STALIN UNDERSTANDS THE TRICKS OF CAPITALIST GOVTS
 
            In a September 9, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “It's not Henderson [British Foreign Office official] who is dangerous, since we have pushed him to the wall, but Litvinov, who believes Wise and other bastards more than the logic of things.  Remember we are waging a struggle (negotiations with enemies is also struggle), not with England alone, but with the whole capitalist world, since the MacDonald government is the vanguard of the capitalist governments in the work of “humiliating’ and “bridling’ the Soviet government with “new,’ more “diplomatic,’ more disguised, and thus more “effective’ methods.  The MacDonald government wants to show the whole capitalist world that it can take more from us (with the help of “gentle’ methods) than Mussolini, Poincare, and Baldwin, that it can be a greater Shylock than the capitalist Shylock himself.  And it wants this because only in this way can it win the trust of its own bourgeoisie (and not only its bourgeoisie).  We really would be worthless if we couldn’t manage to reply to these arrogant bastards briefly and to the point: “You won’t get a friggin’ thing from us.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 178
 
STALIN DETECTED TRAITORS LONG BEFORE THE TRIALS
 
            In a September 9, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated in a P. S. “I almost forgot.  The new (new!) statement from Smirnov, Vaganian, Mrachkovski, and others must be rejected not only as unacceptable (and how!) but as a document from impudent counter-revolutionaries who are exploiting Yaroslavski's easygoing nature and the trust he has shown them. Yaroslavski must be forbidden to have anything to do with those upstarts who have exploited his easygoing nature to organize their counter-revolutionary faction on 'new,' “within-the-regulations' principles.  We don't need them in the party....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 178
 
 
STALIN WANTS PYATAKOV REMOVED YET HE IS LATER MADE THE HEAD OF INDUSTRY
 
            In an August 24, 1930, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “As for Pyatakov, all indications are that he has remained the same as always, that is, a poor, commissar alongside a specialist (or specialists) who are no better.  He is a hostage to his bureaucracy.  You really get to know people in practice, in daily work, in “trivial’ matters.  And here, in the practical matters of financial (and credit!) management, Pyatakov has shown his true colors as a poor commissar alongside poor specialists.  And I have to tell you that this type of Communist economic manager is the most harmful for us at this time.
            Conclusion: he must be removed.  Someone else must be put in his place.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 204
 
            In a September 1930 letter to Molotov Stalin said, “Pyatakov should be watched closely.  He is a genuine rightist Trotskyist (another Sokolnikov), and he now represents the most harmful element in the Rykov-Pyatakov bloc....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 214
 
            After a period of political disfavor because of his Trotskyist sympathies, Pyatakov, whom Lenin, in his political testament, mentioned with Bukharin as one of the more promising among the younger Party members, has made his peace with the Party authorities and received an appointment as head of the State Bank.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 105
 
            While Zinoviev and Kamenev had continued in effect to oppose the Stalin leadership, and had long since been excluded from decent Party society, Pyatakov had been of the greatest service...and had been admitted by him [Stalin] to his latest Central Committee.  He was, in addition, under the apparently powerful protection of Ordjonikidze.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 128
 
            As I was listening to him [Stalin] I couldn't help thinking of the concern he had shown for Pyatakov during his illness in 1931....  He even sent him honey....
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 249
 
 
RYUTIN IS COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY SCUM
 
            In a September 13, 1930, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “With regard to Riutin...  This counter-revolutionary scum should be completely disarmed....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 215
 
            The document's (Ryutin Platform) call to "Stalin's dictatorship" was taken as a call for armed revolt.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 53
 
            Another anti-Stalin group that arose inside the party in the early 30s was the Ryutin group.... This group drafted a lengthy document, known to history as the "Ryutin Platform."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 296
 
            The unpublished memoirs of Alikhanova, who knew Ryutin well, mention that he asserted more than once, among his closest co-thinkers, that the assassination of Stalin was not only possible but actually the only way to get rid of him.  The Ryutin group, however, did not make any preparations or attempts to carry out such an assassination.
            When Stalin found out about the group through the GPU or his own private informers, he struck quickly....  Stalin insisted on the arrest of the group's members and demanded that its leaders be shot.  The majority of the Politburo, however, did not agree with Stalin.  An unwritten law still existed at the time--that excessively severe measures should not be taken against Party activists.  The decision was made to expel the "Ryutinites" from the Party, and to exile most of them to remote areas.
            Ryutin himself was expelled and arrested first.  On Oct. 11, 1932, Pravda published a decree of the Central Control Commission on the expulsion of 20 persons from the party "as degenerate elements who have become enemies of communism and of Soviet power, as traitors to the party and working-class, who tried to form an underground bourgeois-kulak organization under a fake 'Marxist Leninist' banner for the purpose of restoring capitalism in general and kulakdom in particular in the USSR."
            ... They were all banished from Moscow.  Sten, Petrovsky, Uglanov, and Ravich-Cherkassky were expelled from the party for one year.  They were given the right "after a year, depending on their conduct, to raise the question of a review of the present decree."
            Many of these people soon "recanted," were reinstated in the party, and returned to Moscow.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 297
 
            Ryutin also called for a "struggle for the destruction of Stalin's dictatorship," which would "give birth to new leaders and heroes."  These words could be taken as advocating terrorism, because there was no sign of an open, organized movement against the government.  Stalin could well have interpreted these words as a personal threat.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 17
 
            In 1930 Stalin's protege, Syrtsov, newly promoted to candidate membership of the Politburo, had to be expelled from his post (though not from the party) for an 'unprincipled left-right bloc' with the Georgian Old Bolshevik Lominadze and others: they had complained about the 'feudal' approach to the peasantry, and described the new industrial showcases as eyewash.
            A far more significant case, especially as regards Stalin himself, came from a lower-level group.  Ryutin, who had formerly been a party secretary in Moscow, was in trouble in 1930 for a memorandum arguing that Bukharin had been right as to policy, and Trotsky as to the intolerable regime within the party.  He called for the suspension of collectivization, and a return to a rational industrial policy; and he censured Bukharin and his colleagues for their capitulation.  Ryutin was arrested, but released for want of any evidence of criminal intent, and even readmitted to the party with a warning.  But in 1932 he and a small group issued an 'Appeal' to all members of the party, attacking the destruction of the countryside, the collapse of genuine planning, the lawlessness in both the party and the country is a whole, the crushing of opinion, the ruin of the arts, the transformation of the press into 'a monstrous factory of lies'; it called for the removal of Stalin and his clique as soon as possible, adding that they would not go voluntarily so they would have to be forcibly ejected.  (Ryutin is now held up in the Soviet Union as a model of resistance to Stalin, as against the submission of Bukharin and the others.)
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 161
 
            In 1989, it [the Ryutin platform] seems to have been rediscovered, and a summary was printed; it consisted of 13 chapters, four of them attacking Stalin.  It is believed to have run to 200 pages, and according to reports later reaching the West the key sentence was "The Right wing has proved correct in the economic field, and Trotsky in his criticism of the regime in the Party."  It censored Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky for their capitulation.  It proposed an economic retreat, the reduction of investment in industry, and the liberation of the peasants by freedom to quit the kolkhozes.  As a first step in the restoration of democracy in the Party, it urged the immediate readmission of all those expelled, including Trotsky.
            It was even more notable for its severe condemnation of Stalin personally.  Its 50 pages devoted to this theme called forcefully for his removal from the leadership.  It describes Stalin as "the evil genius of the Russian Revolution, who, motivated by a personal desire for power and revenge, brought the Revolution to the verge of ruin....
            Ryutin was expelled from the party in September 1930, and arrested six weeks later.  However, on January 17, 1931 the 0GPU Collegium acquitted him of criminal intent, and he was released and later restored to Party membership, with a warning.
            ... Above all, it stated, "Stalin and his clique will not and cannot voluntarily give up their positions, so they must be removed by force."  It added that this should be done "as soon as possible."
            Stalin interpreted the Appeal as a call for his assassination.  In the Bukharin-Rykov Trial in 1938, it was to be spoken of at length as "registering the transition to the tactics of over throwing the Soviet power by force; the essential points of the Ryutin platform were a palace coup, terrorism....
            On September 23rd, 1932, Ryutin was again expelled the Party and arrested.... it [the 0GPU] referred the question to the Politburo.  There Kirov is said to have spoken "with particular force against recourse to the death penalty.  Moreover, he succeeded in winning over the Politburo in this view."  Another account says that in addition to Kirov, Ordjonikidze, Kuibyshev, Kossior, Kalinin, and Rudzutak spoke against Stalin, who was only supported by Kaganovich.  Even Molotov and Andreyev seemed to have wavered.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 23-24
 
            A joint session of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission took place from September 28, to October 2, 1932.  (Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others had already been called before the Presidium of the Control Commission; Zinoviev and Kamenev had expressed regret, but Uglanov is reported "accusing his accusers.") The Ryutin group were now expelled from the Party "as degenerates who have become enemies of Communism and the Soviet regime, as traitors to the Party and to the working-class, who, under the flag of a spurious 'Marxism-Leninism,' have attempted to create a bourgeois-kulak organization for the restoration of capitalism and particularly kulakdom in the USSR."  Ryutin was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, and 29 others to lesser terms.
            The plenum passed another resolution "immediately expelling from the Party all who knew of the existence of this counter-revolutionary group, and in particular had read the counter-revolutionary documents and not informed the Central Control Commission and the Central Committee of the All Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), as concealed enemies of the Party and the working-class."  It was signed "Stalin."  Zinoviev and Kamenev, thus again expelled from the Party, were deported to the Urals.  Soon afterward, Ivan Smirnov, who on his readmission to the Party had become head of the Gorky Automobile Works, was rearrested and sentenced to 10 years in jail, going to the "isolator" at Suzdal.  Smilga received five years, and with Mrachkovsky was sent to Verkhne-Uralsk.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 26
 
INTERVIEWER: I understand that "The Letter of an Old Bolshevik" contains the first account of the so-called Riutin platform.  Did you learn about this from Bukharin?
NICOLAEVSKY: I had, of course, known about the platform of Riutin, whom I had met personally in 1918 in Irkutsk, when he was still a Menshevik.  I knew that in 1928 he was one of the pillars of the right-wing opposition in the Moscow Committee, which Stalin broke up, and that after he was removed from his post as editor of Krasnaya Zvezda he wrote a long program, the bulk of which dealt with an analysis of the role of Stalin in the life of the Communist Party.
Nicolaevsky, Boris. Power and the Soviet Elite;  "The letter of an Old Bolshevik."  New York: Praeger, 1965, p. 11
 
THE PRESS IS TOO ALARMIST AND IGNORES THE REASONS FOR PROBLEMS
 
            In a September 13, 1930, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “For God's sake, stop the presses squawking about “breakdowns right and left,’ “endless failures,’ “disruptions,’ and other such nonsense.  This hysterical Trotskyist--right-deviationist tone is not justified by the facts and is unbecoming to Bolsheviks.  Economic Life, and, to a certain extent, Izvestia are all being particularly shrill.  They screech about the “falling’ in [production] rates or the migration of workers but they don't explain what's behind it.  Indeed, where did this "sudden" flow of workers to the countryside come from, this “disastrous’ turnover?  What can account for it?  Perhaps a poor food supply?  But were people supplied any better last year compared to this year?  Why wasn't such a turnover, such a flight, observed last year?  Isn't it clear that the workers went to the countryside for the harvest?  They want to ensure that the collective farm won't short them when they distribute the harvest; they want to work for a few months in the collective farm in full view of everyone and thus guarantee their right to a full collective farm share.  Why don't the newspapers write about that, instead of just squeaking in panic?”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 215
 
            Following the Shakhti trial and the detection of some scandals in local Party organizations, the Communist Party Central Committee in 1928 issued an appeal urging the Party and trade union members to subject to merciless criticism abuses in the state administration and management of industry.  The result of this was a veritable flood of letters and articles in the press, revealing real or alleged abuses.  For a vivid first-hand picture of the defects of the Soviet civil service and the socialist management of industry one has only to turn to the columns of the Soviet press.  In some cases, with the Russian tendency toward exaggeration, the criticism was really overdone, and one had the curious spectacle of a press, published under the strictest control of a ruling party, representing some conditions as worse than they actually were.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 399
 
MOST WORKERS ARE IRRESPONSIBLE AND TRANSIENT
 
            In a letter around September 15, 1930, Stalin said to Molotov, “As the situation now stands, some of the workers labor honestly in accordance with socialist competition; others (the majority) are irresponsible and transient, yet the latter are as well provisioned as the first (if not better), enjoy the same privileges of vacations, sanatoria, insurance, etc. as the first.  Is this not an outrage?”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 219
 
STALIN ATTACKS RIGHTIST GROUPS
 
            In a letter dated October 23, 1930, Stalin said to Molotov, “I’m sending you two reports from Reznikov on Syrtsov’s and Lominadze’s anti-party (essentially right-deviationist) factional group.  It’s unimaginable vileness.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 223
 
STALIN’S VIEW OF CAUSE OF UKRAINIAN CROP FAILURES
 
            [Footnote] In Stalin's view, Ukrainian crop failures were caused by enemy resistance and by the poor leadership of Ukrainian officials.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 230
 
TROTSKY REFUTES THE TESTAMENT
 
APPENDIX
 
Trotsky’s Letter
(Translated by the U.S. Editor from Bolshevik)
1925, no. 16:67-70
 
            In a 1925 letter regarding Lenin's testament Trotsky said, “Eastman proceeds to conclusions that are completely and utterly directed against our party and capable, if taken on faith, of discrediting the party and Soviet power.
            ...Where Eastman got his ridiculous information is completely unknown, but its absurdity strikes one immediately....  By the way, Eastman seems not to realize that his description of the Red Army also nourishes the completely rotten Menshevik legend about Bonapartism, praetorianism, and so on, for it is clear that an Army capable of “falling to pieces’ because of a change in individual leadership would not be a Communist or a proletarian army, but rather a Bonapartist and praetorian one.
            Clearly erroneous and false assertions can be found in this book in no small number.  We will discuss only the most important.
            In several places in his book, Eastman says that the Central Committee “hid’ from the party a number of highly important documents that Lenin wrote in the last period of his life (letters on the national question, the so-called testament, and so forth); this cannot be termed anything other than a slander of the Central Committee of our party.
            ...After the onset of his illness, Vladimir Ilich turned more than once to the leading institutions of the party as well as to the Party Congress with proposals, letters, and so on.  It goes without saying that all these letters and proposals came to the attention of the addressees and to the knowledge of the delegates of the 13th Party Congress....  Vladimir ilich did not leave any “testament,’ and the character of his relation to the party, not to mention the character of the party itself, excludes the possibility of such a “testament....’  The 13th Congress gave this letter, like all the others, it's close attention and drew the conclusions appropriate to the circumstances of the moment.  Any talk of a hidden or violated “testament’ is a spiteful invention aimed against the real will of Vladimir ilich and the interest of the party he created.
            Just as false is Eastman's assertion that the Central Committee wanted to keep under wraps (that is, not publish) Lenin's article about the Worker-Peasant Inspection....  Since Comrade Kuibyshev also signed this letter...another of Eastman's false assertions is also refuted: the allegation that Comrade Kuibyshev was appointed to head the Worker-Peasant Inspection as an “opponent’ of Lenin's organizational plan.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 244
 
TROTSKY ATTACKS OTHER COMMENTS BY EASTMAN
 
            In a 1925 letter regarding Lenin's testament Trotsky said, “Eastman's assertions that the Central Committee confiscated or in some way held up my pamphlets in 1923 or 1924 or at any other time are false and based on fantastical rumors.
            Also completely incorrect is Eastman's assertion that Lenin offered me the post of chairman of the Council of Commissars or of the Labor Defense Council.  I learned of this for the first time from Eastman's pamphlet.
            No doubt a more attentive reading of the book would uncover a number of other inaccuracies and errors, but there's hardly any need to do this.  Using Eastman's information and citing his conclusions, the bourgeois and especially the Menshevik press have tried in every way to emphasize his “closeness’ to me as the author of my biography and his "friendship" with me, clearly trying by this indirect means to give his conclusions a weight they do not and could not have on their own.  It is therefore necessary to dwell on this matter.  Perhaps the best way of showing the real nature of my relationship with Eastman is to quote a business letter I wrote before there was any talk of his book Since Lenin Died.
            During my stay in Sukhumi, I received from a party Comrade who is involved in publishing my works in Moscow a manuscript by Eastman entitled Lev Trotsky: Portrait of a Youth. From my associate's accompanying letter, I learned that the author had submitted this manuscript to the State Publishing House so they can consider publishing a Russian edition.... I replied to this letter on April 3, 1925, even before becoming acquainted with Eastman's manuscript, I am in complete agreement with you that it would be absolutely inappropriate to publish it.  Thank you for sending the manuscript, but I have no stomach for reading it.  I'm quite willing to believe that it is unappetizing, especially to our Russian Communist state....  I responded to Eastman's repeated requests for help with the following words: I'm willing to help by providing you with accurate information, but I cannot agree to read your manuscript....  Ask him not to publish the book as a personal favor.  I'm not close enough to him to make that request.           
            ...the tone of my letter leaves no room for doubt that my relationship to Eastman differs in no way from my relationship to very many Communists or “sympathetic foreigners’ who turn to me for help in trying…to learn about the October Revolution, our party, and the Soviet state--certainly no closer. 
            With vulgar self-assurance, Eastman waxes ironic about my “quixotic’ attitude to my closest comrades on the Central Committee, since according to him I referred to them in friendly fashion [even] during the “fierce discussion.’  Eastman, evidently, feels called upon to correct my "mistake" and gives a description of the leaders of our party that is impossible to describe as anything other than slander.
            We saw earlier how rotten is the foundation on which Eastman has constructed his edifice.  With a scandalous disregard for facts and for proportion, he uses individual aspects of the intra-party discussion in order to blacken our party's name and destroy confidence in it.  It seems to me, however, that any really serious and thoughtful reader does not even need to verify Eastman's citations and his “documents’--something, in any event, that not everyone can do.  It is sufficient to ask oneself this simple question: if the malicious evaluation of the leaders of our party given by Eastman is true even in part, then how could such a party have gone through long years of underground struggle, carried out a great revolution, led masses many millions strong, and aided in the formation of revolutionary parties in other countries?  Not one honorable worker will believe the picture given by Eastman.  It contains its own internal contradiction.  It makes no difference what Eastman's own intentions are.  His book can be of service only to the most malicious enemies of communism and the revolution, and is therefore, objectively speaking, a tool of counter-revolution.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 246-47
 
            During 1925 Trotsky held himself aloof from party politics.  He did not speak at the 14th Party Congress and watched with apparent contempt the efforts of Zinoviev and Kamenev to oppose Stalin.  The savaging he had suffered in the previous year had hurt him deeply and he had retreated behind a wall of silence.  His one public statement, made in September 1925, was mendacious.  In a book entitled Since Lenin Died, the American writer Max Eastman, who was a close friend of Trotsky's, published some extracts from Lenin's "Testament" and an account of the struggles within the party since Lenin's death.  He had obtained this information from well-informed foreign communists, from party members close to Trotsky, and possibly from Krupskaya or even from Trotsky himself.  In an article Trotsky denounced the book and its inside information as false.  It was "a slander, to suggest that documents had been concealed from the Central Committee, and "a malicious invention, to allege that Lenin's "Testament" had been violated.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 212
 
            Now about Lenin's "will."  The oppositionists shouted here--you heard them--that the Central Committee of the Party "concealed Lenin's will."  We have discussed this question several times at the plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, you know that it has been proved again that nobody has concealed anything, that Lenin's "will" was addressed to the 13th Party Congress, that this "will" was read out at the congress, that the congress unanimously decided not to publish it because, among other things, Lenin himself did not want it to be published and did not ask that it should be published.  The opposition knows all this just as well as we do.  Nevertheless, it has the audacity to declare that the Central Committee is "concealing" the "will."
            The question of Lenin's "will" was brought up, if I am not mistaken, as far back as 1924.  There is a certain Eastman, a former American Communist who was later expelled from the Party.  This gentleman, who mixed with the Trotskyists in Moscow, picked up some rumors and gossip about Lenin's "will," went abroad and published a book entitled After Lenin's Death, in which he did his best to blacken the Party, the Central Committee and the Soviet regime, and the gist of which was that the Central Committee of our Party was "concealing Lenin's "will."  In view of the fact that this Eastman had at one time been connected with Trotsky, we, the members of the Political Bureau, called upon Trotsky to disassociate himself from Eastman who, clutching at Trotsky and referring to the opposition, had made Trotsky responsible for the slanderous statements against our Party about the "will."  Since the question was so obvious, Trotsky did, indeed, publicly disassociate himself from Eastman in a statement he made in the press.  It was published in September 1925 in Bolshevik, No. 16.
            Permit me to read the passage in Trotsky's article in which he deals with the question of whether the Party and its Central Committee was concealing Lenin's "will" or not.  I quote Trotsky's article:
            "In several parts of his book Eastman says that the Central Committee 'concealed' from the Party a number of exceptionally important documents written by Lenin in the last period of his life (it is a matter of letters on the national question, the so-called 'will,' and others); there can be no other name for this than slander against the Central Committee
of our Party.  From what Eastman says it may be inferred that Lenin intended those letters, which bore the character of advice on internal organization, for the press.  In point of fact, that is absolutely untrue....  Lenin did not leave any 'will,' and the very character of his attitude towards the Party, as well as the character of the Party itself, precluded the possibility of such a 'will.'  What is usually referred to as a 'will' in the emigre and foreign bourgeois and Menshevik press is one of Lenin's letters containing advice on organizational matters.  The 13th Congress of the Party paid the closest attention to that letter, as to all of the others, and drew from it conclusions appropriate to the conditions and circumstances of the time.  All talk about concealing or violating a 'will' is a malicious invention and is entirely directed against Lenin's real will, and against the interests of the Party he created."
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 10, p. 178-179
 
KRUPSKAYA ATTACKS EASTMAN
 
 
EXCERPT FROM KRUPSKAIA’S LETTER
(translated by the U.S. editor from Bolshevik)
1925, no. 16:71-73      July 1, 1925
 
            The magazine Bolshevik published a letter on July 1, 1925, written by Krupskaya in which she says, “Mr. Eastman writes all sorts of unbelievable nonsense about these letters (calling them a “testament’).  Mr. Eastman has no understanding of the spirit of our party....
            Lenin's letters on intra-party relations (the “testament’) were also written for a Party Congress.  He knew that the party would understand the motives that dictated this letter.  Such a letter could only be addressed to people who would undoubtedly put the interest of the cause first. The letter contained, among other things, personal descriptions of the highest party comrades.  There's no lack of faith expressed in the letters toward these comrades, with whom Lenin worked for many years.  On the contrary, there's much that is flattering--Eastman forgets to mention this.  The letters had the aim of helping the other comrades get to work moving in the proper direction, and for that reason, they mention not only virtues but also defects (including Trotsky's), since it is necessary to take into account these defects when organizing the work of the party collective in the best possible way.
            As Lenin wished, all members of the Congress familiarized themselves with the letters.  It is incorrect to call them a “testament,’ since Lenin's Testament in the real sense of the word is incomparably wider....
            The enemies of the Russian Communist party are trying to use the “testament’ in order to discredit the present leaders of the party and to discredit the party itself.  Mr. Eastman is energetically working to achieve the same purpose: he slanders the Central Committee by shouting that the “testament’ has been suppressed.  In this way he tries to inflame an unhealthy curiosity, thus distorting the real meaning of the letter.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 248
 
DURING THE CIVIL WAR BOSHEVIK TERRITORY REDUCED TO VERY SMALL SIZE
 
            In the summer of 1918 the territory under Soviet control shrank to a few starving provinces around Petrograd and Moscow; and only the most desperate display of revolutionary energy staved off what seemed to be an inevitable collapse.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 31
 
            In the second place the Soviet had to cope with a hundred new obstacles--desertion of the intelligentsia, strike of the old officials, sabotage of the technicians, excommunication by the church, the blockade by the Allies.  It was cut off from the grain fields of the Ukraine, the oilfields of Baku, the coal mines of the Don, the cotton of Turkestan--fuel and food reserves were gone.  "Now," said their enemies, "the bony hand of hunger will clutch the people by their throat and bring them to their senses."  To prevent supply trains reaching the cities, agents of the imperialists dynamited the railway bridges and put emery into the locomotive bearings.
Williams, Albert.  Through the Russian Revolution. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967, p. 233
 
            He [Stalin] appealed to the soldiers to draw inspiration from the memories of the civil war, when 'three-quarters of our country was in the hands of foreign interventionists' and the young Soviet Republic had no army of its own and no allies.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 468
 
 
PEASANTS SUPPORT BOLSHEVIKS OVER THE WHITES
 
            The Civil War in Russia was fought along class rather than territorial lines, the Bolsheviks finding their chief support in the industrial workers, while the motive power in the White movement was furnished by the former propertied and official classes, which had suffered most in the revolutionary upheaval.  The peasantry, which constituted the majority of the population, wavered uncertainly in its attitude, now raising insurrections against the ruthless grain requisitions which the Bolsheviks employed to feed the starving cities, now turning sharply against the Whites when they saw that the victory of the latter threatened the return of the hated landlords.  If one may judge from the intensity and scope of the insurrections, the peasants regarded the Bolsheviks as the lesser of two evils, perhaps because they felt that some day the requisitions would cease, whereas the return of the landlords would mean the permanent loss of the land which they had seized in the first period of the Revolution.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 32
 
            Fighting went on with equal violence on both sides of the Kolchak lines.  Iron ore production stopped completely.  The population was even more impoverished than it had been before.  No one knew what historical issues were at stake.  They all knew that Kolchak represented the landlords and capitalists while the Red Army gave the land to the peasants and the mines and factories to the workers, that the Red Army drove the hateful tax collectors and epauletted White officers away or shot them.
Scott, John.  Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 61
 
            ...There were a little over 200,000 communists in the October Revolution.  The more exact figure would be 240,000.
            The country's population was 150 million, more than half illiterate;...   We somehow had to find a way to drag the country onto the high road of progress.  Nothing could have been achieved had we not utilized the services of temporary allies, even if they were only one-quarter allies.  Unaided, we would have been incapable of building socialism.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 289
 
            In spite of depictions to the contrary, the Bolshevik Party was a democratically run, working-class Party that little by little became a dominant political force.  Its power was based on nothing but the trust of the masses, a trust won by months of struggle in the soviets, factories, unions, and streets.  When the March revolution broke out, the Party had 24,000 members; in October, 400,000.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 31
 
            To what extent did these masses support the new government setup by the Bolsheviks?  How wide a following did the Revolution find in the people?  The People's Business said: "A Revolution is a rising of all the people.  But what have we here?  A handful of poor fools deceived by Lenin and Trotsky."
            True, the membership of the Bolshevik Party was a "handful" among the great populations of Russia--not more than one or two percent.  If that was all, the new government might well be stigmatized as "the tyranny of an infinitesimal fraction over the great majority."  But one fact must be borne in mind,: Bolshevik sentiment is not to be gauged by the Bolshevik Party.  For every Bolshevik in the official Bolshevik Party there were 30 to 50 Bolsheviks in the general population.
            The high standard of admission, the hard duties and drastic discipline of the Bolshevik Party, made the masses unwilling to join it.  But they voted for it.
Williams, Albert.   Through the Russian Revolution. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967, p. 173
 
            Roman Gul, a White Guard officer, wrote in his book Campaign on the Ice, "The people did not want to join the Whites... after all, they were the former masters...  The peasant did not trust us.  That was disastrous for the peasant and for Russia as a whole."  The same class hatred of peasants for their former masters helped the Bolsheviks.  As soon as the "masters" reappeared, the peasants forgot Bolshevik oppression completely.  The masters made this easier for them--they tried to reintroduce tsarist laws and took land away from the peasants to restore it to the landowners.  As a result, the might of the Denikin's and Kolchak's armies was destroyed by the merciless peasant war that flared up in their wake.
Radzinsky, Edvard.  Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 165
 
LOCAL SOVIET OFFICIALS DECIDED TO KILL THE ROMANOVS
 
            In the summer of 1918 the Tsar, the Tsarina, their son, and four daughters, were confined in the Ural town of Ekaterinburg.  The Soviet power had been overthrown in Siberia and was tottering in the Urals; the combined forces of the Czechs and White Russians were approaching Ekaterinburg, which was actually taken on July 28.  Under these conditions the local Soviet authorities decided to take no chances on a rescue; and on the night of July 17th the Tsar, the Tsarina, their children, and a few personal attendants were taken into a cellar and mowed down with bullet fire.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 33
 
WEALTH OF PEOPLE IN STALIN’S SU IS RELATIVELY EQUAL
 
            No one can live very long in Russia without gaining an impression of leveling in the everyday life of the people.  Not that absolute material equality, or anything like it, has been achieved.  There are marked variations in the standards of living, not only among the people as a whole, but among the members of the Communist Party.  But, whereas in other countries there is a tendency to display wealth, in Russia there is every impulse to hide it.  The Communist or Soviet official who is observed to spend more freely than his modest salary would seem to permit is likely to be called on for an explanation, either by some Party tribunal or, in especially serious cases, by the secret police.  Flaunting of wealth by the harassed private trader is likely to invite new visitations by the tax collecting authorities.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 50
 
            Who owns the world?  That is the basic question conditioning all hopes of social change.  What is wrong with the world today, according to Marxists, is private ownership of the great productive processes which are socially operated.  The way out is not backward to subsistence farms and handicraft; it is forward to social ownership.  Not "share the wealth," but jointly owned wealth, jointly organized by and for all who work....  From this economic equality, all other forms of equality will grow.
Strong, Anna Louise.  This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 17
 
 
PARTY DOES NOT MAKE EVE___¯RY DECISION FOR LOCAL SOVIETS AND COOPS
 
            "In the Soviet Union...no important political or organizational problem is ever decided by our Soviets and other mass organizations without directives from the Party."  [Problems of Leninism by Stalin, page 33]
            This does not mean that the local branches of the Communist Party attempt to decide every petty detail of the work of the Soviets, trade unions, and cooperatives.  As a matter of fact they are expressly warned not to do this, but to leave to the above-mentioned organizations the maximum liberty and spontaneity of action consonant with the carrying out of the general lines of Party policy.  But these general lines must always be carried out.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 58
 
BASIC PRINCIPLE OF LENINISM IS THAT POWER CAN’T BE GAINED PEACEFULLY
 
            The philosophy underlying the Communist dictatorship is Leninism, or the revolutionary interpretation of Marxian socialism worked out by Lenin.  The main points in this philosophy, summarized very briefly, are as follows.
            Socialism, or communism (Lenin, like Marx, uses these two terms interchangeably), can never come by a process of peaceful evolution, even in countries where such democratic liberties as universal suffrage and freedom of the press and assemblage prevail.  Under the capitalist system the small wealthy minority enjoys such advantages in the manipulation of public opinion through the control of newspapers and large publishing houses and the manifold other advantages which are associated with wealth that it is utopian to hope to win away even the majority of the working-class, to say nothing of the majority of the population, from this capitalist influence by argument and propaganda alone.  Moreover, the bourgeoisie, in a moment of revolutionary crisis, would not abide by the rules of its own parliamentary game; should it find its economic privileges seriously threatened it would resort to military or Fascist dictatorship.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 59
 
VERY DIFFICULT TO BECOME A PARTY MEMBER
 
            It is no easy matter to gain admission to the ruling Party in the Soviet Union.  Workers are preferred above other classes of the population as candidates for membership; but even a manual worker, the aristocrat of Soviet Russia, must obtain two recommendations from old Party members and pass through a period of six month's probation before he may be admitted to full-fledged membership.  For peasants, employees, and intellectuals a larger number of sponsors and longer periods of probation are required.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 62
 
            It seemed to be about as difficult to pass a camel through the eye of a needle as to bring a non-proletarian into this Communist local branch.  On the other hand, worker candidates for membership were apt to pass even when serious criticisms were voiced against them.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 63
 
POLITBURO IS THE SUPREME AUTHORITY IN THE SU
 
            The actual highest governing authority in the Party, and hence for the whole country, is not the large unwieldy Central Committee, but an inner steering group of nine members and eight alternates, elected by the Central Committee and known as the Political Bureau (Politburo).
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 63
 
            ... the present members of the Politburo of the Communist Party Central Committee, which is the ultimate repository of power in the Soviet Union.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 101
 
            Stalin's chief post is not in the government, but as general secretary of the Communist Party, which would certainly remove him if his policy and actions should ever discredit him with the people; at present he is by far the most popular man in the country.
Strong, Anna Louise.  This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 69
 
            The Political Bureau has full responsibility and power in the interims between meetings of the Central Committee, and is thus the most important single party body.
            In my talk with Stalin in 1926 I put the following question: "conservatives claim that the Communist Party and the government are one and the same because they are all controlled by the Political Bureau.  How far is this true?"
            Stalin's eyes flashed with a characteristic twinkle and his face lighted with a smile as he said, "The only difference between our party control and that of foreign countries is that we do things in the open whereas abroad they do them secretly.  The conservatives in England have a shadow cabinet and in most of your states in America there are political bosses who sometimes have more power than your elected officials.
            "What grounds have foreigners to criticize our Political Bureau which is openly elected by the Party and known to everyone, when in Europe there are shadow cabinets and in the United States bosses who are not elected by the people, but rule nevertheless.  It is humorous!
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 36
 
            It has been argued that in these years basic decisions were made in the Politburo of the Central Committee, and the Committee itself was bypassed.  There may be some truth to this, but it is not the essential truth.  In fact, it harbors a distortion of the truth, for it implies a basic dictatorship in a nation which--in 1936--adopted a constitution giving citizens a broader spectrum of rights--not only political but economic--than any in world history.  What the USSR achieved, was a new form of democracy, a mass democracy and the fact that mass democracy does not follow all the structures (and charades) of bourgeois democracy does not mean it is not democracy.  On the other hand, it is certainly true that in a socialist government--or any government---some decisions, both substantive and executive, must be made by a small top body.  Whether that body is responsive to the mass of the population, and has open channels for that response, is the question.  In these years this was certainly so in the USSR....
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 77
 
            To another critic, who demanded more freedom of discussion in the party, Stalin replied that the party was no debating society.  Russia was 'surrounded by the wolves of imperialism; and to discuss all important matters in 20,000 party cells would mean to lay all one's cards before the enemy '.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 258
 
            Somebody mentioned the need for more democracy in the Party.   Did he mean, wondered Stalin, that important and urgent decisions should be made not by the Politburo, but through discussions in 20,000 primary Party organizations?   If that were the system, the class and foreign enemy would rejoice at knowing in advance all Soviet plans, strengths, and weaknesses.   The position of the Soviet Union unfortunately required secrecy to surround decisionmaking: "You must remember that you are surrounded by enemies, salvation may be in your ability to strike a sudden blow, to execute an unexpected maneuver, in speed."
Ulam, Adam.  Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 226
 
HIGH QUALITY OF PARTY MEMBERSHIP
 
            It is my personal impression that the best Communists, as a rule, are to be found in two classes: the intelligentsia whose revolutionary activity began in pre-war times, and the more earnest and sincere manual workers, especially those who fought on the various fronts of the civil war.
            Is never possible for a large ruling group to maintain the uniformly high standards of devotion and sincerity which usually characterize a small persecuted sect....  Today a worker may join the Communist Party because he thinks this will be an insurance against dismissal; an employee may put in an application for membership because he hopes this will be the stepping stone to a higher post; a student may become a Communist because this will enhance his chances of being admitted to the university.
            The Communist Party leadership is quite alive to these inevitable dangers of internal deterioration and tries to guard against them by enforcing a rigorous disciplinary code through the agency of the Control Commission, which has among its members many Old Bolsheviks with a stern attitude toward any yearning after bourgeois fleshpots on the part of the younger Party recruits.
            Functioning with the aid of a network of local commissions established all over the country, the Control Commission every year excludes from the Party a little over 2 percent of its total membership.  Expulsion is the supreme penalty; milder forms of punishment, such as reprimands and demotions, are more commonly applied.  The most familiar causes of expulsion from the Party are drunkenness, embezzlement, heretical political views, and what is rather quaintly called in Russian "connection with an alien element."  This last phrase means that the person concerned has too many close associations, through marriage or otherwise, with "bourgeois" circles, in which no self-respecting proletarian is supposed to move.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 67-68
 
            It is the aim of the Communists to induce everyone who is outstanding in any respect to become a member of his Party.  In this respect the Party is like a fraternity in college.  It tries to attract the best leaders.  But there are many millions in Russia who sympathize with the Party but do not join.  Membership brings few if any privileges and imposes heavy duties.  Each member must pay the party treasury an income tax on his salary.  Every member must devote at least several evenings a week to volunteer Party work.  A communist is expected to set an example to others in daily life and work.  If he works in a factory he must turn out more goods and be absent fewer times than the non-party worker.  If he is at the front he must display more bravery than the others.  If he fails to perform a duty or breaks a law, the punishment is more severe because of the higher obligation resting upon a member of the party.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 37
 
            For ordinary members, membership meant no privileges, only some duties.  Party members, in addition to being expected to be models both in their work and in their private life, had to assume a nagruska (load), voluntary work assigned to them by the Party with their consent.
Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 137
 
LENIN ACCUSED OF BEING A GERMAN SPY
 
            Undeterred by the accusations that he was a German spy, ridiculous to anyone who knew Lenin's lifelong record of bitter hostility to capitalism in all countries....
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 85
 
STALIN WAS EXILED MANY TIMES
 
            Stalin was soon expelled from a seminary for subversive ideas, and entered on a long career of revolutionary activity, mostly in Tiflis, Baku, and other Caucasian centers, in the course of which he was arrested and sent into exile on no less than six occasions.  Five times he escaped and returned to resume his underground work; he was released from his last term of exile in the remote north by the March Revolution.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 90
 
            First arrested by the Tsarist police in 1902, he was sentenced to exile in Siberia.  Escaping and returning to Georgia, he succeeded in evading the police for four years.  There followed once again prison, exile, and escape, and then still again; altogether he was arrested six times and exiled six times.  From the final exile, beyond the Arctic Circle, he was released by the March revolution in 1917, immediately returned to Petrograd.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 19
 
            So Kobi (which was another of his names) made his first escape.  And from that moment, detachments of police here, there, and everywhere tracked him down periodically, found him, recaptured him and then tried to find him again.  This occurred six times, neither more or less.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 25
 
            Five times he was caught by the Tsar's police, five times exiled.  Four times, a veritable Houdini, he escaped; the 1917 revolution liberated him from the fifth imprisonment, when he was incarcerated above the Arctic Circle.
Gunther, John.  Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 523
 
            In 1902, Koba won the spurs of his first arrest and Siberian exile, the first of seven such exiles from which he escaped six times.
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 28
 
SU HAS A PROGRESSIVE PRISON AND EXILE SYSTEM
 
            The Soviet prison system, as applied to ordinary criminals, embodies a number of progressive penological ideas.  Educational and manual training instruction courses exist in the more advanced prisons; prisoners are not required to wear uniforms; and the well-behaved prisoner receives a vacation of two weeks every year, which is certainly a unique Russian institution.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 124
 
            In the 1930s, as we have seen, the spread of industrialization and collectivization brought about a socialist state with a broad spectrum of social and political rights.  As we would expect from such a state, the legal and prison systems that it established were essentially just and nonpunitive.  In fact, they were praised and admired by liberal attorneys and penologists throughout the world.  People's courts, in which ordinary citizens sat with a professional judge on the bench, tried 80 percent of all cases, and legal services could be obtained free of charge.  As a desirable alternative to prisons, "agricultural and industrial labor colonies" were established where some prisoners brought their families and where they were allowed to marry.  The basic objective of the system was rehabilitation, not just in words, as in capitalist states, but in reality, as was dramatically shown, for instance, in the film Road to Life, depicting the regeneration of teenage criminals.  One of the most extensive industrial camp projects was the building of the Baltic-White Sea Canal by prisoners, a vast enterprise whose three chief engineers were former "wreckers."  At the completion of the project, 300 prisoners received scholarships, 12,000 were freed, and 59,000 had their sentences reduced.  Such was the normal course of working class justice in the USSR.  Therefore, if changes were made in some aspects of the system, there must have been reasons for it.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 128
 
            We built the Moscow-Volga Canal for the most part with convict labor.  Back then, convicts were real criminals and were treated accordingly.  Actually, I'd say that on the whole our convicts received fairly humane treatment.  They were considered to be the products of capitalist society.  Therefore, it was felt that our socialist society should re-educate them rather than punish them.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 99
 
            Ordinary criminals, such as murderers and thieves, are mixed up indiscriminately in forced labor camps with members of the various disfavored groups such as the kulaks, nomads, ex-priests, and the like.  In fact, the authorities seem to have a more friendly feeling for ordinary criminals than for social groups which have opposed their various reforms.  They treat a brutal murderer, as a rule, with more consideration than a small farmer who didn't want to turn his domestic animals and house and garden into a common pool with his neighbors to make a collective farm.
            In the winter of 1936, when my wife and I were making a trip by automobile into Yakutsk, the great northeastern province of Russia, our car ran into a ditch soon after crossing the trans-Siberian railway.  We had observed large groups of men under guard working on the double-tracking of the Railway, and decided to go back to ask some of them to help us put our automobile back on the road.  We had run across many such groups in our travels through the Far East; great gangs of these laborers have been working on the railways being built out there for many years.
            When we got back to the railway, there was no guard in sight anywhere; in this isolated country, prisoners could hardly get far off if they wanted to.  These men were dressed in ordinary Soviet working clothes, and there was nothing to show they were prisoners, except that they were perhaps a little more ragged than the average worker.  We asked them if they would help us out, and they readily agreed.
            What struck as most about these people, and those like them whom we had seen elsewhere, was that they did not appear to be what we would call criminal types.  It is probable that most of them were not criminals, in our sense of that word; they were rather members of social groups who had failed to co-operate with the authorities in their various schemes for reform.
            I was told that political prisoners, including members of other revolutionary groups and disgruntled or disgraced Communists, are seldom if ever put into such prison camps or gangs.  If they are considered dangerous, they are confined in concentration camps or isolated prisons.  If they are considered merely a nuisance, they are given what is called free exile.
            The "free exile" system is uniquely Russian; it is practiced today in very much the same forms as before the Revolution.  I encountered free exiles almost everywhere I worked in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Far East.  I have heard it said that one can meet more former aristocrats and well-to-do people in the Central Asian cities than in Leningrad, the former capital of the Tsars.
            Free exile is a comparatively mild punishment.  These people can hardly be distinguished from other residents; they move about as they please within certain limits, and usually have regular work.  They have been given a "minus," to use the Russian description.  Say, for example, that some petty political offender is given a "minus six."  This is a very common penalty; the political police seem to give it out to anyone even faintly suspected of disloyalty to the regime.  The man or woman with a "minus six" cannot live in or visit the six principal cities of European Russia for a number of years.
            I came across some fairly distinguished exiles working in remote mining towns in Asiatic Russia.  Usually they were doing routine work, such as bookkeeping; it is not easy for them to get responsible work, and most of them would not take it even if it were offered to them, since they would be held to account if anything went wrong.  The Soviet police, like police in other countries, round up the most obvious suspects whenever anything goes wrong, and exiles are pretty obvious.  Those I knew were very quiet and inoffensive; they usually had a melancholy air, being separated usually from the people and kind of life they had known before.
            BUT IN GENERAL I BELIEVE THE HORRORS OF THE EXILE SYSTEM HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED.  BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, ACCORDING TO ALL ACCOUNTS, IT WAS PRETTY TERRIBLE.  FORCED LABORERS IN THOSE DAYS, INCLUDING EXILES, WERE KEPT IN LEG -IRONS, WHICH IS NEVER THE CASE TODAY.  THE PRESENT AUTHORITIES DO NOT USE LEG-IRONS, HANDCUFFS, OR UNIFORMS FOR PRISONERS IN ANY CASE WHICH IS KNOWN TO ME.  But even before the Revolution, according to the books which I have read on the subject, most political exiles were allowed a considerable degree of freedom, similar to that of the free exiles today.  If they proved tractable, even in Tsarist days they were allowed to take jobs to eke out their pittance from the Government, and they boarded with small farmers in the cities, towns, or villages of Siberia, and visited among themselves.  Some of them even were friendly with Tsarist officials and paid visits back and forth, according to the accounts of those days which seem to be reliable.  I have never seen evidence of any friendliness between Soviet officials and exiles.
            However, when one reads books written by exiles either before or since the Revolution it becomes apparent that exile is a terrible ordeal to the persons concerned.  Why is this?  Well, in the first place, no human being enjoys being sent off in disgrace, separated from his family, friends, and old associations, compelled to live for years in some distant part of the country during routine work for a bare pittance.  And that is a fair description of the life of an average free exile in Russia today.
            There is another reason, too, it seems to me.  Exiles for the most part are city people; the dispossessed small farmers were not exiled but put to forced labor.  These city dwellers, not being accustomed to existence in undeveloped, isolated country, are naturally unhappy.  When I read Leon Trotsky's description of his periods of exile, for example, I didn't feel any sympathy for him, although it was clear that he felt very much abused because he missed the cities bright lights and political maneuvers.  For myself, I would rather live in the places he was living in than modern cities, and for that reason I couldn't feel sorry for him.
            The word "exile," and all its implications, arouse a sense of horror in the minds of Americans which I am convinced is seldom felt so keenly by Soviet citizens.  The latter are so accustomed to being knocked about by their own authorities, under this as well as previous regimes, that they accept as a matter of course treatment which Americans would heartily resent.  A friend of mind had an experience with a Russian family which throws light on this state of mind.  The family had a daughter about 19 years old, who sometimes spoke out rather critically about the Government.  An old lady who posed as a friend of the family one-day heard her talking, and reported her to the police.  The police visited the family's apartment in the middle of the night, as they usually do in such cases, and took away the girl and a diary she had kept from the age of 15.
            The girl was kept for two months in the Moscow prison for political suspects, during which time her family was not permitted to communicate with her.  At the end of that period, the mother was called in and told she could talk with her daughter for 20 minutes.  The girl told her the police had decided she had "counter-revolutionary moods," and would therefore be exiled for two years.  My friend, talking to the mother, asked: "And what do you think of such treatment?"  The mother replied earnestly: "Oh, we are very much pleased because our daughter received only two years of free exile; she might have been sent to a concentration camp."
            As a matter of fact, there is not a great deal of difference, so far as I could observe, between the treatment accorded to those in free exile and those who are presumably entirely free.  FROM THE AMERICAN VIEWPOINT, ALL SOVIET CITIZENS ARE TREATED VERY MUCH LIKE PRISONERS ON PAROLE, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE OLD TSARIST PASSPORT SYSTEM WAS REVIVED IN 1932.  Every citizen must have a passport and register it with the police at regular intervals; the must show his "documents" whenever he turns around.  He has to get special permission to travel from one part of the country to another, and register with the police wherever he goes.  He must have a very special standing with the authorities to get permission to leave his country; only a few hundred get such permission every year.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 135-139
 
            Practically speaking, there's not much difference between the Soviet citizen sentenced to free exile and the citizen who is refused a residence permit in the larger cities of European Russia.  The former knows that he cannot visit or live in certain cities, and this may be a very severe hardship upon him if his family lives in one of these cities.  Husbands and wives, parents and children, are often separated for years as a result of this system.  But the same is true, to a lesser degree, by the working at the passport system, which enables the authorities to refuse permission to any citizen to live in overcrowded cities.  I have known them to refuse permission to a husband or wife to join the rest of the family in a city on the grounds that there was no more room.
            In any case, if family ties are strong enough, a husband or wife will follow the other into exile or will rejoin each other in the provinces if it is impossible for both to get permission to live in some desirable city.  The authorities never refuse permission to leave cities, although an official might lose standing in the bureaucracy if he left responsible work where he could not easily be replaced merely for the sake of having his family with him.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 141
 
            The officials have become callous in this respect, at least from our viewpoint.  A friend of mine told me about a former aristocrat who was arrested during a general roundup of suspects at Leningrad in 1934.  He was held in prison for a couple of months, and then the police said they could find nothing against him, and let him go.  He returned to his apartment, looking for his wife, from whom he had heard nothing all this time.
            The apartment was empty, and his wife was nowhere to be found.  Someone had broken into his apartment while he was in prison and taken off most of his personal possessions.  That didn't bother him so much, but he was very fond of his wife and gave up his whole time to the search for her.  He could get no clue in Leningrad, and finally came to Moscow, where he learned that she had been exiled to Central Asia.  He immediately telegraphed to her that he was joining her as soon as possible, and started making preparations for the trip.
            A Soviet official heard somehow what this man was planning to do, and called him into his office.  "Apparently you have misunderstood the situation," said the official.  "The police have cleared you, and you'll have no further trouble.  You have a good job waiting for you either at Leningrad or here in Moscow.  You have done good work for us in the past, and we will see that you get ahead.  Under the circumstances there is no need for you to go to Central Asia."
            "But my wife is there," replied the Leningrad resident.  "She was exiled, and cannot get permission to return to European Russia for several years.  She is not in good health, and I am concerned about her.  She needs someone to look after her, and I will have to go to her."
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 142
 
            The Soviet official shook his head.  "In my opinion, you are very foolish, my friend," he said.  "Your wife has been branded with the mark of an exile, while you have been entirely cleared.  You will lose your own favorable position with the authorities if you rejoin her now, and will never get ahead so long as you stick to her.  It is better for you to break with the past once and for all."
            The Leningrad man replied quietly: "My wife means more to me than my career, or a favorable status with the authorities."
            The official shrugged his shoulders.  "In that case, you are not the man we had believed," he said.  "Go to central Asia, by all means."
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 143
 
            Persecution of prisoners already in the gulag took place under Yezhov; such reports cease after Beria took charge of the NKVD in late 1938.
            Different kinds of camps and exile with widely varying features and regimens existed, indicating that gulag practice was not simply to hold or destroy innocent people.  Prisoners were treated according to the nature and degree of the crimes for which they had been convicted.  The NKVD colonel Almazov reported that inmates sentenced to administrative exile were often hired by the camps as free workers.  The gulag administration did not need to house, guard, or feed such people, whose productivity was higher than that of the regular prisoners.  And Avar man arrested in 1937 went to a state farm in Kazakhstan, part of a colony of such NKVD facilities.  "We all worked very hard in the hope of eventual freedom."  He recalled.  Nor did he report any starvation at his site.  A young Russian man arrested in the same year was sent to a factory in Archangel.  Not kept under guard, he was taught how to use a powersaw for wood.  "I learned and worked hard on this machine," he said later.  This man was not a political prisoner; people in that category worked in the forests under guard and had a high mortality rate.  Instead of being used for economic gain, politicals were typically given the worst work or were dumped into the less productive parts of the gulag.
            The difference in treatment for the two categories of prisoners is also illustrated in the memoirs of Victor Herman.  He contrasted the camps Burepolom and Nuksha 2, both near Viatka, in the north of Russia.  In Burepolom there were about 3000 prisoners, all nonpolitical, in the central compound.  They could walk around at will, were lightly guarded, had unlocked barracks with mattresses and pillows, and watched western movies.  But Nuksha 2, which housed serious criminals and politicals, featured guard towers with machine guns and locked barracks and allowed no correspondence....
            Earlier in the decade [the 1930s], prisoners and exiles more often worked at their specialties, as did a Russian man who lived near the Usbirlag after his arrest in 1933.  At that time prisoners could shorten their sentences by overfulfilling the work norms.  The newspaper Perekovka of the White Sea-Baltic Combine, marked "not for distribution beyond the boundaries of the camp," lists 10 prisoners released early in 1936 for good performance.  Here were powerful incentives to work hard.
            Other productive options were open to inmates at this point.  In early 1935, the same paper mentioned a course in livestock raising held for prisoners at a nearby state farm; those who took it had their workday reduced to four hours.  During that year the professional theater group in the camp complex gave 230 performances of plays and concerts to over 115,000 spectators.
            Up to 1937 free men and inmates, though never politicals, were used as armed guards.  Camp newspapers and bond drives existed until then; although it is ironic and cruel to collect money for the state from prisoners, it is at least an indication that they were still regarded as participants in society to some degree.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 102-104
 
            It [the Baltic-White Sea Canal] was finished, as far as it ever was to be, in May 1933.  In July Stalin himself, with Kirov, Yagoda, Voroshilov and others, visited the canal and went on a short boat trip.  This was the occasion for a vast public build-up of the project as not merely an industrial but also a moral triumph, in that the Soviet penal system was born humane and rehabilitatory.  Many prisoners were quoted as expressing their joy at having been saved and turned into decent citizens.  A group of writers, including Gorky, was sent to the canal, and a ludicrous book emerged.  Gorky seems to have been genuinely taken in.  [Conquest has the ludicrous book]
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 186
 
            In May 1934 civil rights were restored to labor deportees, and from January 1935 the right to vote.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov.  Stalinism as a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 97
 
            But the prison administration was held strictly responsible for the actual life of every prisoner.  This was taken to such paradoxical lengths that "in the same cell you would find prisoners suffering severely from the effects of interrogation about which nobody bothered, while every conceivable medicine for the prevention and cure of colds, coughs, and headaches were regularly distributed."  And great precautions were taken against suicide.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 265
 
            In the village of Palatka [north of Magadan on the Pacific Coast] I spoke to Boris Sulim, who had worked in one of the camps when he was a teenager and was now serving on the local raikom, the Party committee....
            Under Stalin, Sulim worked in the Omsuchkan camp, about 400 miles from Magadan.  "I was 18 years old and Magadan seemed a very romantic place to me.  I got 880 rubles a month and a 3000 ruble installation grant, which was a hell of a lot of money for a kid like me.  I was able to give my mother some of it.  They even gave me membership in the Komsomol.  There was a mining and ore-processing plant which sent out parties to dig for tin.  I worked at the radio station which kept contact with the parties.
            "If the inmates were good and disciplined they had almost the same rights as the free workers.  They were trusted and they even went to the movies.  As for the reason they were in the camps, well, I never poked my nose into details.  We all thought the people were there because they were guilty.
Remnick, David.  Lenin's Tomb. New York: Random House, c1993, p. 425
 
            From 1947 to the mid-1950s numerous individuals were denied the right to leave the U.S. on the grounds of their leftist political associations or beliefs, while blanket prohibitions were applied to travel to certain socialist countries.  The U.S. State Department's policy of denying exit from the country to those whose overseas activities might not be in the 'best interests of the United States' was incorporated into the 1950 McCarran act, which forbade the issue of passports to members of the Communist Party, and the 1954 Internal Security Act, which gave the Secretary of State discretionary powers to refuse to issue an individual a passport.  At this time, individuals who left the U.S. without a valid passport (even to go to Mexico or Canada) were subject to criminal penalties on their return.  As the Cold War diminished in the late 1950s the Secretary of State's discretionary powers withered away.  However, restrictions remained on travel to some countries, for political reasons (for example, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Albania) throughout the mid-1970s, and Iran in 1980, and were reinforced by the threat of criminal action.  In 1981, the Reagan Administration once again restricted travel to certain countries--for example, to Cuba and Vietnam.
Szymanski, Albert.  Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 21
 
            ...virtually all states, almost throughout history, have put serious difficulties in the way of those members of their populations who wished to leave their territory.
Szymanski, Albert.  Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 23
 
            According to Wheatcroft:
            "The category of forced labor without confinement had existed from the 1920s.  By the mid-1930s about half of all those sentenced to forced labor served this sentence without confinement, generally at their normal place of work.  The sentences were normally for periods of up to six months or in some cases a year.  Up to 25 percent of the normal pay was deducted from wages."
Szymanski, Albert.  Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 246
 
            Russia's pre-revolutionary prison system was probably the most backward in Europe.   Today Russia has the most advanced penal code in the world....
            On must understand the underlying ideology of Marxism if one would comprehend the prison system of the USSR.   With the Revolution the old penological theories were junked along with all the rest of the prevailing cultural bases.   According to Marx, Engels, and their modern interpreter, Lenin, crime is the product of the capitalistic economic system.   Change the economic order and the fountainhead of all crime dries up.   Since, however, the revolution cannot accomplish the change from a capitalist to a communist society at once, there are forms of anti-social activity due to the transitional stage through which Russia is now passing.
Davis, Jerome.  The New Russia. New York:  The John Day company, c1933, p. 219
 
