Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  72. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 63.

  73. Local party committees had circumscribed authority on paper. A November 1922 Central Committee circular dispatched to all party organizations stipulated that locals had no authority to alter the essence of any party circulars. As if in acknowledgment that this was happening, however, the circular noted that any proposed additions to them had to be agreed with the Central Committee. It was signed by Molotov and Kaganovich. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 73 (citing PANO, f. 1, op. 2, d. 238, l. 32).

  74. Nikolaev, Chekisty, article by Velidov with Ksenofontov bio; Parrish, Soviet Security, 219–20. In late 1924 or early 1925, Ksenofontov ordered workers to repair Stalin’s office after midnight; Balashov, who happened to have night duty, had not been informed, and he refused to allow the workers into Stalin’s office. Ksenofontov called and screamed on the phone; the next day Balashov informed Stalin, who sided with him. Ksenofontov resigned; Stalin did not want to accept his resignation, but Ksenofontov insisted. He moved over to RSFSR social welfare. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 191. Ksenofontov died March 23, 1926, of stomach cancer, aged forty-two, in agony. His obituary (Poletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1926, no. 4: 232–4) credited him as “one of the creators and organizers of the Cheka,” even though he had been transferred to CC apparatus for three years.

  75. Psurtsev, Razvitie sviazi v SSSR. Lenin made extensive use of the telephone; his draft directives for introducing the NEP, for example, had been transmitted by telephone to the politburo. P. I. Makrushenko, “Voploshchenie mechty,” Promyshlenno-ekonomicheskaia gazeta, April 20, 1958: 3. Underinvestment ensured that phones did not spread much beyond functionaries, but also that commissariats and other official bodies constructed their own telephone networks, which were therefore closed systems (and which was why Soviet officials had so many phones on their desks). Solnick, “Revolution, Reform, and the Soviet Telephone Network,” 172–3; Lewis, “Communications Output in the USSR,” at 413.

  76. Boris Bazhanov claimed he once came upon Stalin listening in on a telephone network, using a special device attached to a wire into the drawer of his desk. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 39–41. This incident does not appear in Bazhanov’s earlier work: Avec Stalin dans le Kremlin.

  77. In the 1920s, travelers to the Soviet Union were convinced everything was easvesdropped on—“It was said that in Moscow if one spoke through a telephone one might as well talk directly with the GPU”—but of course all telephones worldwide went through switchboard operators. Lawton, The Russian Revolution, 282. See also Hullinger, Reforging of Russia, 114.

  78. There was a switchboard (kommutator) in a small room between Stalin’s reception and his office, where two female telephone operators worked in shifts through mid-1925, when they would be replaced by male bodyguards who doubled as telephone operators. The number of regular telephones at Old Square quickly leapt from around 250 to 500. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 192.

  79. Izvestiia TsK RKP (b), September 18, 1920; Pavlova, Stalinizm, 46–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 171, l. 2); G. A. Kurnenkov, “Organizatsiia zashchity informatsii v strulturakh RKP (b)—VKP (b), 1918–1941 gg.: avtorefat kandidatskoi dissertatsii,” RGGU, 2010; Anin, Radioelektronnyi shpionazh, 24–32. Boki remained in charge of the cipher department from January 1921 through mid-May 1937.

  80. Boki’s dacha commune was located in the village of Kuchino, east of Moscow, and charged members 10 percent of their monthly paychecks. “The drinking bouts as a rule were accompanied by wild hooliganism and mutual humiliations: drunks spread paint and mustard on their private parts,” recalled Yevdokia Kartseva, a Soviet foreign intelligence agent. “Those who were forced to drink were buried as if they had died. . . . All this was done with priestly accoutrements, which had been imported from the Solovki monastery-labor camp (which Boki had helped establish). Usually two or three people wore priestly garb and conducted a drunken liturgy. They drank laboratory spirits from a chemical laboratory obtained under the pretext of technical needs.” http://www.solovki.ca/camp_20/butcher_bokii.php; Shambarov, Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, 592.

  81. Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World, I: 141–4.

  82. XII s”ezd RKP (b): 70, 71, 74.

  83. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 90 (citing PANO, f. 5, op. 6, d. 142, l. 11).

