CONTENTS

Preface

The Seats of Stalin’s Power

1. BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

The Bulwarks of Stalin’s Power

2. IN LENIN’S SHADOW

A World of Reading and Contemplation

3. HIS REVOLUTION

Trepidation in the Inner Circle

4. TERROR AND IMPENDING WAR

Patient Number 1

5. STALIN AT WAR

Family

6. THE GENERALISSIMO

The Dictatorship Collapses

THE FUNERAL: THE VOZHD, THE SYSTEM, AND THE PEOPLE

Illustrations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

PREFACE

For more than two decades, I have been studying this man and the causes and logic underlying his actions, which upended or utterly destroyed millions upon millions of lives. This work has been stressful and emotionally draining, but it is my vocation. Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history, the large-scale poisoning of minds with myths of an “alternative” Stalin—one whose effective stewardship is held up as a model worthy of emulation—have given my research more than scholarly relevance.

The literature on Stalin and his era is impossibly vast. Even scholars of Stalinism freely admit to not having seen the half of it. Within this vastness, serious, meticulously documented research coexists with slapdash pen-pushing carelessly cobbled together out of anecdotes, rumors, and fabrications. The two camps—historical scholarship and lowbrow (usually pro-Stalin) ramblings—rarely cross paths and have long since given up the idea of reconciling.

Scholarly biographies of Stalin have gone through the same stages as the historiography of the Soviet period overall. I have a high regard for some classics written at a time when Soviet archives were completely inaccessible. Two authors who stand out are Adam Ulam and Robert Tucker.¹ Back in the 1970s, historians of the Stalin period resembled specialists in antiquity: they tended to know the few available documents and memoirs inside out and had little ability to expand their number. This dearth of documentation encouraged the painstaking study of these sources and elegant and thoughtful extrapolation. The situation was bound to change after the archival floodgates were opened in the early 1990s, and it took us some time to get our heads above water. The eventual appearance of new works informed by archival materials—including scholarly biographies of Stalin, as well as other investigations of the man and the political system—signal that historians have begun to cope with the inundation.²

The opening of the archives gave rise to a new genre of Stalin biography that one might call “the archival exposé.” It’s trailblazers include Dmitri Volkogonov, a former party loyalist who became a driving force for perestroika, and the Russian playwright Edvard Radzinsky. This genre favors personal accounts over “dry” statistics or administrative paper trails and page-turning narratives over painstaking research and historical contextualization. For many readers, the archival exposé has played an important role in shaping Stalin’s image.

One of the most successful Western authors working to feed appetites for newly available details about the Stalin era is Simon Sebag Montefiore. A notable feature of his method is the citation of a broad spectrum of sources, not only from memoirs and interviews, but also from the archives. Montefiore struck a sort of middle ground, striving to instill some scholarly discipline into the “archival exposés” genre while producing readable history capable of attracting a wider audience than more scholarly texts.³

In today’s Russia, on the other hand, Stalin’s image is primarily being shaped by pseudo-scholarly apologias. An extremely diverse array of authors, all with their own motivations, contributes to Stalinist mythology. Most of these authors blend a lack of the most elementary knowledge with a willingness to make bold assertions. Their apologias typically cite fabricated sources or shamelessly misrepresent real ones. The impact of this powerful ideological assault on readers’ minds is intensified by the circumstances of Russian life, which include rampant corruption and outrageous social iniquities. When they reject the present, people are more likely to idealize the past.

Apologists for Stalin no longer try, as they once did, to deny the crimes of his regime. Instead they resort to more subtle rewritings of history. In their version of events, lower-level officials, such as secret police chiefs and the secretaries of regional party committees, supposedly hiding their actions from Stalin, instigated mass repression. The most cynical Stalinists take a different tack, claiming that the Terror was just and that the millions destroyed on Stalin’s orders really were “enemies of the people.”

Many Russian Stalinists find it convenient to draw on theories developed by various Western historians: that the Terror developed spontaneously, that Stalin was not deeply involved in it, and that he was a far more “ordinary” political leader than usually thought. It is certainly not my intention to accuse my Western colleagues of fomenting re-Stalinization. They bear no more responsibility for Russia’s contemporary political battles than Marx did for the Bolshevik revolution. Still, we should be aware that our words can have bizarre reverberations.

One variety of apologia widely cultivated in Russia’s intellectual and political soil is the relatively moderate idea of “modernizing Stalinism.” While this ideology formally acknowledges the Terror’s countless victims and the high price paid for the “great leap” strategy, it sees Stalinism as an organic and unavoidable means of addressing the need to modernize and prepare for war. Within these postulates we can detect prejudices deeply rooted in the Russian social consciousness: that the interests of the state take absolute priority, that the individual is insignificant, that the flow of history is governed by higher-order laws. According to this paradigm, Stalin was the expression of an objective historical need. His methods were regrettable but necessary and effective. Furthermore, it is inevitable that the flywheel of history will become spattered with blood.

It would be wrong to deny that the “long waves” of Russian history helped shape the path toward Bolshevism and Stalinism. A strong state with authoritarian traditions, feeble private property and civil society institutions, and the colossal reach of a colonizing power that enabled, among other things, the creation of the Gulag Archipelago, all paved the way toward the Stalinist system. But elevating these factors to some sort of “Russian destiny” leads to the dead-end theory of “inevitable Stalinism.” Adherents of this theory have little interest in specific facts and prefer to recycle Stalinist interpretations of Soviet history, sometimes with a fresh twist, more often without. They adamantly dismiss questions about the price paid for transformations and military victories, alternative development paths, and the role of the dictator. They close their eyes to the fact that Stalin himself, when he brought matters to a state of crisis and ruin, was occasionally forced to soften his policies, thereby demonstrating that even within the framework of Stalinism there were multiple paths toward industrialization. They do not even try to explain how the executions of seven hundred thousand people in 1937–1938 alone, ordered by Stalin, served the goals of modernization. Overall, the theory of modernizing Stalinism makes no serious attempt to ascertain how effective the Stalinist system was or to evaluate Stalin’s own role in the development of the USSR from the 1920s to the early 1950s.

Reducing history to historical imperative is the least creative way of presenting the past. Historians are compelled to deal not with simple schemes and political conjecture but with concrete facts. Working with documents, they cannot avoid noticing the intricate dance between objective factors and personalities or between pattern and random occurrence. In a dictatorship, the role of the dictator’s personal predilections, prejudices, and obsessions is greatly magnified. What better medium than biography to unravel this complex tangle of problems?

Biography is a unique genre of research that can, at one extreme, be reduced to the minutia of historical context or, at the other, be bloated with novelistic details of human behavior. Context without soul and soul without context—these are the main pitfalls confronting the biographer. Navigating them was a challenge for me. In the end, I understood that it was simply not possible to squeeze into this book even a passing reference to every significant episode or aspect of the Stalin period. I was compelled to choose which phenomena and tendencies most deserved inclusion, selecting the facts and events that seemed to characterize Stalin, his time, and the system that bears his name with the greatest clarity and vividness. This selectivity was all the more necessary given the appearance, over the past twenty years, of so many new sources shedding light on Stalin and his period. These sources should be briefly identified.

First, because of the opening of the state archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union, historians now may consult original firsthand documents, whereas in the past they were forced to whittle layers of distortion from official publications. A good example is the works and speeches of Stalin himself. Most were published during the leader’s lifetime, but we now have the ability to work with the originals and compare what was actually said with edited versions. Furthermore, the body of Stalin’s published speeches can now be supplemented with those that did not appear in print. Among the most important documents are papers generated by governmental bodies that Stalin himself chaired, such as the protocols and stenographic records of Politburo meetings and wartime State Defense Committee decrees. These dry bureaucratic documents are tremendously important in understanding Stalin’s personality and life. They took up a huge portion of the dictator’s time and were the tools by which he exercised power. Many resolutions bear traces of his heavy editorial hand.

By themselves, of course, the orders issued under Stalin paint only a partial picture. Why were they adopted? What were the logic and motives behind his directives? Much more revealing is Stalin’s intermittent correspondence with his Politburo colleagues, conducted primarily when he was away on vacation and requiring letters to steer the actions of his fellow leaders back in Moscow. This correspondence was most prolific in the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, before Russia had any reliable telephone service. It is a marvelous example of how sluggish technological progress can be a historian’s friend. After the war, telephone communication became more reliable, and Stalin, now securely at the pinnacle of power, felt less need for detailed correspondence with subordinates. Curt directives sufficed. Despite their fragmentary nature, Stalin’s letters constitute an important documentary whole and make for fascinating reading. They represent the most candid testaments he has left to posterity.⁴

Historians have been able to glean a great deal of important information from the logs of visitors to Stalin’s Kremlin office.⁵ These logs recorded visitors’ names and the times they entered and left the office and thus shed light on how Stalin conducted business. Comparing them with other sources (such as memoirs or the protocols of Politburo meetings) offers important clues to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of various resolutions. Still, like his correspondence, these logs reflect only a portion of Stalin’s activity. In addition to his Kremlin office, he occasionally worked in his office at Central Committee headquarters on Staraia Square and received visitors in his Kremlin apartment, as well as at his numerous dachas outside Moscow and in the south. Although we know that the service responsible for protecting Soviet leaders kept records of visits to Stalin’s Kremlin apartment, researchers have yet to be given access to this archive.⁶ There appears to be no sign of analogous records for the Central Committee office or the dachas.

The visitor logs were kept by Stalin’s secretariat and security team. It seems likely that these services also kept, for their own purposes, records of Stalin’s movements, as well as accounts by security personnel of what happened during their shifts. It goes without saying that these materials would be of tremendous value to Stalin’s biographers. At this point, there is no solid evidence that such records exist.

Stalin’s correspondence and the log of visitors to his Kremlin office are both part of his personal archive, which was compiled under his direct supervision and apparently with an eye toward history. Many documents in this collection feature the notations “my archive” or “personal archive.” An important addition to the personal archive is an assortment of materials about Stalin gathered from various repositories. This assortment, which includes books from Stalin’s library with notations by him, was concentrated in the Central Party Archive. Today both sets of materials have been brought together in the Stalin Collection of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI, successor to the Central Party Archive, which comprises the bulk of its holdings),⁷ a key source of knowledge about Stalin now used extensively by historians.

Yet despite its importance, the Stalin Collection has serious deficiencies. It offers only limited insights into Stalin’s modi vivendi and operandi. Its primary shortcoming is the absence of much of the vast array of papers that made their way to Stalin’s desk on a daily basis. These include thousands upon thousands of letters, statistical compilations, diplomatic dispatches, and reports and memoranda from the various branches of state security. The lack of access to these documents hinders historians in their effort to develop a thorough understanding of how well informed Stalin was, what he knew about a given question, and thus the logic of his actions. The documents that would enable such insights have not been lost. They reside in the Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation (APRF, the former Politburo Archive), organized into “thematic” folders.⁸ While working on this book, I was able to examine a few of them. For the time being, the Presidential Archive does not accommodate systematic scholarly study. However, the very fact that these folders exist encourages hope. The history of Russia suggests that sooner or later the archive will open.

The most tempting sources for biographers are always diaries and memoirs. These contain the sorts of three-dimensional treatments of people and events that are hard to extract from official paperwork. Such firsthand accounts permit biographers to fill their works with attention-grabbing details, but historians are well aware of these sources’ liabilities. Memoirists, even candid ones, are rarely disinterested, and they often muddle events and dates or simply lie. These perils are compounded in memoirs from the Soviet era. As far as we know, no member of Stalin’s inner circle kept a diary, depriving us of the kind of detailed source that Goebbels’s famous diaries provided to Hitler’s biographers. The situation with memoirs is not much better. Only two people close to Stalin left detailed reminiscences: Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan.⁹ While these memoirs represent major contributions, both men were silent on important topics (such as their participation in the mass repression), and there was much that they simply did not know. Within Stalin’s inner circle there was a strict rule: each man was privy only to information that he needed for the effective fulfillment of his duties. In the case of Mikoyan, some elements of his memoirs were distorted by his son, who prepared the manuscript for publication. He arbitrarily and without the customary disclosures simply inserted his own additions and revisions into the dictated text, supposedly based on subsequent accounts shared by his father.¹⁰

We also have memoirs by Soviet and foreign officials and other prominent figures who had some—usually extremely limited—interaction with Stalin. These works make a minor contribution to what we know about his life. In additional, many memoirs (for example by Red Army marshals) were published during the Soviet era and were therefore subjected to censorship (including self-censorship). After the fall of the USSR, many other people whose paths had crossed with Stalin’s spoke up. Freedom sparked a flood of memoirs from the children and relatives of Stalin-era leaders.¹¹ This “children’s literature,” as the Russian historian Elena Zubkova so aptly labeled the genre, was mainly motivated by commerce and a passion for self-justification, and the results are indeed juvenile.¹² Many relatives of Stalin and his comrades concocted fairy tales and cock-and-bull stories, blending personal impressions with fantasy. Naive pronouncements on politics serve to show that these offspring had only the faintest idea of what their fathers were up to. Third-hand information, rumors, and gossip abound. The primary factor detracting from the potential value of this literature is that Stalin’s underlings were obsessed with maintaining strict secrecy. They lived with unrelenting secret police surveillance and the constant fear of being provoked into a politically fatal slip of the tongue. It is difficult to imagine what could have compelled them to be candid within their own families. The price was too high.

In this book I have been restrained in my use of memoirs, even though many contain fascinating descriptions and anecdotes readers would certainly find of interest. Guided by the most basic rules of source verification, I have made every effort to compare memoir accounts with other materials, archival materials first and foremost. On one hand, memoirs that generally held up to scrutiny were given greater credence. On the other hand, numerous errors and flagrant fabrications were treated as clear signs of unreliability, even if some claims could not be proved false through other sources. Certain memoirs were put on my personal blacklist. While I do not condemn others for citing these works, I will never do so.

When all is said and done, however, a historian endeavoring to write a biography of Stalin is in a relatively good position. The abundance of archival documents and evidence offers opportunities for prolonged, intensive, and (one can hope) fruitful work. Significant lacunae and the inaccessibility of many materials are frustrating impediments; nevertheless, it is now possible to write a genuinely new biography of Stalin insofar as newly accessible archival material has forced changes in our understanding of both the man and his era.

I would like to add a few final words about the size and structure of this biography. Restraints in the former have inspired innovations in the latter. Exhaustive details had to be forsaken. References and notes had to be kept to a minimum, so priority has been given to the attribution of quotes, numbers, and facts. By no means all of the worthy works of my colleagues have been mentioned, for which I offer them my apologies. Such economies leave me ambivalent. I regret the omission of many telling facts and quotes, but I am glad for the reader. I know how it feels to gaze wistfully at stacks of fat tomes that will never be conquered.

Another aspect of the book that I hope will facilitate reading, in addition to its modest size, is its structure. A conventional chapter-section chronology did not lend itself to presenting the two interdependent strata of Stalin’s biography: the sequence of his life events and the most salient features of his personality and dictatorship. This difficulty gave rise to the idea of two alternating narratives, a sort of textual matryoshka or Russian nesting doll. One conceptual chain examines Stalin’s personality and system of rule against the backdrop of his final days. The other, more conventionally chronological, follows the main stages of his biography in sequence. As a result, the book can be read in two ways. Readers can trust my arrangement and follow the page order, or they can take one stratum at a time. I have tried to make both methods equally convenient.

THE SEATS OF STALIN’S POWER

The early morning hours of 1 March 1953 at the near dacha. The “Five’s” last supper.

On Saturday, 28 February 1953, Josef Stalin invited four of his senior associates to the Kremlin: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin.¹ During the final six months of his life, Stalin and these four men constituted what was known as the “ruling group” or simply the “Five.” They met regularly in Stalin’s home. The leader’s other old friends—Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Kliment Voroshilov—were in disgrace, and he did not wish to see them.² Assembling a small group of supporters to act as his right hand in ruling the country was a key element of Stalin’s modus operandi. He liked to name these groups according to the number of members: the Five (Piaterka), the Six (Shesterka), the Seven (Semerka), the Eight (Vos’merka), the Nine (Deviatka). These informal groups enjoyed supreme authority while formal party and state structures functioned as regular bureaucracies handling the day-today running of the country. Dividing government into formal and informal institutions allowed the dictator to exploit the capabilities of a vast, all-encompassing bureaucratic machine while keeping a firm hold on the true levers of power. Stalin often changed the composition of the ruling group. He maintained daily, hands-on control over this central node of power, keeping its members at his constant beck and call for meetings and “friendly” gatherings. The dictator’s approach to exercising power through a combination of bureaucratic institutions and patrimonial power inspired Yoram Gorlizki to coin the phrase “neopatrimonial state.”³

Fear was the primary force behind the dictator’s patrimonial power over his top associates and other highly placed officials. With the Soviet state security system under his firm control, Stalin could arrest anyone at any moment and have the person summarily shot. He did so countless times. The entire patrimonial political enterprise rested on terror.

The most important decisions were always made through direct—ideally face-to-face—communication with the dictator. This was the fastest and most effective way for an official to achieve personal and administrative objectives. But communication required access to the seats of power, places that for countless Soviet officials and members of the top leadership took on an almost sacred aura. Some were more sacred than others. There was an unspoken hierarchy in the various settings from which Stalin wielded power, and admission to some endowed greater status than others. Stalin spent a significant portion of his life in these seats of power. Each reflected some aspect of his personality and dictatorship.

The primary and most official seat of power was Stalin’s Kremlin office. This commodious, oak-paneled study was divided into two zones: Stalin’s desk and a long conference table. Other furnishings included a grandfather clock (which Stalin used to monitor the promptness with which those summoned arrived) and a plaster death mask of Lenin encased in glass and displayed on a special stand. On the walls hung portraits of Lenin and Marx. During the war, they were joined by the tsarist-era military heroes Aleksandr Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov. Otherwise the decor hardly changed over the many years he spent there. During the war, the bomb shelter built beneath the Kremlin contained a slightly smaller but otherwise almost exact replica of this office: the same furniture, the same pictures, the same curtains (despite the lack of windows).⁴

Over thirty years, approximately three thousand different people visited the Kremlin office.⁵ Stalin’s closest associates, of course, were there frequently, but the visitors also included heads of government ministries and enterprises, academics, cultural figures, senior state security and military personnel, and foreign guests. The Kremlin office was the most accessible of the seats of Stalin’s power.

On the evening of 28 February 1953, Bulganin, Beria, Malenkov, and Khrushchev, who had been called to the Kremlin by Stalin, did not linger in this office. Stalin immediately took them to the Kremlin movie theater, a much more exclusive place. The theater was a 7.5-by-17-meter space with twenty seats, installed in 1934 where Russia’s tsars had once enjoyed a winter garden. Before it was built, Soviet leaders watched movies either outside the Kremlin, in the building of the cinematography directorate, or in a small Kremlin room that had been used for silent films.⁶ Stalin enjoyed watching movies with his comrades, and these viewing sessions gradually became obligatory. Thanks to detailed records kept by Boris Shumiatsky, who oversaw the Soviet film industry, we know quite a bit about how these evenings in the movie theater were spent during 1934–1936.⁷ Shumiatsky would bring the movies and listen to the comments of Stalin and his colleagues, as well as the decisions that were sometimes taken during a viewing. His notes provide a valuable window onto the rules of behavior within Stalin’s inner circle and the atmosphere of these gatherings.

As a rule, the viewing sessions began late in the evening and extended into the early hours of the morning. Stalin sat in the front row, surrounded by members of the top leadership. There was always a great deal of discussion about the movies and newsreels, both while a film was rolling and afterward. Stalin always had the first word. He would issue instructions concerning the content of specific films, the Soviet film industry, and ideology in general. In the movie theater, he made on-the-spot decisions on everything from budgetary issues to the publication of policy-setting articles in the Soviet press to personnel matters. Filmmakers would occasionally be invited to viewings of their films. Such an invitation was a great honor. Stalin would congratulate them on their work and offer “guidance” on improving it. Shumiatsky’s records make it clear that these get-togethers in the Kremlin movie theater were not merely relaxation for the Soviet leadership. They were informal meetings of the top level of government at which questions of ideology and cultural policy were decided. Most likely, Stalin and his colleagues also discussed other affairs of state before and after the viewings.

Shumiatsky’s records end abruptly in early 1937. This was undoubtedly tied to the intensification of repression in the country. Shumiatsky himself was arrested in early 1938 and shot soon after. Stalin’s movie viewing continued, but we know almost nothing about later sessions. It appears that toward the end of his life, only his closest associates were admitted to the Kremlin movie theater. The 28 February meeting of the Five was Stalin’s last movie-theater get-together.

When the movie was over, Stalin, as he often did, invited the others to dine with him at his dacha near the Moscow suburb of Volynskoe. The dacha was just a few minutes away, earning it the nickname of “the near [dacha]” (blizhniaia). Occasionally the seat of power would shift to one or another of the houses or dachas around Moscow or in the south, where Stalin spent lengthy annual vacations. But the “near” dacha held a special place in his heart. It was an important epicenter of his life and rule.

The first house on the site of the near dacha was built in 1933. The move there was associated with upheavals in Stalin’s personal and political life. The terrible famine that swept the land in the early 1930s as a result of Stalin’s policies coincided with family tragedy. In November 1932 his wife, Nadezhda Allilueva, died by her own hand.⁸ Stalin started a new life in a new place.

Stalin personally oversaw the near dacha’s many expansions and renovations. The huge house that resulted was an odd blend of the institutional and the pretentious.⁹ All the rooms resembled one another and were, in the words of Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, “impersonal.”¹⁰ The second floor, for which an elevator had been installed, was rarely used. Stalin’s favorite room toward the end of his life was the so-called “small dining room” on the first floor. This roomy space contained a rectangular table three meters long, a couch, a cupboard, an easy chair, a small telephone table, and a fireplace. A pair of binoculars, hanging from a hook, and a hunting rifle were kept next to the fireplace. A large carpet covered the floor. The room led to a glassed-in veranda and a terrace. According to Svetlana, Stalin both slept and worked in this room. The large table was always piled with papers and books. Unless he had company, he ate at one of the table’s corners. He kept his medicines in the cupboard. Stalin enjoyed sitting by the fire, where he would sometimes order shashlik to be roasted. He liked to receive his visitors here. It is also where he suffered the stroke that ended his life.

The dacha was surrounded by a fifty-acre park. Stalin personally oversaw the landscaping and farming that took place on the grounds. He designed a greenhouse for citrus plants, supervised the installation of a vineyard, grew his own watermelons, and kept a pond stocked with fish. He sometimes had a portion of his watermelon crop sent to Moscow stores. There were also horses, cows, chickens, ducks, and a small apiary. His bodyguards testified that Stalin devoted a great deal of time to the running of this agricultural enterprise and kept track of even the smallest details. Hundreds of orders from Stalin to the man in charge of running the estate, Lieutenant Colonel P. V. Lozgachev, have been preserved:

7 April 1950: a) Start planting watermelons and melons in raised beds on 10 May; b) In mid-July, trim the watermelon and melon vines.…

20 April: … Line the path from the kitchen to the pond with fir trees.… Plant corn every half meter next to the main house and between apple trees by the pond, toward the gazebo. Plant beans there too.… Plant eggplant, corn, and tomatoes along the edge of the garden.

Lozgachev reported that he received such instructions almost every day.¹¹ In essence, Stalin was the master of a small estate that he preferred to run himself, not leaving important details in the hands of subordinates. The patriarchal way in which he ran his dacha estate is consistent with his approach to running his much larger “estate,” the Soviet Union. He kept track of state resources and reserves and took charge of their allocation, jotting down important pieces of information in a special notebook.¹² He immersed himself in the details of film scripts, architectural plans, and the design of military hardware. His interest in landscaping extended beyond his personal domain to the streets of Moscow: “People say that the square on the Arbat … has not yet been covered with paving blocks (or asphalt). This is shameful! … Put pressure on them and make them finish up the square.”¹³

One result of Stalin’s desire to shape the spaces around him was the creation of a room that served as the dacha’s social nexus: a 155-square-meter hall. The room’s centerpiece was a 7-meter-long table that stood on a 6-by-12-meter rug. (The area of this rug, incidentally, equaled the average living space of sixteen Soviet city dwellers in 1953: 4.5 square meters per person.) Easy chairs and couches lined the walls. Occasionally Stalin worked at the table in this large room or on the couch or easy chairs. For the most part, however, the room was reserved for meetings and festive gatherings.

A number of participants in these gatherings, which were held regularly, have left descriptions. The food was simply placed on the table, and guests helped themselves to whatever they wanted and took their plates to any free seat. Dinner stretched for many hours, ending long after midnight or even at daybreak. These meals were an opportunity to discuss and decide various matters of state. But that was not all. For Stalin, they were a way of keeping an eye on his associates and gleaning information. As one of the few forms of entertainment available to him, they also filled an important social need: they eased his sense of isolation. As Khrushchev wrote, “He felt so alone he didn’t know what to do with himself.”¹⁴

Plenty of drinking went on around this table. As he aged, Stalin moderated his own consumption of spirits, but he liked to spur others to overdo it and then watch their behavior. He had several ways of forcing his guests to drink more heavily than they might have wished. Toasts were proposed in rapid succession, and failing to empty one’s glass was unacceptable. “If someone didn’t participate when a toast was made, he was ‘fined’ by having to drink another glassful and perhaps several glasses.”¹⁵ The Yugoslav politician and writer Milovan Djilas later recalled a drinking game he witnessed at Stalin’s dacha during a visit in January 1948: “Everyone guessed how many degrees below zero it was outside and then, as a penalty, downed … a glass for each degree he was off.… I remember that Beria missed by three and claimed that he had done so on purpose to get more vodka.”¹⁶

The alcohol loosened inhibitions. “The atmosphere at these dinners was unconstrained, and jokes, many of them obscene, evoked raucous laughter.”¹⁷ In addition, there were other, more “cultured” amusements. Sometimes they sang revolutionary and folk songs in which, the wife of Andrei Zhdanov recalled, Stalin would join with a quiet tenor.¹⁸ Zhdanov entertained his comrades with lewd ditties.¹⁹ “Such songs could be sung only at Stalin’s. You couldn’t possibly repeat them anywhere,” Khrushchev recalled.²⁰ For a while a piano stood in the large room. Some remembered Zhdanov playing it, although there is no clear record of what he played or how well. After Zhdanov’s death in 1948, Stalin ordered the piano moved to an adjacent room. More often, music was provided by a radiogram (a combination radio and phonograph), on which Stalin played records, both Russian folk songs and classical music. Sometimes he enjoyed listening to his impressive collection of some 2,700 albums, on his own or with guests. Occasionally there was dancing. According to Khrushchev, Mikoyan was considered the best dancer. Everyone did the best he could. Even Stalin “would move his feet around and stretch out his arms.”²¹

There probably was no dancing during those early hours of 1 March. This was a quiet get-together, limited to Stalin’s most trusted associates. “We would go to Stalin’s place quite often, almost every evening,” Khrushchev recalled of that period. These dinner gatherings with the aging and unbalanced Stalin were not easy on his guests. In Khrushchev’s words, “We were supposed to work at our jobs and the posts to which we had been elected and, besides that, attend Stalin’s dinners like some sort of characters in a play and entertain him. That was a difficult and painful time for us.”²² But Stalin’s comrades were not about to complain, and they assiduously fulfilled their dinner duties as a condition of their inclusion in the ruling circle. As usual, the gathering adjourned toward morning (Khrushchev places its conclusion around five or six a.m.). They parted on a good note. As Khrushchev described it, “Stalin was a bit tipsy and seemed very well disposed toward everyone.” He led his guests into the vestibule, “joked a lot, waved his hands around, and as I recall he poked me in the stomach with his finger and called me Mikita. When he was in a good mood, he always used the Ukrainian form of my name—Mikita.… We too were in a good mood when we left because nothing unpleasant had happened at the dinner, and not all these dinners ended that well.”²³ We have no reason to doubt Khrushchev’s account. Dmitri Volkogonov claimed that Stalin was irritable and threatened his guests, but he does not cite any specific sources.²⁴

Stalin was equally capable of rewarding his underlings with his amiability and menacing them with threats. For almost two decades he used both the carrot and the stick (in Russian, the knout and the ginger cookie, with a good deal more of the former) to keep not only his close associates in hand, but also the many millions who lived in the USSR and, later, the entire “socialist camp.”

Over his seventy-four-year life, the Soviet dictator fought through a stormy historical landscape to become an important factor in events not only in Russia, but also the world. Among scholars, there is more agreement than controversy on the historical and ideational antecedents that shaped him, including traditional Russian authoritarianism and imperialism, European revolutionary traditions, and Leninist Bolshevism.²⁵ These influences, of course, do not diminish his major personal contribution to the formation of a uniquely Soviet totalitarian system and ideology. Ideological doctrines and prejudices were often decisive in Stalin’s life and actions, but instead of receiving them passively, he adapted them to the interests of his own dictatorship and emerging superpower. His personality also played no small role in the political course he forged. He was cruel by temperament and devoid of compassion. Of all the available methods for resolving political, social, and economic conflict, he favored terror and saw no reason to moderate its use. Like other dictators, he was stubborn and inflexible. Concession and compromise were seen as a threat to the inviolability of his power. He made limited and half-hearted reforms only when socioeconomic crises were reaching the breaking point and the stability of the system was imperiled. His theoretical dogmatism lay at the root of the violence that defined his regime.

Underpinning Stalin’s worldview was an extreme anti-capitalism. His hostility toward this system was unequivocal, and he rejected even the limited concessions that Lenin made in instituting the New Economic Policy (NEP). Stalin grudgingly allowed a few capitalist economic vehicles within the Soviet system, such as money, limited market relations, and personal property. After millions had died during the famine of 1932–1933, he agreed to allow peasants limited freedom to produce and sell outside the collective and state farm system. But to the end he believed that the concessions that had been forced on him by hard circumstances would soon be reversed and the socialist economy would be transformed into a money-free powerhouse where people would work as ordered by the state and receive in exchange the natural goods that the state decided they needed.

In Stalin’s worldview, the state the Bolsheviks created was an absolute. All existence was completely and unconditionally subordinate to the state, and its highest personification was the party and its leader. Personal interests were recognized only to the extent that they served the state, which had the unquestioned right to demand from people any sacrifice, including their lives. The state was unrestricted in its actions and could never be wrong, as it represented the ultimate truth of historical progress. Any action by the regime could be justified by the greatness of its mission. Mistakes and crimes by the state did not exist; there was only historical necessity and inevitability or, in some cases, the growing pains of building a new society.

The primary tool used to compel submission to the state and suppress the individual and the social was the so-called “class war” against foreign and domestic “enemies.” In this war, Stalin was the foremost theoretician and a ruthless tactician. With the successful advance of socialism, he asserted, the class war would only intensify. This idea was a cornerstone of his dictatorship. As a means of interpreting reality, the class war theory was also a powerful propaganda tool. Inadequate political and economic outcomes, the hardships endured by the populace, and military failures could all be explained by the underhanded scheming of “enemies.” As a method of state repression, class war gave the Terror the breadth and brutality of an actual war. The Soviet dictator has earned the distinction of being the organizer and director of one of the most powerful and merciless terror machines known to history.

Stalin had no trouble reconciling Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist dogma with great-power imperialism. In November 1937, he told his associates the following: “The Russian tsars did many bad things. They plundered and enslaved the people. They waged wars and grabbed territory in the interests of the landowners. But they did do one good thing—they created a huge state that stretches all the way to Kamchatka. We have inherited that state. And for the first time we, the Bolsheviks, have brought together and consolidated this state as a single, indivisible state … for the benefit of the workers.”²⁶ These candid words are all the more telling as they were spoken at a dinner celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution, the country’s main revolutionary holiday. In the international arena, Stalin’s expansion of the empire makes him a worthy heir to the Russian tsars. Only the ideological façade was different. At the Berlin train station on the eve of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman asked Stalin how it felt to arrive in the capital of a defeated enemy as a victor. Stalin replied, “Tsar Alexander made it all the way to Paris.”²⁷ Yet Stalin arguably outdid the tsars. The Soviet empire expanded its sphere of influence to encompass huge swaths of Europe and Asia and transformed itself into one of the world’s two superpowers.

Did Stalin look back on his triumphs after parting with his guests for the last time in his life on 28 February? Did his thoughts take him to earlier times—his childhood, youth, the revolution? Like the lives of his fellow revolutionaries, Stalin’s life was cleanly divided into two parts: before and after the revolution. Conceptually and chronologically, these two periods were approximate halves of his life. The first thirty-eight of his seventy-four years were lived before the revolution, and twenty of them were spent actively working toward it.

1 BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

According to his official Soviet biography, Stalin was born in 1879. In fact Ioseb Jughashvili (his birth name) was born one year earlier. Stalin knew, of course, when and where he was born: in the small Georgian town of Gori, in a far corner of the vast Russian Empire. A Gori church register (part of Stalin’s personal archive) provides the exact date: 6 December 1878. This date can also be found in other documents, such as his graduation certificate from the Gori Theological School. In a form filled out in 1920, his year of birth is again given as 1878. But the year 1879 began to appear in paperwork completed by his various helpers, and that date was used in all encyclopedias and reference materials. After he had consolidated power, a grand celebration was held in honor of his fiftieth birthday on 21 December 1929. There was confusion over not only the year of his birth, but also the day, given as 9 December (Old Style) instead of 6 December. This inaccuracy came to the attention of historians only in 1990.¹ The reason for it has yet to be determined. One thing is clear: in the 1920s, Stalin decided to become one year younger. And he did.

Legends surround Stalin’s parentage. Sensation seekers proclaimed Ioseb (who later became Iosif once his interactions began to be primarily in Russian) to have been the illegitimate son of a prosperous merchant, a factory owner, a prince, and even Emperor Alexander III, who supposedly was attended to by Ioseb’s mother while the emperor was visiting Tiflis. The historical record suggests more prosaic origins. Ioseb was born into a humble Georgian family. His mother, Ekaterine or Keke (Yekaterina in Russian) Geladze, the daughter of serfs, was born in 1856. In 1864, after the abolition of serfdom, her family moved to Gori, where, at the age of eighteen, she was given in marriage to the cobbler Besarion or Beso (Vissarion in Russian) Jughashvili, six years her senior. Their first two children died in infancy; Ioseb (Soso) was the third.²

Few pieces of documentary evidence survive from Stalin’s youth. The primary source of our knowledge is memoirs written after he had already attained the pinnacle of power. Even an uncritical reader will notice that these memoirists are writing about the childhood and youth of a future dictator, not the early years of Ioseb Jughashvili. This aberration magnifies the tendency, common to biographies generally, toward selective exaggeration and exclusion. Depending on the situation and the writer’s politics, emphasis is placed on either Ioseb’s virtues and leadership qualities or his innate cruelty and psychological abnormalities. But as Ronald Grigor Suny has shown, attempts to find the future dictator in the child Ioseb Jughashvili are highly suspect.

It is commonly believed that Ioseb had a difficult childhood. Abuse and beatings by his drunkard father, as well as material deprivation, supposedly embittered the boy and made him ruthless and vindictive. But there is plenty of evidence to support a very different picture. By many measures, Stalin’s childhood was ordinary or even comfortable. A number of accounts attest that his father was not only a skilled cobbler, but also that he was able to read Georgian and converse in several languages, including Russian. His mother had received some home schooling and could also read and write in Georgian. Given the low literacy rate in Georgia at the time, this would have given the family an advantage. During Ioseb’s early years, Besarion Jughashvili apparently was quite successful and his family was well provided for.³

Later, after Besarion began to drink heavily and then abandoned his wife and child, responsibility for Ioseb’s upbringing fell on his mother’s shoulders. Ekaterine was a woman of strong character and a hard worker, and, starting with odd jobs, she managed to learn the craft of dressmaking. As an only child (a circumstance that would prove significant), Soso, unlike many of his peers, did not have to work and could therefore attend school. In a letter written in 1950, requesting a meeting for old times’ sake, one of Stalin’s childhood friends commented, “In 1894, when you graduated from the theological school, I graduated from the Gori Municipal School. You were accepted that same year into the Tbilisi Theological Seminary, but I wasn’t able to continue my studies since my father had 8 children, so we were poor and we helped him.”⁴ Ioseb’s mother, dreaming that her son would climb the social ladder to become a priest, doggedly worked to make this dream a reality and did everything she could to facilitate his education. Such strivings are hard to reconcile with the idea of a bleak, impoverished childhood.

Certainly there was discord in the family, and the drunken Besarion let loose with his fists. Soso was apparently beaten by both parents. But as Suny rightly observes, the evidence we have is insufficient either to judge whether violence within the Jughashvili family was unusual for that place and time or to assess its impact on Soso’s perception of the world.⁵ Stalin’s childhood and adolescence seem to have been utterly typical of the environment from which he came—the world of poor, but not destitute, craftsmen and shopkeepers in a small town at the outskirts of the empire. This was a world where coarse mores coexisted with traditions of neighbor helping neighbor and periods of relative well-being alternated with hard times. Children were exposed to severity and cruelty as well as to affection and indulgence. Soso Jughashvili experienced the good and the bad—his father’s harshness and his mother’s limitless affection—in relatively balanced proportion. The family’s financial difficulties, which came when Soso was in school, were eased by the help of friends and relatives. While at the local theological school and later at the seminary in Tiflis, Ioseb received assistance from the state and benefited from the intercession of sympathetic protectors. Despite their modest means, mother and son were fully accepted into their small community.

During an interview many years later, Stalin said, “My parents were uneducated, but they did not treat me badly by any means.”⁶ It is possible he was not being candid or was suppressing unpleasant childhood memories. There is little evidence regarding Stalin’s feelings toward his father, who died young. To all appearances, however, he felt genuine affection for his mother. His letters to her in her later years contain lines such as the following: “Hello Mama dear! How are you getting on, how are you feeling? I haven’t had any letters from you in a long time—you must be upset with me, but what can I do? I’m really very busy,” and “Greetings dear mother! I’m sending you a shawl, a jacket, and medicines. Show the medicines to your doctor before taking them because a doctor has to set the dose.”⁷ Despite her son’s meteoric rise, Keke remained in Georgia, living in a position of respect and comfort. Stalin did not attend her funeral in 1937. Throughout that year, the height of the Great Terror, he did not set foot outside of Moscow. The dedication he wrote for a memorial wreath in both Georgian and Russian still survives: “To my dear and beloved mother from her son Ioseb Jughashvili (from Stalin).”⁸

Stalin owed her a true debt of gratitude. She worked hard to protect her son from want and to enable him to get an education, and she nursed him through numerous illnesses, including smallpox, which pockmarked his face for the rest of his life. Soso also suffered a childhood mishap, exacerbated by poor medical treatment, that rendered his left arm severely disabled. The joints remained atrophied for the rest of his life, and the arm never functioned properly. Another physical defect was congenital: two toes on his left foot were joined. It seems unlikely that these defects remained unremarked in the often heartless company of boys. Yet Soso was not an outcast. He remained on an equal footing with his peers and took part in all of their games. He had an excellent memory, always a respected quality. It does not appear that a difficult childhood sowed in Ioseb Jughashvili the cruelty that emerged in Joseph Stalin. There is also no obvious sign of what in his childhood might have turned him into a rebel.

THE BULWARKS OF STALIN’S POWER

The day and evening of 1 March 1953 at the near dacha. Consternation among the bodyguards.

After his guests departed in the early morning hours of 1 March, Stalin most likely went to bed. He may not have felt well.¹ He was aged and sickly. He remained in his rooms and did not, as he usually did, summon any guards or servants toward suppertime. As of early 1952, Stalin’s apartment and dacha were protected by a staff of 335 security personnel.² Another 73 attended to his non-security needs. All told, 408 people, working in shifts at various sites, were devoted to taking care of Stalin. Stalin spent a significant portion of his time in these people’s company. They walked behind him, stood guard under his windows, cooked, cleaned, and, if needed, entertained him. At the near dacha, a long corridor separated the staff quarters from the part of the house where Stalin lived. His rooms were equipped with buttons to summon staff members.

The deviation from Stalin’s routine on 1 March alarmed his security team. The guards reported to their superiors that there was no “movement” within the leader’s residence. Evening approached with no signs of life. The sense of alarm escalated, but if they were not summoned, nobody wanted to check on the boss. Finally, sometime after six o’clock, the guards were relieved to see a light turn on in Stalin’s rooms. Everyone prepared for a call. None came. Anxiety again began to mount. The guards argued over who should go check on Stalin. Nobody volunteered.

Their hesitation was understandable. Of course, they had grown accustomed to Stalin, just as the lonely leader, for whom the hired help often served as a surrogate family, had grown accustomed to them. From time to time, Stalin and the dacha staff worked together in the garden or roasted shashlik in the fireplace. Sometimes he would come into the kitchen and lie down on the Russian brick oven to ease the pain in his back. But the distance that separated Stalin and his guards was much greater than the length of the corridor that separated their quarters from his. He was strict with his staff, and they knew better than to relax the fear they felt toward him.

The guards who protected Stalin and other members of the top leadership belonged to a special department within the Soviet security system, the Main Guard Directorate. In the early days of the regime, when the egalitarian romance of the revolution still lingered, Soviet leaders often mixed with the public. In the 1920s, Stalin’s wife could still ride streetcars, and he himself walked the streets of Moscow or rode in cars with no particular precautions, though always accompanied by bodyguards. In July 1930, while vacationing in Sochi, Stalin and his wife were involved in a car crash. He was slightly injured when his head hit the windshield.³

Two months after the car crash, amid growing hysteria in the struggle against “enemies,” the Politburo adopted a resolution “to oblige Com. Stalin to immediately desist from walking through the city on foot.”⁴ Stalin did not submit to this restriction. On 16 November 1931, while walking down the street, accompanied by bodyguards, from the Central Committee building to the Kremlin, he happened to run into an armed agent of an anti-Bolshevik organization who had come from abroad. The agent was so surprised that he did not have time to pull out his gun before he was arrested. A report on the incident by the Joint State Political Directorate, the OGPU (the Soviet secret police of the time), was sent to Stalin and the other members of the Politburo. Molotov made a notation on the report: “To PB members. Com. Stalin’s walking around Moscow on foot must be stopped.”⁵ It is not known whether Stalin submitted to this demand. It is also unclear whether the encounter could have been orchestrated.

On his 1933 vacation in the south, several incidents appeared to place Stalin in danger.⁶ In August, his car was hit by a truck in Sochi. The truck’s driver was drunk, and Stalin was unharmed. Another incident took place on the Black Sea coast in September when a motorboat on which Stalin was riding came under rifle fire from the shore. The bullets landed in the water, and no one on the boat was injured. An investigation determined that rifles had been fired by border guards who had not been warned that a boat would be entering the protected zone.

The murder of Sergei Kirov on 1 December 1934 was a watershed moment in attitudes toward the safety of Soviet leaders.⁷ Using it as an excuse, Stalin undertook a series of reprisals against former members of the party opposition, who were accused of orchestrating Kirov’s murder and plotting other terrorist acts against the Soviet leadership. In 1936–1938, when terror ravaged the country, engulfing hundreds of thousands of lives, Stalin eliminated everyone suspected of disloyalty. The security apparatus was one important target of the purges, and those in charge of guarding the leaders also fell victim. In April 1937, Stalin’s chief of security was arrested and swiftly executed. Of his two successors in 1937–1938, one shot himself and the other was executed. Finally, in late 1938, the uneducated but efficient Nikolai Vlasik was appointed to the post.⁸ Stalin took a liking to him and kept him in the job for more than thirteen years.

Vlasik’s career even survived an incident that took place in Moscow on 6 November 1942. An official car carrying Anastas Mikoyan, one of Stalin’s closest associates, came under rifle fire that day as it exited the Kremlin. No one was injured, and after a brief struggle the shooter was taken into custody. It turned out that he was a soldier from a Moscow air defense unit who was likely suffering from mental health problems.⁹ This incident was a terrible blow to the protection service under Vlasik’s command: an unbalanced and armed soldier had been standing in plain sight at the Kremlin gates for some time, waiting for an official car to come out, without being questioned or apprehended. Vlasik was demoted, but the leader gave him a second chance. He continued to oversee Stalin’s security.¹⁰

Vlasik seemed to enjoy Stalin’s full confidence. He followed the leader everywhere, often sat down at the same table with him to eat, and was granted the right to photograph him. Under Vlasik, the Main Guard Directorate became a powerful and influential government agency. In early 1952 it comprised 14,300 people and had an enormous budget of 672 million rubles. Vlasik’s directorate was responsible not only for protection, but also for the maintenance of the apartments and dachas of top-level Soviet leaders, keeping Central Committee members supplied with consumer goods, handling the transportation and lodging of foreign guests, and overseeing the construction of new government buildings. In 1951 approximately 80 million rubles of the directorate’s budget went toward maintaining the dachas and apartments of the fourteen highest-ranking Soviet leaders (including expenses for protection and servants). Stalin was, of course, the most expensive of the fourteen. A total of 26.3 million rubles were spent on his apartment and dacha in 1951. This sum probably did not include such expenses as automobile transport.

Serving in the Guard Directorate was both prestigious and lucrative. In 1951 the average compensation for members of Stalin’s security team (including uniforms, housing, etc.) was 5,300 rubles per month, at a time when the average monthly wage throughout the Soviet Union was 660 rubles and the average per capita income for collective farm workers was approximately 90 rubles per month.¹¹ In addition to material benefits, Vlasik’s relationship with the leader gave him significant political influence, leading to his increasing involvement—with Stalin’s encouragement—in the political intrigues that roiled around the vozhd (leader). Having a powerful patron and sense of impunity was intoxicating. Vlasik drank and enjoyed a promiscuous love life, and so did his subordinates.

Stalin generally tolerated such “weaknesses” as a pledge of obedience and devotion. Yet he was known to put his subordinates in their place, especially if they took too many liberties. During the summer of 1947 one of the waitresses at the near dacha informed Stalin that while he had been away, the dacha commandant and his deputy threw a party with drinking and prostitutes, for which they stole refreshments from the official supply. Furthermore, the deputy commandant and his female companions looked through papers on Stalin’s desk. On Stalin’s orders, the deputy commandant was arrested, interrogated at length, beaten, and shot.¹² This incident should have served as a warning to Vlasik, but it did not. Stalin continued to show a fairly relaxed attitude toward his chief bodyguard’s morals. In 1950, on Vlasik’s own admission, Stalin reprimanded him for “graft” and “relationships with women,” yet he remained in favor.¹³

Vlasik’s star waned only when the aging Stalin decided it was time for another general purge of state security. On 19 May 1952, the Politburo approved a resolution criticizing Vlasik and the entire leadership of the Ministry of State Security’s Main Guard Directorate for “criminal dissipation and the uncontrolled expenditure of resources.” Significant cutbacks to the directorate’s personnel, functions, and budget followed. Some of its members were charged with crimes. Vlasik was expelled from the party and demoted to deputy head of a labor camp in the Urals,¹⁴ and in December 1952 he was arrested. Running the Guard Directorate fell to the USSR minister for state security, Semen Ignatiev.¹⁵

The arrests, personnel cutbacks, and reorganization of the Guard Directorate undoubtedly set its members on edge. None of them, fearing for their jobs and their lives, wanted to face the consequences that could come with taking initiative. For these reasons Stalin’s bodyguards were very reluctant to check on him on 1 March 1953, even though something out of the ordinary was clearly taking place.

The branches of state security, including the branch in charge of Stalin’s personal safety, were one very important set of controls regulating the huge machine that historians call the Stalinist party-state. The framework that held this machine together was the Bolshevik party, bequeathed by Lenin, but repeatedly modified to fit the needs of Stalin’s dictatorship. Under Stalin, the party was a rigidly centralized organization whose power rested on its unquestioned right to hire, fire, and reassign personnel. Over many years, lists of positions were compiled (“the nomenklatura”). Each position came under the purview of a particular party committee, from the raikom (district committee) to the TsK (the party’s Central Committee). The career and fate of every official in the country depended on one of these party committees, and nobody, including the party functionaries themselves, could evade the system. Key government leaders were approved within the TsK apparat in Moscow.

The nomenklatura of TsK positions was constantly growing, a reflection of the center’s pursuit of ever-greater control. In September 1952, half a year before Stalin’s death, it comprised approximately 53,000 positions. Those who filled these positions were the “cream” of Soviet society, including high-level party and state officials, top military leaders, and the heads of the “creative unions” such as the Writers’ Union. One step lower were officials in charge of important regional bodies: those holding nomenklatura positions within obkoms (oblast or provincial committees), kraikoms (krai or territorial committees), and the central committees of the Communist parties of the various republics that made up the Soviet Union. This list was also constantly growing. As of 1 July 1952 it totaled 350,000 positions.¹⁶

These hundreds of thousands of functionaries were the backbone of the apparat and the pillar of the dictatorship. Of course Stalin never had direct contact with the vast majority of them. Furthermore, the party-state apparat had a life of its own and was relatively free of interference from the top leadership. In the struggle to survive, prosper, and rise through the ranks, officials sought ways to get around the strict rules aimed at centralization. They could generally act as convenience dictated so long as the paper trail they left reflected adherence to the rules. Abuses of power were common. A number of historians, exaggerating the significance of these processes, have argued that the Stalinist dictatorship was unstable, and many have attempted to explain the worst features of Stalinism—mass repression especially—as arising spontaneously from below.

The documentary evidence offers no support for the idea of a “weak dictator.” We do not know of a single decision of major consequence taken by anyone other than Stalin. We do not know of even a brief period when he did not exercise dictatorial control. The dictatorship developed extremely effective methods of manipulating and pressuring society and the apparat, and thus Stalin had a firm grip on power and the implementation of key decisions. Ongoing repression and purges of personnel kept society and the apparat in a state of mobilized tension. The archives have allowed historians to assess, in fairly precise numbers, the scale of the violence necessary to achieve such control. Official records show that approximately eight hundred thousand people were shot between 1930 and 1952.¹⁷ The number who perished as a result of the regime’s actions, however, was much higher, insofar as Stalin’s security apparat made frequent use of fatal torture techniques and the conditions prevailing in labor camps at times made them indistinguishable from death camps. Between 1930 and 1952, some 20 million people were sentenced to incarceration in labor camps, penal colonies, or prisons. During that same period no fewer than 6 million, primarily “kulaks” and members of “repressed peoples,” were subjected to “administrative exile”: forced resettlement to a remote area of the USSR. On average, over the more than twenty-year span of Stalin’s rule, 1 million people were shot, incarcerated, or deported to barely habitable areas of the Soviet Union every year.

