Stalin

138. On Feb. 2, 1929, Stalin had written an open reply to the proletarian playwright Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovsky that Turbins “is not such a bad play, because it does more good than harm. Do not forget that the chief impression it leaves with the spectator is one that is favorable to the Bolsheviks: ‘if even such people as the Turbins are compelled to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, admit their cause as definitely lost, then the Bolsheviks must be invincible, and there is nothing to be done about it.’ Days of the Turbins is a demonstration of the all-conquering power of Bolshevism. Of course, the author is ‘not guilty’ of this demonstration, but what is that to us?” Sochineniia, XI: 326–9. See also Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 53–5. See also Lunacharsky’s letter to Stalin on Turbins: Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 108–9 (RGASPI, f. 142, op. 1, d. 461, l. 8–80b.: Feb. 12, 1929); Smeliansky, “Destroyers”; and L. M. Leonidov, in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, Dec. 21, 1939.

139. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 102–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4490, l. 3–17: Feb. 12, 1929). See also Shapoval, “‘Oni chuvstvuiut sebia, kak gosti . . . ,’” 120–6. The “brotherly” visit of the Ukrainian writers’ delegation was accompanied by exhibitions and performances as part of a Ukrainian week, punctuated by the audience with Stalin. Pravda, Feb. 9, 12, 13, 14, 1929.

140. Curtis, Manuscripts Don’t Burn, 92–4 (July 1929). Bulgakov had just had a chapter of a new novel rejected for publication. On July 30, 1929, A. Svidersky, a former agricultural commissar overseeing arts in the enlightenment commissariat, reported sympathetically to Alexander Smirnov, a Central Committee secretary, about a long conversation with Bulgakov, whom he characterized as “a person hounded and doomed. I am not even sure his nerves are healthy. His situation is genuinely hopeless.” Svidersky supported Bulgakov’s request to go abroad. Smirnov agreed in a note to Molotov (Aug. 3, 1929). “‘Polozhenie ego deistvitel’no bezyskhodnoe,’” 116 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 239, l. 6); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 115. Bulgakov was not allowed to leave.

141. Stalin had the letter circulated to the upper party and state ranks. Oktiabr’, 1987, no. 6: 176–80; Milne, Mikhail Bulgakov, 268–74.

142. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 299–300; Bulgakov and Bulgakova, Dnevnik Mastera i Margarity, 497; Bulgakov, Vospominaniia, 394 (L. E. Belozerskaya); “‘Polozhenie ego deistvitel’no bezyskhodnoe’”: 116 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 239, l. 6); Fleishman, “O gibeli maiakovskovo kak ‘literaturnom fakte,’” 128; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 127 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 783, l. 11). See also Gromov, Stalin, 114–6.

143. Woroszylski, Life of Mayakovsky, 514–30 (esp. 526); Sundaram, “Manufacturing Culture,” 75–87. Trotsky wrote an obituary (Biulleten’ oppozitsii, May 11, 1930), but Stalin stayed publicly silent. More than 100,000 mourners, with no prompting from the state, had turned out for Mayakovsky’s burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery, a number surpassed only at Lenin’s Red Square funeral. Boyrn, “Death of the Revolutionary Poet,” 158.

Mayakovsky was involved in a recent romance with a very young married woman, the actress Veronika Polonskaya, who refused to leave her husband. On April 14, when he shot himself in the heart, Polonskaya had just left his apartment to attend a rehearsal against his protestations. Rumors spread that the bullet removed from Mayakovsky did not match the revolver he owned (a prop in a play), and that neighbors had heard two shots. Ten days after the poet’s death, the investigating police officer was killed. The handwritten suicide note, however, was unquestionably Mayakovsky’s. “The idea of suicide was like a chronic disease inside him,” his former lover and muse Lily Brik would write, “and like any chronic disease it worsened under circumstances that, for him, were undesirable.” The official report of his death stated that “the suicide was caused by reasons of a purely personal order, having nothing in general to do with the public and literary activity of the poet, the suicide was preceded by an illness from which the poet still had not completely recovered.” Pravda, April 15, 1930. The suicide spurred the removal of the poet’s works from children and youth libraries. Literaturnaia gazeta, July 10, 1930. See also Brown, Mayakovsky; and Terras, Vladimir Mayakovsky.

144. On May 30, 1931, Bulgakov wrote a long letter to Stalin, quoting Gogol, vainly requesting a long rest holiday in Europe, stating he had never been abroad, contrary to published accounts, and pledging his loyalty (“I do not know if the Soviet theater needs me, but I need the Soviet theater like oxygen”). Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 147–50 (otdel rukopisi GPB, f. 562, k. 19, d. 30). In 1931, Stalin allowed both Pilnyak and Zamyatin to travel to Western Europe, and in 1932 Babel would be permitted to travel to Paris, where his wife was undergoing an operation. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 180 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 206, l. 21).

145. Paustovsky, Story of a Life, 63–5. Bulgakov persisted in his supplications to be permitted to travel to France and Italy, writing to Stalin (June 11, 1934) that functionaries must be afraid he would defect. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 210–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 206, l. 37–380b.). Bulgakov would write one more letter to Stalin (Feb. 1938) about the fate of his friend Nikolai Erdman.

