Stalin (36 page)

As a professional revolutionary, Stalin had to endure many hardships: prison, exile, and an unsettled existence even in times of freedom. During one term of exile he became ill with typhus.
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His most difficult trial was his final exile in Turukhansky Krai, which lasted three years. He had difficulty adapting to the harsh climate, austere living conditions, isolation from “the world at large,” and forced idleness, and in letters to friends he complained of a “suspicious cough” brought on by “intensifying cold (37 below)” and a “general state of ill health.”
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Overall, however, the tsarist government was immeasurably kinder to convicts than the Stalinist dictatorship. Had young Stalin had to endure so many imprisonments and exiles in the sort of Gulag system he went on to create, he most likely would not have survived.

The revolution and Civil War not only put millions in their graves, but also deeply affected the Bolshevik party and undermined the health of its leaders. In March 1921 Stalin underwent an appendectomy.
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On 23 April 1921, out of concern for their health, the Politburo voted to grant Stalin, Kamenev, Rykov, and Trotsky extended vacations.
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In late May, Stalin left for the North Caucasus and did not return to Moscow until 8 August, almost two and a half months later. In 1922 he skipped his vacation, but in July the Politburo compelled him to spend three days a week out of town.
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Once the Civil War ended, spending time in the fresh air of Moscow’s leafy suburban dacha communities became an established lifestyle for the top Bolshevik leadership. Stalin and his family commandeered the country home of a former petroleum industrialist. Later, after the death of his wife, the
vozhd
built himself a new dacha, more convenient to Moscow. This famous country home (the “near” dacha in Volynskoe) was Stalin’s main residence for nearly two decades and will forever be associated with him. It was here that he died.

At the dacha, Stalin would spend time with his immediate family and other relatives or get together with his comrades. In addition to the festive dinners with lots of alcohol (described above), Stalin’s dacha lifestyle also included games, such as billiards or
gorodki
(a Russian game similar to skittles), although the dictator himself was not a big lover of physical activity. “He preferred stretching out on a deckchair with a book and his documents or the newspapers. And he could sit at the table with his guests by the hour,” his daughter Svetlana recalled.
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This penchant for immobility only increased with age.

