CODA. LITTLE CORNER, SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1941
1. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 306 (citing UD:s Arkhiv 1920 ARS, HP/1557/LVIII, June 21, 1941). The citation contains a typo, indicating the Swedish ambassador in Berlin, but this was from Moscow.
2. Bismarck, Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman, II: 301.
3. Stalin might have taken a meal in his apartment in the company of the inner circle that afternoon; alternately, he could have done so later in the evening. Mikoyan would recall many years later that “we, politburo members, gathered in Stalin’s Kremlin apartment. . . . We left around 3:00 a.m.” The timing of Mikoyan’s account does not jibe with the Kremlin office logbook, in which, moreover, Mikoyan does not figure on June 21. Molotov late in life remembered that “on June 21, we stayed until 11 or 12 p.m. at Stalin’s dacha. Maybe we had even watched a movie. We used to do this often, watch a movie.” These times, too, are contradicted by the office logbook. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 24; Mikoian, Tak Bylo, 388; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 36; Na prieme, 337.
4. Anna Alliluyeva, Stalin’s sister-in-law, is the main source for the theory that an infected childhood bruise on his left arm had resulted in a chronically stiff elbow. Alliluyeva, Vospominaniia, 167.
5. Dokuchaev, Moskva, Kreml, Okhrana, 113–6. Stalin hated the black ravens, who shat on the monuments, so the Kremlin commandant fought an all-out war against them, trapping at least 35,000 birds, which were given as feed to the zoo.
6. Molotov recalled: “The tension was palpable in 1939 and 1940. Tensions ran very high.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 25.
7. German embassy personnel in Moscow did not know the precise date of the invasion. “I am personally very pessimistic, and although I do not know anything concrete, I think Hitler will launch a war against the USSR,” Schulenburg said at Köstring’s mansion (June 16) in a conversation the NKGB eavesdropped. “At the end of April I saw [Hitler] personally and completely openly I said to him that his plans for a war against the USSR are utter folly, that now is not the time to talk about war with the USSR. Believe me, for my candor I fell out with him and I’m risking my career and, perhaps, soon I’ll be in a concentration camp.” Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 169–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1978–80: June 20, 1941).
8. “From June 10 to 17,” Merkulov wrote (June 18), “thirty-four people left the German embassy to return to Germany; the upper ranks were sending home their families and belongings.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 384–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1945–8). That same day, Augusto Rosso, the Italian ambassador, went to see Schulenburg at his residence (the NKGB eavesdropped the conversation). The German ambassador admitted to receiving his own instructions to evacuate embassy staff families and non-essential employees. Rosso telegrammed Rome asking for instructions in the event of war, especially about what to do with documents. Altogether, NKGB counterintelligence, in Moscow and Rome, secured three versions, independent of one another, of the Rosso-Schulenburg exchange, reporting that Rosso noted Schulenburg’s lack of information, but wrote “in strict confidence he [Schulenburg] added that in his personal opinion . . . a military conflict was unavoidable and that it could break out in two or three days, possibly on Sunday [June 22].” Pronin, “Nevol’nye informatory Stalina,” 1–2 (citing FSB archives); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 389 (TsA FS); Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 267–8. Sudoplatov commented on the June 19 report from the NKGB Rome station chief, “It appears we are being robustly disinformed.” In other words, a privileged conversation between allies—Germany and Italy—was intended to trick the Soviets into preparing for war and thereby provoke war. Under such reasoning, anything and everything the Germans did could be dismissed. The extraordinary achievement and exertions of total surveillance were in vain. Sharapov, “Za sto chasov do voiny.”
9. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 693–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 2, l. 83).
10. Molotov added: “I will have a talk with I.V. [Stalin]. If anything particular comes of it, I will give a call!” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 165–6 (June 21, 1941); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 416. Molotov late in life, to a question about anticipated blackmail, replied, “And why not think so? Hitler was an extortionist, to be sure. He could have been extorting concessions. . . . Around each issue there could have been extortion and deception and duplicity and flattery and . . . it’s hard to say really.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 30.
11. “Iz perepiska N. V. Valentinova-Vol’skogo s B. I. Nikolaevskim,” in Valentinov, Nasledniki Lenina, 214.
12. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi.” See also, among other important sources, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1289, l. 6, 6 ob., 22–3; d. 1482, l. 7 ob., 23.; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 113.
13. Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (2007), 224; Utesov, Spasibo, Serdtse!, 249–50.
14. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 422–3 (quoting an interview with Isakov in 1962).
15. Bullock understood that Hitler and Stalin possessed dissimilar personalities, but he portrayed them as two similar lower-class malcontents, ambitious yet resentful of the political regimes and social orders they lived under. Still, in his telling, neither represented a mere expression of supposed impersonal forces. On the contrary, he portrays each as uniquely decisive in the creation of their respective regimes and policies. In Overy’s follow-up, the infrastructure of rule and systems of domination, rather than the persons, drive the respective systems, which emerged from the destruction of the Great War, sought to realize alternatives to the perceived failures of parliamentary order, and drew upon popular support. Overy understands that the two systems represented very different utopias. Still, he, too, overdoes the similarities. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 349, 977; Overy, Dictators.
16. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 409–10 (Chadayev); Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 355, 370.
17. Recollections of one of Poskryobyshev’s two daughters, Natalya: http://sloblib.narod.ru/slob/poskreb.htm. Poskrebyshev’s first wife, Jadwiga, a Pole, had died in 1929 of tuberculosis.
18. Tyulenev wrote that he saw Timoshenko and Zhukov that evening at the defense commissariat, evidently before their audience with Stalin, and that he departed the city for his dacha in Serebryannyi Bor, where his family was staying. Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (2007), 224, 226. This version of his memoirs—purportedly restoring censored parts—does not differ in essence from the earlier version regarding this episode: Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (1972), 123–4; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 200–3. Admiral Kuznetsov recalled that Tyulenev, when giving a lecture, reminisced that he had been phoned by Stalin at 2:00 p.m. Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 357, which also appears in the first edition (1966), 329.
19. That day Cripps had visited Maisky on his own initiative, and sought to ensure cooperation following the German invasion that Cripps knew was coming. Maisky’s detailed summary of the conversation was received in Moscow on June 22 at 11:00 a.m. “Iz neopublikovannykh dokumentov (Beseda I. Maiskogos) S. Krippsom 21 iiunia 1941g.), 39. See also Vishlev, Nakanune, 51. Gorodetsky (personal communication) notes that Maisky had decided to spend the weekend at the country house of his old friend, Negrín, the last Spanish Republican prime minister, and that the envoy would be genuinely surprised when he heard the news of war. Beyond his fear of crossing Stalin, he could not get out of his head that all the warnings might just be a self-serving British provocation. Supposedly, Major General Susloparov (“Maro”), the military attaché and intelligence chief in Vichy, sent a message on June 21 that the invasion would begin the next morning, and Stalin wrote on it: “This information is an English provocation. Clarify who is the author of this provocation and punish him.” This document has not been published. Ivashutin, “Dokladyvala tochno,” 57; Krasnaia zvezda, Feb. 2, 1991 (Ivashutin interview). Susloparov had told his French interlocutors (June 18) that Germany would not attack the USSR, that the rumors, being spread out of Germany (not Britain, as he formerly believed), formed part of the “pressure which the German government is expected to exert on Moscow to increase considerably the delivery of grain, oil products, and other raw materials, indispensable for continuing the war.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 307–8 (citing Quai d’Orsay Archives, 835/Z312/2: 261–4). See also Trepper, Great Game, 127.