5 Scott, John: Behind the Urals, London, 1942.
6 Pravda, 16 July, 1931.
7 See also Pistrak, op. cit., pp. 76-8.
8 Stalin actually demanded that Riutin should be executed, in defiance of Lenin’s precept. It was Kirov, very soon to be assassinated himself, who persuaded the Politburo to resist Stalin’s demand.
9. Serge, Victor: Portrait de Staline, Paris, 1940.
Chapter 8 “We Have a Beautiful Metro!”
1 Istoria metro Moskvy; Raskazy stroitelei metro, Moscow, 1935. This volume apparently appeared in two versions, one longer than the other. The long version was in my possession and I made notes from it; but the volume has been lost. Pistrak quotes very extensively from both versions, and I have followed him. All the quotations in this chapter, except where otherwise indicated, are from one or other of these versions.
2 Pravda, 6 September, 1933.
3 Pravda, 7 February, 1935.
4 Piat let metro, Moscow, 1940, p. 34.
5 Moskovsky Komsomol na metro, Moscow, 1934, p. 29.
6 El Campesino (Valentin Gonzalez): Listen Comrades: Life and Death in the Soviet Union, London, 1952, pp. 72-3.
7 ibid., p. 74.
8 ibid.
9 Troitskaya, Z. The L.M. Kaganovich Metropolitan Railway of Moscow: Moscow’s Metro, English edition, Moscow, 1955.
10 See especially Pravda, 10 November, 1955.
Chapter 9 The Great Purge
1 The literature on this period and on the terrible years which began with Kirov’s assassination is immense. But Khrushchev’s Secret Speech should be supplemented by a general account of the mood of the times, the best of which is in Deutscher (op. cit.) by the memoirs of individual defectors, e.g. Barmine, op. cit., Kravchenko, op. cit. Trotsky in his own works and the two emigré Russian periodicals, Sotsialistichesky Vestnik and Bulletin Oppozitsy kept up a running commentary on the development and multiplication of Stalin’s crimes. Boris Nikolaevsky’s Power and the Soviet Elite (London, 1966) contains the celebrated and terrible exposé by Bukharin, first published in Sotsialistichesky Vestnik (22 December, 1936, and 17 January, 1937) under the title “Letter of an Old Bolshevik”.
2 Sotsialistichesky Vestnik, especially 22 December, 1936 and 17 January, 1937.
3 Deutscher, op. cit., p. 356.
4 Secret Speech, pp. 128, 130.
5 December, 1937.
6 Secret Speech, p. 156.
7 ibid.
8 ibid, p. 214.
9 Pravda, 23 August, 1936. Resolution of Moscow Party aktiv.
10 Pravda, 31 January, 1937. The front-page photograph on this day showed a crowd of very glum looking workers bearing banners with such slogans as “Shoot the Mad Fascist Dogs!”
11 Pistrak, op. cit., has many further instances.
12 Secret Speech, p. 106.
13 Secret Speech, p. no.
14 Secret Speech, p, 114.
15 Pravda, 23 November, 1936.
16 Pravda, 31 January, 1937.
17 Pravda, 17 March, 1937.
18 Pravda, 6 June, 1937. It will be seen that the national daily newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party made good reading in these days. It is now much duller.
Chapter 10 Viceroy of the Ukraine
1 Weissberg, A., Conspiracy of Silence. With a preface by Arthur Koestler (London 1952).
2 Visti VTsVK, 21 June, 1938 (Quoted by Pistrak, op. cit., p. 145).
3 The term of abuse for all Ukrainians—and all other Soviet minorities—who attempted to maintain their national identities once Stalin had reversed his earlier policies and decided to Russify at all costs, was “bourgeois nationalist.” The Ukrainian situation was complicated by the fact that part of the Ukraine was under the sovereignty of Poland.
4 Visti VTsVK, May 23, 1938 (Quoted Pistrak, op. cit., p. 147). Pistrak is indispensable for his detailed study of Khrushchev in the Ukraine.
5 Bilshovik Ukrainy, no. 7, 1938, p. 25.
6 Visti VTsVK, 24 June, 1938. (Quoted by Pistrak, op. cit., p. 148).
7 Djilas, op. cit., 14, said that in 1944 Beria appeared to be drunk all the time. He was certainly rather gloomily drunk on the only occasion I saw him.
