Stalin

230. Inside the street entrance used by visitors to Stalin’s Kremlin office, there was a small, dark waiting room and an elaborate staircase. Upstairs, a broad corridor led to a massive double door, behind which was Stalin’s spacious anteroom. A table there was usually piled with newspapers and other reading materials, paper, and pencils. Another door led to the office of his top aide, Alexander Poskryobyshev, where two or three guards in uniform sat, and whence there was access to Stalin’s office. Stalin’s expansive wing, formally the “special sector” of the Communist party apparatus, had a special door separating it from the offices for the Council of People’s Commissars and the Soviet central executive committee, on the same floor and one floor above. “I had a pass to all areas [of the Kremlin], except to the corridor leading to Stalin’s wing of the building,” wrote Valentin Berezhkov, an interpreter. “A special pass was made out for each trip” to Stalin’s office. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 203–4. See also Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia dacha Stalina, 57; Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 16; Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (2nd ed.), 184–5; Yakov Chadaev, in Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 383; and Chuev, Sto sorok, 292.

231. Before the Near Dacha was built, Soviet higher-ups had used a small pensione on the steep banks of the Setun River in the Volynskoe Wood, which was on the ninth kilometer of the Mozhaisk Road (Zubalovo was on the 32nd km). Dmitry Donskoi had once awarded the land as a gift to one of the victors in the Battle of Kulikovo Field, Voevoda Bobrok-Volynsky. In the sixteenth century, the land was claimed by the sovereign; after that it went to the courtier who had conducted the inquiry into the death of Ivan the Terrible’s son, then to the Dolgorukys, the Loanov-Rostovskys. Rudomino, Legendarnaia Barvikha, 44: Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia, 28.

232. Merzhanov had been named central executive committee chief architect in June 1931. In 1929, he had won an open competition to design a resort for the Red Army in Sochi. It was built into a hillside (with a funicular), a triumph of constructivism in harmony with the landscape, completed on July 1, 1934, and named in honor of Voroshilov. (It would win a grand prize at the 1937 Paris Exhibition.) The architect and defense commissar struck up a friendship, and the Soviet press spotlighted his Sochi sanatorium. Merzhanov got many commissions, including the NKVD sanatorium in Kislovodsk.

233. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiaiakh, 160; Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 41–2; Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 2. In the nineteenth century, Kuntsevo had become a summer resort for Muscovites (Ivan Turgenev stayed there). It was recognized as a town in 1925–6 and by the mid-1930s counted perhaps 40,000 inhabitants. There was a sewing needle factory, and a dacha that served as the Comintern’s department for international communications (known as facility No. 1). Davydkovo, less than a mile from the territory of Stalin’s dacha complex, became a dacha complex for others in the elite at Stalin’s directive. Trembitskii, Po Zapadnomu okrugu.

234. Zubalovo-4 stood on the left bank of the Medvenka River. Nadya had soured on it and found another spot much farther out on an old estate, Lipki, at the 200km mark on the Dimitrov Highway, where she initiated construction on a new single-family dacha, perhaps to avoid the relatives—both the Alliluyevs and Savnidzes had accommodations at Zubalovo—but Lipki had been finished only after her death. The building of a new Far Dacha, Semenovskoe, would begin in 1937, according to the Near Dacha design, but with bricks from the start. Murin, Stalin v o”iatiakh, 23–4; Alliluyeva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 30–1, 36. The regime established other elite dacha settlements in the dense forests of largely unsettled rural Barvikha county, along the Moscow River and several tributaries, where there had been estates of the Romanovs (Ilinskoe, Usovo, Znamenskoe) or other grandees: Prince Yusupov (Arkhangelskoe), Prince Golitsyn (Petrovskoe), Baron Meyendorf (Podkushino). The Chekists took a shine to Zhukovka: on the high right bank of the Moscow River, between Barvikha village and Usovo. Rudomino, Legendarnaia Barvikha.

235. Hitler had initially rented the alpine hideaway, known as the Haus Wachenfeld, a modest, rustic lodge, during a 1926 holiday (the rent was paid by an admirer), but by 1933, using monies he earned from the sale of Mein Kampf, he had purchased the property. “This place is mine,” Hitler had proudly told a writer for the British Homes and Gardens in 1938. “I built it with money that I earned.” The breathless magazine article, featuring photographs, called Hitler “his own decorator, designer, and furnisher, as well as architect.” It would acquire a remodeled study, a film screening room, and a great room with a marble fireplace, chandeliers, Persian rugs, paintings, and wall tapestries. The furniture was Teutonic-style.

236. Stratigakos, Hitler at Home. See also Schuster-Winkelhof, Adolf Hitlers Wahlheimat; and Hoffmann, Hitler in seinem Bergen.

237. Pauker had a personal Cadillac, a gift from Stalin. Yezhov would ride in a gold-colored Chrysler airflow sedan, one of two in the USSR. Lakoba got a Lincoln. Beria would obtain a coveted Packard. Zhukovskii, Lubianskaia imperiia NKVD, 31; Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 309; Orlov, Secret History, 346.

238. “There are others like Leshchenko,” Stalin was said to have told Artyom and Vasya, “but there’s only one Vertinsky.” Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 42.

239. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 352–3.

240. Their treehouse (“Robinson Crusoe”) was removed, perhaps for security reasons, even though Stalin did not go there much anymore. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 122. Zubalovo would be renamed Gorky-4.

241. Pauker had ended up in Russia in April 1915 as an Austro-Hungarian POW, and was sent to work on a railroad in Turkestan, where in March 1917 he was released and stayed on and joined the Cheka (Dec. 1918), and, around 1920, relocated to Moscow. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 102, 335; Naumov, Stalin i NKVD, 80. Orlov is the source of numerous fairy tales about Pauker, which have been repeated in the secondary literature. Orlov, Taina istoriia, 305–17.

242. Svetlana began first grade in fall 1933; Vasily entered fifth. After completing the eighth grade, Vasily in 1937 would be transferred to special School No. 2; the next year he would be sent to the Kachinsk Military Aviation School in Sevastopol. Svetlana would complete all ten grades at No. 25 and graduate in 1943. Holmes, Stalin’s School, 165–8. Pauker’s men would drop the children off in a car at Pushkin Square, after which they walked the short rest of the way.

243. The unofficially adopted Artyom, after Nadya’s suicide, had gone back to live with his mother full-time in her Moscow apartment, though he continued to visit the Stalin family. He recalled how once at a meal Stalin discovered ashes in the soup and demanded to know the culprit. Artyom admitted responsibility. Stalin told him to eat the soup and if he liked it to ask Karolina Til to put ashes in it every day, but if he did not like it, to desist from doing so ever again. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 89–96, 123. In 1937, Artyom’s mother would obtain a dacha in the elite settlement of Zhukova.

244. Loginov, Teni Stalina, 97.

245. “She and her father are great friends,” Nadya had written to Keke, back on March 12, 1931, when Svetlana was five. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 15–6 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1549, l. 40–40ob.).

246. After her mother’s death Svetlana got a new governess, Lidiya, with whom she clashed. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 132.

247. Charkviani, Napriki da naazrevi, 503. Khrushchev claimed he observed such scenes and pitied Svetlana “as I would feel for an orphan. Stalin himself was brutish and inattentive. . . . [Stalin] loved her, but . . . his was the tenderness of a cat for a mouse.” Krushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 310–1.

248. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 30, 144. Stalin usually had his afternoon meal in his Kremlin apartment, around 7:00 p.m., often in company, and that was when he saw the children. The conversation was often just between the adults, but eventually he would get around to asking Svetlana and Vasily about school. “His time for seeing me and Vasily was during dinner at the apartment,” Svetlana recalled. “He’d ask me about my lessons, look at the [day]book my marks were entered in and sometimes ask me to show him my exercise books. He used to sign my books, as parents were supposed to do.” Vasily often left his daybooks at home, and refused to carry out his assignments, or did them in ways that violated school regulations, prompting his homeroom teacher to phone his governess. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 122–3, 133; Holmes, Stalin’s School, 71–2, 166–7. Stalin in 1937 ordered the keeping of a secret second daybook to track Vasily’s academic work. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiiakh, 56.

249. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 177 (Svanidze diary: May 9, 1935). Svetlana sometimes visited grandma Olga Alliluyeva and grandpa Sergei Alliluyev, who had a homey Kremlin apartment. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 43.

250. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 145–6.

251. The first article, “Stalin the Terrible,” appeared April 8, but the note from Doletsky (TASS) in London was dated April 7, so the Soviets had a heads-up. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 313 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1540, l. 33), 313–4 (l. 34–5), 315 (l. 36), 315–6 (l. 51), 316 (l. 37), 316–7 (l. 52: Astakhov in London), 317 (l. 53: Soviet ambassador), 317–8 (l. 54: German press). The newspaper was owned by Lord Beaverbrook.

252. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 318 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 49, l. 30, 31–31ob.).

253. Slavinskii, Sovetskii soiuz i kitai, 275–6.

254. Barmin, Sovetskii Soiuz i Sin´tszian, 146–7.

255. Chiang had been ready to send his own expeditionary force to back the Muslim rebels against the warlord. Forbes, Warlords and Muslims; Gritsenko, “Chto eto bylo?”; Pravda, June 22, 1934; Hedin, History of the Expedition in Asia, III: 84, 112–5; Goldman, Red Road through Asia, 132. On Dec. 15, 1934, the politburo resolved to have a commission look into whether some Uzbek and Kazakh school textbooks could be adapted for Xinjiang. Gatagova, Sovetskaia etnopolitika 1930–1940-e gody, 33–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 533, l. 14). Molotov would publicly deny, at the 7th Congress of Soviets in Jan. 1935, “the slanderous rumors of the Sovietization of Xinjiang.” Not long thereafter, Soviet forces were fully withdrawn from Xinjiang. DVP SSSR, XVIII: 45; Barmin, Sovetskii Soiuz i Sintszian, 77–9 (citing AVP RF, f. 8/08, op. 14, pap. 130, d. 146, l. 12; d. 147, l. 17, 31; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2798, l. 27), 107–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 154, d. 457, l. 31–8, 9), 111–2 (AVP RF, f. 8/08, op. 15, pap. 162, d. 117, l. 3, 9), 116, 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 32), 132 (l. 113).

