Nadezhda Alliluyeva. The tragic story of Stalin's second wife

ALLILUEVA Nadezhda Sergeevna 0901-1932) - Stalin’s second wife. The leader's first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, died of natural causes (from tuberculosis or pneumonia). Alliluyeva shot herself. Nadezhda Sergeevna was 22 years younger than her husband. Already being the mother of two children, she tried to actively participate in public life, entered the Industrial Academy. But her last years family life were constantly overshadowed by Stalin's rudeness and inattention.

“The evidence that I have,” writes Stalin’s biographer D. Volkogonov, “shows that here too Stalin became an indirect (or is it indirect?) cause of her death. On the night of November 8-9, 1932, Alliluyev-Stalin committed suicide.

The immediate cause of her tragic act was a quarrel, barely noticeable to others. which took place at a small festive evening. where were the Molotovs? Voroshilov with his wives, some other people from the General Secretary’s entourage. His wife’s fragile nature could not bear Stalin’s next rude behavior. The 15th anniversary of the October Revolution was overshadowed. Alliluyeva went to her room and shot herself. Karolina Vasilievna Til, family housekeeper. coming in the morning to wake up Alliluyeva. found her dead. Walter was lying on the floor. They called Stalin. Molotov and Voroshilov.

There is reason to believe. that the deceased left a suicide letter. One can only speculate about this. There are always and will remain big and small mysteries in the world that will never be solved. The death of Nadezhda Sergeevna, I think, was not accidental. Probably the last thing that dies in a Man is hope. When there is no hope, there is no longer a person. Faith and hope always double their strength. Stalin's wife no longer had them."

Leon Trotsky gives a different date and gives a different interpretation of the reason for Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s suicide: “On November 9, 1932, Alliluyeva died suddenly. She was only 30 years old. Soviet newspapers were silent about the reasons for her unexpected death. In Moscow they whispered that she had shot herself and talked about the reason ". At an evening at Voroshilov's in the presence of all the nobles, she allowed herself a critical remark about the peasant policy that led to famine in the village. Stalin loudly answered her with the most rude abuse that exists in the Russian language. The Kremlin servants drew attention to Alliluyeva's excited state when she "was returning to her apartment. After some time, a shot was heard from her room. Stalin received many expressions of sympathy and moved on to the order of the day."

Finally, we find the third version of the reason for Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s suicide in the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev. “I saw Stalin’s wife,” says former leader, - shortly before her death in 1932. It was, I think, at an anniversary celebration October revolution(that is, November 7). There was a parade on Red Square. Alliluyeva and I stood next to each other on the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum and talked. It was a cold, windy day. As usual. Stalin was in his military overcoat. The top button is not fastened. Alliluyeva looked at him and said: “My husband is without a scarf again. He will catch a cold and get sick.” I could tell from the way she said it. that she was in her usual, good mood.

The next day, Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalin’s close associates, gathered the party secretaries and announced that Nadezhda Sergeevna had died suddenly. I thought: “How can this be? I just talked to her. Such a beautiful woman.” But what to do, it happens that people die suddenly.

A day or two later, Kaganovich again gathered the same people and declared:

- I am speaking on behalf of Stalin. He asked to gather you and tell you what really happened. It was not a natural death. She committed suicide.

He didn't give any details and we didn't ask any questions.

We buried Alliluyeva. Stalin looked sad as he stood at her grave. I don’t know what was in his soul, but outwardly he was grieving.

After Stalin's death, I learned the story of Alliluyeva's death.

Of course, this story is not documented in any way. Vlasik. Stalin’s security chief said that after the parade everyone went to have dinner with Military Commissar Kliment Voroshilov in his large apartment. After parades and other similar events, everyone usually went to Voroshilov for lunch.

The commander of the parade and some members of the Politburo went there directly from Red Square. Everyone drank. as usual in such cases. Finally, everyone left. Stalin also left. But he didn't go home.

It was too late. Who knows what time it was. Nadezhda Sergeevna began to worry. She began to look for him and call one of the dachas. And she asked the officer on duty if Stalin was there. “Yes,” he answered, “Comrade Stalin is here.”

He said that there was a woman with him and said her name. This was the wife of a military man, Gusev, who was also at that dinner. When Stalin left, he took her with him. I was told that she is very beautiful. And Stalin slept with her at this dacha, and Alliluyeva found out about this from the officer on duty.

In the morning - I don’t know exactly when - Stalin came home, but Nadezhda Sergeevna was no longer alive. She didn't leave any note, and if there was a note, we were never told about it.

Later Vlasik said:

- That officer is an inexperienced fool. She asked him, and he went and told her everything.

Then there were rumors that perhaps Stalin had killed her. This version is not very clear, the first seems more plausible. After all, Vlasik was his guard.”

Perhaps all three versions are true - for example, there could have been a quarrel at a party, and then, when Alliluyeva found out that there was another woman with Stalin, the grievances combined, and the measure of suffering exceeded the instinct of self-preservation.

The name of Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva became known to the Soviet people only after her death. On those cold November days of 1932, people who knew this young woman intimately said goodbye to her. They did not want to make a circus out of the funeral, but Stalin ordered otherwise. The funeral procession, which passed through the central streets of Moscow, attracted a crowd of thousands. Everyone wanted to see off the wife of the “Father of Nations” on her last journey. These funerals could only be compared with the mourning ceremonies previously held for the death of Russian empresses.

The unexpected death of a thirty-year-old woman, and the first lady of the state, could not but raise a lot of questions. Since foreign journalists who were in Moscow at that time were unable to obtain information of interest from the official authorities, the foreign press was full of reports about a variety of reasons for the untimely death of Stalin’s wife.

Citizens of the USSR, who also wanted to know what caused this sudden death, remained in the dark for a long time. Various rumors spread around Moscow, according to which Nadezhda Alliluyeva died in a car accident, died from an acute attack of appendicitis. A number of other assumptions have also been made.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin’s version turned out to be completely different. He officially stated that his wife, who had been ill for several weeks, got out of bed too early, this caused serious complications, resulting in death.

Stalin could not say that Nadezhda Sergeevna was seriously ill, since a few hours before her death she was seen alive and well at a concert in the Kremlin dedicated to the fifteenth anniversary of the Great October Revolution. Alliluyeva chatted cheerfully with high-ranking government and party officials and their wives.

What was the real reason for the early death of this young woman?

There are three versions: according to the first of them, Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide; supporters of the second version (these were mainly OGPU employees) argued that the first lady of the state was killed by Stalin himself; according to the third version, Nadezhda Sergeevna was shot dead on the orders of her husband. To understand this complicated matter, it is necessary to recall the entire history of the relationship between the Secretary General and his wife.

They got married in 1919, Stalin was then 40 years old, and his young wife was only a little over 17. An experienced man who knew the taste of family life (Alliluyeva was his second wife), and a young girl, almost a child... Could their marriage have become happy?

Nadezhda Sergeevna was, so to speak, a hereditary revolutionary. Her father, Sergei Yakovlevich, was one of the first among Russian workers to join the ranks of the Russian Social Democratic Party; he took an active part in three Russian revolutions and Civil War. Nadezhda's mother also took part in the revolutionary actions of Russian workers.

The girl was born in 1901 in Baku; her childhood years occurred during the Caucasian period of the Alliluyev family’s life. Here in 1903 Sergei Yakovlevich met Joseph Dzhugashvili.

According to family legend, the future dictator saved two-year-old Nadya when she fell into the water while playing on the Baku embankment.

After 14 years, Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva met again, this time in St. Petersburg. Nadya was studying at the gymnasium at that time, and thirty-eight-year-old Joseph Vissarionovich had recently returned from Siberia.

The sixteen-year-old girl was very far from politics. She was more interested in pressing questions about food and shelter than global problems world revolution.

In her diary of those years, Nadezhda noted: “We have no plans to leave St. Petersburg. Provisions are good so far. Eggs, milk, bread, meat can be obtained, although expensive. In general, we can live, although we (and everyone in general) are in a terrible mood... it’s boring, you can’t go anywhere.”

