" Stalin was always -- Stalin was always obsessed with how people behaved at the supreme moment, execution. And though he never attended any torture,...

Well, what I wanted to do was show Stalin in a completely new light. And in fact, some reviewers have said and they`ve got the point this this is the...

Yes. Nadia was Stalin`s much younger wife, 30 years younger than him. And there she is on her deathbed. And she was the child of Bolshevik -- a Bolshevik...

She died in 1932, the 8th of November, and she committed suicide.

It was on the evening of a great party, and Bolsheviks were great partiers. They had a great party at Voroshilov`s flat in the Kremlin, and afterwards...

They`ve been married for 12 years or so, just over, since 1918.

About 25, 30 years.

It was like -- it was a mosaic of like misery. She was a schizophrenic, she had psychological problems, and he was of course impossible, rough, egocentric....

First marriage. Katya Svanidze. A young, educated girl, Georgian, dies after just two years of marriage of tuberculosis. He afterwards says, "I`ll never...

Yes, then he married Nadia.

No. There were a lot of stories that he married a Jewish wife, the sister of Kaganovich, one of his closest -- closest colleagues who was Jewish. And...

Well, that`s fascinating. I mean, no one had really -- no one had really found out much about Valechka, but in fact she was a smiling, easygoing, very...

She never talked about it. She never spoke. But when we looked into it -- and I interviewed many of the people, I interviewed virtually everyone alive...

It would have to be Beria. Beria is the most fascinating. After Stalin, Beria was the most gifted, the most gifted of these people and the most appalling....

Beria. He was coarse...

He`s the one on the right, holding his hat. That`s typical Beria. While Molotov, who is in the middle, is wearing -- looks like a clerk on Wall Street....

We`ve talked to a lot of them, and we`ve found a lot of them. And, of course, when they said they were raped -- this is one of the interesting things....

She`s called Marfa Peshkova. She`s also Gorky -- Maxim Gorky`s granddaughter, so she knew Stalin from childhood. Then she was Svetlana Stalin`s best...

He was a Politburo member. He was secret police chief from 1938. First of all, he ran Georgia in the 1930s, which was the sort of the country on the...

All of them were through sort of friends of friends of friends. This little world of families that knew Stalin is still intact and they all still know...

Quite badly, but good enough to -- good enough to get to know these people.

Marfa Peshkova?

She is still living on Gorky`s, her grandfather`s, estate, which is just outside Moscow. Gorky the most famous writer of the Stalin period. And -- so...

Right, I never spoke to Svetlana.

Well, she`s been all over the place. You know, she`s had a -- she`s had a very turbulent life, I think. She`s in Wisconsin now, I believe. And I did...

Yes.

Seventy-four years.

1878 to 1953; 5th of March, 1953, he died.

Well, he was really in power for much earlier than anyone realized. Lenin died in 1924, but one of the interesting things when you look at this, he...

So at the end, where is he?

Kuntzevo is...

Have you been there?

We may never get to the death scene.

You had to sort of -- you had to -- I had to sort of negotiate with them for ages. Because...

I don`t know. I managed to get them to. I -- that`s one of the things you have to -- these books are like detective stories. You know, you have to,...

All of them, all the time. He moved around all the time. And in every room, he slept in every room. And he had all sorts of strange little details I...

5-foot-6.

Just a bit over 5 foot. That`s right.

No, they flew me in and then they said, we can`t guarantee your safety in this place. But you`re on your own now. And I met up with this sort of Abkhazian...

Yes, the death bed.

Well, you got to picture this scene, it`s extraordinary. Stalin is now getting old. He`s getting forgetful. But he`s still, he`s 74 years old. He`s...

This is the 28th of February...

28th of February, 1953. And they`re at the dacha, they`re drinking wine and they drink until four in the morning, or whatever.

Eisenhower had just become president. And the height of the Cold War; the Korean War is going on and American troops are there. Chinese troops are there.

Bulganin was top Politburo member and ran the Defense Ministry at various times...

Khrushchev was a senior party official running Moscow. Malenkov was Stalin`s sort of deputy in the party. Beria was not head of the secret police at...

They did.

Yeah, I think they did. I mean, Stalin was kind of -- the trouble is, that Stalin was ultimately a practical politician. And he knew that there were...

That`s a great picture, isn`t it? And that picture is soon after the war -- now, that is Stalin`s generalissimus uniform, which was specially designed...

Far left -- Mikoyan is on the far left. Dapper, Armenian, very clever, very wily. The man who survived until Brezhnev`s time, the great survivor of...

Yeah. He came to JFK`s funeral. He was Khrushchev`s representative at JFK`s funeral, so he was -- he`s part of American history too.

He carried -- that`s right. He`s an amazing character. He carried Lenin`s coffin and he attended Jack Kennedy`s funeral. That gives you an idea of his...

Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushchev. Toothy, bald, jag-eared bumpkin, cunning, tireless and a Stalinist fanatic.

Malenkov, flappy, nicknamed "broad-hipped." Didn`t need to shave. A horrible, sinister character, known by all by the feminine nickname, Melanie, for...

Beria. Very unusually dressed as a marshal of the Soviet Union. And we`ve talked about Beria -- pervert, predator, sadist, brilliant manager.

Molotov, the foreign minister. Actually, the foreign minister -- very famous, obeying diplomat. Very cold, ruthless, the rod spear of the Soviet leadership.

