Stalin, Volume 1

176. Togan, Vospominaniia, 267–9. Validi would write a letter requesting amnesty in late 1922; Rudzutaks conferred with Stalin, who agreed to grant it, provided Validi made a public renunciation and agitated among the basmachi to lay down their arms. Supposedly, nothing more was heard from Validi. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 93. Validi fought the Soviets for years before emigrating to Iran, then Turkey, where he took the surname Togan.

177. Bailey, Mission to Tashkent, 119–21. The war commissar, Osipov, escaped to Iran.

178. Zhizn’ natsional’nostei, March 2, 1919; Sochineniia, IV: 230–1.

179. Marshall, “Turkfront.”

180. Frank, Bukhara.

181. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, II: 657 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 14345, l. 13).

182. Eleuov, Inostrannaia voennaia interventsiia, II: 513 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 14884, l. 1).

183. Litvak and Kuznetzov, “The Last Emir of Noble Bukhara and His Money.” See also Becker, Russia’s Protectorates, 273–95.

184. Genis, “S Bukharoi nado konchat’,” 39–44, 49–56. Frunze: Istochnik, 1994, no. 5: 38–48.

185. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstva, 245, n2 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 315, l. 83: Chicherin to Molotov).

186. Gvardeitsy Oktiabria, 269 (RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1474, l. 3–5: 1928 autobiography); Beatty, Red Heart of Russia, 134–5. Peterss had an English wife and spoke the language with a London accent.

187. Peterss wrote to Moscow: “In my opinion an investigation should be launched and those who did not take measures to prevent these outrages should be called to account.” Genis, “S Bukharoi nado konchat’,” 49.

188. Genis, “S Bukharoi nado konchat’,” 39–49 (citing RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 234, l. 5; d. 357, l. 1). Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 596 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 357, l. 1: to Zinovy Katznelson, March 14, 1925).

189. Urazaev, Turkestanskaia ASSR.

190. Schapiro, “General Department.”

191. Istoricheskii arkhiv, I (1992): 14–29, translated in Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 94–115 (Pipes gives the wrong date). See also Westad, Global Cold War, 46. Lenin’s speech was omitted from the stenographic record of the 9th Party Conference published in 1972.

192. Service, Lenin, III: 140–5.

193. Pravda, September 29, 1920.

194. IX konferentsiia RKP (b), 34–6 (Radek), 60–2 (Stalin), 75–9 (Trotsky), 82 (Stalin), 372–3, n18. See also Trotsky, Stalin, 327–8; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 203.

195. “Our foolhardy vanguard, certain of victory,” Lenin privately told Clara Zetkin, the German Communist, “had no reinforcements in troops or ammunition and could not even get enough dry bread,” inducing them to squeeze “Polish peasants and townspeople,” who “looked upon the Red Army men as enemies, not brothers and liberators.” Zetkin, Vospominaniia o Lenine, 18–9; Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, 20. Zetkin first published these reminiscences in 1924. See also Pravda, October 9 and October 10, 1920. Lenin would soon tell the 10th Party Congress: “In our offensive we moved too fast—almost to Warsaw; this was undoubtedly a mistake. I will not now analyze whether it was a strategic or a political mistake—this would lead me too far from my topic. I think this will have to be the work of future historians.” V. I. Lenin, “Otchet o politicheskoi deiatel’nosti TsK RKP (b)” [March 8, 1921], in PSS, XLIII: 11.

196. Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 208–10.

197. Even if the Poles had not evicted Tukhachevsky from Warsaw, the way Piłsudski had been evicted from Kiev, would Britain and France have stood aside and allowed an attempt to Sovietize Poland?

198. Told by Soviet agitators they were “liberators,” Red Army soldiers found themselves greeted with anger by Polish workers. Putna, K Visle i obratno, 137–8; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 215, n2; Mikhutina, Pol’skaia-Sovetskaia voina, 191–5.

199. “In 1920 and partly in 1921,” one anonymous Polish Communist would recall, the party labored “under an illusion concerning the tempo of the development of the revolution.” Dziewanowski, Communist Party of Poland, 95 (citing K., “Poland,” Communist International, 1924, no. 1).

200. The Bolshevik presence in Białystok/Belostok lasted from July 28 through August 22, 1920. As one enthusiast eyewitness recorded at the time, “the Polish Revolutionary Committee arrived with very few staff [rabotnikov]. Red Poland will in time create them in the process of work.” Skvortsov-Stepanov, S Krasnoi Armiei, 47.

201. Lerner, “Poland in 1920,” at 410 (Julian Marchlewski). See also the analysis in Suslov, Politicheskoe obespechenie sovetsko-pol’skoi kampanii.

202. In a fall 1920 conversation with Clara Zetkin, the German Communist, Lenin acknowledged that “what happened in Poland was perhaps bound to happen . . . The peasants and workers, gulled by the followers of Piłsudski and [vice-premier Ignacy] Daszynski, defended their class enemies, allowed our gallant Red Army men to starve to death, enticed them into ambushes and killed them.” Zetkin, Vospominaniia o Lenine, 18–9; Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, 20. See also Pravda, October 9 and October 10, 1920.

203. Lerner, “Poland in 1920.” Lerner wrongly speculated that Tukhachevsky had no express orders to march on Warsaw. But of course he did: Mel’tiukhov, Sovtesko-pol’skie voiny, 74.

204. Tukhachevskii, Pokhod za Vislu, chapter 3, translated in Piłsudski, Year 1920 (New York: Piłsudski Institute of New York, 1972), at 242–4. The “Revolution from Abroad” chapter would be omitted from subsequent editions.

205. He wrote, obliquely, that “for a whole series of unexpected reasons, the high command’s efforts to bring about a regrouping of the great bulk of the Southwestern Front’s forces in the Lublin salient were unsuccessful.” Tukhachevskii, Izbrannye proizvedennye, I: 154.

206. Shaposhnikov, Na Visle. More broadly, see McCann, “Beyond the Bug.”

207. Many biographers have followed the Stalin insubordination line. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 203–5. An early exception is Ulam, Stalin, 188–9. Lenin’s disciples protected his reputation, at Stalin’s expense. “Who on earth would go to Warsaw through Lvov!” Lenin supposedly remarked, according to Bonch-Bruevich, in an obviously fabricated quote: Na boevykh postakh, 283.

208. Kantor, Voina i mir, 206, citing Tukhachesvsky’s “zapiski o zhizni” (September 9, 1921), in his police file: TsA FSB, ASD no. R-9000.

209. Lewis and Lih, Zinoviev and Martov.

210. Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, 146 (citing Zinoviev, Zwolf Tage, 74).

211. Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 71–2; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 217–20; Debo, Survival and Consolidation and Survival, 308–9; Weitz, Creating German Communism, 98.

212. Broue, German Revolution, 502.

213. The Soviets would declare Bessarabia Soviet territory under Romanian occupation. The United States and Japan failed to ratify the treaty. In 1924, in response, the USSR would create a Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of the Dniester River in Ukraine.

214. Wyszczelski, Varshava 1920, 256.

215. Mel’tiukhov, Sovtesko-pol’skie voiny, 104–5.

216. Lenin, “Nashe vneshnee i vnutrennee polozhenie i zadachi partii,” PSS, XLII: 17–38 (at 22: speech to a Moscow province party gathering, November 21, 1920).

217. Piłsudski, Year 1920, 222.

218. Pravda, November 7.

219. Davatts and L’vov, Russkaia armiia na chuzhbine, 7. Wrangel claimed 160,000: Hoover Institution Archives, Maria Dmitrevna Vrangel’ Collection, box 145, folder 28.

220. Zarubin, Bez pobeditelei; A. L. Litvin, “VChK v sovremennoi istoricheskoi literatury,” in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 51–70 (at 59). Yefim Yevdokimov was the chief of a special department of the southern front.

221. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 431.

222. Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, 389.

223. Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 208.

224. Osipova, Klassovaia bor’ba v derevene, 315, 317, 321; Abramovitch, Soviet Revolution, 143–5; Iarov, “Krest’ianskoe vol’nenie na Severo-Zapade Sovetskoi Rossii,” 134–59; Arthur Adams, “The Great Ukrainian Jacquerie,” in Hunczak, The Ukraine, 247–70; Graziosi, Bol’shevikii i krest’iane na Ukraine; Arshinov, Istoriia makhnovskogo dvizheniia; Danilov, Nestor Makhno; Aleshkin and Vasil'ev, Krest'ianskie vosstaniia; Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War.

225. Novaia zhizn’, March 26, 1918: 4 and April 19, 1918: 4, in Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 664; Pravda, March 17, 1918.

226. Graziosi, “State and Peasants,” 65–117 (at 76–7, 87).

227. Landis, Bandits and Partisans; Danilov, Krest’anskoe vosstanie. Previous studies include Singleton, “The Tambov Revolt”; Radkey, Unknown Civil War; and Delano DuGarm, “Local Politics and the Struggle for Grain in Tambov, 1918–1921,” in Raleigh, Provincial Landscape, 59–81.

228. Baranov, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie, 79.

229. Aptekar’, “Krest’ianskaia voina,” 50–55 (citing GARF, f. 6, op. 12, d. 194; f. 235, op. 2, d. 56, l. 6: Shikunov).

230. X s”ezd [1921], 231.

231. Shishkin, Sibirskaia Vandeia, II: 128.

232. Litvin, Krasnyi i belyi terror, 379 (February 13, 1921).

233. Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 165–6.

234. “We have to cope with the present situation, which has deteriorated both internally and internationally,” Lenin told the Moscow party organization on February 24, 1921. “[A formal peace treaty] with Poland has not yet been concluded, and at home we have a growth of banditry and kulak revolts. As for food and fuel, things have gone from bad to worse.” He blamed the influence of the Socialist Revolutionaries. “Their main forces are abroad; every spring they dream of overthrowing Soviet power.” Lenin, Collected Works, 42: 272–3.

235. Maslov, Rossiia posle chetyrekh let revoliutsii, II: 133.

236. Pravda, February 12, 1921.

237. Lenin received a copy of the nine-point resolutions of the Baltic Factory. “1. Down with Communism and Communist power over the Russian Socialist Republic, for not implementing the interests of the majority of the working people of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic. 2. Long live Soviet power, that is, that power which will realize the interests of the working peoples of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic.” And so on. The workers demanded a state without bloodshed, and closed their resolution with the cry, “Long live truth, freedom of speech and the press in the free Socialist Republic.” RGASPI, f. 2, op. 2, d. 561, l. 40.

238. “Doklad nachal’nika 1-go spetsial’nogo otdela VChK Fel’dmana v osobyi otdel VChK” [December 10, 1920], in Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 19–23. On February 28, the politburo in Moscow took a hard line concerning Kronstadt, and Cheka deputy chairman Kesnofontov ordered that “SRs and Mensheviks, using the natural dissatisfaction of the workers with the difficult conditions of life, are trying to call forth a strike movement against Soviet power and the Russian Communist party, giving it an organized, all-Russia character.” Prikaz VChK, “‘Ob usilenii bor’by s konterrevoliutsiie,” in Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 36–7

239. Izvestiya Vremennogo revoliutsionnogo komiteta matrosov, krasnoarmeitsev i rabochikh, March 3, 1921; Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 50–1; Kronstadskaia tragediia, 114–5; Getzler, Kronstadt, 205–45 (esp. 213–4). More than 300 volumes of archival documents on Kronstadt are said to sit in FSB archives, gathered from many agencies and publications, including from the Cheka itself: Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 30. Paul Miliukov, in Paris, gave the Kronstadt slogan as “Soviets without Communists,” which was Soviet propaganda against the sailors, and oft repeated. Poslednie novosti, March 11, 1921.

240. Pravda, March 3, 1921; Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 130–1. Trotsky had complained on March 1 that he was unable to get solid information on events on Kronstadt. The next day Zinoviev, Kalinin, and Lashevich telephoned Trotsky’s assistant Grushin: “We are now convinced that the events in Kronstadt constitute the beginning of an uprising. . . . Your help is needed.” They requested armored cars and trustworthy troops (a phrase crossed out on the version of the telegram that was sent). Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 59. No former tsarist officers served on the fifteen-member Revolutionary Committee, but some were invited to help plan the defense of Kronstadt.

241. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 60, 68.

242. Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 215; Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines, 396–7. The hostage taking included anyone with family ties to Kozlovsky (twenty-seven people, including his wife and children) as well as Petrichenko (including people who had no family ties but only the same name as Petrichenko).

243. Trotskii, Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, III/i: 202; Berkman, Kronstadt, 31–2. The newspaper editor, A. Lamanov, would be among those executed. At Kronstadt, at least 900 of the 2,680 Communist party members and candidates quit the party, many requesting publication of their resignations in the newspaper.

244. Krasnov and Daines, Neizvestnyi Trotskii, 339–41.

245. Kronstadskaia tragediia, I: 287.

246. Krasnov and Daines, Neizvestnyi Trotskii, 345.

247. Tukhachevsky was shocked to discover that a Siberian infantry division considered as the absolute most reliable, which he had specially chosen for the crackdown, refused to put down the sailors. “If the 27th Division will not do it,” one regime official observed on March 14, “no one will.” On March 15, a revolutionary tribunal sentenced many of the insubordinate troops to execution, which newspapers broadcast. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 188 (V. Nasonov); Minakov, Sovetskaia voennaia elita, 269.

248. X s’ezd, 750–65.

249. Sotsialistickeskoe stroitel’stvo SSSR, 2–3; Gladkov, Sovetskoe narodnoe khoziaistvo, 151, 316, 357; Klepikov, Statisticheskii spravochnik po narodnomu khoziaistvu, 26 (table 8); S. G. Wheatcroft, “Agriculture,” in Davies, From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy, at 94.

250. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 6, l. 80.

251. Gimpel’son, Sovetskii rabcohii klass, 80–2; Selunskaia, Izmeneniia sotsial’noi struktury sovetskogo obshchestva, 258. Diane Koenker quipped that “when Bolshevik party leaders saw support slipping away, they blamed the physical disappearance of their supporters rather than changed attitudes.” Diane Koenker, “Introduction: Social and Demographic Change in the Civil War,” in Koenker, Party, State, and Society, at 51.

252. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 431–6; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 197–200.

253. XX s”ezd , 98 (Rafail); Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev”: 37–48.

254. Lenin, Collected Works, 32: 41, 43, 52, 86. “It was a great mistake to put up these disagreements for broad party discussion and the party congress,” he asserted, because debate revealed “the party is sick.” Harding, “Socialist, Society, and the Organic Labour State,” 33.

255. X s”ezd [1921], 1; X s”ezd [1933], 4. The Workers’ opposition advanced their own resolutions for consideration (the last time resolutions would be submitted by anyone other than the apparatus), but they were not submitted to vote.

256. Lenin, Collected Works, 32: 206.

257. X s”ezd [1921], 207; X s”ezd [1933], 380–1. In a passage from that same speech often quoted out of context, Lenin added, referring to Trotsky’s labor army mobilizations that, “first of all we must convince, then coerce [prinudit’]. We have not been able to convince the broad masses.” X s”ezd [1921], 208; X sezd [1933], 382.

258. As it happened, Lenin himself signed the treaty. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 386; Arthur Adams, “The Great Ukrainian Jacquerie,” in Hunczak, The Ukraine, 247–70 (at 260).

259. Borys, Sovietization of the Ukraine. See also Wolfe, “The Influence of Early Military Decisions.”

260. Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” I: 179–84.

