126. As of 1928, the GPU in Siberia had 36,674 names on watch lists. Ugrovatov, Krasnyi banditizm v Sibiri, 187. By February 29, 1928, the Siberian GPU had arrested 123 people under article 58 (counterrevolution), 64 of whom had been forwarded as required to the procuracy for verification (only 20 were approved). Tepliakov, “Nepronitsaemye nedra”: 222–3.
127. Leonidov and Reikhsbaum, “Revoliutsonnaia zakonnost’ i khlebozagotovski,” 36–40. See also Hughes, Stalin, Siberia, 211.
128. Na Leninskom puti, January 31, 1928: 3.
129. Izvestiia Sibkraikoma VKP (b), 1928, no. 13: 10.
130. Another delegate was quoted demanding reduced prices paid for peasant grain in the spring. Pravda, March 2, 1928.
131. Altaiskaia pravda, December 8, 1988.
132. Gushchin, Sibir’skaia derevnia, 188 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 67, d. 365, l. 9). On Syrtsov, see Hughes, “Patrimonialism and the Stalinist System”; Hughes, Stalin, Siberia, 200–4. Policy-wise, Syrtsov would identify with the Right, but he would support Stalin in the struggle against the Right.
133. Moletotov, Sibkraikom, 24.
134. III Sibir’skaia partiinaia kraevaia konfeterentsiia VKP (b), 33.
135. III Sibir’skaia partiinaia kraevaia konfeterentsiia VKP (b), 30–1, 43–4, 197; Hughes, Stalin, Siberia, 62.
136. In April 1932, Zakovsky would be transferred to Minsk as head of the GPU for Belorussia, where he brought a large team of those he had assembled in Siberia.
137. “Iz istorii kollektivizatsii 1928 god,” no. 6: 214–5.
138. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 119, l. 97, 112.
139. “Iz istorii kollektivizatsii 1928 god,” no. 7: 178–92.
140. Papkov, Obyknovenyi terror, 34–5 (citing Tsentr khraneniia i izuchenia dokumentov noveishei istorii Krasnoiarskgo kraia, f. 42, op. 1, d. 435, l. 2–2ob; d. 438, l. 1–8 [recollections of eyewitnesses, interviewed and recorded in 1953–4]), 36 (citing Krasnoiarskii rabochii, February 2, 1928).
141. Il’inykh, Khroniki khlebnogo fronta, 143 (citing GANO, f. P-2, op. 2, d. 217, l. 151), 158 (citing GANO, f. P-2, op. 2, d. 217, l. 472).
142. “Iz istorii kollektivizatsii 1928 god,” no. 7: 179–82. See also Pravda, February 10, 1928 (Mikoyan).
143. Sochineniia, XI: 10–19. An unsigned article in Pravda (February 15) repeated many of the lines in the secret circular (“The rural economy has increased and prospered. Above all, the kulak has increased and prospered”). Between February and May, 1928, 1,434 Communist officials were disciplined (278 of them expelled)—a small taste of what was to come. Ikonnikova and Ugrovatov, “Stalinskaia repetistiia nastupleniia na krest’ianstvo,” 74–7.
144. Shanin, Awkward Class, 1–2, 46–74; Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule, 239.
145. Izvestiia TsK VKP (b), 1928, no. 12–13: 1; Istoriia kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, 544–5. As many as 10,000 were sent just for Ukraine alone. Koniukhov, KPSS v bor’be, 118 (citing Visti, March 28, 1928).
146. Sovetskaia Sibir’, January 28, 1928. Barabashev, “Isil’kul’skie zheleznodorzhniki o klhebe,” 47–8; Carr, Socialism in One Country, II: 118, 177. Barabashev went on to work in Irkutsk, then Crimea, where he would be arrested and executed in 1937. “Kak skladyvalas’ zhizn’ O. V. Rissa”: www .oleg-riss.ru/files/Riss_part01.doc.
147. Senin, A. I. Rykov.
148. Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, T 1106; Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, July 23, 1928: 15; XVII s”ezd VKP (b) [1934], 210; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I/i: 61; “Materialy fevral’sko-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda,” 19 (Bukharin/Pyatakov). See also Medvedev, Let History Judge, 194–5; Lewin, Russian Peasants, 218–20; Cohen, Bukharin, 278, 444, n31.
149. Only Molotov and Kuibyshev had backed Stalin without reservation. Rykov would admit that he had underestimated the extent of the crisis; Molotov, its duration. Lewin, Russian Peasants, 217–9.
150. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 22–4.
151. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 29–30.
152. Khlevniuk, Stalinskoe politburo, 113 (editor’s note). See also the sagacious essay by E. A. Rees, “Stalin, the Politburo, and Rail Transport Policy,” 104–33.
153. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 292.
154. Rosenfeldt, Knowledge and Power, 34.
155. Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World, I: 468–74.
156. Pravda, March 10, 1928: 1. At a March 16 meeting of the North Caucasus party secretariat, Andreyev directed Yevdokimov to compose a local editorial “in the spirit of the Prav-da editorial and the formulation of the question in Moscow.” Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, 30–1. The politburo formed an investigatory commission, consisting of Molotov (sent to Stalino), Tomsky (sent to Shakhty), and Yaroslavsky (sent to Artemovsk), whose speeches were so rabid even Stalin had to send a telegram to rein him in, so as not to discredit the trial that had yet to take place. Kukushkin, Rezhim lichnoi vlasti Stalina, 96.
157. The settlement had originally been known as Grushevka (for the local river), but, in memory of the assassinated Tsar Alexander II, had been renamed Alexandrovsk-Grushevsky, a name it held until February 1920. In November 1923, 10,000 workers at Shakhty, nearly the entire workforce, had struck, disarmed the mine guards, and marched on the local GPU building, demanding higher wages and adherence to safety norms. Soldiers fired on the crowd, killing several protesters and dispersing the others. The GPU locked the miners out and arrested all presumed activists. Nikolai Krylenko arrived on November 4. When he demanded that workers beaten with whips identify themselves, no one did so, either afraid or distrusting. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 1924, no. 1: 7.
158. Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB, 1997, no. 1–2: at 321.
159. Yevdokimov’s circle of loyalists included Mikhail Frinovsky, Fomin, Elza Grundman, Nikolai Nikolayev-Zhuid, V. Kursky, and others.
160. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 382–5; Istochnik, 1995, no. 5, 140–51 (APRF, f. 3, op. 61, d. 648, l. 9–14).
161. Voprosy istorii, 1995, no. 2: 3–7. Yevdokimov’s proximity to Stalin was well known inside the secret police. Orlov, Secret History, 28.
162. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 130 (citing TsA FSB RF f. 2, op. 5, d. 29, l. 1). See also Wheatcroft, “Agency and Terror,” 30.
163. Yevdokimov got credit at the 16th Party Congress in 1930: XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 538ff; Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, II: 230. The first arrests, evidently following denunciations by workers, had taken place on June 14, 1927, and initially the case involved six people. The GPU evidently had trouble getting the case in gear and continually had to request formal extensions of the deadlines for either bringing a case or releasing those under investigation. As of January 16, 1928, the disposition of the case remained unclear. But on February 9, 1928, the OGPU informed Rykov of the case. By then, the “investigation” was nearly six months old. Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, 822, n1 (TsA FSB, f. r-49447, t. 26, ch. 1, l. 213–4, 608–9), n2. See also Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Communist Party, 26–30 (citing conversations with Rezhnikov); Bailes, Technology and Society, 69–94; Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 44–5; and Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I/ii: 584–90.
164. Andrei Andreyev, newly appointed to the North Caucasus, had inherited the Shakhty hot potato, and he wrote to Stalin (on February 27, 1928) that Yevdokimov would come in person for a direct report. Andreev, Vospominaniia, 209; Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, I: 72.
165. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 348–400 (RGASPI. f. 558, op. 11, d. 132, l. 3–18); Na prieme, 27. Yevdokimov had brought along to Moscow Konstantin I. Zonov, the head of the North Caucasus OGPU economic department and the progenitor of the Shakhty case from the trenches: GARF, f. 3316, op. 2, d. 628, l. 20. See also Starkov, “Perekhod k ‘politike razgroma,’” vyp. 2: 260–1; Iu. A. Shchetinov, “Rezhim lichno
i vlasti Stalina,” in Kukushkin, Rezhim lichnoi vlasti Stalina, 9–97 (at 68, citing GARF without specifics).
166. Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, 163–4, 177–81.
167. Krylenko attended a March 30 plenum of the North Caucasus party committee, at which Yevdokimov delivered the main report. Krylenko stated “that the issue of specialists should be clear for all, that without them we could not manage.” Andreyev echoed him: “With our hands alone we cannot build socialism, we need to use specialists. . . . I think that among us, among the managers, there is internal distrust of our GPU organs, that the latter busy themselves with finding crimes, that they overdo it, and so on. Such distrust exists. I think we need to extirpate this distrust.” Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 267–93.
168. Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, 51–2.
169. Mikhhutina, “SSSR glazami pol’skikh diplomatov,” 58; Rosenbaum, Community of Fate, 248.
170. In January 1928, a clarification had been issued regarding the criminal statute on wrecking (article 58.7) to the effect that proof of “counter-revolutionary intent” was not required for prosecution. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 139–40. Already, a 1927 OGPU circular had equated negligence (khalatnost’) with sabotage, if it resulted in industrial fires, cave-ins, or explosions, with or without criminal intent. The circular granted the OGPU the power to impose sentences outside the courts. Viktorov, Bez grifa “sekretno,” 147.
171. Kuromiya, “The Shakhty Affair,” 46–7 (citing GARF, f. 1652, d. 49, l. 1–9 [no opis’]).
172. Mezynski’s leg pain subsided, but his hearing deteriorated sharply, said to be from arteriosclerosis; doctors noted a small enlargement of his heart and aorta as well. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 345–6 (no citation).
173. When Yagoda was being destroyed, Yevdokimov had this to say in 1937: “I ask, you, Yagoda, you were then my boss, what help did you provide from your side? (Yagoda: ‘In the Shakhty Case? You yourself did not believe in it.’) Don’t give me that rubbish.” Voprosy istorii, 1995, no. 2: 6–7.
174. Lubianka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, 148–52 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 328, l. 20–5).
175. Lubianka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, 148–61; Krylenko, Ekonomicheskaia kontr-revoliutsiia. Yevdokimov is said to have possessed “intercepted letters” between the engineer and people abroad, claiming their innocuous content was actually a code, but the documents would not be introduced at trial. Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Communist Party, 28–29. Back in 1927, the cynical Radek—perhaps sensing the political winds, perhaps out of conviction—had condemned bourgeois specialists, naming names, while criticizing corrupt, “rightist” bureaucrats and worker alienation from the regime’s industrialization drive. Graziosi, “Stalin’s Antiworker Workerism,” 252.
176. Rosenbaum, “The German Involvement in the Shakhty Trial.” Litvinov had suggested forming an authoritative commission solely for determining the guilt of the Germans, and guaranteeing the presence of a representative of the German foreign ministry at their interrogations. No such special commission was formed; Voroshilov, who oversaw Soviet-German military relations, was added to the Shakhty politburo commission on March 13.
177. Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, I: 164–5; ADAP, Serie B, VIII: 300–1; Dyck, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, 129–30 (citing Archives of the German Foreign Ministry, 2860/D559468–70: Rantzau to Stresemann, March 6, 1928, and 2860/D559755-6: Rantzau to Stresemann, March 16, 1928); Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 217–8.
178. Akhtamzian, “Sovetsko-Germanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia,” 53; Dyck, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, 119–29.
179. Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, I: 163–4.
180. Torgovaia promyshlennaia gazeta, March 17, 1928: 1; Dyck, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, 131 (citing 5265/E319203–5: Stresemann to Rantzau regarding a conversation with Litvinov).
181. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 824, l. 54–64.
182. Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, I: 218–9 (March 19, 1928).
183. Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, I: 231–3, 239–41; Rosenbaum, Community of Fate, 254–5. The disorganization and mismanagement in the Soviet coal industry is well detailed in “Report of Stuart, James & Cooke, Inc. to V.S.N.H.,” ch. 1, p. 2, Hoover Institution Archives, Charles E. Stuart papers, box 1. In the late 1980s, the USSR procuracy invalidated the charges of deliberate wrecking or working on behalf of emigre former mine owners or foreign intelligence, citing insufficient evidence. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, karaiushchii mech diktatury proletariat, 315.
184. Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, I: 839, n48. On March 21, the politburo resolved that the GPU verify “an exact list” of those arrested and being held. Lubianka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, 153–4 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 328, l. 195); Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, I: 222–3.
185. Chicherin wrote to Stalin (March 12, 1928) about the strong foreign reaction, not just in Germany, and recommended the formation of a commission headed on the German citizens who were accused, but Stalin refused. Krestinsky, the Soviet envoy in Berlin, wrote a long, plaintive letter to Stalin (March 16–17, 1928) about the consequences for Soviet-German relations (“we are heading for a difficult, prolonged conflict with German industry and, it happens, with the government, and with public opinion”). Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, I: 203–4, 210–1, II: 856–61.
