1 Guide to the City of Moscow: Handbook for Tourists, with Information on the City’s Past, Present & Future, Descriptions of its Museums and Points of Interest, including 6 Maps (Moscow, 1937), p. 238.
2 Spravochnik-putevoditel' po vnutrennim vodnym putiam SSSR (Moscow, 1932), p. 218.
3 Matthias Heeke, Reisen zu den Sowjets: Der ausländische Tourismus in Rußland, 1921–1941, mit einem bio-bibliographischen Anhang zu 96 deutschen Reiseautoren (Münster, 1999).
4 Volga: putevoditel' na navigatsiu 1939 (Moscow, 1939), p. 31.
5 Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003), p. 139.
6 Selim O. Chan-Magomedow, Pioniere der sowjetischen Architektur: Der Weg zur neuen sowjetischen Architektur in den zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre (Dresden, 1983), pp. 514–16.
7 Widdis, Visions of a New Land, p. 141. Yevgeny Chervyakov’s Zaklyuchennye ( The Prisoners) of 1936 tells a grotesquely idealized tale of the construction of the Belomor Canal by prisoners in a labour camp.
8 On the dacha and its role in the Russian and Soviet way of life, see Stephen Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710–2000 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003), pp. 136–62.
9 Wadim S. Rogowin, 1937: Jahr des Terrors, trans. Hannelore Georgi und Harald Schubarth (Essen, 1998), p. 114.
10 Ibid., p. 144.
11 Ibid., p. 237.
12 Alexander Vatlin, Tatort Kunzewo: Opfer und Täter des Stalinschen Terrors 1937– 38 (Berlin, 2003), p. 50.
13 See chapter 18, ‘A City by the Sea’, in the present volume. On Dmitlag as the basis of a conspiracy, see Wladislaw Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror 1934–41: Eine Forschungsbilanz (Berlin, 2002), p. 24.
Chapter 22 The National Bolshevik Nikolai Ustrialov
1 Nikolai Ustrialov, ‘“Sluzhit' rodine prikhoditsia kostiami”: Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’ (ed. Irina Kondakova), Istochnik 5–6 (1998), pp. 3–100, p. 4 (preface); the dates given in parentheses later in this chapter refer to this edition of the diary.
2 Mikhail Agursky, ‘Defeat as victory and the living dead: the case of Ustrialov’, History of European Ideas 5 (1984), pp. 165–80; Andrey V. Kvakin, ‘Russkoie zarubezhie: zolotaia kniga imigratsii: pervaia tret' XX veka’, in Entsiklopedicheskii biograficheskii slovar' (Moscow, 1997), pp. 643–4. Curriculum vitae in Nikolai Ustrialov, Natsional-bol'shevizm (Moscow, 2003), p. 16.
3 Rainer Goldt, ‘Einladung zur Enthauptung: Nikolaj Ustrjalows Briefe und Tagebücher als psychologisches Stenogramm einer gescheiterten Heimkehr in die UdSSR’, in Frank Göbler and Ulrike Lange (eds), Russische Emigration im 20. Jahrhundert: Literatur–Sprache–Kultur (Munich, 2005), pp. 33–60, here p. 43.
4 For the Russian emigration in Harbin, see Elena P. Taskina (ed.), Russky Kharbin (Moscow, 1998); Nadezhda E. Ablova, KVZHD i rossiiskaya emigratsia v Kitae (Moscow, 2005).
5 Ustrialov, ‘Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’, p. 5.
6 Ustrialov published his observations on his journey through the Soviet Union in 1925: Rossiia (u okna vagona) (Harbin, 1926). I am indebted to Michael Hagemeister for pointing this out.
7 On the fates of the people caught up in the Russian diaspora, see Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration 1919–1939 (Oxford and New York, 1990); Karl Schlögel (ed.), Der große Exodus: Die russische Emigration und ihre Zentren 1917 bis 1941 (Munich, 1994).
8 Smena vech: s bornik statei (Prague, 1921). The intellectual scene has been depicted in Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917–1922 (Oxford and New York, 1986); Hilde Hardemann, Coming to Terms with the Soviet Regime: The ‘Changing Signposts’ Movement among Russian Émigrés in the Early 1920s (DeKalb, IL, 1994); Erwin Oberländer, ‘Nationalbolschewistische Tendenzen in der russischen Intelligenz: Die “Smena vech”-Diskussion 1921–1922’, Jahrbücher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, new series (1968), pp. 194–211.
