Stalin

65. Indigenous enmities in Eastern Europe would eventually prove enabling to Hitler, creating a kind of competition for his favor. Not for nothing did Czeslaw Milosz recoil at the region’s “acute national hatreds.” Milosz, Native Realm, 23.

66. Wolfer, Britain and France.

67. Dullin, Men of Influence, 265, citing AVP RF, f. 136, op. 22, pap. 172, d. 865 (Litvinov to Surits, Oct. 17, 1938); DVP SSSR, XXI: 618–9 (Litvinov to Surits, Nov. 4, 1938); Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 136. Stalin had Potyomkin reaffirm to Paris that their 1935 treaty remained in force. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 79–80 (Jan. 27, 1939).

68. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 301 (RGASPI, f. 71, op. 25, d. 3695); Laney, “Military Implementation of the Franco-Russian Alliance.” Pravda and Izvestiya voiced disappointment on the second anniversary of the signing of the May 2, 1935, Franco-Soviet Pact. By late 1937, even Litvinov had broached the possibility to a French correspondent of Soviet rapprochement with Nazi Germany, an attempted warning to Paris. Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 222, citing Bullitt (Paris) to Sec. of State, June 17, 1937, State Department, no. 851.00/1684; Cot, Triumph of Treason, 362–3; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 153–4.

69. DDF, 2e série, V: 311–2 (March 30, 1937), 363–5 (April 8), 507–9 (April 21), 510–1 (April 21), 613–4 (April 29), 614–5 (April 29), 615–8 (April 29); Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 44; Ford and Schorske, “Voice in the Wilderness,” 556–61.

70. Dreifort, “French Popular Front.” An internal French analysis—“Reflections on the Possible Consequences of Franco-Soviet military contacts” (May 1937)—had underscored how any deepening military ties with Moscow would risk alienating not just “Germany, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia,” but Great Britain. “French security rests above all on a close entente with England,” the analysis noted, and “a Franco-Soviet military agreement risks putting in jeopardy the warmth and candor of Franco-English relations.” Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 140–1, citing DDF, 2e série, V: 647–8 (May 1, 1937); Bell, France and Britain, 224–5; Adamthwaite, France, 49–50.

71. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 237.

72. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 140. Litvinov had informed Coulondre that he could do nothing “to suppress the French Communist party,” but that he “did not care in the least what the French government did to them. All that interested Russia was the military alliance with France.” Carley, “Five Kopecks,” 48–9 (citing PRO FO 371 20702, C362O/532/62: note of E. Rowe-Dutton, British embassy, Paris, June 17, 1937, MAE RC, Russie/2057, dos. 3: André-Charles Corbin, French ambassador in London, April 17, 1937); PRO FO 371 20702, C362O/532/62: (Note by R. Vansittart, May 13, 1937), and C3685/532/62: “Extract from a record of conversation at a lunch given by the Secretary of State to M. Delbos & Léger on May 15, 1937”); DVP SSSR, XX: 43–6 (Potyomkin with Chautemps, Jan. 19, 1937), 227–8 (Potyomkin to Surits in Berlin, May 4, 1937).

73. Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy, 239. In Jan. 1939, Léon Blum (Daladier’s recent predecessor as prime minister) implored Litvinov for an invitation to Moscow to negotiate directly with Stalin for a “broad antifascist bloc.” Blum also mentioned possibly merging the socialist and communist parties in France. The Soviet politburo formally approved the meeting request, but the trip never happened. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 368 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 85); DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 49 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 39).

74. “Stalin considered vocal music as the finest form of music,” Jelagin thought. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 297–9.

75. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 268–75; Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 302–9. Nazarov would be demoted to deputy chief of the state publishing house on April 1, 1939, and replaced by his deputy Mikhail Khrapchenko (b. 1904).

76. Novikova, “Obruchennyi s bogom,” 427–8. Novikova, a journalist, was only born in 1938, and evidently heard the story from Kozlovsky. Concerning Stalin’s views toward Kozlovsky, see also Gromyko, Pamiatnoe, 203.

77. Ivanov, Aleksei Ivanov, 159; Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 332–3.

78. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 296–7.

79. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 96, l. 110).

80. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinski pitomets, 359–63 (TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 1, l. 1–6); APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 409, l. 3–9). The commission concluded its work on Jan. 10, 1939; the report was dated Jan. 29.

81. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 502 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 5086, l. 1–2). In June 1939, Duklesky would insert twenty-six line-item corrections in Vishnevsky’s screenplay for First Cavalry Army—a copy of the document made its way into Stalin’s files (510–2: d. 165, l. 199–201).

82. Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 10, dated 26/27 Dec. 1938. Stalin had edited the proposal by Beria, composed at Stalin’s wish, to restrict NKVD surveillance and arrests of nomenklatura. Khaustov, “Razvitie sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 364. An additional decree was issued reiterating the requirement for the NKVD to obtain army permission for arrests of officers and soldiers. Suvenirov, “Narkomat oborony i NKVD v predvoennye gody,” 34 (citing RGVA f. 4, op. 15, d. 21, l. 3ob.).

83. APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 91, l. 168–70.

84. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 14–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 145–6); Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 27; Iakovlov et al., Reabilitatsiia: Politicheskie protsessy, 40–1 (a copy of the telegram found in the Dagestan regional party committee: all such documents had to be returned to the Central Committee, so this one evidently survived thanks to negligence); Sluzhba bezopasnosti, 1993, no. 6: 2; Afanas’ev, Inogo ne dano, 561–2n2 (wrong date of Jan. 20, 1939). Kaganovich later testified (in 1957) that Stalin had written out the decree by hand. Kovaleva et al., “Posledniaia ‘antipartiinaia’ gruppa,” 86–9.

85. Prażmowska, Eastern Europe, 228.

86. DGFP, series D, DAP, V: 167–8 (Ribbentrop and Beck, Jan. 26, 1939); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 171–3 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 300, d. 2075, l. 46–9: Surits, Jan. 27, 1939); God krizisa, I: 194–6; Mel’tiukhov, Sovtesko-pol’skie voiny (2001); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 160–4. Citing hearsay from Hans-Adolf von Moltke, Luftwaffe Lieutenant-General Alfred Gerstenberg, the German air force attaché in Poland in 1938 (who would fall into Soviet captivity and be interrogated on Aug. 17, 1945) would assert that Hermann Göring, while traveling to Poland on the pretext of hunting, bribed Beck to work on behalf of Nazi Germany. Gerstenberg knew how much the Soviets despised Beck. Tainy diplomatii Tret’ego Reikka, 581 (TsA FSB, d. N-21147, t. 1, l. 35–53).

87. DGFP, series D, V: 159–61; Cienciala, “Poland in British and French Policy,” at 202, citing DDF, 2e série, XVI: 196 (May 17, 1939), and DBFP, 3rd series, VI: appendix II (foreign office on Danzig, May 5, 1939). Beck had also pursued “Third Europe,” a bloc to be led by Poland with Romania, Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia, but that had failed amid mutual hostilities. Roberts, “Diplomacy of Colonel Beck,” 579–614; Kornat, “Polish Idea of ‘The Third Europe.’” On the intense dislike for Beck even inside Polish circles, see Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 165n124.

88. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 26–7 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9717, d. 2, l. 93–5: Feb. 10, 1939). Retrospectively, a Polish journalist argues that, given the distasteful options, Beck should have yielded to Hitler’s demands for Danzig and an extra-territorial highway through the Corridor and joined him in an attack against the Soviet Union. Zychowicz, Pakt Ribbentrop-Beck. For Beck’s contemplation of possible concessions and his worries over the loss of international prestige and domestic political earthquake, see Weinberg, “Proposed Compromise”; Weinberg, “German Foreign Policy.”

89. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanenu, 198–9; God krizisa, I: 228; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 28.

90. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 169–70.

91. From 1938, the regime had begun a crash radio construction program. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 369–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 160, l. 4).

92. Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, I: 737–41; Hitler, untitled speech; Mommsen, “Hitler’s Reichstag Speech”; Kershaw, “Hitler Myth,” 240–1.

93. In a Jan. 25, 1939, circular, the Nazi foreign ministry identified the United States as the “headquarters of world Jewry.” DGFP, series D, V: 926–33.

94. Gerwarth, Bismarck Myth, 151 (citing “Wegbereiter des nueun Reiches,” Völkischer Beobachter, Feb. 15, 1939).

95. At the first meeting of the Reich Defense Council, on Nov. 18, 1938, Göring had told those assembled, “Gentlemen, the financial situation looks critical.” Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The financial situation of the Reich is catastrophic. We must look for new ways. It cannot go on like this. Otherwise we will be faced with inflation.” Mason, Arbeitsklasse, 925; Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VI: 219 (Dec. 13, 1938). In early Jan. 1939, the Reichsbank Directorate sent Hitler a collective petition urging “financial restraint” to avoid the “threatening danger of inflation.” Hitler, upon seeing eight signatures, responded, “That is mutiny.” Twelve days later he fired Schacht as Reichsbank president. But that (and a mass of resignations from the bank’s board) did nothing to alleviate the circumstance. Schacht, My First Seventy-Six Years, 392–4. Nazi Germany also canceled at the last minute a planned visit to Moscow in Feb. 1939 by Karl Schnurre, humiliating the Soviets.

96. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 161–2.

97. Given the labor shortages—estimated to be at least 1 million as of Jan. 1939—foreign laborers looked necessary for factories and farms. Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 847–55; Mason, Nazism, 106–113.