8 For the most comprehensive account of the forced labour system see Dallin, J. and Nikolaevskey, B. I., Forced Labour in Soviet Russia, London, 1948. Out of a multitude of examples of personal narratives by survivors, I would instance two classics: Eleven Tears in Soviet Prison Camps by Elinor Lipper, London, 1951, and A World Apart by Gustav Herling, London, 1951. But many others, not so beautifully written, provide shattering insights into conditions over the years, one of the latest being A Hidden World by Raphael Rupert, London, 1963.
9 Secret Speech, p. 124.
10 Baczkowski, W.: Towards an Understanding of Russia, Jerusalem, 1947, p. 33. Quoting from Dotsenko, A., The Winter March, Warsaw, 1935.
11 Resolution adopted by the 7th Conference of the Bolshevik Party, April 1917. Stalin, of course, supported this resolution.
12 Bilshovik Ukrainy, no. 6, 1938, p. 13.
Chapter 11 1939: Invader of Poland
1 Molotov, then only 27, had held the Petrograd Bolshevik Party together while Stalin and Kamenev were still exiled, and, after their return, until Lenin’s arrival from Switzerland, strove to prevent their compromising Bolshevik exclusiveness by co-operating with other revolutionary parties.
2 Pravda, 29 June, 1939. But in the light of hindsight, Molotov’s speech to the Supreme Soviet of 31 May, 1939, showed which way the wind was blowing. The full English text of both these contributions is in Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, vol. in. Selected and edited by Jane Degras, London, 1953.
3 Krasnaya gvezda, 23 September, 1939.
4 The occupation of the Baltic States, and the subsequent deportations, were supervised by Andrei Zhdanov.
5 The classic account of the Polish deportations is The Dark Side of the Moon (anonymous), with a preface by T. S. Eliot, London, 1946. The most adequate account of the Katyn Wood affair is The Katyn Wood Murders, by Joseph Mackiewicz, London, 1951. See also An Army in Exile by Lt.-Gen. W. Anders, London, 1949.
6 Details in the Soviet Press of the period are curiously confirmed by a Gestapo report, of all things, quoted in Khrushchev: A Political Portrait. By Konrad Kellen, London, 1961, pp. 66-7.
Chapter 12 The Great Patriotic War
1 Grigoire Gafencu: Prelude to the Russian Campaign, London, 1945, p. 212.
2 But he liked to talk about the war and his part in it, and his regret that he had not been able to share the hardships of the fighting men, in informal conversation: it was clearly a deep and decisive experience for him.
3 This story has never been told and probably never can be told. But Khrushchev saw, unfolding under his eyes, the transformation of a people alienated from their government and hostile even to their own army into a passionately fighting nation, wholly scornful of the Party, but carrying it on their backs and, in the end, making a symbolic leader out of Stalin, because they had to have a figurehead and he had a certain grandeur.
4 Secret Speech, pp. 192 and 240.
5 The Penkovsky Papers, by Oleg Penkovsky, London, 1965, p. 45.
6 The so-called Commissar Order. For the story of German crimes in Russia (and elsewhere) see particularly The Final Solution by Gerald Reitlinger, London, 1953, and my own Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny, London, 1956.
7 This was a rare occasion. One of the saddest things about the Russian war was the stubborn refusal of the authorities (Stalin) to allow either members of military missions, of which I was one, or Western journalists anywhere near the front, with the result that the outside world knew all too little of the real and tremendous story.
8 As the Politburo’s representative he was a member of the Military Council of the Stalingrad front. In The Beginning of the Road by Marshal V. I. Chuikov, London, 1964, who commanded the 62nd Army at Stalingrad, we have glimpses of him encouraging the troops, giving them pep talks and acting as an intermedia
ry between the defenders of the city and the higher command. The Military Council maintained its headquarters under heavy bombardment in the middle of the battle zone on the right bank of the river. Chuikov does not indicate whether Khrushchev lived in this H.Q. or not; but it seems improbable that he spent some months in a dugout virtually surrounded by the German 6th Army without our being told about it later.
9 Secret Speech, p. 180.
Chapter 13 Reconstruction, Russification
1 I am here describing what I myself saw.
2 Stalin introducing the first post-war Five-year Plan, February 1946.
3 Secret Speech, p. 190.
4 Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. iv, Nuremberg, 1948, p. 319.
