Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

271. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 73, 181.

272. Petrov, “Rodos.”

273. Rodos, Ia syn palacha.

274. Mozokhin, Pravo na represii, 217.

275. Tepliakov, “Sibir’” (citing testimony of L. F. Bashtakov, Jan. 1954); Sanina, “R. I. Eikhe.” Eihe had been transferred from Western Siberia to USSR commissar of agriculture in Oct. 1937 (replacing the arrested Mikhail Chernov) and was arrested April 29, 1938.

276. Gazarian, “Etno ne dolzhno povtorit’sia” (1989, no. 2), 63.

277. “I know him from 1923, when he was deputy chairman of the Cheka of Georgia,” Merkulov would write of Beria. “He was then all of twenty-four years old but that post already at that time did not satisfy him. He aimed higher. In general he considered all people beneath himself, especially those to whom he was subordinated.” Merkulov pointed out that Beria had studiously compiled a record of shortcomings everywhere in his domain, which he used to discredit officials who stood in his way around, and that he badmouthed other officials to his tight circle of subordinates, but when someone was powerful, Beria became obsequious. The second anyone fell under a cloud, however, Beria became rude. “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28); Merkulov to Khrushchev, re-sent to Malenkov, July 21, 1953), 96–104 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28: Merkulov to Malenkov, July 23).

278. Loginov, Teni Stalina, 31 (Georgii A. Egnatashvili).

279. Also on Oct. 22, 1938, the Far Eastern territory was subdivided into two provinces, and Stalin had Nikolai Pegov, a student at the Moscow Industrial Academy, sent as the new party boss of the chunk whose capital remained Khabarovsk. Pegov, whom Malenkov had placed on the shortlist of candidates to take over as first deputy USSR NKVD chief, was instructed to gather five hundred Communists from the Moscow party organization to bring with him; he barely managed to round up a few dozen, including his brother. “Our whole life then was illuminated by sunshine, joy, and happiness,” Pegov would recall. He became a member of the local troika responsible for the still ongoing conveyor-belt mass arrests. Pegov, Dalekoe-blizkoe, 7; Stephan, Russian Far East, 216.

280. Blyukher died on Nov. 9, 1938. He would be convicted and sentenced to death posthumously, on March 10, 1939. Dushen’kin, Ot soldata do marshala. His wife received eight years in the Karaganda camp complex.

281. At the Sverdlovsk transit prison, Galina Serebryakova, whose husband, Sokolnikov, had been executed in the 1936 Trotskyite trial, was looking out upon a gaggle of fellow prisoners arrested for being “a member of the family of a traitor to the motherland,” when a companion nudged her and asked if she knew the identity of a tall, thinning woman a short distance away sitting on a sack of her belongings. She did not. “What? That’s Yekaterina Ivanovna Kalinina[-Lorberg], the wife of Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin . . . Yes, she herself. Her husband is our president.” Although married to Kalinina-Lorberg since 1906, Kalinin, since 1924, had essentially been living with his nanny-housekeeper, Alexandra Gorchakova. Serebryakova approached and told Kalinina to remain firm, for Stalin had been duped but would figure things out and release them all. Serebriakova, “Smerch,” 335. Serebryakova, arrested while in exile, would be sentenced to eight years but serve eleven. In 1939 Kalinina would be sentenced to fifteen years; she would be released in 1945.

282. From Irkutsk, Shcherbakov had written to Zhadnov (June 18, 1937), his former superior, that “all leaders of the province soviet departments, the heads of provincial party departments and their deputies (with the exception of two so far), and the lower level province party officials, a number of party secretaries of the district party, the leaders of economic organizations, the directors of factories, [and so on] have been arrested. Thus, there are no functionaries in the party or the soviet apparatuses. It is difficult to imagine something like this. Now they have begun to dig into the NKVD.” Shcherbakov begged Zhdanov for cadres from Leningrad. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodsto, 363 (RGASPi, f. 88, op. 1, d. 1045, l. 1–5); Na prieme, 212.

283. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 78–80; Ponomarev, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, 47–50; Pravda, March 12, 1991 (Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shcherbakov, the son); Na prieme, 212, 234 (April 4, 1938), 244 (Nov. 4, 1938). The Shcherbakov family lived in the same building—Granovsky, 3—as Stalin’s son Yakov; occasionally, Yakov and his wife, Yulia, paid visits to Shcherbakov and his wife, Vera. Ugarov had been the other person besides Shcherbakov whom Stalin had favored for the writers’ union secretary in 1934. Stavsky, at the Soviet Union of Writers, sent denunciation after denunciation of various writers; finally, Andreyev wrote to Stalin in 1938 that Stavsky had to be removed. The NKVD listened in on the phone conversations of Fadeyev, Pavel Yudin, and F. Panferov to assess their reactions to the move. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 412–3 (RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 17, l. 105), 775–6n12 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op, 5, d. 262, l. 19–35).

284. Kennan wrote that Stalin was “a man of incredible criminality . . . without pity or mercy: a man in whose entourage no one was ever safe: a man who . . . was most dangerous of all to those who were his closest collaborators in crime, because he liked to be the sole custodian of his own secrets.” Conversely, Rigby argued that Stalin was not “a disloyal patron.” Of the ten voting members of the politburo as of 1934, one was assassinated (Kirov), one committed suicide (Orjonikidze), and one died of a heart attack (Kuibyshev), but only one was executed—Kosior. Three candidate members from 1934 through 1937 were executed (Chubar [promoted to full member in 1935], Eihe, and Yezhov), while Mikoyan and Petrovsky survived. Kennan, Russia and the West, 254–5; Rigby, “Was Stalin a Disloyal Patron?”

285. The Zhdanov-Malenkov rivalry would perform a similar function of each holding the other in check. Harris, “Origins of the Conflict.”

286. Beria’s son Sergo recalled that his father noticed he was being spied upon by subordinates, who, he said, reported directly to Zhdanov in Moscow. Beriia, Moi otets, 56. In Moscow who was watching Beria for Stalin remains unclear—those sources remain classified, if they survived.

287. Nabokov, for the English translation, later explicitly called his fictional dictator a composite. Nabokov, Tyrants Destroyed, 2.

288. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 4.

289. Graziosi, “New Soviet Archival Sources,” 34. See also Priestland, Politics of Mobilization. Some scholars see this as calculated manipulation of war scares and threats. Rieber, Struggle for Supremacy, 92, 98–9. Others assert that Stalin could not help himself. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World.

290. Without explaining where Stalin acquired the wherewithal to destroy the political machines with ease, Getty continues to insist not on a hypercentralized but a decentralized Soviet system whereby the central apparatus detested its supposed dependence on the backward clan dynamics of local party machines. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror. See also Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications, which holds up 1938 as evidence of Stalin’s defeat.

291. Cherushev, Udar po svoim, 109–10.

292. Overall, between May 1935 and May 1941, Stalin would convoke twelve Central Committee plenums, a single party congress, and one party conference, but more than forty major state banquets. That compares, in the ten-year period from 1924–34, with four party congresses, five party conferences, and forty-three plenums. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 382, 429–32. See also Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 201–11.

293. “Vospominaia Velikuiu otechestvennuiu,” 54; Emel’ianov, Na poroge voiny, 85; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia Iosifa Stalina, 424–5 (Brontman diary); Pravda, Oct. 28, 1938. On other occasions of use of the Facets, see Pravda, April 18 and Oct. 28, 1938, and June 5 and Nov. 5, 1939.

294. Gromov, Stalin, 147; SSSR na stroike, 1938, no. 9.

295. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 209. In Feb. 1938, when Detizdat wanted to publish Smirnova’s Tales of Stalin’s Childhood, he told them to burn it and not indulge a “cult of the personality, vozhdi, infallible heroes,” which he condemned once again as an “SR theory.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1121, l. 24.

296. Stalin’s best biographers and analysts have well understood that he combined Marxism-Leninism with imperial Russian traditions. Tucker characterized Stalin’s approach as “imperial-communist”; Erik van Ree, as “revolutionary patriotism”; Arfon Rees, as “revolutionary Machiavellism.” Tucker, “Stalin and Stalinism,” 1–16; van Ree, Political Thought; Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin.

297. For Shakespeare on the medieval Scottish tyrant Macbeth, see Frye, “Hitler, Stalin, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”

298. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 499 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 339, l. 199: March 13, 1938).

299. “I cannot not inform you about the abuses and nightmares in the activities of the NKVD organs in Abkhazia that I personally saw and, in truth, in writing about them, I risk my life, but I write in honor of justice and love of humanity,” Mikhail Saliya (b. 1908) wrote to Stalin (Aug. 3, 1938). “A citizen is arrested following a denunciation, supposedly as a counterrevolutionary and is charged as such, and when he begins to protest his innocence, then he is subjected to ‘repression.’ First, he is stripped naked and placed on the floor, ‘fighters’ arrive with knouts in hand, about four of them, and begin to beat him, the combat lasts until the victim loses consciousness, he gets a breather of about forty-five minutes, for the ‘fighters’ too get tired from the combat, he is given ammonia under the nose, to revive him, then his whole body is soaked in water, and the four people begin to beat him again with all their might, the person gives off inhuman sounds, begs, that he is not guilty, but they are immovable. The person loses consciousness again, collapsed without memory, ‘the fighters’ among themselves say, ‘oh, the scoundrel, he is simulating.’ They tie paper or a rag in his mouth and continue beating him until he confesses that he is a counterrevolutionary.” The rest of the description details rotting flesh ripped off by the blows and covered with flies. Saliya noted that this was not personal (none of his relatives had been arrested), and gave his address. His letter would serve as the pretext for an investigation, after Beria had been transferred to Moscow, which would reveal that a livestock pen water storage bin had been converted into a solitary confinement cell in early 1938 in the Sukhum internal prison and kept filled several inches high with water for interrogations. Stalin notified Georgian party officials (Nov. 14, 1938) of a Central Committee decision to investigate all top NKVD operatives in Georgia during the next three months, and demanded to be informed of all results and actions. Pauchiliya was arrested in Oct. 1938, fired from the NKVD in May 1939, and returned to the Dynamo sports club. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 355–58 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 1–i otdel, f. 6, d.5520, tom 1, l. 28–30), 361–73 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 1–i otdel, f. 6, d.5520, tom 1, l. 15–24: Oct. 10, 1938), 375–8 (2–i otdel, f. 14, op. 12, d. 256, l. 142–5), 378 (d. 363, l. 146: Nov. 15), 403–9 (1–i otdel, f. 6, d. 5520, tom 3, l. 73–6); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe, 604–6 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 80–3: Nov. 14, 1938).

300. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 339.

PART III. THREE-CARD MONTE

1. “Prime Minister on the Issues,” The Times, Sept. 28, 1938: 10. See also Chamberlain, Struggle for Peace.

2. DDF, 2e série, XI: 685 (Delmas to Daladier, Sept. 28, 1938).

3. Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini. The duce would pass his own anti-Semitic laws and boast to his mistress (Aug. 5, 1938), “I’ve been a racist since ’21. I don’t know why people think I am imitating Hitler, he wasn’t even born. It makes me laugh.” Incensed at reports of the illegal miscegenation in Italy’s Africa colonies, he added, “I need to teach these Italians about race, so that they don’t create half castes and don’t ruin what is beautiful in us.” Petacci, Mussolini segreto, 391: 2.

4. Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini, 27–41. Stalin had an undercover agent report via Poland on the Hitler-Mussolini meeting, and underlined passages related to their reported joint plans for an aggression against the USSR. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 533–41 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 187, l. 28–44).

5. The duce had once told the British ambassador in Rome that Hitler was “a dreamer” and suffered “from an inferiority complex and a bitter sense of injustice.” Robertson, Mussolini as Empire Builder, 57 (citing DBFP, 2nd series, V: 674–5: R. Graham to V. Wellesley, Oct. 11, 1933). Back in July 1934, British foreign secretary Simon wrote to the PM (MacDonald), “We must keep out of trouble in central Europe at all costs . . . There are circumstances in which Italy might move troops into Austria. There are no circumstances in which we would ever dream of doing so.” Aldcroft, “Versailles Legacy.”

6. Mallett, “Fascist Foreign Policy.”

7. Low, Years of Wrath, no pagination.

8. Speer, Spandauer Tagebücher, 199.

9. “That politics is an art there is no doubt,” Mussolini had observed in a speech in 1926 at an art exhibit. “‘Political,’ like artistic, creation is a slow elaboration and a sudden divination. At a certain moment the artist creates with inspiration, the politician with decision.” Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 15, citing Mussolini, Scritti e discorsi, V: 279.

10. Dilks makes the further point that the full depravity of Hitler and his regime was neither understood nor evident in 1938. Dilks, “‘We Must Hope for the Best,’” 318, 347.

11. Honig, “Totalitarianism and Realism.”

12. Litvinov, too, rejected a Soviet solo defense of the Versailles order. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 153–4.

13. By March 18, 1938, Churchill was writing, in an article entitled “The Austrian Eye-Opener,” that “the scales of illusion have fallen from many eyes.” “Friendship with Germany” (Sept. 17, 1937), reprinted in Churchill, Step by Step, 141–4 (at 143–4), 192–5.

14. Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 13.

15. “Three bluffers united are much more powerful than three bluffers playing each for his own hand,” wrote Freda Utley. “Germany, Japan, and Italy stand together, possessing neither the necessary economic strength nor political stability for a real war, yet able to blackmail the democratic powers which possess such strength.” Utley, “Germany and Japan.” Stalin, on Stomonyakov’s recommendation, decided to notify Italy that the Anti-Comintern Pact was not an act of friendship toward the USSR. Sevost’ianov, Moskva-Rim, 436–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 692, l. 78, 80), 438 (l. 37). See also DVP SSSR, XVI: 494–6.

16. Eberhardt, Ethnic Groups and Population Changes, 111–36; Glassheim, Noble Nationalists; Heimann, Czechoslovakia.

17. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1144, l. 39–41. Prague was sharing intelligence with Moscow; Stalin had his own spy in the Czechoslovak general staff. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 277 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 210, l. 257; op. 5, d. 63, l. 123; APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 32, l. 139).

18. Brook-Shepherd, Anschluss; Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss; von Schuschnigg, Brutal Takeover; Low, Anschluss Movement.

19. Hitler privately judged Halifax “a clever politician who fully supported Germany’s claims.” After Eden resigned in a huff in Feb. 1938, Halifax became foreign secretary. Roberts, Holy Fox, 71 (citing A4 410 33); Eberle and Uhl, Hitler Book, 24–5. On Hitler and Britain, see also von Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, 20–32.

20. “His Majesty’s Government,” stated the torturous wording for Henderson to convey to the German government, “could not guarantee that they would not be forced by circumstance to become involved also.” DBFP, 3rd series, I: 331–2 (Halifax to Henderson, May 21, 1938, also referencing a Chamberlain warning in Parliament in March); DDF, 2e série, VIII: 772–4 (March 15); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 174.

21. Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 565–6.

22. Taylor, Sword and Swastika, 182. See also Waldenegg, “Hitler, Göring, Mussolini.”

23. Price, Year of Reckoning, 91–117; von Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, 20–32; Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss; Churchill, Second World War, I: 270.

24. Lassner, “Invasion of Austria,” 447–86. See also French Yellow Book, 2–3 (François-Poncet to Paris, March 12, 1938). The French military had its eyes on Spain. “The defeat of Franco would open the door to communism in Spain,” French military intelligence had noted on March 10, 1938. “Will [the communists] be able to retain power? No. But it would take only a few months for such a regime to precipitate a general European war.” Jackson, “French Strategy,” 68 (citing SHAT, 7N 2762–2, “L’influence soviétique en Espagne”).

25. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 246.

26. Pravda, March 13 and 14, 1938.

27. Bukharin’s doctored final statement appeared in the press (Izvestiia and Pravda, March 13, 1938), and in the 700–page court record, which went to the printer on March 28. Murin, “Kak fal’sifitsirovalos’ ‘delo Bukharina,’” 69: APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 401, l. 03; “‘Moe poslednee slovo na sude, veroiatno, budet moim poslednim solovom voobshche’: kto i kak pravil rech’ N. I. Bukahrina.” From March 1938, whether by coincidence or instruction, the NKVD political mood summaries mentioned “wrecking” less in reports on the actual problems of Soviet defense industry. 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). Litvinov finally expressed an official Soviet reaction to the “aggression” at a press conference on March 17, 1938, proposing an international conference, but the Soviets followed with no concrete measures. Izvestiia, March 18, 1938; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 342–4; DVP SSSR, XXI: 138; Dullin, Men of Influence, 253.

28. DVP SSSR, XVIII: 309–12 (pact with France), 333–6 (pact with Czechoslovakia); Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-chekhoslovatskikh otnoshenii, III: 106–7 (Beneš and Alexandrovsky, May 2–3, 1935), 111 (Benešto Czechoslovak missions abroad, May 9), 112 (Litvinov to Alexandrovsky, May 11). Hochman argues that the condition of Soviet obligations (obliged to act only if France did so) had been insisted upon by Moscow. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 52–3. Cf. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 51.

29. DVP SSSR, XXI: 125–6 (Potyomkin, March 15, 1938).

30. DVP SSSR, XXI: 142–7 (Alexandrovsky with Krofta, March 21); Spáčil and Mal’tsev, Dokumenty po istorii miunhkenskogo sgovora, 49–52 (Shaprov, March 15); Dokumenty po istorii sovetsko-chekhoslovatskikh otnoshenii, III: 382 (Fierlinger from Moscow, March 15).

31. Sluch, “Pol’sha v politike Sovetskogo Soiuza,” 160 (citing AVPRF, f. 0138, op. 19, pap. 128, d. 1, l. 19); Na prieme, 233.

32. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1144, l. 86–7 (Kashuba from Prague, April 9, 1938), Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 16.

33. Pravda, March 29, 1938.

34. Young, “French Intelligence,” 274, 278: April 6, 1938.

35. Na prieme, 235–6; Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-chekhoslovatskikh otnoshenii, III: 402 (Fierlinger to Krofta, April 23, 1938). “We come to the aid of Czechoslovakia in the event France comes to its aid and, conversely, Czechoslovakia comes to our aid in the event that France comes to our aid,” Kalinin explained to a gathering of propagandists on April 26. He added that the Soviet-Czechoslovak pact “does not prohibit either party rendering assistance to the other without waiting for France”—a statement not reproduced in the press account. Zemskov, Novye dokumenty iz istorii Miunkhena, 27–8; Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-chekhoslovatskikh otnoshenii, III: 402–3 (April 26). On May 8, Kalinin informed a visiting Czechoslovak delegation that the Soviet Union would honor its treaty obligations “to the last letter.” Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 143.

36. Bandinelli, Hitler e Mussolini; Baxa, “Capturing the Fascist Moment”; Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini, 59–74.

37. DVP SSSR, XXI: 276 (Alexandrovsky, May 18, 1938).

38. Henke, England in Hitlers politischem Kalkül, 150–62. Sir Horace Wilson, at a luncheon on May 10, 1938, told Soviet ambassador Maisky that “Germany’s expansionary ambitions to create a Mitteleuropa would undermine it by its conglomerate of nationalities, state organizations, and economic regions, producing internal frictions and struggles.” Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 114.

39. Lukes, “Czechoslovak Partial Mobilization.” František Moravec, then head of Czechoslovak military intelligence, later insisted that the German attack plans (intercepted and decoded) were real, and that the Czechoslovaks had no choice except to mobilize in response. Moravec, Master of Spies, 110–1.

40. Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, II: 691–4; DGFP, series D, II: 473–7 (June 18, 1938); Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, I: 104; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 176. The British government tried to restrain the domestic press from crowing about Hitler’s apparent climbdown. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 149.

41. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 335, 465–6.

42. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1144, l. 325.

43. Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 135–42 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 46, l. 183–90). On Lake Khasan, see also Voennyi sovet pri narodnom kosmmissare oborony SSSR, 206–18 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 2030, l. 108–23; op. 18, d. 47, l. 92–5: Nov. 26, 1938). On Aug. 4, 1938, in the middle of the Lake Khasan border war, the Soviet envoy to Czechoslovakia would assure Beneš that the Soviet Union would live up to its European military obligations regardless of the situation in the Far East.

44. Sakwa, “Polish Ultimatum”; DGFP, series D, V: 434, 442–3; DVP SSSR, XXI: 153–5 (Potyomkin, March 26, 1938). On March 24, Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff, sent a draft war plan to Voroshilov stating that “the most likely enemies in the West were Germany and Poland.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 557–60.

