Stalin

278. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 606, 658–59; Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraphs 670, 784; Rybalkin, Operatisia “X,” 118. In 1937, Italian aviation also stalled (industry could not build reliable motors above 1,000 horsepower). Maiolo, Cry Havoc, 199. The Soviets had captured a Messerschmitt Bf 109, which they discovered was superior to the Soviet Il-16. This would prompt a scramble to upgrade the latter with fourteen-cylinder, two-row radial engines, but that would take time.

279. Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (6th ed.), 166–7. The meeting in the Little Corner may have been Aug. 5, 1940: Na prieme, 308.

280. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 24, citing APRF, f. 56, op. 1, d. 298, l. 29–32 (Stalin-Ritter, Feb. 8, 1940) and AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 315, d. 2174, l. 153–4 (Shkvartsev, March 5, 1940); APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 688, l. 58–64 (Mikoyan Schulenburg, April 5, 1940), l. 72–8 (Mikoyan meeting Hilger, April 21, 1940); Sipols, “Torgovo-ekonomicheskie otnosheniia mezhdu SSSR.” See also Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 317.

281. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 202: table 3.2; Musial, Stalins Beutezug, 28–9.

282. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 205: (table 3.5, 210: table 5.1.

283. “Zimniaia voina”: rabota nad oshibkami, 215–43.

284. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 296 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 36, d. 4252, l. 160); van Dyke, “Legko otdelalis’,” 115.

285. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 317–24.

286. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 555. Timoshenko got an apartment in the turn-of-the-century building on the former Romanov Way, renamed Granovsky Street, which was the most prestigious address for those living outside the Kremlin; this is where Mikhail Frunze had lived when he became defense commissar. Budyonny had his apartment here as did the functionaries Yaroslavsky, Malyshev, and Khrushchev. This is where Trotsky was exiled from.

287. See also Mikoian, Tak bylo, 386.

288. Kira was evidently seized on May 5, 1940, by a squad overseen by Merkulov; she was executed by Blokhin without indictment or trial. “Beria protiv Kulika,” in Bobrenev and Riazantsev, Palachi i zhertvy, 197–264 (esp. 195–201, 211–3); Sokolov, Istreblennye marshaly, 300–1; Leskov, Stalin i zagovor Tukhachevskogo, 53–5; Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 293–4.

289. DGFP, series D, VIII: 942; Erickson, Soviet High Command, 508, 553.

290. One scholar gives the reason as Stalin’s desire to show the world that the lessons of the Finnish War had been absorbed by replacing both the defense commissar and chief of staff, even though Stalin acknowledged that Shaposhnikov had gotten the war right. Balandin, Marshal Shaposhnikov, 317–23.

291. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 717.

292. Komandnyi i nachal’stvuiushchii sostav Krasnoi Armii, 4–14; Kirshin, Dukhovnaia gotovnost’ Sovetskogo naroda k voine, 379; van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, 198–9; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 63–4.

293. Osokina, Za fasadom, 206–18; Khanin, Ekonomicheskaia istoriia Rossii, I: 29.

294. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 13–49.

295. Kuznetsov, Krutye povoroty, 37.

296. Zhukov, Vospominaniia, II: 283–7. Zhukov recalls Kalinin being present. The logbook lists Zhukov on June 2, 1939, only in the presence of Molotov and Stalin, and on June 3 in the presence of twenty-five people, almost all military men, but not Kalinin. Kalinin and Zhukov both appear on June 13, but not at overlapping times. Na prieme, 300–1, 302–3.

297. Already by May 1940, 12,000 repressed Red Army officers and troops had been reinstated (not including the air force or navy). “O nakoplenii nachal’stvuiushchego sostava Raboche-Krest’ianskoi Krasnoi Armii,” 182, 187, 188–9.

298. Konstantinov, Rokossovskii, 42. See also Gorbatov, Gody i voiny, 162–72.

299. Drug plennykh, Jan. 27, 1940: 1.

300. Aron, Mémoires, 158.

301. Dullin, “How to Wage Warfare,” 224. See also Borkenau, Totalitarian Enemy, published in March 1939.

302. Schapiro, Totalitarianism; Gleason, Totalitarianism; Jones, Lost Debate. Stalin was likely unaware of these adverse currents. For May Day 1940, he altered the draft slogan for the Young Pioneers from “the cause of communism” to the “cause of Lenin-Stalin.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1257, l. 137.

303. Hilferding, “Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm ili totalitarnoe gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo?” The Mensheviks, just before the Nazis would occupy Paris, would relocate to New York, while Hilferding would stay behind and fall into the clutches of the Gestapo. Liebich, From the Other Shore, 240–3.

304. Harrison and Davies, “Soviet Military-Economic Effort,” 373–93.

305. Adamthwaite, France, 269–79. There is little solid evidence on German intelligence assessments of Soviet capabilities. Germany used Iran, which in 1939 had declared its neutrality, as a platform for reconnaissance and covert action against the Soviet Union (the Shah shared with Hitler fear of the spread of Bolshevism; nearly half of Iranian trade was with Nazi Germany, mostly raw materials and oil for German weapons). Richard August, who went by the name Franz Meyer, an SS officer and spy working undercover as a representative of the Reichsgroup for Industry in the USSR from Sept. 1939 through Feb. 1940, was among those based in Tehran. He evidently reported that the Red Army was strong and the Russian émigré predictions of a pending anti-Bolshevik uprising fantastical. Dolgopolov, Vartanian, 16–7.

