Stalin полностью

The new Supreme Soviet had opened to incredible fanfare on January 12, and three days later it announced an enlarged naval program and a measure authorizing its presidium, formally chaired by Kalinin, to declare a state of war (martial law) if necessary. Yezhov related a “request by the toilers” that Moscow be renamed Stalinodar; Stalin rejected it.²⁴² On January 17, Zhdanov gave a speech condemning spying by foreign consulates in Leningrad, approving the arrests of ethnic groups with compatriots abroad (Poles, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Germans), hammering at the water transport commissariat under Rykov, and going after Kerzhentsev, head of the committee on artistic affairs, for permitting “alien” culture (such as Meyerhold’s theater).²⁴³ On January 20, at the Kremlin wrap-up reception for delegates, Stalin, during the course of five toasts, called Bukharin and Rykov “foreign agents” and members of a “rightist-Trotskyite anti-Soviet bloc.”²⁴⁴ The next night at the Bolshoi, on the fourteenth anniversary of Lenin’s death, Moscow’s Vakhtangov Theater performed the last act of The Man with a Gun, a play by Nikolai Pogodin about the October Revolution. The accomplished actor Ruben Simonov, an ethnic Armenian, played Stalin in his youthful days. Conscious of the occasion and audience, he had not been able to eat for days and lost control of his nerves. Nonetheless, Jelagin, playing in the orchestra pit, observed Stalin in the imperial box enthusiastically applauding Simonov as himself.²⁴⁵

A Great Citizen, based on the assassination of Kirov, premiered on February 13, 1938, after Stalin’s edits. The Communist character (Katz) was given the last word at the hero’s grave: “The party of Bolsheviks is building a new life, realizing the centuries’ dream of humanity! And those who stand in the way, who try to prohibit this work, the people will destroy!” Pravda’s critic enthused that “A Great Citizen teaches vigilance and the ability to differentiate enemy from friend and friend from enemy.” Besides Katz, nearly every party member who appeared in the film came across as a likely foreign agent.²⁴⁶

Also in mid-February, Trotsky’s son Lev Sedov suffered an acute appendicitis attack and died after treatment in a private Paris clinic run by White Russian émigrés who had NKVD connections. Whether Sedov (b. 1906) could have died of natural causes remains unclear. Trotsky lost his most important follower and the main coordinator of his work, and the NKVD lost its nearly effortless total surveillance over Trotsky’s operations.²⁴⁷

In late February 1938, after all the Spanish gold removed to the Soviet Union had been spent ($550 million) on weapons, an emissary from the Republic arrived to plead for Soviet credits to buy more. Stalin had already withdrawn his military advisers and tankists. Dimitrov, with Stalin’s authorization, had had Spanish Communists nondemonstratively quit the Popular Front government, partly to blunt Franco’s propaganda line.²⁴⁸ But Stalin extended the credits (which would never be repaid) to continue forestalling a Franco victory, even as he showed impatience. “You neither take seriously nor have a deep interest in your own production,” he admonished the Spanish envoy, underscoring the economic benefits of military industry. “You could be doing much more. We’ll give you the motorized equipment, since that is the most difficult. But you must develop your military industry.”²⁴⁹ Soviet military industry, despite investment 2.8 times as high as in 1933, was in disarray from Stalin’s annihilations.

THIRD (AND FINAL) PUBLIC TRIAL