            Russia's penal code is based upon no sentimental humanitarianism.   Like her other laws it is the outcome of cold logic working from certain premises looked upon as self-evident with the same assurance as that of the mathematician who accepts the axioms of geometry.   These axioms are the fundamental Marxian and Leninist principles.   From these grow the fundamental penological principles.   These principles may be summarized as follows:
            1.   "Wrongs" are the results of long centuries of acculturation in a capitalistic society.
            2.   Some individuals are unable to adapt their habits to a new social order.
            3.   Others can more easily form a new habit pattern and thus can adapt themselves to a new order of things.
            4.   The purpose of "punishment" is to protect society.
            5.   Society should attempt to change the attitude of "wrong-doers" by every method known to modern pedagogical and medical science.
            6.   Those who cannot be "reformed" should be eliminated from society for its protection.
            No sentimentality here; just cold logic.   No tears over the possible mistakes made in selecting those to be eliminated; some risk must be taken for social protection.   However, every effort must first be made to correct the wrong-doer....
            The Soviet leaders recognize that a capitalistic society cannot at once be transformed culturally into a communistic one.   Socialism is the intermediate stage....
            During this period of restraint society has a chance to order the life of these persons most closely and if possible convert them into good members of society.   The first task is to train them in industry.   So the prisons are great trade schools.   Recognizing that in the transition period of socialism the economic motive must be kept alive for the individual, the Soviet authorities provide that the prisoner must be paid practically the same wage as the free man, consideration being given to the cost of his maintenance....
            More interesting still, instead of conducting their prisons on the theory that prison labor and free labor are in inevitable conflict, Russia arranges the closest connection between prison labor and free labor.   The prisoner must be brought to realize the solidarity of all labor.   He is not an outcast, but a part of the labor-force of the nation.   If he is a member of a trade union upon being sent to prison he does not lose that connection.   In fact the prisoner who shows by his industry and conduct that he is one with the great body of free workers may be sent from the prison during the later stages of his sentence to work in a factory....
            In accordance with their theory of the purpose of confinement the Soviet authorities have done away with life sentences; the longest sentence is 10 years.   If a man cannot be changed in that time he cannot be changed at all....
            As indicated above, capital punishment is reserved for incorrigible criminals....
            It is clear that the system is devised to correct the offender and return him to society.   The means employed are associated labor, social pressure, education for a trade, education in Sovietism and in certain stubborn cases disciplinary treatment.   In all these institutions the Code provides that there shall be no brutality, no use of chains, no deprivation of food, no use of solitary confinement, and no such degrading devices as interviewing visitors through screens.   Prisoners are transferred from one institution to another as the authorities see improvement in attitude and conduct.   Work for all is compulsory.   Two days of labor counts as three days of the sentence for those who make good progress.   Labor conditions in the prisons are controlled by the same labor code as governs free laborers.   Those condemned to labor in these institutions are entitled to two weeks' furlough each year after the first 5 1/2 months.   If they belong to the working class, this furlough is deducted from the sentence.   The wages paid the prisoners are about the same as those paid free labor less the cost of maintenance.   Those condemned to forced labor receive about 25% less.   The prisoner may spend a greater proportion of his wages as he advances in grade.   The institutions must be self-supporting, so careful management is required....
            The educational work in the prisons is a unique feature.   There is regular class work, recreation with an educational aim, wall-and printed newspapers, clubs, theatrical performances, sports, musical activities, and self-government in the most advanced grades.   Every sort of stimulus and pressure is brought to bear to socialize (" sovietize") the inmates.   In the institutions I visited, including old Czarist buildings and modern farm   industrial colonies, I saw these activities carried on with great enthusiasm and earnestness.   Perhaps the most interesting of all I saw was the GPU industrial colony outside a Moscow, called Bolshevo.   Founded by the GPU for homeless children, it has become one of the most progressive correctional institutions for young offenders, both male and female, I have ever seen.   With 2000 inmates, without walls and with very few guards, it appears to be a great industrial village....
            The disciplinary measures are limited to reduction in grade with loss of privileges, limitation of the use of personal funds, isolation of the individual up to 14 days and in removal to an isolator where harsher treatment prevails.   However, solitary confinement in Russia does not exist in our sense of the word.   It is prohibited by Paragraph 49 of the Code.   It consists of a stricter separation from the outer world, disbarment from outdoor work and from furlough.
Davis, Jerome.  The New Russia. New York:  The John Day company, c1933, p. 221-229
 
            However, as the writer visited prisons, especially the farm and industrial colonies, he was shown the pictures of many graduating classes and was told of many who had become agronomists and technicians on Russian state farms and collectives and in Russian industrial establishments....
            The following appraisal is a summary of the writer's judgment of the Russian experiment in dealing with offenders.   Space does not permit justification of his opinion.   He can say only that these judgments are based upon what he was able to learn from those in Russia in a position to know what are the results of the system and upon his long and rather extensive observations in the prisons of a large part of the world....
            For those who show by their conduct that they are amenable to correction every effort is made to prevent the development of a sense of social isolation; solidarity with the dominant group is cultivated in every possible way....
            For those who show that they are incorrigible there is only one end -- elimination.   Before that end is reached every effort is made to correct them.   From the Soviet point of view that is the purpose of the colonies of kulaks and other "enemies of the public" at Archangel and in Siberia....
            The emphasis upon the role of economic opportunity and industrial and social training in correction is found nowhere else.   Even negative disciplinary measures are conceived as reformative in purpose.   There is no punishment for retribution.
Davis, Jerome.  The New Russia. New York:  The John Day company, c1933, p. 236
 
            The introduction of a kind of self-government into the Russian institutions is the most thorough-going attempt to apply this principle [the principle of involving prisoners in prison governance] ever attempted.   It seems rather complicated, but those with whom the writer talked about it said that it works remarkably well.   It attempts to do away with some of the abuses found in the American experiments and yet brings to the prisoner a sense of participating responsibility.
Davis, Jerome.  The New Russia. New York:  The John Day company, c1933, p. 238
 
            The farms and industrial colonies without walls and with a minimum of guards is an experiment worth watching.   So far as the writer could learn, it works well, if proper personnel is in charge and if careful attention is given to the selection of the inmates....   
            The method used to keep intact the economic and social ties are unique and effective.   The periodical furloughs with the family is a step forward.   The prison wage is wholly commendable.   The effort to keep in close touch the prisoner and free laborers and employers is most commendable.
Davis, Jerome.  The New Russia. New York:  The John Day company, c1933, p. 239
 
            We were taken aback by the liberty that prevailed among the prisoners.  In our previous prisons we had seen nothing like it.  But greater surprises lay in store for us.
            The following day comrades showed us papers published in the prison.  What a diversity of opinion there was, what freedom in every article!  What passion and what candor, not only in the approach to theoretical and abstract questions, but even in matters of the greatest actuality.  Was it still possible to reform the system by peaceful means, or was an armed rising, a new revolution required?  Was Stalin a conscious or merely an unconscious traitor?  Did his policy amount to reaction or to counter-revolution?  Could he be eliminated by merely removing the directing personnel, or was a proper revolution necessary?  All the news-sheets were written with the greatest freedom, without any reticence, dotting i's and crossing t's and--supreme horror--every article signed with the writer's full name.
            Our liberty was not limited to that.  During the walk which brought several wards together, the prisoners were in the habit of holding regular meetings in a corner of the yard, with chairman, secretary and orators speaking in proper order.  When the order of the day could not cope with all the business, debates were postponed until the next recreation-time.  At these meetings the most dangerous and forbidden subjects were discussed without the least restraint and without any fear whatsoever.  The invigilating inspector would sit down somewhere or walk to and fro.  He no doubt made his reports in the proper quarters, but nobody seemed to be in the least concerned with that.  At these meetings Stalin came off very badly, being called all sorts of names.  I have seen many things in the USSR but none so bewildering as this isle of liberty, lost in an ocean of slavery--or was it merely a madhouse?  So great was the contrast between the humiliated, terrified country and the freedom of mind that reigned in this prison that one was first inclined toward the madhouse theory.  How was one to admit that in the immensity of silence-stricken Russia the two or three small islands of liberty where men still had the right to think and speak freely were... the prisons?
Ciliga, Ante, The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 199
 
            The Amnesty Commissions periodically visited the prisons and the prison administrations prepared list of those recommended for amnesty.  Candidates for amnesty came firstly from among the "activists," the so-called "enthusiasts for socialism" re-educated in prison; secondly from those obviously sentenced in error; thirdly from the gravely ill whose upkeep cost far more than could be covered by any possible unpaid labor they might be able to do.
Ciliga, Ante, The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 365
 
THEY TRY TO GET MOSTLY WORKERS IN THE PARTY
 
            As has already been pointed out, there is a systematic effort to maintain a predominance of manual workers in the ranks of the ruling Communist Party.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 163
 
PEOPLE’S CONDITIONS IMPROVED GREATLY SINCE THE REVOLUTION
 
            From Sobinka and Shachti and from the factories which I have visited in such cities as Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, and Nizhni Novgorod I gained two outstanding impressions: that the Russian workers, as a general rule, live under harder and more primitive conditions than those which prevail in America and Western Europe, and that there has been a distinct improvement in their lot, materially and morally, since the Revolution.  This improvement finds expression in three fields: wages, hours, and conditions of labor.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 168
 
STRIKES DO OCCUR ESPECIALLY AGAINST PRIVATE EMPLOYERS
 
            Such strikes as to take place are not organized, concerted movements, but flare-ups of indignation over some local grievance, usually involving a small number of workers and quickly settled through the mediation of the trade union.  These observations apply to strikes in the state factories.  The trade unions have no scruples about calling strikes against private employers, and such strikes usually turn out in favor of the workers.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 176
 
            The right to strike exists in law, but it is considerably limited in practice by provisions for arbitration--binding on the employer only....  Strikes in private industry are, of course, more frequent and easier than in State industry.
            ...Criticism of the management of the union, of industry, and of government policies affecting unions is free and vigorous, though in times past it has sometimes met with expulsion or attentions from the GPU.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 167
 
 
PERCENTAGE OF JEWS AS REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS IS HIGHER THAN OTHER GROUPS
 
            That the Jews supplied both leaders and rank-and-file members of the revolutionary movement in greater proportion than the Russians or any of the other races which inhabited the Tsarist Empire is undeniable and quite natural, in view of the systematic and merciless policy of anti-Semitic repression and discrimination which the Tsarist Government applied,....
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 225
 
            ...the fact that the number of Jews in the upper and middle ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy is considerably in excess of their proportion in the population....
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 226
 
            ...But the percentage of Jews in the Communist Party is only slightly higher than their percentage in the population.  In the Soviet Parliament of 531 members, there were only 20 Jews in 1927.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 75
 
            Lenin knew that Rykov was a right-winger and not very reliable with respect to the party.  But he was a good economist, and Lenin had promoted him to the position of chairman of our main economic center,...
            Although Rykov was in favor of including the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the government, he had never openly opposed the October Revolution, as Kamenev had.  Another consideration was that a Russian be the head of the government.  At that time Jews occupied many leading positions, though they made up only a small percentage of the country's population....
            There were many dubious people in the guise of Leninists.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 120
 
            Almost all the Mensheviks were Jews.  Even among the Bolsheviks, among the leaders, there were many Jews....  Lenin criticized the main Menshevik theoreticians, and they were Jews without exception.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 121
 
            They say the Jews made the Revolution, not the Russians.
Well, hardly anyone believes that.  True, in the first Soviet government and in the Politburo, Jews constituted the majority.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 191
 
            Many of Stalin's men had Jewish wives: Voroshilov, Andreev, Rykov, Kirov, Kalinin....  There is an explanation.  Oppositionist and revolutionary elements formed a higher percentage among Jews than among Russians.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 191
 
            In 1933 the internal passport system was introduced, and Jews were identified as a national group, even though they had no republic to be their homeland.  In every major ministry at this time, Jews held top positions.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 288
 
            In his [Ivanov-Skuratov] article "The Question of the Role of Aliens in the Victory of Soviet Power" he writes:
            "... In the early 30s the number two man in the party after Stalin was Kaganovich and his fellow tribesmen [i.e., Jews] gathered the most important commissariats into their hands--Litvinov the Foreign Affairs Commissariat, Yagoda the NKVD, Yakovlev the Commissariat of Agriculture; Gamarnik, and after him Mekhlis, the Political Directorate of the Red Army."
            ... It is common knowledge of course that not only the Bolshevik party but all the Russian revolutionary parties--including the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Anarchists, and Anarcho-Communists--had a disproportionately large number of Jews, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Armenians, Finns, Poles, and other "aliens" (i.e. non-Russians) in their membership.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 557
 
            [Said in 1926] I couldn't help smiling at the threat; Soltz, the head of the Central Control Commission, is the son of the Rabbi of Vilna.
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 27
            Young Jews furnished a large number of the cadres in revolutionary parties and organizations.  Jews had always played an important role in the leadership of these parties.  The Bolshevik party was no exception to this rule, and almost half its Central Committee were Jews.
Bazhanov, Boris. Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 143
 
            Finally, Mekhlis, a native of Odessa and, although a Jew, a favorite of the supreme leader's.  Mekhlis was, at various times, editor-in-chief of Pravda, the people's commissar of state control, and the head of the political administration of the Red Army, with a rank of colonel general.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 176
 
            Jewish intellectuals and workers were disproportionately active in the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire.  In 1922, Jews represented 5.2 percent of Communist Party membership (about five times their percentage of the population).  From the late 1920s through to World War II the proportion of Jews in the party was about 4.3%.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 88
 
            Jews have the highest representation in the Communist Party of any other Soviet nationality.  In 1965, 80 out of every 1000 Jews belonged to the party, compared to the Soviet average of 51 per 1000.  In 1969, Jews made up 1.5% of the Party (an over-representation factor of 1.67)....  Between 1920 and 1940 the percentage of Jews in the Party fluctuated around 4.5% to 5.0%.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 94
 
            Western attempts to present the Soviet Union as a virulently anti-Semitic society cannot be substantiated.  Historically, the Jewish people in the USSR have fared, and continue to fare, very well in almost: all respects.  Jews are over-represented in the highest paying occupations, in the skilled professions, in the institutions of higher education and in all except the top levels in the Communist Party;...
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 99
 
            An extensive examination of the position of the Jews in the Soviet Union shows that the Western attempt to color the Soviet Union as fundamentally anti-semitic is baseless.  In fact, Soviet Jews were found to be heavily over-represented in both professional life and the Communist Party.  No evidence of official anti-Semitism and little evidence of popular anti-Semitism was found.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 296
 
            At the all-union level there were a few Jewish survivors, notably, Kaganovich, his brother M. M. Kaganovich as commissar of the defense industry, Mekhlis as chief editor of Pravda, and Litvinov as foreign commissar.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 491
 
            Yet nationality always mattered in Soviet politics, however internationalist the Party claimed to be.   There were a high proportion of Jews, along with Georgians, Poles, and Letts, in the Party because these were among the persecuted minorities of Tsarist Russia.   In 1937, 5.7% of the Party were Jews yet they formed a majority in the government.
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 305
 
            The Jewish poet Fefer, executed in 1952 with his colleagues from the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee, said before his death, "It seemed to me that only Stalin could correct the historical injustice committed by the Roman kings....   I have nothing against the Soviet system.   I am the son of a poor schoolteacher.  Soviet power made a human being out of me and a fairly well-known poet as well."...   
            Many Jews felt this way, which helps explain why so many could be found in the Soviet security organs and throughout the governmental bureaucracy.   Jews had advanced with extraordinary speed from second-class citizens in Tsarist Russia to the plenipotentiaries of a great world power: Trotsky, Litvinov, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Yagoda, Kaganovich, and Lozovsky (executed as a member of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee in 1952) were only a few of the Jews who rose through the system to the very top and exercised more real power in the Soviet Union than Jews had for nearly two millennia anywhere else in the world.   Many others can be found in this book: Shvartsman, Broverman, Palkin, Raikhman, Sverdlov, Sheinin, Maklyarsky, Ehrenburg, Zhemchuzhina.
Naumov and Brent. Stalin's Last Crime. New York: HarperCollins, c2003, p. 331
 
            A striking feature of Mr. Wilton's examination of the tumultuous 1917-1919 period in Russia is his frank treatment of the critically important Jewish role in establishing the Bolshevik regime.
            The following lists of persons in the Bolshevik Party and Soviet administration during this period, which Wilton compiled on the basis of official reports and original documents, underscore the crucial Jewish role in these bodies.  These lists first appeared in the rare French edition of Wilton's book, published in Paris in 1921 under the title Les Derniers Jours des Romanoffs.  They did not appear in either the American or British editions of The Last Days of the Romanovs published in1920.  [R. Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs (1993)]
            "I have done all in my power to act as an impartial chronicler," Wilton wrote in his foreword to Les Derniers Jours des Romanoffs.  "In order not to leave myself open to any accusation of prejudice, I am giving the list of the members of the [Bolshevik Party' s] Central Committee, of the Extraordinary Commission [Cheka or secret police], and of the Council of Commissars functioning at the time of the assassination of the Imperial family.
            "The 62 members of the [Central] Committee were composed of five Russians, one Ukrainian, six Letts [Latvians], two Germans, one Czech, two Armenians, three Georgians, one Karaim [Karaite] (a Jewish sect), and 41 Jews.
            "The Extraordinary Commission [Cheka or Vecheka] of Moscow was composed of 36 members, including one German, one Pole, one Armenian, two Russians, eight Latvians, and 23 Jews.
            "The Council of the People's Commissars [the Soviet government] numbered two Armenians, three Russians, and 17 Jews.
            "According to data furnished by the Soviet press, out of 556 important functionaries of the Bolshevik state, including the above-mentioned, in 1918-1919 there were: 17 Russians, two Ukrainians, eleven Armenians, 35 Letts [Latvians], 15 Germans, one Hungarian, ten Georgians, three Poles, three Finns, one Czech, one Karaim, and 457 Jews."
 
            "The other Russian Socialist parties are similar in composition," Wilton went on. "Their Central Committees are made up as follows:"
            Mensheviks (Social Democrats): Eleven members, all of whom are Jewish.
            Communists of the People: Six members, of whom five are Jews and one is a Russian.
            Social Revolutionaries (Right Wing): Fifteen members, of whom 13 are Jews and two are Russians (Kerenski, who may be of Jewish origin, and Tchaikovski).
            Social Revolutionaries (Left Wing): Twelve members, of whom ten are Jews and two are Russians.
            Committee of the Anarchists of Moscow: Five members, of whom four are Jews and one is a Russian.
            Polish Communist Party: Twelve members, all of whom are Jews, including Sobelson (Radek), Krokhenal (Zagonski), and Schwartz (Goltz).
 
THE REVOLUTION SAVED THE JEWS AND GAVE THEM RIGHTS
 
            Free access to the state service and to the universities and higher schools, absolute elimination of restrictions — on the right of movement and residence and other humiliating marks of pre-revolutionary racial discrimination, protection against mob violence--these are the substantial gains which the Russian Jews owe to the Revolution.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 226
 
LEADERS OF THE BOLSHEVIKS COME FROM THE INTELLIGENTSIA
 
            The early leadership of all the modern revolutionary parties, including the Bolsheviks, was largely recruited from the intelligentsia.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 340
 
            Intellectuals offer a worldview, but only the working class can achieve victory.  I consider this to be Lenin's most important legacy.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 152
 
            Ninety-six percent of the Bolshevik Party were working men.  Of course the party had its intelligentsia, not sprung directly from the soil.  But Lenin and Trotsky lived close enough to the hunger line to know the thoughts of the poor.
Williams, Albert R. Through the Russian Revolution. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967, p. 82
 
 
SU PRESS MORE RELIABLE THAN FOREIGN REPORTERS
 
            I think a comparison of the news dispatches from Moscow and those sent about Russia from Riga, Helsinki, Berlin, and other places outside the country would demonstrate beyond any doubt that, despite the handicaps which are implicit even in the mildest censorship, Russia can be reported more reliably, more accurately, and more intelligently from Moscow than from any foreign city.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 395
 
            In reporting trials in Britain the journalist--in order to avoid contempt of court--has to keep closely to the facts.  In dealing with the Moscow trials he could use his imagination to the full.
            It would be an instructive exercise for the reader to peruse the verbatim report of the trial of the Metro-Vickers Engineers, the Radek-Pyatakov, or the Bukharin-Rykov-Yagoda trials, and then compare these records with the press reports.  He would have very great difficulty in realizing that he was reading about the same events, for ever since the trial of the Shakhty wreckers in 1928 the press has labored unceasingly to create a prejudice against Soviet justice.
Campbell, J. R. Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 237
 
 
FOREIGN PRESS FREE TO ROAM THROUGHOUT SU
 
            The assertion is often made that correspondents and foreigners in general in Russia are so subjected to official supervision that they are unable to make any independent investigation or to form any correct idea of actual conditions.  I am convinced from personal experience that this assertion is baseless....
            But for the correspondent who wishes to take the time and trouble, working-class and peasant Russia, the Russia of 90 percent of the population, lies open to explore as he wishes.  Except for Soviet Central Asia (which was also a restricted zone for foreign travelers before the War, on account of the proximity to India and the fear of British spies), one can travel anywhere in the Soviet Union.  I have repeatedly struck off the main lines of communication to visit factory settlements and peasant villages and talked freely with the people without encountering any evidences of official espionage or obstruction; in fact it is a general rule that the further one goes away from Moscow the less one sees and hears of the GPU.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 395
 
            Friends back in the States had told us that in Russia they only show you the good things that they want you to see.  Already we had found our friends wrong.  They showed us around, of course, but we were always free to go where we wanted to.
Dykstra, Gerald. A Belated Rebuttal on Russia. Allegan, Mich.: The Allegan Press, c1928, p. 62
 
 
THE TWO OPPOSING VIEWS OF COLLECTIVIZATION
 
            Wouldn't you get an increased planted area and a larger harvest if you gave the richer peasants, who own more horses and machinery, greater opportunities in the way of leasing and farming land?  I inquired.
            Lebedev's face grew more tense and his tired eyes flashed as he shot back:
            Yes, perhaps we should.  But then these richer peasants would grow in wealth and influence like bloated spiders until they had the whole district in their power.  We didn't fight through the civil war, we didn't beat the White generals and landlords and capitalists, and Allied troops who came to help them, for this, to let capitalism creep back in veiled forms.  Our policy is to unite the poor and middle class peasants in cooperatives and collective farms and raise the living standard of all the peasants gradually, instead of letting a few grow rich while the rest remain poor.  As revolutionary Communists that is the only policy we can and shall pursue, no matter how many obstacles we shall have to overcome.
            I left Lebedev's office and went into a neighboring Cossack village, which had suffered so severely during the civil war that 30 percent of the homesteads were farmed by women.  And one of these Cossack women, burned almost black by the fierce glare of the summer sun over the Don steppes, quite unconsciously gave me the individual peasant’s answer to Lebedev.
            “What does the state mean by trying to make us all byedniaks [poor peasants]?,” she burst out.  “We can't all be equal, because some of us will always work harder than others.  Let me work as much land as I can with my own arms and I'll gladly pay rent and taxes to the state for it, and sell my grain too, if I get a fair price and some goods to buy with the money.  But nothing will ever come out of this idea of making us all byedniaks and calling everyone who is a capable hard worker a bloodsucker and kulak.  That sort of thing keeps us poor, and keeps the state poor too.”
            Here, in a nutshell, are the two viewpoints which are competing for mastery all over the Russian countryside today.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 416
 
ALLIES SENT THE SU ALMOST NOTHING IN EARLY STAGE OF WWII
 
            ...Hopkins said, "Inevitably not everything the Roosevelt administration has done has pleased Moscow.  But we've got things straightened out now, surely?  We've supplied you with warplanes and trucks and ships, and quite a bit of food, too.
            It would have been tactless to argue with him; but the truth was that during the first year after Hitler's attack, at the worst time for the Soviet Union, the U.S.A. sent us practically nothing.  Only later, when it was clear that the USSR could stand its ground, and on its own, did the deliveries gradually begin to flow.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 43
 
            [Footnote]: A few words must be said here to explain the material aspects of the Russian superiority.  Throughout the war Russia was confronted with German Armies roughly twice as numerous and strong as those that had defeated her in the First World War.  The Russian achievement was made possible primarily by the rapid industrialization of the eastern provinces, much of which took place in the course of the war on a basis prepared in peace.  The industrial output of the provinces that escaped German occupation was normally about 40 percent of the total Soviet output.  It was doubled between 1942 and 1945.  The production of the armament factories in the East went up by 500-600 per cent.  On the average, 30,000 tanks and fighting vehicles and nearly 40,000 planes were turned out every year between 1943 and 1945--almost none of these had been manufactured in Russia in the First World War.  The annual output of artillery guns was now 120,000, compared with less than 4000 in 1914-17.  The Russian army was supplied with nearly 450,000 home-produced machine-guns annually--only about 9000 had been produced under the Tsar.  Five million rifles and Tommy guns, five times as many as in the First World War, were produced every year.
            The Red Army fought its way from the Volga to the Elbe mainly with home-produced weapons.  The weapons which the western powers supplied were a useful and in some cases a vital addition.  But the lorries which carried the Russian divisions into Germany were mostly of American, Canadian, and British make--more than 400,000 lorries were supplied to Russia under Lend-Lease.  So were most of the boots in which the infantry proper slogged its way to Berlin, through the mud and snow and sand of the eastern European plain.  Much of the army's clothing and of its tinned food were supplied under Lend-Lease.  One might sum up broadly that the fire-power of the Red Army was home produced, whereas the element of its mobility was largely imported.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 512
 
            What role did the military and economic assistance of our Allies play in 1941 and 1942?  Great exaggerations are widely current in Western literature.
            Assistance in accordance with the Lend-Lease Act widely publicized by the Allies was coming to our country in much smaller quantities than promised.  There can be no denial that the supplies of gun-powder, high octane petrol, some grades of steel, motor vehicles, and food-stuffs were of certain help.  But their proportion was insignificant against the overall requirements of our country within the framework of the agreed volume of supplies.  As regards tanks and aircraft supplied to us by the British and American Governments, let us be frank: they were not popular with our tank-men and pilots especially the tanks which worked on petrol and burned like tender.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 391-392
 
PEOPLE ENTER THE US FOR THE DOLLAR NOT FREEDOM
 
            There are of course people in the U.S.A. who openly and courageously carry on the struggle for equality, who do not bow down to the dollar, but they are very few.  Once upon a time, before the name of Abraham Lincoln had dimmed, fighters for freedom sought refuge in America from foreign oppression.  But today it is seldom fighters for freedom who seek refuge there anymore; it is those who want to get closer to Mr. Dollar.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 74
 
STALIN SHOWS DEEP SYMPATHY FOR ROOSEVELT’S CONDITION
 
            At Yalta Roosevelt became ill and the session was deferred for the day.  Stalin wanted to visit him and he asked Molotov and me to accompany him.  We went to the president's rooms on the first floor of the Livadia Palace where the empress had once slept.  The window opened on to a beautiful view of the sea.
            The president was delighted to see us, as he was confined to his bed and had hardly any visitors.  He was clearly tired and drained, though he tried not to show it.  We sat with him for maybe twenty minutes, while he and Stalin exchanged polite remarks about health, the weather and the beauties of the Crimea.  We left him when it seemed that Roosevelt had become detached, strangely remote, as if he could see us, yet was gazing somewhere into the distance.
            We descending the narrow staircase when Stalin suddenly stopped, took his pipe out of his pocket, filled it unhurriedly and, as if to himself, said quietly, but so that we could hear: ' Why did nature have to punish him so?  Is he any worst than other people?'
            Despite his basic harshness of character, Stalin did just occasionally give way to positive human emotions.
            Next day Roosevelt was back to normal and the sessions restarted, though the fatigue did not leave his face throughout the conference.  He had only two months to live.
            I repeat: Stalin sympathized with Roosevelt the man and he made this clear to us.  He rarely bestowed his sympathy on anybody from another social system,...
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 98
 
            Koba called me to discuss future relations with the United States.  He said: "We don’t want merely to continue diplomatic relations on the basis of the 1933 Agreement....  No.  We must establish the closest and most intimate relations with Roosevelt and his group and give them moral guarantees that we shall be on their side in the event of a decisive world conflict....  Roosevelt is a man who takes a broad view in international affairs....  He looks far ahead....  He is no Chamberlain, with Birmingham ties and petty bargaining instead of a really broad policy...."
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 252
 
ACTIVITIES DURING STALIN’S LAST DYING MOMENTS
 
            Another, sadder example.  A while after Stalin's death, I was in Molotov's study and he told me about Stalin's last moments.
            'The members of the Politburo went to see Stalin, having heard he was not well.  In fact, he was very ill.  One day during his illness, we were standing by his bedside: Malenkov, Khrushchev, myself and other members of the Politburo.   Stalin kept falling into semi-consciousness, then coming around again, but he was unable to say anything.'
            'At one moment,' Molotov went on, 'he suddenly came to himself, and half opened his eyes.  Seeing a familiar faces, he then pointed slowly at the wall.  We looked where he was pointing.  On the wall there was a photograph with a simple subject: a little girl feeding a lamb with milk through a horn.  With the same slow movement of his finger, Stalin then pointed to himself.  It was his last act.  He closed his eyes never to open them again.  Those present took it as a typical example of Stalin's wit--the dying man was comparing himself with a lamb.'
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 103
 
 
            We did everything we could to raise Stalin to his feet.  We saw he was unconscious and therefore completely oblivious of his condition.  But then, while the doctors were taking a urine sample, I noticed he tried to cover himself.  He must have felt the discomfort.  Once, during the day, he actually returned to consciousness.  Even though he still couldn't speak, his face started to move.  They had been spoon-feeding him soup and sweet tea.  He raised his left hand and started to point to something on the wall.  His lips formed something like a smile.  I realized what he was trying to say and called for attention.  I explained why he was pointing with his hand.  There was a picture hanging on the wall, a clipping from the magazine Ogonyok.  It was a reproduction of a painting by some artist of a little girl feeding a lamb from a horn.  At that moment Stalin was being spoon-fed and was trying to say, "I'm in the same position as that lamb which the girl is feeding from the horn.  You're doing the same for me with a spoon."
            Then he began to shake hands with us one by one.  I gave him my hand, and he shook it with his left hand because his right wouldn't move.  By these handshakes he conveyed his feelings.
            No sooner had Stalin fallen ill than Beria started going around spewing hatred against him and mocking him.  It was simply unbearable to listen to Beria.  But, interestingly enough, as soon as Stalin showed these signs of consciousness on his face and made us think he might recover, Beria threw himself on his knees, seized Stalin's hand, and started kissing it.  When Stalin lost consciousness again and closed his eyes, Beria stood up and spat.  This was the real Beria--treacherous even toward Stalin, whom he supposedly admired and even worshipped yet whom he was now spitting on.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 318
 
            During his [Stalin] last days I had in some sense fallen out of favor....  I had seen Stalin for five weeks before he died.  He was absolutely healthy.  They called for me when he was taken ill.  When I arrived at the dacha some Politburo members were there.  Of non-Politburo members, only Mikoyan and myself, as I recall, had been called.  Beria was clearly in command.
            Stalin was lying on the sofa.  His eyes were closed.  Now and then he would make an effort to open them and say something, but he couldn't fully regain consciousness.  Whenever Stalin tried to say something, Beria ran up to him and kissed his hand.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 236
 
CHUEV:  Was Stalin poisoned?
MOLOTOV:  Possibly.  But who is there to prove it now?...  But all hell broke out the moment he died.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 237
 
CHUEV:  Beria himself was said to have killed him.
MOLOTOV:  Why Beria?  It could have been done by a security officer or a doctor.  As he was dying, there were moments when he regained consciousness.  At other times he was writhing in pain.  There were various episodes.  Sometimes he seemed about to come to.  At those moments Beria would stay close to Stalin.  Oh!  He was always ready...
            One cannot exclude the possibility that he had a hand in Stalin's death.  Judging by what he said to me and I sensed....  While on the rostrum of the Mausoleum with him on May 1st, 1953, he did drop hints....  Apparently he wanted to evoke my sympathy.  He said, "I did him in!"--as if this had benefited me.  Of course he wanted to ingratiate himself with me: "I saved all of you!"  Khrushchev would scarcely have had a hand in it.  He might have been suspicious of what had gone on.  Or possibly...  All of them had been close by.  Malenkov knows more, much more, much more.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 237
 
            Instead of the customary deep silence, everyone was bustling and running around.  When someone finally told me that my father had had a stroke in the night and was unconscious, I even felt a little relieved.  I had thought he was already dead.  They'd found him at three in the morning, in the room I was standing in, right there, lying on a rug by the sofa.  They decided to carry him to the next room, to the sofa he usually slept on.  That's where he was now.  The doctors were in there, too.
            ...Doctors I didn't know, who were seeing him for the first time--Academician Vinogradov, who'd looked after my father for many years, was now in jail--were making a tremendous fuss, applying leeches to his neck and the back of his head, making cardiograms and taking X-rays of his lungs.  A nurse kept giving him injections and a doctor jotted it all down into notebook.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 6
 
            They all felt that something portentous, something almost of majesty, was going on in this room and they conducted themselves accordingly.
            There was only one person who was behaving in a way that was very nearly obscene.  That was Beria.  He was extremely agitated.  His face, repulsive enough at the best of times, now was twisted by his passions--by ambition, cruelty, cunning, and a lust for power and more power still.  He was trying so hard at this moment of crisis to strike exactly the right balance, to be cunning, yet not too cunning.  It was written all over him.  He went up to the bed and spent a long time gazing into the dying man's face.  From time to time my father opened his eyes but was apparently unconscious or in a state of semiconsciousness.  Beria stared fixedly at those clouded eyes, anxious even now to convince my father that he was the most loyal and devoted of them all, as he had always tried with every ounce of his strength to appear to be.  Unfortunately, he had succeeded for too long.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 7
 
            During the final minutes, as the end was approaching, Beria suddenly caught sight of me and ordered: "Take Svetlana away!"  Those who were standing nearby stared, but no one moved.  Afterward he darted into the hallway ahead of anybody else.  The silence of the room where everyone was gathered around the deathbed was shattered by the sound of his loud voice, the ring of triumph unconcealed, as he shouted, "Khrustalyov!  My car!"
            He was a magnificent modern specimen of the artful courtier, the embodiment of Oriental perfidy, flattering, and hypocrisy who had succeeded in confounding even my father, a man whom it was ordinarily difficult to deceive....  But I haven't the slightest doubt that Beria used his cunning to trick my father into many other things and laughed up his sleeve about it afterwards.  All the other leaders knew it. 
            Now all the ugliness inside him came into the open--he couldn't hold back.  I was by no means the only one to see it.  But they were all terrified of him.  They knew that the moment my father died no one in all of Russia would have greater power in his grasp.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 8
 
            ...I loved my father more tenderly than I ever had before....  Yet even the grandchildren who never saw him loved him--and love him still.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 9
 
 
            For the last 12 hours the lack of oxygen was acute.  His face altered and became dark.  His lips turned black and the features grew unrecognizable.  The last hours were nothing but a slow strangulation.  The death agony was horrible.  He literally choked to death as we watched.  At what seemed like the very last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room.  It was a terrible glance, insane, or perhaps angry and full of the fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of the doctors bent over him.  The glance swept over everyone in a second.  Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened that to this day I can't forget and don't understand.  He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 10
 
 
            ...The members of the government then rushed for the door.
            All of them except the utterly degenerate Beria spent those days in great agitation, trying to help yet at the same time fearful of what the future might bring.  Many of them shed genuine tears.  I saw Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Bulganin, and Khrushchev in tears.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 11
 
 
            My father's servants and bodyguards came to say goodbye.  They felt genuine grief and emotion.  Cooks, chauffeurs, watchmen, gardeners, and the women who had waited on the table, all came quietly in.  They went up to the bed silently and wept.  They wiped their tears away as children do, with their hands and sleeves and kerchiefs.  Many were sobbing.  The nurse, who was also in tears, gave them drops of valerian....
            Valechka, as she was called, who had been my father's housekeeper for 18 years, came in to say goodbye.  She dropped heavily to her knees, put her head on my father's chest and wailed at the top of her voice as the women in villages do.  She went on for a long time and nobody tried to stop her.
            All these men and women who were servants of my father loved him.  In little things he wasn't hard to please.  On the contrary, he was courteous, unassuming, and direct with those who waited on him....  Men, women, everyone, started crying all over again. . No one was making a show of loyalty or grief....  He never scolded anyone except the top men, the generals and commandants of his bodyguard.  The servants had neither bullying nor harshness to complain of.  They often asked him for help, in fact, and no one was ever refused.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 12
 
 
            ...Like everyone who worked for my father she'll [Valechka] be convinced to her dying day that no better man ever walked the earth.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 13
 
 
            No one in this room looked on him as a God or a Superman, a genius or a demon.  They loved and respected him for the most ordinary human qualities, those qualities of which servants are the best judges of all.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 14
 
 
US STOLE SOME ISLANDS IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER
 
            At the same time, however, the U.S.A. was already hatching plans to take over the protectorates of the Marian, Carolingian and Marshall Islands in Micronesia--which in due course they did, thus breaking the U.N. Charter with an act of flagrant imperialistic robbery.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 121
 
GROMYKO JUSTIFIES THE HELP GIVEN TO HUNGARY
 
            Let me say something about the events that took place in Hungary in 1956.  I was not yet Foreign Minister, but I was informed about the upheaval being experienced by a friendly country that had taken the path to socialism.
            I must emphasize as strongly as I can that the help given to Hungary by the Soviet Union was absolutely justified.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 231
 
GROMYKO EXTOLS MOLOTOV’S ROLE IN THE GOVT
 
            Unquestionably, Molotov occupies a special place in the history of Soviet diplomacy.  While continuing to hold a series of senior party jobs, he took over as Foreign Commissar from Litvinov in 1939, was succeeded as Foreign Minister--the title of post of commissar having been changed to minister in 1946--by Vyshinsky in 1949, and then held the post again from 1953 to 1956.  He was in effect second in command throughout the Stalin period.
            Of course, the main guidelines of foreign policy were determined by the Politburo, but even there Stalin's opinion was decisive, and he left Molotov responsible for dealing with a number of issues involving other countries.  In the U.S.A., Britain, and other Western countries Molotov was regarded as a 'hardliner' in foreign policy, but in fact he was no harder than the party and its Central Committee.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 313
 
CAPITALIST SAYS THE SYSTEM MUST CHANGE RATHER THAN CHANGING INDIVIDUALS
 
            Whenever I ask myself what brings increasing visitors to Moscow, what they want here and what they find, and why the eyes of the world turn more and more to the Soviet Union with a questing hope that hardly yet dares call itself belief, there flashes into my mind the remark made to me in 1930 at Dnieprostroy by the young and disillusioned son of a Wall Street millionaire.
            Dnieprostroy in those days was the first of the famous giants of the new Soviet Russia, "the largest power dam in the world."  ... It was then that my companion said: "I think that Dnieprostroy has answered the question that brought me to Russia."
            What question?  I asked.
            Whether the world is to be changed by trying one at a time to improve human beings or by changing the social environment that makes human beings.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 3-4
 
WHAT IS FASCISM
 
            For fascism is the last stand of a desperate capitalism which can no longer use the fruits of science and machine production, which dare no longer permit either peace or democracy, since it must brutally refuse to its victims that abolition of poverty which is already technically possible in the world.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 10
 
HONESTY COMES FROM THE RIGHT SYSTEM NOT PREACHING
 
            In a world whose economic structure fails to reward honesty and altruism, a Marxist would not spend his efforts preaching these virtues, but in creating an economic system were honesty really prospered, where each man's success must be built on the success, rather than the ruin, of others.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 14
 
CLASSES EXIST WHETHER US PEOPLE WANT THEM OR NOT
 
            Millions of Americans resent the very idea of classes, and are indignant at "inflaming class consciousness" where it does not yet exist.  But Marxian classes are not epithets inciting to riot; they are categories in a scientific analysis.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 18
 
LENIN MADE NO EFFORT TO KEEP GROUPS FROM SPLITTING OFF
 
            Again and again groups which could not agree split off of the others.  Lenin made no effort to detain them; he distinguished sharply between those allies with whom cooperation was possible for a longer or shorter period, and the smaller group which would stick through everything.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 25
 
LENIN AND STALIN DID NOT RELY ON STIRRING ORATORY FOR SUPPORT
 
            A communist who allowed himself to become as ignorant of world affairs as is the average American politician would be "cleaned out" of the party,....
            The emotional vagueness which is a feature of all capitalist political platforms, and which is indeed desired in order to win wide support without being too definite, is the exact opposite of communist statements....
            This [Marxism] is no dogma to be learned once for all; it is a developing body of thought, constantly applied to and affected by new conditions.  By the very theory of dialectics, these forces are changing.  The speeches of Lenin and Stalin and other party leaders never deal in stirring oratory or spell-binding generalities but in close and careful analysis.  Stalin would no more attempt to sway a communist Congress by "force of personality" expressed in brilliant oratory and colorful phrasing, than Edison would have expected to convince a group of American engineers of the reliability of some new formula by emotional words.  One such attempt would ruin either an Edison or Stalin.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 29-30
 
            Lenin did not at all conform to the accepted idea of an orator.  He was just a man speaking.  Except at certain periods (notably the days of October) when it was important that the direct and immediate impulses of the people should be aroused, and when it was necessary at all costs to make an impression on the mighty surging tide of humanity, Lenin made hardly any gestures at all when he spoke.  At congresses, people commented on his quietness and even on the "dryness" of his delivery.  He merely endeavored to persuade his listeners, to convey his convictions from within, not from without, by the weight of their contents, as it were, and not by the gesticulations of the container.  The oratorical gestures which are sometimes seen in representations of him are not quite correct, and he may be said never to have moved so much as in his statues.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 38
 
            The simple and efficient method of delivery which Lenin employed was also that which Stalin had instinctively adopted and which he was destined never to abandon (he has even accentuated it).
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 39
 
 
WHAT IS A REAL DICTATORSHIP
 
            Most Americans shrink from the word "dictatorship."  ... the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?
            No country is ruled by one man.  This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule.  Power resides in ownership of the means a production--by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR.  This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power.  When a Marxist uses the word "dictatorship," he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.
            The heads of government in America are not the real rulers.  I've talked with many of them, from the President down.  Some of them would really like to use power for the people.  They feel baffled by their inability to do so; they blame other branches of government, legislatures, courts.  But they haven't analyzed the reason.  The difficulty is that they haven't power to use.  Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan.  If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such "usurpation of power."  Private capitalists own the means of production and thus rule the lives of millions....
            Power over the means of production--that gives rule.  Men who have it are dictators.  This is the power the workers of the Soviet Union seized in the October Revolution.  They abolished the previously sacred right of men to live by ownership of private property.  They substituted the rule: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."
Strong, Anna L. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 39-41
 
POOR PEASANTS DETERMINED WHO WERE THE KULAKS
 
            The most spectacular act...which occured in those years was the exile of several hundred thousand kulaks--rural property owners who lived by trade, money lending or by exploiting small mills, threshers, and hired labor--from farm homes in European Russia and the Ukraine to Siberia or the northern woods.  The usual assumption outside the Soviet Union is that this exiling  occurred through arbitrary action by a mystically omnipotent GPU.  That organization did of course organize the deportation and final place of settlement in labor camps or on new land.  But the listing of kulaks who "impede our farming by force and violence" was done by village meetings of poor peasants and farmhands who were feverishly and not too efficiently organizing collectively owned farms with government loans of machinery and credits.  The meetings I personally attended were as seriously judicial as a court trial in America.  One by one there came before the people the "best families," who had grabbed the best lands, exploited labor by owning the tools of production as best families normally and historically do, and who were fighting the rise of the collective farm--which had the right to take the best lands away from them--by every means up to arson, cattle killing, and murder....  The meeting of farmhands and poor peasants discussed each case in turn, questioned the kulaks, allowed most of them to remain but asked the government to deport some as "trouble-makers."
            It was a harsh, bitter and by no means bloodless conflict, but not one peculiar to Russia.  I was reminded of it again in 1933 by the cotton-pickers' strike in San Joaquin Valley of California.  California local authorities deported pickets who interfered with the farming of ranchers; Soviet authorities deported kulaks who interfered with the collectively owned farming of the poor.  In both cases central governments sent commissions to guard against the worst excesses.  But the "property" which could count on government support was in California that of the wealthy rancher; in the USSR it was the collective property of the poor.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 53
 
            Of the enforced removals there have been two kinds.   In 1929 and 1930 drastic measures were taken against those elements in the villages which were seriously interfering with the formation of kolkhosi, often by personal violence, and willful damage to buildings and crops.   These disturbers of the peace were in many cases forcibly removed from their homes.   "The usual assumption outside the Soviet Union," writes one who witnessed the proceedings of 1930, "is that this exiling occurred through drastic action by a mystically omnipotent GPU.   The actual process was quite different: it was done by village meetings of poor peasants and farm hands who listed those kulaks who 'impede our collective farm by force and violence,' and asked the Government to deport them.  In the hot days of 1930 I attended many of these meetings.   There were harsh, bitter discussions, analyzing one by one the 'best families,' who had grabbed the best lands, exploited labor by owning the tools of production, as 'best families' normally and historically due, and who were now fighting the rise of the collective farms by arson, cattle-killing and murder....   The meetings I personally attended were more seriously judicial, more balanced in their discussion, than any court trial I have attended in America: these peasants knew they were dealing with serious punishments, and did not handle them lightly....   Those who envisage that the rural revolution which ended in farm collectivization was a 'war between Stalin and the peasants' simply weren't on the ground when the whirlwind broke.   The anarchy of an elemental upheaval was its chief.   characteristic: it was marked by great ecstasies and terrors: local leaders in village township and province did what was right in their own eyes and passionately defended their convictions.   Moscow studied and participated in the local earthquakes; and, out of the mass experience, made, somewhat too late to save the livestock, general laws for its direction.   It was a harsh, bitter and by no means bloodless conflict....   Township and provincial commissions in the USSR reviewed and cut down the list of kulaks for exile, to guard against local excesses."
            [From The Soviet Dictatorship by Anna Louise Strong, in, October 1934]
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 205
 
            Today, dekulakizing is being carried out by the masses of poor and middle peasants themselves, who are carrying through mass collectivization.
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 177
 
            The procedure on which the kulaks were got rid of was peculiar.   Decrees of the USSR Sovnarkom declared that the kulaks as a class were to be liquidated.   Up and down the country the batraks and bedniaks, the landless and the poor peasants, with such of the seredniaks (the middle peasants) as chose to attend, held village meetings, and voted that such and such peasants of their village were kulaks, and were to be dispossessed.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 467
 
 
WORKERS OVER 18 CAN VOTE AND RUN FOR OFFICE
 
            All "toilers" over the age of 18 may elect and be elected; the word is interpreted to include students, housewives, old people who have passed the age of work as well as those more formally known as workers.  Voting thus extends to a younger age than is common elsewhere, and there are no disqualifications for transient residents, paupers, migratory workers, soldiers, sailors, such as exist in most countries; even non-citizens may vote if they work in a Soviet industry.  There are no restrictions for sex, creed, or color, not even for illiteracy.  The only significant restriction relates to “exploiting elements, but the steady decrease of privately owned enterprises has cut the disfranchised to 2.5 per cent of the population in the 1934 elections; by 1937 it is expected that all will have the vote.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 59
 
CENTRAL COMMITTEE IS THE SUPREME RULER OF THE SU
 
            There have been statements by Stalin that ushered in great changes, as when he told the agrarian Marxist conference that the time had come to "abolish kulaks as a class."  Yet he only announced the time for a process which every Marxist knew was on the program.  His famous article "Dizziness from Success" which called a sudden halt on March 2, 1930, to widespread excesses of Communists in rural regions, was regarded by foreign correspondents and peasants alike as an "order from Stalin."  Stalin at once disclaimed any personal prestige therefrom accruing, stating in the press: "Some people think that the article is the result of the personal initiative of Stalin.  That of course is nonsense.  The Central Committee does not exist to permit personal initiative of anybody in matters of this kind.  It was a reconnaissance undertaken by the Central Committee."
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 110
 
INDUSTRIALIZATION WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY DESPITE HIGH COST
 
            Farming must be brought out of the Middle Ages, modernized and made efficient.  For this two roads of development were possible.  The employing peasants, known as kulaks, who already owned the best of the rural means of production, better plows, more horses, occasional threshers, creameries and flour mills, might be allowed to expand, to acquire tractors, combines, and the additional land which these machines could cultivate, dispossessing more and more landless peasants into the ranks of the unemployed.  Thus capitalist farming grew in other countries out of the feudal ages.  The price of such growth for Soviet Russia under the world conditions of the modern era would be not only continued class war in rural districts, not only swiftly increasing unemployment, not only the steady submergence of all socialist industry by an expanding capitalism, but the complete dependence of this young Russian capitalism on the financial oligarchs of the imperialist world.  Such, at least, was the analysis made by Stalin and the Communist Party in adopting in 1928 the now famous Five-Year Plan.
            The Five-Year Plan proposed the rapid industrialization of the country, more rapid than any industrialization known in the world before.  Heavy industry must first be built, the machines that make machines for other industry and for farming.  Lighter industries to raise the standard of living must rapidly follow.  Farming must be industrialized, not by strengthening a class of rural  capitalists, but by the voluntary uniting of all non-exploiting peasants, beginning with the poorest, into collective groups farming their lands jointly with machinery which the developing state industry would supply.  This was necessary to make farming modern, while giving the benefits of its modernization to all farmers.  It was necessary to make Russia socialist, or even to preserve the half-socialism which the city workers had begun.  It was necessary for the independence of the country and the very existence of the Soviet government.  "We could not refrain," said Stalin, "from whipping up a country which was a hundred years behind and which owing to its backwardness was faced with mortal danger."
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 125
 
            Trotskyists kept up the pressure.  They claimed we devoted too little attention to industrialization, and that we needed to industrialize as rapidly as possible or perish.
            We said, no, we will not perish!  We will not perish if we don't fall out with the peasants.  But we had to tighten our grip on the kulak.  We clamped down on the kulak and the Nepmen;...we squeezed our monies wherever we could--every ruble and kopek--to fund the revival of industry, even if only modestly.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 169
 
            I do not remember the reason, but I happened to remark, "Without industrialization the Soviet Union could not have preserved itself and waged such a war."
            Stalin added, "It was precisely over this that we quarreled with Trotsky and Bukharin."
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 75
 
            However, let us not be unjust toward Stalin!  What he wished to accomplish, and even that which he did accomplish, could not be accomplished in any other way.  The forces that swept him forward and that he led, with their absolute ideals, could have no other kind of leader but him, given that level of Russian and world relations, nor could they have been served by different methods.
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 191
 
            Stalin stated, "Our country had to be transformed from an agricultural country into an industrial country, capable of itself producing everything which it needed.  This was the principal point, the foundation of our general line of action."
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 131
 
            But Lenin had peremptorily specified that: "If we cannot find means of creating industry among us, and of fostering it, that is the end of our country as a civilized country and, a fortiori, as a socialist country."  And Stalin made similar observations about heavy industry.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 132
 
            Once more a conflict began between the logic of the groundlings and the logic of the giants, between the far-sighted idealists with their overwhelming preoccupations about the future and the short-sighted people who carried no burden on their shoulders.
            Let us start in a small way and develop gradually, said the latter.  In this way you will limit public sacrifice, you will curtail the era of privation and you will facilitate internal peace, instead of hurling yourselves headlong into the system of turning villages into cities and of attacking world records when you do not possess a sufficiency of the necessities of life.
            But:     
            "Your point of view is the wrong one, comrades."
            And logic and patient anticipation of the future, answering through Stalin's lips, explained: "Yes, one would satisfy a few of the immediate desires of the urban and rural populations by beginning with the light industries.  And after that?  Only heavy industries can serve as a basis for the industrial revival of the country.  Only the development of the heavy industries can make co-operation in the country districts possible, that is to say the achievement of great socialist ideals."
            "Co-operation between the peasant and the worker is essential," declares Stalin, "but the re-education of the peasant, the destruction of his individualist psychology and the transforming of it into a collectivist mentality, can only be accomplished on the basis of a new technique, of collective labor, of production on a large scale.  Either we must carry out this task and then we shall establish ourselves permanently, or we must abandon it, and then the return to Capitalism may become inevitable."
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 133
 
            Stalin, on the day on which, summarizing things broadly, some years later, he said that the first foundation of the Soviet State was the alliance between worker and peasant and that the second was the union of nationalities, added that the third was the Red Army.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 134
 
            The country had to be forced into a modern industrialized state in half a generation: otherwise it would go under.  Whatever else he did, in this he was manifestly right.
Snow, Charles Percy. Variety of Men. New York: Scribner, 1966, p. 254
 
            Stalin really believed that the USSR could become the leading industrial nation of the world, and no man knows if he was wrong.
            To Stalin to result was inevitable.  The problem was to industrialize fast enough to produce a proletarian majority in the USSR before the capitalist-minded peasants could begin a counter-revolution, and fast enough to support a mechanized army sufficient to repel the inevitable attack from the capitalist West....  In a sense, Stalin started to industrialize 20 years too soon, before the development of the mathematical and other analytic tools of contemporary economics that might have helped him enormously.  On the other hand, his own program of industrialization was perhaps the greatest single stimulus to modern developmental economics.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 172
 
            But to Stalin, the crucial phases of the industrial revolution were his.  He had started in 1928 with roughly the equivalent of the industrial plant that had failed to withstand Imperial Germany.  By 1941 he had built an industrial plant that proved capable of repelling the far more formidable military and economic might of Hitler's united continental Europe.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 179
 
HUMAN NATURE IS NOT STATIC
 
            Unlike those who justify ancient abuses with the formula, "You can't change human nature," the Marxist knows that human nature is constantly changing.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 250
 
ENVIRONMENT IS PRIMARY, TEACHING IS SECONDARY
 
            For men in all ages have desired to change, to become in some direction "better."  Moral teachers have urged them to effect this by an emotional decision to be good, honest, industrious.  But this is a struggle in the dark with forces which the human being does not understand.  His emotional conversion lasts as long as he can focus will and attention.  But if the old environment continues, the old habits reassert themselves.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 251
 
            Can a prostitute change her environment so that street-walking will become unnecessary?  Only if an honest job is somewhere accessible.  And gangsters reform?  Only if honesty is really the best policy; for him who would prosper under capitalism there is a time to be honest and a time to steal, and the criminal is the unlucky or stupid person who stole at the wrong time and in the unaccepted manner.  Only a social system which insures to ordinary honest labor greater rewards than can be obtained by even the luckiest dishonesty will produce instinctively honest men.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 252
 
            For crime, in the Marxian view, arises from the conflicts of a class-exploiting society and will follow classes and exploitation into oblivion....
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 264
 
 
LEGAL SYSTEM OF THE SU IS JUST
 
            The sharpest test of the conscience remaking of human character is found in the Soviet policy for handling law-breakers.  The Soviet criminologist holds neither of the theories on which the prevalent systems of prison regime in capitalist countries are based.  He does not believe in the existence of "born criminals" whose will must be broken by brutal suppression nor does he rely on emotional appeals to the "better nature" of the criminal, for he knows that this better nature exists as yet only in rudimentary form.  "We don't assume that a man of anti-social habits will be at once reclaimed by gifts of chocolate, nice bathrooms, and soft words," a leading Soviet penologist told me.  "Men are made over by a new social environment and especially by their work done collectively."
            Soviet law aims to make over social misfits while protecting society from their attacks.  Punishment as vengeance has no place in such an aim: revenge merely incites revenge in return.  To make prisoners sit in solitude and think of their sins produces a fixation on crime.  To "break a man's will" or lessen his human dignity in any way injures him as material for a creative socialist society.  Soviet justice therefore aims to give the criminal a new environment in which he will begin to act in a normal way as a responsible Soviet citizen.  The less confinement the better; the less he feels himself in prison the better....  "We have a double approach," said Attorney-General Vyshinsky in an interview.  "Active, confirmed enemies of our Soviet power who stick at nothing to injure us must be ruthlessly crushed....  But if we had tried to apply the idea of absolute humanitarianism to bitter enemies we wouldn't be here today."
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 254
 
