57 On the share of the national contingents in the overall numbers of victims, see Rolf Binner and Marc Junge, ‘“S etoi publikoi tseremonit'sia ne sleduet”: Die Zielgruppe 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.
58 McLoughlin, ‘Die Massenoperationen des NKWD’, p. 45.
59 On the proportion and significance of non-political cases in the balance sheet of persecution and execution, see David Shearer, ‘Social disorder, mass repression and the NKWD during the 1930s’, in Barry McLoughlin and K. McDermott (eds), Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 85–117.
60 McLoughlin, ‘Die Massenoperationen des NKWD’, p. 42.
61 Getty and Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror, pp. 589–90.
62 Ibid., p. 592.
63 McLoughlin, ‘Die Massenoperationen des NKWD’, pp. 41–5.
64 ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK WKP(B) “Ob arestakh, prokurorskom nadzore i vvedenii sledstviia”’, in Khaustov et al. (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938, pp. 607–11; the English text is in Getty and Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror, pp. 532–7, the Russian text in the Yakovlev Archive: www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61411.
65 See Yezhov’s letter of resignation in Getty and Naumov (eds), The Road to Terror, pp. 538–41.
66 To cite the title used by 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.
67 J. Arch Getty, ‘“Excesses are not permitted”: mass terror and Stalinist governance in the late 1930s’, Russian Review 61 (2002), pp. 113–38, here p. 126.
68 Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001), chap. 8, ‘Ethnic cleansing and enemy nations’.
69 Gábor T. Rittersporn, ‘Catching spies, trapping the system: spy mania in the prewar USSR’, paper presented at ‘Soviet War against Fifth Columnists, 1936–1945’, 36th national convention for the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, December 2004.
70 Oleg W. Chlewnjuk, Das Politbüro, p. 258.
Chapter 34 Lonely White Sail …
1 Sergei Mikhalkov, ‘Kem khotiat byt' nashi deti’, Ogonek 18 (1938), p. 21.
2 Catriona Kelly, Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero (London, 2005), p. 181.
3 See the photographic essay by V. Seffer and A. Buzin, ‘Shchastlivoe detstvo’, Ogonek 23 (1937), p. 212.
4 Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, tom vtoroi, 1935–1945 (Moscow, 1959); Valentin Katajew, Es blinkt ein einsam Segel (Berlin, 1946); Arkadi Gajdar, Timur und sein Trupp (Berlin, 1952).
5 Nina Kosterina, Das Tagebuch der Nina Kosterina (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), p. 34; there are similar comments in Nina Lugovskaja, Ich will leben: Ein russisches Tagebuch 1932–1937 (Munich and Vienna, 2005).
6 Kosterina, Das Tagebuch der Nina Kosterina, p. 23 (entry of 25 January 1937).
7 Ibid., p. 91.
8 Ibid., p. 26 (entry of 25 March 1937).
9 Ibid., p. 27 (entry of 16 April 1937).
10 Ibid., p. 54 (entry of 22 May 1938).
11 There is an impressive and moving account of children’s experiences in Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (London, 2007).
12 Gazeta Kino of 23 July 1938, quoted in Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, vol. 2: 1935–1945 (Moscow, 1959), p. 524.
13 Kelly, Comrade Pavlik.
14 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.
15 L. Muravnik, ‘Danilovskie kolokola: centralny moskovsky detpriemnik’, in Butovsky poligon 1937–1938, no. 8 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 313–52, here p. 342.
16 Reprinted in the documents in the appendix of Reinhard Müller’s essay in Simone Barck (ed.), Jahrhundertschicksale: Frauen im sowjetischen Exil (Berlin, 2003), pp. 47–53.
Chapter 35 Yezhov at the Bolshoi Theatre
1 ‘Prikaz no. 134 on the organization of the celebrations’, in Aleksander I. Kokurin and Nikita V. Petrov (eds), Lubianka: organy VCHEK-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB-MVD-KGB, 1917–1991: spravochnik (Moscow, 2003), pp. 587–90.
2 See chapter 25, ‘Soviet Hollywood’, in the present volume.
3 Photograph by S. Sakharov, ‘Bol'shoi teatr: v lozhe udarnikov’, in Moskva (Moscow, 1935), p. 500.
4 Jelena Bulgakowa, Margarita und der Meister: Tagebücher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1993); see the entry of 14 March 1936, as well as the entries of 5 January 1936, 11 February 1936 and 21 March 1939.
