Conversations with Stalin (16 page)

Voznesensky, the Chairman of the Planning Commission of the USSR, was barely past forty—a typical Russian, blond and with prominent cheekbones, a rather high forehead, and curly hair. He gave the impression of being an orderly, cultured, and above all withdrawn man, who said little and always had a happy inward smile. I had previously read his book on the Soviet economy during the war, and it gave me the impression that the author was a conscientious and thoughtful man. Later that book was criticized in the USSR, and Voznesensky was liquidated for reasons that have remained undisclosed to this day.

I was well acquainted with Voznesensky's older brother, a university professor who had just been named Minister of Education in the Russian Federation. I had had some very interesting discussions with the elder Voznesensky at the time of the Panslavic Congress in Belgrade, in the winter of 1946. We had agreed not only with respect to the narrowness and bias of the prevailing theories of “socialist realism,” but also concerning the appearance of new phenomena in socialism (that is, communism) with the creation of the new socialist countries and with changes in capitalism which had not yet been discussed theoretically. It is probable that his handsome contemplative head also fell in the senseless purges.

The dinner began with someone—it seems to me that it was Stalin himself—proposing that everyone guess how many degrees below zero it was, and that everyone be punished by being made to drink as many glasses of vodka as the number of degrees he guessed wrong. Luckily, while still at the hotel, I had looked at the thermometer, and I added to the number to allow for the temperature drop during the night, so that I missed by only one degree. I remember that Beria missed by three, remarking that he had done so on purpose so that he might drink more glasses of vodka.

Such a beginning to a dinner forced upon me a heretical thought: These men shut up in a narrow circle were capable of inventing even more senseless reasons for drinking vodka—the length of the dining room in feet or of the table in inches. And who knows, maybe that's what they do! At any rate, this apportioning of the number of vodka glasses according to the temperature reading suddenly brought to my mind the confinement, the inanity and senselessness of the life these Soviet leaders were living gathered about their superannuated chief even as they played a role that was decisive for the human race. I recalled that the Russian tsar Peter the Great likewise held such suppers with his assistants at which they gorged and drank themselves into a stupor while ordaining the fate of Russia and the Russian people.

This impression of the vacuity of such a life did not recede but kept recurring during the course of the dinner despite my attempts to suppress it. It was especially strengthened by Stalin's age, by conspicuous signs of his senility. No amount of respect and love for his person, which I stubbornly nurtured inside myself, was able to erase that realization from my consciousness.

There was something both tragic and ugly in his senility. The tragic was invisible—these were the reflections in my head regarding the inevitability of decline in even so great a personality. The ugly kept cropping up all the time. Though he had always enjoyed eating well, Stalin now exhibited gluttony, as though he feared that there would not be enough of the desired food left for him. On the other hand, he drank less and more cautiously, as though measuring every drop—to avoid any ill effects.

His intellect was in even more apparent decline. He liked to recall incidents from his youth—his exile in Siberia, his childhood in the Caucasus; and he would compare everything recent with something that had already happened: “Yes, I remember, the same thing. . . .”

It was incomprehensible how much he had changed in two or three years. When I had last seen him, in 1945, he was still lively, quick-witted, and had a pointed sense of humor. But that was during the war, and it had been, it would seem, Stalin's last effort and limit. Now he laughed at inanities and shallow jokes. On one occasion he not only failed to get the political point of an anecdote I told him in which he outsmarted Churchill and Roosevelt, but I had the impression that he was offended, in the manner of old men. I perceived an awkward astonishment on the faces of the rest of the party.

In one thing, though, he was still the Stalin of old: stubborn, sharp, suspicious whenever anyone disagreed with him. He even cut Molotov, and one could feel the tension between them. Everyone paid court to him, avoiding any expression of opinion before he expressed his, and then hastening to agree with him.

As usual, they hopped from subject to subject—and I shall proceed likewise in my account.