9 On the continuity of intellectual trends, see Karl Schlögel, ‘Argonauten des 20. Jahrhunderts: Die russische Intelligencija zwischen “Vechi” (1909) und “Smena vech” (1921)’, in Schlögel, Petersburg: Das Laboratorium der Moderne 1909–1921 (Munich, 2002), pp. 87–162.
10 David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002).
11 Juri Jelagin, Kunst und Künstler im Sowjetstaat (Frankfurt am Main, 1961), p. 39. [The play was by Aleksei Tolstoi. Tsar Fedor, the son of Ivan the Terrible, was a devout ruler who spent much time in prayer. He liked travelling around Russia and ringing the bells in churches. – Trans.]
12 Ibid., p. 40.
13 Golfo Alexopoulos, Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003), p. 3. ‘Annual figures on the numbers of people without rights in the RSFSR remain inconsistent, but in the peak years of the policy the Soviet state bureaucracy registered roughly four million disenfranchised people.’
14 Ibid., p. 29.
15 Ibid., p. 133.
16 Ustrialov, ‘Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’, p. 16.
Chapter 23 Celebrating the October Revolution
1 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (London, 1942), pp. 153–60.
2 ‘The profuse red-banner decorations of Communist Russia against the background of this exceedingly beautiful opera house of the tsarist regime startled me’ (note by Joseph Davies).
3 ‘Guerrilla warfare is much featured by the Soviets. Among the many canvases painted for the Red Army by modern Soviet artists depicting the feats of arms of the Russian soldier, there is a marked preponderance having to do with the guerrilla bands, or Partisans as they are called. It indicates the extent to which the Red Army leaders relied on this type of warfare and how successful it was in the campaigns of the Bolshevik army. They take on some of the characteristics of the minute men and “embattled farmers” of our early history. These husky-looking civilians who paraded here are doubtless typical of what the Germans are contending with and “complaining about” now back of their lines. It is the barricade and guerrilla fighting of civil war’ (note by Joseph Davies).
4 Georgi Dimitroff, Tagebücher 1933–1943, ed. Bernhard H. Bayerlein, trans. Wladislaw Hedeler and Birgit Schliewenz (Berlin, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 161–3; see bibliography.
Chapter 24 A Miniature of High Society
1 The following quotations all come from Jelena Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister: Tagebücher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1993).
2 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (London, 1942), p. 40.
3 Ibid., p. 62. Steiger appears in a key position in Bulgakov’s novel. The connection between literary topoi in Bulgakov and the historical location of the embassy has been studied by Alexander Etkind, Eros des Unmöglichen: Die Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Russland, trans. Andreas Tretner (Leipzig, 1996), pp. 353–88.
4 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, p. 31. By Sykinsky, Davies presumably means Krestinskii.
5 Ibid., p. 78.
6 Ibid., pp. 110–11.
7 Hans von Herwarth, Zwischen Hitler und Stalin: Erlebte Zeitgeschichte 1931– 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), p. 55.
8 On the community of journalists in Moscow, see Arthur W. Just, Russland in Europa (Stuttgart, 1949), pp. 62–9.
9 On the part played by Walter Duranty, see Sally J. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow (Oxford and New York, 1990).
10 Von Herwarth, Zwischen Hitler und Stalin, pp. 74–80.
11 Ibid., p. 118.
12 Gustav Hilger, Wir und der Kreml: Deutsch–sowjetische Beziehungen 1918– 1941: Erinnerungen eines deutschen Diplomaten (Frankfurt am Main and Bonn, 1964), pp. 78, 256.
13 General Ernst Köstring, Der militärische Mittler zwischen dem Deutschen Reich und der Sowjetunion 1921–1941, rev. Herman Teske (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), pp. 101–2. Von Herwarth claims that, unlike the America
ns, German embassy staff did not attend the show trials: Zwischen Hitler und Stalin, p. 118.
14 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, pp. 53–4.
15 Ibid., p. 54 (entry of 10 February 1937).
16 Ibid., pp. 83–4 (entry of 14 March 1937).
17 Ibid., pp. 95–6 (entry of 23 March 1937).
18 Ibid., p. 96.
19 Ibid., p. 19.
20 Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister (entry of 11 April 1935).
21 Ibid. (entry of 23 April 1935).
22 Ibid. (entry of 3 May 1935).
23 Ibid. (entry of 1 April 1937).
24 Yuri Trifonov, The Disappearance, trans. David Lowe (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991), p. 67.
25 Ibid. p. 15.
26 Ibid. pp. 16–17.
27 Ibid. p. 65.
28 Ibid. p. 70.
29 Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister, p. 313.
