Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

78. “A few days ago members of the South Caucasus regional committee, secretaries of the Georgian central committee, and several Azerbaijani functionaries . . . visited me,” Stalin wrote to Kaganovich. “They are embroiled in unbelievable infighting, and it seems to me a long way from over.” He directed Kaganovich to schedule an orgburo meeting. On Sept. 10, Kaganovich acceded to the Caucasus comrades who wanted Samson Mamuliya removed as Georgian party boss and replaced by Kartvelishvili (who would last only until Nov. 14). On Oct. 31, the politburo, following an orgburo meeting, passed a resolution on the “unprincipled struggle of certain individuals for influence (elements of ‘ataman-ism’).” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 68–9 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 7–11: Aug. 26, 1931), 104–5n6; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 847, l. 4; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 188n1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 265, l. 75–137; op. 3, d. 857, l. 9. 12–19).

79. Lakoba wrote: “Koba: Will Beria do for South Caucasus? Me: The only person who works properly is Beria.” Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, notes (1931) of a conversation with Stalin and Orjonikidze. Stalin rejected Polonsky as inappropriate to run the South Caucasus party because “he does not speak any of the local languages.” Khlevniuk, Stalin i Kaganovich, 276 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 3, d. 99, l. 153–5).

80. Makarova, “Stalin i ‘blizhnyi krug,’” 302. “Dear Comrade Nestor!” Beria wrote (Sept. 27, 1931). “I send my greetings and best wishes. Thank you for the letter. I’d very much like to meet with Koba before he leaves. It’d be good if you could remind him about this if the opportunity arises . . . Regards. Your Lavrenti Beria.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 60. Some believe Stalin first met Beria on Nov. 6, 1920, when Stalin addressed a crowd at the Baku Soviet and Beria, fresh out of a Georgian Menshevik prison, worked as business-manager of the Azerbaijan Central Committee. Some say it took place in summer 1923, in Moscow at Stalin’s Zubalovo dacha, or in fall 1923 at a resort in Abkhazia. Whenever the pair first met, Beria got to know Stalin up close thanks to Lakoba. Iskenderov, Iz istorii bor’by kommunisticheskoi partii Azerbaidzhana, 527–8; Knight, Beria, 33 (citing interview with Devi Sturua, son of Georgi Sturua).

81. Zaria vostoka, Nov. 15, 1931; Esaiashvili, Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Gruzii, II: 115–6. “I will not work with that charlatan,” Kartvelishvili supposedly objected when Stalin had told him he was going to get Beria as his deputy (second secretary of South Caucasus regional party committee). Medvedev, Let History Judge, 462–3 (citing A. V. Snegov, former member of the South Caucasus party committee bureau); Khrushchev, “O kul’te lichnosti,” 155–6; Deviatyi v sesoiuznysi s”ezd professional’nyk soiuzov SSSR, 205, 253. Using the Russified name Lavrentyev, Kartvelishvili would serve as party boss of the Soviet Far East territory from 1933 through Dec. 1936.

82. Beria wrote to Kaganovich (July 13, 1932) in a familiar tone, outlining his work so far and requesting a reduction in grain delivery quotas—a touchy subject with Stalin. Beria mentioned grave difficulties arising from massive livestock destruction—under his predecessor—an absence of cash, different options for locating a coke-chemical plant, the critical need to improve rail transport, overseen by Papuliya Orjonikidze (Sergo Orjonikidze’s elder brother). Beria added pointedly: “I was twice at Koba’s and had the chance to inform him in detail about our affairs. The materials concerning the matters addressed in this letter were also conveyed to comrade Koba.” Sokolov, Beriia, 83–4; RGAPSI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 75, l. 15.

83. On June 21, 1932, Orakhelashvili was disciplined for “groupism [gruppovshchina],” and his wife, Maria, was removed for supposedly inciting the Georgian Communist party against the South Caucasus regional party committee with “false rumors,” particularly against “comrade Beria.” Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage” (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 82, l. 88). Stalin wrote to Kaganovich: “My opinion: for all the angularity of Beria’s ‘actions,’ it is Orakhelashvili who’s wrong in this. . . . Everyone says that the positive work is going very well in Georgia [under Beria], and the mood of the peasants has improved.” Kaganovich wrote to Stalin (June 23) supporting Beria. When Orakhelashvili asked for the grain quota to be lowered, Stalin lost all patience (July 24). Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 185, 189.

84. Orakhelashvili wrote to Orjonikidze of Beria (Aug. 1, 1932): “Our relations are worse and worse and unbearable. Comrade Beria does not come to see me, and we don’t even have telephone conversations . . . He behaves like some kind of League of Nations commissar appointed to a mandate country.” Orhakhelashvili added that he had written to Stalin a month ago asking to be relieved of his duties as first secretary of the South Caucasus, but had received no response. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 186–9 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 92, d. 472, l. 1–2). See also Mlechin, KGB, 195; and Gazarian, “O Berii i sude nad Berievtsami v Gruzii,” 113–4.

85. Stalin added: “Sergo insisted on the candidacy of Mamuliya for secretary of the Georgian party, but now it is obvious that Mamuliya is not worth even Beria’s left foot.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 276 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 153–5), 283–5 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 153–60).

86. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 276n3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 903, l. 8); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 75, l. 15: Oct. 9, 1932); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 903, l. 8. Konstantin “Tite” Lordkipanidze, not a close associate of Beria, was given the Georgian OGPU.

87. Thereafter, Beria would be recorded in Stalin’s office in 1933 (twice), 1935 (twice), 1936 (twice), 1937 (twice), and several times in 1938. Na prieme, 569.

88. In Dec. 1932, Lakoba wrote to Beria, with copies to Stalin and Kaganovich, protesting the reprimand given to himself and Ladariya for approaching the USSR Council of People’s Commissars without the authorization of the Georgian Central Committee on the question of again lowering the Abkhaz tobacco procurement target. Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–42. Bagirov, who had been in Moscow, had returned and told Beria that Lakoba had gossiped to Orjonikidze that Beria had been slandering Orjonikidze, supposedly saying that, back when the Menshevik uprising was crushed, “Sergo would have shot all Georgians if it hadn’t been for me.” Enraged, Beria wrote to Orjonikidze (Dec. 18, 1932), “I know there are many big-mouths among those who left the South Caucasus, and it is impossible to prohibit big-mouths from gossiping idiocies, I know that many rumors circulate about me and our work in the South Caucasus, but I cannot for the life of me understand what led comrade Lakoba, what goals he followed, when he informed you about false matters . . . Dear Sergo, you know me more than ten years. You know all my shortcomings, you know what I am capable of. . . . I admire you too much and value your relations too much. I ask you only one thing—don’t believe anyone.” Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 197–8 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 29, d. 413, 1–3). See also Knight, Beria, 50–1. In a March 2, 1933, letter to Orjonikidze, Beria complained that according to Lakoba, Levan Gogoberidze, on holiday in Sukhum, was spreading disinformation about Beria’s involvement in Musavat counterintelligence. Beria reviewed how the matter had been adjudicated in his favor in 1920 in the presence of Orjonikidze and others, and how Beria sent Orjonikidze an official decision of the Azerbaijan Central Committee in 1925. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 202–4 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 29, d. 414, 1–4). See also Mlechin, KGB, 193–4.

89. Artamonov, Spetsob”ekty Stalina, 137–8. A stone stairway of 870 steps to the beach below would be built.

90. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii, 47–9 (no citation). The regime had laid a road to Pitsunda in 1930. See also Sergei Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia: 90 let na sluzhbe Otechestvu, 1921–2011 (Moscow: MediaPress), 157; and Rosenfeldt, “Special” World, 168–70.

91. Zhukov, “Tak, byl li ‘zagovor’ Tukhachevskogo?” (Gagra and Sochi incidents). After Stalin’s death, Chechulin would testify (Oct. 14, 1953): “In order to avoid being shot at again, this time from closer range, I leapt from the glass cabin and told the drivers that the launch should take only a straight course, to the open sea. . . . Comrade Stalin initially attributed the shooting at the launch, after a three-hour stay on the shore in the Pitsunda area, to Abkhaz customs, saying that among the Abkhaz it was customary to greet guests by firing shots. But when the rifle shots rang out so severely, comrade Stalin, it seems, changed his mind about such firing, so that by the time we returned to Cold Spring in order to ascertain the cause of the shots, that very night, as soon as we disembarked, he sent Bogdanov to Pitsunda. . . . Five days after the shooting of the launch, a letter came to Cold Spring from one of the border guards, whose name I do not recall. In that letter he asked comrade Stalin to forgive him for firing at the launch, and explained that he had taken the launch to be not ours (foreign). That launch did in fact appear in the Pitsunda area for the first time. . . . I reported the content of this letter to comrade Stalin. He heard me out and took the letter.”

92. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 47.

93. The fired OGPU chief was A. N. Mikeladze. In 1937, the incident was reclassified as a terrorist act; Lavrov as well as Mikeladze would be shot. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 61–3.

94. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 46–7; Zen’kovich, Marshaly i genseki, 196–8. Vlasik late in life erroneously dated the incident to 1935, and perceived an interconnected conspiracy: this attempt on Stalin’s life, the Kirov murder, the death of Kuibyshev, etc., all the work of a “fifth column.” Loginov, Teni Stalina, 98–9.

95. Dimitrov’s words and a broad counternarrative to Nazi propaganda were propagated in the global press by the Comintern and its media wizard Willi Münzenberg, who had created the Münzenberg Trust (encompassing newspapers, magazines, and film production companies), the fourth-largest media organization in the Weimar Republic. When Nazi newspaper accounts tied Münzenberg to the Reichstag fire, he fled into exile. Gross, Willi Münzenberg.

96. Kaganovich had opposed Koltsov’s request to travel to Paris for the reportage, but Stalin had approved it. The trial would end on Dec. 23, 1933, and the Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe would be guillotined in Jan. 1934. Litvinov wrote to Stalin, regarding Soviet personnel in Berlin, “In the opinion of the foreign affairs commissariat, given the current political situation in Germany, it would be inconvenient to have a single-race composition of the upper stratum of the embassy.” In 1934, Khinchuk would be replaced by Jacob Surits, who, however, was also Jewish (he had a law degree from the University of Berlin and had been a member of the Jewish Bund). Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 106 (AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 94, d. 78, l. 46).

97. DGFP, series C, I: 848–51 (Thomsen, Sept. 26, 1933), 851–3 (Bernhard von Bülow, Sept. 26). German government actions against Soviet citizens and property effectively provoked the Soviet cancellation. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 81; Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion, 134–41. Going back to the nineteenth century, “the German and Russian economies were basically complementary so that there existed a broad basis for economic cooperation . . . in the absence of offsetting political factors.” For the Germans, the goal has always been to increase foreign trade, while for the Russians, it was to advance domestic industrialization. Shoemaker, “Russo-German Economic Relations,” 336.

98. In 1931, Hitler had proposed an Anglo-German partnership to British journalists invited to the Brown House in Munich, offering a free hand at sea in exchange for a free hand on the continent in the East. This was the beginning of a long bilateral courtship. Hildebrand, Foreign Policy, 25. See also Wagener, Memoirs of a Confidant, 173–4. (Wagener worked closely with Hitler 1929–32 and wrote these recollections in 1946 in British captivity.) Hitler turned to Joachim von Ribbentrop, who visited London in Nov. 1933 as a special envoy to forge an entente against the Bolshevik menace. Hoover Institution Archives, Louis P. Lorchner Collection, Ribbentrop to Hitler original files, 1933–38: Nov. 20 and 26, 1933; Bloch, Ribbentrop, 41–4; Waddington, Hitler’s Crusade, 69 (citing House of Lords, Davidson papers, memo Nov. 20, 1933); Winterbotham, Nazi Connection, 53–4; Ernest William Dalrymple Tennant, True Account (London: M. Parish, 1957), 164–9; Davidson, Memoirs of a Conservative, 399–401; von Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 36–7.

99. Le Matin (Nov. 23, 1933).

100. Stalin’s fixation on Polish spies in Ukraine revealed his and the wider regime’s fears about Soviet vulnerabilities. See the tortured case of the head of the Polish section of the Chernigov province party committee, Bołesław Skarbek, executed for leading a fictive clandestine “Polish military organization” on Soviet soil. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 460 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 240, l. 105–6), 467–8 (d. 243, l. 86–8), 525–6 (d. 245, l. 59–60), 530 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 86); Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War, 116–7; Rubl’ov and Reprtinstev, “Repressii protiv poliakiv,” 121; Mitzner, “Widmo POW,” 22.

101. Negotiations had opened on June 26, 1933. Stalin, in the fall, instructed Kaganovich and Molotov to conduct a campaign against Japan in Pravda and to a lesser extent Izvestiya and to republish an internal-use anti-Japanese brochure for wide circulation. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 237–334; Haslam, Threat from the East, 22–24; DVP SSSR, XVI: 573–5 (Sokolnikov to Yurenev in Tokyo: Oct. 17, 1933); Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 396–7 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 131–4: Oct. 21, 1933), 401 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 741, l. 112–5: Oct. 24); Na prieme, 111–2. Roosevelt had promised Litvinov “100 percent moral and diplomatic support” against Japan, and even ordered Bullitt to study the possibility of a nonaggression pact. The U.S. State Department had no interest. Stalin, meanwhile, had used Sokolnikov to undercut Karakhan, a hawk on Japan: on May 25, 1933, the politburo had named Sokolnikov deputy foreign affairs commissar for Far Eastern Affairs (Japan, China, Mongolia); Karakhan was reduced to oversight of just the Near East. Genis, “Upriamyi narkom s il’inki,” 238. Ken and Rusapov, Zapadnoe zagranich’e, 596–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 923, l. 18). Sokolnikov was also placed on the politburo’s Mongolia commission (soon becoming deputy to Voroshilov on that body).

102. Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion, 134–6. Yenukidze, who oversaw many sensitive government affairs, had gone on holiday to Germany in summer 1933; back in the Soviet Union, he invited German ambassador Dirksen and his aide Twardowski to his dacha in Aug. 1933; Krestinsky and Karakhan, deputy commissars, the former a former Soviet envoy to Berlin, also attended. Yenukidze, described by Dirksen as “a fair-haired, blue-eyed, kindly Georgian with definite pro-German leanings,” ventured that the statists would triumph over the agitators in National Socialism; Dirksen and Twardowski agreed that a modus vivendi could be found with Moscow.

103. When Twardowski explained to Litvinov the reasons for German abandonment of the League, “Mr. Litvinov demonstrated such understanding of our position that I expressed regrets that such a stance of the leader of Soviet foreign policy did not find expression in the Soviet press.” DGFP, series C, II: 14–9 (Oct. 17, 1933). See also Bennett, German Rearmament. On Nov. 12, 1933, 93 percent of German voters had approved the German government’s decision to withdraw from the League and 92 percent voted for Nazi candidates (the only party allowed to stand).

104. Bloch, Ribbentrop, 40–1.

105. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 81, l. 141–144–144ob.

106. Krestinsky returned via Vienna. DGFP, series C, I: 862–4 (Bülow, Sept. 27), 901–4 (Twardowski with Stern, Oct. 10). Stalin opened a back channel through his foreign-policy fixer Radek, who helped arrange a meeting between Dirksen and Molotov. Dirksen, due to depart the Moscow posting (to be replaced by Rudolf Nadolny), returned to Moscow from Berlin on Oct. 28 and was afforded a lavish farewell dinner and gifts. Von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 116–8; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 260–1; Gnedin, Iz istorii otnoshenii, 13, 22–3; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 235–6.

107. Back in Sept. 1930, Stalin, accompanied by Nadya, Svetlana, and Orjonikidze, had stayed for the first time at the Sinop villa in Sukhum’s outskirts, where Trotsky used to stay. (In late 1931 Sinop was transferred from Abkhazia’s agriculture commissariat to the USSR central executive committee.) Lakoba, Stalin’s host in 1930, whisked the group the next day to reconnoiter Myussera, where Lakoba suggested creating a new dacha for Stalin. Stalin tweaked proposed secret passages between the buildings, three from his bedroom, including one directly to the hillside. Stalin asked for 50 mandarin trees; Lakoba had 100 planted of the Satsuma variety. Already in 1932, the main structure was pronounced usable, though far from finished, and in Sept. 1932 Stalin arrived to go hunting with Lakoba, Goglidze, Pauker, and Vlasik. Stalin demanded changes and Myussera, like Cold Spring, underwent much further construction. Lakoba Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, 2–28. Myussera ended up being used more by Molotov and Mikoyan (Stalin would stay a mere eight times through the end of his life).

108. The magnate was Stepan Lianosyan, known as Lianozov (whom John Reed had labeled “the Russian Rockefeller”). One more dacha was being built at Abkhazia’s stunning Lake Ritsa. By one account, in summer 1932, while visiting Cold Spring, in Abkhazia, with Nadya, Stalin was persuaded by Lakoba to travel by horseback up to Lake Ritsa, which formed part of the Bzyb River basin, and lay in a deep mountain hollow reached by a steep trail of sheer cliffs and landslides. The lake was cool in summers and warm in winters. Here, at the point where the Yupshara River flowed out of Ritsa, Lakoba oversaw construction on another dacha for Stalin. No mean feat: one of the trucks carrying construction materials collapsed a bridge and plunged. Dzhikhashvili, “Kavkaskie safari Stalina”; XX let Sovetskoi Abkhazii, 110. There were dachas for Stalin’s use on the Black Sea seashore in the area of Green Cape, about five miles north of Batum in Ajaria, at Borjomi (the former retreat of Georgian kings), in Crimea (Mukhalatka) and Valdai (between Moscow and Leningrad). The number would grow to eighteen total, including five in Abkhazia.

109. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 385–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 81, l. 134, 138), 386 (l. 134), 391–3 (d. 82, l. 6–7, 8, 9, 10; f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 112, 124), 393 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 82, l. 5), 393–4 (l. 21–2), 394–5 (d. 741, l. 108–11); Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova.”

110. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 408 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 741, l. 117–8); Na prieme, 112.

111. According to Molchanov, the “organization” aimed to overturn Soviet power and restore monarchism, and was led by Anna Abrikosova (b. 1882), the daughter of a former Moscow factory owner, and Anna Brilliantova (b. 1906), daughter of a former Menshevik, and financed with Catholic church money. They would be sentenced on Feb. 19, 1934, to either eight or ten years in Gulag. Abrikosova would die in the camp in 1936; the other would be rearrested while in confinement and executed in Oct. 1937. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 369–71 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1271, l. 1–3: Nov. 20, 1933).

112. In 1934, there would be at least four more. Hoffmann, Hitler’s Personal Security, 24.

113. Bilateral talks had been spurred by U.S. efforts to stabilize world wheat prices in summer 1933. Bowers, “American Diplomacy.” Recognition became official on Nov. 16, 1933. FRUS, 1933, II: 778–840; DVP SSSR, XVI: 609–10 (Litvinov telegrams, Nov. 8, 1933), 621–2 (Nov. 10), 639 (Nov. 15), 640 (joint communique, Nov. 15), 641–55 (exchange of notes and letters, Nov. 16), 655–8 (Litvinov press conference, Nov. 17), 658–60 (Litvinov telegram, Nov. 19), 662–3 (Litvinov telegram, Nov. 18), 655–6 (Kalinin radio address to America, Nov. 20), 666–7 (Litvinov telegrams, Nov. 20), 675 (Litvinov to Roosevelt, Nov. 22), 675–6 (Litvinov telegram, Nov. 22); Izvestiia, Nov. 20 and 23, 1933; http://nsar chive.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/epi sode-1/fdr-ml.htm; http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14563; http://www.fdrli brary.marist.edu/daybyday/daylog/novem ber-17th-1933. See also Bishop, Roosevelt-Litvinov Agreements; Maddux, Years of Estrangement, 1–26; and Browder, Origins of Soviet-American Diplomacy, 37, 45, 72, 85–6, 95, 99–152.

114. “This success for Soviet diplomacy,” Molotov stated at the central executive committee on Dec. 28, 1933, of the various Soviet bilateral agreements, “is inseparably linked with the name of Comrade Litvinov, whose services are widely recognized, but here we should especially underscore them.” Litvinov was given the floor the next day. DVP SSSR, XVI: 778–81 (at 779), 781–97. Litvinov would take to complaining about his “security” detail. “‘Ne chuvstvovat’ za soboiu topota,’” 123–4 (APRF f. 57, op 1, d. 18, 1. 99–100; Litvinov to Yezhov, Sept. 9, 1935).

115. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 361–445.

116. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 190–6.

