lomatic alliances with the European powers. Finally, in August 1939, he concluded a bilateral nonaggression treaty with Hitler. The events of these years profoundly affected Stalin personally. Although habitually choleric and withdrawn, he had lived in the 1920's an outwardly normal life, surrounded not only by many relatives, who spoke their minds freely in the family circle, but also by good personal friends among the Soviet leadership. In the early 1930's, however, his life began to change, especially after the suicide, on Nov. 8, 1932, of his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who left a letter indicting him both personally and politically. From the beginning of the purges in 1935 until his death in March 1953, he was extremely suspicious, ready to see others--even those with whom he had been united by many years of personal and political comradeship--not only as personal enemies but as enemies of the state. He was unable to resume his trust in anyone from whom he had once withdrawn it, and he was unshakably convinced that the system of political terror must be allowed to work even if it touched those around him. He spared neither his own relatives (the Svanidzes and Alliluyevs, most of whom came to a tragic end), nor former political comrades, nor even the families of his closest political associates. Polina Molotova, the wife of his foreign minister and closest colleague, was sentenced in 1948 to 10 years in prison. A complex man, he centered his life wholly in his office, where he indulged the whole range of his feelings, including--when he wanted--a not inconsiderable charm. He also permitted public glorification of himself on a scale hardly matched in any country in the 20th century. But in his personal life he withdrew almost completely, living until his death either in his Kremlin apartment, which his daughter Svetlana shared in the 1930's, or in his new country house at Kuntsovo, constantly surrounded by NKVD officers and bod...