256. Bullitt, For the President, 83.

257. Litvinov wrote to Maisky (April 19) that “the negotiations with America have for now ground to a halt. The Johnson Act has as good as halted our trade with America . . . We have firmly stated that we will not give in to pressure and that we can exist without American trade.” Haslam, Threat from the East, 40; DVP SSSR, XVII: 274–5.

258. Radek and Bukharin told Bullitt, in wishful thinking, “If war can be delayed for a few years a social upheaval in Japan may not be out of the question.” Haslam, Threat from the East, 41, citing FRUS, 109–10 (Bullitt to Hull, April 16, 1934).

259. Litvinov had proposed to German ambassador Nadolny a joint “guarantee” of the independence and territorial inviolability of the Baltic states. On April 14, Germany declined the proposal, observing that the Baltic states might view such a guarantee as tantamount to a German-Soviet protectorate over them. “This fascist concern for the national sentiment of our Baltic neighbors sounds truly touching on fascist lips,” Pravda (April 27, 1934). See also DGFP, series C, II: 686 (Nadolny report, March 29, 1934).

260. Stalin wrote: “my archive.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 196, l. 54–62 (received at the foreign office on Feb. 5). RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 196, l. 131–7. In May 1934, Stalin received Phipps’s account of his meeting with Hitler and Neurath in Dec. 1933. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 196, l. 17–23. Stalin had told the 17th Party Congress that the termination of parliamentarism in Germany was a sign of “the bourgeoisie’s” weakness, its inability to maintain its rule by so-called respectable methods. Sochineniia, XIII: 283, 293. “Lots of foolishness, but still interesting,” he had written, without specifics, in green pencil on a report from a Soviet agent in Berlin forwarded by the OGPU (April 11, 1934).

261. Stalin also underlined another passage: “The single great achievement is the rather paradoxical success in the sphere of foreign policy . . . Inside the country, there is none of the socialism that he promised to impose . . .” Phipps also noted “empty theaters, bankrupt bookstores, starving writers, artists, and composers all remind one that the cultural life of Berlin is threatened with disappearance under the National Socialist regime.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 186, l. 68–9, 76–8 (sent to London Feb. 7, 1934).

262. These Nazi consulates, Balytsky claimed, also aimed to use German specialists working in the USSR to sabotage Soviet military industry. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 494–500 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 172, l. 11–23: March 5, 1934). Throughout 1934, the OGPU had been secretly gathering information on all ethnic Germans employed in industry in the Soviet Union. Fleischhauer and Pinkus, Soviet Germans, 89–91 (citing Evgeniia Evelson, who had taken part in drawing up the lists of Germans before emigrating). On Nov. 5, 1934, the party apparatus sent a ciphered telegram to “all Central Committees of national communist parties, krai committees and oblast committees,” including Western Siberia (home to many Soviet ethnic Germans), warning that Soviet ethnic Germans “openly conduct counterrevolutionary work.” Hundreds of arrests followed. Shishkin, “Sovetskie nemtsy.”

263. Pravda, May 6, 1934; Biegański et al., Documents on Polish-Soviet Relations, I: 21–2 (extension until Dec. 31, 1945); Demski, “Pol’sko-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 191–218; Soviet intelligence had reported that Piłsudski was prepared to strengthen his nonaggression declaration with Germany in the event of a Franco-Soviet alliance, though he would be cautious not to stray too far from France. Soviet intelligence would note to Stalin that Poland was trying to mount two horses at once and would fail. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 187, l. 18 (May 9, 1934).

264. Germany was a disarmed state, yet a resentful and prideful one that British operatives knew would endeavor to create a military befitting its self-conception. An ad hoc committee of British intelligence designated Nazi Germany the “ultimate potential enemy” in a series of meetings across late 1933 and mid-1934. Undersecretary Vansittart’s April 7, 1934, memorandum for the cabinet on Mein Kampf and recent propaganda, added, as one Foreign Office contemporary noted of his essays generally, “the forlorn beauty of hopelessness to all their other beauties.” DBFP, 2nd series, VI: 975 ff; Lawford, Bound for Diplomacy, 270.

265. Britain had been cast as the main driver of a new imperialist war in a 1933 trial in Moscow of engineers of the British company Metropolitan-Vickers (“a frame-up,” as one of the arrested British citizens stated, “based on evidence of terrorized prisoners”). Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 284–90 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 363, l. 119; d. 364, l. 176–77; d. 368, l. 18, 62, 70–72, 87, 93; d. 367, l. 1–2, 9–10, 58–64; TsA FSB, no. PF-6740, t. 17, l. 175, 177; t. 12, l. 203); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChk, 415–6 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 171, l. 84–5: interrogation of MacDonald, March 16, 1933). See also Morrell, Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution. On April 2, 1933, Rozengolts, foreign trade commissar, had reported to Stalin and Molotov that of the 33 turbines supplied between 1925 and 1933, 24 experienced breakdowns, some multiple times. The contract with Metropolitan Vickers had been annulled. Litvinov negotiated the release and deportation of the engineers in exchange for termination of the embargo the British had imposed following their arrests.

