Stalin полностью

43. On April 26, 1935, the politburo in Moscow had discussed Lakoba’s health, and directed him to observe physicians’ instructions and enter the Kremlin hospital. The Kremlin doctors had recommended that Lakoba cut his workday down to four hours for a few weeks, observe a proper diet (including reducing meat consumption), refrain from smoking and drinking alcohol, engage in physical therapy, and apply cream and ointments. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 23–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 971, l. 12); Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–7, Sept. 16, 1935.

44. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 97, l. 215: Dec. 29, 1936).

45. Pravda reported the death that day (Dec. 29).

46. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 624.

47. This started with Mgaloblishvili, whom Beria had chosen to lead the honor guard accompanying Lakoba’s casket home from Tblisi and who was arrested for “ties.” Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 48–9. The story goes that Beria’s men beat Sarie to testify that Lakoba had wanted to sell Abkhazia to Turkey; she evidently refused, even when they beat her fourteen-year-old son Rauf in front of her. She was said to have died of torture in her cell. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 495–6.

48. Coincidentally or not, after Lakoba’s demise, Stalin would not return to the Caucasus on a holiday for nine years. In 1937, the alphabet for writing the Abkhaz language would be changed to Georgian. On Dec. 16, 1936, the Abkhaz party bureau discussed an order to switch from the Latin to the Georgian alphabet (when elsewhere in the Union the Latin alphabet was being replaced by Cyrillic); all-new printing presses and typewriters would be required. Georgian peasants received land grants to settle on the Abkhaz coast, and Abkhaz language radio broadcasts were discontinued. Marykhuba, Moskovskie arkhivnye, 9 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 105, l. 16–7); Abkhazia, 4. (The Abkhaz would switch to Cyrillic in 1954.)

49. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 64 (Aug. 4, 1937), 67–8 (Aug. 16, 1937), 69–70 (Aug. 16, 1937).

50. Beria promised documentation if necessary to testify to the supervision of lower level party organizations. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 29–30.

51. Mlechin, KGB, 199 (diary of Alexander G. Solovyov).

52. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 5), 85 (testimony of Malik Dotsenko, citing Litvin).

53. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 5), 86–7. (Yezhov’s holiday was 1931–2.) Khrushchev recalled going out with Malenkov to Yezhov’s Meshcherino dacha and finding Beria there. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 180.

54. Beria raised his own status by noting that “Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are objects of especially heightened work of the imperialist powers”—a self-award of carte blanche to go after his enemies. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1995, no. 5–6): 8–13.

55. Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1989, no. 7), 86 (Goglidze).

56. Nekrasov, Beria, 367.

57. In Sept. 1937, Orakhelashvili was said to have testified: “In my presence, in Sergo Orjonikidze’s apartment, Beso Lominadze, after a number of counterrevolutionary slurs aimed at the party leadership, made an exceptionally insulting and hooliganistic slur against comrade Stalin. To my surprise, in response to this counterrevolutionary audacity by Lominadze, Orjonikidze, smiling, turned to me and said, ‘Have a look at him!’ And continued to conduct the conversation with Lominadze in a calm tone . . . In general I have to say that the parlor in Sergo Orjonikidze’s apartment and, on days off, at his dacha (first in Volysnkoe, then in Sosnovka) was a frequent meeting place for members of our counterrevolutionary organization, which, while waiting for Seergo Orjonikidze to arrive, conducted the most candid counterrevolutionary conversations, which continued right on after Orjonikidze himself showed up.” Nekrasov, Beria, 78. See also Knight, Beria, 83. As her husband had his eyes gouged out and eardrums perforated, Orakhelashvili’s wife, Maria, Georgia’s commissar of enlightenment, was compelled to watch.

58. Ginzburg, “O gibeli Sergo Ordzhonikidze,” 91–2. Beria’s minion Goglidze would later admit the obvious: such “testimony” compromising Orjonikidze had been intended to please Stalin. Nekrasov, Beria, 360; Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1991, no. 1), 55; Nekrasov, Beria, 378–9.

59. At the Pyatakov trial Mdivani was accused of plotting to kill Yezhov and Beria. Report of Court Proceedings, 74. Toroshelidze, former head of the Georgian Affiliate of the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin, was also arrested in Oct. 1936.