Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

NOTES

Full citations can be found in the bibliography.

PART I. EQUAL TO THE MYTH

1. Pravda, Nov. 7, 1935: 2. This quote would be reprinted later: Stalin: k shestidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Moscow: Pravda, 1940), 75.

2. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 387–9 (Yakov Chadayev).

3. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 665, l. 361.

4. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 158 (Svanidze diary: Nov. 4, 1934).

5. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 47.

6. Svechin’s conception entailed a war of attrition; Tukhachevsky, among others, would favor attack and preemption. Stone, “Misreading Svechin.” About 5,000 of Stalin’s books would be kept together (in the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute). There would be all told 397 books, pamphlets, and articles with his markings, 72 of which are writings by Lenin, another 13 by Marx and Engels in Russian translation, while 25 are works he wrote.

7. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 23–4.

8. Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin, 17–22.

9. The drawing was by Valērijs Mežlauks. Vatlin and Malashenko, Istoriia VKP (b) v portretakh i karikaturakh ee vozhdei, 110.

10. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 551.

11. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 48.

12. Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 67–8.

13. In a 1931 interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig, Stalin would without irony denounce the seminary “fathers” for their “humiliating regime” and “Jesuitical methods” of “surveillance, espionage, penetration of one’s soul.” Sochineniia, XIII: 113–4. The picture of the seminary during Stalin’s youth would become more severe in 1930s memoirs. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 665, l. 184 (Nikolai Makhatadze, 1936).

14. Iremashvili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, 23. One Gori classmate would imagine in 1932 that Stalin had rejected God because he had decided to be a god himself.

15. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina. In his copy of Lev Kamenev’s biography of the iconic Russian writer Chernyshevsky (1933), Stalin underlined a passage about the discipline instilled by observance of religious rites. (Chernyshevsky had also studied in a seminary.) RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 84, l. 11; Kamenev, Chernyshevskii.

16. Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin, 163; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 63, 66.

17. Segrè, Italo Balbo.

18. Elisabedashvili recalled that Stalin “was given this nickname [Geza] by Ambilarashvili, once a good friend of his, who died in 1911 and was buried in Gori. Apart from us no one knew this name, since otherwise he was called ‘Koba.’” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 665; the “Geza” reference was cut when these reminiscences were published in Molodaya Gvardiya, 1939, no. 12: 86–7.

19. Loginov, Teni Stalina, 116. Stalin had contracted smallpox at age seven.

20. Bliskovskii, M. I. Ul’ianova, 199–200.

21. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 191–2 (citing GIAG, f. 153, op. 1, d. 3432, l. 116); Ilizarov, Taina zhizn’ Stalina, 102; D. Volkogonov, Stalin, I/i: 65.

22. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 201; Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 232.

23. Schmitt, Die Diktatur. Lenin had given dictatorship a favorable cast (“bourgeois democracy or proletarian dictatorship!”).

24. Maksimovskii, “Ideia diktatury u Makiavelli,” 55–94. See also Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin, chapter 8. Maksimovsky had signed the 1923 Trotskyite “Platform of the 46,” became a dean at the Agricultural Academy, and would be arrested on July 27, 1937. He is said to have died in internal exile in Nov. 1941.

25. What emerges from the childhood memoirs, such as they are, is evidence not of warmth but of will. Some evidence indicates that he ridiculed weaker classmates, none of which would be noteworthy except for his role as dictator. For example: “Arriving at the first-year students of Section One at the sound of a loud scream, I saw Lakerov, who in a state of intense agitation was screaming at Iremashvili and Jughashvili,” the seminary deputy inspector recorded in his notebook in 1895. “It turned out that the latter two had been systematically laughing at Lakerov, mercilessly teasing him and ridiculing him, bringing him to distress. They engage in this often, according to the testimony of Lakerov.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 13, l. 91.

26. Not long after the scrotum joke, Stalin had Bryukhanov sacked as finance commissar (Oct. 1930), scapegoating him, along with state bank head Pyatakov, for inflation. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 193–6. See also Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 267.

27. The rest of the quote: “Great men are almost always bad men.” Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887, in Figgis and Laurence, Historical Essays and Studies, 504.

28. “We cannot give a characterization of socialism,” Lenin had admitted (March 8, 1918) in reply to Bukharin’s demand for a sketch of the future. “What socialism will be like when it reaches its completed form we do not know, we cannot say.” PSS, XXXVI: 65–6 (8th Party Congress, March 8, 1918). See also Striedter, “Journeys through Utopia,” at 36.

29. Already in 1926, Stalin stated, “It would be wrong to think that it is possible to build socialism in white gloves, without getting dirty.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1107, l. 15. See also Von Laue, “Stalin in Focus,” and Marwick, “Problems and Consequences of Organizing Society for Total War,” 1–22.

30. “Only . . . a revolutionary regime, because it accepts the permanent use of violence, seems capable of attaining perfection,” Raymond Aron would write, adding that “violence itself attracts more than it repels.” Aron, Opium of the Intellectuals, 65.

31. Kołakowski, “Communism as a Cultural Formation.”

32. Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State, 186.

33. Zhiromskaia, Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, 11–3, 15; Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana posle okonchaniia grazhdanskoi voiny, 237. At the first all-Union congress of “shock workers,” more than 30 percent of the participants were below the age of twenty-two. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd udarnykh brigad, 179.

34. Stalin had written to Mikhail Frunze about a document that labeled Trotsky “the Leader [vozhd’] of the Red Army,” advising, “I think that it would be better if we spoke about a vozhd only in terms of the party.” Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 298–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5254, l. 1: Dec. 10, 1924).

35. Stalin, during a discussion of the coal industry in 1931, criticized the effusive declarations “for the Leaders,” “for the Central Committee,” “for the general line” as “nonsense, playing games.” Similarly, when delegates to an assembly of state farm bosses offered the customary applause, Stalin thundered, “why are you applauding—you should be ashamed.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 162–3 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1115, l. 9; d. 1116, l. 34–42); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 42 (Oct. 1932); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1118, l. 1–2 (June 1934). See also Davies, “Stalin and the Making of the Leader Cult in the 1930s,” 29–46 (at 35). Tucker called Stalin the “master builder” of the cult, but this is too simple. Tucker, “The Rise of Stalin’s Personality Cult.” Photographs of Stalin in Pravda were not frequent into 1933, and usually showed him in the company of other party leaders.

36. Kovaleva et al., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, 1957, 490 (Voroshilov). The following dialogue was recorded on May 13, 1933, between Colonel Robins and Stalin:

“ROBINS: I consider it a great honor to have an opportunity of paying you a visit.

STALIN: There is nothing particular in that. You are exaggerating.

ROBINS (laughs): What is most interesting to me is that throughout Russia I have found the names Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, linked together.

STALIN: That, too, is an exaggeration. How can I be compared to Lenin?” Sochineniia, XIII: 260–73 (at 260).

37. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1187, l. 49–50.

38. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 318; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 181; van Ree, Political Thought, 161–8.

39. On Stalin’s “immodest modesty,” see Plamper, Stalin Cult, 123–4.

40. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 166.

41. When asked, “To what tribe or clan do you belong?,” many Central Asians were said not to understand the question. Zhdanko, “Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoye razmezhevaniye,” 23.

42. Stalin publicly affirmed multiple times that ethnic identities would be a part of the Soviet phenomenon for a long time, perhaps disappearing only when a socialist economy encompassed the entire globe. He envisioned the formation of “socialist nations” (also called Soviet nations) free of class contradictions. See his March 1929 long letter on the national question, which would not be published until 1946: Sochineniia, XI: 336, 347–9. The basic thrust of the letter had appeared in his discussion with Ukrainian writers on Feb. 12, 1929. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4490. Pipes, Formation, 40; d’Encausse, Great Challenge, 38; Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 238–48; van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question,” at 230.

43. Stalin had never been among those Bolsheviks, such as Lenin, who warned of the dangers of Russian nationalism. What would turn out to be final party congress resolution calling for an end to Great Russian chauvinism would pass in 1930. Pravda, June 29, 1930, reprinted in Sochineniia, XII: 369.

44. In an incisive portrait published in 1927, Mark Landau, a popular émigré historical novelist known by his pen name of Aldanov, called Stalin “a standout person, inarguably, the most standout in the entire Leninist guard. Stalin spills blood more freely than any living being, with the exception of Trotsky and Zinoviev. But I cannot deny him, in clear conscience, properties of rare strength of will and courage.” He added: “I wait with ‘captivating interest’ what Stalin will do in this difficult exam in this difficult historical role.” “Stalin,” Poslednie novosti, Dec. 18 and 20, 1927, reprinted in Aldanov, Sovremenniki, 111–40 (at 118–9, 137), and in Aldanov, Bol’shaia Lubianka, 203–21 (at 207–8, 219–20).

CHAPTER 1. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

1. “O tak nazyvaemom ‘vsesoiuzom trotskistskom tsentre,’” 84.

2. Dubinskaia-Dzhalilova and Chernev, “‘Zhmu vashu ruku, dorogoi tovarishch,’” 183 (APRF. F. 45, op. 1, d. 31, l. 10–101ob.).

3. Hindus, Humanity Uprooted, 166–7. Hindus, an émigré, had returned as a magazine writer to his native village (Bolshoye Bykovo) in Kherson province. His father had been a better-off peasant. Mugleston, “Hindus.”

4. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 211, s. 64. See also Sochinenia, X: 241. Originally published in 1895, the year of Engels’s death, the essay in question had seemed to soften his earlier insistence on revolutionary class struggle, but this was partly the work of an editor. Engels, “The Tactics of Social Democracy”; Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, xxxvi–xxxvii, 556–73. Marx, in a speech (Sept. 8, 1872) in Amsterdam, had allowed for a peaceful road to socialism in the United States and Britain. Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, 522–4.

5. Kingston-Mann, In Search of the True West.

6. The Soviet regime was located on four squares and one embankment: Red Square with the triangular Kremlin, inside of which stood the triangular Catherine the Great Imperial Senate, where the government or Council of People’s Commissars had its main offices; Old Square, north of the Kremlin, where the central party apparatus had its offices in an old merchant emporium; Dzierżyński Square, where the secret police were located in an old insurance building and, not far away, sat the foreign affairs commissariat; Nogin Square (essentially an extension of Old Square), where the heavy industry commissariat stood; and the Frunze embankment, where the defense commissariat and general staff were housed.

7. Stalin’s radicalism of 1929 followed partly from the failures of the Communist regime, whose inability to properly regulate the quasi-market of NEP had created a seeming imperative for even greater anti-market measures—which exacerbated the problems, requiring still greater emergency measures. Anticapitalism, the root cause of the problems, was imagined to be the solution. Carr accentuated the “haphazard and impulsive character of the final decision” in late 1929, but failed to elucidate the worldview and governing ideas behind the regime’s improvisation. Carr, “Revolution from Above,” 327. For an alternative development vision, see Antisferov et al., Russian Agriculture, 384. On the scholarly debate, see Harrison, “Why Was NEP Abandoned?”

8. Lenin had written: “Either we must bring the small bourgeoisie under our control (which can be done by organizing the poor), or they will overthrow . . . the workers’ government just as inevitably and unavoidably as the Napoleons . . . , figures who are bound to develop in a soil permeated with petit-bourgeois mentality.” Sochineniia, XXII: 515 (pre-1934). See also Valentinov, “Sut’ bolshevizma v izobrazhenii Iu. Piatakova”; and Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 415–6.

9. Volkogonov, Stalin: politicheskii portret, I: 307.

10. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 407–20.

11. Word of the Kamenev-Bukharin meeting had already appeared in the Menshevik Sotsialisticheskii vestnik [Berlin], Jan. 20, 1929. Three days later, the leaflet “The Party with Closed Eyes Is Leading the Way to a New Catastrophe” appeared; it was signed “Bolsheviks-Leninists” (the Trotskyite self-designation) and quoted Kamenev’s “notes.” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 558–63 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 2–11: Kamenev’s “notes”), 564–5 (l. 12–3: Kamenev to Orjonikidze, Jan. 27), 566–7 (l. 14–5: Sokolnikov to Orjonikidze, Jan. 28), 568–71 (l. 17–24: Tomsky to Orjonikidze, Jan. 14), 572–6 (l. 25–31: Bukharin to Orjonikidze, Jan. 30), 607, 613–5. See also Vaganov, Pravyi uklon, 199–202; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 417; and Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 30–7. A copy of the “notes” is in the Trotsky Papers at Harvard (T1897); it is presumed to have fallen into Trotsky’s hands from F. P. Schwalbe, Kamenev’s secretary. The Russian original, from leaflets, was published in Sotsialistchekii vestnik (May 4, 1929). Fel’shtinskii, “Dva epizoda iz istorii vnutripartiinoi bor’by.”

12. Stalin, “Gruppa Bukharina i pravyi uklon v nashei partii,” Sochineniia, XI: 318–25; Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 577–601. Stalin, ever magnanimous, proposed including Bukharin on the commission to prepare his apology; Bukharin declined, then agreed, but the commission met without him. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 597. See also Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 352.

13. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, 540–8 (resolutions of the joint session Feb. 9, 1929, approved at the April 23, 1929, plenum); VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 515; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 566–7. Bukharin had instigated at least two further meetings with Kamenev, one together with Pyatakov, and a second with Tomsky, and published a pointed reminder of Lenin’s Testament in Pravda (Jan. 24, 1929). Jules Humbert-Droz, the Swiss Communist who met Bukharin in early 1929, later claimed that Bukharin mentioned getting rid of Stalin. Humbert-Droz, Mémoirs, 356, 379–80. “Bukharin,” Carr and Davies wrote, “lacked altogether the astuteness and organizing skill of the politician.” Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, II: 76.

14. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 180 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 26: Jan. 10, 1929).

15. Cristian Rakovski, too, managed to carry trunks of official documents with him into internal exile. Fischer, Men and Politics, 129.

16. After the Ilich had docked at Istanbul, Trotsky was handed $1,500, and put up temporarily in two rooms inside the consulate. Stalin, Trotsky concluded, “was created by the epoch, by the bureaucracy, by the revolution’s fall from grace, in order to effect and embody that fall, that degeneration.” Trotsky attributed his own defeat to a conspiracy against him. Trotskii, “Kak moglo eto sluchit’sia?” in Chto i kak proizoshlo, 25–36.

17. Trotskii, Dnevnik i pis’ma, 46–8. On the politeness of the consul staff toward Trotsky, see Serge and Sedova, Life and Death of Trotsky, 163.

18. Eastman, Great Companions, 117; Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 14 (citing Manchester Guardian, March 17, 1931), 16–8. In Jan. 1929, Herbert von Dirksen, the new German ambassador, when asked whether his government could take in Trotsky, was incredulous: Stresemann had no desire to have him explaining to a fellow German politician: “I don’t place too high a value on our relations with Soviet Russia. But they are always a trump in our game” of diplomacy with the West. ADAP, series b, XI: 74–6 (Dirksen memo, Jan. 29, 1929), 101–2 (Schubert to Dirksen, Feb. 6, 1929), 199 (Stresemann to Paul Loebe, Reichstag president, March 19, 1929).

19. Stalin had the OGPU blackmail or entice Trotsky supporters internally exiled in the USSR to denounce him in the Soviet press. Radek signed a denunciation of Trotsky that was published in Pravda (July 13, 1929). See also Broué, “Bolshevik-Leninist Faction,” 140; Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 390; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 281; Yaroslavskii, “Etot son knochen,” 2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 782, l. 9. Even Beloborodov and Ivan Smirnov would publicly break with Trotsky. Pravda, Nov. 3, 1929. Rakovski, in Astrakhan, nearly alone remained loyal; Trotsky kept a photograph of him on his desk.

20. Trotskii, Writings (1929), 177. See also Kassow, “Trotsky.”

21. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 325–8.

22. Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 67. At Stalin’s behest, the propagandist Miney Gubelman, who went by the name Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, answered with an essay, “Mr. Trotsky at the Service of the Bourgeoisie, or L. Trotsky’s First Steps Abroad”—published in Russian in the Soviet press, essentially a salve for Stalin’s ego. Bol’shevik, 1929, no. 5 and 9.

23. G. G., “Pis’ma iz SSSR.” Bukharin was sometimes perceived as a Jew (“Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin . . .”). Borodin, One Man in His Time, 59.

24. “O gruppirovokakh v kommunisticheskoi oppozitsii.”

25. On March 5, 1929, Mężyński informed the dictator of a supposed thwarted “assassination” plan against him by two Moscow University students and one worker who had tickets to two evening events in the university club in Feb., one of which, it was rumored, Stalin would attend. Under interrogation, one of the students stated he was unsure if he had the fortitude to carry out a terrorist act. In any event, there was no such attempt. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 325–6 (no citation).

26. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 68 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 39, l. 43, 43ob.).

27. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 73 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 42; note, without addressee, in Voroshilov’s file, but obviously addressed to Bukharin). Back in Sept. 1926, Stalin had written: “Bukharin is a swine and perhaps worse than a swine because he considers it beneath his dignity to write even two lines about his impressions of Germany. I’ll get my revenge for that.” This playfulness would look different in retrospect. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 88–93 (Sept. 16, 1926); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 126–9.

28. This was the first plenum of 1929. Stalin invented “joint” plenums with the Central Control Commission as a device to obtain the two-thirds voting majority required by party rules for expulsions from the Central Committee.

29. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 644–84 (RGASPI, f. 558, op, 11, d. 1043, l. 1–131: uncorrected transcript), quote 644; “O pravom uklone v VKP (b),” Sochineniia, XII: 1–107 (at 1).

30. Sochineniia, XII: 43. See also Abramov, O pravoi oppozitsii v partii, 43. Andreyev, North Caucasus party boss, told the plenum: “The GPU was formed to find and expose the very worst and most unfavorable in our country, and if we build our policy only on the basis of the GPU reports, we will always be in a state of panic, it is perfectly clear, our hair will always stand on end.” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 403. Stalin made his own admission of sorts: “Name a single political measure of the party that was not accompanied by these or those excesses?” Sochineniia, XII: 92.

31. Stalin even contrasted Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov unfavorably to the smashed Trotskyites, asserting that the latter had not used the 1921 Kronstadt or 1926 Georgian rebellions but closed ranks in the face of danger. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 656, 659, 668, 676; Sochineniia, XII: 39–40, 69–70.

32. Stalin replaced Bukharin at Pravda with an editorial collective of Yaroslavsky, Nikolai Popov, and Harald Krumin.

33. Sochineniia, XII: 92–3. Bukharin: “Extraordinary measures is the repeal of NEP, although temporarily, of course. Extraordinary measures as a system exclude the NEP.” Orjonikidze interrupted: “You [try to] solve the difficulties this year with grain imports, and next year you do the same?” Bukharin, Problemy, 289. A brief mention of the April 29 plenum was published in Pravda, April 30, 1930. The plenum’s resolutions were first published in 1933: VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 515–30.

34. Davies, Economic Transformation, 286.

35. Pravda, July 20, 1929. The official exchange rate for the ruble—which was not a convertible currency—was set at 1.9415 to the U.S. dollar. Therefore, one gold ruble in foreign trade equaled 51.7 U.S. cents (until early 1933, when the dollar left the gold standard, and the ruble exchange rate was set on the basis of a cross-exchange rate of the currency in question to the French franc, with one ruble equal to 13.1 francs). Gold or foreign trade rubles had no relation to domestic rubles. Dohan, “Soviet Foreign Trade,” 701–8. Kaganovich would cite “local demands” for new coercive measures; obviously, he instigated them. Rees, Iron Lazar, 94–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 3188, l. 95; op. 2, d. 417, l. 57–8, 291–3); Taniuchi, Village Gathering.

36. Mikhail Sholokhov wrote in letters to an acquaintance (E. G. Lebitskaya) in July 1929 of one peasant, “He told me with a bitter smile, ‘They [the Whites] at least took only grain and horses, but our own [Soviet] power takes down to the thread.’” Znamia, 1987, no. 10: 181, 183. “See also Chernopitskii, Na velikom perelome, 40–1 (citing PARO, f. 7, op. 1, d. 844, l. 202).

