Stalin

NOTES

Preface

1. Adam. B. Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York, 1973); Robert C. Tucker: Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), and Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York, 1990).

2. Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (London, 2004); Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin: Profiles in Power (New York, 2005); Sarah Davies and James Harris, eds., Stalin: A New History (New York, 2005); Miklos Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest and New York, 2003); Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement: From Koba to Commissar (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). Concerning Stalin the dictator and his relations with the rest of the Soviet leadership, see Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven and London, 2008), and Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York, 2004). Some works have attempted to peer into Stalin’s inner world: A. J. Rieber, “Stalin, Man of the Borderlands,” American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (2001): 1651–1691; Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London and New York, 2002); B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002); Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him (New York, 2005). Many works on the Terror and the Gulag have added to our understanding of Stalin’s personal role in organizing mass repression: Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 (New York, 2003); V. N. Khaustov and L. Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii. 1936–1938 (Moscow, 2009); Jörg Baberowski, Verbrannte Erde: Stalins Herrschaft der Gewalt (Munich, 2012). Despite copious literature on World War II, Stalin’s role as supreme commander in chief has yet to be adequately investigated. An analogous lacuna exists in regard to the Cold War and Stalin’s handling of foreign policy.

3. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991); Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives (New York, 1997); Simon Sebag Montefiore: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London, 2003), and Young Stalin (London, 2007).

4. Collections of letters have been published as part of the Annals of Communism Series: Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995), and R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven and London, 2003).

5. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008).

6. S. V. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 2010), pp. 113–114.

7. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1–11. (An opis’ [op.] is the equivalent of a drawer in a filing cabinet.) Opis’ 11 comprises Stalin’s personal archive, brought to RGASPI from the Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation (the former Politburo Archive).

8. “Thematic” folders (tematicheskie papki) are subject-specific folders of documents that were submitted to the Politburo and Stalin; they comprise the main historical component of the Presidential Archive.

9. Sergei Khrushchev, ed.: Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar (University Park, PA, 2004); Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006); and Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3: Statesman (University Park, PA, 2007); A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999); Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, The Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan (Madison, CT, 1988).

10. In a splendid review published soon after Mikoyan’s memoirs came out in Russian, Michael Ellman convincingly argued that Mikoyan’s text had been altered (Michael Ellman, “The Road from Il’ich to Il’ich,” Slavic Review 60, no. 1 [2001]: 141). In a response, Mikoyan’s son Sergo categorically stated, “I did not ‘correct’ my father’s stories” (Slavic Review, 60, no. 4 [2001]: 917). This vague formulation came with an important subtext. Sergo Mikoyan was not saying that he did not alter the dictated manuscript, leaving open the possibility that he did supplement the initial transcript of his father’s dictation with subsequent accounts by the elder Mikoyan that were not “correct.” Clearly, any such additions should have been made explicit or, better yet, placed in a footnote.

11. See, for example, Sergo Beria, Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin (London, 2001).

12. E. Yu. Zubkova, “O ‘detskoi’ literature i drugikh problemakh nashei istoricheskoi pamiati,” in Istoricheskie issledovaniia v Rossii. Tendentsii poslednikh let, ed. G. A. Bordiugov (Moscow, 1996), pp. 155–178.

The Seats of Stalin’s Power

1. Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov (1902–1988) was a party bureaucrat who worked for many years in the Central Committee apparat. In the late 1930s, he was elevated by Stalin to the highest echelons of power, buoyed by the waves of mass repression. During the dictator’s last years, Malenkov served as his deputy within the government and the Central Committee Secretariat. After Stalin’s death he was appointed chairman of the Soviet government, an appointment that seemed to label him as Stalin’s unofficial heir. However, Malenkov lost out to Khrushchev in the battle for supreme power and was forced into humiliatingly low-level posts before spending his remaining years in retirement. Other unsuccessful rivals for power had the relative democratization of the USSR to thank for their fates. Under Stalin, disgraced politicians generally paid with their lives.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (1899–1953) began his career in state security. In the early 1930s, Stalin put Beria in charge of Georgia and in 1938 brought him to Moscow and appointed him people’s commissar for internal affairs (head of the NKVD, the main agency of state security); as such, he was assigned to purge the ranks of the secret police and wind down the Great Terror. In subsequent years, Beria became one of Stalin’s closest associates. He was his deputy within the government and oversaw the Soviet nuclear project, as well as other important divisions of the Soviet system, including the Gulag. After Stalin’s death, Beria brought all “punitive organs” under his own control. This move alarmed the other Soviet leaders. They closed ranks and had Beria arrested, accused of countless crimes, and shot. Legends circulated that Beria had had special influence over Stalin and that many of the crimes of the Stalinist regime were his handiwork. In fact, Beria was just one of the men who implemented Stalin’s orders and did not play a notably independent role in carrying out the mass repression. See Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, NJ, 1993).

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (1894–1971) came to Moscow from Ukraine to study at the Industrial Academy, where he got to know Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Allilueva. This acquaintance provided the first impetus to his career, and he began to advance through the ranks of the Moscow party committee. In the late 1930s, new opportunities for advancement came as other officials succumbed to the mass repression. He was appointed party secretary for Ukraine, one of the most important Soviet republics. After the war, Stalin placed him in charge of the party organization in Moscow. In the wake of Stalin’s death, Khrushchev became head of the Central Committee apparat. This post enabled him to outmaneuver Stalin’s other political heirs and become the new Soviet leader. However, Khrushchev was not Stalin. His democratic reforms (the Khrushchev Thaw), his condemnation of Stalin’s Cult of Personality, and his advocacy of freedom for Gulag prisoners, along with numerous tactical blunders, led to a plot against him. In late 1964, he was deprived of his post by purely legal means, but not of his life. He lived out his days as a pensioner. While in retirement, he dictated his well-known memoirs. See William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York, 2003).

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin (1895–1975) was among those who rose through the ranks to fill the vacancies created in the Soviet apparat by the Great Terror. Stalin began to promote Bulganin at the end of the war. As a counterweight to career military men, the civil servant Bulganin was placed in senior posts in the defense commissariat and eventually appointed defense minister. Contemporary accounts portray Bulganin as an expressionless functionary who simply followed orders. After Stalin’s death, Bulganin chaired the Council of Ministers, succeeding the disgraced Malenkov. However, he picked the losing side during Khrushchev’s rise to power and was sent into retirement.

2. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (1890–1986) was one of Stalin’s closest comrades-in-arms, their relationship dating back to prerevolutionary times. From then on, Molotov served as Stalin’s faithful supporter and played a key role during Stalin’s struggle for supreme power. In return, Molotov was appointed to top government posts. In 1930–1941, he chaired the Soviet government (the Council of People’s Commissars). When Stalin himself took over this post in 1941, Molotov was made his deputy. For many years Molotov was in charge of foreign affairs. Within the country and the party, he was seen as Stalin’s heir. For this reason, toward the end of his life, Stalin began to clamp down on Molotov and, in late 1952, eventually expelled him from the ruling circle. Nevertheless, Molotov remained loyal to Stalin even after his death. This loyalty was one source of tension between Molotov and Khrushchev, who encouraged criticism of the Cult of Personality. Molotov lost out to Khrushchev during the decisive clash of 1957. He held a succession of minor posts before being forced into retirement. See Derek Watson, Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930–41 (Basingstoke, UK, 1996).

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (1895–1978) was one of the revolutionary and party activists from Transcaucasia who, thanks to Stalin, wound up making a brilliant career in Moscow. For several decades, Mikoyan was in charge of Soviet trade and the food and consumer-goods industry. In late 1952, Mikoyan fell into disgrace, together with Molotov. After Stalin’s death, he restored his position and gave his allegiance to Khrushchev. He played an important role in resolving the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. After Khrushchev’s removal, Mikoyan’s career went into decline. Nevertheless, he is considered a model Soviet political survivor, renowned for his adaptability.

Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov (1881–1969) was one of Stalin’s closest friends during the 1918–1920 Civil War. In the mid-1920s, Stalin placed him in charge of the Red Army, a post for which Voroshilov was clearly not well suited. Shortly before the 1941 German invasion, Stalin was forced to replace him. During World War II, Voroshilov formally remained among the country’s top leadership; however, he held secondary posts. After Stalin’s death, Voroshilov was appointed to the figurehead post of president of the USSR. He supported Molotov and the other Soviet leaders who opposed Khrushchev in 1957 and soon thereafter went into retirement.

3. Yoram Gorlizki, “Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet Neo-patrimonial State, 1946–1953,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 699–736.

4. Interview with Admiral I. S. Isakov in K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), p. 433.

5. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), p. 7.

6. V. Bogomolova et al., comps., Moskovskii Kreml’ tsitadel’ Rossii (Moscow, 2009), pp. 310–313.

7. After Shumiatsky’s arrest in 1938, these records were given to Stalin and placed in his personal archive. They have been published in K. M. Anderson et al., comps., Kremlevskii kinoteatr. 1928–1953 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 919–1053.

8. Nadezhda Sergeevna Allilueva (1901–1932) grew up in the family of a proletarian revolutionary with whom Stalin had long been acquainted. She and Stalin were married in 1919. Allilueva worked in Lenin’s secretariat and in the editorial offices of a Moscow journal before enrolling in the Moscow Industrial Academy. Further details can be found in the section on Stalin’s family preceding chapter 6 below.

9. This and subsequent information about Stalin’s dacha comes from 1953 god. Mezhdu proshlym i budushchim (exhibition catalogue) (Moscow, 2003), and S. V. Deviatov, A. Shefov, and Iu. Iur’ev, Blizhniaia dacha Stalina. Opyt istoricheskogo putevoditelia (Moscow, 2011).

10. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillian (New York, 1967), p. 21.

11. Deviatov, Shefov, and Iur’ev, Blizhniaia dacha Stalina, p. 287. Lozgachev has provided information relating to the postwar years, but there is evidence suggesting that Stalin took an active interest in the productivity of the dacha lands in earlier years as well.

12. Lazar Kaganovich mentions the existence of such a notebook in F. I. Chuev, Kaganovich. Shepilov (Moscow, 2001), p. 137.

13. Letter to Lazar Kaganovich, 24 September 1931. Cited in R. W. Davies, et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–36 (New Haven and London, 2003), p. 98.

14. In Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 117.

15. In Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar (University Park, PA, 2004), p. 290.

16. M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Litso totalitarizma (Moscow, 1992), p. 108.

17. From an account by Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi (Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 [1997]: 117).

18. 1953 god. Mezhdu proshlym i budushchim, p. 75.

19. Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948) joined the Bolshevik party before the revolution and afterward held various provincial party posts. In 1934 Stalin brought him to Moscow and made him a Central Committee secretary. After Kirov’s murder, Zhdanov replaced him as Leningrad party boss. Until his death he remained one of Stalin’s closest comrades-in-arms and enjoyed good relations with the leader. Zhdanov’s son was briefly married to Stalin’s daughter.

20. In Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1, pp. 102–103.

21. In Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, p. 68.

22. Ibid., p. 117.

23. Ibid., pp. 146–147.

24. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), p. 571.

25. This idea is developed in Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London and New York, 2002).

26. Cited in G. Dmitrov, Dnevnik (Sophia, 1997), p. 128.

27. Cited in V. M. Berezhkov, Riadom so Stalinym (Moscow, 1999), p. 371. Berezhkov was Stalin’s interpreter.

Chapter 1. Before the Revolution

1. L. M. Spirin, “Kogda rodilsia Stalin: Popravki k ofitsial’noi biografii,” Izvestiia, 25 June 1990; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1990): 132–134.

2. A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 88–89. Ostrovskii’s book was the first biography to focus on Stalin’s youth and was based on newly discovered documents from Moscow and Georgian archives. Other works appeared later: Miklos Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest and New York, 2003); Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (London, 2007); Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement: From Koba to Commissar (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). My account of Stalin’s early life draws on these books to varying degrees.

3. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 86–88, 93, 99.

4. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 878, l. 73. Unless otherwise noted, translations are by Nora Favorov.

5. R. G. Suny, “Beyond Psychohistory: The Young Stalin in Georgia,” Slavic Review 46, no. 1 (1991): 52.

6. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 115. Interview with the German author Emil Ludwig, 13 December 1931.

7. Cited in Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), pp. 6–19.

8. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1549, l. 83.

9. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 96–97, 102–104.

10. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 876, l. 12.

11. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 4, l. 1; d. 5, l. 1.

12. Cited in Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), pp. 7–8.

13. L. D. Trotsky, Stalin, (Benson, VT, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 32–33.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (1879–1940) was, for a while, perceived both within the fledgling Soviet state and internationally as second only to Lenin in leading the Bolshevik revolution. The peak of his glory came during the Civil War, in which he led the Red Army to victory. After the war, Trotsky took an active part in the struggle for power and influence that erupted among the Soviet leaders. In 1928, after losing this struggle, Trotsky was sent into exile. He remained politically active in emigration and worked to expose his political nemesis, Stalin, on whose orders he was killed in 1940 in Mexico by a Soviet agent.

14. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 108–111.

15. Ibid., pp. 124–125.

16. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, pp. 115–116. Interview with the German author Emil Ludwig, 13 December 1931.

17. Cited in V. Kaminskii and I. Vereshchagin, “Detstvo i iunost’ vozhdia: Dokumenty, zapiski, rasskazy,” Molodaia gvardiia, no. 12 (1939): 65.

18. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), pp. 80–82.

19. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 600, ll. 1–7; f. 71; op. 10, d. 266, ll. 7–11.

20. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 32, ll. 1–2.

21. Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 3.

22. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 53, ll. 1–15; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 148.

23. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 149.

24. Kaminskii and Vereshchagin, “Detstvo i iunost’ vozhdia,” pp. 84–85.

25. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 53, l. 13.