266. DBFP, 2nd series, VII: 558 (June 4, 1933); Palme-Dutt, “Britanskii imperialism”; Pravda, Aug. 19, 1933.

267. XVII s”ezd, 305–22 (at 307–8); Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 267–8. See also Pravda, June 1, 1934 (Mayorsky); and VII Kongress Kommunisticheskogo internatsionala, 383–4.

268. Kokoshin, Armiia i politika, 95, 96–9.

269. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 243–7 (citing RGVA, f. 40442, op. 2, d. 32, l. 103: draft of Voroshilov report, not earlier than Dec. 13, 1933). Lithuania secretly cooperated militarily with the USSR on the basis of shared antagonism toward Poland. Tukhachevsky visited the United Kingdom in April 1934 and returned with a description of the Royal Air Force new Hampden bomber with a sketch of its weaponry, obtained by Soviet military intelligence. Hastings, Secret War, 2–3 (no citation).

270. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 23, 237n33; Tukhachevskii, Voprosy sovremennoi strategii (Moscow: Voennyi vestnik, 1926), reprinted in Tukhachevskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, I: 244–61 (at 254–5).

271. “Europe remains in equal doubt both as to our policy and to our capacity,” Vansittart, the dominant official in the foreign office, observed in an internal memorandum (June 2, 1934). “The results are already—or perhaps I should say at last—becoming manifest. Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, are all at varying degrees tending to be drawn into the German orbit; and on Italy’s inconstancies now largely depend Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. The political map of Europe is, in fact, altering under our eyes and to our disadvantage, if we must look upon Germany as the eventual enemy.” McKercher, “Deterrence,” 98 (citing “Minute by Sir R. Vansittart” [DQMX32) 117], PRO, CAB 27/510). On British intelligence and Germany, see also Winterbotham, Ultra Secret, 4–5; Winterbotham, Nazi Connection; West, MI6, 45–7.

272. Anon., “Zametki o peresechenii biografii,” 316.

273. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 168–96 (citing the case file). See also Bykov, Boris Pasternak, 472–7.

274. Literaturnaia gazeta, May 14 and 16, 1934.

275. Pridvorov, “Ob otse,” 219.

276. Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, 153–96; Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 25–6; Akhmatova, “Mandelshtam (Listki iz dnevnika),” 182; Anon., “Zametki o peresechenii biografii,” 316–7; “Impressions of Boris Pasternak,” 88. Neither the generally unforgiving Nadezhda nor Osip ever blamed Pasternak.

277. Ivinskaya, Captive of Time, 61–3. It remains unknown which of the narrow circle of people informed on Mandelstam. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 172, 178–80.

278. Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 84–5.

279. Stalin wrote in blue pencil on the letter: “And who gave them authorization to arrest Mandelstam? An outrage.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 709, l. 167–167ob. See also Maksimenkov, “Ocherki nomenklaturnoi istorii.”

280. Bykov, Boris Pasternak, 495–504. Stalin might have been bothered by the circumstance that Pasternak had run to Bukharin, who at Izvestiya was attempting to act as patron and protector of the great writers, rather than directly to the dictator. Trapping Pasternak into failing to admit friendship with Mandelstam, if that is what Stalin did, could have been like psychological payback for an offense Pasternak did not knowingly commit.

281. In the 1950s Pasternak would tell two British academics, Isaiah Berlin and D. P. Costello. Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, 185–7. Pasternak’s friend and German studies specialist Nikolai William-Wilmont was present, and Pasternak’s second wife, Zinaida Neuhaus, was sitting on a couch in the adjacent room during the call.

282. Koltsov, who had helped make Dimitrov famous, was in the airport greeting party. Pravda, Feb. 28 and March 1, 1934. In 1932, in Berlin, the married Koltsov had started a romance with his interpreter, the blond beauty Maria Gresshöner (b. 1908), who accompanied him back to Moscow and took the surname Osten (“East”). He installed her at a German-language periodical in Moscow, and took on her on his foreign trips.

283. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 8 (Feb. 27, 1934). B. Popov and V. Tanev arrived with Dimitrov in Moscow.

284. Borkenau, Communist International, 405; Cockburn, Crossing the Line, 54.

285. In 1933, the original four stories of the Lux were expanded to six, bringing the hotel to 300 rooms. Visiting Soviet inhabitants had to leave their identification cards at the desk and fill out questionnaires in order to enter the Lux; at midnight, all were supposed to be out. Kennel, “New Innocents Abroad,” 15; von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux; Vaksberg, Hôtel Lux.

286. The sprawling twelve-floor structure had some 550 rental apartments, which were centrally allocated and equipped with oak wood floors, gas stoves, constructivist furniture, telephones, radio receivers, gramophones, and frescoes on the ceilings. The complex had schools and nurseries, shops, a laundry, a medical facility, a savings bank branch, a post office, a performance space, and the “Shock Worker” cinema (the country’s first sound-equipped cinema), with 1,500 seats. Prepared food could be delivered to one’s door. Each family had access to a maid, and there were elevator operators and building staff who kept the keys. It was assumed that early service personnel worked for or reported to the OGPU.

