Stalin

215. “The causes behind why I came to military intelligence are known to all,” Uritsky told the group’s “party active” on May 19, 1937. “The causes were a breach . . . I arrived here and there were people who did not help me much. You and I are bad intelligence agents.” Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 3), 57 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 30, d. 54, l. 26).

216. Rodina, 1995, no. 2: 87; Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 203; Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 404–6, 445–51. Artuzov would be executed on Aug. 21, 1937.

217. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 299, 304, 307–10. Firin had helped supervise Stalin’s visit to the Moscow-Volga Canal on April 22, 1937, before being arrested on May 9 as a German spy. Kokurin and Petrov, “Gulag,” 114.

218. Sever and Kolpakidi, GRU, 358.

219. Stalin also underscored the need to portray Soviet spies as “genuine patriots, heroes, of their country,” in order “to attract youth, talented people, girls, scientists” to intelligence work, but warned that “the enemy’s strong intelligence and our weakness are a provocation to war.” Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 290–3 (TsA FSB, f. 6, op. 5, d, 25, l. 208–10). See also Vinogradov, “Tret’ia reform organov bezopasnosti,” II: 76–96, esp. 93. One account has Stalin going in person, on May 22, 1937, to military intelligence HQ: Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no 3.), 57. On the consequences, see also Alekseev et al., Entsiklopediia voennoi razvedki, 508–9.

220. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 44; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 188. See also Pankov, Komkor Eideman, 103. Voroshilov had recommended promoting Eideman to head of antiaircraft, arguing that it needed someone of “major authority.” Whitewood, Red Army, 212 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 19, d. 18, l. 176).

221. Some say the arrest occurred in the office of the provincial party secretary, others in his train coach (he had not yet moved into an apartment). Nikulin, Tukhachevskii, 190; Sokolov, Tukhachevskii, 310–1, (citing P. A. Ermolin); Kantor, Voina i mir, 370 (citing letter of N. I. Shishikin, in the personal archives of Iu. V. Khitrovo); Koritskii et al., Tukhachevskii, 128–9; Zen’kovich, Marshaly i genseki, 488.

222. Pechenkin, “1937 god,” 43, citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d, 615, l. 8, 10, 14.

223. Kantor, Voina i mir, 386–7; Svetlana Tukhachevsky’s statement in Yuliya Kantor, Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky: www.pseudology.org/colonels/Tukhachevsky.htm. The Central Committee, without a plenun, expelled Tukhachevsky as well as Rudzutaks from the party and handed them over to the NKVD. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 190 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 304, l. 112); Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 448. Ushakov would be executed in Jan. 1940.

224. Na prieme, 210. Kandelaki would be arrested Sept. 11, 1937.

225. Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 234.

226. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 263; Krasnaia zvezda, June 4, Aug. 13, 1964. Pravda announced his suicide on June 1, 1937. There were nearly 800 suicides in the Red Army in 1937, and more than 800 the next year. Khlevniuk, 1937–i, 207. Gamarnik had been parroting the Stalin line, telling a party meeting in the military (March 13, 1937), for ex.: “Comrades, the Japanese-German Trotskyist agents, spies, and wreckers are in a full range of our army organization, in the staffs, the institutions, the academies, the military-training institutions.” He repeated this in more speeches before his arrest for being the phenomenon he was warning against. Whitewood, “Purge of the Red Army,” 296, citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 319, l. 2.

227. Мinakov, Za otvorotom marshal’skoi shineli, 249–358.

228. Davies et al., Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 556–7. The Azov–Black Sea Territory was divided in Sept. 1937; Yevdokimov became party chief of the new Rostov province.

229. Rumors circulated that when a preeminent sadist (Anatoly Yesaulov) had failed to beat a confession out of Yagoda for espionage, Stalin had assigned the task to Yevdokimov. The rumor was false yet indicative. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 95–243.

230. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 270–1.

231. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 274–5; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 67–8. See also Wheatcroft, “Agency and Terror.” Kursky shot himself on July 8, 1937.

232. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD; Naumov, Stalin i NKVD, 173–88.

233. http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/193_dok/19390413beria.php (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 373, l. 3–44: protocol of Frinovsky interrogation, Beria to Stalin April 11, 1939). Frinovsky and Yezhov were not close. “I had multiple clashes at work with him,” Yezhov would later observe of Frinovsky. “I cursed him out, and called him a fool to his face, because no sooner would he arrest someone among the NKVD operatives then he would run to me and shout that it was all fabrication [lipa], that the person was wrongly arrested.” “Poslednee slovo Nikolai Ezhova.”

234. http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/193_dok/19390413beria.php (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 373, l. 3–44: protocol of Frinovsky interrogation, sent by Beria to Stalin April 11, 1939); Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 218.

235. “Poslednee slovo Nikolai Ezhova”; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 536 (citing TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo No. N-15302, t. 1, l. 184–6); Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 560–2.

236. Gide, Vozvrashchenie iz SSSR (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1990), 80. On the Soviet response to the Gide book, see Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, 378–83.

237. RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3–e, d. 117, l. 33.

238. Koltsov, who was cohabitating with Feuchtwanger’s wife, Maria Osten, had lobbied for Feuchtwanger to be received in the Soviet Union. RGASPI, f. 17, op., 114, d. 952, l. 48 (Angarov to Ezhov, Nov. 2, 1936; note from Mikhail Apletin, deputy head of the writers’ union foreign commission, to Angarov).

239. Feuchtwanger, Moskva 1937, 68. See also Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 238.

240. Feuchtwanger, Moskva 1937, 64–5, 91. See also Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937, 93–5. Feuchtwanger visited Moscow Dec. 1, 1936, to Feb. 5, 1937. Stalin received him on Jan. 8. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 820, l. 3–22; Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937, 152–3. Feuchtwanger’s book would be withdrawn from Soviet libraries in 1938. One scholar noted that he “was the last in the line of the celebrated fellow-travelers of the interwar period to turn his journey into an eyewitness’ public endorsement of Stalinism; he was the last European intellectual sympathizer to be received on the grand scale of Rolland and Gide.” David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, 270. Orwell conceded that he would support Communism over fascism if forced to choose. Davison, George Orwell.

241. Vishnevskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VI: 410–1.

242. Anderson, Voennyi sovet, 40–1, 57; “Delo o tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi voennoi organizatsii’ v krasnoi armii,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 52.

243. Meretskov, Na sluzhbe narodu, 166–7.

244. Na prieme, 211; Pechenkin, “1937 god,” 51.

245. Polishchuk, “Zasedanie RVS 1–3 iuinia 1937 goda.” Polishchuk was then the head of the Military Electrical-Technology Academy. He is listed as having received the interrogation protocols to read: Anderson, Voennyi sovet, 41.

246. Anderson, Voennyi sovet, 66–70, 74–5. See also Sokolov, Mikhail Tukhachevskii, 378.

247. “‘Nevol’niki v rukakh germanskogo reiskhvera,’” 74 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1120, l. 28–57 at 31–2). See also “Sovetskaia razvedka i russkaia voennaia emigratsiia 20–40x gg.,” 119. On Nov. 14, 1932, Mężyński sent a letter to Stalin proposing Dzierżyński for a medal; Stalin wrote on it “Opposed.” He had still not forgiven Dzierżyński’s brief wavering. But Stalin had authorized a Dzierżyński statue to be erected in front of the NKVD headquarters, on Dzierżyński Square, on the tenth anniversary of his death, in July 1936. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5284, l. 1–3; Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 671 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 279, l. 41).

248. Anderson, Voennyi sovet, 128–43 (esp. 128, 131, 134–5); “‘Nevol’niki v rukakh germanskogo reikhsvera,’” 74 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1120, l. 28–57 at 31–2). See also Gorbatov, Gody i voiny, 122–3. In Jan. 1938, Stalin would take to arguing, unpersuasively, that skill in the military arts was not so crucial for military success and that what mattered were the social origins of military leaders and the overall correct government policy of the workers-peasants state. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1120, l. 104–5, 109.

249. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1120, l. 28–57 (at 46–7).

250. Pechenkin, “1937 god.” The 1961 commission on Stalin’s military repressions was published in two places: Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 29–113 (incomplete); and Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv, 1997, no. 1: 173–255, no. 2: 3–81. See also the illuminating testimony about opposition to collectivization extracted from or written for Pavel Bulanov about Yagoda: Il’inskii, Narkom Iagoda, 500–8 (at 500: TsA FSB, N-13614, tom 2: 211–21: April 30, 1937).

251. Pechenkin, “1937 god,” 50–1.

252. “‘Nevol’niki v rukakh germanskogo reikhsvera,’” 75–6.

253. The ten were Voroshilov, Budyonny, Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Kulik, Apanasenko, Gorodovikov, Shchadenko, Khrulyov, and Meretskov (arrested but released). The majority had been members of the First Cavalry Army in the civil war. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 288. Pechenkin gives eight not arrested. Pechenkin, “1937 god,” 52.

254. Anderson, Voennyi sovet, 250–6, 243–5.

255. Preston, Franco, 278–9.

256. Anderson, Voennyi sovet, 340–1. Already on May 10, 1937, in a detailed report to Stalin and Molotov, Voroshilov had parroted the new Stalin line. The mass arrests of the highest commanders had followed almost immediately. Whitewood, “Purge of the Red Army,” 300, citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 965, l. 65.

257. Ulam, Stalin, 18 (attributing the line to Budu Mdivani).

258. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1549. Keke had taken ill on May 13, 1937.

259. The inventory of her belongings: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1549; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 281–2. The effects went to Maria Kvinkadze.

260. Memuary freiliny imperatritsy, 204–5 (Tatuli Gviniashvili).

261. Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 55; Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 51–2.

