109. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 58–9.
110. During Pravda’s publication of the Short Course, Stalin phoned the editors, according to the journalist Brontman, and reiterated, over and over, the need to publish more material on the “white collar.” Brontman noted: “It’s a new matter.” Brontman, Dnevniki (entry for Sept. 20, 1938).
111. Back when battling the Georgian Mensheviks before 1917, Stalin had advocated for working-class party members, but in power he offered ambiguous views. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 31; Graziosi, “Stalin’s Antiworker Workerism, 1924–1931”; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 219. The secret circular he had dispatched after Kirov’s assassination warned that Bolsheviks with worker origins sometimes turned out to be provocateurs (citing Roman Malinowski, whose secret spying for the okhranka had put Stalin back in prison before the revolution). Yezhov, in 1935, had complained, “look, this veneration for the worker is completely un-Bolshevik and un-Marxist.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 198 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1118, l. 56–60); “Zakrytoe pis’mo Tsk VKP (b),” 97; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 201.
112. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 10.
113. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 307, l. 7–11, 68–72, 80–5, 113–4.
114. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 3–4. “I am not a theoretician [teoretik], but a practitioner [praktik] who knows theory,” Stalin explained, adding, “such are the kind of people we want to have: practitioners with knowledge of theory.” See the prompt from Yaroslavsky: Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 419–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 101).
115. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 166.
116. Telegrams had to be sent directly from the telegram office; there were also phonegrams transmitted by special telephone. Moscow received the first message around 5:00 p.m., and the second at 5:15; each had to be decoded. DVP SSSR, XXI: 549–50 (Potyomkin, Sept. 30, 1938); Lukes, “Stalin and Beneš,” 37–9. Beneš’s moods vacillated, according to Alexandrovsky (one of the few envoys to see the Czechoslovak president regularly). Alexandrovskii, “Munich Witness’s Account,” 129, 132. See also Steiner, “The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 772–3 (citing AVP RF, f. 0138, op. 19, pap. 128, d. 6, l. 161–75: Alexandrovsky’s diary, written Oct. 1938).
117. DVP SSSR, XXI: 548–9 (Alexandrovsky, Sept. 30, 1938), 549 (Sept. 30, 1938), 549–50 (Potyomkin, Sept. 30, 1938), 552–3 (Alexandrovsky, Oct. 1, 1938).
118. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 262; Lukes, “Stalin and Czechoslovakia,” 14–6.
119. Soon he would add “cultural-educational” organization to the list of the state’s functions. Pravda, March 11, 1939, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 394.
120. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 452–66 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 28–9, 34–42, 44–9, 51, 53–61, 63, 65–70, 77–88).
121. Wandycz, Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 452, 478; Prażmowska, Eastern Europe, 144.
122. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 25–28, at 28 (Lipski to Beck, Oct. 1, 1938).
123. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 28. Churchill would famously call interwar Poland a “hyena” for its actions over Těšín (Cieszyn). Churchill, Second World War, I: 311. Soviet intelligence evidently reported rumors from Riga (Oct. 10, 1938) that Poland had also demanded Latvia’s ethnic Polish regions (such as Daugavpils/Dźwińsk-Dyneburg). Sotskov, Pribaltika i geopolitika, 56 (no citation).
124. DVP SSSR, XXI: 599. Stalin possessed a manuscript on German-Polish relations by the émigré Alexander Guchkov, one of the two Duma representatives in 1917 who had been sent to obtain Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication. Pilfered in Paris, the text discussed the possibility of Poland handing Danzig over to Germany, with the thinking that this would satiate German claims and redirect German aggression against Stalin’s Soviet Union. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 234. See also Tokarev, “‘Kará panam! Kará.’”
