Stalin полностью

The dictator would be away from Moscow for nearly three months.¹⁴⁸ From Sochi, he telegrammed Kaganovich that “Svetlana, Mistress of the House, will be in Moscow August 27. She demands permission to leave for Moscow soon, in order to supervise her secretaries.”¹⁴⁹ About Vasily he said nothing. In Moscow on August 30, Henri Barbusse, who had contracted pneumonia, passed away.¹⁵⁰ Soviet officials had waffled on whether to publish a Russian translation of his Stalin, but finally would do so posthumously, in a print run of 100,000.¹⁵¹ Both the spring sowing and the fall gathering had been organized in a timelier, more efficient manner than in years past, and the 1935 harvest would be good: 79 million tons. The state would procure 23.9 million tons, up from 19.7 million the previous year.¹⁵² Stalin finally would be able to build a substantial strategic grain reserve (9.4 million tons). “What is happening with grain procurements this year is our completely unprecedented stunning victory,” Kaganovich exulted to the holidaying Orjonikidze (September 4), “a victory of Stalinism.” Of Stalin he wrote, “He’s holidaying now, it seems, none too badly. Klim [Voroshilov] is with him now. He went to settle some military matters.”¹⁵³

On September 5, 1935, Kaganovich reported to Sochi that Kandelaki had returned to Moscow and conveyed that only 25 million of the 200-million-mark credit had been spent, because of the complexity of Soviet orders. “It seems affairs in Germany are not going very badly,” Stalin wrote back. “Give Comrade Kandelaki my regards and tell him to insist on getting from the Germans everything we need with regard to the military and dyes.”¹⁵⁴

Stalin sent a ciphered telegram (September 7) directing that Yenukidze be posted elsewhere (“to Kharkov, Rostov, Novosibirsk or another place, but not Moscow or Leningrad”), after learning that he had been visiting with Orjonikidze and Orakhelashvili when they were on holiday and “talked politics with them day and night.”¹⁵⁵ The next day Stalin wrote again, to Kaganovich, that Agranov had sent him a note about “a Yenukidze group of ‘old Bolsheviks’ (‘old farts’ in Lenin’s expression). Yenukidze is a person alien to us. It is strange that Sergo and Orakhelashvili continue to be friends with him.” A politburo decree ordered Yenukidze immediately transferred to Kharkov road transportation.¹⁵⁶ Yezhov, meanwhile, wrote to boast to the dictator, regarding his investigation of terrorism plots against the leadership, that “only in the past months have I succeeded in dragging the NKVD into this work, and it is beginning to yield results.”¹⁵⁷ But Yezhov’s conspiracy to uncover conspiracies would have to wait: he was ill. “You should leave on holiday as soon as possible—for a resort in the USSR or abroad, whichever you prefer, or whatever the doctors say,” Stalin ordered (September 10). “Go on holiday as soon as possible, unless you want me to raise a big ruckus.”^{158, 159}

A medical report (September 1935) by the Kremlin’s Dr. Levin noted Stalin’s completion of a course of medicinal baths at Matsesta, and his being advised to curtail his smoking. Stalin seems to have felt vulnerable during his own medical exams. He asked one of the physicians who attended him, Miron Shneiderovich, if he read newspapers, to which the doctor replied that he read Pravda and Izvestiya. Stalin supposedly told him, “Doctor, you’re a smart man, and you should understand, there’s not a word of truth in them.” Typical Stalin mischief: the dictator laughed, but then asked, “Doctor, tell me, but the truth, do you sometimes have the desire to poison me?” Shneiderovich went silent. Stalin: “I know, doctor, that you are a timid person, weak, that you would never do that, but I have enemies who are capable of doing it.”¹⁶⁰

The same ostensible paranoiac took a drive and then a stroll in Sochi. “Why are you leaving, comrades?” he said to a group of Soviet holidaymakers shocked to encounter him, according to one’s recollections. “Why are you so proud that you shun our company? Come here. Where are you from?” They approached. “Well, let’s get acquainted,” Stalin said. “This is comrade Kalinin, this is the wife of comrade Molotov . . . and this is I, Stalin.” He shook hands. Stalin called over his bodyguard-photographers, mocking them as “mortal enemies,” and instructed them to photograph not just himself but “all the people.” He invited over a woman at a kiosk selling apples and a salesclerk from a food stand. The latter hesitated to leave her post, but finally did so. When an empty public bus happened to pull up, Stalin invited the driver and the ticket taker to have their photos taken, too.¹⁶¹

FALL MANEUVERS