March 5 is the anniversary of the death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. 65 years ago, the Soviet dictator died of a stroke. "Znayu" tells everything you need to know about him.
Stalin: years of life and death
Place of birth - Gori, Georgia.
Place of death - Near Dacha.
Joseph Stalin: biography briefly
Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich was born (Stalin is the real name of Dzhugashvili) on December 21, 1879 in the Georgian town of Gori in a family belonging to the lower class. He was the third, but the only surviving child in the family - his older brother and sister died in infancy.
Stalin failed to graduate from the seminary, as he was expelled from the educational institution right before the exams for absenteeism. After that, Joseph Vissarionovich was issued a certificate allowing him to become a teacher in elementary schools. At first, he earned a living by tutoring, and then got a job at the Tiflis Physical Observatory as a computer observer.
The riddle of Stalin: coming to power
Stalin was actively engaged in propaganda of the new government. It was in 1900 that a fateful meeting with V. Lenin took place. This event influenced the further development of Dzhugashvili's career.
In 1912, he finally decided to change his surname Dzhugashvili to the pseudonym "Stalin".
During this period, the future ruler of the USSR began to work as Lenin's right hand in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.
In 1917, for special merits, Lenin appointed Stalin People's Commissar for Nationalities in the Council of People's Commissars.
In 1930, all power was concentrated in the hands of Stalin, in connection with which huge upheavals began in the USSR. This period is marked by the beginning of mass repressions and collectivizations, when the entire rural population of the country was driven to collective farms and starved. The new leader of the Soviet Union sold all the food taken from the peasants abroad, and with the proceeds he developed the industry by building industrial enterprises.
Apocalypse of the USSR: Stalin at the helm
By 1940, Joseph Stalin became the sole ruler-dictator of the USSR.
Stalinist repressions, dictatorship, terror, violence - all these are key features of the reign of Joseph Stalin. He is also accused of suppressing entire scientific areas of the country, accompanied by persecution of doctors and engineers, which caused disproportionate harm to the development of national culture and science.
Stalin's policy is loudly condemned all over the world. The ruler of the USSR is accused of mass famine and the death of people who became victims of Stalinism and Nazism.
Stalin: personal life and family
There is very little information left about Stalin's personal life. He destroyed in every possible way any confirmation of it from the ligatures. At the same time, historians managed to restore some information.
For the first time, Stalin married Ekaterina Svanidze. This happened in 1906. A son was born in marriage, and a year later his wife died of typhus.
The following love relationships were recorded already 14 years after the first marriage. In 1920, the "leader" married Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who was 23 years younger than him. Two children were born in the marriage - son Vasily and daughter Svetlana.
After 12 years, Stalin's second wife also died - she committed suicide after a mysterious conflict with her husband. After that, Stalin never married again.
Circumstances of Death
The Soviet dictator died on March 5, 1932. According to the official version, this was due to a cerebral hemorrhage. In addition, doctors found out that throughout his life he suffered ischemic strokes more than once. This led to serious heart problems and mental disorders.
Initially, his body was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin. But later, after 8 years, at the Congress of the CPSU, they decided to transfer Stalin. So, he is buried near the Kremlin wall.
The place of Stalin's death, the Near Dacha, still remains a restricted facility. Tourists are not allowed there.
Stalin's death mystery
There are theories that people from the government were behind the death of Stalin, who did not like the policy of the ruler. Historians believe that experienced doctors were deliberately not allowed to see Dzhugashvili, who could cure his ailments.
Children and descendants of Stalin
Joseph Stalin had three children - Yakov, Vasily and Svetlana. His children did not choose their father, but they were part of this family - and lived under the control and cold cruelty of the most notorious tyrant in the history of the USSR.
After Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva, he did not become softer. He had problems with alcohol, and the struggle with addiction resulted in anger and violence in the government of his native country. At times, life with a tyrant became so terrible that Nadezhda left home to live with her parents. She took the children with her, but left Yakov, Catherine's son, alone with his father's drunken rage.
Life with Stalin was so unbearable that in 1930, left alone in an apartment, Yakov shot himself in the chest. He was taken to the hospital, where doctors saved his life, and Stalin was called to look at his son, whom he had driven to suicide.
He looked at his son and said, "He can't even shoot accurately."
Stalin concealed from his children that their mother had committed suicide. For example, Svetlana found out about this 10 years later.
When World War II began, Jacob was sent to the front. But there he was captured, after which he was forced to surrender in 1941. To torture Stalin, the Germans sent him a photograph of their captured son.
Stalin by that time had already created an order that everyone who surrendered was accused of desertion, and his family should be arrested - and did not provide for exceptions for his own family. Following this decree, he exiled his son's wife Julia to the Gulag. Over the next two years, Yakov's three-year-old daughter, Galina, was separated from both parents, who were suffering in the camps.
As World War II drew to a close, Adolf Hitler tried to negotiate an exchange of Jacob for German Marshal Friedrich Paulus. Stalin had the opportunity to save his son, but he did not. “I will not change the marshal for a lieutenant,” he replied.
Jacob's father left him to die in a German concentration camp. There, his only friends were other prisoners, many of whom were Poles. Jacob's situation in the camp worsened after it was revealed that his father had killed 15,000 Polish officers at Katyn. Yakov was hounded by the guards and despised by the prisoners. Deprived of hope, he approached a live barbed wire fence, caught hold of it and died.
Vasily was, according to historians, Stalin's favorite son. When he grew up, he began to actively use the status of his father. Vasily constantly drank, rowdy.
In 1943, Vasily and his friends went fishing - by plane. After getting drunk, the friends began to throw shells into the lake to watch the fish die. One of the bombs went off in the wrong place, killing the officer.
Joseph Stalin ordered only Vasily to be fired for systematic drunkenness and corrupting the military.
Svetlana hated her father, whom she called a "moral and spiritual monster," and the path that her country was following. Finally, in 1967, she decided to escape, and chose the United States for emigration. In front of the New York crowd, Svetlana declared: "I came here in search of self-expression, which was not available to me for many years in Russia."
Where did one of the most shameful “doctors’ case” in Russian medicine come from?
Early 50s Joseph Stalin was already over 70. Diseases made themselves felt, performance decreased markedly. And the Soviet leader was frankly afraid that his environment would isolate him, as he once did with a sick man. Lenin. Fear gave birth to new repressions. Iosif Vissarionovich, who was already, in fact, a sick person, was afraid not only of his comrades-in-arms, but also of doctors, reasonably believing that they could become a tool in the hands of his opponents.
Scammer or patriot?
On December 4, 1952, the secret resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On sabotage in the medical business" and "On the situation in the MGB" were issued. The famous "Doctors' Case" was the beginning of great terror and large-scale persecution not only of doctors, but also of Jewish people. The beginning was laid a few years before the mass arrests of the best Soviet doctors and luminaries of science began.
