The Whisperers

by Orlando Figes

  66. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 19 (‘Vospominaniia o kampanii po bor’be s kosmopolitizmom’, ts., 1976); Borshchagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by, p. 214.

  67. See e.g. K. Simonov, ‘Zadachi sovetskoi dramaturgii i teatral’naia kritika’, Pravda, 27–8 February 1949 (where the Sartre and Miller quotation comes from); same author, ‘Zadachi sovetskoi dramaturgii i teatral’naia kritika’, Literaturnaia gazeta, 5 March 1949.

  68. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 226, ll. 1–6; d. 229, l. 30; Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina, pp. 339–40.

  69. Borshchagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by, pp. 19, 35–6, 49, 187, 200, 204, 215, 223, 272, 278–9; interview with Aleksandr Borshchagovsky, Moscow, November 2003.

  70. Borschagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by, pp. 266, 279; interview with Aleksandr Borshchagovsky, Moscow, November 2003; RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 4, l. 4.

  71. Interview with Aleksandr Borshchagovsky, Moscow, November 2003; Borshchagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by, pp. 4, 240.

  72. Ibid., pp. 261–2.

  73. See A. Kozhevnikov, ‘President of Stalin’s Academy: The Mask and Responsibility of Sergei Vavilov’, Isis, vol. 87, no. 1 (March 1996), pp. 18–50; N. Tolstoi (ed.), Brat’ia Nikolai i Sergei Vavilovy (Moscow, 1991); M. Popovsky, The Vavilov Affair (Hamden, 1984); S. Ivanovich Vavilov: ocherki i vospominaniia (Moscow, 1991). Vavilov acted surreptitiously against official decisions and his opposition went unnoticed for many years –perhaps one reason why he was maligned as a ‘lackey president of the Academy of Sciences’ by Solzhenitsyn: A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 3 vols. (London, 1974–8), vol. 2, p. 638.

  74. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 237, ll. 14–15; RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 1365, l. 1; f. 2203, op. 1, d. 333, l. 1; f. 631, op. 16, d. 90; f. 2203, op. 1, d. 333, l. 5; d. 336, l. 11; interview with Nina Arkhipova, Moscow, November 2003; Borshchagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by, p. 321.

  75. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 6, dd. 70, 173; d. 170, l. 17; interview with Lazar Lazarev, Moscow, November 2003; interview with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, July 2004.

  76. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 1, d. 500.

  77. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 126–8; Fink, Konstantin Simonov, p. 229.

  78. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 1, d. 563; op. 4, d. 10; op. 9, d. 5, ll. 69–70; RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 1458, l. 49; f. 558, op. 11, d. 806, l. 164; Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 128–31.

  79. Ibid., pp. 135–7.

  80. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 809, ll. 1–6; Karaganov, Konstantin Simonov, pp. 88–9; Simonov, Segodnia i davno, pp. 609–10.

  81. K. Simonov, Sobranie sochinenii, 12 vols. (Moscow, 1979–87), vol. 12, p. 41.

  82. Interview with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, November 2003; RGALI, f. 1814, op. 1, d. 454, ll. 28–41.

  83. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 185–9.

  84. See Gosudarstvennyi antisemitizm v SSSR: ot nachala do kul’minatsii, 1938–1953 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 27–61.

  85. Borshchagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by, p. 267.

  86. MSP, f. 3, op. 37, d. 2, ll. 13, 52; I. Shikheeva-Gaister, Semeinaia khronika vremen kul’ta lichnosti: 1925–1953 (Moscow, 1998), pp. 72–3, 78–9, 257.

  87. MM, f. 2, op. 5, d. 3; f. 12, op. 30, d. 2, l. 27.

  88. Interviews with Mark Epshtein, St Petersburg, June and October 2003.

  89. SLFA, various documents; interview with Fania Laskina, Moscow, June 2003; interview with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, November 2003; RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 1533; RGASPI, f. 495, op. 199, d. 207 (Zaidler).

  90. A. Simonov, Chastnaia kollektsiia (Nizhny Novgorod 1999), p. 61.

  91. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 1541, l. 36; d. 1770, l. 2.

