17 ‘Repressii uchënykh: biograficheskiye materialy repressiĭ chlenov Akademii nauk’, p. 55.
18 Ibid., p. 95.
19 Ibid., p. 114.
20 Ibid., p. 135.
21 Ibid., p. 61.
22 See Vladimir Vernadsky, The Biosphere (Santa Fe, NM, 1986).
23 On KEPS, see Karl Schlögel, Petersburg: Das Laboratorium der Moderne 1909–1921 (Munich, 2002), pp. 353–408; Bailes, Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions, pp. 139–40.
24 Vernadsky, Zhizneopisanie, p. 237.
25 Ibid., p. 232.
26 Ibid., p. 235.
27 Ibid., p. 229.
28 Ibid., p. 230.
29 V. I. Vernadskii, ‘Dnevnik 1938’, Druzhba narodov 2 (1991), pp. 219–48, here p. 240.
30 Ibid., p. 242.
31 Vernadskii, Zhizneopisanie, p. 184.
32 Ibid., p. 237.
33 Ibid., p. 238.
34 Ibid., p. 244.
35 Ibid., p. 240.
36 Ibid., p. 98.
37 Ibid., p. 237.
Chapter 18 A City by the Sea
1 Aleksei Komarovskii, ‘Vospominaniia ochevidtsa: Dmitlag 1936–1937’, Butovskii poligon 1937–1938: kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii, no. 7 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 53–9, here p. 59. See also www.martyr.ru/content/view/23/17 (accessed July 2008) [in Russian].
2 Lazar' Kogan, ‘Volga u Kremlia’, in L. Kovalëva (ed.), Moskva (Moscow, 1935), pp. 624, 639.
3 Aleksandr I. Kokurin et al. (eds), Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1953 (Moscow, 2005), p. 77.
4 ‘Postanovlenie CIK i SNK SSSR no. 103/1113: “o nagrazhdenii i l'gotakh dlya stroitelei kanala Moskva–Volga”’, ibid., p. 101. See also www.idf.ru/docu-ments/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61110 (accessed July 2008) [in Russian].
5 M. Gorky, L. L. Averbakh and S. G. Firin (eds), Belomorsko–Baltiisky kanal imeni Stalina: istoriia stroitel'stva (Moscow, 1934); English translation as Bjelomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea (New York, 1935).
6 Kokurin et al. (eds), Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1953, p. 74.
7 Komarovskii, ‘Vospominaniia ochevidtsa: Dmitlag 1936–1937’, p. 59.
8 Nikolai Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”: iz istorii stroitel'stva kanala im Moskvy (kanala Moskva–Volga)’, in Butovskii poligon, v rodnom kraiu: dokumenty, svidetel'stva, sudby …(Moscow, 2004), pp. 219, 260; Kokurin et al. (eds), Stalinskiye stroiki GULAGa 1930–1953, pp. 59, 102; Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), pp. 111, 119. Long before the opening up of the Soviet archives, in the early 1970s, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had produced his monumental ‘experiment in literary investigation’: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (London, 1974–6).
9 Nikolai Fëdorov cites Varlam T. Shalamov, Vysera (Moscow, 1989), p. 37, where over a million people were incarcerated in Dmitlag (Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, pp. 219, 260); Michail B. Smirnov et al. (eds), Sistema ispravitel'notrudovykh lagerei v SSSR 1923–1960: spravochnik (Moscow, 1998), pp. 90–1. At the end of 1936, 192,031 people are said to have been imprisoned there. See also www.memo.ru/history/nkvd/gulag (accessed May 2008) [in Russian].
10 Kogan, ‘Volga u Kremlya’, pp. 624–39.
11 V. M. Perlin, ‘Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga’, in A. I. Mikhailov (ed.), Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga (Moscow, 1939), p. 10.
12 For the entire question of canal construction in the context of a history of technology and the environment in the Soviet Union, see Klaus Gestwa, ‘Auf Wasser und Blut gebaut: Der hydrologische Archipel Gulag, 1931–1958’, Osteuropa 6 (2007), pp. 239–66; Klaus Gestwa, ‘Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus: Technik- und Umweltgeschichte der Sowjetunion, 1948– 1967’, doctoral thesis, University of Tübingen, February 2007.
