TIME: Almanac 1995

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac 1995 / TIME Almanac 1995.iso / time / portrait / stalin / stalin.007 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-02-22 | 11.6 KB | 243 lines

<text id=93HT1364> <link 93XV0066> <link 93XP0500> <title> Stalin: The Heart Stops Beating </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--Stalin Portrait </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> March 16, 1953 The Heart Stops Beating </hdr> <body> No tyrant of history, neither khan nor caesar nor czar, amassed power so vast or so absolute. Greater than Peter the Great, he extended Russia's empire over a fourth of the globe and its shadow over the rest. More terrible than Ivan the Terrible, he enslaved millions in the name of freedom and sent millions to death in the name of improvement of the state. No corner of the world was safe from his ambition or secure from his intrigue. His word was gospel, his will law. He repealed truth and denied God. For millions, he was the infallible all, Uncle, Big Brother, Great Father, Leader, Teacher and--as a Soviet poet said of him--"Chief of all the people, Who callest men to life, Who wakest the earth." But he was just another human animal. Some time before 10 o'clock last Thursday night, March 5, Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, alias Koba (The Indomitable), alias Stalin (The Man of Steel), died. A Huge Secret. He died as he had lived, shrouded in dark and oriental mystery. For one of history's momentous events, the outside world had only the carefully stage-managed story told by the handful of men at Stalin's elbow. It was, nonetheless, very thorough: Late Sunday night, in his austere, book-lined apartment deep within the Kremlin, the Premier of Russia was struck unconscious; an artery burst, a massive hemorrhage spread through the left side of his brain. His right arm and leg were paralyzed, his speech gone. The elite of Soviet medicine--the Minister of Health and nine other doctors--assembled around the sickbed, their every gesture watched, their every muttered consultation monitored. For some 48 hours, only Joseph Stalin's intimates and his doctors knew the huge secret. Not until 8 o'clock Wednesday morning (shortly after midnight in New York) did the news burst upon the world. Radio Moscow sounded the Kremlin chimes, set the stage with an interlude of somber music, and then a voice spoke slow, methodical Russian: "The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. announce the great misfortune which has befallen our party and our people--the grave illness of Comrade J. V. Stalin. During the night of March 1 to 2, Comrade Stalin...had a hemorrhage...which affected vital parts of his brain...The Central Committee and the Council of Ministers express confidence that our party and the whole Soviet people will...display the greatest unity and cohesion, staunchness of spirit and vigilance..." There followed a second message, clinical and precise, from Joseph Stalin's ten physicians: "March 2 and 3, necessary measures for treatment were taken, directed toward improvement of the disturbed functions of breathing and circulation of the blood...At 2 a.m., March 4, the state of health of J. V. Stalin continued to remain serious...Breathing...36 per minute...Pulse...120 and completely irregular..." Russia's early morning newspapers were hours late. Muscovites on the way to work suspected something. They gathered in curious knots and queues at news kiosks. Shortly after 8 o'clock the papers arrived, full of meticulous details. The Russians, like the rest of the world, were being told more intimate facts about Stalin in his death throes than they had learned in all his 29 years of reign. Leeches at the Veins. Inside the Kremlin, working on their 73-year-old patient with all the artifices of medicine, the doctors tried penicillin, oxygen mask, glucose injections for nourishment, caffeine for stimulation. They even reached desperately backward for a remedy: Leeches to suck at the old man's veins. "During the past 24 hours, Stalin's condition has remained grave. The cerebral hemorrhage...has also impaired the stem section of the brain, respiration and blood circulation...The patient is in a state of sopor--profound unconsciousness." Clear March Moscow skies gave way to gloomy clouds and snow flurries. Across Stalin's empire, villagers and peasants and workers clotted around loudspeakers and bulletin boards. In Moscow, a large crowd gathered before the Kremlin's huge Spassky gates. They shuffled sadly in the snow, huddled in shawls and greatcoats, talking in whispers. Many had tears in their eyes, some sobbed. Fourteen hours later came the third bulletin: "During Wednesday night and the first half of today, Joseph Stalin's condition became worse. At 8 this morning, there developed signs of...a collapse...At 11:30, there was a second serious collapse." Bearded priests of the Russian Orthodox Church and the clergy of Moscow's few "outside" churches--Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Moslem and Buddhist--called special services to pray for the man who boasted of his atheism. The rabbis of Russia summoned their worshipers to bless the man who had so recently set in motion the scourge of anti-Semitism. In the Kremlin the elaborate medical ritual went on--every flutter of an eyelid neatly noted, every rasp of breath counted. Murder by medicine was a recognized technique in the world Stalin built and ruled; his wary survivors labored to document a thorough record of the Boss's last moments. The "immediate family" was summoned--that apparently included son Vasily, 32, lieutenant general of the air force, and daughter