Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  Snapshot of the status quo: directories as documents of their age

  But when the text and the data for the Directory of 1936 were compiled – the final submission date was in the spring of 1936 – the editors’ task had been to process a vast quantity of information as carefully and precisely as possible and to present it in a digestible fashion. Everything that one had to know to orientate oneself in Moscow was summarized in 680 pages of three columns each. This included information about where to go for first aid, where to find the police, the telegraph, train information, sanitation services, the criminal police or the fire brigade, right down to detailed overviews of the complex and crystalline tangle of institutions characteristic of a metropolis. The editors could look back on a long tradition. Vsia Moskva had first been published in 1893 by Aleksei Suvorin, and after that it appeared annually in revised and enlarged form. Publication was interrupted by the Revolution and the Civil War.2 In 1923 publication was resumed in a volume of 468 pages. In 1925 and 1931 new, expanded editions appeared. All Moscow was more than a mere catalogue of addresses. Together with a brief history of Moscow, it contained information about transport, commerce and culture, as well as a significant advertising section, a list of the most important institutions, social organizations and personalities of the capital. It was a true mirror of the changes of the epoch and its revolutionary shocks. It documented the renaming of streets and changes in the location and significance of institutions; entire strata of the populace that had once set the tone vanished from its pages, while protagonists from the revolutionary underground now moved into the city’s best addresses. A Moscow directory after 1917 is a document of upheaval, both in its general features and and in its details.

  Developments between 1923 and 1926 resulted in additional changes in the Directory. Whereas the editions from the period of the New Economic Policy were concerned with the recovery of the economy and the private sector, including businesses, shops, freelance professions, retailers, cafés and restaurants – in short, with the lively bustle of life in general in the Moscow of the NEP epoch – the editions of 1931 and 1936 document yet another new age: private enterprise was forced onto the back foot and was liquidated; the planned economy and its mechanisms came to the fore. Information about private individuals, doctors’ and lawyers’ practices, shops, workshops and small businesses now disappeared entirely.3 Of the thirty-one rubrics of the Directory of 1936, the majority refer to government, Party and trade union organizations. A second large bloc documents the nationalized or cooperative sector of the economy – i.e. industry, commerce or municipal enterprises. Further sections deal with the urban infrastructure: public transport, telephone and telegraph, the network of savings banks and other banks. Seven sections inform the reader about organizations concerned with culture, education, science and art, the health service and social services. The Directory contains a town plan, a street index (with street names from both before and after the Revolution), an overview of the Metro, tram and bus lines, monuments and memorial plaques within the city limits, seating plans of the Moscow theatres for ticket reservations, and various other pieces of useful information. A comparison of the editions of 1923, 1927 and 1931 reveals the growth of the state sector and at the same time the elimination of individuals from the lists. In short, the Moscow Directory is a true reflection of the social upheaval going on in the city.

  The user can see at a glance the bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of the institutions and organizations, with their presidiums, central committees, departments, commissions and sub-commissions. He will readily find the names and addresses of leading personnel, together with their telephone numbers. Thus emerges a topography of power, its nerve centres, networks and subsidiaries. But we also obtain a picture of the infrastructure and the circulation of the lifeblood of a great city with all its components – the routes to and from work, school and leisure activities, visits to the authorities and also to the cinema. The Moscow Directory teaches us that, even in times of totalitarian rule, cities do not cease to be highly complex organisms. It depicts a lifeworld that is not coextensive with the political world.

  We can only find our way around post-revolutionary Moscow by knowing the new street names. The Directory contains the names of 800 streets that were renamed after 1917. We are speaking here of a reinscription of the old ‘Moscow text’. Thus Aleksandr Street becomes October Street; Bath Street becomes Pugachev Street, Znamenskii Lane becomes Marx–Engels Lane, and Officers’ Street becomes Red Army Street.4 Even old Moscow districts such as Zamoskvorechie or Khamovniki are renamed and are now called Bauman, Dzerzhinsky or October district. In this way a new map of the city becomes embedded in the minds of its inhabitants.

