Soviet Union. Thursday, November 24th, 1938. A few kilometers south of Moscow, the courier from the Kremlin has just
delivered dispatches to Stalin's dacha. Insanely paranoid, Stalin lives
hidden away in the middle of the forest. His residence is protected
by anti-aircraft batteries and a security force of 300 soldiers. No one is permitted to enter the dacha
without dictator's specific permission. Only Valentina, his governess,
has the right of access throughout. Every morning, as usual,
she brings him his dispatches. At 7:00 a.m. the dictator is still up. He has spent all night verifying
a list that sentences 3,178 people, to death or deportation. A long and painstaking task
which is far from over, but Stalin is a meticulous man. He takes his time ticking off
the names of the condemned, one by one. [Russian spoken audio] At 60 and at the peak of his power,
he controls everything. He leads an austere life. Nothing interests him
beyond exercising his own power. [Russian spoken audio] Stalin has reigned
over the USSR for ten years. Comprised of 15 republics, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
occupies one sixth of the world's landmass and extends over 11 time zones. It's the biggest empire of all time. At this stage of his life,
he is a cold, insensitive man. Stalin, the name that he
chose during the Russian Revolution, means the man of steel. Stalin is the ultimate
totalitarian dictator. He is convinced he has been chosen
by Providence to transform society and build an ideal world, communism. He wants to create the new man,
disciplined, obedient, hard working, and blindly obedient
to the party, meaning to Stalin. To accomplish this colossal project, Stalin must destroy
everything before he can rebuild it. Eradicate all privileges,
eliminate all traitors and if necessary, he is prepared
to exterminate half of the population. For a year and a half, he has put into place a
scientific system of massive illumination, that's called the Great Purge. Between July 1937, and November of 1938, he has had 800,000 Russians executed. 1,500 victims per day,
one every 57 seconds. At the end of November 1938,
Stalin has attained absolute power. He has exterminated
all his enemies, whether real or imagined. It's time to stop the bloodbath before
his people realize that he is nothing, but a murderous madman. To absolve himself of any guilt, Stalin will accuse the chief of the
secret police, Nikolai Yezhov, the man known as the bloodthirsty midget, of having committed
these crimes behind his back. Yezhov obeys him
like a dog and has tortured and assassinated thousands of
innocent people with his own hands. Soon it will be his turn
to face torture and death. Stalin has summoned
Yezhov to his office at 6:00 a.m. It's 7:30 a.m., Stalin has finally
finished his daily 16 hour workload. He lies down on the sofa in his office and sleeps peacefully for a few hours,
before putting his plan into action. As he says himself, the greatest
of pleasures is to choose one's victim, prepare one's blow, wreak
one's vengeance then go to bed. It's 10:00 a.m.,
Stalin has slept barely three hours. Despite his immense popularity, the little father of the people's
worshipped by the entire world, lives like a lone wolf
in his huge dacha. The villa has several living rooms and
a dozen or so bedrooms which remain empty, and where he never sets foot. Since his wife's suicide six years ago,
Stalin has totally isolated himself. Although once surrounded
by friends and stepfamily, today there is only one person
he trusts, his housekeeper, Valentina. She is the one who looks after him daily. Utterly faithful, illiterate,
naive, always in good spirits. She has no interest
whatsoever in politics. She also secretly
shares the dictator's bed. This relationship
would last until his death. [Russian spoken audio] Valentina is the only person
who knows all the dictator's weaknesses. Behind his image
as the invulnerable leader, Stalin has fragile health, he suffers from chronic throat infections,
psoriasis and arteriosclerosis which need daily treatments. [Russian spoken audio] Now Stalin lives alone with Valentina, but previously, he had been married twice. His first wife died of an illness
when she was very young. His second wife, Nadia,
had two children with Stalin. When she was alive, the two step families
would often come to the dacha for picnics. Those were happy times. In 1932, Nadia committed
suicide by shooting herself in the heart. During 13 years of marriage, she had progressively discovered
who the man she married really was. [Russian spoken audio] Right up to the end,
out of loyalty to her husband, Nadia kept her suffering to herself
but before committing suicide, she confided to her brother
and sister in law, Alexandre's parents. [Russian spoken audio] When talking of his
wife's suicide, Stalin used to say, "She left me like an enemy." "She left me crippled