  84. Pavlova, “Mekhanizm politicheskoi vlasti,” 63. On November 8, 1919, a politburo minute records Stalin’s complaint that “certain information about sessions of the Central Committee, admittedly in corrupt form, somehow reaches our enemies.” He suggested a procedure “that would allow only a few of the comrades to get to know the protocols.” This prompted institution of rules on who received excerpts from politburo meetings, which were meant to serve as directives or instructions. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 37; Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State: Catalog of Finding Aids and Documents (Hoover Institution Archives, 1995). On June 14, 1923, the politburo resolved to make stenographic records of the principal reports and summary remarks on key agenda items, for the edification of those not present. Adibekov, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, I: 223. Stenographic records were made rarely, however, evidently because such work was labor intensive: sessions tended to be long and the recorded remarks had to be distributed to each individual for editing and approval. The resultant typeset “red books,” so named for their pink binding, could differ substantially from the original hand-recorded oral remarks. On December 8, 1923, the politburo resolved that in its protocols, “nothing other than decisions of the politburo ought to be recorded.” Istochnik, 1993, no. 5–6: 88–95 (at 91).

  85. Dmitrievskii, Sovetskie portrety, 108–9. Dmitriesvky, an employee of the Soviet embassy in Sweden, defected in 1930.

  86. “‘Menia vstretil chelovek srednego rosta . . .’ .”

  87. Kerzhentsev, Printsipy organizatsii. Kerzhentsev was also a playwright and proponent of the mass theater who in 1923–25 worked in the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate and wrote pamphlets about the scientific organization of work (Taylorism) and time management and how to conduct meetings: Nauchnaia organizatsiia truda (NOT) i zadacha partii (St. Petersburg, 1923); Bor’ba za vremia (Moscow, 1923); Organizui samogo sebia (Moscow, 1923); Kak vesti sobaranie, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1923).

  88. After the success of the coup, one Moscow Bolshevik remarked, “some comrades could not get used to the idea that the underground was finally dead.” In fact, the attempt to retain power, within a hostile country and hostile world, made the pseudonyms and coded messages seem no less essential. Smidovich, “Vykhod iz podpol’ia v Moskve,” 177. Smidovich chaired the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee.

  89. In 1922, Lenin insisted that the three Central Committee secretaries post office hours—which were to be published in Pravda—indicating precisely when the secretariat would be open to receive officials, workers, peasants, or whoever showed up. This was the origin of the logbooks for Stalin’s office (which originated not for his Kremlin office, but for his Vozdvizhenka and then Old Square office). Later, Stalin ceased having such open office hours and received officials and others when he summoned them.

  90. Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 74.

  91. In 1918, Znamenka was renamed Red Banner Street—Krasno-Znamënnaya—but colloquially retained its original name. Znamenka no. 23 would be renumbered no. 19 by 1926.

  92. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 186, l. 129, 108; d. 171, l. 232, 167; op. 112, d. 474, l. 11; op. 11, d. 171, l. 198; op. 68, d. 49, l. 116.

  93. On August 5, 1921, Trotsky ordered the political administration of the Red Army to ramp up its work following the civil war victory. He visited Khodynsk camp (lager’) and a school for young commanders. He called for publishing better newspapers and organizing collective readings: “Among the Red Army men of the 36th division there are many Ukrainians. Among
them are a significant number who spent a long time as POWs of the Polish bourgeoisie. They were treated horribly in POW captivity. The former POWs perk up when the topic of their captivity arises. It is necessary to devote one-two-three days of newspaper material to this question.” He suggested finding a journalist who could quote them and select the better stories. He warned them not to forget about uniforms, boots, and rifles either, and to pay attention to their needs, not bathe them in phraseology and cliches. Trotsky wanted to ensure that the oath of service was done properly, not perfunctorily. Trotsky also showed he was guided by Lenin’s instructions, asking Lenin on November 23, 1921, for his writings on military doctrine as the discussions were under way (l. 173). The day before, Trotsky asked to be supplied with the new post–Great War Military Regulations (ustav) of other countries, “above all the French ones” (l. 182). He wanted two popular-style books written, one on Poland and one on Romania, to be factually based, in order to be used as course material and agitprop for Red Army men—and they had to be accessible. He directed that the Journal of Military Science and Revolution be renamed War and Revolution. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 1, d. 448, l. 84–6, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 17.

