Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  19 See chapter 25, ‘Soviet Hollywood’, in the present volume.

  20 Juri Jelagin, Kunst und Künstler im Sowjetstaat (Frankfurt am Main, 1951), p. 170.

  21 Matthias Stadelmann, Isaak Dunaevskij – Sänger des Volkes: Eine Karriere unter Stalin (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2003), p. 78.

  22 Ilf and Petrov, ‘Pisma iz Ameriki’, p. 12.

  23 On the subject of travel and American accounts of their travels in the USSR, see Lewis S. Feuer, ‘Travellers to the Soviet Union’, American Quarterly 14 (summer 1962), pp. 144–6; Judy Acheson, Young America Looks at Russia (New York, 1932); Margaret Bourke-White, Eyes on Russia (New York, 1931); William Henry Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (Boston, 1930); John Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World: Mexico – China – Turkey (New York, 1932); John Dos Passos, In All Countries (New York, 1943); Theodore Dreiser Looks at Russia (New York, 1928); Louis Fischer, Machines and Men in Russia (New York, 1932); Waldo Frank, Dawn in Russia: The Record of a Journey (New York, 1932); Anna-Louise Strong, Children of Revolution: Story of the John Reed Children’s Colony on the Volga, Which is as Well a Story of the Whole Great Structure of Russia (Seattle, 1925); Edmund Wilson, Travels in Two Democracies (New York, 1936); Langston Hughes, A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia (Moscow and Leningrad, 1934); Dorothy Myra Page, Moscow Yankee (New York, 1936).

  24 Mikhail Ilin [pseudonym of Il'ia I. Marzhak], Rasskaz o velikom plane (Moscow, 1930), trans. George S. Counts and Nucia P. Lodge as New Russia’s Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan (Boston, 1931).

  25 The idea of bringing Bolshevism and Americanism together permeated all factions of the Soviet leadership; see Stalin’s statements about the ‘Bolshevik temperament’ and American pragmatism, as well as the views of the left-communist Nikolai Osinskii, Amerikanskii avtomobil ili rossiiskaia telega (Moscow, 1927).

  26 Hans Rogger, ‘America in the Russian mind – or Russian discoveries of America’, Pacific Historical Review 47/1 (1978), p. 41; Hans Rogger, ‘Amerikanizm and the economic development of Russia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981), pp. 382–420; Kendall E. Bailes, ‘The American connection: ideology and the transfer of American technology to the Soviet Union, 1917–1941’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981), pp. 421–48.

  27 Peter G. Filene: Americans and the Soviet Experiment 1917–1933 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 242; Frederick C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion (Port Washington, NY, and London, 1969).

  28 Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment 1917–1933, p. 221.

  29 Walter Arnold Rukeyser, Working for the Soviets: An American Engineer in Russia (New York, 1932); Andrew Smith, I was a Soviet Worker (New York, 1936).

  30 In Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s inspiring study, the fourth member of the quartet is absent: Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Entfernte Verwandtschaft: Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, New Deal, 1933–1939 (Munich, 2005).

  31 In a very different context, that of the anti-Hitler coalition, the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin gives a description of Russo-American affinities: Pitirim Sorokin, Russia and the United States (New York, 1944).

  32 Il'f and Petrov, ‘Odnoetazhnaia Amerika: putevye ocherki’, p. 427.

  33 Ibid., p. 416.

  34 Cited in the commentary to ibid., pp. 559–60.

  35 Ibid., p. 560.

  36 Boris Galanov, ibid., p. 551.

  37 Not even members of the leadership were immune from such denunciations: Lazar' M. Kaganovich had relatives in the USA, and the editor-in-chief of Pravda, Lev Mekhlis, thought he ought to defend himself against a letter addressed to him from New York: ‘Zapiska L. Z. Mekhlisa I. V. Stalinu o provokatsionnom pisme iz Niu-Yorka, doc. no. 370’, in Vladimir N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoie upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 622–3.

  38 Evgenii P. Petrov, ‘Puteshestvie v stranu kommunizma: neokonchennyiroman’, Literaturnoe nasledstvo 74 (1965), p. 592.

  39 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 280. See also chapter 36, ‘Bukharin Takes his Leave’, in the present volume.