37. Mikoyan added, “Of course we would have inevitably come to grips with this task sometime, but it is a question of timing.” Mikoian, Problema snabzheniia strany, 60.

38. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 52 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 3, d. 62, l. 73: Aug. 1929). See also RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 50; and Ivnitskii, Repressivnaia politika sovetskoi vlasti, 59–60. Between 1928 and 1935, Mikoyan would undertake more than twenty regional trips in connection with coercive grain collections. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 49 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 3, d. 167, l. 411–2).

39. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 531–73. The “plan” was actually in effect as of Oct. 1, 1928. Zaleski, Planning for Economic Growth, 70n205, 74; Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, 54; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I/i: 248–52, I/ii: 890–7.

40. Brovkin, Russia after Lenin, 122–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 69, d. 126, l. 5, 107, 117; f. 1, op. 23, d. 821, l. 22). See also Fischer, Men and Politics, 187. Oral exams of university students in 1927 had returned answers that (the Russian anarchist) Bakunin was a French revolutionary who had led the (British) Chartist movement, and that imperialism was the best path to socialism. One student thought the Communist Youth League was “an international organization of the homeless.” Holmes, Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, 60–1. Such surveys revealed more than the anxieties of the ambitious revolutionary regime. Gorsuch, Youth.

41. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 450.

42. “People often forget,” Izvestiya explained (May 23, 1929), “that the Five-Year Plan defines our foreign policy,” making it necessary “to delay the war threat and make use of . . . world markets.”

43. Haslam, Russia’s Cold War, 3–5.

44. Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics, 86–7.

45. The Bolsheviks had been awarding foreigners concessions (or leases) on Soviet territory to spur technology transfer and revive export industries, but this policy had been deeply fraught with difficulties. (Lenin, as usual, on Dec. 21, 1920, had captured the essence, paraphrasing Clausewitz: “Concessions [leases] do not mean peace with capitalism, but war in a new sphere.”) In Feb. 1930, a politburo commission would decide that foreign concessions contradicted socialist industrialization. By 1933, no manufacturing concessions remained. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/I (1976): 90–1; Sutton, Western Technology, I: 86–91; Fitch, “Harriman Manganese Concession”; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 109–10 (citing Za industrialiatsiiu, May 10, 1930; P. N. Pospelov et al. [eds.], Leninskii plan sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii i ego osushchestvlenie [Moscow: Partizdat, 1969], 186–7; and DVP SSSR, XIII: 112 [Litvinov-Dirksen: Feb. 26, 1930]; and Sutton, Western Technology, I: 349, II: 17).

46. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 125–6.

47. Rogachehskaia, Iz istorii rabochego klassa SSSR; Oprischenko, Istoriografiia sotsialisticheskogo sorevnovaniia; Rogachevskaia, Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v SSSR; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 128–35.

48. Pravda, Jan. 20, 1929; PSS, XXVI: 367. See also Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Sept. 27, 1929: 16; and Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 50.

49. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 146–53 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1493, l. 4–13), 153 (d. 1047, l. 48–9); Na prieme, 30. On May 4, 1929, Stalin received a delegation of 170 Donbas miners, who promised (in the text he edited) to “fulfill completely the tasks assigned them by Soviet power in the First Five-Year Plan.” Pravda, May 8, 1929; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1159, l. 93.

50. Sochineniia, XII: 108–11; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 157 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 19).

51. Sochineniia, XII: 115–6. Mikulina, who died in 1998, would be asked to recount her audience with Stalin: Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 153n3.

52. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 162–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 51–5: Aleksei Milrud, Sept. 19, 1929).

53. Sochineniia, XII: 112–5 (July 9, 1929). See also Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 160 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 62).

54. In Comintern documents, Stalin personally wrote in the epithet “social fascism” for Social Democrats. Communism and the International Situation, 6, 16–20; Firsov, “Stalin i Komintern,” 7. “Social fascism” became official in 1929, but Stalin’s conception was long-standing. “Fascism is the fighting organization of the bourgeoisie, leaning on the active support of social democracy,” he had written in 1924. “Social Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism . . . They are not antipodes but twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two basic political organizations, which arose in the situation of the postwar crisis of imperialism and is intended for the struggle against proletarian revolution.” Sochinennia, VI: 282; Degras, Communist International, 44. See also Degras, Communist International, II: 566.

55. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists, 35–9. The German Social Democrats, who had joined the Weimar Republic government, sought rapprochement with France against the Soviets in a pro-Western orientation.

56. McDermott and Agnew blame SPD policies (“more than any single factor”) for “the vitriolic ‘social fascist’ rhetoric employed by the Comintern in the years 1929–33.” McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 100–2.

57. La correspondance international, Aug. 17, 1929: 971. This was the first such plenum since Feb. 1928.

58. Politicheskoe obrazovanie, 1989, no. 1: 81. World Situation, 3–21.

59. Gorelov, Nikolai Bukharin, 100–45. Angelo Tasca, after getting out of Moscow in early 1929, had ripped into Stalin in a letter to the Italian Community party, concluding, “The Russian party and all of us will pay dearly for ignoring Lenin’s instructions about him.” Firsov, “Stalin i Komintern,” 5 (citing Annali Feltrinelli, VIII, 1968, 670). Before the year was out, Tasca was expelled on Stalin’s orders from the Italian Community party, which he had helped establish after having quit the Italian Socialist Party. In exile in France, he would rejoin the Italian Socialists. De Grand, In Stalin’s Shadow. See also Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III: 554.

60. Bahne et al., Les Partis communistes, 165 (March 1929); McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 86. After Hitler would come to power and ban the German Community party, Zetkin would seek asylum in Moscow, where she would die in June 1933.

61. McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 102, citing K. Gottwald, Spisy (Prague, 1951), I: 322 (Dec. 1929).

62. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 148–50 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s., d. 110, l. 1–2ob.). Stalin proposed naming Bukharin commissar of enlightenment, perhaps to tie him down in enervating ideological battles. “Bukharin begged everyone not to name him enlightenment commissar, but proposed, and then insisted on, the Scientific-Technical Administration” of the Supreme Council of the Economy, Voroshilov wrote to Orjonikidze (June 8, 1929). “I supported him in that, a few other comrades supported him and as a majority in one voice (against Koba) we got him so named.” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 123; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 30.

63. Vague resolutions to strengthen the military at the 15th Party Congress (Dec. 1927) and the 16th party conference (April 1929) had produced nothing concrete. Voronetskaia, Industrializatsiia SSSR, 42; XVI konferentsiia VKP (b), aprel’ 1929 goda, 240–7, 625. See also Erickson, Soviet High Command, 295, 301–7, 322.

64. Kudriashov, Krasnaia armiia, 234–40 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 259, l. 168–80). One of the two classified July 15, 1929, decrees was finally revealed in KPSS o vooruzhennykh silakh Sovetskogo Soiuza, 318–21. Contrary to some speculation, the decrees were not related to the launching of military action on the Chinese Eastern Railway. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 72–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 12).

65. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 124–9 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 55, d. 1966, l. 20–32, 35–43; and RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 15, l. 190: Revvoensovet).

66. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 74 (RGVA, f. 74, op. 2, d. 101, 105ob.: Litunovsky, July 30, 1929).

67. Gorlov, Sovershennko sekretno, Moskva-Berlin; Müller, Das Tor zur Weltmacht; Zeidler, Reichswehr und Rote Armee (2nd ed.); Erickson, Soviet High Command, 247–82.

68. Stalin had received Uborevičius on Nov. 4, 1927. Na prieme, 770.

69. In a comprehensive report in 1929, Uborevičius had judged the 4,000-strong German officer corps to be “to the right, far to the right of the Social Democrats. The bulk of them stand for a firm bourgeois dictatorship, for fascism.” D’iakov and Bushueva, Fashistskii mech kovalsia v SSSR, 255 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 295, l. 141–83).

70. Zdanovich, Organy, 423–4 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 7, d. 61, l. 6). See also Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 131 (citing RGVA, f. 33991, op. 1, d. 20, l. 80–92; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 93, l. 1; f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 40); and Z., “Sovremennaia artilleriia i modernizatsiia.” Stalin had written to Voroshilov (Dec. 31, 1928), who was then livid over budget cuts, that “the point now is our artillery is insufficient, scandalously insufficient.” Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 102 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 39, l. 19).

71. Tinchenko, Golgofa, 106–7; Tichanova, Rasstrel’nye spiski, no. 2, 99–101; Smirnov, Krovavyi marshal, 337 (I. P. Grave). Grigory Kulik, a Stalin civil-war crony dating to 1918 Tsaritsyn days and the head of the artillery directorate, escaped.

72. Mężyński also appended his name to the explanation as the top responsible official. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 336–7 (TsA FSB, f.2, op. 2, d. 9, l. 249: Feb. 9, 1929). See the speculations regarding Boris Nicolaevsky’s role in Fel’shtinskii, VChK-GPU, 271.

73. Yagoda would later testify under pressure that he gave both Rykov and Bukharin, at their requests, “secret OGPU material on the situation in the village.” This 1937 testimony, despite the circumstances under which it would be taken, is plausible. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 112–7 (interrogation April 26, 1937: TsA FSB, f. N-13614, tom 2, l. 57–8). On Trilisser’s Comintern intelligence (“communications service”)—65 people in Moscow as well as a worldwide system of radio operators, couriers, and safe houses—see Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina, 52, 54–5.

74. Dmitrievskii, Sovetskie portrety, 218–20.

75. The politburo (Sept. 12, 1929) again ordered him to follow his doctor’s regimen. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 190 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 757, l. 9, 15).

76. Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.”; Gladkov, Nagrada, 345–6. Trilisser maintained that his party meeting report had been approved at the “Central Committee.”

77. Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 95 (June 27, 1929).

78. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 191 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 170, l. 42).

79. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 219–20 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 32, l. 115). Trilisser got kicked over to the workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate.

80. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 202.

81. Papchinskii and Tumshis, Shchit, raskolotii mechom, 208–9.

82. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 202 (citing TsA FSB, arkhivnoe sledvestvennoe delo No. 13144 on Kaul A. I., II: no pagination, words of I. Ia. Ilin; arkhivnoe sledvestvennoe delo N. 14963 on Papashenko I. P., l. 184: M. A. Listengrut), 203 (l. 240–1). Mikhail Frinovsky was gone by then, out of Yevdokimov’s shadow; in Rostov, Frinovsky had had his own gatherings at his house, attended by Yevdokimov.

83. For Stalin’s patronage of Yevdokimov in fall 1929, see Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 191 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 170, l. 42). The full membership of the OGPU collegium became: Redens, Prokofyev, Blagonravov, Boki, Balytsky, Messing, and Yevdokimov. Peterrs and Pavlunovsky were taken off.

84. On Oct. 2, 1929, Yagoda wrote apologetically to the dictator that he had spoken to Mężyński and there were no differences between them (contrary to what Yagoda had earlier told Stalin). Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 344–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 9, l. 248).

85. Kokurin and Petrov, Lubianka, 42–3. Deribas was pushed out to the Soviet Far East.

86. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 135–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 162–3. Stalin included Beso Lominadze among the wayward young functionaries. In early Aug. 1929, Lominadze, demoted to a provincial post, wrote an inflammatory letter about Stalin and party policy to his patron Orjonikidze, who wrote in a protective draft response: “although I keep no party secrets from Stalin, I did not show him your letter.” It seems that Orjonikidze did not send the draft and later read Lominadze’s letter to Stalin, perhaps when Orjonikidze pushed to promote Lominadze to head the South Caucasus party committee (the appointment took effect May 8, 1930). Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze, 23–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s, d. 115, l. 6–10, 1–5); Kommunist, 1991, no. 13: 56–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 607, l. 267–9: Stalin at the Feb.–March 1937 plenum). Lominadze became a full member of the Central Committee in summer 1930.

87. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 154–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 174–6. The main anti-Bukharin essay appeared in Pravda on Aug. 24, 1929; Cohen, Bukharin, 332.

88. Stalin insisted that re-recognition of the USSR precede any settlement on debts, and that he was not going to rein in Comintern propaganda. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 160–3 (Sept. 9, 1929); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 177–9.

89. Murin, Stalin v ob”iaitiakh, 22 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 5).

90. Gorky had boarded the steamer Karl Liebknecht on Aug. 20, and visited Astrakhan and Stalingrad then Rostov and Tiflis. Troyat, Gorky, 173. Stalin’s doctor Ivan Valedinsky recalled Gorky visiting Stalin in Sochi in 1930. In fact, Gorky visited the USSR in 1928 (May 27–Oct. 12); 1929 (May 31–Oct. 12); and 1931 (May 14–Oct. 18), but not in 1930. Gorky’s one and only post-1917 visit to Sochi was in 1929, but Valedinsky wrote that he himself did not see Stalin in 1929. Either Valedinsky “recalled” the Gorky-Stalin encounter based upon stories he was told the next year, or he confused the years he treated Stalin. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 69.

91. Murin, Stalin v ob”iaitiakh, 22 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 6–7), 22–3 (l. 8), 23 (l. 9). Rumor had it that that Avel Yenukidze, her godfather, had enlisted Orjonikidze, and together they persuaded Stalin to allow Nadya to go back to school.

92. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 23–4 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 10–4).

93. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 25–7 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 16–24: between Sept. 16 and 22, 1929), 27 (l. 25: Sept. 23), 41n14 (d. 74, l. 18), 41n15 (d. 778, l. 18–9), 41n16 (d. 778, l. 20–1: Sept. 27). Stalin would thrice receive Kovalev: Dec. 18 (with Popov and Krumin) and Dec. 30 (alone), 1929, and March 11, 1930 (alone). Na prieme, 31–2.

94. Khromov, Po stranitsam, 34 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 98–9, 103–11).

95. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 166–7 (Sept. 30, 1929); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 181–2; Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, V: 10–1 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 768, l. 91, 92). Rykov, as head of the government, chaired the sessions, just as Lenin had.

96. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 27–8 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 27).

97. DBFP, 2nd series, VII: 20–38. After the British had effectively agreed on terms, Stalin noted that politburo members Kalinin and Tomsky were not in Sochi to consult, and that he could not speak in the name of the politburo. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 37; d. 74, l. 25 (Tovstukha, Oct. 3). See also Khromov, Po stranitsam, 220 (RGASPI, f. 669, op. 1, d. 8, l. 1a); and RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 73, l. 12, l. 85.

98. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 166–7, 167–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 181, 182.

99. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 34–5 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 50–1).

100. Sokolov, “Neizvestnyi G. V. Chicherin,” 14 (citing AVP RF, f. 08, op. 12, pap. 74, d. 55, l. 92–3: June 20, 1929).

101. This would be formalized in a politburo directive (Feb. 5, 1930): Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 219–20.

102. The reports of a supposed anti-Soviet bloc recorded frustration by the notional members over refusals to share intelligence. Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 297 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 184, l. 45–45ob.), 298–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 875, l. 92–4).

103. “We live in very difficult times,” the Soviet writer Leonid Leonov, whom Gorky admired, wrote from Moscow to him (Oct. 21, 1929). “All around us everything crumbles . . . There is no way back now . . . The times are dangerous. About many things one cannot write.” Semashkina and Evstigneeva, Perepiska Gor’kogo, II: 302–3.

104. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, I: 736 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 789, l. 14: Oct. 22, 1929), 737 (f. 84, op. 2, d. 12, l. 54: Oct. 26).

105. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 81–2 (citing Sel’sko-khoziaistvennaia gazeta, Nov. 28, 1929: Sergei Syrtsov).

106. Theses of the 6th Comintern Congress in 1928 had predicted “the most severe intensification of the capitalist crisis,” which, like earthquake forecasts, had suddenly turned correct. At the congress, the Comintern had also welcomed Latin American delegates for the first time, eliciting a boast about its “discovery of America.” Manuel, Latin America and the Comintern, 65.

107. Coates and Coates, History of Anglo-Soviet Relations, II: 332; Izvestiia, Nov. 6, 1929; DBFP, 2nd series, VII: doc. 24; DVP SSSR, XII: 537–8, 541; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 182–201 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 55, 51, 87, 94, 123, 136, 143, 158–9, 160–3, 178); Izvestiia, July 5, 1929. In the May 30, 1929, general election, Labour had won 287 seats, not enough for a majority (308), while the Tories won 260; Labour was dependent on the votes of Lloyd George’s Liberal Party (59 seats) to pass legislation. Three Tories voted for restoration of diplomatic relations with the USSR. Redvaldsen, “‘Today Is the Dawn.’”

108. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 21–2. Stalin approved the appointment of Grigory Sokolnikov, the former NEP-era finance commissar and party oppositionist and current skillful head of the state oil trust, as Soviet envoy. Sir Esmond Ovey became British ambassador in Moscow. Lammers, “Second Labour Government.” Ovey would claim that at a banquet given by the foreign affairs commissariat in 1931, the silverware bore the British coat of arms and the motto of the British chivalric Order of the Garter (Honi soit qui mal y pense—“May he be shamed who thinks badly of it”). Evidently, the silver had been stolen from the British embassy either during the 1917 revolution or after 1927, when relations had been severed. Time, May 11, 1931.

109. Blyumkin had served as Trotsky’s adjutant, then was invited to rejoin the secret police, rising to pro-consul in the Soviet satellite of Mongolia and then to undercover OGPU station chief in Istanbul. Yakov Agranov recorded Blyumkin’s revealing deposition (Oct. 20, 1929), which Yagoda forwarded to Stalin, and Stalin forwarded to Central Committee members. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 192–212 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 24, d. 126, l. 94–124), 213 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 2). See also Savchenko, Avantiuristy grazhdanskoi voiny, 305–36; Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 101ff; Gusterin, Sovetskaia razvedka; Agabekov, G.P.U., 221–6; Agabekov, OGPU, 214–23; Agabekov, ChK za rabotoi, 293–9. Agabekov (Aryutunov), an Armenian OGPU operative sent to Turkey to replace Blyumkin, became the first senior secret police official to defect to the West (1930); he betrayed the Soviet spy network in the Near East. OGPU agents went around whispering that Radek had betrayed Blyumkin, a story that, as intended, reached Trotsky, damaging relations between him and Radek, conveniently for Stalin. Radek would not deny he had informed on Blyumkin. Trotsky is said to have received a letter detailing Radek’s betrayal. “Kak i za chto Stalin rasstrelial Bliumkina” Biulleten’ oppozitsi, no. 9 (Feb.–March 1930): 9–11; Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 85–8; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 292–3; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 329–30; Orlov, Secret History, 194.

110. Sel’sko-khoziaistvennaia gazeta, Oct. 15, 1929 (Sergei Syrtsov); Pravda, Nov. 10 and Dec. 8, 1929. The slogan became widespread beginning in Feb. 1930: Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 191. A patent-equivalent for a tractor had been issued in tsarist Russia and a tractor prototype had been produced, but it never came into production. Artobolevskii and Blagonravov, Ocherki, 215.

111. Pravda, Nov. 7, 1929, reprinted with alterations in Sochineniia, XII: 118–35; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 329–45. One of Stalin’s post-facto editorial changes was shrinking the anticipated size of Soviet farms to 40,000–50,000 hectares. Sochineniia, XII: 129; Davies, “Stalin as Economic Policy-Maker,” 123. State farms were being modeled after industry, and, Molotov exhorted the plenum, collective farms should model themselves after state farms. Bol’shevik, 1929, no. 22: 20. Pravda (Sep. 5, 1929) had declared that all “technically more developed capitalist countries” were organizing agriculture like industry. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 3.

112. Mikoyan told the plenum (Nov. 11) that in the next year “we will have a significant export of grain,” even though key ports lacked large mechanized elevators and the United States, Argentina, and Canada had displaced Russia in European grain markets. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, V: 83 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 441, l. 19–20ob.).

113. Sdvigi v sel’skom khoziaistve SSSR, 22–3. See also Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 15; and Davies, Socialist Offensive, 116–37, 442.

114. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 740, l. 5.

115. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, V: 141 (Syrtsov). Officially, 19.1 percent of households had been collectivized in the North Caucasus by Oct. 1929. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 442.

116. Pravda, Nov. 26, 1929; Cohen, Bukharin, 334–5; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 174; Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, 369.

117. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 778, l. 23. Hryhory Petrovsky, a Stalin loyalist, stated at the plenum that “[I] did not belong to the ‘rightist baiters’ in the way, for example, I fought with the Trotskyites or the new opposition—Kamenev and Zinoviev—when we went wall to wall.”

118. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 631. During the plenum, Stalin angrily challenged a published account by Volodomyr Zatonsky concerning Lenin’s dealings with the Left SRs. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 735, l. 11–3, 15–7; Zatonskii, “Otryvki vospominanii,” 128–41. See also Zelenov, “Partiinyi kontrol’ za izdaniem sochinenii Lenina.”

119. Danilov and Ivnitskii, Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut, 23. See also Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party, 159–60.

120. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 157–74; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 643.

121. The CER linked the Soviet cities of Chita and Vladivostok as well as the Chinese cities of Manzhouli, Harbin, Tsitsihar, and Suifenho. Tang, Russian Policy, 193–241. In the Soviet consulate the Chinese found high-quality imitations of American and Japanese seals, evidently used to reseal letters that had been perlustrated and to mail secret Soviet correspondence under the guise of American or Japanese packages. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 34 (citing FRUS, 1929, II: 196–7; FO, 317/13931–F2692, F-2960).

122. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/iii: 895–910. Relations were severed on Aug. 16, 1929. Kārlis Baumanis boasted to the Moscow province party conference (Sept. 1929) that the “Chinese aggression had woken up [Soviet] workers,” who pledged their readiness to take up arms rather than “surrender to the imperialists.” Pervaia moskovskaia konferentsiia VKP (b): stenpograficheskii otchet, 39, 42.

123. Sovetsko-kitaiskii konflikt 1929, 37, translated in Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, II: 391; Krasnoznamenyi Dal’nevostochnyi, 91; Slavinskii, Sovetskii Soiuz i Kitai, 176.

124. Stalin had asked Molotov to think about staging a revolutionary uprising to invade and occupy Harbin “and establish a revolutionary power (massacre the landlords, bring in the peasants, create soviets in the cities and towns).” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 167–8 (Oct. 7, 1929); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 182.

125. Litvinov, Notes for a Journal, 113; Stephan, Russian Far East, 182. Soviet military intelligence had surmised in spring 1929 in an internal memorandum that “despite the strengthening activeness of anti-Soviet and fascist elements in Japan, Japanese policy regarding the USSR has had a more or less steady character.” Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 29–31.

126. Krivosheev, Grif sekretnosti sniat, 66.

127. Slavinskii, Sovetskii Soiuz i Kitai, 178–81; Erickson, Soviet High Command, 240–4; Dushen’kin, Proletarskii marshal, 98–100; Krasnoznamenyi Dal’nevostochnyi, 115–24. Blyukher was awarded a Buick automobile and use of the former Chinese consulate in Khabarovsk as his residence. Kondrat’ev, Marshal Bliukher, 271–3; Kartunova, Bliukher v Kitae, 12; Blyukher, “Vospominania o lichnom,” 81, 85.

128. Walker, War Nobody Knew, 328 (citing North China Daily News, Nov. 28, 1929), 334–5.

129. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, II: 434–6; Antonov, “Nekotorye itogi konflikta”; Tang, Russian Policy, 242–67; Chuikov, “Konflikt na KVZhD.” See also Elleman, Emergence of Communist Power, 192–205; and Patrikeef, Russian Politics, 85.

130. The Japanese also noted the apparent indifference of the League of Nations to questions of Chinese sovereignty. Lensen, Damned Inheritance.

131. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 169–71; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 183–4.

132. Pravda, Dec. 11, 1929. See also Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 131, citing Kuibyshev, Brigady sotsializma: doklad na I Vsesoiuznom s”ezde udarnykh brigad (1930), 13–4, 17; Rezoliutsii i postanovlenii; and Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd udarnykh brigad.

133. Sutton, Western Technology, I: 347–8; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 192, citing Na agrarnom fronte, 1930, no. 1: 62–3, and RGAE, f. 7620, op. 1, d. 22, l. 65–1.

134. There would be 124 technical assistance contracts by 1931, compared with 17 contracts in 1927–28. Payments to foreign specialists perhaps consumed one-quarter of Soviet grain export revenues. By 1933, in an effort to save on scarce foreign currency, and with experience and (illegally) replicable blueprints now in hand, just 46 such contracts remained in force. Lewis, “Foreign Economic Relations,” 209–10. Foreign technical assistance was codified as the strategy for military industry on Dec. 5, 1929. Simonov, Voenno-promyshelnnyi kompleks SSSR, 78.

135. Tsarist gold reserves had been lost in war and revolution, and though the OGPU confiscated precious metals and foreign banknotes in private hands, this amounted to only 10 million rubles in a year. But the gold extraction industry would be revived, using prison labor. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia Sistema SSSR, 8, 63; Budnitskii, Den’gi russkoi emigratsii; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 260 (APRF, f. 4,5 op. 1, d. 170, l. 62: Yagoda, Jan. 7, 1931).

136. Kennan, Russia and the West, 195.

137. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 85, d. 531–5; Stalin: Sbornik statei; Heizer, “Cult of Stalin,” 61, 80.

138. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 768, l. 131.

139. Stalin: sbornik statei; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 85, d. 531–5 (assembled congratulations). Stalin: sbornik statei, 2nd ed. (1930), 10, 44.

140. At this time the censor (Glavlit) laid down strict guidelines for the publication of Stalin photographs. Blium, Za kulisami, 128 (RGALI St. Petersburg, f. 31, op. 2, d. 40, l. 3).

141. Stalin, “Vsem organizatsiiam i tovarishcham, prislavshim privetstviia,” Pravda, Dec. 22, 1929. Sochineniia, XII: 140. See also Davies, Socialist Offensive, 118–9, 174–5.

142. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 6633, 6 parts. Some of the footage is raw (multiple takes being shot).

143. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 125 (citing arkhiv INO OGPU, f. 17548, d. 0292, t. 1, l. 106–7). The letter was among those later stolen with Trotsky’s archives by the NKVD. Following not one but two fires, Trotsky would return to his original rented villa on Prinkipo only in Oct. 1932. Cherniavskii, Lev Trotsky, 488–9.

144. Voroshilov, “Stalin i krasnaia armiia,” Izvestiia, Dec. 21, 1929, reprinted in Stalin: sbornik statei, and in Voroshilov, Lenin, Stalin, i krasnaia armiia, 41–61. Stalin himself crossed out the words that had offended him with red pencil: Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 77 (Voroshilov’s adjutant Khmelnitsky). Stalin had not been prominent in the press materials on the 9th anniversary of the Red Army’s founding (Feb. 23, 1927), but in the three-volume Civil War of 1918–1921, published in 1928–30, A. S. Bubnov wrote a forty-page introduction without mentioning Trotsky’s name while celebrating Stalin. Bubnov et al., Grazhdanskaia voina 1918–1921, III: 10. Avel Yenukidze, in a private birthday letter to Stalin (Dec. 30, 1929), shrewdly captured Stalin’s self-image while managing to quote Pushkin: Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 108–10 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 4–6).

145. Émigré sources produced a blunter version. “Stalin is the only man we must obey, for fear of getting worse,” Pyatakov was said to have remarked privately. “Bukharin and Rykov deceive themselves in thinking that they would govern in Stalin’s place; Kaganovich and such would succeed him, and I cannot and will not obey Kaganovich.” Whether Pyatkaov actually said that, or Trotsky’s supporters reported it so, to please their master, the statement reflected a widespread sense that Stalin stood far above the members of his faction. Souvarine, Staline, 450 (no citation); Souvarine, Stalin, 489.

146. Popov further distinguished Stalin’s leadership by the claim that in difficult situations, he did not succumb to panic. Popov, “Partiia i vozhd’.” For a broader discussion, see Aron, Sociologie des sociétés industrielles.

147. Graziosi, “Stalin’s Anti-Worker ‘Workerism’ 1924–1931,” 253–4; “Iz perepiski A. M. Gor’kogo,” 183–8 (Nov. 27, 1929), translated in Political Archives of the Soviet Union, 1/2 (1990): 177–80.

148. As Syrtsov had put it, echoing Stalin, “in those places where we broke kulak resistance, a strong flow of grain immediately commenced, as if a cork had been removed.” XVI konferentsiia VKP (b), aprel’ 1929 goda, 322–3.

149. Rationing had emerged haphazardly and varied by locale. By Feb.–March 1930, towns were prioritized based upon size and significance. Local trading agencies welcomed rationing as a better way to obtain supplies they were tasked with getting into workers’ hands; factories welcomed rationing, too, lobbying to raise the status of their enterprises for better rations. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 289–300; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 700–4.

150. Back at a July 4, 1929, politburo meeting, Molotov had proposed the formation of a USSR land commissariat, and Mykola Skyrnyk, the enlightenment commissar of Ukraine, immediately understood that this would put the country’s land under Union (not republic) ownership and objected, pointing out that such a move would violate the USSR constitution (in terms of republic prerogatives). Stalin, maneuvering, suggested the matter be postponed until a Central Committee plenum, and in the meantime, he prepared a fait accompli. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 11.

151. Pravda, Jan. 27, 1930; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), V: 39–42, 72–5; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 771, l. 3; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 35–84 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1876, l. 8; f. 558, op. 11, d. 38, l. 1, 4, 7; RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 40, l. 5–5ob., 58–53, 174–69, 73–72, 41, 197–87, 211–06, 205, 218, 217–12, 220–220ob.; d. 50, l. 40–39; d. 49, l. 27–24), 85–6; Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, VII/ii: 114.

152. Sochineniia, XII: 141–72. To those who reasoned that given collectivization’s universal nature, kulak exclusion would be unnecessary, he replied, “dekulakization represents a component part of the establishment and development of collective farms,” adding that “when a head has been cut off, no one cries over the hairs” (170). See also Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, 487; Izvestiia, Feb. 2, 1930; and Pravda, April 3, 1930.

153. Solomon, “Rural Scholars,” 148 (quoting S. M. Dubrovsky). Hearsay has Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov showing up uninvited on New Year’s Eve 1929–30 at Stalin’s Kremlin apartment, carrying Georgian wine, with Stalin letting them in. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 206 (no citation); Medvedev, Nikolai Bukharin, 25 (no citation).

154. This was Nov. 20, 1929. On Nov. 28, Stalin received Kamenev; on Dec. 11, Zinoviev. Na prieme, 31. Trotsky soon warned in an article dated Feb. 13, 1930, of the danger of kulaks infiltrating collective farms, which might become “a new form of social and political disguise for the kulaks.” But his proposed solution was a vague “industrial and cultural revolution,” not mass deportation. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1930, no. 9: 4–5. Tucker, who lacked access to these sources, nonetheless understood that “Stalin placed his own regime before a fait accompli.” Tucker, Stalin in Power, 145.

155. Pravda, Jan. 6, 1930; Kommunisticheskaia partiia sovetskogo soiuza, III: 667; Ivnitskii, “Istoriia podgotovki postanovleniia TsK VKP (b),” 265–88; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 385, l. 1–5 (letter to Orjonikidze: Jan. 3, 1930); Vyltsan et al., “Nekotorye voprosy,” 13. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 177–80, 237. For a chronology, see Viola, “Collectivization in the Soviet Union,” 71.

156. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 103–4 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 21, l. 393–4).

157. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 108–9.

158. Sochineniia, XII: 173–4. Stalin was deferential to Gorky, explaining in a letter in Feb. 1930 to an editor about the republication in Gorky’s Collected Works of his essay about Lenin from 1925 that “if comrade Gorky expresses doubts or—more than that—does not agree to introduce the changes, . . . then it will be necessary to publish the articles without any changes.” Gorky refused to make the changes. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tseznura, 173–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 822, l. 7, 8–9), 183 (l. 10: Feb. 28, 1930), 183–4 (f. 4, op. 2, d. 474, l. 29–30: A. A. Strunov, 1957).

159. On Feb. 2, 1930, an OGPU secret instruction to the special departments watching over the Red Army instituted a registry of soldiers found to have connections to “kulak elements.” Soldiers observed in anti-Soviet activities were to be arrested. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 61; GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1944, l. 17–25. Stalin also, yet again, dispatched grain plenipotentiaries. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 267.

160. He added of the brave new world of anti-market statization: “If we do not put an end to the flood of paperwork, it will drown us. We conquered Denikin and Yudenich, Wrangel and various counterrevolutionary scoundrels, but paper will asphyxiate us.” Ikonnikov, Sozdanie i deiatel’nost’, 212 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 27, l. 9).

161. A politburo decree of Jan. 30, 1930, divided the “kulaks” into three categories: “active counterrevolutionaries,” estimated at 60,000 people, were to be “sentenced” extrajudicially either to execution or internment in camps by “troikas” consisting of the local OGPU chief, provincial party boss, and local procurator; those in the second category, around 1.5 million people, were to be dispossessed and deported to uninhabited or sparsely inhabited places; and those in the third, some 2 million, were to be left in place, for now, but expropriated and not allowed to join collective farms. Danliov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 126–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 64–9). See also Viola, Best Sons, 216. Messing had asked Molotov to explain the party’s policy to the OGPU collegium on Jan. 30–31, 1930, but Stalin rejected the request: a Central Committee directive to the OGPU was not a matter of discussion. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 259–61 (no citation); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 151–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2os., op. 8, d. 35, l. 2–8).

162. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 528. A volunteer’s employer was supposed to pay for transportation, top off the lower collective-farm wages, and accept the worker back in the future. Many factories resisted releasing their workers. Pravda, Dec. 30, 1929; Viola, Best Sons, 35, 41, 56–7.

163. In Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Siberia, the regime deployed OGPU border guards as well (both groups inflicted and took casualties). Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 405–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 329, l. 59–65: May 3, 1930). Officials had propagated the notion that collectivization would produce a “sharp improvement in the qualities of the human material available for the army.” But soon the army political directorate warned (Sept. 8, 1930) of “sharpening kulak moods in the army” and a flood of peasant letters “asking the soldiers ‘to defend the peasantry, to turn their guns against Soviet power.’” Gaevskii, “Kolkhoznoe stroitel’stvo”; Romano and Tarchova, L’Armata Rossa, 354–8 (RGVA, f. 9, op. 28, d. 161, l. 80–4). See also Tarkhova, “Krasnaia armiia,” 114. The families of soldiers would eventually be exempted from dekulakization. But the Red Army political administration would not pronounce the political atmosphere among the soldiery stable until the end of 1932 (a time of famine). By the end of 1933, discharges would rise to at least 37,000. Tarkhova, Krasnaia armiia, 131, 204; Zdanovich, Organy, 313–4 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1 d. 208, l. 111), 314n134.

164. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 52 (citing GASO, f. 1148, op. 148 r/2, d. 65, l. 39).

165. The 23–29 age cohort accounted for just 28.6 percent of the industrial work force. Kuromiya, “Crisis of Proletarian Identity,” at 296n101, citing Politicheskii i trudovoi pod”em rabochego klassa SSSR, 1928–1929 gg. (Moscow, 1956), 545; Meyer, Sozialstruktur sowjetischer Industriearbeiter, 139.

166. Dubbed 25,000ers and “the best sons of the fatherland,” they were celebrated in the Vladimir Mayakovsky march “Onward 25!/Onward 25!” and Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel, Virgin Soil Upturned. Rabochaia gazeta, Jan. 28, 1930; Litsom k derevne, 1930, no. 4: 3; Viola, Best Sons, 65. A regime official would boast that more than 100,000 factory workers had taken part in forcing through regime policy in the countryside as of June 1930. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 66; Ivnitskii and Ezerskii, “Dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki i ikh rol,’” 462, 489; Selunskaia, Rabochie-dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki, 67, 76–7; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 168, 208, 210–11; Viola, Best Sons, 43. The mobilization officially ended on March 25, 1931: Savel’ev and Poskrebyshev, Direktivy VKP (b), 844.

167. Viola, Best Sons, 2 (citing Trud, Feb. 2, 1930).

168. Viola, Best Sons, 63 (citing GARF, f. 5470, op. 14, d. 204, l. 47).

169. Carr wrote that “policy determined class.” Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 99.

170. “O meropriiatiiakh po ukrepleniiu sotsialisticheskogo pereustroistva sel’skogo khoziaistva v raionakh sploshnoi kollektivizatsii i po bor’be s kulachestvom: postanovlenie TsIK i SNK ot 1 fevralia 1930 g.”: http://www.defree.ru/publications/p01/p40.htm#0724.

171. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 245. “All properties were seized, including women’s cut hair, children’s shirts, bowls for syringing, tea cups, spoons, and bed linen,” one report in Perm noted. “Confiscated kulak belongings were used as a dowry during some marriages.” Suslov, “‘Revolution from Above,’” citing PermGANI, f. 2, op. 7, d. 124, l. 112–5: not before March 2, 1930.

172. Hughes, “Capturing the Russian Peasantry,” 99, citing GANO corpus 2, f. 2, op. 2–1, d. 3506, l. 2; op. 2, d. 366, l. 189–98.

173. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 746–63 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 53, l. 31–79: April 29, 1930), 764–71 (d. 655, l. 500–9: May 14, 1930).

174. Viola, Peasant Rebels, 117 (citing GARF, f. 5469, op. 9, d. 398, l. 23). In Smolensk province, as elsewhere, party members were warned “to stay away from the windows” at work, and not to walk village streets at night. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 241.

175. One published account has only fifty 25,000ers being killed or seriously wounded, an improbably small number. Selunskaia, Rabochie-dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki, 145 (no citation).

176. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 245.

177. Reports also were going to Stalin tracing speculation among European diplomats about a possible Soviet attack against a weak Romania. He wrote on the reports: “to my archive.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 184, l. 53–93; Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 312–3 (l. 77–8: Feb. 11, 1930), 315–6 (l. 86–7: March 3, 1930).

178. For 1930, the OGPU would register 13,754 “group anti-Soviet protests” and 13,794 “terrorist acts,” about half against property. But a mere 176 actions were qualified as full-fledged “uprisings” and another 44 as involving arms. The police recorded around 5,000 cases of leaflets or anonymous declarations. These numbers are likely not comprehensive, but they indicate something less than civil war. Danilov, Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 787–808 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 679, l. 36–72 March 15, 1931). See also Viola, Peasant Rebels, 100–31. For the civil war argument, see Graziosi, Stalinism, 5–64. The secret police had recorded sixty-three riots and spontaneous localized rebellions over the two years 1926–27. Berelowitch and Danilov, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, I: 18 (TsA FSB, sekretno-politicheskii otdel OGPU, dokladnaia zapiska 1930: 32).

179. Vasil’ev, “Krest’iane vosstaniia” (quoting declassified local archives without citation); Vasil’ev and Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie, 213–5 (TsGAOO Ukrainy, f. 1, op. 20, d. 3154, l. 39–40), 215–6 (l. 42–3), 21620 (l. 48–53); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 279, 324.

180. Sochinenii, XII: 188 (Feb. 9, 1930). On Soviet war fears, see also the telegram from Litvinov to Alexander Arosyev, Feb. 28, 1930: DVP SSSR, XIII: 118. Stalin had been cognizant not to aggravate tense relations with Poland (which had once ruled Ukraine), anxious that the Poles might take advantage of Soviet troubles. German-Soviet relations were on a knife’s edge as well. Ken and Rusapov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 173–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 53: Jan. 25, 1930), 538–43 (op. 162, d. 8, l. 114: March 11, 1930).

181. The article also took to task local officials who had lagged behind in implementing collectivization. Pravda, March 2, 1930; Izvestiia, March 2, 1930; Sochineniia, XII: 191–9. The politburo had voted to have Stalin “publish an article in the newspapers,” but it remains unclear whether he had discussed beforehand the specific content of his article and its self-exculpatory character. The politburo protocol was approved by telephone polling; Stalin’s signature on it is from a stamp. A secret report to Orjonikidze from Balytsky, OGPU chief in Ukraine, on Feb. 25, and another the next day from party officials in Kharkov to Molotov, detailed both massive peasant resistance and the idea that local officials provoked dangerous peasant rebellion in key border regions by improperly implementing collectivization, the very language Stalin would use in his article. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 25; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 270 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 778, l. 5), 832–33n101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 145, l. 138–44, 146–7). Syrtsov, who served on the key politburo commission on collective farms, in a speech to the Institute for Red Professors on Feb. 20, 1930, which was only published (March 15) after Stalin’s article, foreshadowed many of his themes: Bol’shevik, 1930, no. 5: 47, 51.

182. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1253–4 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 257, l. 18), 1257–8 (l. 15–7), 1258–1344 (d. 679, l. 181–319). Yagoda, a mere five days after Stalin’s “Dizzy” article, reported to him that many regions were engaged in “conciliatory approaches to the kulak . . . defense of the kulak.” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 292–302 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 40, l. 6–17). Stalin met with Yagoda that same day. Na prieme, 32 (March 7, 1930).

183. In fact, Balytsky was in the field commanding the crackdown; Stalin on the phone had reached Balytsky’s deputy, Israel Leplyovsky. Vasil’ev and Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie, 221–2 (TsGAOO Ukrainy, f. 1, op. 20, d. 3154, l. 11: March 19, 1930), 233 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s, d. 125, l. 2–2ob.: no later than March 25, 1930).

184. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 10 (April 1930): 2–7.

185. Hindus, Red Bread, 147.

186. Davydenko et al., Put’ trudovykh pobed, 270–5; Viola, Peasant Rebels, 171–2 (citing RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 122, l. 104).

187. Storella and Sokolov, Voice of the People, 352 (RGAE, f. 7486s, op. 37, d. 102, l. 77–8). Bukharin, too, was undercut: he had just published yet another essay acknowledging the party was always right, while citing “kulak sabotage,” Pravda, Feb. 19, 1930. See also Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 725, 730 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 92, l. 1–49).

188. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 722 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 92, l. 1–49: April 24, 1930). Stalin sent a secret circular (April 2, 1930) to party organizations asserting that had it not been for the tactical retreat—portrayed as fixing the incorrect implementation of the party line—“we would now have had a wave of peasant insurrections, a good half of our ‘lower’ functionaries would have been killed by the peasants, the spring sowing would have failed, the collective farm construction would have been beaten down, and our internal and external position would have been put under threat.” He also depicted his “Dizzy with Success” article as assigned to him by the Central Committee. On April 3, he felt compelled to publish a second article denying that he had written the first on his own initiative, calling it a directive of the Central Committee. Danilov and Ivnitskii, Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut, 387–94. See also Zelenin, “Osushchestvlenie politiki,” 47n4.

189. The functionary added: “Our public was so stunned by the unexpectedness of it that they did not know to react.” “‘Nachalo razgroma profdzvisheniia’: dnevnik B. G. Kozeleva, 1927–1930 gg.,” 136–7. The diarist Boris Kozelev was accused of right deviationism and expelled from the party for two years when his diary was found. In Oct. 1930, he was mobilized to Magnitogorsk.

190. On April 21, the Siberian procuracy reported that 328 officials, mostly of rural soviets, had been sentenced to imprisonment or, in eleven cases, execution. One, in a drunken state, had murdered a peasant and raped his wife. Hughes, Stalinism in a Russian Province, 187–8 (citing GANO corpus 2, f. 2, op. 2, d. 465, l. 104–9; d. 459, l. 19–20, 32, 40), 190 (d. 460, l. 10, l. 31). In March 1930, the GPU district plenipotentiary in Western Siberia, F. G. Dobygin, had arrested eighty members of the soviet and party active and shot nine of them; he released kulaks from the county jail—they grabbed rifles and led an uprising of four hundred people. Danilov and Krasil’nikov, Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, 59 (GANO, f. p-1204, op. 1, d. 8, l. 68).

191. Kin’s original letter was dated April 2, 1930; Stalin’s response to him was returned as undeliverable, and on May 29, Tovstukha inquired of the Kherson party boss whether a Nikolai Kin existed—evidently Kin (whatever his real name) had given a false address. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 184–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 753, l. 114–7), 186 (l. 123), 188 (l. 121).

192. The idea of a rail link between Siberia and Russian Turkestan had first been bruited back in 1886; work had commenced in 1927. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 904–7; Payne, Stalin’s Railroad.

193. Izvestiia, April 27, 1930; Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 304–12 (quote at 304).

194. Another of the main arguments of Magnetic Mountain is that authoritarian state power is most effective when it is reproduced in people’s everyday lives and identities.

195. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 249–50.

196. Rassweiler, Generation of Power. The local factories slated to use the power supply made less progress. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 215.

197. The earliest reports of hunger seem to have emerged from the Russian republic in Jan. 1930, in the Volga Valley, Stalingrad county, where half the harvest failed, according to secret police reports. Peasants there formed groups to demand food from the authorities, who took no special actions, as people consumed food surrogates and children stopped going to school. Kondrashin, Golod v SSSR, I/i: 146 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 778, l. 394–8), 177–80 (d. 852, l. 296–302: July 26, 1930), 189–90 (d. 787, l. 992–3), 197–8 (op. 9, d. 546, l. 302–3: June 6, 1930), 198–9 (RGAE, op. 11, d. 17, l. 139–41: July 8, 1930).

198. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 228–30 (TsA FSB, f. 2m, op. 8, d. 834, l. 985–6), 230 (RGAE, f. 8043, op. 11, d. 17, l. 208–208ob.), 230–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 834, l. 1072–6).

199. Schoolteachers in Akmolinsk province of Kazakhstan deserted their schools en masse and signed on for work at the railroad, which had some food to distribute. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 207–8 (GA Kustanaiskoi obl. Respubliki Kazakhstan, f. 54–p, op. 1, d. 784, l. 14), 220–7 (TSA FSB, f. 2m, op. 8, d. 744, l. 570–6), 227–8 (l. 612). Kazakhstan went from 2 percent collectivization of households as of 1928 to 50 percent as of April 1, 1930, by official statistics. Kozybaev et al., Kollektivizatsiia v Kazakhstane, 4.

200. As trade negotiations with Britain continued over Soviet obligations for tsarist and Provisional Government debt, the Soviet envoy to London, Sokolnikov, was receiving wide praise in the British press as one Communist who kept his word. A Russian émigré periodical edited by Paul Miliukov, the former leader of the Constitutional Democrats, praised Sokolnikov as “the sole Soviet administrator who has demonstrated with deeds that he is capable of learning state affairs.” Mischievously, the article posed the question, “Stalin or Sokolnikov?” Miliukov, Poslednie novosti, May 16, 1930; see also Vozrozhdenie, May 17, 1930; Genis, “Upriamyi narkom s il’inki,” 235. Sokolnikov is said to have fretted to his wife, “Stalin will never forgive me this and will necessarily exact revenge.” Serebriakova, “Iz vospominanii,” at 242. On Sept. 17, 1930, Yaroslavsky wrote a denunciation to Orjonikidze (party Control Commission) of Sokolnikov’s alleged expenditure in London of 4,000 gold rubles on sleeping quarters for his mistress. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 134–5 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 267, l. 1–2). Sokolnikov would serve as envoy to Britain through Sept. 14, 1932. He was replaced by Jan Lachowiecki, from a Russified Polish family, who had taken the name Ivan Maisky, a confidant of Litvinov.

201. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 115 (no citation). “We are facing a combat situation here,” one soldier in Bashkiria noted, according to a spring 1930 police report with many such examples. “I see how they are driving the peasants, and my heart is broken. Nothing can be done, I’ll have to keep silent.” Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1219–24 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, por. 653, l. 305–7).

202. Ivnitskii, Sud’ba raskulachennykh, 24. See also Jasny, Socialized Agriculture, 308.

203. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 153.

204. Viola, Best Sons, 157–8. Peasants, too, were getting promoted by the hundreds of thousands into positions of rural authority, taking ad hoc study courses. Aruntiunian, Mekhanizatory sel’skogo khoziaistva SSSR.

205. Rozenfel’d, Dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki, 31, 158–9.

206. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 292, citing Sotsialisticheskoe zemleutsroitsvo, 1930, no. 3–4: 56–9. Individual peasants received the new land allocations last in line and in smaller allotments, which were less conveniently located and often marshy or infested, but they persevered.

207. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 160, citing Resheniia partii i pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam (1967), II: 196 (March 14, 1930). No single decree had introduced the NEP, and no single decree would abolish it—in fact, technically, NEP would be “transcended” in the Hegelian, dialectical sense.

208. Decisions on how to distribute income from the 1930 harvest would be made locally. There would be wide variation, but also a basic calculation such that collective farmers would receive compensation out of what remained after expenses and tax payments on a “per eater” basis, meaning farmers would get a portion of the harvest irrespective of how much work they had done, a disincentive to work harder. Davies noted that “perhaps the most remarkable feature of the spring of 1930 is that the sowing took place quite successfully in the kolkhozy even though the collective farmers were working on credit for an unknown amount of payment, often not knowing by which system they would be paid.” The original compensation idea—that collective farmers would be paid factory-style wages based on a piece rate system (in line with a vision of gigantic farms)—failed, and not only because cash was in short supply: a guaranteed wage promised to shift the financial burden of any crop failures to the state. Davies also shows that only in June 1930, by which time sowing had been completed, did the regime decide upon remuneration on the basis of “labor days,” a system that treated work accomplished as a dividend to be paid from what was left over from the collective farm’s income (in kind and money) after state deliveries and taxes. Record keeping remained sporadic, however. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 140, 140–67; S”ezdy sovetov Soiuza Sovetskikh SSR, III: 189.

209. Partiinoe khoziaistvo, 1930, no. 7–8: 8 (Wolf).

210. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 310, citing Sotsialisticheskoe zemledelie, June 3, 1930.

211. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 29 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 30), 41n17.

212. Trapeznikov, Kommunisticheskaia partiia, 38–9; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 178–9; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 211–2, 218. Because some were later rehabilitated, or because incomplete figures were initially reported, sometimes the figure is reported as 130,000, including 14,000 who quit voluntarily: Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1930, no. 10 (12): 14–9; Schapiro, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 435. Cf. Pravda, April 23, 1931. A comprehensive study of rural Communists in the RSFSR in 1929 had shown that one in four owned property worth more than 800 rubles, compared with one in six of the overall peasant population. Communist peasants were also more likely to employ hired labor. Gaister and Levin, “O sostave sel’partorganiztsii.”

213. Gill, Origins, 137; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 420; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 48; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 132. Tsarist-era officials comprised 10 percent of the staff in commissariats, albeit a mere 2 percent had been ministers or high officials. This was after sweeping purges of the state apparatus. Izvestiia, Aug. 10, 1930.

214. Stalin also told the congress, “we are in favor of the state dying out, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He acknowledged the contradiction, but called it Marxist dialectics. In 1933, he would reiterate the point. Sochineniia, XIII: 211, 350. Engels had written in Anti-Dühring (1878) that “the interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself . . . The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away [es stirbt ab].” Engels, Unwälzung der Wissenschaft, 291–2.

215. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 17–57; Sochineniia, XII: 235–373. See also Davies, Socialist Offensive, 330–6. Stalin ridiculed “the complete absurdity of chatter about NEP being incompatible with an attack” on capitalist elements. Sochineniia, XII: 306–7. Select workers had been invited to deliver personal narratives to the congress, which became the first with no speeches against the leadership. Szamuely, “Elimination of Opposition.” Even after the opening of the archives, Szamuely’s article remains the most incisive on the problem of opposition to Stalin.

216. Shitts, Dnevnik, 195; Pavlova, Stalinizm, 68–9 (citing GARF, f. 1235, op. 133, d. 11, l. 28, 30). Shitts, born (1874) in Tambov, studied history with the medievalist P. Vinogradov at Moscow University, where he eventually got a position teaching Latin. In 1928 he became the editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He would be arrested in 1933.

217. These words were omitted from Sochineniia, XII: 233, 234.

218. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 250–1, 372–5; Za industrializatsiiu, June 19, July 5, Oct. 8, 1930. On June 16, 1930, in his recognition of the newly opened Rostov Agricultural Engineering Works, Stalin also thanked “all those foreign specialists—engineers and technicians—who have helped.” Stikh, Zavod griadushchikh urozhaev, 22; Pravda, June 17, 1930.

219. Glan, Iakov Il’in, 235. See also Il’in, Bol’sheviki dolzhny ovladet’ tekhnikoi; Il’in, Liudi stalingradskogo traktornogo; and his incomplete posthumous novel Bol’shoi konveier (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1934). Il’in (b. 1905) died in Dec. 1932. Margaret Bourke-White, the photographer, observed at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory how “one Russian is screwing in a tiny bolt and twenty other Russians are standing around watching him, talking it over, smoking cigarettes, arguing . . . They are like children marveling over new toys. More than that, they are religious fanatics worshipping before a new shrine.” Bourke-White, Eyes on Russia, 118–9.

220. Boris Sheboldayev remarked at the congress (June 29): “In many party organizations we have witnessed demonstrations, both of the most straightforward right-wing opportunist and of the ‘leftist’ Trotskyite type, that for sheer boldness and effrontery surpass anything seen even at the height of our struggle with the rights.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 135–6.

221. While Mikoyan ripped into the “right deviation,” Rudzutaks told the delegates the rightists had engaged in “direct slander of the party, direct slander of comrade Stalin.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 39–44. The exiled Trotsky wrote that “the plebiscite regime has been established conclusively,” without acknowledging the root cause. Trotsky, “Preliminary Comments on the Sixteenth Congress” [July 25, 1930], II: 335–6.

222. Bukharin had known Larina since she was four. She had grown up in her stepfather Yuri Larin’s apartment in the Metropole, which was visited by top party officials, including Stalin. Bukharin lived one floor below. On the Black Sea he was still involved with Alexandra Travina—a lover planted on him (it seems she had miraculously appeared in the same coupé on the overnight train from Moscow to Leningrad). Larina and Bukharin would marry in 1934. “‘No ia to znaiu, chto ty prav’: pis’mo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Stalinu iz vnutrennei tiur’my NKVD,” 49 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 301, l. 129–33).; Gregory, Politics, Murder, and Love, 57–60, 67–9, 72–4; Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 107–12.

223. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 142–8. Rykov was no coward: when criticized in person at a Urals party gathering in June 1930, he had responded forcefully and received an ovation.

224. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 29–30 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 31–2).

225. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 63; XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 26 iiunia–13 iiulia 1930 g., I: 122. Tomsky was eventually replaced by the Stalin favorite Nikolai Shvernik (b. 1888), whom the dictator had promoted from Leningrad in 1926 to the central apparatus, then assigned to the Urals. When Shvernik had reported in 1929 that his Urals party organization had failed to fulfill assigned targets, Stalin wrote back, “There are no grounds to complain, you did all you could.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 42 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 36, l. 103); Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 141–44.

226. Kirov, Izbrannye stat’i rechi, 539.

227. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 117–29 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 397, l. 2–7). Pyatakov had been inspired to set out his thoughts in writing by a conversation with Orjonikidze, as noted in a letter to the latter (129n4: l. 1, July 20). See also Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 187–9.

228. Vechernyi klub, Dec. 22, 1992 (interview with Poskryobyshev from 1964). The secretariat had a “bureau, which in March 1926 was replaced by a ‘secret department.’” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, 85, 86. See also Rosenfeldt, “Special” World. Stalin had posted his former top aide, the Marxist scholar Ivan Tovstukha (b. 1889), who had only one lung and tuberculosis, to the Lenin Institute; another long-standing top aide, the high-strung Lev Mekhlis, who hankered after Tovstukha’s intellectual authority, browbeat Stalin into allowing him, finally, to take leave to bootstrap a Marxist education at the Institute of Red Professors. This opened the way for Poskryobyshev, who eventually became Stalin’s top aide. His wife was the sister of the wife of Trotsky’s son Lev Sedov. See also Bazhanov, Damnation of Stalin, 34–40.

229. Already by the next day he was said to be feeling fine. The drivers of the two vehicles went unpunished. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii, 47 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 107).

230. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 700, l. 4. OR l. 47.

231. Chigirin, Stalin, 79–83 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 44-51).

232. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 69. Kaganovich, too, got a new apartment, and was said to be “very satisfied” and “touched by Stalin’s attention.” Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 33 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 46–7). Kaganovich’s apartment was in the so-called children’s wing of the Grand Kremlin Palace, also known as the tsarevich’s quarters.

233. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 196–7; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 207–8.

234. The regime had rechristened the peasant commune, whose origins went back deep into the mists of ancient Russia, a “land society.” But in the RSFSR, a decree of July 30, 1930, stipulated that land societies were to be liquidated wherever 75 percent of households belonged to the new collective farms. (Unlike collective farms, the commune entailed working land individually while holding it in common.) Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 34–5; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 227–8; Atkinson, End of the Russian Land Commune, 369–70. In Ukraine, where communes did not predominate, they had been abolished by decree already in Jan. 1930.

235. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 250 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 16, 20). As of Oct. 1, 1930, the OGPU apparatus consisted of 22,180 employees. That included around 2,000 in the central apparatus, 5,067 on transport, 1,425 at the OGPU central school, 612 at the transport school, 97 at the Lubyanka inner prison, and 270 at the Butyrka prison; more than 10,000 were deployed in localities. Yagoda complained in a directive, however, that operatives preferred to remain in provincial towns and administrative centers, refusing to be deployed in counties or villages. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 34–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 183), 36n1 (Nov. 12, 1930).

236. Most other crops also did well. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 337–8, 419 (table 1).

237. Procurements were 6 million more than in 1929–30 (and double the total of 1928–29). The MTS were entrusted with scarce heavy equipment, which they leased to collective farms in exchange for part of the crop. Miller, One Hundred Thousand Tractors. At the end of 1930, the 158 machine tractor stations controlled more than 31,000 tractors but only about 200 trucks and 17 cars. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 31, citing Sotsialistichekoe zemledelie, Dec. 20, 1930.

238. Rakovski gave a similar incisive analysis from exile that was also published abroad. Braginskaia, “Pobeda plana i rekord besplannovosti”; Rakovski, “Na s”ezde i v strane”; Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 39–41. See also Lewin, “Disappearance of Planning.”

239. Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 37, citing Severenyi rabochii, April 15, 1930, and Za industrializatsiiu, July 20, 1930.

240. Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 38, 43.

241. He instructed Molotov (Aug. 6, 1930) to “pay attention to the Stalingrad and Leningrad [Putilov] tractor factories. Things are bad there.” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 200–1, 201n8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 3).

242. Stalin singled out by name Ivan Klimenko. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 202, 203n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 21–3, 7).

243. In Stalin’s absence the politburo had twice examined the South Caucasus party infighting; he demanded that a damning politburo decree be published in full. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 202, 203n3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 790, l. l. 8; d. 791, l. 23, 24: July 20, Aug. 3, 1930).

244. In 1929 and the first half of 1930, Kalinin’s central executive committee had received an astonishing 172,500 petitions of wrongful dekulakization (337,563 households would be dekulakized in 1930); Kalinin’s secretariat managed to adjudicate just 785 of them (ruling in the plaintiff’s favor 519 times). “Rol’ OGPU v raskulachivanii krest’ianskih khoziaistv”: http://helion-ltd.ru/ogpu-role.

245. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 7 (RGASPI, f. 85, recent acquisitions, d. 2, l. 1–11, 28–30); Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 31.

246. In a follow-up letter of Sept. 2, Stalin put Kalinin on the same plane as Rykov. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 198–202, 211–3; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 203–4, 210–1.

247. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 198–202; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 203–4. The next day, on the basis of Mikoyan’s reports on successful procurements, Stalin demanded still more exports, writing to Molotov, “Otherwise we risk being left without our new iron and steel and machine-building factories (Nizhny Novgorod auto factory, Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, etc.).” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 200–1, 201n8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 3: Aug. 6, 1930).

248. Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 615–6; Tracy, Agriculture in Western Europe, 127; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 107. See also Course and Phases of the World Economic Depression, 167ff.

249. Stalin also felt that Mikoyan was not coping as trade commissar (“a job that is difficult, if not impossible, for one person to handle”), and proposed he be removed or given an outstanding deputy, suggesting Arkady Rozenholz, a member of the Central Control Commission. The politburo formally appointed Rozengolts deputy trade commissar for foreign trade on Sept. 10. On Nov. 15, 1930, trade was redivided into two commissariats, and Rozenholz became commissar for foreign trade. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 202–6; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 204–6, 206n7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 796, l. 9; d. 804, l. 6). Prices for other Soviet exports fell by 20 percent.

250. Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR, 1918–1966, 20.

251. Timber exports, which had only resumed in 1927, would attain 18 percent of the world market in 1931; imperial Russia had had 15 percent of the world timber market in 1913. The USSR targeted the United States, Italy, Germany, and Britain; the British market for Soviet raw materials opened in April 1930.

252. Potocki, Polityka państwa polskiego, 262–72; Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War, 102 (citing CAW I/303/4/6982).

253. To pay for this new expense, he instructed Molotov to “raise the money through an increase in the production of vodka.” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 209–10; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 208–10; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 31. In short order, the politburo enacted his will. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 796, l. 7 (Sept. 25, 1930).

254. An estimated 3,000 engineers had been arrested in the Donbass in 1928–29. “Over the last several years we liquidated counterrevolutionary organizations almost in every sphere of the economy,” the OGPU reported in May 1930. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1140 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, por. 435, l. 169–241).

255. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 178–9 (Aug. 2, 1930); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 199–200; Kommunist, no. 11 (1990): 96 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5275, l. 1). In Oct., after Stalin returned from holiday, he sacked Pyatakov from the state bank.

256. Stalin singled out the tsarist-era economists Vladimir Groman and Nikolai Kondratiev (of “long wave” fame), insisted they were linked to Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov, and wrote that “Kondratiev, Groman and a few other scoundrels must definitely be shot.” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 193–6; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 200–1 (Aug. 6), 201n8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 3).

257. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 211–3 (Sept. 2, 1930); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 210–1. Stalin worried whether the trial would come off as scripted (“Are we ready for this? Do we consider it necessary to take the ‘case’ to trial?”). Finally, in March 1931, fourteen members of a supposed Menshevik party were publicly tried and convicted of attempting to restore their party and overthrow the Soviet regime. Litvin, Men’shevistskii protsess 1931 goda; Menshevik Trial. See also Evdoshenko, “Delo neftianikov-’vreditelei’ 1929–1931 gg.,” 331–89.

258. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 216–8 (Sept. 13, 1930), 218, n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 798, l. 12); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 213–5.

259. Pravda, Sept. 25, 1930; Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1184–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 658, l. 106–12: Sept. 28, 1930).

260. RGANI, f. 89, op. 48, d. 1, Hoover Institution Archives; Prystaiko and Shapoval, Sprava “Spilky Vzvolennaia Ukrainy,” 236; Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1148 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, por. 435, l. 169–241: late May 1930).

261. ‘voeno-fashistskii zagovor,’ 103–4; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i voenno-fashistskii zagovor,” at 247–8.

262. Minakov, Voennaia elita, 114–5.

263. Isserson, “Sud’ba polkovodtsa,” 189 (Todorovsky, head of Red Army training). The book in question was Triandafillov, Kharakter operatsii sovremennoi armii. Triandafillov, an ethnic Greek who had been born (1894) in tsarist Kars province (later ceded to Turkey), would die in a military plane crash in a fog on July 12, 1931. The politburo forbade the regime’s highest officials from flying. Stalin would not get on an airplane until 1943.

264. Aptekar’ and Uspenskii, Marshal M.N. Tukhachevskii (RGVA, f. 7, op. 10, d. 1047, l. 2–8ob., Jan. 11, 1930); Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 91–3 (l. 10ob.–140b, 22–3: Shaposhnikov analysis, Feb. 15). See also Biriuzov, “Predislovie,” 12; Erickson, Soviet High Command (3rd ed.), 326–30, 349–57; and Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planiriovanie, 83.

265. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 97 n7, 8 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 19, d. 10, l. 125: Voroshilov to Stalin, March 5, 1930).

266. Samuelson, Soviet Defence Industry Planning, 126 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 155: March 5, 1930). Voroshilov was angling for greater military expenditures. Pravda, Feb. 23, 1930.

267. Ken, “‘Moia otsenka byla slyshkom rezkoi,’” 150–1 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 58: March 23, 1930); Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 113. See also Stone, “Tukhachevskii in Leningrad,” 1379; Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 99–112. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 446, l. 13–18.

268. On Aug. 14, the OGPU arrested a former tsarist colonel, Ivan Troitsky, who taught at the Frunze Military Academy and called himself “the agitator for Tukhachevsky’s achievements,” and, on Aug. 19, Nikolai Kakurin, a former tsarist staff officer who had served in various White armies but gone over to the Reds, taught at the military academy, too, and fought under Tukhachevsky’s command. Olga Zajonczkowska-Popova—the daughter of the former tsarist general and nobleman Andrzej Zajonchkowski, who had died in 1926 and had served as a secret-police informant—was herself a secret police informant, making use of her famous father’s name to mix in the highest military circles, and she had denounced Kakurin, who was her first cousin. Tinchenko, Golgofa, 114–5 (citing GA SBU, fl. D. 67093, t. 54, delo Kakurina N. E.: 40).

269. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 103–4. By Oct. 5, OGPU interrogators had Kakurin imagining that Tukhachevsky had indirectly revealed he was contemplating Stalin’s assassination. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 104; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’ 248.

270. Zdanovich, Organy, 395–6 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 258, l. 248).

271. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 60.

272. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 216–8, 220–2, 222–3; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 213–5, 216–7, 217–9. This frustration extended well beyond Stalin. Gregory and Markevich, “Creating Soviet Industry,” 802, citing RGAE, f. 7297, op. 38, d. 104, l. 2; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 42; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 439.

273. Syrtsov made some critical remarks at the 16th Party Congress in July 1930, but Stalin had permitted him to be reelected a candidate member of the politburo. Still, the dictator continued to grumble. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 214–6; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 212. On Sept. 25, the politburo dispatched Syrtsov to the Mid-Volga territory to expedite grain procurements. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 798, l. 4.

274. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, l. 37–8; Khlevniuk, “Stalin, Syrtsov, Lominadze,” 90–1 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 797, l. 1–2). Mężyński and Olsky, for their part, kept sounding alarms about planned “terrorist acts,” including against Stalin. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1451–2 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 258, l. 236: Sept. 19, 1930).

275. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 40–52; Watson, Molotov, 99–104. On Rykov, see Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov; Oppenheim, Practical Bolshevik; Shelestov, Vremia Alekseia Rykova; and Senin, A. I. Rykov.

276. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 103–4.

277. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 256–7 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 388, l. 270–1: Oct. 1930); Kommunist, 1990, no. 11: 99–100 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5276); Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 187–8; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 195–6.

278. Murin, Stalin v ob’iatiakh, 30 (l. 34–5: Sept. 5), 31 (36–7: Sept. 8). Fifteen and sixteen years earlier, Stalin had written to fellow revolutionaries asking for something to read in English or French while he was in remote Siberian exile. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 399–401, 409, 413.

279. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 31 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 36, 37), 32 (l. 41–2), 32–3 (l. 43–5), 33 (l. 38–40), 34 (l. 48–9). Stalin responded on Oct. 8: “You hint at some kind of excursions by me. I inform you that I have not traveled anywhere (anywhere at all!) and I have no intention of traveling.” Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 34–5 (l. 50–1).

280. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 738, l. 110.

281. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 144–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 765, l. 68a); Enker, “Struggling for Stalin’s Soul,” 172–5.

282. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 42–3.

283. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 30–3 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, l. 68a; d. 765, l. 55–58; d. 738, l. 110–1; d. 778, l. 43); Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 42–3. Kaganovich later in life recalled that he had supported Molotov, in the event Stalin declined to head the government. Chuev, Tak govoroil Kaganovich, 60.

284. Stalin is listed as meeting (with Nikolai Popov of Pravda) on Oct. 13, his first meeting since July 22. Na prieme, 34–5.

285. Stalin to Bukharin, Oct. 14, and Bukharin’s second letter of Oct. 14: Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 146–7 (RGASPI, f. 329, op. 2, d. 6, l. 78); 147–8 (l. 77).

286. Iakovlev et al., Reabilitatsiia: politicheskie protsessy, 242, 244. The politburo meeting also censured a pamphlet Syrtsov had published based on a presentation he had made on control figures for output in physical units for 1930–31, supposedly “among those series of questions that are not to be made public and disseminated.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 95 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 446, l. 2–4), 106n4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 800, l. 7); Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 44. Syrtsov’s pamphlet is reprinted in Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, 323–46 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 53, l. 92–108).

287. The Soviets decided to reduce trade with the United States: it would fall during the period from Oct. 1930 to March 1931 by nearly half, compared with the same period the year before. This reflected a surmise that increased trade had diminished the argument for diplomatic recognition. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 38, 53–4; Ekonomicheksia zhizn’, Oct. 12, 1930.

288. Also present was Pavel Postyshev, a Central Committee secretary. Na prieme, 35. Lominadze, in Stalin’s mind, enjoyed the inexplicable protection of Orjonikidze, a source of friction between them. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 162–3 (July 29, 1929); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 201–3 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 23, l. 81–8); Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 32.

289. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 801, l. 9. Complaining officials in Western Siberia were dismissed. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 202n2 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 7). Lih gives the date of the politburo session as Oct. 19.

290. Lebedev, “fraviashchaia portiia,” 94; Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, 353n93 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 54); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 255–6. The politburo resolutions were approved by telephone poll (dated Oct. 25). At the session, Stalin evidently had ordered the windows closed, even though they were high up on the top floor of Old Square. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 98n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 800, l. 7; d. 801, l. 12); Iakovlev et al., Reabilitatsiia: politicheskie protsessy, 242, 244.

291. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 39 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 801, l. 12; f. 589, op. 3, d. 9333, t. 2, l. 135).

292. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 205–9. Stalin passed it to Orjonikidze (party Control Commission) and Postyshev (CC secretary); Molotov and Kaganovich were away on holiday. Reznikov would soon be hired by Mekhlis.

293. Reznikov asserted that Syrtsov had called the Oct. 22 meeting. Other attendees were Vladimir Kavraisky, in whose apartment the meeting took place, I. Nusinov, and A. Halperin. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 209 (Reznikov), 272 (Kavraisky, according to the OGPU), 280 (Nusinov), 285 (Halperin).

294. Stalin received Syrtsov on Old Square on Oct. 22 at 2:40 p.m. Postyshev was present. Na prieme, 35.

295. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 121, 347n4 (RGASPI, f. 613, op. 1, d. 142, l. 105, 109).

296. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 96–7 (RGASPI, f. 589, op. 3, d. 9333, t. 2, l. 134–5); Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 209–13, 25. See also Khlevniuk, “Stalin, Syrtsov, Lominadze,” 78–96; and Davies, “The Syrtsov-Lominadze Affair.”

297. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 231–2; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 223–4. Around this time, Stalin heard Mark Reizen (b. 1895), a lush, voluminous basso cantante, sing the role of Mephistopheles in a production of Charles Gounod’s Faust at the Bolshoi, and had the Leningrad-based artist relocated to Moscow. Reizen, Mark Reizen, Avtobiograficheskie zapiski, 135–53; Marshkova, Bol´shoi teatr, 824–38.

298. The episode would be revealed only in 1937: Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 104–5; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,” 248–9. Not everyone vouched for Tukhachevsky: Shchadenko supported his arrest. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 131n25 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 59, l. 102–3: uncorrected stenogram of the June 2, 1937, Main Military Council). Troitsky was sentenced to three years and became an OGPU secret informant; Kakurin, who had been released, would be rearrested in 1932 and given a death sentence, which was commuted to ten years.

299. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 231–2; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 223. Voroshilov did not desist, however: in Jan. 1931 he sent “Dear Koba” a letter with two compromising documents on Tukhachevsky (letters from Verkhovsky and Bergavinov). Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 131–2 n27 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 24).

300. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze, 27–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 607, l. 270–1). Syrtsov was replaced on Nov. 3, 1930, as head of the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars by D. E. Sulimov: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 803, l. 13.

301. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 119–93 (at 119: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, l. 1–218: corrected transcript). See also Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politburo, 99–100 (RGASPI, f. 589, op. 3, d. 9333, t. 2, l. 121).

302. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 123–4, 163–4.

303. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 178, 316 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1001, l. 182–208: the uncorrected transcript, which has Kalinin, Mikoyan, Molotov, and Orjonikidze interjecting some of the statements that would be incorporated as Stalin’s words).

304. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 125.

305. Kuromiya, “Stalin in the Politburo Transcripts,” 48.

306. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 193–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1003, l. 22–5). At one point, when Postyshev had admonished Syrtsov that he should have talked to Orjonikidze, Stalin interjected, “That’s all he does, talk to people.” Stalin removed this sneer from the transcript. But his frustration with Orjonikidze in the role of party disciplinarian was manifest. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 176.

307. He added that the mass violence in the Soviet Union was “the brutality of the self-defense of the people, surrounded by secret and open traitors, uncompromising enemies. This brutality is provoked and—by that—justified.” Of course, the brutality was being directed against the people by the Soviet state.

308. Pravda, Nov. 26, 1930; Za industrializtasiiu, Nov. 27, 1930; Shitts, Dnevnik, 250–1. When the marching workers reached the trial venue, their chants were said to be audible inside—“Death! Death! Death!” Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 370–80.

309. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 258–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 81–2: Nov. 25, 1930).

310. Copies were sent to Poskryobyshev for Stalin, as well as to Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, and Orjonikidze, but to no one else in the politburo or political leadership. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 591–6 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 658, l. 268–73).

311. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 804.

312. This was Pyotr Palchinsky: Ramzin et al., Protsess “Prompartii,” 9, 13–4. See also Rothstein, Wreckers on Trial.

313. Sergei Kirov’s credulous notes on the supposed specific plans of the foreign intervention have survived: Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 154 (citing RGASPI, f. 80, op. 14, d. 16, l. 4).

314. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, II: 444–5 (June 26, 1930). France hosted a large anti-Soviet émigré community that got under Stalin’s skin.

315. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 43–5 (Oct. 3). Litvinov telegrammed Valerian Dovgalevsky in Paris to make an oral protest, which he did: DVP SSSR, XIII: 821 (Oct. 11), 566–9 (Oct. 14); Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 231 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 48), 232–3 (l. 54, 56).

316. Ramzin et al., Protsess “Prompartii,” 531–7. “Among the ordinary public, especially among workers and the Communist herd, there prevails a conviction that there was a plot, there was a ‘party,’ others ‘believe’ even in the participation of Poincaré himself,” Shitts recorded in his diary. He deemed workers ready to “tear to shreds the entire intelligentsia,” in a kind of “dekulakization.” Shitts, Dnevnik, 254.

317. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 3–4; DBFP, 2nd series, VII: 153–5 (Strang to Henderson, referring to briefing by Arens, Aug. 30, 1930). “World imperialism is carrying on a policy of never-ending provocation for war,” Pravda had succinctly editorialized (Aug. 28, 1930).

318. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 184, l. 117 (Oct. 20, 1930).

319. DVP SSSR, XIII: 484–6 (Arosyev to Moscow: Sept. 4, 1930), 497 (Stomonyakov’s response to Arosyev: Sept. 6). Stalin refrained from public comment on the Industrial Trial until the summer of 1931. Sochinenia, XIII: 70–2.

320. Ramzin et al., Protsess “Prompartii,” 517–26 (Dec. 7, 1930), 527 (Dec. 8).

321. Samygin, “Prompartiia.”

322. In a prison institute, Ramzin conducted research on construction of boilers. Five years after the trial, he would be freed and awarded the Order of Lenin. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 263–72.

323. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1210 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 658, l. 398–408: Dec. 20, 1930).

324. An anonymous letter from the USSR printed in Trotsky’s Bulletin of the Opposition quoted workers’ dissatisfaction with the light sentences: “now for small infractions they punish all of us severely, but here, for a gigantic crime, their sentences are lightened.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 19 (March 1931): 18. Ciliga, who was in prison at the time the verdicts were announced, recalled that “this unexpected clemency did . . . strike a very suspicious note,” given that people were being shot for lesser crimes. Ciliga, Russian Enigma, 222.

325. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik [Paris], Dec. 20, 1930: 14. “The anger and indignation of the workers condemning the traitors’ acts have remained in my memory for life,” one worker at Moscow’s Red Proletarian factory recalled. Ermilov, Schast’e trudnykh dorog, 133.

326. Yaroslavsky, despite his proximity to Stalin, revealed his own naïveté during Syrtsov’s interrogation, dismissively stating that “Trotsky is a dead cat.” Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 224 (Oct. 23, 1930).

327. Yezhov was received during a meeting on foreign trade, and in the company of Postyshev. He was back again on Nov. 29, one-on-one. Na prieme, 37. Yezhov’s early biography can be found in Pavliukov, Ezhov, 6–100; and in Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 10–33.

328. Lyons, “Stalin Urges U.S. Trade”; Lyons, “Stalin Laughs!”; Na prieme, 37. Lyons had worked at TASS offices in New York and might have been picked for the exclusive because of Stanisław Czacki, a former OGPU undercover intelligence operative in the United States and now head of the Anglo-American desk of OGPU foreign intelligence, who arrived in Stalin’s office twenty minutes beforehand and remained during the interview. Stalin’s office logbook does not specify which office; Lyons fixes it as Old Square (not the Kremlin). Lyons claimed that in media res Voroshilov entered; Voroshilov is quoted in the reportage, but his name does not appear in Stalin’s office logbook that day, showing that it can be incomplete.

329. Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 384–5, 387, 390; “Eugene Lyon Papers, 1929–1964,” Knight Library, Special Collections, University of Oregon, box 2, typescript; Lyons, Stalin, 197. Compare the leftist journalist Paul Sheffer’s dismissive characterization from around the same time (Sheffer never met Stalin, and relied on the writings of Trotsky). Sheffer, “Stalin’s Power.”

330. Duranty, “Stalin Sees Capitalists.” See also Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist, 169 (citing interview with Henry Shapiro, March 15, 1979). Duranty became one of the prime sources for the view that Stalin had become a revolutionary because of the “Jesuitic repression” at the Orthodox seminary. Duranty, “Stalin.”

331. RGASPI, f., 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 161–5; Na prieme, 37 (in the company of Yakov Podolsky, head of the foreign affairs commissariat press department).

332. Keke was quoted as saying that Stalin had visited her in 1921 and “three years ago” (1926), and that she had stayed with him once in the Kremlin in Moscow (“I didn’t like it”). Knickerbocker, “Stalin Mystery Man,” in Hoover Institution Archives, Edward Ellis Smith papers, box 2. See also Smith, Young Stalin, 54.

333. “According to news from the West (which is conveyed secondhand from people who have been there or ‘from above’), over there they laugh at the nervousness of the Bolsheviks, and are not planning to fight,” Shitts, the encyclopedia editor, recorded in his diary in Nov. 1930. “But here people are sure of war.” Shitts, Dnevnik, 248–9. See also Anon., An Impression of Russia, 10.

334. Stalin struck this revealing outburst when editing the transcript. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1011.

335. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 36–7, 39; van Ree, Political Thought, 118–9.

336. Pravda, Dec. 2, 1930. The poll was recorded as a one-day “meeting” of the plenum.

337. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 735, l. 9–10, 12–3, 14–5. Stalin tasked Andreyev with reporting to the politburo—not to a Central Committee plenum—on Nov. 25 on collectivization in the North Caucasus and had the session, which emphasized success, transcribed to circulate it to party functionaries. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 357–82 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1004, l. 1–64: uncorrected, l. 67–127: corrected, l. 128–45: printed; op. 3, d. 805, l. 3; d. 809, l. 40–5).

338. Dubinskaia-Dzhalilova and Chernev, “‘Zhmu vashu ruku, dorogoi tovarishch,’” 183 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 32, l. 100–1ob.).

339. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 729, l. 36. On Nov. 20, 1930, Pravda had published a statement by Bukharin, edited by Kaganovich, again admitting his mistakes, condemning the Syrtsov-Lomoindze “right-left bloc,” and calling for unity. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 147n1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 805, l. 6).

