Stalin

306. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 49–51. The ambassadors of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and Poland chose not to attend. Dodd and Dodd, Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, 318 (March 7, 1936). Hitler, at the opera house, had proposed “negotiations” to demilitarize both sides of the Rhine, and yet again offered nonaggression pacts to all and sundry. Then, he dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections (the Nazis would win a publicly announced 98.7 percent of the vote). Litvinov wrote to Maisky (March 9) castigating the British for rewarding aggressors by intending to enter negotiations with Germany now, pronounced “collective security” and the League of Nations in grave danger, and noted (March 10) Hitler’s finesse in driving a wedge between Britain and France. DVP SSSR, XIX: 130, 134.

307. DDF, 2e série, II: 15–6 (April 1, 1936).

308. The treaty specified “military aid” in the event of a third-party attack on either country. Article 3 stipulated that troops “will be withdrawn from that territory as soon as the danger is passed, just as took place in 1925 with respect to the withdrawal of Soviet troops.” The Soviets published the treaty with a delay, following a major border clash near Tamsagbulag that involved tanks and aircraft. Izvestiia, April 8, 1936; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 99–104. The Soviet-Mongolia treaty did not mention Chinese sovereignty over Mongolia (recognized in a 1924 Sino-Soviet agreement) and Chiang Kai-shek’s government sent two diplomatic notes of objection. Stalin played it both ways. “No other country except us recognizes Mongolia,” Stalin had told Genden. “You are still a part of China. We have no obligation to help you at all.” Friters, Outer Mongolia, 203–4 (citing Chinese Year Book, 1938, 321–2); China Weekly Review, April 7, 1936: 227, April 25: 270; Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 347–8. The treaty was signed by Amar (head of state) and Genden (prime minister), but not long after the signing, Amar displaced Genden, whom the Mongol leadership resolved to send to Moscow as ambassador. Genden, upon arrival, would refuse to take up the post and would be sent to Crimea on “medical leave,” effectively taken hostage. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 21, l. 1–3, d. 25, l. 1; Dashpürev and Soni, Reign of Terror in Mongolia.

309. Stalin’s informal adviser Varga had been propagating the thinking that “the imperialists” might go after each other. Varga, “Konets Locarno.” Mistakenly, George Kennan surmised that Stalin had decided upon a great purge of the upper ranks (his potential opposition) following the March 1936 German reoccupation of the Rhineland, in order to gain a free hand to deal with Germany. But in foreign policy he already had a free hand, and the terror was not a single decision. Kennan, Russia and the West, 286–90. Kennan’s argument was repeated by Ulam, Stalin, 404–7.

310. DDF, 2e série, II: 15–6 (April 1, 1936).

311. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 78 (citing FSB archives). See also Sibley, “Soviet Industrial Espionage.”

312. Le Temps, March 19, 1936; Izvestiia (March 24, 1936), reprinted in Molotov, Stat’ i rechi, 231–3, and DVP SSSR, XIX: 166–72. See also Watson, Molotov, 133–4. Also in 1936, Eliava, deputy commissar for foreign trade, let on to the Soviet embassy staff in Berlin that in Moscow, “at the top,” they evaluate Hitlerism “differently.” Gnedin, Iz istoriia otnoshenii, 37; Nekrich, 1941, 23. See also Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 267–8.

313. Molotov reverted to Georgian at the end: “Gaumardzhos saakartvelos mshromel khakhs!” “Long live the toilers of Georgia!” Pravda, March 21, 1936; Molotov, Velikaia druzhba, 55–60.

314. Paustovsky, Story of a Life, 133–4.

315. Chukovsky, who spoke at the congress, had spotted Pasternak, whom he fetched to take an open seat next to him. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 141 (April 16 and April 22, 1936). See also Baruzdin, “O Kornee Chukovskom,” 111–21; Bode, “Humor in the Lyrical Stories”; Luk’ianova, Kornei Chukovskii, 624–6. Also in April 1936, Stalin allowed the imprisoned Victor Serge to leave the USSR for the West, despite understanding that Serge would campaign against the Stalinist line, with the credibility of a firsthand observer. His release testified to the importance Stalin attached to the fellow-travelers, especially Rolland. So improbable did Serge’s release seem that Krivitsky, the Soviet spy in the Hague, suspected Serge of being an NKVD plant sent to infiltrate the Trotskyites. But Stalin did not need to pay the cost of international defamation by Serge to infiltrate the Trotskyists; he had already done so. Krivitsky, MI5 Debriefing, 40–9 (letter to Boris Nicolaveksy, Paris, Oct. 25, 1938). Like Trotsky, Serge would die in a Mexican villa (in Serge’s case, in 1947, of a heart attack, just short of fifty-seven years old).

316. Pravda’s account omitted Voroshilov’s improvisational references to Bolshevik vigilance in the context of filling glasses. Stalin altered the wording for the newspaper of his toast for Voroshilov, eliminating “to the Supreme Leader [vozhd’] of the Red Army.” There was only one Supreme Leader of the army as well as the country. Nevezhin, “Bol’shie Kremlevskie priemy Stalina” (no. 3), 134–6 (citing RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 164, l. 206–13); Pravda, May 4, 1936; Krasnaia zvezda, May 4, 1936.

317. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 62; Isserson, “Zapiski sovremennika o M. N. Tukhachevskom,” 73–5; Vinogradov, “1937: pokazaniia marshala Tukhachevskogo,” (no. 9), 63. “The neutrality of the Baltic states plays a very dangerous role for us,” Tukhachevsky would explain at length in prison in 1937, and underscore the need for a proper base far better than Kronstadt on the Baltic. He would add that “war against Finland presents a completely independent problem, difficult to a sufficient degree for us.” Vinogradov, “1937: pokazaniia marshala Tukhachevskogo” (no. 8) 48 (no. 9), 62.

318. Tukhachevsky replaced Alexander Sedyakin, who had been the subject of relentless criticism, not least from Tukhachevsky himself. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 350. More broadly, see Gareev, “Ob opyte boevoi podgotovki voisk.”

319. Vinogradov, “1937: pokazaniia marshala Tukhachevskogo,” (no. 8), 48 (between May 26 and June 10, 1937). If, in 1914, the tsarist army foresaw 360 train cars per day for its mobilization goals in the West (the number would reach 560 per day by 1917), the USSR in the mid-1930s in the western theater could perhaps count on 436 per day. Menning, “Sovetskie zheleznye dorogi,” 363.

320. Simonov, Voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR, 91–2; Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers; Mawdsley, review of Roger Reese, War in History, 7/3 (2000): 375–7. Despite the vast buildup, some exhibited a startling lack of confidence. “Of course, the USSR is not prepared to fight a war, neither politically nor economically, we need to gain at least three to five years,” Ivan Kutyakov, deputy commander of the Volga military district, had written in his diary (Jan. 9, 1936). Viktorov, Bez grifa “sekretno,” 258–9.

321. Stalin had met with Tukhachevsky six times in 1931, eight times in 1932, seven times in 1933, twice in 1934, and three times in 1935. Stalin again received him on July 21, 1935, with Voroshilov and Yegorov, among others. Na prieme, 154, 718. In April 1936, Banner of Russia, a Russian-language monthly published by the emigration in Prague, concluded a sensational four-part series about “Kraskomov,” said to be a clandestine organization of Red Army commanders plotting a putsch. The April issue offered responses to letters received doubting Kraskomov’s existence and wondering, if it did exist, why Banner of Russia would expose it. A military coup to save Russia from Communism was a long-standing fantasy of the emigration, which was penetrated by the Soviet secret police. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler, 92–4; Znamia Rossii, Dec. 1935, Feb., March, and April 1936. In parallel, Voroshilov had received a convoluted secret report that insinuated a “secret connection” between Red Army and Nazi military circles would enable the Germans to bring forth a “friendly” regime in Moscow. The report, said to be by a White Russian officer for the French General Staff, had been shared with the Czechoslovak staff, which, in turn, passed it to Moscow. Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 185–6 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 740, l. 170–5: Dec. 6–7, 1935).

322. The trade protocol was signed on April 29, 1936. DGFP, series C, V: 488–94. See also Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 35–6; and DGFP, series C, IV: 1009–10 (Jan. 18, 1936). On April 19, Litvinov had fretted to Surits in Berlin that any new large trade deal with Germany would alienate France and “play into Hitler’s hands.” Abramov, “Osobaia missiia Davida Kandelaki,” 149 (citing AVP RF, f. 010, op. 11, pap. 68, d. 34, l. 85 –7).

323. Bessonov’s offer included walking back criticism (made by Litvinov in Geneva) of the Rhineland militarization. DGFP, series C, V: 512 (Andor Hencke: May 6, 1936). Bessonov was accompanied by Yevgeny Gnedin, who would later falsely deny the involvement of himself or the foreign affairs commissariat in efforts to win over Nazi Germany. Gnedin, Katastrofa i votrooe rozhdenie, 34–5. Andor Hencke had been German consul in Kiev, and witnessed the famine.

324. Schacht, who was trying to rein in expenditures and inflation, miscalculated in suggesting Göring’s appointment. Overy, Göring, 40. Stalin had received Kandelaki without foreign affairs commissariat personnel on March 16, 1936; again, five days later, with a slew of police, intelligence, and military men; and finally, with Litvinov and Stomonyakov on April 4. Na prieme, 181, 183.

325. DGFP, series C, V: 571–3 (May 20, 1936).

326. Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion, 192 (citing Dirksen report, May 19, 1936).

327. DGFP, series C, V: 572.

328. Dembski, “Pol’sko-Sovetskie otnosheniia,” 196–7 (citing Akten zur Deutschen Austwärtigen Politik [ADAP], series C, VI/1: doc. 341); and Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warszawa, MSZ, Kabinet Ministra, 108, A.T. II, k. 47–8). Germany remained in arrears on paying transit costs for freight through the Polish Corridor, owing to hard currency shortages. On May 22, 1935, during a monologue with Polish ambassador Lipski, Hitler alluded to the need to build a railroad through the Polish Corridor, according to the Polish record—information Stalin received. Morozov, Pol’sko-Chekhoslovatskie otnosheniia, 242 (citing AVP RF, f. 02, op. 1, d. 35, l. 162–9: Lipski from Berlin, May 27, 1935). Von Moltke had broached the railroad idea to Beck back on May 26, 1934. Wojciechowski, Stosunki polsko-niemieckie, 200–1, 232.

329. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 157 (citing RGASPI, f. 78, op. 1, d. 636, l. 73). Leopold Trepper, the military intelligence operative, recalled Berzin saying that “here we talk the whole time about the Nazi threat, but it is envisioned as something very far off.” Trepper, Bol’shaia igra, 79.

330. Robertson, “Hitler and Sanctions.” Mussolini had given approval for Hitler’s Rhineland remilitarization in advance.

331. The British, despite everything, were still trying to restart negotiations for an air-force arms limitation agreement with Germany. The Italians had mobilized half a million men and lost just 3,000 killed. On May 5 Italian troops took Addis Adaba. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy, 396–7. Ethiopia never officially surrendered. On June 18, 1936, Britain would end the limited economic sanctions imposed in 1935. The Soviet Union, along with China, the United States, and three others, would not recognize Italy’s annexation. Italy would use far more aerial bombing and chemical weapons in Ethiopia after the nine-month war of conquest, during the period of “rule.”

332. Medlicott, Britain and Germany, 26–7 (citing C3662–3/4/18 FO 371/19905). The remark is absent from the German record: DGFP, series C, V: 547–9 (May 14).

333. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 363 (citing U.S., 1936, I: 300–1).

334. Sats, Sketches from My Life, 210–27. Attendance at opening night “was poor,” the composer lamented to himself, and it “failed to attract much attention”—a problem of venue. Prokofiev, Autobiography, 89.

335. Morrison, People’s Artist, 29–49. See also Morrison, Sergey Prokofiev and His World. Prokofyev would compose a series of “mass songs” (op. 66, 79, 89), adapting the lyrics of poets who were in favor, and in 1939 the oratorio Zdravitsa or Hail to Stalin (op. 85).

336. The orchestra portrayed the decadent world that the woman leaves behind, a trope borrowed from Chaplin’s Modern Times. A black doll was used for the infant son. During the filming of Marion Dixon’s escape from the American troupe, Orlova tripped on the slag under the railroad tracks, ripping her stockings and skirt and bloodying her knees. She got up and shouted, “Is the baby alive?” The film’s long-gestating appearance coincided with the opening of an outdoor cinema in Moscow’s Gorky Park called “Giant,” which had a three-story screen and a 400-watt imported sound system (instead of the usual Soviet-made 8–10 watts), and which could hold up to 20,000 people on wooden benches. Salys, Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov, 5, 123–200; Taylor, “Illusion of Happiness”; Kushnirov, Svetlyi put´, 145–6; Malkov, “Charlie Chaplin i Dunaevskii.”

337. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 184–200.

338. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 829, l. 84–5; Pyr’ev, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, I: 74–5. Stalin, after previewing the film (Feb. 28), had introduced a new denouement whereby Anna learns of the villain’s dark past and turns a gun on him, at which point the local party chief tells us the villain had killed the Communist Youth League activist and is a foreign spy, and the NKVD escort him away. The film would be shown in the United States beginning in July. After the film, Pyryev was suspended by Mosfilm, for reasons that are unclear, but managed to relocate to Ukraine. Iurenev, introduction to Ivan Pyr’ev v zhizni i na ekrane, at 32.

339. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 19, l. 78 (Feb. 27, 1936); “O tak nazyvaemom ‘antissovetskom ob’edinennomn Trotskistsko-Zinov’evskom tsentre,” 83 (Léopold, March 25, 1936); no. 9: 35 (Vyshinsky’s comment to Stalin on Yagoda’s letter, March 31).

340. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 753 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 223, l. 1–2: April 29, 1936). The ones found with Trotsky’s Bulletin were Eduard Goltsman and A. N. Safonova.

341. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 756 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 224, l. 130); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 19, l. 172.

342. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 757–63 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 225, l. 71–86).

343. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 572, l. 34ob.–35; APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 150, l. 129; Davies et al., Years of Progress, 301–2.

344. Pravda, June 5, 1936.

345. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 231–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 572, l. 67–73).

346. Gorky visited his son’s grave on May 27, 1936. Stalin managed to see Gorky on June 8 and June 12. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 420 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 720, l. 121); Rossiiskaia gazeta, June 17, 2011. Mekhlis had written to Stalin (May 27) that Gorky had submitted an article for Pravda, “The History of the Young Person in the 19th Century,” which he judged full of philosophical issues that “raise doubts.” Stalin ordered Mekhlis to publish the essay without changes. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 418 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 720, l. 119).

347. Pravda, June 21, 1936; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 310 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 978, l. 55); Yedlin, Maxim Gorky, 214.

348. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 310 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 978, l. 55); Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. M. Gor’kogo, IV: 599. Gorky had requested in his will to be buried next to his son. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 276.