  Topography of power and other locations

  The Directory reveals the hierarchically and concentrically arranged complexes of power. It renders visible the concentrated machinery of power in the capital city of the empire. It is the point at which all decision-making processes come together and the starting point from which directives spread out across the entire country. The capital city of the empire is where all the major institutions and organizations have their headquarters. This is where we find the heads of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the diplomatic missions of the Union republics and the autonomous regions, the heads of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, of the Moscow Region and the City of Moscow. This is where all the People’s Commissariats – i.e. ministries – of Heavy Industry, Light Industry, Defence, Internal Affairs, Foreign Affairs, etc., are based. This is where the Supreme Court, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR, of the RSFSR, of the Moscow Region and the City of Moscow are to be found, as are the general staff and the military academies. Parallel to them, the leaders of the political parties and the trade unions likewise have their headquarters in Moscow: the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) – unlike the other national republics, the RSFSR had no Communist Party of its own5 – and the Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions (both of Union-wide and Russian unions), as well as the circa one hundred individual trade unions.

  The Moscow Directory thus reflects a mammoth bureaucratic structure which also has a spatial existence. One of its sites is the Kremlin itself. It is no mere political metaphor but a physical location, one that is home to administrations, secretariats, offices and also apartments, car pools, services and security personnel. Many of them are listed in the Directory, together with their telephone numbers – Numbers Ko-26-00 to Ko-26-40.6 The Directory is very sparing with information about the centre of Soviet power in which part of the leadership lived.

  Scattered throughout the city are the so-called Houses of the Soviets for the members of government administration and other privileged people. We are speaking here of gated communities, which played a great role as places where people lived and as centres of informal politics. The largest is ‘the House on the Embankment’ in ulitsa Serafimovicha 2, which has become famous, thanks to Iurii Trifonov’s novel of that name. This is one of the largest residential complexes of this kind worldwide, a ‘city within a city’, with above-average comforts, including its own leisure and sporting facilities, theatre and cinema, shops and garages. It had been built at the end of the twenties to a design by the architect Boris Iofan. With its circa 500 apartments and almost 2,500 inhabitants, it may be thought of as the elite quarter par excellence, one in which the terror of 1937–8 wreaked particular havoc.7

  Further privileged residential complexes were to be found in Sadovaia-Karetnaia ulitsa, Bozhedomskii pereulok 1, Granovskii ulitsa 3, Bol'shaia Pirogovskaia ulitsa 51, Tverskoi bul'var 10, and the house in Spiridonovskaia 26, as well as the residences at Rozhdestvenskii bulvar 21 and Malaia Nikitskaia 16 and in the building of the Central Executive Committee at No. 3 Red Square, in the former shopping arcades (in the GUM Building).8

  A second nodal point in the topography of power was undoubtedly the area around Staraia ploshchad', where key organiza
tions of the Communist Party – at All-Union, regional and city level – together with their staff, were housed in handsome and luxurious hotel buildings of the pre-revolutionary era (Staraia ploshchad' 4, Tel. Ko-28-00 to Ko-28-40).9 Not far from them were also the head offices of the Komsomol (ulitsa Kuibyshev, Ipat'evskii pereulok 3, Tel. No. Ko-28-00 to Ko-28-4074).10

  The Executive Committee of the Communist International, in contrast, had its offices at 1 Manege Square (Tel. Ko-28-50 to Ko-28-54).11 The most important hall of residence of the Comintern employees was the Hotel Lux in Gorky Street, whose inhabitants were likewise major victims of the repression.

  A third complex was the Palace of Labour, a former house for widows and orphans on the banks of the Moscow River, a giant complex from the early nineteenth century, almost a Moscow Escorial in scale, which found space not only for the Presidium of the Soviet Association of Trade Unions but also for the heads of a good 100 individual trade unions (Address: Solianka 12, Tel. Ko-29-00 to Ko-29-40). 12

