Stalin

272. Mel’tiukhov, Sovetsko-pol’skie voiny, (2001), 303–350, (2004), 463–92; Erickson, “Red Army’s March,” 18–20; Włodarkiewicz, Lwów. Fifteen thousand Lvov defenders (1,000 of them officers) were taken prisoner; many would not survive captivity.

273. Krivoshein, Mezhdubur’e, 234–9; Schmidt-Scheeder, Reporter der Hölle, 101; Deutscher Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 25, 1939.

274. Guderian, Vospominaniia soldata, 105.

275. Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 85–6 (Sept. 20, 1939); Mel’tiukhov, Sovetsko-pol’skie voiny (2001), 319–23, 326–33 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 19, d. 22, l. 60–5); Nekrich, Pariahs, 130–2.

276. Back in 1934, Stalin’s ambassador to Poland (Yakov Davtyan) had confided in the American ambassador his “doubt concerning the capacity of Poland to exist as an independent nation”—a widely held Soviet prejudice. The next year, Piłsudski, dictator of Poland, had died. “Piłsudski is the entire Poland,” Radek claimed he had heard Stalin say. Kuromiya, “Stalin’s Great Terror,” 8 (citing Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe, I.303.4.3158, 235).

277. Wańkowicz, Po klęsce, 612.

278. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 77 (RGVA, f. 35084, op. 1, d. 8, l. 168), 78–83 (Tsentr khraneniia istoriko-dokumental’nykh kollektsii, f. 1/p, op. 1a, d. 1, l. 1–9), 89–92 (l. 63–7), 92–5 (op. 1e, d. 1, l. 17–18), 114–8 (APRF, f. 3 op. 5, d. 614, l. 228–30), and 118–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 410, l. 148–9).

279. Freidländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, I: 267–8; Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 467–9; Melzer, No Way Out, 22, 43, 91; Milton, “Expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany”; Heller, On the Edge of Destruction.

280. Buell, Poland, 307 (General Stanisław Skwarczyński).

281. Westermann, Hitler’s Police Battalions, 124–8; Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazi-Deutschlands, 19–20.

282. Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 41ff.

283. Fritzsche, Life and Death.

284. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 48.

285. DGFP, series D, VIII: 77 (Schulenburg, Sept. 16, 1939). Stalin in Aug. 1923 had predicted the need for “a war against Poland, and possibly the other limitrofa states,” in connection with revolution in Germany. (“Naznachit’ revolutsiia v Germanii na 9 noiabria,” 133.) Tukhachevsky shared this view and his close friend, the Polish Communist Tomasz Dąbal, deputy general secretary of the fledgling Peasant International, in May 1925 had spoken openly in Red Star, the Red Army newspaper, of “a right to separate [the Ukrainians and Belorussians] from Poland and join them to the Soviet republics.” Krasnaia zvezda, May 7, 1925. According to French military intelligence, basing itself on a Polish source, the Soviet military commander Uborevičius, an ethnic Lithuania, had stated ingratiatingly at a banquet in Berlin with the German military brass on Feb. 1, 1930, “Have we not moved far enough in the past two years to be able to pose the question of a revision of the borders and a drubbing of the Poles? In fact, we ought to partition Poland again.” Castellan, Le réarmement clandestin du Reich, 185 (citing letter att. mil., Berlin, no. 152: 295, March 28, 1930).

286. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, chap. 1, 206. Sukiennicki, “Establishment of the Soviet Regime”; Vakar, Byelorussia, 164–5, 168–9. Perhaps ten thousand more Ukrainians were repatriated westward as labor power by Nazi intelligence under falsified German racial origin designations.

287. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 80–1.

288. Vernadsky also pointed out a lack of white bread even for those with the money to pay, a decline in the quality of black bread, queues for vodka, and general dissatisfaction and hardship. Vernadskii, Dnevniki, 1935–1941, II: 56. See also Nevehzin, “Pol’sha v sovetskoi propagande,” 69–88. Bolshevik, the party journal, in its Sept. 1939 issue called the Red Army’s crossing into eastern Poland “a liberation” of ethnic Ukrainians and Belorussians, while making no mention of the Pact. The same issue celebrated the first anniversary of the Short Course and the country’s pending progress in Marxist-Leninist training. Bol’shevik, 1939, no. 17: 6–11, 12–21. Identical treatment appeared in Ogonyok (no. 24 [1939]: 1–7), which had a thrice-monthly circulation of 300,000. On a poster by Viktor Korecki, printed in four languages and 800,000 copies, Stalin was quoted as declaring, “Our army is an army of liberators.”

289. “SSSR v voine,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 79–80 (1939): 8.

290. Iskusstvo kino, 1940, no. 1–2: 44. “In the heat of our work the radio brought news of the historic decision of the Soviet Government,” enthused the director Yefim Dzigan of First Cavalry Army. Kino, Nov. 7, 1939. Semyon Goldstab [b. 1906], who had debuted the Stalin role in Lenin in October, played him again. The real Stalin hand-corrected the screenplay. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 165, l. 1. See also Chernova and Tokarev, “‘Pervaia Konnaia’”; Vishnevskii, “Pervaia konnaia.” During the Nov. 7, 1939, commemoration of the October Revolution, Burning Years would be screened outdoors on Moscow’s Sverdlov Square, across from the Bolshoi Theater.

