339. Max Eastman, who had created a sensation in the 1920s by defending Trotsky and publishing Lenin’s Testament, did so again with Artists in Uniform (1934), which equated the Soviet and the Hitler-Mussolini enlistment and regimentation of cultural figures. Eastman had belatedly come to understand that the problem was not Stalin alone but “the bigotry of Marxist metaphysics.” Radek wrote a rebuttal that highlighted Nazi book burnings and concentration camps in Izvestiya (July 18, 1934), bringing Eastman’s book greater attention. (The newspaper’s circulation was 1.5 million.) Eastman, Artists in Uniform, 133–4. See also Eastman, “Artists in Uniform.” “All Moscow writers seem to have been promoted in rank: they’ve all acquired high-style apartments, fur coats, and mistresses and fallen in love with the luxurious life,” Korney Chukovsky had written in his diary as early as Nov. 24, 1931. (Chukovsky moved to Peredelkino, the leafy writers’ colony.) Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 34. The émigré Vladimir Nabokov wrote that “in Russia before Soviet rule there did exist restrictions, but no orders were given to artists.” Nabokov, “Russian Writers, Censors, Readers,” 3.
340. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 370–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 304, l. 171–5: May 3, 1937).
341. Several years earlier, a group of nearly one hundred cultural figures had established a cooperative to build dachas in Peredlkino, just twelve miles from Moscow. Gorky had written to Stalin “skeptical” about such a writers’ village, and Stalin had agreed (“a far-fetched business that could also remove writers from the real world and develop their conceit”). But the regime approved it anyway. (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 719, l. 104: Feb. 28, 1933; l. 112: March 1, 1933). The original cooperative was abolished, and the money returned.
342. Khodasevich, Portrety slovami, 280.
343. Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 262–78. For speculation on possible murder, see Baranov, Gorky bez grima. Yagoda was in love with Maxim Peshkov’s wife, Timosha. Gel’man, “Zalozhnik OGPU,” 8. Maxim had joined the party in April 1917, served in the Cheka 1918–1919, but emigrated in 1922 to join his father in Italy, where he married and had two daughters; he returned, bringing his family, with his father, in 1932. Maxim had no job, lived the life of a sybarite, and clashed with Gorky’s secretary, Pyotr Kryuchkov.
344. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 430–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 742, l. 21–7: Aug. 12, 1934), 437–8 (d. 83, l. 67–9: Aug. 15); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 220–3 (IMLI, Arkhiv Gor’kogo: Aug. 2, 1934).
345. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 219–20 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 949, l. 29, 95); Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 63–4 (citing RGALI, f. 631, op. 1, d. 40, l. 18: Sept. 5, 1934).
346. In 1935, the average monthly salary in industry was 194 rubles; in state administration, 212; in management of the economy, 293; but 750 for the Literary Fund director; 500 for his deputy; and 300 for a secretary of the directorate. In time, when bona fide writers were unable to work, the Literary Fund awarded them significant monthly sums (200 to 600 rubles, to a total of 3,000 to 6,000 per year). The USSR also established an administration for the protection of authors’ rights, for writers and composers, covering the live stage, cinema, clubs, traveling and restaurant performances. But these were done at the republic level, and sometimes the author of a work in the RSFSR found that work re-used without compensation in a different Union republic. Tolstoi and Vishnevskii, “Ob avtorskom prave,” 3.
347. Babichenko, Literaturnyi front, 16–20 at 18: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 257, l. 14–9: Aug. 29, 1936), 23–5 (at 24: d. 304, l. 171–5). The Literary Fund lobbied to build at least eighty dachas at state expense, and got permission for thirty. Writers watched over the construction, often a full-time job because of insider theft of scarce construction materials, not to mention shoddy workmanship. Sartakova, “Nash pisatel’skii les,” 24.
