Not long thereafter, the politburo had formed a commission to write a new history of the party. But even the textbook drafted by the lapdog Yaroslavsky had been rejected, for lacking vivid individual heroes.352 Stalin had his minions force the issue.353 Functionaries assembled a large group of historians. “We went into the hall like geese,” Sergei Piontkovsky recorded in his diary. “In all, there were about 100 people in the room. . . . Stalin stood up frequently, puffed on his pipe, and wandered between the tables.” He interrupted the main speaker and finally just took the floor. “Stalin spoke very quietly. He held the secondary school textbooks in his hand and spoke with a slight accent, striking the textbooks with his hand, proclaiming, ‘These textbooks are good for nothing. What the heck is the “feudal epoch,” “the epoch of industrial capitalism,” “the epoch of formations”—it’s all epochs and no facts, no events, no people, no concrete information, no names, no titles, no content.’” Piontkovsky’s diary continued: “Stalin said what we need are textbooks with facts, events, names. History should be history.”354
Of course, behind closed doors, Stalin was using just such a schematic vocabulary: feudal epoch, capitalist mode of production, bourgeois democracy.355
In Sochi, the dictator summoned Kirov, who arrived in early August and stayed at the Zenzinovka dacha (where Rykov used to stay). Writing history was not exactly Kirov’s forte. But Stalin also summoned Zhdanov, the dictator’s youngest favorite. Speaking to Alexandra Kollontai, Soviet envoy to Sweden, before departing Moscow, Stalin had playfully posed as a “right deviationist,” contrasting himself with Zhdanov, a “left deviationist,” a statement less about Stalin’s politics than Zhdanov’s extremism.356 Vasily and Artyom were also in Sochi all July and August, and Stalin gave them the draft history to test it. Zhdanov’s fifteen-year-old son, Yuri, invited to join the group for lunch, recalls that Stalin, to general laughter, observed that historians divided history into three successive schemata: matriarchate, patriarchate, and secretariat.357
After work, Stalin and Kirov grilled kebabs, sang old songs (“There’s a Cliff on the Volga”), and worked the garden with shovels, while Kirov chased the ducks and guinea fowl. Stalin did not like to swim (he was from the mountains), but Kirov did, and Stalin would wait for him at the shore. Stalin even permitted Kirov to go with him to the Russian steam bath, where they pounded each other with birch leaves.358 The dictator permitted no mistresses or prostitutes. Kirov got bored. “I am devilishly sick of this place,” he wrote to his wife back in Leningrad, complaining that they could not even play skittles. “We had intense heat, then six days and nights of intense rain. . . . Now, again, tedious heat has struck.”359 Stalin could not be torn from his beloved Sochi, but Kirov was back in Leningrad already by August 30, 1934, having departed in a train with Andrei Andreyev’s family. “He had a strong suntan,” recalled Natalya Andreyeva, the functionary’s daughter. “His teeth were white; he smiled often.”360
Grain procurements were severely lagging, despite the comparatively good harvest, and Kaganovich and Molotov wrote to Stalin about easing the burden on transport by purchasing 100,000 tons of Argentine and Australian wheat for the Soviet Far East. “Wheat imports now, when abroad they are shouting about the lack of wheat in the USSR, can only be a political minus,” he objected.361 Instead he proposed they apply “maximum pressure.” Molotov was deployed to Siberia, Kaganovich to Ukraine, Mikoyan to Kursk and Voronezh, Chubar to the Middle Volga, and Zhdanov to Stalingrad province. Voroshilov, on fall maneuvers, was instructed to look into harvest gathering in Belorussia and the western province.362 Kirov was sent to Kazakhstan to ensure harvest collection under his former protégé, local party boss Levon Mirzoyan. Stalin was now taking a restrained approach to the Kazakhs. Kirov got the head procurator for East Kazakhstan fired for abuses and asked Yagoda to remove police operatives for mistreating collective farmers.363 But when Kaganovich wrote to Stalin requesting a reduced procurement quota for Ukraine, Stalin warned him and the inner circle of a slippery slope.364
EXTRAVAGANZA
Finally, the founding congress of the Union of Soviet Writers had opened on August 17, 1934, with 597 delegates (377 with voting rights) and 40 foreign guests.365 The union had admitted around 1,500 members and 1,000 candidate members, of whom 1,535 lived in the Russian republic, including slightly more than 500 in Moscow, 206 in Ukraine, around 100 in Belorussia, 90 in Armenia, 79 in Azerbaijan, and 26 in Turkmenistan. About one third of the total membership and one half of the congress attendees belonged to the party.366 “Literally all writers submitted applications to join the writers’ union,” the newly appointed deputy head of the Central Committee culture department stated at a pre-congress gathering of the union’s party members. “Not a single writer did not submit an application, except Anna Akhmatova.”367 An exaggeration, but not by much. “On the threshold of its opening, the question unexpectedly arose of how to decorate the Columned Hall of the House of Trade Unions,” recalled one playwright of the venue. “Several of the projects were completely fantastic and unacceptable. At the last meeting, which took place in [culture and propaganda chief Alexei] Stetsky’s office, . . . I suggested we hang portraits of the classic writers. Stetsky stood, shook my hand, and said the question was decided.”368
A grandiose affair, broadcast over the radio and shown on newsreels, the congress lasted sixteen days. Crowds massed outside the hall to catch glimpses of the famous writers. Inside, an ovation greeted Gorky’s appearance to launch the proceedings. His report, “On Soviet Literature,” offered a potted history of literature from the dawn of writing that did not take up a single Soviet writer and, vaguely, called for a “folklore of the toiling people.”369 Samuil Marshak gave a report on children’s literature (August 19), Radek on the literature of dying capitalism (August 24), Aleksei Tolstoy on dramaturgy (August 27).370 “Everyone is consumed by the congress; the West through government glasses,” the literary critic Mikhail Kuzmin laconically wrote of the long speeches.371 Zhdanov informed Sochi (August 28) that “everyone praises the congress right up to the incorrigible skeptics and ironists, who are not few in the writers’ milieu.”372 By contrast, Chekists reported from informants that Mikhail Prishvin and Pantaleymon Romanov had ridiculed the “outstanding boredom and bureaucratism,” while the romanticist P. Rozhkov called the congress “a sleepy kingdom.” Isaac Babel labeled it “a literary wake.”373
One revelation emerged from the report (August 20) on literature in the Georgian republic, delivered by the university rector Malakia Toroshelidze, who at Stalin’s insistence began with the Middle Ages. It attracted the most attention of all the reports on national literatures in the USSR, and sparked discussion about ignored achievements, given the obsession with Europe.374 The Frenchman Malraux, the most prestigious foreigner in attendance, in prepared remarks read by an interpreter, noted that “if writers are really engineers of human souls, do not forget that an engineer’s highest calling is to invent. Art is not submission; art is conquest. (Applause.)” He added, “You should know that only really new works can sustain the cultural prestige of the Soviet Union abroad, the way Mayakovsky sustained it, the way Pasternak does. (Applause.)”375 This was the nub of the dilemma Stalin faced.