  Scattered around the city were the fifteen People’s Commissariats with their offices and branches. The most impressive, together with all its offices, commissions and sections, was the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry, which was situated in a modern office block of pre-war vintage at 2/5 Nogin Square.13 The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs had its headquarters in the converted office building of the Rossiia Insurance Company at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, the former Lubianka Square. The headquarters, however, was just the best-known and most visible building of a ‘labyrinth of terror’ with a plethora of offices, prisons, garages and hostels in the vicinity.14 The People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was housed quite close by, at the corner of Kuznetskii most 5/21. The structure and personnel of the different organizations is given in varying detail. The entry for the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry occupies more than six pages; organizations belonging to the Academy of Sciences are likewise spread over six pages. In other cases, information is restricted to a line or two. Thus all we learn about the NKVD is the address – ulitsa Dzerzhinskogo 2 – with the telephone numbers Ko-27-00 and Ko-27-40. The People’s Commissariat for Defence lists only the address – ulitsa Frunze 19 – and telephone number – 1-03-40 – with the name of the People’s Commissar – Marshal Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov.

  A city – even a city where power is as ubiquitous as in Moscow – does not consist solely of the agencies of power. A city is more than a bureaucratic organization, all the more so as Moscow at the end of the Second Five-Year Plan was a city riven by turbulence verging on ungovernability.

  Beyond the institutions of state power lay the newly built factories. Alongside them we find leisure-time establishments and the entertainment and sports facilities. Dozens of pages list the schools in the districts of the capital. A network of public libraries covers the entire city. There are no fewer than 280 entries in the section on ‘Clubs and Houses of Culture’ alone. Under ‘Publishers’ we find 138 organizations. In 1936 there were close on sixty central and regional newspapers appearing in Moscow – and that did not include the company newspapers that were published by the large enterprises. The editorial offices of over 540 magazines were based in Moscow. The range of magazines covers almost every aspect of human activity: there is an Archive of Pathological Anatomy and the Architecture of the USSR; political magazines such as Class Struggle and the Marxist Historian stand alongside such classics of modern magazine design as the USSR under Construction, whose editors had their offices in Spiridonovskaya ulitsa 2, whose editor-in-chief was the future ‘enemy of the people’ Georgu Piatakov, and whose deputy was Evgenia Yezhova, the wife of the future head of the NKVD. It would seem that magazines for coping with the problems of everyday life were in particular demand, such as Nutrition, Mother and Child, Insurance, Street and Car, the Life of the Blind and the Radio Front. There was a broad spectrum of specialist magazines, such as the Engineer’s Messenger, Air-Fleet Courier, Spa Customer, Physiotherapy and Pig Breeding. The editorial boards of school textbooks and specialist periodicals were also located in the capital: Geography at School, Soviet Music, Locomotive Construction and Techniques of Fire Prevention. Moscow was a theatre city with an almost inexhaustible repertoire. As a city of many nationalities, it had a ‘Theatre for National Minorities’, such as the Moscow State Jewish Theatre – Malaia Bronnaia 2 – or the State Gypsy Theatre ‘Romen’ – Bolshoi Gnezdnikovskii pereulok 10 – but also Latvian and Tatar theatres. Together with numerous symphony orchestras, the presence of a jazz orchestra is particularly noteworthy. The Jazz Orchestra of Aleksandr Varlamov in the Central House of the Red Army, 28 Commune Square, the jazz orchestra of Aleksandr Tsfasman – Dzerzhinsky ulitsa 23 – and the First Moscow Women’s Tea Jazz Band, in the Central Club of the Timber Industry, Bobrov pereulok 2/20. Nor should we forget the centrepiece of the Moscow entertainment industry, the First Moscow State Circus – Tsvetnoi bulvar 13. The Directory records the existence of forty-nine cinemas, with names like Avantgard, Avrora, Ars, Velikan, Tivoli, Zaria and Udarnik. Some of them were very large – for instance, Velikan, which had 587 seats, or the Theatre of Science and Technology, which had 1,300. What was significant about them, however, was that they played throughout the day without a break so as to satisfy the demand. Lastly, a section of the Directory lists a variety of other social organizations, including a ‘Society of the Friends of Green Spaces’, a ‘Society of the Esperantists of the Soviet Republics’, sporting associations, a Society for Proletarian Tourism and an ‘International Association of Revolutionary Theatre’ – Petrovka 10, Entrance 36, Chairman: Erwin Piscator, Tel. 2-91-12.