291. Krasnaia zvezda, Oct. 17, 1938.

292. Tokarev, “‘Kará panam! Kará,’” 49 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 36, d. 3792, l. 221), and Lebedeva, Katyn’: prestuplenie, 112.

293. Cienciala, “The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck,” 130–43; Kornat “Anna Maria Cienciala,” 37.

294. Stalin told the staunch antifascist Georgi Dimitrov, “Now [Poland is] a fascist state, oppressing Ukrainians, Belarussians, and so forth. The annihilation of that state under current conditions would mean one fewer bourgeois fascist state to contend with!” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 116 (Sept. 7, 1939).

295. For example, Duraczyński and Sakharov, Sovetsko-Pol’skie otnosheniia, 67–70.

296. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 291.

297. Volobuev and Kuleshov, Ochishchenie, 157; Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 22 (citing Pravda, Dec. 21, 1994). Before the revolution, of Bogdanov’s critique of Lenin (which continued to circulate underground into the 1930s), Stalin had written privately in a letter, “How do you like Bogdanov’s new book? In my opinion some of Ilich’s blunders are very tellingly and correctly noted. It is also correctly pointed out that Ilich’s materialism differs in many ways from that of Plekhanov, which in spite of the demands of logic (and for the sake of diplomacy?) Ilich tries to cover over.” Dubinskii-Mukhadze, Ordzhonikidze, 92–3, n1. Stalin also wrote something similar in a letter to Mikho Tskhkaya: Istoriia KPSS, 6 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1967), II: 272.

298. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 257–63. Van Ree, Political Thought, 107–8.

299. Jasny, Soviet Economy, 418; Allen, Farm to Factory, 107–8. Some 77 percent of Soviet camp inmates at this time were ethnic Russians or Ukrainians.

300. Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, 158 (RGANI f. 89, op. 73, d. 3, l. 1–2). A “labor day” was worth nothing in 15,700 out of 240,000 collective farms. Hosking, First Socialist Society, 169.

301. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 171–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 25, l. 156; f. 17, op. 3, d. 1015, l. 30; f. 17, op. 3, d. 1016, l. 33; f. 17, 163, d. 1237, l. 223–4); Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 242–4.

302. Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, I: 103–4; Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 102; Ulam, Stalin, 515. Warsaw fell on Sept. 26.

303. “Upon his arrival in Moscow, von Ribbentrop was welcomed by a group of Soviet officials and by Count Schulenburg,” wrote Herwarth. “I was standing next to Gebhardt von Walther,” who “seized my arm and pointed to a group of Gestapo agents who warmly greeted their counterparts from the NKVD.” Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 165.

304. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 606–17n226 (translation of Hilger’s official record, discovered in Schulenburg’s papers in 1990); in German in Fleischhauer, “Der Deutsch-sowjetische Grenz- und Freundschaftsvertrag vom 28 September 1939.”

305. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 611, 614–5.

306. The pact with Estonia was printed the day after next (Izvestiia, Sept. 29, 1939), without the confidential protocol: Polpredy soobshchaiut, 62–4 (AVP RF, f. 03a Estoniia, d. 010).

307. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 614.

308. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 223–7.

309. Fleischhauer, “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”; Chuev, Kaganovich, Shepilov, 118; Chuev, Sto sorok, 19, 24; Chuev, Tak gorovril Kaganovich, 90; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 313–4.

310. Davlekamova, Galina Ulanova.

311. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 179–80; Ilmjärv, Silent Submission, 365; Kuromiya, Stalin, 143; Izvestiia, Sept. 29, 1939. Already on Sept. 27, before seeing Ribbentrop inside the Kremlin, the Estonians had noticed a big airplane with a swastika at the Soviet aerodrome at Velikie luki. Rei, Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 264.

312. Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin, 309; Sommer, Das Memorandum; Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 103–7; Fleischhauer, “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”; Kaslas, “Lithuanian Strip.”

313. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 616–7.

314. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 304–5. Apparently, Stalin promised to come to Germany’s aid if it fell into difficulties, a remark that appears to have stunned Ribbentrop. Stalin: “The fact is that for the time being Germany does not need foreign help, and it is possible that in the future they will not need foreign help either. But if, against all expectations, Germany finds itself in a difficult situation, then she can be sure that the Soviet people will come to Germany’s aid and will not allow Germany to be suppressed.” Zhilin, O voine, 185; Fleischhauer, “Der deutsch-sowjetisch Grenz- und Freundschaftsvertrag,” 457–64.

315. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 267–8; DGFP, series D, VII: 92, 105, 109, 130. The “General Gouvernement for the occupied Polish territories” was proclaimed on Oct. 8, 1939.

316. Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 129–32 (at 132). Ribbentrop would call the Soviets old party comrades to Mussolini on March 10, 1941. DGFP, series D, VIII: 886. See also Dallin, Soviet Russia’s Foreign Policy, 76–7.

317. Pravda, Sept. 29, 1939. For the text and secret protocol, see: DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 134–5 (AVP RF, f. 3a Germaniia, d. 246), 135–6 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675a, l. 20). Facsimiles of the document in German and Russian can be found in Hass, 23 August 1939, 246–51; facsimiles of the maps, with Stalin’s signature, can be found in Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 98–9. See also Izvestiia, Sept. 29, 1939.

