Stalin полностью

107. Overall in Georgia, nearly 20,000 new members would join the party between Nov. 1936 and March 1939. Almost half were children of functionaries. XVIII s”ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunsticheskoi partii (b), 577.

108. Among the targets were immigrants to Armenia: more than 40,000 ethnic Armenians had returned from Asia and Europe in the period 1921–1936, and many now met a grim fate. Melkonian, “Repressions in 1930s Soviet Armenia.” The decapitation at the top was roughly similar in Azerbaijan, under Bagirov: 22 people’s commissars, 49 county party secretaries, 29 chairmen of local soviet executive committees, 57 directors of factories, 95 engineers, 110 military men, 207 trade unionists, and 8 professors were arrested and, in the majority of cases, executed. And that was just in 1937. Ismailov, “1937.” See also Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Azerbaidzhana.

109. Tepliakov, Mashina terrora, 599.

110. Stephan, “‘Cleansing’ the Soviet Far East,” 51–3. The Soviet Far East was the fastest-growing region in terms of population in the Russian republic, doubling between 1926 and 1939. Stephan, Russian Far East, 185.

111. In 1938, 98 percent of the troika sentences in Ukraine were death; in Georgia, 68 percent. Georgia was not a land of exile or giant Gulag camps with which to pad or exceed quotas. It was, however, rich in members of former non-Bolshevik parties. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 55, 77.

112. Beria wrote to Stalin and Molotov seeking authorization to shut down the prestigious Sukhum Subtropical Institute and instead to transform a department at Georgia’s Agricultural Institute into the new de facto all-Union institution for training subtropical agronomists. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 36–7 (April 21, 1937). The Abkhazia Subtropical institute, as it had originally been known, had been opened in 1926 and six years later was designated an all-Union Institute. Anchbadze et al., Istoriia Abkhazskoi ASSR, 155; Blauvelt, “‘From Words to Action!,’” 252.

113. Abkhazskaia oblastnaia organizatsiia, 25–56.

114. Grdzelidze, Mezhnatsional’noe obshchenie, 102–3. Ethnic Abkhaz in the Communist party of Abkhazia fell from 28.3 to 18.5 percent over a single year (1929–30); the high water mark thereafter was 21.8 percent in 1936. In 1939, Abkhaz were down to just over 15 percent in their own party.

115. Ajarians had been designated “Muslim Georgians” under the tsars. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 104–5; Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 67–8 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 2–I otdel, f. 14, op. 11, d. 152, l. 169, 188: Jan. 5, 1937). Beria would sacrifice the boss of the Abkhaz NKVD, Grigory Pauchiliya (b. 1904), an ethnic Georgian whom he had promoted from the NKVD sports team Dynamo.

116. Iskanderov, Ocherki, 540–3. Bagirov initially had sought to impose limits. “Some people are not against demonstrating their ‘orthodoxy’ by firing from work the wives of those arrested, sisters-in-law, relatives,” he told a congress of soviets in Azerbaijan in March 1937. “Pardon me, please, this is not correct. This means arousing greater dissatisfaction, greater anger. This means increasing the number of enemies of Soviet power. Where are they supposed to go? We cannot leave them to starve.” Ismailov, Istoria “bol’shogo terora,” 72–3 (citing APD UDP AR, f. 1, op. 88, d. 137, l. 1), 73–4 (l. 8–9; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 20, l. 131–2), 92–3 (citing APD UDP AR, f. 1, op. 77, d. 101, l. 98).

117. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 380 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 57, l. 99).

118. Ismailov, Istoria “bol’shogo terora,” 145–8 (citing APD UDP AR, f. 1, op. 88, d. 137, l. 1), 73–4 (l. 8–9; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 20, l. 131–2).

119. For some, Khrushchev’s rise presented a mystery. “I took part in the Moscow city party committee meeting, at which we were given instructions . . . Khrushchev’s speech was confused and chaotic,” Aleksandr Solovyov had recorded in his diary (Dec. 14, 1931). “It is incomprehensible how he got to that position, obtuse and narrow minded as he is.” On Jan. 28, 1932, Solovyov privately added following Khrushchev’s promotion: “I am, like many others, astonished at Khrushchev’s rapid rise. He did very badly in his studies at the Industrial Academy. But he has won the sympathy of his classmates . . . He is an incredibly obtuse man. And a frightful bootlicker.” Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia, IV: 170–1.