This story is the first of two installments. Together, the pieces form an abridged version of an in-progress book of the same name.  The conclusion will appear in the Autumn 2007 issue of Etude.

Blood flooded Red Square. The Red Army was mutinous. Moscow's streets were strewn with bodies. And Stalin, dark, mammoth, sinister Stalin, was dead – assassinated by anti-Bolshevik forces. That was the rumor making its way from Riga to Berlin and eventually to New York in the autumn of 1930. In reality, Moscow was bathed not in blood but the first snow of the year. And as United Press Moscow correspondent Eugene Lyons noted in his memoir, the only corpse visible in Red Square was that of Lenin, embalmed and under heavy guard.

Lyons, along with other journalists stationed in the Soviet capital, tried hard to dispel rumors of chaos with reports of a stable and calm Russia. The reporter's denials, however, did little but fuel gossip of Stalin's demise. Most of the ten or so correspondents who reported regularly from Moscow for news services, such as the Associated Press, United Press and International News Service; for daily city papers, such as the Chicago Daily News and New York Herald; and for national publications, such as the Christian Science Monitor and The Nation, sent telegrams to the Kremlin, urging Stalin to quash the snowballing news of his demise with an exclusive interview.

Lyons' frequent requests for a sit-down with Stalin were routinely rejected. So as darkness descended on the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 23, the 32-year-old American journalist had reason to doubt when he answered his phone.

"Mr. Lyons? This is Comrade Stalin's office," a man's voice said in excellent English.

"You don't say," Lyons retorted. "Give him my kindest regards, and Mrs. Stalin, too."  But it was no joke.

"This is Comrade Stalin's secretary," the man said. "Comrade Stalin received your letter and would be glad to talk to you in an hour in his offices at the Central Committee of the Party."

It was the break of all breaks, the scoop of all scoops. Nobody would ever know for certain why Stalin had selected Lyons for the honor. Maybe the young journalist with a jutting jaw and a boxer's strong chin was an easier target for charm than some of the older, cagier news vets. (And yes, believe or not, Stalin could charm. H.G. Wells, who interviewed the leader in 1934, found him to be charismatic.) Stalin no doubt knew that Lyons, who'd been working in the USSR for two years, had for a time sympathized with the party's aims. Maybe Lyons' query was simply on the top of a stack of telegrammed requests. He never knew for sure.

All Lyons could think of was the glory of sitting down with a leader held by many in both ominous and high regard. It would be Stalin's first interview since he came to power seven years earlier.  Lyons, whose wife and small daughter had moved to Moscow to be with him, breathlessly arrived in the anteroom of the leader's office. It was a simple place, without gold braids, bright colors or symbols trumpeting authority. It didn't show wealth. It conveyed only power, "naked, clean and serene in its strength," Lyons recalled in his memoir.

It was a power to which Lyons himself soon fell victim. His pulse raced as a boy led him to Stalin's office, the inner sanctum of the seemingly reclusive leader, the center of a budding empire. The high-ceilinged study was furnished only with portraits of Marx, Lenin and Engels. It was, Lyons speculated in his memoirs, the only office in all of the USSR without a portrait of Stalin. The leader himself wore a drab, olive jacket, and his trousers, of similar color, were tucked into black boots.

"What to ask? What to ask?" thought Lyons. The leader had given the journalist less than an hour to prepare, less than an hour to formulate pointed questions on such weighty matters as the progress of a five-year-plan, which called for substantial growth in production of coal, iron and electricity in an all-out effort to catch and overtake the industrial West. Rather than come up with pointed questions about rumored suffering in the countryside, about trials convicting the innocent for political gain, or about anything of substance, Lyons -- as he later confessed in his memoir -- fell victim to his own awe. Stalin, he was shocked to find, was a real man, with a powerful physique, a fleshy, large-featured face with skin a touch darker than he imagined.  Stalin's shock of unruly black hair was tinged with the gray of the man's 51 years.

In the interview, the best Lyons could do was probe with the blunt instrument of generality. He asked about the progress of the five-year-plan but lacked specifics to press Stalin when the leader responded with the party line. Without sharp, evidence-backed enquiries, the only way to stretch out the conversation was by asking about the leader's wife, his children, his beloved youngest daughter. An hour became two.

As the conversation came to a close, Stalin told Lyons that he would be interested to see the story that came of the conversation. "I am anxious that you read my dispatch before I send it," Lyons answered, committing a journalistic sin by not only agreeing to such an arrangement but by suggesting it. It was a Saturday night, Lyons told Stalin, and getting the story written and approved while also making the early deadline for Sunday papers might not be possible. Stalin waved off the matter, unconcerned that anything in the interview would be sensitive enough to merit a close reading. Lyons, however, was unrelenting in his effort to please. "If I could get a Latin-typewriter," he told Stalin, "I could type the story right here and let you see it immediately." Once the typewriter was found, Lyons pounded out his scoop with speed and precision, stopping only to call his wife to brag that he was, at that very moment, sitting in Stalin's office.

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