  92. Simonov, Chastnaia kollektsiia, pp. 59–61.

  93. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 2581.

  94. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina, pp. 619–26.

  95. Interviews with Fania Laskina, Moscow, June 2003, July 2004; interviews with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, November 2003; SLFA, Iakov Kharon to Sonia Laskina, 8 March 1954; Yevgeniia to Sonia Laskina, 28 May 1954.

  96. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 1, d. 454, l. 32; op. 10, d. 92, l. 37; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 133, d. 390, ll. 81–4; d. 389, ll. 158–63; interview with Lazar Lazarev, Moscow, November 2003. For evidence of Simonov’s authorship of the letter of 24 March see Nash sovremennik, 1999, no. 1, p. 206.

  97. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 189–204.

  98. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 1, d. 802, l. 95.

  99. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 119, d. 452, ll. 4–6; Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 220–22; Fink, Konstantin Simonov, p. 112.

  100. Brent and Naukov, Stalin’s Last Crime, pp. 9, 129, 176, 184; SLFA, M. Laskin, ‘Vospominaniia’, ms., p. 86; Zubkova, Russia After the War, p. 137.

  101. S. Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London, 2003), p. 568.

  102. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 223–7.

  103. Ibid., p. 229.

  104. RGALI, f, 1814, op. 4, d. 10, l. 5.

  105. SLFA, M. Laskin, ‘Vospominaniia’, ms., pp. 87–8.

  106. MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 13, 30.

  107. MP, f. 4, op. 23, d. 2, l. 15.

  108. Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned, p. 385.

  109. MM, f. 12, op. 9, d. 2, l. 67.

  110. MP, f. 4, op. 11, d. 2, l. 46; op. 5, d. 2, l. 12.

  111. MSP, f. 3, op. 4, d. 2, l. 31.

  112. A. Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, 1993), p. 185; A. Lokshin, “‘Delo vrachei”: “Otkliki trudiashchikhsia”’, Vestnik evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve, 1994, no. 1, pp. 52–62.

  113. MSP, f. 3, op. 4, d. 2, ll. 43–4.

  114. Interview with Zinaida Belikova, St Petersburg, May 2003.

  115. Shikheeva-Gaister, Semeinaia khronika, p. 175.

  116. Sluzhili dva tovarishcha, p. 357; MM, f. 12, op. 30, d. 2, l. 22; O. Adamova-Sliuzberg, Put’ (Moscow, 2002), p. 201.

  117. See Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 435–53.

  118. A. Makarova, ‘Noril’skoe vosstanie. Mai-avgust 1953 goda’, ms.; Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 437, 440; MM, f. 12, op. 20, d. 2, ll. 74–5, 89, 91.

  119. MM, f. 12, op. 20, d. 2, ll. 34, 48; f. 1, op. 1, d. 1925, ll. 11–30.

  120. MM, f. 12, op. 20, d. 2, l. 92; MSP, f. 3, op. 8, d. 2, l. 18; d. 3, ll. 20–22; interview with Vasilina Dmitruk, Norilsk, July 2004.

  121. On the similarly moderate demands of the uprising in the Kengir division of the Steplag special camp in Kazakhstan in May–June 1954 see S. Barnes, “‘In a Manner Befitting Soviet Citizens”: An Uprising in the Post-Stalin Gulag’, Slavic Review, vol. 64, no. 4 (Winter 2005), pp. 823–50.

  122. MM, f. 12, op. 20, d. 2, ll. 98, 101.

  123. Istoriia stalinskogo gulaga: konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov. Sobranie dokumentov v semi tomakh, vol. 6, Vosstaniia, bunty i zabastovski zakliuchennykh (Moscow, 2004), pp. 320–413; Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 441–2; interview with Semyon Golovko, Norilsk, July 2004.

  8: Return (1953–6)

  1. SLFA, Spravka MVD, 11 November 1955; Yevgeniia to Sonia Laskina, 8 September 1955, 5 October 1955; interview with Fania Laskina, September 2003; interview with Aleksei Simonov, November 2003.

  2. Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Dokumenty prezidiuma TsKPSS i drugie materialy: mart 1953–fevral’ 1956 (Moscow, 2000), p. 213.

