302. God krizisa, I: 448–9 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1a, pap. 26, d. 18, l. 110: May 11, 1939); DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 356–7; Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 393–4.
303. Still, Romania, like Turkey, viewed a Western-Soviet agreement as effectively inevitable. Watt, How War Came, 284–5.
304. Gorodetsky, Maisky’s Diaries, 202 (no citation).
305. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 256–9. Mikhail Bulgakov’s play Batum (1939), which depicted a young Stalin, in the revolutionary underground, as a decisive personality—incisive, flexible, cunning, even deceitful, above all able to do whatever it took to lead people through difficult challenges, while lusting for power—had been banned before rehearsals. Bulgakov, Sobranie sochinenii, V (Master and Margarita), VII: 305–76 (Batum).
306. Shentalinsky, KGB’s Literary Archive, 42, 47. See also Povarov, Prichina smerti rasstrel; Pirozhkova, At His Side, 115.
307. Shentalinskii, “Proshu menia vyslushat’,” 430–43.
308. Shentalinsky, KGB’s Literary Archive, 44.
309. Mandelstam, Hope against Hope, 321. Mandelstam records Babel’s brazenness in associating with foreigners as well.
310. Stalin could reveal limits to his hyper-suspiciousness. From Dec. 1938—when Valery Chkalov died in a crash during the maiden flight of an experimental fighter plane—through May 15, 1939, the country suffered thirty-four aviation crashes in which seventy people were killed. On May 16, at a meeting of the Main Military Council, Stalin raised the possibility of sabotage (“technicians can do this deliberately, and the aviators trust the aircraft”) but added of Chkalov and four other heroes of the Soviet Union, “The aviator does not want to recognize the laws of physics and meteorology.” Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 237. Nearly two hundred defects had been found on the rushed airplane earlier in the month that Chkalov flew it; the temperature was 25 below zero Celsius the day of the test flight. Maslov, Rokovoi istrebitel’ Chkalova; Ivanov, Neizvestnyi Polikarpov; Bergman, “Valerii Chkalov.”
311. Gorbunov, “Voennaia razvedka v 1934–1939 godakh” (no. 3), 60–1.
312. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 233.
313. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 81–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9157, d. 2, l. 173–9). The source might have been Kurt Welkisch (“ABC”), a German journalist and diplomat in Warsaw (1935–39). Soviet intelligence had reported that Kleist, following the destruction of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, had privately averred that “war against the Soviet Union remains the last and decisive task of German policy.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 60–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9197, d. 2, l. 245–54).
314. “Soobshchenie I. I. Proskurova I. V. Stalinu,” 216–9; Na prieme, 259.
315. APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 455, l. 33–5 (June 1956 note from KGB chief Serov to the Central Committee); d. 448, l. 184, 189 (testimony by operatives Fedotov and Matusov). See also Petrov and Petrov, Empire of Fear, 69.
316. Ribbentrop inserted suggestions, in the German foreign ministry transcripts of the talks with the Soviets, to make it look as if Stalin was beseeching the great Hitler. Dębski, Między Berlinem a Moskwą, 84–91.
317. Dullin, Men of Influence, 30. “If one can speak of a pro-German in the Kremlin,” Krivitsky asserted, “Stalin has been that figure all along.” Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 3, 10.
318. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War.
319. Savushkin, “K voprosu o zarozhdenii teorii,” 78–82.
320. Maiskii, Denevnik diplomata, I: 398–400; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 192.
321. French Yellow Book, 147–9. “Russia is a good card, it is perhaps not necessary to play it,” Beneš had told the French envoy in Prague back in April 1937, “but it is necessary not to abandon it from fear that Germany pick it up.” Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 229 (citing DDF, 2e série, V: 513–4: April 21, 1937).
