Stalin

NOTES

Full citations can be found in the bibliography.

PART I. EQUAL TO THE MYTH

1. Pravda, Nov. 7, 1935: 2. This quote would be reprinted later: Stalin: k shestidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Moscow: Pravda, 1940), 75.

2. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 387–9 (Yakov Chadayev).

3. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 665, l. 361.

4. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 158 (Svanidze diary: Nov. 4, 1934).

5. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 47.

6. Svechin’s conception entailed a war of attrition; Tukhachevsky, among others, would favor attack and preemption. Stone, “Misreading Svechin.” About 5,000 of Stalin’s books would be kept together (in the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute). There would be all told 397 books, pamphlets, and articles with his markings, 72 of which are writings by Lenin, another 13 by Marx and Engels in Russian translation, while 25 are works he wrote.

7. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 23–4.

8. Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin, 17–22.

9. The drawing was by Valērijs Mežlauks. Vatlin and Malashenko, Istoriia VKP (b) v portretakh i karikaturakh ee vozhdei, 110.

10. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 551.

11. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 48.

12. Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 67–8.

13. In a 1931 interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig, Stalin would without irony denounce the seminary “fathers” for their “humiliating regime” and “Jesuitical methods” of “surveillance, espionage, penetration of one’s soul.” Sochineniia, XIII: 113–4. The picture of the seminary during Stalin’s youth would become more severe in 1930s memoirs. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 665, l. 184 (Nikolai Makhatadze, 1936).

14. Iremashvili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, 23. One Gori classmate would imagine in 1932 that Stalin had rejected God because he had decided to be a god himself.

15. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina. In his copy of Lev Kamenev’s biography of the iconic Russian writer Chernyshevsky (1933), Stalin underlined a passage about the discipline instilled by observance of religious rites. (Chernyshevsky had also studied in a seminary.) RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 84, l. 11; Kamenev, Chernyshevskii.

16. Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin, 163; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 63, 66.

17. Segrè, Italo Balbo.

18. Elisabedashvili recalled that Stalin “was given this nickname [Geza] by Ambilarashvili, once a good friend of his, who died in 1911 and was buried in Gori. Apart from us no one knew this name, since otherwise he was called ‘Koba.’” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 665; the “Geza” reference was cut when these reminiscences were published in Molodaya Gvardiya, 1939, no. 12: 86–7.

19. Loginov, Teni Stalina, 116. Stalin had contracted smallpox at age seven.

20. Bliskovskii, M. I. Ul’ianova, 199–200.

21. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 191–2 (citing GIAG, f. 153, op. 1, d. 3432, l. 116); Ilizarov, Taina zhizn’ Stalina, 102; D. Volkogonov, Stalin, I/i: 65.

22. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 201; Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 232.

23. Schmitt, Die Diktatur. Lenin had given dictatorship a favorable cast (“bourgeois democracy or proletarian dictatorship!”).

24. Maksimovskii, “Ideia diktatury u Makiavelli,” 55–94. See also Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin, chapter 8. Maksimovsky had signed the 1923 Trotskyite “Platform of the 46,” became a dean at the Agricultural Academy, and would be arrested on July 27, 1937. He is said to have died in internal exile in Nov. 1941.

25. What emerges from the childhood memoirs, such as they are, is evidence not of warmth but of will. Some evidence indicates that he ridiculed weaker classmates, none of which would be noteworthy except for his role as dictator. For example: “Arriving at the first-year students of Section One at the sound of a loud scream, I saw Lakerov, who in a state of intense agitation was screaming at Iremashvili and Jughashvili,” the seminary deputy inspector recorded in his notebook in 1895. “It turned out that the latter two had been systematically laughing at Lakerov, mercilessly teasing him and ridiculing him, bringing him to distress. They engage in this often, according to the testimony of Lakerov.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 13, l. 91.

26. Not long after the scrotum joke, Stalin had Bryukhanov sacked as finance commissar (Oct. 1930), scapegoating him, along with state bank head Pyatakov, for inflation. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 193–6. See also Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 267.

27. The rest of the quote: “Great men are almost always bad men.” Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887, in Figgis and Laurence, Historical Essays and Studies, 504.

28. “We cannot give a characterization of socialism,” Lenin had admitted (March 8, 1918) in reply to Bukharin’s demand for a sketch of the future. “What socialism will be like when it reaches its completed form we do not know, we cannot say.” PSS, XXXVI: 65–6 (8th Party Congress, March 8, 1918). See also Striedter, “Journeys through Utopia,” at 36.

29. Already in 1926, Stalin stated, “It would be wrong to think that it is possible to build socialism in white gloves, without getting dirty.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1107, l. 15. See also Von Laue, “Stalin in Focus,” and Marwick, “Problems and Consequences of Organizing Society for Total War,” 1–22.

30. “Only . . . a revolutionary regime, because it accepts the permanent use of violence, seems capable of attaining perfection,” Raymond Aron would write, adding that “violence itself attracts more than it repels.” Aron, Opium of the Intellectuals, 65.

31. Kołakowski, “Communism as a Cultural Formation.”

32. Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State, 186.

