146. During the civil war, Red Army soldiers at the front recited Bedny’s colloquial verses (they were also dropped by airplanes behind White lines). Bedny had received an Order of the Red Banner on the occasion of an infirm Lenin’s last birthday, the first such award for literary efforts in Soviet history. Trotsky had pushed for the prize: Bedny had ridden his civil war train and helped him inspire the troops. But during the intraparty struggle Bedny slashed at Trotsky (“a spent politician”). Bedny suffered high sugar levels and was overweight, and Stalin allocated scarce foreign currency for his diabetes treatment in Germany. Bedny wrote a report for Stalin about his trip, jokingly noting that his wife had gone crazy over the cleanliness, order, and abundance of consumer goods in the dying capitalist world (“She stands in front of any store window and dies, dies. You drag her away, and she stares at the next window”). Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 129 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 739, l. 39–40: July 19, 1928), 129–33 (d. 701, l. 43–5: Sept. 20; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 114 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 7, l. 96); Volkogonov papers, Hoover Archives, container 18; Trotskii, Literatura i revoliutsiia, 166–7. “Nobody ever worked so wholeheartedly for the Soviet regime,” Nadezhda Mandelstam bitingly wrote about Bedny. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 26.
147. “Receiving your assignment, I turned for advice to a very well-informed, authoritative comrade, to whom I usually approach in similar or delicate or, I would say, shock-work tasks,” Bedny wrote to Blyukher, commander for the Soviet Far East who had asked for a poem. The poet alluded to how his unnamed “adviser,” “grinning and removing his immutable pipe from his mouth,” had suggested a folk rhyme. Bedny, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, XVII: 76 (1929).
148. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 131 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 718, l. 82–82ob.: Nov. 2, 1930),131–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 201, l. 13: Dec. 6).
149. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 132–3 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d.939, l. 7–9), 134–7 (l. 1–6. Stalin would include the rebuke in his collected works: Sochineniia, XIII: 23–6. Bedny continued to step on the wrong toes. Kaganovich asked Stalin to read Bedny’s poem (“What Next?”), which Izvestiya had published (Sept. 23, 1931), and which seemed potentially provocative to Japan. Kaganovich indicated Litvinov had approved and possibly commissioned the poem. “I did not read and have no intention of reading Demyan’s verses, since I am sure they are not worth it,” Stalin wrote back (Sept. 29). Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 119–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 739, l. 129–35), 122 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 40; f. 17, op. 114, d. 264, l. 11). See also Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 470–1; Dubrovsky, “Chronicle of a Poet’s Downfall,” 188–90; and Chuev, Sto sorok, 269.
150. Bedny’s apartment served as a salon of artistic life. It was here that Fyodor Chaliapin met Stalin. “Stalin spoke little, and when he did it was with a fairly strong Caucasus accent,” the singer would recall. “Yet everything he said had a weighty ring to it, perhaps because he spoke briefly. From his short sentences, which were not always clear in meaning but energetic in tone, I went away with the impression that this was a man who did not fool around. If necessary he could easily—as easily as his light lezginka step-in soft boots—do a dance or blow up the cathedral of Christ the Savior.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 65 (citing Izvestiia 1962, no. 249).
151. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 246–7 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 68), 248 (l. 68, 70), 269 (f. 667, op. 1, d. 18, l. 6: Nov. 19, 1932).
152. Stalin evidently showed the Izvestiya editor Gronsky a journal full of Bedny’s unflattering remarks about the denizens of the Kremlin, which, Stalin explained, had been written by a “journalist.” (Gronsky has the story slightly garbled, because Bedny got the Order of Lenin, and it was before the writers’ congress.) Gronskii, Iz proshlogo, 155. Bedny appears to have made the same complaint to Fyodor Raskolnikov, according to memoirs of Raskolnikov’s wife. Kanivez, “Moia zhizn’ s Raskol’nikovom,” 95. See also Gromov, Stalin, 166.
153. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povesti dnia zasedanii, II: 416 (April 13, 1933). Stalin did not have an Order of Lenin; he had two Orders of the Red Banner (Nov. 1919; Feb. 1930).
154. Stalin had the letter circulated to the politburo for information. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 283–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 702, l. 79–84: April 5, 1933).
155. Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 68 (Aug. 18, 1932).
