Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

296. Memo of Govorukhin, chief of PUR in Leningrad Military District, June 12, 1937, RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 993, l. 159ss, Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 17. Similar mood reports that month to Voroshilov contained the following: “Now, no one except the politburo can be believed.” “Only Comrade Stalin can be believed now, and no one else.” RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 993, l. 157–8, Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 17 (Kruglov, temporarily implementing duties of chief of PUR.)

297. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 194 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 312, l. 162, June 29, 1937). “Over there, over here, they started to arrest commanders, about whom we had never heard a bad word before,” recalled a division commander in the Kiev military district. “From mouth to mouth rumors were whispered, one more absurd than the next, about plots and espionage malefaction.” Gorbatov, “Shkola Iakira,” 176. See also Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 199 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 308, l. 212–3).

298. Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 380.

299. The defense commissariat received more than 200,000 letters in 1938 (and would receive more than 350,000 in 1939). No small number were petitions sent from prisons. Kommunist, 1990, no. 17: 70.

300. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I: 438; Suvenirov, “Za chest’ i dostoinstvo voinov RKKA,” 372–87 (at 377).

301. Kuznetsov, Krutye povoroty, 59, 76–9.

302. Just one of many examples: between May 7 and 10, Voroshilov issued a plan for liquidating wrecking—check all warehouses, all construction sites, all secret information storage holdings, all military units—but he did so without naming a single example of actual wrecking in the army. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 75 (APRF, f. 3, f. 401, l. 107–9).

303. Suvenirov, “Narkomat oborony,” 29 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1023, l. 22, 24, 26: June 1937). Notes to himself for his Nov. 1938 speech to the Main Military Council show how far Voroshilov had come. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 74–5 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1137, l. 3, 5, 6).

304. A few days after the June 1937 military soviet gathering, Voroshilov told an assembly of party members at the defense commissariat that the army was “the last place” in terms of “revealed” enemies, but that during the previous three months the situation had “sharply changed.” Whitewood, Red Army, 249 (citing RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 118, l. 3).

305. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 369–70. Voroshilov’s despair would also be evident in a draft outline of his speech to the June 1937 Central Committee plenum, in which he had written that the unmasking of the military-fascist plot “means that our method of work, our whole system for running the army, and my work as people’s commissar, have utterly collapsed.” This line was evidently not uttered. Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 190.

306. Dubinskii, Osobyi schet, 212. Dubinsky was slandered and arrested back in Kazan.

307. Trotskii, Stalin, II: 276.

308. Machiavelli, Discourses, 181–2, 184–5.

309. Chuev, Sto sorok, 37.

310. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 3), 6.

311. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1994, no. 2), 21.

312. Chuev, Sto sorok, 416. Or again: “We owe the fact that we did not have a fifth column during the war to ’37.” (Of course, the Soviet Union did have an immense Fifth Column during WWII.) Chuev, Molotov, 464. One scholar, who correctly cautioned against accepting the fifth column argument to explain Stalin’s motivations, hypothesized that Molotov’s and Kaganovich’s resort to the fifth column rationale might have assuaged their consciences. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 210.

313. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 575, l. 69. Kaganovich, in June 1938, addressing the Donbass party organization, would state that if the enemies, spies, and kulaks had not been annihilated, “perhaps we would be at war already.” Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror,” 96 (citing RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 231, II. 73, 79). G. K. Dashevskii [Donskoi], a Latin Americanist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of World Economics and World Politics, published a pamphlet in 1938 drawing the parallels: Fashistskaia piataia kolonna v Ispanii (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1938). See also Kublanov, “Razgrom fashistskoi trotskistko-bukharinskoi ‘piatoi kolonii’ v SSSR.”

314. The perceptive American John Scott cited four factors to explain the terror, two of which involved the presence of many “former” people, which he called “potentially good material for clever foreign agents to work with,” as well as the circumstance that Japan, Italy, and Germany “sent fifth-columnists of all kinds into Russia, as they did into every country” (italics added). The other two factors Scott cited were the long history of a secret police in Russia and Bolshevik intolerance toward opposition. Scott, Behind the Urals, 188–9. See also Davies, Mission to Moscow. See also the fellow traveler Strong, Stalin Era, 68; and Deutscher, Stalin, 376–7.

315. Stepanov, Rasstrel po limitu, 13–4. Sholokhov mentioned a fifth column in a letter to Stalin (Feb. 1938). Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 309; Murin, “‘Prosti menia, Koba . . .’: neizvestnoe pis’mo N. Bukharina,” 23 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 427, l. 13–8); “‘Vokrug menia vse eshche pletut chernuiu Pautinu . . . ,’” 18 (f. 45, op. 1, d. 827, l. 41–61, Feb. 16, 1938).

316. The influential Khlevniuk has asserted that, based upon the intelligence he was being fed, Stalin became convinced the Republican side in Spain was being defeated because of traitors in its midst and that he feared the same could happen in the Soviet Union, goading him to undertake the domestic terror. Kuromiya, another top scholar, sought to refine the point, arguing that Stalin feared not latent internal opposition per se but internal opposition transformed by a war launched from without. Khlevniuk, “Objectives of the Great Terror,” 158–76; Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 173 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 90, 141–2, 146); Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror.”

317. Border guards were gathering the harvest. Solov’ev and Chugnuov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 9–10.

318. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 104; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 247–8.

319. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 296 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1049, l. 260–1, 265, July 14, 1937), 297; Suvenirov, “Klim, Koba skazal,” 57–8.

320. During the nine days after the in-camera trial, nearly 1,000 more Soviet commanders and military intelligence operatives were arrested, a number now continuously rising. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 190–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 30, l. 250–1; APRF, f. 3, op. 46, d. 807, l. 62); “Delo o tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi organizatsii’ v Krasnoi Armii,” 57; Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 160–1.

321. Rybalkin, Operatisia “X,” 64 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 852, l. 115); Wheatley, Hitler and Spain, 102–3; Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe. It has been estimated that barring its losses in Spain, Italy could have gone to war in June 1940 with 50 full strength divisions, instead of the 19 full and 34 partial strength it mounted. Sullivan, “Fascist Italy’s Military Involvement,” 703, 718.

322. Some 100 Soviet military advisers served in Spain in 1936, 50 in 1937, 250 in 1938, and 95 in 1939, for a total of 495. Rybalkin, Operatsiia “X,” 57 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 870, l. 344; f. 35082, op. 1, d. 15, l. 47–9); Tolmachaev, “Sovetskii Soiuz i Ispaniia,” 150 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1143, l. 127). See also Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 768 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 912, l. 158; d. 961, l. 170–1).

323. Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 577. See also Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 95.

324. Mallett, Mussolini, 92.

325. Leitz, Economic Relations. Spain enabled Göring to increase his role in German economic planning at home. Franco was uneasy but had to accept Germany’s economic aggrandizement inside Spain. Germany was able to obtain militarily significant raw materials—pyrites, copper, mercury, zinc (some 80 percent of Spanish exports of key materials were going to Germany by 1939), while Spain went into debt to Berlin. Wheatley, Hitler and Spain, 85.

326. Stalin was told on July 26, 1937, that the USSR had dispatched 460,000 tons of goods to Spain since Aug. 1936, from food, oil, and timber to trucks, tractors, ammonium sulfate, cotton, and cigarettes. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 260–4 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 224, l. 95–102). By Feb.–March 1938, the Spanish gold had been spent; Moscow extended a credit of $70 million to the Republic for further purchases. The loans, which might have reached $155 million, were never repaid. Kowalsky reasoned that “even if we subtract Howson’s $51 million in overcharges, acknowledge only the unpaid loan of $70 million, (rather than the potential $155 million), and subtract the cost of three DC-3s (roughly $360,000), the total value of the Soviet assistance provided to the Republic comes to approximately $525 million, or $7 million more than their gold should have bought.” Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 548. Politburo agenda items on Spain more and more took up resettling Spanish orphans in the USSR, as well as prisoner exchanges with Italy and Germany.

327. Antonov-Ovseyenko would be summoned to Moscow “for a short period to report” on July 24, 1937. Three days later he would write to Stalin asking to be received. Stalin would grant an audience only on Sept. 14 (first alone, then in the company of Yezhov and Molotov), when Antonov-Ovseyenko would be appointed justice commissar for the RSFSR. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 265 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 224, l. 106); Na prieme, 220. In Spain, management of Soviet diplomacy would fall to Tateos Mandalyan (b. 1901), an ethnic Armenian who went by the name Sergei Marchenko. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 418–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 228, l. 1–3).

328. On May 20, 1937, Pascua asked to see Stalin regarding the fall of Largo Caballero and the formation of a new Spanish coalition government. Pascua was worried (as he told Potyomkin) that he had committed errors that put him in Stalin’s bad graces; Stalin assented to an audience—on Aug. 2, after Potyomkin reminded Stalin of Pascua’s request on July 27. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 239 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 224, l. 18), 265 (105); Na prieme, 217.

329. Through summer 1938, Dimitrov and the Comintern continued to be preoccupied with Spain, sending many long reports to Stalin, but the dictator’s engagement with Spain was essentially finished. Already in Sept.–Oct. 1937, the majority of Soviet advisers were withdrawn from Spain; the Comintern group there was disbanded. Novikov, SSSR, Komintern, II: 78. By Sept. 1938, the Soviets issued an order to withdraw the International brigades (Franco did not reciprocate by sending the Germans and Italians home).

330. The transfer east was formalized on May 11. Already on June 19, Yezhov ordered Balytsky to report to Moscow. Balytsky had to understand this meant his own arrest. Still, perhaps Balytsky imagined he could persuade the dictator of his loyalty, claiming, for example, that even though he and the enemy Yakir had worked together in Ukraine, he had not known of Yakir’s plotting. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 127, citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 33, l. 81–5. At one time thought to be a candidate to replace Yagoda, Balytsky was executed on Nov. 21, 1937, at Kommunarka, Yagoda’s former dacha. “O sud’be chlenov i kandidatov v chleny TsK VKP (b), izbrannogo XVII s”ezdom partii,” 88.

331. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IV: 214 (July 10, 1937). Erich Wollenberg, a German Communist who served fifteen years in the Red Army (1921–36), noted, “One cannot deny that as a result of the executions the Red Army is leaderless.” Hitler, too, would use this phrase. Wollenberg, Red Army.

CHAPTER 8. “WHAT WENT ON IN NO. 1’S BRAIN?”

1. “Secret Speech” [1956], in Khruschev, Khrushchev Remembers, 616.

2. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 263.

3. Solzhenitsyn, without access to regime archives, got this right, writing that “old prisoners claim to remember that the first blow allegedly took the form of mass arrests” in Aug. 1937. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, I: 68. See also Weissberg-Cybulski, Accused, 7–10.

4. Yezhov’s report was followed by four days of discussion. No transcript was made of the plenum through June 26 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 614, l. 1), and no complete text of Yezhov’s speech has been adduced. We do, however, have his outline: Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 293–312 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 20, l. 117–22, 163–83); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 130–2; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 306–8 (d. 29, l. 200–7). On June 27–29, the plenum discussed the Supreme Soviet election laws, grain seeds, crop rotation, and machine tractor stations, which is what the Pravda post-plenum summary (June 30) mentioned, leaving out Yezhov’s report.

5. Stalin had Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan, and Zhdanov affix their assent. L. B., “‘Tain Kremlia’ bol’she ne budet?,” 37.

6. The creative intelligentsia might have suffered fewer arrests per capita than other groups. Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, 243.

7. Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 15–6.

8. Payne, Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, 350; Conquest, Breaker of Nations, 317. Bullock asserted that both Hitler and Stalin “owed a great deal of their success as politicians to their ability to disguise from allies as well as opponents, their thoughts and their intentions.” Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 367.

9. Enteen, “Intellektual’nye predposylki.”

10. Conquest, Reassessment, 14 (no citation).

11. Tichanova, Rasstrel’nye spiski, 202, 211; Moskovskie novosti, 1994, no. 5.

12. The “politburo” ordered Yezhov to go on holiday on Dec. 7, 1937, outside Moscow, and directed Stalin to make sure Yezhov did not appear at work. RGASPI, f. 17 op. 3, d. 993, l. 74.

13. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 399–405. Savoleinen, the accused mercury poisoner, was executed in Aug. 1937.

14. Orlov, Secret History, 221–2. Yezhov’s office as of Oct. 1936 was on the fourth floor (410). Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 67, citing GARF, f. 9401, op. 1a, d. 15, l. 242.

15. Those who had long minimized Stalin’s role now admit that his “name is all over the horrible documents authorizing the terror.” (Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 451.) And if it were not? If Stalin had kept his name off the documents, while making others sign them, would we be wondering if he were an instrument in their hands, or a neutral figure caught between factions, or an opponent of terror who went along with it? If all the documents on the terror had been destroyed during a wartime bombing or a botched evacuation, or by a fire, or on his command, would it still be unclear that the mass arrests and executions did not somehow begin and wind down of their own accord, but were carried out on Stalin’s orders?

16. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 348–51 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254, l. 165–72). Many examples have been gathered in Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 41–3.

17. Mlechin, KGB, 176.

18. Yezhov was instructed to “spend nine-tenths of his time on NKVD business”: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 981, l. 50.

19. Fadeev, “Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov,” cited in Pavliukov, Ezhov, 335–6, RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 270, l. 69–86 (at 80–1); excerpts are also in Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 13. This was part of a commissioned biography of Yezhov, whose arrest took place before the biography could be published.

20. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 207; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 536.

21. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 1), 10.

22. In this case, by Poluvedko et al., Mech i tryzub, 122. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 12–29.

23. TsA FSB, p-23634, t. 1, l. 195. Spiegelglass handled multiple key double agents, controlled Zborowski’s virtuoso work with Sedov, and would oversee several more priority assassinations abroad—until his own regime executed him.

24. Rees has argued that the Great Terror “was the central and decisive event” in the history of Stalin’s regime, a view I do not share, but I do share his contention that “in the experience of modern states [the terror] is without precedent.” Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 200–39.

25. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 299–300. As of Nov. 30, 1937, Stalin started receiving not the lengthy raw interrogation protocols but summaries, and only of the most important cases. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 319–20.

26. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 322 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 6, d. 11, l. 384).

27. Conquest, Great Terror: Reassessment, 268–9; Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 143–4.

28. Sukhanovka had been retrofitted as a prison in 1931, and in late 1938 into early 1939 would be expanded for “especially dangerous enemies of the people.” Golovkova, Sukhanosvakia tiur’ma; GARF. f. 5446, op. 22a, d. 125, l. 5.

29. Papkov, Stalinskii terror v Sibiri, 230–1. In 1938, for example, the party boss of Karelia would tell Yezhov that because local prisons were already overflowing, he was unable to arrest more than a thousand “enemies.” Takala, “Natsional’nye operatsii,” 196–7. See also Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 90–115.

30. Gur’ianov, Repressii protiv poliakov, 30. As Frinovsky traveled by train in July 1938 through regions that had sent arrest albums to Moscow, he and his aides, having brought the overdue paperwork, rendered decisions on the train and dropped them off as they passed through. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 323.

31. The anti-terrorist machinery that had been introduced on the day of the Kirov murder in the form of a USSR Central Executive Committee decree (Dec. 1, 1934), had been formally approved nine days later by the RSFSR Central Executive Committee and the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars, but the anti-terrorism laws were not finalized until Feb. 1936, entered into the RSFSR criminal code via an added 18th chapter (“On the investigation and hearing of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against Soviet power”). Istoriia zakonodatel’stva SSSR i RSFSR po ugolovnomu protsessu, 53. These procedures were extended to wrecking and diversionary acts on Sept. 14, 1937. On the confusion, see Scott, Behind the Urals, 194.

32. Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie leninskikh printsipov,” 19. In Yerevan in Sept. 1937, Malenkov, Mikoyan, and Beria, overseeing a regional party plenum, turned the sitting party bosses over to the NKVD and decided upon the new first, second, and third party secretaries for Armenia, sending a proposal to Stalin and Molotov in Moscow. Stalin approved “if the plenum of the Central Committee of Armenia does not have any doubts regarding these candidates.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 19, d. 62, l. 2, 4; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 135, l. 65–65ob. Although this could have been a pose of false party democracy, he could hardly know or remember everyone even in the nomenklatura. On Yevdokimov’s telegrammed request to arrest Amatouni Amatouni [Vardapetyan] Stalin had written, “Who is this Amatouni? Where does he work?” (Amatouni was the party boss in Armenia and among the gaggle of high officials arrested there on Sept. 23.) Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlneie, 68 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 65, l. 24), 379–80 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 332, l. 43). Amatouni was executed on July 28, 1938, from a long list of names approved by Stalin. N. P. Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie leninskikh printsipov sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti (1953–1963 gg.),” 19.

33. Some 43,000 people are on the lists; the USSR military collegium handed down 14,732 sentences in 1937 and 24,435 in 1938, a little more than 39,000 people total. An example of someone who survived is Ya. Yelkovich of the Altai, who was on two lists. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 296. Iakushev, Stalinskie rasstrel’nye spiski.

34. As of June 1941, 1,500 telegrams and 33,000 thousand letters were being sent abroad from the Soviet Union and 1,000 telegrams and 31,000 letters were arriving from abroad every day. Most of that was likely official business, but not all. The censors were requesting a vast increase in personnel. Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 85–6 (GARF, f. R-9425, op. 1, d. 19, l. 153–4).

35. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 280–354.

36. Chegodaev, “Iz vospominanii.”

37. Many of the Soviet institutions and instruments of state power had been invented in expropriations of property and physical elimination of class enemies, and then reinvented or vastly expanded in the forced collectivization of the peasantry. Barrington Moore offered a general theory of the state as a reflection of its handling of the peasantry, but without adequately addressing the specifics of the Soviet case. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. See also van Atta, “USSR as a ‘Weak State.’” Von Atta, like others, missed how Stalin’s regime created its own society, which contributed immensely to state capacity.

38. Ellman rightly noted that “having destroyed independent social organizations, established total media censorship, and created a socioeconomic system in which organizations at all levels had an incentive to understate their possibilities and overstate their needs, getting accurate information became very difficult.” Ellman, “Political Economy of Stalinism,” 116.

39. Davies et al., “The Politburo and Economic Decision Making,” 126–7.

40. Markevich, “Monitoring and Interventions,” 1466.

41. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 288–91.

42. Stalin was the decisive actor, although “not immune to pressure and persuasion from politburo members, or from society at large.” Davies, “Making Economic Policy,” 69. See also Gregory, Political Economy, 68. A few functionaries cultivated clients across agencies. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 262–3.

43. Chuev, Sto sorok, 258–9, 263.

44. Rosenfeldt, “Special” World, I: 55–8.

45. “The essence of party leadership,” Stalin had remarked in July 1924, “lies precisely in the implementation of resolutions and directives.” “O kompartii Pol’shi” [July 3, 1924], Bol’shevik, Sept. 20, 1924, reprinted in Sochineniia, VI: 264–72 (at 269–70). How this was to come about was another matter entirely. “To raise the quality of the party official with a wave of the hand is not so simple,” Stalin had told Sverdlov university students. “It is still common for officials to apply the old habits of hasty administrative-izing . . . so-called party leadership sometimes degenerates into a sorry amalgam of useless directives, into empty and glib ‘leadership’ that accomplishes nothing.” Sochineniia, V: 197–222, VII: 171–2, VII: 349–50; Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 24.

46. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 19.

47. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 217–9 (Sept. 22, 1930).

48. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 210–1.

49. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 88–93 (Sept. 16, 1926); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 126–9. See also Markevich, “Monitoring and Enforcement.” One scholar has argued that Stalin’s own policies made the country nearly impossible to govern, which infuriated and haunted him. Harris, “Was Stalin a Weak Dictator?,” 377, echoing Lewin, Making of the Soviet System (1985).

50. For the rubbish about Stalin’s terror as a reaction to regional party bosses’ failure to obey central authority, see Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 12–14, 16, 22. For the refutation that Stalin was not motivated by fear of elite resistance, see Tucker, Stalin in Power, 264–8; and Khlevniuk, “Stalinist ‘Party Generals,’” 195–6.

51. Soviet functionaries experienced inordinate mobility compared with their tsarist predecessors. In the tsarist state, those who started careers in the provinces remained there, destined never to reach the heights and perquisites of the capital. Pinter, “Social Characteristics.”

52. This statement occurred during forced collectivization and dekulakization, and Gorky helpfully pointed out that “if the enemy does not surrender, he is to be exterminated.” Hosking, First Socialist Society, 163.

53. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 212–3.

54. The rise of the politburo had undercut the Central Committee’s authority, but, in turn, Stalin’s informal caucusing undermined the politburo; it met just fifteen times in 1935 and nine times in 1936. Daniels, “Office Holding and Elite Status,” 77–95; Gill, Origins, 65.

