Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  are like some frightened flock

  pressing each other’s sides in crowded ranks! ….

  Thus did the plague in distant times

  visit hills and dales.

  And groans could long be heard

  along the banks of our rivers,

  streams that nowadays frolic boisterously and free of cares

  through this wild paradise.

  The black year that showed no mercy to so many bold, good, handsome people – a simple, naïve shepherd’s song reminds us of this,

  wistful, delightful … Nothing can make us so sad in the midst of pleasure,

  like a mournfulness that echoes in our hearts.

  And this is followed by the defiance that is possible only in a state of drunken despair:

  Such songs are not in fashion now …

  We lock our doors to winter’s tricks,

  let’s lock them fast against the plague,

  light fires and fill our goblets up, and drown our minds in gaiety, with dancing and with banqueting,

  let’s glorify the reign of plague.

  The singer of the poem will die, but the feast will go on:

  And so, all praise to thee, O Plague!

  We’re not afraid of murky tombs,

  we’re not confounded by your call.

  As one we lift our frothing cups

  and drink the rose maiden’s breath,

  although that breath be … breath of plague!34

  The Pushkin jubilee was situated in time between the second great show trial and the plenum of the Central Committee, where the Great Terror was unleashed, with speakers who were soon to be prosecuted and killed – Andrei Bubnov, the People’s Commissar for Education, gave the main speech in the Hall of Pillars. The occasion was marked by texts and authors who would never be printed and performed – Platonov, Bulgakov, Kharms, Ustrialov – this was the feast of literature in the midst of coercion and murder, with seats at the table which increasingly remained unfilled …

  Platitudes of a new culture

  Mikhail Zoshchenko, a master of sharp observation and satirical writing, devoted two reviews to the activities of the Pushkin jubilee. This was meat and drink to him, and he was completely in his element: Pushkin here, Pushkin there, Pushkin everywhere. Zoshchenko takes aim at a certain Matvei Konopliannikov-Suev, the chairman of a housing cooperative who describes the Pushkin industry in a lecture, ‘What I would like to say about the late poet’, and then a second lecture, ‘A speech given during the Pushkin days at a meeting of the tenants’ cooperative on Malaia Perinnaia, No. 7’. The two together form a collection of the platitudes of Pushkin exegesis, of anecdotes about the writer, his family and descendants, his genius and his relevance to us today, and about the chaos of ‘famous passages’ ascribed to Pushkin.35 This mockery of the entire Pushkin industry and the vulgar excesses of Pushkin scholarship can be contrasted, however, with a different view, represented by Andrei Platonov. He observed the profound seriousness of people who had just learned to read and write and whose new knowledge and thirst for knowledge led them to pounce on books in general and on those of Pushkin in particular. He noted the earnestness of working people in their appreciation of the poet, something he missed in professional Pushkin scholars. He compared the Stakhanovite workers with Pushkin himself on one point; they shared an idealism, a complete immersion in their work and its product, as well as their awareness of the risks involved.

  The people read books slowly and carefully. As workers, they know how hard you have to work and to collect experiences and live through the reality for a true thought to emerge and a precise, truthful work to be created. For this reason, their reverence for a book and for words is far greater than was the case with pre-revolutionary intellectuals. The new socialist intelligentsia, which has arisen from among manual workers, preserves its old-proletarian, noble attitude towards literature. We have watched young engineers, agronomists and leading seamen, all of them members of the working class, reading a poem of Pushkin’s for half an hour on end, whispering it to themselves word for word – so as to get to know it better and more precisely. The earnestness of their relation to the human mind, to art, is like their attentiveness to their work on a submarine, a plane or a diesel engine – if not greater. These men need no advice from Gershenson – they read slowly in order to perceive the blooms of poetry beneath the thick layer of ice made of superficiality and indifference. The contemporary reader is himself a creative human being, and everyone has scope for inspired, poetic activity, restricted solely by the limits of his own imagination. It is not important whether this poetic activity takes place in poetry or in the Stakhanovite movement. What is decisive is that this labour requires dedication, concentration and social consciousness.

