Stalin полностью

In Moscow, comic relief arrived on September 19, 1936, when regional party boss Kuzma Ryndin, after whom twenty collective farms and mines had been named, petitioned the dictator to rename Chelyabinsk—which roughly connoted “a pit”—into “Kaganovichgrad.” Stalin wrote on the request: “Against.”¹⁸² The next day, the politburo formally rejected a proposal from Litvinov for an expanded Soviet-led bloc against Nazi Germany, but it reaffirmed the pursuit of “collective security.”¹⁸³ Franco was busy establishing a regime. On the battlefield he took his time, transferring operations from urgent military objectives to political ones, perplexing the other generals. On September 21, in a hut on an airfield in Salamanca, citing the need for unified command in the war effort, Franco managed to get himself elevated to generalissimo of insurgent armies, even though he was junior to Mola. A week later, Franco manipulated matters further to get himself named chief of state with “absolute powers.” Several of the colluding commanders envisioned his elevation as temporary, anticipating a return of the monarchy, but Franco remarked of the moment, “You have placed Spain in my hands.” He did not even control Madrid.

Throughout Europe, significant doubts reverberated among leftist intellectuals about the alleged treason of the executed Bolshevik revolutionaries, but in Republic Spain, the POUM’s La Batalla was almost the only newspaper to detail, let alone condemn, the Moscow showcase trial, labeling the Soviet Union a “bureaucratic regime of poisonous dictatorship.” Tit for tat, the lead editorial in the September 1936 issue of The Communist International, issued in multiple European languages, condemned the POUM as fascist agents masquerading as leftists, with ties to Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Franco, Mussolini, Hitler.¹⁸⁴

Yezhov was bombarding Stalin with reports of secret police deficiencies and forwarded a denunciation of Yagoda by a provincial NKVD chief.¹⁸⁵ Stalin summoned Yezhov to the Black Sea.¹⁸⁶ Yagoda evidently knew, eavesdropping on Stalin’s calls to Yezhov in Moscow.¹⁸⁷ Yefim Yevdokimov, whose bailiwick included Sochi, was also likely pouring poison into Stalin’s ear about the detested Yagoda.¹⁸⁸ Suddenly, on the evening of September 25, 1936, Stalin sent a bombshell phonegram from Sochi to Kaganovich and Molotov, in Moscow, urging Yagoda’s removal. The message was cosigned by Andrei Zhdanov, the dictator’s new favorite, ten years younger than Kirov (and eighteen younger than Stalin), who was with him at the dacha. “Yagoda clearly turned out to be not up to the task of unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc,” the secret message read. “The OGPU was four years late in this process.”¹⁸⁹ “Four years” harked back to the meetings among a few party opposition members damning Stalin’s rule, as a result of the catastrophe of collectivization and famine. Among the potential candidates to head the NKVD were the experienced Chekists Yevdokimov and Balytsky, who at one time had risen to number three in the secret police, before Yagoda squeezed him out of Moscow and sent him back to Ukraine. Yet another option was Lavrenti Beria, the (nominally) former Chekist running the South Caucasus party machine.¹⁹⁰ But Stalin picked his party-apparatus protégé Yezhov.

On the afternoon of September 26, Stalin and Voroshilov spoke on the phone to discuss military shipments to Spain; they noted that no Soviet trademarks should be discernible on the tanks.¹⁹¹ Stalin also directed Voroshilov to read out the Sochi phonegram about Yagoda’s dismissal to Yagoda at a Council of People’s Commissars meeting. The commander of the Moscow military district and other officers accompanied Yagoda to Lubyanka to turn over his portfolio.¹⁹² That day, Stalin dictated a second note for Yagoda, which the bodyguard Vlasik read to him over the phone, informing him of his transfer to the commissariat of communications: “It is a defense-oriented commissariat. I have no doubt you will be able to put this commissariat back on its feet. I urge you to agree”—as if Yagoda could decline.¹⁹³ The symbolism was ominous: Yagoda would be replacing Rykov, the disgraced rightist with whom his own name had been linked. Yagoda evidently hurtled to Sochi, where Pauker, the NKVD bodyguard directorate head, blocked his suddenly former boss from Stalin’s compound.¹⁹⁴ Meanwhile, on September 27, Yagoda’s photograph as the new people’s commissar for communications appeared alongside Yezhov’s in all the newspapers.

Yagoda would spend the next two months on sick leave; he did not make a run for it or try to organize an “accident” to eliminate Yezhov (let alone Stalin).