  94. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 59.

  95. Shanin, Awkward Class, 190–2.

  96. Zibert, “O bol’shevistskom vospitanii.”

  97. Shpilrein, Iazyk krasnoarmeitsa. For political reasons, the regime distrusted the rural instructors who were supposed to educate the peasants, just as the tsarist regime had not, albeit from a different political vantage point. Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, 79.

  98. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 271–9, 288.

  99. “At the current time,” noted a special commission in January 1924, “the Red Army, as an organized, trained, politically educated and mobilizational resource-supplied force, does not exist. In its current form the Red Army is not combat ready.” Berkhin, Voennaia reforma, 60.

  100. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 183.

  101. Berkhin, Voennaia reforma, 60.

  102. Harrison, Marooned in Moscow, 227; Leggett, The Cheka, 34, 165.

  103. On Stalin’s early “keen interest” in the secret police, see Gerson, The Secret Police, 28.

  104. Its staffing poses a bit of a puzzle, partly because of the way personnel were enumerated. Early on, the Cheka managed few records—“everything was done in combat mode, on the fly, they wrote things down when they could,” one history-memoir recounted. Latsis, Otcheta VChK za chetyre goda ee deiatel’nosti (20 dekabria 1917 g.—20 dekabria 1921 g. [Internal use], 13 (cited in V. K. Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 5–50 [at 5]).

  105. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 295–305 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, d. 138, l. 176–9). Soon enough, endless memoranda demanded the elimination of red tape and expenditures. “We need to do away with the superfluous run of paper and reduce the ranks,” Dzierzynski wrote to one of his deputies (July 4, 1921). V. K. Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 9 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 55, l. 108–108ob). There are more than three hundred volumes of archival documents in FSB archives on Kronstadt, gathered from many agencies and publications, including from the Cheka itself: Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 30.

  106. Leonov, Rozhdenii sovetskoi imperii, 298–300; Baiguzin, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost’ Rossii, 436.

  107. Pravda, February 22, 1919 (Vladimir Cheka); Sotsialistickesii vestnik, September 21, 1922 (Stavropol Cheka).

  108. As the exile Maxim Gorky poetically wrote, Chekists “made their way into power like foxes, used it like wolves, and when caught, perished like dogs.” Gorky, Untimely Thoughts, 211.

  109. Also in 1920, Stalin displaced Bukharin as the politburo representative on the Cheka’s governing board (collegium). Leggett, The Cheka, 132–45, 159, 165. Up until November 1918, in the opinion of Nikolai Krylenko, the Cheka “existed without any statutes or law,” let alone supervision. Krylenko, Sudoustroitstvo RSFSR, 97.

  110. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 67–8.

  111. Popoff, The Tcheka; Dmitrievskii, Sud’ba Rossii, 214. Members of the tsarist police were mostly refused employment in the Cheka, which few of them sought. Three known okhranka operatives worked in the Cheka: one who worked in internal passports, one who helped recruit agents in Paris, and the old regime’s top cipher specialist, Ivan A. Zybin, the former head of the tsarist cryptology department. Soboleva, Istoriia shifroval’nogo dela, 417–9. By contrast, an estimated 90 percent of the Bolshevik regime’s state control commission members were former staff of the tsarist procuracy. Remington, “Institution Building in Bolshevik Russia.” The 1923–24 summary report for the top leadership on the activities of the GPU noted some success in incorporating foreign agents from tsarist times. Istochnik, 1995, no. 4: 72–80. In 1925, the OGPU moved the central okhranka central archives to Moscow (the foreign archives, in Paris, were said to be lost, but in fact they were spirited away and deposited in the Hoover Institution at Stanford). The OGPU soon published a list of names in the secret agent/informer card index of the okhranka, amounting to almost 10,000 people. Spisok sekretnykh sotrudnikov, osvedomiteli, vspomogatel’nykh agentov byv. Okhrannykh otdelenii i zhandarmskykh upravlenii, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1926–9).

