(Novosibirsk, 1997).
fn18
Well covered in
Pravo na repressii
.
fn19
Best covered in Anne Applebaum,
Gulag: A History
(New York, 2003), pp. 579–86.
fn20
‘the millions of destroyed families …’ ‘1937 God i Sovremennost’, MEMORIAL (Moscow, 15 April 2007).
fn21
V S. Zhukovsky,
Lubyanskaya Imperiya NKVD 1937–1939
(Moscow, 2001), pp. 179–300,
passim;
see also Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov,
Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Comissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940
(Stanford, 2002), p. 186.
fn22
E.g. S. A. Papkov,
Stalinskii termr v Sibiri: 1928–1941
(Novosibirsk, 1997); RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), f. 1, op. 58, d. 6, 11, 145–6.
fn23
Marc Jansen, et al.,
Stalin’s Loyal Executioner
(Stanford, 2002), p. 187. The full documentation of the Yezhov case is reported as running into twelve volumes
fn24
O. F. Suvenirov,
Tragediia RKKA 1937–1938
(Moscow, 1998), pp. 313, 317–24.
fn25
E. Maksimova, ‘Podslushali i rasstreliali’,
Izvestiya
(Moscow, 16 July 1992).
fn26
Amy Knight,
Who Killed Kirov?
(New York, 1999).
fn27
Oleg V. Khlevniuk,
Politbiuro: mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930—e gody
(Moscow, 1996), p. 141.
fn28
Stalin’s Letters to Molotov: 1925–1936
, ed. Lars T. Lih, Oleg V Naumov and Oleg Khlevniuk (New Haven, 1995), pp. 233–5.
fn29
Oleg V. Khlevniuk,
Politbiuro: mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930—e gody
(Moscow, 1996).
fn30
Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD, 1937–1938
, ed. V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova.
Rossia XX vek
series (Moscow, 2004), pp. 252–3.
fn31
Andrei Sukhomlinov,
Kto vy, Lavrenti i Beria?: neizvestnye stranitsy ugolovnogo dela
(Moscow, 2003).
fn32
Anastas Mikoyan,
Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan
(Madison, Conn., 1988).
fn33
In conversation with Olga Carlisle in January 1960. See
Voprosy Literatury
, No. 3 (1980), pp. 162–83.
fn34
Norman Cohn,
The Pursuit of the Millennium
(New York, 1970).
fn35
Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Problem of Dictatorship’, in
The Russian Revolution
(New York, 1940), p. 48.
fn36
V. I. Lenin,
Collected Works
, Vol. 13 (Moscow: 1972), p. 473.
fn37
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (4 September 1870), in
Selected Correspondence
(New York, 1968).
fn38
Felix Chuev and Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov,
Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics: Conversations with Felix Chuev
(Chicago, 1993).
fn39
Roy Medvedev, in
Moscow News
, 13 August 2002.
fn40
To the Virginia Convention gathered at St John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, 23 March 1775.
Introduction: THE ROOTS OF TERROR
fn1
The effective central core of the Party at the time of the October Revolution is estimated at 5,000 to 10,000, a third of whom were intellectuals (D. J. Dallin, cited in Boris Souvarine,
Stalin
[London, 1949], p. 317).
1 Stalin Prepares
fn1
Blyumkin (the ex-Socialist Revolutionary who had shot the German Ambassador in 1918) had been executed as a secret envoy of Trotsky in 1929, but that was a rather different matter.
fn2
Pyatakov’s speech was welcomed by “prolonged applause.” Zinoviev and Bukharin were not interrupted and gained “applause.” Radek and Kamenev were interrupted, but applauded. Rykov and Tomsky were interrupted and not applauded. But even these last were comparatively well received.
2 The Kirov Murder
fn1
There are earlier assassinations in Russia’s own history which may also have inspired Stalin; for example, the killing of Prime Minister Stolypin in 1911 by an assassin who seems to have acted with the approval and connivance of the Tsarist Secret Police, which objected to Stolypin’s policies.
fn2
Stalin’s similar complicity in the murder of the Yiddish actor-producer Solomon Mikhoels in Minsk in 1948 now seems well established. Described at the time as an accident, it was admitted in the Khrushchev era to have been the work of the MGB (
Sovetskaya Byelorossiya
, 13 January 1963; Svetlana Alliluyeva,
Only One Year
[London, 1969], p. 190).
fn3
All four NKVD officers were later themselves to be denounced and shot as conspiratorsPauker and Volovich as German spies in addition.
3 Architect of Terror
fn1
By the time of the Second World War, when many Western observers first saw him, he had changed. He had developed quite a large paunch; his hair had become very thin; and his face was now white with ruddy cheeks. This coloration was common in high Soviet circles, where it was known as “Kremlin complexion” and attributed to working through the night in its offices.
fn2
Cherkasov gives an account of this conversation in
Zapiski sovetskogo aktera
(Moscow, 1953), pp. 380–82. This book was passed for publication while Stalin was still alive, and (we are told in the Soviet historical journal
Voprosy istorii
, no. 8 [1956]) he raised no objections.
4 Old Bolsheviks Confess
fn1
This was extended during the war to provide for “the punishment of relatives of those who had been taken prisoner” (Svetlana Alliluyeva,
Twenty Letters to a Friend
[London, 1967], p. 196).
fn2
He was replaced by Akulov, who had been serving as Prosecutor-General. It was now that Vyshinsky received that post.
fn3
These dates are those given sporadically in the indictment, in the evidence of the trial, and in the Secret Letter of the Central Committee.
fn4
He is also mentioned by General A. V. Gorbatov as presiding in 1939 over the four- or five-minute farce which sentenced him to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He died in good odor in 1967 (
Years Off My Life
[London, 19641, pp. 117–18).
fn5
Just as the Czechoslovak investigation of the Slansky Trial made in 1968 established that “the individual sentences had been settled beforehand by the Political Secretariat” (
Nova mysl
, no. 7 [10 July 1968]).
fn6
For some reason, no evidence implicating Pyatakov is given in the printed version of the court proceedings. In fact, Reingold had incriminated him.
fn7
At the time, it is true, the Communists denied responsibility and claimed that they had been framed by their enemies. Georgi Dimitrov, at the Reichstag Trial, said, “This incident was not organized by the Bulgarian Communist Party … that act of provocation, the blowing up of Sofia Cathedral, was actually organized by the Bulgarian police” (
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