Stalin полностью

148. Izvestiia, July 26, 1930 (Litvinov interview). Stalin had hesitated to promote the rightist-leaning Litvinov, telling Chicherin, “You should be the commissar, even if you work only two hours a day,” but Litvinov had filled the vacuum anyway. Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova”; “‘Diktatura iazykocheshyshchikh nad rabotaiushchimi’: posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska Chicherina,” 112n7; Farnsworth, “Conversing with Stalin,” 958 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749, l. 80–3); Carley, Silent Conflict, 410–1 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 9, pap. 43, d. 1, l. 130–2: Sept. 7, 1929); Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, (Dec. 3, 1929); Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 100; Besedovskii, Na putiakh, 385–6. See also Kennan on Chicherin, Russia and the West, 205–6. Mikoyan would recall that “the arguments between Chicherin and Litvinov at politburo meetings . . . helped us figure out the most difficult issues of world politics.” Those who worked with both judged them equivalent in quality of mind and breadth of horizons. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, 4; Sheinis, “Polpred B. E. Shtein,” 108. Rumors in Moscow on Chicherin’s likely replacement had run the gamut (Chicherin’s farewell memo seems to have had Kuibyshev in mind). See also Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 14–5; Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe iogranich’e, 562–3; and O’Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution, 157–64.

149. Chicherin added: “The OGPU leaders have blind faith in the words of every idiot and cretin they make their agent.” ‘Diktatura iazykocheshyshchikh nad rabotaiushchimi’: posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska G.V. Chicherina,” 108–10. Chicherin had effectively failed in his Stalin-supported quest to forge a genuine alliance with Germany, but had prevented an anti-Soviet coalition, a version of Soviet strategy he had enunciated in a note to Stalin in 1929: “Any sharpening of the antagonisms between Germany and the Entente, France and Italy, Italy and Yugoslavia, England and America means a strengthening of our position, a lessening of the various threats to us.” V. V. Sokolov, “Neizvestnyi G. V. Chicherin: iz rassekrechennykh arkhivov MID RF,” 12 (citing AVP RF, f. 08, op. 12, pap. 74, d. 55, l. 86). The Germans suspected that because of his British wife, Litvinov was secretly pro-British-French. Von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London, 81.

150. Stalin both criticized and praised Litvinov. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina-Molotovu, 167–8 (Oct. 7, 1929), 169–71 (Dec. 5, 1929); Ken and Rupasov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 568 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 10, l. 62: March 1931). Litvinov, according to his daughter, had preferred Stalin to Trotsky. Phillips, Between the Revolution and the West, 109 (citing Tatyana Litvinova).

151. Stalin expanded the number of the commissariat’s departments responsible for the West and promoted strong officials to lead them, to curb Litvinov’s powers. The foreign affairs collegium now consisted of Litvinov and his three deputies: Krestinsky (first deputy), Boris Stomonyakov (an ethnic Bulgarian), and Lev Karakhan (a Chicherin protégé). Eventually, however, Stalin would grant abolition of the collegium and a reduction in deputy commissars, strengthening Litvinov’s grip over that body. Dullin, Men of Influence, 58–9; Sokolov, “Zamestitel’ narkoma inostrannykh del B. Stomoniakov,” 120.

152. Officials who had joined the foreign affairs commissariat in the early NEP years occupied about one-third of the senior posts dealing with Europe, but an influx during the Great Break, under Litvinov, brought people with fewer than five years of service, some filling entirely new posts, many replacing defectors or those purged. Of diplomats who joined before 1925, around 48 percent were Russian; 33 percent were Jewish; another 4.5 percent were Balts. Of those who joined after 1929, 56 percent were Russian, nearly 30 percent were Jewish, and 6 percent were Ukrainian. At the very top, few were ethnic Russians. Litvinov, Sokolnikov, Surits, Khinchuk, Dovgalevsky were all Jewish. Some of the Russians were the wrong class (of noble descent): Kollontai, Alexandrovsky. Old-line diplomats, with foreign-language and -country expertise, were hostile to the “neophytes” mobilized into the corps by the Central Committee. The arrivistes looked askance at the “bourgeois” habits and mentality of the old guard. Dullin, Men of Influence, 52–3 (comparing the diplomatic yearbooks of 1925 and 1933–6); Sostav rukovodiashchikh rabotnikov i spetsialistov Soiuza SSR, 296–303.