Nadezhda Sergeevna rejected rumors about a Bolshevik attack in the last days of October 1917 as completely groundless. But the revolution was accomplished.

In January 1918, together with other high school students, Nadya visited several times All-Russian Congress Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. “Quite interesting,” she wrote down the impressions of those days in her diary. “Especially when Trotsky or Lenin speak, the rest speak very sluggishly and meaninglessly.”

Nevertheless, Nadezhda, who considered all other politicians uninteresting, agreed to marry Joseph Stalin. The newlyweds settled in Moscow, Alliluyeva went to work in Lenin's secretariat under Fotieva (a few months earlier she had become a member of the RCP(b)).

In 1921, the family welcomed its first child, who was named Vasily. Nadezhda Sergeevna, who devoted all her strength to social work, could not pay due attention to the child. Joseph Vissarionovich was also very busy. Alliluyeva’s parents took care of raising little Vasily, and the servants also provided all possible assistance.

In 1926, a second child was born. The girl was named Svetlana. This time Nadezhda decided to raise the child on her own.

Together with a nanny who helped care for her daughter, she lived for some time at a dacha near Moscow.

However, matters required Alliluyeva’s presence in Moscow. Around the same time, she began collaborating with the magazine “Revolution and Culture”; she often had to go on business trips.

Nadezhda Sergeevna tried not to forget about her beloved daughter: the girl had all the best - clothes, toys, food. Son Vasya also did not go unnoticed.

Nadezhda Alliluyeva was good friend for your daughter. Even without being next to Svetlana, she gave her practical advice.

Unfortunately, only one letter from Nadezhda Sergeevna to her daughter has survived, asking her to be smart and reasonable: “Vasya wrote to me, a girl is playing pranks. It's terribly boring to receive letters like this about a girl.

I thought that I left her big and sensible, but it turns out that she is very small and does not know how to live like an adult... Be sure to answer me how you decided to live further, seriously or somehow...”

In memory of Svetlana, who lost herself early dear person, the mother remained “very beautiful, smooth, smelling of perfume.”

Later, Stalin's daughter said that the first years of her life were the happiest.

The same cannot be said about the marriage of Alliluyeva and Stalin. Relations between them became more and more chilly every year.

Joseph Vissarionovich often went overnight to his dacha in Zubalovo. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, but most often accompanied by actresses, whom all high-ranking Kremlin figures loved very much.

Some contemporaries claimed that even during Alliluyeva’s life, Stalin began dating Lazar Kaganovich’s sister Rosa. The woman often visited the leader’s Kremlin chambers, as well as Stalin’s dacha.

Nadezhda Sergeevna knew very well about her husband’s love affairs and was very jealous of him. Apparently, she really loved this man, who could not find any other words for her except “fool” and other rude words.

Stalin showed his discontent and contempt in the most offensive way, and Nadezhda endured all this. She repeatedly attempted to leave her husband with her children, but each time she was forced to return.

According to some eyewitnesses, a few days before her death, Alliluyeva made an important decision - to finally move in with her relatives and end all relations with her husband.

It is worth noting that Joseph Vissarionovich was a despot not only in relation to the people of his country. His family members also felt a lot of pressure, perhaps even more than anyone else.

Stalin liked his decisions not to be discussed and to be carried out unquestioningly, but Nadezhda Sergeevna was an intelligent woman with a strong character, she knew how to defend her opinion. This is evidenced by the following fact.

In 1929, Alliluyeva expressed a desire to begin her studies at the institute. Stalin resisted this for a long time; he rejected all arguments as insignificant. Avel Enukidze and Sergo Ordzhonikidze came to the woman’s aid, and together they managed to convince the leader of the need for Nadezhda to receive an education.

Soon she became a student at one of the Moscow universities. Only one director knew that Stalin’s wife was studying at the institute.

With his consent, two secret agents of the OGPU were admitted to the faculty under the guise of students, whose duty was to ensure the safety of Nadezhda Alliluyeva.

The secretary general's wife came to the institute by car. The driver who took her to classes stopped a few blocks before the institute; Nadezhda covered the remaining distance on foot. Later, when she was given a new GAZ car, she learned to drive on her own.

Stalin made a big mistake by allowing his wife to enter the world of ordinary citizens. Communication with fellow students opened Nadezhda’s eyes to what was happening in the country. Previously, she knew about government policy only from newspapers and official speeches, which reported that everything was fine in the Land of the Soviets.

In reality, everything turned out to be completely different: beautiful pictures of life Soviet people were marred by forced collectivization and unjust expulsions of peasants, mass repressions and famine in Ukraine and the Volga region.

Naively believing that her husband did not know what was going on in the state, Alliluyeva told him and Enukidze about the institute conversations. Stalin tried to avoid this topic, accusing his wife of collecting gossip spread by Trotskyists everywhere. However, left alone, he cursed Nadezhda with the worst words and threatened to ban her from attending classes at the institute.

Soon after this, fierce purges began in all universities and technical schools. OGPU employees and members of the party control commission carefully checked the students' trustworthiness.

Stalin carried out his threat, and two months of student life disappeared from Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s life. Thanks to the support of Enukidze, who convinced the “father of nations” that his decision was wrong, she was able to graduate from college.

Studying at a university contributed to expanding not only my circle of interests, but also my circle of friends. Nadezhda made many friends and acquaintances. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin became one of her closest comrades in those years.

Under the influence of communication with this man and fellow students, Alliluyeva soon developed independent judgments, which she openly expressed to her power-hungry husband.

Stalin's dissatisfaction grew every day, he needed an obedient like-minded woman, and Nadezhda Sergeevna began to allow herself critical remarks about party and government officials who carried out the party's policy in life under the strict guidance of the Secretary General. The desire to learn as much as possible about the life of her native people at this stage of their history forced Nadezhda Sergeevna to pay special attention to such problems of national importance as famine in the Volga region and Ukraine, and the repressive policies of the authorities. The case of Ryutin, who dared to speak out against Stalin, did not escape her notice.

The policy pursued by her husband no longer seemed correct to Alliluyeva. The differences between her and Stalin gradually intensified, eventually developing into severe contradictions.

“Betrayal” - this is how Joseph Vissarionovich described the behavior of his wife.

It seemed to him that Nadezhda Sergeevna’s communication with Bukharin was to blame, but he could not openly object to their relationship.

Only once, silently approaching Nadya and Nikolai Ivanovich, who were walking along the paths of the park, Stalin dropped the terrible word “I’ll kill.” Bukharin took these words as a joke, but Nadezhda Sergeevna, who knew her husband’s character very well, was frightened. Tragedy occurred shortly after this incident.

On November 7, 1932, widespread celebrations were planned for the fifteenth anniversary of the Great October Revolution. After the parade held on Red Square, all high-ranking party and statesmen My wives and I went to a reception at the Bolshoi Theater.

However, one day to celebrate such significant date there was little. The next day, November 8, another reception was held in the huge banquet hall, which was attended by Stalin and Alliluyeva.

According to eyewitnesses, the Secretary General sat opposite his wife and threw balls rolled from bread pulp at her. According to another version, he threw tangerine peels at Alliluyeva.

For Nadezhda Sergeevna, who experienced such humiliation in front of several hundred people, the holiday was hopelessly ruined. After leaving the banquet hall, she headed home. Polina Zhemchuzhina, Molotov’s wife, also left with her.

Some argue that Ordzhonikidze’s wife Zinaida, with whom the first lady had friendly relations, acted as a comforter. However, Alliluyeva had practically no real friends, except for Alexandra Yulianovna Kanel, the head physician of the Kremlin hospital.

On the night of the same day, Nadezhda Sergeevna passed away. Her lifeless body was discovered on the floor in a pool of blood by Carolina Vasilievna Til, who worked as a housekeeper in the house of the Secretary General.

