Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

According to Ustrialov, Stalin embodied the strength of a machine built of millions of human beings. Anyone who failed to understand that had a dysfunctional relation to the real world. ‘Alea jacta est. There is no alternative. Today patriotism is indissolubly bound up with Bolshevik internationalism. Life in our homeland is inseparable from its position in the world’ (6–7 December 1936). This was no passing mood or a feeling of exhilaration resulting from a single radio broadcast. On the contrary, this entry expressed Ustrialov’s basic conviction, one which he shared with other ‘returnees’ of his generation, including such men as Prince Dmitrii Sviatopolk-Mirskii (1890–1946?), a descendant of the oldest Russian nobility, who had returned from England; the writer Aleksandr Kuprin (1870–1938), who, mortally ill, had returned from France in 1937; and, not least, the composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), who had returned in 1936 after a long stay abroad and who remained in the USSR for the rest of his life.8

  National Bolshevism and Stalin’s ‘Socialism in One Country’

  In his diary Ustrialov recorded no more than what he and his political friends had already said in the anthology Changing Signposts.9 After the Civil War, which had ended with the defeat of the counter-revolution and the establishment of Soviet power, a ruthless stocktaking and a revision of the relationship of the intelligentsia and the émigrés to the Bolsheviks was overdue. To persist with opposition, not to mention military resistance and subversive activities, was not only futile, it also meant betraying one’s country and turning against the true concerns of a patriot. The White Army had simply contributed to the destruction of the infrastructure and the fundamentals of life, while the preservation of the integrity of Russia and the task of reconstruction of a country ruined by war and revolution had passed into the hands of the Soviets. Through a paradox of history, the cause of the Russian nation and the Russian Empire had passed to the Bolsheviks. Lenin and Trotsky embodied the best qualities of the Russian intelligentsia. As capital of the Third International, Moscow had become a world metropolis, an authentic successor to the Third Rome, and Lenin and Trotsky had become authorities respected and revered throughout the world. It was an illusion on the part of the émigrés to imagine that the Bolsheviks’ victory was based exclusively or even chiefly on the power of the bayonet. On the contrary, it had a broad and stable foundation in society. Ustrialov and his co-authors were impressed by what the Bolsheviks had achieved in the briefest time possible. The Russian intelligentsia, whether at home or in exile, could remain true to its great tradition of resistance and the struggle for modernization and renewal only if it showed a readiness to change its own view – in other words, to join constructively in the activities of the post-revolutionary regime.10

