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.