398. Stalin: The Great Terror (Part 4)

19:35And Anita, it should be said that, you know, several thousand Americans and Brits had moved to the Soviet Union, this sort of utopia, as they saw it, that had been created. And Henry Ford had set up factories in the Soviet Union. Many of these workers were now rounded up, sent to gulags, executed. Victor Herman, he was American gulag. John Chichesky, executed. He was American. Pat Breslin, Irish, died in a gulag. An English feminist and suffragette who'd moved to the Soviet Union, editor of the Moscow Times, English language newspaper, arrested and executed. So this went way beyond just Soviet citizens.

20:11It was all these fellow travellers who'd moved to this utopia, find themselves either in a

20:16Anita Anand:gulag or dead we're going to take a break now but when we get back we're going to ask what's really going on in stalin's mind as he unleashes this wave of terror on russia

20:36We are getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

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21:17We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. Disseminated into an operation order. Or Frago? A Frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes.

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22:18Anita Anand:So welcome back. How was Stalin inspired by such delightful figures as Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan when he unleashed the great terror on the Soviet people in the 1930s?

22:31William Dalrymple:I mean, we know a little bit about this because he underlines in a book a line attributed to Genghis Khan. And it says, this is the line, the deaths of the vanquished are necessary for the tranquility of the victors. And he also criticizes Ivan the Terrible for being too soft. So, you know, you know who he's trying to model himself on.

22:52Anita Anand:Can't argue with that, really. I mean, Ivan the Terrible, you know, these pinko liberals in Russian history.

22:56William Dalrymple:Giles, throughout this absolutely tawdry period of history where people are being dragged out and in front of their screaming families or along with their screaming families and executed, one man enters the Guinness Book of Records. Tell us a little bit about him. Well, if you're going to execute thousands of people, you really need a very, very proficient executioner. And Stalin was blessed with having Vasily Blochin, an ex-shepherd and bricklayer, who decides to turn his hands to executing people. And he was absolutely brilliant at it. He executed tens of thousands of people. At the infamous Katyn Forest massacre, he personally killed 7 ,000 people in 28 days.

23:44He worked all night long, 10 hours in a row, and he said he could kill one prisoner every three minutes. And this would earn him, as you say, he would enter the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific executioner in history.

23:59Anita Anand:He just shoots them? Does he have a variety of methods or what's his preferred technique? league so what did what he liked to do so he first of all he he always dressed in the same clothes he wore a leather butcher's apron a leather hat and shoulder length leather gloves um he would turn the prisoner around hold his revolver up to the back of their neck and put a single shot into their brain that was his preferred method of execution um it should be said and perhaps uh you know it's not that surprising he was also an alcoholic and mentally unstable but um Really? Okay.

24:36William Dalrymple:Surprise, shocker. But yes, he killed, as I say, tens of thousands of people. And he incidentally personally killed Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, who had written these begging letters not to be killed. Stalin personally ordered them to be shot by his faithful Vasily Blochin. I mean, at some point, you've got to imagine Stalin's just sort of sitting there in a throne going, you can be dead, you can be dead, you can be dead, you can be dead. because even the man who compiles his albums of death eventually gets put to death. It's quite extraordinary, really, that Stalin would just be signing off the lives of tens of thousands of people.

25:16And I don't know if I can just give a little, because this is a rather grim story we're telling here. And there are a few bright moments. And at the very moment when the show trials are at their worst, The American ambassador to Moscow, William Bullitt, decides to hold the greatest party that Moscow has ever seen. It is to be the Spring Bull held on the 24th of August, 1935. And he imports a forest of birch trees. He has the main dining room table covered in tulips. He has a chicory lawn planted in the ballroom. He brings in an aviary with pheasants, with parrots, with 100 finches. He brings in mountain goats, 12 roosters and a baby bear.

26:02And then he got some mountain goats.

26:04Anita Anand:I always feel that you need a tribe of mountain goats at your parties. Anyway, he brings these into the American embassy or the American residence space house in Moscow. Then he invites all of Stalin's surviving commissars and they have a great, great party. And in fact, the only sort of down, down thing on the whole day or the whole evening is that the bear got terrifically drunk on champagne. pain and vomited over one of the Soviet generals, which was a bit of a black spot on the evening. But it is kind of extraordinary to think that this kind of gaiety is taking place in the heart of Moscow, where tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people are being sent to be executed.

