2. This is where she would kill herself, in 1932. The structure still stands: Nadya’s former room is visible, from the theater ticket booth of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, looking right.
3. On Stalin’s early Kremlin apartments: Mikoian, Tak bylo, 351.
4. Lenin wrote to Kremlin officials three times between November 1921 and February 1922 to force the issue of a new apartment for Stalin. PSS, LIV: 44; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, V: 622–3; Shturman, Mertvye khvataiut zhivykh, 23; Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 108. Belenky had been arrested along with Dzierzynski by left SRs in 1918. From 1919 to 1924, he was chief of Lenin’s bodyguard detail, and from 1921 until January 1928, also in charge of all bodyguards for leadership. Stalin had Belenky arrested in 1938 and shot in 1940.
5. “Comrade Stalin is a living person, not a museum rarity and himself does not want to live in a museum, refusing the residence suggested to him, just as last year Zinoviev declined that same residence,” Sedova wrote to Lenin. “Comrade Stalin would like to take over the apartment where Flakserman and Malkov currently reside.” Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 150 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 1417, l. 1–1ob.); PSS, XLIV: 162. Trotsky imagined that Leonid Serebryakov, an apparatchik in the party secretariat (who was close to Trotsky), had ended the row by offering Stalin his own apartment. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov [1991], 54–5. The outbuilding where Stalin had originally lived was eventually demolished for the post-WWII Palace of Congresses.
6. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 753, l. 3 (June 12, 1925).
7. Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 14 (letter written sometime after September 9, 1927). Artyom would return to live with his mother, Elizaveta, who had a room at Moscow’s National Hotel.
8. Shatunovskaia, Zhizn’ v Kremle, 188; Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1983], 154.
9. Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 154 (APRF, f. 44, op. 1, d. 1, l. 417–9).
10. Allilueva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 98; Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 103.
11. Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiiakh sem’i, 177.
12. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 19–20.
13. Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 22 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 155, l. 5, now RGASPI f. 558, op. 11: Stalin to Nadya, April 9, 1928). See also Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 179; and Allilueva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 124.
14. The baby (Galina) was born February 7, 1929. After the baby’s death at eight months of age, the couple broke up; Zoya, still technically married to Yakov, moved in with Timon Kozyrev, an employee of the regular police (militsia). Yakov took some technical training and got an assembly job as an electrician. Komsomol’skaia Pravda, December 20, 2005.
15. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 34, l. 21.
16. Lih, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 103; Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 55. In 1926, Sochi-Matsesta became a special “state resort.” At that time it had six general state sanitoriums with 465 beds, but another twenty-one with 1,175 beds owned by individual state agencies exclusively for their personnel.
17. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 351–2.
18. Khromov, Po stranitsam, 10 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, l. 23–24ob.).
19. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, l. 5 (M. Gorbachev).
20. “Neopublikovannye materialy iz biografii tov. Stalina,” Antireligioznik.
21. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 590–1 (citing unpublished memoirs of K. K. Orjonikidze).
22. Trotsky, Where Is Britain Going?
23. Lih, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 108 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3266, l. 1–2).
24. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/i: 18 (citing DBRFP, series I A, ii [1968], 724–9).
25. Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union and Britain’s General Strike of May 1926.”
26. Vatlin, Stenogrammy zasedanii Politburo, I: 743–827 (at 743, 780: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 686, l. 146–51, 152–6); Nazarov, Stalin i bor’ba za liderstvo, 152 (citing RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 22, l. 47). See also Stalin’s instructions: Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 55–69.
27. Zaria vostoka, June 10, 1926; Sochineniia, VIII: 173–5.
28. Sochineniia, VIII: 168–72.
29. Vatlin, Stenogrammy zasedanii Politburo, II: 109.
30. Adibekova and Latsis, “V predchuv-stvii pereloma,” 85–6; Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 654–5 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 2, d. 257, l. 46–8); Gimpel’son, NEP, 382, 384.