5 ibid. (American Prosecution Speech.) See also Reitlinger. op. cit., and Crankshaw, Gestapo, cited above.
6 Priscilla Johnson, op. cit. It has now been announced (April 1966) that a memorial is to be raised to the victims of Babi Yar.
7 Quoted Pistrak, op. cit., p. 165.
Chapter 14 Overture to the Struggle for Supremacy
1 Djilas, op. cit, p. 135.
2 ibid., pp. 136-8.
3 Secret Speech, p. 204.
4 MacDuffie, Marshall: The Red Carpet, London, 1955, p. 200.
5 ibid, p. 199.
Chapter 15 Stalin’s End; Malenkov’s Challenge
1 Waste of manpower still remains the major feature of post-Khrushchev agriculture
2 For a glimpse into rural conditions as they are to this day see the short novel about a collective farm, The Dodgers by Fyodor Abramov (London 1963). This story was first published in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev in the Leningrad journal Neva.
3 Moskovskaya Pravda, 28 June, 1950.
4 Izvestia, 13 February, 1951.
5 4 March, 1951.
6 Pravda, 6 October 1952.
7 Secret Speech, pp. 202, 204.
8 ibid., pp. 242, 244.
9 Pravda, 7 March, 1953.
10 Pravda, 9 August, 1953.
11 Pravda, 15 September, 1953.
12 E.g. “We know that bourgeois politicians are idle gossips. They gamble on people with weak nerves. They think they can intimidate us. But we cannot be frightened because if they know what a bomb is, so do we.” Thus in 1954 Khrushchev was taking precisely the same line about the bomb for which he was later to pillory the Chinese with their “paper tiger” slogan.
13 Pravda, 17 August, 1954.
14 He did not mention Malenkov by name—at least in the published version of his speech. But the sense was clear.
15 But immediately after this meeting, according to S. Bialer, a member of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party, who fled to the West early in 1956, Malenkov was openly accused of responsibility for the Leningrad affair in a secret circular sent out to Party officials.
Chapter 16 The Chief tan Finds a Voice
1 Crankshaw, E.: Russia Without Stalin, London, 1956; Khrushchev’s Russia, London, 1959; The New Cold War: Moscow v. Pekin, London, 1963. The best political account of the Khrushchev era up to 1961 is The Kremlin Since Stalin by Wolfgang Leonhard, London, 1962.
2 Kommunist, no. 6, 1955.
3 Pravda, 20 May, 1955.
4 Kommunist, no. 14, 1955.
5 S. Bialer in Hinter dem Eisernen Vor gang, no. 10 (1956).
6 Richard Lowenthal in The New Leader, 9 February, 1959.
Chapter 18 The Secret Speech and the World Stage
1 Information derived from many personal conversations in Moscow and elsewhere.
2 Palmiro Togliatti in an interview (L’Unità, 17 June, 1956). It was Togliatti who, from the grave, helped to bring about Khrushchev’s downfall. He went to the Black Sea, a dying man, to meet Khrushchev and make a formal protest against his pushing the quarrel with China to extreme lengths and also against his high-handed attitude towards the fraternal Parties everywhere (see chapter 20 below). Togliatti died before he could deliver his memorandum. But the Italian Communist Press, in the teeth of objections from Leonid Brezhnev, then President of the Soviet Union, now Khrushchev’s successor as First Secretary, published the text. This took place at the beginning of September, 1964, and the Togliatti memorandum was clearly used by Khrushchev’s opponents as a sharp weapon in their armoury.
3 For an elaboration of this argument, and for a more detailed assessment of Khrushchev’s achievements, see Grankshaw, Khrushchev’s Russia, cited above. Malenkov may very well have calculated in the first instance (and with some reason) that Khrushchev would be unable to ride the storm, which would leave the way clear for his own return to power.
4 28 July, 1959. He had said the same thing earlier in the summer to a visiting group of American senators.
5 The Observer, 11 November, 1962.
6 21 July, 1956.
7 22 September, 1956.