45. Gal’ianov, “Kuda idet Pol’sha.” Already in Feb. 1938, Potyomkin had told the Bulgarian envoy to Moscow that there might well be a new partition of Poland. Lipinsky, Das geheime Zusatzprotokoll, 24. See also Sluch, “Pol’sha v politike Sovetskogo Soiuza,” 162–3 (citing AVPRF, f. 05, op. 18, pap. 148, d. 158, l. 30: April 4, 1938); and Raack, “His Question Asked and Answered.”

46. Ragsdale, Coming of World War II, 81–2, 112–126, 166–7, 185.

47. The Romanian military did not oppose granting transit rights to the Red Army, but King Carol vetoed the idea. Ragsdale, “Soviet Position at Munich,” 35–72; Ragsdale, Coming of World War II, 81–2, 90–1; Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 56–77, 144–69. No airlift of troops of the necessary magnitude for aiding Czechoslovakia took place even during World War II. See also Ragsdale, in “Munich Crisis,” who demolishes the assertions in Pfaff, Die Sowjetunion und die Verteidigung der Tschechoslowakei, 392–7.

48. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1144, l. 150–5, 160, 183; 158–94; Seaton, Russo-German War, 56n16.

49. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 254; Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 291; Jackson, “French Military Intelligence,” 88–9. Churchill (March 23, 1938) had put the question squarely to Maisky about the Red Army’s self-annihilation. Maisky suggested to Litvinov that Churchill be permitted to observe Red Army maneuvers to put to rest the impression derived from the terror. No such visit took place. DVP SSSR, XXI: 151–3; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 107; Steiner, “Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 755.

50. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 65 (no citation). Successive French military attachés had been reprimanded by superiors in Paris for “exaggerating” the USSR’s military capacity. Young, In Command of France, 145–49; Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 129.

51. On Sept. 2, 1938, Jean Payart, long-serving French chargé d’affaires in Moscow, asked Litvinov what assistance the USSR could render to Czechoslovakia, given the reluctance of Poland and Romania to allow Soviet troops and aircraft to pass through; Litvinov reminded him that it was France that was under treaty obligation in the first instance, and that if France came to Czechoslovakia’s aid, the Soviet Union would fulfil its obligations “utilizing every means at our disposal.” Litvinov repeated the Soviet proposal for an immediate conference of Great Britain, France, and the USSR with military representatives, but Payart left the last part out of his report to the French foreign ministry, and instead managed to incite the idea that the Soviet answer had been “evasive.” Steiner, “Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 763–5. Litvinov repeatedly warned Alexandrovsky in Prague to make sure the Czechoslovaks did not expect unilateral Soviet assistance.

52. Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 398; DDF, 2e série, IX: 394–5 (July 16, 1938), 402–4 (July 17), 437–8 (July 20), 487n2; Adamthwaite, France, 197–9.

53. Young, “French Military Intelligence,” 271–309 (at 287).

54. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 246, 255–6, 271–2.

55. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, IX/i: 751–6; Mueller, Das Heer und Hitler, 361.

56. Moorhouse, Killing Hitler, 79–104, at 99, citing Helmuth Groscuth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938–1940 (Stuttgart, 1970), 35.

57. See, for ex., the characteristic letter of Viscount Halifax to Sir Neville Henderson, July 28, 1938, in DBFP, 3rd series, II: 17.

58. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 174–81.

59. Weinberg, “Germany, Munich, and Appeasement,” 115–6.

60. Young, Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, I: 402.

61. Dilks,”‘We Must Hope for the Best,” 329 (Sept. 11, 1938).

62. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 185.

63. Sorge had reported (Sept. 3, 1938) Tokyo’s preference for an alliance with Germany directed solely against the USSR. Eleven days later Sorge’s radio man transmitted another of his dispatches about Japanese commitment to planning war against the Soviet Union. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 650n8.

64. Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 142–52 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 46, l. 191–4), 145–8 (l. 195–200), 149–51 (l. 201–5).

65. Zemskov, Novye dokumenty iz istorii Miunkhena, 98–100; Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny, I: 240; DVP SSSR, XXI: 498–9, 500; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 363–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 5–6); DVP SSSR, XIX: 498–9, 500.

66. Ragsdale, Coming of World War II, 121–2; Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-chekhoslovatskikh otnoshenii, III: 515–17 (Voroshilov’s mobilization order, Sept. 21, 1938), 518 (implementation, Sept. 22, 1938); Spáčil and Mal’tsev, Dokumenty po istorii Miunkhenskogo sgovora, 254–6. See also Grylev, “Nakanune i v dni Miunkhena,” 220–7; Grechko et al., Istoriia Vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 104–7; Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 112–5; Jukes, “Red Army.”

67. See Litvinov’s appeal to Stalin from Geneva to seize the moment: DVP SSSR, XXI: 520 (Sept. 23, 1938). In Geneva since early Sept., Litvinov repeatedly urged Stalin toward a more activist policy over Czechoslovakia while vowing that his recommended actions would not increase the USSR’s obligations, an implied reading of Stalin’s concerns. Steiner, “Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.”

68. Dullin, Men of Influence, 261 (citing SHAT, 7N3123: report of attaché, Oct. 18, 1938).

69. “Prime Minister on the Issues,” The Times, Sept. 28, 1938: 10. See also Chamberlain, In Search of Peace, 393.

70. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 378–464. See also Wendt, Grossdeutschland, 150–2.

71. The Soviets, Churchill later wrote of the Munich Pact, “were not brought into the scale against Hitler, and were treated with an indifference—not to say disdain—which left a mark in Stalin’s mind.” He added: “Events took their course as if Soviet Russia did not exist. For this we afterward paid dearly.” Churchill, Second World War, I: 305. See also Eberle and Uhl, Hitler Book, 30–4.

72. Overy, “Germany and the Munich Crisis”; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 113–25. On Aug. 2, 1938, British ambassador to Germany Neville Henderson had envisioned exclusion of the Soviet Union from a Four Power Conference supposedly for want of time. DBFP, 3rd series, III: 35–6 (Henderson to Strang).

73. Chamberlain had written (Sept. 13) to King George VI about the pending trip to meet Hitler. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 188. See also Crozier, Causes of the Second World War, 144.

74. Fry, “Agents and Structures.”

75. Gunsburg, Divided and Conquered, 66–7.

76. Girard de Charbonnières, La plus évitable de toutes les guerres, 159–63; Thomas, “France and the Czechoslovak Crisis.” Daladier told American ambassador Bullitt (Oct. 2) that Munich had been an “immense defeat for France and England.” Haight, American Aid to France, 13 (citing Bullitt Papers).

77. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 237.

78. Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power; Hauner, “Czechoslovakia as a Military Factor.” Wilhelm Keitel, head of the High Command in 1938, when interrogated at Nuremberg in 1946 about whether Germany would have attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938 if the Western powers had come to Prague’s aid militarily, would reply, “Certainly not. We were not strong enough militarily.” Fritz Erich von Manstein, another general, would state under interrogation, “had Czechoslovakia defended itself, we would have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not have the means to break through.” Similarly, Alfred Jodl would say that, after an invasion of Czechoslovakia, it would have been “militarily impossible” to hold out against a French move from the West. International Military Tribunal, X: 572, 600, 772. See also Churchill, Second World War, I: 392.

79. Deutsch, Hitler and His Generals; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 575–9.

80. Parssinen, Oster Conspiracy, 162.

81. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 247 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 297, l. 50).

82. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 17 (citing TsAMO, f. 5, op. 176703, d. 7, l. 431).

83. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 123. The German invasion plan (Fall Grünn) excluded Soviet intervention because of the upheaval in the Red Army. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 140.

84. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 162–3, 166–7.

85. Because Stalin did not take his southern holiday, there are none of the instructional letters to Moscow that are revealing of his thinking. In addition, Comintern General Secretary Georgi Dimtrov, who kept a diary on Stalin’s thinking, was away on holiday (in Kislovodsk and Crimea) through Oct. 19, 1938.

86. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 224.

87. Alexandrovsky wrote in his diary: “I confess that I felt uncomfortable, as I could say nothing.” “Miunkhen,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’, 1998, no. 11: 138–40.

88. Lukes, “Stalin and Beneš,” 41. Stalin had to think about Japan’s obligation in the Anti-Comintern Pact to assist Germany if the USSR and Germany clashed militarily over Czechoslovakia, as pointedly noted in Izvestiia (Sept. 30, 1938) in a TASS report on speculation in London newspapers. Koltsov had been dispatched to Czechoslovakia, whence he filed many evocative stories on the crisis—“Alarming Days of Prague,” “Czechoslovakia on the Eve of New Tribulations,” “Aggressors Mangle Czechoslovakia”—illuminating the Stalinist line.

89. DVP SSSR, XXI: 516–7 (Potyomkin, Sept. 23, 1938), 523 (conversation of Jankovski and Potyomkin, Sept. 23).

90. Cienciala, “Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski,” 143, citing Polskie dokumenty dyplomatyczne 1938 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Miçdzynarodowych, 2007), docs. 297, 317.

91. Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 165. On Sept. 26, the Soviet military attaché in Paris had claimed that thirty infantry and cavalry divisions, along with tanks and airplanes, had been positioned along the frontier with Poland. Gamelin, Servir, II: 356.

92. Landau and Tomaszewski, Monachium 1938, 462 (Beck to Lipski, Sept. 28, 1939).

93. For indirect evidence of Stalin’s designs on Poland’s eastern territories, see Raack, “His Question Asked and Answered.”

94. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 134–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 61a, l. 1); DVP SSSR, XXI: 738.

95. On Sept. 28, Potyomkin was in the Little Corner from 3:15 a.m. to 3:25 a.m., in the presence of Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, and Yezhov, all of whom were there from 2:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. Na prieme, 241.

96. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 77–8. On Sept. 30, Timoshenko and Poliakov gave an overview of Poland’s military posture on the Soviet border to Voroshilov. Duraczyński and Sakharov, Sovetsko-Pol’skie otnosheniia, 82–3 (RGVA, f. 33797, op. 5, d. 479, l. 199–200).

97. Maslov, “I. V. Stalin o ‘Kratkom kurse istorii VKP (b)’”; APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1122, l. 28–11; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 54ff.

98. In the early and mid-1930s, the regime had tried but failed to publish an official four-volume and then a two-volume history of the party. Yaroslavsky and Pyotr Pospelov (b. 1898), a graduate of the Institute of Red Professors, began work on a new text. In the meantime, Yaroslavsky’s wife, Kirsanova, was expelled from the party, and his son-in-law, Marcel Rosenberg, was arrested. Finally, on April 3, Yaroslavsky and Pospelov presented Stalin with a text. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1217, l. 2–24; Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 252; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 193; Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 213–8 (d. 1219, l. 1–6). Stalin had the draft circulated among the retinue and, with Zhdanov in tow, received Pospelov (without Yaroslavsky) in the Little Corner on March 4 and 5, 1938, during the Bukharin trial. Stalin made many changes: he transformed all leftist parties other than the Communists into counterrevolutionaries already before Oct. 1917, and all oppositionists (left and right) into foreign agents. From late May 1938, he was engaged in proofreading the revision, then decided to rewrite the text himself. On the author page, he replaced the names of Yaroslavsky and Pospelov with “party commission.” “Of the twelve chapters,” Stalin reported on Aug. 16, 1938, to the inner circle and the authors, “it turned out to be necessary to revise eleven.” (Chapter 5 had been deemed acceptable.) RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 36–7.

99. In his summary speech at the Feb.–March 1937 plenum, too, Stalin had included a reference to Antaeus and how Hercules defeated him. Pravda, April 1, 1937. See also Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 121.

100. Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii, 291–2. See also Deutscher, Stalin, 540; and Tucker, “Stalinism as Revolution from Above,” 77–110. The expression “revolution from above” had first appeared as a characterization of Germany’s unification in the “Bismarck” entry in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia published in 1927, a fact now forgotten.

101. Zelenov, “I. V. Stalin v rabote,” 6. A collective farmer would write asking for more biographical detail on Stalin to be inserted in the book. Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 210 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 1, l. 5: I. Shabarov, collective farmer from Rostov). Tucker wrote that if Stalin had written memoirs, they would have amounted to nothing more than a second edition of the Short Course of the History of the Communist Party. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 533, 539.

102. Zelenov, “I. V. Stalin v rabote,” 3, 6, 10–1, 25–7. Stalin deleted extended passages, including on his supposed leading party work in the South Caucasus before 1917.

103. Shestakov, Kratkii kurs, 291. See also Lih, “Melodrama and the Myth.”

104. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 3–4. Stalin would elaborate this core axiom two weeks later at the politburo. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 693; “I. V. Stalin v rabote nad ‘Kratkim kursom,’” 19.

105. Na prieme, 239–40; Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 373–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 37); Zelenov, I. V. Stalin, Istoricheskaia ideologiiia, I: 312–91. See also Medvedev, “How the Short Course Was Created”; and Avrich, “Short Course and Soviet Historiography.”

106. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 375–81 (RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 159, l. 338–78).

107. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 425 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1002, l. 12: Sept. 19, 1938). It would be translated into the languages of Union and autonomous republics the next year and, eventually, reach 42.8 million copies in 67 languages. “Izdanie proizvedenii I. V. Stalina v Sovetskom Soiuze c 7 noiabria 1917 goda na 5 marta 1953: statisticheskie tablitsii,” Sovetskaia bibliografiia: sbornik statei i materialov, vyp. 1 (Moscow: Vsesoiuznaia knizhnaia palata, 1953), 224; Maslov, “‘Kratkii kurs istorii VKP (b)’—Entsiklopediia kul’ta lichnosti,” 51. In 1937–38, the censor withdrew from circulation 16,435 titles, amounting to 24 million volumes. This was a partial accounting (the main censor lacked jurisdiction over military publications). Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 222 (citing GARF. F. 9425, op. 1, d. 5, l. 66; d. 11, l. 61).

108. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 1–18, 28–111. Stalin’s speeches at the meeting can also be found in Zelenov, I. V. Stalin, Istoricheskaia ideologiiia, I: 394–9 (Sept. 27, 1938), 401–24 (Oct. 1) .

109. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 58–9.

110. During Pravda’s publication of the Short Course, Stalin phoned the editors, according to the journalist Brontman, and reiterated, over and over, the need to publish more material on the “white collar.” Brontman noted: “It’s a new matter.” Brontman, Dnevniki (entry for Sept. 20, 1938).

111. Back when battling the Georgian Mensheviks before 1917, Stalin had advocated for working-class party members, but in power he offered ambiguous views. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 31; Graziosi, “Stalin’s Antiworker Workerism, 1924–1931”; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 219. The secret circular he had dispatched after Kirov’s assassination warned that Bolsheviks with worker origins sometimes turned out to be provocateurs (citing Roman Malinowski, whose secret spying for the okhranka had put Stalin back in prison before the revolution). Yezhov, in 1935, had complained, “look, this veneration for the worker is completely un-Bolshevik and un-Marxist.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 198 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1118, l. 56–60); “Zakrytoe pis’mo Tsk VKP (b),” 97; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 201.

112. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 10.

113. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 307, l. 7–11, 68–72, 80–5, 113–4.

114. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 3–4. “I am not a theoretician [teoretik], but a practitioner [praktik] who knows theory,” Stalin explained, adding, “such are the kind of people we want to have: practitioners with knowledge of theory.” See the prompt from Yaroslavsky: Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 419–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 101).

115. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 166.

116. Telegrams had to be sent directly from the telegram office; there were also phonegrams transmitted by special telephone. Moscow received the first message around 5:00 p.m., and the second at 5:15; each had to be decoded. DVP SSSR, XXI: 549–50 (Potyomkin, Sept. 30, 1938); Lukes, “Stalin and Beneš,” 37–9. Beneš’s moods vacillated, according to Alexandrovsky (one of the few envoys to see the Czechoslovak president regularly). Alexandrovskii, “Munich Witness’s Account,” 129, 132. See also Steiner, “The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 772–3 (citing AVP RF, f. 0138, op. 19, pap. 128, d. 6, l. 161–75: Alexandrovsky’s diary, written Oct. 1938).

117. DVP SSSR, XXI: 548–9 (Alexandrovsky, Sept. 30, 1938), 549 (Sept. 30, 1938), 549–50 (Potyomkin, Sept. 30, 1938), 552–3 (Alexandrovsky, Oct. 1, 1938).

118. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 262; Lukes, “Stalin and Czechoslovakia,” 14–6.

119. Soon he would add “cultural-educational” organization to the list of the state’s functions. Pravda, March 11, 1939, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 394.

120. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 452–66 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 28–9, 34–42, 44–9, 51, 53–61, 63, 65–70, 77–88).

121. Wandycz, Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 452, 478; Prażmowska, Eastern Europe, 144.

122. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 25–28, at 28 (Lipski to Beck, Oct. 1, 1938).

123. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 28. Churchill would famously call interwar Poland a “hyena” for its actions over Těšín (Cieszyn). Churchill, Second World War, I: 311. Soviet intelligence evidently reported rumors from Riga (Oct. 10, 1938) that Poland had also demanded Latvia’s ethnic Polish regions (such as Daugavpils/Dźwińsk-Dyneburg). Sotskov, Pribaltika i geopolitika, 56 (no citation).

124. DVP SSSR, XXI: 599. Stalin possessed a manuscript on German-Polish relations by the émigré Alexander Guchkov, one of the two Duma representatives in 1917 who had been sent to obtain Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication. Pilfered in Paris, the text discussed the possibility of Poland handing Danzig over to Germany, with the thinking that this would satiate German claims and redirect German aggression against Stalin’s Soviet Union. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 234. See also Tokarev, “‘Kará panam! Kará.’”

125. On Oct. 2, Soviet ambassador to London Ivan Maisky telegrammed Moscow reporting that, on Sept. 30, he had gone to see Tomáš Masaryk, the Czechoslovak representative in Britain, to express condolences. “They sold me into slavery to the Germans,” Masaryk was reported to have told Maisky through tears, “the way that once the Negroes were sold into slavery in America!” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 29–31 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 278, d. 1931, l. 53–6: Oct. 2, 1938); God krizisa, I: 41–3. On Oct. 5, 1938, Beneš would resign under German pressure and, seventeen days later, go into exile in London.

126. Craigie, Behind the Japanese Mask, 67–8. Craigie served as Britain’s ambassador to Tokyo.

127. Von Hassel, Die Hasseltagebücher, 51; Genoud, Testament of Adolf Hitler, 84–5; Fest, Hitler, 742. Not for Hitler the ancient Sun Tzu’s wisdom: “the greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

128. Jackson, “End of Appeasement,” 237 (citing SHAT, 7N 2515 [Oct. 10–16, 1938] and 2605 [Oct. 11, 1938], 2602–1 [Nov. 9, 1938]). Hitler and his minions even felt that Munich had somehow reconfirmed the Western powers’ objections to Germany’s assumption of its rightful place, which justified Germany’s forcing through even greater expenditures on the military, railways, highways, and other infrastructure. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 288.

129. The Times, Oct. 1, 1938. The Soviets were in difficult trade negotiations with Italy at this time. The Italians were demanding additional oil deliveries; Litvinov recommended offering grain. Sevost’ianov, Moskva-Rim, 454 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 246, l. 128: Litvinov to Stalin, Oct. 15, 1938), 455 (l. 127: Oct. 22, 1938, politburo decree).

130. DGFP, series D, IV: 602–4 (Tippelskirch, Oct. 3, 1938).

131. Sochineniia, XVI: 118.

132. Pravda, Sept. 18, 1938. See also Pravda, Nov. 4, 1938 (Zhdanov) and Izvestiia, Nov. 10, 1938 (Molotov).

133. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 235 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 81, l. 140); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 305. Surits, in Paris, wrote to the foreign affairs commissariat in Moscow that “any Frenchman” could see that for France the Munich Pact constituted “a most terrible defeat” equivalent to a “second Sedan” (when Germany crushed France in Bismarck’s wars of unification). Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 35–6 (“excerpted”: Oct. 12, 1938). Following the Munich Pact, the British agent in Salamanca, Robert Hodgson, told Eberhard von Stohrer, the German ambassador to Franco’s regime, that Britain intended to mediate the conflict in Spain. Franco, at dinner with Stohrer on Oct. 1, rhapsodized over Hitler’s triumph at Munich. DGFP, series D, III: 754–60; Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 555–6, 827–8.