349. MacNeal, Stalin, 206; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 364.

350. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 274.

351. The most authoritative study of Gorky’s death, by the then head of IMLI, inclined towards natural causes, without ruling out foul play: Barakhov, “M. Gor’kii,” 191. Gorky had returned to Moscow from his dacha in Tesseli, Crimea, on May 26, 1936. Malraux had visited Gorky at Tesseli March 7–10, in the company of Koltsov, who wrote of Gorky: “He was not well.” Babel, also present, found Gorky alone and depressed. Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. M. Gor’kogo, IV: 575–6, 586–93, 600–1; Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 269. Koltsov had conveyed a request from Malraux to see Stalin; Stalin chose not to grant an audience. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 411–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 754, l. 77–77ob.).

352. Kuskova, “Na rubezhe dvuh epoch.” Carr, in an obituary in the Spectator (June 26, 1936), wrote that “posterity will not place Gorky with Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Tolstoy.” See also Schroeder, Mit der Menschheit auf Du und Du, 83–5; and Trotsky, Portraits, 160–3 (July 9, 1936). That same day, Gide lunched with Babel and Eisenstein in Babel’s Moscow apartment. Gide praised the USSR to the skies, but after he left, according to an informant for the NKVD, Babel said, “Do not believe the rapture. He is cunning, like the devil . . . Upon return to France he could conjure up some devilish piece.” Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 316–8 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 65, l. 225–8: July 5, 1936). Mikhail Apletin, the head of all-Union society of foreign cultural ties, noted of Gide, “he’s not a simple writer like Rolland.” Clark, Moscow, 140 (RGALI, f. 631, op. 14, d. 5, l. 18).

353. Kotkin, “Modern Times.”

354. Vastly increased organization of society by the state under Stalin was one of the main reasons for the marked increase in his state’s capacity. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the Nazi and Soviet regimes as almost condemned “to organize everyone and everything within its framework and to set and keep them in motion” was apt. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 361, 326. Barrington Moore noted the coincidence in Soviet politics of heavy coercion and grass-roots activism. Moore, Soviet Politics, 403. See also Gelb, “Mass Politics under Stalin.”

355. Kasza, Conscription Society. See also Straus, Factory and Community. Generally, in U.S. social science, the effective organization of society has been viewed in terms of self-organization (nonstate), for example in the influential work of Robert Putnam, but as Sheri Berman points out, civic organizations served as an important vehicle for the spread and institutionalization of the Nazi movement, and did not cease to exist under the Nazis. Putnam, Bowling Alone; Sheri Berman, “Civil Society.” In his critique of the state’s utopian aspirations in so-called “high modernism,” which effectively places forced collectivization on the same plane as surveys of land use, James Scott writes about the failure of society to resist, rather than its thorough organization in state-led crusades. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 89.

356. Pre-1914 France had managed to get tsarist Russia to build strategic railroads to the border with imperial Germany in exchange for rolling over massive economic development loans. Rieber, “Persistent Factors,” 328.

357. Arnason, “Communism and Modernity.”

358. Tsarism’s executive branch was in theory autocratic but was moved—or not—by the operation of patronage networks. Only a strong-willed person at or near the top could impose direction and energy, and usually only for limited periods. Many tsarist loyalists had objected in principle to a strong government, detesting Witte and Stolypin; they wanted firm rule led only by the autocrat himself. But Nicholas II went into audiences with his ministers without seeking to be briefed beforehand, and, suspecting them of sabotage, worked to divide them. The tsar, one scholar has noted, “had his own interest in preserving the very confusion in government that was to be remedied.” Even an audience did not translate into effective action. Orlovsky, Limits of Reform, 125; Kuropatkin, Dnevnik A. N. Kuropatkina, 53 (conversation with Plehve); Yaney, “Some Aspects of the Imperial Russian Government,” 88–9; Khristoforov, Aristokraticheskaia oppozitsiia Veilkim reformam, 300.

359. The tsarist department of police had no more than 10,000 informants across its entire history, a scale the Soviets would dwarf. Lauchlan, Russian Hide and Seek, 133, 203. For perceptive comments on the Leninist revolutionary disposition and social engineering, see Massell, Surrogate Proletariat, 39–40.

360. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 198–237.

361. Pokrovsky in his 1927 Essays on the History of the October Revolution wrote that the revolution had been the only way to avoid “the colonization of Russia by Anglo-American capital.” Ocherki po istorii oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii, II, 447–8. See also Agursky, “The Bolshevik Revolution as a Revolution of National Liberation.”

362. Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, II: 1312–3 (March 20, 1936); Bullock, Hitler, 404.

363. Stalin also said to Howard that “public [obshchestvennye] organizations, which we have created, may be called Soviet, socialist organizations even though they are not yet completed, but they are the root of the socialist organization of the public.” Pravda, March 5, 1936. De Tocqueville had dismissed the authoritarians who, hiding behind constitutional facades, cherished “the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.” De Tocqueville, Old Regime and the French Revolution, 45. Mobilization of the masses lay behind the claim of Giovanni Gentile, the fascist ideologue, for the superiority of Italian fascism over a parliamentary liberal order. Gentile, “Philosophical Basis of Fascism.” In Lenin’s vision of the party, the militant vanguard became meaningful if linked to a militant people. Miliukov, in emigration, would pay Stalin a backhanded compliment: “If, contrary to the American saying, Stalin succeeded in cheating the whole people the whole time, it was because people wished to be deceived.” Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, 39; P. N. Miliukov, “From Nicholas II to Stalin: Half a Century of Foreign Politics,” typescript (n.d.), 334, Hoover Institution Archives.