55. Hearsay recollections by people not at the plenum have claimed Osip Pyatnitsky stood up to Stalin and Yezhov. Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 219–20; Vilenskii, Dodnes’ tiagoteet, 265–6. For a debunking, see Pavliukov, Ezhov, 300–5.

56. These totals do not include other functionaries who attended but were not members: for example, Nazaretyan, Stalin’s first top aide, was arrested on his way to the Kremlin to attend the plenum. (He would be executed Nov. 30, 1937.) Pravda, Nov. 17, 1964. “During the breaks in the sessions,” one person later poetically claimed, “Deputy NKVD Head Frinovsky walked through the corridors smoking, and used his cigarette to point, take this one, take that one.” Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 209 (Afanasy Krymov).

57. Syrtsov was serving as director of a factory in Moscow province when the NKVD came for him on April, 19, 1937. He would be executed on Sept. 10, 1937, and cremated at the Donskoe crematorium.

58. Conquest, Reassessment, 214–34; Gill, “Stalinism and Industrialization,” 131–2. Already by late Oct. 1937, of the 139 members and candidates of the Central Committee, more than half had been arrested and seven shot; another 23 were now scheduled to be executed. The next month Yezhov submitted to Stalin a list for execution of all 45 incarcerated Central Committee personnel who were still alive. Stalin crossed out half the names, perhaps because they had yet to “testify” fully, but many of them were executed some months later. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 339.

59. See the example in Dagestan in 1937: Pravda (Sept. 25, 1937): Dagestanskaia pravda, Oct. 23, 2013; Akhmedabiev, “I opiat’ o mifakh.”

60. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 101–2 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 28: Feb. 13, 1937).

61. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 121; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 115.

62. Kaganovich telegrammed Stalin that “acquaintance with the situation shows that the right-Trotskyite wrecking here has taken broad dimensions—in industry, agriculture, supply, trade, medicine, education and political work.” XXII s”ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza, III: 153.

63. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 68–70.

64. Hlevnjuk, “Les mécanismes de la ‘Grande Terreur’”; Thurston, Life and Terror, 62 (citing GARF, f. 8131, op. 27, d. 145, l. 49–57: Sept. 1939 report).

65. Gill, Origins of the Stalinist Political System, 273.

66. Scott, Behind the Urals, 195–6. Scott added: “Whereas most of the workers in the mills were fairly well trained by 1935, had acquired the knacks of electric welding, pipe-fitting, or what not, most of the administrators were far from having mastered their jobs” (175).

67. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 39 (citing GARF, f. 5446, f. 1, d. 122a, 26–8).

68. More than 2,000 personnel in the various commissariats were arrested just between Oct. 1936 and March 1937, and that did not even include the NKVD, foreign affairs commissariat, and defense commissariat, which did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Council of People’s Commissars. Lukianov, “Massovye represii opravdany byt’ ne mogut,” 120 (data presented by a commission in 1962–3). Veitser was arrested on Oct. 17, 1937, and would be shot (May 7, 1938) at Kommunarka.

69. Kuromiya, “Stalinist Terror in the Donbas.”

70. Vasiliev, “Great Terror in the Ukraine,” 144–5 (citing TsGAOO Ukraini, f. 1, op. 20, d. 7115, l. 67, 86, 90, 167; d. 7177, l. 43–5, 47); Pravda, May 29, 1937; Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 219 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 574, l. 74; f. 589, op. 3, d. 2042); Likholobova, Totalitarnyi rezhym ta politychni represiï, 72n.

71. Likholobova, Stalins’kii totalitarnyi rezhym, 76–8.

72. Avdeenko, Nakazanie bez prestupleniia, 182–3.

73. Vasiliev, “Great Terror in the Ukraine,” 145; Shapoval, Lazar Kaganovich, 35.

74. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 224n141 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3215, l. 3).

75. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 361–62 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 953, l. 212–3, Manuilsky letter to Yezhov, Andreev, and Shkiryatov, May 21, 1937).

76. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 52 (Feb. 11, 1937); Latyshev, “Riadom so Stalinym,” 19.

77. Chase, Enemies within the Gates?, 275–6; Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 69 (Nov. 11, 1937). On May 26, 1937, Dimitrov had cryptically recorded in his diary: “At Yezhov’s (1 o’clock in the morning). The major spies worked in the Comintern.” The next day: “Examination of the apparatus” of the Comintern Executive Committee. (61: May 26, 1937.)

78. Weber, “Weisse Flecken,” 19–20, 24. By some accounts, the Nazis killed six German politburo members. Overall, of the 1,400 leading German Communists, a total of 178 were killed in Stalin’s terror, nearly all of them residents of Hotel Lux. The Nazis killed 222 of them. Fritz Platten, the Swiss Communist who had organized Germany’s help for Lenin’s sealed-train return in 1917, and who lived at the Hotel Lux since 1924, was caught in the sweeps (he would die in Gulag).

79. The resolution was written in Nov. 1937, but it is not clear when the disbandment went into effect. The resolution was formally passed by the Comintern presidium on Aug. 16, 1938. Voprosii istorii KPSS, 1988, no. 12: 52; Chase, Enemies within the Gates?, 287–9; Lazitch, “Stalin’s Massacre,” 139–74; McDermott, “Stalinist Terror.”

80. Naszkowski, Nespokoinye dni, 209–10.

81. Wladyslaw Stein, known as Anton Krajewski, a leading official in the Comintern cadres department, had presented a report on Oct. 25, 1934, accusing émigrés of acting as foreign agents. Yezhov, in a September 1935 speech to party secretaries, had voiced suspicion of political émigrés, especially from Germany and Poland, calling them foreign agents. “I’d like to discuss the question of verification measures of the Polish Communist party, which, as you know, in recent years has been the main supplier of spies and provocative elements in the USSR,” Manuilsky (an ethnic Ukrainian) had written ingratiatingly to Yezhov on Jan. 19, 1936, knowing this was Stalin’s view. Chase, Enemies within the Gates?, 48 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 21, d. 23, l. 6, 9, 23); 105–7 (op. 18, d. 1147a, l. 1–3); Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 210 (APRF, f. 57, op. 1., d. 73, l. 3).

82. In April 1938, Pyatnitsky evidently named Mao among the “Bukharin group” in the Comintern as a spy for Japan. Boris Melnikov, a former Soviet agent in China who had been accused of having gone over to the Japanese, was accused of being involved in the Comintern “conspiracy” of Osip Pyatnitsky, and his “testimony” supposedly denounced Mao as “the leader of Trotskyism in the inmost depths of the CCP.” Piatnitskii, Zagovor protiv Stalina, 120–5 (citing a July 1987 interview with Mikhail Menndeleyev, a former cellmate of Melnikov); Vaksberg, Hôtel Lux, 218–21, 235. See also Chang and Halliday, Mao, 208–9. In 1935, Pyatnitsky had been moved out of the Comintern to the central party apparatus.

83. Starkov, “Ar’ergardnye boi staroi partiinoi gvardii,” 220–1. As of July 1938, a year after his arrest, Pyatnitsky was still not broken and Yezhov’s power was waning. (Béla Kun and Wilhelm Knorin, said to have been in league with Pyatnitsky, were broken.) Pyatnitsky was tried in camera and, on July 29, 1938, executed. Starkov, “The Trial that Was Not Held.” See also Dmitrievskii, Piatnitskii.ogists.

84. Murray, I Spied for Stalin, 83.

85. Stalin’s letters to Karakhan in the 1920s—an epoch ago—had burst with affection, but subsequent mentions were venomous. As late as April 14, 1937, he had asked Karakhan, then Soviet envoy to Turkey, if he would agree to a big promotion to ambassador to the United States. On May 3, he had Karakhan recalled to Moscow and arrested. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 56, l. 68 (ciphered telegram to Karakhan in Ankara). Yezhov, whether on Stalin’s direct order or to please him, had Karakhan implicated in the case against Tukhachevsky; Stalin wrote “important” on the first page of Karakhan’s June 2, 1937, interrogation protocols (which the dictator received on June 19). Karakhan was sentenced and executed on Sept. 20, 1937. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 222–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 309, l. 123–30).

86. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 180 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 469, l. 167).

87. At the Feb.–March 1937 plenum, when Voroshilov asserted that Rykov had several times been trembling—a supposed admission of his guilt—Litvinov interjected, “When was this?” Deeper into the terror, Litvinov would complain to Andreyev that arresting journalists at the Soviet Journal de Moscou for having contacts with foreigners was tantamount to arresting them for doing their job. Dullin, Men of Influence, 217, citing AVP RF, f. 5, op. 17, pap. 126, d. 1, letter Oct. 26, 1937. The journal’s editor (Rayevsky) had been arrested in Oct. 1936; his successor, a bona fide proletarian, Viktor Kin (Surovikin), would be arrested in Jan. 1938. Journal de Moscou was soon shuttered. Babichenko, “‘Esli aresty budut prodolzhatsiia, to . . . ne ostanetsiia ni odnogo nemtsa-chlena partii,’” 119 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 292. d. 101, l. 13–8).

88. Uldricks, “Impact of the Great Purges” 192 (citing National Archives decimal file 861.00/11705: Henderson to secretary of state, June 10, 1937); Barmine, One Who Survived, 3.

89. The next greatest of executions would be 1942—23,000. Popov, “Gosudarstvennyi terror,” 20–31 (using the 1963–4 Shvernik commission report). See also Wheatcroft, “Victims of Stalinism”; and Khlevniuk, “Les mécanismes de la Grande Terreur.”

90. Beck and Godin, Russian Purge, 75; Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party, 219–21; Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shym”; Gregory, Terror by Quota.

91. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 85.

92. Shapoval and Zolotar’ov, Vsevolod, 337; Iakovenko, Agnessa, 65.

93. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 571.

94. Iakovenko, Agnessa, 86–92.

95. According to Otto Shmidt, Stalin, in the course of conversation at the Presidium table, mentioned the names of high officials who had been arrested. Shmidt, “Priemy v kremle,” 273–4; Shevelev, 86.

96. Nezavisimaia gazeta, July 6, 1991.

97. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 477–8, 538; Gos. arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti (GANO), f. 4, op. 34, d. 26, l. 2; Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 262, 332–3. Yezhov and Frinovsky may have been concerned about Western Siberian party boss Eihe getting out ahead of them in gaining credit for the reinstituting of troikas. On the establishment of a Western Siberian troika as supposedly an initiative of Eihe, see Zhukov, Inoi Stalin, 433–4; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 469; Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1993, no. 6), 5; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 134, 228). Mironov was made chairman of the troika. When his arrest quotas were immediately increased, he tried to have them returned to the originally agreed levels. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 430 (telegram Aug. 9, 1937). See also Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 296 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 65, l. 58), 335 (d. 57, l. 68).

98. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 575, l. 19–22. The typed version was first brought forth in “Rasstrel po raznariadke, ili kak eto delali bol’sheviki,” Trud, June 4, 1992. See also Danilov et al., Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 258 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 89). The troikas instituted as a result of Mironov’s “request” would account for more than 90 percent of the mass sentences for execution in 1937 and 1938. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 470. One available factoid indicates that in the Mordovia autonomous republic (Russian Federation), 96 percent of those who passed through the sentencing troika refused to admit they were wreckers, but it remains unclear if this represented resistance or laziness (or incompetence) on the part of the local NKVD. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 286 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 43, l. 113).

99. That day, Stalin had received twelve people in the Little Corner, a mere two of whom were politburo members (Voroshilov and Molotov); the draft decree is in Kaganovich’s handwriting, but he was not recorded in the Little Corner that day. Eight politburo members eventually signed the resolution. Junge et al., Vertikal bol’shogo terrora, 114–6; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKB (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 876, 887. There would be no politburo meetings from June 19, 1937, to Feb. 23, 1938. Only two additional gatherings were held in 1938 (April 25 and Oct. 10–12), and only two more in 1939 (Jan. 29 and Dec. 17). “Politburo” decisions were taken in the Little Corner by Stalin alone or in limited company, written up by Poskryobyshev and “approved” by telephone vote or with signatures affixed the next time the cronies were summoned to appear. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 248–9. Stalin occasionally dropped all pretense and merely sent directives as his personal instructions: Khaustov et al., Lub’ianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 329; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 340.

100. Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shim,” 79.

101. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 238–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 174, l. 107). See also Ilič, “Forgotten Five Percent,” 116–39.

102. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 95–9; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 265; Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 348.

103. To ensure everyone got the message, on July 16 Yezhov convened the regional NKVD chiefs from the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belorussia in Moscow. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 98–101; Leningradskii martirolog, I: 39; Junge et al., Vertikal’ Bol’shogo terrora, 32–3. See also Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 41–3. A separate NKVD conference took place with the NKD chiefs of the Central Asian republics, eastern Siberia, and the Soviet Far East.

104. Iakovenko, Agnessa, 59; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 142–3 (TsA FSB, N-15301, t. 15, l. 387). The chief in Chelyabinsk was Yos-Gersh Blat; in Tataria, Pyotr Rud.

105. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 249 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 989, l. 57, 60). “The greatest revolutionary vigilance and iron will, a sharp Bolshevik eye and organizing talent, an exceptional mind and the subtlest proletarian sense—these are the qualities shown by comrade Yezhov,” Pravda wrote, adding that he was assisted by “millions of eyes, millions of hands of workers . . . Such a force is invincible.” Pravda, July 18, 1937. On July 18, Alexander Barmine, a Soviet diplomat in Greece, defected, obtaining asylum in France. Rogovin, Partiia rasstreliannykh, 353–5.

106. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 528–32.

107. “I can testify that my father’s apartment did not resemble in the least the shop of a poor junk-dealer described in the document,” wrote Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko of his arrested father, Vladimir. The NKVD inventory of his family residence, the son claimed, had omitted “original engravings by famous artists, a typewriter, a radio phonograph player with eight albums of records, his wife’s jewelry, her squirrel coat, expensive French perfume . . . and much, much more.” Antonov-Ovseenko, Portet Tirana, 187. V. Antonov-Ovseyenko had been arrested Oct. 12, 1937 (he would be executed on Feb. 10, 1938), and had lived at the famed Finance Commissariat House (Novinsky Boulevard, 25), built in 1930 by Moisei Ginzburg.

108. Uimanov and Petrukhin, Bol’ liudskaia, V: 102–11; Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shim,” 81–3; Tepliakov, “Personal i povsednevnost’ Novosibirskogo UNKVD,” 254.

109. The jazzmen’s rendition prompted the aviators to rise, applauding, and shout for an encore. Chkalov, Nash transpoliarnyi reis, 59; Vodop’ianov, Letchik Valerii Chkalov, 195; Skorokhodov, V poiskakh utrachennogo, 21–3. Utyosov claimed, in his recollections, that he was never invited back to a Kremlin reception, but the program for May 2, 1938, contradicts him. Nevezhin (Zastol’ia, 298–9) misdates the reception to Aug. 13, 1936, after a nonstop flight to the Soviet Far East, but Utyosov dates the performance to “summer 1937”—that would be July 26, 1937—when Baiduk, Chkalov, and Belyakov flew nonstop from Moscow to Vancouver; Chkalov also makes clear that the evening took place after their return from the United States.

110. Trud, June 4, 1992; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 273–81 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 212, l. 59–78), 281–2 (l. 52–4); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 328–37; Werth and Mironenko, Istoriia Stalinskogo gulaga, I: 277–80; Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shim,” 84–93, 94–6. This was followed by further related directives: Werth and Mironenko, Istoriia Stalinskogo gulaga, I: 363–5. Frinovsky had three audiences with Stalin in July 1937: July 7 (fifteen minutes), July 26 (five minutes), July 29 (fifty-five minutes). Na prieme, 216.

111. Korneev and Kopylova, “Arkhivy na sluzhbe totalitarnogo gosudarstva.” The order specified that the mass operations were to last four months (instead they would last fifteen): on Jan. 31, 1938, the regime would extend the deadline and nearly double the country-wide quota to 500,000. Even the “final” quotas would be exceeded: in Georgia and Uzbekistan by 50 percent, in the USSR as a whole by 100 percent, in Western Siberia by 200 percent. The mass operations ended in different places at different times. Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shim,” 83–103.

112. Mironov worked alongside another member of the local troika, Western Siberian party boss Eihe, and Mironov complained to Yezhov that the latter “interferes in the affairs of the NKVD,” showing up to participate in interrogations and arrests of party members. Yezhov advised Mironov not to conflict with Eihe. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 107 (citing TsA FSB ASD Frinovskogo, N-15301, t. 7: 36–7). Provincial practice varied. According to the NKVD operative Mikhail Shreider, Ivanovo province NKVD chief Israel Radzivilovsky rendered the “troika” decisions himself, just sending the paperwork to the two other troika members, the local party boss and the procurator, to sign. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 76.

113. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 157–61 (GARF, f. 8131, op. 37, d. 145, l. 49–84); Leibovich, “Vkliuchen v operatsiiu,” 302–3.

114. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, I: 320; Kuz’micheva, “Resheniia osobykh troek privodit’ v ispolneniie nemedlenno,” 85.

115. Leibovich et al. “Vkliuchen v operatsiiu,” 314–7 (based on former KGB archives in Perm). Some former kulaks, after their terms of exile ended, managed to return to their former places of habitation and sometimes even to reclaim their lands, which the regime deemed “sabotage.” Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 238–54. Recidivism was also a focus. “The main contingent committing disruptive offenses (robbery, brigandage, murder, aggravated theft) are people who have been convicted before, in most cases recently released from camps or places of detention,” Yezhov wrote in a memorandum to Stalin, a passage the despot marked in pencil. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 96 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 166, l. 151–4); Rittersporn, “‘Vrednye element,’” 103; Hagenloh, “‘Socially Harmful Elements,’” 300.

116. Ellman, “Regional Influences.”

117. Frinovsky sent out a ciphered directive that “anti-Soviet elements” whom local officials assigned to category 1 (“especially socially dangerous”) were not even to be presented with charges, just executed in cold blood. Stepanov, Rasstrel po limitu, 30 (Aug. 8, 1937); Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shim,” 99. See also Rabishchev, “Gnilaia i opasnaia teoriia,” esp. 55.

118. National operations would claim approximately 350,000 victims, 247,157 of whom would be shot.

119. In April 1936, the regime had decided to deport the ethnic Poles and Germans in Ukraine near the western border (more than 10,000 families) to Kazakhstan; then it deported Soviet Finns from the border areas with Finland as well as Iranians near the border with Afghanistan (some 2,000 families). Stalin authorized a request to arrest all Afghan nationals in Merva, Turkmenistan (where there was an Afghan consulate). RGANI, f. 89, op. 48, d. 8, l. 1–2 (ciphered telegram from Anna Mukhamedov, acting party boss of Turkmenistan, to Stalin, July 23, 1937, with Stalin’s handwriting). Mukhamedov was arrested Oct. 5, 1937.

120. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 22, l. 16; d. 21, l. 157; Gelb, “Early Soviet Ethnic Deportation”; Bugai, “Vysylenie sovetskikh koreitsev,” 144; Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing, 9–20; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 352 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 139, l. 23). The Soviet Pacific Fleet had been put on alert to prevent the Koreans from fleeing by sea, but several hundred boats from Korea showed up, just off Soviet waters, to rescue these people; Soviet border guards detained many of the boats. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 301. See also Polian, Against Their Will, 99–101. About 25,000 ethnic Koreans not near the border were not deported, at least not immediately. Belaia kniga, 68, 82. Khaustov and Samuelson claim around 180,000 Koreans were deported altogether: Stalin, NKVD, 300 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 14). The population of ethnic Koreans in the Soviet Far East had tripled, to 170,000, between 1917 and 1926; a secret plan had been adopted (Dec. 6, 1926) but not implemented to relocate 88,000 of them from frontier zones. In 1928, 1930, and 1933, a few thousand Koreans had been shifted to the interior. Khisamutdinov, 119–21; Boldyrev, “Iaponiia i Sovetskii Dal’nyi Vostok,” 187–94, 193–4; Stephan, Russian Far East, 212; Petrov, Ukrepim sovety DVK, 97. Sibirskaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, II: 95.

121. Petrov and Roginskii, “‘Pol’skaia operatsiia’ NKVD,” 22–43.

122. About 70 percent of Soviet ethnic Poles were in Ukraine, and until 1937 Poland maintained consulates in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev, Minsk, and Tiflis, where they ran intelligence operations. But Stalin’s clampdown led the Polish embassies and consulates to desist from recruiting agents among Soviet ethnic Poles. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 48; Pepłoński, Wywiad Polski na ZSSR, 126–7. Conversely, when a Polish citizen showed up at the Lubyanka front door to betray his masters, he was tortured and forced to confess to having been sent to penetrate the NKVD for Poland. Stalin also demanded to know what border point he had crossed. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 229–30 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254, l. 92-3, 203).

123. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 352–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254, l. 173–88: September 14, 1937); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 291; Sudoplatov, Tainaia zhizn’, I: 366–93; Gur’ianov, Repressii protiv poliakov, 16–20. Stalin’s vindictiveness against “foreigners” was not unique. “Stop playing internationalism, all these Poles, Koreans, Latvians, Germans, etc. should be beaten, these are all mercenary nations, subject to termination,” one provincial party boss stated at a local NKVD conference. “All nationals should be caught, forced to their knees, and exterminated like mad dogs.” Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 114 (quoting Sergei Sobolev, Krasnoyarsk). On Sept. 15, 1938, the regime ended the “album procedure” and allowed troikas for the national operation; two months later, it ended the troikas.

124. Okhotin and Roginskii, “Iz istorii ‘nemetskoi operatisii’ NKVD,” 66. Mass operations were also ordered against the returning Harbin émigrés (Sept. 20, 1937), among others. Zaitsev, Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov, 430–7.

125. “All Germans working on our military, semimilitary and chemical factories, on electric stations and building sites, in all regions are all to be arrested,” Stalin instructed (July 20, 1937). Yezhov, five days later, issued this as an operational order (no. 00439). Perhaps 4,000 German citizens were resident in the Soviet Union; around 800 were arrested and deported to Germany. APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254a, l. 82; Okhotin and Roginskii, “Iz istorii ‘nemetskoi operatisii’ NKVD,” 35–7; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 144–5.

126. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 251 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 253, l. 141). The author of the report, Alexander Minayev, was arrested on Nov. 6, 1938, and executed on February 25, 1939. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 298–9.

127. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 662 n86; Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 156 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 987, l. 79). Rudzutaks, even under severe torture, refused to admit any guilt. Chuev, Sto sorok, 410–2. According to Irina Gogua, the arrested Kremlin librarian, Rudzutaks kept the issue of the Menshevik Socialist Herald with Martov’s obituary behind books on his home bookshelf.

128. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 333–4 (citing GARf, f. 8131, op. 37, d. 86, l. 138–48). Nasedkin is listed in the Little Corner on Nov. 23, 1937. Na prieme, 225. Often, NKVD interrogators began by asking why the prisoner had been arrested, as if it were up to the prisoner to establish his or her own guilt.

129. Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 388.

130. Chuev, Sto sorok, 409.

131. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 65 (no citation). The attaché’s country is not identified.

132. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 60 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 983, l. 46: Jan. 9, 1937), 66; Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 509n2 (f. 17, op. 163, d. 1143, l. 73).

133. The sole German-speaking operative in the Soviet intelligence station in Paris was recalled to Moscow in 1937. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 66 (no citation). The person is not identified.

134. Yezhov informed Stalin that a housekeeper reported that Berzin had been close to Trotsky, who had promised him a future post. The housekeeper also supposedly said that Berzin had a great deal of White Guard literature in his personal library, in Russian and foreign languages, including works by Trotsky. (Berzin was head of military intelligence.) Stalin tasked Yezhov with going after military intelligence in the military districts as well, especially Ukraine, Belorussia, and Leningrad (“Did they not link the Trotskyites with Poland, like our Far Eastern intelligence linked the Trotskyites to Japan?”). Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 221 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 316, l. 86). Berzin was removed Aug. 1, 1937, and soon arrested for Trotskyism; he would be executed on July 29, 1938, at Kommunarka. In the meantime, on Sept. 8, 1937, Yezhov implanted a counterintelligence NKVD man as acting military intelligence chief, Semyon G. Gendin, telling his staff that he himself would run military intelligence.

135. Instead, the regime examined trunks, which had been lying around for some time, and found writings of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other such former politburo officials. Kochik, “Sovetskaia voennaia razvedka” (no. 9–12), 101–2.

136. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 133 (Semyon Gendin).

137. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbaraossy,” 56 (no citation). Several dozen more were sacked but not arrested.

138. Polyakova added that “these comrades became my first pupils and later some became my bosses.” Kochik, “Sovetskaia voennaia razvedka” (no. 9–12), 98.

139. In an earlier part of the discussion, a mid-level commander stated his uncertainty about whether he could speak about enemies of the people “in full voice.” Stalin: “To the whole world?” The commander: “No, internally.” Stalin: “You are obliged to do so.” Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 93 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 318, l. 173, 174, 64).

140. Solov’ev and Chugnuov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 538–58, 574–7.

141. Beloff, Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, II: 179–80; Ikuhiko, “Japanese-Soviet Confrontation,” 137–40.

142. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 28–34 (quote on 31).

143. Coox, Nomonhan, 102–19 (quote at 116).

144. Taylor, Generalissimo (citing Chiang’s Diaries, Hoover Institution Archives, box 39, folder 13: July 12, 1937).

145. Jansen, Japan and China, 394–5.

146. The month before (June 1937), the Japanese completed the multiyear standardization of the railway gauge in northern China, converting from the wide gauge that the Russians had originally installed—just in time to move around their troops. Paine, Wars for Asia, 28.

147. Barnhart, “Japanese Intelligence,” 435.

148. Izvestiia, Aug. 30, 1937; DVP SSSR, XX: 466–8; Kurdiukov et al., Sovetsko-Kitaiskie otnosheniia, 161–2; Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 88–9 (APRF, f. 3–a, op. 1, d. 52, l. 1–3); Slavinskii, Sovetskii soiuz i kitai, 314–20. Dmitri Bogomolov, the Soviet envoy to China (since 1933), who signed the nonaggression pact, had been predicting there would be no full-scale Japanese attack on China. In July 1937, Litvinov rebuked him for supposedly implying to the Chinese that the Soviet Union might agree to a full alliance (a mutual assistance pact). In Sept., Stalin had Bogomolov recalled; he returned to Moscow on Oct. 7 and vanished. DVP SSSR, XX: 737–8 (July 19 and July 22, 1937); Ledovskii, “Zapiski diplomata,” 114; Sokolov, “Zabytyi diplomat”; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 149.

149. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 157; Bugai, “Vyselenie sovetskikh koreetsev,” 144.

150. FRUS, 1937, III: 636 (Bullitt to Washington, Oct. 23, 1937).

151. Chang and Halliday, Mao, 200–3.

152. The Soviets would extend $250 million in 1938–39; by mid-1939 there would be 3,665 Soviet advisers in China. Ageenko, Voennaia pomoshch’ SSSR, 49.

153. Whiting and Shih-ts’aicai, Sinkiang, 51 (citing memoirs of the general who ruled Xinjiang with Soviet backing).

154. Garver, “Chiang Kai-shek’s Quest.” Bogomolov called Chiang Kai-shek’s hopes for a direct Soviet-Japanese war his “idée fixe.” DVP SSSR, XX: 389. Chiang did not submit the nonaggression pact for formal ratification until April 26, 1938, indicating he wanted either a formal alliance or was waiting on the Western powers to change their minds.

155. Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 105–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 1, d. 321, l. 10–15).

156. Stalin’s views on China in 1937 after the Japanese attack were recorded by Dimitrov: Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 67–9 (Nov. 11, 1937). Far more Soviet advisers and pilots would serve in China—3,665—than had served in Spain.

157. Barmin, Sovetskii Soiuz i Sin´tszian, 157–8.

158. Kolt’sov, Ispanskii dnevnik, 519–20 (July 7, 1937).

159. The other wife was Elizaveta Koltsova, who had been sacked in Madrid from her job. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 268 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 217, l. 68).

160. Codovilla was replaced in Spain by Togliatti. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 283–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 225, l. 2–10). See also Payne, Spanish Civil War, 32. In 1938, Stalin would twice come to the conclusion that the Communists should quit the Popular Front government and form a new government of just Communists and Socialists; both times, Dimitrov—of all people—appears to have talked Stalin out of it. Meshcheriakov, “SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii,” 93 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 216, l. 2; TsPA VS BSP, f. 146, op. 2, d. 42, l. 1). In February–March 1938, Pascua tried to impress upon Potyomkin the dire military and economic situation of the Spanish Republic; the upshot was a Soviet $70 million loan to Spain, which had spent down its gold reserves. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 325–37 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 226, l. 28–31, 33–5, 37–8, 39; d. 232, l. 46, d. 234, l. 165–6, d. 226, l. 57–8, 42–4, 45, 46–460b., 59–60). By April 1938, Pascua had been transferred to Paris. He wrote yet another artful letter to Stalin, offering his gratitude on behalf of Spain. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 338 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 226, l. 64–64ob.). In Aug. 1938 Pascua came to Moscow from Paris, with a letter to Stalin from Negrín. But by Aug. 29, 1938, Dimitrov and Manuilsky were writing to Stalin about the evacuation of the international brigades from Spain. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 344 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 226, l. 83), 346–7 (l. 85), 354–5 (l. 109), 358 (l. 119–20).

161. Roshchin, Politicheskaia istoriia Mongolii.

162. They reconvened the next day, too. Na prieme, 218.

163. Iakovenko, Agnessa, 95. The Soviet envoy, Vladimir Tairov (Teryan), an Armenian, arrested on Aug. 5, 1937, was evidently being convoyed in the other direction (to Moscow) along the same route.

164. Papkov, Stalinskii terror v Sibiri, 269; Iakovenko, Agnessa, 97–8.

165. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 382–7; Pravda, Aug. 29, 1937; Kolarz, Peoples of the Soviet Far East, 138–9. The secret autopsy cited death “as a result of . . . external poison.” Luzianin, “Rossiia-Mongoliia-Kitai,” 323.

166. Dashpürev and Soni, Reign of Terror in Mongolia, 33–5. Captain Bimba, who defected to the Japanese, told them about a pro-Japanese conspiracy among the Mongol elite to which Demid supposedly belonged. But Bimba’s account is highly inconsistent and often blatantly wrong about dates and verifiable facts. Coox, Nomonhan, 161–3 (who largely accepts the testimony of defector Captain Bimba); Dashpürev and Soni, Reign of Terror in Mongolia, 2–3 (who point out that the testimony is unreliable).

167. RGANI, f. 89, op. 63, d. 26, l. 1.

168. Choibalsan had denounced Demid to Voroshilov in Oct. 1936. Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 355–6, 360.

169. When Frinovsky returned from Mongolia, his possible transfer to the defense commissariat, as deputy commissar, was evidently bruited. Protocol of Frinovsky interrogation, sent by Beria to Stalin April 11, 1939: http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/193_dok/19390413beria.php (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 373, l. 3–44: protocol of Frinovsky interrogation, Beria to Stalin, April 11, 1939).

170. Dashpürev and Soni, Reign of Terror in Mongolia; Sandag and Kendall, Poisoned Arrows.

171. Genden was never repatriated and was executed in Moscow in Nov. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 388; Kaplonski, “Prelude to Violence”; Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 361–2.

172. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 61 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 997, l. 79–82; op. 120, d. 339, l. 42; op. 3, d. 992, l. 28: Feb. 1938; op. 120, d. 339, l. 57).

173. At the Feb.–March 1937 plenum, Stalin had referred to the top 3,000–4,000 officials as the “general staff of the party.” Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 3), 14. In one ward of Smolensk city for which we have data, forty-one people born in the nineteenth century were promoted in 1937–38—not exactly new people. Thurston, Life and Terror, 133 (citing the Smolensk archive).

174. The budget for 1938 envisioned 160,400; the actual number would be 180,500. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 60 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 22, d. 1065, l. 19–20; d. 1060, l. 89).

175. Without CC approval young specialists were forbidden from beginning work. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 60 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 992, l. 97). In 1938, after the name of Arseny Zverev (b. 1900) was presented on a list of party members who had completed the Moscow Institute of Finance and Economics, he was named finance commissar. Chuev, Sto sorok, 291.

176. “Machiavellian duplicity” is the interpretation offered by Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power, 320. Cf. Fitzpatrick, “Making of a New Elite.”

177. Pravda, Oct. 31, 1937; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 117–33; RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 96, l. 148; Bardin, “Ispolin-mudrets,” 54–5. See also Khlevniuk, 1937–i, 104–5.

178. Svetlana Alliluyeva, quoted in Richardson, Long Shadow, 211.

179. Farcically, Getty and Naumov have asserted that “it is not an exaggeration to say that the Riutin Platform began the process that would lead to terror, precisely by terrifying the ruling nomenklatura.” Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 54.

180. Stalin might have wanted to clear a path for the rising new generation, but what kind of path? Confessions to crimes people did not commit and mass executions? Khlevniuk, “The Stalinist ‘Party Generals,’” esp. 59–60. See also Rees, “The Great Purges and the XVIII Party Congress of 1939,” 191–211.

181. Artizov, “V ugodu vzgliadam vozhdia,” (on the 1936 competition); Dubrovskii, “A. A. Zhdanov v rabote nad shkol’nym uchebnikom istorii,” 128–43. Mikhail Pokrovsky, before his death in 1932, had entrenched a Marxist orthodoxy based upon Engels deeming tsarist Russia the most reactionary power, the “gendarme of Europe.” Stalin countered that in the nineteenth century all the great powers were gendarmes. Even though almost all members of Pokrovsky’s School would be physically annihilated, the summons to incorporate imperial Russian legacies in a patriotic history of the Soviet Union proved no easy task. The Pokrovsky School had destroyed the careers of most other historians, leaving a wasteland. Shestakov was one of the few Pokrovsky students to endure.

182. Dubrovskii, Istorik i vlast’, 274–5.

183. Kutskii, “A. V. Shestakov.” Shestakov would be elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1939. For commentary on Shestakov as of 1929, see Iurganov, Russkoe natsional’noe gosudarstvo, 26n3.

184. Shestakov, Kratkii kurs istorii SSSR; Shestakov, Short History of the USSR, 8.

185. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 260. Another 5.7 million copies would be printed in 1938 and 3 million in 1939.

186. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 67 (citing GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2640, l. 1).

187. The book mentioned Stanisław Kosior and others who were soon arrested as enemies, but rather than recall and pulp the long-awaited, highly sought textbook, the censors dispatched directives to paste over the offending names and illustrations. Mekhlis would cross out a photograph of Marshal Blyukher in his own copy: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 373, l. 99–99ob., 103ob., 108.

188. A. K., “Kratkii kurs istorii SSSR,” 85–6. The journal of the historical profession called the book “a great victory on the historical front.” “Bol’shaia pobeda na istoricheskom fronte,” Istoricheskii zhurnal, 1937, no. 8: 6. “He who understands history,” a Communist Youth League mass pamphlet of fall 1938 written by Shestakov would advise, “will better understand contemporary life and struggle more effectively with the enemies of our country and strengthen socialism.” Shestakov, “Ob izuchenii istorii SSSR,” 39 (quoting his own Short Course History of the USSR).

189. Brandenberger and Dubrovsky, “‘The People Need a Tsar’” 879 (citing RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 847, l. 3–4). Zatonsky was arrested in a cinema (where he was with his family) on Nov. 3, 1937. He would be executed July 29, 1938.

190. Harold Denny, the Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, caught the trend with the observation that “there is a legend in Moscow—and the writer does not know whether or not it is true—that Stalin questioned his own son on English history and found that while his son could talk glibly about economic periods he had never heard of Cromwell.” Denny, “No ‘Formalism.’” Denny served in Moscow 1934–39, having replaced Walter Duranty, and he proved no less mendacious regarding Stalin’s crimes. Heilbrunn, “New York Times and the Moscow Show Trials.”

191. Shestakov, Short History of the USSR, 76.

192. Shestakov, Short History of the USSR, 49–50. See also Tucker, Stalin in Power, 282.

193. The film, applauded Izvestiya (Sept. 2), “answers like nothing else the cultural demands of our country’s populace. The masses are showing an unheard of interest in history . . . They want to see the paths that have brought them to glory.”

194. Tolstoi, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, XIII: 355. See also Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, 159 (citing RGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 287, l. 34); and Tucker, Stalin in Power, 114–8.

195. Garros et al., Intimacy and Terror, 209 (Galina Shtange). The depiction of Peter was so over-the-top positive that the American worker John Scott, who saw the film in Magnitogorsk, guessed that Peter the First had been imported. Scott, Behind the Urals, 236. See also Siegelbaum and Sokolov, Stalinism as a Way of Life, 211 (I. K. Karniush to Krest’ianskaia Gazeta, Oct. 30, 1938).

196. Back in April 1926, Stalin had ridiculed comrades who imagined Ivan the Terrible or even Peter as Russia’s industrializers (“not all industrial development constitutes industrialization. The heart of industrialization, its basis, consists in the development of heavy industry, . . . the production of the means of production, in the development of its own machine-building”). At a Central Committee plenum in Nov. 1928, Stalin had said, “when Peter the Great, having dealings with the more developed countries of the West, feverishly built factories for the supply of the army and strengthening the country’s defenses, this was the original attempt to leap out from the limits of backwardness. It is fully understood, however, that not one of the old classes, neither the feudal aristocracy nor the bourgeoisie, could resolve the task of liquidating our country’s backwardness.” In 1931, speaking to Emil Ludwig, Stalin had again brushed off the parallel with Peter, because Soviet modernization efforts were not on behalf of the landowners or merchants but the working class. Sochineniia, VIII: 120–1, XI: 248–9, XIII: 104–5.

197. There is an anecdote that has Stalin rebuking Vasily when he caught his son attempting to trade on his name: “You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, no, not even me!” Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 6 (citing only “Artyom Sergeev”).

198. As Giuseppe Boffa observed, “no matter how numerous its ties with Russia’s past (and certainly it does have many), Stalinism is still a modern phenomenon, well rooted in our century.” Boffa, Stalin Phenomenon, 58. See also Rees, “Stalin and Russian Nationalism,” 77–106 (esp. 93–5).

199. Koliazin and Goncharov, “Vernite mne svobodu!,” 78–95 (Pyotr Tyurkin). Union and autonomous republics lobbied against too much time devoted to teaching Russian (time devoted to native languages would increase in 1938–39). Many locales lacked trained instructors to teach the Russian language. Russian was taught in fewer than half of Turkmenistan’s 728 schools, one-third of Kyrgyzstan’s 667, and one-seventh of Kazakhstan’s 330, and even when taught the quality of instruction was low. Blitstein, “Nation-Building or Russification?,” 256 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 840, l. 76–7).

200. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 628, l. 121–2. The decree rendering Russian obligatory in schools would not be issued until March 13, 1938 (evidently delayed by the terror and bureaucratic complexities). Never published, it stipulated that “in the conditions of a multinational state such as the USSR, knowledge of the Russian language should be a powerful means for communication and contact among the peoples of the USSR, enabling further economic and cultural growth.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 997, l. 103. Local versions of the decree were published. Kul’turnaia zhizn’ v SSSR, 1928–1941, 606n6. In the meantime, on Oct. 30, 1937, Mekhlis complained to Stalin and the other Central Committee secretaries, as well as Yezhov, about the absence of Russian-language newspapers in Ukraine. Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan all had republic-level Russian newspapers, while of the eleven republic and provincial newspapers published in Kiev, all the main ones were in Ukrainian. Of Ukraine’s twelve regions, only the Donbas had even a province-level Russian newspaper. Even Odessa lacked a local Russian-language newspaper. Kiev had German, Polish, Yiddish, and Bulgarian papers, but none in Russian. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 481–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 829, l. 135–6). Other changes included beginning instruction with seven-year-olds (one year earlier than previously), replacing Latin with Cyrillic for many languages of Soviet peoples, and abolishing all remaining national units in the Red Army. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 997, l. 95–6 (March 7, 1938).

201. During the viewing, the film snapped fifteen times. Schlögel, Moscow, 1937, 372–3; Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, 163–4; Literaturnaia gazeta, Dec. 12, 1937.

202. Massing, This Deception, 248–9.

203. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 65; van Ree, “Stalin as Marxist,” 175. Stalin had rendered still more severe the draft directives for spouses (including those divorced), children, siblings, brothers and sisters-in-law. And when relatives of the arrested wrote to him begging for help because of their indigence, he often ordered their arrests. Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 44–5.

204. Khrushchev, in his ever-ingratiating way, sought to reconcile the moment: “What we have is a felicitous combination—both the great leader and the middle cadres!” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 65–7 (Nov. 7, 1937). Tucker imagined that in the speech in Voroshilov’s apartment, Stalin self-consciously emulated Ivan the Terrible. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 482–6.

205. Such was Dimitrov’s account; a longer version was recorded by Voroshilov’s adjutant: “Trotsky was known, he was not a Bolshevik, he joined the Bolsheviks with his program of permanent revolution. Many said that the Republic was Lenin and Trotsky, he was an orator. Major figures joined together: Trotsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Zinoviev, Pyatakov (God only knows what kind of a figure); add to that Nadezhda Konstantinova [Krupskaya], who always supported these ‘leftist’ Communists. Me, Stalin, I was known, but not like Trotsky. Be brave and don’t invent what was not the case.”

206. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 158 (citing RGAPSI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 158–65, 167–74: Khmelnitsky notes).

207. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 62–4, RGAPSI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 158–65, 167–74).

208. No figure acquired more place-names than the deceased Kirov. Murray, Politics and Place Names, 51.

209. Wang Ming had requested an audience with Stalin on Oct. 21, 1937. Moscow also sent an envoy to Yan’an, V. A. Adrianov, from the general staff, with $3 million, to build up the forces to fight the Japanese. Titarenko, VKP (b), komintern i kitai, V: 73 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 281, l. 48); Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 67–9; III: 124, 197–200, 229–33.

210. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 67–9.

211. Zaria vostoka, Oct. 29, 1937. See also Wilson, “Stalin as Ikon,” 271–3 (Wilson attended a physical culture parade on Red Square that glorified Stalin). Also on Nov. 15, 1937, two nervous functionaries in the party’s culture-enlightenment department wrote to Kaganovich and Yezhov about perceived shortcomings in Man with a Gun, the play by Nikolai Pogodin (Stukalov) on the October Revolution, which had premiered at Moscow’s Vakhtangov Theater. Kerzhentsev had inserted the character of Stalin, played by Ruben Simonov (b. 1899), days before the opening. “Simonov was given this important part [young Stalin] because he was Armenian and looked somewhat like a Georgian, and because next to Shchukin Simonov was the best actor in our company,” the letter writers complained. “But all this was not enough to transform the charming, spruce, somewhat eccentric Ruben Simonov into a future father of the people.” Kerzhentsev had dressed down Shchukin for his portrayal of Lenin (“Shchukin turned white and we stood frozen in amazement”), but Molotov told the actor that Kerzhentsev would regret his criticism. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 487–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 256, l. 161–3: F. Shablovsky and K. Yukov); Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 107–9. Molotov had witnessed Stalin’s positive reaction to Shchukin’s portrayal of Lenin in Romm’s film. See also Shchukin, Boris Vasil’evich Shchukin.

212. Stalin had instructed a visiting Chinese Nationalist delegation (Nov. 18, 1937) to build their own weapons and aviation factories, in the rear, because capitalists tended to sell mostly substandard arms, and might stop selling to China altogether. Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 151–7 (November 18, APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 321, l. 20–8). See also Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 136–8 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 321, l. 16–9: Voroshilov, Nov. 1).

213. Taylor, Generalissimo, 161.

214. MacKinnon, Wuhan. Membership would reach 800,000 by 1940.

215. Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia v XX veke, IV/i: 180 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 324, l. 21, Dec. 24, 1937).

216. The Soviet of Nationalities was to be filled by representatives of the union and the autonomous republics without regard to their size or population.

217. Pavlova, “1937.” As one soldier in the Soviet Far East aptly commented, according to an NKVD report, “So Stalin says that’s the way it will be and then everything is democratic.” Merritt, “Great Purges,” 168.

218. Pravda, Dec. 7, 1937; Getty, “State and Society.”

219. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 179–82. See also Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 68 (citing TsAODM, f. 3, op. 50, d. 16, l. 117–9).

220. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5011, l. 1–2. At factories and collective farms, Cheka anniversary lectures were staged.

221. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 459 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 994, l. 17: Dec. 9, 1937).

222. Pravda, Dec. 21, 1937; Izvestiia, Dec. 21, 1937; Sultanbekov, “Nikolai Ezhov,” 28; Mlechin, KGB, 176–7.

223. Conquest, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police, 50–1.

224. Vecherniaia Moskva, Dec. 21, 1937: 1.

225. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 167. Pravda (Dec., 17, 1937) had denounced Meyerhold in a broadside titled “A Foreign Theater.”

226. Na prieme, 227.

227. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 268 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 316, l. 50–61; July 23, 1937).

228. Bowing to practical demands, Molotov had to acquiesce in the promotion of non-party specialists to factory and administrative positions. “We have to admit at the present time, it is not simply a question of the selection of cadres,” Molotov said of a draft decree on Dec. 29, 1937. “What we are doing is a broad-front promotion of new cadres. We need to select new cadres who can work better than the old ones, who have not turned sour or gone over to the enemy camp.” Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 60 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 22, d. 1065, l. 10–7, 19–20).

229. This was evidently a meeting of the politburo, which commenced at 6:05 p.m. The logbook lists Molotov, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Chubar, Mikoyan, Voroshilov, Andreyev, Yezhov, and Zhdanov (candidate members), and Voznesensky (not a member). It does not list Kosior (full member) or Postyshev, Eihe, or Petrovsky (candidate members). Na prieme, 227–8.

230. Chigirin, Stalin, 88–114 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 60–99). Yezhov would have the medical record forwarded to Vlasik on Dec. 12, 1938.

231. Bobylev et al., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR, noiabr’ 1937 g., 73–4; Iakulov, “Stalin i Krasnaia Armiia,” 172. The gathering took place Nov. 21–27, 1937. Kuibyshev would be arrested on Feb. 2, 1938, and executed on August 1. The Soviet officer corps would total 179,000 in 1939.

232. Rapoport and Geller, Izmena rodine, 283–8.

233. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers.

234. DGFP, 1918–1945, series D, I: 29–39 (“Hossbach Memorandum”).

235. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 46–60; Fest, Hitler, 539–43. Whereas Kershaw renders the ascent of Hitler to the top of the military command as almost an accident, Fest makes it overly preplanned.

236. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, V: 117 (Jan. 27, 1938). Read, The Disciples, 450. The bride was Eva Gruhn.

237. Hitler assembled all the generals to deliver the news in person on the afternoon of Feb. 5, 1938. No one objected. That evening he addressed the cabinet (it was the last formal cabinet meeting of the Reich) and sought to dispel rumors of rifts between the Nazi party and the Wehrmacht. The sensational news of the momentous changes in the Wehrmacht took up the press and radio airtime for days—both Blomberg and Fritsch were said to have retired “on health grounds”—spurring rumors of a plot on Hitler’s life. McDonogh, Hitler’s Gamble, 7–19.

238. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d, 994, l. 51.

239. Kostrychenko, Tainaia politika Stalina, 160, 207–8. Postyshev, acting party boss in Kuibyshev (since March 18, 1937), was specially reprimanded for excesses.

240. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 159–67; Khlevniuk, “Party and NKVD,” 26–7; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 140–3; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 501. See also Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 214–8.

241. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 463 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 729, l. 94–5). Individual reprieves were often short-lived. On Sept. 25, 1937, following the arrest of his brother Aleksei Simochkin in the Western province, Vasily Simochkin, party boss of Ivan-Voznesensk province, wrote to Stalin to disown his brother. “You cannot answer for your brother,” Stalin answered. “Continue your work.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 57, l. 93. But Vasily Simochkin would be arrested on Nov. 26, 1938, and executed on March 10, 1939.

242. Starkov, “Kak Moskva chut’ ne stala Stalinodarom,” 126–7.

243. Pravda, Jan. 18, 1938; Pervaia sessia Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 135–41; Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 238–9; RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 672 (Zhdanov’s notes). On Jan. 4, 1938, Shumyatsky reported to Molotov on the need to install permanent filming and sound equipment in the Great Kremlin Palace hall used for party congresses; the equipment had already been purchased in the United States. That same day Malenkov signed an order for Kerzhentsev’s removal. Three days later, the politburo replaced Shumyatsky with Dukelsky (who would last two months). This spurred Gr. Zeldovich, an editor at Mosfilm, to denounce artists for drunken debaucheries at the Metropole and their “immense love for ‘the West’. Many dream about foreign trips . . . I heard that G[rigory] Alexandrov has often been inside certain foreign embassies.” Zeldovich had one uncle living in Poland and another in Riga, while relatives on his mother’s side lived in America, perhaps accounting for his going on the offensive. Maksimenkov, Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 455–6 (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 958, l. 66), 455–6n1 (l. 67), 457 (f. 17, op. 3, d. 994, l. 46), 462–77 (op. 120, d. 349, l. 47–60), 477n3 (f. 82, op. 2, d. 958, l. 38). In 1938, Kerzhentsev was replaced (by Aleksei Nazarov) but would die a natural death (heart failure on June 2, 1940). Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 288–90. Nazarov would last until April 1, 1939, giving way to his deputy, the enduring Mikhail Khrapchenko (b. 1904).

244. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye rechi, 170–83. Stalin allowed Zhdanov to give the speech commemorating Lenin at the Bolshoi.

245. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 109, 287–8; Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 322–3.

246. Milovidov, “Velikii grazhdanin,” 6; Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema, 229–50.

247. In Feb. 1938, the NKVD received a report from Mark Zborowski out of Paris that had Trotsky’s son Sedov once more stating, while reading a newspaper, that “‘the whole regime in the USSR rests upon Stalin and it would be enough to kill him so that it would come crashing down.’ He returned to and underscored many times the necessity of killing comrade Stalin.” Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 198 (citing Arkhiv INO OGPU-NKVD, f. 31660, d. 9067, t. 1, l.140a-140v). See also Volkogonov, Trotsky, 378–80. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 82–3; Serge, “Leon Sedov,” 203–7; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 469–70 (quoting Spiegelglass interrogation). Supposedly in 1937, the NKVD’s Yakov Serebryansky had been tasked with kidnapping Lev Sedov without commotion on a Paris street and transferring him alive to Moscow, leaving no trace of the operation (and not informing the Paris intelligence station). Instead, Sedov suddenly died. This story appears to be given in an effort to deny Soviet intelligence’s involvement in Sedov’s death. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 83–4.

248. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 73 (Feb. 18, 1938). A Communist Youth League member appears to have written Stalin seeking redress after having been fired for failing to affirm that socialism in the Soviet Union had won “final victory” (preserving the country against repeat foreign intervention to restore capitalism). Stalin wrote back, agreeing with the fired petitioner, in a lengthy letter he had printed in Pravda (Feb. 14, 1938): “Since we do not live on an island but in a ‘system of states,’ a considerable number of which are hostile to the land of socialism, creating a danger of intervention and restoration, we say openly and honestly that the victory of socialism in our country is not yet final.” Tucker, “The Emergence of Stalin’s Foreign Policy,” 570.

249. Kowalsky, Stalin, paragraph 608 (citing Pascua’s personal notes of Kremlin meeting of Feb. 26, 1938. AHN-Madrid. Diversos. M. Pascua, Leg. 2, Exp. 6).

250. Danilov et al., Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni, V/i: 452, 486; Ellman, “Soviet 1937 Provincial Show Trials” (the order dated to Aug. 3, 1937, right as the “kulak” operation was unfolding); Ellman, “Soviet 1937–1938 Provincial Show Trials Revisited.” See also RGASPI, 558, op. 11, d. 57, l. 57; Izvestiia, June 10, 1992: 7.

251. Gupta, Ryutin Platform. On the difficulties involved in staging fabricated trials, see Lih, “Melodrama and the Myth,” 178–207 (esp. 202).

252. “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘soiuza marksistov-lenintsev’,” 112–5 (Nov. 1, 1936).

253. Conquest, Great Terror: Reassessment, 23; and Tucker and Cohen, Great Purge Trial, 348. Vyshinsky, claiming to be quoting the defendant Sokolnikov, noted on Jan. 28, 1937, in his statement to the court that “as for the lines of the program, as far back as 1932 the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites and the Rightists all agreed in the main on a program, which was characterized as the program of the Rightists. This was the so-called Ryutin Platform; to a large extent, as far back as 1932, it expressed the program policy common to all three groups.” Report of Court Proceedings, 489.

254. Bukharin, Tiuremnye rukopisi. Four letters are dated between April 15, 1937, and Dec. 10, 1937. In the latter, Bukharin wrote: “I thought about what was taking place, and came up with the following conception: There is some kind of grand, bold political idea of a general purge a) in connection with a prewar time; b) in connection with a transition to democracy. This purge encompasses a) the guilty b) the suspicious and c) the potential-suspicious.” Bukharin also wrote that he had dreamt Nadya Alliluyeva—in whose room he had been living—was still alive and had promised to get Stalin to release him. Stalin circulated the letters to the other politburo members, who wrote across them, “The letter of a criminal,” “A criminal farce,” “A typical Bukharin lie.” Murin, “Prosti menia, Koba . . .’: neizvestnoe pis’mo N. Bukharina,” 23 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 427, l. 13–8); “‘No ia to znaia, chtoty prov’: pis’mo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Staliny iz vnutrennei t’iurmy NKVD,” 56 (d. 301, l. 127, 128); 56–8; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 556–62. See also Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 78–9; and Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 114–5. In late Feb. 1938, on the eve of the trial, Yezhov lied to Bukharin that his life would be spared: Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 365 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 589, l. 108). Bukharin’s last communication with Stalin came March 13, 1938 (a futile appeal of his death sentence). Larina was arrested and sent to the Tomsk camp for wives of traitors and enemies (she would survive).

255. The indictment was presented for an international audience by Yaroslavsky, Meaning of the Soviet Trials. The defendants’ biographies had been rewritten to make them descendants of capitalists and priests.

256. On Yagoda’s attempt to negotiate for his life, see the prison snitch’s report: Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 233–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 318, l. 113–4: V. Kirshon).

257. Conquest, Reassessment, 341–98; Maclean, Escape to Adventure, 59–83; Hedeler, “Ezhov’s Scenario,” 34–55.

258. Sokolov, “N. N. Krestinskii,” 120–42; Trud, May 26, 1988.

259. Conquest, Reassessment, 352; Popov, “Byl i ostaius’ kommunistom,” 244–51.

260. Trial of the Anti-Soviet “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites,” 675.

261. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 173–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 42, l. 29–33; d. 40, l. 128, 347; d. 41, l. 51–70; APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 338, l. 59).

262. Avdeenko, “Otluchenie” (no. 4), 90–1. Avdeenko did not get in to the trial.

263. New York Times, March 1, 1938.

264. Besides Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda, Krestinsky, and Ravovsky (former ambassador to Great Britain and France), the defendants were: Arkady Rosenholtz, Vladimir Ivanov (former People’s Commissar for Timber Industry), Mikhail Chernov (former People’s Commissar for Agriculture), Grigori Grinko (former People’s Commissar for Finance), Isaac Zelensky (former Central Committee Secretary), Akmal Ikramov and Fayzulla Khodzhayev (Uzbek leaders), Vasily Sharangovich (former party boss in Belorussia), Prokopy Zubarev, Pavel Bulanov (NKVD operative), Venyamin Maximov-Dikovsky, Pyotr Kryuchkov (Gorky’s secretary), Sergei Bessonov (a trade representative), and three Kremlin doctors: Lev Levin, Dmitry Pletnev, and Ignaty Kazakov. Levin and Kazakov were sentenced to execution; Pletnev, like Rakovsky and Bessonov, was given a long sentence, but, after being remanded to Orlov prison, he would be shot without retrial in 1941. Borodulin and Topolianskii, “Dmitrii Dmitrievich Pletnev,” 51. On the NKVD’s toxicology lab, see Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatsii, 441. The executioner was Pyotr Maggo.

265. http://www.memo.ru/memory/commu narka/index.htm; Golovkova, Butovskii Poligon. Among those whose cremated remains were dumped at Kommunarka were Bukharin, Rykov, Béla Kun, Abram Belenky (Lenin’s former bodyguard), Peters of the Cheka, Yakov Agranov, Trilliser, Leonid Zakovsky, Grigory Kaminsky, Krestinsky, Pyatnitsky, Postyshev, and Pauker.

266. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 238 (TsA FSB, ASD H-13706, l. 55–6: Grigory Vyatkin). Plestsov would survive and prosper; Vyatkin, already infamous in 1934 in Novosibirsk for having knocked out someone’s teeth with a whip, would be arrested in Nov. 1938, charged with having destroyed more than 4,000 people in Ukraine, and executed in 1939. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 252, 263, 478, 516.

267. Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 188; Orlov, Secret History, 188. “If the purges were bewildering to a person in my privileged position in Moscow,” a secret police defector observed, “they must have been absolutely incomprehensible to the toiling officials and loyal party workers in remote provinces, who suddenly found themselves denounced as secret enemies of the cause they served.” Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 78.

268. Iakir and Geller, Komandarm Iakir, 211.

269. Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 78.

270. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 138–9 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 591, l. 31–3). Rosenholtz (b. 1889) had met with Stalin often over many years as the Soviet representative to the secret negotiations for cooperation with the German military in 1922, a member of the central control commission from 1927, and foreign trade commissar. Na prieme, 694.

271. “Agoniia kapitalizma i zadachi Chetvertogo Internatsionala,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 66 (May–June 1938): 19.

272. Bohlen, Witness to History, 51.

273. Ullman, “Davies Mission,” 265.

274. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka, 54–5.

275. Maria Joffe, the widow of the Soviet diplomat, recounted a story, said to have been told to her by the inventive Radek, about how at the beginning of the 1920s Stalin, in a relaxed state, supposedly said, “The sweetest thing is to devise a plan, then, being on alert, waiting in ambush for a good long time, finding out where the person is hiding. Then catch the person and take revenge!” Another version of this story appears in the memoirs of the widow of Grigory Sokolnikov Joffe, Odna noch’, 33–4; Serebriakova, “Iz vospominanii,” 241–2.

276. Not just those who had worked with Lenin and knew of his 1922–23 Testament were targeted, such as Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and Bukharin, but also those who were entirely creatures of Stalin (Kosior, Postyshev, Chubar, Eihe, and Rudzutaks, the loyalist whom Stalin had elevated to replace Zinoviev in the politburo). For a list of Central Committee members and candidate members not destroyed in the terror, see Mawdsley, “An Elite within an Elite,” 63.

277. The original end of the antikulak “mass operations” was to have been the second week of Dec.—the precise time of the elections—and in the meantime, functionaries who suddenly would have to stand against competition were writing to the Central Committee apparatus complaining that former “kulaks” might get their names on the ballot. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 123; “Demokratiia . . . pod nadzorom NKVD,” Nesizvestnaia Rossiia, II: 272–81; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 195. Wendy Goldman asserts that Stalin’s speech back at the Feb.–March 1937 plenum “aimed for a ruthless yet limited attack on former oppositionists,” but that (pseudo)democratic procedures involving criticism from below wildly expanded the modestly set targets. Goldman, Terror and Democracy, 129.

278. Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 189; Medvedev, “O lichnoi otvestvennosti Stalina za terror,” 289–330 (at 289–90). Sholokhov wrote to Stalin (Feb. 6, 1938) requesting that the arrests be checked, for “they are removing not only White Guardists, émigrés, torturers—in a word, those deserving of removal—but genuinely Soviet people.” The NKVD evidently arrived to arrest Sholokhov at his home in the village of Veshenskaya. He had fled north to Moscow; Stalin decided to spare him. “‘Vokrug menia vse eshche pletut chernuiu Pautinu . . . ’: pis’ma M. A. Sholokhova I. V. Stalinu (1937–1950),” 18. See also Murin, “‘Prosti, menia, Koba . . . ’: neizvestnoe pis’mo N. Bukharina.”

279. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 106, 154–7. The case of Shreider (b. 1902) is particularly illuminating, and involves Stanisław Redens, Stalin’s brother-in-law and by now the NKVD boss in Kazakhstan, then Beria. Shreider would refuse to confess but get ten years and be dispatched to the Northern Railway construction camps (SveZhelDorlag), where, because he was employed in administrative work, he would survive. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 85–95, 252. Redens was arrested in Nov. 1938 and executed in Jan. 1940.

280. Vernadsky showed considerably more understanding of Soviet realities than most contemporaries: “Millions of prisoners—forced labor, playing a very significant and huge role in the state’s economy,” he recorded on Jan. 5, 1938. Sovershenno sekretno, no. 8 (1990): 10–3; Khlevniuk, 1937–i, 214–5. See also Prychodko, One of Fifteen Million, 21.

281. Fyodor Stebenev, the commissar, speaking to Andrei Vedenin, continued: “I would bet my head that Iosif Vissarionovich [Stalin] does not know. Signals, complaints, protests are being intercepted and not reaching him. We need to get Stalin to know about this. Otherwise ruin. Tomorrow they’ll take you, and after you me. We cannot keep quiet.” Vedenin, Gody i liudi, 55.

282. For the gamut of contemporary (and ongoing) speculations, see Medvedev, Let History Judge, 523–601. Then there is the “theory” of a Russian “tradition” of violence. Courtois, “Conclusion: Why?,” 728–31.

283. On April 3, 1938, Mironov reported to Frinovsky that 10,728 “conspirators” had been incarcerated. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 390; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 118.

284. Mironov appeared at the Kremlin on New Year’s; he would be arrested on Jan. 6, 1939, at the foreign affairs commissariat and executed on the night of Feb. 21–2, 1940.

