Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

139. In 1926–27 the average market price per centner for rye had been 7.53 rubles while the state price had been 4.31. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 93 (citing Tovarooborot, 1932: 140–45).

140. Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 121 (citing RGAE, osobaia papka Kolkhoztsentra). No date is given.

141. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 255–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 54). Stalin received twenty people that day, an unusually large number; the last departed at 5:10 p.m. He was back in the office the next day. Na prieme, 79–80.

142. The incident occurred near Ilinka 5/2 across from the Old Gostinny Dvor. Ogarev’s real name was said to be Platonov-Petin, and he was identified as an aide to the British intelligence station chief responsible for the border states that used to be part of imperial Russia. On the OGPU report, Molotov wrote: “To the members of the politburo: comrade Stalin needs to cease walking on foot in Moscow.” Kaganovich, Kalinin, Kuibyshev, and Rykov affixed their signatures. This might have helped accelerate Stalin’s own move permanently into the Kremlin. “Agent angliiskoi razvedki sluchayno vstretil Vas . . . ,” 161–2 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 226, l. 18, 19: Nov. 18, 1931); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 286. APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 200, l. 147.

143. Japanese patriots extolled their country as a liberating conqueror, while the army leadership and many civilian supporters cast Manchuria’s takeover as a matter of national survival. Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity. It took “more than ministers and generals to make an empire.” Young, Total Empire, 8. Japanese casualties occurred mostly in a diversionary action over Shanghai.

144. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 161–3 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 48–51). See also Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 185 (citing l. 52–3). Japan’s military was effectively dictating the country’s foreign policy with an aggressive strategy that asserted a need to “protect” investments in China from China’s protracted civil war and from perceived Soviet encroachment, while actually forcing into being a self-sufficient empire in Asia. Paine, Wars for Asia.

145. Soviet anxiety about appearing either belligerent or too weak was evident in a speech by Molotov on Dec. 22, 1931, at the central executive committee (repeating Stalin’s words of June 1930): “We need no one else’s land, but not one inch of our land will we cede to anyone else.” Molotov, “O vypolnenie pervoi pitaitletki: doklad na vtoroi sessii IsIK SSSR o narodno-khoziaistvennom plane na 1932 god,” Pravda, Dec. 25, 1931, reprinted in DVP SSSR, XIV: 725–8, and in Molotov, V bor’be za sotsializm (1935), 236–76 (at 262–3); Sochineniia, XII: 269. Molotov’s speech might have been the regime’s first public statement on Japan’s action in Manchuria. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 79, 81; Thorne, Limits of Foreign Policy, 133.

146. Ken, Moskva i pakt. The Soviets interpreted France’s diplomatic efforts to manage its predicament vis-à-vis Germany as directed against the USSR. Kun, Kommunisticheskii internatsional v dokumentakh, 966–72; Eudin and Slusser, Soviet Foreign Policy, I: 324–31. In the eyes of Paris, a nonaggression pact with Moscow promised to loosen Soviet-German ties and secure genuine Soviet neutrality in the event of any Franco-German conflict, but after initialing a draft agreement the French had backed off signing it, preferring instead to try to get Germany to freeze frontiers and forswear rearming in exchange for aid. (The Weimar Republic chancellor would decline.) After the Nazi party electoral success in Sept. 1930 and a German government announcement (March 1931) of a pending customs union with Austria, Paris conveyed to Moscow a willingness for exploratory talks on both a nonaggression pact and credits for trade, but mutual suspicion continued to undermine efforts. DVP SSSR, XIV: 452–6 (Dovgalevsky to Moscow, Aug. 8, 1931), 573–581 (V. L. Mezhlauk to Moscow: Oct. 16, 1931); Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 12; Herriot, Jadis, II: 312–3; Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 24–5; Wheeler-Bennett, Documents on International Affairs, 1931, 3–6; Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 8–9; Steiner, Lights that Failed, 553; Carley, “Five Kopecks,” at 36. France would turn out to be the only country in the world that increased its imports from the USSR in 1931–32. Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks, 142. In 1932, the Nazis would win 230 seats, the most by any party during the entire Weimar period. That same year, 90 percent of German reparation payments would be canceled.

147. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 163n6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 64); Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetskikh-pol’skikh otnoshenii, V: 502–5 (AVP RF, f. 05, op. 11, d. 5, l. 157–62: Nov. 14, 1931); Izvestiia, Nov. 22, 1931; Lechik, “‘Vo frantsuzsko-pol’sko-rossiiskom treugol’nike,” 120–3; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 98.

148. Izvestiia, July 26, 1930 (Litvinov interview). Stalin had hesitated to promote the rightist-leaning Litvinov, telling Chicherin, “You should be the commissar, even if you work only two hours a day,” but Litvinov had filled the vacuum anyway. Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova”; “‘Diktatura iazykocheshyshchikh nad rabotaiushchimi’: posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska Chicherina,” 112n7; Farnsworth, “Conversing with Stalin,” 958 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749, l. 80–3); Carley, Silent Conflict, 410–1 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 9, pap. 43, d. 1, l. 130–2: Sept. 7, 1929); Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, (Dec. 3, 1929); Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 100; Besedovskii, Na putiakh, 385–6. See also Kennan on Chicherin, Russia and the West, 205–6. Mikoyan would recall that “the arguments between Chicherin and Litvinov at politburo meetings . . . helped us figure out the most difficult issues of world politics.” Those who worked with both judged them equivalent in quality of mind and breadth of horizons. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, 4; Sheinis, “Polpred B. E. Shtein,” 108. Rumors in Moscow on Chicherin’s likely replacement had run the gamut (Chicherin’s farewell memo seems to have had Kuibyshev in mind). See also Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 14–5; Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe iogranich’e, 562–3; and O’Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution, 157–64.

149. Chicherin added: “The OGPU leaders have blind faith in the words of every idiot and cretin they make their agent.” ‘Diktatura iazykocheshyshchikh nad rabotaiushchimi’: posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska G.V. Chicherina,” 108–10. Chicherin had effectively failed in his Stalin-supported quest to forge a genuine alliance with Germany, but had prevented an anti-Soviet coalition, a version of Soviet strategy he had enunciated in a note to Stalin in 1929: “Any sharpening of the antagonisms between Germany and the Entente, France and Italy, Italy and Yugoslavia, England and America means a strengthening of our position, a lessening of the various threats to us.” V. V. Sokolov, “Neizvestnyi G. V. Chicherin: iz rassekrechennykh arkhivov MID RF,” 12 (citing AVP RF, f. 08, op. 12, pap. 74, d. 55, l. 86). The Germans suspected that because of his British wife, Litvinov was secretly pro-British-French. Von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 81.

150. Stalin both criticized and praised Litvinov. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina-Molotovu, 167–8 (Oct. 7, 1929), 169–71 (Dec. 5, 1929); Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 568 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 62: March 1931). Litvinov, according to his daughter, had preferred Stalin to Trotsky. Phillips, Between the Revolution and the West, 109 (citing Tatyana Litvinova).

151. Stalin expanded the number of the commissariat’s departments responsible for the West and promoted strong officials to lead them, to curb Litvinov’s powers. The foreign affairs collegium now consisted of Litvinov and his three deputies: Krestinsky (first deputy), Boris Stomonyakov (an ethnic Bulgarian), and Lev Karakhan (a Chicherin protégé). Eventually, however, Stalin would grant abolition of the collegium and a reduction in deputy commissars, strengthening Litvinov’s grip over that body. Dullin, Men of Influence, 58–9; Sokolov, “Zamestitel’ narkoma inostrannykh del B. Stomoniakov,” 120.

152. Officials who had joined the foreign affairs commissariat in the early NEP years occupied about one-third of the senior posts dealing with Europe, but an influx during the Great Break, under Litvinov, brought people with fewer than five years of service, some filling entirely new posts, many replacing defectors or those purged. Of diplomats who joined before 1925, around 48 percent were Russian; 33 percent were Jewish; another 4.5 percent were Balts. Of those who joined after 1929, 56 percent were Russian, nearly 30 percent were Jewish, and 6 percent were Ukrainian. At the very top, few were ethnic Russians. Litvinov, Sokolnikov, Surits, Khinchuk, Dovgalevsky were all Jewish. Some of the Russians were the wrong class (of noble descent): Kollontai, Alexandrovsky. Old-line diplomats, with foreign-language and -country expertise, were hostile to the “neophytes” mobilized into the corps by the Central Committee. The arrivistes looked askance at the “bourgeois” habits and mentality of the old guard. Dullin, Men of Influence, 52–3 (comparing the diplomatic yearbooks of 1925 and 1933–6); Sostav rukovodiashchikh rabotnikov i spetsialistov Soiuza SSR, 296–303.

153. Ken, Moskva i pakt, 44–6; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 71–3 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 12–4: Aug. 30, 1931), 88–9 (l. 21–3: Sept. 7). To ensure timely exchange of information and control over decision making, Stalin created a standing politburo commission for foreign affairs (Nov. 22, 1931) consisting of himself, Molotov, and Kaganovich (Orjonikidze would be added a month later). Litvinov helped initiate the establishment (Nov. 26) of a lesser, separate commission just for Poland. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 84–5; Watson, “The Politburo and Foreign Policy,” 134–67 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 68, 98, 99, 111); Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 589–90 (l. 73; AVP RF, f. 010, op. 4, pap. 21, d. 63, l. 635–6).

154. It was not just Stalin who voiced this view. Chicherin, speaking to the Afghan king Amanullah Khan in May 1928, had noted “whether England is preparing a war for us, we shall see later. England is always striving to push others instead of itself into military actions against us. She could push Poland against us.” DVP SSSR, XI: 301–7 (at 303). Stalin also knew that Piłsudski had offered his services to the Japanese as early as 1905, promising to lead an uprising in Russian Poland.

155. Kaganovich exploded at the foreign affairs commissariat to Stalin, writing that “they have no serious materials” in support of their opposition. To Kaganovich’s mind, Litvinov showed himself given to Germanophilia, seeking to build Soviet security one-sidedly on the relationship with Germany while dismissing Poland; Kaganovich also complained of Litvinov’s self-satisfied smugness. But the entire foreign affairs commissariat was united in opposition to a Soviet pact with Poland, even Litvinov’s enemy Karakhan, suspecting that Warsaw’s probes with Moscow were mere ploys to frighten Berlin into deals with Poland and France. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 76–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 739, l. 65–7: Sept. 3, 1931), 105–8 (l. 14–22: Sept. 16), 114n1 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 177–8; op. 162, d. 11, l. 1, 9); Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, V: 490–2 (Karakhan, Aug. 4, 1931); DVP SSSR, XIV: 488–9 (Aug. 6, 1931); Izvestiia, Aug. 30, 1931, Jan. 26, 1932; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, III: 517–9, III: 519–20, 556–8; Dyck, Weimar Germany, 240; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro Tsk RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 259 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 9: Sept. 20, 1931), 261–2 (l. 17: Sept. 30, 1931); Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 69. On Nov. 22, 1931, TASS published a communiqué on the resumption of Polish-Soviet negotiations. DVP SSSR, XIV: 647–50, 675; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 64. See also Budurowycz, Polish-Soviet Relations, 8–9.

156. Dyck, Weimar Germany, 242–9 (citing 9187/H249372–8: Dirksen memo, Nov. 10, 1931); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 75–75ob. German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen wrote in a report on a meeting with Voroshilov (Dec. 12, 1931)—which was intercepted by Soviet intelligence and passed to Voroshilov (Dec. 21)—that “Voroshilov said that, of course, under no circumstances can one speak about any guarantees of the Polish western border; the Soviet government is a principled opponent of the Versailles Treaty; it will never undertake anything that would somehow contribute to strengthening the Danzig corridor or Memel border.” Duraczyński and Sakharov, Sovetsko-Pol’skie otnosheniia, 64 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 70, l. 264–5); Zeidler, Reichswehr and Rote Armee, 262; D’iakov and Bushueva, Fashistskii mech kovalsia v SSSR, 128–9 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 70, l. 253–8).

157. A declaration by Litvinov, after he had met with Kōki Hirota, was published in the Soviet press: the USSR “affords great significance to the maintenance and strengthening of existing relations with Japan. The Soviet government observes a policy of strict noninterference in the conflicts among various countries.” DVP SSSR, XIV: 668–72; Izvestiia, Nov. 21, 1931. On Nov. 23 the two countries signed a long-completed convention on postal exchange. DVP SSSR, XIV: 675–6. On Nov. 26, Karakhan in Tokyo began negotiations with Hirota on a fisheries agreement. DVP SSSR, XIV: 680–3.

158. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 291–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 1–9). Soviet military intelligence also obtained a copy of a secret Japanese brochure for their officer corps, The Red Army and the Methods of Struggle With It, whose sixteen points included: “at the outset of a war it is necessary to inflict a decisive strike,” because the Red Army was weak in the face of strength; “the goal should be not to seize territory but to destroy the functioning field army”; “the most advantageous area of the front is where there are units of different nationalities”; “it is necessary to use anti-Soviet Russians.” Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 47–9 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1233, l. 339–45).

159. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 291–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 1–9: Dec. 19, 1931). In a second intercepted memo sent to Stalin on Feb. 28, 1932, Kasahara again emphasized that “the military might of the Soviet Union” would reach great heights “in ten years.” Stalin underlined this passage, too. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 298–308 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 15–36).

160. Stalin added: “Those comrades who remained in Russia, who did not go abroad, of course, are far more numerous in our party and its leadership than former émigrés, and they, of course, had greater opportunities to contribute to the revolution than those who were located in the foreign emigration.” Leushin, “‘Schitaiv nizhe svoego dostoinstua’: fragment zapisi besedy U. V. Stalina c E. Liudvigom,” 216–17 (RGASPI. f. 558, op. 1, d. 2989, 1.17–8).

161. Stalin added: “‘Fate’ is something that is not part of the laws of history, something mystical. I do not believe in mysticism.” On Feb. 8, 1932, he had a transcript circulated to members and candidate members of the politburo and Central Committee (“for your information”). In April 1932 the party journal Bolshevik published a version he edited. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2989, l. 1. Stalin would authorize its publication as a standalone pamphlet in 1938, and allowed it to be included in Collected Works in 1951. “Beseda s nemetskim pisatelem Emilen Liudvigom,” Bol’shevik, 1932, no. 8: 33–42 (at 41); Sochineniia, XIII: 104–23 (at 114–5, 120–1); Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, II: 517–8.

162. Kenkichi Yoshizawa, Japan’s newly named foreign minister, returning home from his ambassadorial post in Paris via the Trans-Siberian, received a “princely welcome” in Moscow on Dec. 30–31, 1931, according to British observers. Two days after Yoshizawa reached Tokyo, Moscow forced the issue by having Izvestiya (Jan. 16, 1932) publish news that a nonaggression pact had again been proffered. Both Yoshizawa and Ambassador Hirota claimed to be surprised. DVP SSSR, XIV: 746–8 (Litivinov-Yoshizawa conversation); Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 337–41; Sokolov, Na boevykh postakh, 157; Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, I: 277.

163. Voroshilov was especially skeptical of rumors about the ranks of White Guard émigrés ready to enlist for Japan. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 167–8 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 44, l. 53–5). Japanese officials continued to engage in open talk about annexing Northern Sakhalin, the Soviet Far Eastern coastline and Kamchatka. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 79–80.

164. Artuzov judged the French general staff to be against a Franco-Soviet nonaggression pact, but noted that French military intelligence “is of the opinion that the USSR at the present time will avoid a conflict with Europe and Japan and not react to provocations.” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 296–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 11–4). The French general staff was focused on Germany, not the USSR. Vidal, Une alliance improbable.

165. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 98. The OGPU were also reporting delight among peasants, angry at collectivization, at rumors Japan would seize Siberia, and Poland or Germany would take advantage in the West. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 141–5; Vernadskii, Dnevnik, 1926–1934, 240, 256, 271, 275; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 15–16 (citing RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 235, l. 12–10: Jan. 19, 1932).

166. Johnston, New Mecca, 122, citing Vozrozhdenie, March 5, 1932. See also Besedovskii, Na putiakh k termidoru, 286.

167. XVII konferentsiia VKP (b), 156.

168. According to the same hostile witness, when Stalin appeared at the Bolshoi on Feb. 23, 1932, at a celebration of the Red Army’s fourteenth anniversary, he was met with “cold silence.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 28 (July 1932): 3–5. Davies surmises that the letter writer was Ivan Smirnov: Davies, Crisis and Progress, 133 n1, 136, 145. On the conference resolutions, see: VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 728–46.

169. The regime also mandated mobilization plans for each major factory. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 175. Still, even now, Tukhachevsky failed once more to force the creation of a separate army industrial research and development empire. Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 42–7, 55–9, 162 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 2, d. 280, l. 7–8); Harrison and Simonov, “Voenpriemka,” 230.

170. Drobizhev, Glavnyi shtab, 171–2; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 204–9; GARF, f. 5446, op. 15, d. 15, l. 13; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 192 (RGAE, f. 7297, op. 41: intro); Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 241, 243; Seiranian, Nadezhneishii voennyi rabotnik, 138. On Jan. 12, 1932, the politburo appointed party organizers in military factories who were responsible to the Central Committee. Poltaev, Industrializatsiia SSSR, 608.

171. The wildly ambitious 10,000 number included 2,000 BTs (Christie chassis), 3,000 T-26s (Vickers six-ton), and 5,000 machine-gun carrier T-27s (Carden Loyd tankette). Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 193 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 17, d. 76, l. 10). Voroshilov, at a Jan. 1933 party plenum, would claim that Stalin had ordered to “take all measures, spend the money, even large amounts of money, run people to all corners of Europe and America, but get models, plans, bring in people, do everything possible and impossible in order to set up tank production here.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, part 1, l. 125; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 193 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 13, 18–9: Dec. 5, 1929); RGVA, f. 31811, op. 1, d. 1, l. 52–3 (Pavlunovsky).

172. The Soviet delegation chose the Vickers medium tank prototype from a commercial catalogue. Vickers refused to sell its heavy tanks, but a clever member of the Soviet delegation managed to outsmart the British and obtain specifications (which would eventually go into the T-28). Svirin, Bronia krepka, 136–7, 253. The French firm Citroën refused to sell the Soviets tanks with blueprints. Vereshchak, “Rol’ inostrannogo tekhnicheskoi pomoshchi,” 234, 236 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 65: Jan. 11, 1930).

173. Milson, Russian Tanks; Cooper, “Defence Production,” 13; Tupper, “Red Army and the Defence Industry,” 13–5, 359–60; Hofman, “United States’ Contribution”; Mukhin, “Amtorg,” no. 3: 34–41, no. 4: 37–53. See also Sutton, Western Technology, 240–2. In Nov. 1931, the Kharkov Locomotive Factory was designated a “super shock” plant, granting access to raw materials, transport, and daily life necessities. Christie reasoned that tanks should be light and move quickly to penetrate enemy lines, and his suspension system, a sprung bogie instead of a rigid system, afforded tanks a low center of gravity and a low silhouette, as well as an ability to move at high speeds. His original model-1928 or M-1928 had little firepower; it was the improved M-1931 that interested the Soviets. The M-1931 weighed 12 tons, had a 338–horsepower engine, room for a crew of three and a 37mm gun as well as a machine gun, and a speed of 50 mph without tracks (which were removable for travel on paved roads). (Later, the Soviets would thicken the armor and enlarge the guns without losing the mobility.) The Soviets bought the rights to the production, sale, and use of tanks inside the borders of the Soviet Union for ten years. Pavlov et al., Tanki BT chast’ 1. The Christie contract (signed on April 28, 1930) cost $164,000. Kolomiets, Legkie tanki BT, 10. In 1931, the Poles also agreed to buy the M-1931, but then Christie reneged (the deal was illegal without U.S. government permission); he returned the Polish government’s money. Christie’s advanced tank designs never went into mass production in the United States; he would die nearly penniless in 1944. The Soviets also worked on a tank from the experimental designs of German engineer Edward Grotte, of Rheinmetal, who was employed on a technical assistance contract at the Bolshevik Factory in Leningrad. “Do not by any means allow Grotte to go back to Germany,” Stalin told Poskryobyshev to inform Kirov (Aug. 25, 1931). “Take all measures up to arrest and compel him to prepare the tank for serial mass production. Do not allow him go to Germany after the tank enters serial production, because he might give away secrets. Establish thorough surveillance on him making [Filipp] Medved responsible. Do not let him out of sight for even an hour.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 76, l. 42–3. Grotte’s tank design never entered mass production, and in 1933 he was allowed to leave, but his work fed into other Soviet tank design efforts.

174. Stalin, in a letter to Voroshilov, singled out armor-plating as the most difficult aspect. Some 60 percent of armor plates that would be produced at the Red October factory in 1933 for the T-26 were unusable. Vereshchak, “Rol’ inostrannogo tekhnicheskoi pomoshchi,” 241 (citing RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 49; RGAE, f. 7719, op. 4, d. 76, l. 228).

