All language subtitles for PBS.Stalin.Inside.the.Terror.PDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

SHE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

PHONE RINGS

In the early hours
of March 2nd 1953,

the most powerful man in the world
lay dying alone.

He had suffered a stroke
at least 12 hours before.

His guards were worried
but did not dare enter his bedroom.

PHONE CONTINUES TO RING

How could a man worshipped
by millions

be left to lie helpless,
soaked in his own urine?

Mascha? Mascha?

KNOCKS LOUDLY

Stalin had built an empire
on a framework of terror,

justifying in the name
of a political faith.

Through it he ruled his country,
government, party and his family.

He had even terrorised the doctors
he now needed so badly.

KNOCKING

Now there was no one left -
no wife, child, lover or friend -

who was brave enough to enter
the private world of Josef Stalin.

He had become a victim
of his own terror.

At the time of his death,
Stalin was probably
the best-known man on earth.

His popularity outstripped
that of any other world leader.

In the Soviet Union,
his image was everywhere.

He had become a living icon - the
subject of a cult of personality.

160 million people felt
they knew him personally.

But the man they knew
was an invention.

The real man was a mass
of contradictions.

A dictator whose position was
unassailable, yet who was haunted
by paranoia.

Stalin used terror
more effectively and scientifically
than any other ruler.

His extreme faith
in a political ideal would destroy
tens of millions of lives.

Yet his achievements would hold his
people in awe of him to the end.

Although millions of people
detested him,

there were millions and millions
of people who loved and revered him,

and many further millions of people
who detested him

but at the same time,
mourned him when he died.

It is tempting to dismiss Stalin
as a psychopath,

unable to form normal
human relationships with others,

but family photos
show a warm, gentle man,

surrounded by daughters,
sons, aunts and in-laws.

Stalin was a passionate husband
and loving father

and even a committed friend.

Despite this, most of the people
in these photos

would be destroyed by him.

THROUGH INTERPRETER:
My father was called back to Moscow.

He arrived on 18th November.

He got a phone call
and then he left immediately...

and never returned.

INTERPRETER:
It was terrible. Everyone
wanted to destroy everyone else.

There were betrayals,
denunciations,

and hatred that crossed
all normal boundaries.

INTERPRETER: It seemed to me
that he had some hypnotic power.

He could influence people
and he used fear.

TRANSLATOR: Family relationships
meant nothing to him at that time.

The opening of the Russian archives
in recent years

has revealed the story
of the terror that Stalin created

during his journey from extreme
poverty to absolute power.

Stalin was a Georgian from
the south of the Russian Empire.

The village where he was born -
Gori - was nearer to Baghdad
than St Petersburg.

This was a wild country -

a land of tribalism and blood feuds.

He had been baptised Josef
Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili.

His mother Keke called him Soso.

Soso was born into extreme poverty.

The family rented a single room
in a two-room house.

Three siblings had already died
in infancy.

Keke invested all of her hopes
in her one surviving son.

She was a deeply religious woman

and she dreamed that he might
become a man of God.

But Soso's life was overshadowed
by the violence of his father.

Vissarion Dzhugashvili
was a shoemaker and a drunk.

He spent his money on alcohol

and when he came home, which
was not often, there was trouble.

SHOUTING

His father beat his son viciously
just to alleviate
his own frustrations

and, in fact, severely wounded
Stalin at the age of seven.

The left elbow never recovered,
in fact.

You see in all the photographs
of Stalin this withered shorter arm

which affected the mobility
of the left hand.

So he had reason to be terrified
of his father

and I think this instilled in him
the wish for revenge

and never ever in his life
to be the underdog -

he must always be the top dog.

Soso could have disappeared into the
squalor of 19th-century Georgia

but, remarkably, the young boy
was plucked from obscurity
by a powerful patron.

Jakob Egnatashvili was the answer
to Keke's prayers -

perhaps in more ways than one.

It was rumoured that the wealthy
merchant was Soso's true father.

The Egnatashvilis treated him
and his mother as family

and he would protect them
all his life.

TRANSLATOR: His godfather,
Jakob Egnatashvili,

was our closest relative and Stalin
would to them after classes

and they received him as a relative

because Jakob was his godfather.

DISTANT BELL TOLLS

Father or godfather, Jakob's

g.

Entry into the priesthood would

pire.

She brought him up to feel
that he could do no wrong

and a man who is hero-worshipped
by his mother believes he is a hero.

The Orthodox Church underpinned the
authority of the Imperial family.

Its priests encouraged peasants
to revere the Tsar.

They urged them to accept
their ties to the land

as if they were still
medieval serfs.

This was the prize that Keke
had in mind for her only son,

who was already
showing signs of talent.

This is an exceptional child.

The super-intelligence and
sensitivity of this damaged child.

He learned to read and write
much earlier than other children.

Other children at eight or nine

but he told people how he himself
had learned at four or five
to read and write very well.

Soso was brought up speaking
Georgian - his native language.

But Georgian was part

It was also a land of factions
and vendettas,

and he grew up
learning to be a fighter.

Although he was the smallest boy
in his year, he was the toughest.

At 14, he won a scholarship
to the Orthodox Seminary in Tbilisi.

The road from poverty to priesthood
lay before him,

but it would be a harsh journey.

When he arrived, the discipline
imposed on him by his priests -
his teachers -

was very, very severe, including
beatings and solitary confinement.

To Stalin, beating was the worst
punishment you could inflict.

Later, when someone asked him about

."

The seminary at Tbilisi was not just
a centre for studying Christianity.

Here, some of the brightest minds

eas.

They'd read Darwin and now they
found the works of Karl Marx.