261. “Ob ocherednykh zadachakh partii v natsional’nom voprose: tezisy k X s”ezdu RKP (b),” Pravda, February 10, 1921, in Sochineniia, V: 15–29 (at 21–2). Georgy Chicherin, foreign affairs commissar, argued against Stalin’s theses, asserting that Stalin’s view of setting up a dichotomy between national and multinational states was outdated because now there had appeared a supranational state, a result of imperialism and global financial entities. The struggle, therefore, was not between strong or weak, independent or colonial states, but between the revolutionary working class and the supranational capitalist trusts. Chicherin, “Protiv tezisov Stalina,” Pravda, March 6, 8, 9, 1921.

262. Borys, Sovietization of the Ukraine, 343.

263. X s”ezd [1933], 184–91, Sochineniia, V: 33–44.

264. X s”ezd [1933], 191–2; X s”ezd [1963], 187.

265. X s”ezd [1933], 192–205; X s”ezd, [1921], 189–96. This bold assertion—that the party did not create the revolution in Turkestan, but the other way around—became the basis for a book-length treatment he published the same year. Safarov, Kolonial’naia revoliutsiia, first published as a short essay in Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, 1920, no. 14: 2759–2768. Safarov had the distinction of having been among those who had returned with Lenin in the sealed train and, in September 1919, of having been among the victims injured in the terrorist bombing of the Moscow party organization on Leontyev Lane. Following a dispute with Tomsky, the head of the Turkestan party bureau, Safarov as well as Tomsky were recalled.

266. X s”ezd [1933], 210. “It was necessary . . . to take local circumstances into account and to accommodate oneself to them,” Mikoyan told the 10th Party Congress. Massell, Surrogate Proletariat, 44.

267. X s”ezd [1933], 214.

268. X s”ezd [1933], 214–7; Sochineniia, V: 45–9.

269. X s”ezd [1933], 573–83, 749; Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia (b) v rezoliutsiiakh [5th ed.], I: 393.

270. RGASPI, f. 4, op. 2, d. 527, l. 38 (Danishevsky), f. 17, op. 84, d. 200, l. 18; Pavliuchenkov, Krest'ianskii Brest, 261.

271. X s”ezd [1921], 327; X s”ezd [1933], 856–7; Izvestiia, March 23, 1921.

272. X s”ezd [1921], 222; X s”ezd [1933], 406.

273. Malle, Economic Organization of War Communism, 446–7 (Osinsky).

274. Sakharov, Na Rasput’e, 12–3. At the 10th Party Congress, Trotsky reminded the delegates that he had proposed the measures already, a year earlier, only to have been rebuffed in the Central Committee (X s”ezd, 349–50). To halt the “economic degradation,” he had proposed that “the expropriation of surpluses be replaced by a fixed percentage deduction, or tax in kind, so that the best tillage or cultivation would still represent a profit.” He had further suggested that “the quantity of industrial goods delivered to the peasants should bear a closer relation to the quantity of grain sowed.” In other words, peasants should be given incentives, and a better deal, to raise their output. Trotsky’s proposal, “Fundamental Questions of Industrial and Agricultural Policy,” was published in 1926. Trotskii, Sochineniia, XVII/ii: 543–4. Trotsky’s self-presentation in emigration of his alleged anticipation of NEP is wildly inaccurate. Trotskii, Moia zhizn’, II: 199. See also Pavliuchenkov, Krest’ianskii Brest, 158–9. Cf. Danilov, “We Are Starting to Learn About Trotsky.”

275. Baranov, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie, 14–5. At the Food Procurement Congress in June–July 1920, some officials had pushed the tax in kind onto the agenda. Lenin set up a government commission to examine a tax in kind, including the consequence that it would require legal private trade of the surpluses after tax. The matter was debated in Pravda (February 17 and February 26, 1921). Genkina, “V. I. Lenin i perekhod k novoi ekonomicheskoi politike,” 11.

276. This went beyond the Bolsheviks: the Menshevik Fyodor Dan, in December 1920, had proposed a food-supply tax but repudiated the suggestion that he also desired free trade. Lih, Bread and Authority, 220.

277. X s”ezd [1921], 223–4; X s”ezd [1933], 409.

278. “Why was the food requisitioning allowed to continue during the autumn of 1920 and the spring of 1921, when the civil war had been won and the famine crisis was already widespread?” asked Orlando Figes. His answer: requisitioning officials, locally, were either unquestioning implementers of central policy or themselves fanatics, ready to do whatever seemed necessary to defend the new regime. Figes, Peasant Russia, 271–2. See also Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 375.

279. X s”ezd, 224, 468; PSS, XLIII: 69–70. Ryazanov, in November 1917, had helped Kamenev try to form an all-socialist coalition government.

280. X s”ezd [1921], 281; X s”ezd [1933], 523–4.

281. X s”ezd [1933], 736. Only members of the Workers’ opposition—who did not like the introduction of free trade either—opposed “on party unity.” A key leader of the Workers’ opposition, Yuri Lutovinov (b. 1887), a metalworker and trade unionist from Lugansk—the same coal-mining hometown as Voroshilov—would commit suicide in 1924 over the metastasizing of the bureaucracy as well as the New Economic Policy. He was the first person for whom the new Lenin Mausoleum would be used (on May 10, 1924), when the leadership climbed wooden stairs and addressed the crowd from the raised cube. Izvestiia, May 11, 1924. Stalin would soon prevent suicides from being commemorated in such fashion.

282. X s”ezd [1921], 289; X s”ezd [1933], 540; X s”ezd, 533–4. According to Barmine, who later defected, Radek in early 1921 told a group of students at the War College in Moscow that the workers were hungry and exhausted and in no mood for further sacrifice, but that rather than yield to (actual) worker wishes, the party would be resolute and press on to victory. The students were armed with rifles in preparation to join the fight against counterrevolution, but that could mean taking on the very workers in whose name the regime existed—a supreme test of faith. Barmine, One Who Survived, 94.

283. Zinov’ev, Sochineniia, VI: 626.

284. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 47–8 (citing PANO, f. 1, op. 2, d. 12a, l. 14, 18, 20: K. Danishevsky to Ivan Smirnov, then party boss in Siberia).

285. Krasnov and Daines, Niezvestnyi Trotskii, 346; Voroshilov, “Iz istorii podavleniia Kronstadtskogo miatezha,” 22. The regime disseminated the slander that rather than the “conscious” sailors of 1917, the rebels were lads fresh from the village, including transfers from the Black Sea Fleet who were “Ukrainian” peasants (a national slander). Therefore, no real socialist should have any qualms about slaughtering them. This was a charge the Mensheviks had used to try to explain away worker support for Bolshevism in 1917. Service, Bolshevik Party in Revolution, 44. See also Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 830.

286. Mlechin, Russkaia armiia mezhdu Trotskim, 194. En route the Party Congress delegates encountered Zinoviev heading to Moscow to report to the Party Congress, who painted a grim picture of Kronstadt.

287. Only three of the fifteen members of the Revolutionary Committee were captured: Petr Mikhailovich Perepelkin (1890–1921), Sergei Stepanovich Vershinin (1886–1921), and Vladislav Antonovich Val’k (1883–1921). Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 179. A majority of the political refugees would return under an amnesty.

288. Getzler, “The Communist Leaders’ Role,” 35–7.

289. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 252–6 (APRF, f. 26, op. 1, d. 80, l.26–34).

290. When the Party Congress crackdown squad returned to Moscow, Lenin received them on March 21 for a commemorative group photograph. Medals were handed out. In the 1930s, those who had led the crushing of the rebellion would be executed. Voroshilov, “Iz istorii podavleniia Kronshtadtskego miatezha.”

291. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 55–6; Trotskii, Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, III/1: 81.

292. DVP SSSR, III: 607–14; Izvestiia, May 7, 1921 (Krasin); Krasin, Voprosy vneshnei torgovli, 286–8. See also Shishkin, Stanovlenie vneshnei politiki postrevliutsionnoi Rossii i kapitalisticheskii mir, 101–16.

293. Glenny, “The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement.” Debo argues that the agreement reached between Litvinov and James O’Grady in 1920 in Copenhagen “opened the way to the more comprehensive negotiations which followed.” Debo, “Lloyd George and the Copenhagen Conference.”

294. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 262–73; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 76–9.

295. Documents on British Foreign Policy, VIII: 886–9.

296. “Where will we get the goods? Free trade requires goods, and peasants are very smart people and they are extremely capable of scoffing.” X s”ezd [1921], 227; X s”ezd [1933], 413.

297. Poland gained control over western Belorussia and western Ukraine, an addition of 52,000 square miles, and became 30 percent minority (5 million Ukrainians, 1.5 million Belorussians, 1 million Germans, as well as 3 million Jews), a potential source of internal instability. The great powers initially refused to recognize Poland’s new eastern borders. The Entente reluctantly acceded to Poland’s eastern borders in March 1923; Germany continued to refuse to do so. Wandycz, Soviet-Polish Relations, 250–90.

298. Thanks to the diplomatic maneuvering between the Soviets and the Poles, Lithuania, too, like Estonia and Latvia, emerged with its independence reconfirmed. Soviet Russia had contemplated trying to award Wilno/Vilnius, where Polish speakers predominated, to Lithuania as a Machiavellian means of undermining the Lithuanian national state, but in the end agreed not to intervene in the Polish-Lithuanian conflict over the disputed city, effectively ensuring Poland’s de facto control. Borezcki, Soviet-Polish Treaty of 1921, 220–1. In 1923, Moscow would halt the agreed repatriation payments; in addition, more than one million Polish refugees would not be allowed to depart the USSR. The two sides fought bitterly over Poland’s share (Congress Poland) of tsarist Russia’s gold reserves; Moscow never paid the 30 million gold rubles that had been agreed (reduced from an original claim of 300 million). In 1927, after receiving two large payments in gems, the Poles gave up on obtaining the bulk of this money, and instead settled for return of Polish cultural treasures.

299. Gruber, International Communism, 316; Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 109–10.

300. Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 163 (citing Rote Fahne, April 4, 1921).

301. On June 25, 1921, Zinoviev would give a summary report to the 3rd Comintern Congress in Moscow, followed by days of discussion during which he, Bukharin, and Radek would defend the “March Action” in Germany; Lenin, Trotsky, and Kamenev would condemn it. Stalin would be away, and one German attendee would later remark that “it was possible in 1921 to spend six months in Moscow without knowing of his existence.” He added that “there was nothing striking about Lenin, nothing impressive. . . . But in discussion—in a small group on the platform at a monster meeting—he was wonderfully convincing by the way he argued, by the tone of his voice, by the logical sequence of statements by which he reached his conclusion.” Reichenbach, “Moscow 1921,” 16–17.

302. Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 137–196.

303. X s”ezd [1933], 35; PSS, XLIII: 24.

304. Markina and Federovna, Baltiiskie moriaki, 322–3; Getzler, Kronstadt, 219. See also Getzler, “The Communist Leaders’ Role.”

305. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 138–9 (March 5). The absence of evidence for Kozlovsky’s role was whitewashed: on March 25, the politburo created a commission to study Kronstadt, headed by Semyon Sorenson, known as Yakov Agranov (b. 1893), a former Socialist Revolutionary and Cheka operative, and his internal report argued that “the rapid liquidation of the rebellion did not afford the opportunity definitely for the appearance of White Guard elements and slogans.” Kronstadtskaia tragediia, II: 33–43 at 42–3 (TsA FSB RF, d. 114 728, t. 1A); Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 230–42. The Cheka would also focus on the Russian Red Cross, which had arrived on Kronstadt on March 8 via Finland, and managed to bring one hundred bags of flour and some medical supplies. The mission included the former commander of the Sevastopol Baron Pavel Viktorovich Vilken, who had emigrated to Finland. The sailors had hesitated to allow the Red Cross, despite their desperation for the food and medicine. The Red Cross mission departed the day after it arrived; Vilken had stayed behind, but the sailors had refused his offer of up to eight hundred armed men, knowing he was a monarchist.

306. PSS, LXIII: 130–43 (speech to transport workers, March 27, 1921). Lenin understood the Kronstadt sailors were not White Guards per se. He assured the 10th Congress delegates (March 15) that any “conscious peasant” had to understand that “any turn backwards signified a return to the tsarist government. The Kronstadt experience shows this. There, they do not want the White Guards, but no other authority exists, they do not want our state power, and they occupy such a position that it becomes the best agitation for us and against a new government.” In other words, supposedly no political possibilities existed between Bolshevism and a White Guard restoration. And yet, the Kronstadt sailors were not White Guards. X s”ezd [1921], 227–8; X s”ezd [1933], 414.

307. Instead, the Cheka issued a sensational publication, “A Communication on the uncovering in Petrograd of a plot against Soviet Power,” which named a Petrograd Combat Organization led by Professor V. N. Tagantsev (who had been arrested in May 1921). Izvestiia, August 31, 1921.

308. Dzierzynski seemed obsessed with the Socialist Revolutionary leader Victor Chernov, citing his publications from exile in Revel as evidence of his cooperation with the Whites. Dzerzhinskii, “Doklad o vserossiiskoi chrezvychainoi komissii o raskrytykh i likvidirovannykh na territorii RSFSR zagorovakh protiv sovetskoi vlasti v period maia-iiunia 1921 goda,” TsA FSB, f. 1, op. 5, d. 10, l. 1–20, in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 593–612. Chernov had no involvement in Kronstadt: he had sent a note by courier from Estonia to Kronstadt’s Revolutionary Committee indicating that, as the chairman of the (dispersed) Constituent Assembly, he would come to the island to lead the struggle for its restoration, but at a meeting on March 12 only one sailor supported the idea, which was shelved. Petrichenko, on March 13, sent a thank-you note but demurred. Kronstadtskaia tragediia 1921, I: 403; Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 124–5.

309. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, March 18, 1921: 6.

310. Martov, “Kronshtadt,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, April 1921, no. 5: 5; Burgin, Sotsial-demokraticheskaia menshevistskaia literatura, 297.

311. Getzler, Martov, 204–17; Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution, 59.

312. PSS, XLIII: 241–2.

313. Esikov and Kanishev, “Antonovskii NEP,” 60–72.

314. “Zapiska E. M. Sklianskogo 26 Aprelia 1921 g.,” in Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 428–9, 459–60. Lenin met Tukhachevsky no later than December 19, 1920, in Moscow, where they discussed the southern front, and Lenin requested a report (to be sent to Sklyansky). Lenin received him again in late April 1921, when he was assigned to Tambov. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, VIII: 130.

315. Kronstadskaia tragediia, I: 291 (Zinoviev).

316. Baranov, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie, 147–8; Meijer, Trotsky Papers, II: 460–2 (Trotsky retrospectively affixed the wrong date of June; Tukhachevsky’s appointment was approved by the politburo on April 28, 1921).

317. Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 209–41.

318. Aptekar’, “Khimchistka po-Tambovskii,” 56 (RGVA, f. 190, op. 3, d. 514; l. 73; f. 34228, op. 1, d. 383, l. 172–4; f. 7, op. 2, d. 511, l. 140, 151; 140, f. 235, op. 2, d. 82, l. 38; op. 3, d. 34, l. 1ob.); Baranov, Krest’ianskoe vosstaniie, 179. For difficulties ascertaining the extent of chlorine gas use, see Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 265–9.

319. “‘Sfotografirovannye rechi’: govoriat uchastniki likvidatsii antonovshchiny,” Otechestvennye atrkhivy, 1996, no. 2: at 65 (chief of camps at Tambov, claiming 2,000 inmates); Werth, “A State Against Its People,” 110–17. Tukhachevsky soon wrote up the lessons of his counterinsurgency campaign: “If deportation cannot be organized immediately, then one should establish a wide set of concentration camps.” Mikhail Tukhachevskii, “Bor’ba s kontrerevolutsionnymi vosstaniiami,” Voina i revoliutsiia, 1926, no. 6: 6–9, no. 7: 11–13. Some of the incarceration sites were Great War concentration camps.