146. During the civil war, Red Army soldiers at the front recited Bedny’s colloquial verses (they were also dropped by airplanes behind White lines). Bedny had received an Order of the Red Banner on the occasion of an infirm Lenin’s last birthday, the first such award for literary efforts in Soviet history. Trotsky had pushed for the prize: Bedny had ridden his civil war train and helped him inspire the troops. But during the intraparty struggle Bedny slashed at Trotsky (“a spent politician”). Bedny suffered high sugar levels and was overweight, and Stalin allocated scarce foreign currency for his diabetes treatment in Germany. Bedny wrote a report for Stalin about his trip, jokingly noting that his wife had gone crazy over the cleanliness, order, and abundance of consumer goods in the dying capitalist world (“She stands in front of any store window and dies, dies. You drag her away, and she stares at the next window”). Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 129 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 739, l. 39–40: July 19, 1928), 129–33 (d. 701, l. 43–5: Sept. 20; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 114 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 96); Volkogonov papers, Hoover Archives, container 18; Trotskii, Literatura i revoliutsiia, 166–7. “Nobody ever worked so wholeheartedly for the Soviet regime,” Nadezhda Mandelstam bitingly wrote about Bedny. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 26.

147. “Receiving your assignment, I turned for advice to a very well-informed, authoritative comrade, to whom I usually approach in similar or delicate or, I would say, shock-work tasks,” Bedny wrote to Blyukher, commander for the Soviet Far East who had asked for a poem. The poet alluded to how his unnamed “adviser,” “grinning and removing his immutable pipe from his mouth,” had suggested a folk rhyme. Bedny, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, XVII: 76 (1929).

148. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 131 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 718, l. 82–82ob.: Nov. 2, 1930),131–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 201, l. 13: Dec. 6).

149. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 132–3 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d.939, l. 7–9), 134–7 (l. 1–6. Stalin would include the rebuke in his collected works: Sochineniia, XIII: 23–6. Bedny continued to step on the wrong toes. Kaganovich asked Stalin to read Bedny’s poem (“What Next?”), which Izvestiya had published (Sept. 23, 1931), and which seemed potentially provocative to Japan. Kaganovich indicated Litvinov had approved and possibly commissioned the poem. “I did not read and have no intention of reading Demyan’s verses, since I am sure they are not worth it,” Stalin wrote back (Sept. 29). Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 119–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 739, l. 129–35), 122 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 40; f. 17, op. 114, d. 264, l. 11). See also Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 470–1; Dubrovsky, “Chronicle of a Poet’s Downfall,” 188–90; and Chuev, Sto sorok, 269.

150. Bedny’s apartment served as a salon of artistic life. It was here that Fyodor Chaliapin met Stalin. “Stalin spoke little, and when he did it was with a fairly strong Caucasus accent,” the singer would recall. “Yet everything he said had a weighty ring to it, perhaps because he spoke briefly. From his short sentences, which were not always clear in meaning but energetic in tone, I went away with the impression that this was a man who did not fool around. If necessary he could easily—as easily as his light lezginka step-in soft boots—do a dance or blow up the cathedral of Christ the Savior.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 65 (citing Izvestiia 1962, no. 249).

151. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 246–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 68), 248 (l. 68, 70), 269 (f. 667, op. 1, d. 18, l. 6: Nov. 19, 1932).

152. Stalin evidently showed the Izvestiya editor Gronsky a journal full of Bedny’s unflattering remarks about the denizens of the Kremlin, which, Stalin explained, had been written by a “journalist.” (Gronsky has the story slightly garbled, because Bedny got the Order of Lenin, and it was before the writers’ congress.) Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 155. Bedny appears to have made the same complaint to Fyodor Raskolnikov, according to memoirs of Raskolnikov’s wife. Kanivez, “Moia zhizn’ s Raskol’nikovom,” 95. See also Gromov, Stalin, 166.

153. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povesti dnia zasedanii, II: 416 (April 13, 1933). Stalin did not have an Order of Lenin; he had two Orders of the Red Banner (Nov. 1919; Feb. 1930).

154. Stalin had the letter circulated to the politburo for information. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 283–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 79–84: April 5, 1933).

155. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 68 (Aug. 18, 1932).

156. Stalin edited the draft decree. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1932, no. 9: 62; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 168 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 875, l. 11: March 8, 1932), 172–3 (d. 881, l. 6, 22; op. 163, d. 938, l. 37–8: April 23, 1932). The theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold is said to have hung a framed copy of the decree on the wall in his expansive double apartment on Bryusov Lane, a few blocks up from Red Square. Kirpotin, Rovesnik zheleznogo veka, 156–7.

157. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 176–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 941, l. 68–9). An architects’ union was also formed in 1932, but it would not hold its inaugural congress until 1937. The politburo formed a commission led by Stalin that concluded (June 7, 1932): “It is considered inexpedient to establish an organizational committee for musical organizations.” There were associations below the Union level, in Moscow and Leningrad, that did not have jurisdiction over each other. Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 29–32 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 300, l. 144). A decision to form a Composers’ Union would be made on May 3, 1939, but it would not be formed until 1948. Iakovlev, “Soiuz kompozitorov SSSR,” V: 232–3; Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 32 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1124, l. 81; d, 1509, l. 4–5).

158. Na prieme, 68 (literary critic Leopold Averbakh, writer Vladimir Kirshon, Gronsky, and Stetsky), 70 (Gronsky, Stetsky, and Mekhlis).

159. Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 334–6 (letter to Alexsander Ovcharenko, Oct. 22, 1972). See also arkhiv A. M. Gor’kogo MoG-3–25–7 (Gronsky reminiscences with Gorky archive staff, Nov. 30, 1963); and Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 132.

160. Gronsky was the proposed union’s working head, and leader of its party faction. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 175–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 14, d. 295, l. 1–3; APRF, f. 3, op. 35, d. 32, l. 24–24ob.: May 7, 1932); “Perepiska A. M. Gor’kogo s G. G. Iagodoi,” in Keldysh, Neizvestnyi Gor’kii, 168–206.

161. Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 151–2. Gorky played a hand in getting Lev Kamenev appointed the first director of the Institute, but on Dec. 16, 1932, Kamenev was arrested. At that evening in the Bolshoi, Stalin had Henri Barbusse come to the stage from the audience and yielded him his seat. Izvestiia, Sept. 25 and 26, 1932. Andrei Bubnov, RSFSR commissar of enlightenment, on holiday in Gagra, had written to Stalin asking to be excused; Stalin ordered him to appear. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 44, l. 115.

162. In the play (1931), an old professor makes the accusation that Soviet society is built solely upon fear. Lyons, Six Soviet Plays, 585–9; Lih, “Melodrama and the Myth,” 178–207. On April 2, 1933, Afinogenov asked Stalin to read his new play called The Lie, which depicted how low-level party apparatchiks had to lie, and how their lies worked their way up the system, with consequences. Stalin made voluminous marginal comments, and wrote to Afinogenov that “the idea of the play is rich, the formulation of the idea came out not rich.” The Communists all seemed ugly, physically, morally, politically, Stalin noted, prohibiting its staging in that form. Afinogenov reworked his draft but, strangely, did not follow Stalin’s instructions. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 758n37 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5088, l. 1), 758n38 (d. 4591, l. 4), 192 (d. 5088, l. 118–118ob.); Hindus, Crisis in the Kremlin, 249.

163. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 261–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 20–7). Feoktist Berezovsky made notes of the Oct. 20 meeting (but would send the text to Stalin only on April 29, 1933). “It is easy to alienate a sympathizer,” Stalin pointed out, “and much harder to win him over.” He also stated: “Poems are good. Novels are even better. But at the moment more than anything we need plays.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 29–31.

164. Zelinskii, “Odna vtrecha,” 156–7 (RGALI, f. 1604, op. 1, d. 21, l. 112–46). There would be no press coverage or official transcript of the meeting. Zelinskiy was observing Stalin up close for the first time. See also Maksimenkov, “Ocherki nomenklaturnoi istorii,” 221–4; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 521; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 28. The recollections in old age of Nikolai Nakoryakov (1881–1970), director in the 1930s of the state publishing for belles lettres, of another such meeting in Sept. 1933 are actually of the Oct. 1932 meeting. “Iz vospominanii: vstrecha Stalina s sovetskimi pisateliami v 1933 godu” (arkhiv A. M. Gor’kogo, MoG-10–13–3: Feb. 3, 1966).

165. Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 131 (citing “vstrecha pisatelei s I. V. Stalinym,” arkhiv A. M. Gor’kogo, Oct. 26, 1932). The phrase resonated for some. “I immediately liked the permanently repeated aphorism: ‘writers are the engineers of human souls,’” Valentin Katayev noted, attributing it, however, to the writer Yuri Olyesha. Kataev, “Sobytie nebyvaloe,” 216.

166. Zelinskii, “Odna vtrecha,” 157, 160–1, 168.

167. “A Russian writer,” Gorky had written in a private letter back in 1902, “should never live in friendship with a Russian government.” Gorky, Letters of Gorky and Andreev, 41.

168. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 367 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 510, l. 60); Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 107–10. At the entrance to one prisoner barrack, a “menu” had been hung, surrounded by flowers, with the saying “Eat, and build the way you eat.” The lunch was listed as cabbage soup, porridge with meat, fish cutlets with sauce, and pirohzki with cabbage. (“I with the pen, you with the shovel—together we built the canal,” wrote the prisoner Vladimir Kavshchyn.) Draskoczy, Belomor, 11 (citing RGALI, f. 1885, op. 3, d. 34, l. 100). “From the minute we became guests of the Chekists, complete Communism began for us,” recalled the then fledgling writer Alexander Avdeyenko, during this time of famine. “We ate and drank as we wanted, and paid for nothing. Smoked sausages. Cheeses. Caviar. Fruit. Chocolate. Wines. Brandy.” Avdeenko, “Otluchenie” (no. 3), 11, (no. 4), 80–133. A group of satirists wrote to Yagoda that “they were thrilled by the grandiose work of the OGPU!” Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 365 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 510, l. 27: signed Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov), 366 (l. 24, l. 68). The trip culminated in a copiously illustrated 400-page compilation published in early 1934 under Gorky’s name. Gor’kii et al., Belomorsko-Baltiiskii kanal imeni Stalina. Gorky et al., Belomor; Gorky et al., The White Sea Canal (London: National Centre for Marxist and ‘Left’ Literature, 1935). See also Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, III: 78–101; and Ruder, Making History for Stalin, 47–52, 213–4.