318. Golovanov, “1,367 dnei iz zhizni Andreia Tupoleva.”

319. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 90, 92.

320. Supposedly, Stalin, good-cop style, puffing his pipe, took to appearing from behind a curtain in Mikoyan’s office and offering “compromises” to the Germans.

321. The regime’s notetaker, Vyacheslav Malyshev, paid tribute to the effectiveness of the faux-populism, recording that “this was a characteristic trait of Stalin’s: to drill down to the smallest details, especially when those small details affected people.” Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 109; Na prieme, 275. This appears to have been a secret (non-published) decree. No such decree appears in late 1939 or 1940 in the account offered by Barber and Harrison, Soviet Home Front, chapter 9.

322. The “affinity thesis”—despite the profound ideological enmity—was subsequently re-presented by Tucker and Nekrich. Tucker, Stalin in Power; Nekrich, Pariahs.

323. More than four of every five Nazi Party members were male. A National Socialist Women’s League counted approximately 2 million members; it offered classes for schoolgirls and brides and promoted consumption of German-made products. Payne, History of Fascism, 184.

324. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 52. Communist Youth League membership, for those from age fourteen (to maximum twenty-eight), shrank to just 400,000 in 1938. Hitler Youth membership, which was compulsory from age fourteen for Aryans and closed to others, exceeded 7 million by then.

325. The best overview remains Orlow, History of the Nazi Party, II.

326. To be sure, German state demand for goods and services had gone through the roof since 1932, as the state share of GDP more than doubled to 30.5 percent. The state also influenced foreign exchange, set some wages, and froze some prices, but it only rarely nationalized property. Jewish property was confiscated by forced sale, but usually to Aryan private owners. Buchheim and Scherner, “Role of Private Property.”

327. Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 111 (May 26, 1940).

328. Herwarth would tell U.S. ambassador Charles Bohlen after WWII that “We were able to make a deal with the Soviets because we were able without any problems with German opinion to deliver the Baltic states and eastern Poland to Russia. This the British and the French, with their public opinions, were unable to do.” Bohlen, Witness to History, 86.

329. Weinberg, “Nazi-Soviet Pacts,” 185 (citing PRO, FO 371/24846, f. 10, N 6526/30/38, Cripps to the Foreign Office, July 16, 1940). For the mostly matching Soviet transcript: “Priem angliiskogo posla S. Krippsa,” in Sochineniia, XVIII: 190–7 (at 191). Versailles revision was something Chamberlain, too, pursued in his own way, albeit only with regard to Germany—not the Soviet Union.

330. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 27.

331. Nevile Henderson, in an unintentional self-indictment, would correctly note that “though Hitler was constantly talking of the hand which he had held out to England and complaining that England had rejected it, whenever definite advances were made to him, he always found some way of withdrawing and of refusing to meet us half-way.” Henderson, Failure of a Mission, 110.

332. Bullock wrote that from “1934 through 1939 Hitler’s priorities were the reverse of Stalin’s: foreign policy and rearmament, not domestic issues. If Stalin had to pay increasing attention to foreign policy and defense in 1938 and 1939, it was not because of expansionist ambitions of his own but because Hitler’s successes threatened the security of Stalin’s achievement within the Soviet Union.” This misses Stalin’s opportunism and intense resentment at British power. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin (New York: Knopf, 1991), 639.

333. Hitler had told his military commanders on May 23, 1939, “for us it is a matter of expanding our Lebensraum in the East and of making food supplies secure,” not merely the city of Danzig. Overy, 1939: Countdown, 2 (citing ADAP, VI: 479).

334. “I am certain that even if the Germans were given more than they ask for they would attack just the same, because they are possessed by the demon of destruction,” Ciano recorded in his diary after meetings with Ribbentrop and Hitler on Aug. 11–12. Ciano, Diary, 118–20 (Aug. 11–13, 1939).

335. See the cryptic notes on Sept. 1939 by Orlova, Vospominaniia, 101. This passage was omitted from the translation: Orlova, Memoirs, 90–1.

336. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 178.

337. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 451, l. 37–40, 57. On Oct. 7, 1939, the actor Boris Shchukin died suddenly, at age forty-five; he had been in the company of the Vakhtangov since 1920, where he played more than one hundred roles, including Lenin, and been named a USSR People’s Artist in 1936. But he had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown, after which he had developed a heart condition.

338. Trying to take advantage of the Pact, Boris Pasternak approached the journal Znamia in early Nov. 1939 to try to publish his three-year-old translation of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist’s Prince of Homburg (1809–10). The play, about the necessity of unquestioning obedience to orders, was enjoying good runs in theaters in Nazi Germany. But Znamia (under Vishnevsky) rebuffed Pasternak. Still, the play was published in a collection of translations: Pasternak, Izbrannye perevody; Tarasenkov, “Pasternak.”

339. “Thus begins a politics resembling a fight between two wild animals,” the antifascist Vishnevsky recorded in his diary on Oct. 5, 1939. “Uncommon cunning, but diplomatic, military, and hunting tricks—a common phenomenon between wild animals. This is what our Russian person fears, when he hears about ‘friendship’ with fascism.” Vishnevskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VI: 298.

340. Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 37.

341. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 262–71. In Nov. 1939, Halder did engage acquaintances in the officers corps, civil service, and counterintelligence in conversation about possibly arresting Hitler and putting Göring in power (who was known to oppose war with Britain and France), but the plotters panicked and abandoned their talks.

342. Moorhouse, Killing Hitler, 49 (citing Bundesarchiv, Elser interrogation file, BA R30001/310/106).

CHAPTER 12. SMASHED PIG

1. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 79–80 (Aug.–Oct. 1939), 14–6.

2. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 124–5 (Jan. 21, 1940).

3. Monakov, “Zachem Stalin stroil okeanskii flot?”; Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet. A key motivation had been the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that had abandoned Versailles Treaty restrictions on the size of the German fleet. Ivanov, Morskoe sopernichestvo imperialisticheskikh derzhav; Morskoi sbornik, 1937, no. 9: 114–25. Contrary to some analyses, the key prompt was not the Spanish Civil War. Voroshilov, as early as the 17th Party Congress, in Jan. 1934, had promised that, as a result of industrialization, “we shall be able to create our shipbuilding industry and soon produce our fleets.” Herrick, Soviet Naval Strategy, 38–45; XVII s”ezd, 230. Naval commander Vladimir Orlov had presented the initial draft of a big-fleet program in early Feb. 1936 and later detailed it publicly in a speech to the Congress of Soviets (Nov. 28, 1936). Gromov, Tri veka Rossiiskogo Flota, II: 340–3; Pravda, Nov. 29, 1936; Orlov, “Rech’ tov V. M. Orlova.”

4. The naval commissariat was approved Dec. 30, 1937. Pravda, January 17, 1938. Between May 1937 and Sept. 1938, more than 3,000 naval officers were executed. During the second Five-Year Plan (1933–37) Soviet naval academies graduated about the same number of green officers. Gromov, Tri veka Rossiiskogo flota, III: 358. Admiral ranks would be restored on May 7, 1940; Kuznetsov, Galler, and Isaakov became admirals.

5. Rohwer and Monakov, “Soviet Union’s Ocean-Going Fleet,” 855.

6. “Thus ended the conversation about battleships,” Kuznetsov commented, “whose construction was already going full speed ahead, while I as a Navy commissar was still not quite clear in my head why they were being built at all!” Kiselev, Admiral Kuznetsov, 105. As Hauner explains of the impossible fleet plans, in 1939 “the Soviets lacked much basic industrial infrastructure: their gun factories could not yet produce or test guns of sixteen-inch caliber; boilers for the powerful steam turbines could not have been manufactured until after the war; there was no sophisticated optical equipment for fire control.” Hauner, “Stalin’s Big-Fleet Program,” 106. In 1939, the Soviets remained a one-ocean power—i.e., the Arctic, frozen much of the year.

7. Aselius, Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy; Philbin, Lure of Neptune.

8. Kuznetsov signed off on the new plan on July 27, 1940. Kuznetsov, “Voenno-Morskoi flot nakanune Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny”; Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet, 71–106 (citing RGA VMF, f. 2, d. 39526, l. 1–33). Of the 25 billion rubles that would be earmarked for weapons systems in 1940, almost one quarter would go to the navy. The Soviets never completed the colossal battleships, but by the middle of 1941 they would have 267 submarines, more than any other country.

9. Stalin dispatched deputy commissar Admiral Ivan Isakov in May 1939 to the United States, but he proved unable to achieve a breakthrough in the negotiations (asking for the moon), and the attack on Finland ended them. FRUS, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, 457–91, 670–707, 869–903; Davies, Mission to Moscow, 208. See also Maddux, Years of Estrangement, 86–8, 96–8. Stalin had unexpectedly appeared at negotiations with then U.S. Ambassador Davies in 1938, offering to settle repudiated tsarist-era debts in return for access to naval technology. The disadvantage of the Komsomolsk shipyard was the Amur’s lack of depth, forcing larger ships to be towed downstream after launch to be fitted out at Pacific Coast shipyards.

10. On Oct. 26, 1939, a sixty-person Soviet delegation led by shipbuilding commissar Ivan Tevosyan arrived in Berlin with a breathtaking wish list: complete materials for building four light cruisers; two hulls of heavy cruisers (Admiral Hipper class); ship and coastal guns (all calibers); torpedoes and mines; optical range finders, fire control directors, and hydro-acoustical devices; and entire blueprints for the battleship Bismarck, the Hipper-class heavy cruisers, Scharnhorst-class battle cruiser, and aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Hauner, “Stalin’s Big-Fleet Program.” Bezymensky, “Sovetsko-Germanskie dogovory.” Thanks to Göring’s intercession, Tevosyan managed to inspect the Krupp plants in Essen twice in Nov. 1939. Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 167 (citing HA Krupp, WA 7, F 1044, Sept. 7 and Nov., 1114–5, 1939).

11. See Stalin’s self-justifying remarks on April 17, 1940, analyzing the Finnish campaign, in Chubarian and Shukman, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 263–75 (at 263). Stalin repeated this point a year later: Naumov, 1941 god, II: 599–608 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 77, l. 178–211).

12. Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 85–112 (at 85–6: July 13, 1939). In 1932, Helsinki signed a nonaggression pact with Moscow, initially for just three years at Finnish insistence, but reaffirmed in 1934 for ten years. After the Nazis came to power, moreover, German-Finnish relations cooled for a time. But anti-Soviet agitation persisted on the part of Finnish nationalist pressure groups, whose activists the NKVD assessed as mere cover for the Finnish government. Stover, “Finnish Military Politics”; Rintala, Three Generations; Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 17–55 (1934), 58–82 (April 12, 1936); Backlund, “Nazi Germany and Finland.” The treaty and its subsequent modifications can be found in Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations, 23–37.

13. It was led by Major General von der Golz. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 27. Jakobson based his account on unpublished Finnish foreign ministry sources, but did not cite them. He was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in Helsinki when the war broke out.

14. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 147 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 18, l. 32: June 19, 1939).

15. Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 97; Manninen and Baryshnikov, “Peregovory osen’iu 1939 goda,” I: 114 (citing Bundesarchiv-Miliätrarchiv, N 220/19; AVP RF, f. 0135, op. 22, d. 7, l. 8–9, 12–4); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 221 (citing Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, doc. 352: Derevyansky, June 28, 1939; and FO 371/23648: Snow to Halifax, July 3, 1939).

16. Before the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Finnish military attaché in Moscow had managed to obtain information about the secret consultations from the wife of a high-level Soviet figure, an indication of Finland’s obvious concern for its security, but, for Stalin, of something more sinister. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 47 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 172, l. 2). One of the Soviet sources in Finland was the former Kronstadt rebel leader Stepan Petrichenko, who had escaped into exile. V. P. Naumov and A. A. Kosakovskii (eds.), Kronshtadt, 1921 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond Demokratiia, 1997), 402; APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 283, l. 27, Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 27 (Yagodato Stalin).

17. Volkovskii, Tainy i uroki, 4.

18. Dullin, “Understanding Russian and Soviet Foreign Policy,” 179. Secret planning through May 1940 in the Black Sea fleet specified the “likely enemy” as “England, France, Romania, Turkey.” The fleet’s aviation staff were studying the routes to India, while war contingency plans included Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt as well as India—all colonies or allies of Britain.

19. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 26 (Mikoyan on Molotov); Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 390–1; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 288.

20. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 282 (APRF, f. 45, op., 1, d. 178, l. 35, 37). “Yartsev” also donated funds to the Finnish Small Farmers Party, which agitated for “peace” with the Soviet Union.

21. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 296–309; Na prieme, 234. Zoia Voskresenskaya (b. 1907) had been sent to Finland in 1936 as an intelligence operative, operating under Intourist cover; Rybkin, the new station chief, arrived six to seven months later, without his family, and she became his deputy. Half a year later, they asked NKVD intelligence in Moscow for permission to marry, which was granted. Her account has the correct Kremlin meeting date and the fact that Molotov and Voroshilov were also there, and gives a description of his impressions of the visit, as relayed via a conversation Rybkin had with Kollontai. Voskresenskaia, Pod psevdonym Irina, 150–5.

22. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 7–11; Peshcherskii, “Kak I. V. Stalina pytalsia predotvarit’ voinu s Finliandiei.” Gerrard, Foreign Office and Finland, 88–9 (quoting Lascelles’s and Lawrence Collier’s minutes on a report from Helsinki, Oct. 8, 1939), 28 (citing FO 371/22270/N2338: Snow to Halifax, April 26, 1938).

23. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 301. Rybkin-Yartsev does not appear again in Stalin’s office logbook, but he could have been received at the dacha.

24. Tanner, Winter War, 5; Sharapov, Dve zhizni, 345–51; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 302.

25. Sudoplatov, the assassin who had leapt into the leadership rung of Soviet intelligence, surmised that Yartsev’s work was also a device to sow dissension in the Finnish leadership. Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 94, 266. Sudoplatov is off by one day on the meeting: Na prieme, 234.

26. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 163 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 297, d. 2054, l. 33: Litvinov to Derevyansky).

27. Litvinov, on March 11, told the Finnish representative that the “Soviet government did not expect such an answer.” Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 34 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 17, d. 183, l. 80–2; pap. 18, d. 198, l. 6); “The Winter War (Documents on Soviet-Finnish Relations in 1939–1940),” 53–61.

28. Semiriaga, Tainy stalinskoi diplomatii, 143. Litvinov complained to the Swedish envoy to Moscow that “we cannot be sure that Germany, embarking on some sort of adventurism, might not demand from Finland even temporarily the transfer of its islands, and that Finland, either voluntarily, or involuntarily would, under threat, perhaps earlier agree to accede to such a demand.” Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 34 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 18, d. 198, l. 8: March 11, 1939).

29. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 63–5; Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 34 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 17, d. 183, l. 61–5). The politburo designated Stein an envoy of Litvinov (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 120). Stein left Helsinki on April 6. On April 19—the same day Litvinov was received in the Little Corner to discuss the failure of collective security negotiations—Stein wrote a memo to Stalin arguing that Helsinki could not respond positively to Soviet proposals prior to the upcoming Finnish elections, but predicted that afterward there would be some chance of success. He was also received that day (in the company of Litvinov and Potyomkin, as well as inner regime cronies). DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 297–9 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 224–8), XXII/ii: 526n65; Na prieme, 257. Very soon, of course, Litvinov was removed. Stein would be transferred out of Italy on Oct. 7, 1939; he would get a teaching post at the USSR higher diplomatic school.