306. Emets, “O roli russkoi armii,” 64.

307. Adamthwaite, France, 232–4; Gates, End of the Affair, 57–8; Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 295.

308. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 513. For British views, see Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 274; and Adamthwaite, France, 51. On Stalin’s respect for the French army (“worthy of consideration”), expressed to Ribbentrop on Aug. 23, 1939, see DGFP, series D, VII: 227.

CHAPTER 13. GREED

1. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VIII: 196–7 (June 28, 1940).

2. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 374–5 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 339, d. 2315, l. 35, 35 a, 36, 38, 39).

3. Osborn, Operation Pike. See also Richardson, “French Plans”; Millman, “Toward War with Russia.”

4. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 317–8.

5. Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 180.

6. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 223 (citing RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 745, l. 34).

7. Solonin, “Tri plana tovarishcha Stalina,” 44.

8. On May 10, 1940, the same day Hitler attacked France, Moscow was invaded by Leningrad culture. After so many Ten-Day festivals for the various Union republics—beginning with Ukraine in 1936 and most recently with Armenia in Oct. 1939—now came the star turn of the Union’s second capital, with performances by the latter’s principal theaters, symphony orchestras, choral group, and the fabled Leningrad choreography school, cradle of the country’s ballet dancers. Altogether, 2,765 cultural figures from Leningrad would take part (by one press account, closer to 4,000). On May 29, Stalin hosted a banquet for them in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Izvestiia, May 10, 26, and 28, 1940; Kul’turnaia zhizn’ v SSSR, 1928–1941, 732; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 120–1. Also in May 1940, the Nazis sealed off the Jews of German-occupied Łódź into a ghetto behind barbed wire.

9. Gilbert, Churchill and America, 131–3.

10. Self, Neville Chamberlain, 432–3; Lukacs, Five Days in London.

11. In a May 24–28, 1940, Cabinet debate, Churchill prevailed. Reynolds, “British ‘Decision’ to Fight,” 147–67.

12. Firsov, “Arkhivy Kominterna,” 22 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 184, d. 4, l. 53: Sept. 29, 1939). Stalin evidently harbored a certain admiration for the new British PM, Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 152n1.

13. Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 168. Germany sent a team under retired Rear Admiral Otto Feige (b. 1882) to fit out the 690-foot battleship’s superstructure above the first deck. Philbin, Lure of Neptune, 121–2.

14. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 117, 121n101 (citing PA, R 106232, E0418717 and PA/Schnurre, Leben, 97).

15. While dancing the ancient dance with her, Feige was said to have heard a clicking noise, started probing, and found a hidden camera in a large wall painting (it had a small hole cut out). Feige remained impassive to Beria’s clumsy blackmail recruitment effort, while Hitler became indignant about the Soviet entrapment effort. According to Khrushchev, Stalin laced into Beria. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 258.

16. Just before midnight, Stalin evidently invited Beria and Sudoplatov to stay for supper. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 454; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 98–9; Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 76–7.

17. Ribbentrop in fall 1939 had wanted to make a public declaration to counter British press assertions that while in Moscow he had requested Soviet military assistance but been rebuffed. Stalin rewrote the German foreign ministry’s draft of his words to read, “The attitude of Germany in declining military aid commands respect. However, a strong Germany is the absolute prerequisite for peace in Europe, where it follows that the Soviet Union is interested in the existence of a strong Germany. Therefore, the Soviet Union cannot give its approval to the Western powers creating conditions which would weaken Germany and place her in a difficult position. Therein lay the community of interests between the Soviet Union and Germany.” Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 124–27; Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 18.

18. British policy-makers had discussed a possible seizure of Sweden and Norway, which were also major German suppliers, as well as the deployment of British naval squadrons to the Baltic Sea, in order to cut off Germany and confront the Soviets militarily. Such offensive operations remained largely in the realm of fantasy, however, their costs higher than the Western publics or even Western leaders were willing to incur. In any case, Hitler had beaten Britain and France to the punch, invading Norway.

19. Shirer, Rise and Fall, 731–8 (citing Halder letter, July 19, 1957). Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord (London: Harper, 2009), 1–59; Lukacs, Duel, 97–103.

20. The June 10 issue of Poslednie novosti, the émigré newspaper of Paul Miliukov, announcing the Nazi triumph over France, would be its last in Paris; the next day it was shut down.

21. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 297.

22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10339678.

23. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 419–25. The Germans removed the railway carriage to Berlin.

24. On June 21, 1940, Köstring, the German military attaché, met his Soviet liaison officer, Colonel Grigory Osetrov, who asked about the terms imposed on France. Köstring stated, “I do not know the intentions of our command staff, but I think that there will still be something with Britain.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 333–4 (RGVA, f. 33988, op. 4, d. 36, l. 69s); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 33 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 674, l. 128).

25. France’s military budget had jumped from 12.8 billion FF in 1935 to 93.7 billion FF by 1939; it was investing 2.6 times as much on weapons production as it had on the eve of the Great War. Doise and Vaïsse, Diplomatie et outil militaire, 402; Frankenstein, Le prix du réarmement français, 34–35.

26. Of Germany’s 93 combat-ready divisions, only 9 were panzer divisions, with a total of 2,439 tanks; France had 3,254 tanks (4,200 with Belgian, Dutch, and British ones included). Stolfi, “Equipment for Victory”; Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 371–2.