134. Passov, appointed on March 28, 1938, had remained head of civilian intelligence with the formation of the NKGB in Sept. 1938, but would be arrested on Oct. 23 for anti-Soviet conspiracy. Sudoplatov served as acting chief of NKGB espionage until Dec. 2, 1938, when Vladimir Dekanozov would be appointed. Passov would be executed on Feb. 14, 1940. Abramov, Evrei v KGB, 260–1; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 7; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 252 (TsA FSB, f. H-15014, t. 2, l. 90); Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 106–7.

135. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 694–6; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1217, l. 51–2. Only after publication of the Short Course would Stalin relinquish formal control over ideology in the Central Committee secretariat, giving the portfolio to Zhdanov on Nov. 27, 1938. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 171.

136. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 494–5. Stalin added: “Comrade Khrushchev thinks that to this day he remains a worker, when in fact he is an intelligent.”

137. Eugene Lyons would write that “only another war, and a catastrophically losing one, could effectively challenge Stalin’s ascendancy.” Lyons, Stalin, 290. See also Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror.”

138. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 4. Yefim Dzigan’s feature film If War Comes Tomorrow, which had premiered earlier in the year, had made the Red Army seem invincible, mixing documentary footage of paratroopers during maneuvers with a catchy, reassuring song with words by Vasily Lebedev-Kumach: “If war comes tomorrow, if tomorrow it’s into battle, be prepared today!”

139. Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 366 (Grzibowski telegram to Warsaw, Oct. 9, 1938). Following a secret gathering of German military brass on Aug. 19, 1938, at the special SS complex in Yuteborg, Soviet intelligence reported on Nazi Germany’s aggressive designs on the Soviet Union, noting that a major general on Göring’s chief of staff had said that “the main goal of the Führer is a struggle with our real enemies, the Soviets, who have paralyzed Japan in the East and could defend Ukraine only with weak forces. The Führer’s goal is to avoid conflicts with England and France and attain a European pact of the four. Germany needs colonies, not in Africa, but in Eastern Europe, she needs a breadbasket—Ukraine.” A Soviet military intelligence analysis of Germany in Jan. 1939 would conclude that, whereas “Czechoslovakia had served as a barrier to German expansion toward the southeast, now, on the contrary, it serves as a trampoline.” But the report would also quote the Manchester Guardian to the effect that “a shortage of oil might turn out to be the fateful weakness of the German war machine.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 21–2 (RGVA, f. 25888, op. 11, d. 86, l. 15), 25–6.

140. On Oct. 31, Litvinov told the Polish ambassador their nonaggression pact remained in force. This would be confirmed bilaterally on Nov. 26, 1938, and announced by TASS the next day.

141. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 253, 309–10 (TsA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 6, d. 8, l. 13).

142. “Vospominaniia Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 87; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 470; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 179–80; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 344. It seems that at Stalin’s direction, Yezhov had called Uspensky and summoned him to Moscow—Uspensky drew his own obvious conclusions.

143. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 62.

144. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ ery Ezhova,” 125–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 85–86); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 607–11 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 85–7); Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 532–7. On Yezhov’s anger at being accused of lawlessness, when he was following Stalin’s instructions, with which Vyshinsky had colluded, see Ushakov and Stukalov, Front voennykh prokurorov, 70–2.

145. “The fear of war had spawned mass terror,” wrote Ulam. “But terror in its turn increased Stalin’s fear of war.” This appears to be exactly backward: Stalin’s fear of war seems to have ended the mass terror. Ulam, Stalin, 491–2. On Oct. 16, 1938, the politburo resolved to demobilize and return the forces called to the western borders: 330,000 troops, 27,500 horses, and 5,000 vehicles. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 17.

146. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 333. E. H. Carr also portrayed Stalin as the embodiment of Russian realpolitik in his forced industrialization and foreign policy. The Carr student Gabriel Gorodetsky has asserted that “Machiavelli rather than Lenin was Stalin’s idol,” a dubious claim that does not diminish the value of the treasure trove of evidence that Gorodetsky brought to the fore. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 317; Haslam, “Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia,” 134. See also, on Carr, D’Agostino, “Stalin Old and New.”

CHAPTER 10. HAMMER

1. Chuev, Sto sorok, 414–5. Stalin, in the name of the politburo, had removed A. M. Mogilny, head of Molotov’s secretariat, on Aug. 17, 1937; he removed M. Khlusser, another top Molotov aide, eleven days later. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 990, l. 54, 72.

2. Shpanov, Pervyi udar; Shpanov, “Pervyi udar.” The fantasy novella had been completed back in 1937, under the title Twelve Hours of War, and slated for publication by the Union of Soviet Writers publishing house, but the main censor had blocked it on the grounds that it was aesthetically “hopeless.” “Dokladnaia zapiska agitpropa TsK M. A. Suslovu po povodu izdaniia knigi ‘podzhigateli’ N. N, Shapnova” (April 20, 1949): http://alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/is sues-doc/69631. It would be republished with other stories in summer 1939 by Sovetskii pisatel’. See also Ulam, Stalin, 492.

3. Vishnevskii, “Kniga o budushchei voine.”

4. Yezhov had tried to take Litvinov down. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 184–5. On Jan. 1, 1939, in verification of 22,000 people with access to classified materials in people’s commissariats and central agencies of USSR and RSFSR, more than 3,000 were fired. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 361–2.

5. DVP SSSR, XX: 579 (Litvinov to Maisky, Oct. 29, 1937).

6. The perspicacious British envoy Chilston observed “bitter disappointment” in Moscow over Munich, noting that the Kremlin “would like more than ever to pursue a policy of isolation if they could safely do so, [but] realize that, after Munich, they can afford to risk isolation even less than they could before.” Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 257 (citing Chilston to FO, disp. 442 Oct. 18, 1938, FO 371/22289/N5164/97/38: minute, Collier, Oct. 28, 1938).

7. Edwards, British Government and the Spanish Civil War, 130 (July 5, 1938).

8. George Kennan, “The War Problem of the Soviet Union” (March 1935), George F. Kennan Papers, Box 1, Mudd Library, Princeton University, reprinted in Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 176–83 (at 176).

9. One group of analysts has argued that he began with a genuine commitment to achieve “collective security” with the West, only to sour on this option as a result of Anglo-French behavior. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security. Diametrically opposed, another group of analysts has insisted Stalin was bent all along on a deal with Hitler. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security. Stalin pursued both options. What neither group fully appreciated was the extent to which he was not the driver of events.

10. The British especially had looked to non-Nazi members of the German cabinet such as Baron von Neurath (foreign minister), General von Blomberg (war minister), and Hjalmar Schacht (economics minister), all of whom were gone by 1938. Then the British elevated Göring to the role of presumed restraining influence on the Nazi “wild” men around Hitler. Watt, “British Intelligence,” 249.

11. Bond, Chief of Staff, I: 155–6 (Aug. 8, 1938).

12. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 47, 68, 80.

13. Hitler, because of its association with Bolshevism, had rejected the term “dictator” and preferred to be known as the Führer of the German race, viewing democracy, dictatorship, and Judentum as of a piece. Nolte, “Diktatur,” I: 922; Schmitt, Die Diktatur; Cobban, Dictatorship. Baehr, “Dictatorship.”

14. Krivitskii, “Iz vospominaniia sovetskogo kommunista.”

15. In 1933, Hitler had arranged that all private documents concerning his childhood and youth were confiscated. These would be destroyed in April 1945. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 17.

16. Ryback, Hitler’s Private Library. Some 1,200 volumes of Hitler’s 16,000-volume library are in the Library of Congress.

17. Hitler had met Mari Reiter, a pretty blonde, in Berchtesgaden in fall 1926; he was thirty-seven, she was sixteen. Her father was a founding member of the local Social Democrat Party and she ran a clothing shop. He called her “my dear child”; she called him Wolf. Their intimacy was episodic. Hitler met Eva Braun in Hoffmann’s Munich studio. He was then forty; she was seventeen, middle-class, pretty. He took her for sausages and beer under a false name (Herr Wolf), but initially she rebuffed him. Hitler’s main affections were directed at his niece, Geli Raubal, a girl with dark, wavy brown hair who resided in his Munich apartment, but in Sept. 1931 she was found dead there, shot with a revolver, and scandal rocked Munich. But Hitler was absent from the city that day. Geli’s demise proved Eva’s opening: in fall 1932, still living in Munich but despairing over her infrequent access to Hitler, she shot herself with her father’s pistol, but survived. She tried and failed to kill herself again in 1935. By early 1936, she and Hitler had become a regular, if non-public unmarried couple. At the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the company was almost all male, but at the Berghof alpine sanctuary, Hitler had afforded Eva a private apartment, next to his bedroom, and she presided as mistress of the retreat, present at meals (seated to his left) and at his ramblings on race and global conquest. Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 353; Görtemaker, Eva Braun.

18. Speer, Erinnerungen, 116.

19. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 380–411; Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, 165; Speer, Spandauer Tagebücher, 523; Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Liste, 362; Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau, 48.

20. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 140, 154. When films were shown, bodyguards and some of the female staff were admitted.

21. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, II/ii: 251 (March 29, 1932).

22. Neumann, Behemoth; Hayes, “Polycracy and Policy,” 190–210; Broszat, Hitler State; Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. See also Trevor-Roper, Last Days of Hitler, 54; and Overy, Göring, 4.

23. On Oct. 28, 1938, the Head of the Reich Chancellery (Lammers)—the link between Hitler and state ministers—had written to Hitler’s adjutant begging to report on urgent state matters, adding that he had not spoken with the Führer for more than six weeks. Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, II: 245.

24. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 145.

25. Wiedemann, Der Mann, 69; also available, translated, in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, II: 207–8. After 1933, Hitler almost never wrote anything either. The important exception was perhaps his “Four Year Memorandum” (1936), written in anger and frustration at the 1935–6 economic crisis; Hitler passed copies of the memorandum only to two people, both in the military: Göring and Blomberg. (Much later, a third copy went to Speer.) The Economics Minister did not get a copy. Kershaw, “Working towards the Führer,” 90.

26. Stalin “enjoyed settling . . . trivial issues,” one biographer has noted. He “got used to the idea that people couldn’t manage without him, that he must do everything.” Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 147.

27. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, 70.

28. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 397 (citing BA Koblenz N 1340/384); Speer, Erinnerungen, corrected ms. (2nd version), chapter 1; and Schroeder, Er War Mein Chef, 78–81.

29. Shirer, Rise and Fall, 275–6. As Bracher noted, “among the men closest to the Führer, all joined long before the big wave of newcomers in March 1933.” They were distinguished by “the right of immediate access.” Bracher, German Dictatorship, 277; Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, 607.

30. Kershaw, “Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship,” 117; Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 527–91; Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, II: 207. Adolf Eichmann would testify that, “No sooner had Hitler made a speech—and he invariably touched on the Jewish question—then every party or government department felt that it was up to them to do something.” When it came to specific incidents—such as the pogrom known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), on Nov. 8–9, 1938, which would leave around 100 Jews dead and 7,500 Jewish businesses vandalized—Hitler explicitly approved the action. On Dec. 6, 1938, Göring warned the Gauleiters against initiatives predicated upon the Führer’s presumed wishes. Von Lang, Eichman Interrogated, 59; Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VI: 179–81 (Nov. 10, 1938); Friedlander, “Path that Led into the Abyss.” See also Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung. Kershaw presented the concept very broadly—a small businessman besting a competitor by questioning his Aryan credentials; ordinary people perniciously denouncing neighbors to the Gestapo to settle private scores—and in that guise, it could be tantamount to just living under Nazi rule. Kershaw himself writes, moreover, that “there was never any suggestion that Hitler might be bypassed or ignored, that anyone but he could make a key decision. And, once he finally decided to act, he did so . . . with ruthlessness.” Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 328. See also Kershaw, “Uniqueness of Nazism”; and Mommsen, “Hitler’s Position,” 163–88; Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship (4th ed.), 59–79. The basic idea that minions were in competition to gain the favor of the Führer, creating a dynamic that radicalized policy, appears in Hannah Arendt. Seweryn Bialer had called this phenomenon “preemptive obedience.” Bialer, Stalin’s Successors.

31. Zhuravlyov’s denunciation followed the formation of the commission on the NKVD. Beria had passed the letter to Stalin on Oct. 13, 1938. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 249–50; Na prieme, 245–6. See also Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 237. Zhuravlyov briefly got a promotion to Moscow, but Beria would send him to run the Karaganda camps. Yezhov’s response—accepting guilt, claiming poor health, confessing he “had taken badly the appointment of Beria as my deputy. I saw in this an element of lack of trust towards me,” and requesting to resign—is misdated as Sept. (rather than Nov.) 23, 1938. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ery Ezhova,” 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 82–4); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoie upravlenie, 552–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 82–4); Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 355–9 (RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 265, l. 16–26ob.). See also Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness, 59. This is another example where Sudoplatov’s memoir comports with archival materials.

32. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 355–9, at 357 (from APRF, f. 57, op. 1, d. 265, l. 16–26ob.).

33. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ery Ezhova,” 131 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 34–5); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 611 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 34–5).

34. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinski pitomets, 354–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 58, l. 61–2); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 611–2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 35 (appointment of Beria). The last of the infamous execution lists for 1938 was dated Sept. 29: APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 409–19: http://stalin.memo.ru/images/intro.htm. But Volkgonov, citing military archives, claimed that Stalin, having received some 383 extended lists of names for execution in 1937–38, received yet another on Dec. 12, 1938, containing 3,167 names, albeit without even the charges or the results of any “investigation.” Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 301 (citing TsAMO, f. 32, op. 701323, d. 38, l. 14–6).

35. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 255–6. Of the 14,500 new NKVD employees in 1939, around 11,000 came from the party apparatus or Communist Youth League. Of the 3,460 newcomers in the central NKVD, 3,242 were party apparatchiks and Komsomol. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 491–502. There was no hint of societal rebellion. In early 1939, the police discovered a self-styled “fascist organization” in Moscow. Evidently, its handful of youthful members had fashioned a flag and put up seventy posters on the eve of Red Army Day, drew some graffiti, and wrote poems. They also seem to have discussed Nazism, anti-Semitism, and Russian nationalism. Four arrests were made; three of them turned out to have been nineteen years old when they joined the group, and the organizer was seventeen. The NKVD produced five volumes on the case. Rittersporn, Anguish, 174 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 335, l. 109–14).

36. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 332 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 39, d. 54, l. 114, 119, 154).

37. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 146 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 6, d. 11, l. 185). Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 629–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1004, l. 22). See also Knight, Beria, 91. Another 1,960 operatives in the NKVD would be arrested in 1939, including border guards and Gulag. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 151; Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 259. Some 7,372 NKVD personnel were let go in 1939, not all of whom were arrested. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 501; all told, some 60 percent of NKVD personnel would turn over between Oct. 1936 and the end of 1939, while 21,088 new people were promoted to operative positions in 1939. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 259.

38. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 495.

39. As of Oct. 1, 1936, of the 110 most senior operatives in state security, 43 had been Jews (declared), and 42 had been eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians), along with 9 Latvians, 5 Poles, and 2 ethnic Germans; by Sept. 1938, of the 150 most senior ranks, 98 were ethnic Russians and 32 Jews, with no Latvians and 1 Pole. By 1939, there would be 122 Russians, 6 Jews, and 12 Georgians. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 492–500.

40. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 58 (dated Feb. 27, 1979).

41. The Georgia NKVD was given to Avksenti Rapava, Beria’s minion who had helped pulverize Abkhazia. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 89 (Beria to Stalin, Oct. 21, 1937).

42. The transfer took place in Aug. 1938, with Beria’s promotion. Merkulov: RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 4, l. 76–7: letter, to Malenkov, July 23, 1953; “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28); Tumshis, VChK, 211.

43. Kuromiya and Pepłoński, “Stalin und die Spionage,” 29. Amid Stalin’s self-inflicted chaos, NKVD operatives placed one foreign ambassador’s perlustrated letter into the envelope of another. Plotnikova, “Organy,” 77, 79.

44. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 162–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 4, l. 14).

45. Kochik, “Sovetskaia voennaia razvedka,” (Dec. 13, 1938). Khaustov writes that “by the results of the special reports that came to Stalin during the second half of the 1930s, one can judge that we did not succeed in recruiting valuable sources of information in European representative offices.” Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 292.

46. Jacobsen, Nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik; Maser, Hitlers Mein Kampf; Hildebrand, “Hitlers Mein Kampf, Propaganda oder Programm?”

47. Jackel, Hitler’s Worldview, 47–66. Hitler did not use anti-Semitism as a vote-gathering or scapegoating ploy to come to power, but was using power to realize a deeply held anti-Semitic agenda. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship (4th ed.), 93–132.

48. Heiden had been the correspondent for the liberal Frankfürter Zeitung in his hometown in the 1920s, watching Hitler’s rabble-rousing, then in 1933 had gone into exile in the Saarland, before moving to Switzerland and eventually France. “The ‘hero’ of this book is neither a superman nor a puppet,” he wrote in the preface (dated 1935). “He is a very interesting contemporary and, viewed quantitatively, a man who has stirred up the masses more than anyone else in human history.” He depicted Hitler as both the reflection of and the antithesis to Europe, which, he argued, was a community of shared interests and of democracy that provided for freedom and peace. He called for a new “people’s parliament, constituted by freely elected representatives of all nations,” to replace “the conference of diplomats and bureaucrats in Geneva.” Heiden, Hitler, I: 6, 330; Heiden, Hitler, II: 267, 369. Volume 1 was translated as Hitler: A Biography (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1936).

49. Yaney, “War and the Evolution of Russian Government,” 302–3.

50. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 30–2.

51. “If there is any fighting in Europe to be done,” British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had told a group of parliamentarians in 1936, “I should like to see the Bolsheviks and the Nazis doing it.” He also remarked: “If he [Hitler] moves East, I shall not break my heart.” Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, 947; Carley, “Soviet Foreign Policy.”

52. Bullard also complained of his colleague, the British ambassador to Moscow, that “the dishonesty of the Soviet leaders does not disgust him.” Bullard and Bullard, Inside Stalin’s Russia, 144, 151.

53. Carley, 1939.

54. “We are in the remarkable position of not wanting to quarrel with anybody because we have got most of the world already, or the best parts of it, and we only want to keep what we have got and prevent others from taking it away from us,” Admiral Sir A. E. Chatfield had observed privately in mid-1934. “We are a very rich and very vulnerable Empire and there are plenty of poor adventurers who are not far away who look on us with hungry eyes,” Chamberlain had written in a private letter (Jan. 16, 1938). Thorne, Limits of Foreign Policy, 397–8 (letter to Warren Fisher, June 4, 1934); Freiling, Life of Neville Chamberlain, 323 (Chamberlain to Mrs. Morton Prince).

55. Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 105–45. See also Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia.

56. Overy, Twilight Years.

57. Gibbs, Ordeal in England, 409–10.

58. Schroeder, “Munich and the British Tradition.”

59. Caputi, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement; McDonough, Neville Chamberlain; Mills, “Chamberlain-Grandi Conversations”; Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement.

60. Layne, “Security Studies”; Peden, Arms, Economics, 127, 138; and Reynolds, In Command of History, 99.

61. McKercher, “Deterrence,” 119.

62. Kennedy, “Tradition of Appeasement,” 195.

63. Carley, 1939, 108; Haslam, “Soviet-German Relations,” 792 (citing a 1982 lecture by Lord Home, an eyewitness to the Munich Pact).

64. Tooze, Deluge.

65. Indigenous enmities in Eastern Europe would eventually prove enabling to Hitler, creating a kind of competition for his favor. Not for nothing did Czeslaw Milosz recoil at the region’s “acute national hatreds.” Milosz, Native Realm, 23.

66. Wolfer, Britain and France.

67. Dullin, Men of Influence, 265, citing AVP RF, f. 136, op. 22, pap. 172, d. 865 (Litvinov to Surits, Oct. 17, 1938); DVP SSSR, XXI: 618–9 (Litvinov to Surits, Nov. 4, 1938); Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 136. Stalin had Potyomkin reaffirm to Paris that their 1935 treaty remained in force. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 79–80 (Jan. 27, 1939).

68. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 301 (RGASPI, f. 71, op. 25, d. 3695); Laney, “Military Implementation of the Franco-Russian Alliance.” Pravda and Izvestiya voiced disappointment on the second anniversary of the signing of the May 2, 1935, Franco-Soviet Pact. By late 1937, even Litvinov had broached the possibility to a French correspondent of Soviet rapprochement with Nazi Germany, an attempted warning to Paris. Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 222, citing Bullitt (Paris) to Sec. of State, June 17, 1937, State Department, no. 851.00/1684; Cot, Triumph of Treason, 362–3; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 153–4.

