PROSECUTOR: Comrade Stalin, you are charged with being one of the greatest murderers in the history of mankind. Estimates of the total number of deaths attributed to your actions range from 20 million to 60 million. What is your response to this charge?
STALIN: As a rule, it is not in my nature to boast, but I would say that no revolutionary ever accomplished as much as I did! That’s how I respond! As for the 60 million, that is a fairy tale figure plucked from thin air by the zek Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, who was arrested during the Great Patriotic War by SMERSH ⎼ the Red Army’s counter-intelligence organization ⎼ and charged with anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code. He was sentenced to a work camp. He has only himself to blame. But, instead, he preferred to spread slander about me.
PROSECUTOR: In regards to Solzhenitsyn, some additional information is required to balance your characterization. At the time he was sentenced, he had seen considerable action as a Red Army commander during the Great Patriotic War. In fact, he had been decorated twice, and, on July 8, 1944, he received the Order of the Red Star, for locating German artillery batteries, which were destroyed. He was arrested only after Soviet authorities opened letters he had written to a school friend in which he made derogatory comments about your conduct of the war and referred to you as “the boss” and “master of the house.” For this offense, he was sentenced to eight years in a detention camp.
STALIN: As this zek knows, that was a very mild sentence. He was lucky to be spared execution.
PROSECUTOR: Even if we accept that Solzhenitsyn’s figure of 60 million is inflated, documents created by your own administrators indicate that millions and millions died from your policies, including: the use of extreme violence to gain state control of agriculture; millions starved in a famine in Ukraine you could have stopped; a huge expansion of concentration camps; and bloody purges of top Communist Party apparatchiks and Red Army officers. The majority of these deaths occurred long after the Bolsheviks had seized power. Can any alleged obedience to a revolutionary ideology justify such ongoing killing?
STALIN: First of all, the very nature of your question suggests faulty and outdated bourgeois thinking. I can only speak in terms of how the Bolsheviks redefined the means of production consistent with Marxist principles, which required constantly resisting the insidious power of the Western militarists and the Jewish bankers. Overall, I think we are justifiably proud. The Bolsheviks replaced a corrupt and backward autocratic monarchy, ruled by a decadent and feeble Tsar, who permitted wealthy landowners to exploit peasants and factory workers. The October Revolution of 1917 shattered at once the chains of monarchy and capitalism and replaced it with a dictatorship of the proletariat in a new communist state: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But we confronted many enemies, both internal and external, and these enemies persisted in trying to sabotage our success. We rapidly industrialized, brought peace and stability to our frontiers in the Great Patriotic War, and reached the status of nuclear superpower. After the efforts of Lenin and Stalin, no one in the Soviet Union was ever nostalgic for the time of the Tsars! That’s for sure!
PROSECUTOR: Historians suggest that the last real challenge to the Bolshevik regime came from the Kronstadt mutiny, in 1921, set in motion by sailors on the battleship Petropavlovsk. The sailors, it should be noted, thought of themselves as revolutionaries, but had become disillusioned with the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Bolshevik regime. They denounced, as unrepresentative, all existing Soviets – the worker councils that had come to be dominated by Bolshevik mob rule. They called for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. They also sought freedom to form trade unions, and freedom to form rival political parties. They demanded the release of political prisoners, the abolition of political departments in the military and public agencies, and the right of peasants to do what they pleased with the land. Lenin crushed the mutiny and shot thousands in retribution. The Cheka ⎼ the newly established secret police, with a force of 250,000 ⎼ smothered any remaining opposition. Isn’t it true there was never a real Marxist revolt in Russia? The peasantry didn’t rise up. Instead, what the Bolsheviks introduced to the world was absolute rule by a tiny, ruthless minority using a perpetual reign of terror.
