Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

16. Ramzin later received the Stalin Order and all his life referred fondly to the “Boss” despite admitting that he had been framed by the Lubianka.

17. Pis’ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu 1925–1936 gg., Moscow, 1995, 187–8.

18. Demian Bedny wrote for Stalin’s delectation a satire, “From the History of Russiaby Karamzin to Ramzin.”

19. Diary of S. A. Piontkovsky, quoted in Menshevistskii protsess 1931 goda, Moscow, 1999, 13.

20. Stalin doubtless found Frunze’s death convenient, but it is unproven that he ordered an overdose of anesthetic. had in 1923 requisitioned all the chloroform he could find; much was unfit for anesthesia and patients died.

21. Chertkov’s letters to and Stalin: OR 369, 363, 15 & 22; 369, 364, 2.

22. Vlast’ i intelligentsia, Moscow: 1999, 86–101.

23. V. Dmitriev, Sotsiologiia politicheskogo iumora, Moscow, 1998, 63.

24. Stanislav Kuniaev and Sergei Kuniaev, 1995, 230–31.

25. Stalin, however, found Pavlov hard to stomach: on September 26, 1934, on the eve of Pavlov’s eighty-fifth birthday, he reminded Molotov and Kaganovich: “Pavlov is not one of us. . . . He should not be given honors, even if he wanted to have them.”

26. Nicholas II found Platonov “dry and undoubtedly unsympathetic to the cult of Russian heroes.”

27. It is significant that Platonov’s interrogator, Sergei Zhupakhin, a former draftsman and railway engineer, was in 1938 removed from the NKVD and shot for excessive brutality: Zhupakhin had his juniors carry out executions with an ax.

28. Annenkov had given up fighting and become a horse breeder. He was forced to say that he had returned voluntarily to the USSR; he and the general were shot in 1927.

29. Radek never fully renounced Trotsky. When Klim Voroshilov called him Trotsky’s stooge (“tail” in Russian) he replied with an epigram: “O Klim, your head’s an empty space! / Your thoughts are in a mess. / Better to be the Leo’s tail / Than Stalin’s prick.”

30. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni I, Moscow: 1999, 491.

31. A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov (eds.), GULAG 1918–1960, Moscow, 2000, 62.

32. Figures from Iu. A. Poliakov, Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, Moscow: ROSSPÈN, 2000, I, 316.

33. A. G. Tepliakov, Personal i povsednevnost’ novosibirskogo UNKVD v 1936–1946, Minuvshee 21, Moscow/St. Petersburg: 1997, 245–6.

34. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni II, 2000, 103–04.

35. Ibid., 145.

36. A. K. Sokolov (ed.), Golos naroda 1918–1932, Moscow: 1998, 293.

37. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni II, Moscow: 2000, 787.

38. Over 200,000 escaped of which a fifth were recaptured: another 80,000 got away by marrying a “free” local citizen, entering an institute of higher education, or by proving themselves invalids.

39. GASPI 667, 1, 16, 8–9.

40. Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska 1931–1936 gg., Moscow, 2001, 239.

41. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni III, 2001, 549.

42. Ibid., 577.

43. As for private property, Stalin wanted it protected only when a peasant stole it from a senior Bolshevik. In 1932 an army officer, Ivan Korneev, shot dead a youth he caught stealing apples from his orchard and a military tribunal sentenced Korneev to six years in prison. Stalin insisted Korneev be freed: “he had a right to shoot at hooligans who had broken in at night. It is bad and ugly for the organs of authority to defend hooligans against a decent dedicated officer.” See Stalin i Kaganovich, 2001, 279–81.

44. Not until 1938 did the death rate for deported families drop below the birthrate.

45. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni III, 649.

46. Ibid., 664.

47. Ibid., 774.

48. Even in 1990 the horrors of 1932 and 1933 were deemed unfit for publication: the writer Aleksei Markov, who had lived through the famine as a child, found it impossible to print his verse memoirs. He recalled his father sending him out of the house before blocking the chimney and suffocating the fourteen remaining members of the family; he saw Young Communists striding over emaciated corpses on their way to their special canteen.

49. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni III, 644–5.

50. Ibid., 720.

51. Stalin i Kaganovich, 2001, 277.

52. Ibid., 274.

FIVE • Iagoda’s Rise

1. Gorky’s diary was seized after his death and remains secret. This passage was reported by one of the NKVD officers who took possession of it and is in Gorky’s style. See Vadim Baranov, Gor’kii, bez grima: Taina smerti, 2001.

2. Stalin’s office was issued 6,000 cigarettes a month, while Kaganovich had 500; rations were issued to staff who worked after 11 p.m. See Stalinskoe politburo v 1930-e gody, Moscow: 1995, 28–9.