On August 29, 1948, on the table of the head of the Main Security Directorate of the Ministry of State Security (MGB), Lieutenant General Nikolai Sidorovich Vlasik got a letter from a cardiologist in the cardiography room of the Kremlin polyclinic Lydia Timofeevna Timashuk. The physician reported that on August 28 she took an electrocardiogram to a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKB Andrey Alexandrovich Zhdanov, who was being treated at a government sanatorium on Lake Valdai.
Timashuk wrote that after studying the cardiogram, she diagnosed Zhdanov with a myocardial infarction. However, professor Petr Ivanovich Egorov(major general of the medical service, Stalin's therapist) and attending physician Zhdanov Gavriil Ivanovich Mayorov disagree with this diagnosis. And the famous revolutionary was prescribed walks in the park, and not bed rest.
It would seem that an ordinary medical dispute about the correct diagnosis. But Timashuk turned out to be a woman of principle and decided to defend her point of view in higher instances. What she paid for: she was immediately demoted and sent to a less prestigious branch of the clinic. It is worth adding that not only Vlasik, but also the Minister of State Security got acquainted with Timashuk's letter Viktor Semenovich Abakumov and Stalin himself. The denunciation was sent to the archive.
Perhaps everyone would have forgotten about him, but on August 31 Zhdanov died. The cause of death of the main ideologist of the Soviet Union was a heart attack.
Jewish footprint
In the summer of 1950, Minister Abakumov sent the then Chairman of the Council of Ministers Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov a note stating that in many clinics the Bolshevik principle of personnel selection was violated, and nepotism and groupism reigned there. Mostly Jewish doctors work, and patients of the same nationality turn to them. After that, assumptions were made in the government that the same doctors of the “wrong” nationality could be to blame for the deaths of their revolutionary comrades.
On November 8, 1950, they arrested Yakov Gilarievich Etinger, scientist, physician Kirov, Ordzhonikidze, Budyonny and other members of the party elite. Etinger was accused of criminal treatment of the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Alexander Sergeevich Shcherbakov who died in May 1945 from a heart attack. The professor's investigator was one of the most terrible executioners of the Ministry of State Security Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin, whom colleagues behind their backs called the Bloody Dwarf. Today, historians suggest that it was this sadist who started the "doctors' case" in order to curry favor.
Unexpected turn
Ryumin subtly tortured and beat Professor Etinger, who at that time was 62 years old. The investigator did not let the scientist sleep, doused him with ice water, kept him in handcuffs and a punishment cell for many days, and beat him severely. Minister Abakumov periodically came for interrogations. In January, he gave the order to close the Etinger investigation due to the lack of facts proving "wrecking treatment". But Ryumin did not stop and subsequently reminded his boss of "Jewish compassion." Etinger died in March 51 after three months of torture. An autopsy showed that during this time he suffered 29 heart attacks.
But the zealous investigator Ryumin had already bitten the bit and was trying by hook or by crook to get the necessary "evidence". Arrested 70-year-old physician of the Medical and Sanitary Department of the Kremlin and Stalin's personal doctor academician Vladimir Nikitich Vinogradov could not stand the torture and signed accusations against himself that he, along with Etinger, was dissatisfied with the policy of the party, the development of medicine, etc. The goal was achieved.
At the same time, Stalin pressed, demanding to finally sort it out. Here they remembered Timashuk's letter, which best of all confirmed the "facts" of the terrorist activities of doctors - supposedly members of an international Jewish organization controlled by American and British intelligence.
Timashuk was summoned for interrogation, she gave evidence - on their basis, Ryumin built the case. Mass arrests, torture, denunciations began.
Executioner's Revenge
At the beginning of 1952, the newspaper Pravda opened the eyes of all Soviet citizens to the "crimes" of killers in white coats, they were called "American hirelings", "vile spies" and monsters who defiled the honor of Soviet science. It was reported that all "members of the terrorist group" were exposed.
It seemed small to the "bloody dwarf" Ryumin to reveal the "Zionist conspiracy." He went further and denounced his boss, Minister of State Security of the USSR Viktor Abakumov. In a secret letter to Stalin, the sadist wrote that Abakumov ruined the case of Etinger, who admitted that he was a staunch Jewish nationalist, hated the Soviet government and shortened the lives of its members.
Ryumin wrote that Abakumov forbade interrogating the doctor and ordered that the case on his charge be dropped. “He is a dangerous person for the state, especially in such a sensitive area as the Ministry of State Security,” Ryumin summed up in his denunciation. This was enough to expel Abakumov from the party and remove him from work, and then arrest him.
The minister was subjected to the most severe torture, he was kept in the cold, he was shackled for several months, the beatings turned him into an invalid, but he did not recognize the “conspiracy of doctors”. Mass arrests also began in the MGB. And Ryumin was appointed Deputy Minister of State Security. But not for long. Justice still prevailed. True, it is not known whether this would have happened if it were not for the unexpected death of the "leader of the peoples." Because it was already whispered that killer doctors would soon be executed in public - almost on Red Square, and mass deportations await Jews ...
Arrested without legal grounds
After Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, the "doctors' case" was discussed in the government for several more days. A mass check of the collected materials began. The arrested were again interrogated, but now for their dissatisfaction with the investigation. On March 31, 1953, Beria signed a decree on the termination of the "case of doctors", and on April 3, a decision was made to rehabilitate 37 doctors and their families.
The next day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs officially announced that in the course of a “thorough check of all materials”, those involved “in the case of doctors” (hereinafter followed by the names of the victims), who were accused of sabotage, espionage and terrorism against “active figures” of the Land of Soviets, were arrested erroneously and without legal grounds.
Timashuk was deprived of the Order of Lenin, which she had received shortly before for the help she provided "in exposing the killer doctors." Almost all her life, until her death in 1983, Lydia Feodosyevna lived with the stigma of a scammer. Although, according to some modern historians, she was a doctor of principle, she believed in her rightness and had little to do with the fact that the dispute over Zhdanov's diagnosis outgrew an all-Union affair.
Specialists who subsequently studied the infamous case noted that Timashuk could be wrong in the story of the cardiogram - the data that she then drew attention to could be the result of several heart diseases at once, not necessarily a heart attack.
The death of the leader did not help Abakumov to escape from execution. According to Ryumin's denunciation, he was accused of a Zionist conspiracy and treason, and after the death of the Soviet leader, the former Minister of State Security was reminded of the "Leningrad case", fabricated by him, according to which many leaders, immigrants from Leningrad, were repressed. The former minister was shot in December 1954.
There have always been many myths around the name of Joseph Stalin. One of the most mysterious is connected with the origin of the Soviet leader. So, there are several versions at once about who could be his real father.