  3. SLFA, Sonia Laskina to Dmitry Shepilov, 4 June 1955; V. Frid, 58½: zapiski lagernogo pridurka (Moscow, 1996), pp. 358–9.

  4. Y. Gorlizki and O. Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2004), p. 131; D. Shepilov, Neprimknuvshii (Moscow, 2001), p. 267; A. Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, 1993), pp. 209–10; K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1990), pp. 246–7.

  5. V. Naumov, ‘Repression and Rehabilitation’, in W. Taubman, S. Khrushchev and A. Gleason (eds.), Nikita Khrushchev (New Haven, 2000), pp. 90–91; SLFA, Sonia Laski
na to Dmitry Shepilov, 4 June 1955; Konstantin Simonov to Yevgeniia Laskina, 24 September 1955.

  6. N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, translated and edited by S. Talbott (Boston, 1974), p. 79; A. Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (London, 1994), p. 223; N. Adler, Beyond the Soviet System: The Gulag Survivor (New Brunswick, 2002), pp. 90–93.

  7. SLFA, Yevgeniia to Sonia Laskina, 16 September 1955; Vladimir Lugovskoi to Yevgeniia Laskina, 20 July 1956; Maia Bykova to Yevgeniia Laskina, 25 December 1974; interview with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, June 2003.

  8. E. Bonner, Mothers and Daughters (London, 1992), pp. 89–90, 328, 330–31; interview with Elena Bonner, Boston, November 2006.

  9. Compare this with the memoirs of the dissident Liudmila Alekseyeva, who recalls that her moral distancing from the Soviet regime was similarly influenced by her reading of Herzen and by the example of the Decembrists: L. Alexeyeva and P. Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Boston, 1990), pp. 34–5.

  10. MSP, f. 3, op. 33, d. 2, ll. 33, 39.

  11. MSP, f. 3, op. 45, d. 2, l. 47.

  12. MSP, f. 3, op. 45, d. 2, ll. 132, 166.

  13. MSP, f. 3, op. 45, d. 2, ll. 26–7, 89–90, 134.

  14. MSP, f. 3, op. 24, d. 2, l. 38.

  15. MSP, f. 3, op. 35, d. 2, ll. 40–54.

  16. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 2, ll. 27, 29.

  17. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 3, ll. 1–5.

  18. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 2, ll. 31.

  19. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 2, ll. 36, 47, 52, 54.

  20. B. Okudzhava, ‘Devushka moei mechty’, in Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 283–94.

  21. MP, f. 4, op. 10, d. 2, ll. 9, 28.

  22. MSP, f. 3, op. 38, d. 2, ll. 19, 36.

  23. MM, f. 12, op. 29, d. 2, l. 20.

  24. SFA, I. Slavina, ‘Tonen’kii nerv istorii’, ms., p. 17; interview with Ida Slavina, Cologne, June 2003.

  25. MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 23–4, 43–5.

  26. GFA, letter from Anatoly to Liuba Golovnia, 5 December 1940; O. Golovnia, ‘Predislovie k pis’mam’, ms., p. 70; L. Golovnia-Babitskaia, ‘Predsmertnye zapiski’, ms., p. 4; A. Bachinskii, ‘Zhizn’, liubov’ i smert’ Anatoliia Golovni’, Stolitsa S, 17 January 1997; interview with Yevgeniia Golovnia, Moscow, July 2004.

  27. MSP, f. 3, op. 46, d. 3, l. 43; MM, f. 12, op. 29, d. 2, ll. 34–5.

  28. M. Nikolaev, Detdom (New York, 1985), p. 96; interviews with Viktoriia Shweitser, Moscow, July 2004; Amherst, November 2006.

  29. O. Adamova-Sliuzberg, Put’ (Moscow, 2002), p. 153.

  30. Ibid., pp. 154–5.

  31. On this see D. Field, ‘Communist Morality and Meanings of Private Life in Post-Stalinist Russia, 1953–64’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1996). On youth culture: J. Fürst, ‘The Importance of Being Stylish: Youth, Culture and Identity in Late Stalinism’, in same author (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London, 2006), pp. 209–30.

