The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  3. Lyova Fedotov’s diary, bk. 15 (June 22, 1941), 4–5 [Fedotov, Dnevnik, 311–13].

  4. Dnevnik Niny Kosterinoi (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1964), 103–5. Cf. Dnevnik Niny Kosterinoi, http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html.

  5. Ibid., 105–7. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html (unabridged).

  6. Ibid. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html.

  7. Ibid., 107–8. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html.

  8. Ibid., 109–10. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html. The last sentence comes from Gorky’s “The Song of the Stormy Petrel.”

  9. Ibid., 112. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html.

  10. Ibid., 113. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html.

  11. Ibid., 114–15. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html. The lines “too many for him to remember them all” are from The Demon, by Mikhail Lermontov.

  12. Ibid., 115, 118–19. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html. The Jewish War is a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger.

  13. Ibid., 119–20. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html; Viacheskav Boiarskii, Diversanty zapadnogo fronta: Artur Sprogis i drugie (Moscow: Krasnaia zvezda, 2007), 77, 96–97, 107–61, 232–34, 297–355, and passim; A. K. Megera, “V tylu vraga (o boevoi deiatel’nosti razvedyvatel’no-podryvnykh grupp na vremenno okkupirovannoi territorii Podmoskov’ia),” in Kliatvu vernosti sderzhali: Partizanskoe Podmoskov’ie v dokumentakh i materialakh (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1982), 297–306; F. S. Fazliakhmetov, “Reidy komsomol’tsev-razvedchikov po tylam vraga,” in Kliatvu vernosti, 307–16; Nadezhda Arabkina, “Krestnyi put’ Zoi,” Moskovskii komsomolets, December 8, 2001, http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2001/12/08/100549-krestnyiy-put-zoi.html; “Legendy Velikoi Otechestvennoi: Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia,” Rossiia v kraskakh, http://ricolor.org/history/rsv/ist/7/3, and Russkaia narodnaia liniia, http://ruskline.ru/monitoring_smi/2005/04/13/legendy_velikoj_otechestvennoj_zoya_kosmodem_yanskaya.

  14. Dnevnik Niny Kosterinoi, 120. Cf. http://gendirector1.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html; Viacheslav Otshel’nik, “Tvoi lichnyi dnevnik: Interv’iu Eleny Alekseevny Kosterinoi,” Tvoi lichnyi dnevnik: Proekt Viacheslava Otshel’nika, http://subscribe.ru/archive/lit.graph.dnevnikovedenie/200902/05065454.html; RGALI, f. 457, d. 392, ll. 65–66; Memorial: Obobshchennyi bank dannykh o zashchitnikakh otechestva, pogibshikh ili propavshikh bez vesti v period Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny i poslevoennyi period, http://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/default.htm; Gamlet Mirzoian, “Ovsepian, A. A.,” Noev kovcheg 11, no. 134 (November 2008): http://www.noev-kovcheg.ru/mag/2008-11/1432.html.

  15. Obolenskaia, Iz vospominanii, “Samizdat,” http://samlib.ru/o/obolenskaja_s_w/02.shtml; Svetlana Obolenskaia, Deti Bol’shogo terrora: Vospominaniia (Moscow: AGRAF, 2013), 93–95, 77.

  16. P. A. Sudoplatov, Raznye dni tainoi voiny i diplomatii. 1941 god (Moscow: Olma Press, 2001), chap. 12, http://www.pseudology.org/Abel/Sudoplatov1941/12.htm; Anatoly Granovsky, I Was an NKVD Agent (New York: Devin-Adair, 1962), 142, 165–68; Memorial: Obobshchennyi bank dannykh o zashchitnikakh otechestva, http://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/info.htm?id=53081753; Volodia Ivanov’s letters, AMDNN, “B. Ivanov” file, letter of March 13, 1946; G. B. Ivanova, interview with author, March 13, 1998.

