Adam White
Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Dermot Crowley, Paul Chahidi, Paul Whitehouse and Simon Russell Beale discover their deceased leader in The Death of Stalin CREDIT: NICOLA DOVE
In one of his last acts as Soviet Union dictator, Joseph Stalin launched an investigation into prominent Moscow doctors, claiming evidence of a Zionist plot to assassinate Soviet leaders. He referred to it as “The Doctors’ Plot”.
It was, of course, entirely baseless, an ugly episode of antisemitism that was blissfully cut short before it could prove fatal to those affected. For as hundreds of Jewish doctors were tortured ahead of plans to deport them from the country, Stalin took deathly ill.
In an awkward twist of fate, however, with the Soviet medical profession resembling a who’s-who of the country’s most prolific Jews, Stalin’s men found it practically impossible to find a highly-skilled doctor to treat him in his final hours. So he died.
This particularly comedic episode in Stalin’s life only makes a brief appearance in The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci’s take on the immediate aftermath of the dictator’s demise, despite seeming like something straight out of Blackadder. But it proves that Iannucci’s choice to transfer his satirical skill to a particularly fraught moment in Russian history, the first time the British comic has based his characters on real people, wasn’t an enormous reach.
Iannucci has confessed that, in some cases, he chose to tone down real-life absurdity. The film’s opening scene depicts a bed-ridden Stalin requesting a recording of the opera he is listening to on the radio, unaware that it is being broadcast live. Associates must then force the musicians to perform the opera all over again, only this time on tape. Upon hearing the demand, the conductor faints in terror, sending Stalin’s associates on a mad rush to find a replacement.
“In reality the conductor they brought in was drunk,” Iannucci told LBC Radio. “Number two? Was drunk. So they had to get a third conductor in. But I kept that out because I thought no one would believe it.”
Joseph Stalin delivers a speech in 1936 CREDIT: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
The Veep creator’s embellished take on history is also assisted by the fact that so much of Stalin’s actual death remains cloaked in mystery. The facts as we know them declare that on February 28, 1953, Joseph Stalin watched a movie surrounded by his closest political allies before enjoying a feast at his country estate just outside of Moscow. He then retired to his room, asking his guards to leave him in peace.
But as morning came, Stalin remained in bed. Under strict orders to never enter his bedroom unless given permission from the dictator himself, guards were unwilling to investigate. A light flickered on at 6.30pm on March 1, relieving the gathered crowd, but still there was no movement. At 10pm, a guard was finally ordered to enter the room, where he discovered Stalin sprawled on the floor.
But despite their discovery, few were willing to check whether he was still alive. Acting general secretary Nikita Khrushchev (played by Steve Buscemi in the film) suspected he could have been passed out from drink, having declared him to have been heavily inebriated at the previous night’s party. Others were skittish about the act of physically prodding him and the rage such a deed could bring down upon them.
It took over seven hours for the assembled group to call for medical attention, which itself was delayed – partly due to the aforementioned Doctors’ Plot, but also down to potential conspiracy. It has been suggested that Stalin’s associates intentionally delayed help in the hopes that he would die, and therefore give way to a successor. Others have suggested they were so terrified of possible retribution, that a healthy Stalin would be angered that somebody else took charge, that they spent hours endlessly weighing up what to do.
In a line from Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar that could have very well influenced Iannucci’s entire script, “the inner circle was so accustomed to Stalin’s minute control that they could barely function on their own.”
Nikita Khrushchev (right) hugs Fidel Castro in 1960 CREDIT: AP PHOTO/MARTY LEDERHANDLER
Whatever happened overnight, a medical report was finally filed the next morning, one that curiously noted that Stalin took ill shortly before a doctor arrived – an obvious untruth. Diagnosed as suffering from a burst blood vessel in the brain, he died three days later. But, as depicted in the film, events didn’t end there.
Modern physicians have suggested that the same sort of cerebral hemorrhage that killed Stalin could have been caused by regular doses of warfarin, a drug then most often used as rat poison. To further the theory that Stalin could have been poisoned, Khrushchev wrote in his 1970 memoirs that two months after Stalin’s death, security chief Lavrentiy Beria (played by Simon Russell Beale) confessed to poisoning him. “I did him in! I saved all of you,” Khrushchev claimed he yelped. This, unsurprisingly, has never been proven.