13 Cynthia A. Rudder, Making History for Stalin: The Story of Bjelomor Canal (Gainesville, FL, 1998); Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York, 2003); Frank Westermann, Ingenieure der Seele: Schriftsteller unter Stalin: Eine Erkundungsreise (Berlin, 2002), pp. 61–82.
14 Smirnov et al. (eds), Sistema ispravitelno–trudovykh lagerei v SSSR 1923–1960, pp. 90–1.
15 Kokurin et al. (eds), Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1953, p. 63.
16 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, pp. 221–2.
17 Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, p. 30.
18 Perlin, ‘Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga’, p. 12.
19 Ibid., p. 16.
20 Ibid., p. 5; and Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, pp. 74–5.
21 Perlin, ‘Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga’, p. 16.
22 A. I. Mikhailov, ‘Znachenie kanala Moskva–Volga v razvitii sovetskoi arkhitektury’, in Mikhailov, Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga, pp. 73–90, here p. 87.
23 Perlin, ‘Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga’, p. 18.
24 Sergei D. Merkurov, ‘Monumentalnaia skulptura na kanale Moskva–Volga’, in Mikhailov, Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga, pp. 68–72.
25 Mikhailov, ‘Znachenie kanala Moskva–Volga v razvitii sovetskoi arkhitek-tury’, p. 84.
26 Aleksei M. Rukhliadev, ‘Arkhitektura rechnogo vokzala’, in Mikhailov, Arkhitektura Kanala Moskva–Volga, pp. 58–67.
27 Ibid.
28 ‘Prikaz OGPU no. 889/s, ob organizatsii Dmitrovskogo ITL’, in Kokurin et al. (eds), Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952, p. 83.
29 Komarovskii, ‘Vospominaniia ochevidtsa: Dmitlag 1936–1937’.
30 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, pp. 227–9.
31 Ibid., p. 226.
32 Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, p. 77.
33 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, p. 224.
34 Ibid., p. 230.
35 Komarovskii, ‘Vospominaniia ochevidtsa: Dmitlag 1936–1937’, pp. 54–5.
36 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, p. 231.
37 Komarovskii, ‘Vospominaniia ochevidtsa: Dmitlag 1936–1937’.
38 Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, p. 60.
39 Ibid., p. 64.
40 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, p. 233.
41 Ibid., pp. 234–40.
42 Ibid., p. 241.
43 See chapter 33, ‘The Butovo Shooting Range’, in the present volume.
44 Komarovskii, ‘Vospominania ochevidtsa: Dmitlag 1936–1937’, p. 56.
45 Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, p. 67.
46 There are famous photographs of the White Sea Canal project by Aleksandr Rodchenko showing brass bands against a background of newly built lock-chambers: Aleksandr Rodchenko, The Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1998), pp. 282–4. See also Tomasz Kizny, Gulag: Solowezki, Bjelomorkanal, Waigatsch – Expedition, Theater im GuLag, Kolyma, Workuta, Todesstrecke (Hamburg, 2004), pp. 116–83; English edition Gulag: Life and Death inside the Soviet Concentration Camps (Richmond Hill, Ontario, 2004).
47 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, p. 250.
48 Ibid., p. 251.
49 Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskiie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, pp. 71, 96.
50 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, p. 238.
51 Kokurin et al. (eds), ‘ Stalinskiie stroiki GULAGa 1930–1952’, p. 69.
52 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, pp. 244–5, 247, 251.
53 Nikolai Fëdorov, ‘Dvigatel “perekovki”: nachalnik Dmitlaga S. G. Firin’, in Butovskii poligon 1937–1938: kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii, no. 7, p. 45. See also www.martyr.ru/content/view/21/17/ (accessed May 2008) [in Russian].
54 Ibid., p. 47. There is some discussion there of Firin’s memoirs ‘Krasnye partizany’, the speech that appeared in Minsk in 1935 in an edition of 3,000 copies.
55 Fëdorov, ‘Strana “Dmitlag”’, pp. 245–9.
57 Fëdorov, ‘Dvigatel' “perekovki”: nachalnik Dmitlaga S. G. Firin’, p. 50.
58 Ibid., pp. 47, 51.
59 Ibid., p. 45.
60 Ibid., p. 51.
Chapter 19 Year of Adventures
1 Jochen Hellbeck (ed.), Tagebuch aus Moskau 1931–1939 (Munich, 1996), pp. 255–6.
2 The fundamental studies on this question are Scott W. Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia (Cambridge and New York, 2006); John McCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (Oxford and New York, 1998).
