188. The Kremlin audience took place on April 15, after which Koltsov received a coveted invitation to the 1937 May Day reception at the St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Place, where he was toasted by Voroshilov. On May 14, Stalin again received Koltsov in the Little Corner for one hour, alone. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 215 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 127, l. 27); Na prieme, 207, 209. Koltsov’s Spanish Diary picks up again on May 23, on a train from Italy to Bilbao.
189. Orlov, the Soviet station chief in Spain, who was close to Koltsov, would comment, “The NKVD is like a gigantic mailbox, into which any irresponsible person may drop an irresponsible invention.” Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 187–8; Orlov, Secret History, 187–8.
190. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 233 (APRF, f. 3, op. 53, d. 471, l. 73–4), 241 (op. 65, d. 224, l. 32), 242 (l. 30), 268, 276 (l. 115, 117–9), 249–52 (op. 53, d. 471, l. 3–4, 5, 75), 298–9 (d. 472, l. 3–4).
191. Volodarsky, Stalin’s Agent, 205.
192. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 165–8, 454n73, 454n75 (citing ASVRR, file 5581, I: 38, 45). See also Philby’s obfuscatory memoir: Silent War, 17.
193. Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 114. (Later Grigulevich would be one of many tapped to assassinate Trotsky in Mexico.) Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 193; “V Madride ia rukovodil gruppoi” (Grigulevich interview); Primakov, Ocherki, III: 148–54.
194. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 153. With Orlov, Girgulevich participated in the kidnapping and murder of Nin.
195. Kol’tsov, “Fashistsko-shpionskaia rabota ispanskikh trotskistov.” On the forgery: Izvestiia, Nov. 26, 1992.
196. Sharapov, Naum Eitingon, 53. See also Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 291–2.
197. “It was a successful piece of disinformation reported directly to Stalin by Yezhov.” Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 44–5.
198. A Soviet military intelligence report had concluded that the “Trotskyite” and anarchist strongholds in Spain had to be broken. Radosh et al., Spain Betrayed, 129–33 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 960, l. 251–77: Nikonov, Feb. 20, 1937).
199. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 9. Orwell would complete his Homage to Catalonia in Jan. 1938, but his publisher, Victor Gollancz, who controlled the Left Book Club, would reject it—unseen. (The Left Book Club instead published pro-Soviet material on Spain.) But Frederic Warburg published Homage to Catalonia in a print run of 1,500, and managed to sell 800. Warburg also published Souvarine’s Stalin and Gide’s Back from the USSR. Arthur Koestler, who went to Spain in 1936 as a correspondent for Münzenberg media, recalls how the latter shouted at him concerning his manuscript about Spain, “Too weak. Too objective. Hit them! Tell the world how they run over their prisoners with tanks, how they pour petrol over them and burn them alive. Make the world gasp with horror. Hammer it into their heads. Make them wake up.” Koestler wrote in the published book: “If those who have at their command printing machines and printer’s ink for the expression of their opinions, remain neutral and objective in the face of such bestiality, then Europe is lost.” Koestler, Spanish Testament, 177; Koestler, Invisible Writing, 333.
200. Herbert, Paris 1937. Both Speer and Yofan won gold medals; Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period, 179–87.
201. Petrov, Stroitel’stvo politorganov, 224, 237–8; Petrov, Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 298; Erickson, Soviet High Command (3rd ed.), 460.
202. “Delo o tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi organizatsii’ v Krasnoi armii,” 47–8; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 678 (Aleksandr Avseevich, 1962); Pravda, April 29, 1988 (B. Viktorov). Primakov (a Bolshevik since 1914) had served as military attaché in Afghanistan (1927–29) and then Japan (1930); in 1928 he had been forced to declare a break with the Trotskyites. Zdanovich, Organy, 320 (citing TsA FSB, delo R-9000, t. 4, l. 53).
203. “Delo o tak nazyvaemoi ‘antisovetskoi trotskistskoi organizatsii’ v Krasnoi armii,” 46; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvennaia, XIII (2–1): 12. Also on May 10, 1937, the office of political commissar was reinstated (it had been abolished in 1934).
204. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 41; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 182; Na prieme, 209; Viktor A. Aleksandrov, Delo Tukhachevskogo.