Those who were shot or sent to the camps included a fair number of ordinary criminals. But the exceptional severity of laws and the criminalization of all spheres of socioeconomic and political life meant that ordinary citizens who committed minor infractions or were swept up in various political campaigns were often classified as criminals. Furthermore, in addition to the 26 million who were shot, imprisoned, or subjected to internal exile, tens of millions were forced to labor on difficult and dangerous projects, arrested, subjected to lengthy imprisonment without charges, or fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes for being relatives of “enemies of the people.” Overall, the Stalinist dictatorship subjected at least 60 million people to some sort of “hard” or “soft” repression and discrimination.

To this figure we must add the victims of periodic famines or starvation, which during 1932–1933 alone took the lives of between 5 and 7 million people. The Stalinist famine was largely the result of political decisions. In its campaign to break peasant opposition to collectivization, the Stalinist government used famine as a means of “punishing” the countryside. All opportunities to relieve the situation—such as purchasing grain abroad—were rejected. Starving villages had their last stores of food expropriated.

We can conclude from this horrific summation that a significant proportion of Soviet citizens suffered some form of repression or discrimination during the Stalin period.¹⁸ It would not be an exaggeration to say that an absolute majority were brutally suppressed by a privileged minority—except that many in that minority were also swept up in the terror.

To achieve its goals, including the implementation of mass repression and the extraction of grain from the starving countryside, the regime did not need its apparat to run with clocklike precision. The inability to achieve perfect centralization in such a vast country was compensated for by the widespread use of campaigns, which mostly followed a similar template. Campaigns were the cornerstone of Stalinist political practice. They all began with a set of goals and the assignment of specific tasks that originated with the center, usually Stalin himself. These steps were followed by the mobilization of the apparat to carry out the assigned tasks, using extraordinary methods and the total suspension of any sort of legality. As a result, a campaign took on the aura of a crisis, culminating at a point where retreat became necessary. This retreat took the form of a counter-campaign that eliminated some of those who had carried out the original campaign while solidifying its results and stabilizing the situation. This swinging pendulum led to the destruction of vast material resources and countless human lives. But within the context of the Stalinist system, the campaigns were an effective method of mobilizing a vast country toward a central goal.

Stalin himself did not need to exercise tight control over all party and government bodies in order to retain dictatorial power. It was sufficient to hold the main levers of power, the most important being control of the secret police. He understood, sooner than other Soviet leaders, that state security could be a valuable weapon in intraparty warfare. This was a key reason for his success. Once he attained control of the Soviet Union’s “punitive structures,” he never let it slip from his hands. He continued to use state security as an instrument of power until the day he died.

As we will see, Stalin devoted much time to the hands-on management of state security, and during certain periods—most notably during the Terror of 1937–1938—the majority of his time. He personally initiated all the main repressive campaigns, devised plans for carrying them out, and painstakingly monitored their implementation. He guided the fabrication of evidence for numerous political trials and in several instances wrote detailed scripts for how trials should play out. He had a passion for reading the cascade of arrestee interrogation protocols that came before him, and the notations he made on these documents show that he read them thoughtfully and attentively. He often wrote commentaries and issued orders for additional arrests or for the use of torture to “get to the truth.” He personally sanctioned the shooting of many people. Some he knew personally; others he had never met.

In addition to the many “ordinary” functions that the chekists performed for Stalin, they also dealt with special, “delicate” matters.¹⁹

On 5 May 1940, on Stalin’s orders, a special state security group abducted Kira Kulik-Simonich, the wife of the deputy people’s commissar for defense, Marshal Grigory Kulik, as she was leaving her house.²⁰ She was secretly transported to prison, interrogated at length, and then quietly shot. Kulik-Simonich was the descendant of a highly placed tsarist official. Many of her relatives had been shot, and some had managed to escape abroad. She had been married before and had spent time in exile with a previous husband charged with illegal activities involving hard currency. The chekists who reported all this to Stalin embellished the story with many more transgressions, including Kulik-Simonich’s affairs with foreigners. Stalin advised Kulik to divorce his wife, but when the marshal balked, Stalin ordered that Simonich be quietly done away with. When Kulik discovered his wife’s disappearance, he telephoned state security chief Lavrenty Beria, who denied that his agency was involved. Kulik did not believe him and began to dig for the truth. He was summoned to the Central Committee, where he underwent a three-hour interrogation and was ordered not to “slander” state security. Furthermore, he was told, his wife was probably a spy who had fled under threat of exposure.²¹ Kulik relented.

Cases like this one, where Stalin, for political reasons, felt it was not expedient to arrest and charge people openly, were no rarity. A year before Marshal Kulik’s wife was murdered, in July 1939, the Soviet ambassador to China was killed along with his wife. Specially selected chekists beat their heads with hammers and then staged a car crash.²² In early 1948, the Jewish civic leader and stage director Solomon Mikhoels, a popular and well-known figure in the USSR and the West, was similarly done away with.²³ Chekists crashed into Mikhoels with a truck and presented the incident as an accident. The evidence leaves no doubt that this murder was also carried out on Stalin’s direct orders.²⁴ It is one of numerous acts of individual terror committed by Stalin.²⁵ Such targeted killings were also perpetrated overseas. The most famous is the 1940 murder of Trotsky in Mexico.

The archives contain a huge number of documents confirming that Stalin routinely used the secret police to carry out arbitrary and brutal actions based solely on his own assumptions of guilt. They leave a clear impression that Stalin personally organized acts of terror that went far beyond any reasonable sense of “official necessity.” This homicidal aspect of his dictatorship obviously held special appeal for him. Immersion in a world of violence, provocation, and murder fed and intensified his pathological suspicion. Driven by fears and a certainty that he was surrounded by enemies, he felt no compunction about using violence on the grandest scale. These personal qualities were an important factor in the brutalities committed by the Soviet government from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Although Stalin relied heavily on state security, he never became beholden to it. In assigning the secret police the dirtiest work, he did not harbor illusions about the loyalty of his “sword of revolution” but instead kept his chekists in rein through periodic shake-ups and purges of their ranks. In a moment of candor, he confided to State Security Minister Ignatiev that “A chekist has only two paths—advancement or prison.”²⁶ He remained true to this principle. From the 1930s through the 1950s, chekist organizations were subjected to waves of brutal repression. The new executioners destroyed the old, only to later wind up in the torture chamber themselves.

For many decades historians have been arguing over the antecedents and causes of Stalin’s exceptional brutality. Many trace the source back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, an event that, for Stalin, opened the door to power.

2 IN LENIN’S SHADOW

Historians debate the extent to which the unrest in Petrograd in late February 1917 was spontaneous. Some claim the demonstrations were organized by professional revolutionaries, but nobody can say with certainty that this was so. The revolution erupted without warning, as a result of the social destabilization caused by almost four years of war, and the tsar and his advisers did not immediately grasp the gravity of the situation. Lenin, in Switzerland, learned of the revolution by reading about it in Western newspapers. The news was also slow in reaching Stalin in Siberian exile, as the local authorities, apparently hoping the upheavals would blow over, banned their local papers from carrying reports from Petrograd.

The tsar’s abdication sparked widespread jubilation. His brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, had been named Nicholas’s successor, but he also relinquished the throne, thus formally ending the monarchy. Shortly thereafter, in early March 1917, a town meeting was held in Achinsk, where Stalin was exiled at the time. For some reason he was not present, but his close comrade Lev Kamenev played a major role in it. A telegram praising the grand duke’s decision was sent on behalf of those gathered.¹ In 1925, when Stalin and Kamenev wound up on different sides in the struggle for power, Stalin reminded his old friend of this warm gesture toward a member of the royal family, a gesture that now looked like a serious political blunder.² It is unlikely, however, that Stalin felt this way in 1917. The telegram reflected the prevailing intoxication with hope and freedom. In this mood, Stalin, Kamenev, and other freed revolutionaries streamed toward Petrograd.

It took some time before Stalin and his fellow Bolsheviks found their bearings when they first were able to emerge from the underground and play a legitimate role in the new system. In the capital, they discovered divided political power. Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, had formed a provisional government, composed primarily of members of liberal parties that favored the creation of a Western-style parliamentary republic. Yet at the same time, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, a revolutionary body whose authority came from the support of rebelling workers and, most important, soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, exercised a significant share of actual power. The soviet was run by members of socialist parties: Menshevik Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). These two parties were the most influential forces within the revolutionary camp, and they had so far outmaneuvered the other parties, including the Bolsheviks. The SRs and Mensheviks were the ones setting the revolution’s short- and long-term objectives. They considered the events of February a bourgeois revolution that would introduce a prolonged period of bourgeois-democratic development. They therefore believed that at the initial stage, a liberal bourgeois party should hold power and that it was for the Constituent Assembly to determine the shape of the new Russia. The attainment of socialism was a distant goal. Other, more developed capitalist countries—not Russia—would lead the way toward world socialism.

At the same time, the Russian socialists had no intention of renouncing the power that had fallen into their laps. They were not obtuse dogmatists, incapable of deviating from doctrine, but realists and pragmatists, albeit lacking in political sophistication and decisiveness. They were well aware of the dangers confronting the country. Foremost among them was civil war and the spread of a bloody rebellion that could wreak havoc and take Russia to the brink of catastrophe and collapse, not for the first time in its history. The most eloquent symbols of this danger were the millions of war-weary and embittered armed men returning from the front. In 1917, the only responsible position a politician could take was that civil war must be avoided at all costs. Maintaining civil peace was the only way to prevent massive casualties and pave the way toward a better future. The socialists leading the soviet saw it as their duty to suppress revolutionary excesses and work with the liberals and the Provisional Government. Cooperating from a position of strength, they made reasonable use of their power and placed the highest priority on maintaining peace. The official formulation of this policy of compromise was: support for the Provisional Government so long as it advanced the cause of revolution.

Many Bolsheviks, usually described as “moderate” or “rightist,” endorsed essentially the same approach.³ Kamenev was one of this faction’s leaders. He and Stalin shared a bond of long-standing friendship and party collaboration. In December 1912 Stalin wrote him, “Greetings friend! I rub your nose in an Eskimo kiss. Dammit. I miss the hell out of you. I miss you—I swear on my dog! There’s nobody, nobody to have a heart-to-heart talk with, devil take you.”⁴

There is nothing surprising in the fact that early on, Stalin and Kamenev held similar political positions. While Lenin and many other prominent Bolsheviks remained in Switzerland, Kamenev and Stalin played an important role in leading the party in Russia. After arriving in Petrograd, they essentially took control of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and used it to promote a moderate agenda, based on the belief that the ascent of the liberal bourgeoisie to power was in accordance with the dictates of history and that socialism was a long-term prospect. The newspaper proclaimed conditional support for the Provisional Government. As members of the Petrograd soviet leadership, Kamenev and Stalin interacted closely with other socialists. The Bolsheviks were beginning negotiations to explore joining forces with the Menshevik left wing.

From the start, Kamenev and Stalin were forced to defend their stances. Lenin, dissatisfied with the political line being promoted by Pravda, demanded different slogans. Writing from emigration, he argued for a radical course, declaring war on the Provisional Government and advocating socialist revolution. Kamenev and Stalin worked together to parry these attacks. They heavily edited an article sent by Lenin before publishing it in Pravda.⁵ Most likely, they truly did not understand Lenin’s intentions and assumed his radicalism was simply a function of being out of touch with what was actually happening in the country.

Lenin’s position, however, was based on meticulous political calculations. Kamenev’s and Stalin’s moderate positions opened the door to cooperation among the main socialist parties, but the cooperation never materialized. From the standpoint of the country’s well-being, cooperation in a joint effort to keep radicalism at bay was the only correct course. From the standpoint of the ultimate goal of a Bolshevik takeover of sole power, it was ruinous. Taking part in a coalition, even as oppositionists, would tie the Bolsheviks’ hands and deprive them of support from radical segments of the population. This was not what Lenin had in mind, and his disapproval ultimately sealed the fate of “rightist” Bolshevism.

When news of revolution in Russia reached Lenin, he was ready with a plan of action, carefully worked out in light of past political struggles. Lenin was gambling on being able to grab power before the revolutionary situation stabilized. His historical moment would be the period of revolutionary radicalization, a period he knew well based on the experience of other revolutions. Even at the early, relatively moderate stage of the revolution, Lenin advanced an extreme program for which the revolution was not quite ready. To put it another way, knowing that a tendency toward radicalization would come, he was playing a waiting game. This strategy had obvious advantages for a party whose ultimate goal was to seize power. The advancement of radical goals that many saw as reckless put the party in a class all its own. That nobody wanted to enter a coalition with it allowed it a certain freedom. A radical program also served as a means of crushing moderate forces within the party and mobilizing its more decisive elements. Finally, such a program, despite being initially rejected by the masses, would eventually gain wider acceptance as mounting despair and impatience fostered a greater acceptance of extremism.

Once he heard about the revolution, Lenin hastily prepared to leave Switzerland for Russia. Eager to enter the fray, he negotiated an agreement with the German authorities allowing him to travel to Russia across enemy territory. In so doing, he was taking a serious risk and opening himself up to accusations of collusion with the enemy or even espionage. But the ends justified the means: he needed to get to Petrograd. As soon as he stepped off the train, he publicly announced his plan of action.⁶

Lenin proclaimed that the Bolsheviks must refuse to support the Provisional Government and fight for socialist revolution and the transfer of power “into the hands of the proletariat and the poorest segments of the peasantry”—in other words, into the hands of the Bolshevik party. The fledgling democracy that had come about after the February Revolution was never given a chance to establish itself, but for Lenin, it had already outlived its usefulness. The parliamentary republic had to be replaced with a soviet republic that, under Bolshevik leadership, would introduce socialist changes. For now, Lenin mentioned just a few of the most important changes: the nationalization of land, the transformation of large estates into model farms under the control of the soviets, and the nationalization of banks or even their merger into a single national bank. In accordance with these new objectives and to clearly distinguish the Bolshevik party from other socialist parties, Lenin proposed changing its name from the Social Democratic Party to the Communist Party.

This platform met with serious opposition, both from outside the party and within. Lenin was, in essence, proposing a vaguely articulated program for the seizure of power. How would that power be used if his plan succeeded? What would socialism mean under Russian conditions? What guarantee was there that revolution in Russia would be followed by revolution in more developed countries (without which Russia would find itself isolated)? Instead of answers, these questions were met with brazen demagoguery. For now it was clear that the Leninist course was kindling civil war.

According to contemporary memoirs, during one of Lenin’s speeches after his arrival in Petrograd, a party comrade who had once been close to him cried out from his seat, “That’s nonsense, the ravings of a madman!”⁷ Lenin’s Bolshevik associates could not abide such an outcry, even if they more or less agreed with it. Yet in early April, at meetings of the leading Bolshevik organizations, Lenin’s ideas were voted down by the majority. Not only did Kamenev continue to publicly oppose Lenin’s ideas, but so too did Stalin.

The sharp reaction of political opponents outside the party apparently suited Lenin’s purpose. He was intentionally setting up a confrontation that would distance the Bolsheviks from the country’s other political forces. Within the party, however, he would have to calm the discord. It was not possible to do so by the methods Stalin would employ later. The Bolsheviks were not yet that party. The situation in the country—buffeted by the turmoil of revolution and fledgling democracy—was also different. And Lenin was a different sort of leader. He used a combination of hard-line intransigence and conciliation. A particularly important maneuver was the recruiting of “rightist” Bolsheviks, especially Stalin and Kamenev, to his side. Lenin moved cautiously, always allowing his opponents to save face. Instead of driving them into a corner, he promoted them to top party positions. In Stalin’s case, this approach worked. Whatever may have been going on in Stalin’s head, he quickly threw his support behind Lenin.

The endorsement that Lenin gave Stalin during Central Committee elections at the April 1917 party conference clearly reflects their close working relationship: “We have known Com. Koba for very many years.… He handles any responsible job well.”⁸ This recommendation earned Stalin a spot on the Central Committee, yielding him more votes than anyone except Zinoviev and Lenin himself.⁹ Stalin saw, very directly, Lenin’s huge influence within the party. After some wavering, he made a firm decision to align himself with strength.

Was Stalin merely advancing his own career, or did he actually understand and accept what Lenin stood for? Identifying the source of Stalin’s initial inclination toward “moderate” Bolshevism is of fundamental importance for anyone seeking to understand the workings of his mind. Clearly, the flexibility he exhibited in March–April 1917 does not fit the image of an uncompromising, power-hungry radical. Was his apparent moderation due to Kamenev’s influence? Or was he swayed by the other socialists in the Petrograd soviet, where many of the Mensheviks were fellow Georgians? Perhaps he had not yet developed the confidence to act as an independent political figure and felt he needed someone to follow. In that case, why did he not immediately fall in line behind Lenin after receiving his letter from Switzerland? Perhaps Stalin was genuinely “moderate” in early 1917 but, like many others, changed under the force of circumstances. Historical sources offer no clear-cut answers to these questions. What we do know is that Stalin was not always a radical Bolshevik. His “moderation” and “rightism” would emerge again after Lenin’s death, when the party leaders were choosing the path toward socialism, down which they would lead their vast and isolated country.

A WORLD OF READING AND CONTEMPLATION

Late evening of 1 March 1953. The near dacha. The mail arrives.

Only as night approached did Stalin’s bodyguards, after many hours of anxious waiting, decide to enter his quarters. They were thankful to have a pretext: the mail had arrived. A bodyguard took the packet and set out for Stalin’s private rooms.

We do not know the contents of this last mail delivery, but normally Stalin received a huge number of papers. Lists of items sent to him from Moscow while he was vacationing in the south give us an idea of the types of documents the vozhd dealt with on a regular basis. During a vacation extending from September through December 1946, he received an average of just under fifty letters, reports, and other materials per day. During his final southern vacation, August through December 1951, the average dropped to thirty-five documents—not a small number.¹ For obvious reasons, Stalin was regularly sent orders and draft orders by the highest governmental bodies—not all, but the most important ones. Reports from the foreign and military ministries and state security and intelligence bodies regularly crossed his desk. He saw summaries of the foreign press prepared by TASS, the Soviet news agency. Some of these summaries, with his notations, have been preserved in the archives. He was also brought summaries of reports by foreign correspondents in Moscow. In keeping with a habit he had developed before the war, he regularly received daily reports on the production of planes and aircraft engines. Top aviation industry officials often wrote him on specific issues. The vozhd had always taken a special interest in aviation, but he also received reports on the production of other military hardware. After the Korean War started in 1950, he received daily summaries of military actions and reactions to the war by the foreign press. He was also regularly informed about national stockpiles. On top of all this, the volume of correspondence between Stalin and China’s leaders was growing. Finally, his mail included many letters from his top associates on various topics, requests from government agencies, and personnel proposals. Just reading all these letters and reports must have taken an enormous amount of time, and many of them required him to make decisions and compose some sort of response.

In addition to these official papers, Stalin found time to keep up with Soviet magazines, books, and newspapers, particularly Pravda, which he studied attentively. The inventory of materials sent to him during his southern vacation in 1926 lists a large number of Soviet and émigré newspapers and journals, including Menshevik and White Guard publications.² In later years, periodicals disappeared from the list—probably not because Stalin ceased reading them but because they were delivered to him so routinely that listing them was a waste of time.

According to some memoiristic sources, Stalin claimed to read an average of four to five hundred pages a day.³ It is difficult to imagine how he could keep up such a fantastic pace. Some days he may really have read that much or, more likely, scanned texts, focusing on the most interesting passages. In addition to the time he had to spend at his desk dealing with official papers, his workday was filled with hours-long conferences and meetings in his office. The dinners he hosted could extend for hours, as did his regular movie screenings. And he spent quite a bit of time writing. From what we know of his schedule, it appears that Stalin had little time to sit at his desk contemplating the steady stream of papers with which he was daily confronted.

He liked books. Reading played a major role in shaping his ideas. In the revolutionary milieu to which Stalin had been drawn as a youth, the value placed on intellectual pursuits and theorizing was tremendous, but these explorations were ideologically one-sided. This one-sidedness left a permanent mark on Stalin. He read “socially significant” books and studied Marx and Lenin. A literary scholar who made a thorough analysis of Stalin’s writings and speeches noted the narrow scope of his erudition in literary fiction. He was well versed in literature from the Soviet period but had a poor knowledge of Russian or foreign classics.⁴ Observations regarding the political and ideological blinders that limited Stalin’s reading are supported by the lists of books and journals in his library, or rather those in which he made notations.⁵ In total his archive holds 397 items. Of course his reading was not limited to these books, but his marginal comments and underscorings suggest that they are the ones that most captured his attention.

The lion’s share of this collection is comprised of books and journals containing works by Lenin—seventy-two items in all. Stalin was an attentive student of Lenin, and some of his own works represent a recasting or popularization of Lenin’s thinking. Not surprisingly, he constantly cited Lenin in his public speeches. But he also relied on Lenin’s work as a sort of bible or instruction manual when dealing with affairs of state within his close circle of associates. “Whenever I was at Stalin’s, either at a large or small meeting or talk,” one of Stalin’s commissars related, “I’d notice the following habit. If somebody made a proposal that may have been practical but a bit out of the ordinary, he’d walk up to the shelf with Lenin’s books, think a moment, and pull out a little volume. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Let’s have a look at what Vladimir Ilyich has to say on the matter.’ Sometimes he’d read something aloud; sometimes he’d just paraphrase.”⁶ Marx and Engels are much less evident in Stalin’s articles. The archival collection of his library includes only thirteen of their works. Although Marxism was official doctrine and portraits of the bearded wise men were ubiquitous features of the Soviet landscape, Stalin occasionally allowed himself certain liberties in regard to these classics. In 1934, in memoranda to Politburo members and the ideological overseers of various party organizations, he criticized a number of Engels’s works: “Only idiots can harbor any doubts that Engels was and remains our teacher. But this by no means implies we must paper over Engels’s mistakes, that we must conceal them and—especially—pass them off as incontestable truths.”⁷

One noteworthy portion of the collection consists of works—thirty in all—by Russian and foreign theoreticians of the Social Democratic movement, as well as prominent Bolsheviks: Aleksandr Bogdanov, Georgy Plekhanov, Bukharin, Karl Kautsky, and Trotsky, among others. Stalin also appears to have closely studied the nineteen issues of the prerevolutionary underground Bolshevik theoretical journal Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment) kept in his library. The rest of the items in which he made notations largely consisted of propagandistic and educational literature written while he was in power, twenty-five of which he wrote himself. Overall, the classics of Marxism-Leninism (including his own works) and works by their propagandists comprise the vast majority of the nearly four hundred books in which Stalin made notations.

Among the remaining books, one category that deserves mention is historical works, including several courses on Russian history published before the revolution. Stalin loved history and constantly used historical examples and analogies in his articles, speeches, and conversation. He arranged for new history textbooks to be written and encouraged the production of numerous historical books and films. As is well known, he felt a particular affinity for two Russian tsars: Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. They consolidated and enlarged Russia, built up its military might, and fought mercilessly against internal enemies. For Stalin, history was a means of legitimizing his own policies. He was not particularly interested in scholarly discussions and actual historical evidence, choosing instead to adapt the facts to his preferred narrative. Ivan the Terrible was proclaimed a stalwart defender against the forces pulling Russia apart, saving it from a second Tatar yoke. His brutal repression, as Stalin saw it, was necessary, and if anything, it did not go far enough: “It should have been done even more decisively.” During the Cold War, Stalin praised Tsar Ivan for adopting “a national perspective and not allowing foreigners into his country, shielding the country from the intrusion of foreign influence.” He condemned his otherwise beloved Peter the Great for taking a liberal attitude toward foreigners.⁸ Even more, he molded Soviet history to justify his own policies. The falsification and rewriting of the party’s history culminated in the creation of an ideological bible of the regime produced with Stalin’s active participation, the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Appearing in 1938, at the height of the Great Terror, this work proclaimed Stalin to be equal to Lenin as a leader of Bolshevism and the revolution. Utter fictions were inserted into many episodes of Bolshevik history; other episodes were distorted beyond recognition. The opposition leaders, who had by then been killed, were portrayed as inveterate enemies.

Military problems particularly attracted Stalin’s interest. In addition to books of military regulations, he made notations in several books on the history and theory of war, such as works by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and the Russian theorist Aleksandr Svechin.

The few books of non-Marxist philosophy contained in the collection include Plato and a philosophical treatise by Anatole France, The Last Pages: Dialogues under the Rose. The small number of books on economics is dominated by Soviet works on political economics. As for literary fiction, the collection contains only a few literary journals and works by Lev Tolstoy (the novel Resurrection), Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Maxim Gorky, and a few Soviet writers.⁹

Of course this particular collection does not tell the whole story. We know from other sources that Stalin often read literature by contemporary Soviet authors. He offered advice on plays and screenplays and made decisions about the awarding of prizes. He had his likes and dislikes, and the latter, however talented, were often targeted for repression. Even Soviet literary lions faced ideological tongue-lashings. All were made aware of their vulnerability and utter dependence on the government’s favor. Yet despite his politically slanted tastes, Stalin did have a certain ability to distinguish good writing from bad. Perhaps this is why he tolerated and even protected certain talented writers who were not helpful or were even harmful to the regime, such as Mikhail Bulgakov.¹⁰ Still, the censors kept such writers on meager rations, just barely surviving and under constant threat of arrest. Literature and dramaturgy interested the dictator primarily as ideological tools, a means of social manipulation and brainwashing. Officially permitted writers were part of the state’s vast propaganda apparatus. Amalgamated into state corporations, writers, artists, and composers were completely dependent on the state. Like state-run factories, these corporations were not very effective. They encouraged bureaucratization and mediocrity and suffocated talent. “The time is long overdue for us to focus attention on … the irresponsible activities of the three thousand people brought together by the Writers’ Union, out of which two thousand—at least—hardly belong in literature,” Maxim Gorky, Stalin’s choice to lead Soviet writers, lamented in a 1936 letter.¹¹

Stalin knew of Gorky’s feelings (he kept this letter in his personal files), but he was hardly troubled by literary mediocrity. He lived and breathed political power, so works of art and literature were to be judged according to their ideological and propagandistic usefulness. “Simplicity” and “accessibility” were key literary virtues. He welcomed readability and straightforward political edification free of highbrow devices. The “creative intelligentsia” was called on to depict a reality that was idealized (“correct,” “socialist”) rather than objective. It was to bring to the masses not that which was but that which should be, while distracting them from hardships and extolling the virtue of placing the party and the state above self-interest.

The record of conversations that took place during screenings in the Kremlin movie theater offers an interesting window onto Stalin’s taste.¹² He critiqued the films shown exclusively from the standpoint of political utility, which, he believed, called for the production of edifying and entertaining films “that are exciting, cheerful, and fun.” “Just don’t drive everyone into depression, into a labyrinth of psychology. There’s no need for people to engage in pointless philosophizing,” he said during one screening. He fully approved of the rollicking musical Jolly Fellows, the Soviet answer to Hollywood comedies. The film was not profound and politically pointed, but, as Stalin put it, it gave people “interesting and engaging relaxation.” His running commentaries treated what was happening on screen as if it were real life. A few favorites were viewed over and over. Chapaev, about the Civil War hero of that name, for example, was viewed thirty-eight times between late 1934 and early 1936.

Stalin’s taste in theater and music were equally conservative. He condemned the stage director Vsevolod Meyerhold, known for provocative experimentation, for “clownishness” and “gimcrackery.”¹³ The vozhd himself initiated a campaign against new musical forms, such as those being created by the great composer Dmitry Shostakovich.¹⁴ Such innovations were given the derogatory term “formalism.” A regular theatergoer, Stalin preferred classical drama, opera, and ballet. Countless official receptions at the Kremlin were accompanied by concerts featuring a strictly traditional repertoire.¹⁵

There may have been a relationship between Stalin’s literary tastes and his manner of writing. It has often been noted that he was not a gifted orator, a judgment that can easily be confirmed by listening to recordings of his speeches. But his written texts are much more coherent than his impromptu speeches. As a writer, he strove for a clarity and conciseness that bordered on oversimplification. He liked to drive a point home through numerous repetitions, as if he were hammering an idea into his audience’s heads. Lacking the gift (possessed by many other Bolsheviks and writers) for brilliant public speaking, Stalin simply ignored this art. His texts are dull but easily understood. He was a master of slogans and clichés. In a society where education was achieving breadth but not depth, especially in the humanities, such a public speaking style was rather effective.

As a child, Stalin used only Georgian, the language in which he composed verse and revolutionary articles in his youth. He occasionally used Georgian later in life as well. At the age of eight or nine, the future dictator began to study Russian and was able to achieve a high level of proficiency, almost to the point of making it a second native language. But until the end of his life, he spoke with a strong accent. This “accent” can also be felt in his written texts. Stalin’s writing in Russian is grammatically correct and expressive, but he occasionally let slip jarring stylistic infelicities and mangled idioms. Students of Stalin’s language have been able to assemble quite a few examples from his published works.¹⁶ Such examples are also found in his day-to-day writings not intended for publication. As general secretary of the Central Committee, Stalin reviewed Politburo resolutions before they were finalized and often made changes to them. In a number of cases, the fact that he was not a native Russian speaker led to errors and ambiguities.¹⁷

There is scant information concerning Stalin’s knowledge of other languages. He traveled abroad several times before the revolution (to Berlin, Stockholm, London, Vienna, and Krakow), but it is unlikely that he had either the time or the need for serious study of the languages spoken in those cities. These trips were made on party business, and his time was spent mainly with party comrades. His 1913 work on the nationalities question, which made use of sources in German, was written in Vienna with the help of someone who knew that language. While in exile in Turukhansky Krai in 1913–1917, he demonstrated a desire to improve his knowledge of languages. He asked to be sent books by German authors (although it is not clear whether he was asking for the originals or translations). In February 1914 he wrote to a society in Paris that assisted Russian exiles, requesting a French-Russian dictionary and some English newspapers. A May 1914 letter that he wrote to Zinoviev urged him to send “some sort of (civic) English journal (old, new, it doesn’t matter—for reading, since here there’s nothing in English and I’m afraid that without practice I’ll lose what English I’ve learned).” In November 1915 he again wrote to his comrades: “I don’t suppose you could send something interesting in French or English?”¹⁸ In 1930, while vacationing in the south, he asked his wife to send him a textbook for learning English.¹⁹ How serious was Stalin’s intention to study languages? How far did he advance? We cannot answer these questions. As far as we know, he never tried to demonstrate a knowledge of languages during any of his countless meetings with foreigners.

In the end, Stalin’s self-education, political experience, and character formed a mind that was in many ways repellant but ideally suited to holding onto power. His oversimplification of reality, in which phenomena were explained in terms of a historic standoff—between classes, between capitalism and socialism—outlived his system. Whatever the sources of this simplistic worldview—his religious education, his adherence to Lenin’s version of Marxism—its unidimensionality simplified the dictator’s life. A model of the world based on the principle of class struggle permitted him to ignore complexity and despise his victims. It allowed the regime’s most heinous crimes to be seen as a natural expression of historical laws and innocent mistakes to be seen as crimes. It allowed criminal intentions and actions to be attributed to people who intended and committed no crimes. In a relatively uneducated country, simplification was an excellent tool of social manipulation.

Stalin’s theoretical model of the world was in fact tottering and unreliable. Excessively simple and ineffective, it gave rise to abundant contradictions and failures. Yet he saw any adjustments to the ideological system that might have benefited the country as threatening to the stability of his regime. So he responded to life’s demands with rigid ideological and political dogmatism and agreed to limited changes only as a last resort, when crises reached a breaking point. Shielding himself from reality, he retreated—and tried to bring others with him—to the thickets of ideological scholasticism. The contents of his personal archive, which reflect what he thought was worthy of being kept close at hand, are almost completely devoid of documents that represent any sort of outside, expert perspective. Meanwhile, a huge country was engaged in the earnest study of Stalin’s “expert” opinions on fields as diverse as linguistics and political economy. It followed his dictates in crushing “formalists” and “cosmopolitans.” Fearing change and the pernicious influence of the West, Stalin rejected a number of scientific advances, such as genetics.²⁰ He believed only in what “you could touch with your hands,” what he understood and felt to be politically safe.

This dogmatism and rejection of the complex posed serious impediments to the country’s development. Yet even as his life came to an end, Stalin had no intention of changing the political system that had brought him power, a system that he methodically forged throughout the 1930s.

3 HIS REVOLUTION

By the end of 1928, the crushing of the “left opposition” had been transformed into Stalin’s personal victory. Cohesion among the Politburo majority, which had been easy to maintain during the fight against Trotsky and Zinoviev, began to deteriorate. The growing socioeconomic crisis was paralleled by a crisis at the upper echelons of power, a volatile mix that put the system of government in peril. This political kindling was finally ignited by the state’s failure to collect sufficient grain supplies in 1927, one of many signals that the NEP was not working.

The NEP model of development was doomed by a range of factors. Allowing market forces to govern the relationship between the peasants and the state violated fundamental Bolshevik doctrine. Despite the tragic experiences of War Communism, the ruling party continued to preach radical socialism and punish private economic initiative. Furthermore, Soviet agriculture was simply incapable of immediately producing the resources the government needed to support industrialization. Every camp within the ruling party—rightists, leftists, and everyone in between—was aware of the need to adjust the NEP and spur industrialization. The problem was finding how to best modify the system. The fierce battle for power severely limited the available options. The economy was once again falling victim to political conflict and the need to adhere to dogma, and no one was more guilty of putting political expediency before the needs of the economy than Stalin.

The reasons for the crisis of late 1927 were perfectly familiar to the country’s leadership. Pricing policy errors and a disproportionate investment in industry, among other factors, had undermined peasant incentives to sell grain to the state and disrupted the overall economic balance. In previous years, the leaders had found successful recipes for overcoming similar crises. Such a recipe was needed again. At first the Politburo searched for solutions as a unified collective. Although they considered economic stimuli, on this occasion members decided to try intensifying pressure on the peasants through “administrative” means. This meant a campaign to expropriate grain by force, and a key component was visits by the country’s leaders to grain-producing regions to inspire greater effort on the part of local officials. Molotov, who was sent to Ukraine, reported to Stalin on the first day of 1928:

Dear Koba! I’m in my 4th day here in Ukraine—and people say I’m doing some good. I’ve pumped up the lazy khokhols [derogatory term for Ukrainians].… I managed to get Ukraine’s “chiefs” and “centers” to travel around to local sites and to promise to work hard. Now I’m hanging around Melitopol (a gold mine!) and also arranged a pogrom here with all the usual swearing that goes with grain collection.… Lots of new impressions; I’m really glad to be able to touch earth. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. Regards to all.¹

The tone of Molotov’s letter—more lighthearted than hard-line—partially reflected the relatively peaceable mood that still prevailed in the Politburo. Molotov was not yet “unmasking opportunists” or branding “kulaks” and “wreckers.” He asked Stalin to give Ukraine a bonus out of its grain collections to enable the purchase of farm machinery abroad: “This is urgently needed for encouragement (plus to push production) and is expedient in all regards.”

Stalin was not so jovial: he was spending his time thinking up ways to institute extreme policies. What prompted Stalin to take a sharp turn that placed him far to the left of Trotsky and Zinoviev? What drove his sudden opposition to the NEP: a belief that an ultra-leftist course was truly inevitable or self-serving political calculations? The evidence suggests a complex of motives. Some of the NEP’s contradictions were indeed gradually drawing the entire top leadership leftward and leading to a restructuring of the NEP that favored more rapid industrialization. Stalin was among those who were most eager for this new direction. His political and managerial temperament inclined him toward violent measures. Furthermore, he had no expertise whatsoever when it came to dealing with the economy and probably sincerely believed it could be forced into whatever mold politics dictated. The extreme economic measures he mandated served obvious political purposes. In staking his wager on a radical course, Stalin was intentionally destroying the system of collective leadership. The battle within the Politburo that ensued permitted him to create a new majority faction that was unambiguously his to control.

In essence, Stalin was adopting Lenin’s revolutionary strategy, which called for maximally spurring leftist excesses, undercutting “moderates,” and mobilizing radicals with extremist policies. To launch his revolutionary push, Lenin had had to come to Petrograd from emigration in April 1917. Stalin set out for Siberia in early 1928 with a similar purpose: to turn this distant and enormous region into a proving ground for new upheavals. The trip seems to reflect some scheming on his part. The plan had been for the Politburo’s top troika—Stalin, Rykov, and Bukharin—to remain in Moscow to watch over the government, but Stalin took advantage of Ordzhonikidze’s ill health to take his place on the trip to Siberia. He probably assigned Siberia to Ordzhonikidze in the first place realizing that he would not be able to go, given his poor health in late 1927. The very fact that Stalin—who did not like to travel—made such a long trip shows the seriousness of his intentions. After 1928 his official trips were few. He made some stops on the way to his southern vacations; in July 1933 he visited the White Sea–Baltic Canal; and he made one trip to the front during World War II and three to meet with Roosevelt and Churchill in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. Clearly, he had his reasons for going to Siberia in 1928.

It took three days to reach Novosibirsk by train. The general secretary spent a total of three weeks in Siberia during the latter half of January and the first days of February. Most of this time was spent in meetings with the aktiv (local bosses and party stalwarts). Stalin extracted from them a pledge to fulfill an ambitious plan to supply the country with Siberian grain. He told the Siberian officials just how they would achieve this challenging objective, rolling out his plan to bring down the full force of the police state on the kulaks and charge them with the crime of “speculation.”² In essence, this plan represented a return to War Communism. Many Siberian leaders objected. The change of course was so sudden that some even permitted themselves to argue with him. On 19 January the head of the Siberian branch of the agricultural bank, Sergei Zagumenny, wrote to Stalin to voice his concerns, saying he doubted the effectiveness of treating peasants like criminals for refusing to sell grain to the state. Peasants would see this as a return to the policy of mandatory sales of surplus grain to the state practiced during the early years of Soviet rule. It could make matters worse. “It seems to me that we are making too sharp a turn,” he wrote. Stalin’s many notations on Zagumenny’s letter (underscorings and derisive comments) attest to his irritation.³

Stalin continued to pressure the Siberian officials and insisted that repression would be effective. At the same time, he maintained a certain restraint in his interactions. In talking about the failures of grain procurement, he stopped short of making threats and combined confident and decisive authority with displays of comradery. At a meeting in Novosibirsk, in response to a statement that he had caught krai officials making mistakes, Stalin answered with a conciliatory “No, I wasn’t trying to catch anyone.” Even the criticism leveled against Zagumenny was fairly gentle.⁴ This combination of ruthlessness toward “enemies”—in this case grain-hiding kulaks—and amiability toward his party comrades is one aspect of the strategy that helped him climb to the top of the political hierarchy. It undoubtedly made a favorable impression on local party officials and was an effective way for Stalin to reassure anyone who might have doubted the changing nature of the party under his leadership.

Through pressure and persuasion, Stalin got what he wanted. Dressed in a new sheepskin coat made for him in a local workshop, he spent several weeks crisscrossing the vast expanses of Siberia. Everywhere he demanded the same thing: give us grain. As he put it in a telegram to Moscow, he “got everyone good and worked up.”⁵ In a subsequent telegram sent on 2 February, the eve of his return to Moscow, he triumphantly reported that “A turnaround in grain deliveries is beginning. During 26–30 January, 2.9 million poods [approximately 52,400 tons] of grain was procured, instead of the norm of 1.2 million. This is a major turning point.”⁶ Stalin also expressed hope that the pace of grain collection would continue to grow. In a single month, Siberia had supposedly fulfilled more than a third of its annual grain quota.

Behind these figures was escalating brutality in Siberian villages. Bands of agents empowered to use an iron fist in demanding the turnover of grain swept through the countryside. Disdaining even to pay lip service to legality, these agents followed a principle openly expressed by one of them: “What kind of bureaucratism is that? Comrade Stalin gave us our motto—press, beat, squeeze.”⁷ The countryside was gripped by searches and arrests. Such large quantities of grain were confiscated that peasant families were ruined. Under Stalin’s influence, Siberia received more unsparing treatment than the country’s other grain-producing regions, although probably not by much. Pressure from Moscow and the active involvement of highly placed emissaries subjected villages everywhere to violence and lawlessness. But the precedent for extremism set in Siberia had special significance. Coming straight from the general secretary, the order to wage war against the kulaks was seen as a universal license.

As political theater, Stalin’s Siberian trip had a complex subtext. The first thing it did was change the ideological framework of the crisis. Ignoring the official line that the government had made mistakes (a point reiterated in numerous Politburo directives), Stalin shifted the emphasis onto exposing the hostile actions of kulaks and anti-Soviet forces, thus opening the door to the broad use of repressive measures. At his suggestion (his creative contribution to the 1928 grain requisitions), confiscation was not, as previously, conducted on an extraordinary basis but as part of an ongoing effort to enforce the criminal code. “Speculators” were handed over to the courts for refusing to sell grain that they themselves had planted, tended, and harvested. Such actions made a mockery of justice, but they gave extraordinary measures a legal footing and made them routine and permanent. In essence, Stalin was proposing to jettison the principles that, under the NEP, had governed interactions between the state and the countryside. Finally, Stalin’s trip across Siberia confronted the government’s economic apparat—and Rykov, as premier, personally—with a serious challenge. The party, embodied by Stalin, was taking charge of the country’s most important political and economic problem and thus asserting its primacy.

Stalin knew that some of his colleagues would raise objections to the strong-armed measures he instigated in Siberia. He was provoking conflict with careful calculation. The Siberian trip allowed him to confront his fellow leaders from a position of strength, as an energetic leader who had succeeded by applying revolutionary methods to pressing problems. The results cast moderation in an unflattering light and made radicalism look more effective. Fissures in the Politburo started to show immediately after he returned to Moscow in February 1928. But he was apparently not quite ready for all-out war. To an outside observer it might seem that by failing to force a showdown, he was letting an exceptional opportunity slip by, but Stalin probably did not see it that way. At the time, there was no clear evidence that he would emerge victorious. This was a pivotal moment in his campaign for sole power, and he turned it into a guerrilla operation, using deceit, patience, and subversion.

TREPIDATION IN THE INNER CIRCLE

The initial arrival of the four at the near dacha, early morning hours of 2 March 1953.

The bodyguard entered Stalin’s apartments with the packet of mail and started looking for him. After walking through several rooms, he finally found the vozhd in the small dining room. The sight must have been extremely disturbing. Stalin was lying helpless on the floor, which was wet beneath him.¹ This last point is important not for reasons of schadenfreude or as an evocative detail but because it affected subsequent events. It appeared to the bodyguard that Stalin was unable to speak, but he did make a small hand gesture, beckoning him to approach. The bodyguard summoned his colleagues, who helped him lift Stalin onto the couch. They then rushed to telephone their immediate superior, State Security Minister Semen Ignatiev. According to the bodyguards’ later accounts, Ignatiev refused to make any decisions and told them to call members of the top leadership: Beria and Malenkov.

Ignatiev’s reaction was perfectly understandable. He was behaving just as the bodyguards had done several hours earlier, when they were afraid to enter Stalin’s rooms uninvited. Ignatiev did not want to take responsibility for a decision to summon doctors to the vozhd. This was a ticklish matter for a man who, just two years earlier, had been plucked from the relatively cozy position of Central Committee department head and assigned to hunt for enemies of the people as minister of state security. He must have rued the day Stalin picked him for this job, which carried a high price for failure. From then on he lived in fear. Upon hearing that Stalin had suffered some sort of stroke, his only desire was to hand decision-making responsibility to somebody else.

Having failed to get any guidance from their boss, the bodyguards managed to find Malenkov, who then informed the other members of the ruling Five: Beria, Khrushchev, and Bulganin. This made sense. Without a clear understanding of Stalin’s condition, Malenkov did not want to go to the dacha by himself or be the only one to sanction the summoning of doctors. Any decisions should be made collectively. The four men agreed to meet at the dacha to assess the situation and give each other cover for whatever actions were taken.

Both Khrushchev’s memoirs and the bodyguards’ accounts describe the top leadership’s extreme caution after arriving at the dacha in the middle of the night. They were afraid of doing anything that might provoke Stalin’s wrath if he recovered. According to Khrushchev, at first they did not even enter Stalin’s apartments, choosing instead to interrogate the bodyguards. What they heard made them even more nervous. That Stalin was incapacitated and had apparently urinated on himself put the leaders in a difficult position. They knew he would not want anyone to see him in such a state. What if this was just a passing episode? Stalin would not look fondly on anyone who had witnessed his humiliating helplessness. As Khrushchev describes it, once they learned from the bodyguards that Stalin “now seemed to be sleeping, we thought that since he was in such poor shape, it would be awkward for us to appear at his side and make our presence officially known. So we went back to our homes.”²

Khrushchev’s memoirs apparently do not tell the whole story. According to the bodyguards, before leaving, the four designated Malenkov and Beria to enter Stalin’s rooms and personally assess his condition. Such an assessment required two men for obvious reasons. If all four went, they would make unnecessary noise and risk rousing the vozhd. And none of them wanted to go in by himself. Khrushchev and Bulganin thus waited in the bodyguards’ quarters while Beria and Malenkov snuck stealthily in to look at Stalin, terrified of waking him. The bodyguards recalled one slapstick detail: Malenkov’s new shoes made a squeaking noise, so he took them off and carried them under his arm. As the two men approached, they could hear Stalin lightly snoring. After emerging, Beria berated the bodyguards for raising a fuss over nothing. Stalin was just sleeping. The bodyguards defended their actions, explaining that matters had been much worse a few hours earlier.³ Dismissing the bodyguards’ concerns, the four men returned to Moscow.

Some historians and commentators have detected conspiratorial overtones in this episode and blame Stalin’s death on the decision not to call for medical help. This interpretation is doubtful. First, according to the doctors who performed the autopsy, Stalin’s stroke was the result of atherosclerosis that had been developing for years.⁴ Quick intervention would not have saved him. On the other hand, his fellow leaders could not have known this. They did not understand the implications of providing or withholding medical care, and their failure to summon doctors could have contained some malicious intent. Many Soviet leaders, in their hearts, surely did not wish their abusive leader long life. Nevertheless, less sinister explanations must also be considered. Stalin’s associates were simply afraid of intervening. They were not used to taking the initiative, and they knew Stalin’s suspicious and capricious nature all too well. During those days in early March, everyone involved—the bodyguards, Ignatiev, and the other members of the Five—behaved exactly as Stalin had trained them to behave. They tiptoed nervously forward, always looking over their shoulders and trying to shift as much responsibility as possible onto each other.

For many years, even Stalin’s closest associates and friends, people with whom he had shared long years of struggle, had lived under the constant threat of destruction. A dictator can only be sure of his power if those around him are at his mercy. After destroying the former opposition leaders, in 1937–1938 Stalin proceeded to have a significant portion of the Politburo shot. The close relatives of some of his surviving associates were also arrested or killed. The brother of Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich committed suicide, and Kalinin’s wife wound up in a camp.⁵ This suppression of potential oligarchs continued after the war. The Leningrad Affair did away with Nikolai Voznesensky and Aleksei Kuznetsov, two members of the younger generation who had risen to prominence under Stalin.⁶ Molotov’s wife was arrested around the same time. In the final months of his life, Stalin lashed out at Molotov and Mikoyan, essentially removing them from power. His death would provide the only guarantee against new purges.

At some point in their careers, virtually everyone in the top Soviet leadership had to endure a ritual of humiliation and repentance followed by renewed oaths of allegiance to the vozhd. Stalin would cast his comrades into disfavor only to later bring them back into the fold. He was generous with rebukes and liked to orchestrate verbal floggings in the press and at various meetings. And when he lost his temper, it was a horrifying sight to behold. Minister of Foreign Trade Mikhail Menshikov told of one instance when he incurred Stalin’s wrath during a meeting by failing to properly hear his question. “He gave me a furious look,” Menshikov recalled, “and launched a fat pencil at me as hard as he could, hurling it along the length of the table in my direction. For a moment everyone froze and waited to see what would happen next.”⁷ After Stalin’s death, Ignatiev complained about having been subjected to constant dressings-down: “Comrade Stalin reprimanded me using fouler language than I’d ever heard in my life and called me an idiot.”⁸ When the writer Konstantin Simonov attended the Central Committee plenum in October 1952, he was struck by the furious, “almost ferocious” and “unrestrained,” tone of Stalin’s speech denouncing Molotov and Mikoyan.⁹ Stalin’s temper and unpredictability, especially during his final years, were made worse by his declining health.

Top Soviet officials lived a golden-cage existence. While they exercised life-and-death power over their subordinates, they were at the constant mercy of their ultimate boss. Their security, transportation, incoming and outgoing correspondence, special telephone lines, dachas, and apartments—all were handled by state security, which was entirely under the dictator’s control. Such control meant that Stalin knew everything about how and with whom these officials spent their time. As if that were not enough, he apparently asked the secret police to install listening devices to spy on certain Politburo members.¹⁰

Despite the oppression of the collective leadership, periodic manifestations of oligarchy inevitably threatened Stalin’s sole power. Though very much under his thumb, his fellow leaders did enjoy a certain administrative autonomy as the heads of major government institutions, and they independently made many decisions of consequence for the running of the country. Furthermore, their authority expanded as Stalin’s physical frailty diminished his involvement in day-to-day decision making. Stalin was aware of this threat. Konstantin Simonov recorded a typical comment by the vozhd about his comrades, as reported by an eyewitness:

Even when differences remain, they will come to some agreement on paper and present the issue to me in that form.… The managers understand that I cannot know everything; all they want from me is a stamp with my signature. Yes, I cannot know everything, so I pay attention to differences, to objections, and I try to make sense of why they come up, where the real problem lies. The managers do their best to conceal these from me; they go along with the votes but they conceal the differences, all so that they can get a stamp with my signature. What they want out of me is my stamp.¹¹

Stalin’s method for penetrating the defenses of this mutual protection society could best be described as scattershot. The dictator’s underlings never knew what question might suddenly interest him. They never knew whether Stalin would react to a particular decision and, if so, how or when. The constant threat of a random attack allowed him to keep the apparat and his close associates in a state of tension that helped to compensate for his lack of total control over them. The vozhd’s effort to maximize his power over his subordinates was helped by the number of channels through which he received information. The government and party bureaucracies, the courts, and state security all kept an eye on one another and constantly tried to prove their vigilance and effectiveness by denouncing one another to Stalin, zealously exposing others’ warts while concealing their own.

