208. They would adopt a daughter (Natasha) from a children’s home. Yevgeniya ran a literary salon, while pursuing extramarital affairs. Yezhov, for his part, bedded subordinates’ wives, household and cleaning personnel, prostitutes, and various male lovers; he drank and became pugnacious, beating her.
209. Chubar, whom Stalin met during the October days of 1917, had a reputation as an expert, and Stalin promoted him to deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and finance commissar and invited him to inner-circle meals. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 228–9; Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 167.
210. This resolution appears to have been dictated by Stalin to Poskryobyshev; other members of the politburo signed it in the same red pencil on Stalin’s desk (Kalinin’s was evidently a telephone approval). The logbook for Stalin’s office records no meeting that day. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 139 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1056, l. 35–6); Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 142 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 960, l. 7; op. 2, d. 538, l. 3), 143 (op. 3, d. 961, l. 16); Na prieme, 152.
211. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 141.
212. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, 187, 210, 241.
213. On Sept. 23, 1934, Barbusse had requested an audience with Stalin, which was granted. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 341–2 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 699, l. 81). On the Sept. 16, 1927, audience, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 699, l. 2–10; “‘U nas malo rasstrelivaiut’: beseda I. V. Stalina s A. Babiusom” (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 699, l. 2-10); and Barbusse, Voici ce qu’on a fait de la Géorgie (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1929). On the Oct. 5, 1932, meeting: Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 251–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 699, l. 35–42, 43–51), 259 (l. 53–4).
214. Stetsky, who was assigned to edit Barbusse, mostly raised issues about the portrayal of Trotsky and the Stalin-Trotsky clash. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 341–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 699, l. 124–5: Sept. 29, 1934).
215. Barbusse described the Amusement Palace apartment, where Stalin no longer lived by the time the book came out. Barbusse, Stalin, vii–viii, 7, 277, 278. Louis Fischer would write that in Moscow, Barbusse had talked mostly about Jesus Christ. Margarete Buber-Neumann, who had encountered Barbusse in Moscow in 1932, would write that “I was very surprised my idol Barbusse displayed such traits of the bourgeois and the prima donna” by complaining about the hotel. Fischer, Men and Politics, 193; Buber-Neumann, Von Potsdam nach Moskau, 326.
216. Davies et al., Years of Progress, 153–6; Pravda, Jan. 30 and Feb. 16, 1935; Vtoroi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd kolkhoznikov-udarnikov, 186–7 (Yezhov), 247–97; Vyltsan, Zavershchaiushchii etap, 25–40.
217. Pravda, Feb. 10, 1935; Vtoroi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd kolkhoznikov-udarnikov, 144. See also Kolkhoznitsa, 1935, no. 11–12: 14–5; “Priem kolkhoznits-udarnits sveklovichnykh polei rukovoditeliami partii i pravitel’stva,” Sotsialisticheskaia rekonstruktsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, no. 11 (1935): 15–8; Kataev, “Mariia Demchenko,” 295–300 (dated 1938).
218. Buckley, Mobilizing Soviet Peasants, 235–6, citing Sergei K. Korotkov et al., My predsedatel’stvuem na Vsesoiuznom s”ezde (Moscow: Sel’khozgiz, 1935), 12–3, 39. See also Kazakhstanskaia pravda, Feb. 18, 1935. All congress delegates received a copy of the bound published record. Stoletov, “Zamechatel’nye knigi.”
219. Pravda, Feb. 15, 1935. A model statute had been drafted in late 1929 and published in revised form on March 2, 1930, but it had contained no specifics on organization, forms of payment, and so on. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 78–80. As one scholar has demonstrated, enduring regulations governing the collective farm system were not in place until 1933, when the concessions of 1932 were acknowledged as permanent. Merl, Bauern unter Stalin.
