Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 полностью

354. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 144–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 765, l. 68a); Enker, “Struggling for Stalin’s Soul,” 172–5.

355. Stalin’s personal secretariat appears to have moved from party HQ on Old Square to Government HQ in the Kremlin at the beginning of the 1930s. Rosenfeldt, “‘The Consistory of the Communist Church,’” 318n31, citing Robert Tucker, personal communication. The move displaced some offices of the central executive committee from the Kremlin to the GUM department store across Red Square. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 136–7 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 25–6), 141 (f. 78, op. 1, d. 376, l. 107). See also Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” 183.

356. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 851, l. 15.

357. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 667. See also Kolesnik, Khronika zhizni sem’i Stalina, 58–62.

358. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 310. Stalin departed Kureika in late 1916 (when summoned to the draft board), more than nine months before the boy’s birth was officially registered (Nov. 6, 1917); the registration could have been delayed by remoteness or falsely reported. Pereprygina (b. 1900/1) went on to marry Yakov Davydov and become a hairdresser in Igarka (100 miles north of Kureika); she would die around 1964. In 1956, Ivan Serov of the KGB would send a report to Khrushchev based on an interview with Pereprygina-Davydova, attributing paternity to Stalin; it contains obvious errors and reflects lazy police work. Izvestiia, Dec. 8, 2000; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1288; Gelii Kleimenov, O lichnoi zhizni Iosifa Stalina, chast’ 2, glava 9 (2013): http://www.proza.ru/2013/05/11/894. The boy, Alexander, later fought in WWII, lived in Siberia, and died in 1987. In 1934 the log cabin in Kureika became a Stalin museum.

359. “Chto dal’she,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 17–18 (Nov.–Dec. 1930): 22.

360. In another private letter of March 1930, Bakhmeteff foresaw the consequences as well (“agricultural catastrophe . . . famine on a great scale”). Bakhmeteff also understood that Stalin would succeed in asserting state control over the countryside, whatever the human and economic costs (“that is second order from the point of view of Communist political goals”). He concluded: “A regime that forms in such conditions can only be compared with a military occupation by an armed external enemy.” Budnitskii, “Sovershenno lichno i doveritel’no!,” III: 420–1 (Feb. 12, 1929), 433 (April 19, 1929), 466 (Feb. 1930), 468–73 (March 4, 1930).

361. Trotsky would later write in his diary that back in 1926, Kamenev had warned him that his life was in danger, and that Zinoviev had told him, “Do you think that Stalin has not discussed the question of your physical removal?” Trotsky did not record these alleged conversations at the time, and neither Kamenev nor Zinoviev ever stated as much publicly. Trotskii, Dnevniki i pis’ma, 72–74 (Feb. 18, 1935).

362. Khlevniuk rightly pointed out that Stalin’s victory over Rykov, Bukharin, and Tomsky required significant effort, but he did not specify whether another outcome was possible.

363. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 289. “The Right Opposition was more a state of mind than an organization,” observed Victor Serge. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 253.

364. Tomsky conceded to the 16th Party Congress: “Any opposition, any struggle against the party line under the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . will inevitably find a response outside the party. And whatever the opposition’s platform may be . . . it will become the organizational nucleus for a third force, for the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship.” Rykov told the delegates: “Any utilization of our difficulties for criticism of the party general line must automatically include an appeal for the support of the petit bourgeois elements against the socialist elements of the countryside.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 145 (Tomsky), 152 (Rykov). The Russian-speaking American journalist William Reswick, who met with Rykov in his Kremlin apartment, has him stating: “Only a year back, we still had the situation in hand. Even six months ago we still could have forced a showdown and won. But there was always a haunting fear of an interparty fight turning into a civil war and now it is too late.” The conversation is undated, but from the context it seems this was Nov. 1929. Reswick, I Dreamt Revolution, 253–4.