26:46Anita Anand:Charles, I'm quite intrigued by what you were saying about the Kremlin itself, that they're all kind of living in a compound. Is it collegiate? Is this sort of communal dining? Are these people who are being you know informing on each other and uh and executing each other

26:59William Dalrymple:toasting one evening and then sort of stabbing each other in the head yeah are they all living

27:04Anita Anand:together and you know cheek by jowl in or are they in their little houses living family lives how does it work no they they have their little apartments within the kremlin compound they often eat together um they get drunk together they get horrendously drunk together interestingly as stalin everyone's always you know saying how he was um drinking vodka all the time stalin didn't drink vodka. In fact, Stalin often didn't drink alcohol at these dinners. What he liked to do was get everyone else completely drunk and he remained completely sober. And actually, he did the same with some very amusing accounts of the American ambassador, the British ambassador, getting right royally drunk at these things and then realising that Stalin, his vodka glass, which he kept doing shots of, was actually full of water, not vodka at all.

27:47William Dalrymple:I mean, he did exactly that at Yalta. I mean, that's the hilarious thing, you know, just to And he acted drunk. He could act drunk as well. But when it came to memorizing everything that had been said or getting his way, it's how he did it. You know, I sort of threw this in as a line that the man who compiled his albums also ends up being put to death. I'm talking about Nikolai Yezhov. And let's just stay with that for one second, because he was the head of the secret police. He was, you know, one of the architects of the Great Terror as the pinnacle of the NKVD, the very feared NKVD. And Stalin just suddenly decides in some kind of paranoid haze after Yezhov has helped him put thousands of people to death that he has to go.

28:33William Dalrymple:And his replacement is a name that people probably will be familiar with. He's a Georgian and his name is Lavrentiy Beria, who was so memorably played by Simon Russell Beale in The Death of Stalin. and this man, Giles, I mean, is a criminal. I mean, he is a rapist. He's a personal brute. I mean, he enjoys seeing the life leak out of somebody's eyes. He was one of the most monstrous henchmen of this entire regime, Beria. He had total control over everyone and everything. As you say, he was said to have raped numerous young women and then killed them. And in fact, when many years later, I think it was in the 70s or 80s, His personal residence became the Italian embassy in Moscow, and they dug up the garden to install some new drains and everything.

29:25And they came across dozens and dozens of skeletons of young women, almost certainly women that Beria had raped and then killed. And you also mentioned Yezov, who was head of the feared NKVD before Beria. And indeed, before Yezov, there was Yagoda, who was head of the NKVD. Both of them ended up being executed. This is a classic case of the sort of revolutionary revolution swallowing its own. So they end up being disposed of by Stalin and the monstrous Beria, who will then be head of this horrific police state, the NKVD, throughout the next few years and indeed throughout the Second World War, where it's going to have a very busy job and Beria, a a monstrous bloodstained criminal.

30:15Anita Anand:So we're heading, as you just said, towards the Second World War now. And tell us about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which is signed in 1939, in the summer. In 1939, the two great powers, the two great autocratic powers of Europe, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, sworn enemies, stunned the world by announcing that they've entered into a pact together, a pact of friendship. This really comes as a bolt from the blue. It shocks absolutely everyone. And it is to have profound and dire consequences, because this pact enables Poland to be divided into two separate parts. Nazi Germany will invade the western part of Poland, and the Soviet Union will swallow the eastern part of Poland.

31:04This, of course is where Great Britain enters the war. This is really the beginning of the Second World War and it is started by this pact signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop and his opposite number Molotov in Moscow in 1939.

31:20Anita Anand:And Stalin is very pleased with this isn't he? He thinks this is a great masterstroke of diplomacy. Stalin is pleased with it and many people would say well it was a masterpiece of diplomacy because both dictators got what they wanted. It should be said and this is a sort of footnote to history, but I love these little footnotes because they sometimes shed much light on things that the British themselves had sent an emissary to Moscow to try and negotiate a deal with Stalin, similar to the Nazi Soviet pact. So they were hoping to get in there first and sign some sort of alliance with Stalin. Unfortunately, listen to the man that they sent as their emissary.

