47. Wager, Der Generalquartiermeister, 106. “All in all,” Karl Schnurre, the German economic official, had crowed on May 10, 1940, the day Germany struck France, “trade with Eastern Europe, as a result of the Economic Agreement with the Soviet Union, has attained a volume that it never reached in previous years.” Der Deutsche Volkswirt (May 10, 1940), in RGAE, f. 413, op. 13, d., 2856, l. 5–6, cited in Nekrich, Pariahs, 154; Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 116–7. Hitler had written (March 8, 1940) to mollify Mussolini that “the trade agreement which we have concluded with Russia, duce, means a great deal in our situation!” DGFP, series D, VIII: 876 (March 8, 1940); Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 111.
48. In addition, the Soviets lent Germany a submarine base near Murmansk for refueling and maintenance, as well as launching raids on British shipping. An oil tanker with Soviet oil arrived to refuel Nazi warships and landing craft during the attack on Norway in April 1940.
49. “Friendship with Germany, the Pact, and so on is all a temporary move, tactical devices,” wrote Vishnevsky in his diary in May 1940. “Will we win? Or will we only give the Germans time, a breathing space, supplies?” Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 228–9 (RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2077, l. 63, 64ob.).
50. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 172. Speer gets the date wrong. See also Reynolds, “1940.”
51. He had settled upon the novella after a long search for a vehicle, as he had once explained, to explore “the heroism of construction, the new [Soviet] man, struggle and the overcoming of obstacles.” Morrison, People’s Artist, 88 (citing RGALI, f. 1929, op. 3, ed. khr. 30, l. 1); Vecherniaia Moskva, Dec. 6, 1932.
52. Richter, “On Prokofiev,” 187–8.
53. Final approval had come only after Vyshinsky, deputy commissar for foreign affairs, saw it and the film’s depiction of the German occupation of Ukraine was toned down. Morrison, People’s Artist, 102–4 (citing RGASPI f. 82, op. 2, d. 950, l. 99); Perkhin, Deiateli russkogo iskusstva, 607–8n4. See also Shlifshtein, “Semyon Kotko,” 3.
54. Zubkova, Pribaltika i Kreml. A Greek diplomat speculated, in an intercepted and deciphered communication, that “Moscow would like above all to drag out the war [in the West], from which it is trying to extract advantages—which, by the way, it is achieving, as evidenced by the example of the new impositions on the Baltic states.” Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 256 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 22, l. 106: June 1940).
55. DVP SSSR, XXIII/1: 350–2 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 2, pap. 2, d. 13, l. 103–4, 127).
56. Sabaliunas, Lithuania in Crisis, 54.
57. Kirby, “Baltic States,” 27 (citing Third Interim Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Aggression and the Forced Incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR [Washington, 1954], 315–6; File N 4794/803/59: Preston to Order, April 19, 1940).
58. Ocherki istorii kommunisticheskoi partii Latvii, II: 429. Stalin had murdered the entire Estonia Central Committee. Many of them had spent fourteen years in Estonian prisons following the 1924 failed coup, before being released in an amnesty in 1938 and emigrating to the USSR.
59. Gross, Revolution from Abroad. See also Kotkin, “The State.” Lithuania had emerged from Stalin’s gratuitous massacres with just 1,220 Communists.
60. Gross observes that “the Polish Military underground organization, the ZWZ, which thrived under the Nazi occupation in spite of persistent Gestapo efforts to destroy it, never had a chance under the NKVD.” Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 148.
