Young Stalin (86 page)

Betrayal, 1913: Roman Malinovsky, ex-burglar-cum-rapist and star Bolshevik was the Okhrana’s highly paid double-agent. Neither Stalin nor Lenin believed he was a traitor. But he arranged Stalin’s arrest by luring him to a fund-raising party.

Left:
Stalin, Central Committee member, refused to go to the cocktail party but Malinovsky persuaded him, lending him this silk tie. He was arrested in it.
Right:
Tatiana Slavatinskaya, Stalin’s mistress, and his date at the party where he was betrayed. Stalin tried to escape in drag.

Arctic sex comedy. Escape from Kureika
(above)
on the Arctic Circle was impossible. Stalin loved hunting and living with Ostyak tribesmen and their reindeer
(left)
.

In 1914, he consoled himself by seducing the thirteen-year-old Lidia Pereprygina with whom he was surprised by the local policeman wielding a sabre. Stalin was so outraged he chased the policeman around the village.
above right:
Middle-aged Lidia after the Second World War.
Below left:
Stalin and Lidia’s illegitimate son, Alexander.

Siberian summer, 1915: Bolshevik exiles meet up to drink, picnic and hold trials of their comrades.
Top:
At the back, standing, Stalin in his fedora
(third from the left)
is between Spandarian in cloth cap
(second from left)
, and Kamenev with moustache
(fourth from left)
, while Sverdlov in a white shirt and glasses is third from right. Spandarian’s partner Vera Shveitzer sits in front. The child is Sverdlov’s son Andrei, one of Stalin’s future secret-police torturers.

Stalin met most of the Soviet grandees during his youth and he never forgot any slights or rows. During the 1930s, he unleashed the Great Terror to liquidate many of them, having so many of his companions killed that the picture had to be culled too. First, in 1936, Kamenev was shot and his place next to Stalin was blanked out
(above left)
. In 1937–38, Stalin had approximately 1.5 million people shot. The group in the picture was savagely cut too: another five people have vanished
(above right)
.

Top:
Vera Shveitzer was Spandarian’s girlfriend. After his death, she moved in with Stalin. After the fall of the Tsar, they caught the train together for Petrograd.
Left:
Stalin’s seduction and impregnation of thirteen-year-old Lidia Pereprygina seemed so outrageous as to be legendary. In 1956, Khrushchev ordered KGB boss Serov to investigate: Here is his top secret memo that proves it all, signed by Khrushchev, Voroshilov and the Politburo. (Serov was also ordered to investigate Stalin’s links to the Okhrana and the Eremin Letter, which he covers in the memo’s first pages before moving on to the underaged affair.)

Revolution, February–March 1917: When Stalin arrived from Siberia in Petrograd, he walked excitedly to Potemkin’s Taurida Palace
(top)
, the seethingly chaotic political centre, home of Soviet, Duma, government—and marauding soldiers
(bottom)
.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2007 by Simon Sebag Montefiore

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Originally published in Great Britain by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, the Orion Publishing Group Ltd., London.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Montefiore, Sebag, [date]
Young Stalin / Simon Sebag Montefiore.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49892-2
1. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953. 2. Heads of state—
Soviet Union—Biography. I. Title.
DK268.S8M574 2007
947.084′2092—DC22

[B]             2007029220

v3.0