STALIN: Please! First of all, you have conveniently forgotten the well-documented atrocities of the West that were undertaken on a global scale for hundreds of years and erased entire populations! The European powers enslaved half the world and raped all of their colonial possessions until every able body had been stuffed into a slave ship, and every speck of diamond and ounce of gold had been plucked out of the ground! Such hypocrisy! You have also chosen to overlook the circumstances of World War I and World II, which each broke out due to the inevitable crisis and catastrophe of monopolistic capitalism. The fight among capitalists to dominate markets always leads to armed forces battling to regain spheres of influence. In the autumn of 1917, as Russian soldiers were abandoning their posts in the war against Germany, the rule of the Tsar descended into anarchy. The Bolsheviks took control, because no one else could, and we negotiated a peace with the Germans. But the Red Army faced many backward factions. I can tell you the peasants did not support the generals of the White Army, who would have restored the rights of landlords. It was the Whites, not the Red Army, who slaughtered Jews by the tens of thousands.
PROSECUTOR: But it seems the Bolsheviks, like the Western powers, were also interested in establishing an empire by any means necessary. For example, the Ukrainians created an independent state in 1918 and the Red Army brutally crushed them. Was there any thought to winning a war of ideas first? Shouldn’t exposure to the truths of Marxism have been enough?
STALIN: The intellectuals and the wealthy farmers in Ukraine were trying to take advantage of a weakened Russia. They couldn’t care less about the peasants! These elitists were working in league with attacking forces from almost every major power. After the October Revolution sent the capitalist warmongers into a frenzy of fear, we were swarmed by 200,000 invaders from Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. A drought brought famine, affecting millions. There wasn’t bread in the cities. Had the Bolsheviks not succeeded in creating order, the human tragedy would have been far greater. Further, we were not going to make the mistake of the Paris Communards of 1871, who showed the capacity of workers to defy the merchants and clerics, and for two glorious months waved their red banners behind barricades manned by a volunteer militia. But as Comrade Lenin observed, the Communards were too timid. They failed to launch an offensive against the Army, which was given time to recover, and when the Army returned to the streets of Paris, the Communards were massacred by the thousands. We were not going to wait for the reactionaries to strangle our Revolution. We realized we had to be brutal, intolerant and absolute. The Cheka had to be created to combat counter-revolutionaries, saboteurs and all the harmful insects.
PROSECUTOR: One of the Cheka’s first victims was a celebrated circus clown named Bim-Bom, who had been making jokes about the Communists in his act. The Cheka agents attempted to arrest him during a Moscow performance. When the clown tried to flee, the agents began shooting. The audience wasn’t sure if it was real or part of the show. So apparently even a guy in funny makeup, entertaining kids, was a threat to the state. As the size of the Cheka grew almost exponentially, it was soon executing as many as 10,000 people monthly. The people dying were not foreign citizens. Isn’t it fair to say that one of the greatest accomplishments of the Bolsheviks was identifying all the psychopaths in the country and giving them a job that allowed them to act upon their sadistic fantasies and slaughter with impunity?
STALIN: I apparently need to remind you that all the tsars had their internal police! Centuries ago, Ivan ⎼ the very first Tsar ⎼ established a special guard called the Oprichnina. Ivan had 6,000 men wearing black robes and riding black horses who zealously and brutally protected the crown against devious, plotting aristocrats. But then Ivan would bend a knee to God and repent. You can’t be of two minds like that, and, of course, religion is for fools. A century later, Peter the Great used his Preobrazhensky Prikaz ⎼ his special regiment ⎼ to guard against the scheming of his sister Sofia. Catherine the Great relied on her Secret Expedition to monitor political mischief. Nicholas I called upon his Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery to monitor ideological subversion. In 1881, after Tsar Alexander was assassinated by the socialists of the Narodnaia Volia, a larger and more skilled intelligence organization was needed. That was the Okhrana, and we learned many lessons from them about the art of spying, including the need to mount covert actions in other nations. I need to emphasize that, at the start of the revolution, the Bolsheviks had many, many enemies, including a vast, entrenched bourgeois class system of bloodsucking kulaks, priests, landowners, warmongers, royals, and philistine intellectuals. On December 31, 1922, a new era finally began. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was brought into existence. We chose red for the color of the flag, the same color as the flags of popular revolts against autocracy in France and elsewhere. On the upper left of the flag, the gold hammer and sickle represented the workers of industry and agriculture. The gold star symbolized the ultimate goal of worldwide communist victory. This flag flew over the largest nation on earth, spanning almost 9,000 miles and 11 time zones.
