Joseph Stalin died a slow, miserable and painful death: no more, it could be said, than he deserved. As effective ruler of the USSR from 1928, he had governed through a mixture of persuasive propaganda, shrewdly identifying himself with his predecessor, Lenin, and building a vicarious cult of personality through his presentation of himself as Lenin’s natural and loyal successor. Where propaganda failed, he turned to cruder methods, eliminating all sources of opposition with a massive and ruthless array of secret police forces. Estimates of the numbers killed under his regime range from 3 to 60 million. There were undeniable advances made under his rule, but his regime remains a watchword for the most paranoid and brutal forms of murderous authoritarianism.
By early 1953 the 73-year-old had become more paranoid and unpredictable than ever so that those closest to him, including his doctors, household staff and family, lived in fear for their very lives.
On Saturday 28 February 1953 Stalin invited Lavrentiy Beria (head of the secret police, NKVD), Georgy Malenkov (Deputy Prime Minister and heir apparent), Nikolai Bulganin (Defence Minister) and Nikita Khrushchev (head of the Communist Party in Moscow) to dinner at his Kuntsevo dacha. They consumed large quantities of excellent Georgian white wine, Stalin’s favourite drink, over the course of a long night that saw Stalin in excellent spirits. It was after five o’clock in the morning before his guests departed, leaving Stalin preparing himself for bed. In the morning, a maid knocked quietly on his bedroom door and, hearing no response, returned to the kitchen. She and other household staff tried once more to raise their master a little later, again to no effect. No one dared to enter Stalin’s bedroom uninvited until after midnight. When, approaching midnight, concern for his well-being overwhelmed fears of the potential consequences of awakening a hung-over supreme leader, some brave soul ventured to open the door. They found Stalin lying on the floor, soaked in his own urine. He had suffered a stroke.
There are various accounts of what happened next, but what seems undeniable is that Stalin received no medical attention for quite some hours following his stroke, which minimised the possibility of any meaningful recovery. This led to conjecture that Malenkov, Khrushchev and the others may have had little interest in keeping Stalin alive, and seized the opportunity to leave him, at best, weakened and incapable of continuing as Soviet leader.
All of his final visitors had made the appropriate gestures of sorrow and respect, save for one: the man who had the most to gain from Stalin’s death, Beria. Whatever their true feelings, Khrushchev and the other senior members of the leadership had the sense to weep and grieve in public, while Beria could neither summon tears nor conceal his delight at the possibility for career advancement created by the top man’s death.
Stalin died a choking, agonising death on the evening of 5 March 1953 and the new leadership was announced the next day. Nominated by Beria, Malenkov became the new Prime Minister, and in turn appointed Beria first deputy. Khrushchev was relieved of his duties as head of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party and was appointed one of the Communist Party secretaries.
Beria, canny enough to understand that he could not, as a fellow Georgian in a multi-ethnic federation of Republics, follow Stalin into the Kremlin, seems instead to have reached an understanding with Malenkov that made Beria very much the power behind the throne. He quickly re-merged the MVD and MGB, establishing himself in a powerful position as head of all Soviet internal affairs.† He immediately took the initiative by tabling a series of proposed reforms, some of which, such as the release of hundreds of thousands of gulag inmates, would, in essence, have passed all of the blame for past atrocities onto Stalin, working wonders for Beria’s image. Some of his other proposals were quite extraordinary and controversial. One in particular was to allow East Germany to unite with West Germany to form a new, single, neutral Germany in exchange for massive Western financial and technical assistance to boost the Soviet Union’s ailing economy. (It should be remembered that, in spite of the growing mutual mistrust between East and West, the Soviet Union, United States, United Kingdom and France were at that time still allies and jointly responsible for the future of Germany.)
Premier Malenkov was generally considered to be weak, his only strong card being the self-serving support he had received from Beria. The latter, on the other hand, was now all-powerful, particularly with regard to his control of the MGB. The everalert Khrushchev warned the other leading politicians that if Beria engineered a coup, which would not be difficult in the present situation, he would become even more powerful than Stalin had been. They needed to do something to stop him – and soon. If they could develop a strong enough case against Beria, Khrushchev argued, they might be able to turn Malenkov against him.