27. Forcade, “Le Renseignement face à l’Allemagne,” 126–55.

28. French intelligence (the Second Bureau of the General Staff) had monitored the transfer of German divisions westward following completion of the Polish campaign, and by early May 1940, despite Germany’s minimizing the use of radio communications, the Second Bureau nailed the number of German divisions almost exactly (estimating 137 for an actual 136). The Germans had altered their compromised codes on May 1, cutting off French signals intelligence for a time, making the already skeptical decision makers at the top that much more so when it came to intelligence, however. Schuker, “Seeking a Scapegoat,” 81–127, citing Col. Ulrich Liss, “Die Tätigkeit des französischen 2. Bureau im Westfeldzug 1939/40,” Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau, 10 (1960): 267–78.

29. Bloch, Strange Defeat, 36, 52.

30. France’s Maginot Line, mocked by subsequent analysts, proved difficult to overcome even when the Germans attacked it from the rear, toward war’s end; not one of its major fortresses was captured in the fighting. Doughty, Breaking Point, 69–70.

31. Förster, “Dynamics of Volksgemeinschaft,” III: 204. In 1939, French intelligence had taken note of Guderian’s new, controversial strategy of using combined tank and air power to smash through and get behind enemy artillery and wreak havoc, but very few German generals, even in 1940, expected an armored blitzkrieg to succeed in delivering a knockout blow (based on the experience of World War I). Young, “French Military Intelligence,” 288–90.

32. Jacobsen, Dokumente zum Wesfeldzug 1940; Jacobsen, Fall Gelb” der Kampf; Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende, 66–116; Goutard, Battle of France; May, Strange Victory, 215–26; Geyer, “Restorative Elites,” 139–44.

33. “The great western offensive was a one-shot affair,” one historian aptly explained. “Success, and Germany would acquire the economic base to fight a long war; failure, and the war would be over.” Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 361.

34. Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende, 3. The same day—May 20, 1940—the Nazis opened a concentration camp at Oświęcim/Auschwitz for Polish political prisoners. It would later be expanded and specialize in gassing Jews.

35. Hooten, Luftwaffe at War, II: 61; Schuker, “Seeking a Scapegoat,” 114, citing Villelume, Journal, 333 (May 12, 1940). As the historian May has observed of France, “When Germany opened its offensive against the Low Countries and France in 1940, not a single general expected victory as a result.” May, Strange Victory, 7.

36. Nord, France 1940. See also Gunsburg, Divided and Conquered.

37. Deutscher, Stalin, 437–41; Erickson, Soviet High Command, 537. In France, the advocates of armor, such as de Gaulle, lacking a patron, had been stymied by traditionalists.

38. Hillgruber, “Das Russlandbild,” 296–310; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 297–300.

39. Haffner, Meaning of Hitler, 31.

40. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 267; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 266.

41. Jervis, “Hypotheses on Misconceptions,” esp. 475–6. “The vozhd,” the contemporary Konstantin Simonov would later observe, “had created for himself a situation in the party and the state such that if he decided something firmly, no one contemplated the possibility of direct resistance. Stalin did not have to defend his correctness before anyone, he was by definition correct if he had taken the decision.” Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 82.

42. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115–6 (Sept. 7, 1939). “Hitler without knowing it leads to shattering [of the] bourgeoisie,” explained a secret cipher in early Oct. 1939, from the Dimitrov to Earl Browder of the American Communist party, in reference to the Pact. Jaffe, Rise and Fall of American Communism, 46–7.

43. DGFP, series D, IX: 585–6 (June 18, 1940); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 40–2 (AVPRF, f. 06, op. 2, pap. 14, d. 155, l. 206–8).

44. Lemin, “Novyi etap voiny v Evrope,” 28; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 373–4; Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 296–7. Halifax, British foreign secretary, wrote in his diary on May 25, 1940: “the mystery of what looks like the French failure is as great as ever. The one firm rock on which everybody had been willing to build for the last two years was the French Army, and the Germans walked through it like they did through the Poles.” Colville, Footprints in Time, 92; Reynolds, “1940,” 329 (citing Halifax diary: Hickleton papers, A 7.8.4, Borthwick Institute, York).

45. Schwendemann, Die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit, 373. The German air attaché in Moscow, Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich Aschenbrenner, called upon the international liaison department of the defense commissariat back on May 21, 1940, and in a jolly mood attributed German successes in the West to Soviet support. “Before my departure for your country,” he told his Soviet interlocutor, “I was received by Hitler, who said to me: ‘Remember, Stalin did a great thing for us, about which you should never forget, under any circumstances. Remember this, and do not turn yourself into a merchant, but be a worthy representative of our army in a country friendly to us.’” Later that same day, Köstring, the German army attaché, visited the international liaison department and passed on photographs from the war with France. (The package was marked solely for Stalin.) When asked how events would now unfold, Aschenbrenner had made ostensibly definitive statements; the shrewder Köstring had answered, “only Hitler and a very narrow circle of people close to him know. I am given very limited information.” Aschenbrenner asked that his conversation not be reported to Köstring, for the latter “is jealous, like a girl, and might be offended that I got here before him.” Gavrilov, Voenaia razvedka informiruet, 315–6 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1305, l. 374s–375s; report of Colonel Grigory I. Osetrov [b. 1901]).

