(4 of 8)
Kittens & Shepherds. Life at Dallgow, as described by some of its participants, now in the West, sounds like a Dostoevskian debauch. They tell of drunken bouts in Vasily's tightly guarded, 30-room villa; of his shouting rages, his wild rides in stolen cars, of cuffings, beatings and brutish practical jokes. Their stories, perhaps individually suspect, have when taken together a great deal of consistency. His first wife was dead. According to one story, she was killed in a plane crash which Vasily survived. At Dallgow he lived with Lelya Timoshenko, 21-year-old daughter of the Soviet marshal. On nights when Vasily's chauffeur brought in a batch of girls, Koshechka ("Little kitten," as Lelya was called) was escorted to their huge bedroom, where a picture of father Stalin looked sternly down from the wall. The master's German shepherd, Jack, guarded her door until morning.
If the food didn't suit him, Vasily would hurl it on the floor, stamp out, and roar away in his plane to stunt off his anger. He drank brandy and vodka in gulping draughts from breakfast until bedtime. The base soccer team, the Stalin Commandos, either in victory rode the dizzying crest of his pleasure or in defeat the depths of his displeasure.
Colonel Stalin climbed trees for a better look at take-offs and landings, on at least one occasion punished sloppy flying with a cuff from his leather gauntlets. Red airmen whooping it up in Potsdam's nightclubs posted sentries to warn of Vasily's approach. The colonel, they said, hated to have his boys get tipsy and make spectacles of themselves. Except for a few favored companions, anyone who got caught landed in solitary. There were private and inconsequential attempts at revenges: once the leather seats of Stalin's car were ripped out; another time, someone heaved a brick through his windshield.
On March 3, 1946, Russian papers carried the news of Vasily's promotion to major general. Red army men saw five-star Marshal Zhukov pop to quivering attention before one-star General Stalin. For beating up a veteran flyer, Vasily was broken back to colonel, but soon had his star back. The phone buzzed incessantly between father & son. In 1947, Vasily was recalled to Moscow. In 1948 he led his first Aviation Day air parade. In 1949, word came that he was commanding general of the jet fighters charged with protecting the Moscow district.
What next?
In spite of the unrelieved picture the refugees paint—of an arrogant, hard-drinking, whoring youth—Vasily Iosifovich Stalin is obviously something more than that. A prime product of his environment, he is shrewd, tough and fanatic. As a pilot and commander, he showed some of the skill, high spirit and reckless abandon that Russia brought against the Nazis. He lives for Communism, displays nothing but hatred for the world outside, and little knowledge of it. He believes that Russia and the Red air force are invincible. He is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the City of Moscow. but is considered to have little interest in politics. A good bet is that he may one day be top commander of Russia's mighty air fleet.
Should this happen, the boss's favored son will inherit a prize air force, built up by a nation that tuned to the throb of an airplane engine almost before it knew the automobile.