            The labor camp is the prevalent method for handling serious offenders of all kinds, whether criminal or political....  The labor camps have won high reputation throughout the Soviet Union as places where tens of thousands of men have been reclaimed.  They have, however, been the center of some of the most spectacular attacks on the Soviet Union in recent years.  Allegations of brutal treatment and even of torture have found their way widely into the foreign press.  While it is clearly impossible to check every one of these accusations, they are contradicted by every competent observer who has ever seen the camps.  Dr. Mary Stevens Callcott, the American penologist who has studied prisons all over the world, and who has had the unique experience of visiting the larger part of the Soviet camps, including those for the worst--and for political--offenders, has commented both in her book Soviet Justice and in conversations with me personally, on the "amazingly normal" life that differentiates these camps from prisons in any other part of the world.
            She notes the freedom of movement over large areas of territory, the very small amount of guarding, the work done under normal conditions--7 hours for ordinary labor to 10 for men whose tasks, such as driving a truck, permitted frequent rests during work.  She could find no speed up; laws of labor protection operated as in factories.  Wages were the same as those outside, with deductions for living expenses; all above this could be sent by the prisoner to his family, saved, or spent as he chose.  "No uniforms with their psychological implications, no physical abuse; isolation only in extreme instances.  Privileges and special rewards replace the system of special penalties."  Among these special rewards are the two weeks' vacation in which the prisoner may leave the camp, and the opportunities given for his family not only to visit him but even to live with him for extended periods.  Normal human association goes on; men and women meet and may even marry while serving sentence, in which case they are given separate quarters.
            What most impressed Dr. Callcott, however, was the type of men in charge of these camps, and the relation they had to the prisoners.  She tells of going through the Moscow-Volga Canal camp with its director.  Prisoners hailed him with obvious pleasure and informality.  A girl rushed up to detain him by seizing the belt of his uniform lest he get away before she could tell him something.  A teacher whose term was about to expire expressed a wish to stay on and work under him.  There were only five officials in the central administration office of this camp of many thousand prisoners; all the work, including most of the guarding, was done by the convicted men themselves.  "In fact," said Dr. Callcott, "I can never see what kept men in this camp unless they wanted to stay there.  No convicts I have known would have any difficulty if they wanted to break away."
            Both prisoners and officials, of whom Dr. Callcott asked this question--she talked with prisoners freely without the presence of officials--replied that they didn't run away because it they did, "nobody in my working gang would speak to me when I came back.  They would say I had disgraced them."  There are, however, a certain number of incorrigibles who run away repeatedly, and these are given somewhat closer guarding for a time.  Political prisoners, she noted, were treated like everyone else, except that those who had been persistent and dangerous in their attacks on the government were sent away from the possibility of connection with their past associates.  In all her conversations with these "politicals," she was unable to find one who had been sentenced merely for expressing anti-Soviet views.  All were charged with definite action against the government.
            "I did everything I could to destroy this government," one such man frankly told her, "sabotage of the most serious kind.  But the way they have treated me here has convinced me that they are right."
            Another prisoner, who had been in Sing Sing, San Quentin, as well as in jails of England, Spain, and Germany, before he was picked up by the Soviets for grand larceny, had been reclaimed by the Baltic-White Sea Canal.  He had done a bit of engineering in his youth, and was promptly given a chance to work at this specialty.  He won a metal, pursued his studies further, and was doing brilliant work on the Moscow-Volga Canal when Dr. Callcott met him.  To her query about his reformation he replied:
            "in the other countries they treated me like a prisoner, clapped me in jail and taught me my place.  Here they clapped me on the back and said "what can we do to make you into a useful citizen?"  Dr. Callcott conversed with many men now high in Soviet industry who had previously been reclaimed by the labor camps.  Nothing in their attitude or that of those about them showed any stigma remaining from their prison life.  "Of course, when it's over, it's forgotten," one of them said to her. "That," says Dr. Callcott, "is real restoration."
            Information from many other sources and from my own observation corroborates Dr. Callcott.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 256
 
            The Communists point out that in so-called democratic countries, while justice pretends to be impartial as between all citizens, and to guarantee individuals certain declared rights, in practice the propertied classes get the benefit of any doubt; private property has a superior claim.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 61
 
            III.  ON REDUCING THE POPULATION OF PLACES OF CONFINEMENT
            1) the maximum number of persons that may be held in custody in places of confinement attached to the People's Commissariat for Justice, the 0GPU, and the Chief Directorate of the Police, other than in camps and colonies, is not to exceed 400,000 persons for the entire Soviet Union.
            The 0GPU, the People's Commissariat for Justice of each of the Union republics, and the Procuracy of the USSR are to proceed immediately to reduce the population of places of confinement.  The total number of those confined is to be reduced within the next two months from the current figure of 800,000 to 400,000 persons.
            2...  The superintendents of places of confinement are prohibited from taking prisoners in excess of the maximum number that has been established.
            3...  The maximum period for holding a person in custody in police lockups is to be three days.  Those incarcerated are to be provided with bread rations without fail.
            Signed: Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, Molotov and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, J. Stalin.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 117
 
            ...Moreover, according to the new regulations, the NKVD did not have the power to pass death sentences (as the 0GPU and its predecessors the GPU and Cheka had) or to inflict extralegal "administrative" punishments of more than five years.  Treason cases, formerly under the purview of the secret police, were, along with other criminal matters, referred to the regular courts or to the Supreme Court.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 121
 
            ...A number of key events between 1934 and 1937, including the assassination of Politburo member Kirov, dramatically changed and hardened the political landscape.
            ...In September a memo from Stalin proposed the formation of a Politburo commission (chaired by Kuibyshev...) to look into 0GPU abuses.  Stalin called the matter "serious, in my opinion," and ordered the commission to "free the innocent" and purge the 0GPU of practitioners of specific "investigative tricks" and punish them regardless of their rank....
            Thus, in response to Stalin's recommendation, the Kuibyshev Commission prepared a draft resolution censuring the police for "illegal methods of investigation" and recommending punishment of several secret police officials.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 122
 
            [June 17th, 1935 decree by the Council of People's Commissar's of the USSR in the Central Committee of the Communist Party]
            1.  In modification of instructions of May 8th, 1933, henceforth organs of the NKVD may make arrests only with the consent of the appropriate procurator.  This applies to all cases without exception.
            2.  If arrests must be made at the site of the crime, officials of the NKVD authorized by law are obligated to report the arrest immediately to the appropriate procurator for his confirmation.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 188
 
            [From Protocol # 38 of the Politburo on April 20th 1936]
            Regarding: Dependents of persons deported from cities in the USSR subject to special measures.
            ...Residence in localities in the USSR subject to special measures is to be permitted to dependents of persons removed from these localities: to dependents whose family is engaged in socially useful work, or to students--that is to those people who are in no way personally to blame for anything.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 220
 
            "Decree of the Narkomvnudel.  Whereas Peter Kleist, engineer, age 29, and a former employee of the Cotton Trust, has been examined on the suspicion of engaging in political espionage and whereas the examination has shown that he did not knowingly engage in such activity, it is decided that he be acquitted of this charge."
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 177
 
            ...whereas the aforesaid has been further examined on the suspicion of engaging in economic espionage by the sequestration of data and formulae, and whereas it has been established that secret technical data and formulae were in his possession at the time of his intended departure from the Soviet Union, it is decreed that the said Peter Kleist be forthwith expelled from the Soviet Union.  It is further decreed that the charge of illegally exchanging Soviet currency for foreign currency shall not be proceeded with. 
Signed.  Tanev, Procurator."
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 178
 
            (Others Kleist met in prison). He was a Rumanian called Jonescu [who said],
            "I wasn't sorry to be in prison.  I got regular food and something to occupy my mind-- they gave me work and offered to teach me a trade.  I had studied mathematics and so I asked permission to do the work of a planning statistician.  I liked the work.  It was interesting studying the work of men in relation to machines, output, and all the rest of it.  They paid me a wage for my work and I wasn't uncomfortable.  I got there everything I wanted in the Lavka.  (The Lavka is the prison shop where penal prisoners are allowed to buy from their wages things like tobacco, paper and pencil, newspapers and books.).  I began to read again, to look forward to a settled life as a Soviet worker....
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 181
 
            ... in August 1936 he publicly rebuffed any idea that in Soviet circumstances children should answer for their parents' sins.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 196
 
            ...the government's edict "On Revolutionary Legality," issued on June 25, 1932, swung Soviet jurisprudence decisively toward statutory stability, formality, and correspondingly the professionalization of jurists.  The main spokesman for the new approach was Vyshinsky, whose appointment as procurator general of the USSR in 1935 symbolized the ascendance of that philosophy.  Taking his cue from Stalin's assertion that "the withering away of the state will come not through a weakening of state authority but through its maximum intensification," Vyshinsky worked tirelessly to make law the cornerstone of the burgeoning bureaucratic apparatus.  He clashed repeatedly with the commissar of justice, Krylenko, over what Krylenko considered excessive borrowing of forms and norms from bourgeois legal systems.  Vyshinsky engaged in bureaucratic turf battles with both Krylenko's commissariat and the NKVD.
            The Constitution epitomized the new Soviet legal thinking.  As one Western scholar has noted, it provided for "a strong and stable criminal law for the protection of public property, and a predictable and differentiated civil law for the protection of the...right of 'personal property.'  Beyond this, the emphasis on stability and predictability was entirely consistent with a whole series of measures adopted by the regime in 1934 and 1935.  These included reconciliation with former oppositionists at the 17th Party Congress, the issuing of a kolkhoz statute, the convocation of a Writer's Union congress and its preaching of literary toleration, and the rejection of the Comintern's "class-against-class" strategy in favor of the more ecumenical antifascist popular-frontism .  Together, they constituted a strategy of political moderation that distinguishes the mid-1930s from both earlier and later in the decade.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov. Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 159
 
            The authors of the telegram [a telegram sent by the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR just before the trial began] then proceed to demand that "judicial guarantees" or "legal guarantees" be given.  The implication must be that unless some powerful outside influence is brought to bear, the trial will be an unjudicial and improper proceeding; and, indeed, one of the authors has since stated that the meaning was that the case "ought to be tried in accordance with the ordinary canons of justice and humanity."  I confess that I find this request, and the criticism implied in it, very difficult indeed to justify.  The Soviet Union is a civilized country, with a developed legal system, and some very fine lawyers and jurists.  Its criminal procedure is at least the equal of that of very many other countries.  There was not and is not, in my humble opinion, the slightest ground for fearing that, in any public trial (and it was announced from the outset that this trial would be public), it would deviate from civilized procedure.  I am aware that provisions exist in its procedure for secret trials, and for the withholding of counsel and witnesses for the defense in secret trials for counter-revolutionary offenses.  I regret the existence of such provisions, and have never concealed my regret.  Defenders of the Soviet system can, of course, urge in defense that every country in the world provides in greater or less degree for secret trials, and that the practice of depriving a prisoner, arraigned on charges of high treason or similar offenses, of the right to counsel or witnesses, has prevailed in a great many countries and a great many ages; they could even say that this practice lasted for some centuries in England.  But in truth all that is not to the point; for in this public trial there was never any intention of depriving, and I think that there was not even any procedural opportunity to deprive the accused either of counsel or of the right to make their defense or to call witnesses if they desired.
            Every foreign critic who has studied the Soviet legal system has reported that, taken as a whole, it is good and fair; everyone who studies it at all knows that year by year it progresses steadily towards greater facilities for the prisoner, greater independence of judges and counsel, and greater technical efficiency.  Even with the difficulties which must always exist in securing a fair trial in political cases, where the feelings of everyone must be deeply engaged (difficulties which are, of course, far smaller when the jury system is not in vogue), why should it, once again, be assumed that everything is being and will be done wrong.  Such an attitude from a Press lord suffering from acute CommunistPhobia, which is the modern equivalent of the horror felt by our respectable grandfathers in the 1880s when they heard of men who voted Radical, would be quite comprehensible; but it is regrettable to find anything like it in Socialist quarters.  To put the matter at its lowest, the self-interest of the Soviet Government would surely insure that a public trial at this time on a charge of the greatest gravity, brought against old servants of the revolution, would be held with the fullest possible degree of fairness.
            I must diverge for a moment here to point out that the statement that the defendants were not allowed counsel appeared in several English newspapers, including the one that was obviously the fairest of all in its attitude, whilst the statement also appeared in reputable papers that they were not allowed to make a defense.  These two statements, or rather misstatements (for there is clearly no foundation for them), must plainly be bona fide errors, and I can well imagine that they may have colored the whole feelings and attitude of commentators; so, perhaps, once again in journalistic history, a pure error has led people, acting in the utmost good faith, to a line of criticism which they would never otherwise have adopted.  In truth, of course, the accused were at liberty to make any defense they liked; two of them did make or attempt a defense as to part of the charges, as I have already stated, and otherwise they all elected not to do so.  They all expressly renounced counsel; and I do not think that counsel, however eminent, could have done more for them than they did for themselves.... 
            Returning to this not unimportant telegram, we find next a request that the accused shall be allowed counsel who shall be "independent of the Government."  We are entitled to assume knowledge in the authors that the accused were entitled to counsel, so that the whole emphasis of the request obviously falls on the point of "being independent of the Government."  Counsel in the USSR are not government servants, but one must obviously look to substance and not to form, and I take it that the implied or hinted meaning is that, unless some special precautions are taken, any counsel whom the accused might select would, either out of fear of the Government or out of deference to popular feeling, not "pull his weight" for his clients.  That suspicion of my much-maligned profession is entertained, I suppose, in every country in every political case, and perhaps in non-political cases too.  There is never as much in it as laymen suspect; there is perhaps more in it than honest lawyers believe.  Whether there is anything in it in the USSR or not is, of course, not easy to say; all that I can contribute to its elucidation is that I investigated it with care four years ago and came to the conclusion that a political defendant had as good a chance of getting reliable counsel in the USSR as anywhere else.
Pritt, Denis Nowell. At the Moscow Trial, New York City: International Publishers, 1937, p. 23-25
 
            The next request to be found in the telegram is that no death sentences be "promulgated."...  But this request is made in a world where most, States still retain the death penalty for some offenses; and if there ever were a case in which any State which still kept upon its statute book provision for inflicting such a penalty would be likely to inflict it, it is a case of treasonable conspiracy to murder the half-dozen principal leaders of the Government.  And the regrettable probability, or virtual certainty, that most States would inflict the penalty in such a case would only be increased by the circumstances that most of the men involved were men who had been forgiven and reinstated in the Party and in important posts once, twice, thrice, after expressing regret for past disloyalty and offering the most sweeping assurances as to their future conduct, intending all the time to use the opportunities thus secured to continue terrorist conspiracies against the State.
Pritt, Denis Nowell. At the Moscow Trial, New York City: International Publishers, 1937, p. 27
 
            Now, the critic inquires why the opposition was brutally crushed just at this moment.  I have already stated at length the grounds, to my mind overwhelming, for holding that the proceedings can only have been launched for the most genuine and cogent reasons; but I do not understand why the detection and punishment of a conspiracy for multiple assassination should be described as the brutal crushing of the opposition, merely because the conspiracy was opposed to the Government and several of the conspirators had in the past been among the leaders of the opposition.  Why are we to assume that men guilty of conspiracy to murder are shot because they are or were in opposition rather than because they are guilty of conspiracy to murder?...  It should not be overlooked, either, that if the more important of these men were regarded as "the opposition" which is not unreasonable, they are rather the opposition of the past than of the future.  They had been definitely proved to be wrong in the controversy which had made them into an opposition; they had been, instead of being crushed, forgiven over and over again, as if no one wanted to be harsh to them; and as an opposition they were perhaps less to be feared than at any previous time.
Pritt, Denis Nowell. At the Moscow Trial, New York City: International Publishers, 1937, p. 29
 
            In England, our friend remarks, a prisoner indicted for treason is practically forced to go through a legal routine of defense.   He pleads Not Guilty; and his counsel assumes for him an attitude of injured innocence, refusing to admit any evidence that is not within certain rules, demanding legitimate proof of every statement and setting up a hypothesis as to what actually happened which is consistent with the prisoner's innocence.   He cross-examines the Crown witnesses mercilessly.   He puts the prisoner into the witness-box and asks him questions so framed that by simple affirmative answers or indignant denials or at worst by flat perjury (which is considered allowable on such occasions) he may seem to support the hypothesis.   The judge compliments the counsel on the brilliant ability with which he has conducted his case.   He points out to the jury that the hypothesis is manifestly fictitious and the prisoner obviously guilty.   The jury finds the necessary verdict.   The judge then, congratulating the prisoner on having been so ably defended and fairly tried, sentences him to death and commends him to the mercy of his God.
            May not this procedure, which seems so natural and inevitable to us, very intelligently strike a Russian as a farce tolerated because our rules of evidence and forms of trial have never been systematically revised on rational lines.   Why should a conspirator who is caught out by the Government, and he knows that he is caught out and that no denials or hypothetical fairy tales will help him to escape--why should he degrade himself uselessly by a mock defense instead of at once facing the facts and discussing his part in them quite candidly with his captors?   There is a possibility of moving them by such a friendly course: in a mock defense there is none.   Our candid friend submits that the Russian prisoners simply behave naturally and sensibly, as Englishmen would were they not virtually compelled by their highly artificial legal system to go through a routine which is useful to the accused only when there is some doubt as to the facts or as to the guilt or innocence of the conduct in question.   What possible good could it do them to behave otherwise?   Why should they waste the time of the court and disgrace themselves by prevaricating like pickpockets merely to employ the barristers?   Our friend suggests that some of us are so obsessed with our national routine that the candor of the Russian conspirators seems grotesque and insane.   Which of the two courses, viewed by an impartial visitor from Mars, would appear the saner?
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 923-924
 
PRISONS IN SU REHABILITATE PEOPLE VERY WELL
 
            Many former prisoners from the Baltic-White Sea Canal, after receiving freedom together with special prizes and high honors for their good work, went of free choice to help build the Moscow-Volga Canal, another convict-labor job.  Here they were especially valued because through their own experience they understood the process through which new prisoners had to go and were especially skilled in helping them make themselves over....
            So well known and effective is the Soviet method of remaking human beings that criminals occasionally now apply to be admitted.  I met one such man in Gulin village.  Notorious locally as a thief and drunkard, he had a dozen convictions to his discredit, till at last he went to the authorities saying: "I'm a man destroyed, but I want to be made over."  They sent him to a labor camp whence he returned a qualified worker.  Bolshevo Commune, the most famous "cure" for criminals, can be entered only by application approved by the general meeting of members.  It's waiting list is so long that it accepts only the most hardened cases, priding itself on being able to make over persons who cannot become cured in any other institution.  Its strength lies in its large membership of intelligent former criminals, who apply to new entrants their intimate knowledge of the criminal mind.
            Crime today is rapidly diminishing in the Soviet Union.  From 1929 to 1934 sentences for murder decreased by 1/2 while sex crimes fell off to 1/4.  The cause is found in the growing strength of the Soviet environment to remake human beings; the penal policy is only a supplementary force.  A striking example of the play of both causes may be found in the figures of prostitution.  Pre-war Moscow had 25,000 to 30,000 prostitutes; these sank by 1928 to about 3000, a diminution clearly due to economic causes.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 261
 
            Kulaks committed arson, cattle-killing, murder, and were exiled in large numbers; anti-Soviet engineers and officials sabotaged and were sent to labor camps.  Today the kulaks have been amnestied, not only because many of them have recovered their civil status by honest labor, but also because the collective farms in the villages are strong enough to withstand their attack and absorb them.  The labor camps which supplanted prisons are themselves diminishing, partly because they have "cured" their inmates, and still more because the normal free life of Soviet society is becoming strong and prosperous enough to have a direct regenerative influence on those social misfits that remain.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 264
 
            I had received my background on the Polish question from members of the Polish government-in-exile when I was in London in 1943.  I was entertained at dinner by the Minister of Information of the London group.  Present at the dinner were some Poles who had been imprisoned in Russia.  They told me what they considered worst in their prison experiences.  It so happened that I had for a time been Director of prisoner of war work in Canada for the World Committee of the YMCA and their description of conditions did not show the Russian camps to contrast unfavorably with those of Canada.  They had been put to work, but that was a policy I had continually urged upon the Canadian government.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 99
 
            Sentences to prison are limited to 10 years, even for the most serious offenses, including murder.  Up to 1921 the maximum was only five years.  In practice, time off for good conduct cuts the ten-year sentence to five or six.  The theory of this limited prison sentence is that Soviet prisons are intended to reform, not punish, and that if a man can't be reformed in 10 years, he can't be reformed at all.  The death penalty, applied to a long list of crimes and rather commonly resorted to up to 1927, was abolished on the 10th anniversary of the Revolution for all cases except political crimes and armed robbery.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 65
 
            The maximum prison sentence in Russia for any offense, criminal or political, is 10 years.  The theory as applied to criminals is that if they cannot be reformed in that period they cannot be reformed at all, and so a longer time is useless.  In political cases 10 years is evidently regarded as long enough for any offense not punished by death.  The 10 years is, in practice, often reduced to six or seven by good behavior.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 203
 
            [Jan. 27, 1925 NKVD circular on measures for developing work in areas of labor camps]
            The Corrective Labor Code defines our basic mission as assigning inmates to productive employment for the purpose of imparting the benefits of corrective labor to them.
            In order to develop inmates employment, inmates should be organized as self-supporting work units exempt from all national and local taxes and levies....
            According to our information, it is obvious that work programs for inmates have not been organized at any large number of places of incarceration, thus depriving the inmates of the benefits of corrective labor, i.e., the places of incarceration are failing to accomplish their primary mission as defined by the Corrective Labor Code.
Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 141
 
            ... This book [a volume on the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal], with contributions by Gorky... and other notable writers, extolled the rehabilitative benefits of the prison labor project; many of those who worked on the canal were rewarded subsequently with pardons.
Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 153
 
            The Governor came to see me in prison at 10:00....
            "You see, Kleist, the essential difference between investigation and punishment in the USSR and in your capitalist countries is that with us the investigatory period is one of rigid discipline and inquiry, and the so-called 'punishment' period is a reformatory one in which we make it as easy as possible for the prisoner to adjust himself to normal society.  With you, the investigatory period is one of leniency and the punishment period is one of savage reprisal of society against one whom in practice it henceforward rejects."
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 192
 
            In August 1935 Pravda added a weighty editorial voice to this campaign when it announced that "to punish for mistakes--this is the last resort.  It is necessary to teach how to avoid mistakes....  It's necessary to remember a basic rule: persuade, teach, help."  Repression was to be used only in "extreme cases," but even then it should also educate.
            Thus, during 1935 Party organs and the central authorities of the judicial system issued a series of strong warnings to lower courts and prosecutors alike that petty problems and infractions were not to be considered crimes, that cases of counter-revolution were not to be pressed unless serious, and that careful attention to evidence was the order of the day.  Krylenko's and Vyshinsky's protests against NKVD behavior and the wide application of Article 58 had a similar thrust.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 14
 
            All inmates of the institution have a classification. The citizens who have "gone wrong" and are sent to prison are at the beginning placed in the first category.  They are left there until the observation committee approves of them being promoted to the second category.  While they are under this first classification each is allowed three days' vacation a year--to go home or anywhere they please, but must report back to the prison on the assigned day.  Those deserving a promotion are raised to the second category which gives them seven days a year vacation in addition to other privileges.  When promoted to the third category they receive one month.  These vacations are counted in each case as a part of their sentence.
            If a prisoner is released on good behavior he is given a job.  But if convicted of a crime again, the new sentence, plus the remaining part of the old sentence, is added to the time he must serve.  Every prisoner is allowed to go anywhere in the prison he pleases and the trusted ones are given the right to be guards.  If on account of bad behavior, a prisoner is punished by isolation in a cell and only allowed to walk around where there are no other inmates, this punishment the prison warden said is to remind him of his misbehavior and has produced good results.
            The institution contained a factory where every prisoner had to work if able.  The inmate who did not already know a trade is taught one, both by theory and practice, so when released he is much abler to find employment.  Each is paid a wage for his work and allowed to spend a certain amount for incidentals at the prison store, the remaining part is put in a bank account; and when released, each one has his savings account money returned so that he can care for himself and therefore would not be so apt to commit another crime.  The wage ranges from 50 to 60 rubles a month.  This is thought to be low enough so as not to compete with other labor, for if wages were equal or better the workers might have a tendency to commit crime to take advantage of it as the wage is a clear one, the prisoners being free of the expenses of food, clothes, and shelter.
            All prisons are considered open prisons, the only isolated ones being in north Siberia and they are isolated only in the sense that prisoners are kept in a prison community.  Only exceptionally bad prisoners are sent there and the repeaters who have a long list of crimes.  These, however, are those classed as "incurables."
            This prison contained no confinement cells--I had the privilege of going anywhere I wished here and found nothing of this sort.  The number of inmates in each cell were three.  The condition of the cells would be classified as average, each having a good sized window which let in sufficient light.  As for the food and clothes, these items, too, may be said to be average.
            The Soviet idea of treating a criminal is not to beat and punish him by physical force, but to consider him as a citizen "gone to wrong" and help train him to be a law-abiding citizen.  If a person has a prison record it does not in any way hinder him from getting employment.  Quite different from our prison system!
            There are only two things which every prisoner is forced to do and that is, learn to read and write while in confinement.
            Sometime later I saw a group of prisoners doing harvest work with machinery on one of the government farms.  There were only a few guards on hand and no evidence whatever of exploitation.
Wright, Russell. One-Sixth of the World's Surface. Hammond, Ind., The Author, c1932, p. 33-34
 
            The state proclaimed a policy of "reformation through forced labor."  Those who actively showed their worth in "the building of socialism" had a good chance of being pardoned, rewarded, even allowed to continue their careers.  In the 1930s a highly popular film “Prisoners” depicted the rapid reeducation at the Baltic-White Sea Canal Construction Camp of both criminals and political prisoners, transformed into active participants in building socialism.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov. Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 89
 
            Forced labor, in the strict sense, was imposed on peasants who had resorted to violence in resisting collectivization.  They were treated like criminals and were subject to imprisonment.  Here history played one of its malignant and gloomy jokes.  Soviet penitentiary reforms of earlier years, inspired by humanitarian motives, viewed the imprisonment of criminals as a means to their re-education, not punishment.  They provided for the employment of criminals in useful work.  The criminals were to be under the protection of trade unions; and their work was to be paid at trade-union rates.  As the number of rebellious peasants grew, they were organized in mammoth labor camps and employed in the building of canals and railways, in timber felling, and so on.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 336
 
            QUESTION: Is the 0GPU under another name employing two or 3 million political prisoners in carrying out a program of forced labor?
 
            ANSWER: The picture that these words aroused for the average American--of idealistic intellectuals condemned to heavy, unpaid, chain-gang work--does not exist in the USSR.
            There are, however, "labor camps" in many parts of the country, as part of the Soviet method of reclaiming anti-social elements by useful, collective work.  They replace prisons, which have been steadily closing; I have found old prison buildings remodeled as schools.  Men in the labor camps draw wages, have vacations in which they leave the camp, and rise in their profession like free workers.  They work at their specialty; engineers do large-scale engineering, intellectuals do cultural work, teaching and clerical work; actors put on plays, unskilled workers are trained in trades and illiterate men get schooling.  Their wives and families are often allowed to visit them for extended periods.
            These camps usually work on some nationally famous project which is intended to stir instincts of creative energy and collective pride.  Men who respond to these motives may rise to the highest honors.  The Baltic-White Sea Canal, for instance, was celebrated not only as an achievement in construction, but as a place where criminals "made themselves over."  Many former thieves, saboteurs, murderers, received the Order of Lenin, the highest honor in the country.
Strong, Anna Louise. “Searching Out the Soviets.” New Republic: August 7, 1935, p. 358\
 
            Likewise, throughout [until] 1936, except in extraordinary conditions (such as the Civil War of 1918-1920, and the rural conflict of 1930-31) very few opponents were executed.  The standard remedy for active opponents of the regime (as it was for common criminals) was socialist re-education, in good part through productive labor.  This represented a humane and largely effective strategy....  Until 1937 the conditions applying to those actually confined for active opposition to the regime were considerably better than those for ordinary criminals; until 1937 torture was officially prohibited in the USSR (and, in fact, was rare).  It was standard practice for those sentenced to a term in labor re-education camps in the remote region of the country to return to their old positions (as engineers, party leaders, etc.) after a relatively short time;...
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 228
 
PEOPLE IN THE SU ARE FREE AND INDIVIDUALS
 
            To many persons in capitalist countries these words will be only partly intelligible.  They have been so accustomed to considering that their own life is "free" and Soviet life "regimented" that they cannot at once grasp a viewpoint which holds the exact opposite.  Yet even the casual observer of human beings today in the Soviet Union notices that while they have certain characteristics in common they are by no means regimented into uniformity, but show a vivid individuality at least as great as is found anywhere in the world.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 287
 
STALIN:  You say that in order to build our socialist society we sacrificed personal liberty and suffered privations.  Your question suggests that socialist society denies personal liberty.  That is not true.  Of course, in order to build something new one must economize, accumulate resources, reduce one's consumption for a time and borrow from others.  If one wants to build a house one saves up money, cuts down consumption for a time, otherwise the house would never be built.  How much more true is this when it is a matter of building a new human society!  We had to cut down consumption somewhat for a time, collect the necessary resources, and exert a great effort.  This is exactly what we did and we built the socialist society.
            But we did not build this society in order to restrict personal liberty but in order that the human individual may feel really free.  We built it for the sake of real personal liberty, liberty without quotation marks.  It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.  Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home, and of bread.  Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
Stalin, J. The Stalin-Howard Interview. New York: International Publishers, 1936, p. 13
 
            We are taught to believe that the freedom allowed in a democratic nation is better than anything else in the world, including the freedom in a socialist republic.  How can this be true when there is always a ruling class who controls the wealth and has the power to order what is to be taught in the schools, suppress the press, dictate politics, and even sway the courts?  A student who criticizes the teachings in a capitalistic university unless his professor is broad-minded, is in danger of flunking.  If a journalist writes a truthful article directed against the status quo he runs chances of losing his job.  If a politician votes against measures favorable to the "financial interests" he will be defeated in the next election.  And if a worker is hauled into court--guilty or not guilty--and has no money to hire a shyster lawyer or bride a judge, he goes to prison.  Wherein lies the freedom or justice of such an order?  The difference between a socialist republic and a democratic capitalist country, is that in the former the worker is really free and the capitalist is suppressed, whereas in the latter the worker is educated to believe in the wonderful so-called liberties which he is lucky to have a taste of, and the capitalist is really the free man.  The worker in the Soviet Union does not have to be afraid of complaining to his "boss" or of criticizing factory conditions to the "shop committee," but if a worker did this same thing in a capitalist industry it would cost him his job.  The Soviet newspapers frequently receive letters from Russian workers presenting their objections to this or that.  These letters are not only printed, but the suggestions are welcome, contrary to general opinion.  Whereas the "Voice of the People" columns here are merely the feeble moan of a selected few.
Wright, Russell. One-Sixth of the World's Surface. Hammond, Ind., The Author, c1932, p. 118
 
 
FREEDOM IS DIFFERENT FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE
 
            When the means a production became the factory, the meaning of freedom slowly changed.  Freedom became to the owner the right to fix prices and wages, to the worker the right to drift from job to job, seeking an easier boss.  Freedom in government became the "right to choose one's rulers," not the right to own and rule.
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 289
 
MCCARTHY ERA EXHIBITED THE WORST US POLITICAL REPRESSION
 
Book cover
            The McCarthy era was a bad time for freedom in America.  Encompassing far more than the brief career of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, it was the most widespread episode of political repression in the history of the United States.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998
 
PEOPLE IN US TRIED FOR THEIR LITERATURE NOT FOR ACTUAL DEEDS
 
            These trials [the trials of socialists, Wobblies, and anarchists opposed to WWI] foreshadowed the anticommunist prosecutions of the Cold War in both their procedures and their outcomes.  In the IWW cases, for example, the government, as it was later to do in prosecuting the CP, based its case almost entirely on the organization's literature, rather than on its activities.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 54
 
            Still, the government did have to come up with some more positive evidence that Communists espoused the violent overthrow of the state.  It found it in the party's bookstores.  Political trials, because they often deal more with words than deeds, can sometimes be literary affairs.  In the Smith Act case, because it involved "teaching" as well as "advocating," was especially dense with texts.  They included the most incendiary passages in the works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and other communist heavies....
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 195
 
 
US GOVT OFFICIALS SUPPRESSED PEOPLE REGARDLESS OF THE LAW
 
            There were parallels as well between the outrages that accompanied the Palmer raids and those that took place during the McCarthy period.  These similarities were no accident; they occurred because it was not possible either in 1919 or in 1949 to clamp down on political agitation without seriously compromising freedom of speech and the rights of individuals.  It was, after all, not against the law to call for a proletarian revolution or, later, to be a Communist.  This lack of a clear statutory prohibition against what they wanted to suppress tempted officials like Hoover to operate in the murky area at the margins of legality.  Undoubtedly, they sometimes went over the edge, either because they exceeded their own authority or because laws they were trying to enforce did not forbid the activities they considered illegal.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 58
 
            The first raids took place on November 7, 1919, the second anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.  The main target was a left-wing immigrant group, the Union of Russian Workers, but Hoover and his men also picked up Emma Goldman and a few other top anarchists.  Neither the  violence that accompanied the raids nor such violations of civil liberties as beatings and warrantless arrests diminished the apparent popularity of the measures.
            The newly formed communist parties were the targets of the second roundup.  Undercover agents got orders to call meetings for the night of January 2, 1920, to facilitate the raids.  Again, there were massive violations of human rights and due process.  Somewhere between 6000 10,000 people were arrested in New York, Boston, Detroit, and 30 other cities, often without a warrant.  As a result, although the raids netted most of the nation's leading communist aliens, they also picked up nondeportable citizens and such innocent bystanders as the curiosity seeker in Newark who was arrested because he "looked like a radical."  Some of the detainees were beaten and others were held without hearings for weeks and even months, often in dangerously overcrowded facilities.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 59
 
 
            So, too, did the illegal behavior and injustice that suffused so much of what happened.  The process of destroying Communism seriously deformed American politics.  Countersubversion was not good for democracy.  The basic illegitimacy of the project tainted everything it touched.  From the FBI's illegal break-ins to the secrecy of the entertainment industry's blacklists to the ACLU board's refusal to except its members rejection of an anticommunist referendum, every public and private institution that fought communism resorted to lies and dirty tricks.  The hypocrisy was corrosive, laying the foundation for the widespread cynicism and apathy that suffuses contemporary political life.
            Nor has the blatant disregard for the rights of individuals that characterized the anticommunist crusade necessarily vanished from the scene.  It may in fact have intensified.  Certainly during the 1960s, the brutal repression practiced against such dissenting organizations as the Black Panthers built upon the foundations laid during the McCarthy era.  And it remains unclear, for example, whether the police state apparatus that J. Edgar Hoover and his allies tried to put into place has been entirely dismantled.  During the 1980s, the Bureau was still engaging in COINTELPRO-type operations against opponents of the Reagan administration's foreign policy in Central America.  National security, now as then, still cloaks this kind of illegitimate activity.
            The contempt for constitutional limitations that McCarthyism bred among its perpetrators has also continued to fester within the American polity.  It was, after all, HUAC's most famous alumnus, Richard Nixon, who mounted a COINTELPRO-type of offensive against the very structure of the American government during the Watergate years.  Nixon owed his career to the anti-communist crusade.  He won elections by red-baiting and gained a national reputation by pursuing Alger Hiss.  His political success conveyed respectability on the illicit practices he and his allies employed.  By the time he reached the White House, the secrecy and deceit that had marked his early triumphs had become routine.  He snooped on aides and rivals, authorized dirty tricks against domestic opponents, and illegally bombed a country (Cambodia) with which the United States was not at war.  These crimes were far more serious than the offense artifacts that someone like Clinton Jencks was charged with during McCarthy era.
            Nixon's subversive activities were not merely the excesses of an out-of-control politician.  They had been nurtured in a system that, from the 1940s on, had justified the illegitimate use of state power against the supposed enemies of the state.  Nixon simply identified himself with the state and carried on business as usual.  Watergate was, thus, the logical result of the tendency to insulate affairs of state from the Constitution.  During the McCarthy era, that tendency nullified the First Amendment; during Watergate it overrode much of the rest of the Constitution.  Though Nixon was forced from office, there was no repudiation of the mentality that tempted him to break the law in the name of some greater national purpose.
            The equally illegal Iran-Contra operation reveals how deeply engrained that propensity for criminal behavior had become.  Ronald Reagan's top advisers--and possibly the president himself--knowingly contravened Congress's express prohibition on supplying arms to the Nicaraguan Contras and funded the operation by an illegal deal to trade arms for hostages in the Middle East.  Like Nixon, they tried to cover it up.  And like the protagonists of the McCarthy era, they tried to justify it in terms of national security.  To the extent, then, that the secret and illegal use of state power for illegitimate purposes became routinized during the McCarthy era, it is clear that the anticommunist crusade contributed to the undermining of respect for lawful procedures at the very highest levels of government.  Ultimately, it may well be that the sleaziness McCarthyism introduced to American politics constitutes its main legacy.
            ... the process through which McCarthyism came to dominate American politics is infinitely replicable.  The demonization of politically marginalized groups and the use of state power to repress them goes on all the time, as does the willingness of so many important individuals and institutions to collaborate with the process.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 413
 
            With the advent of war [World War I] anything German became anathema.  Teaching of the language was banned in most schools; Beethoven & Bach disappeared from symphony programs; sauerkraut was renamed liberty cabbage.  The fact that most brewers were of German nationality was used by the Anti-Saloon League and its intemperate allies to help push the 18th Amendment through a few more state legislatures, enough to make prohibition inevitable.  The suppression of the International Workers in the World (IWW) was given new impetus with the charge (belatedly disproven) that the union had "enemy funding."  With the passage, in quick succession, of the Espionage Act (1917), the Sedition Act (1918), and the Alien Deportation Act (1918), pacifism became disloyalty, complaints about wages or working conditions were called "seditious utterances," and neighborhood quarrels or ballroom brawls were elevated to the level of treason.
Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. New York: Norton, c1991, p. 70
 
            The May 1917 Selective Service Act required that all males between the ages of 21 and 30 register for the draft.  Convinced that many young men had failed to sign up, and aware that a number of others had deserted once they were inducted, Secretary of War Newton Baker and Attorney General Gregory gave Bureau of Investigation Chief, Bielaski, permission to conduct a number of small experimental "roundups" in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Boston.  Pleased with the results, Bielaski decided to try something more ambitious.  On Sept. 3, 1918, 35 BI agents, 2000 American Protective League [a kind of right wing vigilante group] operatives, an equal number of military personnel, and several hundred policeman fanned out over New York City, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Newark.  At bayonet point, they confronted men on street corners and streetcars and yanked them from barber chairs, theaters, pool halls, hotel lobbies, and offices, demanding that each produce either a draft-registration card or a birth certificate proving him too young or too old for the draft.  Those who didn't happen to be carrying such documentation, the majority, were herded into hastily constructed "corrals" and held until their status was determined.  Overly enthusiastic--the New York catch included a 75 year old cripple on crutches--the raiders arrested far more than had been provided for, and many were confined in standing-room-only quarters without food, water, or sanitary facilities for up to two days.
            [Footnote]: Exactly how many "slackers" were apprehended remains unclear.  BI Chief Bielaski having issued various contradictory figures.  In his final report he claimed that out of 50,000 arrested, 1,505 had been inducted into military service and 15,000 referred to their draft boards.  However, one of his assistants injudiciously admitted that out of every 200 arrests, 199 were clearly mistakes.
Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. New York: Norton, c1991, p. 71
 
            It was O'Brian [a progressive Republican from Buffalo, New York, and special assistant to the Attorney General for war work] who prosecuted the most important Espionage Act cases, including that of the Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was given a ten-year sentence for an antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio (O'Brian argued that the pacifist's utterances were not the "free speech" mentioned in the First Amendment).
Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. New York: Norton, c1991, p. 74
 
ROOSEVELT WAS QUITE REPRESSIVE WHEN HE WANTED TO BE
 
            Nonetheless, at those moments when Communists and their allies created problems for his administration, Roosevelt had few reservations about repressing them, especially if they interfered with national security or his own political career.  He was not a civil libertarian.  He was more than willing to spy on, harass, or prosecute any group or individual that opposed his policies.  Though he had refused to send the army into San Francisco to put down the maritime strike of 1934, he was quite prepared to throw its leader Harry Bridges out of the country a year later.  At times, especially when the CP turned against his foreign policy, the president could be quite ferocious.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 87
 
CPUSA LEADER WAS SENTENCED UNJUSTLY
 
            Recognizing that there was nothing to be gained by forcing the party’s leader [Browder] to serve out the remainder of his patently unfair sentence, Roosevelt released him from prison on May 16, 1942, on the grounds that it "will have a tendency to promote national unity."
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 103
 
LITTLE EVIDENCE AGAINST THE ROSENBERGS
 
            Because the Venona documents were too highly classified to be produced at a trial, the government had to build its case against Rosenberg on other evidence--of which there was little.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 177
ILLEGAL ACTIVITY WAS COMMITTED TO CONVICT THE ROSENBERGS
 
            The government's evidence against the Rosenbergs was not overwhelming, but given the political atmosphere in the spring of 1951 the guilty verdict was probably inevitable.  Nonetheless, the prosecution left little to chance and fixed the case.  Not only did it encourages witnesses to embellish their testimony, but it also colluded directly (and illegally) with Judge Kaufman to ensure that he would impose the death penalty.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 178
 
            McCarthyism functioned along a spectrum that extended from such relatively minor damages as the withdrawal of a judgeship from Alger Hiss's lawyer to the judicial murder of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 305
 
TRIAL AGAINST CPUSA LEADERS WAS UNJUST AND RIGGED
 
            The defense attorneys challenged the government's entire case.  Time and again they questioned the admissibility of the books and articles that Budenz, Philbrick, and the other government witnesses were introducing.  Most of these works had been written long before the passage of the Smith Act and were hardly representative of the party's current thinking.  Nor were the selections an accurate sampling of the CP's basic philosophy.  But Judge Medina overruled each objection.
            Medina was hardly an unbiased arbiter....   Not surprisingly, he handled the party's lawyers and their clients with overt hostility, treating their objections as delaying tactics and openly baiting both attorneys and witnesses....  It was not a decorous proceeding.
            Nor was it a fair one.  Whether through bugs or informers, the FBI got inside information about defense strategy that it passed to the prosecutors.  In the courtroom, Medina cut off cross-examinations when they appeared to be damaging the government witnesses and he refused to let the CP present the same kind of evidence that the prosecution had.  The government used the judge's bias to good advantage....
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 198
 
MCCARTHYISM WAS ACTUALLY HOOVERISM BECAUSE THE FBI RAN IT ALL
 
            Had observers known in the 1950s what they have learned since the 1970s, When the Freedom of Information Act Opened the Bureau's files, "McCarthyism" would probably be called "Hooverism."  For the FBI was the bureaucratic heart of the McCarthy era.  It designed and ran much of the machinery of political repression, shaping the loyalty programs, criminal prosecutions, and undercover operations that pushed the communist issue to the center of American politics during early years of the Cold War.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 203
 
            Though the bureau often tried to hide its tracks, the evidence that remains makes it clear that the FBI was the single most important component of the anti-communist crusade and the institution most responsible for its successes--and its inequities.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 239
 
            McCarthy was more flamboyant than his fellow crusaders, but the dishonesty, opportunism, and disregard for civil liberties that he practiced were commonplace within the rest of the anticommunist network.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 265
 
            "McCarthyism" was, from start to finish, the creation of one man, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. New York: Norton, c1991, p. 380
 
 
THE FBI WAS HIGHLY POLITICAL AND BIASED
 
            It would be hard to exaggerate the importance Hoover and his men placed on maintaining the FBI's reputation as a professional, nonpartisan investigating agency.  That perception was the key to its power.  By insisting that it was above political considerations, the Bureau insured that it would receive support from all constituencies and that few restrictions would be placed on its activities.  That image, of course, was a myth.  Far from being an impartial agency that simply looked for facts, the Bureau had a very definite political agenda that it sought to implement in any way it could.  And many of the FBI's activities went far beyond what it was authorized to do.
            In order to maintain its reputation, therefore, the Bureau had to devote considerable resources to concealing what it was doing.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 218
 
FBI WORKED HARD TO HIDE ITS CRIMES
 
            The public occasionally caught glimpses of these activities.  In 1945, just as the government was preparing its case against the journalists and officials involved in the leaking of classified documents to the left-wing magazine Amerasia, one of the defendants discovered that FBI agents had illegally entered his apartment...
            The materials, which described contacts between Americans and Russians, contained nothing that endangered the United States but quite a lot that embarrassed the FBI.  They showed that the Bureau was improperly concerned about people's political activities and had investigated and wire-tapped a wide range of private citizens,....
            Never again.  The FBI immediately took steps to prevent a recurrence.  It intensified its efforts both to protect its files and to ensure that they would no longer reveal evidence of its agents' misdeeds.  Actually, the Bureau had long been doctoring its records to conceal unauthorized investigations and unlawful practices.  Some files were intentionally written to be opaque, others were altered or destroyed.  In still other cases, agents simply did not report illegal activities like break-ins to their superiors or, when they did, used complicated filing procedures to hide that information.  In response to the Coplon trial, Hoover created even more misleading filing procedures and developed ways to ensure that information about his agency's more questionable activities would not come in court.
            The FBI's damage containment was not limited to falsifying its records, however.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 222
 
            When it became clear that the administration was not going to act, the National Lawyers Guild mounted its own investigation.  It analyzed the FBI materials that had been released at the Coplon trial and issued a report in January 1950 noting the illegalities of the Bureau's operations and again calling on Truman to investigate.  "On a strictly numerical basis," the National Lawyers Guild report concluded, "the FBI may commit more federal crimes than it ever detects."
            Many of those crimes had been committed against the National Lawyers Guild.  The Bureau had a protracted vendetta against the Guild.  From 1940 on, FBI agents routinely burglarized its offices and planted illegal wire taps on its phones and on those of its leading members.... the FBI's buggings and burglaries ensured that it had full information about the Guild's strategy.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 223
 
            The Bureau used more intrusive and often illegal methods to keep track of what the people it was investigating did outside the public eye.  It rifled through their trash, intercepted their mail, broke into their homes and offices, and planted illegal microphones and wiretaps.  These procedures seem to have been routine.  Almost every FBI file I saw contained some evidence of an illegal break-in, trash cover, or electronic surveillance.
            Illegal entries were common.  Between 1947 and 1951 the FBI burglarized the National Lawyer Guild's Washington offices at least 14 times.  The Communist party's New York headquarters was broken into so routinely that, as one agent later noted, it had been "burgled  more than a fur company in the Bronx."
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 225
 
FBI USES DIRTY TRICKS IN COINTELPRO
 
            In the mid-'50s the FBI began to use its undercover operations for harassment as well as information gathering.  To a large extent, this switch, which was formalized by the August 1956 creation of the Counter-intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, as it was called, was just a codification and intensification of what the Bureau was already doing.  Prompted by a series of recent Supreme Court decisions that had thrown out many of the government's cases against the CP, Hoover and his men decided to use dirty tricks instead of criminal prosecutions to neutralize the party.  Informers were to become agents provocateurs, to spread rumors and promote dissension within the ranks.  "Snitch jackets," falsified documents that created the suspicion that someone was an FBI informer, were planted on party stalwarts.  There were also leaks to the media, anonymous letters, IRS audits, attempts to get people fired, and disruptions of public activities by encouraging building owners to cancel meetings....  As with so many of the FBI's other countersubversive activities, COINTELPRO was secret and unauthorized.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 227
 
MILITARY PEOPLE WERE TREATED UNJUSTLY
 
            Enlisted men charged with disloyalty and threatened with less than honorable discharges did not always get hearings; and, if they did, were not always told what they were accused of.  Sometimes they were not even notified of the outcome of their hearings.  The Army had gotten so much negative publicity when it reversed the favorable decisions of a few hearing panels that it simply stopped telling servicemen what those panels had decided.  The individuals involved could appeal, but blindly, since they would not know until the moment of their discharge whether or not they have been cleared.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 278
 
INFORMERS WERE USED ILLEGALLY BY THE FBI
 
            At the insistence of the FBI, which was, of course, hiding its dirty laundry as well as protecting its informants, the identities of informers were invariably withheld.  Even the loyalty boards that handled these cases did not get this information.  Often all they knew was that the material on which they based their judgments came from, in the Bureau's terminology, a "reliable" source....
            The injustices involved were obvious.  Without knowing the source of the charges against them, employees who were trying to disprove them could not effectively counter those allegations and demonstrate their falsity.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 279
 
            Few loyalty panels gave employees a chance to confront witnesses against them.  Though they recognized that the failure to let people confront their accusers did, in the words of Seth Richardson, the first head of the Truman administration's Loyalty Review Board, "give rise to most serious questions in the minds of the general public," they refused to do so.  In their eyes, national security overrode fair play.  The 1956 report of the Defense Department's personnel security officials presents the argument in a typically apocalyptic fashion.  "No American welcomes the necessity for the non-disclosure of sources of information.  But a necessity it is.  The necessity is real because the conspiracy is real.  The struggle is for the survival of a whole nation.  Without the confidential informant that struggle could not be successful."
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 280
 
            The federal attorneys who built their cases on the testimony of professional informers like Matusow may have suspected that these people embellished their stories, but it was so hard to find any usable evidence against Communists that the prosecutors shut their eyes to the perversions of justice that their reliance on such witnesses entailed.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 349
 
FAIR HEARINGS INVOLVING SERIOUS TOPICS WERE DENIED
 
            In its 2-1 decision early in 1950, the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals ruled, as it and other tribunals were doing in similar employment cases (and in deportation cases as well), that because losing a job was not a criminal punishment, Bailey had no right to a fair hearing.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 281
 
POLITICS RATHER THAN SECURITY RAN THE LOYALTY PROGRAM
 
            Since the communist threat, such as it was, diminished even as the security measures that were being taken to counter it increased in severity, it was obvious that politics, not security, drove the nation's loyalty programs.  Such had been the case from the start.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 287
 
SUPPRESSION OF FREE PRESS IN USA
 
            ... Instead, the government took on the China Daily News and its directors.
            The paper's ostensible crime was that it ran ads for the banks that handled these remittances [money sent back by American Chinese to their relatives in China], these ads serving, so the prosecution claimed, as "the instrument used by these defendants...to aid and assist Communist China."  The paper's real crime had occurred on its editorial pages, where it continued to support the mainland regime and offer Chinese Americans a more nuanced perspective on East Asia than that of Chiang Kai-shek.  Prosecuting it for trading with the enemy long after it had halted the illicit advertisements was simply a useful way to silence what the government called "nothing more than a mouthpiece for Communist China in this country."
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 377
 
OUSTER OF CPUSA MEMBERS DRAMATICALLY WEAKENED THE LABOR MOVEMENT
 
            Labor's rupture with the left hastened its transformation from a movement to a bureaucracy.  The radical organizers who had built and sustained the CIO were ousted, replaced by less imaginative individuals with neither their predecessors' vision nor their drive.  Labour also lost its political independence.  It operated as a junior partner within the American system, seeking higher wages and benefits for its members and foregoing any attempt to push for major social and economic change....  The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act was only part of a larger corporate effort to destroy the legitimacy and power of American unions.  Nonetheless, the ouster of its left-wingers weakened the labor movement by limiting its options and depriving it of just those elements that might have offered a stronger defense of collective action.
            The Communists and their allies were, after all, labor's most militant voices.  Their ideology encouraged them to champion workers against bosses.  They understood how capitalism operated and were often willing to challenge management at every level.  They were, for example, among the first labor leaders to raise such crucial issues as deindustrialization and runaway plants.  In addition, because they recognized the importance of retaining the loyalty of their rank-and-file members, they tried to create a broader community that would keep those members involved with the union.  A typical left-wing local, like the one Harold Christoffel organized at Allis-Chalmers, ran dances, held classes, and aggressively pursued grievances.  Moreover, as long as the CP retained a presence, its opponents also had to work the grassroots.
            Once the left-wingers were gone, organized labor lost its dynamism.  It became more centralized, corrupt, and distant from its members.  Not surprisingly, those members responded in kind.  They lost interest in their unions, stopped going to meetings, and no longer viewed belonging to a union as central to their own identity.  That apathy forced the labor movement to rely on federal intervention instead of the support of its own members.  When the political climate became hostile to organized labor, as it did during the Reagan administration, the AFL-CIO was blindsided.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 382
 
NOTED PEOPLE ARE BLACKLISTED UNJUSTLY
 
            By the time Paul Robeson became the first person barred from American television early in 1950, the most charismatic black actor and singer of his generation had already become a nonperson.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 397
 
            The anti-communist crusade and the black list that it imposed ended Hollywood's brief flirtation with the real world and ensured that the fledgling television industry would never even begin one.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 398
 
MEDIA IN MCCARTHY ERA WAS STERILE AND ESCAPIST
 
            McCarthyism did, thus, reach the screen,...
            Equally conservative, though less obviously political, were the messages that the ordinary genre films of the period purveyed: the good guy/bad guy polarization of the Westerns, the unthinking patriotism of the war movies, the global triumphalism of the Bible epics, and the constricted sexuality of the romantic comedies.  Hollywood was selling an escapist oeuvre that indirectly sanctioned the ostensibly homogenized society of Cold War America by keeping blacks, workers, and uppity women off the screen.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 398-399
 
            Most of the entertainment that reached the nation's living rooms during the 1950s supported the status quo.  Quiz shows celebrated capital accumulation.  Westerns and crime stories offered simplistic morality tales that got resolved by violence.  Sitcoms reinforced traditional gender roles.  And what passed for documentaries were often recycled World War II propaganda films produced by the armed forces.  The news was equally oversimplified and militaristic.  Except when they handled special events like the Army-McCarthy hearings, networks rarely had the resources to cover stories live.  They usually relied on government briefings and official footage, especially when dealing with warfare and foreign policy.  Public affairs programming was predictably bland.  The networks consciously decided not to run editorials in order to avoid controversy.  Though television inherited talk-show panels from radio, it narrowed the range of opinions expressed on them.  Moreover, the conviviality that suffused these programs trivialized the issues they dealt with and reinforced the notion that Americans had nothing to disagree about.
            Not much has changed.  Though the mass media did open up slightly during the 1960s, the patterns of institutional restraint and self-censorship established during the McCarthy era are still around.  So, too, are the limitations on the range of issues that receive exposure.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998, p. 400
 
WHAT ARE KULAKS AND WHAT DO THEY DO
 
            Farming, especially, was in the hands of small owners, the strongest of whom were petty capitalists, called kulaks, who profited and grew by exploiting other peasants and cheating the state.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 13
 
            The bourgeoisie has always maintained that the Soviet collectivization `destroyed the dynamic forces in the countryside' and caused a permanent stagnation of agriculture.  It describes the kulaks as individual `dynamic and entrepeneurial' peasants.  This is nothing but an ideological fable destined to tarnish socialism and glorify exploitation.  To understand the class struggle that took place in the USSR, it is necessary to try to have a more realistic image of the Russian kulak. 
            At the end of the nineteenth century, a specialist on Russian peasant life wrote as follows:
            `Every village commune has always three or four regular kulaks, as also some half dozen smaller fry of the same kidney....  They want neither skill nor industry; only promptitude to turn to their own profit the needs, the sorrows, the sufferings and the misfortunes of others...  Stepniak’s The Russian Peasantry, quoted in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? second edition (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 563 [footnote]
            ...`The distinctive characteristic of this class...is the hard, unflinching cruelty of a thoroughly educated man who has made his way from poverty to wealth, and has come to consider money-making, by whatever means, as the only pursuit to which a rational being should devote himself.'
Stepniak’s The Russian Peasantry, quoted in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? second edition (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 564
Martens, Ludo.  Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 62 [p. 52 on the NET]
 
            [December 1929 speech by Gelman to the First Congress of Shock Brigades]
            ...On the night shift a shock worker fell into the machine, and when he was being beaten by this Jagger, when his legs were being broken, when he was being boiled in the hot dye, a worker standing nearby did not stop the machine.  When the matter was investigated, it turned out that [the latter] was a well-to-do kulak.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov. Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 32
 
            Dr. Dillon, whose testimony is of unimpeachable authority, declared in 1918 that "this type of man was commonly termed a kulak, or fist, to symbolize his utter callousness to pity or ruth.   And of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall any so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.   In the revolutionary horrors of 1905 and 1917 he was the ruling spirit--a fiend incarnate."
            [The Eclipse of Russia by Dillon, 1918, Page 67]
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 466 & 564
 
            Many illustrative examples of relentless economic oppression by kulaks may be gathered from Russian sources.  Yet the kulaks as a class may be said to have done no more than would have been considered “sound business” by the individualist economists of Victorian England; namely, habitually to take advantage of the economic weakness of those with whom they made their bargains; always to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market; paying the lowest wage at which they could hire the services of those who begged for employment; and extracting the utmost usury from those who voluntarily accepted their loans.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, pp. 466 & 565
 
STALIN MOST QUALIFIED SUCCESSOR TO LENIN
 
            Stalin had reasons for thinking himself Lenin's most loyal disciple and natural heir, in spite of that "testament."  He had been a Bolshevik 20 years, a member of Lenin’s central committees for 10 years, and had served directly under Lenin for six stormy years of revolution.  He could easily consider that last conflict as a misunderstanding due to Lenin's illness, which could have been cleared up if Lenin had recovered.  All the other leaders had had worse clashes.  Trotsky had opposed Lenin for years and only joined him at the moment of revolution.  Zinoviev and Kamenev had been traitors in the very hour of the uprising, opposing it and giving its details in an opposition newspaper.  Lenin had forgiven them all.  Compared with their sins against Lenin, Stalin's may well have seemed to him trivial.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 18
 
            Stalin, whose personality is without any Napoleonic trait, was never­theless the man who closed the revolutionary epoch and directed the rebuilding of the country.  His enemies accuse him of having betrayed the revolution, which is definitely unjust.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 49
 