287. After nearly an hour, Molotov and others joined. Na prieme, 126. The central Comintern apparatus numbered about 500 staff (more than 800 with inclusion of technical personnel).

288. Jackson, Popular Front, 17–51.

289. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 11 (April 3, 1934), 12–5 (April 7, 1934). Hundreds of Austrian socialist “Schutzbundists” escaped the crackdown, fleeing to Czechoslovakia, whence they were invited to the USSR. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 19n16; Fischer, Le grande rêve socialiste, 280–1.”

290. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 19 (May 2, 1934).

291. Dobry, “February 1934,” 129–50; Jenkins and Millington, France and Fascism.

292. Chase, Enemies within the Gates?, 15 (citing Community party archives, Sofia, f. 146, op. 2, a.e. 317, l. 11); Leibzon and Shirina, Povorot v politike Kominterna, 93 (citing Tsentralen partien arkhiv pri TsK na VKP [Sofia], f. 146, op. 2, d. 317, l. 11). See also Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 127, 191. In Austria, in Feb. 1934, street thugs, police, and army forces loyal to Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss (who had suspended parliamentary rule) assaulted banned yet still powerful socialist organizations—and Social Democrat-led workers fought back.

293. Artuzov was in the Little Corner on April 19, May 16 and 25, 1934. Na prieme, 127, 562–3. In May 1934, Stalin also cut off the ability of Radek’s bureau to request secret information from Soviet intelligence or diplomatic agencies. Ken, “‘Rabota po istorii,’” 108–16.

294. The exposures occurred in Vienna, Riga, Hamburg, Helsinki, and Paris between 1931 and 1933, and led to the loss of dozens of agents. A politburo injunction against recruitment of agents among foreign Communists (Dec. 8, 1926) came up against the fact that individuals who were ready to serve the Soviet cause, held foreign passports, and spoke accentless foreign languages were in very short supply outside foreign Communist circles. Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU, I: 196; Lurie and Kochik, GRU, 477; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 185–6; Gorbunov, Stalin i GRU, 248–9; Damaskin, Stalin i razvedka, 164. One key figure in the Soviet spy network in Paris, Léopold Trepper (b. 1904), the son of a failed Jewish shopkeeper in Habsburg Galicia, escaped via Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union; he would eventually be posted to Brussels.

295. Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 2), 99 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 599); Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU, I: 201; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 311 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 25). TASS denied the Soviets in France had been engaged in espionage. Pravda, March 30, 1934. See also Primakov, Ocherki, III: 62.

296. On May 25, 1934, Stalin received Artuzov without Berzin. Na prieme, 127, 130. The politburo decree insisted on better cooperation between military and civilian intelligence, better compartmentalization in operations, paying attention in hiring not only to social origins but nationality, and quickly establishing a school to train large numbers of new spies in small groups. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 522–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 64–6).

297. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 208–9. Artuzov was supposed to spend two-thirds of his time in military intelligence. At civilian intelligence, his deputies, Abram Slutsky and Boris Berman, were to bear the load.

298. In June 1934, the civil war–era Revolutionary Military Council was abolished, and a more modest advisory Main Military Council was created. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 371–2.

299. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 526 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 172, l. 105: Igor Sitnikov). Back on March 15, 1934, Artuzov had reported that Captain Makoto Tanaka of the Japanese army had reconnoitered parts of the Chinese Eastern Railway, possibly for sabotaging tunnels. Stalin underlined passages and wrote: “Comrade Artuzov, what should be the measures to counter explosions and in general diversionary activity? Who is working them out, who is implementing them?” Khaustov, Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 505–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 186, l. 115–6).

300. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 202–3 (Vaizer). See also, Khaustov, Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 526 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 172, l. 105: Igor Sitnikov).

301. Yagoda wrote to Stalin (Feb. 17, 1934) recommending removal of Smagin (b. 1894) as head of Red Army external relations. Smagin had served as an aide to the deputy head of military intelligence (1924–26) and then through May 1930 as an aide to the Soviet military attaché in Japan, Primakov, who had reported that a Japanese officer in a drunken state had uttered the secret code used for the head of Soviet military intelligence Berzin (“Crow”) and had referred to content in a classified report by Primakov. Only Primakov and Smagin knew that code name. Primakov’s report of the incident had not been properly investigated at the time. Smagin returned to Soviet military intelligence in Moscow, then, in July 1933, was appointed to his current post. Yagoda recommended against trying to turn Smagin against the Japanese. Stalin made a note to himself: “Speak with Klim.” Maybe Stalin decided, contrary to Yagoda, to try to “double” Smagin. But Smagin was removed in June 1934 and left unemployed. In Jan. 1935, he would be appointed to the Frunze Military Academy. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 482–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 186, l. 79–87); Lurie and Kochik, GRU, 303; RGVA, f. 37837, op. 1, d. 1300, l. 19ob.–27. In 1934, Kawabe would be named chief of intelligence to the Kwantung Army. Smagin would be arrested Dec. 16, 1937, and executed Aug. 26, 1938.