117. Stalin received considerable intelligence pointing to a Japanese desire for war against the USSR. In late Nov. 1933, after Hirota became Japan’s foreign minister, Stalin received an intercepted letter from the U.S. ambassador in Japan to Washington indicating Hirota’s promotion heralded a more aggressive Japanese posture. That same month, the OGPU sent Stalin intelligence obtained in Paris in the circles of the former prime minister Kokovtsov, who had a document from Japan concerning “the manifest threat to the main Japanese islands over which Soviet squadrons could appear in a few hours . . .” Stalin underscored this passage and wrote, “for Klim.” On Jan. 14, 1934, Artuzov and Agranov sent Stalin a Russian translation of an article published back in April 1933 in a closed journal of the Japanese general staff bruiting war with the Soviet Union. On Feb. 26, Yagoda sent Stalin materials from the Japanese military attaché (Kawabe) assessing the technical level of the Red Army, and stating, “in defense industry the USSR has freed itself of foreign dependence.” Stalin underlined the passage. On March 11, Yagoda sent Stalin materials dispatched by the Japanese military attaché in Turkey to Tokyo (dated Feb. 15) on mobilizing Muslim peoples against the USSR through propaganda, and asking for finances to set it up. The document asserted that “the interests of England and the USSR [are] in irreconcilable contradiction”—a passage Stalin underlined. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 126–32; d. 186, l. 1, 37–53, 91–5, 118–26; Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 206; Haslam, Threat from the East, 38–9. Germany learned that Litvinov had expressed fears of a Japanese attack as well as a German-Polish reconciliation, and thus of a triple alliance against the USSR, on a visit to Rome: DGFP, series C, II: 183 (Hassell, Dec. 7, 1933).

118. Moscow Daily News, Dec. 30, 1933. Marx spent eight weeks on tour. Litvinov did the knives routine himself, to Harpo’s surprise, at the final performance. Harpo evidently served as a secret courier, smuggling letters for Ambassador Bullitt by taping sealed envelopes to his leg under his pants. Marx, Harpo Speaks!, 299–337; Fromkin, In the Time of the Americans; Harlow, “Secrets in His Socks.”

119. FRUS, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, 53–4 (Bullitt, Dec. 24, 1933), 60–1 (Jan. 4).

120. Costiliogla, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, 268.

121. Bullitt returned the kiss. Bullitt, For the President, 68–9 (Jan. 1, 1934); FRUS, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, 59–61 (Bullitt to Phillips, Jan. 4, 1934); Farnsworth, Bullitt and the Soviet Union, 109–14; and Tucker, Stalin in Power, 224. Soviet counterintelligence used the ballerina Irena Charnodskaya, who made the rounds of Bullitt and his bachelor aides, Chip Bohlen and Charles Thayer. “We simply cannot keep our hands off her,” Thayer wrote. “She has become an acquisition of the Embassy and . . . sleep[s] in some vacant room which the three of us carefully lock together and then fight violently as to who will keep the key . . . What an embassy!” The exuberance would end quickly for all. Costiliogla, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, 263–70 (citing Thayer diary, April 14–May 20, 1934, box 6, Thayer papers; Bohlen to Mother, April 15–May 15, 1934, box 36, Bohlen papers); George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1950–1963, 126; “Fair Day, Adieu!,” p. 18, box 240, Kennan papers; Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 190; Kennan, “Flashbacks,” in At a Century’s Ending, 31.

122. The text also noted that the situation in the United States “is most favorable for the establishment of socialism.” Eudin and Slusser, Soviet Foreign Policy, II: 577–85; Theses and Decisions, 20–47.

123. “Stalin to Duranty,” Time, Jan. 8, 1934: 26. See also Sochineniia, XIII: 276–81, and the slightly longer Soviet transcript: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 374, l. 1–6; Na prieme, 118. Duranty had been allowed to accompany Litvinov to Washington in Nov., and returned to Moscow with Bullitt in Dec. See also Duranty, I Write as I Please, 166–7; and Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist, 190–2. Thayer, the U.S. embassy official, wrote of Duranty, “Always witty, always ready to take any side in an argument, he usually kept every party he was at in an uproar of argument and vituperation.” Thayer, Bears in the Caviar, 60.

124. DVP SSSR, XVI: 772–4 (Dovgalevsky, Dec. 29, 1933), 876–7n321. The politburo had resolved (Dec. 19, 1933) to join the League and enter a regional pact in the framework of the League, in the face of Nazi aggression, under certain conditions. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 305–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 154–5: Dec. 19, 1933). A possible new “collective security” policy was also discussed by the Central Committee (Dec. 29, 1933), among the last prewar instances when the Central Committee was tasked with discussing Soviet foreign policy. On Dovgalevsky (who had become ambassador to France in Jan. 1928), see Barmine, One Who Survived, 178.

125. At a Dec. 9, 1933, Kremlin meeting Stalin gave the go-ahead for formal negotiations with France. “We have adopted a firm course of closer relations with France,” Litvinov overly enthused in a telegram to Dovgalevsky. Soviet proposals did go far beyond the original French idea, insisting that holdout League members had to extend diplomatic recognition to the USSR, colonial mandates had to be revised (a major plank of Soviet propaganda), and a regional pact had to include not only Poland but also the Baltic states, Finland, and Czechoslovakia, as well as security assistance if Japan attacked the USSR in Asia. Borisov, Sovetsko-frantsuzskie otnosheniia, 202 (AVP RF, f. 0136, op. 17, pap. 159, d. 778, l. 79), 204; DVP SSSR, XVI: 576–8 (Oct. 20, 1933), 773, 735–6 (Dec. 11, 1933); 876–7 n321; DDF, 1e série, IV: 160–1, 165; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15; Paul-Boncour, Entre deux guerres, I: 363–4; Dullin, “La rôle de l’Allemagne,” 245–62. Litvinov also urged the signing of a trade pact, however modest. DVP SSSR, XVIII: 752. Even if the Soviet Union represented an important market, the two countries could not get beyond the Soviets’ repudiation of tsarist-era debt. French elite circles also remained embittered at the confiscation without compensation of some 13 billion gold rubles in investments from tsarist times. Some private French arms dealers refused to sell to the Communists for fear of reverse engineering or because the orders were too small for the bother. Dullin, Men of Influence, 100.

126. The visit took place Aug. 26–Sept. 9, 1933. Pravda underscored that Herriot “categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the USSR.” Pravda, Sept. 13, 1934; Werth et al., Black Book of Communism, 159–60; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 311 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 24), 317 (l. 41). Laval’s fellow Radical Party member Pierre Cot, air minister in the government, followed Herriot, arriving in Moscow with an air squadron on Sept. 15, and becoming the first foreign delegation afforded Soviet military honors. Izvestiia, Sept. 15, 24, and 25, 1933. Cot was allowed to observe aviation maneuvers and the secret bomber factory in Fili outside Moscow—the Germans had just evacuated their secret air training station at Lipetsk three days before—and became the object of intense attention by Soviet intelligence. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 598–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 203, l. 19–21). Cot, based on the WWII intercepts, would later be tagged as a Soviet “agent.” Romerstein and Breindel, Venona Secrets, 56–7. Draitser, Stalin’s Romeo Spy, 191. See also Baker, Rezident; and Stavinskii, Zarubiny.

127. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 198–9 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 45, l. 70–70ob.).

128. Eldev-Ochir, a leftist and scourge of the lamas, had been Mongolian People’s Party leader for a year in 1929–30, during the catastrophe that had compelled the new course correction. In July 1932, he served a second term (for one month), giving way to Lhumbe (b. 1902). On Oct. 8, 1933, the politburo Mongolia commission discussed “the matter of a spy organization,” and Eliava received instructions to root out pro-Japanese elements and prepare for possible war and evacuation. Between July 1933 and June 1934, there would be perhaps 2,000 arrests in a campaign against “left deviationists” and a so-called Lhumbe group accused of spying for the Japanese. At least fifty-six Mongols would be executed, including Lhumbe. On May 23, 1934, the politburo directed Artuzov to “make a complete list of Mongolians who had come to the Soviet Union at various times.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 100, 125–7; d. 16, l. 63. M. Chibisov, a Soviet proconsul who helped fabricate the Lhumbe Affair, would remark upon departure from Mongolia for Moscow in July 1934: “Stalin has already said that all lamas are counterrevolutionaries. They must be convicted as traitors before the people.” Sandag and Kendall, Poisoned Arrows, 76. See also Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 327–33. Karakhan would tell American ambassador Bullitt about the discovery of a Japanese plot to replace the Mongolian government with a pro-Japanese government, and, in a further fabrication, how the Mongols had again asked to be admitted into the USSR as a Union republic but the Soviets declined, demonstrating they were not imperialists. FRUS, 1934, III: 232–3.

129. Stalin suggested cutting by half the 4,000 Soviet personnel in country. He asked the Mongols (in terms of language), “Can you understand Buryats (yes), Qalmyks (somewhat), Tuvins (no)?” The conversation between Dobchin (b. 1896), a deputy prime minister, and Eldev-Ochir (b. 1905), a Central Committee secretary and presidium member, and Sokolnikov/Voroshilov was written down from memory. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 10, l. 1–7.

130. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 11, l. 1: Jan. 16, 1935. The politburo had allocated 100,000 rubles for Genden’s delegation: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 953, l. 58 (Oct. 19, 1934).

131. “‘Zhmu vashemu ruku, dorogoi tovarishch’: perepiska Maksima Gorkogo i Iosifa Stalina” Novy Mir, 1997, no. 9: 169; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 124–5 (IMLI, arkhiv Gor’kogo: Jan. 8, 1930); Sochineniia, XII: 177. “I am not an expert in literature and, of course, not a critic,” Stalin wrote, also in 1930, while intervening to support a leftist playwright and poet, Alexander Bezymenskii (Stalin did fault Bezymenskii for “some holdovers of Communist Youth League avant-gardism”). Sochineniia, XII: 200–1; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 180–1. Back in 1925, Stalin had responded to an inquiry from enlightenment commissar Lunacharsky about the Bolshoi Theater’s centenary, “I am not strong in artistic matters, as you yourself know, and I do not dare say anything decisive in this area.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 760, 146–8.

132. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 157–9 (RGALI, f. 2750, op. 1, d. 140, 141: Oct. 29 and Nov. 9, 1931); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 858, l. 6. Initially permitted as an experiment, the play was terminated during rehearsals in spring 1932.

133. At a deeper level, the novel took up mythmaking, salvation through a woman, eternity versus the cut and thrust of the moment, an atheist turned into a believer, the urban environment as a character, and estrangement of the physical world—all hallmarks of Bulgakov’s work. Proffer, Bulgakov, 146. “I love this novel more than all my other writings,” Bulgakov observed in Oct. 1924 of White Guard. Brainina and Dmitrieva, Sovetskie pisateli, III: 86.

134. Rossiia, 1926, no. 4 and 5. A pirated Russian edition of the full novel appeared in Riga in 1927. A complete Russian version, corrected by Bulgakov, was published in Paris under the revised title: Dni Turbinykh (Belaia gvardiia), 2 vols. (Paris: Concorde, 1927). Proffer, Bulgakov, 137–9; Agursky, Third Rome, 305–17; Bulgakov, Early Plays, 86–8. The publisher of the journal Russia, Isai Altshuler, known as Lezhnev, emigrated to Estonia in 1926 and soon declared himself the official representative to sell the rights abroad of Bulgakov’s works, prompting the writer to issue a denial through TASS of any such right. Lyandres, “Russkii pisatel” (Jan. 9, 1928); “Teatral’nyi roman,” in Bulgakov, Izbrannaia proza, 518–41; Chudakova, “Arkhiv Bulgakova.”

135. Boris Vershilov, head of the Moscow Art Theater’s second studio, had sent Bulgakov a penciled note after reading White Guard asking him to render it into a play, which the writer did in four months. Curtis, Manuscripts Don’t Burn, 62. It had premiered on Oct. 5, 1926. Gorchakov, Istoriia Sovetskogo teatra, 132–5; Gorchakov, Theater in Soviet Russia. How the play had gotten approved stumped Moscow cultural circles. Lunacharsky was ordered to open it in a private phone call from Stalin, a fact kept secret. Lunacharsky Moskovskie novosti, April 25, 1993; APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 240, l. 2; d. 239, l. 23; Sarnov, Stalin i pisateli, II: 421–2; Krylov, Puti razvitiia teatra, 232;” Lunacharskii, “Pervye novinki sezona,” Izvestiia, Oct. 1926, reprinted in Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, III: 325–31; Gorchakov, Istoriia Sovetskogo teatra, 133. Gorchakov, Theater in Soviet Russia, 185–7.

136. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 68, 82, 86–8, 742n2. See also Pravda, Feb. 9, 1930 (Kerzhentsev).

137. “‘Polozhenie ego deistvitel’no bezyskhodnoe’: 110–4 (APRF, f. 3, op. 1, d. 241, l. 69–80: Kerzhentsev, Jan. 6, 1929), 114 (l. 83: Voroshilov to Stalin, Jan. 29), 115 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 724, l. 5: Jan. 30); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 91–6, 99, 100; Proffer, Bulgakov, 275–87.

138. On Feb. 2, 1929, Stalin had written an open reply to the proletarian playwright Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovsky that Turbins “is not such a bad play, because it does more good than harm. Do not forget that the chief impression it leaves with the spectator is one that is favorable to the Bolsheviks: ‘if even such people as the Turbins are compelled to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, admit their cause as definitely lost, then the Bolsheviks must be invincible, and there is nothing to be done about it.’ Days of the Turbins is a demonstration of the all-conquering power of Bolshevism. Of course, the author is ‘not guilty’ of this demonstration, but what is that to us?” Sochineniia, XI: 326–9. See also Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 53–5. See also Lunacharsky’s letter to Stalin on Turbins: Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 108–9 (RGASPI, f. 142, op. 1, d. 461, l. 8–80b.: Feb. 12, 1929); Smeliansky, “Destroyers”; and L. M. Leonidov, in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, Dec. 21, 1939.

139. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 102–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4490, l. 3–17: Feb. 12, 1929). See also Shapoval, “‘Oni chuvstvuiut sebia, kak gosti . . . ,’” 120–6. The “brotherly” visit of the Ukrainian writers’ delegation was accompanied by exhibitions and performances as part of a Ukrainian week, punctuated by the audience with Stalin. Pravda, Feb. 9, 12, 13, 14, 1929.

140. Curtis, Manuscripts Don’t Burn, 92–4 (July 1929). Bulgakov had just had a chapter of a new novel rejected for publication. On July 30, 1929, A. Svidersky, a former agricultural commissar overseeing arts in the enlightenment commissariat, reported sympathetically to Alexander Smirnov, a Central Committee secretary, about a long conversation with Bulgakov, whom he characterized as “a person hounded and doomed. I am not even sure his nerves are healthy. His situation is genuinely hopeless.” Svidersky supported Bulgakov’s request to go abroad. Smirnov agreed in a note to Molotov (Aug. 3, 1929). “‘Polozhenie ego deistvitel’no bezyskhodnoe,’” 116 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 239, l. 6); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 115. Bulgakov was not allowed to leave.

141. Stalin had the letter circulated to the upper party and state ranks. Oktiabr’, 1987, no. 6: 176–80; Milne, Mikhail Bulgakov, 268–74.

142. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 299–300; Bulgakov and Bulgakova, Dnevnik Mastera i Margarity, 497; Bulgakov, Vospominaniia, 394 (L. E. Belozerskaya); “‘Polozhenie ego deistvitel’no bezyskhodnoe’”: 116 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 239, l. 6); Fleishman, “O gibeli maiakovskovo kak ‘literaturnom fakte,’” 128; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 127 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 783, l. 11). See also Gromov, Stalin, 114–6.

143. Woroszylski, Life of Mayakovsky, 514–30 (esp. 526); Sundaram, “Manufacturing Culture,” 75–87. Trotsky wrote an obituary (Biulleten’ oppozitsii, May 11, 1930), but Stalin stayed publicly silent. More than 100,000 mourners, with no prompting from the state, had turned out for Mayakovsky’s burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery, a number surpassed only at Lenin’s Red Square funeral. Boyrn, “Death of the Revolutionary Poet,” 158.

Mayakovsky was involved in a recent romance with a very young married woman, the actress Veronika Polonskaya, who refused to leave her husband. On April 14, when he shot himself in the heart, Polonskaya had just left his apartment to attend a rehearsal against his protestations. Rumors spread that the bullet removed from Mayakovsky did not match the revolver he owned (a prop in a play), and that neighbors had heard two shots. Ten days after the poet’s death, the investigating police officer was killed. The handwritten suicide note, however, was unquestionably Mayakovsky’s. “The idea of suicide was like a chronic disease inside him,” his former lover and muse Lily Brik would write, “and like any chronic disease it worsened under circumstances that, for him, were undesirable.” The official report of his death stated that “the suicide was caused by reasons of a purely personal order, having nothing in general to do with the public and literary activity of the poet, the suicide was preceded by an illness from which the poet still had not completely recovered.” Pravda, April 15, 1930. The suicide spurred the removal of the poet’s works from children and youth libraries. Literaturnaia gazeta, July 10, 1930. See also Brown, Mayakovsky; and Terras, Vladimir Mayakovsky.

144. On May 30, 1931, Bulgakov wrote a long letter to Stalin, quoting Gogol, vainly requesting a long rest holiday in Europe, stating he had never been abroad, contrary to published accounts, and pledging his loyalty (“I do not know if the Soviet theater needs me, but I need the Soviet theater like oxygen”). Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 147–50 (otdel rukopisi GPB, f. 562, k. 19, d. 30). In 1931, Stalin allowed both Pilnyak and Zamyatin to travel to Western Europe, and in 1932 Babel would be permitted to travel to Paris, where his wife was undergoing an operation. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 180 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 206, l. 21).

145. Paustovsky, Story of a Life, 63–5. Bulgakov persisted in his supplications to be permitted to travel to France and Italy, writing to Stalin (June 11, 1934) that functionaries must be afraid he would defect. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 210–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 206, l. 37–380b.). Bulgakov would write one more letter to Stalin (Feb. 1938) about the fate of his friend Nikolai Erdman.

146. During the civil war, Red Army soldiers at the front recited Bedny’s colloquial verses (they were also dropped by airplanes behind White lines). Bedny had received an Order of the Red Banner on the occasion of an infirm Lenin’s last birthday, the first such award for literary efforts in Soviet history. Trotsky had pushed for the prize: Bedny had ridden his civil war train and helped him inspire the troops. But during the intraparty struggle Bedny slashed at Trotsky (“a spent politician”). Bedny suffered high sugar levels and was overweight, and Stalin allocated scarce foreign currency for his diabetes treatment in Germany. Bedny wrote a report for Stalin about his trip, jokingly noting that his wife had gone crazy over the cleanliness, order, and abundance of consumer goods in the dying capitalist world (“She stands in front of any store window and dies, dies. You drag her away, and she stares at the next window”). Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 129 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 739, l. 39–40: July 19, 1928), 129–33 (d. 701, l. 43–5: Sept. 20; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 114 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 96); Volkogonov papers, Hoover Archives, container 18; Trotskii, Literatura i revoliutsiia, 166–7. “Nobody ever worked so wholeheartedly for the Soviet regime,” Nadezhda Mandelstam bitingly wrote about Bedny. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 26.

147. “Receiving your assignment, I turned for advice to a very well-informed, authoritative comrade, to whom I usually approach in similar or delicate or, I would say, shock-work tasks,” Bedny wrote to Blyukher, commander for the Soviet Far East who had asked for a poem. The poet alluded to how his unnamed “adviser,” “grinning and removing his immutable pipe from his mouth,” had suggested a folk rhyme. Bedny, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, XVII: 76 (1929).

148. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 131 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 718, l. 82–82ob.: Nov. 2, 1930),131–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 201, l. 13: Dec. 6).

149. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 132–3 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d.939, l. 7–9), 134–7 (l. 1–6. Stalin would include the rebuke in his collected works: Sochineniia, XIII: 23–6. Bedny continued to step on the wrong toes. Kaganovich asked Stalin to read Bedny’s poem (“What Next?”), which Izvestiya had published (Sept. 23, 1931), and which seemed potentially provocative to Japan. Kaganovich indicated Litvinov had approved and possibly commissioned the poem. “I did not read and have no intention of reading Demyan’s verses, since I am sure they are not worth it,” Stalin wrote back (Sept. 29). Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 119–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 739, l. 129–35), 122 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 40; f. 17, op. 114, d. 264, l. 11). See also Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 470–1; Dubrovsky, “Chronicle of a Poet’s Downfall,” 188–90; and Chuev, Sto sorok, 269.

150. Bedny’s apartment served as a salon of artistic life. It was here that Fyodor Chaliapin met Stalin. “Stalin spoke little, and when he did it was with a fairly strong Caucasus accent,” the singer would recall. “Yet everything he said had a weighty ring to it, perhaps because he spoke briefly. From his short sentences, which were not always clear in meaning but energetic in tone, I went away with the impression that this was a man who did not fool around. If necessary he could easily—as easily as his light lezginka step-in soft boots—do a dance or blow up the cathedral of Christ the Savior.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 65 (citing Izvestiia 1962, no. 249).

151. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 246–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 68), 248 (l. 68, 70), 269 (f. 667, op. 1, d. 18, l. 6: Nov. 19, 1932).

152. Stalin evidently showed the Izvestiya editor Gronsky a journal full of Bedny’s unflattering remarks about the denizens of the Kremlin, which, Stalin explained, had been written by a “journalist.” (Gronsky has the story slightly garbled, because Bedny got the Order of Lenin, and it was before the writers’ congress.) Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 155. Bedny appears to have made the same complaint to Fyodor Raskolnikov, according to memoirs of Raskolnikov’s wife. Kanivez, “Moia zhizn’ s Raskol’nikovom,” 95. See also Gromov, Stalin, 166.

153. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povesti dnia zasedanii, II: 416 (April 13, 1933). Stalin did not have an Order of Lenin; he had two Orders of the Red Banner (Nov. 1919; Feb. 1930).

