Moscow, 1937
Page 80
1 Lion Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937: My Visit Described for my Friends, trans. Irene Josephy (London, 1937), p. 110.
2 Michail Kolzow, Spanisches Tagebuch (Berlin, 1960), p. 534. The book is largely based on reports and essays written for Pravda.
3 For the chronicle of events on the front, see accounts of the Civil War in Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War (London, 1982); Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991).
4 Pravda, nos. 21 and 22, 1937.
5 Ibid., no. 244, 4 September 1937.
6 Istoriia rabochikh Moskvy 1917–1945gg (Moscow, 1983), p. 300.
7 Ivan U. Majskij, Memoiren eines sowjetischen Botschafters (Berlin, 1971), p. 289.
8 Istoriia rabochikh Moskvy 1917–1945gg, p. 300.
9 Ibid.
10 Pravda, no. 124, 1937.
11 Ibid., no. 179, 1937.
12 On the subject of their further fate, see Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2000).
13 Pravda, no. 7, 1937.
14 Ibid.
15 Prozessbericht über die Strafsache des sowjetfeindlichen trotzkistischen Zentrums, verhandelt vor dem Militärkollegium des Obersten Gerichtshofes der UdSSR vom 23–30 Januar 1937: Vollständiger, stenographischer Bericht, ed. the People’s Commissariat for Justice of the USSR (Moscow, 1937), e.g. pp. 8, 9.
16 Prozessbericht über die Strafsache des antisowjetischen ‘Blocks der Rechten und Trotzkisten’, verhandelt vor dem Militärkollegium des Obersten Gerichtshofes der UdSSR vom 2–13 März 1938, ed. the People’s Commissariat for Justice of the USSR (Moscow, 1938), p. 5.
17 On the ethnic aspect of Stalinist purges and the ethnicization of conflicts, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001); Jörg Baberowski and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Ordnung durch Terror: Gewaltexzesse und Vernichtung im nationalsozialistischen und im stalinistichen Imperium (Bonn, 2006); cf. also chapter 33, ‘The Butovo Shooting Range’, in the present volume.
18 See David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002).
19 Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov (eds), Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (New Haven, CT, and London, 2001), p. 23. Other estimates start from 2,044 military advisers in all, 700 or 800 of whom were constantly on the spot; see Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panné, ‘The shadow of the NKVD in Spain’, in Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, pp. 333–52, here p. 336. One of the long-standing Chekists in Spain was Aleksandr Orlov, who in July 1938 was transferred to Canada, where he wrote his memoirs: Aleksandr Orlow, Kreml-Geheimnisse (Würzburg, 1953).
20 George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Harmondsworth [1938] 1970), p. 141; for the part played by the communists in the Spanish Civil War, see also Edward H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (New York, 1984); Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds), International Communism and the Communist International: 1919–1943 (Manchester, 1998).
21 Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, p. 186.
22 Ibid., p. 164.
23 Ibid., p. 170.
24 Radosh et al. (eds), Spain Betrayed, pp. 108–20, Document 30.
25 Ibid., p. 481, Document 76.
26 Ibid., p. 485, Document 76.
27 Ibid., p. 8, Document 1.
28 Ibid., p. 133, Document 33.
29 Ibid., pp. 131–2, Document 33.
30 Ibid., pp. 471–2, Document 75.
31 Ibid., p. 486, Document 76.
32 Ibid., p. 487, Document 76.
33 Ibid., p. 271; cf. Courtois and Panné, ‘The shadow of the NKVD in Spain’, especially p. 348.
34 See ibid., p. 345.
35 Ibid., p. 349.
36 Ibid., p. 342.
37 Radosh et al. (eds), Spain Betrayed, pp. 196–7, Document 43.
38 Courtois and Panné, ‘The shadow of the NKVD in Spain’, pp. 346–7.
39 Radosh et al. (eds), Spain Betrayed, p. 473, Document 75.
40 Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness – a Soviet Spymaster (London, 1995), pp. 30–1.
41 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse, 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 563.
42 Radosh et al. (eds), Spain Betrayed, p. 93.
43 Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse, p. 555.
44 Ibid., p. 593.
45 Ibid., p. 610.
46 Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing (London, 1954), p. 387.