Vissarion Dzhugashvili
According to the official version, Stalin was born in the city of Gori, Tiflis province, on December 9 (21), 1879. By the way, later the researchers found that in fact he was born on December 6 (18), 1878. It is still unknown why and under what circumstances the leader's date of birth was changed.
According to the documents, Joseph's parents were Vissarion Ivanovich and Ekaterina Georgievna Dzhugashvili. Vissarion (Beso) was a shoemaker by profession and, according to many testimonies, drank heavily. Joseph (Soso) was the third child in the family, before him Catherine gave birth to two more sons who died in infancy. When the boy was 11 years old, his father was killed in a drunken brawl.
Many years after Stalin's death, other versions of his origin appeared. In particular, a hypothesis was put forward that Vissarion Dzhugashvili was not his father at all. And who then? Here are some options.
What could be in common between the famous traveler, after whom the breed of horse was even named, and the proletarian leader, the Soviet tyrant?
Arguments in favor of this version are given by the historian, writer and playwright Edward Radzinsky in his book "Stalin". The author allegedly "used materials from closed sources, including from the personal archives of Western experts."
The history looks like this. In the winter or early spring of 1878, 22-year-old Ekaterina Dzhugashvili, nee Geladze, who at that time had been married to Joseph Dzhugashvili for four years, in the house of her distant relative, Prince Maminoshvili, met Russian officer Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalsky, who was visiting him. On December 6, 1878 (according to the old style), Catherine gave birth to a son named Joseph ...
Radzinsky also testifies: Przhevalsky not only knew that his son was growing up in Georgia, but also constantly sent funds for his upbringing. This is confirmed by Stalin's granddaughter Galina Dzhugashvili, daughter of Yakov Dzhugashvili. [S-BLOCK]
According to Radzinsky, Stalin changed the date of his birth on the papers, as he did not want anyone to doubt his "proletarian origin." The fact is that then at the time of his alleged conception, Przhevalsky had to be in China and could not become his father in any way.
If we compare the portraits of Przhevalsky and Stalin, then the second one is really very similar in appearance to a Russian traveler. However, could Przhevalsky really be at the time mentioned, that is, from February to May 1878, in Gori?
It follows from the traveler's diaries that from the end of August 1877 until the end of March 1878, he was on an expedition in China and was preparing for an expedition to Tibet, but due to "political misunderstandings" with Beijing, he received an order to return to St. Petersburg. In addition, before that, he was quite seriously ill and was not yet fully recovered. He arrived in Petersburg on May 23, 1878 and stayed there until January 20, 1879. After permission was received for an expedition to Tibet, Przhevalsky left for Zaisan. In addition, nowhere, except for Radzinsky's book, is there any information that Przhevalsky ever visited Georgia, and even more so in Gori.
An end to the version of Przhevalsky's paternity was put by a DNA analysis of Stalin's grandson, director A. Burdonsky. He showed the presence of the G2 haplogroup, characteristic of Ossetians and Armenians. Whereas in the DNA of the Przhevalskys there is a European haplogroup R1a, which is absent in Bourdonsky.
Yakov Egnatashvili
This version is presented by the English historian, writer and journalist Simon Sebag Montefiore in the book "Young Stalin", which is a fairly serious study using materials from closed Russian and Georgian archives.
So, even before her marriage, Ekaterina Geladze worked as a day laborer in the house of the local wealthy Jewish merchant Yakov Egnatashvili. Those close to him called him Koboi. He subsequently became one of the groom's friends at Keke and Beso's wedding. Keke later wrote in her official memoirs, published in 1935, that Yakov constantly helped the family. He became the godfather of the eldest two sons of Dzhugashvili, and his wife became the nurse of little Soso.
In a conversation with Nina Beria, Stalin's mother, already in her old age, once uttered the phrase: "In my youth, I ran the household in one house and, having met a handsome guy, did not miss my own."
Could Egnatashvili be Stalin's father? All this, of course, is only at the level of rumors, although the closeness of Yakov to the Dzhugashvili family cannot be denied.
Damian Davrichewy
Another version presented by Montifiore. Davrichevi was the chief of police in Gori, and Ekaterina Dzhugashvili more than once resorted to him to complain about her husband - a drunkard and a fighter. In the end, mutual sympathy arose between them. Countrymen recalled that "everyone in Gori knew about Damian's connection with the beautiful mother Soso."
Christopher Charkviani
Stalin himself, according to the same Montifiore, at a reception in 1934 uttered the phrase: "My father was a priest." In all likelihood, this meant none other than Christopher Charkviani, who once married the parents of Joseph Dzhugashvili, and later considered a friend of the family.
This version is also supported by the fact that only children of representatives of the clergy were admitted to the theological school, where Stalin entered in his youth.
And yet Dzhugashvili ...
In the 80s of the last century, a photograph of Vissarion Dzhugashvili at the age of 25-30 was found. He is very similar to the young Stalin. But what about the DNA analysis, which showed the absence of Georgian blood?
But who said that Dzhugashvili was a Georgian? The same Burdonsky declares: “Armenians have lived in Gori from time immemorial. Assimilated, they adopted Georgian surnames: Muradyan - Muradeli, Palyan - Paliashvili. So Stalin could well be a descendant of Armenians and Ossetians.
It's a miracle that Stalin could live to be 73 years old. Serious health problems began with him back in the 1920s, after the war he experienced two strokes. The third stroke, which occurred on the night of February 28 to March 1, 1953, was fatal. However, Stalin could have survived that night if not for the criminal inaction of Khrushchev and Malenkov.
Alexander Myasnikov was one of the most famous therapists of the Soviet era. During the war - the chief therapist of the Navy of the USSR, then - a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He, among other luminaries of science, was at Stalin's dacha in the last days of the dictator. The manuscript of his memoirs, completed in 1965, shortly before his death, of course, was confiscated. It was recently returned from the archives to Myasnikov's grandson. Soon it will be published under the title "I treated Stalin." With composure, with a share of a certain medical cynicism, Alexander Myasnikov, together with personal memories, describes the history of the country. The book's editor, Olga Shestova, was told about the existence of these memoirs by Myasnikov's student, Academician Yevgeny Chazov.
Late in the evening of March 2, 1953, an employee of the special department of the Kremlin hospital came to our apartment: "I'm following you - to the sick owner." I quickly said goodbye to my wife (it is not clear where you will go from there). We drove to Kalinina Street, where Professor N.V. Konovalov (a neuropathologist) and E.M. Tareev were waiting for us, and rushed to Stalin's dacha in Kuntsevo.
We reached the gate in silence: barbed wires on both sides of the moat and fence, dogs and colonels, colonels and dogs. Finally we are in the house (a vast pavilion with spacious rooms furnished with wide ottomans; the walls are trimmed with polished plywood). In one of the rooms were already the Minister of Health, Professor P.E. Lukomsky (chief physician of the Ministry of Health), Roman Tkachev, Filimonov, Ivanov-Neznamov.
