The Great Terror

3 Architect of Terror

fn1

By the time of the Second World War, when many Western observers first saw him, he had changed. He had developed quite a large paunch; his hair had become very thin; and his face was now white with ruddy cheeks. This coloration was common in high Soviet circles, where it was known as “Kremlin complexion” and attributed to working through the night in its offices.

fn2

Cherkasov gives an account of this conversation in

Zapiski sovetskogo aktera

(Moscow, 1953), pp. 380–82. This book was passed for publication while Stalin was still alive, and (we are told in the Soviet historical journal

Voprosy istorii

, no. 8 [1956]) he raised no objections.