46. Trotsky, “Stalin—Intendant Gitlera.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 79–80 (Aug.–Oct. 1939).

47. Wager, Der Generalquartiermeister, 106. “All in all,” Karl Schnurre, the German economic official, had crowed on May 10, 1940, the day Germany struck France, “trade with Eastern Europe, as a result of the Economic Agreement with the Soviet Union, has attained a volume that it never reached in previous years.” Der Deutsche Volkswirt (May 10, 1940), in RGAE, f. 413, op. 13, d., 2856, l. 5–6, cited in Nekrich, Pariahs, 154; Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 116–7. Hitler had written (March 8, 1940) to mollify Mussolini that “the trade agreement which we have concluded with Russia, duce, means a great deal in our situation!” DGFP, series D, VIII: 876 (March 8, 1940); Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 111.

48. In addition, the Soviets lent Germany a submarine base near Murmansk for refueling and maintenance, as well as launching raids on British shipping. An oil tanker with Soviet oil arrived to refuel Nazi warships and landing craft during the attack on Norway in April 1940.

49. “Friendship with Germany, the Pact, and so on is all a temporary move, tactical devices,” wrote Vishnevsky in his diary in May 1940. “Will we win? Or will we only give the Germans time, a breathing space, supplies?” Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 228–9 (RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2077, l. 63, 64ob.).

50. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 172. Speer gets the date wrong. See also Reynolds, “1940.”

51. He had settled upon the novella after a long search for a vehicle, as he had once explained, to explore “the heroism of construction, the new [Soviet] man, struggle and the overcoming of obstacles.” Morrison, People’s Artist, 88 (citing RGALI, f. 1929, op. 3, ed. khr. 30, l. 1); Vecherniaia Moskva, Dec. 6, 1932.

52. Richter, “On Prokofiev,” 187–8.

53. Final approval had come only after Vyshinsky, deputy commissar for foreign affairs, saw it and the film’s depiction of the German occupation of Ukraine was toned down. Morrison, People’s Artist, 102–4 (citing RGASPI f. 82, op. 2, d. 950, l. 99); Perkhin, Deiateli russkogo iskusstva, 607–8n4. See also Shlifshtein, “Semyon Kotko,” 3.

54. Zubkova, Pribaltika i Kreml. A Greek diplomat speculated, in an intercepted and deciphered communication, that “Moscow would like above all to drag out the war [in the West], from which it is trying to extract advantages—which, by the way, it is achieving, as evidenced by the example of the new impositions on the Baltic states.” Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 256 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 22, l. 106: June 1940).

55. DVP SSSR, XXIII/1: 350–2 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 2, pap. 2, d. 13, l. 103–4, 127).

56. Sabaliunas, Lithuania in Crisis, 54.

57. Kirby, “Baltic States,” 27 (citing Third Interim Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Aggression and the Forced Incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR [Washington, 1954], 315–6; File N 4794/803/59: Preston to Order, April 19, 1940).

58. Ocherki istorii kommunisticheskoi partii Latvii, II: 429. Stalin had murdered the entire Estonia Central Committee. Many of them had spent fourteen years in Estonian prisons following the 1924 failed coup, before being released in an amnesty in 1938 and emigrating to the USSR.

59. Gross, Revolution from Abroad. See also Kotkin, “The State.” Lithuania had emerged from Stalin’s gratuitous massacres with just 1,220 Communists.

60. Gross observes that “the Polish Military underground organization, the ZWZ, which thrived under the Nazi occupation in spite of persistent Gestapo efforts to destroy it, never had a chance under the NKVD.” Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 148.

61. Gross, “Nature of Soviet Totalitarianism.” Because Poland underwent Nazi and Soviet occupations simultaneously, it would seem the ideal (if that is the word) place to make the case for “totalitarianism” as a concept encompassing both regimes, yet Gross, a proponent of the term, also noted significant differences between the nature and consequences of Nazi and Soviet rule. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 230–1. After a trip to newly acquired western Ukraine and western Belorussia as a Pravda correspondent, the writer Avdeyenko returned with a new Buick. (On Sept. 9, 1940, he would be taken to task for being a “serial goods pursuer.”) Babichenko, Pisateli i tsenzory, 22–31. The writer Vishnevsky, afforded a visit to the front in Finland, had written in his diary (Jan. 2, 1940), “I am ashamed to the point of horror to see how our people soiled many homes in Finland, how they carried off everything.” Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 226–7 (citing RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2076, l. 2).

62. Khabarovsk OGPU materials of the early 1930s (to which I was given access in 1993) contain extremely specific, comprehensive characterizations for the population, right down to dwellings drawn to scale, in the émigré settlements across the border in Manchuria, even as the Soviet authorities could not feed or clothe the population in Khabarovsk region.

63. In the 1940 Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language, the word sovetizirovat’ (to Sovietize) was defined as “To implant Soviet ideology, worldview, and understanding of the practical tasks of Soviet power.” Amar, “Sovietization as a Civilizing Mission in the West,” 31.

64. Beria wrote to Stalin that in the summer of 1940, the police archive in Kishinëv, seized from Romania, had been burned before the NKVD could seize it. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 308 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 22, l. 301).

