9. Yoram Gorlizki, “Political Reform and Local Party Interventions under Khrushchev,” in Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864–1996, ed. Peter H. Solomon (New York and London, 1997), pp. 259–260.
10. Letter from Stakhanov to Stalin in May 1945; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 891, l. 128. For a similar letter sent to Molotov before the war, see GARF, f. R-5446, op. 82, d. 108, l. 145; d. 120, l. 74.
11. According to official statistics, at the start of 1953 more than 40 percent of the country’s population lived in cities. It should be kept in mind, however, that this figure included residents of small cities and settlements where the standard of living was close to that of the peasants.
12. In 1952, out of the 443,000 tons of meat sold through state and cooperative outlets across the USSR, 110,000 were sent to Moscow and 57,400 were sent to Leningrad; GARF, f. R-5446, op. 87, d. 1162, l. 171.
13. A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999), p. 355.
14. Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2000).
15. Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003).
16. Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York and Oxford, 1996); Lynne Viola, ed., Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (Ithaca, NY, 2002); Jeffrey J. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2005).
17. In recent years historians have produced several valuable studies on this problem. See, for example, the following: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999); Elena Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (New York and London, 2001); Donald Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943–1953 (Cambridge, 2010).
18. Calculations based on E. Iu. Zubkova et al., comps., Sovetskaia zhizn’. 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 102–103; O. V. Khlevniuk et al., comps., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow, 2002), pp. 388–389. For comparison, see A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, GULAG. 1917–1960 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 543–551.
19. This letter was given to Malenkov to read; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 901, l. 37.
20. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 107.
21. Cited in ibid., p. 263.
22. Figures for state and private urban housing are from RGAE, f. 1562, op. 41, d. 56, ll. 30–33. Figures for the urban population as of early 1953 are from V. P. Popov, Ekonomicheskaia politika Sovetskogo gosudarstva. 1946–1953 gg. (Moscow and Tambov, 2000), p. 16.
23. RGAE, f. 1562, op. 41, d. 56, ll. 30–33. The inventory of publicly owned residential buildings included the best-built ones, which belonged to local government councils (soviets) and agencies. A significant proportion of urban housing was in private hands. These buildings were in much worse shape.
24. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, p. 179.
25. 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), pp. 623–624.
26. B. V. Zhiromskaia, I. N. Kiselev, and Iu. A. Poliakov, Polveka pod grifom “sekretno”: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1937 goda (Moscow, 1996), pp. 98, 100.
27. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001).
28. See one recent study: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).
29. For documents and letters characterizing inter-ethnic conflicts during the final period of Stalin’s rule, see L. P. Kosheleva et al., comps., Sovetskaia natsional’naia politika. Ideologiia i praktiki realizatsii (Moscow, 2013).
30. Geoffrey Hosking, Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2006).
31. E. Khodzha [Enver Hoxha], So Stalinym. Vospominaniia (Tirana, 1984), p. 90.
32. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1479, ll. 14–18.
33. A. Berelovich and V. Danilov, eds., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD: 1918–1939 gg., vols. 1–4 (Moscow, 1998–2012); G. N. Sevost’ianov et al., eds., “Sovershenno sekretno”: Lubianka–Stalinu o polozhenii v strane (1922–1934), vols. 1–9 (Moscow, 2001–2013).
34. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 12, d. 100, ll. 91–92.
35. When the apparat of the Special Sector was being reorganized in 1939, provisions were made for the creation of fifteen staff positions for people reading letters addressed to Stalin. Their duties included familiarizing themselves with the letters and sorting them (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 37). If we assume that each reader spent an average of ten minutes per letter, in working an eight-hour day, all fifteen readers would be able to review 720 letters per day or approximately 260,000 per year. Probably the number was higher. Experienced readers would process letters quickly, especially as many letters were short. Furthermore, using a shift system, the apparat worked essentially around the clock, and shifts were not strictly limited to eight hours.
36. APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 65, l. 51. The Special Sector’s Fifth Section also took care of Stalin’s library.
37. The letters shown to the Special Sector leadership during 1945–1953 have been preserved. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, dd. 888–904.
38. Letters selected to be shown to Stalin were accompanied by a list entitled “Letters and Petitions Received Addressed to Com. Stalin.” In addition to the letters presented to Stalin, this list included certain letters sent for review by other Soviet leaders. Apparently these were letters it was felt Stalin did not need to see but about which he would be interested in knowing. Stalin’s personal archive contains a rather complete set of such lists of letters only for 1945–1952 (but lacks those received while he was vacationing in the south); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, dd. 862–882.
39. Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven, 2012).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When Jonathan Brent and Vadim Staklo—then the editorial director and project manager for Yale University Press’s Annals of Communism series respectively—suggested that I write a biography of Stalin, I was more puzzled than glad. But now that the book has been completed, I am truly thankful to them.
Few know more about the Stalin era than my friends Yoram Gorlizki, Andrea Graziosi, Jan Plamper, and David Shearer, and I am grateful to them for reading the manuscript and making valuable comments. This work also greatly benefited from the skillful editing of William Frucht, the press’s executive editor, the keen eye and remarkable memory of the manuscript’s copy editor, Bojana Ristich, and the expertise of production editor Margaret Otzel. A critical role was played by the book’s translator, Nora Favorov, my most attentive and demanding reader.