98. Bezymenskii, Stalin und Hitler, 183–209. Politburo approval came on Jan. 21, 1939.

99. Lisovskii, SSSR i kapitalisticheskoe okruzhenie. See also Barghoorn, Soviet Image of the United States, 18.

100. Zemskov, “Zakliuchennye,” 55–6; Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 104. A Nov. 17, 1938, report by the party cell in the Gulag finance department stated that the Gulag had attained just 71.6 percent of its assigned plan targets, including just 62.7 percent of railway construction. The report stated that costs were high, labor productivity low, and mismanagement so rampant it could not all be attributed to deliberate wrecking. Pliner, the Gulag head, was soon sacked and arrested. Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga, III: 148–56 (Chugunikhin); Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 103. Beria, in April 1939, wrote to Molotov claiming that he lacked slave laborers to complete his assigned tasks—a shortage across Gulag of some 400,000 prisoners. Beria wanted a freeze on new projects assigned to Gulag and a recall of those prisoners loaned out on contracts to non-Gulag enterprises, and he sought measures to improve slave laborers’ diet and health. Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga, III: 162–3; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 203–5.

101. Nordlander, “Evolution of the Dal’stroi Bosses”; Kozlov, “Pervyi direktor”; Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind, 290–304. Stalin had congratulated and rewarded Berzin on a number of occasions. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 56, l. 13 (Feb. 8, 1937).

102. Dalstroi had grown from 62,703 recorded prisoners in late 1936 to 93,978 by the end of 1938. Conquest, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police, 106; Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, II: 153–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 58, l. 77, 80); Nordlander, “Evolution of the Dal’stroi Bosses.” Stalin received A. A. Khodyrev, deputy chief of Dalstroi, twice (Jan. 24 and Feb. 7, 1939). Na prieme, 251, 253. Some of the ships used by the Soviets to transport prisoners were British and American built. Bollinger, Stalin’s Slave Ships.

103. Sovietland, 1939, no. 4: 10.

104. Dallin and Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor, 133–34; Nikolaevskii, “Dal’stroi,” 256–7; Conquest, Kolyma.

105. Rittersporn, Anguish, 174 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 335, l. 109–14).

106. Stalin had instructed the teacher to be firmer. In fact, the teacher and school director were fired. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 60–2 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1553, l. 9: June 8, 1938).

107. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 58–9 (l. 20–22: Dec. 8, 1938); Polianskii, 10 let s Vasiliem Stalinym, 17–8; Sokolov, Vasilii Stalin, 76–8; Tokaev, Stalin Means War, 120.

108. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 60–2 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1553, l. 26–8).

109. Vasily also “was a good athlete, rode a horse with aplomb, and was fond of motorcycles and cars.” Polianskii, 10 let s Vasiliem Stalinym, 20.

110. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 145–6. She recalled that “by 1937 or 1938, except for my nurse, there was no one left of the people my mother had found.” Even the long-standing head of the household staff, Karolina Til, “in spite of the fact that she’d been with us for ten years and was practically a member of the family,” was replaced by a young Georgian woman from Beria’s NKVD. “The whole staff at Zubalovo was changed, and new people whom none of us knew appeared at my father’s house in Kunstevo as well.” Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 143–4, 123–4.

111. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 161–76 (esp. 3, 168); Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 61–3; Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 13, 129; Posen, “Competing Images.” See also Christensen and Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks.”

112. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, Oct. 1936: 3–5, July 1937: 42–44. In Aug. 1938, the apparatus streamlined recruitment procedures. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, Aug. 1938: 63–4, Oct. 1938: 79–80.

113. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 3049, 3050, 3051.

114. XVIII s”ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii (b), 149.

115. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 224–44; Pravda, Feb. 27, 1939; Drizdo, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia.

116. Krupskaya became deathly ill the night of a pre-birthday celebration outside Moscow in Arkhangelskoe, in a narrow circle with her longtime secretary Vera Dridzo, as well as Gleb and Zinaida Kryżanowski, Dmitry Ulyanov, Felix Kon, and Mężyński’s sister Ludmila. Stalin had restrained himself from arresting Krupskaya, despite their mutual enmity, or Maria Ulyanova, both of whom continued to live in the apartment they had shared with Lenin. Lenin’s former secretaries Lidia Fotiyeva and Maria Volodicheva also went untouched. Fotiyeva (b. 1881) from 1938 was posted to the Central Lenin Museum. Pravda, Aug. 28, 1975.

117. Rodnoi Lenin (Vladimir Il’ich) i ego sem’ia: http://leninism.su/private/4131–rod noj-lenin.html?showall=&start=1.

118. Pravda, Feb. 28, 1939 (A. E. Badaev). See also Pravda, March 3, 1939; and Izvestiia, Feb. 28 and March 1, 1939.

119. Trotsky imagined that “Stalin always lived in fear of a protest on her part. She knew far too much.” New International, 5/4 (April 1939): 117. In 1937–38, at the commissariat of enlightenment, Krupskaya had received upward of 400 letters per day, mostly asking for her intercession, which she was powerless to give.

120. Zhukov, Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie, 260.

121. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 243 (citing GARF, f. upravdelami SNK SSR, otdel sekretariata, d. 4, l. 12). Nonetheless, Stalin would permit remembrance of the first anniversary of Krupskaya’s death: see the news chronicle, RGAFKFD film 1–3163.

122. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 10-21 marta 1939 goda: stenograficheski otchet, 175, 561; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 529. “It was the fault of the Comintern workers that they allowed themselves to be deceived by the class enemy, failed to detect his maneuvers in time, and were late in taking measures against the contamination of the Communist parties by enemy elements,” Manuilsky, a survivor, told the 18th Party Congress. Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, 89. In May 1939, Proskryobyshev moved to create a new department—staffed by twenty-nine people—in the special sector to handle correspondence of ordinary Soviet inhabitants with Stalin. Khlevniuk, “Letters to Stalin,” 329 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 37).

123. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 57.

124. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/ii: 52–3; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 351 (RGASPI, f. 477, op. 1, d. 41, l. 62–83, 143–4; f. 17, op. 2, d. 773, l. 128); Khlevniuk, “Objectives of the Great Terror,” 170; Davies, “Soviet Economy,” 11–38 (at 31).

125. Whereas between 1918 and 1928 the USSR had graduated an average of just 46,000 new specialists per year, the number would climb to 335,000 per annum in the period 1938–41, which would give the Soviet Union nearly 1 million specialists with (some form of) higher education as of Dec. 31, 1940. Unger, “Stalin’s Renewal.”

126. Pravda-5, 1995, no. 1: 8 (Chuev via Mgeladze).

127. Whereas in 1928 the country counted about 4 million white-collar employees; by 1939, that number reached nearly 14 million. Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” 63. The proportion of working-class party members, even by official statistics (which inflated worker social origins), would drop from 8 percent (1933) to 3 percent (1941). Rittersporn, “From Working Class,” 187.

128. This was true from 1932 onward. DeWitt, Soviet Professional Manpower, 179.

129. “The enormous and unjustified growth, cost, proliferation, inefficiency, nepotism, narrow-mindedness, false reporting, inflexibility and arbitrariness,” the leading historian of the Soviet state summarized, “defied all party and other controls.” Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” 65.

130. Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia, 204–6. An extraordinary seven of eight applicants for candidate membership in the party would be accepted between April and Oct. 1939; over the year, the party would grow by a record 1.1 million new full members.

131. An editorial in the Menshevik émigré newspaper duly noted the transition, commenting, “this is . . . the Congress of a new party which should be called Stalinist.” “Pered s”ezdom,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, March 15, 1939. See also Vishnevskii, “Stalin na XVIII s”ezde partii,” 73–83.

132. Pravda, March 11, 1939, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 380–1.

133. Petrovsky was officially removed as a deputy chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet presidium on May 31, 1939. He remained without employment for half a year, but then became deputy director of the Museum of the Revolution under Fyodor Samoilov, who knew him from the days in the Bolshevik Duma faction. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 407.

134. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 510–9; Pravda, March 20, 1939.

135. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 221–2. Behind the scenes Zhdanov was said to have wisecracked about the terror. “Stalin complains that his pipe has disappeared,” Zhdanov supposedly joked. “‘I would give a lot to find it,’ Stalin states. Within three days Beria has already unmasked ten thieves, each of whom confesses to being the one who stole Stalin’s pipe. A day later Stalin finds his pipe, which had fallen behind the couch.” Zhdanov, his interlocutor recalled, “laughed merrily at this terrible joke.” Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (2nd ed.), 509.

136. Shvernik and one of his aides were trying to solve a difficult problem, and when the aide made a suggestion, Shvernik pointed out that it contradicted a Central Committee decree, to which the aide replied that this body could err. “It is difficult to describe what transpired with Nikolai Mikhailovich at these words. Reddening, he shouted, ‘Hands on the trouser seams, comrade Pogrebnoi, when you speak about the Central Committee, hands on the trouser seams!!!’” Guseinov, “Ves’ma neodnoznachnyi N. M. Shvernik,” 102.

137. The Beria household census form for 1939 listed their Moscow address as Malaya Nikitskaya, 28, apt. 1. Beria himself is not listed for some reason; the five listed were his wife, Nina [Nino] (34 years old), his mother, Marta (66 years old), his sister Akesha (32), his son Sergei [Sergo] (14), and the German nanny Ellia Almeshtigler (38), who was a student at the Moscow Institute of Economics and Finances. Koenker et al., Revelations, 344 (GARF, f. 9430, op. 1S, d. 166, l. 1–2). Kuropatkin died in 1925. Knox, “General Kuropatkin.”

138. At the dacha, the Berias’ neighbors were the Kaganoviches. Beria, My Father, 34–5. Svetlana recalls it as Chubar’s dacha, not Postyshev’s. Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 412–3. It is possible that Chubar had it after Postyshev. Postyshev and Chubar, arrested at different times, were shot the same day (Feb. 26, 1939).

139. “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 100–101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28: Merkulov to Malenkov, July 23, 1933). Merkulov claimed that Beria never opened up to him.

140. Traktory i sel’khozmashiny, 1967, no. 6: 2, no. 7: 41. On harvest exaggerations for 1937–40, see Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 288nf. Tractors held by the regional MTS would rise from 7,100 in 1930 to 356,800 by 1937; harvester combines from 10,400 in 1933 to 96, 300 by 1937.

141. Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 288nf; Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 262–7; Borisov, Proizvodstvennye kadry derevni, 200–1. Whereas about 3.3 million tons of grain had been exported in 1937–38, only 2 million tons would be exported in 1940 and the first half of 1941.

142. Osokina, Za fasadom, 201; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, IV: 794–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 978, l. 62), 831–2 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 94, l. 17), 839 (d. 95, l. 3), 843–4 (l. 40–1), 862–4 (GANO, f. P-3, op. 2, d. 1063, l. 34–7), 868–74 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 1292, l. 8–19), 886–90 (l. 247–57), 900–4 (l. 320–30), 913–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 982, l. 31–2). In 1936, Stalin had not objected to requests to mention in the regional press the assistance extended to regions suffering hunger (885–6: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 55, l. 109).

143. Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 241–2 (RGASPI, f. 477, op. 1, d. 4, l. 114–5); Kolkhozy vo vtoroi, 24.

144. The first subdivision had taken place in Aug. 1937, when a separate machine building commissariat was formed. By 1941, there would be twenty-two separate industrial commissariats, one for each branch. Rees and Watson, “Politburo and Sovnarkom,” 24.

145. Davies, “Soviet Economy,” 32 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 336, l. 9–12). The author was Pakhomov, but this was not N. I. Pakhomov, the water transport commissar (who been shot in Aug. 1938). Stalin had Poskryobyshev forward the letter to Zhdanov.

146. Krokodil, 1939, no. 7; Chegodaeva, Dva lika vremeni, 50.

147. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 1–3050 (year 1939).

148. Reid, “Socialist Realism”; Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 145–55, 180.

149. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 16.

150. “If I had said it right,” Molotov later explained, “Stalin would have felt that I was correcting him.” Pavlov, “Dve poslednie vstrechi”; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 586.

151. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 34, 26; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 10–1.

152. Pravda, March 11, 1939; XVIII s”ezd VKP(b), 15; Sochineniia, XIV: 337–8. For British reactions, see DBFP, 3rd series, IV: 210–7 (Henderson to Halifax, March 9, 1939), 260 (Henderson to Halifax, March 15), 266–9/8 (Halifax to Phipps, March 15), 278–9 (Henderson to Halifax, March 16). Ivan Maisky had written to Stalin in late 1937 on how to handle appeasement: “Let ‘Western democracies’ reveal their hand in the matter of the aggressors. What is the point of us pulling their chestnuts out of the fire for them? To fight together—by all means. To serve as cannon fodder for them—never!” Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, xxv (no citation).

153. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 205. Izvestiya’s foreign department did internally discuss the possibility of a change in foreign policy orientation, and the newspaper did suddenly discontinue its antifascist writings from Paris by “Paul Jocelyn” (a pseudonym of Ehrenburg’s). When Ehrenburg sought an explanation from Surits, the latter was said to have snapped, “Nothing is asked of you, and you are worried!” Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 228.

154. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 109 (citing Bundesarkhiv Koblenz, Zsg. 101/12: 72).

155. From 1907 through 1914, Schulenburg had been a German consul in tsarist Russia. Sommer, Botschafter Graf Schulenburg. See also Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 19.

156. Schorske, “Two German Diplomats.” At the German embassy on Leontyev Lane, on March 5, 1932, five shots had been fired at Dirksen’s car, but he was not inside (one of the bullets struck an embassy counselor in the hand). A hasty trial linked the episode to the Polish embassy (a transparent Soviet effort to poison German-Polish relations). Dirksen, a parvenu aristocrat (from a long line of bourgeois civil servants), had been moved to Japan (1933–8), where he belatedly joined the Nazi Party (1936), and then to Britain (1938–9), where he succeeded Ribbentrop as ambassador and recognized that Chamberlain’s government was among Germany’s greatest political assets. Hilger, Incompatible Allies, 247–8. In 1938, Leontyev Lane would be renamed Stanislavsky Street, for the celebrated Russian theater director.

157. Maisky had written from London to Litvinov (Feb. 10, 1939) to the effect that war between the Axis and the “so-called” Western democracies was not imminent, though “one could not completely exclude such a possibility, especially in 1939,” because “matters depended on Hitler and Mussolini.” Maisky also wrote that Hitler “is little inclined to go full bore against Poland, let alone the USSR.” AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 3, d. 35, l. 51–3 (Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 1). Five days after the March 15 occupation of Czechoslovakia, Litvinov wrote to Stalin, latching on to Chamberlain’s dispatch to Moscow of a trade negotiator, Robert Hudson, but the Soviets put the onus on the British. “Since our many previous proposals have failed to yield results,” Litvinov wrote to Hudson, “we do not now intend to advance any new proposals and are awaiting an initiative from those who must in some way indicate that they are ready to take measures to enter collective security.” DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 209–11 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 154–8). DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 209–11 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 2, d. 11, l. 154–8: March 20, 1939). The visit by Hudson would yield nothing, as Litvinov complained.