65. “The capitalists succeeded for a time in playing on the national distrust of Latvian, Estonian, and Finnish peasants, as well as shopkeepers, toward the Great Russians,” Schcherbakov would admit after the annexations to the Supreme Soviet (Aug. 1, 1940), in connection with the failures in 1918–20 to reconquer these lands. When the transcript was getting ready for publication, he crossed out “national distrust” and inserted a passage about “bourgeois politicians” in cahoots with the “imperialist bourgeoisie,” “deceiving” these peoples. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 86 (citing RGASPI, f. 88, op. 1, d. 1015, l. 5).

66. Kul’turnaia zhizn’ v SSSR, 1928–1941, 734.

67. The Taras Shevchenko Theater of Ballet and Opera performed Natalka-Poltavka, The Zaporozhets beyond the Danube, and other folk favorites. Literaturnaia gazeta, March 27, 1936; Sovetskaia kul’tura v rekonstruktivnyi period, 517. Pravda, March 24, 1936; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 115 (citing RGALI, f. 962, op. 21, d. 1, l. 10); Cherushev, Komendanty Kremlia, 477–8. A Kazakh Ten-Day followed (May 17–26), with 350 participants, including the Kazakh Musical Theater, which performed the first Kazakh opera, a form that was a Soviet implant but, in this case, with a story based on the sixteenth-century oral epic Kyz Zhibek. The sensation proved to be the traditional improviser-troubadours (akyns), who sang tales accompanied by a dombra. Literaturnaia gazeta, May 10 and 15, 1936; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 115–6 (citing RGALI, f. 962, op. 21, d. 1, l. 10). See also Ubiria, Soviet Nation-Building, 169–70. Maya Plisteskaya, the ballerina, condescendingly observed that “Soviet Leaders positively loved these showy-imitation Ten-Days,” then admitted that “these parades mobilized creative people to an extreme. Everyone worked to the limits (otherwise, you look up, and you don’t get the little medal, and they don’t summon you to the final banquet). So you forget all the negatives. . . . These Ten-Days gathered the best forces.” Plisetskaia, Chitaia zhizn’ svoiu, 93.

68. Uzbekistan’s Ten-Day had taken place May 21–30, 1937, with some 600 participants; they performed Farkhad and Shirin by V. A. Uspensky and Giulsara by R. M. Glier and T. D. Jalilov, with a Kremlin reception on May 31, 1937. Literaturnaia gazeta, May 30, 1937; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 116–7 (citing RGALI, f. 962, op. 21, d. 1, l. 11). Azerbaijan’s took place on April 5–15, 1938, with more than 600 participants and a banquet on April 17 in the St. George’s Hall and the Palace of Facets. Fadeev, Vstrechi s tovarishem Stalinym, 168. Armenia’s would take place Oct. 20–29, 1939, with 550 participants. The Spendiarov Opera and Ballet Theater performed Spendiarov’s opera Almast, A. T. Tigranyan’s opera Anush, and Khachaturyan’s ballet Happiness. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 119–20 (citing RGALI, f. 962, op. 21, d. 20, l. 70; d. 1, l. 11); Chegodaeva, Dva lika vremeni, 301.

69. The committee had sent the conductor Vasily Tselikovsky (b. 1900) of the Bolshoi to Frunze, the Kyrgyz capital, already in 1936 for the Ten-Day in Moscow (planned for 1938). Ballet master L. I. Lukin, also sent to Frunze, would be imprisoned there as an enemy of the people, but released five days before the much-delayed Ten-Day opened in Moscow on May 25, 1939, with more than 500 participants. Bakhtarov, Zapiski aktera, 85–86. A Kyrgyz ensemble performed Altyn Kys as well as Aichurek (Moon Beauty), the first Kyrgyz opera, co-written by Vladimir Vlasov and Vladimir Feré from Moscow. Ivanov, Dnevniki, 28. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 113–4. Bakhtarov, Zapiski aktera, 82. Brusilovsky wrote the Kazakh operas, Bogatryev, the Tajik ones. “The resourceful officials of the Committee on Artistic Matters,” Jelagin wrote, “even managed to conjure up a Buryat-Mongol opera.” Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 262, 263.

70. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 232–3.

71. Latyshev, “I eshche odin tost ‘vozhdia narodov,’” 141–2; Sovetskaia kul’tura v rekonstruktivnyi period, 517–20. Gromov, Stalin, 330.

72. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 120. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 98–102.

73. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 163 (Ribbentrop to Fabricius, June 27, 1940); Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 483–4 (June 25, 1940); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, I: 371–3; Gafencu, Last Days of Europe, 387–91. Gafencu resigned as foreign minister; Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 489 (no citation).

74. Novikov, Vospominaniia diplomata, 41; Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 488–9 (no citation). The secret protocol (clause 3) of the Pact was ambiguous: “With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinterestedness in these areas.” Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 78n34.

75. Izvestiya (June 29, 1940) trumpeted “the new victory of the USSR’s politics of peace,” and called the northern part of Bukovina “a typically Ukrainian province.”

76. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VIII: 196–7 (June 28, 1940). Stalin had even obtained approval for this action from Mussolini, Hitler’s ostensible ally, in exchange for recognition of Italian primacy in the Mediterranean. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 29 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 2, pap. 20, d. 229, l. 1–6: Molotov-Rosso, June 20, 1940; f. 059, op. 1, pap. 330, d. 2269, l. 84–5: Molotov to Gorelkin, June 27, 1940); Schramm-von Thadden, Griechenland, 27. See also Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina, 26.

77. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 158–9 (Ribbentrop to Schulenburg, June 25, 1940), 159–60 (Schulenburg to Ribbentrop, June 25, 1940), 161–2 (Schulenburg to Ribbentrop, June 26, 1940), 163; Rossi, Deux ans, 153 n2 (Schulenburg to Ribbentrop, July 17, 1940). Romanian oil production had begun to decline after 1936. Pearton, Oil and the Romanian State, 201–3. On July 4, 1940, Moscow asked Tokyo, which had long agreed not to recognize Romania’s annexation of Bessarabia, to recognize the Soviet annexation. Elleman, “Secret Soviet-Japanese Agreement,” 294 (citing Gaimushō, B100–JR/1).

78. Gafencu, Last Days of Europe, 390–2.

79. German occupation authorities in Belgium sought to shutter the Soviet trade mission. Mikoyan urged Stalin and Molotov not to allow that to happen, for “we have unfulfilled orders from Belgium and the Belgian Congo totaling 8,578,000 rubles.” Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 125 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 62, l. 39: July 20, 1940).

80. Soviet counterintelligence personnel did not trust even the Communists installed in power there by Moscow, especially in Estonia. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 306–7 (TsA FSB, f. 8os, op. 1, d. 81, l. 2; f. 14os, op. 1, d. 15, l. 201–2). On July 27, 1940, Stalin’s “big fleet” program was reined in: ten instead of fifteen battleships, eight instead of sixteen battle cruisers, even as two small aircraft carriers for the Pacific Fleet were added. Hauner, “Stalin’s Big-Fleet Program”; Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet, 113.

81. The report reached Stalin the very next day. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 20–6 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 435, l. 39–51).

82. Of Chamberlain and the Tories, Cripps had publicly written, “I am convinced that our reactionaries have no genuine desire to enter into a reciprocal agreement with Russia, but rather wish to use Russia for our own purposes so that by embroiling Russia with Germany they may save their own skins.” Tribune, March 24, 1939.

83. Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 42–3.

84. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 197–99; Jones, Lloyd George, 247–8; Rudman, Lloyd George. Lloyd George had met Hitler in Sept. 1936, gushing that the Nazi desired friendship with the British people, had “achieved a marvelous transformation in the spirit of the [German] people, and was the greatest German of the age, the George Washington of Germany—the man who won for his country independence from all her oppressors.” He even concluded that “the establishment of a German hegemony in Europe, which was the aim and dream of the old pre-war militarism, is not even on the horizon of Nazism.” “I Talked to Hitler,” Daily Express [London], Nov. 17, 1936; Jones, Diary with Letters, 269.

85. Hanak, “Sir Stafford Cripps”; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow; Clarke, Cripps Version, 183–241.

86. “I am sorry for Sir S. Cripps, who is now entering the humiliating phase which all British negotiators in Moscow have to go through when they are simply kept waiting on the doormat until such time as the Soviet Government considers it desirable, as part of their policy of playing off one Power against the other to take notice,” a perceptive foreign office official in London observed on June 23, 1940. “Stalin hopes to be able to counter any German browbeating and nagging by pointing to Sir S. Cripps on the doormat, threatening to have him in and start talking with him instead of the German Ambassador.” Hanak, “Sir Stafford Cripps,” 59 (citing TNA, FO 371/24844 5853: Sir Orme Sargent).

87. The logbooks for Stalin’s office for July 1 list only Molotov, 5:35 p.m. until 6:25 p.m., but also note “last ones departed at 9:40 p.m.” It is likely that Molotov left to retrieve Cripps, who noted that the meeting commenced at 6:30 p.m., and returned with Cripps, but neither was recorded in the logbooks. Na prieme, 305. Cripps had handed Molotov the letter from Churchill at 5:00 p.m., according to the Soviet translator-notetaker Pavlov: DVP SSSR, XXIII/i: 399 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 2, pap. 10, d. 100, l. 1–2).

88. For the Soviet transcript of Cripps’s July 1, 1940, conversation with Stalin, see “Priem angliiskogo posla S. Krippsa,” Diplomaticheskii vestnik (Moscow, 1993), 74–7, reprinted in Sochineniia, XVIII: 190–7, and in DVP SSSR, XXXIII/i: 394–9 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 278, l. 4–11). For the British version, see Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 52 (citing PRO, FO 371/24846, f. 10, N 6526/30/38: Cripps to the Foreign Office, July 16, 1940); and Clarke, Cripps Version, 192.

89. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 19–22; Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 52–5; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 60. For Churchill’s message to Stalin: Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 466–7. British embassy staff concluded that “nothing of importance emerged from this interview” with Stalin. Clarke, Cripps Version, 192 (citing FO 371/29464, f. 128).

90. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 19–22. Maisky was convinced the foreign office was sabotaging Cripps. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 211–3 (July 1, 1940). Churchill later sought to scapegoat Cripps, but Gorodetsky exposed Churchill’s distortions. Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 116–22. Still, there was some truth to Churchill’s remark concerning the Labourite Cripps that “we did not at that time realise that Soviet Communists [read: Stalin] hate extreme Left Wing politicians even more than they do Tories and Liberals.” Churchill, Second World War, II: 118.

91. Paxton, Vichy France, 43; Lukacs, Duel, 160–5. Maisky also claimed to have been received by Churchill at 10 Downing Street on July 3. Maisky, Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador, 96–100.

