Stalin

209. Wang Ming had requested an audience with Stalin on Oct. 21, 1937. Moscow also sent an envoy to Yan’an, V. A. Adrianov, from the general staff, with $3 million, to build up the forces to fight the Japanese. Titarenko, VKP (b), komintern i kitai, V: 73 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 281, l. 48); Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 67–9; III: 124, 197–200, 229–33.

210. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 67–9.

211. Zaria vostoka, Oct. 29, 1937. See also Wilson, “Stalin as Ikon,” 271–3 (Wilson attended a physical culture parade on Red Square that glorified Stalin). Also on Nov. 15, 1937, two nervous functionaries in the party’s culture-enlightenment department wrote to Kaganovich and Yezhov about perceived shortcomings in Man with a Gun, the play by Nikolai Pogodin (Stukalov) on the October Revolution, which had premiered at Moscow’s Vakhtangov Theater. Kerzhentsev had inserted the character of Stalin, played by Ruben Simonov (b. 1899), days before the opening. “Simonov was given this important part [young Stalin] because he was Armenian and looked somewhat like a Georgian, and because next to Shchukin Simonov was the best actor in our company,” the letter writers complained. “But all this was not enough to transform the charming, spruce, somewhat eccentric Ruben Simonov into a future father of the people.” Kerzhentsev had dressed down Shchukin for his portrayal of Lenin (“Shchukin turned white and we stood frozen in amazement”), but Molotov told the actor that Kerzhentsev would regret his criticism. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 487–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 256, l. 161–3: F. Shablovsky and K. Yukov); Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 107–9. Molotov had witnessed Stalin’s positive reaction to Shchukin’s portrayal of Lenin in Romm’s film. See also Shchukin, Boris Vasil’evich Shchukin.

212. Stalin had instructed a visiting Chinese Nationalist delegation (Nov. 18, 1937) to build their own weapons and aviation factories, in the rear, because capitalists tended to sell mostly substandard arms, and might stop selling to China altogether. Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 151–7 (November 18, APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 321, l. 20–8). See also Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 136–8 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 321, l. 16–9: Voroshilov, Nov. 1).

213. Taylor, Generalissimo, 161.

214. MacKinnon, Wuhan. Membership would reach 800,000 by 1940.

215. Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 180 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 324, l. 21, Dec. 24, 1937).

216. The Soviet of Nationalities was to be filled by representatives of the union and the autonomous republics without regard to their size or population.

217. Pavlova, “1937.” As one soldier in the Soviet Far East aptly commented, according to an NKVD report, “So Stalin says that’s the way it will be and then everything is democratic.” Merritt, “Great Purges,” 168.

218. Pravda, Dec. 7, 1937; Getty, “State and Society.”

219. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 179–82. See also Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 68 (citing TsAODM, f. 3, op. 50, d. 16, l. 117–9).

220. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5011, l. 1–2. At factories and collective farms, Cheka anniversary lectures were staged.

221. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 459 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 994, l. 17: Dec. 9, 1937).

222. Pravda, Dec. 21, 1937; Izvestiia, Dec. 21, 1937; Sultanbekov, “Nikolai Ezhov,” 28; Mlechin, KGB, 176–7.

223. Conquest, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police, 50–1.

224. Vecherniaia Moskva, Dec. 21, 1937: 1.

225. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 167. Pravda (Dec., 17, 1937) had denounced Meyerhold in a broadside titled “A Foreign Theater.”

226. Na prieme, 227.

227. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 268 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 316, l. 50–61; July 23, 1937).

228. Bowing to practical demands, Molotov had to acquiesce in the promotion of non-party specialists to factory and administrative positions. “We have to admit at the present time, it is not simply a question of the selection of cadres,” Molotov said of a draft decree on Dec. 29, 1937. “What we are doing is a broad-front promotion of new cadres. We need to select new cadres who can work better than the old ones, who have not turned sour or gone over to the enemy camp.” Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 60 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 22, d. 1065, l. 10–7, 19–20).

229. This was evidently a meeting of the politburo, which commenced at 6:05 p.m. The logbook lists Molotov, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Chubar, Mikoyan, Voroshilov, Andreyev, Yezhov, and Zhdanov (candidate members), and Voznesensky (not a member). It does not list Kosior (full member) or Postyshev, Eihe, or Petrovsky (candidate members). Na prieme, 227–8.

230. Chigirin, Stalin, 88–114 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 60–99). Yezhov would have the medical record forwarded to Vlasik on Dec. 12, 1938.

231. Bobylev et al., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR, noiabr’ 1937 g., 73–4; Iakulov, “Stalin i Krasnaia Armiia,” 172. The gathering took place Nov. 21–27, 1937. Kuibyshev would be arrested on Feb. 2, 1938, and executed on August 1. The Soviet officer corps would total 179,000 in 1939.

232. Rapoport and Geller, Izmena rodine, 283–8.

233. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers.

234. DGFP, 1918–1945, series D, I: 29–39 (“Hossbach Memorandum”).

235. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 46–60; Fest, Hitler, 539–43. Whereas Kershaw renders the ascent of Hitler to the top of the military command as almost an accident, Fest makes it overly preplanned.

236. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, V: 117 (Jan. 27, 1938). Read, The Disciples, 450. The bride was Eva Gruhn.