Stalin spoke up about the atom bomb: “That is a powerful thing, pow-er-ful!” His expression was full of admiration, so that one was given to understand that he would not rest until he, too, had the “powerful thing.” But he did not mention that he had it already or that the USSR was working on it.

On the other hand, when Kardelj and I met with Dimitrov in Moscow a month later, Dimitrov told us as if in confidence that the Russians already had the atom bomb, and an even better one than the Americans', that is, the one exploded over Hiroshima. I maintain that this was not true, but that the Russians were just on the way to making an atom bomb. But these are the facts, and I cite them.

Both that night and again soon after, in a meeting with the Bulgarian and Yugoslav delegations, Stalin stressed that Germany would remain divided: “The West will make Western Germany their own, and we shall turn Eastern Germany into our own state.”

This thought of his was new, but understandable; it proceeded from the whole trend of Soviet policy in Eastern Europe and toward the West. I could never understand the statements by Stalin and the Soviet leaders, made before the Bulgars and the Yugoslavs in the spring of 1946, that all of Germany must be ours, that is, Soviet, Communist. I asked one of those present how the Russians meant to bring this about. He replied, “I don't know myself!” I suspect that not even those who made the statements actually knew how but were caught up by the flush of military victories and by their hopes for the economic and other dissolution of Western Europe.

Toward the end of the dinner Stalin unexpectedly asked me why there were not many Jews in the Yugoslav Party and why these few played no important role in it. I tried to explain to him that there were not many Jews in Yugoslavia to begin with, and most belonged to the middle class. I added, “The only prominent Communist Jew is Pijade, and he regards himself as being more of a Serb than a Jew.”

Stalin began to recall: “Pijade, short, with glasses? Yes, I remember, he visited me. And what is his position?”

“He is a member of the Central Committee, a veteran Communist, the translator of
Das Kapital
,” I explained.

“In our Central Committee there are no Jews!” he broke in, and began to laugh tauntingly. “You are an anti-Semite, you, too, Djilas, you, too, are an anti-Semite!”

I took his words and laughter to mean the opposite, as I should have—as the expression of his own anti-Semitism and as a provocation to get me to declare my stand concerning the Jews, particularly Jews in the Communist movement. I laughed softly and kept still, which was not difficult for me inasmuch as I have never been an anti-Semite and I divided Communists solely into the good and the bad. Stalin himself quickly abandoned this slippery subject, being content with his cynical provocation.

At my left sat the taciturn Molotov, and at my right the loquacious Zhdanov. The latter told of his contacts with the Finns and admiringly emphasized their exactitude in delivering reparations: “Everything on time, expertly packed, and of excellent quality.”

He concluded, “We made a mistake in not occupying Finland. Everything would have been set up if we had.” Molotov: “Akh, Finland—that is a peanut.”

At that very time Zhdanov was holding meetings with composers and preparing a “decree” on music. He liked operas and asked me in passing, “Do you have opera in Yugoslavia?”

Surprised at his question, I replied, “In Yugoslavia operas are being presented in nine theaters!” At the same time I thought: How little they know about Yugoslavia. Indeed, it is not noticeable that it even interests them except as a given geographic location.

Zhdanov was the only one who was drinking orangeade. He explained to me that he did this because of his bad heart. I asked him, “How serious is your illness?”

With a restrained smile he replied with his customary mockery, “I might die at any moment, and I might live a very long time.” He certainly evinced an exaggerated sensitivity, and he reacted quickly and too easily.

A new five-year plan had just been promulgated. Without turning to anyone in particular Stalin announced that the teachers' salaries ought to be increased. And then to me: “Our teachers are very good, but their salaries are low—we must do something.”

Everyone uttered a few words of agreement while I recalled, not without bitterness, the low salaries and wretched conditions of Yugoslav cultural workers and my impotence to help them.

