Stalin полностью

282. From Irkutsk, Shcherbakov had written to Zhadnov (June 18, 1937), his former superior, that “all leaders of the province soviet departments, the heads of provincial party departments and their deputies (with the exception of two so far), and the lower level province party officials, a number of party secretaries of the district party, the leaders of economic organizations, the directors of factories, [and so on] have been arrested. Thus, there are no functionaries in the party or the soviet apparatuses. It is difficult to imagine something like this. Now they have begun to dig into the NKVD.” Shcherbakov begged Zhdanov for cadres from Leningrad. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodsto, 363 (RGASPi, f. 88, op. 1, d. 1045, l. 1–5); Na prieme, 212.

283. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 78–80; Ponomarev, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, 47–50; Pravda, March 12, 1991 (Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shcherbakov, the son); Na prieme, 212, 234 (April 4, 1938), 244 (Nov. 4, 1938). The Shcherbakov family lived in the same building—Granovsky, 3—as Stalin’s son Yakov; occasionally, Yakov and his wife, Yulia, paid visits to Shcherbakov and his wife, Vera. Ugarov had been the other person besides Shcherbakov whom Stalin had favored for the writers’ union secretary in 1934. Stavsky, at the Soviet Union of Writers, sent denunciation after denunciation of various writers; finally, Andreyev wrote to Stalin in 1938 that Stavsky had to be removed. The NKVD listened in on the phone conversations of Fadeyev, Pavel Yudin, and F. Panferov to assess their reactions to the move. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 412–3 (RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 17, l. 105), 775–6n12 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op, 5, d. 262, l. 19–35).

284. Kennan wrote that Stalin was “a man of incredible criminality . . . without pity or mercy: a man in whose entourage no one was ever safe: a man who . . . was most dangerous of all to those who were his closest collaborators in crime, because he liked to be the sole custodian of his own secrets.” Conversely, Rigby argued that Stalin was not “a disloyal patron.” Of the ten voting members of the politburo as of 1934, one was assassinated (Kirov), one committed suicide (Orjonikidze), and one died of a heart attack (Kuibyshev), but only one was executed—Kosior. Three candidate members from 1934 through 1937 were executed (Chubar [promoted to full member in 1935], Eihe, and Yezhov), while Mikoyan and Petrovsky survived. Kennan, Russia and the West, 254–5; Rigby, “Was Stalin a Disloyal Patron?”

285. The Zhdanov-Malenkov rivalry would perform a similar function of each holding the other in check. Harris, “Origins of the Conflict.”

286. Beria’s son Sergo recalled that his father noticed he was being spied upon by subordinates, who, he said, reported directly to Zhdanov in Moscow. Beriia, Moi otets, 56. In Moscow who was watching Beria for Stalin remains unclear—those sources remain classified, if they survived.

287. Nabokov, for the English translation, later explicitly called his fictional dictator a composite. Nabokov, Tyrants Destroyed, 2.

288. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 4.

289. Graziosi, “New Soviet Archival Sources,” 34. See also Priestland, Politics of Mobilization. Some scholars see this as calculated manipulation of war scares and threats. Rieber, Struggle for Supremacy, 92, 98–9. Others assert that Stalin could not help himself. Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World.

290. Without explaining where Stalin acquired the wherewithal to destroy the political machines with ease, Getty continues to insist not on a hypercentralized but a decentralized Soviet system whereby the central apparatus detested its supposed dependence on the backward clan dynamics of local party machines. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror. See also Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications, which holds up 1938 as evidence of Stalin’s defeat.

291. Cherushev, Udar po svoim, 109–10.

292. Overall, between May 1935 and May 1941, Stalin would convoke twelve Central Committee plenums, a single party congress, and one party conference, but more than forty major state banquets. That compares, in the ten-year period from 1924–34, with four party congresses, five party conferences, and forty-three plenums. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 382, 429–32. See also Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 201–11.

293. “Vospominaia Velikuiu otechestvennuiu,” 54; Emel’ianov, Na poroge voiny, 85; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia Iosifa Stalina, 424–5 (Brontman diary); Pravda, Oct. 28, 1938. On other occasions of use of the Facets, see Pravda, April 18 and Oct. 28, 1938, and June 5 and Nov. 5, 1939.

294. Gromov, Stalin, 147; SSSR na stroike, 1938, no. 9.