154. Stalin had the letter circulated to the politburo for information. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 283–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 79–84: April 5, 1933).

155. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 68 (Aug. 18, 1932).

156. Stalin edited the draft decree. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1932, no. 9: 62; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 168 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 875, l. 11: March 8, 1932), 172–3 (d. 881, l. 6, 22; op. 163, d. 938, l. 37–8: April 23, 1932). The theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold is said to have hung a framed copy of the decree on the wall in his expansive double apartment on Bryusov Lane, a few blocks up from Red Square. Kirpotin, Rovesnik zheleznogo veka, 156–7.

157. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 176–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 941, l. 68–9). An architects’ union was also formed in 1932, but it would not hold its inaugural congress until 1937. The politburo formed a commission led by Stalin that concluded (June 7, 1932): “It is considered inexpedient to establish an organizational committee for musical organizations.” There were associations below the Union level, in Moscow and Leningrad, that did not have jurisdiction over each other. Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 29–32 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 300, l. 144). A decision to form a Composers’ Union would be made on May 3, 1939, but it would not be formed until 1948. Iakovlev, “Soiuz kompozitorov SSSR,” V: 232–3; Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 32 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1124, l. 81; d, 1509, l. 4–5).

158. Na prieme, 68 (literary critic Leopold Averbakh, writer Vladimir Kirshon, Gronsky, and Stetsky), 70 (Gronsky, Stetsky, and Mekhlis).

159. Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 334–6 (letter to Alexsander Ovcharenko, Oct. 22, 1972). See also arkhiv A. M. Gor’kogo MoG-3–25–7 (Gronsky reminiscences with Gorky archive staff, Nov. 30, 1963); and Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 132.

160. Gronsky was the proposed union’s working head, and leader of its party faction. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 175–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 14, d. 295, l. 1–3; APRF, f. 3, op. 35, d. 32, l. 24–24ob.: May 7, 1932); “Perepiska A. M. Gor’kogo s G. G. Iagodoi,” in Keldysh, Neizvestnyi Gor’kii, 168–206.

161. Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 151–2. Gorky played a hand in getting Lev Kamenev appointed the first director of the Institute, but on Dec. 16, 1932, Kamenev was arrested. At that evening in the Bolshoi, Stalin had Henri Barbusse come to the stage from the audience and yielded him his seat. Izvestiia, Sept. 25 and 26, 1932. Andrei Bubnov, RSFSR commissar of enlightenment, on holiday in Gagra, had written to Stalin asking to be excused; Stalin ordered him to appear. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 44, l. 115.

162. In the play (1931), an old professor makes the accusation that Soviet society is built solely upon fear. Lyons, Six Soviet Plays, 585–9; Lih, “Melodrama and the Myth,” 178–207. On April 2, 1933, Afinogenov asked Stalin to read his new play called The Lie, which depicted how low-level party apparatchiks had to lie, and how their lies worked their way up the system, with consequences. Stalin made voluminous marginal comments, and wrote to Afinogenov that “the idea of the play is rich, the formulation of the idea came out not rich.” The Communists all seemed ugly, physically, morally, politically, Stalin noted, prohibiting its staging in that form. Afinogenov reworked his draft but, strangely, did not follow Stalin’s instructions. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 758n37 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5088, l. 1), 758n38 (d. 4591, l. 4), 192 (d. 5088, l. 118–118ob.); Hindus, Crisis in the Kremlin, 249.

163. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 261–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 20–7). Feoktist Berezovsky made notes of the Oct. 20 meeting (but would send the text to Stalin only on April 29, 1933). “It is easy to alienate a sympathizer,” Stalin pointed out, “and much harder to win him over.” He also stated: “Poems are good. Novels are even better. But at the moment more than anything we need plays.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 29–31.

164. Zelinskii, “Odna vtrecha,” 156–7 (RGALI, f. 1604, op. 1, d. 21, l. 112–46). There would be no press coverage or official transcript of the meeting. Zelinskiy was observing Stalin up close for the first time. See also Maksimenkov, “Ocherki nomenklaturnoi istorii,” 221–4; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 521; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 28. The recollections in old age of Nikolai Nakoryakov (1881–1970), director in the 1930s of the state publishing for belles lettres, of another such meeting in Sept. 1933 are actually of the Oct. 1932 meeting. “Iz vospominanii: vstrecha Stalina s sovetskimi pisateliami v 1933 godu” (arkhiv A. M. Gor’kogo, MoG-10–13–3: Feb. 3, 1966).

165. Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 131 (citing “vstrecha pisatelei s I. V. Stalinym,” arkhiv A. M. Gor’kogo, Oct. 26, 1932). The phrase resonated for some. “I immediately liked the permanently repeated aphorism: ‘writers are the engineers of human souls,’” Valentin Katayev noted, attributing it, however, to the writer Yuri Olyesha. Kataev, “Sobytie nebyvaloe,” 216.

166. Zelinskii, “Odna vtrecha,” 157, 160–1, 168.

167. “A Russian writer,” Gorky had written in a private letter back in 1902, “should never live in friendship with a Russian government.” Gorky, Letters of Gorky and Andreev, 41.

168. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 367 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 510, l. 60); Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 107–10. At the entrance to one prisoner barrack, a “menu” had been hung, surrounded by flowers, with the saying “Eat, and build the way you eat.” The lunch was listed as cabbage soup, porridge with meat, fish cutlets with sauce, and pirohzki with cabbage. (“I with the pen, you with the shovel—together we built the canal,” wrote the prisoner Vladimir Kavshchyn.) Draskoczy, Belomor, 11 (citing RGALI, f. 1885, op. 3, d. 34, l. 100). “From the minute we became guests of the Chekists, complete Communism began for us,” recalled the then fledgling writer Alexander Avdeyenko, during this time of famine. “We ate and drank as we wanted, and paid for nothing. Smoked sausages. Cheeses. Caviar. Fruit. Chocolate. Wines. Brandy.” Avdeenko, “Otluchenie” (no. 3), 11, (no. 4), 80–133. A group of satirists wrote to Yagoda that “they were thrilled by the grandiose work of the OGPU!” Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 365 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 510, l. 27: signed Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov), 366 (l. 24, l. 68). The trip culminated in a copiously illustrated 400-page compilation published in early 1934 under Gorky’s name. Gor’kii et al., Belomorsko-Baltiiskii kanal imeni Stalina. Gorky et al., Belomor; Gorky et al., The White Sea Canal (London: National Centre for Marxist and ‘Left’ Literature, 1935). See also Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, III: 78–101; and Ruder, Making History for Stalin, 47–52, 213–4.

169. XVII s”ezd, 620.

170. Back in 1929, in connection with Stalin’s official fiftieth birthday, Tovstukha’s Short Biography (1927), shorter than a newspaper article, had been slightly enlarged and reissued in Pravda (Dec. 21, 1929). Tovstukha promised more, but there the matter had stood.

171. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11 [4?], d. 1493, l. 50. Orjonikidze did not consider Koltsov’s draft a success, stating of Stalin “he will beat you and thrash me.” Koltsov nonetheless sent his text to the censor, which in turn forwarded it to Stalin, who supposedly read the manuscript, phoned Koltsov, told him “you praise me too much.” True or not, the book never saw the light of day. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 38–9. Koltsov’s the “Riddle of Stalin,” published in connection with the official fiftieth birthday, had used the conceit that Stalin might be a riddle to the world bourgeoisie—“Stalin the enigma,” “the Communist sphinx,” “the incomprehensible personality”—but not to the Soviet worker. Pravda, Dec. 21, 1929.

172. Days, the émigré paper in Paris edited by Alexander Kerensky, had alleged in Oct. 1929 that members of the so-called right opposition had compromising documents on Stalin’s pre-1917 revolutionary past. They did not. The fabricated Yeremin “document” (a tsarist police official) appeared in the mid-1930s. (It would be published in Life on April 23, 1956.) Valdlen S. Izmozik, Zhendarmy Rossii (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2002), 466–8. The collection Batumskaia demonstratsiia 1902 goda (Moscow: Partizdat, 1937) contained recollections that Stalin had escaped from Eastern Siberian exile and traveled back to the Caucasus using a fabricated police I.D. in his name.

173. The memoirist Iosif “Soso” Iremashvili also claimed Stalin had emerged with “a grim and bitter hatred against the seminary administration, the bourgeoisie, and all that existed in the country and represented tsarism.” Iremashvili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, 6, 11–2, 24; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 73.

174. The Comintern operative (Münzenberg) also mentioned Boris Bazhanov, the defector from Stalin’s secretariat, who published a damning exposé in French (1930) and German (1931). Kun, Stalin, 69–70; RGASPI, f. 155, op. 1, d. 85, l. 1, 3.

175. Bey, Career of a Fanatic; and Bey, Stalin. A Russian translation of Stalin was published in Riga (Filin, 1932). Bey elaborated his stories of Stalin’s criminal expropriations, amid exotic pageantry, in parallel volumes: Blood and Oil in The Orient (1931) and Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus (1931). See also Rieber, “Fun with my Buddy.” When Lev was six years old, his mother, Berta Slutzkin (née Ratner), from the Russian empire’s Pale of Settlement, had committed suicide (possibly by drinking acid); Nussimbaum’s father, Abraham, also an Ashkenazi Jew but born in Tiflis, profited from the fin-de-siècle Caspian oil boom, and cashed in his wells to the Nobels in 1913, with exquisite timing. In 1917, when revolution struck, father and son fled by ship to Kizil-Su (Red Water), in Turkestan, where they allegedly lived in a cinema. Then they fled to Persia by camel caravan, briefly returning to the Caucasus (by then under Ottoman occupation), and in 1921 they boarded a refugee ship (the Kleopatra) from Batum to Istanbul. In 1932, Bey married an heiress, Erika Loewendahl (who did not know his real origins), and resettled in Vienna. Following the Anschluss with Austria, Nussimbaum-Bey would relocate in March 1938 to Italy, but then went to Los Angeles. That same year, his wife publicly denounced him as a Jew and they divorced. “He told me he was of princely Arabian heritage,” she wrote. “I learned after our marriage . . . that he was just plain Leo Nussinbaum!” Erika was herself a Jew, the daughter of a shoe magnate from Leipzig who built up the successful Berlin franchise of the Czech company Bata. In Hollywood, while Lev was developing a script for Clark Gable, Erika started an affair with an older married man, a Viennese-born Hungarian visionary named René Fülöp-Miller, who wrote in German and was an acquaintance and rival of Nussimbaum-Bey. Nussimbaum would die in Sept. 1942 of Raynaud’s syndrome, having written some sixteen books in German, most of them translated into numerous languages, on Islam, desert escapades, the global oil industry, love in the Caucasus, Judaism’s “oriental” roots, Muhammad, Nicholas II, Lenin, and Stalin. Reiss, Orientalist.

176. Beria also had his party organization publish Stalin’s 1909 “Letter from the Caucasus,” and mandated its study in educational circles. Sukharev, “Litsedeistvo,” 105 (citing Partiinyi arkhiv Institutta istorii partii pri TsK KP gruzii, f. 13, op. 10, d. 11, l. 45–6); f. 14, op. 7, d. 34, l. 10; Sbornik materialov v sviazi.

177. Tovstukha and his assistants gathered an immense volume of materials: RGASPI, f. 71, op. 10, d. 192–218, 364–73.

178. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 335n.109; Brandenberger, “Stalin as Symbol,” 249–70 (at 256).

179. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 270 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 699, l. 61: Dec. 8. 1932), 271 (l. 62). Barbusse had written two books about his travels inside the Soviet Union, and both had flattered Stalin.

180. Van Ree, Political Thought, 164; Maksimenkov, “Kul’t”; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3087. When Ukrainian Communists wanted to publish a pamphlet on his life in connection with the 1933 fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth League, Stalin balked. That same year, he crossed out references to his contributions from the theses of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism on the Bolshevik party’s thirtieth anniversary. The next year he deleted the second part of the phrases “Lenin-Stalin party” and “teachings of Lenin and Stalin” from a publication. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 149–50 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 3087, l. 30; d. 3118). A 1934 Pravda essay on Turukhansk, including an image of Stalin’s exile hut, elicited his disdain (“rubbish”). RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1494, l. 6–10. When the Youth League journal Young Guard prepared a writer’s travelogue across the USSR for publication, Stalin expunged mentions of visits to his places of exile. El’-Registan, “Neobychainoe puteshestvie”; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, 1494, l. 121–5. Trotsky had underlined in the manuscript of one of his writings: “If personalities do not make history, then history makes itself by means of personalities.” Volkogonov, Trotsky, xxxii–xxxiii.

181. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 4572, l. 1 (July 1933); Sukharev, “Litsedeistvo,” 104; Gromov, Stalin, 143–4.

182. Radek’s encomium was reissued as a pamphlet in 225,000 copies (and multiple languages): Zodchii sotsialisticheskogo obshchestva (Moscow: Partizdat, 1934); The Architect of a Socialist Society (Moscow-Leningrad: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934); Der Baumeister der sozialistischen Gesellschaft (Moscow-Leningrad: Verlagsgenossenschaft ausländischer arbeiter in der UdSSR, 1934). See also Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 69; and Tucker, Stalin in Power, 244–6.

183. The congress amended the statutes to stipulate a gathering every three years. XVII s”ezd, 525–66. Even half the collective farms now contained at least one Communist. Party members of peasant social origin had risen to 28.5 percent, from 20.4 percent in 1930, but the still ongoing purge would wipe out these gains.

184. Kamenev had published an essay in Pravda (May 25, 1933) enjoining the opposition to desist (they were in prison or exile). The politburo had approved the reinstatement of Zinoviev and Kamenev on Dec. 12, 1933 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 936, l. 5). After the Congress, Kamenev would be installed as head of Academia, the country’s highest prestige press for scholarship, which in 1934 would publish the first volume of a Russian translation of Machiavelli’s collected works containing The Prince, whose publication had already been scheduled, but now Kamenev was able to write the preface, and he offered Soviet readers a Machiavelli who was an unmasker of despots, and repeatedly called him “secretary” of the Florentine republic—Stalin’s title. Kamenev characterized the Florentine “secretary” as having “no gift for profound philosophical inquiry” and his society as “an oppressive class of masters struggling among themselves for power over the laboring masses.” Kamenev, “Predislovie,” I: 7–15.

185. XVII s”ezd, 124–9 (Bukharin), 209–12 (Rykov), 492–7 (Zinoviev), 516–21 (Kamenev). Stalin allowed Zinoviev to be named an editor of Bolshevik, the party journal. At a politburo session on Feb. 20, 1934, on Stalin’s initiative, Bukharin was named editor of Izvestiya (replacing Gronsky, who was moved to the editorship of the journal Novy Mir). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 939, l. 2. Even the die-hard Trotsky supporter Rakovski would publicly recant and be allowed back from internal exile, though not into the party. Pravda, April 18, 1934; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 326–34 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 139, l. 35–52: Oct. 11, 1932); Bukharin’s appointment had implications for Kalinin, since Izvestiya was the organ of his own Soviet central executive committee. Brontman, Dnevniki. Brontman (b. 1905), who published under the name Ognev, wrote many of Pravda’s unsigned editorials.

186. Chernobaev, Vvikhre veka, 178 (Alexander Arosyev diary, Jan. 26, 1934).

187. Sochineniia, XIII: 282–379 (at 366–70).

188. Sochineniia, XIII: 371.

189. Sochineniia, XIII: 294.

190. XVII s”ezd, 8–36; Sochineniia, XIII: 283. Stalin would repeat the idea that imperialist war could generate new revolutions at the next congress in 1939. Sochineniia, XIV: 338; van Ree, Political Thought, 212. See also Rieber, “Stalin as Foreign Policy Maker,” 142–3. There were close parallels between Varga’s New Phenomena in the World Economic Crisis (1934) and Stalin’s report to the 17th Party Congress. Varga, “Vskryt’ cherez 25 let,” 155–6; Duda, Jenő Varga, 89, 109–10, 115. One émigré who claimed to have worked in Varga’s Institute claimed that its staff had no reason to fear reprisals for what in their mind were realistic portrayals of the capitalist world. Rosenfeldt, Stalin’s Special Departments, 71–3 (citing unpublished manuscript “Organizatisia i funktsiia Osobogo sektora TsK VKP (b)” held at the Library of Congress). On German fears of a Soviet policy shift dating to 1933, Von Riekhoff, German-Polish Relations, 385. See also Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 103 (citing AVP RF, f. 082, op. 14, pap. 62, d. 2, l. 365).

191. DGFP, series C, II: 421–2; Reichgesetzblatt, 1934, II: 118–9 (German and Polish originals); Ahmann, Nichtangriffspakte, 310–25, 255–342; Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion, 151–63; Wandycz, Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 300–35; Cienciala, “Declaration of Non-Aggression”; Ken and Rusapov, Politbiuro Tsk VKP (b) i otnosheniia SSSR, 62–3; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 14, 20–1; Beck, Final Report, 31–2. For the public Soviet reaction: Izvestiia and Pravda, Jan. 29, 1934.

192. Cienciala, “Polish Foreign Policy,” 44–59; Cienciala, “Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski.”

193. Wandycz, “Polish Foreign Policy: Some Observations,” citing Louis Eisenmann, “La Question de Teschen.” La Vie des peoples, I, 1920: 837. While Piłsudski had tried to diminish the Russian menace by carving out a quasi-federation of states in the east centered on an independent Ukraine, his nemesis Dmowski had pushed for annexations. Both had failed.

194. The French embassy in Warsaw seems to have submitted nothing to Paris between Dec. 21 and Jan. 26: DDF, 1e série, VII: 907–10.

195. Laroche, La Pologne de Pilsudski, 138–45; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 169–72; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 63.

196. Gasiorowski, “German-Polish Nonaggression Pact of 1934,” 27; Cienciala, review of La Décadence, 539; Pohle, Der Rundfunk, 397–8. The perceptive French ambassador in Washington ventured to the Americans that Germany wanted a short period of peace to strengthen itself for eventual European domination. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 73 (citing State 760c.6212/10: undersecretary Phillips on conversation with de Laboulaye, Jan. 27, 1934).

197. Radek had argued to Stalin that while France was seeking to align with Germany, France’s ally Poland could be wooed away and promised a Soviet-Polish pact against Germany founded on Polish desires for a free hand in independent Lithuania and perhaps Danzig. Alarmingly for Moscow, however, in mid-Nov. 1933, Hitler and the new Polish ambassador Józef Lipski issued an odd public joint communiqué, vaguely implying (or maybe not) the possibility of a nonaggression pact. On Nov. 27, Piłsudski secretly received a concrete German proposal, which he sat on for some time.

198. This occurred on Dec. 20, 1933, at the sixteenth anniversary commemoration of the Cheka’s founding. Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 2), 103. Artuzov was said to have recruited Polish agents as double agents as far back as 1920, including the Riga-born, Moscow University–educated Ignay Sosnowski (Dobrzynski), who worked for the intelligence department of the Polish general staff. Pogonii, Lubianka 2, 175–9. See also Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, 445–51 (citing Artuzov’s letter to Yezhov, March 22, 1937); and Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU, I: 205–7. Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Soviet envoy in Warsaw, had written shrewdly to Stomonyakov in Moscow that the Polish government had never believed an alliance with France or the Little Entente would guarantee its security against Germany. “You will be in all the combinations,” one Polish contact told him, “but we?” Still, Antonov-Ovseyenko had been taken in by Polish assurances that there were no negotiations under way with Germany. Dokumenty o materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 112–6 (Nov. 29, 1933).

199. Yegorov, chief of the general staff, was urging Twardowski, “Change your policy and everything will be all right again.” DGFP, series C, II: 338–9 (Jan. 11, 1934), 352–3 (Jan. 13), 376–9 (Jan. 17). See also Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 271; and Tucker, Stalin in Power, 256–60. Nadolny, in reference to Stalin’s Jan. 26 speech, noted its “calm tone and matter-of-factness,” especially compared with Litvinov, and suggested the Germans make an acknowledgment. Hitler mentioned Stalin’s speech in his own speech to the Reichstag (Jan. 30). DGFP, series C, II: 435–6 (Jan. 29, 1934); Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, II: 1151–71; Völkischer Beobachter, Jan. 31, 1934. Nadolny, after arguing with Hitler, who blocked his efforts to attain a rapprochement, would resign on June 16, 1934. He would be succeeded by Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg. “The German Foreign Office,” in Craig and Gilbert, Diplomats, 417–8; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 180–3.

200. Shore, “Hitler’s Opening Gambit.”

201. On the eve of the Polish-German coup de main, the USSR had signed a modest, provisional trade agreement with France. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 307 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 166: Jan. 11, 1934); DDF, 1e série, V: 436–7. See also Carley, “Five Kopecks.” In early 1934, France and the USSR also exchanged aviation attachés, as Cot’s mission bore delayed fruit, and in Aug. 1934 the Soviets reciprocated Cot’s visit with an aviation squadron that landed in France. Scott, Alliance Against Hitler, 119–21.

202. Piłsudski received the interlocutor in question, Hermann Rauschning, head of state in Danzig, in Warsaw on Dec. 11, 1933. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 72 (citing German foreign ministry memo IV Po 9133, T-120, 3024/6601/E 495072–77: Dec. 14, 1933). On Nov. 23, 1934, Rauschning would resign his Nazi party membership and later emigrate.

203. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 269; Ken, Collective Security or Isolation, 121–2, 146–7; Morozov, Pol’sko-Chekhoslovatskie otnosheniia, 9, 27, 504; DVP SSSR, XVII: 133–4; Izvestiia, April 20, 1934.

204. Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 167–73; DDF, 1e série, V: 783–5. Beck admitted that Piłsudski convened discussions of possible preemptive war against Germany, but claimed the idea was put to rest in spring 1934. Beck, Final Report, 51–3.

205. Sochineniia, XIII: 321–2, 329–30. Stalin also conceded that “it must be said of state farms that they have failed to achieve what is required of them.” He deemed them too specialized and too cumbersome to administer properly, without admitting this had been his vision. XVII s”ezd, 23. In 1933, state farms had supplied only a few million of the 20 million tons of grain procured by the state. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 332–47.

206. Davies et al., Years of Progress, 11–4; XVII s”ezd, 435–6, 439–41, 443–55, 668; Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, 132. A politburo decree of Jan. 20, 1934, committed state supplies of seeds and equipment for workers to garden on household plots in their free time, legally and without being taxed. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 509–11 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 937, l. 1, 8, 52, 68–9).

207. XVII s”ezd, 525. The views of actual farmers were far from the discussion. “Under the current regime it is necessary to tie a noose around one’s neck, or to cheat the state,” I. Gribanov told a group of collective farmers in 1934, according to a police summary. Kedrov, Lapti Stalinizma, 151 (citing GAAO, otdel DSPI, f. 290, op. 2, d. 337, l. 16–8).

208. XVII s”ezd, 236–9.

209. XVII s”ezd, 251–9; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 271, l. 529–33 (Chagin). Kirov, exhausted, had been compelled to spend Nov. 23 to Dec. 29, 1933, at a sanatorium in Tolmachevo, outside Leningrad, but insisted on a direct telephone line to Smolny and daily postal deliveries, with his wife serving as his secretary. He complained to his physician (G. F. Lang) of heart palpitations, pains, insomnia, and occasional trouble walking, and submitted to a regimen of saltwater baths. Pazi, Nash Mironych, 412–8, 448; Sinel’nikov, Kirov, 357–8; Krasnikov, Kirov v Leningrade, 179–83; Knight, Who Killed Kirov?, 167–8.

210. XVII s”ezd, 269. “Whereas at the 15th Congress it was still necessary to prove the correctness of the party line and to fight certain anti-Leninist groupings, and at the 16th Congress to finish off the last supporters of these groupings,” Stalin had noted in his congress report, “at the present congress there is nothing to prove and, it seems, nobody to beat.” XVII s”ezd, 28. Manuilsky also made no reply to the discussion of his report on the Comintern.

211. At the 15th Congress (1927), forty-three did not. At the 1939 congress vote, forty-four bulletins would go unused. RGASPI, f. 56, op. 1, d. 61, l. 39; op. 2, d. 36, l. 23; f. 58, op. 1, d. 37, l. 31–3; op. 2 d. 46, l. 9; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 99–106 (citing f. 477, op. 1, d. 41, l. 4). Delegates had to insert their folded ballots into urns specifically for their delegation.

212. Mikhailov and Naumov, “Skol’ko delegatov XVII s”ezda partii golosovalo protiv Stalina?”; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 613 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 23, l. 43–43ob.: Napoleon V. Andreosyan [sic] deposition). According to Mikoyan, Andreasyan told him that his delegation alone recorded twenty-five votes against Stalin. Mikoian, Tak Bylo, 592–3.

213. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Feb. 25, 1934; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 331–4.

214. Pravda, Feb. 7, 1964. V. Verkhovykh would later claim that “in conversation with Kosior the latter told me: ‘Some of us spoke with Kirov in order to get him to agree to become general secretary.’ Kirov refused, saying: ‘It’s necessary to wait, all will settle down.’” Mikhailov and Naumov, “Skol’ko delegatov XVII s”ezda partii golosovalo protiv Stalina?” 114. Khrushchev, who at the time of the 17th Congress was close to Stalin, would recall (or imagine) that Sheboldayev had approached Kirov on behalf of a group of colluding provincial bosses, but that Kirov went straight to Stalin, which implanted permanent suspicions of Kirov in Stalin’s mind. (Khrushchev acknowledged that he “personally did not have direct interaction with” Kirov.) Mikoyan claims that, in Stalin’s office on the evening of Dec. 2 (the meeting was actually the 3rd), when he questioned why Yagoda was not being held accountable, Stalin defended him—raising suspicions that Stalin had organized the assassination through Yagoda. Mikoyan has the events taking place at the Winter Palace, not Tauride, and has Medved, not Zaporozhets, absent from Leningrad. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 97–9; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 91–3; Mikoian, “V pervyi raz bez Lenina,” 6; Mikoian, Tak bylo, 316–8. It has also been asserted that the Caucasus delegations lobbied Mikoyan and Orjonikidze to have Kirov (an honorary Caucasus figure) replace Stalin as general secretary, with Stalin moving over to head the government in place of Molotov. Bondarenko and Efimov, Utaennye stranitsy sovetskoi istorii, 70.

215. Kirilina, Rikoshet, 76–80; Benvenuti, “Kirov in Soviet Politics.” Kirov’s public profile paled in comparison to those of Kaganovich, Orjonikidze, or Molotov, let alone Stalin. Kirov rarely attended politburo meetings, which took place in Moscow, and sometimes did not even vote on politburo matters by telephone poll. See also Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 122; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 215–6.

216. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 93; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 86.

217. Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 122–3.

218. XVII s”ezd, 303. See also Tucker, Stalin in Power, 247.

219. XVII s”ezd, 573–6; Furer, Novaia Gorlovka. In response to disarray in Ukraine’s strategic coal industry, Kaganovich had visited the mining town of Gorlovka, then the Donbass capital, in spring 1933. Among the many measures forced through, Furer became Gorlovka party boss and worked like a demon to lift the miners out of mud huts and barracks, paving streets, building housing, sidewalks, tram lines, a hospital, schools, and a stadium with lights for night matches, a first for the USSR (it opened in Sept. 1933 and was named for living Ukraine OGPU chief Balytsky). Furer would last in Gorlovka until Dec. 1934, when Kaganovich would summon him to head the agitation and propaganda department in the Moscow province-city party committee. Kuromiya, “The Commander and the Rank and File,” 154–5; XVII s”ezd, 162–3; www.gorlovka360.dn.ua/sport-i-zdorovie/stadion-shahter-virtualnyiy-tur.

220. Chuev, Sto sorok, 307–8, 478; Chuev, Molotov, 375–6; Krasnikov, Kirov v Leningrade, 187–8; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 28–9. There is some ambiguity as to whether the Kirov incident took place in a narrow circle or at the Central Committee plenum.

221. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 121–2. Kirov would end up spending more time in Moscow: he would be recorded in Stalin’s office for 63 hours in 1934, compared with 10 in 1933, 28 in 1932, and 23 in 1931. Na prieme.

222. Zhdanov replaced the now Ukraine-based Postyshev, whom Stalin promoted to candidate member of the politburo even as he relieved him of the Central Committee secretary position. Kaganovich remained Stalin’s top deputy in the party, receiving all the documentation concerning party affairs, economic management, and foreign affairs. On Jan. 17, 1934, Stalin had required that all hiring and firing in the Central Committee apparatus have either his own or Kaganovich’s authorization. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 5; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 195–6; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 3.

223. Zhdanov, born in Mariupol, had grown up mostly in Tver, where in Aug. 1914 he joined a Marxist group led by A. I. Krinitsky. In Jan. 1918, Zhdanov, a veteran of the Great War, was part of a group of Red Guards who seized the small town of Shadrinsk in the Urals (near Perm); by 1919, however, he was said to be exhausted and allowed to go home to Tver to recuperate; his comrades abandoned Shadrinsk. Zhdanov served for a decade as party boss of Nizhny Novgorod, 1924–1934. He would go after Krinitsky in 1935 and help destroy him in 1938. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 562; Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, 1896–1948; Glotova, “Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov”; Borisov, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov.

224. “Vospominaniia: memurary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 62–3. The scientist and Leningrad-resident Vladimir Vernadsky, in his diary, would deem Zhdanov a “petty, talentless figure, especially after Kirov.” Vernadskii, “Dnevnik 1940 goda.”

225. Kaganovich, in Feb. 1932, had needed a six-week respite, bedridden for headaches and dizziness. He would have a tonsillitis operation in July 1934. Rees, Iron Lazar, 217. Zhdanov was given the agriculture portfolio on March 3, which Kaganovich had managed, but Zhadanov held it for a mere thirty-eight days (it went to Yakovlev) and instead got planning, finance, and trade; Yezhov got industry, which he would hold for a year; Kaganovich, transport (the next area for a trouble-shooter, after agriculture’s stabilization); Stetsky, culture and propaganda. Posokryobyshev remained head of the special sector; that is, Stalin’s office. Zhdanov, although not a member of the politburo, would attend more than half the meetings in Stalin’s office in 1934. E. K. Pramnek, appointed hastily to replace Zhdanov in Nizhny Novgorod, was awkwardly promoted to Central Committee candidate member after the Congress.

226. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 102. See also Chuev, Sto sorok, 468. Whereas in 1923, 88 percent of all decisions were taken at a formal meeting, by 1933 that was down to 13 percent (by 1937, it would be 0.6 percent). In 1933, there were twenty-four formal politburo sessions for the year, two a month, usually on the first and fifteenth; from Sept. 1934, formal meetings would drop to one per month, with additional meetings as necessary. In 1936, there were no politburo meetings in Jan., Aug., and Nov. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937,” 25–7. See also Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 289. Formal politburo meetings could be attended by sixty people or more at any one time: non-members were invited for specific agenda items or the whole meeting. Wheatcroft, “From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny,” 88–9.

227. XVII s”ezd, 680–1. Stalin allowed the former Trotsky supporter Pyatakov into the Central Committee, and Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, and Sokolnikov to return as candidate members.

228. Stalin also formally pared back the powers of his own workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate–party Control Commission (he had already entrusted the 1933 party purge to a special commission), slashing its size in a push for greater efficiency and less local collusion. “What we need now,” he had told the congress, “is not inspection but check-up on fulfillment of the center’s decisions.” Many of the commission’s powers, in any case, had already been taken by the OGPU. XVII s”ezd, 35; Turkan, Ian Rudzutak, 91–2; Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia, 219–23. “From now on,” Stalin added, “nine-tenths of the responsibility for the failures and defects in our work rest not on ‘objective’ circumstances but on ourselves and on ourselves alone.” Sochineniia, XIII: 367–70. See also Markevich, “Monitoring and Interventions.”

229. Pravda, Feb. 7 and 8, 1934. Stalin had been signing documents for some time only as “secretary of the CC.” From 1931, he was being listed as just “secretary,” not general secretary. Rosenfeldt, Stalin’s Special Departments, 9. Politburo members as of Feb. 1934 were: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Orjonikidze, Kuibyshev, Kirov, Andreyev, and Kosior. Candidate members were: Mikoyan, Chubar, Petrovsky, Postoyshev, and Rudzutaks. Secretariat members were: Stalin, Kaganovich, Kirov, and Zhdanov.

230. Inside the street entrance used by visitors to Stalin’s Kremlin office, there was a small, dark waiting room and an elaborate staircase. Upstairs, a broad corridor led to a massive double door, behind which was Stalin’s spacious anteroom. A table there was usually piled with newspapers and other reading materials, paper, and pencils. Another door led to the office of his top aide, Alexander Poskryobyshev, where two or three guards in uniform sat, and whence there was access to Stalin’s office. Stalin’s expansive wing, formally the “special sector” of the Communist party apparatus, had a special door separating it from the offices for the Council of People’s Commissars and the Soviet central executive committee, on the same floor and one floor above. “I had a pass to all areas [of the Kremlin], except to the corridor leading to Stalin’s wing of the building,” wrote Valentin Berezhkov, an interpreter. “A special pass was made out for each trip” to Stalin’s office. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 203–4. See also Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia dacha Stalina, 57; Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 16; Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (2nd ed.), 184–5; Yakov Chadaev, in Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 383; and Chuev, Sto sorok, 292.

231. Before the Near Dacha was built, Soviet higher-ups had used a small pensione on the steep banks of the Setun River in the Volynskoe Wood, which was on the ninth kilometer of the Mozhaisk Road (Zubalovo was on the 32nd km). Dmitry Donskoi had once awarded the land as a gift to one of the victors in the Battle of Kulikovo Field, Voevoda Bobrok-Volynsky. In the sixteenth century, the land was claimed by the sovereign; after that it went to the courtier who had conducted the inquiry into the death of Ivan the Terrible’s son, then to the Dolgorukys, the Loanov-Rostovskys. Rudomino, Legendarnaia Barvikha, 44: Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia, 28.

232. Merzhanov had been named central executive committee chief architect in June 1931. In 1929, he had won an open competition to design a resort for the Red Army in Sochi. It was built into a hillside (with a funicular), a triumph of constructivism in harmony with the landscape, completed on July 1, 1934, and named in honor of Voroshilov. (It would win a grand prize at the 1937 Paris Exhibition.) The architect and defense commissar struck up a friendship, and the Soviet press spotlighted his Sochi sanatorium. Merzhanov got many commissions, including the NKVD sanatorium in Kislovodsk.

233. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiaiakh, 160; Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 41–2; Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 2. In the nineteenth century, Kuntsevo had become a summer resort for Muscovites (Ivan Turgenev stayed there). It was recognized as a town in 1925–6 and by the mid-1930s counted perhaps 40,000 inhabitants. There was a sewing needle factory, and a dacha that served as the Comintern’s department for international communications (known as facility No. 1). Davydkovo, less than a mile from the territory of Stalin’s dacha complex, became a dacha complex for others in the elite at Stalin’s directive. Trembitskii, Po Zapadnomu okrugu.

234. Zubalovo-4 stood on the left bank of the Medvenka River. Nadya had soured on it and found another spot much farther out on an old estate, Lipki, at the 200km mark on the Dimitrov Highway, where she initiated construction on a new single-family dacha, perhaps to avoid the relatives—both the Alliluyevs and Savnidzes had accommodations at Zubalovo—but Lipki had been finished only after her death. The building of a new Far Dacha, Semenovskoe, would begin in 1937, according to the Near Dacha design, but with bricks from the start. Murin, Stalin v o”iatiakh, 23–4; Alliluyeva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 30–1, 36. The regime established other elite dacha settlements in the dense forests of largely unsettled rural Barvikha county, along the Moscow River and several tributaries, where there had been estates of the Romanovs (Ilinskoe, Usovo, Znamenskoe) or other grandees: Prince Yusupov (Arkhangelskoe), Prince Golitsyn (Petrovskoe), Baron Meyendorf (Podkushino). The Chekists took a shine to Zhukovka: on the high right bank of the Moscow River, between Barvikha village and Usovo. Rudomino, Legendarnaia Barvikha.

235. Hitler had initially rented the alpine hideaway, known as the Haus Wachenfeld, a modest, rustic lodge, during a 1926 holiday (the rent was paid by an admirer), but by 1933, using monies he earned from the sale of Mein Kampf, he had purchased the property. “This place is mine,” Hitler had proudly told a writer for the British Homes and Gardens in 1938. “I built it with money that I earned.” The breathless magazine article, featuring photographs, called Hitler “his own decorator, designer, and furnisher, as well as architect.” It would acquire a remodeled study, a film screening room, and a great room with a marble fireplace, chandeliers, Persian rugs, paintings, and wall tapestries. The furniture was Teutonic-style.

236. Stratigakos, Hitler at Home. See also Schuster-Winkelhof, Adolf Hitlers Wahlheimat; and Hoffmann, Hitler in seinem Bergen.

237. Pauker had a personal Cadillac, a gift from Stalin. Yezhov would ride in a gold-colored Chrysler airflow sedan, one of two in the USSR. Lakoba got a Lincoln. Beria would obtain a coveted Packard. Zhukovskii, Lubianskaia imperiia NKVD, 31; Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 309; Orlov, Secret History, 346.

238. “There are others like Leshchenko,” Stalin was said to have told Artyom and Vasya, “but there’s only one Vertinsky.” Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 42.

239. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 352–3.

240. Their treehouse (“Robinson Crusoe”) was removed, perhaps for security reasons, even though Stalin did not go there much anymore. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 122. Zubalovo would be renamed Gorky-4.

241. Pauker had ended up in Russia in April 1915 as an Austro-Hungarian POW, and was sent to work on a railroad in Turkestan, where in March 1917 he was released and stayed on and joined the Cheka (Dec. 1918), and, around 1920, relocated to Moscow. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 102, 335; Naumov, Stalin i NKVD, 80. Orlov is the source of numerous fairy tales about Pauker, which have been repeated in the secondary literature. Orlov, Taina istoriia, 305–17.

242. Svetlana began first grade in fall 1933; Vasily entered fifth. After completing the eighth grade, Vasily in 1937 would be transferred to special School No. 2; the next year he would be sent to the Kachinsk Military Aviation School in Sevastopol. Svetlana would complete all ten grades at No. 25 and graduate in 1943. Holmes, Stalin’s School, 165–8. Pauker’s men would drop the children off in a car at Pushkin Square, after which they walked the short rest of the way.

243. The unofficially adopted Artyom, after Nadya’s suicide, had gone back to live with his mother full-time in her Moscow apartment, though he continued to visit the Stalin family. He recalled how once at a meal Stalin discovered ashes in the soup and demanded to know the culprit. Artyom admitted responsibility. Stalin told him to eat the soup and if he liked it to ask Karolina Til to put ashes in it every day, but if he did not like it, to desist from doing so ever again. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 89–96, 123. In 1937, Artyom’s mother would obtain a dacha in the elite settlement of Zhukova.

244. Loginov, Teni Stalina, 97.

245. “She and her father are great friends,” Nadya had written to Keke, back on March 12, 1931, when Svetlana was five. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 15–6 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1549, l. 40–40ob.).

246. After her mother’s death Svetlana got a new governess, Lidiya, with whom she clashed. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 132.

247. Charkviani, Napriki da naazrevi, 503. Khrushchev claimed he observed such scenes and pitied Svetlana “as I would feel for an orphan. Stalin himself was brutish and inattentive. . . . [Stalin] loved her, but . . . his was the tenderness of a cat for a mouse.” Krushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 310–1.

248. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 30, 144. Stalin usually had his afternoon meal in his Kremlin apartment, around 7:00 p.m., often in company, and that was when he saw the children. The conversation was often just between the adults, but eventually he would get around to asking Svetlana and Vasily about school. “His time for seeing me and Vasily was during dinner at the apartment,” Svetlana recalled. “He’d ask me about my lessons, look at the [day]book my marks were entered in and sometimes ask me to show him my exercise books. He used to sign my books, as parents were supposed to do.” Vasily often left his daybooks at home, and refused to carry out his assignments, or did them in ways that violated school regulations, prompting his homeroom teacher to phone his governess. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 122–3, 133; Holmes, Stalin’s School, 71–2, 166–7. Stalin in 1937 ordered the keeping of a secret second daybook to track Vasily’s academic work. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiiakh, 56.

249. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 177 (Svanidze diary: May 9, 1935). Svetlana sometimes visited grandma Olga Alliluyeva and grandpa Sergei Alliluyev, who had a homey Kremlin apartment. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 43.

250. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 145–6.

251. The first article, “Stalin the Terrible,” appeared April 8, but the note from Doletsky (TASS) in London was dated April 7, so the Soviets had a heads-up. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 313 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1540, l. 33), 313–4 (l. 34–5), 315 (l. 36), 315–6 (l. 51), 316 (l. 37), 316–7 (l. 52: Astakhov in London), 317 (l. 53: Soviet ambassador), 317–8 (l. 54: German press). The newspaper was owned by Lord Beaverbrook.

252. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 318 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 49, l. 30, 31–31ob.).

253. Slavinskii, Sovetskii soiuz i kitai, 275–6.

254. Barmin, Sovetskii Soiuz i Sin´tszian, 146–7.

255. Chiang had been ready to send his own expeditionary force to back the Muslim rebels against the warlord. Forbes, Warlords and Muslims; Gritsenko, “Chto eto bylo?”; Pravda, June 22, 1934; Hedin, History of the Expedition in Asia, III: 84, 112–5; Goldman, Red Road through Asia, 132. On Dec. 15, 1934, the politburo resolved to have a commission look into whether some Uzbek and Kazakh school textbooks could be adapted for Xinjiang. Gatagova, Sovetskaia etnopolitika 1930–1940-e gody, 33–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 533, l. 14). Molotov would publicly deny, at the 7th Congress of Soviets in Jan. 1935, “the slanderous rumors of the Sovietization of Xinjiang.” Not long thereafter, Soviet forces were fully withdrawn from Xinjiang. DVP SSSR, XVIII: 45; Barmin, Sovetskii Soiuz i Sintszian, 77–9 (citing AVP RF, f. 8/08, op. 14, pap. 130, d. 146, l. 12; d. 147, l. 17, 31; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2798, l. 27), 107–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 154, d. 457, l. 31–8, 9), 111–2 (AVP RF, f. 8/08, op. 15, pap. 162, d. 117, l. 3, 9), 116, 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 32), 132 (l. 113).