175. The final tank tally in 1932 would be 2,585 instead of 10,000; 800 of them had no turrets, 290 lacked treads, and even the “finished” T-26s had no turrets for mounting a 45mm gun (they carried only machine guns). By 1933 the number of tanks would leap to 4,700. Similar exponential growth would occur in military aircraft and artillery. And the BT—soon the fastest moving tank in the world—was world class. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 192–202 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 717, l. 11–2: Pavlunovsky to Voroshilov, Jan. 2, 1933; d. 896, l. 7: Yegorov, Jan. 26; d. 717, l. 9–10: Voroshilov to Molotov); Maiolo, Cry Havoc, 18–9.

176. Davies, “Soviet Military Expenditures,” 580–1, 594 (table 3); Davies, Crisis and Progress, 165. Already between Oct. and Dec. 1931, Soviet armaments production shot up by 75 percent, to claim more than one of four workers in machine building. Then, in the first weeks of 1932, the military procurement budget nearly doubled. The capacity to absorb that funding influx efficiently was another matter. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 111–8; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 190–1 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 417, l l. 29, 31ff; op. 14, d. 603, l. 31). The Soviet Far Eastern Army had doubled in size between May and Feb. 1932, and would reach 152,000 by the end of that year, with more than 300 tanks, 300 armored vehicles, and 250 planes. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 207 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 39, l. 63ob.: Blyukher, Oct. 25, 1932; op. 14, d. 754, l. 26: Dec. 1932–Jan. 1933).

177. Soviet propagandists huffed that Tokyo presented itself as “the apostle of peace” and asserted that China had “insulted” Japan and threatened it with “chaos.” Conversely, an Osaka newspaper fumed (March 3, 1932), “Why is the American annexation of the Philippines justified, while the Japanese seizure of Formosa [Taiwan] is not?” Tanin and Kogan, Voenno-fashistskoe dvizhenie v Iaponii, 251–62; Paine, Wars for Asia, 24.

178. Kasahara and his Polish contacts were clearly trying to spur Tokyo. Stalin underlined passages in the text suggesting a need to study the technical development of the Red Army, and wrote on the document: “From hand to hand. To the members of the politburo (to each individually). With the obligation to return to the politburo.” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 298–308 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 15–36), 807.

179. Blyukher had given orders to fire at the overflights, and Stalin vented his anger when he found out. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 43, l. 116. Voroshilov had instructed Blyukher in a secret order (Feb. 28, 1932) to annihilate anyone who violated the Soviet border. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 187 (citing RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 88, l. 9–10).

180. The regime also created a special collective farm corps “to reinforce Soviet Far Eastern frontiers,” and directed seven tank battalions with infantry escorts, armored trains, antiaircraft machine guns, and antitank weapons to the Soviet Far East. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 187–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 196–7); Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, I: 110 (March 16, 1932); Dmitriev, Sovetskoe podvodnoe korablestroenie, 71, 240–55; Isaev, “Meropriiatie KPSS po ukrepleniiiu dal’nevostochnykh rubezhei”; Zakharov, “Krasnoznamennomu Tikhookeanskomu flotu”; Dmitriev, “Stroitel’stvo sovetskogo podvodnogo flota.”

181. For monitoring and subverting the USSR, the Kwantung Army had already deployed a vast intelligence apparatus through Manchuria (Harbin, Manchouli, Mukden, Jilin), which they expanded (to Qiqihar, Hailar, Heihe) after the formation of Manchukuo. Japanese intelligence personnel were also deployed at their consulates in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, and Novosibirsk, and at the Manchukuo consulate in Chita (and soon, a Manchukuo consulate in Blagoveshchensk). The Japanese legation in Tehran was also used against the Soviet Union. Kuromiya and Pepłoński, “The Great Terror,” citing, among other works, Tsutao Ariga, Nihon riku kai gun no jōhōkikō to sono katsudō (Tokyo: Kindai Bungeisha, 1994), 84–100. Japanese police in Manchuria enlisted local bandits for assassinations and kidnappings, set up rings for prostitution and drug trafficking, and concocted subterfuges to fool a League of Nations fact-finding mission. Vespa, Secret Agent of Japan.

182. The original plan dated to 1927, and had been reworked (to Stalin’s approval) in summer 1930: RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 490, l. 19–23.

183. Puyi was converted to “emperor” in 1934. Most of Japan’s conquests, beginning with Taiwan (1895) and followed by Korea (1905), had not been driven primarily by economic concerns—trade between China and Japan, for example, dwarfed that between Korea and Japan—but Manchukuo was seen as a vast settler colony, a solution to Japan’s rural poverty.

184. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 210–1; Izvestiia, March 22, 1932.

185. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 225–6; RGSAPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 36, 68 (March 26, 1932), 94 (April 6), 107–8 (April 17). Into summer 1932, international observers noted Moscow’s “extreme forbearance” toward Japan bordering on “pusillanimity” (in the words of the British consul in Harbin). Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 373 (citing FO 371/16173–665: Garstin to Ingram, Harbin, June 11, 1932); Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 81.

186. It was Romania, not the Soviet Union, that refused to sign the bilateral pact. Lungu, “Nicolae Titulescu.” The Soviets refused to recognize Bessarabia’s annexation by Romania. According to Louis Fischer, however, Litvinov was long ready to relinquish Soviet claims to Bessarabia to normalize relations with Romania. Elleman, “Secret Soviet-Japanese Agreement”; Fischer, Men and Politics, 135. When Tukhachevsky had reported on the 1932 Poland war plan to Voroshilov, he had noted that “a similar operation would be very easy to prepare against Bessarabia.” D’iakov and Bushueva, Fashistskii mech kovalsia v SSSR, 131–2 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 342, l. 179–80), 132n2 (d. 400, l. 14–29). See also Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 127–8.

187. Le Temps, Nov. 30, 1932; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 98.

188. The OGPU’s Balytsky and Artuzov reported to Stalin (March 19, 1932) on new intelligence from an informant in Warsaw regarding the French general staff’s preparation for a military intervention against the USSR that relied on Poland and Japan while attempting to draw in Britain. The report was filled with misspellings of the principal actors (Polish general staff chief Janusz Gąsiorowski listed as Gonsiarowski, French Marshal Pétain as Lecien). Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 329–32 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 65–70).

189. Ken, Moskva i pakt, 113–4; Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, V: 492–4 (AVP RF, f. 08, op. 14, d. 137, l. 31–3), 494–6 (l. 13–5), 496–7, 497–8, 498–500, 501; Budurowych, Polish-Soviet Relations, 16–7; Karski, Great Powers, 109. See also Izvestiia, Aug. 27, 28, 30, 1931; DVP SSSR, XIV: 562–4 (Dovgalevsky to Karakhan, Oct. 6, 1931), 566 (Dovgalevsky to Moscow, Oct. 9), 570–2 (Litvinov and Zelezynski: Oct. 14); and Biegański et al., Documents on Polish-Soviet Relations, I: 14–6.

190. D’iakov and Bushueva, Fashistskii mech kovalsia v SSSR, 131–2 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 342, l. 179–80 to Khinchuk). As late as Dec. 1932, the politburo approved the dispatch of four officers to German military academies. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 198 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 14, l. 39: Dec. 16, 1932).

191. Kochan, Russia and the Weimar Republic, 159. German diplomats interpreted the Franco-Soviet and Polish-Soviet nonaggression pacts as “a complete change in the course of Soviet foreign policy.” Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 103 (citing AVP RF, f. 082, op. 14, pap. 62, d. 2, l. 365).

192. On April 13, 1932, Piłsudski arrived in Romania, with plans to travel on to Japan, trips that the Soviets viewed as setting the stage for a long-anticipated military pact against USSR; in fact, the Polish president was trying (and failing) to induce his Romanian allies into ratcheting down tensions with Moscow and become part of the broad regional nonaggression commitments. Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 104–5. On April 22, 1932, with Piłsudski in Tokyo, deputy foreign affairs commissar Stomonyakov speculated in a letter to Antonov-Ovseyenko that “in all likelihood he is holding specific military negotiations related to Far Eastern complications for the event of a war between Poland and Romania against the USSR.” Revyakin, “Poland and the Soviet Union,” 79–101 84 (no citation).

193. Stalin might have felt dissatisfied with the information at his disposal, for he had recently received Radek one-on-one for an hour and a half and then ordered creation of an “information bureau” on international affairs inside his secretariat (formalized on April 1, 1932). Effectively an extension of the foreign bureaus of Izvestiya, Radek’s bureau, in theory, had the right to make use of “all existing institutions concerned with economic, political, and military matters in the capitalist countries.” Na prieme, 64 (March 27, 1932); Ken and Rupaov, Politbiuro TsK VKP (b) i otnosheniia SSSR, chast’ 1: 196, 553–4, 574–5; Rupasov, Zapadnoe zagranich’e, 590–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 878, l. 5), 592–6 (op. 162, d. 11, l. 135, 143: May 16, 1932); Ken, “Karl Radek i Biuro.” On Radek’s value to Stalin, see Duda, Jenő Varga, 113–4. See also Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 147. Radek managed to cast the Soviet Union as a champion of peace in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the American establishment, and in May 1932 he would work with Voroshilov on contacts with the American military over a possible common policy toward Japan—which, however, would prove fruitless. Radek, “War in the Far East”; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 113; 173–4; Safronov, SSSR, 369. Stalin counseled Voroshilov on the proper way to engage with the U.S. military. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 173–4 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 46–8: Voroshilov to Stalin, June 6, 1932), 175–6 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 66: June 12), 176n3 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 194–5: June 20).

194. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 277–82 (RGASPI, f. 631, op. 5, d. 52, l. 48–53: Feb. 10, 1932).

195. Some foods for those still on lists were derationed (no longer promised). Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 406–7 (March 23, 1932).

196. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 147–54.

197. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 312–5 (RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 236, l. 4–13); Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 22–4.

198. “Otkrytoe pis’mo Prezidiumu Ts.I.K’a Soiuza SSR,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 27 (March 1932): 1–6 (at 5).

199. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 311 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 877, l. 9); Sovetskaia iustitsiia, no. 12 (1932): 29; Zelenin, “Byl li ‘kolkhoznyi neonep’?” 108–9 (citing GARF, f. 7486, op. 3, d. 237, l. 225–6); Davies et al., Years of Progress, 14. Stalin had crossed out a section in the draft of the decree that would have guaranteed feed to collective farmers for their personal animals. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3016, l. 1. Another decree, a fortnight later, publicized the decision. Davies stresses that although Stalin did not initiate the relaxation on livestock, he would grab credit. Davies, “Stalin as Economic Policy-Maker,” 136–7. One scholar argues that Yakovlev and “bourgeois” specialists working under him had initiated a shift from extensive to intensive growth already in late 1931–early 1932. Tauger, “People’s Commissariat of Agriculture,” 157–9.

200. Sochineniia, XIII: 134. Stalin permitted a foreigner, James Abbé, to photograph him in the Little Corner on April 13, 1932, resulting in a sensational portrait on the New York Times front page. Abbé, I Photograph Russia; von Dewitz and Johnson, Shooting Stalin. Stalin attended the politburo meetings throughout April and May 1932: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 874–885. The same day Abbé got twenty minutes in the Kremlin, an infirm Mężyński wrote to Stalin pleading to be relieved of his position. Stalin refused. Molotov concurred. Kuibyshev wrote on the resignation request, “read it and understand nothing.” Mężyński had suffered a heart attack on Dec. 13, 1931, returning to work on Jan. 25, 1932.

201. Rudich, Holod 1932–33 rokiv, 148–50. Stalin received an OGPU report enumerating the mass flight out of villages region by region, and naming “food difficulties” as a prime motivator. Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 25–6 (no citation).

202. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 43 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 42, d. 26, l. 1–6).

203. The areas affected were better supplied than villages, but a low priority among industrial regions. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin. On strikes, see also Gromtseva, Teni izchezaiut v smol’nom, 28–9.

204. Werth and Moullec, Rapports secrets soviétiques, 209–16 (at 214).

205. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 188–91 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 39, l. 6–7).

206. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin, 231 (citing RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 213, l. 90); Danilov et al., Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni, III: 318–54 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 10, d. 53, l. 1–64: April 1932).

207. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. In Ivanovo in 1937, there would be a mere three work stoppages involving a very small number of people protesting rising norms and food shortages. Rittersporn, Anguish, 233 (citing RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 230, l. 87).

208. Later, while reading back issues of Pravda, Stalin would erupt at the loyalist Yaroslavsky over an article (May 31, 1932) admitting the fact of strikes in Ivanovo—even though the article blamed the already sacked local party leadership—because he felt that any admission handed ammunition to enemies to speak of “a ‘new Kronstadt.’” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 120–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 11, 12–12ob.: June 5, 1932), 139n1 (f. 17, op. 3, d. 887, l. 9); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 34–5. The politburo condemned Yaroslavsky’s article and removed him from the editorial position at Pravda.

209. Berson, Sowieckie zbrojenia moralne, 7. Berson, under the pseudonym Otmar, served as Moscow correspondent for the Polish Telegraph Agency and Gazeta Polska, until his expulsion in 1935.

210. Rassweiler, Generation of Power; Goriaeva, “Velikaia kniga dnia,” 256–7.

211. On May 3, Stalin received the International Herald Tribune correspondent to reiterate Soviet interest in expanded trade with the United States and told him that in the forthcoming second Five-Year Plan, “yes, light industry will develop to a much greater extent than before.” Sochineniia, XIII: 258 (Ralph Barnes). More broadly, see Mahoney, Dispatches and Dictators. Stalin played little role in drawing up the second Five-Year Plan, which was overseen by Molotov, Kuibyshev, and Orjonikidze, yet it could not go forward until he approved.

212. The Soviets also planned to import 10,000 breeding cattle from South America, Germany, and Britain. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 138; Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/ii: 290–1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 114, 124). That same day, the politburo decreed the expulsion of 38,300 “kulak” households, but ten days later, this would be circumscribed to individual arrests of “evil elements in the village.” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 367 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 134). May 5, 1932, was the 30th birthday of Pravda, which was celebrated without mention of Bukharin, its editor for twelve years. Medvedev, Nikolai Bukharin, 49.

213. Soon, the regime clarified that such trade would be “carried out at prices formed on the market.” Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 138 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 883, l. 9), 140; Sobranie zakonov, 1932, no. 1: article 190; Sobranie zakonov, 1932, no. 33: article 195; Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1932, no. 11–2: 50; Kollektivizatsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, 411–3, 416–7; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 58–9 (no citation). An Oct. 1931 decree had legalized peasant trade of grain at “cooperative prices.” Additional decrees after May 6, 1932, reduced procurement targets for other agricultural products. Gorelik and Malkis, Sovetskaia torgovlia, 125; Whitman, “Kolkhoz Market,” 387. From Jan. 15, 1933, the regime would concede free trade in meat, too.

214. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 484, l. 36–46. “We still have bazaars that are not Soviet but purely private, in almost every village, almost every town,” North Caucasus party boss Sheboldayev complained at the 17th party conference. “Not only do these bazaars fail to make the individual peasant into a socialist, they sometimes prevent him from becoming a collective farmer.” XVII konferentsiia VKP (b), 210.

215. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 187–90. Whereas (black) market prices for grain in 1929 had been double the state procurement prices, in 1932 the multiple reached 28 times. Ellman, “Did the Agricultural Surplus Provide the Resources for Increased Investment in the USSR during the First Five-Year Plan?” Economic Journal 85 (1975): 844–63 (table 6); James R. Millar, “Mass Collectivization and the Contribution of Soviet Agriculture to the First Five-Year Plan: A Review Article,” Slavic Review 33/4 (1974): 750–66.

216. Davies, Crisis and Progress, xv.

217. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 51 (citing Za industrializatsiiu, March 15, 1931: Dukarevich). “You cry that you do not have this or that but you never say what is necessary to correct the situation,” Orjonikidze complained at a heavy industry commissariat meeting on June 6, 1932. “You are placing the blame on others when you yourself are to blame.” Gregory and Markevich, “Creating Soviet Industry,” 798 (citing RGAE, f. 7297, op. 38, d. 10, l. 4).

218. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 171–2 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 56–7). See also Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 108–12, 141–3; Ken, “‘Moia otsenka byla slishkom rezkoi’: I. V. Stalin rekonstrucktsiia RKKA,” 150–2 (RGASPI, f. 74, d. 38, 1.58, 56–7); and Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 79–80. Tukhachevsky was in Stalin’s office on April 7 and 14, 1932. In Aug. 1932, Stalin would even invite him over to his dacha in Sochi. Na prieme, 65–6; Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 198n90 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 105, l. 56–7: Tukhachevsky to Voroshilov, Aug. 27, 1932). During Voroshilov’s summary speech at the June 1–4, 1937, meeting of the Main Military Council, a revealing exchange would occur when he labeled Tukhachevsky’s Jan. 1930 proposals “idiocies.” Stalin interjected: “It would have been good to have such a force, but it was necessary to rebuff it at that time.” Voroshilov persisted: “This was a wrecking proposal.” Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 319n43 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 61, l. 130: uncorrected transcript).

219. On May 8, Stalin approved a commission, headed by Kaganovich, to check the production and distribution of consumer goods. Rees, Iron Lazar, 107 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 883, l. 1).

220. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 365 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 43, l. 60).

221. A decree of May 20, 1932, that lowered taxes on the legalized collective-farmers’ trade urged local officials to disallow “the opening of shops and kiosks by private traders,” adding that “middlemen and speculators trying to live off the workers and peasants must be extirpated everywhere.” Ball, Russia’s Last Capitalists, 81, citing Resheniia partii i pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam, 16 vols. (Moscow: Politicheskaia literatura, 1967–), II: 388–9.

222. Soviet officials had been discussing the market following the launch of “wholesale” collectivization, but the discussions could be deceiving. At the 17th party conference (Jan.–Feb. 1932), for example, the ideologue Alexei Stetsky had mentioned the imperative to “develop Soviet trade, the Soviet market,” but he meant state-controlled trade and markets. XVII konferentsiia VKP (b), 193. At the Jan. 1933 plenum, when Stalin would underscore the place of trade in a socialist economy, he would insist that “this is not a return to NEP.” Bordiugov and Kozlov, “Dialektika teorii i praktiki stsialisticheskogo stroitel’stva,” 14 (citing unspecified party archives).

223. Davies, Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 11–2.

224. Sandag and Kendall, Poisoned Arrows, 72–3. On Mongolia’s collectivization, see Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 11 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 73).

225. Bawden, Modern History of Mongolia, 290–327. A list of Mongol rebellions against Soviet domination can be found in Misshima and Goto, Japanese View of Outer Mongolia, 16–24. A purge would reduce the Mongol People’s Party from around 40,000 to 11,000. Lkhamsuren, Ocherki istorii Mongol’skoi narodno-revoliutsionnoi partii, 147.

226. At the same time as ordering dispatch of the goods, on March 16, 1932, the regime established a standing politburo commission for Mongolia headed by Postyshev, with Voroshilov, Karakhan, and Eliava as members. Instructions for the Soviet proconsul Okhtin were approved on April 23. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 18–20, 31, 92, 111–2; Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 282–325 (esp. 317).

227. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 113; Terayama, “Soviet Policies toward Mongolia,” I: 37–66. Stalin emerges in the documents as trying to impose order amid conflicting reports, while venting his fury.

228. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/ii: 152–5 (GA Minskoi obl., f. 164p, op. 1, d. 132, l. 546–9).

229. Davies et al., “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” 650–1 (citing RGASPI, f. 79, op. 1, d. 375, l. 1–3; f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, 1. 153–4; GARF, f. 5446, op. 27, d. 33, 1. 127).

230. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 114–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 153; f. 82, op. 2, d. 138, l. 150–3: Redens to Molotov, May 28 and 29, 1932).

231. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 115–6.

232. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 243; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 231 (before June 1932). During his summer 1932 holiday, Stalin received 91 registered documents, many lengthy. He did not answer all of them. A politburo commission (Kaganovich, Postyshev, Yenukidze) on fixing resorts recommended forming an all-Union agency; Stalin abstained from weighing in. The body was approved on June 23, 1932. Khlevniuk, et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 201 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 114), 201n (f. 17, op. 3, d. 881, l. 12, 29–31; d. 889, l. 9, 29; d. 895, l. 15).

233. Stalin added that only if the situation was truly beyond internal rescue, which he doubted, could Soviet troops be dispatched, and then only ethnic Buryats. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 173–4 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 46–8: June 6, 1932), 174n3 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 133; f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 49–52), 174n5 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 175); Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 136 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 49–52: June 4, 1932), 143, 156–7, 182 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 76: June 19, 1932).

234. In a June 10 telegram, Stalin reiterated his opposition to overt military intervention in Mongolia to Molotov, Voroshilov, and Kaganovich. “A hurried and insufficiently prepared decision could provoke a conflict with Japan and give a basis for a united front of Japan, China, Mongolia against the USSR,” he warned. “We will be portrayed as occupiers . . . and the Japanese and Chinese as liberators . . .” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 157–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 42–5).

235. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 779, l. 47. The policy shift (“New Turn”) was confirmed at a Mongolia People’s party extraordinary plenum June 29–30, 1932, with Soviet advisers present. Genden attacked the leftists and pronounced the noncapitalist path a failure in Mongol conditions. By Sept. 1, Stalin would add himself to the politburo’s Mongolian commission. (He had named Voroshilov to replace Karakhan as chairman.) On Nov. 10, the politburo would approve a telegram from Eliava to the Mongols (copy to Okhtin) instructing the Mongolian Central Committee to remove all “leftists,” amnesty rank and file rebels who turned in their weapons, and call out the leaders of the uprising as Chinese agents and Japanese imperialists seeking to end Mongolia’s independence. Soon the Soviets were asking about Mongolia’s mobilization possibilities in the event of war with Japan. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; Roshchin, Politicheskaia istoriia Mongolii, 254–65.

236. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 175 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 60). Without irony Stalin advised Kaganovich (June 7, 1932) that “the bureaucrats at Pravda have replaced letters from workers and collective farmers with letters from professional correspondents and ‘plenipotentiaries’. But the bureaucrats have to be reined in. Otherwise, Pravda risks falling utterly out of touch with live human beings at factories and collective farms.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 149 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 58–60). Kaganovich had the new rubric created, “Letters from workers and collective farmers” (164: f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 37–43; f. 17, op. 114, d. 302, l. 13. 166: f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 43–52).

237. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 180–1 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 152).

238. Pyrih et al., Holodomor, 33–6 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 139, l. 162–5). “Do you realize what is happening in the lands around Belaia Tserkov, Uman, and Kiev?” G. I. Tkachenko, a twenty-year-old Ukrainian student, wrote to Ukrainian party boss Kosior on June 18, 1932. “There are vast areas of land not sown . . . In collective farms in which there were 100–150 horses, there are now only 40–50, and these are dying off. The population is terribly hungry.” Rudich, Holod 1932–1933 rokiv, 183–5. In March 1932, Kosior had managed to procure a seed loan for Ukraine of 110,000 tons from storehouses in better-off regions outside Ukraine (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 30). On April 29, 1932, the politburo advanced a further seed loan to collective farms in Ukraine (l. 115–6).

239. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 335.

240. The politburo (June 21) formally resolved to summon them, but in the meantime refused additional emergency aid to Ukraine. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Kaganaovich, 163–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 37–42: June 12, 1932), 169 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 62–3: June 15, 1932), 168–9n5. That day, a telegram in the names of Stalin and Molotov admonished the Ukrainian hierarchy that “no manner of deviation—regarding either amounts or deadlines set for grain deliveries—can be permitted from the plan established for your region for collecting grain from collective and private [family] farms or for delivering grain to state farms.” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 242n3; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 230n3; Rudich, Holod 1932–1933 rokiv, 190.

241. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 187 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 83–5).

242. The politburo (in July 1932) would formally approve slight reductions. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 197–8 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 81–7), 198n3 (f. 17 op. 162, d. 13, l. 11, 30, 133). Stalin was showing a bit of uncharacteristic flexibility, writing to Kaganovich and Molotov (June 26, 1932) that Sheboldayev might be right in suggesting that rural consumer cooperatives be freed from enacting state grain procurements, while their role as distributors of industrial goods to the countryside should be enhanced and their taxes reduced. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 197–8 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 81–7). On June 25, 1932, the decree “On Revolutionary Legality” stipulated criminal prosecution of officials who violated the law in dealings with peasants and protected judges from dismissal. Enforcement of the decree was another matter. Solomon, Reforming Justice, 193.

243. The Soviet Union was by no means alone in its emphasis on heavy over light bombers at this time. Bailes, “Technology and Legitimacy,” 381–406.

244. They agreed on better supervision of air force missions and more quality control in industry. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 203–4 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 37, l. 49–50; d. 38, l. 69, 70; f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 121; d. 78, l. 8). Aircraft losses were a long-standing problem. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1225–6 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 16, l. 492–4: July 18, 1930). After perusing a copy of the German-language book by Major Helders (Robert Knauss), Air War 1936: The Destruction of Paris (Berlin, 1932), which imagined a future war between Britain and France decided by the “flying fortress,” Stalin wrote to Voroshilov (June 12, 1932) that the “wonderful book” should be published in Russian translation to teach and inspire aviators. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 175 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 64–5). Robert Knauss, Luftkrieg 1936: die Zertrümmerung von Paris (Berlin: Wilhelm Rolf, 1932) was translated: Vozdushnaia voina 1936: razrushenie Parizha, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1934); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 52.

245. “We made a lot of noise but did not blow up the bridge,” the OGPU’s Terenty Deribas would admit. The politburo (July 16, 1932) reprimanded the OGPU for “poor organization.” The captured Soviet agent confessed. Karakhan denied any involvement to the Japanese ambassador. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 208 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 147), 213n13 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 12, 33), 227 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 78, l. 43–4, l. 73, 72); DVP SSSR, XVI: 814n44 (July 26, 1932); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 315 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 33), 807n99. The operative transferred was Nikolai Zagvozdin (b. 1898), who would rise to head of the NKVD in Uzbekistan and then Tajikistan—until his arrest (Feb. 9, 1939) and execution (Jan. 19, 1940). In summer 1932, Heinz Neumann (b. 1902), the leader of the German Communist party’s paramilitary wing, which conducted assassinations, was evidently invited to Sochi. An elderly man of Caucasus extraction, according to the memoirs of Neumann’s lover, was among the many guests. “This is comrade X, my assassin,” Stalin supposedly remarked, before explaining, affably, that the old man’s plot to kill him had been foiled by the OGPU. Neumann’s lover recounted: “The assassin had been condemned to death. But he, Stalin, deemed it proper to pardon this old man, who had, after all, simply acted out of nationalist infatuation, and in order for him to feel like the hatchet had been buried once and for all, had invited him to Matsesta as his guest . . . During this lengthy exposition the old man stood before the gaggle of guests with a downcast gaze.” Such anecdotes about Stalin’s perverse sense of humor abound, usually with a single witness. Buber-Neumann, Von Potsdam nach Moskau, 274–5. Heinz Neumann would be executed in Moscow on Nov. 26, 1937.

246. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 179–80 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 69–72; f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 65–8); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 890, l. 8; Molotov, O pod´eme sel’skogo khoziaistva.

247. Stalin had used the word “famine” when characterizing what enemies predicted would happen as a result of Soviet policies, for example, in reference to bourgeois specialists in the original version of his “six conditions” speech in June 1931: RGASPI, f. 85, op. 28, d. 7, II: l. 189–91. In summer 1932, Molotov told the politburo upon return from Ukraine, “We are indeed faced with the spectre of famine, and in rich grain districts to boot.” Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i razkulachivanie, 203. See also Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 167.

248. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 90, 476.

249. He also reminded Kaganovich and Molotov that the conference was to have led to “obligatory 100 percent fulfillment of the grain procurements.” The next day Stalin instructed them to “concentrate the most serious attention on Ukraine,” and “take all the measures to break the current mood of officials, isolate the whiners and rotten diplomats (no matter who!) and ensure genuinely Bolshevik decisions.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganaovich, 205 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 129–30), 210 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 45–7; f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 1), 210–3 (l. 2–9).

250. Kostiuk, Stalinist Rule in Ukraine, 19 (citing Visti, July 17, 1932). Kaganovich wrote to Stalin that Kosior held a firm line on fulfilling the plan at the conference, thereby protecting him.

251. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganaovich, 219 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 78, l. 16).

252. The politburo resolved “to accept the recommendation of comrade Stalin on a reduction of the planned grain procurement in Ukraine by 722,000 tons as an exception for those regions of Ukraine particularly suffering.” (That was from 5.8 million.) The politburo also resolved to summon Kosior to Moscow and to direct him, along with Kuibyshev and Kaganovich, to determine which regions in Ukraine to assign the reduced targets. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 183 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 75, 76: signed by Kaganovich, in Stalin’s absence); Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 241–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 78, l. 79–81: July 24, 1932). Stalin denied the Sept. 10, 1932, request from Ivan Kabakov, party boss in the Urals, for lower grain procurement targets. Then, on Sept. 22, he approved the distribution of 39,000 tons of grain to the Urals, instead of the previous 37,000. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 184 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 81, l. 148), 185 (l. 149), 186 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 131, 133, 134).

253. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 244–5 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 115–9); Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 182–3 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 76: Aug. 17, 1932; l. 85: Sept. 1, 1932).

254. Peasants could not distinguish between rust and other diseases, a Soviet agronomist reported. But as Tauger has demonstrated, local officials, too, did not understand plant disease and, at harvest time, when they would discover that the crop had been rotted out, would wrongly blame social causes. Tauger, “Natural Disaster,” 15 (citing Na zaschitu urozhaia, 1933, no. 10: 14–6: S. E. Grushevoi; and RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 237, l. 388), 40–5.

255. A major contributing factor to the famine was the extreme deterioration in party-village relations. Penner, “Stalin and the Ital’ianka.” Whereas in 1928 there had been 1 horespower for every 3.63 hectares of land sown to grain, in 1932 the number was 1 for every 6.02 hectares. A. A. Barsov, Balans stoimostnykh obmenov, 85.

256. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 176–80 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 49–51), 180–1 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 68–71), 181–5 (d. 37, l. 54–9); f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 6. According to Polish intelligence, between Oct. 1, 1932, and June 20, 1933, 20 Soviet soldiers sought asylum in Poland. Zdanovich, Organy, 507 (citing RGVA, f. 308, op. 3, d. 303, l. 2).

257. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 185–6 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 76–7).

258. Zdanovich, Organy, 435–6 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 10, d. 94, l. 1, 3, 7: L. Ivanov). See also Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 162–3.

259. Rees, Decision-making in the Stalinist Command Economy, 43–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 894, l. 12; f. 79, op. 1, d. 376, l. 1–2: Kuibyshev’s memo; and RGASPI, f. 85, op. 29, d. 433, l. 1); Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politburo, 125–6.

260. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 365; DVP SSSR, XV: 465–8 (Spilvanek and Japanese journalist Fuse: Aug. 12, 1932), 479–81 (Troyanovsky-Karakhan, Aug. 19), 614–8, 798. Between Dec. 4 and 6, 1932, more than 4,000 Chinese, including 2,400 soldiers (11 generals among them), were taken into Soviet custody. After Japanese demands for their surrender, the Soviets decided to send them to Xinjiang, announcing that they were being sent out of USSR territory. Sladkovskii, Znakomomstvo s Kitaem i kitaitsami, 186 (citing Tsentral’nyi arkhiv porgrannichnykh voisk, f. 160, op. 2, d. 1, l. 7); Barmin, Sovetskii Soiuz i Sintszian, 124 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 117); DVP SSSR, XV: 677; Izvestiia, Dec. 21, 1932.

261. From Jan. 1 through July 1, 1932, 1.37 million households quit collective farms in the RSFSR; 200,000 households quit in Ukraine. Zelenin, “By li ‘kolkhoznyi Neonep’?” 106 (citing RGAE, f. 7446, op. 14, d. 108, l. 34; op. 3, d. 364, l. 2; d. 378, l. 2; op. 2, d. 338, l. 57). The number collectivized by the end of 1932 (completion of the Five-Year Plan) was officially 14.9 million households, or 61.5 percent, rather than the target of 17.9 million.

262. Cairns added that “what surprised me most in Kiev was not what the people said (although conditions there seemed to be worse than in any place I visited in the next five weeks), but that they should all—young, middleaged and old alike—be unanimous and that none of them seemed to care what they said or who heard them, even the police and GPU.” Carynnyk et al., Foreign Office, 13, 51, 42, 105, 111. See also Cairns, Soviet Famine. “There’s no bread, no meat, no fats—nothing,” a senior OGPU official in Leningrad is said to have told the British ambassador. Haslam, “Political Opposition,” 396 (citing FO 371/16322: Strang to Simon in London, Aug. 14, 1932).

263. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 235–6 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 106–13: July 20, 1932), 240–1 (d. 100, l. 137–40: before July 24, 1932). The methods of theft could be ingenious. Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 135–7. Stalin was keen to institutionalize the importance of socialist property in social consciousness. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 119, 222–3. “State socialist property” was theorized as synonymous with “people’s patrimony.” Stuchka, Kurs Sovetskogo grazhdanskogo prava, III: 29.

264. RGAPSI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 895, l. 14 (politburo Aug. 2/8); Sobranie zakonov, 1932, article 360; Kollektivizatsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, 423–4; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 242–56. See also Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism, 21.

265. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 273–5 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 144–51). A second decree, “On the struggle with speculation,” stipulating sentences of five to ten years, followed on Aug. 22: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 896, l. 13; Sobranie zakonov, 1932, article 375. This, too, had come from Stalin’s instructions on holiday. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 243–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 104–11); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 316 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 52); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 896, l. 13.

266. Pravda, Aug. 9, 1932. See also Izvestiia TsIK SSSR i VTsIK, Aug. 8, 1932. Already, places of confinement were far over capacity.

267. Zelenin et al., Istoriia sovetskogo krest’iantsva, II: 428–9n137 (citing RGAE, f. 1562, op. 152, d. 29, l. 58, 29). In the RSFSR alone, more than 160,000 people were convicted under the law in the first year alone. Werth and Mironenko, Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga, I: 135–8.

268. The names are crossed out from the record of the meeting. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 256–8 (personal archive of Kaganovich); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 418–9 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 106–13, 117, 121–3, 144–5, 151; d. 100, l. 1–7).

269. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 273–5 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 144–51).

270. Polish intelligence was still sending ethnic Ukrainian agents across the border on espionage missions, but almost all were being caught, as Stalin knew from intercepted Japanese correspondence out of Warsaw. Mikulicz, Prometeizm w polityce II Rzeczypospolitej, 110–5; Kuromiya, The Voices of the Dead, 220–1. Japan cooperated with Poland to support Ukrainian anti-Communist nationalists, but Soviet intelligence knew this, too, having penetrated Ukrainian groups abroad. Sotskov, Neizvestnyi separatizm, 75–81. On Soviet-Polish prisoner exchanges, including spies, see Pepłoński, Wywiad Polski na ZSSR, 122–3. See also Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 147–8.

271. Stanisław Patek, the Polish envoy to the USSR, and Krestinsky had signed the pact in Moscow on July 25, 1932; it went into effect on Dec. 23, when ratifications were exchanged in Warsaw between Beck and Antononv-Ovseyenko. Ken and Rupasov, Politbiuro TsK VKP (b) i otnosheniia SSSR, 514–9; Ken, Moskva i pakt, 104.

272. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 283–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 153–60: Aug. 16). Balytsky would not arrive in Ukraine as a special plenipotentiary until Nov. 1932; he would be promoted to republic OGPU chief in Feb. 1933. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 340 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 907, l. 20: Nov. 25, 1932); Shapoval et al., ChK-GPU-NKVD, 47–8, 436. But Stalin directed Kaganovich to bring the Red Army into the harvest campaign in Ukraine. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 460 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 79, l. 21).

273. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 232 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 91–104), 285–6 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 3, d. 99, l. 157–60). This overturned the recent politburo decision on sown area expansion that Stalin had mandated (f. 17, op. 3, d. 895, l. 14: Aug. 7, 1932). Total sown area for the 1933 harvest would be 4.7 million hectares fewer than for 1932. Still, crop rotation would not be restored even by 1935, when it was practiced on just 50 percent of the sown area. Davies, “Stalin as Economic Policy-Maker,” 133–4.

274. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 180–1 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 81, l. 107–10), 182 (l. 105).

275. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, l. 38 (Aug. 16, 1932).

276. Also present were Dmitry Maretsky, editor-in-chief of Leningrad Pravda; Pyotr Petrovsky, first deputy editor of Pravda and a former editor of Red Star; and Alexander Sleptsov, a founding editor of Communist Youth League Pravda. Petrovskii, “Poslednii rot front,” 179–98.

277. Merridale, “Reluctant Opposition,” at 392; Merridale, Moscow Politics, 231–3; Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 15–6; Cohen, Bukharin, 234. Ryutin had been born in Eastern Siberia, joined the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social Democrats in 1914, and, after the seizure of power, managed to get elected a delegate to the 10th Party Congress, while participating in the regime crackdown against the Kronstadt sailors. He had once been admonished for alluding to Lenin’s Testament at a ward party bureau session (“We know that Comrade Stalin has his faults, about which Comrade Lenin spoke”). “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev,’” 108; Zagoria, Power and the Soviet Elite, 11; Iakovlev et al., Reabilitatsiia: politicheskie protsessy, 92–104. Around the time of the 16th Party Congress (June 1930), Stalin evidently offered him an opportunity to remain in the Central Committee in exchange for publicly denouncing the right; Ryutin demurred. “M. N. Riutin,” 156. Stalin wrote to Molotov of Ryutin (Sept. 13), “This counterrevolutionary scum must be completely disarmed.” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 215. Eight days later, as if on cue, a denunciation came forward from a former official in the Krasnaya Presnya ward party committee who claimed that in Aug. 1930 Ryutin had called Stalin “a trickster and political intriguer who will lead the country to ruin.” Radzinsky, Stalin, 273 (quoting A. Nemov, without a reference). Hauled before the Central Control Commission, Ryutin denied the accusations (“99 percent of it is the most vile lie”) but did admit that back in 1928 “Comrade Stalin defamed me needlessly and had me thrown out of party work with a clever maneuver. I consider that dishonesty toward me on his part.” On Oct. 5, 1930, Ryutin was expelled from the party for “double-dealing” and right opportunism. On Nov. 13, the OGPU imprisoned Ryutin at Butyrka for counterrevolutionary agitation, but interrogators were unable to break him; Mężyński wrote to Stalin that Ryutin “poses as an innocent wronged.” Stalin, for reasons that remain obscure, ordered Ryutin’s release, which took place on Jan. 17, 1931. “O tak nazyvaemom ‘vsesoiuzom trotskistskom tsentre,’” 110–1; Starkov, “Delo Riutina,” 166–7); Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 22–25; Anfert’ev, “Osobennosti preodoleniia I. V. Stalinym krizisnoi situatsii,” 2 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5282, l. 1). Radzinsky speculates that Ryutin was meant to be used to entrap other oppositionists. Radzinsky, Stalin, 273. See also Tel’man, “Riutin protiv Stalina” (purporting to quote additional instructions from Stalin to Mężyński). Ryutin got hired as an economist at an electrical production unit.

278. “Platforma ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev’ (‘Gruppa Riutina’): ‘Stalin i krzis proletarskoi diktatury’” (1990, no. 8), 201–6, (no. 9), 172.

279. Ryutin had said back at the 12th Party Congress in 1923, when Trotsky attacked the leadership, that “a party cannot exist without its leaders. . . . A party that discredits its leaders is unavoidably weakened, disorganized. Parties are always led by leaders.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 165. See also Getty and Naumov, Yezhov, 74; Starkov, “Trotsky and Ryutin,” 71. See also Joffe, Back in Time, 45; Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 1928, no. 1; Poslednie novosti, Dec. 4, 1927; Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 13; Pavlov [pseudonym], 1920-e: revoliutsiia i biurokratiia, 86–7: a manuscript in the Hoover Institution archives (“Pavlov file”); the identity of the author, a student at Moscow University in the 1920s, remains unclear.

280. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 296. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 53. Besides Ryutin, Ivanov, and the two Kayurovs, the attendees were Natalia Kayurova (wife of Vasilii Kayurov), Vasily Demidov, Professor Pavel Fyodorov, Pavel Galkin, Viktor Gorelov, Nikolai Kolokolov, Boris Ptashny, Grigory Rokhkin, Semyon V. Tokarev, Nikolai Vasileyev, Pyotr Zamyatin. The home was Pyotr Silchenko’s. He was absent.

281. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 54–8. In 1932, Stalin learned from Anna Ulyanova, Lenin’s sister, that their mother was the daughter of a baptized Jew, Alexander Blank, born Srul Moissevich Blank, who had become a landowner and physician. Ulyanova stressed how beneficial it would be to reveal Lenin’s one-quarter Jewish ancestry. Stalin made it a state secret. Volkogonov, Lenin, 9. Lenin had Russian, Qalmyk, German, and Swedish along with Jewish ancestry.

282. “Platforma ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev’ (‘Gruppa Riutina’): ‘Stalin i krzis proletarskoi diktatury’,” (1990, no. 12), 198–9.

283. “Platforma ‘Soiuza marksistov-lenintsev’ (‘Gruppa Riutina’): ‘Stalin i krzis proletarskoi diktatury’,” (1990, no. 11), 162–3, (no. 12), 190, (no. 8), 201.

284. “Platforma ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev’ (‘Gruppa Riutina’): ‘Stalin i krzis proletarskoi diktatury’” (1990, no. 12), 193; Starkov, Martem’ian Riutin, 237–8.

285. Ryutin proposed no alternative leader (he had in mind a collective leadership). Starkov, “Trotsky and Ryutin,” 73. On Oct. 15, 1932, OGPU raided Silchenko’s home, where they found the original 167-page handwritten “Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship,” which they then typed up, the only extant copy.

