The Great Terror

, ed. V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova.

Rossia XX vek

series (Moscow, 2004), pp. 252–3.

fn31

Andrei Sukhomlinov,

Kto vy, Lavrenti i Beria?: neizvestnye stranitsy ugolovnogo dela

(Moscow, 2003).

fn32

Anastas Mikoyan,

Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan

(Madison, Conn., 1988).

fn33

In conversation with Olga Carlisle in January 1960. See

Voprosy Literatury

, No. 3 (1980), pp. 162–83.

fn34

Norman Cohn,

The Pursuit of the Millennium

(New York, 1970).

fn35

Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Problem of Dictatorship’, in

The Russian Revolution

(New York, 1940), p. 48.

fn36

V. I. Lenin,

Collected Works

, Vol. 13 (Moscow: 1972), p. 473.

fn37

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (4 September 1870), in

Selected Correspondence

(New York, 1968).

fn38

Felix Chuev and Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov,

Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics: Conversations with Felix Chuev

(Chicago, 1993).

fn39

Roy Medvedev, in

Moscow News

, 13 August 2002.

fn40

To the Virginia Convention gathered at St John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, 23 March 1775.

Introduction: THE ROOTS OF TERROR

fn1

The effective central core of the Party at the time of the October Revolution is estimated at 5,000 to 10,000, a third of whom were intellectuals (D. J. Dallin, cited in Boris Souvarine,

Stalin

[London, 1949], p. 317).

1 Stalin Prepares

fn1

Blyumkin (the ex-Socialist Revolutionary who had shot the German Ambassador in 1918) had been executed as a secret envoy of Trotsky in 1929, but that was a rather different matter.

fn2

Pyatakov’s speech was welcomed by “prolonged applause.” Zinoviev and Bukharin were not interrupted and gained “applause.” Radek and Kamenev were interrupted, but applauded. Rykov and Tomsky were interrupted and not applauded. But even these last were comparatively well received.

2 The Kirov Murder

fn1

There are earlier assassinations in Russia’s own history which may also have inspired Stalin; for example, the killing of Prime Minister Stolypin in 1911 by an assassin who seems to have acted with the approval and connivance of the Tsarist Secret Police, which objected to Stolypin’s policies.

fn2

Stalin’s similar complicity in the murder of the Yiddish actor-producer Solomon Mikhoels in Minsk in 1948 now seems well established. Described at the time as an accident, it was admitted in the Khrushchev era to have been the work of the MGB (

Sovetskaya Byelorossiya

, 13 January 1963; Svetlana Alliluyeva,

Only One Year

[London, 1969], p. 190).

fn3

All four NKVD officers were later themselves to be denounced and shot as conspiratorsPauker and Volovich as German spies in addition.

3 Architect of Terror

fn1

By the time of the Second World War, when many Western observers first saw him, he had changed. He had developed quite a large paunch; his hair had become very thin; and his face was now white with ruddy cheeks. This coloration was common in high Soviet circles, where it was known as “Kremlin complexion” and attributed to working through the night in its offices.

fn2

Cherkasov gives an account of this conversation in

Zapiski sovetskogo aktera

(Moscow, 1953), pp. 380–82. This book was passed for publication while Stalin was still alive, and (we are told in the Soviet historical journal

Voprosy istorii

, no. 8 [1956]) he raised no objections.

4 Old Bolsheviks Confess

fn1

This was extended during the war to provide for “the punishment of relatives of those who had been taken prisoner” (Svetlana Alliluyeva,

Twenty Letters to a Friend

[London, 1967], p. 196).

fn2

He was replaced by Akulov, who had been serving as Prosecutor-General. It was now that Vyshinsky received that post.

fn3

These dates are those given sporadically in the indictment, in the evidence of the trial, and in the Secret Letter of the Central Committee.

fn4

He is also mentioned by General A. V. Gorbatov as presiding in 1939 over the four- or five-minute farce which sentenced him to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He died in good odor in 1967 (

Years Off My Life

[London, 19641, pp. 117–18).

fn5

Just as the Czechoslovak investigation of the Slansky Trial made in 1968 established that “the individual sentences had been settled beforehand by the Political Secretariat” (

Nova mysl

, no. 7 [10 July 1968]).

fn6

For some reason, no evidence implicating Pyatakov is given in the printed version of the court proceedings. In fact, Reingold had incriminated him.

fn7