Another significant part of Stalin’s life were his vacations in resort areas of southern Russia. He spent time in the south every year from 1923 to 1936 and from 1945 to 1951.
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These trips were working vacations. A constant stream of documents was forwarded to him, and he kept up an active correspondence with his comrades back in Moscow, a practice that generated invaluable records for historians. But there was also time for rest and relaxation. While in the south Stalin treated his numerous diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, bouts of tonsillitis, long-lasting intestinal disturbances, and neurasthenia.
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His ailments were also eased by therapeutic baths. “I am getting better. The Matsesta waters (near Sochi) are good for curing sclerosis, reviving the nerves, dilating the heart, and curing sciatica, gout, and rheumatism,” he reported to Molotov on 1 August 1925.
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But Stalin was not a conscientious patient. His chronic ailments were exacerbated by his lifestyle and bad habits: smoking, drinking, rich foods, and overwork. Like most people, Stalin alternated between taking care of his body and inflicting damage. In May 1926 he left for a vacation in the Caucasus. After a brief stop in Sochi he set out with Mikoyan to travel through Georgia, where he visited his native Gori before going to stay with Ordzhonikidze in Tiflis. Letters from the head of Stalin’s Sochi-based security team, M. Gorbachev, suggest that this was a boisterous trip. While “under the influence,” as Gorbachev put it, on a whim, Stalin suddenly summoned him from Sochi to Tiflis but then forgot he had done so. When Gorbachev showed up, Stalin was surprised to see him. When it became clear what had happened, everyone “had a good laugh.” Gorbachev was forced to hurry back to Sochi, covering the vast distance at breakneck speed.
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Continuing his spree, Stalin spent a long time driving around the Caucasus and wound up returning to Sochi in bad shape. “I returned to Sochi today, 15 June,” he reported to Molotov and Bukharin. “In Tiflis I came down with a stomachache (I got food poisoning from some fish) and am now having a hard time recovering.”
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Gorbachev wrote to Stalin’s assistant, Ivan Tovstukha, “Overall, the boss wound up paying quite a price for this trip across the Caucasus in terms of his health. Mikoyan and Sergo [Ordzhonikidze] turned him topsy-turvy.”
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Stalin called for a doctor, went on a diet, and began to take the waters on a regular basis.
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The doctor who treated him in Sochi, I. A. Valedinsky, recalled that his patient complained of pain in his arm and leg muscles. When his doctors forbade him to drink, Stalin asked, “But what about cognac?” Valedinsky replied that “on Saturday you can let loose, on Sunday you should rest, and on Monday you can go to work with a clear head.” “Stalin liked this response, and the next time he arranged a ‘
subbotnik’
[a word usually used for mandatory ‘volunteer’ work on Saturdays], it was very memorable for me,” Valedinsky wrote, although he did not explain what made this particular gathering so unforgettable.
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References to his poor health are scattered throughout Stalin’s later correspondence as well. While on vacation in July 1927, he wrote to Molotov: “I’m sick and lying in bed so I’ll be brief.”
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According to Valedinsky, that year he also complained of pain in his arm and leg muscles. Therapeutic baths were followed by the usual
subbotnik.
Stalin invited his doctors to dine with him “and was so generous with the cognac,” Valedinsky wrote afterward, “that I did not make it home until the following day, on Sunday.”
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In 1928, before taking a curative bath in Sochi, Stalin again complained of pain in his arms and legs. The rheumatoid arthritis in his left arm was progressing.
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During a vacation in August 1929 Stalin wrote to Molotov that “I am beginning to recuperate in Sochi after my illness in Nalchik.”
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In 1930, while undergoing treatment in Sochi, he fell ill with tonsillitis. His teeth also hurt. In September 1930 he wrote to his wife that the dentist had “sharpened” eight of his teeth in one go, so he “was not feeling very well.”
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In 1931 he again took therapeutic baths. “I spent about 10 days in Tsqaltubo. I took 20 baths. The water there was marvelous, truly valuable,” he wrote to Yenukidze.
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That September he wrote to his wife that he was vacationing in Sochi with Kirov. “I went one time (just once!) to the seaside. I went bathing. It was very good! I think I’ll go again.”
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Apparently he used the Russian word for “bathing” because he could not swim.

The vacation Stalin took in 1932 was one of his longest. The log of visitors to his Kremlin office shows that he did not receive anyone there between 29 May and 27 August—almost three months. The apparent reason for such a long break was poor health. The following spring the foreign press was still speculating that Stalin was seriously ill. On 3 April,
Pravda
took the unprecedented step of publishing a response by Stalin to a query by the Associated Press: “This is not the first time that false rumors that I am ill have circulated in the bourgeois press. Obviously, there are people in whose interest it is that I should fall seriously ill and for a long time, if not worse. Perhaps it is not very tactful of me, but unfortunately I have no information to gratify these gentlemen. Sad though it may be, the fact is that I am in perfect health.”
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Behind this characteristically mocking response was genuine irritation. Stalin’s symptoms were serious, and rest and relaxation in the beneficial climate of southern Russia apparently did not alleviate them. “It seems I won’t be getting better anytime soon,” Stalin wrote to Kaganovich from the south in June 1932. “A general weakness and real sense of fatigue are only now becoming evident. Just when I think I’m beginning to get better, it turns out that I’ve got a long way to go. I’m not having rheumatic symptoms (they disappeared somewhere), but the overall weakness isn’t going away.”
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Soon, however, he felt well enough to make a 230-mile trip across the Black Sea by motor boat.
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Regular trips to the south inspired Stalin to build new vacation homes there. These construction projects began in 1930 and continued for the rest of his life. “We’ve built a marvelous little house here,” he wrote of his new dacha outside Sochi in August 1933. A month later he wrote of another residence: “Today I visited the new dacha near Gagry. It’s turned out (they just finished building it) to be a splendid dacha.”
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In 1933 Stalin was away from his Kremlin office from 17 August to 4 November. On 18 August he left Moscow to travel south with Voroshilov. The trip—by train, boat, and automobile—took seven days, during which they visited several regions of the country. Stalin spent the remainder of his vacation traveling (including by sea), entertaining guests, and, inevitably, working. This vacation was apparently among the more enjoyable. The situation in the country had somewhat stabilized after the devastating famine, putting the Soviet leadership in a good mood. Moreover, Stalin enjoyed relatively good health. “Koba felt great the entire time,” Voroshilov wrote to Yenukidze. His only health problem was some tooth pain.
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Stalin’s vacation the following year was less successful. In 1934 he caught influenza and returned to Moscow having lost weight.
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Kirov, who accompanied Stalin that summer, also did not enjoy himself. “As fate would have it, I wound up in Sochi,” Kirov wrote, “which I’m not happy about—the heat here isn’t tropical; it’s hellish.… I really regret that I came to Sochi.”
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Things did not go well in 1935 either: Stalin again caught influenza and injured his finger when the head of his security team accidentally slammed a car door on it. Stopping in Tiflis toward the end of this vacation to visit his mother, he came down with a stomach ailment.
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In 1936, Stalin’s letters to his comrades-in-arms back in Moscow during August through October are brief, harsh, and often ill humored. They contain no personal information, just orders. They are largely devoted to the topic of “enemies of the people,” especially arrangements for the first Moscow show trial against Zinoviev and Kamenev.

