175. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 53–4 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1553, l. 7–8).
176. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 183–4 (Svanidze diary: Nov. 17, 1935), 185 (Dec. 4).
177. Leushin, “Staliniada,” 105 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 754, l. 112–3).
178. The upshot was a drop between 1927 and 1935 in the ratio of dependents to earners from 2.5 to 1.6. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, 103. “I like good clothes,” Sophie Kienya, a technician of Shaft 82, Metro Construction, was quoted as telling a foreign resident. “At work underground I wear rubber waders, breeches, and tie up my hair in a handkerchief. But at home and on free days I want my dresses to be fashionable and pretty and to fit well. All our girls like pretty clothes. At the theater or at parties when you meet girls from the Metro you would never think that they spent their days working underground . . . Our shoes are now excellent, but our factories should pay more attention to producing elegant buttons, trimmings, bags, gloves.” Malnick, Everyday Life, 221.
179. Kaganovich assured Stalin that “many workers made a calculation and themselves pointed out that, since previously they were buying supplementary meat and butter at markets, now they were gaining. Now, it seems, we will need to pay attention to shops and organizing sales.” Davies et al., Years of Progress, 174–6; Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 589–90 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 743, l. 40–4: Sept. 26, 1935). See also Davies and Khlevniuk, “Otmena kartochnoi sistemy v SSSR,” 127.
180. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 34.
181. Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia; Osokina, Za fasadom; Hessler, Social History of Soviet Trade; Randall, Soviet Dream World.
182. “Moscow restaurants left nothing to be desired,” wrote Juri Jelagin, a violinist at the Vakhtangov Theater, of an evening meal that, with entertainment, could easily cost two weeks of a worker’s salary. “Magnificent, live Volga sturgeons swam in a pool in the center of the dining room at the Metropol on Theater Square. The patrons could select the fish they wanted in the clear water.” Ziegler’s Czech jazz band played at the Metropol and Tsafman’s and Utyosov’s bands at the National, while gypsies sang at the Prague on the Arbat. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 136–8. Charles Thayer, the U.S. embassy official, recalled, “a good dinner at the Metropol or the Medved Restaurant was cheap enough.” Thayer, Bears in the Caviar, 106.
183. Martelli, Italy Against the World; Hardie, Abyssinian Crisis; Robertson, Mussolini as Empire Builder; Strang, Collision of Empires. See also Durand, Crazy Campaign.
184. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 545 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 89, l. 2–2ob.: Sept. 2, 1935). The Abyssinian invasion also did not inhibit Soviet participation in Milan’s first international air show (Oct. 12–28, 1935), where the Soviets exhibited their well-designed Il-15 biplane, which impressed as best in show. Their Il-16, a low-wing cantilever monoplane, was then the fastest fighter in the world, but the international audience dismissed its performance data as too good to be true. 1 Salone Internazionale Aeronautico; Ziemke, Red Army, 193. The story would make the rounds that Stalin mischievously ordered one of his NKVD attendants to get Ras Kasa—a tribal leader in the resistance to Italian forces—on the phone, and when the operative returned distraught, unable to connect to the mountain Ethiopian, Stalin was said to have replied, “And you are still working in security?” Gromyko, Memoirs, 103 (no citation).
