225. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 63; XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 26 iiunia–13 iiulia 1930 g., I: 122. Tomsky was eventually replaced by the Stalin favorite Nikolai Shvernik (b. 1888), whom the dictator had promoted from Leningrad in 1926 to the central apparatus, then assigned to the Urals. When Shvernik had reported in 1929 that his Urals party organization had failed to fulfill assigned targets, Stalin wrote back, “There are no grounds to complain, you did all you could.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 42 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 36, l. 103); Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 141–44.
226. Kirov, Izbrannye stat’i rechi, 539.
227. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 117–29 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 397, l. 2–7). Pyatakov had been inspired to set out his thoughts in writing by a conversation with Orjonikidze, as noted in a letter to the latter (129n4: l. 1, July 20). See also Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 187–9.
228. Vechernyi klub, Dec. 22, 1992 (interview with Poskryobyshev from 1964). The secretariat had a “bureau, which in March 1926 was replaced by a ‘secret department.’” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, 85, 86. See also Rosenfeldt, “Special” World. Stalin had posted his former top aide, the Marxist scholar Ivan Tovstukha (b. 1889), who had only one lung and tuberculosis, to the Lenin Institute; another long-standing top aide, the high-strung Lev Mekhlis, who hankered after Tovstukha’s intellectual authority, browbeat Stalin into allowing him, finally, to take leave to bootstrap a Marxist education at the Institute of Red Professors. This opened the way for Poskryobyshev, who eventually became Stalin’s top aide. His wife was the sister of the wife of Trotsky’s son Lev Sedov. See also Bazhanov, Damnation of Stalin, 34–40.
229. Already by the next day he was said to be feeling fine. The drivers of the two vehicles went unpunished. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii, 47 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 107).
230. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 700, l. 4. OR l. 47.
231. Chigirin, Stalin, 79–83 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 44-51).
232. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 69. Kaganovich, too, got a new apartment, and was said to be “very satisfied” and “touched by Stalin’s attention.” Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 33 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 46–7). Kaganovich’s apartment was in the so-called children’s wing of the Grand Kremlin Palace, also known as the tsarevich’s quarters.
233. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 196–7; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 207–8.
234. The regime had rechristened the peasant commune, whose origins went back deep into the mists of ancient Russia, a “land society.” But in the RSFSR, a decree of July 30, 1930, stipulated that land societies were to be liquidated wherever 75 percent of households belonged to the new collective farms. (Unlike collective farms, the commune entailed working land individually while holding it in common.) Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 34–5; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 227–8; Atkinson, End of the Russian Land Commune, 369–70. In Ukraine, where communes did not predominate, they had been abolished by decree already in Jan. 1930.
235. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 250 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 16, 20). As of Oct. 1, 1930, the OGPU apparatus consisted of 22,180 employees. That included around 2,000 in the central apparatus, 5,067 on transport, 1,425 at the OGPU central school, 612 at the transport school, 97 at the Lubyanka inner prison, and 270 at the Butyrka prison; more than 10,000 were deployed in localities. Yagoda complained in a directive, however, that operatives preferred to remain in provincial towns and administrative centers, refusing to be deployed in counties or villages. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 34–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 183), 36n1 (Nov. 12, 1930).
236. Most other crops also did well. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 337–8, 419 (table 1).
237. Procurements were 6 million more than in 1929–30 (and double the total of 1928–29). The MTS were entrusted with scarce heavy equipment, which they leased to collective farms in exchange for part of the crop. Miller, One Hundred Thousand Tractors. At the end of 1930, the 158 machine tractor stations controlled more than 31,000 tractors but only about 200 trucks and 17 cars. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 31, citing Sotsialistichekoe zemledelie, Dec. 20, 1930.