30. The Soviets had a plan of attack against Finland (and Estonia) already by March–April 1939, but that is what all militaries do: they plan wars, just in case. Aptekar’, Sovetsko-finskie voiny.

31. Chuev, Sto sorok, 34; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 24.

32. Meretskov, Na sluzhbe, 177. Voroshilov visited the Karelian Isthmus sometime in April and ordered that combat readiness be raised and plans be developed for evacuation of women and children should war break out. Semiriaga, Tainy stalinskoi diplomatii, 146 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 4, d. 366, l. 134). Also in April 1939, the NKVD transport directorate produced an internal assessment of all the ports and military bases of all countries on or near the Baltic Sea. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 250.

33. Meretskov, Na sluzhbe, 177–80. Meretskov (Na sluzhbe, 178) claims that he was present during a conversation between Kuusinen and Stalin in late June 1939, and that Stalin expressed alarm over the situation with Finland. Neither appears in the logbooks for summer 1939. Na prieme, 646, 661. In summer 1939, the Finnish-Soviet border was largely quiet. Chugunov, Granitsa nakanune voiny, 10.

34. Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 17 (Oct. 10, 1939).

35. Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 85–112 (Leningrad-province state security, July 13, 1939); Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 150–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 405, l. 200: Beria, no earlier than July 10, 1939).

36. Van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, 7 (citing PRO FO 371 23648, N3199). The British general might have been trying to induce London to help the Finns.

37. Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations, 42; Baryshnikov, Ot prokhladnogo mira, 229. On Latvia, see Dr. Alfred B ī lmanis: Latvian Russian Relations, 192–8; Polpredy soobshchaiut, 75–86 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 12, d. 119a, l. 3–8, 9–17); Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 184; Izvestiia, Oct. 6, 1939.

38. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 201–3; Manninen and Baryshnikov, “Peregovory osen’iu 1939 goda,” I: 116–7.

39. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1235, l. 99); Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 160–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 30, l. 225–6). On the formulation of Soviet demands, see Manninen and Baryshnikov, “Peregovory osen’iu 1939 goda,” I: 119–21.

40. Raskol’nikov, “Otkrytoe pis’mo Stalinu” (Aug. 17, 1939). He died Sept. 12. See also Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 420–53; and Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” II: 342–3. Speculation on the cause of Raskolnikov’s death—poisoning, nervous breakdown—is inconclusive. Konstantinov, F. F. Ilin-Raskol’nikov, 153; “Smert’ Raskol’nikov,” Vorozhdenie, September, 29, 1939; Barmine, One Who Survived, 21; Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 469. Raskolnikov evidently did lose his mind. N. P. V., “Sumashestvie Raskol’nikova: beseda s A.G. Barminym,” Poslednie novosti, Aug. 28, 1939; I. M., “Raskol’nikov soshel s uma,” Vorozhdenie, Sept. 1, 1939.

41. Raskolnikov added: “He does not like people who have their own opinion, and with his usual nastiness drives them away.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 592.

42. Gerrard, Foreign Office and Finland, 88–9 (quoting Lascelles’s and Lawrence Collier’s minutes on a report from Helsinki, Oct. 8, 1939). For the argument about Finland being a pawn in British strategy, see Pritt, Must the War Spread? (Pritt was expelled from the Labour Party, partly as a result of his pro-Soviet views in the Soviet-Finnish War.) On Britain’s possible lack of inside information concerning the Helsinki government, see Sotskov, Pribaltika i geopolitika, 64–5 (Oct. 16, 1939).

43. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 167–9 (Maisky, Oct. 7, 1939); Maisky, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 28–31 (Oct. 6, 1939); Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 232. Churchill continued this line in further discussions with Maisky: DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 2 (Nov. 13, 1939). See also Gerrard, Foreign Office and Finland, 95 (citing FO 371/23683/N6384: British War cabinet, Nov. 16, 1939). Back in the Russian civil war, the lengthy Helsinki-London plotting had come to naught, opposed by the British cabinet, the Finnish parliament, and newly independent border states wary of collaboration with the Russian nationalist Whites. Ruotsila, “Churchill-Mannerheim Collaboration.”

44. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 196 (RGVA, f. 25888, op. 11, d. 76, l. 12). Mobilization was complete by a second report, on Oct. 13 (199: l. 16).

45. Izvestiia, Oct. 11, 1939; SSSR i Litva, I: 205–46; Polpredy soobshchaiut, 94–144; Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 193.

46. Zonin, Admiral L. M. Galler, 309.

47. DPV SSSR, XXII/ii: 178 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 297, d. 2053, l. 197).

48. Stalin had received Molotov and Derevyansky that afternoon, just prior to meeting the Finns: Na prieme, 276.

49. Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 35 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 18, d. 193, l. 4); Tanner, Winter War, 25 (who claims his account of Stalin’s presentation is based on the Finnish interpreter’s notes). Paasikivi had been born Johan Gustaf Hellsten and Finnicized his name at age fifteen, in 1885, after he had been orphaned.

50. The Beria report was dated Oct. 12, 1939. Vrang had become a celebrity in Moscow diplomatic circles as a result of the circumstance that in a Soviet espionage film, the actor who played the role of the main bad guy, a foreign military attaché, happened to be a dead ringer for the Swede. Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions,” 1091, citing U. A. Käkönen, Sotilasasiamiehenä Moskovassa 1939 (Helsinki, 1966), 62; Norberg, “Det militära hotet.”

51. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 162–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 393, l. 122–4: Oct. 12, 1939), 163–4 (op. 6, d. 31, l. 117–9, Oct. 12), 164–5 (d. 31, l. 122–4: Oct. 13), 165–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 393, l. 122–4), 166–7 (l. 147–9: Oct. 14, 1939); Volkogonov Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 1. See also Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions,” 1091–2. One clandestine Soviet source in Helsinki, Cay Sundström, a pro-Communist Social Democrat in the Finnish parliament (his NKVD code name was “the Count”), complained to the NKVD that when the parliamentary foreign-affairs committee discussed Soviet demands in his presence, other members told the rapporteur to stop speaking. He informed Moscow that Erkko had stated there was no need for any concessions to the Soviet Union because Finland could count on the support of Britain, the United States, and Sweden. Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions”; Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 163–4 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 117-9: Oct. 12); Volkogonov Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, box 1 (identifying the source as Sundström); Sinitsyn, Rezident svidel’stvuet, 21. See also Manninen and Baryshnikov, “Peregovory osen’iu 1939 goda,” 119.

52. Stalin received Molotov for fifteen minutes prior to meeting the Finns: Na prieme, 276.

53. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 474.

54. Upton, Finland, 29–30 (quoting J. K. Paasikivi, Toimintani Moskovassa ja Suomessa 1939–1941 [Porvoo: Werner Söderström, 1959], I: 45–6); Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 114–8; Tanner, Winter War, 27–8; Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 35 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 18, d. 193, l. 1–2). Apparently, the Soviet side made no formal record of the talks: Baryshnikov, Ot prokhladnogo mira, 237–8.

55. Stalin also suspected that a coup could bring an avowedly fascist regime to power in Helsinki. The NKVD in Leningrad characterized the Cayander-Tanner government in Helsinki as proto-fascist. Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 85–112 (July 13, 1939).

56. Tanner, Winter War, 30.

57. A Soviet military intelligence on Finnish civilian evacuations from frontline areas was dated Oct. 14, 1939; the evacuations would be pronounced complete seven days later. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 199–200 (RGVA, f. 25888, op. 11, d. 76, l. 17), 200 (l. 20).

58. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 120.

59. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 170–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 282–4: Oct. 19, 1939).

60. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 169–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 216–8: Beria, Oct. 17, 1939), 170–1 (l. 282-4: Oct. 19); Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions,” 1093. See also Voskresenskaia, Pod psevdonym Irina, 112–8. On German policy toward Finland, see Jonas, Wipert von Blücher, 105–58. Stalin prohibited engaging ethnic Finns in espionage work, reminding Proskurov (head of Soviet military intelligence) that a radio operator working for them in Mongolia (under the name of Voroshilov, no less) had been exposed as a Finn. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 123 (Aug. 25, 1939).

61. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 172–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 341–3: from Colonel Doi).

62. Stalin’s ultimate aims are not spelled out in internal Soviet documents. We are left, like the Finns, to deduce his aims from his statements in the negotiations, and, above all, from his actions.

63. Rentola, “Finnish Communists and the Winter War,” 596.

64. Upton, Finland, 35.

65. Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 35 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 18, d. 193, l. 3–6).

66. Tanner, Winter War, 42.

67. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 125.

68. Tanner, Winter War, 40–56. Stalin had been warned the Finns would drag out the talks. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 184.

69. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 173 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 145–6: Oct. 27, 1939).

70. Roberts, “Soviet Policy and the Baltic States.” On pogroms against Jews by Poles in Wilno, following the arrival of Soviet and Lithuanian troops, see Senn, Lithuania, 55–67.

71. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 119–20. Dimitrov does not appear in Stalin’s office logbook for Oct. 25 (no one does): Na prieme, 277. Dimitrov published his article “The War and the Working Class in the Capitalist Countries,” in Communist International, 1939, no. 8–9.

72. Izvestiia, Oct. 31, 1939; Kabanen, “Dvoinaia igra.”

73. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 466. Molotov instructed Kollontai to ensure the neutrality of Sweden in a Soviet-Finnish War. In the scholarly publication of her diplomatic notebooks, the Nov. visit to Moscow occurs without a meeting with Stalin. Kollontai is not recorded in the office logbooks after 1934. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 467. Another version has her meeting Stalin: “Beseda Stalina s A. M. Kollontai,” in Sochineniia, XVIII: 606–11 (originally published in Dialog, 1998, no. 8: 92–4). Kollontai knew she was closely watched by the NKVD. Vaksberg, Alexandra Kollontai, 414–21.

74. Pravda (Nov. 3) stated defiantly in an editorial, “we will defend the security of the Soviet Union regardless, breaking down all obstacles of whatever character, in order to attain our goal.”

75. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 135; Tanner, Winter War, 67. Khrushchev recalled that at a dinner sometime in Nov. 1939, Stalin, along with Molotov and Otto Kuusinen, agreed “the Finns should be given a last chance to accept the territorial demands,” otherwise “we would take military action.” Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 177–8.

76. It is not clear that Paasikivi and Tanner were familiar with theses islands. Rzheshevskii et al., Zimniaia voina, I: 127; Tanner, Winter War, 67–8; Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 136.