286. Notwithstanding Ryutin’s bravery, the only way out was not to seize the party but to dissolve it, deliberately or accidentally, by introducing democracy—competitive elections, secret ballot, alternative parties, private property, market relations. There was no salvation from tyranny in Bolshevism.

287. “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev,’” 106 (N. K. Kuz’min and N. A. Storozhenko, who claimed to have received the appeal from Alexander Kayurov).

288. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 54. According to a Molotov speech that was published, Zinoviev in testimony had stated “as far as I can judge, recently a fairly significant section of party members have been seized by the idea of a retreat, that it is necessary to retreat somewhere. This conception comes from my impressions, what I read and hear.” Pravda, Jan. 12, 1933.

289. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 29–30 (Sept. 1932): 1–5. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 298–9.

290. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 31 (Nov. 1932): 18–20. Trotsky’s prescriptions, dated Oct. 22, 1932, presaged Soviet policy in 1933: lowering capital investment and concentrating resources on bringing existing construction to completion. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 298–9.

291. Trotsky received the letter on Oct. 4, 1932: Trotsky archive, Harvard, T 4782; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 246–7, citing conversations with Pierre Broué, editor of Trotsky’s notebooks in French. In late Sept. 1932, the well-informed Menshevik émigré paper Socialist Herald carried word from Moscow of a “letter of the eighteen Bolsheviks” who united “former right and left oppositionists” around the imperative “to remove Stalin.” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Sept. 26, 1932 (report dated Sept. 7). In the Bulletin, Trotsky elaborated: “If the bureaucratic equilibrium in the USSR were to be upset at present, this would almost certainly benefit the forces of counterrevolution.” Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 175.

292. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 167–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 900, l. 33–4; op. 162, d. 13, l. 99–100); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 319 (APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 60, l. 10), 321–4 (l. 13–9). See also Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 463. Stalin’s first meeting back in Moscow was on Aug. 27, 1932. Na prieme, 70. Insider theft would remain an obsession for Stalin. On Nov. 15, 1932, he sent politburo members the interrogation record of a collective farm bookkeeper, with a cover letter deeming it “one of many documents demonstrating the organized embezzlement of collective farm property.” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 336–7 (APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 60, l. 29–34).

293. Tauger, who stresses the natural causes of the famine, carefully showed that the annual reports from the collective farms for 1932 implied an extremely low harvest, and that not only the official figure for the 1932 harvest but revised figures given by Davies and Wheatcroft were likely too high. Ultimately, the size of the 1932 harvest remains uncertain, but the annual report data from 40 percent of the collective farms—which are the only actual harvest data so far discovered—imply a harvest on the order of 50 million tons. Tauger, “1932 Harvest.” Davies and Wheatcroft estimate the 1932 harvest at 58–60 million, but that is based on pre-harvest forecasts. It should be noted, however, that Wheatcroft, who has rejected Tauger’s views, often stridently, subsequently allowed 50 million as the lower band of the estimate without then citing Tauger. Davies, Economic Transformation, 286 (56 million tons plus or minus 10 percent). The Five-Year Plan had originally envisioned a harvest by 1932 of 100–106 million tons; as late as July 1932, the harvest had been estimated at 76–78 million tons, better than in 1931, but in Sept. 1932 the estimates were reduced to 67–71 million. Revised estimates conducted in early 1933 would put the figure between 60 and 65 million; the final official figure, from politburo decision in Sept. 1933, was 69.87 million. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 443–6; Piatliletnyi plan, II/i: 298; Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 248–9 (Sept. 12, 1933); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 234–5.

294. Tauger, “Natural Disaster,” 40–5.

295. Molot, Jan. 23, 1934; VIII Vsekazakhstanskaia kraevaia konferentsiia VKP (b), 159. “The Ukrainian village was leading a nomad life,” in one official’s description of starving refugees, while the Kazakh steppe nomads were being forced into a sedentary life—which also spurred mass flight. Swianiewicz, Forced Labor, 121 (citing a statement to the author in 1933 from an unnamed Central European Communist who had just escaped the USSR). In Aug. 1932, the head of the Kazakhstan Council of People’s Commissars wrote that “the administrative transformation of semi-desert livestock districts into ‘agricultural’ districts has had a ruinous effect on livestock farming.” Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 155.

296. Uraz Isaev (b. 1899), an ethnic Kazakh and chair of the autonomous republic’s Council of People’s Commissars, estimated 10,000 to 15,000 human deaths in spring 1932. Ăbdīraĭymūly et al., Golod v kazakhskoi stepi, 140–51 (APRK, f. 141, op. 17, d. 607, l. 1–14); Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 153–162; Partiinaia zhizn’ Kazakhstana, 1990, no. 6: 83–9.

297. Kuramysov, Na putiakh sotsialisticheskogo pereustroitastva kazakskogo aula, 3–4; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 324 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 113–7). Turar Ryskulov, a vice chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, to protest courageously but vainly to Stalin (Sept. 29) that the settlement mania exhibited “ignorance of the interests of livestock in districts that were mainly livestock districts.” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 503–9 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 670, l. 11–14ob.); Partiinaia zhizn’ Kazakhstana, no. 10 (1990): 76–84; Ryskulov, Sobranie sochinenii, III: 304–16 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 6403, l. 13–6). Kazakh nomads were driven into farming partly by impoverishment, not solely by the regime’s organized sedentarization. Of course, coercive collective farming was not the only farming option those people would have wanted.

298. Pianciola, “Famine in the Steppe,” 184 (citing GARF, f. 6985, op. 1, d. 9, l. 2). Livestock allowances would be increased on Dec. 19, 1934. Pianciola, “Collectivization Famine,” at 244 (citing Kazakhstanskaia pravda, Dec. 20, 1934; GARF, f. 6985, op. 1, d. 9, l. 133); Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 183–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 13, l. 113–7, 118).

299. Khatayevich wrote on Sept. 22, 1932; he had been in Stalin’s office on Sept. 1, 2, and 14. Na prieme, 70–1. On Oct. 23, Kosior wrote to Stalin that Khatayevich “acted incorrectly, doing all this without an agreement with me” (again, the letter is underlined through and through in red pencil), and assured the dictator that the grain still might be procured, and that “the weather right now in the south of Ukraine, even in the Right Bank, is exceptionally fine,” and “the mood of the mass of collective farms is also not bad.” Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 187–91 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 82, l. 136–40), 192–5 (l. 132–5). Khatayevich wrote to Stalin again, at length (Dec. 27, 1932), declaring how hard he was working for the cause, and requesting new party personnel for localities in Ukraine immediately. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 224 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 85, l. 88–94).

300. In normal times, Ukraine and the North Caucasus produced perhaps one-third of the country’s harvest and half its marketable grain. Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, 221 (no citation).

301. Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 316 (table 48). See also Lewin, Making of the Soviet System (1985), 166–7. The 1932 grain procurement plan had been based upon an assumed harvest of 90 million tons, with planned collection of 29.5 million tons—5 million more than the previous year—and export of 6.235 million.

302. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 747–61; VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1936), II: 669. Pravda (Oct. 11, 1932) published the expulsion resolution and a list of the Ryutin group. Twenty Communists were expelled without recourse, and four others for a year, after which they could appeal for reinstatement.

303. Anfert’ev, “‘Delo M. N. Riutina’ v sud’be G. E. Zinovieva i L. B. Kameneva, oktiabr’ 1932 g.,” Istoricheskii arkhiv, 2006, no. 1: 73, 80; “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev,’” 107. All during the summer of 1932, the politburo had been mulling over proposals by the light industry commissar (I. E. Lyubimov) to allow state industrial enterprises to sell their above-plan output on the open market, but now, after Stalin’s return to the capital from holiday, the idea was turned aside. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 188–90 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 76–81), 190n6 (f. 17, op. 3, d. 887, l. 7; d. 891, l. 4; d. 895, l. 3; d. 903, l. 15: Oct. 16, 1932). Stalin did not seek Ryutin’s execution. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937,” 45. On Dec. 14, 1933, both Zinoviev and Kamenev would be reinstated in the party.

304. Serge, Portrait de Staline, 95; Basseches, Stalin, 188. See also Letter of an Old Bolshevik; Krivitsky, I Was Stalin’s Agent, 203; and Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 259.

305. Pravda, Oct. 14, 1932. “Ryutin in prison!” recalled Ante Ciliga (b. 1898), a Yugoslav-born inmate and fervent Trotsky supporter. “The prison received Ryutin coldly but calmly.” (Ryutin was soon transferred.) Ciliga noted that it had been arduous trying to follow political events in the Soviet Union while at liberty, “but to be among two hundred prisoners representing . . . all the shades of opinion that are to be found in the immense country that is Russia—that was a precious privilege which allowed me to acquire a full knowledge of Russian political life in all its aspects.” He called the prison groupings “truly an illegal parliament.” Ciliga, Russian Enigma, 228, 209–10. Ciliga would become an ardent supporter of the Croatian Ustaše fascist regime, criticizing Ante Pavlević as too soft.

306. Radzinsky, Stalin, 274 (no citation). See also Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 361–3 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1264, l. 1–3).

307. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 223.

308. “My dear child Ioseb, first of all I greet you with great love and wish you a long life and good health together with your family. Child, I ask nature to give you complete victory and annihilation of the enemy. . . . Be victorious!” Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 7 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 721, l. 68). This letter is absent from Murin.

309. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiiakh, 1–19 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1549, l. 1–2, 13–4, 15–6, 19–20, 21–2, 23–4, 36–7, 38–9, 41–2, 43–4, 45–6, 51–2, 53–4, 55–6, 59–60, 72–3, 61–3, 64–5).

310. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 16 (Dec. 22, 1931).

311. Alliluyeva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 71; MacNeal, “Stalin’s Family.” Nadya might have visited her sister Anna in Kharkov, in famine-stricken Ukraine, that fall.

312. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 41. Zubalovo consisted of different buildings, the largest was divided between Mikoyan’s large family and others; Stalin got the smaller (still ample) dacha. Also there were two servants’ buildings (Sergei Alliluyev built a machine shop in the servants’ block).

313. “Kirov and Molotov danced a Russian handkerchief dance with their partners,” Yekaterina Voroshilova would later recall. “Mikoyan hovered around Nadezhda Sergeyevna [Alliluyeva] and asked her to dance the lezginka with him. Mikoyan danced very quickly and with great energy . . . Nadezhda Sergeyevna was timid and shy, just as she always was. She covered her face with her hand.” Voroshilova’s husband danced the Ukrainian hopak and then a polka (“he was particularly good at it”). Kun, Stalin, 226 (citing RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 42: diary written 1950s).

314. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 786, l. 123–4 (July 10, 1932). At the same time, Galina Serebryakova (the third and final wife of Sokolnikov) saw Nadya in 1932 waiting at a bus stop jammed with people at the corner of Vozdvizhenka and Mokhovaya. Serebriakova, “Smerch,” 253–4. According to Kamenev’s daughter-in-law Galina Kravchenko, Nadya went to church; no other source confirms this. Vasil’eva, Kremlevskie zheny, 156.

315. Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia, 48 (citing family archive of A. N. Shefov).

316. One fellow student recalled her as full of life and sparkle that Nov. 1932; his account portrays her marriage to Stalin as widely known. Tokaev, Betrayal of an Ideal, 160–1. Tokaev, an Ossetian born (1909) Gokhi Tokati, studied at a Moscow military academy and would seize a chance to defect on a trip to Germany in 1947.

317. “In Moscow I determinedly try not to have anything to do with anyone,” she had written to Maria Svanidze (“Auntie Marusya”), back in 1926. “Sometimes it is strange: so many years not to have acquaintances, close friends. But that obviously depends on character.” Nadya added that she felt closer to the non-party people. “The many new prejudices are terrible. If you don’t work, you’re a ‘hussy’ [‘baba’].” She insisted: “It’s absolutely necessary to have a profession, so that you don’t have to be a gopher for anybody, as normally happens in secretarial work.” RGASPI, f. 44, op. 1, d. 1, l. 417; Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 7; Radzinskii, Stalin, 297–8. Maria Svanidze (née Korona) had been born in Tiflis in 1899 of Jewish extraction, divorced in 1918, and three years later married Nadya’s brother Alexander “Alyosha” Svanidze. She studied at the conservatory in Georgia and in the 1920s sang in the Tiflis opera. See also RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 666.

318. Cherviakova, “Pesochnye chasy,” no. 5: 83. “In Iosif’s presence,” Gogua would later claim, “Nadya resembled the pitiful type [fakir] who in the circus walks barefoot on broken glass smiling at the public. . . . She never knew what would happen next, the next explosion. He was an utter boor. The only creature that softened him was Svetlana . . . Vaska always annoyed him.” Gogua, “Semeinye istorii.” “Nadya repeatedly told me with a sigh,” wrote the defector Boris Bazhanov, who knew her in the 1920s. “‘He’s been silent for three days now. He speaks to no one, he does not respond when someone addressed him. He is a particularly difficult person.’” Bazhanov, Vospominaniia, 154.

319. Svetlana claimed she had received only one letter from her mother, and it was a scolding. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 96. See also Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter, 21 (citing interview with Chrese Evans, formerly Olga Peters), 27 (interview with Svetlana, London, 1994, Meryle Secrest Collection, audio recording, group 2, tape 28, HIA).

320. Kun, Stalin, 201 (citing interviews from the 1960s–70s with László Pollacsek). See also the hearsay in the secret police: Orlov, Secret History, 315, 318; Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 303–4.

321. Vladimir Alliluyev (son of Anna Alliluyeva and Redens) wrote that she suffered “ossification of the cranial sutures. The disease began to progress, accompanied by bouts of depression and headaches . . . She traveled to Germany for consultations with the leading German neuropathologists . . . Nadezhda threatened to commit suicide more than once.” Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 30. Svetlana thought it was schizophrenia. There is hearsay that Nadya had an abortion at one point, causing gynecological complications. Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 12.

322. Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 33. See also Shatunovskaia, Zhizn’ v Kremle, 188.

323. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 15–6 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1549, l. 40–40ob.: March 12, 1931).

324. Kun, Stalin, 204 (citing RGASPI, f. 668, op. 1, d. 15).

325. Khrushchev, Vremia, liudi, vlast’: vosponinaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1999), I: 291–3. The defector Alexander Barmine claimed he saw her on Red Square the day before her death: he recalled her as looking exhausted. But others said she looked in good spirits. Barmine, One Who Survived, 63; Vasil’eva, Kremlevskie zheny, 197.

326. Na prieme, 78; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 45, l. 23; Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 193–4 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 5235, l. 139–40). On Oct. 22, Stalin had sent commissions headed by Molotov to Ukraine and by Kaganovich to the North Caucasus for ten days, to break “the kulak sabotage.” Oskolkov, Golod 1932/1933, 26–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 904, l. 11); Sheboldaev, Doklad, 11; Na prieme, 77.

327. Vladimir Alliluyev recalled that Stalin and Nadya had gone to the Bolshoi together and fought there, but Stalin’s office logbook seems to preclude theater attendance that particular night before the banquet. Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 25.

328. Radzinsky, Stalin, 287 (quoting an interview with Nadezhda Stalin, daughter of Vasily Stalin and Galina Burdonskaya).

329. Rybin, Stalin v Oktiabre, 20; Vasilieva, Kremlin Wives, 103–11. Druzhba narodov, 1997, no. 5: 83 (Lyola Treshtsalina, of the protocol department). Vlasik later told Khrushchev (who was not present at the banquet) that Stalin left for a tryst with Feodosiya Drabkina-Guseva, a woman of Jewish extraction and the wife of the commander Yakov Drabkin (known as Sergei Gusev).

330. Orange peel as the item: Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 25 (based on the hearsay of his grandmother Olga Evgeneevna). A piece of bread as the item, according to Molotov: “Stalin made a tiny ball of bread and, in front of everyone, threw it at Yegorov’s wife.” That act, Molotov claims, triggered Nadya’s departure from the banquet. Chuev, Sto sorok, 250. Svetlana’s version largely adheres to Molotov’s, but also has Stalin proposing a toast to “the destruction of enemies of state,” and rudely reprimanding Nadya for not drinking. Polina observed that Nadya was “perfectly calm” at their parting back at her own apartment. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 108–10. Most scholars follow this account: Radzinskii, Stalin, 287–9; Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 3–22; Service, Stalin, 292–3.

331. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 173–4. Stalin supposedly said, “Let her go.” Shatunovskaia, Zhizn’ v Kremle, 196–7.

332. Svetlana’s account—that Til ran to fetch Bychkova and the two hoisted Nadya’s body onto the bed—is an obvious impossibility because Svetlana, and hence Bychkova, were at the Sokolovka dacha that night. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 109 (citing much later discussions with Bychkova). Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 117; Vaslieva, Kremlin Wives, 67.

333. Secret report of Dr. Kushner: “There is a five millimeter hole over the heart—an open hole. Conclusion: Death was immediate from an open wound to the heart.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 149, d. 2, l. 1–6. Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 16.

334. At her seventh birthday, following her mother’s death, Svetlana was said to have asked what present her mother had sent from Germany. If so, this implies she had not seen the open coffin, as she later claimed. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 37; “Priemysh vozhdia,” Moskovskii komsomolets, Aug. 3, 2004; Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 111–3. See also Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter, 54 (citing Artyom Sergeyev in Kreml’-9 writers, Svetlana Stalina: Escape from the Family).

335. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 39.

336. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 173–4.

337. For eight days running, Pravda published obituaries attributed to Voroshilov’s wife, Molotov’s wife, Orjonikidze’s wife, Postyshev’s wife, as well as Mikoyan, Kagananovich, and others. The obituary published in Pravda (Nov. 10, 1932) was signed by Yekaterina Voroshilova, Polina Zhemchuzhina, Zinaida Orjonikidze, Dora Khazan, Maria Kaganovich, Tatyana Postysheva, and Aikhen Mikoyan. Izvestiya (Nov. 11) published Demyan Bedny’s poem “Death Has Its Severe Guile.” On Nov. 16, Pravda published a letter of grief from Krupskaya to Stalin.

338. No suicide note has turned up. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 112–3. See also Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter, 50–1 (citing interview with Alexander Alliyuev). The funeral commission consisted of Yenukize (chairman), Pauker, Dora Khazan, Kaganovich, Peterson, and Ruben. GARF, f.7523c, op. 149a, d. 2, l. 10–1.

339. Pravda, Nov. 10, 1932; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 666 (Alisa Radchenko). Radzinsky quotes Nadya’s medical file, without citation, from Aug. 1932: “acute pains in the abdominal region—return for further examination in 2–3 weeks’ time.” Another entry, the last: “August 31, 1932. Examination to consider operation in 3–4 weeks.” Radzinsky, Stalin, 292. The medical file is RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1551. Dr. Boris Zbarsky prepared the body for the lying in state (he had mummified Lenin in 1924) and, many years later, is said to have told a friend he covered over a temple wound (rather than a shot to the heart). Kanel, “Vstrecha na lubianke,” 495. Khrushchev recalled that Kaganovich summoned the Moscow party apparatchiks the day after the parade and informed them that Nadya had died suddenly, offering no explanation. Kaganovich summoned the same officials a day or two later, according to Khrushchev, and said, “Stalin has ordered me to tell you that Alliluyeva did not just die; she shot herself.” The implication: it was a traitorous act.Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 52–3.

340. Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 91–3. The author, the wife of a Comintern official, worked in the organization from 1924 through 1933.

341. Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia, IV: 172 (Solovyov); Medvedev, “Smert’ Nadezhdy Alliluevoi”; Alliluyeva, Tol’ko odin god, 127. By some accounts, Stalin had his trusted minion Mekhlis “investigate” the circumstances of Nadya’s death to clear him of rumored responsibility for shooting her. Seleznev, Tainy rossiiskoi politiki XX veka.

342. Barmine, One Who Survived, 264. Kaganovich had a sister named Rachel; she died in 1926; he had a niece named Rosa (born 1919).

343. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, 184, 210; Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 141; Medvedev, Nikolai Bukharin, 39. “An almost indistinguishable door in the wall separated the dining room from Stalin’s bedroom,” one functionary noted. “A bed; two small armoires for underwear, coats, and a jacket; a sink.” Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 2. Stalin first moved to a two-story building (no. 6) closer to the Trinity Gate, the so-called cornered extension of the Amusement Palace, his fourth Kremlin apartment; he moved into the Imperial Senate after its refurbishment.

344. Sochineniia, XIII: 411 (“November 11, 1932, Stalin accompanied the casket with the body of N. S. Alliluyeva-Stalina to the Novodevichy cemetery”). According to Orlov, Stalin followed for only a few minutes, as far as the Manège (right outside the Kremlin), then got into a car with Pauker. Orlov, Secret History, 319–21. Rumors circulated that Stalin’s brother-in-law and fellow Georgian Alexander Svanidze, who was around his height and had a mustache, substituted for him. Kolsenik, Khronika zhizni sem’i Stalina, 21.

