35. Kirill Aleksandrov, Russkie soldaty Vermakht’a: Geroi ili predateli (Moscow: Yauza, 2005), 26–44 (in Russian).
36. Beria’s letter to Stalin, dated July 29, 1940. Document No. 121, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 181.
37. Boris Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, translation and commentary by David W. Doyle (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1990), 212–4. Bazhanov was a former member of Stalin’s secretariat.
38. Beria’s report to Stalin, dated July 20, 1940. Document No. 118 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 178–9.
39. Details in, for instance, M. I. Mel’tyukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina. Sovetskii Soyuz i bor’ba za Evropu: 1939–1941 (Moscow: Veche, 2000), 176–211 (in Russian).
40. Timoshenko’s report No. 390-ss, dated June 17, 1940, in ibid., 206.
41. Georgii Fedorov, Bruschatka. Dokumental’nye povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: Libr, 1997), 57 (in Russian).
42. Irena Wiley, Around the Globe in Twenty Years (New York: David McKay Company, Inc.: 1962), 104.
43. Prisoner cards in the Vladimir Prison Archive.
44. NKGB Report No. 1687/M, dated May 16, 1941. Document No. 207, in Organy gosudarstvenoi bezopasnosti, 1 (2), 144–6. Also, Document Nos. 107–108 in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh–pervaya polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 1. Massovye repressii v SSSR, edited by S. V. Mironenko and N. Werth, 394–400 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004) (in Russian).
45. Viktor Stepakov, ‘Apostol’ SMERSHa (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2009), 75 (in Russian).
46. Politburo decision P35/407, dated January 6, 1942. By October 2, additional groups of deportees were sent to five other Siberian areas as ‘fishermen’. On the whole, of the total number of 52,664 ‘fishermen’, only 35,684 were able to work physically. NKVD reports in Yurii Bogdanov, Ministr stalinskikh stroek. 10 let vo glave MVD (Moscow: Veche, 2006), 106–9 (in Russian).
47. Document Nos. 2.73–2.101, in Stalinskie deportatsii 1928–1953, edited by N. L. Pobol’ and P. M. Polyan, 215–72 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2005) (in Russian).
48. NKGB Report No. 2288/M, dated June 17, 1941 and signed by Merkulov; Kobulov’s report, dated July 13, 1941; reports of Konradov, dated June 17, 1941 and September 15, 1941. Document Nos. 110, 112–114, in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 401, 404–7. Also, Moldavian NKGB Report No. 908, dated June 19, 1941; Document No. 260, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnost v Velikoi Otechstvennoi voine. Sbornik dokumentovi. Nakanune, T. 1 (2) (Moscow: Kniga i bizness, 1995), 260–1 (in Russian).
49. Data from Table 1 in The White Book: Losses Inflicted on the Estonian Nation by Occupation Regimes, 1940–1991 (Tallinn: Estoniam Encyclopedia Publishers, 2005), 37.
50. A. E. Gur’yanov, ‘Pol’skie spetspereselentsy v SSSR v 1940–1941 gg.,’ in Repressii protiv polyakov i polskikh grazhdan, edited by A. E. Guriyanov, 114–36 (Moscow: Zven’ya, 1997) (in Russian); figures for all deportations from the Baltics and other territories, in Alfred J. Rieber, ‘Civil Wars in the Soviet Union,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4, no. 1 (Winter 2003), 129–62.
51. Figures from Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 5, 56.
52. Agreements between the USSR and Germany, dated January 10, 1941. Document Nos. 641 and 642, in Dokumenty vneshnei politiki. Ministerstvo inostrannykh del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, T. 23 (2, pt. 1) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1998), 303–17 (in Russian).
53. Published in Izvestia, June 27, 1940. Details in Bochkov’s report, dated December 16, 1940. Document No. 117, in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 411–4.
54. Figures from Document Nos. 131 and 229, in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 446–8 and 623–4.
55. However, this decree concerned mostly the workers. The majority of peasants, forced to be members of kolkhozes (collective farms) could not leave their villages because the administration of kolkhozes kept their passports.
56. Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, 510–33.
57. Beria’s reports to Stalin, dated January 1941 and February 3, 1941. Document Nos. 146 and 150, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 224–6, 233.
58. The number of prisoners in 1941 from Oleg V. Khlevnyuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 328.
59. V. I. Vernadsky, ‘Korennye izmeneniya neizbezhny… Dnevnik 1941 goda,’ Novyi mir, no. 5 (1995) (in Russian), http://victory.mil.ru/lib/books/memo/vernadsky_vi/01.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
60. Joint Decree of the Central Committee and Council of Commissars, dated February 8, 1941. Document No. 155, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 240–2.
61. NKVD/NKGB Order No. 00151/003, dated February 12, 1941. Document No. 142 in Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka (2003), 608–9.
62. Joint decision of the Central Committee and Council of Commissars, dated February 8, 1941. Document No. 155 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 240–2.
63. On the Red Army structure, see Roger R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917–1991 (London: Routledge, 2000).
64. Politburo decision P31/132, dated April 19, 1941. Document No. 162, in Lubyanka: Stalin i NKVD, 262–63.
65. NKVD Order No. 00232, dated February 28, 1941. Document No. 143, in Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka (2003), 609–14.
CHAPTER 6
On the Verge of the War
Apparently, with the acquisition of new territories and having implemented a new structure of security services aimed at better ruling the enlarged country, Stalin did not expect that the war with Germany would come soon. He initiated a new wave of purges against the military, especially those officers who recently fought in Spain and showed independence from Moscow in their professional decisions. At the same time, Stalin made preparations for a future offensive war by making himself head of the government (Chairman of the Council of Commissars), which would allow him to declare and lead a war if necessary.
New Mass Purges
Just two months before the war, the NKO 3rd Directorate began to uncover a new military ‘plot’, this time in the air force and the armaments industry. The investigation was triggered by an extraordinary event. On April 9, 1941, thirty-year-old Pavel Rychagov, head of the Air Force Directorate and a deputy Defense Commissar, dared to confront Stalin at a Politburo meeting. Rychagov, a flying ace who had fought in both Spain and China, was distraught about a spate of plane crashes caused by mechanical problems. At the meeting, he blurted out: ‘The accident rate is high and will continue to be so because you force us to fly in coffins!’1 After a pause, the dictator responded: ‘You should not have said that.’ Rychagov was dismissed instantly, but, in keeping with the usual ritual, not immediately arrested.2