5 Vecherniaia Moskva, 4 and 7 December 1937; Stepan Podlubnyi reports on the arrest of his mother, in Jochen Helbeck (ed.), Tagebuch aus Moskau 1931–1939 (Munich, 1996), pp. 237–43.
6 Vecherniaia Moskva, 15 December 1937.
7 Ibid., 16 December 1937.
8 Ibid., 17 December 1937.
9 Ibid., 23 December 1937.
10 Ibid., 21 December 1937.
11 Ibid.
12 For the biography of Nikolai I. Yezhov, see Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commisar Nikolai Ezhov 1895–1940 (Stanford, CA, 2002); on the ‘assistants assigned to special tasks’, see A. Golovkova, ‘Rasstrely i rasstrelshchiki’, in Butovskii polygon, v rodnom kraiu: dokumenty, svidetel'stva, sud'by …(Moscow, 2004), pp. 85–95.
13 Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 342.
14 ‘Rech N. I. Yezhova na tseremonii nagrazhdeniia sotrudnikov NKVD ordenami’, in Kokurin and Petrov (eds), Lubianka: organy VCHEK-OGPUNKVD-NKGB-MGB-MVD-KGB, 1917–1991, pp. 586–7.
15 ‘Proekt prikaza NKVD SSSR o 20-letnei godovshchine VCHEK-NKVD, 20.12.1937’, ibid., pp. 587–9.
16 On the way in which the mentality of the participants had been forged in the Civil War, see Jörg Baberowski, Der rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus (Munich, 2003), pp. 86–93.
17 ‘Doklad A. I. Mikoiana, slavnoe dvadtsatiletie sovetskoi razvedki, na torzhestvennom zasedanii v Bol'shom Teatre’, in Kokurin and Petrov (eds), Lubianka: organy VCHEK-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB-MVD-KGB, 1917–1991, pp. 590–9, here p. 595.
18 Ibid., p. 596.
19 Ibid., p. 599.
20 L. Mironov, during an interrogation on 20 June 1937, in Nikita Petrov, ‘Die Kaderpolitik des NKWD während der Massenrepressalien 1936–39’, in Wladislaw Hedeler (ed.), Stalinscher Terror 1934–41: Eine Forschungsbilanz (Berlin, 2002), pp. 11–32, here p. 21.
21 Ibid., pp. 11–32; 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), p. 26.
22 Petrov, ‘Die Kaderpolitik des NKWD während der Massenrepressalien 1936– 39’ …, p. 20.
23 See also chapter 18, ‘A City by the Sea’, in the present volume.
24 Petrov, ‘Die Kaderpolitik des NKWD während der Massenrepressalien 1936– 39’ …, p. 13.
25 ‘Postanovlenie politburo CK WKP(B) “Ob arestakh, prokurorskom nadzore i vedenii sledstviia”’, and also ‘Prikaz narkoma vnutrennikh del o poriadke osushchestvleniia postanovleniia SNK i CK WKP(B) ot 17 noiabria 1938 goda’, in Vladimir N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004), pp. 607–17; ‘Ob arestakh’, see www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p=21&doc=61411; ‘Prikaz narkoma …’, see www.idf.ru/documents/info. jsp?p=21&doc=61414 (accessed July 2008) [in Russian]. Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, p. 449.
26 Nikita Petrov, ‘Die Kaderpoliti
k des NKWD während der Massenrepressalien 1936–39’, p. 28.
27 Ibid., p. 30.
28 Barry McCloughlin, ‘“Vernichtung des Fremden”: Der “Große Terror” in der UdSSR 1937/38: Neue russische Publikationen’, in Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2000/2001, p. 82; see also Nikita Petrov and Konstantin V. Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD 1934–1941: spravochnik, ed. N. G. Okhotin and A. B. Roginsky (Moscow, 1999), p. 227 (see also www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto); on the structure of the NKVD, see also Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, pp. 479–88.
Chapter 36 Bukharin Takes his Leave
1 Prozessbericht uber 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. 1.
2 Opinions vary about the exact date of the executions: Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung, Inszenierung und Wirkung (Berlin, 2003), p. 393, gives it as 13 March; Stephen F. Cohen, in his introduction to Bukharin’s prison novel How it All Began (New York, 1998), p. xi, refers to 15 March.
3 Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (London, 1942), p. 177.
4 Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (London, 1941); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, trans. John O’Neill (Boston, 1969).
5 On the editing of the trial records, see Wladislaw Hedeler, ‘Jeshows Szenario: Der Moskauer Schauprozess 1938’, Mittelweg 36/7 (1998–9), pp. 61–75.