33. Zhiromskaia, Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, 11–3, 15; Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana posle okonchaniia grazhdanskoi voiny, 237. At the first all-Union congress of “shock workers,” more than 30 percent of the participants were below the age of twenty-two. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd udarnykh brigad, 179.

34. Stalin had written to Mikhail Frunze about a document that labeled Trotsky “the Leader [vozhd’] of the Red Army,” advising, “I think that it would be better if we spoke about a vozhd only in terms of the party.” Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 298–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5254, l. 1: Dec. 10, 1924).

35. Stalin, during a discussion of the coal industry in 1931, criticized the effusive declarations “for the Leaders,” “for the Central Committee,” “for the general line” as “nonsense, playing games.” Similarly, when delegates to an assembly of state farm bosses offered the customary applause, Stalin thundered, “why are you applauding—you should be ashamed.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 162–3 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1115, l. 9; d. 1116, l. 34–42); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 42 (Oct. 1932); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1118, l. 1–2 (June 1934). See also Davies, “Stalin and the Making of the Leader Cult in the 1930s,” 29–46 (at 35). Tucker called Stalin the “master builder” of the cult, but this is too simple. Tucker, “The Rise of Stalin’s Personality Cult.” Photographs of Stalin in Pravda were not frequent into 1933, and usually showed him in the company of other party leaders.

36. Kovaleva et al., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, 1957, 490 (Voroshilov). The following dialogue was recorded on May 13, 1933, between Colonel Robins and Stalin:

“ROBINS: I consider it a great honor to have an opportunity of paying you a visit.

STALIN: There is nothing particular in that. You are exaggerating.

ROBINS (laughs): What is most interesting to me is that throughout Russia I have found the names Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, linked together.

STALIN: That, too, is an exaggeration. How can I be compared to Lenin?” Sochineniia, XIII: 260–73 (at 260).

37. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1187, l. 49–50.

38. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 318; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 181; van Ree, Political Thought, 161–8.

39. On Stalin’s “immodest modesty,” see Plamper, Stalin Cult, 123–4.

40. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 166.

41. When asked, “To what tribe or clan do you belong?,” many Central Asians were said not to understand the question. Zhdanko, “Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoye razmezhevaniye,” 23.

42. Stalin publicly affirmed multiple times that ethnic identities would be a part of the Soviet phenomenon for a long time, perhaps disappearing only when a socialist economy encompassed the entire globe. He envisioned the formation of “socialist nations” (also called Soviet nations) free of class contradictions. See his March 1929 long letter on the national question, which would not be published until 1946: Sochineniia, XI: 336, 347–9. The basic thrust of the letter had appeared in his discussion with Ukrainian writers on Feb. 12, 1929. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4490. Pipes, Formation, 40; d’Encausse, Great Challenge, 38; Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 238–48; van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question,” at 230.

43. Stalin had never been among those Bolsheviks, such as Lenin, who warned of the dangers of Russian nationalism. What would turn out to be final party congress resolution calling for an end to Great Russian chauvinism would pass in 1930. Pravda, June 29, 1930, reprinted in Sochineniia, XII: 369.

44. In an incisive portrait published in 1927, Mark Landau, a popular émigré historical novelist known by his pen name of Aldanov, called Stalin “a standout person, inarguably, the most standout in the entire Leninist guard. Stalin spills blood more freely than any living being, with the exception of Trotsky and Zinoviev. But I cannot deny him, in clear conscience, properties of rare strength of will and courage.” He added: “I wait with ‘captivating interest’ what Stalin will do in this difficult exam in this difficult historical role.” “Stalin,” Poslednie novosti, Dec. 18 and 20, 1927, reprinted in Aldanov, Sovremenniki, 111–40 (at 118–9, 137), and in Aldanov, Bol’shaia Lubianka, 203–21 (at 207–8, 219–20).

CHAPTER 1. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

1. “O tak nazyvaemom ‘vsesoiuzom trotskistskom tsentre,’” 84.

2. Dubinskaia-Dzhalilova and Chernev, “‘Zhmu vashu ruku, dorogoi tovarishch,’” 183 (APRF. F. 45, op. 1, d. 31, l. 10–101ob.).

3. Hindus, Humanity Uprooted, 166–7. Hindus, an émigré, had returned as a magazine writer to his native village (Bolshoye Bykovo) in Kherson province. His father had been a better-off peasant. Mugleston, “Hindus.”

4. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 211, s. 64. See also Sochinenia, X: 241. Originally published in 1895, the year of Engels’s death, the essay in question had seemed to soften his earlier insistence on revolutionary class struggle, but this was partly the work of an editor. Engels, “The Tactics of Social Democracy”; Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, xxxvi–xxxvii, 556–73. Marx, in a speech (Sept. 8, 1872) in Amsterdam, had allowed for a peaceful road to socialism in the United States and Britain. Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, 522–4.

5. Kingston-Mann, In Search of the True West.

6. The Soviet regime was located on four squares and one embankment: Red Square with the triangular Kremlin, inside of which stood the triangular Catherine the Great Imperial Senate, where the government or Council of People’s Commissars had its main offices; Old Square, north of the Kremlin, where the central party apparatus had its offices in an old merchant emporium; Dzierżyński Square, where the secret police were located in an old insurance building and, not far away, sat the foreign affairs commissariat; Nogin Square (essentially an extension of Old Square), where the heavy industry commissariat stood; and the Frunze embankment, where the defense commissariat and general staff were housed.