320. Baranov, Krest’ianskoe vosstannie, 223–4, 226–7. In Tambov between March and September 1922, there were 217 voluntary resignations from the party, alongside just 29 new members, almost none of whom came from the working class. Pavliuchenkov, “Orden Mechenostsev,” 275 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 110, l. 163).

321. Zdanovich, Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 236–8; Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 360; Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 277–9.

322. Mnatsakanian, Poslantsy Sovetskoi Rossii, 56–7.

323. King, Ghost of Freedom, 169.

324. Kazemzadeh, Struggle for Transcaucasia, 288–9; Iskenderov, Iz istorii bor’by kommunisticheskoi partii Azerbaidzhana za pobedu sovetskoi vlasti, 527–9.

325. As Jordania explained in 1918, drawing upon the authority of Kautsky, “the first steps of the victorious proletariat will be not social reforms, but the introduction of democratic institutions, the realization of the party’s minimum program, and only afterwards the gradual transition to the socialist maximum program.” Suny, Georgian Nation, 195.

326. Jordania, “Staline, L’Écho de la lutte”; Vakar, “Stalin”; Kazemzadeh, Struggle for Transcaucasia, 184–210; Suny, Transcaucasia, 249.

327. “The Free and Independent Social-Democratic State of Georgia,” wrote one perceptive eyewitness of the Menshevik republic, “will always remain in my memory as a classic example of an imperialist ‘small nation.’ Both in territory snatching outside and bureaucratic tyranny inside, its chauvinism was beyond all bounds.” Bechhofer, In Denikin’s Russia, 14.

328. Pravda, May 8, 1920; Mirnyi dogovor mezhdu Gruziei i Rossiei. Georgia’s secret negotiating team included Grigol Uratadze, David Sagirashvili (former chairman of the soviet of Tsaritsyn in 1917, where he had been exiled), and Aristotle Mirsky-Kobakhidze. Mirsky-Kobakhidze, who had been sent to Georgia to undertake subversion, may have initiated the peace mission from his prison cell at Metekhi. En route to Moscow the men were intercepted by Orjonikidze, who declared he would conduct the negotiations. Mirsky-Kobakhidze managed to contact Lenin, who overruled Orjonikidze. Chicherin had his deputy, Lev Karakhan [Karakhanyan], sign; Uratadze signed for the Georgian government. On May 10, 1921, Lenin received Uratadze in his office. Uratadze and Sagirashvili were also received in Stalin’s office. A banquet was held with the Georgian colony in Moscow. De Lon, “Stalin and Social Democracy.” Uratadze did not see fit to mention Sagirashvili or Mirsky in his account: Uratadze, Vospominaniia. Later in 1921 the Cheka arrested Sagirashvili and imprisoned him in Metekhi (again); he was exiled with a large group in November 1922 to Germany.

329. For the secret codicil, see Rossiiskaia Sotisalisticheskaia Federativnaia Sovcetskaia Respublika, 16.

330. Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovskii, 33–4.

331. David Dallin, “Between the World War and the NEP,” in Haimson, The Mensheviks, 191–239 (at 236). Dallin, a Menshevik, attended the congress.

332. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 4 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 74, l. 3; d. 122, l. 2; d. 46, l. 3; d. 55, l. 5).

333. Boersner, The Bolsheviks, 63.

334. Sochineniia, IV: 408. In Pravda (December 4) Stalin called the Dashnaks “agents of the Entente.” Sochineniia, IV: 413–4.

335. Sochineniia, IV: 162, 237, 372. Further impetus may have come from the specter of Karl Kautsky, the bête noire of Bolshevism and hero of Georgian Menshevism, who was visiting the non-Bolshevik socialist republic from late September 1920 through January 1921, and found that independent “Georgia lacks nothing to make her not only one of the most beautiful, but also one of the richest countries in the world.” Kautsky, Georgia, 14.

336. Jones, “Establishment of Soviet Power,” 620–1.

337. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 523 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 122, l. 2; op. 2, d. 46, l. 3; d. 55, l. 5; d. 56, l. 1); Makharadze, Pobeda sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v Gruzii, 420–3; Zhordania, Moia zhizn’, 109–12. Trotsky, away in the Urals, demanded an investigation. Makharadze complained in late 1921 to Tskhakaya, the Georgian representative in Moscow: “In the Caucasus bureau there are comrades, even now, who do not recognize the formal existence of Transcaucasus republics, but rather see them as provinces of the RSFSR.” Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 524 (citing RGASPI, f. 157, op. 1/c, d. 14, l. 1–5).

338. PSS, XLII: 367. On March 2, Lenin wrote Orjonikidze ordering “a special policy of concessions for the Georgian intelligentsia and small traders. . . . It is hugely important to seek an acceptable compromise with Jordania or Georgian Mensheviks like him. . . . I ask you to understand that both the internal and international aspects of Georgia demand that the Georgian Communists do not apply the Russian pattern, but that they skillfully and flexibly create a particular tactic based on concessions to all kind of petty-bourgeois elements.” Lenin, Collected Works, 32: 362.

339. Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 172.

340. Orjonikidze wanted “with red-hot irons,” in Stalin’s words, “to burn down the remains of nationalism,” as he stated in Tiflis in late November 1921. Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 216.

341. King, Ghost of Freedom, 173; Avalov, Nezavisimosti Gruzii, 285.

342. King, Ghost of Freedom, 171.

343. See Churchill’s August 16, 1919, long memorandum, excerpted in Churchill, World Crisis, 251–3.

344. Avalov, Nezavisimosti Gruzii, 288–9; Avalishvili, Independence of Georgia, 266–8. Oliver Wardrop, a scholar of Georgian literature and history, was British commissioner.

345. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, II: 755; Garafov, “Russko-turetskoe sblizhenie,” 247.

346. The Georgians could not manage to create a cultural center abroad. Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 234.

347. More than 150,000 Georgians had fought in the tsarist army during the Great War, but after battlefield deaths, captures, and desertions, General Kvinitadze managed to muster a mere 10,000. General Giorgi Kvinitadze [Chikovani] (1874–1970) was born in Daghestan and graduated from the St. Constantine Infantry School in St. Petersburg and later the General Staff Academy. He did not speak Georgian. He did not get along with Jordania, but the latter invited him to become supreme commander. He was put off by the Georgian Mensheviks’ abuses of power, amid rhetorical flourishes about socialism and internationalism, and their flirtation with a “people’s militia” rather than a real army. They let him go, then turned to him again at crisis time. In 1922 in Paris he wrote memoirs; he would be buried in the same cemetery as Jordania. Kvinitadze, Moi vospominaniia.

348. On March 17–18, Jordania had sent emissaries to negotiate with the Bolsheviks located just outside Batum (Stalin’s brother-in-law Alyosha Svanidze, Avel Yenukidze, and Mamiya Orakhelashvili); the Mensheviks agreed to allow the Red Army to enter via the port of Batum to prevent its seizure by the Turks, and to provide wagons for Dmitry Zhloba’s cavalry. The Bolsheviks promised amnesty and positions in a Soviet government. The Mensheviks distrusted the offer.

349. Jordania would set up south of Paris; eventually, he would find a patron in Piłsudski.

350. Kuleshov, “Lukollov mir,” 72–3 (RGASPI, f. 78, op. 1, d. 46, l. 1, 3).

351. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 675, l. 1–23.

352. RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 24278, l. 1–2.

353. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, VI: 390, IX: 348, 618, X: 348, 566, 588, 639, XI: 47, 113, 128; Meijer, Trotsky Papers, II: 26–9, 66–7; McNeal, Stalin, 50. Trotsky was given an eight-week holiday at the same time: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 149, l. 93.

354. TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 47–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3530, l. 1–2; Kommunist [Baku], July 31, 1921). Amayak Nazaretyan, one of the five members of the Caucasus bureau, in 1922 became Stalin’s top assistant in Moscow.

355. De Lon, “Stalin and Social Democracy,” 125.

356. Trotsky, Stalin, 359–60; Lang, Modern History, 238–9 (no citations, evidently relying on Menshevik emigre accounts); Payne, The Rise and Fall of Stalin, 275–6 (repeating Lang’s account).

357. Iremashvili, Stalin und die Tragodie, 57–62.

358. Pravda Gruzii, July 1921, 13; Stalin, “Ob ocherednykh zadachakh kommunizma v Gruzii i Zakavka’e,” in Sochineniia, V: 88–100 (at 95).

359. Belov, Baron Ungern fon Shternberg; Palmer, Bloody White Baron.

360. Alioshin, Asian Odyssey, 167, 183–7. A sensational insider account of the baron, by a Polish professor at Omsk University, became a bestseller: Ossendowski, Beasts, Men, and Gods.

361. Tornovskii, “Sobytiiia v Mongolii-Khalkhe,” 168–328 (at 208–13); Alioshin, Asian Odyssey, 231.

362. Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 184–5.

363. Iuzefovich, Samoderzhets pustyni, 3, 133–7.

364. Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 410–13; Alioshin, Asian Odyssey, 229.

365. The Anglophobe Chicherin played a lead role, insisting that the Peoples of the East consisted not only of Muslims but also Buddhists. Mongolia and Tibet were potential thorns in the side of British India. Amur Sanai, “Kloiuchki k vostokou,” Zhizn’ natsional’nostei, May 26, 1919.

366. For a Soviet account of them, see Genkin, Severnaia Aziia, 1928, no. 2: 79–81.

367. Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 202; Roshchin, Politicheskaia istoriia Mongolii, 35–6.

368. Murphy, Soviet Mongolia, 13–4.

369. Rupen, Mongols of the Twentieth Century, I: 139; Sumiatskii, “Na zare osvobozhdeniii Mongolii,” Pravda, July 26, 1920, in Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 203–4.

370. Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 216; Rupen, Mongols of the Twentieth Century, I: 141, 155. Retrospectively, this conference became the 1st Party Congress.

371. I. I. Lomakina, “Kommentarii,” in Pershin, Baron Ungern, 189–259 (at 176–7).

372. Lepeshinskii, Revoliutsiia na Da’lnem vostoke, 429–32; Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 238.

373. The Warsaw-born Red Army commander Konstanty Rokossowski (b. 1896) joined his substantial cavalry to the Mongol forces led by Sukhbaatar, but Rokossowski was wounded and left the field. Roshchin, Politcheskaia istoriiia Mongolii, 20–1; Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 244–5, 263.

374. Pravda, July 9, 1921; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 196–7. The 3rd Congress met in Moscow from June 22 to July 12, 1921. Stalin was not among the five Soviets (Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek, Lenin, and Trotsky) elected to the Comintern executive committee. During the congress he was recuperating down south.

375. Morozova, Comintern and Revolution in Mongolia, 16 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 154, d. 20, l. 1–7).

376. Alioshin, Asian Odyssey, 266.

377. Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 287–8.

378. Palmer, Bloody White Baron, 228 (citing GARF, f. 9427, op. 1, d. 392, l. 36). See also Kuz’min, Baron Ungern v dokumentakh i memuarakh, 199–242 (RGVA, f. 16, op. 3, d. 222, l. 123–4ob., 125, 1–19; f. 16, op. 1, d. 37, l. 128, 337, 333, 329; GARF, f. 9427, op. 1, d. 392, l. 7–13, 47–60, 35–46); Sovetskaia Sibir’, September 13, 1921 (Ivan Pavlunovsky, Siberian Cheka).

379. Kuz’min, Baron Ungern v dokumentakh i memuarakh, 198–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 195, l. 1; op. 163, d. 178, l. 5; op. 163, d. 180, l. 3–3ob.). To ensure nothing went wrong, Moscow sent Minei Gubelman, known as Emilyan Yaroslavsky, as prosecutor; he happened to be Jewish, though this appears not to have factored into the decision of who would condemn the rabidly anti-Semitic baron, for Yaroslavsky was from Eastern Siberia (the son of an exile) and had recently been named a Central Committee secretary.

380. Sovetskaia Sibir’, September 16, September 17, September 18, and September 20, 1921; Da’lnevostochnaia pravda, September 25, 1921; Kuz’min, Baron Ungern v dokumentakh i memuarakh, 242–63; Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 294–304.

381. Kuz’min, Baron Ungern v dokumentakh i memuarakh, 263 (RGVA, f. 16, op. 1, d. 37, l. 330).

382. Misshima and Tomio, Japanese View of Outer Mongolia, 27.

383. Nyamaa, Compilation of Some Documents, 7–8.

384. Slavinskii, Sovetskii Soiuz i Kitai, 51–3 (AVP RF, f. 08, op. 5, psap. 3, d. 17, l. 1–2; d. 18, l. 4–5); Tsziun, “Sovetskaia Rossiia i Kitai,” 54–5.

385. Roshchin, Politicheskaia istoriia Mongolii, 37 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 152, d. 9, l. 12–4: Boris Shumyatsky to Chicherin, August 12, 1921); Kuz’min, Baron Ungern v dokumentakh i memuarakh, 264 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 145, l. 38: Joffe letter); Kuz’min, Istoriia barona Ungerna, 199. See also Murphy, Soviet Mongolia; Hammond, “Communist Takeover of Outer Mongolia.”

386. RGASPI, f. 495, op. 152, d. 11, l. 19–23.

387. Chicherin favored a meeting, writing to Lenin that Mongolia’s “revolutionary government is the ace of spades in our hands. Its creation foils the plans of Japan to set up an anti-revolutionary front stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian. With a friendly Mongolia our border becomes utterly safe.” Luzyanin, “Mongolia,” 76.

388. Roshchin, Politicheskaia istoriia Mongolii, 70 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 152, d. 9, l. 65); Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 222 (citing central archives of foreign relations, F-117, H/N-01); Morozova, Comintern and Revolution in Mongolia, 43, RGASPI, f. 495, op. 152, d, 9, l. 63–4).

389. Only in early January 1922, some two months later, did the Peking government even begin to hear rumors concerning the contents of the Soviet-Mongolian treaty. Elleman, “Secret Sino-Soviet Negotiations.”

390. Bolshevik officials were aware that Mongolia had little class differentiation or upper-class wealth to expropriate (as reported by the scholar Ivan Maisky, who had been part of a Soviet expedition to Outer Mongolia). Maiskii, Sovremennaia Mongoliia, 127.

391. Malle, Economic Organization of War Communism, 506–11.

392. Lih, Bread and Authority; Narskii, Zhizn’ v katastrofe, 5.

393. PSS, XLIII: 18, 24, XLIV: 159.

394. Vaisberg, Den’gi i tseny’, 10.

395. NEP decrees continued right through 1923, legalizing private activity in publishing, credit, and savings and loans; leasing factories from the state; and allowing state factories to do business with private traders, scorned as NEPmen.

396. A decree of October 17, 1921, on confiscation and requisition mandated that a protocol be made at the time of any confiscation, with the names of those whose goods were seized, those who enacted the seizure, and those who received the goods for storage at a warehouse, as well as a full inventory of the articles. The protocol had to be signed, including by at least two witnesses (often neighbors). It also established the principle of compensation for requisitions and restrictions on the use of confiscation solely to legitimate punitive contexts. Izvestiia, October 26, 1921; Timashev, Publichno-pravovoe polozhenie lichnosti, I: 177–8. The instructions for implementation tried to draw a firm line underneath everything, stipulating an end to fruitless efforts to adjudicate prior legal claims for confiscations. Yet another decree on seizures would follow in 1922, in a further attempt to draw a line under the revolutionary dispossession whirlwind of 1917–22 by allowing those who possessed confiscated goods to retain them. Izvestiia, March 29, 1922.