3 Michail Wodopjanow, Der Flieger Tschkalow (Berlin, 1963), p. 190.
4 Valerij Tschkalow, Unser Transpolarflug (Moscow, 1939), p. 89.
5 Ibid., p. 86.
6 Iwan Papanin, Eis und Flamme: Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1981), p. 276.
7 Tschkalow, Unser Transpolarflug, p. 11.
8 Iurii A. Kaminsky, Kremlëvskie perelëty (Moscow, 1998), p. 176.
9 McCannon, Red Arctic, pp. 60, 65.
10 Kaminskii, Kremlëvskie perelëty, p. 52; Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air, p. 223.
11 Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air, p. 249.
12 Leonid L. Kerber, Tupolev (Moscow, 1999), p. 118.
13 Reports and portraits of the crew consisting of Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov can be found in the contemporary news reports, e.g. in Pravda on 21, 22 and 23 June 1937, and of the crew consisting of Gromov, Danilin and Yumashev in Pravda on 15 July 1937.
14 Kaminskii, Kremlëvskie perelëty, p. 158; McCannon, Red Arctic, p. 160.
15 McCannon, Red Arctic, pp. 73–5.
16 Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air, p. 218.
17 A historical outline of the conquest of the North Pole can be found in J. Schokalski, ‘Der Nordpol’, in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, Part 1: Michail Wodopjanow, Der Traum des Piloten: Roman, Part 2: Die Verwirklichung des Traums: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Eroberung des Pols (London, 1938), pp. 207–13, here p. 209; despite its propagandistic nature, this volume is an anthology of important texts, newspaper articles, telegrams, reportage and biographical sketches.
18 Otto Schmidt, ‘Warum streben wir nach dem Pol?’, ibid., pp. 221–3.
19 ‘Auf fünf Flugzeugen’, ibid., pp. 279–80.
20 ‘Radiobriefe vom und zum Nordpol’, ibid., pp. 357–8.
21 Schmidt, ‘Warum streben wir nach dem Pol?’, ibid., pp. 214ff., and also Papanin, Eis und Flamme, p. 275.
22 Papanin, Eis und Flamme, p. 172, Schmidt, ‘Warum streben wir nach dem Pol?’, p. 234.
23 Papanin, Eis und Flamme, p. 194.
24 Eugen Fëdorow and Peter Schirschow, ‘Die wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten der Polarstation auf treibender Scholle’, in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, pp. 384–91.
25 Papanin, Eis und Flamme, p. 223.
26 Ibid., pp. 248, 251.
27 Ibid., p. 259.
28 Ibid., p. 282.
29 B. Galin and Ernst Krenkel, in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, p. 317.
30 On aviation and the stimulus to the imagination provided by aviation, see inter alia Robert Wohl, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908–1918 (New Haven, CT, 1994); Clive Hart, Images of Flight (Berkeley, CA, 1988); Felix Philipp Ingold, Literatur und Aviatik: Europäische Flugdichtung, 1909–1927 (Basel, 1978); Peter Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Cambridge, MA, 1992).
31 Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air, p. 20.
32 Ibid., p. 64.
33 Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue (London, 1952), pp. 283–300.
34 McCannon, Red Arctic, p. 124; the idea of aviators as heroic figures is treated in Hans Günter, ‘Stalinskie sokoly: analiz mifa tridtsatykh godov’, Voprosy literatury 11/12 (1991), pp. 122–41.
35 McCannon, Red Arctic, p. 116.
36 Lev Nikulin, in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, p. 291; on the Soviet image of America, see Alan Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia (New York, 2003).
37 Nikulin, in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, p. 298.
38 ‘Bolschewistische Romantik’, Izvestiia, 23 May 1937, quoted in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, p. 392.