  17. Lyova Fedotov’s diary, bk. 15 (June 26, 1941), 8 [Fedotov, Dnevnik, 320].

  18. Ibid., 10 [Fedotov, Dnevnik, 321–22].

  19. Ibid. 8, and (July 11, 1941), 19 [Fedotov, Dnevnik, 320, 334].

  20. L. Roshal’, Piramida, Solo truby: Kinostsenarii (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989), 87–89; Gurov, “Chego ne znali Stalin i Gitler,” 8; Mikhail Korshunov and Victoria Terekhova, Tainy i legendy: Doma na naberezhnoi (Moscow: Slovo, 2002), 184–90; Memorial: Obobshchennyi bank dannykh o zashchitnikakh otechestva, http://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/info.htm?id=87025470.

  32. THE RETURN

  1. GARF, f. 9542, op. 7, d. 216, ll. 2–9; d. 265, l. 1.

  2. GARF, f. 9542, op. 7, d. 565, l. 3; d. 263, ll. 5–119; op. 1, d. 82, ll. 2–28.

  3. GARF, f. 9542, op. 7, d. 263, l. 5; d. 265, ll. 1–2; d. 565, l. 3; d. 374, l. 4; d. 427, l. 1; d. 243, ll. 5–6; d. 462, l. 3ob.; d. 485, ll. 4, 81–93; op. 1a, d. 28, l. 186; d. 32, ll. 153–63; op. 1, d. 53, ll. 11–63; d. 18, ll. 105–8; d. 92, ll. 1–5ob.; d. 83, ll. 11–29; d. 96, ll. 16–17, 31; d. 102, ll. 1–2; d. 103; d. 107, l. 1; d. 108, ll. 1–7; d. 111, ll. 40–41; d. 112; d. 113, ll. 1–2; d. 135, ll. 1–4; d. 139, ll. 1–2; d. 145, ll. 1–4; Viktoriia Il’inichna Vakhrusheva, interview with author, January 9, 1998; Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 502–10; Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Washington. DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 178–80, 336.

  4. Inna Shikheeva-Gaister, Deti vragov naroda: Semeinaia khronika vremen kul’ta lichnosti 1925–1953 (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2012), 102. On post-Gulag reunions, see Cathy A. Frierson and Semyon S. Vilensky, Children of the Gulag (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 301–51.

  5. M. R. Peterson, “O nas,” ll. 17, 19–20, 27–34, in AMDNN, “Peterson” file.

  6. Peterson, “O nas,” l. 17.

  7. Obolenskaia, Iz vozpominanii, “Samizdat,” http://samlib.ru/o/obolenskaja_s_w/01.shtml; Svetlana Obolenskaia, Deti Bol’shogo terrora: Vospominaniia (Moscow: AGRAF, 2013), 47.

  8. Obolenskaia, Iz vozpominanii, http://samlib.ru/o/obolenskaja_s_w/01.shtml; Obolenskaia, Deti Bol’shogo terrora, 48, 49.

  9. T. I. Shmidt, Dom na naberezhnoi: Liudi i sud’by (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2009), 80–81; Shikheeva-Gaister, Deti vragov naroda, 113–64; Peterson, “O nas,” ll. 33–35, 53.

  10. Anatoly Granovsky, I Was an NKVD Agent (New York: Devin-Adair, 1962), 214, 222–24.

  11. Ibid., 223–24.

  12. Ibid., 178, 225–341.

  13. Raoul Wallenberg: Report of the Swedish-Russian Working Group (Stockholm: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Department for Central and Eastern Europe, 2000), 68–69, 92, 129–49, 177, 188, http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/wp-content/files_mf/2836.pdf; Granovsky, I Was an NKVD Agent, insert between 179 and 180.

  14. Evgenii Zhirnov, “Vse proiskhodiashchee so mnoi lozhitsia ten’iu na imia ottsa,” Kommersant-Vlast’, November 7, 2005, http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/624225; Roi Medvedev, “Slava i tragediia odnoi sem’i,” Karetnyi riad 5 (November 1989): 6; Ia. N. Naumov and A. Ia. Iakovlev, Tonkaia nit’ (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1965), 71–72, 342, 77–93 (the interrogation technique quotation is on 82). See also Ia. N. Naumov and A. Ia. Iakovlev, Dvulikii Ianus (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1967); and Ia. Naumov and A. Iakovlev, Skhvatka s oborotnem (Moscow: Veche, 2008; originally published in 1969).