92. “The ‘Vienna to Versailles’ period has run its course,” wrote the Polish-born British historian Lewis Namier in Feb. 1940. “The first task is to save Europe from the Nazi onslaught—a difficult task; but even greater will be the work of resettling a morally and materially bankrupt world on a new basis.” Namier, “From Vienna to Versailles,” 17–8.

93. On the Baltics as a sticking point for Britain, see Henderson, Failure of a Mission, 251.

94. A corrective, in domestic political terms, to those who see a gulf between the two Conservatives, Churchill and Chamberlain, can be found in Lawlor, Churchill and the Politics of War, 88–111.

95. “Russia and the West,” The Economist, July 27, 1940: 113.

96. Lukacs, Duel, 72–7, 184–6, 207–10; Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i (Dec. 29, 1940: Lloyd George surmise).

97. Amid rumors of a Soviet-British rapprochement, Schulenburg reported that Stalin remained loyal to Berlin and only wanted some tin and rubber from Britain. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 142–3.

98. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 38 (citing APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 435, l. 39–51: Proskurov to Stalin, June 4, 1940).

99. DVP SSSR, XXIII/i: 399 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 326, d. 2238, l. 149–51: July 13, 1940); DGFP, series D, X: 207–8 (Schulenburg to Ribbentrop, July 13,1940); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 166–8; Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 258–60.

100. Back in Feb. 1940, German violations of Soviet airspace had drawn fire, and the intruders turned tail. On March 17, thirty-two German fighters and bombers entered Soviet airspace on the path to Moscow, and again Soviet border guards opened fire; one German plane was hit and crashed. On March 29, Beria, following Stalin’s instructions, sent a directive to the border guards: no opening fire; airspace violations were merely to be registered. On April 5, 1940, came a further prohibition against the use of firearms anywhere on the frontier (with the inflow of diversionists, the order was sometimes ignored). A June 10, 1940, border convention specified that any plane crossing the border accidentally was to be returned. Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 1939–iuin’ 1941, 292; Sechkin, Granitsa i voina, 53–5 (citing TsAPV, f. 14, op. 224, d. 110, l. 1, 17, 21).

101. Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 490 (July 3, 1940); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 6-7.

102. This was before, it turned out, secret feasibility studies had even been completed by the Wehrmacht. Alt, “Die Wehrmacht im Kalkül Stalins,” 107–9; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, 90–2.

103. Golovanov, Zapiski komanduiushchego ADD, 299. In the 1920s, Shaposhnikov, along with the Voroshilovs and Mikoyans, had used the dacha Zubalovo-2 when Stalin and his wife Nadzezhda used the dacha Zubalovo-4 next door. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 27.

104. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): 86 (RGVA, f. 40442, op. 2, d. 170, l. 112).

105. A. M. Vasilevskii, “Nakanune voiny,” 5–8 (citing TsAMO, f. 16, op. 2951, d. 239, l. 1–37, l. 197–244: Sept. 18, 1940), (d. 242, l. 84–90: Oct. 5), d. 239, l. 245–77 (not later than Dec.).

106. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 125 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 1, d. 15, l. 82).

107. Ogonek, Sept. 1940, Jan. 1941.

108. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 487–500. See also Weinberg, World at Arms, 164. “Cripps argues that we must give everything—recognition, gold, ships and trust to the Russians,” Cadogan wrote in his diary (Aug. 17, 1940): “This is simply silly . . . Extraordinary how we go on kidding ourselves. Russian policy will change exactly when and if they think it will suit them. And if they do think that, it won’t matter whether we’ve kicked Maisky in the stomach. Contrariwise, we could give Maisky the Garter and it wouldn’t make a penn’orth of difference.” Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 321.

109. On July 9, 1940, Pavel Fitin, head of NKVD intelligence, reported that “the former King Edward together with his wife, Simpson, are currently in Madrid, whence they maintain contacts with Hitler. Edward is conducting negotiations with Hitler on the question of forming a new English government and the conclusion of a peace with Germany on the condition of a military alliance against the USSR.” This could well have been disinformation from MI6 to push Moscow into talks with London. Shirokorad, Velikii antrakt, 99. See also Varga, “Mezhdunarodnoe polozhenie,” 15–6.

110. “Vansittart spoke eloquently and at length about the misunderstanding and underestimation of the English character abroad,” Maisky would record in his diary (Dec. 12, 1940). “It has been so ever since time immemorial. Napoleon, Bismarck, the Kaiser, and now Hitler, Ribbentrop and Mussolini—they were all grossly mistaken in fancying the English to be a ‘nation of shopkeepers,’ ‘degenerate gentlemen,’ ‘depraved plutocrats,’ etc., who cannot and will not fight whatever the circumstances. A profound mistake.” Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/I: 305–6; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 324. On British arms exports, see Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine.

111. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 174–5. All propaganda outlets, from TASS on down, continued to trumpet the Soviet pursuit of “peace.” Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 76 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 57, l. 59–74).

