Stalin полностью

28. Sukhanovka had been retrofitted as a prison in 1931, and in late 1938 into early 1939 would be expanded for “especially dangerous enemies of the people.” Golovkova, Sukhanosvakia tiur’ma; GARF. f. 5446, op. 22a, d. 125, l. 5.

29. Papkov, Stalinskii terror v Sibiri, 230–1. In 1938, for example, the party boss of Karelia would tell Yezhov that because local prisons were already overflowing, he was unable to arrest more than a thousand “enemies.” Takala, “Natsional’nye operatsii,” 196–7. See also Joyce, “Soviet Penal System,” 90–115.

30. Gur’ianov, Repressii protiv poliakov, 30. As Frinovsky traveled by train in July 1938 through regions that had sent arrest albums to Moscow, he and his aides, having brought the overdue paperwork, rendered decisions on the train and dropped them off as they passed through. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 323.

31. The anti-terrorist machinery that had been introduced on the day of the Kirov murder in the form of a USSR Central Executive Committee decree (Dec. 1, 1934), had been formally approved nine days later by the RSFSR Central Executive Committee and the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars, but the anti-terrorism laws were not finalized until Feb. 1936, entered into the RSFSR criminal code via an added 18th chapter (“On the investigation and hearing of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against Soviet power”). Istoriia zakonodatel’stva SSSR i RSFSR po ugolovnomu protsessu, 53. These procedures were extended to wrecking and diversionary acts on Sept. 14, 1937. On the confusion, see Scott, Behind the Urals, 194.

32. Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie leninskikh printsipov,” 19. In Yerevan in Sept. 1937, Malenkov, Mikoyan, and Beria, overseeing a regional party plenum, turned the sitting party bosses over to the NKVD and decided upon the new first, second, and third party secretaries for Armenia, sending a proposal to Stalin and Molotov in Moscow. Stalin approved “if the plenum of the Central Committee of Armenia does not have any doubts regarding these candidates.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 19, d. 62, l. 2, 4; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 135, l. 65–65ob. Although this could have been a pose of false party democracy, he could hardly know or remember everyone even in the nomenklatura. On Yevdokimov’s telegrammed request to arrest Amatouni Amatouni [Vardapetyan] Stalin had written, “Who is this Amatouni? Where does he work?” (Amatouni was the party boss in Armenia and among the gaggle of high officials arrested there on Sept. 23.) Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlneie, 68 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 65, l. 24), 379–80 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 332, l. 43). Amatouni was executed on July 28, 1938, from a long list of names approved by Stalin. N. P. Mironov, “Vosstanovlenie i razvitie leninskikh printsipov sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti (1953–1963 gg.),” 19.

33. Some 43,000 people are on the lists; the USSR military collegium handed down 14,732 sentences in 1937 and 24,435 in 1938, a little more than 39,000 people total. An example of someone who survived is Ya. Yelkovich of the Altai, who was on two lists. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 296. Iakushev, Stalinskie rasstrel’nye spiski.

34. As of June 1941, 1,500 telegrams and 33,000 thousand letters were being sent abroad from the Soviet Union and 1,000 telegrams and 31,000 letters were arriving from abroad every day. Most of that was likely official business, but not all. The censors were requesting a vast increase in personnel. Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 85–6 (GARF, f. R-9425, op. 1, d. 19, l. 153–4).

35. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 280–354.

36. Chegodaev, “Iz vospominanii.”

37. Many of the Soviet institutions and instruments of state power had been invented in expropriations of property and physical elimination of class enemies, and then reinvented or vastly expanded in the forced collectivization of the peasantry. Barrington Moore offered a general theory of the state as a reflection of its handling of the peasantry, but without adequately addressing the specifics of the Soviet case. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. See also van Atta, “USSR as a ‘Weak State.’” Von Atta, like others, missed how Stalin’s regime created its own society, which contributed immensely to state capacity.