6 Nikolai Bucharin, Gefängnisschriften, vol. 1: Der Sozialismus und seine Kultur, ed. Swetlana N. Gurwitsch-Bucharina, Wladislaw Hedeler and Ruth Stoljarowa (Berlin, 1996); vol. 2: Philosophische Arabesken: Dialektische Skizzen, ed., trans. and with a commentary by Dieter Uzlig und Wladislaw Hedeler (Berlin, 2005); Nikolai Bukharin, Vremena: Roman (Moscow, 1994); Nikolai Bukharin, How it All Began (New York, 1998); general bibliography: Wladislaw Hedeler, Nikolaj I. Bucharin: Bibliographie seiner Schriften und Korrespondenzen 1912–1938, mit einem Anhang: Bucharins Karikaturen und Bucharin in der Karikatur (Berlin, 2005).
7 Prozessbericht … 1938, p. 845. See also ‘N. I. Bukharin’s last plea before the Supreme Court of the USSR, Moscow, March 12, evening session, 1938’, http://art-bin.com/art/obukharin.html, from which this and the following quotations have been taken.
8 Ibid., pp. 835–6.
9 Ibid., p. 845.
10 Ibid., p. 697.
11 Ibid., p. 89.
12 Ibid., pp. 113, 137.
13 Ibid., p. 359.
14 Ibid., p. 364.
15 Ibid., p. 366.
16 Ibid., pp. 67, 301.
17 Ibid., p. 111.
18 Ibid., p. 292.
19 Ibid., p. 334.
20 Ibid., p. 607.
21 Ibid., p. 581.
22 Ibid., p. 671.
23 Ibid., p. 53
24 Ibid., pp. 404, 408.
25 Ibid., pp. 342–3.
26 For the present state of research, see Wladislaw Hedeler (ed.), Nikolai Bucharin: Gefängnisschriften, vol. 1. Der Sozialismus und seine Kultur, and Bukharin, How it All Began.
27 Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (London, 1973), p. 391.
28 Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, p. 610.
29 Bukharin, How it All Began, p. xvi, n. 10; Wladislaw Hedeler, ‘Ein Brief N. I. Bucharins’, Mittelweg 36/2 (1993), pp. 69–71; Nikolai Bucharin, ‘Brief an Stalin (10.12.1937)’, in Henryk Skrzypczak (ed.), Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 1 (1993), pp. 21–5 (also at www.stalinwerke.de/mp/mp_bucharinbrief.html); Nikolaj Bucharin, ‘An eine künftige Generation von Parteiführern’, in Anna Larina Bucharina, Nun bin ich schon weit über zwanzig: Erinnerungen (Göttingen, 1991), pp. 428–30; Nikolai Bukharin, ‘“Vsiudu i vezde ia budu nastaivat' na svoei polnoi absoliutnoi nevinnovnosti …” (pisma N. I. Bukharina poslednikh let), avgust–dekabr' 1936g.’, Istochnik 2 (1993), pp. 4–18; ‘“Vsë, chto govorit Radek – eto absoliutno zlostnaia kleveta …”: ochnaia stavka K. Radeka i N. Bukharina v CK WKP(B) 13. ianvaria 1937g.’, Istochnik 1 (2001), pp. 65–77; Nikolai Bukharin, ‘“Ia ikh, eti navety, otvergaiu i budu otvergat'”: pismo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Stalinu ot 19 ianvaria 1937g.’, Istochnik 3 (2001), pp. 27–38; Nikolai Bukharin, ‘“No ia to znaiu, chto ya prav”: pismo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Stalinu iz vnutrennei tiurmy NKVD, 15 aprelia 1937g.’, Istochnik 3 (2000), pp. 46–58; Nikolai Bukharin, ‘“Ni razu ne govorilos' otnositel'no terrora”: stenogramma ochnoi stavki N. I. Bukharina s V. N. Astrovym v Politburo CK VKP(B), 13 ianvaria 1937g.’, Istochnik 2 (2001), pp. 89–110; Nikolai Bukharin, ‘“Prosti menia, Koba”: pismo N. I. Bukharina v adres I. V. Stalina, 10 dekabria 1937’, Istochnik 0 (1993), pp. 23–5.
30 See Wladislaw Hedeler’s afterword to Bucharin, Philosophische Arabesken: Dialektische Skizzen, p. 392.
31 Bukharin, How it All Began, p. xii.
32 Bucharin, Der Sozialismus und seine Kultur.
33 See the list of all the poems in Hedeler, Nikolaj Ivanovič Bucharin: Bibliographie seiner Schriften und Korrespondenzen 1912–1938, pp. 253–64; see also Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938, where the exact dates are given. The most accurate commentary on the poems can be found in Hedeler’s afterword to Bucharin, Philosophische Arabesken: Dialektische Skizzen, pp. 444–8; see also Boris Frezenskii, ‘Golos iz bezdny’, in Bukharin, Vremena, pp. 3–20.