112. Zhukov later stated that “the only one in Stalin’s inner circle, in my memory and in my presence, who voiced another point of view about the possibility of a German attack was Zhdanov. He consistently spoke very sharply about the Germans and insisted that Hitler could not be trusted in anything.” But Zhdanov distrusted the British no less. Simonov, “Zametki,” 49. A table of Stalin’s inner circle visitors appears in Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 290. Zhdanov had observed to the Leningrad party in spring 1940 that for the USSR, “it is more pleasant, useful, and valuable to have alongside us not anti-Soviet Anglo-French allies, who harbor the intention of attacking either Germany or Leningrad . . . [but] a country that is in friendly relations with us”—i.e., Germany. Nevezhin, “Sovetskaia politika,” 26.

113. “‘He’s a thoroughly likeable person,’ I remember thinking as we sat there, and thinking it in astonishment,” Lyons had recalled of the conversation in 1930. “‘Are you a dictator?’ Stalin smiled, implying that the question was on the preposterous side. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘I am no dictator.’” Lyons, Stalin, 196, 200, 203; Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 387. Waldemar Gurian rightly noted of Lyons’s book that “the most valuable parts are based upon Souvarine’s monumental study of Stalin.” Review of Politics 2/4 (1940): 506–8. Sourvarine’s work had been translated into English the year before.

114. Lyons, Stalin, 278, 291–2.

115. Gregory and Harrison, “Allocation under Dictatorship.”

116. Osokina, Za fasadom, 206–18; Khanin, Ekonomicheskaia istoriia Rossii, I: 29. Harvests had stabilized (at overreported levels), and state procurements were high, but grain exports and their revenues had declined. In 1940 the Soviet state procured 33.8 million tons of grain and exported 1.2 million, earning the hard currency equivalent of 51.2 million rubles, compared with 26 million tons and exports of 2.1 million, earning 48.8 million gold rubles, in 1937. Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR, 1918–1966, 20–1.

117. Pykhov, Ekononomika, 12. Annual per capita consumption of absolute alcohol was estimated at 0.6 gallon (2.24 liters) in 1940, and that was excluding brandy, champagne, fruit and berry wines, and imports. Prot’ko, V bor’be za trezvost’, 129.

118. The police labeled them “black commodity exchanges” and noted their shadowy existence in nineteen cities, but also that some instituted an arbitration panel to resolve disputes, and bribed investigative officials to avert their eyes. Those involved often legally worked as plenipotentiaries tasked with pushing along fulfillment of the official orders for state companies. Rittersporn, Anguish, 225 (citing GARF, f. 9415, op. 5, d. 87, l. 8–14, 18, 20ob.).

119. Rittersporn, Anguish, 220 (citing GARF f. 8131, op. 37, d. 242, l. 103–4).

120. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity, 280; Filtzer, Soviet Workers.

121. Pravda, June 26, 1940; Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 233–53. Back at a meeting on June 19, 1940, Stalin had explained that workers in capitalist countries worked ten to twelve hours, and that the Bolsheviks had “understood the economy poorly” when introducing the seven-hour workday in 1927. The new labor law restored the eight-hour workday (without additional pay). He partly blamed indiscipline and turnover on Soviet trade unions (“not a school of communism, but a school of self-seekers”). Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 112 (June 19, 1940); Khlevniuk, “26 iiunia 1940 goda,” 89.

122. “Vot gde Pravda, Nikita Sergeevich!,”17.

123. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 300–1, 327; Rittersporn, Anguish, 233 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 550, l. 922–3, 101–3; GARF, f. 8131, op. 37, d. 137, l. 53–4; f. 9415, op. 5, d. 205, l. 5).

124. Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 239. Some managers were demoted or demonstratively arrested for failing to apply the draconian law, but job turnover and absenteeism persisted. “O kontrole nad provedeniem v zhizn’ ukaza presidiuma verkhovnogo soveta SSSR ot 26 iiunia 1940,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 676, I: 41–42ob.

125. Khlevniuk, “26 iiunia 1940 goda.” See also Markevich and Sokolov, “Magnitka bliz Sadovogo kol’tsa.” “We cannot be indifferent to who is joining the working class,” Stalin would lament later. “If this goes on in spontaneous fashion, the composition of the working class may be ruined. And correspondingly, the regime as a dictatorship of the working class may be ruined. But at present they latch on to anyone who turns up for a job.” Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 113 (Sept. 26, 1940).

126. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 225 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1124, l. 46–7).

127. Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, II: 368–74.

128. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie, 168.

129. Trial of the Major War Criminals, XXXIV: 277 (Raeder for Assmann, Jan. 30, 1944).

130. Churchill, Second World War, II: 200 (letter to Smuts).

131. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie; Martin, Friedensinitiativen und Machtpolitik.

132. Raeder explained on July 11 that “in her weakened state, Britain will seek the support of the United States, in whose interests it is to preserve England as a powerful European state. This will automatically make the United States Germany’s enemy. The two Anglo-Saxon powers will retain or rebuild their maritime resources in order to defend their empire and will thus become the next natural enemies of Germany to be dealt with.” The next day Hitler ordered redirection of armaments investment to the Luftwaffe and the navy, with highest priority to U-boats. None of that would be achieved quickly. On July 13, Hitler convened a military conference at the Berghof. “He sees the answer (as we do) in Britain’s hopes on Russia,” General Halder wrote in his diary. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie, 147 (citing Kriegstagebuch der Seekriegsleitung, Teil A, July 11, 1940); Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 394 (citing BAMA RW19/164; and IWM EDS al 1492, Chef Wi Rue Amt, Aug. 20, 1940, Aktennotiz); Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 504–6 (July 13, 1940); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 19–22.