285. Misshima and Goto, Japanese View of Outer Mongolia, 21–2.

286. Coox, Nomonhan, 164–5.

287. Pravda, March 29, 1937; Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, 140. In 1935, the Soviet authorities recorded 340 aircraft “incidents” as well as 54 crashes (in which 88 people died); of these 394 events, fewer than half (163) were investigated as involving possible wrecking, but in 1937–8 everything became wrecking. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 330 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 1411, l. 255).

288. Zhukov, Inoi Stalin, 293. Stalin’s Nov. 1936 dismissal of the notion that all former kulaks and White Guardists were enemies would be republished in the 1939 edition of his Questions of Leninism. Stalin, Voprosy Leninizma, 531–2.

289. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 586 (Aug. 1937). Similarly, arrests under article 58–10 (anti-Soviet agitation) had numbered 100,000 in 1931, during peasant rebellion, then fell to 17,000 in 1934, climbed to 230,000 in 1937, and fell to 18,000 in 1940. Davies, “Crime of ‘Anti-Soviet Agitation.’”

290. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 138–9.

291. Kuromiya, Stalin, 136. This was a long-standing, self-serving view of Stalin: viz. Nov. 25, 1932, politburo session, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 11012.

292. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 306.

293. Stalin, polemicizing with Uglanov and the rightists at the politburo (April 22, 1929), continued: “Don’t you know what class struggle is, don’t you know what class are?” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 654, 674 (uncorrected transcript); Kuromiya, “Stalin in the Politburo Transcripts,” 52.

294. Pravda, Oct. 20, 1937.

295. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 48, 52 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 187, l. 24), 55, 55–6.

296. Baker, “Surveillance of Subversion,” 497.

297. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 93; Rittersporn, Anguish, 39.

298. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 175; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 62, 77–8. On April 26, 1937, Uritsky, head of military intelligence, had reported to Stalin that “according to your directive a collective of military intelligence operatives wrote a number of articles concerning the organization and methods of work of foreign espionage.” (Stalin underlined this passage in pencil.) Seven such articles had already been published; five more were enclosed for final approval; six others awaited completion. Stalin was waiting upon the big article that would be published in Pravda on May 4. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 134–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1594, l. 1). See also “Spy International,” Pravda, Aug. 21, 1937; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 62–88, 93–100; Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 60.

299. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 62, 77–8. When the Soviet press launched saturation coverage of public charges about Soviet inhabitants serving as espionage agents on behalf of Japan, the Japanese embassy conducted thorough checks, verifying that the “confessions” contained lies and were contradicted by the whereabouts on the days in question of those Japanese officials said to be involved. These facts were internally acknowledged by the NKVD, at least early on: an April 2, 1937, NKVD document, for example, admitted that “evidence of the guilt of the arrested is lacking.” Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 47, 48 (TsA FSB, f. 66–1t., op. 30, d. 17, l. 185).

300. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 316 (TsA FSB, f. 8os, op. 1, d. 57–65); Khaustov et al., Liubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 659–60 n78 (TsA FSB, 8os, op. 1, d. 80); Plotnikova, “Organy,” 160.

301. In March 1938, all Soviet stamp collectors who engaged in correspondence with foreigners were registered. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 305 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 13, l. 81–4; f. 66, op. 1, d. 460, l. 261). When Yezhov sent Stalin (April 5) an intercepted Japanese ciphered telegram noting that the number of Finnish tourists arriving via Intourist had increased and that their geographical possibilities of travel once inside the USSR had expanded, Stalin had Intourist placed under the NKVD. The decree was not made public. After a Dec. 1938 court case would be opened against Intourist in the United States for espionage activity—it belonged to the NKVD—Beria would get Stalin’s approval to transfer Intourist from the NKVD to the foreign trade commissariat in Jan. 1939. RGASPI, f. 16, op. 163, d. 1207, l. 69–72; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 223–5; Kokurin and Petrov, Lubianka, 20. A total of only 100,000 foreigners visited the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, around 5,000 per year, and their interactions with Soviet inhabitants had become increasingly circumscribed to the point of prohibiting nearly all contact. At peak, between 20,000 and 30,000 foreign-born workers and specialists as returning émigrés were working alongside Soviets in factories and offices in the early 1930s, but by the mid-1930s they would be gone. Lel’chuk and Pivovar, “Mentalitet sovetskogo obshchestva,” at 29.

302. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 46 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, os, op. 6, d. 9, l. 209, 216).

303. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 45.

304. When in fall 1937 the USSR had proposed opening two more consulates in Germany (Breslau and Munich), and to bring the total in each country to four by closing three of the seven German consulates, the Germans refused; Stalin ordered the number of German consulates brought down to two. In 1938, all consulates of both countries were shuttered. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 355, 355n1, n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 22, l. 50, 56, 142); DGFP, series D, I: 903–4 (Schulenburg to foreign ministry, Jan. 13, 1938), 904–9 (Schulenburg to foreign ministry, Jan. 17). See also Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 155; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 279.

305. Rittersporn, Anguish, 41–2 (citing Plotnikova, “Organy,” 70–1), 43 (citing PA AA, MOSKAU I 394: Gestapo to foreign ministry, July 27, 1939; I 393: 275, I 394: foreign ministry to Moscow embassy, May 14, 1939, R 101388: Rosette Eimeke to foreign ministry, March 27, 1940, Abwehr to chief of chancery, Aug. 29, 1940; I 419: Dec. 16, 1937 notes; I 421: July 2, 1938 note); Plotnikova, “Organy,” 25.

306. Rittersporn, Anguish, 51 (citing BA-MA, RW, 67, 48: 55).

307. Pepłoński, Wywiad Polski na ZSSR, 126–7. Stalin was aware that the Polish government sent spies posing as Communist refugees to the USSR, which served to further discredit Moscow-resident foreign Communists in his eyes. The Poles, in turn, were aware that the NKVD recruited Soviet agents among émigrés in Poland, and managed thereby to infiltrate Soviet espionage efforts.

308. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 48.

309. Kozlov, “Pokozatel’i po trudu” (a secret GPU-NKVD file from the Magadan archives). Back in 1936, Japan’s Kwantung Army had set up a school to train Koreans for political agitation and espionage assignments on the Soviet side of the border. Nair, Indian Freedom Fighter, 141–6.

310. Solov’ev and Chugnuov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 8–36.

311. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 283–4. See also the story of the Polish agent who crossed the frontier at Baranovichi, was caught by the NKVD, confessed to being a Polish agent, but was beaten to confess to fantastic accusations that were untrue: Cybulski, Accused, 455–9.

312. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 316 (TsA FSB, f. 8os, op. 1, d. 57–65); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 659–60n78 (d. 80).

313. “All foreign bourgeois specialists are or may be intelligence agents,” Stalin had written to Kaganovich (Aug. 7, 1932). The next year, he had exploded at Kaganovich when he learned that American journalists were traveling to the famine-stricken Kuban region, noting “there already are many spies in the USSR.” Davies et al., Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 177; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 307.

314. Rzheshevskii and Vehviläinen, Zimniaia voina, II: 207. For Stalin’s connect-the-dots theory, see also Broide, Vreditel’stvo.

315. A Soviet writer has speculated that Stalin simultaneously believed and disbelieved his inventions of plots. Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization, 99, 94.

316. Volkogonov, Stalin: Politicheskii portret, I: 263 (on Stalin’s notes kept in the Presidential Archive). See also Tucker, Stalin in Power, 474 ff; and van Ree, Political Thought, 117–25. A fire at Kaganovich’s residence spurred Stalin to issue a resolution (April 1937) to the effect that the politburo “considers this fire not an accidental occurrence but one organized by enemies.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 30.

317. “Fragmenty stenogrammy dekabrskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1936 goda,” 6.

318. The year 1937 did not begin on Dec. 1, 1934, contrary to Yevgeniya Ginzburg’s famous bon mot. Ginzburg, Into the Whirlwind, 11.

319. See the letter (Sept. 2, 1936) from Moiseyev (Yershisty), on which Molotov wrote: “To comrade Yezhov: Moiseyev-Yershisty could hardly be troublesome to anybody in Leningrad. I doubt he was justifiably expelled from the VKP (b).” Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 294–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 272, l. 54–5).

320. Chuev, Sto sorok, 463.

321. As Conquest wrote, “The nature of the whole purge depends in the last analysis on the personal and political drives of Stalin.” Conquest, Reassessment, 33.

322. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 291.

323. Countless examples could be adduced. For ex., when Yezhov sent Stalin a list of people “who were being checked for possible arrest,” Stalin wrote on it: “Don’t check, arrest.” Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie Leninskikh printsipov,” 19. One scholar has noted that “to attribute events that cost tens of millions of lives to the agency of a few individuals violates historians’ sense of proportion, not to speak of theoretical commitments.” Pomper, “Historians and Individual Agency.” This issue is readily resolved, however, by the distinction between causative agency and collaborative agency. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.

324. Cherushev, “Dorogoi nash tovarishch Stalin!”

325. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 31 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 318, l. 103: Prokofyev).

326. Mikoian, “V pervyi raz bez Lenina,” 6; Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 154; Chuev, Kaganovich, Shepilov, 211; Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 85–6; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 79. Although Bukharin grasped that Stalin was evil, he, too, failed to take the full measure of Stalin’s enigmatic character. Dan, “Bukharin o Staline,” 181–2. See also Nicolaevsky, Power and the Soviet Elite, 3–7.

327. Stalin (film by Thames Television, London, 1990); Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 113.

328. Robert Tucker offered the most detailed and thought-through portrait of Stalin as psychopath, which he attributed, among other factors, to Stalin’s childhood years. But many of the observations (in memoirs) of Stalin’s early years are dubious, while Tucker’s clever additional arguments—e.g., that Stalin had a “Lenin complex” and craved the feat of a “second October”—border on reducing to matters of psychology colossal events of geopolitics, Russian historical legacies, and Bolshevik ideas. In less capable hands than Tucker’s, the psychologizing gets absurd. A bastardization of his argument portrays Stalin as a deformed product of his abusive father and overly devoted mother, motivated by unconscious urges, a need to alleviate anxieties arising out of an impaired narcissism (his “core”), and thus fundamentally irrational. Stalin, we are told, identified with “aggressors,” and his favorite was Hitler, to whom he was homosexually attracted, and turned his “inner conflict” outward, with murderous results. Rancour-Lafferiere, Mind of Stalin.

329. These came not just from the secret police but from such sources as Pravda correspondents, forwarded to him by Mekhlis, which presented highly tendentious characterizations of the situation in localities or institutions. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 153.

330. “We knew exactly by whom and where anti-Soviet conversations were conducted, badmouthing Stalin,” recalled one NKVD operative of those years. “We opened dossiers [formuliary] on everyone.” Kirillina, “Vystrely v Smol’nom,” 73 (Popov).

331. Rudzutaks, for example, an erstwhile deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, regaled cellmates with how during the early civil war Lenin had informed him he was being assigned to the Southern Front, where he would be working with Stalin. Rudzutaks had quickly affirmed his readiness to carry out the assignment, but Lenin, according to Rudzutaks, warned him it would be difficult: Stalin was an unscrupulous intriguer. Vladimir Khaustov, personal communication (Dec. 2012), referring to material in the APRF. Khlevniuk speculates that Stalin knew he was not held in high regard by those who knew earlier times. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 303–4.

332. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 78. As an illustration, see the summer 1938 incident involving the Communist Youth League chief Alexander Kosaryov, as described by his widow, when Stalin clinked glasses with and kissed Kosaryov, then is said to have whispered in his ear, “If you’re a traitor, I’ll kill you.” Kosaryov was arrested. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 595 (citing an unpublished memoir).

333. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 318. One scholar has elaborated a so-called dictator’s dilemma: the more powerful, the less he can trust his minions who claim to be loyal. Wintrobe, Political Economy of Dictatorship, 335–7. See also Harrison, Guns and Rubles, 7.

334. The Kremlin physicians Dmitry Pletnev and Lev Levin (executed in 1938) were said to have arrived at the diagnosis of paranoia, but Levin was an internist and Pletnev a heart specialist, and they appear to have diagnosed Stalin with a heart condition and gall bladder ailment. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi.” For the hearsay, see Volski and Souvarine, “Un Caligula à Moscou,” 16; Souvarine, Staline (1977), 582. Superficial psychologizing about dictators is rampant: Glad, “Why Tyrants Go Too Far.” Rees, writing of Stalin, sought to distinguish between “criminal psychopaths,” who tend to be impulsive, reckless, and “Machiavellian psychopaths,” who are calculating, organized, determined, untroubled by self-doubt, audacious and often rise to the top of organizations. Rees, Iron Lazar, 218–22. See also Kovalevskii, Psikhiatricheskie eskizy iz istorii, III: 65–75 (on Ivan the Terrible). Stalin’s self-control was duly noted by Conquest, Roy Medvedev, and many others. See Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 494. One scholar has rightly observed that “the precise proportions of political calculation and psychological derangement that drove Stalin to these extreme measures will always be a matter of speculation.” Rieber, “Stalin as Foreign Policy Maker,” 142–3.

335. Rybin, Riadom so Stalinym, 76.

336. Molotov later admitted that he and Stalin knew the secret police exaggerated the supposed threat, but Molotov did not admit that Stalin relentlessly pressured the police to do so. Chuev, Molotov, 466, 473–5.

337. Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin, 237–47.

338. Machiavelli, Gosudar’; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 315; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 282. Others denied Machiavelli’s influence on Stalin: Souvarine, Stalin, 563, 583. Volkogonov claims he saw Stalin’s copy of Machiavelli: Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 107. Nikolai Ryzhkov, Soviet prime minister under Gorbachev, claims he read Stalin’s underlined copy of Machiavelli: “To tell the truth, the book with its markings gave me a thousand times greater understanding of the personality of Stalin than all the biographies, all the films, about him, all the recollections of his friends and enemies.” Ryzhkov made off with it. Ryzhkov, Perestroika, 354–6. The underlinings, in Russian, are: “Neestestvenno, chtoby vooruzhenyi stal okhotno pokoriat’sia nevooruzhenomu”; “Bez boiazni mogut byt’ Gosudari zhestokimi v voennoe vremia.”

339. Volubuev and Kuleshov, Ochishchenie, 146.

340. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 267.

341. In the discussion of Augustus Octavian in Samuil Lozinskii’s History of the Ancient World: Greece and Rome (Petrograd, 1923), Stalin underlined “first citizen, prince . . . supreme ruler.” Volobuev and Kulsheov, “Istoriia ne terpit polupravdy.”

342. Van Ree, Political Thought, 258–61.

343. Discussion of statecraft was almost entirely absent from Marx’s voluminous writings. He had begun from the premise that the state did not possess interests of its own but incarnated class interests; those class interests were, therefore, the main object of analysis. Marx saw no need to subject the state’s institutions and procedures—which differ significantly from country to country—to careful analysis. True, the phenomenon of Napoleon III in France provoked a change of heart in Marx, but not a full-fledged rethinking. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, 130–1; Civil War in France, 42. Engels had famously added the idea that after the proletarian revolution, as class contradictions were overcome, the state would “wither away.” Lenin, initially, had also concurred that the state was an instrument of class oppression and would wither away (State and Revolution [1903]), but then changed his mind, albeit without managing to fill the theoretical gap.

344. van Ree, Political Thought, 135–8, 258.

345. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 143, l. 372, 382, 424, 438.

346. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 202, l. 21.

347. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 551–3; Brzezinski, Permanent Purge, 168.

348. Isaac Deutscher would imagine that Stalin ordered the purges to prevent “the managerial groups from consolidating as a social stratum,” which could indeed have been part of Stalin’s thinking. But Deutscher remained under the spell of Stalin’s supposed special targeting of the Old Bolsheviks. Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 306–7. It has been asserted with no evidence that young, aggressive new administrative cadres themselves pushed for the terror, being envious of the old guard Leninists. Voslensky, Nomenklatura (1984), 53–5, (1980), 82–6.

349. Stalinskie rasstrel’nye spiski.

350. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 39.

351. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 167.

352. Chalaia, Oboronnaia dramaturgiia, 3. See also Kuleshova, “‘Bol’shoi den’”; Kuznetsova, “Esli zavtra voina”; and Scott, Behind the Urals, 197–203 (about the play “Witness Confrontation”). Iu. Olesha and A. Macheret would adapt Confrontation for the big screen as The Mistakes of Engineer Kochin, which would premiere on Dec. 14, 1939 (Mosfilm).

353. Uldricks, “Impact of the Great Purges,” 188–92; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 130.

354. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 184. Several of the agents who had been assigned to Sedov were diverted to hunt down Soviet NKVD personnel abroad.

355. Mekhlis’s response was to denounce Voroshilov to Stalin for impeding the destruction of additional “enemies.” Rubtsov, Marshaly Stalina, 50–1 (Ivan Ilichev report to Mekhlis; Mekhlis letter to Stalin, Nov. 20, 1938).

356. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 17.

357. Pavel Alliluyev (Stalin’s brother-in-law), Georgy Savchenko, Dmitry Pavlov, Kirill Meretskov, and Grigory Kulik supposedly sent a petition to Voroshilov that further arrests threatened the Red Army with disintegration. No such letter has been seen, only Pavlov’s testimony, under torture, in July 1941 before he was shot. The letter seems to have been written in summer 1938. (Alliluyev died Nov. 2, 1938, in his Moscow office, unexpectedly, the day after returning from a holiday down south.) “Kulik was the main author of the text,” Pavlov was recorded as testifying. “We sent it to Voroshilov but his secretariat informed us that the people’s commissar would not even read our letter and requested us to withdraw it. At this Kulik called us together on a Sunday. We made some changes to the letter and sent it to the General Secretary of the Central Committee with a copy to Voroshilov. The letter argued that the main forces of the counterrevolution had already been liquidated within the army yet the arrest of its commanders continued. Indeed, to such an extent that the army might start to disintegrate . . . We believed that the Government would reduce the arrests.” Bobrenev and Riazantsev, Palachi i zhertvi, 182–3, 186–91.

358. “The whole period of the purges was one of disillusionment and revulsion, the intensity of which, I suppose, accounted for my previous enthusiasm,” confessed E. H. Carr. Cox, E. H. Carr, xviii.

CHAPTER 9. MISSING PIECE

1. Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 421; Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 183.

2. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 314.

3. Yezhov also ordered the NKVD secretariat to reduce the number of “workers” and “collective farmers” in reported arrest statistics. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 279. This is hardly the only falsification in arrest statistics.

4. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 416 (citing RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 271, l. 708).

5. He sometimes also got drunk at a safe house, on Gogol Boulevard, before heading out for “exercise” at Lefortovo. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 139.

6. Rees, “The People’s Commissariat of Water Transport,” 235–61.

7. In March 1938, Malenkov ordered all leading party organs urgently, not later than the fifteenth of that month, to prepare lists of their members and candidate members who were “Poles, Germans, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Iranians, English, French, Italian, Hungarians,” and to indicate their place of employment as well as nationality and citizenship. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 82 (citing TsAODM, f. 3, op. 50, d. 74, l. 7).

8. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 348–9.

9. Conquest, Reassessment, 57.

10. Zakovsky was a drinker, and Yezhov’s notes on him refer to conversations about Stalin. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 441.

11. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 151 (TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 6: testimony of Frinovsky’s son).

12. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 43. Karutsky shot himself on May 13, 1938. Zakovsky, demoted to the Kuibyshev hydroelectric station, an NKVD object, and arrested there, was executed on Aug. 29, 1938, as an “agent of Polish and German counter-espionage.” Stalin had Zakovsky blamed for arrests that supposedly ruined the naval shipbuilding program, an unwitting admission of the deadly effect of the terror on war preparation. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 242–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254a, l. 1).

13. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 412.

14. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 411–3; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 170 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 83). Yezhov would later claim, “I have known Yevdokimov, it seems, since 1934. I considered him a party man, verified. I visited him at his apartment, he visited me at my dacha.” But “by my own denunciation to the Central Committee he was removed from his post” in the NKVD. “Poslednee slovo N.I. Ezhova na sudebnom protsesse, 3 fevralia 1940 goda”: http://www.perpetrator2004.narod.ru/documents/Yezhov/Yezhov.htm

15. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 311 (TsA FSB, ASD p-4000, t. 7, l. 83–6).

16. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 319.

17. Khlevniuk, 1937-i, 67; Starkov, “Narkom Ezhov,” 21–39 (at 37–8).

18. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 1), 69.

19. According to his son, Beria speculated that Stalin had Persian blood and compared him to Shah Abbas I [1571–1629], the ruler of Persia’s Safavid dynasty. (In 1587, a teenage Abbas had shoved aside his weak father, taking over a divided, nearly failed state, then went on to break the power and confiscate the wealth of the provincial chiefs, and fashion an imperial power that stretched from the Caucasus to the Tigris to the Indus and was distinguished by robust diplomatic relations and flourishing arts and architecture.) This might have been a Beria self-image. Beria, My Father, 21, 284.