Repression, the constant threat of punishment, and Stalin’s temper and whims made the life of top Soviet officials almost as difficult as that of the powerless man or woman on the street. His “comrades” lived and worked under constant stress. One long-term Soviet diplomat left the following remembrance of the country’s minister of foreign affairs, Andrei Vyshinsky, one of Stalin’s most devoted and successful associates: “Vyshinsky was terrified of Stalin. Every Thursday he would go and report to him, and well beforehand, in anticipation of this encounter, his mood would sour. The closer it came to Thursday, the gloomier and more irritable he got.… But by Friday, when it was all behind him, he allowed himself to relax for a day or two. Experienced people knew that this was when it was best to report to him on the most complicated matters or approach him with requests of a personal nature.”¹²

Stalin was a merciless boss. He expected total dedication from his subordinates and favored a military management style: orders had to be carried out unquestioningly and at any cost—no excuses. In addition to the constant danger of arrest and the excessive workload, the lives of Stalin’s close associates were made difficult by his nocturnality. To accommodate the vozhd, the apparat worked both at night, when Stalin was awake, and during the day, when the rest of the country was up. The stresses of working for Stalin apparently made some stronger. A number of his closest associates lived many years. Molotov and Kaganovich, for example, nearly reached the century mark. But not everyone had the iron constitution and adaptability needed to survive the demands Stalin placed on his subordinates. A Central Committee document written in 1947 admitted that “An analysis of the health of the party and government’s leading cadres has shown that many individuals, even among the relatively young, suffer from diseases of the heart and the circulatory and nervous systems sufficiently serious to impact their ability to work. One cause of these diseases is stressful work not only during the day, but also during the night, and often even on holidays.”¹³ As long as Stalin was alive, nothing could be done about this problem, but soon after his death a resolution was adopted requiring regular government offices to remain closed at night, and the bureaucracy began to run in a more normal way.

Stalin kept himself at the center of the huge machine used to manipulate officials. He initiated and guided repression, orchestrated all major reassignments, and was constantly reshuffling people so that nobody grew too comfortable in a particular job. Like any dictator, he strove to instill a sense of fear, adoration, and instinctive devotion in his underlings. Vyacheslav Molotov, a diehard follower of the dictator, described Lazar Kaganovich as a “two hundred percent Stalinist.”¹⁴ These were the sorts of people Stalin tried to cultivate.

A key element of the process by which the Soviet government—including its very top leadership—was “Stalinized” was the mass purges of the 1930s. In a matter of months, the purges destroyed the party’s old guard and replaced it with fresh faces, unburdened by excessive knowledge of the past or ideas about how the country might be run differently. “New stock” replaced officials who had earned their places in the Soviet government during the revolution. By 1940, after the Terror had receded, 57 percent of party secretaries in the regions of Russia and on the central committees of the Soviet Union’s ethnic republics were under the age of thirty-five.¹⁵ Many ministers, generals, directors of major enterprises, and leaders of cultural unions were between thirty and forty.

Stalin gave these upstarts tremendous power, allowing them to preside over their own little dictatorships. The fates, even the lives, of millions were in their hands. The distribution of significant resources and the functioning of gigantic enterprises depended on them. They formed their own caste, which lived by its own laws and enjoyed its own privileged world. The members of this caste did not know hunger or material want. They were not affected by the catastrophic shortage of housing or the backwardness of the health care system. They lived in spacious apartments and dachas, protected by guards. Their cars sped past overcrowded public buses and trolleys. Whoever did their shopping did not have to line up for hours outside empty stores. Their salaries and tax-free supplemental pay (known as “envelopes”) exceeded by orders of magnitude the meager pay of ordinary citizens. The fees paid to Soviet writers privileged to belong to the nomenklatura reached the hundreds of thousands of rubles, in some cases generating annual incomes of up to a million rubles, many thousands of times what a Soviet peasant survived on.¹⁶ Dazzled by the sense of belonging to an all-powerful government corporation and by their own importance, they were utterly free of compassion, self-reflection, or understanding of the “other.”

Stalin was the gatekeeper for the world of the nomenklatura. Entry could be gained only with his favor and support. For those fortunate enough to survive, the horrible fates of their predecessors and the continuing repression only intensified their gratitude toward the dictator. Stalin was twice the age of many members of this new generation of officials. Many of them knew little of the party’s revolutionary period or of former leaders who were now labeled enemies. For them, Stalin was the ultimate authority, the leader of the revolution, the victorious generalissimo, and a theoretician on a par with the founders of Marxism.

Stalin strove variously to feed this image. He cultivated an inferiority complex in his close associates: “You are blind like little kittens. Without me the imperialists would strangle you.”¹⁷ Gradually he acquired the exclusive right to advance any initiative of significance, leaving the operational details to his comrades. His speeches, conversations, and letters were like lectures that he laced with contrived profundities. He liked to assign meaning to events and show off his vast knowledge and deep understanding of problems. The self-confident tone of his pontificating often belied the flimsiness and artificiality of his reasoning. But who would dare challenge him? For most functionaries, who tended to lack sophistication, Stalin’s utterances had an almost sacred quality. However, it was not just his monopoly on theoretical pronouncements that made the vozhd the voice of authority. He was well read and had a good memory, as well as a knack for pithy aphorisms. He would spend time preparing for his meetings, and it enabled him to show an impressive knowledge of detail. Such knowledge left a deep impression on many who witnessed these performances.

The primary reason that every utterance by Stalin carried such weight was that these were the words of an enormously powerful dictator who inspired both horror and adoration. To promote this image, he adopted the manner of a judge and master of destinies. During conferences he did not fraternize with other attendees but strolled around, pipe in hand. Before the spellbound gazes of onlookers, he reasoned out loud as if mulling weighty decisions. Stalin never publicly spoke of himself as a great man. It was enough that official propaganda shouted his greatness to the point of absurdity. Aware that brilliance stands out nicely against a façade of modesty, Stalin presented himself as a mere disciple of Lenin and servant of the party and the people. Every opportunity was taken to highlight this “humility.” He feigned impatience or even embarrassment when greeted with the inevitable standing ovation. He peppered his speeches with self-deprecation and folksy humor. He helped certain visitors to his dacha with their coats. After arriving at a reception arranged by Mao Zedong during the Chinese leader’s January 1950 visit to Moscow, Stalin greeted the cloakroom attendant but turned down his services. “Thank you, but this is something even I seem to be able to manage.” After removing his coat, he hung it on a hanger himself.¹⁸ This affected modesty did not prevent Stalin from asserting his own worth when warranted. In 1947 he personally edited his official biography, inserting the following: “Masterfully performing the job of vozhd of the party and people and enjoying the full support of the Soviet people, Stalin nevertheless did not allow even a shadow of self-importance, conceit, or self-admiration into anything he did.” Thirteen million copies of this biography were printed.¹⁹

Stalin must have believed that if he was going to hold on to power, he had to be considered infallible. On occasion he recognized that mistakes were made, but they could never be his. Misguided decisions and actions were attributed to “the government,” officials, or—most often—the plotting of enemies. The idea that he might bear personal responsibility for the country’s afflictions was rejected out of hand. He was, however, willing to take credit for its achievements. Boundless power inevitably gave him, as it does any dictator, a belief that he was endowed with remarkable prescience. But unlike the mystically inclined Hitler, who believed he was following a higher calling, Stalin’s belief in his infallibility probably had more to do with his untrusting nature and anxieties. He was sure that the only person he could count on was himself. Around him swarmed enemies and traitors. At times, this political paranoia was the cause of unfathomable tragedy. Such was the case in 1937–1938.

4 TERROR AND IMPENDING WAR

Throughout 1937, the wave of repressions against members of the nomenklatura and former oppositionists continued to grow. In August, this wave turned into a tsunami when the ranks of the repressed were expanded from a few tens of thousands of officials to hundreds of thousands of ordinary Soviet citizens. It was at this point that the repression of 1937–1938 earned the name given it by Robert Conquest: “the Great Terror.”¹

After the archives were opened, we learned that the Great Terror was actually a series of operations approved by the Politburo and aimed at different groups. The most far-ranging of these operations—the one against “anti-Soviet elements”—was carried out in fulfillment of NKVD Order No. 00447, approved by the Politburo on 30 July 1937 and planned for August through December. Each region and republic was assigned specific numerical targets for executions and imprisonments in camps. The quotas for the destruction of human lives were very much like those for the production of grain or metal. During the first stage, approximately two hundred thousand people were to be sent to the camps and more than seventy thousand were to be shot. Yet Order No. 00447 allowed for flexibility: local officials had the right to ask Moscow to increase the permitted number of arrests and executions. It was clear to everyone involved that this right was actually a duty. After expeditiously reaching initial targets, local authorities sent Moscow new “increased obligations,” which were almost always approved. With Moscow’s encouragement, the initial plan for destroying “enemies” was fulfilled several times over.

The first “anti-Soviet elements” affected by the operation were the kulaks, who, according to Order No. 00447, had continued their “anti-Soviet subversive activities” after returning from camps and exile. Order No. 00447 placed so much emphasis on kulaks that it has often been called “the kulak order.” This is a misnomer, however, since it provided for the arrest and execution of many other population groups: former members of parties that opposed the Bolsheviks, former members of the White Guard, surviving tsarist officials, “enemies” who had completed their sentences and been released, and political prisoners still in the camps. Toward the end of the list came common criminals.

This list of targets suggests that the operation’s purpose was the extermination or imprisonment of anyone the Stalinist leadership considered a current or potential threat. This goal was even more clear-cut in the “nationalities” operations that were conducted alongside the “anti-Soviet elements” operation. The “nationalities” operations were also planned in Moscow and governed by special NKVD orders approved by the Politburo. They had a catastrophic impact on the Soviet Union’s ethnic Poles, Germans, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Afghans, Iranians, Chinese, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. The Soviet leadership viewed all these groups as ripe for recruitment by hostile foreign powers. A special operation was also conducted against Soviet employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway, who had returned to the USSR from Harbin after the railway was sold to Japan in 1935.

The two campaigns, the “anti-Soviet elements” and the “nationalities” operations, comprised the Great Terror. It was a highly centralized effort begun in the summer of 1937 and concluded in November 1938. Based on the most recent knowledge, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, and 700,000 of them were shot.² An unknown number perished in NKVD torture chambers. Over the roughly year-and-a-half duration of the Great Terror, approximately 1,500 “enemies” were killed every day. None of Stalin’s other crimes against the Soviet population matched the Great Terror in either scale or savagery, and human history offers few episodes that compare.

These figures explain why the Great Terror has come to symbolize Stalin’s dictatorship and personal cruelty. That Stalin himself was the inspiration behind the Terror has never been disputed by serious scholars, and further evidence of his involvement was found after the opening of the archives, which revealed how closely Moscow directed the operations. Having put to rest any lingering doubts that Stalin was the instigator and organizer of the Great Terror, historians have now turned to the task of reconstructing his plans and calculations during these bloody months. Scholars have debated Stalin’s motives for years. The horrific nature of his deeds has led some to think he might have been insane. Clinical proof of such a possibility is undoubtedly beyond reach at this point, but we do have extensive evidence of Stalin’s mental state during this period. For the first time in many years he did not take his usual summer vacation in the south, remaining in Moscow to oversee the roundup. More telling are the many notations and instructions he left on interrogation protocols and the vast body of correspondence between him and the NKVD during this period.

Com. Yezhov: Very important. You have to go through the Udmurt, Mari, Chuvash, and Mordov republics; go through them with a broom.³

Beat Unshlikht for not naming the Polish agents for each region.⁴

Comrade Yezhov: Very good! Keep on digging and cleaning out this Polish spy filth.⁵

You don’t need to “check,” you need to arrest.⁶

Valter (a German). Beat Valter.⁷

One important source for understanding the fury Stalin unleashed in 1937–1938 is the complete transcripts of his speeches and remarks from this period; these have recently become available. Unusually convoluted and incoherent, they are filled with references to conspiracies and omnipresent enemies. In remarks to a meeting of the defense commissar’s council on 2 June 1937, Stalin asserted, “Every party member, honest non-member, and citizen of the USSR has not only the right but also the duty to report any failings that he notices. Even if only 5 percent are true, it will still be worthwhile.”⁸ In another example, the top-performing workers in the metallurgical and coal industries, while being honored with a special reception at the Kremlin on 29 October 1937, were told by Stalin that he was not certain he could trust even them: “I’m not even sure that everyone present, I truly apologize to you, is for the people. I’m not sure whether even among you, I again apologize, there might be people who are working for the Soviet government but at the same time have set themselves up with some intelligence agency in the West—Japanese, German, or Polish—for insurance.” These words, which must surely have surprised those present, were expunged from the official record of the reception.⁹

These examples, of which there are many, are consistent with a statement made by the commissar for foreign trade, Arkady Rozengolts, and contained in his NKVD case file. Rozengolts, who knew Stalin well, described him as “suspicious to the point of insanity” and felt that by 1937 he had changed. In the past, Rozengolts noted, whenever he had reported to Stalin, the vozhd had calmly signed whatever papers needed his signature. Now he would fall into “a fit, a mad fit of rage.”¹⁰ This rage was undoubtedly an important factor in the huge scope and brutality of the Great Terror. By the same token, Stalin’s agitated state does not fully explain the decisions he made throughout this period. Pivotal questions remain unanswered. With whom was Stalin so furious, and why did this fury emerge specifically then?

To understand the nature of Stalin and his regime it is important to keep in mind that the Soviet Union was born out of war. The country came into being as a result of World War I, established itself through victory in the Civil War—a victory that involved overcoming foreign intervention—and was perpetually preparing for the next war. Having come to power solely through war, Bolshevik leaders always believed their power could be taken away by the coordinated efforts of a foreign enemy and domestic counterrevolutionary forces. War readiness, for them, had two aspects: a strong military economy and a secure homeland. The latter required destroying internal enemies.

The gradual move toward terror during the second half of the 1930s coincided with growing international tensions and a growing threat of war. In addition to Japanese aggression along the Soviet Union’s Far Eastern borders, events in Europe were increasingly alarming: Hitler had come to power, and Poland, which lay between the USSR and Germany, seemed in Stalin’s eyes to favor relations with Germany over the USSR. Western powers were pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Nazis, and the Rhineland had been remilitarized in 1936. Another factor influencing Stalin’s foreign policy was the civil war in Spain, which convinced him that England and France were incapable of standing up to Germany. He had little faith in the Western democracies in any case. A policy of non-intervention no longer made sense for the Soviet leadership, and it decided to enter the war in support of Spain’s Republicans, who were fighting Hitler’s ally, General Francisco Franco. Stalin, observing the situation in Spain, became further convinced of the need to purge the homeland in the interests of military readiness. The Spanish Civil War was bringing to the fore a familiar assortment of ills, including anarchy, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, a drifting and ambiguous line dividing the front from the rear, and all manner of treachery. This was the war that gave us the concept of the fifth column. In October 1936, at a critical moment when four columns of Francoist forces were approaching Madrid, the Nationalist general Emilio Mola claimed to have a “fifth column” within the Republican-held city that would rise up and help his forces take it. This term quickly became embedded in the Soviet leaders’ political lexicon.

War in Spain and repression in the USSR escalated in parallel. When the conflict broke out in Spain, on 18 July 1936, the Stalinist leaders initially reacted with caution. But catastrophic defeats suffered by the Republican army led them to intervene. On 29 September 1936, the Politburo adopted a plan of action.¹¹ (It may be significant that this decision coincided with Yezhov’s appointment as head of the NKVD.) The Spanish defeats were taking place alongside setbacks in Europe and the Far East. On 25 October 1936, Italy signed a treaty with Germany, followed on 25 November by the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan. All of these developments seemed to heighten the danger of war.

Newly available archives confirm that Stalin was heavily involved in Spanish affairs. The evidence clearly shows that he believed Republican defeats were caused by saboteurs in the ranks. He demanded that the internal enemy be dealt with decisively. On 9 February 1937 Soviet representatives in Valencia and Madrid were sent a telegram asserting that a series of failures at the front had been directly caused by treachery at headquarters: “Make use of these facts, discuss them, observing caution, with the best of the Republican commanders … so that they may demand … an immediate investigation of the surrender of Malaga, a purge of Franco agents and saboteurs from army headquarters.… If these demands by front-line commanders do not produce immediately the necessary results, put it … that our advisers may find it impossible to continue working under such conditions.”¹² A few days later, he repeated these demands: “We tell you what our firmly established opinion is: that the General Staff and other headquarters must be purged thoroughly of their complement of old specialists who are unable to understand the conditions of civil war and, in addition, are politically unreliable.… Headquarters must be reinforced with fresh people, staunch and full of fighting spirit.… Without this radical measure the Republicans will unquestionably lose the war. This is our belief.”¹³

At the same time that Stalin was dispatching telegrams to Spain, the notorious February–March 1937 Central Committee plenum, which signaled an intensification of repression, was taking place in Moscow. Stalin, reading a draft of the speech Molotov planned to make to the plenum, made some comments in the margins. He underlined the parts where Molotov talked about Trotsky ordering his followers in the USSR “to save their strength for the most important moment—for the start of war—and at that moment to strike with total decisiveness at the most sensitive points in our economy.”¹⁴ Near the words “those incapable of fighting the bourgeoisie, who prefer to cast their lot with the bourgeoisie rather than the working class, have abandoned [the party],” Stalin made a notation: “This is good. It would be worse if they abandoned us in time of war.”¹⁵ The theme of the special danger posed by wreckers and spies in wartime ran through the speeches delivered at the plenum, including Stalin’s: “Winning a battle in time of war takes several corps of Red Army soldiers. But reversing that victory at the front requires just a few spies somewhere in army headquarters or even division headquarters, able to steal the battle plans and give them to the enemy. To build a major railway bridge would take thousands of people. But to blow it up, just a few people would be enough. There are dozens, hundreds of such examples.”¹⁶

Stalin took an active hand in preparing an article for the 4 May 1937 issue of Pravda, titled “Certain Insidious Recruitment Techniques Used by Foreign Intelligence.” This lengthy piece, taking up the bottom halves of three pages, was an important element of the Great Terror’s ideological underpinning. It was reprinted in various publications, actively used in propaganda, and discussed at party study groups. We can see from the initial draft, which Stalin filed in his personal archive, that he modified its headline, which originally read “Certain Methods and Techniques Used by Foreign Intelligence,” to give it a more sinister tone.

This article, unlike others that Stalin helped produce, was not at all theoretical. It described specific (most likely fictitious) instances in which Soviet citizens, especially those sent overseas on state business, had been recruited by foreign intelligence agencies. These examples made the article credible and persuasive. Stalin contributed almost an entire page of text describing an instance in which a Soviet official working in Japan met regularly with an “aristocratic lady” in a restaurant. During one such meeting, a Japanese man in a military uniform appeared, claimed to be the woman’s husband, and made a scene. Another Japanese man appeared and offered to help resolve the matter, but only after the Soviet citizen agreed in writing to keep him informed of what was happening in the USSR. This “helpful intermediary” turned out to be an agent of Japanese intelligence, and the Soviet citizen became a spy.¹⁷

In the months that followed, Stalin’s suspicions were translated into massive police operations. During the spring and summer of 1937, the urgent call to expose spies and forestall potential treason became the basis for a case against a counterrevolutionary organization within the Red Army. On 2 June 1937, Stalin explained the goal of the plot to members of the defense commissar’s Military Council: “They wanted to turn the USSR into another Spain.”¹⁸ Reports of treachery and anarchy in Spain were an important component of the propaganda campaign to “intensify vigilance” and fight against “enemies” within the USSR. In June and July 1937, when the government was preparing to launch large-scale operations against domestic anti-Soviet elements, Soviet newspapers were filled with articles about arrests of German spies in Madrid and of Trotskyites in Barcelona and the fall of the Basque capital Bilbao brought about by a treacherous commander in the Basque army. Also during that summer, the Spanish Republican government created a special state security agency to counteract espionage and combat the “fifth column”—the Servicio de Investigacion Militar (SIM), which sent tentacles into all parts of Republican Spain and brutally suppressed any opposition. The methods used by this new structure prompted sharp criticism even by sympathetic leftists in Western countries. Intensified repression in the Soviet Union was being mirrored in Spain (including by Soviet agents operating there).¹⁹ The Spanish Republican police and the Soviet secret police each worked to crush their own “fifth columns.”

In July the situation in the Far East became even more tense after Japan invaded China. Two important events occurred on 21 August 1937. First, the USSR and China, both with eyes on Japan, signed a non-aggression pact. Second, a resolution was adopted by the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee to “Expel the Korean Population from Border Regions of the Far Eastern Territory.” In the fall of 1937 a massive operation was undertaken to arrest and deport Koreans from this vast region. More than 170,000 people were expelled. The expressed goal was to “prevent the penetration of Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Territory.”²⁰

The idea that the country had to be purged of a potential fifth column, a recurring theme throughout the 1930s in the USSR, was an article of faith among Stalin’s close associates. Even many decades later, they referred to it:

Nineteen thirty-seven was necessary. If you consider that after the revolution we were slashing left and right, and we were victorious, but enemies of different sorts remained, and in the face of the impending danger of fascist aggression they might unite. We owe the fact that we did not have a fifth column during the war to ’37.²¹

This was a struggle against a fifth column of Hitlerite fascism that had come to power in Germany and was preparing war against the country of the Soviets.²²

There is little doubt that Stalin encouraged these ideas among his fellow Politburo members. From their narrow perspective, he had a logical and convincing argument. The Soviet government had many internal enemies who might be keeping a low profile at the moment but were ready to leap into action as soon as the USSR was challenged by a foreign power. The relatively independent old party nomenklatura, which still had ties to the military and the NKVD, might seek to take charge. Former oppositionists were surely eager to take revenge after long years of humiliation and persecution. The kulaks and the perpetually starving peasants might band together with former members of the nobility, White Guard, and the clergy to follow the example of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and turn war with a foreign enemy into a civil war against a despised regime. Then there were the Soviet Union’s many ethnic minorities with ties to neighboring countries—Germans and Poles especially—who Stalin suspected would collaborate with an enemy based on ties of blood. The way to eliminate these dangers was to destroy as many potential enemies and collaborationists as possible. Such was the logic of Stalin’s fearful and ruthless mind as the threat of war grew. In the fevered imaginations of his inner circle, such a fifth column loomed orders of magnitude larger than it could possibly have been in reality. Phantom threats overshadowed the very real dangers confronting the Soviet Union.

PATIENT NUMBER 1

The summoning of the doctors to the near dacha on the morning of 2 March 1953.

Beria, Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Malenkov returned to their homes, leaving Stalin on the couch without medical attention. Perhaps out of fear, or perhaps out of unspoken ambivalence toward his recovery, Stalin’s comrades rejected the idea that they were facing a medical emergency. After Malenkov and Beria checked on the vozhd and found him sleeping, they proceeded to dismiss what the bodyguards had told them about his symptoms. Had he really had some sort of fit? The bodyguards were not doctors. Their imaginations could have been playing tricks on them. His colleagues probably also remembered that Stalin had recently accused his own doctors of being murderers. Who would take responsibility for calling a doctor (or summoning a murderer, as the vozhd might see it) unless he were absolutely sure one was needed? A simple need for emergency medical care was transformed into a multidimensional political problem.

Stalin’s bodyguards spent the remainder of the night in a state of anxiety. No doubt worried that they could be held accountable if Stalin died, they again asked for guidance from above and reported that things did not seem right with the boss. This time the four comrades decided to send a team of doctors to the dacha. Before doing so, however, they convened the Bureau of the Central Committee Presidium¹ so that the summoning of medical luminaries would look like a collective decision by the party leadership. Should Stalin recover, his anger would fall on everyone at once. On the morning of 2 March the doctors arrived at Stalin’s bedside.

The renowned Soviet cardiologist Aleksandr Miasnikov, one of the medical experts summoned to attend Stalin, gives a detailed description of the visit in his memoirs. “The diagnosis,” he wrote, “was clear to us, thank God: hemorrhage in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain caused by hypertonia and atherosclerosis.”² The doctors gave Stalin generous doses of various stimulants but without any real hope of preventing death. From a medical perspective, his condition was no mystery. An autopsy confirmed the initial diagnosis, revealing a large cerebral hemorrhage and severe damage to the cerebral arteries due to atherosclerosis.³ Stalin had been a sickly old man. He would have turned seventy-five later that year.

In totalitarian regimes, too much depends on the personality of the dictator. From the time he came to power, Stalin’s health was a topic of worldwide interest. During his lifetime there was periodic speculation in the Western press that he was ill or even near death. People in the Soviet Union whispered similar rumors. Scholars and commentators looked to Stalin’s physical and mental health as possible keys to understanding his personality and the brutality of his dictatorship. For a long time speculation surrounding Stalin’s health was based on unfounded assumptions. Only recently have we gained access to Stalin’s surviving medical records and testimony by the doctors who monitored his health and examined him after his death.

The only one of the Jughashvilis’ three children to live to adulthood, the future dictator suffered a variety of ills growing up. At an early age, Ioseb came down with smallpox, which left his face permanently pockmarked. He also had a bout of malaria.⁴ Then, through some sort of accident, the details of which have never been clear (some say he was hit by a horse-drawn carriage), he severely injured his left arm. The injury caused his arm to atrophy, giving him problems for the rest of his life. In 1898 Ioseb wrote to the rector of the Tiflis Theological Seminary asking to be excused from a reexamination “due to a disease of the chest that has long plagued me and that grew more severe during examinations.”⁵ He sought to be released from police custody in October and November 1902 because of his “predisposition toward pulmonary consumption” and worsening cough.⁶ Apparently his juvenile tuberculosis eventually abated, and he did not show signs of the disease later in life.

As a professional revolutionary, Stalin had to endure many hardships: prison, exile, and an unsettled existence even in times of freedom. During one term of exile he became ill with typhus.⁷ His most difficult trial was his final exile in Turukhansky Krai, which lasted three years. He had difficulty adapting to the harsh climate, austere living conditions, isolation from “the world at large,” and forced idleness, and in letters to friends he complained of a “suspicious cough” brought on by “intensifying cold (37 below)” and a “general state of ill health.”⁸ Overall, however, the tsarist government was immeasurably kinder to convicts than the Stalinist dictatorship. Had young Stalin had to endure so many imprisonments and exiles in the sort of Gulag system he went on to create, he most likely would not have survived.

The revolution and Civil War not only put millions in their graves, but also deeply affected the Bolshevik party and undermined the health of its leaders. In March 1921 Stalin underwent an appendectomy.⁹ On 23 April 1921, out of concern for their health, the Politburo voted to grant Stalin, Kamenev, Rykov, and Trotsky extended vacations.¹⁰ In late May, Stalin left for the North Caucasus and did not return to Moscow until 8 August, almost two and a half months later. In 1922 he skipped his vacation, but in July the Politburo compelled him to spend three days a week out of town.¹¹ Once the Civil War ended, spending time in the fresh air of Moscow’s leafy suburban dacha communities became an established lifestyle for the top Bolshevik leadership. Stalin and his family commandeered the country home of a former petroleum industrialist. Later, after the death of his wife, the vozhd built himself a new dacha, more convenient to Moscow. This famous country home (the “near” dacha in Volynskoe) was Stalin’s main residence for nearly two decades and will forever be associated with him. It was here that he died.

At the dacha, Stalin would spend time with his immediate family and other relatives or get together with his comrades. In addition to the festive dinners with lots of alcohol (described above), Stalin’s dacha lifestyle also included games, such as billiards or gorodki (a Russian game similar to skittles), although the dictator himself was not a big lover of physical activity. “He preferred stretching out on a deckchair with a book and his documents or the newspapers. And he could sit at the table with his guests by the hour,” his daughter Svetlana recalled.¹² This penchant for immobility only increased with age.

Another significant part of Stalin’s life were his vacations in resort areas of southern Russia. He spent time in the south every year from 1923 to 1936 and from 1945 to 1951.¹³ These trips were working vacations. A constant stream of documents was forwarded to him, and he kept up an active correspondence with his comrades back in Moscow, a practice that generated invaluable records for historians. But there was also time for rest and relaxation. While in the south Stalin treated his numerous diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, bouts of tonsillitis, long-lasting intestinal disturbances, and neurasthenia.¹⁴ His ailments were also eased by therapeutic baths. “I am getting better. The Matsesta waters (near Sochi) are good for curing sclerosis, reviving the nerves, dilating the heart, and curing sciatica, gout, and rheumatism,” he reported to Molotov on 1 August 1925.¹⁵

But Stalin was not a conscientious patient. His chronic ailments were exacerbated by his lifestyle and bad habits: smoking, drinking, rich foods, and overwork. Like most people, Stalin alternated between taking care of his body and inflicting damage. In May 1926 he left for a vacation in the Caucasus. After a brief stop in Sochi he set out with Mikoyan to travel through Georgia, where he visited his native Gori before going to stay with Ordzhonikidze in Tiflis. Letters from the head of Stalin’s Sochi-based security team, M. Gorbachev, suggest that this was a boisterous trip. While “under the influence,” as Gorbachev put it, on a whim, Stalin suddenly summoned him from Sochi to Tiflis but then forgot he had done so. When Gorbachev showed up, Stalin was surprised to see him. When it became clear what had happened, everyone “had a good laugh.” Gorbachev was forced to hurry back to Sochi, covering the vast distance at breakneck speed.¹⁶ Continuing his spree, Stalin spent a long time driving around the Caucasus and wound up returning to Sochi in bad shape. “I returned to Sochi today, 15 June,” he reported to Molotov and Bukharin. “In Tiflis I came down with a stomachache (I got food poisoning from some fish) and am now having a hard time recovering.”¹⁷ Gorbachev wrote to Stalin’s assistant, Ivan Tovstukha, “Overall, the boss wound up paying quite a price for this trip across the Caucasus in terms of his health. Mikoyan and Sergo [Ordzhonikidze] turned him topsy-turvy.”¹⁸ Stalin called for a doctor, went on a diet, and began to take the waters on a regular basis.¹⁹ The doctor who treated him in Sochi, I. A. Valedinsky, recalled that his patient complained of pain in his arm and leg muscles. When his doctors forbade him to drink, Stalin asked, “But what about cognac?” Valedinsky replied that “on Saturday you can let loose, on Sunday you should rest, and on Monday you can go to work with a clear head.” “Stalin liked this response, and the next time he arranged a ‘subbotnik’ [a word usually used for mandatory ‘volunteer’ work on Saturdays], it was very memorable for me,” Valedinsky wrote, although he did not explain what made this particular gathering so unforgettable.²⁰

References to his poor health are scattered throughout Stalin’s later correspondence as well. While on vacation in July 1927, he wrote to Molotov: “I’m sick and lying in bed so I’ll be brief.”²¹ According to Valedinsky, that year he also complained of pain in his arm and leg muscles. Therapeutic baths were followed by the usual subbotnik. Stalin invited his doctors to dine with him “and was so generous with the cognac,” Valedinsky wrote afterward, “that I did not make it home until the following day, on Sunday.”²² In 1928, before taking a curative bath in Sochi, Stalin again complained of pain in his arms and legs. The rheumatoid arthritis in his left arm was progressing.²³ During a vacation in August 1929 Stalin wrote to Molotov that “I am beginning to recuperate in Sochi after my illness in Nalchik.”²⁴ In 1930, while undergoing treatment in Sochi, he fell ill with tonsillitis. His teeth also hurt. In September 1930 he wrote to his wife that the dentist had “sharpened” eight of his teeth in one go, so he “was not feeling very well.”²⁵ In 1931 he again took therapeutic baths. “I spent about 10 days in Tsqaltubo. I took 20 baths. The water there was marvelous, truly valuable,” he wrote to Yenukidze.²⁶ That September he wrote to his wife that he was vacationing in Sochi with Kirov. “I went one time (just once!) to the seaside. I went bathing. It was very good! I think I’ll go again.”²⁷ Apparently he used the Russian word for “bathing” because he could not swim.

The vacation Stalin took in 1932 was one of his longest. The log of visitors to his Kremlin office shows that he did not receive anyone there between 29 May and 27 August—almost three months. The apparent reason for such a long break was poor health. The following spring the foreign press was still speculating that Stalin was seriously ill. On 3 April, Pravda took the unprecedented step of publishing a response by Stalin to a query by the Associated Press: “This is not the first time that false rumors that I am ill have circulated in the bourgeois press. Obviously, there are people in whose interest it is that I should fall seriously ill and for a long time, if not worse. Perhaps it is not very tactful of me, but unfortunately I have no information to gratify these gentlemen. Sad though it may be, the fact is that I am in perfect health.”²⁸ Behind this characteristically mocking response was genuine irritation. Stalin’s symptoms were serious, and rest and relaxation in the beneficial climate of southern Russia apparently did not alleviate them. “It seems I won’t be getting better anytime soon,” Stalin wrote to Kaganovich from the south in June 1932. “A general weakness and real sense of fatigue are only now becoming evident. Just when I think I’m beginning to get better, it turns out that I’ve got a long way to go. I’m not having rheumatic symptoms (they disappeared somewhere), but the overall weakness isn’t going away.”²⁹ Soon, however, he felt well enough to make a 230-mile trip across the Black Sea by motor boat.³⁰

Regular trips to the south inspired Stalin to build new vacation homes there. These construction projects began in 1930 and continued for the rest of his life. “We’ve built a marvelous little house here,” he wrote of his new dacha outside Sochi in August 1933. A month later he wrote of another residence: “Today I visited the new dacha near Gagry. It’s turned out (they just finished building it) to be a splendid dacha.”³¹

In 1933 Stalin was away from his Kremlin office from 17 August to 4 November. On 18 August he left Moscow to travel south with Voroshilov. The trip—by train, boat, and automobile—took seven days, during which they visited several regions of the country. Stalin spent the remainder of his vacation traveling (including by sea), entertaining guests, and, inevitably, working. This vacation was apparently among the more enjoyable. The situation in the country had somewhat stabilized after the devastating famine, putting the Soviet leadership in a good mood. Moreover, Stalin enjoyed relatively good health. “Koba felt great the entire time,” Voroshilov wrote to Yenukidze. His only health problem was some tooth pain.³²

Stalin’s vacation the following year was less successful. In 1934 he caught influenza and returned to Moscow having lost weight.³³ Kirov, who accompanied Stalin that summer, also did not enjoy himself. “As fate would have it, I wound up in Sochi,” Kirov wrote, “which I’m not happy about—the heat here isn’t tropical; it’s hellish.… I really regret that I came to Sochi.”³⁴ Things did not go well in 1935 either: Stalin again caught influenza and injured his finger when the head of his security team accidentally slammed a car door on it. Stopping in Tiflis toward the end of this vacation to visit his mother, he came down with a stomach ailment.³⁵ In 1936, Stalin’s letters to his comrades-in-arms back in Moscow during August through October are brief, harsh, and often ill humored. They contain no personal information, just orders. They are largely devoted to the topic of “enemies of the people,” especially arrangements for the first Moscow show trial against Zinoviev and Kamenev.

Nineteen thirty-seven had a gloomy start both for the country, which was succumbing to another round of repression, and for Stalin, who began the year with a bout of tonsillitis. (By 5 January he had sufficiently recovered to enjoy dinner with his comrades and doctors, followed by dancing to phonograph records.)³⁶ Despite his continued poor health, for the first time in many years he did not leave Moscow on vacation. The decision to stay was undoubtedly due to his intimate involvement in the purging of Soviet society. He also stayed in Moscow the following few summers. After the winding down of the Great Terror, the impending war prevented him from relaxing down south. In 1939, for example, he spent August embroiled in difficult negotiations with Western powers and then the Nazis, resulting in the pact with Hitler. He had recently turned sixty, and his health had not improved. In records dated February 1940, Valedinsky mentions another episode of tonsillitis and a bad cold.³⁷

The outbreak of war in the summer of 1941 pushed the already hardworking leader to his limits. Unlike many Soviet citizens, of course, he was not going hungry or enduring long days of backbreaking labor, but the additional workload and responsibilities put a greater strain on his health. In September 1944 discussions with the United States ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman (who was attempting to arrange for the Soviet leader to meet with Roosevelt and Churchill), Stalin explained that he would not be able to leave the country because of “increasingly frequent illnesses.” According to one account of these talks, “In the past Com. Stalin would have the flu for one or two days, but now it was lasting for one and a half or two weeks. He was showing his age.”³⁸ In his categorical refusal to travel by plane, Stalin may have been overdramatizing his health problems, but not by much. A number of memoirs describe Stalin’s frail health during the war years. Whenever the situation at the front permitted it, the dictator retreated to his dacha and worked from there.

In October 1945, shortly after the surrender of Japan, Stalin took his first southern vacation in several years.³⁹ Toward the end of his life these trips were shifted to later in the year, usually commencing in August or September and ending in December. Apparently he preferred to enjoy the peak of summer at his dacha outside Moscow and to head south when the weather up north turned cold. His vacations also grew longer. In 1946–1949 they extended to three or three and a half months, and in 1950 and 1951 he spent four and a half months out of town.⁴⁰ While at his southern residences, Stalin engaged in more or less the same activities as in Moscow. He spent time working on the day’s mail and writing to his comrades. He also received visitors, although fewer than in Moscow. As in Moscow, however, he enjoyed presiding over festive gatherings at the dinner table and playing billiards. But some activities were specific to his vacation lifestyle. During his visits to Russia’s resort towns, he took therapeutic baths, went for walks, and traveled. In 1947 he expressed a desire to travel by car from Moscow to Crimea, although the poor quality of the roads allowed him to get only as far as Kursk, where he boarded a train. Long car trips were evidently bad for his rheumatism. A number of memoirs report that he nevertheless preferred the less comfortable jump seats to the cushioned back seat.⁴¹ He seldom stayed in one place very long when visiting the south, moving among his continuously growing collection of dachas.⁴² Sometimes he would invite his daughter and son to join him, occasioning a sort of family reunion that, for a number of reasons, was not possible in Moscow.

After the war, these visits to the south alternated with long periods when Stalin barely left his Moscow dacha. Visits to his Kremlin office became increasingly rare, primarily due to his deteriorating health. He continued to suffer from stomach pain and intestinal disturbances, accompanied by fever, throat problems, colds, and influenza. His atherosclerosis was progressing.⁴³ Despite scattered attempts to do so, he was by now simply incapable of changing his sedentary lifestyle. The copious fare served at his frequent late-night dinner gatherings was surely not good for him. According to Milovan Djilas, who visited Stalin’s dacha several times in the 1940s, “The selection of food and drink was huge, with an emphasis on meat dishes and hard liquor.”⁴⁴ The leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, Matyas Rakosi, recalled the following:

The atmosphere at these dinners was free and easy; people told jokes—often even dirty ones—to the raucous laughter of everyone present. Once they tried to get me drunk, but wine doesn’t affect me, which earned me recognition and a bit of surprise from those in attendance. Our last dinner together was in the fall of 1952. When Stalin left the room at three in the morning, I commented to the Politburo members, “Stalin is already 73; aren’t such dinners, stretching so late into the night, bad for him?” His comrades assured me that Stalin knew his limits.⁴⁵

Stalin brought up his age and the importance of cultivating a new generation of leaders with increasing frequency.⁴⁶ Deep down, however, he must have hoped for the best. In November 1949, when the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha expressed the wish that Stalin would live to one hundred, the Soviet leader joked: “That’s not enough. Back home in Georgia we have old people still alive at 145.”⁴⁷ As Stalin’s daughter Svetlana attested, “In later years he wanted to continue in good health and live longer.”⁴⁸

In 1952, Stalin did not travel south. Even though he remained in Moscow, he visited his Kremlin office only fifty times, an average of less than once a week. On 21 December 1952, for his seventy-third birthday, his daughter Svetlana made her final visit to her father’s dacha. “I was worried at how badly he looked,” she recalled. “He must have felt his illness coming on. Maybe he was aware of some hypertension, for he’d suddenly given up smoking and was very pleased with himself.… He’d been smoking for fifty or sixty years.”⁴⁹ By this time his atherosclerosis was well advanced. The autopsy performed two and a half months later showed that damage to the arteries had greatly impeded blood flow to the brain.⁵⁰

To what extent was Stalin’s death hastened by a lack of professional care? It is widely believed that he did not see any doctors during the final months of his life due to arrests at government hospitals in connection with the Doctors’ Plot (see chapter 6 below). Svetlana Allilueva writes:

He was probably aware of an increase in his blood pressure, but he hadn’t any doctor to take care of him. Vinogradov [a renowned doctor who had treated Stalin], the only one he trusted, had been arrested and he wouldn’t let any other doctor near him.

Somewhere or other he got hold of some quack remedies, and he’d take some pills or pour a few drops of iodine into a glass of water. Moreover, he himself did a thing no doctor would ever have allowed: Two months after I last saw him and just twenty-four hours before his stroke he went to the bathhouse near the dacha and took a steam bath, as he’d been accustomed to doing ever since Siberia.⁵¹

Allilueva’s testimony has to be taken with a grain of salt. She rarely saw her father and knew little about his life. Her reminiscences offer a subjective view of events. No archival documents have been found to clarify whether Stalin was under the care of doctors during the final months of his life. Nothing has been written about the quality of his health care at that time. Perhaps no treatment in the world would have helped.

We are equally in the dark about another complex question: the effect Stalin’s ailments had on his decisions and actions. Without solid evidence, speculation on this subject remains just that. What we do know is that Miasnikov, one of the doctors summoned to his deathbed, believed that the extensive damage to Stalin’s cerebral arteries uncovered during his post mortem must have affected his character and behavior:

I believe that Stalin’s cruelty and suspiciousness, his fear of enemies and loss of the ability to assess people and events, his extreme obstinacy—all this was the result, to a certain extent, of atherosclerosis of the arteries in his brain (or rather, atherosclerosis exacerbated these traits). Basically, the state was being governed by a sick man.… Sclerosis of the blood vessels in the brain developed slowly, over the course of many years. Areas of cerebral softening that had originated much earlier were discovered in Stalin.⁵²

These observations by a distinguished doctor are entirely consistent with the testimony of Stalin’s associates. Even the most devoted among them, Vyacheslav Molotov, admitted, “In my opinion, Stalin was not quite in possession of his faculties during his final years.”⁵³ A historian, as well, would have no trouble coming up with “oddities” and inappropriate responses in Stalin’s political behavior. But historians are not doctors. While keeping their subjects’ possible ailments in mind, they try not to dwell on them.

5 STALIN AT WAR

The 22 June 1941 surprise attack came with plenty of warning. The previous evening Moscow’s military leadership received a report: a sergeant in the German army had crossed the border with the news that an invasion would begin the following morning.¹ Stalin was immediately informed, and the military leaders and Politburo gathered in his office to decide how to respond. People’s Commissar for Defense Semen Timoshenko and Army Chief of Staff Georgy Zhukov, according to the latter’s memoirs, asked for a directive allowing them to bring troops to a state of combat readiness.² Stalin was doubtful: “Could it be that the German generals sent us this defector to provoke a clash?” After hearing out his military chiefs, he concluded, “It would be premature to issue such an order. The matter might still be resolved peacefully. We should issue a brief order indicating that an invasion could start with provocative actions by German units. To avoid complicating matters, forces in border districts should not give in to any provocations.”³ The order reached troops shortly after midnight.

Stalin and the Politburo continued to discuss the alarming news until they finally parted ways, exhausted, around three o’clock in the morning. It was not long before Zhukov telephoned Stalin to report that German troops had launched an invasion. After briefly trying to refuse the general’s demand that the vozhd be summoned to the phone, his chief bodyguard finally went to wake him:

After about three minutes, I. V. Stalin came to the phone.

I informed him of the situation and asked for permission to commence an armed response. I. V. Stalin was silent. All I heard was his heavy breathing.

“Did you understand what I said?”

Again silence.

“Will there be orders?” I persisted.⁴

Zhukov’s memoirs seem to suggest that Stalin withheld permission to respond to the attack and simply ordered Zhukov and Timoshenko to the Kremlin. But in 1956 Zhukov offered an important detail about this conversation that was never included in his memoirs. During the telephone call, he said, Stalin issued an order to the troops: “This is a provocation by the German military. Do not open fire to avoid unleashing wider action.”⁵ There is no reason to disbelieve this account.

According to Zhukov, he and Timoshenko arrived at Stalin’s office at 4:30 a.m. to find the Politburo already there. This timing contradicts the log of visitors to Stalin’s office, which states that Timoshenko and Zhukov’s first visit on 22 June occurred at 5:45.⁶ A simple explanation could be that the 4:30 meeting took place not in Stalin’s office but in his Kremlin apartment. In any event, after being updated by his military chiefs, Stalin again expressed doubts: “Couldn’t this just be a provocation by German generals? … Hitler surely doesn’t know about this.” He sent Molotov to meet with Germany’s ambassador, Friedrich von der Schulenburg.⁷ As Zhukov describes it, he and Timoshenko asked Stalin to order a counterstrike, but Stalin told them to wait until Molotov returned.

The idea that the attacks were a conspiracy by German generals and were unknown to Hitler fit perfectly with Stalin’s thinking. Further evidence that the Soviet leaders harbored serious illusions about Hitler can be found in Molotov’s behavior during his meeting with Schulenburg, which began at 5:30 that morning. Obeying instructions sent by his government, Schulenburg, clearly upset, read Molotov the following brief notification: “In view of the intolerable threat to Germany’s eastern border posed by the massive concentration and readying of all the armed forces of the Red Army, the German government feels compelled to take military countermeasures.” Molotov’s reaction suggests that he did not understand what was actually happening. He began to dispute that Soviet forces were concentrated along the border and concluded with the almost desperate question: “Why did Germany sign a non-aggression pact only to break it so easily?”⁸ He tried to convince Schulenburg that the USSR was innocent in this matter and that it was Germany that was being treacherous, although he must have understood that even if the German ambassador believed him, nothing could be done. Schulenberg was just the messenger.

This meeting took place right in the Kremlin, so by 5:45 Molotov was already back in Stalin’s office, along with Beria, Lev Mekhlis, Timoshenko, and Zhukov.⁹ As Zhukov describes it, upon hearing from Molotov that Germany had declared war, Stalin “silently dropped into his chair and became immersed in thought. A long and painful pause ensued.” Stalin agreed to issue a directive ordering the destruction of the invading enemy and added, “So long as our troops, with the exception of aviation, do not violate the German border anywhere for now.”¹⁰ This order was issued to the troops at 7:15 a.m., almost four hours after the invasion began.¹¹ It showed that the top leadership still did not understand what was happening. Stalin did not sign the order. It went out over the signatures of Timoshenko, Malenkov, and Zhukov.

In the hours that followed, Stalin conferred with his fellow leaders on several questions. Among the most pressing was how Soviet citizens would be informed that their country was at war. It was not just a matter of an official statement but of how the war was to be presented, what political slogans would be put into play, and what objectives were to be pursued. Stalin’s comrades felt strongly that he should be the one to speak to the country, but he refused. The job fell to Molotov. Of course Stalin understood the political drawbacks of this decision, but he simply did not know what to say. The situation was fraught with uncertainty. Molotov’s speech announced that the country was at war, emphasized that Germany was the aggressor, and expressed confidence that the Soviet Union would prevail. He ended with the words, “Our cause is just. The enemy will be crushed. Victory will be ours.” Throughout this horrific war, these watchwords were emblazoned on posters and banners and repeated over the airwaves.

The archives contain a version of the speech written and edited in Molotov’s hand.¹² The speech he actually delivered was somewhat different from this initial draft and added references to Stalin. It started with the introductory statement, “The Soviet government and its head, Comrade Stalin, have asked me to make the following announcement.” A paragraph was added toward the end calling on the people to “rally their ranks” around the party, the government, and “our great leader Comrade Stalin.” These references to Stalin were undoubtedly designed to preclude any doubts and rumors that might have arisen from his silence.

Molotov’s speech exposes a central political concern worrying Stalin during the war’s early hours. The brief remarks repeatedly emphasized the idea that the German aggression was completely unprovoked and that the USSR had meticulously adhered to the non-aggression pact. As the speech put it, “The German government was not once given grounds for complaining to the USSR that it was not fulfilling the agreement.” Molotov emphasized that Germany “is the invading side” and even called the German fascists “traitors.” Implicit in this word choice is the idea that there was an understanding between the two countries that could be betrayed.

The English historian John Erickson has suggested that Molotov’s speech exposed a sense of unease and even humiliation on the part of the Soviet leadership.¹³ It was as if Molotov were taking the German explanation for the invasion at face value and defending the Soviet Union against charges of aggressive intent. Was this insistence on Soviet adherence to the pact intended for Hitler in the faint hope that the invasion had indeed been launched by rogue generals? Or was the idea of Soviet blamelessness meant to influence public opinion in the West, in whose eyes it was suddenly important to seem a victim, rather than a partner, of Nazism? Or was the speech meant purely for the domestic audience in an effort to fan indignation toward a treacherous enemy?

Five minutes after noon, Molotov left Stalin for twenty minutes, during which his voice was broadcast over the radio while Soviet officials streamed in and out of Stalin’s office. A general army mobilization was announced. The situation remained ambiguous. Stalin decided to send high-ranking emissaries to the front: Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, and Kulik.¹⁴ The use of plenipotentiaries to represent him remained Stalin’s preferred method of overseeing the war throughout its duration.