7. Stalin’s radicalism of 1929 followed partly from the failures of the Communist regime, whose inability to properly regulate the quasi-market of NEP had created a seeming imperative for even greater anti-market measures—which exacerbated the problems, requiring still greater emergency measures. Anticapitalism, the root cause of the problems, was imagined to be the solution. Carr accentuated the “haphazard and impulsive character of the final decision” in late 1929, but failed to elucidate the worldview and governing ideas behind the regime’s improvisation. Carr, “Revolution from Above,” 327. For an alternative development vision, see Antisferov et al., Russian Agriculture, 384. On the scholarly debate, see Harrison, “Why Was NEP Abandoned?”

8. Lenin had written: “Either we must bring the small bourgeoisie under our control (which can be done by organizing the poor), or they will overthrow . . . the workers’ government just as inevitably and unavoidably as the Napoleons . . . , figures who are bound to develop in a soil permeated with petit-bourgeois mentality.” Sochineniia, XXII: 515 (pre-1934). See also Valentinov, “Sut’ bolshevizma v izobrazhenii Iu. Piatakova”; and Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 415–6.

9. Volkogonov, Stalin: politicheskii portret, I: 307.

10. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 407–20.

11. Word of the Kamenev-Bukharin meeting had already appeared in the Menshevik Sotsialisticheskii vestnik [Berlin], Jan. 20, 1929. Three days later, the leaflet “The Party with Closed Eyes Is Leading the Way to a New Catastrophe” appeared; it was signed “Bolsheviks-Leninists” (the Trotskyite self-designation) and quoted Kamenev’s “notes.” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 558–63 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 2–11: Kamenev’s “notes”), 564–5 (l. 12–3: Kamenev to Orjonikidze, Jan. 27), 566–7 (l. 14–5: Sokolnikov to Orjonikidze, Jan. 28), 568–71 (l. 17–24: Tomsky to Orjonikidze, Jan. 14), 572–6 (l. 25–31: Bukharin to Orjonikidze, Jan. 30), 607, 613–5. See also Vaganov, Pravyi uklon, 199–202; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 417; and Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 30–7. A copy of the “notes” is in the Trotsky Papers at Harvard (T1897); it is presumed to have fallen into Trotsky’s hands from F. P. Schwalbe, Kamenev’s secretary. The Russian original, from leaflets, was published in Sotsialistchekii vestnik (May 4, 1929). Fel’shtinskii, “Dva epizoda iz istorii vnutripartiinoi bor’by.”

12. Stalin, “Gruppa Bukharina i pravyi uklon v nashei partii,” Sochineniia, XI: 318–25; Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 577–601. Stalin, ever magnanimous, proposed including Bukharin on the commission to prepare his apology; Bukharin declined, then agreed, but the commission met without him. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 597. See also Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 352.

13. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, 540–8 (resolutions of the joint session Feb. 9, 1929, approved at the April 23, 1929, plenum); VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 515; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 566–7. Bukharin had instigated at least two further meetings with Kamenev, one together with Pyatakov, and a second with Tomsky, and published a pointed reminder of Lenin’s Testament in Pravda (Jan. 24, 1929). Jules Humbert-Droz, the Swiss Communist who met Bukharin in early 1929, later claimed that Bukharin mentioned getting rid of Stalin. Humbert-Droz, Mémoirs, 356, 379–80. “Bukharin,” Carr and Davies wrote, “lacked altogether the astuteness and organizing skill of the politician.” Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, II: 76.

14. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 180 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 26: Jan. 10, 1929).

15. Cristian Rakovski, too, managed to carry trunks of official documents with him into internal exile. Fischer, Men and Politics, 129.

16. After the Ilich had docked at Istanbul, Trotsky was handed $1,500, and put up temporarily in two rooms inside the consulate. Stalin, Trotsky concluded, “was created by the epoch, by the bureaucracy, by the revolution’s fall from grace, in order to effect and embody that fall, that degeneration.” Trotsky attributed his own defeat to a conspiracy against him. Trotskii, “Kak moglo eto sluchit’sia?” in Chto i kak proizoshlo, 25–36.

17. Trotskii, Dnevnik i pis’ma, 46–8. On the politeness of the consul staff toward Trotsky, see Serge and Sedova, Life and Death of Trotsky, 163.

18. Eastman, Great Companions, 117; Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 14 (citing Manchester Guardian, March 17, 1931), 16–8. In Jan. 1929, Herbert von Dirksen, the new German ambassador, when asked whether his government could take in Trotsky, was incredulous: Stresemann had no desire to have him explaining to a fellow German politician: “I don’t place too high a value on our relations with Soviet Russia. But they are always a trump in our game” of diplomacy with the West. ADAP, series b, XI: 74–6 (Dirksen memo, Jan. 29, 1929), 101–2 (Schubert to Dirksen, Feb. 6, 1929), 199 (Stresemann to Paul Loebe, Reichstag president, March 19, 1929).