340. The repeated delays of the plenum sparked rumors: the Menshevik Socialist Herald speculated about a rift between Stalin and other members of the politburo over the right deviation; Trotsky’s Bulletin of the Opposition imagined a break between Stalin and Molotov, with Stalin blaming Molotov for the failures in industry. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 21–2 (citing Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1930, no. 17–18: 3, and Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 1930, no. 24: 15); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 134–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 2939, l. 1–6); Sochineniia, XIII: 23–7 (excerpts). The last such joint plenum had been April 1929, for the assault on Bukharin. Rykov’s fate, formally, was not included on the agenda.

341. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 735, l. 81–3, 87. See also Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 28–37. Molotov’s appointment took effect that day. His two deputies were Kuibyshev and Nikolai Voznesensky. Platon Kerzhentsev (Lebedev) became business manager of the Council of People’s Commissars, moving over from agitprop in the party apparatus and succeeding Nikolai Gorbunov.

342. Molotov, V bor’be za sotsializm, 76.

343. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 45–50 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 453, l. 53–61, 70–4, 77–8, 87–92).

344. Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 9.

345. Besedovskii, Na putiakh k terimodru, 294. The memoir of Besedovsky, a Soviet diplomat who defected, contained fanciful nonsense (for example, that Stalin used Lenin’s old dacha at Gorki and Lenin’s Rolls-Royce), but also correctly explained the crucial roles of Molotov and Kaganovich. Besedovskii, Im Dienste der Sowjets, 219. Besedovsky had defected in Paris on Oct. 2, 1929. The next month, Kaganovich told a Central Committee plenum, “Besedovskys are not few, unfortunately.” In fact, by then seventy-two Soviet officials had refused to return from abroad since late 1928. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 441, l. 110, 113.

346. At the time of Lenin’s fatal illness, the politburo had had seven members and six candidates, but now only four of those remained: Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin, and Rudzutaks (now a full member). The new full members besides Orjonikidze were Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kuibyshev, Kirov, and Kosior; the new candidate members were Mikoyan, Vlas Chubar, and Petrovsky. All were Stalin loyalists. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 669–73.

347. “Blizhaishee okruzhenie diktatora,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Nov. 10, 1933: 3–10. “If we have used the word ruthless for Kaganovich,” Robert Conquest wrote, “it must be taken quite literally—there was no ruth, no pity, at all in his make-up.” Conquest, Reassessment, 13. “There was no question about his devotion to the party and to the cause,” Kaganovich’s protégé Khrushchev would recall. “He never flagged in strength or energy. He was as stubborn as he was devoted.” Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 65.

348. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937.” Rees, Iron Lazar, 123–43.

349. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 53.

350. Stalin entrusted the party’s Central Control Commission and the workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate to his young protégé Andreyev. By party rules, the chairman of the Central Control Commission could no longer be a member of the politburo. On Oct. 2, 1931, however, Stalin would name Andreyev transport commissar; Rudzutaks got the Central Control Commission. On Feb. 4, 1932, Andreyev became a full member of the politburo, replacing Rudzutaks.

351. Fitzpatrick, “Ordzhonikidze’s Takeover.” Trotsky misjudged Orjonikidze, too. Trotsky, Stalin, 348.

352. Orjonikidze added that the Magnitorgorsk Iron and Steel Works, Nizhny Novgorod Auto Plant, and other well-under-way highest-priority constructions projects still “lacked blueprints.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 145, l. 43–54.

353. Another example: In Dec. 1931, Amayak Nazaretyan, Stalin’s first top aide in the party secretariat, proposed publishing the impressions of the foreign workers who had participated in the socialist construction. “Correct. To the politburo,” Stalin wrote on the memo. On the fifteenth anniversary in Nov. 1932, a 700-plus-page book, Through the Eyes of Foreigners, with testimonies of more than 100 people, would be published. Glazami inostrantsev; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 210 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 920, l. 126).

354. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 144–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 765, l. 68a); Enker, “Struggling for Stalin’s Soul,” 172–5.

355. Stalin’s personal secretariat appears to have moved from party HQ on Old Square to Government HQ in the Kremlin at the beginning of the 1930s. Rosenfeldt, “‘The Consistory of the Communist Church,’” 318n31, citing Robert Tucker, personal communication. The move displaced some offices of the central executive committee from the Kremlin to the GUM department store across Red Square. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 136–7 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 25–6), 141 (f. 78, op. 1, d. 376, l. 107). See also Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” 183.

356. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 851, l. 15.

357. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 667. See also Kolesnik, Khronika zhizni sem’i Stalina, 58–62.

358. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 310. Stalin departed Kureika in late 1916 (when summoned to the draft board), more than nine months before the boy’s birth was officially registered (Nov. 6, 1917); the registration could have been delayed by remoteness or falsely reported. Pereprygina (b. 1900/1) went on to marry Yakov Davydov and become a hairdresser in Igarka (100 miles north of Kureika); she would die around 1964. In 1956, Ivan Serov of the KGB would send a report to Khrushchev based on an interview with Pereprygina-Davydova, attributing paternity to Stalin; it contains obvious errors and reflects lazy police work. Izvestiia, Dec. 8, 2000; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1288; Gelii Kleimenov, O lichnoi zhizni Iosifa Stalina, chast’ 2, glava 9 (2013): http://www.proza.ru/2013/05/11/894. The boy, Alexander, later fought in WWII, lived in Siberia, and died in 1987. In 1934 the log cabin in Kureika became a Stalin museum.

359. “Chto dal’she,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 17–18 (Nov.–Dec. 1930): 22.

360. In another private letter of March 1930, Bakhmeteff foresaw the consequences as well (“agricultural catastrophe . . . famine on a great scale”). Bakhmeteff also understood that Stalin would succeed in asserting state control over the countryside, whatever the human and economic costs (“that is second order from the point of view of Communist political goals”). He concluded: “A regime that forms in such conditions can only be compared with a military occupation by an armed external enemy.” Budnitskii, “Sovershenno lichno i doveritel’no!,” III: 420–1 (Feb. 12, 1929), 433 (April 19, 1929), 466 (Feb. 1930), 468–73 (March 4, 1930).

361. Trotsky would later write in his diary that back in 1926, Kamenev had warned him that his life was in danger, and that Zinoviev had told him, “Do you think that Stalin has not discussed the question of your physical removal?” Trotsky did not record these alleged conversations at the time, and neither Kamenev nor Zinoviev ever stated as much publicly. Trotskii, Dnevniki i pis’ma, 72–74 (Feb. 18, 1935).

362. Khlevniuk rightly pointed out that Stalin’s victory over Rykov, Bukharin, and Tomsky required significant effort, but he did not specify whether another outcome was possible.

363. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 289. “The Right Opposition was more a state of mind than an organization,” observed Victor Serge. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 253.

364. Tomsky conceded to the 16th Party Congress: “Any opposition, any struggle against the party line under the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . will inevitably find a response outside the party. And whatever the opposition’s platform may be . . . it will become the organizational nucleus for a third force, for the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship.” Rykov told the delegates: “Any utilization of our difficulties for criticism of the party general line must automatically include an appeal for the support of the petit bourgeois elements against the socialist elements of the countryside.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 145 (Tomsky), 152 (Rykov). The Russian-speaking American journalist William Reswick, who met with Rykov in his Kremlin apartment, has him stating: “Only a year back, we still had the situation in hand. Even six months ago we still could have forced a showdown and won. But there was always a haunting fear of an interparty fight turning into a civil war and now it is too late.” The conversation is undated, but from the context it seems this was Nov. 1929. Reswick, I Dreamt Revolution, 253–4.

365. Cohen, Bukharin, 315, 60–106; von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 335. Bukharin, according to his biographer, perceived that Voroshilov wavered, at least in 1930. But if so, that passed. Cohen, Bukharin, 287, 289. Voroshilov, at the 16th Party Congress, on July 2, 1930, found it necessary to deny that any wavering had taken place inside the Red Army (“not one, not one case”). XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 504–16, reprinted in Voroshilov, Stat’i i rechi, 434–50 (at 444). According to Reese, many lower-level Red Army party cells sympathized with the right’s program of voluntary collectivization and higher state prices for grain, though it is unclear whether they also supported individual household farming. Reese, “Red Army Opposition,” esp. 37. On rumors about the army, see Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 121–2.

CHAPTER 2. APOCALYPSE

1. Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 259. “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev,’” 103–15; “Platforma ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev’ (‘Gruppa Riutina’): ‘Stalin i krzis proletarskoi diktatury.’” There are some hints that the texts underwent changes as they were circulated from hand to hand (105). The party archives contain no originals of either document. The version that is extant is purported to be a copy of the original “certified” and signed by “First Operational Commissar of the Special Political Department (SPO) of the OGPU, Bogan.” Whether the police made insertions cannot be established.

2. Bix, Hirohito, 209–10 (citing Bonner F. Fellers Collection, Hoover Institution Archives: Answer to Japan, Southwest Pacific Area, July 1, 1944: 9).

3. On July 25, 1930, the politburo had decreed that by late Sept. 1931, collectivization would reach 65–70 percent in the chief grain growing areas, and 35–40 percent elsewhere, but just 15–20 percent in the grain deficit territories. The regime significantly raised taxes on individual family farms and curtailed the land available to them. Officials also engaged in arbitrary confiscations of seed grain, implements, and other property “for the good of the collectives.” Many peasants just gave up and headed for the factory construction sites. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 1 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 790, l. 13), 14 (RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 193, l. 99).

4. Pravda, Dec. 22, 1930; VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 675–92; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 380–1. On the plenum’s eve, Kaganovich had exhorted the Moscow party organization to “struggle against excesses, but in that lies the whole trick, the whole art of the Bolshevik leadership’s Marxism-Leninism, to be able, without excesses, to double and triple collectivization.” Kir’ianov, “Kollektivizatsiia tsentra Rossii,” 79 (citing RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 139, l. 74: Dec. 1930).

5. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 167 (citing former politburo archive, without details).

6. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 677–8; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 263. The 1931 plan itself was printed in just 1,200 copies, for internal circulation only: Narodno-khoziaistvennyi plan na 1931 god: kontrol’nye tsifry (Moscow: 1931).

7. Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 109–13. Benito Mussolini, in 1912, then a member of the Italian Socialist Party, had written: “We want to believe in [socialism], we must believe in it, humanity needs a credo. It is faith which moves mountains because it gives the illusion that mountains move. Illusion is perhaps the only reality in life.” Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 43 (citing Avanti! June 18, 1912, reprinted in Mussolini, Opera Omnia, IV: 173–4).

8. Lyons was most impressed with the pithy slogans, such as “Five-in-Four,” which he noted was instantly understood to refer to the Five-Year Plan and its early attainment, and judged “as effective as our 4-out-of-5 for toothpaste.” Lyons, Moscow Carrousel, 209. See also Mikhutina, “SSSR glazami pol’skikh diplomatov,” 46; and Sukhanov, Zapiski, III: 214.

9. Following Mekhlis’s graduation in May 1930 from the Institute of Red Professors, Stalin had appointed him head of the Central Committee press department and, concurrently, to Pravda’s editorial collective; he took over as editor-in-chief in 1931, and would help boost Pravda’s circulation to 1.8 million, but Stalin worried about his ability to handle the load. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovic, 37 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 115–8: earlier than Aug. 6, 1931). See also Avtorkhanov, Tekhnologiia vlasti, 109–10, 116; and Rubtsov, Teni vozhdia, 81–2.

10. Stalin had stopped bothering to attend formal meetings of the party secretariat or orgburo. The latter functioned as a kind of permanently empowered commission of the politburo, while the former, from 1931, did not even refer questions to the politburo. Detached from even nominal politburo oversight, the central apparatchiks all reported to Stalin. Rosenfeldt, “Special” World. By 1933, secret department salaries were 30–40 percent higher than in the rest of apparatus. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 53. At the government (Council of People’s Commissars), procedures stipulated “only in matters of special importance to refer them to the politburo,” but Molotov sought approval for all “sensitive” issues at the politburo. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937,” 33–5; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 823, l. 9.

11. The melding of zeal (“You will be masters of the whole world!”) and opportunism was often intense. But some speakers at the Communist Youth League Congress in Jan. 1931 mentioned a “desertion rate” of nearly half among Communist Youth assigned to the Donbass coal mines. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 10 (citing Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, Jan. 22, 1931); Fisher, Pattern for Soviet Youth, 162, 257; IX Vsesoiuznyi s”ezd VLKSM.

12. Viola, “Peasant Nightmare,” 762; Davydenko et al., Put’ trudovykh pobed, 270–5.

13. Globally, learning how to mechanize production in concrete cases was easier said than done, and mass production was not readily achieved in some industries, or even in some countries. Kinch, “Road from Dreams,” 107–36. Soviet mass production, even more than in Germany, would be associated with producer (or capital) goods. There were fierce internal debates in the USSR about proper industrial organization, with references to American and German production experiences. Shearer, Industry, State, and Society.

14. Istoriia industrializatsii SSSR, 1926–1941. Stalin had offered a threefold justification for the crash Five-Year Plan the month after it launched: to catch and overtake capitalist countries; to ensure the Soviet Union’s ability to remain independent in the international system; and to furnish agriculture with machines because industry could not move forward without agriculture being modernized. Stalin, “Ob industrializatsii strany i o pravom uklone v VKP,” Sochineniia, XI: 245–90 (at 247–53).

15. Sutton, Western Technology, II. On Feb. 14, 1931, Mężyński reported to Stalin that at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant “extensive housing construction is being done completely unconnected to when the factory goes into production,” and that “not a single factory shop will be completed during the year.” Such a state of affairs was typical. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 261 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 18, l. 162–3).

16. Lewis, “Technology and the Transformation of the Soviet Economy,” 196.

17. Davies et al., Years of Progress, xiv.

18. During the first Five-Year Plan, the urban labor force would rise from around 11.9 million to 22.9 million. Heavy industry would count more than 6 million employees in 1932, as against perhaps 3 million in 1928. Most newcomers came from villages. By 1932–33, between 45 and 60 percent of industrial workers had begun factory work in 1926 or later. Drobizhev, Industrializatsiia i izmeneniia, 4–5.

19. The first decree forbidding free movement of labor (Oct. 1930) was followed by one forbidding factory directors from hiring workers who had quit their previous employ without authorization. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 419–30; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 26–7; Rees, Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 44; Friedman, Russia in Transition, 218; Izvestiia, Jan. 14, 1931; Za industrializatsiiu, Feb. 14 and 16, 1931.

20. The number of peasant households would plunge from 25–26 million to 19 million by 1937. Many of those who left the village were young males, those most in favor of the regime’s social transformation, including early stalwarts of the collective farms. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 81; Wheatcroft and Davies, “Population,” 69.

21. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 72–105.

22. The regime used “taxation” against private traders. NEPmen were also being systematically evicted from their apartments. Davies, Development of the Soviet Budgetary System,112; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 97–101, citing Kontrol’nye tsifry narodnogo khoziaistva SSSR 1929/30 (1930), 188; Pravda, Oct. 12, 1929; and Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, Feb. 14, 1930; Ball, Russia’s Last Capitalists, 78. On Feb. 9, 1930 Stalin would criticize those “trying to ‘supplement’ the slogan of the liquidation of the kulaks as a class with the slogan of the liquidation of the urban bourgeoisie,” a mistake given that the latter, unlike the kulaks, had no control over the means of production. But the “dekulakization” of the NEP-era “bourgeoisie”—the majority of whom were petty traders—proceeded apace, and would further unhinge the supply of food and other goods in cities. Sochinenia, XII: 186; Ianvarskii ob” edinennyi plenum MK i MKK, 31 (Bauman); Rukeyser, Working for the Soviets, 217.

23. Tikhomirov, Promyslovaia kooperatsiia, 15–7. On June 28, 1931, the Council of People’s Commissars issued a directive to shore up enforced artisan “cooperatives.” Kiselev and Shchagin, Khrestomatiia po otechestvennoi istorii, 401–5 (RGAE, f. 3429, op. 1, d. 5249–6, l. 42–6).

24. Fitzpatrick, “After NEP.” NEPmen and other “non-laboring elements” were denied access to state-owned housing and to rationing—but not if they reinvented themselves.

25. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 207–8; Rubinstein, Razvitie vnutrennei torgovli, 290; Randall, Soviet Dream World, 19–21, 24–6; Hessler, Social History of Soviet Trade, 177–82.

26. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 225.

27. Of perhaps 2 million functionaries, around 160,000 were subjected to investigation as of mid-1931 and at least 5,000 in the central economic administration and 4,500 on the railways were arrested, mostly for “sabotage.” Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 117–8, 134–5, 533; XVI s”ezd VKP (b) (2nd ed.), 316; Chistka sovetskogo apparata, 22.

28. Werth, “Stalin’s System,” 50 n25 (no citation).

29. Sotsialisticheskoe stroitel’stvov SSSR, 344–5; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 126–7. As a side effect, the number of students in secondary schools plummeted from around 1 million in 1928–30 to a mere 4,234 in 1931–32. Before the end of 1932, secondary students would shoot up again, to 1.2 million, although their preparation left much to be desired. Nove, Economic History of the USSR (1992), 199. On March 15, 1931, the politburo decreed an end to worker advancement into administration and ordered those recently advanced to be returned to where they were actually needed: as skilled workers in factories. Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, VIII: 386.

30. In 1929–30, only 3,166 people graduated from engineering and technical schools, but that was compared with just 1,282 in 1928–29; the education of the graduates was not comprehensive. Soviet engineers-in-training learned mostly on the job, including while working alongside European and American specialists employed in the USSR. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 123 (citing Pravda, May 11, 1930), 124–5; Hoover Institution, AER, box 4, R. W. Stuck ms., 29.

31. Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, II: 284–301. There were 728 attendees. Pervaia vsesoiuznaia konferentsiia rabotnikov sotsialisticheskoi promyshlennosti. Stalin crossed out or softened barbed references to bourgeois specialists from the original draft of his speech to the conference of industrialists on Feb. 4, 1931; a politburo resolution of Feb. 20 would indicate concern about the number of engineers arrested and their disposition. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 22960, l. 7, 9, 23; f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 139. On April 10, the politburo would allow industrial specialists convicted of wrecking to work in prison institutes, which would play a significant part in Soviet industrial design. Viktorov, Bez grifa “sekretno,” 169; Westwood, Soviet Locomotive Technology, 88–9, 163. On June 23, 1931, in a speech to industrialists (“New Conditions, New Tasks”), Stalin would belatedly absolve bourgeois specialists as a class, though not specific individuals, a turnabout echoed by Pravda (June 25). Sochineniia, XIII: 51–7; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 263–86; Sochineniia, XIII: 72–3. A note to Stalin (Nov. 26, 1931) would list 1,087 imprisoned specialists who had been handed over to economic agencies; industry had placed requests for another 700. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 287–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 143, l. 15–6: Akulov). By fall 1931, many “bourgeois” specialists were amnestied, and the police began to restore specialists who had not been executed to work. Dzanovich, Organy, 438.

32. “O zadachakh khoziaistvennikov,” Pravda, Feb. 5, 1931, reprinted, with changes, in Sochineniia, XIII: 38–9. “The country ought to know its heroes,” Pravda wrote (March 6, 1931). “The outstanding shock worker, the inventor, the rationalizer who has mastered production technology—this is the hero of the land of socialism under construction.”

33. Il’in, Bolshoi konveier, 143–50; 1933 god, 104–9.

34. In Sochineniia, XIII: 41. In Sept. 1929, culminating a year-long campaign, unified management (edinonachalie) had been formally introduced for industrial enterprises: the manager was supreme, not the party cell or the technical director, who was usually a “bourgeois” specialist. Kuromiya, “Edinonachalie and the Soviet Industrial Manager, 1928–1937”; Gregory, Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy, 57–9. On Aug. 23, 1931, the regime would award sole decision- making powers for both military and political issues to the military commanders over the political commissars. “Letopis’ stroitel’stva sovetskikh vooruzhennykh sil 1931 god (mai-iiul’),” 122–3.

35. Directives from above tasked local communists and Communist Youth League organizers with drawing up lists, usually in a few frantic days, and the police placed special boxes in rural soviets, schools, or streets to solicit denunciations. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 241.