            ...Stalin achieved colossal results [at the 14th Party Congress].  If not for him, the cadres would not have pulled together.  The Bolshevik cadres would not simply obey orders at the wave of a wand.  They had to be convinced.  The same applied to the old Bolsheviks.  Habitually they deferred to no authority or command.  They regarded themselves as the equal of an ideological leader....  In 1924 discussion against Trotsky was proceeding full tilt.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 135
 
            Stalin used to say that if Lenin were alive today, surely he would speak differently--there is no doubt about that.  He would surely think up something that has not yet occurred to us.  But the fact that Stalin was his successor was very fortunate.  Very fortunate indeed.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 155
 
            After Lenin, Stalin was the strongest politician.  Lenin considered him the most reliable, the one whom you could count upon.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 156
 
            You can't compare me with him [Stalin].  After Lenin, no one person, not me, or Kalinin, or Dzerzhinsky, or anyone else could manage to do even a tenth of what Stalin accomplished.  That's a fact.  I criticize Stalin on certain questions of a quite significant theoretical character, but as a political leader he fulfilled a role which no one else could undertake.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 181
 
            Stalin!  The more they assail him, the higher he rises.  A struggle is going on.  They fail to see the greatness in Stalin.  After Lenin there was no more persevering, more talented, greater man than Stalin!  After the death of Lenin, no one understood the situation better than Stalin....  Stalin fulfilled his role, an exceptionally important, very difficult role.
            Let us assume he made mistakes.  But name someone who made fewer mistakes.  Of all the people involved in historic events, who held the most correct position?  Given all the shortcomings of the leadership of that time, he alone coped with the task then confronting the country....
            Despite Stalin's mistakes, I see in him a great, an indispensable man!  In his time there was no equal!
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 183
 
            However, if we wish to determine what Stalin really meant in the history of Communism, then he must for the present be regarded as being, next to Lenin, the most grandiose figure.  He did not substantially develop the ideas of Communism, but he championed them and brought them to realization in a society and a state.  He did not construct an ideal society...but he transformed backward Russia into an industrial power.... 
            Viewed from the standpoint of success and political adroitness, Stalin is hardly surpassed by any statesman of his time.
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 190
 
            Stalin--"rude,"--sometimes bureaucratic and limited as a Marxist theorist--had a realistic plan for the construction of socialism, and he approached the task with determination, courage, and skill.  For all his faults he was the best of the Party leaders available.  And this was the opinion of the majority of the Party.  Stalin's report and reply to the discussion at the Thirteenth Congress in 1924 show that he had the Party's confidence.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 52
 
            Certainly before 1921 he showed no pretension to the leadership, and was content to serve.  He was proud, sensitive, but not personally ambitious.  After removal of Lenin he, like many others, must have wondered about the future of the party.  Of the most prominent members Trotsky, towards whom he felt strong antipathy, would endanger unity and the others were not remotely of his caliber.  Thus it would seem that during 1922 or 1923 Stalin began to consider seriously that in the interests of the party and communist Russia he would have to take over the leadership, and once having reached this decision he pursued his goal quietly and implacably.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 194
 
            He [Stalin] cast himself in the role of leader because none of the other party leaders was remotely capable of assuming it, and because he had developed a burning sense of his mission to lead Russia.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 222
 
            At every stage of his career he had grown in stature, showing the confidence and ability to meet greater challenges.  He possessed a natural authority, an inner strength and courage.  He was not overwhelmed by the responsibilities that now lay upon him as sole ruler over a nation of 200 million people, and at a time when its survival was threatened.  He did not play safe, evading dangers which might lead to destruction; on the contrary, although cautious by nature, he pursued his objectives with an implacable single-mindedness, undeterred by risk....
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 235
 
            My father said that an attentive reading of Lenin's "Political Testament" shows that he saw nobody but Stalin as fit to succeed him.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 136
 
 
            Stalin did not rise to supreme power exclusively by means of the levers of bureaucratic manipulation.  Certainly he had an advantage inasmuch as he could replace local party secretaries with persons of his choosing.  It is also true that the regime in the party allowed him to control debates in the Central Committee and at Party Congresses.  But such assets would have been useless to him if he had not been able to convince the Central Committee and the Party Congress that he was a suitable politician for them to follow.  Not only as an administrator but also as a leader,in thought and action,he seemed to fit these requirements better than anyone else.
Service, Robert.  Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 246
 
COLLECTIVIZATION AND MODERNIZATION WERE DEFINITELY NEEDED
 
            For, in 1928, the old-style Russian farming could not even feed the cities; it could never provide food for rapid industrialization or for expanding education and culture.  Farming, along with industry, had to be modernized.
            Russian peasants, in 1928, farmed by methods of the Middle Ages, methods that even went back to Bible times.  They lived in villages and walked long distances to fields....  One-fourth of the peasants did not own a horse; less than half had a team of two horses or oxen.  So plowing was seldom and shallow, often by homemade wooden plow, without a metal share.  Sowing was by hand, the seed cast from an apron to the earth, where birds and winds carried much away....
            Social life was equally medieval.  The Old Man ruled the home.  Sons married, brought their wives to the patriarchal homestead and worked the farm that their fathers still bossed.  So farm practice remained old-fashioned, unchanged by young views.  Much of it was determined by religion.  Holy days fixed dates for sowing, religious processions sprinkled fields with holy water to insure fertility, rain was sought by processions and prayers.  The ultra-pious regarded tractors as "devil machines"--priests actually led peasants to stone them.  Any fight for modern farming thus became a fight "against religion."...
            By 1928, the farms had recovered from war devastation; the total crops equaled those before the war.  Far less grain, however, was reaching the cities.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 34
 
            Life magazine said, March 29, 1943, in a special number: "Whatever the cost of farm collectivization...these large farm units...made possible the use of machinery...which doubled output...(and) released millions of workers for industry.  Without them...Russia could not have built the industry that turned out the munitions that stopped the German army."
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 46
 
            They say Lenin would have accomplished collectivization with fewer victims.  But how could it have been done any other way?  I renounce none of it.  We carried out collectivization relentlessly; our measures were absolutely correct.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 146
 
CHUEV:  Some writers now argue that Stalin and Molotov declared they would not rush ahead with collectivization, but as a matter of fact they...
MOLOTOV:  We couldn't have delayed it any longer.  Fascism was emerging.  Soon it would have been too late.  War was already looming on the horizon.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 245
 
            I believe our success in collectivization was more significant than victory in World War II.  If we had not carried it through, we would not have won the war.  By the start of the war we already had a mighty socialist state with its own economy, industry, and so forth.
            I personally designated districts where kulaks were to be removed....
            We exiled 400,000 kulaks.  My commission did its job....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 248
 
            Molotov asserts that the members of the former employing and exploiting classes are still numerous, a fact that is indisputable when we remember that there were millions of rich peasants exploiting hired labor in the Soviet Union in 1928, in addition to millions of merchants and shopkeepers.
Campbell, J. R. Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 139
 
            This was a crisis in grain farming which was bound to be followed by a crisis in livestock farming....
            The only escape from the predicament was a change to large-scale farming which would permit the use of tractors and agricultural machines and secure a several-fold increase of the marketable surplus of grain.  The country had the alternative: either to adopt large-scale capitalist farming, which would have meant the ruin of the peasant masses, destroyed the alliance between the working-class and the peasantry, increased the strength of the kulaks, and led to the downfall of Socialism in the countryside; or to take the course of amalgamating the small peasant holdings into large Socialist farms, collective farms, which would be able to use tractors and other modern machines for a rapid advancement of grain farming and a rapid increase in the marketable surplus of grain.
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 287
 
            Land redistribution greatly multiplied the number of small-farm holders till they aggregated 25 million by 1928.   Although possessed of land and relieved of rents they did not prosper, for in fact they had no more land to use than under the Czar.   They produced no more.   The government in consequence failed to get grain for export or to feed the cities properly.   Their own area had not increased under the new system and the small farmers had proved to be less efficient producers than the landlords.   Thus the proletarian dictatorship faced a serious crisis created by the peasants.
            It met it by decreeing what it had hitherto avoided, the extensive socialization of agriculture.   Not that Marxianism did not require it, but a situation dominated by peasants had been too difficult.   Now, however, action was imperative.   As Stalin put it, they could not continue part socialistic and part capitalistic.   The individualistic peasant had to be proletarianized or the revolution lost.   So the Five-year Plan was launched with agricultural reconstruction as its most audacious and difficult task.
Davis, Jerome. The New Russia. New York: The John Day company, c1933, p. 54
 
            We have no wish to minimize, still less to seek to justify, this ruthless expropriation and removal of the occupiers and cultivators who were stigmatized as kulaks, any more than we do the equally ruthless expulsion, little over a century ago, of the crofters from so much of the Scottish Highlands, or the economic ruin of so many small-holders that accompanied the statutory enclosure of the English commons.  The policy of compulsorily substituting sheep-runs and large farms for tiny holdings may have been economically sound in the one case as in the other.   The Soviet Government may well have been right in concluding that only by a wide-spread amalgamation of the independent peasants holdings could any general mechanization of agriculture be made practicable; and that only by such mechanization could the aggregate production of foodstuffs be made equal to the nation's requirements.   In fact, the partial failure of crops in 1931 and 1932 (though, as we have already explained, far removed from anything to be properly called a famine) brought many thousands of small peasants within reach of actual starvation; and it may well have seemed that, in these cases at any rate, nothing but removal could save them from death at the next failure of crops, or even before the next harvest.   It is, indeed, not so much the policy of removal that is open to criticism, as the manner in which it appears to have been carried out, and the unsatisfactory conditions of life into which the victims seem to have been, without judicial trial or any effective investigation, arbitrarily deported.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 471
 
TWO VIEWS IN PARTY ON COLLECTIVIZATION AND KULAKS
 
            The Right wing of the Communist Party held that kulaks should be allowed to get rich and that socialism could win through state ownership of industries.  The left wing was for forcing peasants rapidly into collective farms under state control.  Actual policy shifted for several years under pressure of different groups in the Party.  The policy finally adopted was to draw peasants into collective farms by offering government credits and tractors, to freeze the kulaks out by high taxes and, later, to "abolish them as a class."...
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 35
 
            The "Socialized property created by the revolution" could not have triumphed automatically over the capitalist elements.  It could only triumph in virtue of planned leadership, carrying through a definite policy, and before that policy could be operated two rival policies had to be brushed aside. 
            There was the policy of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky, which meant the abandonment of Socialist attack on the capitalist elements of the country, the slowing down of the rate of development in industry, reliance on the individual rather than the collective farms.  If this policy had been carried out, the grain difficulties would never have been overcome, industry would have been poorly developed, and the capitalist elements would have been able to dictate to the Soviet Government.
            A still more spectacular fiasco would have resulted had the Party and the Government adopted the proposal of Trotsky and Zinoviev and attacked the rich peasants before the alliance with the middle peasantry had been cemented, and before the grain production of the rich peasant could be replaced by that of the Soviet and collective farms.
            If either of those variants had been accepted the "conditions of socialized property" would not have saved the country from disaster.
Campbell, J. R. Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 82
 
 
STALIN DID NOT USE FORCEFUL COLLECTIVIZATION OR CAUSE FOOD SHORTAGES
 
            American commentators usually speak of collective farms as enforced by Stalin; they even assert that he deliberately starved millions of peasants to make them join collectives.  This is untrue.  I traveled the countryside in those years and know what occurred.  Stalin certainly promoted the change and guided it.  But the drive for collectivization went so much faster than Stalin planned that there were not enough machines ready for the farms, nor enough bookkeepers and managers.  Hopeful inefficiency combined with a panic slaying of livestock under kulak urging, and with two dry years, brought serious food shortage in 1932, two years after Stalin's alleged pressures.  Moscow brought the country through by stern nationwide rationing.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 35
 
            Stalin, half peasant by origin, added: "the peasant is not going to be driven to Socialism by any mystical phrase, but only by his self-interest.  If we show him that with commonly owned machines he can harvest more and earn more, he will accept it."
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 151
 
            As early as March 2, 1930, even Stalin recoiled from the chaos and wrote his famous "Dizziness with Success" article, in which he called for a halt to forced collectivization and ordered a reduction in the use of violence against peasants....
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 109
 
            In view of what followed it is interesting to note that much of his [Stalin] success in the villages, and therefore of his victory over the Opposition, was due to his obstinate refusal to put pressure too soon upon the richer peasants.  Patience, willingness to bide his time and await the psychological moment, is another outstanding quality of Joseph Stalin.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 136
 
            The basic success of the collective movement, Stalin said, lies in the fact that it is largely voluntary on the part of the peasants.  To force them further would be a fatal and autocratic error and would imply a rupture between the Communist Party and the masses it controls, whereas in reality its strength and its whole reason for existence are based upon a close connection with and work for the masses.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 183
 
            Thus it can be seen, notwithstanding the assertions to the contrary of the Trotskyites and the bourgeois intelligentsia, who are very 'clever' and yet stupid, it was Stalin and the Central Committee who were against any form of coercion in the matter of collectivization.
Brar, Harpal. Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 180
 
            [Report from the commander of the Siberian Military District to Voroshilov, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Soviet, April 30, 1930, regarding directives forbidding use of the military in operations against the kulaks]
            Based on your [Voroshilov] directives of Feb. 2 and 5 of this year, on Feb. 6 the Revolutionary Military Council of the district issued orders to divisional commanders and military divisional commanders categorically forbidding the use of military formations in the dekulakization operations.
Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 383
 
            [Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party March 26, 1932]
            In many regions we can observe the collectivization of cattle and smaller livestock by forcible means.  This practice is a flagrant violation of repeatedly issued directives by the party's Central Committee as well as of the provisions contained in the statute of the agricultural artel.
            The Central Committee stresses that only enemies of the kolkhozes would permit forced collectivization of livestock from individual kolkhoz members.  The Central Committee emphasizes that forced requisition of kolkhoz members' cattle and smaller livestock is contrary to the party's political program.  The goal of the party is that every member of the kolkhoz have a cow, some smaller livestock, and poultry.  The further expansion and development of kolkhozes should occur through breeding and raising younger animals and/or by purchasing cattle by the farmers.
            The central committee of the All-Union Communist Party proposes to all party, Soviet, and kolkhoz organizations:
            1.  Cease all attempts of forced collectivization of cattle and small livestock belonging to kolkhoz members and expel from the party those guilty of violating Central Committee directives,
            2.  Organize aid for the members of the kolkhozes who have no cattle or small livestock to purchase and raise young animals for their own personal needs.
Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 388
 
            [Minutes of the March 23, 1932, meeting of a Politburo commission and the final version of a resolution on the forced collectivization of livestock]
            Resolved: "The practice of collectivizing cattle and small livestock belonging to individual collective farmers by means of actual coercion has been noted in several regions, in flagrant violation of the repeated directives of the Central Committee of the party and the regulation governing agricultural co-operative associations.  The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party most strongly emphasizes that only enemies of collective farms could allow the forced collectivization of cattle and small livestock belonging to individual collective farmers."
            The Central Committee would like to clarify that the practice of forced confiscation of cattle and small livestock from collective farmers has nothing to do with the policy; the aim of the party consists in seeing that each collective farmer has his own cattle, small livestock, and poultry.  The further expansion and development of collective farms should progress only by means of allowing these collective farmers to rear young animals.
Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 389
 
 
            A few facts.
            1.  The success of our collective farm policy is to be explained, among other things, by the fact that this policy is based on the collective farm movement being a voluntary one and on the recognition of the diversity of conditions existing in the various regions of the Soviet Union.  Collective farms cannot be set up by force.  To do so would be stupid and reactionary.  The collective farm movement must lean on the active support of the basic masses of the peasantry.  Forms of collective farm construction in the developed regions cannot be mechanically transplanted to the backward regions.  Do so would be stupid and reactionary.  Such a "policy" would discredit the idea of collectivization at one blow.  In determining the speed and methods of building collective farms we must carefully take into account the diversity of conditions prevailing in the various regions of the Soviet Union....
            But what do we sometimes find taking place in practice?  Can it be said that the voluntary principle and the principle of taking local peculiarities into account are not violated in a number of regions?  No, unfortunately, that cannot be said.  It is known, for example, that a number of the northern regions of the grain-importing belt, where favorable conditions for the immediate organization of collective farms are comparatively less than in the grain-bearing regions, not infrequently endeavor to replace the preparatory work for the organization of collective farms by bureaucratically decreeing the collective farm movement, by paper resolutions regarding the growth of collective farms, by the organization of collective farms, "on paper," farms which in reality do not yet exist, but regarding the "existence" of which there is a pile of braggart resolutions.  Or, let us take certain regions of Turkestan, where conditions favoring the immediate organization of collective farms are even less than in the northern oblasts of the grain-importing belt.  We know that in a number of regions of Turkestan there have already been attempts to "overtake and surpass" the advanced regions of the Soviet Union by resorting to threats of applying military force, by threatening to deprive the peasants who do not yet wish to enter the collective farms of irrigation water and of manufactured goods.
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 254
 
            What relation is there between this sergeant Prishibeiev’s [a person in one of Chekhov's plays who has the manners of the barracks and the drill ground] "policy" and the policy of the Party, which is based on the voluntary principle and on a regard for local peculiarities in collective farm construction?  It is obvious that they have nothing in common.
            Who benefits by these distortions, this bureaucratic decreeing of the collective farm movement, this wretched threatening of the peasants?  Nobody, but our enemies!
            What may be the result of these distortions?  The strengthening of our enemies and the discrediting of the collective farm movement idea....
            The question arises: who benefits by this stupid and harmful precipitancy?  Irritating the peasant-collective-farm member by "collectivizing" living premises, all the milk cattle, all the small livestock and the domestic poultry, when the grain problem is still unsolved, when the artel form of the collective farm is not yet consolidated--is it not obvious that such a "policy" can please  and benefit only our sworn enemies?  One such fiery "collectivizer" even went so far as to issue an instruction to the artel ordering "that within three days every single head of poultry in every household be registered," that special "commanders" be appointed to register and supervise, "to occupy the key positions in the artel," "to lead the fight for socialism, without quitting their posts," and--of course--to seize the whole artel by the throat.  What do you call that--a policy of leading the collective farm, or a policy of disintegrating and discrediting it?...
            How could such blockheaded exercises in collectivization, such ludicrous attempts to lift oneself by one's own bootstraps, attempts the purpose of which is to ignore classes and the class struggle, but which in practice bring grist to the mill of our class enemies, occur in our midst?...  They could occur only as a result of the fact that certain of our comrades became dizzy with success, and for a while lost clear-mindedness and sober vision....
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 256
 
            Now he [Stalin] intimated that his instructions had been misunderstood: 'Collective farms cannot be set up by force.  To do so would be stupid and reactionary.'  He railed at 'opportunists', 'blockheads', 'noisy lefts', 'timid philistines', and 'distortionists ': and he called for a halt to 'excesses'.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 330
 
            Volodya says, "There is the question of the repressions carried out during the time of collectivization; people now put the blame on Stalin.  The first thing to say is that the Party fully supported the policy of collectivization.  The policy of the liquidation of the kulaks as a class was a policy which Lenin considered to be most correct; he considered the kulak the most malicious enemy of Soviet power beside the capitalist landowner.  He considered that as long as the kulaks continued to exist there would be a threat of the restoration of capitalism.
            ... in the course of this collectivization mistakes were made.  But in that case you have to look at the people who were carrying out the policy.  Stalin's business was to arrange the general direction, but it was a question of how it was organized locally that affected how it was actually carried out.
            ... There is probably data on how many were transported to the camps; I would think that far more were transported than perished.  As for those who were transported, in the end they did have the possibility of going home!  People talk a lot now about how it was not just the head of the family who was transported, but also his family and children.  People consider this anti-humanitarian, but from the other point of view, to abandon the children to the vagaries of fate would be far less humane than to exile them and to provide them with a place to live in another region of the country."
Richardson, Rosamond.  Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 276
 
PEOPLE DIFFER WIDELY ON THEIR VIEWS OF COLLECTIVIZATION
 
            Into these discussions penetrated organizers from the Party, sometimes farm experts giving counsel, sometimes workers ignorant of farming but aflame with zeal for collectivization....  Discussions were hot and hostile.  Later, Moscow denounced the "disease of giantism."  But at first the enthusiasts called all caution "counter-revolution."  Families split; the young man followed the enthusiasts, eager for new ways.  The old men doubted; they saw themselves losing control of the household along with the acres.  The women worried over the fate of the family cow....
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 35
 
KULAKS SPREAD RUMORS ABOUT THE COLLECTIVES AND USE VIOLENCE
 
            Kulaks and priests clouded the issue with rumors, playing on the emotions of sex and fear.  Everywhere, I heard of the "one great blanket" under which all men and women of the collective farm would sleep!  Everywhere, rumor said that babies would be "socialized."  In some places, kulaks joined collectives--to rule or ruin.  Elsewhere, they were being expelled from collectives as undesirable.  Some collectives took in kulaks horses but not kulaks, as had been done with landlords' equipment in the revolution.  Kulaks fought back by burning the collective barns and even by assassination.  The trial of 12 kulaks for the murder of a Party secretary was closing in Atkarsk.  "He died for all of us," declared the prosecution; the peasant audience wept.  The storm of collectivization rose higher as farms were named in the martyr's honor.
            As I left the area, I asked a local official.  "What does Moscow say about this, about that?"  He replied, hurriedly but proudly: "We can't wait to hear from Moscow; Moscow makes its plans from what we do."
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 35
 
COLLECTIVIZATION WENT TO EXCESS AT TIMES
 
            The winter of 1929-1930 was a time of considerable chaos.  The precise form of the collective was not yet clear.  Stalin, also making his plans from the peasants' actions, stated on December 27, 1929, that the time had come "to abolish kulaks as a class."  This merely authorized what poor peasants were already doing, but with the authorization they began doing more.  Cruel tales came of the unroofing of kulaks' houses, of chaotic deportations.  Meantime, organizers, eager for a record, forced peasants into farms by threat of deportation as "kulaks"; they "communized" cows, goats, chickens, even dishes and underwear.  Kulaks grossly exaggerated these excesses and incited peasants to kill and eat their livestock and "go naked  into the collective where the state supports you all."
            "Why doesn't Stalin stop it?"  I asked a communist friend.  "Has a kulak no rights?  This is chaos!"
            "There is really too much anarchy," he answered.  "It comes from division in the Party; we Communists must take the blame.  Stalin has stated the 'line'--'to abolish kulaks as a class.'  The Right-wing elements, who control the government apparatus"--I knew he meant Rykov--"delay the formulation in law.  So the Left-wing elements among our local comrades, having no law as a guide, do what is right in their own eyes and the eyes of farmhands and poor peasants.  This is anarchy.  We expect government decrees soon; then there will be more order."
            The first decree appeared February 5, 1930--it authorized deportation of kulaks in areas where collectivization was "total" and where peasants meetings asked for the deporting of definite people after hearings.  The list must then be checked by the provincial authorities, and arrangements made for the districts to which the kulaks should go.  These were usually construction jobs or virgin land in Siberia.  After the decree, the anarchy lessened,....
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 38
 
            Problems inherent to the massive introduction of a new, collective system of farming further complicated the situation.  The very scale and speed of collectivization was astounding: in the space of four years, over 14 million farms were collectivized, including 70 percent of the farms in Ukraine.  Collectivization took place at rates and with methods subject to extreme swings depending on the abilities and attitudes of local and the regional authorities.  Careful planning gave way to confusion as even at the top level collectivization schedules and targets were subject to drastic changes and revisions.  With limited historical experience to draw upon and in a countryside renowned for backwardness and age-old peasant traditions, millions of small strips and holdings were amalgamated into a few hundred thousand collective farms.  Peasants long used to manual labor and working with draught animals were now introduced to tractor ploughs, tractor-drawn seeders, mechanical combines and threshers.  Against this background and widespread sabotage, a smooth transition was impossible.
            Added to this were errors and excesses committed in the course of collectivization.  Contrary to what Nationalist ideologues and "experts" would have us believe, Soviet historiography does not ignore this period, nor does it gloss over errors committed.
Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books,1987, p. 95
 
            That property expropriated from kulaks was assigned to the new collectives together with the over-zealousness of many Party cadre led poor peasants to take aggressive action against the rich peasants, and treat many recalcitrant middle peasants as kulaks; in some areas 15-20% of peasants were treated as if they were kulaks, contrary both to Party policy and common sense.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 221
 
            Some rich peasants slaughtered their animals rather than contribute them to the collectives, more because the fodder to keep them alive was appropriated to feed the cities.  Between spring 1929 and spring 1930 the number of farm animals in the USSR fell by 25%.  To have continued the hectic measures of January and February would have resulted in famine and possibly collapse of the regime.
            On March 2, 1930, summing up those measures, the Central Committee of the Party issued a statement criticizing its local cadre and poor peasant supporters for becoming 'dizzy with success,' ignoring the basic rule that peasants must join the collectives voluntarily, and alienating the majority of middle peasants who, until the winner of 1930, had been undecided about whether or not to join (thus pushing them into the arms of the kulaks).  The Party also emphasized that the collective farm socialized only the land, draft animals and larger machinery, leaving cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, and other personal property in the hands of the individual peasants.  The decree read in part:
            "The Kolkhoz must not be imposed by force.  That would be stupid and reactionary.  The Kolkhoz movement must be based on the active support of the main mass of the peasantry....
            What can these distortions lead to?  To the strengthening of our enemies and the complete discrediting of the idea of the Kolkhoz movement....
            As a result of the March 1930 decree, the errors of the previous two months were largely corrected and pressure on the rich, especially the middle, peasants considerably relaxed.  More than half the peasants who, in January and February, had been induced to join the collectives, left them within a few weeks.  By September 1930, the percentage of peasants in collectives had dropped to 21% of the total (from a peak of about 58% in early March).
            Subsequently subtler incentive structures (and a balance between collective and individual interests) were employed to induce the middle peasants to join the collectives.  Private plots, from which peasants could sell their produce on an individual basis, were institutionalized; profit-sharing, rather than set wage payments, became the norm.  Most state farms were disbanned and their land and resources given free to the collectives.  This more moderate approach after 1930 resulted in a fairly rapid pace of collectivization.  By 1933 about 60%, by 1934 about 75%, and by 1940, 97% of peasants were organized in collective or state farms....
            The slaughter of farm animals by rich and middle peasants in the winner of 1930 together with the continuingly serious problems of organization of the collectives and motivation of the peasants meant, in Isaac Deutschers' words, that 'Rapid mechanization of agriculture now became a matter of life and death.' The food crisis continued unabated.  In 1929 the average Soviet urban dwellers annual consumption of meat, poultry and fat was 48 pounds, in 1930 it was 33, falling to 27 in 1931, and less than 17 in the famine year of 1932.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 221-222
 
            ... since Stalin said he desired a smooth transition to socialist agriculture, the government put out vague and shifting schedules for collectivization, which supposedly spread the process out over 10 years or more.  But the local Communist organizers in fact went ahead far more quickly and disruptively, not because Stalin had given them secret hurry-up orders (as his enemies charge) but because schedules were hopelessly vague, and because both idealism and careerism pressed the Communist organizer ahead as fast as possible.
            To Stalin the enemy in the villages was above all the kulak, while the poor peasantry and even most of the middle peasantry were merely coerced or misled by the kulaks.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 157
 
            Curiously enough, collectivization which was at first forced has now become more of a response to the exigencies of the situation.   Peasants are flocking into the kolhozi as into arks of safety.   It is largely a matter of expediency and to that extent voluntary.   Thus all Soviet expectations have been surpassed.   It was planned to collectivize only as machinery could be supplied and to have 15% of the small-farm holders organized by 1933.   But once the backbone of opposition was broken and it became expedient to join, the collectives increased so rapidly that four times the quota has already been reached.
            ... The crisis that compulsory socialization created in 1930 is forgotten, but its effects are not repaired.   When the peasants saw what awaited them, they ate up or killed their livestock rather than let it be collectivized, and by midsummer 1930 from 1/4 to 1/2 of the farm animals had disappeared.   The confiscation of grain and property together with the ruthless policy of the proletarian collectivizers had two consequences.   It caused acute hunger and dissatisfaction in the cities and rebellious outbreaks in the country.   Partisan zeal was jeopardizing the dictatorship.   Thereupon Stalin, in the famous letter of March, 1930, called a halt, saying there was "giddiness from success" among the organizers.   They were ordered to desist from coercive methods and roundly scored for their excesses.   Collectivization was declared to be purely voluntary.   Thus a "strategic retreat" was negotiated and the crisis successfully passed with the result that subsequently a policy of modernization has prevailed and socialization has been secured by inducement rather than force.   However, the war upon the kulaki has not ceased.
Davis, Jerome. The New Russia. New York: The John Day company, c1933, p. 58
 
ONLY A MINORITY WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT COLLECTIVIZATION MISTAKES
 
            Toward the end of March, I went south to meet the spring.  Twenty-four  hours from Moscow I found it, on the line to Stalingrad.  When my train set me down after midnight, I was appalled by the crowds of peasants who surrounded me, pouring out bitter words.  "A former bandit got into the Party and bossed our village."  Stalin says collectives are voluntary, but they won't give back our oxen."
            Next morning in the township center, I heard similar complaints heaped on a tired secretary from dawn till long after dark.  "The chairman isn't here," he explained.  "He went to help a village where kulaks last night burned a barn containing 27 horses that were relied on for the sowing.  He must organize emergency help."  Meantime the secretary wearily repeated to all comers that of course they would get their oxen back if they decided to leave the collective farm, but they couldn't disorganize sowing by grabbing the oxen on a day's notice from field-gangs plowing 20 miles away.  Especially, when they kept changing their minds several times a week.
            Farms seemed going to pieces under a dozen pressures--violence of kulaks, attacks by priests, official stupidities, and just plain inefficiency of medieval Russia.  Yet, as soon as I left the railway and went inland, the chaos was replaced by a spectacular, mass sowing.  I saw then that all journalists who judge by the railway and the township center must judge wrongly.  All complaints and injustice flowed to the railroad and sought adjustment from the township center.  No peasant who could plow went to the railway--he was plowing.  Beyond the railroad, men were fighting for a record harvest to establish their right to land and machines.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 39-40
 
A REPORTER NOTES THE GRAIN SHORTAGE BUT SAYS WORKING ALONE WILL BE WORSE
 
            Working out from Stalingrad went the Traveling Struggle, a newspaper published from three railway cars.  It journeyed through the spring from township to township, investigated and published abuses, and even summoned judges from the city for special courts.  Melnikov, its most energetic reporter, could digest ten shocking cases daily and find in them no discouragement but a call to battle....
            Not all the anti-Soviet sheets in America could invent more "Bolshevik atrocities" than Melnikov triumphantly recorded in his routine.  This Traveling Struggle had had more than two hundred officials arrested that season for crimes ranging from graft to banditry.  But when I asked whether the harvest would be much less because of the turmoil, Melnikov stared as if I were crazy.
            "Less?  It must be much greater!  Have you not seen tractors doubling the sown area?  Have you not seen, even without tractors, how farmhands and peasants use kulaks horses to increase area 70 percent?  The kulaks sabotaged the harvest, fearing taxes and hating the Soviet power.  These new owners drive forward like madmen."
            The hunger of the poor peasants for more life was the power released in that "First Bolshevik Spring."  This power was led by Communists who, despite inexperience and excesses, were a disciplined and tireless group.  I could pick them out in field brigades by their tense concern that everything go well.  It is thus I recall Kovalev, Party secretary of a small Tatar district south of Stalingrad, and his talk with ten shiftless, deserting peasants.
            These peasants were leaving the collective farm.  One said: "I have no warm coat and they make me pasture livestock in the rain."  Another: "They work my camel hungry and he dies before my eyes."  A third: "My wife won't live with me since I joined the kolhoz."
            The reasons seemed sound to me but not to Kovalev.  "These conditions you always had," he said.  "Nobody offered a golden dish in the kolhoz.  Faults of management can be corrected.  Men working at night must have warm clothes.  Hay is scarce from last year's drought, but it will be no better in individual fields.  Who leaves will not better himself, for the whole Soviet power helps the kolhoz.  A peasant is not an independent person; his farm depends on the nation and the nation depends on his farm.  Our land is surrounded by capitalist lands.  We must swiftly build great industry and modern farming or we perish.  That great factory in Stalingrad will this summer give tractors to our farms.  That great power station, Stalgres, will this autumn give light to your homes.  While these are unfinished, they need bread; there must be a great increase in grain.  Can this be done if every peasant sits at home, deciding whether to plow?  The task of every citizen this year is to strengthen the collective farm."...
            Melnikov guessed right.  Though the seed was sown in the chaos of class war--by men who stormed their way out of the Middle Ages in a year--yet such was the drive of their awakened will that when crop returns at last came in, the Soviet Union (and the foreign powers who watched like hawks) knew that the country had achieved the widest sown area and the greatest harvest it had ever known.
            That harvest changed the history of farming for the world.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 41
 
COLLECTIVE HARVESTS WERE NOT GOOD PRIOR TO 1933
 
            One harvest was not enough to stabilize collectivization.  In 1930, it was put over by poorly organized, ill-equipped peasants through force of desire.  In the next two years, the difficulties of organization caught up with them.  Where to find good managers?  Bookkeepers?  Men to handle machines?  In 1931, the harvest fell off from drought in five basic grain areas.  In 1932, the crop was better but poorly gathered.  Farm presidents, unwilling to admit failure, claimed they were getting it in.  When Moscow awoke to the situation, a large amount of grain lay under the snow.
            Causes were many.  Fourteen million small farms had been merged into 200,000 big ones, without experienced managers or enough machines.  Eleven million workers had left the farms for the new industries.  The backwardness of peasants, sabotage by kulaks, stupidities of officials, all played a part.  By January 1933 it was clear that the country faced a serious food shortage, two years after it had victoriously "conquered wheat."
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 41
 
1933 HARVEST WAS THE BEST SINCE 1930 WHICH WAS A RECORD
 
            From one end of the land to the other, there was shortage and hunger--and a general increase in mortality from this.  But the hunger was distributed--nowhere was there the panic chaos that is implied by the word "famine."
            The conquest of bread was achieved that summer, a victory snatched from a great disaster.  The 1933 harvest surpassed that of 1930, which till then had held the record.  This time, the new record was made not by a burst of half-organized enthusiasm, but by growing efficiency and permanent organization.
            Victory was consolidated the following year by the great fight the collective farmers made against a drought that affected all the southern half of Europe....  In each area where winter wheat failed, scientists determined what second crops were best; these were publicized and the government shot in the seed by fast freight.  This nationwide cooperation beat the 1934 drought, securing a total crop for the USSR equal to the all-time high of 1933.  Even in the worst regions, most farms came through with food for man and beast  with strengthened organization.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 44-45
 
THE PROCESS BY WHICH THE 1936 CONSTITUTION CAME ABOUT AND MASS SUGGESTIONS
 
            One fruit of those happy days remained for history--the new Soviet constitution was born in those years.
            The USSR has always claimed to be democratic; this the West has always denied....  Whatever Americans thought of Soviet elections Soviet people took part in them at least as energetically and hopefully as we.  They not only voted for candidates; they wrote their demands into the "Nakaz," the "People's Instructions," which became the first order of business for incoming governments.
            In the 1934 elections, my husband spent every evening for a month as a precinct worker, visiting every person in his precinct and stimulating them not only to come out but to list things they wanted the government to do....
            Since the 1922 Constitution, however, great changes had taken place.  The basic wealth of the land was publicly owned; the people were no longer illiterate.  Indirect, unequal voting from the place of work no longer fitted; people everywhere knew of their national heroes and could vote for them directly.  On February 6, 1935, the Congress of Soviets decided that the Constitution should be changed to conform to the changed life of the nation.  A commission of 31 historians, economists, and political scientists, under Stalin's chairmanship, was instructed to draft a new Constitution, more responsive to the people's will, and more adapted to a socialist state.
            The method of adoption was highly significant.  For a year, the commission studied all historic forms--both of states and of voluntary societies--through which men have organized for joint aims.  Then a proposed draft was tentatively approved in June 1936 by the government and submitted to the people in 60 million copies.  It was discussed in 527,000 meetings, attended by 36 million people.  For months, every newspaper was full of people's letters.  Some 154,000 amendments were proposed--many, of course, duplicates, and many others more suitable for a legal code than a constitution.  Forty-three amendments were actually made by this popular initiative.
            In the great white hall of the Kremlin Palace, 2,016 delegates assembled, in December of 1936, for the Constitutional Convention....
            The Constitution reflected the changes in the country.  It began with the form of the state and the basic types of property.  Land, resources, industries were "state property, the wealth of the whole people."  Cooperative property of collective farms, and "personal property" of citizens in their income, their homes, and chattels, were "protected by law."  Elections were to be by "universal, direct, equal and secret ballot for all citizens over 18."
            The section on  "rights and duties of citizens" was cheered section by section; it was the most sweeping list of rights any nation ever guaranteed.  The right to life was covered by four headings: "the right to work, to leisure, to education, to material support."  The right to liberty was expanded into six paragraphs, including freedom of conscience, of worship, of speech, of press, of assembly, demonstration and organization, freedom from arbitrary arrest, inviolability of home and of correspondence, "irrespective of nationality or race."
            The Constitution was a direct challenge to Nazi-Fascism, then in power in Germany.  The Nazis called democracy outworn; all Soviet speakers hailed democracy and socialism as "unconquerable."  Hitler preached "superior and inferior races."  Stalin challenged him in one of the most sweeping statements ever made of human equality: "neither language nor color of skin nor cultural backwardness nor the stage of political development can justify national and race inequality."
            Tens of millions of people poured into the winter streets of the USSR to hail the event with bands.  Progressives around the world hailed it.  "Mankind's greatest achievement," said Mrs. Sun Yat-sen in faraway China.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 55
 
            By November 1936, 1,651,592 people in Leningrad, Smolensk and their environs had made comments or suggestions.  A sampling of 2,600 a these shows that two of the four most common suggestions were the requests that local village soviets be given the right to arrest people without the sanction or participation of the state procurator (which the constitution had demanded), and that former nobles, Tsarist gendarmes, kulaks, priests, and other "class alien" elements not be given the right to vote.  A collective farmer from the Leningrad region believed (contrary to law and to Stalin's orders) that ideally, "any citizen of our country can arrest such persons who wreck construction."  A peasant from Kaluga warned that "Kulaks and priests must not be given electoral rights," and at one collective farm meeting, everyone who spoke wanted to limit or deny electoral rights to priests, former gendarmes, pomeshchiki, and policemen.  Stalin himself had to publicly intervene to defend the idea of suffrage for the class-aliens. 
            Other remarks from the masses suggest the prevalence of the popular attitudes that made Stalinism possible.  The worker Kombarov from Leningrad said that "Using free speech, meetings, and so forth to oppose the socialist state constitutes a betrayal of the country and should carry heavy punishment."  Another peasant, showing the traditional Russian genealogical approach to things, thought that "relatives having connections with traitors should face the full severity of the law."
Nove, Alec, Ed. The Stalin Phenomenon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, p. 126
 
            The film  changed, and now it was the Bukharin of 1936 that I saw before me.  The moment was the drafting of the famous "Stalin Constitution," of which he [Bukharin] in fact was the real author.
Tokaev, Grigori. Betrayal of an Ideal. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1955, p. 3
 
            The composition of the Drafting Committee [of the 1936 Constitution] was a stroke of genius on Stalin's part: here sat representatives of non-Russian republics and here too sat the leaders of the oppositionists themselves!
Tokaev, Grigori. Betrayal of an Ideal. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1955, p. 282
 
            The discussions occasioned by the draft of a new Soviet Constitution provided an opportunity for Soviet citizens to express their views on a broad range of issues.  The published record of these discussions, replete with statistics on the number of meetings, speakers and proposals, and accounts of labor enthusiasm, not surprisingly presented a picture of overwhelming support for the principles embodied in the Constitution.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov. Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 15
 
            Two months after Kirov's assassination, on Feb. 6, 1935, the 7th Congress of the Soviets passed a motion on the need for a new constitution and elected a commission which was to draft it.  The commission, headed by Stalin, included men like Bukharin, Radek, Sokolnikov, as well as their future prosecutor Vyshinsky.  In the course of the next year and a half the commission frequently met in Stalin's presence.  Bukharin and Radek were the chief authors of the new constitution, which they often discussed in the columns of Pravda and Izvestia.  The constitution was to be adopted by the next congress of the Soviets, in November 1936, several months after the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 359
 
THE MAJOR TRIALS OUTLINED BRIEFLY
 
            ...  I sat in the court and watched the tale unfold.  Zinoviev and Kamenev, once friends of Lenin and imminent theoreticians, told the judges, the audience, and the whole world that, having lost power through the rise of Stalin, they had conspired to seize power by assassinating several leaders, presumably including Stalin, through agents who, if caught, would not know the identity of the top conspirators, but would appear to be ordinary agents of the German Gestapo.  The chief conspirators, with reputations intact, would then call for "party unity" to meet the emergency.  In the confusion they would gain leading posts.  One of them, Bakayev, slated to become head of the GPU, would liquidate the actual assassins, thus burying all evidence against the higher ups.
            That was the tale I watched unfold in the court day after day.  The defendants were vocal; they bore no evidence of torture.  Kamenev said that by 1932 it became clear that Stalin's policies were accepted by the people and he could no longer be overthrown by political means but only by "individual terror."  "We were guided in this," he said, "by boundless bitterness against the leadership and by a thirst for power to which we had once been near."  Zinoviev stated in court that he had become so used to giving orders to large numbers of people that he could not endure life without it.  Minor agents gave testimony connecting the group with the Gestapo.  One of them, N.  Lurye, claimed to have worked "under the guidance of Franz Weitz, personal representative of Himmler."  Some of the lesser lights apparently first learned in court of the fate their chiefs had reserved for them; this added to the venom with which they attacked those chiefs.
            "Let him not pretend to be such an innocent," cried the defendant Reingold against co-defendant Kamenev.  "He would have made his way to power over mountains of corpses."
            Was the story credible?  Most of the press outside the USSR called it a frame up.  Most people who sat in the court-room, including the foreign correspondents, thought the story true.  Ambassador Davies says in his book Mission to Moscow, that he believes the defendants guilty as charged.  D. N . Pratt, imminent lawyer and British member of Parliament, was similarly convinced.  Edward C. Carter, Secretary-General of the Institute of Pacific Relations, wrote: "The Kremlin's case is...terribly genuine.  It makes sense...is convincing."  Even Khrushchev's  comprehensive attack on excesses of this period, does not say that any of the open trials were a fraud.
            For me, I listened to the defendants, often from only a few feet away; the process by which once revolutionary leaders became traitors seemed understandable.  They began by doubting the Russian people's ability to build socialism without outside help; this was the open discussion in 1924-27.  Their doubt deepened through the contrast between Russia's inefficiency--which even brought the land to famine in 1932--and the efficient German organization they had known.  Was it hard to believe that Russia might profit by German discipline, impressed by the iron heel?  Plenty of irritated people in those days made such remarks.  Eventually there would be a German revolution; they themselves might promote it from within.  Meantime, they would be rid of the hated Stalin.
            If once we admit that these first trials were genuine--and trained foreign observers thought they were--then we have a situation that might well drive a nation off its sane base.  Not only were they surrounded by hostile capitalist states; their own revolutionary leadership seemed deeply penetrated by agents, plotting assassination and government overthrow.  After the conviction of Zinoviev and Kamenev, arrests and trials spread wider.  Tomsky, former chairman of the Central Council of Trade Unions, mentioned in court by one of the defendants, confessed guilt and committed suicide to escape arrest.  Regional trials began in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Far East.  In the Far East, the chief of the GPU fled to Japan and many of his subordinates were arrested as Japanese agents.
            The army was next involved.  The chief of its political commissars, Marshal Gamarnik, committed suicide June 1, 1937.  On July 11th, Marshall Tukhachevsky, only recently a Vice-Commissar of Defense, was court-martialed with seven other top commanders, the first big trial to be held in secret.  It was announced that the defendants admitted to being in the pay of Hitler, whom they had promised to help get the Ukraine.  They got the death sentence.  Some corroboration of their guilt came from abroad.  E. R. Gedye, Prague correspondent of the New York Times, cabled June 18 that " two of the highest officials in Prague" told him they had "definite knowledge that secret connections between the German General Staff and certain high Russian generals had existed since the Rapallo Treaty."  I myself was later told by Czech officials that their military men had been the first to learn and to inform Moscow that Czech military secrets, known to the Russians through the mutual aid alliance, were being revealed by Tukhachevsky to the German High Command.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 62
 
            Of the endless trials, public and secret, four were of the greatest importance:....  All were charged with attempting to assassinate Stalin and the other members of the Politburo, to restore capitalism, to wreck the country's military and economic power, and to poison or kill in any other way masses of Russian workers.  All were charged with working from the earliest days of the revolution for the espionage services of Britain, France, Japan, and Germany, and with having entered into secret agreements with the Nazis by which they were to dismember the Soviet Union and cede vast slices of Soviet territory to Germany and Japan.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 372
 
            Sydney and Beatrice Webb, who made an exhaustive study of life in Communist Russia, came up with this analysis of the confessions in The Treason Trials in Russia, a New Civilization?:
            'The confessions of the defendants; the manner in which the several stories corroborated one another; their frank explanations of the way they had yielded to the temptation of giving their general adherence to a treasonable company of which they did not at first understand the scope; and how they had then found themselves unable to escape from the coils in which they had become entangled;--be it added, a certain amount of further corroboration deduced from incautiously public utterances by both German and by Japanese statesmen, convinced the British and American journalists present at the trial in January 1937 that the defendants were really guilty of the treasonable conspiracies with which they were charged.' 
            Some other foreign observers shared this view.  For instance, the American engineer John Littlepage, who had spent 10 years in Russia, and had written about Stalin's Russia for various US publications, was asked by friends whether the accused were guilty.  He said without equivocation that most of them were.  What surprised Littlepage was that the men in the Kremlin had waited so long to realize that 'other Communists are the most dangerous enemies they have' (in The Saturday Evening Post , 1 January 1938).
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 205
 
FIFTH COLUMN CAUSES INSECURITY AND ARRESTS IN 1930S
 
            A sense of insecurity spread among the Soviet people, replacing that exultant sense of progress they had felt in 1934.  It was not due alone, and not even primarily, to personal fear of arrest or to concern for friends.  It was due to the knowledge that the enemy had penetrated high into the citadel of leadership, that nobody knew who was loyal.  This was the first time any nation came to grips with the deadly efficiency of the Hitler Fifth Column.  They felt it as a fight for the nation's survival, but a fight in the dark.  This nightmare quality of the struggle affected not only the people, but also, I think, Stalin.  He produced the theory that the nearer a country got to socialism the more enemies it would have.
            ... Those years, and especially 1937, are recalled by all Soviet citizens as a time of great mental distress....  People were taken away at night and never seen afterward.  Sometimes they re-appeared.  George Andreichine was twice exiled to Siberia and each time came back fairly soon to a better job.  Most people thus arrested were not executed but sent either to a convict labor camp or to residence in a distant place....
            My closest woman friend, who had lived with me several years before she married and moved to Leningrad, was exiled with a ten-year sentence.  Nine years later, I again met her in Moscow and learned what had happened.  Her husband had been arrested; she never learned the details of the charge against him.  Believing him innocent, she pestered the offices of the GPU and was herself arrested, charged with being "the wife of an enemy of the people."  She was sent, not to a camp but to a small town in Kazakhstan where she got a job as a teacher in the high school.  Once a month she had to report to a local GPU official, an intelligent man with whom she had "many interesting discussions."  Several times he questioned her about her view of her own arrest and the many other arrests that she knew occurred.
            "The way I have figured it," she replied on one occasion, "is that the Nazi Fifth Column penetrated the GPU and got high in it and has been arresting the wrong people."  Her questioner replied: "Many people have that view."
            ... Of the 134 persons [the 1934 Party Congress] elected to the Central Committee, 98--or 70 percent of all--were not only arrested but shot.  Those who attribute this to a mad paranoia of Stalin have still to explain why even a paranoiac should eliminate his most successful and loyal supporters.  The "Victory Congress" of 1934 was composed precisely of those who had stuck to Stalin's line, and celebrated the triumph of socialism in both industry and farming.  Their drastic elimination within three years becomes somewhat more credible as the successful attempt of a Nazi Fifth Column to get rid of the nation's most efficient patriots.
            Such cases as I myself knew would support the view that it was often "the wrong people" who were arrested, people who seemed almost picked out for the purpose of disorganizing.  On our Moscow News staff, three people were suddenly taken.  If I had to pick our three most useful, energetic workers, these would have been the ones.  They were Party members, always working hard both for the paper and the trade union, always willing to work nights in emergencies.
            ... Let us now turn to the revelations of what was happening in the parties upper circles, as revealed by Khrushchev's attack on Stalin in 1956.... He reveals that immediately after the Kirov murder, and on Stalin's initiative, directions were issued to the courts to speed up investigations, sentences, and punishments.  At that time, Yagoda was chief of the GPU.  Stalin found him too dilatory and wired from Sochi on September 25, 1936, that Yezhov should be appointed Commissar of Internal Affairs, since Yagoda showed incompetence.  Yezhov's appointment and his plans were approved by the plenary session of the Central Committee in February 1937.  The number of arrests at once multiplied....
            ... Suddenly, Yezhov disappeared from the scene; he was rumored to have been taken to a madhouse.
            In fixing the blame for the criminal railroading of innocent people in 1937, Khrushchev makes several statements.  "We are justly accusing Yezhov for the degenerate practices of 1937," he says.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 65
 
            I justify the repressions despite the grave mistakes committed in the process.  Bear in mind it was not merely overdoing it--not with Yagoda heading state security.  He explicitly told the court that the oppositionists had remained in high offices for so long only because he had assisted them.
            I have the transcript of his trial.  He said, "Indeed, the rightists and the Trotskyists sitting here in the dock were exposed so late because I was the one who prevented that.  And now I am condemning them all!  Can you guarantee life to me in exchange for that service?"  What a skunk!  A communist, a people's commissar.  And that scoundrel sat next to Dzerzhinsky!  As Dzerzhinsky's closest aide he was gradually, after Menzhinsky, moved up to take the job of people's commissar for state security.  What kind of man was this?  What filth!
            I used to know him well in those years, and I regret he was such a close aide to Dzerzhinsky.  Dzerzhinsky was a radiant, spotless personality.  Yagoda was a filthy nobody who wormed his way into the party and was only caught in 1937.  We had to work with reptiles like that, but there were no others.  No one!  Now you understand why so many mistakes were made.  They deceived us, and innocent people were sometimes incriminated.  Obviously one or two out of 10 were wrongly sentenced, but the rest got their just desserts.  It was extremely hard then to get at the truth!  But any delay was out of the question.  War preparations were under way.  That's how it was.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 257
 
MUNICH SELL-OUT WAS TO GET NAZIS HEADED EASTWARD
 
            Britain, however, under Prime Minister Chamberlain, built up Hitler, granting to him in haste everything that had for a decade been refused to the German Republic--the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Nazi-terrorized plebiscite in the Saar, German re-armament, naval expansion, the Hitler-Mussolini intervention in Spain.  British finance, which had strangled German democracy by demanding impossible reparations, helped Hitler with investments and loans.  Every intelligent world citizen knew that these favors were given to Hitler because British Tories saw in him their "strong-arm gangster" against the Soviets.  If any doubt remained of the aims of both the British and French foreign offices, the Munich Conference removed it.  That cynical sell-out of Czechoslovakia was their trump-card in inducing Hitler to march East.
            Anyone who watched, as I did, the British moves of those days, saw that Chamberlain, who spoke of "appeasing" Hitler, really egged him on.  He suggested giving the Czech's Sudetenland to Hitler before anyone in Germany dared demand it....
            The only ally that proposed to help the Czechs resist this sellout was the USSR.
            ...Why were Chamberlain and Daladier willing to sacrifice 27 Czech divisions and one of the best fortification lines in Europe?  What made them give Hitler one of Europe's best armament plants--the Skoda Works?  Where they conscious traitors, or weak?  A manager of a local industry said: "You can say it in four words--They're afraid of Bolshevism."
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 74
 
            Although the main imperialist rivals in Europe were the same as in World War I (namely, British and French versus German), the British and French in the pre-World War II years not only allowed the German ruling class to rearm but made great concessions to it.  They allowed the German rulers to take Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other territories on the understanding that these new economic and military resources would be used in war against the USSR.  In the first phases of the war the British and French acquiesced in the German conquest of Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and Holland; and the French ruling class in effect gave its German counterpart a lease on its economic resources for the conquest of the socialist state.  The British ruling class split on whether to follow suit but finally decided, with U.S. prodding, that the price was too high.  U.S. imperialism saw such concessions as a serious risk, realizing that if German imperialism controlled all of Europe, including the USSR and Britain, it would next join forces with Japan and mount a war against the United States.
            On the hand, neither the American imperialists nor the British wish to see the USSR victorious.  Both hoped that the USSR and Germany would mutually exhaust each other and allow  British and American imperialist interests to penetrate deep into Europe.  Thus they supplied the USSR with what they thought was just enough assistance to help it to resist but not conquer the Germans.  They delayed opening a second front in the hope of a Soviet-German stalemate, but delayed too long--until the Soviet armies were rolling on to Berlin and seemingly threatened to overrun Europe.  The reason for their miscalculation was that they did not understand the special strengths of the socialist state.
            Stalin, in spite of later assertions to the contrary, was well aware of all these matters.  In March 1939, more than two years before the German invasion of the USSR, he commented:
            "Or take Germany, for instance.  They let her have Austria, despite the undertaking to defend her independence; they let her have the Sudeten region; they abandoned Czechoslovakia to her fate, thereby violating all their obligations; and then began to lie vociferously in the press about "the weakness of the Russian army," "the demoralization of the Russian Air Force," and "riots" in the Soviet Union, egging the Germans on to march farther east, promising them easy pickings, and prompting them: "Just start war on the Bolsheviks, and everything will be all right."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 109
 
            Stalin understood perfectly that France and Britain were preparing a new Munich, that they were ready to sacrifice Poland, encouraging Hitler to march on the Soviet Union.  Harold Ickes, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, wrote at the time in his journal:
            “(England) kept hoping against hope that she could embroil Russia and Germany with each other and thus escape scot-free herself.”
            Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), Vol. 2, p. 705.
Martens, Ludo.  Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 233 [p. 187 on the NET]
 
            To complete the picture of our mood I must say what we felt about the Western Democracies.  Tragically, they offered us no hope.  Both in the eyes of the thinking opposition and of the man in the street the Munich agreement had destroyed their moral authority.  By that agreement Britain and France committed moral suicide.  Hard though it is to say, in that crucial period between 1938 and 1941 hardly anyone in the USSR had a warm place in his heart for the British or the French.  There was no need for any central Party directive.  At meeting after meeting the opinion was expressed with genuine spontaneity that the Western Powers would betray us at the slightest opportunity and that we must, therefore, keep the utmost vigilance regarding the West.  We mistrusted it from the bottom of our hearts.
Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press,1956, p. 169
 
            To the Russians, Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, was the archvillain.  They held him in contempt, and blamed him for the collapse of the Soviet policy of collective security.  They were convinced that he was encouraging Germany to march eastwards, leaving Britain and France to enjoy peace while fascism and communism destroyed each other....
            It was probably about this time that Stalin decided to open the door to an alliance with Hitler.  It was a calculated gamble, but he could see no alternatives.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 304
 
            In April 1939 diplomatic negotiations among the Soviet Union, England, and France were re-activated with the aim of establishing a system of collective security in Europe.  But the most important Soviet proposals were rejected, while many of the English and French proposals were clearly unacceptable to the USSR.  Moreover, the government of Chamberlain secretly continued to seek an agreement with the Germans to guarantee England's security.  The French and English ruling circles had obviously not abandoned their primary hope of turning German aggression eastward, against the Soviet state.  Under these conditions Soviet diplomats again began to seek contacts with Germany.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 726
 
            ... England and France were playing an insecure and dangerous political game.  They dragged out the negotiations with the Soviet Union while holding secret talks with Germany, still hoping that Germany would direct its aggression eastward.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 727
 
            Most Western authors recount these events in a very tendentious manner--as though the Soviet Union were responsible for supporting Hitler in his attack on Poland and thus contributing to the outbreak of World War II.  But this opinion is mistaken.
            I do not intend to justify Stalin's entire policy....  But the nonaggression pact should not be added to this list of Stalin's errors....
            The Soviet government was compelled to sign the pact because Britain and France, with their policy of toleration and nonintervention, had been encouraging German fascism and helped Germany recreate a strong military machine in the hope that it would be used against Bolshevism.  Some of the big corporations in the United States had also helped, with the same aim in mind.  The Munich accord of 1938, agreed to by Germany, Italy, England, and France, was what truly unleashed Hitler.  After the occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia the next step for Germany was almost certainly to try to destroy Poland.  It was also clear to Hitler that England and France would "give up": if they could be certain that German aggression would be directed eastward.  "The enemy cherishes the hope," Hitler declared at a military conference in Berlin on Aug. 22, 1939, "that Russia will become our enemy after the conquest of Poland."  Hitler considered France and Britain the weaker opponents, however, and at first planned to make war only on his Western front.  To this day every document published in the West has confirmed that the Western governments of that time were responsible for the breakdown of negotiations for collective security in Europe.  Under the circumstances the Soviet Union had to look after its own interests and security.  In 1939 the nonaggression pact with Germany served that purpose.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 728
 