These had only recently
been published in Russia.

TRANSLATOR: In Tbilisi, there
was only one copy of Das Kapital.

It was handwritten.

They used to read it at night.

Of course, the seminary
found out about it.

The seminary authorities would have

.

The elegance of Nicholas II's court
was a glittering disguise.

Behind it lay an absolutist monarchy

which made few concessions
to the ideas of democracy
taking root in Europe.

The regime stifled protest

ria.

20-year-old Soso was entranced

ass war.

He turned his back on a career
in the priesthood.

Soso had found a higher calling.

The sort of Marxism that attracted

ire,

that was going to bring
Tsarism crashing down.

And Stalin,
throughout his young manhood,

saw Tsarism as being an order that
brought about political oppression

and economic exploitation
and national hatreds.

He wanted all of that
to be eliminated.

Conversion to a new faith demanded
a new identity.

Soso was dead.

He would call him self Koba after
a Georgian Robin Hood-style hero.

Koba the revolutionary had
a mission to spread the new gospel
to the urban workers

who had most to gain from Marxism.

In the Black Sea port of Batumi,

.

15 were killed
and many more wounded.

Koba the revolutionary
had been bloodied.

He had his first police record.

On 9th July 1903, he was sentenced
to three years' exile in Siberia.

If the seminary in Tbilisi had been
a school for revolutionaries,

Siberia would prove to be
his university.

Here, he met a
group of hard-line activists,

many of whom would become leaders
in the Russian Revolution.

They were rather
like reading holidays.

A group of revolutionaries would
find themselves reading books
in boring Siberian villages.

Every now and then, they'd escape
and go to the local train station...

They were only guarded often
by a local gendarme,

who kept a pretty unclose watch
on them.

Koba could easily slip away
from his exile back to Tbilisi.

He had fallen in love
with a local girl, Katyo Svanidze -

the sister of one of his comrades.

But unlike her brother, Katyo
was surprisingly conventional.

I think he fell in love
with his mother.

She was deeply religious, this very
beautiful girl that he married,

and she didn't believe in politics
either.

It was his mother.

Koba's new love would draw him back
into a world he had just left.

Katyo and his mother
wanted a church wedding.

Remarkably, he agreed.

His relationship would quickly
be tested by his life
as a revolutionary.

He wanted her to be his "baba" -
keeping Georgian house for him -

but he was always gone,
he was never there.

He was always on the road, in secret
meetings, trips abroad and so on.

The life of a revolutionary was the
opposite to that of a good husband

and Katyo had a very lonely life.

Katyo had to rely on her family
rather than on her new husband.

Now the certainties which bounded
their world were to be challenged.

The year was 1905.

In 1905, of course, Nicholas II
almost was overthrown.

Strikes broke out
in all the major cities.

Peasants started moving
against their landlords.

It came very close
to a full revolution.

So these young revolutionaries
who had read their Marx,

had been rather bookish,

had been drawn to doctrines
of total change,

suddenly became big political
figures in their own right.

The unsuccessful rising
created new heroes for Koba.

Within weeks of marrying Katyo

he left for Finland on forged papers
to meet Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

What he found surprised him.

"I was expecting to see the eagle
of our party -

"a great man, not only politically
but, if you will, physically.

"I had formed an image of Lenin
as a giant - stately and imposing.

"What was my disappointment when I
saw the most ordinary-looking man -

"distinguished from ordinary mortals
by nothing, literally nothing."

In Stalin, Lenin found exactly
what he needed.

Lenin was existing in the world
of bourgeois intellectuals,

exiles sitting in coffee houses
discussing dialectical materialism.

What he needed was ruthless,
tough, energetic organisers
in Russia itself.

Men who would do anything
for the cause, who had nothing
to lose, and Stalin was that.

That's why Lenin called him
"my wonderful Georgian."

Stalin, for example, organised
the bank robberies, the "expros" -
expropriations.

Lenin was impressed
by Stalin's ruthlessness
and organisational flair,

but others in the party
were less comfortable.

In a world poisoned by suspicion,

one incident cast particular doubt
on Stalin's loyalties.

For years, the Okhrana - the Tsarist

Tbilisi.

Revolutionary pamphlets
were flooding the factories

and bombs and ammunition
were stored there.

In 1906, the Okhrana raided

s -

and possibly rivals.

Koba himself just happened to be
out of town.

Many thought Koba was the informer
and an agent for the Okhrana.

People around him were double
agents, single agents,

and Stalin was probably one.

It didn't mean they weren't
Marxist fanatics.

It just meant that they might betray

exile,

but they were still fanatics.

In 1907, whilst on the run,
he heard that Katyo had given birth
to a boy - Yakov.

He managed to get home,
but not to celebrate.

Weakened by the birth, Katyo
had succumbed to tuberculosis.

When she died, what he said
was, "All warm feeling for people
died with her.

"She melted my stony heart."

It was as if nobody else
could do that again.

It's almost a betrayal
that she dies.

A betrayal of that love,
that he'd opened to her

and she died.

It's very complicated. He is a very
complex person there's no doubt.

Yakov, Stalin's first son,

would be almost 20
before he'd see his father.

He abandoned him to the care
of Katyo's sisters

and returned to his life
of revolutionary action.

In weeks, he was back in prison -
a hardened man.

A fellow prisoner,
Simeon Verishchak, recalls:

"Nothing would ever upset Stalin.

"When executions were taking place
and the others were shaken,
he slept soundly

"or quietly studied Esperanto.

"On one occasion after a major riot,

"the politicals were made to run the
gauntlet of soldiers' rifle butts.