26. Ibid., op. 4, d. 60, ll. 1–3.

27. Ibid., op. 11, d. 879, l. 45.

28. Ibid., op. 4, d. 65, ll. 1–4.

29. Trotsky, Stalin, vol. 1, p. 44.

30. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 154–155.

31. A. J. Rieber, “Stalin, Man of the Borderlands,” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 1651–1691; Alfred J. Rieber, “Stalin as Georgian: The Formative Years,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 18–44.

32. I. Baberovski [J. Baberowski], Vrag est’ vezde. Stalinizm na Kavkaze (Moscow, 2010), p. 15.

33. Documents from Boris Nicolaevsky’s archive published by Iu. G. Fel’shtinskii and G. I. Cherniavskii in Voprosy istorii, no. 14 (2012): 16.

34. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 72, l. 9.

35. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 188–189.

36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 619, ll. 175–177.

37. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 212–218.

38. Erik van Ree, “The Stalinist Self: The Case of Ioseb Jughashvili (1898–1907),” Kritika 11, no. 2 (2010): 265–266; Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 4.

39. Erik van Ree, “Reluctant Terrorists? Transcaucasian Social-Democracy, 1901–1909,” Europe-Asia Studies 40, no. 1 (2008); Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 9.

40. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 254.

41. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 896, l. 115.

42. For more details on the heist, see Montefiore, Young Stalin. See also Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 11. Miklos Kun has uncovered some evidence that Stalin assisted in the preparations for Kamo’s operation (Stalin, pp. 77–79).

43. Documents from Boris Nicolaevsky’s archive published by Iu. G. Fel’shtinskii and G. I. Cherniavskii in Voprosy istorii, no. 7 (2010): 34, and no. 9 (2010): 11.

44. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 292.

45. Z. I. Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii (1880–1917 gg.) (Moscow, 2000), pp. 242–274.

46. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 329–330.

47. Cited in Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii, p. 246.

48. Roman Vatslavovich Malinovsky (1876–1918) was a metalworker, labor union activist, and member of the Bolshevik party who enjoyed Lenin’s special patronage. In 1912 he was elected to the State Duma and in 1913 became chairman of the Duma’s Bolshevik faction. Meanwhile, he served many years as a police double agent. Under threat of exposure, he fled Russia in 1914. In 1918 he returned to Soviet Russia hoping to be pardoned. Instead, he was shot.

49. These letters were opened by the police and therefore survive in police archives. Copies of them are also in the Stalin Collection (Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 396–398; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1288, ll. 12–14, 18, 28, 32–35).

50. Letter to Roman Malinovsky in late November 1913.

51. Letter to T. A. Slavotinskaia, dated 20 November 1913.

52. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 52, l. 1; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 402–403.

53. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5394, ll. 2–3; A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 19.

54. Ia. M. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, (Moscow, 1957), vol. 1, p. 227.

55. A. S. Allilueva, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1946), p. 115.

56. In Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 132. Translation slightly edited.

57. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 1, p. 280.

58. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1288, ll. 15–16; B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002), pp. 289, 291, 294–297; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 393.

59. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 773, ll. 79–82; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, pp. 297–298.

60. In any event, Stalin soon ceased to have anything to do with Pereprygina. After he left exile she married and was later widowed with eight children (Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 310).

61. Letter to O. Ye. Allilueva dated 25 November 1915. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 55, l. 2; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 21.

62. Trotsky, Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 248–249.

63. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 17–20; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 397–401, 412–413, 415.

64. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 54, l. 1.

65. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 49 (Moscow, 1970), pp. 101, 161.

The Bulwarks of Stalin’s Power

1. There is a tradition that views Stalin’s final illness and death as the result of a poisoning organized by Beria. One of the most recent attempts to assess the medical evidence for this view can be found in Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 (New York, 2003).

The basic events of Stalin’s last days can be retraced by drawing on multiple sources. In addition to the well-known reminiscences of Khrushchev, who was among the leaders that kept watch over the dying Stalin (Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar [University Park, PA, 2004], pp. 147–149), new sources have appeared, including accounts by Stalin’s bodyguards recorded by Dmitri Volkogonov and Edvard Radzinsky (Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy [New York, 1991], pp. 571–572; Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives [New York, 1997], pp. 566–572). Here I make use of all three publications.

2. Here and below, on the topic of the Main Guard Directorate, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 858, ll. 2–20. It is unclear from the documents in question whether this information applies to all of Stalin’s dachas or only to the one in Volynskoe. In any case, the guards and servants were primarily concentrated at the Volynskoe dacha, where Stalin lived.

3. S. V. Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia. 1921–2011 (Moscow, 2011), pp. 162–163.

4. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 54; V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Ianvar’ 1922–dekabr’ 1936 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 255–256.

5. According to a report by senior officials of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) to Stalin, the agent was prevented from making an attempt on Stalin’s life by an undercover OGPU agent who had infiltrated the organization and was accompanying the foreign agent. Under interrogation, the foreign agent stated that during an initial attempt he was simply unable to grab his revolver, which was hidden deep under his clothing. The rather large security detail accompanying Stalin prevented him from making a second attempt. (“Zapiska OGPU Stalinu. 18 noiabria 1931 g.,” Istochnik, no. 3 [1996]: 161–162; Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, p. 286.)

6. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii. 1881–2006 (exhibition catalogue) (Moscow, 2006), pp. 47–49.

7. Sergei Mironovich Kirov (1886–1934) was a Russian revolutionary and Civil War figure. In 1921–1926 he served as party chief in Azerbaijan. His career benefited from his years as one of Stalin’s clients in Transcaucasia and the personal friendship that developed between the two. In 1926, after the crushing of the opposition, Kirov was appointed to replace Zinoviev as head of the Leningrad party organization, a position that led to his elevation to candidate member of the Politburo. On 1 December 1934 he was killed by a lone gunman. It was long believed that Kirov’s murder was arranged by Stalin, but most historians have since rejected this possibility.

8. Nikolai Sidorovich Vlasik (1896–1967) was born into a peasant family in Belarus, received an elementary-school education, and later supported himself as an unskilled laborer. He fought in the tsarist army during World War I and later joined the Red Army. In 1919 he went to work for state security, where he rose through the ranks. The numerous vacancies created by the mass arrests of 1937–1938 accelerated Vlasik’s career. In 1952 he was arrested, and two years after Stalin’s death he was sentenced to ten years in exile. He was pardoned in 1956.

9. After a lengthy investigation, the soldier was shot in 1950.

10. S. V. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 2010), pp. 161, 164–167.

11. Figures are for 1950. E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), p. 501; V. P. Popov, Rossiiskaia derevnia posle voiny [iiun’ 1945–mart 1953] (Moscow, 1993), p. 146.

12. N. V. Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow, 2005), pp. 87–89.

13. From Vlasik’s testimony at his 1955 trial; V. M. Loginov, Teni Stalina. General Vlasik i ego soratniki (Moscow, 2000), p. 152.

14. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 858, ll. 2–8.

15. Semen Denisovich Ignatiev (1904–1983) was born into a peasant family and began his career in the Komsomol (Communist Youth League). After studying at the Industrial Academy in 1935, he landed a job in the Central Committee apparat. For many years he headed various regional party organizations. In 1950 he was placed in charge of the Central Committee department that handled party personnel matters, an important post. In 1951, after a wave of arrests within the leadership of the USSR Ministry of State Security, Stalin appointed Ignatiev to head this institution. Under Stalin’s orders, Ignatiev falsified a number of political cases. After Stalin’s death this action almost cost him his career or even his life, but Khrushchev’s support saved him. Ignatiev was sent to work in the provinces and, in 1960, into retirement.

16. Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), f. 5, op. 29, d. 3, l. 2; d. 16, ll. 94, 108.

17. On the sources of the statistics offered here, see O. Khlevniuk, Stalin u vlasti. Prioritety i rezul’taty politiki diktatury. Istoriia stalinizma: Itogi i problemy izucheniia (Moscow, 2011), pp. 63–65.

18. In early 1937 the total population of the USSR was 162 million, and in early 1953 it reached 188 million. The adult population was, of course, much lower, totaling in 1937, for example, approximately 100 million.

19. Soviet security services have gone through numerous reorganizations and renamings. By tradition, they continued to be called by their initial acronym—ChK (chrezvychainaia komissiia, or extraordinary commission). This is the origin of the term “cheka” or “chekist.” Stalin himself often used this designation.

20. Grigory Ivanovich Kulik (1890–1950) fought alongside Stalin during the Civil War. With Stalin’s patronage, he enjoyed a successful military career and in 1940 was elevated to marshal. During the war with Germany, like many other Civil War–era commanders, he did not acquit himself particularly well. In 1942 he was tried and stripped of his rank and given a series of junior command positions. Stalin’s lack of trust in Kulik was reciprocated. In 1947 he was arrested along with several other generals who had criticized Stalin in frank discussions with one another. In 1950 he was shot.

21. May 1940 letter from the chairman of the Party Control Commission, Andrei Andreev, to Stalin in regard to the Kulik case; K. A. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow, 1998), pp. 272–276. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 17, ll. 128–148.

22. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy, pp. 267–271.

23. Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels (1890–1948) was a stage director, actor, and leader of the Jewish community. During World War II, he headed the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which mobilized strong support for the Soviet Union in the West. The fact that he was awarded the Stalin Prize (the highest honor granted to cultural figures) immediately after the war testifies to the importance of his services. Nevertheless, soon thereafter Mikhoels became one of the first victims of Stalin’s changing foreign policy priorities and the launching of an anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR.

24. G. V. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia Politika Stalina. Vlast’ i antisemitizm (Moscow, 2001), pp. 388–392.

25. N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), pp. 66–68.

26. Ignatiev related this statement during testimony given on 27 March 1953, after Stalin’s death (ibid., p. 307).

Chapter 2. In Lenin’s Shadow

1. Lev Borisovich Kamenev (1883–1936), the son of an engineer, studied law at Moscow University before being expelled for revolutionary activities. He was one of Lenin’s closest associates. Kamenev first met Stalin when they were both engaged in revolutionary work in Transcaucasia. After the 1917 revolution, Kamenev held a number of senior posts within the Soviet government and was among those contending for power after Lenin’s death. He became an opposition leader in the 1920s. Once Stalin solidified his victory over the opposition, he dealt brutally with his old friend. In late 1934, Kamenev and his fellow oppositionists were arrested on fabricated charges that they had been involved in Kirov’s murder. In August 1936, Kamenev was convicted of espionage and terrorism in the first of a series of major show trials and put to death.

2. Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995), pp. 101–103, 131–132.

3. There is a vast body of literature on Bolshevik activities during the Russian revolutionary period, including the following: E. N. Burdzhalov, Russia’s Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd, trans. and ed. D. J. Raleigh (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1967); Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (Chicago and London, 2004); Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1990). For Stalin’s role in the revolution, see Robert M. Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution (Baltimore and London, 1987), and Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement: From Koba to Commissar (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), chs. 18 and 19.

4. Cited in A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 16.

5. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 31 (Moscow, 1969), pp. 11–22, 504.

6. Ibid., pp. 103–112.

7. Cited in N. N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii, vol. 2, bk. 3 (Moscow, 1991), p. 16.

8. Cited in Sed’maia (Aprel’skaia) Vserossiiskaia konferntsiia RSDPR (bol’shevikov). Petrogradskaia obshchegorodskaia konferentsiia RSDPR (bol’shevikov). Protokoly (Moscow, 1958), p. 323.

9. Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev (1883–1936) was one of Lenin’s closest comrades-in-arms. After the revolution, he headed the Leningrad party organization and the Comintern. Failing to take over leadership of the party after Lenin’s death, he became an opposition leader and suffered persecution as the opposition was routed. In 1934, Zinoviev, along with Kamenev, was arrested based on fabricated evidence of complicity in Kirov’s murder. In August 1936, he and Kamenev were convicted at the first Moscow show trial and shot.

10. Speech by Stalin, 3 August 1917, at the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP) Sixth Party Congress; Shestoi s"ezd Rossiiskoi sotsial-demokraticheskoi rabochei partii (bol’shevikov). Avgust 1917 g. Protokoly (Moscow, 1958), p. 250.

11. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 890, l. 8.

12. For a detailed investigation of these events, including evidence based on recently discovered documents, see V. T. Loginov, Neizvestnyi Lenin (Moscow, 2010), pp. 261–264.

13. Statements by Zinoviev and Kamenev on 11 October 1917; Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b). Avgust 1917–fevral’ 1918 (Moscow, 1958), pp. 87–92.

14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 66, l. 1.

15. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b). Avgust 1917–fevral’ 1918, p. 115.

16. R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S. G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 62–64.

17. Protocols of Politburo meetings; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, dd. 1–125.

18. Letter from Stalin to Lenin and Trotsky, 22 June 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5403, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 40.

19. Letter from Stalin to Lenin, 7 July 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 248, l. 1; I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1954), pp. 120–121.

20. Telegram from Stalin to Trotsky and Lenin, 11 July 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1812, ll. 1–2; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 42.

21. Letter from Stalin to Lenin, 3 October 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5410, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 52.

22. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5718, ll. 177, 178, 191, 195, 197.

23. Ibid., ll. 196–198.

24. Speech by Voroshilov at the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1989): 160.

25. Letter from Stalin to Lenin, 31 August 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5408, l. 4; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 46.

26. I. S. Rat’kovskii, Krasnyi terror i deiatel’nost’ VChK v 1918 godu (St. Petersburg, 2006), pp. 151, 170.

27. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1989): 157, 168.

28. Cited in Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 54.

29. Ibid., pp. 52–53.

30. I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1947), p. 271.

31. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 50 (Moscow, 1970), p. 389.

32. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1815, ll. 2–4; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 142–143.

33. RGASPI, f. 558. op. 1, d. 5521, l. 2. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 148.

34. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4137, l. 1; d. 1943, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 155.

35. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1961, ll. 1–2; Stalin, Works, vol. 4, p. 358.

36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4681, l. 1.

37. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4458, ll. 1–3; Stalin, Works, vol. 4, pp. 360–362.

38. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 126, l. 4.

39. Ibid., op. 1, d. 5213, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 156.

40. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 106, l. 5.

41. Ibid., ll. 3, 4.

42. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 3 (1991): 167.

43. Deviataia konferentsiia RKP(b). Protokoly (Moscow, 1972), pp. 60–61, 76–77; Iu. N. Amiantov et al., comps., V. I. Lenin. Neizvestnye dokumenty. 1891–1922 (Moscow, 1999), pp. 382, 390.

44. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5541, ll. 1–2; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 160–161.

45. Stalin’s involvement in organizing the so-called Ukrainian Labor Army during the winter and spring of 1920 was an attempt to militarize labor by using the army as a labor force, primarily in the coal mines of Ukraine.

46. Meeting of a section of the Twelfth RKP(b) Congress on the nationalities question, 25 April 1923; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1991): 170. For a detailed account of Stalin’s work in the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, see Jeremy Smith, “Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (New York, 2005), pp. 45–62, and V. Denningkhaus [Victor Dönninghaus], V teni “bol’shogo brata.” Zapadnye natsional’nye men’shinstva v SSSR. 1917–1938 gg. (Moscow, 2011), pp. 84–91.

47. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 234, l. 2.

48. Ibid., d. 310, l. 2.

49. Politburo resolution, 19 October 1922; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 318, l. 4.

50. Grigory Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937) was one of Stalin’s closest friends and comrades-in-arms. In the 1920s he was a top party leader in Transcaucasia before being transferred to Moscow to take up the important post of chairman of the Party Control Commission. In this capacity he helped in Stalin’s climb to power. In the 1930s Ordzhonikidze was put in charge of Soviet heavy industry. He tried to oppose Stalin’s repression of key personnel, leading to conflict between the two men. In February 1937 Ordzhonikidze committed suicide. How he died became widely known only after Stalin’s death. See Oleg V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze (New York, 1995).

51. Letters from Nazaretian to Ordzhonikidze, 14 June and after 9 August 1922; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 13, ll. 6, 10; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 256, 257, 262, 263.

52. Letters from Nazaretian to Ordzhonikidze, 12 July and after 9 August 1922; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 13, ll. 7, 10; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 259, 263.

53. Letter from Nazaretian to Ordzhonikidze after 9 August 1922; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 13, l. 10. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 263.

54. Reminiscence by N. A. Uglanov, written in January 1925, at a time when Stalin had not yet established his sole power; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1989): 196.

55. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888–1938) was a Bolshevik leader and theoretician. He took Stalin’s side in the confrontation with Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, but after Stalin was victorious over these oppositionists, Bukharin himself became Stalin’s victim. Bukharin advocated a more moderate course and a gradual transition out of the NEP. Stalin labeled Bukharin and his supporters as “right deviationists.” The expulsion of the rightists from the party’s leadership helped Stalin solidify his dictatorship. Bukharin was arrested in 1937 and shot the following year. (See Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 [New York, 1973]; Paul R. Gregory, Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina [Stanford, CA, 2010]).

56. Cited in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1989): 198. For another version of Ulianova’s reminiscence, see Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 3 (1991): 188.

57. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1989); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 303, l. 5.

58. Cited in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1989): 198. Maria Ulianova’s memoirs were found among her papers after her death. They were obviously not intended for publication. Their candor and confessional nature add to their credibility as a source.

59. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 191–216.

60. Ibid., p. 209.

61. Ibid., no. 12 (1989): 191.

62. Ibid., pp. 189, 191.

63. Cited in ibid., pp. 198–199.

64. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 45 (Moscow, 1970), p. 345.

65. Ibid., p. 346.

66. Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926) was active in the revolutionary movement in Russia and spent many years in exile, prison, and labor camps. After the revolution he headed the Emergency Commission or Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ notorious state security organization. In the 1920s, while still head of the political police, he also ran the commissariats of transport and industry. He was still active at the time of his death from heart failure.

67. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54 (Moscow, 1975), p. 329.

68. Ibid., pp. 329–330.

69. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), p. 277.

70. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54, p. 330.

71. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 151; emphasis by Kamenev.

72. Ibid., no. 12 (1989): 193.

73. Ibid., no. 9 (1990): 151–152.

74. V. A. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie Lenina: Real’nosti istorii i mify politiki (Moscow, 2003). See also a critical discussion of this book in Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 2 (2005): 162–174.

75. Moshe Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle (New York, 1968).

76. Cited in V. P. Vilkova, comp., RKP(b). Vnutripartiinaia bor’ba v dvadtsatye gody. Dokumenty i materialy. 1923 (Moscow, 2004), p. 129; emphasis by Zinoviev.

77. Ibid., pp. 135–136; emphasis by Stalin.

78. Transcript of a discussion of the international situation at the 21 August 1923 Politburo meeting. Istochnik, no. 5 (1995): 118, 124.

79. Ibid., p. 126.

80. Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov (1881–1938) was a well-known Bolshevik who served as the Soviet premier after Lenin’s death. An economic moderate, he joined forces with Stalin in opposing Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. Together with Bukharin, Rykov was accused of “right deviation” and removed from the leadership. He was arrested in 1937 and put to death in 1938.

81. Ibid.

82. Vilkova, RKP(b). Vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, pp. 147–151.

83. Trinadtsatyi s"ezd PKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), pp. xxi–xxii.

84. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 126, l. 68.

85. V. Nadtocheev, “‘Triumvirat’ ili ‘semerka’?” in Trudnye voprosy istorii, ed. V. V. Zhuravlev (Moscow, 1991), pp. 68–70.

86. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 8 (1991): 182.

87. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 777, ll. 27–28.

88. Letters from Kirov to Ordzhonikidze dated 10 and 16 January 1926. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 315, 318.

89. Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, pp. 115–116.

90. A. G. Egorov, ed., KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s"ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1984), pp. 49–50.

91. See, for example, Stalin’s letter to Rykov, Voroshilov, and Molotov dated 20 September 1927; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 797, ll. 84–85.

92. Valerian Valerianovich Osinsky (1887–1938) was an Old Bolshevik who took part in various opposition movements and was a follower of Trotsky at one point. Soon after the departure mentioned in the letter to Stalin, Osinsky was removed as head of the Central Statistical Directorate. Nevertheless, in later years he held various senior economic posts. He was shot during the Terror.

93. Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov (1887–1937) was a long-standing party member and an active participant in the revolution and Civil War who became involved in the opposition in the 1920s. In 1928 he was exiled to the Ural region for three years, a term ultimately extended to 1935, at which point he was again arrested. He was shot in 1937.

94. Timofei Vladimirovich Sapronov (1887–1937) was a long-standing party member and a Moscow Bolshevik leader. After the revolution he held senior government posts. In the 1920s he joined the opposition. In 1928 he was exiled to the Arkhangelsk region for three years. The term of his exile was extended to 1935, as was Smirnov’s. In 1935 he was again arrested, and in 1937 he was shot.

95. Yuly Osipovich Martov (1873–1923) was a leader of the Social Democratic movement in Russia. He collaborated with Lenin during the early stages of his revolutionary career, but in 1903 the two men broke off relations, and later Martov headed the Menshevik party. He participated in the revolutionary movement in Russia but condemned the 1917 Bolshevik overthrow of the Provisional Government. He later tried to work with the Bolsheviks and democratize the Bolshevik dictatorship. In 1920 he was sent abroad and later died of tuberculosis.

96. Osinsky’s letter and Stalin’s following response are in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 780, ll. 12–14; Istochnik, no. 6 (1994): 88.

97. Grigory Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (1888–1939), a long-standing party member, escaped abroad after being exiled to Siberia. After the revolution he became a member of the top leadership. His greatest success was the monetary reforms he introduced during the 1920s, which provided Soviet Russia with a stable currency. Sokolnikov was subjected to persecution due to his involvement with the opposition. In 1927 he announced his break with the opposition and for some time held various senior government posts. He was shot during the Stalinist Terror.

98. During his speech to the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927, Stalin again spoke of an intervention being prepared against the USSR and drew an analogy with the shooting in Sarajevo (I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 10 [Moscow, 1949], pp. 281, 288).

99. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 71, ll. 2–4ob.

100. Yan Ernestovich Rudzutak (1887–1938) was a long-standing Bolshevik who spent years in tsarist prisons. After the revolution he held senior party and government posts before being shot during the Stalinist Terror.

101. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, ll. 35–39, 45–48, 56–60.

102. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875–1946) was a long-standing Bolshevik who shortly after the revolution was appointed chairman of the Soviet parliament and held the largely figurehead post of president of the USSR until his death. One of the more moderate members of the Bolshevik leadership, he nevertheless submitted to power. After some wavering, he threw his support behind Stalin. Kalinin’s wife was arrested in the 1930s and released shortly before her husband’s death.

103. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, ll. 35–39, 45–48; d. 71. ll. 11, 13–14.

104. Molotov uses this term since not only Politburo members took part in voting, but also the chairman of the Party Control Commission, Ordzhonikidze, whose post excluded him from Politburo membership.

105. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, ll. 56–60.

106. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 139.

107. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1110, l. 181.

A World of Reading and Contemplation

1. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 105, ll. 20–126; d. 117, ll. 1–173.

2. Ibid., op. 11, d. 70, ll. 85–114.

3. B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002), p. 143.

4. M. Ia. Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin (Moscow, 2000), pp. 17–22.

5. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, dd. 1–392. There exists a legal document (akt) instructing that all of Stalin’s books with notations be placed in his archive. Books from Stalin’s Kremlin and dacha libraries that did not contain any handwritten markings were placed in the library of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism or other research libraries. Whether or not the libraries Stalin left behind at the time of his death were properly catalogued and preserved is an open question. Some books, including those with notations, have disappeared. However, the books that were preserved in the Stalin archival collection appear to be a representative sample.

6. Former Soviet transport commissar I. V. Kovalev, in an interview with G. A. Kumanev. Cited in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2005): 165.

7. Cited in R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven and London, 2003), p. 381.

8. Cited in A. Artizov and O. Naumov, comps., Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia (Moscow, 1999), pp. 499, 583, 613. Memorandum from Stalin concerning the script of the film Ivan the Terrible, 13 September 1943; speech by Stalin at a meeting of the Orgburo, 9 August 1946; conversation between Stalin and the creators of the film Ivan the Terrible, 26 February 1947: see Maureen Perrie, The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (Basingstoke and New York, 2001).

9. B. S. Ilizarov claims to have found a copy of Fedor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov with notations by Stalin in a library (Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 411).

10. Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was a novelist and playwright. Some of his early plays were staged in the 1920s but were harshly criticized for ideological flaws. Gradually, Bulgakov’s works were banned and he was deprived of his livelihood. Stalin, who liked Bulgakov’s works, gave the writer some support. Bulgakov was given some work, although most of his writing remained prohibited. His best known work, The Master and Margarita, was published many years after Stalin’s death.

11. Letter from Gorky to the head of the Communist youth organization, 14 April 1936. Cited in L. V. Maksimenkov, comp., Bol’shaia tsenzura. Pisateli i zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov. 1917–1956 (Moscow, 2005), p. 413.

12. As mentioned above, in 1934–1936 the head of the Soviet film industry, Boris Shumiatsky, took notes at several dozen film screenings hosted by Stalin for other top Soviet leaders. K. M. Anderson et al., comps., Kremlevskii kinoteatr. 1928–1953 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 919–1053. The quotes in this paragraph are from this volume.

13. Letter from Stalin to members of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, 28 February 1929. Cited in Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 110.

Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold (1874–1940) was a theatrical director and producer and an adherent of revolutionary theatrical experimentation. Meyerhold’s works fell out of favor after the proclamation of the Stalinist doctrine of socialist realism. In 1939 Meyerhold was arrested, and he was shot the following year.

14. Dmitry Dmitryevich Shostakovich (1906–1975) is considered one of the twentieth century’s leading composers. On Stalin’s instructions, he was branded a “formalist” and persecuted in 1936 and 1948. To come to terms with the authorities, Shostakovich was periodically compelled to create “correct,” ideologically acceptable works.

15. V. A. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia Iosifa Stalina. Bol’shie kremlevskie priemy 1930-kh–1970-kh gg. (Moscow, 2011), pp. 282–308.

16. Stalin’s mangling of idioms is difficult to convey in translation. For examples, see Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin, p. 23.

17. For an example, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 471, l. 16; d. 494, l. 14.

18. Cited in A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 399, 400–401, 409, 413.

19. Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), pp. 30–31.

20. Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006).

Chapter 3. His Revolution

1. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, l. 76.

2. Minutes from an 18 January 1928 meeting of the Siberia Krai party leadership attended by Stalin; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 5 (1991): 196–199.

3. Ibid., pp. 199–201.

4. Stalin’s speech at a 20 January 1928 closed meeting of the party leadership of Siberia Krai; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 118, ll. 23–34; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 6 (1991): 203–212.

5. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 119, l. 84.

6. Ibid., l. 106; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1991): 178.

7. Cited in I. I. Ikonnikova and A. P. Ugrovatov, “Stalinskaia repetitsiia nastupleniia na krest’ianstvo,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 1 (1991): 76.

8. Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (1880–1936) was a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party and a Soviet trade union leader after the revolution. In 1922 he took charge of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions and joined the country’s top leadership. After Stalin defeated the rightists, Tomsky was relegated to low-level positions. In 1936, under threat of arrest, he took his own life.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Uglanov (1886–1937) was a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party who held senior posts in Moscow and the provinces after the revolution. In 1924 he was appointed head of Moscow’s party organization, a position that assured him a place at the upper echelons of power. In 1928 he was removed from his post through Stalin’s intrigues, given a low-level position, and subjected to persecution. He was arrested and shot during the Terror.