  Chapter 32 ‘I Know of No Other Country on Earth …’

  1 Prozessbericht uber die Strafsache des antisowjetischen ‘Blocks der Rechten und Trotzkisten’, verhandelt vor dem Militarkollegium des Obersten Gerichtshofes der UdSSR vom 2–13 Marz 1938, ed. the People’s Commissariat for Justice of the USSR (Moscow, 1938), pp. 832–3.

  2 See chapter 25, ‘Soviet Hollywood’, in the present volume.

  3 Translation revised and adapted from Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks (eds), Modern Russian Poetry (Indianapolis and New York, 1967), pp. 739–41.

  4 It is the achievement of Emma Widdis to have been the first to give an account of the production of Soviet space and its mental maps. See Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003).

  5 On spatial images of the Soviet Union, see Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (eds), The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle and London, 2003).

  6 This list of events is taken from the issues of Pravda and Ogonek for the years 1936, 1937 and 1938.

  7 Greg Castillo, ‘Peoples at an exhibition: Soviet architecture and the national question’, in Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (eds), Socialist Realism without Shores (Durham, NC, 1997), pp. 91–119. This contribution was published in revised form in South Atlantic Quarterly 94/3 (1995), pp. 715–46.

  8 A good idea of this is to be found, for example, in the exhibition guide Vsesoiuznaia selskokhoziaistvennaia vystavka: putevoditel' po territorii vystavki, ed. Nikolai V. Tsitsin (Moscow, 1940). See also chapter 15, ‘Soviet Art Deco’, in the present volume.

  9 Klaus Gestwa, ‘Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus: Technik- und Umweltgeschichte der Sowjetunion, 1948–1967’, doctoral thesis, University of Tübingen, February 2007.

  10 On the topography of the gulags, see Tomas Kizny, Gulag: Life and Death inside the Soviet Concentration Camps (Richmond Hill, Ontario, 2004); Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004); Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York, 2003).

  11 Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land, p. 194.

  12 On the influence of USSR in Construction, see SSSR na stroike 1930–1949: illustrirovannyi zhurnal novogo tipa (Moscow, 2006), especially the contributionby Erika Wolf: Érika Volf, ‘SSSR na stroike: zhurnal i ego chitatel'’, pp. 11–23.

  13 Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land, pp. 194ff. See also chapter 19, ‘Year of Adventures’, in this volume.

  14 For the type of the pogranichnik in Soviet film, see Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land, pp. 143–4.

  15 E.g. Boris Arapov, ‘Nasha rodina’, Ogonek 28 (1937), pp. 9–16.

  16 On the concept of time and the homogenizing of time, see Robert C. Williams, ‘The Russian Revolution and the end of time, 1900–1940’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 43 (1995), pp. 364–401.

  17 On Sovietness, see Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land, p. 1.

  18 The decision-making processes leading up to the elections in 1937 still remain largely obscure. See the study by J. Arch Getty, ‘State and society under Stalin: constitutions and elections in the 1930s’, Slavic Review 50/1 (1991), pp. 18–35, here p. 24.

  19 Ibid., pp. 29–34.

  20 On this point, see chapter 33, ‘The Butovo Shooting Range’, in this volume.

  Chapter 33 The Butovo Shooting Range

  1 Figures according to ‘Statisticheskiie svedenia o rasstreliannykh i zakhoronennykh na spetsobekte “Butovskii Poligon” v 1937–1938gg.’, in Butovskii polygon, no. 7 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 302–11, here p. 311; see also Butovskii polygon, no. 8 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 396–7.

  2 Ibid., no. 8, p. 95.

  3 Ibid., no
. 7, p. 311.

  4 Lidia A. Golovkova, ‘V rodnom kraiu’, ibid., no. 8, pp. 143–4.

  5 Ibid., no. 8, p. 156.

  6 On the search for traces, see ‘Ot obshchestvennoi gruppy po uvekovecheniiu pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii’, ibid., no. 1 (Moscow, 1997), pp. 5–9, and no. 8, pp. 157–63; see also Barry McLoughlin, ‘“Vernichtung des Fremden”: Der “Große Terror” in der UdSSR 1937–38: Neue russische Publikationen’, Jahrbuch fur Historische Kommunismusforschung 2000–2001, p. 55.