345. Pravda, Nov. 13, 1932. “Everyone knows that some beings are as tender and delicate as flowers—she was one of them,” Alexandra Kollontai, the daughter of a tsarist general and the erstwhile wife of another (before she left him), who served as Soviet envoy to Sweden, wrote ingratiatingly to Stalin of Nadya. “Those who knew her will treasure the beauties of her soul in their memories . . . Please remember that the Cause has need of you. Take care of yourself!” Kun, Stalin, 210 (citing RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 35).

346. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 39.

347. Kaganovich would recall that Stalin “was terribly down.” Chuev, Kaganovich, Shepilov, 94. Svetlana recalled: “He said that he did not want to go on living. . . . [Stalin] was in such a state that they were afraid to leave him alone. He had sporadic fits of rage.” Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 112; Richardson, Long Shadow, 129–30. “The children forgot her in a few days, but me she crippled for life,” Stalin was later to have complained, according to Maria Svanidze, who blamed her. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob”iatialkh, 177 (May 9, 1935).

348. One of his bodyguards recalled late in life that Stalin would sit for long periods at Nadya’s grave at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery. Svetlana asserted that her father never visited the grave. Stalin (film by Thames Television, London, 1990); Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 113. Some writers have asserted that a copy of Ryutin’s appeal denouncing her husband was found in Nadya’s room. Radzinsky, Stalin, 296 (quoting a Vlasik interview with N. Antipenko); Rayfield, Stalin and his Hangmen, 239–40.

349. Fridberg, “Gosudarstvennye zagotovki,” 350.

350. Ken, “‘Moia ostenka byla slishkom rezkoi’: I. V. Stalin i rekunstruktsiia RKKA,” 152n3 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 754, l. 43–5: Jan. 1933).

351. Kuibyshev, back on Aug. 2, 1932, in a speech not covered by the press but published in 200,000 copies, had told Moscow party officials that peasants lacked incentives—so he knew the score. Kuibyshev, Uborka, khlebozagotovki, i ukrelplenie kolkhovov: rech’ na sobranii dokladchikov Moskovskoi partiinoi organziatsii (Moscow, 1932), reprinted in Kuibyshev, Stat’i i rechi, V: 294–322; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 242. Ivnitsky points out that Stalin had denied he was forcing collectivization to solve the procurement problem; rather, Stalin claimed he was building socialism in the countryside. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 205.

352. Rees, Iron Lazar, 110, citing O kolkhoznom stroitel’stve (Moscow, 1932), 218; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 520–1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 21, d. 3377, l. 83), 575–7 (op. 3, d. 2025, l. 42–42ob.: Dec. 14, 1932); Graziosi, Soviet Peasant War, 67–8. “If one were to sack them one would have to sack half,” Kaganovich wrote to Stalin (Nov. 5) about the state farm directors. “We will have to remove some, and work on others. . . . Judges passed sentences, but no one carried them out. Clearly, in such a situation, they are mocking us.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganaovich, 298–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 177–80). About 26,000 of the 120,000 rural Communists in the North Caucasus would be purged; another 30,000 would quit rather than submit to the procedure. Shimotomai, “Note on the Kuban Affair”; O kolkhoznom stroitel’stve (Rostov, 1932), 281–3, 286–90.

353. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, l. 108. In the wake of the North Caucasus purge, party organizations in Kazakhstan and Ukraine requested permission to purge their ranks. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 26, d. 54, l. 265; Tauger, “People’s Commisariat of Agriculture,” 298n99 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 907, l. 73/49–74/50).

354. Stalin also sent a secret telegram to OGPU plenipotentiaries to forward interrogation protocols on sabotage of grain procurement and embezzlement of collective farm property to “the Central Committee.” Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 201 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 84, l. 84: Nov. 29, 1932). Goloshchiokin replied immediately that severe repression was already under way, apologizing for not having informed Stalin earlier. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 197 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 83, l. 137), 198–9 (l. 138–138ob.).

355. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 74 (citing Sotsialisticheskoe zemledelie, Nov. 12, 16, 28, and Dec. 17, 1932).

356. Maximilien Savelev wrote the letter to Stalin (Nov. 19), indicating he had heard of the meeting from someone else (I. V. Nikolsky), a colleague of Eismont’s. Savelev and Nikolsky co-signed a second letter to Stalin (Nov. 22) with new details. They quoted the drunk Eismont as stating, “What is to be done! Either comrade Stalin, or peasant uprisings.” According to the informant, “Smirnov said that one speech by Stalin at the congress of Agrarians Marxists in a few days brought to nothing the results of his [Smirnov’s] three-year work to restore the herds.” Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia, I: 56–128 (at 66); Vatlin, Stenogrammy zasedanii politburo, III: 551–676 (at 642: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1011).

357. Mikoyan as well as Kirov, among others, inserted more fervid condemnations into the transcript when offered a chance to edit their remarks. Wynn, “‘Right Opposition,’” 97–117. Stalin removed his heckling of Smirnov. The crisis atmosphere was well summarized by the émigré press: Sotsialisticheski vestnik, Nov. 26, 1932.

358. Serge, Portrait de Staline, 94–5. Serge gives no date for the rumored resignation, vaguely referring to a time after Nadya’s suicide and before the 17th Party Congress. Serge was in Moscow then. Deutscher has Stalin asking to resign in late 1932. Deutsher, Stalin, 333–4.

359. He underscored the many nonaggression pacts as evidence of his success, asserting that capitalists do not sign such pacts with the weak, and once again blamed food difficulties on kulak saboteurs, their silent middle-peasant supporters, and soft (or worse) rural party officials. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 141–2. See also Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 52. Stalin’s gloss on the countryside was fed back to him in the secret police reports. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, 446–52 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 43, l. 75–95), 472–6 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 10, d. 520, l. 699–708), and 488–9 (d. 514, l. 145–7).

360. Stalin demanded a “knockout blow” to any internal opposition. Vatlin, Stenogrammy zasedanii politburo, 581 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1010); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 557–561 (d. 1011, l. 9ob.-15). See also Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 187–8.

361. A Central Committee plenum (Jan. 1933) rubber-stamped the expulsions, and the reprimands to Tomsky, Rykov, and V. V. Schmidt (a Rykov associate) for encouraging anti-party work. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), VI: 32–3.

362. Koenker et al., Revelations, 405–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 85, d. 379, l. 1, 1ob, 2); Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 202 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 84, l. 139). On Dec. 15, 1932, Stalin set up a separate agricultural department in the Central Committee apparatus and named Kaganovich responsible.

363. Haslam, Threat from the East, 8; Bridges, “Yoshizawa Kenkichi.” Alexander Troyanovsky (b. 1882) was the scion of lesser gentry, educated at the Mikhailov artillery school, and originally a Menshevik; during the NEP, he worked in trade before being appointed envoy to Japan in late 1927.

364. Izvestiia, Jan. 17, 1933; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, III: 574–5.

365. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 910, l. 2. At this time the regime also tightened the screws by introducing political departments into the machine tractor stations and state farms. These would be announced at the Jan. plenum, when Stalin would blame failures of county party committees for forcing his hand. Zelenin, “Politotdely MTS,” 45; Shimotomai, “Springtime for the Polkitotdel,” 1034; Thorniley, Rise and Fall, 124–40.

366. Stalin received the OGPU’s Yagoda and Prokofyev that day. Na prieme, 83. Kirov at the OGPU jubilee stated, “It is necessary to say openly that the Cheka-GPU is an organ called to punish, and to simplify the matter, not just to punish but to punish in real fashion, so that population growth in the ‘other world’ will be duly noticed.” Pogonii, Lubianka, 200 (no citation).

367. Campbell, Russia, 13–8; Stalin, “Gospodin Kembell priviraet,” Bolshevik, 1932, no. 22: 1–16 (dated Dec. 23, 1932; published in the Nov. 30 issue). “He was very erect and alert, dressed in Russian costume, consisting of boots, breeches, and a white Russian shirt worn outside the trousers with a black belt,” Campbell wrote of Stalin, while recalling the presence of American-made typewriters and filing cabinets. Campbell claimed the audience with Stalin (Jan. 28, 1929) had taken place in the Kremlin but then wrote about ascending to the sixth floor (i.e., at Old Square). Campbell appears in Stalin’s office logbook as “Kellbell.” Na prieme, 30. In response to the condemnation, Campbell told a reporter, “I have a very high regard for Mr. Stalin,” adding, “I consider him a real leader and perhaps the only man who can bring that country out of its duress and turmoil.” Spokesman Review, Dec. 31, 1932. Trotsky seized upon the Campbell book: Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 32 (Dec. 1932).

368. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 339–40 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 175, l. 9: Nov. 25, 1932); Sobranie zakonov, 1932, no. 84: article 516; Hoffman, Peasant Metropolis Social Identities, 52; Kessler, “Passport System.” From Jan. through April 1933, the state issued 6.6 million passports while denying 265,000 applications. Violations were rampant; the passports had no photographs.

369. Collective farmers living within 60 miles (100 km) of Moscow and Leningrad would be given passports, as an exception.

370. Zelenin, “O nekotorykh ‘belykh piatnakh,’” 14 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 26, d. 68, l. 1–9, 32, 35).

371. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 270.

372. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 134–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 750, l. 52, 54–6; op. 3, d. 913, l. 9); KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), VI: 18; Pravda, Jan. 13, 1933; VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 762–83.

373. “Itogi pervoi piatiletki: doklad 7 ianvaria 1933 g.,” Sochineniia, XII: 161–215. See also Kontorovich, “Military Origins.” On class struggle, Stalin had remarked in July 1928 that “as we move forward, the resistance of capitalist elements will grow, the class struggle will become sharper, and Soviet power, whose forces will grow even more, will carry out . . . a policy of suppression of the exploiter’s resistance.” Sochineniia, XI: 170–1. Trotsky in April 1918 had observed, “The further and the more the revolutionary movement develops, here and abroad, the more tightly the bourgeoisie of all lands will close ranks.” Volkogonov, Trotsky, 121–2 (citing Sochineniia, XVII/i: 205).

374. He added: “They are for the procurements, but they insist on creating all sorts of unnecessary reserves for animal husbandry, insurance,” which enabled them to steal socialist property. Sochineniia, XIII: 216–33 (at 229–30, 207–8); Kaganovich, “Tseli i zadachi,” 17, citing Stalin; Materialy ob”edinennogo plenuma TsK i TsKK VKP (b), 144. Nikolai Krylenko reported to the plenum that 54,645 people in the RSFSR had been convicted under the law on theft of socialist property, leading to 2,100 executions. He complained of resistance to implementing the law: “One people’s judge straight-out said to me: ‘My hand will not rise to punish a person with ten years for stealing wisps of grain.’” Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 73–4, 126–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, l. 15–21). A Jan. 30, 1933, decree would extend application of the law to accounting fraud as well as wrecking or sabotage. Volin, “Agrarian Collectivism,” 622. In a series of decrees, including on Jan. 19, 1933, the regime attempted to incentivize sowing and attain larger yields by shifting from confiscatory “grain procurement” to “compulsory delivery” in the form of a tax, which was to be levied not on harvest estimates but “from the land actually under cultivation.” All surpluses above the obligations were supposed to remain at the disposal of the collective farmers, but the legalized peasant markets were supposed to be shut down until state taxes had been met. Kollektivizatsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, 441–5.

375. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, vyp. 1, l. 55. Stalin had had Trotsky stripped of his citizenship on Feb. 20, 1932.

376. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 91–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 511, l. 12–22: typescript with Rudzutaks’s corrections), 95–7 (l. 215–20: typescript with Bukharin’s corrections), 76–7 (l. 17–9: typescript with Smirnov’s corrections). The plenum confirmed Smirnov’s expulsion from the Central Committee, the expulsions from the party of Eismont and Tolmachev, and the reprimands for Tomsky and Rykov.

377. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 200 (RGAE, f. 8040, op. 8, d. 20, l. 25–25ob.); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 913, l. 15. The Ukrainian hierarchs, mimicking Stalin from the spring, decided the latest reduction had to be kept secret, lest grain procurement officials get demoralized.

378. Stalin had Levon Mirzoyan, an ethnic Armenian serving as second secretary of the Urals province, replace Goloshchyokin, who was sacked Jan. 21, 1933. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 914, l. 9. At the Jan. 1933 Central Committee plenum, Goloshchyokin had trumpeted Kazakhstan’s supposed successes in collectivization in the face of unmitigated catastrophe. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 625–31 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, vyp. I, l. 19ob.–21ob., 43ob.–44ob.); Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 202–4; Ryskulov, Sobranie sochinenii, III: 316–8, (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 6403, l. 17).

379. One “Trotskyite,” during his arrest, was pointedly noted to have been on the phone with Radek. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 388–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 139, l. 173–6).

380. From Jan. 1933, even formal politburo meetings would decline. Detailed politburo protocols were still compiled, as if Stalin’s decisions and the ad hoc gatherings in his office constituted an official meeting. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 386 ff.

381. Khromov, Po stranitsam, 23–4.

382. Special settlements in Kazakhstan and Western Siberia were ordered to prepare to receive up to 500,000 each: In the event, 133,000 were deported to Siberia during 1933, and a similar number to other remote destinations, for a total of 270,000 by year’s end. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChk, 418 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 14, l. 96: March 20, 1933); Ellman, “Role of Leadership Perceptions,” 831; Krasil’nikov, Serp i molokh, 95, 106, 110–26; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 55–6, 63.

383. “Information has reached the Central Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars about a mass exodus of peasants from the Kuban and Ukraine ‘for grain’ into the Central Black-Earth province, Volga, Moscow province, the Western province, Belorussia,” the decree stated. “The Central Committee and Council of People’s Commissars do not doubt that this peasant exodus, just as in the previous year from Ukraine, is organized by the enemies of Soviet power, the SRs and agents of Poland, with the aim of agitating ‘through the peasants’ in the northern regions of the USSR against collective farms and generally against Soviet power.” The decree was composed in Stalin’s hand; Molotov’s signature on the original was absent. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 634–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 45, l. 109–109ob.), 635–6 (f. 17, op. 42, d. 80, l. 9–11), 636–8 (d. 72, l. 109–11), 638 (l. 113); Oskolkov, Golod 1932/1933, 19 (citing PARO, f. 79, d. 74, l. 40). Yevdokimov, in his report on implementation, tied peasant flight to rebellion, and noted how the heavy secret police pressure was curbing the exodus. Stalin underlined these passages. By contrast, Balytsky, who gave exact numbers (31,963 people), observed that “in the majority of cases exodus is motivated by a search for earnings,” that “only part of those leaving villages are bringing their families,” and that “the exodus of collective farmers is of significantly less scope than that of individual farmers.” Stalin did not underline any of these revealing passages. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 392–4 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 189, l. 3–10). On Feb. 16, 1933, a politburo decree ordered the OGPU to apply the Jan. 22 interdiction decree to the Lower Volga. Ivnitskii, Golod 1932–1933 godov, 269–70 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 45, l. 109).

384. The regime proved better able to block emigration to Poland and Romania than into China, Iran, and Afghanistan. Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, 237, 246–47. On March 1, the politburo granted extrajudicial troikas in Belorussia powers of execution in “cases of counterrevolutionary organizations and groupings consisting of kulaks and White Guard elements.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 63 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 212, l. 1–2).

385. On Feb. 17, Yagoda reported the interdiction of 150,391 people across eight republics or regions, of whom 114,579 had been returned. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChk, 397–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 914, l. 1; op. 162, d. 14, l. 48, 51), 398–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 189, l. 26–7), 399–406 (d. 196, l. 127–38), 406–7 (d. 189, l. 36–6).

386. Pravda, Jan. 24, 1933.

387. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 245; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 232.

388. In July 1932, the Nazi party had received 13.7 million votes, 37 percent, and won 230 seats, vs. 133 seats for the Social Democrats. (The July 1932 turnout was Weimar’s largest, 84.1 percent.) In Nov. 1932, the Nazis dropped to 196 seats.

389. Orlow, History of the Nazi Party, II: 18–9. Nazi party membership, 25,000 in 1925 and around 2 million in 1933 when Hitler was made chancellor, would grow to 4.4 million by 1936, when membership requirements would be tightened. Over time, the Nazi party would become more proletarian; the Soviet party, less so. At the same time, Nazism enjoyed far stronger appeal in rural locales than the Soviet Community party did.

390. Jones, “Establishment of the Third Reich”; Jones, “Hindenburg and the Conservative Dilemma.” See also Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, 83–4.

391. Winkler, Weimar, 509. “I solemnly prophesy to you that this damnable man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and bring inconceivable misery down upon our nation,” General Ludendorff wrote to Hindenburg. “Coming generations will curse you on your grave because of this action.” Fest, Hitler, 411. Ludendorff had collaborated with Hitler in the lunatic Beer Hall putsch of 1923.

392. Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power. The cabinet led by Hitler lacked a majority in the Reichstag, a fact von Papen concealed from Hindenburg. This was the third “presidential” cabinet in a row. See also Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik, 443–80; and Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 374–5, 413–25.

393. Beckles, “Hitler, the Clown.”

394. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, II/iii: 120–1 (Jan. 31, 1933).

395. Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, 69; DBFP, 2nd series, IV: 402; Francois-Poncet, Souvenirs, 70.

396. Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis.

397. Bessel, Political Violence, 76–7; Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 44.

398. The Center Party and the Bavarian People’s Party had entertained the possibility of coalition government with the Nazis, whereas the Social Democrats, the only consistently unequivocal defenders of Weimar democracy, remained fixated on the letter of the law even though they had been victims of extra-constitutional maneuvers. The SPD opposed as demagogy popular job-creation measures such as public works, which the Nazis strongly supported. Gates, “German Socialism.”

399. Geyer, “Etudes in Political History,” 101–23; Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament.

400. Winkler, Der Weg, 444–5, 754. Even after the Nazis had come to power and decimated the German labor movement, the Comintern executive committee would continue to single out Social Democrats as “the main prop of the bourgeoisie also in the countries of open dictatorship.” McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 112. See also Fischer, Stalin and German Communism; and Bahne, Die K.P.D.

401. Thälmann wrote to the Comintern (Jan. 27, 1933) that the Nov. 1932 election showed a crisis had overtaken the Nazi party, and some “petit-bourgeoisie” were moving to the antifascist camp, joining the working masses. (Not long thereafter, Thälmann, who had consistently called Nazism and Social Democracy “twins,” was arrested by the Nazis. He would spend eleven years in solitary confinement before being executed at Buchenwald.) Shirinia, Komintern v 1933 godu, 119 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 19, d. 248, l. 17–8). By contrast, the Comintern’s Georgi Dimitrov was urging unification of Communists with Social Democrats in “antifascist actions.” Sobolev, Georgii Dimitrov, 102–3; Leibzon and Shirinia, Povorot v politike kominterna, 50–7. See also von Rauch, “Stalin und die Machtergreifung Hitlers,” 117–40.

402. This is the surmise of Tucker, Stalin in Power, 232.

403. A Nov. 1933 document, advanced at the next Comintern enlarged plenum, which could not be put forward without Stalin’s approval, defined “fascism as the open terrorist dictatorship of the more reactionary, more chauvinistic and more imperialist elements of finance capital.” Shirinia, Komintern v 1933 godu, 469–70 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 171, d. 38, l. 212; d. 299, l. 103; d. 301, l. 4; op. 19, d. 248, l. 222); Ferarra and Ferarra, Conversando con Togliatti.

404. DGFP, series C, I: 464; G. Castellan, “Reichswehr et Armée Rouge,” in La Relation Germano-Soviétiques de 1933 a 1939, 248; F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 360; A. E. Ioffe, Vneshniaia politika Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1928–1932, 267.

405. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 105 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 91, d. 28, l. 189). On Jan. 23, 1933, days before Hitler’s formal ascension, in his speech on foreign affairs, Molotov declared that “of all the countries that have diplomatic relations with us, with Germany we have had and have the strongest economic relations.” The many Jewish diplomats in Soviet service distinguished between the fascist Mussolini—with whom the Soviets enjoyed amicable relations—and Nazism. DVP SSSR, XVI: 50–6; III sessiia TsIK SSSR 6–ogo sozyva: stenograficheskii otchet, 23–3o inavaria 1933 g., biulleten’ no.1, 37–43; Dullin, Men of Influence, 93 (citing internal Soviet diplomatic correspondence referring to Mein Kampf).

406. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 105 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 91, d. 28, l. 90–1). Foreign Minister Neurath was not a Nazi. Neither was Germany’s ambassador to Moscow, Dirksen, who assured the foreign affairs commissariat that Hitler’s and Rosenberg’s public statements “contain no real political significance” and that “real state policy will quickly compel the Nazis to forget about their previous plans.” Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 105 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 91, d. 28, l. 206).