9. RGASPI, f. 85. These recent additions to the fond have not yet been assigned an opis’: d. 2, ll. 1–11, 28–30.

10. Cited in A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 58.

11. New documents pertaining to the conversation between Bukharin and Kamenev and the circumstances under which it came to light have been published. See V. P. Danilov and O. V. Khlevniuk et al., eds., Kak lomali NEP. Stenogrammy plenumov TsK VKP(b). 1928–1929 gg., vol. 4 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 558–567, 685–699.

12. Speech delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry, 4 February 1931. I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1954), p. 43. The translation has been slightly revised.

13. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 145, ll. 43–54.

14. I borrow the term “war on the peasants” from Andrea Graziosi, The Great Soviet Peasant War: Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917–1933 (Cambridge, MA, 1996).

15. V. P. Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni. Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie. 1927–1939, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 35–78.

16. Ibid., pp. 75–76, 85–86.

17. Ibid., p. 11.

18. Ibid., pp. 703, 789. See also Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York and Oxford, 1996).

19. In the 1960s V. P. Danilov had an opportunity to acquaint himself with the relevant Politburo archive documents, which have still not been made generally available to historians; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, p. 833.

20. Ibid., pp. 279, 324. Lynne Viola et al., eds., Riazanskaia derevniia v 1929–1930 gg. Khronika golovokruzheniia (Moscow, 1998).

21. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, p. 270.

22. Ibid., pp. 303–305.

23. Ibid., p. 804. According to OGPU figures for 1930, 2.5 million people took part in the 10,000 disturbances (out of 13,800) for which an estimate was made. Assuming an average of 245 people per disturbance, we arrive at a figure of 3.4 million people for all 13,800 incidents. It should be borne in mind, however, that the OGPU data were probably not complete.

24. Cited in V. Vasil’ev and L. Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie na Ukraine (Vinnitsa, 1997), pp. 213–219, 221.

25. RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 125, l. 2; Vasil’ev and Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie, p. 233.

26. V. N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR. 1930–1960 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 16, 20.

27. Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (New York, 2007).

28. R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S. G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 289.

29. Speech to a Central Committee plenum, 7 January 1933. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, pp. 161–217.

30. O. Latsis, “Problema tempov v sotsialisticheskom stroitel’stve,” Kommunist, no. 18 (1987): 83.

31. R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 412–415.

32. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985).

33. On proposals submitted to Stalin in 1932 to introduce fixed grain procurement norms, see N. A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie (nachalo 30-kh godov) (Moscow, 1994), p. 191.

34. Politburo resolution, 29 April 1932; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 115.

35. Judging by reports from the head of the Procurement Committee to Stalin, as of 1 July 1933—i.e., before the deliveries of grain from the 1933 harvest—Soviet grain reserves, including all grain cultures, totaled approximately 1.4 million metric tons, including more than 1 million tons of grains for human consumption (APRF [Archive of the President of the Russian Federation], f. 3, op. 40, d. 27, ll. 123, 133). Davies and Wheatcroft found these figures in the archives of the Procurement Committee (The Years of Hunger, p. 229). It is known that peasant households in Russia annually consumed an average of 262 kilograms of grain per capita. That figure suggests that these reserves would have been sufficient to provide normal rations for approximately 4 million people for an entire year or even more people at below-standard rations. Even more striking is the quantity of grain exported during the famine. Although the government was forced to cut back, grain exports still totaled 1.8 million tons in 1932 and 223,000 tons during the first half of 1933 (Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 3, pp. 33–34; Davies and Wheat-croft, The Years of Hunger, p. 440).

36. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven and London, 2004), p. 62; Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, p. 20.

37. While formally part of the Russian Federation, the North Caucasus was geographically, economically, and ethnically (due to a significant Ukrainian population) tied to Ukraine.

38. Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger, pp. 448–449, 470.

39. Cited in Iu. Murin, comp., Pisatel’ i vozhd’. Perepiska M. A. Sholokhova s I. V. Stalinym. 1931–1950 gody (Moscow, 1997), p. 68.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984) has been called a classic writer of Soviet literature and enjoyed Stalin’s particular patronage. Despite his success, Sholokhov continued to live in his native village in the Don region of Russia, a location that exposed him to the realities of collectivization and the Terror. On several occasions Sholokhov appealed directly to Stalin for help.

40. R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven, 2003), pp. 179–181.

41. Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin: Profiles in Power (New York, 2005), pp. 111–112. Historians continue to argue about the anti-Ukrainian nature of the famine and whether it represents a case of genocide. See, for example, Andrea Graziosi, Stalinism, Collectivization and the Great Famine (Cambridge, MA, 2009).

42. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, pp. 253–254.

43. Stalin was referring to a law enacted 7 August 1932 that provided for draconian penalties, including execution, for stealing kolkhoz property.

44. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 799, ll. 24–25, 30–31. A transcript of these discussions was first published in 1951: I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1951), pp. 260–273. The published version of the text was redacted and the discussion of the state of the countryside cited here was cut.

45. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 3, pp. 527–528, 661–665.

46. Cited in Murin, Pisatel’ i vozhd’, pp. 28–58.

47. Ibid., pp. 68, 145–147.

48. Within the party, many people knew of Trotsky’s speeches. They were even quoted at the January 1933 Central Committee plenum, albeit labeled as “slanderous” (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514. vyp. 1, l. 55).

49. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp. 56, 57–58, 68.

50. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 779, l. 47.

51. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, ll. 154–155; G. M. Adibekov et al., eds., Politbiuro TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b) i Evropa. Resheniia ‘osoboi papki’ (Moscow, 2001), pp. 305–306.

52. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 13, p. 252.

53. Davies, Harrison, and Wheatcroft, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, p. 127.

54. RGASPI., f. 17, op. 2, d. 530. ll. 78–98.

55. Khlevniuk. History of the Gulag, p. 63.

56. Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (New York, 1996), pp. 153–195.

57. APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 71, ll. 11–31.

58. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, ll. 88–89. Subsequently, Aleksei Seliavkin fared relatively well. He survived the repression of 1937–1938 and fought in World War II, earning the rank of colonel. He even managed to publish his memoirs in the early 1980s (A. I. Seliavkin, V trekh voinakh na bronevikakh i tankakh [Kharkov, 1981]), a testament to the position of respect he held in Soviet society.

59. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp. 121–123.

60. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 31; V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Ianvar’ 1922–dekabr’ 1936 (Moscow, 2003), p. 566; V. N. Khaustov and L. Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii. 1936–1938 (Moscow, 2009), p. 70.

61. A major part in promoting such accounts was played by the works of Roy Medvedev. See, for example, Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origin and Consequences of Stalinism (New York, 1972).

62. For more details, see Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven and London, 2008), pp. 108–116.

63. An examination of the most important evidence is offered in Matthew E. Lenoe, The Kirov Murder and Soviet History (New Haven and London, 2010). My discussion of this event relies heavily on this highly professional and detailed study and on A. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 2001).

64. One of the most recent publications on this subject is based on documents from the archives of the RF Federal Protection Service, the agency responsible for protecting senior officials. See S. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova. Fakty i versii,” Rodina, no. 3 (2005): 64.

65. Cited in F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 310.

66. Cited in Voprosy istorii, no. 2 (1995): 16–17.

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (1895–1940) played a central role in carrying out Stalin’s plans for the mass purges and repression in 1935–1938. Yezhov initially oversaw this campaign in his capacity as the Central Committee secretary charged with monitoring the NKVD. In late 1936 he was placed directly in charge of the organization. Under Stalin’s guidance, Yezhov conducted the large-scale repressive operations of 1937–1938 that constituted the core of the Great Terror. After carrying out the duties that had been placed on his shoulders, Yezhov was arrested and shot.

Aleksandr Vasilyevich Kosarev (1903–1939) was head of the Komsomol, the Soviet youth organization. He was arrested in 1938 and shot in 1939.

67. A. N. Artizov et al., comps., Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 546, 548–549, and vol. 3 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 491–492.

68. Nikolaev’s relatives also met tragic fates. Almost all of them—his mother, two sisters, his younger sister’s husband, his brother’s wife, and, in addition to Milda Draule herself, her sister, her sister’s husband, and even Nikolaev’s neighbor—were shot or perished in prison (Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, p. 367).

69. Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (1891–1938) served as deputy chairman of the OGPU beginning in 1923 and as people’s commissar for internal affairs (NKVD chief) from 1934 to 1936. He was arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938.

70. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia, vol. 3, pp. 466–467. Nikolaev officially registered his revolver in 1924 and 1930.

71. Ibid., pp. 490, 499.

72. Ibid., p. 493.

73. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, pp. 344–347; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia, vol. 3, pp. 494–498.

74. Cited in Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), p. 168.

75. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1052, l. 152.

76. Ibid., ll. 152, 153. For the complete text of Stalin’s memorandum, see ibid., f. 71, op. 10, d. 130, ll. 13–15.

77. Cited in Pravda, 2 December 1935.

78. From the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 173–175.

79. Speech at the March 1937 Central Committee plenum; cited in Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1995): 14.

80. D. A. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Moscow, 1989), p. 249.

81. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1989): 86–93.

82. Avel Safronovich Yenukidze (1877–1937) was a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party who became friends with Stalin when they were both working in the revolutionary underground in Transcaucasia. After the revolution Yenukidze held a senior post in the Soviet parliament. Among his duties was accommodating the material needs of the top Soviet leadership. In that post he developed a reputation as someone who enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, and it probably contributed to his fall from favor. In 1935 he was removed from his senior post based on fabricated charges and in 1937 he was shot.

83. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, pp. 599, 601–612, 618–619, 626–637, 638–650, 663–669.

84. An account of the relationship between these two men is offered in Oleg V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze (New York, 1995).

85. Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky (1893–1937) was a Bolshevik hero of the Civil War who had held senior posts in the Red Army before being appointed deputy to the people’s commissar for defense, Kliment Voroshilov, with whom he had numerous run-ins. Stalin and many other Soviet military leaders were suspicious of Tukhachevsky as a potential conspirator because of his long years serving under Trotsky. Tukhachevsky and many of his fellow military leaders were shot based on fabricated political charges.

86. Khaustov and Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i represii, pp. 106–121.

Trepidation in the Inner Circle

1. On this point the bodyguards’ accounts are fully consistent with Khrushchev’s. See Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 147; Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives (New York, 1997), p. 573.

2. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, p. 147.

3. Radzinsky, Stalin, p. 573.

4. A. L. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina (Moscow, 2011), pp. 302, 304–305.

5. Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich (1893–1991) was one of Stalin’s closest associates in the 1930s. Beginning in 1931 he essentially acted as Stalin’s deputy in party matters. Before the war his political influence was somewhat diminished, and he was sent to work in economic posts, but because of his boundless devotion to Stalin, he continued to be a part of the inner circle. In 1957 he opposed Khrushchev’s ascent and was forced into retirement. He lived to be almost one hundred and remained a confirmed Stalinist until his death. See E. A. Rees, Iron Lazar: A Political Biography of Lazar Kaganovich (London and New York, 2012).

6. Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky (1903–1950) was a member of the post-revolutionary generation of Stalinist functionaries. He joined the party after the Civil War, studied at Moscow’s Institute of the Red Professoriat, and went on to hold several government posts. Voznesensky’s career benefited from his time working directly under Andrei Zhdanov in Leningrad. When Zhdanov was promoted to the top leadership, he took his clients with him. Voznesensky also benefited from all the job openings created by mass repression. In 1938 he was appointed to head the State Planning Commission, and in 1941 he became Stalin’s first deputy chairman at the Council of People’s Commissars. After the war he became a member of the country’s top leadership, but after Zhdanov’s death in 1948 he, along with Zhdanov’s other protégés, began to lose influence. In 1949 Stalin arranged the series of fabricated cases that constituted the Leningrad Affair. Voznesensky was arrested and shot.

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov (1905–1950) also rose to prominence under Zhdanov’s patronage. He held many party posts in Leningrad and was transferred to Moscow after the war. There he became a Central Committee secretary and was placed in charge of CC personnel matters. He was arrested and shot in association with the Leningrad Affair.

7. M. A. Men’shikov, S vintovkoi i vo frake (Moscow, 1996), p. 138.

8. Note from Ignatiev to Beria dated 27 March 1953; cited in N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), p. 299.

9. K. M. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), pp. 341–343.

10. Pavel Sudoplatov claims that in 1950 Stalin ordered that listening devices be installed to spy on Molotov and Mikoyan (Pavel Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster [New York, 1994], p. 332). Even if Sudoplatov is mistaken about the time and target of this eavesdropping, the very mention of such orders by Stalin reflects an actual phenomenon recalled by this highly placed security official.

11. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 160–161. Quoted from Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York, 2004), p. 83.

12. Interview with V. G. Trukhanovsky in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 6 (1994): 78–79.

13. Cited in O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), p. 399. See also Yoram Gorlizki, “Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet Neopatrimonial State, 1946–1953,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 723–725.

14. Cited in Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 409.

15. O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Regional’naia politika Khrushcheva. TsK VKP(b) i mestnye partinye komitety. 1953–1964 (Moscow, 2009), p. 161.

16. In early 1951 Soviet ministers were paid a monthly salary of twenty thousand rubles, and their deputies received ten thousand (RGANI, f. 5, op. 25, d. 279, l. 17). Other senior officials in Moscow and around the country received salaries totaling several thousand rubles, as well as significant perquisites. L. V. Maksimenkov, comp., Bol’shaia tsenzura. Pisateli i zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov. 1917–1956 (Moscow, 2005), p. 627, describes fees totaling in the millions of rubles paid to writers. For comparison, the average per capita income of a peasant household in 1950 was less than one hundred rubles per month (V. P. Popov, Rossiiskaia derevnia posle voiny [iiun’ 1945–mart 1953] [Moscow, 1993], p. 146). Meanwhile, many top officials were not subject to taxes, while the tax burden on the population at large was constantly growing.