Svetlana, 30. No mention was made of Stalin's third wife, Roza, sister of his longtime comrade Lazar Kaganovich. The gasping old man never awoke to say goodbye. At 9:50 o'clock that night, as a wintry wind howled past Kremlin battlements built by the Czars, he died. Six hours later came the communique: "The heart of the comrade and inspired continuer of Lenin's will, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people--Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin--has stopped beating. "Dear comrades and friends...The steel-like unity and monolithic unity of the ranks of the party constitutes the main condition for its strength and might...Long live the great and all-conquering teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin! "Long live our mighty Socialist Motherland! "Long live our heroic Soviet people!" Hands on the Tiller. Swiftly but quietly, the Soviet world put on mourning. The momentous news had come piece by piece over 48 hours, every word carefully prepared and timed to cushion the shock. Everything about it suggested that a fresh, firm hand had taken over the instant Joseph Stalin's had begun to falter. The world awoke next day to learn that his successor already had stepped into office, that Stalin's body was in the hands of the embalmers (the same who mummified Lenin). His funeral date had been set, and the Supreme Soviet had been summoned for an emergency session. The dictator was dead, but dictatorship continued; the efficiency of all this suggested to the outside world that Stalin may have been dead even before the first announcement of his illness. On Friday afternoon, a motor hearse rolled to the ornate House of the Trade Unions. There, where Lenin lay in state in 1924, the neatly arrayed remains of Joseph Stalin were placed. In sallow, impassive dignity, Stalin's body lay in the glare of spotlights, the huge grey head resting on a silken pillow, the chest of his simple, military tunic adazzle with medals and ribbons; others glinted on a pillow laid at the foot of his bier. Through the great hall floated the sickish scent of massed flowers, from Peking and all the conquered capitals of Eastern Europe, from Communist Parties all over, from Stalingrad and Stalino and Stalinabad and Stalinogrosk. The heirs themselves--Premier Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Marshal Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich--stood the first honor watch at the bier. Then the huge doors were thrown open. For 60 hours, the men, women & children of Moscow marched in to gaze, in awe, in curiosity, or in grief, at the powerful little man so few had seen in life. Muffled Tread. In the freezing cold of Monday morning, March 9, the pageant of death was played out to its end. A silent 35,000 massed in the flower-banked vastness of Red Square. Thousands held black-bordered portraits of the dead man. A 750- piece band stood motionless. Tall, grey-coated guardsmen paced silently before the great red and black stone mausoleum Stalin had built for Lenin, and now is to share with him until the government builds a promised new Pantheon for Stalin, Lenin and all the lesser gods of Communism. From the distance came the sound of funereal music and the muffle of treading feet. Then came the flower bearers from the Hall of Columns, hundreds of them. Soviet generals bore the Generalissimo's medals on red pillows. Next came a lone soldier on a jet black horse. Then eight more black horses pulling a gun carriage. There, framed in red for revolution and black for death, rode the coffin of Joseph Stalin, the dead man himself visible through its glass dome. The Foreigner. A few steps behind walked the new Premier, Malenkov, in a huge black coat with grey fur collar. On his left, in a position of singular honor, strode not a Russian but a foreigner--Premier Chou En-lai of Red China, representing Mao. Flanking them walked the rest of Moscow's hierarchy, and behind them the diplomats and the plenipotentiaries of the satellites--Czechoslovakia's Gottwald, Hungary's Rakosi, Poland's Bierut and others. The procession halted and the pallbearers, headed by Malenkov, gently moved the coffin from the carriage. Silently the new leaders of Russia climbed the 40 marble steps to the top of Lenin's tomb, where Joseph Stalin had stood innumerable times to receive the salute of the masses--where he had stood grimly that day in November of 1941 to review the Red army while the German Wehrmacht pounded at the gates of Moscow; where he had stood triumphantly on the unforgettable day in 1945 as his army passed, and tossed the shattered banners and standards of the crushed invaders at his feet. This time it was Stalin's eulogizers who stood there. From new Premier Georgy Malenkov came the kind of message that served his mentor so long and so well. "The Soviet Union...is waging a consistent policy...of peace...A policy based on the Lenin-Stalin premise of the possibility of coexistence and peaceful competition of...capitalist and socialist," said he. But Russia had a "sacred duty" to keep its army mighty. Next spoke Beria (who called Malenkov the disciple of Stalin) and then, slightly choked by emotion, Old Bolshevik V. M. Molotov. At 11:55 a.m. the orators were done, and the world was noting the order in which they spoke--Malenkov, Beria, Molotov. At 11:58 the body of Stalin was pushed behind the big metal doors of the mausoleum. At the first stroke of noon by the Kremlin clock, a wave of sound--artillery salvos, clanging chimes, blasting factory whistles--ranged across Soviet Russia and its satellites. Thus was the conqueror laid to rest--not with a prayer, but with whistle's scream and cannon's roar. </body> </article> </text>