19. Stalin had the OGPU blackmail or entice Trotsky supporters internally exiled in the USSR to denounce him in the Soviet press. Radek signed a denunciation of Trotsky that was published in Pravda (July 13, 1929). See also Broué, “Bolshevik-Leninist Faction,” 140; Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 390; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 281; Yaroslavskii, “Etot son knochen,” 2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 782, l. 9. Even Beloborodov and Ivan Smirnov would publicly break with Trotsky. Pravda, Nov. 3, 1929. Rakovski, in Astrakhan, nearly alone remained loyal; Trotsky kept a photograph of him on his desk.

20. Trotskii, Writings (1929), 177. See also Kassow, “Trotsky.”

21. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 325–8.

22. Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 67. At Stalin’s behest, the propagandist Miney Gubelman, who went by the name Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, answered with an essay, “Mr. Trotsky at the Service of the Bourgeoisie, or L. Trotsky’s First Steps Abroad”—published in Russian in the Soviet press, essentially a salve for Stalin’s ego. Bol’shevik, 1929, no. 5 and 9.

23. G. G., “Pis’ma iz SSSR.” Bukharin was sometimes perceived as a Jew (“Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin . . .”). Borodin, One Man in His Time, 59.

24. “O gruppirovokakh v kommunisticheskoi oppozitsii.”

25. On March 5, 1929, Mężyński informed the dictator of a supposed thwarted “assassination” plan against him by two Moscow University students and one worker who had tickets to two evening events in the university club in Feb., one of which, it was rumored, Stalin would attend. Under interrogation, one of the students stated he was unsure if he had the fortitude to carry out a terrorist act. In any event, there was no such attempt. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 325–6 (no citation).

26. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 68 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 39, l. 43, 43ob.).

27. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 73 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 42; note, without addressee, in Voroshilov’s file, but obviously addressed to Bukharin). Back in Sept. 1926, Stalin had written: “Bukharin is a swine and perhaps worse than a swine because he considers it beneath his dignity to write even two lines about his impressions of Germany. I’ll get my revenge for that.” This playfulness would look different in retrospect. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 88–93 (Sept. 16, 1926); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 126–9.

28. This was the first plenum of 1929. Stalin invented “joint” plenums with the Central Control Commission as a device to obtain the two-thirds voting majority required by party rules for expulsions from the Central Committee.

29. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 644–84 (RGASPI, f. 558, op, 11, d. 1043, l. 1–131: uncorrected transcript), quote 644; “O pravom uklone v VKP (b),” Sochineniia, XII: 1–107 (at 1).

30. Sochineniia, XII: 43. See also Abramov, O pravoi oppozitsii v partii, 43. Andreyev, North Caucasus party boss, told the plenum: “The GPU was formed to find and expose the very worst and most unfavorable in our country, and if we build our policy only on the basis of the GPU reports, we will always be in a state of panic, it is perfectly clear, our hair will always stand on end.” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 403. Stalin made his own admission of sorts: “Name a single political measure of the party that was not accompanied by these or those excesses?” Sochineniia, XII: 92.

31. Stalin even contrasted Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov unfavorably to the smashed Trotskyites, asserting that the latter had not used the 1921 Kronstadt or 1926 Georgian rebellions but closed ranks in the face of danger. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 656, 659, 668, 676; Sochineniia, XII: 39–40, 69–70.

32. Stalin replaced Bukharin at Pravda with an editorial collective of Yaroslavsky, Nikolai Popov, and Harald Krumin.

33. Sochineniia, XII: 92–3. Bukharin: “Extraordinary measures is the repeal of NEP, although temporarily, of course. Extraordinary measures as a system exclude the NEP.” Orjonikidze interrupted: “You [try to] solve the difficulties this year with grain imports, and next year you do the same?” Bukharin, Problemy, 289. A brief mention of the April 29 plenum was published in Pravda, April 30, 1930. The plenum’s resolutions were first published in 1933: VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 515–30.

34. Davies, Economic Transformation, 286.

35. Pravda, July 20, 1929. The official exchange rate for the ruble—which was not a convertible currency—was set at 1.9415 to the U.S. dollar. Therefore, one gold ruble in foreign trade equaled 51.7 U.S. cents (until early 1933, when the dollar left the gold standard, and the ruble exchange rate was set on the basis of a cross-exchange rate of the currency in question to the French franc, with one ruble equal to 13.1 francs). Gold or foreign trade rubles had no relation to domestic rubles. Dohan, “Soviet Foreign Trade,” 701–8. Kaganovich would cite “local demands” for new coercive measures; obviously, he instigated them. Rees, Iron Lazar, 94–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 3188, l. 95; op. 2, d. 417, l. 57–8, 291–3); Taniuchi, Village Gathering.

36. Mikhail Sholokhov wrote in letters to an acquaintance (E. G. Lebitskaya) in July 1929 of one peasant, “He told me with a bitter smile, ‘They [the Whites] at least took only grain and horses, but our own [Soviet] power takes down to the thread.’” Znamia, 1987, no. 10: 181, 183. “See also Chernopitskii, Na velikom perelome, 40–1 (citing PARO, f. 7, op. 1, d. 844, l. 202).

37. Mikoyan added, “Of course we would have inevitably come to grips with this task sometime, but it is a question of timing.” Mikoian, Problema snabzheniia strany, 60.

38. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 52 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 3, d. 62, l. 73: Aug. 1929). See also RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 50; and Ivnitskii, Repressivnaia politika sovetskoi vlasti, 59–60. Between 1928 and 1935, Mikoyan would undertake more than twenty regional trips in connection with coercive grain collections. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 49 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 3, d. 167, l. 411–2).

39. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 531–73. The “plan” was actually in effect as of Oct. 1, 1928. Zaleski, Planning for Economic Growth, 70n205, 74; Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, 54; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I/i: 248–52, I/ii: 890–7.

40. Brovkin, Russia after Lenin, 122–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 69, d. 126, l. 5, 107, 117; f. 1, op. 23, d. 821, l. 22). See also Fischer, Men and Politics, 187. Oral exams of university students in 1927 had returned answers that (the Russian anarchist) Bakunin was a French revolutionary who had led the (British) Chartist movement, and that imperialism was the best path to socialism. One student thought the Communist Youth League was “an international organization of the homeless.” Holmes, Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, 60–1. Such surveys revealed more than the anxieties of the ambitious revolutionary regime. Gorsuch, Youth.

41. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 450.

42. “People often forget,” Izvestiya explained (May 23, 1929), “that the Five-Year Plan defines our foreign policy,” making it necessary “to delay the war threat and make use of . . . world markets.”

43. Haslam, Russia’s Cold War, 3–5.

44. Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics, 86–7.

45. The Bolsheviks had been awarding foreigners concessions (or leases) on Soviet territory to spur technology transfer and revive export industries, but this policy had been deeply fraught with difficulties. (Lenin, as usual, on Dec. 21, 1920, had captured the essence, paraphrasing Clausewitz: “Concessions [leases] do not mean peace with capitalism, but war in a new sphere.”) In Feb. 1930, a politburo commission would decide that foreign concessions contradicted socialist industrialization. By 1933, no manufacturing concessions remained. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/I (1976): 90–1; Sutton, Western Technology, I: 86–91; Fitch, “Harriman Manganese Concession”; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 109–10 (citing Za industrialiatsiiu, May 10, 1930; P. N. Pospelov et al. [eds.], Leninskii plan sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii i ego osushchestvlenie [Moscow: Partizdat, 1969], 186–7; and DVP SSSR, XIII: 112 [Litvinov-Dirksen: Feb. 26, 1930]; and Sutton, Western Technology, I: 349, II: 17).

46. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 125–6.

47. Rogachehskaia, Iz istorii rabochego klassa SSSR; Oprischenko, Istoriografiia sotsialisticheskogo sorevnovaniia; Rogachevskaia, Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v SSSR; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 128–35.

48. Pravda, Jan. 20, 1929; PSS, XXVI: 367. See also Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Sept. 27, 1929: 16; and Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 50.

49. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 146–53 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1493, l. 4–13), 153 (d. 1047, l. 48–9); Na prieme, 30. On May 4, 1929, Stalin received a delegation of 170 Donbas miners, who promised (in the text he edited) to “fulfill completely the tasks assigned them by Soviet power in the First Five-Year Plan.” Pravda, May 8, 1929; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1159, l. 93.

50. Sochineniia, XII: 108–11; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 157 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 19).

51. Sochineniia, XII: 115–6. Mikulina, who died in 1998, would be asked to recount her audience with Stalin: Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 153n3.

52. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 162–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 51–5: Aleksei Milrud, Sept. 19, 1929).

53. Sochineniia, XII: 112–5 (July 9, 1929). See also Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 160 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 62).

54. In Comintern documents, Stalin personally wrote in the epithet “social fascism” for Social Democrats. Communism and the International Situation, 6, 16–20; Firsov, “Stalin i Komintern,” 7. “Social fascism” became official in 1929, but Stalin’s conception was long-standing. “Fascism is the fighting organization of the bourgeoisie, leaning on the active support of social democracy,” he had written in 1924. “Social Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism . . . They are not antipodes but twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two basic political organizations, which arose in the situation of the postwar crisis of imperialism and is intended for the struggle against proletarian revolution.” Sochinennia, VI: 282; Degras, Communist International, 44. See also Degras, Communist International, II: 566.

55. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists, 35–9. The German Social Democrats, who had joined the Weimar Republic government, sought rapprochement with France against the Soviets in a pro-Western orientation.

56. McDermott and Agnew blame SPD policies (“more than any single factor”) for “the vitriolic ‘social fascist’ rhetoric employed by the Comintern in the years 1929–33.” McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 100–2.

57. La correspondance international, Aug. 17, 1929: 971. This was the first such plenum since Feb. 1928.

58. Politicheskoe obrazovanie, 1989, no. 1: 81. World Situation, 3–21.

59. Gorelov, Nikolai Bukharin, 100–45. Angelo Tasca, after getting out of Moscow in early 1929, had ripped into Stalin in a letter to the Italian Community party, concluding, “The Russian party and all of us will pay dearly for ignoring Lenin’s instructions about him.” Firsov, “Stalin i Komintern,” 5 (citing Annali Feltrinelli, VIII, 1968, 670). Before the year was out, Tasca was expelled on Stalin’s orders from the Italian Community party, which he had helped establish after having quit the Italian Socialist Party. In exile in France, he would rejoin the Italian Socialists. De Grand, In Stalin’s Shadow. See also Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III: 554.