  15. Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, No. 7, http://www.memo.ru/history/diss/chr/chr7.htm.

  16. Peterson, “O nas,” l. 20.

  17. R. M. Poloz, interview with author, June 28, 1998; Iurii Trifonov, “Zapiski soseda,” in Iurii i Ol’ga Trifonovy vspominaiut (Moscow: Soverwenno sekretno, 2003), 180.

  18. B. G. Golubovskii, Bol’shie malen’kie teatry (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo imeni Sabashnikovykh, 1998), 108–23; AGTsTM, f. 454, d. 1294, l. 3; d. 4, l. 1; d. 455, ll. 106–7; d. 1377, n.p.

  19. GARF, f. R-5449, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 33, 52; G. S. Ronina, interview with author, October 1, 1997.

  20. Il’ia Zbarskii, Ob’’ekt No. 1 (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), 233–36; V. I. Zbarskii, interview with author, March 10, 1998.

  21. R. M. Poloz, interview with author, June 28, 1998; A. Shitov, Iurii Trifonov: Khronika zhizni i tvorchestva (Ekateringurg: Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo Universiteta, 1997), 249–50; Obolenskaia, Iz vozpominanii, http://samlib.ru/o/obolenskaja_s_w/01.shtml.

  22. V. B. Volina, interview with author, September 18, 1997; Shitov, Iurii Trifonov, 271; Zakhar Prilepi
n, Leonid Leonov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2010), 409.

  23. Golubovskii, Bol’shie malen’kie teatry, 119–20; AGTsTM, f. 454, d. 1377, l. 128.

  24. GARF, f. R-5449, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 31–32.

  25. Evgenii Gurov, “Chego ne znali Stalin i Gitler, znal Leva Fedotov,” Prezent (supplement to Moskovskie vedomosti) 37 (December 1993): 8; Shmidt, Dom na naberezhnoi, 90–93; Zbarskii, Ob’’ekt No. 1, 233–36; V. B. Zbarskii, interview with author, March 10, 1998.

  26. Gurov, “Chego ne znali Stalin i Gitler,” 8; Shmidt, Dom na naberezhnoi, 91–92. On rehabilitations, see N. F. Bugai, Reabilitatsiia repressirovannykh grazhdan Rossii (XX-nachalo XXI veka) (Moscow: MSNK-Press, 2005); A. G. Petrov, Reabilitatsiia zhertv politicheskikh repressii: Opyt istoriko-pravovogo analiza (Moscow: INION RAN, 2005); A. Artizov et al., eds., Reabiitatsiia: Kak eto bylo, vols. 1–3 (Moscow: Demokratiia, 2000); and, esp., Nanci Adler, Keeping Faith with the Party: Communist Believers Return from the Gulag (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012).

  27. E. D. Stasova, Stranitsy zhizni i bor’by (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1960); RGASPI, f. 356, op. 2, d. 32, l. 1; d. 24, ll. 159–60 and passim; G. A. Voronskaia, Vospominaniia (Moscow: Protei, 2002), 70; RGASPI, f. 356, op. 2, d. 24, l. 160.

  28. RGASPI, f. 356, op. 2, d. 34, l. 48ob.

  29. Voronskaia, Vospominaniia, 64, 68.

  30. Ibid., 66–67.

  31. Ibid., 64–65, 69; RGASPI, f. 356, op. 2, d. 6, l. 113.

  32. Voronskaia, Vospominaniia, 69.

  33. Ibid., 71–72; RGASPI, f. 356, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 1–3.

  34. Svetlana Allilueva, Dvadtsat’ pisem k drugu (Moscow: Zakharov, 2000), 59–60; translation from Svetlana Allilueva, Twenty Letters to a Friend (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 61–62.

  35. Allilueva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 60–61.

  36. Allilueva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 59–62; translation from Allilueva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, 62–64. See also Vladimir Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 225–61, 274, 281; Kira Allilueva, Plemiannitsa Stalina (Moscow: Vagrius, 2006), 210–52.

