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.