PROSECUTOR: Many have suggested that, in fact, you did not establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, but rather made yourself a dictator of the proletariat. In other words, you became a Marxist Tsar. What is your reaction to that assessment?
STALIN: Ridiculous! Such bourgeois nonsense! Let’s begin with the circumstances of my birth. I understood the predicament of the worker because I was one of them. I grew up dirt poor in a small village. My family moved constantly, always renting. My father left my mother when I was boy. She cleaned houses to feed us. When I became a Marxist organizer, editing pamphlets and staging factory strikes, I slept in a different room every night to evade arrest. Nonetheless, I was arrested six times by the Tsar’s secret police and exiled to Siberia. I escaped repeatedly and returned to revolutionary activities. For all the propaganda about the virtues of Western democracy, no political organization was as democratic as the organs of the Communist Party. All of us who served the Soviet people faced regular and free elections. When the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union convened, our work was microscopically scrutinized. Every person elevated to the Politburo understood that he or she served only as long as they were productive. Unlike the U.S. President, or the British Prime Minister, no one person in the Soviet state was given blanket authority. All decisions were reviewed in a strict committee process. And, with the exception of a small number of books, photographs and other personal items, I did not own anything.
PROSECUTOR: Comrade Stalin, you might not have technically owned anything, but you had access to anything you wanted at a moment’s notice, and you lived much like a Tsar … or King … or capitalist tycoon. For example, when traveling, you used the luxury train car built for the Tsar. You had an apartment inside the fortress of the Kremlin, and two homes in the leafy suburbs of Moscow, one of which was previously occupied by an oil baron. You took regular and long southern vacations in the Caucasus Mountains and on the Black Sea, with sole access to multiple lavish properties. Every one of your dinners was a banquet, with a wide variety of dishes and alcohol.
STALIN: Those who know me best know I lived simply. When in Moscow, I slept many nights on a couch in the study of my dacha. I’d often fall asleep while reading official documents. I regularly worked myself to exhaustion and always worked during vacations. In my heart, I know the Soviet people view me with love and gratitude.
PROSECUTOR: It has also been speculated that you have a mental disorder of some kind. According to your closest colleagues, including your physician, you demonstrated extreme narcissism and extrema paranoia … Alternated between periods of mania and depression, which suggest bi-polar disorder. Finally, you repeatedly engaged in delusional thinking. It has been theorized that these traits were, in part, the product of a being abused as a child. How would you assess your psychological makeup?
STALIN: You sound like the traitorous Jew Trotsky talking about the ridiculous theories of the Jew Freud. The psychology of Freud is a perversion and easily debunked when you evaluate it in a Marxist context. We are not primitives driven entirely by our sexual drives. The first priority of psychology is to take into account social conditions ⎼ not the analysis of our dreams. Dreaming is for poets. As for my upbringing, it was typical of any villager of the time period.
PROSECUTOR: Many accounts report that you were often beaten as a child.
