Such was the man who had taken Nadya Allilueva as his wife after the October Revolution. There had been no wedding ceremony, but their daughter Svetlana was told that her parents lived as spouses from some unspecified time before the Soviet government’s transfer from Petrograd to Moscow in 1918. (Apparently the official registration did not take place until 24 March 1919.)3 Nadya was less than half his age at the time and he was her revolutionary hero; and she had yet to learn that the harsh features of his character were not reserved exclusively for the enemies of communism.
At first things went well. Alexandra Kollontai, who got to know Nadya in the winter of 1919–20, was impressed by her ‘charming beauty of soul’ as well as by Stalin’s demeanour: ‘He takes a great deal of notice of her.’4 But trouble was already in the air. Joseph wanted a wife who took household management as her priority; this was one of Nadya’s accomplishments which had caught his eye in 1917.5 Nadya, however, wanted a professional career. As the daughter of a Bolshevik veteran, she had carried out important technical tasks on the party’s behalf in the Civil War. Although she had no professional qualifications, she had a grammar school education and proved a competent clerk at a time when politically reliable secretaries were few.6 She soon learned how to decode telegrams transmitting confidential information among Soviet leaders, including her husband.7 Lenin employed her on his personal staff.8 Joseph was more often absent on campaign than at home until autumn 1920, leaving Nadya to devote herself to her Sovnarkom duties. She became so close to the Lenins that if Nadezhda Krupskaya was going away on a trip, she would ask her to feed their cat. (Lenin could not be depended upon.)9 Nadya joined the party, assuming that her involvement in Bolshevik administration at the highest level would continue.
Her hope was dashed when Joseph returned from the Soviet–Polish War and family chores increased. Joseph wanted a settled domesticity at the end of his working day, whenever that might be. Matters came to a head late in the winter of 1920–1. Nadya, pregnant since June 1920, had gone on working while carrying the child. Joseph himself had fallen badly ill. In the Civil War he had frequently complained of his aches and pains as well as his ‘exhaustion’.10 No one had taken him seriously because he had usually done this when trying to resign in high dudgeon. Brother-in-law Fëdor Alliluev, seeing him before the Tenth Party Congress, remarked how tired he looked. Stalin agreed: ‘Yes, I’m tired. I need to go off to the woods, to the woods! To relax and have a proper rest and sleep as one ought!’11 He took a few days off. It was only when he retired to his bed after the Congress that medical attention became an obvious necessity. Professor Vladimir Rozanov, one of the Kremlin doctors, diagnosed chronic appendicitis. Rozanov said the problem might have existed for a dozen years; he could barely believe Stalin had been able to stand upright. Instant surgery was vital.
Operations for appendicitis in that period were often fatal. Rozanov worried that the procedure could infect Stalin’s peritoneum; he also thought him dangerously thin.12 Initially a local anaesthetic was administered because of his weakened condition. Yet the pain became unbearable and the operation was not completed until after a dose of chloroform. Allowed home afterwards, Stalin lay on a divan reading books and convalesced over the next two months. As he got better, he went out in search of company. By June he had been passed fit. Coming upon Mikhail Kalinin in discussion with other Bolsheviks about the NEP, he announced his return to work: ‘It’s oppressive to lie around by yourself and so I’ve got up: it’s boring without one’s comrades.’13 This sentiment might easily have been included in any collection of memoirs about Stalin; but the rest of Fëdor Alliluev’s story was too embarrassing for Stalin to allow publication. He would not permit people to discover that he had ever been anything but tough in mind and body.
Joseph’s illness and recuperation coincided with the arrival of their first child. Vasili Stalin was born in Moscow on 21 March 1921. Delight at his safe delivery was tempered for Nadya by the fact that Joseph increased pressure on her to dedicate herself to domesticity. No one on her side of the family helped her out: all of them, including her mother Olga, were immersed in political activity. Olga was anyway hardly a model for child rearers. When Nadya and the other Alliluev children had been young, they had often had to fend for themselves while their parents went about their professional lives and revolutionary activity.