69. DDF, 2e série, V: 311–2 (March 30, 1937), 363–5 (April 8), 507–9 (April 21), 510–1 (April 21), 613–4 (April 29), 614–5 (April 29), 615–8 (April 29); Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 44; Ford and Schorske, “Voice in the Wilderness,” 556–61.

70. Dreifort, “French Popular Front.” An internal French analysis—“Reflections on the Possible Consequences of Franco-Soviet military contacts” (May 1937)—had underscored how any deepening military ties with Moscow would risk alienating not just “Germany, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia,” but Great Britain. “French security rests above all on a close entente with England,” the analysis noted, and “a Franco-Soviet military agreement risks putting in jeopardy the warmth and candor of Franco-English relations.” Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 140–1, citing DDF, 2e série, V: 647–8 (May 1, 1937); Bell, France and Britain, 224–5; Adamthwaite, France, 49–50.

71. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 237.

72. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 140. Litvinov had informed Coulondre that he could do nothing “to suppress the French Communist party,” but that he “did not care in the least what the French government did to them. All that interested Russia was the military alliance with France.” Carley, “Five Kopecks,” 48–9 (citing PRO FO 371 20702, C362O/532/62: note of E. Rowe-Dutton, British embassy, Paris, June 17, 1937, MAE RC, Russie/2057, dos. 3: André-Charles Corbin, French ambassador in London, April 17, 1937); PRO FO 371 20702, C362O/532/62: (Note by R. Vansittart, May 13, 1937), and C3685/532/62: “Extract from a record of conversation at a lunch given by the Secretary of State to M. Delbos & Léger on May 15, 1937”); DVP SSSR, XX: 43–6 (Potyomkin with Chautemps, Jan. 19, 1937), 227–8 (Potyomkin to Surits in Berlin, May 4, 1937).

73. Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy, 239. In Jan. 1939, Léon Blum (Daladier’s recent predecessor as prime minister) implored Litvinov for an invitation to Moscow to negotiate directly with Stalin for a “broad antifascist bloc.” Blum also mentioned possibly merging the socialist and communist parties in France. The Soviet politburo formally approved the meeting request, but the trip never happened. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 368 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 85); DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 49 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 39).

74. “Stalin considered vocal music as the finest form of music,” Jelagin thought. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 297–9.

75. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 268–75; Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 302–9. Nazarov would be demoted to deputy chief of the state publishing house on April 1, 1939, and replaced by his deputy Mikhail Khrapchenko (b. 1904).

76. Novikova, “Obruchennyi s bogom,” 427–8. Novikova, a journalist, was only born in 1938, and evidently heard the story from Kozlovsky. Concerning Stalin’s views toward Kozlovsky, see also Gromyko, Pamiatnoe, 203.

77. Ivanov, Aleksei Ivanov, 159; Elagin, Ukroshchenie iskusstv, 332–3.

78. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 296–7.

79. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 96, l. 110).

80. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinski pitomets, 359–63 (TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 1, l. 1–6); APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 409, l. 3–9). The commission concluded its work on Jan. 10, 1939; the report was dated Jan. 29.

81. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 502 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 5086, l. 1–2). In June 1939, Duklesky would insert twenty-six line-item corrections in Vishnevsky’s screenplay for First Cavalry Army—a copy of the document made its way into Stalin’s files (510–2: d. 165, l. 199–201).

82. Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 10, dated 26/27 Dec. 1938. Stalin had edited the proposal by Beria, composed at Stalin’s wish, to restrict NKVD surveillance and arrests of nomenklatura. Khaustov, “Razvitie sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 364. An additional decree was issued reiterating the requirement for the NKVD to obtain army permission for arrests of officers and soldiers. Suvenirov, “Narkomat oborony i NKVD v predvoennye gody,” 34 (citing RGVA f. 4, op. 15, d. 21, l. 3ob.).

83. APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 91, l. 168–70.

84. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 14–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 145–6); Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 27; Iakovlov et al., Reabilitatsiia: Politicheskie protsessy, 40–1 (a copy of the telegram found in the Dagestan regional party committee: all such documents had to be returned to the Central Committee, so this one evidently survived thanks to negligence); Sluzhba bezopasnosti, 1993, no. 6: 2; Afanas’ev, Inogo ne dano, 561–2n2 (wrong date of Jan. 20, 1939). Kaganovich later testified (in 1957) that Stalin had written out the decree by hand. Kovaleva et al., “Posledniaia ‘antipartiinaia’ gruppa,” 86–9.

85. Prażmowska, Eastern Europe, 228.

86. DGFP, series D, DAP, V: 167–8 (Ribbentrop and Beck, Jan. 26, 1939); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 171–3 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 300, d. 2075, l. 46–9: Surits, Jan. 27, 1939); God krizisa, I: 194–6; Mel’tiukhov, Sovtesko-pol’skie voiny (2001); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 160–4. Citing hearsay from Hans-Adolf von Moltke, Luftwaffe Lieutenant-General Alfred Gerstenberg, the German air force attaché in Poland in 1938 (who would fall into Soviet captivity and be interrogated on Aug. 17, 1945) would assert that Hermann Göring, while traveling to Poland on the pretext of hunting, bribed Beck to work on behalf of Nazi Germany. Gerstenberg knew how much the Soviets despised Beck. Tainy diplomatii Tret’ego Reikka, 581 (TsA FSB, d. N-21147, t. 1, l. 35–53).

87. DGFP, series D, V: 159–61; Cienciala, “Poland in British and French Policy,” at 202, citing DDF, 2e série, XVI: 196 (May 17, 1939), and DBFP, 3rd series, VI: appendix II (foreign office on Danzig, May 5, 1939). Beck had also pursued “Third Europe,” a bloc to be led by Poland with Romania, Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia, but that had failed amid mutual hostilities. Roberts, “Diplomacy of Colonel Beck,” 579–614; Kornat, “Polish Idea of ‘The Third Europe.’” On the intense dislike for Beck even inside Polish circles, see Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 165n124.

88. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 26–7 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9717, d. 2, l. 93–5: Feb. 10, 1939). Retrospectively, a Polish journalist argues that, given the distasteful options, Beck should have yielded to Hitler’s demands for Danzig and an extra-territorial highway through the Corridor and joined him in an attack against the Soviet Union. Zychowicz, Pakt Ribbentrop-Beck. For Beck’s contemplation of possible concessions and his worries over the loss of international prestige and domestic political earthquake, see Weinberg, “Proposed Compromise”; Weinberg, “German Foreign Policy.”

89. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanenu, 198–9; God krizisa, I: 228; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 28.

90. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 169–70.

91. From 1938, the regime had begun a crash radio construction program. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 369–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 160, l. 4).

92. Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, I: 737–41; Hitler, untitled speech; Mommsen, “Hitler’s Reichstag Speech”; Kershaw, “Hitler Myth,” 240–1.

93. In a Jan. 25, 1939, circular, the Nazi foreign ministry identified the United States as the “headquarters of world Jewry.” DGFP, series D, V: 926–33.

94. Gerwarth, Bismarck Myth, 151 (citing “Wegbereiter des nueun Reiches,” Völkischer Beobachter, Feb. 15, 1939).

95. At the first meeting of the Reich Defense Council, on Nov. 18, 1938, Göring had told those assembled, “Gentlemen, the financial situation looks critical.” Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The financial situation of the Reich is catastrophic. We must look for new ways. It cannot go on like this. Otherwise we will be faced with inflation.” Mason, Arbeitsklasse, 925; Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VI: 219 (Dec. 13, 1938). In early Jan. 1939, the Reichsbank Directorate sent Hitler a collective petition urging “financial restraint” to avoid the “threatening danger of inflation.” Hitler, upon seeing eight signatures, responded, “That is mutiny.” Twelve days later he fired Schacht as Reichsbank president. But that (and a mass of resignations from the bank’s board) did nothing to alleviate the circumstance. Schacht, My First Seventy-Six Years, 392–4. Nazi Germany also canceled at the last minute a planned visit to Moscow in Feb. 1939 by Karl Schnurre, humiliating the Soviets.

96. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 161–2.

97. Given the labor shortages—estimated to be at least 1 million as of Jan. 1939—foreign laborers looked necessary for factories and farms. Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 847–55; Mason, Nazism, 106–113.

98. Bezymenskii, Stalin und Hitler, 183–209. Politburo approval came on Jan. 21, 1939.

99. Lisovskii, SSSR i kapitalisticheskoe okruzhenie. See also Barghoorn, Soviet Image of the United States, 18.

100. Zemskov, “Zakliuchennye,” 55–6; Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 104. A Nov. 17, 1938, report by the party cell in the Gulag finance department stated that the Gulag had attained just 71.6 percent of its assigned plan targets, including just 62.7 percent of railway construction. The report stated that costs were high, labor productivity low, and mismanagement so rampant it could not all be attributed to deliberate wrecking. Pliner, the Gulag head, was soon sacked and arrested. Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga, III: 148–56 (Chugunikhin); Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 103. Beria, in April 1939, wrote to Molotov claiming that he lacked slave laborers to complete his assigned tasks—a shortage across Gulag of some 400,000 prisoners. Beria wanted a freeze on new projects assigned to Gulag and a recall of those prisoners loaned out on contracts to non-Gulag enterprises, and he sought measures to improve slave laborers’ diet and health. Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga, III: 162–3; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 203–5.

101. Nordlander, “Evolution of the Dal’stroi Bosses”; Kozlov, “Pervyi direktor”; Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind, 290–304. Stalin had congratulated and rewarded Berzin on a number of occasions. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 56, l. 13 (Feb. 8, 1937).

102. Dalstroi had grown from 62,703 recorded prisoners in late 1936 to 93,978 by the end of 1938. Conquest, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police, 106; Afanas’ev et al., Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, II: 153–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 58, l. 77, 80); Nordlander, “Evolution of the Dal’stroi Bosses.” Stalin received A. A. Khodyrev, deputy chief of Dalstroi, twice (Jan. 24 and Feb. 7, 1939). Na prieme, 251, 253. Some of the ships used by the Soviets to transport prisoners were British and American built. Bollinger, Stalin’s Slave Ships.

103. Sovietland, 1939, no. 4: 10.

104. Dallin and Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor, 133–34; Nikolaevskii, “Dal’stroi,” 256–7; Conquest, Kolyma.

105. Rittersporn, Anguish, 174 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 335, l. 109–14).

106. Stalin had instructed the teacher to be firmer. In fact, the teacher and school director were fired. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 60–2 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1553, l. 9: June 8, 1938).

107. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 58–9 (l. 20–22: Dec. 8, 1938); Polianskii, 10 let s Vasiliem Stalinym, 17–8; Sokolov, Vasilii Stalin, 76–8; Tokaev, Stalin Means War, 120.

108. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 60–2 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1553, l. 26–8).

109. Vasily also “was a good athlete, rode a horse with aplomb, and was fond of motorcycles and cars.” Polianskii, 10 let s Vasiliem Stalinym, 20.

110. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 145–6. She recalled that “by 1937 or 1938, except for my nurse, there was no one left of the people my mother had found.” Even the long-standing head of the household staff, Karolina Til, “in spite of the fact that she’d been with us for ten years and was practically a member of the family,” was replaced by a young Georgian woman from Beria’s NKVD. “The whole staff at Zubalovo was changed, and new people whom none of us knew appeared at my father’s house in Kunstevo as well.” Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 143–4, 123–4.

111. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 161–76 (esp. 3, 168); Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 61–3; Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 13, 129; Posen, “Competing Images.” See also Christensen and Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks.”

112. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, Oct. 1936: 3–5, July 1937: 42–44. In Aug. 1938, the apparatus streamlined recruitment procedures. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, Aug. 1938: 63–4, Oct. 1938: 79–80.

113. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 3049, 3050, 3051.

114. XVIII s”ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii (b), 149.

115. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 224–44; Pravda, Feb. 27, 1939; Drizdo, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia.

116. Krupskaya became deathly ill the night of a pre-birthday celebration outside Moscow in Arkhangelskoe, in a narrow circle with her longtime secretary Vera Dridzo, as well as Gleb and Zinaida Kryżanowski, Dmitry Ulyanov, Felix Kon, and Mężyński’s sister Ludmila. Stalin had restrained himself from arresting Krupskaya, despite their mutual enmity, or Maria Ulyanova, both of whom continued to live in the apartment they had shared with Lenin. Lenin’s former secretaries Lidia Fotiyeva and Maria Volodicheva also went untouched. Fotiyeva (b. 1881) from 1938 was posted to the Central Lenin Museum. Pravda, Aug. 28, 1975.

117. Rodnoi Lenin (Vladimir Il’ich) i ego sem’ia: http://leninism.su/private/4131–rod noj-lenin.html?showall=&start=1.

118. Pravda, Feb. 28, 1939 (A. E. Badaev). See also Pravda, March 3, 1939; and Izvestiia, Feb. 28 and March 1, 1939.

119. Trotsky imagined that “Stalin always lived in fear of a protest on her part. She knew far too much.” New International, 5/4 (April 1939): 117. In 1937–38, at the commissariat of enlightenment, Krupskaya had received upward of 400 letters per day, mostly asking for her intercession, which she was powerless to give.

120. Zhukov, Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie, 260.

121. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 243 (citing GARF, f. upravdelami SNK SSR, otdel sekretariata, d. 4, l. 12). Nonetheless, Stalin would permit remembrance of the first anniversary of Krupskaya’s death: see the news chronicle, RGAFKFD film 1–3163.

122. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 10-21 marta 1939 goda: stenograficheski otchet, 175, 561; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 529. “It was the fault of the Comintern workers that they allowed themselves to be deceived by the class enemy, failed to detect his maneuvers in time, and were late in taking measures against the contamination of the Communist parties by enemy elements,” Manuilsky, a survivor, told the 18th Party Congress. Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, 89. In May 1939, Proskryobyshev moved to create a new department—staffed by twenty-nine people—in the special sector to handle correspondence of ordinary Soviet inhabitants with Stalin. Khlevniuk, “Letters to Stalin,” 329 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 37).

123. Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 57.

124. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/ii: 52–3; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 351 (RGASPI, f. 477, op. 1, d. 41, l. 62–83, 143–4; f. 17, op. 2, d. 773, l. 128); Khlevniuk, “Objectives of the Great Terror,” 170; Davies, “Soviet Economy,” 11–38 (at 31).

125. Whereas between 1918 and 1928 the USSR had graduated an average of just 46,000 new specialists per year, the number would climb to 335,000 per annum in the period 1938–41, which would give the Soviet Union nearly 1 million specialists with (some form of) higher education as of Dec. 31, 1940. Unger, “Stalin’s Renewal.”

126. Pravda-5, 1995, no. 1: 8 (Chuev via Mgeladze).

127. Whereas in 1928 the country counted about 4 million white-collar employees; by 1939, that number reached nearly 14 million. Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” 63. The proportion of working-class party members, even by official statistics (which inflated worker social origins), would drop from 8 percent (1933) to 3 percent (1941). Rittersporn, “From Working Class,” 187.

128. This was true from 1932 onward. DeWitt, Soviet Professional Manpower, 179.

129. “The enormous and unjustified growth, cost, proliferation, inefficiency, nepotism, narrow-mindedness, false reporting, inflexibility and arbitrariness,” the leading historian of the Soviet state summarized, “defied all party and other controls.” Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” 65.

130. Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia, 204–6. An extraordinary seven of eight applicants for candidate membership in the party would be accepted between April and Oct. 1939; over the year, the party would grow by a record 1.1 million new full members.

131. An editorial in the Menshevik émigré newspaper duly noted the transition, commenting, “this is . . . the Congress of a new party which should be called Stalinist.” “Pered s”ezdom,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, March 15, 1939. See also Vishnevskii, “Stalin na XVIII s”ezde partii,” 73–83.

132. Pravda, March 11, 1939, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 380–1.

133. Petrovsky was officially removed as a deputy chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet presidium on May 31, 1939. He remained without employment for half a year, but then became deputy director of the Museum of the Revolution under Fyodor Samoilov, who knew him from the days in the Bolshevik Duma faction. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 407.

134. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 510–9; Pravda, March 20, 1939.

135. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 221–2. Behind the scenes Zhdanov was said to have wisecracked about the terror. “Stalin complains that his pipe has disappeared,” Zhdanov supposedly joked. “‘I would give a lot to find it,’ Stalin states. Within three days Beria has already unmasked ten thieves, each of whom confesses to being the one who stole Stalin’s pipe. A day later Stalin finds his pipe, which had fallen behind the couch.” Zhdanov, his interlocutor recalled, “laughed merrily at this terrible joke.” Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (2nd ed.), 509.

136. Shvernik and one of his aides were trying to solve a difficult problem, and when the aide made a suggestion, Shvernik pointed out that it contradicted a Central Committee decree, to which the aide replied that this body could err. “It is difficult to describe what transpired with Nikolai Mikhailovich at these words. Reddening, he shouted, ‘Hands on the trouser seams, comrade Pogrebnoi, when you speak about the Central Committee, hands on the trouser seams!!!’” Guseinov, “Ves’ma neodnoznachnyi N. M. Shvernik,” 102.

137. The Beria household census form for 1939 listed their Moscow address as Malaya Nikitskaya, 28, apt. 1. Beria himself is not listed for some reason; the five listed were his wife, Nina [Nino] (34 years old), his mother, Marta (66 years old), his sister Akesha (32), his son Sergei [Sergo] (14), and the German nanny Ellia Almeshtigler (38), who was a student at the Moscow Institute of Economics and Finances. Koenker et al., Revelations, 344 (GARF, f. 9430, op. 1S, d. 166, l. 1–2). Kuropatkin died in 1925. Knox, “General Kuropatkin.”

138. At the dacha, the Berias’ neighbors were the Kaganoviches. Beria, My Father, 34–5. Svetlana recalls it as Chubar’s dacha, not Postyshev’s. Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 412–3. It is possible that Chubar had it after Postyshev. Postyshev and Chubar, arrested at different times, were shot the same day (Feb. 26, 1939).

139. “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 100–101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28: Merkulov to Malenkov, July 23, 1933). Merkulov claimed that Beria never opened up to him.

140. Traktory i sel’khozmashiny, 1967, no. 6: 2, no. 7: 41. On harvest exaggerations for 1937–40, see Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 288nf. Tractors held by the regional MTS would rise from 7,100 in 1930 to 356,800 by 1937; harvester combines from 10,400 in 1933 to 96, 300 by 1937.

141. Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 288nf; Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 262–7; Borisov, Proizvodstvennye kadry derevni, 200–1. Whereas about 3.3 million tons of grain had been exported in 1937–38, only 2 million tons would be exported in 1940 and the first half of 1941.

142. Osokina, Za fasadom, 201; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, IV: 794–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 978, l. 62), 831–2 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 94, l. 17), 839 (d. 95, l. 3), 843–4 (l. 40–1), 862–4 (GANO, f. P-3, op. 2, d. 1063, l. 34–7), 868–74 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 1292, l. 8–19), 886–90 (l. 247–57), 900–4 (l. 320–30), 913–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 982, l. 31–2). In 1936, Stalin had not objected to requests to mention in the regional press the assistance extended to regions suffering hunger (885–6: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 55, l. 109).

143. Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 241–2 (RGASPI, f. 477, op. 1, d. 4, l. 114–5); Kolkhozy vo vtoroi, 24.

144. The first subdivision had taken place in Aug. 1937, when a separate machine building commissariat was formed. By 1941, there would be twenty-two separate industrial commissariats, one for each branch. Rees and Watson, “Politburo and Sovnarkom,” 24.

145. Davies, “Soviet Economy,” 32 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 336, l. 9–12). The author was Pakhomov, but this was not N. I. Pakhomov, the water transport commissar (who been shot in Aug. 1938). Stalin had Poskryobyshev forward the letter to Zhdanov.

146. Krokodil, 1939, no. 7; Chegodaeva, Dva lika vremeni, 50.

147. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 1–3050 (year 1939).

148. Reid, “Socialist Realism”; Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 145–55, 180.

149. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 16.

150. “If I had said it right,” Molotov later explained, “Stalin would have felt that I was correcting him.” Pavlov, “Dve poslednie vstrechi”; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 586.

151. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 34, 26; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 10–1.

