339. Pravda, Nov. 10, 1932; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 666 (Alisa Radchenko). Radzinsky quotes Nadya’s medical file, without citation, from Aug. 1932: “acute pains in the abdominal region—return for further examination in 2–3 weeks’ time.” Another entry, the last: “August 31, 1932. Examination to consider operation in 3–4 weeks.” Radzinsky, Stalin, 292. The medical file is RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1551. Dr. Boris Zbarsky prepared the body for the lying in state (he had mummified Lenin in 1924) and, many years later, is said to have told a friend he covered over a temple wound (rather than a shot to the heart). Kanel, “Vstrecha na lubianke,” 495. Khrushchev recalled that Kaganovich summoned the Moscow party apparatchiks the day after the parade and informed them that Nadya had died suddenly, offering no explanation. Kaganovich summoned the same officials a day or two later, according to Khrushchev, and said, “Stalin has ordered me to tell you that Alliluyeva did not just die; she shot herself.” The implication: it was a traitorous act.Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 52–3.
340. Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 91–3. The author, the wife of a Comintern official, worked in the organization from 1924 through 1933.
341. Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia, IV: 172 (Solovyov); Medvedev, “Smert’ Nadezhdy Alliluevoi”; Alliluyeva, Tol’ko odin god, 127. By some accounts, Stalin had his trusted minion Mekhlis “investigate” the circumstances of Nadya’s death to clear him of rumored responsibility for shooting her. Seleznev, Tainy rossiiskoi politiki XX veka.
342. Barmine, One Who Survived, 264. Kaganovich had a sister named Rachel; she died in 1926; he had a niece named Rosa (born 1919).
343. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, 184, 210; Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 141; Medvedev, Nikolai Bukharin, 39. “An almost indistinguishable door in the wall separated the dining room from Stalin’s bedroom,” one functionary noted. “A bed; two small armoires for underwear, coats, and a jacket; a sink.” Shepilov, Kremlin’s Scholar, 2. Stalin first moved to a two-story building (no. 6) closer to the Trinity Gate, the so-called cornered extension of the Amusement Palace, his fourth Kremlin apartment; he moved into the Imperial Senate after its refurbishment.
344. Sochineniia, XIII: 411 (“November 11, 1932, Stalin accompanied the casket with the body of N. S. Alliluyeva-Stalina to the Novodevichy cemetery”). According to Orlov, Stalin followed for only a few minutes, as far as the Manège (right outside the Kremlin), then got into a car with Pauker. Orlov, Secret History, 319–21. Rumors circulated that Stalin’s brother-in-law and fellow Georgian Alexander Svanidze, who was around his height and had a mustache, substituted for him. Kolsenik, Khronika zhizni sem’i Stalina, 21.
345. Pravda, Nov. 13, 1932. “Everyone knows that some beings are as tender and delicate as flowers—she was one of them,” Alexandra Kollontai, the daughter of a tsarist general and the erstwhile wife of another (before she left him), who served as Soviet envoy to Sweden, wrote ingratiatingly to Stalin of Nadya. “Those who knew her will treasure the beauties of her soul in their memories . . . Please remember that the Cause has need of you. Take care of yourself!” Kun, Stalin, 210 (citing RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 35).
346. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 39.
347. Kaganovich would recall that Stalin “was terribly down.” Chuev, Kaganovich, Shepilov, 94. Svetlana recalled: “He said that he did not want to go on living. . . . [Stalin] was in such a state that they were afraid to leave him alone. He had sporadic fits of rage.” Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 112; Richardson, Long Shadow, 129–30. “The children forgot her in a few days, but me she crippled for life,” Stalin was later to have complained, according to Maria Svanidze, who blamed her. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob”iatialkh, 177 (May 9, 1935).
348. One of his bodyguards recalled late in life that Stalin would sit for long periods at Nadya’s grave at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery. Svetlana asserted that her father never visited the grave. Stalin (film by Thames Television, London, 1990); Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 113. Some writers have asserted that a copy of Ryutin’s appeal denouncing her husband was found in Nadya’s room. Radzinsky, Stalin, 296 (quoting a Vlasik interview with N. Antipenko); Rayfield, Stalin and his Hangmen, 239–40.
349. Fridberg, “Gosudarstvennye zagotovki,” 350.
350. Ken, “‘Moia ostenka byla slishkom rezkoi’: I. V. Stalin i rekunstruktsiia RKKA,” 152n3 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 14, d. 754, l. 43–5: Jan. 1933).