169. XVII s”ezd, 620.

170. Back in 1929, in connection with Stalin’s official fiftieth birthday, Tovstukha’s Short Biography (1927), shorter than a newspaper article, had been slightly enlarged and reissued in Pravda (Dec. 21, 1929). Tovstukha promised more, but there the matter had stood.

171. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11 [4?], d. 1493, l. 50. Orjonikidze did not consider Koltsov’s draft a success, stating of Stalin “he will beat you and thrash me.” Koltsov nonetheless sent his text to the censor, which in turn forwarded it to Stalin, who supposedly read the manuscript, phoned Koltsov, told him “you praise me too much.” True or not, the book never saw the light of day. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 38–9. Koltsov’s the “Riddle of Stalin,” published in connection with the official fiftieth birthday, had used the conceit that Stalin might be a riddle to the world bourgeoisie—“Stalin the enigma,” “the Communist sphinx,” “the incomprehensible personality”—but not to the Soviet worker. Pravda, Dec. 21, 1929.

172. Days, the émigré paper in Paris edited by Alexander Kerensky, had alleged in Oct. 1929 that members of the so-called right opposition had compromising documents on Stalin’s pre-1917 revolutionary past. They did not. The fabricated Yeremin “document” (a tsarist police official) appeared in the mid-1930s. (It would be published in Life on April 23, 1956.) Valdlen S. Izmozik, Zhendarmy Rossii (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2002), 466–8. The collection Batumskaia demonstratsiia 1902 goda (Moscow: Partizdat, 1937) contained recollections that Stalin had escaped from Eastern Siberian exile and traveled back to the Caucasus using a fabricated police I.D. in his name.

173. The memoirist Iosif “Soso” Iremashvili also claimed Stalin had emerged with “a grim and bitter hatred against the seminary administration, the bourgeoisie, and all that existed in the country and represented tsarism.” Iremashvili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, 6, 11–2, 24; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 73.

174. The Comintern operative (Münzenberg) also mentioned Boris Bazhanov, the defector from Stalin’s secretariat, who published a damning exposé in French (1930) and German (1931). Kun, Stalin, 69–70; RGASPI, f. 155, op. 1, d. 85, l. 1, 3.

175. Bey, Career of a Fanatic; and Bey, Stalin. A Russian translation of Stalin was published in Riga (Filin, 1932). Bey elaborated his stories of Stalin’s criminal expropriations, amid exotic pageantry, in parallel volumes: Blood and Oil in The Orient (1931) and Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus (1931). See also Rieber, “Fun with my Buddy.” When Lev was six years old, his mother, Berta Slutzkin (née Ratner), from the Russian empire’s Pale of Settlement, had committed suicide (possibly by drinking acid); Nussimbaum’s father, Abraham, also an Ashkenazi Jew but born in Tiflis, profited from the fin-de-siècle Caspian oil boom, and cashed in his wells to the Nobels in 1913, with exquisite timing. In 1917, when revolution struck, father and son fled by ship to Kizil-Su (Red Water), in Turkestan, where they allegedly lived in a cinema. Then they fled to Persia by camel caravan, briefly returning to the Caucasus (by then under Ottoman occupation), and in 1921 they boarded a refugee ship (the Kleopatra) from Batum to Istanbul. In 1932, Bey married an heiress, Erika Loewendahl (who did not know his real origins), and resettled in Vienna. Following the Anschluss with Austria, Nussimbaum-Bey would relocate in March 1938 to Italy, but then went to Los Angeles. That same year, his wife publicly denounced him as a Jew and they divorced. “He told me he was of princely Arabian heritage,” she wrote. “I learned after our marriage . . . that he was just plain Leo Nussinbaum!” Erika was herself a Jew, the daughter of a shoe magnate from Leipzig who built up the successful Berlin franchise of the Czech company Bata. In Hollywood, while Lev was developing a script for Clark Gable, Erika started an affair with an older married man, a Viennese-born Hungarian visionary named René Fülöp-Miller, who wrote in German and was an acquaintance and rival of Nussimbaum-Bey. Nussimbaum would die in Sept. 1942 of Raynaud’s syndrome, having written some sixteen books in German, most of them translated into numerous languages, on Islam, desert escapades, the global oil industry, love in the Caucasus, Judaism’s “oriental” roots, Muhammad, Nicholas II, Lenin, and Stalin. Reiss, Orientalist.

176. Beria also had his party organization publish Stalin’s 1909 “Letter from the Caucasus,” and mandated its study in educational circles. Sukharev, “Litsedeistvo,” 105 (citing Partiinyi arkhiv Institutta istorii partii pri TsK KP gruzii, f. 13, op. 10, d. 11, l. 45–6); f. 14, op. 7, d. 34, l. 10; Sbornik materialov v sviazi.

177. Tovstukha and his assistants gathered an immense volume of materials: RGASPI, f. 71, op. 10, d. 192–218, 364–73.

178. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 335n.109; Brandenberger, “Stalin as Symbol,” 249–70 (at 256).

179. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 270 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 699, l. 61: Dec. 8. 1932), 271 (l. 62). Barbusse had written two books about his travels inside the Soviet Union, and both had flattered Stalin.

