Kato, Stalin, Yakov
Early April, 1925. The General Secretary's study.
An uninvited guest stood before him. Stalin did not look up from his papers. With a faint rustle he turned a page — or pretended to — and stole a glance at the figure waiting in silence.
Dark brows stretched in a single line, set low over the eyes. The eyes themselves were deep-set and beautiful. Most people would have said the boy took after his father. Stalin knew better. He knew exactly whose eyes those were.
Kato...
Stalin closed his eyes and let the past rise up to meet him.
In June of 1906, Kato Svanidze was carrying Stalin's child. He decided then that he would marry this woman, whose eyes and heart were equally beautiful. At two o'clock in the morning on the sixteenth of July, in the Church of Saint David — Mamadaviti — in Tbilisi, he took her as his wife.
The Okhrana, the Empire's secret police, were hunting him, and so the ceremony could not be held in daylight. The guests numbered a mere ten — Bolshevik comrades all. It was a secret wedding. He had not even invited his own mother, Keke Geladze. The comrades never let him hear the end of it — an atheist like Dzhugashvili, married in a church — but he paid them no mind. It was what Kato had wanted.
Their happiness did not last. As the Bolshevik leader of the Caucasus, Stalin was a constant target of the Okhrana, and his life was one long flight from arrest. Kato Svanidze, scraping by on whatever work she could find, threw herself into aiding the Bolsheviks — and was caught by a double agent and thrown in prison.
Then, on the eighteenth of March, 1907, she gave birth to a son. Yakov. A beautiful child, with Kato's eyes.
That June, Stalin robbed a State Bank carriage in Erivan Square to raise funds for the Party. Forty people died. After a crime of that magnitude, he could no longer remain in Tbilisi. Evading the Okhrana, he fled to Baku with Svanidze and the infant Yakov.
Baku was an oil city. In summer the temperature climbed past forty degrees. The air stank of petroleum. There was no distinction between the water that came in and the water that went out — a backward, wretched place. To make matters worse, the Okhrana tracked him without rest, and he was forced to leave the house for days at a time.
Svanidze was left alone in a strange city where she knew no one. She sat in a rented room with Yakov in her arms and waited for her husband. By the time summer ended, worry over Stalin, the isolation, and the brutal climate had broken her health. The Svanidze family came to take her home. She sent them away. She would not leave her husband behind.
In October her condition collapsed beyond anyone's power to stop it. Stalin, fully prepared to be arrested, brought her back to Tbilisi to find treatment.
"I'm sorry, Koba..."
Heaven was on no one's side. On the twenty-second of November, 1907, Kato Svanidze died.
Stalin closed her eyes, gathered her into his arms, and wept until he lost consciousness. Her funeral was conducted according to the rites of the Church. He prepared the coffin himself. And when they lowered it into the earth, Stalin threw himself into the grave after it.
He was ready to die. A crowd of Bolshevik followers dragged him out. He wept again, and could not stop.
The Okhrana agents hiding beyond the church wall saw it all — and could not bring themselves to arrest him. They turned their faces away. But Stalin could not even see the funeral through to its end. Still hunted, he fled once more to Baku.
"Yakov. My son..."
He had no confidence that he could keep the boy safe. In the end he left Yakov with the Svanidze family, and for years he did not return to Tbilisi.
And in those years, the warm and passionate revolutionary of Georgia became a cold-blooded man of steel.
"Please grant me your blessing to marry Zoya."
Yakov's voice pulled Stalin from the depths of memory. The Svanidze child who had spent fully seventeen years in Tbilisi had always been a shy boy, one who almost never gave voice to his own wishes. And now that same Yakov was telling Stalin, for the first time in his life, what he wanted.
"Her name was Zoya, was it?"
"...Did I tell you her name, Father?"
Stalin gave a short, humorless snort. Since becoming General Secretary, there was no citizen of the Union he could not investigate if he wished.
"This father is a busy man, so I shall be brief."
He went on without warmth or ceremony.
"...May I ask why?"
Reasons? Stalin could have produced as many as he liked.
In an atheist state, a marriage alliance with a family of theologians is a weakness in itself. For now the Party confined itself to "maintaining an anti-religious attitude." But Stalin knew better than anyone, from long years of revolution, where anti-religion ended: in the systematic crushing of religious institutions. Countless Orthodox priests will be branded enemies of the people.
Yakov was still a child. Far too young to be forced to choose between abandoning his wife and being abandoned alongside her. If Stalin said as much, the boy would understand. If he understood, he would accept it. If he accepted it, he would give up the marriage.
Stalin said none of it. He simply went on studying his papers in silence. Yakov, for his part, offered no reply. He neither rebelled nor pleaded. He only stood there, looking down at Stalin with Kato's eyes.
Then he turned and left.
After that day, Yakov kept coming back, seeking permission to marry Zoya. Stalin kept refusing.
"This is my last warning as your father, Yakov."
By the time the Man of Steel's patience had finally reached its limit —
"I understand, Father."
The son of steel had changed.
June, 1925. Leningrad.
Pavorsky came back with a brown coat and pulled it on himself. It was a shabby thing, the elbows worn to a shine. As he shoved his arms through the sleeves he opened a desk drawer and stuffed a thermometer, a stopwatch, and several test tubes into his pockets. Last of all he took a small brown bottle stoppered with a cork, slipped it into his inner pocket, then pulled two gas masks from the wall and tucked them under his arm. He looked at us for a moment — and took down two more.
