Back in 1931, when Stalin was ruthlessly liquidating the kulaks in his drive to collectivize the land, he gave one of his rare interviews to outsiders. His guests were George Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor. As always, Nancy Astor was forthright : "When are you going to stop killing people?" she asked Stalin.
"When it is no longer necessary," Stalin replied. "Soon, I hope."
Eleven years later, in the dark war year of 1942, on Churchill's last night in Russia, Stalin invited Churchill to his quarters for drinks. After the drinks, after an improvised but excellent dinner with fine wines, and after the ice was broken, Churchill got Stalin to talking about the bloody liquidation of the kulaks.
"Ten millions," said Stalin, holding up his hands with stubby fingers extended. "It was fearful. Four years it lasted."
Joseph Stalin never gave up killing people. It was always necessary in the kind of regime he ran. He killed until he died. He killed methodically, almost as if to say: nothing personal, merely inevitable. Or was that all? "Stalin's . . . spite," wrote Lenin, ". . . is a most evil factor in politics." Said Trotsky: "He is a kind of opportunist with a bomb." In the outer world, in those days, many intellectuals excused Stalin's methodical slaughter as a necessary first step toward a Communist paradise on earth.
Calm & Cunning. Judgments on Stalin varied astonishingly among those free to assess him—outsiders who saw him compatriots who broke with him. U.S. Businessman Donald Nelson, caught up in the heady transactions of Lend-Lease, found Stalin "a regular fellow, and a very friendly sort of fellow, in fact." "He is the most vindictive man on earth," said Leonid Serebriakov, who had known Stalin for years. "If he lives long enough, he will get every one of us who ever injured him in speech or action." Stalin purged Serebriakov, along with some millions of others, in 1937. Wrote starry-eyed Joseph E. (Mission to Moscow) Davies, who was U.S. Ambassador during the purges: "His brown eyes are exceedingly kind and gentle. A child would like to sit on his knee."
A habitual doodler who doodled wolves, girls, castles and the word "Lenin" on paper pads during conferences and interviews, Stalin gave the impression of impassive calm. But a Tito aide once saw him angry: "He trembled with rage, he shouted, his features distorted, he sharply motioned with his hand and poured invective into the face of his secretary who was trembling and paling as if struck by heart failure." Wrote Biographer Boris Souvarine: "This repulsive character . . . cunning, crafty, treacherous but also brutal, violent, implacable ..." Said Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who met Stalin at the Teheran conference: "Most of us, before we met him, thought he was a bandit leader who had pushed himself to the top of his government. That impression was wrong. We knew at once that we were dealing with a highly intelligent man . . ." Said Churchill: "Stalin left upon me an impression of deep, cool wisdom and absence of illusions," added that he had "a very captivating manner when he chooses . . ." Said Roosevelt: "Altogether, quite impressive, I'd say."