180. Van Ree, Political Thought, 164; Maksimenkov, “Kul’t”; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3087. When Ukrainian Communists wanted to publish a pamphlet on his life in connection with the 1933 fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth League, Stalin balked. That same year, he crossed out references to his contributions from the theses of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism on the Bolshevik party’s thirtieth anniversary. The next year he deleted the second part of the phrases “Lenin-Stalin party” and “teachings of Lenin and Stalin” from a publication. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 149–50 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 3087, l. 30; d. 3118). A 1934 Pravda essay on Turukhansk, including an image of Stalin’s exile hut, elicited his disdain (“rubbish”). RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1494, l. 6–10. When the Youth League journal Young Guard prepared a writer’s travelogue across the USSR for publication, Stalin expunged mentions of visits to his places of exile. El’-Registan, “Neobychainoe puteshestvie”; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, 1494, l. 121–5. Trotsky had underlined in the manuscript of one of his writings: “If personalities do not make history, then history makes itself by means of personalities.” Volkogonov, Trotsky, xxxii–xxxiii.

181. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 4572, l. 1 (July 1933); Sukharev, “Litsedeistvo,” 104; Gromov, Stalin, 143–4.

182. Radek’s encomium was reissued as a pamphlet in 225,000 copies (and multiple languages): Zodchii sotsialisticheskogo obshchestva (Moscow: Partizdat, 1934); The Architect of a Socialist Society (Moscow-Leningrad: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934); Der Baumeister der sozialistischen Gesellschaft (Moscow-Leningrad: Verlagsgenossenschaft ausländischer arbeiter in der UdSSR, 1934). See also Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 69; and Tucker, Stalin in Power, 244–6.

183. The congress amended the statutes to stipulate a gathering every three years. XVII s”ezd, 525–66. Even half the collective farms now contained at least one Communist. Party members of peasant social origin had risen to 28.5 percent, from 20.4 percent in 1930, but the still ongoing purge would wipe out these gains.

184. Kamenev had published an essay in Pravda (May 25, 1933) enjoining the opposition to desist (they were in prison or exile). The politburo had approved the reinstatement of Zinoviev and Kamenev on Dec. 12, 1933 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 936, l. 5). After the Congress, Kamenev would be installed as head of Academia, the country’s highest prestige press for scholarship, which in 1934 would publish the first volume of a Russian translation of Machiavelli’s collected works containing The Prince, whose publication had already been scheduled, but now Kamenev was able to write the preface, and he offered Soviet readers a Machiavelli who was an unmasker of despots, and repeatedly called him “secretary” of the Florentine republic—Stalin’s title. Kamenev characterized the Florentine “secretary” as having “no gift for profound philosophical inquiry” and his society as “an oppressive class of masters struggling among themselves for power over the laboring masses.” Kamenev, “Predislovie,” I: 7–15.

185. XVII s”ezd, 124–9 (Bukharin), 209–12 (Rykov), 492–7 (Zinoviev), 516–21 (Kamenev). Stalin allowed Zinoviev to be named an editor of Bolshevik, the party journal. At a politburo session on Feb. 20, 1934, on Stalin’s initiative, Bukharin was named editor of Izvestiya (replacing Gronsky, who was moved to the editorship of the journal Novy Mir). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 939, l. 2. Even the die-hard Trotsky supporter Rakovski would publicly recant and be allowed back from internal exile, though not into the party. Pravda, April 18, 1934; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 326–34 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 139, l. 35–52: Oct. 11, 1932); Bukharin’s appointment had implications for Kalinin, since Izvestiya was the organ of his own Soviet central executive committee. Brontman, Dnevniki. Brontman (b. 1905), who published under the name Ognev, wrote many of Pravda’s unsigned editorials.

186. Chernobaev, Vvikhre veka, 178 (Alexander Arosyev diary, Jan. 26, 1934).

187. Sochineniia, XIII: 282–379 (at 366–70).

188. Sochineniia, XIII: 371.

189. Sochineniia, XIII: 294.

190. XVII s”ezd, 8–36; Sochineniia, XIII: 283. Stalin would repeat the idea that imperialist war could generate new revolutions at the next congress in 1939. Sochineniia, XIV: 338; van Ree, Political Thought, 212. See also Rieber, “Stalin as Foreign Policy Maker,” 142–3. There were close parallels between Varga’s New Phenomena in the World Economic Crisis (1934) and Stalin’s report to the 17th Party Congress. Varga, “Vskryt’ cherez 25 let,” 155–6; Duda, Jenő Varga, 89, 109–10, 115. One émigré who claimed to have worked in Varga’s Institute claimed that its staff had no reason to fear reprisals for what in their mind were realistic portrayals of the capitalist world. Rosenfeldt, Stalin’s Special Departments, 71–3 (citing unpublished manuscript “Organizatisia i funktsiia Osobogo sektora TsK VKP (b)” held at the Library of Congress). On German fears of a Soviet policy shift dating to 1933, Von Riekhoff, German-Polish Relations, 385. See also Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 103 (citing AVP RF, f. 082, op. 14, pap. 62, d. 2, l. 365).

191. DGFP, series C, II: 421–2; Reichgesetzblatt, 1934, II: 118–9 (German and Polish originals); Ahmann, Nichtangriffspakte, 310–25, 255–342; Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion, 151–63; Wandycz, Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 300–35; Cienciala, “Declaration of Non-Aggression”; Ken and Rusapov, Politbiuro Tsk VKP (b) i otnosheniia SSSR, 62–3; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 14, 20–1; Beck, Final Report, 31–2. For the public Soviet reaction: Izvestiia and Pravda, Jan. 29, 1934.