152. Pravda, March 11, 1939; XVIII s”ezd VKP(b), 15; Sochineniia, XIV: 337–8. For British reactions, see DBFP, 3rd series, IV: 210–7 (Henderson to Halifax, March 9, 1939), 260 (Henderson to Halifax, March 15), 266–9/8 (Halifax to Phipps, March 15), 278–9 (Henderson to Halifax, March 16). Ivan Maisky had written to Stalin in late 1937 on how to handle appeasement: “Let ‘Western democracies’ reveal their hand in the matter of the aggressors. What is the point of us pulling their chestnuts out of the fire for them? To fight together—by all means. To serve as cannon fodder for them—never!” Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, xxv (no citation).

153. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 205. Izvestiya’s foreign department did internally discuss the possibility of a change in foreign policy orientation, and the newspaper did suddenly discontinue its antifascist writings from Paris by “Paul Jocelyn” (a pseudonym of Ehrenburg’s). When Ehrenburg sought an explanation from Surits, the latter was said to have snapped, “Nothing is asked of you, and you are worried!” Ehrenburg, Sobranie sochinenii, IX: 228.

154. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 109 (citing Bundesarkhiv Koblenz, Zsg. 101/12: 72).

155. From 1907 through 1914, Schulenburg had been a German consul in tsarist Russia. Sommer, Botschafter Graf Schulenburg. See also Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 19.

156. Schorske, “Two German Diplomats.” At the German embassy on Leontyev Lane, on March 5, 1932, five shots had been fired at Dirksen’s car, but he was not inside (one of the bullets struck an embassy counselor in the hand). A hasty trial linked the episode to the Polish embassy (a transparent Soviet effort to poison German-Polish relations). Dirksen, a parvenu aristocrat (from a long line of bourgeois civil servants), had been moved to Japan (1933–8), where he belatedly joined the Nazi Party (1936), and then to Britain (1938–9), where he succeeded Ribbentrop as ambassador and recognized that Chamberlain’s government was among Germany’s greatest political assets. Hilger, Incompatible Allies, 247–8. In 1938, Leontyev Lane would be renamed Stanislavsky Street, for the celebrated Russian theater director.

157. Maisky had written from London to Litvinov (Feb. 10, 1939) to the effect that war between the Axis and the “so-called” Western democracies was not imminent, though “one could not completely exclude such a possibility, especially in 1939,” because “matters depended on Hitler and Mussolini.” Maisky also wrote that Hitler “is little inclined to go full bore against Poland, let alone the USSR.” AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 3, d. 35, l. 51–3 (Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 1). Five days after the March 15 occupation of Czechoslovakia, Litvinov wrote to Stalin, latching on to Chamberlain’s dispatch to Moscow of a trade negotiator, Robert Hudson, but the Soviets put the onus on the British. “Since our many previous proposals have failed to yield results,” Litvinov wrote to Hudson, “we do not now intend to advance any new proposals and are awaiting an initiative from those who must in some way indicate that they are ready to take measures to enter collective security.” DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 209–11 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 154–8). DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 209–11 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 2, d. 11, l. 154–8: March 20, 1939). The visit by Hudson would yield nothing, as Litvinov complained.

158. Watt, How War Came, 154.

159. Nowak, “Von der Karpatenukraine zum Karpatenland”; Winch, Republic for a Day; Kennan, From Prague after Munich, 58–75; Stercho, Diplomacy of Double Morality. Soon Mussolini, whom the Führer had not informed about his march into Czechoslovakia, responded by invading Albania, which would be incorporated into the Italian “empire.”

160. Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 47.

161. A. Gerasimov, “O zakhvate Chechoslovakii Germaniei,” RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1237, l. 162–7. Litvinov had written to Maisky that the Western democracies were in essence saying to Hitler, “Go east, or we will unite with them [the Soviets] against you. I would not be surprised if Hitler undertakes the same gestures towards us.” AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 4, d. 34, l. 39–41 (Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 1).

162. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 343–5; The Founding Conference of the Fourth International: Program and Resolutions (New York: The Socialist Workers Party, 1939).

163. On the eve of the Munich Pact, Trotsky had dismissed Stalin’s policy of “collective security” against Nazi Germany as a “lifeless fiction” and predicted that “we may now expect with certainty Soviet diplomacy to attempt a rapprochement with Hitler.” On the eve of Czechoslovakia’s destruction, Trotsky wickedly observed that Hitler went from triumph to triumph, whereas “Stalin met only defeat and humiliation (China, Czechoslovakia, Spain).” Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1938–39, 29–30 (Sept. 22, 1938), 216–9 (March 11, 1939).

164. A plan would be presented to him in July 1939 and be approved in Aug. Soviet intelligence’s documents on the Trotsky assassination efforts are said to be largely missing, except for the period Aug. 1940 to the end of 1941. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 91, 93, 109n1.

165. One of the abandoned field agents, code-named Felipe, would manage to get back to Moscow in Jan. 1940 and report details on Trotsky’s security system and the comings and goings from his villa in Mexico, all of which he had undertaken to ascertain on his own; he would be sent back to Mexico to be part of the operations. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 94–5.

166. Eitingon had helped direct sabotage of rail lines and airfields, as a deputy to Orlov. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 29–36.

167. “This is not just an act of revenge, although Konovalets is an agent of German fascism,” Stalin had supposedly explained to Sudoplatov. “Our goal is to behead the movement of Ukrainian fascism on the eve of war and force these gangsters to annihilate each other in a struggle for power.” Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 23–4.

168. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 103.

169. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 64–7; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 441–54. Sudoplatov’s visits to the Little Corner are not recorded in Stalin’s Kremlin logbooks; Volkgonov’s work and the documents he brought to bear strongly support Sudoplatov’s overall veracity.

170. Eitingon was denounced by Peterss and Karakhan. Sharapov, Naum Eitingon, 70.

171. Schroeder, “Alliances 1815–1945,” 195–222. More broadly, see Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine.

172. Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine.

173. On Nov. 10, 1938, Hitler told four hundred invited German journalists: “It was only out of necessity that for years I talked of peace. But it was now necessary gradually to re-educate the German people psychologically and make it clear that there are things which must be achieved by force.” Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, III: 721–4.

174. Britain lost its Czechoslovakia intelligence station. Earlier, the Austrian station chief for British intelligence had been arrested in 1938 when the Nazis marched in. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 57.

175. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 29–33 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1237, l. 162ss–167ss.).

176. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 204–5; Salter, Personality in Politics, 85.

177. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/i: 9–12.

178. DGFP, series D, VI: 91–6; DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 537–8n86. A Romanian-German timber agreement followed on May 13, 1939.

179. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 286 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 105, l. 96–107).

180. DGFP, series D, VI: 121–4; Trial of the Major War Criminals, IV: 404 (Brauchitsch), III: 217. In March 1939, Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Mossor of the general inspectorate of the Polish armed forces wrote a memorandum urging the general staff “to prepare for Soviet air bases in the region of Brest and anticipate the march of Soviet forces primarily through northern Poland to attack East Prussia.” He was removed from his position.

181. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 230 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 172), 231 (pap. 20, d. 228, l. 1–2), 232 (pap. 1, d. 5, l. 117–8), 233 (l. 121).

182. Andrew, Defense of the Realm, 205.

183. French Yellow Book, 104 (George Bonnet to Léon Noel, French ambassador to Warsaw, March 31, 1939).

184. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 290–1 (Maisky, 31, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 300.

185. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, I: xxi–xxii, 689ff.

186. Interview in London, March 18, 1939: Fourth International (New York) 3/1 (1942): 117. Confronting Hitler would indeed cost the empire.

187. “As Prime Minister,” explained Strang, an adviser, “Chamberlain took increasingly into his own hands the conduct of foreign policy, or rather of that branch of foreign policy which might involve issues of peace or war, namely relations with the two European dictatorships”—meaning Germany and Italy. Strang, Home and Abroad, 124.

188. Aster, 1939, 14–16, 359–60. See also Bond, British Military Policy, 306; and Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 214.

189. Chamberlain had assured the Cabinet that “it would, of course, be for us to determine what action threatened Polish independence. This would prevent us from becoming embroiled as the result of a frontier incident.” Newman, March 1939, 202 (citing CAB/98: Cabinet Minutes, March 31, 1939).

190. Strang, “Once More unto the Breach”; Newman, March 1939.

191. “It was in Spain that men learnt that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and that there are times when courage is not its own reward,” Albert Camus would write. “It is this which explains why so many men throughout the world regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.” Camus, “préface,” in Georges Bataille (ed.), L’Espagne libre.

192. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement, 156.

193. Thompson, Anti-Appeasers.

194. The gold was on deposit with the Bank for International Settlements, founded in 1930 in Switzerland, which used the Bank of England; still, the latter honored the request for transfer of the reserves. Blaazer, “Finance and the End of Appeasement.”

195. Watt, How War Came, 162–87; Cienciala, “Poland in British and French Policy,” reprinted in Finney, Origins of the Second World War, 413–33. On long-standing British sympathy for Germany’s claims to Danzig and the Corridor, see Cienciala, “German Propaganda.”

196. Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 737–8.

197. Because Hitler could not attack the Soviet Union without bringing Poland into play, the French ambassador to the Soviet Union believed that, in effect, the “guarantee” to Poland brought about, indirectly, what Chamberlain had said he would never do: put Britain on the line to defend the USSR. Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 263.

198. Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 170.

199. DBFP, 3rd series, V: 104.

200. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 4–5.

201. On March 13, 1939, Frinovsky had written to Stalin recalling a conversation he had had in Molotov’s office in Jan. 1938 when, in front of Kaganovich and Mikoyan, Stalin had informed Frinovsky that a number of others had testified against him. Stalin had asked Frinovsky whether he was “honest before the party.” Frinovsky had answered affirmatively. “You will not let us down, then?” Stalin had said. “No,” Frinovsky had answered. What was this? A psychological game, theater, self-amusement, a moment of indecision? Toptygin, Neizvestnyi Beriia, 50.

202. “‘Druzhba narodov’: pervaia polveka (1939–1989)”: http://magazines.russ.ru/dru zhba/site/history/i39.html.

203. E. V. Tarle, Taleiran (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1939).

204. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 237 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 180, l. 30). The Polish ambassador to Tokyo had been told by the Japanese foreign minister that the fisheries negotiations with the USSR were a matter not merely of economics but of national prestige, and that if a new agreement were not reached the Japanese “would undertake decisive steps, as I understand, of a military nature.” The Japanese foreign minister also said that “the Japanese government had not yet definitively decided the issue of deepening the Anti-Comintern Pact.” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 230 (March 10, 1939).

205. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 529 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 163, l. 2–2ob.). On April 9, Eisenstein wrote to Stalin requesting permission to travel to London for the premiere there of Alexander Nevsky. Stalin wrote to Molotov that “this matter does not concern me,” but Molotov knew Stalin’s views and forbid Eisenstein to travel. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 538 (APRF, f. 3, op. 35, d. 86, l. 45–6). Andro Kobaladze would play Stalin in Yakov Sverdlov (1940).

206. Trauberg, “Rasskaz o velikom vozhde,” 7–15; Trauberg, “Proizvedenie mysli i strasti,” 32–8. See also Tsimbal, “Obraz Lenina v kino,” 13–7; and Lebedev, Shchukin—akter kino; Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil’my, 4 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961–77), II: 197.

207. Toward the film’s end, Dzierżyński divulges that an agent-provocateur has “penetrated” the Cheka. Kataev, “Lenin v 1918 godu”; Sadovskii, “Lenin v 1918 godu”; Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema, 220–9.

208. Vernadskii, Dnevniki, 1935–1941, II: 52.

209. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 33–50 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 373, l. 3–44); Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 204 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 374, l. 3–47); Stepanov, “O masshtabakh repressii” (no. 5), 61–2.

210. D. N. Sukhanov, an aide to Malenkov, claimed he witnessed Yezhov’s arrest by Beria in Malenkov’s office: Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 13, excerpted memoirs (dated March 6, 1993); Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 179–81; Briukhanov and Shoshkov, Opravdaniiu ne podlezhit, 132; Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatisii, 100; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 200–1; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 512–3; Polianskii, Ezhov, 205–6, 219.

211. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ery Ezhova,” 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 82–4).

212. Khaustov, “Razvitie sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti,” 362 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 45, d. 29, l. 246).

213. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 182.

214. Nikolai P. Afanasev, USSR deputy general procurator, recalls this as taking place at Lefortovo, but all other sources indicate Yezhov was held in Sukahnovka. Ushakov and Stukalov, Front voennykh prokurorov, 69.

215. Viktorov, Bez grafa “sekretnosti,” 326.

216. “Vospominaniia: memurary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 87; Piliatskin, “‘Vrag naroda’”; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 513; Polianskii, Ezhov, 216–7. Others suggest these documents—which disappeared—need not have been compromising, but could have been flattering material Yezhov collected for a Stalin museum. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 228.

217. Briukhanov and Shoshkov, Opravdaniiu ne podlezhit, 132–3. Malenkov’s son would assert that when his father had Yezhov’s safe opened, they discovered dossiers on Malenkov as well as Stalin; the latter included the recollections of an old Bolshevik that Stalin had prerevolutionary links to the tsarist okhranka. Malenkov, O moem otse Georgii Malenkove, 34.

218. Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 423–5. It is said that when Malenkov finally saw a transcript of this interrogation, in Feb. 1955, he destroyed it. Kovaleva et al., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, 44; Kovaleva et al., “Posledniaia ‘antipartiinaia’ gruppa,” 23. For Khrushchev’s defense of Malenkov in 1937 in Moscow, see Ponomarev, “Nikita Khrushchev,” 135.

219. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia, kak eto bylo, 330.

220. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, 68. The former colleague was Sergei Schwarz.

221. Pavliukov, Ezhov, 470; Khrushchev, Vremia, liudi, vlast’, I: 172; Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 417.

222. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 365–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3–os, op. 6, d. 3, l. 42–3). For Yezhov’s interrogation on April 26 (by Kobulov and others), see Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 52–72 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 375, l. 122–64).

223. Sontag, “Last Months of Peace.”

224. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 332–3 (April 15, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 342.

225. Stalin wrote on the TASS summary: “Expel the representative of this newspaper from Moscow.” (In Feb. 1939, the politburo had approved the foreign affairs commissariat request to grant Howard an entry visa, while warning him not to expect another audience with Stalin.) Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 506–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 207, l. 36–41; f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 105). Howard also published a dispatch from Paris at this time pointing out that anti-Jewish actions in Nazi Germany were underestimated, not exaggerated.

226. God krizisa, I: 386–7 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, p. 25, d. 4, l. 27–8); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 283–4, 284–5 (AVP RF f. 059, op. 1, p. 303, d. 2093, l. 27–8); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 335–7 (April 17, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 346–7.

227. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 335–6 (April 17, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 345–6; Aster, 1939, 163; Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 283, 287–9; God krizisa, I: 386 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 25, d. 4, l. 27–8); FRUS, 1939, I: 240; DDF, 2e série, XV: 789–90; Na prieme, 256. See also Carley, 1939, 126–34; and Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 159.

228. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 291–3 (Astakhov record: AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 7, d. 65, l. 69–71); DGFP, series C, IV: 783 (Bräutigam memo, Nov. 1, 1935); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1–2; Roberts, “Infamous Encounter?”; Roberts, Origins of the Second World War, 69–71; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 202–15.

229. Gafencu, Last Days of Europe, 78.

230. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 283 (citing FP [36], minutes of 43rd meeting, April 19, 1939, Cab 27/624); DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 541–2n101 (citing PRO, Cab. 27/624: 300–3, 309–12); Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 175. Halifax told a British cabinet meeting (April 26) that the “time was not ripe for so comprehensive a proposal, and we proposed to ask the Russian government to give further consideration to our plan.” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 341 (April 21), 684n103 (citing PRO, CAB 23/39: 58); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, I: 340, II: 308n103.

231. Overy, “Strategic Intelligence,” 474, citing DGFP, series D, VI: 289–90 (chargé d’affaires in London Kordt to foreign ministry, April 19, 1939), 336 (Kordt to foreign ministry, April 26, 1939), 472–3 (Dirksen to foreign ministry, May 11); Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 197–8.

232. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 252–3 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 7, d. 63, l. 14–5: Litvinov to Merekalov, April 4, 1939), 268–9 (f. 011, op. 4, pap. 27, d. 61, l. 77–8: Merekalov’s reply, April 12, 1939). See also Bartel, “Aleksej Fedorovič Merekalov.” Litvinov’s Anglophilia has been exaggerated. It was always a means to an end—Soviet security—which he saw as solely possible with a collective security agreement against fascism. Phillips, Between the Revolution and the West, 21–2, 52–3.

233. In early April, Potyomkin sent two notes, both handwritten, to Surits warning of “the very hard line” being adopted in Moscow vis-à-vis cadres. “The slightest lapse is not only recorded but also provokes a swift and violent reaction.” He had Surits send his subordinate to Moscow. Dullin, Men of Influence, 216 (citing AVP RF, f. 11, op. 4, pap. 32, d. 179: April 4 and 19, 1939). Surits was represented by Krapivintsev, who worked under him as embassy counselor in Paris. Na prieme, 257–8. This was only Maisky’s second visit to Stalin’s office, the first having been June 1, 1938, with Litvinov.

234. For the grim documentary trail of Litvinov’s memorandums to Stalin, see DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 208–9 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 2, d. 11, l. 159: March 20, 1939), 209–11 (l.154–8: March 20), 220–1 (l. 167–8: March 23), 230 (l. 172: March 27), 246 (l. 186: April 3), 269–70 (l. 209: April 13), 275–7 (l. 213–7: April 15), 277–8 (l. 218–9: April 15), 283 (l. 220–1: April 17); Resis, “Fall of Litvinov.”

235. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, 360–3; Dullin, Des hommes d’influence, 310–3; Dullin, Men of Influence, 230–1. Sheinis suggests that the meeting described by Maisky took place on April 27, but Litvinov does not appear in the Kremlin office logbook that day. Na prieme, 257–8.

236. Mel’tiukhov, 17 September 1939, 232; Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 284.

237. The July 29, 1936, secret circular to the entire provincial party and state apparatus had omitted Molotov’s name on the list of the assassination targets of the Zinoviev-Trotskyite Center, and at the public trial that Aug., the defendants never mentioned him as a target, possibly a show of Stalin’s displeasure. But if so, Molotov’s purgatory had not lasted long: on Sept. 21, 1936, a two-year-old attempt on Molotov’s life had been included in the “testimony” taken in preparation for the second Moscow trial. And from the day of Stalin’s return to Moscow (Oct. 25), Molotov was regularly in the Little Corner again. “The thought alone that it was possible,” Pravda (Nov. 23, 1936) would intone of an assassination of Molotov, “is capable of making every citizen of the Soviet Union shudder.” Stalin’s decision to ratchet up the psychological pressure on Ordjonikidze might have been a factor in Molotov’s abrupt return to favor. See also Iakovlev et al., Reabilitatsiia: Politicheskie protsessy, 231–2; Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 154–9; Conquest, Reassessment, 90–1; Pravda, Oct. 26, 1961; Watson, Molotov, 130. The incident in question had occurred on a visit to the Siberian coal town of Prokopevsk when Molotov’s local driver had veered off an inclined road and came to a stop in a ditch (called “a ravine”). At the time, the driver had received merely a party reprimand, which Molotov had interceded to get rescinded. But in 1936, the driver was retrospectively charged with terrorism, and confessed. Molotov and Chuev wrongly recalled the incident as having occurred in 1932. Chuev, Sto sorok, 302.

238. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 50 (1936): 15, no. 52–53 (1936): 47, no. 58–59 (1936): 18–19; Chuev, Sto sorok, 302. For Lev Sedov’s response to the Novosibirsk trial, see Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 54–55 (1937): 4. Molotov was included as a target in the Jan. 1937 trial, alongside Stalin, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Orjonikidze, Yezhov, Zhdanov, and four provincial party bosses, one of whom was Beria.

239. Rudzutaks, a deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars under Molotov, told the latter to his face that he had been tortured. “I think that he was not a conscious participant” in a conspiracy, Molotov admitted later in life. “A former [tsarist] prisoner, he had been at hard labor for four years . . . I formed the impression when he was my deputy, he had begun to self-indulge a bit . . . He enjoyed the life of a philistine—he would sit around, dine with friends, spend time with companions . . . It is difficult to say what brought about his downfall, but I think he shared the type of company where non-party elements were present, or god knows what other kinds.” Another close Molotov comrade, Alexander Arosyev, the hack writer and head of the all-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad, was also executed. “The most devoted person,” Molotov recalled. “It seems he was not discriminating in his acquaintances. It was impossible to mix him up in anti-Soviet affairs. But he had ties . . .” Chuev, Sto sorok, 410–1, 422–3. See also David-Fox, “Stalinist Westernizer?”

