Two university students who had returned from Ukraine told her that in the worst areas of the famine, there had been cases of cannibalism. They had personally participated in an arrest operation, and from the homes of the two arrested brothers, they had recovered several pieces of human flesh that were ready to be taken for sale. Aliluyeva, frightened and alarmed, went back and told Stalin and his captain of the guard, Paul Kerr, about it.
Stalin decided to put an end to this hostility in his own Home, and after scolding his wife with extreme rudeness and ferocity, he announced that she would not be allowed to return to school. He ordered Pauker to find out about the two students and arrest them. The task was not difficult: the spies whom Paokol had sent to protect Aliluyeva were themselves obliged to keep an eye on the people she was seeing and talking to at the college. Through this, Stalin also drew general “organizational conclusions”: he ordered the State Political Security Directorate and the Party’s Supervisory Committee to carry out a brutal purge of colleges and secondary technical schools, paying special attention to those students who had been mobilized to participate in collectivization.
Aliluyeva could not return to her college for almost two months. Later, thanks to the intervention of her “protecting angel” Yenukidze, she was allowed to finish the academic year.
Three months after Nadezhda Aliluyeva’s death, there was a visit from Bokel. During the meeting, people talked about the deceased. Someone lamented her early death, saying that she never took advantage of her prominent position and was always a modest, gentle woman.
“Gentle?” Pauker asked sarcastically and rhetorically, “It is clear that you did not know her. She is very irritable. I’d like to show you how she once snapped and yelled in his face: You’re a sadist, that’s what you are! You abuse your own son, you torture your own wife …… and you persecute the whole people!”
I have heard of one more such quarrel between Aliluyeva and Stalin. It was in the summer of 1931, the night before the couple was to go on vacation to the Caucasus, when Stalin lost his temper for some reason and, as usual, scolded his wife with obscenities. The next morning, Aliluyeva was busy preparing for the departure. When Stalin came out, they dined together. After the meal, the guards put Stalin’s small suitcase and leather bag in the car. Other items had been delivered directly to Stalin’s special car beforehand. Aliluyeva picked up the hatbox and instructed the guard to put it in the suitcase she had packed. Stalin then suddenly announced: “Don’t go, stay here!”
Stalin got into the car, sat next to Paokel, and walked away. The terrified Aliluyeva, however, stood there dumbfounded, still holding her hatbox.
It was obvious that she had no possibility to get rid of this dictator-cum-husband. There was no law in the whole country that could protect her. For her this was not a conjugal Life, but a prison, and the only way to get rid of it was to die.
Aliluyeva’s body was not cremated, she was buried in the cemetery. This situation naturally caused surprise, because in Moscow there was a tradition that all party members should be cremated after death. If the deceased was an important official, his urn was placed in the walls of the old Kremlin. The ashes of lower-ranking officials rest in the walls of the funeral home. Aliluyeva, as the wife of the great leader, should of course have been given a niche in the Kremlin walls.
Stalin, however, was against cremation. He ordered Yagoda to organize a solemn funeral ceremony and to bury the deceased in the cemetery of the new virgin convent of the ancient privileged. It was an ancient royal mausoleum where Peter the Great’s first wife, his sister Sophia, and many representatives of the Russian nobility were buried.
Stalin asked to follow the funeral hearse all the way from Red Square to the convent, that is to say, nearly seven kilometers. This surprised Yagoda, who was secretly anxious. Yagoda, who had been responsible for the personal safety of the “master” for more than 20 years, knew that the “master” had always tried to avoid taking risks. Although surrounded by a large number of guards, but in order to get a more reliable security, Stalin always had to come up with new measures, sometimes to the point of ridiculous. Not once did he take the risk of walking through the streets of Moscow after he had taken over the reins of power. When he intended to visit one of the newly built factories, he would order workers to take a holiday and deploy the army and the staff of the State Political Security Directorate throughout the factory area. Yagoda also knew that even in the Kremlin, if Stalin accidentally met a Kremlin employee on his way from his residence to his office, Paulkor was bound to get a bad rap, even though the entire Kremlin staff was Communist and had been repeatedly vetted and screened by the State Political Security Directorate. So Yagoda couldn’t believe his ears when he heard that Stalin was going to accompany the hearse on foot through the streets of Moscow.
The news that Aliluyeva would be buried in the New Virgin Cemetery was not announced until the day before the funeral. Many of the streets in Moscow’s central district were narrow, crooked, and, as anyone knows, the funeral procession moved slowly. What if an assassin recognized Stalin from a window and dropped a bomb from a high place, or shot him with a pistol or even a rifle? Yagoda presented the funeral preparations to Stalin several times during the day, and each Time he tried to persuade Stalin not to take any risks, trying to convince him to go directly to the cemetery by car at the last minute. But all failed to work. Stalin may have been determined to show the people how much he loved his wife, and in so doing to crush the rumors that had been spread against him. But he may also have been condemned by his conscience – in any case, it was he who caused the death of the mother of his own child.
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