Stalin полностью

346. “We argued for a long time, but Cripps clung to his views,” Maisky added. Cripps, for his part, noticed that Maisky “seemed much less confident that there would be not be a war” and “now seemed very depressed.” The editor of the Times (Geoffrey Dawson) also found Maisky suddenly persuaded that a German invasion was coming. Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 111–2; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 305–6 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 352, d. 2402, l. 235–6: Maisky to Molotov; and f. 0171: Maisky’s diary, June 18; and FO 371 29466 N3099/3/38: Cripps memo, June 19); Times archives, Dawson to Halifax, June 22. After Eden had failed to persuade Maisky that Britain had definitive intelligence showing a coming German invasion, Churchill and the British cabinet had taken the remarkable decision to share the Enigma intelligence. Cadogan had summoned Maisky and on June 16 recited German war preparations, then showed him a map of German troop concentrations on the border, in minute detail. Maisky’s dispatch reporting the stages and numbers of Germany’s buildup arrived in Moscow amid the silence in Berlin over the TASS bulletin, but the reaction, if any, remains unclear. “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 77–8; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 374; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 303 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 352, d. 2402, l. 214–5: Maisky to Molotov, June 16); Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 361–3. The NKGB reported (June 17) on the movement of some German divisions, based on sources inside Britain, mentioning either “an undertaking of great scale, as the Germans maintain, or possibly . . . maximum pressure on the USSR.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 381–2 (TsA SVR, d. 21616, t. 2, l. 411).

347. Nekrich, Pariahs, 229 (citing Bundesarchiw-Militärarchiw. RMII/34: 320: Köstring to Matzky).

348. Roberts, “Planning for War,” 1320–1. Even Gorodetsky, who writes of “Stalin’s failure to prepare for the German onslaught,” admits that “even with hindsight, it is hard to devise alternatives which Stalin could have safely pursued. If he had made a preemptive strike, the blow would at best have softened but definitely not averted.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 323.

CODA. LITTLE CORNER, SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1941

1. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 306 (citing UD:s Arkhiv 1920 ARS, HP/1557/LVIII, June 21, 1941). The citation contains a typo, indicating the Swedish ambassador in Berlin, but this was from Moscow.

2. Bismarck, Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman, II: 301.

3. Stalin might have taken a meal in his apartment in the company of the inner circle that afternoon; alternately, he could have done so later in the evening. Mikoyan would recall many years later that “we, politburo members, gathered in Stalin’s Kremlin apartment. . . . We left around 3:00 a.m.” The timing of Mikoyan’s account does not jibe with the Kremlin office logbook, in which, moreover, Mikoyan does not figure on June 21. Molotov late in life remembered that “on June 21, we stayed until 11 or 12 p.m. at Stalin’s dacha. Maybe we had even watched a movie. We used to do this often, watch a movie.” These times, too, are contradicted by the office logbook. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 24; Mikoian, Tak Bylo, 388; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 36; Na prieme, 337.

4. Anna Alliluyeva, Stalin’s sister-in-law, is the main source for the theory that an infected childhood bruise on his left arm had resulted in a chronically stiff elbow. Alliluyeva, Vospominaniia, 167.

5. Dokuchaev, Moskva, Kreml, Okhrana, 113–6. Stalin hated the black ravens, who shat on the monuments, so the Kremlin commandant fought an all-out war against them, trapping at least 35,000 birds, which were given as feed to the zoo.

6. Molotov recalled: “The tension was palpable in 1939 and 1940. Tensions ran very high.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 25.

7. German embassy personnel in Moscow did not know the precise date of the invasion. “I am personally very pessimistic, and although I do not know anything concrete, I think Hitler will launch a war against the USSR,” Schulenburg said at Köstring’s mansion (June 16) in a conversation the NKGB eavesdropped. “At the end of April I saw [Hitler] personally and completely openly I said to him that his plans for a war against the USSR are utter folly, that now is not the time to talk about war with the USSR. Believe me, for my candor I fell out with him and I’m risking my career and, perhaps, soon I’ll be in a concentration camp.” Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 169–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1978–80: June 20, 1941).