            I would note in passing that, under the terms of an existing treaty, the Soviet Union and France were to assist Czechoslovakia jointly in case of an act of aggression against her.  When in the fall of 1938 the threat became real, Moscow was ready to fulfill its commitment.
            Mobilization orders were issued in the western part of the Soviet Union.  France, on the other hand, did not live up to its part of the agreement and struck a deal in Munich without even consulting Moscow.
Berezhkov, Valentin. At Stalin's Side. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Pub. Group, c1994, p. 22
 
            [In 1936 Stalin said to Radek], "You know they'll do all they can to forestall us by offering Hitler the neutrality of the West, to force him in our direction.  We must put a stop to that."
Alexandrov, Victor. The Tukhachevsky Affair. London: Macdonald, 1963, p. 28
 
            With the temperature of the crisis soaring towards boiling point in September, 1938, Britain and France studiously avoided all the Soviet efforts to form a united front against Hitler.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 27
 
            We must make it clearly understood that we shall continue the old historical process, that our dispute with Germany will be settled on the battlefields and that if somebody else--say Roosevelt--also resolves to fight Hitler, we shall be on his side in that hour when the fate of mankind is at stake."  Again he [Stalin] paused, and then added, "Please understand me!  We must not act prematurely....  The danger is extremely great....  We cannot afford to receive the first blow... the most terrible blow of that war-machine--the biggest the world has ever seen....  If we did, we should be betrayed and finished....  All these Chamberlains, Halifaxes and the like wait only for that moment to let us down... to make us the prey of German imperialism....  They have less interest in us than in Togoland or the Cameroons....  They would rather give away the Ukraine than sacrifice any of their colonies....  We must be cautious...."
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 253
 
            Europe in early 1939 was, in Stalin's own words, a "poker game" with three players, in which each” hoped to persuade the other two to destroy one another and leave the third to take the winnings.
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 302
 
            The principle matter was settled: everyone, Stalin included, believed that Chamberlain was urging Hitler to embark on a crusade against the Russians, and that the Soviet government would have to take steps to divert the Germanic flood, and to direct it toward the valley of the Lower Danube, and then the Balkans and Asia minor,...
Delbars, Yves. The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 230
 
            German Foreign Office documents captured by the Soviet troops after Germany's defeat reveal the true purport of Great Britain's and France's policy at that period.  They show that, essentially, British and French policy was not to unite the forces of the peace-loving states for a common struggle struggle against aggression, but to isolate the USSR and direct Hitler's aggression toward the East, against the Soviet Union, using Hitler as a tool for their own ends.
Foreign Lang. Pub. House. Schuman, F. L. Intro. Falsifiers of History. Moscow, 1948, p. 16
 
            Stalin chuckled, and said:
            "The French Government headed by Daladier and the Chamberlain Government in Britain have no intention of getting seriously involved in the war with Hitler.  They still hope to be able to persuade Hitler to start a war against the Soviet Union.  They refused to form an anti-Hitler bloc with us in 1939, because they did not want to hamper Hitler in his aggression against the Soviet Union.  But nothing will come of it.  They will have to pay a high price for their short-sighted policy."
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 206
 
            While wishing to preserve peace as the decisive condition for building socialism in the USSR, Stalin saw that the governments of Britain and other Western countries were doing everything possible to prod Hitler into a war with the Soviet Union, that, being in a critical military situation and striving to save themselves from catastrophe, they were strongly interested in having the Germans attack the USSR.  That was why Stalin distrusted the information he was getting from Western governments that Germany was about to attack the Soviet Union.
            "Don't you see?"  Stalin would say.  "They are trying to frighten us with the Germans and to frighten the Germans with us, setting us one against the other."
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 267-268
 
            Stalin stated, "In deciding to wage war against the Soviet Union, Hitler took into account the imperialist circles in Britain and the USA, who totally shared his thinking.  And not without reason: they did everything they could to direct the military actions of the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 282
 
SUMMARY OF BRITAIN AND FRANCE DRAGGING THEIR FEET IN SUMMER OF 1939
 
            Voices in Britain and France demanded an alliance with the USSR to stop Hitler....  The USSR made several proposals for a triple alliance to guarantee both East and West Europe against the Nazis.  Every suggestion was put on ice by the Chamberlain government and after delay, turned down.  Chamberlain sought agreement rather with Hitler; on May 3, 1939, he startled the House of Commons by saying he was ready for a non-aggression pact with Germany.  Two days later, he refused the proposal of the USSR for a military alliance.
            Even Conservatives began to protest Chamberlain's actions.  Winston Churchill, on May 7th, in the House of Commons, demanded an alliance with the USSR.  Under such pressure, the British and French ambassadors in Moscow were finally instructed, May 25th, to "discuss" an alliance.  Ten vital weeks had been lost since the rape of Czechoslovakia.  Three more weeks were wasted in waiting for a certain Mr. Strang to get to Moscow.  This representative, sent by the British foreign office to "handle discussions," proved, on arrival, to have no authority to sign anything....  The Soviets were clearly in haste; the British as clearly delayed.  Suddenly, Moscow learned that the British Parliamentary Secretary of Overseas Trade had been discussing with a German official a loan of half a billion or a billion pounds.
            To the Moscow leaders, it was clear that Britain either trifled or was trying to push war East....
            Twice, Moscow signaled the British people that the discussions were getting nowhere.  The first signal was the resignation on May 3rd, of Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Foreign Minister.  For a decade he had symbolized to the world a program for peace through collective agreements against aggression.  This program had failed, said Moscow through Litvinov's resignation.  It failed in Manchuria, in Abyssinia, in Spain, in China, in Austria, in Albania, in Czechoslovakia, in Memel--eight years of failure, because the government chiefs of the Western democracies appeased or encouraged the aggressors....
            After six weeks, Moscow gave another signal.  On July 29, Zhdanov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Supreme Soviet, declared in an article in Pravda that the talks with Britain and France were getting nowhere and that he did not think either Britain or France wanted an alliance or intended to check Hitler, but might be negotiating just to keep the Russians quiet while Hitler prepared to attack them.
            At the end of July, when all Europe's foreign offices knew that Hitler intended to seize the Polish corridor within a month, the Soviets made a last attempt.  They suggested that Britain and France send military missions to Moscow to plan the mutual defense of East Europe on the spot.  The missions waited ten days, then traveled by the slowest route; when they reached Moscow it was found they had no authority to agree to anything....
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 76
 
 
BENEFITS OF RUSSO-GERMAN NON-AGGRESSION PACT
 
             The British and French, who had not scrupled to force the Czechs, by threats, to yield to Hitler, used no pressure to induce the Poles to accept the Soviet help.
            So the Soviet Union made its decision.  Hitler had offered a Non-Aggression Pact--he later admitted, in his declaration of war against the USSR, that the request came from him.  The pact was signed between Germany and the USSR on August 23rd.
            Hitler's allies were angry.  Mussolini and Franco openly disapproved.  Terrible was the blow to Tokyo, for Japan was already fighting the USSR on the edge of Mongolia, and was reported to have told Hitler that she would be ready by August to join "the big push."
            In that tragic time, when Poland was breaking, a Soviet diplomat said to me: "But for our Non-Aggression Pact, we would now be under attack, from both Europe and Asia, by the Alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan.  Britain and France would have held the Maginot Line and financed Hitler.  America would have been Japan's arsenal against us, as she has been against China.  By our Non-Aggression Pact, we drove wedges between Hitler, Japan, and Hitler's London backers.  It was too late to stop the invasion of Poland; Chamberlain didn't even try.  But we have split the camp of world fascism and shall not have to fight the whole world."
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 78
 
            I believe that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 was historically inevitable, given the circumstances of the time, and that in the final analysis it was profitable for the Soviet Union.  It was like a gambit in chess: if we hadn't made that move, the war should have started earlier, much to our disadvantage.  As it was, we were given a respite.  I think the vast majority of the Party considered the signing of the treaty tactically wise on our part, even though nobody could say so publicly....
            All the while the English and French and the whole bourgeois press were trying to sic Hitler on the Soviet Union, trumpeting, "Russia is nothing but a colossus with feet of clay!"
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 129
 
            The same Edward H. Carr, noting that the Chamberlain government "as a defender of capitalism" turned down an alliance with the USSR against Germany, made the following estimation of the gains made by the Soviet Union as a result of signing the Non-aggression treaty with Germany:
            "In the pact of August 23rd, 1939, they [the Soviet government] secured: (a) a breathing space of immunity from attack; (b) German assistance in mitigating Japanese pressure in the Far East; (c) German agreement to the establishment of an advanced bastion beyond the existing Soviet frontiers in Eastern Europe; it was significant that this bastion was, and could only be, a line of defense against potential German attack, the eventual prospect of which was never far absent from Soviet reckonings.  But what most of all was achieved by the pact was the assurance that, if the USSR had eventually to fight Hitler, the Western powers would already be involved."  (Carr, From Munich to Moscow: II, in Soviet Studies, Vol. I, October 1949, page 103).
Brar, Harpal. Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 570
 
            On the hand, the signing of a nonaggression pact could avert war between Germany and the Soviet Union, at least for some time.  Stalin did not rule out the idea that eventually he would have to confront Hitler.  However, he wanted to put off the conflict for as long as he could.  A pact appeared to offer a prospect of that.
Berezhkov, Valentin. At Stalin's Side. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Pub. Group, c1994, p. 29
 
            Russia was to supply Germany with grain and raw materials and to receive German machines and machine tools.  One of the first things Stalin did, after the conclusion of the pact, was to dispatch his military missions to Germany.  With what avidity those missions tried, in the first flush of friendship, to ferret out the German war industries can be seen from the complaints about their 'excessive curiosity', which Goering, Keitel, and Rader were already lodging at the beginning of October 1939.  A little later Nazi economic leaders complained that the Russians wanted too many machine tools for the production of artillery and too much other war material.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 443
 
            Four days later, on May 11, 1939, the first attack came.  The crack Japanese army that had invaded Manchuria struck into the Soviet Union.  The Soviet-Japanese war of 1939 is conveniently omitted from our history books, but this war, together with the Anglo-French collaboration with the Nazis and fascists in the West, form the context for another of Stalin's great "crimes," the Soviet-German nonaggression pact of August 1939.  Stalin recognized that the main aim of the Axis was to destroy the Soviet Union, and that the other capitalist nations were conniving with this scheme.  He also knew that sooner or later the main Axis attack would come on the USSR's western front.  Meanwhile, Soviet forces were being diverted to the east, to fend off the Japanese invaders.  The nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, which horrified and disillusioned Communist sympathizers, particularly intellectuals, in the capitalist nations, was actually one of the most brilliant strategic moves of Stalin's life, and perhaps of diplomatic history.  From the Soviet point of view it accomplished five things: (1) it brought needed time to prepare for the Nazi attack, which was thus delayed for two years; (2) it allowed the Red Army to concentrate on smashing the Japanese invasion, without having to fight on two fronts; they decisively defeated the Japanese within three months; (3) it allowed the Soviet Union to retake the sections of White Russia and the Ukraine that had been invaded by Poland during the Russian Civil War and were presently occupied by the Polish military dictatorship; this meant that the forthcoming Nazi invasion would have to pass through a much larger area defended by the Red Army; (4) it also allowed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which also had been part of Russia before the Civil War, to become part of the USSR as Soviet republics; this meant that the forthcoming Nazi attack could not immediately outflank Leningrad; (5) most important of all, it destroyed the Anglo-French strategy of encouraging a war between the Axis powers and the Soviet Union while they enjoyed neutrality; World War II was to begin as a war between the Axis powers and the other capitalist nations, and the Soviet Union, if forced into it, was not going to have to fight alone against the combined fascist powers.  The worldwide defeat of the fascist Axis was in part a product of Stalin's diplomatic strategy, as well as his later military strategy.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 25
 
            At Munich the British and French had given Germany parts of Czechoslovakia "as a price for undertaking to launch war on the Soviet Union, which the Germans now refused to honor."
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 604
 
            No counterfeiters can expunge from history or from the minds of the people's the overriding factor that under the circumstances the Soviet Union was faced with the alternative:
            Either, in its self-defense, to accept Germany's proposal for a pact of non-aggression, and thereby insure the Soviet Union prolongation of peace for a certain period, which might be utilized to better prepare the forces of the Soviet State for resistance to eventual aggression;
            Or to reject Germany's proposal for a non-aggression pact, and thereby allow the provocateurs of war in the camp of the Western Powers to embroil the Soviet Union immediately in an armed conflict with Germany, at a time when the situation was utterly unfavorable to the Soviet Union, seeing that it would be completely isolated.
            Under these circumstances, the Soviet Government was compelled to make its choice and conclude a non-aggression pact with Germany.
            The slanderous claptrap that all the same the USSR should not have agreed to conclude a pact with the Germans can only be regarded as ridiculous.  Why was it right for Poland, who had Britain and France as allies, to conclude non-aggression pact with the Germans in 1934, and not right for the Soviet Union, which was in a less favorable situation, to conclude a similar pact in 1939?  Why was it right for Britain and France, who were the dominant force in Europe, to issue joint a declaration of non-aggression with the Germans in 1938, and not right for the Soviet Union, isolated as it was because of the hostile policy of Britain and France, to conclude a pact with the Germans?
            Is it not a fact that of all the non-aggressive Great Powers in Europe, the Soviet Union was the last to agree to a pact with the Germans?
Foreign Lang. Pub. House. Schuman, F. L. Intro. Falsifiers of History. Moscow, 1948, p. 39-40
 
SU HAD HINDERED NAZIS PRIOR TO BEING INVADED
 
            Hitler saw that the USSR, as a neutral, was the immediate barrier in his path to world rule.  In the 22 months of the Non-Aggression Pact, the USSR had three times blocked the Nazi advance.  The Soviet march into Poland had checked for a year Hitler's advance to the East; the Soviet return to Bessarabia had pulled him back from invading Britain; and Moscow's power politics in the Balkans and Baltic had delayed him at the Dardanelles.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 90
 
STALIN SHOWS COURAGE AND BRAVERY IN EARLY DAYS OF THE INVASION
 
            Stalin stayed in Moscow.  On November 7, 1941, while German guns roared in the suburbs and Hitler announced Moscow already taken, Stalin reviewed the troops in Red Square.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 98
 
            In his memoirs, Khrushchev portrays Stalin's panic and confusion in the first days of the war and later.  I saw no such behavior.  Stalin did not isolate himself in his dacha until June 30th, 1941.  The Kremlin diary shows he was regularly receiving visitors and monitoring the deteriorating situation.  From the very beginning of the war, Stalin received Beria & Merkulov [cohead of the Soviet security service] in the Kremlin two or three times a day.  They usually returned to NKVD headquarters late at night, or sometimes called in their orders directly from the Kremlin.  It appeared to me that the administrative mechanism of command and control was functioning without interruption.  In fact, Eitingon and I maintained a deep belief in our ultimate victory because of the calm, clear, businesslike issuance of these orders.
            On Nov. 6, 1941, I received an invitation to attend the October Revolution anniversary gathering in the Mayakovsky subway station.  Traditionally, these celebrations were held in the Bolshoi Theatre, but this time, for security reasons, it was arranged on the subway platform.
            ... Stalin spoke for about 30 minutes.  I was deeply moved, because his confidence and self-assurance symbolized our ability to resist the Germans.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 134
 
            This excerpt from Izvestia, #6, 1990 confirms Sudoplatov's contention that Stalin, contrary to Khrushchev's claims in his memoirs, was not immobilized by panic after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, but rather received a steady stream of visitors at his Kremlin study.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 433
 
            It is worth recording Dimitrov's attitude toward Stalin.  He, too, spoke of him with admiration and respect, but without any conspicuous flattery or reverence....
            He recounted: "When the Germans were outside Moscow, a general uncertainty and confusion ensued.  The Soviet government had withdrawn to Kuibyshev.  But Stalin remained in Moscow.  I was with him at the time, in the Kremlin.  They were taking out archives from the Kremlin.  I proposed to Stalin that the Comintern direct a proclamation to the German soldiers.  He agreed, though he felt no good would come of it.  Soon after, I too had to leave Moscow.  Stalin did not leave; he was determined to defend it.  And at that most dramatic moment he held a parade in Red Square on the anniversary of the October Revolution.  The divisions before him were leaving for the front.  One cannot express how great a moral significance was exerted when the people learned that Stalin was sitting in Moscow and when they heard his words.  It restored their faith and raised their confidence, and it was worth more than a good-sized army."
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 37
 
            Moscow was bombed by German aviation.  Panic began to seize the city's population.  The Nazis were only 80 kilometres away.  Part of the administration was evacuated.  But Stalin decided to remain in Moscow.  The battles became more and more fierce and, in early November, the Nazi offensive was stopped.  After consulting with Zhukov, Stalin took the decision to organize the traditional November 7 military parade on Red Square.  It was a formidable challenge to the Nazi troops camped at the gates of Moscow.  Stalin made a speech, which was broadcast to the entire country.
Martens, Ludo.  Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 247 [p. 224 on the NET]
 
            [In September 1941] The situation at the front is bad.... If it becomes necessary to abandon Moscow we can't be sure that [the leadership will stand firm--implied]....  In the Instantsia they are not quite sure either that [Stalin will stand firm--implied]....  Stalin stands for war to the end....  While with others...Brest-Litovsk is in the air.
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 307
 
            We must get the peasant going and instill in him the hatred of the enemy....  What a brilliant order of Stalin's to the Army....  "A fighter should not die without leaving the corpse of a German interventionist by his side.  Kill him with a machine-gun, or rifle, a bayonet....  If you're wounded, sink your teeth into his throat and strangle him as you would a wild beast".
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 309
 
            The main blow was aimed directly at the capital, Moscow, whose outskirts were reached by late fall.  Almost all the government offices had been evacuated to the east.  But Stalin remained in the capital, where he assumed personal command of the war.  On Dec. 2, 1941, the Nazis were stopped in the suburbs of Moscow.  In December 6, Stalin ordered the first major counterattack to occur in World War II.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 31
 
            As to Stalin's nerves, or lack of them, his generals make no criticisms.  Rather, Marshal Zhukov told a war correspondent that Stalin had 'nerves of steel'.  The correspondent, author Ehrenburg, wrote that the Marshal repeated these words to him several times when they met at a command post near the front line early in the war.
            Even General Vlasov who had a great grievance against Stalin and, therefore, cause for resentment, told the Germans upon his capture that Stalin had strong nerves.  Speaking to Dr. Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, he said that in the autumn of 1941, when the city of Moscow was threatened by advancing German armies, every one in the Kremlin had lost his nerve but only Stalin insisted on continued resistance to the German invaders.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 168
 
            This is what Kraskyn, Stalin's confidant and the Press Department's senior war correspondent, wrote regarding the outbreak of the German-Russo war:
            ... "Stalin remained at Sochi until the end of the month.  The direct telephone line which connected his villa with the Kremlin was in constant use with Molotov at the other end.  Stalin never showed bad temper, remained calm, and determined."
Fishman and Hutton. The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 139
 
            The Wehrmacht's first offensive was launched against Moscow for Hitler well knew the city had always been a symbol to the Russians, and that if his troops could conquer this political and spiritual center, it would be a milestone on the road to the defeat of the Soviet Union.
            Stalin realized this too.  He attended all meetings of the Committee of the Defense of the City, and addressed his people regularly, but despite superhuman efforts by the Red fighting forces and the Soviet population, the Nazi armies advanced inexorably towards Moscow.  Stalin was forced to order the evacuation of women and children from the Red capital.  He issued an Order of the Day, declaring that Moscow would be defended to the last, and at the same time, a state of siege was proclaimed.
            The next day, the Soviet Government and Diplomatic Corps established themselves in Kuibyshev in the middle Volga.  Certain Government Departments had been transferred to Kazan and Sverdlovsk.  Stalin, Molotov, and other members of the "Inner Circle," remained in Moscow.
Fishman and Hutton. The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 143
 
            Stalin was affable and had the common touch.  He showed courage, particularly during the war.  During the war, he preferred to work at the dacha rather than in the Kremlin, even though there were no air-raid shelters at the dacha.  During an air attack, he would sometimes watch the planes from the roof of the building.  According to Rybin, Stalin did not panic in mid-October 1941 when German forward units had reached the suburbs of Moscow.  While Beria gave orders to senior party officials for the evacuation of Moscow on the evening of October 15 and although Malenkov and Kaganovich also recommended the move to Kuibyshev, Stalin, in a Kremlin meeting on Oct. 16, announced that he had decided to stay in Moscow.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 148
 
            There were riots in Moscow at the time, and shops were pillaged.  According to Rybin, Stalin deliberately showed himself in various parts of the city and talked to people to give a boost to morale.  Molotov was sent for three days to Kuibyshev to supervise the transfer of the foreign ministry, but he also confirmed in conversation with Rybin that Stalin had no intention of leaving the capital.... When information was received that an unexploded mine or shell had landed not far from the dacha, Stalin joined the search party--yet another demonstration of personal courage.
            ...On a visit to Oryol in 1946, he walked the streets accompanied by hundreds of citizens.  When they thanked him for having defeated the Germans, he replied modestly: "The people defeated the Germans, not I."
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 149
 
            I am often asked about Stalin's role in the battle Moscow.
            Stalin was in Moscow, in control of the troops and weapons, preparing the enemy's defeat.  He must be given credit for the enormous work in organizing necessary strategic, material, and technical resources which he did as head of the State Committee for Defense with the help of the executive staff of the People's Commissariats.  With strictness and exactingness Stalin achieved the near-impossible.
            When I am asked what event in the war impressed me most, I always say: the Battle of Moscow.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 361
 
            For a long time now, there are stories, lies, outright falsifications that the war scared Stalin out of his wits.  In view of these lies, let me tell of an incident.  On May 5, at a meeting in the Kremlin, one of the scared officers said that the Central Committee armored train is ready and hidden.  Stalin really let him have it:...
            What kind of nonsense!  What kind of safety armored train, when the enemy is inside the borders of the Soviet Union!
            You can draw your own conclusion from this statement....
            At the beginning of the war with the German attack on the USSR, this news was conveyed to Stalin by Marshall Zhukov.  Already at 3 a.m., Stalin came into his office at the Kremlin.  After that came in Zhukov and Timoshenko.  Stalin regularly walked on the streets of Moscow, even during the flights of German aircraft.  But he understood that people must see him amongst themselves, that the leader is with them, that he is in the capital of Moscow, and is heading its defense.  Even more effective, he visited command posts on Gorky Street, Zemlianov Valley, Smolensky Square.  For the sentries and army personnel, this had a tremendous effect.
            Sometimes at the beginning of the war, at about 4 o'clock in the morning, Stalin was on Kaluzhki Square.  Underneath, you could hear the crunch of broken glass.  Around us, there were wooden homes, ambulances were racing to and fro, taking the dead and tending the wounded civilians and soldiers, right in Moscow.  We were surrounded by crying women with children in their arms.  Looking at them with tears in his eyes, Stalin told Vlasik:
            We must evacuate the children deep into the interior of the country.
            All of them stared to ask as to when will the Red Army stop the German Fascists!  Stalin tried to console them with these well-known words:
            There will be, there will be a holiday and dancing on this street of ours!
            After being bombed by German planes, we went into Gorky Street.  A woman with a flashlight came up to Stalin and scolded him:
            Is it permissible for you to wander on the street, comrade Stalin, during such dangerous times?  An enemy could easily drop a bomb on you!
            Stalin only opened up his arms.  Of course, the lady was correct.  He was with us near Kubinka when over 400 planes were in the air, bombing while our fighters tried to shoot them down.  After successfully repulsing the enemy, Stalin asked for the names of our pilots who did such an outstanding job.  He met Victor Talakhin who did an outstanding job of shooting down German planes.
            The enemy knew exactly where Stalin had his Dacha.  Stalin risked his life together with all of us.  Stalin always looked at the tremendous dogfights over the Dacha, when the Germans desperately tried to kill Stalin and his entourage, knowing in advance that they were there.  They dropped bombs near the Dacha, some exploded, others did not, and we had to diffuse them, knowing full well that if they went off, everyone around the perimeter of the Dacha would be killed.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 28-30
 
            On Oct. 15, Beria with Shcherbakov called the meeting of the NKVD and secretaries of the districts of Moscow.  Beria deceitfully announced:
            German tanks are already in Oditsovo.  Contact with the front is broken.  According to the decisions of the Central General Command, we must mine all large factories, industries and other important structures.  Leave 500 members in every district to defend Moscow, evacuate older people and children.  Give out all the reserves of products to the people, in order that the enemy would not get them.
            Our surroundings at the Dacha were mined, and the news was told to us, from where, we do not know, that Stalin has left and went to Kalinin front or someplace else, no one knows where.
            Where was Stalin at this time?  Chauffeur to Stalin, Mitriukhin, states emphatically that from the Kremlin, Stalin wanted to go to the Dacha to meet his Politbureau.  Rumniatsev started to tell him that there is no water there, there is no heat, there are mines, but Stalin gave the order to open the Kremlin gates and go.  Orlov kept the gates closed.  Stalin gave another order:
            At this moment, I want you to take out all the mines, do you understand!
            Orlov had to open the gates and light a fire at the Dacha.  Stalin set to work, preparing the agenda for the meeting, while sappers were digging up the mines....
            Going through Moscow on October 16th, Stalin saw people with bread, flour, sausages, macaroni--all goods belonging to the state reserves.  He never said a word to these people, but in the Kremlin, he quickly called a meeting, and asked:
            Who allowed this anarchy to take place in Moscow?
            All were quiet.  Beria even closed his eyes.  Sharukhin very briefly told what happened.  Stalin commanded Shcherbakov to go on the radio, to tell the people that we are going to be victorious, to make sure that a normal state of affairs came back to the city... to open up all the stores and to get normalcy going again.  Then he called to see Zhukov, Artemiev, Shaposhnikov, Voznesensky, Kuztsov, and Kalinin.  From Molotov, he demanded that all foreign Diplomatic Corps be evacuated to Kuibyshev.  At last, the commandant of the Kremlin arrived, General Spiridonov.  Stalin asked him:
            What is your suggestion?  Beria is demanding the evacuation of all to Kuibyshev.
            Better to go to the Urals or Siberia.  It is safer.
            Stalin did not say anything... kept quiet but you could see that he did not like the hidden "panic" created by Beria and some others.
            ... At midnight when in the Dacha there gathered the whole Politburo, he called in to this high-level meeting, the landlady of the Dacha, Istomina, and asked:
            Valentina Vasilevna, are you preparing to leave Moscow?
            Comrade Stalin, Moscow is our mother, our home.  It should be defended, she forthrightly told the gathered Politburo.
            Do you hear how Muscovites talk?  With sarcasm in his voice, Stalin looked around at all those present.
            Everyone kept quiet.  In the morning on his way to the Kremlin, talking with the chauffeur Krivchenkov about defending Moscow, Stalin forthrightly said:
            I always was and will always remain with the Russian people in Moscow.  We shall defend it to the death!
            ... In the most critical of times, while the enemy was at the gates of Moscow, Stalin remained calm, collected, and inspired courage in all of us.
            ... Regarding the "special train" for Stalin, it was shunted to another section of the city where there was an enormous storage of building materials.
            There were two bombs dropped by German aircraft on this train... somehow they were told where this train was hidden.
            The commandant of the Dacha, Soloviev, under a command from Beria, started to evacuate Stalin's furniture and other possessions and load them on this train.  When Stalin found out, he was livid:
            Where did my furniture and papers go to?
            We are getting ready, comrade Stalin, to evacuate to Kuibyshev.
            No!  No evacuation.  Do you hear?  We are remaining in Moscow until final victory!
            Suslov, on Oct. 16, came to see if everything was going as planned, heard what Stalin told him:
            Stalin now gave me such a going over, that you must get this train out of sight and return all the furniture and other things from the train back to the Dacha!
            As we can see, all sorts of people, even those who wanted desperately, for their own reasons, to have Stalin leave, have told one and the same thing--his decision, his categorical decision was to remain in Moscow....
            I want to convince the reader of the falsehood about Stalin's "cowardliness."  Here are some examples.  Even though the territory of the Dacha "Semenovskoye" was heavily mined all around and had anti-aircraft emplacements, Stalin always came here.  The NKVD warned Stalin that one of the bombs dropped had not exploded.
            ... Then two enemy aircraft were circling over the Dacha.  Aircraft gunners opened fire.  Bullets, shells were falling on the ground like hail and Stalin was asked to go inside... but he stood there with the other defenders, urging them on.  Finally, Stalin said: Vlasik, do not worry.  Our bombs and those of others will not fall near us.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 30-35
 
            When the German Army marched to the outskirts of Moscow in 1941, Stalin and Shtemenko bunkered together two levels below ground in the Kirovskaya subway station; the rest of the General Staff stayed in a command post one level below ground in the Byelorussian metro station.
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 105
 
            Let us go back to those days and get their impressions... not from the military commanders' point of view, but from the Moscow Soviet Chairman, Vasili Pronin, who was chairman from April 1939 to 1945.  [In the following] he was interviewed by the editor of the Military-Historical Journal, Captain Ishenko.
 
QUESTION: You met Stalin often in your position as Head of Moscow Soviet.  How do you look at all the anti-Stalin hysteria that we have heard in the last 40 years?
 
ANSWER: This is a very hard question.  In my work, of course, I met Stalin often.  As the publicists, historians, and present leaders write and speak about Stalin, there is nothing real in their writings, nothing actual or truthful.
            Stalin was no fool or sick.  He was a tough leader during very tough times and there were enemies within and outside our borders....  Stalin was smart and a very learned man.  He went into any given problem very methodically.  In 1939-1940, this is the way we worked.  There was intensive work to fortify the defenses of Moscow.  Stalin visited all the regions of Moscow every day, looking over the fortifications, giving advice, finding fault with things that were not done and should have been done according to the master defense plan for Moscow.  Every little thing interested him.  He observed the smallest discrepancies.  I accompanied him often.
            ...we start to visit the defenses and building of emplacements and other structures.  We discussed the plans and what could be done either to improve or take certain steps to speed it up.  People, seeing Stalin, converged.  I remember at a stop, on Lenin Prospect, Stalin told the people: "Comrades, this is not a meeting--we came here to look at the construction."  Vlasik, perspiring as he ran here and there to see that no one tried to attack Stalin... there were no other guards guarding Stalin, who freely met, talked, shook hands with people.
            Stalin was interested in everything, knew everything and was on top of things regarding the defenses of Moscow.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 21-23
 
QUESTION: In your capacity as a member of the General Central Command, were there any disagreements regarding the defense of Moscow or its evacuation?
 
ANSWER: [Moscow Soviet Chairman, Vasili Pronin, who was chairman from April 1939 to 1945 says], No, there was unity.  When on the night of October 19, 1941 we were asked to come to the General Staff Command, only one question was on the agenda: Are we going to defend Moscow?  At first, as was the custom, all the General Staff and Moscow secretaries met in the Kremlin: Beria, Malenkov, Molotov and others.
 
QUESTION: Any from the Military High Command?
 
ANSWER: There was only one-- General Artemiev.  Marshal Zhukov was at the front.
 
QUESTION: It seems that to defend or not to defend Moscow was left to the Government body--civilians!
 
ANSWER: It looked like it.  When we were all gathered in the hall, ready to go to the office of Stalin, Beria said that he would try to convince everyone to evacuate Moscow.  He was for evacuating Moscow, giving it up to the Germans and establishing the headquarters of defense on the Volga River.  Malenkov was agreeing with Beria, Molotov was very agitated and against this.  Others present kept mum.  I remember the words of Beria as follows: "Well, with what are we going to defend Moscow?  We have nothing with which to defend ourselves.  They will break us apart and will shoot us all like partridges!"
            Then we went to Stalin's office.  There were 10 of us.  Stalin was pacing in his office as always, with a pipe in his mouth.  When we were all seated, he asked the question: "Will we be defending Moscow?"
            All of us kept quiet.  He waited a couple of minutes and again, repeated the same question.  Again, all of us were silent.
            "Well, if all of you are silent, I'm going to ask each one individually."
            The first one he asked was Molotov.  Molotov said: "We're going to defend Moscow!"  He asked each one personally.  All of them, including Beria and Malenkov, said that we should defend Moscow!
            He turned to me and said: "Pronin, write this down."
            I took the paper and pencil and Stalin dictated.  With this, we informed all citizens... then he told me to get this message to the GHQ and on the radio.  He then picked up the telephone, got in touch with the front lines and then from his small book where he had all the divisions, commanders, sections of armies, all marked... he dictated commands as Commander-in-Chief to immediately deploy their divisions around Moscow.  Someone from the Ural districts stated that he has not enough railway cars to bring his army to Moscow.  Stalin stated emphatically: "You shall have the cars...."
            So, you see, Stalin never thought of leaving Moscow.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 30-32
 
QUESTION: There is talk now that Stalin himself wanted to leave Moscow if the situation worse.
 
ANSWER: [Moscow Soviet Chairman, Vasili Pronin, who was chairman from April 1939 to 1945 says], I heard such talk, but these lies are spread by people who themselves ran away with tails between their legs at that time.  They are doing this to make themselves look good before their children and grandchildren.  I and my friend Kuznetsov and Poskrebyshev looked into this matter, perused archives and diaries of all different sources, but absolutely NOTHING whatsoever was found to say that Stalin wanted to run away.  The opposite was true--he was the pillar of steadfastness and patriotism.
            Furthermore, I was one of the leaders of PVO and I read that Stalin was seen running to and fro on some railway station, trying to get out of Moscow.  An absolute lie!  At that time, days on end German planes were over Moscow and if Stalin's train would have been going out of Moscow, our fighter planes would have been there to give him cover.  Our command NEVER once got the order from Stalin that the High Command was planning to leave Moscow.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 34-35
 
            On 2 October 1941 the Germans launched their first offensive against Moscow....
            Stalin remained on the spot throughout the battle, attending all the meetings of the Committees for the Defense of the City, the chairman of which was the Moscow Secretary of the Party, Alexander Shcherbakov.
Delbars, Yves. The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 308
 
            The victory in the Battle of Moscow brought about a fundamental change in Stalin's position.   Externally, however, his attitude was the same as ever.   During the past months he had maintained, before the representatives of Great Britain and the United States, an attitude of calm assurance, despite the tragic uncertainty of the situation.   Another man would have found it extremely difficult to play the part of the unperturbed ruler; but for Stalin it was no effort to control his nerves, and to meet his visitors with an untroubled countenance.   He is kneaded of a special clay, which never ceases to radiate a certain impression of strength and confidence.   But he knew that the greatest trials were still to come, and wanted to prove that in any situation there were for him no ups and downs but only a reasoned and obstinate steadfastness.
Delbars, Yves. The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 312
 
            Stalin said, "Are you sure we'll be able to hold Moscow?  It hurts me to ask you this.  Answer me truthfully, as a communist."
            I said, "We'll definitely hold Moscow.  But we'll need at least two more armies and another 200 tanks."
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 35
 
A question about 22nd June, 1941.
Was Stalin confused? It is said that he did not meet anyone?
            No.  It is all lies.  We were with him.  At night while Molotov was meeting Schulenberg we were there at Stalin's place.  He immediately handed over the responsibilities.  I was given - Transport, and Mikoyan - Supplies.  And transport was ready!  To carry 15-20 million people, the factories... it was not a joke.  Stalin was working all the while.  Of course, he was surprised.  He had thought that he would be able to avert the invasion for some more time as the crisis in Anglo-American relations would deepen.  I do not think that this was a miscalculation.  It was impossible to provoke us.  Perhaps Stalin was over-careful.  At that time there was no alternative.  At first I thought that perhaps Stalin's idea at the start of the war was to overcome the crisis diplomatically.  Molotov said 'No'.  This was war and nothing could have been done.
            Hitler was not able to out-smart Stalin.  Despite all logic Hitler did not end the war with the British but attacked us.  Hitler acted as an imperialist.
THUS SPAKE KAGANOVICH by Feliks Chuyev, 1992
 
            [Footnote]: None of the three main sources for the opinion that Stalin abdicated leadership at the opening of the war were in Moscow at the time, and none reveal how they learned of this alleged abdication.  They are Khrushchev, Maisky, and Grechko. 
            Similarly unconvincing is the assertion in Khrushchev Remembers that 'I'd seen him when he had been paralyzed by his fear of Hitler.'  In fact Khrushchev, who was in Kiev, did not see Stalin at all in the early part of the war.  In his speech of 1956 he contradicts this accusation by instead claiming that Stalin's fault early in the war was interference with military operations, hardly the same as paralysis.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 369
 
            Khrushchev also said that Stalin on hearing of the invasion acted like a "rabbit in front of a boa constrictor).  But a man who was arrested at least six times by Tsarist police between 1902 and 1913, and who escaped five times--as Stalin did, mostly from Siberian and Arctic prison camps--is not likely to act the coward in moments of danger....
            Many experts have written that Stalin disappeared for a few days after invasion day, and it is difficult to be accurate as to his whereabouts during the opening days of the invasion.  A few years ago his appointments book was found, and several pages detailing visitors to Stalin's Kremlin study are reproduced in Sudoplatov's Special Tasks, the Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness--a Soviet Spymaster.  And the Stalin biographer Radzinsky, on a visit to London in April 1996, disclosed that he had gained access to the 'presidential archives' in the Kremlin and found the journal listing Stalin's visitors for June 1941.  He said this showed that Stalin had not, as previously thought, disappeared for a week or more after the invasion, but rather had received a steady stream of visitors....
            That the country was not leaderless at this time is shown by the fact that a number of vital decisions were taken during the first week of the invasion and these had to be approved at the highest level.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 167
 
            Marshal Zhukov mentions a telephone call from Stalin on the 26th, the fourth day of the invasion, summoning him to Moscow.  'In the evening of 26 June I landed at Moscow and went to Stalin's office directly from the airport.'  Zhukov makes no mention of an incapacitated Stalin.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 168
 
US TRIES TO DICTATE PEACE IN ASIA AND DETERMINE EAST EUROPE GOVTS
 
            In the East, Washington not only took sole charge of the armistice with Japan, freezing both Russia and China out of the arrangements, but made supplementary terms with the Japanese generals, by which they kept on fighting the Chinese Communists until America's $300 million airlift could bring Chang Kai-shek's troops north to accept the surrender.  In the West, Washington ordered  Bulgaria to add to her cabinet some men of America's choice, if she wished to be recognized.  The Russians were astounded.  "We don't tell France, Belgium, or Holland to change their cabinets," they said.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 107
 
SU TOOK BACK AFTER WWII TERRITORY THAT WAS THEIRS
 
            Insult seemed added to injury when American commentators more and more grudged Russia "the great territory grabbed in the war."  To Russians, this was their own territory, lost in the first world war, only partially regained in the second.  The Russians had lost or ceded 330,000 square miles in the first war, and regained 250,000 square miles in the second, a net loss of 80,000 square miles, which roughly covered the territory ceded to Finland and Poland.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 111
 
STALIN’S OVERALL ACCOMPLISHMENTS
 
            Howard K. Smith said from Europe: "Stalin did more to change the world in the first half of this century than any other man who lived in it."  Let that stand as his worldwide epitaph.
            He built up Russia to a great power, to the world's first socialist state....  "He altered the West's whole attitude to the workingman," Howard K. Smith noted.  For all ideas of government planning, of "New Deal" in the USA and "welfare state" in Britain, arose in competition with Russia's Five-Year Planning, to keep the 1929 world economic crisis from producing revolution.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 117
 
            No voice today can be final about the Stalin era....  What we know, at least, is that he set out in 1928 to build socialism in one country, a backward peasant land surrounded by a world of foes.  When he began, Russia was peasant, illiterate; when he finished, it was the world's second industrial power.  Twice over he thus built it, once before the Hitler invasion and again upon the war's ruin.  That stands to his credit forever; he engineered that job.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 125
 
            Under Stalin more than 82 major towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants, designed by the most able architects of our time, have sprung up in the Soviet Union: and this in the midst of a traditional peasant's country.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 128
 
            One can say, for instance, that Stalin, more than any other single individual, built the first socialist society and built it on the wreck left by imperialist intervention and civil war.  One can also say that Stalin, more than any other single individual, was responsible for ending Nazi imperialism; in doing so, he not only preserved socialism but helped to extend its foundations in Eastern Europe.  These are immense accomplishments, accomplishments that place Stalin among the foremost historical figures of our century.  They are, moreover, accomplishments in the interest of humanity as a whole and run counter to the plans of world reaction.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 7
 
            Lenin and Stalin did not invent history, but they organized it.  They brought the future nearer.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 282
 
            According to Medvedev, it is these accomplishments [under Stalin] that must, in good part, account for the high level of popularity of the Party's General Secretary, especially among the working people of the USSR.  Medvedev concludes:
            "It was known that Party and state leaders were being arrested as 'enemies of the people,' but at the same time new schools, factories, and palaces of culture were rising everywhere.  Military leaders were being arrested as spies, but the Party was building a strong, modern army.  Scientists were being arrested as wreckers, but Soviet science had developed rapidly with the Party's support.  Writers were being arrested as Trotskyites and counter-revolutionaries, but some literary works appeared that were real masterpieces.  Leaders in the union republics were arrested as nationalists, but the formerly oppressed nationalities were improving their lot, and friendship among the peoples of the USSR was growing.  And this obvious progress filled Soviet hearts with pride, engendering confidence in the Party that was organizing it and in the man who stood at the head of the Party."
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 257
 
            When Stalin looked back on the rise of industry in his cities he was distressed at the many shortcomings, which he made constant attempts to rectify.  But he was immensely proud of the total result.  An agrarian country was fast becoming half urban.  A largely agrarian economy was now overwhelmingly weighted toward industry.  The postulated inevitable industrialization of all countries was coming true in his own country under his own guidance.  Because of the size and riches of the country, the industrialization process had produced the second largest and mightiest industrial plant in the world.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 202
 
            Irrespective of Stalin's right to leadership, the next question is, How far has he lived up to his responsibilities?  In other words, What has he done for his Party and his country?  The list can be made as follows:
            1.  As Commissar of Nationalities, he played the major role in forming the USSR, which was a far more difficult job than forming the 13 American colonies into the United States, because the Soviet Union was composed of dozens of diverse and formerly hostile peoples with different languages, cultures, and religions.
            2.  He created a Russian heavy industry free from foreign control and independent of foreign technical personnel.
            3.  He took the 25 million small peasant holdings--they could hardly be called farms--that were the backward and wasteful agriculture of Russia, and reorganized them into a modern, mechanized system of collective farming.
            4.  He led his country to victory through the most devastating and disastrous of wars.
Duranty, Walter. Stalin & Co. New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1949, p. 67
 
 
            Future historians may well declare that Stalin's greatest achievement, greater even than his conduct of the war to a victorious end, was his conquest of the Russian villages for socialism.  It was indeed a long and cruel struggle, almost as costly in human suffering and actual loss of life as a foreign war.  Stalin's contemporaries, whether in Russia or abroad, certainly regarded it as a major struggle and we have his own words in the History of the Party: "This was a profound revolution, a leap from an old qualitative state of society to a new qualitative state, equivalent in its consequences to the Revolution of 1917."
Duranty, Walter. Stalin & Co. New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1949, p. 72
 
            He [Stalin] achieved a lot: urbanization, military strength, education, and Soviet pride.  His USSR could claim impressive achievements.  It became a model for radical political movements,and not only communist ones,elsewhere in the world.  And at a time before the Second World War when liberal-democratic government signally failed to stand up effectively to fascism, Stalin appeared to have established a plausible alternative    .  If this had not been the case, he would never have gained the support necessary for him to survive and flourish.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 602
 
            Volodya says, "Stalin continued the work of Lenin, and he was quite successful; we prevented the ruin of the country and its collapse after the civil war.  We created industry, we collectivized the peasants, and to this day there is no desire among the peasants to leave the kolkhozes.  We won the war, even though it was very, very tough.  Hitler was armed for imperialism and the fact that our country managed to defeat him was to Stalin's huge merit.  The economy of the country was restored, atomic weaponry was created which has maintained peace for all these years.  At the tail end of this the first Sputnik was launched into space, space rockets were built: and alll this is due to the activity of one person....
            Stalin was a great man who had both a good side and a bad side, like everyone.  What he did in our country was huge, his merits are enormous and he is not guilty of everything that happened in this country.  All serious politicians say this.  He was a great, great organizer.  Even Churchill elevated Stalin very highly.
            A gigantic task was accomplished in changing the face of this country: the second great world power emerged after his term in office--you cannot deny this fact!  That power was so international in its essence that we did not know any "ethnic fights", so we were brought up knowing nothing of our "nationalist roots"; we could not care less.  The ethnic fights are purely the result of present-day policies."
Richardson, Rosamond.  Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 279
 
            During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights.  These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed.  To say that "socialism doesn't work" is to overlook the fact that it did.  In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists.  The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
            State Socialism transformed desperately poor countries into modernized societies in which everyone had enough food, clothing, and shelter; where elderly people had secure pensions; and where all children (and many adults) went to school and no one was denied medical attention....
Parenti, Michael.  Blackshirts and Reds, San Francisco: City Light Books, 1997, p. 84
 
            Furet sees communism is a kind of flash in the pan of modern history.  When the illusion passed, he writes, it left virtually no traces and no enduring legacy.  This is preposterous....
            Labor reform in the West in the past century came about under the threat of a radicalized international labor movement, protected and supported by the USSR.  President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was in part meant to steal the thunder of radicals who looked to Moscow and therefore could not be ignored.  Social goals that are commonplace today, including women's rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist Party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously.  It was Communists who first went to the American South and began organizing African-Americans and poor whites around issues of social justice.  The more politically acceptable young people who followed them in the sixties are heroes today.  On the international scene the Soviet Union provided support for Nelson Mandela and other reformers.  Communism made life difficult for Western establishments, and it is doubtful that reforms would have come when they did if the USSR had not existed.  Communists always rejected reform in favor of revolution.  Ironically, however, the existence of the Soviet Union helped the capitalist West reform itself and avoid the bloody revolutions of the East.  Twentieth-century communism was no passing illusion; its legacies are everywhere.
The Future Did Not Work by J. Arch Getty, Book Review of The Passing of an Illusion by Franois Furet [March 2000 Atlantic Monthly]
 
 
SU REVIVES AFTER WWII BY INTEGRATING EASTERN EUROPE NOT EXPLOITING IT
 
            Let me illustrate by an anecdote.  Ten years ago, I met a Czech in Moscow; he had come to make an economic treaty with the USSR.  I asked him what truth there was in the American claim that Moscow exploited the East European lands.  He replied: "when we deal with the Chiefs of Soviet industry, they bargain for their prices and we bargain for ours.  They are tough bargainers.  But if they press too hard then Gottwald takes it up with Stalin for a 'political settlement,' and says the terms will ruin us....  Then Stalin gives us help."
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 127
 
            Patrascanu accepted the armistice in the name of the King, and under the circumstances the terms seemed surprisingly moderate.  Rumania had to pay an indemnity of $300 million, no more than that imposed on Finland.  She lost no territory and earned a chance, by joining in an alliance with Russia, of getting back her prewar control of Transylvania, which Hitler had handed over to Hungary's Admiral Horthy.  Patrascanu seemed to think he had made a fair bargain.
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 41
 
            To speed up reconstruction and to raise the standard of living he had to draw on the economic resources of other nations.
            In theory he could do that in three different ways.  He might have asked the western allies, especially United States, for assistance.  In the heyday of the alliance there had been much talk of American loans to Russia and of Russo-American trade.  But amid the tensions and conflicts that developed later, the vistas of economic co-operation faded.  Stalin must, anyhow, have been reluctant to bring his country to that position of relative dependence in which any debtor inevitably finds itself vis-a-vis his creditor.  His choice was practically limited to two methods, one essentially nationalist, the other revolutionary.  The nationalist method consisted in the imposition of tribute on the vanquished nations, the dismantlement and transfer to Russia of their industries, the levying of reparations from their current output, and the direct use of their labor.  The revolutionary method, promising to bear fruit more slowly but more permanently, consisted in the broadening of the base on which planned economy was to operate, in an economic link-up between Russia and the countries within her orbit.  The gradual integration into the system of planned economy of several small and medium-sized countries, most of which had been industrially more developed than Russia before the '30s, promised to quicken the tempo of Russia's as well as of their own reconstruction.  The first condition of that integration was that communism should be in power in the countries concerned.
            We have seen that the two policies, the nationalist and the revolutionary, clashed on crucial points.  Stalin did not, nevertheless, make a clear-cut choice between the two; he pursued both lines simultaneously; but whereas the nationalist one predominated during the war, the revolutionary one was to gain momentum after the war.
            ... He now replaced his socialism in one country by something that might be termed 'socialism in one zone'.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 551-552
 
 
STALIN SAYS SEMINARY TURNED HIM INTO A REVOLUTIONARY
 
            But, when I asked Stalin whether the privations of his childhood had made him what he was, he answered in the negative and offered me the following astonishing explanation:
            "My parents had no education, but they did much for me.  Such things as you tell me about Masaryk did not make me into a socialist, either at the age of six or at the age of 12.  I became one at the seminary, because the character of the discipline enraged me.  The place was a hotbed of espionage and chicanery.  At nine in the morning we assembled for tea, and when we returned to our bedrooms all the drawers had been rifled.  And just as they went daily through our papers, they went daily through our souls.  I could not stand it; everything infuriated me.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 19
 
            In the case of Stalin, the remote reticence lord of all the Russians, he gave me the key himself.  He said he became a revolutionary because he could not stand the Jesuitic repression and martinet intolerance of the Orthodox Church seminary where he spent some years.  Those are his own words, and came right from his heart, although he gave other reasons, about his poor birth and surroundings and revolutionary friends, all in the proper Marxist manner.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 169
 
 
STALIN STRONGLY OPPOSED USING EX-CZARIST OFFICERS
 
            ... Lenin and Trotsky had to a knowledge that they could not manage without the advice of the old officers.  They therefore accepted the services of a few of these professionals, and always had them watched by tried and trusted party comrades. ...when Lenin gave Stalin his first command at the front, near Tsaritsyn, Stalin discovered a conspiracy among the officers, who were about to turn on the new rulers.  Stalin's reports and telegrams were filled with the bitterest contempt for the professionals, who did everything wrong: "what these fellows call the science of war I can only deplore, though I have the highest respect for science as such."
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 63
 
            In later years Stalin used to enjoy telling us that he refused to have anything to do with the bourgeois officers whom Trotsky dispatched to Tsaritsyn and that they invariably turned out to be traitors.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 18
 
            In order to enlist bourgeois officers into the Red Army, Lenin knew he would have to give them the freedom to make decisions on their own.  Commissars were to watch over the bourgeois officers but not to interfere with them.  Just imagine: a former colonel of the old tsarist army would suddenly be given a command in the Red Army.  During the Civil War, I saw many misunderstandings arise between officers and the commissars who were standing over them.  As Stalin was later to remind us so frequently, there were many instances of treason among the bourgeois officers.  A certain amount of treason had to be expected.  These people had been brought up under the old capitalist regime.  Some came over to our side out of fear, some came for the novelty, others came because they had no alternative--they had to earn a living.  And some came out of treachery.
            But the party had no choice.  We had to win over as many specialists as possible to our cause.  It was part of Lenin's genius that at such a critical moment he was able to learn some lessons from the capitalists and take advantage of their experience and expertise.
            Stalin, for his part, remained a specialist-eater all his life.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 20
 
            Trotsky, safe at Moscow, became more and more irritated by Tsaritsyn.  His policy in creating the new Red Army was to staff it almost exclusively from the ex-officers of the old army.  The policy of Stalin and Voroshilov was to consider such officers as unreliable and to staff the army from the young enthusiasts of the revolutionary movement.  Trotsky, moreover, did not forgive the ignoring of his telegram.  He went to Lenin and insisted upon Stalin's recall.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 47
 
            Somewhat weakly, it must be said, Trotsky agreed and allowed Stalin to join the war staff on the Southern front.  That was an error if Trotsky firmly believed that it was fatal to allow young communists to run the army rather than ex-officers of the Tsar's army.
            In any case, he proceeded to get rid of all Stalin's "heroes" in Tsaritsyn.  In December he demanded of Lenin that Voroshilov be relieved as he could not work with him.  And with Voroshilov the rest of the staff was dismissed and Trotsky had a new staff of his own choosing and a new commander.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 53
 
 
STALIN REPLIES TO THE TESTAMENT
 
            Stalin knew that Lenin's last words against him were being repeated throughout the country.  Instead of repressing them, he was clever enough to repeat them with his own coloring.  He said to the Congress:
            "Yes, comrades, it is true that I am a gruff sort of fellow.  I do not deny it....
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 99
 
            But in 1927 the question [of the last testament] was raised in the Central Committee.  It had to be admitted that such a document really existed.  In a speech at a joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, after reading aloud a section of Lenin's "Letter to the Congress," Stalin stated: "Yes, I am rude, comrades, toward those who are rudely and treacherously trying to destroy the party.  I have not and I do not hide this."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 86
 
            Stalin stated, “It is said that in his testament Lenin suggested that, in view of Stalin's 'rudeness', the Congress should consider replacing him as General Secretary with someone else.  That is absolutely true.  Yes, comrades, I am rude towards those who rudely and treacherously destroy and split the party.  I have never hidden this, nor do I now.  Maybe a certain gentleness is required towards the splitters.  But it is not in me to be like that.  At the very first session of the Central Committee plenum following the 13th Congress, I asked the plenum to release me from the duties of General Secretary.  The congress itself had debated this question.  All the delegates including Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, unanimously obliged Stalin to remain at his post.  What was I supposed to do?  Run away from the job?  That is not in my nature.  I have never run away from a job, nor did I have the right to do so, as it would have amounted to desertion.  A year later, I again asked the plenum to release me, and again I was compelled to remain at my post.  What more could I do?
            It is significant that the Testament contains not one word, not a hint about Stalin's mistakes.  It speaks only of Stalin's rudeness.  But rudeness is not, nor can it be, a shortcoming of Stalin's political line or his positions."
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 139
 
            Now the oppositionists-- too late for it to do them any good--brought up Lenin's complaint that Stalin was too rude.  Stalin with his overwhelming majority was now in a position to shrug off the accusation.  Yes, he admitted, Lenin had indeed said this.  And he read out the passage from the Testament about his rudeness, and other faults.  He emphasized that the decision not to publish it had been unanimous, and on the essentials said, 'Yes, comrades, I am rude towards those who rudely and treacherously break their word, who split and destroy the party.'
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 138
 
            He [Stalin] had a violent argument with the founder of the Caucasian Social Democracy.  His expulsion was demanded.  Koba defended himself:
            "Friendship counts for nothing when the Party and its interests are at stake," he declared.  "I am ready to offer my personal apologies, but whenever he adopts an attitude contrary to the interests of the Party I shall oppose him with the same violence and the same energy.  The absolute refusal to compromise is the most effective weapon in revolutionary conflict.  People may say I'm rude and offensive but that is nothing to me.  I shall continue to fight all those who threaten to destroy the Party."
Fishman and Hutton. The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 22
 
            Obviously, talk about the Party concealing these documents is infamous slander.  Among these documents are letters from Lenin urging the necessity of expelling Zinoviev and Kamenev from the Party.  The Bolshevik Party, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, have never feared the truth.  The strength of the Bolshevik Party lies precisely in the fact that it does not fear the truth and looks the truth straight in the face.
            The opposition is trying to use Lenin's "will" as a trump card; but it is enough to read this "will" to see that it is not a trump card for them at all.  On the contrary, Lenin's "will" is fatal to the present leaders of the opposition.
            Indeed, it is a fact that in his "will" Lenin accuses Trotsky of being guilty of "non-Bolshevism" and, as regards the mistake Kamenev and Zinoviev made during October, he says that that mistake was not "accidental."  What does that mean?  It means that Trotsky, who suffers from "non-Bolshevism," and Kamenev and Zinoviev, whose mistakes are not "accidental" and can and certainly will be repeated, cannot be politically trusted.
            It is characteristic that there is not a word, not a hint in the "will" about Stalin having made mistakes.  It refers only to Stalin's rudeness.  But rudeness is not and cannot be counted as a defect in Stalin's political line or position.
            Here is the relevant passage in the "will":
            "I shall not go on to characterize the personal qualities of the other members of the Central Committee.  I shall merely remind you that the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, not accidental, but that they can be blamed for it personally as little as Trotsky can be blamed for his non-Bolshevism."
            Clear, one would think.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 10, p. 182
 