The minister said that on the night of March 2, Stalin had a cerebral hemorrhage with loss of consciousness, speech, paralysis of his right arm and leg. It turned out that just yesterday, until late at night, Stalin, as usual, was working in his office. The officer on duty (from security) saw him at the table at 3 o'clock in the morning (looked through the keyhole). The light was on all the time, but that was the way it was. Stalin slept in another room; there was a sofa in the office, on which he often rested. In the morning at seven o'clock the guard again looked into the well and saw Stalin sprawled on the floor between the table and the sofa. He was unconscious. The patient was laid on a sofa, on which he lay later on all the time. A doctor (Ivanov-Neznamov) was called from Moscow from the Kremlin hospital, Lukomsky soon arrived - and they were here in the morning. 
The consultation was interrupted by the appearance of Beria and Malenkov (in the future they always came and went only together). Beria turned to us with words about the misfortune that had befallen the party and the people and expressed confidence that we would do everything in the power of medicine. “Keep in mind,” he said, “that the party and the government absolutely trust you, and whatever you find necessary to do will meet with nothing from our side but full consent and help.”
These words were said, probably due to the fact that at that time some of the professors - "killer doctors" - were in prison and were awaiting the death penalty.
Stalin was overweight; he turned out to be short and stout, the usual Georgian face was twisted, his right limbs lay like lashes. He was breathing heavily, sometimes quieter, sometimes stronger (Cheyne-Stokes breathing). Blood pressure - 210/110. Atrial fibrillation. Leukocytosis up to 17 thousand. There was a high temperature, 38 with tenths, in the urine - a little protein and red blood cells. When listening and percussion of the heart, no special deviations were noted, nothing pathological was determined in the lateral and anterior sections of the lungs. The diagnosis seemed to us, thank God, clear: a hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of the brain due to hypertension and atherosclerosis. Treatment was prescribed plentiful: the introduction of preparations of camphor, caffeine, strophanthin, glucose, inhalation of oxygen, leeches - and prophylactically penicillin (for fear of infection). The order of medical appointments was regulated, but in the future it began to be violated more and more due to the shortening of the periods between injections of cardiac drugs. Later, when the pulse began to fall and respiratory disorders became threatening, they pricked every hour, or even more often. 
The entire composition of the council decided to stay for the whole time, I called home. We spent the night in a neighboring house. Each of us carried our hours of duty at the bedside of the patient. Someone from the Politburo of the Central Committee was constantly with the patient, most often Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Bulganin, Mikoyan.
* * *
On the third morning, the council was supposed to answer Malenkov's question about the forecast. Our answer could only be negative: death is inevitable. Malenkov let us know that he expected such a conclusion, but immediately stated that he hoped that medical measures would be able, if not to save life, then to prolong it for a sufficient period. We realized that this was a necessary background for the preparation of the organization of the new government, and at the same time, public opinion. Immediately we compiled the first bulletin on the state of health of I.V. Stalin (at 2 o'clock on March 4). It contained the final phrase: "A number of therapeutic measures are being taken to restore the vital functions of the body." Thus, in a cautious form, the hope for “restoration”, that is, the expectation of some calming of the country, was expressed. 
Doctor Alexander Myasnikov.
In medical institutions - the Academic Council of the Ministry, the Presidium of the Academy, in some institutes - meetings were convened to discuss how to help in the treatment of Stalin. Proposals were made on certain measures, which were proposed to be sent to the council of doctors. To combat, for example, hypertension, they advised the methods of treatment developed at the Institute of Therapy (and it was ridiculous for me to read my recommendations directed to me myself). They sent a description of the method of medicinal sleep, but meanwhile the patient was in a deep unconscious state - stupor, that is, hibernation. Professor Negovsky offered to treat respiratory disorders with an artificial respiration apparatus, which he developed to save the drowning and those poisoned with carbon monoxide - his cars were even dragged into the house, but when he saw the patient, the author did not insist on his method.
Stalin was breathing heavily, sometimes moaning. For only one short moment, it seemed, he took a meaningful look around those around him. But the look no longer expressed anything, again sopor. At night, many times it seemed that he was dying.
* * *
The next morning, the fourth, someone had the idea that there might be a myocardial infarction on top of that. A young doctor arrived from the hospital, took electrocardiograms and categorically stated: “Yes, a heart attack.” Trouble! Already in the case of killer doctors, there was a deliberate failure to diagnose myocardial infarction in the leaders of the state who were killed by them. Now we're probably on holiday. After all, until now we have not indicated the possibility of a heart attack in our medical reports, and the conclusions are already known to the whole world. Complaining about pain, such a characteristic symptom of a heart attack, Stalin, being unconscious, of course, could not. Leukocytosis and elevated temperature could also speak in favor of a heart attack. The council was indecisive. I was the first to decide to go for broke: “The electrocardiographic changes are too monotonous for a heart attack - in all leads. These are cerebral pseudo-infarction electrocardiograms. My colleagues in VMMA obtained such curves in experiments with a closed skull injury. It is possible that they can be with strokes.” Neuropathologists supported: it is possible that they are cerebral, in any case, the main diagnosis - cerebral hemorrhage - is quite clear to them. Despite the self-confident treble of electrocardiography, the council did not recognize a heart attack. However, a new touch was added to the diagnosis: focal hemorrhages in the heart muscle are possible due to severe vasomotor disorders due to hemorrhages in the basal ganglia of the brain. 
photo: AR
* * *
N.A. Bulganin was on duty from the Central Committee. I noticed that he was looking at us suspiciously and, perhaps, hostilely. Bulganin shone with marshal's stars on shoulder straps; his face is puffy, a tuft of hair forward, a beard - he looks a bit like some kind of Tsar Romanov or, perhaps, a general during the Russo-Japanese War. Standing by the sofa, he turned to me: “Professor Myasnikov, why is he vomiting blood?” I replied: "Perhaps this is the result of small hemorrhages in the wall of the stomach of a vascular nature in connection with hypertension and cerebral stroke." "Maybe?" he mimicked with distaste.
All day on the fifth we injected something, wrote a diary, compiled bulletins. Meanwhile, members of the Central Committee were gathering on the second floor; members of the Politburo approached the dying man, people of a lower rank looked through the door, not daring to come closer even to the half-dead "master". I remember that N.S. Khrushchev, a short and pot-bellied little man, also kept to the doors, in any case, and at that time the hierarchy was respected: in front - Malenkov and Beria, then Voroshilov, then - Kaganovich, then - Bulganin, Mikoyan. Molotov was unwell, he had influenza pneumonia, but he came two or three times for short periods.
An explanation of the gastrointestinal hemorrhages was recorded in the diary and included in a detailed epicrisis compiled at the end of the day, when the patient was still breathing, but death was expected any hour.
Finally, it came - at 9 hours 50 minutes on the evening of March 5.