30 Ibid. (entry of 15 November 1937).
31 Ibid. (entry of 13 December 1937).
32 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth- Century Russia (Oxford and Princeton, NJ, 2005), p. 190.
33 Ibid., pp. 190, 200.
34 Ibid., p. 191.
35 Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895–1940 (Stanford, CA, 2002), pp. 185–7.
36 Witali Schentalinski, Das auferstandene Wort: Verfolgte russische Schriftsteller in ihren letzten Briefen, Gedichten und Aufzeichnungen: Aus den Archiven sowjetischer Geheimdienste (Bergisch-Gladbach, 1996), chap. 2, here p. 104.
37 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), pp. 221–2.
38 Schentalinski, Das auferstandene Wort, p. 103.
Chapter 25 Soviet Hollywood
1 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (London, 1942), p. 154.
2 Boris Schumatsky, Silvester bei Stalin (Berlin, 1999), p. 63.
3 Maia I. Turovskaia, ‘“Mosfilm ” – 1937’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski 50 (2001), pp. 204–9.
4 Evgenii Gromov, Stalin, vlast' i iskusstvo (Moscow, 1998); Leonid Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki: Stalinskaia kul'turnaia revoliutsiia 1936–1938 (Moscow, 1997). Cf. also Christine Engel (ed.), Geschichte des sowjetischen und russischen Films (Stuttgart, 1999).
5 Peter Kenez, ‘Soviet cinema in the age of Stalin’, in Richard Taylor and Derek Spring (eds), Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (London and New York, 1993), p. 68; Ekaterina Khokhlova, ‘Forbidden films of the 1930s’, ibid., pp. 90–6; Denise J. Youngblood, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 (Austin, TX, 1991).
6 On the search for a new type of film theatre, see Selim O. Chan-Magomedow, Pioniere der sowjetischen Architektur: Der Weg zur neuen sowjetischen Architektur in den zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre (Dresden, 1983), p. 480.
7 Kenez, ‘Soviet cinema in the age of Stalin’, p. 55.
8 I. A. Grankina, V. P. Pronina and T. A. Selivanova (eds), Moskva socialisticheskaia (Moscow, 1940), pp. 75–7.
9 Richard Taylor, ‘Ideology as mass entertainment: Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet cinema in the 1930s’, in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds), Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (London and New York, 1991), pp. 193–216.
10 Jay Leyda, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (London, 1960), pp. 301–40 (chapter 14: ‘Witnessed years, 1934–1937’), here p. 319; Richard Taylor, ‘Red stars, positive heroes and personality cults’, in Taylor and Spring (eds), Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, p. 77.
11 Maya Turovskaya, ‘The 1930s and 1940s: cinema in context’, ibid., p. 42.
12 A programmatic statement to this effect can be found in Boris Shumiatskii, Kinematografiia millionov: opyt analiza (Moscow, 1935). I am grateful to Anne Hartmann for drawing my attention to this.
13 Turovskaya, ‘The 1930s and 1940s: cinema in context’, p. 43.
14 Ibid., p. 45.
15 Kenez, ‘Soviet cinema in the age of Stalin’, p. 57.
16 Turovskaya, ‘The 1930s and 1940s: cinema in context’, p. 47.
17 Ibid., p. 50.
18 Turovskaia, ‘“Mosfilm” – 1937’, esp. pp. 204–9.
19 Ibid., p. 200. For a catalogue of the feature films made in 1937, see Sovetskie khudozhestvennye filmy, vol. 2: Zvukovye filmy (1930–1957) (Moscow, 1961), pp. 148–50.
20 Kenez, ‘Soviet cinema in the age of Stalin’, p. 63.
21 Ibid., p. 65.
22 Turovskaia, ‘“Mosfilm” – 1937’, p. 201.
23 Ibid., p. 204.
24 Ibid., p. 205.
25 For Eisenstein’s total oeuvre and his aesthetics, see Oksana Bulgakowa, Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography (Berlin, 2007).
26 On Friedrich M. Ermler’s film, see Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, vol. 2: 1935–1945 (Moscow, 1959), pp. 88–94.
27 Turovskaia, ‘“Mosfilm” – 1937’, p. 201.
28 Ibid., p. 202.
29 Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, vol. 2: 1935–1945, p. 23.
30 Turovskaia, ‘“Mosfilm” – 1937’, p. 202.
31 Ibid., p. 203.
32 Maya Turovskaya, ‘“Volga-Volga” i eë vremia’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski 45 (2000), p. 123.