31:59He was called, and I've had to write it down, Sir Reginald Alma Ranfony Plunkett Ern Earl Drax. He has a quadruple - We don't have nearly enough of these people today. He has a quadruple-barrelled surname. And when Stalin was told who the British had sent to negotiate, he simply said, they cannot be serious. And so poor old Sir Reginald arrived in the capital, found that he was not taken seriously. And he was still in Moscow when it was announced to that actually Stalin had signed his pact with von Ribbentrop. And so the Nazi Soviet deal was a done deal.

32:37William Dalrymple:Although, can I just say, I mean, this is the tale of two bastards, really, because they both think they're getting the better of each other and that they're going to shiv each other in the showers later. Because doesn't Stalin say Hitler thinks he's tricking us, but I think we've got the better of him. This is not something that either of them has signed in amity. They both reckon that they're doing deals with people who are less than them and who they will ultimately betray. That's absolutely right. This is the ultimate betrayal pact, in fact. It has far-reaching consequences, of course, because one of the parts of the deal is that the Soviet Union is going to supply huge amounts of raw materials to Nazi Germany, which will help Hitler consolidate and build the Nazi war machine.

33:21So, yeah, it's profound consequences for both Soviet Union and Nazi Germany for Europe and for the world. This really fires the gun that will start the Second World War.

33:32Anita Anand:Stalin uses the breathing space created by the pact to go after the Baltic states, doesn't he? He does, yeah. He's going to swallow as much territory as possible. As I said, he's moved his Red Army into Poland, bringing with it a wave of appalling terror, executions, assassinations, liquidating any sort of intellectual in Poland. Then he moves into the Baltic states, then he makes his move on Finland. This is Stalin grabbing as much territory as he can while he's got the opportunity.

34:01William Dalrymple:And then in the early hours of the 22nd of June 1941, Giles, you have three million German troops crossing into Soviet territory. It's known as Operation Barbarossa. Our sister podcast here at Goalhanger, We Have Ways, has done a whole series on Operation Barbarossa quite recently. And the thing about this is that a man who is endlessly suspicious of his friends doesn't see that Hitler is about to betray him. I mean, it's so mad. How did he not see it coming? This is absolutely extraordinary. He has three million Wehrmacht troops on the border. This is going to be the greatest invasion in the history of warfare.

34:44There are tanks, There are jeeps. There are enormous amounts of military hardware on the border. On top of that, Stalin is being brought intelligence from his own military, from spies inside the embassy in Tokyo, for example. Even Winston Churchill, who's got very good intelligence on what's taking place, sends his ambassador to see Stalin to say, this is about to happen. You're about to be invaded. Stalin didn't want to believe it. He said Hitler will not betray the Nazi Soviet pact. And even when in the early hours of the 22nd of June 1941, when the first Germans start to cross the frontier, several of those Germans defect and warn the Soviets what's taking place.

35:23This is immediately sent back to Moscow, to the Kremlin, to Joseph Stalin. He says, I want those deserters rounded up and shot. He doesn't believe what they're saying. So this actually causes a great crisis on the front line because this enables the Wehrmacht, the German army, to roll across the frontier almost uncontested.

35:45William Dalrymple:Yeah, there's a really lovely memorable line from Khrushchev decades later when asked about this. He said, yeah, everyone knew. Everyone knew what Hitler was going to do. The sparrows were chirping about it at every crossroad. So this is like just a really bonkers time in Stalin's already bonkers regime.

36:04Anita Anand:And Beria is encouraging Stalin in his belief, isn't he? He's telling Stalin how wise he is not to believe these rumours that Hitler's got an invasion plan. That's right. And even as the armies are moving towards Minsk, Stalin still does not believe. He says this might be just a little incursion or something like that. You know, I'm sure Hitler didn't order this at all. And what happens, which is quite extraordinary, when Stalin finally realises that this is a massive invasion, he has almost some sort of complete breakdown. He retires to his dacha in the countryside. He refuses to see anyone. He refuses to take any phone calls.