262. “You’re wrong to talk about famine and penury abroad, because they write to me that everything there is cheaper than here and they send money,” one woman in Vologda, Stalin’s former place of internal exile, observed in 1937 in response to party agitation. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 68–9 (citing BOANPI, f. 1858, op. 2, d. 940, l. 56). A Sept. 1938 secret directive confirmed the institutions that could receive foreign literature, dividing them into three categories. Only those in the first category—the secretariat of the Council of People’s Commissars, the Central Committee, the Supreme Soviet, Pravda and Izvestiya editorial boards, the foreign affairs commissariat, the NKVD foreign department, TASS, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, leading members of foreign Communist parties, and foreign embassies—enjoyed unlimited privileges. Blium, Tsenzura v Sovetskom Soiuze, 279–80. Despite the tight control, the censor still ended up pulping 10 percent of the purchased foreign periodicals (which cost the state a quarter million gold rubles). In 1939, the USSR would import 2.36 million individual foreign publications (books, pamphlets, issues of periodicals); the censorship examined about one-quarter of the total, and 10 percent were again destroyed. Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 311, 326.

263. “The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper,” in the ironic words of Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Polish poet and aphorist, who had been born de Tusch-Letz in Habsburg Lemberg (Lwów) in 1909. Lec, Unkempt Thoughts.

264. Meerovich, “V narkomindele, 1922–1939: interv’iu s E. A. Gnedinym,” Pamiat’: istoricheskii sbornik [Paris], 1981, vyp. 5: 381.

265. Rittersporn, “Omnipresent Conspiracy,” 101–20; also found in Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, 99–115. See also Rittersporn, Anguish.

266. He added that “we junior officers knew that personally we ran no hazards.” Akhmedov, In and Out of Stalin’s GRU, 104.

267. For a detailed account of how the NKVD fabricated the case, see Cherushev, 1937 god. Stalin edited the copy, drafted by Mekhlis, following sessions in the Little Corner. Na prieme, 211–2; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 217–19 (APRF, f. 3. op. 24. d. 308. l. 78–83). Józef Unszlicht, although long out of the military, was arrested that day but not included in the military trial. He would be executed on July 28, 1938.

268. Pravda, June 9–13, 1937. An abridged Soviet version appeared as Razvedka i kontrrazvedka (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1938).

269. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 50; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 194; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 688.

270. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 103 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d 1038, l. 188–9: letter, June 5).

271. Gorchakov, Ian Berzin, 113. Berzin would only last until Aug. 1, 1937.

272. One author has alleged that there was a “plot” by these military men, not to seize power, but to have Voroshilov removed, which provoked Stalin’s actions. Minakov, 1937. There is no evidence whatsoever for such a “plot” (as opposed to a wish). Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 17.

273. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 264–5. A facsimile of Tukhachevsky’s “confession” and a copy of the “plan of defeat” are in: “Pokazaniia marshala Tukhachevskogo.”

274. Trotsky had condemned Tukhachevsky’s idea of a Red-Army-led “revolution from abroad” (which the latter had applied unsuccessfully to Poland in 1920). See also Tukhachevsky’s militant contribution to Der bewaffnete Aufstand, 21, 23.

275. Rapoport and Alexeev, High Treason, 5–8. The street where Tukhachevsky met his death, formerly known as Nikolskaya, had been the location of his original Moscow apartment.

276. Jansen and Petrov, “Mass Terror and the Court.”

277. Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 199.

278. Verevkin-Rakhal’skii, Moi 90 let, 193. Voroshilov’s diary for June 7 indicates that Stalin went back and forth on precisely who of those already arrested would be put on trial, and who would sit in the panel of judges. Deputy Commander of the Far Eastern Army Mikhail Sangursky, who was arrested June 1–2, 1937, appeared in Voroshilov’s June 7 order on the trial, but before June 11 was removed. Voroshilov had Berzin and Smirnov originally listed as judges but crossed them off. Kun, Stalin, 400–1 (facsimiles of the pages from Voroshilkov’s diary); “Prikaz narodnogo komissara oborony Soiuza SSR no. 072 (7 iiunia 1937 g.),” 46; Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 91, 379.

279. Zen’kovich, Marshaly i genseki, 510–1 (citing the eleven-page trial transcript). Five of the seven military men sitting as judges with Ulrich would soon be executed themselves, except for Budyonny and Shaposhnikov.

280. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3s, d. 828, Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 17. In his account for Stalin (June 26), Budyonny noted that although Tukhachevsky had shaken his head “no” during the reading of the charges and testimony, and denied passing any classified documents to the Germans, in the end he pronounced himself guilty. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 55–6; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 199–200; APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 310, l. 170–83. See also the report of another “judge,” I. P. Belov, in Cristiani and Mikhaleva, Le repressioni, 192–8.

281. “Delo o tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi organizatsii’ v Krasnoi Armii,” 57.

282. Blokhin was assisted by Ignatev. Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 199. Just after Ulrich had pronounced sentences, Stalin received Timoshenko, alone, for half an hour (June 12). He would be posted to Ukraine, to replace Yakir as commander of the Kiev military district. Na prieme, 212.