20. Mikoian, S liubov’iu i pechal’iu, 27–8, 31–3; Mikoian, Svoimi glazami, 33–4, 36–40.

21. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 57–8. Nami Mikoyan’s father would soon be arrested.

22. In Armenia, his replacement had been Khachik Moughdousi [Astvatsaturov], a Beria loyalist.

23. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 1), 69. Tsaturov was arrested in Oct. 1937 but would survive.

24. Stepanyan also wrote about the absence of Leninist party democracy under Stalin. Aganian, Nersik Stepanian, 40, 49–50 (citing Arianskii filial IML, f. 4033, op. 6, d. 312, l. 1–6); Matossian, Impact of Soviet Policies, 129; Revoliutsionnyi vostok, 1936, no. 4: 50. In April 1936 and again in Sept., Lyudmila Yanushevskaya, the wife of Semyon Sef, head of the party’s culture-propaganda department in Tblisi, told people that Sef, not Beria, was the author of the work. Word reached Yezhov, who launched an investigation with interviews of witnesses. On Aug. 16, 1936, Yezhov wrote on the resolution: “Give me the material.” Another report from a participant, written Oct. 22, 1936, after Yezhov had been named head of the NKVD, was less categorical, as if Yezhov had merely wanted to gather and hold the compromising material on Beria. (Sef and his wife were expelled from the party.) Sokolov, Beriia, 98–105.

25. Aganian, Nersik Stepanian, 52 (citing Arianskii filial IML, f. 1, d. 35, l. 98–9).

26. The bodyguards were detained but released after a month and a half. Sokolov, Beriia, 108–20.

27. Antonov-Ovseenko, Beriia, 92–6; Artsuni, “Samoubiistvo A. G. Khandzhiana”; Gazarian, “Etno ne dolzhno povtorit’sia” (no. 2), 65. After Beria’s destruction in 1953, witnesses came forward to charge him with shooting Khanjyan in his (Beria’s) office, then having the body somehow delivered past the bodyguards to Khanjyan’s room. The Armenian head of the typist pool of the South Caucasus secretariat (Sushannik Safaryan) would testify that she was carrying the bureau-meeting typescript to Beria, gently pushed open his office door a bit, caught a glimpse of a man lying on the carpet, and quickly retreated. In 1961, KGB chief Shelepin concluded that Beria had killed Khanjyan in his (Beria’s) office. The idea that the experienced operative Beria—with members of the Moscow Central Control Commission in the next room—would shoot Khanjyan in his own office raises more questions than it answers. “Sovetskie praviteli Armenii”(Jan. 2009): http://www.noev-kovcheg.ru/mag/2009–01/1499.html; Izvestiia, Oct. 28, 1961; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 413, 624–5.

28. http://www.noev-kovcheg.ru/mag/2009–01/1499.html#ixzz23qnzhqky. See also Aganian, Nersik Stepanian, 52–3.

29. Zaria vostoka, July 11, 1936; Pravda [Armenia], July 12, 1936.

30. Tzitzernak, “Aghassi Khanjian.”

31. Zaria vostoka, July 20, 1936.

32. In Georgia between 1932 and 1936, the combined print run of all writings by Marx—in both Russian and Georgian—had totaled 20,000; those of Lenin, 200,000; those of Stalin, 696,000; those of Beria, 430,000. Toptygin, Neizvestnyi Beriia, 41. Beria’s Lado Ketskhoveli (1937), which celebrated Stalin’s martyred mentor in Marxism, was evidently plagiarized from the manuscript of L. Shengelaya, a copy of which had entered the Tiflis Affiliate of the Marxism-Leninism Institute in Sept. 1935. Here, too, Beria emulated the master. Sukharev, “Litsedeistvo,” 112 (citing PA IIP pri TsK KPSS, f. 8, op. 1, d. 39, l. 23).

33. After Papuliya’s arrest, Orjonikidze summoned the Azerbaijan party boss Bagirov to Kislovodsk. “Orjonikidze drilled me about Beria, and spoke of him very negatively,” Bagirov would later testify. “In particular, Orjonikidze said that he couldn’t believe in the guilt of his brother Papuliya . . . Beria learned through his own people that Orjonikidze had summoned me to Kislovodsk, and he asked me the reasons for it over the telephone.” Shariya would testify: “I knew that on the surface Beria thought well of Orjonikidze, but in fact he said all manner of despicable things about him to his circle of confidants.” Goglidze would testify: “Beria in my presence and that of others made sharp, deprecatory comments about Sergo Orjonikidze . . . I formed the impression that Beria said that as a result of some personal grudge against Orjonikidze and set others against him.” Nekrasov, Beria, 360; Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina,” 1991, no. 1: 50.

34. Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 2–26 (speech to Sukhum city soviet, Jan. 1, 1936). Pravda on March 4, 1936, celebrated fifteen years of Soviet power in Abkhazia with a front-page photo of Lakoba, alongside Stalin, Orjonikidze, and Mikoyan, from 1927, which was said to have come from Stalin’s private collection. No functionary—especially Beria—could miss a Kremlinological signal so immense, and for a place so small, a mere autonomous republic. Lakoba did not get to claim an article himself; instead, an article (“Itogi bor’ba i pobed”) was printed under the byline of Agrba, Abkhaz party secretary (Pravda was a party paper). In 1935 or 1936 Beria moved from an apartment building to a mansion at Machabeli St. 11. He also used a white stucco villa in Gagra, near Stalin’s villa. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 511–2 .

35. An opportunity for Beria’s pressure came with the suicide, in 1935 or 1936, of the daughter of the foreign trade commissar Rosenholtz at Lakoba’s dacha in Gagra. At the time Beria was at his own dacha in Gagra, and there was a suspicion he had had sexual intercourse with her. In fact, she had sexual relations that day, but earlier, in the city, at the hotel where she was staying. In Gagra by invitation, she had supper with the host and others, then retired for the night and shot herself with one of Lakoba’s guns. Beria either could not manage or chose not to mount a case against Lakoba. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 47–8.

36. Abbas-ogly, Ne mogu zabyt’; Abbas-ogly, Moia Abkhaziia, moia sud’ba.

37. Musto, “Pistolet ili iad?”: http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2004/musto_yad.html. Once, it was said, in 1935, when Beria had used foul language in the presence of women, Mikhail Lakoba, Nestor’s half-brother, had put a Brauning to Beria’s temple. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 294 (no citation).

38. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 74.

39. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 67. See also the hearsay in reminiscences by Musto Dkhikhasvili, “Konkurenty” (http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2004/musto_konkur.html). Musto writes that he did not attend the funeral in protest; photos show him as a pallbearer. Dimitrov’s diary notes (Dec. 12, 1936) “with Lakoba and his wife.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 41.

40. Lakoba had to obtain formal permission from the local party bureau to travel to Tiflis at Beria’s summons; permission was granted by telephone poll to him and M. Gobechiya on Dec. 25, 1936. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 97, l. 217–8).

41. By some accounts, Anastas Engelov, the Abkhaz plenipotentiary in Tblisi, assisted Lakoba in the walk to the hotel because Lakoba’s driver, as instructed, was waiting back at the hotel. Engelov would be executed in connection with the Nov. 1937 trial of Lakoba-ites.

42. Minchenok, “Nestor i ten’.” Beria arrived at the hotel with South Caucasus NKVD chief Goglidze and, evidently, German Mgaloblishvili, chairman of the Georgian Council of People’s Commissars. (Mgaloblishvili might have attended the theater with Lakoba and been at the hotel already.) Two Georgian NKVD operatives were already on the scene (including Kobulov), where the deceased Lakoba lay on the bed.

43. On April 26, 1935, the politburo in Moscow had discussed Lakoba’s health, and directed him to observe physicians’ instructions and enter the Kremlin hospital. The Kremlin doctors had recommended that Lakoba cut his workday down to four hours for a few weeks, observe a proper diet (including reducing meat consumption), refrain from smoking and drinking alcohol, engage in physical therapy, and apply cream and ointments. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 23–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 971, l. 12); Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–7, Sept. 16, 1935.

44. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 97, l. 215: Dec. 29, 1936).

45. Pravda reported the death that day (Dec. 29).

46. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 624.

47. This started with Mgaloblishvili, whom Beria had chosen to lead the honor guard accompanying Lakoba’s casket home from Tblisi and who was arrested for “ties.” Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 48–9. The story goes that Beria’s men beat Sarie to testify that Lakoba had wanted to sell Abkhazia to Turkey; she evidently refused, even when they beat her fourteen-year-old son Rauf in front of her. She was said to have died of torture in her cell. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 495–6.

48. Coincidentally or not, after Lakoba’s demise, Stalin would not return to the Caucasus on a holiday for nine years. In 1937, the alphabet for writing the Abkhaz language would be changed to Georgian. On Dec. 16, 1936, the Abkhaz party bureau discussed an order to switch from the Latin to the Georgian alphabet (when elsewhere in the Union the Latin alphabet was being replaced by Cyrillic); all-new printing presses and typewriters would be required. Georgian peasants received land grants to settle on the Abkhaz coast, and Abkhaz language radio broadcasts were discontinued. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 9 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 105, l. 16–7); Abkhazia, 4. (The Abkhaz would switch to Cyrillic in 1954.)

49. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 64 (Aug. 4, 1937), 67–8 (Aug. 16, 1937), 69–70 (Aug. 16, 1937).

50. Beria promised documentation if necessary to testify to the supervision of lower level party organizations. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 29–30.

51. Mlechin, KGB, 199 (diary of Alexander G. Solovyov).

52. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 5), 85 (testimony of Malik Dotsenko, citing Litvin).

53. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 5), 86–7. (Yezhov’s holiday was 1931–2.) Khrushchev recalled going out with Malenkov to Yezhov’s Meshcherino dacha and finding Beria there. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 180.

54. Beria raised his own status by noting that “Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are objects of especially heightened work of the imperialist powers”—a self-award of carte blanche to go after his enemies. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 5–6): 8–13.

55. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1989, no. 7), 86 (Goglidze).

56. Nekrasov, Beria, 367.

57. In Sept. 1937, Orakhelashvili was said to have testified: “In my presence, in Sergo Orjonikidze’s apartment, Beso Lominadze, after a number of counterrevolutionary slurs aimed at the party leadership, made an exceptionally insulting and hooliganistic slur against comrade Stalin. To my surprise, in response to this counterrevolutionary audacity by Lominadze, Orjonikidze, smiling, turned to me and said, ‘Have a look at him!’ And continued to conduct the conversation with Lominadze in a calm tone . . . In general I have to say that the parlor in Sergo Orjonikidze’s apartment and, on days off, at his dacha (first in Volysnkoe, then in Sosnovka) was a frequent meeting place for members of our counterrevolutionary organization, which, while waiting for Seergo Orjonikidze to arrive, conducted the most candid counterrevolutionary conversations, which continued right on after Orjonikidze himself showed up.” Nekrasov, Beria, 78. See also Knight, Beria, 83. As her husband had his eyes gouged out and eardrums perforated, Orakhelashvili’s wife, Maria, Georgia’s commissar of enlightenment, was compelled to watch.

58. Ginzburg, “O gibeli Sergo Ordzhonikidze,” 91–2. Beria’s minion Goglidze would later admit the obvious: such “testimony” compromising Orjonikidze had been intended to please Stalin. Nekrasov, Beria, 360; Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 55; Nekrasov, Beria, 378–9.

59. At the Pyatakov trial Mdivani was accused of plotting to kill Yezhov and Beria. Report of Court Proceedings, 74. Toroshelidze, former head of the Georgian Affiliate of the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin, was also arrested in Oct. 1936.

60. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 113. Nadezhda Lukina, Bukharin’s first wife, had written to Stalin on Aug. 23, 1936, the day of the verdict against Kamenev and Zinoviev, claiming that during Kirov’s Red Square funeral Kamenev had smiled at Mdivani (“I simply could not keep myself from writing you”). RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 710, l. 135–6.

61. Zaria vostoka, May 27, 1937; Pravda, June 5, 1937.

62. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 53–5. On police-reported gossip in Georgia, see Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 69–72 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 2–I otdel, f. 14, op. 11, d. 244, l. 19–22).

63. Beria’s telegram to Stalin noted that Mezenin’s superior in Moscow, Alexander Nikitin, had sent a telegram tasking the correspondent with delivering sharply critical information, and that Nikitin had twice phoned Meznin to render his reportage still sharper. Nikitin (b. 1901) would be named editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda in Aug. 1937 and head of the Central Committee press department in Jan. 1938, arrested on Sept. 3, 1939 (under Beria), and executed in July 1941.

64. Avalishvili, “‘Great Terror.’” May 29, 1937, would be Ilya Chavchavadze’s 100th jubilee, and Beria telegrammed Stalin eight days prior to request permission to re-publish Stalin’s poetry from 1896 (some of which Chavchavadze’s journal had published). Stalin refused. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 46.

65. Nekrasov, Beria, 242–3. Mikoyan would recall that Beria’s role in Musavat was discussed at a Central Committee plenum in 1937. Naumov, Lavrentii Beriia, 1953, 165–6; Antonov-Ovseenko, Beriia, 19.

66. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 253–4. See also Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 374 (RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 19, l. 49–50, Kaganovich to Stalin, Sept. 20, 1937).

67. Kaminskii, Grigorii Kaminsky; “Grigorii Naumovich Kaminskii.”

68. Pavliukhhov, Ezhov, 296–7. Kaminsky supposedly told his wife on the morning of June 25 that he might not return home from the plenum; he is said to have already removed all documents from his safe and desk at the commissariat, prompting his assistant to ask if he was being transferred. Zhavaronkov and Pariiskii, “Skazavshii budet uslyshan,” 200–3 (quoting the recollections of Karmanova, his deputy in the health commissariat, and the writer Aleksandra Bentsianova, neither of whom attended the plenum), 209 (quoting I. I. Mukhovoz).

69. Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 204 (Svetlana Kaminskaya). Kaminsky had been perhaps the sole Soviet journalist on the ground in Germany in fall 1923 reporting objectively that the Comintern efforts to instigate a seizure of power were disastrous. Lozhechko, Grigorii Kaminskii.

70. Afanas’ev, Oni ne molchali, 210–1 (Kaminskaya).

71. The sentence was carried out Feb. 10, 1938, at Yagoda’s former dacha (Kommunarka).

72. “Ochen’ vysoko tsenit t. Beria,” 163–5 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 788, l. 114–5ob; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 788, l. 114–16ob, June 25, 1937). Tite Lordkipanidze, a former head of the South Caucasus secret police, was arrested on June 22, 1937, along with several subordinates, in the Crimea autonomous republic; he was sentenced to execution on Sept. 14, 1937, and shot fifteen days later.

73. Already back on Oct. 21, 1933, Stalin had written to Kaganovich: “Pavlunovsky destroyed the artillery. Orjonikidze must be given a scolding for having trusted two or three of his favorites. He was ready to give state benefits to these imbeciles.” Stalin to Kaganovich, RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 38–9. Pavlunovsky would be shot on Oct. 30, 1937.

74. Already during his 1920s police work rooting out Menshevik sympathies, Beria had begun collecting dossiers on literary figures, musicians, and university personnel. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 299.

75. Pravda, Jan. 15, 1937; Literaturnaia gazeta, Jan. 5 and 10, 1937. The central regime awarded 3 million additional rubles for new apartments for artists of the Georgian National Opera and Ballet Theater, 700,000 for the theater’s refurbishment, 1 million to build a concert hall in the Tblisi conservatory, and half a million to refurbish its building. Gatagova et al., TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, II: 212–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 983, l. 28: Jan. 14, 1937).

76. Akhmeteli was executed on June 27, 1937. Urushadze, Sandro Akhmeteli, 250–1, 266–70. On Akhmeteli’s theater, see also Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 213–4.

77. Rayfield, “Death of Paolo Iashvili,” 635–6.

78. Akhmeteli had been scathing toward fellow Georgian writers, whom he accused of giving in to political pressure; they now shrank from defending his name. Rayfield, “Death of Paolo Iashvili,” 655n23.

79. Zelinskii, “V iune 1954 goda,” 82–3.

80. According to the recollections of Semyon Chikovani, who carefully listed all the people who had been present. (Interview with Lasha Bakradze, director of the Georgian Literary Museum, who read out Chikovani’s Georgian-language memoir to me.) By other accounts, after Yashvili shot himself, Javakhishvili muttered, “He was a real man, he was a real man.” Be that as it may, four days later, the writers voted approval of a resolution condemning “Javakhishvili as an enemy of the people, spy and diversant [who] is to be expelled . . . and physically annihilated.” One friend, Geronti Kikodze, had the courage to walk out (and he would survive). Rayfield, “Death of Paolo Iashvili,” 660; Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 344; Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 269.

81. Pasternak, Essay in Autobiography, 110; Rayfield, “Pasternak and the Georgians”; Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 262–3. Beria also stripped Tblisi University of its professors, including the papyrologist and classical scholar Grigol Tsereteli.

82. Rayfield, “Death of Paolo Iashvili,” 636, 647; Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 247. Countless others were executed, including Dimitri Shevardnadze, a painter who had established the country’s national gallery in 1920 (and had co-designed the emblem of Georgia’s Mensevik-dominated republic of 1918–1921); he had led opposition to a proposal by Beria to tear down Tbilisi’s ancient Metekhi Church (which would survive).

83. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 16–9, 20 (Mikoyan and Beria to Stalin Jan. 5, 1937). These are documents from the former Communist Party Archive, Georgian Affiliate of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Tbilisi (f. 14, op. 11, korobka 18, d. 152: telegrammy, poslannye na imia sekretaria TsK VKP [b] tov. Stalina).

84. Beria had asked Molotov for 33,000 more tons, and received an answer from Molotov’s aid (Antipov) that Georgia would have to make do within its existing allocation. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 31 (Feb. 4, 1937), 40 (May 5, 1937), 47–8 (May 22, 1937).

85. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 41–5 (May 9, 1937).

86. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 61–3 (Beria to Stalin and Molotov, July 31, 1937).

87. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 58–9, 66, 73–5 (Sept. 1, 1937). In Sept. 1937 Beria wrote to Stalin asking for additional kerosene, complaining of severe shortages and queues because of central cutbacks in supplies to the republic. Demand, he wrote, was increasing as a result of the return of students to Tbilisi and provincial capitals for the academic year. In Oct. 1937, he wrote to Stalin and Molotov about failures to deliver planned supplies of gasoline, complaining that the Azerbaijan oil distribution company was sending Georgia’s allotments to Moscow. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 76–7, 88–9.

88. Zen’kovich, Marshaly i genseki, 194–5. See also Kremlev, Beriia, 84–5.

89. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 252–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 315, l. 24–42).

90. Six others stood in the same trial. Zaria vostoka, July 11, 1937; Conquest, Reassessment, 225. There is a story that Mdivani told his interrogators at Metekhi: “Being shot is not enough punishment for me; I need to be quartered! It was me who brought the 11th Army here. I betrayed my people and helped Stalin and Beria, these degenerates, enslave Georgia and bring Lenin’s party to its knees.” Antonov-Ovsenko, Beriia, 27.

91. The trial was staged Sept. 24, 1937, in Batum’s House of the Red Army. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 293–9 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 2–i otdel, f. 14, op. 11, d. 106, l. 61–6).

92. The trial took place on Nov. 3, 1937, in the Drama Theater. RGANI, f. 89, op. 48, d. 5; APRF, Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 27; Abkhazia, 433–40. See also Delba, “Besposhchadno borot’sia s vragami naroda,” 427–30. See also Sovetskaia Abkhazia, Nov. 3, 1937; Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 12–5, 26–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 18, d. 104, l. 15–7; op. 3, d. 993, l. 3).

93. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 71–2. See also Zaria vostoka, Aug. 26, 1937.

94. Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Armenii, 387; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 586. On Aug. 19, 1937, Sahak Ter-Gabrielyan, former head of the Armenian Council of People’s Commissars, died, apparently throwing himself out the fourth floor window of the Lubyanka. For another version, see Matossian, Impact of Soviet Policies, 158.

95. Agrba would be executed April 21, 1938. Zakhar Suleimanovich Agrba, the director of the Abkhaz theater, was also arrested and executed.

96. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 583.

97. Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Armenii, 387; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 488–9.

98. Blauvelt, “March of the Chekists.” Beria wrote to Stalin to request authorization to strengthen defenses on the border with Turkey, reacting quickly after a central decree had ordered such strengthening in Central Asia on the borders with Iran and Afghanistan. Beria understood not to push too far: in one draft telegram to Stalin, he changed the phrase “the Georgia Central Committee proposes” to “requests” when seeking to escape a new decree by the railroad commissariat. Beria also reported to Stalin that Artyomi Geurkov, the former party boss of Ajaria, had shot himself in his apartment, leaving a letter to Beria (which he forwarded) admitting his guilt, perhaps to try to protect family members (“I should be punished, I am doing this myself, perhaps in excess”). Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 78–9 (Sept. 26, 1937), 80–1 (Sept. 1937), 82–4 (Oct. 1, 1937).

99. Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 270; Rayfield, “Death of Paolo Iashvili,” 663. Back on Oct. 30, 1937, Beria had written to Stalin that of the 12,000-plus people arrested, only 7,374 had had their cases decided, leaving some 5,000 in overcrowded prisons, because the traveling military collegium from Moscow was busy going around to various locations; Beria requested permission for a special collegium of the Georgian court to determine sentences. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 415–6 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 212, l. 137–9); Junge and Bonwetsch, Bol’shevistskii poriadok, II: 23–4 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 2–I otdel, f. 14, op. 11, d. 152, l. 171–3). Beria staged what would turn out to be his final show trial in Tbilisi, which resulted in executions for “wreckers” at the Georgian Animal Husbandry Institute. Zaria vostoka, Jan. 25, 1938.

100. Beria had sought Stalin’s permission to hold a plenum of the Soviet writers’ union in Tbilisi in honor of the Rustaveli celebrations: Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 56–7 (Beria to Stalin, May 31, 1937). Vsevolod Vishnevsky did a radio broadcast from Gori on Dec. 26, 1937, briefly narrating its thirteen centuries of history and describing a visit to Stalin’s birth hovel. Goriaeva, “Veilkaia kniga dnia,” 317–21 (RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 1181, l. 8–15).

101. In absolute terms, this was third highest, after the Russian and Ukrainian republics. Avalishvili, “‘Great Terror’”; http://stalin.memo. ru/images/note1957.htm.

102. Georgia’s list for the proposed mass operations (NKVD 00447), sent to Yezhov and Frinovsky in Moscow on July 8, 1937, contained 1,419 names in first category (execution) and 1,562 in second (Gulag). An additional 2,000 people were said to be members of former political parties in the republic. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 588, l. 36. The NKVD quotas for Georgia were set at 2,000 (first) and 3,000 (second). APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 212, l. 55–78. The Georgia troika would assemble in Goglidze’s office, usually around midnight until 4:00 a.m., and work through 100 to 150 “cases” in a session, spending two minutes or so on each. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 411–28 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 1–i otdel, f. vosstanovlennykh del G. Mamuliya: I . Takahadze, Jan. 8, 1957).

103. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, I: 68, 71, 75, 81, 95, 200.

104. Esaiashvili, Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Gruzii, II: 160 (partarkhiv GF IML, f. 14, op. 40, d. 35, l. 13–4), 163.

105. “Beria as a literary critic,” quipped Rayfield, “had been successful beyond the dreams of most critics: every writer he had disapproved of had ceased to write.” Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 262–3.

106. Already by this date, Beria reported to Stalin that more than 12,000 people had been arrested, of which 7,374 had been convicted, 5,236 extrajudicially (by troika). Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 95–7 (Oct. 30–31, 1937).

107. Overall in Georgia, nearly 20,000 new members would join the party between Nov. 1936 and March 1939. Almost half were children of functionaries. XVIII s”ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunsticheskoi partii (b), 577.

108. Among the targets were immigrants to Armenia: more than 40,000 ethnic Armenians had returned from Asia and Europe in the period 1921–1936, and many now met a grim fate. Melkonian, “Repressions in 1930s Soviet Armenia.” The decapitation at the top was roughly similar in Azerbaijan, under Bagirov: 22 people’s commissars, 49 county party secretaries, 29 chairmen of local soviet executive committees, 57 directors of factories, 95 engineers, 110 military men, 207 trade unionists, and 8 professors were arrested and, in the majority of cases, executed. And that was just in 1937. Ismailov, “1937.” See also Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Azerbaidzhana.

109. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 599.

110. Stephan, “‘Cleansing’ the Soviet Far East,” 51–3. The Soviet Far East was the fastest-growing region in terms of population in the Russian republic, doubling between 1926 and 1939. Stephan, Russian Far East, 185.

111. In 1938, 98 percent of the troika sentences in Ukraine were death; in Georgia, 68 percent. Georgia was not a land of exile or giant Gulag camps with which to pad or exceed quotas. It was, however, rich in members of former non-Bolshevik parties. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 55, 77.

112. Beria wrote to Stalin and Molotov seeking authorization to shut down the prestigious Sukhum Subtropical Institute and instead to transform a department at Georgia’s Agricultural Institute into the new de facto all-Union institution for training subtropical agronomists. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 36–7 (April 21, 1937). The Abkhazia Subtropical institute, as it had originally been known, had been opened in 1926 and six years later was designated an all-Union Institute. Anchbadze et al., Istoriia Abkhazskoi ASSR, 155; Blauvelt, “‘From Words to Action!,’” 252.

113. Abkhazskaia oblastnaia organizatsiia, 25–56.

114. Grdzelidze, Mezhnatsional’noe obshchenie, 102–3. Ethnic Abkhaz in the Communist party of Abkhazia fell from 28.3 to 18.5 percent over a single year (1929–30); the high water mark thereafter was 21.8 percent in 1936. In 1939, Abkhaz were down to just over 15 percent in their own party.

115. Ajarians had been designated “Muslim Georgians” under the tsars. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 104–5; Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 67–8 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 2–I otdel, f. 14, op. 11, d. 152, l. 169, 188: Jan. 5, 1937). Beria would sacrifice the boss of the Abkhaz NKVD, Grigory Pauchiliya (b. 1904), an ethnic Georgian whom he had promoted from the NKVD sports team Dynamo.

116. Iskanderov, Ocherki, 540–3. Bagirov initially had sought to impose limits. “Some people are not against demonstrating their ‘orthodoxy’ by firing from work the wives of those arrested, sisters-in-law, relatives,” he told a congress of soviets in Azerbaijan in March 1937. “Pardon me, please, this is not correct. This means arousing greater dissatisfaction, greater anger. This means increasing the number of enemies of Soviet power. Where are they supposed to go? We cannot leave them to starve.” Ismailov, Istoria “bol’shogo terora,” 72–3 (citing APD UDP AR, f. 1, op. 88, d. 137, l. 1), 73–4 (l. 8–9; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 20, l. 131–2), 92–3 (citing APD UDP AR, f. 1, op. 77, d. 101, l. 98).

117. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 380 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 57, l. 99).

118. Ismailov, Istoria “bol’shogo terora,” 145–8 (citing APD UDP AR, f. 1, op. 88, d. 137, l. 1), 73–4 (l. 8–9; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 20, l. 131–2).

119. For some, Khrushchev’s rise presented a mystery. “I took part in the Moscow city party committee meeting, at which we were given instructions . . . Khrushchev’s speech was confused and chaotic,” Aleksandr Solovyov had recorded in his diary (Dec. 14, 1931). “It is incomprehensible how he got to that position, obtuse and narrow minded as he is.” On Jan. 28, 1932, Solovyov privately added following Khrushchev’s promotion: “I am, like many others, astonished at Khrushchev’s rapid rise. He did very badly in his studies at the Industrial Academy. But he has won the sympathy of his classmates . . . He is an incredibly obtuse man. And a frightful bootlicker.” Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia, IV: 170–1.

120. Kolman, My ne dolzhny byli tak zhit’, 192. A reporter for Vechernaia Moskva, A. V. Khrabovitsky, would recall: “I always saw Khrushchev together with Kaganovich. Kaganovich was the active, powerful one, whereas all I ever heard Khrushchev saying was, ‘Yes, Lazar Moiseyevich,’ ‘Right, Lazar Moiseyevich.’” Medvedev, All Stalin’s Men, 124–5.

121. Dmitrii Shepilov, in Vostryshev, Moskva stalinskaia, 365.

122. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 112–5 (reference to D. Rabinovich and I. Finkel).

123. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, 1: 132–4, 145–7; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 127–9, 138–40; Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 99; Taubman, Khrushchev, 103–4, 114–7; Na prieme, 227–9. See also Borys, “Who Ruled the Soviet Ukraine in Stalin’s Time?” A blithe absence of genuine concern from Stalin was evident in another favorite, the peasant-born Andreyev, who as a young man back in 1920–22 had voted for Trotsky’s platform in the trade union debate. During the June 1937 sessions of the Main Military Council, Stalin was seated next to Andreyev, pointed to him, and stated that “he had been a very active Trotskyite in 1921.” “Which Andreyev?” a voice interjected. “Andrei Andreyevich Andreyev, Central Committee Secretary,” Stalin answered, adding that Andreyev had “disarmed” and “is fighting the Trotskyites very well.” Istochnik, 1994, no. 3: 74.

124. That included both Moscow and Ukraine. Makarova, “Stalin i ‘blizhnyi krug,’” 301.

125. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 995, l. 5.

126. Borys, “Who Ruled the Soviet Ukraine in Stalin’s Time?,” 230.

127. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 139–40.

128. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 184; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 178–80.

129. Mikoyan later wrote that “Khrushchev made a career for himself in Moscow literally within a couple of years. As for how and why—it was because almost everybody else had been put in prison in the meantime. Besides, Khrushchev had Alliluyeva as his patron. They met at the Industrial Academy where Khrushchev was active in fighting against the opposition. It was then that he became secretary of the district party committee. He finally got onto the Central Committee over others’ dead bodies, as it were.” Mikoian, Tak bylo, 614.

130. This was formalized in a politburo decree on Feb. 17, 1938: RGASPI, f. 17, op., 162, d. 22, l. 127.

131. Yezhov’s orders were dated Feb. 26 and March 3, 1938. Uspensky, for his part, told one of the newly appointed provincial NKVD chiefs under him, “all Germans and Poles living in Ukraine are spies and saboteurs.” Kuromiya and Pepłoński, “The Great Terror,” 650 (citing Z arkhiviv VUChK-HPU-NKVD-KHB, 1998, no. 1–2: 215).

132. Leplyovsky was transferred to NKVD transport; he would be arrested on April 26, 1938, and “confessed” that he had been a plotter since 1930, when he had helped mount the Springtime case against former tsarist officers. Naumov, Stalin i NKVD, 515–21. The last person connected with the Tukhachevsky trial, Marshal Blyukher, would be arrested on Oct. 22, 1938.

133. Na prieme, 220 (Sept. 21, 1937).

134. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 418–9. At a Jan. 24–25, 1938, gathering of NKVD central and regional bosses, several requested extensions for the mass operations. Yezhov goaded them on, indirectly invoking Stalin. Frinovsky interrupted the speech of Grigory Gorbach, Mironov’s successor as NKVD chief in Western Siberia, “Have you heard? Fifty-five thousand arrested! Bravo Gorbach! There’s a star [molodets]!” Both Yezhov and Frinovsky ominously warned that additional enemies were lurking in NKVD ranks. “We have provinces where the local GB apparatus has not been touched at all.” Danilov et al., Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni, V/ii: 548; Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 241–2 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 13, l. 358–9, 280); Pavliukov, Ezhov, 348–55.

135. Of the 204 special reports from the locales during the second half of July 1938 concerning the “struggle against counterrevolutionary elements,” Uspensky was responsible for more than thirty. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 243–5 (TSA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 6, d. 4, l. 31–4; op. 5, d. 63); Shapoval et al., ChK-GPU-NKVD, 173–4.

136. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 364–5 (TsA FSB, H-15301, t. 9, l. 100–2).

137. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 359–62; RGASPI, f. 560, op. 1, d. 10, l. 38 (Zhabokritsky).

138. Vasilev et al., Politicheskoe rukovodstvo Ukrainy, 35–47 (TsDAGOU, f . 1, d. 548, l. 1–105: June 13, 1938).

139. Slutsky was in the Little Corner once in 1935, three times in 1936, and twice in 1937 (the last time on July 5, for twenty minutes). Na prieme, 705.

140. Galina would later deny that this was her half-brother: V. Nechaev, “Vnuchka Stalina ‘o belykh piatniakh v istorii svoei sem’i,” Argumenty i fakty, Nov. 3, 1999.

141. Orlov, Secret History, 231–2, 237–8.

142. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 362–71 (citing TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo No. N-15302, III: 100, XI: 184, Frinovsky testimony, Uspensky testimony); Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 81–2 (citing TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo No. N-15301, t. 3, l. 117–23). Also in April 1938, an NKVD passport decree denied individuals the ability to determine their nationality and thus, from the regime’s point of view, to hide behind a false front: rather, the determination would be derived from the nationality of one’s parents. If mother and father were of different nations, both were inscribed in the passport. The decree aimed to “unmask” people, particularly in border regions, who had co-nationals abroad and were concealing their true nationality. Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 275, 294 (GARF, f. 7523, op. 65, d. 304, l. 1).

143. For example, the June 16, 1937, reception given by Latvia for its foreign minister would be attended by Molotov, Litvinov, Mikoyan, Budyonny and Yegorov, and Kerzhentsev. Pravda, June 18, 1937. On July 10, 1937, a breakfast given by the Swedish foreign minister would be attended by Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Chubar, Rukhimovich, and Bulganin. Pravda, July 11, 1937.

144. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 773, l. 1 (December 8, 1932); Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 159–60 (Nov. 4, 1934); Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia, 88.

145. Duggan, Fascist Voices, 319–24.

146. “Recently I have been dreaming about you a lot, perhaps, I don’t know, that is what stimulated me to write to you,” wrote Rakhil Dizik, a pedagogue of the Moscow region, in an undated letter, evidently from the 1930s, that mentioned her Communist Youth League membership and desire to get to know him better. Stalin returned her letter and accompanying photo with a note: “Comrade Unknown! I ask you to believe me that I have no desire to insult you . . . But all the same I must say that I am without the opportunity [no time!] to satisfy your wish. I wish you all the best.” “‘Tovarishch neznakomaia’: iz perepiski I. V. Stalina.”

147. Another service woman, who would be rumored to be Stalin’s mistress, the housekeeper Varvara Istomina [née Zhbychkina, b. 1917], would be assigned to the Near Dacha only in 1946. Deviatov et al., Blizhniaia, 384. The top service position at the Nearby Dacha was held by Matryona “Motya” Butuzova.

148. The occasion, Aug. 18, 1938, was Aviation Day, one of the country’s most important holidays. Rybin, Stalin v oktiabre, 18–9; Rybin, Stalin na fronte, 41; Turchenko, “Zhenschiny diktatora.” Rybin gives her name as Rusudan Jordaniya (Rybin, Stalin v oktiabre) and as Ruzadan Pachkoriya (Rybin, Stalin na fronte).

149. Vlasik had served in the tsarist army in the Great War, then in the Red Army, soon joining the Cheka, and worked under Pauker from 1926 in the operative department as part of the elite bodyguard corps. On Nov. 19, 1938 (in an appointment signed by both Yezhov and Beria), Vlasik took command of the First Department (bodyguards) in the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) (the Kremlin Commandantura of State Security went to N. K. Spiridonov). GARF, f, R-9401, op. 1, d. 1623, l. 157. On Dec. 27, 1938, Vlasik was promoted from senior major to commissar of state security, third level: GARF, f. R-9401, op. 57, d. 1625, l. 273, 76. Like his nemesis Beria, Vlasik would move into a private mansion on Moscow’s innermost ring road.

150. Elagin, Ukroshchenie isskustv, 328.

151. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 289 (TsA FSb, f. 3, op. 5, d. 82, l. 51), 304 (TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 391, l. 55).

152. Kuromiya and Pepłoński, “The Great Terror,” 665 (citing RGVA, f. 308k, op. 3, d. 456, l. 37, and Archiwum akt nowych Warsaw, Sztab Główny, 616/249: Dec. 10–13, 1937).

153. Japanese consulates remained at Vladivostok, Petrovavlovsk, Okha, and Aleksandrovsk; Manchukuo, Japan’s puppet state, maintained consulates in Chita and Blagoveshchensk.

154. Stephan, Russian Far East, 207.

155. Na prieme, 216 (July 28, 1937); Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 1,” 151.

156. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 16.

157. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 254.

158. Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 74–5. Petrov wrongly gives the date for Lyushkov in Rostov as 1938, instead of 1937.

159. On July 17, 1937, Balytsky wrote a confession to Yezhov of his involvement in a conspiracy, which Frinovsky forwarded to Stalin on July 21; Stalin underlined several passages and wrote: “discuss with Yezhov.” Balytsky had refused to confess only three days earlier. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 257–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 316, l. 8–12).

160. Na prieme, 216. Lyushkov was received in the company of Yezhov, Molotov, and Voroshilov. It was Lyushkov’s one recorded visit to the Little Corner.

161. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 234–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 321, l. 11; op. 58, d. 405, l. 175).

162. Pravda, Dec. 20, 1937; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 368–73 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254, l. 203–15).

163. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 79.

164. Ethnic Chinese had comprised 13 percent of the Russian Far East population in 1911, but would fall to under 1 percent as of 1939. Stephan, Russian Far East, 213; Coox, “L’Affaire Lyushkov,” 416. In 1938, the NKVD took inventory of all Chinese in the Soviet Far East with the idea of forcing anyone remaining to emigrate to Xinjiang or resettle in Kazakhstan. But on June 10, 1938, only those who wanted to relocate had to do so, and many Chinese under arrest were released and allowed to go to China. Yezhov informed the NKVD in the Soviet Far East that the USSR was following “friendly relations with China.” Pobol’ and Polian, Stalinskie deportatsii, 103–4.

165. Merritt, “Great Purges,” 456–7.

166. Not including Yagoda, who was general commissar (equivalent to marshal), there were three levels of commissar of state security: first rank, second rank, third rank. Frinovsky held a military rank [komkor]. Two of these state security commissars would survive to 1941. Naumov, Stalin i NKVD (2010), 74–5; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 426.

167. Yezhov supposedly directed Frinovsky to instruct Lyushkov to commit suicide if he were to be recalled to Moscow. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 160 (citing TsA FSB, ASD Frinovskogo, N-15301, t. 2: 173).

168. The second Order of Lenin came on Feb. 23, 1938, Red Army Day. Conquest, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police, 90.

169. Svetlanin, Dal’nevostochnyi zagovor, 92 (referring to a conversation with Blyukher’s political adjutant Semyon Kladko, whom the author ran into in Moscow in mid-Aug. 1938). On July 10, 1937, Stalin received a letter from Blyukher addressed to Voroshilov, in which the Far Eastern marshal rebuked those who had organized his meeting in July 1936 with visiting communications commissar Rykov, blaming the arrested former Far Eastern party boss Kartvelishvili-Lavrentyev. But Blyukher also attacked Vareikis for passing on different information to the Center. Stalin kept Blyukher’s self-justification in his personal archive. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 205–6 (APRF, d. 313, l. 146–8).

170. Blyukher, “S. Vasiliem Konstantinovichem Bliukherom,” 80.

171. Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 1,” 158.

172. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 422–4 (citing TsA FSB, seldstvennoe delo N-15302, t. 10, l. 169, 175), 428.

173. Haslam, Threat from the East, 94 (citing DDF, 2e série, IX: 613–5, May 3, 1938).

174. The despot elaborated “that it was the ultimate objective of the Japanese to capture the whole of Siberia as far as Lake Baikal,” yet he made clear that “the Soviet Union would not, however, intervene in the war.” U.S. ambassador William Bullitt, relating a conversation with Sun Fo (the envoy who spoke to Stalin): FRUS, 1938, III: 165.

175. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 58, l. 21–4, 33–4 (May 14, 1938).

176. Soviet Naval Commissar Pyotr Smirnov, who co-signed the warning, was sent to the Soviet Far East at this time. Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 2,” 87.

177. Svetlanin, Dal’nevostochnyi zagovor, 105. Between May 28 and June 8, 1938, the Main Military Council in Moscow, with Stalin in attendance, resolved, among multiple agenda items in connection with the Far Eastern Army, “to purge the command-political cadres of enemies of the people, doubtful and morally debased elements.” All ethnic Germans, Poles, Latvians, Estonians, Koreans, Lithuanians, Romanians, Turks, Hungarians, and Bulgarians in the Far Eastern Army’s ranks were to be immediately discharged. Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 84–5.

178. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 427 (according to the then head of bodyguards, Dagin).

179. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 160–1 (citing TsA FSB, ASD Frinovskogo, N-15301, t. 2: 179).

180. It was said that Lyushkov had dispatched his twenty-seven-year-old wife, Nina, and their eleven-year-old adopted daughter, who needed a medical operation, to Moscow, with a secret plan for them to escape to Poland by train; to signal this plan was working, Nina was to send her regards by telegram. The telegram supposedly arrived. Whether this actually happened or was an invention by Lyushkov to put himself in a better light for having tried to save rather than abandon his family is unclear. It was also said that the Japanese used their “sources” to try to trace the fate of wife and daughter but without success; Lyushkov never saw or heard from his wife and daughter again. (His mother and sister were also arrested.) Nina was sentenced to eight years and incarcerated in a camp in Karaganda (Akmolinsk), survived, and was released in summer 1946. Coox, “L’Affaire Lyushkov,” 410; Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 129.