31. RGASPI, f. 76, op. 2, d. 270. Back when Dzierzynski had written him on April 5, 1926, asking for a replacement first deputy to help him run the economy, complaining of his ever-widening differences with Pyatakov, Rykov responded that Pyatakov and Trotsky were conspiring with Kamenev and Zinoviev, and that if Pyatakov were freed of the burdens of administration he would have more time to conspire politically. It is unclear if Rykov was trying to avoid finding a replacement or if he was driven by precisely these calculations. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 326 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 2, d. 168, l. 11).
32. Dzierzynski concluded: “I too am exhausted from these contradictions.” Kommunist, 1989, no. 8: 87–8; Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 659–60 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 2, d. 270, l. 29–30: July 3, 1926). A red-brown transformation was an old song for him: on July 9, 1924, Dzierzynski had written to Stalin and other politburo members warning that if the situation did not improve, a dictator would appear who would bury the revolution “no matter what red feathers were affixed to his clothing.” Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 277 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 2, d. 746, l. 14, 17).
33. http://kremlin-9.rosvesty.ru/news/111/.
34. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1289, l. 6, 6ob.
35. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’, 113.
36. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 68.
37. Merridale, Moscow Politics, 38. The meeting in question occurred on June 6, 1926, although there may have been more than one.
38. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 220.
39. Moskovskie bol’sheviki, 189–90 (citing MPA, f. 69, op. 1, d. 374, l. 107).
40. Zdanovich, Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 316–7 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 4, d. 145, l. 15: V. Vasilev).
41. Lih, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 100 (citing RGASPI, f. 613, op. 1, d. 46, l. 21–2).
42. Lih, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 115–7; Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 72–5. Stalin also predicted that “Trotsky will once again become loyal,” and advised he be treated leniently. Trotsky joined a written protest to the July 1926 plenum with Zinoviev, Kamenev, Krupskaya, and others (thirteen in all), but the statement was not included in the record. Lih, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 116, n1.
43. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, Khromov, po stranitsam, 1—1 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, l. 53).
44. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/i: 76–80.
45. F. E. Dzerzhinskii—predsedatel’, 663–4 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 364, l. 57–8, 70); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 326 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, delo unspecified, l. 56–56ob). On July 18, Dzierzynski wrote to Yagoda asking what had been done to strengthen counterintelligence against Poland, Belorussia, Ukraine, and Romania: F. E. Dzerzhinskii—predsedatel’, 668 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 364, l. 62).
46. Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 665 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 88, l. 37).
47. Shishkin, Vlast´, politika, ekonomika, 296.
48. F. E. Dzerzhinskii—predsedatel’, 670 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 4, d. 30, l. 50–1); Pravda, August 1, 1926; Dzerzhinskii, Izbrannye proizvedennia, II: 381–92; Dzerzhinskaia, V gody velikikh boev, 400–3.
49. Pravda, July 22, 1926, in Sochineniia, VIII: 192–3. See also Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, August 1, 1926.
50. Trotskii, Stalin, II: 184. According to Trotsky, Stalin conveyed
the impression that it was the letter of an ill person—the illness was speaking—and that Lenin was unduly influenced by women (baby), meaning Krupskaya and perhaps Fotiyeva and Volodicheva. Trotskii, Stalin, II: 253.
51. RGASPI, f. 17, op.2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 62, 66–7 (Steongraficheskii otchet Ob”edinennogo plenuma TsK i TsKK VKP (b), 14–23 iuinia 1926 g.).
52. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 105.
53. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 85–6.
54. RGASPI, f. 17, op.2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 66.
55. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 599–601.
56. RGASPI, f. 17, op.2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 66.
57. Pravda, July 25, 1926; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh [1970], III: 332–54.
58. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, l. 89, 102, 105.
59. Orjonikidze refused: “I am no good for that kind of work, for I’m improbably explosive and rude, illiterate—in a word, I cannot write. . . . Don’t forget that I was given a reprimand that was published in the press for a physical altercation [mordoba],” the infamous slap back in early 1923. He recommended instead Rudzutaks, Kaganovich, or Andreyev. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 39, 323–4 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 25, d. 120, l. 1–2: March 17, 1926); Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 23–4; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 34, l. 84, 87; Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 82–6.
60. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 23–4. Stalin wrote to Molotov on August 30, 1926, instructing that the decree be reworded post facto; Molotov took responsibility, in a letter to “Dear Sergo” of September 9, 1926, and observed, “From my side, I hope that you will not remain in the North Caucasus for long and that you’ll transfer to Moscow in the not distant future.” Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 82–6; Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 336–7 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 25, d. 151, l. 1–3: Sept. 9, 1926).
61. Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization, 128 (no citation); Polikarenko, O Felikse Edmundoviche Dzerzhinskom; “Nad grobom Dzerzhinskogo,” Pravda, July 23, 1926: 1. See also Pavlov, Chekisty, 12. The archives got a boost from Dzierzynski’s death, which induced the regime to compile his “personal files,” on the example of the Lenin archives. Dzierzynski’s personal file in the party archives (RGASPI, f. 76) contains more than 5,000 folders. Newly minted foreign intelligence operatives would swear their duty oaths on his birthday (September 11). Later, all Chekist salaries would be paid on the eleventh of every month. Leonov, Likholet’e, 354; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 30.
62. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 42 (citing interview with defector Peter Deriabin, former member of the guards). On the religious aspects to the Dzierzynski cult, see Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization, 125–34.
63. Fedor, Russia and the Cult of State Security, 11–29; Hingley, The Russian Secret Police, 130. See also Mikoian, Feliks Dzerzhinskii.
64. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 353 (no citation). Sobol became a writer under the pen name Irina Guro. There was about Mezynski an interesting secret fact. Back in June–July 1915, behind a pseudonym, he had savaged Lenin in a Russian-language newspaper based in Paris (Our Echo). “Lenin considers himself not only the sole successor to the Russian throne, once it opens up, but the sole successor of the International,” Mezynski perspicaciously wrote, adding that “Lenin . . . is a political Jesuit, twisting Marxism over many years to his aims of the moment, ending up irredeemably confused. . . . The Leninists are not even a faction, but a clan of party gypsies, with stentorian voices and love of brandishing whips, they imagined an unchallengeable right to be the drivers of the working class.” Quite possibly Stalin, through denunciations, learned Mezynski had written this pseudonymous tirade, and kept a copy, to hold over Mezynski. S. D., “Lenin,” Nashe ekho, June 19, 1915: 6–7, July 15: 6–7. Our Echo was published from April to August 1915. Scholars have often misquoted and misdated the article: see, for example, Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 110. Mezynski would become a member of the Central Committee in December 1927; he was never elevated to the politburo.
65. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 32.
66. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 105.
67. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 194–6. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 78. For Trotsky’s letter and notebook on her, whom he labeled “an old spinster,” see Trotskii, Dnevniki i pis’ma [1990], 76–7.
68. Ul’ianova, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina k I. V. Stalinu,” 198–9 (RGASPI, f. 14, op. 1, d. 398, l. 1–8).
69. Trotsky has Krupskaya privately remarking among friends in 1926, “If Volodya were alive today, he would now be in prison.” Trotskii, Moia zhizn’, II: 219; Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov [1984], 56.
70. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyp., s. 64. The Testament would be published in a special bulletin of the 15th Party Congress and, after Stalin’s death, in a new edition of the regular proceedings. XV s”ezd VKP (b), II; 1477–8. Thousands would be arrested for trying to spread the Testament, including, in 1929, twenty-two-year-old Moscow student Varlam Shalamov.
71. Moskovskie bol’sheviki, 174–5.
72. Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 78. Stalin, however, could be an impatient taskmaster. Upon receiving Kuusinen’s draft of Comintern text on the autonomy of Alsace-Lorraine, a territory France had seized back from Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, Stalin wrote sternly on August 14, 1926, “You need to insert a paragraph . . . about how the struggle for autonomy does not signify the weakening of ties of the Alsace-Lorraine proletariat with the proletariat of France but, on the contrary, significantly strengthens those ties.” Stalin also objected to the tone of the text, which he found condescending, and suggested it be pared down to eliminate repetitions. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 755, l. 114, 118–20.