RADEK DENOUNCES TROTSKY
 
            I heard Radek speak about Trotsky in Moscow in 1925 and 1931, before and after his first defection....  Later he declared with the tone and mien that seemed to me somewhat too solemn, almost clerical, that he had searched his heart during his exile, re-examined everything and recognized the absurdity of Trotsky's program.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 108
 
            [In a letter to Kaganovich and Yezhov  on 19 August 1936 Stalin stated] I read Radek's letter addressed to me about his situation in connection with the Trotskyite trial.  Although the letter is not very persuasive, I propose anyway that the question of arresting Radek be dropped for now and that he be allowed to publish an article over his byline against Trotsky in Izvestia.  The article will have to be reviewed beforehand.
Shabad, Steven, trans. The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 328
 
STALIN FORESAW VICTORY AFTER NAZI ATTACK WHILE HIS ENEMIES FORESAW DEFEAT
 
            Fundamentally Stalin's idea about the future of the Soviets differed only in one point--but this a decisive one--from that of his enemies: both parties foresaw the German attack, but Stalin believed in victory, Trotsky and his followers in defeat.  Stalin evaluated the Russian and German forces in the right, the others in the wrong way.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 110
 
            A chief reason why during 1941-42 he was constantly demanding offensive action, although it often involved terrible casualties, was that in these disastrous months, when Russia seemed near to collapse, he subordinated military considerations to the need to uphold the pride and fighting spirit of the nation.  He was unsure of the morale of the Red Army and of the Russian people.  Attempts to direct and control an orderly withdrawal of forces and the evacuation of the civilian population would have led, he feared, to panic-stricken flight, as had happened to the tsarist army in 1916-17.  The great panic which had swept through Moscow in October 1941 as the Germans approached, was the kind of failure in morale which might have spread throughout Russia, leading to complete collapse....
            But at every stage he had fought to halt them, as he had halted them before Moscow.  He had demanded attack and had inspired his commanders with his own spirit of aggression and will to victory.  It was indeed his implacable will which more than any other factor held the nation from collapse in the tragic days of 1941-42.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 421
 
STALIN’S SOCIAL PROGRAMS ARE FAR BETTER THAN THE NAZIS
 
            In Germany, before the outbreak of the war, Hitler permitted 60,000 young people to attend the institutions of higher learning; in Russia, Stalin gave permission to 600,000 recruiting young workers and peasants alike as students in newly founded military academies which are today the pride of the country.  Hitler drove distinguished scholars out of the country because their fathers had inherited a religion different from the one which he himself does not even believe in.  Stalin invited these scholars to his country and gave them important tasks and high salaries.  When we consider the care of the aged in Russia, we need only set by its side the answer which a Berlin doctor gave over the telephone to a friend of mine who called for help.  He asked how old the patient was, then said: "Seventy!  It's no longer worth while!  I'm not coming!"
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 137
 
SU FOSTERS CULTURE
 
            Books, radio, and film educate the Soviet citizen, who is kept away from banalities and, above all, from obscenities.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 139
 
            The nation has, nevertheless, advanced far in most fields of its existence.  Its material apparatus of production, which about 1930 was still inferior to that of any medium-sized European nation, has so greatly and so rapidly expanded that Russia is now the first industrial power in Europe and the second in the world.  Within little more than one decade the number of her cities and towns doubled; and her urban population grew by 30 millions.  The number of schools of all grades has very impressively multiplied.  The whole nation has been sent to school.  Its mind has been so awakened that it can hardly be put back to sleep again.  Its avidity for knowledge, for sciences and the arts, has been stimulated by Stalin's government to the point where it has become insatiable and embarrassing.  It should be remarked that, although Stalin has kept Russia isolated from the contemporary influences of the west, he has encouraged and fostered every interest in what he calls the 'cultural heritage' of the west.  Perhaps in no other country have the young been imbued with so great a respect and love for the classical literature and art of other nations as in Russia.  This is one of the important differences between the educational methods of nazism and Stalinism.  Another is that Stalin has not, like Hitler, forbidden the new generation to read and study the classics of their own literature whose ideological outlook does not accord with his.  While tyrannizing the living poets, novelists, historians, painters, and even composers, he has displayed, on the whole, a strange pietism for the dead ones.  The works of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Belinsky, and many others, whose satire and criticism of past tyranny have only too often a bearing on the present, have been literally pressed into the hands of youth in millions of copies.  No Russian Lessing or Heine has been burned at an auto-da-fe.  Nor can the fact be ignored that the ideal inherent in Stalinism, one to which Stalin has given a grossly distorted expression, is not domination of man by man, or nation by nation, or race by race, but their fundamental equality.  Even the proletarian dictatorship is presented as a mere transition to a classless society; and it is the community of the free and the equal, and not the dictatorship, that has remained the inspiration.  Thus, there have been many positive, valuable elements in the educational influence of Stalinism, elements that are in the long run likely to turn against its worst features.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 568
 
            Many times in the Kremlin, the Central Committee would see new films that were shown.  They were shown English films by the Cinematographic Committee under the head of Bolshakov.  After seeing this "cultural film", Stalin said:
            Did you buy this film with our gold?
            No, it was in exchange--meekly said the chief of the committee.
            You have "Chapaev"?
            Yes
            Give us this film.  These are the kind of films to show our youth and future generations.
            Some of the people in the audience, members of the Politburo, started to shout: Bravo, Stalin, Bravo!
            After the film ended, Stalin was agitated and told those who performed this "Bravo" event:
            This is not called for at all.  I certainly do not appreciate or want these "bootlicking" words to be said in my name!
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 27-28
 
RICH ARE NOT KIND GOOD GUYS
 
            The patriarchal benevolence of the big landlords is nothing but a fairytale.  Even count Tolstoy, the humanitarian and poet towering so high above his class, let the peasants on his estate live in squalor.  Masaryk, who told me this fact, remonstrated with Tolstoy himself on this account when visiting him in the eighties.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 146
 
1936 SU CONSTITUTION AMONG THE GREATEST CONSTITUTIONS
 
            The third great document of modern humanity, after the Declaration of Independence and the Paris Rights of Man, is represented by the Soviet Constitution of 1936....
            History will call this new constitution by the name of Stalin, though he did not head the Soviet Union, but only the Communist party at the time of its inception, and though its main thoughts had been already formulated by Lenin in his first two constitutions of 1918 and 1924.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 163
 
            The Russians consider their Constitution the most advanced and democratic in the world--and they feel that Stalin more than any other man was responsible for it.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 34
 
            The Constitution of the USSR [1936] was entirely the creation of Stalin.  He supervised and directed the drafting.  It was worked out according to his plan under his direct, continuous leadership.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 202
 
            ...Stalin edited the Constitution; he headed the commission; everything was in his hands.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 205
 
            Neither was Stalin the author of the Constitution, though it was called the "Stalin Constitution."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 823
 
            "...To be sure, elections to the Soviets became more democratic from a formal point of view.  Deputies to local Soviets had been elected by open voting in factories and other institutions; after 1936 they were elected in polling places scattered through territorial districts, with the entire adult population casting secret ballots.  Before the voters elected deputies directly only to local soviets, the local soviets elected deputies to the next higher soviets, and so on.  After 1936 all elections became direct, and the voters of each district elected deputies to the local soviet, the city soviet, the oblast soviet, the republic soviet, and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 837
 
            It will be seen that the difference between the usual constitutions of the [bourgeois] democracies and the Constitution of the Soviet Union lies in the fact that, all the former admittedly proclaim the rights and liberties of the citizens, they specify no means of substantiating them, whereas the Constitution of the Soviet Union stipulates the very physical conditions without which true democracy cannot exist, inasmuch as without assured economic independence the unhampered formation of opinion is impossible, while there is nothing so inimical to freedom as the fear of unemployment, fear for the future of children, and fear of a wretched old age.
            It may be disputed whether all the 146 articles of the Soviet Constitution are operative, or whether some of them exist only on paper.  But it is indisputable that the four articles which I have quoted [Articles 118,119,120,121]--and they seem to me to be the basis of practical democracy--are not just printed words, but do express realities.  If you were to turn the city of Moscow upside-down, you would discover hardly anything inconsonant with these articles.
Feuchtwanger, Lion. Moscow, 1937. New York: The Viking Press, 1937, p. 30
 
            The most outstanding feature in the first section of the constitution and upon which the whole constitution is based is the specific fact that the exploitation of man by man must cease.  In addition to this a great many of its parts pertain strictly to economics.  When it speaks of equality it means economic equality and not that of birth and mentality.  The Russians did not tack on a Bill of Rights to their constitution like we did, but began with those rights.  Their idea of a constitution is a new one to the world--stressing economics, the abolition of human exploitation for the purpose of individual profits.  This is quite different from our constitution which allows exploitation to be conducted by the "financial interests."  Even those countries which have had successful revolutions in the last years did not attempt to eradicate exploitation as it exists under capitalism, but, giving it a softer tone, continued it in writing a constitution patterned after ours.
Wright, Russell. One-Sixth of the World's Surface. Hammond, Ind., The Author, c1932, p. 16
 
            In the middle of this earthquake, in November 1936, Stalin promulgated the new constitution in an address to the Eighth Congress of the Soviets....  The new constitution was to replace Lenin's electoral system, which had openly and frankly favored the industrial working class, and give equal suffrage to all classes, including the hitherto disfranchised former bourgeoisie.  Indirect elections were to be replaced by direct, open ballot by secret.  Such an advance, Stalin said, was possible because the structure of society had changed: the first phase of communism had been achieved; the working class was no longer a proletariat; the peasantry had been integrated into the socialist economy; and the new intelligentsia was rooted in the working classes.  Opposing what he claimed to be someone's amendment to the draft of the constitution, he insisted that the constitution must guarantee to constituent republics the right to secede from the Soviet Union. 
            Opposing still another amendment, which aimed at investing sovereignty in the President of the Republic instead of in the many-headed Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Stalin warned his audience that a single President might become a dictator-- the constitution should leave no such opening.  He even insisted on the enfranchisement of the former White Guards and priests.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 381
 
            [From Pravda Feb. 27, 1937]
            The introduction of the new USSR Constitution marks a turning point in the country's political life.  The essence of this change consists in the further democratization of the electoral system--the replacement of the not completely equal elections to the soviets by equal elections, of multi-stage elections by direct ones, of open balloting by secret.
            Whereas before introduction of the new constitution, clergy, former White Guards, former individuals and people not usefully employed were limited in their electoral rights, the new constitution dispenses with all limitations on the electoral rights of these categories of citizens, making the elections of deputies universal.
            Whereas formerly the elections of deputies were unequal, since there existed different electoral standards for the urban and rural populations, now the need for placing limitations on the equality of elections has disappeared and all citizens have the right to participate in elections on an equal basis.
            Whereas previously the elections to the middle and higher organs of the Soviet power were multi-stage, now, under the new constitution, elections to all soviets--from the village and city level all the way of to the Supreme Soviet--will be direct.
            Whereas the election of deputies to the Soviets was formerly by open ballot and on the basis of lists, now the voting in the election of deputies will be secret and not by lists but by individual candidacies put forward by electoral districts.
McNeal, Robert. Resolutions and Decisions of the CPSU--The Stalin Years: 1929-1953. Vol. 3. Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1974, p. 184
 
            The 1936 Constitution, the Stalin constitution, as it was immediately baptized, did assure democratic rights to all citizens: freedom of speech, association, and the press, freedom to demonstrate, freedom to propagate both religious and antireligious ideas, and the inviolability of privacy in the home and in one's correspondence.  Freedom of movement was not mentioned, but all citizens were given the right to vote (none were disenfranchised any longer), and elections were to be secret and direct.  The Stalin constitution was proclaimed "the most democratic in the world."
Nekrich and Heller. Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 287
 
            No doubt about it, the document [the new 1936 constitution] was as advertised, "the most democratic constitution in the world."   Elections were to be free, equal, and secret.   To the list of individual rights found elsewhere the Soviet document proudly added the right of every individual to demand that his government provide him with employment.   Neither John Stuart Mill nor Thomas Jefferson could have objected to a single provision.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 403
 
            And Stalin,    sanctioned the granting of full civic rights under the Constitution to all Soviet citizens regardless of their social, religious, or political backgrounds.  Universal equality of treatment was proclaimed.  Soviet citizens were guaranteed pay, food, education, shelter, and employment.  No other constitution in the world was so expansive in the benefits it proffered.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 319
 
PEOPLE CAN HAVE PRIVATE PROPERTY FOR PERSONAL USE
 
            In the Constitution of the Soviets the corresponding article, of course greatly enlarged, says the following: the land and all it contains...are owned by the state, that is they are the property of the whole nation.  On the other hand, private property is partly retained by the Soviets, for it says further on: "The personal property of the citizens derived from their work, savings made in their households, and objects for personal use and comfort are protected by law."
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 165
 
            Outside of the socialistic system, the law permits smaller private farms and other undertakings founded on personal work and excluding the exploitation of others."
            Where private ownership has been abolished, the privilege of the private owner to become a millionaire through low wages and high prices has been abolished, too.  In this way the striving for gold as the greatest aim in life becomes impossible, while the striving for the good things of life, in recompense of diligence and talent, is retained.  Where exploitation of human labor has been prohibited, but private property and savings permitted to a limited degree, life will offer a new purpose.
            Thus the protection of the state is granted not only the "proletarian," but every citizen, because no extremely rich or poor man can exist.  Together with the right to work each citizen is guaranteed the following things: gratuitous education, access to all cultural advantages, paid vacations, insurance against sickness and old age.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 166
 
1936 CONSTITUTION WAS OVERWHELMINGLY ACCEPTED
 
            Ninety millions voted for, but four millions against the Constitution.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 168
 
STALIN SAVED ENGLAND FROM BEING ATTACKED BY THE NAZIS
 
            The great benefit accruing to the world and allied victory from Stalin's pact, has been divulged by Hitler himself.  Later in their speeches of June 23, 1941, Hitler and Ribbentrop set forth that it was Stalin who prevented an attack on England in the fall of 1940: the wicked Russians, cried Hitler in his familiar sniveling manner, had occupied Bessarabia and thus set the Balkans in motion against Germany.  Yes, Hitler himself confessed in his declaration of war that he did not dare attack England in the rear if he had to confront an armed Russia.  This sentence would be sufficient to justify every opponent of Hitler--in other words, the majority mankind--in giving thanks to Stalin.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 230
 
STALIN DENOUNCES RULE BY TERROR
 
            "This policy of cruelty."  I answered, "seems to have aroused a very widespread fear.  In this country I have the impression that everybody is afraid and that your great experiment could succeed only among this long-suffering nation that has been trained to obedience."
            "You are mistaken," said Stalin, "but your mistake is general.  Do you think it possible to hold power for so long merely by intimidating the people?  Impossible.  The Czars knew best how to rule by intimidation.  It is an old experiment in Europe and the French bourgeoisie supported the Czars in their policy of intimidation against the people.  What came of it?  Nothing."
            "But it maintained the Romanovs in power for 300 years."
            "Yes, but how many times was that power shaken by insurrections?  To forget the older days, recall only the revolts of 1905.  Fear is in the first instance a question of the mechanism of administration.  You can arouse fear for one or two years and through it, or at least partly through it, you can rule for that time.  But you cannot rule the peasants by fear.  Secondly, the peasants and the working classes in the Soviet Union are by no means so timid and long-suffering as you think.  You believe that our people are timid and lazy.  That is an antiquated idea.  It was believed in formerly, because the landed gentry used to go to Paris to spend their money there and do nothing.  From this arose an impression of the so-called Russian laziness.  People thought that the peasants were easily frightened and made obedient.  That was a mistake.  And it was a threefold mistake in regard to the workers.  Never again will the workers endure the rule of one man.  Men who have reached the highest pinnacles of fame were lost the moment they had got out of touch with the masses.  Plehanov had great authority in his hands, but when he became mixed up in politics he quickly forgot the masses.  Trotsky was a man of great authority, but not of such high standing as Plehanov, and now he is forgotten.  If he is casually remembered, it is with a feeling of irritation."
            I did not intend to mention Trotsky to Stalin but since he himself had broached the subject, I asked: "Is the feeling against Trotsky general?"
            "If you take the active workers, nine tenths speak bitterly of Trotsky."  (We spoke before the Moscow trials, in December 1931.)
            ... "You cannot maintain that people may be ruled for a long time merely by intimidation.  I understand your skepticism.  There is a small section of the people which is really afraid.  It is an unimportant part of the peasant body.  That is represented by the kulaks.  They do not fear anything like the initiation of a reign of terror but they fear the other section of the peasant population.
            "But if you take the progressive peasants and workers, not more than 15 percent are skeptical of the Soviet power, or are silent from fear or are waiting for the moment when they can undermine the Bolsheviks state.  On the other hand, about 85 percent of the more or less active people would urge us further then we want to go.  We often have to put on the brakes.  They would like to stamp out the last remnants of the intelligentsia.  But we would not permit that.  In the whole history of the world there never was a power that was supported by nine tenths of the population as the Soviet power is supported.
            That is the reason for our success in putting our ideas into practice.  If we ruled only by fear, not a man would have stood by us.  And the working classes would have destroyed any power that attempted to continue to rule by fear.  Workers who have made three revolutions have had some practice in overthrowing governments.  They would not endure such a mockery of government as one merely based on fear."
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 173-175
 
LUDWIG: It seems to me that a considerable part of the population of the Soviet Union stands in fear and trepidation of the Soviet power, and that the stability of the latter rests to a certain extent on that sense of fear....
STALIN: You are mistaken.  Incidentally, your mistake is that of many people.  Do you really believe that we could have retained power and have had the backing of the vast masses for 14 years by methods of intimidation and terrorisation?  No, that is impossible.  The czarist government excelled all others in knowing how to intimidate.  It had long and vast experience in that sphere....  Yet, in spite of that experience and in spite of the help of the European bourgeoisie, the policy of intimidation led to the downfall of czarism.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 110
 
            Nevertheless, the specific remedies he [Stalin] proposed for the remaining "problems" were in the benign areas of party education and propaganda rather than repression.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 129
 
            "But if in this building you are so democratic," I objected, "why is your government so cruel at the end of 14 years that everybody in your country fears you?"
            To this challenge--for I had made up my mind to be rough and discourteous in the Kremlin--Stalin made a long, quiet reply on the history of the Bolsheviks, whose beginnings were far too mild, and said, at the end of his discussion, that my mistake in this matter was a general one.  "Do you really believe a man could maintain his position of power for 14 years merely by intimidation?  Only by making people afraid?  The Czars were past masters of that art and what has become of them?  Fear is a question of the mechanics of administration.  You can excite fear for a year or two.  But not among our peasants!  Our workmen and peasants are not so timid as you think.
            You ask about fear?  Well, a small part of the peasants, the kulaks, are afraid.  They are afraid of the other peasant groups....  Of the adult peasants and workmen 15% at the most keep silence through fear.  Besides, our workmen have three revolutions behind them, that is sufficient practice for them to destroy leaders they do not like."
Ludwig, Emil. Three portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin. New York Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company, c1940, p. 118
 
SU MEETS ITS FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS WITH THE CAPITALISTS
 
            My old friend, Owen Young, Chairman of the Board of General Electric Co.,...tells me that the Soviet government has an exceptionally high credit rating in banking and business circles in New York and this country; that they have the reputation of being meticulously careful to meet their financial obligations promptly and even before the due date.  In the course of business relations which the General electric has had with the Soviet government, running into millions of dollars, and covering 10 or 15 years, he stated that the Soviets have been scrupulously prompt in their payments and had lived up to their promises in every respect.  He gave them a most excellent reputation for living up to their promises, quite in contrast to nonbusiness and politically minded people with whom I have discussed the Soviets here.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 8
 
DEFENDANTS FREELY AND NONCHALANTLY CONFESSED
 
            The principal defendants [in the January 1937 trial] were Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, and Muralov.... In detail, calmly and dispassionately, Pyatakov set forth the narrative of his criminal activities.  As he proceeded (as was the case with the others), his testimony would be interrupted by the prosecutor who called upon different defendants to corroborate the certain specific instances which he described.  In some cases they modified or disputed some fact but in the main would corroborate the fact that the crime was committed.  All this was done by these defendants with the greatest degree of nonchalance.  I noted particularly that after Serebryakov, who was an old railroad man, was called to his feet to corroborate the fact of a peculiarly horrible crime (which he did laconically), he sat down quite unconcerned and yawned.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 38
 
            Foreign observers at the trial [Shakhty trial], of whom I was one, were somewhat puzzled by the apparent readiness, even willingness, of the accused to admit and sometimes actually to stress their own and each other's sins.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 154
 
 
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS OF 1937 DEFENDANTS
 
            Radek, the second defendant to be called,... asked them to remember that he it was who had disclosed the Trotsky conspiracy, with the implication that, but for him, that which the government desired to establish would not have been forthcoming.  Serebryakov was as mild-mannered a pirate as ever slit a throat (with a cherubic face), who casually recited horror after horror which he had projected.  He seemed more or less resigned in his demeanor.  Sokolnikov, former ambassador to London,...delivered himself of what might appear to be a dispassionate lecture upon his participation in the conspiracy, and expounded logically and clearly the reasons which prompted him and his associates to launch upon a plot with Japan in Germany; the basis of which was that there was no possibility of projecting their plans for the betterment of the Russian people internally because the Stalin government was so strong that mass action within could not overthrow it and that historically they had reason to believe that their best chance was to rise to power through a foreign war and to create a smaller state out of the embers, because of the friendly disposition of the victors (Germans), and the probable attitude of other Western powers of Europe in the resultant peace arrangements.
            Muralov...told of his reasons for supporting Trotsky as one of his oldest and best friends and a great man, who had been a man "when others were mice," and again when he spoke of his reasons for refusal to confess, and ultimate recantation.  He denied there had been any pressure put upon him; and stated that for eight months he had refused to confess, because he resented his arrest and became angry and stubborn; that at first he thought he would prefer to die as a hero and forward the cause in that way, but that, when he gradually understood the whole plot, he had finally concluded that the Stalin government had made much progress and was doing such great things for the Russian people that he had been mistaken, and that his duty lay in making a clean breast of it.  The remainder of the defendants all testified at length with reference to their particular crimes, and were of widely different types.
            All defendants [at the Jan. 1937 trial] seemed eager to heap accusation upon accusation upon themselves--mea culpa maxima.  They required little cross-examination by the prosecutor.  In the case of one defendant a prosecutor even had to admonish him to get down to the case and not embroider his testimony with additional crimes.  The attitude of the prosecutor generally was entirely free from browbeating.  Apparently, it was not necessary.
            At the conclusion of the testimony, the prosecutor made a long address to the court, based in part upon evidence but largely upon extraneous historical matter.  It was a scholarly, able presentation.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 39-40
 
SENTENCES OF THE 1937 DEFENDANTS
 
            The defendant Pyatakov asked for no mercy in his final speech, nor did Shestov, who had been the chief agent for the perpetration of some of the most heinous crimes.  Shestov, in fact, stated that he deserved death and wanted to die.   Radek did not ask for mercy except by implication, nor did Muralov.  Sokolnikov did, but in a very dignified way. 
            The defendants were all adjudged guilty and sentenced according to the degree of crime.  Pyatakov and Serebryakov, as members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyite center and as those who had organized treason, espionage, wrecking, and terrorist activities, were sentenced to the supreme penalty--to be shot.  Eleven others, including Muralov, as organizers and direct executors of the crimes, were sentenced to the supreme penalty--to be shot.  Two, Radek and Sokolnikov, as being members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyite "parallel center" and responsible for its criminal activities--but not directly participating in the organization and execution of the specific crimes--were sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment.  Two others, Arnold and Stroilov, were sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for the specific crimes with which they were charged....  The clemency shown to Radek and to Sokolnikov occasioned general surprise.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 41
 
WHY HAVE THE PUBLIC 1937 TRIAL SINCE THEY CONFESSED
 
            The most extraordinary part of this trial, from a Western outlook, is that there should have been such a trial at all.  The accused had all entered the plea of guilty.  There remained nothing for a court to do but to hear possible pleas for clemency and to adjudge the facts and sentence the accused.  But here a...trial was had which lasted for six days and in which presumably all proof was produced that the prosecutor could possibly adduce--from our point of view an entirely useless proceeding.  There were probably two purposes for this program on the part of the authorities.
            Off the record, one is admitted, to wit: that the occasion was dramatized for propaganda purposes.  It was designed: first, as a warning to all existing and potential plotters and conspirators within the Soviet Union; second, to discredit Trotsky abroad; and third, to solidify popular national feeling in support of the government against foreign enemies--Germany and Japan.  During the trial every means of propaganda was employed to carry to all parts of the country the horrors of these confessions.  The newspapers were filled not only with reports of the testimony but also comments of the most violent and vituperative character as to the accused.  The radio also was working overtime.
            The other probable purpose was to disclose to the public in open court the bona fides of the confessions of the accused.  Had these confessions been made "in chambers," or produced over the signatures of the accused, their authenticity might have been denied.  The fact of the confessions could never be disputed in the face of the oral self-accusations made "in open court."
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 42
 
1937 TRIAL LEFT NO DOUBT AS TO THEIR GUILT
 
            From reports of the previous trials the present case differed in the opinion of many observers here in that there was practically unanimity of confessions here, also greater corroboration, and a more general opinion on the part of disinterested observers that an actual conspiracy was shown to exist against the Soviet government.  
            With an interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully.  Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants.  The unanimity of their confessions, the fact of their long imprisonment with the possibility of duress and coercion extending to themselves or their families, all gave me grave doubts as to the reliability that could attach to their statements.  Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment.... I am still impressed with the many indications of credibility which obtained in the course of the testimony.  To have assumed that this proceeding was invented and staged as a project of dramatic political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of a Shakespeare and the genius of a Belasco in stage production.  The historical background and surrounding circumstances also lend credibility to the testimony.  The reasoning which Sokolnikov and Radek applied in justification of their various activities and their hoped-for results were consistent with probability and entirely plausible.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 42
 
            The lesser accused, who were merely tools, amplified in great circumstantial detail their chronicle of crime, and in many instances gave indications that what they were then stating was being uttered for the first time.  These and other facts, which I saw, compelled the belief that there may have been much redundant embroidery in the testimony, but that the consistent vein of truth ran through the fabric, establishing a definite political conspiracy to overthrow the present government.
            On the face of the record in this case it would be difficult for me to conceive of any court, in any jurisdiction, doing other than adjudging the defendants guilty of violations of the law as set forth in the indictment and as defined by the statutes.
            I have talked to many, if not all, of the members of the Diplomatic Corps here and, with possibly one exception, they are all of the opinion that the proceedings established clearly the existence of a political plot and conspiracy to overthrow the government.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 44
 
            In the Diplomatic Corps there is no unanimity of opinion with respect to the testimony with reference to the alleged Trotsky agreement with Japan and Germany.  The rationalization of such a plan as calmly discussed and justified by Sokolnikov and also by Radek carried weight with some, who pointed out that it was consistent with Lenin's conduct in acquiring power through the use of the German military in 1917, and the rise of the Social Democrats in Germany out of the embers of war.  With others, that part of the testimony was discounted.  But all agree that the state established a case of conspiracy against the present government.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 45
 
            Prevailing impressions among the correspondents here is that regardless of motives which may have prompted these extraordinary mass confessions these defendants are, generally speaking, telling the truth at least in part; and that the prosecution has made a strong case establishing the existence of widespread Trotsky conspiracy to destroy the present government....
            Personally I have found great interest in following this trial and have attended each of the sessions.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 49
 
            All of these defendants had been kept incommunicado for weeks and months.  One by one they arose and told their story quite dispassionately and in the greatest of circumstantial detail, piling self-accusation upon self-accusation.  The prevailing opinion is that, objectively viewed in the face of the proceedings, the government established its case at least to the extent of establishing a conspiracy against the present government.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 53
 
            On February 2, 1937, Davies wrote in his diary, "The ---------- minister called.  He has been in the U.S. and in Washington several times.  Opinion regarding the trial--guilty.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 56
 
            On February 6, 1937, Ambassador Davies wrote in his diary, "Called on the Lithuanian minister--a fine old man.  We discussed the trial.  He stated that there was evidently a widespread plot."
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 68
 
            On February 18, 1937, Ambassador Davies wrote in his diary, "The-------minister called.  Regarding the trial: There was no doubt but that a widespread conspiracy existed and that the defendants were guilty....
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 82
 
            Reasonably neutral observers construct a "theory" about the trials more or less as follows:
            1.  Every important defendant in the first and second trials was a Zinovievite or a Trotskyist.  Radek, Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, had been Trotskyists for years.  Radek joined the Trotsky faction in 1923, went into exile, and only recanted in 1929; he was readmitted to grace in 1930.  Their opposition to Stalin was ingrained and inexpungeable; they were Trotskyists to the bone; when they saw things going badly according to their lights, it was perfectly reasonable for them to turn back to their old leader.
            2.  Moreover, these old revolutionaries, quite apart from the fact that they were Trotskyists and therefore dissidents, were conspirators by nature, conspirators born and bred.  From their very earliest days they had breathed the air of plot and counterplot.  The day of their eminence passed; Stalin wanted engineers and administrators; they were naturally disgruntled.  In a police-run state like Russia, one should remember, discontent can be expressed only by conspiracy.  And Radek and company were congenitally incapable of giving conspiracy up.
            3.  The Trotskyists--outside Russia at least--made no effort to conceal their violent hatred of the Stalinist regime.  They were far beyond such "bourgeois" considerations as orthodox patriotism.  They were world revolutionaries and they no longer regarded the USSR as a revolutionary or communist state.  They had the same aim as pre-1939 Germany and Japan, to overthrow the Stalinist regime.  Stalin was as much an enemy to them as Hitler.  And they were willing to cooperate even with Hitler, at that time an obvious ally, for their supreme goal--Stalin's destruction.
            4.  Radek and the others testified over and over again--the central issue of the trial--that they felt war to be inevitable in 1933 or 1934 and that the Russians would be defeated.  They thought that things were going very badly, and that when the crash came the Soviet Union would not survive it.  Therefore, as good world revolutionaries, they deemed it their duty to get to work and perfect an underground organization that would survive the war, so that revolutionary communism would not altogether perish.  Also, if war came, they might themselves have had a chance at getting power in Russia, and therefore an attempt to buy the Germans off, buy the Japanese off, was natural.
            5.  So much for Radek and his friends inside.  As regards Trotsky outside, an anti-Trotskyist could probably add two more considerations: (a) Trotsky was actively eager for a German war against the USSR, and he hoped that the USSR would lose--therefore he sought to weaken it by sabotage; (b) his ambition and his lust for office were such that he was quite willing to give up the Ukraine and the Maritime Provinces as a price for power.  One should not forget that Trotsky fought the Tsar during the Great War much as he fights Stalin now, that Lenin crossed Germany with German aid in a German sealed train, and that Trotsky signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk giving an immense amount of Russian territory to Germany.
Gunther, John. Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 558-559
 
            The confessions of the defendants; the manner in which their several stories corroborated one another; their frank explanations of the way they had yielded to the temptation of giving their general adhesion to a treasonable conspiracy of which they did not at first understand the…scope; and how they had then found themselves unable to escape from the coils in which they had become entangled;--be it added, a certain amount of further corroboration deduced from incautiously published utterances both by German and by Japanese statesman, convinced the British and American journalists present at the trial in January 1937 that the defendants were really guilty of the treasonable conspiracies with which they were charged.   Careful perusal of the full reports of the proceedings and speeches at the public trial leaves upon us the same impression, so far as concerns the actual defendants,   
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 927
 
1937 TRIAL TESTIMONIES WERE VERY CONVINCING
 
            The circumstantial detail, apparently at times surprising even to the prosecutor as well as to other defendants, which was brought out by the various acciused, gave unintended corroboration to the gist of the charges.  The manner of testifying of various accused and their bearing on the stand also had weight with me.  The dispassionate, logical, detailed statement of Pyatakov and the impression of despairing candor, with which he gave it, carried conviction.  So, too, with Sokolnikov.  The old general, Muralov, was particularly impressive.  He carried himself with a fine dignity and with the forthrightness of an old soldier.  In his "last plea" he said:...
            "I refuse counsel and I refuse to speak in my defense because I am used to defending myself with good weapons and attacking with good weapons.  I have no good weapons with which to defend myself.... I don't dare blame anyone for this; I, myself, am to blame.  This is my difficulty.  This is my misfortune....
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 44
 
ROMM ADMITS HIS GUILT AND DESCRIBES HIS TROTSKYIST ROLE
 
            During the course of the Radek trial, Mr. Walter Duranty of The New York Times came to me with a cable which he had received from a group of journalists in the United States and which read as follows:
            "All members of the Washington newspaper corps have read with anxiety of the arrest of our colleague Vladimir Romm of Izvestia.  In our dealings with Romm we have found him a true friend and advocate of the USSR.  Never once did he even faintly indicate lack of sympathy for or disloyalty toward the existing government....  We hope this testimonial can be strongly certified to his judges...."
            Of course my sympathies were enlisted and I watched his testimony with the deepest interest and concern.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 46
 
             Romm was placed on the witness stand on the day of the receipt of your message.  His testimony was most extraordinary.  Without prompting by the prosecutor or use of leading questions, he told a chronological story very clearly and simply.  He disclosed that he was an intimate friend of Radek, had received his position from the latter, and in great detail recited the manner in which, upon several occasions, he acted as "go between" for Radek and Trotsky and Trotsk'y son, Sedov, in carrying letters (sewn into the binding of German books) back and forth.  He stated that he had been an original Trotsky adherent and that from and after his conversation with Sedov in 1931 or 1932 had become part of the Trotsky organization.  These letters, to which Romm and other defendants had testified, were the basis of the conspiracy charge against these defendants.  They were relied upon to establish that Trotsky was plotting with those defendants the overthrow of the present Russian government, through sabotage, terrorism, assassination, and for the organization of defeatism among the population and active participation with Japan and Germany through foreign spies in the fomenting of an early war against Russia directed principally by Germany and out of which it was contemplated that the conspirators would rise to power in a new and smaller Soviet Republic, after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the cession of the Ukraine to Germany, and the maritime states and Sakhalin oil fields to Japan.
            The indictment charges innumerable violations of the existing law of the Soviet Union and a typical counterrevolutionary terrorist conspiracy.  Romm also stated that he had used government agencies, i.e., the Tass telegraph agency, to communicate with Trotsky.
            The poor devil did not leave himself a leg to stand on.  He did state that since 1934 when he went to the United States he had dropped all further participation in the plans.
            While his [Romm] appearance on the stand was rather downcast, he looked physically well and as far as I could judge, his testimony bore the earmarks of credibility.
            Under these circumstances it made it impossible for anyone to be of aid to him in the trial.
            I would gladly have done anything I could to have helped the poor chap....  But after all he is a Soviet citizen, knew Soviet law, and entered into the situation with his eyes open....
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 48-49‚
 
SU WANTED PEACE SO BAD IT SIGNED A PACT WITH THE NAZIS
 
            The USSR wanted peace above all things else and to get it, in his [The-----minister] opinion, would pay even the price of an agreement with Hitler.  This is an extraordinary view in the face of the violent way in which Hitler and Stalin are calling each other all the vile names under the sun.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 82
 
            ...the Soviet government left no stone unturned to impart to the rest of Europe its own awareness of the Nazi peril.  Its representatives ran hither and yon offering to all and sundry pacifist agreements, nonaggression pacts, and economic accords.  They conducted negotiations not only with nations that might become victims of Nazi aggression, but with powers unfriendly to Russia, like Poland and Finland, and, on an economic basis, with Germany itself.  In those days the Russians were like Cassandra, prophesying evil and striving desperately to avert it, but finding few to heed their warnings.  Even the Comintern was pressed into the campaign for peace.  It instructed foreign Communist Parties to make common cause wherever possible with Labor and liberal groups and to form a "United Front against the Nazi-Fascist danger."
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 226
 
            ...As leader, he [Stalin] could say he was aiming the country towards catching up and overtaking the developed capitalist countries, but he needed time and he needed peace, peace at any price.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 384
 
            For Stalin, the options had expired.  Between Schulenburg's visits to the Kremlin... Stalin finally took the decision to go with Hitler.  It was, on the evidence available, the only way left for him to protect his country.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 220
 
 
THE GENERALS WERE GUILTY
 
            On June 28, 1937, Ambassador Davies wrote to Sumner Wells, "The judgment of those who have been here longest is that conditions are very, very serious; the best judgment seems to believe that in all probability there was a definite conspiracy in the making looking to a coup d'etat by the army--not necessarily anti-Stalin, but antipolitical and antiparty, and that Stalin struck with characteristic speed, boldness, and strength.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 160
 
            As to the alleged to guilt of these army generals of overt acts --actual conspiracy with the German government...it should be said that two very well-informed ambassadors, with whom I have discussed the matter, have stated it to be their belief that there was probably some truth in the allegations.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 192
 
            Facts are not now available, and it is doubtful whether they will be for a long time to come, which would justify a statement as to exactly what happened and just what constituted the "offense" of these officers of the Red Army.  Opinion must be based largely on deductions from known facts and these are few.  The press reports here are practically bare of anything, except allegations.  The same applies to Voroshilov's manifesto to the army.  About all  that has been stated is the position of the government, i.e., that these men were guilty of treason in the Red Army, had conspired with Germany to overthrow the government, had admitted their guilt, had been tried by the cream of the Red Army--their own peers--and that the evidence of their guilt was submitted, prior to the trials, to representative officers of all military districts of the Soviet Union.  That such a conference was in fact held and that a very large number of officers were present here in Moscow at that time seem  to be confirmed by foreign military observers who saw many of these Red Army officers whom they had met in different parts of the Soviet Union.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 200
 
            In view of the character of the accused, their long terms of service, their recognized distinction in their profession, their long-continued loyalty to the communist cause, it is scarcely credible that their brother officers--Voroshilov, Egorov, Budenny, Blucher, and the many other district military commanders--should have acquiesced in their execution, unless they were convinced that these men had been guilty of some offense. 
(Footnote: The Bukharin trial six months later developed evidence which, if true, more than justified this action.  Undoubtedly those facts were all fully known to the military court at this time.)
            It is generally accepted by members of the Diplomatic Corps that the accused must have been guilty of an offense which in the Soviet Union would merit the death penalty.
            From the facts which we have, certain deductions can be reached as to what the situation probably was.  It would have been quite natural for strong-minded man, such as these men were, to have criticized political bureaucratic control of industry when it handicapped the army.  It is also reasonable to assume that a group of men, such as these, would resent vigorously the imposition of an espionage system over them, through the instrumentality of a secret police system, under the control of politicians.  It would also be quite natural for men of this character, and particularly with this training, to have resented bitterly the possible destruction of the fine military organization which they had built up, by the imposition of political control over the military command in each military district.  It is quite fair to assume that these men would not permit the party, of which they were members, to adopt this course of conduct as a matter of "party principle," without vigorous opposition.  It is possible that they continued to voice such opposition.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 201
 
            However, if after the 17th of May, when political control of the army was established as a result of a party decision, the opposition on the part of these officers continued, even though it were simply through discussions among themselves, their action would be treasonable and a felony under Bolshevik rules of behavior.  It is a fundamental of party government that once a party action is established by a vote of the majority, any further opposition thereto constitutes treason.
            Under all of the conditions it can also be quite reasonably considered that the party leaders responsible for the conviction of these defendants had convinced themselves that these Red Army generals had outgrown their creators and were a serious threat to the party organization and dominance.  It is possible also that these party leaders found but little difficulty in spelling out of the conduct of the defendants an overt conspiracy to impose the will of the army over the party, and failing therein to engage in a conspiracy with a foreign enemy to overthrow the state.
            (I don't think any of these are the real reasons)
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 202
 
            Another factor that led to general acceptance of their [the military officers] treason by the rank-and-file was that the "traitors" were said to have been tried by a military tribunal of high-ranking officers, albeit in secret, which was normal for serious military crimes.
Getty and Manning. Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 205
 
            But quite a few non-Stalinist sources maintain that the generals did indeed plan a coup d'etat and did this from their own motives, and on their own initiative, not in contact with any foreign power.  The main part of the coup was to be a palace revolt, following an assault on the headquarters of the GPU and culminating in Stalin's assassination.  Tukhachevsky was regarded as the leader of the conspiracy.  A man of military genius, the real modernizer of the Red Army, surrounded by the glory of his feats in the civil war, he was the army's favorite, and was indeed the only man among all the military leaders of that time who showed a resemblance to the original Bonaparte and could have played the Russian First Consul.  Generals Yakir, commander of Leningrad, Uborevitch, commander of the western military district, Kork, commander of Moscow's Military Academy, Primakov, Budienny's deputy in the command of the cavalry, Gamarnik, the chief Political Commissar of the army who presently committed suicide, and other officers were supposed to have been in the plot.  On May 1, 1937, Tukhachevsky stood at Stalin's side at the Lenin Mausoleum, reviewing the May Day parade.  Eleven days later he was demoted.  On June 12 the execution of Tukhachevsky and his friends was announced.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 379
 
            By May 29, 1937, Marshall Tukhachevsky was confessing to espionage, links with the Germans, and recruitment by Yenukidze into Bukharin's conspiracy.
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 200
 
            The least interesting chapter in the book [The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes by Orlov] was the chapter devoted to the "Tukhachevsky affair," which Orlov treated hastily and in many ways inaccurately.  Only at the end of this chapter does he let slip an enigmatic phrase: "When all the facts connected with the Tukhachevsky case become clear, the world will understand that Stalin knew what he was doing."
Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1998, p. 469
 
            Even in The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, Orlov had carefully served notice that an attempt at a military-political coup had actually taken place.
Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1998, p. 474
 
            In light of the statements, we can place a certain amount of confidence in Molotov's words which we cited earlier: "We even knew the date of the conspiracy."
Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1998, p. 475
 
            Yet another relevant article, "The Soviet Union on the Road to Bonapartism," appeared in the semiofficial German military journal of Deutsche Wehr, but only after the event.  Its author had no doubt that Tukhachevsky had indeed plotted against Stalin but was betrayed at the very last moment.  His article, which attracted much attention and was widely translated and disseminated, was by one "A. Agricola "--none other than Russian-born Alexander Bauermeister, who, during World War I, was the most effective German spy master on the Eastern Front.
            Agricola said that every true Soviet expert knew that the conspiracy had not been just a matter of espionage; it aspired to be a truly enormous military coup.  The commanders of the most important military districts were involved in the plot.  Tukhachevsky had made his first preparations in 1935, and zero hour was fixed for June 1937.  Only because of General Skoblin's betrayal had the coup been averted.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 87
 
            After Khrushchev's "secret speech," it became the practice to accuse Stalin of murdering the "flower of the Red Army."  At the same time, mitigating circumstances were adduced: Stalin had fallen victim to the forgeries of the Nazi Secret Service....  [They ignore the fact that] Above all, it has been known for a long time that the first arrest (of Generals Putna and Primakov) took place almost a year before the Nazi forgeries reached the Kremlin.  Furthermore Tukhachevsky had already been incriminated during the second Moscow show trial of former leading Bolsheviks (Pyatakov, Radek, et al.), which took place in early 1937.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 89
 
            ... the organs of state security began preparations for the trial of Soviet generals nine months before the German forgeries reached Moscow.  Pavlenko had it on the authority of Major General Golushkevich (who was present at the 1937 trial) that the Heydrich documents were never once brought up in the course of the proceedings.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 90
 
            But investigation, so far as investigation was possible, began to disclose a number of enlightening details.  Tukhachevsky, brilliant and ambitious, wanted power for himself; he and Voroshilov were on bad terms, it was said; a general impression in military circles is that Tukhachevsky planned a "palace" coup d'etat to get rid of Stalin and set up a dictatorship himself.  Stalin got him first.
            All eight of the generals had close relations at one time with the German Reichswehr.  The Red Army and the German army worked intimately together before 1932, it should be remembered; every year Russian officers went to Germany for training and study; even after Hitler, the two general staffs had a cordial respect for each other.  Generals Kork and Feldman, with obviously German names, were Baltic Germans; General Uborevitch attended the German maneuvers after the Nazi party congress last year; both Kork and Putna had been military attaches in Berlin.
            Few people think that Tukhachevsky could have sold out to Germany, or promised the defeat of his own army in the event of war; but it is quite possible that he envisaged some arrangement with the Reichswehr independently of Stalin.  He wanted the Red Army and the German army to work together; politics prevented this.  He was known to be an opponent of the Franco-Soviet pact, and the French distrusted him.
Gunther, John. Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 560
 
            Some of this analysis cannot be dismissed.  It seems not impossible that Tukhachevsky and other high army officers had in 1937 made a plot to depose him [Stalin].  In fact, it is a priori likely.
Snow, Charles Percy. Variety of Men. New York: Scribner, 1966, p. 262
 
Diary of October 24, 1936:
            The French Ambassador had engaged the Calvet Quartet to play for his guests, but the real entertainment took place when the Russian diplomats arrived and the German officials tried to avoid greeting them.   Neurath and Dieckhoff were icy cold.   Madame Franois-Poncet was equal to the situation, however, and ushered the Russian guests to the very first row of seats.
            Henry, one of the French staff, was indignant.   He said, "This is preposterous.   The Nazis snub the Russians in public, but I know that privately they have been in close contact with an extensive clique of Russian army officers.   Quite a plot, too.   Involves some of Marshal Tukhachevsky's highest staff officers.   The clique entered into an agreement to effect the removal of Stalin.   Afterward, a pact with Germany against the world.   'Send us a list of your most reliable men,' the generals were told."
            The generals returned to Russia and sent the list.   It was promptly placed in Stalin's hands.   An example of Nazi diplomacy as practiced by Count Werner von Schulenberg, German Ambassador to Moscow.   It accounts, if you believe it, for the torture and execution of so many high civil and military officials in Russia.
Fromm, Bella. Blood and Banquets. New York: Carol Pub. Group, c1990, p. 231
 
            It is along the same lines that the failure of a "conspiracy" of "traitors" and "spies" among leaders of the Red Army was announced on June 11, 1937 together with their forthcoming trial which supposedly indicated the "crisis of bourgeois intelligence services."  The eight accused were all officers of the highest ranks--seven generals and a marshal....  The most illustrious of them, the first deputy of the people's commissar of defense, Tukhachevsky.  For about six months, rumors had been persistently circulating in diplomatic circles about his alleged intention to stage a coup as well as about his purported secret contacts with the Nazi high command, and it is improbable that they were unknown in Moscow.  One month before his fall, ranking officials of the NKVD who had been already in the hands of their former colleagues, accused him and three of his prospective codefendants of "criminal contacts," at the same time also implicating a general, Shaposhnikov, (who would never be arrested).  Moreover, in the first days of May the president of Czechoslovakia, Benes, transmitted a message with documents of German origin, which he did not suspect to be forgeries, that seemed to establish the marshal's "guilt."  But the material was not used during the investigations or at the trial and no step was taken immediately after its receipt in Moscow.  All that happened was Tukhachevsky's demotion from his post of deputy People's Commissar and his transfer to head a military district.  This was hardly the usual treatment of dangerous conspirators, and nevertheless two codefendants of the marshal were also merely reassigned at the same moment, one of them, Yakir, even twice in 10 days.
Rittersporn, Gabor. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933-1953. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, c1991, p. 139
 
            All those who headed the Red Army during the Stalinist period-- Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Bluecher, Budenny, Yakir, Uborevich, Gamarnik, Dybenko, Fedko, [Kork, Putna, Feldman, Alksnis, Eidemann, Primakov, and many others],--were each in his time advanced to responsible military posts when I was at the head of the War Department, in most cases advanced personally by me during my tours of the fronts and during my direct observation of their war work.  However bad, therefore, my own leadership was, it was apparently good enough to have selected the best available military leaders, since for more than 10 years Stalin could find no one to replace them.  True, almost all the Red Army Leaders of the Civil War, all those who subsequently built our army eventually proved to be "traitors" and "spies."
Trotsky, Leon, Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 269
 
SOVIET OFFICIAL SAYS GOVT IS INFESTED WITH SPIES AND TRAITORS
 
            On October 7, 1937, Ambassador Davies wrote in his diary, "Ambassador Troyanovsky [Soviet Ambassdor to the US] came in and spent an hour with me.  He gave rather an interesting account of conditions here that justified the executions.  He described the naivete of his people even in the government in extending their trust and making party membership a guarantee of reliability.  He stated that the country was in fact infested with spies of hostile countries, which spies were for years engaged upon this service as members of the Communist Party and even the government itself.  He stated that he himself had had suspicions many times; that England and France were similarly infested; that Stalin might later give the world "his side" of this situation.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 225
 
            Stalin gives the impression of a strong mind which is composed and wise.  His brown eye is exceedingly kindly and gentle.  A child would like to sit in his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.  It is difficult to associate his personality and this impression of kindness and gentle simplicity with what has occurred here in connection with these purges and shootings of the Red Army generals, and so forth.  His friends say, and Ambassador Troyanovsky assures me, that it had to be done to protect themselves against Germany--and that someday the outside world will know "their side."
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 356
 
            [At the Feb. March 1937 Plenum Stalin stated], Then the question has to be asked as to where and how the present enemies have the influence?  Their strength is that they hold the party card in their hands, thus giving them the respectability to do their dirty work... doors open into our most important governmental posts.
            They completely worm themselves into favor, becoming more patriotic than the best dedicated communist; they heap slavish praise upon the leadership in every section that they are in.  They thus were able to get the top government secrets and thus, give them to foreign enemy powers.  Thus, they were easily enmeshed in foreign secret services.  Our mistakes are that we did not try earlier to unmask these enemies, thus weakening our fight against these present-day enemies.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 235
 
            ...sometime in January the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, after accusing Ukraine of deliberately sabotaging the fulfillment of grain quotas, had sent Postyshev, a sadistically cruel Russian chauvinist, as its viceroy to Ukraine....
            As we listened to these harangues, we often thought that perhaps there was hidden sabotage at work to discredit the Communist Party.
Dolot, Miron. Execution by Hunger. New York: W.W. Norton, c1985, p. 210-211
 
 
THE CHARGES IN THE MARCH 1938 TRIAL
 
            On February 27, 1938, Ambassador Davies wrote in his journal, "Twenty-one prominent men are to be tried for treason, including Bukharin, Rykov, Rakovsky, Grinko, Krestinsky, Rosengoltz, Yagoda, Chernov, and Ivanov, according to an announcement by the State's Attorney.
            Organizing espionage, etc., on behalf of foreign states, to provoke war in order to dismember the union, and deliver up the Ukraine, White Russia, Turkestan, the Caucasus, and the Far Eastern Maritime Province to enemy countries, being in the pay of foreign states, are the principal charges named.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 261
 
OBSERVERS CAN’T FATHOM THE 1938 DEFENDANTS’ CONFESSIONS UNLESS THEY WERE TRUE
 
            On March 4, 1938, Ambassador Davies wrote in his diary, "Litvinov and his daughter came in for the movies at 5:30.”
            He said he was much shocked by Krestinsky's arrest.  He could not understand why men would confess to crimes that they must know were punishable by death unless they were really guilty.  He said that Rykov and Bukharin last summer, when haled before the Central Committee of the party and when confronted by Sokolnikov and Radek, faced them down and bitterly protested their innocence even when they broke down in tears; but that apparently they were in fact guilty as subsequently they made complete confessions.  He said he could not understand their final confessions, knowing them as he did, on any other theory than that they were actually guilty.  “A man could die only once,” said he, and these men knew that they would surely be condemned to death after such solemn admissions of their guilt.  It was regrettable but the government had to be certain and could take no chances.  It was, he said, fortunate that the country had a leadership strong enough to take the necessary protective measures.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 262
 
(Sinclair’s comments only)
            You speak in your letter of "obviously phony trials."  That is, of course, begging the question.  That the trials were "phony" seems obvious to you, but the exact opposite seems obvious to me.  Over and over again I ask myself: Is it conceivable that revolutionists, trained in a lifetime of war against the czar, would go into open court and confess to actions which they had not committed?  I ask: Is there any torture, any kind of terror, physical, mental, or moral, which would induce them to do such a thing?___
            These men had withstood the worst that the Czar's police could do.  Here and there, of course, an individual weakened-- that is always to be expected, it is a part of revolutionary history.  But that they would all do it, and all join in framing a consistent story--that seems to me a psychological impossibility.  You remember how the Czar's young officers came into the cell of Spiridonova and burned her flesh with their lighted cigarettes; yet she did not betray her comrades.  One could find a thousand such stories in the records of the revolutionists, and my belief is that the Bolsheviks would have let the GPU agents tear them to pieces shred by shred before they would have confessed to actions which they had not committed.
Sinclair and Lyons. Terror in Russia?: Two Views. New York : Rand School Press, 1938, p. 60-61
 
1938 TRIAL DEFENDANTS ARE GUILTY AND WORKING WITH TRAITOROUS GENERALS
 
            On March 8, 1938, Ambassador Davies wrote, "For the last week, I have been attending daily sessions of the Bukharin treason trial....  It is terrific.  I have found it of much intellectual interest, because it brings back into play all the old critical faculties involved in assessing the credibility of witnesses and sifting the wheat from the chaff--the truth from the false--which I was called upon to use for so many years in the trial of cases, myself.
            All the fundamental weaknesses and vices of human nature--personal ambitions at their worst--are shown up in the proceedings.  They disclose the outlines of a plot which came very near to being successful in bringing about the overthrow of this government....
            The extraordinary testimony of Krestinsky, Bukharin, and the rest would appear to indicate that the Kremlin's fears were well justified.  For it now seems that a plot existed in the beginning of November 1936 to project a coup d'etat, with Tukhachevsky at its head, for May of the following year.  Apparently it was touch and go at that time whether it actually would be staged.
            But the government acted with great vigor and speed.  The Red Army generals were shot and the whole party organization was purged and thoroughly cleansed.  Then it came out that quite a few of those at the top were seriously infected with the virus of the conspiracy to overthrow the government, and were actually working with the Secret Service organizations of Germany and Japan.
            The situation explains the present official attitude of hostility toward foreigners, the closing of various foreign consulates in this country, and the like.  Quite frankly, we can't blame the powers that be much for reacting in this way if they believed what is now being divulged at the trial.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 269
 
            On March 17, 1938, Ambassador Davies wrote, "I have the honor to report that this confirms the cable sent in confidential code with reference to the judgment of the court in the so-called Bukharin mass treason trial.
            Paraphrase of the cable is as follows:
            On March 13, 1938, at approximately five o'clock in the morning, all the defendants in the trial were adjudged guilty and the sentences were imposed.  Three of the defendants were condemned to imprisonment and the remainder to death through shooting.  Eight of the most prominent former members of the Soviet government...were among those condemned to be shot.  Condemned to imprisonment were a former Ambassador to England and France, a former Counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Berlin, and one famous heart specialist.
            ...after daily observation of the witnesses, their manner of testifying, the unconscious corroborations which developed, and other facts in the course of the trial, together with others of which a judicial notice could be taken, it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty of treason and the adjudication of the punishment provided by Soviet criminal statutes.  The opinion of those diplomats who attended the trial most regularly was general that the case had established the fact that there was a formidable political opposition and an exceedingly serious plot, which explained to the diplomats many of the hitherto unexplained developments of the last six months in the Soviet Union.  The only difference of opinion that seemed to exist was the degree to which the plot had been implemented by different defendants and the degree to which the conspiracy had become centralized.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 271
 
CHUEV:  But now it is said that the accusations had no basis in fact whatever, apart from the confessions of the accused, which still cannot be taken as proof of guilt.
MOLOTOV:  No other evidence was required.  We were absolutely certain they were guilty.  They were enemies!  You just read Bukharin.  What an opportunist!  And what about the kulak revolts?
CHUEV:  Their innocence was out of the question, then?
MOLOTOV:  Absolutely.  Look, they strained to reduce their testimony to the point of absurdity because they were so terribly embittered by defeat.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 267
 
            In order to balance the current denunciations of these trials as frame-ups, we might note the reaction at the time of the U.S. ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davies, who attended the 1937 and 1938 trials and had himself been a trial lawyer.  Davies first attended the trials of the Trotskyite center in January 1937.  He reported in a "Strictly Confidential" memo to Cordell Hull, then Secretary of State, that in his opinion, the defendants were guilty as charged.  "To have assumed that this proceeding was invented and staged as a project of dramatic political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of a Shakespeare and the genius of a Belasco in a stage production."
            Four other ambassadors confided in Davies that they, too, believed the trials to be genuine and the defendants guilty.  But what the ambassadors reported back to their governments and what these governments propagated were different things:
            "Another diplomat, Minister-----, made a most illuminating ”statement to me yesterday.  In discussing the trial he said that the defendants were undoubtedly guilty; that all of us who attended the trial had practically agreed on that; that the outside world, from the press reports, however, seemed to think that the trial was a put-up job (facade, as he called it); that while we knew it was not, it was probably just as well that the outside world should think so."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 66
 