158. Watt, How War Came, 154.

159. Nowak, “Von der Karpatenukraine zum Karpatenland”; Winch, Republic for a Day; Kennan, From Prague after Munich, 58–75; Stercho, Diplomacy of Double Morality. Soon Mussolini, whom the Führer had not informed about his march into Czechoslovakia, responded by invading Albania, which would be incorporated into the Italian “empire.”

160. Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 47.

161. A. Gerasimov, “O zakhvate Chechoslovakii Germaniei,” RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1237, l. 162–7. Litvinov had written to Maisky that the Western democracies were in essence saying to Hitler, “Go east, or we will unite with them [the Soviets] against you. I would not be surprised if Hitler undertakes the same gestures towards us.” AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 4, d. 34, l. 39–41 (Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 1).

162. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 343–5; The Founding Conference of the Fourth International: Program and Resolutions (New York: The Socialist Workers Party, 1939).

163. On the eve of the Munich Pact, Trotsky had dismissed Stalin’s policy of “collective security” against Nazi Germany as a “lifeless fiction” and predicted that “we may now expect with certainty Soviet diplomacy to attempt a rapprochement with Hitler.” On the eve of Czechoslovakia’s destruction, Trotsky wickedly observed that Hitler went from triumph to triumph, whereas “Stalin met only defeat and humiliation (China, Czechoslovakia, Spain).” Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1938–39, 29–30 (Sept. 22, 1938), 216–9 (March 11, 1939).

164. A plan would be presented to him in July 1939 and be approved in Aug. Soviet intelligence’s documents on the Trotsky assassination efforts are said to be largely missing, except for the period Aug. 1940 to the end of 1941. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 91, 93, 109n1.

165. One of the abandoned field agents, code-named Felipe, would manage to get back to Moscow in Jan. 1940 and report details on Trotsky’s security system and the comings and goings from his villa in Mexico, all of which he had undertaken to ascertain on his own; he would be sent back to Mexico to be part of the operations. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 94–5.

166. Eitingon had helped direct sabotage of rail lines and airfields, as a deputy to Orlov. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 29–36.

167. “This is not just an act of revenge, although Konovalets is an agent of German fascism,” Stalin had supposedly explained to Sudoplatov. “Our goal is to behead the movement of Ukrainian fascism on the eve of war and force these gangsters to annihilate each other in a struggle for power.” Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 23–4.

168. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 103.

169. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 64–7; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 441–54. Sudoplatov’s visits to the Little Corner are not recorded in Stalin’s Kremlin logbooks; Volkgonov’s work and the documents he brought to bear strongly support Sudoplatov’s overall veracity.

170. Eitingon was denounced by Peterss and Karakhan. Sharapov, Naum Eitingon, 70.

171. Schroeder, “Alliances 1815–1945,” 195–222. More broadly, see Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine.

172. Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine.

173. On Nov. 10, 1938, Hitler told four hundred invited German journalists: “It was only out of necessity that for years I talked of peace. But it was now necessary gradually to re-educate the German people psychologically and make it clear that there are things which must be achieved by force.” Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, III: 721–4.

174. Britain lost its Czechoslovakia intelligence station. Earlier, the Austrian station chief for British intelligence had been arrested in 1938 when the Nazis marched in. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 57.

175. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 29–33 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1237, l. 162ss–167ss.).

176. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 204–5; Salter, Personality in Politics, 85.

177. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/i: 9–12.

178. DGFP, series D, VI: 91–6; DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 537–8n86. A Romanian-German timber agreement followed on May 13, 1939.

179. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 286 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 105, l. 96–107).

180. DGFP, series D, VI: 121–4; Trial of the Major War Criminals, IV: 404 (Brauchitsch), III: 217. In March 1939, Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Mossor of the general inspectorate of the Polish armed forces wrote a memorandum urging the general staff “to prepare for Soviet air bases in the region of Brest and anticipate the march of Soviet forces primarily through northern Poland to attack East Prussia.” He was removed from his position.

181. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 230 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 172), 231 (pap. 20, d. 228, l. 1–2), 232 (pap. 1, d. 5, l. 117–8), 233 (l. 121).

182. Andrew, Defense of the Realm, 205.

183. French Yellow Book, 104 (George Bonnet to Léon Noel, French ambassador to Warsaw, March 31, 1939).

184. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 290–1 (Maisky, 31, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 300.

185. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, I: xxi–xxii, 689ff.

186. Interview in London, March 18, 1939: Fourth International (New York) 3/1 (1942): 117. Confronting Hitler would indeed cost the empire.

187. “As Prime Minister,” explained Strang, an adviser, “Chamberlain took increasingly into his own hands the conduct of foreign policy, or rather of that branch of foreign policy which might involve issues of peace or war, namely relations with the two European dictatorships”—meaning Germany and Italy. Strang, Home and Abroad, 124.

188. Aster, 1939, 14–16, 359–60. See also Bond, British Military Policy, 306; and Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 214.

189. Chamberlain had assured the Cabinet that “it would, of course, be for us to determine what action threatened Polish independence. This would prevent us from becoming embroiled as the result of a frontier incident.” Newman, March 1939, 202 (citing CAB/98: Cabinet Minutes, March 31, 1939).