302. Paul-Boncour, Entre deux guerres, II: 364. “The mystique of the League,” notwithstanding its failures, “remained the essential element of our foreign policy as well as our domestic policy,” General Maurice Gamelin would later claim. Gamelin, Servir, II: 56; DDF, 1e série, IV: 258–62 (April 16, 1934).

303. Dullin, Men of Influence, 2, citing Leon Trotsky, Ouevres (Paris: EDI, 1985), XII: 107–9. Karakhan was banished as envoy to Ankara, and Sokolnikov by May 1934 to the timber commissariat. Their departures enhanced Litvinov’s position. But the party cell inside the commissariat kept a watchful, envious eye on Litvinov and his associates. Total foreign affairs personnel in the 1930s hovered around 1,000, including the central commissariat and the roughly 30 embassies and 40 to 50 consulates. Roshchin, “V narkomindele v predvoennye gody,” 41–9; Crowley, Soviet Diplomat Corps.

304. Bernard Attolico, the Italian envoy in Moscow, explained to Twardowski that the Soviets pursued “the policy of the free hand,” but “if there is no other way out, they would swallow the bitter pill, join the League of Nations and make an alliance with France, . . . unless German policy succeeded in meeting the Russian ‘pact mania’ in a form acceptable to them.” DGFP, series C, III: 150–1 (Twardowski, July 9, 1934).

305. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 37–44. Litvinov latched onto a renewed offer on April 20, 1934, by a new French foreign minister, the conservative nationalist Louis Barthou, to renew the talks begun under his predecessor for a regional alliance. In private talks with Germany, however, the Soviets distanced themselves from the “French idea.” AVP RF, f. 5, op. 14, pap. 103, d. 117; Na prieme, 128; DDF, 1e série, VI: 496–502.

306. Pravda, June 10, 1934; Wheeler-Bennet, Documents on International Affairs, I: 253ff. The thorny issue of Bessarabia was left unresolved. DVP SSSR, XVII: 379–81; Pravda, June 11, 1934; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 312 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 59, 87, 89). DDF, 1e série, VI: 664–6. Diplomatic relations had been normalized with Hungary (Feb. 1934). “The Russians do not understand what dogs they could have against Europe in the form of Central European small states,” the Czechoslovak diplomat Jaroslav Papoušek had told the Soviet envoy in Prague, Alexandrovsky, on March 24, 1934, claiming to be citing President Masaryk. Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 123 (AVP RF, f. 0138, op. 15, pap. 122, d. 2, l. 226).

307. Stalin forwarded the report to Molotov, Voroshilov, Kuibyshev, and Orjonikidze for discussion. The report asserted that Poland and Germany, in parallel, were negotiating a military alliance with Japan and that Romania would join and perhaps even Italy, Austria, and Hungary. “War against the Soviet Union,” the alarmist report concluded, “was never as realistic a possibility as now.” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 533–41 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 187, l. 28–44). See also Harris, “Encircled by Enemies,” 536. In July 1934, the head of the Polish foreign ministry’s Eastern Department (Colonel Tadeusz Schaetzel) told the Bulgarian chargé d’affaires in Warsaw that Poland “was counting on the circumstance that if a war broke out in the Far East, Russia would be crushed, and then Poland would include in its borders Kiev and part of Ukraine.” Jurkiewicz, Pakt wschodni, 66 (citing Bulgarian foreign ministry archives).

308. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 24–5 (June 18, 1934). From late 1934, Dimitrov and Fleischmann would start a household in Moscow as she became his second wife.

309. It met from June 29 through July 1, 1934. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), VI: 166.

310. Longerich, Die braunen Battallione, 223; Bessel, Political Violence; Frei, National Socialist Rule in Germany.

311. In April 1934, Hindenburg became terminally ill, meaning a presidential succession loomed. On June 11, the Evening Standard in London implied that the German military could take over. On June 17, Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen publicly called for restoration of some freedoms and an end to the SA’s lawlessness. He had failed to coordinate his speech (written for him) with the Reichswehr or the Reich president, but its remarkable content made it seem that he had. Evans, Third Reich in Power, 26–41; Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 499–525, 744n57. See also Höhne, Mordasche Röhm, 218–24.

312. Longerich, Die braunen Bataillione, 215–6; von Bedrow, Hitler rast; von Papen, Memoirs, 310–1; Wheeler-Bennett, Nemesis of Power, 319–20; von Fallois, Kalkül und Illusion. See also Hancock, “Purge of the SA Reconsidered.” When the SA leader in the Rhineland had received information in late June about an impending crisis, he rightly assumed this meant Göring was preparing a putsch against Röhm. Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter, 86.

313. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, I: 418 (July 13, 1934). Domarus commented that Hitler projected onto the SA the failings of the Nazi party (400n138, 414n155).

314. The British ambassador dubbed the episode Hitler’s “Sicilian vespers.” Wark, Ultimate Enemy, 82 (citing MI3 summary, July 18, 1934, WO 190/263; Phipps dispatch, Nov. 14, 1934, C7703/20/18, FO 371/17696); Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 74 (no citation).

315. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 123 (citing Rundschau, July 5, 1934: 1541–3). See also Radek in Pravda (July 3, 1934).