33 Ibid., p. 130.
34 Turovskaia, ‘“Mosfilm” – 1937’, pp. 211–12.
35 Valeriya Selunskaya and Maria Zezina, ‘Documentary film – a Soviet source for Soviet historians’, in Taylor and Spring (eds), Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, pp. 171–85.
36 On Partiiny bilet (Ivan Pyrev, 1936), see Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, vol. 2: 1935–1945, pp. 81–4.
37 On Velikyi grazhdanin (Fridrich M. Ermler, 1938–9), see ibid., pp. 94–108.
Chapter 26 Death in Exile
1 Reinhard Müller, Menschenfalle Moskau: Exil und stalinistische Verfolgung (Hamburg, 2001), p. 145; Reinhard Müller (with Natalija Mussijenko), ‘“Wir kommen alle dran”: Säuberungen unter den deutschen Politemigranten in der Sowjetunion (1934–1938)’, in Hermann Weber and Ulrich Mählert (eds), Terror: Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen 1936–1953 (Paderborn, 1998).
2 For literature on this topic, see Peter Huber, ‘Das Beispiel Komintern: Überwachung und Repression’, in Wladislaw Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror 1934–41: Eine Forschungsbilanz (Berlin, 2002), pp. 179–202; William Chase, Enemies Within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934– 1939 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2002); Michail Panteleev, in ‘La Terreur stalinienne au Komintern en 1937–1938’, refers to 113 members of the ECCI apparatus who were arrested in 1937–8, cited in Chase, Enemies Within the Gates?, p. 461; Carola Tischler, Flucht in die Verfolgung: Deutsche Emigranten im sowjetischen Exil – 1933 bis 1945 (Münster, 1996); Fridrich Firsov, ‘Some critical notes on recent publications on Comintern and Soviet politics’, Jahrbuch fur Historische Kommunismusforschung (2003), pp. 268–76.
3 Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge (London, 1972), pp. 221–2; Oleg Dehl, Verratene Ideale: Zur Geschichte deutscher Emigranten in der Sowjetunion in den 30er Jahren (Berlin, 2000).
4 Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 222.
5 Ibid., pp. 222–3.
6 Marian Naszkowski, Niespokojne dni: wspomnienia z lat trzydziestych (Moscow, 1962), quoted here from Medvedev, Let History Judge, pp. 219–20.
7 Chase, Enemies Within the Gates?, p. 299.
8 Georgi Dimitroff, Tagebücher 1933–1943, ed. Bernhard H. Bayerlein, trans. Wladislaw Hedeler and Birgit Schliewenz (Berlin, 2000), vol. 1, p. 149 (entry of 11 February 1937).
9 Ibid., p. 158 (entry of 26 May 1937).
10 Georgi Dimitroff, ‘Brief an Andreev am 3.1.1939’, in Chase, Enemies Within the Gates?, p. 307 (document 44).
11 Editor’s commentary in Dimitroff, Tagebücher 1933–1943, p. 710.
12 To echo the title of a book by Carola Tischler, Flucht in die Verfolgung.
13 Chase, Enemies Within the Gates?, p. 96 (document 5).
14 Ibid., p. 133.
15 Simone Bark, ‘Ges
etzt, sie sind unschuldig: Deutsche Wissenschaft und Kultur im Exil’, in Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror, pp. 203–28, here p. 208.
16 Chase, Enemies Within the Gates?, p. 134.
17 Ibid., p. 136.
18 Reinhard Müller (ed.), Die Säuberung: Moskau 1936: Stenogramm einer geschlossenen Parteiversammlung (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1991), pp. 558–60.
19 See Ruth von Mayenburg on the Comintern dachas in Kuntsevo and Ilinskoye, in Hotel Lux (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), pp. 195–9.
20 Müller (ed.), Die Säuberung: Moskau 1936, p. 459.
21 Ernst Fischer, Erinnerungen und Reflexionen (Hamburg, 1969), p. 395. I am grateful to Anne Hartmann for drawing my attention to this passage.
22 See Dimitrov’s detailed entries on his sojourns in the sanatoria in the Crimea and the Caucasus – Kislovodsk, Yalta, Sevastopol, Alupka and the most modern sanatorium of the USSR, in Matsesta, in Tagebücher 1933–1943, pp. 306, 309.
23 The pandemonium resulting from the combination of denunciation, attempted rescues, coincidences and doom in the community of political émigrés in Moscow has been scrupulously reconstructed by Reinhard Müller in his study Menschenfalle Moskau; see also Müller, Herbert Wehner – Moskau 1937 (Hamburg, 2004).
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