240. Chadaev in Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 421–2. Molotov’s Poskryobyshev was I. I. Lapshov.

241. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 493.

242. Watson, “Politburo and Foreign Policy,” 141; Watson, Molotov, 147.

243. Dullin, Men of Influence, 233–6. Already by late 1937, fourteen of the foreign consulates in Leningrad had been forced to close—including those of Germany, Japan, Italy, and Poland. Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” II: 337–8.

244. Foreign policy had already been delegated to a permanent commission of the politburo back on April 14, 1937. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 55, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 986 (protocol for April 16, 1937).

245. In 1938, Litvinov had not traveled for his annual rest at Karlsbad, and had to summon his children home from England. Litvinov’s talkative British wife, Ivy, had already been sent to the isolation of the Urals some years before. Carswell, Exile, 165–8.

246. Ulricks, “Impact of the Great Purges,” 188–92; Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 130. Personnel arrested in the second wave included deputy commissar Stomanyakov (who tried to commit suicide but failed), as well as Litvinov’s personal secretary (Nazarov) and others. After the March 1938 Bukharin trial, rumors had circulated in Moscow of a public trial of diplomatic personnel, but as in the case of the Comintern, no public process took place. Conquest, Reassessment, 423.

247. Kennan, Russia and the West, 231, 336; Watson, Molotov, 153–6; Gnedin, Katastrofa i vtoroe rozhdenie, 105–15; Meerovich, “V narkomindele 1922–1939”; Chuev, Sto sorok, 332–3.

248. Voroshilov’s annual May Day holiday declaration to the troops for 1939 observed that “the capitalist world has entered the plane of new powerful shocks. The economic crisis threatens to become prolonged and more difficult than previous crises. Fascist aggressors, reshaping the world’s map by force, have dragged humanity into a Second Imperialist War. . . . Unbridled fascist military aggression, intoxicated by easy victories, does not cease to threaten new attacks against weak and intimidated countries.” Krasnaia zvezda, May 1, 1939, reprinted in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XIII (II/i): 100–2 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 15, d. 25, l. 227–29).

249. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, I: 385–6; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 182–3.

250. Gnedin, Katastrofa i votoroe rozhdenie, 108–10.

251. DBFP, 3rd series, V: 400 (Seeds to Halifax, May 3), 410 (Seeds to Halifax, May 4), 542 (Seeds to Halifax, May 19); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 213–4.

252. Litvinov evidently did refer to Molotov as “fool” (durak), including over the phone, which he knew was eavesdropped, according to Litvinov’s daughter Tatiana, cited in Phillips, Between the Revolution and the West, 166. Litvinov is listed for a mere thirty-five minutes in the Little Corner on May 3, 1939: Na prieme, 258.

253. Stalin’s telegram on Molotov’s replacement of Litvinov mentioned “the serious conflict between the chairman of the People’s Council of Commissars, Comrade Molotov, and the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Comrade Litvinov,” and blamed Litvinov’s “disloyalty.” APRF, f. 3, op. 63, d. 29, l. 71; DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 327 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 313, dl. 2154, l. 45); Sochineniia, XVIII: 174.

254. On Molotov’s influence on Stalin, see Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 11–16. See also Gromyko, Memories, 30, 33, 404.

255. Watson, “Molotov’s Apprenticeship.”

256. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 98–102. Sudoplatov was then deputy director of NKVD intelligence and in charge of the German desk.

257. Khrushchev, “Vospominaniia,” 18.

258. Zhukov added that “it was another matter later, when all the calculations turned out to be incorrect and collapsed; more than once in my presence Stalin berated Molotov for this.” Simonov, “Zametki k biografii G. K. Zhukova,” 49, reprinted in Mirkina and Iarovikov, Marshal Zhukov, II: 201–2.

259. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, 363. The dacha may have belonged to Stalin, who had awarded it to Litvinov.

260. Gnedin, Katastrofa i votoroe rozhdenie, 128–52. Gnedin would be the only one to survive to old age from the Soviet embassy or trade mission to Berlin.

261. “Sometimes he would stop for a few minutes and he would bring out his mouth organ and play arias from operas on it,” Korzhenko’s daughter Nora wrote of Nikolai, aged twenty-eight. “He was a brilliant player and if I closed my eyes I could imagine I was listening to an organ.” She added: “All the time we were living in the beautiful wooden house at Klyazma life was perilous and uncertain. Nearly every day men and women were being arrested, shot or sent into exile. You could never escape from the atmosphere of intrigue, misery and sudden death. It was a strange and sinister atmosphere for a young girl to live in, but somehow one just accepted these things as part of life.” Murray, I Spied for Stalin, 83–9, 112–3.126; Barmine, Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat, 17. Nora, who had studied foreign languages and mingled with foreigners, would become an informant in that milieu for the organization that wrecked her family and the families of nearly everyone she knew—the NKVD.

262. Conquest, Reassessment, 423.

263. “Vospominaniia nachal’nika vneshnei razvedki P. M. Fitina,” in Primakov, Ocherki, IV: 19; Bondarenko, Fitin, 41–7. Of the six hundred or so students admitted to the NKVD Central School in Moscow (Bolshoi Kiselny Pereulok) in those years, just fifty were chosen for the separate spy school in Balashikha, just outside Moscow. Sinitsyn, Rezident svidetlet’stvuet, 5; Sergutov, “Organizatsionnye aspejty deiatel’nosti vneshnei razvedki,” III: 237. See also Pavlov, Tragediia Sovetskoi razvedki, 349.

264. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 66–8.

265. Trotsky speculated that Stalin was titillated by Kollontai’s love life. Trotsky, Stalin, 243–4.

266. In late 1938, Litvnov had written several times to Boris Stein in Rome, forbidding him to return to Moscow because he was “needed” abroad. Sheinis, “Sud’ba diplomata,” 301. Stalin would dispatch Stein to Finland, after which, in Feb. 1939, he did return to Moscow. He would be spared, demoted to the editorial board of the periodical Trud, along with Troyanovsky, who had been ambassador to Tokyo and Washington.

267. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 10–12 (AVP RF f. 06, op. 1, p. 2, d. 11, l. 4–7: Jan. 3, 1939).

268. Molotov claims he was specifically tasked with removing the preponderance of Jews. Chuev, Sto sorok, 274.

269. “‘Avtobiograficheskie zametki’ V. N. Pavlova—perevodchika I. V. Stalina.” Pavlov turned over this unpublished short memoir to the Foreign Ministry in 1987, and was interviewed in 1989 to clarify certain points.

270. Bohlen, Witness to History, 65.

271. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 68–9.

272. Seabury, Wilhelmstrasse, 31, citing Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, 106. By 1940, 71 of the 120 highest officials in the German foreign ministry would belong to the Nazi party. Davidson, Trial of the Germans, 152.

273. Serge, “Litvinov,” 419. Litvinov’s inner circle included young people, such as Eduard Hershelman (head of his secretariat from age thirty), who was nevertheless arrested.

274. Even before the massacre-induced vacancies, half of the 1,000 personnel in the Soviet diplomatic corps at home and abroad were recruited right out of school at the beginning of the 1930s. Still, some 85 percent of Soviet diplomatic personnel active from 1940 to 1946 had begun a diplomatic career after 1936. Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” II: 345. “It happened that one made an appointment with a colleague but could not find him on the fixed day—he had been arrested,” recalled one high-level official in the commissariat. “Exchange of opinions and conversations were reduced to a minimum.” Roshchin, “People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 110–11. The commissariat’s private apartments at Blacksmith Bridge were sealed in wax after the arrest of their occupants, and the new residents often witnessed the unsealing by the NKVD. Dullin, Men of Influence, 238.

275. Kordt, Wahn und Wirklichkeit, 153.

276. Gafencu, Last Days of Europe, 83. On June 13, 1939, Nazi Party organizations would be forbidden to use “Third” when referring to the Reich—a repudiation of the Holy Roman empire (800–1806) as the first Reich (Bismarck’s having then been the second). Wilson, Heart of Europe.

277. Butler, Mason-Mac, 74–5. Mason-Macfarlane’s drawing-room window overlooked the Charlottenburg Chausee, which ran from the Siegesäule gilded column commemorating the 1870–71 war of reunification eastward to the Brandenburg Gate.

278. Moorehouse, Killing Hitler, 190–1, citing DBFP, 3rd series, IV, appendix V, Mason-Macfarlane Memorandum, 626; Imperial War Museum Archive, Mason-Macfarlane papers, ref. MM40.

279. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 183–5.

280. McKee, Tomorrow the World, 27.

281. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, III: 1148–79; Domarus, Hitler: Speeches, III: 1561–96; Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 161–2; Muggeridge, Ciano’s Diary, 78; Shirer, Berlin Diary, 133.

282. Haffner, Meaning of Hitler, 32–4.

283. DGFP, series D, VI: 460 (Braun von Stumm, May 9, 1939). The order (“Immediately cease polemics against the Soviet Union and Bolshevism”) was issued on May 5, 1939. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 110 (citing Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt, Bonn, Zsg. 101/13: 5).

284. Stehlin, Témoignage pour l’histoire, 147–53; and French Yellow Book, 132–6 (Coulondre to Bonnet, May 7, 1939); Andrew, Secret Service, 423–4. On June 16, Bodenschatz would tell Coulondre that “Germany was making great efforts for an agreement with Russia.”

285. Borev, Staliniada, 182–3. Dunayevsky, the songwriter, would get the Order of Lenin after Volga-Volga. Turovskaia, “Volga-Volga i ego vremia.” On May 7, the annual Kremlin banquet for military academy graduates was held, after a two-year hiatus.

286. Nekrich, Pariahs, 154 (citing RGAE, f. 413, op. 13, d, 2856, l. 5–6).

287. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 3.

288. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 339–41 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 7 d. 66, l. 21–4: Astakhov to Molotov, May 6, 1939); God krizisa, I: 457–8 (AVP RF, f. 082, op. 22, pap. 93, d. 7, l. 214–5: Astakhov to Potyomkin, May 12, 1939).

289. On the Germany embassy’s favorable report concerning Litvinov’s dismissal, see DGFP, series D, VI: 419–20 (Tippelskirch, May 4).

290. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 45; Sipols, Tainy, 323–40.

291. Watt, “Initiation of the Negotiations,” 164–5. Alfred Rosenberg, following a conversation with Göring in spring 1939, had noted a willingness to go along with a temporary deal with Moscow out of expediency. United States Holocaust Museum, Alfred Rosenberg’s Diary, 269.

292. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 308–9; Fischer, Life and Death of Stalin, 56. Ehrenburg, along with everyone else, puzzled over why Litvinov had not been arrested. Ehrenburg, Post-War Years, 276–8.

293. Lev Helfand, the Soviet ambassador to Rome, who would defect in July 1940, surmised that Stalin was willing to reach agreement with the British at least through June 1939. Haslam, Russia’s Cold War, 8 (citing a report of Helfand’s Sept. 12, 1940, interview with Neville Butler, Washington, D.C.: FO 371/24845).

294. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 375–6 (May 5, 1939). See also Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 153–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22407, d. 2, l. 183: April 14, 1939, l. 192, 210: April 17 and 26, 1939); and Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 98–9.

295. Muggeridge, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 283, 286; Gibson, Ciano Diaries, 78–9, 82, 84–5 (May 7, 14, and 21, 1939).

296. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 342 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 303, d. 2093, l. 60–1: Molotov to Surits, May 8, 1939), XXII: 546n113 (pap. 294, d. 2036, l. 75: Molotov to Maisky, May 8), XXII/i: 356 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 300, d. 2076, l. 189–90: Maisky to Molotov, May 10); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 380–2 (May 8, 1939), 383–4 (May 8), 386–8 (May 10, 1939), 687n113; Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, II: 25–6, 28, 311n113; DBFP, 3rd series, V: 487 (May 8).

297. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 110 (citing Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt, Bonn, Schnurre, “Aus einem bewegten Leben,” ms., 74–5). Hilger’s family’s property had been expropriated by the October revolution, yet he had taken part in the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Germany and the Soviet Union and had joined the German embassy staff in 1923. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 76–7.

298. Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 133–6.

299. DGFP, series D, VI: 494–6 (Ribbentrop to Tokyo, May 15, 1939).

300. Cienciala, “Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski”; Meysztowicz, Czas przeszły dokonany, 216; Beck, Final Report, 183–9; Mackiewicz, Colonel Beck and His Policy, 135; Overy, Road to War, 1–23; Von Riekhoff, German-Polish Relations, 329.

301. Potyomkin concluded his report by maintaining that he had summarized the conversation before departing and Beck had confirmed his statement. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 352 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 296, d. 2047, l. 92: May 10, 1939), 352–4 (d. 2046, l. 122–5: May 10); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 389.

302. God krizisa, I: 448–9 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 26, d. 18, l. 110: May 11, 1939); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 356–7; Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 393–4.

303. Still, Romania, like Turkey, viewed a Western-Soviet agreement as effectively inevitable. Watt, How War Came, 284–5.

304. Gorodetsky, Maisky’s Diaries, 202 (no citation).

305. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 256–9. Mikhail Bulgakov’s play Batum (1939), which depicted a young Stalin, in the revolutionary underground, as a decisive personality—incisive, flexible, cunning, even deceitful, above all able to do whatever it took to lead people through difficult challenges, while lusting for power—had been banned before rehearsals. Bulgakov, Sobranie sochinenii, V (Master and Margarita), VII: 305–76 (Batum).

306. Shentalinsky, KGB’s Literary Archive, 42, 47. See also Povarov, Prichina smerti rasstrel; Pirozhkova, At His Side, 115.

307. Shentalinskii, “Proshu menia vyslushat’,” 430–43.

308. Shentalinsky, KGB’s Literary Archive, 44.

309. Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 321. Mandelstam records Babel’s brazenness in associating with foreigners as well.

310. Stalin could reveal limits to his hyper-suspiciousness. From Dec. 1938—when Valery Chkalov died in a crash during the maiden flight of an experimental fighter plane—through May 15, 1939, the country suffered thirty-four aviation crashes in which seventy people were killed. On May 16, at a meeting of the Main Military Council, Stalin raised the possibility of sabotage (“technicians can do this deliberately, and the aviators trust the aircraft”) but added of Chkalov and four other heroes of the Soviet Union, “The aviator does not want to recognize the laws of physics and meteorology.” Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 237. Nearly two hundred defects had been found on the rushed airplane earlier in the month that Chkalov flew it; the temperature was 25 below zero Celsius the day of the test flight. Maslov, Rokovoi istrebitel’ Chkalova; Ivanov, Neizvestnyi Polikarpov; Bergman, “Valerii Chkalov.”

311. Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 3), 60–1.

312. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 233.

313. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 81–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9157, d. 2, l. 173–9). The source might have been Kurt Welkisch (“ABC”), a German journalist and diplomat in Warsaw (1935–39). Soviet intelligence had reported that Kleist, following the destruction of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, had privately averred that “war against the Soviet Union remains the last and decisive task of German policy.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 60–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9197, d. 2, l. 245–54).

314. “Soobshchenie I. I. Proskurova I. V. Stalinu,” 216–9; Na prieme, 259.

315. APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 455, l. 33–5 (June 1956 note from KGB chief Serov to the Central Committee); d. 448, l. 184, 189 (testimony by operatives Fedotov and Matusov). See also Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 69.

316. Ribbentrop inserted suggestions, in the German foreign ministry transcripts of the talks with the Soviets, to make it look as if Stalin was beseeching the great Hitler. Dębski, Między Berlinem a Moskwą, 84–91.

317. Dullin, Men of Influence, 30. “If one can speak of a pro-German in the Kremlin,” Krivitsky asserted, “Stalin has been that figure all along.” Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 3, 10.

318. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War.

319. Savushkin, “K voprosu o zarozhdenii teorii,” 78–82.

320. Maiskii, Denevnik diplomata, I: 398–400; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 192.

321. French Yellow Book, 147–9. “Russia is a good card, it is perhaps not necessary to play it,” Beneš had told the French envoy in Prague back in April 1937, “but it is necessary not to abandon it from fear that Germany pick it up.” Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 229 (citing DDF, 2e série, V: 513–4: April 21, 1937).

322. Pravda, May 28, 1939; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (8th ed.), V: 398–404 (May 27, 1939). Stalin also complained about labor shortages and called for extracting additional labor power from collective farms, claiming that much of it was idle. Zelenin, Stalinskaia “revoliutsiia sverkhu,” 246–7, 285; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1123, l. 1–30: uncorrected transcript; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, v/ii: 416–24. The transcript of the plenum, which met May 21–24 and 27, was never printed or distributed to regional party committees. There would not be another plenum until March 26–28, 1940.

323. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 395 (May 14, 1939), 417–21 (May 27, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, II: 39–40, 61–4; DBFP, 3rd series, V: 679–80.

324. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, V: 453 (Völkischer Beobachter, May 23, 1939); Toscano, Origins of the Pact of Steel.

325. DGFP, series D, VI: 586 (Weizsäcker, May 25, 1939). That same day, Japanese ambassador Shigenori Tōgō told Molotov that, according to the 1924 Soviet-Chinese Agreement, the USSR recognized Chinese suzerainty over Outer Mongolia, and therefore the Japanese government did not recognize the Soviet-Mongolian Pact. Tōgō also remonstrated that not Manchukuo but Outer Mongolia had violated the border. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): VII/i: 115–6 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1233, l. 165–6).

326. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 8–9; DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 386–7 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 1, d. 2, l. 24–26: May 20, 1939), also in God krizisa, I: 482–3; Stronski, “Soviet Russia’s Common Cause.” Schulenburg was evidently not allowed to bring an interpreter and had to speak French for the Russian interpreter.

327. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 163–4; Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, XXXVII: 546–56; DGFP, series D, VI: 574–80; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 576, 579–83; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 191–3.

328. Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 221–2; Sommer, Deutschland und Japan, 238–42, 248–56; Morley, Deterrent Diplomacy, 105–11.

329. Iklé, German-Japanese Relations, 101 (April 28, 1939, citing International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Documents Presented in Evidence, exhibit 497: Ōshima’s interrogation).

330. On May 27, 1939, the German ambassador in Tokyo, Eugen Ott, reported to Berlin that “I hear from another source that the Emperor, during a report by [chief of the general staff] Prince Kanin, who put forward the Army’s demands on the alliance, made his consent dependent on the Army and Navy coming to an agreement. In view of the stubborn resistance by opponents of the alliance, rumors have cropped up about terrorist plans by radical groups.” DGFP, series D, VI: 594–5.

331. DGFP, series D, VI: 597–8 (received at Moscow embassy on June 2).

332. DGFP, series D, VI: 599–600, 603–4 (unsigned, May 29, 1939).

333. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 88–99 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9157, d. 2, l. 101–17, 120–4), 740n40; God krizisa, I: 379–87, 405.

334. Mehringer, Die NSDAP, 5; Overy, Dictators, 639–40.

CHAPTER 11. PACT

1. Cadogan also wrote that he himself was “in favor of it [a Soviet alliance]. So, I think, is H. [Halifax].” Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 182.

2. Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik; Bloch, Ribbentrop. “I honestly hated him,” the long-serving state secretary in Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry Baron von Weizsäcker would later claim. No one had a good word for him. Ribbentrop “was a man who occupied a responsible position for which he had neither talent, knowledge, nor experience, and he himself knew or sensed this very well,” surmised the Moscow embassy official Gustav Hilger. “He sought to hide his feelings of inferiority by an arrogance that often seemed unbearable.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 293. The old-line conservative Franz von Papen—who had midwifed the invitation to Hitler to assume the Chancellorship at Ribbentrop’s villa—deemed Ribbentrop “a husk with no kernel.”

3. Schmidt, Statist, 312, 317. On the aspects of Schmidt’s memoirs requiring scholarly caution, see Namier, In the Nazi Era, 104–8. The best account of Ribbentrop in London is Spitzy, So haben wir das Reich verspielt, 92–122. Ribbentrop actually spent limited time in London: Jacobsen, Nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik, 706.

4. Rees, Nazis, 93–5 (citing Spitzy); Snyder, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, 295. Prince Otto von Bismarck, grandson of the Iron Chancellor and Counselor at the German embassy in Rome, told Ciano of Ribbentrop “he is such an imbecile, he is a freak of nature.” Ciano, Ciano’s Hidden Diary, 151.