237. Hitler assembled all the generals to deliver the news in person on the afternoon of Feb. 5, 1938. No one objected. That evening he addressed the cabinet (it was the last formal cabinet meeting of the Reich) and sought to dispel rumors of rifts between the Nazi party and the Wehrmacht. The sensational news of the momentous changes in the Wehrmacht took up the press and radio airtime for days—both Blomberg and Fritsch were said to have retired “on health grounds”—spurring rumors of a plot on Hitler’s life. McDonogh, Hitler’s Gamble, 7–19.

238. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d, 994, l. 51.

239. Kostrychenko, Tainaia politika Stalina, 160, 207–8. Postyshev, acting party boss in Kuibyshev (since March 18, 1937), was specially reprimanded for excesses.

240. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 159–67; Khlevniuk, “Party and NKVD,” 26–7; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 140–3; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 501. See also Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 214–8.

241. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 463 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 729, l. 94–5). Individual reprieves were often short-lived. On Sept. 25, 1937, following the arrest of his brother Aleksei Simochkin in the Western province, Vasily Simochkin, party boss of Ivan-Voznesensk province, wrote to Stalin to disown his brother. “You cannot answer for your brother,” Stalin answered. “Continue your work.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 57, l. 93. But Vasily Simochkin would be arrested on Nov. 26, 1938, and executed on March 10, 1939.

242. Starkov, “Kak Moskva chut’ ne stala Stalinodarom,” 126–7.

243. Pravda, Jan. 18, 1938; Pervaia sessia Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 135–41; Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 238–9; RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 672 (Zhdanov’s notes). On Jan. 4, 1938, Shumyatsky reported to Molotov on the need to install permanent filming and sound equipment in the Great Kremlin Palace hall used for party congresses; the equipment had already been purchased in the United States. That same day Malenkov signed an order for Kerzhentsev’s removal. Three days later, the politburo replaced Shumyatsky with Dukelsky (who would last two months). This spurred Gr. Zeldovich, an editor at Mosfilm, to denounce artists for drunken debaucheries at the Metropole and their “immense love for ‘the West’. Many dream about foreign trips . . . I heard that G[rigory] Alexandrov has often been inside certain foreign embassies.” Zeldovich had one uncle living in Poland and another in Riga, while relatives on his mother’s side lived in America, perhaps accounting for his going on the offensive. Maksimenkov, Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 455–6 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 958, l. 66), 455–6n1 (l. 67), 457 (f. 17, op. 3, d. 994, l. 46), 462–77 (op. 120, d. 349, l. 47–60), 477n3 (f. 82, op. 2, d. 958, l. 38). In 1938, Kerzhentsev was replaced (by Aleksei Nazarov) but would die a natural death (heart failure on June 2, 1940). Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 288–90. Nazarov would last until April 1, 1939, giving way to his deputy, the enduring Mikhail Khrapchenko (b. 1904).

244. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye rechi, 170–83. Stalin allowed Zhdanov to give the speech commemorating Lenin at the Bolshoi.

245. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 109, 287–8; Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 322–3.

246. Milovidov, “Velikii grazhdanin,” 6; Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema, 229–50.

247. In Feb. 1938, the NKVD received a report from Mark Zborowski out of Paris that had Trotsky’s son Sedov once more stating, while reading a newspaper, that “‘the whole regime in the USSR rests upon Stalin and it would be enough to kill him so that it would come crashing down.’ He returned to and underscored many times the necessity of killing comrade Stalin.” Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 198 (citing Arkhiv INO OGPU-NKVD, f. 31660, d. 9067, t. 1, l.140a-140v). See also Volkogonov, Trotsky, 378–80. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 82–3; Serge, “Leon Sedov,” 203–7; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 469–70 (quoting Spiegelglass interrogation). Supposedly in 1937, the NKVD’s Yakov Serebryansky had been tasked with kidnapping Lev Sedov without commotion on a Paris street and transferring him alive to Moscow, leaving no trace of the operation (and not informing the Paris intelligence station). Instead, Sedov suddenly died. This story appears to be given in an effort to deny Soviet intelligence’s involvement in Sedov’s death. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 83–4.

248. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 73 (Feb. 18, 1938). A Communist Youth League member appears to have written Stalin seeking redress after having been fired for failing to affirm that socialism in the Soviet Union had won “final victory” (preserving the country against repeat foreign intervention to restore capitalism). Stalin wrote back, agreeing with the fired petitioner, in a lengthy letter he had printed in Pravda (Feb. 14, 1938): “Since we do not live on an island but in a ‘system of states,’ a considerable number of which are hostile to the land of socialism, creating a danger of intervention and restoration, we say openly and honestly that the victory of socialism in our country is not yet final.” Tucker, “The Emergence of Stalin’s Foreign Policy,” 570.

249. Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 608 (citing Pascua’s personal notes of Kremlin meeting of Feb. 26, 1938. AHN-Madrid. Diversos. M. Pascua, Leg. 2, Exp. 6).

250. Danilov et al., Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 452, 486; Ellman, “Soviet 1937 Provincial Show Trials” (the order dated to Aug. 3, 1937, right as the “kulak” operation was unfolding); Ellman, “Soviet 1937–1938 Provincial Show Trials Revisited.” See also RGASPI, 558, op. 11, d. 57, l. 57; Izvestiia, June 10, 1992: 7.

