man react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors? You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal. And it is not ideal, nor can it be, even if it did not contain a certain percentage of criminals—we opened up our penitentiaries and stuck everybody into the army. There was an interesting case. An Air Force major had fun with a woman, and a chivalrous engineer appeared to protect her. The Major drew a gun: ‘Ekh, you mole from the rear!’—and he killed the chivalrous engineer. They sentenced the Major to death. But somehow the matter was brought before me, and I made inquiries—I have the right as commander in chief in time of war—and I released the Major and sent him to the front. Now he is one of our heroes. One has to understand the soldier. The Red Army is not ideal. The important thing is that it fights Germans—and it is fighting them well, while the rest doesn’t matter.”

  Soon after, upon my return from Moscow, I heard, to my horror, of a far more significant example of Stalin’s “understanding” attitude toward the sins of Red Army personnel. Namely, while crossing East Prussia, Soviet soldiers, especially the tank units, pounded and regularly killed all German civilian refugees—women and children. Stalin was informed of this and asked what should be done. He replied: “We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have some initiative!”

  That night at his villa, he then asked: ‘‘And what about General Korneev, the chief of our Mission, what kind of man is he?”

  I avoided saying anything bad about him and about his Mission, though all sorts of things could have been brought up, but Stalin himself concluded: “The poor man is not stupid, but he is a drunkard, an incurable drunkard!”

  After that Stalin even joked with me, on seeing that I was drinking beer. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like beer. Stalin commented: “Djilas here drinks beer like a German, like a German—he is a German, by God, a German.”

  I did not find this joke at all to my liking; at that time hatred for the Germans, even for those few Communist émigrés, was at its height in Moscow, but I took it without anger or inner resentment.

  With this, it appeared, the dispute over the behavior of the Red Army was resolved. Stalin’s relation to me got back on the original track of cordiality.

  And so it went, until the rift between the Yugoslav and Soviet Central Committees, in 1948, when Molotov and Stalin dredged up in their letters that same dispute over the Red Army and the “insults” that I had dealt it.

  Stalin teased Tito with obvious deliberateness—in a manner that had in it as much malice as jest. He did it by speaking unfavorably of the Yugoslav Army while flattering the Bulgarian Army. That previous winter Yugoslav units including many draftees who were engaged for the first time in very serious frontal attacks had suffered defeats, and Stalin, who was apparently well informed, took the opportunity to point out, “The Bulgarian Army is better than the Yugoslav. The Bulgars had their weaknesses and enemies in their ranks. But they executed a few score—and now everything is in order. The Bulgarian Army is very good—drilled and disciplined. And yours, the Yugoslav—they are still Partisans, unfit for serious front-line fighting. Last winter one German regiment broke up a whole division of yours. A regiment beat a division!”

  A bit later Stalin proposed a toast to the Yugoslav Army, but he did not forget to add to it, “But which will yet fight well on level ground!”

  Tito had kept from reacting to Stalin’s comments. Whenever Stalin made some witty remark at our expense, Tito looked at me silently with a restrained smile, and I returned his look with solidarity and sympathy. But when Stalin said that the Bulgarian Army was better than the Yugoslav, Tito could not stand it, and shouted that the Yugoslav Army would quickly rid itself of its weaknesses.

  One could detect in the relation between Stalin and Tito something special, tacit—as though these two had a grudge against one other, but each was holding back for his own reasons. Stalin took care not to offend Tito personally in any way, but at the same time he kept taking sideswiping jabs at conditions in Yugoslavia. On the other hand, Tito treated Stalin with respect, as one would one’s senior, but resentment could also be detected, especially at Stalin’s remarks on Yugoslav conditions.

  At one point Tito brought out that there were new phenomena in socialism and that socialism was now being achieved in ways different from those of the past, which gave Stalin an opportunity to say, “Today socialism is possible even under the English monarchy. Revolution is no longer necessary everywhere. Just recently a delegation of British Labourites was here, and we talked about this in particular. Yes, there is much that is new. Yes, socialism is possible even under an English king.”

  As is known, Stalin never upheld such a view publicly. The British Labourites soon gained a majority at the elections and nationalized over twenty per cent of the industrial production. Nevertheless, Stalin never recognized these measures as being socialistic nor the Labourites as being socialists. I maintain that he did
not do so primarily because of differences and clashes with the Labour Government in foreign policy.

  In the course of the conversation about this, I interjected that in Yugoslavia there existed in essence a Soviet type of government; the Communist Party held all the key positions and there was no serious opposition party. But Stalin did not agree with this. “No your government is not Soviet—you have something in between De Gaulle’s France and the Soviet Union.”

  Tito remarked that in Yugoslavia something new was taking shape. But this discussion remained unfinished. Within myself I could not agree with Stalin’s view; neither did I think that I differed with Tito.

  Stalin presented his views on the distinctive nature of the war that was being waged: “This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as for as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.” He also pointed out, without going into long explanations, the meaning of his Panslavic policy. “If the Slavs keep united and maintain solidarity, no one in the future will be able to move a finger. Not even a finger!” he repeated, emphasizing his thought by cleaving the air with his forefinger.

  Someone expressed doubt that the Germans would be able to recuperate within fifty years. But Stalin was of a different opinion. “No, they will recover, and very quickly. That is a highly developed industrial country with an extremely qualified and numerous working class and technical intelligentsia. Give them twelve to fifteen years and they’ll be on their feet again. And this is why the unity of the Slavs is important. But even apart from this, if the unity of the Slavs exists, no one will dare move a finger.”

  At one point he got up, hitched up his pants as though he was about to wrestle or to box, and cried out almost in a transport, “The war shall soon be over. We shall recover in fifteen or twenty years, and then we’ll have another go at it.”