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 The 1946 decree criticizing Zoshchenko and Akhmatova was rescinded only in the late 1980s during Gorbachev’s perestroika.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).