17. Cited in Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, p. 89.

18. N. Fedorenko, “Nochnye besedy,” Pravda, 23 October 1988, p. 4.

19. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 113, 118.

Chapter 4. Terror and Impending War

1. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s (New York, 1968). The orders and other documents associated with the large-scale operations of 1937–1938 have been published in English translation (see Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the Great Terror [New Haven and London, 2004], pp. 140–165). By now there is a vast literature outlining the mechanism by which the Terror was carried out. Among general works on the subject available in English are J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, eds., The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939, updated and abridged edition (New Haven, 2010); David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven and London, 2009); Paul Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police: Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, 2009).

2. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. R-9401, op. 1, d. 4157, ll. 201–205. These figures have appeared in numerous publications. See, for example, Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp. 165–170, 289–290.

3. Note written by Stalin on a telegram from the NKVD chief for Sverdlovsk Oblast; dated 10 September 1937; cited in V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i Glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD. 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 348–351.

4. Instructions to Yezhov (most likely), dated 13 September 1937; ibid., p. 352.

5. Note written by Stalin on a progress report from Yezhov concerning the “operation to liquidate Polish espionage cadres”; dated 14 September 1937; ibid., pp. 352–359.

6. Stalin’s instructions written in response to an NKVD summary of testimony by arrestees; dated 30 April 1938; ibid., pp. 527–537.

7. Stalin’s instructions written in response to an NKVD report on a “terrorist group” within the rubber industry; dated 2 September 1938; ibid., pp. 546–547.

8. Cited in N. S. Tarkhova et al., comps., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR. 1–4 iiunia 1937 g. (Moscow, 2008), p. 137.

9. Cited in V. A. Nevezhin, comp., Zastol’nye rechi Stalina. Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, 2003), pp. 132–135.

10. Rozengolts was arrested on 7 October 1937; V. N. Khaustov and L. Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii. 1936–1938 (Moscow, 2009), pp. 138–139.

11. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 20, l. 87.

12. APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 90; Oleg Khlevniuk, “The Reasons for the ‘Great Terror’: The Foreign-Political Aspect,” in Russia in the Age of Wars 1914–1945, ed. Silvio Pons and Andrea Romano (Milan, 2000), pp. 165–166.

13. APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 142.

14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 772, l. 14.

15. Ibid., l. 88.

16. “Stenogramma zasedanii fevral’sko-martovskogo plenuma 1937 g.,” Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1995): 13–14.

17. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, ll. 62, 77–78.

18. Cited in Tarkhova et al., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR, p. 133.

19. Edward Hallet Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (London and Basingstoke, 1984), p. 44.

20. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 157; N. F. Bugai, “Vyselenie sovetskikh koreitsev s Dal’nego Vostoka,” Voprosy istorii, no. 5 (1994): 144.

21. F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), pp. 390, 391, 416.

22. L. M. Kaganovich, Pamiatnye zapiski (Moscow, 1996), pp. 549, 558.

23. Cited in A. S. Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (Moscow, 1987), p. 212.

24. The discovery of “counterrevolutionary groups” (rather than lone enemies) was one of the primary goals of the process of extracting confessions from arrestees.

25. Cited in Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, p. 163.

26. A detailed study of Stalin’s role in organizing the Terror has been done using a vast body of archival documents. See Khaustov and Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii.

27. These calculations were made based on the clerical numbering of Yezhov’s reports published in Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i Glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD. I am grateful to N. V. Petrov, who pointed out the possibility of using this source.

28. Oleg V. Khlevniuk. Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven and London, 2008), p. 270.

29. RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 265, l. 22.

30. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1992): 125–128.

31. Official figures for industrial growth gave 28.7 percent for 1936, 11.2 percent for 1937, and 11.8 percent for 1938. Economists have calculated that using modern methods, these figures would correspond to 10.4, 2.3, and 1.1 percent growth respectively. See R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S. G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 302–303.

32. During 1937–1938 a total of thirty-five thousand commanders were discharged from the Red Army (not including the air force and navy). Many of them were arrested. As of early 1940, approximately eleven thousand of them had been returned to the army, so approximately twenty-four thousand were lost. A sense of the scale of this attenuation can be gained by comparing these figures to the number of graduates of military colleges and academies during the three-year period of 1935–1937: slightly more than twenty-seven thousand (Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 1 [1990]: 186–189). It goes without saying that the officers who had been discharged, arrested, and then returned to duty suffered serious emotional trauma that affected their performance. Furthermore, the fear that they too could be arrested surely also had an effect on those who were not.

33. GARF, R-8131, op. 37, d. 112, l. 16.

34. Cited in A. I. Kartunova, “1938-i. Poslednii god zhizni i deiatel’nosti marshala V. K. Bliukhera,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 1 (2004): 175.

35. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 17.

36. Stenographic record of the Eighteenth Party Congress; XVIII s"ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b). 10–21 marta 1939 g. (Moscow, 1939), pp. 12–15.

37. Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov (1876–1951), who joined what would become the Bolshevik party long before the revolution, served the cause of Soviet foreign affairs in one capacity or another most of his adult life. After years as deputy commissar and then commissar, he fell into disgrace in the late 1930s. During the war, Stalin decided to take advantage of the ties Litvinov had developed in the West and the reputation he enjoyed there and appointed him Soviet ambassador to the United States. Toward the war’s end Litvinov was dismissed for the final time, but he was never arrested and was allowed to live out his life.

38. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 534.

39. S. Z. Sluch, “Stalin i Gitler, 1933–1941: Raschety i proschety Kremlia,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (2005): 98–119.

40. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 592, l. 107.

41. Cited in G. Ia. Rudoi, comp., Otkroveniia i priznaniia. Natsistskaia verkhushka o voine “tret’ego reikha” protiv SSSR (Moscow, 1996), p. 65.

42. V. G. Komplektov et al., eds., Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR. 1939, vol. 22 (Moscow, 1992), vol. 1, p. 624; vol. 2, p. 585. This correspondence was also preserved in Stalin’s personal archive: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 296, ll. 1–3.

43. Cited in S. Z. Sluch, “Rech’ Stalina, kotoroi ne bylo,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (2004): 114. In this article Sluch provides a detailed history of this alleged speech and persuasively argues that it was a fake.

44. Cited in G. M. Adibekov et al., eds., Politbiuro TsK RKP(b) VKP(b) i Komintern. 1919–1943. Dokumenty (Moscow, 2004), pp. 780–781.

45. Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski, eds., Katyn: A Crime without Punishment (New Haven and London, 2007).

46. Alfred Bilmanis, comp., Latvian-Russian Relations: Documents (Washington, D.C., 1944), pp. 196–197.

47. Cited in L. E. Reshin et al., comps., 1941 god, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1998), pp. 595–596.

48. Notation by Stalin on a coded message from Belarusian Central Committee secretary Ponomarenko to Stalin; dated 13 November 1939; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 66, l. 13.

49. O. A. Rzheshevskii and O. Vekhviliainen, eds., Zimniaia voina 1939–1940 (Moscow, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 324–325.

50. Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar (University Park, PA, 2004), p. 266.

51. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, p. 236.

52. Soviet transcripts of Molotov’s conversations with Hitler and von Ribbentrop on 13 November 1940 have been published in G. E. Mamedov et al., eds., Dokumenty vneshnei politiki (Moscow, 1998), vol. 23, bk. 2, pt. 1, pp. 63–78.

53. Ibid., pp. 135–137.

54. G. A. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym (Smolensk, 2001), pp. 463–470.

55. According to Chadaev in ibid., the chairman of Gosplan, Nikolai Voznesensky, was also at the meeting. At the time, Voznesensky was not yet a Politburo member.

56. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), pp. 317–318.

57. Aleksandr Sergeevich Shcherbakov (1901–1945) was a member of the post-revolutionary generation that Stalin placed in charge of propaganda within the Central Committee apparat. In 1938 he was made first secretary of Moscow’s party organization as well as a Central Committee secretary. Shcherbakov died at an early age.

58. Remarks by Stalin at a meeting on 17 January 1941 as recorded by V. A. Malyshev in his diary; cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (1997): 114.

59. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 346.

60. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, ll. 176–176ob.

61. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 5 (1994): 222.

62. Cited in Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, “Stalin and His Circle,” in The Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 248.

63. Stalin actually spoke at this reception several times, but for simplicity’s sake, I will treat these remarks as a single speech. The stenographic record of Stalin’s remarks has not been preserved, but several witnesses describe him as saying essentially the same thing. See Nevezhin, Zastol’nye rechi Stalina, pp. 273–296.

64. Speech by Stalin at a meeting of Moscow and Leningrad propagandists; Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 5 (1994): 13.

65. E. N. Kul’kov and O. A. Rzheshevskii, eds., Zimniaia voina 1939–1940 (Moscow, 1999), vol. 2, pp. 281–282.

66. Debate around this topic has become particularly active over the past twenty years. Overall, the numerous arguments in favor of the idea that Stalin was planning a preventive strike—some of which appear to be politically motivated—do not seem to warrant serious attention, but this theory has generated a number of works presenting interesting evidence and arguments. I make use of statistical data offered in a study by Mikhail Meltiukhov, although I am not convinced by his overall argument. See M. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina. Sovetskii Soiuz i bor’ba za Evropu. 1939–1941 (Moscow, 2002).

67. Ibid., pp. 360, 392–393.

68. Davies, Harrison, and Wheatcroft, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, p. 321.

69. Mel’tiukhov, Upushennyi shans Stalina, pp. 392, 393.

70. Cited in E. A. Osokina, Za fasadom “stalinskogo izobiliia” (Moscow, 2008), pp. 272–277.

71. Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 1 (1991): 17.

72. In September 1940, the government permitted such convicts to be sent to the Gulag to serve their prison terms, a violation of its own law (GARF, f. R-5446, op. 57, d. 79, l. 31). These prisoners suffered a terrible fate, and they were not always released after serving the short terms handed down by the courts.

73. From a 15 April 1942 conversation between Stalin and General Nikolai Biriukov, one of the heads of the Main Mechanized Directorate; N. Biriukov, Tanki–frontu. Zapiski sovetskogo generala (Smolensk, 2005), pp. 143–144.

74. Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 54–55.

75. Mel’tiukov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, p. 246; M. Iu. Mukhin, Aviapromyshlennost’ SSSR v 1921–1941 godakh (Moscow, 2006), pp. 154–155, 291–299.

76. David Murphy, who has made a careful study of all available Soviet intelligence reports on the eve of the war, gives Soviet espionage rather high marks. However, he notes an effort on the part of the leaders of Soviet intelligence to adapt their findings to Stalin’s preconceptions. In this regard, Murphy draws historical parallels: the reluctance of the conservative government of Great Britain in the 1930s to properly assess the Nazi threat and the myopic focus of U.S. intelligence on hunting down weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while earlier administrations missed clues of an impending terrorist attack on U.S. soil. See David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven and London, 2005), pp. xviii–xix.

77. Cited in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 382–383.

Patient Number 1

1. Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 148.

2. A. L. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina (Moscow, 2011), pp. 294–295.

3. Ibid., p. 302.

4. B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002), p. 110.

5. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4327, l. 1.

6. Ibid., op. 4, d. 619, ll. 172, 173.

7. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 110.

8. Letter from Stalin to Malinovsky, November 1913; cited in A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 397–398.

9. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 110.

10. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 154, l. 2.

11. Ibid., d. 303, l. 5.

12. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York, 1967), p. 33.

13. No information has been found about Stalin’s travels in the south in 1924, although an August 1924 Politburo decision granted him a two-month vacation; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 459, l. 2.

14. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalin, pp. 112–113, 118–119.

15. Cited in Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995), p. 91.

16. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, ll. 53–54.

17. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 113.

18. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, l. 67ob.

19. Ibid., l. 68.

20. From Valedinsky’s memoirs; cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1998): 68.

21. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 138.

22. Cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1998): 69.

23. Ibid., p. 69; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalin, pp. 112–113.

24. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 175.

25. Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), p. 32.

26. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, l. 29.

27. Cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 37.

28. I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1954), p. 136. Translation slightly revised.

29. Cited in O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska. 1931–1936 (Moscow, 2001), p. 180.

30. S. V. Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia. 1921–2011 (Moscow, 2011), p. 157.

31. Letters from Stalin to Yenukidze, dated 16 August and 13 September 1933; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, ll. 38, 40.

32. Letter dated 7 September 1933; cited in A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 254.

33. From the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 158.

34. Letter to A. I. Ugarov, dated 16 August 1934; cited in A. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 2001), p. 141.

35. From the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 183.

36. From the memoirs of Dr. Valedinsky; cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1998): 70.

37. Ibid., p. 70.

38. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 377, l. 60.

39. Stalin left Moscow on 9 October 1945 and returned 17 December; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), p. 398.

40. Ibid.

41. Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia, p. 201.

42. Descriptions of Stalin’s lifestyle at his southern dachas can be found in the memoirs of the Georgian party boss Akaky Mgeladze, a young protégé of Stalin who enjoyed his particular favor; A. I. Mgeladze, Stalin. Kakim ia ego znal, (n.p., 2001).

43. Stalin’s medical records; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1483, ll. 1–101; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, pp. 126, 129.

44. M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Litso totalitarizma (Moscow, 1992), p. 60.

45. Cited in Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 117.

46. Mgeladze, Stalin, p. 125.

47. Cited in E. Khodzha [Enver Hoxha], So Stalinym. Vospominaniia (Tirana, 1984), p. 137.

48. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 22.

