Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  Hitherto observers have always pointed to the importance of the Berlin– Moscow axis, the parallels between the plans for the capital of Germania and the General Plan for Moscow, the two pavilions in Paris and the similarities in aesthetics and taste of Albert Speer and Boris Iofan, the two architects. To have done so is not misguided. Von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, has reported on the exhibition of Speer’s designs in the Kremlin in Moscow and the enthusiastic reception given to them by Stalin – but that was in October 1939 – in other words, when all the decisions about the palace had long since been taken.23 Iofan’s connection with Rome and New York went back much further and had a far greater impact. It is more than an irony of history that the only place from where we might see today what the Moscow building of the century would have looked like, had it been built, is New York – more precisely, the Rockefeller Center, and in particular Radio City Music Hall. There you can find fragments of what the Moscow architects and builders brought back to Moscow from America by way of drawings in their sketch pads: the escalators connecting the foyers, the air-conditioning units in the rows of seats, the hydraulic machinery with which to operate the stage, the sculpture figures of a Promethean age, and the realistic fresco by José Maria Sert, depicting the emancipation of the exploited and oppressed.24

  War, post-war, and the end of the state of emergency

  There is no doubt that the Palace of the Soviets would have been completed, presumably on time, as was expected, and as Molotov had insisted yet again at the Eighteenth Party Congress in 1939, ‘by the end of the Third Five-Year Plan’ – i.e. in 1942. By the summer of 1938 a start had been made on the assembly of the steel frame for the tower. The German attack on the Soviet Union wrecked this plan, as well as the planned reconstruction of Moscow in general. The Palace of the Soviets had become an important landmark for the attacking German bombers; the building materials and steel were now required for other purposes, namely for the defence of the capital. The Commission for the Construction of the Palace was evacuated to Sverdlovsk, where it continued to work on further alternatives. After the war, work was resumed on the project under the altered conditions and in a different location, on the Lenin Hills to begin with, then within the Kremlin itself. Boris Iofan spent the rest of his life busy with modifications and adjustments to the changed situation. But Khrushchev’s ‘de-Stalinization’ delivered the death blow to the centennial building. The foundation pit became an open-air swimming pool, which enjoyed great popularity until the demise of the Soviet Union.25 The Palace of the Soviets existed only in the negative, as an imaginary focus, a reference point for the seven high-rise buildings erected in Moscow at the end of the forties and the early fifties. This meant it still led a kind of indirect existence until it was succeeded by another building in the centre: the new Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that was built between 1995 and 2000.

  The transformation of the largest building site in the USSR and of the project of the century into an open-air swimming pool symbolizes the transition from a society that could not survive without such major projects into a society that could live with the idea that it had a swimming pool at the centre of its capital city, or that was compelled to do so. The original barn-storming project was the quintessence of society in a state of permanent mobilization. Abandoning it signalled the transition from a society in need of a utopia to one which had become indifferent or even resistant to utopias. The ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ had followed a strange path – from the heroic efforts of the imagination to the lowly spheres of a normality that could dispense with heroic gestures. We shall have to wait and see whether the new version of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour means more than the rebirth of a city centre or whether it should be interpreted as an imperial gesture that is both old and new.

  39

  Instead of an Epilogue

  An epilogue usually serves the purpose of summarizing the data that have crystallized in the course of the book and of attempting to draw conclusions. This could also be attempted here – that is to say, I could try to sum up what has been established, provide a balance sheet of the human losses, discuss the long-term consequences of this bacchanal of self-destruction and perhaps point to the emergence of a trend towards stabilization. But that would be to suggest the prospect of a future life that was about to dawn following the shock created by violent excesses of the greatest ferocity; perhaps it would even mean an easing of tension, or at any rate an end to the state of emergencies and extremes.