for the rest of my life." [Russian spoken audio] It was this event that
caused Stalin to lose all human feeling. He began to develop
a hatred for her entire family, which he systematically eliminated. [Russian spoken audio] It's precisely on this day
in November 1938, that Evgeniya, Alexandre's mother, is about to
make a mistake that will prove fatal. It's 1:00 p.m. In his office, Stalin
receives Evgeniya, his sister in law, who has come
to pay him an unexpected visit. Evgeniya is the sister of his second wife,
Nadia, the one who committed suicide. Since this tragic event,
Stalin detests all of his in-laws. He receives Evgeniya coldly. Evgeniya is frightened. Part of her family has already been
executed or sent to the gulag by Stalin. She even suspects he is responsible for
poisoning her husband a few days earlier. Yet, in spite of the danger, Evgeniya has come
to give him a letter from Maria, another of Stalin's sister in law's, who he has sent
to the gulag for no apparent reason. Living conditions in Stalin's gulags
in Siberia are terrible Up to 50 degrees below zero in the winter. A 12-hour workday without enough food. Prisoners die of cold, hunger,
disease, exhaustion and despair. From her gulag, Maria has managed
to get a letter to her sister in law, begging Stalin to set her free. She writes, if I don't
get out of this camp, I will die here. Many years later, Evgeniya
described the scene to her son, Alexandre. [Russian spoken audio] In fact, Stalin hated any
pleading for those he had classified once and for all, as his enemies. Not only would Maria not be freed, she would be transferred
to a camp that was even worse and be executed several months later. Since Stalin never forgot an insult, he'd retaliate against Evgeniya by sending
her to the Gulag a few years later. Almost all of Stalin's family
were victims of his murderous insanity. Pavel, brother of his second wife, Nadia, poisoned on the 2nd of November,1938. Evgeniya, his wife and Kira,
their daughter, sent to the Gulag in1947. Anna, the elder sister of Stalin's
first wife, six years in the gulag. Her husband, Stanislav,
shot the 12th of February, 1940. Alexander, his first wife's brother,
shot the 20th of August, 1941. His wife, Maria, and her sister Mariko,
shot together in March 1942. Not counting all his close friends
who disappeared one after the other. [Russian spoken audio] Stalin himself grew up in a family
atmosphere of insecurity and violence. He was the only
survivor of three children. His father, a shoemaker, was
an alcoholic and regularly beat his son. He died when Stalin was ten. His mother, a housekeeper,
noticed his intelligence early on and managed to enroll him
in a seminary, so he could become a priest. A brilliant student. He would complete eight years
of studies before being expelled because of his subversive ideas. He had just discovered Marxism. Then he became passionately
committed to the revolutionary struggle against the Czar. Stalin killed people with his own hands and became the head of a Bolshevik gang
that robbed banks, plundered villages and planned assassinations
to finance Leonard's party. When the Bolsheviks came to power, Leonard made him
one of the top party officials. Nevertheless, before his death, Leonard wanted to
prevent him from becoming his successor. In his will, he would write, Stalin is much too brutal. He must be stopped from taking power. As every day in the early afternoon, Stalin is at work
in his office at the Kremlin. This little room
is the center of the empire. From all four corners of the country, millions of civil servants
supply the dictator with every scrap of information they can collect. Alone at the top
of an immense administrative pyramid, Stalin knows everything. He is omnipotent. To assist him in this colossal job, he has four secretaries
who are on call 24 hours a day. Distant and methodical, Stalin
always proceeds in the same manner. [Russian spoken audio] Stalin examines the list of the condemned
alone, in secret. The personnel of the Politburo
must not know that he is the one who condemns those
thousands of innocent people. He crosses out a name from time to time, an old comrade exiled with him in Siberia
when he was a young revolutionary or an old Georgian Bolshevik like himself. As for the others, a simple cross in the margin
suffices to send them to their deaths. On this same list,
Stalin also adds the names of people who are currently
at work right across the hall. [Russian spoken audio] All of Stalin's collaborators were
sent throughout the country to verify that the death sentences were carried out, a way for Stalin
to make them his accomplices. They could not later accuse him of crimes that they themselves
had also been involved in. Anastase Mikoyan, one of Stalin's
principal ministers, was one of them, his son remembers. [Russian spoken audio] The families of the condemned
