Police operatives had recently been instructed to omit the name and location of their branch even when signing their secret internal correspondence, so as to reduce any outsider’s ability to decipher the organization’s structure in case of a leak.77 Now, Stalin wrote to Mężyński (September 16, 1929), “it turns out you (the Chekists) have taken a course toward full-bore self-criticism inside the GPU. In other words, the Chekists are committing the same mistakes that were committed not long ago in the military body. . . . Do not forget that the GPU is no less a militarized agency than the military body. . . . Would it be impossible to undertake decisive measures against this evil?”78 Trilisser lost out, replaced by Stanisław Messing, who was close to his fellow Pole Mężyński. At the same time, the Stalin favorite, Yefim Yevdokimov, was brought from the North Caucasus to run the central OGPU secret-political directorate, which oversaw the secret, counterintelligence, special (army), informational (intelligence analysis), Eastern, and operative departments—a counterweight to Yagoda.79
Among the 2,000-odd operatives in the central OGPU at this time, Yevdokimov stood out. His North Caucasus bailiwick had become the most medal-bedecked in the Union, thanks to the protracted counterinsurgency against a well-armed populace (“bandit formations”), a civil war after the civil war.80 What is more, the place where Stalin took his holidays fell within his jurisdiction. In conspiring with the dictator to manufacture the 1928 Shakhty trial, Yevdokimov had become an all-Union star (and in 1930 would receive his fourth Order of the Red Banner).81 He looked after his subordinates’ families and gathered them at his house for banquets and singing—Ukrainian choral songs, Cossack songs, Russian folk ditties—with one Chekist playing the piano and another the accordion. “Yevdokimov had formed a powerful group that would implement his any command,” recalled one member. “By giving out awards, taking care of their daily life concerns, and corrupting their behavior, Yevdokimov had succeeded in forging a strong nucleus of Chekists loyal to him to the end. In turn, these people forged groups of operatives loyal to one another and, by extension, to Yevdokimov.”82
There was no assignment from which Yevdokimov would shrink on behalf of his patron. Innocently, Stalin, in the letter to Mężyński on September 16, 1929, had written: “I got wind that Yevdokimov is being transferred to Moscow to secret-operative work (it seems in place of Deribas). Would it not follow to simultaneously make him a member of the OGPU collegium? It seems to me it would follow.” Yevdokimov was named to the collegium even before his relocation to Moscow took effect.83
Stalin did not instigate this anti-Yagoda revolt. But he had again extracted advantage from others’ actions. Yagoda was promoted to first deputy chairman of the OGPU, from merely “deputy,” while Messing became a new second deputy chairman. But Stalin allowed Yevdokimov to implant his North Caucasus minions into the many departments in the capital that he now oversaw.84 Yevdokimov’s top deputy was now Jan Kulikowski, known as Olsky (b. 1898), another Pole of noble descent, who remained the head of the powerful counterintelligence department while becoming concurrently head of the special department for the army. Artur Artuzov, deputy chief of foreign intelligence and a long-standing Yagoda nemesis, became Yevdokimov’s other top deputy.85 Yagoda would have to overexert himself to demonstrate separation from the “right deviation” and loyalty to Stalin.
THE GENERAL SECRETARY’S WIFE—A RIGHTIST
All during the OGPU machinations, Stalin was on holiday down south, from the third week of July 1929, staying mostly at the Puzanovka dacha in Sochi. He had caught severe flu. He promoted “Bolshevik self-criticism” when it suited him, but in a letter of July 29 to Molotov, whom he had left in charge, he denounced some articles he had seen in Communist Youth League Pravda and the journal Young Guard as tantamount to “a call for a review of the general line of the party, for the undermining of the iron discipline of the party, for the turning of the party into a discussion club.”86 Stalin drafted politburo resolutions and instructions on foreign affairs, ordered that close attention be paid to the new iron- and steelworks under construction, and directed that the internal exile Cristian Rakovski, whose damning essay Stalin had read in the first issue of Trotsky’s Bulletin of the Opposition (July 1929), be deported to an even more remote locale (which turned out to be Barnaul, Siberia). Stalin complained about low grain procurements and demanded surveillance over collective farm directors and arrests of urban “speculators.” He congratulated Molotov (August 29) for savage attacks against Bukharin in Pravda, and reported, “I’m beginning to recuperate in Sochi.”87
Stalin directed talks to restore diplomatic relations with Britain (severed in mid-1927). The negotiations, supported by British industrialists, were launched after the Labour party won elections and the Labourite Ramsay MacDonald was returned as prime minister (in June 1929). “No haste should be displayed on the British question,” he instructed Molotov, denigrating deputy foreign affairs commissar Maxim Litvinov. “Remember we are waging a struggle (negotiations with enemies is struggle) not with England alone, but with the whole capitalist world, for the MacDonald government is the vanguard of the capitalist governments in the work of ‘humiliating’ and ‘bridling’ the Soviet government with ‘new,’ more ‘diplomatic,’ more ‘masked,’ in a word, more ‘valid’ methods. The MacDonald government wants to show the whole capitalist world that it can take more from us (with the help of ‘soft’ methods) than Mussolini, Poincaré, and Baldwin, that it can be a greater Shylock than the capitalist Shylock himself. And it wants this because only in this way can it win over the trust of its own bourgeoisie (and not only its bourgeoisie). We would be the bottom of the barrel if we could not manage to reply to these arrogant bastards briefly and to the point: ‘You won’t get a friggin’ thing from us.’”88
Stalin was assiduously courting Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer, to return permanently from Italy, and in 1929, for the second year in a row, he visited the USSR. “I heard Gorky evidently went to Sochi,”—Stalin’s wife, Nadya, wrote to him on August 28.89 “He will probably visit you, a pity, without me.” After traveling down the Volga, Gorky made it to Tiflis and, apparently, Sochi, but soon began spitting blood and cut his trip short.90 Nadya was in Moscow to sit entrance exams for the Industrial Academy. “I send you a big kiss, like the kiss you gave me when we parted,” she wrote to her husband in the August 28 letter, delivered by airplane. He wrote the next day about how “I have already managed to take two medicinal baths. I think I’ll take ten.” On September 1, he wrote that he had evidently “been close to pneumonia,” and still suffered from a persistent cough. “As soon as you get 6–7 free days, get down here to Sochi. How are things with the exam? I kiss you, my Tatka.”91
Nadya wrote the next day of daily life in the capital, “I must say that the mood about food supplies, among students and teachers, is only so-so; everyone is worn out by the queues.” She added knowingly, “Do not be angry at such details.”92 She had the further audacity to intervene on behalf of a member of Pravda’s editorial collegium, the secretary of its party cell, Kovalev, who had fallen afoul for publishing a critical article about the need for criticism, without seeking prior authorization from the Central Committee. But Kovalev had received authorization from higher-ups at Pravda. “I cannot be indifferent about the fate of such a good worker and comrade of mine,” Nadya wrote to Stalin, revealing that she knew a politburo meeting had been scheduled to adjudicate the matter. (Nadya also wrote, “And, if you can, send 50 rubles, I do not have a kopeck left.” Stalin sent her 120 rubles.) He accepted her account of Kovalev’s scapegoating (“I think you are right”) and sent a telegram to Molotov that same evening asking to delay any decision. The next day, Stalin instructed Orjonikidze and Molotov to establish firmer control over Pravda. Orjonikidze wrote to Stalin that “Kovalev has so far not been touched even though he committed a mass of idiocies. I agree with you that the leaders of Pravda are more at fault.” (Kovalev would be fired from Pravda all the same.) Orjonikidze pointedly added, “I must say, the sooner you return, the better.”93