Stalin, Volume 1
Page 135
242. Rees, “Iron Lazar,” 33–5.
243. “One of the most talented and brilliant Bolshevik leaders,” wrote Bazhanov (who worked in both Stalin’s secretariat, under Kaganovich, and in the finance commissariat, under Sokolnikov). “Whatever assignments he was given, he handled them.” Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1990], 122.
244. “Our dear, talented, and most valuable in practical matters Sokolnikov does not understand anything in trade. And he will bury us, if given the chance,” Lenin complained to Kamenev in a letter. At the same time, Lenin called Sokolnikov’s book State Capitalism and the New Financial Policy “very successful.” Lenin, PSS, XLIV: 428, LIV: 90. Lenin’s Collected Works (vol. LIV) contain considerable correspondence with Sokolnikov in 1921–22.
245. In 1908, Chicherin had a falling out with Lenin and went over to the Mensheviks. In 1917, the British jailed him for preaching peace and socialism (which they deemed to be pro-German, anti-Entente sentiments). Trotsky obtained Chicherin’s release in exchange for resuming the granting of visas and diplomatic couriers for the British. He became Trotsky’s deputy at foreign affairs, then, quickly, his replacement. Debo, Revolution and Survival, 34–41. See also Debo, “The Making of a Bolshevik”; O’Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution. Chicherin was a leftist. In January 1922, for example, he expressed alarm that, from abroad, “people are sending newspapers by mail to private persons. To allow this means to restore the possibility of press agitation against us. Glaring examples of the White Guard press will circulate in Moscow.” Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 427–8.
246. When Litvinov instead joined the army, despite poor eyesight, he mastered Russian and became familiar with underground revolutionary literature. Stationed in Baku, in 1898, he refused to fire upon a crowd of striking workers and was discharged. Georgii Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova,” XX Vek: istoriia Rossii i SSSR, January 22, 1924.
247. In the U.K. still, Litvinov was arrested on September 8, 1918, and charged with encouraging Bolshevik propaganda; released after ten days, he was exchanged for the incarcerated British spy Bruce Lockhart. Pope, Maksim Litvinoff, 129–30.
248. Sheinis, “Pervye shagi diplomaticheskoi deiatel’nosti M. M. Litvoinov,” 153; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 110–2.
249. Voroshilov detested Litvinov. Dullin, Men of Influence, 13 (citing Zvezda [Odessa], September 21, 1928).
250. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 88–9.
251. “Posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska Chicherina,” Istochnik, 1995, no. 6: 100.
252. Georgii Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova,” XX Vek: istoriia Rossii i SSSR, February 4, 1924. An especially unsympathetic portrait of Litvinov can be found in the defector Dmitrievskii [Dmitriev], Sovetskie portrety, 240–52, translated as Dans les coulisses du Kremlin (Paris: Plon, 1933), 182–207.
253. Ivanov, Neizvestnyi Dzerzhinskii; Plekhanov, Dzerzhinskii; Plekhanov and Plekhanov, Zheleznyi Feliks.
254. Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization, 126 (no citation). The arrested Christian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, after an interrogation in the Lubyanka inner prison, wrote that “Dzierzynski gave the impression of a person who was completely convinced and sincere. He was a fanatic. . . . In the past he had wanted to become a Catholic monk, and he transferred his fanatical faith to Communism.” Berdiaev, Samopoznanie, 215.
255. Dvadtsat’ let VChK-OGPU-NKVD, 20–3; Blobaum, Feliks Dzierżyński.
256. Tishkov, Dzherzhinskii [1976], 75, 78. Once, despite being himself in a weakened state, he is said to have carried an ailing cellmate on his back when they were allowed out to the prison courtyard. Dmitriev, Pervyi chekist, 53–62.
257. Sheridan, From Mayfair to Moscow, 95.
258. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 227 (no citation); Shteinberg, Ekab Peters, 119; Viktor Baklanov, “Slovo Dzherzhinskomu,” Gazeta “Dos’e,” November 3, 2002. Victor Chernov called Dzierzynski “a genuine monk-ascetic. And really a good person.” D. A. Lutokhin, “Zarubezhnye pastyri,” Minuvshee, 1997: 71.