36:50And for three or four days, he is on his own and just denies any responsibility for the running of the state. He does absolutely nothing. He won't see anyone. And it's almost like he's abnegating all responsibility for what's taking place, you know, on the frontiers of the Soviet Union.

37:07William Dalrymple:Yeah. And so, you know, within days, you've got a sort of seemingly a collapse of the army, what is left of the army after his purges. And you've got Stalin disappearing in this nervous breakdown that you've just described. I mean, I'm thinking that this is kind of music to ears in London, because if you've got these two big beasts fighting each other, that's two fronts for Hitler. Of course, this is going to have profound consequences for Great Britain. Churchill is woken on the morning of Sunday, the 22nd of June, by his personal secretary and told of this invasion. And for Churchill, this is perhaps one of the greatest moments of his life, because he knows now that Hitler is fighting a war on two fronts.

37:52It is very, very good news. The first thing he does, even though it's like 5.30 in the morning, is he pulls out a cigar from his case and lights it in celebration of the news he's just been told. He actually has Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, staying at Chequers as well that weekend. And he goes around in his dressing gown to Anthony Eden's bedroom, tells him the news and offers him a cigar as well. And Anthony Eden demures and said, no, I can't possibly smoke at this time in the morning. But this is a great moment for Great Britain, because there is now the glimmer of hope that actually Hitler has overreached himself and that the Second World War is now at a turning point.

38:30Anita Anand:So one of the things that happens during Barbarossa is that among the many, many troops that are rounded up and captured by the very fast advancing Wehrmacht with these extraordinary tank regiments shooting through great acreages of Russia is the son of Stalin, Yakov, from his first marriage. Barely knew his father and is now in the army. He is captured. What happens to him, Jas? Well, you see, Stalin has issued this order not one step back. And so anyone who is captured or surrenders Stalin thinks, well, they simply deserve to be shot. It is greatly unfortunate that Yakov is indeed captured by the Germans and put into a prison of war camp.

39:15And there are sort of stories behind the scenes or attempts to negotiate Yakov's release. But Stalin simply says, no, I'm not doing any deal. You know, he might be my son, but he's got captured. Tough, you know. And extraordinary on the part of Stalin simply almost to disown his son because he's been dishonourable enough to get captured by the Wehrmacht.

39:38William Dalrymple:And, you know, he's still killing senior members of his army as well. There's, you know, a guy called General Pavlov who saw the threat from the Nazis, who told his higher commands that, actually, you know, the Germans are coming for us. Can I fight them back? and is told, no, stand down. Hitler would never do this to Stalin. He's executed as well. So in the next episode, Giles, we're going to be joined by the wonderful Anthony Beaver, who is going to talk us through what the impact of having no senior commanders left has on Stalingrad, the great siege of Stalingrad. So let's leave this episode, Giles, with the Germans can see the gilded domes of Moscow.

40:20William Dalrymple:They are that close to taking the capital. They are literally just outside the capital. They're waiting to move in. It's absolute panic inside Moscow. Stalin transfers the government way to the east to the Urals, where they're going to be safe from bombing raids by the Luftwaffe. The entire diplomatic community is moved to a place called Koibyshev, again, way to the east. The population of the city is also moved out. It is widely believed that the German army, the Wehrmacht, is about to seize control of Moscow. Only Stalin, in fact, remains in the Kremlin. He decides that he's going to stay there.

40:58The only thing that Hitler has not considered, as Napoleon did not consider before him, is that winter in the Russia is extremely cold and the snow and the ice is about to descend on Moscow.

41:14William Dalrymple:Winter is coming. Winter is coming. If you want to hear the next episode right now and ad-free, just head off to empirepoduk.com. Empirepoduk.com. You can become a member and you get all of these series on demand. Giles, it's been absolutely fabulous having you. Thank you. You're a great storyteller and it is just a horrifyingly great story to tell. Thank you very much indeed. Well, thank you for having me on once again. Great pleasure. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand.

41:42Anita Anand:And goodbye from me, William Derimple.