186. Rosenbaum, Community of Fate, 258–63.
187. Terpigorev, Vospominaniia gornogo inzhenera, 183; Starkov, “Perekhod k ‘politike razgroma,’” 255–6 (March 15, 1928, police mood summary).
188. The letter went on: “Could it be that the cause of Lenin will die?” Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 291–2 (Boris Sysoev, June 9, 1928). Vlas Chubar, the head of the government in Ukraine, had sent the suicide note to Stalin, who distributed it to the politburo.
189. Bailes, Technology and Society, 79.
190. Sovetskoe rukovodstvo: perepiska, 28 (Voroshilov to Tomsky, March 29, 1928); Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 30–1. Voroshilov knew Yevdokimov from his time as commissar on the southern front during the civil war and as head of the North Caucasus military district (1921–24). On Rykov and Shakhty, see Pravda, March 11, 1928; and Reswick, I Dreamt Revolution, 246–51.
191. Pravda, March 28, 1928. The politburo already had a standing commission for political cases, but it had formed a special Shakhty commission consisting of Rykov, Orjonikidze, Molotov, Kuibyshev, and Stalin; Voroshilov, responsible for German-Soviet military cooperation, was soon added.
192. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, March 6, 1928. The announcement of the Shakhty case in the newspaper of Kuibyshev’s agency had been muted. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, March 10 and March 11, 1928; Khavin, U rulia industrii, 79–81.
193. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, March 29, 1928.
194. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 228.
195. Stenograficheskii otchet pervoi Leningradskoi oblastnoi konferenetsii VKP (b), 19.
196. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 28 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 45, l. 4–4ob, 6–60b).
197. Pravda, April 19, 1928; Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 417–37. See also Bukharin, Izbrannye proizvedenie, 376.
198. Trud v SSSR, 61; Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union, 6–7. See also Krzhizhanovskii, Desiat’ let khoziiastvennogo stroitel’stva.
199. Merridale, Moscow Politics, 18, calculating from Statisticheskii spravochnik goroda Moskvy i Moskovskoi gubernii (Moscow: Mosgorkomstat, 1927); Davies, Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 84.
200. Duranty, I Write as I Please, 145–7.
201. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 104–5 (citing GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 259, l. 110), 141.
202. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 278–82; Chase, “Workers’ Control and Socialist Democracy,” 235–6.
203. Graziosi, “Stalin’s Antiworker Workerism,” 228.
204. Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, II: 943–6.
205. Storella, Voice of the People, 244–5 (RGAE, f. 396, op. 6, d. 114, l. 748–50).
206. Kuromiya, “The Shakhty Affair,” 51 (citing GARF, f. 5459, op. 9, d. 354, l. 5); Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 116.
207. Kislitsyn, Shakhtinskoe delo, II: 940–2.
208. Sanukov, “Stalinist Terror in the Mari Republic.”
209. Kuromiya, “Crisis of Proletarian Identity.”
210. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 5: 195–6.
211. Just 452 of the 1,017 arrests in Ukraine in the first several months of 1928 were of kulaks; 1,087 of the 2,661 arrests in the North Caucasus over the same period; and 272 of 903 arrests in the Urals. Even in Siberia, where initially “kulaks” predominated in the arrest statistics, arrests of those officially classified as middle peasants began to rise. Manning, “The Rise and Fall of ‘the Extraordinary Measures,’” 15 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 6, d. 567, l. 498–504).
212. Manning, “The Rise and Fall of ‘the Extraordinary Measures,’” 15 (citing GARF, f. 353s, op. 16s, d. 6, 16–17: February 23, 1928). Mikoyan, in Pravda back on February 12, had admitted “irregularities” and called for arrests to be limited to actual kulaks, defined as peasants possessing at least 36 tons of grain (2,000 poods), and the politburo the next day had urged officials to follow these guidelines strictly.
213. Shemelev, Bor’ba KPSS. See also Brower, “The Smolensk Scandal and the End of NEP.”
214. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 156–68. See also Lutchenko, “Rukovodstvo KPSS formirovaniem kadrov tekhnicheskoi intelligentsia,” 29–42 (at 33, citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 354, l. 790); and Gimpel’son, NEP, 254 (citing Pravda, October 3, 1988).
215. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 203, 214–24.
216. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 233–5.
217. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh [8th ed.], IV: 84.
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