Stalin полностью

The dictator soon took the podium, attributing the “profoundly revolutionary” movement to initiative from below, in the country’s new conditions. “Life has become better, comrades,” he observed. “Life has become more joyous. And whenever life is joyful, work goes better.” (Earlier in the proceedings, the 3,000 attendees had spontaneously broken out into the catchy march from Jolly Fellows.) “If there had been a crisis in our country, if there had been unemployment—that scourge of the working class—if people in our country lived badly, drably, joylessly, there would have been nothing like the Stakhanovite movement. (Applause.) . . . If there is a shortage of bread, a shortage of butter and fats, a shortage of textiles, and if housing conditions are bad, freedom will not carry you very far. It is very difficult, comrades, to live on freedom alone. (Shouts of approval. Applause.)”²¹³

Stalin closed by asking for approval to reward the country’s best workers with the highest state honor, again inciting delirium. Stakhanov would be awarded the Order of Lenin, admitted to the party, promoted into mine management, and made the author of texts extolling Stalin for originating his movement.²¹⁴ He would take to drinking, lose his Order of Lenin and party card in a drunken brawl, smash the mirrored walls at the Metropole Hotel restaurant, and wed a fourteen-year-old. Stalin would lose interest in Stakhanovism, but he now paid still more attention to the cultivation of public heroes.

DIPLOMATIC DELUSIONS

The Soviet envoy to Bulgaria, Fyodor Ilin, the son of a priest and himself a storied Bolshevik, who adopted the surname Raskolnikov (from Dostoevsky’s character), was in Moscow in late November 1935. He and his wife decided to see Oleksandr Korniychuk’s play Platon Krechet, about the new Soviet intelligentsia’s quest for genuine humanism and social justice, at the affiliate of the Moscow Art Theater on Theological Lane. Unexpectedly, Raskolnikov encountered Stalin and Molotov. (The pair had first gone to the Moscow Art Theater, but the show they went to see had been switched out.) During intermission, Stalin engaged Raskolnikov in a discussion of Soviet policy in Bulgaria. Molotov took note of Stalin’s respect for Raskolnikov, and the next morning Zhemchuzhina, Molotov’s wife, phoned to invite Raskolnikov and his wife to their dacha. During billiards, drinking, and dancing, the men discussed the threat of fascism, and Molotov exclaimed, “Our main enemy is England!”²¹⁵

At the theater, Stalin had asked Raskolnikov to visit him in his office, but when the envoy phoned from the foreign affairs commissariat, a disbelieving Poskryobyshev gave him the runaround. Once, when Raskolnikov dialed Stalin’s number, the dictator himself picked up—and invited him over right then. It was December 9, 1935. Raskolnikov got twenty minutes one-on-one, his first (and sole) visit to the Little Corner. “Stalin’s working office in the recently refurbished Kremlin building was furnished, point for point, the same way as his office on the top floor of the immense building of the Central Committee on Old Square,” Raskolnikov noted. The dictator came out from behind the desk, placed Raskolnikov at the large felt table, took a seat, and, after pinching some tobacco, lit his pipe. Raskolnikov relayed that his superiors had declined Sofia’s request to buy Soviet weapons. “A mistake!” Stalin interjected, adding that the Bulgarians would just buy them from the Germans. Raskolnikov received authorization to report Stalin’s view at the commissariat. The conversation widened. “‘England now stands for peace!’ Stalin stated ironically, opening his palms wide, animatedly approaching me,” Raskolnikov recalled. “‘England now will be plucked. Its colonies are spread around the whole world. Defending them is unthinkable: they would need 100 navies to do that. It’s not like us, where everything is gathered in a single space. Therefore, England, of course, stands for peace.’”²¹⁶