Stalin полностью

Pravda reported on a spectacular sixty-three-hour flight (June 18–20, 1937) by Valery Chkalov, copilot Georgy Baidukov, and navigator Alexander Belyakov, from Moscow to the Pacific coast of the United States. The trio landed in Vancouver, Washington, after a daring nonstop flight that covered a distance of more than 5,500 miles and pioneered the polar air route.²⁸⁶ “He is our father,” Chkalov said of Stalin after landing. “The aviators of the Soviet Union call Soviet aviation Stalinist aviation. He teaches us, nurtures us, warns us about risks like children who are close to his heart; he sets us on the right path, takes joy in our success.”²⁸⁷ The exploit showcased the airmen and the airplane: the wide wingspan on the Soviet-designed ANT-25, the work of A. N. Tupolev, had enabled great range and fuel efficiency. The risk of failure had been immense, but so was the reward: domestic and international acclaim. Tupolev was soon imprisoned on trumped-up charges.²⁸⁸

BREAKING KLIM

Pravda, unrelenting, urged ever more naming of names; Stalin was forwarding to the newspaper selections from the investigatory materials Yezhov was providing. The editor, forty-eight-year-old Lev Mekhlis, a former Menshevik, high strung, with a yellowish face, never took his cigarette from his mouth and was known behind his back as the Gloomy Demon.²⁸⁹ “I never met someone with a more complex and contradictory character,” one Soviet official wrote. “I also never heard any kind words about him or praise for his work”—except from the despot: “In Stalin’s eyes Mekhlis was daring, insistent, diligent, and true.”²⁹⁰ Stalin soon named him head of the Red Army’s political administration, which carried promotion to deputy defense commissar. Mekhlis would travel the many military districts, demanding arrests and executions. “The defense commissariat became like a kennel of mad dogs,” Khrushchev would recall. “Mekhlis was one of the worst.”²⁹¹

To try to halt the savagery and save themselves, the top brass would have needed to be in a real conspiracy, but to them the idea of a military coup, such as in Spain, was anathema: they were Communists, and conscious of party discipline. Anyway, organizing a coup was an utterly remote proposition in the webs of surveillance and mutual denunciation.²⁹² Stalin wielded monopoly control over communications, the party cells and political administration in army units, the NKVD special departments for the army, and the public story in all newspapers and on the radio, which received ostensible confirmation of his narrative in real-life events in Spain. He also had a plethora of “vigilant” types in pursuit of reward or survival: the Kuliks and Budyonnys, the Little Blackberry Yezhov, the Gloomy Demon Mekhlis, and, in the end, Voroshilov, too.

On June 14, 1937, Voroshilov had sent a telegram to Novosibirsk reminding the locals that “only I personally sanction arrests of Trotskyites, double-dealers, and such.”²⁹³ He did not accede in every instance, especially when he was bucking Yezhov or Mekhlis rather than Stalin. Twice Yezhov sought Voroshilov’s permission to arrest one of the latter’s deputies, Andrei Khrulyov, head of military construction, but Voroshilov refused; the third time, Yezhov asked Stalin, who also refused.²⁹⁴ But Soviet military archives contain nearly thirty volumes of lists with the names of military men charged with crimes that the special department sent to the defense commissar for approval. Voroshilov affixed his signature to each name or to the whole list: “I do not object” . . . “I agree” . . . “Arrest him.” Sometimes he added vicious remarks: “Take all the scoundrels out” . . . “Round up the vermin.”²⁹⁵ Military officials dutifully conveyed to him the indignation that was supposedly emanating from the ranks over the revelations of treason (“These bastards should be chopped up alive, like pigs”). But their reports noted that “a few individuals have expressed panicked views that the fascist band that gave away many secrets to the Germans struck a blow against the fortress of the Red Army which will lead to defeat.”²⁹⁶ In fact, confusion broke out. One air brigade deputy commander destroyed all the portraits of top marshals and generals, and wanted to do the same for the portraits of the country’s political leaders, because no one could now be trusted.²⁹⁷