  The position of the Smenovekhovtsy had instantly triggered a lively, indeed tempestuous debate in the centres of emigration – above all, in Sofia, Belgrade and Berlin, but not only there. The Soviet government, with Lenin at its head, took note of this statement by the liberal and conservative intellectuals and, realizing that it was an important indicator of the process of ferment and change in the intelligentsia, had come to its own conclusions. It generously sponsored the publications and newspapers of this trend – especially in the magazine Nakanune. It invited its intellectual spokesmen to lectures and debates in the USSR, while not concealing its view that that the Smenovekhovtsy’s ‘radish’ theory – that the Soviets were red on the outside, white on the inside – was a reactionary wish-fulfilment. For the first time since the Civil War, forums opened up for a relatively candid debate about fundamental questions of Soviet policy and the question of whether it might be possible even for non-communist intellectuals to make a contribution to the Soviet state. In particular, might this prove possible even for the intellectuals and members of the professions previously denounced as bourgeois specialists: engineers, doctors, academicians, university staff, agronomists, and others? The debate about Changing Signposts brought to an end the sectarian trend of Soviet thinking and thus began to attract intellectuals who up until then had been hostile or had adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Since the economy was being rapidly restored, this was an absolutely decisive moment, and a relaxation, indeed normalization, of the intellectual scene came about following the introduction of the NEP. Stalin’s slogan of ‘Socialism in One Country’ began to circulate from 1923 as a counter to Trotsky’s concept of ‘permanent revolution’, with its fixation on the onward march of revolution throughout the world. But what it meant was really nothing more than the recognition that revolution was to be confined to Russia, at least for the time being, and that this would have to be acknowledged. The invitation to join in the construction process opened up new opportunities for this stratum of experts and scholars, which was small but of great importance for the functioning of society as a whole. Far from wishing to spurn this invitation, the patriotically inclined, conservative intelligentsia were eager to play an active part. The Communist Party’s fear of the potential influence of this sector of the population, as well as of members of the old intelligentsia, can be gauged from the resurgence of Civil War practices in the late 1920s: smear campaigns against intellectuals and experts, show trials, the disparaging of the entire sector, and even physical attacks by militant cultural-revolutionary activists and workers who had been incited to feel hatred. Once again, the old, patriotic intelligentsia was pilloried, excluded and exposed to grave sanctions. The revision of this policy of exclusion and the rehabilitation of the experts, their competence and their authority from roughly 1935 on was experienced by them as a form of redemption. The situation at the end of the Civil War and the transition to the NEP seemed to be recapitulated at the end of the Sturm und Drang phase of industrialization and collectivization, when a new modus vivendi appeared between the government and groups hitherto stigmatized. This renewed harmony filled those who had previously been ostracized with confidence and great expectations. They now hoped that they would be left in peace to work for themselves and the nation. The same hope inspired the supporters of other tendencies, such as the Eurasians, who had made their appearance in the diaspora and in Russia itself during this time of ferment and a quest for a new orientation. The patriotism to which the ‘National Bolsheviks’ around Ustrialov had given expression was a potent force within that milieu, and was not just recognized by the powers that be but was also promoted and manipulated. Here two powerful currents came together: the first was the old patriotism of traditional elites rooted in the old tsarist empire and concerned with modernization and Russia’s standing as a great power. The second was Stalin’s imperialist policy, which was eager to exploit new, even unprecedented methods in order to renew the old empire in Soviet form and restore its authority.11 Needless to say, the new power left no room for even a single second’s worth of doubt that the older patriotism had to submit to the ambitions and ideas of the new age. In Stalin’s eyes Ustrialov and his friends were never more than welcome propagandists who might have their uses in helping to legitimize the new regime.

  The world of ‘former people’ and 1937

  Having arrived in Moscow from Harbin, Ustrialov met acquaintances from the old days everywhere. In the Metro he met someone who was now working as a translator. ‘It was agreeable to see once more a shade from the irretrievable past’ (14 February 1937), and on Kuznetskii most he met an acquaintance who now worked in a Soviet publishing house. The city had changed radically, but the classmates he used to know turned up everywhere. Old contacts had not vanished overnight without a trace. They might have lost their rightful place, but they had found refuge in odd corners where they could make a home for themselves. Sometimes they had taken evasive action and returned to their original hometown. The new powers too had need of particular professions and qualifications, especially those uncommon among the now rising lower classes, professions linked to the knowledge of languages, art and culture, contact with foreigners, administrative and management functions, organizational talents, the worlds of commerce and retail trade, luxury and f
ashion. Certain skills were exceptionally rare and thus provided the ‘former people’, the ‘superfluous men’, with strategies for survival despite all the discrimination and exclusion. Frequently, those in such marginal, niche positions could survive because they were protected by powerful patrons – Bukharin, Voroshilov or Yezhov, all of whom had entourages consisting of intellectuals or artists. Many prominent Party leaders had their own cultural circle or retinue, with the consequence that, when the leaders were overthrown, their followers too were dragged down into the abyss. The violinist Iurii Elagin reports in his memoirs that the Moscow Art Theatre enjoyed the special protection of Molotov and Voroshilov:

  Under the protection of these powerful men we led undisturbed and agreeable lives. The class struggle had not penetrated as far as our theatre. Among its numerous members, actors, musicians, backstage workers and ushers, there was a host of people who in strictly legal terms were class enemies and had no claims to such a privileged life in the socialist state of workers and peasants. The same situation obtained in the Bolshoi Theatre, the Maly Theatre, the Art Theatre, and indeed in all the better Moscow theatres. In the orchestra of the Art Theatre a modest old man with a little white beard played the guitar. Before the Revolution he had been one of the richest men in Moscow and the owner of a dozen large houses in the heart of the city. Children of ‘outcasts’ disappeared into the choir or the corps de ballet of the Bolshoi Theatre, and this enabled them to avoid all difficulties. This was how Luisa Aleksandrova, a former lady-in-waiting at the court of the Empress Aleksandra and a favourite of Nicholas II, succeeded in surviving all the storms of the day without coming to any harm. When her connections to the court of the tsars became more widely known she had to go to Moscow. There she became a character actress in the Maly Theatre and enjoyed a fairly carefree and untroubled life.