STALIN: It would be better if I simply provided you with an accurate understanding of my early life and how it motivated me to find a more enlightened perspective. When I visited my mother just before she died, I asked her: “Why did you beat me so hard?” Do you know what she replied? She said: “That’s why you turned out so well!” I think there is some truth in that statement. It is also no secret that my father, Vissarion Dzhugashvili, was a drunk who regularly beat my mother. He’d also beat me. Sometimes both my father and my mother beat me. In these circumstances, you make a choice: do you submit to self-pity or create your own path? When I was a boy, I insisted that everyone call me Koba. That’s the name of a heroic robber from a Georgian story, published in 1883, just after I was born. Koba is a mountain man of the Caucasus who joins a great resistance against the Russian empire. He lives by the mountain code of honor and destroys anyone who betrays him. Koba’s famous cry is: “I’ll make their mothers weep!” My mother, who was very religious, didn’t want another Koba. She wanted a priest. She encouraged me to seek a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, in Tbilisi, in order that I could become a priest in the Georgian Orthodox Church. In my second year of seminary training, I repudiated the brainwashing I was getting. The priests rejected all secular and modern ideas and insulted Georgian culture. I smuggled the works of Marx and Engels into the seminary. I was caught once and sent to a solitary cell for punishment. I became enthralled with a new way of thinking: the historical inevitability of communism ⎼ the imminence of class war, the overthrow of capitalism, the creation of a classless society. When I dedicated myself completely to Marxism and the socialist revolution, I came to think of my wretched father as a victim of history. He died alone and destitute. He was a cobbler, a craftsman, who was forced to give up his workshop, leave his village, and take a job in a city factory. He became just another exploited worker gobbled up by the cruelties of monopolistic capitalism.
PROSECUTOR: Nikolai Bukharin, one of the key figures of the Bolshevik Revolution, was arrested, tortured and executed during your purge of Communist Party members in the 1930s. He said you were a fundamentally unhappy man because you could not convince everyone of your superiority. He said your unhappiness was your most fundamental human trait. He said this explains your need for revenge. General Mikhail Tukhachevsky, an innovator who is credited with mechanizing the Red Army, was also arrested, tortured and shot in the purges. Tukhachevsky was a refined and accomplished man. He was born into a family of Russian nobility, played violin with the composer Dimitri Shostakovich, and was popular with fellow officers, soldiers, and the public. In a playful mood, General Tukhachevsky once swept you off your feet and held you in the air. Since you are five-feet-four inches, this would understandably be embarrassing. However, those who witnessed the incident said your face was filled with rage and terror. Is it true you never overcame a deep inferiority complex?
STALIN: More Freudian stupidity! Bukharin was a rightist who tried to frustrate Communist Party policy and hinder collectivization and industrialization. Tukhachevsky was simply a traitor who was plotting with the Nazis and monarchist exiles to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. I do not think you understand the need for constant struggle against the many enemies of the revolution. You also do not grasp my leadership responsibilities. My given name is Iossif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. But when I became an organizer for the Bolsheviks, I truly became a new man, reborn. I adopted a new Russian name: Stalin. Stal is the Russian word for steel. That’s the quality required to crush the bourgeoisie and, for the first time in human history, bring into being the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ideology without discipline is pointless! As a boy in Georgia, I was constantly teased because of my appearance. Smallpox had scarred my face and my left arm had become stiff and shortened after I was struck by an out-of-control horse carriage. But I was never afraid to fight those who insulted me! I eagerly wrestled others until they were on the ground begging for mercy. I learned to project my will forcefully. I always let you see only what I wanted you to see. I intended the menace in my eyes to distract you from the pockmarks that were cratered on my face. I steered conversations in such a way that you wouldn’t dare ask about the odd bearing of my left arm. Anyway, what purpose would be served by emphasizing any of these aspects of my appearance? The Soviet people were not interested in the story of Iossif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, from the small town of Gori. They needed Stalin ⎼ the man of steel ⎼ so that they would no longer think of themselves as doormats! I will also admit that I believe in the virtue of fear. Mothers nurture their children. Fathers are intended to scold them. Fathers also know that their children are naturally defiant. I was required to become Father Stalin of the Soviet people. However, fear is not sufficient for a ruler. Fear must be accompanied by order.
