Stalin полностью

Kandelaki, on his own initiative, approached Herbert Göring, an industrial adviser, SS officer, and cousin of the famous Luftwaffe head, and Herbert expressed delight at Moscow’s willingness to enter direct talks and promised to inform his cousin, as if the same information conveyed by official channels weeks earlier would not have reached Hermann Göring. These talks also went nowhere. “Schacht managed only to whisper to me (literally whisper) that he does not see any possibility right now for altering our relations,” Surits wrote Litvinov. “The young Göring also hinted not a word about our matters.”¹⁴² Stalin sent a ciphered telegram to Berlin (March 19, 1937) asking Kandelaki if he would agree to take over as ambassador to Germany in place of Surits—deemed by the American ambassador to Berlin “the brightest head among the diplomats here”—who was being transferred to Paris.¹⁴³ But on April 2, the Soviets announced that Kandelaki was being recalled from Berlin and promoted to deputy trade commissar.¹⁴⁴

On April 1, 1937, the second Five-Year Plan had been pronounced complete—in just four years and three months, just like the first. (Ten days later, the third Five-Year Plan would be officially approved.) On April 5, Surits left Berlin for consultations in Moscow; on April 7, he was officially transferred to Paris, but he returned to Germany to await his successor. On April 16, he wrote to Litvinov from Berlin: “Without exception, all the members of the diplomatic corps are fixed on the question of possible changes in Soviet-German relations. The rumors about the possibility of a rapprochement between Germany and the USSR have become widespread in Berlin’s diplomatic circles, despite being refuted. Some even suggested that the relevant negotiations have already begun, which the Soviet side is keeping in strict confidence.”¹⁴⁵ Litvinov’s suspicions had been correct. Germany leaked the “negotiations,” trying to drive a wedge between the USSR and France. On April 17, Litvinov telegrammed the Soviet chargé in Paris (Yevgeny Hirschfeld) and the envoy in Czechoslovakia (Alexandrovsky): “Inform the foreign ministry that the rumors circulating abroad about our rapprochement with Germany are without foundation. We did not conduct and are not conducting negotiations with the Germans, which should be clear if only from the simultaneous recall of our ambassador and trade representative.”¹⁴⁶

Hitler had unilaterally terminated the back-channel contacts with Soviet personnel. Stalin had the German nationals in the Soviet Union who had been arrested deported.¹⁴⁷ Also in April, on his initiative, the politburo formed two parallel quintets, which were dubbed permanent commissions: one for foreign policy and other top-secret matters (Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Yezhov) and one for urgent economic affairs (Molotov, Stalin, Chubar, Mikoyan, Kaganovich).¹⁴⁸ This institutionalized the narrower decision making in the name of the politburo that was already prevalent.

A DESPOT’S REALM

Terror had seized the privileged precincts of society—the postmidnight knock, the search and confiscations in the presence of summoned neighbors (“witnesses” were required by law), the wailing of spouses and children, the disappearances without trace, the fruitless pleading for information at NKVD reception windows, the desperate queues outside transit prisons and unheard screams inside, the bribes to guards for scraps of information on whereabouts.¹⁴⁹ But ordinary Soviet inhabitants mostly did not feel an immediate threat of arrest.¹⁵⁰ As the morbid joke had it, when uniformed men arrived and said “NKVD,” people answered, “You’ve got the wrong apartment—the Communists live upstairs.”¹⁵¹ Newspaper editorials complained that collective farmers were illegally enlarging household plots, reducing compulsory deliveries, and avoiding tax payments after the arrests of all their supervisors.¹⁵² Pravda criticized workers, too, for supposedly taking advantage of the destruction of enemies by failing to show up on the job.¹⁵³ One provincial factory worker, the landlord to the exiled poet Osip Mandelstam and his wife, told the poet that the trials were an elite affair, “a fight for power among themselves.”¹⁵⁴