  37. Allilueva, Dvadtsat’ pisem, 62, translation from Allilueva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, 64. See also Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 281.

  38. Obolenskaia, Iz vospominanii, http://samlib.ru/o/obolenskaja_s_w/01.shtml; Obolenskaia, Deti Bol’shogo terrora, 52–53.

  39. S. V. Obolenskaia, interview with author, October 20, 2009.

  40. For the catalog, see Eva Pavlovna Levina-Rozengolts, 1898–1975: Sbornik materialov; Katalog vystavki proizvedenii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia, Gosudarstvennyi muzei izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv im. A. S. Pushkina, 1996). See also E. B. Levina, comp., Eva Pavlovna Levina-Rozengol’ts: Zhivopis’i grafika (Moscow: Galart, 2006); Eva Levina-Rozengolts: Her Life and Work (Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1999).

  33. THE END

  1. Joseph Kellner, “The End of History: Radical Responses to the Soviet Collapse” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming, 2018).

  2. Aleksandr Ovcharenko, V krugu Leonida Leonova: Iz zapisok 1968–1988 gg. (Moscow: Moskoskii intellektual’no-delovoi klub, 2002), 158; M. A. Kanazirska, “Zagadka Leonova (Iz besed s pisatelem),” in Vek Leonida Leonova: Problemy tvorchestva; Vospominaniia (Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2001), 347–48; Zakhar Prilepin, Leonid Leonov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2010), 328–37, 485–500, 507–8; Leonid Leonov, Piramida (Moscow: Nash sovremennik, 1994), 1:6.

  3. Leonov, Piramida, 3:72; M. Gor’kii, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: GiKhL, 1955), 30:400; Leonid Leonov v vospominaniiakh, dnevnikakh, interv’iu (Moscow: Golos, 1999), 223; Leonov, Piramida, 1:32.

  4. Ibid., 2:252.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Leonid Leonov, “Slovo o pervom deputate,” Leonid Leonov, http://www.leonid-leonov.ru/slovo-o-pervom-deputate.htm; Leonov, Piramida, 3:6.

  7. Leonov, Piramida, 3:8–9.

  8. Ibid., 2:254; 1:14, 19.

  9. Ibid., 1:67–68.

  10. Victoria Smolkin, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

  11. Luke 14:26; 1 Cor.: 8–9.

  12. Plato, The Republic, Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html.

  13. J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953) 528–29. Cf. I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1951), 13:37–38.

  14. Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Viktor Zhivov, “Osobyi put’ i puti spaseniia v Rossii,” manuscript in author’s possession.

  EPILOGUE

  1. Iurii Trifonov, Vremia i mesto, in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1985), 4:260.

  2. Iurii Trifonov, “Seroe nebo, machty i ryzhaia loshad’,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 4:260.

  3. Trifonov, Utolenie zhazhdy, in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1985), 1:715–16, Trifonov, “Pravda i krasota,” in Iurii Trifonov, Stat’i, Litmir, http://www.litmir.co/br/?b=71204&p=1; Yuri Trifonov, The House on the Embankment, in “Another Life” and “The House on the Embankment,” trans. Michael Glenny (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 197–98 (translation modified). Cf. Iurii Trifonov, Dom na naberezhnoi, in Sobranie sochinenii, 2:370.

  4. Trifonov, “The House on the Embankment,” 222, 189 (translation modified).

  5. Yury Trifonov, The Disappearance, trans. David Lowe (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1991), 7.

  6. Trifonov, “The House on the Embankment,” 201 (translation modified); Trifonov, The Disappearance, 78 (translation modified), 15–17.

  7. Trifonov, “The House on the Embankment,” 226 (translation modified).

  8. Yury Trifonov, “Games at Dusk,” in The Exchange and Other Stories, trans. Jim Somers (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 175 (translation modified). Cf. Trifonov, “Igry v sumerkakh,” TheLib.ru, http://thelib.ru/books/trifonov_yuriy/igry_v_sumerkah.html.