Svetlana Alliluyeva later recalled: “Shaking with fear, she ran to our nursery and called the nanny with her, she could not say anything. They went together. Mom was lying covered in blood next to her bed, in her hand was a small Walther pistol. Two years before the terrible tragedy, this lady’s weapon was given to Nadezhda by her brother Pavel, who worked in the Soviet trade mission in Germany in the 1930s.

There is no exact information about whether Stalin was at home on the night of November 8–9, 1932. According to one version, he went to the dacha, Alliluyeva called him there several times, but he left her calls unanswered.

According to supporters of the second version, Joseph Vissarionovich was at home, his bedroom was located opposite his wife’s room, so he could not hear the shots.

Molotov claimed that on that terrible night, Stalin, heavily fueled by alcohol at the banquet, was fast asleep in his bedroom. He was allegedly upset by the news of his wife’s death, he even cried. In addition, Molotov added that Alliluyeva “was a bit of a psychopath at that time.”

Fearing information leaks, Stalin personally controlled all messages received by the press. It was important to demonstrate that the head of the Soviet state was not involved in what happened, hence the talk that he was at the dacha and did not see anything.

However, from the testimony of one of the guards the opposite follows. That night he was at work and dozed off when his sleep was interrupted by a sound similar to the knock of a door closing.

Opening his eyes, the man saw Stalin leaving his wife’s room. Thus, the guard could hear both the sound of a door slamming and a pistol shot.

People who study data on the Alliluyeva case argue that Stalin did not necessarily shoot himself. He could provoke his wife, and she committed suicide in his presence.

It is known that Nadezhda Alliluyeva left a suicide letter, but Stalin destroyed it immediately after reading it. The Secretary General could not allow anyone else to find out the contents of this message.

Other facts indicate that Alliluyeva did not commit suicide, but was killed. Thus, Dr. Kazakov, who was on duty at the Kremlin hospital on the night of November 8-9, 1932, and was invited to examine the death of the first lady, refused to sign the suicide report drawn up earlier.

According to the doctor, the shot was fired from a distance of 3–4 m, and the deceased could not independently shoot herself in the left temple, since she was not left-handed.

Alexandra Kanel, invited to the Kremlin apartment of Alliluyeva and Stalin on November 9, also refused to sign a medical report according to which the secretary general’s wife died suddenly from an acute attack of appendicitis.

Other doctors at the Kremlin Hospital, including Dr. Levin and Professor Pletnev, also did not sign this document. The latter were arrested during the purges of 1937 and executed.

Alexandra Canel was removed from office a little earlier, in 1935. Soon she died, allegedly from meningitis. This is how Stalin dealt with people who opposed his will.

Even seventy years later, researchers have not reached a consensus regarding the causes and circumstances of the suicide of Stalin’s second wife

Nadezhda Alliluyeva shot herself on the night of November 8-9, 1932. The newspapers reported that Stalin's second wife died due to an unsuccessful appendicitis operation. We said goodbye to the deceased on November 11. During the funeral service, Stalin allegedly pushed the coffin away from himself and declared: “She left like an enemy!” And in his hearts he threw in the face of Nadezhda’s closest friend and godfather Avel Enukidze: “You baptized her, you bury her.” During the “great purge,” Enukidze and Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s closest friend, Maria Svanidze, were shot.

Why did Nadezhda Alliluyeva pass away? This question still - almost seventy years later - worries researchers.

“My father considered her death a betrayal.”

Nadezhda Alliluyeva was born in 1901 in Baku into the family of revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev. She married Stalin in 1918, being 22 years younger than her husband. After the wedding, those surrounded by the future generalissimo said that the young wife was actually his illegitimate daughter and that in 1903 he saved Nadezhda when she fell into the river. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Nadezhda was a kind, but unbalanced woman. Already having two children, she actively participated in public life and entered the industrial academy. The couple often quarreled; in 1926, Nadezhda and her children even left her husband for Leningrad. In the last years before his wife's death, Stalin was often rude and inattentive to her.

The 75-year-old daughter of Nadezhda Alliluyeva and Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, who lives in London, said in an interview with the weekly Boulevard: “No one could understand how she could do this. They referred to illness. When I got older, my aunts told me that, of course, depression was to blame. But my mother was a very organized, responsible person, and she didn’t throw herself into any antics. She was only 31 years old. Terrible! My father considered this a betrayal. Immediately they began to whisper that he killed her (this is still going on). But we in the family know that this is not so. He told my uncle, Pavel Sergeevich: “She crippled me for life.” He stopped trusting people."

Stalin did not come to the Novodevichy cemetery on the day of the funeral. On November 18, Pravda published his letter: “I offer my heartfelt gratitude to the organizations, institutions, comrades and individuals who expressed their condolences on the death of my close friend and comrade Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva-Stalina.” On the monument made of Italian marble, created by the sculptor Ivan Shadr, a laconic inscription was carved: “Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva-Stalina (1901-1932) member of the CPSU (b) (from Stalin).” Later the monument as a work of art was sent to Tretyakov Gallery, and a copy was installed in its place.

Alliluyeva shot in the left, not the right temple

One of Stalin’s biographers, Dmitry Volkogonov, claims that “the immediate cause of her (Alliluyeva. - Author) tragic act was a quarrel, barely noticeable to those around her, which occurred at a small festive evening, where Molotov and Voroshilov with their wives, some other people from the Secretary General's entourage. His wife’s fragile nature could not bear Stalin’s next rude act; the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution was overshadowed. Alliluyeva went to her room and shot herself. Carolina Vasilievna Til, the family's housekeeper, came to wake Alliluyeva up in the morning and found her dead. Walter was lying on the floor. There is reason to believe that the deceased left a suicide letter. One can only speculate about this.”

On the other hand, Molotov writes in his diaries that Nadezhda was very jealous of Stalin. "Gypsy blood. That same night she shot herself. Polina (Molotov’s wife - author) condemned her action and said: “Nadya was wrong. She left him during such a difficult period!” What do you remember? Stalin picked up the pistol with which Alliluyeva shot herself and said: “And it’s a toy pistol, I shot once a year.” I was bad husband, I didn’t have time to take her to the movies.” They started a rumor that he killed her. I've never seen him cry before. And here, at Alliluyeva’s coffin, I saw his tears roll down.”

Polina Zhemchuzhina, Molotov’s wife, had a personal secretary who, in the mid-30s, ended up in a camp, where one day she allegedly told her misfortune friends that after a banquet at Voroshilov’s, Stalin and Nadezhda, having returned home, first talked about something in raised voices, and then went into the office. A soft shot sounded. It is unknown whether Alliluyeva pulled the trigger herself, or whether her enraged husband did it. The second version is supported by the fact that Alliluyeva shot herself in the left and not the right temple (although it is possible that she was left-handed).

Stalin's granddaughter Galina Dzhugashvili (daughter of his eldest son Yakov. - Author) is sure that the reason for Alliluyeva's suicide was a quarrel at Voroshilov's apartment. Nadezhda allegedly went to the Kremlin, and Stalin went to the dacha. She called her husband several times, but he never answered the phone.

Stalin went to the dacha with someone else's wife

Why did Stalin and Alliluyeva quarrel? According to one legend, Stalin at Voroshilov’s banquet, knowing that his wife did not take a drop of alcohol into her mouth, shouted loudly: “Hey, drink!” “I’m not saying ‘hey’ to you,” Alliluyeva was offended and, going home, committed suicide. According to Leon Trotsky, “at an evening at Voroshilov’s in the presence of all the nobles, she (Alliluyeva - Author) allowed herself a critical remark about the peasant policy that led to famine in the village. Stalin loudly responded to her with the rudest abuse that exists in the Russian language. The Kremlin servants noticed Alliluyeva’s excited state when she returned to her apartment. After some time, a shot was heard from her room.”

