267. Zolotarev,
269. Goldbstab complained to Stalin: “I am ready to yield this high honor if the artist Gelovani captures this genius of humanity better than I,” adding the names of many people who “openly told me that I convey your image more truthfully, sincerely, and softly.” Markova, “Litso vraga,” 98 (citing RGALI, f. 2456, op. 1, d. 345, l. 88).
270. Bernshtein, Mikhail Gelovani
271. Khrushchev,
272. Petrov, “Rodos.”
273. Rodos,
274. Mozokhin,
275. Tepliakov, “Sibir’” (citing testimony of L. F. Bashtakov, Jan. 1954); Sanina, “R. I. Eikhe.” Eihe had been transferred from Western Siberia to USSR commissar of agriculture in Oct. 1937 (replacing the arrested Mikhail Chernov) and was arrested April 29, 1938.
276. Gazarian, “Etno ne dolzhno povtorit’sia” (1989, no. 2), 63.
277. “I know him from 1923, when he was deputy chairman of the Cheka of Georgia,” Merkulov would write of Beria. “He was then all of twenty-four years old but that post already at that time did not satisfy him. He aimed higher. In general he considered all people beneath himself, especially those to whom he was subordinated.” Merkulov pointed out that Beria had studiously compiled a record of shortcomings everywhere in his domain, which he used to discredit officials who stood in his way around, and that he badmouthed other officials to his tight circle of subordinates, but when someone was powerful, Beria became obsequious. The second anyone fell under a cloud, however, Beria became rude. “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28); Merkulov to Khrushchev, re-sent to Malenkov, July 21, 1953), 96–104 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28: Merkulov to Malenkov, July 23).
278. Loginov,
279. Also on Oct. 22, 1938, the Far Eastern territory was subdivided into two provinces, and Stalin had Nikolai Pegov, a student at the Moscow Industrial Academy, sent as the new party boss of the chunk whose capital remained Khabarovsk. Pegov, whom Malenkov had placed on the shortlist of candidates to take over as first deputy USSR NKVD chief, was instructed to gather five hundred Communists from the Moscow party organization to bring with him; he barely managed to round up a few dozen, including his brother. “Our whole life then was illuminated by sunshine, joy, and happiness,” Pegov would recall. He became a member of the local troika responsible for the still ongoing conveyor-belt mass arrests. Pegov,
280. Blyukher died on Nov. 9, 1938. He would be convicted and sentenced to death posthumously, on March 10, 1939. Dushen’kin,
281. At the Sverdlovsk transit prison, Galina Serebryakova, whose husband, Sokolnikov, had been executed in the 1936 Trotskyite trial, was looking out upon a gaggle of fellow prisoners arrested for being “a member of the family of a traitor to the motherland,” when a companion nudged her and asked if she knew the identity of a tall, thinning woman a short distance away sitting on a sack of her belongings. She did not. “What? That’s Yekaterina Ivanovna Kalinina[-Lorberg], the wife of Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin . . . Yes, she herself. Her husband is our president.” Although married to Kalinina-Lorberg since 1906, Kalinin, since 1924, had essentially been living with his nanny-housekeeper, Alexandra Gorchakova. Serebryakova approached and told Kalinina to remain firm, for Stalin had been duped but would figure things out and release them all. Serebriakova, “Smerch,” 335. Serebryakova, arrested while in exile, would be sentenced to eight years but serve eleven. In 1939 Kalinina would be sentenced to fifteen years; she would be released in 1945.