34 On his caricatures, see Alexander Vatlin and Larissa Malashenko (eds), Schweinefuchs und das Schwert der Revolution: Die bolschewistisiche Führung karikiert sich selbst (Munich, 2007); Aleksandr Korotkov, Natalia Kovaleva and Vladimir Lebedev, ‘“Pokazat' vsem chlenam Politburo …”: duel karikaturistov na bol'shevistskom olimpe’, Istochnik 3 (2002), pp. 77–83.
35 Bucharin, Philosophische Arabesken: Dialektische Skizzen, p. 388.
36 Ibid., p. 395.
37 Ibid., p. 15.
38 On the idea that Bukharin’s final plea represents a Hegelian selftranscendence, see Jochen Hellbeck, ‘With Hegel to salvation: Bukharin’s other trial’, Representations 107/1 (2009), pp. 56–90. I should like to express my thanks to Jochen Hellbeck for allowing me to read his study of this in manuscript form. See also Hellbeck, Revolution on my Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA, 2006).
39 Nikolai Bucharin, ‘Brief an Stalin (10.12.1937)’, p. 21.
40 Ibid., pp. 22–5. See also the analysis of Bukharin’s letter in 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), pp. 556–60, as well as www.yale.edu/annals/Reviews/review_texts/Walden_on_Getty_ Ass._Newspapers_10.22.99.html.
41 For Bukharin’s biography, see Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 (New York, 1971); Adolf G. Löwy, Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht: Leben und Werk Nikolai Bucharins (Vienna, 1990).
42 Bukharin, Vremena, p. 349.
43 Ibid., p. 212.
44 Ibid., pp. 264–6.
45 Ibid., pp. 223, 228–30.
46 Ibid., p. 271.
47 Ibid., p. 347.
48 Ibid., p. 358.
49 Ibid., pp. 180–2.
50 Ibid., p. 202.
51 Ibid., p. 289.
52 Ibid., pp. 312f.
53 For the biography of Petr Ivanovich Maggo, see Butovsky poligon, no. 8 (Moscow, 2004), p. 92.
Chapter 37 ‘For Official Use Only’
1 Mil. Geo. Plan von Moskau: Verkehrsmittel 1:35 000. Anlage zu Militärgeographische Angaben über das Europäische Rußland, Mappe H: Moskau. Sonderausgabe VII, 1941. ‘Nur fur den Dienstgebrauch!’; Mil. Geo. Plan von Moskau (Stadtkern). Anlage zu Militärgeographischen Angaben über das Europäische Rusland, Mappe H: Moskau. Sonderausgabe VI, 1941. ‘Nur fur den Dienstgebrauch!’
2 Entry ‘Ka
rtograficheskie uchrezhdeniia’ [‘Cartography’], in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 31 (Moscow, 1937), pp. 646–7; see also Emma Widdis, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003), p. 193.
3 See one of the few studies on the topic of maps and secrecy: Dagmar Unverhau, Kartenverfälschung als Folge übergroßer Geheimhaltung? Annäherung an das Thema Einflussnahme der Staatssicherheit auf das Kartenwesen der DDR (Münster, 2003).
4 ‘Spetssoobshchenie N. I. Yezhova I. V. Stalinu o rezultatakh sledstviia po delu o propazhe karty-dislokatsii, 14 aprelia 1938g., nr. 102 899’, in Vladimir N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937–1938 (Moscow, 2004), p. 518; see also www.idf.ru/documents/info.jsp?p= 21&doc= 61339 [in Russian].
5 Hans-Ulrich Seidt, Berlin, Kabul, Moskau: Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer und Deutschlands Geopolitik (Munich, 2002), p. 267.
6 On Niedermayer’s activities, for example, in Aden und Beirut, see ibid., pp. 36–7.
7 Hans von Herwarth, Zwischen Hitler und Stalin: Erlebte Zeitgeschichte 1931– 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), p. 196.
8 Hans-Ulrich Seidt, Berlin, Kabul, Moskau, p. 294.
9 Werner Roeder, Faksimile der ‘Sonderfahndungsliste UdSSR’ des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, das Fahndungsbuch der deutschen Einsatzgruppen im Rußlandfeldzug 1941 (Erlangen, 1977).
Moscow, 1937 Page 87
