26 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 363.
27 Orlow, Kreml-Geheimnisse, p. 269.
28 On Sergei Efron, see Wadim Rogowin, 1937: Jahr des Terrors (Essen, 1998), p. 384.
29 Orlow, Kreml-Geheimnisse, p. 269.
30 Rogowin, 1937: Jahr des Terrors, p. 386.
31 For the Collège de Sociologie, founded in 1937 by Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris and Roger Caillois, and attended by Walter Benjamin, Hans Mayer, Alexandre Kojève, André Masson and Pierre Klossowski, see Stephan Moebius, Die Zauberlehrlinge: Soziologiegeschichte des Collège de Sociologie (Konstanz, 2006).
32 Willem van Reijen and Herman van Doorn, Aufenthalte und Passagen: Leben und Werk Walter Benjamins: Eine Chronik (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), pp. 174–5.
Chapter 13 Red Square
1 See the entry ‘Red Square’ in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: ‘Krasnaia ploshchad'’, in Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1937), vol. 34, pp. 583–8. On the shape of Red Square in 1937, see Guide to the City of Moscow: Handbook for Tourists, with Information on the City’s Past, Present & Future, descriptions of its Museums and Points of Interest, including 6 Maps (Moscow, 1937); and also L. Kovalëva (ed.), Moskva (Moscow, 1935).
2 André Gide, Back from the USSR, trans. Dorothy Bussy (London, 1937), p. 25.
3 On public spaces in Stalinism, see Gábor T. Rittersporn, Malte Rolf and Jan C. Behrends (eds), Public Spheres in Soviet-Type Societies (Frankfurt am Main, 2003). On the spatial dimension of the cult of personality, see Jan Plamper, ‘The spatial poetics of the personality cult: circles around Stalin’, in Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (eds), The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle and London, 2003), pp. 19, 50; Monica Rüthers, Moskau bauen von Lenin bis Chruschtschew: Öffentliche Räume zwischen Utopie, Terror und Alltag (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2007), esp. pp. 33–52. Of fundamental importance for the Soviet parade, see Malte Rolf, Das sowjetische Massenfest (Hamburg, 2006).
4 Juri Trifonow, Das Verschwinden (Berlin, 1989), p. 192.
5 Ibid., p. 193.
6 Ibid., p. 194.
7 Ibid., p. 196.
Chapter 14 Chopin Concert and Killing Ritual
1 Nikolai V. Ustrialov, ‘“Sluzhit' rodine prikhoditsia kostyami”: Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’, Istochnik 5–6 (1998), pp. 3–100 (entry of 30–31 January 1937, pp. 66–7).
2 On the creation of such communities, see Lorenz Erren, ‘Selbstkritik’ und Schuldbekenntnis: Kommunikation und Herrschaft unter Stalin (1917–1953) (Munich, 2008). On the role of radio and the mass media, see Hans Günter and Sabina Khensgen (eds), Sovetskaia vlast' i media: sbornik statei (St Petersburg, 2006); Tatiana Goriaeva, Radio Rossii politicheskii kontrol' sovetskogo radioveshchaniia v 1920–1930 (Moscow, 2000); Tatiana Goriaeva, ‘Velikaia kniga dnia’ Radio v SSSR: dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, 2007); Jurij Murašov, ‘Das elektrifizierte Wort’, in Jurij Murašov and Georg Witte (eds), Die Musen der Macht: Medien in der sowjetischen Kultur des 20er und 30er Jahre (Munich, 2003), pp. 81–112.
3 Quoted in Véronique Garros, Thomas Lahusen and Natalija Korenewskaja (eds), Das wahre Leben: Tagebücher aus der Stalinzeit (Berlin, 1998), p. 148.
4 Quoted in the entry ‘Radiosoveshchanye’, in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 48, pp. 55–9, here p. 56.
5 Istoriia Moskvy, vol. 6: Period postroeniia sotsializma (1917g.–iiun' 1941g.), Book 2 (Moscow, 1959), p. 290.
6 Ibid., p. 292.
7 ‘Radiosoveshchanie’, p. 57.
8 On the sound-worlds of Old Russia, see Richard Hernandez, ‘Sacred sound and sacred substance: church bells and the auditory culture of Russian villages during the Bolshevik velikii perelom’, American Historical Review 109/5 (2004), pp. 1475–504; Edward V. Williams, ‘Aural icons of orthodoxy: the sonic typology of Russian bells’, in William C. Brumfield and Milos M. Velimirovich (eds), Christianity and the Arts in Russia (Cambridge, 1991).
