331. The British, despite everything, were still trying to restart negotiations for an air-force arms limitation agreement with Germany. The Italians had mobilized half a million men and lost just 3,000 killed. On May 5 Italian troops took Addis Adaba. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy, 396–7. Ethiopia never officially surrendered. On June 18, 1936, Britain would end the limited economic sanctions imposed in 1935. The Soviet Union, along with China, the United States, and three others, would not recognize Italy’s annexation. Italy would use far more aerial bombing and chemical weapons in Ethiopia after the nine-month war of conquest, during the period of “rule.”
332. Medlicott, Britain and Germany, 26–7 (citing C3662–3/4/18 FO 371/19905). The remark is absent from the German record: DGFP, series C, V: 547–9 (May 14).
333. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, I: 363 (citing U.S., 1936, I: 300–1).
334. Sats, Sketches from My Life, 210–27. Attendance at opening night “was poor,” the composer lamented to himself, and it “failed to attract much attention”—a problem of venue. Prokofiev, Autobiography, 89.
335. Morrison, People’s Artist, 29–49. See also Morrison, Sergey Prokofiev and His World. Prokofyev would compose a series of “mass songs” (op. 66, 79, 89), adapting the lyrics of poets who were in favor, and in 1939 the oratorio Zdravitsa or Hail to Stalin (op. 85).
336. The orchestra portrayed the decadent world that the woman leaves behind, a trope borrowed from Chaplin’s Modern Times. A black doll was used for the infant son. During the filming of Marion Dixon’s escape from the American troupe, Orlova tripped on the slag under the railroad tracks, ripping her stockings and skirt and bloodying her knees. She got up and shouted, “Is the baby alive?” The film’s long-gestating appearance coincided with the opening of an outdoor cinema in Moscow’s Gorky Park called “Giant,” which had a three-story screen and a 400-watt imported sound system (instead of the usual Soviet-made 8–10 watts), and which could hold up to 20,000 people on wooden benches. Salys, Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov, 5, 123–200; Taylor, “Illusion of Happiness”; Kushnirov, Svetlyi put´, 145–6; Malkov, “Charlie Chaplin i Dunaevskii.”
337. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 184–200.
338. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 829, l. 84–5; Pyr’ev, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, I: 74–5. Stalin, after previewing the film (Feb. 28), had introduced a new denouement whereby Anna learns of the villain’s dark past and turns a gun on him, at which point the local party chief tells us the villain had killed the Communist Youth League activist and is a foreign spy, and the NKVD escort him away. The film would be shown in the United States beginning in July. After the film, Pyryev was suspended by Mosfilm, for reasons that are unclear, but managed to relocate to Ukraine. Iurenev, introduction to Ivan Pyr’ev v zhizni i na ekrane, at 32.
339. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 19, l. 78 (Feb. 27, 1936); “O tak nazyvaemom ‘antissovetskom ob’edinennomn Trotskistsko-Zinov’evskom tsentre,” 83 (Léopold, March 25, 1936); no. 9: 35 (Vyshinsky’s comment to Stalin on Yagoda’s letter, March 31).
340. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 753 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 223, l. 1–2: April 29, 1936). The ones found with Trotsky’s Bulletin were Eduard Goltsman and A. N. Safonova.
341. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 756 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 224, l. 130); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 19, l. 172.
342. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 757–63 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 225, l. 71–86).
343. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 572, l. 34ob.–35; APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 150, l. 129; Davies et al., Years of Progress, 301–2.
344. Pravda, June 5, 1936.
345. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 231–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 572, l. 67–73).
346. Gorky visited his son’s grave on May 27, 1936. Stalin managed to see Gorky on June 8 and June 12. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 420 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 720, l. 121); Rossiiskaia gazeta, June 17, 2011. Mekhlis had written to Stalin (May 27) that Gorky had submitted an article for Pravda, “The History of the Young Person in the 19th Century,” which he judged full of philosophical issues that “raise doubts.” Stalin ordered Mekhlis to publish the essay without changes. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 418 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 720, l. 119).
347. Pravda, June 21, 1936; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 310 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 978, l. 55); Yedlin, Maxim Gorky, 214.