251. Gupta, Ryutin Platform. On the difficulties involved in staging fabricated trials, see Lih, “Melodrama and the Myth,” 178–207 (esp. 202).

252. “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘soiuza marksistov-lenintsev’,” 112–5 (Nov. 1, 1936).

253. Conquest, Great Terror: Reassessment, 23; and Tucker and Cohen, Great Purge Trial, 348. Vyshinsky, claiming to be quoting the defendant Sokolnikov, noted on Jan. 28, 1937, in his statement to the court that “as for the lines of the program, as far back as 1932 the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites and the Rightists all agreed in the main on a program, which was characterized as the program of the Rightists. This was the so-called Ryutin Platform; to a large extent, as far back as 1932, it expressed the program policy common to all three groups.” Report of Court Proceedings, 489.

254. Bukharin, Tiuremnye rukopisi. Four letters are dated between April 15, 1937, and Dec. 10, 1937. In the latter, Bukharin wrote: “I thought about what was taking place, and came up with the following conception: There is some kind of grand, bold political idea of a general purge a) in connection with a prewar time; b) in connection with a transition to democracy. This purge encompasses a) the guilty b) the suspicious and c) the potential-suspicious.” Bukharin also wrote that he had dreamt Nadya Alliluyeva—in whose room he had been living—was still alive and had promised to get Stalin to release him. Stalin circulated the letters to the other politburo members, who wrote across them, “The letter of a criminal,” “A criminal farce,” “A typical Bukharin lie.” Murin, “Prosti menia, Koba . . .’: neizvestnoe pis’mo N. Bukharina,” 23 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 427, l. 13–8); “‘No ia to znaia, chtoty prov’: pis’mo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Staliny iz vnutrennei t’iurmy NKVD,” 56 (d. 301, l. 127, 128); 56–8; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 556–62. See also Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 78–9; and Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 114–5. In late Feb. 1938, on the eve of the trial, Yezhov lied to Bukharin that his life would be spared: Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 365 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 589, l. 108). Bukharin’s last communication with Stalin came March 13, 1938 (a futile appeal of his death sentence). Larina was arrested and sent to the Tomsk camp for wives of traitors and enemies (she would survive).

255. The indictment was presented for an international audience by Yaroslavsky, Meaning of the Soviet Trials. The defendants’ biographies had been rewritten to make them descendants of capitalists and priests.

256. On Yagoda’s attempt to negotiate for his life, see the prison snitch’s report: Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 233–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 318, l. 113–4: V. Kirshon).

257. Conquest, Reassessment, 341–98; Maclean, Escape to Adventure, 59–83; Hedeler, “Ezhov’s Scenario,” 34–55.

258. Sokolov, “N. N. Krestinskii,” 120–42; Trud, May 26, 1988.

259. Conquest, Reassessment, 352; Popov, “Byl i ostaius’ kommunistom,” 244–51.

260. Trial of the Anti-Soviet “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites,” 675.

261. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 173–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 42, l. 29–33; d. 40, l. 128, 347; d. 41, l. 51–70; APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 338, l. 59).

262. Avdeenko, “Otluchenie” (no. 4), 90–1. Avdeenko did not get in to the trial.

263. New York Times, March 1, 1938.

264. Besides Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda, Krestinsky, and Ravovsky (former ambassador to Great Britain and France), the defendants were: Arkady Rosenholtz, Vladimir Ivanov (former People’s Commissar for Timber Industry), Mikhail Chernov (former People’s Commissar for Agriculture), Grigori Grinko (former People’s Commissar for Finance), Isaac Zelensky (former Central Committee Secretary), Akmal Ikramov and Fayzulla Khodzhayev (Uzbek leaders), Vasily Sharangovich (former party boss in Belorussia), Prokopy Zubarev, Pavel Bulanov (NKVD operative), Venyamin Maximov-Dikovsky, Pyotr Kryuchkov (Gorky’s secretary), Sergei Bessonov (a trade representative), and three Kremlin doctors: Lev Levin, Dmitry Pletnev, and Ignaty Kazakov. Levin and Kazakov were sentenced to execution; Pletnev, like Rakovsky and Bessonov, was given a long sentence, but, after being remanded to Orlov prison, he would be shot without retrial in 1941. Borodulin and Topolianskii, “Dmitrii Dmitrievich Pletnev,” 51. On the NKVD’s toxicology lab, see Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatsii, 441. The executioner was Pyotr Maggo.

265. http://www.memo.ru/memory/commu narka/index.htm; Golovkova, Butovskii Poligon. Among those whose cremated remains were dumped at Kommunarka were Bukharin, Rykov, Béla Kun, Abram Belenky (Lenin’s former bodyguard), Peters of the Cheka, Yakov Agranov, Trilliser, Leonid Zakovsky, Grigory Kaminsky, Krestinsky, Pyatnitsky, Postyshev, and Pauker.

266. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 238 (TsA FSB, ASD H-13706, l. 55–6: Grigory Vyatkin). Plestsov would survive and prosper; Vyatkin, already infamous in 1934 in Novosibirsk for having knocked out someone’s teeth with a whip, would be arrested in Nov. 1938, charged with having destroyed more than 4,000 people in Ukraine, and executed in 1939. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 252, 263, 478, 516.

267. Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 188; Orlov, Secret History, 188. “If the purges were bewildering to a person in my privileged position in Moscow,” a secret police defector observed, “they must have been absolutely incomprehensible to the toiling officials and loyal party workers in remote provinces, who suddenly found themselves denounced as secret enemies of the cause they served.” Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 78.

268. Iakir and Geller, Komandarm Iakir, 211.

269. Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 78.

270. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 138–9 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 591, l. 31–3). Rosenholtz (b. 1889) had met with Stalin often over many years as the Soviet representative to the secret negotiations for cooperation with the German military in 1922, a member of the central control commission from 1927, and foreign trade commissar. Na prieme, 694.

271. “Agoniia kapitalizma i zadachi Chetvertogo Internatsionala,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 66 (May–June 1938): 19.

272. Bohlen, Witness to History, 51.

273. Ullman, “Davies Mission,” 265.

274. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka, 54–5.

275. Maria Joffe, the widow of the Soviet diplomat, recounted a story, said to have been told to her by the inventive Radek, about how at the beginning of the 1920s Stalin, in a relaxed state, supposedly said, “The sweetest thing is to devise a plan, then, being on alert, waiting in ambush for a good long time, finding out where the person is hiding. Then catch the person and take revenge!” Another version of this story appears in the memoirs of the widow of Grigory Sokolnikov Joffe, Odna noch’, 33–4; Serebriakova, “Iz vospominanii,” 241–2.

276. Not just those who had worked with Lenin and knew of his 1922–23 Testament were targeted, such as Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and Bukharin, but also those who were entirely creatures of Stalin (Kosior, Postyshev, Chubar, Eihe, and Rudzutaks, the loyalist whom Stalin had elevated to replace Zinoviev in the politburo). For a list of Central Committee members and candidate members not destroyed in the terror, see Mawdsley, “An Elite within an Elite,” 63.

277. The original end of the antikulak “mass operations” was to have been the second week of Dec.—the precise time of the elections—and in the meantime, functionaries who suddenly would have to stand against competition were writing to the Central Committee apparatus complaining that former “kulaks” might get their names on the ballot. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 123; “Demokratiia . . . pod nadzorom NKVD,” Nesizvestnaia Rossiia, II: 272–81; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 195. Wendy Goldman asserts that Stalin’s speech back at the Feb.–March 1937 plenum “aimed for a ruthless yet limited attack on former oppositionists,” but that (pseudo)democratic procedures involving criticism from below wildly expanded the modestly set targets. Goldman, Terror and Democracy, 129.

278. Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 189; Medvedev, “O lichnoi otvestvennosti Stalina za terror,” 289–330 (at 289–90). Sholokhov wrote to Stalin (Feb. 6, 1938) requesting that the arrests be checked, for “they are removing not only White Guardists, émigrés, torturers—in a word, those deserving of removal—but genuinely Soviet people.” The NKVD evidently arrived to arrest Sholokhov at his home in the village of Veshenskaya. He had fled north to Moscow; Stalin decided to spare him. “‘Vokrug menia vse eshche pletut chernuiu Pautinu . . . ’: pis’ma M. A. Sholokhova I. V. Stalinu (1937–1950),” 18. See also Murin, “‘Prosti, menia, Koba . . . ’: neizvestnoe pis’mo N. Bukharina.”

279. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 106, 154–7. The case of Shreider (b. 1902) is particularly illuminating, and involves Stanisław Redens, Stalin’s brother-in-law and by now the NKVD boss in Kazakhstan, then Beria. Shreider would refuse to confess but get ten years and be dispatched to the Northern Railway construction camps (SveZhelDorlag), where, because he was employed in administrative work, he would survive. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 85–95, 252. Redens was arrested in Nov. 1938 and executed in Jan. 1940.

280. Vernadsky showed considerably more understanding of Soviet realities than most contemporaries: “Millions of prisoners—forced labor, playing a very significant and huge role in the state’s economy,” he recorded on Jan. 5, 1938. Sovershenno sekretno, no. 8 (1990): 10–3; Khlevniuk, 1937–i, 214–5. See also Prychodko, One of Fifteen Million, 21.

281. Fyodor Stebenev, the commissar, speaking to Andrei Vedenin, continued: “I would bet my head that Iosif Vissarionovich [Stalin] does not know. Signals, complaints, protests are being intercepted and not reaching him. We need to get Stalin to know about this. Otherwise ruin. Tomorrow they’ll take you, and after you me. We cannot keep quiet.” Vedenin, Gody i liudi, 55.

282. For the gamut of contemporary (and ongoing) speculations, see Medvedev, Let History Judge, 523–601. Then there is the “theory” of a Russian “tradition” of violence. Courtois, “Conclusion: Why?,” 728–31.

283. On April 3, 1938, Mironov reported to Frinovsky that 10,728 “conspirators” had been incarcerated. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 390; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 118.

284. Mironov appeared at the Kremlin on New Year’s; he would be arrested on Jan. 6, 1939, at the foreign affairs commissariat and executed on the night of Feb. 21–2, 1940.