It was a moment, of course, in a high degree significant. As soon as we established that the pulse had disappeared, breathing stopped and the heart stopped, the leading figures of the party and government, daughter Svetlana, son Vasily and guards quietly entered the spacious room. Everyone stood motionless in solemn silence for a long time, I don't even know how long - about 30 minutes or longer. Undoubtedly, a great historical event has taken place. The leader, before whom the whole country trembled, and in essence, to one degree or another, the whole world, has passed away. The great dictator, until recently omnipotent and inaccessible, has turned into a pitiful, poor corpse, which tomorrow will be shredded to pieces by pathologists, and later on he will lie in the form of a mummy in the Mausoleum (however, as it turned out later, not for long; then he will turn into dust , like the corpses of all other ordinary people). Standing in silence, we thought, probably to each his own, but the general feeling was the feeling of changes that must, that cannot but occur in the life of our state, our people. 
Monument to Alexander Myasnikov at the entrance to the Institute of Cardiology.
* * *
On March 6, at 11-12 pm on Sadovaya-Triumfalnaya, in an outbuilding in the courtyard of the building occupied by the Department of Biochemistry I of MOLMI, an autopsy of Stalin's body took place. Of the members of the council, only Lukomsky and I were present. There were types from the guard. A.I. Strukov, Professor I MOLMI (Moscow Order of Lenin Medical Institute. - V.K.), was opened, N.N. Anichkov, biochemist Professor S.R. Mordashev, who was supposed to embalm the corpse, pathologists professors Skvortsov, Migunov, Rusakov.
In the course of the autopsy, of course, we were worried: what about the heart? where is the bleeding from? Everything has been confirmed. There was no infarction (only foci of hemorrhages were found), the entire mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines was also dotted with small hemorrhages. The focus of hemorrhage in the region of the subcortical nodes of the left hemisphere was the size of a plum. These processes were the result of hypertension. The arteries of the brain were severely affected by atherosclerosis; their lumen was very sharply narrowed.
It was a little creepy and funny to see how the insides taken out of Stalin floated in basins of water - his intestines with contents, his liver ... Siс transit gloria mundi! (this is how worldly glory passes. - V.K.)
* * *
Severe sclerosis of the cerebral arteries, which we saw at the autopsy of I.V. Stalin, may raise the question of how much this disease - undoubtedly developed over the past few years - affected Stalin's condition, his character, his actions. After all, it is well known that atherosclerosis of the cerebral vessels, leading to malnutrition of nerve cells, is accompanied by a number of dysfunctions of the nervous system. First of all, on the part of higher nervous activity, there is a weakening of the processes of inhibition, including the so-called differentiation - it is easy to imagine that in Stalin's behavior this was manifested by a loss of orientation in what is good, what is bad, what is useful, and what is harmful, what is permissible, what is unacceptable, who is a friend and who is an enemy. In parallel, there is an aggravation of personality traits: an angry person becomes angry, a somewhat suspicious person becomes painfully suspicious, begins to experience ideas of persecution - this is fully consistent with Stalin's behavior in the last years of his life. I believe that Stalin's cruelty and suspicion, fear of enemies, loss of adequacy in assessing people and events, extreme stubbornness - all this was created to a certain extent by atherosclerosis of the cerebral arteries (or rather, atherosclerosis exaggerated these features). Managed the state, in essence, a sick man. He concealed his illness, avoided medicine, was afraid of its revelations.
At the third Moscow trial, Stalin gave an answer to those foreign critics who posed the same tricky question more and more persistently: how to explain the fact that dozens of carefully organized terrorist groups, about which so much was said at both first trials, were able to commit only one single terrorist act - the murder of Kirov?
Stalin understood that this question hit the nail on the head: indeed, the fact of a single murder was the weak point of the entire grandiose court performance. It was impossible to get away from this issue. Well, he, Stalin, will accept the challenge and answer the critics. How? A new legend that he will put into the mouths of the defendants at the third Moscow trial.
So, in order to adequately respond to the challenge, Stalin had to indicate by name those leaders who were killed by the conspirators. However, how do you find them? Over the past twenty years, only one terrorist act has been reported to the people - all about the same murder of Kirov. For those who would like to trace how the sophisticated Stalinist brain worked, there could hardly be a more suitable case than this. Let's see how Stalin solved this problem and how it was presented to the court.
Between 1934 and 1936, several prominent political figures died of natural causes in the Soviet Union. The most famous of them were Politburo member Kuibyshev and OGPU chairman Menzhinsky. In the same period, A. M. Gorky and his son Maxim Peshkov died. Stalin decided to use these four deaths. Although Gorky was not a member of the government and was not a member of the Politburo, Stalin wanted to portray him as a victim of the terrorist activities of the conspirators, hoping that this atrocity would provoke popular indignation directed against the accused.
But it was not so easy to carry out this plan, even for Stalin, invested with dictatorial power. The difficulty was that the true circumstances of the death of each of these four were described in detail in Soviet newspapers. The conclusions of the doctors who examined the dead were published, and people knew that Kuibyshev and Menzhinsky had suffered from angina pectoris for many years and both died of a heart attack. When the sixty-eight-year-old Gorky fell ill in June 1936, the government ordered a daily bulletin on his state of health to be published. Everyone knew that he had tuberculosis from a young age. An autopsy showed that only a third of his lungs were actively working.
It would seem that after all this information it is impossible to put forward a version that all four died at the hands of terrorists. But logic, obligatory for mere mortals, was not obligatory for Stalin. After all, he once told Krupskaya that if she does not stop treating him "critically", then the party will announce that not she, but Elena Stasova was Lenin's wife ... "Yes, the party can do anything!" he explained to the perplexed Krupskaya.
It wasn't a joke at all. The party, that is, he, Stalin, can really do whatever he wants, can cancel the well-known facts and replace them with myths. It can destroy the real witnesses of the event and substitute false witnesses in their place. The main thing is to master the alchemy of forgery and learn how to use force without hesitation. With these qualities, Stalin could overcome any obstacles.
What's the trouble if a few years ago the government announced that Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky and Gorky had died of natural causes? With sufficient ingenuity, one can refute those old reports and prove that in reality they were all put to death. Who can stop him from doing this? Doctors who treated the dead? But aren't these doctors under the control of Stalin and the NKVD? And why not, for example, say that the doctors themselves secretly killed their famous patients and, moreover, did this at the request of the leaders of the Trotskyist conspiracy?
Such was the insidious ploy that Stalin resorted to.
Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky and Gorky were treated by three well-known doctors: 66-year-old Professor Pletnev, senior consultant of the Kremlin Medical Department Levin, and the well-known doctor Kazakov in Moscow.
Stalin and Yezhov decided to transfer all three to the hands of NKVD investigators, where they would be forced to confess that, at the request of the leaders of the conspiracy, they used the wrong treatment, which obviously should have led to the death of Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky and Gorky.