Chapter 7 Blindness and Terror
1 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: kratkie itogi (Moscow, 1991). This was followed a little later by Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1939 goda: osnovnye itogi (Moscow, 1992). A complete edition of the data collected is available in Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: obshchie itogi: sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow, 2007).
2 S. I. Golotik and V. V. Minaev, Naselenie i vlast': ocherki demograficheskoi istorii SSSR 1930-kh godov (Moscow, 2004), p. 81.
3 Catherine Merridale, ‘The 1937 census and the limits of Stalinist rule’, Historical Journal 39/1 (1996), pp. 223–40, here p. 227.
4 ‘Zavtra vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia’, Pravda, 5 January 1937.
5 ‘Net staroi okrainy’, Pravda, 7 January 1937.
6 Pravda, 7 January 1937.
7 ‘Dolg sovetskogo grazhdanina’, Pravda, 6 January 1937.
8 Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', p. 80.
9 Instructions for filling the census lists, ibid., pp. 82–5.
10 Ibid., p. 92.
11 Modern data-gathering technology had first been tried out in the censuses in Germany in 1933 and then in 1939. On this point, see Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth, Die restlose Erfassung: Volkszählen, Identifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main, 2000).
12 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: kratkie itogi, p. 5.
13 Ibid., p. 210.
14 Ibid., p. 3.
15 Valentina B. Zhiromskaia, ‘Istoriia podgotovki i provedeniia perepisi naseleniia 1937’, in Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937: obshchie itogi, p. 22.
16 Cf. the entry ‘Census’ in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: ‘Perepis naselenia’, in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1940), vol. 45, p. 21.
17 Questionnaire and instructions in Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', pp. 82–6.
18 ‘Sovsem innaia kartina’, Pravda, 6 January 1937.
19 On the relations between demographic statistics, ethnographic categorizing and the Soviet constitution, see Francine Hirsch, ‘The Soviet Union as a work-in-progress: ethnographers and the category nationality in the 1926, 1937, and 1939 censuses’, Slavic Review 56/2 (1997), pp. 251–78; and also Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2005).
20 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: kratkie itogi, p. 6.
21 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska nachal'nika TsUNKhU Gosplana SSSR v CK WKP(B) i SNK SSSR o predvaritelnykh itogakh vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia’, ibid., pp. 22–3.
22 ‘Predvaritelnye itogi’, Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: obshchie itogi, p. 76.
23 Valentina B. Zhiromskaia, Demograficheskaia istoriia Rossii v 1930-e gody: vzgliad v neizvestnoe (Moscow, 2001), p. 61.
24 Ibid., p. 71.
25 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: obshchie itogi, pp. 60, 64.
26 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: kratkie itogi, pp. 26–7.
27 Ibid., p. 24.
28 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: obshchie itogi, pp. 86–7.
29 Ibid., pp. 86–97.
30 Zhiromskaia, Demograficheskaia istoriia Rossii v 1930-e gody, p. 76.
31 Golotik and Minaev
, Naselenie i vlast', p. 104.
32 Zhiromskaia, Demograficheskaia istoriia Rossii v 1930-e gody, p. 72.
33 Ibid., p. 88.
34 Ibid., pp. 92, 101.
35 Ibid., p. 90.
36 Ibid., pp. 96, 99.
37 Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', p. 104.
38 Ibid., p. 105.
39 Ibid., p. 106. On the reluctance to provide information on the part of some respondents, see the dossiers of the Belorussian NKVD in Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: obshchie itogi, pp. 291–2.
40 Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', pp. 118–23, here broken down into literates and illiterates, men and women.
41 Ibid., p. 109.
42 Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: kratkie itogi, p. 25.
43 Ibid., p. 34.
44 Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', pp. 97–100.
45 E. Andreev, L. Darskii and T. Char'kova: ‘Opyt otsenki chislennosti naselenia SSSR 1926–1947 gg. (kratkie rezultaty issledovania)’, Vestnik statistiki 7 (1990), pp. 34–46, here p. 36.
46 A. G. Volkov, ‘Iz istorii perepisi naselenia 1937’, Vestnik statistiki 8 (1990), pp. 45–56.
47 ‘Dokladnaia zapiska 14.3.1937’, in Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1937 goda: kratkie itogi, p. 38.
