Stalin полностью

127. Whereas in 1928 the country counted about 4 million white-collar employees; by 1939, that number reached nearly 14 million. Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” 63. The proportion of working-class party members, even by official statistics (which inflated worker social origins), would drop from 8 percent (1933) to 3 percent (1941). Rittersporn, “From Working Class,” 187.

128. This was true from 1932 onward. DeWitt, Soviet Professional Manpower, 179.

129. “The enormous and unjustified growth, cost, proliferation, inefficiency, nepotism, narrow-mindedness, false reporting, inflexibility and arbitrariness,” the leading historian of the Soviet state summarized, “defied all party and other controls.” Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” 65.

130. Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia, 204–6. An extraordinary seven of eight applicants for candidate membership in the party would be accepted between April and Oct. 1939; over the year, the party would grow by a record 1.1 million new full members.

131. An editorial in the Menshevik émigré newspaper duly noted the transition, commenting, “this is . . . the Congress of a new party which should be called Stalinist.” “Pered s”ezdom,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, March 15, 1939. See also Vishnevskii, “Stalin na XVIII s”ezde partii,” 73–83.

132. Pravda, March 11, 1939, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 380–1.

133. Petrovsky was officially removed as a deputy chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet presidium on May 31, 1939. He remained without employment for half a year, but then became deputy director of the Museum of the Revolution under Fyodor Samoilov, who knew him from the days in the Bolshevik Duma faction. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 407.

134. XVIII s”ezd VKP (b), 510–9; Pravda, March 20, 1939.

135. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 221–2. Behind the scenes Zhdanov was said to have wisecracked about the terror. “Stalin complains that his pipe has disappeared,” Zhdanov supposedly joked. “‘I would give a lot to find it,’ Stalin states. Within three days Beria has already unmasked ten thieves, each of whom confesses to being the one who stole Stalin’s pipe. A day later Stalin finds his pipe, which had fallen behind the couch.” Zhdanov, his interlocutor recalled, “laughed merrily at this terrible joke.” Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (2nd ed.), 509.

136. Shvernik and one of his aides were trying to solve a difficult problem, and when the aide made a suggestion, Shvernik pointed out that it contradicted a Central Committee decree, to which the aide replied that this body could err. “It is difficult to describe what transpired with Nikolai Mikhailovich at these words. Reddening, he shouted, ‘Hands on the trouser seams, comrade Pogrebnoi, when you speak about the Central Committee, hands on the trouser seams!!!’” Guseinov, “Ves’ma neodnoznachnyi N. M. Shvernik,” 102.

137. The Beria household census form for 1939 listed their Moscow address as Malaya Nikitskaya, 28, apt. 1. Beria himself is not listed for some reason; the five listed were his wife, Nina [Nino] (34 years old), his mother, Marta (66 years old), his sister Akesha (32), his son Sergei [Sergo] (14), and the German nanny Ellia Almeshtigler (38), who was a student at the Moscow Institute of Economics and Finances. Koenker et al., Revelations, 344 (GARF, f. 9430, op. 1S, d. 166, l. 1–2). Kuropatkin died in 1925. Knox, “General Kuropatkin.”

138. At the dacha, the Berias’ neighbors were the Kaganoviches. Beria, My Father, 34–5. Svetlana recalls it as Chubar’s dacha, not Postyshev’s. Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 412–3. It is possible that Chubar had it after Postyshev. Postyshev and Chubar, arrested at different times, were shot the same day (Feb. 26, 1939).

139. “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 100–101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28: Merkulov to Malenkov, July 23, 1933). Merkulov claimed that Beria never opened up to him.

140. Traktory i sel’khozmashiny, 1967, no. 6: 2, no. 7: 41. On harvest exaggerations for 1937–40, see Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 288nf. Tractors held by the regional MTS would rise from 7,100 in 1930 to 356,800 by 1937; harvester combines from 10,400 in 1933 to 96, 300 by 1937.

141. Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 288nf; Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 262–7; Borisov, Proizvodstvennye kadry derevni, 200–1. Whereas about 3.3 million tons of grain had been exported in 1937–38, only 2 million tons would be exported in 1940 and the first half of 1941.