18. Eastman, Great Companions, 117; Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 14 (citing Manchester Guardian, March 17, 1931), 16–8. In Jan. 1929, Herbert von Dirksen, the new German ambassador, when asked whether his government could take in Trotsky, was incredulous: Stresemann had no desire to have him explaining to a fellow German politician: “I don’t place too high a value on our relations with Soviet Russia. But they are always a trump in our game” of diplomacy with the West. ADAP, series b, XI: 74–6 (Dirksen memo, Jan. 29, 1929), 101–2 (Schubert to Dirksen, Feb. 6, 1929), 199 (Stresemann to Paul Loebe, Reichstag president, March 19, 1929).
19. Stalin had the OGPU blackmail or entice Trotsky supporters internally exiled in the USSR to denounce him in the Soviet press. Radek signed a denunciation of Trotsky that was published in Pravda (July 13, 1929). See also Broué, “Bolshevik-Leninist Faction,” 140; Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 390; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 281; Yaroslavskii, “Etot son knochen,” 2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 782, l. 9. Even Beloborodov and Ivan Smirnov would publicly break with Trotsky. Pravda, Nov. 3, 1929. Rakovski, in Astrakhan, nearly alone remained loyal; Trotsky kept a photograph of him on his desk.
20. Trotskii, Writings (1929), 177. See also Kassow, “Trotsky.”
21. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 325–8.
22. Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 67. At Stalin’s behest, the propagandist Miney Gubelman, who went by the name Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, answered with an essay, “Mr. Trotsky at the Service of the Bourgeoisie, or L. Trotsky’s First Steps Abroad”—published in Russian in the Soviet press, essentially a salve for Stalin’s ego. Bol’shevik, 1929, no. 5 and 9.
23. G. G., “Pis’ma iz SSSR.” Bukharin was sometimes perceived as a Jew (“Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin . . .”). Borodin, One Man in His Time, 59.
24. “O gruppirovokakh v kommunisticheskoi oppozitsii.”
25. On March 5, 1929, Mężyński informed the dictator of a supposed thwarted “assassination” plan against him by two Moscow University students and one worker who had tickets to two evening events in the university club in Feb., one of which, it was rumored, Stalin would attend. Under interrogation, one of the students stated he was unsure if he had the fortitude to carry out a terrorist act. In any event, there was no such attempt. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 325–6 (no citation).
26. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 68 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 39, l. 43, 43ob.).
27. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 73 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 42; note, without addressee, in Voroshilov’s file, but obviously addressed to Bukharin). Back in Sept. 1926, Stalin had written: “Bukharin is a swine and perhaps worse than a swine because he considers it beneath his dignity to write even two lines about his impressions of Germany. I’ll get my revenge for that.” This playfulness would look different in retrospect. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 88–93 (Sept. 16, 1926); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 126–9.
28. This was the first plenum of 1929. Stalin invented “joint” plenums with the Central Control Commission as a device to obtain the two-thirds voting majority required by party rules for expulsions from the Central Committee.
29. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 644–84 (RGASPI, f. 558, op, 11, d. 1043, l. 1–131: uncorrected transcript), quote 644; “O pravom uklone v VKP (b),” Sochineniia, XII: 1–107 (at 1).
30. Sochineniia, XII: 43. See also Abramov, O pravoi oppozitsii v partii, 43. Andreyev, North Caucasus party boss, told the plenum: “The GPU was formed to find and expose the very worst and most unfavorable in our country, and if we build our policy only on the basis of the GPU reports, we will always be in a state of panic, it is perfectly clear, our hair will always stand on end.” Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 403. Stalin made his own admission of sorts: “Name a single political measure of the party that was not accompanied by these or those excesses?” Sochineniia, XII: 92.
31. Stalin even contrasted Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov unfavorably to the smashed Trotskyites, asserting that the latter had not used the 1921 Kronstadt or 1926 Georgian rebellions but closed ranks in the face of danger. Danilov and Khlevniuk, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 656, 659, 668, 676; Sochineniia, XII: 39–40, 69–70.
32. Stalin replaced Bukharin at Pravda with an editorial collective of Yaroslavsky, Nikolai Popov, and Harald Krumin.