48 Nicolas Werth, ‘A state against its people: violence, repression and terror in the Soviet Union’, in Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2000), pp. 33–268, here p. 167. On the debate about the extent and the consequences of the catastrophe, see Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver, ‘Demographic analysis and population catastrophes in the USSR’, Slavic Review 44/3 (1985), pp. 517–36; Alain Blum, Naître, vivre et mourir en URSS (Paris, 2004); Steven Rosefielde, ‘Excess mortality in the Soviet Union: a reconsideration of the demographic consequences of forced industrialization, 1929–1949’, Soviet Studies 35 (1983), pp. 385–409; Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘On assessing the size of forced concentration labour in the Soviet Union, 1929– 1956’, Soviet Studies 33 (1981), pp. 265–95; Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s’, Soviet Studies 42/2 (1990), pp. 355–67; Steven Rosefielde, ‘Excess collectivization deaths, 1929–1933: new democratic evidence’, Slavic Review 43/1 (1984), pp. 83–8; Vladimir A. Iusupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka: istoriko-demograficheskie ocherki (Novosibirsk, 2000), Frank Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects (Geneva, 1946); Sergeĭ Maksudov and Zhanna Zajonchkovskaya (eds), Poteri naseleniya SSSR (Benson, VT, 1989); Naselenie Rossii v XX veke: istoricheskie ocherki, Vol. 1: 1900–1939 (Moscow, 2000).
49 A. G. Volkov, ‘Iz istorii perepisi naseleniia 1937’, Vestnik statistiki 8 (1990), p. 45.
50 Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', p. 111.
51 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 614.
52 Abbreviation for ‘Tsentral'noe upravlenie narodno-khoziaistvennogo ucheta’ (= Central Administration of Economic Statistics).
53 Golotik and Minaev, Naselenie i vlast', p. 81.
54 See ‘Perepis naselenya’, in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 45, p. 22.
55 Volkov, ‘Iz istorii perepisi naselenia 1937’, pp. 46–7.
56 Ibid., p. 47.
57 Ibid., p. 52.
Chapter 8 A Stage for the Horrors of Industrialization
1 For an analysis of the trial, see William Chase, ‘Stalin as producer: the Moscow show trials and the construction of mortal threats’, in Sarah Davies and James Harris (eds), Stalin: A New History (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 226–48; Nicolas Werth, Le Procès de Moscou 1936–1938 (Brussells, 1987); Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (London, 1973); Nathan Leites and Elsa Bernaut, Ritual of Liquidation: The Case of the Moscow Trials (Glencoe, IL, 1954).
2 Prozessbericht über die Strafsache des sowjetfeindlichen trotzkistischen Zentrums, verhandelt vor dem Militärkollegium des Obersten Gerichtshofes der UdSSR vom 23–30 Januar 1937: Vollständiger, stenographischer Bericht, ed. the People’s Commissariat for Justice of the USSR (Moscow, 1937), pp. 19–20.
3 Ibid., p. 560. On Vyshinskii’s theory of justice, see Peter H. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge, 1996).
4 On the sequence of interrogations and confrontations, see Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003).
5 Lion Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937 (London, 1937), pp. 145–9.
6 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (London, 1942), p. 35.
7 Prozessbericht …1937, pp. 50–1.
8 Ibid., p. 54.
9 Ibid., p. 186.
10 Ibid., p. 208.
11 Ibid., p. 230.
12 Ibid., p. 268.
13 Ibid., p. 400.
14 Ibid., p. 332.
15 Ibid., p. 453.
16 Ibid., pp. 488–9, 493–4 and 499–500.
17 This production of new ‘mental maps’ can best and most systematically be followed in the back numbers of SSSR na stroike, which, incidentally, had been edited at various times by Iurii Piatakov.
18 Prozessbericht … 1937, p. 499.
19 ‘Kuznetskii bassein’, in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1937), vol. 35, pp. 374–87.