            On the Bukharinite trial, Davies wrote at the time in a letter to his daughter:
            "All the fundamental weaknesses and vices of human nature--personal ambitions at their worst--are shown up in the proceedings.  They disclose the outlines of a plot which came very near to being successful in bringing about the overthrow of this government."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 67
 
And he wrote in a confidential memo to Cordell Hall:
            "Notwithstanding a prejudice arising from the confession evidence and a prejudice against a judicial system which affords practically no protection for the accused, after daily observation of the witnesses, their manner of testifying, the unconscious corroborations which developed, and other facts in the course of the trial, together with others of which a judicial notice could be taken, it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned [that] sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty of treason."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 67
 
 
SU SHOT THE FIFTH COLUMNISTS
 
            In the summer of 1941 after the German invasion of Russia Ambassador Davies said, Passing through Chicago, on my way home from the June commencement of my old University, I was asked to talk to the University Club....  Someone in the audience asked: "What about Fifth Columnists in Russia?"  Off the anvil, I said: "There aren't any--they shot them."
            On the train that day, that thought lingered in my mind.  It was rather extraordinary, when one stopped to think of it, that in this last Nazi invasion, not a word had appeared of "inside work" back of the Russian lines.  There was no so-called "internal aggression" in Russia cooperating with the German High Command.  Hitler's March into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active military support of Henlein's organizations in Czechoslovakia.  The same was true of his invasion of Norway.  There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Soviet picture....
            None of us in Russia in 1937 and 1938 were thinking in terms of "Fifth Column" activities.  The phrase was not current....
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 272-273
 
            Yet the trials were important, and not only because they revealed Russian weakness as so many experts thought.  When Hitler marched into Russia there were no Quislings, and no organized Fifth Column.  Every European country conquered by Hitler had traitors in high places.  In Russia there were none.  It is clear now that Stalin had eliminated the potential Lavals.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 30
 
            ...Thanks to 1937 there was no fifth column in our country during the war.  Even among Bolsheviks, you know, there were some--there still are some--who are loyal and dedicated as long as the nation and the party face no danger.  But as soon as something dangerous appears, they first waiver and then switch sides....  The main thing, however, is that at the decisive moment they could not be depended on.
            A friend of mine, a professor, comes to see me from time to time.  "How shall I explain that period?" he asks.  I say, "But what would have happened if the right-wingers had been in charge?  Where would the course of history have turned then?  If you look closely at the details, you will see the answer."
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 254
 
In the summer of 1941, after the German imperialist attack on the USSR, Davies commented:
            On the train that day, that thought lingered in my mind.  It was rather extraordinary, when one stopped to think of it, that in this last Nazi invasion, not a word had appeared of "inside work" back of the Russian lines.  There was no so-called "internal aggression" in Russia cooperating with the German High Command.  Hitler's march into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active military support of Henlein's organizations in Czechoslovakia.  The same was true of his invasion of Norway.  There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quisling's in the Soviet picture....  There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941--they had shot them.  The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 67
 
            [From J. S. Fuller, 1939-1945: World War II Foreign Literature Publishing House, Moscow, 1956]
            "Even on June 29, the Volkischer Beobachter carried an article saying:...
            Before the war with Russia the German intelligence service counted, to a large degree, on the 'fifth column.'  But in Russia 'the fifth column' was not existent, although there were dissatisfied people in the country."
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 306
 
            Hitherto German Intelligence had largely relied on the Fifth Column assistance.  In Russia, though there were to be found discontented people, there was no Fifth Column.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 411
 
SOME DID NOT REALIZE THE FIFTH COLUMN WAS A SERIOUS THREAT
 
            All of us there in Moscow at the time paid comparatively little attention to that side of these cases.  Some of us seemed to have "missed the boat."  I certainly did.  There is no doubt but that, generally speaking, we were centering our attention on the dramatic struggle for power between the "ins" and "outs"--between Stalin and Trotsky--and the clash or personalities and policies within the Soviet government, rather than upon any possible German Fifth Column activities, which we were all disposed to discount at the time.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 275
 
            The time all come when everything will be sorted out....  Then they had to be tolerated.  Things are no different today.  By 1937 they had lost a platform to stand on and the support of the people.  They voted for Stalin but were double-dealers.  It was shown in court that the right-wingers had Kuibyshev and Gorky poisoned.  Yagoda, the former chief of the secret police, was involved in arranging the poisoning of his own predecessor, Menzhinsky.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 264
 
CHUEV:  It really never occurred to Stalin that we could not possibly have so many enemies of the people?...  They say the whole thing was fabricated.
MOLOTOV:  That's out of the question.  They could by no means be fabricated.  Pyatakov kept Trotsky informed....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 278
 
            Each of our leaders would like to create Lenin in his own image.  Lenin is now being falsified and exploited.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 337
 
            The final doubt which one may have is concerning the charge against Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Smirnov that they conspired with the Gestapo and the German General Staff.  Could Old Bolsheviks conspire with Nazi police and generals?  The precedent of Lenin's arrangement with the German General Staff during the Great War, permitting him to travel through Germany to Leningrad, is a sufficiently distinguished precedent of indifference to means for ends.  And if Zinoviev, Kamenev, and the other Trotskyists considered that an Imperialist war against the USSR involving a collapse of both Germany and Russia and a new proletarian revolution, was a worthy end, is it any wonder that they should conspire with Nazis or that the Soviet people, becoming aware of it, should defend itself against these Old Bolsheviks?
            The technique of Fascist penetration by spies, terrorists, saboteurs, and diversionists has been demonstrated in Spain and Austria by its success.  Is there reason to believe that Hitler reserves more delicate treatment for the Ukraine than he did for Catalonia?  Those who doubt the wisdom of the GPU in its sifting of Fascist agents or of its drastic treatment of Generals Tukhachevsky and Putna, should consider the example of Spain and Austria, whose political police lacked the vigilance or sincerity of the GPU.  The movement of world events will, I feel, prove that the GPU did not and does not chase shadows in its watchfulness.  In the years which have passed since my release, the bursting into flame of the Spanish-Fascist rebellion, the risings and intervention of the Nazis in Austria and the promise of intervention in Czechoslovakia have convinced me that whatever bewilderment is felt outside the Soviet Union at the unearthing there of Fascist conspirators, Fascist conspiracy in conjunction with Trotskyist conspiracy does exist and that its extirpation, so far from endangering the USSR, marks another peril avoided.
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 217
 
 
SUMMARY OF THE MAIN TRIALS
 
            The story which was unfolded in these trials [the January 1937 treason trials] disclosed a record of Fifth Columnist and subversive activities in Russia under a conspiracy agreement with the German and Japanese governments that were amazing.  The gist of the testimony, which the record of these cases discloses, is as follows:
            The principal defendants had entered into a conspiracy among themselves, and into an agreement with Germany and Japan to aid these governments in a military attack upon the Soviet Union.  They agreed to and actually did cooperate in plans to assassinate Stalin and Molotov, and to project a military uprising against the Kremlin which was to be led by Gen. Tukhachevsky, the second in command of the Red Army.  In preparation for war they agreed to and actually did plan and direct the sabotaging of industries, the blowing up of chemical plants, the destruction of coal mines, the wrecking of transportation facilities, and other subversive activities.  They agreed to perform and did perform all those things which the German General Staff required should be done by them pursuant to instructions which they received from such General Staff.  They agreed to and in fact did conspire and co-operate with the German and Japanese Military Intelligence services.  They agreed to and in fact did co-operate with German diplomatic consular representatives in connection with espionage and sabotage.  They agreed to and actually did transmit to Germany and Japan information vital to the defense of the Soviet Union.  They agreed among themselves and with the German and Japanese governments to co-operate with them in war upon the Soviet government and to form an independent smaller Soviet state which would yield up large sections of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine, and White Russia in the west to Germany and the Maritime Provinces in the east to Japan.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 276
 
            They agreed after the German conquest of Russia that German firms were to have concessions and receive favors in connection with the development of iron ore, manganese, oil, coal, timber, and the other great resources of the Soviet Union.
            To appreciate fully the character and significance of this testimony, which I personally listened to, it should be borne in mind that the facts as to this conspiracy were testified to by two cabinet members of the first order, the Commissar for the Treasury and the Commissar for Foreign Trade, by a former Premier of the government, by two Soviet Ambassadors who had served in London, Paris, and Japan; by a former Undersecretary of State and by the acting Secretary of State of the government, as well as by two of the foremost publicists and editors of the two leading papers of the Soviet Union.
            To appreciate its significance, it was as though the Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, Secretary of Commerce Jones, Undersecretary of State Wells, Ambassador Bullitt, Ambassador Kennedy, and Secretary to the President Early, in this country, confessed to a conspiracy with Germany to co-operate in an invasion of the United States.
            Here are a few excerpts of the testimony in open court:
            Krestinsky, Undersecretary of State, said:
            We came to an agreement with Gen. Seeckt and Hess to the effect that we would help the Reichswehr create a number of espionage bases in the territory of the USSR....  In return for this, the Reichswehr undertook to pay us 250,000 marks annually as a subsidy.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 277
 
 
            Grinko, Secretary of the Treasury, said:
            I knew and was connected with people both in the Ukrainian organization as well as in the Red Army who were preparing to open the frontier to the enemy.  I operated particularly in the Ukraine, that is to say, at the main gates through which Germany is preparing its blow against the USSR.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 277
 
 
            Rosengoltz, Secretary of Commerce, stated:
            I handed various secret information to the Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr....  Subsequently, direct connections were established by the Ambassador in the USSR to whom I periodically gave information of an espionage character.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 277
 
 
            Sokolnikov, former Ambassador to Great Britain, stated:
            Japan, in the event of her taking part in the war, would receive territorial concessions in the Far East in the Amur region and the Maritime Provinces; as respects Germany, it was contemplated to satisfy the national interests of the Ukraine.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 277
 
 
            The testimony of many of the minor defendants went to establish the fact that upon orders of the principal defendants, they had direct connection with the German and Japanese Intelligence Services and co-operated with them in systematic espionage and sabotage; and either committed or aided and abetted in numerous crimes.  For instance, Rataichak stated that he had organized and was responsible for two explosions at the Gorlovka nitrogen fertilizer plants which entailed enormous property losses as well as the loss of human life.  Pushkin contributed or assumed responsibility for the disaster to the chemical plants of the Voskressensk Chemical Works and the Nevsky plant.  Knyazev told how he had planned and executed the wrecking of troop trains, entailing great loss of life, upon the express directions or instructions from foreign Intelligence Services.  He also testified as to how he had received instructions from these foreign Intelligence Services "to organize incendiarism in military stores, canteens, and army shipments," and the necessity of using "bacteriological means in time of war with the object of contaminating troop trains, canteens, and army camps with virulent bacilli." 
            The testimony in these cases involved and incriminated Gen. Tukhachevsky and many high leaders in the army and in the navy.  Shortly after the Bukharin trial these men were arrested.  Under the leadership of Tukhachevsky these men were charged with having entered into an agreement to co-operate with the German High Command in an attack upon the Soviet state.  Numerous subversive activities conducted in the army were disclosed by the testimony.  Many of the highest officers in the army, according to the testimony, had either been corrupted or otherwise induced to enter into this conspiracy.  According to the testimony, complete co-operation had been established in each branch of the service, the political revolutionary group, the military group, and the High Commands of Germany and Japan.
            Such was the story, as it was brought out in these trials, as to what had actually occurred.  There can be no doubt but what the Kremlin authorities were greatly alarmed by these disclosures and the confessions of these defendants.  The speed with which the government acted and the thoroughness with which they proceeded indicated that they believed them to be true.  They proceeded to clean house and acted with the greatest of energy and precision.  Voroshilov, Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, said:
            It is easier for a burglar to break into the house if he has an accomplice to let him in.  We have taken care of the accomplices....
            There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941--they had shot them.  The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 277
 
            As we look over the history of the 1920s and 1930s in the USSR, one of these reasons [for changes in the legal system] quickly becomes apparent, namely massive sabotage--in the mines, on the railways, in factories, in agriculture, in economic planning, in government.  A picture of the extent of this sabotage emerged only in the trials of the various opposition leaders between 1936 and 1938, which also revealed that sabotage was linked with plans for the destruction of the Soviet Union in war.  These public trials of the "opposition" leaders, however, had revealed only the tip of the iceberg.  They indicated the existence of followers everywhere--wrecking machinery, making the wrong parts, sending materials to the wrong places, poisoning farm animals, starting pit fires in mines, planning railway sabotage to build up to the immobilization of the railways in the coming war.  Nor was the sabotage only physical.  Economic plans were deliberately distorted, government documents lost, statistics faked--actions which could cause widespread disruption in a planned economy.  Furthermore, this sabotage, which appears to have been the most massive in history, was coordinated with Nazi and Japanese war plans and with terrorism.  Kirov, the popular head of the Party in Leningrad, was assassinated, and terrorist plans seem to have been afoot to assassinate the whole top Party leadership.
            To assert, then, that most of those arrested were innocent "victims" is patently absurd.  If the leaders were guilty--and the evidence, as we have seen, indicates that they were--, their followers on the whole must have been guilty also.  When the workers began to realize the nature of the situation--the assassination of Kirov in particular evoked angry demonstrations and petitions--they demanded action.  The Party, which until then had actually been lagging behind events, began wide investigations and amended the penal code in order to move forward swiftly in a situation of threatening war.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 129
 
 
LOSS OF THE GENERALS WAS NO BIG LOSS
 
            It is generally considered here that the liquidation of the older and experienced generals has weakened the army very materially.  Personally, I agree with our Military Attache, Colonel Faymonville, that while this is measurably true, it is much exaggerated.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 409
 
            Stalin has also been held guilty of bringing upon Russia the disasters of 1941-42 by his purge of the Red Army.  Although tragic and wasteful, the purge probably had little effect, and certainly less than is often stated.  Although many senior army commanders were purged, it was in this category that the Red Army was generally superior to the Germans, even in the years 1941-42.  Germans superiority was marked among junior officers and NCOs.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 421
 
            Reese also shows that newly released statistics on the military purges indicate that at most 9.7% of the officers at the height of the terror in 1937 were "repressed," in contrast to earlier estimates by Conquest and Erickson that 25-50% of the officer corps fell victim to arrest in 1937 and 1938.
Getty and Manning. Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 9
 
            The destruction of the cadres of young officers around the reformer Tukhachevsky is usually taken as evidence that the Soviet Union took a giant step backward in military effectiveness and levels of military preparedness.  This is a superficial conclusion....
            Any argument which suggests that the purges weakened the Red Army (and navy) rests on a prior assumption that the pre-purge army must have been a more effective instrument.  Such an assumption is clearly open to question.  For all of Tukhachevsky's enthusiasm for mass tanks and aircraft, there existed a wide discrepancy between theory and practice.  Soviet forces had made poor progress in "command and control," the critical dimension of fast-moving aircraft and tank combat.  Communications systems were rudimentary or nonexistent.  Tanks and aircraft were not equipped with radios and could not easily communicate with each other.  Commanders had no way of coordinating air and ground action, nor of holding a large group of tanks and armored vehicles together.  These deficiencies rendered the concept of "deep operations" almost impossible.  At most levels of junior command there existed a lack of flexibility and tactical awareness.  German soldiers who watched their Soviet counterparts in training and on maneuvers were unimpressed by what they saw.  "The weak point of the army," wrote a German army adjutant in 1933, "is that all commanders from platoon to regiment commander, are not yet efficient enough.  Most of them are capable of dealing with problems only at the level of a non-commissioned officer."  The German military attache in Moscow the same year detected throughout the army "a fear of responsibility."  Many of those liquidated after 1937 were men who had little military education and had achieved office on the grounds of their Civil War experience.  In 1937 thousands of younger man, trained in military academies since the 1930s, were ready to take their place.  By the mid-1930s there were 16,000 officers a year training in the military academies.  By 1941 over 100,000 officers were entering the Soviet armed forces each year.  The purges certainly removed many military men of talent, but it is questionable whether the aggregate effect was to make the average performance of the officer corps much worse than it had been beforehand or to make the tank and air war any less capable of realization.  The army had significant technical and human weaknesses both before and after 1937.
Overy, R. J. Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow. New York: TV Books, c1997, p. 50
 
DAVIES SAYS WEST’S POLICY MAY DRIVE SU TO PACT WITH NAZIS
 
            In a January 18, 1939, letter to Harry Hopkins Ambassador Davies said, "The Chamberlain policy of throwing Italy, Poland, and Hungary into the arms of Hitler may be completed by so disgusting the Soviets that it will drive Russia into an economic agreement and an ideological truce with Hitler.  That is not beyond the bounds of possibility or even probability...."
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 434
 
            In a March 21, 1939, letter to Sen. Key Pittman, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States, Ambassador Davies stated, "From information that I get from most responsible sources and that I think is reliable, Hitler is making a desperate effort to alienate Stalin from France and Britain.  Unless the British and French wake up, I am afraid he will succeed.  If he does, he can turn his attention to Western Europe without any concern as to an attack from behind.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 439
 
STALIN GIVES UP TRYING TO SIGN PACTS WITH THE WEST
 
            ...Stalin's speech to the Communist Party, delivered to the 18th Congress in March last (1939), definitely indicated a disposition toward withdrawal of Soviet activities so far as Europe was concerned, and a tendency to be extremely cautious "not to allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to have others pull their chestnuts out of the fire for them";...
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 444
 
[Report to the 18th Congress on March 10, 1939]
            The tasks of the Party in the sphere of foreign policy are:
            2.  To be cautious and not allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to having others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them;
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 346
 
 
            In a July 18, 1941, letter to Harry Hopkins Ambassador Davies said, "From my observation and contacts, since 1936, I believe that outside of the President of the United States alone no government in the world saw more clearly the menace of Hitler to peace and the necessity for collective security and alliances among nonaggressive nations than did the Soviet government.  They were ready to fight for Czechoslovakia.  They canceled their nonaggression pact with Poland in advance of Munich because they wished to clear the road for the passage of their troops through Poland to go to the aid of Czechoslovakia if necessary to fulfill their treaty obligations.  Even after Munich and as late as the spring of 1939 the Soviet government agreed to join with Britain and France if Germany should attack Poland or Romania, but urged that an international conference of nonaggressor states should be held to determine objectively and realistically what each could do and then serve notice on Hitler of their combined resistance.  They claimed that this was the only thing that would stop Hitler's aggression against European peace.  The suggestion was declined by Chamberlain by reason of the objection of Poland and Romania to the inclusion of Russia; and the disastrous unilateral agreements were then promoted and entered into by Britain.
            During all the spring of 1939 the Soviets, fearful that they were being used as the "cat's paw" to "pull the chestnuts out of the fire" and would be left to fight Hitler alone, tried to bring about a definite agreement that would assume unity of action and co-ordination of military plans to stop Hitler.
            Even as late as August 1939 the commissions of France and Germany were in Moscow for that purpose.  Britain, however, refused to give the same guarantees of protection to Russia with reference to the Baltic states which Russia was giving to France and Britain in the event of aggression against Belgium or Holland.  The Soviets became convinced, and with considerable reason, that no affective, direct and practical, general arrangement could be made with France and Britain.  They were driven to a pact of nonaggression with Hitler.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 495
 
            In his diary dated October 28, 1941, Ambassador Davies recorded the following answer to the question: Will Stalin make a separate peace with Hitler?  "The last question indicated to me how utterly people of this country misjudge the Russian situation.  The real question which is vital now is, "Will WE force Stalin to make peace with Hitler again?"  We, or rather the European democracies, forced Stalin into Hitler's arms in August of 1939.  We--that is to say, England and America--could force Stalin into Hitler's arms again if Stalin were to believe that we were ready to let him down, use the Soviet army merely as a cat's paw and double-cross him in the way that Chamberlain and Daladier did before and after Munich and up to the eve of Armageddon.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 509
 
            The English and French representatives who came to Moscow to talk with Voroshilov didn't really want to join forces with us against Hitler at all.  Our discussions with them were fruitless.  We knew that they weren't serious about an alliance with us and that their real goal was to incite Hitler against us.  We were just as glad to see them leave.
            That’s how the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, as it was called in the West, came into being.  We knew perfectly well that Hitler was trying to trick us with the treaty.  I heard with my own ears how Stalin said, "Of course it's all a game to see who can fool whom.  I know what Hitler's up too.  He thinks he's outsmarted me, but actually it's I who have tricked him!"  Stalin told Voroshilov,  Beria, myself, and some other members of the Politburo that because of this treaty the war would pass us by for a while longer.  We would be able to stay neutral and save our strength.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 128
 
            Stalin, however, was aware--as were all Marxists at the time--that the British and French ruling classes were split on the issue.  Hence the Soviet government offered to honor their treaty with France to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia.  This the French government, with Chamberlain's backing, turned down.  The Soviet government then (April 1939) offered Britain and France a mutual assistance pact.  This, too, was rejected.  When it became clear that the right-wing, fanatically anti-Soviet sections of the British and French bourgeoisie were in political control, then, and only then, the Soviet government signed a nonaggression pact with Germany (August 1939).  This pact gave the USSR a breathing space of almost two years to build up its armed forces for what it saw as an inevitable attack.  At the time the pact was stigmatized by some as an alliance.  If it had been, Britain would have been conquered and the United States put under siege.  Churchill at the time considered the Soviet action as "realistic in a high degree."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 110
 
            It is certain that the Soviet-German nonaggression pact delayed the Soviet Union's entry into the war by two years.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 731
 
            Stalin's speech of March 10, 1939, delivered to the Eighteenth Congress of the communist party, was, however, a clear indication of his dissatisfaction with the democracies, and his impending withdrawal from their front.  He pointed out that war--"the second imperialist war"--had been going on since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.  He pointed out that the non-aggressor democracies were beyond doubt stronger than the aggressor states, but that nevertheless the democracies continued to give way to them.  They surrendered Spain, Czechoslovakia, parts of China.  Why?  One reason he adduced was fear of revolution.  Another was that the democracies, no longer interested in collective security, found that non-intervention, a policy of isolation and neutrality, served their best interests.  Stalin indicated quite clearly that he could play this same game.  Britain, he implied, played Germany off against Russia.  Very well.  Why should not Russia, in turn, play Germany off against Britain?
Gunther, John. Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 574
 
SU DID NOT LIKE THE APPEASEMENTS
 
            Then followed a series of developments which aggravated the relationships between the Soviet government and the Western democracies.
            The Soviets were "humiliated" and "deeply hurt" by being excluded from Munich.
            Out of "appeasement" there grew still greater distrust, so far as the Soviet government was concerned, in either the capacity, the intention, or even the "pledged word" of the Chamberlain government or the Daladier government.
            The Soviet proposals for a "realistic alliance" to stop Hitler were rejected, be the Chamberlain government....
            During the Soviet-British-French negotiations, including the sessions of the Strang mission and Military Missions to Moscow, this distrust was intensified by the fact that these authorities were not clothed with power to close a final, definite realistic alliance.
            The suspicion continued to grow that Britain and France were playing a diplomatic game to place the Soviets in the position where Russia would have to fight Germany alone.
            Then there came the Hudson proposals for economic rehabilitation of Germany which again smacked of "appeasement" from the point of view of the Soviets.  This was followed by the adjournment of Parliament by the Chamberlain government, without the conclusion of any definite agreement with Russia and the discovery by the Soviet leaders that a British Economic Mission had been sent to Denmark, allegedly with Chamberlain's blessing, to study economic appeasement, along the line of policy which has been initiated by Hudson.
            Added to this France and England had persisted in a refusal to enter into an unequivocal agreement to support Russia in the protection of Russia's vital interest, in preventing the absorption through internal aggression of the Baltic states, whereas Russia had offered unequivocal support to Britain and France to come to their aid if their vital interests were affected by a German attack upon Belgium or Holland, regardless of the character of the aggression.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 455
 
STALIN AIDED SMALL NATIONS AGAINST FASCIST AGGRESSION
 
            The Soviet Union, from the beginning, never faltered in getting aid and assistance to China.
            Throughout their participation in the League of Nations, the Soviet government led the fight for the protection of little nations vigorously and boldly.  This was the fact in the case of Ethiopia and Spain.
            No government saw more clearly or stated with greater accuracy what Hitler was doing and would do and what ought to be done to preserve peace and prevent the projection of a war by Hitler than did the Soviets.  That is a fact regardless of whether their motive was ideological or whether it was for the safety of their own people.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 496
 
            Those who have criticized the USSR for failing to intervene "arms in hand" to advance or save a revolution abroad have either urged the impossible or advocated an adventurism which would injure not only the USSR but the world proletariat.  At the same time, when the USSR has been able to intervene directly the same critics condemn the action as unwarranted interference and suppression of "rights."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 91
 
RED ARMY INTELLIGENCE WAS READY FOR NAZI ATTACK
 
            Hitler attacked without any notice whatsoever to the Soviet government; but the Red Army intelligence were aware of Hitler's mobilization and were prepared for any possibility.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 497
 
            I don't deny--in fact, I can confirm--that our intelligence should have been better.  Nonetheless, the basic elements of Hitler's plan to attack the Soviet Union were well-known.  As the saying goes, sparrows were chirping about it at every crossroad.  Hitler and the Nazis were yelling at the top of their voices about how they wanted to rid the world of Communists and communism.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 50
 
CHUEV:  Some people, Marshall Golovanov in particular, argue that the war caught the general staff asleep.
MOLOTOV:  They were not asleep.  But they had a directive ordering that the first reports not be trusted, that they must be verified.  Time was lost.
CHUEV:  But that's a failing of Stalin's.
MOLOTOV:  You may think so, of course.  He was in a difficult situation because he didn't want the war.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 23
 
            All this, and more, was faithfully reported to Moscow, but without any apparent effect.  Admittedly, on June 5, sixty-six year old old Kalinin, the President of the USSR, made a speech at the Military Academy in Moscow in the course of which he said: "The Germans are preparing to attack us, but we are ready.  The sooner they come, the better: we will wring their necks."
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 614
 
SU INTELLIGENCE REPORTS ON POTENTIAL NAZI ATTACK WERE INADEQUATE
 
            Although our intelligence disclosed Hitler's intentions to attack the Soviet Union, the reports were to a certain extent contradictory.  They didn't contain assessments of the potential of the German tank force and air force units or their capability of breaking the defense lines of the Red Army units deployed on our borders.  No one in the intelligence service examined the real balance of forces on the Soviet-German frontiers.  Thus the strength of Hitler's strike came as a surprise to our military commanders, including Marshall Zhukov, the Red Army chief of staff at the time, who admits in his memoirs that we did not foresee an enemy able to unleash large scale offensive operations by mass tank formations simultaneously in several directions.
            What was overlooked in the intelligence information was the qualitative force of the German blitzkrieg tactics.  We believed that if war broke out the Germans would first try to seize our Ukrainian regions, which were rich in food supplies and raw materials.  We knew from their military strategic games that a prolonged war would demand additional economic resources.  This was a big mistake: GRU and NKVD intelligence did not warn the general staff that the aim of the German army in both Poland and France was not to seize the territory but rather to destroy the military might of the opposing army.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 117
 
            The NKVD and GRU should be blamed for underestimating the striking potential of the German armed forces; they were too preoccupied with political intentions and decisions, instead of the Wehrmacht's tactics.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 122
 
            Intelligence estimates on the timing of the invasion were contradictory.  Sorge reported from Tokyo that the invasion was planned for June 1st.  Our rezidentura reported from Berlin that the invasion was planned for June 15.  Prior to that, on March 11, GRU had reported that the invasion was planned for spring.  There was no clear picture, and it was further muddled by ongoing negotiations.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 123
 
            On March 20, 1941, General Golikov, Chief of the Intelligence Division, submitted a report to Stalin containing information of the greatest importance.
            This document outlined variants of the possible directions of the blows of the German fascist troops when they attacked the Soviet Union.  As it later turned out they accurately summarized the evolution of the Barbarossa plan by the German command, and one of the variants, as a matter of fact, contained the essence of the plan.
            However, the conclusions drawn from the information cited in the report actually nullified its importance.  At the end of General Golikov's report it says:
            "(1).  On the basis of all the statements cited above and possible variants of operations of this spring I consider that the most probable time operations will begin against the USSR is after victory over England or the conclusion of an honorable peace treaty with her.
            (2).  Rumors and documents to the effect that war against the USSR is inevitable this spring should be regarded as misinformation coming from the English or perhaps even the German intelligence service."
            On May 6, 1941, Adm. Kuznetsov, People's Commissar for the Navy, sent the following memorandum to Stalin.
            "Our naval attache in Berlin, Captain 1st Class Vorontsov, reports that according to a German officer from Hitler's General Headquarters the Germans are preparing to invade the USSR on May 14 through Finland, the Baltic area, and Romania.  Simultaneously big air raids are planned on Moscow and Leningrad and airborne troops are to be landed at border centers...."
            The information contained in this document was also exceptionally valuable, but again Admiral Kuznetsov's conclusions as expressed to the leadership were not in accordance with the facts he cited.  He wrote: "I consider that this information is false and was specially sent through this channel so that it would get to our Government and the Germans would see how the USSR would react."
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 228-229
 
STALIN SAW WORLD WAR II NAZI ATTACK COMING
 
            Stalin was convinced that it was just a matter of time until the Soviet Union would again be invaded by hostile capitalist powers seeking to dismember and destroy the first Socialist State.  Stalin considered it his sacred obligation to see to it that when the time came the attackers would not be able to accomplish this.  The fulfillment of this task justified all means.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 64
 
            From Molotov's answers to Stalin's questions I concluded that his trip [to Germany in November 1940] had strengthened our general conviction that war was inevitable and probably imminent.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 132
 
            Hitler's film [a cinematic spectacular to frighten adversaries by showing the German capture of Danzig] was sent to us anyway, and we watched it in the Kremlin with Stalin.  It was very depressing.  We knew very well that we were the next country Hitler planned to turn his army against.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 135
 
            We had dinner.  Stalin was in high spirits.  He was glad that the Treaty had been signed.  He said, "Well, we deceived Hitler for the time being," or something like that, showing he understood the inevitability of war and that while the Treaty postponed the war, it only gave us some time.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 53
 
            With Poland, France, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania all occupied, now it was the USSR's turn.  Stalin understood that war was inevitable.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 54
 
            I left on Friday, and on Saturday [June 21st] I was in Kiev.  By then Stalin himself understood that the war was about to begin.  So how can anyone still say it was a surprise attack?
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 56
 
CHUEV:  All the history books say that Stalin miscalculated the beginning of the war.
MOLOTOV:  To some extent, but it was impossible not to miscalculate.  How could you know when the enemy would attack?  We knew we would  have to deal with him, but on what day or even what month....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 21
 
CHUEV:  It is known there were 14 dates?
MOLOTOV:  We are blamed because we ignored our intelligence.  Yes, they warned us.  But if we had heeded them, had given Hitler the slightest excuse, he would've attacked us earlier.
            We knew the war was coming soon, that we were weaker than Germany, that we would have to retreat.  The question was, retreat to where--to Smolensk or to Moscow, that's what we discussed before the war.
            We knew we would have to retreat, and we needed as much territory as possible.  We did everything to postpone the war.  And we succeeded-- for a year and ten months.  We wished it could have been longer, of course.  Stalin reckoned before the war that only in 1943 would we be able to meet the Germans as equals.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 22
 
CHUEV:  But there were intelligence reports...
MOLOTOV:  What is written about this is contradictory.  From my point of view, there couldn't have been another beginning for that war.  We delayed it and, in the end, we were caught asleep; it turned out to be unexpected.  I think we could not have relied on our intelligence.  You have to listen to them, but you also have to verify their information.  Intelligence agents could push you into such a dangerous position that you would never get out of it.  Provocateurs everywhere are innumerable.  That's why you can't trust intelligence without constant and scrupulous checking and re-checking.
            Some naive people, philistines, have written in their reminiscences: the intelligence agents spoke out, deserters from the enemy crossed the border...
            You couldn't trust such reports.  But if you were too distrustful you could easily go to the other extreme.
            When I was the Predsovnarkom I spent half a day reading intelligence reports.  The only thing missing was the date of the invasion!  And if we had trusted these reports [and gone on a war footing] the war could have started much earlier....
            On the whole, everyone expected the war would come and it would be difficult, impossible for us to avoid.  We delayed it for a year, for a year and a half.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 22
 
CHUEV:  Khrushchev used Churchill's words saying that he had warned Stalin.  Stalin said later, "I didn't need any warnings at the time.  I knew the war was coming, but I thought I could gain another half a year."  That is why Stalin is blamed.  He relied upon himself and thought he could delay the war.
MOLOTOV:  That's stupid.  Stalin couldn't rely upon himself; in this case he had to rely upon the whole country.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 28
 
CHUEV:  Churchill's memoirs.  He excoriates you, alleging that you helped Hitler in 1940 during the battle for France....  Also, Stalin and Molotov should have known that in one year they would have to fight Hitler!
MOLOTOV:  We knew, we knew it very well.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 414
 
            At the same time, Stalin and Molotov transferred substantial numbers of army units from Siberia in April, May, and early June 1941 to protect our Western borders.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 120
 
            If one excepts the thesis that Stalin had long ago decided that Nazi Germany was his enemy, that he was willing to except all manner of disrepute to maintain peace with Germany while he built up his strength, that in the autumn of 1940 he perceived that Germany could no longer win a quick and easy war in the West and must therefore turn against Russia--a turn which he could no longer avert--his policy in 1941 can be understood without difficulty.  He saw that he was the next object of German attack, and from that it followed logically that Britain, and behind Britain America, were henceforth his potential allies, no matter what might have happened before in the days of Munich and Chamberlain.  Clear-sighted as he was, Stalin knew that Yugoslavia and Greece could offer small resistance to the Germans; yet nevertheless he ventured to offer Germany virtual defiance in Yugoslavia's behalf, and almost simultaneously began moving Soviet troops westward from Siberia.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 260
 
            Stalin's prewar speeches show that he was under no delusions about Nazi intentions.  He knew the attack would come sooner or later and that he was simply buying time in signing the nonaggression treaty.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 126
 
            Malenkov had a file containing a draft decree from the chief administration of political propaganda in the Red Army, which Zaporozhets had given to him in the middle of June.  Malenkov had given the draft to Stalin on June 20.  It had been in preparation since Stalin's speech to the military graduates on May 5, 1941, when he [Stalin] said that war was inevitable and that we must prepare unconditionally to destroy Fascism.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 406
 
            On 5 May 1941 he [Stalin] addressed the ceremony for graduates of military academies in Moscow.  His words, unreported in the press at the time, were combative.  Instead of the reassuring words he issued to the media about Germany, he declared:
            “War with Germany is inevitable.  If Comrade Molotov can manage to postpone the war for two or three months through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that will be our good fortune, but you yourselves must go off and take measures to raise the combat readiness of our forces.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 407
 
            I [Budu] realize today that he [Stalin] must have foreseen the war as far back as 1935, for the said to me then, 'I'm sure the Anglo-Saxons are going to have to ask us to help them against Hitler's Germany one of these days.  They'll never be able to conquer the Reich without us.'
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 210
 
            Stalin knew his business, too, and was not taken in by the ease with which he had got his way.  A little later, he was overheard to tell Molotov that by giving him Lithuania with so little argument, Hitler had in effect declared war on the Soviet Union.  Stalin understood all too clearly that the only reason Hitler had done so was because he intended to take it back again as soon as the time was right.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 355
 
            Ribbentrop had no doubt that Hitler was sincere, and that he truly believed the understanding with the Soviet Union was permanent.  Stalin, however, was less gullible.  Although he admired Hitler's ruthlessness, he had no illusions about his integrity and knew he would turn on the Soviet Union as soon as it suited him.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 359
 
            Zhukov immediately set about speeding up the improvements in the military system which they had already begun, cutting bureaucracy, weeding out incompetent commanders, and generally gearing up for the fight which was so obviously looming on the horizon.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 553
 
            There can be few better examples of Stalin's twin aims of placating Hitler and preparing his own people than the events surrounding the speech he made at a grand banquet in the Kremlin on May 5, 1941, for several 100 graduates of 16 military academies and nine university military faculties.... 
            ...the Pravda report could also refer to the possibility of new concessions and some sort of new deal.  But was that what Stalin had really said?  Later, during the war, Hilger [a high ranking Nazi] talked to many captured [Russian] officers who had been at the banquet.  Their version of what Stalin had said was quite different from that which had been so carefully fed to the Germans through the DNB [German news agency] man.  When a high-ranking general had proposed a toast to the peace policy of the Soviet Union, Stalin had replied, "The slogan 'long live the peace policy of the Soviet Union' is now outdated.  It's about time to end this old nonsense."  And when someone else toasted the friendship with Germany, Stalin was said to have replied that the Soviet people should stop praising the German army to the skies.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 574
 
            Other sources give Stalin's speech as following this line much more closely than the leaked version.  "Our glorious Red Army,"  he is reported as saying, "must be prepared to fight fascist Germany at any moment."  Needless to say, the Soviet government would try "by all means at its disposal to delay a German attack... at least until the autumn."  By then it would be too late for that year.  Autumn rains and the onset of winter would reduce the mobility of any invading army.  If this strategy succeeded, if Germany could be kept at bay for the whole of 1941, then "almost inevitably" there would be a war in 1942.  But that war would be fraught in circumstances much more favorable to the USSR.  For one thing, the Red Army would be better trained and equipped.  It would be in a position to take the initiative.  Indeed, to forestall a German attack, the USSR might have to strike first.
            From the Soviet domestic point of view, it did not matter what Stalin actually said.  The gist of his speech - that the country was in imminent danger from Germany - was all over Moscow within 24 hours, and Muscovites drew their own conclusions.  Their worst fears must have seemed confirmed when they read in Pravda on May 6, along with the brief and ambiguous report of his speech, the much more surprising news that he had replaced Molotov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, the Soviet prime minister, thus becoming head of the government as well as the party....
            ... It was a signal to the Soviet people that the international situation had grown so dangerous that the USSR could no longer be left in the hands of lesser men: only the great Stalin himself could be trusted to lead the country through the treacherous quicksands that lay ahead.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 575
 
            While continuing to placate Hitler with every means at his disposal, Stalin was also concerned to go on warning him, as tactfully as possible, that the Soviet Union would defend herself if attacked.  Until mid-May, he did not take too much trouble to hide the steadily increasing build-up of his forces in the west, allowing British, German, and other military attaches to travel through the areas where they were concentrating.  The attaches reported seeing train after train heading west loaded with troops, tanks, and mechanized equipment.  They also noted that 1000 people a day were being called up for military service in Moscow alone, and that in early May the youngest age-group was called up six months early.  Kollontai, the Soviet minister in Sweden, was allowed to say that never in history had more powerful Russian forces been massed in the west - the general consensus in the international intelligence community was that well over 60 percent of the Red Army was already massed in the West, and more were arriving all the time.  Another secret that was not too well kept was that factories around Moscow were being transferred to the safety of the lands beyond the Urals.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 581
 
            Whether or not he succeeded in stalling Hitler, Stalin still needed to speed up the preparation of the Soviet people for the coming war.  Throughout May, there was a constant series of civil defense exercises throughout the Soviet Union.  The leading role in these was taken by and organization called the Osoaviakhim League....  After the summer of 1940 and the fall of France, the League grew in size until it boasted nearly 12 million volunteer members, many of them children.  They took part in the numerous black-outs and practice alerts which were held in every large city from Kiev to Alma Ata.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 582
 
            On May 15 and 16, 1941, a particularly large-scale civil defense exercise was staged at Ramenskoye, a town some 20 kilometers east of Moscow.  This involved some 20,000 civilians and was based on a scenario which assumed the worst: four groups of enemy paratroops were said to have been dropped in the area and a number of neighboring villages were supposed to be under artillery bombardment; incendiary bombs were supposed to have been dropped on the surrounding countryside and forest, starting a number of fires; and to cap it all, Ramenskoye itself was assumed to have suffered a gas attack.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 583
 
            In an address to the new graduates of the Soviet military academies on May 5, 1941, Stalin came closest to recognizing the threat.  He stated that a German surprise attack could not be ruled out in the immediate future, but that the government would try by diplomatic means to put it off till autumn, too late in the year for the Germans to attack.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 272
 
            Volodya says, "I think that Stalin had no doubt that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union.  Stalin's aim was to win time.  He saw it as his task to put off the beginning of the war with the giants of the imperialist world so as to wait until the contradictions between them had been aggravated, and win time in this way.  The Stalin played the game of giving Hitler no motive for provocation.
Richardson, Rosamond.  Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 277
 
SCOTT SAYS WRECKING WAS DEFINITELY GOING ON
 
            While the activities of Glazer, Shevchenko, and others above described probably do not coincide with most Westerners' ideas of wrecking, there unquestionably was wrecking going on in Magnitogorsk.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 182
 
            Unquestionably some genuine sabotage went on in Magnitogorsk.  Here are two examples which I knew of personally:
            A certain foreman in the blowing house of the blast-furnace department was rather outspoken in his criticism of the Soviet power.  He was a heavy drinker, and under the influence of vodka his tongue would sometimes run away with him.  Once he boasted openly in the presence of several foreigners that he would 'wreck the works.'  One day not long afterward a heavy stilson wrench was found in the mashed blades of one of the imported German gas turbines.  The frame of the machine was cracked and the whole thing ruined, involving a loss of several tens of thousands of rubles and a good deal of labor.  Several days later the foreman was arrested and confessed that he had done the job.  He got eight years.
            Another case I ran into personally which would be termed sabotage in any country, was the following: 
            The second part of the power house in Magnitogorsk was under construction, and two large (24,000 kW) turbines were being installed.  The reinforced concrete work--foundations, walls, and grouted roofs--was done by ex-kulak labor.  As on many Soviet construction jobs, the erection of the equipment started before the building was completely finished.  Consequently, when the big turbine was already in place and the mechanics working on it, the ex-kulaks were still around pouring concrete.
            One morning the mechanics found the main bearings and some of the minor grease cups of the big turbine filled with ground glass.  This substance will ruin a bearing very rapidly.  Investigations were made immediately, and several pails of the glass were found near the shack where the ex-kulaks reported when they came to work in the morning.  It was there for the electric welders, who used it, mixed with chalk and water, to coat their electrodes.
            Obviously one of the embittered, illiterate, dekulakized laborers had taken a pocketful of the glass and put it into the bearings.  Unnoticed, this act would have caused great loss.  The action was clearly deliberate and malicious wrecking, and the motivations of the wrecker were easily understood.
            During the late twenties and early thirties the rich peasants, or kulaks, were liquidated.  Their property was confiscated and given to the collective farms.  They were shipped out to some construction jobs for five years or so, to be re-educated.  Some of the young ones, like my friend Shabkov, lent themselves to this re-education; but most of the old ones were bitter and hopeless.  They were ready to do anything, in their blind hatred, to strike back at the Soviet power.
            But the Soviet power was not around to strike.  There were only workers and engineers and other ex-kulaks building a steel mill.  But the machines were symbolic of the new power, of the force which had confiscated their property and sent them out onto the steppe to pour concrete.  And they struck at the machines.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 186-187
 
SCOTT EXPLAINS WHY THE PURGE OCCURRED EAST OF URALS
 
            The purge struck Magnitogorsk in 1937 with great force.  Thousands were arrested, incarcerated for months, finally exiled.  No group, no organization was spared.
            This purge was part of a vast Union-wide storm which went on from 1935 until 1938.  The causes of this purge have been widely discussed--I offer the following:
            The October Revolution earned the enmity of the old aristocracy, the officers of the old Czarist army and of the various White armies, State employees from pre-war days, businessmen of all kinds, small landlords, and kulaks.  All of these people had ample reason to hate the Soviet power, for it had deprived them of something which they had had before.  Besides being internally dangerous, these men and women were potentially good material for clever foreign agents to work with.
            Geographical conditions were such that no matter what kind of government was in power in the Soviet Union, poor, thickly populated countries like Japan and Italy and aggressive powers like Germany would leave no stone unturned in their attempts to infiltrate it with their agents, in order to establish their organizations and assert their influence, the better to chip pieces off for themselves.  They sent fifth- columnists of all kinds into Russia, as they did into every other country.  These agents bred purges.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 187
 
SCOTT DESCRIBES TREATMENT OF MAGNITOGORSK PRISONERS
 
            There were almost no acquittals in Magnitogorsk in 1937, nor were there more than half a dozen death sentences.  After the trial, the operative department of the NKVD turned the convicts over to the ULAG (criminal camp administration), whose job it was to get certain construction work done, using the labor of the convicts, and also to carry on re-educational work.  The ULAG was a completely separate and independent part of the NKVD organization.  They received a prisoner accompanied by a frayed document stating that he had been convicted on such-and-such an article.  Beyond this they knew nothing.  Their job was to build dams and railroads, and in the interest of high productivity, if for no other reason, they treated the prisoners as well as possible.
            Arrived at the construction job, the prisoners received better food than they had had since their arrests and warm, sturdy clothes, and were told that from then on the thing that counted was their work.  Until 1938, twenty, forty, or sixty percent of their sentences were frequently commuted for good work....
            Alexei Pushkov, the chief of the Magnitogorsk NKVD during 1937, was himself purged in 1939 for his excessive ardor in purging the people of Magnitogorsk.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 193
 
            At the time of their a­rrest, "saboteur"-Communists apparently expected that they would suffer a relatively light punishment, much like the nonparty specialists at the beginning of the 1930s, who were given decent living and working conditions after their trial.  John Scott tells how in 1932, the GPU sent to Magnitogorsk 20 to 30 engineers who had been convicted in the case of the "Industrial Party."  Upon arriving in Magnitogorsk with their families, they were given four-room cottages and automobiles.  They worked under contracts according to which they were paid 3000 rubles per month (10 times more than the wage of an average worker).  Although they were watched by the 0GPU, they were allowed to go hunting on holidays in the forests of the Urals located tens of kilometers from the city.  "They were also given highly responsible positions and instructed to work hard in order to prove that they really intended to become good Soviet citizens."  One of the former "wreckers" worked as the chief electrician at the combinat, another as the main engineer at a chemical plant.  Several of them were decorated with medals for labor achievements.
Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1998, p. 269
 
ARRESTS IN THE 1930S WERE NOT NEARLY AS MANY AS FOREIGNERS THINK
 
            Unfortunately, many foreigners left the Soviet Union during 1937 and 1938 for one reason or another, carrying away with them the impression that the purge ended everything, or at least ended something; an epoch, let us say.  Everyone worthwhile had been arrested or shot, it seemed.  This impression was basically incorrect.  The purge caused many arrests, but the Soviet Union was large, and millions of Russians who had not been involved personally in the purge took it more or less as it came without allowing it permanently to influence their attitude toward the Soviet power.  So that in the end of 1938 when the purge ended, when hundreds of arrested people were released with terse apologies for 'mistakes' of the investigators, when new arrests stopped or almost stopped, most of the workers in Magnitogorsk had an essentially cheerful and optimistic view of things.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 205
 
PEOPLE OF THE SU DID THE INDUSTRIALIZING THEMSELVES
 
            While a few thousand foreign technicians assisted in the work, the brunt of the immense task fell on the shoulders of the Soviet peoples.  Russia was industrialized with the sweat and blood of the one hundred and sixty-odd million inhabitants of the vast country.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 257
 
 
STALIN SAVED LENIN IN SUMMER OF 1917
 
            After the events of July 1917, when Lenin, hounded and persecuted by the counter-revolutionary provisional government, was forced to go into hiding, Stalin directly guided the work of the Central Committee and the Central Party Organ, which at that time appeared under a succession of different names.  It was Stalin who saved the precious life of Lenin for the Party, the Soviet people and for humanity at large, by vigorously resisting the proposal of the traitors, Kamenev, Rykov, and Trotsky that Lenin should appear for trial before the courts of the counter-revolutionary Provisional Government.
Alexandrov, G. F. Joseph Stalin; a Short Biography. Moscow: FLPH, 1947, p. 53
 
            Lenin and Zinoviev were hesitant: they feared that to avoid trial would confirm, in the eyes of uninformed opinion, the charges leveled against them.  This was at first also the view of Lunacharsky and Kamenev.  Stalin, on the contrary, advised them to go into hiding.  It would be folly, he said, to trust the justice of the Provisional Government.  An anti-Bolshevik hysteria was being so unscrupulously whipped up that any young officer or ensign escorting the 'German spies' into prison, or from prison to court, would think it an act of patriotic heroism to assassinate them on the way.  Lenin still hesitated to follow Stalin's advice.  Stalin then approached the Executive of the Soviets and told them that Lenin was prepared to face trial if the Executive guaranteed his life and personal safety from lawless violence.  As the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries refused to shoulder any such responsibility, Lenin and Zinoviev finally made up their minds to go into hiding.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 151
 
            The Congress discussed whether Lenin should appear for trial.  Kamenev, Rykov, Trotsky and others had held even before the Congress that Lenin ought to appear before the counter-revolutionary court.  Comrade Stalin was vigorously opposed to Lenin's appearing for trial.
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 198
 
            In her reminiscences Krupskaya states: "On the seventh I visited Ilyich at his quarters in the apartment of the Alliluyevs together with Maria [Lenin's sister].  This was just at the moment when Ilyich was wavering.  He marshaled arguments in favor of the necessity to appear in court.  Maria argued against him hotly.  'Zinoviev and I have decided to appear.  Go and tell Kamenev about it,' Ilyich told me.  I made haste.  'Let's say goodbye,' Ilyich said to me, 'we may never see each other again.'  We embraced.  I went to Kamenev and gave him the Ilyich’s message.  In the evening Stalin and others persuaded Ilyich not to appear in court and thereby saved his life."
            ...More categorical than any other against surrender was Stalin:...
            To what extent the opponents of Lenin's surrender to the authorities were right was proved subsequently by the story of the officer commanding the troops, general Polovtsev.  "The officer going to Terioki [Finland] in hopes of catching Lenin asked me if I wanted to receive that gentleman whole  or in pieces.... I replied with a smile that people under arrest very often try to escape."  For the organizers of judicial forgery it was not a question of "justice" but of seizing and killing Lenin, as was done two years later in Germany with Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg.  Stalin was more convinced than the others of the inevitability of a bloody reprisal; such a solution was quite in accord with his own cast of thought.  Moreover, he was far from inclined to worry about what "public opinion" might say.  Others, including Lenin and Zinoviev, wavered.  Nogin and Lunarcharsky became opponents of surrender in the course of the day, after having been in favor of it.  Stalin held out more tenaciously than others and was proved right.
Trotsky, Leon, Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 211-212
 
LENIN GOT STALIN RED BANNER AWARD FOR WAR PERFORMANCE
 
            Stalin's services and the Civil War received special recognition in a decision adopted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, on Lenin's motion, on November 27, 1919, awarding him the Order of the Red Banner.
Alexandrov, G. F. Joseph Stalin; a Short Biography. Moscow: FLPH, 1947, p. 69
 
SURVIVAL OF CAPITALISM IN MEN’S MINDS PRODUCT OF NATIONALISM
 
            The survivals of capitalism in the minds of men, Stalin pointed out, were much more tenacious in the sphere of the national question than in any other.
Alexandrov, G. F. Joseph Stalin; a Short Biography. Moscow: FLPH, 1947, p. 123
 
            In the face of a world in which peace between nations is literally an absurd formula, each one of the 75 or so contemporary nations having but one aim (which some of them do and some do not admit), namely, to live to the detriment of one another....
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 98
 
STALIN DIRECTED THE DEFENSE OF MOSCOW IN WWII
 
            Stalin personally directed the defense of Moscow and the operations of the Red Army; he inspired men and commanders, and supervised the building of the defense works at the approaches to the Soviet capital.
Alexandrov, G. F. Joseph Stalin; a Short Biography. Moscow: FLPH, 1947, p. 163
 
PRIOR TO KIROV SHOOTING ARRESTS AND TRIALS ONLY USED FOR ANTI-SOVIET ACTS
 
            Before the [Kirov] murder, the Cheka rarely resorted to administrative methods for dealing with people.  By administrative methods, I mean arrest and trial.  Such methods were used only in cases involving activities of an overtly anti-Soviet character.  For example, we had always tried to deal with work stoppages and strikes in Moscow by going to the barracks or factories and explaining to the workers that we had to raise production quotas in order to catch up with our enemies....  If certain individuals refused to adapt themselves to the necessary conditions, they would be openly denounced by the party.  But we almost always stopped short of using administrative methods against them.
            All that suddenly changed after Kirov's murder.  Redens told me he had received instructions to "purge" Moscow.  Moscow unquestionably needed a purgative.  It was constipated with many undesirable elements--nonworkers, parasites, and profiteers.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 78
 
STALIN INCENSED OVER ORDZHONIKIDZE’S DEATH
 
            ...I was at a dinner with Stalin and some of the other comrades and just happened to bring up the subject of Sergo Ordzhonikidze:
            "Sergo!  Now there was a real man.  What a pity he died before his time.  What a loss!"
            There was an embarrassed silence.  I sensed that I had said something wrong.  I asked Malenkov as we were leaving after dinner, "What did I say that I shouldn't have said?"
            "Don't you know?"
            "No."
            "You mean you thought Sergo died a natural death?  You didn't know he shot himself?  Stalin won't forgive him for that...."
            After Stalin's death Mikoyan, who had been very close to Sergo, told me he had had a talk with him on the very eve of his suicide.  On a Saturday evening they had gone for a walk together around the Kremlin.  Sergo told Mikoyan that he couldn't go on living.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 85
 
STALIN IS FLEXIBLE AND NOT HARD-HEADED
 
            Sometimes if you persistently opposed Stalin and if he became convinced you were right, he would retreat from his position and accept yours.  Of course, such flexibility and reasonableness is a positive quality in any man.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 93
 
SECRET POLICE GATHERING EVIDENCE AGAINST AND INVESTIGATING STALIN ALSO
 
            It had so happened that earlier, while working in Moscow, I'd once asked that Lukashov be sent to Poland and Lithuania to purchase onion seeds and vegetables.  When he was arrested, he was pressured to testify that his trade mission to Poland had actually been a secret political assignment to establish contacts with anti-Soviet organizations abroad.  He refused to confess and was released--a rare thing.  I told Stalin about the episode.
            "Yes," he said, "I know what you mean; there are these kinds of perversions.  They're gathering evidence against me, too."
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 108
 
            I was astounded also to discover that Molotov had my uncle's personal secretariat so honeycombed with his own spies that he knew everything that went on in Stalin's entourage, and even more amazed to learn that the GPU kept even Stalin under surveillance.
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 70
 
            "Good day, Budu," he [Stalin] said.  "You see I've succeeded in getting your articles.  I read them carefully.  You're quite right.  There's nothing anti-Marxist in them at all.  I'm going to talk to Molotov about it."
            I told him why I had come to see him and about all the difficulties that had been put in my way.  His face turned a pale gray from rage.  He was beside himself.
            "I won't stand for anyone intercepting Nadia's letters or phone calls," he exploded.  "She's my wife.  I guarantee her.  The GPU has no business interfering with her!"
            He picked up the telephone and called Dzerzhinsky.
            "Felix Dzerzhinsky," he said, when the GPU president answered, "will you come over to my apartment at once?"
            He hung up and turned back to me.
            "You stay, Budu," he directed me.  "We're going to have this out."
            Dzerzhinsky arrived 15 minutes later.  His face was twisted and lined with deep wrinkles.  Dark circles surrounded his eyes.  It was not difficult to see that the illness which had long beset him was getting worse.
            He greeted me in a friendly fashion.
            "Look here, Felix," Stalin attacked, "your organization is going a little too far.  My nephew here, Budu Svanidze, was called in by Artuzov for a strictly personal matter which concerns me alone.  In the future, I want the GPU to keep its nose out of my private affairs."
            "What happened?"  Dzerzhinsky asked.
            "The GPU has been intercepting phone calls and opening letters addressed to us here."
            Dzerzhinsky became very serious.
            "There must be some mistake, Comrade Stalin.  There is an order of the Politburo covering that point.  Letters addressed to members of the Politburo are never opened."
            "Let's get it quite straight," Stalin said.  "I'm not speaking only of letters addressed to me personally.  I do not want any surveillance of Comrade Alliluyeva [Stalin’s wife] and I do not want any discussions at the GPU concerning my conversations with my nephew.  Make that clear to Artuzov."
            Dzerzhinsky promised that there would be no repetition of the offense.  He stayed for a few moments longer, talking with my uncle, and then left after taking a cup of tea, which my aunt offered him.
            When he had gone, Stalin said to me, "You see how it is, Budu, the GPU is becoming all-powerful.  They don't want to let anyone alone."
            I knew that Dzerzhinsky, who was an old member of the Party, affected an attitude of complete independence toward the Politburo.  But I hadn't dreamed up to now that the GPU would dare to spy on the secretary-general of the Party.
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 77
 
            Ordjonikidze himself was being increasingly harassed.  Police officers arrived at Ordjonikidze's flat with a search warrant.  Humiliated and frantic with rage, he spent the rest of the night trying to get through to Stalin on the telephone.  As morning came he finally got through and heard the answer [from Stalin].  "It is the sort of organ that is even liable to search my place.  That is nothing extraordinary...."
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 168
 
