Free Sex Lives of the Great Dictators by Nigel Cawthorne Page A

him.
    Stalin wore boots on even the most inappropriate occasions. On holiday in Georgia in the late twenties, he was in the garden with his guests, showing off his prize roses. He was wearing a lightweight tussore silk suit and heavy black riding boots which were quite out of keeping.
    "Joseph Vissarionvich," asked one of his guests, "it's so hot, but you are still wearing boots. How can you stand it?"
    "What can I say?" said Stalin. "Boots are really comfortable things. And useful. You can kick someone in the head with them - so hard he'll never find all this teeth." And he burst out laughing.
    This was typical cal Stalin's sadistic fantasies. He always identified with the aggressor -
    even his own father. In power, he modelled himself" on the Tsars, particularly Ivan the Terrible and Alexander I who defeated Napoleon. Stalin even compared himself to Nicholas II, who had imprisoned and exiled him.
    Stalin's all-time favourite aggressor was Hitler. He used Hitler's Night of the Long Knives as a model for his own purges. Even when Hitler attacked Russia in June 1941, he ordered frontline troops not to fight back, thinking there had been some mistake. He simply could not believe Hitler was attacking, even though everyone else saw it coming.
    Many political commentators had remarked on a homosexual element in the Nazi-Soviet pact, but Stalin had strong feelings about homosexuality. In 1933, he made all homosexual acts illegal, giving no clear reason. For propaganda purposes, a "homosexual conspiracy" was dreamt up. Gays were ganging up to overthrow the state.
    In January 1934, mass arrests of homosexuals began and Maxim Gorky published an
    article in Pravda, saying: "Destroy homosexuals and fascism will disappear." Stalin often referred to his enemies as "prostitutka" - male prostitutes.
    There were rumours that Stalin had a homosexual relationship in the mid-1930s with his chief bodyguard, the Hungarian Jew, K.V. Pauker. Pauker would have been the submissive partner in the relationship. He certainly knew what Stalin liked. His party piece was an imitation of Grigori Zinoviev who, when about to be executed, fell to his knees and embraced the boots of his executioner.
    "Stalin watched every move of "Zinoviev" and roared with laughter," an eyewitness reported. "When they saw how much Stalin enjoyed the scene, his guests demanded that Pauker repeat the performance. Pauker obliged. This time Stalin laughed so much that he bent down and held his belly with both hands. And when Pauker introduced a new improvisation and, instead of kneeling, raised his hands to heaven and screamed, "Hear Israel, our God is the only God!" Stalin could bear it no longer and, choking with laughter, began to make signs to Pauker to stop the performance."
    There were also some homosexual overtones to Stalin's all-male drinking parties after the war. Polish government official Jakub Berman attended one of these parties in 1948 and recalled dancing with Molotov.
    "Don't you mean Mrs Molotov?" he was asked.
    "No, she wasn't there," he said. "She'd been sent to a labour camp. I danced with Molotov
    - it must have been a waltz, or at any rate something simple, because I haven't a clue about how to dance and I just moved my feet to the rhythm."
    "As the woman?"
    "Yes, Molotov led," said Berman. "I wouldn't know how. He wasn't a bad dancer, actually."
    Stalin wound the gramophone and watched. Berman said that Stalin really had fun.
    This is not an isolated incident. Stalin often forced men to dance with each other at his parties. Indeed, there were fewer and fewer women around the Kremlin. Like Mrs Molotov, Stalin was arresting them all.
    Stalin only joined in on one occasion. After drinking Bruderschaft with Tito, he grabbed the Yugoslav dictator and span him around the floor to a Russian folk melody. Stalin danced so exuberantly that he lifted the bemused Yugoslav up in his arms several times.
    William Bullitt, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 1930s,