  112. Leggett, The Cheka, 190. Latsis, Chrezvychainye komissii, 11.

  113. Kapchinskii, Gosbezopasnosti iznutri, 256–7.

  114. When a heckler shouted that he had been imprisoned despite having proof of his innocence, Kamenev promised “the [Moscow] soviet will deal with such injustices,” provoking catcalls. Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat, 39 (citing TsGAMO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 236, l. 9, 11, 21, 28, 46–7).

  115. “Comrade Kamenev!” Lenin wrote (November 29, 1921). “I am closer to you than to comrade Dzierzynski. I advise you not to retreat and to bring the matter to the politburo.” PSS, LIV: 39.

  116. Yet another special commission (established December 1, 1921) comprised of Dzierzynski, Kamenev, and Dmitry Kursky, the justice commissar (1918–28) and procurator general, became stalemated. While Dzierzynski worked on Kursky, proposing to introduce more precise procedures for arrests, searches, and detainment, he directed his new first deputy, Józef Unszlicht, to find a way to get what the Cheka wanted without alienating Lenin. Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 339–40; D. B. Pavlov, Bol’shevistskaia diktatura, 54–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2558, l. 50); Zhordaniia, Bol’shevizm, 71. Kursky (b. 1874) would become Soviet envoy to Italy (1928–32) and commit suicide in December 1932. Voloshin, “Dmitrii Ivanovich Kurskii”; “Dmitrii Ivanovich Kurskii: k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia,” Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost’, 1974, no. 11: 48–9.

  117. To carry out the changes, yet another commission was formed, consisting of Stalin, Kamenev, and Kursky—but this time, also Unszlicht, who conducted a rearguard action on behalf of Dzierzynski. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 108–11. Dzierzynski certainly desired greater adherence to legality, so as not to discredit the GPU. See his letter (April 2, 1923) to Unszlicht’s former secretary (Andreeva) on not jailing suspects for more than two weeks without charges: RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 117. The politburo decree abolishing the Cheka had stated that the new agency should “concentrate on institutionalization of informing and [collecting] internal information and elucidation of all counterrevolutionary and anti-Soviet acts in all spheres.” The precise wording of this directive came from the commission on SRs and Mensheviks that had been formed by the politburo in late 1921. D. B. Pavlov, Bol’shevistskaia diktatura, 53 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 59, d. 16, l. 1–2, 4).

  118. Vysylka vmesto rasstrela, 11. Already by early 1921, more than 2,000 Mensheviks were in Soviet prisons and camps. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 400 (TsA FSB, f. 1, op. 6, d. 138, l. 100). The Cheka in the South Caucasus became the GPU in
1926. Confusingly, the plenipotentiary office of the central Cheka based in Tiflis did become the GPU plenipotentiary in 1922, and the head of the South Caucasus Cheka was also the South Caucasus GPU plenipotentiary. Waxmonsky, “Police and Politics in Soviet Society,” 126; Organy VChK-GPU-OGPU na Severnom Kavkaze i v Zakavkaz’e, 1918–1934 gg. https://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/system/attachments/0000/3107/%D0%9E%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B_%D0%92%D0%A7%D0%9A-%D0%93%D0%9F%D0%A3-%D0%9E%D0%93%D0%9F%D0%A3_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B5_%D0%B8_%D0%B2_%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%8C%D0%B5__1918-1934_%D0%B3%D0%B3._.pdf.

  119. PSS, XLIV: 396–400 (pis’mo D. I. Kurskomu). See also Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev,” 131 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 50, l. 64). Stalin had Lenin’s letter printed in Bol’shevik, January 15, 1937. Already on December 28, 1921, the politburo had accepted Dzierzynski’s recommendation to stage a public trial of the SRs, although it took time to manufacture the case. Tsvigun, V. I. Lenin i VChK [1987], 518.

  120. Argenbright, “Marking NEP’s Slippery Path”; Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 143. No more than a few weeks after the concession of legalization of private trade, in April 1921, Ivar T. Smilga proposed a mass trial of engineers in the petroleum industry. In the winter of 1921–22, Lenin urged the justice commissariat to mount show trials of economic managers. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 155, 1. 4; Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia, 35.