However, the doctors were not party members. They were not taught party discipline and the dialectic of lies. They still adhered to outdated bourgeois morality and, above all the directives of the Politburo, honored the commandments: do not kill and do not bear false witness. In general, they could refuse to say in court that they had killed their patients, as long as they did not actually do so.
He chose Professor Pletnev, the most prominent cardiologist in the USSR, after whom a number of hospitals and medical institutions were named. In order to demoralize Pletnev even before the start of the so-called investigation, Yezhov resorted to an insidious trick. A young woman was sent to the professor as a patient, usually used by the NKVD to draw members of foreign missions into drunken sprees. After one or two visits to the professor, she raised a fuss, rushed to the prosecutor's office and stated that three years ago Pletnev, receiving her at his home in a paroxysm of voluptuousness, attacked her and bit her chest.
Having no idea that the patient was sent by the NKVD, Pletnev wondered what could make her slander him in this way. At the confrontation, he tried to get at least some explanation from her for such a strange act, but she continued to stubbornly repeat her version. The professor wrote a letter to the members of the government whom he treated, he also wrote to the wives of influential people, whose children he had to save from death. He pleaded for help to restore the truth. Nobody, however, responded. Meanwhile, the inquisitors from the NKVD silently watched these convulsions of the old professor, who turned into their guinea pig.
The case was sent to court, which was chaired by one of the veterans of the NKVD. At the trial, Pletnev insisted on his innocence, referred to his impeccable medical activity for forty years, to his scientific achievements. None of this interested anyone. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to a long prison term. Soviet newspapers, usually not reporting on such incidents, this time gave the "sadist Pletnev" quite exceptional attention. Throughout June 1937, resolutions from medical institutions from various cities appeared in the newspapers almost daily, vilifying Professor Pletnev, who had dishonored Soviet medicine. A number of resolutions of this kind were signed by close friends and former students of the professor - the almighty NKVD took care of this.
Pletnev was in despair. In this state, broken and dishonored, he was handed over to the NKVD investigators, where something even worse awaited him.
In addition to Professor Pletnev, two more doctors were arrested - Levin and Kazakov. Levin, as already mentioned, was a senior consultant for the Kremlin Medical Directorate, responsible for the treatment of all members of the Politburo and the government. The organizers of the forthcoming trial intended to present him as Yagoda's chief assistant in the area of "medical murders", and assign the roles of Levin's accomplices to Professor Pletnev and Kazakov.
Dr. Levin was about seventy years old. He had several sons and many grandchildren - very handy, since they were all considered by the NKVD as actual hostages. In fear for their fate, Levin was ready to confess to everything the authorities wanted. Before this misfortune happened to Levin, his privileged position as a Kremlin doctor was the envy of many of his colleagues. He treated the wives and children of members of the Politburo, treated Stalin himself and his only daughter Svetlana. But now, when he fell into the millstones of the NKVD, no one extended a helping hand to him. Kazakov also had many influential patients; however, his position was just as hopeless.
According to the legend, concocted by Stalin with the participation of Yezhov, Yagoda called these doctors into his office, each one by one, and through threats he forced them to take their famous patients - Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky and Gorky - to the grave with the wrong treatment. Out of fear of Yagoda, the doctors seemed to obey.
This legend is so absurd that to refute it, it is enough to ask one single question: why did these doctors, who enjoy universal respect, have to commit the murders demanded by Yagoda? It was enough for them to warn their influential patients about Yagoda's plan, and they would immediately inform Stalin and the government. Moreover, the doctors had the opportunity to tell about Yagoda's plans not only to the intended victims, but also directly to the Politburo. Professor Pletnev, for example, could turn to Molotov, whom he treated, and Levin, who works in the Kremlin, even to Stalin himself.
Vyshinsky was unable to present to the court a single piece of evidence of the guilt of the doctors. Of course, they themselves could easily refute the accusations of murder, nevertheless, they supported Vyshinsky and stated at the trial that, at the request of the leaders of the conspiracy, they did indeed use proper medicines, but in such a way as to cause the speedy death of their high-ranking patients. There was no need to wait for other evidence - the accused were told that their salvation was not in denying their guilt, but, on the contrary, in full recognition and repentance.
So three non-partisan and completely apolitical doctors were used to correct the old Stalinist version and convince the world that the terrorists succeeded not only in the murder of Kirov.
In this whole fantastic story, the most interesting, from the point of view of analyzing Stalin's forgery talent, is the legend of the murder of Gorky.
It was important for Stalin to present Gorky as a victim of murderers from the Trotskyite-Zinoviev bloc, not only for the sake of inciting popular hatred towards these people, but also for the sake of strengthening his own prestige: it turned out that Gorky, the "great humanist", was Stalin's close friend and, by virtue of this, irreconcilable the enemy of those who were destroyed as a result of the Moscow trials.
Not only that: Stalin tried to portray Gorky not only as his close friend, but also as a passionate defender of Stalin's policy. This motive sounded in the "confessions" of all the defendants at the third Moscow trial. For example, Levin cited the following words of Yagoda, explaining why the conspirators needed Gorky's death: "Aleksey Maksimovich is a person who is very close to the top leadership of the party, a person who approves the policy that is being pursued in the country, personally devoted to Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin." Continuing the same line, Vyshinsky declared in his accusatory speech: "It is no coincidence that he (i.e., Gorky) connected his life with the great Lenin and the great Stalin, becoming their best and closest friend."
Thus, Vyshinsky tied the bonds of friendship and mutual devotion to three at once: Stalin, Lenin and Gorky. However, this knot was unreliable. Let us recall at least the so-called "Lenin's testament", where he recommends removing Stalin from the post of general secretary. Let us add to this a personal letter from Lenin announcing to Stalin that he is breaking off all relations with him. So the attempt to present Lenin as a close friend of Stalin is nothing but a dishonest deception.
Let us also try to analyze the "close friendship" between Stalin and Gorky. This "close friendship" by no means without special reasons was constantly emphasized in court by the accused, their defense lawyers, and the prosecutor. Stalin badly needed to create such an impression. After two years of mass terror, Stalin's moral authority, already not very high, completely fell. In the eyes of his own people, Stalin appeared in his true form - a cruel murderer who stained himself with the blood of the country's best people. He understood this and hurried to hide behind the enormous moral authority of Gorky, who supposedly was friends with him and ardently supported his policy.
In pre-revolutionary Russia, Gorky enjoyed a reputation as a defender of the oppressed and a courageous opponent of the autocracy. Later, despite his personal friendship with Lenin, he attacked him in the first years of the revolution, condemning the Red Terror in his newspaper Novaya Zhizn and taking the persecuted "former people" under his protection.