  7 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, p. 160.

  8 Based on Lidia A. Golovkova, ibid., pp. 170–9.

  9 Ibid., pp. 145–7.

  10 Ibid., pp. 60f.

  11 Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1995), p. 286.

  12 According to the database of the Memorial Society.

  13 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, p. 61.

  14 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, p. 64; Rolf Binner and Marc Junge, ‘Wie der Terror “groß” wurde: Massenmord und Lagerhaft nach Befehl 00 447’, Cahiers du monde russe, 42 (2001), p. 562.

  15 On the use of torture, see Reinhard Müller, ‘NKWD-Folter: Terror-Realität und Produktion von Fiktionen’, in Wladislaw Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror 1934–41: Eine Forschungsbilanz (Berlin, 2002), pp. 133–58; see also Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), documents 45–6.

  16 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, pp. 63–4.

  17 On the practice of the troikas, see Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 491; Alexander Vatlin, Tatort Kunzewo: Opfer und Täter des Stalinschen Terrors 1937–38 (Berlin, 2003); Alexander Vatlin, ‘Stalinscher Terror im Rayonmasstab: Das Beispiel Kunzewo’, in Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror 1934–41, pp. 51–68; Binner and Junge, ‘Wie der Terror “groß“ wurde’, pp. 573–81; Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag, pp. 149–63.

  18 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, p. 65.

  19 Ibid., p. 71.

  20 On Blokhin, see ibid.; Nikita V. Petrov and Konstantin V. Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD 1934–1941: spravochnik (Moscow, 1999), p. 112. See also www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/ [in Russian].

  21 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, p. 72.

  22 Boris Sopelniak, ‘Palach’, Sovershenno sekretno (1996), no. 10, pp. 14–15; Butovsky poligon, no. 8, pp. 85–7.

  23 A. Mil'chakov, ‘Dvorik v Varsonofievskom pereulke, ili kto strel'al v zatylok?’, Vecherniaia Moskva, 28 October 1990.

  24 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, pp. 136–7.

  25 Ibid., p. 86.

  26 Ibid., p. 97.

  27 Ibid. pp. 98–100.

  28 Ibid., pp. 104f., 109.

  29 Ibid., pp. 114–15; see also chapter 18, ‘A City by the Sea’, in the present volume.

  30 Butovskii poligon, no. 8, p. 119.

  31 Ibid., p. 123.

  32 Ibid., p. 131.

  33 Ibid., p. 137.

  34 Ibid., pp. 65f.

  35 McLoughlin, ‘“Vernichtung des Fremden”’, p. 78.

  36 Nikita Ochotin and Arseni Roginski, ‘Zur Geschichte der “Deutschen Operation” des NKWD 1937–1938’, Jahrbuch fur Historische Kommunismusforschung 2000– 2001, p. 121.

  37 J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1999), pp. 588–9.

  38 For the assessment of the Great Terror, see Jörg Baberowski, Der Rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus (Munich, 2003); Oleg W. Chlewnjuk, Das Politbüro: Mechanismen der politischen Macht in der Sowjetunion der dreißiger Jahre (Hamburg, 1998); Mark Junge and Rolf Biner, Kak terror stal bol'shim: sekretnyi prikaz no. 00 447 i tekhnologiia iego ispolneniia (Moscow, 2003); Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (London, 1973); Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London and New York, 2000); J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (Cambridge, 1985); J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993); Nicolas Werth, La Terreur et le désarroi: Staline et son système (Paris, 2007). See also the following collections of documents: Vladimir N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004); Andrei A. Artizov et al. (eds), Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo: dokumenty prezidiuma CK KPSS i drugie materially, mart 1953–fevral' 1956 (Moscow, 2000); Aleksandr N. Iakovlev (ed.), Reabilitatsiia: politicheskie protsessy 30–50-kh godov (Moscow, 1991).