  In the 1930s, when the Art Theatre put on a production of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, the director was embarrassed by his inability to find anyone who could ring the church bells backstage convincingly. In the 1930s it was almost impossible to find a genuine bell-ringer in the Moscow of the Great Stalin. After a desperate search, an old man who had been a bell-ringer in the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Kremlin was finally located in a concentration camp in the north. The man was instantly pardoned and sent to Moscow, where he spent the rest of his life backstage in the Art Theatre ringing bells.12

  Such bolt-holes as were found by people like Elagin, whose grandfather was a factory-owner and whose father was an engineer, provided refuge for a significant concentration of ‘former people’.

  In the Vakhtangov Theatre, the electrician was the son of a tsarist general and the conductor was a nephew of the tsarist minister of the interior. Princess Rita Obolensky, who was famous for her beauty and her expressively mournful eyes, was an acting member of our ensemble. One of the most glaring examples was that of our leader, Count Sheremetyev, who sat next to me in the orchestra. When I first met him, in 1931, he was still a young man, not much older than me. He came from one of the oldest and best-known aristocratic families, and his distinguished appearance immediately made an impression thanks to his refined, noble features, which are seldom seen in Russia today … He was an outstandingly trained musician. His violin-playing was precise, expressive and notable for its especially beautiful tone. He had a perfect ear.13

  All this was just the tip of the iceberg; at the height of the period of discrimination this group amounted to around 4 million people.14 They had been excluded by the Soviets from participation in elections and access to universal rights in the constitutions of 1918 and 1926. They were regarded as ‘capitalist elements’, supporters of the ancien régime, businessmen, clerics, members of the tsarist secret police, the White armies, people who employed wage-labourers and did not depend for their living on what they themselves had earned. Their disenfranchisement meant that they also lost the right to homes, work, schools and universities – they were in effect outlaws and at the mercy of informers and the authorities. At every election they were registered and excluded all over again. Many professions were especially hard hit by this exclusion: traders, small farmers, members of the Orthodox clergy, rabbis, mullahs, pastors and former members of the officer corps. They and, above all, their families were the preferred, indeed the foreseeable victims of the selection and deportation programmes of 1929, 1934 and 1935. They were excluded from schools, pensions, medical care and certain professions and were denied the right to obtain food rations.15 Since they had access neither to work nor to a home, they were in effect condemned to a semi-legal, semi-criminal existence. The existence of these lishentsy was scarcely tolerable, but its main impact was in its disciplinary function. Everyone in this group could be blackmailed, ‘unmasked’ and eliminated. The drive to unmask ‘former people’ took on the features of a sport, and surviving this hunt more or less intact became a never-ending challenge, with the inevitable impact on people’s nerves. The fact that the group affected was anything but tiny can be gleaned from the numbers of those who suffered exclusion from the elections in the Moscow region in the years 1928–9: at that time there were 219,084 of them, and 85 per cent, or 185,700, made efforts to recover their rights.16

  The practical effects of excluding such a large number of people make it easy to understand the approval, indeed the enthusiasm which greeted the new Stalin Constitution particularly among this cohort. The text of its Article 135 guaranteed the right to vote to all and did away with the discrimination inscribed in Lenin’s Constitution of 1918. From now on, they could not only vote but could send their children to school, join collective farms and receive food ration cards. But, even after the constitution had been approved, there was still great confusion and uncertainty about how Article 135 should be interpreted, about whether all restrictions had been lifted, and whether those who had been banished could now return. The restitution of rights it proclaimed, coming on the heels of the exclusions which followed the Revolution and the Civil War, together with the new appeal to national pride, generated a new national mood of social unity. Ustryalov’s entry on the broadcast announcing the constitution on 6 December 1936 read: ‘Celebration of the constitution. The whole day long, the radio glowed with patriotic excitement and socialist triumph.’