285. Misshima and Goto, Japanese View of Outer Mongolia, 21–2.

286. Coox, Nomonhan, 164–5.

287. Pravda, March 29, 1937; Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, 140. In 1935, the Soviet authorities recorded 340 aircraft “incidents” as well as 54 crashes (in which 88 people died); of these 394 events, fewer than half (163) were investigated as involving possible wrecking, but in 1937–8 everything became wrecking. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 330 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 1411, l. 255).

288. Zhukov, Inoi Stalin, 293. Stalin’s Nov. 1936 dismissal of the notion that all former kulaks and White Guardists were enemies would be republished in the 1939 edition of his Questions of Leninism. Stalin, Voprosy Leninizma, 531–2.

289. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 586 (Aug. 1937). Similarly, arrests under article 58–10 (anti-Soviet agitation) had numbered 100,000 in 1931, during peasant rebellion, then fell to 17,000 in 1934, climbed to 230,000 in 1937, and fell to 18,000 in 1940. Davies, “Crime of ‘Anti-Soviet Agitation.’”

290. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 138–9.

291. Kuromiya, Stalin, 136. This was a long-standing, self-serving view of Stalin: viz. Nov. 25, 1932, politburo session, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 11012.

292. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 306.

293. Stalin, polemicizing with Uglanov and the rightists at the politburo (April 22, 1929), continued: “Don’t you know what class struggle is, don’t you know what class are?” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 654, 674 (uncorrected transcript); Kuromiya, “Stalin in the Politburo Transcripts,” 52.

294. Pravda, Oct. 20, 1937.

295. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 48, 52 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 187, l. 24), 55, 55–6.

296. Baker, “Surveillance of Subversion,” 497.

297. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 93; Rittersporn, Anguish, 39.

298. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 175; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 62, 77–8. On April 26, 1937, Uritsky, head of military intelligence, had reported to Stalin that “according to your directive a collective of military intelligence operatives wrote a number of articles concerning the organization and methods of work of foreign espionage.” (Stalin underlined this passage in pencil.) Seven such articles had already been published; five more were enclosed for final approval; six others awaited completion. Stalin was waiting upon the big article that would be published in Pravda on May 4. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 134–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1594, l. 1). See also “Spy International,” Pravda, Aug. 21, 1937; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 62–88, 93–100; Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 60.

299. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 62, 77–8. When the Soviet press launched saturation coverage of public charges about Soviet inhabitants serving as espionage agents on behalf of Japan, the Japanese embassy conducted thorough checks, verifying that the “confessions” contained lies and were contradicted by the whereabouts on the days in question of those Japanese officials said to be involved. These facts were internally acknowledged by the NKVD, at least early on: an April 2, 1937, NKVD document, for example, admitted that “evidence of the guilt of the arrested is lacking.” Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 47, 48 (TsA FSB, f. 66–1t., op. 30, d. 17, l. 185).

300. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 316 (TsA FSB, f. 8os, op. 1, d. 57–65); Khaustov et al., Liubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 659–60 n78 (TsA FSB, 8os, op. 1, d. 80); Plotnikova, “Organy,” 160.

301. In March 1938, all Soviet stamp collectors who engaged in correspondence with foreigners were registered. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 305 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 13, l. 81–4; f. 66, op. 1, d. 460, l. 261). When Yezhov sent Stalin (April 5) an intercepted Japanese ciphered telegram noting that the number of Finnish tourists arriving via Intourist had increased and that their geographical possibilities of travel once inside the USSR had expanded, Stalin had Intourist placed under the NKVD. The decree was not made public. After a Dec. 1938 court case would be opened against Intourist in the United States for espionage activity—it belonged to the NKVD—Beria would get Stalin’s approval to transfer Intourist from the NKVD to the foreign trade commissariat in Jan. 1939. RGASPI, f. 16, op. 163, d. 1207, l. 69–72; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 223–5; Kokurin and Petrov, Lubianka, 20. A total of only 100,000 foreigners visited the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, around 5,000 per year, and their interactions with Soviet inhabitants had become increasingly circumscribed to the point of prohibiting nearly all contact. At peak, between 20,000 and 30,000 foreign-born workers and specialists as returning émigrés were working alongside Soviets in factories and offices in the early 1930s, but by the mid-1930s they would be gone. Lel’chuk and Pivovar, “Mentalitet sovetskogo obshchestva,” at 29.

302. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 46 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, os, op. 6, d. 9, l. 209, 216).

303. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 45.

304. When in fall 1937 the USSR had proposed opening two more consulates in Germany (Breslau and Munich), and to bring the total in each country to four by closing three of the seven German consulates, the Germans refused; Stalin ordered the number of German consulates brought down to two. In 1938, all consulates of both countries were shuttered. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 355, 355n1, n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 22, l. 50, 56, 142); DGFP, series D, I: 903–4 (Schulenburg to foreign ministry, Jan. 13, 1938), 904–9 (Schulenburg to foreign ministry, Jan. 17). See also Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 155; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 279.

305. Rittersporn, Anguish, 41–2 (citing Plotnikova, “Organy,” 70–1), 43 (citing PA AA, MOSKAU I 394: Gestapo to foreign ministry, July 27, 1939; I 393: 275, I 394: foreign ministry to Moscow embassy, May 14, 1939, R 101388: Rosette Eimeke to foreign ministry, March 27, 1940, Abwehr to chief of chancery, Aug. 29, 1940; I 419: Dec. 16, 1937 notes; I 421: July 2, 1938 note); Plotnikova, “Organy,” 25.

