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

34. The “Gorky of the Balkans,” the Romanian Panait Istrati, unable to stomach show trials, collectivization, or purges, “turned Trotskyist.” In the Soviet Union, Istrati “saw the broken eggs but couldn’t see the omelette.” He died unexpectedly in Bucharest in 1935. Barbusse, apparently in fine health, died in Moscow in August 1935 after his hagiography of Stalin appeared. “That teaches us to be careful,” Rolland wrote to Gorky. Eugène Dabit, a healthy young proletarian accompanying André Gide (and sharing his disquiet) on a tour of the USSR, died, poisoned, at the age of thirty-eight in a Sevastopol hotel in July 1936.

35. Quoted from Roi Medvedev, “Pisateli Evropy na priiome u Stalina,” Moskovskie novosti, 2002, 28, 17.

36. H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 1934. The interview took place on July 23, 1934.

37. Terentiev was so intrigued by his interrogators’ fantasies that he helped them make the charges even more ludicrous. See Minuvshee 18, Moscow, 1995, 533–608.

38. Kuniaev and Kuniaev, 1995, 82.

39. For a full account, based on surviving records in St. Petersburg, see A. V. Blium, Sovetskaia tsenzura v èpokhu total’nogo terrora 1929–1953, St. Petersburg, 2000.

40. In 1800 Tsar Paul had forbidden naming cats or goats Masha, to prevent lèsemajesté against the Tsaritsa Mariia Fiodorovna.

41. Khlevniuk, 1996, 36.

42. Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 1993, I, 103; Khlevniuk, 1996, 36.

43. A. Afanasiev (ed.) Oni ne molchali, Moscow, 1991, 136.

44. See B. A. Starkov, “Pravo-levye fraktsionery” in A. Afanasiev (ed.) Oni ne molchali, Moscow: 1991, 125–44; also O. V. Khlevniuk, 1993, 21–9.

45. Lominadze, according to Avdeev’s memoir, said the meeting took place just before dawn, and that he was alone with Stalin. See Afanasiev, 1991, 136–7.

46. Afanasiev, 1991, 139.

47. This blew up in OGPU’s face, for it was widely rumored that Riutin’s Platform had been fabricated by Menzhinsky.

48. From there he continued the struggle in letters to his children. Five years later Riutin was required to incriminate himself and his associates as terrorists. He went on hunger strike and attempted suicide, but this time resisted torture. He was shot on January 10, 1937.

49. Two days before, at a Red Square parade, Nadezhda had marched with other students at her academy and joined party leaders on the tribune. She told Nikita Khrushchiov (a fellow student) she was worried that Stalin was standing in the cold with his coat unbuttoned.

50. Iu. G. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiiakh sem’i, Moscow, 1993, 29–42.

51. L. Vasil’eva in Kremliovskie zhiony, Moscow: 1995, 170, cites hearsay that Nadezhda was driven to despair when she came to believe that Stalin had slept with her mother and was perhaps her father. See also Eremei Parnov, Skelety v seife, Moscow, 2000, I, 65–104.

52. The matter could be settled by exhuming the body. Dr. Vladimir Rozanov twice operated on famous revolutionaries who died on the operating table: Nogin in 1924, Frunze in 1925. He removed Stalin’s appendix in 1921.

53. Parnov, Skelety v seife I, 2000, 97.

54. Feliks Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, Moscow, 1992, 154.

55. Probably 1932. See A. Kirilina, Neizvestnyi Kirov, St. Petersburg, 2001, 341.

56. Beria and Molotov ensured that Menzhinsky’s widow kept her three-room dacha and received special rations, while his sickly young son, Rudolf, his first wife, Iulia Ivanovna (thought by Beria to be his mother), his surviving sister, and his nephew and niece were all on the NKVD’s payroll. See GARF 9401, 2, 105 and 206; T. Gladkov et al., Menzhinskii, Moscow, 1969, 340–43.

SIX • Murdering the Old Guard

1. Compare Bernard Gui, Procedures of the Office of the Inquisition for Trying Heretics, c. 1310, which also dispenses with lawyers, witnesses, and appeals. Stalin and Molotov had in September 1934 authorized Robert Eikhe, the satrap of western Siberia, to set up troikas that sentenced victims to death without formalities, but only for the six weeks of grain procurement.

2. The testimony of some NKVD men including the defector Orlov, Iagoda’s ambiguous remarks at his trial in 1938, Trotsky’s speculations, and Nikita Khrushchiov’s accusations in his destalinization speech in 1956 have persuaded many historians that, on Stalin’s orders, Nikolaev was manipulated by Iagoda’s men into killing Kirov.

3. The best-documented account of Kirov’s murder is Kirilina, 2001.

4. Orjonikidze, as close to Kirov as either was to Stalin but a person who might not have agreed to falsification, was told not to come to Leningrad: Stalin claimed it might be “bad for his heart.” See Rogovin, 1994, 83.