  Pushkin no more wrote purely for money than Stakhanov worked merely for money’s sake. The best workers follow ‘their artistic feeling for the machine and pay no heed to honours or a wage rise; their supporters may become the victims of oppression, and this has actually happened to some Stakhanovites, because the enemy, consciously or otherwise, covertly or openly, lurks among the Stakhanovites and continues to do so to this day.’36

  Just as Zoshchenko describes the trivializing of Pushkin by the Pushkin jubilee industry, so Platonov describes the other side of the coin: the entry of completely new strata of the population to books and culture. This has been confirmed empirically. More and more people could read and write. In Moscow after the census of 1926 there were still forty-five illiterates to every 1,000 men and 193 out of every 1,000 women.37 The focused literacy campaign could chalk up noteworthy successes in building new schools, training teachers, and introducing educational programmes in factories and clubs as early as the First Five-Year Plan. The new age was less willing to experiment, but schools benefited from the reintroduction of a rigorous curriculum as well as from recognizing the skills of teachers and educational experts. The number of schools and technical colleges had doubled within a few years. From 1932–3 to 1939–40, the number of comprehensive schools in Moscow increased from 322 to 689, the number of pupils doubled, from 366,600 to 618,800, and the number of teachers rose from 11,700 to 21,900; 379 new schools were built between 1935 and 1939.38

  Another indicator of the explosive growth of education was the increased numbers of students. In 1929 there were twenty colleges in Moscow, and this had increased to eighty-four by 1934, many of them technical and specialist colleges. In 1934 there were 86,649 students; by 1939 this had grown to around 95,000; by 1939 there were around 38,000 students registered at the 131 technical schools and colleges. This meant that the Soviet Union and Moscow in particular did not fare badly in comparison with Germany or Britain.

  A further indicator of the growth of a new reading public was the development of a tightly knit network of libraries. Pre-revolutionary Moscow had only sixteen libraries that were also accessible to workers. The libraries were nationalized by a decree of April 1918. The Rumiantsev Library became the de facto State Library, which held a stock of 9 million volumes as early as 1942. One of the most important construction projects of 1937 was the new building for the Lenin Library. Libraries entered into partnerships with businesses. The growth in the number of children’s libraries was particularly dramatic.39

  The number of new publications and, above all, the average size of print runs grew at an extraordinary rate. Whereas in 1913 each person possessed only 0.6 books, this had increased by 1939 to 4.1. This applied to every sector of the book market, but especially schoolbooks and technical manuals. The publishers of technical books, schoolbooks and textbooks produced million-volume editions year after year without being able to satisfy the hunger for reading material on the part of what was in essence an underdeveloped country. From 1934 to 1937 primary and secondary school textbooks appeared in editions of around 434 million copies, many of them in one of the ninety languages of the USSR. What was wanted above all were basic texts on technical subjects, encyclopaedias, technical manuals, t
he works of Darwin, atlases of anatomy, the classical writings of historians such as Kliuchevskii, Platonov and Pokrovskii, and the basic texts of ‘Western philosophy’ – Bacon, Rousseau, Spinoza, Hegel, Diderot, Helvétius and on to Marx and Engels. Editions of literary works were even larger. In 1934, 45 million copies of works of literature were published; this had increased by 1937 to 101.5 million, with the average edition for each book consisting of between 12,900 and 25,300 copies. For the Pushkin jubilee more than 20 million copies of Pushkin’s works were published between 1936 and 1937. Gorky, Maiakovskii, Sholokhov, Tolstoy and Ostrovsky also appeared in large editions.40

  Figure 9.1 Pushkin Square by night (photograph taken around 1935)

  ‘Pushkin is detached from his historical context and transposed into the middle of the 1930s.’

  The mass reader – the new mass reading public that so impressed foreign visitors, including Gide and Feuchtwanger – was no propaganda figure but a reality. Such a reader was someone whom literacy had transformed into a willing object of modern methods of persuasion and manipulation, but he or she was also someone who had acquired a completely new intellectual independence. For millions of people who had just learned to read, Pushkin was simply a shorthand name for access to education, literature, knowledge and the wider world. ‘Pushkin’ stands for the basics of Russian culture. He provided a ‘short course’ on the acquisition of a canon of forms and values after a time of troubles and the dissolution of all forms and moral values.