PROSECUTOR: Almost immediately after the end of World War II, the alliance between the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States dissolved. Winston Churchill accused you of placing an Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe. Harry Truman charged that you did not keep your agreements. In 1947, Truman told Congress that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine, as it was called, was a clear signal that the Soviet Union would now be America’s chief adversary.
STALIN: I must interrupt your tiresome history lessons because I think you’ve forgotten that we immediately responded to the so-called Truman Doctrine with the Molotov Plan, which strengthened the economic alliance between the socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc.
PROSECUTOR: With all due respect Comrade Stalin, I think you are skipping ahead in the historic timeline. After the Truman Doctrine, the United States proposed the Marshall Plan. It was a pledge of economic assistance to all European countries, including the Soviet Union. You refused to join the Marshall Plan and did not allow the Eastern Bloc nations to join, either. You even summoned the Czech foreign minister to Moscow and berated him because the country had considered involvement. But the Marshall Plan helped the Western European nations to achieve the fastest growth in their history.
STALIN: Why are you telling me things that I know? Especially things that I did! Where are you going with this line of questioning?
PROSECUTOR: Well, here is where I am going. After the trauma of the Great Patriotic War, a Cold War almost immediately began. For a completely exhausted nation, there was no respite. Withering hardships continued for the Soviet people as resources were diverted to weapons and soldiers. Could this turn of events have possibly been avoided?
STALIN: The short answer is yes. Of course this situation could have been avoided. But I am not to blame. During World War II, there were exhaustive meetings between the leaders of the three chief armies fighting Fascism. Within reason, I honored the commitments I made. I recognized and accommodated the chief priorities of my counterparts. Winston Churchill was principally interested in maintaining control of as much of the British Empire as possible; in other words, maintaining Britain’s oppression of millions of freedom-seeking people on almost every continent. Franklin Roosevelt wanted the Soviet Union to join and cooperate in the establishment of the new United Nations, which we did. But, more specifically, let me tell you how Churchill negotiated the fate of some nations. Is that ok? Because I don’t want to tire your simple mind.
PROSECUTOR: I may indeed have a simple mind, but I am happy to learn more from the Leader and Teacher of the Workers of the World.
STALIN: I detect sarcasm, which I will ignore. To continue. I met with Churchill in Moscow in the fall of 1944 and he was perfectly fine with selling out half of Europe. He said to me: “Let us settle our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Romania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at cross purposes in small ways. How would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in Romania and for us to have ninety percent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?” Churchill also suggested splitting Hungary 50-50, and giving Russia 75 percent of Bulgaria. As we were talking, Churchill began writing this formula on a blank sheet of paper and passed it to me. I’m not kidding! He chopped up Europe with a few strokes of a pen! It was very basic, having been quickly scrawled, and it listed the names of the countries and, underneath, the respective percentages he had mentioned. So, you can see why I found Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech quite a terrible joke. Two years before, he had blithely conceded a vast portion of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. I guess old imperialist warmongers never change their stripes.
PROSECUTOR: But did Roosevelt ever suggest that the United States gain some measure of control over Eastern European nations?