256. Bullitt, For the President, 83.

257. Litvinov wrote to Maisky (April 19) that “the negotiations with America have for now ground to a halt. The Johnson Act has as good as halted our trade with America . . . We have firmly stated that we will not give in to pressure and that we can exist without American trade.” Haslam, Threat from the East, 40; DVP SSSR, XVII: 274–5.

258. Radek and Bukharin told Bullitt, in wishful thinking, “If war can be delayed for a few years a social upheaval in Japan may not be out of the question.” Haslam, Threat from the East, 41, citing FRUS, 109–10 (Bullitt to Hull, April 16, 1934).

259. Litvinov had proposed to German ambassador Nadolny a joint “guarantee” of the independence and territorial inviolability of the Baltic states. On April 14, Germany declined the proposal, observing that the Baltic states might view such a guarantee as tantamount to a German-Soviet protectorate over them. “This fascist concern for the national sentiment of our Baltic neighbors sounds truly touching on fascist lips,” Pravda (April 27, 1934). See also DGFP, series C, II: 686 (Nadolny report, March 29, 1934).

260. Stalin wrote: “my archive.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 196, l. 54–62 (received at the foreign office on Feb. 5). RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 196, l. 131–7. In May 1934, Stalin received Phipps’s account of his meeting with Hitler and Neurath in Dec. 1933. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 196, l. 17–23. Stalin had told the 17th Party Congress that the termination of parliamentarism in Germany was a sign of “the bourgeoisie’s” weakness, its inability to maintain its rule by so-called respectable methods. Sochineniia, XIII: 283, 293. “Lots of foolishness, but still interesting,” he had written, without specifics, in green pencil on a report from a Soviet agent in Berlin forwarded by the OGPU (April 11, 1934).

261. Stalin also underlined another passage: “The single great achievement is the rather paradoxical success in the sphere of foreign policy . . . Inside the country, there is none of the socialism that he promised to impose . . .” Phipps also noted “empty theaters, bankrupt bookstores, starving writers, artists, and composers all remind one that the cultural life of Berlin is threatened with disappearance under the National Socialist regime.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 186, l. 68–9, 76–8 (sent to London Feb. 7, 1934).

262. These Nazi consulates, Balytsky claimed, also aimed to use German specialists working in the USSR to sabotage Soviet military industry. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 494–500 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 172, l. 11–23: March 5, 1934). Throughout 1934, the OGPU had been secretly gathering information on all ethnic Germans employed in industry in the Soviet Union. Fleischhauer and Pinkus, Soviet Germans, 89–91 (citing Evgeniia Evelson, who had taken part in drawing up the lists of Germans before emigrating). On Nov. 5, 1934, the party apparatus sent a ciphered telegram to “all Central Committees of national communist parties, krai committees and oblast committees,” including Western Siberia (home to many Soviet ethnic Germans), warning that Soviet ethnic Germans “openly conduct counterrevolutionary work.” Hundreds of arrests followed. Shishkin, “Sovetskie nemtsy.”

263. Pravda, May 6, 1934; Biegański et al., Documents on Polish-Soviet Relations, I: 21–2 (extension until Dec. 31, 1945); Demski, “Pol’sko-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 191–218; Soviet intelligence had reported that Piłsudski was prepared to strengthen his nonaggression declaration with Germany in the event of a Franco-Soviet alliance, though he would be cautious not to stray too far from France. Soviet intelligence would note to Stalin that Poland was trying to mount two horses at once and would fail. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 187, l. 18 (May 9, 1934).

264. Germany was a disarmed state, yet a resentful and prideful one that British operatives knew would endeavor to create a military befitting its self-conception. An ad hoc committee of British intelligence designated Nazi Germany the “ultimate potential enemy” in a series of meetings across late 1933 and mid-1934. Undersecretary Vansittart’s April 7, 1934, memorandum for the cabinet on Mein Kampf and recent propaganda, added, as one Foreign Office contemporary noted of his essays generally, “the forlorn beauty of hopelessness to all their other beauties.” DBFP, 2nd series, VI: 975 ff; Lawford, Bound for Diplomacy, 270.

265. Britain had been cast as the main driver of a new imperialist war in a 1933 trial in Moscow of engineers of the British company Metropolitan-Vickers (“a frame-up,” as one of the arrested British citizens stated, “based on evidence of terrorized prisoners”). Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 284–90 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 363, l. 119; d. 364, l. 176–77; d. 368, l. 18, 62, 70–72, 87, 93; d. 367, l. 1–2, 9–10, 58–64; TsA FSB, no. PF-6740, t. 17, l. 175, 177; t. 12, l. 203); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChk, 415–6 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 171, l. 84–5: interrogation of MacDonald, March 16, 1933). See also Morrell, Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution. On April 2, 1933, Rozengolts, foreign trade commissar, had reported to Stalin and Molotov that of the 33 turbines supplied between 1925 and 1933, 24 experienced breakdowns, some multiple times. The contract with Metropolitan Vickers had been annulled. Litvinov negotiated the release and deportation of the engineers in exchange for termination of the embargo the British had imposed following their arrests.

266. DBFP, 2nd series, VII: 558 (June 4, 1933); Palme-Dutt, “Britanskii imperialism”; Pravda, Aug. 19, 1933.

267. XVII s”ezd, 305–22 (at 307–8); Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 267–8. See also Pravda, June 1, 1934 (Mayorsky); and VII Kongress Kommunisticheskogo internatsionala, 383–4.

268. Kokoshin, Armiia i politika, 95, 96–9.

269. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 243–7 (citing RGVA, f. 40442, op. 2, d. 32, l. 103: draft of Voroshilov report, not earlier than Dec. 13, 1933). Lithuania secretly cooperated militarily with the USSR on the basis of shared antagonism toward Poland. Tukhachevsky visited the United Kingdom in April 1934 and returned with a description of the Royal Air Force new Hampden bomber with a sketch of its weaponry, obtained by Soviet military intelligence. Hastings, Secret War, 2–3 (no citation).

270. Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 23, 237n33; Tukhachevskii, Voprosy sovremennoi strategii (Moscow: Voennyi vestnik, 1926), reprinted in Tukhachevskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, I: 244–61 (at 254–5).

271. “Europe remains in equal doubt both as to our policy and to our capacity,” Vansittart, the dominant official in the foreign office, observed in an internal memorandum (June 2, 1934). “The results are already—or perhaps I should say at last—becoming manifest. Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, are all at varying degrees tending to be drawn into the German orbit; and on Italy’s inconstancies now largely depend Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. The political map of Europe is, in fact, altering under our eyes and to our disadvantage, if we must look upon Germany as the eventual enemy.” McKercher, “Deterrence,” 98 (citing “Minute by Sir R. Vansittart” [DQMX32) 117], PRO, CAB 27/510). On British intelligence and Germany, see also Winterbotham, Ultra Secret, 4–5; Winterbotham, Nazi Connection; West, MI6, 45–7.

272. Anon., “Zametki o peresechenii biografii,” 316.

273. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 168–96 (citing the case file). See also Bykov, Boris Pasternak, 472–7.

274. Literaturnaia gazeta, May 14 and 16, 1934.

275. Pridvorov, “Ob otse,” 219.

276. Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, 153–96; Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 25–6; Akhmatova, “Mandelshtam (Listki iz dnevnika),” 182; Anon., “Zametki o peresechenii biografii,” 316–7; “Impressions of Boris Pasternak,” 88. Neither the generally unforgiving Nadezhda nor Osip ever blamed Pasternak.

277. Ivinskaya, Captive of Time, 61–3. It remains unknown which of the narrow circle of people informed on Mandelstam. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 172, 178–80.

278. Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 84–5.

279. Stalin wrote in blue pencil on the letter: “And who gave them authorization to arrest Mandelstam? An outrage.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 709, l. 167–167ob. See also Maksimenkov, “Ocherki nomenklaturnoi istorii.”

280. Bykov, Boris Pasternak, 495–504. Stalin might have been bothered by the circumstance that Pasternak had run to Bukharin, who at Izvestiya was attempting to act as patron and protector of the great writers, rather than directly to the dictator. Trapping Pasternak into failing to admit friendship with Mandelstam, if that is what Stalin did, could have been like psychological payback for an offense Pasternak did not knowingly commit.

281. In the 1950s Pasternak would tell two British academics, Isaiah Berlin and D. P. Costello. Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, 185–7. Pasternak’s friend and German studies specialist Nikolai William-Wilmont was present, and Pasternak’s second wife, Zinaida Neuhaus, was sitting on a couch in the adjacent room during the call.

282. Koltsov, who had helped make Dimitrov famous, was in the airport greeting party. Pravda, Feb. 28 and March 1, 1934. In 1932, in Berlin, the married Koltsov had started a romance with his interpreter, the blond beauty Maria Gresshöner (b. 1908), who accompanied him back to Moscow and took the surname Osten (“East”). He installed her at a German-language periodical in Moscow, and took on her on his foreign trips.

283. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 8 (Feb. 27, 1934). B. Popov and V. Tanev arrived with Dimitrov in Moscow.

284. Borkenau, Communist International, 405; Cockburn, Crossing the Line, 54.

285. In 1933, the original four stories of the Lux were expanded to six, bringing the hotel to 300 rooms. Visiting Soviet inhabitants had to leave their identification cards at the desk and fill out questionnaires in order to enter the Lux; at midnight, all were supposed to be out. Kennel, “New Innocents Abroad,” 15; von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux; Vaksberg, Hôtel Lux.

286. The sprawling twelve-floor structure had some 550 rental apartments, which were centrally allocated and equipped with oak wood floors, gas stoves, constructivist furniture, telephones, radio receivers, gramophones, and frescoes on the ceilings. The complex had schools and nurseries, shops, a laundry, a medical facility, a savings bank branch, a post office, a performance space, and the “Shock Worker” cinema (the country’s first sound-equipped cinema), with 1,500 seats. Prepared food could be delivered to one’s door. Each family had access to a maid, and there were elevator operators and building staff who kept the keys. It was assumed that early service personnel worked for or reported to the OGPU.

287. After nearly an hour, Molotov and others joined. Na prieme, 126. The central Comintern apparatus numbered about 500 staff (more than 800 with inclusion of technical personnel).

288. Jackson, Popular Front, 17–51.

289. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 11 (April 3, 1934), 12–5 (April 7, 1934). Hundreds of Austrian socialist “Schutzbundists” escaped the crackdown, fleeing to Czechoslovakia, whence they were invited to the USSR. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 19n16; Fischer, Le grande rêve socialiste, 280–1.”

290. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 19 (May 2, 1934).

291. Dobry, “February 1934,” 129–50; Jenkins and Millington, France and Fascism.

292. Chase, Enemies within the Gates?, 15 (citing Community party archives, Sofia, f. 146, op. 2, a.e. 317, l. 11); Leibzon and Shirina, Povorot v politike Kominterna, 93 (citing Tsentralen partien arkhiv pri TsK na VKP [Sofia], f. 146, op. 2, d. 317, l. 11). See also Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 127, 191. In Austria, in Feb. 1934, street thugs, police, and army forces loyal to Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss (who had suspended parliamentary rule) assaulted banned yet still powerful socialist organizations—and Social Democrat-led workers fought back.

293. Artuzov was in the Little Corner on April 19, May 16 and 25, 1934. Na prieme, 127, 562–3. In May 1934, Stalin also cut off the ability of Radek’s bureau to request secret information from Soviet intelligence or diplomatic agencies. Ken, “‘Rabota po istorii,’” 108–16.

294. The exposures occurred in Vienna, Riga, Hamburg, Helsinki, and Paris between 1931 and 1933, and led to the loss of dozens of agents. A politburo injunction against recruitment of agents among foreign Communists (Dec. 8, 1926) came up against the fact that individuals who were ready to serve the Soviet cause, held foreign passports, and spoke accentless foreign languages were in very short supply outside foreign Communist circles. Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU, I: 196; Lurie and Kochik, GRU, 477; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 185–6; Gorbunov, Stalin i GRU, 248–9; Damaskin, Stalin i razvedka, 164. One key figure in the Soviet spy network in Paris, Léopold Trepper (b. 1904), the son of a failed Jewish shopkeeper in Habsburg Galicia, escaped via Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union; he would eventually be posted to Brussels.

295. Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 2), 99 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 599); Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU, I: 201; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 311 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 25). TASS denied the Soviets in France had been engaged in espionage. Pravda, March 30, 1934. See also Primakov, Ocherki, III: 62.

296. On May 25, 1934, Stalin received Artuzov without Berzin. Na prieme, 127, 130. The politburo decree insisted on better cooperation between military and civilian intelligence, better compartmentalization in operations, paying attention in hiring not only to social origins but nationality, and quickly establishing a school to train large numbers of new spies in small groups. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 522–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 64–6).

297. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 208–9. Artuzov was supposed to spend two-thirds of his time in military intelligence. At civilian intelligence, his deputies, Abram Slutsky and Boris Berman, were to bear the load.

298. In June 1934, the civil war–era Revolutionary Military Council was abolished, and a more modest advisory Main Military Council was created. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 371–2.

299. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 526 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 172, l. 105: Igor Sitnikov). Back on March 15, 1934, Artuzov had reported that Captain Makoto Tanaka of the Japanese army had reconnoitered parts of the Chinese Eastern Railway, possibly for sabotaging tunnels. Stalin underlined passages and wrote: “Comrade Artuzov, what should be the measures to counter explosions and in general diversionary activity? Who is working them out, who is implementing them?” Khaustov, Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 505–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 186, l. 115–6).

300. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 202–3 (Vaizer). See also, Khaustov, Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 526 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 172, l. 105: Igor Sitnikov).

301. Yagoda wrote to Stalin (Feb. 17, 1934) recommending removal of Smagin (b. 1894) as head of Red Army external relations. Smagin had served as an aide to the deputy head of military intelligence (1924–26) and then through May 1930 as an aide to the Soviet military attaché in Japan, Primakov, who had reported that a Japanese officer in a drunken state had uttered the secret code used for the head of Soviet military intelligence Berzin (“Crow”) and had referred to content in a classified report by Primakov. Only Primakov and Smagin knew that code name. Primakov’s report of the incident had not been properly investigated at the time. Smagin returned to Soviet military intelligence in Moscow, then, in July 1933, was appointed to his current post. Yagoda recommended against trying to turn Smagin against the Japanese. Stalin made a note to himself: “Speak with Klim.” Maybe Stalin decided, contrary to Yagoda, to try to “double” Smagin. But Smagin was removed in June 1934 and left unemployed. In Jan. 1935, he would be appointed to the Frunze Military Academy. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 482–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 186, l. 79–87); Lurie and Kochik, GRU, 303; RGVA, f. 37837, op. 1, d. 1300, l. 19ob.–27. In 1934, Kawabe would be named chief of intelligence to the Kwantung Army. Smagin would be arrested Dec. 16, 1937, and executed Aug. 26, 1938.

302. Paul-Boncour, Entre deux guerres, II: 364. “The mystique of the League,” notwithstanding its failures, “remained the essential element of our foreign policy as well as our domestic policy,” General Maurice Gamelin would later claim. Gamelin, Servir, II: 56; DDF, 1e série, IV: 258–62 (April 16, 1934).

303. Dullin, Men of Influence, 2, citing Leon Trotsky, Ouevres (Paris: EDI, 1985), XII: 107–9. Karakhan was banished as envoy to Ankara, and Sokolnikov by May 1934 to the timber commissariat. Their departures enhanced Litvinov’s position. But the party cell inside the commissariat kept a watchful, envious eye on Litvinov and his associates. Total foreign affairs personnel in the 1930s hovered around 1,000, including the central commissariat and the roughly 30 embassies and 40 to 50 consulates. Roshchin, “V narkomindele v predvoennye gody,” 41–9; Crowley, Soviet Diplomat Corps.

304. Bernard Attolico, the Italian envoy in Moscow, explained to Twardowski that the Soviets pursued “the policy of the free hand,” but “if there is no other way out, they would swallow the bitter pill, join the League of Nations and make an alliance with France, . . . unless German policy succeeded in meeting the Russian ‘pact mania’ in a form acceptable to them.” DGFP, series C, III: 150–1 (Twardowski, July 9, 1934).

305. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 37–44. Litvinov latched onto a renewed offer on April 20, 1934, by a new French foreign minister, the conservative nationalist Louis Barthou, to renew the talks begun under his predecessor for a regional alliance. In private talks with Germany, however, the Soviets distanced themselves from the “French idea.” AVP RF, f. 5, op. 14, pap. 103, d. 117; Na prieme, 128; DDF, 1e série, VI: 496–502.

306. Pravda, June 10, 1934; Wheeler-Bennet, Documents on International Affairs, I: 253ff. The thorny issue of Bessarabia was left unresolved. DVP SSSR, XVII: 379–81; Pravda, June 11, 1934; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 312 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 59, 87, 89). DDF, 1e série, VI: 664–6. Diplomatic relations had been normalized with Hungary (Feb. 1934). “The Russians do not understand what dogs they could have against Europe in the form of Central European small states,” the Czechoslovak diplomat Jaroslav Papoušek had told the Soviet envoy in Prague, Alexandrovsky, on March 24, 1934, claiming to be citing President Masaryk. Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 123 (AVP RF, f. 0138, op. 15, pap. 122, d. 2, l. 226).

307. Stalin forwarded the report to Molotov, Voroshilov, Kuibyshev, and Orjonikidze for discussion. The report asserted that Poland and Germany, in parallel, were negotiating a military alliance with Japan and that Romania would join and perhaps even Italy, Austria, and Hungary. “War against the Soviet Union,” the alarmist report concluded, “was never as realistic a possibility as now.” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 533–41 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 187, l. 28–44). See also Harris, “Encircled by Enemies,” 536. In July 1934, the head of the Polish foreign ministry’s Eastern Department (Colonel Tadeusz Schaetzel) told the Bulgarian chargé d’affaires in Warsaw that Poland “was counting on the circumstance that if a war broke out in the Far East, Russia would be crushed, and then Poland would include in its borders Kiev and part of Ukraine.” Jurkiewicz, Pakt wschodni, 66 (citing Bulgarian foreign ministry archives).

308. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 24–5 (June 18, 1934). From late 1934, Dimitrov and Fleischmann would start a household in Moscow as she became his second wife.

309. It met from June 29 through July 1, 1934. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), VI: 166.

310. Longerich, Die braunen Battallione, 223; Bessel, Political Violence; Frei, National Socialist Rule in Germany.

311. In April 1934, Hindenburg became terminally ill, meaning a presidential succession loomed. On June 11, the Evening Standard in London implied that the German military could take over. On June 17, Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen publicly called for restoration of some freedoms and an end to the SA’s lawlessness. He had failed to coordinate his speech (written for him) with the Reichswehr or the Reich president, but its remarkable content made it seem that he had. Evans, Third Reich in Power, 26–41; Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 499–525, 744n57. See also Höhne, Mordasche Röhm, 218–24.

312. Longerich, Die braunen Bataillione, 215–6; von Bedrow, Hitler rast; von Papen, Memoirs, 310–1; Wheeler-Bennett, Nemesis of Power, 319–20; von Fallois, Kalkül und Illusion. See also Hancock, “Purge of the SA Reconsidered.” When the SA leader in the Rhineland had received information in late June about an impending crisis, he rightly assumed this meant Göring was preparing a putsch against Röhm. Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter, 86.

313. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, I: 418 (July 13, 1934). Domarus commented that Hitler projected onto the SA the failings of the Nazi party (400n138, 414n155).

314. The British ambassador dubbed the episode Hitler’s “Sicilian vespers.” Wark, Ultimate Enemy, 82 (citing MI3 summary, July 18, 1934, WO 190/263; Phipps dispatch, Nov. 14, 1934, C7703/20/18, FO 371/17696); Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 74 (no citation).

315. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 123 (citing Rundschau, July 5, 1934: 1541–3). See also Radek in Pravda (July 3, 1934).

316. Nekrich, 1941, 19 (citing a personal conversation in the 1950s with Surits, the envoy in question). Krivitsky, an NKVD operative in Europe at the time (who later defected), would claim from hearsay that Stalin summoned Jan Berzin, head of military intelligence, the very night of the long knives. But Berzin was recorded in Stalin’s office on April 19, 1934, and then not again until 1937. Krivitsky would also assert that “Stalin was profoundly impressed by the manner in which Hitler exterminated his opposition, and studied minutely every secret report from our agents in Germany relating to the events of that night.” Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 1–2, 183; Na prieme, 569.

317. Izvestiia, July 16, 1934.

318. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 534.

319. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, 73.

320. Those killed included the immediate previous chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, the Catholic Action leader, aides to von Papen, and other conservatives. Höhne, Mordsache Röhm, 319–21. Another scholar gives a figure of ninety killed: Gritschneder, “Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt . . . ,” 60–2.

321. German National Socialism tipped even more decisively away from its internal factions pushing for full-scale nationalization of banks and industry and for closer ties with the Soviet Union, while the SS felt even less encumbered. Pringle, Master Plan, 41. Von Hindenburg died on Aug. 2, 1934; von Papen resigned as vice chancellor five days later. On Aug. 19, in a 90 percent vote, Hitler became head of state (“Führer and chancellor”).

322. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 13–6 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 1, l. 1–3); Firsov, “Stalin i komintern,” 12 (citing TsPA na TsK na BKP, f. 146, op. 6, а.е. 754, l. 1); Komolova, Komintern protiv fashizma, 326–9; Borkenau, European Communism, 110–1. On July 4, Dimitrov was again received one-on-one by Stalin (“thorough discussion!”), but in late July Stalin was still defending his “social fascist” theory. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 24 (July 4, 1934); Na prieme, 135–6; McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 92.

323. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 114–4: July 5, 1934. The Soviet envoy in Rome told Mussolini if Germany ceased its hostility, “nothing would prevent the Soviet government from continuing the friendly collaboration with Germany in the spirit of the Rappallo and Berlin agreements.” DVP SSSR, XVII: 471 (July 13, 1934). Negotiations with Germany for the proffered credit would drag on. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 88–9: Dec. 5.

324. Izvestiia, July 11, 1934.

325. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 801 n70 (Feb. 6, 1934). He had abandoned his small Kremlin apartment in the Cavalry Building for good, unable any longer to climb to the second floor, and stayed at his state dacha in Gorki-6 (Arkhangelskoe). Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 346–9, 354–5 (no citation). After the death of his second wife, Maria Rostovtsa, in 1925 he was said to have become a recluse. But he married a third time, and had another child, his fifth.

326. An intentionally provocative obituary in a prominent surviving liberal German newspaper alleged a falling-out between Yagoda and Stalin over forced collectivization. Paul Scheffer, in Berliner Tageblatt, May 11, 1934, translated in Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 377–81 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 12, l. 2–5).

327. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 25.

328. Stalin had initiated the change, introducing a politburo resolution Feb. 20, 1934, to place the OGPU inside an all-Union NKVD, and forming a commission. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 486 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 939, l. 2), 487–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 4, l. 14–5), 509 (l. 20), 514–5 (l. 124–6), 515 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 943, l. 10) 543–4 (d. 948, l. 33, 92–3); Yezhov had sent suggestions on personnel for the NKVD on April 8, 1934: Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 514–5.

329. The expansion occurred on June 8, 1934. On June 6, 1937, the regime would add subarticle 14: “counterrevolutionary sabotage.” Zaitsev, Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov. “In all truth, there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58,” Solzhenitsyn would write. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, 60. Criminal codes were by republic, and in Ukraine, it was article 54.

330. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 511 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 941: March 20, 1934); Karnitskii, Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR. See also RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 730, l. 22 (Oct. 7, 1934).

331. Yagoda had already issued a circular on the imperative for labor camp bosses to better organize their work, properly employ machinery, and fulfill the plan with attention to quality and cost, citing cases of failures to meet plan targets. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 375 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 594, l. 20: June 22, 1934), 382–90 (d. 7, l. 4–14). In Nov. 1934, the USSR NKVD would assume control over the prisons previously under the commissariats of justice in the Union republics, and thereby unite them with the corrective labor camps and colonies and special settlements. Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag.

332. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 166–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, 948, d. l. 95–100); Pravda, July 26, 1934.

333. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 166 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 47, l. 3). USSR procurator general Ivan Akulov had followed up a petition by Aleksei Selyavkin (b. 1896), the former head of anti-aircraft defense, who was serving a ten-year sentence in Gulag from 1933 for the alleged sale of secret military documents. Selyavkin’s petition, which Akulov forwarded to Stalin, stated that he had falsely admitted his guilt under the threat of execution. Stalin decided to use this as an example. On June 5, 1934, the politburo freed him and admonished the OGPU leadership and even the procuracy for ignoring Selyavkin’s earlier petitions. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 106 (no citation); APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 71, l. 11–31; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 88–9. On July 9, Voroshilov had written to Stalin in Sochi about granting early release to the Provisional Government war minister General Alexander Verkhovsky from his ten-year sentence (“considering that the situation has now sharply changed, I think that we could free him without special risk, using him in scholarly-research work”). Stalin accepted the recommendation, further evidence he had decided to rein in indiscriminate repression. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 222 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1015, l. 61–2).

334. The secret-police central apparatus in Moscow alone now numbered more than 8,200, and the chaotic expansion had come at the expense of educational levels, competence, and probity. Police bookkeeping, as the rival procuracy’s investigations showed, entailed all manner of “black” accounts enabling self-dealing, while contraband running and other abuses of office were pervasive. OGPU archives were spread around many buildings of Moscow’s Lubyanka quarter. Yakov Genkin, head of the OGPU records and statistics department, wrote to the hierarchs (Feb. 15, 1934) that the archives then contained almost 825,000 folders (dela), and more than 100,000 folders were not enumerated. Investigation records were merely “a mountain of paper which presents itself for reading with difficulty,” often handwritten, in pencil, and sewn in such a way that trying to read them led to ripping the pages; they were also filthy, overwhelmed with stamps on the cover. Of his predecessors Genkin wrote, “They looked upon the archive like a warehouse, where they could dump paper, if there was no room to hold it or send it some place.” In May 1934, the OGPU archives got a new facility, in the basement of one of the Lubyanka quarter’s buildings, and a staff increase to five, as well as folders for redoing files and metal cupboards for securing secret materials. Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” 15 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 1607, l. 1).

335. Yagoda cited Stalin’s speech of Jan. 1933 about enemies (“This of course is not frightening. But we have to keep it in mind if we want to terminate these elements quickly and without especially numerous victims”). Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 407, 410 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 4, l. 1–35).

336. Molchanov would later testify that “in 1934 Yagoda many times pointed out to me the need to conduct a more liberal course in our punishment policy. I recall, for example, a conversation in the summer of 1934 at the Water Station Dynamo. In this conversation Yagoda openly said that it is time perhaps to stop shooting people.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 174, l. 137.

337. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 168–70; Sharlet and Beirne, “In Search of Vyshinsky.” See also Goliakov, Sbornik dokumentov po istorii ugolovnogo zakonodatel’stva SSSR, 333–4.

338. “Autocracy,” as one scholar observed of the tsarist regime, had “maneuvered between arbitrariness and legality, between the principle of unlimited personal power and the imperative to strive for a more rational organization of the state.” Taranovsky, “Osobennosti rossiiskoi samoderzhavnoi monarkhii,” 166.

339. Max Eastman, who had created a sensation in the 1920s by defending Trotsky and publishing Lenin’s Testament, did so again with Artists in Uniform (1934), which equated the Soviet and the Hitler-Mussolini enlistment and regimentation of cultural figures. Eastman had belatedly come to understand that the problem was not Stalin alone but “the bigotry of Marxist metaphysics.” Radek wrote a rebuttal that highlighted Nazi book burnings and concentration camps in Izvestiya (July 18, 1934), bringing Eastman’s book greater attention. (The newspaper’s circulation was 1.5 million.) Eastman, Artists in Uniform, 133–4. See also Eastman, “Artists in Uniform.” “All Moscow writers seem to have been promoted in rank: they’ve all acquired high-style apartments, fur coats, and mistresses and fallen in love with the luxurious life,” Korney Chukovsky had written in his diary as early as Nov. 24, 1931. (Chukovsky moved to Peredelkino, the leafy writers’ colony.) Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 34. The émigré Vladimir Nabokov wrote that “in Russia before Soviet rule there did exist restrictions, but no orders were given to artists.” Nabokov, “Russian Writers, Censors, Readers,” 3.

340. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 370–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 304, l. 171–5: May 3, 1937).

341. Several years earlier, a group of nearly one hundred cultural figures had established a cooperative to build dachas in Peredlkino, just twelve miles from Moscow. Gorky had written to Stalin “skeptical” about such a writers’ village, and Stalin had agreed (“a far-fetched business that could also remove writers from the real world and develop their conceit”). But the regime approved it anyway. (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 719, l. 104: Feb. 28, 1933; l. 112: March 1, 1933). The original cooperative was abolished, and the money returned.

342. Khodasevich, Portrety slovami, 280.

343. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 262–78. For speculation on possible murder, see Baranov, Gorky bez grima. Yagoda was in love with Maxim Peshkov’s wife, Timosha. Gel’man, “Zalozhnik OGPU,” 8. Maxim had joined the party in April 1917, served in the Cheka 1918–1919, but emigrated in 1922 to join his father in Italy, where he married and had two daughters; he returned, bringing his family, with his father, in 1932. Maxim had no job, lived the life of a sybarite, and clashed with Gorky’s secretary, Pyotr Kryuchkov.

344. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 430–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 742, l. 21–7: Aug. 12, 1934), 437–8 (d. 83, l. 67–9: Aug. 15); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 220–3 (IMLI, Arkhiv Gor’kogo: Aug. 2, 1934).

345. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 219–20 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 949, l. 29, 95); Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 63–4 (citing RGALI, f. 631, op. 1, d. 40, l. 18: Sept. 5, 1934).

346. In 1935, the average monthly salary in industry was 194 rubles; in state administration, 212; in management of the economy, 293; but 750 for the Literary Fund director; 500 for his deputy; and 300 for a secretary of the directorate. In time, when bona fide writers were unable to work, the Literary Fund awarded them significant monthly sums (200 to 600 rubles, to a total of 3,000 to 6,000 per year). The USSR also established an administration for the protection of authors’ rights, for writers and composers, covering the live stage, cinema, clubs, traveling and restaurant performances. But these were done at the republic level, and sometimes the author of a work in the RSFSR found that work re-used without compensation in a different Union republic. Tolstoi and Vishnevskii, “Ob avtorskom prave,” 3.

347. Babichenko, Literaturnyi front, 16–20 at 18: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 257, l. 14–9: Aug. 29, 1936), 23–5 (at 24: d. 304, l. 171–5). The Literary Fund lobbied to build at least eighty dachas at state expense, and got permission for thirty. Writers watched over the construction, often a full-time job because of insider theft of scarce construction materials, not to mention shoddy workmanship. Sartakova, “Nash pisatel’skii les,” 24.

348. Wells was under the spell of Roosevelt’s New Deal and now envisioned a collectivist world-state, with the United States and the USSR converging—if only Stalin would give up Marx. Stalin dismissed Wells’s technocratic enthusiasms, insisting that only classes could make history and that the technical intelligentsia was a mere stratum. For Stalin, any New Deal–Five-Year Plan convergence was a non-starter, and so was the concept of general humanity (“I do not believe in the goodness of the bourgeoisie”). But Stalin also denied capitalism was in its death throes. “It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr. Stalin,” Wells, twelve years Stalin’s senior, interjected. New Statesman and Nation, Oct. 27, 1934. Wells received a copy of the transcript Stalin had already edited. Wells, as president of the PEN club, added a delicate reference as to whether freedom of thought was possible in the USSR, to which Stalin replied it already existed: Bolshevik “self-criticism.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 3151, l. 1–23; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 495 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 742, l. 99–104 Sept. 24, 1934), 496n5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 3151, l. 2–3). Stalin had the edited interview published in the party journal, but not in a mass circulation newspaper. Bol’shevik, 1934, no. 17: 8–18. In the United Kingdom, two prominent public figures jumped on Wells for the interview, George Bernard Shaw (not enough praise of Stalin) and John Maynard Keynes (too much praise of a demagogue): Stalin-Wells Talk: Verbatim Record and Discussion (London: The New Statesman and Nation, 1934). See also Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 683–702; Cowley, “Interview with Stalin”; Taunton, “Russia and the British Intellectuals,” 209–24; and Lel’chuk, “Beseda I. V. Stalina s angliiskim pisatelem G. Uellsom,” 326–52. Wells correctly recalled his interpreter as Konstantin Umansky; Stalin’s logbook has N. M. Goloded (a government official in Soviet Belorussia). Na prieme, 138.

349. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 792, l. 121–46 (at 121: Nov. 9, 1934).

350. “I accompanied Stalin on his trips to the south, I spent a lot of time with him, we always ate meals together, and practically all his free time he spent with us,” Vlasik would recall. “I mean myself and his secretary Poskryobyshev. In Moscow I saw him far less. I accompanied him on his trips around the city, to the theater, the cinema.” Loginov, Teni Stalina, 106.

351. “O nekotorych voprosakh istorii bol’shevizma,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1931, no. 6: 3–21 (Oct. 26, 1931); Pikhoia, I. V. Stalin, 128–37 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2983, l. 1–15). Sochineniia, XII: 84–102. See also Slutskii, “Bol’sheviki o germanskoi sotsial-demokratii”; Dunaevskii, “Bol’sheviki i germanskie levye na mezhdunarodnoi arene,” 504–6 (citing a letter from Slutsky, June 9, 1964); Barber, “Stalin’s Letter to the Editors of Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya,” 39–41; and Tucker, “The Rise of Stalin’s Personality Cult,” 355–8.

352. Enteen, “Marxist Historians During the Cultural Revolution”; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 189–91 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 255, l. 179–82). Popov, Ocherk istorii.

353. “History at long last has been restored” to schools, Andrei Bubnov, the enlightenment commissar, had remarked at the Communist Academy (March 13, 1934). “Peter was Peter, Catherine was Catherine . . . We must give an impression of the epoch, about the events that took place at that time, who ruled, what sort of government there was, what sort of policies were carried out, and how events transpired.” Brandenberger and Dubrovsky, “‘The People Need a Tsar,’” 874 (citing Arkhiv RAN, f. 350, op. 1, d. 905, l. 1–3ob.); Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 32–3. See also Pikhoia, I. V. Stalin, 186 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1013, l. 4: March 3, 1934). History education was reintroduced as a separate subject in schools, and meant to displace the study of Engels’s Anti-Dühring or Dialectics of Nature. Scott, Behind the Urals, 45.

354. The meeting took place March 20, 1934. Litvin, Bez pravo na mysl’, 55–7 (quoting the unpublished diary of Sergei A. Piontkovsky). D. Osipov in Pravda (April 5, 1934), lambasted schemata without facts as “skeletons in the schools.” See also Pravda and Izvestiya, May 16, 1934: 1; Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, IX: 137; Suny, Structure of Soviet History, 229.

355. For example: Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 12–5 (April 7, 1934).

356. Farnsworth, “Conversing with Stalin,” 961 (Kollontai diary, summer 1934: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749, l. 105).

357. “Iurii Zhdanov, vtoroi muzh docheri ‘otsa narodov’: ia znal Stalina s 15 let,” Komsmol’skaia pravda, Jan. 10, 2007.

358. Rybin, Stalin v oktiabre, 9. Kirov had been in Stalin’s office July 25, 26, and 27: Na prieme, 138.

359. Similarly, Kirov complained in a letter to a minion in Leningrad, “By the whim of fate I’ve ended up in Sochi, and I’m unhappy about it. The heat here is not tropical but hellish.” Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 141 (citing Kirov Museum, f. III-414), 324–8 (TsPA, f. 80, op. 26, d. 68, l. 1, 4–4, ob. 7).

360. Andreev, Vospominaniia, pis’ma, 294.

361. Stalin also noted that foreign currency had to be conserved. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 462 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 84, l. 20–20ob.).

362. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 455 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 61–6), 465 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 84, l. 23–23ob.), 473–6 (d. 742, l. 75–84). Stalin demanded additional grain levies from the harvest, in the form of purchases (zakupki) at low prices, beyond the obligatory quotas. But grain exports in 1934 were a mere 800,000 tons, less than half the much reduced 1933 amount. Baykov, Soviet Foreign Trade, appendix, table IV. The NKVD was ordered to take charge of grain elevators and grain collection points as of July 27, 1934.

363. RGASPI, f. 558 op. 1, d. 3155; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 245–9 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 419, l. 55–7: Goloshchokin, Aug. 4, 1933); Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 328 (LPA, f. 24, op. 2–v, d. 936, l. 94: Sveshnikov to Agranov, Dec. 16, 1934), 331–2 (RGASPI, f. 80, op. 18, d, 67, l. 67–9; d. 137, l. 1–2). Kirov was in Kazkahstan Sept. 6–29. Pazi, Nash Mironych, 449.

364. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–5: Sept. 12, 1934), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82: to Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Molotov, Kuibyshev—but not Kirov, Sept. 13).

365. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 687–96. See also Struve, “Pan-Soviet Literary Congress.” Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union.

366. Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 27.

367. Maksimenkov, “Ocherki nomenklaturnoi istorii sovetskoi literatury,” 247 (Pavel Yudin, Aug. 15, 1934).

368. “K 40-letiiu Pervogo vsesoiuznogo s”ezda,” Voprosy literatury, 1974, no. 8: at 14 (Valery Kirpotin).

369. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 1, 5–18. One bitter witness would recall that Gorky just stopped reading his own text partway through. Kochin, Spelye kolos’ia, 299. See also Baranov, “‘Nado prekoslovit!’”

370. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 20–38, 291–318, 416–20.

371. Kuz’min, Dnevnik 1934 g., 95 (Aug. 30, 1934).

372. Zhdanov thought that party-member writers spoke less brightly than the non-party, and noted to Stalin that Gorky thought the party-member writers had no authority whatsoever in the writers’ milieu. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 230–1 (RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 112, l. 2–8).

373. Babel added: “Since everything is done artificially, under the stick, the congress is proceeding deathlike, like a tsar’s parade, and no one abroad will believe in this tsar’s parade.” Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 232–4 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 56, l. 185–89). The non-party loyalist Ilya Ehrenburg would later deem the gathering “a great and marvelous festival.” Ehrenburg, Men, Years—Life, IV: 40. Rozhkov, who was not a delegate to the congress, published an essay collection on the value of romanticism right at this time: Nuzhna li nam romantika? (Moscow: Sovetskaia literatura, 1934). Stalin evidently took an interest in Rozhkov’s ideas. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 412–3 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 793, l. 95: Radek to Poskryobyshev, April 10, 1936).

374. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 74–103; Zhgenti, “S”ezd velikogo edineniia,” 53; Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, 201–2. Toroshelidze’s report was published in the press the next day with a front-page photograph of the Georgian delegation accompanied by Pasternak (known for his translations from Georgian). Literaturnaia gazeta, Aug. 21, 1934. One scholar has asserted that, as a minority, “Ukrainian writers lost more than their Russian colleagues.” Luckyj, Literary Politics, 203.

375. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 286–7 (as translated by Olyesha).

376. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 232–4 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 56, l. 185–89). Kirilenko served as the secretary to Petrovsky, head of the central executive committee in Soviet Ukraine.

377. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 223–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 56, l. 125–32), 226 (l. 150), 227–8 (l. 160–3), 229 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 950, l. 40).

378. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 447 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 83, l. 122–122ob.). Attendees’ national composition was registered as follows: 201 Russians, 113 Jews, 28 Georgians, 25 Ukrainians, 19 Armenians, 19 Tatars, 17 Belorussians, and 12 Uzbeks (43 other nationalities were represented by fewer than 10 and in some cases just one person). The politburo strongly criticized the party organizations in Bashkiria, Buryat-Mongolia, Yakutia, and the German region in the Volga for sending ill-chosen delegates and not overseeing the speeches. Gatagova et al., TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, II: 75 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 951, l. 8: Aug. 28, 1934).

379. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 83, l. 156–7.

380. Antipina, Pvsednevnaia zhizn’, 43–4; Osokina, Za fasadom, 113.

381. “Many members of our government attended,” recalled Valentina Khodasevich, principal designer of the storied Leningrad (formerly Mariinsky) Theater of Opera and Ballet. “Supper, served in the dining room, was very lively and interesting. People made speeches. Aleksei Maximovich asked that I sit next to Malraux, since I speak French, to entertain him and translate . . . [Louis] Aragon, Elsa Triolet, the Spanish writer Mara-Teresa Léon and many others spoke very well.” Khodasevich, Portrety slovami, 280–1.

382. Pravda, June 19, 1934; Katsman, “Cheliuskin”; Groza and Dubenskii, Slavnym zavoevateliam Artiki.

383. Radio was still mostly live at this time, and arrests followed “accidental” announcements (e.g., mentioning that there had been a famine in 1933), but sometimes the utterances were deliberate: the announcer of the ceremony on Red Square for the Chelyuskin rescuers signed off, “The comedy is over.” (He turned out to have noble descent and a relative arrested by the OGPU.) Goriaeva, Radio Rossii, 158. See also Bollinger, Stalin’s Slave Ships, 65–71; McCannon, Red Arctic, 61–8; The Cheliuskin Odyssey (1934).

384. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 4–5. Pavel Yudin and Alexander Fadeyev authored “On Socialist Realism,” which had been approved by the Central Committee and published in Pravda (May 8), on what was thought to be the eve of the congress. See also Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 177. The literary section of the institute of philosophy, at the Communist Academy, would mount what ended up to be a debate about socialist realism on Dec. 20 and 28, 1934, and Jan. 3, 1935, prompted by a draft encyclopedia article on the novel by a Hungarian-born Germanophone intellectual, György Lukács (b. 1885), a Hegel devotee who had once been expelled from the Hungarian Communist party for the heresy of advocating alliances with non-proletariat forces in democratic settings, and lived in Moscow, for a time editing Marx’s German-language notebooks and manuscripts at the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin. Lukács cast the novel as both pure avatar of bourgeois culture and capitalist modernity and as temporary displacement of the grand epic tradition, but the proletariat’s rise forced the creation of a “positive hero,” the “conscious worker,” who overcame the “degradation of man” and forced the novel back into the arms of the epic. Socialist realism—thanks to this class analysis contortion—became an instrument for a supposedly genuine world literature. “Problemy teorii romana: doklad G. Lukacha,” Literaturnyi kritik, 1935, no. 2: 214–49, and “Pravlennaia stenogramma diskusii po dokladu G. Lukacha,” Literaturnyi kritik, 1935, no. 3: 231–54; Clark, Moscow, 163–5; Tikhanov, Master and the Slave, 112–28; Lukach, “Roman kak burzhuaznaia eopopeia,” IX: 795–832; Szikalai, After the Revolution; Gurvich, “Vtoroe rozhdenie,” 347–8.

385. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 464–6 (Aug. 28). Zarkhi (b. 1900) died July 17, 1935.

386. Katerina Clark presents “Soviet socialist realism as a canonical doctrine defined by its patristic texts,” and offers an “official short list of model novels.” For Boris Groys, socialist realism just signifies “the art of the Stalin period.” Evgeny Dobrenko calls socialist realism “the USSR’s most successful industry . . . a machine for distilling Soviet reality into socialism.” Clark, Soviet Novel, 3, appendix B; Groys, Total Art of Stalinism, 72; Dobrenko, Political Economy of Socialist Realism, 5–6.

387. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 42–3. Jelagin was himself class enemy, like his stand-partner, “Count” Sheremetyev. See also Smrž, Symphonic Stalinism.

388. Matthew Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 87, 109. As Bown notes, there is scant information on Stalin’s views on painting (184). Bown rehabilitates socialist realist visual art by arguing that avant-garde artists changed their style voluntarily in order to make their work widely accessible, a goal they passionately wanted to achieve. Margarita Tupitsyn’s work on photography—which the authorities did not consider an art form, and therefore for which no union was established—also argues that the Soviet version of the avant-garde aesthetic project was about mass media, such as the photograph in a mass-produced journal, and mass culture. Christina Kiaer, in her work on Alexaander Deneika, attempts to show how socialist realism was avant-garde. These works follow from Boris Groys’s provocation. Tupitsyn, Soviet Photograph; Kiaer, “Was Socialist Realism Forced Labor?,” 45; Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions. See also Susan Reid, “Socialist Realism in the Stalinist Terror”; Reid, “In the Name of the People,” 716; and Johnson, “Alternative Histories of Soviet Visual Culture.” Stalin had become the subject of oil paintings in 1928, 1931, and 1932 by the Leningrad-based artist Isaac Brodsky (b. 1883), who depicted him in exaggerated size, with an iconic copy of Pravda on the desk. In 1934, Brodsky became the first painter to receive the Order of Lenin. That same year Alexander Gerasimov (b. 1881), a traditional realist before the revolution (when he opposed the avant-garde) and a Red Army veteran of the civil war, completed his Stalin Gives His Report to the 17th Party Congress. Gersaimov, too, favored a larger-than-life heroic realism. Pravda, April 10, 1934, and Feb. 6, 1935. Mikhail Avilov painted The Arrival of Comrade Stalin at the First Cavalry in 1919 for the 1933 exhibition “15 Years of the Red Army.” Pravda, Aug. 13, 1933. Yevgeny Katsman recorded Stalin’s reaction to the exhibition: “Next to Nikonov’s picture, Stalin said, when looking at Kolchak with a revolver in his hand, ‘he wants to shoot himself.’ . . . When we got to Avilov, Stalin saw himself painted, laughed and immediately turned his eyes to other works. Then back to Avilov, and he examined himself longer.” Plamper, Stalin Cult, 136–7 (citing RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 12–3).

389. The sales were carried out by the foreign trade commissariat, which had no expertise in art treasures and formed a state company, Antiquariat. Some of the paintings that were sold, along with icons, furniture, jewelry, and antiquarian books, came from museum collections, but many were looted from the public or churches. The first paintings sold were bartered for oil (in 1930). Andrew Mellon, the U.S. secretary of the treasury, purchased twenty-one of the paintings in 1931, for $6.65 million; one painting alone sold for $1.166 million, then the largest amount ever paid. “‘Nuzhen li nam ermitazh’,” 106–10 (APRF, f. 3, op. 42, d. 141, I ll.89–90, 94–95ob.); Stetsky to Kaganovich; 94–95ob.: Lergan to Stalina); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 179 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 183); Odom and Salmond, Treasures into Tractors. Mellon would donate the art in 1937 to the U.S. government in Washington, where they would form the basis of the National Gallery. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought some. Stetsky wrote to Kaganovich (Oct. 23, 1933) that the secretive process had resulted in rumors of a firesale, lowering prices, and that the Hermitage Museum had sunk from third-ranked in the world to perhaps seventeenth. The politburo resolved to terminate the sales on Nov. 15, 1933. Ilin and Semenova, Prodannye Sokrovisha Rossii. Hermitage deputy director Iosif Orbeli soon replaced his boss (Legran), who had complied with the sales as mandated by the regime. Megrelidze, Iosif Orbeli; Iubashian, Akademik Iosif Orbeli.

390. Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 87, 109.

391. Mindlin, Neobyknovennye sobesedniki, 429.

392. Conformism was rampant but with a culture this vast, various tendencies inevitably vied with each other. Schlögel, Terror und Traum, 30–1.

393. Stalin commented that he had liked Radek’s speech but not Gorky’s. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 461–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 84, l. 53; d. 50, l. 49), 465–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 84, l. 42–42ob.), 466n3 (f. 17, op. 3, d. 951, l. 28: Sept. 1, 1934).

394. Ponomarev, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, 18.

395. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 329–32 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1494, l. 13ob.–18ob.).

396. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 140 (April 10, 1936).

397. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 114.

398. Mirskii, Istoriia russkoi literatury, 794.

399. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 340–1 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 730, l. 18–20, 17: Sept. 6, 1934). An abridged version of Bukharin’s speech to the congress was published in Pravda (Aug. 30, 1934); his closing speech was also published (Sept. 3). Gorky’s closing speech was likewise published in Pravda (Sept. 2). Zhdanov had written another report to Stalin on the Writers Congress, Sept. 3, 1934. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 332–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 730, l. 2–16).

400. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 236–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 951, l. 28–30).

401. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 238–50 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 56, l. 70–93).

402. Ivanov-Razumnik, Neizdannyi Shchedrin; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 231, s. 301–2; Gromov, Stalin, 161–2.

403. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 170–1 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 186, l. 213–5: March 1932).

404. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 73.

405. Bykov, Boris Pasternak, 491.

406. For an analysis of the reader under the Stalin dictatorship, see Dobrenko, Formovka Sovetskogo chitatelia.

407. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 338–40 (RGASPI, f. 58, op. 11, d. 729, l. 52–65: Sept. 5, 1934). The Sukharyov Tower in Moscow had also been demolished, despite vehement opposition from scholars. “We cannot deal with a single decrepit little church without a protest being delivered,” Kaganovich complained. “K istorii snosa Sukharevskoi bashni,” 109–16.

CHAPTER 4. TERRORISM

1. The other task: “The mood of the masses regarding the revolutionary movement in Spain.” Kozlova, Sovetskie liudi, 232 (citing the Memorial archive, TsDNA, f. 30, d. 12, l. 64–5: Stepan Polubny, b. 1914).

2. Zolotarev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945 gg., I: 9; Grechko et al., Istoriia Vtoroi mirovoi voiny, I: 214; Kirshner and Novikov, Kanun i nachalo voiny, 29; Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 358.

3. Włodarkiewicz, Przed 17 wrzśenia 1939 roku, 132; Habeck, Storm of Steel, 214–5 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 51: “Stenograficheskii otchet zasedanie Voennogo Soveta pri NKO Soiuza SSR 10–12 dekabria 1934 g.: ob itogakh boevoi podgotovki 1934 i zadachakh na 1935 g.”).

4. E.g.: Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 477 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 72–5: Sept. 6), 479 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–5: Sept. 12), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82: Sept. 13), 483–4 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 742, l. 85–9: Sept. 16).

5. By late July 1934, Stalin had shaved the list of Soviet conditions for joining the League of Nations down to a mere seat on its Council. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 313 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, l. 119); DVP SSSR, XVII: 479 (Litvinov to Rosenberg, July 14, 1934); DDF, 1e série, VII: 5 (Barthou to Payart, July 27, 1934).

6. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 59.

7. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 315–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 49); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 26, 31–32ob.

8. The invitation was portrayed as coming from France, just as the Soviets had insisted. Poland demanded that Moscow declare that all bilateral agreements with Warsaw remained inviolable. Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 220–1, 225; DDF, 1e série, VII: 406–7; Beck, Final Report, 65; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 483 (RGASPI, f. 558, p. 11, d. 85, l. 48, 61: Sept. 16). Thirty-nine member countries voted yes, three voted no (Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland), and seven abstained.

9. Haslam, “Soviet-German Relations,” 789, citing Sotsialistichekii vestnik, Jan. 25, 1934, and Kommunisticheskaia revoliutsiia, 1934, no. 8: 43–4.

10. Back on Nov. 5, 1927, Stalin had told a delegation of foreign workers that “the Soviet Union is not prepared to become a part of that camouflage for imperialist machinations represented by the League of Nations. The League is a ‘house of assignations’ for the imperialists who arrange their business there behind the scenes.” Sochineniia, X: 206–7 Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 104–16; Izvestiia, Jan. 4, 1934.

11. Pravda, Sept. 17 and 20, 1934; DVP SSSR, XVII: 589; DDF, 1e série, VI: 683–4. Left unsaid was that Geneva would be a gold mine of information: more than 600 people worked at the League, of varied nationalities, and many were willing to talk to the builders of a new socialist world. Zhukovskaia, “SSSR i liga natsii.”

12. DVP SSSR, XVII: 606 (Litvinov on Beck, Sept. 22, 1934), 608 (Litvinov on Bartou, Sept. 25); Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 318 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 17: Sept. 23), 318–9 (l. 75–6: Nov. 2, 1934); DDF, 1e série, VII: 254–5.

13. Milićević, King Dies in Marseilles; Paul-Boncour, Entre deux guerres, II: 21–7. On the supposed involvement of Nazi Germany, see Thorndike et al., Unternehmen Teutonenschwert, 21–43; Volkov, Operatsiia “Tevtonskii mech”; and Volkov, Germano-iugoslavskie otnosheniia, 64.

14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 86, l. 89, 26. Voroshilov received a secret intelligence brief (Oct. 23, 1934) remarking on the increasing closeness of Japan, Poland, Finland, and Latvia to Nazi Germany. “War,” the analysts wrote, “might not happen for several years and at the same time it could break out quickly and unexpectedly.” P. N. Bobylev et al., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR, dekabr’ 1934 g., 5 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 1136, l. 90–5).

15. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 18–22 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 1, l. 4–7; f. 558, op. 1, d. 3162, l. 1–2: Oct. 25, 1934); Leibzon and Shirina, Povorot v politike Kominterna, 97 (TsPA pri TsK na VKP [Sofia], f. 146, op. 4, d. 639, l. 7–8).

16. Multiday discussions took place (Dec. 9–19, 1934) in the Comintern. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 144–5, citing Thorez, Fils du peuple (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1960), 102.

17. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 566 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 246, l. 1: Sept. 2, 1934); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 70; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 31; Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 19, 58–66.

18. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 229–30 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 74, 80, 82, 86; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 27, d. 73, l. 3); Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 511 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 86, l. 41: Oct. 9, 1934; l. 23: Oct. 9), 512 (l. 55: Oct. 10).

19. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 226–8 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 72, l. 180–7, 253–4; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 80, l. 4, 33–40, 91; f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 2–3, 42, 57, op. 163, d. 1046, l. 21–3; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 27, d. 81, l. 428–9); Viktorov, Bez grifa “sekretno,” 139–40; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 130–4. With the kulak crushed, Kaganovich had explained to the Moscow party organization (Sept. 21, 1934), it was necessary “to conduct our measures, repressions, the struggle with enemies within the law . . . educating our population within the frame of socialist legal consciousness.” Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 222 (RGASPI, f. 87, op. 3, d. 164, l. 39).

20. “Reconciliation inside the party could not have appealed to him,” Tucker surmised of Stalin at this time. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 243.

21. Whereas the OGPU had made 505,000 arrests in 1933, including 283,000 for counterrevolution, in 1934 the OGPU-NKVD would make 205,000, including 90,000 for counterrevolution. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 229 (GARF, f. R-9401, op. 1, d. 4157, l. 202); Werth and Mironenko, Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga, I: 609; Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 123.

22. As an overstated U.S. headline, which was translated for the internally circulated regime summaries of the foreign press, had it, “Red Russia was becoming pink.” Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 106 (Baltimore Sun). Utyosov (who had been born Lazar Weisbein) discovered jazz on a trip to Paris.

23. Stalin’s first post-holiday meeting is recorded as Oct. 31. Na prieme, 139.

24. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 288–9.

25. Dullin, Men of Influence, 97 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 14, d. 103, l. 117); Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 318–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 75–6). In Nov. 1934, the regime belatedly created a training institute inside the foreign affairs commissariat.

26. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 587.

27. On Nov. 3, 1934, Stalin repaired to his Kremlin apartment after meetings in his office until 8:30 p.m. On Nov. 4, he had late supper at his Kremlin apartment with Kaganovich and Zhdanov. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 158–9 (Svanidze diary: Nov. 4, 1934); Na prieme, 139–40. Rybin, Stalin v oktiabre, 9; See also Barmine, One Who Survived, 268.

28. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 108.

29. Stalin would also be rumored to be having Kremlin rendezvous with the Bolshoi soprano Valeria Barsova [Vladimirova] and the mezzo-soprano Vera Davidova, who many years later would assert that Stalin had wanted her to be his “housekeeper.” Kun, Stalin, 222.

30. Gromov, Stalin, 63.

31. Shumyatsky had replaced the Stalin critic Ryutin, who had been shunted over to the then backwater film industry for a time. Kepley Jr., “The First Perestroika.” Shumyatsky compiled notes of his notes on his film showings at the Kremlin from May 1934 through Jan. 26, 1937. In summer 1935, in Shumyatsky’s absence, Ia. Chuzin, his deputy, made notes. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 919–1053. The first Soviet sound film, Putevka v zhzin’, by N. V. Ekka, had premiered in June 1931. Shumiatskii, Kinematografiia millionov, 121; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 892, l. 93; Christie, “Making Sense of Early Soviet Sound,” 176–92; Kul’turnaia zhizn’ v SSSR, 1928–1941, 184, 199, 255.

32. Mar’iamov, Kremlevskii tsenzor, 9.

33. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 144–5.

34. Late into the 1930s, all Soviet sound films were released in silent versions, too, for many movie projectors still lacked audio equipment. Bulgakova, Sovetskii slukhoglaz, 98.

35. Stalin first saw Chapayev on Nov. 4, 1934; an anxious Shumyatsky had asked Stalin’s permission to summon the directors, the brothers Sergei and Georgy Vasilyev, to help answer questions. Stalin would watch Chapayev again and again that month (the viewing on Nov. 8–9 lasted until 3:51 a.m.). Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 949–51 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 828, l. 56). On the arguments between the Vasilyev brothers and the actor who played Chapayev, Boris Babochkin (b. 1904) of the Leningrad Drama Theater, see Babochkin, Litso Sovetskogo kinoaktera.

36. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 959–61 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 828, l. 63–63ob.). Stalin invited Budu Mdvinai, with whom he had clashed in the 1920s over Georgian affairs, to the screening that evening.

37. Pravda, Nov. 3, 1934 (S. S. Dinamov); Izvestiia, Nov. 10 (Kh. N. Khersonsky). Stalin directed Shumyatsky to work more closely with Mekhlis; on Nov. 20, the dictator again phoned Mekhlis directly from a screening, which resulted in “The Whole Country Is Watching Chapayev” (Pravda, Nov. 21, 1934). Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 969–70 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 828, l. 69–69ob.: Nov. 20, 1934). See also Brooks, “Thank You, Comrade Stalin!,” 59–60.

38. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 961–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 828, l. 64–6).

39. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 160–2 (Nov. 14 and 26). See also Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 138.

40. Bullard and Bullard, Inside Stalin’s Russia, 243; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 68–70.

41. Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 70–1; Kokurin and Petrov, Lubianka, 49. Medved had served as OGPU boss in the Soviet Far East (1926–1929) before his transfer to Leningrad in Jan. 1930. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 295.

42. Viktorov, Bez grifa “Sekretnosti,” 140 (Stalin to Kuibyshev and Zhdanov). At the May 2, 1934, Kremlin reception, when Voroshilov observed “from the Chekists no one has come. Neither Yagoda nor anyone else,” Stalin responded, “Yesterday I somewhat offended them. They arrested people for nothing.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 18 (May 2, 1934).

43. In Medved’s case, Yagoda singled out lapses in reconnoitering the Finnish frontier (permitting spies and saboteurs to cross), grain procurements, and the struggle against factory sabotage. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 372–4 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 9, l. 243–5); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 569–71.

44. Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 68. On Aug. 16, 1934, Stalin had Zinoviev sacked from the journal Bolshevik, as a scapegoat for controversy related to writings of Engels. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 716–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 950, l. 87–9), 419 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 43–6), 428–9 (f. 558, op. 1, d. 742, l. 15–20), 439–40 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 154–60); Tucker, “The Emergence of Stalin’s Foreign Policy,” 564–5. Zinoviev’s sacking spurred an NKVD move to arrest fourteen ex-Zinovievites in Leningrad, but Kirov, according to Medved, overruled the operation as counter to Stalin’s recent stress on “socialist legality.” Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 473; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 146 (citing RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 62, l. 62–76: Fomin deposition, 1956). On Kirov’s continuing confidence in Medved in 1934, see Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 71. Sveshnikov, interviewed in 1960 and 1964, recalled tensions in 1934 between Kirov and Medved. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 146–7 (citing RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 73, l. 102); V. K. Zavalishin, “Vokrug ubiistva Kirova,” Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, series 236, box 411, file I: 1–55.

45. Markus had taken charge of a clinic (Bolshaya Podyacheskaya, no. 30) for patients with syphilis, mostly prostitutes, whom she strove to reeducate by forcing them to attend political meetings and read about exemplary Bolsheviks. She took the tram to work, dressed simply, and wore no makeup, but two students she had recruited pimped the prostitutes at a nearby bar, causing a scandal. The difficult hospital environment was thought to have exacerbated her health problems and she resigned. Chudov arranged for one of Markus’s sisters, a doctor, to come stay with her in Tolmachevo. Lebina, Povsedevnaia zhizn’, 95–6; Lebina and Shkarovskii, Prostitutsiia v Peterburge, 148–9; Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 324, 405–6 (recollections of Danil Shamko, Feb. 11, 1965). Markus was officially listed as born 1885—Kirov was born in 1886—but she seems to have been at least three to four years older than him. Zen’kovich, Samye sekretnye rodsvtvenniki, 184–5.

46. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 37–8.

47. Kirov’s office had been on the long part of the L-shaped corridor, closer to the main stairway, but was moved to the short part. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 59; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 125–6, 403–9 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 80, l. 137–9: Gubin to Mironov, Jan. 7, 1935; d. 13, l. 1–18: Pelshe report). Lenoe gives a figure of fifteen guards, citing Pelshe; Deviatov gives a figure of twelve (through Feb. 1934). While in Leningrad, Stalin chose not to stay at Kirov’s place—a building with some 250 apartments—but in a detached house, which prompted Medved to have subordinates scope out a possible detached house as a more secure residence for Kirov. Kirov resisted any move. Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 37; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 407–8 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 13, l. 279–81, 288–95ob.).

48. Sept. 28–Oct. 8, 1934, the Mongol party had held its first congress since the New Course. Batbayar, “Stalin’s Strategy in Mongolia.”

49. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 13, l. 1–24. Stalin noted that when property was collective, enrichment signified raising the general well-being; under private property, enrichment meant exploitation by some of others. But Mongolia was a “bourgeois-democratic republic,” even if “of a new type,” so there would be exploitation. “Allowing exploitation, you do not sympathize with it and support it but circumscribe it by means of taxes.” He advised that the better-off should be kept out of the party. Stalin edited the transcript of the conversation. See also “Sovety I. Stalina mongol’skomu premer’u,” Azia i Afrika segodnia, no. 6 (1991): 63–5.

50. Choibalsan belonged to the arrested Lhumbe’s circle, and was evidently incarcerated with the “Japanese spy group,” but soon he himself was torturing the other arrested Mongols on Moscow’s behalf. Okhtin, Moscow’s former envoy to Mongolia, wrote to Choibalsan absolving him of the Lhumbe association yet emphasizing that a lesson had been imparted. Roshchin, Politicheskaia istoriia Mongolii, 285–6, citing L. Bat-Ochir, Choibalsan: namtryn n’ balarkhaig todruulakhui (Ulan Bator: [n.p.], 1996), 105–7. Choibalsan studied for long periods in the USSR (April–Sept. 1933; Feb.–autumn 1934).

51. Khaustov, Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 594–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 188, l. 1–7: Jan. 5, 1935). On April 17, 1935, Stalin received a secret report via an agent in New York about a possible U.S.-Japan pact of nonaggression (661–2: l. 71–3).

52. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 14, l. 1–8. The Mongols were in the Soviet Union Oct. 21–Dec. 2, 1934. On Nov. 24, 1934, Molotov hosted a diplomatic luncheon for them: Stalin, Voroshilov, and, Mikoyan attended. Gol’man and Slesarchuk ; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 351, l. 66.

53. Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 342–3.

54. A letter from the Mongol leadership in Ulan Bator (Dec. 20, 1934) to Stalin reported unanimous formal approval of the negotiations with the USSR (RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 15, l. 1–4).

