Panic at the Dacha: How Stalin Hastened His Death by Excessive Security Due to His Fear of Being Assassinated.
The 7 key moments of Stalin's last days.
In an exceptional book, “The Last Days of Stalin”, that retraces the last days of Joseph Stalin, Joshua Rubenstein tells of the great embarrassment that seized the guards, doctors, and members of his first circle. A fear to act that precipitated his death.
Overview of this book, which I invite you to read, in 7 key moments of the last days of the one who finds Vladimir Putin a worthy successor in horror.
The last evening of Stalin
As they often did, Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, Nikolai Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev were watching a movie with him in the Kremlin on that fateful Saturday night in February 1953. After the movie, the four “comrades-in-arms” drove to Kuntsevo to join Stalin for dinner, who had left earlier for his dacha.
They stayed there until the early morning. This was not unusual, because he liked to keep them for endless hours and then sleep late the next day.
Again, according to Khrushchev, Stalin was “quite drunk after dinner and in a very jovial mood.” Stalin walked them to the door, jokingly, very friendly, “mischievously pointing his finger at Khrushchev's belly and calling him Mikita with a Ukrainian accent” - Beria and Malenkov got into one car and Khrushchev and Bulganin into another - “because nothing bad had happened during dinner.” It was five or six in the morning.
No more news from the Vojd
The next day, Sunday, March 1, 1953, did not go as planned. According to the schedule of the master of the house, the guards and household staff expected to hear from him around 11 a.m. or at the very least around noon, when Stalin asked for his tea or breakfast.
As part of the security protocol, they were under strict orders not to enter his apartments without being invited, an order they would violate at their own risk. But no call came, and there was no sound of footsteps or coughing. The guards waited.
In the afternoon, they noticed a light on in his apartments. In the early evening, sentries posted outside the dacha also saw a light through the window. But still no call, no request for tea or food. For security reasons, Stalin liked to sleep in different rooms, thinking that this would lead a potential assassin astray. This precaution also misled his guards, who never knew exactly where Stalin slept.
The caution of the guards
At 10 p.m. that night, the guards became so worried that they decided to use a pretext to send someone to the master's apartments. An official postal package had arrived from the Kremlin, a daily occurrence; Stalin needed to see these documents and it was the guards' responsibility to present them to him. So they decided to ask one of his long-time maids, Matriona Petrovna, to bring him the package. She was an elderly woman who had worked for him for many years.
They reasoned that if Stalin was surprised by her appearance in his apartments, she would be the least likely to arouse suspicion. She discovered him lying on the floor of the library in his night clothes. He was unconscious, his clothes soaked with urine. He could barely move his limbs. When he tried to speak, he only emitted a strange, muffled borborygma. Matriona Petrovna immediately alerted the guards, who lifted him to a nearby sofa.
Security paranoia
Although the dictator Stalin deployed the full resources of his empire to protect himself, all these precautions only served to increase his vulnerability. When Stalin collapsed it was his security measures that made it more difficult for his staff to know what was going on, to assist him, and to call for help.
Thus, his driver took different routes between the Kremlin and his dacha. His convoy of five identical limousines, without license plates, drove about 20 kilometers from Red Square to his residence, the drivers regularly passing each other to dissuade any attempt to attack. There were several locks on the gate and double rows of barbed wire all around the compound, as well as bodyguards among the household staff.
None of these security devices could prevent Stalin from lying on the floor for hours in his urine, paralyzed, and with no way to scream for help.
The fear of doctors
Although Stalin was unconscious, fear and anxiety continued to haunt everyone around him. Doctors were afraid to approach their patient. Khrushchev saw Professor Pavel Lukomsky approaching “him with infinite caution and, trembling nervously, touched Stalin's hand as if it were a burning iron.” Rybin also recalled the trembling hands of the doctors, unable to remove his shirt and forced to cut it off with scissors.
A young doctor performed a cardiogram and immediately stated that he had suffered a heart attack. The other doctors suspected a brain hemorrhage, but if they had failed to detect a heart attack, they were terrified of the repercussions.
Then the doctor left the dacha and the subject was not discussed again. In a context where the newspapers were denouncing a conspiracy to eliminate the Kremlin leadership, no doctor was sure that he would not be held responsible for the death of the dictator.
A lack of care
However, the patient's condition was already beyond effective treatment. After the stroke, Stalin remained unconscious, his leg, arm, and fingers paralyzed. In a report detailing their initial findings, the doctors included several specific pieces of information that should not be made public.
The patient's liver, which had swollen significantly, protruded several centimeters between the ribs. His right elbow was visibly bruised and swollen, an obvious result of his fall. When they lifted his eyelids, his eyeballs moved in both directions, right and left, betraying a loss of control.
In the face of such symptoms, they recommended the following remedies: absolute calm, application of eight medical leeches on the ears, a cold compress on the head, an enema with milk of magnesia, and the extraction of his false teeth. They also recommended that no one should try to feed him, but some liquids, such as soup or sweet tea, could be tried with caution, using a spoon and provided that Stalin did not choke.
The agony of Stalin
Stalin's daughter stayed at his bedside, at the “Nearby Dacha,” and saw life gradually leave her father. “In the last twelve hours, the lack of oxygen became acute. His face had changed, Stalin was gray. His lips had turned black and his features were increasingly unrecognizable. The last few hours were a slow strangulation. The agony was horrible. Stalin was choking to death before our eyes. At what seemed to me to be his very last moment, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked at everyone in the room. It was a terrible look, demented, or perhaps angry, and full of the fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of all those doctors bent over him. That look slipped over everyone in a second. Then something incomprehensible, and impressive happened, which to this day I cannot forget and do not understand. Stalin suddenly raised his left hand as if he was pointing at something above him and cursing us all. The next moment the spirit, after a final effort, tore itself from his flesh.”
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