Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas

borsch, sizzling steaks, and finally cakes a foot thick and platters of tropical fruit under which the tables buckled.
    Even earlier one could detect a concealed anticipation of the feast among the Soviet officers. Thus they all came predisposed to gorge and to guzzle. But the Yugoslavs went as if to a great trial; they had to drink, despite the fact that this was not in accord with their ‘‘Communist morality,” that is, with the mores of their army and Party. Nevertheless, they comported themselves splendidly, especially considering the fact that they were not used to alcohol. A tremendous exertion of will power and conscientiousness helped them withstand many “bottoms-up” toasts, thus escaping prostration in the end.
    I always drank little and cautiously, using as my excuse headaches, from which I really suffered at the time. Our General Terzić looked tragic. He had to drink even if he did not feel like it, for he did not know how to refuse a Russian confrere who would raise a toast to Stalin just a second after not having spared himself for Tito.
    Our escort seemed even more tragic to me. He was a colonel from the Soviet General Staff, and because he was “from the rear,” the Marshal and his generals picked on him, taking full advantage of their higher rank. Marshal Konev paid no attention to the fact that this Colonel was fairly weak; he had been brought back to work on the General Staff after having been wounded at the front. He simply commanded the Colonel: “Colonel, drink up a hundred grams of vodka to the success of the Second Ukrainian Front!” A silence ensued. All turned to the Colonel. I wanted to intercede for him. But he arose, stood at attention, and drank. Soon globules of sweat broke out on his pale high forehead.
    However, not everyone drank: those who were on duty and in contact with the front did not. Nor did the staff drink at the front, except in moments of a definite lull. They said that during the Finnish campaign Zhdanov proposed to Stalin that he approve of one hundred grams of vodka a day per soldier. From that time on, the custom remained in the Red Army, except that the portion was doubled before attacks: “The soldiers feel more relaxed!” it was explained to us.
    Nor did Marshal Konev drink. He had no superior to order him; besides, he had difficulties with his liver, and so his doctors forbade him to. He was a blond, tall man of fifty, with a very energetic bony face. Though he abetted gluttony, for he held to the official “philosophy” that “the men have to have a good time now and then,” he himself was above that sort of thing, being sure of himself and of his troops at the front.
    The author Boris Polevoy accompanied us to the front as a correspondent for
Pravda
. Though he became all too easily enthusiastic over the heroism and virtues of his country, he told us an anecdote about Konev’s superhuman presence of mind and courage. Finding himself at a lookout post under fire from German mortars, Konev pretended to be looking through his binoculars, but was actually watching out of the corner of his eye to see how his officers were taking it. Every one of them knew that he would be demoted on the spot if he showed any vacillation, and no one dared point out to him the danger to his own life. And this went on. Men fell dead and wounded, but he left the post only after the inspection was over. On another occasion shrapnel struck him in the leg. They took off his boot, bandaged the leg, but he remained at the post.
    Konev was one of Stalin’s new wartime commanders. He was less an example of rapid promotion than Rokossovsky, for his career was neither as sudden nor as stormy as the latter’s. He joined the Red Army just after the revolution as a young worker, and gradually rose through the ranks and through the army schools. But he, too, made his career in battle, which was typical of the Red Army under