  32. MM, f. 12, op. 16, d. 2, ll. 78, 79–80, 85, 97.

  33. MFA, L. Makhnach, ‘Otets’, ms., pp. 3–8; interview with Leonid Makhnach, Moscow, July 2004.

  34. MSP, f. 3, op. 8, d. 2, l. 24.

  35. L. El’iashova, “‘Kak zhit”? O zhizni Sof’i Mikhailovny Firsovoi’, Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, no. 22 (3489), 20 October 1998, p. 24; Frid, 58½, p. 389; Sluzhili dva tovarishcha: kniga o zhizni kinodramaturgov Dunskogo i Frida (Moscow, 2002), p. 146.

  36. MM, f. 12, op. 18, d. 2, ll. 12–14, 17–19.

  37. MSP, f. 3, op. 41, d. 2, ll. 37–41, 83–6; d. 3, l. 2.

  38. MP, f. 4, op. 22, d. 2, ll. 16, 29, 35, 50, 53, 59.

  39. MM, f. 1, op. 1, dd. 841, 2676; f. 12, op. 4, d. 2, ll. 59–80.

  40. GFA, N. Iznar, ‘Avtobiografiia’; Natalia Iznar to Elena Abezgauz, undated.

  41. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 2581, ll. 28–36.

  42. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 229, ll. 15, 17, 18, 21, 32, 47, 48.

  43. MM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 45, l. 1105; A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 3 vols. (London, 1974–8), vol. 3, p. 455.

  44. A. Applebaum, ‘After the Gulag’, New York Review of Books, vol. 49, no. 16 (24 October 2002), p. 41.

  45. MP, f. 4, op. 10, d. 2, ll. 10–13.

  46. Adler, Beyond the Soviet System, pp. 30–31; A. Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (London, 2003), p. 460; C. Hooper, ‘Terror from Within: Participation and Coercion in Soviet Power, 1924–64’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2003), p. 377.

  47. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 3, p. 451.

  48. RGASPI, f. 560, op. 1, d. 37, l. 487.

  49. MM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 29 (Anatolii Brat [Zhukov], ‘Zhutkie gody’).

  50. MSP, f. 3, op. 8, d. 2, l. 28.

  51. MP, f. 4, op. 6, d. 2, ll. 28–30, 39–40.

  52. MM, f. 12, op. 20, d. 2, l. 124.

  53. MP, f. 4, op. 6, d. 2, l. 29.

  54. MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, l. 26.

  55. Adamova-Sliuzberg, Put’, pp. 207–8.

  56. MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, l. 46.

  57. MP, f. 4, op. 43, d. 2, l. 2.

  58. MSP, f. 3, op. 46, d. 2, ll. 51–4; d. 3, ll. 49–50.

  59. TsAFSB, Arkhivno-sledstvennoe delo I. V. Slavina (P-51969); ‘Delo reabilitatsii’ (N 4 N 012826/55); SFA, I. Slavina, ‘Put’ na plakhu’, ms., pp. 3–6, 103; interview with Ida Slavina, Cologne, June 2003.

  60. MSP, f. 3, op. 10, d. 2, ll. 15, 30–31; d. 3, ll. 34–5. See also MSP, f. 3, op. 38, d. 2, ll. 23–6; MM, f. 12, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 28–30.

  61. L. Chukovskaia, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, 3 vols. (Paris, 1980), vol. 2, p. 137.

  62. MSP, f. 3, op. 12, d. 2, ll. 60–67, 131–3.

  63. MSP, f. 2, op. 51, d. 2, ll. 3–7.

  64. MM, f. 12, op. 10, d. 2, ll. 18–23.

  65. MSP, f. 3, op. 14, d. 2, ll. 66–8; d. 3, ll. 54–5.

  66. I. Sherbakova, ‘The Gulag in Memory’, in L. Passerini (ed.), International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories, vol. 1: Memory and Totalitarianism (Oxford, 1992), p. 114 (translation slightly altered for clarity).

  67. See A. Inkeles and R. Bauer, The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

  68. N. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope (London, 1989), p. 48.

  69. Ibid., p. 49.

  70. Vokrug Fadeeva: neizvestnye pis’ma, zametki i dokumenty (Moscow, 1996), pp. 12, 122; RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 5, l. 30; V. Kaverin, Epilog: memuary (Moscow, 2002), pp. 313–24.