At 9:15 p.m., another directive went out to Soviet forces, again over the signatures of Timoshenko, Malenkov, and Zhukov.¹⁵ The results of the first day of fighting were sugarcoated. While recognizing that the German forces had achieved “minor successes” in a number of areas, the directive claimed that in most border sectors “attacks were repelled with heavy enemy casualties.” Having painted this optimistic picture, the directive went on to spell out the goal: deal a counterblow and destroy the enemy. In his memoirs, Zhukov noted his disapproval of the directive’s wording and his feeling that it did not reflect the true state of affairs.¹⁶

In truth, Stalin did not have accurate information about the first day of combat. Communication with frontline forces had broken down, and commanders at all levels were afraid to deliver bad news. Stalin himself had a hand in creating a distorted picture. On 23 June the first Red Army Main Command’s combat overview was published in newspapers. The vozhd labored over the wording of this summary himself. “After fierce battles,” the overview read, “the enemy was beaten back and suffered great losses.” Supposedly there were only two points at which the Germans were able to penetrate the border by 10–15 kilometers.¹⁷ In reality, the first day of fighting was catastrophic. According to official Soviet sources, on 22 June the Red Army lost 1,200 airplanes, many of which were destroyed while still sitting on airfields. German figures record more than 1,800 Soviet airplanes lost, of which approximately 1,500 were destroyed on the ground. In one day the Germans advanced 60–80 kilometers into the Baltic states, 40–60 kilometers into Belarus, and 10–20 kilometers into Ukraine.¹⁸

Despite lacking accurate information and his understandable desire to hope for the best, Stalin must have realized the seriousness of the situation. According to eyewitnesses, he was stunned by the outbreak of war. As Zhukov describes it, “During the first day he was not able to really take himself in hand and get a firm grip on events. The shock to I. V. Stalin caused by the enemy invasion was so strong that his voice even became softer and his instructions on organizing the military effort were not always appropriate to the situation.”¹⁹ Chadaev later recalled, “Early on the morning of 22 June I caught sight of Stalin in the corridor. He had arrived at work after a brief sleep. He looked tired, worn out, and sad. His pockmarked face was sunken. You could see he was depressed.”²⁰

Stalin’s indecisiveness during the war’s first hours and his refusal to make a radio address on 22 June clearly show that he was not himself. His indecisiveness continued the following day, when it came time to set up a command headquarters. He refused to formally take charge of General Command Headquarters, and Defense Commissar Timoshenko took over that responsibility. Officially, Stalin’s membership in the Command Headquarters was on a par with those of Molotov, Voroshilov, Semen Budenny,²¹ Zhukov, and Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov.²² A number of other Politburo members and military leaders were given the status of advisers to Command Headquarters.²³ This system was extremely inefficient. Though officially in charge of the war effort, Timoshenko in fact had little authority among his colleagues. According to Kuznetsov, the members of Command Headquarters and the top leaders “had no intention of subordinating themselves to the people’s commissar for defense. They demanded reports and information from him, and even made him account for his actions.”²⁴ Timoshenko was certainly not able to go over Stalin’s head. The chain of command became long and tangled, and the system whereby decisions were made and implemented was highly disorganized.

Stalin’s prewar strategy had failed. He had not managed to avoid war, and furthermore, it had gotten off to a worse start than anyone might have imagined. In addition to the military catastrophe, he had suffered a devastating blow to his self-esteem. Nobody could openly criticize him for his miscalculations, but he must have known that not only his colleagues in the leadership but also tens of millions of Soviet citizens were reproaching him in their thoughts.

FAMILY

2 March 1953 at the near dacha. The arrival of the daughter.

Once the seriousness of Stalin’s condition became clear, his children, Svetlana and Vasily, were called to the dacha. This was largely a symbolic gesture. Over time, Stalin’s family had come to play less and less of a role in his life.

Stalin met his first wife when he was still a young revolutionary adventurer. Returning to Tiflis in 1905 after escaping from his first exile and traveling through Transcaucasia, he moved in with the Svanidze family. There were five members of this family: Aleksandr Svanidze, who was involved in the revolutionary movement, and his sisters—Sashiko, Kato (Yekaterina), and Masho—as well as Sashiko’s husband, whom Stalin had known in the seminary. Sashiko and Kato were well-known dressmakers in the city who had nothing to do with the revolutionary movement. So when he brought Iosif Jughashvili into the household, Aleksandr tried to keep this outsider as far away as possible from his sisters.¹ Nevertheless, an infatuation developed between Iosif and Yekaterina, who were both young and attractive. Kato’s sisters could not have been happy about her involvement with an impoverished seminary dropout. Some light is shed on this period by a letter sent to Stalin forty years later, in 1946. An acquaintance of Stalin and the Svanidze family from his Tiflis days asked for help and rather artlessly implied that Stalin owed him a favor. First, Stalin had used the letter writer’s room for assignations with Yekaterina. Second, when Stalin proposed to Kato and “the relatives were opposed,” “I told her, if you like him, don’t listen to anybody, and she heeded my advice.”²

The Svanidze family was basically presented with a fait accompli, and in July 1906 the couple was married.³ This new family member inevitably entangled the Svanidzes in his world. Soon after the wedding, Yekaterina was arrested as an accomplice of revolutionaries. The matter was resolved thanks to her sister Sashiko, who used her ties to wives of police officers. Yekaterina spent about two months under arrest, but instead of being held in a jail cell, she was kept in a local police chief’s apartment—apparently at the request of the chief’s wife, who was a client of the dressmakers.⁴ One important argument for closing Yekaterina’s case was that she was pregnant. In March 1907 the future dictator’s first child, Yakov, was born. Family life and revolution did not mix. Iosif moved his wife and son with him to Baku, where Yekaterina fell seriously ill. In November 1907 she died. This was a heavy blow to Iosif. Unable to take adequate care of his son, he left Yakov with his wife’s family.

There were other women in Stalin’s life. Evidence survives of a relationship with Stefaniia Petrovskaia, a young revolutionary from the landowning class, that began in 1909, when both were exiled to Solvychegodsk in Vologda Province. After serving out her term, Petrovskaia followed Iosif to Baku. When he was arrested in June 1910, the future dictator even asked the police for permission to “enter into lawful wedlock” with her. The permission was granted, but the wedding never took place. In September 1910 Jughashvili, still a bachelor, was again sent into exile.⁵ During this second exile in Solvychegodsk he registered his place of residence (in the home of M. P. Kuzakova) together with fellow exile Serafima Khoroshenina, suggesting that the two were intimate. Soon, however, Khoroshenina was transferred out of Solvychegodsk.⁶ According to rumors now being promoted by some journalists, Stalin then began a relationship with his landlady, Kuzakova, resulting in the birth of a son. There is no hard evidence of this relationship. After finishing his term of exile a few months after the supposed affair with Kuzakova, Jughashvili spent some time living in Vologda. Here he became acquainted with an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl named Pelageia Onufrieva, the fiancée of one of his fellow exiles, Petr Chizhikov. The future dictator flirted openly with the girl and gave her a book with the inscription, “To clever, nasty Polya from the oddball Iosif.” When Pelageia left Vologda, Jughashvili sent her facetious cards, such as: “I claim a kiss from you conveyed via Petka [Chizhikov]. I kiss you back, and I don’t just kiss you, but passionately (simple kissing isn’t worth it). Iosif.”⁷ In his personal files, Stalin kept a photograph of Chizhikov and Onufrieva dating to his time in Vologda: a serious, pretty, round-faced girl in glasses and a serious young man with regular features and a moustache and beard.

The jocular cards, presents, and photograph attest to the thirty-three-year-old Jughashvili’s interest in the young woman but do not prove that he was romantically involved with her. We have only a few vague hints. Around the same time that Stalin left Vologda, in 1912, Chizhikov went to visit his parents in Ukraine, where he fell ill and died suddenly, without marrying Pelageia, as he may or may not have intended. Onufrieva suffered the sort of misfortune that befell many of her compatriots. After Chizhikov’s death she married, and as her erstwhile gallant admirer presided over the country, her husband was arrested. It is not known whether she ever tried to appeal to Stalin for help. She died in 1955, having lived her entire life in Vologda.⁸

The evidence that Iosif Jughashvili had an affair with the even younger Lidiia Pereprygina during his last Turukhansky exile is more solid, although rumors that they had a son together have not been proved. In any case, Stalin never recognized Pereprygina’s son or any other illegitimate children attributed to him.

Returning to St. Petersburg after the February 1917 revolution, Stalin was ready to turn a new page. The Alliluev household provided a place of warmth after the upheavals of life underground. The attraction this family held for him is understandable. Stalin had known them since his years in Tiflis and had corresponded with them during his final exile in Kureika. The head of the family, Sergei Alliluev, was a longtime party member who had been arrested many times. The family’s two sons and two daughters were often left without adult supervision and led rather freewheeling lifestyles. Iosif was particularly fond of the youngest, the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nadezhda, who reciprocated his feelings despite the twenty-three-year difference in their ages. To a young woman from a revolutionary family, he must have seemed like the ideal man: a tried-and-true revolutionary, brave and mysterious but also personable. In 1919 Stalin and Nadezhda tied the knot. As to the nature of their relationship before marriage, we can only guess.

Nadezhda, a party member beginning in 1918, was a model Bolshevik wife. She worked in Lenin’s secretariat (Lenin knew the Alliluevs and even lived in their apartment in 1917). In 1921 the Stalins had their first child, Vasily. Nadezhda had a hard time keeping up with childrearing, work, and party activism and apparently neglected the last. In late 1921 she was expelled from the party as “ballast with no interest in the life of the party whatsoever.” Only through the intercession of top party officials, including Lenin, was her membership restored, although she had to spend a year earning her way back in as a candidate member. Such were the times. Nadezhda herself probably believed in the ideals of equality and party democracy and was not offended by her treatment. In her request to be readmitted she promised to “prepare herself for party work.”⁹

In addition to the birth of Vasily, Nadezhda’s life was complicated by the introduction of Stalin’s first son, Yakov, into the family. Letters to her mother-in-law, Ekaterine Jughashvili, in 1922 and 1923 included cautious complaints: “Yasha is going to school, fooling around, and smoking, and does not listen to me”; “Yasha is also healthy, but he’s not putting much effort into his schoolwork.”¹⁰ Yakov, fifteen in 1922, was just six years younger than his stepmother. A few years later, in 1926, Nadezhda wrote of Yakov to a female friend: “I have already lost all hope that he will ever come to his senses. He has absolutely no interests and no goal.”¹¹ The boy was also not getting along with his father. Conflict over his intention to marry ended tragically: when he failed to get his father’s consent, he tried to commit suicide. On 9 April 1928 Stalin wrote to Nadezhda: “Tell Yasha from me that he has behaved like a hooligan and a blackmailer with whom I have nothing in common and with whom I can have nothing further to do. Let him live wherever he wants and with whomever he wants.”¹² For a while Stalin’s relationship with his eldest son was in a state of suspension, but on the eve of the war, when Yakov was studying at the Artillery Academy, Stalin was apparently pleased with him. On 5 May 1941, Yakov was present at a large Kremlin reception in honor of military academy graduates. In his remarks to the gathering, Stalin joked that “I have an acquaintance who studied at the Artillery Academy. I looked over his notes and found that a great deal of time is being spent studying cannons that were decommissioned in 1916.”¹³ This was an obvious reference to Yakov’s notes, a sign that the two were spending time together.

In early 1926 Nadezhda gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana. In sharing the good news with Ordzhonikidze’s wife, Zinaida, who was vacationing in the south, Nadezhda wrote, “In short, we now have a complete family.”¹⁴ But with Stalin immersed in his official duties and embroiled in a battle for power, this was no usual family. No doubt he loved his wife and children, but for the most part he loved them from a distance. They spent brief stretches of time together at the dacha outside Moscow and while on vacation in the south. Nadezhda, as if emulating her husband, was always busy with work, party activism, and her studies. In a letter to a friend a month before Svetlana’s birth, she wrote, “I very much regret that I’ve again fettered myself with new family responsibilities,” obviously referring to the impending arrival of her second child. “In our time it’s not very easy since there are such an awful lot of new prejudices, and if you’re not working, then of course you’re a ‘baba’ [peasant woman, used derogatively for women in general].… You just have to have an area of expertise that enables you to escape being someone’s errand girl, as usually happens in ‘secretarial’ work, and do everything that has to do with your area of expertise.”¹⁵ Young and energetic, Nadezhda sincerely and energetically strove to adhere to the new model of the “Soviet woman.” This was not easy. Her surviving letters show that to the end of her life her writing was riddled with syntactic errors. In an effort to make up for the shortcomings of her education, she became an assiduous student. In 1929 she enrolled in the Industrial Academy, hoping to receive, in keeping with the ethos of the times, an advanced technical education. Her children were largely handed over to nursemaids, governesses, and tutors. A housekeeper and cook took care of the Stalin Kremlin household. An important part in Vasily and Svetlana’s lives was played by relatives, as well as their peers among the children of other Soviet leaders who lived in the Kremlin. Together they formed a boisterous band that spent time together at suburban dachas and each other’s Kremlin apartments.

This manner of family life had its advantages and logic. The infrequency of time spent together could perhaps make “the heart grow fonder” and actually strengthen family ties. But the few surviving letters between Stalin and Nadezhda, written during vacations between 1929 and 1931, attest to both love and tension in their relationship. “I send you a big kiss, like the kiss you gave me when we parted,” Nadezhda wrote to her husband. She said she missed him and asked doting questions about his health and treatments. Stalin responded in kind. He tenderly called her Tatka and Tatochka (“Write about everything, my Tatochka”) and even resorted to baby talk. As a loving father, he was always asking about the children: “How are things with Vaska, with Setanka [his nickname for Svetlana]?” “Have Setanka write me something. And Vaska too.” He sent lemons and peaches home to his family. But this sweetness and consideration could suddenly be darkened by jealousy and irritation. In September 1930, after spending part of her husband’s vacation with him and then returning to Moscow, Nadezhda wrote him a letter filled with reproach: “This summer I didn’t feel that delaying my departure would make you happy; quite the opposite. Last summer I could really sense that, but not this time. Of course, there was no point staying with such a mood.” A few weeks later she wrote: “For some reason I’m not hearing anything from you.… Probably you’re distracted by your quail-hunting trips.… I heard from an interesting young woman that you looked great, … that you were marvelously cheerful and you wouldn’t let anyone sit still.… I’m glad to hear it.” Stalin made a halfhearted effort to dispute her implications: “As for your assumption that I did not consider it desirable for you to stay in Sochi, your reproaches … are unfair”; “You’re hinting at some trips. I’m telling you that I have not traveled anywhere (anywhere at all!) and I have no intention of traveling.”¹⁶

Nadezhda’s jealousy was not without grounds. Stalin could be a flagrant philanderer, and his wife was quick to take offense. Many who observed the relationship firsthand commented on Nadezhda’s frail mental health. Mental illness apparently ran in the family, afflicting her mother and at least one of her siblings. It is probably here, at the intersection of Stalin’s unfaithfulness and Allilueva’s mental illness, that the roots of the tragedy should be sought.

On 8 November 1932, the anniversary of the October Revolution that brought them all to power, Stalin and Allilueva joined other top Soviet leaders and their wives for a celebratory dinner at the Kremlin. The details of what took place at this dinner are unknown. Perhaps Stalin drank too much and started openly flirting with some of the wives.¹⁷ Perhaps Nadezhda was simply in a bad mood or Stalin said something hurtful to her. Or perhaps she was the one who provoked an argument. Whatever the cause, there was an argument, and Nadezhda returned to their Kremlin apartment alone. Sometime during that night she took her own life, using a small pistol that had been a gift from her brother Pavel.

Some have speculated that Allilueva was upset about her husband’s policies and felt ardent sympathy for their victims, including those dying from the devastating famine then taking millions of lives. Their daughter, Svetlana, wrote of a suicide note left by her mother that contained, among its grievances, political accusations, although she had no firsthand knowledge of this note and was citing other people’s descriptions of it. There is absolutely no hard evidence that Nadezhda objected to her husband’s policies. None of her surviving letters mentions the horrific events taking place in the country: violent collectivization, the internal deportations of hundreds of thousands of peasants, and the arrests of countless suspected “enemies.” Her letters give the impression that she, like the rest of the Bolshevik elite, was completely isolated from the suffering of tens of millions outside the Kremlin walls. On 10 July 1932, during the famine, when peasant mothers were watching their children starve to death, Nadezhda wrote a note to Stalin’s assistant Aleksandr Poskrebyshev complaining that she was not receiving her usual supply of new works of fiction from overseas and asked that the head of the OGPU, Yagoda, do something to fix the problem.¹⁸ Admittedly, we do not know for sure whether Nadezhda ever said anything against her husband’s repressive policies in the months before her death, in part because the usual correspondence between Stalin and his wife while he was away on vacation is missing for 1932. Perhaps these letters were destroyed, or perhaps Nadezhda was with her husband during his entire vacation. No evidence has been found to explain the absence of such letters.

His wife’s suicide was apparently a great blow to Stalin. Grief over the loss and pity for his children were combined with anger. Nadezhda had betrayed and humiliated him, cast a cloud over his reputation, and made his personal life a subject of sordid conjecture that endures to this day. “She did a very bad thing… ; she maimed me for the rest of my life,” he told relatives some two and a half years later.¹⁹

Out of habit, Stalin’s family led its customary life for a few years after Allilueva’s death. Almost every member of the household maintained his or her role within the family routine. Seeking relief from painful memories, Stalin moved to a new apartment in the Kremlin and began construction of the near dacha. The children remained under the care of governesses and nursemaids in Moscow and at the old dacha. Stalin, Vasily, and Svetlana were surrounded by the same relatives, especially the families of Pavel and Anna Alliluev (Nadezhda’s brother and sister) and Aleksandr Svanidze (the brother of Stalin’s first wife). This was a complicated and often unsavory world. The relatives schemed to outshine one another in Stalin’s eyes. Apparently Pavel Alliluev’s wife even had a brief affair with the dictator.²⁰ Stalin appears to have enjoyed the competition among his relatives.

After Nadezhda’s death, Stalin tried to spend more time with his children. While they were having dinner together in the Kremlin apartment, he asked them how things were going in school, and he sometimes came to the dacha to pick them up and take them to the theater. On occasion, he brought them with him when he vacationed in the south. He was especially fond of Svetlana, who was a promising student and very attached to her father. He began to play a little game with his daughter, calling her khoziaika (which could be translated as “housekeeper” or “the boss”) while he played the role of the sekretarishka (little secretary) who followed her orders: “Setanka-Housekeeper’s wretched Secretary, the poor peasant J. Stalin.” Svetlana would write out orders for her father: “I order you to let me go to Zubalovo tomorrow”; “I order you to take me to the theater with you”; “I order you to let me go to the movies. Ask them to show Chapaev and an American comedy.” Stalin responded with facetious pomposity.²¹ Other members of Stalin’s inner circle were appointed Svetlana’s sekretarishkas, playing along with the vozhd. “Svetlana the housekeeper will be in Moscow on 27 August. She is demanding permission to leave early for Moscow so that she can check on her secretaries,” Stalin wrote to Kaganovich from the south on 19 August 1935. Kaganovich replied on 31 August: “Today I reported to our boss Svetlana on our work, she seemed to deem it satisfactory.”²² Until the war began, father and daughter exchanged affectionate letters. “I give you a big hug, my little sparrow,” he wrote to her, as he had once written to his wife.²³

Stalin’s relationship with his sons was much more fraught. For many years he avoided Yakov and his family, and Vasily gave him a great deal of trouble.²⁴ The boy understood very early that he was the son of a powerful man. He preferred soccer to studying and often behaved defiantly toward those around him. “Vasily thinks he’s an adult and insists on getting what he wants, which is often foolish,” the commandant of the Zubalovo dacha reported to Stalin in 1935, when Vasily was fourteen. The situation only grew worse with time. Unable to tolerate the outrageous behavior of his imperious student, in 1938 one of Vasily’s teachers complained to the boy’s father, telling Stalin that Vasily was getting special treatment from the school administration and that he sometimes used threats of suicide to get his way. Stalin thanked the teacher for his honesty and described his son in extremely negative terms: “Vasily is a spoiled youth of average ability, a little savage (a real Scythian!) who is not always truthful, loves to blackmail weak authority figures, is often rude, and has a weak, or rather, unfocused will. He has been spoiled by ‘kith and kin,’ all the while emphasizing that he is ‘the son of Stalin.’” He asked the teacher to be firmer and promised that he would “take him by the scruff of the neck” from time to time. As was often the case, the letter was all for show, and the matter was ultimately resolved in typical Stalin manner. A purge of the school was conducted and the directors were fired, along with the teacher who had dared complain to Stalin. Vasily was sent to study at an aviation school in Crimea, where the special treatment continued. He was met at the train station with great fanfare by the school’s leadership, quartered away from the other cadets in a hotel, and fed special meals in the officers’ mess. Once, obviously pulling a prank, Vasily ordered some special dish. Since the local cook did not know how to make it, someone was sent to a nearby town to find out. Vasily rode all over Crimea in a car and also on a motorcycle. His education was overseen by senior military officials in Moscow. In 1940 he graduated with the rank of lieutenant. He liked to fly, but his character showed no sign of improvement. The system created by the father did irreversible harm to the son.

Vasily’s departure for Crimea came just as the old Stalin-Alliluev-Svanidze extended family ceased to exist. During the Great Terror, Stalin began to annihilate his own relatives. Between late 1937 and late 1939, Aleksandr Svanidze, his wife, and the husband of Anna Allilueva were arrested and then shot. In late 1938, apparently unable to endure the stress, Pavel Alliluev also died. Stalin had nothing further to do with those relatives who remained at liberty. The war further diminished the family. During its first days, Yakov, who, unlike Vasily, received no special protection, was taken prisoner by the Germans. Stalin ordered the arrest of Yakov’s wife but later freed her. Some accounts maintain that Stalin was offered Yakov in exchange for certain German generals (Paulus is most often named) but that he refused. There is no documentary evidence of this claim, and the story lacks credibility since it is hard to understand what would motivate Hitler’s leadership to pursue such an exchange. When the war ended, Stalin was given testimony by Yakov’s fellow prisoners.²⁵ After Germany was defeated, Yakov’s 1941 interrogation protocol was seized, and testimony was obtained from the guards and commandant of the camp where he died.²⁶ All this evidence shows that Yakov comported himself honorably as a prisoner. He was shot by a sentry while attempting to leave the prison grounds in 1943. Perhaps this news improved Stalin’s opinion of his son, and it may explain why, during his final years, the vozhd took an interest in his young granddaughter, Yakov’s daughter.

Vasily and Svetlana were disappointments for Stalin during the war. Vasily, who was stationed near Moscow, would host drunken parties at the Zubalovo dacha. At one such gathering, in late 1942, sixteen-year-old Svetlana met the thirty-eight-year-old Soviet filmmaker Aleksei Kapler, who had gained prominence as the screenwriter of popular films about Lenin and the revolution. The two began an affair that ended several months later when Stalin ordered Kapler’s arrest. Apparently he was furious over Svetlana’s relationship with Kapler, whom she has described as her first love, and considered it all the more inappropriate in wartime. According to Svetlana, his reaction forever destroyed the closeness between them:

I’d never seen my father look that way before.… He was choking with anger and was nearly speechless.… “Your Kapler is a British spy. He’s under arrest!” …

“But I love him!” I protested at last, having found my tongue again.

“Love!” screamed my father, with a hatred of the very word. And for the first time in my life he slapped me across the face, twice. “Just look, nurse, how low she’s sunk!” He could no longer restrain himself. “Such a war going on, and she’s busy the whole time---------!” Unable to find any other expression, he used the coarse peasant word.²⁷

The next blow came from Vasily. By early 1943 he held the rank of colonel and had been placed in charge of an air regiment. That April he and a group of his subordinates decided to do some fishing. The fish were stunned using explosives. One shell exploded on land, killing one of the regiment’s officers and wounding Vasily with shrapnel. He, of course, was treated at the Kremlin hospital in Moscow. Stalin was enraged. Apparently this escapade was one transgression too many, or so one might conclude from an order issued by People’s Commissar for Defense I. V. Stalin on 26 May 1943:

(1) Immediately remove V. I. Stalin from his position as commander of an air regiment and do not give him any other command posts in the future until I permit it.

(2) Inform the regiment and former regimental commander Colonel Stalin that he is being removed from his post for drunkenness and debauchery and for spoiling and corrupting the regiment.²⁸

Being long accustomed to his father’s empty threats, Vasily was not terribly worried by this reproach. Indeed, he was soon given new, more senior posts, and by war’s end he was a twenty-four-year-old general. Stalin’s son could get away with almost anything. Around the same time Svetlana, now a university student, married a former schoolmate. She soon gave birth to a son, named Iosif after his grandfather. Nevertheless, Stalin refused to meet with his son-in-law, who was Jewish and had not fought in the war. Perhaps he consented to the marriage only to avoid the acrimony that came with the Kapler affair.

Once Germany was defeated and wartime pressures receded, Stalin did not return to his family—or rather did not allow his family back into his life. He had grown accustomed to solitude and his nocturnal lifestyle, and he rarely made time for his children. Apparently he never developed grandfatherly feelings. By now he was in his declining years, weary, in poor health, and obsessed with thoughts of treachery and the hunt for enemies. The final blow dealt against his family was the arrest of Pavel Alliluev’s wife and Nadezhda’s sister Anna. They were released only after his death.

Stalin’s children, admittedly, were hardly a comfort in his old age. Vasily sank rapidly into alcoholism and dissipation, and by his thirtieth birthday he was already an old man, plagued with a number of chronic diseases. Thanks to his father’s indulgence, he nevertheless held increasingly senior army posts and squandered government funds with impunity. The younger Stalin greedily chased the good life: he built and repeatedly renovated his suburban estate, spent lavishly on an elaborate hunting lodge, and established sports teams, luring top athletes with huge salaries and apartments. He had goods shipped in from Germany via airplane, ran through a series of lovers and wives, and drank heavily in the company of sycophantic hangers-on. Toward the end of Stalin’s life, after yet another scandalous episode, the father removed the son from the key post of air commander for the Moscow Military District. Vasily was sent to study at a military academy, thereby removing any remaining constraints on his drinking. Meanwhile, Svetlana divorced the husband her father did not like and married one he did—Yuri Zhdanov, son of Stalin’s late comrade. This marriage, however, was not happy and did not last long.

After his death, Stalin’s children suffered deeply symbolic fates. Vasily, after drunkenly insulting his father’s successors, was put in prison and died in exile at the age of forty. Svetlana married an Indian Communist. When she was given permission to travel to India for his funeral, she took the opportunity to defect and move to the United States, where she died in 2011. While in emigration, Svetlana published a memoir of life in the Stalin family, Twenty Letters to a Friend, which was both nostalgic and embellished. She placed the blame for her father’s pathological cruelty on the scheming and insinuations of Lavrenty Beria. In the end, her attitude toward the system her father created was most eloquently expressed by her defection to the country that he considered socialism’s most fearsome enemy.

6 THE GENERALISSIMO

Victory elevated Stalin to unprecedented heights. The exultant show of military might that paraded across Red Square in June 1945 was an important symbol of his new power, now more secure than ever and legitimized with the title of generalissimo. But Stalin was a seasoned enough politician to know that victory, which had transformed the Red Army into one of the most formidable forces on the planet, was just the first step on the long and difficult postwar path toward regaining and holding the country’s status as a world power. The Soviet Union was a weakened nation. The extent of suffering and devastation that had befallen it is almost unimaginable. Contemporary demographers speak of 27 million lives lost, and many of those lives were young—the country’s future. Thousands of towns and villages lay in ruins, and many people were forced to improvise some form of shelter. Several million wounded veterans needed government support. The demobilization of an army of 11 million and the transition to a peacetime economy also demanded significant resources. The postwar famine—a tragic testament to the devastation wreaked on collectivized agriculture and to the weakness of the Stalinist distribution system—peaked in 1946–1947. As many as 1.5 million people died of hunger or disease. Many millions were afflicted by dystrophy and other serious illnesses causing permanent disability. As usual, cannibalism raised its ugly head during the famine years. To all these hardships were added desperate guerrilla wars in western Ukraine and the Baltic states, territories that had been absorbed into the Soviet Union on the eve of the war and given a taste of Stalinist terror.

There was also a whole new set of international challenges. Relations with the Allies had cooled considerably. Stalin’s Soviet Union and the Western democracies, brought together in a marriage of convenience by Nazi aggression, had little in common. Negotiations to resolve the postwar repartition of the world opened up new areas of contention, but the Soviet Union was too weak to put up a decisive fight. It was unnerved by the United States’ nuclear monopoly and devoted huge resources to ending it.

A particular danger facing the Stalinist regime was the incongruity between the symbolic triumph of victory for Soviet society and the hard realities of daily life. The war had taken millions of Soviet citizens beyond the country’s borders to Europe, an experience that many found shocking. The victors saw that the slaves of capitalism enjoyed a standard of living immeasurably better than theirs. They now knew that for years official Soviet propaganda had been pulling the wool over their eyes. Tens of millions of peasants, many of whom had fought in the war, dreamed of dismantling the kolkhoz system and believed that their sacrifices at the front had earned them this reward. A threatening gulf was opening up between the Soviet people’s postwar expectations and their reality. As they struggled to overcome extreme daily hardships, mourned the dead, and listened to stories from returning soldiers, people’s conversations inevitably drifted toward ideas and topics that were taboo: the price of war and victory, the questionable privileges enjoyed by party and government officials, and the causes of hunger and deprivation. The system’s usual response to such “incorrect” thinking was arrest and prosecution for “anti-Soviet propaganda.” But would that response work in the new, postwar USSR?

Apparently Stalin was not sure how to address these challenges. In the immediate aftermath of victory, he sent mixed messages to the country, including hints at a coming liberalization. Take, for example, the remarks made at a reception honoring Red Army commanders on 24 May 1945:

Our government made more than a few mistakes; there were moments of desperation in 1941–1942, when our army was on the retreat, abandoning our native villages and cities.… Another people might have told its government: you have not met our expectations; go away; we will put another government in your place that will sign a truce with Germany and ensure us peace. But the Russian people did not choose to do that since they believed in the correctness of their government’s policies and chose to make sacrifices in order to secure the destruction of Germany. And this trust the Russian people placed in the Soviet government proved to be the decisive force that secured a historic victory against an enemy of humanity—against fascism. Thanks to the Russian people for this trust!¹

This hint of penitence was an effective gesture by a confident, popular, and triumphant leader. But soon Stalin began to sense that such statements could be perilous. They opened the door to discussion of critical questions about the past war, and echoes of these discussions were starting to reach him. In November 1945, he was told about a letter from a propagandist in the Buriat-Mongol republic who was being asked during lectures just what Stalin meant when he mentioned mistakes by the Soviet government: “I, of course, was not able to answer this question.… I earnestly ask you, Com. Stalin, for your explanation as to what should be the answer to this question.”² More to the point was a letter from N. M. Khmelkov from the village of Maly Uzen in Saratov Oblast that asked, “How could we allow it to happen that when the war broke out the German Army was better armed than our army?” Khmelkov recalled prewar promises that the Red Army would soon be fighting “on the territory from which the enemy comes” and concluded by asking Stalin a central question, the validity of which Stalinists reject to this day: “Victors are not judged. But a victorious people is obliged to figure out whether victory was achieved with the least possible expenditure of effort and resources and with the fewest possible casualties, and if it was not, then why: were we given too little time to prepare for war, were the cogs in a complex machine operating poorly … and failing its more complicated parts?”³ Stalin instructed that Khmelkov’s letter be filed away.⁴ He had no intention of responding to such questions or “figuring out” what mistakes the government might have made. To forestall undesirable discussion of the price of victory, the performance of the military leadership, and hopes for postwar liberalization, he launched a series of ideological counterattacks.

The first of these was a reappraisal of the toll taken by the war and the reasons for defeat. In an obvious attempt to downplay the nation’s losses, in March 1946 Stalin officially stated that “as a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost approximately 7 million in fighting with the Germans and because of the German occupation and the driving of Soviet people into German hard labor.”⁵ This was a strange number to pick, and it was far from accurate, but it is possible to see how Stalin might have arrived at it. According to General Staff estimates, approximately 7 million Red Army soldiers were killed in the war or died of wounds and disease.⁶ He must have known that he was distorting the truth when he included the victims of occupation and those taken to work in Nazi labor camps in this figure. Soviet war losses no longer looked quite so terrible, and the matter was put to rest for many years.

While it may have been easy enough to hide the true number of Soviet war dead, the Red Army’s catastrophic retreat was another matter. How had the Germans been able to advance all the way to the Volga? At best, discussion of this ignominious episode could be suppressed. The horrible defeats suffered during the war’s first eighteen months cast a shameful light on the regime and on Stalin himself, diminishing his stature as the architect of victory. Soviet propaganda had a few stock arguments to explain those early defeats: the might of Hitler’s war machine, which enslaved Europe; the fact that the Red Army had not finished rearming; and the Nazis’ perfidious surprise attack. Apparently Stalin felt these arguments were not enough. Cautiously and gradually, he tried to introduce another idea into the propaganda arsenal, one that exonerated him as supreme commander: that the Red Army’s retreat was a calculated move designed to wear down the enemy. There was a well-known historical precedent that made this argument understandable and familiar: Kutuzov’s 1812 strategy of allowing Napoleon’s army to enter deep into Russian territory, even relinquishing Moscow, before counterattacking, a strategy that is credited with preserving the army and saving the country.

An opportunity to promote this new way of explaining the retreat came in the form of a letter Stalin received in early 1946 from Ye. A. Razin, a military academy instructor. Razin was writing the vozhd with general questions about doctrine, but Stalin responded in a letter by offering specific and far-reaching guidelines for understanding Soviet military history. He underscored two central ideas. First, Lenin was not “an expert in the military sciences” during the Civil War years or at any other time. Thus Stalin was the only Soviet leader who qualified as a true commander in chief. The second idea offered a more favorable interpretation of the early, catastrophic stage of the war. “A retreat, under certain disadvantageous conditions,” Stalin wrote, “is just as legitimate a form of combat as an offensive.” He noted the need to take a closer look at the counteroffensive “after an enemy’s successful offensive, [when] the defender gathers strength, switches to a counteroffensive, and hands the enemy a decisive defeat.” Bolstering this idea with historical parallels, Stalin cited the example of the ancient Parthians, who “lured” Roman forces deep inside their country and then “struck with a counteroffensive and annihilated them.” He also offered the example of Kutuzov’s counteroffensive against the French, calling him a “brilliant” commander.⁷

Of course, Stalin did not draw a direct line between these historical precedents and the events of 1941–1942, but the implication was obvious. The defeats of the war’s first stage were transformed into a manageable phase of preparation for a counteroffensive, a “legitimate form of combat,” and not a catastrophe caused by egregious blunders at the top or a broken chain of command. Aware of the questionable validity of this recontextualization, Stalin did not widely disseminate his letter at first. It was written in late February 1946 but not published until a year later.

The letter to Razin contained another thought that preoccupied Stalin in the first months after the war: the need to avoid “kowtowing to the West,” including showing “unwarranted respect” for the “military authorities of Germany.” The first expression of this sentiment is found in a letter written by Stalin during the autumn of 1945 to his comrades in Moscow while he was vacationing in the south. Denouncing unnamed “senior officials” who were “thrown into fits of childlike glee” by praise from foreign leaders, he wrote, “I consider such inclinations to be dangerous since they develop in us kowtowing to foreign figures. A ruthless fight must be waged against obsequiousness toward foreigners.”⁸

These loosely formulated ideas were Stalin’s response to the “contamination” of Soviet society by the ideological influence of the Western allies and to the danger of an inferiority complex on the part of the impoverished victors. Over time, the “fight against kowtowing” took the form of specific campaigns and institutions. In August 1946 a Central Committee resolution was published on “The Magazines Zvezda and Leningrad” in support of an irate speech to Leningrad writers delivered by Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov. The targets of his ire were the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and the poet Anna Akhmatova. The former’s writings, according to Zhdanov, were poisoned by the “venom of a brutish hostility to the Soviet system.” Akhmatova was labeled a “whore and a nun, in whom licentiousness is combined with prayer.”⁹ Discussion of the resolution was made mandatory at party meetings across the country—in regional party organizations, factories, and kolkhozes—and marked the beginning of a severe scolding given to the creative intelligentsia.

A leitmotif of the attack on writers was the unmasking of “kowtowing to the contemporary bourgeois culture of the West”—a formulation that clearly came from Stalin’s own pen. Indeed, archival documents show that Stalin was behind Zhdanov’s vitriol and that he read and edited his speech.¹⁰ The archives further reveal that Stalin was the driving force behind other actions designed to promote ideological lockstep, such as the well-known case of the married scientists Nina Kliueva and Grigory Roskin, who were developing a cancer drug in Moscow. In 1947 they were ground-lessly accused of passing secret information to the Americans. The couple was accused of “kowtowing and servility to anything foreign.”¹¹

These shrill ideological clichés were variations on the canonical themes of Leninism and Stalinism: the USSR, since it was building the most advanced social system, would always and in all respects surpass the rest of the world; the capitalist powers, sensing their inevitable demise, would be ready at any moment to unleash war against the birthplace of socialism. The recent war and the gradual move toward a new “cold” war served to confirm this thinking.

Many years of research, especially since the archives of the former USSR and other countries of the socialist bloc have opened up, have provided a wealth of information on the origins of the Cold War. Nevertheless, scholars may never reach agreement about its real causes, which side should take the larger share of blame, and the true motives and calculations of the opposing powers. The Cold War was more a gradual evolution than an event with a clear beginning. The world leaders involved in this process were not simply looking out for their countries’ fundamental interests, but were also reacting to specific, often unexpected situations with decisions that were often illogical. Stalin was no exception.

The intensifying conflict between the World War II Allies was fed by the utter incompatibility of their systems, their competing desires to expand their spheres of influence, mutual grievances dating to the prewar years, and a shared need for a foreign enemy. Specific issues tended to exacerbate the general suspicion and animosity. America’s nuclear monopoly and its reluctance to let the Russians take part in the occupation of Japan were among the many frustrations Stalin felt in dealing with the United States. In a meeting with Averell Harriman at the Soviet leader’s southern dacha in October 1945, Stalin angrily wondered out loud whether the United States “needs not an ally but a satellite in Japan? I must say that the Soviet Union is not suited to that role.… It would be more honorable for the USSR to leave Japan entirely rather than remain there like a piece of furniture.”¹² For his part, Stalin angered Western leaders, already fundamentally opposed to Soviet communism, with his thinly veiled desire to sovietize Eastern Europe using the Red Army and local Communists.

It is hard to imagine what mutual concessions might have prevented a breakdown in relations between two such different systems. Such a breakdown could only be delayed by tactical calculations and political factors, including the illusion on the part of Western public opinion that an enduring alliance was actually feasible (Soviet public opinion had little say in the matter). Relations also remained civil so long as Stalin harbored hope for Western concessions, particularly in the areas of economic aid and reparations from Germany. The devastation and famine afflicting the USSR after the war made the need for assistance particularly pressing. That Eastern Europe—now within the Soviet sphere of influence—not only suffered its own famine and devastation but was also home to significant anti-Communist sentiment also forced him to act with circumspection.

Stalin was restrained in his personal relations with Western leaders. He preferred to let Molotov take hard-line stances during diplomatic negotiations, while he himself would periodically step in and make demonstrative concessions that allowed the Western side to save face or prevented it from breaking off talks. As during the war, Stalin tried to play the Americans and British against one another. In April 1946, after Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, Stalin met with the U.S. ambassador in Moscow. After accepting the gifts of a safety razor and transistor radio, Stalin offered a “friendly” warning: In pursuing their own interests, “Churchill and his friends” might try to push the United States away from the USSR.¹³

Such face-to-face diplomacy was no match for the powerful forces at play. Truman responded to Soviet attempts to gain footholds in Iran, Turkey, and Greece with a plan to help rebuild Europe, the centerpiece of which became known as the Marshall Plan. Stalin responded by turning down the aid offered under the plan (as did other East European states, under Soviet pressure) and by creating an international Communist organization, the Cominform. During the Cominform’s first conference, Zhdanov echoed Stalin’s idea that the world was being divided into “two camps.”¹⁴ Efforts to sustain the wartime alliance gave way to the traditional call to stand up to “international imperialism.”

On the domestic side, the return to prewar political thinking and practices occurred even earlier. Stalin’s conservative inclinations played no small role. Given the array of complex problems facing him, as he approached his seventieth birthday, he neither took an interest in reforms or experiments nor saw any reason to change his country’s long-range goals for economic development. He offered a number of production targets in a speech to an election meeting on 9 February 1946: 500 million tons of coal, 60 million tons of steel, 50 million tons of cast iron, 60 million tons of petroleum. Considering the actual figures for 1946—only 13.3 million tons of steel and 9.9 million tons of cast iron were produced, along with 163.8 million tons of coal and 21.7 million tons of petroleum—such targets were obviously wildly ambitious. Furthermore, as the economic historian Eugene Zaleski has noted, a program like Stalin’s, purely focused on output targets, reflected a simplistic understanding of economic development.¹⁵

Stalin showed his preference for tried and true methods during the famine of 1946–1947, when, as in 1932, draconian laws were enacted against the pilfering of state property. Two 4 June 1947 decrees provided for sentences ranging from five to twenty-five years in a camp for theft. Between 1947 and 1952, more than 2 million people were convicted of this charge. Many if not most were simply ordinary people who committed minor crimes in the face of great material deprivation. Parents who stole a loaf of bread for their hungry children were sentenced to many years in a camp. Mass repression was not limited to the prosecution of theft. Arrests for political crimes continued, and harsh laws were also put in place to combat violations of workplace discipline. Approximately 7 million such sentences, an average of 1 million per year, were handed down between 1946 and 1952.¹⁶ In Stalin’s last years, the Gulag grew into a sprawling network that played a central role in the life of the country. On 1 January 1953, more than 2.5 million people were being held in camps, penal colonies, and prisons. “Special settlements” in remote regions held another 2.8 million.¹⁷ Some 3 percent of the population was either incarcerated or under internal exile.¹⁸

Mass repression, in the form of large-scale arrests, executions, and internal exile, was now largely focused on the newly absorbed parts of the Soviet Union, where fierce guerrilla campaigns raged. Stalin received regular reports on the pacification of mutinous areas.¹⁹ For the years 1944–1952, according to incomplete official statistics, approximately a half million people were killed, arrested, or forcibly exiled from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, along with an equal number in the western provinces of Ukraine.²⁰ For these small republics and provinces, whose populations totaled just a few million, these were astounding numbers. The Stalinist system had neither changed nor grown less repressive.

THE DICTATORSHIP COLLAPSES

A conference in the Kremlin, 2–5 March 1953, and the death of Stalin.

The arrival of the doctors on the morning of 2 March 1953 fundamentally changed the situation. The very fact that they had been summoned to Stalin’s dacha meant that the seriousness of his condition was officially recognized. The doctors confirmed the worst: a stroke had brought the vozhd to death’s door. For the first time in many decades, and completely unexpectedly, the USSR was faced with a transfer of power at the highest level.

Like Lenin, Stalin had not anointed a successor or created a legal mechanism for the orderly transfer of power. Instead he did everything he could to hinder the emergence of a successor and to instill a sense of political unworthiness in his associates. By concentrating high-level decision making in his own hands, he ensured that the other members of the Politburo were poorly informed and had little authority even over those areas for which they were immediately responsible. Driven by a thirst for power, political self-centeredness, and senile emotional instability, the Soviet dictator seemed to display an “Après moi le déluge” attitude toward the post-Stalinist future.

Thus one can only marvel at the ease with which Stalin’s heirs got through the critical period of the interregnum. There were a number of reasons why they could do so. One was that even during Stalin’s lifetime his comrades had developed a certain independence and the ability to work with one another. Each oversaw a particular component of the party-state apparat. It was not unusual for them to meet without Stalin to work on specific practical matters of government. One set of administrative entities that met quite regularly were the various executive and administrative bodies that came under the Council of Ministers. Officially, Stalin headed these bodies, but he never took part in their day-to-day work. Furthermore, during his lengthy southern vacations the Politburo grew accustomed to deliberating without him. Also, the members of the leadership were united by their common terror of the dictator. Although there was competition to get closer to him, Stalin’s comrades were careful not to provoke his fury, and they worked to maintain equilibrium within the leadership group. The Leningrad Affair had shown that no one was safe. There was an elaborate interplay among the instinct for self-preservation, institutional interests, and the need to fend off threats against the system. Dealing as they did with the day-to-day challenge of keeping the country afloat, Stalin’s colleagues were keenly aware of the urgent need for change to which he seemed willfully blind. This awareness led to an informal effort to conceive solutions, whose realization was blocked only by Stalin. Gradually and inexorably, under the shadow of dictatorship, the oligarchic system took embryonic form. It was only a matter of days from the first news of Stalin’s fatal illness that the oligarchy emerged as a force.

At 10:40 on the morning of 2 March, an official meeting of the Central Committee Presidium Bureau was convened. It was the first time in many years that a meeting took place in Stalin’s Kremlin office without him. In addition to all the members of the Bureau (except for Stalin), the attendees were Molotov, Mikoyan, Nikolai Shvernik (the chairman of the Supreme Soviet), Matvei Shkiriatov (chairman of the Party Control Commission), I. I. Kuperin (head of the Kremlin’s health administration), and the neuropathologist R. A. Tkachev. For twenty minutes the group considered one matter: “The finding of the council of physicians concerning the cerebral hemorrhage of Comrade I. V. Stalin that took place on 2 March and the resulting severe state of his health.”¹ The Bureau approved the doctors’ diagnosis and established a schedule for members of the leadership to keep watch by the vozhd’s bedside. The presence of Molotov and Mikoyan, despite their being out of favor with Stalin and formally expelled from the Bureau, is of central importance. Their inclusion was an act of defiance against the vozhd and an effort to restore the old collective leadership, as well as a natural and sensible step aimed at maintaining unity in a time of crisis. The Soviet leaders, certain that Stalin would not recover, were undertaking to change the system of supreme power that he had established.

At 8:25 that evening, the same assemblage of newly fledged oligarchs again convened in Stalin’s office to consider an official medical update: “On the state of health of Comrade I. V. Stalin as of the evening of 2 March.”² With every passing hour it became clearer: Stalin had not long to live. The doctor Aleksandr Miasnikov later recalled: “On the morning of the third the council of physicians had to submit an answer to Malenkov’s question about the prognosis. The only answer we could give was a negative one: death was inevitable. Malenkov gave us to understand that he expected such a finding, but then stated that he hoped that medical measures could extend his life for a sufficient time, even if they could not save it. We understood that he was referring to the need to allow time to organize a new government and, at the same time, prepare public opinion.”³

Records indicate that on the morning of 3 March the Soviet leaders were already assuming that Stalin would not recover and planning accordingly. At noon another meeting was held, this time without any doctors, at which a resolution was adopted to report Stalin’s illness in the press and to convene a Central Committee plenum.⁴ The decision to convene a plenum signaled preparations to transfer power, even while the exact configuration of the new leadership remained an open question. Malenkov and Beria took upon themselves the task of formulating specific proposals. They had plenty of time to do so. The members of the Presidium kept vigil at Stalin’s dacha, two at a time. Malenkov and Beria were teamed for this duty, as were Khrushchev and Bulganin. The shifts lasted many hours, and there was time for far-ranging discussion.

The fourth of March marked a turning point. That day’s newspapers contained the first official announcement of Stalin’s illness. With no hope for a recovery, the only option was to accustom the country and world to the news. The same day, Beria and Malenkov prepared proposals for reorganizing the upper echelons of power that were later discussed by the leadership group, including Molotov and Mikoyan. The 4 March document containing these proposals was confiscated from the safe of Malenkov’s assistant in 1956.⁵ For now we do not know what the initial draft contained, but we do know that it outlined the main decisions that were officially adopted the following day.⁶

Stalin’s heirs completely dismantled the governmental structure he had put together during his final months of life. The expanded Central Committee Presidium created on Stalin’s orders in October 1952 was abolished with the stroke of a pen. The Central Committee’s Presidium Bureau was proclaimed to have a new membership: Molotov and Mikoyan were added, and the young protégés whom Stalin had made part of the expanded Presidium were expelled from its ranks. In essence this upset meant a return, under a new name, to the collective leadership that had once existed as the Politburo. Stalin’s title of chairman of the Council of Ministers was given to Malenkov. This title did not mean, however, that Malenkov was recognized as Stalin’s heir or that he possessed Stalin’s powers. The new system was designed to include numerous counterpoises that would protect against the appearance of a new tyrant. Malenkov, unlike Stalin, did not simultaneously hold the post of Central Committee secretary; that post was given to Khrushchev. The men designated as Malenkov’s first deputies—Beria, Molotov, Bulganin, and Kaganovich—were in no way his juniors within the nomenklatura system. This reshuffling created a balance and satisfied the interests of all the members of the top leadership. Later, none of the participants in the reorganization recalled any controversy or rancor.