283. “World fascism this time, too, has discovered that its loyal agents, the Gamarniks and the Tukhachevskys, the Yakirs and the Uboreviches, as well as similar treasonous offal, lackeys serving capitalism, have been wiped from the face of the earth,” wrote Voroshilov, in a directive to all Red Army servicemen printed in Pravda (June 13). “Their memory will be cursed and forgotten.” Tukhachevsky was equated with “playing the same role as Franco.”

284. Pravda, June 13, 1937 (Krupskaya). See also Komsomol’skaia pravda, Jan. 18, 2013.

285. Vostryshev, Moskva stalinskaia, 361–2; Kommersant vlast’, July 9, 2012.

286. Bailes, Technology and Society, 387; Egorov and Kliucharev, Grazhdanskaia aviatsiia SSSR, 98–9, 101; Karpov, Aviatsiia strany sotsializma, 60–2. Stalin sometimes summoned these flight crews to the Little Corner before their flights, going over their plans, and occasionally saw them off at the airfield. Chkalov (with Baidukov) was recorded in the Little Corner twice: July 14, 1936, and May 25, 1937 (before the Pacific Coast flight). Na prieme, 189, 210.

287. Velikii letchik nashego vremeni, 315.

288. Bailes, Technology and Society, 381–406.

289. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 332.

290. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 435–6 (Chadaev). See also Rubtsov, Alter ego Stalina; Rubtsov, Iz-za spiny vozhdia.

291. Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 4, telegrams to and from the military districts from TsAMO; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 160–4. Mekhlis soon replaced Gamarnik as chief of the political department in the military (from Dec. 1937), a post he would hold until Sept. 1940. “The more ‘enemies of the people’ Stalin exterminates, rising upward on their corpses,” Trotsky acidly wrote of Mekhlis after his promotion to deputy defense commissar, “the greater the void that forms around him.” “Voroshilov Is Next in Line,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 62–3 (1938): 23.

292. A contemporary Soviet diplomat, who defected and survived, well understood the impossibility, physically and psychologically, of a Red Army plot in cahoots with Nazism. Barmine, One Who Survived, 223.

293. Volkogonov, “Marshal Voroshilov,” 163.

294. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 321 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 343, l. 84); Khaustov, “Razvitie sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 362. Khrulyov was demoted to the Kiev military district in 1938, but Stalin would bring him back to Moscow in Sept. 1939. Voroshilov evidently also managed to save Mikhail Lukin, who became a lieutenant general. Muratov and Gorodetskaia, Komandarm Lukin, 262. See also Voroshilov’s appeal to Stalin (July 11, 1937) for a member of the military council of the Ural Military District. (The file contains no answer.) Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 17.

295. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 64; Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 4, telegrams to and from the military districts from TsAMO (this one dated Oct. 2, 1937). See also Cristiani and Mikhaleva, Le repressioni, 66.

296. Memo of Govorukhin, chief of PUR in Leningrad Military District, June 12, 1937, RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 993, l. 159ss, Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 17. Similar mood reports that month to Voroshilov contained the following: “Now, no one except the politburo can be believed.” “Only Comrade Stalin can be believed now, and no one else.” RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 993, l. 157–8, Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 17 (Kruglov, temporarily implementing duties of chief of PUR.)

297. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 194 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 312, l. 162, June 29, 1937). “Over there, over here, they started to arrest commanders, about whom we had never heard a bad word before,” recalled a division commander in the Kiev military district. “From mouth to mouth rumors were whispered, one more absurd than the next, about plots and espionage malefaction.” Gorbatov, “Shkola Iakira,” 176. See also Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 199 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 308, l. 212–3).

298. Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 380.

299. The defense commissariat received more than 200,000 letters in 1938 (and would receive more than 350,000 in 1939). No small number were petitions sent from prisons. Kommunist, 1990, no. 17: 70.

300. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I: 438; Suvenirov, “Za chest’ i dostoinstvo voinov RKKA,” 372–87 (at 377).

301. Kuznetsov, Krutye povoroty, 59, 76–9.

302. Just one of many examples: between May 7 and 10, Voroshilov issued a plan for liquidating wrecking—check all warehouses, all construction sites, all secret information storage holdings, all military units—but he did so without naming a single example of actual wrecking in the army. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 75 (APRF, f. 3, f. 401, l. 107–9).

303. Suvenirov, “Narkomat oborony,” 29 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1023, l. 22, 24, 26: June 1937). Notes to himself for his Nov. 1938 speech to the Main Military Council show how far Voroshilov had come. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 74–5 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1137, l. 3, 5, 6).

304. A few days after the June 1937 military soviet gathering, Voroshilov told an assembly of party members at the defense commissariat that the army was “the last place” in terms of “revealed” enemies, but that during the previous three months the situation had “sharply changed.” Whitewood, Red Army, 249 (citing RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 118, l. 3).

305. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 369–70. Voroshilov’s despair would also be evident in a draft outline of his speech to the June 1937 Central Committee plenum, in which he had written that the unmasking of the military-fascist plot “means that our method of work, our whole system for running the army, and my work as people’s commissar, have utterly collapsed.” This line was evidently not uttered. Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 190.

