289. Ilf and Petrov were in the United States Sept. 19, 1935, to Jan. 22, 1936, and accredited as correspondents of Pravda. Ilf, with his Leica, took a wealth of photographs, which he and Petrov published along with eleven light, satirical installments about their travels in the illustrated mass magazine Ogonyok. They found ordinary America provincial and ignorant of the outside world. Ilf and Petrov, Odnoetazhnaia Amerika; Wolf, Ilf and Petrov’s Road Trip, 136 (quotation); Ilf and Petrov, “Amerikanskie fotografii”; Rodchenko, “Amerikanskie fotograiia Il’ia Il’fa.”; Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 1050–1 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 829, l. 94–6).
290. These data were for Jan. 1, 1937. Zemskov, “GULAG,” 11 (GARF, f. 9401, op. 1, d. 4157, l. 201–5), reproduced in Davies et al., Years of Progress, 432. Mikoyan had pushed for the construction of large meat factories in Moscow, Leningrad, Orsk, and Semipalatinsk, on the model of Chicago slaughterhouses, and Stalin backed him. The machinery was to be imported from Germany, the labor to come from the Gulag. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 73 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 1, d. 135, l. 1–2).
291. Yagoda sent a directive (April 2, 1936) to all camp commandants demanding they combat insect infestation, wash barrack floors and clothes, reduce the interminable queues and food poisonings at mess halls, and ensure that forced laborers, especially skilled ones, were employed properly. Kokurin and Petrov, “Gulag,” 113–7. The regime was cutting costs and mortality statistics with mass releases of invalids and the chronically ill, and incentivizing productivity with early release of inmates who earned the designation “shock worker.”
292. From inception in 1932 through 1941, Dalstroi would produce 430 tons of pure gold. Shirokov, Dal’stro, 141 (citing GAMO, f. R-23ss, op. 1, d. 5, l. 14–5); Khlusov, Ekonomika Gulaga, 74–7 (GARF, f. 5446, op. 20a, d. 9496, l. 2–3, 6, 58: Oct. 30, 1937). The steep rise in gold production enabled the USSR to export 411 gold rubles’ worth of precious metals between 1932 and 1936. Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 610.
293. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 67 (TsA FSB, f. 8os, op. 1, d. 80, l. 39, 51). Yagoda also noted that the ranks of the regular police in 1935 were still only half the total in 1913 (albeit for a somewhat smaller country: no Poland, Baltic states, or Bessarabia). Shearer, “Social Disorder, Mass Repression,” 518 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 904, l. 2–14).
294. Paris Midi, Feb. 28, 1936. This was only Hitler’s second interview for the French press, and the first since fall 1933. For a detailed chronology of Nazi foreign policy through 1938, see Jacobsen, Nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik, 765–841.
295. DBFP, 2nd series, XVI: 73–7 (Feb. 28, 1936); Toynbee, Acquaintances, 279–82; Medlicott, Britain and Germany, 24 (C1814/4/18 FO 371/19891). Toynbee was director of studies at Chatham House, at Balliol College, Oxford University, from 1924. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee. Surits, the Soviet envoy, desperately scoured the German press for any lessening of hostility and wrote to Moscow (late Feb. 1936) that it was widely believed in the diplomatic corps “that German military circles continue to follow a special line in German policy toward the Soviet Union.” Abramov, “Osobaia missiia Davida Kandelaki,” 149, (citing AVP RF, f. 082, op. 19, pap. 83, d. 4, l. 36).
296. Ambassador von Moltke reported that Göring’s “declaration was received with obvious satisfaction.” DGFP, series C, IV: 1201–2 (Feb. 26, 1936).
297. Shillony, Revolt in Japan; Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 244–300.
298. Trotsky would seize upon the Roy Howard interview (“the export of revolution is nonsense”) to reassert his “gravedigger” portrait of Stalin. Revolution Betrayed, 186.
299. New York World Telegram, March 4, 1936; Pravda, March 5, 1936, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 116–31. In mid-March 1936, returning from a trip through Western Europe, Uborevičius told a gathering of the Communist Youth League in the Western province that he expected war in the Far East “at any moment” and that “in this year or the next, or in two to three years, it’s unavoidable that we will have an encounter with German fascism. . . . The fascists cannot not unleash war. Without war they cannot long exist.” “Dva ochaga opasnosti: vystupeniie komanduiushchego Belorusskim voennym okrugom komandarma 1 ranga I. P. Uborevicha na soveshchanii v Zapadnom obkome VLKSM v 1936 g.” See also Erickson, Soviet High Command, 397–400.
