324. An anonymous letter from the USSR printed in Trotsky’s Bulletin of the Opposition quoted workers’ dissatisfaction with the light sentences: “now for small infractions they punish all of us severely, but here, for a gigantic crime, their sentences are lightened.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 19 (March 1931): 18. Ciliga, who was in prison at the time the verdicts were announced, recalled that “this unexpected clemency did . . . strike a very suspicious note,” given that people were being shot for lesser crimes. Ciliga, Russian Enigma, 222.
325. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik [Paris], Dec. 20, 1930: 14. “The anger and indignation of the workers condemning the traitors’ acts have remained in my memory for life,” one worker at Moscow’s Red Proletarian factory recalled. Ermilov, Schast’e trudnykh dorog, 133.
326. Yaroslavsky, despite his proximity to Stalin, revealed his own naïveté during Syrtsov’s interrogation, dismissively stating that “Trotsky is a dead cat.” Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 224 (Oct. 23, 1930).
327. Yezhov was received during a meeting on foreign trade, and in the company of Postyshev. He was back again on Nov. 29, one-on-one. Na prieme, 37. Yezhov’s early biography can be found in Pavliukov, Ezhov, 6–100; and in Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 10–33.
328. Lyons, “Stalin Urges U.S. Trade”; Lyons, “Stalin Laughs!”; Na prieme, 37. Lyons had worked at TASS offices in New York and might have been picked for the exclusive because of Stanisław Czacki, a former OGPU undercover intelligence operative in the United States and now head of the Anglo-American desk of OGPU foreign intelligence, who arrived in Stalin’s office twenty minutes beforehand and remained during the interview. Stalin’s office logbook does not specify which office; Lyons fixes it as Old Square (not the Kremlin). Lyons claimed that in media res Voroshilov entered; Voroshilov is quoted in the reportage, but his name does not appear in Stalin’s office logbook that day, showing that it can be incomplete.
329. Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 384–5, 387, 390; “Eugene Lyon Papers, 1929–1964,” Knight Library, Special Collections, University of Oregon, box 2, typescript; Lyons, Stalin, 197. Compare the leftist journalist Paul Sheffer’s dismissive characterization from around the same time (Sheffer never met Stalin, and relied on the writings of Trotsky). Sheffer, “Stalin’s Power.”
330. Duranty, “Stalin Sees Capitalists.” See also Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist, 169 (citing interview with Henry Shapiro, March 15, 1979). Duranty became one of the prime sources for the view that Stalin had become a revolutionary because of the “Jesuitic repression” at the Orthodox seminary. Duranty, “Stalin.”
331. RGASPI, f., 558, op. 11, d. 726, l. 161–5; Na prieme, 37 (in the company of Yakov Podolsky, head of the foreign affairs commissariat press department).
332. Keke was quoted as saying that Stalin had visited her in 1921 and “three years ago” (1926), and that she had stayed with him once in the Kremlin in Moscow (“I didn’t like it”). Knickerbocker, “Stalin Mystery Man,” in Hoover Institution Archives, Edward Ellis Smith papers, box 2. See also Smith, Young Stalin, 54.
333. “According to news from the West (which is conveyed secondhand from people who have been there or ‘from above’), over there they laugh at the nervousness of the Bolsheviks, and are not planning to fight,” Shitts, the encyclopedia editor, recorded in his diary in Nov. 1930. “But here people are sure of war.” Shitts, Dnevnik, 248–9. See also Anon., An Impression of Russia, 10.
334. Stalin struck this revealing outburst when editing the transcript. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1011.
335. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 36–7, 39; van Ree, Political Thought, 118–9.
336. Pravda, Dec. 2, 1930. The poll was recorded as a one-day “meeting” of the plenum.
337. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 735, l. 9–10, 12–3, 14–5. Stalin tasked Andreyev with reporting to the politburo—not to a Central Committee plenum—on Nov. 25 on collectivization in the North Caucasus and had the session, which emphasized success, transcribed to circulate it to party functionaries. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 357–82 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1004, l. 1–64: uncorrected, l. 67–127: corrected, l. 128–45: printed; op. 3, d. 805, l. 3; d. 809, l. 40–5).
338. Dubinskaia-Dzhalilova and Chernev, “‘Zhmu vashu ruku, dorogoi tovarishch,’” 183 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 32, l. 100–1ob.).