190. Strang, “Once More unto the Breach”; Newman, March 1939.

191. “It was in Spain that men learnt that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and that there are times when courage is not its own reward,” Albert Camus would write. “It is this which explains why so many men throughout the world regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.” Camus, “préface,” in Georges Bataille (ed.), L’Espagne libre.

192. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement, 156.

193. Thompson, Anti-Appeasers.

194. The gold was on deposit with the Bank for International Settlements, founded in 1930 in Switzerland, which used the Bank of England; still, the latter honored the request for transfer of the reserves. Blaazer, “Finance and the End of Appeasement.”

195. Watt, How War Came, 162–87; Cienciala, “Poland in British and French Policy,” reprinted in Finney, Origins of the Second World War, 413–33. On long-standing British sympathy for Germany’s claims to Danzig and the Corridor, see Cienciala, “German Propaganda.”

196. Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 737–8.

197. Because Hitler could not attack the Soviet Union without bringing Poland into play, the French ambassador to the Soviet Union believed that, in effect, the “guarantee” to Poland brought about, indirectly, what Chamberlain had said he would never do: put Britain on the line to defend the USSR. Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 263.

198. Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 170.

199. DBFP, 3rd series, V: 104.

200. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 4–5.

201. On March 13, 1939, Frinovsky had written to Stalin recalling a conversation he had had in Molotov’s office in Jan. 1938 when, in front of Kaganovich and Mikoyan, Stalin had informed Frinovsky that a number of others had testified against him. Stalin had asked Frinovsky whether he was “honest before the party.” Frinovsky had answered affirmatively. “You will not let us down, then?” Stalin had said. “No,” Frinovsky had answered. What was this? A psychological game, theater, self-amusement, a moment of indecision? Toptygin, Neizvestnyi Beriia, 50.

202. “‘Druzhba narodov’: pervaia polveka (1939–1989)”: http://magazines.russ.ru/dru zhba/site/history/i39.html.

203. E. V. Tarle, Taleiran (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1939).

204. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 237 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 180, l. 30). The Polish ambassador to Tokyo had been told by the Japanese foreign minister that the fisheries negotiations with the USSR were a matter not merely of economics but of national prestige, and that if a new agreement were not reached the Japanese “would undertake decisive steps, as I understand, of a military nature.” The Japanese foreign minister also said that “the Japanese government had not yet definitively decided the issue of deepening the Anti-Comintern Pact.” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 230 (March 10, 1939).

205. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 529 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 163, l. 2–2ob.). On April 9, Eisenstein wrote to Stalin requesting permission to travel to London for the premiere there of Alexander Nevsky. Stalin wrote to Molotov that “this matter does not concern me,” but Molotov knew Stalin’s views and forbid Eisenstein to travel. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 538 (APRF, f. 3, op. 35, d. 86, l. 45–6). Andro Kobaladze would play Stalin in Yakov Sverdlov (1940).

206. Trauberg, “Rasskaz o velikom vozhde,” 7–15; Trauberg, “Proizvedenie mysli i strasti,” 32–8. See also Tsimbal, “Obraz Lenina v kino,” 13–7; and Lebedev, Shchukin—akter kino; Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil’my, 4 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961–77), II: 197.

207. Toward the film’s end, Dzierżyński divulges that an agent-provocateur has “penetrated” the Cheka. Kataev, “Lenin v 1918 godu”; Sadovskii, “Lenin v 1918 godu”; Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema, 220–9.

208. Vernadskii, Dnevniki, 1935–1941, II: 52.

209. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 33–50 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 373, l. 3–44); Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 204 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 374, l. 3–47); Stepanov, “O masshtabakh repressii” (no. 5), 61–2.

210. D. N. Sukhanov, an aide to Malenkov, claimed he witnessed Yezhov’s arrest by Beria in Malenkov’s office: Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 13, excerpted memoirs (dated March 6, 1993); Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 179–81; Briukhanov and Shoshkov, Opravdaniiu ne podlezhit, 132; Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatisii, 100; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 200–1; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 512–3; Polianskii, Ezhov, 205–6, 219.

211. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ery Ezhova,” 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 82–4).

212. Khaustov, “Razvitie sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 362 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 45, d. 29, l. 246).

213. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 182.

214. Nikolai P. Afanasev, USSR deputy general procurator, recalls this as taking place at Lefortovo, but all other sources indicate Yezhov was held in Sukahnovka. Ushakov and Stukalov, Front voennykh prokurorov, 69.

215. Viktorov, Bez grafa “sekretnosti,” 326.

216. “Vospominaniia: memurary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 87; Piliatskin, “‘Vrag naroda’”; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 513; Polianskii, Ezhov, 216–7. Others suggest these documents—which disappeared—need not have been compromising, but could have been flattering material Yezhov collected for a Stalin museum. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 228.

217. Briukhanov and Shoshkov, Opravdaniiu ne podlezhit, 132–3. Malenkov’s son would assert that when his father had Yezhov’s safe opened, they discovered dossiers on Malenkov as well as Stalin; the latter included the recollections of an old Bolshevik that Stalin had prerevolutionary links to the tsarist okhranka. Malenkov, O moem otse Georgii Malenkove, 34.

218. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 423–5. It is said that when Malenkov finally saw a transcript of this interrogation, in Feb. 1955, he destroyed it. Kovaleva et al., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, 44; Kovaleva et al., “Posledniaia ‘antipartiinaia’ gruppa,” 23. For Khrushchev’s defense of Malenkov in 1937 in Moscow, see Ponomarev, “Nikita Khrushchev,” 135.

219. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia, kak eto bylo, 330.

220. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, 68. The former colleague was Sergei Schwarz.

221. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 470; Khrushchev, Vremia, liudi, vlast’, I: 172; Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 417.

222. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 365–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 42–3). For Yezhov’s interrogation on April 26 (by Kobulov and others), see Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 52–72 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 375, l. 122–64).

223. Sontag, “Last Months of Peace.”

224. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 332–3 (April 15, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 342.

225. Stalin wrote on the TASS summary: “Expel the representative of this newspaper from Moscow.” (In Feb. 1939, the politburo had approved the foreign affairs commissariat request to grant Howard an entry visa, while warning him not to expect another audience with Stalin.) Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 506–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 207, l. 36–41; f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 105). Howard also published a dispatch from Paris at this time pointing out that anti-Jewish actions in Nazi Germany were underestimated, not exaggerated.

226. God krizisa, I: 386–7 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, p. 25, d. 4, l. 27–8); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 283–4, 284–5 (AVP RF f. 059, op. 1, p. 303, d. 2093, l. 27–8); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 335–7 (April 17, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 346–7.

227. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 335–6 (April 17, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 345–6; Aster, 1939, 163; Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 283, 287–9; God krizisa, I: 386 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 25, d. 4, l. 27–8); FRUS, 1939, I: 240; DDF, 2e série, XV: 789–90; Na prieme, 256. See also Carley, 1939, 126–34; and Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 159.

228. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 291–3 (Astakhov record: AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 7, d. 65, l. 69–71); DGFP, series C, IV: 783 (Bräutigam memo, Nov. 1, 1935); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1–2; Roberts, “Infamous Encounter?”; Roberts, Origins of the Second World War, 69–71; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 202–15.

229. Gafencu, Last Days of Europe, 78.

230. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 283 (citing FP [36], minutes of 43rd meeting, April 19, 1939, Cab 27/624); DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 541–2n101 (citing PRO, Cab. 27/624: 300–3, 309–12); Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 175. Halifax told a British cabinet meeting (April 26) that the “time was not ripe for so comprehensive a proposal, and we proposed to ask the Russian government to give further consideration to our plan.” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 341 (April 21), 684n103 (citing PRO, CAB 23/39: 58); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 340, II: 308n103.

231. Overy, “Strategic Intelligence,” 474, citing DGFP, series D, VI: 289–90 (chargé d’affaires in London Kordt to foreign ministry, April 19, 1939), 336 (Kordt to foreign ministry, April 26, 1939), 472–3 (Dirksen to foreign ministry, May 11); Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 197–8.

232. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 252–3 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 7, d. 63, l. 14–5: Litvinov to Merekalov, April 4, 1939), 268–9 (f. 011, op. 4, pap. 27, d. 61, l. 77–8: Merekalov’s reply, April 12, 1939). See also Bartel, “Aleksej Fedorovič Merekalov.” Litvinov’s Anglophilia has been exaggerated. It was always a means to an end—Soviet security—which he saw as solely possible with a collective security agreement against fascism. Phillips, Between the Revolution and the West, 21–2, 52–3.

233. In early April, Potyomkin sent two notes, both handwritten, to Surits warning of “the very hard line” being adopted in Moscow vis-à-vis cadres. “The slightest lapse is not only recorded but also provokes a swift and violent reaction.” He had Surits send his subordinate to Moscow. Dullin, Men of Influence, 216 (citing AVP RF, f. 11, op. 4, pap. 32, d. 179: April 4 and 19, 1939). Surits was represented by Krapivintsev, who worked under him as embassy counselor in Paris. Na prieme, 257–8. This was only Maisky’s second visit to Stalin’s office, the first having been June 1, 1938, with Litvinov.

234. For the grim documentary trail of Litvinov’s memorandums to Stalin, see DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 208–9 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 159: March 20, 1939), 209–11 (l.154–8: March 20), 220–1 (l. 167–8: March 23), 230 (l. 172: March 27), 246 (l. 186: April 3), 269–70 (l. 209: April 13), 275–7 (l. 213–7: April 15), 277–8 (l. 218–9: April 15), 283 (l. 220–1: April 17); Resis, “Fall of Litvinov.”

235. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, 360–3; Dullin, Des hommes d’influence, 310–3; Dullin, Men of Influence, 230–1. Sheinis suggests that the meeting described by Maisky took place on April 27, but Litvinov does not appear in the Kremlin office logbook that day. Na prieme, 257–8.

236. Mel’tiukhov, 17 September 1939, 232; Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 284.