"First things first. Let's have a look at that factory of yours!"
That factory...? Never mind that — he wanted to go now?
"When else? At this rate the sun will be down. Lead the way!"
The clock on the wall still read half past eight, but the world beyond the window was as bright as afternoon. In Leningrad in June, night was in no hurry to arrive.
A demonstration factory, Pavorsky scolded me, was a site for experiments — and how did I propose to conduct any without first confirming that the site was even fit for the purpose?
"The road out to the Red Triangle is rough, and it's late. Wouldn't it be better to go in the morning?"
"Listen here, young lady. I'm no bureaucrat like the rest of you. I haven't got time to sit around."
A scholar, he added, was a man who proved things with objective evidence. With that brief remark, Pavorsky handed me a spare gas mask and strode for the door.
Katerina glanced at me. Nothing for it. We exchanged a look, shrugged, and she pulled the keys from her pocket.
The car cut through the city along the Neva. The light of the white nights lay in a thin film across the water, and beyond the far bank the factory chimneys breathed black smoke into the sky. Pavorsky watched from the back seat, muttered that they'd be getting coal tar out of that, and pulled a notebook from his pocket to jot something down.
"Inspector Svanidze. How many workers did you say your factory had?"
"Twenty-five."
"Hmm..."
He left the sound hanging in the air, closed the notebook, and drew his coat collar tight. Thinking he might be cold, I offered him the nonwoven pouch I kept inside my coat.
"Oho. And what is this?"
Pavorsky's eyes lit up.
He tore the pouch open at once.
"Fascinating. Iron filings mixed with a catalyst to produce an oxidation reaction? The catalyst is..." He smacked his lips. "There's salt in it."
He had identified the thing in seconds.
"Even a child knows that rusting iron gives off heat. But the notion of putting it in a scrap of cloth you can hold in your hand — I doubt anyone's thought of that."
"I thought the same. Unfortunately, it already has an international patent. So I just use them privately."
Was this not supposed to be the privilege of those who regress, possess, or reincarnate? I had seen the factory girls shivering in the cold, conceived a modest little idea, and sworn I would invent the hand warmer and make a fortune. That vow had crumpled at once before the inconvenient fact that the thing already existed.
"A talent like yours, wasted as a mere factory inspector. What a shame."
Pavorsky grinned as he said it. A smear of black iron powder sat on the bridge of his nose.
We reached the factory soon enough. Pavorsky climbed out of the car and strode straight inside. Caught off guard, I scrambled after him to play the guide.
The first place he stopped was wherever the workshop ceiling came into view. Dozens of women workers turned to look at us, but he paid them no attention at all. His head was tipped back, studying the ceiling.
"Exhaust pipes?"
"Yes. We installed them recently."
"How many in this factory?"
"Two at each workbench."
"...Excellent."
He went up to the top floor, climbed onto the railing, and crawled out along the pipes toward an exhaust outlet. No one would have believed a body that old could move like that. We all watched, hearts in our throats, certain he was going to fall. Pavorsky pressed his palm to the mouth of the pipe, confirmed that air was sweeping across his hand, nodded to himself, and crawled back.
We barely managed to talk the peculiar old man out of inspecting every other pipe, and went back down to the first floor.
"Remarkably clean windows."
"Those were replaced recently as well."
Pavorsky nodded and looked around. Then he crouched in front of the pechka set flush against the wall and peered into the firebox. He ran his fingers through the flue, rubbed the soot between them, and nodded again.
Next came the workbenches. He pulled on a gas mask, picked up a brush from beside a pot of adhesive, examined the bristles, and studied the pot and its lid with painstaking care. Then his gaze found me. Without a word, he walked off toward a part of the factory he had not yet seen.
The last place Pavorsky stopped was the old barn behind the workshop. Nothing stood there yet but a skeleton of logs. A banya was supposed to go up on this spot — but thanks to that damned Zinovyev, the work had been halted.
"...Inspector Svanidze."
Having toured every corner of the factory, he finally opened his mouth.
"How long have you been posted here?"
"Well..."
I counted on my fingers. Hadn't even been a month, had it?
"I've been to this factory before. It was nowhere near this clean." Pavorsky went on, not bothering to hide his admiration. "You're a far more remarkable man than I gave you credit for. To have talked around that fastidious Nikolai Dmitrievich..."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"What's that blank look supposed to mean? I'm talking about the owner of the factory you were assigned to."
"...You mean the director of the 3rd Galoshi Factory?"
"Who else would I mean!"
I had not expected the director's name to come out of Pavorsky's mouth.
"I've never even met the director."
"What?"
"More than that — Nikolai? That's a name I'm hearing for the first time today."
"...You truly don't know?"
Was this someone I was supposed to know? I collected myself for a moment, then answered.
"No. I don't."
"Listen carefully. The director of your factory is none other than..."
When I heard the identity of the name that left Pavorsky's lips, I could not help but be astonished. And how could I not be? He was a monarchist — a man who had no place in this Union — and...
"Nikolai Dmitrievich Golitsyn," Pavorsky said.
The last Prime Minister of the Russian Empire.