316. Nekrich, 1941, 19 (citing a personal conversation in the 1950s with Surits, the envoy in question). Krivitsky, an NKVD operative in Europe at the time (who later defected), would claim from hearsay that Stalin summoned Jan Berzin, head of military intelligence, the very night of the long knives. But Berzin was recorded in Stalin’s office on April 19, 1934, and then not again until 1937. Krivitsky would also assert that “Stalin was profoundly impressed by the manner in which Hitler exterminated his opposition, and studied minutely every secret report from our agents in Germany relating to the events of that night.” Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 1–2, 183; Na prieme, 569.

317. Izvestiia, July 16, 1934.

318. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 534.

319. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, 73.

320. Those killed included the immediate previous chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, the Catholic Action leader, aides to von Papen, and other conservatives. Höhne, Mordsache Röhm, 319–21. Another scholar gives a figure of ninety killed: Gritschneder, “Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt . . . ,” 60–2.

321. German National Socialism tipped even more decisively away from its internal factions pushing for full-scale nationalization of banks and industry and for closer ties with the Soviet Union, while the SS felt even less encumbered. Pringle, Master Plan, 41. Von Hindenburg died on Aug. 2, 1934; von Papen resigned as vice chancellor five days later. On Aug. 19, in a 90 percent vote, Hitler became head of state (“Führer and chancellor”).

322. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 13–6 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 1, l. 1–3); Firsov, “Stalin i komintern,” 12 (citing TsPA na TsK na BKP, f. 146, op. 6, а.е. 754, l. 1); Komolova, Komintern protiv fashizma, 326–9; Borkenau, European Communism, 110–1. On July 4, Dimitrov was again received one-on-one by Stalin (“thorough discussion!”), but in late July Stalin was still defending his “social fascist” theory. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 24 (July 4, 1934); Na prieme, 135–6; McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 92.

323. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 114–4: July 5, 1934. The Soviet envoy in Rome told Mussolini if Germany ceased its hostility, “nothing would prevent the Soviet government from continuing the friendly collaboration with Germany in the spirit of the Rappallo and Berlin agreements.” DVP SSSR, XVII: 471 (July 13, 1934). Negotiations with Germany for the proffered credit would drag on. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 88–9: Dec. 5.

324. Izvestiia, July 11, 1934.

325. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 801 n70 (Feb. 6, 1934). He had abandoned his small Kremlin apartment in the Cavalry Building for good, unable any longer to climb to the second floor, and stayed at his state dacha in Gorki-6 (Arkhangelskoe). Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 346–9, 354–5 (no citation). After the death of his second wife, Maria Rostovtsa, in 1925 he was said to have become a recluse. But he married a third time, and had another child, his fifth.

326. An intentionally provocative obituary in a prominent surviving liberal German newspaper alleged a falling-out between Yagoda and Stalin over forced collectivization. Paul Scheffer, in Berliner Tageblatt, May 11, 1934, translated in Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 377–81 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 12, l. 2–5).

327. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 25.

328. Stalin had initiated the change, introducing a politburo resolution Feb. 20, 1934, to place the OGPU inside an all-Union NKVD, and forming a commission. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 486 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 939, l. 2), 487–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 4, l. 14–5), 509 (l. 20), 514–5 (l. 124–6), 515 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 943, l. 10) 543–4 (d. 948, l. 33, 92–3); Yezhov had sent suggestions on personnel for the NKVD on April 8, 1934: Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 514–5.

329. The expansion occurred on June 8, 1934. On June 6, 1937, the regime would add subarticle 14: “counterrevolutionary sabotage.” Zaitsev, Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov. “In all truth, there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58,” Solzhenitsyn would write. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, 60. Criminal codes were by republic, and in Ukraine, it was article 54.

330. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 511 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 941: March 20, 1934); Karnitskii, Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR. See also RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 730, l. 22 (Oct. 7, 1934).

331. Yagoda had already issued a circular on the imperative for labor camp bosses to better organize their work, properly employ machinery, and fulfill the plan with attention to quality and cost, citing cases of failures to meet plan targets. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 375 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 594, l. 20: June 22, 1934), 382–90 (d. 7, l. 4–14). In Nov. 1934, the USSR NKVD would assume control over the prisons previously under the commissariats of justice in the Union republics, and thereby unite them with the corrective labor camps and colonies and special settlements. Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag.

332. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 166–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, 948, d. l. 95–100); Pravda, July 26, 1934.

333. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 166 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 47, l. 3). USSR procurator general Ivan Akulov had followed up a petition by Aleksei Selyavkin (b. 1896), the former head of anti-aircraft defense, who was serving a ten-year sentence in Gulag from 1933 for the alleged sale of secret military documents. Selyavkin’s petition, which Akulov forwarded to Stalin, stated that he had falsely admitted his guilt under the threat of execution. Stalin decided to use this as an example. On June 5, 1934, the politburo freed him and admonished the OGPU leadership and even the procuracy for ignoring Selyavkin’s earlier petitions. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 106 (no citation); APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 71, l. 11–31; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 88–9. On July 9, Voroshilov had written to Stalin in Sochi about granting early release to the Provisional Government war minister General Alexander Verkhovsky from his ten-year sentence (“considering that the situation has now sharply changed, I think that we could free him without special risk, using him in scholarly-research work”). Stalin accepted the recommendation, further evidence he had decided to rein in indiscriminate repression. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 222 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1015, l. 61–2).