In the wake of Stalin’s death, Beria had assumed the role of First Deputy Premier, putting him in charge of the secret and regular peace and various infantry divisions. Government roles were split up in comparison to Stalin’s dictatorial reign, with Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) succeeding him as State Secretariat, along with his role as Premier of the Soviet Union. The Secretariat role, however, was short-lived, Malenkov forced to resign within a week, new leaders eager to avoid anything resembling a dictatorship.
Meanwhile, Beria’s new role put him firmly in the cross hairs of political rivals, having already proven himself unpopular in government circles with his sadism and sexual penchant for little girls. They subsequently plotted to oust him.
Armando Iannucci directs his cast on the set of The Death of Stalin CREDIT: NICOLA DOVE
Somewhat ambitiously, Beria had attempted to liberalise the Soviet Union and restore capitalism following Stalin’s demise, only for his efforts to be halted when Khrushchev decided to publicly declare him a traitor. Despite a lack of evidence, Khrushchev accused Beria of being in the pocket of the British and part of an elaborate scheme to overthrow Stalin.
recommended by: Leon Rozenbaum
Beria and many of his closest associates were arrested and put on trial without lawyers or representation of their own. Beria was found guilty of treason and terrorism, and by the end of 1953 was executed, reports claiming he begged for forgiveness before being killed. While these events are depicted as having taken place over the course of just a few days in The Death of Stalin, in reality Beria’s arrest, trial and execution took place over six months.
As a result of his execution, Beria has often been identified as responsible for Stalin’s mysterious death, but suspicion has also been brought upon Khrushchev himself, who was the individual to first relay the information that Stalin wanted privacy on the night in question. Such a request was highly unusual, as Stalin usually demanded that two guards watch over him while he slept.
That Khrushchev was so instrumental in Beria’s execution and ultimately succeeded Stalin as Soviet leader only adds to the speculation, leaving gaping holes in an important moment of modern Russian history. Holes that couldn’t help but lead a revered British comic to want to fill them in for himself. Only with added Yorkshire accents.
The Death of Stalin is released on October 20
Henryk Grynberg – Pamiętnik 3
W niniejszym trzecim tomie swoich pamiętnikarskich zapisków, powstałych od kwietnia 2014 do lutego 2017 roku przeważnie w McLean pod Waszyngtonem, Henryk Grynberg dobitnie komentuje bieżące gry polityczne i międzynarodowe, rewidując doniesienia mediów, zwłaszcza dotyczące Żydów i Izraela. Dzieli się wrażeniami z wydarzeń kulturalnych i lektur, szczególnie na temat Holokaustu, i jak zwykle energicznie polemizuje. Wspomina ludzi, którzy z jego świata odeszli, żegna tych, którzy odchodzą. A jednocześnie obserwuje przyrodę i z poetycką wrażliwością oraz dowcipem i wdziękiem opisuje „bezdomne” lisy i sarny – z przychówkiem – które regularnie odwiedzają zapuszczony backyard za oknem jego gabinetu, „towarzysząc” mu godzinami przy pracy. Dramatyczna kompozycja sprawia, że czyta się te zapiski jak fascynującą całość.
W trzeciej części dziennika Henryk Grynberg, pisarz, poeta i eseista, nie traci wyrazistości poglądów. W krótkich codziennych zapiskach, prowadzonych od kwietnia 2014 do lutego 2017 w McLean pod Waszyngtonem, z ostrością brzytwy komentuje międzynarodową sytuację polityczną i doniesienia medialne. Jak zwykle dzieli się też wrażeniami z lektur, wydarzeń kulturalnych i spotkań z czytelnikami. Pozostaje w swoim żywiole, polemizuje, wytyka słabe punkty. A jednocześnie z wrażliwością poety opisuje swój backyard, na który przychodzą sarny z młodymi, sny i tęsknotę za ludźmi, których coraz częściej zaczyna brakować.
