Stalin and His Hangmen (83 page)

37.
Feliks Dzierżyński, 1951, 155–6

38.
The irony is that Piłsudski grew up on an estate neighbouring Dzierżyński’s.

39.
Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo,
156

40.
Latyshev, 1996, 282

41.
GASPI 558, 11, 816, 71, 7 March 1923

42.
Orjonikidze’s fiery temperament, his drinking and womanizing, and his readiness to use his fists had annoyed Lenin before.

43.
Kamenev had a dacha at Zubalovo. In autumn 1922, once he had constructed a branch line and got a neighbouring collective farm to provide food, Stalin persuaded Lenin to stay there too.

44.
His first break for three years, from suppressing ‘bandits’ and anarchists in the Ukraine, was a course of hydrotherapy in summer 1921 in Kharkov at Lenin’s insistence.

45.
Lakoba archive, now in Hoover Institute

46.
Ibid.

47.
V. I. Lenin,
Neizvestnye dokumenty,
2000, 439

48.
When, in March 1922, Kamenev’s and Stalin’s mental states worried Lenin and Dzierżyński was told to find them a dacha for restful weekends, Stalin voted the proposal down.

49.
GASPI 558, 11, 816, 75

50.
GASPI 558, 11, 816, 177

51.
See V. Iu. Cherniaev (ed.),
Piterskie rabochie i ‘diktatura proletariata’ –Oktiabr’ 1917–29, 2000,
193

52.
A. Ia. Livshin et al. (eds)
Pis’ma vo vlast’ 1917–1927,
1998, 463–8

53.
Lenin, 2000, 487

54.
Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo,
277

55.
Ibid. 278

56.
Ibid. 311

57.
GASPI 76, 3, 231, 2. Only in despair did Dzierżyński confess to Kamenev that the only way to revive the rural economy would be to restore the dispossessed landowners.

58.
GASPI 76, 3, 237, 21. Telegram from Belenky to Gerson, 7 November 1922

59.
GASPI 76, 4, 30, 8

60.
GASPI 482, 1, 46, 9. Quoted by Nekrasov, 1995, 62.

THREE * The Exquisite Inquisitor

1.
A typed copy of Menzhinsky’s dissertation is in OR 384, 25, 60.

2.
His son Rudolf was killed in the First World War. Not until the late 1920s did Menzhinsky, then a sick man, remarry. His second wife was Alla Semionovna, by whom he had a son, another Rudolf (who died in 1951), in 1927.

3.
Menzhinsky’s unpublished prose was lost in Paris; some lies in the FSB archives.

4.
Menzhinsky, like Dzierżyński, visited Gorky on Capri and, like Iagoda, forged a lifelong link with him.

5.
Blok had asthma, scurvy and paranoia; Sologub’s wife was going mad and doctors in Germany or Finland were their last hope.

6.
Under arrest the previous year, Blok had told a fellow writer that the Bolsheviks ‘will kill us all and everything else’.

7.
Agranov, not yet thirty, was a frustrated poet. He eventually became a boon companion of Mayakovsky and mixed with Pilniak and Mandelstam. In 1921 he could break into intellectual circles only with a revolver.

8.
See
Zven’ia I,
1991, 470.

9.
It also decreed death for any deportee who returned without permission.

10.
G. Latyshev,
Rassekrechennyi Lenin,
Moscow: 1996, 202

11.
GASPI2, 2, 1338. See Latyshev, 1996, 263–4.

12.
Latyshev, 1996, 216–17

13.
See M. V. Zelenov,
Apparat CK RKP(b) VKP (b): Tsenzura i istoricheskaia nauka v 1920-e gody,
Nizhni Novgorod, 2000.

14.
Surta became a neuropathologist and rose to become commissar for health in Belorussia. He was shot in 1937.

15.
A. Krivova,
Vlast’ i tserkov’ v 1922–1925 gg.,
Moscow: 1997, 128

16.
N. Pokrovskii and S. G. Petrov,
Politbiuro i tserkov’ 1922–1925 gg.,
Moscow, 1997, I, 9

17.
Ibid. I, 141–2

18.
Ibid. I, 232–8

19.
The Bashkir cavalry fought against the Bolsheviks. On 17 February 1920, Lenin and Dzierżyński ordered all Bashkir leaders to be arrested and the rebellion in the area to be ‘liquidated with the harshest measures’. (Politbiuro session, GASPI 17, 3, 62, 1)

20.
Zinoviev was called Grisha, not always affectionately and not only by Stalin. He reminded his colleagues of Grigori Rasputin and Grisha Otrepiev, the seventeenth-century pretender who claimed to be a son of Ivan the Terrible.