  Russian genius and imperial rule

  The Pushkin monument was, and still is, a natural meeting place. It is an unmistakable location and is referred to in Moscow parlance as ‘Tverbul-Pampush’, after Tverskoi Boulevard (Tverskoy bul'var) and the Pushkin monument (‘pamiatnik Pushkinu). But the writer Kornei Chukovskii meant something more than a meeting place when he wrote ‘Tverbul'. Zhdu tebia, moi drug Karlusha, na Tverbule, u Pampusha’ (Tverbul. I will wait for you, my friend Karlusha, in Tverbul, by Pampush.).41 He was alluding to a commonplace of Russian and of Soviet culture, which had come into existence in connection with this place. The Pushkin jubilee has all the marks of a ‘transposition’. Pushkin is detached from his historical context and transposed into the middle of the 1930s. It is an extreme example of de-contextualization and recontextualization and, at the same time, the establishment of a curious continuity, a new codification of public space as well as of the intellectual and literary landscape. Strastnoi Square became Pushkin Square. The monastery was replaced by the square, which, with its geometrical pattern of tram lines, zebra crossings, traffic lights, limousines and the concrete, steel and glass façade of the Izvestiia Building, became an icon of modernity in a reconstructed Moscow. The bell tower was transformed into a giant screen for political propaganda on behalf of the new Russia. Later on, the monument was moved too – the decision to do so was taken as early as 1944, though this was not implemented until 1950. Pushkin was moved to Pushkin Square. A new civic space and cultural context was created – with a new street, the widened Gorky Street, with prestigious apartment blocks and office buildings, a great approach road from Belorusskii Station to Red Square and the Kremlin, which would become the location for parades and confetti processions. A new configuration was now constructed between Maiakovskii Square, Pushkin Square, Gorky Street, Manege Square and Red Square. In this way a new continuity, a new genealogy was created.

  Moscow was the focal point for the coronation of Pushkin as the premier classic. But henceforth there would be Pushkin squares, Pushkin streets, and theatres, libraries and museums with his name throughout the USSR, and not just in places associated with the poet, such as Kishinev (Chisinau), Odessa or the Caucasus, but even in places unconnected with him and where the Russian language was alien, incomprehensible, where it had been the language of the conquerors of yesteryear and had now become so once again following the collapse of the tsarist empire and the resurgence of Muscovite power: in the Southern Caucasus or Central Asia. The Pushkin jubilee was an All-Union festival, and the humanism and universalism that were ascribed to the poet were meant to go hand in hand with the ideals of the transnational community of Soviet man that was supposed to do away with internal ethnic rivalries and tensions. Even though the programme of the festivities emphasized the Russian element, ‘Russian’ was meant also to stand for universal cultural values. Even though d’Anthès, Pushkin’s opponent in the final duel, embodied the idea of foreignness, this was miles away from the interpretation imposed on the writer a mere decade later – in the celebrations for his 150th anniversary in 1949 – and which would turn him into the vehicle for a militant, narrow-minded chauvinism in the context of the struggle against cosmopolitanism. The Pushkin jubilee of 1937 established a cult that had more than merely political foundations. Its foundations were cultural; the values it invoked were those of a universal human civilization, and the authority established here was that of the genius of a great culture. It was the authority of a great culture that a weak and violent power sought to co-opt in order to consolidate its own rule, and it was the authority and order of a culture in which a people could seek refuge in times of confusion and disorder – and perhaps even find it.

  10

  Public Death: Ordzhonikidze’s Suicide and Death Rites

  On 19 February the newspapers announced the death of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry and member of the top leadership. The news caused a minor earthquake that reverberated throughout the USSR. His death took most people completely by surprise; many had considered him one of the most capable men in the leadership and associated the advances of industrialization and the transformation of the nation from an agricultural to an industrial state with his name. If the term ‘popular’ can be applied to any member of Stalin’s circle, his name would be the one that first springs to mind. But, even so, the news of the death of this outstanding organizer and manager may well have been linked right from the start with the suspicion that something was amiss. The news of Ordzhonikidze’s death not only struck ordinary Soviet citizens like a thunderbolt; it had a similar impact on the leaders as well, who had gathered in preparation for the plenum of the Central Committee that was fixed for 20 February. They were all busy working on the reports and agendas for the forthcoming motions, as was Ordzhonikidze himself.

