67. “Letopis’ stroitel’stva sovetskikh vooruzhennykh sil 1931 goda (ianvar’-aprel’),” 114–5 (March 13, 1931). The accuser, Sergei Bezhanov (Sakvorelidze), would be executed (Balytysky had recommended a ten-year sentence, based upon his cooperation). Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 106; Tynchenko, Golgofa, 209–12 (GA SBU, fp., d. 67093, t. 21, delo Bzhanova S. G.: 102–3; t. 23: 578; t. 2, protokoly troika NKVD USSR: 89). Shaposhnikov had been placed at the head of non-party senior military men who approved industrialization and condemned the right deviation at the 16th Party Congress in 1930, when Stalin had allowed him to join the party expeditiously. In June 1931, Alexander Yegorov, whom Stalin knew from the civil war, was named chief of the staff.
68. Tynchenko, Golgofa, 124 (citing TsA FSB, f. R-40164, d. 4–b, delo Snesareva A. E.: 250); Snesarev, Filosofiia voiny, 33 (no citation). Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, a former chief of staff, was arrested (Feb. 1931) but then released (May); Sergei Kamenev, the former supreme commander of the Red Army, was untouched despite compromising material gathered on him. Alexander Svechin was re-arrested in Feb. 1931 and got five years but would be released early in Feb. 1932; Verkhovsky was also arrested in Feb. 1931 and, in July, sentenced to execution, but this was commuted to ten years; Kakurin was sentenced in Feb. 1932 extrajudicially to execution, which was commuted immediately to ten years of solitary confinement (he would die in prison in summer 1936). Snesarev ended up at Solovki. In Sept. 1934 he would be granted early release because of ill health; he would die in a Moscow hospital on Dec. 4, 1937, and be buried at the Vaganskoye cemetery. Dudnik and Smirnov, “Vsia zhizn’-nauke,” (no. 2), (no. 8); Bol’shaia Sovetskaia entsiklopediia (1976), XXIII: 635; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 287; Khrushchev, Memoirs, II: 141–3, 143n2.
69. Rölling and Rüter, Tokyo Judgment, I: chap. 6; Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 73, 86–9; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 178–80.
70. Tukhachevsky took part in the May 13, 24, and 25, 1931, sessions of the Revolutionary Military Council in Moscow. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 816, 818, 824, d. 829, l. 4 (June 10, 1931); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 162; d. 10, l. 2, 7, 33; Nikulin, Tukhachevskii, 169. Orjonikidze might have played a role in Tukhachevsky’s promotion. Dubinskii-Mukhadze, Ordzhonikidze, 277. Tukhachevsky had been working hard to demonstrate his loyalty to Voroshilov, sending an especially sycophantic fiftieth birthday greeting (Feb. 4, 1931). Voroshilov, Stat’i i materialy k 50-letiiu, 250–1.
71. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 100–13. The same key informant, Olga Zajonczkowska-Popova, continued her work.
72. Next up was the R-5, and Stalin was told it had a transmitter and receiver, which he could test. “And you are not deceiving us? Show me the radio station . . .” Turzhanskii, “Vo glave Sovetskoi aviatsii,” 183–9. Turzhansky would be arrested on July 23, 1938, accused of taking part in a military-fascist plot against the USSR and tortured; he would refuse to confess and be deported to the Kolyma camps; he would be released on Feb. 29, 1940, and, on June 4, named a major general of the air force.
73. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 213 (citing ORAF UFSB po Stavorpol’skomy kraiu, arkhivnoe sledstvennoe delo no. 13144 on Kaul A. I. t. 2).
74. Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 104; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 226–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 20, d. 193, l. 129–31: March 7, 1930); Zdanovich, Organy, 415 (Sept. 1930); Whitewood, Red Army, 130 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 293, l. 220). Yevdokimov had used his authority to send commissions to Sverdlovsk and Alma-Ata to gather compromising material on forced confessions and other abuses to use against Yagoda. Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 213, (citing ORAF UFSB po Stavorpol’skomy kraiu, arkhivnoe sledstvennoe delo no. 13144 on Kaul A. I. t. 2: 37).
75. He had taken a long holiday in 1930, and spent the entire winter 1930–31 at his dacha outside Moscow, but his health worsened again in Feb.–March 1931. Meditsinskaia gazeta, June 29, 1988.
76. See Seyed-Gohrab, Great Umar Khayyam.
77. He would suffer severe flu in Sept. and Oct. 1931.
78. Akulov had a storied past as the organizer before the 1917 revolution of a 60,000-strong worker demonstration in St. Petersburg, and had assisted Stalin’s machinations in the removal of Rykov as head of the government several months before. Blinov, Ivan Akulov.
