Stalin полностью

265. The demolition had taken place on Dec. 5, 1931. Conceived in the wake of the defeat of Napoleon by Alexander I, it had been consecrated in 1883 on the day Alexander III had been crowned. Its valuable gold (half a ton from the cupola alone) was removed before demolition, whereas its marble went into the Moscow metro construction. Once the rubble was cleared, the crater was supposed to see erection of a grandiose Palace of Soviets designed by Boris Yofan, who sketched a neoclassical stepped colossus of porphyry, marble, and jasper, which aimed to be taller than the Eiffel Tower, at more than 1,300 feet, topped by a 260-foot statue of Lenin, making it resemble a pedestal. Construction of even the foundation was delayed by the grandiosity, and would finally commence in 1937, with the foundation completed in 1939, but nothing else after that. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 827, l. 9 (May 25, 1931); d. 828, l. 17 (June 5); Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 158 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 95–7: Molotov to Yenukidze, Aug. 24, 1931); Lebedeva, “O snose khrama Khrista Spasitelia,” 14; Iofan, “Dvorets s”ezdov SSSR.” See also Tarkhanov and Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era; Paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin. Before the revolution, Moscow counted 460 Orthodox churches; already by Jan. 1, 1933, this stood at perhaps 100.

266. Arfon Rees correctly noted that “the significant aspect of Stalinist ideology was not the extent to which it adjusted to a nationalist perspective . . . but the extent to which . . . a Marxist-Leninist perspective, modified over time, remained the dominant ideology.” Rees, “Stalin and Russian Nationalism,” 102–3. Carr wrongly called Russian nationalism “the only political creed which moved [Stalin] at all deeply.” Carr, Russian Revolution, 170.

267. “‘Neizmennyi drug’—eto obiazyvaet . . . : pis’ma O. I. Sobalevoi-Mikhal’tsevoi,” 113 (APRF, f. 345, op. 34 1, d. 2731118, l. 7149: Dec. 10, 1935); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 279–80. The writers’ union was a trade union and its members wrote to management seeking all manner of material help. Even some of the published writers said they could not make a living and requested additional employment (as editors or reviewers). Osip Mandelstam wrote from internal exile in 1936 to the poet and union management official Nikolai Tikhonov, “I am seriously ill, abandoned by everyone and destitute . . . I cannot translate either, because I have become very weak, and even the worry about my verse, which I cannot lay aside, is costing me palpitations.” Antipina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 12–3 (citing RGALI, f. 631, op. 15, d. 637, l. 136), 13–21.

268. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 64 (citing TsAODM, f. 3, op. 50, d. 75, l. 38).

269. The censor organ was organized into four sectors: political-economic, artistic, agricultural, and regional (or provincial). In late 1935, according to a party commission probe, the political-economic sector did not have even a single economist, and the artistic sector lacked anyone with specialized arts training. “And if the situation with the censor in the center is blatantly unsatisfactory,” the commission report concluded, “in locales, and especially in the counties, it is utterly catastrophic.” Zhuravlev, Obshchestvo i vlast’, 114–6. Locally, almost every member of the censor staff had to work other jobs concurrently.

270. Shcherbakov composed a long analysis of the situation in literature (Jan. 2, 1936), professing optimism about recent and forthcoming literary works, but complaining that his deputy Stavsky was going behind his back (something Stalin encouraged). Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 284–8 (RGASPI, f. 88, op. 1, d. 474, l. 1–8). Shcherbakov had sent two memoranda to Stalin, Kaganovich, and Yezhov about a struggle to the death of “two camps” inside the underperforming Moscow Art Theater, “‘Priniat’ srochnnye mery k ozdorovleniiu’: 122–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 35, d. 24, l. 10–1: Aug. 3, 1935), 125–6 (l. 18–21: Sept. 17), 131–2 (l. 33–4); Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 265–6, 267–9, 288–9, 327–31 (APRF, f. 3, op. 35, d. 24, l. 45–51: Oct. 11, 1936).