  This diversity of social and semi-governmental institutions and organizations gives us not merely an insight into the immense complexity of an urban society, but also an inkling of the huge efforts and even violence required if they are to be disciplined, levelled down and made uniform. We come to realize all the things that must be done to ensure that the hundreds of newspapers and magazines follow the same linguistic line, the theatre repertoires are made to conform, and the libraries and bookshops are purged of the works of writers who have not kept up with the times. What must happen to ensure that museums, whose exhibitions and displays necessarily reflect long-term efforts, accept the inevitability of a new line and a new course? And what must be done to ensure that hundreds of schools and hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren feel ready to accept a new canon? The Directory of 1936 encapsulates a moment in time in which the accusers and the accused, the perpetrators and the victims, the executioners and the executed of the morrow, still sit side by side – as functionaries, perhaps in the office next door in the building of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry, in the editorial offices of Izvestiia, in the secretariat of the Moscow Party leadership or in a school.

  Traces of the disappeared

  Iurii Trifonov spent his childhood in the ‘House on the Embankment’. What he has described so vividly in his novel Disappearance applies to the city as a whole, and above all to the focal points of political life.

  I once lived in that house. No, that house is long since dead and gone. It was another house I lived in, but inside those mighty, dark-grey concrete walls that so resemble a fortress. The building towered over the two-storey houses, little villas, churches, bell towers, old factories, embankment streets with granite cladding, and on both sides the Moscow River flowed past. The house stood on an island, like a crazy, ponderous ship without masts, funnels or ship’s wheel, a giant box, an ark stuffed full with people, ready to set sail. Where to? No one knew. No one had the slightest idea. The people who walked past it on the street, along the walls in which hundreds of tiny citadel-like windows were lit up, thought the building was as unshakeable and eternal as a field. After thirty years the dark-grey colour of the walls has not changed. But I knew that the old house was dead: it had been dead already when I left it. That’s how it is with houses: we leave them and they die.15

  Regardless of which page of
the Directory we turn to, we see everywhere the names of people who disappeared in 1937–8, because they had either been driven out, arrested, condemned or shot or had committed suicide. A few examples, taken at random, will suffice to make the point.

  On page 4 we find a list of members of the Council of the People’s Commissars under the chairmanship of Viacheslav Molotov. Within a brief space of time all of Molotov’s deputies disappeared from the ranks of the living. V. Chubar was arrested on 4 July 1938 and condemned to death on 26 February 1939. Ian Rudzutak was arrested on 25 May 1937 and sentenced to death on 28 July 1938. V. Mezhlauk was arrested on 1 December 1937 and condemned to death on 28 July 1938. N. Antipov was expelled from the Party in June and sentenced to death on 28 July 1938.16 Of the remaining fifteen members of the Council of People’s Commissars listed in 1936, only four were to survive. The People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry, G. Ordzhonikidze – ploshchad' Nogina 2/5, Dielovoi dvor, Tel. 2-81-30, would commit suicide on 18 February 1937. The People’s Commissar for Light Industry, I. Liubimov, was expelled from the Central Committee in June 1937. The People’s Commissar for the Timber Industry, S. Lobov, was expelled from the Party in June 1937 and died shortly after. The People’s Commissar for Agriculture, M. Chernov, was sentenced to death in the third Moscow show trial and was executed on 15 March 1938. The People’s Commissar for Plant and Animal Production, M. Kalmanovich, was sentenced to death on 27 November 1937 and executed. The People’s Commissar for Finance, G. Grinko, was sentenced to death and executed on 13 March 1938 in the third Moscow show trial. The former People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs and General Commissar for State Security, G. Iagoda, was sentenced to death and executed in the third Moscow show trial in March 1938. The People’s Commissar for Shipping was arrested on 9 April 1938 and executed on 19 August 1938. The People’s Commissar for Internal Trade, I. Veitser, was arrested on 17 October 1937 and sentenced to death on 7 May 1938. The People’s Commissar for the Posts and Telegraphs, A. Rykov, was arrested in 1937 and sentenced to death and executed in 1938, in the third show trial. The People’s Commissar for Foreign Trade, Arkadii Rozengol'ts, was arrested on 7 October 1937 and sentenced to death in the third Moscow show trial in 1938.