5. Ribbentrop had ended up in London almost by accident. On April 18, 1936, the German ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Leopold von Hoesch, died; initially, no one was appointed to take his place. Then, when von Bülow died on June 21, Ribbentrop expected to get his position as state secretary (number two) under Neurath, but the latter objected, and Ribbentrop was posted to London as consolation. Ribbentrop spent most of 1936 and 1937 not in the United Kingdom, but negotiating with Japan and Italy for an alliance against the UK. On Dec. 28, 1937, he wrote to Hitler that Britain was Germany’s “most dangerous enemy.” Heineman, Hitler’s First Foreign Minister, 140–44; Seabury, Wilhelmstrasse, 54–6; Weinberg, “Hitler and England,” 87–8; Waddington, “Ribbentrop and the Soviet Union”; Ciano’s Diary 1937–1938, 24.

6. Almost alone, von Ribbentrop had interpreted the Munich Pact as a blow against Britain, commenting that Chamberlain “has signed a death sentence for the British empire and invited us to fix the date of implementation of this sentence.” Dalton, Fateful Years, 195.

7. Ribbentrop later wrote that he constantly reminded Hitler of Bismarck’s Russia policy. Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 151. Wilhelmstrasse, 76, was a two-story former private home constructed in the eighteenth century; Bismarck had had his medium-sized office as well as family quarters on the upper floor. Pflanze, Bismarck, II: 35.

8. Molotov, Stati’i i rechi, 1935–1936, 12, 20–1 (Jan. 28, 1935); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 46. On a document sent to him by Molotov, Zhdanov wrote that “entering into agreement with England and France against Germany, even concluding a military alliance with them, we should not forget for one minute that in this alliance, England and France will conduct a policy of insincerity, provocation, and betrayal with respect to us.” Nekrich, Pariahs, 105 (undated reference, letter by V. P. Zolotov).

9. Recall Stalin’s statement to Eden that the world situation was worse than it had been on the eve of the Great War, “because in 1913 there was only one source of the threat of war—Germany—and presently there are two such sources, Germany and Japan” (both of which bordered the Soviet Union). DVP SSSR, XVIII: 246–251 (at 249–50: March 29, 1935); RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1144, l. 325.

10. Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 32–6 (RGVA, f. 32113, op. 1, d. 203, l. 6–11: May 16, 1939), 36–40 (d. 202, l. 6–10: May 16), 41–3 (f. 33797, op. 1, d. 37, l. 17–21), 43–4 (op. 3, d. 1225, l. 5–6), 44–5 (op. 1, d. 38, l. 6), 45–6 (d. 36, l. 39–40, 48), 46–8 (l. 51), 48–50 (d. 35, l. 26–35), 51–2 (op. 3, d. 1225, l. 12–4), 52–3 (f. 32113, op. 1, d. 204, l. 33), 53–4 (f. 7977, op. 1, d. 37, l. 55); Coox, “Introduction,” 122.

11. Coox, Nomonhan, 186–9 (April 25, 1939); Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 1 (citing U.S. Department of the Army, Forces in the Far East, Japanese Special Studies on Manchuria, 13 vols. [Tokyo, 1954–6], XI/1: 99–102), 83–8.

12. Coox, Nomonhan, 188–95.

13. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 406; Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 54–6: RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 1386, l. 8–12; AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 1, d. 2, l. 22–3.

14. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 90–9; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, II: 249–87(at 250–3). Zhukov’s memoir dates the meeting with Voroshilov to June 2, but a letter to his wife and other documents indicate May 24. See also Roberts, Stalin’s General, 48–9.

15. Sokolov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 115–8. In June 1938, when Zhukov had been promoted to deputy commander of the Belorussian military district, he denied in writing any ties to enemies of the people. Daines, Zhukov, 81.

16. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 100–1 (Zhukov to Voroshilov, May 30, 1939).

17. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): 116–8 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 1, d. 38, l. 102–6). See also Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 77–8 (RGVA, f. 37977, op. 1, d. 38, l. 110–2: Shaposhnikov, May 28, 1939).

18. Coox, Nomonhan, 200–65; Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 82–4 (RGVA, f. 37977, op. 1, d. 37, l. 109–15), 88 (RGVA, f. 37977, op. 1, d. 82, l. 74: May 31, 1939).

19. Tret’ia sessiia Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 25–31 maia 1939 g., 467–76 (at 476); God Krizisa, I: 523–30.

20. God krizisa, I: 520–2 (AVP RF, f. 011, op. 4, pap. 27, d. 59, l. 105–10). Astakhov informed Moscow of Germany’s evident wish to throw a wrench into Soviet-British talks. Weizsäcker sensed Soviet suspicions of German motives. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 406; Hill, Weizsäcker Papiere, 154. Ribbentrop had informed Weizsäcker and Friedrich Gaus (director of the foreign ministry legal department) on May 25 that Hitler for some time had been thinking about improving relations with the USSR; the two officials drafted instructions for the embassy in Moscow, to convey to Molotov, but then these instructions were not sent, either because Ribbentrop was still hopeful of a formal military alliance with Japan, which a deal with Moscow would scuttle, or Hitler found them excessive. DGFP, series D, VI: 589–93 (Ribbentrop instructions, May [26], 1939); Fleischhauer, Der Pakt, 202–7.

21. DGFP, series D, VI: 614–5.

22. The freedom to choose the moment implied Japan might not even carry out military actions. Iklé, German-Japanese Relations, 117–8 (citing International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Documents Presented in Evidence, exhibit 614: Ott telegram to foreign ministry, June 5, 1939); Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 212–3 (citing exhibit 614); Tokushirō, “The Anti-Comintern Pact,” 103–5.

23. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 99–105 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9157, d. 2, l. 350–60); DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 583 n169.

24. Iklé, German-Japanese Relations, 87–118; Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg, 308.

25. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 18–20 (Schulenburg to Berlin, June 5, 1939), 21–2 (Tippelskirch, June 18, on Mikoyan’s distrust). The Germans had gotten Stalin’s point: in May 1939, the anti-Nazi Herwarth of the German embassy secretly conveyed it to U.S. ambassador Bohlen. Bohlen, Witness to History, 69–82 (at 71).

26. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 20–1 (Woermann foreign ministry memo, June 15, 1939).

27. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 603. The German foreign ministry expert Nadolny was of the opinion that the Treaty of Berlin was still valid. DGFP, series D, VI: 686–7 (June 9, 1939), 687 (June 9, 1939), 741–2 (June 17, 1939), 843–5 (July 4, 1939).

28. On June 17, Schulenburg, in Berlin, requested a meeting with Astakhov, and told him the German foreign ministry awaited a response to Weizsäcker’s prompt of May 30, underscoring its sincerity and seriousness. God krizisa, II: 40 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 294, d. 2036, l. 115–6), 65–7 (f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 26, d. 1, l. 4–6: Molotov and Schulenburg, June 28).

29. Schulenburg brought up this incident to Molotov as a way of broaching touchy issues. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 53–6 (at 54: Schulenburg to the foreign ministry, Aug. 16, 1939).

30. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 25–6 (Hewel, June 29, 1939), 27–8 (Weizsäcker to Schulenburg, June 30). See also DGFP, series D, VI: 820–1 (Schnurre, June 30).

31. God krizisa, II: 105–6 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 302, d. 2090, l. 171–2: Surits, July 19, 1939); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 496–7.

32. Duhanovs et al., 1939, 46–85.

33. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, DK266.A3 S2 1971; Gromyko et al. (eds.), Soviet Peace Efforts on the Eve of World War II (Moscow: Progress, 1973), 363. Lithuania further feared that Poland would immediately announce its own acceptance of a Soviet guarantee if Lithuania did so and that Hitler would blame Poland’s action on Lithuania and take revenge. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 545–6 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 12, d. 126, l. 1–2: Pozdnyakov report to Molotov, July 19, 1939).

34. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 449 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 301, d. 2079, l. 186–7); Pravda, June 13, 1939.

35. God krizisa, II: 34–5 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 313, d. 2154, l. 107–8); Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 453.

36. Moiseev, Ia vospominaiu, 45–7. Moiseev provides no date for the incident, except that it took place before the Pact (Aug. 1939). His troupe’s first appearance at a Kremlin reception was May 17, 1938 (banquet for schoolteachers); they appeared again on New Year’s Eve 1938–9, May 5 and 7, 1939, July 5 and 20, 1939. Shamina, “Igor Moiseev.” On Nov. 8, 1939, Moiseyev would write to Stalin, complaining of a lack of facility and resources; Stalin would turn the letter over to Shcherbakov, who gave them rehearsal space in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and apartments to some of the dancers. “My peremenili 16 mest raboty,” Izvestiia, 2002, no. 3: 11–2; Ponomarev, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, 60.

37. Strang, Home and Abroad, 68. “Halifax invited me over and started complaining bitterly: we were creating unnecessary difficulties, we were absolutely unyielding, we were reusing the German method of negotiating (announcing our price and demanding 100% acceptance),” Maisky confided in his diary (June 23). “He admitted that, despite the large quantity of telegrams from Seeds and Strang, he still could not grasp what the problem was.” Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, I: 415–6; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 201.

38. Strang, Home and Abroad, 175.

39. Aster, 1939, 273 (citing letter to Hilda Chamberlain, Chamberlain Papers). Chamberlain, one British insider who hosted him in an intimate setting noted, “is not genuine in his desire for an agreement.” Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 300–1 (citing FO 371/23068/C8370/3356/18: Peake to Cadogan, June 9, 1939; Harvey Papers, ADD, MSS 5639).

40. Koliazin, “Vernite mne svobodu!,” 220–40.

41. Medvedeva, “‘Chornoye leto’ 1939 goda,” 318–66; Braun, “Vsevolod Meyerhold,” 145–62; Morrison, People’s Artist, 99–100 (citing RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, ed. khr. 655, l. 26ob.: Lina Prokofyeva); “Zagadka smerti Zinaidi Raikha,” Komsomol’skaia pravda, Nov. 14, 2005.

42. Beria evidently awarded the larger part of Meyerhold’s spacious, now vacant apartment in the heart of Moscow (just off Gorky St.) to one of his mistresses, Vardo Mataradze, officially a typist, whom he had brought from Georgia and, it is said, arranged to marry one of his NKVD drivers. The smaller half went to the driver, who found it too small and moved out. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 103–4. See also Radzinsky, Stalin, 434.

43. DGFP, series D, VI: 1059–62, VII: 67–9; Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 161–2.

44. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 108–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22407, d. 2, l. 359–60); DGFP, series D, VI: 737–40, 750–1.

45. DGFP, series D, VI: 821–2.

46. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, III: 1216; Vauhnik, Memoiren eines Militärattachés, 29.

47. DGFP, series D, VI: 858–60.

48. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 601–27.

49. On June 9, 1939, Beria provided a denunciation from the local special department (“A powerful fist to destroy the enemy has not been formed. Troops are being thrown into battle without coordination and mutual support, suffering heavy losses”). Daines, Zhukov, 95–6 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1181, l. 126–7).

50. Sevos’tianov, “Voennoe i diplomaticheskoe porazhenie iaponii,” 70–1.

51. Barnhart, “Japanese Intelligence,” 436–7. The Kwantung chief was Ueda Kenkichi.

52. Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 133–4 (RGVA, f. 37977, op. 1, d. 86, l. 10–3: June 27, 1939), 192–3 (op. 3, d. 1225, l. 155–6: July 14, 1939), 164–5 (op. 1, d. 83, l. 166–71), 195 (d. 54, l. 121), 196–7 (d. 55, l. 92–6: Kulik), 219 (f. 4, op. 11, d. 54, l. 276); Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): 124 (RGVA, f. 33977, op. 1, d. 54, l. 121), 124–5 (l. 129); Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 118–21. On July 10, 1939, Beria sent Voroshilov a copy of an intercepted letter from the Germany embassy in Moscow to Berlin concerning events at the Halha River. Military attaché Köstring reported the rumors that the Soviets had staged the border incident either to push the Japanese army back or to re-confirm to the British and French that the Japanese were a threat in the Far East, but he deemed these possibilities “unlikely.” Instead, he adhered to the view in the Japanese press that the borders were not clear and that the Mongol nomads migrated with their horses. He discounted the possibility of a full-scale Soviet-Japanese war in this remote border region. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): 121–2 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1181, l. 166–9).

53. Hill, Weizsäcker Papiere, 157, 181.

54. DGFP, series D, VI: 870–1 (July 7), 889 (July 10).

55. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 112–5 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9157, d. 2, l. 418–31).

56. DBFP, 3rd series, VI: 389–91 (Wilson and Wohltat, July 19, 1939). See Metzmacher, “Deutsch-englische Ausgleichbemühengen.”

57. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 499–502 (July 21, 1939); Schorske, “Two German Diplomats,” 505–6.

58. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, I: 426–7; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 208; DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 574n158.

59. Aster, 1939, 243–51. On the parade: Pravda, July 21, 1939.

60. Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 242; Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 113.

61. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 67–9; Gladwyn, Memoirs, 86–7. Pravda happened to announce on July 22, 1939, the resumption of Soviet-German trade and credit negotiations in Berlin. That same day, the German foreign ministry instructed the embassy in Moscow to try to restart political talks as well. DGFP, series D, VI: 955–6.

62. Overy, “Strategic Intelligence,” 465–6 (citing PRO WO 190/745: “Note on Germany’s Present Position and Future Aims,” Jan. 17, 1939). See also MacDonald, “Economic Appeasement.” On May 23, 1939, Hitler had told his upper military that “it is not Danzig that is at stake. For us it is a matter of expanding our living space in the East and making food supplies secure and also solving the problem of the Baltic States. . . . No other openings can be seen in Europe.” DGFP, series D, VI: 574–80.

63. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 316 (citing Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1108).

64. DBFP, 3rd series, IX: 323 (Halifax to Sir Robert Craigie in Tokyo, July 24, 1939); Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 301–10 (citing Halifax Papers, FO 800/315: Henderson to Halifax, June 17, 1939; FO 371/23527/F7395/6457/10: Halifax interview with Maisky, July 25, 1939); Shai, “Was There a Far Eastern Munich?”; Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 246–71; Watt, How War Came, 356–9.

65. Iklé, German-Japanese Relations, 182; Tokushirō, “The Anti-Comintern Pact,” 107–11. On June 24, 1939, Sorge reported by telegram that he had learned from Ott that the Japanese had allowed that “in the event of a war between Germany and the USSR, Japan will automatically enter into a war against the USSR.” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 463 (June 24, 1939); See also Tokushirō, “The Anti-Comintern Pact,” 9–111.

66. Barnhart, “Japanese Intelligence,” 436–7.

67. Coulondre reported hearsay out of Berlin to Bonnet on July 11, 1939, that Ribbentrop had fallen out of favor with Hitler for failing to anticipate the strong British resistance to Germany’s plans to reclaim Danzig. French Yellow Book, 186–8.

68. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 294.

69. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 54. On Aug. 10, 1939, Hitler had summoned Carl Burckhardt, the conservative Swiss high commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig, who had been working to avert a British-German war and generally blamed Polish intransigence. “Everything I undertake is aimed at Russia,” Hitler told him at the Berghof the next day, according to Burckhardt. “If the West is too stupid and too blind to see this, I shall be forced to come to an understanding with the Russians, defeat the West, and then marshal my forces against the Soviet Union. I need the Ukraine so that they cannot starve us out, as they did in the last war.” Hitler aimed to neutralize the British and sow distrust between London and Warsaw. Burckhardt, Meine Danziger Mission, 347–8; Levine, “Mediator.” On Sept. 1, 1939, the Nazi Gauleiter in Danzig, Forster, would order Burckhardt out of the “former” free city.

70. As Gaus testified at Nuremberg, “in the early Summer of 1939 . . . von Ribbentrop asked . . . von Weizsäcker and myself to come to his estate, Sonnenburg, near Freienwalde-an-der-Oder, and informed us that Adolf Hitler had for some time been considering an attempt to establish better relations between Germany and the Soviet Union.” This was Ribbentrop talking, not Hitler. Lasky, “Hitler-Stalin Pact,” 9, 15. Ribbentrop would seize upon any reports that Jews were being purged by Stalin to inform Hitler that the Soviet system appeared to be evolving toward a Russian fascism.

71. DGFP, series D, VI: 755–6, 1006–9, 1015–6, 1047–8; Hill, Weizsäcker Papiere, 157 (July 30, 1939); Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 604–5; Sipols, Tainy, 79–80.

72. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 33–7.

73. Henderson, Failure of a Mission, 252–3. Henderson had written to Horace Wilson in May 1939: “The responsibility of my small job in Berlin is greater than my capacity and I cannot feel otherwise than profoundly pessimistic.” Overy, 1939: Countdown, 57 (citing NA, PREM 1/331a).

74. Henderson, Failure of a Mission, 234. See also Cienciala, “German Propaganda.”

75. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 38; DGFP, series D, VI: 1006–9 (July 27, 1939), 1059–62 (Aug. 4); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 566–9 (AVP RF, f. 0745, op. 14, pap. 32, d. 3, l. 27–30: Aug. 2, 1939); AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, p. 26, d. 1, l. 7–12; f. 059, op. 1, pap. 294, d. 2036, l. 162–5, in Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 1. In Aug. 1939, Astakhov was recalled to Moscow; the Germans asked for him to be named ambassador to Berlin. Instead, Astakhov was demoted to a position in the Museum of the Peoples of the USSR. He seems to have died of muscular dystrophy in 1941.

76. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 585–7 (AVP RF, f. 011, op. 4, pap. 27, d. 61, 126–9: Astakhov to Molotov, Aug. 8, 1939); God krizisa, II: 179–80.

77. DGFP, series D, VI: 1059–62 (Schulenburg to Berlin, Aug. 3–4, just after midnight); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 41.

78. Halder, who looked with trepidation on any pact between Britain and the Soviet Union, was said to have called the prospect “the only thing that could stop Hitler now” in a private conversation. Kordt, Nicht aus Akten, 313–19; Mosley, On Borrowed Time, 252.

79. Voroshilov appeared on nineteen of the twenty-seven days in August for which audiences were recorded in Stalin’s office logbook. For the instructions to Voroshilov (Aug. 4, 1939), see Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 20 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1b, p. 27, d. 5, l. 22–32). Voroshilov would report to Stalin immediately after the conclusion of a session, and Kuznestov writes that on occasion, he and Shaposhnikov attended, too. Kuznetsov appears in the office logbook only on Aug. 20 (without Voroshilov or Shaposhnikov); Shaposhnikov appears on Aug. 13, 14, and 25. There could also have been meetings at the dacha. Na prieme, 268–71; Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 249.

80. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 19 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1235, l. 66–72). Beria continued to keep Voroshilov well informed of French, German, Italian, British, and other actors through eavesdropped conversations and agent reports, in the European capitals and in Moscow. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1235, l. 9/cc (Sept. 23, 1939: Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 16).

81. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, I: 434–5 (Aug. 5, 1939); Pankrashova and Sipols, “Soviet-British-French Talks”; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, 140–1.

82. Primakov, Ocherki, IV: 261–2.

83. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 55.

84. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 310–1.

85. Hill, Weizsäcker Papiere, 157–8. Molotov (July 28) praised Astakhov’s detailed reporting of Schnurre’s proposals and non-response. God krizisa, II: 145 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 295, d. 2038, l. 93); Fleischhauer, Der Pakt, 273–4.

86. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 290.

87. The intense impatience in Berlin was conveyed by Schnurre to Schulenburg in a telegram sent on Aug. 2 and received two days later: “Secret: Politically, the problem of Russia is being dealt with here with extreme urgency. During the last ten days I have daily had at least one direct or telephone conversation with the foreign minister and know that he is also constantly exchanging views with the Führer on this. The foreign minister is concerned to obtain some result on the Russian question as soon as possible, not only on the negative side (disturbing the British negotiations) but also on the positive side (an understanding with us) . . . You can imagine how eagerly talks with Molotov are awaited here.” DGFP, series D, VI: 1047–8.

88. DBFP, 3rd series, VI: 762–89 (“Instructions to the British Military Mission to Moscow, Aug. 1939”); Izvestiia, Aug. 12, 1939; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 439.

89. Sipols, Tainy, 89; Pravda, Dec. 24, 1989. Haslam maintained that “given the lack of serious intent in London it was inevitable that the Russians would turn to the Germans.” Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 216.

90. DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 584 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 16, pap. 27, d. 5, l. 38: Aug. 7, 1939); Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 111.

91. Spiridonovka St. became Alexei Tolstoy St.; Litvinov resided on this street when he was people’s commissar for foreign affairs.

92. Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 212–8 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 25, d. 12, l. 3–12); God krizisa, II: 191–6. Drax suggested that if the negotiations were switched to London, he would be able to produce the desired confirmation of his plenipotentiary powers. Someone remarked, to general laughter, that it would be simpler to have the documents sent to Moscow than to bring all the delegations to London. Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 247.