181. Na prieme, 237; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 161; Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 110n1.

182. RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 102, l. 54–6 (Soviet intelligence translation of Lyushkov’s remarks); Pavliukov, Ezhov, 429–31; Iakovlev et al., Reabilitatsiia: politicheskie protsessy, 183.

183. Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 2,” 83.

184. Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 1,” 176.

185. Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 1,” 153.

186. Coox, “Lesser of Two Hells, Part 2,” 79–80, 86–8. According to Lyushkov, in March 1938, Stalin had even dispatched an envoy—known under the code name Major Yartsev—to investigate the possibility of repositioning the Pacific Fleet and bringing Sakhalin, where Japanese companies managed economic concessions, to a state of full military readiness, including the building of new air strips, which would be conspicuous. It seems that Japanese sea, air, and ground forces were to be lured to defending Southern Sakhalin. Yartsev was Boris Rybkin (see chap. 12, below).

187. Kahn, Codebreakers, 637; Goldman, “Spy Who Saved the Soviets.”

188. According to Coox, for strictly military matters the Japanese preferred the information of artillery officer Major Frontyarmar Frantsevich, of the 36th Motorized Infantry Division, who had defected to the Japanese by motor car from Outer Mongolia two weeks before Lyushkov, on May 29, 1938. Coox, “L’Affaire Lyushkov,” 418.

189. “I did not want to leave my country any more than a fish wants to leave water, but the delinquent activity of criminal people has cast me up like a fish on ice,” Orlov wrote in a letter for Yezhov and Stalin hand-delivered to the Soviet embassy in Paris after he was safely gone. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 308–12 (letter to Yezhov from NKVD file).

190. In 1938, a book in Spanish, Espionage in Spain (Barcelona: Ediciones Unidad), was published under the name Max Rieger, a member of Spain’s Socialist party, which brought together vast incriminating materials on the POUM; it was quietly translated into Russian with a different title: Spanish Trotskyites in Franco’s Service. The secret materials had not been assembled by the rank and file leftist, but under the direction of the NKVD’s Orlov, who had assigned a journalist to write the text. POUM members were said to have been discovered in Franco’s intelligence service after the capture of a top Franco agent. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 140–1, 144.

191. According to the official historical essays on Soviet intelligence, Orlov never divulged to the West the secrets he knew. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 146n1.

192. Merritt, “Great Purges,” 500 (citing “Statistika antiarmeiskogo terrora,” Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv, 1997, no. 2: 105–12). Lyushkov told his interrogators that between July 1937 and May 1938, more than 4,000 Far Eastern Army personnel—1,200 officers and political commissars and 3,000 junior officers—were arrested, including almost all of Blyukher’s immediate subordinates. Stephan, Russian Far East, 220 (citing U.S. Army Department, “The Interrogation of Lyushkov,” frame 0982).

193. Stephan, Russian Far East, 234.

194. Kubeev, “Obrechennyi na kazn’,” 93–4; Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 133–4; Coox, “L’Affaire Lyushkov,” 412.

195. A large-scale operation at Lake Khasan appeared in the Japanese army’s plan for 1938. Savin, “O podgotovke Iaponii k napadeniiu na SSSR.”

196. Coox, Anatomy of a Small War, 3–9; Coox, Nomonhan, 124; Ikuhiko, “Japanese-Soviet Confrontation,” 140–57.

197. Solov’ev and Chugnuov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, doc. 623 (Colonel Fedotov).

198. This would be Lyushkov’s one and only intentional public appearance. He would publish an “open letter to Stalin” in the Japanese periodical Kaizo (April 1939). Kaizo, April 1939: 106–25, excerpted in Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 681–6. For a detailed Japanese report on the July 13 public appearance, see Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 148–51 (TsKhIDK, f. 1, op. 3,4 d. 4601, l. 210–6).

199. Solov’ev and Chugunov, Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 591–3; “Prikaz narodnogo komissara oborony Soiuza SSR no. 0040 (4 sentiabria 1938).”

200. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 161–2. See also Svetlanin, Dal’nevostochnyi zagovor, 124–6.

201. Far Eastern Affairs, 1990, no. 3: 176–84 (Ivan Minka); Merritt, “Great Purges,” 513–5 (citing RGVA, f. 35083, op. 1, d. 3, l. 35, 67; f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1084, l. 37–8; RGASPI, f. 71, op. 25, d. 359, l. 1–2), 526 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1136, 1. 10; f. 35083, op. 1, d. 28, 11. 113–4).

202. On July 20, 1938, the Japanese ambassador, Mamoru Shigemitsu, paid a call on Litvinov and the two clashed sharply over maps; Litvinov also complained of penetration of Soviet embassy territory in Tokyo by a person who then flung leaflets: Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 369–71 (July 22, 1938).

203. A published Soviet assessment noted Japanese strength in traditional infantry, a low level of mechanization, rendering them unable to mount breakthrough operations, and a domestic Japanese aircraft industry that, despite access to foreign prototypes, was relatively weak by top international standards. The Soviets had a high opinion of Japanese prowess on the sea. Japanese cruisers were state of the art in speed and firepower; they even carried more torpedo tubes than their American counterparts. New Japanese battleships, moreover, were coming off the stocks. Shvede, Voennyi flot Iaponii, 31–2. This assessment would be maintained in the next edition: Voenno-morskoi flot Iaponii (1939).

204. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 252 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 67, l. 28).

205. Coox, Nomonhan, 123–4; Haslam, Threat from the East, 113–4.

206. Coox, Anatomy of a Small War, 57–70; Coox, Nomonhan, 134–5. Sorge would report that “this incident will not lead to a war between the Soviet Union and Japan.” Volkov, “Legendy i deistvitel’nost o Rikharde Zorge,” 100, referring to Toshito Obi, Zoruge jiken, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1962–71), I: no page number.

207. Grebennik, Khasanskii dnevnik, 54–7.

208. Coox, Anatomy of a Small War.

209. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 146–7 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22383, d. 3, l. 185–6).

210. Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 87–9

211. Back on July 20, 1936, the then head of Soviet military intelligence (Uritsky) had written to Voroshilov about Sorge concerning a review of intelligence, which had indicated that German-Japanese negotiations for a military alliance were bogged down because of Germany’s desire not to force the issue. Stalin had written on it: “In my view, this is a disorientation emanating from German circles.” Uritsky explained to Voroshilov that the inside knowledge had come primarily from Sorge, who “usually produced good quality information and not infrequently genuine secret documentary material. For example, we have now received from this intelligence operative a report of the German military attaché in Tokyo (sent to you separately). We were able to verify the genuineness of this report, having received analogous documents directly from the German general staff.” On the basis of additional materials, including decoded telegraph traffic between Berlin and Tokyo, Uritsky concluded firmly that Sorge was correct. “In presenting these interpretations and materials to you, I request your instructions about their further forwarding to comrade Stalin.” Voroshilov’s response is unknown. (Uritsky, of course, was later executed as a foreign spy.) Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 141–2 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 3108, d. 3, l. 239–41).

212. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 273 (citing TsGASA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1140, l. 18–22); Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 327–8; Kortunova, “1938–I,” 175.

213. Shigemitsu made the suggestion to Litvinov in person on the evening of Aug. 4, 1938: Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 373–5. The next day Soviet intelligence reported to Moscow that Kung Hsianghsi of the Chinese secret service, a stogie-smoking seventy-fifth generation descendant of Confucius, had pledged China’s unconditional support to the USSR in the conflict with Japan. Ganin, who met Kung and wrote the report, inquired whether he should convey the information he had received to the Soviet foreign affairs commissariat. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennai, VII/i: 97–9 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1114, l. 324–8).

214. Sorge repeated that appraisal on Aug. 10: Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 91–2; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 147–8 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22383, d. 3, l. 198–9).

215. DVP SSSR, XXI: 433-4 (Aug. 11, 1938).

216. Coox, Nomonhan, 138 (quoting Inada), 140–1.

217. MacKinnon, “Tragedy of Wuhan”; MacKinnon, Wuhan.

218. DGFP, series C, VI: 337–8, 396–7; von Weizsäcker, Memoirs, 126–7; Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 126–7.

219. Cherepanov, Zapiski voenno sovetnika, 323–3; Kaliagin, Po neznakomym dorogam, 92n, 282.

220. “Problems of War Strategy” (Nov. 6, 1938), reprinted in Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings, 269–85 (at 269, 273).

221. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 76–7.

222. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties, 47–51; Coox, Nomonhan, 132.

223. Blyukher, “S Vasiliem Konstantinovichem Bliukherom,” 84–7. See also Erickson, Soviet High Command, 498–9.

224. Konev, when queried after World War II, would judge Blyukher a man of the past unsuited to modern warfare. “Besedy s marshalom Sovetskogo Soiuza I. S. Konevym,” in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 304–5.

225. One example was Mikhail Viktorov (Novoselov), newly named as NKVD chief in Sverdlovsk, who turned up a shocking state of affairs, even by standards of the terror, in the work of his predecessor (Dmitriev). Viktorov freed a large number of prisoners and sent Lubyanka a long analysis of local falsifications of cases. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 444–5 (citing TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo no. R-24334, t. 1, l. 67–8). Viktorov would be arrested on Jan. 22, 1939, and sentenced to fifteen years; he died in a camp in 1950.

226. RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1075, l. 57–63.

227. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 229.

228. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 86 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 364, l. 155). Chubar would be arrested on July 4, 1938, and executed on Feb. 26, 1939; Beria would get his dacha.

229. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 538–41.

230. According to the memoirs of D. N. Sukhanov (b. 1904), an aide to Malenkov, dated March 6, 1993, Stalin had asked Malenkov for files on people who could be appointed to replace Yezhov as commissar of state security. Sukhanov claims he looked through the nomenklatura lists and selected as the finalists Beria, Kruglov, Pegov, Kuznetsov, and Gusarov. Malenkov’s son said seven names were submitted to Stalin, who chose Beria. Hoover Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 13, excerpted Sukhanov memoirs (dated March 6, 1993); Malenkov, O moem otse, 34. Pavliukov has Malenkov asking his aide V. A. Donskoi to compile the list, not Sukhanov.

231. Another report (July 21, 1938) outlined the dubious leadership style and methods of Beria and Dekanozov. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 164–5, citing APRF, f. 57, op. 1, d. 264; f. 3, op. 24, d. 463, l. 236–7. Rumors circulated that Yezhov ordered Beria’s arrest in July 1938, and that Beria was tipped off and flew to Moscow to see Stalin. The rumors were bunk. Jansen and Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner, 149. See also Gol’dshtein, Tochka opory, II: 34–5 and Knight, Beria, 87–8.

232. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 355–9 (RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 265, l. 16–26ob.).

233. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 452, citing TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo, N-15302, t. 7, l. 180.

234. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 451, citing TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo, N-15302, t. 10, l. 163; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 163, citing TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 316–7.

235. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 179–80. Beria might have told Khrushchev afterward; Khrushchev might have been invited to the meal afterward at the dacha and heard there.

236. According to Malenkov’s son, Stalin phoned Malenkov: “You wrote this yourself?” “Yes, I wrote it.” “This is what you think?” “Yes, I think this.” Malenkov, O moem otse, 33.

237. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 179–80.

238. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 4, l. 94–5; Knight, Beria, 88.

239. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 165, citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 92, l. 23.

240. Of course, by letting good slave laborers go, the camps would be left with the worst, rendering them unable to fulfill their assigned economic tasks. Vostryshev, Moskva stalinskaia, 376; the politburo decree would be issued on June 10, 1939 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 25, l. 54–5), and formalized by the Supreme Soviet presidium on June 15.

241. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 167 (no citation). Frinovsky’s advice was for Yezhov to stop moping and prevent Beria from implanting all his people in the NKVD. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 457–8, TsA FSB, sledstvennoe delo, no. N-15302, 1. 10, l. 59; RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 265, l. 24.

242. Frinovsky testified that on Aug. 27–28, 1938, Yevdokimov, Yezhov’s deputy in water transport, called and asked him to come to his apartment. “Verify whether Zakovsky has been shot and whether all the Yagoda people have been shot, because with Beria’s arrival the investigations of these cases could be resumed and these cases could be turned against us.” Zakovsky, Lev Mironov, and others had been shot on Aug. 26–27. http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/193_dok/19390413beria.php (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 373, l. 3–44: protocol of Frinovsky interrogation, Beria to Stalin, April 11, 1939:); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 247 (TsA FSB, ASD p-4406). Yevdokimov would be arrested Nov. 9, 1938.

243. Rybin, Riadom so Stalinym, 73. See also Medvedev, Let History Judge, 587.

244. “People have completely stopped trusting each other,” Mikhail Prishvin, the writer, noted in his diary in Oct. 1937. “They go about their work and do not even whisper to one another. There is a huge mass of people raised up from poor social backgrounds who have nothing to whisper about: they just think ‘That’s how it should be.’ Others isolate themselves to whisper, or study the art of silence.” Prishvin, Dnevniki, IX: 762–3.

245. The incident took place in summer 1937. Zaporozhets, “Iz vospominaniia,” 532–8 (the old friend, Zaporozhets’ stepfather, was Pavel Dorofeyev).

246. Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 108.

247. Pis’mennyi, “Ia iskrenne veril Stalinu . . . ,” 10.

248. Scott, Behind the Urals, 195. See also Rittersporn, “Omnipresent Conspiracy,” 112 (citing Smolensk party archives).

249. Davies, Popular Opinion, 124.

250. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 995, l. 17 (Feb. 3, 1938). “As a rule, not one operational meeting, which were called often in Rostov, took place without a grandiose drinking bout, a total debauch, lasting sometimes twenty-four hours or more,” complained one subordinate of the North Caucasus boss Yevdokimov. “There were cases when we found some operatives only on the third or fourth day somewhere in a tavern or with a prostitute.” In Kazakhstan, the predecessor of NKVD chief Vasily Karutsky had actually been removed for corruption; Karutsky, a heavy drinker, maintained a harem (his wife committed suicide). Balytsky in Ukraine cohabitated with the wives of subordinates, emulating tsarist-era lords of the manor who slept with the wives of house serfs and field hands. Tumshis, “Eshche raz o kadrakh chekistov,” 190–1 (I. Ia. Ilin); Shapoval and Zolotar’ov, Vsevolod, 268, 337; Iakovenko, Agnessa, 55. Prime objects for liaisons were the wives of those arrested who sought information about their husbands or other favors, and were given false promises.

251. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 22–4. Shreider claims he and his wife were frequent guests at Ostrovsky’s dacha.

252. Afinogenov, Dnevniki, 481. Afinogenov had been criticized for excessively complex characters lacking obvious heroism, and in April 1937 he was expelled from the writers’ union. Despite his reprieve in 1938, his plays were mothballed. Literaturnaia gazeta, May 1, 1937; Hellbeck, “Writing the Self in the Time of Terror,” 69–93.

253. Stalin never cared for the popular front, but long-standing popular-frontists such as Dimitrov, Manuilsky, and Kuusinen survived, while anti–Popular Frontists, such as Kun, Knorin, and Pyatnitsky, were destroyed. Stalin badmouthed Manuilsky (“strictly a lightweight”) to Dimitrov, while using him to maintain surveillance on Dimitrov. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 105 (April 26, 1939).

254. “Muzhestvo protiv bezzakoniia,” Problemy mira i sotsializma, 1989, no. 7: 89–91 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 60, l. 1–5). Varga was Jewish (at a time when Jews were being targeted), not a youth (at a time when long-time functionaries were targeted), and had once associated with the “renegade” Kautsky. See also Duda, Jenő Varga; Mommen, Stalin’s Economist.

255. Yegorov had been removed as deputy defense commissar on Jan. 25, 1938. That same day, Pavel Dybenko was removed as commander of the Leningrad military district, soon transferred to the forestry commissariat, then, on Feb. 26, 1938, arrested. He was accused not only of the customary espionage but of using state funds for alcohol-fueled orgies, and, on July 29, 1938, was executed. By contrast, on March 2, 1938, at a confrontation with the arrested Belov, Graynov, Grinko, and Sedyakin, Yegorov was said to have performed well. Still, his wife was pronounced a Polish spy and he was expelled from the Central Committee although not arrested. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 465–6 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 330, l. 112–3), 456–7 (l. 113), 490 (d. 338, l. 4). Every officer acquired a damning dossier as a traitor, including Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Zhukov, and Vasilevsky, but they were not touched. Cherushev, “Nevinovnykh ne byvaet . . . ,” 382–3.

256. Inostrannaia literatura, 1988, no. 4: 172.

257. Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 429. Ehrenburg, in 1939, was listed as politically suspect, along with Babel and Pasternak. Babichenko, Literaturnyi front, 29–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 1, l. 39–40: July 1939), 38 (l. 38: July 26, 1939). “Koltsov along with his boon companion Malraux made contact with the local Trotskyite organization POUM,” Marti (general commissar of the international brigades in Spain) wrote to Stalin. “If one takes into account Koltsov’s long-time sympathy for Trotsky, these contacts do not carry an accidental character.” Marti added that the “so-called civil wife of Koltsov Maria Osten . . . is, I personally have no doubt whatsoever, a secret agent of German intelligence.” Gromov, Stalin, 319. On Koltsov’s recall, see also Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 215 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 127, l. 27), 312 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 127, l. 33–4: Mekhlis to Stalin Nov. 12, 1937); Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 486–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 754, l. 82: Nov. 6), 487n1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 71, d. 46, l. 52); Efimov, Mikhail Kol’tsov, 114.

258. TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 262, l. 57–60. Stalin had had a sarcastic note about Bedny’s long antifascist poem, “Struggle or Die,” read to the poet in July 1937. Bedny kept trying, sending Mekhlis a poem for Pravda about the anniversary of the Kirov murder, which Mekhlis forwarded to Stalin and Molotov with a recommendation of rejection, and another about beating enemies, which Stalin called “weak.” Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 476–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 112; d. 130, l. 100; d. 702, l. 133; l. 113–21), 481 (f. 82, op. 2, d. 984, l. 50: Oct. 20, 1937; 496–7: f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 134–6: Jan. 26, 1938). Without a paid job, Bedny was forced to sell his spectacular private library, which he had been assembling since his university days; Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich found out and bought it for the State Literary Museum. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, 184. In Aug. 1938, Bedny was expelled from the party and the Union of Soviet Writers. Gronsky claimed that Stalin confidentially “took an exercise book out of his safe. Written in it were some rather unflattering remarks about the denizens of the Kremlin. I said that the handwriting was not Demyan’s. Stalin replied that these were the sentiments of the slightly tipsy poet, taken down by a certain journalist.” Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 155. See also Gromov, Stalin, 165–6. The “journalist” may have been Mikhail Prezent, who was arrested and had kept a diary, writing in it that the literati joked, “Trotsky decided to commit suicide, so Trotsky sent Stalin a letter challenging him to a socialist competition.” Stalin underlined the passage. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69 (diary); excerpts in Sokolov, Narkomy strakha, 24–37. Prezent died in prison from a lack of insulin.

259. Tolstoy, Tolstoys.

260. Litvin, “‘Chto zhe nam delat’?,” I: 505–27 (at 509, 521–3).

261. Poretsky, Our Own People, 214–6.

262. Duff, Time for Spies; West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, 103–26.

263. Lewin, “Grappling with Stalinism,” 308–9; Khlevniuk, “Stalinist ‘Party Generals,’” 60.

264. Bagirov remained party boss in Azerbaijan and Grigor Arutyunov in Armenia. Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 278; Knight, Beria, 89.

265. Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 135–41 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 46, l. 183–90).

266. Blyukher, “S. Vasiliem Konstantinovichem Bliukherom,” 82–3. The same “take a holiday in Sochi” approach had been ominously suggested to Nikolai Kuznetsov when he returned from Spain in Sept. 1937; Kuznetsov survived to get a new assignment.

267. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 103–8 (TsAMO, f. 2, op. 795437, d. 1, l. 35–44). Gorbach, who replaced Lyushkov as NKVD chief for the Soviet Far East, wrote a report to Beria (dated Sept. 15, 1938), which was forwarded to Stalin and Voroshilov, that echoed the blame for Blyukher. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost organov,” 332 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 883, l. 100–3).

268. Na prieme, 239. Molotov and Zhdanov had left at midnight (Sept. 12) and were called back.

269. Goldbstab complained to Stalin: “I am ready to yield this high honor if the artist Gelovani captures this genius of humanity better than I,” adding the names of many people who “openly told me that I convey your image more truthfully, sincerely, and softly.” Markova, “Litso vraga,” 98 (citing RGALI, f. 2456, op. 1, d. 345, l. 88).

270. Bernshtein, Mikhail Gelovani, no pagination; Bernshtein, “V roli Stalina.” See also Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, 208.