306. Dubinskii, Osobyi schet, 212. Dubinsky was slandered and arrested back in Kazan.

307. Trotskii, Stalin, II: 276.

308. Machiavelli, Discourses, 181–2, 184–5.

309. Chuev, Sto sorok, 37.

310. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 3), 6.

311. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1994, no. 2), 21.

312. Chuev, Sto sorok, 416. Or again: “We owe the fact that we did not have a fifth column during the war to ’37.” (Of course, the Soviet Union did have an immense Fifth Column during WWII.) Chuev, Molotov, 464. One scholar, who correctly cautioned against accepting the fifth column argument to explain Stalin’s motivations, hypothesized that Molotov’s and Kaganovich’s resort to the fifth column rationale might have assuaged their consciences. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 210.

313. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 575, l. 69. Kaganovich, in June 1938, addressing the Donbass party organization, would state that if the enemies, spies, and kulaks had not been annihilated, “perhaps we would be at war already.” Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror,” 96 (citing RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 231, II. 73, 79). G. K. Dashevskii [Donskoi], a Latin Americanist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of World Economics and World Politics, published a pamphlet in 1938 drawing the parallels: Fashistskaia piataia kolonna v Ispanii (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1938). See also Kublanov, “Razgrom fashistskoi trotskistko-bukharinskoi ‘piatoi kolonii’ v SSSR.”

314. The perceptive American John Scott cited four factors to explain the terror, two of which involved the presence of many “former” people, which he called “potentially good material for clever foreign agents to work with,” as well as the circumstance that Japan, Italy, and Germany “sent fifth-columnists of all kinds into Russia, as they did into every country” (italics added). The other two factors Scott cited were the long history of a secret police in Russia and Bolshevik intolerance toward opposition. Scott, Behind the Urals, 188–9. See also Davies, Mission to Moscow. See also the fellow traveler Strong, Stalin Era, 68; and Deutscher, Stalin, 376–7.

315. Stepanov, Rasstrel po limitu, 13–4. Sholokhov mentioned a fifth column in a letter to Stalin (Feb. 1938). Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 309; Murin, “‘Prosti menia, Koba . . .’: neizvestnoe pis’mo N. Bukharina,” 23 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 427, l. 13–8); “‘Vokrug menia vse eshche pletut chernuiu Pautinu . . . ,’” 18 (f. 45, op. 1, d. 827, l. 41–61, Feb. 16, 1938).

316. The influential Khlevniuk has asserted that, based upon the intelligence he was being fed, Stalin became convinced the Republican side in Spain was being defeated because of traitors in its midst and that he feared the same could happen in the Soviet Union, goading him to undertake the domestic terror. Kuromiya, another top scholar, sought to refine the point, arguing that Stalin feared not latent internal opposition per se but internal opposition transformed by a war launched from without. Khlevniuk, “Objectives of the Great Terror,” 158–76; Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 173 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 90, 141–2, 146); Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror.”

317. Border guards were gathering the harvest. Solov’ev and Chugnuov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 9–10.

318. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 104; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 247–8.

319. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 296 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1049, l. 260–1, 265, July 14, 1937), 297; Suvenirov, “Klim, Koba skazal,” 57–8.

320. During the nine days after the in-camera trial, nearly 1,000 more Soviet commanders and military intelligence operatives were arrested, a number now continuously rising. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 190–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 30, l. 250–1; APRF, f. 3, op. 46, d. 807, l. 62); “Delo o tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi organizatsii’ v Krasnoi Armii,” 57; Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 160–1.

321. Rybalkin, Operatisia “X,” 64 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 852, l. 115); Wheatley, Hitler and Spain, 102–3; Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe. It has been estimated that barring its losses in Spain, Italy could have gone to war in June 1940 with 50 full strength divisions, instead of the 19 full and 34 partial strength it mounted. Sullivan, “Fascist Italy’s Military Involvement,” 703, 718.

322. Some 100 Soviet military advisers served in Spain in 1936, 50 in 1937, 250 in 1938, and 95 in 1939, for a total of 495. Rybalkin, Operatsiia “X,” 57 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 870, l. 344; f. 35082, op. 1, d. 15, l. 47–9); Tolmachaev, “Sovetskii Soiuz i Ispaniia,” 150 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1143, l. 127). See also Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 768 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 912, l. 158; d. 961, l. 170–1).

323. Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 577. See also Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 95.

324. Mallett, Mussolini, 92.

325. Leitz, Economic Relations. Spain enabled Göring to increase his role in German economic planning at home. Franco was uneasy but had to accept Germany’s economic aggrandizement inside Spain. Germany was able to obtain militarily significant raw materials—pyrites, copper, mercury, zinc (some 80 percent of Spanish exports of key materials were going to Germany by 1939), while Spain went into debt to Berlin. Wheatley, Hitler and Spain, 85.