192. Cienciala, “Polish Foreign Policy,” 44–59; Cienciala, “Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski.”

193. Wandycz, “Polish Foreign Policy: Some Observations,” citing Louis Eisenmann, “La Question de Teschen.” La Vie des peoples, I, 1920: 837. While Piłsudski had tried to diminish the Russian menace by carving out a quasi-federation of states in the east centered on an independent Ukraine, his nemesis Dmowski had pushed for annexations. Both had failed.

194. The French embassy in Warsaw seems to have submitted nothing to Paris between Dec. 21 and Jan. 26: DDF, 1e série, VII: 907–10.

195. Laroche, La Pologne de Pilsudski, 138–45; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 169–72; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 63.

196. Gasiorowski, “German-Polish Nonaggression Pact of 1934,” 27; Cienciala, review of La Décadence, 539; Pohle, Der Rundfunk, 397–8. The perceptive French ambassador in Washington ventured to the Americans that Germany wanted a short period of peace to strengthen itself for eventual European domination. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 73 (citing State 760c.6212/10: undersecretary Phillips on conversation with de Laboulaye, Jan. 27, 1934).

197. Radek had argued to Stalin that while France was seeking to align with Germany, France’s ally Poland could be wooed away and promised a Soviet-Polish pact against Germany founded on Polish desires for a free hand in independent Lithuania and perhaps Danzig. Alarmingly for Moscow, however, in mid-Nov. 1933, Hitler and the new Polish ambassador Józef Lipski issued an odd public joint communiqué, vaguely implying (or maybe not) the possibility of a nonaggression pact. On Nov. 27, Piłsudski secretly received a concrete German proposal, which he sat on for some time.

198. This occurred on Dec. 20, 1933, at the sixteenth anniversary commemoration of the Cheka’s founding. Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 2), 103. Artuzov was said to have recruited Polish agents as double agents as far back as 1920, including the Riga-born, Moscow University–educated Ignay Sosnowski (Dobrzynski), who worked for the intelligence department of the Polish general staff. Pogonii, Lubianka 2, 175–9. See also Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, 445–51 (citing Artuzov’s letter to Yezhov, March 22, 1937); and Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU, I: 205–7. Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Soviet envoy in Warsaw, had written shrewdly to Stomonyakov in Moscow that the Polish government had never believed an alliance with France or the Little Entente would guarantee its security against Germany. “You will be in all the combinations,” one Polish contact told him, “but we?” Still, Antonov-Ovseyenko had been taken in by Polish assurances that there were no negotiations under way with Germany. Dokumenty o materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 112–6 (Nov. 29, 1933).

199. Yegorov, chief of the general staff, was urging Twardowski, “Change your policy and everything will be all right again.” DGFP, series C, II: 338–9 (Jan. 11, 1934), 352–3 (Jan. 13), 376–9 (Jan. 17). See also Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 271; and Tucker, Stalin in Power, 256–60. Nadolny, in reference to Stalin’s Jan. 26 speech, noted its “calm tone and matter-of-factness,” especially compared with Litvinov, and suggested the Germans make an acknowledgment. Hitler mentioned Stalin’s speech in his own speech to the Reichstag (Jan. 30). DGFP, series C, II: 435–6 (Jan. 29, 1934); Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, II: 1151–71; Völkischer Beobachter, Jan. 31, 1934. Nadolny, after arguing with Hitler, who blocked his efforts to attain a rapprochement, would resign on June 16, 1934. He would be succeeded by Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg. “The German Foreign Office,” in Craig and Gilbert, Diplomats, 417–8; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 180–3.

200. Shore, “Hitler’s Opening Gambit.”

201. On the eve of the Polish-German coup de main, the USSR had signed a modest, provisional trade agreement with France. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 307 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 166: Jan. 11, 1934); DDF, 1e série, V: 436–7. See also Carley, “Five Kopecks.” In early 1934, France and the USSR also exchanged aviation attachés, as Cot’s mission bore delayed fruit, and in Aug. 1934 the Soviets reciprocated Cot’s visit with an aviation squadron that landed in France. Scott, Alliance Against Hitler, 119–21.

202. Piłsudski received the interlocutor in question, Hermann Rauschning, head of state in Danzig, in Warsaw on Dec. 11, 1933. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 72 (citing German foreign ministry memo IV Po 9133, T-120, 3024/6601/E 495072–77: Dec. 14, 1933). On Nov. 23, 1934, Rauschning would resign his Nazi party membership and later emigrate.

203. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 269; Ken, Collective Security or Isolation, 121–2, 146–7; Morozov, Pol’sko-Chekhoslovatskie otnosheniia, 9, 27, 504; DVP SSSR, XVII: 133–4; Izvestiia, April 20, 1934.

204. Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 167–73; DDF, 1e série, V: 783–5. Beck admitted that Piłsudski convened discussions of possible preemptive war against Germany, but claimed the idea was put to rest in spring 1934. Beck, Final Report, 51–3.

205. Sochineniia, XIII: 321–2, 329–30. Stalin also conceded that “it must be said of state farms that they have failed to achieve what is required of them.” He deemed them too specialized and too cumbersome to administer properly, without admitting this had been his vision. XVII s”ezd, 23. In 1933, state farms had supplied only a few million of the 20 million tons of grain procured by the state. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 332–47.

