173. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 59 (March 16, 1937). Four days later, in the presence of Dimitrov, Stalin told the Spanish writers Rafael Alberti and María-Teresa Léonon that “the people and the whole world must be told the truth—the Spanish people are in no condition now to bring about a proletarian revolution—the internal and especially the international situation do not favor it.” Stalin added that “victory in Spain will loosen fascism’s hold in Italy and Germany. Communist and socialist forces must join forces—they now share the same basic aims—a democratic republic.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 60–1 (March 20, 1937). Dimitrov did not relent: On March 23, he provided Stalin with a report by a Bulgarian Comintern official who had spent two months in Spain. “The ability of the government to govern is very limited . . . Everyone, the broad popular masses, feels the need for a strong government, a government capable of ruling . . . The fundamental source of weakness of the government is that it lacks . . . a state apparatus.” Stalin may well have agreed with this assessment, but he still refrained from having the Communists in Spain seize power. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 51–8.
174. Kaganovich to Orjonikidze, Sept. 30, 1936: Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politburo, 149.
175. Spain’s Communist party is alleged to have grown to 400,000 at its peak. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 506–7.
176. Communist agents could not fail to learn of these probes. Payne, Spanish Revolution, 271–2. On April 15, 1937, a Comintern representative in the Republican camp wrote to Stalin urging him to break completely with Largo Caballero. Radosh et al., Spain Betrayed, 184–95.
177. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 58 (March 14, 1937).
178. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 221 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 151), versus Berzin’s report: 219 (l. 152). Berzin blamed the weak artillery support and weak offensive capabilities of the blue infantry, and the recent strengthening of the whites as well as the advantageous geography seized by them.
179. Southworth, Guernica, Guernica. Preston, Franco, 243–7. The article was by George Steer, South African born, who had written authoritatively about the Italian atrocities in the Abyssinian War. Steer would be killed in Burma in 1945. A Pablo Picasso canvas, an 11 x 25 foot mural commissioned by the Republican government for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, was completed already by mid-June and exhibited in July; it depicts the intense suffering of people, animals, and buildings subjected to violence.
180. Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 30–3. Stalin could have had the “information” delivered into the hands of the Japanese in Warsaw, in order to have it “leaked” back through foreign channels, perhaps to persuade Voroshilov.
181. Maclean, Escape to Adventure, 15; Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 227–8; Conquest, Reassessment, 214. Unusually, on April 28, 1937, Izvestiya issued a correction to a photo caption published the previous day: “Comrade Stalin the organizer of the strike of Tiflis railroad workers in 1902.” The newspaper had to admit that at the time Stalin was imprisoned in Batum. It seems Stalin himself, or his aide, conveyed to the newspaper editor that the caption was “an utter misunderstanding from the point of view of historical truth.” Izvestiia, April 27 and April 28, 1937.
182. Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 178; “Delo on tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi organizatsii’ v Krasno armii,” 46–7 (S. P. Uritsky); Cristiani and Mikhaleva, Le repressioni, 254, 256 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1047, l. 70). Stalin canceled the annual reception at the Kremlin Grand Palace for graduates of military academies.
183. Sharapov, Naum Eitingon, 57.
184. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 628–45.
185. Tatiana Tess, in Efimov, Mikhail Koltsov, 325.
186. S. Prokofeva and N. Godon, in Efimov, Mikhail Kol’tsov, 285, 384. The Embankment was officially known as Bersenevskaya. Koltsov previously lived on Bolshaya Dmitrovka. Of the fifty-six or so Central Committee members and candidates who had apartments in the House on the Embankment, forty-five would be arrested. Many residents, like Koltsov, were not Central Committee members.
187. Efimov, Mikhail Koltsov, 26–135 (at 103, 94–5). Koltsov had been in the Little Corner on Dec. 9, 1935, for twenty minutes, one-on-one. Na prieme, 174.