  71. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 10, p. 147.

  72. On Fadeyev’s kindness see K. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 1901–69, 2 vols. (Moscow, 2003), vol. 2, pp. 282–3; A. Borshchagovskii, Zapiski balovnia sud’by (Moscow, 1991), p. 21; and the letter by Akhmatova to Fadeyev on 10 March 1956 in which she thanked him for his efforts to release her son Lev Gumilyov from a Siberian labour camp (‘You have been more kind and sympathetic than anybody in these frightful years’)in Vokrug Fadeeva, p. 161.

  73. RGALI, f. 618, op. 16, d. 88, l. 16.

  74. Literaturnaia gazeta, 17 July 1954, pp. 2–3; 20 July 1954, pp. 2–3.

  75. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 248–53; interview with Lazar Lazarev, Moscow, November 2003.

  76. Pravda, 4 July 1954, p. 3.

  77. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 1770, ll. 21–2. On the public response to the novel see D. Kozlov, ‘Naming the Social Evil: The Readers of Novyi mir and Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone, 1956–1959’, in P. Jones (ed.), The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: A Social and Cultural History of Reform in the Khrushchev Era (London, 2005), pp. 80–98.

  78. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 1770, l. 15; K. Simonov, Segodnia i davno (Moscow, 1978), p. 78; A za mnoiu shum pogoni: Boris Pasternak i vlast’. Dokumenty 1956–72 (Moscow, 2001), pp. 89–90.

  79. L. Lazarev, Shestoi etazh: kniga vospominaniia (Moscow, 1999), p. 201.
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  80. Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, pp. 349–51; W. Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (London, 2003), pp. 270, 272, 274, 278.

  81. Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, pp. 5–6; Taubman, Khrushchev, pp. 273–4.

  9: Memory (1956–2006)

  1. W. Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (London, 2003), pp. 282–3.

  2. P. Jones, ‘From the Secret Speech to the Burial of Stalin: Real and Ideal Responses to De-Stalinization’, in same author (ed.), The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: A Social and Cultural History of Reform in the Khrushchev Era (London, 2005), p. 47.

  3. L. Alexeyeva and P. Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Boston, 1990), p. 4.

  4. MM, f. 12, op. 4, d. 2, ll. 47, 78.

  5. MSP, f. 3, op. 18, d. 2, ll. 21–2.

  6. MP, f. 4, op. 26, d. 2, ll. 12–14.

  7. MP, f. 4, op. 22, d. 2, ll. 14, 62–4.

  8. MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 36–41.

  9. MSP, f. 3, op. 19, d. 2, ll. 5, 24–33.

  10. MP, f. 4, op. 19, d. 2, ll. 26–7, 41–5; d. 3, l. 1; d. 4, ll. 1–3.

  11. I. Shikheeva-Gaister, Semeinaia khronika vremen kul’ta lichnosti: 1925–1953 (Moscow, 1998), pp. 266–7; MSP, f. 3, op. 37, d. 2, ll. 31–2, 76.

  12. MSP, f. 3, op. 8, d. 2, l. 25; MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, l. 23; MM, f. 12, op. 30, d. 2, ll. 36–8.

  13. V. Shalamov, ‘Dry Rations’, in Kolyma Tales (London, 1994), p. 43; MSP, f. 3, op. 37, d. 2, l. 45. See also: op. 1, d. 2, ll. 33–4; op. 36, d. 2, ll. 7–9.

  14. C. Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (London, 2000), p. 21.

  15. C. Garland (ed.), Understanding Trauma: A Psychoanalytical Approach (London, 1998), pp. 4–5; D. Laub, ‘Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle’, in C. Caruth (ed.), Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 61–75.

  16. MSP, f. 3, op. 15, d. 3, l. 1.

  17. Interview with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, November 2003; interview with Marina Babak, Moscow, November 2003; interview with Nina Arkhipova, Moscow, November 2003.

  18. RGALI, f. 1814, op. 9, d. 1538; V. Pushnova, Valentina Serova (Moscow, 2003), pp. 258–84; interview with Maria Simonova, Moscow, March 2004.