Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secr by Edvard Radzinsky

Author:Edvard Radzinsky [Radzinsky, Edvard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307754684
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

ALYOSHA, MARIA, AND JOSEPH

His private life at this time seemed likely to remain a secret, and a source of legend. There was, however, one chronicler—a witness who enables us to catch a glimpse of this most secretive of human beings at home. Maria Svanidze.

Maria Svanidze was then in her forties (she was born in 1889). And she was more or less in love with Stalin.

Her husband, Alyosha Svanidze, was the brother of Stalin’s first wife. Svetlana Alliluyeva describes “Uncle Alyosha” as “a handsome Georgian of the Svanetian type, a short fair-haired man with blue eyes and an aquiline nose. He had received a European education at German universities, paid for by the Party.” Maria, a Jewish beauty, was a singer in the Tiflis opera company. She was already in her thirties when she divorced her first husband and married Alyosha. They had a son, to whom they gave the ultrarevolutionary name Dzhonrid (John Reed) in honor of the famous American Communist. Svanidze had worked in Georgia as head of the republic’s Finance Ministry in Budu Mdivani’s government.

In Moscow Maria saw a great deal of Nadya Stalin. Alyosha even wrote to his wife in care of Stalin’s apartment. Maria was very fond of Nadya. A year after Nadya’s death she wrote, “Now she’s no longer with us, but her family and her home are dear to me. I went to see Nyura Redens [Nadya’s sister Anna] yesterday. Pavel was there, and Zhenya … but it wasn’t the same. I feel very lonely without Nadya.”

She did, however, often visit the house which seemed so empty after Nadya’s death. It was there that she “observed” Joseph and Zhenya. And all this time she kept up her diary. Many pages have been torn out. Did Maria destroy them herself in that terrible year 1937? Or did the diary’s hero take the trouble to do it, when the diary came his way after Maria’s arrest?

But all this was in the future. For the time being the Svanidzes belonged to the innermost circle of Stalin’s friends. He called them Alyosha and Masha, they called him Joseph. Svetlana Alliluyeva described the Svanidzes as an ideal couple. But you need only read the diary to realize that the two Georgian revolutionaries had more in common than most friends. Alyosha’s European veneer also concealed the fiery temperament of a barbarian. An entry in the diary, from 1923, the year in which the Svanidzes married, reads: “I cried bitterly after that wild scene of jealousy, and he sat on the edge of the bed beside me: ‘It’s all because we love each other, you know.… All the unpleasantness is over now’ and he became so affectionate. When he makes jealous scenes it isn’t so much because he’s hurt and is suffering as because, according to him, I don’t know how to behave … and my conduct is very bad when men are present.” And an entry on March 30, 1934: “Why do I have to live with a man who

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.