326. Stalin was told on July 26, 1937, that the USSR had dispatched 460,000 tons of goods to Spain since Aug. 1936, from food, oil, and timber to trucks, tractors, ammonium sulfate, cotton, and cigarettes. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 260–4 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 224, l. 95–102). By Feb.–March 1938, the Spanish gold had been spent; Moscow extended a credit of $70 million to the Republic for further purchases. The loans, which might have reached $155 million, were never repaid. Kowalsky reasoned that “even if we subtract Howson’s $51 million in overcharges, acknowledge only the unpaid loan of $70 million, (rather than the potential $155 million), and subtract the cost of three DC-3s (roughly $360,000), the total value of the Soviet assistance provided to the Republic comes to approximately $525 million, or $7 million more than their gold should have bought.” Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 548. Politburo agenda items on Spain more and more took up resettling Spanish orphans in the USSR, as well as prisoner exchanges with Italy and Germany.

327. Antonov-Ovseyenko would be summoned to Moscow “for a short period to report” on July 24, 1937. Three days later he would write to Stalin asking to be received. Stalin would grant an audience only on Sept. 14 (first alone, then in the company of Yezhov and Molotov), when Antonov-Ovseyenko would be appointed justice commissar for the RSFSR. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 265 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 224, l. 106); Na prieme, 220. In Spain, management of Soviet diplomacy would fall to Tateos Mandalyan (b. 1901), an ethnic Armenian who went by the name Sergei Marchenko. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 418–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 228, l. 1–3).

328. On May 20, 1937, Pascua asked to see Stalin regarding the fall of Largo Caballero and the formation of a new Spanish coalition government. Pascua was worried (as he told Potyomkin) that he had committed errors that put him in Stalin’s bad graces; Stalin assented to an audience—on Aug. 2, after Potyomkin reminded Stalin of Pascua’s request on July 27. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 239 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 224, l. 18), 265 (105); Na prieme, 217.

329. Through summer 1938, Dimitrov and the Comintern continued to be preoccupied with Spain, sending many long reports to Stalin, but the dictator’s engagement with Spain was essentially finished. Already in Sept.–Oct. 1937, the majority of Soviet advisers were withdrawn from Spain; the Comintern group there was disbanded. Novikov, SSSR, Komintern, II: 78. By Sept. 1938, the Soviets issued an order to withdraw the International brigades (Franco did not reciprocate by sending the Germans and Italians home).

330. The transfer east was formalized on May 11. Already on June 19, Yezhov ordered Balytsky to report to Moscow. Balytsky had to understand this meant his own arrest. Still, perhaps Balytsky imagined he could persuade the dictator of his loyalty, claiming, for example, that even though he and the enemy Yakir had worked together in Ukraine, he had not known of Yakir’s plotting. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 127, citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 33, l. 81–5. At one time thought to be a candidate to replace Yagoda, Balytsky was executed on Nov. 21, 1937, at Kommunarka, Yagoda’s former dacha. “O sud’be chlenov i kandidatov v chleny TsK VKP (b), izbrannogo XVII s”ezdom partii,” 88.

331. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IV: 214 (July 10, 1937). Erich Wollenberg, a German Communist who served fifteen years in the Red Army (1921–36), noted, “One cannot deny that as a result of the executions the Red Army is leaderless.” Hitler, too, would use this phrase. Wollenberg, Red Army.

CHAPTER 8. “WHAT WENT ON IN NO. 1’S BRAIN?”

1. “Secret Speech” [1956], in Khruschev, Khrushchev Remembers, 616.

2. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 263.

3. Solzhenitsyn, without access to regime archives, got this right, writing that “old prisoners claim to remember that the first blow allegedly took the form of mass arrests” in Aug. 1937. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, I: 68. See also Weissberg-Cybulski, Accused, 7–10.

4. Yezhov’s report was followed by four days of discussion. No transcript was made of the plenum through June 26 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 614, l. 1), and no complete text of Yezhov’s speech has been adduced. We do, however, have his outline: Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 293–312 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 20, l. 117–22, 163–83); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 130–2; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 306–8 (d. 29, l. 200–7). On June 27–29, the plenum discussed the Supreme Soviet election laws, grain seeds, crop rotation, and machine tractor stations, which is what the Pravda post-plenum summary (June 30) mentioned, leaving out Yezhov’s report.

5. Stalin had Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan, and Zhdanov affix their assent. L. B., “‘Tain Kremlia’ bol’she ne budet?,” 37.

6. The creative intelligentsia might have suffered fewer arrests per capita than other groups. Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, 243.

7. Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 15–6.

8. Payne, Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, 350; Conquest, Breaker of Nations, 317. Bullock asserted that both Hitler and Stalin “owed a great deal of their success as politicians to their ability to disguise from allies as well as opponents, their thoughts and their intentions.” Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 367.

9. Enteen, “Intellektual’nye predposylki.”

10. Conquest, Reassessment, 14 (no citation).

11. Tichanova, Rasstrel’nye spiski, 202, 211; Moskovskie novosti, 1994, no. 5.

12. The “politburo” ordered Yezhov to go on holiday on Dec. 7, 1937, outside Moscow, and directed Stalin to make sure Yezhov did not appear at work. RGASPI, f. 17 op. 3, d. 993, l. 74.

13. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 399–405. Savoleinen, the accused mercury poisoner, was executed in Aug. 1937.

14. Orlov, Secret History, 221–2. Yezhov’s office as of Oct. 1936 was on the fourth floor (410). Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 67, citing GARF, f. 9401, op. 1a, d. 15, l. 242.

15. Those who had long minimized Stalin’s role now admit that his “name is all over the horrible documents authorizing the terror.” (Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 451.) And if it were not? If Stalin had kept his name off the documents, while making others sign them, would we be wondering if he were an instrument in their hands, or a neutral figure caught between factions, or an opponent of terror who went along with it? If all the documents on the terror had been destroyed during a wartime bombing or a botched evacuation, or by a fire, or on his command, would it still be unclear that the mass arrests and executions did not somehow begin and wind down of their own accord, but were carried out on Stalin’s orders?

16. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 348–51 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254, l. 165–72). Many examples have been gathered in Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 41–3.

17. Mlechin, KGB, 176.

18. Yezhov was instructed to “spend nine-tenths of his time on NKVD business”: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 981, l. 50.

19. Fadeev, “Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov,” cited in Pavliukov, Ezhov, 335–6, RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 270, l. 69–86 (at 80–1); excerpts are also in Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 13. This was part of a commissioned biography of Yezhov, whose arrest took place before the biography could be published.

20. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 207; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 536.

21. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 1), 10.

22. In this case, by Poluvedko et al., Mech i tryzub, 122. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 12–29.

23. TsA FSB, p-23634, t. 1, l. 195. Spiegelglass handled multiple key double agents, controlled Zborowski’s virtuoso work with Sedov, and would oversee several more priority assassinations abroad—until his own regime executed him.

24. Rees has argued that the Great Terror “was the central and decisive event” in the history of Stalin’s regime, a view I do not share, but I do share his contention that “in the experience of modern states [the terror] is without precedent.” Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 200–39.

25. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 299–300. As of Nov. 30, 1937, Stalin started receiving not the lengthy raw interrogation protocols but summaries, and only of the most important cases. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 319–20.

26. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 322 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 6, d. 11, l. 384).

27. Conquest, Great Terror: Reassessment, 268–9; Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 143–4.

28. Sukhanovka had been retrofitted as a prison in 1931, and in late 1938 into early 1939 would be expanded for “especially dangerous enemies of the people.” Golovkova, Sukhanosvakia tiur’ma; GARF. f. 5446, op. 22a, d. 125, l. 5.

29. Papkov, Stalinskii terror v Sibiri, 230–1. In 1938, for example, the party boss of Karelia would tell Yezhov that because local prisons were already overflowing, he was unable to arrest more than a thousand “enemies.” Takala, “Natsional’nye operatsii,” 196–7. See also Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 90–115.

30. Gur’ianov, Repressii protiv poliakov, 30. As Frinovsky traveled by train in July 1938 through regions that had sent arrest albums to Moscow, he and his aides, having brought the overdue paperwork, rendered decisions on the train and dropped them off as they passed through. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 323.

31. The anti-terrorist machinery that had been introduced on the day of the Kirov murder in the form of a USSR Central Executive Committee decree (Dec. 1, 1934), had been formally approved nine days later by the RSFSR Central Executive Committee and the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars, but the anti-terrorism laws were not finalized until Feb. 1936, entered into the RSFSR criminal code via an added 18th chapter (“On the investigation and hearing of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against Soviet power”). Istoriia zakonodatel’stva SSSR i RSFSR po ugolovnomu protsessu, 53. These procedures were extended to wrecking and diversionary acts on Sept. 14, 1937. On the confusion, see Scott, Behind the Urals, 194.

32. Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie leninskikh printsipov,” 19. In Yerevan in Sept. 1937, Malenkov, Mikoyan, and Beria, overseeing a regional party plenum, turned the sitting party bosses over to the NKVD and decided upon the new first, second, and third party secretaries for Armenia, sending a proposal to Stalin and Molotov in Moscow. Stalin approved “if the plenum of the Central Committee of Armenia does not have any doubts regarding these candidates.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 19, d. 62, l. 2, 4; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 135, l. 65–65ob. Although this could have been a pose of false party democracy, he could hardly know or remember everyone even in the nomenklatura. On Yevdokimov’s telegrammed request to arrest Amatouni Amatouni [Vardapetyan] Stalin had written, “Who is this Amatouni? Where does he work?” (Amatouni was the party boss in Armenia and among the gaggle of high officials arrested there on Sept. 23.) Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlneie, 68 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 65, l. 24), 379–80 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 332, l. 43). Amatouni was executed on July 28, 1938, from a long list of names approved by Stalin. N. P. Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie leninskikh printsipov sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti (1953–1963 gg.),” 19.