407. Goebbels convinced Hitler to make May 1, 1933, a paid holiday (“Germany honors labor”). As workers marched from factories through the capital to the parade grounds at Tempelhof, airplanes flew in formation overhead, and radio loudspeakers broadcast songs about miners, farmers, and soldiers. In the evening, Hitler addressed workers as patriots responsible for Germany’s industrial might. “The biggest demonstration of all times,” noted the Berliner Morgenpost, a leftist newspaper. The grandiose Nazi initiative had elicited the support of the socialist Free Trade Unions, but on May 2 Nazi storm troopers assaulted them. Fritzsche, Life and Death, 46–7. A decade later Goebbels would reminisce that “only then was the National Socialist state on stable foundations.” Fröhlich, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, teil II, VIII: 197 (May 2, 1943).

408. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 207–9.

409. Pravda, Feb. 18, 1933; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 21. Rees, Iron Lazar, 113. At the gathering land commissar Yakovlev painted a more truthful, grim picture of collective farm operation from observations in Odessa province. Pravda, Feb. 19, 1933. Kaganovich had returned to the North Caucasus in late Jan. 1933, and reported cases of cannibalism but also of feigned starvation and “vicious terror” against the regime. He would go to his grave without acknowledging the tragedy. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 639 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 215, l. 74); “Dve besedy s L. M. Kaganovichem.”

410. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd kolkhoznikov-udarnikov, 66–7.

411. Pravda, Feb. 23, 1933, Sochineniia, XIII: 236–56 (at 251–2).

412. Sochineniia, XIII: 246–7. Oja, “From Krestianka to Udarnitsa.” Officially, only 15.25 million households were collectivized as late as mid-1933. Kolkhozy vo vtoroi, 1.

413. The arsonist confessed and claimed to have acted alone. German Communists alleged the Nazis had set him to the task to justify a premeditated anti-Communist repression. In fact, Nazi higher-ups appear to have been panicked the night of the fire. Mommsen, “Reichstag Fire,” 129–222; Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 456–8, 731–2. There is one eyewitness account, by a journalist of the London Daily Express: Delmer, “Reichstag Fire.”

414. Kershaw, “Hitler Myth,” 52–3. The Communists, despite the terror, still won 12.3 percent, but Hitler now banned the party by decree. The Social Democrats won 18.3 percent. Turnout was a record 88.8 percent.

415. Germany’s constitutional court accepted the validity of the Enabling Act. Bracher, German Dictatorship, 224. See also Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 117.

416. Mommsen, “Der Reichstagbrand.” See also Kershaw, “Hitler Myth,” 54–6.

417. The consul had just seen the body of a man flayed alive. Larson, In the Garden of Beasts, 5 (citing the Messersmith Papers).

418. “Germany,” he had warned in Mein Kampf, in his typical inversion, “is the next great objective of Bolshevism.” Hitler, Mein Kampf, 750–1. See also Thies, Architekt der Weltherrschaft.

419. Hitler had not tried to block a special bridge credit of 140 million reichsmarks by Dresdner and Deutsche banks (Feb. 23, 1933). The refinancing alleviated pressure on the Soviets, who owed Germany 1.2 billion marks, of which 700 million was due. (By Dec. 1934, the debt would amount to 250 million.) Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 283–7. Hitler also submitted the 1931 protocol extending the 1926 Berlin Treaty to the Reichstag for ratification on May 5, 1933. DGFP, series C, I: 91–3n7, 355–8 (April 28), 385–9 (May 5); von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 122; Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion, 87–8.

420. Between April 30 and May 4, 1933, the editor of the semiofficial Gazeta Połska, Bogusław Miedziński, visited Moscow as a back channel contact; Radek reciprocated to Warsaw, July 6–22, under the pretext of visiting his mother. Radek’s report: “Polish-Soviet Rapprochement” (July 26, 1933): AVP RF, f. 010, op. 7, d. 12, l. 71–81. The Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg traveled to Britain in May 1933 to gin up support against the Communist menace, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, 1933, no. 12: 14–20.

421. Shirinia, Komintern v 1933 godu, 141–2 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 25, d. 237, l. 69, 79–80; d. 233, l. 69–80). German Communist party turnover was high: Up to three-quarters of the members were unemployed and therefore unconnected to factories. Bahne, “Die Kommunistitche Partei Deutschlands,” 662; Grebing, Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 310.

422. Firsov, “Stalin i Komintern,” 10; Shirinia, Komintern v 1933 godu, 169–77 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 18, d. 963, l. 134–5, 182). By late 1933, the number of legal Communist parties would dwindle to sixteen, from a peak of seventy-two; another seven were semilegal.

423. Robert Tucker held Stalin “chiefly responsible” for the failure of the German Communists and Social Democrats to work together in a united front of the left against Hitler, but did not explain how the two leftist parties would have reconciled in Stalin’s absence. Winkler argued that “the gulf between the two workers’ parties became so deep . . . that a common unified front was no longer imaginable.” Tucker, Stalin in Power, 225–32; Winkler, Der Weg, 864.

424. Ivnitskii, “Golod 1932–1933 gg.: kto vinovat?,” 36. Davies and Wheatcroft estimate perhaps as many as 70 million lived in regions affected by famine, even excluding the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 411.

425. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 47.

426. Ivnitskii, “Golod 1932–1933 godov: kto vinovat?,” 61 (citing the politburo archive without details). Peasants from “surplus” population regions were being forcibly resettled to ghost villages of the North Caucasus and elsewhere as well. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 428 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 929, l. 133, op. 162 d. 15, l. 100–1; GARF, f. 5446, op. 1, d. 470, l. 179–80). On March 17, 1933, the regime sought to restrict seasonal labor migration, requiring collective farm permission for exit and threatening food denial to “flitters who leave before the sowing and return for the harvest.” Pravda, March 20, 1933.

427. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 254–65 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 960, l. 1–12).

428. Maksudov, “Geografiia goloda 1933 goda”; Maksudov, “Ukraine’s Demographic Losses,” 27–43.

429. On March 15, Kosior sent a long report to Stalin from Ukraine begging for more tractors and food aid of not less than 36,000 tons. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 304–17 (APRF, f. 3, op. 61, d. 794, l. 73–86). Ryskulov noted, correctly, that “the situation that has taken shape right now in Kazakhstan . . . cannot be found in any other territory or republic.” He even wrote that because of the previous local party leadership group, “it was forbidden officially to say (even in Alma-Ata, where Kazakh corpses were collected from the streets), that there was famine and deaths therefrom. More than that, local functionaries were not bold enough to admit that livestock had declined.” Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 204–25 (GARF, f. R-5446, op. 27, d. 23, l. 245–53); Ryskulov, Sobranie sochinenii, III: 320–48 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 6403, l. 138–46). See also Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 220–3 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 5287, l. 33–8); Ăbdīraĭymūly et al., Golod v kazakhskoi stepi, 166–7 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 6403, l. 37), 196–200; Werth, “La famine au Kazakhstan”; and Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 687–91 (RGASPI, f. 112, op. 47, d. 7, l. 26, 269–83: Dec. 23, 1933).

430. Stragglers were congregating near factories, according to Molchanov, and knocking on the doors of workers begging (“‘Help me, I was fired without cause.’ ‘Help me, I am a starving unemployed’”). Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 298–303 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 56, l. 11–6). Khatayevich, in Dnepropetrovsk, reported (March 15, 1933) that “in reality there are no bazaars,” meaning no way to supplement rations. Golod 1932–33 rokiv na Ukraini, 465–7.

431. Rudich, Holod 1932–1933 rokiv na Ukraini, 409 (March 5, 1933), 433–7 (March 12), 480–1 (April 1); Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 420 (RGAE, f. 8040, op. 8, d. 25, l. 32–5: March 22, 1933). “Citizenness Gerasimenko ate the corpse of her dead sister,” noted a March 1933 report from the North Caucasus for the OGPU higher-ups. “Citizen Doroshenko, after the death of his father and mother, was left with infant sisters and brothers, ate the flesh of his brothers and sisters when they died of hunger.” OGPU operatives appended many names of hardworking farmers who had died of starvation. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 648–9 (TsA FSB, f. 4, op. 11, d. 42, l. 62–4: March 7, 1933), 662–5 (f. 2, op. 11, d. 42 l. 113–6: April 3, 1933).

432. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 363–64 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 42, l. 149–50: North Caucasus, March 21, 1933), 422–4 (d. 551, l. 36–8: March 31, 1933).

433. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 527–8 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 10, d. 514, l. 234–6: Nov. 5, 1932), 661–2 (op. 11, d. 42, l. 101–3: April 1, 1933).

434. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 644–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 741, l. 3). That March of 1933, Trotsky, from Turkey, sought to reconcile himself with Stalin, pledging readiness to “enter into preliminary negotiations without any publicity.” Stalin might have played along, trying to lure him back to Moscow, but, whether from distraction or other causes, appears not to have tried. In summer 1933, Trotsky would accept an offer of asylum in France, although he would not be allowed to settle in Paris. Petrement, Simone Weil: A Life, 189–91.

435. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 206, 420 (RGAE, f. 8040, op. 8, d. 25, l. 32–5: March 22, 1933).

436. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 330–1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 918, l. 1, 18–19, 23–4).

437. This was part of a re-registration of weapons Union-wide. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChk, 419 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 14, l. 96–7).

438. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 192–4 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 907, l. 58–60: Voroshilov to Gamarnik, from Sochi, Dec. 7, 1932), 196–7 (d. 38, l. 80: Dec. 17, 1932), 213 (d. 43, l. 60–3).

439. The year before, Kopelev had fallen in love with the daughter of a specialist accused of being a Polish spy in the Shakhty case (Iu. N. Matov), who was sentenced to death but received a reprieve. Kopelev, I sotvoril sebe kumira, 234.

440. Kopelev, “Last Grain Collections (1933),” 224–86. The official was Roman Terekhov. He would survive and, after Stalin’s death, recall the following rebuke in late 1932: “We’ve been told that you, Comrade Terekhov, are a good speaker. It seems that you are a good storyteller—you have made up quite a good fable about famine, thinking to frighten us, but it won’t work! Wouldn’t it be better for you to quit the post of provincial party secretary and the Ukrainian Central Committee and join the Writers’ Union? Then you can write your fables, and fools will read them.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 241 (citing Pravda, May 26, 1964); Zelenin, “O nekotorykh ‘belykh piatnakh,’” 15–6.

441. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 198–237.

442. One contemporary described Postyshev as “tall and thin as a lath, with a grating bass voice. No fool . . . but careless of others’ feelings.” Tokaev, Betrayal of an Ideal, 166. Conspicuously, Postyshev had told the Jan. 1933 Central Committee plenum that “it is not good hiding behind the back of the kulak, even more so when his back is not as wide as before,” warning “we will not change the situation like that” and urging plenum attendees to get better at administration of the large-scale, complex economy. Zelenin, “Politotdely MTS,” 53. In March 1933, two months after Postyshev’s arrival and one month after the appointment of Balytsky as NKVD plenipotentiary in Ukraine, Mykola Skrypnyk had been sacked as the republic’s education commissar. On July 7, 1933, vilified at the Ukrainian politburo by Postyshev for “counterrevolutionary nationalism,” Skrypnyk would go home to his apartment in Kharkov and take his own life rather than politically recant. Corbett, “Rehabilitation of Mykola Skrypnyk.”

443. Kopelev managed to transfer to Moscow University, where he did German studies. He would be expelled from the Communist Youth League for ties to Trotskyites.

444. Kopelev, Education of a True Believer, 11–2. See also Crossman, God That Failed, 43, 53 (Koestler). Kopelev’s father, an agronomist, raged at him, the “editor-philosopher,” who had seized starving peasants’ grain. Their argument dissolved in drunken tears. Kopelev regarded his father as “a conscientious specialist, but a limited, vacillating philistine, weighed down with old Socialist Revolutionary prejudices.”

445. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 423 (citing TsDAGOU, f. 1, op. 20, d. 6275, l. 225: Kharkov, May 30, 1933).

446. Sholokhov largely blamed regional officialdom, but he also called what he saw “not individual instances of excesses,” but “the ‘method’ of carrying out grain procurements.” On July 4, 1933, the politburo would hear Shkiryatov’s report on “excesses” in Veshensk county, after which the second secretary, the plenipotentiary for grain collections, and others were transferred elsewhere, but not arrested. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 717 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 2035, l. 4), 717–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 827, l. 1–22), 720–1 (f. 17, op. 3, d. 2040, l. 5–6); “Sholokhov i Stalin: perepiska nachala 30-x godov”; Pravda, March 10, 1964; Murin, Pisatel’ i vozhd’, 28–58, 68, 145–7.

447. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 429–35 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 171, l. 91–101). Whereas in 1932, 3,889 “socially alien elements” were removed from the ranks, the number jumped to 22,308 in 1933. There would be more than 20,000 arrests in 1933 in the army of spies and wreckers. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 49–51. Stalin had told the Central Committee (May 2, 1933) that “the Russian nation is the most talented nation in the world,” a long-standing theme of his, but also that “the peasant [muzhik]” had to be taught “not to oppose his interests to the state,” not to live in the past, for “the old must die out.” Stalin’s approach to the village rested largely on his view of the Russian peasant (muzhik), rather than the Ukrainian peasant or Kazakh nomad. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1117, l. 10, 11, 14, 23.

448. On April 24, 1933, the Japanese ambassador to Moscow (Ota) inquired of Karakhan about purchasing the Chinese Eastern Railway, and on May 2 the Soviets agreed to negotiations quickly, but the Kwantung Army had no intention of buying what they could seize, the NKVD reported to Stalin. DVP SSSR, XVI: 831–2 n114; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 83, l. 39. Litvinov favored a sale, to take the wind out of the sails of the pro-war party in Tokyo, while Karakhan viewed such an act as an invitation to Japanese aggressors to increase their demands; Stalin backed Litvinov. Izvestiya, May 1 and 12, 1933; DVP SSSR, XIII: 736–42, XIV: 320 (May 7, 1931), 786–9n76, 533–5, 544–8; XV: 790–1n229, 794n245; XVI: 831–2n114, 115.

449. Japanese Interior Minister Goto Shinpei had characterized the United States as “a great hypocritical monster clothed in justice and humanity.” Tooze, Deluge, 143. Japan formally quit the League on March 27, 1933. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations. Eight days before Japan withdrew, Mussolini announced a desire to create a “four-power pact” between Britain, France, Italy, and Germany to arbitrate European and world affairs in place of the League. It was classic nineteenth-century balance of power, imagining Italy as one of the powers. A diluted version amounting to nothing was signed in Rome on July 15, 1933. Jaurusch, Four Power Pact.

450. International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo: 1946–48), exhibit 193; Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 185.

451. Harris, “Encircled by Enemies,” 534 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 39/5c, l. 2–21, 76–82, 109–116).

452. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 97–102.

453. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 791, l. 33–8; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 235–6 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 38–9: Karakhan to Yenukidze, June 4, 1933); DVP SSSR, XVI: 837–8.

454. Kuznetskii [pseudonym], “Kakov smysl tokiiskikh peregovorov o prodazhe KVZhD,” Bol’shevik, 1933, no. 14: 65–71.

455. The pair wrote disapprovingly that collective farm chairmen and county and district plenipotentiaries were being arrested “according to the rule: ‘first arrest, then figure it out.’” Their directive also set an upper limit of inmates for the Union, excluding labor camps and colonies, of 400,000—half the number then imprisoned. (Another 500,000 were in camps.) Afanas’ev et al., Istoria stalinskogo Gulaga, I: 609. Krylenko reported (July 19, 1933) the prison population to Stalin and Molotov as 397,284, so on paper the objective was met, in very short order. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 87 (citing GARF, f. R-5446, op. 15a, d. 1073, l. 35).

456. Goliakov, Sbornik dokumentov po istorii ugolovnogo zakonodatel’stva SSSR, 335–6 (May 8, 1933); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 746–50 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 981, l. 229–38); Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 63; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 185–8; Krasil’nikov, Serp i molokh, 94–107; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 54–82. In the military, too, arrests were being made by anyone. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 62. Stalin wrote in notes to himself (May 13, 1933): “(1) Who can arrest? (2) What to do about the former White military people in our economic organs? (3) decrease the prison population in a lawful way (by accelerating cassation) (what to do about quarantine) (accelerate the work of courts). (4) What to do about different groups of arrested people? (5) allow expulsion, deportation?” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 27, l. 69. See also Béládi and Krausz, Stalin, 169–70.

457. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 46, 140. “It is a small thing to win power, it is no small thing to drive out the capitalists,” Kaganovich told Moscow party activists on May 22, 1933, contrasting 1917 with the Stalin revolution. “What is necessary is to destroy the root from which capitalism grows.” Rees, Iron Lazar, 115 (citing Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1933, no. 11: 10).

458. Dolot, Execution by Hunger, 155.

459. A similar fate sometimes met adult interlopers: one man had his ear cut off, then his fingers put in a door and smashed; he was still alive when the farmers threw him down a well, into which they dumped dirt. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 774 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 212–8: July 15, 1933).

460. The politburo discontinued grain exports in April 1933, after Mikoyan, among others, lobbied Stalin to reduce them. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 68 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 8, l. 5). Forestry exports (logs, lumber, plywood, cellulite, paper) in 1933 brought in nearly four times as much (119 million gold rubles), oil and petroleum products almost twice as much (60.4 million), and furs nearly as much (30.2 million) as grain. Total export revenues in 1933 were 388.7 million, versus 812.7 million in 1930. Even the 1933 level represented a high-water mark compared with what would follow (239.7 million in 1940). Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR, 1918–1966, 18–22.

461. Davies, “Soviet Military Expenditures,” 586–9, 593, 598.

462. Pravda, April 29, 1933; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), VI: 46–7; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 221–2; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 201–4; Thorniley, Rise and Fall, 141. Stalin had Kaganovich chair the all-Union purge commission. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 910, l. 2. Initially, the purge targeted the provinces of Moscow, Leningrad, Urals, Donetsk, Odessa, Kiev, and Vinnitsa, as well as Belorussia and Eastern Siberia and Far Eastern regions. From May 15, 1934, it would be extended to the provinces of Gorky, Western Siberia, Azov-Black Sea, the North Caucasus, Crimea, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Chernigov, and Uzbekistan. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1934, no. 14: 2. The seventeen remaining provinces or republics would undergo a purge during a Union-wide party card verification campaign in 1935. Iaroslavskii, “K chistke partii,” 18; and Iaroslavskii, “o chistke partii”; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 52; Gill, Origins, 201–218; Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, 22, 38–48. Two previous “general” party purges had taken place (1921 and 1929).

463. Thorniley, Rise and Fall, 145–7; Armstrong, Politics of Totalitarianism, 9–10. As of Jan. 1934, the party would number 1.826 million members and 874,000 candidates, or 2.7 million total. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 52.

464. Kolpakidi and Seriakov, Shchit i mech, 357–61 (Sept. 9, 1933). Back on Nov. 5, 1924, the politburo had formed a commission for political crimes; the commission forbade local organs from issuing sentences without Central Committee authorization. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 130–31 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 73, l. 9, 23, 37, 112, 123–4, 128–9; d. 60, l. 11).

465. Katzenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 9.

466. Robbins, Famine in Russia; Simms, “Crop Failure of 1891”; Simms, “Economic Impact of the Russian Famine”; Miller, Economic Development, 49; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 158.

467. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 412–5; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 67–77.

468. At least half a million Kazakhs resettled permanently outside the republic, including 200,000 beyond Soviet frontiers. Ohayon, La sedentarisation des Kazakhs, 264–8; Maksudov, “Migratsii v SSSR”; Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 463–6; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 408 (citing RGAE, f. 1562, op. 329, d. 143: Jan. 14, 1937); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 420–7 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1449, l. 106–18: July 20, 1932); Cameron, “Hungry Steppe.” See also Jasny, Socialized Agriculture, 323. The Soviet census of 1926 gave a Kazakh ASSR population of 6.2 million, of whom 3.6 million were ethnic Kazakh, some 2 million were Slavs, some 230,000 Uzbeks and 62,000 Uighurs. The 1939 census gave a figure of 1.321 million fewer ethnic Kazakhs. On this basis, one scholar estimated the catastrophe at 2 million lives lost. The local ethnic Ukrainian population in Kazakhstan declined from 859,000 to 658,000. Tatimov, Sotsial’naia obuslovlennost’ demograficheskikh protsessov, 122–4; Abylkhozhin et al., “Kazakhstanskaia tragediia,” 67. In the neighboring Kyrgyz autonomous republic, the catastrophe was less pronounced. Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 377–81.

469. Sel’skoe khoiziastvo SSSR, 517; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 321–2; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 289. Even the data supplied to Kazakh party bosses severely underestimated the losses of human and animal life, partly because of fear of reporting the truth, and partly from logistical difficulties of surveying such a vast and sparsely populated territory. Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 468.

