There was a spluttering and an odd, incomprehensible noise issuing from the radio receiver which was tuned in to the Moscow home service. The 01.00 hours bulletin had just been broadcast. It was a repeat of the bulletin that went out at midnight, and that in turn had been a repeat of the evening broadcast.
I waited. The news of Stalin╒s death had just been released to the outside world by Moscow╒s foreign services. Now, surely, was the moment for the Russians to be told. But they were not told anything ╤ except perhaps by implication. Solemn orchestral music brimmed out of the loudspeaker, filling the night with an eerie atmosphere of tragedy and sorrow. The Russians who were listening-in at that moment ╤ the broadcast was beamed to Siberia, where it was morning by then ╤ had not been told; but they must have surmised the truth.
As time went on and the customary news bulletins, the early morning broadcast of the physical training instructor, and the talks on political subjects, failed to materialise, the surmise in the minds of the listeners must have turned to a dimly apprehended certainty. There were those, I am sure, who were still hoping against hope. The dread word had not been uttered yet. A crisis perhaps ╤ but surely not death!
At 2.55 the music ceased. For a moment there was stillness in the air, silence in the room ╤ and in the rooms of all the Russians whose sets were tuned to Moscow. Then came the bells. They pealed neither joyfully nor sorrowfully, and yet managed to impart to the waiting minds and straining ears a sense of foreboding something akin to fear ╤ the feeling that overcomes most people at a crisis in life.
At 03.00 the bells stopped, suddenly. Again silence. And then the majestic strains of the Soviet national anthem, which replaced the ╥Internationale╙ during the war. The broad melody swept the vast expanses of Russia, of which it is intended to be descriptive. It penetrated into the little huts in the mountain settlements of Central Asia. And far in the North, where the snow and ice never thaw, it was heard by the camp guards who had just come back into the warmth of the guardroom, having been relieved by their comrades on the stroke of three. But the camp inmates ╤ of whom I was once one ╤ probably did not know and, if they knew, were hardly in a condition to care. They had just done a twelve-hour stretch of hard, back-breaking work, some in the forests where they had been felling trees, others in the goldmines of the Soviet Far East.
Five minutes, and the anthem came to a close. Would the ordinary news bulletin now be broadcast? Would it be a repeat of an earlier bulletin? Or would the news, which was by now in all the newspaper offices of the outside world, be told at last to the Russians?
Yuri Levitan, the announcer who during the war brought the Russians the news of victories ╤ but never of defeats ╤ was at the microphone. Slowly, solemnly, with a voice brimming over with emotion, he read:
╘The Central Committee of the Communist party, the Council of Ministers and the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. announce with deep grief to the party and all workers that on March 5 at 9.50 p.m., Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, died after a serious illness. The heart of the collaborator and follower of the genius of Lenin╒s work, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist party and of the Soviet people, stopped beating.╒
The blow was a heavy one, he said. The news would bring pain to the hearts of all men. ╥But in these dark days all the peoples of our country are becoming more united in the great brotherly family led by the Communist party, founded and educated by Lenin and Stalin. The Soviet people is united in its confidence and inspired with warm love for the Communist party, knowing that the supreme law governing all activity of
the party is to serve the interests of the people.╙
The Soviet people, he went on, would follow the guidance of the party, the rightness of whose policy had been demonstrated over and over again. Now, under the party╒s continued leadership, they would look forward to new successes. They knew, he said, quoting a recent statement of Stalin╒s without attributing it to the dead leader, that the improvement of the people╒s material well-being was the party╒s special concern. They also knew ╤ and here his voice became firm and self-assured ╤ that the defensive powers of the Soviet State were growing in strength, that the party was doing everything to prepare a crushing blow for any possible aggressor.
In foreign policy the party and the Government would strive to consolidate and preserve peace, oppose the preparations for the unleashing of new wars, and work for international collaboration ╤ familiar words, these, coming from Moscow radio. Can there be any more substance in them than on the thousand previous occasions when Soviet spokesmen uttered them?
And then came the first intimate note with another, harder note superimposed upon it. ╥Dear friends and comrades,╙ Levitan said, ╥the great directing and leading force of the Soviet Union in the struggle for the building of Communism is our Communist party. Steel-like unity and a monolithic cohesion of the ranks of the party are the main conditions for strength and power.╙