STALIN: Not exactly. But there were troubling decisions. In keeping my promise to Roosevelt to participate in the establishment of the United Nations, I, in turn, had a few priorities. Most importantly, I begged the British and the Americans to invade France in 1942, in order to take pressure off the Eastern front. Of course, D-Day did not occur until the middle of 1944, and, during those two years, millions of Soviet soldiers and citizens died fighting the majority of the Nazi forces. So I judged the Normandy invasion as horribly late. Churchill and Roosevelt insisted their forces weren’t ready. Fine. But then don’t complain that the Red Army is occupying all of Eastern Europe. If the British and Americans had gotten there first, they could have run the show anyway they wanted! At the Yalta Summit, Roosevelt also asked me to join the war in the Pacific after the defeat of Hitler. I agreed. By attacking from Siberia and establishing a new front, we would be putting additional pressure on the militarists in Tokyo. This would also allow the Soviet Union to regain rail and shopping access to the Pacific, which had been lost when Tsar Nicholas was humiliated in the 1905 war with Japan. But at the final Allied Summit, in Potsdam, I suddenly had to deal with a new American President, Mr. Truman, a presumptuous and dishonorable fool who decided to override Roosevelt’s promises. In Potsdam, Truman found out his atomic bomb had been tested successfully. Suddenly, he didn’t need us anymore! I asked that the Soviet Union be included in the Potsdam Declaration to Japan, demanding immediate unconditional surrender. I did not even receive the courtesy of an official reply. I knew Truman would use his new weapon as soon as possible, in order to quickly end the war and keep us out of it. After the Potsdam summit, I rushed back to Moscow, and, as soon as I arrived, I ordered more than a million troops to attack Japanese forces. And, by the way, the reason why Japan agreed to surrender has a lot more to do with the fast approaching Red Army than with Truman’s big explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
PROSECUTOR: You say you believe in fear and control, but it seems what you really mean is the constant and random application of killing in order to eliminate any trace of dissent. It’s not a new way of governing. It’s no different than the Romans, or the Mongols, or the Vikings. And, as previously noted, you live like an emperor or a king. For example, take your dacha in a forest tract about 15 minutes from the Kremlin. How many rooms does it have?
STALIN: I do not own this dacha. It belongs to the Soviet people.
PROSECUTOR: The dacha has 20 rooms. There’s a special room for billiards, and another one for screening movies. It has a greenhouse, a solarium, and a Russian steam bath. There’s a separate building for a library, which has 20,000 volumes and is staffed by a full-time librarian. The compound includes several pavilions, with tables, which were built for your walks in the surrounding parkland. There are large auxiliary accommodations for guards and a domestic staff.
STALIN: I use this secure location to meet regularly with members of the Politburo. Do you know that?
PROSECUTOR: Yes. I will get to that. But I also want to stay on the topic of how it seems that the state has always indulged your every desire, as opposed to you being a humble servant of the state, as you so forcefully claim. Like all emperors and kings who make it a habit of killing their rivals, you are in perpetual fear of assassination. You ban carpets from your many custom-built homes because it muffles the sound of intruders. For the same reason, you don’t want fountains anywhere. None of your food is served until it had been first tasted by someone else.
STALIN: This is sensible security.
PROSECUTOR: Or is it something a bit more troubling? Is it more like the behavior of a pampered paranoiac who should have been neutralized many years ago.
STALIN: Viper! If that had happened, you would be speaking German and living under Fascism.
PROSECUTOR: One final charge.
STALIN: So you have finally run out of fantasies about me?
PROSECUTOR: I prefer to call it one more reality for you to hear, which is this: You are a doddering, useless, pathetic figure who constantly forces the Politburo to stay up all night laughing at your cruel jokes and watching Hollywood cowboy movies. It’s almost like you have become one of those rich American retirees who end up vegetating in Florida.
STALIN: But you are wrong. I no longer watch Hollywood cowboy movies.
PROSECUTOR: I don’t believe you.
STALIN: I assume you know the American actor John Wayne?
PROSECUTOR: Yes.
STALIN: I will admit to admiring his work in the John Ford westerns, especially Stagecoach. When Wayne makes his entrance as the Ringo Kid, a star is born.
PROSECUTOR: So why have you stopped watching Westerns?
STALIN: I found out John Wayne had become one of Hollywood’s leading anti-communists and it soured me on the whole genre. Which reminds me. Can you do me a small favor, in case this trial ends like most Soviet trials.
PROSECUTOR: A favor?
STALIN: I can give you the address of John Wayne’s ranch in California.
PROSECUTOR: So the KGB can kill him?
STALIN: No, something worse. Tell him Stalin is no longer a member of his fan club.