49. Ibid., pp. 206–207.

50. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina, p. 302.

51. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 207.

52. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina, pp. 304–305.

53. Transcript of a conversation in March 1978 published in F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 324.

Chapter 5. Stalin at War

1. The following descriptions of meetings in Stalin’s office on 21 and 22 June 1941 are based on G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia (Moscow, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 260–269; A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 388; and A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), pp. 337–338.

2. Semen Konstantinovich Timoshenko (1895–1970) was a commander of the First Cavalry Army during the Civil War, in which capacity he worked closely with Stalin. He went on to make a successful military career and, after the debacle in Finland, replaced Voroshilov as defense commissar and was elevated to marshal. However, during the war with Germany, Timoshenko did not prove to be particularly able and was forced into the background. After the war and until his retirement in 1960 he was given secondary posts commanding various military districts.

Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (1896–1974) made a military career after serving with the Red Army during the Civil War. He advanced rapidly through the ranks during the late 1930s, when purges among the officer corps created opportunities. Zhukov proved an able commander during military conflicts with Japan in 1939. Before the war with Germany he was appointed chief of the General Staff. The war proved to be his finest hour. He rose to be one of the Soviet Union’s leading marshals and served as deputy to the commander in chief (Stalin). When it was over, Zhukov fell into disfavor but enjoyed a brief return to prominence after Stalin’s death, serving as defense minister from 1955 to 1957. Khrushchev, however, was wary of the ambitious marshal and forced him into retirement. After Khrushchev was expelled as Soviet leader, Zhukov was allowed to publish his memoirs (the first edition of which came out in 1969). Although they were heavily censored, they remain an important source for historians of the Great Patriotic War (as the war with Germany is known in Russia). Recent editions of his memoirs restore materials excised by the censors, but we will never know to what extent Zhukov self-censored his original manuscript.

3. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 260.

4. Ibid, p. 264

5. Cited in a speech written by Zhukov in May 1956 to be given at a Central Committee plenum that was to be devoted to the Cult of Personality but never took place; cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1995): 147.

6. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 337.

7. Cited in Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 265.

8. Cited in L. E. Reshin et al., comps., 1941 god (Moscow, 1998), vol. 2, p. 432.

9. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 337.

Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis (1889–1953) was one of Stalin’s assistants in the 1920s, after which he held a number of senior posts and enjoyed Stalin’s wholehearted trust. After war with Germany broke out, Stalin put Mekhlis in charge of the political offices within the Red Army that were supposed to exercise political control over commanders. Mekhlis’s bungling at the front infuriated Stalin but did not undermine his trust in his faithful helper. Mekhlis went on to hold a number of senior posts on various fronts. After the war, he was put in charge of the Ministry of State Control. Poor health forced him into retirement. He died several weeks before Stalin and was buried at the foot of the Kremlin walls, alongside other Soviet leaders and heroes.

10. Cited in Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 265.

11. Reshin et al., 1941 god, p. 431.

12. For versions of Molotov’s speech, see Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 2 (1995): 34–39.

13. John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad (London, 2003), p. 177.

14. Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov (1882–1945) was one of the few Red Army officers to retain Stalin’s trust even as he reached a position of seniority. On the eve of the war with Germany and during its initial phase Shaposhnikov was head of the army’s General Staff and deputy defense commissar, but he had to resign due to illness. He died a few weeks before the fall of Berlin.

15. Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 439–440.

16. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 268.

17. Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 4.

18. M. I. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina. Sovetskii Soiuz i bor’ba za Evropu. 1939–1941 (Moscow, 2002), p. 413.

19. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 340.

20. Memoirs of Chadaev published in Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 2 (2005): 7.

21. Semen Mikhailovich Budenny (1883–1973) commanded the First Cavalry Army during the Civil War and was a supporter of Stalin during this period. He went on to become a marshal and held top military posts, including first deputy people’s commissar of defense.

22. Admiral Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov (1902–1974) was head of the naval commissariat and commander in chief of the navy from 1939 to 1946. After the war he fell into disfavor and was demoted, but in 1951–1953 he was again placed in charge of the naval ministry. He lost command of the navy for good in 1955 after the loss of a battleship.

23. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 36, l. 22; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 6 (1990): 196–197.

24. N. G. Kuznetsov, Nakanune (Moscow, 1989), p. 327.

25. N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), p. 85–93.

26. Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 2 (1995): 29–32; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 6 (1990): 208–209, 212–214.

27. Interview by Georgy Kumanev of I. V. Kovalev, who was serving as deputy commissar for state control when the war broke out and was in charge of rail transport. Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2005): 149–150.

28. Reshin et al., 1941 god, p. 497; F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 52.

29. In his memoirs Zhukov states that Stalin came to the defense commissariat twice (Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 287); however, there are no other sources to corroborate this assertion.

30. Mikoyan’s recollections are reported in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 497–498.

31. Letter to the Soviet leadership from Lavrenty Beria after his arrest in 1953; published in Istochnik, no. 4 (1994): 7; recollections of Anastas Mikoyan published in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 498–499.

32. Cited in Reshin et al., 1941 god, p. 498.

33. Cited in Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym, p. 330.

34. Recollections of Anastas Mikoyan published in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 498–499.

35. The original text is among Mikoyan’s personal papers, which are held by RGASPI.

36. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 391.

37. Iu. A. Gor’kov, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony postanovliaet (1941–1945) (Moscow, 2002), pp. 30–31.

38. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1990): 208, and no. 8 (1990): 208; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1319, l. 93.

39. Interview of Ivan Peresypkin, wartime communications commissar, by Georgy Kumanev; Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (2003): 65.

40. The speech is cited in Pravda, 3 July 1941.

41. Order by People’s Commissar for Defense Stalin, 28 June 1941. In V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR. 22 iunia 1941 g.–1942 g., vol. 13 (2–2) (Moscow, 1997), pp. 37–38.

42. G. F. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti. Kniga poter’ (Moscow, 2009), pp. 60–61.

43. Conversations between Stalin and commanders in the Western Direction, 26 July 1941; cited in V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1) (Moscow, 1996), pp. 92–93.

44. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 167, d. 60, l. 49.

45. D. A. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1989), p. 167.

46. Cited in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), p. 361.

47. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 492, l. 35; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 213.

48. V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh.” 1939–1946 (Moscow, 2006), pp. 317–318.

49. For the texts of these decisions with changes entered by Stalin, see Vestnik arkhiva Preszidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Voina. 1941–1945 (Moscow, 2010), pp. 37–40.

50. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh,” pp. 317–318.

51. Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 476–479.

52. Cited in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1990): 209.

53. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1993): 45–46.

54. Interview of I. V. Kovalev by Georgy Kumanev published in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2005): 160–161.

55. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 235, l. 123.

56. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, pp. 350–353.

57. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 84.

58. Cited in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), pp. 108–109; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 199–200.

59. A. M. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni (Moscow, 1978), p. 132.

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Vasilevsky (1895–1977) was a renowned Soviet marshal and leading figure in the Great Patriotic War who served as deputy chief and then chief of the General Staff and commanded Soviet troops in the Far East during the war with Japan. After the war he served as minister of defense.

60. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 85.

61. Interview with Zhukov published in K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), p. 361.

62. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), pp. 175.

63. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 361–363.

64. Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 1 (1992): 77, and nos. 6–7 (1992): 17; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), pp. 378–379.

65. A. E. Golovanov, Dal’niaia bombardirovochnaia … (Moscow, 2004), p. 78.

66. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1990): 210–211.

67. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 417. Mikoyan writes that this was on 16 October, but he definitely refers to the discussion of the order to evacuate Moscow that was actually adopted on 15 October. This meeting evidently took place in Stalin’s apartment.

68. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1990): 217.

69. Interview with Aleksandr Vasilevsky in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 446.

70. NKVD report dated 21 October 1941; published in Istochnik, no. 5 (1995): 152.

71. M. M. Gorinov et al., comps., Moskva voennaia. 1941–1945. Memuary i arkhivnye dokumenty (Moscow, 1995), p. 550; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 1 (1991): 217.

72. Gorinov et al., Moskva voennaia, pp. 111, 116–119; Mikoian, Tak bylo, pp. 419–420.

73. A. I. Shakhurin, Kryl’ia pobedy (Moscow, 1990), pp. 156–157.

74. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 1 (1991): 215–216, and no. 4 (1991): 210–214; Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 92.

75. S. V. Tochenov, “Volneniia i zabastovki na tekstil’nykh predpriiatiiakh Ivanovskoi oblast osen’iu 1941 goda,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (2004): pp. 42–47; Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 2 (1994): 111–136.

76. Cited in G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia (Moscow, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 26–27.

77. Cited in Pravda, 7 November 1941.

78. S. V. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 2010), p. 87.

79. Ibid., pp. 57–61, 64.

80. Pravda, 8 November 1941.

81. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’, p. 61.

82. K. M. Anderson et al., comps., Kremlevskii kinoteatr. 1928–1953 (Moscow, 2005), p. 639.

83. Cited in V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2) (Moscow, 1996), pp. 33–35.

84. R. V. Mazurkevich, “Plany i real’nost’,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 2 (1992): 24–25.

85. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, p. 189.

86. Cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (1995): 41.

87. GARF (not yet catalogued). From the memoirs of Yakov Chadaev.

88. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2), pp. 236–239.

89. Interview with Georgy Zhukov in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 366.

90. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, pp. 195–196.

91. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 179.

92. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2), pp. 263–264.

93. After reading this letter, Stalin placed it in his personal archive. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 762, ll. 6–8.

94. K. K. Rokossovskii, Soldatskii dolg (Moscow, 2013), p. 211.

Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (1896–1968) was a much-acclaimed marshal of the Great Patriotic War. He was arrested during the purges and spent 1937–1940 in prison. During the war he was placed in charge of armies and fronts. In 1949–1956 he served as Poland’s minister of defense before holding senior posts in the Soviet ministry. His rather candid memoirs, Soldatskii dolg (A soldier’s duty), were published in 1968 with major excisions. An uncensored edition came out in 1997.

95. Cited in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2), pp. 276–279.

96. O. A. Rzheshevskii, Stalin i Cherchill’. Vstrechi. Besedy. Diskussii (Moscow, 2004), pp. 348–383.

97. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, pp. 60–61.

98. Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 65.

99. Aleksei Innokentievich Antonov (1896–1962) was a senior Soviet military officer who served as deputy head of the General Staff during the war years and often reported directly to Stalin.

100. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, pp. 311.

101. A. Eremenko, Gody vozmezdiia (Moscow, 1986), pp. 36, 38; Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), p. 481; Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’, pp. 184, 186.

102. Perepiska Predsedatelia Soveta Ministrov SSSR s prezidentami SShA i prem’er-ministrami Velikobritanii vo vremia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow, 1957). Stalin’s letter to Churchill is dated 9 August 1943 (vol. 1, pp. 141–142). Stalin’s letter to Roosevelt is dated 8 August 1943 (vol. 2, p. 77).

103. Stalin’s letter to Churchill, 24 June 1943, which he sent that same day to Roosevelt for his information; Perepiska, vol. 2, pp. 72–75.

104. Cited in S. M. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny (Moscow, 1989), p. 148.

105. Golovanov, Dal’niaia bombardirovochnaia, pp. 351–356.

106. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 377, l. 61.

107. Cited in Gorinov et al., Moskva voennaia, pp. 694–695; Istochnik, no. 2 (1995): 138–139.

108. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1997): 66–68.

109. V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv, Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1944–1945, vol. 16 (5–4) (Moscow, 1999), p. 12.

110. For an examination of the populations affected by mass killings in the geographic region between Germany and the Soviet Union by both Stalin and Hitler, see Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).

111. Vestnik arkhiva Preszidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Voina. 1941–1945, pp. 346–348.

112. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh,” p. 405.

113. Alexander Statiev, “The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942–1944: The North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 285–318.

114. V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds., “Osobaia papka” Stalina. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR. 1944–1953 (Moscow, 1994).

115. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 64, l. 167.

116. Ibid., l. 166.

117. Ibid., l. 165

118. Ibid., d. 66, ll. 9–10, 40–46.

119. Ibid., ll. 334–340.

120. Ibid., d. 67, ll. 319–324; d. 68, ll. 268–273.

121. N. M. Naimark, Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

122. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh,” pp. 502–504.

123. Cited in M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Litso totalitarizma (Moscow, 1992), p. 82.

124. Transcript of conversations between Stalin and Roosevelt; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 235, l. 8.

125. N. V. Petrov, Po stsenariiu Stalina: Rol’ organov NKVD-MGB SSSR v sovetizatsii stran Tsentral’noi i Vostochnoi Evropy. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2011), pp. 44–52.

126. Cited in V. A. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1943 g., vol. 16 (5–3) (Moscow, 1996), p. 185.

127. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1045, l. 55.

128. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942, vol. 16 (5–2), p. 420.

129. Interview with Aleksandr Vasilevsky in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 446.

130. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, pp. 496–497.

131. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, pp. 102–104. V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv, Velikaia Otechestvennaia. General’nyi shtab v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. 1941, vol. 23 (12–1) (Moscow, 1997), pp. 11–12.

132. From a 2 April 1965 memorandum from Marshal Konev to the Central Committee Presidium; Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, pp. 104, 192; I. S. Konev, Zapiski komanduiushchego frontom (Moscow, 2000), p. 498.

133. Interview with Zhukov in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 377.

134. Konev, Zapiski komanduiushchego frontom, p. 498.

135. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, p. 497.

136. The SNK Bureau’s Commission on Current Issues existed from June 1941 to December 1942. The SNK Bureau met in regular session from December 1942 through August 1945. Background on the establishment of these bodies can be found in RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1326, l. 233; d. 1350, l. 40; d. 1356, ll. 120–121; d. 1406, l. 27.