306. Rittersporn, Anguish, 51 (citing BA-MA, RW, 67, 48: 55).

307. Pepłoński, Wywiad Polski na ZSSR, 126–7. Stalin was aware that the Polish government sent spies posing as Communist refugees to the USSR, which served to further discredit Moscow-resident foreign Communists in his eyes. The Poles, in turn, were aware that the NKVD recruited Soviet agents among émigrés in Poland, and managed thereby to infiltrate Soviet espionage efforts.

308. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 48.

309. Kozlov, “Pokozatel’i po trudu” (a secret GPU-NKVD file from the Magadan archives). Back in 1936, Japan’s Kwantung Army had set up a school to train Koreans for political agitation and espionage assignments on the Soviet side of the border. Nair, Indian Freedom Fighter, 141–6.

310. Solov’ev and Chugnuov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 8–36.

311. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 283–4. See also the story of the Polish agent who crossed the frontier at Baranovichi, was caught by the NKVD, confessed to being a Polish agent, but was beaten to confess to fantastic accusations that were untrue: Cybulski, Accused, 455–9.

312. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 316 (TsA FSB, f. 8os, op. 1, d. 57–65); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 659–60n78 (d. 80).

313. “All foreign bourgeois specialists are or may be intelligence agents,” Stalin had written to Kaganovich (Aug. 7, 1932). The next year, he had exploded at Kaganovich when he learned that American journalists were traveling to the famine-stricken Kuban region, noting “there already are many spies in the USSR.” Davies et al., Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 177; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 307.

314. Rzheshevskii and Vehviläinen, Zimniaia voina, II: 207. For Stalin’s connect-the-dots theory, see also Broide, Vreditel’stvo.

315. A Soviet writer has speculated that Stalin simultaneously believed and disbelieved his inventions of plots. Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization, 99, 94.

316. Volkogonov, Stalin: Politicheskii portret, I: 263 (on Stalin’s notes kept in the Presidential Archive). See also Tucker, Stalin in Power, 474 ff; and van Ree, Political Thought, 117–25. A fire at Kaganovich’s residence spurred Stalin to issue a resolution (April 1937) to the effect that the politburo “considers this fire not an accidental occurrence but one organized by enemies.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 30.

317. “Fragmenty stenogrammy dekabrskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1936 goda,” 6.

318. The year 1937 did not begin on Dec. 1, 1934, contrary to Yevgeniya Ginzburg’s famous bon mot. Ginzburg, Into the Whirlwind, 11.

319. See the letter (Sept. 2, 1936) from Moiseyev (Yershisty), on which Molotov wrote: “To comrade Yezhov: Moiseyev-Yershisty could hardly be troublesome to anybody in Leningrad. I doubt he was justifiably expelled from the VKP (b).” Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 294–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 272, l. 54–5).

320. Chuev, Sto sorok, 463.

321. As Conquest wrote, “The nature of the whole purge depends in the last analysis on the personal and political drives of Stalin.” Conquest, Reassessment, 33.

322. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 291.

323. Countless examples could be adduced. For ex., when Yezhov sent Stalin a list of people “who were being checked for possible arrest,” Stalin wrote on it: “Don’t check, arrest.” Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie Leninskikh printsipov,” 19. One scholar has noted that “to attribute events that cost tens of millions of lives to the agency of a few individuals violates historians’ sense of proportion, not to speak of theoretical commitments.” Pomper, “Historians and Individual Agency.” This issue is readily resolved, however, by the distinction between causative agency and collaborative agency. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.

324. Cherushev, “Dorogoi nash tovarishch Stalin!”

325. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 31 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 318, l. 103: Prokofyev).

326. Mikoian, “V pervyi raz bez Lenina,” 6; Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 154; Chuev, Kaganovich, Shepilov, 211; Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 85–6; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 79. Although Bukharin grasped that Stalin was evil, he, too, failed to take the full measure of Stalin’s enigmatic character. Dan, “Bukharin o Staline,” 181–2. See also Nicolaevsky, Power and the Soviet Elite, 3–7.

327. Stalin (film by Thames Television, London, 1990); Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 113.

328. Robert Tucker offered the most detailed and thought-through portrait of Stalin as psychopath, which he attributed, among other factors, to Stalin’s childhood years. But many of the observations (in memoirs) of Stalin’s early years are dubious, while Tucker’s clever additional arguments—e.g., that Stalin had a “Lenin complex” and craved the feat of a “second October”—border on reducing to matters of psychology colossal events of geopolitics, Russian historical legacies, and Bolshevik ideas. In less capable hands than Tucker’s, the psychologizing gets absurd. A bastardization of his argument portrays Stalin as a deformed product of his abusive father and overly devoted mother, motivated by unconscious urges, a need to alleviate anxieties arising out of an impaired narcissism (his “core”), and thus fundamentally irrational. Stalin, we are told, identified with “aggressors,” and his favorite was Hitler, to whom he was homosexually attracted, and turned his “inner conflict” outward, with murderous results. Rancour-Lafferiere, Mind of Stalin.