364. George Mosse argued that the massification of politics threatened anarchy, but that the masses were shaped into a manageable political body by nationalist symbols and liturgy, a key challenge for liberal orders, too. He went too far in asserting that “parliamentary republics were naturally unable to construct effective representations of themselves, just as they failed to create national festivals.’” Mosse, Nationalization of the Masses, 72.

365. A March 30, 1936, secret report for Maurice Gamelin warned bleakly of low morale and high Communist subversion among the French troops. Gamelin sent it to Daladier with a warning that France was coming to resemble Spain. Jackson, “French Strategy” (citing SHAT, 7N 4034–1, “Eta d’esprit de l’armée, April 1, 1936).

366. Rieber, “Persistent Factors,” 336–7.

367. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 93. In Odessa in 1934, a single Trotskyite “group” was unmasked; in 1935, suddenly, thirty-one such groups were found.

PART II. TERROR AS STATECRAFT

1. Kollontai added: “If I don’t fall ‘underneath the wheel,’ it will be almost a miracle.” Vaksberg, Alexandra Kollontai, 393; Farnsworth, “Conversing with Stalin,” 944 (citing RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62, l. 6).

2. “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder,” Campbell wrote. “Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, 30.

3. One of Bukharin’s works, “Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State” [1916], which influenced Lenin, had argued that a “militaristic state capitalism” would produce a “new Leviathan, in comparison with which the fantasy of Thomas Hobbes seems like child’s play.” He denied socialism could lead to this result because “socialism is the regulation of production directed by society, not by the state.” Needless to say, his new Leviathan (“absorbing within the domain of state management everyone and everything”) had turned out to fit the Soviet state. Bukharin, “K teorii imprialisticheskogo gosudarstva,” 5–32. See also Harding, “Authority, Power and the State,” 32–56. Daniels, “The State and Revolution”; and Cohen, Bukharin, 39–40.

4. A typical absolution of Marx from the Soviet outcome is Dalrymple, “Marx and Agriculture.” The distance between Stalin and Marx was one of time period and context. “Everyone who contradicted him, he treated with abject contempt,” one of Marx’s fellow radicals, Carl Schurz, a student radical from Bonn (later a U.S. senator), wrote of their first meeting in Cologne in 1848. “Every argument that he did not like he answered either with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motives of him who had advanced it.” McLellan, Karl Marx, 15 (1909 memoir).

5. Self-styled socialists in the nineteenth century, initially, had employed other terms—“the anti-social system,” “the system of bourgeois property”—but then hit upon this single all-encompassing notion whose essence (property relations, a mode of production), if replaced, would supposedly alter not merely the economy but the entire world, delivering abundance, social justice, and peace. The invention of “capitalism” was a stunning achievement for the socialists, in a way, but a tragedy for humanity, and ultimately, for the entire left, too. Unlike Leninists, Social Democrats were never sure whether this “capitalism” would implode on its own, could be peacefully overcome inside parliaments by large worker-majority parties, or in the end required revolutionary intervention, but it had to go. Those Social Democrats who came to believe that “capitalism” was amenable to becoming more humane—capitalism with a human face—opened themselves up to accusations of being accomplices to exploitation and imperialism.

6. Hegel stated in a series of lectures published posthumously (1837): “But even regarding History as the slaughter-bench [Schlachtbank] at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.” The answer was not Hegel’s Reason or World Spirit but misbegotten ideas. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Hegel’s lectures were published in Russian translation in 1932 as vols. IX and X of his Works by Partizdat.

7. In Marxism-Leninism, only one set of interests can be legitimate, the “proletariat’s,” the rest are ipso facto expressions of the “wrong” class interests, a stricture that effectively excludes lawful politics. But politics is how different groups, interests, and opinions are represented and allowed to compete via peaceful means, and with institutional restraint. Crick, In Defence of Politics, 28. More broadly, the idea that a self-appointed elite has the right, even the duty, to coerce a population for the latter’s benefit is beyond pernicious. That the destruction of whole “classes” can somehow produce freedom is beyond folly. Systemic prevarication and political murder in the name of some supposed higher humanity get institutionalized. Chamberlin, Evolution of a Conservative, 13.

8. Carr defended Stalin’s bloody revolution from above because it was the only way to build socialism (a system not based on private property and markets), which was true, but also because it enabled the socialist state to defend itself in the rapacious international order. A self-styled realist, Carr understood he was defending a morally repugnant system, but in his eyes capitalism had failed, while state planning and collectivization had appeared to succeed, against expectations. It also helped that socialism’s extreme violence and waste could be attributed to inevitable birth pangs that would pass, while capitalism’s crisis was seen as permanent. Wohlforth, “Russian-Soviet Empire,” at 226. See also Jonathan Haslam, “We Need a Faith,” 37.