This new arrangement was formally approved by the oligarchs at a joint meeting of the Central Committee plenum, the Council of Ministers, and the Supreme Soviet Presidium on 5 March 1953. Soviet dignitaries gathered in a hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace. One participant, the writer Konstantin Simonov, left the following description of the ceremony’s atmosphere:

I arrived long before the appointed time, about forty minutes early, but more than half of the participants had already gathered in the hall, and ten minutes later everyone was there. Maybe two or three people arrived less than a half hour before the start. There were several hundred people there, almost all acquainted with one another … sitting in total silence and waiting for the start. We were sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder; we saw one another, but nobody said a word to anyone else.… Until the very start it was so quiet in the hall that if I had not sat in that silence for forty minutes myself, I would never have believed that three hundred people sitting so tightly packed could keep quiet like that.⁷

Finally the members of the presidium that was about to be voted into existence appeared. The entire event lasted forty minutes, from 8:00 to 8:40 p.m. The resolutions that the top leadership had already agreed on were, as usual, obediently approved. The Stalin factor was dealt with simply and elegantly. He was deprived of the top posts of chairman of the government and secretary of the Central Committee and then formally included in the Central Committee Presidium. From now on, whatever his physical fate, Stalin’s political future and his comrades’ liberation from his tyrannical powers were faits accomplis. As Simonov remarked, “There was a sense that right there, in the Presidium, people were freed from something that had been weighing them down, that had bound them.”⁸

Stalin endured this formal deprivation of power for only one hour. At 9:50 p.m. he died. His death was agonizing, as if in confirmation of the folk wisdom that only the righteous are granted an easy death. His daughter Svetlana, who spent her father’s final days by his side, recalled:

The death agony was horrible. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed like the very last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry and full of the fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of the doctors bent over him. The glance swept over everyone in a second. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened that to this day I can’t forget and don’t understand. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace, and no one could say to whom or at what it might be directed. The next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh.⁹

Stalin’s comrades did not linger at his bedside. A half-hour later, at 10:25 p.m., they were already back in his Kremlin office, several kilometers away.¹⁰ All the main matters of state had been resolved. What remained were the funeral arrangements. The new leaders created a commission to handle these arrangements and appointed Khrushchev to head it. They also adopted a decision to place the sarcophagus with Stalin’s embalmed body in Lenin’s mausoleum. State security and the propaganda apparat were given their orders. The editor-in-chief of Pravda, Dmitry Shepilov, spent ten minutes at this meeting. One deeply symbolic detail impressed him the most: “The chair Stalin had occupied as chairman for thirty years was empty; nobody sat in it.”¹¹

For a while, the Soviet leaders were genuinely equal and united in their determination to prevent the emergence of another tyrant. After what they had endured under Stalin, they were ready to do away with the system of terror, even if that entailed some undesirable political consequences. By 3 April 1953, after the appropriate preparations, the Central Committee Presidium resolved to “fully rehabilitate and release from custody the doctors and members of their families arrested in association with the so-called Case of the Wrecker-Doctors.” Thirty-seven people were freed. The state security officers who “particularly applied themselves in the fabrication of this provocational case” were to be brought to justice.¹² The next day this resolution was announced in the newspapers, occasioning a variety of responses and a certain consternation among the vozhd’s most ardent supporters. Other political cases in which the collective leadership had a personal interest were quietly subjected to a quick review. Molotov’s wife was released from prison. Kaganovich’s brother, who had taken his own life on the eve of the war after charges of wrecking, was pronounced innocent. The Mingrelian Affair, which had cast a shadow on Beria’s reputation, was also reviewed. Many other prominent victims of political repression were set free or posthumously rehabilitated. After taking care of their own, Stalin’s heirs began to grant relative freedom to the rest of the country. They were driven in this direction not only by conscience, but also by the growing crisis that had already been apparent under Stalin. The death of the man who had been unwilling to entertain any talk of change opened the door to reforms to be implemented with amazing speed and decisiveness.

Two pillars of the dictatorship—state security and the Gulag—were significantly reformed. One symbol of this reform was a Ministry of Internal Affairs order, dated 4 April 1953, banning the use of torture against arrestees. The order recognized the problem of “arrests of innocent Soviet citizens” and “the widespread use of various means of torture: the brutal beating of arrestees; the round-the-clock use of handcuffs behind the back, in isolated cases for several months; long-term sleep deprivation; and locking up unclothed arrestees in cold punishment cells, etc.” Threatening harsh punishment of anyone who violated the order, the ministry’s leadership demanded that torture chambers be closed in prisons and that the implements of torture be destroyed.¹³ When the order was read out loud to all state security operatives, it must have made quite an impression. These reforms continued into the spring and summer of 1953, bringing major changes to the camp system. A mass amnesty announced for those convicted of non-political crimes cut the inmate population in half. Many factories and construction projects that were still using a prisoner work force and being overseen by the ministry were shut down or transferred to the economic ministries.¹⁴ A large-scale effort to rehabilitate the victims of Stalinist terror lay in the near future.

Significant changes to economic policy were made within weeks. Unwieldy construction projects were scaled down, and the rush to “build communism” and expand Soviet military capabilities that was putting such a strain on the economy was brought to a halt. The resources thus freed up were directed toward alleviating the crisis in agriculture and meeting the needs of ordinary citizens. The prices paid for agricultural products were raised, and the tax burden on peasants was reduced. A marked improvement in output, especially in the area of livestock, came with amazing speed.¹⁵ Soon there would be ambitious programs to ease the plight of ordinary citizens, including a massive effort to expand housing.

Domestic reforms were accompanied by a moderation of foreign policy. On 19 March 1953 the Council of Ministers passed a resolution calling for “an end to the war in Korea as soon as possible.”¹⁶ After tense negotiations, an armistice treaty was signed on 27 July 1953. Moscow gave its blessing to a liberalization of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. On 2 June 1953 a Council of Ministers directive spelled out Soviet objections to the policies of the East German government and called for measures to improve the republic’s political situation.¹⁷

In short, Stalin’s “ungrateful” heirs had little trouble eliminating many of the excesses for which the vozhd bore sole responsibility. Their reforms fundamentally changed the Soviet regime. It was no longer “Stalinist”; it was less brutal and more predictable and flexible. Dictatorship, as a form of government in the Soviet Union, had been dealt a blow from which it never recovered. Internal struggles at the upper reaches of government would more than once lead to power changing hands, but never again would a Soviet leader wield the sole power exercised by Stalin.

THE FUNERAL

The Vozhd, the System, and the People

For three days beginning on 6 March 1953, the Soviet Union said its ceremonial farewells to Joseph Stalin. His coffin was put on display in the very center of Moscow, in the House of Unions’ Hall of Columns, the traditional site for public mourning of Soviet leaders that had earlier served as the House of Receptions for Moscow’s nobility. At four o’clock on the afternoon of the sixth, the public was let in to pay its final respects. The viewing of the body was poorly organized, and the provisions made for the crush of people who headed toward the House of Unions were not conducive to public safety. Those trying to get one last look at the dictator streamed into narrow streets filled with police and trucks meant to serve as barriers. In the chaos and panic many suffered disabling injuries or were crushed to death. The files of investigations into these events have yet to be made accessible to historians. In remarks made to a small gathering in 1962, Khrushchev said that 109 people in the crowd died that day.¹

No information about this addition to the long series of Soviet tragedies appeared in newspapers, which were filled with grandiloquent expressions of sorrow and grief for the late vozhd. People’s true feelings came out in a flood of letters, as eyewitnesses to the tragedy registered their complaints with various government offices:

This is not the first time that during the movement of a large crowd the police were transformed into a helpless organization, or rather into violators of order. How distressing it was when—in front of a crowd of hundreds and foreigners darting about with their cameras—they began to retrieve the injured and crushed and send them off in ambulances. A simply shocking scene.²

For five hours people were herded all over Moscow, and none of the police knew where the line was! The police were running into columns made up of many thousands of people, with their cars causing casualties, cries, and groans. Hundreds of thousands of people were walking around the blocked-off streets leading to the Hall of Columns and could not find the way in! … Only a wrecker could announce that access would begin at four but announce the route at nine.³

In many ways these letters captured the essence of the Stalin era, both in their lexicon—with references to foreigners “darting about with their cameras” and “wreckers”—and in the events they describe: the police turning into violators of public order. Relying on brute force, the dictatorship had attained its goals at the expense of countless victims. The boundary between rational order and destructive chaos was blurred. Those charged with maintaining order wound up wreaking havoc.

Perhaps the tragedy in Moscow forced Stalin’s heirs to ponder the police state’s shortcomings, but for now they had no option but to rely on the institutions and methods bequeathed to them. Stalin’s funeral, set for 9 March, was prepared much as the viewing in state had been, but possibly with a bit more care. The top priority was security, ensured by 22,600 secret police agents, policemen, and soldiers. Thirty-five hundred vehicles were commissioned to block streets.⁴ The government approved a minute-by-minute schedule of funeral events: the carrying of the coffin from the House of Unions, its placement in front of the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square, a mourning gathering for the public, the carrying of the coffin into the mausoleum. Several hours before the ceremony, six thousand soldiers and fifteen thousand members of a “delegation of workers” were brought to Red Square.⁵ This time everything went according to plan.

Although incompetent officials bear much responsibility for the casualties in Moscow, another cause of the tragedy was the sheer number of people wanting to catch one last glimpse of the vozhd. What drove them? Was it love, curiosity, mass psychosis, or a rare opportunity for a spontaneous display of emotion? Apparently all these elements were present, along with many others. The few available documents that shed light on the public mood reveal a complex range of responses to the vozhd’s illness and death. On 5 March 1953, State Security Minister Ignatiev presented the Soviet leadership with a report on soldiers’ reactions to the news that Stalin was ill. The document described a certain pattern in the reaction of the “faithful.” One common thread was sympathy toward Stalin the man, who, according to Soviet propaganda, was the embodiment of goodness and benevolence: “My family takes this news as a terrible sorrow befalling our country”; “He worked very hard, and that took a toll on his health.” “Positive” responses often involved expressions of concern over the future of the country and the responder’s own future. Two points long emphasized by Soviet propaganda played a part in such positive responses: Stalin was irreplaceable and war was looming: “It’s kind of scary. Who will take his place after his death?”; “Maybe this will speed up the onset of a Third World War.” The chekists also reported on “negative” and “hostile” statements: “Serves him right”; “That’s just fine”; “Stalin won’t hang on for long, and that’s even better. You’ll see that everything will immediately change.”⁶ All such letters led to arrests or at least an investigation.

March 1953 saw a surge in arrests and convictions of people charged with “anti-Soviet agitation” for expressing satisfaction with Stalin’s death or otherwise denigrating him. A forty-four-year-old Muscovite named S. M. Telenkov, who worked at a scientific institute, drunkenly proclaimed in a commuter train, “What a fine day it is today; today we buried Stalin. There’ll be one less scoundrel around and now we can get back to living.” R. S. Rybalko, a twenty-eight-year-old working-class woman from Rostov Oblast, was convicted of using profanity in regard to Stalin. Ya. I. Peit, who had been forcibly resettled in Kazakhstan, was sentenced for destroying and stomping on a portrait of Stalin after an official mourning ceremony. Upon hearing of Stalin’s death, P. K. Karpets, a thirty-two-year-old railroad worker from the Ukrainian city of Rovno, swore and exclaimed, “Smell that? The corpse is already stinking.” Ye. G. Gridneva, a forty-eight-year-old female railroad worker from Transcaucasia, was not able to contain herself and commented to a coworker, “A dog dies a dog’s death. It’s good that he died. There won’t be any kolkhozes and life will be a little easier.”⁷

The expressions of anti-Stalin sentiment that came to secret police attention were just the tip of the iceberg. Most people had been trained to keep their opinions to themselves. The ubiquity of informants and the habit of fear kept free expression to a minimum, to say nothing of more demonstrative forms of protest. The choice was simple: either accept—or pretend to accept—official values or find yourself in a camp or face to face with an executioner. This circumstance diminishes the value of such normally candid sources as diaries. One must assume that even in the privacy of their own homes, Soviet citizens exercised self-censorship and used their diaries more as potential alibis than vehicles for frankness. Newspaper reports on mass demonstrations, summaries prepared by state security on the public mood, and letters written to the authorities by ordinary citizens provide only part of the picture. Furthermore, many of these documents are still hidden in closed archives. Historians attempting to fathom the public mood during the Stalin era still face major obstacles.

The 190 million people living in Stalin’s Soviet Union on the eve of his death constituted an exceptionally complex community that bore little resemblance to the “New Man” featured on the covers of Soviet magazines.⁸ Many factors worked to give cohesion to Soviet society and promote support for the regime, and the motives for this support could vary from sincere enthusiasm to reconciliation with the inevitable to ordinary submission in the face of overwhelming power. The huge scale of violence and terror made fear and compulsion the backbone of the Stalinist system, albeit hidden behind a façade of enthusiasm. At the same time, loyalty and belief in the system and the man were not always feigned. The perpetual fear that was the primary instrument for unifying the people and suppressing independent thought was used alongside “positive” mechanisms of social manipulation. Both the carrot and the stick were applied to keep Soviet society moving in the desired direction.

One by-product of the regime’s policies was the creation of a large privileged class of officials. Those holding all but the most junior government or party posts enjoyed many benefits, including high social status and significant material perquisites. After the mass purges of the second half of the 1930s, the ranks of the Soviet nomenklatura stabilized. Repression against officials during the postwar period was more the exception than the rule. Furthermore, there is evidence that on the eve of Stalin’s death, officials and their relatives were essentially immune from prosecution. The requirement that any arrest or prosecution of a party member be approved by the leadership of party committees led to a bifurcation of the judicial system. In many cases members of the nomenklatura and their relatives avoided prosecution for administrative or criminal offenses that would bring severe punishment to an ordinary citizen.⁹

Another category—“the country’s best people”—approached the status of officials within the huge party-state apparat. These “best people” could be found in every social segment and professional group, including workers, peasants, writers, artists, and scientists. The best known examples were the so-called Stakhanovites, real or imagined shock workers at the forefront of production who were held up for admiration as “beacons” of the Soviet spirit. Enjoying a stature somewhere between ordinary citizens and officials, the Stakhanovites quickly assimilated the latter’s value system, although in theory they kept working away as before. They served as spokespeople, lobbying for the interests of enterprises and regions and enjoying significant material privileges. A typical representative of this category of beneficiary of the Stalinist system was the eponymous miner Aleksei Stakhanov, who earned celebrity and Stalin’s favor through his record-breaking productivity. He quickly developed a taste for the nomenklatura lifestyle and bombarded Stalin with requests:

Joseph Vissarionovich! Give me a nice car and I will justify your trust. Soon the Stakhanovite movement will be ten years old, and I’m going to Donbas and will again show people how to work. I keep asking and they keep giving me some broken down war trophy clunker, but if just once I got something nice, I’d stop asking.… Also, about the apartment.… I can’t get anywhere with my requests to fix it up. The walls are dirty, the furniture is frayed and broken …, while other people get their walls papered with silk twice a month and get all sorts of furniture. This isn’t correct, so I’m asking for a renovation and new furniture so I won’t be ashamed to invite people to my apartment.¹⁰

Another consequence of the channeling of benefits to the upper crust of Soviet society was the policy of disproportionately allotting resources to cities, especially major ones. Forced industrialization and militarization widened the gulf in living standards and social status between the rural majority and urban minority.¹¹ Many urbanites, especially in the capitals and major industrial centers, belonged to a relatively privileged and well-remunerated class. During years of famine they may have been hungry, but since they received a government ration, they were not dying of starvation like the peasantry. They had internal passports, unlike the peasants, and relative freedom of movement. Urban populations also enjoyed better health care and a well-developed cultural and educational infrastructure. In the stores of Moscow and Leningrad, where most food and consumer goods were sent, shoppers could find what they needed and even had a degree of choice.¹² The relative accessibility of educational institutions and high-paying jobs gave urbanites much better economic prospects. The monetary reform, which reduced prices in state stores while increasing taxes on peasant production, disproportionately favored the residents of capitals and industrial centers. These measures forced peasants to sell the products of their private plots at lower prices in urban markets. The consequences of these policies apparently escaped Stalin’s awareness. Mikoyan, whose duties placed him in charge of certain commercial matters, offers the following account:

I told him [Stalin] that we could not lower the prices on meat and butter, on white bread, first of all because they were in short supply and second because it would affect the procurement prices, which would have a negative effect on the production of these products, and when these goods are in short supply and with this reduction in prices there would be huge lines, which would lead to profiteering; after all, workers cannot go to the store during the day, so the profiteers would buy up all the goods.… But Stalin insisted, saying that this was necessary in the interests of the intelligentsia.¹³

Mikoyan here nicely sums up the predictable effect of the politically motivated price reduction: shortages, lines, and a shadow market. But these were of little concern to Stalin. His focus was on the regime’s bulwark, the privileged segment of society in major cities. The government’s preferential distribution of resources made even the average urbanite many times better off than the rural population. One symptom of this inequality was the number of young rural women streaming into cities to work as housekeepers for urban families for no more than bread and shelter. Clearly, the urban minority and the rural majority had starkly divergent perceptions of reality. It was the urbanite viewpoint that found voice in memoirs and diaries and has disproportionately influenced contemporary understandings of day-to-day life under Stalin.

Another factor that led Soviet society to tolerate and even support the dictatorship was war. Memories of the horrors of the world and civil wars, the victory over the Nazis (paid for with 27 million lives), and the fear of a third world war all had a huge impact on perceptions—and not only in the Soviet Union. Stalin enjoyed the image of a savior who had delivered the world from a terrible evil. For decades afterward, the 1945 victory lent legitimacy to the Stalinist regime and those of his successors.¹⁴

The list of historical circumstances that enabled the Stalinist system to endure could be continued, but even in conjunction with an ever-vigilant apparatus of repression they could not completely hide the contradictions inherent in Soviet society or suppress widespread dissatisfaction. From the moment they came to power as a radical revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks relied on a strategy of dividing society and suppressing the fraction that, for reasons of class origin or societal role, was considered hostile to socialism. This strategy included killing off the members of the hostile groups.¹⁵ The Stalinist revolution devoted tremendous resources to purging society of these “elements.” Furthermore, along with the nobility, bourgeoisie, tsarist officers and officials, and anyone else proclaimed persona non grata after 1917, the largest segment of the population was stigmatized: the peasantry. During collectivization, many peasants were branded kulaks and shot, exiled, or driven out of their native villages. Millions of people from every sector were persecuted on a variety of pretexts and put into the camp system or simply killed. Aware that these measures had earned the dictatorship true enemies, Stalin intensified his preemptive purges, most notably during the Great Terror of 1937–1938. Repression begat repression. By the end of his rule a significant proportion, if not the majority, of Soviet citizens had at one time or another been arrested, imprisoned in a camp, forcibly relocated, or subjected to some softer form of mistreatment.

The regime’s victims did not necessarily turn into conscious opponents. Terror often had the opposite effect. Intimidation made people more governable and submissive and forced them to demonstrate their loyalty. But it would be wrong to assume that submission was the only possible reaction. The historical record attests to the existence of widespread anti-government feelings or even active forms of resistance. For understandable reasons resistance was most common when the dictatorship was first being consolidated—most notably peasant revolts during collectivization in 1930 and its aftermath.¹⁶ The Terror and the stabilization of the system sharply curtailed opportunities for overt action, especially on a large scale. But it is important to note that access to secret police archives, which would reflect the true state of affairs in the late Stalin era, is extremely limited. We may learn that our image of the 1940s generation as silent and submissive is misinformed.

A root cause of widespread dissatisfaction was the Soviet Union’s low standard of living.¹⁷ Agriculture, its productivity severely undermined by collectivization, lurched between crisis and stagnation. Almost every year, the Stalinist government acknowledged that famine or “food difficulties” affected either a large swath of the country, as in 1931–1933 and 1946–1947, or some particular regions. Even in the best years the average diet was meager. Most people lived primarily on grains and potatoes. Budgetary studies conducted on the eve of Stalin’s death, during the relatively prosperous year 1952, established the following daily nutritional intake in worker and peasant families: the average Soviet citizen consumed approximately 500 grams of flour products (primarily bread), a small amount of cereals, 400–600 grams of potato, and approximately 200–400 grams of milk or milk products. These items accounted for the bulk of the typical diet. Anything else, especially meat, was a special occasion. The figure for per capita consumption of meat and meat products averaged 40–70 grams per day and 15–20 grams of fat (animal or plant oils, margarine, or fatback). A few teaspoons of sugar and a bit of fish completed the picture. Average citizens could permit themselves an average of one egg every six days. These rations are approximately equal to the dietary norm for prison camps.¹⁸ The figures were produced by the Central Statistical Directorate, which was under constant political pressure and probably painted an overly rosy picture. Averages could be inflated, for example, by selecting workers at the high end of the pay spectrum or peasants from relatively prosperous kolkhozes in the study. Also, the budgetary studies did not factor in the often poor quality of the food. A resident of Chernigov Oblast wrote to Stalin in November 1952, “Now they are baking black bread, and even that is of poor quality. It is impossible to eat such bread, especially for people in poor health.”¹⁹

The supply of manufactured goods was just as bad. Prices of factory-made items were traditionally kept exceptionally high. People had to settle for simple, relatively cheap products, but few could afford even these. For example, in 1952 only one out of every four peasants could afford leather footwear.²⁰ Some lacked even the simplest footwear and clothing. As one resident of a village in Tambov Oblast wrote to Stalin in December 1952, “In our kolkhoz the kolkhozniks have one article of winter clothing for 3–4 family members, and children in 60 percent of the population cannot go to school since they don’t have the clothing.”²¹

For the majority of the population the housing situation was no better. Under Stalin, housing was the chronically underfunded stepchild that received whatever resources were left after priority items had been taken care of. For years the housing shortage grew continually worse—and then came the devastation of war. As of the beginning of 1953 there was an average of 4.5 square meters of residential housing per urban resident.²² When temporary residents and those without official registration were taken into account, this ratio grew even worse. The quality of housing was also low. Only 46 percent of state-owned residential space came equipped with running water, 41 percent with sewage hookups, 26 percent with central heating, 3 percent with hot water, and 13 percent with a bathtub.²³ Even these figures reflected the higher standards found in major cities, chiefly the two capitals. A striking indicator of the housing crisis was the prevalence of urban “barracks”—flimsy temporary communal housing without plumbing—and the increasing number of people registering such barracks as their residences. In 1945 approximately 2.8 million people lived in urban barracks, but by 1952 the number had grown to 3.8 million. More than 337,000 people in Moscow lived in barracks.²⁴

Another source of hardship for the Soviet people was the exceptionally difficult working conditions in industry and agriculture. The poorly developed system of material incentives led to widespread coercion in the workplace. The use of slave labor was of course most blatant within the Gulag system, but supposedly free industrial and agricultural workers also often toiled under compulsion. The workforce for certain industries, especially the most poorly paid and dangerous, was assembled by pressing young people into service through compulsory mobilization. Evasion was punishable by a term in a labor camp. Beginning in 1940, emergency labor laws were used to bind workers to their places of employment. Peasants, who were essentially not paid for their work in kolkhozes, were prosecuted for failure to fulfill their work quotas. Between 1940 and 1952 approximately 17 million people were convicted of tardiness, leaving their place of employment without permission, or evading mobilization.²⁵ This huge number, which fails to capture the extent of violations of workplace discipline, belies the propagandists’ exultation of Soviet workers’ selfless enthusiasm.

Between the two extremes of devotion and opposition to the regime, the vast majority made empty shows of loyalty but were largely indifferent to politics. Only marginally influenced by propaganda and trying their best to evade the grip of repression, most took comfort in tradition and ritual. Despite state repression of priests and active church members, especially in the 1930s, most Soviet citizens held onto their faith. During the census of January 1937, 57 percent of respondents over the age of sixteen identified themselves as religious—more than 55 million people. Surely many others hid their faith out of fear of persecution.²⁶

In the area of inter-ethnic relations, Stalin left a problematic legacy. The relative liberalism of the early Bolshevik regime, which built what historian Terry Martin calls an “affirmative action empire,” came to an end in the early 1930s.²⁷ Under Stalin, nationalities policy grew increasingly brutal. Mass arrests and executions based on nationality, the internal exile of entire peoples, and the effort to use russification to create a single Soviet nationality laid a minefield under the country’s future.²⁸ Explosions started to go off while Stalin was still alive, when guerrilla wars roiled western Ukraine and the Baltic states. Although a degree of inter-ethnic unity was actually achieved, behind the propaganda façade extolling the “friendship of peoples” seethed many inter-ethnic conflicts.²⁹ The “Russian question” that grew out of the contradictory position of the Russian majority—simultaneously the bulwark of the Soviet empire and one of its chief victims—promoted instability and ultimately destroyed the Soviet Union, an interpretation advanced by Geoffrey Hosking.³⁰

What did Stalin know about the real life of “his” people? The Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha visited Moscow in 1947 and later recalled Stalin saying, “To govern, you have to know the masses, and in order to know them, you have to walk among them.”³¹ Stalin could hardly claim to adhere to his own wisdom. After his famous visit to Siberia in 1928, most of which was spent meeting with functionaries, he almost never walked “among the masses.” Official meetings with representatives of the workers were carefully orchestrated propaganda spectacles. During better days, Stalin would occasionally indulge his taste for theatrics and suddenly appear in public. But even these spontaneous meetings inevitably took on the aura of “Christ appearing to the people.” In September 1935, accompanied by several Soviet leaders, he toured the outskirts of Sochi and encountered small groups of vacationers. On Stalin’s initiative a spontaneous “fraternization” was allowed. One vacationer left a striking account of the event:

Comrade Stalin … stopped us with the following words: “Why are you leaving comrades? Why are you so proud that you shun our company? Come here. Where are you from?” We walked up to him.… “Well, let’s get acquainted,” Comrade Stalin said, and he introduced us to each of his companions in turn and introduced himself as well. “This is Comrade Kalinin, this is the wife of Comrade Molotov … and this is I, Stalin,” he said, shaking everyone’s hand. “Now we’ll all have our pictures taken together,” and Comrade Stalin invited us to stand next to him.… While the photographers were working, Comrade Stalin kept making fun of them: he said they were “mortal enemies” and were always trying to interfere with one another. He asked that they photograph not only him but “all the people.” … Then Comrade Stalin began to invite the woman selling apples from a kiosk … and a salesman from the food stand to come have their pictures taken. It took a long time before the disconcerted saleswoman could be persuaded to leave her store. Comrade Stalin told her that “it’s not good to be so proud” and told the photographers not to take the picture until she came. “The saleswoman,” Stalin proclaimed, “should become the most respected woman in our country.” Finally she came and the photo shoot continued. An empty bus drove up, and Comrade Stalin invited the driver and conductor to have their pictures taken.³²

Obviously such “walks among the people” did little to enhance Stalin’s understanding of them, and even these mostly stopped after the 1930s. The vozhd never took an interest in seeing the conditions in which the Soviet people were living, what they bought and where, what sort of health care or education they received. His knowledge of “the masses” came mostly from what he read in his office. So far we know of two main sources from which he gleaned knowledge of daily life: summary reports from state security about the public mood and letters and complaints from ordinary citizens. A steady stream of such letters arrived in government offices, including some addressed to him personally.

As far as can be determined from archival studies, state security summaries were a major source of information for the Soviet leadership in the 1920s and 1930s. These reports contained rather candid assessments of the situation in the country, albeit from a chekist perspective, which saw almost all crises and difficulties as the work of enemies. There were a number of types of reports, some providing an overview of sociopolitical processes, others devoted to matters of economics or politics. One problematic aspect of these reports was their length. The leaders for whom they were prepared had to spend hours poring over them. In recent years historians have published a number of informational state security summaries dating to the prewar period.³³ These publications, however, are based on copies found in state security archives—not in Stalin’s personal archive. We do not currently know the extent to which, or in what form, they are contained in the Politburo archive, which is part of the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Historians therefore cannot be sure to what extent the leadership in general or Stalin in particular read these secret police summaries. There is evidence to suggest that they were mostly unaware of these reports’ contents.

We know more about Stalin’s familiarity with letters from Soviet citizens. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of the country sent complaints, requests, and petitions on a wide array of topics to all sorts of government offices. Such letter writing was an extremely common practice and was even encouraged by the authorities. Within the highly centralized system, letters to the government were one of the few ways of solving everyday problems. The government was virtually the only employer. It also had authority over the allocation or construction of housing. Government stores supplied (or were supposed to supply) all basic needs. Government hospitals were the only places to obtain treatment for serious illnesses. The government determined the rather narrow category of people eligible for pensions or benefits and the size of the payments. Given the flaws of the Soviet judicial system, citizens turned to bureaucrats to resolve conflicts and disputes. Abuses by officials within the huge bureaucratic apparat occasioned countless grievances. Arrests, forcible relocations, imprisonments in camps, or death sentences against tens of millions of people generated millions of complaints and pleas for relief. Arrestees themselves wrote, as did their relatives, and even unrelated people sometimes worked up the courage to intercede on behalf of an acquaintance or colleague. This pursuit of justice was encouraged by the state since it created the illusion of impartial leadership.

Another practice that was encouraged was denouncing abuses or “enemy activity.” Stalin made it no secret that he held denouncers and informers in high regard. All denunciations, including anonymous ones, were investigated. The government’s attitude is eloquently illustrated by the fact that even prisoners who were deprived of all other rights had the right to submit denunciations. In February 1936 the NKVD chief signed an order calling for the installation of boxes in all camps, prisons, and penal colonies into which inmates could insert statements addressed to him personally or the head of the Gulag directorate. “The boxes shall be sealed with the seal of the Directorate of Camps,” the order read, “and only the head of the camp or his deputy (in camps) and the head of the Department of Detention Centers or his deputy (in prisons and penal colonies) shall open them.” All correspondence was to be sent to the NKVD chief personally and “under no circumstance concealed.” Inmates were to be informed of “the purpose of these boxes.”³⁴

Taking advantage of the regime’s eagerness to uncover enemies and the almost total impunity enjoyed by slanderers, many Soviet citizens used denunciations to game the system. Informers used the government to attain their own mercenary objectives—to settle scores, get rid of annoying neighbors sharing the same communal apartment, or eliminate those competing for the same job. For the hapless multitudes at the bottom of the societal hierarchy, denunciations were the only means of taking revenge against powerful officials. The state implicitly encouraged people to use this disgraceful means of fighting for their rights.

In addition to complaints and denunciations, the archives abound with “helpful” letters. Some offered ideas for reorganizing government agencies or for various socioeconomic innovations; some offered ideas for renaming cities or creating new holidays or ceremonies; others sought to correct “errors” in the press. Writing such letters was one of the few outlets for activism available to ordinary citizens. These letters may have contained an element of self-promotion as their authors tried to draw the top leadership’s attention to themselves.

As the supreme authority, Stalin, of course, was all these correspondents’ prime addressee. It is hard to know the precise number of letters addressed to him personally, but it apparently exceeded several hundred thousand per year.³⁵ Obviously not all of them reached his desk; he was shown a selected sample. The nature of this sample is of interest from a number of perspectives. Primarily, it shows how well informed Stalin was about people’s lives and tells us what he expressed an interest in seeing. No doubt the apparat was given criteria for selecting the letters he would be shown.

Handling letters addressed to Stalin was a complicated bureaucratic process. Within the Central Committee’s Special Sector, which served as Stalin’s personal secretariat, was a division dedicated to processing his mail. After the war this division was called the Special Sector’s “Fifth Section.” In early 1950 it had a staff of twenty.³⁶ They received and logged letters addressed to Stalin and immediately forwarded a significant portion of them to various agencies for review. The heads of the Special Sector, especially Stalin’s personal assistant, Aleksandr Poskrebyshev, were shown the most important and interesting letters.³⁷ Poskrebyshev further filtered them, leaving just a few of the most interesting for his boss. As a result of this tiered system, Stalin saw just a tiny percentage of the hundreds of thousands of letters sent to him, and over time this number shrank. In early 1946 Stalin saw about ten letters per month, but by 1952 he was shown just one or two.³⁸

This small sample revealed little about real life in the Soviet Union. Most of the letters reaching Stalin’s desk belonged to one of three categories: queries on matters of theory, letters from old acquaintances, and a large number of letters of support. On extremely rare occasions he might be shown correspondence that tiptoed around some unsavory aspect of Soviet reality. Overall, the letters he saw reflected the vozhd’s growing desire to live in the past or savor hopes for the future. Pressing matters of real consequence likely to provoke negative emotions were avoided.

As ignorant of the life of the people as the vozhd was, the people knew even less what kind of a man he was. Partly due to his personality and partly out of calculation, Stalin, unlike many other dictators, rarely spoke before large audiences. He preferred to express himself in writing. The aggressive propaganda of Stalin’s articles, interviews, and theoretical works created the impression that the invisible vozhd was ever-present and all-knowing. His cryptic sententiousness gave him a certain charisma.

Tight control over the alchemy of official “Staliniana” has created false and doubly majestic images of Stalin and his accomplishments.³⁹ These images outlive the man himself and have an appeal even in contemporary Russia. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the stresses of the transitional period, corruption, poverty, and glaring social inequality all feed the longing for a social utopia. A significant portion of Russian society seeks recipes for the present by looking to the Stalinist past. Popular images of the greatness of the Stalinist empire—of equality and the fight against corruption, of the joy and purity of this distant life undone by “enemies”—are exploited by unscrupulous commentators and politicians. How great is the danger that a blend of historical ignorance, bitterness, and social discontent will provide fertile ground for pro-Stalinist lies and distortions to take root?

Could it really be that Russia in the twenty-first century is in danger of repeating the mistakes of the twentieth?

ILLUSTRATIONS

Stalin’s mother, Ekaterine (Keke) Jughashvili.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin as a pupil at the Gori Theological School in the early 1890s.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin as a young revolutionary, early 1900s.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

From party archives, a 1910 arrest record for Stalin from the files of the tsarist political police in Baku. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin at the Tsaritsyn front in 1918. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Lenin and Stalin at Gorki, Lenin’s residence outside Moscow, in 1922, a few months before Lenin’s death prompted a fierce power struggle. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin with Rykov (left) and Bukharin (right), December 1927. Rykov and Bukharin were shot in 1938. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The vozhd with his faithful comrades in 1934. Left to right: Kirov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Stalin, and Mikoyan. Kirov was shot later that year by the husband of a staff member, and Ordzhonikidze committed suicide in 1937. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin with his wife, Nadezhda Allilueva, Voroshilov, and Voroshilov’s wife Yekaterina relaxing in the south in 1932 (with a bodyguard to the right) a few months before Nadezhda’s suicide. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

On vacation in 1933. Stalin’s daughter Svetlana sits on the lap of then Georgian party boss Lavrenty Beria. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The loving father: Stalin with Svetlana, 1933.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

A visit in the south, 1933. Left to right: chief of the Red Army General Staff Aleksandr Yegorov; Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov; Stalin; Soviet military leader Mikhail Tukhachevsky; Abkhaz leader Nestor Lakoba. Lakoba died in 1936 under mysterious circumstances and was soon proclaimed an “enemy of the people.” Tukhachevsky was shot in 1937 and Yegorov in 1938. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The near dacha, where Stalin lived (starting after his wife’s suicide) and died.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History

A rare family gathering in the mid-1930s. Left to right: Stalin’s son Vasily, Leningrad party boss Andrei Zhdanov, daughter Svetlana, Stalin, and Stalin’s son (by his first wife) Yakov, who was killed in a Nazi POW camp. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin inspects new military hardware at the Kremlin, September 1943. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Crimea, February 1945.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Generalissimo Stalin immediately after the war.

Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin and his comrades at a celebration in January 1947. Left to right: Beria, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Molotov, Kuznetsov, Stalin, Kosygin, Voznesensky, Voroshilov, and Shkiriatov. Two years later Kuznetsov and Voznesensky were arrested and shot. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Stalin at a party congress in 1952, four months before his death.

Unflattering photographs like this one were not published. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

Millions of copies of Stalin’s works were published in all languages. After his death they provided tons of recycled paper pulp. Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

NOTES

Preface

1. Adam. B. Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York, 1973); Robert C. Tucker: Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), and Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York, 1990).

2. Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (London, 2004); Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin: Profiles in Power (New York, 2005); Sarah Davies and James Harris, eds., Stalin: A New History (New York, 2005); Miklos Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest and New York, 2003); Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement: From Koba to Commissar (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). Concerning Stalin the dictator and his relations with the rest of the Soviet leadership, see Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven and London, 2008), and Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York, 2004). Some works have attempted to peer into Stalin’s inner world: A. J. Rieber, “Stalin, Man of the Borderlands,” American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (2001): 1651–1691; Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London and New York, 2002); B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002); Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him (New York, 2005). Many works on the Terror and the Gulag have added to our understanding of Stalin’s personal role in organizing mass repression: Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 (New York, 2003); V. N. Khaustov and L. Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii. 1936–1938 (Moscow, 2009); Jörg Baberowski, Verbrannte Erde: Stalins Herrschaft der Gewalt (Munich, 2012). Despite copious literature on World War II, Stalin’s role as supreme commander in chief has yet to be adequately investigated. An analogous lacuna exists in regard to the Cold War and Stalin’s handling of foreign policy.

3. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991); Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives (New York, 1997); Simon Sebag Montefiore: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London, 2003), and Young Stalin (London, 2007).

4. Collections of letters have been published as part of the Annals of Communism Series: Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995), and R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven and London, 2003).

5. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008).

6. S. V. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 2010), pp. 113–114.

7. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1–11. (An opis’ [op.] is the equivalent of a drawer in a filing cabinet.) Opis’ 11 comprises Stalin’s personal archive, brought to RGASPI from the Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation (the former Politburo Archive).

8. “Thematic” folders (tematicheskie papki) are subject-specific folders of documents that were submitted to the Politburo and Stalin; they comprise the main historical component of the Presidential Archive.

9. Sergei Khrushchev, ed.: Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar (University Park, PA, 2004); Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006); and Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3: Statesman (University Park, PA, 2007); A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999); Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, The Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan (Madison, CT, 1988).

10. In a splendid review published soon after Mikoyan’s memoirs came out in Russian, Michael Ellman convincingly argued that Mikoyan’s text had been altered (Michael Ellman, “The Road from Il’ich to Il’ich,” Slavic Review 60, no. 1 [2001]: 141). In a response, Mikoyan’s son Sergo categorically stated, “I did not ‘correct’ my father’s stories” (Slavic Review, 60, no. 4 [2001]: 917). This vague formulation came with an important subtext. Sergo Mikoyan was not saying that he did not alter the dictated manuscript, leaving open the possibility that he did supplement the initial transcript of his father’s dictation with subsequent accounts by the elder Mikoyan that were not “correct.” Clearly, any such additions should have been made explicit or, better yet, placed in a footnote.

11. See, for example, Sergo Beria, Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin (London, 2001).

12. E. Yu. Zubkova, “O ‘detskoi’ literature i drugikh problemakh nashei istoricheskoi pamiati,” in Istoricheskie issledovaniia v Rossii. Tendentsii poslednikh let, ed. G. A. Bordiugov (Moscow, 1996), pp. 155–178.

The Seats of Stalin’s Power

1. Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov (1902–1988) was a party bureaucrat who worked for many years in the Central Committee apparat. In the late 1930s, he was elevated by Stalin to the highest echelons of power, buoyed by the waves of mass repression. During the dictator’s last years, Malenkov served as his deputy within the government and the Central Committee Secretariat. After Stalin’s death he was appointed chairman of the Soviet government, an appointment that seemed to label him as Stalin’s unofficial heir. However, Malenkov lost out to Khrushchev in the battle for supreme power and was forced into humiliatingly low-level posts before spending his remaining years in retirement. Other unsuccessful rivals for power had the relative democratization of the USSR to thank for their fates. Under Stalin, disgraced politicians generally paid with their lives.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (1899–1953) began his career in state security. In the early 1930s, Stalin put Beria in charge of Georgia and in 1938 brought him to Moscow and appointed him people’s commissar for internal affairs (head of the NKVD, the main agency of state security); as such, he was assigned to purge the ranks of the secret police and wind down the Great Terror. In subsequent years, Beria became one of Stalin’s closest associates. He was his deputy within the government and oversaw the Soviet nuclear project, as well as other important divisions of the Soviet system, including the Gulag. After Stalin’s death, Beria brought all “punitive organs” under his own control. This move alarmed the other Soviet leaders. They closed ranks and had Beria arrested, accused of countless crimes, and shot. Legends circulated that Beria had had special influence over Stalin and that many of the crimes of the Stalinist regime were his handiwork. In fact, Beria was just one of the men who implemented Stalin’s orders and did not play a notably independent role in carrying out the mass repression. See Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, NJ, 1993).

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (1894–1971) came to Moscow from Ukraine to study at the Industrial Academy, where he got to know Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Allilueva. This acquaintance provided the first impetus to his career, and he began to advance through the ranks of the Moscow party committee. In the late 1930s, new opportunities for advancement came as other officials succumbed to the mass repression. He was appointed party secretary for Ukraine, one of the most important Soviet republics. After the war, Stalin placed him in charge of the party organization in Moscow. In the wake of Stalin’s death, Khrushchev became head of the Central Committee apparat. This post enabled him to outmaneuver Stalin’s other political heirs and become the new Soviet leader. However, Khrushchev was not Stalin. His democratic reforms (the Khrushchev Thaw), his condemnation of Stalin’s Cult of Personality, and his advocacy of freedom for Gulag prisoners, along with numerous tactical blunders, led to a plot against him. In late 1964, he was deprived of his post by purely legal means, but not of his life. He lived out his days as a pensioner. While in retirement, he dictated his well-known memoirs. See William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York, 2003).

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin (1895–1975) was among those who rose through the ranks to fill the vacancies created in the Soviet apparat by the Great Terror. Stalin began to promote Bulganin at the end of the war. As a counterweight to career military men, the civil servant Bulganin was placed in senior posts in the defense commissariat and eventually appointed defense minister. Contemporary accounts portray Bulganin as an expressionless functionary who simply followed orders. After Stalin’s death, Bulganin chaired the Council of Ministers, succeeding the disgraced Malenkov. However, he picked the losing side during Khrushchev’s rise to power and was sent into retirement.

2. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (1890–1986) was one of Stalin’s closest comrades-in-arms, their relationship dating back to prerevolutionary times. From then on, Molotov served as Stalin’s faithful supporter and played a key role during Stalin’s struggle for supreme power. In return, Molotov was appointed to top government posts. In 1930–1941, he chaired the Soviet government (the Council of People’s Commissars). When Stalin himself took over this post in 1941, Molotov was made his deputy. For many years Molotov was in charge of foreign affairs. Within the country and the party, he was seen as Stalin’s heir. For this reason, toward the end of his life, Stalin began to clamp down on Molotov and, in late 1952, eventually expelled him from the ruling circle. Nevertheless, Molotov remained loyal to Stalin even after his death. This loyalty was one source of tension between Molotov and Khrushchev, who encouraged criticism of the Cult of Personality. Molotov lost out to Khrushchev during the decisive clash of 1957. He held a succession of minor posts before being forced into retirement. See Derek Watson, Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930–41 (Basingstoke, UK, 1996).

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (1895–1978) was one of the revolutionary and party activists from Transcaucasia who, thanks to Stalin, wound up making a brilliant career in Moscow. For several decades, Mikoyan was in charge of Soviet trade and the food and consumer-goods industry. In late 1952, Mikoyan fell into disgrace, together with Molotov. After Stalin’s death, he restored his position and gave his allegiance to Khrushchev. He played an important role in resolving the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. After Khrushchev’s removal, Mikoyan’s career went into decline. Nevertheless, he is considered a model Soviet political survivor, renowned for his adaptability.

Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov (1881–1969) was one of Stalin’s closest friends during the 1918–1920 Civil War. In the mid-1920s, Stalin placed him in charge of the Red Army, a post for which Voroshilov was clearly not well suited. Shortly before the 1941 German invasion, Stalin was forced to replace him. During World War II, Voroshilov formally remained among the country’s top leadership; however, he held secondary posts. After Stalin’s death, Voroshilov was appointed to the figurehead post of president of the USSR. He supported Molotov and the other Soviet leaders who opposed Khrushchev in 1957 and soon thereafter went into retirement.

3. Yoram Gorlizki, “Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet Neo-patrimonial State, 1946–1953,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 699–736.

4. Interview with Admiral I. S. Isakov in K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), p. 433.

5. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), p. 7.

6. V. Bogomolova et al., comps., Moskovskii Kreml’ tsitadel’ Rossii (Moscow, 2009), pp. 310–313.

7. After Shumiatsky’s arrest in 1938, these records were given to Stalin and placed in his personal archive. They have been published in K. M. Anderson et al., comps., Kremlevskii kinoteatr. 1928–1953 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 919–1053.

8. Nadezhda Sergeevna Allilueva (1901–1932) grew up in the family of a proletarian revolutionary with whom Stalin had long been acquainted. She and Stalin were married in 1919. Allilueva worked in Lenin’s secretariat and in the editorial offices of a Moscow journal before enrolling in the Moscow Industrial Academy. Further details can be found in the section on Stalin’s family preceding chapter 6 below.

9. This and subsequent information about Stalin’s dacha comes from 1953 god. Mezhdu proshlym i budushchim (exhibition catalogue) (Moscow, 2003), and S. V. Deviatov, A. Shefov, and Iu. Iur’ev, Blizhniaia dacha Stalina. Opyt istoricheskogo putevoditelia (Moscow, 2011).

10. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillian (New York, 1967), p. 21.

11. Deviatov, Shefov, and Iur’ev, Blizhniaia dacha Stalina, p. 287. Lozgachev has provided information relating to the postwar years, but there is evidence suggesting that Stalin took an active interest in the productivity of the dacha lands in earlier years as well.

12. Lazar Kaganovich mentions the existence of such a notebook in F. I. Chuev, Kaganovich. Shepilov (Moscow, 2001), p. 137.

13. Letter to Lazar Kaganovich, 24 September 1931. Cited in R. W. Davies, et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–36 (New Haven and London, 2003), p. 98.

14. In Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 117.

15. In Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar (University Park, PA, 2004), p. 290.

16. M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Litso totalitarizma (Moscow, 1992), p. 108.

17. From an account by Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi (Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 [1997]: 117).

18. 1953 god. Mezhdu proshlym i budushchim, p. 75.

19. Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948) joined the Bolshevik party before the revolution and afterward held various provincial party posts. In 1934 Stalin brought him to Moscow and made him a Central Committee secretary. After Kirov’s murder, Zhdanov replaced him as Leningrad party boss. Until his death he remained one of Stalin’s closest comrades-in-arms and enjoyed good relations with the leader. Zhdanov’s son was briefly married to Stalin’s daughter.

20. In Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1, pp. 102–103.

21. In Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, p. 68.

22. Ibid., p. 117.

23. Ibid., pp. 146–147.

24. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), p. 571.

25. This idea is developed in Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London and New York, 2002).

26. Cited in G. Dmitrov, Dnevnik (Sophia, 1997), p. 128.

27. Cited in V. M. Berezhkov, Riadom so Stalinym (Moscow, 1999), p. 371. Berezhkov was Stalin’s interpreter.

Chapter 1. Before the Revolution

1. L. M. Spirin, “Kogda rodilsia Stalin: Popravki k ofitsial’noi biografii,” Izvestiia, 25 June 1990; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1990): 132–134.

2. A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 88–89. Ostrovskii’s book was the first biography to focus on Stalin’s youth and was based on newly discovered documents from Moscow and Georgian archives. Other works appeared later: Miklos Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest and New York, 2003); Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (London, 2007); Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement: From Koba to Commissar (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). My account of Stalin’s early life draws on these books to varying degrees.

3. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 86–88, 93, 99.

4. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 878, l. 73. Unless otherwise noted, translations are by Nora Favorov.

5. R. G. Suny, “Beyond Psychohistory: The Young Stalin in Georgia,” Slavic Review 46, no. 1 (1991): 52.

6. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 115. Interview with the German author Emil Ludwig, 13 December 1931.

7. Cited in Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), pp. 6–19.

8. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1549, l. 83.

9. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 96–97, 102–104.

10. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 876, l. 12.

11. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 4, l. 1; d. 5, l. 1.

12. Cited in Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), pp. 7–8.

13. L. D. Trotsky, Stalin, (Benson, VT, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 32–33.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (1879–1940) was, for a while, perceived both within the fledgling Soviet state and internationally as second only to Lenin in leading the Bolshevik revolution. The peak of his glory came during the Civil War, in which he led the Red Army to victory. After the war, Trotsky took an active part in the struggle for power and influence that erupted among the Soviet leaders. In 1928, after losing this struggle, Trotsky was sent into exile. He remained politically active in emigration and worked to expose his political nemesis, Stalin, on whose orders he was killed in 1940 in Mexico by a Soviet agent.

14. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 108–111.

15. Ibid., pp. 124–125.

16. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, pp. 115–116. Interview with the German author Emil Ludwig, 13 December 1931.

17. Cited in V. Kaminskii and I. Vereshchagin, “Detstvo i iunost’ vozhdia: Dokumenty, zapiski, rasskazy,” Molodaia gvardiia, no. 12 (1939): 65.

18. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), pp. 80–82.

19. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 600, ll. 1–7; f. 71; op. 10, d. 266, ll. 7–11.

20. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 32, ll. 1–2.

21. Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 3.

22. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 53, ll. 1–15; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 148.

23. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 149.

24. Kaminskii and Vereshchagin, “Detstvo i iunost’ vozhdia,” pp. 84–85.

25. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 53, l. 13.

26. Ibid., op. 4, d. 60, ll. 1–3.

27. Ibid., op. 11, d. 879, l. 45.

28. Ibid., op. 4, d. 65, ll. 1–4.

29. Trotsky, Stalin, vol. 1, p. 44.

30. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 154–155.

31. A. J. Rieber, “Stalin, Man of the Borderlands,” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 1651–1691; Alfred J. Rieber, “Stalin as Georgian: The Formative Years,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 18–44.

32. I. Baberovski [J. Baberowski], Vrag est’ vezde. Stalinizm na Kavkaze (Moscow, 2010), p. 15.

33. Documents from Boris Nicolaevsky’s archive published by Iu. G. Fel’shtinskii and G. I. Cherniavskii in Voprosy istorii, no. 14 (2012): 16.

34. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 72, l. 9.

35. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 188–189.

36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 619, ll. 175–177.

37. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 212–218.

38. Erik van Ree, “The Stalinist Self: The Case of Ioseb Jughashvili (1898–1907),” Kritika 11, no. 2 (2010): 265–266; Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 4.

39. Erik van Ree, “Reluctant Terrorists? Transcaucasian Social-Democracy, 1901–1909,” Europe-Asia Studies 40, no. 1 (2008); Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 9.

40. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 254.

41. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 896, l. 115.

42. For more details on the heist, see Montefiore, Young Stalin. See also Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, ch. 11. Miklos Kun has uncovered some evidence that Stalin assisted in the preparations for Kamo’s operation (Stalin, pp. 77–79).

43. Documents from Boris Nicolaevsky’s archive published by Iu. G. Fel’shtinskii and G. I. Cherniavskii in Voprosy istorii, no. 7 (2010): 34, and no. 9 (2010): 11.

44. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 292.

45. Z. I. Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii (1880–1917 gg.) (Moscow, 2000), pp. 242–274.

46. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 329–330.

47. Cited in Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii, p. 246.

48. Roman Vatslavovich Malinovsky (1876–1918) was a metalworker, labor union activist, and member of the Bolshevik party who enjoyed Lenin’s special patronage. In 1912 he was elected to the State Duma and in 1913 became chairman of the Duma’s Bolshevik faction. Meanwhile, he served many years as a police double agent. Under threat of exposure, he fled Russia in 1914. In 1918 he returned to Soviet Russia hoping to be pardoned. Instead, he was shot.

