Death of a Tyrant

5 March 1953

According to a Roman historian, “The first days after the death of a tyrant are the most joyous for the people,” since the end of suffering is the most keenly felt of human pleasures.

History of the Russian State, Nikolai Karamzin

To all members of the party, to all workers of the Soviet Union.

Dear comrades and friends!

It is with a profound sense of grief that we – the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR – inform the party and all workers of the Soviet Union that at 9:50 on the evening of March 5, Joseph Vissarionovich STALIN, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of SSRs and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, passed away after a grave illness.

The heart of Lenin’s comrade-in-arms, of the man who so brilliantly carried on his cause, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people – Joseph Vissarionovich STALIN – beats no more.

Statement issued by the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

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When Stalin decided to do away with his “Old Guard” (Molotov and company) by rallying the “Young Guard” (Malenkov and company), Beria was the first to catch on to his strategy, which was to destroy the entire Politburo membership following the same blueprint used in the twenties and thirties: eliminate the Old Guard using the Young Guard and the Young Guard using the up-and-coming generation. But Stalin miscalculated: he was no longer surrounded by the ideological simpletons of the twenties or the political eunuchs of the thirties, but rather by kindred spirits he had molded to match his own criminal way of thinking and acting. And the preeminent master of Stalin’s own criminal arts was Beria. Fortunately for the peoples of the USSR, God deprived Stalin of his reason at the very moment when he was directing his rage at Beria. In a mind-boggling blunder, Stalin gave himself away by his formulation of the Kremlin “Doctor’s Plot.” After all, the allegation that the entire network of top-level security organs was complicit in the “plot” was aimed directly at Beria. Beria knew both Stalin and the fates of his own predecessors all too well to labor under any illusions. Stalin needed Beria’s head. And Beria had no other way to save it than to cut off Stalin’s.

Zagadka smerti Stalina [The Mystery of Stalin’s Death], Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov

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Several years after Stalin’s death, various legends started to circulate, especially in the West, to the effect that Stalin died “with help.” There was a lot of insistence on the idea that Stalin’s demise saved Beria from certain death, since Stalin had come to fear him and was planning to do away with him. The account offered by Khrushchev, that Beria did not try to conceal his jubilation at what had happened, was interpreted as proof that he had been directly or indirectly involved in Stalin’s death. This version of events, which has a certain novelistic appeal, is not supported by the evidence.

Neither Beria nor any of the other members of the Politburo, who had all served the dictator faithfully, had the courage to eliminate him. They all, Beria included, were most fearful for themselves, and nothing else interested them. Beria, who was despised by the other members of the Politburo, had to tread most carefully of all.

Stalin died of natural causes, the same way ordinary old people tend to.

Smert Stalina [The Death of Stalin], Mikhail Geller

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Among the events that make up our postwar spiritual history, the death and funeral of Stalin is without question one of the most important, probably equal in significance to the events that took place at the White House [in Moscow] in August of 1991. At their core, these events are closely linked one to another, since during those days in March of 1953, for hundreds of thousands of people, something not only started to shift, but turned upside down, opened up in the consciousness. But for this to happen, they all had to go through a monstrous psychosis, to literally and physically go through the funeral “crush.” As ribs were cracking, so too minds were surely fracturing under the extraordinary pressure thrusting them toward individual thought, toward awareness. In this sense, August of 1991 was easier. Consciousness did not have far to go, the deed was almost done, old evils just needed to be swept away. Everyone’s choice was clear. The revolution that was Stalin’s funeral 50 years ago was completely unconscious, although, like every emancipation, it came with a price: blood.

Most amazing of all is that people were just going to a funeral, but they were caught up in some sort of phantasmal mechanism from which few escaped untransformed. When the crowd dispersed after being tested by the crucible of the crushing throng, people appeared: humankind of the 1960s. This is why it is so difficult to describe Stalin’s funeral: here, history is comprised of hundreds of thousands of individual stories, all branching toward the same place in the form of family shrubs, each with its own private drama. Who carried the coffin from the House of Unions and what the country’s new “masters” – Malenkov and Beria – said in their speeches turns out to be unimportant from today’s perspective. What is important is the tragedy of the “unthinking” crowds, stunned by His death, crowds that would beget a new humankind.

“Agoniya” [The Death Throes], Vasily Golovanov (2003)

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My story dates back to the historic date of March 5, 1953. For a couple of days the radio, through the voice of the announcer Levitan, had been solemnly reporting “the misfortune that has befallen our party and people: the grave illness of our Great Leader and Teacher, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.” (There were probably other titles and honorifics, but I don’t remember them.)

The setting was a tuberculosis sanatorium in a remote and snow-covered village in southern Estonia, almost on the border with Latvia. Although I have to admit being otherwise fortunate (arrested early, released early), in one respect, luck was not on my side: after falling ill in Sverdlovsk, where I was working in a mortar factory during the cold and hungry winter of 1942-1943, I contrived to have myself put in a children’s sanatorium, where they managed to get me back on my feet in three months. In fact I was in such fine shape that, after my arrest, I never once managed to wriggle out of my camp duties. But as soon as I was released, I earned myself such a bad relapse, apparently because of the stresses of camp life, that I was considered not worth the trouble of an operation, so they put me here to see if I would recover at all.