  Any epilogue to the story I have narrated must inevitably disappoint such expectations if it is to remain true to history. The catastrophe described here was succeeded after a mere three years by an even greater disaster. The massacres of 1937–8 were followed by human sacrifices whose numbers were estimated after the end of the Soviet Union to be 27 million. Entire armies were surrounded and annihilated, entire generations were wiped out; newly built towns with their tractor plants, factories and schools – the only real achievements to have survived the great upheaval – all lay in ruins. The chapter of Russian history covering 1937–8 was followed not by peace and consolidation but by an intensified state of emergency and an increased degree of cruelty that would bleed even great nations of their lifeblood and destroy them. The present chapter should be succeeded by an account of the war that followed, by the near death and the survival of the country through its own efforts. It would have to deal with the disappearance of a tragedy in the shadow of an even greater tragedy.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1 ‘1937 god i sovremennost': tezisy “Memoriala”, 30 oktiabria, no. 74 (2007), special issue; German edn: ‘Das Jahr 1937 und die Gegenwart: Thesen von Memorial’, Osteuropa 6 (2007), pp. 287–394. The most important and reliable account, one indispensable for any reconstruction of that year, is Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003). Cf. also Wadim S. Rogowin, 1937: Jahr des Terrors (Essen, 1998).

  2 On the question of demographic losses, see Geoffrey Hosking, Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2006), pp. 47–9, 129–35; V. A. Iusupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka: istoriko-demograficheskie ocherki (Novosibirsk, 2000); Valentina B. Zhiromskaia, Demograficheskaia istoriia Rossii v 1930-e gody: vzgliad v neizvestnoie (Moscow, 2001).

  3 ‘The Great Terror of the 1930s defies explanation, let alone comprehension, and divergent interpretations, old and new, will generate critical debate till the end of time’ (Arno J. Mayer, The Furies, Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions, Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2002, p. 660). Nicolas Werth, ‘Repenser la “Grande Terreur”: l’U.R.S.S. des années trente’, Le Débat 122 (2002), pp. 118–39; Gábor Tamás Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflicts in the USSR 1933–1953 (Chur and New York, 1991); Nicolas Werth, La Terreur et le désarroi: Staline et son système (Paris, 2007).

  4 On the significance of the mass operation in the balance sheet as a whole, see, above all, Rolf Binner and Marc Junge, ‘Wie der Terror “groß” wurde: Massenmord und Lagerhaft nach Befehl Nr. 00447’, Cahiers du monde russe 42/2–4 (2001), pp. 557–614; Binner and Junge, ‘“S étoĭ publikoĭ tseremonitsya ne sleduyet”: Die Zielgruppen des Befehls Nr. 00447 und der Große Terror aus der Sicht des Befehls Nr. 00447’, Cahiers du monde russe 43/1 (2002), pp. 181– 228; Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds), Stalin’s Terror, High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (Basingstoke, 2003); J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993).

  5 See the bibliographies in Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, pp. 497–524; Jörg Baberowski, Der Feind ist überall: Stalinismus im Kaukasus (Munich, 2003), pp. 822–76; Jörg Baberowski, Der rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus (Munich, 2003); Manfred Hildermeier (ed.), Stalinismu
s vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Neue Wege der Forschung (Munich, 1998); still outstanding is Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (London, 1973); Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge (London, 1972); Alec Nove (ed.), The Stalin Phenomenon (New York, 1992); Robert C. Tucker (ed.), Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York, 1977); Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London and New York, 2000); Nick Lampert and Gábor T. Rittersporn (eds), Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath: Essays in Honour of Moshe Lewin (Armonk, NY, and Basingstoke, 1992).

  6 The most complete overview is to be found in Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, pp. 497–524; of particular importance for the present work are Vladimir N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i VCHÈK–GPU–OGPU–NKVD, ianvar' 1922 – dekabr 1936 (Moscow, 2003), and also Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004); Aleksandr N. Iakovlev (ed.), Reabilitatsia: politicheskiie protsessy 30–50-kh godov (Moscow, 1991); Andrei Artizov et al. (eds), Reabilitatsiia: kak éto bylo, vols. 1–3 (Moscow, 2000–4); J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1999); William J. Chase, Enemies Within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2001); Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004).