Long before Gorky's death, Stalin tried to make him his political ally. Those who knew Gorky's incorruptibility could imagine how hopeless the task was. But Stalin never believed in human incorruptibility. On the contrary, he often pointed out to the NKVD officers that in their activities they should proceed from the fact that incorruptible people do not exist at all. Everyone has their own price.
Guided by this philosophy, Stalin began to court Gorky.
In 1928, the Party Central Committee launched an all-Union campaign for Gorky's return to the USSR. The campaign was organized very skillfully. First, associations of Soviet writers, and then other organizations, began to send letters to Gorky in Italy so that he would return to his homeland to help raise the cultural level of the masses. Among the invitations that Gorky was bombarded with were even letters from pioneers and schoolchildren: the children asked the beloved writer why he prefers to live in fascist Italy, and not in the Soviet Union, among the Russian people who love him so much.
As if succumbing to the spontaneous pressure of the masses, the Soviet government sent Gorky a warm invitation to move to the Soviet Union. Gorky was promised that, if he wished, he would be given the opportunity to spend the winter months in Italy. Of course, the government takes care of Gorky's well-being and all expenses.
Under the influence of these appeals, Gorky returned to Moscow. From that moment on, a program of appeasing him, sustained in the Stalinist style, began to operate. At his disposal were given a mansion in Moscow and two comfortable villas - one in the Moscow region, the other in the Crimea. The supply of the writer and his family with everything necessary was entrusted to the same department of the NKVD, which was responsible for providing for Stalin and the members of the Politburo. For trips to the Crimea and abroad, Gorky was allocated a specially equipped railway car. On Stalin's instructions, Yagoda sought to catch Gorky's slightest desires on the fly and fulfill them. Around his villas, his favorite flowers were planted, specially delivered from abroad. He smoked special cigarettes ordered for him in Egypt. On demand, any book from any country was delivered to him. Gorky, by nature a modest and moderate person, tried to protest against the defiant luxury that surrounded him, but he was told that Maxim Gorky was alone in the country.
As promised, he got the opportunity to spend autumn and winter in Italy and traveled there every year (from 1929 to 1933). He was accompanied by two Soviet doctors who monitored his health during these trips.
Along with concern for Gorky's material well-being, Stalin instructed Yagoda to "re-educate" him. It was necessary to convince the old writer that Stalin was building real socialism and was doing everything in his power to raise the standard of living of the working people.
From the very first days of the writer's stay in Moscow, Yagoda took measures so that he could not communicate freely with the population. But he got the opportunity to study the life of the people at meetings with workers from various factories and workers of exemplary state farms near Moscow. These meetings were also organized by the NKVD. When Gorky appeared at the factory, the audience greeted him with enthusiasm. Special speakers delivered speeches about the "happy life of the Soviet workers" and about the great achievements in the field of education and culture of the working masses. The leaders of local party committees proclaimed: "Hurrah for the best friends of the working class - Gorky and Stalin!"
Yagoda tried to fill Gorky's days so that he simply did not have time for independent observations and assessments. He was taken to the same spectacles that Intourist guides treated foreign tourists to. He was especially interested in two communes organized near Moscow, in Bolshevo and in Lyubertsy, for former criminals. Those used to greet Gorky with thunderous applause and prepared speeches in which gratitude for the return to an honest life was expressed to two people: Stalin and Gorky. Children of former criminals recited excerpts from Gorky's works. Gorky was so deeply moved that he could not hold back his tears. For the Chekists accompanying him, this was a sure sign that they were faithfully carrying out the instructions received from Yagoda.
In order to more thoroughly load Gorky with everyday affairs, Yagoda included him in a group of writers who were engaged in compiling the history of Soviet factories and plants, singing the "pathos of socialist construction." Gorky also undertook to patronize various cultural undertakings; to help self-taught writers, he organized the journal Literary Study. He participated in the work of the so-called association of proletarian writers, headed by Averbakh, who was married to Yagoda's niece. Several months had passed since Gorky's arrival in the USSR - and he was already so busy that he did not have a free minute. Completely isolated from the people, he moved along the conveyor organized for him by Yagoda, in the constant company of Chekists and several young writers who collaborated with the NKVD. Everyone who surrounded Gorky was made to tell him about the miracles of socialist construction and sing praises to Stalin. Even the gardener and cook assigned to the writer knew that from time to time they had to tell him that they "just" received a letter from their village relatives who report that life there is getting more and more beautiful.
Gorky's position was no different from that of a foreign diplomat, with the difference, however, that the foreign ambassador regularly received information from secret sources about how things were going in his country of residence. Gorky did not have such secret informants - he was content with what the people assigned to him by the NKVD would tell.
Knowing Gorky's responsiveness, Yagoda prepared a kind of entertainment for him. Once a year he took him with him to inspect some prison. There, Gorky talked with prisoners, previously selected by the NKVD from among the criminals who were scheduled to be released ahead of schedule. Each of them told Gorky about his crime and promised to start a new, honest life after his release. The Chekist accompanying him - usually it was Semyon Firin, who was not without acting talents - took out a pencil and a notebook and looked inquiringly at Gorky. If he nodded, Firin wrote down the name of the prisoner and ordered the guards to release him. Sometimes, if the prisoner was young and made a particularly good impression, Gorky asked that this young man be given a place in one of the exemplary communes for former criminals.
Gorky often asked those released to write to him and let him know how their new life was getting on. Yagoda's staff made sure that Gorky received such letters. In general, life should have seemed to Gorky a solid idyll. Even Yagoda and his assistants seemed to him good-natured idealists.
Gorky remained in happy ignorance until the Stalinist collectivization led to famine and to the terrible tragedy of orphaned children, tens of thousands rushing from villages to cities in search of a piece of bread. Although the people around the writer tried their best to downplay the size of the disaster, he was seriously alarmed. He began to grumble, and in conversations with Yagoda he openly condemned many phenomena that he noticed in the country, but about which he kept quiet for the time being.
In 1930 or 1931, there was a report in the newspapers about the execution of forty-eight people, allegedly guilty of having caused a famine by their criminal actions. This message infuriated Gorky. Speaking with Yagoda, he accused the government of shooting innocent people with the intention of blaming them for the famine. Yagoda and his co-workers were never able to convince the writer that these people were really guilty.
Some time later, Gorky received an invitation from abroad to join the International Union of Democratic Writers. In accordance with Stalin's instructions, Yagoda declared that the Politburo was against this because some members of the union had already signed an anti-Soviet appeal to the League for the Defense of Human Rights, protesting against the recent executions in the USSR. The Politburo hopes that Gorky will stand up for the honor of his country and put the slanderers in their place.
Gorky hesitated. Indeed, in "home" conversations with Yagoda, he could grumble and protest against the cruel actions of the government, but in this case it was about protecting the USSR from the attacks of the world bourgeoisie. He replied to the International Union of Democratic Writers that he refused to join this organization for such and such a reason. He added that the guilt of the people shot in the USSR seemed to him beyond doubt.