Voznesensky kept silent the whole time; he comported himself like a junior among seniors. Stalin addressed him directly only with this one question: “Could means be obtained outside of the Plan for the construction of the Volga-Don Canal? A very important job! We must find the means! A terribly important job from the military point of view as well: in case of war they might drive us out of the Black Sea—our fleet is weak and will go on being weak for a long time. What would we do with our ships in that case? Imagine how valuable the Black Sea Fleet would have been during the Battle of Stalingrad if we had had it on the Volga! That canal is of first-class, first-class importance.”

Voznesensky agreed that the means could be found, took out a little notebook and made a note of it.

I had long been interested in two questions—almost privately—and I wished to ask Stalin for his opinion. One was in the field of theory: neither in Marxist literature nor anywhere else could I ever find an explanation of the difference between “people” and “nation.” Since Stalin had long been reputed among Communists to be an expert on the nationalities question, I sought his opinion, pointing out that he had not treated this in his book on the nationalities question, which had been published even before the First World War and since then was considered the authoritative Bolshevik view.

At my question Molotov first joined in: “‘People' and ‘nation' are both the same thing.”

But Stalin did not agree. “No, nonsense! They are different!” And he began to explain simply: “‘Nation'? You already know what it is: the product of capitalism with given characteristics. And ‘people'—these are the workingmen of a given nation, that is, workingmen of the same language, culture, customs.”

And concerning his book
Marxism and the National Question
, he observed: “That was Ilyich's—Lenin's view. Ilyich also edited the book.”

The second question involved Dostoevsky. Since early youth I had considered Dostoevsky in many ways the greatest writer of the modern age, and I could never square within myself the Marxist attacks on him.

Stalin also answered this simply: “A great writer and a great reactionary. We are not publishing him because he is a bad influence on the youth. But, a great writer!”

We turned to Gorky. I pointed out that I regarded as his greatest work—both in method and in the depth of his depiction of the Russian Revolution—
The Life of Klim Samgin
. But Stalin disagreed, avoiding the subject of method. “No, his best things are those he wrote earlier:
The Town of Okurov
, his stories, and
Foma Gordeev
. And as far as the depiction of the Russian Revolution in
Klim Samgin
is concerned, there is very little revolution there and only a single Bolshevik—what was his name: Liutikov, Liutov?”

I corrected him: “Kutuzov—Liutov is an entirely different character.”

Stalin concluded: “Yes, Kutuzov! The revolution is portrayed from one side, and inadequately at that; and from the literary point of view, too, his earlier works are better.”

It was clear to me that Stalin and I did not understand one another and that we could not agree, though I had had an opportunity to hear the opinions of significant littérateurs who, like himself, considered these particular works of Gorky his best.

Speaking of contemporary Soviet literature, I, as more or less all foreigners do, referred to Sholokhov's strength. Stalin observed: “Now there are better ones!”—and he cited two names, of which one belonged to a woman. Both were unknown to me.

I avoided a discussion of Fadeev's
Young Guard
, which even then was under attack for the insufficient “Partyness” of its heroes; also, Aleksandrov's
History of Philosophy
, which was criticized on quite opposite grounds—dogmatism, shallowness, banality.

It was Zhdanov who reported Stalin's observation on the book of love poems by K. Simonov: “They should have published only two copies—one for her, and one for him!” At which Stalin smiled demurely while the others roared.

The evening could not go by without vulgarity, to be sure, Beria's. They forced me to drink a small glass of
peretsovka—
strong vodka with pepper (in Russian,
perets
means pepper, hence the name for this drink). Sniggering, Beria explained that this liquor had a bad effect on the sex glands, and he used the most vulgar expressions in so doing. Stalin gazed intently at me as Beria spoke, ready to burst into laughter, but he remained serious on noticing how sour I was.

Even apart from this I could not dispel that conspicuous similarity between Beria and the Belgrade Royal Police official Vujković it even grew to such proportions that I felt as though I was actually in the fleshy and damp clutches of Vujković-Beria.