The Berlin Uprising of 17 June brought them the pretext they needed. It was evidence, they said, of what would happen if Germany were to be reunified. They now needed to plan Beria’s downfall and Ivan Serov played a key role in this.‡
Serov, barely five feet tall (152cm), was a man of serious temperament and intense appearance. He dressed well, but could hardly be described as dapper. He had a Kirk Douglas-dimpled chin and strong jaw-line, but neither could he be described as handsome. His heavy, dark eyebrows were invariably furrowed, which drew attention to his steely grey eyes, and his lips were mostly held straight and tight. His high forehead led to neatly combed black hair. He looked the quiet, contemplative part of a philosopher, but was decisive and uncompromising when moved to action.
The perceptive Serov, although never a true insider, scented trouble brewing at the top level of Soviet politics. As a true disciple of Stalin, he was incensed by Beria’s vilification of him and the proposed reunification of Germany. One of Serov’s strongest beliefs was that the Soviet Union should never relinquish its domination of a country or territory. He offered to assist the Khrushchev faction that wanted to remove Beria and was able to bring with him the support of other senior GRU officers.
Khrushchev and Serov had worked effectively as colleagues in pre-war Ukraine, though there is no evidence of great personal warmth between them. Nonetheless, here they were again, presented with a common cause. Serov’s task was to produce a litany of offences purportedly committed by Beria, while Khrushchev would convene an extraordinary meeting of the Politburo to try Beria on Serov’s charges.
The physical side of this operation – the arrest and imprisonment of Beria – was arranged by Deputy Defence Minister Georgy Zhukov, Khrushchev’s long-time friend and ally. Marshal Zhukov was the Soviet Union’s most decorated soldier. He, like Serov, had been accused by Abakumov and Beria of plundering German war booty for his own personal gain. This was Zhukov’s opportunity to take his revenge on Beria.
Zhukov arranged the arrest as a precision miniature military operation. He assigned a small special force and allocated to them two special VIP cars with darkened glass to enable them to enter the Kremlin covertly. He also ordered the Moscow Military Zone’s Guard to replace the usual NKVD Guard.
The Politburo meeting was arranged for 26 June within the historic, powerful building of the Kremlin. Beria was uneasy as he had not been told the purpose of the meeting, and knew that his powerful ally Vyacheslav Molotov had abandoned him over the German issue. Nonetheless, he must have been startled when Khrushchev opened the proceedings by reading the list of offences that had been prepared by Serov. He was accused of treason (spying for British Intelligence), terrorism, and counter-revolutionary activities. Molotov and others followed Khrushchev’s lead with scathing verbal attacks. Khrushchev proposed a motion to dismiss Beria from his position in the government, and even his erstwhile friend Premier Malenkov supported the motion.
When given the signal, Zhukov’s small force rushed in and arrested Beria on the spot. Many of his subordinates and associates were arrested later. He and six accomplices were tried at a special session of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953. All were found guilty and shot the same day. Not for the first time, Serov had chosen his side wisely. Had he not betrayed Beria he would undoubtedly have been executed along with the others.
‡
At the end of July 1953 – a month after the fall of Beria – an exceptional officer, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, was appointed to a senior position in the GRU with responsibility for the Near East. At thirty-four years of age, he was of medium height, athletic, and commanded attention with his natural air of self-confidence and ruggedly handsome face, and receding fair hair with a few rogue streaks of grey. He had just completed a three-year course in Military Espionage and English at the Military Diplomatic Academy.
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky was born in Ordzhonikidze in the Caucasus on 23 April 1919, when Eastern Europe was in turmoil in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution. He completed his secondary education at the age of eighteen and went as a cadet to the 2nd Kiev Artillery School. His training there finished just as WWII started, in 1939, and he was immediately appointed a battery political officer. He had what soldiers might describe as a good war; seeing active service on several fronts and also having spells as an instructor, mostly in Moscow.
He was wounded in 1944 when he was an artillery battalion commander in a Tank Destroyer Regiment. After hospitalisation in Moscow he was appointed liaison officer to Lieutenant-General Sergei Varentsov, Artillery Commander of the 1st Ukrainian Army Group, who was also recovering in hospital following a tank accident. Their closeness turned into a lifelong friendship, with Varentsov becoming Penkovsky’s mentor and, to some extent, a father-figure.
The brilliant Penkovsky rose to the rank of colonel by the age of twenty-six. He had been awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Alexander Nevsky, the Order of the Fatherland War (First Class), the Order of the Red Star, and eight medals. At the end of the war he went to the Frunze Military Academy, graduating top of the class in 1948.
Penkovsky, as a new member of the GRU, may have been introduced to Serov in the summer of 1953. Neither of them could have known that within a few years their lives would be inexorably thrown together with disastrous results for both of them.