However, Trotsky is contradicted by Khrushchev, who in his memoirs names not a political, but a purely personal reason for Alliluyeva’s suicide. This story, according to Nikita Sergeevich, was told to him by Stalin’s personal guard Nikolai Vlasik. After a festive meal at Voroshilov’s, Alliluyeva went home, and Stalin went to the dacha with someone else’s wife. "It was too late. Who knows what time it was,” writes Nikita Sergeevich. - Nadezhda Sergeevna began to worry. She began to look for him and call one of the dachas. And she asked the officer on duty if Stalin was there. “Yes,” he answered, “Comrade Stalin is here.” He said that there was a woman with him and said her name. I was told that she is very beautiful. In the morning - I don’t know exactly when - Stalin came home, but Nadezhda Sergeevna was no longer alive. She didn't leave any note, and if there was a note, we were never told about it. Vlasik later said: “That officer is an inexperienced fool. She asked him, and he went and told her everything.” Then there were rumors that perhaps Stalin had killed her. This version is not very clear; suicide seems more plausible. After all, Vlasik was his guard.”

This version is complemented by the legend that a few days before his wife’s suicide, Stalin, at Gorky’s dacha, openly flirted with a beautiful actress whom Tukhachevsky brought with him. The couple quarreled, the offended Alliluyeva left, but Stalin stayed and continued to have fun.

One cannot help but note one almost mystical coincidence - Molotov, whose wife Alliluyeva was friends with, also died on November 8th. True, 54 years after her death. Molotov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery, not far from Alliluyeva.

Favorite women of Joseph Vissarionovich

...We don’t want heavenly truth,
It is easier for us to lie on earth.

Joseph Dzhugashvili.
1896 poem in translation
from Georgian F. Chueva

When Stalin’s second wife passed away on the night of November 9, 1932, by pressing the trigger of a miniature Walther, he was not yet fifty-three. For a man - a blooming age. From 52-year-old Ivan the Terrible, who was one of the idols of the “leader of all nations,” his seventh wife gave birth to Tsarevich Dimitri, and the restless tsar sent his ambassador to England to woo his eighth wife.

Joseph Vissarionovich did not marry a third time, but it would be unfair to believe that he turned into a misogynist. Although he carefully hid his personal life from prying eyes.

Those who had the opportunity to communicate with Stalin almost unanimously note his charm, and many considered him handsome. “I also liked Stalin in everyday life, if I met him at his dinners. - Khrushchev recalled after he had debunked Stalin’s “cult of personality.” “They were such casual family dinners, with jokes and stuff.” Stalin was very humane at these dinners, and I was impressed by this.” “In his personal life, Stalin was very modest, he dressed simply,” adds Mikoyan, who only fell out of favor with him towards the end of the leader’s life. “Civilian clothes suited him very well, emphasizing his simplicity even more.” “He has a lovely smile,” notes Korney Chukovsky, Barmaley’s creator. “Stalin knew how to charm people,” Beria’s son testifies. “In general, Stalin was handsome,” states Molotov, the second person in the Stalinist hierarchy. “Women were supposed to be attracted to him.” He was a success."

And he really was successful with women. And in 1918 in Petrograd, one of them awarded him with a venereal disease (presumably gonorrhea). When Molotov was asked about this, he smiled:
- Well, it was like that.

Ekaterina Georgievna, the mother of Joseph Dzhugashvili, unhappy in her personal life (her husband, a shoemaker, drank like a shoemaker), predicted a career for her son as a clergyman and until her last days she blamed him for his disobedience. Having already become the “autocrat of All Rus',” he rarely saw her, although he repeatedly visited the Caucasus on vacation. His letters to his mother, also infrequent, are written as if according to a template, and rarely in any of them do notes of filial love break through:

“September 29, 1933.
Hello, my mother! How do you feel, how are you living? I received your letter. It's good that you don't forget us. Now I feel good and healthy. If you need anything, let me know. Whatever you instruct, I will do. Yours Soso.”

One can’t help but recall the description given to his idol by “Stalin’s People’s Commissar” Kaganovich: “Stalin did not recognize any personal relationships. For him there was no love, so to speak, for a person as a person. He had a love for faces in politics.”

And further. During the autopsy, doctors found that the left hemisphere of Stalin’s brain, responsible for the thought process, was larger than the right hemisphere, which forms emotions.

Stalin surrounded his mother with care, but with the care of strangers. He settled her in Tbilisi in the former palace of the Governor-General, where she, deeply religious and alien to luxury, occupied one small and dark room. My son was here only once, in 1935. Is this the kind of concern that old Kate expected? God knows.

Stalin did not come to the funeral of his mother, who died on July 4, 1937: the closed trial of Marshal Tukhachevsky, army commanders Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman, Kork and Putna had just ended. They were shot. Next in line were Bukharin, Rykov... Things were up to their necks.

A wreath was placed on the grave of Ekaterina Georgievna Dzhugashvili, located on Mount David next to Griboedov’s grave, with the inscription on the ribbon: “To my dear and beloved mother from the son of Joseph Dzhugashvili (from Stalin).”

I was there. There is a funicular from Tbilisi to the mountain. An unremarkable grave of a simple Georgian woman who gave birth to the evil genius of the 20th century. Even Churchill stood before him.

In his personal archive, Stalin kept only documents to which he wanted to limit access or which evoked in him some unknown associations and feelings. For example, in the drawer of his desk under an old newspaper they found a note from Bukharin, written before the execution. “Koba,” Nikolai Ivanovich addressed his old friend, “why did you need my life?”

Among other papers, Stalin also kept in his archive a letter from a completely unknown, not very literate woman, although thousands and thousands of letters were received in his name, finding rest in the folders of the archives of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, ministries and departments. The letter arrived at Stalin's secretariat in April 1938 from a Muscovite M. Mikhailovskaya, who, as follows from the rather confusing text, is concerned about the fate of a certain Praskovya Georgievna Mikhailovskaya, the wife of her nephew. She disappeared in broad daylight in Moscow, where she had come from Saratov region to fulfill the behest of her recently deceased mother: to give Stalin her childhood photographs.

“I met Pasha and her mother,” writes Mikhailovskaya, “in the first years of the Revolution. She was a tall, slender, black-eyed Georgian beauty. To my question to her mother - why is Pasha so black, because... the mother was bright, Pasha’s mother answered: her father is Georgian. But why are you alone? To this question, Pasha’s mother replied that Pasha’s father devoted himself to serving the people, and this is Stalin.

If you remember your youth and early youth (and this is never forgotten), then you, of course, remember the little black-eyed girl whose name was Pasha. She remembers you well. Your mother spoke Georgian, and Pasha remembered these words: “Dear dear child.”

I looked carefully at Pasha and see that she has your face, Comrade Stalin. The same general expression of an open, bold face, the same eyes, mouth, forehead. It became clear to me that Pasha is close to you by blood.”

In the “first years of the Revolution” Pasha was 18 years old. This means that she was born in 1899, when Stalin was expelled from the last class of the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Is this a coincidence?

On March 20, 1938, Praskovya Georgievna handed over a letter addressed to Stalin and her children’s cards to the reception of the Central Committee of the party, and a few days later she disappeared. “She left me at 10 a.m. yesterday and didn’t come back. I waited for her all day and all night. I'm terribly worried that something bad has happened to her. She could have been hit by a tram; Wanting to get a date with you, she, driven by the futility of this, could commit suicide. By your order, it is not difficult to find Pasha.”

But it is difficult to say what happened to Praskovya Georgievna and M. Mikhailovskaya, given that Mikhailovskaya’s letter to Stalin came from the NKVD with a “top secret” covering note. Either the leader caressed the fruit of his sinless youth, taking a vow of silence in return, or he erased it into the camp dust along with his aunt, who learned what she was not supposed to know. But he kept her letter, just as he kept Bukharin’s note.