21.
GASPI 558, 11, 753

22.
The GPU’s statistics are mendacious: in the Solovetsky islands concentration camps alone some 700 prisoners were shot in 1923.

23.
Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo,
297–8

24.
Ibid.

25.
Ibid. 298

26.
Ibid. 305. Letter to Mekhlis, editor of
Pravda,
before 1 May 1925.

27.
Balitsky’s contribution to Soviet security was marked by Vladimir Putin with a commemorative postage stamp in 2002.

28.
GASPI 558, 11, 701, 37

29.
Stalin reported to Rykov: ‘Grisha was saying, “Everything here is getting worse, collapse is inevitable, etc.” Bukharin gave him an exemplary thrashing… Grisha got a reasonable reception at first, then people began interrupting and booing him. Bukharin was received very well, had an ovation, etc. There were about 2,000 present. I’m told there were about 30–40 on the side of the opposition.’ GASPI 558, 11, 131, 73: 10 May 1927

30.
Trotsky’s energies were dissipated by minor posts: one of his jobs was exporting Russian furs to Germany, where the proceeds were used to fund the Berlin Institute Psychiatry, in which he had an interest.

31.
Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo,
309–12

32.
GASPI 558, 11, 131, 14–

33.
GASPI 76, 3, 245, 19 & 26

34.
GASPI 2, 2, 380 & 447

35.
When Dzhunkovsky, as head of Moscow’s gendarmerie, denounced Rasputin’s orgies, he was immediately dismissed on the Tsaritsa’s orders.

36.
While Menzhinsky was alive, Dzhunkovsky was protected. He was shot in 1937.

37.
GASPI 558, 11, 726, 38. Letter to Kamenev, Dzierżyński, Kalinin, 9 August 1924

38.
Leonid Mlechin,
KGB: predsedateli organov bezopasnosti,
Moscow: 2001, 364. Much of Mlechin’s account relies on Khrushchiov’s uncorroborated memoirs.

39.
See Andrew Cook,
On His Majesty’s Secret Service – Sidney Reilly,
London: 2002.

40.
GASPI 558, 11, 71: 22 June 1926

FOUR * Stalin Solo

1.
See Mikhail Reiman,
‘Dokumenty kanuna stalinshchiny’
in
Sintaksis 13,
Paris, 1985, 132–62.

2.
Pis’ma vo vlast’ 1917–1927,
Moscow, 1998, 401

3.
Article 107 of the legal code.

4.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni I,
1999, 159

5.
Ibid. 212

6.
V. Kvashonkin et al.,
Sovetskoe rukovodstvo: perepiska 1928–1941,
Moscow: ROSSPÈN, 1999, 78–9

7.
Vadim Rogovin,
Vlast’ i oppozitsiia,
Moscow: 1993, 45

8.
Bazhanov in his
Memoirs
says that a Czech communist who specialized in automatic telephone exchanges was instructed by Stalin to install a system giving Stalin access to all calls made in the Kremlin, and that Stalin then told Iagoda to kill the Czech engineer. A special monitoring telephone certainly existed, but there are no records of any missing Czech telephone engineer.

9.
Ibid. 48–54

10.
See Rogovin, 1993, 166–7.

11.
Chess was for the Soviet Union an avenue for international contacts. Krylenko declared in 1932, ‘We must once and for all condemn the formula “chess for chess’s sake”, like the formula “art for art’s sake”. We must organize shock-tactics brigades of chess players and immediately start carrying out a five-year plan for chess.’

12.
Kak lomali NÈP,
Moscow: 2000, I, 412

13.
Pis’ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu 1925–1936,
Moscow, 1995, 178–81

14.
Part of the evidence against Chaianov was a science fiction novel set in 1984,
My Brother Aleksei’s Journey to the Land of Peasant Utopia,
published in 1920.

15.
Rogovin, 1993, 198

16.
Ramzin later received the Stalin Order and all his life referred fondly to the ‘Boss’ despite admitting that he had been framed by the Lubianka.