"Stalin walked through the ordeal
calmly and bravely,

"reading a book."

Stalin proved his usefulness
to the cause

by his diligent work
as a bank robber and agitator.

His reward was a post
on the party's Central Committee

and for this he would leave
his quiet life in exile.

He returned to St Petersburg,
travelling under a new name -

from now on he would be Stalin,
the man of steel.

Behind the facade of St Petersburg's
imperial splendour

seethed an underworld of murderous
revolutionary groups

dedicated to overthrowing the Tsars.

Stalin slipped quickly into
the heart of this dissident network.

He found a home with a trusted
family of radicals, the Alliluyevs.

Their flat - not far
from the Tsar's winter palace -

was a safe house for subversives.

Stalin had already met the family
in Georgia.

Sergei the father was married
to Olga -

a restless woman notorious
for her affairs.

Stalin became intimately involved
with Sergei and his children.

TRANSLATOR: Grandfather used to
hide revolutionaries in his flat.

The police would come
and the children would be afraid.

Can you imagine the children knowing
that everyone could go to prison?

He would save revolutionaries

The first thing they would ask was,
"Are there two exits?

"A back door and a front door?
Good. Then we'll stay here."

The police came to the front door,
so they could escape at the back.

But escape wasn't an option when,

exile.

This time it was a remote camp
beyond the Arctic Circle

where he would remain
for four miserable years.

From here he wrote to the Alliluyevs
in the paradise of St Petersburg:

"I'd be happy if you would send
postcards with views of nature.

"In this forsaken spot,
nature is reduced to ugliness.

"In summer, the river
and in winter, the snow."

Just a year into his exile,
the First World War broke out.

Russia mobilised millions of troops
against Germany.

Stalin, with his damaged arm, was
found unfit for military service,

so he escaped the catastrophic
defeats and harsh conditions

which began to undermine
the Tsarist regime.

In February 1917,
the Tsar was overthrown.

The news that the Tsar had abdicated
took them totally by surprise.

They set off from their exile on
this train journey to St Petersburg

with their hopes of power,

Power was now in the hands
of a provisional government.

Lenin's faction, the Bolsheviks,
formed part of the opposition.

Stalin came directly to this house.

It was a barracks for party workers.

Upstairs were the editorial offices
of Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper.

Stalin took over as editor,

but instead of following the

,

Stalin went badly off message.
He would soon taste Lenin's wrath.

When Lenin arrived in St Petersburg,

Stalinist history recalls how, with

aration.

In fact, Lenin got off the train
cursing the editor of Pravda.

Stalin was given a telling off
for his weak attitude.

However, he was content to follow
Lenin, the hero of the revolution,

but he loathed the intellectual
arrogance of the silver-tongued
Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky's brilliance far eclipsed
Stalin in those early years.

Stalin was not
one of the great orators.

His Georgian accent
told against him.

He was nervous
about giving big political speeches.

What he was good at
was editing newspapers

and organising the revolution
within the Central Committee.

Stalin's role lacked glory
but it was practical.

He was Lenin's secret factotum.

tsky.

Trotsky was a European figure,
he was famous.

That was only true
of Lenin and Trotsky then.

Lenin now approved of Stalin's
skills in editing Pravda

and he had other strengths.

On 3rd July, the Bolsheviks tried to
seize power, but the plot backfired.

Trotsky was arrested
and a warrant was issued for Lenin.

Stalin plucked Lenin from danger

and took him
to the Alliluyev's safe house.

TRANSLATOR: Lenin was at my
grandfather's flat for 36 hours.

His beard had to be shaved off.

My grandmother started
to shave his beard,

but Stalin said,
"You can't do it. Let me."

So he finished shaving him.

They shaved his beard off then put

Looking like this, he was escorted
to the railway station.

Stalin, the master
of misinformation,

successfully disguised one of the
most recognisable men in history.

Lenin's second chance to hijack
the revolution came in October 1917.

Russia was in crisis as her army
crumbled before the Germans.

The Bolsheviks harnessed
the discontent of soldiers
in St Petersburg

and mounted a coup against
the provisional government.

They surrounded the Winter Palace
and forced the government out.

Stalin got a job as a People's
Commissar in Lenin's government.

He later joined the inner circle
of power - the Politburo.

For his secretary, he chose one
of the daughters of the Alliluyevs -

the 16-year-old Nadezhda.

She was a girl when she met Stalin
and had fun with him.

They went for sleigh rides,
Stalin read to them.

He would read Chekhov to them.

They would laugh a lot, apparently.

Nadia was a boisterous, mischievous
child and liked to play jokes.

Soso would laugh and joke with them.

At times they found him
quite solemn and introverted,

but he had this humorous side
which they loved.

Stalin was old enough
to be Nadezhda's father,

but she was entranced by him

and she shared
his revolutionary passion.

When the encroaching Germans

him.

Here, Lenin's government
was in trouble.

Although they had signed

Forces loyal to the Tsar were
massing in parts of the old empire.

Lenin had to defend his revolution
ruthlessly, using "war communism"

and the Terror tactics once
harnessed in the French Revolution.

There was enormous resistance
to Lenin and the Bolsheviks

even from the working class.

It wasn't
going to be an easy revolution.
There was going to be civil war.

Civil war would use
Stalin's talents as an organiser -

an agitator who could push men
into desperate action.

The skills he had honed
in orchestrating bank robberies
now had real value.

There was a problem in the south.

Stalin left Moscow
with many militia to sort it out.

His destination was the city
of Tsaritsyn.