  39 Document 169 in Getty and Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror, pp. 470–1 [translation modified]; the Russian text can be found in ‘Zapiska M. I. Frinovskogo v politburo CK WKP(B) s prilozheniem operativnogo prikaza NKVD SSSR No. 00 447’, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 273–81. See also the document with the same name in the Alexander Iakovlev Archive: www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61133 (in Russian; this and all pages on this website accessed in July 2008).

  40 Ochotin and Roginski, ‘Zur Geschichte der “Deutschen Operation” des NKWD 1937–1938’, pp. 89ff.; Prikaz no. 00439, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 271–2. Also to be found in the Alexander Iakovlev Archive: www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61164.

  41 Document 151, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, p. 273; an English translation is in Getty and Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror, pp. 473–4 [translation modified].

  42 Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 274–81.

  43 Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, p. 274.

  44 McLoughlin, ‘“Vernichtung des Fremden”’, pp. 60, 67. Interim report on the state of the campaign against anti-Soviet elements: ‘Spetssoobshchenie N. I. Yehzova I. V. Stalinu o pervykh itogakh operatsii po repressirovaniu antisovetskikh elementov, 8 sentiabria 1937g.’, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 337–43; see also www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61174.

  45 ‘Operativnyi prikaz ob areste vsekh nemtsev, rabotaiushchikh na oboronnykh zavodach, 25 iiuliia 1937, nr. 00439’, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoie upravleniie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, p. 271; McLoughlin, ‘“Vernichtung des Fremden”’, p. 67.

  46 Interim report on the state of the Polish operation and a description of Polish activities, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 300–21 (‘Zakrytoe pismo o fashistkopovstancheskoi, shpionskoi, diversionnoi, porazhencheskoi i terroristicheskoi deyatelnosti polskoi razvedki v SSSR, 11 avgusta 1937’), and pp. 352–59 (‘Spetssoobshchenie N. I. Yezhova I. V. Stalinu o khode polskoi operatsii 14 sentiabria 1937g.’); www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61149.

  47 McLoughlin, ‘“Vernichtung des Fremden”’, pp. 58–67.

  48 For an overview of the twelve operational orders, see Barry McLoughlin, ‘Die Massenoperationen des NKWD: Dynamik des Terrors 1937/38’, in Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror 1934–41, p. 39.

  49 ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK WKP(B) “O koreitsakh”, 21 avgusta 1937g.’, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravleniie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 325–6; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61155.

  50 On the resettlement of Chinese: ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK VKP(B) o pereselenii kitaitsev s dalnego vostoka, 10 iuniia 1938g.’, ibid., pp. 539–40; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61347.

  51 ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK WKP(B) “O koreitsakh”, 21 avgusta 1937 g.’, ibid., pp. 325–32; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61155. On the resettlement of Chinese, see ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK VKP(B) o pereselenii kitaitsev s dalnego vostok
a, 10 iuniia 1938g.’, ibid., pp. 539–40; see also www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61347. Decree concerning re- emigrants from Harbin: ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK VKP(B) “Vopros NKWD” s prilozheniem proekta operativnogo prikaza No. 00593, 19 sentiabria 1937g.’, ibid., pp. 366–8; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p= 21&doc=61188.

  52 With regard to the persecution of the ‘Socialist Revolutionaries’, see ‘Spetssoobshchenie N. I. Yezhova I. V. Stalinu ob eserakh, 10 fevralka 1938g.’, ibid., pp. 485–9; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61285.

  53 ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK VKB(B) “Ob antisovetskich elementakh”, 31 ianvaria 1938g.’, ibid., pp. 467–8; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61104.

  54 McLoughlin, ‘Die Massenoperationen des NKWD’, p. 46.

  55 See documents 287 und 288, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 496–71, and in the Aleksandr Iakovlev Archive: www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61279 (doc. 287) and www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61280 (doc. 288).

  56 On the extension of the action against the national contingents to 15 April 1938, see ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK WKP(B) o prodlenii repressii sredi naseleniia po priznaku natsional'noi prinadlezhnosti, 31 ianvaria 1938’, ibid., pp. 468–9; www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61278.