334. The secret-police central apparatus in Moscow alone now numbered more than 8,200, and the chaotic expansion had come at the expense of educational levels, competence, and probity. Police bookkeeping, as the rival procuracy’s investigations showed, entailed all manner of “black” accounts enabling self-dealing, while contraband running and other abuses of office were pervasive. OGPU archives were spread around many buildings of Moscow’s Lubyanka quarter. Yakov Genkin, head of the OGPU records and statistics department, wrote to the hierarchs (Feb. 15, 1934) that the archives then contained almost 825,000 folders (dela), and more than 100,000 folders were not enumerated. Investigation records were merely “a mountain of paper which presents itself for reading with difficulty,” often handwritten, in pencil, and sewn in such a way that trying to read them led to ripping the pages; they were also filthy, overwhelmed with stamps on the cover. Of his predecessors Genkin wrote, “They looked upon the archive like a warehouse, where they could dump paper, if there was no room to hold it or send it some place.” In May 1934, the OGPU archives got a new facility, in the basement of one of the Lubyanka quarter’s buildings, and a staff increase to five, as well as folders for redoing files and metal cupboards for securing secret materials. Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” 15 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 1607, l. 1).

335. Yagoda cited Stalin’s speech of Jan. 1933 about enemies (“This of course is not frightening. But we have to keep it in mind if we want to terminate these elements quickly and without especially numerous victims”). Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 407, 410 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 4, l. 1–35).

336. Molchanov would later testify that “in 1934 Yagoda many times pointed out to me the need to conduct a more liberal course in our punishment policy. I recall, for example, a conversation in the summer of 1934 at the Water Station Dynamo. In this conversation Yagoda openly said that it is time perhaps to stop shooting people.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 174, l. 137.

337. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 168–70; Sharlet and Beirne, “In Search of Vyshinsky.” See also Goliakov, Sbornik dokumentov po istorii ugolovnogo zakonodatel’stva SSSR, 333–4.

338. “Autocracy,” as one scholar observed of the tsarist regime, had “maneuvered between arbitrariness and legality, between the principle of unlimited personal power and the imperative to strive for a more rational organization of the state.” Taranovsky, “Osobennosti rossiiskoi samoderzhavnoi monarkhii,” 166.

339. Max Eastman, who had created a sensation in the 1920s by defending Trotsky and publishing Lenin’s Testament, did so again with Artists in Uniform (1934), which equated the Soviet and the Hitler-Mussolini enlistment and regimentation of cultural figures. Eastman had belatedly come to understand that the problem was not Stalin alone but “the bigotry of Marxist metaphysics.” Radek wrote a rebuttal that highlighted Nazi book burnings and concentration camps in Izvestiya (July 18, 1934), bringing Eastman’s book greater attention. (The newspaper’s circulation was 1.5 million.) Eastman, Artists in Uniform, 133–4. See also Eastman, “Artists in Uniform.” “All Moscow writers seem to have been promoted in rank: they’ve all acquired high-style apartments, fur coats, and mistresses and fallen in love with the luxurious life,” Korney Chukovsky had written in his diary as early as Nov. 24, 1931. (Chukovsky moved to Peredelkino, the leafy writers’ colony.) Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 34. The émigré Vladimir Nabokov wrote that “in Russia before Soviet rule there did exist restrictions, but no orders were given to artists.” Nabokov, “Russian Writers, Censors, Readers,” 3.

340. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 370–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 304, l. 171–5: May 3, 1937).

341. Several years earlier, a group of nearly one hundred cultural figures had established a cooperative to build dachas in Peredlkino, just twelve miles from Moscow. Gorky had written to Stalin “skeptical” about such a writers’ village, and Stalin had agreed (“a far-fetched business that could also remove writers from the real world and develop their conceit”). But the regime approved it anyway. (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 719, l. 104: Feb. 28, 1933; l. 112: March 1, 1933). The original cooperative was abolished, and the money returned.

342. Khodasevich, Portrety slovami, 280.

343. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 262–78. For speculation on possible murder, see Baranov, Gorky bez grima. Yagoda was in love with Maxim Peshkov’s wife, Timosha. Gel’man, “Zalozhnik OGPU,” 8. Maxim had joined the party in April 1917, served in the Cheka 1918–1919, but emigrated in 1922 to join his father in Italy, where he married and had two daughters; he returned, bringing his family, with his father, in 1932. Maxim had no job, lived the life of a sybarite, and clashed with Gorky’s secretary, Pyotr Kryuchkov.

344. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 430–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 742, l. 21–7: Aug. 12, 1934), 437–8 (d. 83, l. 67–9: Aug. 15); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 220–3 (IMLI, Arkhiv Gor’kogo: Aug. 2, 1934).

345. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 219–20 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 949, l. 29, 95); Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 63–4 (citing RGALI, f. 631, op. 1, d. 40, l. 18: Sept. 5, 1934).