17.
Pis’ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu 1925–1936gg.,
Moscow, 1995, 187–8

18.
Demian Bedny wrote for Stalin’s delectation a satire, ‘From the
History of Russia
by Karamzin to Ramzin’.

19.
Diary of S. A. Piontkovsky, quoted in
Menshevistskii protsess 1931 goda,
Moscow, 1999, 13.

20.
Stalin doubtless found Frunze’s death convenient, but it is unproven that he ordered an overdose of anaesthetic. Dzierżyński had in 1923 requisitioned all the chloroform he could find; much was unfit for anaesthesia and patients died.

21.
Chertkov’s letters to Dzierżyński and Stalin: OR 369, 363, 15 & 22; 369, 364, 2.

22.
Vlast’ i intelligentsia,
Moscow: 1999, 86–101

23.
V. Dmitriev,
Sotsiologiia politicheskogo iumora,
Moscow, 1998, 63

24.
Stanislav Kuniaev and Sergei Kuniaev, 1995, 230–31

25.
Stalin, however, found Pavlov hard to stomach: on 26 September 1934, on the eve of Pavlov’s eighty-fifth birthday, he reminded Molotov and Kaganovich: ‘Pavlov is not one of us… He should not be given honours, even if he wanted to have them.’

26.
Nicholas II found Platonov ‘dry and undoubtedly unsympathetic to the cult of Russian heroes’.

27.
It is significant that Platonov’s interrogator, Sergei Zhupakhin, a former draughtsman and railway engineer, was in 1938 removed from the NKVD and shot for excessive brutality: Zhupakhin had his juniors carry out executions with an axe.

28.
Annenkov had given up fighting and become a horse breeder. He was forced to say that he had returned voluntarily to the USSR; he and the general were shot in 1927.

29.
Radek never fully renounced Trotsky. When Klim Voroshilov called him Trotsky’s stooge (‘tail’ in Russian) he replied with an epigram: ‘O Klim, your head’s an empty space! / Your thoughts are in a mess. / Better to be the Leo’s tail/Than Stalin’s prick.’

30.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni I,
Moscow: 1999, 491

31.
A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov (eds),
GULAG 1918–1960,
Moscow, 2000, 62

32.
Figures from Iu. A. Poliakov,
Naselenie Rossii v XX veke,
Moscow: ROSSPÈN, 2000, I, 316.

33.
A. G. Tepliakov,
Personal i povsednevnost’ novosibirskogo UNKVD v 1936– 1946, Minuvshee 21,
Moscow/St Petersburg: 1997, 245–6

34.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni II,
2000, 103–04

35.
Ibid. 145

36.
A. K. Sokolov (ed.),
Golos naroda 1918–1932,
Moscow: 1998, 293

37.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni II,
Moscow: 2000, 787

38.
Over 200,000 escaped of which a fifth were recaptured: another 80,000 got away by marrying a ‘free’ local citizen, entering an institute of higher education or by proving themselves invalids.

39.
GASPI 667, 1, 16, 8–9

40.
Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska 1931–1936gg.,
Moscow, 2001, 239

41.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni III,
2001, 549

42.
Ibid. 577

43.
As for private property, Stalin wanted it protected only when a peasant stole it from a senior Bolshevik. In 1932 an army officer, Ivan Korneev, shot dead a youth he caught stealing apples from his orchard and a military tribunal sentenced Korneev to six years in prison. Stalin insisted Korneev be freed: ‘he had a right to shoot at hooligans who had broken in at night.
It is bad and ugly for the organs of authority to defend hooligans against a decent dedicated officer.’ See
Stalin i Kaganovich,
2001, 279–81.

44.
Not until 1938 did the death rate for deported families drop below the birth rate.

45.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni III,
649

46.
Ibid. 664

47.
Ibid. 774

48.
Even in 1990 the horrors of 1932 and 1933 were deemed unfit for publication: the writer Aleksei Markov, who had lived through the famine as a child, found it impossible to print his verse memoirs. He recalled his father sending him out of the house before blocking the chimney and suffocating the fourteen remaining members of the family; he saw Young Communists striding over emaciated corpses on their way to their special canteen.

49.
Tragediia sovetskoi derevni III,
644–5

50.
Ibid. 720

51.
Stalin i Kaganovich,
2001, 277

52.
Ibid. 274

FIVE * Iagoda’s Rise

1.
Gorky’s diary was seized after his death and remains secret. This passage was reported by one of the NKVD officers who took possession of it and is in Gorky’s style. See Vadim Baranov,
Gor’kii, bez grima: Taina smerti,
2001.