Stalin and his top people
learnt to be killers -

the glamour of macho expeditions
into the countryside,

riding shotgun in armoured trains

Riding out to execute massive
numbers of aristocrats or bourgeois
or whatever.

In these expeditions,

they felt they were living
the power and glamour of revolution.

On board Stalin's train thundering
south was his secretary Nadezhda.

Her brother Fyodor was also there.

Returning to his carriage from
dinner, Fyodor heard his sister
cry out.

Nadia?

TRANSLATOR: Allegedly,
Stalin started to rape her.

I read this rubbish somewhere.

But she was very much in love
with him.

Why would he rape her
if she was so much in love with him?

Nadezhda and Stalin were
man and wife from that day on.

Their Bolshevik marriage would
be solemnised in a bloodbath

as around them
dozens were being executed.

He behaved with the macho violence
of a Bolshevik in command.

When he had prisoners on a barge,
he sunk the barge with prisoners
on deck.

Nothing was too much for Stalin.

No excess of violence was too much

ll.

He had absolute power
and he learnt how to use it.

He learnt one of the ruling rules
of his life -

one man, one problem,
no man, no problem.

In 1921, Stalin masterminded
the Bolshevik takeover of Georgia,

which had declared itself
independent.

Stalin said, "We must draw a white
hot iron across this Georgian land."

His swaggering behaviour

s

Nadia understood Stalin's harsh
world - she too was a Bolshevik

and she knew
that revolutions called for blood.

In Moscow, they lived in the Kremlin

on.

TRANSLATOR: We started living
with Stalin and Nadezhda Sergeyeva

in a communal flat with
one kitchen for several families.

They were comfortable
and the comrades were all friends

and their wives were all friends
too.

So they carried on living there.

Even though there was one kitchen,
you had your own private room.

Then in 1921, Vasily was born
and the flat became too small
for Stalin,

so he had to move.

Although Stalin now had a family,

he would not allow it to compromise
his revolutionary zeal.

A letter recently unearthed
in one of the state archives

shows how determined he was to prove
his proletarian credentials.

It's to the head of state Kalinin.

"I've moved into my new flat
in the Kremlin

"and I'm furious to discover that
someone has brought new furniture
for it.

"This is directly against my orders.

"I'm very angry. I gave orders
that I was to have old furniture.

"More than that", he writes,
"Find the culprit and punish him."

And he signs off, "With Communist
greetings, J Stalin."

Both Stalin and Nadia, in the first
two decades of the 20th century,

had very similar ideals,

which were social justice
and equality

and fair working conditions
and so on.

Nadia was one of the first
emancipated women.

Women won equal rights
and she went for them.

She wanted independence.
She wasn't going to change her name.

As leader of the party, Lenin
was burdened by a huge workload.

He was relying on Stalin
more and more.

A job was created for Stalin -
General Secretary
of the Bolshevik Party.

He wrote his own job description.

It would make him the most powerful
man in the party.

The civil war had left the country
in ruins.

Transport had broken down. Food was
no longer reaching the cities.

So Lenin relaxed the policy
of collectivising land
and seizing grain.

"Let the peasants sell their grain.
Let the market unlock shortages."

This was a big retreat
from Bolshevism.

Lenin was the ultimate Machiavellian
pragmatist and he argued for this,

but a lot of the young Bolsheviks
believed that this was a compromise
too far

and that one day they'd have to deal
with the peasant problem.

Nonetheless, Lenin got the NEP
brought in.

Lenin had exhausted himself
in holding the revolution together.

In May 1922, he suffered
the first of a series of strokes.

Over a few months, he recovered
some of his strength,

but he became concerned that he

Stalin.

As Lenin weakened
through the winter of 1922,

his fears about Stalin grew.

In December, Stalin persuaded
the Central Committee

to make him responsible
for Lenin's medical care.

Now he had control
over the man he once served.

TRANSLATOR: He changed when he
understood he could become leader.

It's probably the psychology
of somebody who wants power,

who loves power
and knows how to use power.

That's how he was. His yes meant yes
and his no meant no.

He didn't say a lot.

He built an invisible wall
around Lenin -

forbidding access to him
and controlling contact with others.

He heard that Lenin had dictated
a memo to his arch-enemy Trotsky.

Lenin's devoted wife Krupskaya
was acting as his secretary.

Stalin now telephoned her.

Her account of the conversation
would almost destroy him.

One hears about Stalin
the controlled ice man,

but he also had this fiery Georgian
temper that he couldn't control.

This is a man who's supposed to be
this great political machine,

but he loses his temper
and almost loses everything.

Stalin had gone too far
in abusing Krupskaya.

Lenin was now dictating
his "testament to the party".

He was already incensed

When he heard about the phone call
to his wife,

he added a devastating condemnation
of Stalin.

The testament was sealed in an

ath.

But one of his secretaries
leaked the fact to Stalin

that Lenin meant to finish him.

It was to be done at the next

behalf.

But Stalin offered Trotsky
a political concession

in return for dropping the issue.

Trotsky fell for it,
Stalin was reprieved,

and the chance to halt his grim
progress was lost forever.

Lenin had foreseen the danger
in an all-powerful Stalin.

The protegee would go on to eclipse
the worst excesses of his master.

TRANSLATOR:
I remember going to the building
where Lenin's body was lying.

I remember
that we went up the stairs

and everything was covered
in black cloth.

Halfway up the stairs,
two boys were crying,

then all the little children
passed by the body.

We didn't know what was going on,

but we knew that something horrible
had happened.

At the funeral, Stalin read an
extraordinary evangelical tribute
to his leader.

"Comrade Lenin ordained us
to hold high and keep pure

"the title of member of the party.