When Anna Alliluyeva, the sister of Stalin’s second wife, and Evgenia Zemlyanitsyna, her brother’s wife, were arrested in 1948, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana asked her father about the reasons for the arrest. “They knew too much, they talked too much. And this plays into the hands of the enemies,” replied Joseph Vissarionovich, whom Bukharin called “Genghis Khan with a telephone.”
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Ekaterina Svanidze, Stalin’s first wife, “looked at her husband as if he were a demigod.” Although there seemed to be nothing special about it. “Height is two arshins and a half inches (that’s about 160 cm - L.B.). Average build. The second and third toes of the left foot are fused. Hair, beard and mustache are dark. The nose is straight and long. The forehead is straight and low. The face is elongated, dark, with pockmarks.” This is how he, twenty-three years old, appeared to police officials at the beginning of the twentieth century. But in the personal file of Joseph Dzhugashvili, aka Ryaboy, aka Koba, aka Zakhar Milikyan, aka Nisharidze, aka Stalin, who was arrested in 1912, his height is determined to be 1 meter 74 cm, which is by no means small for that time. And in the photographs he doesn’t look short. However, women have their own ideas about the merits of men.

Catherine, about whom little is known, was from the same village of Didi-Lilo near Tiflis, where Stalin’s father was from. In 1904, the already famous revolutionary Joseph Dzhugashvili fled from his first Siberian exile and settled in his native Georgia, where he soon secretly married his father’s countrywoman and herself beautiful girl village of Didi-Lilo. Judging by the few photographs that have survived, Ekaterina Svanidze was indeed a woman with an outstanding appearance. Apparently, Stalin sincerely loved her. But in 1907 she died: either from typhus, or from pneumonia, or - there is such a version - from transient consumption (Stalin in the twenties was diagnosed with old, no longer active tuberculosis, which he acquired underground and could give it to your wife). Stalin took the loss seriously. “He was very sad. The pale face reflected the mental suffering that the death of a faithful life friend caused to this so callous person,” recalled a contemporary.

However, he also experienced the death of his second wife just as hard. “They thought then that he would commit suicide or go crazy,” testifies Stalin’s niece Kira Pavlovna Politkovskaya. The leader was a monogamous man, and it was difficult to part with what he was used to, and if he parted, it was without regret. Including clothes. “There was nothing to bury him in,” said Molotov. “The frayed sleeves of the uniform were hemmed and cleaned...”

Ekaterina Semyonovna Svanidze was buried according to the Orthodox rite. In the photograph depicting her in the coffin, Stalin, still with a small beard, stands at the head of the bed, his head lowered in unruly curls.
“This creature softened my stony heart,” Joseph Dzhugashvili said to his friend in the cemetery. “She died, and with her the last warm feelings for people died.

Kato left baby Jacob to her husband, who experienced the tragic fate of being the son of a “great leader and teacher.” He got to know his father closely only in 1921, when, as a fourteen-year-old teenager, he was sent from Georgia to Moscow. Before that, he lived serenely in the family of his maternal aunt Alexandra Svanidze.

The brother of Stalin's first wife and his wife, initially welcomed by the leader, were then repressed. They were arrested together in 1937. Alexander Semenovich, who was often called by his relatives by his underground nickname Alyosha, died in prison in 1942, and Maria Anisimovna, who idolized Stalin, died on a distant island of the Gulag archipelago. Their son, named Jonrid in honor of the American journalist John Reed, author, did not escape arrest and exile. famous book about the October Revolution “Ten days that shook the world.”

Between the death of his first wife and his second marriage, Stalin lived as a bog for twelve years. The uneventful life of a professional revolutionary was diversified only by arrests, exiles and escapes. And it’s not for nothing that they say: being single is like being mad. When in 1912, Joseph Vissarionovich, who had once again escaped from exile, settled in St. Petersburg in the same apartment with Molotov, he took away his girlfriend Marusya from Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, which Stalin’s minion did not fail to remember at the end of his life.

Lazar Kaganovich, after whom the Moscow metro was originally named and for whom Stalin forever remained an infallible idol, having already exchanged his tenth decade of life, once said to the poet and collector of Stalin’s people’s commissars Felix Chuev:
- And that perhaps Stalin had some kind of attachments. His wife died before the revolution. And he married Nadezhda Sergeevna in 1919. Until I was nineteen, I had the right to love anyone.

For the second time after his escape, exiled at the end of 1910 to the small Arkhangelsk town of Solvychegodsk, Stalin settled in the house of the widow Matryona Prokopyevna Kuzakova, who had five children from a legal marriage. All of them were fair-haired, and the sixth, an illegitimate child, had hair the color of a raven's wing. He was named Konstantin Stepanovich Kuzakov.

“I didn’t immediately ask my mother about my father,” Kuzakov recalled. “She was a kind woman, but with an iron character. And very reasonable - until her last days. When I finally gathered my courage and asked if what they were saying about me was true, she replied:
- You are my son. Never talk about the rest to anyone.”

Really, reasonable woman. Unlike the talkative relatives of Joseph Vissarionovich’s wives.

Stalin did not forget about his Solvychegodsk passion. He, as the Count of Monte Cristo, secretly supported his second son. Konstantin Stepanovich rose to high positions in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, edited the speeches of delegates at party congresses (then to retreat on the podium from the text approved by the editorial commission is the same as “a step to the left, a step to the right is considered an escape”). When clouds gathered over him, and clouds that smelled of lead (his deputy in the party Central Committee, for whom he vouched, was accused of transferring Soviet nuclear secrets to the Americans), Stalin delivered a verdict:
- I see no reason to arrest Kuzakov.

And although Konstantin Stepanovich saw his great father close many times, but, being also reasonable person, did not dare to speak to him.

After Stalin's death, Kuzakov was appointed editor-in-chief of television. And the leader’s niece, Kira Politkovskaya, who returned from exile, worked here as an assistant director. The relatives met.
“But Stalin’s children showed no interest in me,” said Kuzakov.

In February 1913, Stalin was arrested for the seventh and last time and exiled to the Turukhansk region - first to the stanka (small settlement) Kostino, and then to the very Arctic Circle - to the stanka Kureyka (now in the Krasnoyarsk region). After this arrest and this exile, the time will come to arrest and exile him. By the way, the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva served her Soviet exile in the same place as Stalin, and heard from the natives about his relationship with one of the local peasant women.

Kureika, with only eight houses and 67 inhabitants, is the only place of exile from which Stalin did not escape. Although there were conditions for this, which he himself indirectly admitted in 1930. They intended to dispossess his former Kurei guard Mikhail Merzlyakov. He wrote to Stalin, recalling his friendly relations with him in the pre-revolutionary years. Joseph Vissarionovich rescued the former gendarme from trouble by sending a note to the party control commission: “In “friendly” relations with Mikh. I couldn’t be Merzlyakov. However, I must testify that if my relationship with him was not “friendly,” it was not hostile either. Mich. Merzlyakov did not spy on me, did not bully me, did not find fault, and turned a blind eye to my frequent absences.”

At first, Joseph Vissarionovich and Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, the future chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, who was driven into Kureika with him, settled in one hut, but soon quarreled. “My friend and I are now in different apartments, and we rarely see each other,” Sverdlov wrote in May 1914. And this despite the fact that they were the only political exiles among the illiterate aborigines.

Stalin moved to the poor hut of the Pereprygins, where there were no adults, and only orphaned teenagers and children lived. But there are a lot - two girls and five boys. The tenant occupied an extension, the entrance to which was only through the hut. “A small square room, in one corner there is a wooden trestle bed, opposite there is fishing and hunting gear: nets, whetstones, hooks. Not far from the window there is an oblong table covered with books; a kerosene lamp hangs above the table. In the middle of the room there is a small “potbelly stove” stove with an iron pipe,” this is how Stalin’s home was remembered by an exiled Bolshevik who once visited him in Kureika.