470. The regime managed to begin to rebuild Kazkah herds by allowing (in Sept. 1932) artel collective farms to be replaced by so-called TOZ (“association for the joint cultivation of land”), in which only some land was worked in common, and most implements and all animals, including even draft animals, were held by households. Aitiev and Ishmukhamedov, Torzhestvo leninskogo kooperativnogo plana, 36–7. On March 29, 1933, Mirzoyan asked Stalin to purchase more livestock from western China and release more food aid (16,500 tons) for the region, to allow him to sell significant nationalized livestock back to the Kazakh herders, and to stop Uzbekistan, Siberia, and the Volga from returning Kazakhs who fled. Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 220–3 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 5287, l. 33–8); Ăbdīraĭymūly et al., Golod v kazakhskoi stepi, 196–200 (at 199). The livestock losses were still hurting agricultural productivity in 1940. In the USSR as a whole, the cattle and sheep population did not recover to the 1914 level until the late 1950s. Hunter, “Soviet Agriculture”; Millar and Nove, “Debate on Collectivization.”

471. Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 424; Chamberlain, Russia’s Iron Age, 88–9; Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, 257. See also Bright-Holmes, Like It Was; Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 118. Thomas Walker, in a series of five articles in 1935, asserted that not crop failure but “a planned process of extermination by Moscow, is what caused the terrific loss of life in this district in the past year.” Walker, “Children Starve.” Walker offered no evidence; he purported to be an eyewitness, but visited in 1934, after the mass famine had subsided. Fischer, “Heart’s Russian ‘Famine’”; Tottle, Fraud, Famine, and Fascism, 9. See also Mace, “Man-made Famine,” 86–90.

472. Ellman, “Role of Leadership Perceptions,” 824. P. Blonskii, a doctor from Kiev province, wrote in a letter to the health commissar of Ukraine, which the police intercepted and excerpted, that “the politically harmful ‘theory’ that the starving people themselves are responsible for the famine is prevalent among leaders and rank-and-file workers; it is claimed that they did not want to work, so in that case, let them die—no pity there.” Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 384–6 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 56, l. 203–5).

473. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 75 (citing Molot, March 10, 1933); Zelenin, “Kolkhoznoe stroitel’stvo v SSSR,” 28–9 (citing GARP, f. 3316, d. 815, l. 4; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 21, d. 2415, l. 1181ob.); “Kollektivizatsiia: istoki, suchnost’, posledtsviia,” 46–56.

474. Davies and Wheatcroft persuasively refute Ellman’s assertions that Stalin intentionally starved peasants, concluding: “We regard the policy of rapid industrialisation as an underlying cause of the agricultural troubles of the early 1930s, and we do not believe that the Chinese or NEP versions of industrialisation were viable in Soviet national and international circumstances.” Davies and Wheatcroft, “Reply to Ellman,” 626. Robert Conquest wrote the principal book on the supposedly intentional famine—Harvest of Sorrow (1986)—but in a letter to Davies (Sept. 7, 2003), he acknowledged that Stalin did not intentionally cause the famine. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 441n145. Kuromiya noted there was no evidence to support intentionality. “Stalin does not appear to have anticipated the deaths of millions of people,” he concluded. “The millions of deaths de-stabilised the country politically and generated political doubt about his leadership even within the party (most famously the Ryutin Platform).” Kuromiya, “The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered,” 667.

475. Merl, “Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot?”

476. For Ukraine, the initial procurement target had been 5.83 million tons (May 6, 1932), which was lowered to 5.17 million (Aug. 17, 1932), then to 4.22 million (Oct. 30, 1932), and finally to 3.77 million tons (Jan. 12, 1933); actual collections amounted to 3.59 million. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 123, 137 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 131–5), 478. For the North Caucasus, the quota was reduced overall from 2.52 to 1.59 million tons.

477. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 478; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 290 (table 22). See also Lewin, Making of the Soviet System (1985), 151.

478. Tauger, “1932 Harvest,” 74 (table 2).

479. Davies and Wheatcroft, “Reply to Ellman,” 627–8; Gintsburg, “Massovyi golod,” 124, 126.

480. One Ukrainian scholar correctly conceded that in Ukraine, ethnic Russians and Jews died in lesser proportion than ethnic Ukrainians partly because the former lived in greater proportion in cities. Kul’chyts’kyi, “Skil’ky nas zahynulo pid holodomoru 1933 roku?,” 15. A decree of Dec. 14, 1932, enjoined the authorities in Soviet Ukraine “to direct serious attention to the correct implementation of Ukrainianization, eliminate a mechanical implementation, chase out Petlyura-ites and other bourgeois-nationalists elements from party and soviet organizations, thoroughly select and rear Ukrainian Bolshevik cadres, furnish systematic party leadership and control over the implementation of Ukrainianization.” A follow-up decree of Dec. 26 ended Ukrainianization in the neighboring Kuban region of the RSFSR. Brian Boeck has demonstrated that Ukrainianization in the Kuban was opposed by the populace, who preferred a Cossack or Kuban identity, and by local officials. He also shows that Kaganovich seized upon, and twisted, a single report by a local official about a single Cossack settlement (Poltavskaya) that blamed supposedly successful Ukrainianization as a cause of resistance. “Thus,” Boeck concludes, “there is no compelling evidence that the success of Ukrainianization, or the Central Committee’s perceptions of the success of Ukrainianization, led to the decree of 14 December.” Boeck, “Complicating the National Interpretation,” 31–48; Pyrih et al., Holod, 291–4 (Tsentral’nyi gos. Arkhiv obshchestvennykh obedeinenii Ukrainy, f. 39, op. 4, d. 1, l. 8–10); Trapeznikov, Istoricheskii opyt KPSS, 262. A related decree was issued for Belorussia: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 917, l. 7 (Dec. 19, 1932).

481. “In the archives of Russia, in the archives of the republics of the former USSR, millions of documents have been preserved [of] the famine in the USSR at the beginning of the 1930s of the last century in various regions of the large country,” wrote V. P. Kozlov, the head of the Russian archival service, in the preface to a collection of declassified materials. “Not a single document has been found confirming the conception of a ‘Holodomor-genocide’ in Ukraine or even a hint in the documents about ethnic motives of what occurred, including in Ukraine.” Antipova, Golod v SSSR, 6–7 (the collection consists entirely of facsimiles of original documents). Klid and Motyl define the Holodomor (or Ukrainian Holocaust) as “the murder by hunger of millions in the 1932–33 famine in Soviet Ukraine and the Kuban region of the North Caucasus, where Ukrainians formed a large percentage of the population.” This becomes “genocide” when the authors include the executions of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, poets, musicians, artists, church officials. They offer no evidence of intentional starvation or of ethnic targeting. They do not dwell on the ethnic Ukrainian agency in the alleged genocide against Ukrainians (in regions where lots of Russians lived and died). They do not include the Volga Valley, Kazakhstan, the Urals, Western Siberia, and other famine-wracked regions where Ukrainians did not form a large percentage of the population. Klid and Motyl, Holodomor Reader, xxix–xxx.

482. Rudich, Holod 1932–1933 rokiv, 441–4 (at 443: March 15, 1933).

483. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 238 (GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 19, l. 66–8: Feigin, April 12, 1933).

484. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 799, l. 24–5, 30–1; Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 88–9. Stalin did not refer to “enemies” or “wreckers” in his explanations to Robins. The conversation was severely edited when originally published: Sochineniia, XIII: 260–73. See also Salzman, Reform and Revolution, 355–6. See also Postyshev’s public comments about “teaching” the peasants: Izvestiia, June 22, 1933.

485. Davies et al., “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” 653.

486. The threat of attack by Japan, the need for grain stockpiling, and the fact that an overwhelmed transport network had had to carry military and industrial equipment, troops, and deported kulaks to Siberia and the Soviet Far East, would be another way the regime would explain the severe domestic hardships to the party. Duranty, USSR, 190–2; Dalrymple, “Soviet Famine of 1932–1934,” at 273; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 206 (citing RGAE, f. 7297, op. 41, d. 33, l. 23–4: directive sent by Stalin and Molotov: March 31, 1932). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, part 1, l. 9 (Stalin to CC plenum, Jan. 7, 1933); Sochineniia, XIII: 182–3. But Davies, rightly, discounts militarization and instead blames absurd plan targets. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 176ff; Davies, “Soviet Defence Industries,” 266.

487. Barmine, One Who Survived, 101–2.

488. Trotskii, “Nuzhno chestnoe vnutripartiinoe soglashenie.” See also Deutscher, Stalin, 352.

489. When Kaganovich demonstrated a bit of leniency toward procurements in Ukraine in Sept. 1933, Stalin rebuked him. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–5), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82).

490. Additional arrests were carried out by the various grain procurement plenipotentiaries and the regular police. In Ukraine, OGPU arrests totaled 124,463 in 1933 (compared with 74,859 people in 1932); OGPU arrests in Ukraine would fall to 30,322 in 1934. Vasil’ev, “Tsena golodnogo khleba,” 144. When Kaganovich demonstrated a bit of leniency toward procurements in Ukraine in Sept. 1933, Stalin rebuked him. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–45), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82).

491. Zelenin, “O nekotorykh ‘belykh piatnakh,’” 15. The regime issued numerous decrees to provide food aid to orphaned children in the tens of thousands in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 428 (RGAE, f. 8043, op. 11, d. 74, l. 97: June 13, 1932), 487 (d. 75, l. 255; d. 61, l. 155: Aug. 20, 1933).

492. Penner, “Stalin and the Ital’ianka,” 45–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 166, op. 1. d. 12, 1. 4 and “Golod 1932–1933 godov na Ukraine: svidetel’stvuiut arkhivnye dokumenty,” 79. See also Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 214–5.

493. Stalin would later boast in a discussion of five historical turning points—1905, 1917, the Brest-Litovsk peace of 1918, the Russian civil war, “and especially collectivization”—that the latter entailed “a completely novel, historically unprecedented event.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 69 (Nov. 11, 1937).

494. The figure officially reported was 89.8 million tons (as of Oct. 1933), 20 million more than the wildly inflated 1932 official figure of 69.8 million. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 446. The degree to which the regime contributed to the bumper harvest, by the distribution of tractors, seed aid, and food relief, remains a matter of intense controversy. Some of it was improvisation by local officials. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 117–30. Tauger, seeking to place the Soviet story in a broader one of agricultural modernization, emphasizes how the collective farm system facilitated Soviet relief efforts and the peasants’ ability to generate the harvest that saved them and the country. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants”; Tauger, “Stalin, Soviet Agriculture, and Collectivization,” 109–42.

495. Famine conditions persisted into late fall 1933 and, in some places, would last through summer 1934. Ammende, Human Life in Russia, 80–4. In fall 1933, the regime was pressing for workers to cultivate gardens to grow their own food, on the example of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 71 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 19, l. 125–6). Kazakhstan would be given 18,000 tons of food aid by decree on Nov. 28, 1933. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 507 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 142, 145, 148).

496. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 240–1 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 7–9); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 158. Voroshilov, too, sent a letter to Yenukidze that month, doubtless aware the OGPU perlustrated his correspondence and the contents could get to Stalin. “A remarkable man, our Koba,” he wrote. “It is simply incomprehensible how he can combine the great mind of the proletarian strategist, the will of a statesman and revolutionary activist, and the soul of a completely ordinary kind comrade who bears in mind every detail and cares for everything that concerns the people he knows, loves, and values.” Kvashonkin, Sovetstskoe rukovodstvo, 241–2 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 5–7: Voroshilov to Yenukidze, June 29, 1933). See also Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 186.

CHAPTER 3. VICTORY

1. Lunacharskii, “Puti i zadachi sovetskoi ramaturgii,” Literaturnana gazeta, Feb. 28, 1933, retitled (and not abridged) as “Sotsialisticheskii realism,” Sovetskii teatr, 1933, no. 2–3; reprinted in Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VIII: 491–523 (at 497). Lunacharskii, in a draft text from around the same time, explained: “The socialist realist . . . may resort to all manner of hyperbole, caricature and utterly improbable comparisons, not to conceal reality but, via stylization, to reveal it.” Or, as he put it, “A Communist who cannot dream is a bad Communist,” Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VIII: 615–6: RGASPI, f. 142, op. 1, d. 318, l. 15–21, Feb. 10, 1933. See also Louis Fisher, in Crossman, God that Failed, 205–6.

2. Hunter, “Optimal Tautness in Development Planning”; Hunter, “First Soviet Five-Year Plan”; Cheremukhin et al., “Was Stalin Really Necessary?”

3. Instead of an anticipated 5.426 billion gold rubles of revenue from all exports (grain, timber, oil) over the course of the Five-Year Plan, the Soviets managed to bring in 3.283 billion. Industry was short 1.873 million rubles, including 832 million just in 1932. The Soviets ran out of convertible currency even for purchases of foreign military technology. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 46 (citing RGAE, f. 1562, op. 329, d. 4, l. 2–4). A key source of foreign currency revenue were the shops designed for “trade with foreigners” (Torgsin), which in fact placed no restrictions on who could enter and buy and sell: around 80 percent of their trade involved Soviet inhabitants. In 1933, during the worst of the famine, Torgsin stores had their best year, expanding deeply across the countryside to sell flour, cooking oil, and sugar for the population’s valuables. That year, family-heirloom revenue exceeded foreign grain sale revenues. After 1933, with the population’s closets tapped out, Torgsin revenues declined. Still, sales from 1932 until the shops were closed in early 1936 totaled 287.2 million, which paid for imports for Magnitorgorsk worth 44 million rubles; Gorky Auto Plant, 42.3 million; Stalingrad Tractor, 25 million rubles; Stalin Auto factory, 27.9 million rubles; Cheliabinsk Tractor, 23 million; Kharkov Tractor, 15.3 million; and Uralmash, 15 million. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia sistema SSSR, 65; Osokina, Zoloto dlia industrializatsii.

4. Robert Allen argues that per capita consumption, after falling in the early 1930s, increased significantly, being perhaps a fifth higher in 1937 than a decade earlier, but he has rightly been taken to task separately by Davies and Ellman. Allen, Farm to Factory, 147–50, 185–6; R. W. Davies (http://eh.net/book_reviews/farm-to-factory-a-reinterpre tation-of-the-soviet-industrial-revolution); Ellman, “Soviet Industrialization.”

5. Millar, “Mass Collectivization”; Barsov, Baslans stoimostnykh obmenov; Ellman, “Agricultural Surplus”; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 11–3. See also Barsov, “NEP i vyravnivanie ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii,” 93–102. Even a Stalinist publication, with exaggerated figures, admitted that industrial exports constituted the primary source of export revenues during the Five-Year Plan (2 billion of 3.5 billion gold rubles total). From 1932, all Soviet exports declined in physical terms, not just in revenue, but agricultural exports declined faster than industrial ones. Ginzburg, Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR, 67, 72. Prices changed favorably toward agriculture, when one takes into consideration more than grain and the legalized markets for selling “surpluses.”

6. E. H. Carr, writing in the wake of the Soviet Union’s World War II victory, concluded that Stalin’s collectivization and industrialization “were imposed by the objective situation which Soviet Russia in the later 1920s had to face.” Well, yes, if Bolshevik monopoly and anticapitalism were to be retained. There are multiple ways to modernize, but not multiple ways to modernize without the rule of law, political pluralism, private property, and the market. Carr, “Stalin Victorious.” In later years, Carr’s position shifted slightly. Davies, Introduction to Russian Revolution, xxxiv–xxxv; Nove, “The Peasants,” at 389. See also Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta, 54.

7. As Alec Nove pointed out, something is a necessity, although not inevitable, if it follows logically from the objective circumstances and the values of the decision maker(s). Nove, “Was Stalin Really Necessary?” reprinted in Nove, Was Stalin Really Necessary?, 17–39; Grossman, Review. See also Millar and Nove, “Debate on Collectivization”; and Brown and Cairncross, “Alec Nove.” The otherwise trenchant Millar incorrectly averred that collectivization was “an unmitigated policy disaster,” failing to distinguish between economic and political outcome. See Swianiewicz, Forced Labor, 91.

8. Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 52. Another scholar has asserted that Stalin spent as much time on culture as foreign policy and military affairs. Gromov, Stalin, 6. On formalization of Stalin’s role in culture, see Khlevniuk, Stalinskoe politbiuro, 112–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 113 d. 818, l. 10), 141, 143; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 67, 112.

9. Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 218.

10. Trotsky supported establishment of a non-party literary journal to focus and multiply their efforts in favorable directions, and proposed that the censorship organ, Glavlit, compile a register of artists, in order to track them. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 36–7 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 185, l. 8–10: June 30, 1922).

11. Pravda, July 1, 1925; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 506, l. 4, 31–7: June 18, 125; Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 21–67 (esp. 34); Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 74 (Moscow: Nauka, 1965): 29–37; Ermakov, 376–7.

12. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 633, l. 3–4: May 5, 1927; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 84 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 697, l. 10). Non-party though it might have been, the weekly Literaturnaya gazeta was going to be overseen by the apparatus.

13. See also Fitzpatrick, Cultural Front, 145.

14. One scholar observed that “writers embroiled in controversy sought to use Stalin against their adversaries and were therefore themselves to some extent responsible for establishing the pattern of authoritarian control.” Brown, “Year of Acquiescence,” 57.

15. Krivenko, “Solovetskii ITL OGPU.” In April 1930, the OGPU system was organized under a “Main Administration of Camps”—in Russian “Gulag,” a bureaucratic moniker that soon changed but would stick in popular reference. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, II: 359–60, 373; Wheatcroft, “Assessing the Size,” at 287; Ivanova, Gulag; Upadyshev, “Ot Solovkov k GULAGu,” 93; Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 100. The Main Administration of the Construction of the Far North, centered in Magadan, lasted from 1931 to 1957; and the Karaganda Camp Complex, which at its height would reach 80 camps, lasted from 1931 to 1959. Kokurin and Petrov, Gulag; Krivenko, “Karagandinskii ITL”; Sigachev, “Glavnoe upravlenie stroitel’stva Dal’nego Severa”; Krivenko, “Belomoro-Baltiiskii ITL.”

16. Solzhenitsyn would dub Dalstroi “the greatest and most famous island, the pole of ferocity of that amazing country of Gulag.” Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, I: ix. See also Kokurin and Petrov, Gulag, 72 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 57, 63).

17. That year 9,928 of the approximately 16,000 prisoners reached Magadan alive; in 1933, 27,390 would survive the journey. Subsequently, 32,304 would survive the journey in 1934; 44,601 in 1935; and 62,703 in 1936—a labor force. About 20 percent of the workers were not prisoners. Stephan, Russian Far East, 225–32. Reported gold extraction rose from 511 kilograms of pure gold in 1932 to 5,515 kilograms in 1934; 14,458 kg in 1935; and 33,360 kg in 1936. Total gold mining across the entire Soviet Union had been 13,215 kg in 1928. Nordlander, “Economic History of Dalstroi,” 105–25.

18. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia sistema SSSR, 64; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 162–3 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 57, d. 18, l. 85–95: art. 234/45s, 138–9: art. 372/79ss). Roy Medvedev wrote that “there existed a system of examinations which allowed ten-year sentences to be reduced to two or three years, excellent food and clothing, a workday of four to six hours in winter and ten in summer, and good pay, which enabled prisoners to help their families and to return home with funds.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 508. See also Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 368–9.

19. Swianiewicz, Forced Labor. There were instances when Gulag labor was more productive than “free” labor.

20. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 363–4 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 4, l. 58: Yagoda to Mężyński, June 27, 1933). See also Izvestiia, June 26, 1933; Pravda, June 29, 1933; and Leningradskaia pravda, June 23, 27, and 29, 1933. Stalin had rescued the canal from Rykov’s cost-cutting. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 212. The Suez Canal, 117 miles long, was built in 15 years, without locks; the Panama Canal, 48 miles long, was built in 33 years, with locks.

21. Pazi, Nash Mironych, 447. Kirov first took a test drive to Moscow, with a single guard, to see if the route was safe, then did the trip again, to pick up the passengers. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 406 (citing RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 73, l. 96–132: Sveshnikov, 1966).

22. Stalin and Kirov likely first met in Oct. 1917, at the 2nd Congress of Soviets that had proclaimed a seizure of power (Kirov was a delegate of the Vladikavkaz-Kabardinya soviet). Their relationship is documented from May 29, 1918, when Stalin recommended Kirov as worthy of “complete trust.” Plimak and Antonov, “1 dekabria 1934–go,” 35.

23. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 149, l. 70 (March 6, 1929).

24. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4554; Sochineniia, VI: 422.

25. In late 1929, during the party purge, several targeted Leningrad officials fought back, demanding Kirov be sacked for prerevolutionary work on behalf of what they called a “Cadet” (bourgeois-liberal) newspaper: Kirov’s signed articles—which his attackers dug up in the public library—had welcomed the Provisional Government. Orjonikidze defended Kirov, divulging that Stalin himself, at Pravda, had not been anti-Provisional Government in early 1917. Kirov’s denouncers were removed, but Stalin had Kirov’s prerevolutionary political “error” recorded in his party file. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 120 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 24–5: Dec. 11, 1929); Khlevniuk, Stalin i Orzhonikidze, 19–20; Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 26–9; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 108–10; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 93–106. See also Ciliga, Russian Enigma, 120–1; and Tokaev, Betrayal of an Ideal, 109, 241.

26. Vladimir Loginov, Teni Stalina, 97. Artyom concurred: “Kirov after Nadezhda Sergeevna was the closest person to Stalin.” Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 59–60.