"We vow to thee that we shall
fulfil thy commandment."

Stalin would now use Lenin's name

r.

There was to be a collective
leadership,

but his main rival was Trotsky -
the darling of the party.

For 20 years, Stalin had lived
in Trotsky's shadow.

His fame as the charismatic orator

himself.

Trotsky had described Stalin as
a "grey bureaucrat, a mediocrity."

It was a fatal underestimation
of Stalin's political skill

and of his unswerving hatred.

Stalin now had control
of the party machinery.

He would use it over the next
six years to destroy Trotsky
and all his other rivals.

Henceforth, Trotsky's name would
become synonymous with heresy.

Stalin won the support of the party
by elevating Lenin

to the status of a hero and prophet.

The man who had tried to destroy

re.

He took over the intellectual side
of Lenin.

He decided what of Lenin's work
was published and what wasn't.

His embalmment of Lenin and
displaying him in a mausoleum

was the deliberate creation
of a religion of Bolshevism,

and of a religious symbol
for Bolshevism, which worked.

By 1929, Russia had just matched

.

As the increasingly powerful
General Secretary,

Stalin embarked on a mission

He wanted to make the Soviet Union
into an industrial colossus

and a military power to be reckoned
with on the European mainland.

He wanted Soviet modernity.

He wanted an end to the old Russia -

of the peasant, the village,
the Christian faith.

He wanted virtually
an industrialised countryside

to take the place
of the medieval Muscovy

that he so much detested.

In the cities, Stalin mobilised
an army of young Communists

to help crush anyone
who might oppose his plans.

They flooded out of Moscow and
St Petersburg into the countryside.

Their mission was to drag
the peasants into the 20th century.

If the peasants didn't cooperate,
they would be destroyed.

The master of propaganda showed
town dwellers, in films like this,

how the richer class of peasant -

rain.

Lists of the guilty were published.

He expropriated their property

and he deported most of them
to Siberia for at least five years.

Bolshevik squads seized thousands
of tons of grain across the country.

The peasants would starve.

For those who dared to hoard grain,
Stalin had a solution -

a new law, Protocol 111.

They called it the "Five Ear Law."

You could be shot for stealing
five grains of corn.

Stalin had unleashed his army

He was worried, but he imposed
his will regardless.

The deliberateness of the violence
and terror is fascinating.

They divided the peasants
into three categories.

Category one - to be shot instantly.

Category two - to be deported
to the gulags.

Category three - to be deported
into exile.

This expanded into a sort of civil
war against the countryside.

And it was done by thousands
of young workers from the cities

who went to the countryside and saw
the people starving and being shot,

but they believed it was right

because it was the way to heaven

Hundreds of thousands of peasants
were deported into the east.

They were making the same journey
Koba had made many times,

but they were not expected
to return.

They were destined for camps

where they would be starved
and worked to death in conditions
of absolute brutality.

For most, exile would become
another word for the death sentence.

The tundra swallowed
hundreds of thousands of families.

Stalin executed a radical turn -
"the great turn" he called it -
a Stalin revolution.

A Stalin revolution
was a much more dramatic change

for the Russian people
than the Lenin revolution of 1917.
It changed everything.

There was resistance from Stalin's
partners in government -

Bukharin and the rightists -
and Stalin easily defeated them.

They recanted and agreed to follow
the party line.

Stalin believed that any number
of human casualties were worth it

in order to achieve deferred
paradise - the deferred paradise
of Socialism.

Between 1929 and 1933,
up to five million people perished.

Instead of creating communal farms,
they were digging communal graves.

Stalin suppressed news of this,
although 30 million were starving.

TRANSLATOR: I went to the city
of Karkov.

I was in a good compartment.

When I opened the window,
there was a famine going on outside.

I saw on the railway platform
people who were starving.

When my mother told Stalin,
he said it's an illusion.

She's only a child.
Only he could say things like that.

Stalin's behaviour was beginning
to scare people -

his wife Nadezhda in particular.

She wasn't meant to know about this,

but she picked it up
from her friends

who used to go out to the country
and tell her what was happening.

Stalin wasn't telling her.

This caused enormous distress to her

and division in the marriage.

They think that women are weak
but she was very strong.

Probably their two characters
clashed and they had rows about it.

In 1931 - according to her sister
Anna - she was packing her bags.

She was going to finish her studies

er,

and set up her own career
because she'd had enough.

Stalin now controlled
the destiny of millions,

but not that of his own family.

In 1926, a daughter, Svetlana,
had been born.

Stalin doted on her,
but not so on the boys.

His first son Yakov had now
joined them in the Kremlin,

but Stalin's constant bullying
had driven him to shoot himself.

He survived -
much to his father's disgust.

"Huh!" sneered Stalin.
"He can't even shoot straight."

Stalin's wife was also unsympathetic
to Yakov's cry for attention.

She had her own concerns.

Nadia obviously had severe
psychological problems.

Svetlana said her mother
was schizophrenic.
Molotov said she was psychopathic.

She was a hysteric.

Nadezhda could no longer cope

ntry.

Nadezhda Sergeyevna, Vasily and I
went to Red Square.

Soon, Nadezhda -
well, maybe in 15 or 20 minutes -

literally started to moan.

"Oh, my head!" She clutched
her head and started to moan

and a couple of minutes later
went home.

The next day, Nadezhda saw
the children for the last time.

That evening, they were having
dinner with the Molotovs
and the Vorishilovs.

The Vorishilovs, as usual, were
holding their revolution party.

Down the table was General Igoroff's
wife Galina.

Stalin began to flirt with her in
the clumsy way he did, drunkenly,

by tossing balls of bread at her.