When in 1956 Khrushchev began “the fight against the cult of personality and its consequences,” he instructed the then chairman of the USSR KGB, Serov, to delve into Stalin’s past. The security officers reported, among other things: “According to the story of citizen Perelygina, it was established that I.V. Stalin, while in Kureika, seduced her at the age of 14 and began to live together with her. In this regard, I.V. Stalin was summoned to gendarme Laletin to face criminal charges for cohabitation with a minor. I.V. Stalin gave his word to gendarme Laletin to marry Perelygina when she became an adult. As I told you in May of this year. Perelygina, she had a child around 1913 who died. In 1914, a second child was born, who was named Alexander.”

But it struck February Revolution, the gendarmes were outlawed, and the honest revolutionary word given to one of them lost its force. Stalin went to Petrograd to make a socialist revolution, and Perelygina (aka Pereprygina - passports were not issued in Kureika, and surnames were recorded by ear) married a local peasant Davydov, who adopted the third of Stalin’s surviving sons.

Unlike the Kuzakovs, Joseph Vissarionovich did not take any part in the fate of Lydia Perprygina and Alexander Davydov. Although Alexander’s son Yuri claimed (after his father’s death in 1987) that Stalin tried twice – at the end of the Civil War and in the early thirties – to drag his father to Moscow. But without an illiterate mother.

The KGB memo was read and endorsed by members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, but not one of them, even on their deathbed, said a word about this episode in the biography of their defeated idol. For, as Kaganovich said, “the personal has no public significance.” The Bolshevik leaders were not puritans. Sergo Beria, the son of Stalin’s Malyuta Skuratov, who was choosing concubines, including young ones, on the street through the windows of a limousine, recounted Stalin’s memory from the first post-revolutionary years: “I was in one of the offices of the Central Committee, when I suddenly saw Krupskaya approaching, all in tears . To my perplexed question, she replied: “Vladimir Ilyich slept with all the girls in the secretariat, but this was not enough for him. Now he has chosen other places. I demand that the Central Committee take action, since with his unworthy behavior he discredits the entire government.” I was stunned, although I knew that Vladimir Ilyich was bleeding at that time. Then the leader was not particularly concerned about the indiscreet views of his guards.” At the meeting of the Central Committee, the men roared with laughter and “came to the conclusion that he was certainly guilty, but Krupskaya was even more guilty: having assumed numerous party responsibilities, she ignored her marital duty. We release her from all assignments and remind her that the main party task is to be the wife of Vladimir Ilyich. Krupskaya left the meeting room, loudly slamming the door.”

Somehow during the Great Patriotic War The chief political commissar of the Red Army, Mehlis, asked Stalin: what are we going to do - one of the marshals changes “front-line wives” every day. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief paused sternly, and then grinned:
- We'll be jealous!
“The favorite of the party,” according to Lenin’s definition, forty-year-old Bukharin became attached and tied to himself a fourteen-year-old girl, who married him, although she was already twenty.

Stalin screwed his second and last official wife in 1917. He was almost thirty-eight, she was almost sixteen. He did not wait for her to come of age and made her his wife without allowing her to finish high school, although they officially registered their marriage only in March 1919, when Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva turned eighteen.

The daughter of a revolutionary, she was born and spent her childhood in Georgia. Her mother, Olga Evgenievna - either a Georgian or, according to family legend, a gypsy - was a passionate woman and more than once cuckolded her husband. However, having learned about her daughter’s connection with Joseph Vissarionovich, whom she deeply respected and regularly sent him parcels to Kureika, she called her a fool. Father, Sergei Yakovlevich, an old friend of Stalin, did not oppose this strange marriage, rather he was proud: “a wonderful Georgian,” as Lenin described Joseph Vissarionovich in one of his letters, became one of key figures in the political arena.

Although not a beauty, Nadezhda Sergeevna was pretty and charmed with her youth and large dark eyes. “They say Nadya was a very cheerful girl, a laugher. But I didn’t see that anymore,” her niece recalled.

In 1918, Alliluyeva joined the Bolshevik Party and, together with Stalin, as his secretary, went on a special train to defend Tsaritsyn (then Stalingrad, and now Volgograd) from the Whites. Endowed with extraordinary powers by Lenin, Stalin showed remarkable organizational skills and his usual cruelty. Were it not Nadya’s “long, dry fingers,” as her daughter remembered them, who printed Stalin’s dispatches similar to ultimatums to Lenin: “I will myself, without formalities, overthrow all the commanders and commissars who are ruining the cause. This is how the interests of the matter tell me.” The “overthrown” commanders and commissars were loaded onto a barge, and the barge was sunk in the Volga.

The bloody honeymoon ended, Nadezhda Sergeevna returned with her husband to Moscow and entered the secretariat of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin, who got the newlyweds an apartment in the Kremlin. A romantic schoolgirl, who grew up, although in a revolutionary, but quite wealthy family, brought up on Chekhov, touching the sacraments of the great and dirty politics(“She was entrusted with work of the most secret nature,” and Lenin, giving “highly secret” instructions, said: “Let Alliluyeva do it, she will do everything well”), she withdrew into herself, shielding her fragile inner world from harsh reality with shells of constant self-control (“Mom was very secretive and proud,” her daughter Svetlana believed).

“I have absolutely no business with anyone in Moscow,” Nadezhda Sergeevna wrote in one of her letters in 1926. – Sometimes it’s even strange: for so many years not to have close friends, but this obviously depends on the character. Moreover, strangely, I feel closer to non-party people (women, of course).”

She sincerely believed in the cleansing mission of the revolution, tried to follow the ideal of a new woman drawn from books, devoting herself entirely to the struggle for a bright future for the working people, and was deeply distressed by the inconsistency of the established cruel world order with her ideas. Stalin, who had long ago abandoned romantic ideas about the revolution, Stalin, in whom “the last warm feelings for people had died”, and only a “heart of stone” and an insatiable thirst for power remained, he could not understand his “Tatka,” as he called his wife in letters, and “really disliked” it when she interfered in his affairs.

Khrushchev, who studied with Nadezhda Alliluyeva at the Industrial Academy, recalled: “I felt sorry for Alliluyeva on a purely human level. She was so different from Stalin! She was a nice person. Yes, and a modest person in life. She came to the academy only by tram, left with everyone else and never got out as a “wife” big man" And the daughter-in-law of Kamenev, one of Stalin’s friends and enemies, had a different opinion: “Very uninteresting. Gray. Boring. She looked older than her age. In general, it was noticeable that she was a little “that one.” As they say now, with violets in your head.” “She had the skull of a suicide,” Maria Svanidze, the wife of Alliluyeva’s brother, wrote in her diary the opinion of the doctor who performed the post-mortem X-ray of Nadezhda’s body.

“Mom was never at home near us,” stated Svetlana Iosifovna. “In those days, it was generally indecent for a woman, and even a party member, to spend time around children.” But Stalin needed a wife at home. He hated women who dried themselves in the herbarium of class struggle. Stalin hated Lenin’s wife Krupskaya, an example of such a woman dried up by the revolution, and motivated his feelings like this: “Well, because she uses the same outhouse as Lenin, I should value and recognize her just as much as Lenin? "

At the request of her husband, Alliluyeva intended to leave her job in the secretariat of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. The head of the secretariat, Fotieva, complained to Lenin.
“If he doesn’t show up for work tomorrow, tell me, and I’ll talk to him,” Vladimir Ilyich threatened.
Alliluyeva went to work. Upon learning of this, Lenin commented:
- Asian!
It was not given to Nadezhda Sergeevna to be just a wife, even the wife of “the great Stalin”. She allowed herself to have her own opinion, which often differed from Stalin’s, and this left a painful imprint on the relationship between two people who loved each other. Quarrels, interspersed with reconciliations, followed one after another. There was no reason behind it. Stalin could not talk to his wife for a month due to the fact that she, 22 years younger than him, for a long time did not dare to switch from “you” to “you” in addressing him. Nadezhda gave birth to her first child not in the Kremlin hospital, where everything was ready for childbirth, but in an ordinary maternity hospital on the outskirts of Moscow, before leaving the Kremlin determined to leave her husband forever.