Nineteen thirty-seven had a gloomy start both for the country, which was succumbing to another round of repression, and for Stalin, who began the year with a bout of tonsillitis. (By 5 January he had sufficiently recovered to enjoy dinner with his comrades and doctors, followed by dancing to phonograph records.)
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Despite his continued poor health, for the first time in many years he did not leave Moscow on vacation. The decision to stay was undoubtedly due to his intimate involvement in the purging of Soviet society. He also stayed in Moscow the following few summers. After the winding down of the Great Terror, the impending war prevented him from relaxing down south. In 1939, for example, he spent August embroiled in difficult negotiations with Western powers and then the Nazis, resulting in the pact with Hitler. He had recently turned sixty, and his health had not improved. In records dated February 1940, Valedinsky mentions another episode of tonsillitis and a bad cold.
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The outbreak of war in the summer of 1941 pushed the already hardworking leader to his limits. Unlike many Soviet citizens, of course, he was not going hungry or enduring long days of backbreaking labor, but the additional workload and responsibilities put a greater strain on his health. In September 1944 discussions with the United States ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman (who was attempting to arrange for the Soviet leader to meet with Roosevelt and Churchill), Stalin explained that he would not be able to leave the country because of “increasingly frequent illnesses.” According to one account of these talks, “In the past Com. Stalin would have the flu for one or two days, but now it was lasting for one and a half or two weeks. He was showing his age.”
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In his categorical refusal to travel by plane, Stalin may have been overdramatizing his health problems, but not by much. A number of memoirs describe Stalin’s frail health during the war years. Whenever the situation at the front permitted it, the dictator retreated to his dacha and worked from there.

In October 1945, shortly after the surrender of Japan, Stalin took his first southern vacation in several years.
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Toward the end of his life these trips were shifted to later in the year, usually commencing in August or September and ending in December. Apparently he preferred to enjoy the peak of summer at his dacha outside Moscow and to head south when the weather up north turned cold. His vacations also grew longer. In 1946–1949 they extended to three or three and a half months, and in 1950 and 1951 he spent four and a half months out of town.
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While at his southern residences, Stalin engaged in more or less the same activities as in Moscow. He spent time working on the day’s mail and writing to his comrades. He also received visitors, although fewer than in Moscow. As in Moscow, however, he enjoyed presiding over festive gatherings at the dinner table and playing billiards. But some activities were specific to his vacation lifestyle. During his visits to Russia’s resort towns, he took therapeutic baths, went for walks, and traveled. In 1947 he expressed a desire to travel by car from Moscow to Crimea, although the poor quality of the roads allowed him to get only as far as Kursk, where he boarded a train. Long car trips were evidently bad for his rheumatism. A number of memoirs report that he nevertheless preferred the less comfortable jump seats to the cushioned back seat.
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He seldom stayed in one place very long when visiting the south, moving among his continuously growing collection of dachas.
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Sometimes he would invite his daughter and son to join him, occasioning a sort of family reunion that, for a number of reasons, was not possible in Moscow.