49. These letters were opened by the police and therefore survive in police archives. Copies of them are also in the Stalin Collection (Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 396–398; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1288, ll. 12–14, 18, 28, 32–35).

50. Letter to Roman Malinovsky in late November 1913.

51. Letter to T. A. Slavotinskaia, dated 20 November 1913.

52. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 52, l. 1; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 402–403.

53. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5394, ll. 2–3; A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 19.

54. Ia. M. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, (Moscow, 1957), vol. 1, p. 227.

55. A. S. Allilueva, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1946), p. 115.

56. In Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 132. Translation slightly edited.

57. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 1, p. 280.

58. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1288, ll. 15–16; B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002), pp. 289, 291, 294–297; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 393.

59. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 773, ll. 79–82; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, pp. 297–298.

60. In any event, Stalin soon ceased to have anything to do with Pereprygina. After he left exile she married and was later widowed with eight children (Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 310).

61. Letter to O. Ye. Allilueva dated 25 November 1915. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 55, l. 2; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 21.

62. Trotsky, Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 248–249.

63. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 17–20; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 397–401, 412–413, 415.

64. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 54, l. 1.

65. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 49 (Moscow, 1970), pp. 101, 161.

The Bulwarks of Stalin’s Power

1. There is a tradition that views Stalin’s final illness and death as the result of a poisoning organized by Beria. One of the most recent attempts to assess the medical evidence for this view can be found in Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 (New York, 2003).

The basic events of Stalin’s last days can be retraced by drawing on multiple sources. In addition to the well-known reminiscences of Khrushchev, who was among the leaders that kept watch over the dying Stalin (Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar [University Park, PA, 2004], pp. 147–149), new sources have appeared, including accounts by Stalin’s bodyguards recorded by Dmitri Volkogonov and Edvard Radzinsky (Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy [New York, 1991], pp. 571–572; Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives [New York, 1997], pp. 566–572). Here I make use of all three publications.

2. Here and below, on the topic of the Main Guard Directorate, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 858, ll. 2–20. It is unclear from the documents in question whether this information applies to all of Stalin’s dachas or only to the one in Volynskoe. In any case, the guards and servants were primarily concentrated at the Volynskoe dacha, where Stalin lived.

3. S. V. Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia. 1921–2011 (Moscow, 2011), pp. 162–163.

4. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 54; V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Ianvar’ 1922–dekabr’ 1936 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 255–256.

5. According to a report by senior officials of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) to Stalin, the agent was prevented from making an attempt on Stalin’s life by an undercover OGPU agent who had infiltrated the organization and was accompanying the foreign agent. Under interrogation, the foreign agent stated that during an initial attempt he was simply unable to grab his revolver, which was hidden deep under his clothing. The rather large security detail accompanying Stalin prevented him from making a second attempt. (“Zapiska OGPU Stalinu. 18 noiabria 1931 g.,” Istochnik, no. 3 [1996]: 161–162; Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, p. 286.)

6. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii. 1881–2006 (exhibition catalogue) (Moscow, 2006), pp. 47–49.

7. Sergei Mironovich Kirov (1886–1934) was a Russian revolutionary and Civil War figure. In 1921–1926 he served as party chief in Azerbaijan. His career benefited from his years as one of Stalin’s clients in Transcaucasia and the personal friendship that developed between the two. In 1926, after the crushing of the opposition, Kirov was appointed to replace Zinoviev as head of the Leningrad party organization, a position that led to his elevation to candidate member of the Politburo. On 1 December 1934 he was killed by a lone gunman. It was long believed that Kirov’s murder was arranged by Stalin, but most historians have since rejected this possibility.

8. Nikolai Sidorovich Vlasik (1896–1967) was born into a peasant family in Belarus, received an elementary-school education, and later supported himself as an unskilled laborer. He fought in the tsarist army during World War I and later joined the Red Army. In 1919 he went to work for state security, where he rose through the ranks. The numerous vacancies created by the mass arrests of 1937–1938 accelerated Vlasik’s career. In 1952 he was arrested, and two years after Stalin’s death he was sentenced to ten years in exile. He was pardoned in 1956.

9. After a lengthy investigation, the soldier was shot in 1950.

10. S. V. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 2010), pp. 161, 164–167.

11. Figures are for 1950. E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), p. 501; V. P. Popov, Rossiiskaia derevnia posle voiny [iiun’ 1945–mart 1953] (Moscow, 1993), p. 146.

12. N. V. Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow, 2005), pp. 87–89.

13. From Vlasik’s testimony at his 1955 trial; V. M. Loginov, Teni Stalina. General Vlasik i ego soratniki (Moscow, 2000), p. 152.

14. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 858, ll. 2–8.

15. Semen Denisovich Ignatiev (1904–1983) was born into a peasant family and began his career in the Komsomol (Communist Youth League). After studying at the Industrial Academy in 1935, he landed a job in the Central Committee apparat. For many years he headed various regional party organizations. In 1950 he was placed in charge of the Central Committee department that handled party personnel matters, an important post. In 1951, after a wave of arrests within the leadership of the USSR Ministry of State Security, Stalin appointed Ignatiev to head this institution. Under Stalin’s orders, Ignatiev falsified a number of political cases. After Stalin’s death this action almost cost him his career or even his life, but Khrushchev’s support saved him. Ignatiev was sent to work in the provinces and, in 1960, into retirement.

16. Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), f. 5, op. 29, d. 3, l. 2; d. 16, ll. 94, 108.

17. On the sources of the statistics offered here, see O. Khlevniuk, Stalin u vlasti. Prioritety i rezul’taty politiki diktatury. Istoriia stalinizma: Itogi i problemy izucheniia (Moscow, 2011), pp. 63–65.

18. In early 1937 the total population of the USSR was 162 million, and in early 1953 it reached 188 million. The adult population was, of course, much lower, totaling in 1937, for example, approximately 100 million.

19. Soviet security services have gone through numerous reorganizations and renamings. By tradition, they continued to be called by their initial acronym—ChK (chrezvychainaia komissiia, or extraordinary commission). This is the origin of the term “cheka” or “chekist.” Stalin himself often used this designation.

20. Grigory Ivanovich Kulik (1890–1950) fought alongside Stalin during the Civil War. With Stalin’s patronage, he enjoyed a successful military career and in 1940 was elevated to marshal. During the war with Germany, like many other Civil War–era commanders, he did not acquit himself particularly well. In 1942 he was tried and stripped of his rank and given a series of junior command positions. Stalin’s lack of trust in Kulik was reciprocated. In 1947 he was arrested along with several other generals who had criticized Stalin in frank discussions with one another. In 1950 he was shot.

21. May 1940 letter from the chairman of the Party Control Commission, Andrei Andreev, to Stalin in regard to the Kulik case; K. A. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow, 1998), pp. 272–276. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 17, ll. 128–148.

22. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy, pp. 267–271.

23. Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels (1890–1948) was a stage director, actor, and leader of the Jewish community. During World War II, he headed the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which mobilized strong support for the Soviet Union in the West. The fact that he was awarded the Stalin Prize (the highest honor granted to cultural figures) immediately after the war testifies to the importance of his services. Nevertheless, soon thereafter Mikhoels became one of the first victims of Stalin’s changing foreign policy priorities and the launching of an anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR.

24. G. V. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia Politika Stalina. Vlast’ i antisemitizm (Moscow, 2001), pp. 388–392.

25. N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), pp. 66–68.

26. Ignatiev related this statement during testimony given on 27 March 1953, after Stalin’s death (ibid., p. 307).

Chapter 2. In Lenin’s Shadow

1. Lev Borisovich Kamenev (1883–1936), the son of an engineer, studied law at Moscow University before being expelled for revolutionary activities. He was one of Lenin’s closest associates. Kamenev first met Stalin when they were both engaged in revolutionary work in Transcaucasia. After the 1917 revolution, Kamenev held a number of senior posts within the Soviet government and was among those contending for power after Lenin’s death. He became an opposition leader in the 1920s. Once Stalin solidified his victory over the opposition, he dealt brutally with his old friend. In late 1934, Kamenev and his fellow oppositionists were arrested on fabricated charges that they had been involved in Kirov’s murder. In August 1936, Kamenev was convicted of espionage and terrorism in the first of a series of major show trials and put to death.

2. Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995), pp. 101–103, 131–132.

3. There is a vast body of literature on Bolshevik activities during the Russian revolutionary period, including the following: E. N. Burdzhalov, Russia’s Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd, trans. and ed. D. J. Raleigh (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1967); Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (Chicago and London, 2004); Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1990). For Stalin’s role in the revolution, see Robert M. Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution (Baltimore and London, 1987), and Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin and the Russian Revolutionary Movement: From Koba to Commissar (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), chs. 18 and 19.

4. Cited in A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 16.

5. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 31 (Moscow, 1969), pp. 11–22, 504.

6. Ibid., pp. 103–112.

7. Cited in N. N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii, vol. 2, bk. 3 (Moscow, 1991), p. 16.

8. Cited in Sed’maia (Aprel’skaia) Vserossiiskaia konferntsiia RSDPR (bol’shevikov). Petrogradskaia obshchegorodskaia konferentsiia RSDPR (bol’shevikov). Protokoly (Moscow, 1958), p. 323.

9. Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev (1883–1936) was one of Lenin’s closest comrades-in-arms. After the revolution, he headed the Leningrad party organization and the Comintern. Failing to take over leadership of the party after Lenin’s death, he became an opposition leader and suffered persecution as the opposition was routed. In 1934, Zinoviev, along with Kamenev, was arrested based on fabricated evidence of complicity in Kirov’s murder. In August 1936, he and Kamenev were convicted at the first Moscow show trial and shot.

10. Speech by Stalin, 3 August 1917, at the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP) Sixth Party Congress; Shestoi s"ezd Rossiiskoi sotsial-demokraticheskoi rabochei partii (bol’shevikov). Avgust 1917 g. Protokoly (Moscow, 1958), p. 250.

11. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 890, l. 8.

12. For a detailed investigation of these events, including evidence based on recently discovered documents, see V. T. Loginov, Neizvestnyi Lenin (Moscow, 2010), pp. 261–264.

13. Statements by Zinoviev and Kamenev on 11 October 1917; Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b). Avgust 1917–fevral’ 1918 (Moscow, 1958), pp. 87–92.

14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 66, l. 1.

15. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b). Avgust 1917–fevral’ 1918, p. 115.

16. R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S. G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 62–64.

17. Protocols of Politburo meetings; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, dd. 1–125.

18. Letter from Stalin to Lenin and Trotsky, 22 June 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5403, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 40.

19. Letter from Stalin to Lenin, 7 July 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 248, l. 1; I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1954), pp. 120–121.

20. Telegram from Stalin to Trotsky and Lenin, 11 July 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1812, ll. 1–2; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 42.

21. Letter from Stalin to Lenin, 3 October 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5410, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 52.

22. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5718, ll. 177, 178, 191, 195, 197.

23. Ibid., ll. 196–198.

24. Speech by Voroshilov at the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1989): 160.

25. Letter from Stalin to Lenin, 31 August 1918; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5408, l. 4; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 46.

26. I. S. Rat’kovskii, Krasnyi terror i deiatel’nost’ VChK v 1918 godu (St. Petersburg, 2006), pp. 151, 170.

27. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1989): 157, 168.

28. Cited in Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 54.

29. Ibid., pp. 52–53.

30. I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1947), p. 271.

31. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 50 (Moscow, 1970), p. 389.

32. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1815, ll. 2–4; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 142–143.

33. RGASPI, f. 558. op. 1, d. 5521, l. 2. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 148.

34. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4137, l. 1; d. 1943, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 155.

35. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1961, ll. 1–2; Stalin, Works, vol. 4, p. 358.

36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4681, l. 1.

37. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4458, ll. 1–3; Stalin, Works, vol. 4, pp. 360–362.

38. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 126, l. 4.

39. Ibid., op. 1, d. 5213, l. 1; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 156.

40. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 106, l. 5.

41. Ibid., ll. 3, 4.

42. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 3 (1991): 167.

43. Deviataia konferentsiia RKP(b). Protokoly (Moscow, 1972), pp. 60–61, 76–77; Iu. N. Amiantov et al., comps., V. I. Lenin. Neizvestnye dokumenty. 1891–1922 (Moscow, 1999), pp. 382, 390.

44. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5541, ll. 1–2; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 160–161.

45. Stalin’s involvement in organizing the so-called Ukrainian Labor Army during the winter and spring of 1920 was an attempt to militarize labor by using the army as a labor force, primarily in the coal mines of Ukraine.

46. Meeting of a section of the Twelfth RKP(b) Congress on the nationalities question, 25 April 1923; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1991): 170. For a detailed account of Stalin’s work in the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, see Jeremy Smith, “Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (New York, 2005), pp. 45–62, and V. Denningkhaus [Victor Dönninghaus], V teni “bol’shogo brata.” Zapadnye natsional’nye men’shinstva v SSSR. 1917–1938 gg. (Moscow, 2011), pp. 84–91.

47. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 234, l. 2.

48. Ibid., d. 310, l. 2.

49. Politburo resolution, 19 October 1922; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 318, l. 4.

50. Grigory Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937) was one of Stalin’s closest friends and comrades-in-arms. In the 1920s he was a top party leader in Transcaucasia before being transferred to Moscow to take up the important post of chairman of the Party Control Commission. In this capacity he helped in Stalin’s climb to power. In the 1930s Ordzhonikidze was put in charge of Soviet heavy industry. He tried to oppose Stalin’s repression of key personnel, leading to conflict between the two men. In February 1937 Ordzhonikidze committed suicide. How he died became widely known only after Stalin’s death. See Oleg V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze (New York, 1995).

51. Letters from Nazaretian to Ordzhonikidze, 14 June and after 9 August 1922; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 13, ll. 6, 10; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 256, 257, 262, 263.

52. Letters from Nazaretian to Ordzhonikidze, 12 July and after 9 August 1922; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 13, ll. 7, 10; Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 259, 263.

53. Letter from Nazaretian to Ordzhonikidze after 9 August 1922; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 13, l. 10. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, p. 263.

54. Reminiscence by N. A. Uglanov, written in January 1925, at a time when Stalin had not yet established his sole power; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1989): 196.

55. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888–1938) was a Bolshevik leader and theoretician. He took Stalin’s side in the confrontation with Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, but after Stalin was victorious over these oppositionists, Bukharin himself became Stalin’s victim. Bukharin advocated a more moderate course and a gradual transition out of the NEP. Stalin labeled Bukharin and his supporters as “right deviationists.” The expulsion of the rightists from the party’s leadership helped Stalin solidify his dictatorship. Bukharin was arrested in 1937 and shot the following year. (See Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 [New York, 1973]; Paul R. Gregory, Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina [Stanford, CA, 2010]).

56. Cited in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1989): 198. For another version of Ulianova’s reminiscence, see Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 3 (1991): 188.

57. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1989); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 303, l. 5.

58. Cited in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1989): 198. Maria Ulianova’s memoirs were found among her papers after her death. They were obviously not intended for publication. Their candor and confessional nature add to their credibility as a source.

59. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 191–216.

60. Ibid., p. 209.

61. Ibid., no. 12 (1989): 191.

62. Ibid., pp. 189, 191.

63. Cited in ibid., pp. 198–199.

64. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 45 (Moscow, 1970), p. 345.

65. Ibid., p. 346.

66. Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926) was active in the revolutionary movement in Russia and spent many years in exile, prison, and labor camps. After the revolution he headed the Emergency Commission or Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ notorious state security organization. In the 1920s, while still head of the political police, he also ran the commissariats of transport and industry. He was still active at the time of his death from heart failure.

67. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54 (Moscow, 1975), p. 329.

68. Ibid., pp. 329–330.

69. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), p. 277.

70. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54, p. 330.

71. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 151; emphasis by Kamenev.

72. Ibid., no. 12 (1989): 193.

73. Ibid., no. 9 (1990): 151–152.

74. V. A. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie Lenina: Real’nosti istorii i mify politiki (Moscow, 2003). See also a critical discussion of this book in Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 2 (2005): 162–174.

75. Moshe Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle (New York, 1968).

76. Cited in V. P. Vilkova, comp., RKP(b). Vnutripartiinaia bor’ba v dvadtsatye gody. Dokumenty i materialy. 1923 (Moscow, 2004), p. 129; emphasis by Zinoviev.

77. Ibid., pp. 135–136; emphasis by Stalin.

78. Transcript of a discussion of the international situation at the 21 August 1923 Politburo meeting. Istochnik, no. 5 (1995): 118, 124.

79. Ibid., p. 126.

80. Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov (1881–1938) was a well-known Bolshevik who served as the Soviet premier after Lenin’s death. An economic moderate, he joined forces with Stalin in opposing Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. Together with Bukharin, Rykov was accused of “right deviation” and removed from the leadership. He was arrested in 1937 and put to death in 1938.

81. Ibid.

82. Vilkova, RKP(b). Vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, pp. 147–151.

83. Trinadtsatyi s"ezd PKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), pp. xxi–xxii.

84. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 126, l. 68.

85. V. Nadtocheev, “‘Triumvirat’ ili ‘semerka’?” in Trudnye voprosy istorii, ed. V. V. Zhuravlev (Moscow, 1991), pp. 68–70.

86. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 8 (1991): 182.

87. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 777, ll. 27–28.

88. Letters from Kirov to Ordzhonikidze dated 10 and 16 January 1926. Kvashonkin et al., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, pp. 315, 318.

89. Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, pp. 115–116.

90. A. G. Egorov, ed., KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s"ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1984), pp. 49–50.

91. See, for example, Stalin’s letter to Rykov, Voroshilov, and Molotov dated 20 September 1927; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 797, ll. 84–85.

92. Valerian Valerianovich Osinsky (1887–1938) was an Old Bolshevik who took part in various opposition movements and was a follower of Trotsky at one point. Soon after the departure mentioned in the letter to Stalin, Osinsky was removed as head of the Central Statistical Directorate. Nevertheless, in later years he held various senior economic posts. He was shot during the Terror.

93. Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov (1887–1937) was a long-standing party member and an active participant in the revolution and Civil War who became involved in the opposition in the 1920s. In 1928 he was exiled to the Ural region for three years, a term ultimately extended to 1935, at which point he was again arrested. He was shot in 1937.

94. Timofei Vladimirovich Sapronov (1887–1937) was a long-standing party member and a Moscow Bolshevik leader. After the revolution he held senior government posts. In the 1920s he joined the opposition. In 1928 he was exiled to the Arkhangelsk region for three years. The term of his exile was extended to 1935, as was Smirnov’s. In 1935 he was again arrested, and in 1937 he was shot.

95. Yuly Osipovich Martov (1873–1923) was a leader of the Social Democratic movement in Russia. He collaborated with Lenin during the early stages of his revolutionary career, but in 1903 the two men broke off relations, and later Martov headed the Menshevik party. He participated in the revolutionary movement in Russia but condemned the 1917 Bolshevik overthrow of the Provisional Government. He later tried to work with the Bolsheviks and democratize the Bolshevik dictatorship. In 1920 he was sent abroad and later died of tuberculosis.

96. Osinsky’s letter and Stalin’s following response are in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 780, ll. 12–14; Istochnik, no. 6 (1994): 88.

97. Grigory Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (1888–1939), a long-standing party member, escaped abroad after being exiled to Siberia. After the revolution he became a member of the top leadership. His greatest success was the monetary reforms he introduced during the 1920s, which provided Soviet Russia with a stable currency. Sokolnikov was subjected to persecution due to his involvement with the opposition. In 1927 he announced his break with the opposition and for some time held various senior government posts. He was shot during the Stalinist Terror.

98. During his speech to the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927, Stalin again spoke of an intervention being prepared against the USSR and drew an analogy with the shooting in Sarajevo (I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 10 [Moscow, 1949], pp. 281, 288).

99. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 71, ll. 2–4ob.

100. Yan Ernestovich Rudzutak (1887–1938) was a long-standing Bolshevik who spent years in tsarist prisons. After the revolution he held senior party and government posts before being shot during the Stalinist Terror.

101. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, ll. 35–39, 45–48, 56–60.

102. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875–1946) was a long-standing Bolshevik who shortly after the revolution was appointed chairman of the Soviet parliament and held the largely figurehead post of president of the USSR until his death. One of the more moderate members of the Bolshevik leadership, he nevertheless submitted to power. After some wavering, he threw his support behind Stalin. Kalinin’s wife was arrested in the 1930s and released shortly before her husband’s death.

103. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, ll. 35–39, 45–48; d. 71. ll. 11, 13–14.

104. Molotov uses this term since not only Politburo members took part in voting, but also the chairman of the Party Control Commission, Ordzhonikidze, whose post excluded him from Politburo membership.

105. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, ll. 56–60.

106. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 139.

107. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1110, l. 181.

A World of Reading and Contemplation

1. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 105, ll. 20–126; d. 117, ll. 1–173.

2. Ibid., op. 11, d. 70, ll. 85–114.

3. B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002), p. 143.

4. M. Ia. Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin (Moscow, 2000), pp. 17–22.

5. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, dd. 1–392. There exists a legal document (akt) instructing that all of Stalin’s books with notations be placed in his archive. Books from Stalin’s Kremlin and dacha libraries that did not contain any handwritten markings were placed in the library of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism or other research libraries. Whether or not the libraries Stalin left behind at the time of his death were properly catalogued and preserved is an open question. Some books, including those with notations, have disappeared. However, the books that were preserved in the Stalin archival collection appear to be a representative sample.

6. Former Soviet transport commissar I. V. Kovalev, in an interview with G. A. Kumanev. Cited in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2005): 165.

7. Cited in R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven and London, 2003), p. 381.

8. Cited in A. Artizov and O. Naumov, comps., Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia (Moscow, 1999), pp. 499, 583, 613. Memorandum from Stalin concerning the script of the film Ivan the Terrible, 13 September 1943; speech by Stalin at a meeting of the Orgburo, 9 August 1946; conversation between Stalin and the creators of the film Ivan the Terrible, 26 February 1947: see Maureen Perrie, The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (Basingstoke and New York, 2001).

9. B. S. Ilizarov claims to have found a copy of Fedor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov with notations by Stalin in a library (Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 411).

10. Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was a novelist and playwright. Some of his early plays were staged in the 1920s but were harshly criticized for ideological flaws. Gradually, Bulgakov’s works were banned and he was deprived of his livelihood. Stalin, who liked Bulgakov’s works, gave the writer some support. Bulgakov was given some work, although most of his writing remained prohibited. His best known work, The Master and Margarita, was published many years after Stalin’s death.

11. Letter from Gorky to the head of the Communist youth organization, 14 April 1936. Cited in L. V. Maksimenkov, comp., Bol’shaia tsenzura. Pisateli i zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov. 1917–1956 (Moscow, 2005), p. 413.

12. As mentioned above, in 1934–1936 the head of the Soviet film industry, Boris Shumiatsky, took notes at several dozen film screenings hosted by Stalin for other top Soviet leaders. K. M. Anderson et al., comps., Kremlevskii kinoteatr. 1928–1953 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 919–1053. The quotes in this paragraph are from this volume.

13. Letter from Stalin to members of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, 28 February 1929. Cited in Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, p. 110.

Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold (1874–1940) was a theatrical director and producer and an adherent of revolutionary theatrical experimentation. Meyerhold’s works fell out of favor after the proclamation of the Stalinist doctrine of socialist realism. In 1939 Meyerhold was arrested, and he was shot the following year.

14. Dmitry Dmitryevich Shostakovich (1906–1975) is considered one of the twentieth century’s leading composers. On Stalin’s instructions, he was branded a “formalist” and persecuted in 1936 and 1948. To come to terms with the authorities, Shostakovich was periodically compelled to create “correct,” ideologically acceptable works.

15. V. A. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia Iosifa Stalina. Bol’shie kremlevskie priemy 1930-kh–1970-kh gg. (Moscow, 2011), pp. 282–308.

16. Stalin’s mangling of idioms is difficult to convey in translation. For examples, see Vaiskopf, Pisatel’ Stalin, p. 23.

17. For an example, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 471, l. 16; d. 494, l. 14.

18. Cited in A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 399, 400–401, 409, 413.

19. Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), pp. 30–31.

20. Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006).

Chapter 3. His Revolution

1. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 767, l. 76.

2. Minutes from an 18 January 1928 meeting of the Siberia Krai party leadership attended by Stalin; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 5 (1991): 196–199.

3. Ibid., pp. 199–201.

4. Stalin’s speech at a 20 January 1928 closed meeting of the party leadership of Siberia Krai; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 118, ll. 23–34; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 6 (1991): 203–212.

5. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 119, l. 84.

6. Ibid., l. 106; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1991): 178.

7. Cited in I. I. Ikonnikova and A. P. Ugrovatov, “Stalinskaia repetitsiia nastupleniia na krest’ianstvo,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 1 (1991): 76.

8. Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (1880–1936) was a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party and a Soviet trade union leader after the revolution. In 1922 he took charge of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions and joined the country’s top leadership. After Stalin defeated the rightists, Tomsky was relegated to low-level positions. In 1936, under threat of arrest, he took his own life.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Uglanov (1886–1937) was a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party who held senior posts in Moscow and the provinces after the revolution. In 1924 he was appointed head of Moscow’s party organization, a position that assured him a place at the upper echelons of power. In 1928 he was removed from his post through Stalin’s intrigues, given a low-level position, and subjected to persecution. He was arrested and shot during the Terror.

9. RGASPI, f. 85. These recent additions to the fond have not yet been assigned an opis’: d. 2, ll. 1–11, 28–30.

10. Cited in A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 58.

11. New documents pertaining to the conversation between Bukharin and Kamenev and the circumstances under which it came to light have been published. See V. P. Danilov and O. V. Khlevniuk et al., eds., Kak lomali NEP. Stenogrammy plenumov TsK VKP(b). 1928–1929 gg., vol. 4 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 558–567, 685–699.

12. Speech delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry, 4 February 1931. I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1954), p. 43. The translation has been slightly revised.

13. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 145, ll. 43–54.

14. I borrow the term “war on the peasants” from Andrea Graziosi, The Great Soviet Peasant War: Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917–1933 (Cambridge, MA, 1996).

15. V. P. Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni. Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie. 1927–1939, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 35–78.

16. Ibid., pp. 75–76, 85–86.

17. Ibid., p. 11.

18. Ibid., pp. 703, 789. See also Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York and Oxford, 1996).

19. In the 1960s V. P. Danilov had an opportunity to acquaint himself with the relevant Politburo archive documents, which have still not been made generally available to historians; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, p. 833.

20. Ibid., pp. 279, 324. Lynne Viola et al., eds., Riazanskaia derevniia v 1929–1930 gg. Khronika golovokruzheniia (Moscow, 1998).

21. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, p. 270.

22. Ibid., pp. 303–305.

23. Ibid., p. 804. According to OGPU figures for 1930, 2.5 million people took part in the 10,000 disturbances (out of 13,800) for which an estimate was made. Assuming an average of 245 people per disturbance, we arrive at a figure of 3.4 million people for all 13,800 incidents. It should be borne in mind, however, that the OGPU data were probably not complete.

24. Cited in V. Vasil’ev and L. Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie na Ukraine (Vinnitsa, 1997), pp. 213–219, 221.

25. RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1c, d. 125, l. 2; Vasil’ev and Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie, p. 233.

26. V. N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR. 1930–1960 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 16, 20.

27. Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (New York, 2007).

28. R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S. G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 289.

29. Speech to a Central Committee plenum, 7 January 1933. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, pp. 161–217.

30. O. Latsis, “Problema tempov v sotsialisticheskom stroitel’stve,” Kommunist, no. 18 (1987): 83.

31. R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 412–415.

32. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985).

33. On proposals submitted to Stalin in 1932 to introduce fixed grain procurement norms, see N. A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie (nachalo 30-kh godov) (Moscow, 1994), p. 191.

34. Politburo resolution, 29 April 1932; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 115.

35. Judging by reports from the head of the Procurement Committee to Stalin, as of 1 July 1933—i.e., before the deliveries of grain from the 1933 harvest—Soviet grain reserves, including all grain cultures, totaled approximately 1.4 million metric tons, including more than 1 million tons of grains for human consumption (APRF [Archive of the President of the Russian Federation], f. 3, op. 40, d. 27, ll. 123, 133). Davies and Wheatcroft found these figures in the archives of the Procurement Committee (The Years of Hunger, p. 229). It is known that peasant households in Russia annually consumed an average of 262 kilograms of grain per capita. That figure suggests that these reserves would have been sufficient to provide normal rations for approximately 4 million people for an entire year or even more people at below-standard rations. Even more striking is the quantity of grain exported during the famine. Although the government was forced to cut back, grain exports still totaled 1.8 million tons in 1932 and 223,000 tons during the first half of 1933 (Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 3, pp. 33–34; Davies and Wheat-croft, The Years of Hunger, p. 440).

36. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven and London, 2004), p. 62; Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, p. 20.

37. While formally part of the Russian Federation, the North Caucasus was geographically, economically, and ethnically (due to a significant Ukrainian population) tied to Ukraine.

38. Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger, pp. 448–449, 470.

39. Cited in Iu. Murin, comp., Pisatel’ i vozhd’. Perepiska M. A. Sholokhova s I. V. Stalinym. 1931–1950 gody (Moscow, 1997), p. 68.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984) has been called a classic writer of Soviet literature and enjoyed Stalin’s particular patronage. Despite his success, Sholokhov continued to live in his native village in the Don region of Russia, a location that exposed him to the realities of collectivization and the Terror. On several occasions Sholokhov appealed directly to Stalin for help.

40. R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven, 2003), pp. 179–181.

41. Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin: Profiles in Power (New York, 2005), pp. 111–112. Historians continue to argue about the anti-Ukrainian nature of the famine and whether it represents a case of genocide. See, for example, Andrea Graziosi, Stalinism, Collectivization and the Great Famine (Cambridge, MA, 2009).

42. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, pp. 253–254.

43. Stalin was referring to a law enacted 7 August 1932 that provided for draconian penalties, including execution, for stealing kolkhoz property.

44. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 799, ll. 24–25, 30–31. A transcript of these discussions was first published in 1951: I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1951), pp. 260–273. The published version of the text was redacted and the discussion of the state of the countryside cited here was cut.

45. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 3, pp. 527–528, 661–665.

46. Cited in Murin, Pisatel’ i vozhd’, pp. 28–58.

47. Ibid., pp. 68, 145–147.

48. Within the party, many people knew of Trotsky’s speeches. They were even quoted at the January 1933 Central Committee plenum, albeit labeled as “slanderous” (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514. vyp. 1, l. 55).

49. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp. 56, 57–58, 68.

50. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 779, l. 47.

51. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, ll. 154–155; G. M. Adibekov et al., eds., Politbiuro TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b) i Evropa. Resheniia ‘osoboi papki’ (Moscow, 2001), pp. 305–306.

52. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 13, p. 252.

53. Davies, Harrison, and Wheatcroft, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, p. 127.

54. RGASPI., f. 17, op. 2, d. 530. ll. 78–98.

55. Khlevniuk. History of the Gulag, p. 63.

56. Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (New York, 1996), pp. 153–195.

57. APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 71, ll. 11–31.

58. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 16, ll. 88–89. Subsequently, Aleksei Seliavkin fared relatively well. He survived the repression of 1937–1938 and fought in World War II, earning the rank of colonel. He even managed to publish his memoirs in the early 1980s (A. I. Seliavkin, V trekh voinakh na bronevikakh i tankakh [Kharkov, 1981]), a testament to the position of respect he held in Soviet society.

59. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp. 121–123.

60. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 17, l. 31; V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Ianvar’ 1922–dekabr’ 1936 (Moscow, 2003), p. 566; V. N. Khaustov and L. Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii. 1936–1938 (Moscow, 2009), p. 70.

61. A major part in promoting such accounts was played by the works of Roy Medvedev. See, for example, Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origin and Consequences of Stalinism (New York, 1972).

62. For more details, see Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven and London, 2008), pp. 108–116.

63. An examination of the most important evidence is offered in Matthew E. Lenoe, The Kirov Murder and Soviet History (New Haven and London, 2010). My discussion of this event relies heavily on this highly professional and detailed study and on A. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 2001).

64. One of the most recent publications on this subject is based on documents from the archives of the RF Federal Protection Service, the agency responsible for protecting senior officials. See S. Deviatov et al., “Gibel’ Kirova. Fakty i versii,” Rodina, no. 3 (2005): 64.

65. Cited in F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 310.

66. Cited in Voprosy istorii, no. 2 (1995): 16–17.

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (1895–1940) played a central role in carrying out Stalin’s plans for the mass purges and repression in 1935–1938. Yezhov initially oversaw this campaign in his capacity as the Central Committee secretary charged with monitoring the NKVD. In late 1936 he was placed directly in charge of the organization. Under Stalin’s guidance, Yezhov conducted the large-scale repressive operations of 1937–1938 that constituted the core of the Great Terror. After carrying out the duties that had been placed on his shoulders, Yezhov was arrested and shot.

Aleksandr Vasilyevich Kosarev (1903–1939) was head of the Komsomol, the Soviet youth organization. He was arrested in 1938 and shot in 1939.

67. A. N. Artizov et al., comps., Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 546, 548–549, and vol. 3 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 491–492.

68. Nikolaev’s relatives also met tragic fates. Almost all of them—his mother, two sisters, his younger sister’s husband, his brother’s wife, and, in addition to Milda Draule herself, her sister, her sister’s husband, and even Nikolaev’s neighbor—were shot or perished in prison (Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, p. 367).

69. Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (1891–1938) served as deputy chairman of the OGPU beginning in 1923 and as people’s commissar for internal affairs (NKVD chief) from 1934 to 1936. He was arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938.

70. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia, vol. 3, pp. 466–467. Nikolaev officially registered his revolver in 1924 and 1930.

71. Ibid., pp. 490, 499.

72. Ibid., p. 493.

73. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, pp. 344–347; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia, vol. 3, pp. 494–498.

74. Cited in Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), p. 168.

75. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1052, l. 152.

76. Ibid., ll. 152, 153. For the complete text of Stalin’s memorandum, see ibid., f. 71, op. 10, d. 130, ll. 13–15.

77. Cited in Pravda, 2 December 1935.

78. From the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 173–175.

79. Speech at the March 1937 Central Committee plenum; cited in Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1995): 14.

80. D. A. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Moscow, 1989), p. 249.

81. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1989): 86–93.

82. Avel Safronovich Yenukidze (1877–1937) was a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party who became friends with Stalin when they were both working in the revolutionary underground in Transcaucasia. After the revolution Yenukidze held a senior post in the Soviet parliament. Among his duties was accommodating the material needs of the top Soviet leadership. In that post he developed a reputation as someone who enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, and it probably contributed to his fall from favor. In 1935 he was removed from his senior post based on fabricated charges and in 1937 he was shot.

83. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, pp. 599, 601–612, 618–619, 626–637, 638–650, 663–669.

84. An account of the relationship between these two men is offered in Oleg V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze (New York, 1995).

85. Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky (1893–1937) was a Bolshevik hero of the Civil War who had held senior posts in the Red Army before being appointed deputy to the people’s commissar for defense, Kliment Voroshilov, with whom he had numerous run-ins. Stalin and many other Soviet military leaders were suspicious of Tukhachevsky as a potential conspirator because of his long years serving under Trotsky. Tukhachevsky and many of his fellow military leaders were shot based on fabricated political charges.

86. Khaustov and Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i represii, pp. 106–121.

Trepidation in the Inner Circle

1. On this point the bodyguards’ accounts are fully consistent with Khrushchev’s. See Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 147; Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives (New York, 1997), p. 573.

2. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, p. 147.

3. Radzinsky, Stalin, p. 573.

4. A. L. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina (Moscow, 2011), pp. 302, 304–305.

5. Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich (1893–1991) was one of Stalin’s closest associates in the 1930s. Beginning in 1931 he essentially acted as Stalin’s deputy in party matters. Before the war his political influence was somewhat diminished, and he was sent to work in economic posts, but because of his boundless devotion to Stalin, he continued to be a part of the inner circle. In 1957 he opposed Khrushchev’s ascent and was forced into retirement. He lived to be almost one hundred and remained a confirmed Stalinist until his death. See E. A. Rees, Iron Lazar: A Political Biography of Lazar Kaganovich (London and New York, 2012).

6. Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky (1903–1950) was a member of the post-revolutionary generation of Stalinist functionaries. He joined the party after the Civil War, studied at Moscow’s Institute of the Red Professoriat, and went on to hold several government posts. Voznesensky’s career benefited from his time working directly under Andrei Zhdanov in Leningrad. When Zhdanov was promoted to the top leadership, he took his clients with him. Voznesensky also benefited from all the job openings created by mass repression. In 1938 he was appointed to head the State Planning Commission, and in 1941 he became Stalin’s first deputy chairman at the Council of People’s Commissars. After the war he became a member of the country’s top leadership, but after Zhdanov’s death in 1948 he, along with Zhdanov’s other protégés, began to lose influence. In 1949 Stalin arranged the series of fabricated cases that constituted the Leningrad Affair. Voznesensky was arrested and shot.

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov (1905–1950) also rose to prominence under Zhdanov’s patronage. He held many party posts in Leningrad and was transferred to Moscow after the war. There he became a Central Committee secretary and was placed in charge of CC personnel matters. He was arrested and shot in association with the Leningrad Affair.

7. M. A. Men’shikov, S vintovkoi i vo frake (Moscow, 1996), p. 138.

8. Note from Ignatiev to Beria dated 27 March 1953; cited in N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), p. 299.

9. K. M. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), pp. 341–343.

10. Pavel Sudoplatov claims that in 1950 Stalin ordered that listening devices be installed to spy on Molotov and Mikoyan (Pavel Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster [New York, 1994], p. 332). Even if Sudoplatov is mistaken about the time and target of this eavesdropping, the very mention of such orders by Stalin reflects an actual phenomenon recalled by this highly placed security official.

11. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 160–161. Quoted from Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York, 2004), p. 83.

12. Interview with V. G. Trukhanovsky in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 6 (1994): 78–79.

13. Cited in O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), p. 399. See also Yoram Gorlizki, “Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet Neopatrimonial State, 1946–1953,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 723–725.

14. Cited in Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 409.

15. O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Regional’naia politika Khrushcheva. TsK VKP(b) i mestnye partinye komitety. 1953–1964 (Moscow, 2009), p. 161.

16. In early 1951 Soviet ministers were paid a monthly salary of twenty thousand rubles, and their deputies received ten thousand (RGANI, f. 5, op. 25, d. 279, l. 17). Other senior officials in Moscow and around the country received salaries totaling several thousand rubles, as well as significant perquisites. L. V. Maksimenkov, comp., Bol’shaia tsenzura. Pisateli i zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov. 1917–1956 (Moscow, 2005), p. 627, describes fees totaling in the millions of rubles paid to writers. For comparison, the average per capita income of a peasant household in 1950 was less than one hundred rubles per month (V. P. Popov, Rossiiskaia derevnia posle voiny [iiun’ 1945–mart 1953] [Moscow, 1993], p. 146). Meanwhile, many top officials were not subject to taxes, while the tax burden on the population at large was constantly growing.

17. Cited in Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, p. 89.

18. N. Fedorenko, “Nochnye besedy,” Pravda, 23 October 1988, p. 4.

19. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 113, 118.

Chapter 4. Terror and Impending War

1. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s (New York, 1968). The orders and other documents associated with the large-scale operations of 1937–1938 have been published in English translation (see Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the Great Terror [New Haven and London, 2004], pp. 140–165). By now there is a vast literature outlining the mechanism by which the Terror was carried out. Among general works on the subject available in English are J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, eds., The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939, updated and abridged edition (New Haven, 2010); David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven and London, 2009); Paul Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police: Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, 2009).

2. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. R-9401, op. 1, d. 4157, ll. 201–205. These figures have appeared in numerous publications. See, for example, Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp. 165–170, 289–290.

3. Note written by Stalin on a telegram from the NKVD chief for Sverdlovsk Oblast; dated 10 September 1937; cited in V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i Glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD. 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 348–351.

4. Instructions to Yezhov (most likely), dated 13 September 1937; ibid., p. 352.

5. Note written by Stalin on a progress report from Yezhov concerning the “operation to liquidate Polish espionage cadres”; dated 14 September 1937; ibid., pp. 352–359.

6. Stalin’s instructions written in response to an NKVD summary of testimony by arrestees; dated 30 April 1938; ibid., pp. 527–537.

7. Stalin’s instructions written in response to an NKVD report on a “terrorist group” within the rubber industry; dated 2 September 1938; ibid., pp. 546–547.

8. Cited in N. S. Tarkhova et al., comps., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR. 1–4 iiunia 1937 g. (Moscow, 2008), p. 137.

9. Cited in V. A. Nevezhin, comp., Zastol’nye rechi Stalina. Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, 2003), pp. 132–135.

10. Rozengolts was arrested on 7 October 1937; V. N. Khaustov and L. Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii. 1936–1938 (Moscow, 2009), pp. 138–139.

11. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 20, l. 87.

12. APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 90; Oleg Khlevniuk, “The Reasons for the ‘Great Terror’: The Foreign-Political Aspect,” in Russia in the Age of Wars 1914–1945, ed. Silvio Pons and Andrea Romano (Milan, 2000), pp. 165–166.

13. APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 223, l. 142.

14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 772, l. 14.

15. Ibid., l. 88.

16. “Stenogramma zasedanii fevral’sko-martovskogo plenuma 1937 g.,” Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1995): 13–14.

17. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, ll. 62, 77–78.

18. Cited in Tarkhova et al., Voennyi sovet pri narodnom komissare oborony SSSR, p. 133.

19. Edward Hallet Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (London and Basingstoke, 1984), p. 44.

20. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 21, l. 157; N. F. Bugai, “Vyselenie sovetskikh koreitsev s Dal’nego Vostoka,” Voprosy istorii, no. 5 (1994): 144.

21. F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), pp. 390, 391, 416.

22. L. M. Kaganovich, Pamiatnye zapiski (Moscow, 1996), pp. 549, 558.

23. Cited in A. S. Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (Moscow, 1987), p. 212.

24. The discovery of “counterrevolutionary groups” (rather than lone enemies) was one of the primary goals of the process of extracting confessions from arrestees.

25. Cited in Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, p. 163.

26. A detailed study of Stalin’s role in organizing the Terror has been done using a vast body of archival documents. See Khaustov and Samuel’son, Stalin, NKVD i repressii.

27. These calculations were made based on the clerical numbering of Yezhov’s reports published in Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i Glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD. I am grateful to N. V. Petrov, who pointed out the possibility of using this source.

28. Oleg V. Khlevniuk. Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven and London, 2008), p. 270.

29. RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 265, l. 22.

30. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1992): 125–128.

31. Official figures for industrial growth gave 28.7 percent for 1936, 11.2 percent for 1937, and 11.8 percent for 1938. Economists have calculated that using modern methods, these figures would correspond to 10.4, 2.3, and 1.1 percent growth respectively. See R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S. G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 302–303.

32. During 1937–1938 a total of thirty-five thousand commanders were discharged from the Red Army (not including the air force and navy). Many of them were arrested. As of early 1940, approximately eleven thousand of them had been returned to the army, so approximately twenty-four thousand were lost. A sense of the scale of this attenuation can be gained by comparing these figures to the number of graduates of military colleges and academies during the three-year period of 1935–1937: slightly more than twenty-seven thousand (Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 1 [1990]: 186–189). It goes without saying that the officers who had been discharged, arrested, and then returned to duty suffered serious emotional trauma that affected their performance. Furthermore, the fear that they too could be arrested surely also had an effect on those who were not.

33. GARF, R-8131, op. 37, d. 112, l. 16.

34. Cited in A. I. Kartunova, “1938-i. Poslednii god zhizni i deiatel’nosti marshala V. K. Bliukhera,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 1 (2004): 175.

35. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 17.

36. Stenographic record of the Eighteenth Party Congress; XVIII s"ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b). 10–21 marta 1939 g. (Moscow, 1939), pp. 12–15.

37. Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov (1876–1951), who joined what would become the Bolshevik party long before the revolution, served the cause of Soviet foreign affairs in one capacity or another most of his adult life. After years as deputy commissar and then commissar, he fell into disgrace in the late 1930s. During the war, Stalin decided to take advantage of the ties Litvinov had developed in the West and the reputation he enjoyed there and appointed him Soviet ambassador to the United States. Toward the war’s end Litvinov was dismissed for the final time, but he was never arrested and was allowed to live out his life.

38. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 534.

39. S. Z. Sluch, “Stalin i Gitler, 1933–1941: Raschety i proschety Kremlia,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (2005): 98–119.

40. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d. 592, l. 107.

41. Cited in G. Ia. Rudoi, comp., Otkroveniia i priznaniia. Natsistskaia verkhushka o voine “tret’ego reikha” protiv SSSR (Moscow, 1996), p. 65.

42. V. G. Komplektov et al., eds., Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR. 1939, vol. 22 (Moscow, 1992), vol. 1, p. 624; vol. 2, p. 585. This correspondence was also preserved in Stalin’s personal archive: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 296, ll. 1–3.

43. Cited in S. Z. Sluch, “Rech’ Stalina, kotoroi ne bylo,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (2004): 114. In this article Sluch provides a detailed history of this alleged speech and persuasively argues that it was a fake.

44. Cited in G. M. Adibekov et al., eds., Politbiuro TsK RKP(b) VKP(b) i Komintern. 1919–1943. Dokumenty (Moscow, 2004), pp. 780–781.

45. Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski, eds., Katyn: A Crime without Punishment (New Haven and London, 2007).

46. Alfred Bilmanis, comp., Latvian-Russian Relations: Documents (Washington, D.C., 1944), pp. 196–197.

47. Cited in L. E. Reshin et al., comps., 1941 god, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1998), pp. 595–596.

48. Notation by Stalin on a coded message from Belarusian Central Committee secretary Ponomarenko to Stalin; dated 13 November 1939; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 66, l. 13.

49. O. A. Rzheshevskii and O. Vekhviliainen, eds., Zimniaia voina 1939–1940 (Moscow, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 324–325.

50. Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar (University Park, PA, 2004), p. 266.

51. Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, p. 236.

52. Soviet transcripts of Molotov’s conversations with Hitler and von Ribbentrop on 13 November 1940 have been published in G. E. Mamedov et al., eds., Dokumenty vneshnei politiki (Moscow, 1998), vol. 23, bk. 2, pt. 1, pp. 63–78.

53. Ibid., pp. 135–137.

54. G. A. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym (Smolensk, 2001), pp. 463–470.

55. According to Chadaev in ibid., the chairman of Gosplan, Nikolai Voznesensky, was also at the meeting. At the time, Voznesensky was not yet a Politburo member.

56. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), pp. 317–318.

57. Aleksandr Sergeevich Shcherbakov (1901–1945) was a member of the post-revolutionary generation that Stalin placed in charge of propaganda within the Central Committee apparat. In 1938 he was made first secretary of Moscow’s party organization as well as a Central Committee secretary. Shcherbakov died at an early age.

58. Remarks by Stalin at a meeting on 17 January 1941 as recorded by V. A. Malyshev in his diary; cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (1997): 114.

59. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 346.

60. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, ll. 176–176ob.

61. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 5 (1994): 222.

62. Cited in Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, “Stalin and His Circle,” in The Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 248.

63. Stalin actually spoke at this reception several times, but for simplicity’s sake, I will treat these remarks as a single speech. The stenographic record of Stalin’s remarks has not been preserved, but several witnesses describe him as saying essentially the same thing. See Nevezhin, Zastol’nye rechi Stalina, pp. 273–296.

64. Speech by Stalin at a meeting of Moscow and Leningrad propagandists; Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 5 (1994): 13.

65. E. N. Kul’kov and O. A. Rzheshevskii, eds., Zimniaia voina 1939–1940 (Moscow, 1999), vol. 2, pp. 281–282.

66. Debate around this topic has become particularly active over the past twenty years. Overall, the numerous arguments in favor of the idea that Stalin was planning a preventive strike—some of which appear to be politically motivated—do not seem to warrant serious attention, but this theory has generated a number of works presenting interesting evidence and arguments. I make use of statistical data offered in a study by Mikhail Meltiukhov, although I am not convinced by his overall argument. See M. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina. Sovetskii Soiuz i bor’ba za Evropu. 1939–1941 (Moscow, 2002).

67. Ibid., pp. 360, 392–393.

68. Davies, Harrison, and Wheatcroft, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, p. 321.

69. Mel’tiukhov, Upushennyi shans Stalina, pp. 392, 393.

70. Cited in E. A. Osokina, Za fasadom “stalinskogo izobiliia” (Moscow, 2008), pp. 272–277.

71. Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 1 (1991): 17.

72. In September 1940, the government permitted such convicts to be sent to the Gulag to serve their prison terms, a violation of its own law (GARF, f. R-5446, op. 57, d. 79, l. 31). These prisoners suffered a terrible fate, and they were not always released after serving the short terms handed down by the courts.

73. From a 15 April 1942 conversation between Stalin and General Nikolai Biriukov, one of the heads of the Main Mechanized Directorate; N. Biriukov, Tanki–frontu. Zapiski sovetskogo generala (Smolensk, 2005), pp. 143–144.

74. Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 54–55.

75. Mel’tiukov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, p. 246; M. Iu. Mukhin, Aviapromyshlennost’ SSSR v 1921–1941 godakh (Moscow, 2006), pp. 154–155, 291–299.

76. David Murphy, who has made a careful study of all available Soviet intelligence reports on the eve of the war, gives Soviet espionage rather high marks. However, he notes an effort on the part of the leaders of Soviet intelligence to adapt their findings to Stalin’s preconceptions. In this regard, Murphy draws historical parallels: the reluctance of the conservative government of Great Britain in the 1930s to properly assess the Nazi threat and the myopic focus of U.S. intelligence on hunting down weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while earlier administrations missed clues of an impending terrorist attack on U.S. soil. See David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven and London, 2005), pp. xviii–xix.

77. Cited in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 382–383.

Patient Number 1

1. Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 148.