27. Molotov also noted of Kirov: “He was a weak organizer. He was a good mass agitator.” He dismissed the notions that Stalin could have killed Kirov (“odiousness”) or that Kirov could have taken Stalin’s place. (“Absurd! . . . look, pretty speeches of a secondary character. That was not enough.”) Chuev, Molotov, 377.

28. Kirov won the Order of Lenin (March 31, 1931) for helping fulfill the oil industry five-year plan in 2.5 years.

29. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 71–3.

30. Chukhin, Kanaloarmeitsy, 18 (no citation).

31. The canal laborers gave their name (“zek” or zakliuchennyi kanalstroia) to all Gulag prisoners. Chukhin, Kanaloarmeitsy, 189–209. Yagoda built a large number of critical objects, from the country’s first-ever stadium (Dynamo) in Moscow to new administrative buildings for the NKVD itself.

32. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiiakh, 44 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1552, l. 19).

33. Aug. 27, 1933.

34. Chigirin, Stalin, 84–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 53: Aug. 25 to Sept. 2, 1933).

35. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 249–52 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 8–12: Aug. 27, 1933), 252–3 (f. 74, op. 2, d. 41, l. 63–71: Aug. 30), 253–4 (l. 72–3: Sept. 7). See also Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 255 n1 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 41, l. 74; GARF, f. R-3316, op. 1, 3d. 18, l. 168).

36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 68.

37. In summer 1931, the first high-frequency phone lines were installed between Moscow and Leningrad and Moscow and Kharkov. The scramblers and encrypters were purchased in Germany from Siemens and Halske AG and AEG, copied and adapted. Moscow would soon be connected to Smolensk and Minsk (1932), Gorky and Rostov (1933), Kiev (1934). Other systems grew in parallel: the Kremlin self-dialing ATC (“vertushka”); the NKVD state security first directorate (bodyguard) telephone station; etc.

38. Na prieme, 107–12.

39. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 330 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 87).

40. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 315 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 741, l. 7–12: Aug. 26, 1933), 319 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 107–8: Aug. 29), 323 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 66: Sept. 1), 325–7 (d. 741, l. 20–6: Sept. 2); Rees, Iron Lazar, 119 (citing RGASPI, f. 54, op. 1, d. 100, l. 107–8); Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 248–9 (Sept. 12, 1933), 247–8n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 929, l. 21; d. 930, l. 13); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 234–5, 233n2; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 261–3 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 214, l. 25–30: Sept. 30); Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 133; Davies et al., “The Politburo and Economic Decision Making,” 110.

41. The dacha had been constructed in 1932–33 in a mad rush (the construction director, from the central executive committee of Abkhazia, begged for more labor power). Lakoba Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, 1–65. Lakoba, Yenukidze, his deputy N. I. Pakhomov, and Pauker conducted a final inspection in early July 1933.

42. Imperial Russia had annexed the Black Sea territory from Istanbul in 1864, which provoked a mass exodus to the Ottoman empire and a mass influx of settlers, especially Mingrelians from adjacent western Georgia, ethnic Georgians, Russians, and Armenians. The Abkhaz language belongs to a North Caucasus language group unrelated to Georgian or Russian, and the differences were strongly felt. Ethnic Abkhaz became concentrated in three districts: Gudauta, Kodor, and Samurzakan, while non-Abkhaz made up 90 percent of Abkhazia’s other districts. Voronov, Abkhazia.” See also Tardy, “Caucasus Peoples.”

43. Dzidzariia et al., Revoliutsionnye komitety Abkhazii, 253. See also Pritsker, Istoriia kurortov Abkhazskoi SSR; Orynianskii, Sovetskaia Abkhaziia; Grigoliia, Kurortnye bogatsva Abkhazii; Abkhazia had perhaps 150 available beds for patients and holiday-makers in 1922, which jumped to 3,680 by 1935, under Lakoba’s construction. Around 300 people took advantage in 1922, and 16,755 by 1935.

44. Tulumdzhian, S’ezdy Sovetov Abkhazii.

45. A party commission went after Lakoba, citing “the presence in the Abkhazia organization of elements of factionalism, degeneration, ‘private property-ism,’ nepotism and group cohesion reaching toadyism.” Stalin, vacationing on the Black Sea, got dragged into the intrigues and, in a letter co-signed by Orjonikidze (Oct. 19, 1929), faulted Lakoba for “sometimes not subordinating himself to the decisions of the provincial party committee.” The mild rebuke protected Lakoba from worse. Hoover Institution Archives, Lakoba Papers, box 1, folder 55, 56; Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 214 (citing Partarkhiv TsK KPG, f. 14, op. 7, d. 3516, l. 1–3).

46. Rikhter, Kavkaz nashikh dnei, 98; Blauvelt, “‘From Words to Action!,’” 243–4 (citing sakartvelos shss arkivi [II], f. 14, op. 2, d. 485, 49–56).

47. “When Stalin and I were there,” Orjonikidze had noted, “Comrade Lakoba made the best impressions of all the comrades present.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 58 (1925). See also Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–25, 1–26; and Kvashonkin, Bolshevistskoe rukovodstvo, 338–41.

48. Trotskii, “Yenukidze” [Jan. 8, 1938], in Portrety, 251–72 (at 264–6). “My ears hold me back, but so what,” Lakoba had written to Orjonikidze (March 12, 1922). Kvashonkin, Bolshevistskoe rukovodstvo, 237–8.

49. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 188–9. Lakoba has only a single recorded listing in Stalin’s office logbook, Nov. 20, 1933, and for just twenty minutes. Na prieme, 114.

50. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 76–7. In 1929, a Lakoba confidant wrote to the Abkhaz leader that “being in Sochi I saw Stalin at the central executive committee rest house, and he asked the whole time, where are you, are you coming, Long Live Abkhazia and sang Abkhaz songs.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 59–60 (Ladariya).

51. “Autobiography, December 12, 1936,” Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, box 1, item 2; Bgazhba, Nestor Lakoba; Argun, Stalin i Lakoba; Lakoba, “History: 1917–1989,” 89–101.

52. Whereas Georgia was undergoing vigorous Georgification, the ratio of ethnic Abkhaz in the enclave’s population of 146,000 had fallen, to under 30 percent in 1926 (from 55 percent as late as 1897). By 1939, the Abkhaz share would shrink to 18 percent. By comparison, the Ajarians, a Muslim people in Georgia, accounted for around 70 percent in Ajaristan, an autonomous republic in Georgia. The penurious Abkhaz administration issued circulars in three languages (Abkhaz, Georgian, Russian). Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 115; Agrba, Abkhazskaia oblastnaia organizatsiia kompartii Gruzii v tsifrakh; Partarkhiv Abkhazskogo obkoma KP Gruzii, f. 1, op. 1, d. 180, l. 95–6: Lakoba at 7th province party conference. Abkhaz were almost never accepted at Georgia’s institutions of higher learning (where the instruction was solely in Georgian). Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 2–42.

53. A few days after the letter to Lenin and Stalin (dated March 26, 1921), Lakoba was one of three people to sign a telegram addressed to Lenin, Stalin, Chicherin, Kirov, all Soviet republics, the whole world, proclaiming the new Abkhaz Soviet Socialist Republic, which Lenin approved, and on May 21, 1921, the Georgian SSR signed an agreement recognizing the separate Abkhaz SSR. But on Dec. 16, 1921, under pressure, the Abkhaz signed a treaty with Georgia providing for a confederal structure. Sagariia, “K istorii obrazovaniia Abkhazskoi avtonomnoi respubliki”; Bor’ba za uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 58–9 (Gosarkhiv Abkhazskoi SSR, f. 38, d. 74, l. 176). Golos trudovoi Abkhazii, 1921, no. 134, reprinted in Bor’ba za uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 80; Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 58.

54. A partial census in 1920 had listed 55 nations, but the 1926 census allowed for 190; in the 1930s, the number would fall to around three score, then climb to 106 (1937 census). Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 284, 327–30.

55. If a nation got a Union republic, members of that nation who lived outside it—Russians in Ukraine, Tajiks in Uzbekistan—did not receive an autonomous republic there. In an exception, there was a predominantly ethnic Armenian autonomous republic in Azerbaijan, Karabakh (“Black Mountain”). Armenians there had sought inclusion in Armenia. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 133, l. 28–31.

56. Haugen, Establishment, 195–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 87, l. 73–6; d. 101, 68–9, 76; d. 107, 29, 55, d. 104, l. 165; GARF, f. 1235, op. 26, d. 28, l. 4). See also Aworth, Modern Uzbeks; Haugen, Establishment, 206–10. Uzbekistan also got Tashkent, which the Kazakhs had wanted despite its population of 96,000 Uzbeks and 172 Kazakhs, because they insisted it was surrounded by Kazakh nomads who needed a city to rise out of backwardness. Fedtke, “How Bukharans Turned into Uzbeks and Tajiks,” 19–50; Slezkine, “USSR as a Communal Apartment,” 428; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 452; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 776, l. 1.

57. Soviet Uzbekistan accounted for 60 percent of Central Asia’s arable lands and perhaps 70 percent of its GDP. But in carving out Tajikistan, Stalin perhaps wanted to blunt a too strong Uzbek entity, stabilize the border with Afghanistan, and curry favor with Iran. Berge, Birth of Tajikistan; Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 174–86. The Tajiks were shunted into the Pamirs: some 90 percent of Tajikistan’s landmass consisted of high mountains, and its “capital” was the village of Dushanbe, which was renamed Stalinabad. Perhaps 60 percent of Soviet Tajiks ended up outside the Tajik republic. Iurkevich, U vorot Indostana, 16. See also Teichman, “Red Man’s Burden,” 177 (citing RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2542, l. 155–7); and Teichman, “Canals, Cotton.” On the occasion of Tajikistan’s inaugural party congress, in June 1930, the Tajik party boss, Mirza Davud Huseynov, an ethnic Azeri, proposed sending greetings to the toilers of India, but Stalin objected, evidently concerned not to raise outcries of interference in British India. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 63, l. 58. See also Baberowski, Der Feind, 230–5, 279–82, 620; Kangas, “Faizulla Khodzhaev”; and Norling, “Myth and Reality,” 114 (citing RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 154, l. 79–92: Jan. 25, 1931).

58. There had been more than 26,000 mosques in Turkestan in 1912 under the tsarist regime, but there would be a mere 1,300 by 1942. The remnants of the Islamic legal and educational systems would be closed down, as were most of the places where mullahs were trained. Between 1927 and 1930 local alphabets were changed from Arabic script to Latin (as was done in Turkey), which cut future generations from the past and the Quran. The pilgrimage to Mecca would be prohibited from 1935. Later the regime would shift the languages to Cyrillic. Gatagova et al., TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, II: 128–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 588, l. 3, 4), 191–6 (d. 751, l. 38–47; d. 607, l. 4–5).

59. Wohlforth, “Russian-Soviet Empire,” 225. The success of the coercive Soviet project is all the more remarkable when one examines the depth of the challenges faced by national activists in mixed-language regions. Judson, Guardians of the Nation.

60. This was where the peasantry in Abkhazia had been most receptive to original Bolshevik revolutionary demands for radical land reform against local nobles. Dzidzariia, Ocherki istorii Abkhazii, 62–6, 108–9.

61. The status change was formally approved at the 6th Congress of Soviets of Abkhazia on Feb. 11, 1931, although it had not been included on the agenda. Dzhonua et al., Sovety Abkhazii, 227–8; Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 142–6.

62. Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 227–8 (citing Arkhiv TsK KPG, f. 14, op. 6, d. 267: “Informsvodki Abkhaz. GPU: dokladnaia zapiska raikoma o rukovodstve obkoma vo antosovetskikh vystupleniakh krest’ian v Gudautskom raione, 177–9).

63. Mamiya Orakhelashvili and Beria arrived, but peasant delegations insisted on speaking to Lakoba. They wanted permission to emigrate to Turkey, like many of their nineteenth-century forebears. Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 227 (citing secret police reports). Danilov, “Tragediia Abkhazskogo naroda.”

64. Ethnic Russians, who constituted just 10 percent of Abkhazia’s population in the early 1930s, accounted for more than 40 percent of the local apparatus, versus around 9 percent ethnic Abkhaz. Lakoba also got the apparatus in Moscow to renew calls for indigenization of Abkhazia’s apparatus. But the ongoing party purges pushed in the opposite direction. Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 132 (citing TsGAA f. 1, op. 2, d. 300, l. 3–4).

65. Beria denounced the Feb. 1931 Abkhaz “demonstration” to Stalin, suggesting that Lakoba had encouraged the peasants to rebel and that Lakoba’s mother had stood in the front, so the secret police troops could not shoot. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 58.

66. Beria’s mother, Marta Jakeli, and her second husband, Pavel Beria, had two other children: Lavrenti’s elder brother died at age two of smallpox; his sister Akesha, or Anna (b. 1905), was rendered a deaf mute by childhood measles. His father died when Lavrenti was school age and, like Stalin, Beria was raised by his mother, who, like Keke, had ambitions for her boy. (She would later marry a Georgian Jew, Levan Loladze.) At age sixteen, Beria left for the oil boomtown Baku and enrolled in its high school for mechanical-building studies, spending a summer working for Alfred Nobel’s concern. Reliable material on Beria’s biography is scant. See Danilov, “K biografii L. Beriia”; Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1989, no. 5), 39n1 (citing Chekryzhev), (1990, no. 1), 70–2. See also Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina”(1990, no. 3): 81–2; (“Berievshchina” was reprinted in Nekrasov, Beria, 300–80); “O sud’be chlenov i kandidatov v chleny TsK VKP (b), izbrannogo XVII s”ezdom partii,” 82–113: 88. See also Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina,” no. 3 (1990): 81–2; RGASPI, f. 5, op. 15, d. 448, l. 246–8.

67. Beria’s arrests, releases, and rearrests remain murky. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina,” no. 1 (1990): 77–8; Toptygin, Lavrentii Beriia, 11; Kazemzadeh, Struggle for Transcaucasia, 307–9; Mlechin, KGB, 176; Sokolov, Beriia, 31–2.

68. RGASPI, f. 85, op. 29, d. 414, l. 3 (Beria letter to Orjonikidze); “Ochen’ vysoko tsenit t. Beria,” 163–5 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 788, l. 114–5ob; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 788, l. 114–16ob, Pavlunovsky to Stalin, June 25, 1937); Zaria vostoka, Nov. 15, 1931. Ruhulla Akhundov, a former Left SR and a Baku Communist party official, attended the late-1920 discussion of Beria’s Musavat past. “He has outstanding abilities, as demonstrated in various apparatuses of the state mechanism,” Akhundov wrote of Beria in 1923, calling the results-oriented functionary “so necessary at this moment of Soviet construction.” Zen’kovich, Marshaly i genseki, 161.

69. That same month, April 1921, Beria married the sixteen-year-old upper-class Georgian Nino Gegechkori, whose uncle had been a member of the tsarist State Duma and foreign minister in the overturned Georgian Menshevik government. The pair may have met in prison, when Nino and her mother came to visit her Bolshevik father, Alexander Gegechkori, who had been arrested and held along with Beria in the Kutaisi prison. Nino went on to graduate university in economics. Sokolov, Beriia, 40–2. See also Dumbadze, Na sluzhbe cheka i kominterna, 93 Beria’s patron Bagirov was expelled from the party for torture, oppressing national minorities (Armenians, Russians), and bribe-taking. He was sacked from the secret police in May 1927 for “exceeding his authority, intrigues, and using the organs against the party.” But Stalin, writing to Molotov in 1929, decided that “Bagirov (despite his past sins) will have to be confirmed as chairman of the Cheka in Azerbaijan: he is now the only person who can cope with the Musavatists and Ittikhadists who have reared their heads in the Azerbaijan countryside. This is serious business, and there should be no fooling around.” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 168. See also “Iz otchetov komiteta partiinogo kontrolia pri TsK KPSS o partiinoi reabilitatsii kommunistov v 50-kh-nachale 60-kh gg.,” 47; and RGASPI, f. 613, op. 1, d. 90, l. 47. In 1930, Bagirov would be brought to Moscow to study Marxism-Leninism for twenty-four months. Zaria vostoka, Dec. 15, 1933; Knight, Beria, 39. In Oct. 1932, Bagirov was returned to Azerbaijan as chairman of the republic’s Council of People’s Commissars, and in Dec. 1933 he became party boss of Azerbaijan. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 396n2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 935, l. 2, 32–4. Bagirov occupied the mansion of the former Baku agent of the Rothschilds.

70. Iusif-Zade, Chekisty Azerbaidzhana, 26, 31–57. Mikhail Kedrov, head of a traveling commission on secret police abuses, relayed a damning report on Beria to Dzierżyński, who in Dec. 1921 issued an arrest order. Beria desperately appealed to the local top man, Orjonikidze, arguing that Kedrov did not understand Baku’s rough conditions. Orjonikidze supposedly later told a secretary that upon learning of Beria’s service in Musavat counterintelligence, Dzierżyński had wanted to execute him, but that Orjonikidze interceded to save Beria’s life. In another version, the son of the arresting officer claimed Stalin telephoned Dzierżyński and vouched for Beria, citing the word of Mikoyan. Whatever the cause, Dzierżyński countermanded the warrant. Berezin, “Istoriia ordera na arrest Berii,” 195–6 (recollections of the son of Yan Berezin); Agabekov, G.P.U., 170; Leggett, Cheka, 270–1. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 134 (citing TsA FSB, ASD P-771, l. 5, testimony of Orjonikidze’s secretary). All the paperwork would later disappear from Dzierżyński’s files except a document indicating that there had been paperwork. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 168–9. On June 27, 1922, Kirov, then party boss in Azerbaijan, directed him to cease police surveillance on Bolshevik officials. (Beria wrote back denying any involvement.) Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 1): 68. A denunciation of Beria in the later 1920s accused him of surrounding himself with dubious types. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 236 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 9, l. 78–85).

71. In Sept. 1929, after a torrent of complaints, Orjonikidze had sent in a Central Control Commission team. Beria once again begged to be relieved of his post and allowed to resume his studies. “Time passes, all around people are growing, developing, and those who yesterday were far behind me today moved ahead,” Beria noted. “My backwardness is painful and humiliating, the more so when one knows that the country now needs people with expertise . . . Dear Sergo, I implore you to take me from the Caucasus and, if I cannot be sent to study, then transfer me to different work in one of the regions of the USSR . . . After all, I cannot argue with everyone for my lifetime, it will ruin my nerves.” But Orjonikidze blocked the Georgian push for disciplinary action against Beria in spring 1930. Toptygin, Nezivestnyi Beriia, 27–8; Knight, Beria, 39–40 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 71, l. 1–6); Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 236 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 9, l. 78–85).

72. In 1925, a Junkers airplane en route to Sukhum had caught fire and crashed near the Tiflis aerodrome, killing the chairman of the South Caucasus Council of People’s Commissars and another high government official as well as Mogilevsky. Trudovaia Abkhazia, March 25, 1925; Biulleten’ oppozitsii (Jan. 1939): 2–15. Beria transformed an obituary for Mogilevsky into a self-tribute. Antonov-Ovseenko, Beriia, 31.

73. Popov and Popokov, “Berievshchina,” 1989, no. 5: 40. Orjonikidze had told Pavlunovsky that “he rated the work of Beria as a growing functionary very highly, and that Comrade Beria would develop into a big-time functionary.” “Ochen’ vysoko tsenit t. Beria,” 163–5 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 788, l. 114–5ob; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 788, l. 114–16ob, June 25, 1937).

74. Rubin, Lavrentii Beriia, 57–8.

75. Whether Beria set Redens up remains unknown (Redens had a well-known weakness for the bottle and women). Tumshis, VChK: voina klanov, 207–8; Knight, Beria, 43–4 (citing Merkulov: RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 4, l. 86). “In the GPU apparat whole legends circulated about [Beria],” the operative Agabekov wrote at the time. Traveling with Beria for three days in a train in 1928, he found Beria “more interested in Tiflis street happenings than events of all-Union significance.” Agabekov, G.P.U., 169–70; Agabekov, OGPU, 155.

76. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina,” 1990, no. 5: 86–7; Nekrasov, Beria, 354; Rubin, Lavrentii Beriia, 63–4. Beria or someone on his behalf spread rumors he was destined for promotion to a big job in Moscow. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1989, no. 7), 85; Tumshis, VChK: voina klanov, 204–5. See also Smyr, Islam v Abkhazii, 148–51.

77. Beria had been cultivating Lakoba for some time, sending him gifts, but at the same time, filth spread about Lakoba—his half-brother Mikhail received a horse (“bribe”) when he brokered peace between families after a murder; his mother got 7,000 bricks for a two-story house (“palace”)—which bore the mark of Beria’s minions. Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1-392-35. Lakoba’s compound in Sukhum—a two-story brick villa, with two balconies, built by an Armenian magnate—took up a full city block in the finest neighborhood. Everyone had a room, including the governess, like prerevolutionary nobility.