33. Some 43,000 people are on the lists; the USSR military collegium handed down 14,732 sentences in 1937 and 24,435 in 1938, a little more than 39,000 people total. An example of someone who survived is Ya. Yelkovich of the Altai, who was on two lists. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 296. Iakushev, Stalinskie rasstrel’nye spiski.

34. As of June 1941, 1,500 telegrams and 33,000 thousand letters were being sent abroad from the Soviet Union and 1,000 telegrams and 31,000 letters were arriving from abroad every day. Most of that was likely official business, but not all. The censors were requesting a vast increase in personnel. Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 85–6 (GARF, f. R-9425, op. 1, d. 19, l. 153–4).

35. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 280–354.

36. Chegodaev, “Iz vospominanii.”

37. Many of the Soviet institutions and instruments of state power had been invented in expropriations of property and physical elimination of class enemies, and then reinvented or vastly expanded in the forced collectivization of the peasantry. Barrington Moore offered a general theory of the state as a reflection of its handling of the peasantry, but without adequately addressing the specifics of the Soviet case. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. See also van Atta, “USSR as a ‘Weak State.’” Von Atta, like others, missed how Stalin’s regime created its own society, which contributed immensely to state capacity.

38. Ellman rightly noted that “having destroyed independent social organizations, established total media censorship, and created a socioeconomic system in which organizations at all levels had an incentive to understate their possibilities and overstate their needs, getting accurate information became very difficult.” Ellman, “Political Economy of Stalinism,” 116.

39. Davies et al., “The Politburo and Economic Decision Making,” 126–7.

40. Markevich, “Monitoring and Interventions,” 1466.

41. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 288–91.

42. Stalin was the decisive actor, although “not immune to pressure and persuasion from politburo members, or from society at large.” Davies, “Making Economic Policy,” 69. See also Gregory, Political Economy, 68. A few functionaries cultivated clients across agencies. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 262–3.

43. Chuev, Sto sorok, 258–9, 263.

44. Rosenfeldt, “Special” World, I: 55–8.

45. “The essence of party leadership,” Stalin had remarked in July 1924, “lies precisely in the implementation of resolutions and directives.” “O kompartii Pol’shi” [July 3, 1924], Bol’shevik, Sept. 20, 1924, reprinted in Sochineniia, VI: 264–72 (at 269–70). How this was to come about was another matter entirely. “To raise the quality of the party official with a wave of the hand is not so simple,” Stalin had told Sverdlov university students. “It is still common for officials to apply the old habits of hasty administrative-izing . . . so-called party leadership sometimes degenerates into a sorry amalgam of useless directives, into empty and glib ‘leadership’ that accomplishes nothing.” Sochineniia, V: 197–222, VII: 171–2, VII: 349–50; Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 24.

46. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 19.

47. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 217–9 (Sept. 22, 1930).

48. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 210–1.

49. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 88–93 (Sept. 16, 1926); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 126–9. See also Markevich, “Monitoring and Enforcement.” One scholar has argued that Stalin’s own policies made the country nearly impossible to govern, which infuriated and haunted him. Harris, “Was Stalin a Weak Dictator?,” 377, echoing Lewin, Making of the Soviet System (1985).

50. For the rubbish about Stalin’s terror as a reaction to regional party bosses’ failure to obey central authority, see Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 12–14, 16, 22. For the refutation that Stalin was not motivated by fear of elite resistance, see Tucker, Stalin in Power, 264–8; and Khlevniuk, “Stalinist ‘Party Generals,’” 195–6.

51. Soviet functionaries experienced inordinate mobility compared with their tsarist predecessors. In the tsarist state, those who started careers in the provinces remained there, destined never to reach the heights and perquisites of the capital. Pinter, “Social Characteristics.”

52. This statement occurred during forced collectivization and dekulakization, and Gorky helpfully pointed out that “if the enemy does not surrender, he is to be exterminated.” Hosking, First Socialist Society, 163.

53. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 212–3.

54. The rise of the politburo had undercut the Central Committee’s authority, but, in turn, Stalin’s informal caucusing undermined the politburo; it met just fifteen times in 1935 and nine times in 1936. Daniels, “Office Holding and Elite Status,” 77–95; Gill, Origins, 65.

55. Hearsay recollections by people not at the plenum have claimed Osip Pyatnitsky stood up to Stalin and Yezhov. Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 219–20; Vilenskii, Dodnes’ tiagoteet, 265–6. For a debunking, see Pavliukov, Ezhov, 300–5.

56. These totals do not include other functionaries who attended but were not members: for example, Nazaretyan, Stalin’s first top aide, was arrested on his way to the Kremlin to attend the plenum. (He would be executed Nov. 30, 1937.) Pravda, Nov. 17, 1964. “During the breaks in the sessions,” one person later poetically claimed, “Deputy NKVD Head Frinovsky walked through the corridors smoking, and used his cigarette to point, take this one, take that one.” Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 209 (Afanasy Krymov).

57. Syrtsov was serving as director of a factory in Moscow province when the NKVD came for him on April, 19, 1937. He would be executed on Sept. 10, 1937, and cremated at the Donskoe crematorium.