2. A. L. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina (Moscow, 2011), pp. 294–295.

3. Ibid., p. 302.

4. B. S. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina (Moscow, 2002), p. 110.

5. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4327, l. 1.

6. Ibid., op. 4, d. 619, ll. 172, 173.

7. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 110.

8. Letter from Stalin to Malinovsky, November 1913; cited in A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 397–398.

9. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, p. 110.

10. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 154, l. 2.

11. Ibid., d. 303, l. 5.

12. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York, 1967), p. 33.

13. No information has been found about Stalin’s travels in the south in 1924, although an August 1924 Politburo decision granted him a two-month vacation; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 459, l. 2.

14. Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalin, pp. 112–113, 118–119.

15. Cited in Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995), p. 91.

16. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, ll. 53–54.

17. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 113.

18. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 69, l. 67ob.

19. Ibid., l. 68.

20. From Valedinsky’s memoirs; cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1998): 68.

21. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 138.

22. Cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1998): 69.

23. Ibid., p. 69; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalin, pp. 112–113.

24. Cited in Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, p. 175.

25. Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), p. 32.

26. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, l. 29.

27. Cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 37.

28. I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1954), p. 136. Translation slightly revised.

29. Cited in O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska. 1931–1936 (Moscow, 2001), p. 180.

30. S. V. Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia. 1921–2011 (Moscow, 2011), p. 157.

31. Letters from Stalin to Yenukidze, dated 16 August and 13 September 1933; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, ll. 38, 40.

32. Letter dated 7 September 1933; cited in A. V. Kvashonkin et al., comps., Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow, 1996), p. 254.

33. From the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 158.

34. Letter to A. I. Ugarov, dated 16 August 1934; cited in A. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 2001), p. 141.

35. From the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 183.

36. From the memoirs of Dr. Valedinsky; cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1998): 70.

37. Ibid., p. 70.

38. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 377, l. 60.

39. Stalin left Moscow on 9 October 1945 and returned 17 December; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), p. 398.

40. Ibid.

41. Deviatov et al., Garazh osobogo naznacheniia, p. 201.

42. Descriptions of Stalin’s lifestyle at his southern dachas can be found in the memoirs of the Georgian party boss Akaky Mgeladze, a young protégé of Stalin who enjoyed his particular favor; A. I. Mgeladze, Stalin. Kakim ia ego znal, (n.p., 2001).

43. Stalin’s medical records; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1483, ll. 1–101; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, pp. 126, 129.

44. M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Litso totalitarizma (Moscow, 1992), p. 60.

45. Cited in Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 117.

46. Mgeladze, Stalin, p. 125.

47. Cited in E. Khodzha [Enver Hoxha], So Stalinym. Vospominaniia (Tirana, 1984), p. 137.

48. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 22.

49. Ibid., pp. 206–207.

50. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina, p. 302.

51. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 207.

52. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina, pp. 304–305.

53. Transcript of a conversation in March 1978 published in F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 324.

Chapter 5. Stalin at War

1. The following descriptions of meetings in Stalin’s office on 21 and 22 June 1941 are based on G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia (Moscow, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 260–269; A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 388; and A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), pp. 337–338.

2. Semen Konstantinovich Timoshenko (1895–1970) was a commander of the First Cavalry Army during the Civil War, in which capacity he worked closely with Stalin. He went on to make a successful military career and, after the debacle in Finland, replaced Voroshilov as defense commissar and was elevated to marshal. However, during the war with Germany, Timoshenko did not prove to be particularly able and was forced into the background. After the war and until his retirement in 1960 he was given secondary posts commanding various military districts.

Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (1896–1974) made a military career after serving with the Red Army during the Civil War. He advanced rapidly through the ranks during the late 1930s, when purges among the officer corps created opportunities. Zhukov proved an able commander during military conflicts with Japan in 1939. Before the war with Germany he was appointed chief of the General Staff. The war proved to be his finest hour. He rose to be one of the Soviet Union’s leading marshals and served as deputy to the commander in chief (Stalin). When it was over, Zhukov fell into disfavor but enjoyed a brief return to prominence after Stalin’s death, serving as defense minister from 1955 to 1957. Khrushchev, however, was wary of the ambitious marshal and forced him into retirement. After Khrushchev was expelled as Soviet leader, Zhukov was allowed to publish his memoirs (the first edition of which came out in 1969). Although they were heavily censored, they remain an important source for historians of the Great Patriotic War (as the war with Germany is known in Russia). Recent editions of his memoirs restore materials excised by the censors, but we will never know to what extent Zhukov self-censored his original manuscript.

3. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 260.

4. Ibid, p. 264

5. Cited in a speech written by Zhukov in May 1956 to be given at a Central Committee plenum that was to be devoted to the Cult of Personality but never took place; cited in Istochnik, no. 2 (1995): 147.

6. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 337.

7. Cited in Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 265.

8. Cited in L. E. Reshin et al., comps., 1941 god (Moscow, 1998), vol. 2, p. 432.

9. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 337.

Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis (1889–1953) was one of Stalin’s assistants in the 1920s, after which he held a number of senior posts and enjoyed Stalin’s wholehearted trust. After war with Germany broke out, Stalin put Mekhlis in charge of the political offices within the Red Army that were supposed to exercise political control over commanders. Mekhlis’s bungling at the front infuriated Stalin but did not undermine his trust in his faithful helper. Mekhlis went on to hold a number of senior posts on various fronts. After the war, he was put in charge of the Ministry of State Control. Poor health forced him into retirement. He died several weeks before Stalin and was buried at the foot of the Kremlin walls, alongside other Soviet leaders and heroes.

10. Cited in Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 265.

11. Reshin et al., 1941 god, p. 431.

12. For versions of Molotov’s speech, see Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 2 (1995): 34–39.

13. John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad (London, 2003), p. 177.

14. Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov (1882–1945) was one of the few Red Army officers to retain Stalin’s trust even as he reached a position of seniority. On the eve of the war with Germany and during its initial phase Shaposhnikov was head of the army’s General Staff and deputy defense commissar, but he had to resign due to illness. He died a few weeks before the fall of Berlin.

15. Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 439–440.

16. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 268.

17. Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 4.

18. M. I. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina. Sovetskii Soiuz i bor’ba za Evropu. 1939–1941 (Moscow, 2002), p. 413.

19. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 340.

20. Memoirs of Chadaev published in Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 2 (2005): 7.

21. Semen Mikhailovich Budenny (1883–1973) commanded the First Cavalry Army during the Civil War and was a supporter of Stalin during this period. He went on to become a marshal and held top military posts, including first deputy people’s commissar of defense.

22. Admiral Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov (1902–1974) was head of the naval commissariat and commander in chief of the navy from 1939 to 1946. After the war he fell into disfavor and was demoted, but in 1951–1953 he was again placed in charge of the naval ministry. He lost command of the navy for good in 1955 after the loss of a battleship.

23. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 36, l. 22; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 6 (1990): 196–197.

24. N. G. Kuznetsov, Nakanune (Moscow, 1989), p. 327.

25. N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), p. 85–93.

26. Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 2 (1995): 29–32; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 6 (1990): 208–209, 212–214.

27. Interview by Georgy Kumanev of I. V. Kovalev, who was serving as deputy commissar for state control when the war broke out and was in charge of rail transport. Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2005): 149–150.

28. Reshin et al., 1941 god, p. 497; F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 52.

29. In his memoirs Zhukov states that Stalin came to the defense commissariat twice (Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, p. 287); however, there are no other sources to corroborate this assertion.

30. Mikoyan’s recollections are reported in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 497–498.

31. Letter to the Soviet leadership from Lavrenty Beria after his arrest in 1953; published in Istochnik, no. 4 (1994): 7; recollections of Anastas Mikoyan published in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 498–499.

32. Cited in Reshin et al., 1941 god, p. 498.

33. Cited in Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym, p. 330.

34. Recollections of Anastas Mikoyan published in Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 498–499.

35. The original text is among Mikoyan’s personal papers, which are held by RGASPI.

36. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 391.

37. Iu. A. Gor’kov, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony postanovliaet (1941–1945) (Moscow, 2002), pp. 30–31.

38. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1990): 208, and no. 8 (1990): 208; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1319, l. 93.

39. Interview of Ivan Peresypkin, wartime communications commissar, by Georgy Kumanev; Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (2003): 65.

40. The speech is cited in Pravda, 3 July 1941.

41. Order by People’s Commissar for Defense Stalin, 28 June 1941. In V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR. 22 iunia 1941 g.–1942 g., vol. 13 (2–2) (Moscow, 1997), pp. 37–38.

42. G. F. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti. Kniga poter’ (Moscow, 2009), pp. 60–61.

43. Conversations between Stalin and commanders in the Western Direction, 26 July 1941; cited in V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1) (Moscow, 1996), pp. 92–93.

44. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 167, d. 60, l. 49.

45. D. A. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1989), p. 167.

46. Cited in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), p. 361.

47. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 492, l. 35; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 213.

48. V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh.” 1939–1946 (Moscow, 2006), pp. 317–318.

49. For the texts of these decisions with changes entered by Stalin, see Vestnik arkhiva Preszidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Voina. 1941–1945 (Moscow, 2010), pp. 37–40.

50. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh,” pp. 317–318.

51. Reshin et al., 1941 god, pp. 476–479.

52. Cited in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (1990): 209.

53. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1993): 45–46.

54. Interview of I. V. Kovalev by Georgy Kumanev published in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2005): 160–161.

55. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 235, l. 123.

56. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. 1, pp. 350–353.

57. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 84.

58. Cited in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), pp. 108–109; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 9 (1990): 199–200.

59. A. M. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni (Moscow, 1978), p. 132.

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Vasilevsky (1895–1977) was a renowned Soviet marshal and leading figure in the Great Patriotic War who served as deputy chief and then chief of the General Staff and commanded Soviet troops in the Far East during the war with Japan. After the war he served as minister of defense.

60. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 85.

61. Interview with Zhukov published in K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), p. 361.

62. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), pp. 175.

63. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, pp. 361–363.

64. Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 1 (1992): 77, and nos. 6–7 (1992): 17; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1941 g., vol. 16 (5–1), pp. 378–379.

65. A. E. Golovanov, Dal’niaia bombardirovochnaia … (Moscow, 2004), p. 78.

66. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1990): 210–211.

67. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 417. Mikoyan writes that this was on 16 October, but he definitely refers to the discussion of the order to evacuate Moscow that was actually adopted on 15 October. This meeting evidently took place in Stalin’s apartment.

68. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1990): 217.

69. Interview with Aleksandr Vasilevsky in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 446.

70. NKVD report dated 21 October 1941; published in Istochnik, no. 5 (1995): 152.

71. M. M. Gorinov et al., comps., Moskva voennaia. 1941–1945. Memuary i arkhivnye dokumenty (Moscow, 1995), p. 550; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 1 (1991): 217.

72. Gorinov et al., Moskva voennaia, pp. 111, 116–119; Mikoian, Tak bylo, pp. 419–420.

73. A. I. Shakhurin, Kryl’ia pobedy (Moscow, 1990), pp. 156–157.

74. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 1 (1991): 215–216, and no. 4 (1991): 210–214; Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 92.

75. S. V. Tochenov, “Volneniia i zabastovki na tekstil’nykh predpriiatiiakh Ivanovskoi oblast osen’iu 1941 goda,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (2004): pp. 42–47; Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 2 (1994): 111–136.

76. Cited in G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia (Moscow, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 26–27.

77. Cited in Pravda, 7 November 1941.

78. S. V. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 2010), p. 87.

79. Ibid., pp. 57–61, 64.

80. Pravda, 8 November 1941.

81. Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’, p. 61.

82. K. M. Anderson et al., comps., Kremlevskii kinoteatr. 1928–1953 (Moscow, 2005), p. 639.

83. Cited in V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2) (Moscow, 1996), pp. 33–35.

84. R. V. Mazurkevich, “Plany i real’nost’,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 2 (1992): 24–25.

85. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, p. 189.

86. Cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (1995): 41.

87. GARF (not yet catalogued). From the memoirs of Yakov Chadaev.

88. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2), pp. 236–239.

89. Interview with Georgy Zhukov in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 366.

90. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, pp. 195–196.

91. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 179.

92. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2), pp. 263–264.

93. After reading this letter, Stalin placed it in his personal archive. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 762, ll. 6–8.

94. K. K. Rokossovskii, Soldatskii dolg (Moscow, 2013), p. 211.

Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (1896–1968) was a much-acclaimed marshal of the Great Patriotic War. He was arrested during the purges and spent 1937–1940 in prison. During the war he was placed in charge of armies and fronts. In 1949–1956 he served as Poland’s minister of defense before holding senior posts in the Soviet ministry. His rather candid memoirs, Soldatskii dolg (A soldier’s duty), were published in 1968 with major excisions. An uncensored edition came out in 1997.

95. Cited in Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942 g., vol. 16 (5–2), pp. 276–279.

96. O. A. Rzheshevskii, Stalin i Cherchill’. Vstrechi. Besedy. Diskussii (Moscow, 2004), pp. 348–383.

97. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, pp. 60–61.

98. Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 65.

99. Aleksei Innokentievich Antonov (1896–1962) was a senior Soviet military officer who served as deputy head of the General Staff during the war years and often reported directly to Stalin.

100. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, pp. 311.

101. A. Eremenko, Gody vozmezdiia (Moscow, 1986), pp. 36, 38; Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), p. 481; Deviatov et al., Moskovskii Kreml’, pp. 184, 186.

102. Perepiska Predsedatelia Soveta Ministrov SSSR s prezidentami SShA i prem’er-ministrami Velikobritanii vo vremia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow, 1957). Stalin’s letter to Churchill is dated 9 August 1943 (vol. 1, pp. 141–142). Stalin’s letter to Roosevelt is dated 8 August 1943 (vol. 2, p. 77).

103. Stalin’s letter to Churchill, 24 June 1943, which he sent that same day to Roosevelt for his information; Perepiska, vol. 2, pp. 72–75.

104. Cited in S. M. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny (Moscow, 1989), p. 148.

105. Golovanov, Dal’niaia bombardirovochnaia, pp. 351–356.

106. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 377, l. 61.

107. Cited in Gorinov et al., Moskva voennaia, pp. 694–695; Istochnik, no. 2 (1995): 138–139.

108. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1997): 66–68.

109. V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv, Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1944–1945, vol. 16 (5–4) (Moscow, 1999), p. 12.

110. For an examination of the populations affected by mass killings in the geographic region between Germany and the Soviet Union by both Stalin and Hitler, see Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).

111. Vestnik arkhiva Preszidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Voina. 1941–1945, pp. 346–348.

112. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh,” p. 405.

113. Alexander Statiev, “The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942–1944: The North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 285–318.

114. V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds., “Osobaia papka” Stalina. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR. 1944–1953 (Moscow, 1994).

115. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 64, l. 167.

116. Ibid., l. 166.

117. Ibid., l. 165

118. Ibid., d. 66, ll. 9–10, 40–46.

119. Ibid., ll. 334–340.

120. Ibid., d. 67, ll. 319–324; d. 68, ll. 268–273.

121. N. M. Naimark, Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

122. Khaustov et al., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh,” pp. 502–504.

123. Cited in M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Litso totalitarizma (Moscow, 1992), p. 82.

124. Transcript of conversations between Stalin and Roosevelt; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 235, l. 8.

125. N. V. Petrov, Po stsenariiu Stalina: Rol’ organov NKVD-MGB SSSR v sovetizatsii stran Tsentral’noi i Vostochnoi Evropy. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2011), pp. 44–52.

126. Cited in V. A. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1943 g., vol. 16 (5–3) (Moscow, 1996), p. 185.

127. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1045, l. 55.

128. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia. Stavka VGK. 1942, vol. 16 (5–2), p. 420.

129. Interview with Aleksandr Vasilevsky in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 446.

130. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, pp. 496–497.

131. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, pp. 102–104. V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv, Velikaia Otechestvennaia. General’nyi shtab v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. 1941, vol. 23 (12–1) (Moscow, 1997), pp. 11–12.

132. From a 2 April 1965 memorandum from Marshal Konev to the Central Committee Presidium; Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, pp. 104, 192; I. S. Konev, Zapiski komanduiushchego frontom (Moscow, 2000), p. 498.

133. Interview with Zhukov in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, p. 377.

134. Konev, Zapiski komanduiushchego frontom, p. 498.

135. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, p. 497.

136. The SNK Bureau’s Commission on Current Issues existed from June 1941 to December 1942. The SNK Bureau met in regular session from December 1942 through August 1945. Background on the establishment of these bodies can be found in RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1326, l. 233; d. 1350, l. 40; d. 1356, ll. 120–121; d. 1406, l. 27.

137. Ibid., d. 1356, ll. 120–121.

138. Ibid., d. 1406, l. 27.

139. State Defense Committee resolution dated 4 February 1942; RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 36, ll. 32–35.

140. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 465.

141. APRF, f. 3, op. 52, d. 251, l. 93.

142. In December 1943, Andrei Andreev, a Central Committee secretary and Politburo member, was appointed people’s commissar for agriculture.

143. APRF, f. 3, op. 52, d. 251, l. 93; Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 466.

144. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1420, l. 136.

145. Bulganin was made a member of the State Defense Committee in place of Voroshilov, with whose performance Stalin was displeased. Ibid., op. 3, d. 1051, l. 44, 46.

146. V. A. Zolotarev, ed., Russkii arkhiv. Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR. 1943–1945 gg., vol. 13 (2–3) (Moscow, 1997), p. 332.

147. Ibid., p. 337–338.

148. David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002).

149. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 417.

150. From notes taken by the head of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, G. G. Karpov, on the meeting between Stalin and the church leaders. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 1–10; M. I. Odintsov, Russkie patriarkhi XX veka (Moscow, 1994), pp. 283–291.

151. Rzheshevskii, Stalin i Cherchill’, p. 420; Michael Ellman, “Churchill on Stalin: A Note,” Europe-Asia Studies 58, no. 6 (September, 2006): 969–970.

152. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 94, ll. 15–27. Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 5 (1993): 123–128.

153. Cited in D. Omel’chuk and S. Iurchenko, “Krymskaia konferentsiia: Neizvestnye stranitsy,” Svododnaia mysl, no. 2 (2001): 122–123.

154. Perepiska, vol. 2, pp. 204, 205; V. Pechatnov, Stalin, Ruzvel’t, Trumen: SSSR i SShA v 1940-kh gg. (Moscow, 2006), pp. 305–306.

155. Perepiska, vol. 2, pp. 211, 212; Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., comp., Correspondence between Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill and Atlee during World War II (Honolulu, 2001), p. 214.

156. Secret telegram from Joseph Stalin to Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of the Battle of Berlin; Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2000): 180–181.

157. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti, p. 171.

158. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, p. 265.

159. V. A. Zolotarev and G. N. Sevast’ianov, eds., Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina. 1941–1945. Voenno-istoricheskie ocherki, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1999), p. 279.

160. Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 99.

Family

1. A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina? (Moscow, 2002), pp. 235–236.

2. This letter was included in a summary of incoming correspondence prepared for Stalin and then sent to Bulganin, evidently so he could look into granting the requests for assistance; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 895, l. 59.

3. Ostrovskii, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina?, p. 249.

4. Ibid., pp. 251–252.

5. Ibid., pp. 308–309, 329, 332–334.

6. Ibid., pp. 340–341.

7. Cited in ibid., pp. 349, 357.

8. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 10 (1989): 190.

9. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 8 (1991): 150.

10. Cited in Iu. G. Murin, comp., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993), pp. 7–8.

11. Ibid., p. 154.

12. Ibid., p. 22.

13. Cited in V. A. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia Iosifa Stalina. Bol’shie kremlevskie priemy 1930-kh–1970-kh gg. (Moscow, 2011), p. 279.

14. “Pis’ma N. S. Alliluevoi Z. G. Ordzhonikidze,” Svobodnaia mysl’, no. 5 (1993): 74.

15. Letter from Nadezhda Allilueva to Maria Svanidze, 11 January 1926; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 154.

16. Ibid., pp. 22–40.

17. Simon Sebag Montefiore explores possible scenarios of what took place that evening in the prologue to his book Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London, 2003).

18. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 786, ll. 123–124.

19. According to the diary of Maria Svanidze; cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, p. 177.

20. Ibid., pp. 157–158.

21. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York, 1967), pp. 151–152.

22. Cited in R. W. Davies et al., eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven, 2003), pp. 297, 304.

23. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 151.

24. The discussion of Vasily’s relationship with Stalin is based on Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 54–65, 68–69.

25. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 93, ll. 276–278; V. N. Khaustov et al., comps., Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh.” 1939–1946 (Moscow, 2006), pp. 493–494; Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 92–93.

26. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 69–89, 96–100.

27. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, p. 180.

28. Cited in Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiiakh sem’i, pp. 91–92.

Chapter 6. The Generalissimo

1. Cited in Pravda, 25 May 1945.

2. Letter from G. Tsydenov, 23 October 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 865, l. 6.

3. Letter dated 16 February 1946; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 867, ll. 14–15; E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 612–613.

4. The summary of incoming correspondence that included quotes from this letter features a notation by Poskrebyshev: “Archive.” It could only have been made on Stalin’s instructions since a number of other letters from the summary were sent to be taken care of by the appropriate official; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 867, ll. 1–2.

5. Pravda, 14 March 1946.

6. G. F. Krivosheev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia bez grifa sekretnosti. Kniga poter’ (Moscow, 2009), p. 42. Without citing a source, Dmitri Volkogonov states that in January 1946 Stalin was given a figure of 15 million dead, including 7.5 million soldiers killed, dying of wounds, or missing in action; Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1991), p. 505. It has not been possible to verify this information.

7. For the original of Stalin’s letter, edited in his own hand, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 794, ll. 85–89. The letter was published in the magazine Bol’shevik in 1947 (no. 3, pp. 6–8).

8. From a coded telegram from Stalin to Molotov, Beria, Malenkov, and Mikoyan dated 10 November 1945; cited in L. V. Maksimenkov, comp., Bol’shaia tsenzura. Pisateli i zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov. 1917–1956 (Moscow, 2005), pp. 556–557.

9. Pravda, 23 September 1946.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (1895–1958) was a popular satirical writer and playwright. The scathing criticism to which he was subjected in 1946 led to his being deprived of the right to publish. After Stalin’s death he was given work writing for magazines but was still a target of discrimination. The 1946 decree criticizing Zoshchenko and Akhmatova was rescinded only in the late 1980s during Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1889–1966) was among Russia’s most important poets. Under Stalin, she was subjected to ongoing persecution. Her first husband was shot and the second died in a labor camp, and her only son spent many years in a camp. A number of anti-Stalinist works by Akhmatova are famous, her poetic cycle Requiem first and foremost.

10. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 732, ll. 1–19.

11. Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science (Princeton, 1997); V. D. Esakov and E. S. Levina, Stalinskie “sudy chesti”: “Delo KR” (Moscow, 2005).

12. Cited in V. Pechatnov, Stalin, Ruzvel’t, Trumen: SSSR i SShA v 1940-kh gg. (Moscow, 2006), pp. 392–393.

13. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 382, l. 45; Pechatnov, Stalin, Ruzvel’t, Trumen, p. 421.

14. G. Procacci and G. Adibekov et al., eds., The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949 (Milan, 1994), pp. 225–226.

15. Eugene Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952 (Chapel Hill, 1980), pp. 347–348.

16. N. Vert and S. V. Mironenko, eds., Istoriia stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov, vol. 1: Massovye repressii v SSSR (Moscow, 2004), p. 610.

17. A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, comps., GULAG. 1917–1960 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 435, 447; V. N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930–1960 (Moscow, 2003), p. 225.

18. The total population of the USSR at the beginning of 1953 was 188 million; V. P. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika sovetskogo gosudarstva. 1946–1953 gg. (Moscow and Tambov, 2000), p. 16.

19. V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds., “Osobaia papka” Stalina. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR. 1944–1953 (Moscow, 1994).

20. E. Iu. Zubkova, Pribaltika i Kreml’ (Moscow, 2008), p. 256; V. Naumov and Iu. Sigachev, comps., Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Stenogramma iul’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1999), p. 47.

21. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1481, l. 45.

22. Ibid., d. 97, ll. 35–36.

23. Ibid., ll. 96–99.

24. V. O. Pechatnov, “‘The Allies Are Pressing on You to Break Your Will.…’ Foreign Policy Correspondence between Stalin and Molotov and Other Politburo Members, September 1945–December 1946,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 26 (September 1999).

25. Ibid., p. 2.

26. Cited in ibid., p. 4.

27. O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), pp. 198–199.

28. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 771, ll. 9–10.

29. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 195, 196.

30. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 771, l. 11.

31. Ibid., ll. 7–8.

32. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 195. This conflict is also described in Pechatnov, “‘The Allies Are Pressing on You to Break Your Will,’” pp. 8–15.

33. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 196–197.

34. Cited in ibid., pp. 197–198.

35. Ibid., pp. 198–199.

36. Ibid., p. 200.

37. Ibid., pp. 24–25, 38.

38. Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov (1895–1953) was a longtime aid to Beria who had come with him to Moscow in 1938 and was appointed his first deputy at the NKVD. In 1943 Merkulov was in charge of the State Security Commissariat, which had been made into a separate agency outside of the internal affairs commissariat (the NKVD). After being removed from this post amid scandal, he still held high-level positions and during Stalin’s final years headed the State Control Ministry. As a client of Beria, he was arrested and shot in late 1953 after Beria himself.

39. Viktor Semenovich Abakumov (1908–1954) rose through the state security ranks and during the war served as Stalin’s deputy at the defense commissariat in charge of military counterintelligence. In 1946–1951 he served as state security minister before being arrested in 1951. Even after Stalin’s death he was shot rather than being released from prison.

40. Memorandum from Merkulov dated 23 July 1953; cited in V. A. Kozlov, ed., Neizvestnaia Rossiia XX vek, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1993), p. 73.

41. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 442, ll. 202–206; V. Naumov et al., comps., Georgii Zhukov. Stenogramma oktiabr’skogo (1957 g.) plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 2001), pp. 16–17.

42. A. G. Zverev, Zapiski ministra (Moscow, 1973), pp. 231–234.

43. Iu. I. Kashin, comp., Po stranitsam arkhivnykh fondov Tsentral’nogo banka Rossiiskoi Federatsii, vol. 3 (Moscow, 2007), pp. 31–32.

44. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika sovetskogo gosudarstva, pp. 83–88. A key memorandum by Zverev dated 8 October 1946 and providing an overview of the experience of the 1922–1924 Soviet currency reform, including notations by Stalin, has been published in Istochnik, no. 5 (2001): 21–47. The memorandum is held in the APRF.

45. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), p. 617.

46. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1506, l. 22.

47. Kashin, Po stranitsam arkhivnykh fondov Tsentral’nogo banka, vol. 3, pp. 96–97.

48. E. Iu. Zavadskaia and T. V. Tsarevskaia, “Denezhnaia reforma 1947 goda: Reaktsiia naseleniia. Po dokumentam iz ‘osobykh papok’ Stalina,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 6 (1997): 135–137.

49. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, pp. 561–564.

50. Ibid., p. 564–567.

51. Iu. Aksenov and A. Uliukaev, “O prostykh resheniiakh neprostykh problem. Denezhnaia reforma 1947 goda,” Kommunist, no. 6 (1990): 83.

52. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, pp. 495–496.

53. Istochnik, no. 5 (2001): 51.

54. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 529.

55. “On Per Person Norms for Sales of Food and Manufactured Goods”; USSR Council of Ministers Resolution No. 3867, dated 14 December 1947; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 1, d. 316, ll. 288–289. These limits remained in effect until 1958.

56. Aksenov and Uliukaev, “O prostykh resheniiakh neprostykh problem,” pp. 84–85.

57. Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton, 2004), p. 314.

58. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 578.

59. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 122, d. 308, l. 183.

60. Ibid., op. 88, d. 900, l. 178.

61. Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 77–116.

62. In recent years a huge number of documents pertaining to the sovietization of Eastern Europe and Stalin’s role in this process has been published. For a multifaceted study of these questions, see T. V. Volokitina et al., Moskva i Vostochnaia Evropa. Stanovlenie politicheskikh rezhimov sovetskogo tipa (1949–1953) (Moscow, 2008).

63. Ibid., pp. 430–550.

64. For a more in-depth account, see Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York, 2004), pp. 79–89.

65. Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 67.

66. For an interpretation of the Leningrad Affair as Stalin’s response to the spread and strengthening of patron-client relations within the Soviet nomenklatura, see Benjamin Tromly, “The Leningrad Affair and Soviet Patronage Politics, 1949–1950,” Europe-Asia Studies 56, no. 5 (July 2004): 707–729.

67. Cited in F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (Moscow, 1991), p. 475.

68. Voting was carried out by opros (polling); in other words, members voted remotely, not while they were seated together in a Politburo meeting. According to the tally compiled by Poskrebyshev, who handled most of the clerical aspects of Politburo resolutions, Stalin, Bulganin, Voroshilov, Voznesensky, Shvernik, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Andreev, Beria, Malenkov, and Kosygin voted in favor of expelling Zhemchuzhina from the party. “Com. Molotov abstained”; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1518, l. 162.

69. Ibid., l. 164; Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 313.

70. Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven, 2001).

71. Cited in Vestnik arkhiva prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Voina 1941–1945 (Moscow, 2010), p. 333.

72. Letter from Gorbenko, a member of the military, dated 15 July 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 863, ll. 79–86.

73. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, 2004), p. 297.

74. Letter from military journalist S. A. Lifshits dated March 1949; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 876, l. 15; f. 17, op. 132, d. 118, ll. 1–3.

75. From the diary of People’s Commissar V. A. Malyshev, who was present at the meeting; cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (1997): 140–141.

76. This and subsequent excerpts from documents pertaining to preparations for Mao’s visit are quoted, with minor modifications, from Sergey Radchenko and David Wolff, “To the Summit via Proxy-Summits: New Evidence from Soviet and Chinese Archives on Mao’s Long March to Moscow, 1949,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no 16. (Spring 2008): 118–129.

77. A. M. Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia. Dokumenty i svidetel’stva uchastnika sobytii. 1937–1952 (Moscow, 1999), p. 55.

78. Chen Jian, “The Sino-Soviet Alliance and China’s Entry into the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 1 (June 1992), p. 19.

79. A. V. Pantsov, Mao Tzedun (Moscow, 2007), p. 47.

80. Cited in A. V. Pantsov, comp., Mao Tzedun. Avtobiografiia. Stikhi (Moscow, 2008), p. 166.

81. A. M. Ledovskii, “Stalin, Mao Tzedun i koreiskaia voina 1950–1953,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 5 (2005): 106.

82. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 329, ll. 10–17; Chen Jian et al., eds., “Stalin’s Conversations: Talks with Mao Zedong, December 1949–January 1950, and with Zhou Enlai, August–September 1952,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996): 5–7.

83. From the memoirs of Matyas Rakosi; cited in Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 142–143.

84. Odd Arne Westad, “Fighting for Friendship: Mao, Stalin, and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 8–9 (Winter 1996–1997): 227–228; Dieter Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945–1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance (London, 2003), pp. 281–282, 286–289.

85. Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia, p. 143.

86. Cited in N. Fedorenko, “Nochnye besedy,” Pravda, 23 October 1988, p. 4.

87. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 329, l. 51.

88. Fedorenko, “Nochnye besedy.”

89. For a detailed examination of Stalin’s role in the Soviet nuclear project, see David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven, 1996).

90. Letter written to the members of the Soviet leadership by Beria from prison, 1 July 1953; cited in Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, p. 75.

91. Cited in A. V. Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina: Koreiskii konflikt 1950–1953 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 6–8.

92. Kathryn Weathersby, “To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War,” International History Project Bulletin, no 5. (Spring 1995): 7–8.

93. Ibid., p. 9; Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 533.

94. K. Vezersbi [Weathersby], “Sovetskie tseli v Koree, 1945–1950 gg.,” in Kholodnaia voina. Novye podkhody, novye dokumenty, ed. M. M. Narinskii (Moscow, 1995), p. 316.

95. In January 1950 the USSR was boycotting the United Nations, demanding that the new Communist government of China be allowed representation. Starting the war in Korea at a time when the Soviet representative to the Security Council was absent was a clear blunder by Stalin, one of which the United States took full advantage.

96. Cited in Kathryn Weathersby (introduction and translations), “New Russian Documents on the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996): 40.

97. Cited in Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina, p. 97.

98. Cited in Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996): 118. (Bracketed insertion is Mansourov’s.)

99. Cited in Ledovskii, “Stalin, Mao Tzedun i koreiskaia voina,” p. 106.

100. From the memoirs of Matyas Rakosi; cited in Istoricheskii arkhiv, nos. 5–6 (1997): 7–8. The fact that this meeting took place is also confirmed by the defense minister of Czechoslovakia, Alexeje Čepička; Voprosy istorii, no. 10 (1999): 85–86.

101. Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, pp. 668–669.

102. Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE), f. 4372, op. 11, d. 677, ll. 9–10. Figures for military expenditures are for four ministries created after Stalin’s death: defense (which brought together the former defense and naval ministries), defense industry (an updated version of the former armaments ministry), the aviation industry, and medium-machine building. These ministries accounted for the lion’s share (although not all) of military spending.

103. N. S. Simonov, Voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR v 1920–1950-e gody (Moscow, 1996), pp. 210–266.

104. Council of Ministers resolutions dated 9 and 19 February 1953; A. A. Danilov and A. V. Pryzhikov, Rozhdenie sverkhderzhavy. SSSR v pervye poslevoennye gody (Moscow, 2001), pp. 92–93.

105. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 329, ll. 66; Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia, p. 160.

106. A. I. Kokurin and Iu. N. Morukov, Stalinskie stroiki GULAGA. 1930–1953 (Moscow, 2005).

107. RGAE, f. 4372, op. 11, d. 282, l. 66.

108. Narodnoe khoziastvo SSSR. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1956), p. 118.

109. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 882, ll. 57–58.

110. Letter dated 1 November 1952; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 903, ll. 42–46.

111. This undated letter was sent from Stalin’s secretariat for Malenkov to deal with on 4 November 1952; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 901, ll. 39–40.

112. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 551; N. Kovaleva et al., comps., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich. 1957. Stenogramma iiun’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1998), pp. 193–194.

113. On the works of this commission and Stalin’s position on the subject, see Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Cold Peace, pp. 139–140.

114. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 578.

115. RGAE, f. 4372, op. 11, d. 459, ll. 164–170.

116. Kokurin and Petrov, GULAG. 1917–1960, pp. 788–791; RGAE, f. 4372, op. 11, d. 677, l. 9.

117. The inventories did not specify the agency originating the coded telegrams. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 117, ll. 1–173.

118. Ignatiev told this story in testimony given 27 March 1953; N. V. Petrov, Palachi (Moscow, 2011), p. 307.

119. K. A. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow, 1998), p. 163.

120. Ibid., pp. 225–226.

121. Ibid., pp. 167–168.

122. Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, pp. 34–35.

123. For more details, see Timothy Blauvelt, “Abkhazia: Patronage and Power in the Stalin Era,” Nationalities Papers 35, no. 2 (2007): 220, 222–223.

124. Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, pp. 29–40.

125. It was at the Nineteenth Party Congress that the party’s name was officially changed from the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, commonly referred to by the acronym VKP(b), to simply the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or KPSS. This name endured until the party and country were abolished in 1991.

126. Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 573.

127. Ibid., pp. 574–576; Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym, p. 469; L. N. Efremov, Dorogami bor’by i truda (Stavropol, 1998), pp. 12–16.

128. N. Mukhitdinov, Reka vremeni. Ot Stalina do Gorbacheva. Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1995), pp. 88–89.

129. Volokitina et al., Moskva i Vostochnaia Evropa, pp. 558–566.

130. Explanatory memorandum from Ignatiev to Beria dated 27 March 1953; cited in Petrov, Palachi, p. 297.

131. Ibid., pp. 287, 299–300.

132. Cited in V. N. Khaustov et al., comps. Lubianka. Stalin i MGB SSSR. Mart 1946–mart 1953 (Moscow, 2007), pp. 522–523.

133. Cited in N. V. Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow, 2005), p. 124.

134. From a transcript of remarks by Stalin to a commission on reorganizing the Ministry of State Security’s intelligence service, November–December 1952; cited in Istochnik, no. 5 (2001): 132.

135. These press items were edited by Stalin. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 157, ll. 9–14, 29–33; Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 392–397.

136. For a detailed examination of this theory about the deportation of Jews, see G. V. Kostyrchenko, Stalin protiv “kosmopolitov”. Vlast’ i evreiskaia intelligentsiia v SSSR (Moscow, 2009), pp. 329–380.

137. B. S. Klein, “Politika SShA i ‘delo vrachei,’” Voprosy istorii, no. 6 (2006): 35–47.

The Dictatorship Collapses

1. A. A. Chernobaev, ed., Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), p. 553; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), p. 436. When the log of visitors to Stalin’s office was published, Tkachev’s name was mistakenly given as Tolkachev.

2. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 553; Khlevniuk et al., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p. 436.

3. A. L. Miasnikov, Ia lechil Stalina (Moscow, 2011), p. 295.

4. Khlevniuk et al., TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, pp. 436–437.

5. N. Kovaleva et al., comps., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich. 1957. Stenogramma iiun’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1998), pp. 42, 45. The papers were removed when Malenkov’s assistant was arrested.

6. The decisions were recorded in the minutes of the 5 March 1953 joint meeting of the Central Committee plenum, the Council of Ministers, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Istochnik, no. 1 (1994): 107–111.

7. K. M. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1989), pp. 257–258.

8. Ibid., p. 260.

9. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York, 1967), p. 10.

10. Chernobaev, Na prieme u Stalina, p. 553.

11. From Shepilov’s memoirs; cited in Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1998): 15.

12. A. N. Artizov et al., comps., Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo, vol. 1 (Moscow, 2000), p. 19.

13. V. Naumov and Iu. Sigachev, comps., Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Stenogramma iul’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1999), pp. 28–29.

14. Oleg Khlevniuk, “The Economy of the OGPU, NKVD and MVD of the USSR, 1930–1953: The Scale, Structure and Trends of Development,” in The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag, ed. Paul R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev (Stanford, CA, 2003), pp. 54–55.

15. According to official statistics, between 1 January and 1 October 1953 the number of cows increased from 24.3 million to 26 million, and almost 1 million of that increase took place outside of the collective and state farm system. During that same period the number of pigs increased from 28.5 to 47.6 million, including an increase of 12 million in private herds; Narodnoe khoziastvo SSSR. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1956), pp. 119–120. Even with the consideration of possible seasonal fluctuations, these numbers are significant and surely attributable to lower taxes and higher procurement prices.

16. A. V. Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina: Koreiskii konflikt 1950–1953 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 272–279.

17. This directive was largely in response to the large number of defections from East Germany to the West. See Naumov and Sigachev, Lavrentii Beriia, pp. 55–59.

The Funeral

1. Speech by Khrushchev at a dinner in the Bulgarian city of Varna during an official visit on 16 May 1962; cited in Istochnik, no. 6 (2003): 130.

2. Letter dated 10 March 1953 from a group of citizens to the Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet; GARF, f. R-7523, op. 52, d. 18, ll. 94–95.

3. Anonymous letter addressed to Georgy Malenkov, dated 6 March 1953; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1486, l. 157.

4. Ibid., d. 1487, l. 55.

5. Ibid., ll. 66–71.

6. Cited in V. A. Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia XX vek, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1992), pp. 254–258.

7. Cited in V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, 58–10. Nadzornye proizvodstva Prokuratury SSSR po delam ob antisovetskoi agitatsii i propagande. Annotirovannyi katalog. Mart 1953–1991 (Moscow, 1999), pp. 13, 21, 23, 32.

8. There is a long list of published documents and studies on the public mood and mechanisms used to shape it and on social adaptation and the particular mindset that Stalinism strove to shape. Studies vary in terms of their authors’ viewpoints and the aspect of reality they emphasize. See, for example, the following: Sheila Fitzpatrick: The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY, 1992), and Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, 2005); Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995); Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941 (Cambridge, 1997); Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957 (New York, 1998); Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

9. Yoram Gorlizki, “Political Reform and Local Party Interventions under Khrushchev,” in Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864–1996, ed. Peter H. Solomon (New York and London, 1997), pp. 259–260.

10. Letter from Stakhanov to Stalin in May 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 891, l. 128. For a similar letter sent to Molotov before the war, see GARF, f. R-5446, op. 82, d. 108, l. 145; d. 120, l. 74.

11. According to official statistics, at the start of 1953 more than 40 percent of the country’s population lived in cities. It should be kept in mind, however, that this figure included residents of small cities and settlements where the standard of living was close to that of the peasants.

12. In 1952, out of the 443,000 tons of meat sold through state and cooperative outlets across the USSR, 110,000 were sent to Moscow and 57,400 were sent to Leningrad; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 87, d. 1162, l. 171.

13. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 355.

14. Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2000).

15. Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003).

16. Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York and Oxford, 1996); Lynne Viola, ed., Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (Ithaca, NY, 2002); Jeffrey J. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2005).

17. In recent years historians have produced several valuable studies on this problem. See, for example, the following: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999); Elena Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (New York and London, 2001); Donald Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943–1953 (Cambridge, 2010).

18. Calculations based on E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 102–103; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), pp. 388–389. For comparison, see A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, GULAG. 1917–1960 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 543–551.

19. This letter was given to Malenkov to read; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 901, l. 37.

20. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 107.

21. Cited in ibid., p. 263.

22. Figures for state and private urban housing are from RGAE, f. 1562, op. 41, d. 56, ll. 30–33. Figures for the urban population as of early 1953 are from V. P. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika Sovetskogo gosudarstva. 1946–1953 gg. (Moscow and Tambov, 2000), p. 16.

23. RGAE, f. 1562, op. 41, d. 56, ll. 30–33. The inventory of publicly owned residential buildings included the best-built ones, which belonged to local government councils (soviets) and agencies. A significant proportion of urban housing was in private hands. These buildings were in much worse shape.

24. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 179.

25. N. Vert and S. V. Mironenko, eds., Istoriia stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov, vol. 1: Massovye repressii v SSSR (Moscow, 2004), pp. 623–624.

26. B. V. Zhiromskaia, I. N. Kiselev, and Iu. A. Poliakov, Polveka pod grifom “sekretno”: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1937 goda (Moscow, 1996), pp. 98, 100.

27. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001).

28. See one recent study: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).

29. For documents and letters characterizing inter-ethnic conflicts during the final period of Stalin’s rule, see L. P. Kosheleva et al., comps., Sovetskaia natsional’naia politika. Ideologiia i praktiki realizatsii (Moscow, 2013).

30. Geoffrey Hosking, Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2006).

31. E. Khodzha [Enver Hoxha], So Stalinym. Vospominaniia (Tirana, 1984), p. 90.

32. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1479, ll. 14–18.

33. A. Berelovich and V. Danilov, eds., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD: 1918–1939 gg., vols. 1–4 (Moscow, 1998–2012); G. N. Sevost’ianov et al., eds., “Sovershenno sekretno”: Lubianka–Stalinu o polozhenii v strane (1922–1934), vols. 1–9 (Moscow, 2001–2013).

34. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 12, d. 100, ll. 91–92.

35. When the apparat of the Special Sector was being reorganized in 1939, provisions were made for the creation of fifteen staff positions for people reading letters addressed to Stalin. Their duties included familiarizing themselves with the letters and sorting them (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 37). If we assume that each reader spent an average of ten minutes per letter, in working an eight-hour day, all fifteen readers would be able to review 720 letters per day or approximately 260,000 per year. Probably the number was higher. Experienced readers would process letters quickly, especially as many letters were short. Furthermore, using a shift system, the apparat worked essentially around the clock, and shifts were not strictly limited to eight hours.

36. APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 51. The Special Sector’s Fifth Section also took care of Stalin’s library.

37. The letters shown to the Special Sector leadership during 1945–1953 have been preserved. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, dd. 888–904.

38. Letters selected to be shown to Stalin were accompanied by a list entitled “Letters and Petitions Received Addressed to Com. Stalin.” In addition to the letters presented to Stalin, this list included certain letters sent for review by other Soviet leaders. Apparently these were letters it was felt Stalin did not need to see but about which he would be interested in knowing. Stalin’s personal archive contains a rather complete set of such lists of letters only for 1945–1952 (but lacks those received while he was vacationing in the south); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, dd. 862–882.

39. Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven, 2012).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When Jonathan Brent and Vadim Staklo—then the editorial director and project manager for Yale University Press’s Annals of Communism series respectively—suggested that I write a biography of Stalin, I was more puzzled than glad. But now that the book has been completed, I am truly thankful to them.

Few know more about the Stalin era than my friends Yoram Gorlizki, Andrea Graziosi, Jan Plamper, and David Shearer, and I am grateful to them for reading the manuscript and making valuable comments. This work also greatly benefited from the skillful editing of William Frucht, the press’s executive editor, the keen eye and remarkable memory of the manuscript’s copy editor, Bojana Ristich, and the expertise of production editor Margaret Otzel. A critical role was played by the book’s translator, Nora Favorov, my most attentive and demanding reader.

This biography is the culmination of long years of studying Soviet history. These years brought collaboration and friendship with many knowledgeable colleagues. My interactions with all of them have helped prepare me to produce this work.

To start with those no longer living, I learned a great deal from Moshe Lewin, Viktor Petrovich Danilov, Victor Zaslavsky, and Derek Watson—all prominent historians and wonderful human beings.

Next, this book would not have been possible without decades of work alongside my friends and fellow archival researchers. At RGASPI, I have been fortunate to work with Andrei Sorokin, Lyudmila Kosheleva, Marina Astakhova, Galina Gorskaia, and Elena Kirillova. My work at GARF would have been impossible without the constant support of Sergei Mironenko, Larisa Rogovaya, Larisa Malashenko, Dina Nokhotovich, Sofia Somonova, Galina Kuznetsova, and Tatiana Zhukova. Together we compiled a number of collections of historical documents.

For twenty-five years now I have been a proud member of the Robert Davies team. His dedication to the study of history and his amazing productivity are an example for us all.

Collaboration, interaction, and friendship with a number of historians have greatly contributed to my work. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Golfo Alexopoulos, Jörg Baberowski, Alain Blum, Yves Cohen, Marta Craveri, Victor Dönninghaus, Michael David-Fox, Mark Elie, Benno Ennker, Klaus Gestwa, Mark Harrison, Jana Howlett, Melanie Ilic, Nicolaus Katzer, Vladimir Kozlov, Sergei Kudryashov, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Terry Martin, Silvio Pons, Valeri Pozner, Arfon Rees, Andrea Romano, Ingrid Schierle, Robert Service, Jeremy Smith, Takeshi Tomita, Aleksandr Vatlin, Lynne Viola, Amir Weiner, Nicolas Werth, Stephen Wheatcroft, and Elena Zubkova.

Paul Gregory, Ron Suny, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Piter Solomon, and Dietrich Beyrau have been attentive and patient conversation partners for many years.

I would also like to express gratitude to the German Historical Institute in Moscow, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, and the Ukrainian Studies Fund for their support.

As always, I would not miss this opportunity to wish success to my daughter Dasha.

As fate would have it, when I began work on this project my wife Katya fell ill. By the time I completed the manuscript, she was no longer with us.

To her, I dedicate this book.

