Stalin полностью

Spain was still on fire. “The front stretches very far,” Pravda’s Koltsov had lyricized in his Spanish diary (July 7, 1937). “It goes from Madrid’s trenches, across Europe, across the entire world. It crosses countries, villages, cities, it crosses boisterous meeting halls, it courses quietly through the shelves of bookstores.”¹⁵⁸ And apartments: Malenkov informed Stalin (August 16) of a denunciation from a Soviet official in Spain, who had written, “I do not know if it is known in Moscow that in Madrid Koltsov lives with his two wives with completely equal status (at least by outward appearance). There are very many conversations and troubling questions about this, including in Madrid. The matter does not just concern giving an answer to our Spanish friends whether polygamy is legal for Soviet writers, but also, for example, the apartment of Koltsov’s [common-law] wife, Maria Osten, has been turned into a salon where high-profile comrades of various nationalities gather and where they discuss delicate questions in the presence of not fully verified comrades.”¹⁵⁹

Soviet advisers were trying to stave off defeat, reorganizing the International Brigades. In September 1937, Victorio Codovilla (b. 1894), an Italian-Argentine Comintern representative in Spain, was recalled to Moscow. Dimitrov forwarded to Stalin (September 8) a letter from Codovilla asking “what tactics should we advise the Comintern” for victory in Spain. Stalin wrote in the margin: “Together with the Socialists, without looking away from them, expose and smash the enemies of the united front.” Where Codovilla noted that the parliament was not meeting, Stalin wrote, “Restore the parliament, the municipal governments.” Where Codovilla re-proposed a merger of the Spanish Socialist and Communist parties, suggesting both names be used, Stalin wrote in the margin, “United Worker Party.”¹⁶⁰

FRONTLINE DEFENSE

Chiang Kai-shek did not capitulate to Japan. Still, Stalin might have been chastened at the prospect that China would fall, which would allow Japan to pivot toward the Soviet Union. A Japanese advance beyond Peking toward Kalgan in August 1937, on the old caravan route to Mongolia, threatened the Soviet satellite, a potential springboard for invading Eastern Siberia and cutting off the Soviet Far East. But Stalin pressed ahead with his destabilizing decapitation of the Red Army on trumped-up charges, including in the Soviet Far East. He also allowed his murderous “mass operations” to continue, which consumed vast industrial and transport resources. Most strikingly, he unleashed a rampage in Mongolia.¹⁶¹

On August 13, Stalin met in the Little Corner for four hours with Molotov, Voroshilov, Yezhov, Frinovsky, and Pyotr Smirnov, a newly minted deputy defense commissar; chief of staff Shaposhnikov joined the meeting late.¹⁶² Yezhov reported on a pending “Japanese-sponsored” coup d’état in the Mongolian capital. (Genden, Mongolia’s prime minister, who was suspected of being pro-Japanese, had already been arrested in Sochi.) Stalin decided to send a clandestine delegation headed by Frinovsky. He also named Mironov, the Western Siberian NKVD boss, plenipotentiary for Mongolia, in place of the Soviet ambassador (who was a Soviet intelligence operative but was arrested by the NKVD for being a Japanese spy). “As soon as his promotion occurred,” Mironov’s wife, Agnessa, noted, “Mirosha became manifestly cheerful, and his former self-confidence returned immediately.” And yet, as Frinovsky and his armed gang traveled by train to pick him up on the way at Novosibirsk, Mironov started to fear that his promotion might be a ruse to effect his arrest.¹⁶³ Not this time. In Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, Frinovsky beat a local official in the greeting party to a pulp in front of the rest of the local leadership, demonstrating how “enemies” were dealt with.¹⁶⁴ He and Mironov disembarked in Ulan Ude (Soviet Buryatia) and went the final 350 miles by car to Ulan Bator, which they reached on August 24, unannounced. It was not the Japanese but the Soviets who launched a coup d’état.