259. Ostensibly to prevent operational data from being revealed, Mezynski instructed OGPU officials not to turn over to the procuracy any documents concerning political crimes—thereby thwarting the provision of procuracy supervision of arrests. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 305; Zdanovich, Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 142–3, citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 3, d. 60, l. 40; Fomin, Zapiski starogo chekista, 214. Fomin headed the border guards in the North Caucasus, so he saw a lot of Cheka visitors to the Kislovodsk spa. The daughter of a Soviet diplomat in Berlin recalled Mezynski “as taciturn, gloomy, and extremely polite—he even addressed me [she was then twelve] with the formal ‘You.’” Ioffe, Vremia nazad, ch. 2.
260. Deacon, History of the Russian Secret Service, 286–7 (unfootnoted).
261. Fomin, Zapiski starogo chekista, 220–1; Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 166–74.
262. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 17.
263. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 278–9. Yagoda would rebuild the Lubyanka building, erect the NKVD club and the Dynamo Stadium for police-sponsored sports teams, and oversee a plethora of monumental forced labor construction projects.
264. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 273–5.
265. Gladkov, Nagrada za vernost’—kazn’; Kuvarzin, Dorogami neskonchaemykh bitv, 53; Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 295.
266. Frunze remarked that “I have data that secret information from the staff of the Red Army is leaking abroad. I, for example, receive information about directives earlier from Poland than from Moscow.” Mikhaleva, Revvoensovet Respubliki, 335.
267. Vinogradov, Genrikh Yagoda, 312–7 (TsA FSB, f. 1, op. 6, d. 37, l. 102–3). See also Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 228; and Istochnik, 1995, no. 6: 154–5 (APRF f. 32, op. 1, d. 1, l. 27–27ob: Unszlicht, April 21, 1922).
268. The operative Jan Berzin was briefly imprisoned. Dzierzynski admitted the latter’s fondness for trinkets such as gold rings and watches, but had him released. Gerson, The Secret Police, 69–70 (citing Pravda, December 25 and December 26, 1918).
269. Ward, Stalin’s Russia, 36–7.
270. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1594, l. 3; Gromov, Stalin, 72.
271. Leninskii sbornik, XXXVI: 122; Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1933, no. 36–7: 10.
272. Trotsky, My Life, 477.
273. Trotsky, Stalin, 389 (quoting Serebryakov, who claimed to have heard it from Yenukidze).
274. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 54–5.
275. Ilizarov, “Stalin”; Gromov, Stalin, 57–9; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 118.
276. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 105–6.
277. “Stalin Closely Observed,” in Urban, Stalinism, 6–30 (at 8).
278. Ul’ianov, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina I. V. Stalina,” 197.
279. Izvestiia, April 5, 1923.
280. Sochineniia, VIII: 66–8; Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 1156. See also Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV: 32–4.
281. Getzler, Martov, 218 (citing Poslednye novosti, April 11, 1923, and Sovremennye zapiski, 1923, vol. 15: 368–70).
282. Budennyi, Proidennyi put’ I: 339.
283. Trotsky, Portraits, 217.
284. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, “Slovo o Lenine,” Pravda, April 21, 1990 (quoting Alexei Svidersky). Gorbachev was interested in this vignette as an example of supposed apparatus sabotage. Svidersky, under Stalin, worked in the workers and peasants inspectorate and the agriculture commissariat; he had his ashes buried in the Kremlin Wall, after dying a natural death in 1933. See also PSS, spravochnyi tom, chast’ II: 471.
285. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 256–7 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/S, d. 13, l. 6). Nazaretyan also reported that he had received an apartment, from Avel Yenukidze, the Kremlin commandant. �
�The apartment is excellent” (Povarskaya Street, no. 11). After August 9, 1922, to Orjonikidze: “Koba is training me big time. I am undergoing a comprehensive but extremely boring education. For the time being they are trying to turn me into the consummate functionary, the most perfect controller of implementation of resolutions of the politburo, orgburo and secretariat.” Nazaretyan lobbied Stalin to be moved out of the heavy paperwork position. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3 (RGASPI, f. 85, op 1/S, d. 13, l. 10).
286. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3. See also Chevychelov, Amaiak Nazaretian.
287. “We saw Stalin often,” recalled Maria Joffe, the wife of Adolf Joffe (b. 1883), who was among the closest people to Trotsky. “We would run into him at the Bolshoi Theater premieres, in the box held by the theater management. Stalin usually showed up in the company of his close associates, among whom were Voroshilov and Kaganovich. . . . Very sociable, on friendly speaking terms with everyone, but there was not a truthful gesture in any of this . . . Stalin was an actor of rare ability, capable of changing his mask to suit any circumstance. And one of his favorite masks was precisely this one: simple, ordinary good fellow wearing his heart on his sleeve.” Mariia Ioffe, “Nachalo,” Vremia i my, 1977, no. 20: 163–92 (at 178). Maria emigrated to Israel in 1975.
288. This was established, in a major revision to the literature, by Rigby, “Was Stalin a Disloyal Patron?”
289. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1279, d. 1482.
290. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1289, l. 22
291. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 357.
292. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 351–2.
293. In 1930, some of the land would go to the construction of an elite sanitorium named Barvikha.
294. Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 29; Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiiakh sem’i, 177.
295. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline.
296. Stalin’s dacha settlement was designated Zubalovo-4. Dzierzynski’s was in Gorky-2, where he established a GPU state farm to feed the elite. Molotov was also in Gorky-2 (from the late 1920s).
297. http://protown.ru/information/hide/6965.html (Alexander Bek interview of Fotiyeva).
298. “K istorii polsednikh Leninskikh dokumentov: Iz arkhiva pisatelia Aleksandra Beka, besedovavsheo v 1967 godu s lichnyi sekretariami Lenina,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9.
299. McNeal, Stalin, 46–7.
300. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3. See also Chevychelov, Amaiak Nazaretian.
301. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 193–5. Stalin let Balashov enter the Institute of Red Professors in the fall of 1926.
302. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 93.
303. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 194. One scholar has written that “the foundation of Stalin’s power in the party was not fear: it was charm . . . when he set his mind to charming a man, he was irresistible.” Charm there was aplenty, but fear as well. Montefiore, Stalin, 41–2.
304. Balashov added that “Stalin should see with his own eyes how the people lived, himself spend time with the masses, listen to people, but all we did was send instructions and directives to these people. The main misfortune of Stalin and of other leaders, I think, was that they spent time in the struggle over theoretical issues, all energy went to that, and concerned themselves little with living people. Is it possible to build socialism in one country, is it impossible, that’s the cud they chewed from morning to night.” After Balashov brought up the idea of what they would say if suddenly confronted with a live peasant, they jokingly began to call him a “kulak.” Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 194-5.
305. Dan, “Bukharin o Staline,” 182.
306. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 4: 182. Balashov, as it happened, did see Trotsky often: he shared living quarters with Vera Inber and her father, who was Trotsky’s uncle. “Trotsky and his children (Sedov and his two daughters) often came to see him, other comrades, whole assemblies took place” (no. 5: 193). Balashov had met Kaganovich in Turkestan but did not follow him right away to Moscow in March 1922. Balashov had contracted malaria in Samarkand, which prompted him to ask for a transfer to Russia; once he had been transferred, Kaganovich took him in, from June 1, 1922. When Stalin named Kaganovich party boss of Ukraine, Balashov was transferred from Kaganovich’s Organization and Instruction Department and became Tovstukha’s assistant. Then Balashov became the politburo recording secretary, replacing Maria Burakova.
307. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 131, l. 270–1. Van Ree, Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 148.
308. On the the Soviet system as “a vast collection of personal followings,” see Armstrong, Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, 146. One eminent scholar has suggested that the concept of patronage was the defining characteristic of the imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet polities, without, however, providing the comparisons to other systems that look remarkably similar. Hosking, “Patronage and the Russian State,” which is essentially a gloss on M. N. Afanas’ev, Klientelizm i Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennost’ (Moscow: Tsentr konstitutsionnykh issledovanii, 1997). See also Orlovsky, “Political Clientelism in Russia,” 174–99; and Ransel, “Character and Style of Patron-Client Relations in Russia,” among others.
309. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 368–9.
310. Iu. A. Shchetinov, “Rezhim lichnoi vlasti Stalina,” in Kukushkin, Rezhim lichnoi vlasti Stalina, 19 (citing GARF. F. 5865, op. 1, d. 41: letter to Yekaterina Kuskova).
311. PSS, XLV: 302.
CHAPTER 11: “REMOVE STALIN”
1. PSS, XLV: 345.
2. PSS, XLV: 346.
3. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie.
4. There were 217 strikes between August and December 1923, including 51 in Moscow. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 26 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, por. 794, l. 141).
5. Important exceptions are Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 172–212, and van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question.”
6. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2479, l. 159–60, 272–4.
7. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 199.
8. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 646–7 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 278, l. 2; f. 558, op. 1, d. 2479, l. 262–5). The orgburo commission members included Stalin, Kuibyshev, Rakovski, Orjonikidze, and Sokolnikov, as well as representatives of the republics: Alexander Chervyakov (Belorussia), Grigory Petrovsky (Ukraine), Alexander Myasnikyan (Armenia), S. A. Aga-Maly-Ogly (Azerbaijan), and Polikarp “Budu” Mdivani (Georgia), among others.
9. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 192–3, 196. For Stalin’s handwritten formal proposal, see Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 647–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2479, l. 241).
10. PSS, XLV: 556–8, n136.
11. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 198–9 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 28, l. 23–4: September 22, 1922); TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 78–9; Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 181–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 28, l. 19–21).
12. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 220.
13. Leninskii sbornik, XXXVI; PSS, XLV: 211–3. On Lenin’s self-congratulation, see Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 60.
14. Lenin, PSS, XLV: 211–3.
15. As one Soviet scholar tamely put it, “The head of the government of the RSFSR, V. I. Lenin, more than once indicated in his speeches, that the RSFSR in its domestic and foreign policy expressed the interests also of the Soviet republics federated with it.” Filimonov, Vozniknovenie i razvitie RSFSR kak federativnogo gosudarstva, 22.
16. One estimate has 2 percent of writings by Marx devoted to nationalism, 25 percent by Lenin, and 50 percent by Stalin. Munck, Difficult Dialogue,
76.
17. Kun, Bukharin, 130–1.
18. Mdivani told Lenin that the Georgians would agree to “a union” of equals in a USSR but not incorporation into the RSFSR—a point Stalin had already conceded, as a politburo note to Lenin had confirmed. Kharmandanian, Lenin i stanovlenie Zakavkazskoi federatsii, 344; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 208.
19. Pospelov et al., Vladimir Il’ich Lenin. Lenin had accused Stalin of “hurriedness” in an earlier letter. At the politburo on September 28, Stalin and Kamenev exchanged notes. Kamenev: “Ilich has decided on war in defense of independence. He proposes that I meet with the Georgians.” Stalin: “We need firmness against Ilich.” Kamenev: “I think that given that Ilich insists, it will be worst to resist.” Stalin: “I don’t know. Do as you see fit.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 206, 208–9; PSS, XLV: 214. Trotsky had been granted holiday from September 13, 1922, but he remained in Moscow; Kamenev was also technically on holiday.
20. Reshetar, “Lenin on the Ukraine”; Szporluk, “Lenin, ‘Great Russia,’ and Ukraine.”
21. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 205. Lenin wrote a note to Kamenev on October 6, 1922, stating, “I have declared a fight to the death against Great Russian chauvinism,” and demanding that the chairmanship of the USSR Soviet central executive committee be rotated among the member republics, and not be controlled by the RSFSR. Lenin also carried this point (Stalin wrote on Lenin’s note “correct”). PSS, XLV: 214, 559, n136; Lenin, Sochineniia, XXXIII: 335.
22. Borys, Sovietization of the Ukraine.
23. PSS, XLI: 161–8 (at 164); Lenin, Sochineniia, XXV: 624; “Iz istorii obrazovanii SSSR,” in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 191–218; 1991, no. 3: 169–82; no. 4: 158–76; no. 5: 154–76. Stalin’s letter was drastically abbreviated in later editions of Lenin’s works. See also van Ree, Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 209.