36. Peasant letter writers called for establishing collective farms without haste on a voluntary basis, and respecting churches. Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 17 (RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 194, l. 252); Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 252. Officials more often took notice of the village solidarity: “in many villages the kulaks were seen off by the whole population, in tears of sympathy,” the party boss of the Tatar autonomous province reported to Stalin. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 822, l. 43.

37. Although category I “kulaks”—those subject to exile to remote regions or execution—had been envisioned at around 60,000, the actual number turned out to be 283,717 for the period from Jan. 1 to Oct. 1, 1930, half of them following the tactical retreat of “Dizzy with Success.” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 704 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 329, l. 198–212: Nov. 17, 1930); Viola, “Role of the OGPU,” 21, 43n82. In the Urals, the typical dekulakized household had one cow, one horse, three sheep, a modest family residence and stable, a bath-house, a storehouse, and between six and eight acres of sown land. Bedel’ and Slavko, “Iz istorii raskulachennykh spetspereselentsev,” 12. See also Scott, Behind the Urals, 17–8.

38. Yagoda ordered this situation corrected, informing operatives that it was “not obligatory to seize by the quota.” But there was no state medal for trailing the overachievers. Berelowitch and Danilov, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, III/i: 107–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 41, l. 38–41).

39. Suslov, “‘Revolution from Above.’” Better-off peasants rushed to sell their implements, kill off their livestock, and flee, prompting the regime to issue strongly worded orders to prevent self-dekulakization.

40. Popov, “Gosudarstvennyi terror,” 28–9; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 492; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 68, Unknown Gulag, 2, 6, 29–32 (GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 89, l. 205; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 56, l. 59). Timing varied: Uzbekistan’s dekulakization took place mostly in Aug. and Sept. Pokrovskii, Politbiuro i krest’ianstvo, I: 439–41 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 195, l. 157–8: Oct. 10, 1931). The state “planned” losses of 5 percent of the special settlers, but mortality was far higher thanks to the state’s unpreparedness for its own policy. Danilov and Krasil’nikov, Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, III: 10.

41. Between 1928 and 1931, on the territory of the former Moscow gymnasium no. 3, behind Lubyanka, 2, a new Constructivist edifice was built for the OGPU (Lubyanka, 12), with a distinctive façade and round windows on the top (seventh) floor. It contained 65,000 square feet of office space, a three-story department store, 120 residential apartments, a club, cafeteria, and 1,500-seat cinema. Pogonii, Lubianka, 68. As of July 1934, the OGPU would count 200,125 border guards and internal troops, another 18,000 convoy troops, nearly 200,000 in the regular police or militia, 18,951 in Gulag administration, and 20,125 field couriers, and others, for a total of 514,838—not even including state security (GUGB). Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 477–8 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 32, d. 8, l. 346–7). “Comrades, leave us in peace and don’t interfere with our work,” one exasperated professor at Tomsk University pleaded. Another professor at a technical school in Kiev remarked, “I do not intend ever to drive across a bridge built by an engineer from the workers.” Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1136–75 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, por. 435, l. 169–241: late May 1930).

42. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 138. On Feb. 25, 1931, the politburo resolved by telephone poll to recommend that during the course of six months the OGPU “prepare” kulak settlements for 200,000–300,000 families near Karaganda in northern Kazakhstan. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 263 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 149, l. 51). For a time, urgent requests for cheap “kulak” laborers skyrocketed, but sites that had large numbers of the deported often begged not to be sent any more: the ones they had were just dying. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 26, l. 37 (Kuznetskstroi); Viola, Unknown Gulag, 4.

43. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, I: 56. See also Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 10–12, 16–7.

44. Of the 2 million slated for exile within their own region, a large number of these also fled to the construction sites after their property was confiscated for the collective farms. Zemskov, “‘Kulaktskaia ssylka,’” 3; Danilov and Ivnitskii, Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut, 46–7. Actual criminals flourished in the tumult, a public order challenge. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism, 289.

45. Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 52–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, f. d. 26, l. 77–85: June 26, 1931). On Oct. 12, 1931, Yagoda would report to Stalin on the completion of kulak operations in regions of wholesale collectivization. As of Jan. 1, 1932, the OGPU reported that 1.3 million people were in special settlements. Berelowitch and Danilov, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, III/i: 774 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 10, d. 379, l. 93); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 267 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 195, l. 163); Pokrovskii, Politbiuro i krest’ianstvo, I: 442; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 47 (GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 89, l. 206); Viola, Unknown Gulag, 6 (GARF, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 89, l. 205; d. 949, l. 75–9).

46. A Central Committee circular of Jan. 20, 1931, had directed local party organizations to conduct mass agitation to prepare for the spring sowing campaign, expedite the flow of households into collective farms via creation of initiative groups, dispatch workers who could repair tools and equipment, and prevent distribution of the harvest according to the number of souls, as in the previous year, but instead according to the amount of work accomplished. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1931, no. 2: 61–2; Kollektivizatsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, 354–6.

47. Piatiletnyi plan, II/i: 328–9, 330–1; Kollektivizatsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, 350. These harvest numbers reflected multiplication of planned sown area by planned yields, neither of which was based on actual data. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 65–6. Yields had been declining since the mid-1920s, a trend whose causes were not well understood. Nove, Economic History of the USSR (1992), 176.

48. Drought, in different ways, affected other world regions around this time. In the United States the “great southern drought” of 1930–31, which coincided with a price collapse and banking failures, inflicted hardship across twenty-three states from West Virginia to Texas; President Herbert Hoover sought to have the Red Cross, a private agency, be wholly responsible for relief, opposing federal drought relief (seeing it as opening the door to general federal relief). French West Africa suffered drought, locusts, and its worst famine ever; the French authorities did not relent on tax demands. Mortality in French West Africa was disproportionately higher (in an immensely smaller area and overall population) than in the Soviet Union. China in 1931–32 suffered the opposite problem: large snowmelt and tremendous rainfall that inundated an area equivalent in size to England and half of Scotland, flooding some 52 million people, and killing as many as 2 million from drowning and especially starvation. Tauger, “Natural Disaster,” 8, citing Woodruff, Rare as Rain; Report of the National Flood Relief Commission, 1931–32 (Shanghai, 1933); Fuglestad, “La grande famine.” See also Buck, 1931 Flood.

49. A secret OGPU report addressed to Stalin in early June 1931 complained that that machinery and buildings were unready for the harvest. On June 5, the politburo belatedly approved purchase of 2,500–3,000 additional trucks in the United States and Europe, beyond the 4,000 already ordered. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 68–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 883, l. 3: June 30, 1931; op. 162, d. 10, l. 66; RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 194, l. 273–253: June 10, 1931). On June 8, 1931, the regime felt constrained to redirect 30,000 tons of wheat and rye from export to consumption in Moscow and Leningrad. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 85–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 80).

50. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 153 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 28–9).

51. Wheatcroft and Davies, “Agriculture,” 125.

52. “Settlement is the liquidation of the bai semi-feudals, . . . the destruction of tribal attitudes,” intoned Isay Goloshchokin, known as Filipp, the Jewish-born party boss of the autonomous republic. Zveriakov, Ot kochev’ia k sotsializmu, 53; Iz istorii Kazakhskoi SSR, II: 255; Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 28, 34–9 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 2968, l. 141–8); Tursunbaev, “Torzhestvo kolkhoznogo stroia,” 259–308 (at 266, citing APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 2404, l. 23).

53. While the overall share of grain procurement from grain surplus regions declined between 1928 and 1932 from 67.5 to 50 percent, the share from grain-deficit regions grew from 9.4 to 16.9 percent. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 329 (citing RGAE, f. 4372, op. 30, d. 881, l. 82: Aug. 4, 1932).

54. Pianciola, “Famine in the Steppe.” In the Kazakh autonomous republic, significant numbers of deaths from starvation began in spring and summer 1930. That year an estimated 35,000 Kazakh households, more than 150,000 people with 900,000 head of livestock, fled for China, Iran, and Afghanistan. The USSR land commissariat resolved that even southern Kazakhstan—an area of nomads and semi-nomads—should see “reinforced state farm and collective farm construction,” partly in order to “narrow the basis for nomadic and semi-nomadic land utilization.” Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 3–4 (RGAE, f. 7486, op. 19, d. 130, l. 6–7: on Feb. 1, 1931); Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 207–8 (GA Kustanaiskoi obl. Respubliki Kazakhstan, f. 54–p, op. 1, d. 784, l. 14), 220–7 (TsA FSB, f. 2m, op. 8, d. 744, l. 570–6), 227–8 (l. 612); Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 72–3 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 3336, l. 97). Turar Ryskulov reported to Stalin that between Feb. 1931 and Feb. 1932, private Kazakh herds had shrunk by more than 4 million head, but only 1.5 million livestock had been delivered to the state. Ryskulov blamed “excesses in collectivization,” “alongside the evil murder of livestock by kulak-herders [bai].” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 503–9 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 670, l. 11–14ob.); Partiinaia zhizn’ Kazakhstana, 1990, no. 10: 76–84; Ryskulov, Sobranie sochinenii, III: 304–16 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 6403, l. 13–6).

55. Aldazhumanov, “Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie soprotivleniia,” 66–93. One district of Dagestan reported 10,000 people on the verge of starvation already in Dec. 1930: Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/1: 321 (RGAE, f. 8043, op. 1, d. 20, l. 128). A Central Committee plenum (June 11–15, 1931) discussed the completed sowing campaign and upcoming harvest, but was largely preoccupied with Moscow city reconstruction and Union-wide rail transport bottlenecks, which Stalin addressed in his usual way: forcing personnel changes, including an influx of OGPU personnel into the railroad commissariat. Pravda, June 17, 1931; VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 693–720; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 109–10 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 35–6: Sept. 19, 1931), 123–4 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 85–85ob.: Oct. 1), 127–8 (l. 88ob.: Oct. 5); Rees, Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 51–2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 854, l. 7.

56. Discussion ensued of some heretical ideas, such as allowing state companies independence and disposal of their own profits, to create incentives, but the transcript was not published. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d, 11, l. 119 (July 15, 1931).

57. RGASPI, f. 85, op. 28, d. 7, I: 176–82. This text, as delivered, differs from the text published two weeks later and reprinted in Sochineniia, XIII: 51–80.

58. When hostile governments fed the Soviets information aimed at compromising Red Army officers, much of it had actually originated with the OGPU’s schemes. The defector Bazhanov colorfully told French intelligence that “I often heard politburo members and major OGPU functionaries say that émigré organizations were so saturated with agents that at times it was difficult to make out where émigré activities began and prevocational work ended.” Gutinov, “‘Unichtozhit’ vragov, predvaritel’no ikh obmanuv,” 38. See also Dzanovich, Organy, 92 (citing TsA FSB, f. PF, d. 6159, t. 1, l. 228ob.).

59. “At the beginning of Soviet power I was neither sympathetic nor certain it would endure,” Colonel Nikolai Svechin testified, according to his interrogation protocols. “Although I participated in the civil war, it was not in my heart. I fought eagerly when the war took on the character of an external war (the Caucasus front). I fought for the territorial integrity and preservation of Russia, although it was called the RSFSR” (i.e., Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic). Tynchenko, Golgofa, 146 (citing GA SBU, fp., d. 67093, t. 189 [251], delo Afanas’eva A. V.: 56). See also Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 46–47 (citing AVKVS RF, op. 55, d. 8651, l. 52; RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 10, l. 214: Gamarnik report, May 1931; AVKVS RF, op. 66, d. 2552, l. 1–13).

60. Snesarev had voiced the latter fear after his arrest in late 1930. Zdanovich, Organy, 376 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 4, d. 774, l. 4).

61. Voroshilov had boasted to a Central Committee plenum in April 1928 that “the commanders we received from the tsarist army at the present time have become completely reliable, ours, if not 100 percent, then 99 percent, we assimilated them and melded them in with the young red cadres.” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, I: 280. The defense commissar kept a vigilant eye on rivals, and had once denounced Budyonny to Stalin as “too much a peasant, excessively popular and very cunning,” adding that “in the imagination of our enemies, Budyonny will play the role of some sort of savior [a peasant Leader], heading a ‘people’s’ movement.” “‘Cherkni . . . desiatoic slov,” 408 (Feb. 1, 1923). Voroshilov also complained about negative reports generated by the Red Army’s political administration. Khlevniuk, Politburo, 37; Zdanovich, Organy, 158 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, d. 5, l. 21ob.–22), 114 (op. 5, d. 478, l. 168). Voroshilov’s aide-de-camp was Rafail Khmelnitsky (b. 1898).

62. According to the Lesser Soviet Encyclopedia (1931): “Officers constituted a closed caste, access to which was open predominantly to those of the ruling class . . . they were a true bulwark of the autocracy in the struggle against the revolutionary movement.” Malaia Sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1931), VI: 208. Much the same would be stated, even more colorfully, eight years later: Bol’shaia Sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1939), XLIII: 674. See also Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuti, III: 144–5.

63. “According to OGPU data,” Mężyński reported to Stalin, “all counterrevolutionary organizations and groups are striving to penetrate the Red Army . . . Recently we have uncovered numerous such rebel groups tied to the Red Army, about which we will offer a special report. I consider it necessary to convey to you a communication about one such organization discovered by the Ukraine GPU that presents the greatest interest.” Stalin had received Mężyński on Oct. 14 and 26, 1930. Ukraine GPU chief Balytsky was summoned to Moscow. Zdanovich, Organy, 388–9 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 247, l. 292; d. 15, l. 451–2).

64. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 122; Zdanovich, Organy, 390 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 237, l. 144, 136). Evidently, when the central OGPU in Moscow sent a brigade to the Ukrainian capital of Kharkov, it found anti-Soviet moods among former tsarist officers but no organization. Zdanovich, Organy, 391–2 (citing TsA FSB, delo R-4807, t. 1, l. 39, 44: May 8, 1938), 433. A Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) had been founded in Belgrade in 1924 by General Wrangel, Lieutenant General Alexander Kutepov, and the Romanov pretender, Grand Duke Nikolai Niloaevich, and was run out of Paris by Kutepov. His deputy, Major General Nikolai Skoblin, was an OGPU agent. The general staffs of Poland and Finland allowed their diplomatic pouches to carry ROVS materials to and from Moscow. Kutepov had concluded that only terrorist acts could shake the entrenched Soviet regime (or as Kutepov is said to have remarked, “detonate” the country), precisely the reasoning of the underground leftist terrorists during the tsarist days. On Jan. 26, 1930, Kutepov was kidnapped by an OGPU team coordinated by Yakov Serebryansky (the “Yasha team” for special tasks). Voitsekhovskii, Trest, 10–11; Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 58; Barmine, One Who Survived, 186; Pipes, Struve, 379–87; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 23; Krasnaia zvezda, Sept. 22, 1965.

65. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 262 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 171, l. 4–5); Zdanovich, Organy, 390 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 63, l. 50: Feb. 16, 1931). The Moscow “center” was said to consist of Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, Alexander Verkhovsky, Sergei Kamenev, Alexander Svechin, Kakurin, and Snesarev—several with ties to Tukhachevsky.

66. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 671–788; Z arkhiviv VUChK, GPU, NKVD, KGB, no. 1, issue 18 (2002): 209; Khaustov, Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 212–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 188, 192); Zdanovich, Organy, 423–31. The main scholarly authority, who provides a list of names while admitting the impossibility of establishing exact figures, writes that as many as 10,000 officers might have been arrested and sentenced. Tynchenko, Golgofa, 242, 248–311. See also Berkhin, Voennaia reforma, 261.

67. “Letopis’ stroitel’stva sovetskikh vooruzhennykh sil 1931 goda (ianvar’-aprel’),” 114–5 (March 13, 1931). The accuser, Sergei Bezhanov (Sakvorelidze), would be executed (Balytysky had recommended a ten-year sentence, based upon his cooperation). Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 106; Tynchenko, Golgofa, 209–12 (GA SBU, fp., d. 67093, t. 21, delo Bzhanova S. G.: 102–3; t. 23: 578; t. 2, protokoly troika NKVD USSR: 89). Shaposhnikov had been placed at the head of non-party senior military men who approved industrialization and condemned the right deviation at the 16th Party Congress in 1930, when Stalin had allowed him to join the party expeditiously. In June 1931, Alexander Yegorov, whom Stalin knew from the civil war, was named chief of the staff.

68. Tynchenko, Golgofa, 124 (citing TsA FSB, f. R-40164, d. 4–b, delo Snesareva A. E.: 250); Snesarev, Filosofiia voiny, 33 (no citation). Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, a former chief of staff, was arrested (Feb. 1931) but then released (May); Sergei Kamenev, the former supreme commander of the Red Army, was untouched despite compromising material gathered on him. Alexander Svechin was re-arrested in Feb. 1931 and got five years but would be released early in Feb. 1932; Verkhovsky was also arrested in Feb. 1931 and, in July, sentenced to execution, but this was commuted to ten years; Kakurin was sentenced in Feb. 1932 extrajudicially to execution, which was commuted immediately to ten years of solitary confinement (he would die in prison in summer 1936). Snesarev ended up at Solovki. In Sept. 1934 he would be granted early release because of ill health; he would die in a Moscow hospital on Dec. 4, 1937, and be buried at the Vaganskoye cemetery. Dudnik and Smirnov, “Vsia zhizn’-nauke,” (no. 2), (no. 8); Bol’shaia Sovetskaia entsiklopediia (1976), XXIII: 635; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 287; Khrushchev, Memoirs, II: 141–3, 143n2.

69. Rölling and Rüter, Tokyo Judgment, I: chap. 6; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 73, 86–9; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 178–80.

70. Tukhachevsky took part in the May 13, 24, and 25, 1931, sessions of the Revolutionary Military Council in Moscow. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 816, 818, 824, d. 829, l. 4 (June 10, 1931); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 162; d. 10, l. 2, 7, 33; Nikulin, Tukhachevskii, 169. Orjonikidze might have played a role in Tukhachevsky’s promotion. Dubinskii-Mukhadze, Ordzhonikidze, 277. Tukhachevsky had been working hard to demonstrate his loyalty to Voroshilov, sending an especially sycophantic fiftieth birthday greeting (Feb. 4, 1931). Voroshilov, Stat’i i materialy k 50-letiiu, 250–1.

71. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 100–13. The same key informant, Olga Zajonczkowska-Popova, continued her work.

72. Next up was the R-5, and Stalin was told it had a transmitter and receiver, which he could test. “And you are not deceiving us? Show me the radio station . . .” Turzhanskii, “Vo glave Sovetskoi aviatsii,” 183–9. Turzhansky would be arrested on July 23, 1938, accused of taking part in a military-fascist plot against the USSR and tortured; he would refuse to confess and be deported to the Kolyma camps; he would be released on Feb. 29, 1940, and, on June 4, named a major general of the air force.

73. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 213 (citing ORAF UFSB po Stavorpol’skomy kraiu, arkhivnoe sledstvennoe delo no. 13144 on Kaul A. I. t. 2).

74. Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 104; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 226–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 20, d. 193, l. 129–31: March 7, 1930); Zdanovich, Organy, 415 (Sept. 1930); Whitewood, Red Army, 130 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 293, l. 220). Yevdokimov had used his authority to send commissions to Sverdlovsk and Alma-Ata to gather compromising material on forced confessions and other abuses to use against Yagoda. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 213, (citing ORAF UFSB po Stavorpol’skomy kraiu, arkhivnoe sledstvennoe delo no. 13144 on Kaul A. I. t. 2: 37).

75. He had taken a long holiday in 1930, and spent the entire winter 1930–31 at his dacha outside Moscow, but his health worsened again in Feb.–March 1931. Meditsinskaia gazeta, June 29, 1988.

76. See Seyed-Gohrab, Great Umar Khayyam.

77. He would suffer severe flu in Sept. and Oct. 1931.

78. Akulov had a storied past as the organizer before the 1917 revolution of a 60,000-strong worker demonstration in St. Petersburg, and had assisted Stalin’s machinations in the removal of Rykov as head of the government several months before. Blinov, Ivan Akulov.