  7 Of the major reference works, see especially Aleksandr I. Kokurin and Nikita V. Petrov (eds), Lubianka: VCHÈK-OGPU-NKVD- NKGB-MGB-MVD-KGB, 1917–1960: spravochnik (Moscow, 1997); Nikita V. Petrov and Konstantin V. Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD 1934–1941: spravochnik (Moscow, 1999); Jacques Rossi, Spravochnik po gulagu (London, 1987).

  8 For the lists of those who were killed by shooting, see the bibliography in Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, p. 516, and also the eight volumes of Butovsky poligon (Moscow, 1997–2004).

  9 The term comes from Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, CA, 1995). For more recent diaries and other autobiographical sources, see Véronique Garros, Thomas Lahusen and Natalija Korenewskaja (eds), Das wahre Leben: Tagebücher aus der Stalinzeit (Berlin, 1998); Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on my Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (London, 2007).

  10 Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Raum und Geschichte’, in Koselleck, Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), pp. 78–96; Karl Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit: Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik (Munich, 2003).

  11 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination (Austin, TX, 1982); Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist , Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1984), pp. 258–62.

  12 Eisenstein’s sketches for his Moscow film can be found in Jan Leyda, Eisenstein at Work (New York, 1982), pp. 81–2, and Oksana Bulgakowa, Sergej Eisenstein: Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1998). The idea of alphabetical ordering, as found in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, 1926: Ein Jahr am Rand der Zeit (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), turns out to be as unsuitable as the method employed by Walter Kempowski, in his monumental Echolot – ein kollektives Tagebuch (4 vols, Munich, 2002–5).

  13 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’. Bakhtin’s epoch-making study of Rabelais – Rabelais and his World (Bloomington, IN, 1984) – was certainly inspired by the events whose contemporary and witness he was, not without risk to himself. Conversely, his theory of the carnivalesque dimension of history helps us to find a key to understanding the Great Terror.

  14 I have in mind here above all Heimito von Doderer’s Die Strudlhofstiege, Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, and Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (on Mumbai/Bombay).

  15 For the political history of Moscow, see Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1995). An entirely new view has been opened up by David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow 1929–1941 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1994). A semiotics of the city of Moscow has been attempted by Karl Schlögel, Moskau lesen (Berlin, 1984). An indispensable work for the history of the city is Istoriya Moskvy, Vol. 6: Period postroeniia sotsializma (1917g.–iiun' 1941g.), Book 2 (Moscow, 1959), as well as Istoriia Moskvy: s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei (Moscow, 1997–2000) and the Entsiklopediia Moskva (Moscow, 1997).

  16 I am greatly indebted to Sebastian Lentz and his colleagues at the LeibnizLänder-Institut, Leipzig, for the production of the map of Moscow.

  17 To the best of my knowledge, the only person to refer to the date 2 July 1937 is J. Arch Getty, in ‘State and society under Stalin: constitutions and elections in the 1930s’, Slavic Review 50/1 (1991), pp. 18–35, and, especially, in ‘“Excuses are not permitted”: mass terror and Stalinist governance in the late 1930s’, Russian Review 61 (2002), pp. 113–38, here p. 126.

  18 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1971); of the systematically interrelated writings of Sheila Fitzpatrick, mention need be made here only of Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 (Cambridge, 1979); The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1992); Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2005); (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London and New York, 2000); and Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York and Oxford, 1999). For the history of the controversy between the totalitarian and revisionist schools, see Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York and London, 1995).

  19 This was the thrust of my programmatic sketch ‘Russland im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine unerzählte Geschichte’, in Karl Schlögel, Go East, oder die zweite Entdeckung des Ostens (Berlin, 1995), pp. 201–15.

