Besides Beria, one of the very few other regional party satraps to survive was his former patron, now protégé, in Azerbaijan, Bagirov, who also wrote to Stalin boasting of his arrests: Trotskyites and ethnic Iranians living in the frontier zones, not to mention anyone who had personally crossed him. More than 10,000 officials would be removed in Azerbaijan in 1937–38.116 Stalin evinced special interest in the arrests in Nakhichevan, an autonomous republic inside Azerbaijan, bordering both Iran and Turkey, calling it “the most dangerous point in the whole South Caucasus.” Bagirov obligingly bloodied it.117 Of course, alongside the party boss, the head of the NKVD in Azerbaijan, Yuvelyan Sumbatov-Topuridze, also a Beria protégé (and a Georgian), ordered his subordinates to overfulfill arrest quotas. At the same time, Bagirov himself looked to be in danger, as Azerbaijan figured in Malenkov’s report to the January 1938 party plenum on mistakes in the expulsions and arrests of Communists. An NKVD commission from Moscow, chaired by a high figure (Mikhail Litvin), came to Baku. But somehow, Bagirov managed to pin the blame on the local NKVD; Sumbatov-Topuridze was the one removed, on January 10, though not arrested (Beria managed to transfer him to the NKVD’s economic administration in Moscow).118 Bagirov, too, survived, likely thanks to Beria.
A FAVORITE FOR UKRAINE
Beria was not the only phenomenon to emerge. Just before Stalin switched Beria to the party from the secret police, Nikita Khrushchev in January 1932 became Kaganovich’s deputy, number two in the huge Moscow party organization, with Kaganovich’s guiding example of a superhuman work ethic to emulate. Khrushchev developed a reputation for bootlicking.119 In January 1934, he became Moscow city party boss, and, in early 1935, concurrently, Moscow provincial party boss, a region equivalent in physical size to England and Wales. One official who knew him explained that, like Kaganovich, Khrushchev “compensated (not always successfully) for gaps in education and cultural development with intuition, improvisation, boldness, and great natural gifts.”120
During the terror, in fall 1937, the Moscow party active assembled in the city’s conservatory for a meeting presided over by Kaganovich (by then both heavy industry commissar and railroad commissar) and Khrushchev. Khrushchev spoke passionately, lost his place, mispronounced words, and made people laugh, epitomizing the lower-middle strata who had risen with the revolution and Stalin’s rule. “A large head, a high forehead, light-colored hair, a wide-open smile—all this conveyed the impression of simplicity and goodwill,” recalled one observer, seeing the golden boy for the first time. “And I, and my neighbors, glancing at Khrushchev, experienced not only satisfaction, but a kind of tender emotion: what a fellow, a regular miner, and he had become secretary of the Moscow party committee.”121
But Iona Yakir, the arrested military officer, had visited Khrushchev at his Moscow dacha, part of the manor house on the estate of the former Moscow governor general, in Novo-Ogaryovo; Yakir had been there on the very eve of his arrest. Yakir’s sister was married to Semyon Korytny, a close Khrushchev colleague in Moscow, who was also arrested in the hospital—the day after Khrushchev had visited him there. “I worried,” Khrushchev recalled. “First, I pitied him. Second, they could come after me, too.” Stalin ordered or allowed Yezhov to arrest two of Khrushchev’s top aides in Moscow, both of whom Khrushchev viewed as exceptionally trustworthy. Stalin divulged to Khrushchev that each had testified against him, claiming that “Khrushchev” was not his real name but a mask, and hinted that such arrests might be the work of enemies who had infiltrated the NKVD, hardly comforting for Khrushchev’s prospects.122
And then there was the biggest black spot: Khrushchev divulged to Kaganovich that, during his student days back in 1923, he had sympathized with Trotsky, information likely to come forward in an anonymous denunciation. Kaganovich “blanched.” “Trotskyism” by his protégé threatened him, too, especially because Kaganovich himself had hints of Trotsky association: he had served in the civil war on the eastern front, among Trotsky supporters, not on the southern front, among Stalin supporters. He advised Khrushchev to inform Stalin immediately. Stalin, in response, told Khrushchev not to worry. The despot’s absolution, Khrushchev would recall, “further strengthened my confidence in Stalin, and gave rise to a feeling of certainty that those who were being arrested really were enemies of the people.”123