Stalin felt happy, full of strength; he no longer had that taste of lead in his mouth, that ache in his heart. To him, the sense of life itself was inseparable from a sense of strength. Since the first days of the war he had felt a constant weariness. It hadn’t left him even when he’d seen his marshals freeze with fear at his anger, even when thousands of people stood up to greet him as he entered the Bolshoy Theatre. He always had the impression that people were laughing at him behind his back, that they remembered his confusion during the summer of 1941. Once, in Molotov’s presence, he had
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