223. Zhdanov, born in Mariupol, had grown up mostly in Tver, where in Aug. 1914 he joined a Marxist group led by A. I. Krinitsky. In Jan. 1918, Zhdanov, a veteran of the Great War, was part of a group of Red Guards who seized the small town of Shadrinsk in the Urals (near Perm); by 1919, however, he was said to be exhausted and allowed to go home to Tver to recuperate; his comrades abandoned Shadrinsk. Zhdanov served for a decade as party boss of Nizhny Novgorod, 1924–1934. He would go after Krinitsky in 1935 and help destroy him in 1938. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 562; Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, 1896–1948; Glotova, “Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov”; Borisov, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov.
224. “Vospominaniia: memurary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 62–3. The scientist and Leningrad-resident Vladimir Vernadsky, in his diary, would deem Zhdanov a “petty, talentless figure, especially after Kirov.” Vernadskii, “Dnevnik 1940 goda.”
225. Kaganovich, in Feb. 1932, had needed a six-week respite, bedridden for headaches and dizziness. He would have a tonsillitis operation in July 1934. Rees, Iron Lazar, 217. Zhdanov was given the agriculture portfolio on March 3, which Kaganovich had managed, but Zhadanov held it for a mere thirty-eight days (it went to Yakovlev) and instead got planning, finance, and trade; Yezhov got industry, which he would hold for a year; Kaganovich, transport (the next area for a trouble-shooter, after agriculture’s stabilization); Stetsky, culture and propaganda. Posokryobyshev remained head of the special sector; that is, Stalin’s office. Zhdanov, although not a member of the politburo, would attend more than half the meetings in Stalin’s office in 1934. E. K. Pramnek, appointed hastily to replace Zhdanov in Nizhny Novgorod, was awkwardly promoted to Central Committee candidate member after the Congress.
226. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 102. See also Chuev, Sto sorok, 468. Whereas in 1923, 88 percent of all decisions were taken at a formal meeting, by 1933 that was down to 13 percent (by 1937, it would be 0.6 percent). In 1933, there were twenty-four formal politburo sessions for the year, two a month, usually on the first and fifteenth; from Sept. 1934, formal meetings would drop to one per month, with additional meetings as necessary. In 1936, there were no politburo meetings in Jan., Aug., and Nov. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937,” 25–7. See also Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 289. Formal politburo meetings could be attended by sixty people or more at any one time: non-members were invited for specific agenda items or the whole meeting. Wheatcroft, “From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny,” 88–9.
227. XVII s”ezd, 680–1. Stalin allowed the former Trotsky supporter Pyatakov into the Central Committee, and Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, and Sokolnikov to return as candidate members.
228. Stalin also formally pared back the powers of his own workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate–party Control Commission (he had already entrusted the 1933 party purge to a special commission), slashing its size in a push for greater efficiency and less local collusion. “What we need now,” he had told the congress, “is not inspection but check-up on fulfillment of the center’s decisions.” Many of the commission’s powers, in any case, had already been taken by the OGPU. XVII s”ezd, 35; Turkan, Ian Rudzutak, 91–2; Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia, 219–23. “From now on,” Stalin added, “nine-tenths of the responsibility for the failures and defects in our work rest not on ‘objective’ circumstances but on ourselves and on ourselves alone.” Sochineniia, XIII: 367–70. See also Markevich, “Monitoring and Interventions.”
229. Pravda, Feb. 7 and 8, 1934. Stalin had been signing documents for some time only as “secretary of the CC.” From 1931, he was being listed as just “secretary,” not general secretary. Rosenfeldt, Stalin’s Special Departments, 9. Politburo members as of Feb. 1934 were: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Orjonikidze, Kuibyshev, Kirov, Andreyev, and Kosior. Candidate members were: Mikoyan, Chubar, Petrovsky, Postoyshev, and Rudzutaks. Secretariat members were: Stalin, Kaganovich, Kirov, and Zhdanov.