55. Stalin had decided unilaterally to abolish rationing for bread in the new year while in Sochi in Oct. 1934. On Dec. 8 the regime finally published the much-rumored forthcoming decree. Malenkov wrote to Kaganovich (Dec. 21) about large numbers of workers at factories condemning the move, amid anger over wage arrears as well. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 513 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 83–7); Davies and Khlevniuk, “Otmena kartochnoi sistemy v SSSR”; Khlevniuk and Davies, “The End of Rationing in the Soviet Union, 1934–1935”; Kvashonkin, Sovetstskoe rukovodstvo, 302–3 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 255, l. 1).

56. Stalin added: “Money will circulate, money will become fashionable, which has not been the case here for a long time, and the money economy will strengthen.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 530, l. 79–98.

57. On Nov. 6, at dinner with Bagirov, Orjonikidze fell ill with high fever and chills. He returned to Tiflis to take part in the Revolution Day parade, but that night, at Beria’s apartment, he suffered stomach pains and intestinal bleeding. Four days later, he had heart palpitations. Several photos of Orjonikidze with Beria were published in the newspaper Beria controlled: Zaria Vostoka, Nov. 4, 18, and 27, 1934.

58. Rybin, Riadom so Stalinym, 10.

59. Kirilina, Rikochet, 38–9.

60. They lived at Bateinin St. 9/39, Vyborg Side. According to her party autobiography (June 1933), Draule was born in St. Petersburg gubernia of peasant parents; her supposedly landless father had moved there from the ethnic Latvian province, and Milda supposedly began tending the gentry family’s pigs and cows at age nine. Secret police files indicate her father managed an estate in Luga province and was well-off, making her a class enemy. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 60–1 (TsGA IPD St.P, f. 1051, op. 2, d. 6, l. 93; f. 1728, d. 698355, l. 10–12ob.: Olga Draule); Sukharnikova, “My nagnli takoi.”

61. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’, Kirova” 62.

62. Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 465; Kirilina, “Vstrely v Smol’nom,” 72; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 200–5 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 25, l. 39–43).

63. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 247; Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 464; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 112, l. 5; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 215–6 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 1, l. 10–53). Also in Aug. 1934, borrowing money, Milda had rented a dacha on the Gulf of Finland at Sestroretsk with the two children. Deviatov et al. have Kirov on holiday there at the same time, but Kirov was in Sochi with Stalin for all of Aug. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 62 (TsGA IPD ST.P, f. 1957, op. 2, d. 3754, l. 161).

64. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 257; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 220–2 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 1, l. 65–74).

65. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 398–9 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 13, l. 7–45: Klimov report on Nikolayev detentions, 1961). See also Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 43; and Barmine, One Who Survived, 252.

66. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova” 57–8; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 183, 185, 191, 647, 664, 685. Nikolayev purchased bullets and practiced shooting at the city’s Dynamo sport society, run by the NKVD (perhaps the only place to get ammunition legally).

67. According to Draule’s testimony: Zhukov, “Sledstvie,” 40 (citing Yezhov archive materials).

68. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 209, 227 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 12, l. 401–10: May 13, 1934); Zhukov, “Sledstvie,” 40; Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 253.

69. Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost’, 1991, no. 2: 70–1; Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 466–7; Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 262; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 229–35 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 24, l. 24–32; d. 1, l. 65–74). “Dear Wife and School Brothers!” he wrote again, probably in late Oct. “I am dying for political convictions, on the basis of historical reality, without even a dollop of fear, or an iota of consolation . . . I must die since there is no freedom of agitation, the press, or voting, in life.” Zhukov, “Sledstvie,” 38; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 228 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 24, l. 24–32).

70. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 258–9, 397; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 237–8, 242–3 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 12, l. 401–10).

71. Petukhov and Khomchik, “Delo o ‘Leningradskom tsentre,’” 17–8; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 245–6 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 1, l. 85). Leonid’s half-brother Pyotr had deserted from the Red Army and would be captured in a gunfight. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 217–8, 247–8.

72. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 59 (citing TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2a, d. 30, l. 16–7: report by Alekhin, head of the NKVD operative department, to Zakovsky on Dec. 12, 1934). Smolny had had no pass system whatsoever through 1932; in 1933, its security was taken over by the secret police.

73. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 408–9 (Nikolayev interrogation, Dec. 3, 1934).

74. Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 211–4; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo Kirova, 40; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 150–1 (citing RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 73, l. 114–5: Sveshnikov interview). On rationing anxiety: Rimmel, “Another Kind of Fear”; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 125–6.

75. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 60; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 162 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 80, l. 137–9: Gubin testimony, Jan. 7, 1935), 408–9 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 13, l. 252–62, 263–74, 279–81, 289–95pb.: Baskakov and Mikhalchenko, 1960–1); Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 494. Deviatov et al. have Borisov as head of Kirov’s bodyguards from Feb. 1, 1934.

76. Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 494. Borisov initially testified that he was twenty steps behind, but later that it was twenty to thirty. RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 113, l. 22 (Dec. 1, 1934); Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 209. Deviatov et al. write that Kirov’s traveling detail did not go inside the building, in violation of regulations. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 390–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 60, l. 47); Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova.”

77. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 216–8.

78. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 408; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 114, l. 81, 7.

79. Bravy, the commandant duty officer, on the basis of having heard the shot, placed two calls to NKVD headquarters. According to A. L. Molochnikov, chief of economic security in the Leningrad NKVD, who was at Liteiny, the first call was merely a summons of Medved; the second, seconds later, mentioned Kirov being shot. He judged that Fomin had also received a call, evidently placed by Mikhalchenko, Bravy’s superior as deputy commander of the Smolny guard. Zhukov, “Sledstvie,” 36; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 159–60 (RGANI, f. 6. Op. 13, d. 71, l. 15–7: Molochnikov, Dec. 9), 164–6 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 24, l. 99–104: Mikalchenko, Dec.), 762–3n28 (RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 113, l. 72–3: Bravy).

80. Reabilitatsiia, kak eto bylo 490.

81. Bogen, chief of the Leningrad health department, who was on the third floor, arrived early to the scene, and found Kirov without a pulse. Dr. Maria Galperina, of the Smolny clinic, found Kirov already dead when she arrived (nonetheless she applied artificial respiration). Professors began arriving around 5:00 p.m.; Professor of Surgery Yustin Janelidze arrived last at 5:40 p.m., not long after which Kirov was finally pronounced dead. Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 41–2; Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 221–8; Koenker et al., Revelations, 74–5 (Sept. 9, 1965); Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 168–9.

82. Zhukov, “Sledstvie,” 36; Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 58. Deviatov has the Draule interrogation taking place at Smolny; Zhukov, at NKVD HQ. The location is not specified on the protocol, which lists 16:45 as the start and 19:10 as the conclusion. The otherwise scrupulous Lenoe surmises that the interrogation commenced at 18:45, and a mix-up of 6 and 8 occurred in the record. He bases this unnecessary speculation on the brevity of the protocol, arguing that its length corresponds to a twenty-five-minute conversation. Of course, the NKVD interrogators included in “protocols” what they deemed important. A short text could have resulted from a conversation lasting 2 hours and 25 minutes. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 176 (RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 114, l. 1–2).

83. Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 218; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 157. The witness accounts are supported by the post-Stalin memoirs of Rosliakov (first put to paper around 1959–60, and published in 1991), who was the deputy director of Leningrad regional planning (for finances), and was in Chudov’s office and one of the first to the scene. (Rosliakov believed Stalin organized the assassination.) Silverest Platoch, an electrician, was fixing the light fixtures on the third floor; Grigory G. Vasilyev, a stockman, was also there, to carry a typewriter from the secret department to the former Tauride Palace for the speech.

84. “It seems to be the most likely that at the moment Kirov was wounded he was not in a vertical position.” Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 64; author interview with Devyatov in Moscow (Dec. 23, 2014). Kirov’s body was cremated at the Donskoi Monastery; his clothing was preserved at a museum dedicated to him in Leningrad.

85. RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 117, l. 1–18 (Pelshe commission report, 1966); Petukhov and Khomchik, “Delo o ‘Leningradskom tsentre,’” 15–8; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo Kirova, 43–4; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 763n30 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d, 13, l. 314-6: Kulesh, 1960).

86. The person closest to Kirov at the time of the shot, Platoch, who upon seeing an approaching Kirov had turned his back to lock the glass door (it had been opened to use the elevator to transport the typewriter), claims when he heard the shot he turned again and saw Kirov on the floor in the corridor alongside another male, whom he punched in the face. Another witness, Mikhail Lioninok, a city party functionary, claimed he came into the hall after hearing the first shot and saw Nikolayev standing, screaming, waving the gun, and then firing the second shot. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 153–4 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 44, l. 22: Platoch testimony, Dec. 1, l. 15–7: Molochnikov testimony, Dec. 9; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 113, l. 18–20: Platoch testimony, Dec. 2), 154 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 24, l. 81: Dec. 1), 167 (TsA FSB a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 12, l. 15–6: Nikolayev testimony, Dec. 3). On the bullets, see RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 117, l. 1–18 (Pelshe commission report, 1966); Petukhov and Khomchik, “Delo o ‘Leningradskom tsentre,’” 15–8; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 43–4; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 763n30 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d, 13, l. 314–6: Kulesh, 1960).

87. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 170, 671–2, 764n32. The autopsy, performed on Dec. 2, determined that the bullet from the Nagant had entered Kirov’s cerebellum from behind, near his left ear, passed through the cerebellum and part of the left side of the temporal lobe, then bounced backward off the front of the skull slightly above the left eye; Kirov fell face forward with the left side of his forehead hitting the floor, and the combined bullet ricochet and floor impact cracked his skull, causing massive bleeding and bruising. He died instantly. Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 223–5 (Kirov Museum, f. III-293, l. 1–4).

88. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 64 (TsA IPD StP, f. 25, op. 5, d. 52, l. 3–4, 119; d. 54, l. 53, 56).

89. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 211–4; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 40; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 150 (citing RGANI, f. 6. op. 13, d. 73, l. 114–5: testimony of NKVD courier M. F. Fyodorova).

90. Rimmel, “Kirov Murder and Soviet Society,” 59, 62–4. Pavel Sudoplatov, whose wife (Emma Kaganova) was said to have helped compile a list in the central NKVD of Kirov’s mistresses and possible mistresses, wrote that Draule and Kirov were intimate, but that party leaders refused to acknowledge their hero had died because of adultery. Sudoplatov also asserted that Draule was a waitress in the Smolny cafeteria, and had considered filing for divorce. Sudoplatov, Razvedka i kreml’, 60–1; Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 50–1.

91. Kirilina, “Vystrely v Smol’nom,” 33, 70–8 (interview with interrogator Leonid Raikhman, recounting his Dec. 2, 1934, interrogation of Draule).

92. Tatyiana Sukharnikova, director of the Kirov Museum in St. Petersburg, with the aid of Marx Draule, was able to read through all eighty-five volumes of the Kirov investigation in secret police archives, and reported that the notebook-diary is in Nikolayev’s hand and that there is no mention of an affair between Draule and Kirov. Sukharnikova, “My nagnali takoi”; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 691–2.

93. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 171–2 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 62, l. 62–76: Fomin testimony, March 1, 1956; TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 24, l. 332–3: clinic examination, Dec. 1); Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 465; Petukhov and Khomchik, “Delo o ‘Leningradskom tsentre,’” 18 (Isakov, March 15, 1961); Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 251.

94. The interrogator noted that, upon reading the written record, Nikolayev “categorically refused to sign the present protocol of his testimony, and attempted to rip it up.” Zhukov, “Sledstvie,” 37; Petukhov and Khomchik, “Delo o ‘Leningradskom tsentre,’” 18; Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 250, 406–7; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 256–9 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 1, l. 92–9).

95. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 390–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 60, l. 47); Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 151 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 71, l. 14). Why Medved’s telegram was sent so late—well after Kirov was dead and Draule had been arrested—remains puzzling.

96. Sedov et al.,” Spravka,” 491; Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova,” 58; Koenker et al., Revelations, 73–4 (Poskryobyshev’s written recollections, 1961). Poskryobyshev recalled Stalin not being in; this could be faulty memory, or a reflection of the fact that Poskryobyshev’s office was in the Kremlin’s Imperial Senate, while that day Stalin was at Old Square.

97. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 71–2.

98. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 259 (citing RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 62, l. 62–76: Fomin, 1956).

99. Molotov has Stalin saying “shliapy,” but he could have used saltier language. Chuev, Molotov, 376.

100. Pravda, Dec. 2 and 4, 1934; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 488 (APRF, f. 3, op. 62, d. 95, l. 14–15ob.).

101. Na prieme, 142. This was Suslov’s first recorded visit to Stalin’s office.

102. Pravda, Dec. 4, 1934. A draft terrorist law had been prepared after an earlier assassination (Voikov, the Soviet envoy in Warsaw, in 1927). Now, this one would be approved by telephone poll of politburo members by Dec. 3, but dated the day of the assassination. Pravda, Dec. 4, 1934; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 87; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 795n55, 796n60; Khaustov et al., Lubiankia: Stalin i VChK, 137–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 3, l. 113–113ob.); Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 252 (APRF, f. 3, op. 62, d. 95, l. 1); Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 233. Both the decree and the order for the special train were issued after the assassination. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 240–5. The Dec. 1 decree scuttled the work of the commission and its draft politburo resolution on “rooting out illegal methods of investigation.” Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 132–3.

103. Local newspapers for the next morning, as well as some late-night extra editions, carried the announcement. Leningradskaia pravda, Dec. 2, 1934; Kirilina, Rikoshet, 30–1; Rimmel, “Kirov Murder and Soviet Society,” 21, 27–8; Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, series 212, box 249, file 3 (V. I. Rudolf-Iurasov memoir). Ehrenburg’s name along with that of Pasternak and other writers was affixed to a note that appeared in Izvestiya (Dec. 2). Liudi, gody, zhizn’, in Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 53.

104. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 173–5 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 24, l. 1–2), 177–8 (l. 3–4). The consulate was actually at 43; the phone number was correct. Ves’ Leningrad na 1933 g. (Leningrad: Lenoblispolkom i Lensovet, 1934), 19.

105. Taubman, Khrushchev, 69, 71 (quoting Gostinskaya); Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 39, 92.

106. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, 232 (A. Tammi).

107. Agranov took possession of the case materials at 11:00 a.m., and put the local army garrison, local NKVD troops, and regular police, as well as Fomin, at Pauker’s disposal. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 263 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 62, l. 62–76). Stalin, according to Fomin, demanded all operational documents concerning anti-Soviet groups and individuals, and, after looking over the list said, “Your recording-keeping is poor.” Petukhov and Khomchik, “Delo o ‘Leningradskom tsentre,’” 19 (Fomin recollections).

108. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 152–3 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 71, l. 14: Borisov’s Dec. 1 interrogation), 159 (l. 15–7: Molochnikov, Dec. 9), 263 (d. 92, l. 169–72: Zavilovich, Dec. 4).

109. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 414–27 (TsA FSB, a.u.d., N-Sh44, t. 24, l. 253–4: Maly, 255–6: Vinogradov, 259–62: Kuzin, twice; 242–44: expert commission report, 291–2: Chopovsky; RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 1, l. 10–53: Khvuiizov; d. 2, l. 78–107: Aug. 1956 commission report; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 271, l. 539–40), 686 (Lyushkov, 1939); Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 494–8; “O kul’te lichnosti,” 138; Kirilina, Neizvestny Kirov, 343–54.

110. The bodyguard responsible for the entire third floor, Nikolai Dureiko, had been even farther behind Kirov than Borisov on Dec. 1, and he was not killed in a vehicle accident. In fact, no other operative was killed.

111. Fomin and others, seeking a foreign link, had again interrogated Nikolayev in the wee hours on Dec. 2. After Stalin’s arrival, the Leningrad NKVD interrogated Nikolayev again, on Dec. 3. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 260–1 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 12, l. 12–4), 157, 249–50 (TsA FSB, a.u.d. N-Sh44, t. 12, l. 15–6: Nikolaev interrogation, Dec. 3).

112. See Stalin’s response to the incident (Aug. 5, 1934) involving Artyom Nakhayev, who brought unarmed cadets to an infantry barracks in Moscow and told them to start a new revolution: “He is, of course (of course!), not alone . . . He is probably a Polish-German (or Japanese) agent.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 411–2, 421, 425, 429, 431–2, 437, 459–60; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 87; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 565 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 84, l. 15: Agranov to Stalin, Aug. 26, 1934), 818–9n147; Khromov, Po stranitsam, 154–5. Nakhayev had been expelled from the party and the Red Army for supporting the Trotskyite opposition in 1926–28. Zdanovich, Organy, 326 (citing TsA FSB, delo R-45677, l. 1).

113. Molotov added: “I don’t think any woman was involved.” Chuev, Sto sorok, 310–1; Chuev, Molotov, 376.

114. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 264–7 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 21, l. 86–93: A. I. Katsafa, who retook custody of Nikolayev after the interrogation); Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 46; Artizov, Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, I: 296 (Molotov, Dec. 31, 1955).

115. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 271–3 (RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 79, l. 1).

116. The NKVD pursued not the German but the Latvian consul connection. Nikolayev proved able to pick the Latvian consul (Georgs Bissenieks) out of eighteen photographs, and to describe the facility’s interior. Bissenieks was expelled from the Soviet Union on Dec. 30, 1934. (The Soviets would capture and execute him in 1940–1.)

117. Sedov et al., “Spravka,” 482. Mikoyan is among the many sources who falsely assert that from the first minutes Stalin fingered the Zinovievites. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 316.

118. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 955, l. 20. A former Socialist Revolutionary who had joined the Bolsheviks in 1919, Kandelaki had served as commissar of enlightenment in Georgia (1925–30) and Soviet trade representative in Sweden. He would make twenty visits to Stalin’s office, according to the logbooks. Na prieme, 627.

119. Gnedin, Iz istorii otnoshenii, 34–5; Gnedin, Katastrofa i votoroe rozhdenie, 237–9. See also Raymond, “Witness and Chronicler.”

120. Rybin, Riadom so Stalinym, 10.

121. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 970–2 (RGASPI. f. 558, op. 11, d. 828, l. 70–3). See also Mikoian, Tak bylo, 115, 148–50. The filmed Kirov speeches were to the second Leningrad province congress of collective farmers (July 17, 1933) and the Leningrad party plenum (Oct. 10, 1934). The documentary would open Jan. 14, 1935. Bliokh was awarded the Order of Lenin.

122. According to the heavy industry staffer Semyon Ginzburg, for days after Kirov’s death Orjonikidze would not appear at the commissariat. Upon his return, the staff “did not recognize the typically enthusiastic and vivacious Sergo. He had turned gray and aged noticeably. He often seemed lost in thought, with a face heavy from grief.” Ginzburg, “O gibeli Sergo Ordzhonikidze,” 89. Zinoviev and his former supporter Grigory Yevdokimov evidently sent an obituary to Pravda, which refused to publish it. Pravda, Aug. 15, 1936.

123. Stalin also liked “The Varangian” (“Tell the whole word, seagulls, the sad news: they did not surrender to the enemy, they fell for Russian honor”). Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 22–3, 78.

124. Stalin added: “Moreover, in the hands of talented masters, it is the most powerful art. We, the leaders, need to get directly involved in the work of cinema to help this extremely important cause. Those working in film need to take a great deal of care to ensure that films should be varied, that, together with serious works there should also be jolly ones, as in theatre, so that the viewer, depending on his mood and his level, might choose where he’d rather go today.” Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 973–42 (RGASPI. f. 558, op. 11, d. 828, l. 74–5).

125. Taranova, Golos Stalina, 69–70. Levitan had been designated to break the news of Kirov’s assassination for the Soviet public, but he had been out sick. His voice (“Moscow speaking!”) was now heard across the USSR multiple times a day, in a broadcast known as “The Latest News,” from a studio at the Central Telegraph Station. (Natalya Tolstova was the second-most-heard voice.) Legend also has it that Stalin, in his office working on Jan. 25, 1934, on his speech for the 17th Party Congress, had turned up the dial on the radio and heard Levitan, who after a three-year training period, had finally gotten a chance to be assigned to read the next morning’s edition of Pravda over the radio; Stalin called the head of Soviet radio, Konstantin Maltsev, and directed that his congress report the next day—a five-hour performance—be read over the radio in its entirety by the same announcer. Taranova, Golos Stalina, 55–6. See also Tolstova, Vnimanie, vkliuchaiu mikrofon!; Liachenko, “Tak proletelo sorok let . . . ,” 47–51; and Goriaeva, “Veilkaia kniga dnia,” 77 (GARF, f. R-6903, op. 1 l/s, d. 25, l. 24).

126. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiaikh, 168 (Svanidze diary: Dec. 5, 1934).

127. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 281–3 (TsA FSB, u.a.d., N-Sh44, t. 12, l. 95–6: Nikolayev interrogation, Dec. 4). Agranov reported to Stalin and Yagoda (Dec. 5) over the phone that, according to Draule’s interrogation, “until August she participated in the compilation of her husband’s diary. She confirmed that she read several of his entries that carried a counterrevolutionary character.” He added that Draule’s relatives, in Latvia, were “traders” (i.e., class enemies) and that her brother in Leningrad had been sentenced to a three-year term in a labor colony for embezzlement. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 393 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 60, l. 1–6).