60. Bahne et al., Les Partis communistes, 165 (March 1929); McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 86. After Hitler would come to power and ban the German Community party, Zetkin would seek asylum in Moscow, where she would die in June 1933.

61. McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 102, citing K. Gottwald, Spisy (Prague, 1951), I: 322 (Dec. 1929).

62. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 148–50 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s., d. 110, l. 1–2ob.). Stalin proposed naming Bukharin commissar of enlightenment, perhaps to tie him down in enervating ideological battles. “Bukharin begged everyone not to name him enlightenment commissar, but proposed, and then insisted on, the Scientific-Technical Administration” of the Supreme Council of the Economy, Voroshilov wrote to Orjonikidze (June 8, 1929). “I supported him in that, a few other comrades supported him and as a majority in one voice (against Koba) we got him so named.” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 123; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 30.

63. Vague resolutions to strengthen the military at the 15th Party Congress (Dec. 1927) and the 16th party conference (April 1929) had produced nothing concrete. Voronetskaia, Industrializatsiia SSSR, 42; XVI konferentsiia VKP (b), aprel’ 1929 goda, 240–7, 625. See also Erickson, Soviet High Command, 295, 301–7, 322.

64. Kudriashov, Krasnaia armiia, 234–40 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 259, l. 168–80). One of the two classified July 15, 1929, decrees was finally revealed in KPSS o vooruzhennykh silakh Sovetskogo Soiuza, 318–21. Contrary to some speculation, the decrees were not related to the launching of military action on the Chinese Eastern Railway. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 72–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 12).

65. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 124–9 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 55, d. 1966, l. 20–32, 35–43; and RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 15, l. 190: Revvoensovet).

66. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 74 (RGVA, f. 74, op. 2, d. 101, 105ob.: Litunovsky, July 30, 1929).

67. Gorlov, Sovershennko sekretno, Moskva-Berlin; Müller, Das Tor zur Weltmacht; Zeidler, Reichswehr und Rote Armee (2nd ed.); Erickson, Soviet High Command, 247–82.

68. Stalin had received Uborevičius on Nov. 4, 1927. Na prieme, 770.

69. In a comprehensive report in 1929, Uborevičius had judged the 4,000-strong German officer corps to be “to the right, far to the right of the Social Democrats. The bulk of them stand for a firm bourgeois dictatorship, for fascism.” D’iakov and Bushueva, Fashistskii mech kovalsia v SSSR, 255 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 295, l. 141–83).

70. Zdanovich, Organy, 423–4 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 7, d. 61, l. 6). See also Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 131 (citing RGVA, f. 33991, op. 1, d. 20, l. 80–92; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 93, l. 1; f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 40); and Z., “Sovremennaia artilleriia i modernizatsiia.” Stalin had written to Voroshilov (Dec. 31, 1928), who was then livid over budget cuts, that “the point now is our artillery is insufficient, scandalously insufficient.” Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 102 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 39, l. 19).

71. Tinchenko, Golgofa, 106–7; Tichanova, Rasstrel’nye spiski, no. 2, 99–101; Smirnov, Krovavyi marshal, 337 (I. P. Grave). Grigory Kulik, a Stalin civil-war crony dating to 1918 Tsaritsyn days and the head of the artillery directorate, escaped.

72. Mężyński also appended his name to the explanation as the top responsible official. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 336–7 (TsA FSB, f.2, op. 2, d. 9, l. 249: Feb. 9, 1929). See the speculations regarding Boris Nicolaevsky’s role in Fel’shtinskii, VChK-GPU, 271.

73. Yagoda would later testify under pressure that he gave both Rykov and Bukharin, at their requests, “secret OGPU material on the situation in the village.” This 1937 testimony, despite the circumstances under which it would be taken, is plausible. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 112–7 (interrogation April 26, 1937: TsA FSB, f. N-13614, tom 2, l. 57–8). On Trilisser’s Comintern intelligence (“communications service”)—65 people in Moscow as well as a worldwide system of radio operators, couriers, and safe houses—see Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina, 52, 54–5.

74. Dmitrievskii, Sovetskie portrety, 218–20.

75. The politburo (Sept. 12, 1929) again ordered him to follow his doctor’s regimen. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 190 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 757, l. 9, 15).

76. Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.”; Gladkov, Nagrada, 345–6. Trilisser maintained that his party meeting report had been approved at the “Central Committee.”

77. Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 95 (June 27, 1929).

78. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 191 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 170, l. 42).

79. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 219–20 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 32, l. 115). Trilisser got kicked over to the workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate.

80. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 202.

81. Papchinskii and Tumshis, Shchit, raskolotii mechom, 208–9.

82. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 202 (citing TsA FSB, arkhivnoe sledvestvennoe delo No. 13144 on Kaul A. I., II: no pagination, words of I. Ia. Ilin; arkhivnoe sledvestvennoe delo N. 14963 on Papashenko I. P., l. 184: M. A. Listengrut), 203 (l. 240–1). Mikhail Frinovsky was gone by then, out of Yevdokimov’s shadow; in Rostov, Frinovsky had had his own gatherings at his house, attended by Yevdokimov.