9 Andrey Platonov, The Foundation Pit, trans. Robert Chandler and Geoffrey Smith (London, 1996), p. 55.
10 Ibid., p. 62.
11 Ibid., pp. 128–9.
12 Nina Kosterina, Das Tagebuch der Nina Kosterina (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), p. 45.
13 Ibid., p. 63.
14 Ustrialov, ‘Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’, p. 80 (entry of 12 May 1937).
15 Ruth von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), p. 50.
16 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 106.
17 Georgi Dimitroff, Tagebücher 1933–1943, ed. Bernhard H. Bayerlein, trans. Wladislaw Hedeler and Birgit Schliewenz (Berlin, 2000), vol. 1, p. 129.
18 ‘Andrej Arschilowskij am 13. November 1936’, in Garros, Lahusen and Korenewskaja (eds), Das wahre Leben, p. 148.
19 Ustrialov, ‘Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’ (entry of 30–31 October 1936, pp. 56–7).
20 Vladimir I. Vernadskii, ‘Dnevnik 1938’, Druzhba narodov 2 (1991), pp. 219–48, here p. 237.
21 Ustrialov, ‘Dnevnik N. V. Ustrialova 1935–1937’ (entry of 25 November 1936, pp. 58–9).
22 Ibid. (entry of 6/7 December 1936, p. 60).
23 ‘Protokoly plenuma, 26.2.1937’, in Voprosy istorii 5 (1993), pp. 22–3.
Chapter 15 Soviet Art Deco
1 On the history of architecture and the debates surrounding it, see Alexei Tarkhanov and Sergei Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era (New York, 1992); Vladimir Paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two (Cambridge, 2002); Dmitrii Khmelnitskii, Arkhitektura Stalina: psikhologiia i stil' (Moscow, 2007).
2 For Shchusev’s life, see Kirill N. Afanasev, A. V. Shchusev (Moscow, 1978).
3 Information compiled from Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitekture, vols 1 and 2 (Moscow, 1975).
4 S. Frederick Starr, Melnikov: Solo Architect in a Mass Society (Princeton, NJ, 1978); Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Konstanin Melnikov (Moscow, 2006).
5 For Alabyan’s biography, see Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitekture, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1975), pp. 406–22.
6 The most important account of the ‘Stalinization’ of architecture is that of Hugh D. Hudson, Jr., Blueprints and Blood: The Stalinization of Soviet Architecture, 1917–1937 (Princeton, NJ, 1994); for the action taken against Okhitovich and Lisagor, see chapter 8.
7 Ibid., p. 168.
8 For the biography of Moisei Ginzburg, see Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, M. I.a. Ginzburg (Moscow, 1972).
9 For the biography of the Vesnin brothers, see Mikhail A. Il'in, Vesniny (Moscow, 1960); Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Alexander Wesnin und der Konstruktivismus (Stuttgart, 1987).
10 Hudson, Blueprints and Blood, pp. 187, 190.
11 Ibid., p. 191.
12 Peter Lizon, The Palace of the Soviets: Change in Direction of Soviet Architecture (Ann Arbor, MI, 1972), p. 171.
13 Hudson, Blueprints and Blood, pp. 191, 193.
14 Aleksei V. Shchusev, ‘Zadachi sovetskoi arkhitektury’, in Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob architekture, vol. 1, p. 199.
15 Hudson, Blueprints and Blood, p. 197 (about S. Z. Ginzburg).
16 Ibid., pp. 198–9.
17 Ibid., pp. 199–200.
18 Lion Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937: My Visit described for my Friends, trans. Irene Josephy (London, 1937), p. 34.
19 This chronology is based on Paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, pp. 277–9.
20 This holds good for the relevant issues of Stroitel'stvo Moskvy, Arkhitektura SSSR and other trade journals.
21 A reconstruction of this exhibition can be found in Susan E. Reid, ‘Socialist realism in the Stalinist Terror: the Industry of Socialism art exhibition, 1935–41’, Russian Review 60 (April 2001), pp. 153–84, here p. 158.
22 Ibid., pp. 162–3.
23 Ibid., pp. 164, 168.
24 Ibid., pp. 181–2.
25 Greg Casti
llo, ‘Peoples at an exhibition: Soviet architecture and the national question’, in T. Lahusen and E. Dobrenko (eds), Socialist Realism without Shores (Durham, NC, 1997); David Brandenberger, ‘Proletarian internationalism, “Soviet patriotism” and the rise of Russocentric etatism during the Stalinist 1930s’, Left History 6/2 (1999), pp. 87–8.