137. Ibid., d. 1356, ll. 120–121.

138. Ibid., d. 1406, l. 27.

139. State Defense Committee resolution dated 4 February 1942; RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 36, ll. 32–35.

140. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 465.

141. APRF, f. 3, op. 52, d. 251, l. 93.

142. In December 1943, Andrei Andreev, a Central Committee secretary and Politburo member, was appointed people’s commissar for agriculture.

143. APRF, f. 3, op. 52, d. 251, l. 93; Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 466.

144. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1420, l. 136.

145. Bulganin was made a member of the State Defense Committee in place of Voroshilov, with whose performance Stalin was displeased. Ibid., op. 3, d. 1051, l. 44, 46.

146. V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR. 1943–1945 gg., vol. 13 (2–3) (Moscow, 1997), p. 332.

147. Ibid., p. 337–338.

148. David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002).

149. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 417.

150. From notes taken by the head of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, G. G. Karpov, on the meeting between Stalin and the church leaders. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 1–10; M. I. Odintsov, Russkie patriarkhi XX veka (Moscow, 1994), pp. 283–291.

151. Rzheshevskii, Stalin i Cherchill’, p. 420; Michael Ellman, “Churchill on Stalin: A Note,” Europe-Asia Studies 58, no. 6 (September, 2006): 969–970.

152. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 94, ll. 15–27. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 5 (1993): 123–128.

153. Cited in D. Omel’chuk and S. Iurchenko, “Krymskaia konferentsiia: Neizvestnye stranitsy,” Svododnaia mysl, no. 2 (2001): 122–123.

154. Perepiska, vol. 2, pp. 204, 205; V. Pechatnov, Stalin, Ruzvel’t, Trumen: SSSR i SShA v 1940-kh gg. (Moscow, 2006), pp. 305–306.

155. Perepiska, vol. 2, pp. 211, 212; Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., comp., Correspondence between Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill and Atlee during World War II (Honolulu, 2001), p. 214.

156. Secret telegram from Joseph Stalin to Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of the Battle of Berlin; Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2000): 180–181.

157. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 171.

158. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, p. 265.

159. V. A. Zolotarev and G. N. Sevast’ianov, eds., Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina. 1941–1945. Voenno-istoricheskie ocherki, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1999), p. 279.

160. Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 99.

Family

1. A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 235–236.

2. This letter was included in a summary of incoming correspondence prepared for Stalin and then sent to Bulganin, evidently so he could look into granting the requests for assistance; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 895, l. 59.

3. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 249.

4. Ibid., pp. 251–252.

5. Ibid., pp. 308–309, 329, 332–334.

6. Ibid., pp. 340–341.

7. Cited in ibid., pp. 349, 357.

8. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 10 (1989): 190.

9. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 8 (1991): 150.

10. Cited in Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), pp. 7–8.

11. Ibid., p. 154.

12. Ibid., p. 22.

13. Cited in V. A. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia Iosifa Stalina. Bol’shie kremlevskie priemy 1930-kh–1970-kh gg. (Moscow, 2011), p. 279.

14. “Pis’ma N. S. Alliluevoi Z. G. Ordzhonikidze,” Svobodnaia mysl’, no. 5 (1993): 74.

15. Letter from Nadezhda Allilueva to Maria Svanidze, 11 January 1926; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 154.

16. Ibid., pp. 22–40.

17. Simon Sebag Montefiore explores possible scenarios of what took place that evening in the prologue to his book Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London, 2003).

18. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 786, ll. 123–124.

19. According to the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 177.

20. Ibid., pp. 157–158.

21. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York, 1967), pp. 151–152.

22. Cited in R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven, 2003), pp. 297, 304.

23. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 151.

24. The discussion of Vasily’s relationship with Stalin is based on Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 54–65, 68–69.

25. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 93, ll. 276–278; V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh.” 1939–1946 (Moscow, 2006), pp. 493–494; Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 92–93.

26. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 69–89, 96–100.

27. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 180.

28. Cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 91–92.

Chapter 6. The Generalissimo

1. Cited in Pravda, 25 May 1945.

2. Letter from G. Tsydenov, 23 October 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 865, l. 6.

3. Letter dated 16 February 1946; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 867, ll. 14–15; E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 612–613.

4. The summary of incoming correspondence that included quotes from this letter features a notation by Poskrebyshev: “Archive.” It could only have been made on Stalin’s instructions since a number of other letters from the summary were sent to be taken care of by the appropriate official; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 867, ll. 1–2.

5. Pravda, 14 March 1946.

6. G. F. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti. Kniga poter’ (Moscow, 2009), p. 42. Without citing a source, Dmitri Volkogonov states that in January 1946 Stalin was given a figure of 15 million dead, including 7.5 million soldiers killed, dying of wounds, or missing in action; Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), p. 505. It has not been possible to verify this information.

7. For the original of Stalin’s letter, edited in his own hand, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 794, ll. 85–89. The letter was published in the magazine Bol’shevik in 1947 (no. 3, pp. 6–8).

8. From a coded telegram from Stalin to Molotov, Beria, Malenkov, and Mikoyan dated 10 November 1945; cited in L. V. Maksimenkov, comp., Bol’shaia tsenzura. Pisateli i zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov. 1917–1956 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 556–557.

9. Pravda, 23 September 1946.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (1895–1958) was a popular satirical writer and playwright. The scathing criticism to which he was subjected in 1946 led to his being deprived of the right to publish. After Stalin’s death he was given work writing for magazines but was still a target of discrimination. The 1946 decree criticizing Zoshchenko and Akhmatova was rescinded only in the late 1980s during Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1889–1966) was among Russia’s most important poets. Under Stalin, she was subjected to ongoing persecution. Her first husband was shot and the second died in a labor camp, and her only son spent many years in a camp. A number of anti-Stalinist works by Akhmatova are famous, her poetic cycle Requiem first and foremost.

10. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 732, ll. 1–19.

11. Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science (Princeton, 1997); V. D. Esakov and E. S. Levina, Stalinskie “sudy chesti”: “Delo KR” (Moscow, 2005).

12. Cited in V. Pechatnov, Stalin, Ruzvel’t, Trumen: SSSR i SShA v 1940-kh gg. (Moscow, 2006), pp. 392–393.

13. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 382, l. 45; Pechatnov, Stalin, Ruzvel’t, Trumen, p. 421.

14. G. Procacci and G. Adibekov et al., eds., The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949 (Milan, 1994), pp. 225–226.

15. Eugene Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952 (Chapel Hill, 1980), pp. 347–348.

16. N. Vert and S. V. Mironenko, eds., Istoriia stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov, vol. 1: Massovye repressii v SSSR (Moscow, 2004), p. 610.

17. A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, comps., GULAG. 1917–1960 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 435, 447; V. N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930–1960 (Moscow, 2003), p. 225.

18. The total population of the USSR at the beginning of 1953 was 188 million; V. P. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika sovetskogo gosudarstva. 1946–1953 gg. (Moscow and Tambov, 2000), p. 16.

19. V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds., “Osobaia papka” Stalina. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR. 1944–1953 (Moscow, 1994).

20. E. Iu. Zubkova, Pribaltika i Kreml’ (Moscow, 2008), p. 256; V. Naumov and Iu. Sigachev, comps., Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Stenogramma iul’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1999), p. 47.

21. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1481, l. 45.

22. Ibid., d. 97, ll. 35–36.

23. Ibid., ll. 96–99.

24. V. O. Pechatnov, “‘The Allies Are Pressing on You to Break Your Will.…’ Foreign Policy Correspondence between Stalin and Molotov and Other Politburo Members, September 1945–December 1946,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 26 (September 1999).

25. Ibid., p. 2.

26. Cited in ibid., p. 4.

27. O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), pp. 198–199.

28. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 771, ll. 9–10.

29. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 195, 196.

30. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 771, l. 11.

31. Ibid., ll. 7–8.

32. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 195. This conflict is also described in Pechatnov, “‘The Allies Are Pressing on You to Break Your Will,’” pp. 8–15.

33. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 196–197.

34. Cited in ibid., pp. 197–198.

35. Ibid., pp. 198–199.

36. Ibid., p. 200.

37. Ibid., pp. 24–25, 38.

38. Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov (1895–1953) was a longtime aid to Beria who had come with him to Moscow in 1938 and was appointed his first deputy at the NKVD. In 1943 Merkulov was in charge of the State Security Commissariat, which had been made into a separate agency outside of the internal affairs commissariat (the NKVD). After being removed from this post amid scandal, he still held high-level positions and during Stalin’s final years headed the State Control Ministry. As a client of Beria, he was arrested and shot in late 1953 after Beria himself.

39. Viktor Semenovich Abakumov (1908–1954) rose through the state security ranks and during the war served as Stalin’s deputy at the defense commissariat in charge of military counterintelligence. In 1946–1951 he served as state security minister before being arrested in 1951. Even after Stalin’s death he was shot rather than being released from prison.

40. Memorandum from Merkulov dated 23 July 1953; cited in V. A. Kozlov, ed., Neizvestnaia Rossiia XX vek, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1993), p. 73.

41. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 442, ll. 202–206; V. Naumov et al., comps., Georgii Zhukov. Stenogramma oktiabr’skogo (1957 g.) plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 2001), pp. 16–17.

42. A. G. Zverev, Zapiski ministra (Moscow, 1973), pp. 231–234.

43. Iu. I. Kashin, comp., Po stranitsam arkhivnykh fondov Tsentral’nogo banka Rossiiskoi Federatsii, vol. 3 (Moscow, 2007), pp. 31–32.

44. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika sovetskogo gosudarstva, pp. 83–88. A key memorandum by Zverev dated 8 October 1946 and providing an overview of the experience of the 1922–1924 Soviet currency reform, including notations by Stalin, has been published in Istochnik, no. 5 (2001): 21–47. The memorandum is held in the APRF.

45. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), p. 617.

46. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1506, l. 22.

47. Kashin, Po stranitsam arkhivnykh fondov Tsentral’nogo banka, vol. 3, pp. 96–97.

48. E. Iu. Zavadskaia and T. V. Tsarevskaia, “Denezhnaia reforma 1947 goda: Reaktsiia naseleniia. Po dokumentam iz ‘osobykh papok’ Stalina,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 6 (1997): 135–137.

49. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, pp. 561–564.

50. Ibid., p. 564–567.

51. Iu. Aksenov and A. Uliukaev, “O prostykh resheniiakh neprostykh problem. Denezhnaia reforma 1947 goda,” Kommunist, no. 6 (1990): 83.

52. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, pp. 495–496.

53. Istochnik, no. 5 (2001): 51.

54. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 529.

55. “On Per Person Norms for Sales of Food and Manufactured Goods”; USSR Council of Ministers Resolution No. 3867, dated 14 December 1947; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 1, d. 316, ll. 288–289. These limits remained in effect until 1958.

56. Aksenov and Uliukaev, “O prostykh resheniiakh neprostykh problem,” pp. 84–85.

57. Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton, 2004), p. 314.

58. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 578.

59. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 122, d. 308, l. 183.

60. Ibid., op. 88, d. 900, l. 178.

61. Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 77–116.

62. In recent years a huge number of documents pertaining to the sovietization of Eastern Europe and Stalin’s role in this process has been published. For a multifaceted study of these questions, see T. V. Volokitina et al., Moskva i Vostochnaia Evropa. Stanovlenie politicheskikh rezhimov sovetskogo tipa (1949–1953) (Moscow, 2008).

63. Ibid., pp. 430–550.

64. For a more in-depth account, see Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York, 2004), pp. 79–89.

65. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 67.

66. For an interpretation of the Leningrad Affair as Stalin’s response to the spread and strengthening of patron-client relations within the Soviet nomenklatura, see Benjamin Tromly, “The Leningrad Affair and Soviet Patronage Politics, 1949–1950,” Europe-Asia Studies 56, no. 5 (July 2004): 707–729.

67. Cited in F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 475.

68. Voting was carried out by opros (polling); in other words, members voted remotely, not while they were seated together in a Politburo meeting. According to the tally compiled by Poskrebyshev, who handled most of the clerical aspects of Politburo resolutions, Stalin, Bulganin, Voroshilov, Voznesensky, Shvernik, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Andreev, Beria, Malenkov, and Kosygin voted in favor of expelling Zhemchuzhina from the party. “Com. Molotov abstained”; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1518, l. 162.

69. Ibid., l. 164; Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 313.

70. Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven, 2001).

71. Cited in Vestnik arkhiva prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Voina 1941–1945 (Moscow, 2010), p. 333.

72. Letter from Gorbenko, a member of the military, dated 15 July 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 863, ll. 79–86.

73. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, 2004), p. 297.

74. Letter from military journalist S. A. Lifshits dated March 1949; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 876, l. 15; f. 17, op. 132, d. 118, ll. 1–3.

75. From the diary of People’s Commissar V. A. Malyshev, who was present at the meeting; cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (1997): 140–141.

76. This and subsequent excerpts from documents pertaining to preparations for Mao’s visit are quoted, with minor modifications, from Sergey Radchenko and David Wolff, “To the Summit via Proxy-Summits: New Evidence from Soviet and Chinese Archives on Mao’s Long March to Moscow, 1949,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no 16. (Spring 2008): 118–129.

77. A. M. Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia. Dokumenty i svidetel’stva uchastnika sobytii. 1937–1952 (Moscow, 1999), p. 55.

78. Chen Jian, “The Sino-Soviet Alliance and China’s Entry into the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 1 (June 1992), p. 19.

79. A. V. Pantsov, Mao Tzedun (Moscow, 2007), p. 47.

80. Cited in A. V. Pantsov, comp., Mao Tzedun. Avtobiografiia. Stikhi (Moscow, 2008), p. 166.

81. A. M. Ledovskii, “Stalin, Mao Tzedun i koreiskaia voina 1950–1953,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 5 (2005): 106.

82. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 329, ll. 10–17; Chen Jian et al., eds., “Stalin’s Conversations: Talks with Mao Zedong, December 1949–January 1950, and with Zhou Enlai, August–September 1952,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996): 5–7.

83. From the memoirs of Matyas Rakosi; cited in Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 142–143.

84. Odd Arne Westad, “Fighting for Friendship: Mao, Stalin, and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 8–9 (Winter 1996–1997): 227–228; Dieter Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945–1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance (London, 2003), pp. 281–282, 286–289.

85. Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia, p. 143.

86. Cited in N. Fedorenko, “Nochnye besedy,” Pravda, 23 October 1988, p. 4.

87. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 329, l. 51.

88. Fedorenko, “Nochnye besedy.”

89. For a detailed examination of Stalin’s role in the Soviet nuclear project, see David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven, 1996).

90. Letter written to the members of the Soviet leadership by Beria from prison, 1 July 1953; cited in Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, p. 75.

91. Cited in A. V. Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina: Koreiskii konflikt 1950–1953 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 6–8.

92. Kathryn Weathersby, “To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War,” International History Project Bulletin, no 5. (Spring 1995): 7–8.

93. Ibid., p. 9; Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 533.

94. K. Vezersbi [Weathersby], “Sovetskie tseli v Koree, 1945–1950 gg.,” in Kholodnaia voina. Novye podkhody, novye dokumenty, ed. M. M. Narinskii (Moscow, 1995), p. 316.

95. In January 1950 the USSR was boycotting the United Nations, demanding that the new Communist government of China be allowed representation. Starting the war in Korea at a time when the Soviet representative to the Security Council was absent was a clear blunder by Stalin, one of which the United States took full advantage.

96. Cited in Kathryn Weathersby (introduction and translations), “New Russian Documents on the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996): 40.

97. Cited in Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina, p. 97.

98. Cited in Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996): 118. (Bracketed insertion is Mansourov’s.)

99. Cited in Ledovskii, “Stalin, Mao Tzedun i koreiskaia voina,” p. 106.

100. From the memoirs of Matyas Rakosi; cited in Istoricheskii arkhiv, nos. 5–6 (1997): 7–8. The fact that this meeting took place is also confirmed by the defense minister of Czechoslovakia, Alexeje Čepička; Voprosy istorii, no. 10 (1999): 85–86.

101. Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, pp. 668–669.

102. Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE), f. 4372, op. 11, d. 677, ll. 9–10. Figures for military expenditures are for four ministries created after Stalin’s death: defense (which brought together the former defense and naval ministries), defense industry (an updated version of the former armaments ministry), the aviation industry, and medium-machine building. These ministries accounted for the lion’s share (although not all) of military spending.

103. N. S. Simonov, Voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR v 1920–1950-e gody (Moscow, 1996), pp. 210–266.

104. Council of Ministers resolutions dated 9 and 19 February 1953; A. A. Danilov and A. V. Pryzhikov, Rozhdenie sverkhderzhavy. SSSR v pervye poslevoennye gody (Moscow, 2001), pp. 92–93.

105. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 329, ll. 66; Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia, p. 160.

106. A. I. Kokurin and Iu. N. Morukov, Stalinskie stroiki GULAGA. 1930–1953 (Moscow, 2005).

107. RGAE, f. 4372, op. 11, d. 282, l. 66.

108. Narodnoe khoziastvo SSSR. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1956), p. 118.

109. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 882, ll. 57–58.

110. Letter dated 1 November 1952; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 903, ll. 42–46.

111. This undated letter was sent from Stalin’s secretariat for Malenkov to deal with on 4 November 1952; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 901, ll. 39–40.

112. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 551; N. Kovaleva et al., comps., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich. 1957. Stenogramma iiun’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1998), pp. 193–194.

113. On the works of this commission and Stalin’s position on the subject, see Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Cold Peace, pp. 139–140.

114. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 578.

115. RGAE, f. 4372, op. 11, d. 459, ll. 164–170.

116. Kokurin and Petrov, GULAG. 1917–1960, pp. 788–791; RGAE, f. 4372, op. 11, d. 677, l. 9.

117. The inventories did not specify the agency originating the coded telegrams. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 117, ll. 1–173.

118. Ignatiev told this story in testimony given 27 March 1953; N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), p. 307.

119. K. A. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow, 1998), p. 163.

120. Ibid., pp. 225–226.

121. Ibid., pp. 167–168.

122. Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, pp. 34–35.

123. For more details, see Timothy Blauvelt, “Abkhazia: Patronage and Power in the Stalin Era,” Nationalities Papers 35, no. 2 (2007): 220, 222–223.

124. Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, pp. 29–40.

125. It was at the Nineteenth Party Congress that the party’s name was officially changed from the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, commonly referred to by the acronym VKP(b), to simply the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or KPSS. This name endured until the party and country were abolished in 1991.

126. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 573.

127. Ibid., pp. 574–576; Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym, p. 469; L. N. Efremov, Dorogami bor’by i truda (Stavropol, 1998), pp. 12–16.

128. N. Mukhitdinov, Reka vremeni. Ot Stalina do Gorbacheva. Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1995), pp. 88–89.

129. Volokitina et al., Moskva i Vostochnaia Evropa, pp. 558–566.

130. Explanatory memorandum from Ignatiev to Beria dated 27 March 1953; cited in Petrov, Palachi, p. 297.

131. Ibid., pp. 287, 299–300.

132. Cited in V. N. Khaustov et al., comps. Lubianka. Stalin i MGB SSSR. Mart 1946–mart 1953 (Moscow, 2007), pp. 522–523.

133. Cited in N. V. Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow, 2005), p. 124.

134. From a transcript of remarks by Stalin to a commission on reorganizing the Ministry of State Security’s intelligence service, November–December 1952; cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (2001): 132.

135. These press items were edited by Stalin. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 157, ll. 9–14, 29–33; Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 392–397.

136. For a detailed examination of this theory about the deportation of Jews, see G. V. Kostyrchenko, Stalin protiv “kosmopolitov”. Vlast’ i evreiskaia intelligentsiia v SSSR (Moscow, 2009), pp. 329–380.

137. B. S. Klein, “Politika SShA i ‘delo vrachei,’” Voprosy istorii, no. 6 (2006): 35–47.

The Dictatorship Collapses

1. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), p. 553; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), p. 436. When the log of visitors to Stalin’s office was published, Tkachev’s name was mistakenly given as Tolkachev.

2. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 553; Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 436.

3. A. L. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina (Moscow, 2011), p. 295.

4. Khlevniuk et al., TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 436–437.

5. N. Kovaleva et al., comps., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich. 1957. Stenogramma iiun’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1998), pp. 42, 45. The papers were removed when Malenkov’s assistant was arrested.

6. The decisions were recorded in the minutes of the 5 March 1953 joint meeting of the Central Committee plenum, the Council of Ministers, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Istochnik, no. 1 (1994): 107–111.

7. K. M. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), pp. 257–258.

8. Ibid., p. 260.

9. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York, 1967), p. 10.

10. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 553.

11. From Shepilov’s memoirs; cited in Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1998): 15.

12. A. N. Artizov et al., comps., Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo, vol. 1 (Moscow, 2000), p. 19.

13. V. Naumov and Iu. Sigachev, comps., Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Stenogramma iul’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1999), pp. 28–29.

14. Oleg Khlevniuk, “The Economy of the OGPU, NKVD and MVD of the USSR, 1930–1953: The Scale, Structure and Trends of Development,” in The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag, ed. Paul R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev (Stanford, CA, 2003), pp. 54–55.

15. According to official statistics, between 1 January and 1 October 1953 the number of cows increased from 24.3 million to 26 million, and almost 1 million of that increase took place outside of the collective and state farm system. During that same period the number of pigs increased from 28.5 to 47.6 million, including an increase of 12 million in private herds; Narodnoe khoziastvo SSSR. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1956), pp. 119–120. Even with the consideration of possible seasonal fluctuations, these numbers are significant and surely attributable to lower taxes and higher procurement prices.

16. A. V. Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina: Koreiskii konflikt 1950–1953 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 272–279.

17. This directive was largely in response to the large number of defections from East Germany to the West. See Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, pp. 55–59.

The Funeral

1. Speech by Khrushchev at a dinner in the Bulgarian city of Varna during an official visit on 16 May 1962; cited in Istochnik, no. 6 (2003): 130.

2. Letter dated 10 March 1953 from a group of citizens to the Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet; GARF, f. R-7523, op. 52, d. 18, ll. 94–95.

3. Anonymous letter addressed to Georgy Malenkov, dated 6 March 1953; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1486, l. 157.

4. Ibid., d. 1487, l. 55.

5. Ibid., ll. 66–71.

6. Cited in V. A. Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia XX vek, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1992), pp. 254–258.

7. Cited in V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, 58–10. Nadzornye proizvodstva Prokuratury SSSR po delam ob antisovetskoi agitatsii i propagande. Annotirovannyi katalog. Mart 1953–1991 (Moscow, 1999), pp. 13, 21, 23, 32.

8. There is a long list of published documents and studies on the public mood and mechanisms used to shape it and on social adaptation and the particular mindset that Stalinism strove to shape. Studies vary in terms of their authors’ viewpoints and the aspect of reality they emphasize. See, for example, the following: Sheila Fitzpatrick: The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY, 1992), and Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, 2005); Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995); Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941 (Cambridge, 1997); Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957 (New York, 1998); Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

9. Yoram Gorlizki, “Political Reform and Local Party Interventions under Khrushchev,” in Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864–1996, ed. Peter H. Solomon (New York and London, 1997), pp. 259–260.

10. Letter from Stakhanov to Stalin in May 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 891, l. 128. For a similar letter sent to Molotov before the war, see GARF, f. R-5446, op. 82, d. 108, l. 145; d. 120, l. 74.

11. According to official statistics, at the start of 1953 more than 40 percent of the country’s population lived in cities. It should be kept in mind, however, that this figure included residents of small cities and settlements where the standard of living was close to that of the peasants.

12. In 1952, out of the 443,000 tons of meat sold through state and cooperative outlets across the USSR, 110,000 were sent to Moscow and 57,400 were sent to Leningrad; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 87, d. 1162, l. 171.

13. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 355.

14. Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2000).

15. Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003).

16. Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York and Oxford, 1996); Lynne Viola, ed., Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (Ithaca, NY, 2002); Jeffrey J. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2005).

17. In recent years historians have produced several valuable studies on this problem. See, for example, the following: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999); Elena Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (New York and London, 2001); Donald Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943–1953 (Cambridge, 2010).

18. Calculations based on E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 102–103; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), pp. 388–389. For comparison, see A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, GULAG. 1917–1960 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 543–551.

19. This letter was given to Malenkov to read; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 901, l. 37.

20. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 107.

21. Cited in ibid., p. 263.

22. Figures for state and private urban housing are from RGAE, f. 1562, op. 41, d. 56, ll. 30–33. Figures for the urban population as of early 1953 are from V. P. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika Sovetskogo gosudarstva. 1946–1953 gg. (Moscow and Tambov, 2000), p. 16.

23. RGAE, f. 1562, op. 41, d. 56, ll. 30–33. The inventory of publicly owned residential buildings included the best-built ones, which belonged to local government councils (soviets) and agencies. A significant proportion of urban housing was in private hands. These buildings were in much worse shape.

24. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 179.

25. N. Vert and S. V. Mironenko, eds., Istoriia stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov, vol. 1: Massovye repressii v SSSR (Moscow, 2004), pp. 623–624.

26. B. V. Zhiromskaia, I. N. Kiselev, and Iu. A. Poliakov, Polveka pod grifom “sekretno”: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1937 goda (Moscow, 1996), pp. 98, 100.

27. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001).

28. See one recent study: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).

29. For documents and letters characterizing inter-ethnic conflicts during the final period of Stalin’s rule, see L. P. Kosheleva et al., comps., Sovetskaia natsional’naia politika. Ideologiia i praktiki realizatsii (Moscow, 2013).

30. Geoffrey Hosking, Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2006).

31. E. Khodzha [Enver Hoxha], So Stalinym. Vospominaniia (Tirana, 1984), p. 90.

32. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1479, ll. 14–18.

33. A. Berelovich and V. Danilov, eds., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD: 1918–1939 gg., vols. 1–4 (Moscow, 1998–2012); G. N. Sevost’ianov et al., eds., “Sovershenno sekretno”: Lubianka–Stalinu o polozhenii v strane (1922–1934), vols. 1–9 (Moscow, 2001–2013).

34. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 12, d. 100, ll. 91–92.

35. When the apparat of the Special Sector was being reorganized in 1939, provisions were made for the creation of fifteen staff positions for people reading letters addressed to Stalin. Their duties included familiarizing themselves with the letters and sorting them (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 37). If we assume that each reader spent an average of ten minutes per letter, in working an eight-hour day, all fifteen readers would be able to review 720 letters per day or approximately 260,000 per year. Probably the number was higher. Experienced readers would process letters quickly, especially as many letters were short. Furthermore, using a shift system, the apparat worked essentially around the clock, and shifts were not strictly limited to eight hours.

36. APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 51. The Special Sector’s Fifth Section also took care of Stalin’s library.

37. The letters shown to the Special Sector leadership during 1945–1953 have been preserved. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, dd. 888–904.

38. Letters selected to be shown to Stalin were accompanied by a list entitled “Letters and Petitions Received Addressed to Com. Stalin.” In addition to the letters presented to Stalin, this list included certain letters sent for review by other Soviet leaders. Apparently these were letters it was felt Stalin did not need to see but about which he would be interested in knowing. Stalin’s personal archive contains a rather complete set of such lists of letters only for 1945–1952 (but lacks those received while he was vacationing in the south); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, dd. 862–882.

39. Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven, 2012).