Meanwhile, Stalin's bounty rained down on Gorky as if from a cornucopia. The Council of People's Commissars by a special resolution noted his great services to Russian literature. Several businesses have been named after him. The Moscow City Council decided to rename the main street of Moscow - Tverskaya - into Gorky Street.
At the same time, Stalin made no attempt to personally approach Gorky. He saw him once or twice a year on the occasion of revolutionary holidays, leaving him to take the first step himself. Knowing Gorky's weakness, Stalin pretended to be extremely interested in the development of Russian literature and theater and even offered Gorky the post of People's Commissar of Education. The writer, however, refused, citing his lack of administrative ability.
When Yagoda and his assistants decided that Gorky was already completely under their influence, Stalin asked Yagoda to inspire the old writer: how great it would be if he took up a work about Lenin and Stalin. Gorky was known in the country as a close friend of Lenin, they knew that Lenin and Gorky were connected by personal friendship, and Stalin wanted Gorky's pen to portray him as a worthy successor to Lenin.
Stalin was impatient for a popular Russian writer to immortalize his name. He decided to shower Gorky with royal gifts and honors and thus influence the content and, so to speak, the tone of the future book.
In a short time, Gorky received such honors that the greatest writers of the world could not even dream of. Stalin ordered that a large industrial center, Nizhny Novgorod, be named after Gorky. Accordingly, the entire Nizhny Novgorod region was renamed Gorky. Gorky's name was given to the Moscow Art Theater, which, by the way, was founded and gained worldwide fame thanks to Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, and not Gorky. All these Stalinist bounties were celebrated with magnificent banquets in the Kremlin, at which Stalin raised a glass to "the great writer of the Russian land" and "a true friend of the Bolshevik Party." All this looked as if he set out to prove to the NKVD officers the correctness of his thesis: "every person has his own price." However, time passed, and Gorky still did not start writing a book about Stalin. Judging by what he was doing and what tasks he set for himself, it did not seem that he intended to take on a Stalinist biography.
I once sat in Agranov's office. The organizer of the famous communes from former criminals, Pogrebinsky, with whom Gorky was especially friendly, entered the office. From the conversation it became clear that Pogrebinsky had just returned from the Gorky villa near Moscow, "Someone ruined the whole thing," he complained. Agranov agreed that, apparently, someone really "spoiled the whole thing." In fact, Stalin and the leadership of the NKVD simply underestimated Gorky's character.
Gorky was not as simple and naive as they thought. With a sharp writer's eye, he gradually penetrated into everything that was being done in the country. Knowing the Russian people, he could read by faces, as in an open book, what feelings people experience, what excites and worries them. Seeing the exhausted faces of malnourished workers at the factories, looking out of the window of his personal carriage at the endless echelons of arrested "kulaks" being taken to Siberia, Gorky had long understood that hunger, slavery and brute force reigned behind the false sign of Stalinist socialism.
But most of all, Gorky was tormented by the ever-increasing persecution of the old Bolsheviks. He personally knew many of them from pre-revolutionary times. In 1932 he expressed Yagoda his bitter bewilderment in connection with the arrest of Kamenev, whom he treated with deep respect. Hearing of this, Stalin ordered Kamenev to be released from prison and returned to Moscow. We can recall several more cases when Gorky's intervention saved one or another of the old Bolsheviks from prison and exile. But the writer could not come to terms with the very fact that the old members of the party, languishing in the tsarist prisons, were now being arrested again. He expressed his indignation to Yagoda, Yenukidze and other influential figures, irritating Stalin more and more.
In 1933-1934, mass arrests of opposition members were carried out, nothing was officially reported about them at all. Once, an unknown woman spoke to Gorky, who had gone for a walk. She turned out to be the wife of an old Bolshevik whom. Gorky knew before the revolution. She begged the writer to do everything in his power - she and her daughter, who is sick with bone tuberculosis, are threatened with expulsion from Moscow. Asking about the reason for the expulsion, Gorky learned that her husband had been sent to a concentration camp for five years and had already served two years of his sentence.
Gorky immediately interceded. He called Yagoda and, having received an answer that the NKVD could not release this man without the sanction of the Central Committee, turned to Yenukidze. However, Stalin was stubborn. He had long been irritated by Gorky's intercession for political opponents, and he told Yagoda that "it's time to cure Gorky of his habit of sticking his nose into other people's business." He allowed the wife and daughter of the arrested man to be left in Moscow, but he himself was forbidden to be released until his term was over.
Relations between Gorky and Stalin became strained. By the beginning of 1934, it became completely clear that Stalin would never see such a coveted book.
Gorky's isolation became even more severe. Only a select few, filtered by the NKVD, were admitted to it. If Gorky expressed a desire to see someone outsider, undesirable for the "organs", then they immediately tried to send this outsider somewhere from Moscow. At the end of the summer of 1934, Gorky requested a foreign passport, intending to spend the next winter, like the previous ones, in Italy. However, he was denied this. Doctors, following Stalin's instructions, found that it would be more beneficial for Gorky's health to spend this winter not in Italy, but in the Crimea. Gorky's own opinion was no longer taken into account. As a famous Soviet writer, he belonged to the state, so the right to judge what was good for him and what was not became the prerogative of Stalin.
"From a black sheep - at least a tuft of wool" ... It didn’t work out with the book, Stalin decided, let him write at least an article. Yagoda was ordered to convey this request to Gorky: the anniversary of the October Revolution was approaching, and it would be good if Gorky wrote an article "Lenin and Stalin" for Pravda. The leaders of the NKVD were sure that this time Gorky would not be able to evade the order. But he again turned out to be more principled than they expected, and deceived Yagoda's expectations.
Shortly thereafter, Stalin made another and, as far as I know, last attempt to take advantage of Gorky's authority. The case took place in December 1934, Zinoviev and Kamenev had just been arrested, who were to be charged with organizing the assassination of Kirov. These days, Yagoda gave Gorky the task of writing an article for Pravda condemning individual terror. Stalin expected that this article by Gorky would be regarded by the people as a speech by the writer against the "Zinovievites". Gorky, of course, understood what was the matter. He rejected the request he heard from Yagoda, saying at the same time: "I condemn not only individual, but also state terror!"
After that, Gorky again, this time officially, demanded that he be issued a passport for traveling to Italy. Of course, he was denied again. In Italy, Gorky could indeed write a book, but it would not be at all what Stalin dreamed of having. So the writer remained Stalin's prisoner until his death, which followed in June 1936.
After Gorky's death, the NKVD officers found carefully hidden notes in his things. When he finished reading them, Yagoda swore and grunted: "No matter how you feed the wolf, he keeps looking into the forest!"
Gorky's notes remain inaccessible to the world to this day.