329. These came not just from the secret police but from such sources as Pravda correspondents, forwarded to him by Mekhlis, which presented highly tendentious characterizations of the situation in localities or institutions. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 153.

330. “We knew exactly by whom and where anti-Soviet conversations were conducted, badmouthing Stalin,” recalled one NKVD operative of those years. “We opened dossiers [formuliary] on everyone.” Kirillina, “Vystrely v Smol’nom,” 73 (Popov).

331. Rudzutaks, for example, an erstwhile deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, regaled cellmates with how during the early civil war Lenin had informed him he was being assigned to the Southern Front, where he would be working with Stalin. Rudzutaks had quickly affirmed his readiness to carry out the assignment, but Lenin, according to Rudzutaks, warned him it would be difficult: Stalin was an unscrupulous intriguer. Vladimir Khaustov, personal communication (Dec. 2012), referring to material in the APRF. Khlevniuk speculates that Stalin knew he was not held in high regard by those who knew earlier times. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 303–4.

332. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 78. As an illustration, see the summer 1938 incident involving the Communist Youth League chief Alexander Kosaryov, as described by his widow, when Stalin clinked glasses with and kissed Kosaryov, then is said to have whispered in his ear, “If you’re a traitor, I’ll kill you.” Kosaryov was arrested. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 595 (citing an unpublished memoir).

333. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 318. One scholar has elaborated a so-called dictator’s dilemma: the more powerful, the less he can trust his minions who claim to be loyal. Wintrobe, Political Economy of Dictatorship, 335–7. See also Harrison, Guns and Rubles, 7.

334. The Kremlin physicians Dmitry Pletnev and Lev Levin (executed in 1938) were said to have arrived at the diagnosis of paranoia, but Levin was an internist and Pletnev a heart specialist, and they appear to have diagnosed Stalin with a heart condition and gall bladder ailment. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi.” For the hearsay, see Volski and Souvarine, “Un Caligula à Moscou,” 16; Souvarine, Staline (1977), 582. Superficial psychologizing about dictators is rampant: Glad, “Why Tyrants Go Too Far.” Rees, writing of Stalin, sought to distinguish between “criminal psychopaths,” who tend to be impulsive, reckless, and “Machiavellian psychopaths,” who are calculating, organized, determined, untroubled by self-doubt, audacious and often rise to the top of organizations. Rees, Iron Lazar, 218–22. See also Kovalevskii, Psikhiatricheskie eskizy iz istorii, III: 65–75 (on Ivan the Terrible). Stalin’s self-control was duly noted by Conquest, Roy Medvedev, and many others. See Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 494. One scholar has rightly observed that “the precise proportions of political calculation and psychological derangement that drove Stalin to these extreme measures will always be a matter of speculation.” Rieber, “Stalin as Foreign Policy Maker,” 142–3.

335. Rybin, Riadom so Stalinym, 76.

336. Molotov later admitted that he and Stalin knew the secret police exaggerated the supposed threat, but Molotov did not admit that Stalin relentlessly pressured the police to do so. Chuev, Molotov, 466, 473–5.

337. Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin, 237–47.

338. Machiavelli, Gosudar’; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 315; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 282. Others denied Machiavelli’s influence on Stalin: Souvarine, Stalin, 563, 583. Volkogonov claims he saw Stalin’s copy of Machiavelli: Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 107. Nikolai Ryzhkov, Soviet prime minister under Gorbachev, claims he read Stalin’s underlined copy of Machiavelli: “To tell the truth, the book with its markings gave me a thousand times greater understanding of the personality of Stalin than all the biographies, all the films, about him, all the recollections of his friends and enemies.” Ryzhkov made off with it. Ryzhkov, Perestroika, 354–6. The underlinings, in Russian, are: “Neestestvenno, chtoby vooruzhenyi stal okhotno pokoriat’sia nevooruzhenomu”; “Bez boiazni mogut byt’ Gosudari zhestokimi v voennoe vremia.”

339. Volubuev and Kuleshov, Ochishchenie, 146.

340. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 267.

341. In the discussion of Augustus Octavian in Samuil Lozinskii’s History of the Ancient World: Greece and Rome (Petrograd, 1923), Stalin underlined “first citizen, prince . . . supreme ruler.” Volobuev and Kulsheov, “Istoriia ne terpit polupravdy.”

342. Van Ree, Political Thought, 258–61.

343. Discussion of statecraft was almost entirely absent from Marx’s voluminous writings. He had begun from the premise that the state did not possess interests of its own but incarnated class interests; those class interests were, therefore, the main object of analysis. Marx saw no need to subject the state’s institutions and procedures—which differ significantly from country to country—to careful analysis. True, the phenomenon of Napoleon III in France provoked a change of heart in Marx, but not a full-fledged rethinking. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, 130–1; Civil War in France, 42. Engels had famously added the idea that after the proletarian revolution, as class contradictions were overcome, the state would “wither away.” Lenin, initially, had also concurred that the state was an instrument of class oppression and would wither away (State and Revolution [1903]), but then changed his mind, albeit without managing to fill the theoretical gap.

344. van Ree, Political Thought, 135–8, 258.

345. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 143, l. 372, 382, 424, 438.

346. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 202, l. 21.

347. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 551–3; Brzezinski, Permanent Purge, 168.

348. Isaac Deutscher would imagine that Stalin ordered the purges to prevent “the managerial groups from consolidating as a social stratum,” which could indeed have been part of Stalin’s thinking. But Deutscher remained under the spell of Stalin’s supposed special targeting of the Old Bolsheviks. Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 306–7. It has been asserted with no evidence that young, aggressive new administrative cadres themselves pushed for the terror, being envious of the old guard Leninists. Voslensky, Nomenklatura (1984), 53–5, (1980), 82–6.

349. Stalinskie rasstrel’nye spiski.

350. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 39.

351. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 167.

352. Chalaia, Oboronnaia dramaturgiia, 3. See also Kuleshova, “‘Bol’shoi den’”; Kuznetsova, “Esli zavtra voina”; and Scott, Behind the Urals, 197–203 (about the play “Witness Confrontation”). Iu. Olesha and A. Macheret would adapt Confrontation for the big screen as The Mistakes of Engineer Kochin, which would premiere on Dec. 14, 1939 (Mosfilm).

353. Uldricks, “Impact of the Great Purges,” 188–92; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 130.

354. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 184. Several of the agents who had been assigned to Sedov were diverted to hunt down Soviet NKVD personnel abroad.

355. Mekhlis’s response was to denounce Voroshilov to Stalin for impeding the destruction of additional “enemies.” Rubtsov, Marshaly Stalina, 50–1 (Ivan Ilichev report to Mekhlis; Mekhlis letter to Stalin, Nov. 20, 1938).

356. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 17.

357. Pavel Alliluyev (Stalin’s brother-in-law), Georgy Savchenko, Dmitry Pavlov, Kirill Meretskov, and Grigory Kulik supposedly sent a petition to Voroshilov that further arrests threatened the Red Army with disintegration. No such letter has been seen, only Pavlov’s testimony, under torture, in July 1941 before he was shot. The letter seems to have been written in summer 1938. (Alliluyev died Nov. 2, 1938, in his Moscow office, unexpectedly, the day after returning from a holiday down south.) “Kulik was the main author of the text,” Pavlov was recorded as testifying. “We sent it to Voroshilov but his secretariat informed us that the people’s commissar would not even read our letter and requested us to withdraw it. At this Kulik called us together on a Sunday. We made some changes to the letter and sent it to the General Secretary of the Central Committee with a copy to Voroshilov. The letter argued that the main forces of the counterrevolution had already been liquidated within the army yet the arrest of its commanders continued. Indeed, to such an extent that the army might start to disintegrate . . . We believed that the Government would reduce the arrests.” Bobrenev and Riazantsev, Palachi i zhertvi, 182–3, 186–91.

358. “The whole period of the purges was one of disillusionment and revulsion, the intensity of which, I suppose, accounted for my previous enthusiasm,” confessed E. H. Carr. Cox, E. H. Carr, xviii.

CHAPTER 9. MISSING PIECE

1. Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 421; Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 183.

2. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 314.

3. Yezhov also ordered the NKVD secretariat to reduce the number of “workers” and “collective farmers” in reported arrest statistics. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 279. This is hardly the only falsification in arrest statistics.

4. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 416 (citing RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 271, l. 708).

5. He sometimes also got drunk at a safe house, on Gogol Boulevard, before heading out for “exercise” at Lefortovo. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 139.

6. Rees, “The People’s Commissariat of Water Transport,” 235–61.

7. In March 1938, Malenkov ordered all leading party organs urgently, not later than the fifteenth of that month, to prepare lists of their members and candidate members who were “Poles, Germans, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Iranians, English, French, Italian, Hungarians,” and to indicate their place of employment as well as nationality and citizenship. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 82 (citing TsAODM, f. 3, op. 50, d. 74, l. 7).

8. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 348–9.

9. Conquest, Reassessment, 57.

10. Zakovsky was a drinker, and Yezhov’s notes on him refer to conversations about Stalin. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 441.

11. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 151 (TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 6: testimony of Frinovsky’s son).

12. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 43. Karutsky shot himself on May 13, 1938. Zakovsky, demoted to the Kuibyshev hydroelectric station, an NKVD object, and arrested there, was executed on Aug. 29, 1938, as an “agent of Polish and German counter-espionage.” Stalin had Zakovsky blamed for arrests that supposedly ruined the naval shipbuilding program, an unwitting admission of the deadly effect of the terror on war preparation. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 242–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254a, l. 1).

13. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 412.

14. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 411–3; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 170 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 83). Yezhov would later claim, “I have known Yevdokimov, it seems, since 1934. I considered him a party man, verified. I visited him at his apartment, he visited me at my dacha.” But “by my own denunciation to the Central Committee he was removed from his post” in the NKVD. “Poslednee slovo N.I. Ezhova na sudebnom protsesse, 3 fevralia 1940 goda”: http://www.perpetrator2004.narod.ru/documents/Yezhov/Yezhov.htm

15. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 311 (TsA FSB, ASD p-4000, t. 7, l. 83–6).

16. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 319.

17. Khlevniuk, 1937-i, 67; Starkov, “Narkom Ezhov,” 21–39 (at 37–8).

18. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 1), 69.