Life nevertheless had its pleasant side. The Stalins lived in two places after the Soviet–Polish War: their Kremlin flat and the dacha they called Zubalovo near the old sawmill at Usovo outside Moscow. By a bizarre coincidence, the dacha’s owner had belonged to the Zubalishvili business family which had built the hostel that became the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary. Probably it tickled the fancy of Stalin and his neighbour Mikoyan that they were living in homes put up by an industrialist from the south Caucasus against whom they had once helped to lead strikes.30
Several dachas were made state property in the same district in 1919 and the Stalins occupied Zubalovo-4. Stalin, who had never had a house of his own,31 cleared the trees and bushes to turn his patch into a spot to his liking. Near by was the River Moskva, where the children could swim in the summer. It was a beautiful spot which might have appeared in the plays of Anton Chekhov; but whereas Chekhov described how the old rural gentry were supplanted by the
In the summers they holidayed in the south of the USSR, usually in one of the many state dachas by the Black Sea. Stalin had material couriered to him whenever he needed to be consulted. But he knew how to enjoy himself. There were always plenty of Caucasian dishes and wines on his table and the visitors were many. Georgian and Abkhazian politicians queued to ingratiate themselves. His Moscow cronies, if they were staying in nearby dachas, called on the family; and picnics were arranged in the hills or by the seaside. Although Stalin could not swim, he loved the fresh air and the beach as well.
He also used the vacations as a time to allow his body to recuperate. Joseph’s health had always troubled him and since 1917 he had resorted to various traditional cures. The rheumatism in his arm and his bothersome cough — probably caused by his pipe-smoking — figured often in his letters.33 Once he had stopped at Nalchik high up in the north Caucasus. It was a place visited by tuberculosis patients.34 But Stalin’s specific complaints were different; and for his rheumatism, which affected his arm every spring, he was advised by Mikoyan to try the hot baths at Matsesta near Sochi on the Black Sea coast.35 Stalin tried this and found the waters at Matsesta to work ‘a lot better than the Essentuki muds’.36 Essentuki was one of the spa towns of the north Caucasus famous for the medical benefits of its soil. Stalin mostly, in any case, preferred to go to Sochi for his summer vacations.37 From 1926 he put himself in the hands of Dr Ivan Valedinski, a great believer in ‘balneology’. When Stalin made his way south in the summer, he pocketed instructions from Valedinski: he was told to take a dozen baths at Matsesta before returning home. Stalin asked for permission to enliven his stay with a glass or two of brandy at weekends. Valedinski was stern: Stalin could take a glass on Saturdays but definitely not on Sundays.38
Perhaps the doctor forgot that Sundays were not sacred for an atheist. In any case Stalin was never a trusting patient; he had his own pack of medicines and used them as he saw fit regardless of advice from doctors.39 It is doubtful that he went along with everything that Valedinski specified. But undoubtedly he felt better than earlier. The hot baths eased the pain in his joints and the aspirin prescribed by Valedinski reduced the pain in his neck. A heart check-up in 1927 confirmed him as generally robust.40