397. Smith, “Stalin as Commissar for Nationality Affairs.”

398. VIII s”ezd RKP (b), 82.

399. The Treaty of Riga (1921), which ended the Polish-Soviet War, reinforced the path to a federal structure—Belorussia and Ukraine were signatories. Working with Alexander Myasnikov (Myasnikyan), a Russified Armenian Bolshevik, Stalin played a significant role in the “annexation” of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belorussia in Minsk in December 1919. The proclamation was issued in Russian, Polish, and Yiddish, but not Belorussian, the language of the peasants. Izvestiia, December 18, 1919; Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 71–5.

400. In October 1920 Stalin had noted that “the demand for the secession of the border regions from Russia . . . must be rejected not only because it runs counter to the very formulation of the question of establishing a union between the center and the border regions, but mainly because it fundamentally runs counter to the interests of the mass in both center and border regions.” Sochineniia, IV: 352.

401. PSS, LIII: 189–90. The two warring officials were Mikhail Tomsky and Georgy Safarov. The matter was taken up at the politburo on September 13, and within a month personnel in Turkestan were changed.

402. It was in this context that Kamenev, in 1922 (with a second edition in 1923), would publish a fat compendium of his various journalistic articles, Between Two Revolutions. Belatedly, it looked like Kamenev had won that famous April 1917 debate with Lenin, when the Bolshevik leader had returned from exile to the Finland Station, railing at Kamenev (and Stalin), who were arguing against the seizure of class power, insisting that the “bourgeois democratic” revolution still had a long way to go. Lih, “The Ironic Triumph of ‘Old Bolshevism.’”

403. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 299, l. 55.

404. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 68, l. 47.

405. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 45–9.

406. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 223–7 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 315, l. 252–3, 260).

407. Sochineniia, V: 117–27 (at 118–19); Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 349–50.

PART III: COLLISION

1. Stalin, “O Lenine,” reprinted in Sochineniia, VI: 52–64 (at 61).

2. Sering, Die Umwalzung der osteuropaischen Agrarverfassung, 5–6; Antsiferov, Russian Agriculture During the War, 382–3.

3. For these and many other intolerant Lenin utterances, see Getzler, “Lenin’s Conception” (citing PSS, XXXV: 268, XXXVIII: 339). To be sure, once famine broke out in mid-1921 and Lenin was appealing for international food aid, he asserted that the civil war “had been forced upon the workers and peasants by the landowners and capitalists of all countries.” Lenin, Collected Works, 32: 502.

4. Lenin, “O vremennom revoliutsionom pravitel’stve [May 1905],” PSS, X: 227–50; “Sed’maia (aprels’skaia) vesrossiiskaia konferentsiia RSDRP (b)” [April 1917], PSS, XXXI: 339–81 (esp. 353–4). Incredibly, Rabinowitch (again) argues that dictatorship was forced upon Lenin and the Bolsheviks, even as Rabinowitch shows, time and again, that in response to crises, often precipitated by the Bolsheviks themselves, they resorted to arrests and dirty tricks (e.g., voter fraud), which they always sought to justify by invoking “class war” and the battle against “counterrevolution” (e.g., anyone who opposed them). Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power.

5. Pravda, August 28, 1919; Lenin, Collected Works, 29: 559.

6. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics.

7. Marx, too, never developed a theory of politics. He never explicitly embraced the possibility of rival political platforms competing in open politics; when critics, such as Mikhail Bakunin, spelled out the likely consequences of such a position, Marx went silent. For Marx, the only consideration was representation of the “interests” of the proletariat, for which he (and Engels) were the spokesmen; they denounced other socialists who claimed to express the interests of the proletariat differently. Politics for Marx was never a legitimate pursuit in itself, let alone a necessity.

8. PSS, XXXIII: 109; Pravda, January 15, 1919 (Osinsky, a Left Communist). In notes to himself (in power), he wrote of the state as “a tool of the proletariat in its class struggle, a special bludgeon, rien de plus!” “O diktature proletariat,” Leninskii sbornilk, III (1925), reprinted in PSS, XXXIX: 261–9 (at 262). Lenin never completed the pamphlet “On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” for which he composed these notes.

9. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 155 (citing a justice commissariat official).

10. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics, esp. 91–2.

11. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1988, no. 10: 6. See also Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 2: 128.

12. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 410.

13. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 21, l. 18; d. 71, l. 2; op. 3, d. 174, l. 5; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 2: 129, 130, 137; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XI: 47.

14. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 240, l. 1.

15. Ogonek, 1990, no. 4: 6 (Doctor Osipov). See also, PSS, LIV: 203 (Lenin to Varga).

16. Izvestiia, TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 2: 131–2 (Darkshevich). On March 6, Lenin told the Communist faction at the metal workers trade union congress, “My illness . . . for several months has not permitted me to take part in political affairs”—divulging a state secret. PSS, XLV: 6.

17. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 160 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 263, l. 1; d. 265, l. 1–2), 162–7. Stalin was first assigned responsibility for the agitprop department on August 22, 1921; then, on September 13, 1921, the politburo resolved that he should spend three quarters of his time on party work, one quarter on Rabkrin. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 193, l. 2; d. 201, l. 5–6. See also Chuev, Sto sorok, 181, 229–30.

18. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 78, l. 7; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 267; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 170–1; Chuev, Sto sorok, 181. For fantasies about other supposed candidates for general secretary (Ivan Smirnov, Janis Rudzutaks, Mikhail Frunze), see Pavlova, Stalinizm, 56. See also Trotskii, Stalin, II: 173–4.

19. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 172–7.

20. Chuev, Sto sorok, 181; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 170–1 (citing RGASPI, f. 48, op. 1, d. 21, l. 1–469); Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 95–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 78, l. 2, 6–7ob.; and PSS, XLV: 139). After the names of Molotov and Kuibyshev Lenin wrote “secretary.” Stalin came in tenth place in the voting for the 27, in terms of how many negative votes he received. The votes for the new Central Committee at the 11th Congress were indicative: for Lenin, 477 out of 478; for Trotsky, the same number (the last time that would happen); for Stalin, 463; for Kamenev, 454; and for Zinoviev, 448. Thus, it was not true that Kamenev or Zinoviev had higher standing in the party than Stalin.

21. XI s”ezd VKP (b), 84–5, 143; PSS, XLV: 122.

22. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 241, l. 2. In February 1922, the Profintern (trade union international) acquired a “general secretary” (Rudzutaks). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 361, l. 15. Lenin had rebuffed Zinoviev’s request to relocate the Comintern to Petrograd; the appointment of Kuusinen (in Moscow) was a compromise.

23. Someone, evidently Lenin, blocked a suggestion at the April 3 Central Committee plenum to create a permanent Central Committee chairman (predsedatel’) above the general secretary. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 78, l. 2, 6.

24. Three days after formalizing Stalin’s appointment as general secretary, Lenin ordered a full case of German Somnacetin and Veronal from the Kremlin apothecary. Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 529 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 23036).

25. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 412–3. Plans to find Lenin a retreat somewhere in the mountains, whether in the Caucasus or the Urals, had come to naught. Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 379, 537; Leninskii sbornik, XXXVI: 468–9; PSS, LIV: 229–30; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 2: 133–4 (RGASPI, f. 16, op. 3, d. 20); PSS, LIV: 241–2; Tsvigun, V. I. Lenin i VChK [1987], 536. Suddenly, the old Caucasus bandit Kamo (Ter-Petrosyan) popped up, vowing to protect and serve Lenin in the region. PSS, LIV: 230–1.

26. Klemperer told the New York Times that Lenin “was sick, but not seriously so,” without revealing his diagnosis. New York Times, April 4, 1922. The commissar of health wrote in the newspaper that the bullets aimed at Lenin had been dipped in curare, a poison in which Native Americans were known to have dipped their arrows—and which, if true, would have killed him back in 1918. Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 114 (citing Bednota, April 22, 1922: Semashko). Word of Lenin’s “poisoning,” whether from Klemperer’s bogus diagnosis or Semashko’s bogus assertions, ricocheted abroad: Rul’, March 26, March 29, June 13, June 15, June 18, June 21, July 19, August 1, and August 2, 1922.

27. Pravda, April 28, 1922.

28. Lenin’s note concerned the need to set up some model sanitoriums within 500 miles of Moscow. Lenin added as if conspiratorially (“P.S. Secret”) a directive to attend to food supply and transport for Zubalovo, where Stalin and Kamenev had state dachas and where one for Lenin was under construction. Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 34 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 694, l. 2). Kamenev and Dzierzynski were also said to have dachas in Zubalovo.

29. Vospominaniia o Vladimir Il’iche Lenine [1956–61], II: 342 (V. Z. Rozanov, “Zapiski vracha”).

30. The official account of Lenin’s activities lists the stroke as May 25–27: Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 349. See also Vospominaniia o Vladimire Il’iche Lenine [1979], III: 320; Molodaia gvardiia, 1924, no. 2–3: at 113; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 178–9; Ogonek, 1990, no. 4: 6; PSS, LIV: 203; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 1: 215; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 2: 130–6; Trotsky, My Life [1930], 475.

31. Chuev, Sto sorok, 193.

32. For instance, in late 1921 Lenin wrote of Kamenev, “Poor fellow, weak, frightened, intimidated”—and Lenin had a relatively higher opinion of Kamenev and “loved him more” than Zinoviev (as Molotov recalled). Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 138 (December 1, 1921); Chuev, Sto sorok, 183. See also Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 61. In a preface to a collection of his writings, Lenin had inserted damning material against Zinoviev; only right before publication did he excise it (Stalin had urged Lenin to keep it in). Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 143–6.

33. Lidiya Fotiyeva took over Lenin’s personal secretariat in August 1918; by 1920, it had seven staff total (including her): five aides and two clerks. Fotiyeva’s two key underlings were Glasser and Volodicheva. Others included N. S. Krasina and N. S. Lepeshinskaya. Stalin’s wife Nadya Alliluyeva, for a time, was responsible for Lenin’s archive and the most secret documents. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 103–5; Kolesnik, Khronika zhizni sem’i Stalina, 28; Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World, I: 123. Gorbunov (who had replaced Bonch-Bruevich) would stay on as head of the Council of People’s Commissars business directorate and private secretary under Rykov.

34. “I am a bad judge of people, I don’t understand them,” Lenin supposedly told a member of his staff, who remarked that Lenin “tried to consult with long-time comrades, with Nadezhda Konstantinova and with Maria Ilichina.” Yakov Shatunovsky, quoted in Shatunovskaia, Zhizn’ v Kremle, 36–7. “In a society where personal attachments were an integral part of social organization, Lenin’s detachment was culturally revolutionary.” Jowitt, New World Disorder, 7.

35. Mal’kov, Zapiski, 150–2, 154, 181; Bonch-Bruevich, Tri pokusheniie na V. I. Lenina, 102; McNeal, Bride of the Revolution, 185–6. It was during the fall 1918 respite among the linden trees at Gorki that Lenin wrote his slashing rebuttal to Kautsky.

36. When guests were not expected the family ate in the kitchen. The dining room door opened to Lenin’s room, which contained a writing desk in front of the window—which looked out onto Senate Square—a table, and a small bed. Vera Dridzo, Krupskaya’s secretary, was one of the few people to take meals at the apartment with the family. Dridzo, Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaia.

37. Zdesenko, Gorki Leninskie, 115, 144 (photo of the Rolls-Royce, with tractor treads for snow).

38. Trotsky, in cahoots with Zinoviev and Kamenev, would later claim that Stalin had schemed to isolate Lenin (an interpretation adopted by many scholars). In fact, the politburo as a whole, Trotsky included, voted for all the arrangements for Lenin’s stays at Gorki.

39. Stalin’s visits in 1922 occurred on May 30, July 10, July 30, August 5, August 9, August 15, August 19, August 23, August 30, September 12, September 19, and September 26. Ul’ianova, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina I. V. Stalina,” 198; Ul’ianova, “O Vladimire Il’iche,” no. 4: 187. Kamenev visited four times: July 14, August 3, August 27, and September 13; Bukharin visited four times: July 16, September 20, September 23, and September 25; and Zinoviev visited twice, August 1 and September 2. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 200–1.

40. Valentinov, Novaia eknomicheskaia politika, 46–53.

41. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 183–7; Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 411–2 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 136–7).

42. Izvestiia, TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 185.

43. “You’re being sly?” Lenin said, according to Maria’s account. “When did you ever know me to be sly?” Stalin retorted, in her account. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 197–8.

44. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 198.

45. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 132–3; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 121 (politburo collective letter of December 31, 1923); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 209, l. 9–11 (January 1, 1926, plenum). “M. I. Ul’ianova ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina i I. V. Stalina,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 196–9 (at 197); RGASPI, f. 14, op. 1, d. 398, l. 1–8. Emelyan Yaroslavsky, the Stalin loyalist, recalled that Lenin “had become fatally tired” of Trotsky and his relentless public polemics over doctrine and policy. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 189.

46. Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 124 (March 13, 1921).

47. On June 16, 1921, the politburo took up the question of Trotsky’s transfer to Ukraine as food supply commissar. Trotsky refused to accept the politburo’s decision, which accelerated the summoning of a Central Committee plenum to discuss the issue. Trotsky, in the meantime, telephoned Cristian Rakovski, party boss of Ukraine, who supposedly told him that all measures to bring grain into Ukraine were already under way. Documents that Lenin was receiving contradicted this picture, however. Lenin and Trotsky met between July 16 and July 23 for a series of extended discussions. On July 27, 1921, Lenin, again receiving Trotsky, backed down. The two reached some sort of compromise regarding Trotsky’s behavior. Trotsky remained in charge of the Soviet military. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 135–42 (citing Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 7: 187; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 190, l. 4; Voprosy istorii, 1989, no. 8: 138–9; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XI: 105–6; Leninskii sbornik, XXXIX: 359; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 71, l. 5, 24; f. 2, op. 1, d. 200015, l. 1–1ob, 5, 24–5; and PSS, LIV: 148).

48. Chuev, Sto sorok, 193. See also Ulam, Stalin, 207–9; and Service, Stalin, 189–90.

49. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 357; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 183–4. On June 13, 1922, Lenin was evidently well enough to be moved from the compound’s auxiliary building (fligel’) to the main manor house, but the next day he had a spasm of the blood vessels in his head, and told Kozhevnikov, “So, that’s it. It’ll be a stroke.” Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 353–4; Volkogonov, Lenin, 414. On June 18, Pravda published a bulletin indicating he was feeling fine, albeit chafing under the physicians’ restrictive regime.

50. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 2: 198–200; Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 23–5.

51. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 197–8; Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 23.

52. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2397, l. 1.

53. PSS, LIV, 273; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 359. The July 18 letter to Stalin has an enigmatic opening: “I thought through your answer very thoroughly and I do not agree with you.” What this concerns remains unclear.

54. Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 547; Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 257 (citing RGASPI. f. 2, op. 1, d. 25996, l. 1).

55. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 416 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 23). Those in attendance were Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Tomsky, Molotov, Zinoviev, Rykov, Radek, Buhkharin, and Chubar.

56. Mikoyan, “Na Severnom Kavkaze,” 202. See also Pravda, August 6, 1922.

57. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 285–6.

58. Lenin, V. I. Lenin 548–9 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 26002); RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 275, l. 4–6; XII s”ezd RKP (b), 198; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 816, l. 37–43, 49. Kamenev, head of the Moscow soviet and of the Moscow party organization, was already, informally, the principal substitute for Lenin in the government. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 201.

59. RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 275, l. 4–6; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 11.

60. Volkogonov surmises that Lenin expected and hoped Trotsky would decline, especially given that Lenin chose not to get a politburo decision and enforce party discipline on Trotsky after his refusal (in this instance). Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 23–4. Sakharov, otherwise a careful scholar, also speculates that Lenin wanted Trotsky to refuse, which is not documented. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 98; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 190–1.

61. Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 548–9; Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 171, 174 (Lenin letter to Stalin with markings, a facsimile, 172–3); Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 464, 466–7.

62. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 30–1.

63. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 312, l. 4; f. 5, op. 2, d. 275, l. 4–6.

64. Stalin would soon make Trotsky’s refusal public at the 12th Congress: XII s”ezd RKP (b), 198.

65. Sochineniia, V: 134–6.

66. Karaganov, Lenin, I: 382; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 371.

67. Lenin indulged requests to allow a photographer (P. A. Otsup) to record the event with a group picture for posterity, albeit only after the agenda had been completed. Karaganov, Lenin, I: 400–2; Vospominaniia o Vladimire Il’iche Lenine, IV: 446; Pravda, October 4, 1922.

68. Naumov, “1923 god,” 36; Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 257 (citing RGASPI, f. 2, op. 2, d. 1239, l. 1); Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 24. Lenin’s response is undated; Naumov speculates it was produced after October 2, 1922, when Lenin returned to Moscow.

69. PSS, XLV: 245–51; Izvestiia, November 1, 1922; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 231–2. On November 1, 1922, Lenin held a meeting in his Kremlin office with a triumvirate: Stalin (party apparatus), Kamenev (government), and Zinoviev (Comintern). Leninskii sbornik, XXIX: 435; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 454.

70. PSS, XLV: 270. At the official anniversary celebration in the Bolshoi, an aluminum likeness of Marx and Engels made by a Moscow factory was presented as a gift for Lenin. Izvestiia, November 9, 1922; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 466–7.

71. PSS, XLV: 278–94; Leninskii sbornik, XXXIX: 440; Vospominaniia o Vladimire Il’iche Lenine [1979], V: 452, 459–61, 462–3, 468–9, 472–3; Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 9: 41–3.

72. Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev,” 195–6 (citing RGASPI, f. 4, op. 2, d. 1197, l. 1); PSS, XLV: 30–9; Leninskii sbornik, XXXIX: 440; Vospominaniia o Vladimire Il’iche Lenine [1979], IV: 452–3; Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 268–9 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/S, d. 13, l. 8–9: Nazaretyan to Orjonikidze, Nov. 27, 1922).

73. Chervinskaia, Lenin, u rulia strany Sovetov, II: 240–1 (B. M. Bolin).

74. Rosmer, Moscou sous Lenine, 231. See also Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 33–4.

75. Pravda, November 21, 1922; PSS, XLV: 300–1; Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 566–73 (full transcript).

76. PSS, XLV: 457.

77. Pravda, January 21, 1927; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 509; PSS, XLV: 463; Bessonova, Biblioteka V. I. Lenina, 56; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 240; Izvestiia, December 1, 1922.

78. Boffa, The Stalin Phenomenon.

79. Chuev, Sto sorok, 381.

80. Sering, Die Umwalzung der osteuropaischen Agrarverfassung, 5–6 (italics mine).

CHAPTER 10: DICTATOR

1. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 190–1; Chuev, Kaganovich, 263.

2. He went on to note that “this year’s harvest is patchy and, as a whole, well below expectations: it is probable that even the estimates of a couple of months ago will prove too high. Prospects for next year are not brilliant.” Bourne and Watt, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, VII: 376 (undated, date deduced from content).

3. L. D. Trotskii, “Kak moglo eto sluchit’sia?” in Trotskii, Chto i kak proizoshlo, 25–36 (at 25); Trotsky, Stalin, 393. See also Trotsky, My Life, 512. Eugene Lyons, the sympathetic left-leaning American correspondent, would grant Stalin possession only of “the tawdry talents of the ward-politician raised to the dimension of near-genius,” not understanding that this was a very high compliment. Lyons, Stalin, 159.

4. E. O Preobrazhenskii, “Stranitsa iz ego zhizni,” Pravda, March 18, 1919: 2. See also Duval, “The Bolshevik Secretariat”; Duval, “Yakov M. Sverdlov.”

5. On the various demands from regional party committees to the center, see Service, Bolshevik Party in Revolution, 277–95.

6. On March 18, 1919, the day of the interment of Sverdlov’s ashes in the Kremlin Wall, Lenin said at a meeting in the Metropole Hotel, “The work which he performed alone in the sphere of organization, the selection of people, their appointment to responsible posts according to all varied specializations—that work will now be possible only if each of the large-scale branches that comrade Sverdlov oversaw by himself will be handled by whole groups of people, proceeding in his footsteps, coming near to doing what this one man did alone.” PSS, XXXVIII: 79. See also Lenin’s obituary for Sverdlov: Pravda, March 20, 1919.

7. Trotsky claimed credit for Kalinin’s nomination. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 182 (Trotsky letter to Lunacharsky, April 14, 1926). The Congress of Soviets, which convened once a year, possessed even less authority than had the tsarist Duma. The best analysis of the real structure of the new authority can be found in Vishniak, Le regime sovietiste. In theory, the Council of People’s Commissars answered to the central executive committee of the Soviet, which, formally, possessed the right to form the Council of People’s Commissars and its commissariats (July 1918 constitution, article 35). The Council of People’s Commissars was tasked with issuing decrees and regulations (articles 37, 38), but the central executive committee was supposed to approve such decrees; the Council of People’s Commissars was also supposed to report, weekly, on its activities to the CEC (Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, VI: 167). In practice, the Council of People’s Commmissars behaved as a sovereign entity. Sverdlov, indiscreetly but accurately, had once revealed at a meeting of the central executive committee that the Council of People’s Commissars was “not only an executive body as has been claimed; it is legislative, executive and administrative.” Zasedanie vserossiiskogo tsentral’nogo ispolnitel’nogo komiteta 4-go sozyva, 66–77. Mikhail Vladimirsky was acting chairman of the CEC March 16–30, 1919.

8. Stasova, Vospominaniia, 161. See also Isbakh, Tovarishch Absoliut.

9. Nikolai Osinsky had written to Lenin (October 16, 1919) suggesting the “formation of an organizational dictatorship consisting of three members of the Central Committee, the best known organizers,” naming Stalin, Krestinsky, and Leonid Serebryakov (while allowing that Dzierzynski could be appropriate, too). RGPASI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 1253, l. 6. Osinsky on Sverdlov at the 8th Party Congress: VIII s”ezd RKP (b), 165. Lenin kept Osinsky away from high posts after his opposition to Brest-Litovsk.

10. Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy [1977], 266.

11. Daniels, “The Secretariat,” 33. Krestinsky admitted the defects: IX s”ezd RKP (b), 41.

12. See, for example, Zinoviev’s comments at the 11th Party Congress: Pravda, April 2, 1921.

13. Even though Lenin blocked Krestinsky’s inclusion on the electoral list, 161 of the 479 voting delegates wrote in his name, a unique event in party annals. X s”ezd [1963], 402. Krestinsky also lost his seat on the politburo (March 16, 1921) and was sent to Germany as a Soviet envoy. Lenin was not sentimental: Krestinsky’s wife had been the first doctor to treat Lenin when he was shot in 1918.

14. Nikonov, Molotov, 517–8; Zelenov, “Rozhdeniie partiinoi nomenklatury,” 4. See also Ali, “Aspects of the RKP (b) Secretariat.”

15. This was up from 82,859 passes to its offices in 1920: Izvestiia TsK, no. 3 (39), March 1922: at 55.

16. Harris, “Stalin as General Secretary: The Appointment Process and the Nature of Stalin’s Power,” 69 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 78, l. 2); Pravda, April 2, 1922 [Zinoviev]; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 4: at 176.

17. PSS, XLIV: 393–4. Molotov would recall that when he became head of the party secretariat, in 1921, Lenin told him, “as Central Committee secretary you should take up politics [policy], and delegate all the technical work to deputies and aides.” Chuev, Sto sorok, 181.

18. Daniels, “Stalin’s Rise to Dictatorship”; Rosenfeldt, Knowledge and Power. See also Daniels, “The Secretariat”; Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques”; Rosenfeldt, Stalin’s Special Departments; and the wrongly dismissive reviews by Gábor Rittersporn, Russian History/Histoire Russe, 17/4 (1990), 468, and J. Arch Getty, Russian Review, 50/3 (1991) 372–74.

19. “Iosif Stalin: opyt kharakteristiki (September 22, 1939),” in Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 46–60 (at 59), 351, n35 (note by Fel’shtinskii, citing Trotsky’s 1930s notebooks). Elsewhere Trotsky wrote that “Stalin took possession of power, not with the aid of personal qualities, but with the aid of an impersonal machine. And it was not he who created the machine, but the machine that created him.” Trotsky, Stalin, xv.

20. Avtorkhanov, Tekhnologiia vlasti, 5; McNeal, Stalin, 82.

21. “There was nothing ‘automatic’ about the process of Stalin’s elevation during the twenties,” Tucker rightly noted in 1973. “It took an uncommonly gifted man to navigate the treacherous waters of Bolshevik politics with the skill that he showed in those years.” Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 392.

22. Lenin’s personal secretariat overlapped with that of the Council of People’s Commissars. It gathered every political mood report from 1918 through 1922, and every cockamamie policy proposal.

23. On March 31, 1920, Dzierzynski had proposed creating two lists of functionaries, one alphabetical, one regional, a suggestion immediately taken up. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 14, l. 183.

24. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 114, l. 14.

25. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 62–3, 180 (Viktor Nogin, a member of the Revision Commission of the 12th Party Congress). Nogin died in May 1924.

26. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/S, d. 13, l. 10).

27. This chapter makes use of Vsia Moskva (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1923) and Vsia Moskva v karmane (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1926), among other sources.

28. Stalin had implored Lenin to be relieved of this or that task, complaining of overwork—not without basis, although Stalin’s presence at the workers and peasants inspectorate or nationalities commissariat was minimal. Stalin relinquished both these government posts to concentrate fulltime on the party apparatus, though he retained a government office in the Kremlin’s Imperial Senate.

29. Sharapov, Razreshenie agrarnogo voprosa, 174.

30. This would be the peak rural proportion of party members in the regime’s entire history. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 135.

31. Pethybridge, One Step Backwards. In 1924, Smolensk, a rural province, had 16 Communists for every 10,000 rural working-age inhabitants. Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule, 44. Zinoviev, at the Party Congress in 1923, flatly stated that the Communists were an urban party. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 39.

32. Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat, 155.

33. Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat, 101.

34. “‘Menia vstretil chelovek srednego rosta . . .’ .”

35. Barmine, Vingt ans au service de l’U.R.S.S., 256–60.

36. Lenin understood that “policy is conducted through people.” PSS, XLV: 122–3. An early version of Stalin’s 1935 slogan “cadres decide everything.”

37. Shefov, Moskva, kreml’, Lenin; Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 230; Duranty, “Artist Finds Lenin at Work and Fit.”

38. The rooming house proved to be something of a catch basin: Kalinin, head of the Soviet central executive committee, also set up offices here on the second floor, as did Alexei Rykov, deputy head of the Council of People’s Commissars, though they would have their main offices in the Imperial Senate, on the same floor as Lenin. Vozdvizhenka, 3, had held tsarist foreign affairs ministry archives and it became the Soviet state archive (the building that would be torn down for an expansion of the Lenin Library), while Vozdvizhenka, 6, a private clinic, became the Kremlin hospital. Barmin, Sokoly Trotskogo, 155. The rooming house, known as Petergof, was built in 1877 and added a fourth story in 1902. It was designated the House of Soviets no. 4. The Central Committee publishing arm was located at Vozdvizhenka, 9, while no. 10, built by the Economic Society of the Officers of the Moscow Military District, would become the military store (Voentorg); it also housed the Communist Youth League Central Committee offices, Young Guard publishing association, and a dormitory. Bela Kun lived here, 1923–37, and not in the Hotel Lux. Down Vozdvizhenka stood the Morozov mansion as well as the Sheremetyev family’s Moscow compound, known as the Corner House. Vozdvizhenka ran perpendicular to the Kremlin; Mokhovaya, parallel. Vozdvizhenka would be renamed Comintern Street in 1935; Mokhovaya became Karl Marx Prospect. Sytin, Iz istorii Moskovskikh ulits [1948].

39. IX s”ezd RKP (b), 357, 610, n118; Pavliuchenkov, Rossiia Nepovskaia, 61; Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev,” 213–27. Later, Vozdvizhenka, 5, became the State Museum of Architecture, which it remains today.

40. Berkman, Bolshevik Myth, 46, 36–7. The headquarters of the Zhenotdel—derisively known as Tsentro-Baba—was also at Vozdvizhenka, 5.

41. Kazakov’s building had gained its third story in 1898. Stalin’s initial secretariat office, when he was assigned to party work nearly full-time, before he became general secretary, had been set up on September 26, 1921, at Trubnikovskiii pereulok, no. 19, second floor, at least for correspondence. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4505, l. 1, 3; d. 1860, l. 1–4.

42. “We [the party] have become the state,” one delegate stated at the 8th Party Congress in 1919. VIII s”ezd [1959], 178 (Varlam Avanesov). “Everyone knows, it’s a secret for no one, that in fact the leader of Soviet power in Russia is the Central Committee,” Zinoviev stated in his report on the 8th Congress to the Leningrad party machine. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 8: 187.

43. Lenin’s government was effectively a cabinet, not a cabinet system rooted in parliamentary majority (as in the British case). Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 230.

44. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 176–86. Of course, there were local soviets, but these grassroots bodies mostly recruited new political elites, many of whom moved up and out of the soviets. Abrams, “Political Recruitment and Local Government.” The commissariat for local self-government had been formally folded into the commissariat of internal affairs on March 20, 1918; meanwhile, the regime had facilitated elimination of zemstvo local government bodies (which dated to Russia’s 1860s Great Reforms, and which the Provisional Government had democratized and, on paper, greatly expanded). Gronsky, “The Zemstvo System.”

45. Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, at the 9th Party Congress (March 1920), had observed that some delegates had “gone so far as to suggest that the party can be abolished, because we have soviets, in which the Communists are a majority.” But Krestinsky, then party secretary, suggested, instead, eliminating the soviets in the provinces. IX s”ezd RKP (b), 68; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 7: 160.

46. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1921, no. 28 (March 5): 23–4; no. 29: at 7; 1922, no. 3 (39): 54. See also Schapiro, Communist Party, 250.

47. Sakwa, Soviet Communists, 49–53, 191–3; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 688.

48. Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World. By 1924, the central party apparatus ballooned to nearly 700.

49. Sytin, Iz istorii moskovskikh ulits [2000], 70. “Kitai,” in Russian, can signify China, but this is clearly not the meaning of Moscow’s Kitaigorod, which no one has definitely established. Kolodnyi, Kitai-gorod, 5–16. Vozdvizhenka, no. 5, went to the state planning commission. The separate Moscow party organization apparatus in the capital was all set: following the September 25, 1919, bombing of its headquarters at Leontyev Lane, 18, it had moved to Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 15a, once a wealthy club before the revolution—with a restaurant, exhibit and concert halls, billiard rooms, and card-playing rooms—which had been renowned for artistic salons. The Moscow organization stayed at Bolshaya Dmitrovka until after Lazar Kaganovich, a Central Committee secretary, concurrently became Moscow party boss (1930) and grabbed Old Square, no. 6, from the commissariat of labor in order to remain proximate to the central apparatus and Stalin (at no. 4).

50. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 192.

51. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 38–9.

52. Loginov, Teni Stalina, 95. Vlasik dictated his recollections to his wife Mariia; their adopted daughter Nadezhda passed them to Georgii Egnatashivili. Egnatashvili’s father, Aleksandr, had worked under Vlasik, as head of bodyguard detail for politburo member Nikolai Shvernik.

53. The politburo generally met on Tuesdays and Thursdays; the Council of People’s Commissars, on Wednesdays.

54. Lieven, “Russian Senior Officialdom”; Armstrong, “Tsarist and Soviet Elite Administrators.” Some functions of the tsar’s secretariat were taken by the Ministry of the Imperial Household, which supervised the emperor’s property (known as Cabinet Lands, the largest landowner in Russia).

55. Remnev, Samoderzhavnoe pravitel’stvo, 83 (citing unpublished memoirs of A. N. Kulomzin). The imperial chancellery did more than merely summarize; its functionaries rewrote and recast proceedings, going so far as to eliminate arguments to compose smooth narratives of policy formation, creating paperwork designed to be accessible to the tsar. The chancellery often “spared” the tsar reports from the provinces. The heads of imperial chancellery sections conducted the final editing of laws, while the overall chancellery head oversaw appointments and attended virtually all special commissions. Remnev, Samoderzhavnoe pravitel’stvo, 68–110; Shepelev, Chinovny mir Rossii XVIII–nachalo XX v., 47–55.

56. Alexander III had tried to have his chancellery become something of a personal watchdog over the bureaucracy, but he failed. The ministers denounced and obstructed the change, and the autocrat could not gain operational control over the state. Lieven, Russia’s Rulers, 286–7.

57. E. H. Carr, in his fourteen-volume history of the first twelve years of the revolution, explored the relationship of political contingency (Stalin’s dictatorship) and what he saw as the primary structural determinant (Russian backwardness). As a reader progresses through the volumes, the Russian past impresses itself more and more on the reader, as it did on many of the Bolshevik revolutionaries. But in the final volume, which appeared in 1978, Carr would reconsider, writing that the emphasis on tsarism, “though not wrong, now seems to me somewhat overstated.” Carr, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/iii: viii.

58. Ilin-Zhenevskii, “Nakanune oktiabria,” 15–6; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, 57–9.

59. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 191–2.

60. PSS, XLV: 123. With all members said to be “strictly subordinate to party discipline,” as the 8th Party Congress in 1919 emphasized, “the whole matter of assignment of party functionaries is in the hands of the Central Committee of the party. . . . Its decision is binding for everyone. The Central Committee is entrusted with the carrying out of the most determined struggle against any localism or separatism in these questions.” The Central Committee seized the right to “systematically rotate functionaries from one sphere to another, from one region to another, with the aim of their most productive use.” VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 426–8; Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza, I: 444.

61. From the summer of 1922 through the fall of 1923, 97 of 191 local party secretaries were elected; Moscow “recommended” or outright appointed the rest. Tsakunov, V labirinte, 93 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 68, d. 484, l. 170–85); Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques,” 15–19.

62. “The Central Committee,” declared a policy statement in 1922, “considered as its duty the constant observation of the internal affairs of local party organizations, trying in every way to eliminate from the localities those frictions and dissensions known under the name of ‘skloki.’” Izvestiia TsK, March 1922: at 13. In April 1920, for example, the entire membership of the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine had been transferred to Russia. Ravich-Cherkasskii, Istoriia kommunisticheskoi partii, appendix 12. See also Service, Bolshevik Party in Revolution.

63. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 147, l. 150; Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, vyp. 3: 108, 118. On the centralizing process in Petrograd, under Zinoviev, see McAuley, Bread and Justice, 145.

64. Daniels, “The Secretariat”; Moore, Soviet Politics, 290. After a fall 1921 party purge, the third one in three years, which targeted careerists and “disguised” class enemies and resulted in just under one fourth of the 659,000 members being expelled (many quit of their own volition), a re-registration of the remaining half million Communists followed in 1922; it constituted a party “census,” during which the central apparatus collected questionnaires from nearly every member and candidate. Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, vyp. 3, 128–30; Service, Bolshevik Party in Revolution, 164; Gimpel’son, NEP, 329 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 34, d. 1, l. 19); Izvestiia TsK RKP (b), March 5, 1921. In 1921, many party commissions invited the non-party mass to voice their opinions about individual Communists. In one military unit of the Moscow garrison, 400 non-party soldiers threw the 36 party members out of the meeting and themselves decided who should be purged, an outcome later nullified. Izvestiia MK RKP (b), 1922, no. 1: 6. The apparatus evidently failed to index all party members by the start of the 11th Congress in spring 1922. Pravda, September 10, 1921; Protokoly XI, 52; Leonard Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy, 1977, 337–8; Gimpel’son, NEP, 329 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 34, d. 1, l. 19); Izvestiia TsK RKP (b), March 5, 1921.

65. Molotov had told the 11th Party Congress (1921) that a three-person commission sent to Samara province had uncovered a “complete lack of disciplne” and a membership dropoff from 13,000 to 4,500 (leaving out the fact that a terrible famine raged), compelling Moscow to replace the entire Samara leadership with appointees. XI s”ezd RKP (b), 57–8; Izvestiia TsK, March 1922: at 35. Umpteen secret circulars, including one dated November 30, 1922, referred to the “immensely widespread bribe-taking” among functionaries that was threatening “the degeneration and destruction of the workers state apparatus,” and called for a person or commission in every region to be responsible for fighting the scourge. Bribe-taking was blamed on “the general lack of culture and economic backwardness of the country.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 100, l. 234; op. 84, d. 291а, l. 282.

66. Izvestiia TsK, no. 42, June 1922, no. 43, July 1922, no. 9 (45), September 1922, no. 11–12.

67. Harris, “Stalin as General Secretary.” Partly because of vast expansion, partly because of turnover, only between 20 and 40 percent of Party Congress delegates carried over from one yearly gathering to the next. Of the 106 voting and non-voting delegates to the 7th Congress, 38 percent appeared at the 8th; of the 442 at the 8th, 23 percent carried over to the 9th; of the 593 at the 9th, 22 percent made it to the 10th; of the 1,135 at the 10th, only 15 percent were at the 11th; only 36 percent were at the 12th. Carryover on the Central Committee, however, was substantial, even as that body, too, expanded (from 23 full and candidate members in 1918 to 46 in 1922). Gill, Origins, 58, 61.

68. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 370, l. 2; Pavliuchenkov, Rossiia Nepovskaia, 70 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 142, l. 4).

69. Merridale, Moscow Politics, 29.

70. Izvestiia TsK VKP (b), January 1924, no. 1 (59): 64–7; April 1924, no. 4 (62): 41; January 18, 1926, no. 1 (122): 22–4; Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 4: 186; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 68, d. 139, l. 74; Rigby, “Origins of the Nomenklatura System,” 241–54; Rigby, “Staffing USSR Incorporated”; Korzhikhina and Figatner, “Sovetskaia nomenklatura.”

71. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 704–5; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 69, d. 259, l. 101. Nonetheless, the Central Committee apparatus also seized the initiative to register non-party state bureaucrats, beating an attempt by the Soviet central executive committee to take charge of this function. Pavliuchenkov, Rossiia Nepovskaia, 69; Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev,” 227–53. Soon, the nomenklatura system would be required practice in all republics of the Union. Daniels, “The Secretariat,” 37–8; Rigby, “Staffing USSR Incorporated,” 529–30. By 1924, the list was divided in two, with 3,500 included on list no. 1, and another 1,500 on list no. 2. Those on no. 1 were to be named by the politburo and approved by the Central Committee and encompassed. RGASPI, f, 80, op. 19, d. 1, l. 6–14.

72. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 63.

73. Local party committees had circumscribed authority on paper. A November 1922 Central Committee circular dispatched to all party organizations stipulated that locals had no authority to alter the essence of any party circulars. As if in acknowledgment that this was happening, however, the circular noted that any proposed additions to them had to be agreed with the Central Committee. It was signed by Molotov and Kaganovich. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 73 (citing PANO, f. 1, op. 2, d. 238, l. 32).

74. Nikolaev, Chekisty, article by Velidov with Ksenofontov bio; Parrish, Soviet Security, 219–20. In late 1924 or early 1925, Ksenofontov ordered workers to repair Stalin’s office after midnight; Balashov, who happened to have night duty, had not been informed, and he refused to allow the workers into Stalin’s office. Ksenofontov called and screamed on the phone; the next day Balashov informed Stalin, who sided with him. Ksenofontov resigned; Stalin did not want to accept his resignation, but Ksenofontov insisted. He moved over to RSFSR social welfare. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 191. Ksenofontov died March 23, 1926, of stomach cancer, aged forty-two, in agony. His obituary (Poletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1926, no. 4: 232–4) credited him as “one of the creators and organizers of the Cheka,” even though he had been transferred to CC apparatus for three years.

75. Psurtsev, Razvitie sviazi v SSSR. Lenin made extensive use of the telephone; his draft directives for introducing the NEP, for example, had been transmitted by telephone to the politburo. P. I. Makrushenko, “Voploshchenie mechty,” Promyshlenno-ekonomicheskaia gazeta, April 20, 1958: 3. Underinvestment ensured that phones did not spread much beyond functionaries, but also that commissariats and other official bodies constructed their own telephone networks, which were therefore closed systems (and which was why Soviet officials had so many phones on their desks). Solnick, “Revolution, Reform, and the Soviet Telephone Network,” 172–3; Lewis, “Communications Output in the USSR,” at 413.

76. Boris Bazhanov claimed he once came upon Stalin listening in on a telephone network, using a special device attached to a wire into the drawer of his desk. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 39–41. This incident does not appear in Bazhanov’s earlier work: Avec Stalin dans le Kremlin.

77. In the 1920s, travelers to the Soviet Union were convinced everything was easvesdropped on—“It was said that in Moscow if one spoke through a telephone one might as well talk directly with the GPU”—but of course all telephones worldwide went through switchboard operators. Lawton, The Russian Revolution, 282. See also Hullinger, Reforging of Russia, 114.

78. There was a switchboard (kommutator) in a small room between Stalin’s reception and his office, where two female telephone operators worked in shifts through mid-1925, when they would be replaced by male bodyguards who doubled as telephone operators. The number of regular telephones at Old Square quickly leapt from around 250 to 500. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 192.

79. Izvestiia TsK RKP (b), September 18, 1920; Pavlova, Stalinizm, 46–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 171, l. 2); G. A. Kurnenkov, “Organizatsiia zashchity informatsii v strulturakh RKP (b)—VKP (b), 1918–1941 gg.: avtorefat kandidatskoi dissertatsii,” RGGU, 2010; Anin, Radioelektronnyi shpionazh, 24–32. Boki remained in charge of the cipher department from January 1921 through mid-May 1937.

80. Boki’s dacha commune was located in the village of Kuchino, east of Moscow, and charged members 10 percent of their monthly paychecks. “The drinking bouts as a rule were accompanied by wild hooliganism and mutual humiliations: drunks spread paint and mustard on their private parts,” recalled Yevdokia Kartseva, a Soviet foreign intelligence agent. “Those who were forced to drink were buried as if they had died. . . . All this was done with priestly accoutrements, which had been imported from the Solovki monastery-labor camp (which Boki had helped establish). Usually two or three people wore priestly garb and conducted a drunken liturgy. They drank laboratory spirits from a chemical laboratory obtained under the pretext of technical needs.” http://www.solovki.ca/camp_20/butcher_bokii.php; Shambarov, Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, 592.

81. Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World, I: 141–4.

82. XII s”ezd RKP (b): 70, 71, 74.

83. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 90 (citing PANO, f. 5, op. 6, d. 142, l. 11).

84. Pavlova, “Mekhanizm politicheskoi vlasti,” 63. On November 8, 1919, a politburo minute records Stalin’s complaint that “certain information about sessions of the Central Committee, admittedly in corrupt form, somehow reaches our enemies.” He suggested a procedure “that would allow only a few of the comrades to get to know the protocols.” This prompted institution of rules on who received excerpts from politburo meetings, which were meant to serve as directives or instructions. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 37; Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State: Catalog of Finding Aids and Documents (Hoover Institution Archives, 1995). On June 14, 1923, the politburo resolved to make stenographic records of the principal reports and summary remarks on key agenda items, for the edification of those not present. Adibekov, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, I: 223. Stenographic records were made rarely, however, evidently because such work was labor intensive: sessions tended to be long and the recorded remarks had to be distributed to each individual for editing and approval. The resultant typeset “red books,” so named for their pink binding, could differ substantially from the original hand-recorded oral remarks. On December 8, 1923, the politburo resolved that in its protocols, “nothing other than decisions of the politburo ought to be recorded.” Istochnik, 1993, no. 5–6: 88–95 (at 91).

85. Dmitrievskii, Sovetskie portrety, 108–9. Dmitriesvky, an employee of the Soviet embassy in Sweden, defected in 1930.

86. “‘Menia vstretil chelovek srednego rosta . . .’ .”

87. Kerzhentsev, Printsipy organizatsii. Kerzhentsev was also a playwright and proponent of the mass theater who in 1923–25 worked in the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate and wrote pamphlets about the scientific organization of work (Taylorism) and time management and how to conduct meetings: Nauchnaia organizatsiia truda (NOT) i zadacha partii (St. Petersburg, 1923); Bor’ba za vremia (Moscow, 1923); Organizui samogo sebia (Moscow, 1923); Kak vesti sobaranie, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1923).

88. After the success of the coup, one Moscow Bolshevik remarked, “some comrades could not get used to the idea that the underground was finally dead.” In fact, the attempt to retain power, within a hostile country and hostile world, made the pseudonyms and coded messages seem no less essential. Smidovich, “Vykhod iz podpol’ia v Moskve,” 177. Smidovich chaired the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee.

89. In 1922, Lenin insisted that the three Central Committee secretaries post office hours—which were to be published in Pravda—indicating precisely when the secretariat would be open to receive officials, workers, peasants, or whoever showed up. This was the origin of the logbooks for Stalin’s office (which originated not for his Kremlin office, but for his Vozdvizhenka and then Old Square office). Later, Stalin ceased having such open office hours and received officials and others when he summoned them.

90. Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 74.

91. In 1918, Znamenka was renamed Red Banner Street—Krasno-Znamënnaya—but colloquially retained its original name. Znamenka no. 23 would be renumbered no. 19 by 1926.

92. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 186, l. 129, 108; d. 171, l. 232, 167; op. 112, d. 474, l. 11; op. 11, d. 171, l. 198; op. 68, d. 49, l. 116.

93. On August 5, 1921, Trotsky ordered the political administration of the Red Army to ramp up its work following the civil war victory. He visited Khodynsk camp (lager’) and a school for young commanders. He called for publishing better newspapers and organizing collective readings: “Among the Red Army men of the 36th division there are many Ukrainians. Among them are a significant number who spent a long time as POWs of the Polish bourgeoisie. They were treated horribly in POW captivity. The former POWs perk up when the topic of their captivity arises. It is necessary to devote one-two-three days of newspaper material to this question.” He suggested finding a journalist who could quote them and select the better stories. He warned them not to forget about uniforms, boots, and rifles either, and to pay attention to their needs, not bathe them in phraseology and cliches. Trotsky wanted to ensure that the oath of service was done properly, not perfunctorily. Trotsky also showed he was guided by Lenin’s instructions, asking Lenin on November 23, 1921, for his writings on military doctrine as the discussions were under way (l. 173). The day before, Trotsky asked to be supplied with the new post–Great War Military Regulations (ustav) of other countries, “above all the French ones” (l. 182). He wanted two popular-style books written, one on Poland and one on Romania, to be factually based, in order to be used as course material and agitprop for Red Army men—and they had to be accessible. He directed that the Journal of Military Science and Revolution be renamed War and Revolution. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 1, d. 448, l. 84–6, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 17.

94. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 59.

95. Shanin, Awkward Class, 190–2.

96. Zibert, “O bol’shevistskom vospitanii.”

97. Shpilrein, Iazyk krasnoarmeitsa. For political reasons, the regime distrusted the rural instructors who were supposed to educate the peasants, just as the tsarist regime had not, albeit from a different political vantage point. Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, 79.

98. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 271–9, 288.

99. “At the current time,” noted a special commission in January 1924, “the Red Army, as an organized, trained, politically educated and mobilizational resource-supplied force, does not exist. In its current form the Red Army is not combat ready.” Berkhin, Voennaia reforma, 60.

100. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 183.

101. Berkhin, Voennaia reforma, 60.

102. Harrison, Marooned in Moscow, 227; Leggett, The Cheka, 34, 165.

103. On Stalin’s early “keen interest” in the secret police, see Gerson, The Secret Police, 28.

104. Its staffing poses a bit of a puzzle, partly because of the way personnel were enumerated. Early on, the Cheka managed few records—“everything was done in combat mode, on the fly, they wrote things down when they could,” one history-memoir recounted. Latsis, Otcheta VChK za chetyre goda ee deiatel’nosti (20 dekabria 1917 g.—20 dekabria 1921 g. [Internal use], 13 (cited in V. K. Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 5–50 [at 5]).

105. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 295–305 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, d. 138, l. 176–9). Soon enough, endless memoranda demanded the elimination of red tape and expenditures. “We need to do away with the superfluous run of paper and reduce the ranks,” Dzierzynski wrote to one of his deputies (July 4, 1921). V. K. Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 9 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 55, l. 108–108ob). There are more than three hundred volumes of archival documents in FSB archives on Kronstadt, gathered from many agencies and publications, including from the Cheka itself: Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 30.

106. Leonov, Rozhdenii sovetskoi imperii, 298–300; Baiguzin, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost’ Rossii, 436.

107. Pravda, February 22, 1919 (Vladimir Cheka); Sotsialistickesii vestnik, September 21, 1922 (Stavropol Cheka).

108. As the exile Maxim Gorky poetically wrote, Chekists “made their way into power like foxes, used it like wolves, and when caught, perished like dogs.” Gorky, Untimely Thoughts, 211.

109. Also in 1920, Stalin displaced Bukharin as the politburo representative on the Cheka’s governing board (collegium). Leggett, The Cheka, 132–45, 159, 165. Up until November 1918, in the opinion of Nikolai Krylenko, the Cheka “existed without any statutes or law,” let alone supervision. Krylenko, Sudoustroitstvo RSFSR, 97.

110. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 67–8.

111. Popoff, The Tcheka; Dmitrievskii, Sud’ba Rossii, 214. Members of the tsarist police were mostly refused employment in the Cheka, which few of them sought. Three known okhranka operatives worked in the Cheka: one who worked in internal passports, one who helped recruit agents in Paris, and the old regime’s top cipher specialist, Ivan A. Zybin, the former head of the tsarist cryptology department. Soboleva, Istoriia shifroval’nogo dela, 417–9. By contrast, an estimated 90 percent of the Bolshevik regime’s state control commission members were former staff of the tsarist procuracy. Remington, “Institution Building in Bolshevik Russia.” The 1923–24 summary report for the top leadership on the activities of the GPU noted some success in incorporating foreign agents from tsarist times. Istochnik, 1995, no. 4: 72–80. In 1925, the OGPU moved the central okhranka central archives to Moscow (the foreign archives, in Paris, were said to be lost, but in fact they were spirited away and deposited in the Hoover Institution at Stanford). The OGPU soon published a list of names in the secret agent/informer card index of the okhranka, amounting to almost 10,000 people. Spisok sekretnykh sotrudnikov, osvedomiteli, vspomogatel’nykh agentov byv. Okhrannykh otdelenii i zhandarmskykh upravlenii, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1926–9).

112. Leggett, The Cheka, 190. Latsis, Chrezvychainye komissii, 11.

113. Kapchinskii, Gosbezopasnosti iznutri, 256–7.

114. When a heckler shouted that he had been imprisoned despite having proof of his innocence, Kamenev promised “the [Moscow] soviet will deal with such injustices,” provoking catcalls. Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat, 39 (citing TsGAMO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 236, l. 9, 11, 21, 28, 46–7).

115. “Comrade Kamenev!” Lenin wrote (November 29, 1921). “I am closer to you than to comrade Dzierzynski. I advise you not to retreat and to bring the matter to the politburo.” PSS, LIV: 39.

116. Yet another special commission (established December 1, 1921) comprised of Dzierzynski, Kamenev, and Dmitry Kursky, the justice commissar (1918–28) and procurator general, became stalemated. While Dzierzynski worked on Kursky, proposing to introduce more precise procedures for arrests, searches, and detainment, he directed his new first deputy, Józef Unszlicht, to find a way to get what the Cheka wanted without alienating Lenin. Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 339–40; D. B. Pavlov, Bol’shevistskaia diktatura, 54–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2558, l. 50); Zhordaniia, Bol’shevizm, 71. Kursky (b. 1874) would become Soviet envoy to Italy (1928–32) and commit suicide in December 1932. Voloshin, “Dmitrii Ivanovich Kurskii”; “Dmitrii Ivanovich Kurskii: k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia,” Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost’, 1974, no. 11: 48–9.

117. To carry out the changes, yet another commission was formed, consisting of Stalin, Kamenev, and Kursky—but this time, also Unszlicht, who conducted a rearguard action on behalf of Dzierzynski. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 108–11. Dzierzynski certainly desired greater adherence to legality, so as not to discredit the GPU. See his letter (April 2, 1923) to Unszlicht’s former secretary (Andreeva) on not jailing suspects for more than two weeks without charges: RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 117. The politburo decree abolishing the Cheka had stated that the new agency should “concentrate on institutionalization of informing and [collecting] internal information and elucidation of all counterrevolutionary and anti-Soviet acts in all spheres.” The precise wording of this directive came from the commission on SRs and Mensheviks that had been formed by the politburo in late 1921. D. B. Pavlov, Bol’shevistskaia diktatura, 53 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 59, d. 16, l. 1–2, 4).

118. Vysylka vmesto rasstrela, 11. Already by early 1921, more than 2,000 Mensheviks were in Soviet prisons and camps. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 400 (TsA FSB, f. 1, op. 6, d. 138, l. 100). The Cheka in the South Caucasus became the GPU in 1926. Confusingly, the plenipotentiary office of the central Cheka based in Tiflis did become the GPU plenipotentiary in 1922, and the head of the South Caucasus Cheka was also the South Caucasus GPU plenipotentiary. Waxmonsky, “Police and Politics in Soviet Society,” 126; Organy VChK-GPU-OGPU na Severnom Kavkaze i v Zakavkaz’e, 1918–1934 gg. https://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/system/attachments/0000/3107/%D0%9E%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B_%D0%92%D0%A7%D0%9A-%D0%93%D0%9F%D0%A3-%D0%9E%D0%93%D0%9F%D0%A3_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B5_%D0%B8_%D0%B2_%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%8C%D0%B5__1918-1934_%D0%B3%D0%B3._.pdf.

119. PSS, XLIV: 396–400 (pis’mo D. I. Kurskomu). See also Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev,” 131 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 50, l. 64). Stalin had Lenin’s letter printed in Bol’shevik, January 15, 1937. Already on December 28, 1921, the politburo had accepted Dzierzynski’s recommendation to stage a public trial of the SRs, although it took time to manufacture the case. Tsvigun, V. I. Lenin i VChK [1987], 518.

120. Argenbright, “Marking NEP’s Slippery Path”; Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 143. No more than a few weeks after the concession of legalization of private trade, in April 1921, Ivar T. Smilga proposed a mass trial of engineers in the petroleum industry. In the winter of 1921–22, Lenin urged the justice commissariat to mount show trials of economic managers. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 155, 1. 4; Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia, 35.

121. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 359.

122. Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, 206.

123. Citing not merely political expediency but principle, Gorky had written to Rykov (July 1, 1922) that “if the trial of the SRs ends in murder—it will be a premeditated murder, a criminal murder! I ask that you convey my opinion to Lev Trotsky and others.” He denounced the “senseless and criminal murder of the intellectual forces of our illiterate and uncultured country.” It is telling he mentioned Trotsky and not Stalin. Shpion, 1993, no. 1: 36 (RTSKHIDK, f. 7, op. 2, d. 2600, l. 11). Back in 1919, Lenin had written in response to criticism from Gorky that “the lackeys of capital consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.” Koenker, Revelations, 229–30 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 11164, l.1–6: Lenin letter, September 15, 1919).

124. Vinogradov et al., Pravoeserovskii politicheskii protsess; Jansen, Show Trial; Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov; Shub, “The Trial of the SRs.”

125. The death sentences were only formally commuted in January 1924. Trotsky claimed credit for Kamenev’s proposal: Moia zhizn’, II: 211–2. On March 1, 1922, Mezynski of the GPU had ordered “all forces of informants directed at preventing the unification of SR groupings” and “the smashing of their unification strivings.” Sbornik tsirkuliarnykh pisem VChK-OGPU, III/i: 301. The GPU engaged specialists on socialist parties as consultants (referenty), who helped with public slander campaigns. Such work was led by the large Secret-Operative Department, but fully six of the ten GPU departments were involved in repression against socialists as well as anarchists.

126. Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov o repressiiiakh, 12.

127. Gerson, The Secret Police, 222. At the fifth anniversary of the Soviet secret police in December 1922 at the Bolshoi Theater, Zinoviev remarked that abroad proletarians “salivated” at hearing the initials “VChK”—All-Russia Cheka—while the bourgeoisie “trembled upon hearing those three awesome letters.” The crowd laughed. Pravda, December 19, 1922: 3.

128. At the wharf, GPU convoys were said to have doffed their caps. Chamberlain, Lenin’s Private War, 139 (citing Vera Ugrimova, 204). Ironically, many of these deportees would outlive those who deported them.

129. Robson, Solovki; Ascher, “The Solovki Prisoners”; Beliakov, Lagernaia sistema, 385–91. There were three camps of special designation: Arkhangelsk, Kholmogorsky, and Pertominsky.

130. Dzierzynski proposed that “a case file [delo] should be opened on every intellectual”—guilty by definition. But he subdivided the intelligentsia for surveillance purposes into “roughly, 1) novelists, 2) pundits and politicians, 3) economists (here we need subgroups: experts on finance, fuel, transport, trade, cooperatives and so on), 4) technicians (here also subgroups: engineers, agronomists, doctors, general staff personnel and so on), 5) professors and teachers and so and so on.” He continued: “Every group and subgroup should be illuminated from all sides by qualified comrades, among whom these groups should be divided by our department. The information should be verified from various sides so that our conclusions can be errorless and irreversible, which has not been the case till now owing to the hurriedness and one-sidedness of the illumination.” Platova, Zhizn’ studenchestva Rossii, 134. In one of his last acts as first deputy chairman of the GPU, Unszlicht wrote to the party secretariat (March 17, 1923) about the need “to strengthen the tendency toward schisms and disagreements in the ranks of parties that are our enemies”—meaning non-Bolshevik socialists. D. B. Pavlov, Bol’shevistskaia diktatura, 3 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 59, d. 14, l. 38). On Unszlicht, see also Weiner, “Dzerzhinskii and the Gerd Case.”

131. Izmozik, Glaza, 115 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 306, l. 156).

132. S. A. Krasil’nikov, “Politbiuro, GPU, ii intelligentsia v 1922–1923 gg.,” in Intelligentsiia, obshchestvo, vlast’, 53. The party, too, established an “information department,” which from 1924 (as part of the battle against Trotsky) would undergo strengthening, but it gathered information not only on party cells, but also workers, peasants, industry, agriculture, nationalities, and regions. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh [1984], III: 159. In fact, almost all organizations, from the Red Army to the Communist Youth League, engaged in surveillance and mood summaries.

133. Svodki had been kept by the Provisional Government, for army and navy, and resumed by the Petrograd Bolsheviks to track the mood of soldiers and of workers. Indeed, within days of the coup, Petrograd Bolsheviks sent a questionnaire to regional party groups on the masses’ feelings toward “the seizure of power.” Izmozik, Glaza, 50. During the Great War, Britain and Germany had engaged in mail perlustration, as well as censorship and propaganda. By 1918, the British employed the same per capita proportion of censors as would the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Holquist, “‘Information is the Alpha and Omega,’” 422, 440. The British also sought not just to record but also to shape the mood in the trenches. Englander, “Military Intelligence.” The French and German armies were no different. Becker, The Great War, 217–9.

134. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 176, 196; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 131, 142–3.

135. The building was also numbered 5/21. The square in front of the commissariat would be renamed for Wacław Worowski, a polyglot literary critic and Soviet diplomat who was assassinated in May 1923 in Switzerland by an anti-Soviet emigre evacuated from Crimea with the White forces of Baron Wrangel. A Swiss court acquitted the assassin, judging the murder a legitimate act of retribution against the Soviet regime for its atrocities. Chistiakov, Ubit’ za Rossiiu! The famous central Kiev artery Kreshchatik also bore Worowski’s name from 1923 until 1937.

136. Liadov, Istoriia Rossiiskogo protokola, appendix document 2.

137. Besedovskii, Revelations of a Soviet Diplomat, 78-9.

138. Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” I: 246–53. A Soviet source gave a total of 1,066 personnel as of January 1924: Desiat’ let sovetskoi diplomatii

139. Uldricks, Diplomacy and Ideology, 97–115.

140. Non-Russian Comintern representatives, known in the jargon as the “best representatives of the working class,” were referred to in private as “the best friends of the Russian party.” Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 39 (citing Kuusinen to Herbert Droz, February 5, 1923: archives de Jules Humbert Droz, I: 143).

141. Von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux [1978]. Baronness Ruth von Mayenburg worked for Soviet military intelligence. See also Vaksberg, Hôtel Lux; Von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux [1991]. In 1933, the original four stories would be expanded to six, bringing the hotel to 300 rooms, filled with officials and refugees from countries that outlawed Communism. (Originally Tverskaya, 36, became Gorky, 10.)

142. Soviets had to leave an identification card and fill out two questionnaires to enter the Lux; at midnight, all were supposed to be out. Kennel, “The New Innocents Abroad,” 15.

143. Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 44. Besides Kuusinen, the top Comintern staff included Osip Tarshis, known as Pyatnitsky (b. 1882), a Lithuanian Jew and former carpenter; and, eventually, Dmitry Manuilsky (b. 1883), the son of an Orthodox priest from a Ukrainian village and the first secretary of the Communist party in Ukraine and a Stalin loyalist.

144. See Heimo and Tivel, 10 let Kominterna. (The old Berg mansion went to the Italian embassy in February 1924, when diplomatic relations were restored.) The Comintern library and archives were kept in the basement, where the meetings were also held, in the so-called club room. “It was no joke sitting on narrow benches for hours on end, especially after an eight-hour workday when everyone was tired,” Kuusinen’s wife Aino noted. “Foreigners who did not understand Russian suffered particularly and had difficulty hiding their yawns. But no one dared to protest, or even to mention the fact that members of the Executive Committee were never to be seen at them.” Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 55. The library was overseen by Allan Wallenius, a Finn who had taken a librarian’s course at the New York Public Library; the archivist was Boris Reinstein.

145. Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 47.

146. Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 39, 41, 59–60. Besides Pyatnitsky, Meyer Trilliser worked in the International Relations Department before moving to foreign intelligence.

147. “Posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska Chicherina,” Istochnik, 1995, no. 6: 108–10; Kennan, Russia and the West, 177.

148. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 76 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3 d. 164, l. 2). The violation of the ban on illegal activity by embassy personnel was demonstrated when, two years later, the politburo forbid Soviet diplomats from spreading revolutionary literature—unless expressly permitted (by Chicherin) to do so. RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 24 539; f. 17, op. 3, d. 158, l. 2 and d. 173, l. 2; Drachkovitch and Lazitch, Lenin and the Comintern, 534. The Comintern did take over funding foreign Communist parties from the foreign affairs commissariat, and began to develop its own separate set of international couriers, to the delight of Zinoviev. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 25–6; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 67.

149. “In Moscow’s view,” Kennan continued, “non-Communist statesmen were regarded as incapable of doing good intentionally.” Kennan, Russia and the West, 181–5.

150. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 67–8; Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered.

151. Stalin in Pravda, December 18, 1921, in Sochineniia, V: 118–20.

152. The Soviets, in negotiations, understood that their purchases would benefit the economies and important constituencies in those capitalist countries to whom they could appeal. Kennan, Russia and the West, 189–95.

153. Pravda, October 29, 1921.

154. Orde, British Policy; Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe. On Soviet participation: Genuezskaia konferentsiia: Materialy i dokumenty (Moscow: NKID, 1922); Ioffe, Genuezskaia Konferentsiia; Liubimov and Erlikh, Genuezskaia konferentsiia.

155. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, I: 270–2, 287–8. When Russia unilaterally announced that it could represent all six Soviet Socialist Republics at the Genoa Conference, Ukrainian leaders erupted in full fury (the new Union treaty would be signed only later that year).

156. APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 306, l. 8–9, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 23: Cheka note to Molotov, January 23, 1922. None of the top Bolsheviks went. The Cheka report also mentioned as a target Georgy Chicherin, who would lead the Soviet delegation, which included Maxim Litvinov, Adolf Joffe, Cristian Rakovski, Leonid Krasin, Wacław Worowski, Janis Rudzutaks (then thirty-two years old), and Alexander Beksadyan (foreign affairs commissar of Armenia).

157. Lenin, “V. M. Molotovu dlia chlenov politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” PSS, LIV: 136–7.

158. Lenin added, characteristically, “Of course this must not be mentioned even in secret documents.” Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 144–5. Chicherin was also under Lenin’s strict instructions to remain silent about the inevitability of another imperialist war, the overthrow of capitalism, and so on. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/i: 120.

159. White, Origins of Detente; Fink, The Genoa Conference.

160. In Britain, Lord Curzon and Winston Churchill were the anti-Bolshevik intransigents, opposed to Lloyd George’s initiative, but Lenin judged Lloyd George to be the tip of the British imperialist spear. DBFP, VIII: 280–306. See also O’Connor, Engineer of Revolution; and Khromov, Leonid Krasin, 64–82.

161. On Genoa, see Ernest Hemingway, “Russian Girls at Genoa,” Toronto Daily Star, April 13, 1922, reprinted in Hemingway By-Line: 75 Articles and Dispacthes of Four Decades (London: Penguin, 1968), 46–7. See also Eastman, Love and Revolution, 285–90; Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, I: 298–301 (Chicherin speech). Soviet-German bilateral negotiations had actually commenced over repatriation of Russian POWs. Williams, “Russian War Prisoners”; Shapiro, Soviet Treaty Series, I: 40–1. Gustav Hilger, who had been educated in Russian as well as German schools and returned to Soviet Russia in 1919, aged twenty-four, as a machine-construction engineer, oversaw the repatriations: Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 25. Far from everyone was repatriated; emigres numbered about 500,000 in Europe by 1921.

162. Peter Kruger, “A Rainy Day, April 16, 1922: The Rapallo Treaty and the Cloudy Perspective for German Foreign Policy,” in Fink, Genoa, Rapallo, and European Reconstruction, 49–64.

163. Kennan, Russia and the West, 198–21; Fink, Genoa Conference. See also White, Origins of Detente.

164. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, V: 226 (Litvinov).

165. Izvestiia, May 10, 1922; Sbornik deistvuiushchikh dogovorv soglashenii, III: 36–8. Lenin had also made sure to negotiate a separate treaty with Italy as well, to sow discord among the great powers, but after that treaty was signed (May 1922), he failed to ratify it.

166. Lenin had told Moscow party activists on December 6, 1920, that “although she is herself imperialist, Germany is obliged to seek for an ally against world imperialism, because she has been crushed. That is the situation we must turn to our advantage.” “Doklad o kontsessiiakh,” PSS, 55–78 (at 68).

167. Sandomirskii, Materialy Genuezskoi konferentsii, 327–8; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 202 (Chicherin to Barthou, April 29, 1922).

168. Gorlov, Sovershenno sekretno, Moskva-Berlin, 1920–1933; Muller, Das Tor zur Weltmacht; Zeidler, Reichswehr und Rote Armee [1993]; Erickson, Soviet High Command [1962], 247–82. On August 19, 1922, Krestinsky, the newly named Soviet envoy to Berlin, wrote to Trotsky, with a copy to Stalin, requesting they send a military figure to Berlin, like Frunze or Tukhachevsky. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 755, l. 1. Bukharin gave a general speech at the Comintern Congress in November 1922, explaining that a worker state could sign military alliances with bourgeois great powers, just as it could accept loans. IV Vsemirnyi kongress, 195–6; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Union and the West, 209–10.

169. White, Origins of Detente, 181.

170. Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 90–98 (quote at 98).

171. Germany spent a small fortune beginning in April 1922 to blame Poincare and France for the Great War (a supposed revenge for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870), a propaganda blitz in which the Soviets eagerly participated, seeking to further discredit Nicholas II by portraying the war as a Franco-tsarist Russian aggression. Keiger, Raymond Poincare, 288–91; Mombauer, Origins of the First World War, 200.

172. Fisher, Famine, 300; Golod 1921–1922; Lubny-Gertsyk, Dvizhenie naseleniia na territorii SSSR; and Adamets, Guerre civile et famine en Russie. Pravda (June 30, 1921) warned of the catastrophe early. The food supply commissariat foresaw a catastrophic procurement of less than 4.3 million tons (5.4 million had been procured in 1920); the actual amount from the tax would be around 2.7 million. Piat’ let vlasti Sovetov, 373; Genkina, Perekhod, 302. In 1928, an outside expert estimated that between 1916 and 1924, 8 to 10 million people had died from epidemics. Grant, Medical Review of Soviet Russia, 15.

173. Fisher, Famine, 96. See also Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, 91–119. Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian relief coordinator, vacillated in his estimates of population subjected to intense hunger, either 20 to 30 million (September 1921) or 50 million (1922). League of Nations, Records of the . . . Assembly, II: 545, III: 59. See also Graziosi, “State and Peasants,” 65–117 (at 100).

174. Wehner and Petrov, “Golod 1921–1922 gg.,” 223 (citing GARF, f. 1065, op. 1, d. 86, l. 12). Some people profited from the crisis: while passengers clamoring for seats on trains were turned away, a guard on a rail express train route in 1922 used an entire compartment, as well as the toilet, to stock salt, the currency of trade, and had his wife conduct transactions at station stops—“so many pounds of salt for a goose, so many for a suckling pig”—which could be resold at astronomical markups in blighted areas the train traveled through. Mackenzie, Russia Before Dawn, 229.

175. Logachev, “‘V khlebnom raoine Zapadnoi Sibiri’: ot prodraverstka k golodu,” 36–43.

176. Beisembaev, Lenin i Kazakhstan, 325–6.

177. Dzerzhinskii, Feliks Dzerzhinskii: dnevnik zakliuchennogo, 229–30; Tishkov, Dzerzhinskii [1976], 335–8; Bartashevich, “Moskva zhdet . . . khleba,” 34–7; Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 368–9.

178. Berelowich and Danilov; Sovetskaia derevnia glazami, I: 572–4 (TsA FSB, 1, op. 6, d. 461, l. 69–76).

179. Edmondson, “The Politics of Hunger.” “Instead of the peasantry relieving the cities,” one historian aptly summarized, “millions of peasants themselves became objects of relief.” Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society, 89.

180. Patenaude, Big Show in Bololand; Itogi posledgol s 15/X-1922 g. 1/VIII-1923 g. (Moscow: Tsentral’naia komissiia pomoshchi golodayushchim, 1923), 65. The ARA delivered 784,000 tons of food aid. Total food imports would exceed 2 million tons, including the foreign purchases. Fisher, Famine, 298n, 554.

181. As cited in H. Johnson, Strana i mir, 1992, no. 2: 21. The ARA benefitted from the Bolsheviks’ ruthlessness in clampdowns on railroad workers and others. The regime used Red Army soldiers to guard the trainloads of relief grain being shipped to stricken areas (the soldiers were allotted rations, but if the delivery trains ended up taking longer than expected, many soldiers would arrive at their destination nearly dead themselves). Fisher, Famine, 181, 191.

182. PSS, XLV: 122, 127, L: 187, 388–9; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, VIII: 366, XI: 509; McNeal, Stalin, 48; Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 23.

183. The Bolsheviks assumed the ARA would prioritize feeding “class enemies” of the regime. In fact, Hoover ordered relief workers not even to discuss politics, let alone organize politically, believing that the ARA’s example of efficiency would inspire the Russian people to overthrow Bolshevism. Some observers wondered if such a process had perhaps begun. On May 28, 1923, Boris Bakhmeteff, the Provisional Government’s ambassador to the United States, wrote to a confidant (Yekaterina Kuskova) about a conversation with Hoover. “Not long ago he very persuasively related to me that in his opinion the formation of surpluses among the peasants will lead to a confrontation with the existing system of Bolshevik rule,” wrote Bakhmeteff. “Agents [of the ARA] have correctly apprised Hoover of the pressure on prices of these surpluses and of the natural growth among peasants of the idea that they should bring this grain to market to sell at the highest possible price. As a result of the expansion of this phenomenon, that is, the growth of grain surpluses, landholders will naturally want to sell these surpluses at the maximal highest prices, and a maximal price signifies the conditions of free world trade. I think that Hoover is right and that the antagonism of this natural and insurmountable instinct to receive for one’s grain the highest price will become one of the strongest and unconquerable enemies of the Bolshevik system.” Pavel Nikolaevich Miliukov Papers, ca. 1879–1970, Columbia Unviersity, box 1. See also Budnitskii, “Boris Bakhmeteff’s Intellectual Legacy”; and Engerman, Modernization, 116.

184. It took some time for the NEP to take hold. The term “NEP” was not even used until two months after the policy had been introduced. In Ukraine the NEP’s introduction was delayed; in Siberia, only a few districts were initially shifted to the tax in kind from mandatory delivery quotas. Izvestiia, March 23, 1921; PSS, XLIII: 62; Pravda, March 21, 1921; Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 502–3; A. M. Bol’shakov, “The Countryside 1917–1924,” in Smith, Russian Peasant, 48. One provincial party official urged that tax collection “proceed as in war, in the full sense of the word.” Quoted in Radkey, Unknown Civil War, 366–7. The NEP-era tax collectors often were the previous gunpoint-requisitioners. Gimpel’son, Sovetskie upravlentsy.

185. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, II: 289, 295–6.

186. Atkinson, End of the Russian Land Commune, 235.

187. In 1928, Alexei Shchusev designed a colossal new headquarters for the agriculture commissariat at Orlikov Lane, no. 1, in constructivist style. That same year, Smirnov was sacked. The next year, a USSR agriculture commissariat was established. Shchusev’s masterpiece would be completed in 1933.

188. Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside, 104–35.

189. By 1927, the agriculture commissariat would employ one in five Soviet commissariat personnel. Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside, 93–4; Gosudarstvennyi apparat SSSR, 16, 104–5. The statistics commissariat was the fourth largest.

190. Even then, no commissariat received the full amount of funding it sought: the war commissariat received just 37 percent of requests in 1919. Malle, Economic Organization of War Communism, 172–82. The dyes for printing money had to be purchased abroad for gold.

191. As of early 1918, £1 sterling could be purchased for R45; one year later, the number was 400, and by the middle of 1920 £1 cost R10,000, an increase of 222 times; the German mark against the ruble, during the same period, rose from 1 to 1 to around 100 to 1. By fall 1921, following the introduction of the NEP, black currency markets had become fully open, even though such exchange would not be formally legalized until April 1922. Feitelberg, Das Papiergeldwesen, 50.

192. Aliamkin and Baranov, Istoriia denezhnogo obrashcheniia, 194–5.

193. Katsenellenbaum, Russian Currency, 10.

194. Preobrazhenskii, Bumazhnye den’gi, 4. See also Arnold, Banks, Credit, and Money, 95–6; Feldman, The Great Disorder; Fergusson, When Money Dies.

195. G. Ia. Sokol’nikov, “Avtobiografiia,” in Gambarov, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, XLI/iii: 73–88, republished in Anfert’ev, Smerch, 190–205, and in Sokol’nikov, Novaia finansovaia politika, 39–50; Oppenheim, “Between Right and Left”; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, II: 351. Krestinsky was made envoy to Berlin.

196. Pravda, February 14, 1919 (Stalin); Genis, “G. Ia. Sokolnikov.” On the sealed train see Sokolnikov, in Anfert’ev, Smerch, 193. It may have been Sokolnikov, rather than Trotsky, who originally suggested coordinating the October 1917 coup with the opening of the 2nd Congress of Soviets. Rubtsov, “Voenno-politcheskaia deiatel’nost’ G. Ia. Sokol’nikova,” 47.

197. Pravda, December 10, 1917; Sokol’nikov, K voprosu o natsionalizatsii bankov; Sokolov, Finansovaia politika Sovetskoi vlasti, esp. 22–27.

198. Zinoviev refused to go, which is how the task fell to Sokolnikov. Ivan A. Anfert’ev, “Vozvrashchenie Sokol’nikova,” in Anfert’ev, Smerch, 158–89, and “Neizvestnyi Sokol’nikov,” Vozvrashchenye imena (Moscow: Novosti, 1989), II: 223–42 (at 224–5); Sokol’nikov, Brestskii mir.

199. In 1919 at the 8th Party Congress Lenin entrusted him with presenting the case against the “military opposition” of Voroshilov and others and their partisan-warfare tactics. Back at the front, Sokolnikov wrote a denunciation of the First Cavalry Army’s undisciplined, drunken pillaging of the Don Valley civilian population after a victory, thereby eliciting Semyon Budyonny’s everlasting hatred. In July 1920, Trotsky asked Sokolnikov to deliver a course of lectures at the General Staff Academy so that, “in addition to the lectures, socialist literature would be enriched by a good book on military matters.” VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 144–52, 273 (for the vote on Sokolnikov’s theses); Sokol’nikov, “Avtobiografiia,” in Anfert’ev, Smerch, 190–205 (at 200); Budennyi, Proidennyi put’, I: 374–406. Chigir, “Grigorii Iakovlevich Sokol’nikov,” 63 (citing RGASPI, f. 760, op. 1, d. 71, l. 124).

200. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, IX: 108, 159.