Stalin полностью

Also in April 1937, the NKVD intercepted and photographed a communication from the Japanese military attaché in Warsaw to the general staff in Tokyo. NKVD foreign intelligence could not read the Japanese and had to go to Lefortovo prison for assistance from R. N. Kim, a Soviet counterintelligence agent on Japan who had been arrested as a foreign spy. The document was composed in the hand of the Japanese attaché’s aide—handwriting well known to Kim—and conveyed that “contact had been established with an emissary of Marshal Tukhachevsky.” This secret message for Tokyo had been sent not by ciphered telegram but by diplomatic pouch, which traveled from Poland to Japan through the Soviet Union. Japanese intelligence appears to have intended the “secret” document to be “intercepted.”¹⁸⁰

MAY DAYS

A convoluted action also took place on May Day 1937, a holiday marked by a military parade through the seat of power. “Infantry, cavalry, tanks would sweep past while fighters and bombers roared overhead,” one foreign observer noted. “Every now and then he [Stalin] would raise his hand, palm outstretched, with a little gesture that was at once a friendly wave, a benediction, and a salute.”¹⁸¹ Still, the regime undertook unprecedented precautions, even by Stalinist standards, enveloping Red Square in NKVD troops and plainclothes officers—as if a putsch were imminent. It was: Stalin’s putsch. Right after the parade, in the normally convivial setting of the Voroshilovs’ apartment, the despot warned the many military men present that unexposed enemies were in their midst.¹⁸²

In Catalonia by this time, tensions were boiling over, because food prices had nearly doubled since the onset of civil war, many factories were operating far below capacity, and tit-for-tat political murders were taking place. The governing Socialists, not to mention the Communists, had long been eager to crush the anarchists, as well as the POUM and, along with them, Catalan regional autonomy. On May 2, when the civilian president of the Republic’s government called the civilian president of the Catalan Generalitat, an operator at the anarchist-controlled main telephone station said the line needed to be kept open for more important business. The next day, government police seized the station. Workers in Barcelona laid down their tools, barricades went up, and, within hours, all political forces had mustered their militias. Later, Franco would boast that his agents had provoked the Barcelona anarchist uprising so as to disorganize the Republic’s rear. No doubt his agents did try. The NKVD, too, had infiltrated the POUM to instigate an attempted “seizure of power”—as a pretext to crush it.¹⁸³ In fact, no one needed to instigate the events. The crackdown was brutal. On May 7, a special assault guard arrived from Valencia, some 6,000 men. The street combat left around 500 dead and 1,000 wounded.¹⁸⁴ On May 15, amid calls for harsh reprisals against “anarchist” violence, Largo Caballero resigned as prime minister.

During Barcelona’s violent May Days, Koltsov was on a six-week trip back home. He had dug in with soldiers in trenches, witnessing the heroism and death of a real war. “There was something new in him, he became older, more severe, appeared pensive,” one acquaintance recalled. “He had gotten thinner, his skin was tanned, the flame of war had literally burned him, charred him.”¹⁸⁵ Koltsov’s longtime coworkers at Pravda were being accused of monstrous crimes and being arrested. Around his luxury apartment at Government House (the House on the Embankment), the doors to his neighbors’ apartments were sealed with wax, indicating that the residents had been hauled off by the NKVD.¹⁸⁶

Stalin, joined by Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Yezhov, had granted Koltsov an audience in the Little Corner, his second. “He sincerely, profoundly, . . . fanatically believed in the wisdom of Stalin,” Koltsov’s brother Boris Yefimov would recall. “How many times, after meeting the Master, my brother would regale me in minute detail about his way of conversing, about his specific observations, phrases, jokes. He liked everything about Stalin.”¹⁸⁷ Now the despot mocked Koltsov. “Stalin stood near me, put his hand on his heart, and bowed: ‘What should one call you in Spanish, Mig-u-el?’” Koltsov told his brother after the audience. “Mig-el, Comrade Stalin.” Stalin: “Right, then, Don Mig-el. We, noble Spaniards, heartily thank you for your interesting report. Goodbye for now, Don Mig-el.” As Koltsov reached the door, Stalin called after him: “Have you a revolver, Comrade Koltsov?” “Yes, Comrade Stalin.” “But you aren’t planning to shoot yourself with it?” “Of course not.” “Well, excellent! Excellent! Thank you again, Comrade Koltsov, goodbye, Don Mig-el.”¹⁸⁸