But she left him forever only after eleven years.

There are several versions of the cause of the death of Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva. One of them is another quarrel at a banquet hosted by Voroshilov in honor of the 15th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. As if a tipsy Stalin was accurately throwing pellets of bread into the neckline of the wife of either the future Marshal Tukhachevsky or the future Marshal Egorov, who was sitting opposite. Daughter Svetlana says that her mother was offended when Stalin shouted to her at that ill-fated banquet:
- Hey, drink!
- I’m not saying “hey” to you!

Molotov considered the cause of Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s suicide to be unbridled jealousy. “Jealousy, of course. In my opinion, completely unfounded. There was a hairdresser whom he went to for a shave. The wife was unhappy with this. A very jealous person." Equally, we would add, like Stalin. When one day he caught his wife walking along the path of her dacha in Zubalovo in the company of Bukharin, he crept up behind Nikolai Ivanovich and hissed: “I’ll kill you!” And he killed him as the organizer of the right-wing Trotskyist bloc.

Khrushchev, referring to the head of Stalin’s guard, Vlasik, puts forward his own version. After a quarrel at Voroshilov’s banquet, Nadezhda Sergeevna, reassured by Molotov’s wife Zhemchuzhina (later repressed), began to look for her husband by phone: he left the Voroshilovs and did not return home. I called the dacha in Zubalovo. The newbie on duty innocently reported to her:
- Comrade Stalin is here.
- Who's with him?
- Gusev’s wife is with him.

According to those who saw her, the wife of Sergei Ivanovich Gusev ( real name– Yakov Davidovich Drabkin), one of the associates of Stalin and Voroshilov in the Civil War, was a very beautiful woman.

The lifeless body of Nadezhda Sergeevna was first discovered by the housekeeper of the Stalinist family, Karolina Vasilievna Til, who went to wake Alliluyeva up for breakfast. “Mom was lying covered in blood next to her bed; in her hand was a small Walter pistol, once brought to her by Pavlusha (brother) from Berlin. The sound of his shot was too weak to be heard in the house. She was already cold.” The rose that Nadezhda had pinned in her hair while getting ready for the banquet was lying by the door. Then it, already cast from cast iron, was placed on the grave of Nadezhda Sergeevna.

There were persistent rumors that Stalin's wife did not shoot herself, but was shot by her husband in a fit of anger. In any case, the home doctor of the Stalinist family I.N. Kazakov refused to sign Nadezhda Sergeevna’s suicide certificate, being sure that the shot was fired from a distance of several steps. Academician Boris Zbarsky, who embalmed Lenin’s body, said: “No matter what happens later, I will not embalm him (Stalin). He did not have to retract his words: he, as a “cosmopolitan,” was arrested a year before the leader’s death and released only nine months after his death.

When Larisa Vasilyeva, a researcher of the Kremlin elite, turned to the KGB of the USSR with a request to provide her with the Alliluyeva case, she was told that “Stalin gave the order not to initiate a criminal case” into the death of N.S. Alliluyeva.

It was rumored that Nadezhda left Joseph a suicide letter of a political nature. In 1932, the millstones of collectivization and dispossession were turning with all their might, and the country was gripped by famine. Dissatisfaction with Stalin's policies grew, and the person closest to the leader found himself on the other side of the barricades. But this letter, if it existed, was not read by anyone except the addressee.

The death of his wife shocked Stalin. At the moment of farewell before the funeral, he said with tears in his eyes:
- I didn’t save...

There is a legend that late autumn In 1941, when all the vital objects of Moscow had already been mined in case of its surrender to the Germans, and the dacha in Zubalovo was blown up, Stalin visited his wife’s grave at the Novodevichy cemetery at night. What were Joseph Vissarionovich and Nadezhda Sergeevna silently talking about?

Apparently, in the first years after the death of Nadezhda Sergeevna, Joseph Vissarionovich did not abandon his intention to get a new wife. In any case, there is evidence from Vera Alexandrovna Davydova, a singer at the Bolshoi Theater, which Stalin loved to visit: “Stalin really proposed to me. I refused, citing my strong marriage and my loyal love for the leader, incompatible with everyday love.” The leader was satisfied with her explanations. Vera Davydova became People's Artist of the USSR and Georgian SSR, three times laureate of the Stalin Prize and died in her husband’s homeland - in already independent Georgia in 1993.

Stalin made no further attempts to tie himself with the knot of Hymen. And it’s not appropriate for a “great leader and teacher” to throw a wedding in his old age: you won’t end up with rumors and slander. And this could cause irreparable damage to the image of the disinterested “father of the people”, crystallized over years of work, caring day and night for their well-being to the detriment of even his personal life. Stalin regretted that in his famous speech to graduates of military academies on May 4, 1935, when he put forward the slogan “Cadres decide everything,” he forgot to add: “Our leaders came to power as bastards and remain so to the end. They are driven solely by ideas, but not by acquisitions.”

“After the death of Nadezhda Sergeevna,” Khrushchev recalled, “I met Stalin’s young woman for some time. beautiful woman, a typical Caucasian woman. She tried not to meet us on the way. As soon as her eyes sparkle, she immediately disappears. Then they told me that this woman was Svetlana’s teacher. But this did not last long, and she disappeared. From some of Beria’s remarks, I realized that this was his protégé. Well, Beria, he knew how to select “teachers.” We are talking here about Alexandra Nikolaevna Nikashidze, the hostess sister in Stalin’s house, a lieutenant, and then a state security major. She did not know how to cook, spoke Russian poorly, but she took excellent care of Stalin’s children and relatives and pawned them to their stern father and, out of duty, to Beria. She was funny and good-natured and willingly eavesdropped on the telephone conversations of her charges. However, when Molotov was asked whether his phone was tapped, he, once the second man in the “Stalin empire,” replied:
“I think I’ve been eavesdropped on my whole life.”

Sashenka Nikashidze was replaced by Valentina Vasilievna Istomina. She, the only one, mourned the deceased leader like a human being, like a woman. Molotov recalled: “Valentina Istomina is already at the dacha. She brought the dishes. And if she was a wife, who cares?”

The officer of Stalin's guard remembered her, a beauty, as “a sweet, charming, incredibly slender and neat woman who knew how to not only maintain tact and accuracy in everything, but also ethical standards of behavior.” Not knowing her position at Stalin's court, the guards tried to flirt with her. “Valentina Vasilievna came out of the situation with honor, cooling the streams of expressions of lovers with exactly the right quiet and firm word.” The state security officer was amazed that “none of the alleged suitors received penalties.” This was extraordinary in a country where denunciation had become the cornerstone of the regime.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953 at 21.50 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Beria went out into the corridor and ordered:
- Khrustalev, car!
A new era was beginning.

Svetlana Alliluyeva recalled: “Valentina Vasilyevna Istomina came to say goodbye - Valechka, as everyone called her, the housekeeper who worked for her father at this dacha for eighteen years. She fell to her knees near the sofa, fell with her head on the dead man’s chest and began to cry out loud, as in the village. For a long time she could not stop, and no one stopped her. In recent years, Valechka knew much more about him and saw more than I, who lived far away and aloof. And up to last days she will be convinced that there was no better person in the world than my father.”

Years of life: 1901 - 1932
The ancestors of Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva, the second wife of I.V. Stalin, came from serfs, and her parents were professional revolutionaries. Their marriage turned out to be happy, it was not overshadowed even by the fact that Olga Evgenievna Alliluyeva, having a very expansive nature, was sometimes carried away by some man: sometimes a Hungarian, sometimes a Pole, sometimes a Bulgarian, sometimes a Turk. When her next hobby passed, peace and tranquility returned to the family again.

Nadezhda was born in Baku and spent her childhood in the Caucasus. According to family legend, in 1903 Joseph Stalin saved two-year-old Nadya when she fell into the water while playing on the embankment. Fourteen years later they met again - a sixteen-year-old high school student and a thirty-eight-year-old exiled revolutionary who returned from Siberia. Soon they got married...