  Ustrialov admired the government’s achievement in integrating the population of the Soviet Empire. ‘The old principle is reiterated: civis romanus sum. People are proud – I am a Soviet citizen … Long live the USSR! Long live the Soviet state! Long live the united, the great Soviet nation!’ (evening of 12 August 1936). However, the creation of a broad national consensus in a time of crisis and instability went hand in hand with the control and elimination of every conceivable risk that might be thought to be lurking in genuinely free, universal elections. The first election campaign following the passing of the new constitution culminated on 12 December 1937. It was accompanied by a mass-murder campaign, during which the potential representatives of any alternative were preemptively targeted and destroyed. In the course of this murder campaign, which was the obverse of the election campaign, Nikolai Ustrialov was killed, together with a half a million others.

  A double reading: a diary with comments by the NKVD

  Ustrialov’s diary provides a picture of an attitude bordering on utter self-immolation. But it also goes beyond that, demonstrating why such a stance could never really be credible to those in power, and why Ustrialov himself and others like him continued to be treated as opponents and a threat. The diary contains many underlined passages. When looked at in the round, they reveal something about the suspicion and mistrust in which he was held; they provide a kind of negative image of Ustrialov. The underlinings reveal the authorities’ interest in a returnee who had been issued with a passport valid for three years. The state police wanted to know about his contacts, about everyone he had visited in Moscow, which other former Harbin émigrés he had resumed contact with, and whom he had met in the Metro. The articles he wrote attempting to clarify his own
ideas as well as his work on his great ‘confession’ (10 February 1937) proved to be of great interest. Passages underlined include his commentary on ‘nationalism’ in Napoleon and Mussolini, on the one hand, and Tolstoy, Lenin and Stalin, on the other. A further passage underlined is the comment he wrote on Gorky’s death. ‘Pity about him. Strictly speaking, he was not really popular among the Soviet intelligentsia – but I genuinely mourn his death’ (20 June 1936). Remarkably, even his attempt to explain the birth of a style appropriate to the Russian Revolution and the emergence of a ‘Soviet Rastrelli’ was duly noted.

  One’s thoughts inevitably turn towards the present. The Russian Revolution must discover its own style! This style should evidently combine the monumentalism of a great state, the youthful beginnings and the joyful self-assertion of unspoilt human beings with the universalism of the international idea, the breadth of the ideology of liberation and, with it, the order established by Soviet society and its educational dictatorship. A synthesis such as that promises a magnificent style. If the great French Revolution found its appropriate architecture in the forms of the Napoleonic Empire, then it may be said that the proletarian Russian Revolution will undoubtedly outdo Napoleon through the splendour of its architectural achievements. That will surely be the case. And the first tentative efforts are the dawn of a new era of culture. Where will they come from – the new Rastrellis, Quarenghis, Camerons and Feltons? Will they come from over there, from the West? No, it is now we who are the avant garde! These are interesting times. (26 June 1936)

  We can sense that Ustrialov was now coming under surveillance from all sides. On 21 April 1937 he noted that the director of his institute had told him that a young man who had heard his lectures in Harbin had now been arrested as a Japanese spy. On 25 May 1937 he noted, just after recording his excitement about the Soviet polar expedition, that the director of the Law Institute ‘no longer works there’ and had been replaced by a new face unfamiliar to him. On 2 June 1937 he read the paper and recorded the arrival from exile of the writer Aleksandr Kuprin and also Gamarnik’s suicide. The last entry in his diary was dated 4 June 1937: ‘Sometimes, one thinks how good it would be not to think! … How good it would be not to think! Of course, that is nonsense. That would be as much as to say: How good it would be not to live. For – cogito ergo sum. That means it remains true that what is needed is light, more light! More light!’ [In German in the original; a reference to Goethe’s last words – Trans.]