That was his way of flirting.
He did it to entertain children too.

Coarse and clumsy it certainly was.

He didn't notice his young wife's
lovely dress or new hairdo.

He didn't notice anything about her.

There was a toast
and she didn't drink to it.

Then she got up suddenly
and ran out.

Molotov's wife followed her
and they went for a walk.

She said, why does Stalin have
to flirt with all these women?

He flirts with the hairdresser who
he may be having an affair with.

They agreed that men were men
and silly things.

But Polina said Stalin's
under immense pressure,

you can't put him under more
pressure when he's fighting a war.

No one knows why when she left

.

She got out the little pistol that
her brother had got from Berlin,

then she wrote a letter attacking
Stalin personally and politically.

GUNSHOT

When he stood by her open coffin...

to take his parting from her, he
said, "She went away as an enemy"

and he turned and walked away,
according to his daughter Svetlana.

TRANSLATOR: The coffin stood
in the room surrounded by people.

Stalin approached the coffin
and wept.

What's more, he wept so strongly
that he was shaking all over.

It was absolutely clear
he couldn't control himself.

It was the most horrible thing
that could have happened to him.

Such grief.
Vasily was clutching at him.

"Daddy, don't cry. Daddy, don't cry.
Please don't cry."

For Stalin, it was a huge betrayal.

She had publicly said,
by leaving a letter,

that she thought Stalin's policies
were wrong

and she agreed
with Bukharin's ideas.

And that she found it intolerable

.

So not only was it
a personal tragedy,

it was a political betrayal.

And it was on that level,
principally, that he took it.

Nadezhda's death marked the end

ife

He filled the gap
with his affection for Svetlana,

whom he called
"the lady of the house."

She was even allowed to appear
at Politburo dinners.

For male company -
always important to him -

he had his old friend Kirov.

Kirov, when he wasn't at his office

ha.

Kirov took Nadia's place, in a way,
as his comfort and dear friend.

He would only go to the baths
with Kirov.

Among his political fraternity,

.

This relationship was very close,

but there were severe
political tensions.

At the 17th Congress in 1934,

some Bolsheviks, disenchanted with
the horrors of collectivisation,

planned to overthrow Stalin and
place Kirov as leader of the party.

Kirov was Stalin's closest friend.

Now suddenly he was his closest
rival and a serious threat.

On December 1st 1934,
at Kirov's office in Leningrad,

a lone gunman stalked the corridor.

GUNSHOT

TRANSLATOR:
Suddenly there was a telephone call.

It was an inter-city call -
you could tell by the ring.

Stalin took the receiver and,
my mother told me, he turned pale.

His face went completely strange.

He put down the receiver and said,
"Kirov has been killed.

"I'm going to Leningrad."

He left for Leningrad
with his own court of judges,
prosecutors and executioners.

Within hours of Kirov's death,

Stalin had drafted
the 1st December law,

which gave him the power to shoot
anyone accused of terrorism quickly.

He personally interrogated Kirov's
assassin, Nikolaev.

Stalin claimed he implicated

ev.

Nikolaev was quickly executed.

Then he had the assassin's wife,
brother and sister-in-law
shot without trial.

He identified and arrested Zinoviev
supporters and had them all shot.

GUNSHOTS

His old colleagues Zinoviev
and Kamenev were seized in Moscow.

It isn't known whether or not
Stalin ordered Kirov's death,

but he had drafted the law allowing

news.

The 1st December law was to be the
basis of his personal dictatorship.

and the foundation
of the Terror of the '30s.

Within a year, over 100,000 people
in Leningrad alone

would be imprisoned or shot.

In time, most of the 2,000 delegates

d.

Too many had voted for Kirov.

If the party wouldn't follow Stalin,
he'd build one that would.

The initial trial of Zinoviev
and Kamenev was a sham,

but after being promised light
sentences, they confessed.

He'd brought the Georgian vendetta -
the Caucasian blood feud -
to Moscow.

He'd brought it north.

And he was determined to physically

rgiven.

He is a Georgian and Georgians have

You didn't just annihilate your
enemy, you stamped on his grave.

In 1936, at the first
of the infamous show trials
before the international press,

Kamenev and Zinoviev were retried,
found guilty and executed...

GUNSHOT

..despite Stalin's promises
that their lives would be spared.

The Terror spread in shockwaves
throughout the Soviet Union.

In the midst of it all,

Stalin went with his children
to visit his mother Keke.

Now 75, she was looked after
on Stalin's behalf,

by the head of the Georgian NKVD,
Lavrenti Beria.

Keke knew what was going on.

TRANSLATOR: Friends would visit
who knew about the arrests

and they would complain because she
was his mother. She didn't like it.

When he came to say
his final goodbye to her...

I forget why she died, I forget
what illness, but she was very old.

..she told him, "Son, it would have
been better if you'd been a priest."

The man who could have been a priest
was playing God.

It was a religious Terror
essentially.

Stalin said that we had to kill
people because "they'd lost faith".

People were killed
not for their conscious sins,

but for the fact that they MIGHT
sin, MIGHT turn against the project,

MIGHT show a lack of faith
in Stalinism, in Bolshevism.

Stalin took a close personal
interest in the Terror

as it assumed a life of its own.

He decided to kill people
like industrial production targets.

For example, Stalingrad was told,

The amazing thing we've discovered
about Stalin in the last few years

is that the Terror was organised
deliberately from the centre

and that Stalin and his leaders
didn't care who they killed.

It was done by quota, by numbers,
not even by name.

In one year, arrests
for counter-revolutionary crimes
increased tenfold.