77. Molotov delivered a speech from the stage, followed by music and dancing. Stalin sat in the tsar’s box, obscured. At intermission, as the guests took advantage of the buffet, Derevyansky, the Soviet envoy to Helsinki, approached Tanner, who claims to have told him the negotiations were going poorly. Tanner, Winter War, 69.

78. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XIII (II/i): 100–2 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 15, d. 25, l. 636–38). Pravda, in articles and cartoons (Oct. 6, 25, and 26, Nov. 12 and 20), relentlessly pounded home the view that the imperialist powers (Britain and France) were inciting war to garner profit and suppress freedoms at home, while scheming to drag “neutral powers” such as the Soviet Union into their bloody game—meaning a Soviet-German war.

79. “There can be no doubt that Stalin was genuinely anxious to reach a settlement,” concluded the scholar Max Jakobson: Diplomacy of the Winter War, 144. Stalin watched the morning Revolution Day parade on Nov. 7 atop the Mausoleum, as massive columns of Red Army soldiers and armor passed, followed by columns of workers bearing aloft portraits of him, then attended the late-afternoon luncheon with the retinue at Voroshilov’s apartment. “I believe that the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war (during the first imperialist war) was appropriate only for Russia, where the workers were tied to the peasants and under tsarist conditions could engage in an assault on the bourgeoisie,” he told those assembled. “For the European countries that slogan was inappropriate, for there the workers had received a few democratic reforms from the bourgeoisie and were clinging to them, and they were not willing to engage in a civil war (revolution) against the bourgeoisie.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 120–1.

80. Tanner, Winter War, 71–2.

81. DGFP, series D, VIII: 293 (Hitler to Sven Hedin); Tanner, Winter War, 82–3.

82. Upton, Finland, 43–44; Tanner, Winter War, 82; Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 142; Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 172; Ken et al., Shvetsiia v politike Moskvy.

83. Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions,” 1091 (citing report by the Swedish military attaché to Moscow, Major Vrang, no. 44, Oct. 4, 1939, KrA, FST/Und, E I: 15).

84. Mannerheim, Memoirs, 300–3, 315; Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 64, 150–1; Virmarita, “Karl Gustaf Emil’ Mannergeim,” 65–6.

85. Rei, Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 259–60. Rei was the notetaker for Estonian foreign minister K. Selter with Molotov. “Soviet Russia’s period of weakness was over,” Paasikivi observed of the Pact. Paasikivi, Meine Moskauer Mission, 56.

86. Tanner, Winter War, 73.

87. Van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, 21 (citing AVP RF, f. 0135, op. 22, pap. 145, d. 1, l. 22–3: Yeliseyev to Dekanozov, Nov. 12, 1939). Sinitsyn captured the rivalry between Beria and Molotov firsthand. He also had an audience with Stalin, evidently on Nov. 27, 1939, which is not recorded in the office logbooks. He noted that “Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Kaganonovich and even Voroshilov behaved like bad pupils in front of a strict teacher, or, more accurately, like mannequins.” Sinitsyn, Rezident svidetel’stvuet, 20–56 (quote at 40).

88. Tanner, Winter War, 75–6.

89. Na prieme, 279.

90. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 221 (citing RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2076, l. 31ob.), 225–6 (l. 68). The very same day, the all-Union Society of Cultural Ties Abroad demonstratively assembled novelists, film directors, composers, painters, journalists, and more to affirm friendship with Nazi Germany, according to the head of the import agency International Book (A. Solovyev). The next day, Vishnevsky told a meeting of screenwriters that “the question of the British empire, the destruction of this gigantic colonial empire, has been sharply posed, and here, paradoxically, . . . Germany is doing a progressive thing.” Solov’ev, “Tretrady krasnogo professor, 1912–1941 gg.,” IV: 205; Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 221–2, citing RGALI, f. 2456, op. 1, d. 445, l. 23).

91. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 55–8; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 238. Isolationist sentiment in Britain had not receded despite the guarantees to Poland. “What concerns me is the fate of the British empire!” Lord Beaverbrook, the conservative press baron, told Maisky in London on Nov. 15, 1939. “I want the empire to remain intact, but I don’t understand why for the sake of this we must wage a three-year war to crush ‘Hitlerism.’ To hell with that man Hitler! If the Germans want him, I happily concede them this treasure and make my bow. Poland? Czechoslovakia? What are they to us?” Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 60–1; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 239.

92. Upton, Finland, 25–50; Tanner, Winter War, 80–1; Spring, “Soviet Decision for War.”

93. A Soviet protocol official improbably reported that he found the departing Finns in high spirits. Baryshnikov, Ot prokhaldnogo mira, 259 (citing AVPRF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 1, d. 7, l. 64 [B. Pontikov]).

94. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 63 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1552, l.15–6).

95. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 66, l. 13.

96. DGFP, series D, VIII: 427–8. Molotov would blame the “Social Democrat” Tanner, rather than the prime minister and foreign minister back in Helsinki. See also Kollontai, “‘Seven Shots’”; and Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 466–7. Paasikivi would make telling criticisms of Tanner in his memoirs.

97. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, III: 1422–4; Domarus, Hitler: Speeches, III: 1882–91; DGFP, series D, VIII: 439–46.

98. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 171 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 282–4). Tanner recorded a different version of Stalin’s flippancy (“You are sure to get 99 percent support”). Tanner, Winter War, 30.