168. According to the same hostile witness, when Stalin appeared at the Bolshoi on Feb. 23, 1932, at a celebration of the Red Army’s fourteenth anniversary, he was met with “cold silence.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 28 (July 1932): 3–5. Davies surmises that the letter writer was Ivan Smirnov: Davies, Crisis and Progress, 133 n1, 136, 145. On the conference resolutions, see: VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II: 728–46.
169. The regime also mandated mobilization plans for each major factory. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 175. Still, even now, Tukhachevsky failed once more to force the creation of a separate army industrial research and development empire. Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 42–7, 55–9, 162 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 2, d. 280, l. 7–8); Harrison and Simonov, “Voenpriemka,” 230.
170. Drobizhev, Glavnyi shtab, 171–2; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 204–9; GARF, f. 5446, op. 15, d. 15, l. 13; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 192 (RGAE, f. 7297, op. 41: intro); Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 241, 243; Seiranian, Nadezhneishii voennyi rabotnik, 138. On Jan. 12, 1932, the politburo appointed party organizers in military factories who were responsible to the Central Committee. Poltaev, Industrializatsiia SSSR, 608.
171. The wildly ambitious 10,000 number included 2,000 BTs (Christie chassis), 3,000 T-26s (Vickers six-ton), and 5,000 machine-gun carrier T-27s (Carden Loyd tankette). Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 193 (citing RGVA, f. 4, op. 17, d. 76, l. 10). Voroshilov, at a Jan. 1933 party plenum, would claim that Stalin had ordered to “take all measures, spend the money, even large amounts of money, run people to all corners of Europe and America, but get models, plans, bring in people, do everything possible and impossible in order to set up tank production here.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, part 1, l. 125; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 193 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 13, 18–9: Dec. 5, 1929); RGVA, f. 31811, op. 1, d. 1, l. 52–3 (Pavlunovsky).
172. The Soviet delegation chose the Vickers medium tank prototype from a commercial catalogue. Vickers refused to sell its heavy tanks, but a clever member of the Soviet delegation managed to outsmart the British and obtain specifications (which would eventually go into the T-28). Svirin, Bronia krepka, 136–7, 253. The French firm Citroën refused to sell the Soviets tanks with blueprints. Vereshchak, “Rol’ inostrannogo tekhnicheskoi pomoshchi,” 234, 236 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 65: Jan. 11, 1930).