  9. Yury Trifonov, “The Exchange,” trans. Ellendea Proffer, in The Exchange and Other Stories, 40–41 (translation modified). Cf. Trifonov, “Obmen,” Solnechnyi veter, http://www.vilavi.ru/raz/trif/1.shtml.

  10. Iurii Trifonov, “Otblesk kostra,” in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), 4:7.

  11. Trifonov, Studenty, in Sobranie sochinenii, 1:238.

  12. Trifonov, Vremia i mesto, in Sobranie sochinenii, 4:254–55.

  13. Yuri Trifonov, The Old Man, trans. Jacqueline Edwards and Mitchell Schneider (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 153 (translation modified).

  14. Trifonov, The Disappearance, 7; Trifonov, “The House on the Embankment,” 189, 280 (translation modified).

  15. Drugaia zhizn, Dom na naberezhnoi, Predvaritel’nye itogi, Vremia i mesto. The last quotation is from The Long Goodbye, in Yury Trifonov, The Long Goodbye: Three Novellas (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), 203.

  16. Trifonov, The Long Goodbye, 232 (translations modified).

  17. Trifonov, Utolenie zhazhdy.

  18. Trifonov, “The House on the Embankment,” 272–73, 274 (translation modified).

  19. Trifonov, Vremia i mesto.

  20. Vremia i mesto, Dom na Naberezhnoi, Predvaritel’nye itogi, Starik. On blindness, see Natal’ia Ivanova, Proza Iuriia Trifonova (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1984), 258.

  21. The David Shvarts quotation is from The Disappearance, 58.

  22. Trifonov, The Disappearance, 116.

  23. The grandmother quotation is from The Disappearance, 114. See Ivanova, Proza, 227.

  24. Trifonov, “The House on the Embankment,” 333–34 (translation modified).

  25. Trifonov, Another Life, in “Another Life” and “The House on the Embankment,” 107 (translation modified).

  26. Trifonov, The Long Goodbye, 276 (translations modified).

  27. Trifonov, Another Life, 112, 128 (trans
lation modified).

  28. Trifonov, The Old Man, 261; Trifonov, The Long Goodbye, 276 (translations modified). Iu. Trifonov, Neterpenie, Otkrytyi tekst, http://opentextnn.ru/man/?id=2806.

  29. “The time we began” quotation is from Iurii Trifonov, “Otblesk kostra.”

  30. Trifonov, The Old Man, 114, 247, 251, 185 (translations modified).

  31. Ibid., 91–92, 76, 87–90 (translations modified). For the original report, including the “Carthage” quotation, see The Last Battle, based on Filipp Mironov: Tikhii Don v 1917–1921 gg. (Moscow: Demokratiia, 1997), 224, reprinted from GARF, f. 1235, op. 83., d. 8, ll. 43–52.

  32. Trifonov, The Old Man, 90 (translation modified).

  33. Ibid., 99–100, 171–72, 71–72 (translations modified), cf. Rev. 8:10–11.

  34. Ibid., 225–29 (translations modified). The original is in Filipp Mironov, 415–23 (see The Last Battle).

  35. Ibid., 178, 41 (translations modified).

  36. Ibid., 243–44 (translation modified).

  37. Ibid., 165 (translation modified).

  38. Ibid., 185–86 (translation modified).

  39. Ibid., 255–60 (translation modified).

  40. Ibid., 261 (translation modified).

  41. Trifonov, Another Life, 127–28 (translation modified)

  42. Ibid., 77–78 (translation modified)

  43. Ibid., 183–84.

  44. English translation by Walter Kaufmann, in Goethe’s Faust (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 467–69, 493.

  45. Trifonov, Another Life, 185–86 (translation modified); Trifonov, The Old Man, 152–53 (translation modified).

  INDEX

  Page numbers in italics refer to maps or photographs.

  Adoratskaia, Varvara (“Varia”), 385, 983

  Adoratsky, Vladimir Viktorovich, 191–92, 385, 390, 482, 494–95, 499, 535, 542, 596–97, 936, 983

  Africa, 100–101

  agitation, 35–36, 135

  Agranov, Yakov, 297, 305, 715, 718, 783, 789