In our cell (excuse me, ward!) there were three fellows beside me: a swarthy metalworker, who anxiously tried to put together enough change every morning for a hair of the dog; a halfwit of indeterminate age obsessed with finding the source of drafts (there always seems to be at least one of these in prisons and hospitals), and a third guy of smallish stature (approximately my height) – I think his name was Nikolai Vasilych, or maybe Alexei Semyonich. He was a doctor (not sure what kind), and he considered himself to be a big-league man of culture, which he demonstrated through extraordinary neatness and courteousness: clean-shaven, not a hair out of place, always in a suit and tie.

And so, it’s early in the morning and we’re listing to the radio. We’ve each fixed our gaze straight ahead to avoid eye contact (and nobody’s commenting – heaven forbid!). Everyone is wearing an appropriate expression: solemn. It’s not that we’re all broken up, but we aren’t derisive either, not on your life! Levitan begins the first broadcast of the day on a such a lofty note, it’s as if he’s getting ready to announce a fireworks display in honor of the taking of Ryazan or a reduction in the price of pickled cabbage: “During the night, Comrade Stalin’s health took a serious turn for the worse!”

(I gave a little start, but then got a hold of myself.) “Despite intensive oxygen therapy and drug treatment (the announcer’s voice grew more and more resolute), Cheyne-Stokes respiration has set in!” I look at the usually staid and mild-mannered Vasily Alexeyich, who never raises his voice, and he’s leaping to his feet and shouting, “Yura, time to run get some!”

What really struck me was not the part about running “to get some,” which, you’ll surely agree, is perfectly appropriate for six in the morning, but the familiar “Yura,” utterly inconceivable for the usually formal Semyon Nikolayich. Matters must be serious, I’m thinking, but I want to be sure:

“But they didn’t say anything conclusive, did they?” I inquire... But Vasily Semyonych isn’t backing down: “Yura,” he repeats, thrusting his chest out slightly. “I am a doctor, after all! A medical school graduate! I know what I’m talking about: Cheyne-Stokes is an exceptionally reliable guy – he never lets you down!” That’s when it finally sinks in on me: matters are serious and there’s no time for debate. Pulling on my coat as I run out the door, I head for the store. It’s early morning: moon, streetlights, snow banks. Not a soul. The store, of course, is closed, and the two-story building is pitch black and there’s a lock on the door. But I’m not going to give up! Where, I wonder, does the salesman live? On the second floor, obviously! I clamber up a staircase on the side of the building, knock, and at first it’s silent – not a sound. I knock harder, with my fists, my feet, all over the place! “Kurat, kurat.”1 I hear from a distance. “Vat iz dat? Zey don’t let us sleep, zos Russki schweine, drunk again, kurat, kurat!” He pauses to catch his breath and I form my hands into a bullhorn and enunciate as clearly as I can:

“Open up, please, it’s really important!” He walks up to the door and asks in a totally different voice, “Really? Already?”

“Yes, yes, that’s the point!”

“I don’t understand no-sing! I vuz listening to zee ratio, and zer iz somesing about breezink...”

“That’s it, yes. We’ve got a doctor in our ward, and he says we’re in the clear!”

“Gutness gracious!” He opens the door. “Oy, excuse me.” (He’s in a bathrobe and holding a kerosene lamp). “Jus luk at me!” (“Don’t be silly!”) “You know zos Russians...” (He looks askance at me, somewhat embarrassed; I give him an encouraging smile: “Sure, I get it!”) “...zey can be like beasts! Zey get drunk. I did not understand right avay...” (He hurries down the steps.) “You probably vant fodka, yes? How much?”

“Let me see how much I have...well, at least a bottle.”

“Vat you talking about, take it! I know you vill be back anyvay, a regular customer. I did not recognize you right avay! I apologize!”

“Well, thanks. And I apologize for waking you.”

“Oh, zat’s fine, zat’s just fine. Come venever you vant!”

Poor fellow, he probably decided that I’d always bring him such good news!

Later we were politically rehabilitated, then came the Thaw, but soon things turned icy again. At the very start of seventy-one, even though I’d been kicked off the faculty in 1968 for something I signed, the time finally came for me to defend my dissertation. At the conclusion of the defense ritual, I was granted the usual opportunity to make formal expressions of gratitude. Alek Volpin2 sat calmly, taking all the names I mentioned, including his own, in stride, but when he heard me say “I would like to recognize the profound and instrumental influence that the outstanding work of Dr. John Cheyne and Doctor William Stokes had on me, especially their remarkable 1953 result, which can be credited not only with my own achievements, but those of my entire generation,” he jumped up, gaped joyously, and obviously intended to blurt something out... My wife was barely able to get him back in his seat and calm him down. My other friends, who had been in the habit of paying tribute to Doctor Cheyne-Stokes during numerous jubilant March 5 celebrations, also became animated and started smiling. However, the members of the academic council and my dissertation committee didn’t raise an eyebrow...

That evening, about 50 of us got together, and just as many showed up the following day. The most toasted-to heroes of these celebrations, naturally, were Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Stokes...

From a Memoir by Dissident Mathematician Yuri Gastev (1928-1993)

1. Kurat – devil in Estonian. 2. Gastev’s fellow mathematician and dissident.