39 Nikulin, in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, p. 287.
40 E. Kriege, ‘Der Sowjetmathematiker Schmidt’, ibid., p. 286.
41 W. Chodakow and Ilja Masuruk, ibid., p. 299.
42 V. Gerassimowa and Anatolij Alexejew, ibid., pp. 302, 305.
43 V. Wischnewski and Iwan Papanin, ibid., p. 312.
44 ‘Die Überwinterer’, ibid., pp. 322, 324.
45 L. Kassil, ‘Hier spricht der Nordpol’, ibid., pp. 376, 383.
46 ‘Traum: Ein ungewöhnliches Bühnenwerk’, ibid., pp. 294, 296.
47 Nikulin, ibid., p. 291.
48 ‘Bolschewistische Romantik’, Izvestiia, 23 May 1937, quoted in Die Eroberung des Nordpols, p. 394.
49 Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air, p. 17.
50 Ibid., pp. 99–101.
51 This succinct term introduced by Scott W. Palmer is the quintessence of his outstanding study Dictatorship of the Air.
52 On this point, see the monumental painting by Aleksandr Deineka, Nikita, the Russian Icarus, which admittedly was produced somewhat later, in 1940: Aleksandr Deineka, Paintings, Graphic Works, Sculptures, Mosaics: Excerpts from the Artist’s Writings (Leningrad, 1982), plate p. 156.
53 Leonid L. Kerber, Stalin’s Aviation Gulag: A Memoir of Andrei Tupolev and the Purge Era, ed. Von Hardesty (Washington, DC, 1996).
54 Palmer, Dictatorship of the Air, pp. 248, 251; McCannon, Red Arctic, p. 163.
55 McCannon, Red Arctic, pp. 145–7, 165.
56 Ibid., p. 179.
Chapter 20 Moscow as Shop-Window
1 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); Vsia Moskva: adresno-spravochnaia kniga na 1936g (Moscow, 1936).
2 Ehrenfried Schütte, Das Versichungswesen der Sowjet-Union: Mit einem Rückblick auf das vorrevolutionäre Erbe (Berlin, 1966); for the significance of insurance policies in the context of confiscation, see the diary entries of Iulia Piatnitskaia, Dnevnik zheny bol'shevika (Benson, VT, 1987), p. 22.
3 For the development of Soviet consumption of luxury products, see Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (Oxford and New York, 2003).
4 Randi Cox, ‘This can be yours! Soviet commercial advertising and the social construction of space, 1928–1956’, in Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (eds), The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle and London, 2003), pp. 125–62, here p. 131.
5 Ibid., p. 140. An entire chapter on advertising can be found in the account of travels in America that appeared in Pravda and Ogonek: Erica Wolf (ed.), Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (New York, 2007). On advertising, see also Nancy Condee (ed.), Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia (Bloomington, IN, 1995).
6 André Gide, Afterthoughts: A Sequel to Back from the USSR, trans. Dorothy Bussy (London, n.d.), p. 90.
7 Ibid., pp. 34–5, 37–8.
8 Cox, ‘This can be yours!’, p. 132.
9 One of the few studies of the development of Soviet fashion is Sergei Zhuravlev and Jukka Gronov, ‘Krasota pod kontrolem gosudarstva: osobennosti i etapy stanovlenia sovetskoi mody’, Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 32/1 (2006), pp. 1–92.
10 Cox, ‘This can be yours!’, p. 140.
11 Elena Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (Armonk, NY, and London, 2001), p. 145.
12 Ibid., pp . 155–7, 161.
13 Ibid., p. 157.
14 Ibid., pp. 159, 163.
15 For the cultural history of Soviet trade and co
nsumption, see Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices and Consumption, 1917–1935 (Princeton, NJ, 2004); Julie Hessler, ‘Cultured trade: the Stalinist turn toward consumerism’, in Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London and New York, 2000), pp. 182–209.
16 Osokina, Our Daily Bread, p. 181 [translation slightly modified]; see also Selensky’s confession in 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 (Moscow, 1938), p. 814.
17 Osokina, Our Daily Bread, p. 182.
18 Ibid., p. 187.
19 Ibid., pp. 187–8. On the travails of queuing, see Piatnitskaia, Dnevnik zheny bol'shevika, pp. 86, 96.
20 Osokina, Our Daily Bread, pp. 190, 193.
Chapter 21 Open Spaces, Dream Landscapes
Moscow, 1937 Page 83