206. Davies et al., Years of Progress, 11–4; XVII s”ezd, 435–6, 439–41, 443–55, 668; Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, 132. A politburo decree of Jan. 20, 1934, committed state supplies of seeds and equipment for workers to garden on household plots in their free time, legally and without being taxed. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 509–11 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 937, l. 1, 8, 52, 68–9).

207. XVII s”ezd, 525. The views of actual farmers were far from the discussion. “Under the current regime it is necessary to tie a noose around one’s neck, or to cheat the state,” I. Gribanov told a group of collective farmers in 1934, according to a police summary. Kedrov, Lapti Stalinizma, 151 (citing GAAO, otdel DSPI, f. 290, op. 2, d. 337, l. 16–8).

208. XVII s”ezd, 236–9.

209. XVII s”ezd, 251–9; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 271, l. 529–33 (Chagin). Kirov, exhausted, had been compelled to spend Nov. 23 to Dec. 29, 1933, at a sanatorium in Tolmachevo, outside Leningrad, but insisted on a direct telephone line to Smolny and daily postal deliveries, with his wife serving as his secretary. He complained to his physician (G. F. Lang) of heart palpitations, pains, insomnia, and occasional trouble walking, and submitted to a regimen of saltwater baths. Pazi, Nash Mironych, 412–8, 448; Sinel’nikov, Kirov, 357–8; Krasnikov, Kirov v Leningrade, 179–83; Knight, Who Killed Kirov?, 167–8.

210. XVII s”ezd, 269. “Whereas at the 15th Congress it was still necessary to prove the correctness of the party line and to fight certain anti-Leninist groupings, and at the 16th Congress to finish off the last supporters of these groupings,” Stalin had noted in his congress report, “at the present congress there is nothing to prove and, it seems, nobody to beat.” XVII s”ezd, 28. Manuilsky also made no reply to the discussion of his report on the Comintern.

211. At the 15th Congress (1927), forty-three did not. At the 1939 congress vote, forty-four bulletins would go unused. RGASPI, f. 56, op. 1, d. 61, l. 39; op. 2, d. 36, l. 23; f. 58, op. 1, d. 37, l. 31–3; op. 2 d. 46, l. 9; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 99–106 (citing f. 477, op. 1, d. 41, l. 4). Delegates had to insert their folded ballots into urns specifically for their delegation.

212. Mikhailov and Naumov, “Skol’ko delegatov XVII s”ezda partii golosovalo protiv Stalina?”; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 613 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 23, l. 43–43ob.: Napoleon V. Andreosyan [sic] deposition). According to Mikoyan, Andreasyan told him that his delegation alone recorded twenty-five votes against Stalin. Mikoian, Tak Bylo, 592–3.

213. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Feb. 25, 1934; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 331–4.

214. Pravda, Feb. 7, 1964. V. Verkhovykh would later claim that “in conversation with Kosior the latter told me: ‘Some of us spoke with Kirov in order to get him to agree to become general secretary.’ Kirov refused, saying: ‘It’s necessary to wait, all will settle down.’” Mikhailov and Naumov, “Skol’ko delegatov XVII s”ezda partii golosovalo protiv Stalina?” 114. Khrushchev, who at the time of the 17th Congress was close to Stalin, would recall (or imagine) that Sheboldayev had approached Kirov on behalf of a group of colluding provincial bosses, but that Kirov went straight to Stalin, which implanted permanent suspicions of Kirov in Stalin’s mind. (Khrushchev acknowledged that he “personally did not have direct interaction with” Kirov.) Mikoyan claims that, in Stalin’s office on the evening of Dec. 2 (the meeting was actually the 3rd), when he questioned why Yagoda was not being held accountable, Stalin defended him—raising suspicions that Stalin had organized the assassination through Yagoda. Mikoyan has the events taking place at the Winter Palace, not Tauride, and has Medved, not Zaporozhets, absent from Leningrad. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 97–9; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 91–3; Mikoian, “V pervyi raz bez Lenina,” 6; Mikoian, Tak bylo, 316–8. It has also been asserted that the Caucasus delegations lobbied Mikoyan and Orjonikidze to have Kirov (an honorary Caucasus figure) replace Stalin as general secretary, with Stalin moving over to head the government in place of Molotov. Bondarenko and Efimov, Utaennye stranitsy sovetskoi istorii, 70.

215. Kirilina, Rikoshet, 76–80; Benvenuti, “Kirov in Soviet Politics.” Kirov’s public profile paled in comparison to those of Kaganovich, Orjonikidze, or Molotov, let alone Stalin. Kirov rarely attended politburo meetings, which took place in Moscow, and sometimes did not even vote on politburo matters by telephone poll. See also Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 122; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 215–6.

216. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 93; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 86.

217. Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 122–3.

218. XVII s”ezd, 303. See also Tucker, Stalin in Power, 247.

219. XVII s”ezd, 573–6; Furer, Novaia Gorlovka. In response to disarray in Ukraine’s strategic coal industry, Kaganovich had visited the mining town of Gorlovka, then the Donbass capital, in spring 1933. Among the many measures forced through, Furer became Gorlovka party boss and worked like a demon to lift the miners out of mud huts and barracks, paving streets, building housing, sidewalks, tram lines, a hospital, schools, and a stadium with lights for night matches, a first for the USSR (it opened in Sept. 1933 and was named for living Ukraine OGPU chief Balytsky). Furer would last in Gorlovka until Dec. 1934, when Kaganovich would summon him to head the agitation and propaganda department in the Moscow province-city party committee. Kuromiya, “The Commander and the Rank and File,” 154–5; XVII s”ezd, 162–3; www.gorlovka360.dn.ua/sport-i-zdorovie/stadion-shahter-virtualnyiy-tur.