But Russian State archives reveal

uction.

Here's a chilling document that
comes from the height of the Terror.

It's 22nd November 1938.

It's headed Top Secret.

It's a very laconic,
very Stalinist message.

"Comrade Malenkov, Moscovin
must be arrested. J Stalin."

Very simple. Moscovin, who was
a top official in the Comintern

and an ex-secret policeman,
was arrested and shot
soon after this note.

Stalin's orders were carried out
by a "troika" -

a travelling court that read out
charges and supervised executions.

GUNSHOTS CONTINUE

Stalin personally signed for
execution almost 400 lists of names,

totalling about 40,000 people.

During the Terror,
around 700,000 men and women
were sentenced to death.

On 12th December 1937 alone,

Stalin and Molotov approved
3,167 death sentences

before breaking to go to the cinema.

Stalin had killed most of those
who had been part of the revolution.

He now turned his attention
to another former ally -

one of the original Bolshevik
leaders, Nikolai Bukharin.

Bukharin is probably the most

Lenin called him "the darling
of the party" and he was.

Bukharin would have to endure the
humiliation of a public show trial.

He knew he was never going to escape
the condemned cell.

In his last letter to Stalin,
he appealed to his old friendship

and showed that he still loved
the cause even if not the man.

"If I am to receive
the death sentence,

"then I implore you by all you hold
dear not to have me shot.

"Let me drink poison in my cell.

"I am preparing myself mentally
to depart from this vale of tears

"and there is nothing in me toward
all of you, the party and the cause,

"but enormous and boundless love.

"For that reason,
I embrace you in my mind.

"Farewell forever

"and remember kindly
your wretched Nikolai Bukharin."

Now no one was safe.

No one was closer to Stalin than his
secretary Alexander Poskrebyshev -

no one that is except
Poskrebyshev's wife, Bronislava.

According to her daughter, she
was having an affair with Stalin.

One day in 1939, she vanished.

TRANSLATOR: My father thought
she'd gone to the dacha,

but she wasn't there.

He asked Stalin about it. Stalin
said, "I don't know. Ask Beria."

Beria said she had links
with Trotskyism and was therefore
an enemy of the people.

She had been arrested. Two years
later, she would be shot.

Before her death, Poskrebyshev
had already taken a new wife.

His first wife had ceased to exist

and still Poskrebyshev
served his leader.

TRANSLATOR: Papa couldn't
do anything about it.

She was accused of links
with Trotskyism.

Trotsky was an ideological enemy

and, besides, Stalin had his
own score to settle with Trotsky.

When you were accused of that,
there was no hope of pardon.

You have to understand he had
two little girls to look after.

I think he did it for us.

These two faded photographs
are all that remain

of Bronislava Poskrebyshev -

Natalia's mother
and perhaps Stalin's mistress.

My nanny told me that when
I was little, Papa was looking
through some photographs -

it must have been 1939.

I saw a picture of mother
and I went, "Mama! Mama!"

And he burst into tears
and left the room.

The circle of terror closed in
on everyone,

tightening until it touched
his own family.

He'd reached the family album

including the Georgian brother and
sister-in-law of his first wife,
Katyo Svanidze.

The Svanidzes were locked up -

she in a camp and he in a prison,
and he was shot there.

When she heard about it, she died.

Before she died, she wrote on a
pillowcase and sent it to my mother.

My mother wrote it down on paper
and showed it to Stalin.

He read it and said, "Eugenia, don't
ever do anything like that again."

She could see by his face
that she'd done something stupid.

You see, she understood that he'd
crossed them out of his life.

They didn't exist for him anymore.

When he put people in prison,
he just forgot about them.

What kind of a man is it
that can do that?

There was no clear end
to the Terror.

No specific date.

But by mid 1938,
Stalin had killed almost all
of the 1934 Central Committee,

enough of his generals
to undermine the army,

and enough industrial bosses to have
brought the country near standstill.

Those he hadn't killed
were rotting in the camps.

He had almost finished.
It was time to blame somebody.

He chose the head of his secret
police, Nikolai Yezhov.

Yezhov is perfect. He's behaving
like the cliche of a vampire -

living at night, permanently drunk,

Stalin subtlely turns against him,

brings up a very trusted,

The man he chose
to deliver the final blow

was the secret policeman
who'd been looking after his mother.

Beria had Yezhov arrested and shot
on 4th February 1940.

The Terror was very nearly over.

On 20th August that year,

a Soviet agent finally
tracked down Trotsky in Mexico

and plunged an ice-pick
into his head.

Stalin had once said,
"There is nothing sweeter
than to plan revenge on an enemy,

"see it executed, and then
go to bed to sleep peacefully."

He believed that he had neutralised
any threat from Nazi Germany

by signing a non-aggression pact
with Hitler.

In the early hours
of June 22nd 1941,

Hitler's forces burst onto Russian
soil along a 500-mile front.

In the first day, they shot down
2,000 Soviet planes

and slaughtered hundreds
of thousands of Red Army soldiers.

It was the greatest miscalculation
of his life.

The first few hours
after Operation Barborossa's start
were terrible ones for Stalin.

He refused to believe that what
was happening really was happening

and he refused, initially,

He started to speak
in a very, very low voice.

He was clearly mentally...
shattered by what had happened.

Stalin pulled himself together and
took control of Russian defences.

After a week of ever-worsening
disaster, he withdrew to his dacha.

It was half a crisis of confidence

and half a test of loyalty
for the Politburo.

They come out to the dacha -
all of them - cap in hand.

He stiffens when they arrive
because he thinks they've come
to arrest him.