26 Vystavochnye ansambli SSSR 1920–1930: materialy i dokumenty (Moscow, 2006), p. 167.
27 Ibid., p. 154.
28 See ibid., p. 158, for a list of the most outstanding artists.
29 See ibid., p. 160, for El Lissitzky’s address.
30 Ibid., p. 164.
31 Ibid., pp. 164, 168.
32 The exhibition served as a film set for a carnival at night in Medvedkin’s film New Moscow and van Piriev’s The Swineherd and the Shepherd. Tanya’s journey in The Shining Path likewise ends up in the exhibition . See Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003), pp. 180, 182.
33 The definitive inventory at the opening in 1939 was provided in the guides to the exhibition: A. F. Zhukov, Arkhitektura vsesoiuznoi selskokhozyaistvennoi vystavki 1939 (Moscow, 1939); Vsesoiuznaia selskokhozyaistvennaia vystavka: putevoditel' (Moscow, 1940).
34 Hudson, Blueprints and Blood, p. 174.
35 Ibid., pp. 170, 175.
36 Aleksandr Vesnin, ‘Spornye voprosy’, in Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitekture, vol. 2, p. 21.
37 Aleksandr Vesnin, ‘Iz vystupleniia na obshchemoskovskom soveshchanii arkhitektorov v fevrale 1936g.’, in Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitek-ture, vol. 2, p. 23.
38 Nikolai Kolli, ‘Iz ocherkov sovetskoi arkhitektury’, ibid., p. 356.
39 Viktor Vesnin, ‘Ot konstruktivizma k sotsialisticheskomu realizmu, 1937g.’, ibid., p. 47.
40 Hudson, Blueprints and Blood, p. 193.
41 Ibid., p. 198.
42 The question of how to describe this has been debated in, e.g., Hans Günter and Evgenii Dobrenko (eds), Sotsrealisticheskii kanon (St Petersburg, 2000), especially section I, pp. 7–182.
43 Questions regarding Wright’s sojourn in Russia can be found in Donald Leslie Johnson, ‘Frank Lloyd Wright in Moscow, June 1937’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 46/1 (1987), pp. 65–79. I am grateful to Oksana Bulgakova for drawing this to my attention.
44 Ibid., p. 70.
45 Ibid., p. 71.
Chapter 16 ‘Brown Bodies, Gaily Coloured Shorts’
1 On the semantics of physical culture, see the contemporary article ‘Fizicheskaya kultura’, in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 57 (Moscow, 1936), pp. 304–5.
2 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (London, 1942), pp. 119–20.
3 Jelena Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister: Tagebücher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1993), p. 203 (entry for 12 July 1937).
4 Mike O’Mahony, Sport in the USSR: Physical Culture – Visual Culture (London, 2006), p. 80.
5 For the history and significance of Soviet sport, see Henry W. Morton, Soviet Sport: Mirror of Soviet Society (New York and London, 1963); James Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia and the USSR (Cambridge, 1977); Robert Edelman, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sport in the USSR (Oxford and New York, 1993); Barbara Keys, ‘Soviet sport and transnational mass culture in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History 38/3 (2003), pp. 413–34; Robert Edelman, ‘A small way of saying “no”: Moscow working men, Spartak soccer, and the Communist Party, 1900–1945’, American Historical Review 107/5 (2002), www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/107.5/ah0502001441.html (accessed May 2008); V. Gerlitsyn, Soviet Sport: The Success Story (Moscow, 1987).
6 O’Mahony, Sport in the USSR, p. 84.
7 Ibid., p. 85.
8 Edelman, Serious Fun, p. 27.
9 Alexander Lavrentiev, Alexander Rodchenko, Photography 1924–1954 (Cologne, 1995), pp. 247–93.
10 O’Mahony, Sport in the USSR, pp. 79–80; cf. the portraits of people in Matthew Cullerne Bown and Brandon Taylor (eds), Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992 (Manchester, 1993); Irina N. Barsheva and Kira Sazonova, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Samokhvalov (Leningrad, 1963); Vladimir P. Sysoev, Aleksandr Deineka (2 vols, Moscow, 1989); Leonid S. Zinger, Aleksandr Samokhvalov (Moscow, 1982).
11 See chapter 2, ‘Moscow as a Construction Site’, in the present volume and also Istoriia Moskvy, vol. 6: Period postroeniia socializma (1917g.–ii'un 1941g.), Book 2 (Moscow, 1959), pp. 116–18.
12 Keys, ‘Soviet sport and transnational mass culture in the 1930s’.
13 Romain Rolland, Voyage à Moscou (juin–juillet 1935), ed. Bernard Duchatelet (Paris, 1992), p. 137. I am grateful to Anne Hartmann for drawing my attention to this.
