Stalin полностью

88. In Dec. 1932, Lakoba wrote to Beria, with copies to Stalin and Kaganovich, protesting the reprimand given to himself and Ladariya for approaching the USSR Council of People’s Commissars without the authorization of the Georgian Central Committee on the question of again lowering the Abkhaz tobacco procurement target. Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–42. Bagirov, who had been in Moscow, had returned and told Beria that Lakoba had gossiped to Orjonikidze that Beria had been slandering Orjonikidze, supposedly saying that, back when the Menshevik uprising was crushed, “Sergo would have shot all Georgians if it hadn’t been for me.” Enraged, Beria wrote to Orjonikidze (Dec. 18, 1932), “I know there are many big-mouths among those who left the South Caucasus, and it is impossible to prohibit big-mouths from gossiping idiocies, I know that many rumors circulate about me and our work in the South Caucasus, but I cannot for the life of me understand what led comrade Lakoba, what goals he followed, when he informed you about false matters . . . Dear Sergo, you know me more than ten years. You know all my shortcomings, you know what I am capable of. . . . I admire you too much and value your relations too much. I ask you only one thing—don’t believe anyone.” Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 197–8 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 29, d. 413, 1–3). See also Knight, Beria, 50–1. In a March 2, 1933, letter to Orjonikidze, Beria complained that according to Lakoba, Levan Gogoberidze, on holiday in Sukhum, was spreading disinformation about Beria’s involvement in Musavat counterintelligence. Beria reviewed how the matter had been adjudicated in his favor in 1920 in the presence of Orjonikidze and others, and how Beria sent Orjonikidze an official decision of the Azerbaijan Central Committee in 1925. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 202–4 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 29, d. 414, 1–4). See also Mlechin, KGB, 193–4.

89. Artamonov, Spetsob”ekty Stalina, 137–8. A stone stairway of 870 steps to the beach below would be built.

90. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii, 47–9 (no citation). The regime had laid a road to Pitsunda in 1930. See also Sergei Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia: 90 let na sluzhbe Otechestvu, 1921–2011 (Moscow: MediaPress), 157; and Rosenfeldt, “Special” World, 168–70.

91. Zhukov, “Tak, byl li ‘zagovor’ Tukhachevskogo?” (Gagra and Sochi incidents). After Stalin’s death, Chechulin would testify (Oct. 14, 1953): “In order to avoid being shot at again, this time from closer range, I leapt from the glass cabin and told the drivers that the launch should take only a straight course, to the open sea. . . . Comrade Stalin initially attributed the shooting at the launch, after a three-hour stay on the shore in the Pitsunda area, to Abkhaz customs, saying that among the Abkhaz it was customary to greet guests by firing shots. But when the rifle shots rang out so severely, comrade Stalin, it seems, changed his mind about such firing, so that by the time we returned to Cold Spring in order to ascertain the cause of the shots, that very night, as soon as we disembarked, he sent Bogdanov to Pitsunda. . . . Five days after the shooting of the launch, a letter came to Cold Spring from one of the border guards, whose name I do not recall. In that letter he asked comrade Stalin to forgive him for firing at the launch, and explained that he had taken the launch to be not ours (foreign). That launch did in fact appear in the Pitsunda area for the first time. . . . I reported the content of this letter to comrade Stalin. He heard me out and took the letter.”

92. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 47.

93. The fired OGPU chief was A. N. Mikeladze. In 1937, the incident was reclassified as a terrorist act; Lavrov as well as Mikeladze would be shot. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 61–3.

94. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 46–7; Zen’kovich, Marshaly i genseki, 196–8. Vlasik late in life erroneously dated the incident to 1935, and perceived an interconnected conspiracy: this attempt on Stalin’s life, the Kirov murder, the death of Kuibyshev, etc., all the work of a “fifth column.” Loginov, Teni Stalina, 98–9.

95. Dimitrov’s words and a broad counternarrative to Nazi propaganda were propagated in the global press by the Comintern and its media wizard Willi Münzenberg, who had created the Münzenberg Trust (encompassing newspapers, magazines, and film production companies), the fourth-largest media organization in the Weimar Republic. When Nazi newspaper accounts tied Münzenberg to the Reichstag fire, he fled into exile. Gross, Willi Münzenberg.