Stalin полностью

32. In Georgia between 1932 and 1936, the combined print run of all writings by Marx—in both Russian and Georgian—had totaled 20,000; those of Lenin, 200,000; those of Stalin, 696,000; those of Beria, 430,000. Toptygin, Neizvestnyi Beriia, 41. Beria’s Lado Ketskhoveli (1937), which celebrated Stalin’s martyred mentor in Marxism, was evidently plagiarized from the manuscript of L. Shengelaya, a copy of which had entered the Tiflis Affiliate of the Marxism-Leninism Institute in Sept. 1935. Here, too, Beria emulated the master. Sukharev, “Litsedeistvo,” 112 (citing PA IIP pri TsK KPSS, f. 8, op. 1, d. 39, l. 23).

33. After Papuliya’s arrest, Orjonikidze summoned the Azerbaijan party boss Bagirov to Kislovodsk. “Orjonikidze drilled me about Beria, and spoke of him very negatively,” Bagirov would later testify. “In particular, Orjonikidze said that he couldn’t believe in the guilt of his brother Papuliya . . . Beria learned through his own people that Orjonikidze had summoned me to Kislovodsk, and he asked me the reasons for it over the telephone.” Shariya would testify: “I knew that on the surface Beria thought well of Orjonikidze, but in fact he said all manner of despicable things about him to his circle of confidants.” Goglidze would testify: “Beria in my presence and that of others made sharp, deprecatory comments about Sergo Orjonikidze . . . I formed the impression that Beria said that as a result of some personal grudge against Orjonikidze and set others against him.” Nekrasov, Beria, 360; Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina,” 1991, no. 1: 50.

34. Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 2–26 (speech to Sukhum city soviet, Jan. 1, 1936). Pravda on March 4, 1936, celebrated fifteen years of Soviet power in Abkhazia with a front-page photo of Lakoba, alongside Stalin, Orjonikidze, and Mikoyan, from 1927, which was said to have come from Stalin’s private collection. No functionary—especially Beria—could miss a Kremlinological signal so immense, and for a place so small, a mere autonomous republic. Lakoba did not get to claim an article himself; instead, an article (“Itogi bor’ba i pobed”) was printed under the byline of Agrba, Abkhaz party secretary (Pravda was a party paper). In 1935 or 1936 Beria moved from an apartment building to a mansion at Machabeli St. 11. He also used a white stucco villa in Gagra, near Stalin’s villa. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 511–2 .

35. An opportunity for Beria’s pressure came with the suicide, in 1935 or 1936, of the daughter of the foreign trade commissar Rosenholtz at Lakoba’s dacha in Gagra. At the time Beria was at his own dacha in Gagra, and there was a suspicion he had had sexual intercourse with her. In fact, she had sexual relations that day, but earlier, in the city, at the hotel where she was staying. In Gagra by invitation, she had supper with the host and others, then retired for the night and shot herself with one of Lakoba’s guns. Beria either could not manage or chose not to mount a case against Lakoba. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 47–8.

36. Abbas-ogly, Ne mogu zabyt’; Abbas-ogly, Moia Abkhaziia, moia sud’ba.

37. Musto, “Pistolet ili iad?”: http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2004/musto_yad.html. Once, it was said, in 1935, when Beria had used foul language in the presence of women, Mikhail Lakoba, Nestor’s half-brother, had put a Brauning to Beria’s temple. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 294 (no citation).

38. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 74.

39. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 67. See also the hearsay in reminiscences by Musto Dkhikhasvili, “Konkurenty” (http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2004/musto_konkur.html). Musto writes that he did not attend the funeral in protest; photos show him as a pallbearer. Dimitrov’s diary notes (Dec. 12, 1936) “with Lakoba and his wife.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 41.

40. Lakoba had to obtain formal permission from the local party bureau to travel to Tiflis at Beria’s summons; permission was granted by telephone poll to him and M. Gobechiya on Dec. 25, 1936. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 97, l. 217–8).

41. By some accounts, Anastas Engelov, the Abkhaz plenipotentiary in Tblisi, assisted Lakoba in the walk to the hotel because Lakoba’s driver, as instructed, was waiting back at the hotel. Engelov would be executed in connection with the Nov. 1937 trial of Lakoba-ites.

42. Minchenok, “Nestor i ten’.” Beria arrived at the hotel with South Caucasus NKVD chief Goglidze and, evidently, German Mgaloblishvili, chairman of the Georgian Council of People’s Commissars. (Mgaloblishvili might have attended the theater with Lakoba and been at the hotel already.) Two Georgian NKVD operatives were already on the scene (including Kobulov), where the deceased Lakoba lay on the bed.