79. Belsky was kicked over to the lowly supply commissariat, Messing to the foreign trade commissariat, and Olsky to the trust overseeing Moscow cafeterias. Stalin took the opportunity to insert Lavrenti Beria into the OGPU collegium as well. Artuzov, after a phone conversation with Mężyński, wrote him a letter (Dec. 3, 1931), upset that his loyalty had come under question, professed never to have collected material against Yagoda, and asked to be assigned different work. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 354–8 (TsA FSB, d. R-4489, t. 3, l. 12–4). See also Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 104; Gladkov, Nagrada, 375–7.

80. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 275 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 127), 276 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 840, l. 1, 2), 805–6n87 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 842, l. 5, 14); Il’inskii, Narkom Iagoda, 172. In the 1960s, Medved’s brother-in-law (D. B. Sorokin) would claim that Kirov had blocked Medved’s transfer out of Leningrad. RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 67, l. 7–14 (Sorokin to Khrushchev, March 5, 1962). There is a garbled version in Orlov, Secret History, 14–15.

81. Yevdokimov would take with a venegeance to his new assignment to bring rebels, known as “Basmachi,” to heel in the Tajikistan mountains bordering Afghanistan and the Turkmenistan desert bordering Iran. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 221 (citing TsA FSB, arkhivnoe sledvestvennoe delo no. 14963 on Papashenko I. P., l. 120, quoting Iu. K. Ivanov-Borodin).

82. Naumov, Bor’ba v rukovodstve NKVD, 31–2. Balytsky, for example, brought a substantial number of Chekists to Moscow from Ukraine, while also leaving many loyalists behind to watch over Ukraine for him. Sever, Volkodav Stalina, 69–70. Molchanov, of Ivanovo province, would be moved to Moscow as head of the secret-political department on Nov. 20, 1931: Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 287 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 861, l. 9).

83. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 16 (citing Bodleian Library, Simon MS70, fols 86, 132). “France—at the head of our enemies,” was the title of a section of a 1931 Soviet pamphlet. Mezhdunarodnoe polozhenie, 12. On July 18, 1931, for the first time since the war, a German chancellor, Brüning, went to Paris. Soon, Brüning, backed by Britain, would announce that Germany would seek the cancellation of all reparations.

84. The incident, involving Artashes Khalatyants, known as Artyom Khalatov, a Baku-born (1894) ethnic Armenian and the director of the state publishing house (since 1927), is related by Ivan Gronsky, then the editor of Izvestiya. Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 153. Stalin wrote a note to Khalatov, along with Kaganovich and Kalinin, on Sept. 12, 1931, indicating he had not been excommunicated, but he would be sacked from the state publishing house on April 15, 1932; the disgraced Tomsky was named in his stead. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 201, 205, 296 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 840, 842, 880); Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 100 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 61), 110 (l. 73), 112 (l. 73–73ob.). Khalatov would be arrested on Sept. 26, 1937, and executed in Oct. 1938.

85. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 275–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 127; op. 3, d. 840, l. 1–2), 280 (d. 841, l. 5, 9: Aug. 10 circular), 280 (d. 841, l. 5, 9: Aug. 6, 1931); Na prieme, 48. After Stalin had departed the capital, Kaganovich asked who ought to announce the personnel changes to the OGPU itself; Stalin insisted it had to be a party secretary, so that “the report is not assessed as revenge by one part of the OGPU against another.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 48 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 9–9ob.: Aug. 15, 1931), 48n1 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 127), 49 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 10–10ob.: Aug. 15). On July 10, the politburo had decreed that “no Communists, working in the organs of the GPU or outside the organs, either in the center or in locales, should be arrested without the consent of the Central Committee,” and that “no specialists (engineering technical personnel, military, agronomists, physicians, and so on) should be arrested without the consent of the corresponding people’s commissar.” Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 107; Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 60 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 840, l. 9). Later, this need to obtain a higher-up’s permission for arrests of subordinates would have the effect of making complicit people’s commissars and others in the annihilation of loyal cadres.

86. Shreider has a version of the internal OGPU struggle: Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 10, 13, 14–15.

87. Yagoda concluded: “There is not a single blot on the glorious banner of the OGPU. Ahead are still many years of struggle and glorious victories. We shall close Chekist ranks still more tightly!” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 277–9 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 171, l. 6–9); Istoriia sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (Moscow: Vysshaia krasnoznamennaia shkola KGB, 1977), 234–5. Slyly, Yagoda gave the Yevdokimov protégé Yakov Weinstok the assignment of evicting Yevdokimov’s family from their Moscow apartment, ensuring everlasting bad blood between patron and protégé. Zhukovskii, Lubianskaia imperiia NKVD, 211.

88. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 161 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 46: Sept. 24, 1931).

89. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, l. 29. See also Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 69. Stalin wrote a similar letter (undated) to Molotov. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 255; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 239. Stalin was traveling through Mingrelia and Abkhazia in mid-Aug. 1931, on his way to Sochi.

90. Khromov, Po stranitsam, 12–5.

91. Davies, “Stalin as Economic Policy-Maker,” 126–9.

92. The letters to Stalin brought to his attention were enumerated in lists in late 1930 and for Jan.–July 1931; no other such lists survive until 1945. Khlevniuk, “Letters to Stalin,” citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 849-82.

93. Functionaries left Stalin to decide whether the people really knew him, or whether the proposed inventions should be considered. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 861, l. 100.

94. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 856, l. 138. Stalin occasionally replied to letters in the press, when he perceived an issue of general interest. Stalin, “Reply to Comrade Kolkhozniks,” Pravda (April 3, 1930), reprinted in Sochineniia, XII: 202.

95. Khlevniuk, “Letters to Stalin,” 331 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 850, l. 34–55).

96. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 50–1 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 101–2).

97. Two days later he told Kaganovich to circulate to politburo members a telegram accusing Mikoyan of lying about the silos there for tea and tobacco, based on other reports the dictator received (“Who is right and who is deceiving the Central Committee?”). Mikoyan replied that he had reported the truth, not conflated grain silos with other kinds; Stalin went back at him, prompting an irate Mikoyan to tender his resignation (“Dear Stalin!”). Stalin resolved the incident by denigrating supply personnel for their red tape, and instructing Kaganovich to have the workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate, as well as Caucasus OGPU boss Beria, oversee the silos in western Georgia. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 51–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 14–8); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 35–6 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 8–8ob,14–5); Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 83–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 1, d. 134, l. 2, 5: Sept. 12, 1931); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 72–3.

98. Andrei F. Andreyev, a Red Army veteran in Zdorovets village of the Central Black Earth province, somehow got a letter through to Stalin on Feb. 2, 1931, in which he claimed that he had fought the Whites in the civil war and been wounded, returned to his poor family in his native village, and become a rural correspondent, continuing the struggle, but had been hindered by local officials, who evicted him from the collective farm. “Now all these criminals, whose work I exposed in the press, have managed to have me arrested without even presenting a cause for my arrest,” he wrote of fruitless petitions to the county procurator and OGPU. “I led companies, regiments, and battalions into battle against the Whites not in order that I would now sit under arrest by these same White Guards.” Stalin wrote on the letter: “To comrade Yagoda. Request: immediately assign one of your people (someone completely reliable) to sort this out in Bolshevik fashion—honestly, quickly, and impartially and ‘no matter who.’” Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 351–3 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 11, l. 138–40); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 260–1 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 171, l. 2–3). Andreyev (b. 1894) was vindicated and readmitted to a collective farm. (He would be arrested in 1942 and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp.)

99. See the case of the head of the Artyom Coal Trust in the Donbass, Konstantin Rumyantsev, in which Stalin expressed distrust of the motives of his brother-in-law Redens (Ukraine OGPU boss): RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 42, l. 104. Rumyantsev (b. 1891), who won an Order of Lenin in 1931, died in a plane crash the next year.

100. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 284 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 70: Sept. 19, 1931).

101. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 84 (citing RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 101). Besides Orjonikidze, Stalin was concerned about Kuibyshev, who, he knew, was an alcoholic and clashed with Molotov as well.

102. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 73–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 779, l. 21–3: Sept. 11, 1931; l. 32–33: Oct. 4, 1931). “Sergo did not love Molotov very much,” Mikoyan recalled. But disputes were generally not over first principles but bureaucratic interests. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 324, 520; Rees, Decision-making in the Stalinist Command Economy, 262–74.

103. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 35 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 52), 35–6 (l. 53–8), 37 (l. 59), 44 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1552, l. 1), 37 (l. 60), 39 (l. 65–6: Sept. 26). The openly pro-fascist Dmitrievsky expressed a positive view of Stalin, imagining him to represent “the national-socialist imperialism that aspires to destroy the West in its strongholds.” Stalin (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1931), in Swedish and in Russian (Stockholm: Strela, 1931). See also the review by Kuskova: Sovremennye zapiski, 1931, no. 47: 518. See also the gossip about Stalin and Alliluyeva that circulated in the secret police: Orlov, Secret History, 318–9.

104. The tracks would be fully repaired before 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Yoshihashi, Conspiracy at Mukden; Ogata, Defiance in Manchuria; Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy; Istoriia voiny na Tikhom okeane, I: 187. See also Iriye, After Imperialism.

105. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 114–21.

106. Patrikeef, Russian Politics, 101–3. The early 1920s Soviet thrust into Manchuria, as in the case of Mongolia, had been defensive, to secure Siberia’s flanks against anti-Soviet White armies abroad, but then Manchuria became a largely commercial venture, subject to material cost-benefit rather than revolutionary calculations.

107. The League, founded in 1920 following the Versailles treaty negotiations with forty-two members, was the first international organization dedicated to world peace, aiming to prevent wars with what it called “collective security,” disarmament, and arbitration. Headquartered in Geneva it had a general assembly of all members and a secretariat, but lacked its own military and depended on the great powers comprising its executive council to enforce its resolutions. Japan was one of five permanent members of the League’s executive council (along with Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany, which had been added later). The United States, one of the originators, had failed to join. American economic power could be converted into military power—such as in the decision to build a two-ocean navy in 1916—but American geopolitical power remained constrained by limits set by Congress and public opinion. The Soviet Union was not a member of the League either. Kennedy, “Move to Institutions.” Membership would peak at fifty-eight in late 1934 and early 1935.

108. Lensen, Japanese Recognition; Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 223–6; Dallin, Rise of Russia in Asia, 244–8; Beloff, Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, I: 76–7.

109. Under Nicholas II, the Pacific had come to seem the theater of gravest threat, but in Soviet military thinking the Vistula commanded center stage. Contradictions stemming from strategic anxiety and pessimism were endemic to imperial Russian strategy. Fuller, Strategy and Power, 430.

110. Menning, “Soviet Strategy,” I: 215–6; Daines, “Voennaia strategiia,” 247–8.

111. Between 1932 and 1936, the Soviet Far Eastern Army would increase from six to fourteen divisions. Coox, Nomonhan, 76–8.

112. The USSR’s sparsely populated, exposed Far Eastern territory was not even administered by the local party machine, but by the army (Vasily Blyukher) and secret police (Terenty Deribas), in vicious rivalry. Rumors of Blyukher’s pending arrest, in connection with Operation “Springtime,” had circulated in late 1930 and resurfaced in May and June 1931, although on Aug. 6, the second anniversary of the Far Eastern Army, Voroshilov, on an extended inspection tour, locally announced Blyukher’s award of the Order of Lenin. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 72 (citing Times, Nov. 20, 22, 25, 1930); Izvestiia, Aug. 18, 1931; Dushen’kin, Proletarskii marshal, 111.

113. Toshihio, “Extension of Hostilities,” 241–33; Slavinskii, Sovetskii Soiuz i Kitai, 219–20 (citing AVP RF, fond Litvinova, op. 12, pap. 85, d. 45, 8–9); Coox, Nomonhan, 23; Stephan, Russian Far East, 183–5; Steiner, Lights that Failed, 719–20. On Oct. 28, 1931, the Japanese ambassador conveyed an ultimatum warning against a military response; TASS published it and the Soviet reply (a policy of “strict noninterference”) two days later. The Japanese suspected the Soviets were supplying the Chinese resistance. DVP SSSR, XIV: 820.

114. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 116–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 76–76ob.). Stalin called for toning down the boasts in the press about ongoing Red Army military maneuvers in the Western military district. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 121–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 81: Sept. 27, 1931).

115. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 113 (citing RGAE, f. 4372, op. 91, d. 871, l. 98–9), 115 (GARF, f. 4372, op. 57, d. 16, l. 30: art. 212ss).

116. Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 114. Later, Kondrashin republished this book excising Penner’s co-authorship (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008).

117. The official 1931 harvest estimate had been lowered several times, to 69.5 million tons, which still ended up to be a massive overestimate. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 76, 446; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 286–8 (table 19).

118. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, 14–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 732, l. 18; d. 484, l. 42, 48). For different figures (38 million as of early 1932), see Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 700–4; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 289–300; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 177. A newly established grain reserve fund had stood at 2 million tons, but it soon vanished through export and a massive increase in internal consumption.

119. “There are few Englishmen who do not rejoice at the breaking of our golden fetters,” John Maynard Keynes wrote. Eichengreen, Golden Fetters, 21.

120. France by itself was too weak to stabilize the global monetary system, and the United States, which had its own economic and financial challenges, refused to do so. Steiner, Lights that Failed, 698–9; more broadly, see Tooze, Deluge.

121. “The End of an Epoch,” Economist, Sept. 26, 1931: 547; Steiner, Lights that Failed, 663–8; Eichengreen, Golden Fetters, 298–9.

122. Eichengreen, Golden Fetters. Politicians, with the post–Great War widening of the suffrage and the spread of trade unions and leftist parties, proved skittish about imposing economic adjustment on their electorates for the sake of the stability of financial markets, a lack of credible commitment that undid global finance and trade. Simmons, Who Adjusts? Of course, “international cooperation” might not have been an issue at all if the United States had undertaken expansionary policies, generating the capital outflow that could have supplied much-needed liquidity and therefore the security sought by the governments in Europe that lacked confidence. (Given that the consumers’ expenditure average value index dropped close to 30 percent between 1929 and 1933, moderately expansionary policies would not have threatened inflation.) Britain would launch monetary expansion in 1932, and endure a relatively milder crisis; Japan would emulate the British and enjoy a robust recovery. Franklin Roosevelt would rescue the banks with public money, in 1933. Many people at the time, and subsequently, viewed his actions as opening a path to recovery. But that recovery would be halting, at best, and full of policy mistakes. Kindleberger, World in Depression; Friedman and Schwartz, Monetary History; Eichengreen, Golden Fetters.

123. Steiner, Lights that Failed, 668–70.

124. Soviet foreign trade, despite the dislocation in the capitalist world from 1929, had initially expanded more rapidly than envisioned in the Five-Year Plan, but even though the USSR had exported more than twice as much grain in 1930 as in 1927–28, it had earned only about the same revenues because of lower prices. Revenues in 1931 were worse. Catastrophic livestock losses, moreover, destroyed the animal-products export plan, and even mechanization of agriculture brought costs (tractors consumed fuel, reducing petroleum-product exports). Sel’skoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 222; Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR za 20 let, 1918–1937 gg., 35. Grain exports officially rose to about 4.8 million tons in 1930 and 5.06 million tons in 1931, accounting for just under one-fifth of total exports (others included timber, oil, flax, animal products, even medicinal herbs). Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 612–3. One gold ruble in foreign trade equaled $0.52 until early 1933.

125. Dmytro Manuilsky, at a Comintern enlarged plenum in March 1931, stated: “Can the perspective of the people’s revolution in Germany be viewed outside of the whole complicated international tangle and especially outside the question of the USSR?” A German revolution might provoke British and French intervention, forcing the Soviet Union to send in the Red Army, or allow “the imperialists” to annihilate the German Communists. Manuilsky, Communist Parties, 99; Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 32–3, 37. The German trade delegation was in Moscow from Feb. 26 to March 11, 1931. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 239–42; von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 89–96. Stalin had received an analysis of the credit disposition toward the USSR of German banks on Nov. 19, 1930. The OGPU worried about the opposition inside the newly created Bank of International Settlements (1930) in Basel to German bank cooperation with the USSR. Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 322–3 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 861, l. 14–5), 328–9 (l. 7–8: May 7, 1931).

126. The agreement had been signed on April 14, 1931. Dyck, Weimar Germany, 223–4; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 55; Izvestiia, March 10, April 21 and 24, 1931; DVP SSSR, XIV: 116–9 (Krestinsky to Khinchuk in Berlin: March 10, 1931), 172 (Tass communiqué, March 10), 246–8 (Russian text of the agreement). On June 24, the two sides agreed on a protocol extending the April 1926 Treaty of Berlin, a treaty of neutrality and nonaggression, with a two-year moratorium for either side to denounce it, but the German side did not ratify it. It had been set to expire on June 29. DVP SSSR, XIV: 395–6. Dyck, Weimar Germany, 229–36.

127. By 1932, Germany would account for nearly half of Soviet imports. Dyck, Weimer Germany, 216; Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 14. The USSR had already gone from eleventh to fourth place in German exports between 1930 and 1931. DVP SSSR, XIV: 118, 247, 749–50.

128. The pound was devalued by some 30 percent after Britain withdrew from the gold standard, and because much of Soviet debt was payable in sterling Moscow might have gotten debt relief, but just about all Soviet gold payments in the years 1931–34 went to Germany, and the Soviets had to purchase marks (with gold) at the official parity rate of the reichsmark (the German government refused to devalue the mark). The Soviets covered their debt to Britain with commodity exports, whose prices were falling, so that the Soviets failed to achieve the full windfall in paying off debt that was denominated in devalued sterling. In 1933, when the United States would leave the gold standard and the dollar would be devalued, the Soviets would reap about 300 million gold rubles’ worth of debt relief. Dohan, “Soviet Foreign Trade,” 607–10. The exchange rate for sterling, which had been 9.46 rubles to £1, fell to 6.58–6.42 rubles by late 1931. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia Sistema SSSR, 104.

129. Germany, Greece, and Hungary would default in 1932. Reinhart and Rogoff, This Time Is Different, 96 (table 6.4). The real value of the ruble would drop by perhaps 60 percent during the Five-Year Plan. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 213.

130. Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 606–7; DBFP, 2nd series, VII: 222 (Strang to Marquess of Reading); Davies, Crisis and Progress, 121n80. Strang surmised that a stable capitalism was a sine qua non for the success of socialism in the USSR. See also New York Times, Dec. 6, 1931, and Jan. 10, 1932. Some foreigners knew better: Le Temps, Nov. 23, 1931 (L. Vitin). The British came to understand that the Germans would not let the Soviets default: British Documents on Foreign Affairs, part II, series A, X: 377, XVI: 4–5.

131. The year 1931 would mark a peak for Soviet industrial imports, when the USSR accounted for 27.5 percent of U.S. industrial exports and 80 percent of German engineering exports. Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky.” Cloth imports fell from more than 10 million meters to under 1 million. Lewis, “Foreign Economic Relations,” 208. The year 1932 would turn out to be the worst in the history of Soviet foreign trade because of higher tariffs abroad and decreased credit availability.

132. Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 626–7. See also Tauger, “1932 Harvest,” 88n52.

133. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 86 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 119). On Sept. 4, Stalin complained to Kaganovich that “you are putting every kind of pressure for the export of grain when they pay pennies for grain,” suggesting instead they export butter; Kaganovich recommended no changes for now. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 80–1 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 16–9), 83–6 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 739, l. 76–87: Sept. 6).

134. Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 233–463, 610–28.

135. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 54–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 739, l. 28–39), 60 (d. 76, l. 30–1); Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 85 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 128, 153), 88–91 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 479, l. 267; d. 484, l. 43, 47ob., 45, 53, 53ob., 54, 55, 55ob., 61; d. 481, l. 123); Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 116 (RGAE, f. 7496, op. 37 d. 159, l. 98).

136. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 69 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 484, l. 60).

137. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 75 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 484, l. 53–5: Stalin mocking V. V. Ptukha). Pravda’s coverage of the plenum did not mention the discussion of grain procurement, in which regional party bosses condemned incompetence in harvest gathering and mass theft of the grain. Mikoyan interjected that collective farmers needed to be told: “first, satisfy the state plan, then satisfy your own plan.” Oskolkov, Golod 1932/1933, 17–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 484, l. 119).

138. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 88, 90–1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 481, l. 123, 55ob., 61), 96–7.