9. Robert Caro has argued that Lyndon Johnson had a “hunger for power not to improve the lives of others but to manipulate and dominate them, to bend them to his will in a hunger so fierce and consuming that no consideration of morality or ethics, no cost to himself—or to anyone else—could stand before it.” Of course, Johnson was head of the Senate and then president in a constitutional order. Caro, Path to Power, xix.

10. Much escaped Stalin’s attention, obviously. And yet, nothing was too trivial to be brought to him by someone, or for him to involve himself. “People say that the square on the Arbat (where there used to be a church, in front of the cinema) has not yet been paved with blocks (or asphalt),” he wrote to Kaganovich (September 24, 1931) from Sochi. “Shameful! One of the busiest squares and it is full of potholes! Pressure them and make them finish up the square.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 117 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 38).

11. Sometimes the underlining in documents was done by an aide. Sometimes the underlining could be absent-minded, without retention. Much is not underlined. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/i: 221, I/ii: 141, II/ii: 153; Khlevniuk, Stalin; Zhizn’, 144–5.

12. “He wrote everything himself,” Molotov would recall. “The staff never wrote for him. This was a Leninist tradition. Zinoviev wrote for himself, Kamenev, too, not to mention Trotsky.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 168. Stalin’s style borrowed from the catechism approach of his seminary training, and was well suited for agitation among the lower orders, including non-native speakers, where he had cut his teeth.

13. Brooks, “Thank You, Comrade Stalin!,” 83–105. “What more is there to ask when there is Soviet power; when exploitation, oppression, lack of rights, and slavery have been abolished forever; when there is the party of Lenin-Stalin, a worker-peasant government, which exists only to make an abundant, joyful, and happy life for millions of working people—the men and women of the new socialist society,” a group of female shock workers were quoted in Pravda (March 11, 1936). “We are obliged to you, our own dear Iosif Vissarionovich.” Pravda, March 11, 1936. “Our republic,” the writer Mikhail Prishvin had written in his diary in mid-1929, “resembles a photographic dark room, in which not a single ray of light is admitted from the outside, but inside everything is illuminated by a red lantern.” Prishvin, Dnevniki, VI: 432 (July 22, 1929).

14. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 65 (Feb. 27, 1979).

15. Rees, “Leader Cults,” at 22.

16. Goebbels intuited that “genius” was fine, but a leader needed to be in touch with the pulse of the people. Kershaw, “Hitler Myth,” 59. See also Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 308.

17. Lewin, Making of the Soviet System (1985, 1994).

18. In 1935 the regime had stepped up the deportations of certain ethnics and convicted criminals, increased the size of the NKVD border guards, and erected forbidden zones along the western border, sometimes more than ten miles wide, removing people and installing barbed wire, watch towers, and strips of raked land in which footprints could be spotted. Dullin, La frontière épaisse, 206. See also Erickson, Soviet High Command, 406–7; and Chandler, Institutions of Isolation, 55–66; and XVII s”ezd, 71–3.

19. “The Bolsheviks can satisfy the characteristic human striving for a purposeful and significant life, man’s natural craving to transcend the humdrum routine of daily life, to give his activities a purpose more than personal.” Gurian, Bolshevism. See also Stern, “National Socialism as Temptation,” 151.

20. Garros et al., Intimacy and Terror, 206 (Galina Shtange). See also Overy, Dictators, 54–5.

21. Jasny, Soviet Industrialization.

22. Vagts, “Capitalist Encirclement,” 506. See also Izvestiia, March 21, 1937: 2 (Zhdanov).

23. An entry on the “Inquisition” in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia that happened to appear in 1937 noted that “during just eighteen years under the principal Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada, more than 10,000 people were burned alive.” Bol’shaia Sovetskaia entsiklopediia (1937), XXVIII: 510–2.

24. Soviet terror statistics are suspect, of course, but still indicate orders of magnitude. We will never know how many of those beaten to death during interrogations were recorded as dying from heart attacks, for example. Officially, executions were almost evenly distributed between the horrific years of 1937 (353,074) and 1938 (328,618). The number included both political and common crimes. These two years accounted for 91 percent of all the death sentences for political crimes handed down between 1921 and 1940. GARF, f. 9041, op. 1, d. 4517, l. 201–5 (report of late 1953); Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 26; Lukianov, “Massovye represii opravdany byt’ ne mogut,” 120 (data presented by a commission in 1962–3); Popov, “Gosudarstvennyi terror”; Ellman, “Soviet Repression Statistics”; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 477–8 (TsA FSB, f. 8, op. 1, d. 80, l. 57–8, 61–2). The number 1.575 million does not include arrests by the regular police (militia).

25. Davies, “Soviet Economy,” 11–37.

26. Davies, Popular Opinion, 35.

27. Many Soviet collective farmers preferred bribing the capitalists, with grain or whatever it took, to avoid war, and some were reportedly even ready to pay double tax if that meant war could be avoided for sure. ‘Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,’ 125 (citing TsDOOSO, f. 4, op. 5, d. 87, l. 111).

