262. “You’re wrong to talk about famine and penury abroad, because they write to me that everything there is cheaper than here and they send money,” one woman in Vologda, Stalin’s former place of internal exile, observed in 1937 in response to party agitation. Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 68–9 (citing BOANPI, f. 1858, op. 2, d. 940, l. 56). A Sept. 1938 secret directive confirmed the institutions that could receive foreign literature, dividing them into three categories. Only those in the first category—the secretariat of the Council of People’s Commissars, the Central Committee, the Supreme Soviet, Pravda and Izvestiya editorial boards, the foreign affairs commissariat, the NKVD foreign department, TASS, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, leading members of foreign Communist parties, and foreign embassies—enjoyed unlimited privileges. Blium, Tsenzura v Sovetskom Soiuze, 279–80. Despite the tight control, the censor still ended up pulping 10 percent of the purchased foreign periodicals (which cost the state a quarter million gold rubles). In 1939, the USSR would import 2.36 million individual foreign publications (books, pamphlets, issues of periodicals); the censorship examined about one-quarter of the total, and 10 percent were again destroyed. Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 311, 326.
263. “The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper,” in the ironic words of Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Polish poet and aphorist, who had been born de Tusch-Letz in Habsburg Lemberg (Lwów) in 1909. Lec, Unkempt Thoughts.
264. Meerovich, “V narkomindele, 1922–1939: interv’iu s E. A. Gnedinym,” Pamiat’: istoricheskii sbornik [Paris], 1981, vyp. 5: 381.
265. Rittersporn, “Omnipresent Conspiracy,” 101–20; also found in Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, 99–115. See also Rittersporn, Anguish.
266. He added that “we junior officers knew that personally we ran no hazards.” Akhmedov, In and Out of Stalin’s GRU, 104.
267. For a detailed account of how the NKVD fabricated the case, see Cherushev, 1937 god. Stalin edited the copy, drafted by Mekhlis, following sessions in the Little Corner. Na prieme, 211–2; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 217–19 (APRF, f. 3. op. 24. d. 308. l. 78–83). Józef Unszlicht, although long out of the military, was arrested that day but not included in the military trial. He would be executed on July 28, 1938.
268. Pravda, June 9–13, 1937. An abridged Soviet version appeared as Razvedka i kontrrazvedka (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1938).
269. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 50; Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 194; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 688.
270. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 103 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d 1038, l. 188–9: letter, June 5).
271. Gorchakov, Ian Berzin, 113. Berzin would only last until Aug. 1, 1937.
272. One author has alleged that there was a “plot” by these military men, not to seize power, but to have Voroshilov removed, which provoked Stalin’s actions. Minakov, 1937. There is no evidence whatsoever for such a “plot” (as opposed to a wish). Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 17.
273. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 264–5. A facsimile of Tukhachevsky’s “confession” and a copy of the “plan of defeat” are in: “Pokazaniia marshala Tukhachevskogo.”
274. Trotsky had condemned Tukhachevsky’s idea of a Red-Army-led “revolution from abroad” (which the latter had applied unsuccessfully to Poland in 1920). See also Tukhachevsky’s militant contribution to Der bewaffnete Aufstand, 21, 23.
275. Rapoport and Alexeev, High Treason, 5–8. The street where Tukhachevsky met his death, formerly known as Nikolskaya, had been the location of his original Moscow apartment.
276. Jansen and Petrov, “Mass Terror and the Court.”
277. Lebedev, “M. N. Tukhachevskii i ‘voenno-fashistskii zagovor,’” 199.
278. Verevkin-Rakhal’skii, Moi 90 let, 193. Voroshilov’s diary for June 7 indicates that Stalin went back and forth on precisely who of those already arrested would be put on trial, and who would sit in the panel of judges. Deputy Commander of the Far Eastern Army Mikhail Sangursky, who was arrested June 1–2, 1937, appeared in Voroshilov’s June 7 order on the trial, but before June 11 was removed. Voroshilov had Berzin and Smirnov originally listed as judges but crossed them off. Kun, Stalin, 400–1 (facsimiles of the pages from Voroshilkov’s diary); “Prikaz narodnogo komissara oborony Soiuza SSR no. 072 (7 iiunia 1937 g.),” 46; Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 91, 379.
