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The "Dzhigit." The night of Nov. 9, 1932 is memorable in Vasily's life. At a Kremlin party commemorating the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution, Nadezhda Allilueva argued with her husband about a political amnesty he was postponing, and in anger threw an inkstand at him. Early next morning, the Kremlin doctor was called to Stalin's apartment. Nadezhda lay dead on the floor. Stalin stood by, white and drawn, a pistol nearby on the desk. Nadezhda had committed suicide, he said, undoubtedly over a law exam she was studying for.
Young Vasily marched behind his mother's coffin on the slow parade from Red Square to Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery. Her friends saw a thin, undersized eleven-year-old with close-cropped hair. He had been closer to his mother than to his doting but busy father; Nadezhda liked to say that he was a "real dzhigit."*
After his mother's death, something happened to dzhigit Stalin. At school, he turned in mediocre marks, seemed shy and sullen, interested only in soccer. When he graduated at the age of 18, he took no job, but spent his time loafing.
"Red Czarevich." Vasily coveted the shining golden wings of the swanky Red air force pilots he saw about Moscow. His father was badgered into letting him enroll in Sebastopol's Kachinsky Flying School, where he was treated with groveling politeness and fragile care. He never stood guard duty, ate special meals, slept apart. He smoked the finest Pushka and Kazbek cigarettes. Flying came hard, but he never got a thumbs-down. A special plane and a special instructor were set aside for the "Red Czarevich." Finally, in the fall of 1941, Vasily won his wings.
While his classmates flew long, bitterly cold patrols at the front that winter, young Stalin sortied into Moscow. The city's finest tailors and bootmakers were called in to pad out his spindly frame, add a bit to his 5 ft. 3 in. height. Vasily shot up to captain, major, lieutenant colonel, then colonel. He cut quite a figure in actresses' dressing rooms.
Eventually, he got into combat. In June 1942, Colonel Stalin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for bravery in combat, in 1944 was mentioned in his father's Order of the Day, again for bravery. Said Pravda: "He has continually made a brilliant record in heaviest fighting." Vasily got the Order of Suvorov, 2nd Class, and command of the 16th Air Division (50 planes), based at Dallgow Field near Potsdam. Red airmen say that he just about ran the entire 16th Air Division, since its nominal head, Colonel General Leonid Rudenko, carefully deferred to Joe Stalin's 25-year-old.