20 Prozessbericht …1937, p. 435.
21 Ibid., pp. 432–5.
22 Edward Afron Rees, Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport 1928–41 (London and New York, 1995).
23 Ibid., p. 148.
24 Ibid., p. 152.
25 Ibid., p. 156.
26 Ibid., p. 172.
27 Ibid., pp. 169–71.
28 Ibid., p. 185.
29 Prozessbericht …1937, p. 12.
30 Ibid., p. 506.
31 Ibid., p. 432.
32 Ibid., pp. 13–14.
33 Ibid., p. 404.
34 Ibid., p. 546.
35 Ibid., pp. 182, 472.
36 Ibid., p. 331.
37 Ibid., p. 525.
38 Ibid., p. 602.
39 Ibid., p. 539.
40 Ibid., p. 563.
41 Lydia Tschukowskaja, Ein leeres Haus (Zurich, 1967), p. 50.
42 Pravda, 21 January 1937.
43 ‘Groznye volny narodnogo gneva i nenavisti’, Pravda, 27 January 1937.
44 ‘Unichtozhit izmennikov rodiny, krovavych psov fashizma – takovo trebovanie trudiashchikhsia mass Sovetskogo Soiuza’, Pravda, 25 January 1937.
45 Pravda, 31 January 1937.
46 Pravda, 27 January 1937.
47 Pravda, 28 January 1937.
48 Pravda, 27 January 1937.
49 Mikhail Kol'tsov, in Pravda, 23 January 1937.
50 Pravda, 27 January 1937.
51 Pravda, 30 January 1937.
52 ‘Pochemu oni priznaiutsia?’, Pravda, 27 January 1937.
53 Pravda, 30 January 1937.
54 ‘Miting na Krasnoi Ploshchadi, Vsevolod Vishnevskii, narod-pobeditel'’, Pravda, 31 January 1937.
55 Nikolai N. Evreinov and Shagi Nemezidy, ‘Ia drugoi takoi strany ne znaiu’, in Dramaticheskaia khronika v 6–ti kartinakh iz partiinoy zhizni v SSSR (1936– 1938) (Paris, 1956).
56 Lorenz Erren, ‘Selbstkritik’ und Schuldbekenntnis: Kommunikation und Herrschaft unter Stalin (1917–1953) (Munich, 2008), p. 374.
57 Ibid., p. 375.
58 Ibid., pp. 395–6.
Chapter 9 ‘A Feast in the Time of Plague’
1 ‘Da zdravstvuet Lenin, da zdravstvuet Stalin / Da zdravdstuvet solntse! Da skroetsia t'ma!’, Pravda, 14 April 1937.
2 A number of studies have already been devoted to the Pushkin centenary, among them Stephanie Sandler, ‘The 1937 Pushkin jubilee as epic trauma’, in Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger (eds), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propagan
da (Madison, 2006), pp. 193–213; Iurii Molok, Pushkin v 1937 godu: materialy i issledovaniia po ikonografii (Moscow, 2000); Rainer Grübel, ‘Gabe, Aufgabe, Selbstaufgabe: Dichter-Tod als Opferhabitus’, in Klaus Städtke (ed.), Welt hinter dem Spiegel (Berlin, 1998), pp. 139–204, esp. pp. 191–3; Wolfgang Stephan Kissel, Der Kult der toten Dichter und die russische Moderne: Puškin – Blok – Majakovskij (Cologne, 2004). On the question of canonization, cf. also the entry ‘Pushkin’ by D. Gershenzon in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1940), vol. 47, pp. 651–73.
3 Sandler, ‘The 1937 Pushkin jubilee as epic trauma’; Molok, Pushkin v 1937 godu, p. 204.
4 Molok, Pushkin v 1937 godu, p. 62.
5 Véronique Garros, Natalija Korenewskaja and Thomas Lahusen (eds), Das wahre Leben: Tagebücher aus der Stalinzeit (Berlin, 1998), p. 117.
6 Molok, Pushkin v 1937 godu, pp. 30, 199.
7 Sandler, ‘The 1937 Pushkin jubilee as epic trauma’, p. 196.
8 Viktor B. Shklovski’s review ‘Podvig mysli’, in Pravda, 13 February 1937.
9 Pushkinskaia Moskva: putevoditel' (Moscow, 1937); Nikolai P. Antsiferov, Moskva Pushkina (Moscow, 1950).