73. Pogerelskin, “Kamenev in Rome,” 102 (citing ACDS, Busta, 15 Fasciola: Kameneff, Mussolini: colloquio con Kameneff, February 3, 1927), 103.
74. Na prieme, 765. Davis carried letters of introduction from the U.S. Senate foreign affairs committee chairman William Borah. He also had Osinsky, who had visited the United States in 1924–25, write a letter to Stalin indicating that Davis would publish a report of the American delegation’s trip to the USSR, to be used in gaining U.S. recognition for the Soviet state. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 95–95ob, 96. Davis prepared written questions in advance (l. 89–90).
75. Davis, “Stalin, New Leader.” Russian translation: RGASPI, f., 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 119–32. Davis claimed he understood Stalin’s Russian; the session was translated by Tivel. The conversation was transcribed by the Soviet side. Stalin forbid publication of the Russian translation, claiming nine tenths of it departed from what he had said, disingenuously adding that it had not been recorded by anyone. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 139. Davis does not appear in Stalin’s Kremlin logbook; the interview took place at Old Square office. Davis tried to see Stalin again the next year in Moscow but was rebuffed. See also Harper and Harper, The Russia I Believe In, 234–5; Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 162, 165.
76. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 148.
77. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 97–105; Khromov, Po stranitsam, 249–57.
78. On peasants: “We hope that the peasant will ultimately join with us. . . . We are creating such material conditions as will push them over to our side. The peasant is a practical man. What does he need? He must be supplied with manufactured goods at reasonable prices, he needs credits, he wants to feel that the Government considers his interests, helps him in time of famine, and is anxious to work with him and for him. . . . The peasants realize that we have protected them from the former landlords who would take back their land. We are giving them a cultural life they never had before.” Davis also claimed to have met Stalin’s mother in Tiflis in 1927.
79. Nolan, Visions of Modernity.
80. Henry Ford, “Mass Production,” Encyclopedia Britannica (13th ed.), XV:
38–41.
81. Na prieme, 759–66. Ivan Ksenofontov, the former head of the party business affairs department, died of stomach cancer, age forty-two, on March 23, 1926.
82. Lih, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 119–20; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 34, l. 98–101.
83. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 70, l. 20.
84. “Ob edeintsve partii,” in Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, II: 77–82 (at 79–80).
85. Trotsky, Stalin School of Falsification, 89–90 (a letter of Trotsky’s to the Central Committee, dated November 22, 1927).
86. On October 9, 1926, thirteen members of the joint opposition “active” gathered at the apartment of one of them, Ivan Bakayev, in Moscow’s Sokolniki ward, to hammer out a Trotsky-Zinoviev text about desisting from opposition activity. Moskovskie bol’sheviki, 205 (citing MPA, f. 85, op. 1, d. 318, l. 228).
87. Pravda, October 17, 1926.
88. Eastman wrote to Isaac Deutscher in 1956 that he had obtained the full Testament in a copy from Krupskaya via an emissary who had brought it to Boris Souvarine in Paris. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, II: 16, n2.
89. Murin, “Eshche raz ob otstavkakh I. Stalina,” 72–3 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 126, l. 69–9: misdated as 1924).
90. Sochineniia, VII: 233.
91. Pravda, October 24, 1926; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, III: 360–1.
92. XV konferentsiia VKP (b), 531–3. See also Trotskii, Kommunistichekii internatsional posle Lenina, 109–10.
93. XV konferentsiia VKP (b), 564, 566.
94. “O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii,” Pravda, November 5–6, 1926, in Sochineniia, VIII: 234–97 (at 276).
95. Serge, La vie et la mort, 180–1 (citing the recollections of Trotsky’s wife Natalya Sedova, who misdates the incident to 1927); Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 296–7; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, II: 16–17. See also RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 98, l. 304.
Stalin, Volume 1 Page 146