8 See especially Pravda of 6 and 24 July, 1956.
9 Information derived from personal conversations with Polish Communists in Warsaw at the height of the crisis.
10 For the attitude of the Soviet Press towards the Hungarian crisis as it developed, see Leonhard, op. cit.
11 Pravda, 4 November, 1956. See also ibid., 3 November, 1956— the first occasion on which the Russians published for home consumption an all-out denunciation of the “counter-revolution.” It was our old friend General Serov who carried out the arrests.
12 Crankshaw: The New Cold War: Moscow v. Pekin, cited above. Revised edition, London, 1965, p. 170.
13 Information from personal conversations with E. European Communists.
14 Quoted in Leonhard, op. cit., p. 232.
15 At a reception at the Chinese Embassy, Moscow. Pravda, 19 January, 1957.
Chapter 19 Victory: the Dictator by Consent
1 Pravda, 30 March, 1957. Khrushchev had actually delivered this speech six weeks before it was published.
2 Leonhard, op. cit., p. 237.
3 Pravda, 15 June, 1957.
4 The proceedings of these crucial meetings are still obscure. Moscow was full of “true stories.” Khrushchev himself let fall remarks from time to time in later years, none of them conclusive. An indication of the vituperative atmosphere may also be found in speeches made by delegates to the 21st Party Congress in January 1959.
5 Pravda, 16 July, 1957.
6 Khrushchev had already, in his Secret Speech, made it clear that he had a strangle-hold on Voroshilov. Secret Speech, p. 226.
7 This is an example of the stories which used to go round Moscow, apparently with Khrushchev’s deliberate encouragement. They emanated as a rule from very high Communist circles. Another example was the story, purposefully spread (whether true or not), that Khrushchev had sharply blamed his underlings for the Pasternak affair, asking them whether any of them had in fact read Doctor Zhivago and, on receiving the answer “no”, retorting that he himself had now read it and that it should never have been banned: “You should have printed a very small edition. It would have been forgotten very quickly, and we should have avoided all this fuss.”
8 Kommunist, no. 16, 1957.
9 This attack on the writers, an attempt by Khrushchev and others to break the resistance of the best of them to the reassertion of Party control, was one of the last joint efforts of the old “collective.” Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and Shepilov were all present at the May meeting of the Central Committee. It was later believed in Moscow that it was at the famous garden party that Shepilov, so very much Khrushchev’s protégé, fatally blotted his copybook by going to the help of Margaret Aliger and assuring her, when she came round, that she should not take too seriously the words of Nikita Sergeievich in a temper. Shepilov was obviously considered a special case by Khrushchev, since the compulsory incantation when referring to the members of the vanquished “anti-Party group” was “Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich; and Shepilov, who joined them.”
10 Djilas, op. cit., p. 135.
11 Priscilla Johnson, op. cit.,
12 Cra
nkshaw: The New Cold War, cited above, p. 107.
13 Pravda, 1 May, 1956.
14 Pravda, 5 February, 1959. L’Unità, the Italian Communist Party newspaper carried the full speech on the same day.
15 Pravda, 10 March, 1963.
16 Encounter, London. April, 1963. Quoted also in Priscilla Johnson, op. cit. Miss Johnson’s work, with the documents selected by her and Leopold Labedz, is indispensible for a proper study of Khrushchev’s running fight with the intellectuals during his last two years. Also for an understanding of what the intellectuals were, and are, trying to do. For the earlier phases of the Thaw see Crankshaw: Russia without Stalin, cited above. For a collection of writings of rebellious writers from the early days of the Revolution up to Yevtushenko and his Babi Tar see Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature, edited by Max Hayward and Patricia Blake, London, 1962. For an example of the limits of Khrushchev’s toleration see Solzhenitsyn’s Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the first account in Russian of life in a labour camp, London, 1963. Although Khrushchev let it be known that he had sponsored this book in 1962, it was afterwards sharply attacked. For an example of what he would not tolerate, see Ward 7 by Valery Tarsis, London, 1965. For a general survey of the whole Soviet era in literature see Literature and Revolution in Soviet Russia, 1917-1962, by Max Hayward and Leopold Labedz, London, 1963. I should like to emphasise that it is the cultural battle-front which offers the deepest insights into the minds and the expedients of the Soviet leadership. Deplorable it may be to mix politics with literature, painting and composing: the fact remains that the only politicians, as we understand the term, in the Soviet Union are the artists of all kinds.
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