INDEX

Illustrations are indicated by Gallery number

Abakumov, Viktor Semenovich, 273, 303, 369n39

Agriculture: collectivization, 110–113, 115–116, 299, 300, 322

and famine policy, 38, 117

and food shortages, 184–185, 278, 300–301, 323–324

grain expropriation, 101, 102–104, 105, 110, 119–120

grain reserves, 349n35

interregnum period reforms, 302, 315

livestock production, 299–300, 374n15

and New Economic Policy (NEP), 64, 110

private plots, 7, 111, 112, 124, 278

quotas for grain deliveries, 123–124

tsarist reforms, 27. See also Peasants

Air Force: accident rate in, 186

capacity of, 183, 187

modernization of, 184

destruction of at start of war, 201–202

Akhmatova, Anna, 265, 368n9

Alcohol consumption, at Stalin’s dacha, 5–6

Alekseev, N. P., 56–57

Alexander III, 11

Alliluev, Pavel, 134, 256, 258, 259

Alliluev, Sergei, 252

Allilueva, Anna, 30, 256, 258, 259

Allilueva, Nadezhda. See Stalin, Nadezhda Allilueva

Allilueva (Alliluyeva), Svetlana: birth of, 253

childhood of, 254, 256, Gallery 8, 9, 11

on dacha lifestyle, 4, 191

defection of, 260

Jewish husband of, 259, 286

in public appearance, 136, 137

relationship with father, 256–257, 258, 259

at Stalin’s deathbed, 250, 313–314

on Stalin’s health, 196–197

on suicide of mother, 255

Alliluev family, Stalin’s friendship with, 48–49, 252

Andreev, Andrei, 365n142

Anti-Comintern Pact, 154

Anti-retreat units, 223, 237, 242

Anti-Semitism, as state policy, 284–285, 304, 309

Antonov, Aleksei Innokentievich, 227, 364n99

Appeasement policy, 163, 167, 168

Archival sources: citizens’ letters, 300–301, 327–329, 377n35, n38

newly accessible, ix, xii, xv

Stalin Collection, xiii–xiv

types of, xii

visitor logs, xiii

Aristov, Averky, 301

Atom bomb: Soviet, 293

U.S., 248

Baberowski (Baberovski), Jörg, 21

Baku, Social Democratic movement in, 26–27

Balitsky, Vsevolod, 115

Bank deposits, and currency reform, 275, 277, 279

Baramiia, Mikhail, 304–305

Batum, revolutionary violence in, 22–23

Beaverbrook, Lord, 212

Belarus: German invasion of, 204

and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

Red Army campaign of 1944, 231

forced resettlement campaign in, 174

Soviet occupation of, 170

Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich: 2, 5, 40, 260, Gallery 8, 14

biography of, 332–333n1

bribery charge against, 304–305

on collaborators, 232

and ethnic deportations, 233–234

fall of, 333n1

on German prisoners of war, 231

in interregnum period, 312

in leadership reorganizations, 282, 303

and Molotov scandal, 271, 272

poisoning charge against, 338n1

Politburo appointment of, 177

on Red Army crimes against civilians, 234

at Stalin’s deathbed, 142, 143, 189, 312

and Stalin’s wartime safety, 211

state security under, 181

in wartime leadership, 203, 204, 205, 206, 225, 240, 269

as Yezhov’s deputy, 159–160

Berlin blockade, 281

Berlin Conference, 247–248

Berlin operation, 246–247

Bessarabia, 166, 173, 174

Biography: archival exposés, ix–x

memoirs as source for, xiv–xv

pitfalls of genre, xi–xii

Bliukher, Vasily, 163

Bogdanov, Aleksandr, 94

Bolsheviks: armed robbery by, 25–26

centralized party organization of, 36–38

at European party congresses, 25

falsification of history of, 95

revolutionary agenda of, 24

Stalin’s conflicts with colleagues, 63

Stalin’s purge of old guard, 137–139, 140

Stalin’s rise in leadership ranks, 28, 54, 65–66

war readiness of, 153. See also Civil War

Collective leadership

Lenin

Revolution of 1917

Borisov, Mikhail, 128, 132, 133

Britain: appeasement of Hitler, 163, 167

Churchill-Stalin meetings, 224, 230, 244

and Polish invasion, 169–170

in postwar settlement, 270

second front plan, 223–224, 228, 229

wartime aid to Stalin, 211, 212

Budenny, Semen, 202, 361n21

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich: 68, 90, 94, Gallery 6

on anti-Trotsky coalition, 81–82

biography of, 343n55

execution of, 140

-Kamenev secret meeting, 107

as oppositionist, 105, 106, 108

in power struggle, 75–76, 77, 78, 80

Bukovina, 173

Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasyevich, 96, 346n10

Bulganin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, 2

biography of, 333n1

in interregnum period, 312

in Mao’s Moscow visit, 289

at Stalin’s deathbed, 142, 189, 312

Stalin’s promotion of, 303

in wartime leadership, 241

Bulgaria, in Communist bloc, 281

Cannibalism, in famine of 1932–1933, 119

Capital investment, postwar, 299, 322

Capture by enemy provisions (Order No. 270), 210

Caucasus region, culture of violence in, 21–22

Central Committee: February-March 1937 plenum, 154–155

majority faction, 80

Presidium, 305–306, 312

Presidium Bureau, 306, 311, 312

Special Sector, 329

Stalin’s reorganization of, 178

Chadaev, Yakov, 181, 202, 221

Chamberlain, Austen, 88

Chamberlain, Neville, 163

Chapaev (film), 96

Charkviani, Khristofor, 14

Chechens, forced relocation of, 233

Chiang Kai-shek, 288

“Children’s literature,” xiv–xv

China-Soviet relations: collective leadership debate on, 90

in Korean War, 294, 296

Mao’s Soviet visit, 149, 287–288, 289–293

non-aggression pact of 1937, 156

treaty of 1945, 91, 288, 290

treaty of 1950, 291–292

Chinese civil war, 286, 288

Chizhikov, Petr, 251

Chochia, Grigory, 25

Chubar, Vlas, 177

Chuikov, Vasily, 171–172

Churchill, Winston, 269

Iron Curtain speech of, 267

and second front plan, 223–224, 228, 229

-Stalin meetings, 224, 230, 244, Gallery 12

Civil War: casualties of, 54

opponents of Bolsheviks in, 53

Polish front, 59–61

Stalin’s missions during, 54–56

Stalin-Trotsky conflict, 61–63

Tsaritsyn terror campaign during, 56–59

Clausewitz, Carl von, 95

Cold War, origins of, 266–267

Collaborators with Nazi occupation, prosecution of, 232

Collective leadership, Gallery, 6, 7

anti-Trotsky coalition in, 80, 81–82

division of functions, 80–81

expulsion of leftist opposition, 83–86, 90, 100

and foreign threats campaign, 88–89

and New Economic Policy (NEP), 81, 82, 87, 88, 110

opponents of Stalin’s rise to power, 82–83, 104–105, 106, 108

policy debates within, 89–91

purge of oppositionists, 137–139

Stalin faction in, 105, 106

after Stalin’s death, 310–313

Stalin’s resignation offer, 79–80, 91

Stalin’s restructuring of NEP, 100–106

victory of Stalin faction, 106–108

Collectivization, agricultural, 110–113, 115–116, 299, 300, 322

Cominform, creation of, 267

Conquest, Robert, 150

Constitution, liberalization of, 134–135

Consumer goods: price of, 321–322, 324

shortages of, 276–278

Corruption, and currency reform, 278–279

Cosmopolitanism campaign, 284, 286

Crimea: ethnic deportations from, 232, 233

Soviet-German Front in, 220, 221, 228

Yalta Conference, 244–246, 289, Gallery 12

Currency reform, 274–280, 321

Czechoslovakia: in Communist bloc, 280

German invasion of, 164

Munich Agreement on, 163–164

Slansky trial, 307

–Soviet mutual assistance treaty, 135

Dacha (“near dacha”): Gallery 10

landscaping of, 4–5

library at, 93–96, 346n5

renovations of, 3–4

security personnel at, 33, 36, 92, 142–143, 189, 338n2

social gatherings at, 5–7, 93, 196

Stalin’s death at, 33, 92, 142–144, 338n1

Dachas, southern, 191, 193, 359n42

Daily Herald, 270–271

Daladier, Édouard, 163

Danilov, V. P., 348n19

Deikina, V. F., 300–301

Denunciations, 328

Dimitrov, Georgy, 171

Disease epidemics, 119

“Dizzy with Success” (Stalin), 114

Djilas, Milovan, 5, 196, 235

Doctors’ Plot, 196, 307–309, 314

Draule, Milda, 130

Dureiko, N. M., 132–133

Dzerzhinsky, Feliks Edmundovich, 71, 73, 344n66

Eastern Europe: Berlin blockade, 281

liberalization in interregnum period, 316

military buildup in, 297

sovietization of, 266, 267, 270, 280, 370n62

Stalin’s enemies campaign in, 281

and Titoism, 280–281

Eastern Front. See Soviet–German Front

Economy: and capital investment, 299, 302

and currency reform, 274–280, 321

interregnum period reforms, 302, 315

postwar recovery, 279–280

and price reduction, 321–322

Sovnarkom Bureau oversight of, 178–179

standard of living, 262

Terror’s impact on, 161

urbanite advantages in, 321

and war mobilization, 184–185, 274

wartime leadership of, 240–241. See also Agriculture

Famine

Industrialization

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Edinonachalie, in Red Army, 238

Eikhe, Robert, 177

Ellman, Michael, 332n10

Engels, Friedrich, 94

Erenburg, Ilya, 236

Erickson, John, 201

Espionage, Soviet, 357–358n76

Estonia: and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

postwar repression in, 268

forced resettlement campaign in, 174

sovietization of, 170–171, 173

Ethnic groups: forced resettlement of, 232–234

and russification policy, 325. See also Jews, Soviet

Famine: of 1921–1922, 64, 118

of 1931–1933, 3, 7, 38, 116, 117–122

of 1936, 124

as political weapon, 38

postwar, 261, 267

preferential treatment of urbanites, 321

Fedorenko, Nikolai, 292

Feuchtwanger, Lion, 162

Fifth column, Stalin’s suspicions of, 155–157, 162

Film screenings, 2–3, 93, 96–97, 347n12

Filtzer, Donald, 280

Finland: and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

Soviet invasion of (Winter War), 172–173, 186

“Five” (ruling group), 1

Five-Year Plan: First, 109, 116, 117, 123

Second, 124

Food shortages, 184–185, 278, 300–301, 323–324

Foreign intelligence, Stalin’s suspicions of, 155–157, 162

Foreign policy: arms race, 297–298

Baltic states occupation, 170–171

breakdown in relations with West, 266–267

China (See China-Soviet relations)

under collective leadership, 88–89

Doctors’ Plot as tool of, 309

and European alliances, 123, 135, 163

Finland invasion (Winter War), 172–173, 186

German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 164–169, 170, 174

Hitler-Molotov four-way alliance negotiations, 174–176

in interregnum period, 315–316

and Japanese border clashes, 163, 168–169

and Japanese postwar settlement, 248–249, 270

and Japanese threat, 123, 153, 156

and Korean War, 294–296, 298, 316

“kowtowing to the West” campaign, 265–266, 285, 286

and Munich Agreement, 163–164

and nuclear capability, 293

Polish occupation, 170

postwar challenges for, 261–262

preemptive strike plan, 182–183

sovietization of postwar Eastern Europe, 266, 267, 270, 280, 370n62

sovietization under Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, 171, 173–174

and Spanish civil war, 153–154

and spheres of influence, 171, 244

Stalin’s caution and pragmatism in, 298

Terror’s consequences for, 162

and Titoism, 280–281

United Nations boycott, 372n95

war readiness in, 153, 164, 183–188

Foreign press, rumors of power struggle in, 269, 270–271

France, Anatole, 95

France: appeasement of Hitler, 163, 167

fall of, 173

and Polish invasion, 169–170

-Soviet mutual assistance treaty, 135

Franco, Francisco, 153

Genghis Khan, 138

Georgia: ethnic deportations from, 233

Mingrelian Affair, 304–305, 314–315

in Transcaucasian Federation dispute, 71–72, 73, 74, 75

Georgian language, Stalin’s use of, 97

German–Soviet Front. See Soviet-German Front Germany: Berlin blockade, 281

Politburo plan for revolution in, 77–78

Red Army crimes against civilians, 234–235

Weimar, 123. See also Nazi Germany

Goebbels, Joseph, xiv

Golovanov, Aleksandr, 214, 230

Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 281

Gorbachev, M., 192

Gori, Stalin’s birth in, 11

Gori Theological School, 11, 14–15, Gallery 2

Gorky, Maxim, 95, 96

Gorlizki, Yoram, 1

Grain requisitions, forced, 101, 102–104, 105, 110, 119–120

Grain reserves, 349n35

Great Leap policy, 108–109, 117

Great Terror. See Terror

Gridneva, Ye. G., 319

Harriman, Averell, 8–9, 195, 212, 230

History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course, 95

Hitler, Adolf, 149, 153

appeasement of, 163, 167, 168

-Molotov four-way alliance negotiations, 174–176

purges of, 165

-Stalin non-aggression pact, 165–169, 174

suicide of, 247. See also Nazi Germany

Hoarding, 276–277

Hopkins, Harry, 211

Hosking, Geoffrey, 325

Housing, 324, 376n23

Hungary, in Communist bloc, 281

Ignatiev, Semen Denisovich, 36, 41, 142, 144, 303, 304, 308, 318, 339n15

Industrialization: absenteeism and employee turnover, 185

consumer goods production, 276–278, 321–322, 324

First Five-Year Plan growth targets, 109, 116–117

Great Leap policy, 108–109

interregnum period reforms, 302, 315

and liberalization policy, 124–125

military production, 183–184, 297–298

New Economic Policy (NEP), 64, 101

postwar production, 267

and Stakhanovites, 320–321

Terror’s impact on, 161

wartime management of, 240

working conditions under, 324–325

Ingush, forced relocation of, 233

Inner circle, Gallery 14

composition of, 1, 332–334n1

dachas and apartments of, 35, 191

face-to-face communications with, 1–2

memoirs of, xiv

Molotov scandal, 269–272

movie screenings for, 2–3, 347n12

shifts in balance of power, 178–179, 272–274, 282, 303, 306–307

at Stalin’s deathbed, 142–144, 189

Stalin’s power over, 1, 144–147

at Stalin’s social gatherings, 5–7, 93

wartime domestic duties of, 240–241

Intelligentsia, attacks on, 265

Israel, 285–286

Italy: Allied victories in, 229

postwar settlement, 270

in Tripartite Pact, 174

Ivan the Terrible, Stalin’s view of, 94, 95

Japan: in Anti-Comintern Pact, 154

invasion of China, 156

military threat from, 123, 153, 156

in postwar settlement, 248–249, 270

-Soviet border clashes, 163, 168–169

in Tripartite Pact, 174

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, 284

Jews, Soviet: cosmopolitanism campaign against, 284, 286

discrimination against, 284, 304

in Doctors’ Plot, 307–309

and Israel, 285–286

purge of Molotov’s wife, 283–284

and Stalin’s anti-Semitism, 284–285, 286

Jolly Fellows (film), 96

Jughashvili, Besarionis (Stalin’s father), 11, 12, 14

Jughashvili (Geladze), Ekaterine (Stalin’s mother), 11, 12, 13–14, 15, 20, 23, 252, Gallery 1

Jughashvili, Iosif. See Stalin, Joseph

Kaganovich, Lazar Moiseevich, Gallery 7, 14

biography of, 352n5

in interregnum period, 312

purge of family member, 314

and Stalin’s daughter, 256–257

Stalin’s power over, 144, 146, 147

in wartime leadership, 207, 214

Kalinin, Mikhail Ivanovich: biography of, 345–346n102

compromising evidence against, 106

and expulsion of left opposition, 90

as oppositionist, 105

purge of wife, 144

Kamenev, Lev Borisovich, 69, 70, 191, 194

and abdication of tsar, 42

biography of, 340–341n1

Bukharin’s secret meeting with, 107

execution of, 139

Politburo expulsion of, 84–85

and Kirov’s murder charge, 131

and Kremlin Affair, 139

on Lenin-Stalin conflict, 73

in moderate (rightist) faction, 43–44, 46

opposition to Bolshevik seizure of power, 50, 51, 52

as oppositionist, 82–84, 87

in power struggle, 79, 80

Provisional Government crackdown on, 48

Kapler, Aleksei, 258

Karpets, P. K., 319

Katyn massacre, 170

Kautsky, Karl, 94

Kazbegi, Alexandre, 17

Kelbakiani, 19–20

Kerensky, Aleksandr, 49

Kerr, Archibald, 230

Ketskhoveli, Lado, 18, 21

Kharkov, Battle of, 221, 222

Khmelkov, N. M., 263

Kholodov, N. I., 300

Khoroshenina, Serafima, 251

Khrushchev, Nikita: on agricultural commission, 301–302

biography of, 333n1

on fall of France, 173

in interregnum period, 312, 314

in Kirov murder investigation, 128

memoirs of, xiv, 333n1

Politburo appointment of, 177

Stalin characterized by, 5

on Stalin’s ceremonial farewell, 317

at Stalin’s deathbed, 142, 143, 189, 312, 338n1

on Stalin’s exile, 30

Stalin’s promotion of, 303

at Stalin’s social gatherings, 2, 5, 6

in wartime leadership, 221

and Zhukov, 360n2

Kibirov, I. I., 31

Kiev: fall of, 212–213

liberation of, 228

Kiev Theological Seminary, 18

Kim Il Sung, 294, 295, 296

Kirov, Sergei Mironovich, Gallery 7

biography of, 339n7

bodyguards of, 133

and collective leadership, 83

motive for murder of, 130–131

murder of, 34, 127–129

and plot against Stalin, 127

Stalin’s involvement in murder of, 131–134

vacation with Stalin, 193, 194

Kirponos, Mikhail, 212, 213

Kliueva, Nina, 265

Kolkhozes (collective farms), 110–113, 299, 300

Korean War, 294–296, 298, 316

Kornilov, Lavr, 49

Kosarev, Aleksandr Vasilyevich, 131, 351n66

Kosior, Stanislav, 177

Kostov, Traicho, 281

Kosygin, Gallery 14

Kovalev, I. V., 361n27

“Kowtowing to the West” campaign, 265–266, 285, 286

Kremlin: German bombing of, 218

movie theater in, 2–3, 96–97

purge of staff, 139

Stalin’s office in, 2, 242, 311

Kremlin Affair, 139

Kronstadt rebellion, 64

Kruglov, Sergei, 276

Krupskaia, Nadezhda, 70, 72, 82

Kulaks: collectivization campaign against, 111–113

executions of, 116, 150

grain requisitions from, 101, 102–104, 105, 110

forced resettlement of, 38, 112, 116

Kulik, Grigory Ivanovich: biography of, 340n20

murder of wife, 40

as Stalin’s emissary to front, 201

Kulik-Simonich, Kira, 40

Kuomintang, 286, 288

Kuperin, I. I., 311

Kurile Islands, 248, 249, 290

Kuromiya, Hiroaki, 120

Kursk, Battle of, 226–227, 228

Kutuzov, Mikhail, 2, 242, 264

Kuzakova, M. P., 251

Kuznetsov, Aleksi Aleksandrovich, Gallery 14

biography of, 353n6

in leadership reorganization, 282

in Leningrad Affair, 144, 282–283

Kuznetsov, Nikolai Gerasimovich, 202, 213, 361n22

Labor camps, 38, 268, 325

Lake Khasan, Battle of, 163

Lakoba, Nestor, Gallery 10

Lashevich, Mikhail, 84

Latvia: and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

postwar repression in, 268

forced resettlement campaign in, 174

sovietization of, 170–171, 173

League of Nations, 123, 173

Lend-Lease aid, 212

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: assassination attempt on, 57, 128

death of, 79

death mask of, 2

evacuation of sarcophagus of, 203

federation proposal of, 68–69

health of, 65, 68, 70, 74

as military leader, 264

New Economic Policy (NEP) of, 7, 64–65

and invasion of Poland, 59–60

in Provisional Government crackdown, 48, 49

return from Switzerland, 45

revolutionary action plan of, 44–47

revolutionary teachings of, 24

and seizure of power, 50–51, 52

Stalin attacked by, 72–74, 79

–Stalin relationship, 25, 28, 46, 54, 64–65, 67–68, 69–75

Stalin’s correspondence with, 32, 60

Stalin’s support for revolutionary agenda of, 47–49, 52–53

Stalin as student of, 24, 53, 93–94

and Stalin–Trotsky conflict, 62–63

“testament” of, 73, 79, 91, 137

-Trotsky relationship, 51–52, 65–66, 70

on Tsaritsyn terror campaign, 58

Leningrad Affair, 144, 282–283, 310

Leningrad Blockade, 213, 225

Leningrad magazine, 265

Letter writing, citizen, 300–301, 327–329, 377n35, n38

Lewin, Moshe, 74

Liberalization policy, 124–125

Literature: censorship of, 96

in Stalin’s library, 95

Stalin’s taste in, 17, 93, 95–96

Lithuania: and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

postwar repression in, 268

forced resettlement campaign from, 174

sovietization of, 170–171, 173

Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich, 164, 356n37

Liushkov, Genrikh, 162

Livestock production, postwar, 299–300, 374n15

Lozgachev, P. V., 4

Ludwig, Emil, 16

Main Guard Directorate, 33–34, 35–36

Makhrovsky, Konstantin, 56–57

Malenkov, Georgy Maksimillianovich: 2, Gallery 14

biography of, 332n1

capital investment reduction under, 302

in interregnum period, 312

in leadership reorganizations, 178, 181, 272–273, 282, 303

and Molotov scandal, 271, 272

Politburo appointment of, 177

at Stalin’s deathbed, 143, 189, 311, 312

on Timoshenko, 222

in wartime leadership, 200, 204, 205, 207, 214, 216, 222, 225, 240, 269

Malinovsky, Roman, 28, 29, 32, 337n48

Malinovsky, S. V., 14–15

Mao Zedong, 286

and Korean War, 296

Moscow visit of, 149, 287–288, 289–293

Marshall Plan, 267

Martin, Terry, 325

Martov, Yuly Osipovich, 85, 86, 345n95

Mekhlis, Lev Zakharovich, 199, 220, 221, 360n9

Mensheviks: opposition to armed robberies, 26

in party congresses, 25

in Petrograd Soviet, 43, 44

and Provisional Government, 50

revolutionary agenda of, 24

Menshikov, Mikhail, 144

Merkulov, Vsevolod Nikolaevich, 273, 369n38

Merzliakov, M. A., 31

Meyerhold, Vsevolod Emilyevich, 97, 347n13

Mgeladze, Akaky, 359n42

Miasnikov, Aleksandr, 189, 197, 311

Mikhail, Grand Duke, 42

Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich, 40, 284, 340n23

Mikoyan (Mikoian), Anastas Ivanovich, Gallery 7

on agricultural policy, 302

assassination attempt on, 35

biography of, 334n2

China visit of, 288

dismissal of, 144, 283

in interregnum period, 311

in leadership reorganizations, 178–179, 306–307

and Leningrad Affair, 283

memoirs of, xiv, 332n10

and Molotov scandal, 271, 272

on Moscow evacuation, 214

on Presidium makeup, 306

on price reduction, 321–322

in Stalin faction, 105

at Stalin’s social gatherings, 6

Stalin’s threat to, 144

Stalin’s vacation with, 192

in wartime leadership, 204, 205, 206, 207, 225, 240, 241, 269

Mikoyan (Mikoian), Sergo, 206, 332n10

Military. See Air Force

Soviet-German Front

Red Army

Military production: German, 186–187

Soviet, 183–184, 297–298

Mingrelian Affair, 304–305, 314–315

Mola, Emilio, 153

Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich: 192, Gallery 14

in Baltic states negotiations, 171

biography of, 333–334n2

on collective leadership, 89–90

dismissal of, 144, 284

in foreign affairs post, 164–165, 180

foreign press rumors blamed on, 269, 270–271

and German invasion, 199, 200–201

on grain expropriation, 101

-Hitler four-way alliance negotiations, 174–176

and Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact, 166

in interregnum period, 311, 312

on Kaganovich, 147

in leadership reorganizations, 178, 179–180, 181, 306–307

in Mao’s Moscow visit, 289

negotiations with West, 267

and postwar settlement, 269–270

purge of wife, 283–284, 314

in Stalin faction, 105

Stalin’s attacks on, 181–182, 270–272, 283

on Stalin’s mental state, 197, 204–205

on Stalin’s security, 34

Stalin’s threat to, 144, 146

on Trotsky, 154

in wartime leadership, 202, 204, 205, 206, 214, 216, 225, 240, 269

Western allies visited by, 223

Monetary reform, 274–280, 321

Montefiore, Simon Sebag, ix Moscow Conference, 212

Moscow, Siege of: defenses in, 217

and evacuation plans, 214–216

October Revolution anniversary celebrations in, 217–219

political stability during, 216

popular uprisings during, 216–217

Stalin’s presence during, 227–228

Movie screenings, 2–3, 93, 96–97, 347n12

Munich Agreement, 163–164, 167

Munitions industry, 183–184, 185–186

Murphy, David, 357–358n76

Music, Stalin’s taste in, 97

Nakhimov, Pavel, 242

Nationalities. See Ethnic groups Nationalities commission, 65

NATO, 281, 297

Nazaretian, Amaiak, 66–67

Nazi Germany: in Anti-Comintern Pact, 154

collaborators in occupied territories, 232

collapse of, 231, 247

invasion of Czechoslovakia, 164

invasion of Poland, 169–170

invasion of Soviet Union, 173, 176, 187–188, 198–202

military production of, 186–187

in Munich Agreement, 163–164, 167

occupation of Europe, 173, 174

-Soviet non-aggression pact, 165–169, 174

Stalin’s overtures to, 164–166

in Tripartite Pact, 174. See also Soviet-German Front

Nevsky, Aleksandr, 242

New Economic Policy (NEP): under collective leadership, 81, 82, 110

under Lenin, 7, 64–65

party infighting over, 87, 88

Stalin’s restructuring of, 100–104

New York Times, 271

Nicholas II, abdication of, 42

Nicolaevsky, Boris, 22

Nikolaev, Leonid: background of, 129–130

execution of relatives, 351n68

motives for Kirov’s murder, 130–131

murder of Kirov, 128–129, 131–132, 351n68

prior detentions by NKVD, 132

NKVD: fabricated evidence of, 140

formation of, 125

in Kirov murder investigation, 131–133

in Kremlin Affair, 139

Order No.00447, 150

purge of, 140, 160

in Trotsky murder, 174

Yezhov’s direction of Terror, 157, 158–159

Nomenklatura: new stock, 147

privileged lifestyle of, 320

purge of, 139–140, 144, 150, 282–283, 304, 320

Stalin’s control over, 36–37, 147–148

Stalin’s reorganization of, 178

Norway, German occupation of, 174

Nuclear development, 293, 297

October Revolution, 8, 50–53

anniversary of, 217–219

Onufrieva, Pelageia, 251–252

Order No. 227, 223

Order No. 270, 210

Ordzhonikidze, Grigory Konstantinovich: 66, 82, 192, Gallery 7

biography of, 343n55

on Central Committee expulsion of left opposition, 90

on factional disputes, 106–107

and “Georgian Affair,” 71, 73

health of, 102

on industrialization, 109

and Lenin-Stalin conflict, 73

on peasant uprisings, 115

in power struggle, 76

in Stalin faction, 105

suicide of, 140, 177

Ordzhonikidze, Zinaida, 253

Orlov, A. Ya., 289

Osinsky, Valerian Valerianovich, 85–86, 345n92

Ostrovskii, Aleksandr, 19

Panic-mongers and cowards, campaign against, 223

Parade of Our Troops on Moscow’s Red Square on 7 November 1941 (film), 218–219

Party apparat. See Nomenklatura

Patricide, The (Kazbegi), 17

Paulus, Friedrich, 225, 258

Pavlov, Dmitry, 208

Peasants: currency reform impact on, 278

and famines, 38, 116, 117–122

income of, 353n16

postwar discontent of, 262

forced resettlement of, 38, 322

revolts of, 110, 113–115, 323

taxation of, 302

working conditions of, 324–325. See also Agriculture

Kulaks

Penal colonies, 38

Penalty battalions, 223, 237, 242

Pereprygina, Lidiia, 30, 31, 252, 338n60

Peter the Great, Stalin’s view of, 94, 95

Petrograd Soviet, 43, 44, 52

Petrovskaia, Stefaniia, 251

Petrovsky, Grigory, 177

Plato, 95

Plekhanov, Georgy, 94

Poland: Civil War campaign in, 59–61

in Communist bloc, 281, 297

German invasion of, 169–170

and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

Katyn massacre, 170

postwar settlement in, 245, 248

Warsaw uprising, 244

Politburo: abolition of, 305–306

eavesdropping on members, 145, 353n10

execution of members, 144, 177

expulsion of leftist opposition, 84–86

independence in day-to-day work, 310–311

power struggle in, 75–81, 86–87

reorganizations of leadership, 66, 177–179, 303

replaced during Great Terror, 177–178

Stalin’s appointment to, 54

Stalin’s dictatorial powers approved by, 180–181

Stalin’s domination of, 144–147, 176–177, 241

voting process in, 370n66

wartime domestic duties of, 240–241

and wartime leadership, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 238, 241

and world revolution, 77–78

young generation in, 177, 181. See also Collective leadership

Popular front against fascism, 135

Poskrebyshev, Aleksandr, 255, 329

Postyshev, Pavel, 177

Pravda, 44, 51, 79, 89, 93, 113, 155, 193, 236, 308, 314

Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation (APRF), xiv

Presidium, of Central Committee, 305–306, 312

Presidium Bureau, of Central Committee, 306, 311, 312

Preventive war theory, 183, 184

Prisoners of war: German, 231

Soviet, 210

Private peasant plots, 7, 111, 112, 124, 278

Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment) (magazine), 94

Provisional Government: crackdown on Bolsheviks, 48–49

formation of, 42

and Kornilov mutiny, 49–50

overthrow of, 45, 50–53

socialist support for, 43

Purges: during Civil War, 56–59

under collective leadership, 89

Doctors’ Plot, 196, 307–309, 314

Leningrad Affair, 144, 282–283, 310

Mingrelian Affair, 304–305, 314–315

of Molotov’s wife, 283–284, 314

of nomenklatura, 139–140, 144, 150, 282–283, 304, 320

rehabilitation of victims, 314–315

Shakhty Affair, 107

of state security, 34–35, 36, 40, 303–304. See also Terror

Radzinsky, Edvard, ix, 338n1

Rajk, Laszlo, 281

Rakosi, Matyas, 196, 290, 297

Rape, by Red Army, 234–235

Rationing, abolition of, 275, 278

Razin, Ye. A., 264, 265

Reconciliation campaign, 135–136

Red Army: anti–government sentiment of peasant recruits, 105

in Baltic states, 170–171

Berlin operation of, 246–247

in Civil War, 55–56, 59–61

crimes against civilians, 234–236

in Eastern Europe, 244

in Finland (Winter War), 172–173, 186

growth of, 185–186

in Japanese border clashes, 163

modernization of, 183–184

in Poland, 170

postwar buildup, 297–298

purge of, 155, 161, 162–163, 186, 355n31

Stalin’s critique of command, 186, 219, 236–237

Stalin’s reorganizations of command, 237–239, 273–274

Stalin-Trotsky conflict over, 61–63. See also Soviet-German Front

Religion, 242–243, 325

Retail prices, and currency reform, 277, 278

Revolution of 1905, 24–25

Revolution of 1917: Bolshevik seizure of power, 50–53

escalation of, 47

Lenin’s radical action plan, 44–46

Lenin–Stalin collaboration during, 46, 47–49, 50

moderate (rightist) Bolshevik faction in, 43–44, 46–47, 50, 51

outbreak of, 42. See also Provisional Government

Rhee, Syngman, 294

Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 165, 166, 174

Rieber, Alfred, 21

Robins, Raymond, 120–121

Rokossovsky, Konstantin Konstantinovich, 222–223, 297, 364n94

Roosevelt, Franklin: 269, Gallery 12

correspondence with Stalin, 228, 246

and Hopkins mission to Moscow, 211

and Red Army criminal behavior, 235–236

representatives at Moscow Conference, 212

and second front plan, 223, 228, 229, 230

Roskin, Grigory, 265

Rozengolts, Arkady, 152

Rudzutak, Yan Ernestovich: biography of, 345n100

compromising evidence against, 106

execution of, 177

as oppositionist, 90

Rukhadze, Nikolai, 304–305

Russian Federation, proposals for, 68–69

Russian language proficiency, Stalin’s, 97–98

Russian Orthodox Church, reconciliation with, 242–243

Russification policy, 325

Russo–Japanese War of 1905, 248

Rybalko, R. S., 319

Rykov, Aleksei Ivanovich: 80, 191, Gallery 6

biography of, 344n80

execution of, 140

expulsion of, 108

and left opposition, 90

as oppositionist, 105, 106, 108

Sakhalin: oil pipeline, 179

and postwar settlement, 248, 289

Salaries, 35, 353n16

Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail, 95

Sapronov, Timofei Vladimirovich, 85, 345n94

Savings bank deposits, and currency reform, 275, 277, 279

Schulenburg, Friedrich von der, 199

Second front plan, 223–224, 228, 229, 230

“Secret Five” group, 177–178

Security system. See NKVD

State security Seliavkin, Aleksei, 126, 350n58

Sevastopol, siege of, 221

Shakhty Affair, 107

Shakhurin, Aleksei, 187, 215–216

Shaposhnikov, Boris Mikhailovich, 201, 361n14

Shcherbakov, Aleksandr Sergeevich: biography of, 356–357n57

Politburo appointment of, 177

in wartime leadership, 214, 216

Shepilov, Dmitry, 314

Shkiriatov, Matvei, Gallery 14, 311

Sholokhov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich, 119, 121–122, 349n39

Shostakovich, Dmitry Dmitryevich, 97, 347n14

Shtemenko, Sergei, 229–230, 247, 297

Shumiatsky, Boris, 2, 3, 347n12

Shvernik, Nikolai, 311

Siberia: grain expropriation in, 101, 102–104

Stalin’s exile in, 23, 29–32, 190

Simonov, Konstantin, 144–145, 213, 313

Slansky, Rudolf, 307

Smirnov, Vladimir Mikhailovich, 85, 345n93

Smolensk, Battle of, 210–211

Smolny Institute, Kirov’s murder at, 128–129

Social Democratic movement: in Baku, 26–27

European congresses of, 25

factions of, 24

radical wing of, 21

in revolution of 1905, 24–25

Stalin’s involvement in, 18, 19, 21, 22–24. See also Bolsheviks

Mensheviks

Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), 43, 50, 158

Sokolnikov, Grigory Yakovlevich, 87, 345n97

Soviet-German Front: capture by enemy provisions (Order No. 270), 210

casualties of, 208, 220, 222, 224, 232, 261, 263

in Crimea, 220, 221, 228

crimes against civilians, 234–236

defeats in early stages of war, 208, 209–210, 222, 238, 263–265

final battles, 243–244

first days of combat, 201–205

Kharkov, Battle of, 221, 222

Kursk, Battle of, 226–227, 228

Lend-Lease aid, 212

Leningrad Blockade, 213, 225

Moscow Siege, 213–219, 227–228

penalty battalions/anti-retreat units, 223, 237, 242

physical destruction in, 232, 261

popular uprisings/disturbances in, 216–217

ratio of forces, 231

repressive measures in, 209–210, 223, 237, 242

Smolensk, Battle of, 210–211

Stalingrad, Battle of, 224–225, 228, 238

Stalin’s emissaries at, 201, 208–209

Stalin’s strategic directives in, 208, 210, 212–213, 217, 219–221, 225, 226–227, 239–240

Stalin’s visits to, 227–228

in Ukraine, 212–213, 221, 222, 228

victories of 1944, 230–231

Zhukov’s commands, 212, 213, 214, 360n2. See also Stalin, Joseph, wartime leadership of

Sovnarkom Bureau of the USSR: Commission on Current Issues, 365n136

formation of, 178–179

function of, 181

Spain, repression of foreign espionage, 156

Spanish Civil War, 153–154, 163

Special Sector, 329, 377nn35–37

Spheres of influence in Europe, 244

Stakhanov, Aleksei, 320–321

Stakhanovites, 320–321

Stalin, Joseph, Gallery 3, 13, 15

“agree and ignore” approach of, 105–106

in airplane flight, 229–230

anti-Semitism of, 284–285, 286

apologists for, ix, x–xi

arrests of, 23, 27, 28, Gallery 4

biographies of, ix–x, 149, 331n2

birth of, 11

bodyguards of, 33–36, 92, 189, 338–339n5

and Bolshevik armed robbery, 26

in car crash, 34

and Caucasian culture of violence, 21–22

childhood and youth of, 11–14

in Civil War Southwestern Front, 59–61

in Civil War Tsaritsyn command, 54–56, Gallery 5

Civil War Tsaritsyn terror campaign of, 56–59

in collective leadership (See Collective leadership)

collectivization policy of, 110–113, 115–116, 299, 300

conflict with Bolshevik colleagues, 63

consolidation of power, 176–181

constitutional liberalization by, 134–135

dachas of, 3–7, 191, 193, Gallery 10

death of, 313–314

dictatorial powers of, 36–39, 180–181, 303

“Dizzy with Success,” 114

double agent rumors about, 27

economy under (See Economy)

editor of Pravda, 44, 51

education of, 12, 13, 14–20, Gallery 2

on espionage threat, 154–155

at European party congresses, 25

exile of, 23, 27, 29–32, 42, 98, 190, 251

family life/relations with children, 253, 254, 256–260, Gallery 9, 11

famine explanation of, 120–122

federation proposal of, 69

film favorites of, 96–97

final days of, 33, 92, 142–144, 189, 310–313, 338n1

on foreign intelligence threat, 155–157, 162, 284

foreign policy of (See Foreign policy)

and foreign press rumors of leadership struggle, 269, 270–271

funeral and ceremonial farewells, 314, 317–318

generalissimo rank of, 225–226, 261

as general secretary of party, 66–67, 108

grain expropriation policy of, 101, 102–104, 105, 110, 119–120

health of, 145, 189–197, 303

historical interests of, 94–95

-Hitler non-aggression pact, 165–169, 174

ideological influences on, 7, 93–94

industrialization policy of, 108–109, 117, 124–125, 267, 298, 299

inner circle of (See Inner circle)

and Kirov’s murder, 128, 129, 130–134

Kremlin office of, 2, 242, 311

languages, knowledge of, 97–98, 289

Lenin cited in speeches of, 93

-Lenin relationship, 25, 28, 46, 54, 64–65, 67–68, 69–75, Gallery 5

Lenin’s attack on, 72–74, 79

Lenin’s ideological influence on, 24, 53, 93–94

Lenin’s revolutionary agenda supported by, 47–49, 50, 52–53

letters from public sent to, 300–301, 327–329, 377n35, n38

libraries of, 93–96, 138, 346n5

literary tastes of, 17, 93, 95–96

Mao’s visit to, 149, 287–288, 289–293

marriage to Nadezhda Allilueva, 49, 252–256, Gallery 8

marriage to Yekaterina Svanidze, 25, 27, 250–251

marshal rank of, 226

medical care of, 189, 192, 196–197, 309

mental state of, 151–153, 197, 204–205

on military professionals, 59

modest facade of, 148–149

-Molotov relationship, 181–182, 269, 270–272

musical tastes of, 97

name change of, 28

official trips of, 102

oratory of, 97

parents of, 11, 13, Gallery 1

personality of, 7, 21–22, 40–41, 149, 181, 197, 270, 289

physical defects of, 13–14, 190

plot against, 127

poetry of, 17

postwar challenges to, 262–263

power over subordinates, 1, 144–149

in power struggle for leadership, 75–81, 86–87

on preemptive strike, 182–183

and private agriculture, 7, 112, 124

promotion of younger generation leaders, 177, 181, 196

public appearances of, 136–137, 326

public image of, 329–330

public sentiment at death of, 318–319

radicalization during seminary years, 18–20, 21

reading materials/information sources of, 92–96, 327

reconciliation campaign of, 135–136

reorganization of leadership, 178–179, 272–274, 303, 306–307

reorganization of military command, 237–239, 273–274

reorganization of political structure, 305–306

research on (See Archival sources)

in revolution of 1905, 24–25

in revolutionary movement, 42, 43–44, 46–47, 51

rise in Bolshevik leadership ranks, 28, 54, 65–66

romantic relationships of, 30, 251–252, 255

seats of power, 1–2

and “Secret Five” leadership group, 177–178

seventieth birthday celebration, 290

Siberian visit of 1928, 102–104, 326

in Social Democratic movement, 18, 19, 21, 22–24

social gatherings of, 5–7, 196

sovietization goal of, 171–172

and Spanish Civil War, 154

state security controlled by, 39–40, 145, 158

succession to, 310–316

theatrical tastes of, 97

in Tiflis weather station job, 21

-Trotsky conflict over Polish Front, 61–63

as tsarist heir, 8–9

vacations in south, 191–194, 268–269, 303–304, Gallery 8, 10

under Vlasik, 35

war preparations of, 183–187

world-view of, 7–8, 98–99

writings of, 320, Gallery 16

writing style of, 97

See also Purges

Stalinist system

Terror

Stalin, Joseph, wartime leadership of: Gallery 11

at Berlin Conference, 247–248

in Churchill meetings, 224, 230

and collaborators with Nazi occupation, 232

combat operation directives in, 208, 210, 212–213, 217, 219–221, 225, 226–227, 239–240

Command Headquarters in, 202

defeats blamed on subordinates, 221–223

and domestic policy, 240–241

emissaries to front, 201, 208–209

ethnic deportations policy, 232–234

explanation of Red Army retreat, 263–265

in first days of war, 203–205

front line visit of, 227–228

and German invasion, reaction to, 187–188, 198–202

and health problems, 194–196, 214

in Japanese war, 248–249

and Lend–Lease aid, 211–212

and mental health problem, 204–205

and military command structure, 237–239

and military leadership reorganization, 241–242

and military staffing decisions, 220–221

mistrust of Western Allies, 246, 248, 266

and Moscow evacuation, 214–216

and prisoners of war procession, 231

propaganda campaign, 217–219

radio address (3 July 1942), 207

and Red Army crimes against civilians, 234–236

Red Army criticized by, 186, 219, 236–237

and religious reconciliation, 242–243

repressive measures in, 209–210, 223, 237, 242

and second front plan, 223–224, 229, 230

State Defense Committee in, 205–207

at Tehran Conference, 229–230

at Yalta Conference, 244–246, Gallery 12

Stalin, Nadezhda Allilueva (second wife): Gallery 8

biography of, 334n8

career of, 252–253

and Khrushchev, 333n1

marriage of, 49, 252, 254–255

suicide of, 3, 255–256

Stalin, Svetlana (daughter). See Allilueva (Alliluyeva), Svetlana Stalin, Vasily (son): Gallery 11

birth of, 152

childhood of, 254, 256

death of, 260

public appearance of, 136–137

relationship with father, 257, 258, 259–260

at Stalin’s deathbed, 250

Stalin, Yakov (son): Gallery 11

birth of, 250–251

childhood and youth of, 25, 27, 252–253

as prisoner of war, 258

relationship with father, 253, 257

Stalin, Yekaterina Svanidze (first wife), 25, 27, 250–251

Stalin Collection of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), xiii–xiv

Stalingrad, Battle of, 224–225, 228, 238

Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn), in Civil War, 54–59

Stalinist system: beneficiaries of, 320–322

campaigns and counter-campaigns of, 39

“inevitable Stalinism” theory, xi

modernization as justification for, x–xi

nostalgia for, 330

public mood under, 319–330

victims of, 37–38, 322–323

Standard of living, 262, 323–324

State Defense Committee, 205–207, 240

State security: under Beria, 181, 332–333n1

formation of NKVD, 125

interregnum period reform of, 315

investigation of secret police abuses, 125–126

party opposition suppressed by, 83–85

purges of, 34–35, 36, 40, 303–304

reorganization of, 340n19

reports/summaries as information source, 327

Stalin’s control of, 39–40, 145, 158

Stalin’s guards, 33–34, 35–36

torture by, 38

in wartime, 216

at Yalta Conference, 245–246. See also NKVD

Sudoplatov, Pavel, 353n10

Suny, Ronald Grigor, 12–13

Suvorov, Aleksandr, 2, 242

Svanidze, Aleksandr, 250, 256, 258

Svanidze, Maria, 134, 136

Svanidze, Yekaterina, 25, 27, 250–251

Svanidze family, 250

Svechin, Aleksandr, 95

Sverdlov, Yakov, 29, 30

Tehran Conference, 229–230

Telenkov, S. M., 319

Ter-Petrosian, Simon (Kamo), 26

Terror: anti-Semitic campaign, 340n23

“anti-Soviet elements” operations, 150–151

apologists’ view of, x

casualties of, 38, 151

and class war, 8

conspiracy theories as pretext for, 136

economic consequences of, 161

ended by Stalin’s successors, 314–315

expansion of, 141

foreign intelligence threat as pretext for, 155–157

foreign relations consequences of, 162

grievances and complaints about, 161

against Kremlin staff, 139

against Kulaks, 116, 150

Kirov’s murder as pretext for, 34, 128, 131–132, 134

literature on, 354n1

military consequences of, 162–163, 186

“nationalities” operations, 151

against old guard Bolsheviks, 137–139, 140, 147

overcrowding of camps and prisons in, 122–123, 125

against party and state apparats, 139–140, 144

against Politburo members, 177

political consequences of, 176–177

postwar repression, 268

pullback on, 125–127

against Red Army, 155, 161, 162–163, 355n32

and reconciliation campaign, 135–136

Stalin’s instigation and orders in, 40–41, 150–153, 157–159

Stalin’s relatives as victims of, 257–258

against state security, 34–35, 36, 140, 160

targeted killings, 40

as tool of Stalinist system, 322–323

winding down of, 157, 160–162, 194

Yezhov’s direction of, 139, 140, 152, 157, 158–159, 351n66

Theater, Stalin’s taste in, 97

Tiflis: Bolshevik armed robbery at, 25–26

Social Democratic movement in, 21, 22, 26

Tiflis Meteorological Station, 21

Tiflis Theological Seminary, 15–20, 190

Timoshenko, Semen Konstantinovich: biography of, 359–360n2

and German invasion, 198, 199, 200, 202, 204

in wartime leadership, 207, 221, 222

Tito, Josip Broz, 280–281

Tkachev, R. A., 311

Tolstoy, Leo, 95

Tomsky, Mikhail Pavlovich: biography of, 347–348n8

Politburo expulsion of, 108

as oppositionist, 105, 107

suicide of, 140

Torture, 38

ban on, 315

Tovstukha, Ivan, 192

Tripartite Pact, 174–176

Trotsky, Lev Davidovich, 15, 31, 191

anti-Trotsky coalition, 80, 81–82

biography of, 336n13

and Bukharin–Kamenev meeting, 107

expulsion of, 84–85, 90

-Lenin relationship, 51–52, 65–66, 70

murder of, 40, 85, 174

NEP strategy criticized by, 87

oratory of, 52

power struggle with Stalin, 77, 78

Red Army command of, 55

-Stalin conflict over Polish Front, 61–63

Tsaritsyn terror campaign opposed by, 58–59

works of, 15, 94

Truman, Harry, 248, 267

Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad), in Civil War, 54–59, Gallery 5

Tucker, Robert, ix, 72

Tukhachevsky, Mikhail Nikolaevich, 140, 352n85, Gallery 10

Twenty Letters to a Friend (Allilueva), 260

Uglanov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, 105, 107, 108, 348n8

Ukraine: collaboration policy in, 232

famine of 1932–1933, 119

and German-Soviet non-aggression pact, 166

peasant uprisings in, 114–115

forced resettlement campaign in, 174

Soviet-German Front in, 212–213, 221, 228

Soviet occupation of, 170

Ukrainian Labor Army, 342n45

Ulam, Adam, ix

Ulianova, Maria Ilinichna, 68, 70, 71, 343n58

United Nations: and Korean War, 295

Soviet boycott of, 372n95

United States: at Berlin Conference, 248

–Israel relations, 285–286

in Korean War, 294, 295

Lend-Lease aid of, 211, 212

Marshall Plan, 267

in postwar settlement, 270

second front plan of, 223–224, 228, 229, 230

at Tehran Conference, 230

Urban population, 278, 375n11

preferential treatment of, 321–322

Valedinsky, L. A., 192

Vasilenko, Vladimir, 307–308

Vasilevsky, Aleksandr Mikhailovich: biography of, 362n59

on command structure, 238

on Kiev defeat, 213

marshal rank of, 226

on Moscow evacuation, 215

on Stalin’s strategic decisions, 225, 227, 239

Vinogradov, Vladimir, 197, 307, 308

Violence: Caucasian culture of, 21–22

Stalin’s pathology of, 40–41

Visitor logs, in archives, xiii Vlasik, Nikolai Sidorovich, 35, 304, 339n8

Voikov, Petr, murder of, 88–89

Volkogonov, Dmitri, ix, 6, 338n1, 367n6

Voroshilov, Kliment Yefremovich: 78, 172, 186, Gallery 8, 10, 14

biography of, 334n2

in Civil War command, 55, 57

in collective leadership, 90

in Stalin faction, 105

vacation with Stalin, 194

in wartime leadership, 202, 205, 206, 220–221

Vorozheikin, Grigory, 285

Vovsi, Miron, 307–308

Voznesensky, Nikolai Alekseevich: Gallery 14

biography of, 352–353n6

in leadership reorganization, 272, 282

in Leningrad Affair, 144, 282–283

Politburo appointment of, 177

Sovnarkom Bureau appointment of, 178–179, 181

in wartime leadership, 205, 206, 207, 214, 240

Vyshinsky, Andrei, 146

Warsaw uprising, 244

White movement, 53

Winter War, 172–173

Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 65

Working conditions, 324–325

World revolution, Politburo plans for, 77–78

World War II: Allied victories in 1943, 229

Berlin Conference, 247–248

Berlin operation, 246–247

collapse of Nazi Germany, 231

final battles of, 243–244, 246

German invasion of Poland, 169–170

German invasion of Soviet Union, 176, 187–188, 198–202

German occupation of Europe, 173, 174

postwar settlement, 269–270

second front plan, 223–224, 228, 229, 230

Tehran Conference, 229–230

Yalta Conference, 244–246, 290, Gallery 12. See also Soviet-German Front

Stalin, Joseph, wartime leadership of

Wrangel, Petr, 59, 60, 61

Yagoda, Genrikh Grigoryevich, 255

biography of, 351n69

and Kirov murder investigation, 131

purge of, 140, 160

Yakovlev, Aleksandr, 157

Yalta Conference, 244–246, 289, Gallery 12

Yegorov, Alexandr, Gallery 10

Yegorov, Petr, 307, 308Yemelianov, Nikolai, 49

Yenukidze, Avel Safronovich, 139, 193, 352n82

Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanovich, 154

biography of, 351n66

execution of, 160

on Kirov’s murder, 131

removal of, 157, 159–160

Terror directed by, 139, 140, 152, 157, 158–159

Yugoslavia, 235, 280–281

Zagumenny, Sergei, 102

Zaleski, Eugene, 267

Zhdanov, Andrei Aleksandrovich: Gallery 11

in anti-intelligentsia campaign, 265

biography of, 335n19

and breakdown in relations with West, 267

and Central Committee, 178

death of, 282

in leadership reorganizations, 180, 181, 272, 273

Politburo appointment of, 177

protégés of, 352–353n6

at Stalin’s social gatherings, 6

in wartime leadership, 207

Zhdanov, Yuri, 260

Zhemchuzhina, Polina (Molotov’s wife), 283–284, 314

Zhou Enlai, 298

Zhukov, Georgy Konstantinovich: biography of, 360n2

in Command Headquarters, 202, 204

on Crimean defeat, 221

on crimes against civilians, 236

and foreign press rumors, 269

on German intelligence, 209

and German invasion, 198, 199–200, 201, 202

marshal rank of, 226

Stalin’s criticism of, 241, 273–274

as Stalin’s emissary, 201

and Stalin’s strategic decisions, 213, 227

wartime commands of, 212, 213, 214, 360n2

Zinoviev, Grigory Yevseevich, 70, 98, 194, 282

and anti-Trotsky coalition, 81–82

biography of, 341n9

Bolshevik seizure of power opposed by, 50, 51, 52

execution of, 139

expulsion of, 84–85, 90

and Kirov’s murder charge, 131

as oppositionist, 82–84, 87

in power struggle, 75–76, 77, 78, 79, 80

in Provisional Government crackdown, 48, 49

Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 265, 368n9

Zubkova, Elena, xiv–xv

Zverev, Arseny, 274, 275, 277

Zvezda (magazine), 265