  It is now generally accepted that Ordzhonikidze had resolved to end his own life. He took the decisive step in his apartment in the Kremlin at around 5.30 p.m. on 18 February 1937. The leadership assembled there a little after that – shocked and at a loss what to do. The start of the plenum had to be postponed for the funeral rites – the funeral not of a man who had committed suicide or had been driven to do so, but of Ordzhonikidze, a workaholic and People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry, who had died of a heart attack. That was the form of words chosen by Stalin’s circle, which attempted by this strategy to consolidate its power following Ordzhonikidze’s death. The pompous funeral arrangements became a ceremonial format that enabled a society in which violent, mass deaths had long since become a daily occurrence to create a discourse in which it becomes possible to speak of death – in public.

  The shock: Sergo is dead

  The fact that the news of Sergo Ordzhonikidze’s death produced such a shock in so many circles and such distant regions suggests that it touched a nerve in the nation. Elena Bulgakova noted in her diary on 18 February 1937: ‘In the evening, the Williams and Liubov' Orlova. Late at night, we had just finished eating, G. Aleksandrov telephoned and told us that Ordzhonikidze had died of heart failure. We were all shaken.’1 Dimitrov learned of his death the same day, as we see from his diary entry: ‘Sergo (Ordzhonikidze) dead’ (17.30). ‘Heard about it at noon. Wrote to the Comintern. Obituary for Pravda in the name of ECCI. – Was in the Kremlin to see the late Sergo. Met Kaganovich, Mikoian et al.’2 In distant Tiumen', Andrei Arshilovskii noted in his diary on 19 February 1937: ‘Yet another significant event. Ordzhonikidze has died. No details available as yet.’3 A
young Muscovite girl noted in her diary on 21 February: ‘Grigorii Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze has died. Lida, Svetlana and Lena Gershman went to the Hall of Pillars of the House of the Unions where Ordzhonikidze lay in state. One loss after the other: Kirov, Kuibyshev, Gorky, Ordzhonikidze – the old guard is disappearing … Today I went to Red Square with Mulyka and Vovka. We saw all the leaders on the podium.’4

  According to a report in Izvestiia,

  People gathered in every house, every factory, every school and every workplace and set out, slowly and grief-stricken, in the direction of the Hall of Pillars. Passengers on the trams and Metro abandoned their destinations and made their way to the Hall of Pillars when they heard of the death of the great revolutionary Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Passers-by asked why flags were being raised and joined the crowds going to the Hall of Pillars. The streets around the House of the Unions filled up with slowly moving throngs. No one spoke. The bad news came too suddenly. Workers, Red Army soldiers, schoolchildren, engineers, scientists – they could all be seen there. They push forward slowly for hours on end since the queues stretch out for miles. They are all headed for the Hall, whose dull white pillars are cut by black ribbons as if they wished to mirror the grief of people’s hearts, braced as they were for the worst.5

  In his prison cell (in Kharkov), the Austrian physicist and political émigré Aleksandr Weissberg-Cybulski learned of Ordzhonikidze’s death. ‘We all felt it as a blow. We had the feeling we had all lost a man who would speak up against the tyrant on behalf of the people.’6 On the other hand, rumours were circulating in Kazan, Baku and elsewhere to the effect that he had committed suicide.7

  The news had to come as a shock because the People’s Commissar, restless as always, had been travelling on business up to the evening of 18 February. On 1 February 1937, he had spoken at a reception for workers of the oil refining industry; on 5 February he had addressed a meeting of colleagues from the different departments of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry.8 On 15 and 16 February, he worked on his talk and the resolutions for the plenum of the Central Committee. One day later, he went to the offices of the Commissariat; he was late because he had had a private conversation with Stalin at 10 a.m. After a couple of hours, he had gone to see Molotov in the Kremlin, where the meeting of the Politburo took place at 3 p.m. The agenda included resolutions on wrecking activities in heavy industry and transport. At 4.30 Ordzhonikidze and Kaganovich met Aleksandr Poskrebyshev, the secretary of the Politburo, in order to finalize the resolutions. They left his office at 7 p.m., said goodbye and went home. Ordzhonikidze was at home by 7.15. At 9.30 p.m. he went back to the People’s Commissariat, where he had a meeting with Professor Nizon Gelperin, who had returned from a tour of inspection of Kemerovo, and they agreed the timetable for further appointments.9 After Ordzhonikidze’s wife had discovered her husband’s body, she informed Stalin and other leaders, who quickly assembled in the dead man’s apartment. The medical bulletin that was issued to the press ignored the bullet hole from which he had died and simply stated: