215. The Chinese Communists were receiving $110,000 to support their armed forces from the Nationalist government and themselves collected some $200,000 in local currency via local governments under Communist control in northern regions, likely through traditional land taxes. Party dues amounted to another $40,000. But they were spending around $700,000 per month. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 123–5 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 317. l. 53–5).
216. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 126 (Feb. 23 and 25, 1940). On Feb. 25, 1940, Yan Xishan, the warlord ruler of small, poor, remote Shanxi region, who had an off-again, on-again collaboration with the Communists against the Japanese, halted his offensive against the Communists. The Eighth Route Army was based there.
217. A memo from the Comintern’s personnel department to Dimitrov denigrated Wang Ming, Mao’s rival, as possessing “no authority among the old cadres of the party,” and recommended that he not be given “leading positions,” while proposing promotion of a long list of Mao loyalists (including a young military leader in the Eighth Route Army named Deng Xiaoping). “Mao Zedong is certainly the most important political figure in the Chinese Communist party. He knows China better than the other CCP leaders, knows the people, understands politics and generally frames issues correctly.” Pantsov and Levine, Mao, 333–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 225, d. 71, t. 3: l. 186–9).
218. Taylor, Generalissimo, 172; Suyin, Eldest Son, 170.
219. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 384–90 (APRF, f. 3, zakrytyi paket no. 1, with facsimile). Between late Sept. 1939 and March 1940, the Soviets and the Nazis had held a series of meetings (apparently four in total) to discuss anticipated Polish resistance, coordination of the respective occupations, POWs, and refugees. Contrary to some claims, the Feb. 20, 1940, meeting (at the Pan Tadeusz villa of the Zakopane spa, in the Tatra Mountains) did not coordinate or precipitate the Soviet Katyn massacre. Vishlёv, Nakanune, 119–23; Bór-Komorowski, Secret Army. Beria’s March 1940 report and recommendation to Stalin is in Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 476–8.
220. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 390–2 (APRF, f. 3, zakrytyi paket no. 1); Cienciala et al., Katyn, 118–20; Ubyty v Katyni; Kozlov et al., Katyn’ mart 1940–sentiabr’2000 g. The total includes approximately 14,500 POWs held in NKVD camps in Kozelsky, Ostaskhovsky, and Starobelsky, and more than 7,300 in remand prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian and Belorussian republics. The execution sites included Smolensk city, Kalinin, Kharkov, and other places, as well as Katyn forest. Documents establishing the fact of Soviet culpability survived, but the full story will never be known because the files were purged. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 42n21.
221. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 16. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 276–7, 295.
222. Osborn, Operation Pike, 92–6. Overflowing camps and prisons placed a strain on NKVD resources in the western regions. Of course, the inmates could have been deported eastward to labor camps rather than executed without trial.
223. In Nov. 1939, Mekhlis, as head of the army’s political administration, had told a gathering of Soviet writers that Polish officers held as prisoners of war could form the leadership of Polish legions of up to 100,000 men, which were being constituted in France, and therefore that they should not be released. Jasiewicz, Zagłada polskich Kresów, 175 (Vishnevsky diary, Nov. 11, 1939). This passage was not included in Vishnevskii, Stat’i, dnevniki, pis’ma, 372.
224. Boiadzhiev, Maretskaia, 100; Kalashnikov, Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, II: 169–84.
225. Izvestiia, March 8, 9, 10, and 11, 1940; Pravda, March 9, 1940. That month, a “short biography” of Molotov, barely ten pages, went to press in a print run of half a million. It recounted his days in the underground, the 1917 revolution, and the civil war, and stressed his orthodox Leninism, organizing prowess, and close association with “the Supreme Leader of peoples comrade Stalin.” Tikhomirov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, 15.
226. Shvarts, “Zhizn’ i smert’ Mikhaila Bulgakova,” 126. Pasternak, having learned Bulgakov was terminally ill, had paid a last visit.
