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

18. Of a total of 3,486,206 prisoners taken by the Soviets on the western front, 2,388,443 were Germans; the other large contingents were Hungarians (half a million), Romanians and Austrians (each over 150,000). Statistics and information come from Stefan Karner, Arkhipelag GUPVI, Moscow/Vienna: 2002 (Russian version of 1995 German edition).

19. The NKVD allowed senior German officers better rations and freedom from work. In March 1943 General von Paulus even ordered winter shoes, socks, a sweater, and a new suitcase from the German military attaché in Ankara, the bill to be sent to his wife in Berlin. Ibid., 74.

20. The memoirs of Pavel Sudoplatov (Spetsoperatsii: Lubianka i Kreml’ 1930–1950 gody, Moscow, 1997, 432–49) are mendacious, but his account of Wallenberg’s fate is not contradicted by other evidence.

21. One can be sure that if a writer said anything dissident it would be reported, less sure that it would be reported accurately. See Vlast’ i intelligentsia 487–99 and 522–33.

TEN • The Gratification of Cruelty

1. Iu. G. Murin, Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiiakh sem’i, Moscow, 1993, 95.

2. Politburo CK VKP(b) i sovet ministrov SSSR 1945–1953, Moscow: 2002, 195–200.

3. Ibid., 25–6.

4. Ibid., 205–06.

5. Malenkov had reason to fear worse; he knew that he had been named in Ezhov’s confessions. In 1954 Malenkov got hold of Ezhov’s statements and destroyed them.

6. The exception was the deputy minister of geology Academician Iosif Grigoriev, who was beaten to death in 1949 by Beria’s henchman Shvartsman. See Arkadii Vaksberg, Neraskrytye tainy, Moscow, 1993, 112.

7. In 1947, however, the Politburo forbade the publication of The Journal of Physics in the USSR in Western languages on the grounds that this “makes the work of foreign intelligence much easier.”

8. For reports of these proceedings see Artizov and Naumov (eds.) Moscow, 1999, 549–603.

9. But Chaplin’s antifascist film The Great Dictator remained banned in the USSR.

10. Eisenstein and Cherkasov reconstructed this conversation from memory. See Artizov and Naumov (eds.) 612–19.

11. Aleksei Kuznetsov had temporarily taken over the government of Leningrad when Zhdanov’s nerve broke. He rallied the city’s population, taking his twelve-year-old son everywhere and sleeping in dugouts, not bunkers.

12. B. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina, Moscow: 2001, 229. This is the authoritative work on Stalin and the Jews: for a vivid account of the fate of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, see also Vaksberg, 1993, 222–302.

13. Kostyrchenko, 2001, 234.

14. Ibid., 514.

15. Vaksberg, 1993, 261–5.

16. Grigulevich became ambassador to the Vatican and wrote a history of the Spanish Inquisition.

17. Stalin was intrigued by group sex, to judge by his marginal comments on polygamy in Engels’s book on the origin of the family.

18. Once again, Ogoltsov evaded the hot ministerial seat, but he became Ignatiev and Riumin’s loyal assistant. 19. For an account of Abakumov’s fate, see K. A. Stoliarov, Palachi i zhertvy, Moscow, 1997, 11–148.

20. This device, a denunciation from an obscure underling, had last been used by Stalin to unseat Ezhov on a similar accusation of inadequate zeal. Viktor Zhuravliov, a major from Ivanovo, was credited in November 1938 with unmasking Ezhov to the Politburo. Mediocrities like Zhuravliov and Riumin would not have risked, unprompted, such suicidal initiatives. Zhuravliov’s fate (he died mysteriously, at age forty-two, in December 1946) should have given Riumin pause for thought. Sukhanov got his comeuppance in 1956, when it was discovered that he had stolen 100,000 rubles from Beria’s safe on the date of his arrest. See K. A. Stoliarov, Igry v pravosudie, Moscow, 2000, 284–6.

21. Timewatch, BBC2, August 9, 2002. Kremlin doctors such as Vinogradov were so overloaded with duties as professors and editors, in addition to having to take care of caseloads of party leaders, many of whom were in bad health, that they were unfit to treat patients. Unlike Lenin and , Stalin and Beria would not consult foreign doctors.

22. Vinogradov knew the dangers. In 1938 he was summoned by Ezhov as an expert to damn his colleague Dr. Pletniov. Ezhov warned him: “Bear in mind that every third person is my agent and tells me everything. I advise you to talk less.”

23. Leonid Mlechin, KGB: predsedateli organov bezopasnosti, Moscow, 2001, 364. Mlechin’s account relies on Khrushchiov’s uncorroborated memoirs. When Ignatiev died in 1983, Pravda’s obituary praised his “modesty and sensitive attitude to people.”

24. Kostyrchenko, 2001, 649.

25. The letter was never printed. The text is in Vaksberg, 1993, 295–6.

26. Ibid., 276–80.

27. “Politburo TsK” in Sovet ministrov 1945–1953, Moscow, 2002, 349–54.