220. Chuev, Sto sorok, 307–8, 478; Chuev, Molotov, 375–6; Krasnikov, Kirov v Leningrade, 187–8; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 28–9. There is some ambiguity as to whether the Kirov incident took place in a narrow circle or at the Central Committee plenum.

221. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 121–2. Kirov would end up spending more time in Moscow: he would be recorded in Stalin’s office for 63 hours in 1934, compared with 10 in 1933, 28 in 1932, and 23 in 1931. Na prieme.

222. Zhdanov replaced the now Ukraine-based Postyshev, whom Stalin promoted to candidate member of the politburo even as he relieved him of the Central Committee secretary position. Kaganovich remained Stalin’s top deputy in the party, receiving all the documentation concerning party affairs, economic management, and foreign affairs. On Jan. 17, 1934, Stalin had required that all hiring and firing in the Central Committee apparatus have either his own or Kaganovich’s authorization. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 5; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 195–6; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 3.

223. Zhdanov, born in Mariupol, had grown up mostly in Tver, where in Aug. 1914 he joined a Marxist group led by A. I. Krinitsky. In Jan. 1918, Zhdanov, a veteran of the Great War, was part of a group of Red Guards who seized the small town of Shadrinsk in the Urals (near Perm); by 1919, however, he was said to be exhausted and allowed to go home to Tver to recuperate; his comrades abandoned Shadrinsk. Zhdanov served for a decade as party boss of Nizhny Novgorod, 1924–1934. He would go after Krinitsky in 1935 and help destroy him in 1938. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 562; Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, 1896–1948; Glotova, “Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov”; Borisov, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov.

224. “Vospominaniia: memurary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 62–3. The scientist and Leningrad-resident Vladimir Vernadsky, in his diary, would deem Zhdanov a “petty, talentless figure, especially after Kirov.” Vernadskii, “Dnevnik 1940 goda.”

225. Kaganovich, in Feb. 1932, had needed a six-week respite, bedridden for headaches and dizziness. He would have a tonsillitis operation in July 1934. Rees, Iron Lazar, 217. Zhdanov was given the agriculture portfolio on March 3, which Kaganovich had managed, but Zhadanov held it for a mere thirty-eight days (it went to Yakovlev) and instead got planning, finance, and trade; Yezhov got industry, which he would hold for a year; Kaganovich, transport (the next area for a trouble-shooter, after agriculture’s stabilization); Stetsky, culture and propaganda. Posokryobyshev remained head of the special sector; that is, Stalin’s office. Zhdanov, although not a member of the politburo, would attend more than half the meetings in Stalin’s office in 1934. E. K. Pramnek, appointed hastily to replace Zhdanov in Nizhny Novgorod, was awkwardly promoted to Central Committee candidate member after the Congress.

226. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 102. See also Chuev, Sto sorok, 468. Whereas in 1923, 88 percent of all decisions were taken at a formal meeting, by 1933 that was down to 13 percent (by 1937, it would be 0.6 percent). In 1933, there were twenty-four formal politburo sessions for the year, two a month, usually on the first and fifteenth; from Sept. 1934, formal meetings would drop to one per month, with additional meetings as necessary. In 1936, there were no politburo meetings in Jan., Aug., and Nov. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937,” 25–7. See also Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 289. Formal politburo meetings could be attended by sixty people or more at any one time: non-members were invited for specific agenda items or the whole meeting. Wheatcroft, “From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny,” 88–9.

227. XVII s”ezd, 680–1. Stalin allowed the former Trotsky supporter Pyatakov into the Central Committee, and Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, and Sokolnikov to return as candidate members.

228. Stalin also formally pared back the powers of his own workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate–party Control Commission (he had already entrusted the 1933 party purge to a special commission), slashing its size in a push for greater efficiency and less local collusion. “What we need now,” he had told the congress, “is not inspection but check-up on fulfillment of the center’s decisions.” Many of the commission’s powers, in any case, had already been taken by the OGPU. XVII s”ezd, 35; Turkan, Ian Rudzutak, 91–2; Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia, 219–23. “From now on,” Stalin added, “nine-tenths of the responsibility for the failures and defects in our work rest not on ‘objective’ circumstances but on ourselves and on ourselves alone.” Sochineniia, XIII: 367–70. See also Markevich, “Monitoring and Interventions.”

229. Pravda, Feb. 7 and 8, 1934. Stalin had been signing documents for some time only as “secretary of the CC.” From 1931, he was being listed as just “secretary,” not general secretary. Rosenfeldt, Stalin’s Special Departments, 9. Politburo members as of Feb. 1934 were: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Orjonikidze, Kuibyshev, Kirov, Andreyev, and Kosior. Candidate members were: Mikoyan, Chubar, Petrovsky, Postoyshev, and Rudzutaks. Secretariat members were: Stalin, Kaganovich, Kirov, and Zhdanov.