were also to be eliminated. [Russian spoken audio] Today is Thursday,
the 24th of November, 1938. Stalin just signed the last list of people
sentenced to death during the Great Purge. One last thing remains for him to do. Designate someone to take
the blame for all of these crimes. This afternoon, Stalin
has summoned Nikolai Yezhov, the chief of secret police. A brilliant strategist, Stalin has
already foreseen needing to sacrifice him when the great terror
began a year and a half ago. He had immediately seen how to use this
cruel man nicknamed, the Bloody Dwarf. A little apparatchik, willing to do
anything to win his master's trust. Yezhov had overseen executions throughout
the empire and did not hesitate to torture and kill with his own hands
at the terrible prison of Lubyanka. From July 1937 until
this day in November of 1938, Yezhov, leader of
the Great Purge, under Stalin's orders, had had 770,000 people
executed with a bullet to the temple. To encourage him, Stalin made him
one of the great heroes of the regime. His portraits were carried
triumphantly by the crowd. He was applauded by the Politburo, and he went on vacation with
the highest dignitaries of the regime. Today, Yezhov is frightened. For some time now,
he has sensed his disgrace drawing nearer. The only thing he
hopes to save is his own head. But Stalin has signed
his last list of death sentences. Now he needs a scapegoat. Cynically, he accuses
Yezhov of the worst crimes. He calls him a rat,
a bloodthirsty renegade. He accuses him of having murdered hundreds
of innocent people behind his back, and of being a spy on payroll for the
British, the Germans and the Japanese. He even charges him with being
an alcoholic, a degenerate and a sodomite. All chief accusations
that will serve to condemn him. Yezhov doesn't even try to defend himself. He knows that once Stalin has decided
to condemn someone, nothing can stop him. His fate is sealed. Yezhov isn't only afraid for his own life, he's also afraid for
his daughter, Natalia, who was only
ten years old when he was arrested and knew nothing
about what her father did. [Russian spoken audio] Only once when she was six years old, did she suspect what
her father's work entailed. [Russian spoken audio] From that day on, Natalia was confined
to an orphanage in the north of Russia until she reached adulthood. She didn't find out what had
happened to her father until years later. She was never allowed
to use the name Yezhov again. Today she lives alone in the same area
where she had once been deported. Once the Yezhov matter is wrapped up,
Stalin pays a visit to his children, just as he does each day. They've been looked after by a nanny since
their mother, Nadya, committed suicide. Stalin reviews their homework and signs the school notebooks of Svetlana
12 years old, and Vasily, 18. He especially adores his daughter
and is very affectionate towards her. He takes time to play with her
and invents a game in which she's the boss who gives him orders,
which he obeys with pleasure. [Russian 00:28:20] Svetlana, who lives in a cocoon, notices that many members of her family
and friends have disappeared. She would write,
but where did they all go? Why is our house so empty? More and more, I felt the loneliness
and the emptiness around me. A desert world where my school
and my nanny were all that was left. After a long day well spent,
Stalin reclines on his old sofa, listening to his favorite piece,
Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 23. Alone, in the
early morning in his immense dacha. The dictator has
every reason to be satisfied. On this 24th of November,
1938, he has eliminated all his enemies, and he is now the
absolute ruler of the Soviet Union. On March 1st,1953, Stalin shut away in his
office, did not appear for the entire day. His entourage didn't dare disturb him. When at last the
Kremlin courier entered the office, he found Stalin unconscious, lying on
the floor, the victim of a major stroke. His agony lasted five days. He was 75 years old. Stalin died the same way
that he governed, alone in his office. The man who was responsible
for the death of over 20 million people, died at the summit of his power,
mourned by millions of Soviets and even by some of his victims. He had created a system
that would outlast him for over 35 years.
It’s such an enormous complex of subjects, but as a brief introductory thumbnail sketch this is quite good.
this was a good doc.
"You killed a hundred thousand people? You must get up very early in the morning!" Eddie Izzard.
Stalin lived in an apartment with a roommate.
60% of politicians were blue collar in his day.
He had 1 vote.
He was voted down numerous times.
Like the 4 times he tried to step down from his position.
No one who is about to downvote me could tell me how the soviet government functioned.
“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.” -Nietzsche
beware of the tankies and stalin apologists