Stalin полностью

295. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1937–1953,” 209. In Feb. 1938, when Detizdat wanted to publish Smirnova’s Tales of Stalin’s Childhood, he told them to burn it and not indulge a “cult of the personality, vozhdi, infallible heroes,” which he condemned once again as an “SR theory.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1121, l. 24.

296. Stalin’s best biographers and analysts have well understood that he combined Marxism-Leninism with imperial Russian traditions. Tucker characterized Stalin’s approach as “imperial-communist”; Erik van Ree, as “revolutionary patriotism”; Arfon Rees, as “revolutionary Machiavellism.” Tucker, “Stalin and Stalinism,” 1–16; van Ree, Political Thought; Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin.

297. For Shakespeare on the medieval Scottish tyrant Macbeth, see Frye, “Hitler, Stalin, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”

298. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 499 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 339, l. 199: March 13, 1938).

299. “I cannot not inform you about the abuses and nightmares in the activities of the NKVD organs in Abkhazia that I personally saw and, in truth, in writing about them, I risk my life, but I write in honor of justice and love of humanity,” Mikhail Saliya (b. 1908) wrote to Stalin (Aug. 3, 1938). “A citizen is arrested following a denunciation, supposedly as a counterrevolutionary and is charged as such, and when he begins to protest his innocence, then he is subjected to ‘repression.’ First, he is stripped naked and placed on the floor, ‘fighters’ arrive with knouts in hand, about four of them, and begin to beat him, the combat lasts until the victim loses consciousness, he gets a breather of about forty-five minutes, for the ‘fighters’ too get tired from the combat, he is given ammonia under the nose, to revive him, then his whole body is soaked in water, and the four people begin to beat him again with all their might, the person gives off inhuman sounds, begs, that he is not guilty, but they are immovable. The person loses consciousness again, collapsed without memory, ‘the fighters’ among themselves say, ‘oh, the scoundrel, he is simulating.’ They tie paper or a rag in his mouth and continue beating him until he confesses that he is a counterrevolutionary.” The rest of the description details rotting flesh ripped off by the blows and covered with flies. Saliya noted that this was not personal (none of his relatives had been arrested), and gave his address. His letter would serve as the pretext for an investigation, after Beria had been transferred to Moscow, which would reveal that a livestock pen water storage bin had been converted into a solitary confinement cell in early 1938 in the Sukhum internal prison and kept filled several inches high with water for interrogations. Stalin notified Georgian party officials (Nov. 14, 1938) of a Central Committee decision to investigate all top NKVD operatives in Georgia during the next three months, and demanded to be informed of all results and actions. Pauchiliya was arrested in Oct. 1938, fired from the NKVD in May 1939, and returned to the Dynamo sports club. Junge and Bonwetsch, Bolshevistskii poriadok, II: 355–58 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 1–i otdel, f. 6, d.5520, tom 1, l. 28–30), 361–73 (Arkhiv MVD Gruzii, 1–i otdel, f. 6, d.5520, tom 1, l. 15–24: Oct. 10, 1938), 375–8 (2–i otdel, f. 14, op. 12, d. 256, l. 142–5), 378 (d. 363, l. 146: Nov. 15), 403–9 (1–i otdel, f. 6, d. 5520, tom 3, l. 73–6); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe, 604–6 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 80–3: Nov. 14, 1938).

300. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 339.

PART III. THREE-CARD MONTE

1. “Prime Minister on the Issues,” The Times, Sept. 28, 1938: 10. See also Chamberlain, Struggle for Peace.

2. DDF, 2e série, XI: 685 (Delmas to Daladier, Sept. 28, 1938).

3. Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini. The duce would pass his own anti-Semitic laws and boast to his mistress (Aug. 5, 1938), “I’ve been a racist since ’21. I don’t know why people think I am imitating Hitler, he wasn’t even born. It makes me laugh.” Incensed at reports of the illegal miscegenation in Italy’s Africa colonies, he added, “I need to teach these Italians about race, so that they don’t create half castes and don’t ruin what is beautiful in us.” Petacci, Mussolini segreto, 391: 2.

4. Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini, 27–41. Stalin had an undercover agent report via Poland on the Hitler-Mussolini meeting, and underlined passages related to their reported joint plans for an aggression against the USSR. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 533–41 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 187, l. 28–44).