93. Young, In Command of France, 239.

94. Overy, 1939: Countdown, 13 (Borthwick Archive, University of York, Halifax Papers, A4.410.12/1).

95. Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 218–23 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 25, d. 12, l. 13–22, Aug. 13, 1939), II: 239–47 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 25, d. 12, l. 48–59, Aug. 15, 1939); God krizisa, II: 196–202, 202–7, 220–8.

96. “He that commands the sea,” Sir Francis Bacon had explained of British strategy already in the seventeenth century, “is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.” Bacon, “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” [1612, enlarged 1625], as cited in Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 55.

97. Ponomarev, Pokoriteli neba, 68–75.

98. Schorske, “Two German Diplomats,” 508. On Aug. 11, 1939, firm intelligence that Germany’s attack on Poland was imminent reached the war office in London, effectively rendering further British moves toward Berlin a show to ensure that responsibility for the outbreak of war fell on Germany. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 83n.

99. Schnurre summoned Astakhov on Aug. 13 (a Sunday) to convey agreement to conduct talks in Moscow. God krizisa, II: 185 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 7, d. 70, l. 1–2); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 603, 606–7; DGFP, series D, VII: 62–4 (Ribbentrop to Schulenburg, Aug. 14), 68–9 (Weizsäcker to Schulenburg, Aug. 15). Interactions with Astakhov in Berlin had indicated to the Germans that an agreement was likely. DGFP, series D, VII: 17–20 (Schnurre to Berlin, Aug. 10, 1939), 20–1 (Schnurre to Schulenburg in Berlin, Aug. 10), 58–9 (Schnurre to Moscow embassy, Aug. 14).

100. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 50–2 (Ribbentrop to Schulenburg), 52–3 (Schulenburg to German foreign ministry), 53–7 (Schulenburg), 57 (Schulenburg); Die Beziehungen, 55–7 (Ribbentrop’s original instructions and Schulenburg’s amendments); God krizisa, II: 229–31 (AVP RF, f. 0745, op. 14, pap. 32, d. 3, l. 33–6), 232–3 (l. 37–9); Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 353 (citing AVP RF, f. 0745, op. 15, pap. 38, d. 8, l. 126–8).

101. Also on Aug. 15, the Soviet military attaché in Tokyo reported that Japanese ruling circles remained gridlocked over a military alliance with Germany and Italy: the key players wanted the alliance to be directed solely against the USSR, while Berlin and Rome wanted to add Japan to their alliance against the Western powers. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 583; The attaché was L. A. Mishin.

102. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 70, 72 (no citation).

103. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 61–3 (Ribbentrop to Schulenburg, received in Moscow at 5:45 a.m. on Aug. 19).

104. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 7 (citing RGVA, f. [unspecified], op. 9157, d. 2, l. 418–31, 447, 453–4).

105. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 64–5 (Schulenburg to foreign ministry, Aug. 19, 1939), 65–6; God krizisa, II: 269–71 (AVP RF, f. 0745, op. 14, pap. 32, d. 3, l. 40–3), 271–3 (l. 44, 45–6), 274–6 (l. 47–51), 277–8 (l. 52–3), 280–91 (AVP RF, f. 03a, d. 05 Germaniia); DGFP, series D, VII: 134 (Schulenburg to Berlin, Aug. 19, 1939); Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 214. Britain knew as well: Group Captain Malcom Christie, a former British air attaché who had excellent contacts among senior German officers and others hostile to Hitler, reported secret leaks to Sir Robert Vansittart (the retired undersecretary of the foreign office), who relayed the reports to the government. On June 27, 1939, Christie conveyed that the German mobilization for Poland would begin from Aug. 1 and be completed by the 27th. On Aug. 17, Christie reported that the war would commence between Aug. 25 and 28. Overy, 1939: Countdown, 23 (citing Churchill College, Cambridge, Christie Papers, CHRS I/29B); Andrew, Secret Service, 429.

106. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 57–61; Trial of the Major War Criminals, XXXI: 233; DGFP, series D, VIII: 310–3 (Ritter and Schulenburg to the foreign ministry, Oct. 18, 1939); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 83–5.

107. As late as Aug. 20, Drax had written to Voroshilov that he had not yet received an answer from his government: Volkogonov, Triumf I tragediia, II/1: 21–2 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1235, l. 73); Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 351.

108. The agreement, at Soviet insistence, mentioned German “industrial goods,” but had not specified what the term encompassed. In Oct. 1939, both Schnurre and Karl Ritter would deny this included armaments, perhaps as a way of bargaining for better terms of exchange. Wish lists the Soviets had passed on made abundantly clear industrial goods meant weaponry. Schwendemann, Die Wirtschaftliche Zussamenarbeit, 90–7.

109. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 66–7; Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, VII: 131 (Russian translation, Volkogonov, Hoover Institution Archives, container 1); DGFP, series D, VII: 156–7 (Ribbentrop to the Moscow embassy, Aug. 20, 1939); God krizisa, II: 302 (AVP RF, f. 0745, op. 14, pap. 32, d. 3, l. 63–4); DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 585 n172; Volkogonov, Triumf I tragediia, II/1: 28–9.

110. Fleischhauer, Diplomatischer Widerstand, 14–28. Stalin preserved the exchange with Hitler in his personal archive: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 296, l. 1–3.

111. God krizisa, II: 303 (AVP RF, f. 0745, op. 14, pap. 32, d. 3, l. 65); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 624.

112. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 300; Hoffman, Hitler Was My Friend, 102; Speer, Erinnerungen, 176; Domarus, Hitler: Reden, III: 1233; Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, IV: 142.

113. Watt, How War Came, 466–70; Meehan, Unnecessary War, 233–4; Maser, Der Wortbruch, 59–60.

114. Antonov, “Anatolii Gorskii.”

115. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 207; Baumgart, “Zur Ansprache Hitlers” (no. 2), esp. 126, 132–3 n53 and n55, 149n113; Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 180; Albrecht, “‘Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?’”

116. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 212–3; Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, I: 439–40 (Aug. 22, 1939). “Of all the big Nazi leaders, Hermann Gōring was for me by far the most sympathetic,” Henderson would write in 1940. He had certain attractive qualities; and I must say that I had a real personal liking for him.” Henderson, Failure of a Mission, 76. Prażmowska concluded that Britain’s “guarantee to Poland had more to do with obtaining leverage with Poland in order to force her to the negotiating table, than with the defence of Poland from aggression.” Prażmowska, Britain, Poland, 190.

117. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 225–6. On Aug. 22, 1939, with the TASS announcement of Ribbentrop’s pending arrival, the Comintern executive (Gottwald, Dimitrov, Kuusinen, Manuilsky, Marti, and Florin) assembled to map out a position defending against attacks by the “bourgeois” press in Britain and France. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 69–71 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 18, d. 1291, l. 141–3).

118. Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 220.

119. Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 199n. Sydney Cotton, an Australian pilot and aerial photography specialist who worked for British Air Intelligence, had been sent to Berlin to pick up Göring. DGFP, series D, VII: 235–6 (Woermann note, Aug. 23, 1939).

120. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 110. For an earlier such incident involving Lord Beaverbrook in 1933, see Thayer, Bears in the Caviar, 33–4.

121. Memoir accounts claim that the airfield was festooned with Nazi flags, retrieved from the anti-Nazi productions at Mosfilm studios, and that a Soviet military band struck up “Deutschland über Alles,” but the detailed Soviet newsreels show neither the flags nor the band. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 16332. The German planes were “locked up” in a hangar under NKVD guard, no doubt so that they could be thoroughly examined. Baur, Hitler’s Pilot, 95.

122. Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 142.

123. Stalin had gathered Molotov, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Beria, and Kaganovich in the Little Corner until 3:30 p.m. Na prieme, 270–1. Also, on Aug. 23, 1939, the Moscow city soviet resolved to award land around the main NKVD HQ at Lubyanka, 2, for the building’s expansion; several residential structures housing 440 people were slated for demolition. (The residents received a mere 2,500 rubles’ compensation and free moving costs, and had to find or build their own new housing on plots granted outside Moscow.) Construction would begin almost immediately even as plans were still being drawn up by the architect, Alexei Shchusev, who went through various designs. The war would interrupt construction, which would be completed in 1948. A lack of resources inhibited the blending of the facades of the existing building and the addition until later (1979–82). Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 70–9.

124. Kalinin had told Schulenburg upon his appointment, “Don’t pay too much attention to the shoutings in the press. The peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union are linked by many different lines and to a great extent are dependent on each other.” Nekrich, 1941, 21 (citing German archives).

125. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 49–50.

126. “It was a move,” Hilger guessed, “that was calculated to put the [German] foreign minister off balance.” In fact, Stalin sought to demonstrate Moscow’s commitment to the new pact. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 301. On Aug. 23, 1939, the logbook for Stalin’s office shows Molotov, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Beria, and Kaganovich (listed from 1:12 p.m. or so to 3:30 p.m., before the negotiations), then Molotov from 2:15 a.m. to 3:35 a.m. Na prieme, 270–1.

127. Chuev, Sto sorok, 257.

128. Shaposhnikov, Vospominaniia.

129. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 69.

130. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 210.

131. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 303. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, using only German documents, attributed the Pact to Soviet initiative. This collection was immediately translated into Russian for Stalin and provoked his involvement in countervailing efforts, originally entitled “Answer to the Slanderers,” which in Stalin’s hands became Falsifiers of History, a work that would be published in Russian and English translation in 1948: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 2, d. 239–45. See also Nekrich, “Soviet German Treaty,” 9–13.

132. DGFP, series D, VII: 220 (Ribbentrop to the foreign ministry, Aug. 23, 1939), 223 (Kordt to Moscow embassy, Aug. 23, 1939); Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 165.

133. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, 186n8; Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 488–9 (no citation).

134. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 72–3.

135. “Mr. Stalin and Molotov commented in a hostile way on the behavior of the British military mission in Moscow which had not told the Soviet government what it actually wanted.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 580 (German record). See also Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 72–6.

136. Antonov, “Anatolii Gorskii.”

137. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 581 (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amtes. Bonn, Bestand Büro RAM F/110019–30); Chuev, Sto sorok, 19. An alert SS adjutant, Lieutenant Richard Schulze, claims he managed to have his glass refilled from Stalin’s personal flask, and that it contained not vodka but water. Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 256. Schulze appears in the Pact photos.

138. For the text of the Pact, and the secret protocol, see DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 630–2 (AVP RF, f. 3a, d. 243; APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675a, l. 3–4). Izvestiya carried the announcement of the Pact later that same day (Aug. 24, 1939).

139. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/ii: 107 (no citation). Berezhkov writes that the cocktail party went on until dawn and that only after that was Ribbentrop able to inform Hitler. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 40.

140. “‘Avtobiograficheskie zametki’ V. N. Pavlova—perevodchika I. V. Stalina,” 99.

141. This was Andor Hencke, the under state secretary, who added: “The cordial and yet at the same time dignified manner in which Stalin, without losing face, attended to each one of us, left a strong impression on us all.” Rees, World War II behind Closed Doors, 18 (citing Hencke’s 1950 interrogation, DGFP, series D, VII: 225–9).

142. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 676. See also Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, 102–14. Two German photographers were present, Hoffmann and Helmut Laux. Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, 109.

143. Stalin’s logbook of visitors for Aug. 22 and 23 contains six names (aides were never logged in). On Aug. 24, Molotov alone is logged in (2:15 a.m. to 3:35 a.m.). Na prieme, 270–1. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 96–7.

144. For the full Pact, see Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 76–8; and Naumov, 1941 god, II: 576–8, 585–93. Gaus appeared in the photos.

145. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, III: 145 (Sept. 1935).

146. “Johnnie” Herwarth and his Bavarian wife, Pussi, spent time at Bohlen’s dacha, as Soviet intelligence and Stalin knew, but, officially, Herwarth was the chief contact at the German embassy in Moscow to Britain, the United States, and France. At the dacha they rode horses, played tennis, and sipped tea. Herwarth was one quarter Jewish. Bohlen, Witness to History, 69–83; Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 167.

147. Bezymenskii, “Secret Protocols of 1939,” 76; Bezymenskii, “Sovetsko-Germanskie dogovory,” 3, 20–1. Molotov would hold on to the Soviet original of the secret protocol until Oct. 1952, when it was belatedly placed in the “osobaia papka” of the party archives. Other 1930s agreements that contained secret protocols included the German-Polish nonaggression declaration of 1934, Franco-Italian and Anglo-Italian agreements of 1935 regarding Africa, the 1938 Munich Pact, the 1939 Anglo-Japanese Agreement on China, and so on.

148. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 181–4; Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 109–15 (composed in prison while waiting to be hanged after the Nuremberg trial in 1946); Schmidt, Statist, 452–4; Bloch, Ribbentrop, 249. Stalin rewrote the text of the communiqué regarding Poland, and Hitler judged it superior to the text drafted in Berlin. Hilger recalled: “‘The old Romans,’ Stalin said, turning to me, ‘did not go into battle naked but with shields. Today correctly worded political communiqués play the role of such shields.’” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 302. Ribbentrop, who had conceded everything, later claimed to have been impressed by Stalin: “his sober, almost dry and yet so apt way of expressing himself, the hardness and yet generosity of his bargaining.” Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 113.

149. Na prieme, 271.

150. Simonov, “Zametki k biogfraii G. K. Zhukova,” 49. Khrushchev, who was at the Near Dacha on Aug. 23, 1939, recalled that Stalin said, “This is a game, who can outsmart and deceive whom.” Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 225-8. Stalin well understood that the Pact helped Hitler, too. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115. Gaus claimed he overheard Stalin mutter “deception.” It is unclear if Gaus understood what could have been the Russian word (obman), though Stalin did know some words in German and might have uttered Täuschung; or Gaus could have misheard.

151. At the same time, complicating Japan’s attempt to conquer China, many Japanese forces were tied down in Manchukuo to deter the Soviet Union. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 35 (citing U.S. Department of the Army, Forces in the Far East, Japanese Special Studies on Manchuria, 13 vols. [Tokyo, 1954–6], XI/3: 193).

152. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 118–20.

153. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 252.

154. Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 319–20 (RGVA, f. 32113, op. 1, d. 670, l. 57–9). Zhukov would claim that he acted on Aug. 20 also because he learned that the Japanese planned an offensive beginning Aug. 24, but there is no such plan in the Japanese documentation record. Coox, Nomonhan, 578–9.

155. Coox, Nomonhan, 582. The Japanese espionage network in Mongolia, which had never amounted to much, evidently missed this massive buildup.

156. Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 217; Zhilin, Pobeda na reke Khalkhin-gol, 18; Khalkhin Gol, 71.

157. Vorozheikin, Istrebiteli, 224.

158. Mongol troops had been pressed into fighting by both belligerents, but, supposedly, many on the Japanese side refused to fight or defected to the Soviets. Dylykov, Demoktraicheskoe dvizhenie mongol’skogo naroda, 39–40.

159. Coox, Nomonhan. See also the blistering critique of Japanese strategy: Wilson, When Tigers Fight.

160. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 522.

161. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 136–7.

162. Voroshilov forwarded the Zhukov telegram to Stalin, with a note: “As one could have anticipated, no divisions turned out to be surrounded, the enemy having either managed to remove the main forces in time or, more likely, no major forces were in this region for a long time, instead there was a specially prepared garrison, which now is completely destroyed.” A concentration camp for two thousand Japanese POWs had been prepared in Verkhne-Udinsk, but only around one hundred soldiers had been captured and they were sent to the Chita prison. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestevennaia, XVIII (VII/i): 127 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1225, l. 162), 139 (TsKhIK, f. 1t/p, op. 1, d. 5, l. 93–4). See also Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 137.

163. Coox, Nomonhan, 914; Rossiia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka, 177, 179; Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 101–53. For other numbers, see Krivosheev, Grif sekretnosti sniat’, 77–85. Mongolia suffered 556 casualties.

164. “Muzhestvo i geroizm,” Krasnaia zvezda, Aug. 30, 1939; Sokolov, Georgii Zhukov, 143.

165. Simonov, “Zmetki k biografii G. K. Zhukova,” 54.

166. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 163–4 (RGVA, f. 37977, op. 1, d. 91, l. 32–3: Sept. 1, 1939). Zhou En-Lai brought some of the captured Japanese army codes to Moscow in Sept. to Dimitrov, who passed them to Beria. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 99 (RGASPi, f. 495, op. 74, d. 316, l. 12: note by Stern, Aug. 15); Sergutov, “Organizatsionnye aspekty deiatel’nosti vneshnei razvedki,” III: 241. “For the Japanese army, Nomonhan was the graveyard of reputations.” Coox, Nomonhan, 952; Ikuhiko, “Japanese-Soviet Confrontation,” 157–78.

167. Coox, Nomonhan, 1002 (Oct. 4, 1939); Coox, “The Lesser of Two Hells, Part 2,” 108.

168. Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 100–3; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 123 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22407, d. 2, l. 417).

169. Weizsäcker, Memoirs, 210; Craigie, Behind the Japanese Mask, 71; DBFP, 3rd series, IX: 495–7; Iklé, German-Japanese Relations, 135 (citing International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Documents Presented in Evidence, exhibit 486: Ott to Weizsäcker, Aug. 25, 1939); Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 218 (citing exhibit 2735–A, 225, exhibit 3587); DGFP, series D, VII: 259–60 (Ott to foreign ministry, Aug. 24, 1939). The Soviet military attaché’s aide in Tokyo sent a quick report to Moscow on Aug. 26: Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia oteechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): 159 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22410, d. 2, l. 131–2).

170. Robinson, Black on Red, 137. “It left us all stunned, bewildered, and groggy with disbelief,” recalled one loyal party member (who later defected). “Hatred of Nazism had been drummed into our minds year after year.” Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 332–5. Kravchenko, thirty-four years old in 1939, directed a factory in the industrial district of western Siberia.

171. Ehrenburg, Liudi, gody, zhizn’, II; 202. Vsevolod Vishnevsky, then in the Soviet Far East, also heard about the Pact over the radio and was similarly shocked. The Far East received central newspapers with delay, and after the Aug. 23 treaty he received the August 15–17 newspapers, which had continued to rage about “cannibals” (Nazis). “What about the general ideational-philosophical and political evaluation of fascism, the bloc of aggressors?” he wrote in his diary. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 200 (citing RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2077, l. 39ob., 41).

172. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 74 (1939): 4 (Trotsky, “Stalin’s Capitulation,” March 11, 1939), reprinted in Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 147–9. Trotsky also asserted that Stalin was afraid. “The main source of the policy of Stalin himself is now fear in the face of the fear that he himself has begotten,” he wrote, apropos of Afinogenov’s old play Fear. “Stalin never trusted the masses; now he fears them.” Trotskii, “Iosif Stalin: opyt kharakteristiki (Sept. 22, 1939),” in Portrety revoliutsionerov, 46–60 (at 58).

173. Manuilsky tried to explain to Hernandez at the Comintern villa in Kuntsevo, “Everything has been taken care of. We can’t lose! . . . If the capitalists want to slit each other’s throats, so much the better. When the time is right, when they begin to get weary, we will undoubtedly be solicited by both sides and can chose the one which suits us best. Don’t worry, our army won’t pull the chestnuts out of the fire for any capitalist country.” Hernández, La grande trahison, 206–7.

174. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 71–85 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 67, l. 44–59), 88 (op. 74, d. 517, l. 43); Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 150; “Komintern i sovetsko-germanskii dogovor o nenapedenii,” 206; Firsov, “Arkhivy Kominterna”; Firsov, “Komintern,” 21–2. Daniil Kraminov (b. 1910), assigned to draft the first editorial for Izvestiya about the Pact, had no idea what to write. The editor, Yakov Selikh, approached Voroshilov, who compared the Pact to the 1918 Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany for providing a breathing space. Already on Aug. 24, Selikh knew that Ribbentrop had proposed to insert words about German-Soviet friendship into the text, but Stalin had refused to do so. Seilkh also knew the subjects of the toasts and the jokes exchanged. None of this information had been recorded in the Soviet documents. Kraminov, V orbite voiny, 55.

175. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115–6 (Sept. 7, 1939). For the resultant new Comintern directive, dispatched abroad, see Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 117 (Sept. 8, 1939); Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 88–90 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 18, d. 1292, l. 47–8); and King and Matthews, About Turn, 69–70. More broadly, see also Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 154–63.

176. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115–6 (Sept. 7, 1939).