14 On ‘ kulturnost’, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1992), esp. pp. 216–37.
15 Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930–1945 (London, Barcelona and Berlin, 1996) [exhibition catalogue].
16 On the human image and cult of the hero, see Hans Günther (ed.), The Culture of the Stalin Period (London, 1990); Hans Günther, Der sozialistische Übermensch: Maksim Gor’kij und der sowjetische Heldenmythos (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1993); Derek Müller, Der Topos des Neuen Menschen in der russischen und sowjetrussischen Geistesgeschichte (Berne, 1998).
17 ‘ Plemya Stalina’: I wish to express my thanks to Oksana Bulgakova und Dietmar Hochmuth for having supplied me with a copy of this film.
18 Nikolai P. Starostin, Futbol skvoz' gody (Moscow, 1989); Edelman, ‘A small way of saying “no”: Moscow working men, Spartak soccer, and the Communist Party, 1900–1945’ – illustration no. 6 shows Starostin in Norilsk; James Riordan, ‘The strange case of Nikolai Starostin, football and Lavrentii Beria’, Europe–Asia Studies 46/4 (1994), pp. 681–90.
Chapter 17 Wealth and Destruction
1 Vladimir I. Vernadskii, Zhizneopisanie: izbrannye trudy: vospominaniia sovremennikov, suzhdeniia potomkov (Moscow, 1993), p. 234 (entry of 7 July 1937).
2 Ibid.
3 See Kendall E. Bailes, Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions: V. I. Vernadsky and his Scientific School, 1863–1945 (Bloomington, IN, 1990); also Aleksander Fersman’s entry ‘Vladimir I. Vernadskii’, in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 10 (Moscow, 1928), pp. 306–7.
4 Paul Range, ‘Der Internationale Geologenkongreß in Moskau 1937’, International Journal of Earth Science 31/7–8 (1940), pp. 508–18, here p. 515.
5 Ibid., p. 518; on gold production in the camp system, see Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York, 2003).
6 See especially Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1945 (Princeton, NJ, 1978).
7 On the avenues for social advancement, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobilization in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 (Cambridge and London, 1979); Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Stalin and the making of a new elite, 1928–1939’, Slavic Review 38/3 (1979), pp. 377–402; Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London and New York, 2000). For the career paths and status of Soviet engineers, see Susanne Schattenberg, Stalins Ingenieure: Lebenswelten zwischen Technik und Terror in den 30er Jahren (Munich, 2002).
8 Istoriia Moskvy, vol. 6: Period postroeniia sotsializma (1917g.–ii'un 1941g.), Book 2 (Moscow, 1959), pp. 205–7.
9 Aleksey V. Shchusev, ‘Gorodok nauki’, in Moskva (Moscow, 1935), pp. 605–7; see there the chapter on the reconstruction of Moscow.
10 Istoriia Moskvy, vol. 6, p. 214.
11 The following biographical data are taken from the list published by the Academy of Sciences – Repressii uchënykh: biograficheskie materialy – which contains a chapter titled ‘Repressirovannye geologi: 968 personalii’. These brief biographies contain information about the the subjects’ date and place of birth, origins and education, the chief st
ages of their careers, their most important publications up to the year of persecution, and the charges against them, as well as their further fate: ‘Repressii uchënykh: biograficheskie materialy repressii chlenov Akademii nauk’, http://russcience.chat.ru/repress/rep.htm (accessed 6 November 2006) [in Russian].
12 On anti-intellectualism and the campaign against and persecution of intellectuals, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1992); Dietrich Beyrau, Intelligenz und Dissens: Die russischen Bildungsschichten in der Sowjetunion, 1917 bis 1985 (Göttingen, 1993), pp. 73–155.
13 Golfo Alexopoulos, Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003).
14 On the question of science, see Zhores A. Medvedev, Soviet Science (Oxford, 1979); Roy A. Medwedew, Die Wahrheit ist unsere Stärke: Geschichte und Folgen des Stalinismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), pp. 551–90.
15 ‘Repressii uchënykh: biograficheskiye materialy repressiĭ chlenov Akademii nauk’, p. 44.
16 On the arrest of relatives, see Wladislaw Hedeler, ‘Sippenhaft im “Großen Terror” 1937/38: Das “Akmolinsker Lager für Ehefrauen von Vaterlandsverrätern” (ALZIR) und seine deutschen Häftlinge’, Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (2005), pp. 81–101.
Moscow, 1937 Page 82