  20 It is Moshe Lewin’s achievement to have provided a model demonstration of this, most recently in The Soviet Century (London and New York, 2005), pp. 60–5.

  21 On the history of fear, see Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford, 2004); on the culture of violence, see Jörg Baberowski, Zivilisation der Gewalt: Die kulturellen Ursprünge des Stalinismus (Berlin, 2005); Stephan Plaggenborg, ‘Stalinismus als Gewaltgeschichte’, in Plaggenborg (ed.), Stalinisimus: Neue Forschungen und Konzepte (Berlin, 1998), pp. 71–112; on the public sphere, see Gábor T. Rittersporn, Malte Rolf and Jan C. Berends (eds), Sphären von Öffentlichkeit in Gesellschaften sowjetischen Typs: Zwischen parteistaatlicher Selbstinszenierung und kirchlichen Gegenwelten (Frankfurt am Main, 2003).

  22 An exceptions of course is Stalin himself, about whom a number of biographies have appeared in recent years: Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York, 2004), and Young Stalin (London, 2007); studies such as that by Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895–1940 (Stanford, CA, 2002), are still a rarity.

  Chapter 1 Navigation

  1 Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Michael Glenny (London: Harvill Press [1967] 1996), p. 423. Further page numbers in the text refer to this edition.

  2 Cited by Irina Belobrovtseva and Svetlana Kulyus, Roman Mikhaila Bulgakova, ‘Master i Margarita’: opyt kommentarii (Tallinn, 2004), pp. 49–50.

  3 Ibid., p. 50.

  4 Jelena Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister: Tagebücher, Erinnerungen, trans. Antje Leetz and Ottokar Nürnberg (Berlin, 1993), pp. 23–4.

  5 This giant airship has been the frequent subject of paintings, and the crash is generally referred to by the majority of the diarists of those years as a catastrophe.

  6 Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), pp. 104f..

  7 Ibid., pp. 44–6.

  8 Belo
brovtseva and Kulyus, Roman Mikhaila Bulgakova, p. 26.

  9 Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister, p. 223.

  10 Ibid., p. 246.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Moskva, no. 11 (1966) and no. 1 (1967).

  13 Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister, p. 216.

  14 Cited in Belobrovtseva and Kulyus, Roman Mikhaila Bulgakova, p. 26.

  15 Information culled from Lidia M. Ianovskaia, Tvorcheskii put M. Bulgakova (Moscow, 1983); Vospominaniia o M. Bulgakove (Moscow, 1988); Boris S. Miagkov, Bulgakovskaia Moskva: po sledam bulgakovskikh geroev (Moscow, 1993); and the entry ‘Bulgakov’ in Moskva: entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1997), p. 146.

  16 See Korneliia V. Starodub, ‘Bulgakovskaya kvartira’, in Moskva: entsiklopediia, pp. 146–7; Boris V. Sokolov, Entsiklopediia Bulgakovskaia (Moscow, 1996); Mikhail Bulgakov: zhizn' i tvorchestvo (Moscow, 2006).

  17 Alexander Etkind, Eros des Unmöglichen: Die Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Russland, trans. Andreas Tretner (Leipzig, 1996), pp. 358–76.

  18 Belobrovtseva and Kulyus, Roman Mikhaila Bulgakova, p. 92.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Ibid., p. 93.

  21 Ibid., p. 95.

  Chapter 2 Moscow as a Construction Site

  1 My thanks are due to Oksana Bulgakova and Dietmar Hochmuth for putting Medvedkin’s and other film documents at my disposal. Oksana Bulgakowa, ‘Spatial figures in Soviet cinema of the 1930s’, in Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (eds), The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle and London, 2003), pp. 51–76; Janina Urussowa, Das neue Moskau: Die Stadt der Sowjets im Film 1917–1941 (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2004); Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003), pp. 87–8.