He's frightened. Usually,
he'd be doing the arresting,

but in this case,
the buck stops with Stalin.

He says, "What have you come for?"

They say, "We want you to come back
and command the armies."

SPEECH IN RUSSIAN THROUGH SPEAKERS

On July 3rd, Stalin
broke his silence to make a speech
to the nation.

His delivery was described
as "dull and colourless."

Perhaps Stalin was more shaken
than people realised.

A new piece of evidence suggests
that at some point in 1941,

Stalin had more than just

TRANSLATOR: By chance, I met with
a very religious person at a church.

Somebody had told him that I knew
Stalin's grandchildren.

I said, "I'm Tina Egnatashvili."

He said, "I know this name -
Egnatashvili.

"I believe you are related
to Stalin."

And as we passed the church,
he drew me aside for conversation.

He said, "Do you know
that Stalin took confession?"

I said, "Josef Vissarionovich
Stalin?" I was amazed.

"He confessed in 1941,
'43, '45 and '48.

"He made these confessions
to my father."

And he told me that his father
took his secret to the grave,

but he had told his son,

"Remember, Stalin took confession
four times."

Is it possible that the great

in the crisis of 1941?

He was clearly shattered
by what had happened.

However, the idea that
he went into psychological meltdown
is wholly untrue.

He quickly gathered
his strength again.

Soon he was barking at his generals
and bullying his political
subordinates

in the way he had done
in recent years.

He took hold of the State Committee
for Defence and headed it.

He took hold of military strategy.

He killed the general who had been
in charge of the western front,

blaming him for the catastrophe
that he himself had caused
by his own misjudgment.

So he quickly reasserted himself.

Stalin run the war
as he had run everything else -

singlehandedly and without mercy.

In August 1941, he issued Order 270,

n captive.

Serious punishment awaited Soviet
prisoners-of war should they return.

Retreat was prohibited.

Stalin left his forces in no doubt
as to who they should fear most -
him or Hitler.

As soon as the war started,
Yakov, Stalin's eldest son,
was captured by the Germans.

Realising his identity,
they offered to exchange him
for one of their generals.

Stalin, who had pronounced, "there

d,

"I have no son called Yakov."

TRANSLATOR: I remember a person
bringing me an American,

or an English, magazine

with a picture of a soldier
hanging dead on barbed wire.

And the caption said, my father -
"Jacob Stalin."

Stalin decreed that the wives

and his own daughter-in-law
was no exception.

Yakov's wife was arrested and

rents.

This doesn't even surprise Gulia.

If his daughter-in-law was
considered guilty of something,

why should he treat her differently
from anybody else?

Blood relations didn't mean
anything to him at that time.

Stalin's ruthlessness,
first in building
an industrialised Soviet Union,

and then in allowing it
to be destroyed, would win the war.

One of the reasons
that the USSR was successful

was that they could afford to lose
more tanks, aircraft and more men

than the Germans
could afford to lose.

The Russians had huge industrial
and human resources...

unavailable to Adolf Hitler.

Victory cost Stalin an estimated
26 million Russian lives,

but he had won the war
and conquered Eastern Europe

and his prestige and popularity
had never been greater.

He had this vision
and one has to say
that he did turn the tank around.

The industrialisation
that took place over the 30 years
that Stalin was in power

took the rest of the Western world
about 150 years.

He also brought education and
training to Russia, which had none.

He changed that.

When the war was over,
he was almost 70.

He was now frail, exhausted.

But even if his political energies

.

Stalin became more paranoid that

His health went too.
He became increasingly sclerotic
and had high blood pressure,

so his physical health wasn't good.

Certainly, this paranoia became

His family had started to disappear
as early as 1938,

but for them,
the Terror never stopped.

It's very difficult
to understand this and the family
still don't understand it.

In 1947, he banished Yegenevya,
his elder sister-in-law...

first to prison
and then to the camps.

Then in 1948, Anna Sergeyevna,
his younger sister-in-law.

Even his beloved Svetlana,
bereft of her family,

came close to disappearing.

When Svetlana said to him, "Why
have you imprisoned my aunts?"

He said, "Don't play the advocate
or I'll imprison you."

Is it normal for a father to say
things like that to his daughter?

And finally Kira herself.

One day, about 25 days later...
It was two o'clock in the morning.

I'd locked up because I thought

n.

There was a ring at the door.
My little brother Sacha answered it.

He said, "There's three warrants
for arrest."

They were pretending
there were three to frighten us.

It was rather confusing.

Then Sacha said,
"Kira, they've come for you."

This was the ultimate destruction
of Stalin's family.

They remained
in solitary confinement.

Genya said she survived
because she thought of her children.

Otherwise she might have given up
life in prison.

TRANSLATOR: The secret police said,
"If you write to Stalin,
he'll let you out."

I said, "I'm offended.
I'm not going to write to Stalin."

As it turned out,
that's what saved me.

If anyone wrote to Stalin,

PHONE RINGS, KNOCKING

So now Stalin lay dying alone.

TRANSLATOR: If my father had known
that we were imprisoned,

what would he have said?

It's a lack of gratitude.
He lived with the family.
He was hidden by them.

And he married into the family.

But he said, "I'm a man of

son.

"You'll be silent there."

My mother came in and said,
"Stalin's let me out of prison."

My brother said, "You fool.

On the day of Stalin's funeral,
millions of Russians wept

and not just for the camera.

They grieved the passing
of the greatest tyrant
in a century of tyrants -

the man who had killed their
friends, neighbours and families.

But they had seen
how his cruel revolution
had made their country great.

They recognised that Stalin
was the last of the Russian Tsars.