In 1921, Nadezhda and Stalin had their first child, who was named Vasily. The boy was mainly cared for by his grandparents and servants. In 1926, Svetlana was born.

Nadezhda at this time actively participated in social work, and the main responsibilities for caring for the girl lay with the teacher. After the death of V.I. Lenin Alliluyev, his former secretary, began working in the magazine “Revolution and Culture”. Having no education other than six classes at the gymnasium, she was ready to do any work, just so as not to sit with children within the Kremlin walls.

From the memoirs of Svetlana Alliluyeva: “She was very beautiful and wore good perfume. In the evenings, my mother came to my bed, kissed me, touched me with her hands and left, but the smell remained, and I fell asleep in a fragrant cloud.”

Meanwhile, having truly unlimited possibilities, Nadezhda Sergeevna by nature remained a modest and thrifty woman. Her grandson, director A.V. Burdonsky (son of Vasily), in one interview gave a very characteristic example: “Once in the fifties, my grandmother’s sister, Anna Sergeevna Alliluyeva, gave us a chest where Nadezhda Sergeevna’s things were kept. I was struck by the modesty of her dresses. An old jacket with patches under the arms, a worn skirt made of dark wool, covered in patches on the inside. And it was worn by a young woman who was said to love beautiful clothes.”
“Stalin’s marriage with Alliluyeva cannot be called happy,” writes historian Alexander Kolesnik in the book “Truth and Myths about Stalin’s Family.” - He was most often busy with work. He spent most of his time in the Kremlin. His wife clearly missed his attention. She left him several times along with her children Vasily and Svetlana, and shortly before her death she even talked about moving in with relatives after graduating from the Industrial Academy, where she studied.”

With daughter Svetlana

More and more often, Nadezhda Sergeevna turned to God (despite revolutionary ideas, she was a believer). Maybe this saved her for a while. But it still didn’t save me from the fatal step...

The year 1926 turned out to be difficult for the leader’s family... Svetlana Alliluyeva writes: “Somehow back in 1926, when I was six months old, my parents quarreled, and my mother, taking me, my brother and the nanny, went to Leningrad to visit my grandfather, never to return. She intended to start working there and gradually create an independent life for herself. The quarrel arose because of rudeness; the reason was small, but obviously it was a long-standing, accumulated irritation. However, the resentment passed. My nanny told me that my father called from Moscow and wanted to come “to make peace” and take everyone home. But my mother answered the phone, not without evil wit: “Why do you need to go, it will cost the state too much! I’ll come myself.” And everyone returned home..."

I.V. Stalin, N.S. Allilueva, E.D. Voroshilova, K.E. Voroshilov. Sochi, 1932

Everyone who knew Nadezhda well spoke of her as an extremely nervous, excitable person. In this respect, the spouses were similar to each other, although Stalin himself knew how to hide his feelings. One of the women who knew Nadezhda Sergeevna said: “In general, it was noticeable that she was a little “that one.” As they say now, with violets in your head.” Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, remembering her, also admitted that “she was a little mentally ill, in the presence of others she sawed and humiliated him (Stalin).”

Mentally unwell... Researchers agree on one thing: Nadezhda Sergeevna went to Berlin for consultation about severe headaches. And the doctors allegedly refused to operate on her. Although the disease was more than serious - fusion of the cranial sutures.

“What his wife Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva discovered about Stalin and what she knew about him that made her life impossible will probably never be known,” suggests A. Kolesnik. “Her psyche could not stand it, and on the night of November 8-9, 1932, N. S. Alliluyeva passed away.”

Larisa Vasilyeva gives an interesting version of the death of Nadezhda Sergeevna in her book: “Once, it was about a week before November 7, Alliluyeva told her friend that something terrible would soon happen to her. She is cursed from birth because she is Stalin’s daughter and his wife at the same time... Stalin allegedly told her this himself at the time of a quarrel. And when she was dumbfounded, he tried to improve the situation: he joked, they say. She pressed her mother against the wall, who had had a good time in her youth, and she admitted that she was really close to Stalin and her husband at the same time... and, to be honest, she doesn’t know which of them gave birth to Nadya...”

J.V. Stalin did not go to the funeral of the mother of his children. Her family and friends buried her. Following the coffin were Avel Enukidze and Alexander Svanidze, each of whom Muscovites mistook for Stalin. There is also a version that J.V. Stalin himself shot his wife. But to date there is no evidence of this.

According to eyewitnesses, Alliluyeva was jealous of Stalin’s wives of his associates and even the hairdresser who had Joseph Vissarionovich shaved. Maybe there really were reasons for jealousy. At one time, the book “Confession of Stalin’s Mistress” about the opera singer Vera Davydova, with whom the leader allegedly often visited Sochi, became a sensation.

“We can assume that Alliluyeva knew about their relationship,” says Sochi historian Yuri Alexandrov. - Stalin met Davydova in the spring of 1932, and judging by the active participation he took in her move from Leningrad to Moscow, Davydova made a great impression on Stalin. When I talked to old workers at Stalin’s Sochi dacha, none of them could remember Davydov. But my sister-hostess and librarian Elizaveta Popkova told me that his second cousin, an opera singer named Mchedlidze, often came to see Stalin. I searched for information about Mchedlidze for a long time and found it in... Soviet encyclopedia: “Vera Davydova (Mchedlidze), opera singer, People’s Artist of the USSR.”

Stalin regarded his wife's suicide as a betrayal. In the diary of Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s friend, Maria Svanidze, who was shot as an “enemy of the people” in 1942, there is an entry dated April 1935: “...And then Joseph said: How is it that Nadya... could shoot herself. She did something very bad." Sashiko inserted a remark - how could she leave two children. “What children, they forgot about her in a few days, but she crippled me for life. Let's drink to Nadya! - said Joseph. And we all drank to the health of dear Nadya, who left us so cruelly..."

Joseph Stalin with his wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva in a Rolls-Royce car. Pavel Udalov is driving. Moscow Kremlin. 1923. RGALI

“The first days he was shocked,” Svetlana wrote. - He said that he himself didn’t want to live anymore... They were afraid to leave their father alone, he was in such a state. At times he felt some kind of anger and rage. This was explained by the fact that his mother left him a letter.
Apparently she wrote it at night. I never saw him, of course. It was probably destroyed right there, but it was there, those who saw it told me about it. It was terrible. It was full of accusations and reproaches. This was not just a personal letter: it was partly a political letter. And, after reading it, my father might have thought that my mother was only with him for appearances, but in fact she was walking somewhere next to the opposition of those years.

Stalin - actor Duta Skhirtladze, Nadezhda Alliluyeva - actress Olga Budina

He was shocked and angry by this, and when he came to say goodbye to the civil memorial service, he approached the coffin for a minute, suddenly pushed it away from him with his hands and, turning, walked away. And he didn’t go to the funeral.”

Angered by his wife's suicide, Stalin imprisoned and executed many of her relatives. Even the harmless sisters, far from politics, were arrested: “They know too much and talk too much.”

Vladimir Alliluyev in his book “Chronicle of a Family” cites an eyewitness account that in October 1941, “when the fate of Moscow hung in the balance and the evacuation of the government to Kuibyshev was expected, Stalin came to Novodevichye to say goodbye to Nadezhda. Security officer of the Secretary General A.T. Rybin claims that Stalin came to Novodevichye several times at night and sat silently for a long time on a marble bench installed opposite the monument.”

Former assistant commandant of Stalin's dacha Pyotr Lozgachev said that in Last year Throughout his life, Joseph Vissarionovich began to remember more and more often about Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In the dining room, a portrait of her appeared on the wall from somewhere (obviously, the same one that, on the orders of the leader, was painted by the artist Gerasimov in the morgue). Stalin used to stand in front of him for a long time and think about something...

Text by E. N. Oboymina and O. V. Tatkova