28. Conquest, Stalin’s Purge. “The nature of the whole purge depends in the last analysis on the personal and political drives of Stalin.” Conquest, Reassessment, 33. “The Soviet Union one sees in the archives is perfectly recognizable to people who have tried to understand it from the open sources alone,” wrote Joseph Berliner. Gregory, Behind the Façade, 6.

29. Gerschenkron, “On Dictatorship.”

30. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 202–3.

31. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 585. Volkgonov largely echoed Medvedev. Lars Lih argued that Stalin pursued an “anti-bureaucratic scenario,” but also that Stalin recognized the necessity of the state, an unresolved paradox. Lih, Introduction to Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1–63.

32. Trotsky, Stalin; Tucker, Stalin in Power; Lewin, “Stalin in the Mirror of the Other,” 120. This represents a considerable improvement on the traditional Trotskyite formulation, whereby, in the misguided words of Deutscher, Stalin’s “own behaviour was now dictated by the moods, needs, and pressures of the vast political machine.” Deutscher, Stalin, 226–7.

33. Kuromiya, Stalin; Kuromiya, “Stalin in the Politburo Transcripts,” 41–56; Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror; van Ree, Political Thought; Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin. Harris depicted Stalin as a consummate misperceiver who never adequately understood that his own central policies were driving the phenomena he hated and struggled against—and so he murdered everyone. Harris, “Encircled by Enemies.” This misperception differs markedly from Harris’s earlier assertion that the terror arose “not because of the opposition to collectivization, high-tempo industrialization, or the leadership of Stalin,” but because regional officials, struggling to cope, had engaged in deception, blame-shifting, and scapegoating, which Stalin suddenly discovered—as if he had not known about inflated production reports before, and as if he needed such a pretext to attack. Harris, Great Urals, 189–90.

34. Ulam, “Price of Sanity,” 133.

35. Without embarrassment, Yuri Zhukov has asserted that the terror was forced upon a reluctant Stalin by regional officials, making Stalin a victim (meanwhile, all those who allegedly forced his hand were cremated). Zhukov, Inoi Stalin. J. Arch Getty has even suggested that the terror was provoked by “tensions” between the center and periphery, and fallout from genuine efforts to introduce democracy, a crackpot assertion he shares with Zhukov. “[I]t was a purely domestic event (the 1937 electoral campaign) that sparked the terror,” argued Getty, who added that the terror operations were “unplanned, ad hoc reactions to a perceived immediate political threat.” Getty, “‘Excesses are not permitted.’” See also Manning, “Government in the Soviet Countryside”; Getty, “State and Society.”

36. Kotkin, “Conspiracy So Immense.”

37. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 286.

38. According to the recollections of S. Yakubovsky, the phrase “Stalin is the Lenin of our day” arose at an editorial meeting of Pravda. Lel’chuk, “Beseda I. V. Stalina s angliiskim pisatelem G. Uellsom,” 345.

39. Scholars have identified a “dictator’s dilemma”: the more power the dictator has, the less sure he can be of the loyalty of subordinates. Wintrobe, Political Economy of Dictatorship, 20. In all authoritarian regimes, the ruler perceives the only path to securing his rule is an expansion of his power at the expense of elites (who, in theory, can remove him). That said, elite palace coups are hard, whereas the ruler enjoys greater opportunity to behave opportunistically, to cut back the degree of power-sharing or collective decision making, and, once his power passes a certain point, rebellion becomes near impossible and participation in decision making shrinks or even vanishes. Svolik, Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Machiavelli had argued that those who lead a country have more to fear from the scheming elites than from the populace, and therefore he advised a leader to form an alliance with the people against the aristocracy.

40. “The frenzy with which [Stalin] pursued the feud, making it the paramount preoccupation of international communism as well as of the Soviet Union and subordinating to it all political, tactical, intellectual, and other interests, beggars description,” Deutscher would write. “There is in the whole of history hardly another case in which such immense resources of power and propaganda were employed against a single individual.” Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 125–6. See also Szamuely, “Elimination of Opposition,” 323.

CHAPTER 6. ON A BLUFF

1. Trotsky, Fourth International 2, no. 5 (1941): 150–4, reprinted in Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1936–1937.

2. Payne, Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 175–7. There would be some runoffs, reruns, and shifts in coalition allegiance, altering the totals.

3. On the problems of Spain’s democracy, some of them analogous to the situation in late Weimar Germany, see Payne, Spain’s First Democracy; and Preston, “Explosive Experiment.” Stalin might have received an intelligence warning about the Spanish generals’ plotting in April 1936. Mereshcheriakov, “SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii,” 84, no citation. Spanish conspirators had informed the British foreign office, in late May 1936, of an intention “to restore law and order,” that is, overthrow the Popular Front in favor of “a civilian, right-wing government.” The British cabinet, discussing Spain on July 6, knew a coup was imminent. Volodarsky, Stalin’s Agent, 143 (citing PRO FO 371, file 20522, documents W4919 and W5693; records of the cabinet office, minutes, file 85); Coverdale, Italian Intervention, 60.

4. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 900; Preston, Spanish Holocaust.

5. This argument has been advanced by Khlevniuk and reinforced by Kuromiya, but rightly rejected by Rees. Khlevniuk, “Objectives of the Great Terror”; Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 173 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 90, 141–2, 146); Khlevniuk, “Reasons for the ‘Great Terror’”; Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror”; Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953.”

6. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 764–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 226, l. 159–61). The innermost circle—Kaganovich, Voroshilov—privately expressed their support to Stalin, at his prompting, for the annihilation of “lowlifes” such as Dreitser and Pikel. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 627 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 743, l. 53: Kaganovich to Stalin, July 6, 1936); Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 333–4 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 104–6: Voroshilov to Stalin, July 9, 1936).

7. Volodarsky, Stalin’s Agent, 216. Publicly, Stalin did not comment much on Spain. Many military intelligence reports from Spain were addressed to Voroshilov. Radosh et al., Spain Betrayed, 58–63 (Sept. 25, 1936), 63–5 (Oct. 16, 1936), 66–70 (Oct. 16, 1936). A mass of documents regarding Spain in the so-called Politburo or Presidential Archive were addressed to Kaganovich (and sometimes Molotov) in Stalin’s absence, but Stalin’s voluminous holiday correspondence with Kaganovich does not elucidate his motives in Spain. Crucially, there is no Dimitrov diary from Jan. 31, 1935, to Aug. 19, 1936, or Sept. 21 to Nov. 22, 1936, when Dimitrov and his wife were on holiday.

8. Some scholars have asserted that Stalin followed all events in Spain closely and read every single document on the country. Mereshcheriakov, “SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii,” 87 (no citation); Novikov, SSSR, Komintern, II: 7; Sarin and Dvoretsky, Alien Wars, 3. In fact, as the Russian analyst Rybalkin noted, “Stalin’s position in relation to the Spanish Republic was unpredictable and changed depending on his mood and the situation on the fronts of the Iberian Peninsula and in the international arena.” He continued: “Gradually Stalin’s interest in country X [Spain] fell—on the contrary, hostility arose. From mid-1937 at politburo meetings it became more frequent to discuss aid not to Spain but to Mongolia and China (country Z), as well as the struggle against anti-state elements inside the country.” Rybalkin, Operatsiia “X,” 45. Another scholar refers to “improvisations and adaptations.” Roberts, “Soviet Foreign Policy and the Spanish Civil War.” Yet another noted that “a historian looking back over events encounters the danger of reading into facts future motives of which the participants were not yet aware.” Cattell, Soviet Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War, 120.

9. Stalin had many decisions on Spain approved by the politburo, but almost always via “telephone poll,” so it is not clear whether any discussions took place. (No transcripts were made of politburo meetings between the end of 1932 and late 1938.) Many of the decisions regarding Spain—“Operation X”—were left out of the politburo protocols entirely, not even with oblique reference. These were recorded as OOP, which could have connoted “separate special file” [otdelnaia osobaia papka], and are found in the Presidential Archive. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 23. Compare Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa.

10. No politburo member, and no other people’s commissar except for Litvinov, had traveled across the ocean. In Jan. 1936, Mikoyan had been awarded the Order of Lenin for the food industry commissariat’s overfulfillment of the 1935 plan and introduction of machinery. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 75–6 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 3, d. 164, l. 603), 76–7 (l. 590). See also Mikoian, Pishchevaia promyshlennost Sovertskogo Soiuza, 9–10. In the United States during the course of two months, he visited more than 100 enterprises: bread and biscuits, canned meats, non-alcoholic drinks, refrigerators, as well as slaughterhouses. He saw the mass production of hamburger patties at Macy’s and bought machines for manufacturing meat cutlets. “We traveled across America from east to west and back, and nowhere did the police create any difficulties for us,” Mikoyan would later remember. Pavlov, “Iz zapisok narkoma,” 107. See also Medvedev, Blizhnyi krug Stalina, 173.

11. Orjonikidze found out about the Soviet military intervention in Spain either by voting (via polling) for the politburo resolution on Sept. 29, 1936, or from Kaganovich’s letter to him the next day. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 149 (Sept. 30, 1936). See also Maisky, Spanish Notebooks, 20–1.

12. “Stalin’s position” in Spain, Daniel Kowalsky summarized, “was never one of strength, but rather one of weakness, incompetence, inexperience, and indecisiveness.” Kowalsky largely omits the Soviet domination of the Spanish Communist party. Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraphs 792–5.

13. Firsov, “Stalin i Komintern,” 8 (no citation); Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 295–7. See also Preston, We Saw Spain Die, 3.

14. Preston, Franco, 16; Fusi, Franco, 18. The statement dates to Dec. 31, 1938.

15. In 1934, when leftists in Spain had seized power in the mining province of Asturias—thanks to solidarity among normally uncooperative Socialists, Communists, and anarchists—it had been Franco who was summoned to suppress the strikers; more than 1,000 people died. Ferran and Amago, Unearthing Franco’s Legacy, 61.

16. Preston, Franco, 114.