83. For Stalin’s patronage of Yevdokimov in fall 1929, see Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 191 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 170, l. 42). The full membership of the OGPU collegium became: Redens, Prokofyev, Blagonravov, Boki, Balytsky, Messing, and Yevdokimov. Peterrs and Pavlunovsky were taken off.

84. On Oct. 2, 1929, Yagoda wrote apologetically to the dictator that he had spoken to Mężyński and there were no differences between them (contrary to what Yagoda had earlier told Stalin). Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 344–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 9, l. 248).

85. Kokurin and Petrov, Lubianka, 42–3. Deribas was pushed out to the Soviet Far East.

86. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 135–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 162–3. Stalin included Beso Lominadze among the wayward young functionaries. In early Aug. 1929, Lominadze, demoted to a provincial post, wrote an inflammatory letter about Stalin and party policy to his patron Orjonikidze, who wrote in a protective draft response: “although I keep no party secrets from Stalin, I did not show him your letter.” It seems that Orjonikidze did not send the draft and later read Lominadze’s letter to Stalin, perhaps when Orjonikidze pushed to promote Lominadze to head the South Caucasus party committee (the appointment took effect May 8, 1930). Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze, 23–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s, d. 115, l. 6–10, 1–5); Kommunist, 1991, no. 13: 56–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 607, l. 267–9: Stalin at the Feb.–March 1937 plenum). Lominadze became a full member of the Central Committee in summer 1930.

87. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 154–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 174–6. The main anti-Bukharin essay appeared in Pravda on Aug. 24, 1929; Cohen, Bukharin, 332.

88. Stalin insisted that re-recognition of the USSR precede any settlement on debts, and that he was not going to rein in Comintern propaganda. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 160–3 (Sept. 9, 1929); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 177–9.

89. Murin, Stalin v ob”iaitiakh, 22 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 5).

90. Gorky had boarded the steamer Karl Liebknecht on Aug. 20, and visited Astrakhan and Stalingrad then Rostov and Tiflis. Troyat, Gorky, 173. Stalin’s doctor Ivan Valedinsky recalled Gorky visiting Stalin in Sochi in 1930. In fact, Gorky visited the USSR in 1928 (May 27–Oct. 12); 1929 (May 31–Oct. 12); and 1931 (May 14–Oct. 18), but not in 1930. Gorky’s one and only post-1917 visit to Sochi was in 1929, but Valedinsky wrote that he himself did not see Stalin in 1929. Either Valedinsky “recalled” the Gorky-Stalin encounter based upon stories he was told the next year, or he confused the years he treated Stalin. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 69.

91. Murin, Stalin v ob”iaitiakh, 22 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 6–7), 22–3 (l. 8), 23 (l. 9). Rumor had it that that Avel Yenukidze, her godfather, had enlisted Orjonikidze, and together they persuaded Stalin to allow Nadya to go back to school.

92. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 23–4 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 10–4).

93. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 25–7 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 16–24: between Sept. 16 and 22, 1929), 27 (l. 25: Sept. 23), 41n14 (d. 74, l. 18), 41n15 (d. 778, l. 18–9), 41n16 (d. 778, l. 20–1: Sept. 27). Stalin would thrice receive Kovalev: Dec. 18 (with Popov and Krumin) and Dec. 30 (alone), 1929, and March 11, 1930 (alone). Na prieme, 31–2.

94. Khromov, Po stranitsam, 34 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 98–9, 103–11).

95. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 166–7 (Sept. 30, 1929); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 181–2; Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, V: 10–1 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 768, l. 91, 92). Rykov, as head of the government, chaired the sessions, just as Lenin had.

96. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 27–8 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 27).

97. DBFP, 2nd series, VII: 20–38. After the British had effectively agreed on terms, Stalin noted that politburo members Kalinin and Tomsky were not in Sochi to consult, and that he could not speak in the name of the politburo. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 37; d. 74, l. 25 (Tovstukha, Oct. 3). See also Khromov, Po stranitsam, 220 (RGASPI, f. 669, op. 1, d. 8, l. 1a); and RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 12, l. 85.

98. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 166–7, 167–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 181, 182.

99. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 34–5 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 50–1).

100. Sokolov, “Neizvestnyi G. V. Chicherin,” 14 (citing AVP RF, f. 08, op. 12, pap. 74, d. 55, l. 92–3: June 20, 1929).

101. This would be formalized in a politburo directive (Feb. 5, 1930): Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 219–20.

102. The reports of a supposed anti-Soviet bloc recorded frustration by the notional members over refusals to share intelligence. Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 297 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 184, l. 45–45ob.), 298–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 875, l. 92–4).

103. “We live in very difficult times,” the Soviet writer Leonid Leonov, whom Gorky admired, wrote from Moscow to him (Oct. 21, 1929). “All around us everything crumbles . . . There is no way back now . . . The times are dangerous. About many things one cannot write.” Semashkina and Evstigneeva, Perepiska Gor’kogo, II: 302–3.

104. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, I: 736 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 789, l. 14: Oct. 22, 1929), 737 (f. 84, op. 2, d. 12, l. 54: Oct. 26).

105. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 81–2 (citing Sel’sko-khoziaistvennaia gazeta, Nov. 28, 1929: Sergei Syrtsov).

106. Theses of the 6th Comintern Congress in 1928 had predicted “the most severe intensification of the capitalist crisis,” which, like earthquake forecasts, had suddenly turned correct. At the congress, the Comintern had also welcomed Latin American delegates for the first time, eliciting a boast about its “discovery of America.” Manuel, Latin America and the Comintern, 65.

107. Coates and Coates, History of Anglo-Soviet Relations, II: 332; Izvestiia, Nov. 6, 1929; DBFP, 2nd series, VII: doc. 24; DVP SSSR, XII: 537–8, 541; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 182–201 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 55, 51, 87, 94, 123, 136, 143, 158–9, 160–3, 178); Izvestiia, July 5, 1929. In the May 30, 1929, general election, Labour had won 287 seats, not enough for a majority (308), while the Tories won 260; Labour was dependent on the votes of Lloyd George’s Liberal Party (59 seats) to pass legislation. Three Tories voted for restoration of diplomatic relations with the USSR. Redvaldsen, “‘Today Is the Dawn.’”

108. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 21–2. Stalin approved the appointment of Grigory Sokolnikov, the former NEP-era finance commissar and party oppositionist and current skillful head of the state oil trust, as Soviet envoy. Sir Esmond Ovey became British ambassador in Moscow. Lammers, “Second Labour Government.” Ovey would claim that at a banquet given by the foreign affairs commissariat in 1931, the silverware bore the British coat of arms and the motto of the British chivalric Order of the Garter (Honi soit qui mal y pense—“May he be shamed who thinks badly of it”). Evidently, the silver had been stolen from the British embassy either during the 1917 revolution or after 1927, when relations had been severed. Time, May 11, 1931.

109. Blyumkin had served as Trotsky’s adjutant, then was invited to rejoin the secret police, rising to pro-consul in the Soviet satellite of Mongolia and then to undercover OGPU station chief in Istanbul. Yakov Agranov recorded Blyumkin’s revealing deposition (Oct. 20, 1929), which Yagoda forwarded to Stalin, and Stalin forwarded to Central Committee members. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 192–212 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 24, d. 126, l. 94–124), 213 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 2). See also Savchenko, Avantiuristy grazhdanskoi voiny, 305–36; Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 101ff; Gusterin, Sovetskaia razvedka; Agabekov, G.P.U., 221–6; Agabekov, OGPU, 214–23; Agabekov, ChK za rabotoi, 293–9. Agabekov (Aryutunov), an Armenian OGPU operative sent to Turkey to replace Blyumkin, became the first senior secret police official to defect to the West (1930); he betrayed the Soviet spy network in the Near East. OGPU agents went around whispering that Radek had betrayed Blyumkin, a story that, as intended, reached Trotsky, damaging relations between him and Radek, conveniently for Stalin. Radek would not deny he had informed on Blyumkin. Trotsky is said to have received a letter detailing Radek’s betrayal. “Kak i za chto Stalin rasstrelial Bliumkina” Biulleten’ oppozitsi, no. 9 (Feb.–March 1930): 9–11; Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 85–8; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 292–3; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 329–30; Orlov, Secret History, 194.

110. Sel’sko-khoziaistvennaia gazeta, Oct. 15, 1929 (Sergei Syrtsov); Pravda, Nov. 10 and Dec. 8, 1929. The slogan became widespread beginning in Feb. 1930: Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 191. A patent-equivalent for a tractor had been issued in tsarist Russia and a tractor prototype had been produced, but it never came into production. Artobolevskii and Blagonravov, Ocherki, 215.

111. Pravda, Nov. 7, 1929, reprinted with alterations in Sochineniia, XII: 118–35; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 329–45. One of Stalin’s post-facto editorial changes was shrinking the anticipated size of Soviet farms to 40,000–50,000 hectares. Sochineniia, XII: 129; Davies, “Stalin as Economic Policy-Maker,” 123. State farms were being modeled after industry, and, Molotov exhorted the plenum, collective farms should model themselves after state farms. Bol’shevik, 1929, no. 22: 20. Pravda (Sep. 5, 1929) had declared that all “technically more developed capitalist countries” were organizing agriculture like industry. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 3.

112. Mikoyan told the plenum (Nov. 11) that in the next year “we will have a significant export of grain,” even though key ports lacked large mechanized elevators and the United States, Argentina, and Canada had displaced Russia in European grain markets. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, V: 83 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 441, l. 19–20ob.).

113. Sdvigi v sel’skom khoziaistve SSSR, 22–3. See also Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 15; and Davies, Socialist Offensive, 116–37, 442.

114. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 740, l. 5.

115. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, V: 141 (Syrtsov). Officially, 19.1 percent of households had been collectivized in the North Caucasus by Oct. 1929. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 442.

116. Pravda, Nov. 26, 1929; Cohen, Bukharin, 334–5; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 174; Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, 369.

117. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 778, l. 23. Hryhory Petrovsky, a Stalin loyalist, stated at the plenum that “[I] did not belong to the ‘rightist baiters’ in the way, for example, I fought with the Trotskyites or the new opposition—Kamenev and Zinoviev—when we went wall to wall.”