28. We`re at dinner, we`re drinking. The other four leave.

The drinking gets worse and worse and worse.

Well, they drink -- they drank a lot of vodka, a lot of brandy. And they drink a lot of Georgian wine, and they also love champanskoe, you know, Crimean...

We know from all the memoirs of the different people. We`ve -- there`s no doubt about it, there`s absolute strong evidence for this. They would dance...

The men would dance, because there were no women at these dinners by the end. I mean, these were extraordinary scenes. These were bacchanals.

There was slow dancing between men. And in fact, they would often use that to sort of whisper -- Molotov would like to slow-dance with one of the Polish...

Poskrebyshev.

He was a key person who no one really knows (ph), but he was an extremely ugly little man. Once a medical orderly, who was Stalin`s chef de cabinet...

Chief of staff. I mean, he was really his chief of staff, when the chief of staff at the White House is a huge, well-known public official. But in their...

Well, he had a -- he had a very pretty wife.

Who was called Ronka. And she was like -- Jewish, like many of the women around these people, she was Jewish, flirtatious, sort of semi-Polish -- she...

Stalin was obsessed with Trotsky. Trotsky was his great villain, the great enemy. And Stalin had made his career by basically destroying Trotsky.

Stalin ordered it. He tried to kill him umpteen times, and finally called in Beria and Sudoplatov, who was this sort of master of special tasks in the...

In Mexico City, yes.

Poskrebyshev.

Yeah.

Well, she made a -- her brother was also arrested. And he was a Kremlin doctor. A top Kremlin doctor. And so she went to Stalin, to ask for -- for his...

He loved him, he worshiped him.

He thought that was business as usual. And one of the key things in this book to understand is that these weren`t like normal people, they weren`t like...

No. She was kept in prison. And just as Stalin -- and the second world war begun, when -- after Hitler had invaded in 1941, Stalin had her shot. And...

We`ve got to get there.

They`re drinking a lot, and they`re talking about the doctor`s confession, Stalin saying, have you managed to beat -- you`ve got to beat a confession...

I do, yes, I have a picture of the sofa.

He had them everywhere. I`ve seen many of them. And they`re all the same, they`re all huge. You can actually sleep on them. And he moved around, and...

Yes.

Yeah. I`m not sure what stage that is, but whenever he was first examined medially, I guess...

Yeah, but this -- this, when we`re talking, he still hasn`t even been -- he still hasn`t been really sort of -- no one -- no doctors have seen him yet....

Yes, 14-year-old mistress, who was absolutely -- absolutely beautiful girl.

Oh, well, he was 53, 54. And she was kept in all the finest houses, and she had her own driver. You know, this was sort of -- you know, this was really...

The four. And they have this frantic negotiation about what, who would go in. And then in the end, they crept in, Beria and Malenkov, the dominant people,...

By the way, how old was Vasily, his son, then?

We have a picture of Vasily.

By the way, hold the false teeth story, because while you`re on him just for a moment, what was the Mayday story when he was fired because of the bombers?

Let me read from the death chapter. Once it was proved that he was incapacitated, Beria, quote, "spewed forth his hatred of Stalin," end quote. But...

At a sultan`s bedside."

But you have a couple of occasions in here when Beria -- when his eyelids were closed, he`d think he was dead, he would start screaming hatred to him.

You also say here that perhaps 20 million had been killed, 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the gulags. Yet, after so much slaughter,...

Did you have a total figure of how many humans Stalin was responsible for killing, murdering or starving?

What`s your best guess?

So the teeth, the false teeth?

When does he die?

"Beria darted forward and ritually kissed the warm body first, the equivalent of wrenching a dead king`s ring off his finger."

Where did you find that?

In other words, where did you find the story of the details on that?

"Molotov cried, mourning Stalin, despite his own imminent liquidation and that of his wife."

How were they liquidated?

Paulina.

And by the way, Golda Meir used to run Israel...

... from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

OK.

So what happened to the two of them?

Because we don`t have much time, I want to get to Beria for a moment. Who -- he became the leader?

How long?

Who eliminated him?

Who killed him?

After the 100 days?

Where is Stalin today?

And Lenin is still in his tomb?

When you say the Kremlin, you`ve been there?

Did you go through -- I mean, explain what the Kremlin is?

And you find these -- you found them?

Let me ask you, because I want to get your own story. Where are you from, originally?

Where?

Where did you go to school?

Had you spoken Russian before that?

And you`re what, 39 now?

Did, did you have an interpreter when you would interview people like Marfa Peshkova?

Did you tape those interviews?

How many did you do, do you think?

Total of all the old...

And how many of those folks are still Stalinists?

In addition to all this, you and your wife are somewhat known in Great Britain, or in England, as I don`t what, how to describe it. You`re friends of...

Friends of Prince Charles.

How did that all come about? How long have you been married?

Did that ever help in getting access to some of this stuff? You talk about the British ambassador to Russia helping you open up the flights and the...

Where did you meet your wife?

Her name is Santa?

How many kids?

How old?

And your wife is a writer?

Where did you do all this work? I mean, how do you all -- you`re both writers, you work in the same place?

Are you a fast writer?

How many words a day?

Shelby Foote (ph) says that he writes about 500 words a day, that`s all.

When did you finish this book?

Our guest has been Simon Sebag Montefiore. This is the cover of the book, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar." Thank you very much.