Although Valentin Berezhkov was not Stalin’s primary interpreter, he did attend many important meetings with Stalin during the Second World War, including Yalta and in Moscow. With a natural flair for languages, Berezhkov found that he was chosen for important work by Molotov and was suddenly thrust into the middle of history making events. His memoirs are interesting as they reflect the mind set of suspicion, fear and ambition at the very highest levels of Soviet government. The leaders of the State were constantly looking over their shoulders and testing the ground beneath their feet as their leader, Stalin, the consummate politician watched them for any inking of disloyalty or lack of duty.
Those same leaders had to submit to the grossest demands as when for example, Molotov’s wife, Paulina was arrested and sent to the Gulag. When Molotov went to Stalin for help, Stalin pointed out that all his relatives were also in prison. In fact, almost all the relatives of Stalin’s first and second wives were either in prison or had been shot. The same was true for the wife of the Soviet President, Kalinin and Stalin’s main assistant Poskryobyshev. To add salt to the wound for Molotov, Beria the feared head of the Soviet secret police would whisper to Molotov from time to time, “Paulina is still alive…”. Living in such an atmosphere was obviously stressful and the stress increased when Beria suggested that Berezhkov’s parents might still be alive in Kiev which had been overrun by the Nazi’s. Anyone living in such an area was automatically under suspicion as being a collaborator and thus Berezhkov being so close to Stalin could be a threat.
Fortunately for Berezhkov, Staling never uttered those dreaded words, “he knows too much” and thus was spared either an outright arrest or death via car accident, which was one of the favorite methods of disposing of potential threats, real or imagined. Allowed to take other jobs he survived the time of Stalin and ended up being senior researcher at the Institute of USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He also taught courses on political science at Claremont College and at the Monterey Institute of International Studies prior to his death in the late 1990s.
This is a fine book which traces his early life and belief in the Communist ideal through his awakening about the reality of the Soviet state. We see through his eyes the hope and dreams of a better life and the realization of the terrible cost hundreds of millions paid for their participation in the Communist experiment. In the end, the problem was not Stalin, but rather a system which claimed to be based on “science” which allowed men like Stalin, Beria and others to rise to the top of the State machinery.