            It is unclear whether the "neighbors" had been tapping Koba's telephone on their own initiative or with the permission of Mekhlis.
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 217
 
            While Ordjonikidze was at the Commissariat, a search was conducted of his apartment.  When he found out about this, Ordjonikidze immediately telephoned Stalin and expressed his indignation.  Stalin said in reply: "It's such an organ, that it might carry out a search at my place.  Nothing to get upset about...."
Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1998, p. 194
 
            These few examples reveal the GPU's in method of operation.  The system was similar in the control organ of the party.  In the Fourth Section of the army  it was considerably different because most of the staff was salaried.  But there, too, the same system of investigating and spying reached everywhere.  Nobody was spared, not even Stalin: there was a dossier on him, too.
Tuominen, Arvo, The Bells of the Kremlin: Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983, p. 184
 
STALIN WAS A GREAT LEADER WHO FOUGHT CORRUPTION AND BUREAUCRACY
 
            Shortly afterward, Mitrokhin, the director of the Yaroslavl factory, became Commissar of the Chemical Industry.  I was pleased that Stalin hadn’t forgotten my high recommendation of this man and had assigned him to such a responsible post.  In relation to the scale of or whole manufacturing industry, this episode concerned a minor matter, but it still had its significance for me.  I've told this story to illustrate how Stalin was sometimes capable of a conscientious and statesmanly approach to problems.  He was a jealous lord and master of the State, and he fought against bureaucracy and corruption and defects of all kinds.  He was a great man, a great organizer and a leader,...
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 124
 
            Whenever I had dealings with Eisenhower in later years, I always remembered these actions of his during the war. [Eisenhower ordered the commander of the German Army to surrender to the Russians who had defeated his army.  Montgomery ignored the request and took them all].  I kept in mind Stalin's words about him.  [I frequently heard Stalin speak about Eisenhower’s noble characteristics...such as decency, generosity, and chivalry in his dealings with the allies p. 220].  Stalin could never be accused of liking someone without reason, particularly a class enemy.  He was uncorruptible and irreconcilable in class questions.  It was one of his strongest qualities, and he was greatly respected for it.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 222
 
            [And Stalin said], "The exposure and expulsion from the administrative apparatus of incorrigible bureaucrats and red-tapists.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 134
 
            The service rendered by Stalin's leadership in strengthening the unity of the party--and of the world communist movement as well--is tremendous.  Stalin was a man of integrity.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 259
 
            In 1928 Stalin was troubled by a similar problem:
            "Of course, the fact that we have a group of leaders who have risen excessively high and enjoy great prestige is in itself a great achievement for our Party.  Obviously, the direction of a big country would be unthinkable without such an authoritative group of leaders.  But the fact that as these leaders rise they get further away from the masses, and the masses begin to look up at them from below and do not venture to criticize them, cannot but give rise to a certain danger of the leaders losing contact with the masses and the masses getting out of touch with the leaders.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 76
 
            It was precisely the “Stalinists' who fought bureaucracy and excesses most consistently and who defended a correct line for collectivization.
Martens, Ludo.  Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 69 [p. 59 on the NET]
 
            The danger of bureaucracy lies first of all in the fact that it holds back the colossal reserves concealed in the bosom of our social system, not allowing them to be utilized: it tries to nullify the creative initiative of the masses, binds them hand and foot with red tape and aims at reducing every new undertaking of the Party into a petty and insignificant business.  The danger of bureaucracy lies, secondly, in the fact that it cannot tolerate having the execution of orders verified and strives to transform the principal directions of the leading bodies into a mere sheet of paper divorced from real life.  The danger is represented, not only and not so much by the old bureaucratic derelicts in our institutions, as particularly by the new bureaucrats, the Soviet bureaucrats, amongst whom "communist" bureaucrats play a far from insignificant role.  I have in mind those "communists" who try to replace the creative initiative and independent activity of the millions of the working-class and peasantry by office instructions and "decrees," in the virtue of which they believe as a fetish.
            The task is to smash bureaucracy in our institutions and organizations, to liquidate bureaucratic "habits" and "customs," and clear the road for the utilization of the reserves of our social order, for the development of the creative initiative and independent activity of the masses.
            It is no easy task.  It cannot be settled in the twinkling of an eye to.  But it has to be settled at all costs, if we really want to transform our society on socialist lines.
            In its struggle against bureaucracy, the Party works in four directions: in the direction of the development of self-criticism, in the direction of organizing the verification of the execution of orders, in the direction of cleansing the apparatus, and, finally, in the direction of promoting to the state apparatus devoted members of the working-class from below.
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 100
 
            [Lev Borisovich says to Kamenev,] You see, he [Stalin] will become a man of destiny, a great figure who will occupy a permanent place in the world's history.  He will take his place in history as a nail enters the wall...."
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 94
 
            [In a speech delivered at the 8th Congress of the Oil-Union  Leninist Young Communist League on May 16, 1928 Stalin stated] Bureaucracy is one of the worst enemies of our progress.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 11, p. 75
 
            But one of the most serious obstacles, if not the most serious of all, is the bureaucracy of our apparatus.  I am referring to the bureaucratic elements to be found in our Party, government, trade-union, co-operative and all other organizations.  I am referring to the bureaucratic elements who batten on our weaknesses and errors, who fear like the plague all criticism by the masses, all control by the masses, and who hinder us in developing self-criticism and ridding ourselves of our weaknesses and errors.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 11, p. 137
 
KHRUSHCHOV SWEARS NOT TO ATTACK THE DEAD BUT ATTACKS STALIN
 
            One shouldn't say unkind things about the dead, so I won't say anything about Shcherbakov except that he was an upper-echelon Party worker for many years and chief of the political directorate of the Red Army during the war.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 203
 
            The minutes of a July 12, 1984, Politburo session revealed a truly nauseating spectacle: the leaders of the party still defending Stalin against Khrushchev's revisionism.  At the meeting, the members listened to a report on how Molotov, Stalin's Foreign Minister, was "overwhelmed with joy" at the Politburo's decision to restore him to the Party ranks.  Molotov had been expelled during Khrushchev's "thaw."
            "And let me tell you," says Marshall Dmitri Ustinov, the head of the armed forces.  "If it hadn't been for Khrushchev, they never would have been expelled and there never would have been these outrageous actions regarding Stalin....  Not a single one of our enemies has inflicted so much misfortune on us as Khrushchev did regarding his policies and his attitude toward Stalin."
Remnick, David. Lenin's Tomb. New York: Random House, c1993, p. 518
 
STALIN AND MOLOTOV HAVE NO RESPECT FOR TRUMAN
 
            However, at this time Truman was president, and Stalin had no respect at all for Truman.  He considered Truman worthless.  Rightly so.  Truman didn't deserve respect.  This is a fact.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 221
 
            Roosevelt was an imperialist who would grab anyone by the throat....  Roosevelt knew how to conceal his attitude toward us, but Truman--he didn't know how to do that at all.  He had an openly hostile attitude.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 51
 
            And Truman had a very anti-Soviet mindset.  That's why he began in that tone; he wanted to show who was boss....  He was far from having Roosevelt's intellect.  A big difference.  They had only one thing in common--Roosevelt had been an inveterate imperialist, too.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 55
 
            Truman was least of all interested in either friendship or cooperation with Russia.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.,1971, p. 56
 
 
ALLIED AID TO THE SU
 
            In addition we received steel and aluminum [from America] from which we made guns, airplanes, and so on.  Our own industry was shattered and partly abandoned to the enemy.  We also received food products in great quantities.  I can't give you the figures because they never been published.  They're all locked away in Mikoyan's memory.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 226
 
            It should be pointed out here, although this has nothing to do with the Russian attitude, that it is easy for Americans to overestimate the amount of help given to the Soviet Union through Lend-Lease.  The Allied deliveries of tanks, artillery, and aircraft, while needed, were insignificant compared to Russian production.  One Soviet tank plant alone produced 35,000 tanks, several times the number supplied by the Allies during the war.  Soviet artillery was entirely Russian, and reputed to be the equal of any in the world.  Russian made planes played the biggest part on the eastern front, although the Soviets did get 13,000 planes from the United States, about 5% of our total production.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 108
 
            During the entire war the allies sent the USSR...contributions amounted to 12 percent of the armament produced in the USSR for use against the Germans.
Nekrich and Heller. Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 411
 
 
[The 26th Anniversary of the October Revolution speech delivered at Moscow, Nov. 6, 1943]
            If to all this is added the fact that the Allies are regularly supplying us with various munitions and raw materials, it can be said without exaggeration that by all this they considerably facilitated the successes of our summer campaign.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 403
 
            Western bourgeois political and military historians allege that the Soviet army was able to achieve its superiority in material owing to Anglo-American assistance.
            This is far from true.
            I do not wish completely to deny its value though as in some degree it did help the Soviet army and our war industry.  However, it did not amount to much and hence cannot be considered of much significance.
            We gained our material superiority over the enemy thanks to the advantages of Soviet social order and through heroic, tremendous efforts of the Soviet people led by the Party, both at the front and in the rear.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 466
 
            As far the armaments, what I would like to say is that we received under the Lend-Lease Act from the United States and Britain 18.7 thousand aircraft, 10.8 thousand tanks and 9600 artillery pieces.  All that comprised 12, 10.4, and 2% respectively of the total amount of armaments that the Soviet army was equipped with during the war.  Undoubtedly, that was of definite significance, but really there is no ground for talk about a decisive role.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 684
 
 
            Nor was Moscow saved by war material from America.  Almost none of the eventual $11 billion worth of American Lend-Lease aid to the USSR arrived in time to save Moscow.  American assurances of aid may have made Stalin more willing to throw material reserves into the struggle for his capital after October.  But all told, Lend-Lease came to only 6% of Russian war material, most of it coming after Stalingrad.  The thesis of Russian primitivity is inconsistent with the theory that Russia was saved by importing huge amounts of American goods along thousands of miles of railway.
            The war material with which the Red Army saved Moscow and the bulk of the USSR was produced at home.  The USSR produced 16,000 airplanes in 1941, 10,000 of them after the invasion.  The production of munitions almost tripled in the second half of 1941--in spite of all the German victories and the chaotic dislocations involved in removing much Soviet industry eastward out of the Germans' reach.  In 1942, when two-thirds of European Russia was occupied, the USSR produced 23,000 tanks (of better quality) to the Germans' 9300; 25,000 airplanes to the Germans' 14,700; and 34,000 heavy guns to the Germans' 12,000.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 281
 
            By the time Lend-Lease began to arrive in large quantities, the Russians had already won the battle of Stalingrad.   The heavy armaments shipped under Lend-Lease did not amount to more than 10 or 15% of what the Russians were themselves producing.   And when one considers that the Second World War cost the United States $400 billion, of which only $11 million worth went to Russia as Lend-Lease one realizes that, by American standards of expenditure, this help to Russia was not an overwhelmingly large item.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.,1971, p. 115
 
            Western bourgeois political and military historians are trying to prove that the Red Army only achieved its superiority in material thanks to the material assistance rendered by the USA and Britain.
            I do not wish to deny this completely and make out that this aid did not exist.  It did help the Red Army and the war industry to a certain extent, but, all the same, it should not be regarded as more significant than it actually was.
            Our material superiority over the enemy was gained thanks to the advantages of the Soviet social system, the heroic struggle of the Soviet people, guided by the party, at the front as well as in the rear.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 196-197
 
            Nevertheless, for years after the war bourgeois historiography has asserted that it was the Allied deliveries of armaments, materials, and foodstuffs that had played a decisive role for our victory over the enemy.
            As for the armaments, what I would like to say is that we received under Lend-Lease from the United States and Britain about 18,000 aircraft and over 11,000 tanks.  That comprised of a mere 4% of the total amount of armaments that the Soviet people produced to equip its army during the war.  Consequently, there is no ground for talk about the decisive role of the deliveries under Lend-Lease.
            As for the tanks and aircraft supplied to us by the British and US governments, they, to be frank, did not display a high fighting qualities; especially tanks which, running on petrol, would burn like torches.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 460
 
STALIN TRIED TO HELP PEOPLE WHILE BERIA UNDERMINED THEM
 
            Voznesensky dared to cross Beria's path, and before Beria finished with him, Voznesensky was just a shadow of his former self.
            I remember that more than once during this period Stalin asked Malenkov and Beria, "Isn't it a waste not letting Voznesensky work while we're deciding what to do with him?"
            "Yes," they would answer, "let's think it over."
            Some time would pass and Stalin would bring up the subject again: "Maybe we should put Voznesensky in charge of the State Bank.  He's an economist, a real financial wizard."
            No one objected, but nothing happened.  Voznesensky was still left hanging.
            Stalin obviously felt a certain residual respect for Voznesensky.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 251
 
            Apparently even after these arrests, Stalin felt a certain amount of goodwill toward Shakhurin and Novikov.  He used to turn to Beria and Malenkov during dinner and ask, "Say, are Shakhurin and Novikov still in jail?"
            "Yes."
            "Don't you think it might be all right to release them?"  But Stalin was asking the question to himself.  He was just thinking out loud.  No one would say anything, and the matter would be left up in the air until sometime later when he'd bring it up again.  Once he even went so far as to say, "You should give serious thought to releasing Shakhurin and Novikov.  What good are they doing us in jail?  They can still work."  He always directed these remarks to Malenkov and Beria because they were in charge of the case against Shakhurin and Novikov.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 253
 
            Beria had many faults and betrayed many hopes, nevertheless it was a blow for me when in 1953 he was suddenly arrested and shot.
Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press,1956, p. 267
 
            Beria was absolutely insolent.  He tried to find the smallest insignificant detail of perceived slight, in order to try and get you fired or arrested... this was in order to make Stalin either nervous or upset.  This came to such a state of outright provocation that once while Stalin was away from the Dacha, Beria with his personal entourage started to snoop in the offices of Stalin, rummaging through his papers and documents.  After one such "snooping search," Stalin's transistor radio went missing.  Needless to say, it was Stalin's own bodyguards who were suspected and blamed.  The offices were turned upside-down.  Time passed and no transistor was found.  Then, the Guard Kuzin who was shoveling snow, came across the transistor.  Who else could do something of this caliber?  Only Beria and his clique, of well-masked and hidden enemies of Stalin and the Soviet Union!
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 66
 
STALIN DID NOT SIGN SENTENCING ORDERS ALONE
 
            I was never really in on the case [the Leningrad trial] myself, but I admit that I may have signed the sentencing order.  In those days when a case was closed--and if Stalin thought it necessary--he would sign the sentencing order at a Politbureau session and then pass it around for the rest of us to sign.  We would put our signatures on it without even looking at it.  That's what was meant by "collective sentencing."
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 256
 
STALIN EXPRESSED HIMSELF BRIEFLY, CONCISELY, AND COMPREHENSIVELY
 
            I want to give Stalin his due here.  Right up to his very death, Stalin could express himself clearly and concisely.  His formulations were short, comprehensible, and to the point.  It was one of Stalin's great gifts.  In this regard Stalin was possessed of a tremendous power which can neither be denied nor debased.  Everyone who knew Stalin admired this talent of his, and because of it we were proud to work with him.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 275
 
 He accomplishes a great deal during his working day because he possesses an orderly and self-controlled mind and a marvelously retentive memory.  Foreign statesmen are usually amazed at the extent of his knowledge, down to the most minute detail, on matters in which he is interested.  Yenukidze, Secretary of the Soviet executive committee, says that Stalin's distinctive characteristics in speaking, writing, and working are brevity, clarity, accuracy.  This was evident in my interviews with Stalin.  He answered questions instantly in clear, brief statements, frequently listing his points in one, two, three order.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 10
 
            At Politburo meetings he was brief and to the point, he sought not so much to polemicize against others as to summarize in a few words the opinion of the majority.  A man of strong will, Stalin was at the same time extremely cautious and, on occasion, indecisive as well....  Stalin was not interested in women.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 89
 
  Stalin was not interested women...  He was neither unintelligent nor devoid of common sense.
Medvedev, Roy. On Stalin and Stalinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 33
 
STALIN CONVENED THE 1952 PARTY CONGRESS
 
            In 1952 Stalin called us together and suggested that we should convene a party Congress.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 276
 
KHRUSHCHOV FEARED THE CONSEQUENCES OF STALIN’S DEATH
 
            My own anxiety was growing.  Stalin was at an age which put the rest of us in a difficult position.  Far from looking forward to Stalin's death, I actually feared it.  I was afraid of the consequences.  What would happen to the country?  Even though I already had my doubts about the campaign against the enemies of the people, I still had confidence in Stalin.  I figured that perhaps there had been some excesses, but basically everything had been handled properly.  Not only did I not condemn Stalin, I exalted him for being unafraid to purge the Party and thereby to unify it.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 314
 
KIM IL SUNG STARTED THE KOREAN WAR NOT STALIN
 
            Nevertheless, Stalin decided to ask Mao Tse-tung's opinion about Kim Il Sung's suggestion.  I must stress that the war wasn't Stalin's idea, but Kim Il Sung's.  Kim was the initiator.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 368
 
            I'm telling the truth now for the sake of history: it was the initiative [to start the Korean War] of Comrade Kim Il Sung, and he was supported by Stalin and many others--in fact, by everybody.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 144
 
            It was not Stalin's initiative, but he supported Kim Il Sung.  Although I blame Stalin for all the crimes he committed, on this I am with him.  If I had had to make a decision, I would also have given my consent to Kim.  This was a question of the internal affairs of Korea.  It was only natural that the people of Korea were fighting then, and are still fighting, to become a unified, socialist Korea.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 145
 
            Throughout 1949 the Soviet Union delivered weapons and other military equipment to North Korea at an intense pace, each consignment personally approved by Stalin.  The North probed the South to test the strength of its defenses.  They crossed the border and conducted 'reconnaissance in force'.  Following one such sortie, Shtykov [the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea] received a threatening telegram from Stalin, dated October 27, 1949: 'You were forbidden to advise the government of North Korea to undertake active operations against the South Koreans without permission of the Center...  You failed to report the preparation of major offensive actions by two police brigades and in practice you allowed our military advisers to take part in these actions.... We require an explanation.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 153
 
            A key document is a special report from Shtykov to Stalin dated January 19, 1950:
            "On the evening of January 17... Kim Il-sung declared that when he had been in Moscow, Comrade Stalin had told him he should not invade South Korea; if the army of Syngman Rhee were to invade the North, then it would be right to make a counter offensive against the South.  But since up to this time Syngman Rhee has not started an offensive, it means that the liberation of the people of the southern part of the country continues to be delayed.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 154
 
            The Korean communist leader Kim Il-Sung went to Moscow in March 1949 and requested a large increase in assistance so that he might attack the South.  Stalin refused, advising the Korean comrades to get on with their preparations but to fight only if invaded.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 553
 
UNLIKE STALIN KHRUSHCHOV AND BERIA ADMIRED TITO
 
            Tito has always been a good Communist and a man of principal....
            It was very profitable for the capitalist countries then, and it's still profitable for them today, to use tempting trade agreements to try and coax the fraternal countries away from the Socialist camp one by one.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 382
 
            Yugoslavia always took care not to affiliate itself with one block or another....  The Yugoslavs refused to join the Warsaw Pact because they had a special commercial relationship with the West.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 383
 
            Beria offered assurances to Czechoslovakia that the USSR would not continue to interfere in Czech internal affairs, and he wrote a personal letter to Marshal Tito apologizing for the manner in which Stalin had treated him.  The MGB officer who would carry the letter to Tito showed it to me.  The final sentence said, "Let us cast the past aside and look ahead to the resumption of diplomatic relations between our two nations."
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 148
 
KHRUSCHOV TALKS SOCIALISM BUT DOES NOT PRACTICE IT
 
            Every working-class should be able to choose its own course of development on the basis of local historical and economic circumstances--on the one vital condition, of course, that the means of production and the banks belong to the people, and that the state is run by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 391
 
            ...Molotov claimed that Khrushchev and Brezhnev, intimidated by U.S. atomic weapons, had cravenly abandoned the goal of international communism for that of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 331
 
 
STALIN PREDICTS CAPITALISTS WILL DEFEAT THE LEADERS FOLLOWING HIM
 
            Right up until his death Stalin used to tell us, "You'll see; when I'm gone the imperialistic powers will wring your necks like chickens."   We never tried to reassure him that we would be able to manage.  We knew it wouldn't do any good.  Besides, we had doubts of our own about Stalin's foreign policy.  He overemphasized the importance of military might, for one thing, and consequently put too much faith in our armed forces.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 392
 
            In Khrushchev's 1956 speech he stated, "Shortly after the doctors were arrested we members of the Politburo received protocols with the doctors' confessions of guilt.  After distributing these protocols Stalin told us, "You are blind like young kittens; what will happen without me?  The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies."
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 601
 
            On the subject of the relations between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world, Stalin took every chance to instill in us the idea that we were mere kittens, calves to be led around by the rest of the world.  "The West will wrap you around its finger," he would warn us.  Stalin never expressed any confidence that we were worthy of representing our socialist nation, or defending its interest in the international arena.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 79
 
            You shouldn't forget that all during Stalin's life, right up to the day he died, he kept telling us we'd never be able to stand up to the forces of imperialism, that the first time we came into contact with the outside world our enemies would smash us to pieces; we would get confused and be unable to defend our land.  In his words, we would become "agents" of some kind.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 424
 
 
            Stalin then invited us to supper, but in the hallway we stopped before a map of the world on which the Soviet Union was colored in red, which made it conspicuous and bigger than it would otherwise seem.  Stalin waived his hand over the Soviet Union and, referring to what he had been saying just previously against the British and the Americans, he exclaimed, "They will never accept the idea that so great a space should be red, never, never!"
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 74
 
            Some of the more perceptive delegates to whom I [Volkogonov] have spoken sensed that Stalin was thinking about his legacy, and this is borne out by the long speech he made at the plenum that was elected at the 19th Congress.  Malevolently and in an accusing tone, he expressed doubt that his comrades would follow the agreed course, and wondered whether they would not capitulate before the country's domestic difficulties, as well as the imperialists' threats.  Would they show the courage and firmness needed to withstand the new tests?
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 569
 
            Stalin gave the orders on how the investigation should proceed:...  By early January confessions had been obtained.  Stalin passed them round the leadership saying, 'You are blind like kittens; what will happen without me?  The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies.'
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 309
 
            Sensing their incredulity and unease, he scoffed at them: 'YOU ARE BLIND, LIKE YOUNG KITTENS.  WHAT WILL HAPPEN HERE WITHOUT ME?  THE COUNTRY WILL PERISH--YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO RECOGNIZE AN ENEMY.'
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 620
 
            Koba laughed.  "You're the same old joker, Carl Bernardovitch.  I know I'm surrounded by a crowd of imbeciles
Alexandrov, Victor. The Tukhachevsky Affair. London: Macdonald, 1963, p. 22
 
            Khrushchev, like several other political figures, recalled in his memoirs that at the end of his life Stalin began to wonder what would happen to all his work after he had gone.  At the midnight dinner table he often asked his cronies how they would get on without him, and just as often would say: 'They'll crush you like kittens.'
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 169
 
            He felt the end approaching and sensed he would be followed by a vacuum, as indeed he was.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 171
 
            As, today, when we behold the morons and scum who have proliferated on the ruins of the Soviet empire and now govern it, I'm sometimes gripped by a doubt.   Perhaps I am wrong to condemn Stalin?   Perhaps he knew these people perfectly well and was right to consider that they understood nothing....
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 149
 
HARDLINE DULLES REFUSED TO MAKE ANY CONCESSIONS AND RAN US POLICY
 
            The United States in those days refused to make even the most reasonable concessions because John Foster Dulles was still live.  It was he who determined the foreign policy of the United States, not President Eisenhower.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 397
 
TITO PUSHED THE HUNGARIAN INVASION
 
            We reported to Tito on why we had come and confronted him with our decision to send troops into Budapest.  We asked for his reaction.  I expected even more strenuous objections from Tito than the ones we had encountered during our discussions with the Polish comrades.  But we were pleasantly surprised.  Tito said we were absolutely right and that we should send our soldiers into action as quickly as possible.  He said we had an obligation to help Hungary crush the counterrevolution.  He assured us that he completely understood the necessity of taking these measures.  We had been ready for resistance, but instead we received his wholehearted support.  I would even say he went further than we did in urging a speedy and decisive resolution of the problem.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 421
 
KHRUSCHOV SAYS HITLER’S SOCIALISM WAS A JOKE
 
            Even Hitler used to babble about Socialism, and he worked the word into the name of his Nazi [National Socialist] party.  The whole world knows what sort of Socialism Hitler had in mind.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 433
 
KHRUSHCHOV AND STALIN WRESTLE WITH THE EAST GERMAN PROBLEM
 
            Meanwhile, Walter Ulbricht and our other comrades in the GDR were facing serious troubles directly stemming from the ambiguous status of West Berlin.  Berlin was an open city, which posed two problems: First, there was the problem of people crossing from East Berlin into West Berlin.  The GDR had to cope with an enemy who was economically very powerful and therefore very appealing to the GDR's own citizens.  West Germany was all the more enticing to East Germans because they all spoke the same language.  An East German with adequate professional qualifications had no difficulty finding a job if he moved to West Germany.  The resulting drain of workers was creating a simply disastrous situation in the GDR, which was already suffering from a shortage of manual labor, not to mention specialized labor.  If things had continued like this much longer, I don't know what would have happened.  I spent a great deal of time trying to think of a way out.  How could we introduce incentives in the GDR to counteract the force behind the exodus of East German youths to West Germany?  Here was an important question--the question of incentives.  How could we create conditions in the GDR which would enable the state to regulate the steady attrition of its working force?
            The second problem was the problem of the West Berliners' easy access to East Berlin.  Residents of West Berlin could cross freely into East Berlin, where they took advantage of all sorts of communal services like barbershops and so on.  Because prices were much lower in East Berlin, West Berliners were also buying up all sorts of products which were in wide demand--products like meat, animal oil, and other food items, and the GDR was losing millions of marks.
            Of course, even if we had a peace treaty, it wouldn't have solved these problems because Berlin's status as a free city would have been stipulated in the treaty and the gates would have remained open....
            The GDR's economic problems were considerably relieved by the establishment of border control between East and West Berlin.  Comrade Ulbricht himself told me that the economy of the GDR immediately began to improve after the establishment of border control.  The demand for food products in East Berlin went down because West Berliners were no longer able to shop there.  This meant that the limited supply of consumer products was available exclusively to the citizens of East Berlin....
            Of of course there were some difficulties.  The East Berliners who had jobs in West Berlin were suddenly out of work.  But there was never any problem of unemployment.  On the contrary, most of the people affected were construction workers, who were very much needed in East Germany.  They were all given jobs suitable to their qualifications....
            If the GDR had fully tapped the moral and material potential which will someday be harnessed by the dictatorship of the working-class, there could be unrestricted passage back and forth between East and West Berlin.  Unfortunately, the GDR--and not only the GDR--has yet to reach a level of moral and material development where competition with the West is possible.  The reason is simply that West Germany possesses more material potential and therefore has more material goods than the GDR....  If we had at our disposal more material potential and had more ability to supply our material needs, there's no question but that our people would be content with what they would have and they would no longer try to cross over to the West in such numbers that the drain has become a major threat to a state like the GDR.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 454-456
 
            When the two German republics were being formed, West Berlin became a stumbling block and destroyed relations among former allies as well as between the East and the West.  The West began to step up subversive efforts inside the GDR, using West Berlin as a base.  This was fairly easy for the West to do because Germans were used against Germans.  The usual problems of language, of a strange culture, and of outward appearance of agents did not exist as the West looked for agents to send into the East.  Besides, there used to be unrestricted travel and communication between the two sides.  The borders were open borders.  Of course, this meant that the German Democratic Republic also had the opportunity to send agents against the Federal Republic of Germany, but the Western countries took the most advantage of the situation.
            Therefore, the issue of how to combat Western influence arose.  The best and most logical way to fight it was to try to win the minds of the people by using culture and politics to create better living conditions.  That way people would really have the opportunity to exercise free choice.
            However, given the conditions that developed in the two German states, there was no real freedom of choice to speak of.  That is because West Germany was richer, with more industrial potential, more natural resources, and more production capacity.  It was hard for East Germany to compete.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 163
 
            Moreover, West Germany was supported by the United States' industrial and financial might.  The GDR was fighting not only against the opportunities that existed within West Germany, but also against the added material incentives of the United States.
            The West's goal was to turn West Berlin into what is called a mirror of Western life, a showcase for the capitalist world, in order to attract the people of East Berlin into resisting the steps toward socialism being taken in the GDR.  These tactics might have seemed perfectly acceptable: let each person make up his or her own mind.  There was no contradiction in this.  It was a war for people's minds, not an armed conflict.  In fact, we Communists also wage a war for people's minds all over the world when we demonstrate the advantages of the socialist system of production and when we talk about how socialism is a more democratic system that gives more opportunity to the people.  Socialism makes better use of the resources accumulated by the people and provides better distribution of riches among the people.
            Yet if you looked at the situation that way, the picture was not quite right.  The GDR's natural resources and its production capabilities were significantly less than those of West Germany.  West Germany had the support of the United States, a rich country that you could say had robbed the entire world and grown fat off the first and second world wars.  Thanks to more than one war, the United States had expanded its production capabilities.  The Soviet Union, by contrast, had suffered more than any other country in the war and had a greater need than any other for the basic necessities: food, clothing, and housing.  The Soviet Union's cities and towns, its technology, its machine-building factories and steel mills, and its housing had all been destroyed.
            The Soviet Union never had a chance to compete fairly, to pit its material resources against those of the West.  While the Soviet Union bled during World War II, the United States prospered and developed its power.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 164
 
            For this reason, after the war the Americans had accumulated enormous military resources, including clothing and rations.  When they reduced the size of their own armed forces they threw their surpluses to West Berlin and West Germany.  In this way the competition was uneven from the very start.
            The historical role of Marxist-Leninist teachings and the opportunities these teachings afford the working people of all countries are understood only by the most forward-looking segment of society, the most advanced portion of the working-class and intelligentsia.  Unfortunately, at a certain stage, ideological issues are decided by the stomach, that is, by seeing who can provide the most for the people's daily needs.  Therefore, the attraction of one or the other system is literally decided by the shop windows, by the price of goods, and by wages.  In these areas, of course, we had no chance of competing with the West, especially in West Berlin, where capitalism gave handouts to sharply contrast the material wealth of West Berlin with the living conditions in East Berlin.
            Also, dividing a single people, making them live under different sociopolitical conditions, created enormous difficulties.  West Germany had the chance to make itself more appealing, especially to professionals such as engineers, doctors, teachers, and highly skilled workers.  This category of people was particularly attracted to move to the West.  Naturally, workers tended to follow their employers.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 165
 
            By 1961 an unstable situation had been created in the GDR.  At the time, there was an economic boom in West Germany.  West Germany needed workers badly and lured them from Italy, Spain, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and other countries.  Numbers of the intelligentsia, students, and people with higher education, left the GDR because West Germany paid office workers more than they were paid in the GDR and other socialist countries.  The question of whether this or that system is progressive ought to be decided in political terms.  However, many people decide it in the pit of their stomach.  They don't consider tomorrow's gains but only today's income-- and today West Germany industry pays you more.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 168
 
            Walter Ulbricht even asked us to help by providing a labor force.  This was a difficult issue to face.  We didn't want to give them unskilled workers.  Why?  Because we didn't want our workers to clean their toilets.  I had to tell Comrade Ulbricht: "Imagine how a Soviet worker would feel.  He won the war and now he has to clean your toilets.  It will not only be humiliating--it will produce an explosive reaction in our people.  We cannot do this.  Find a way out yourself."
            What could he do?  He had to appeal for stronger discipline; but they still kept on running away because qualified workers could find better conditions in West Germany.
            I spoke to Pervukhin, our ambassador in Germany, about the establishment of border control.  He gave me a map of West Berlin....  I asked Pervukhin to share the idea with Ulbricht....  Ulbricht beamed with pleasure.  "This is the solution!  This will help.  I am for this."
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 169
 
            Of greater interest to me personally were the opportunities I had of observing life in Berlin.  In West Berlin a great deal of the rubble and ruins which I had seen in 1945 had been cleared way, and instead of half-demolished houses there were now open spaces with paved streets going through them, which still bore their former names on signposts, but new buildings were going up and the less damaged houses were being restored.  Familiar shops and large stores had been reopened in temporary premises; there were many flourishing restaurants and bars; theaters had been rebuilt and were well attended.  Street traffic was normal, and people were going briskly about their business.  West Berlin was still very much alive.
            East Berlin was a sad contrast.  War damage had probably been no greater than in West Berlin, but the pace of restoration was infinitely slower.  With the exception of one long street, the Stalin Allee, consisting of blocks of newly-built houses in the Soviet style, it looked as if the war had ended overnight.  On every hand stood streets of ruined houses and shells of churches and large public buildings.  At night the streets were badly lighted compared with the brilliantly illuminated streets of the West.  Traffic was meager, and people moved about in a listless way....  It was a depressing picture, and immediately revealed the difference in living conditions between the two zones.
Birse, Arthur Herbert. Memoirs of an Interpreter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 226
 
            Nowhere was the conflict of the powers more intense than in Germany; and nowhere was it more sharply focused than in Berlin.  There the contrast between American affluence and Russian destitution was brutally exposed for everyone to see.  While the United States and Britain were already pumping economic aid into western Germany, Russia was still draining the resources of East Germany which she needed for her reconstruction.  It was only too easy for anti-Russian propagandists to present this outcome of the war, and of long and complex preceding historic developments, as the test of the opposed socio-political systems; and to a claim that western capitalism brought prosperity and freedom while Russian Communism could live only by spoliation and slavery.
            Of that condominium [the joint condominium over Germany] hardly a trace was now left: Stalin had refused the western powers any say in the conduct of East German affairs just as they had denied him any share in the control of western Germany....  In the spring of 1948 the issue was brought to a head.  The western powers, anxious to hasten the economic rehabilitation of their parts of Germany, proposed to introduce a currency reform under which the old depreciated Mark was to be replaced by a new one.  The reform put a seal upon Germany's division; and it posed at once the question of Berlin's currency.  Russia could not allow the city to become financially incorporated into West Germany; nor could the western powers permit it to be financially absorbed by East Germany.  If two different currencies were to circulate in Berlin, the result would be a chronic conflict, for while a growing volume of goods in the West was bound to assure the stability of the new Mark, the value of the eastern currency would be undermined by a continued scarcity of goods.  To forestall this, Stalin ventured a desperate gamble.  He ordered a blockade of those sectors of Berlin that were held by the Americans, the British, and the French.  Soon all traffic heading for West Berlin, whether by land or by water, was brought to a standstill.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 588-589
 
 
KHRUSHCHOV CONSIDERED NIXON AN UNPRINCIPLED PUPPET OF MCCARTHY
 
            I joked with Kennedy that we had cast the deciding ballot in his election to the presidency over that son-of-a-bitch Richard Nixon....
            As for Nixon, I had been all too familiar with him in the past.  He had been a puppet of [Joseph] McCarthy until McCarthy's star began to fade, at which point Nixon turned his back on him.  So he was an unprincipled puppet, which is the most dangerous kind.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 458
 
 
            So much for my first personal introduction to Richard Nixon.  Naturally I'd known of him from the press since long before because he'd occupied a special position among the American political leaders.  We considered him a man of reactionary views, a man hostile to the Soviet Union.  In a word, he was a McCarthyite.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 414
 
 
WHAT TALLYRAND SAYS ABOUT THE TONGUE OF DIPLOMATS
 
            Talleyrand once said that a diplomat is given a tongue in order to conceal his thoughts.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 461
 
STALIN ATTACKS MAO FOR RELYING ON PEASANTS ONLY AND NON-MARXISM
 
            Stalin was always fairly critical of Mao Tse-tung.  He had a name for Mao, and it describes him accurately from a purely Marxist point of view.  Stalin used to say that Mao was a "margarine Marxist".
            When Mao's victorious revolutionary army was approaching Shanghai, he halted their march and refused to capture the city.  Stalin asked Mao, "Why didn't you take Shanghai?"
            "There's a population of 6 million there," answered Mao.  "If we take the city, then we'll  have to feed all those people, and where do we find food to do it?"
            Now, I ask you, is that a Marxist talking?
            Mao Tse-tung has always relied on the peasants and not on the working-class.  That's why he didn't take Shanghai.  He didn't want to take responsibility for the welfare of the workers.  Stalin properly criticized Mao for this deviation from true Marxism.  But the fact remains that Mao, relying on the peasants and ignoring the working-class, achieved victory.  Not that his victory was some sort of miracle, but it was certainly a new twist to Marxist philosophy since it was achieved without the proletariat.  In short, Mao Tse-tung is a petty-bourgeois whose interests are alien, and have been alien all along, to those of the working class.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 462
 
            On 10 February 1948 Stalin said, "I also doubted that the Chinese could succeed, and advised them to come to a temporary agreement with Chiang Kai-shek.  Officially, they agreed with us, but in practice, they continued mobilizing the Chinese people.  And when they openly put forward the question: Will we go on with our fight?  We have the support of our people.  We said: Fine, what do you need?  It turned out that the conditions there were very favorable.  The Chinese proved to be right, and we were wrong.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 443
 
KHRUSCHOV IS AN ATHEIST WHO DECRIES PRAYER
 
            For centuries people have been droning, "Lord, have mercy upon us; Lord, help us and protect us."  And have all the prayers helped?  Of course not.  But people are set in their ways and continue to believe in God despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 471
 
KHRUSCHOV CONSIDERS HO CHI MINH A SAINT
 
            Ho Chi Minh really was one of communism's "saints."
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 481
 
KHRUSHCHOV COMPLIMENTS KENNEDY AND SAYS HE WOULD HAVE AVOIDED VIETNAM
 
            I believe that if Kennedy had lived, relations between the Soviet Union and United States would be much better than they are.  Why do I say that?  Because Kennedy would have never let his country get bogged down in Vietnam.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 505
 
KHRUSCHOV SAYS IN CAPITALISM THE DOLLAR COUNTS NOT PEOPLE
 
            The main thing that I noticed about the capitalist West when I was in New York, which Gorky once called the City of the Yellow Devil, is that it's not the man that counts but the dollar.  Everyone thinks of how to make money, how to get more dollars.  Profits, the quest for capital, and not people are the center of attention there.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 513
 
STALIN LIVED A VERY FRUGAL, SPARTAN LIFE WITHOUT WEALTH
 
            The story of Stalin is a success story....  No orator in the traditional sense, and betraying a Georgian accent, he nevertheless has perfect self-possession in speaking....
            He is a quiet man....  There is little to be said about his personal life since the Soviet leaders do not consider their personal lives something to be spread over the front pages.  As a result fantastic rumors have spread throughout the world that Stalin loves luxury and lives amid great splendor and pomp.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and nothing can give such a misleading idea of the man and his aims.  The fact is that Stalin does not care for money, is extremely modest and simple in his dress, in his habits, and in his home.  He has a small four room apartment in the Kremlin.  When his children were small one of them slept on a sofa in the dining room.  Except for the worst period of the winter Stalin lives in Gorky in the little house where Lenin lived before his death.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 9
 
            Stalin was very frugal.  He had no clothes in which to be buried.  He was buried in his old military suit which had been cleaned and repaired....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 210
 
            My father never cared about possessions.  He led a puritanical life, and the things that belonged to him said very little about him.  The ones he left behind--his house, his rooms, and his apartment--give no clue to what he was like.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 15
 
            My father lived on the ground floor.  He lived in one room, in fact, and made it do for everything.  He slept on the sofa, made up at night as a bed, and had telephones on the table beside it.  The large dining table was piled high with documents, newspapers, and books....  The great, soft rug, and the fireplace were all the luxury my father wanted.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 20
 
 
            The garden, the flowers, and the woods that surrounded the dacha were my father's hobby and relaxation.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 21
 
            There was no need to make a Puritan of my mother--her tastes were simple enough already.  Besides, in those days it was a matter of course for the leaders, especially leaders of the Party, to live in what was almost puritanical style.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 54
 
            Often he spent days at a time in the big room with the fireplace.  Since he didn't care for luxury, there was nothing luxurious about the room except the wood paneling and the valuable rug on the floor.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 205
 
            He [my father] let his salary pile up in packets every month on his desk.  I have no idea whether he had a savings account, but probably not.  He never spent any money--he had no place to spend it and nothing to spend it on.  Everything he needed--his food, his clothing, his dachas, and his servants--was paid for by the government.
            Sometimes he'd pounce on his commandants or the generals of his bodyguard, someone like Vlasik, and start cursing: "You parasites!  You're making a fortune here.  Don't think I don't know how much money is running through your fingers!"
            But the fact was, he knew no such thing.  His intuition told him huge sums were going out the window, but that was all.  From time to time he'd make a stab of auditing the household accounts, but nothing ever came of it, of course, because the figures they gave him were faked.  He'd be furious, but he couldn't find out a thing.  All-powerful as he was, he was impotent in the face of the frightful system that had grown up around him like a huge honeycomb, and he was helpless either to destroy it or to bring it under control.  General Vlasik laid out millions in my father's name.  He spent it on new houses and trips by enormous special trains, for example.  Yet my father was unable even to get a clear explanation of how much money was being paid out, where, and to whom.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 209-210
 
  [Zhukov said] "He [Stalin] never tolerated any luxury in clothing, furniture, or his life in general."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 124
 
            People who laugh like children love children....
Footnote:  I can hear Stalin's laughter from here if he ever heard the monumental ineptitude of the Vermot Almanac which says: "Stalin spends 250,000 francs a year for his personal needs."
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 278
 
            As a person, however, Stalin had changed greatly.  He had power and position, but showed no interest in possessions and luxuries.  His tastes were simple and he lived austerely.  In summer he wore a plain military tunic of linen and in winter a similar tunic of wool, and an overcoat that was some 15 years old.  He also had a short fur coat with squirrel on the inside and reindeer skin on the outside, which he started wearing soon after the Revolution and continued to wear with an old fur hat until his death.  The presents, many of them valuable and even priceless works of craftsmanship, sent to him from all parts of the country and, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, from all over the world, embarrassed him.  He felt that it would be wrong to make any personal use of such gifts.  And, as his daughter noted: "He could not imagine why people would want to send him all these things."  It was an insight into the paradoxical humility of this extraordinary man.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 235
 
            After an official dinner in the Kremlin on August 14, 1942, there was a more informal final meeting on the following evening.  Churchill was saying goodbye when Stalin proposed that they go to his apartment for a farewell drink.  He led the way along corridors into a narrow street, still within the Kremlin, and into another building, followed by Churchill and Birse, the British interpreter, and two or three NKVD guards.  Stalin's apartment comprised a dining room, work room, bedroom, and a large bathroom, all very simply furnished.  There was no trace of luxury.  An elderly housekeeper in white overalls, wearing a head scarf, was setting the table.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 352
 
            Shortly before midnight Churchill said he would like to wash his hands, so Stalin led him through the adjoining bedroom to a bathroom beyond.  I accompanied them, and thus became the first foreigner to see Stalin's bedroom.  It was as simply furnished as the dining room, with a marked absence of luxury.  A bed and bedside table, a rug or two on the floor, a few chairs, and a large bookcase made up the total.  There may have been a clothes cupboard as well, I cannot remember.  I had a look at the books.  They were a collection of Marxist literature, with a good many historical works, but I could see no Russian classics.
Birse, Arthur Herbert. Memoirs of an Interpreter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 103
 
            ... Stalin always dressed simply and lived modestly.  He displayed no taste for luxury or desire to enjoy the good things of life.  He lived in the Kremlin in a modestly furnished apartment formerly occupied by a palace servant.  At a time when Kamenev had already appropriated a magnificent Rolls-Royce, Stalin rode around Moscow in an old "Russo-Balte."...
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 89
 
            Among party leaders in the '20s Stalin was known for the ascetic simplicity of his personal life, and echoes of that lifestyle persisted.  For example, at his dacha in Kuntsevo there was hardly any furniture in the rooms he used for leisure or sleep.  There was a clothes closet, a shelf with a small number of books (his main library was at his Kremlin apartment), a plain lamp without a shade, and a bed....
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 843
 
            They [Stalin and Churchill] set off on their way along the Kremlin passageways.  They came out into a small yard, crossed a street, and finally found themselves in Stalin's apartment, which the British prime minister later described as "modest in style and size": a dining room, a living room, a study, and a large bathroom.  Stalin made no mention of the fact that the place had previously belonged to Bukharin.  They switched apartments after Stalin's life, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, committed suicide.
Berezhkov, Valentin. At Stalin's Side. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Pub. Group, c1994, p. 299
 
            Stalin's son, Vasili, was born in 1921 and a few years later came Svetlana.  Shortly after she was born, they were joined by Yakov, their father's son by his first marriage.  Stalin's wife, Nadezhda, who was 22 years his junior, went about the task of setting up a simple household with zeal and dedication.  They lived modestly on Stalin's salary until she went to work, first, for the journal Revolution and Culture then in the Sovnarkom secretariat, and finally to study at the Industrial Academy.  One day at dinner Stalin suddenly said to her, 'I've never loved money, because I usually never had any.'...
            Like all the other leaders at that time, Stalin lived in simple circumstances, in keeping with the family budget and party norms....
            ... Stalin had a natural bent for physical asceticism.  When he died, he was found to have owned very few personal items--some uniforms, a pair of embroidered felt boots and a patched, peasant sheepskin coat.  He did not love objects,...
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 102
 
            The leadership of the 1920s lived rather modestly.  At first, Stalin lived in a small apartment he had been given on Lenin's orders.  A letter from Lunacharsky of November 18, 1921, requests that Stalin be found something more comfortable.  When Lenin saw the letter he sent a note to the head of security, Belenky: "This is news to me.  Can nothing else be found?"  There is also a note from Lenin to Yenukidze, requesting that the matter of Stalin's apartment be expedited and asking to be informed by telephone when it had been settled.  And indeed Stalin was soon re-housed in former servants quarters in the Kremlin, an inelegant dwelling with some of the original furniture, a worn floor, and small windows.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 145
 
            In his last years, he [Stalin] had a small wooden house built next to the large villa and he moved into it.  As Shelepin, (at one time head of the KGB and a member of the Politburo in the early 1970s), told me [Volkogonov]:
            "When Stalin died and an inventory of his possessions had to be made, it turned out to be a very simple job.  There were no antiques or valuable objects of any kind, apart from a government-issue piano.  The furniture was cheap and the armchairs had loose covers.  There was not even a single good 'real' picture, they were all printed reproductions in plain wooden frames.  Hanging in the central position in the sitting room was an enlarged photograph of Lenin and Stalin, taken at Gorky in September 1922 by Lenin's sister, Maria.
            There were two rugs on the floor.  Stalin slept under an army blanket.  Apart from his marshal's uniform, his clothes consisted of a couple of ordinary suits, one of them in canvas, embroidered felt boots, and a peasant's sheepskin."
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 146
 
            Stalin's own material demands were modest; his flat, furniture, pictures, clothes were simple and inexpensive.  His salary simply accumulated in a drawer.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 311
 
            I [Budu] felt that I had been away from Moscow for too long of time and I wanted someone to fill in the gaps for me with all the rumors and gossip of the capital.  Mikeladze was just the man to do me that service.
            Among other things, he told me how my Uncle Sosso had been living during the period when I had not been able to see him.
            "He's the simplest man in the government," he told me.  "He's also the most conservative in his daily habits.  He's still living in the same little apartment in the Kremlin that he has had since the start of his career.  He goes for a couple of months in the summer to his country house in Gorinka--you've been there--and goes hunting with Voroshilov and Budenny in the Perlovka woods or the forest of Bolchevo."
            "Do you know his place at Sochi?"  I asked.
            "Yes.  He has a villa built on the foundations of the old convent of St. Tamar.  It was constructed by Auphane according to Comrade Stalin's own plans.  It's modern and comfortable, but there's no ostentatious luxury about it, as there is in the villas of some of the members of the government.
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 140
 
            "Svetlana," he [Stalin] said, "you haven't run over your budget this month?"
            "No, papa."
            "Let's see your accounts."  And, turning to me [Budu], he added, "She cheats.  By the end of the year I have quite a deficit."
            "Oh, papa, the state publishing house still owes you more than one million rubles for your books, and all you spend is 120,000 rubles year.  How can you have a deficit?"
            "You forget my donations," my uncle said.  "Besides that, I took 500,000 rubles of bonds of the military loan.  I have just 120,000 rubles left for my personal expenses.  That's not bad either, when you add the same amount that I get as head of the government."
            "Yes," said Svetlana, "and then you spend your own money for official ceremonies!  When Churchill had dinner with us in your apartment at the Kremlin, I spent more than 10,000 rubles out of my budget then you never asked to be paid back for it."
            "Yes, I did."  My uncle laughed.  "I asked Molotov to pay half of it, for that was really a private dinner which he and I gave to Churchill.  He said he'd pay half if he could take it out of the secret funds of the Foreign Ministry."
            "You see, papa, Molotov is smarter than you!"
            "He's poorer than I am, too.  He doesn't publish any books."  He laughed maliciously.
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 202
 
            Until the Second World War, he [Stalin] dressed with traditional Bolshevik modesty in a plain brown military coat and dark trousers stuffed into leather boots.  He lived unpretentiously in a small house in the Kremlin, formerly part of the Tsars servants' quarters.  Ownership and money as such played no part in his life.  In the 1930s, his official salary was about 1000 rubles a month--in purchasing power, perhaps $40.  One of his secretaries accepted and dealt with this small sum, paying the superintendent of the Kremlin a modest rent for his apartment, and dealing with his Party dues, his payment for his holiday, and so on....  His country villa at Borovikha and his seaside Government Summer House No. 7 at Sochi were "State property."
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 59
 
            But he [Stalin] has now his country seat or summer residence.  He lives in the house where Lenin died, outside Moscow, Gorky, a fine white house with Greek columns.  It is a nice place with white walled rooms, pictures in gilded frames, armchairs and sofas upholstered in white and gold, antique marble vases, crimson curtains, palms and ferns in big pots.  There are portraits of gentry of a bygone age.  Not much has been disturbed since the original owners quitted the scene.  Stalin lives there as if he had leased a furnished house for the season.  He does not order the bourgeois luxury to be removed.  Neither does he profit by it very much.  It does not interest him.  He sits in his own cabinet with masses of papers and books and works.  Here for a while he tried to learn English, but gave it up, finding it too difficult.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 117
 
            He does not play cards like most of the other leaders and also, unlike other comrades, takes little pleasure in sitting around a table drinking and gossiping.
            In the winter he moves his family back to the Kremlin, to his rooms there.  That is less comfortable, but perhaps more to his liking.  He engages no cook.  The meals are sent in on a tray from the Communal restaurant.  It is true he dines more amply than the working man; he does not stint his stomach.  He has his mince stewed in grape leaves, his shashlik, his cranberry cream, all washed down with abundant wine from his native Georgia.  He is not a vodka drinker and does not care for beer.  Red table-wine such as one can get at any dukhan in the Caucasus, is all he asks.  He enjoys good health; his abdominal trouble does not recur.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 118
 
            The dinner is served on nationalized plates, some of them still bearing the initials of the Tsars.  His rooms are simply furnished; no armchairs, divans or anything of the kind; white-curtained windows; wooden chairs; no tablecloth; a portrait of Lenin.  He sits down to dinner in the afternoon and to supper in the evening with his new young consort, Nadia, and his children.  There are seldom any visitors at these meals.  Stalin eats and drinks and says little.  He does not discuss politics with his wife nor tell her the events of the day.  When the meal is over he moves back his chair, lights his pipe and seems to fall into a reverie.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 119
 
            In those years, the 1920s, Stalin led a very simple life.  He always wore an ordinary outfit, of a military cut, with boots and a military cap.  He had neither the taste for luxuries nor the wish to enjoy the pleasures of life.  He lived in the Kremlin, in a small and simply furnished apartment, where palace servants had lived before.  Whereas Kamenev, for example, with his new understanding of cars, had a splendid Rolls-Royce, Stalin was content with a Russo-Balt (an old Russian model) that was powerful but old and modest.
Bazhanov, Boris. Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 109
 
            A couple of times the Supreme Commander-in-Chief invited us to dinner in his Kremlin apartment.
            Stalin led a rather modest life.  The food was always very simple, mostly Russian cuisine, sometimes Georgian national dishes.  He never tolerated any luxury in clothing, furniture, or his life in general.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 495
 
            Stalin inspected the villa [at Potsdam] placed at his disposal and asked whose it had been before.  He was told it had belonged to General Ludendorff.  Stalin never liked any lavishness.  After he had inspected the quarters he asked for some of the furniture to be removed.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 668
 
            Stalin inspected the villa placed at his disposal [at Potsdam] and asked who it had belonged to before.  He was told it had belonged to General Ludendorff.  Stalin never liked any lavishness.  After he had inspected the quarters he asked for some of the furniture to be removed.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 442
 
 
            I later found out that Stalin was very frugal, economizing on everything and thus trying to set an example to others.  He had to be convinced to get something new.  As an example, to get summer suits.  He wore his boots and shoes until they nearly fell off his feet.  He raised his children also without luxury.  In order to please Svetlana (Stalin's daughter) Vlasik gave her a small cabin to herself which was empty.
            Stalin, finding this out later, said:
            "Vlasik, you should not do this, it's against the law.  Who is she, a member of our Politburo, a member of our Central Committee?  Vacate the cabin and give her a place together with the others."
            Here is another example.  It was a September day.  The ocean was calm.  Antonov was sunning himself under a large tree.  All of a sudden, a dark storm blew up.  I stood nearby.  The downpour was horrendous, while Antonov, the guard, bravely stood at his post in the open, not moving from his guard duty.  It was the most frightful storm I have ever witnessed...but the bodyguards stood where they were placed throughout this deluge.  Stalin, during this event, saw through the window as Antonov was practically drowned by the rain and nearly blown off his feet.  After the storm subsided, Stalin, together with commissar Bogdanov, wanted to see this dutiful man, Antonov.
            Antonov said: I'm listening, comrade Stalin!
            You certainly got a soaking....  I saw everything.
            It's nothing, comrade Stalin, soon my uniform will dry.
            Why hasn't a small shelter for the guards been built here?, asked Stalin of Bogdanov. You should be put in his place so that you can see what it is to suffer through such a downpour.  I want this small shelter built immediately, within two hours.
            In two hours, Stalin came out to see whether this had been done and seeing a new shelter, said:
            Something like this should not have to be ordered by me.  Bogdanov should have thought of this himself.  All of us must carry out our responsibilities!
            Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, comrade Stalin, for being so concerned about us!  Altshuler, the guard who had replaced Antonov who had gone to dry himself, thanked Stalin.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 11-13
 
            On July 16, 1945, Stalin came to Berlin to attend the Potsdam Conference.  Yefimov  and Orlov provided Stalin with a luxurious room in a hotel, got him gold-embossed furniture.  When Stalin saw this, he made them take it out and replace it with ordinary furniture and he blasted them for this bootlicking, fawning attitude to him.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 49
 
            After the death of Stalin, in his bedroom on his small night table, Starostin found Stalin's bank book--only 900 rubles had he saved.  The bank book was given to Svetlana.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 107
 
            His habits were modest enough.  He dressed simply, worked in his ostentatious lodgings in the Kremlin, drank sparingly of vodka and Georgian wines and ate traditional Russian food.
Overy, R. J. Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow. New York: TV Books, c1997, p. 35
 
            There the dictator occupies two plain rooms in an annex.  His living quarters in another part of the Kremlin, where he lives with his family, is just as unpretentious.  His office looks more like the hygienic surgery of a doctor, and the man in the light gray jacket, a kind of military tunic without buttons or badges, also looks thoroughly washed.  Everything stands in precise and tasteless order on the long table, the carafes, ashtrays and sheets of paper.  If Marx's magnificently domed forehead, which always reminds me of someone dear to me, did not look down from the wall, one might feel himself in Department X of the Y ministry in the capital of Z.
Ludwig, Emil. Three portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin. New York Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company, c1940, p. 117
 
            In his memoirs Bazhanov gives us a description of Stalin in 1923-25 that has the ring of truth about it.... He [Stalin] lived very modestly in a Kremlin apartment formerly occupied by a palace servant.  He always wore simple clothes and had little taste for luxury or other creature comforts.  At time when Kamenev had already appropriated a magnificent Rolls, Stalin drove around Moscow in an old "Russo-Balte."...
Medvedev, Roy. On Stalin and Stalinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 33
 
            On one occasion, Stalin asked the two Germans to come unobtrusively to his apartment in the Kremlin.  What impressed his visitors was the modest style in which Stalin lived: He occupied a single-story, two-room house in the former servants' quarters of the Kremlin, shabbily furnished, despite the fact that he was the organizer of "tens of thousands of salaried employees, including the state police... and could offer party jobs and state jobs, give influential assignments in Russia and abroad, and very often "responsible party tasks" combined with substantial material advantages--apartments, automobiles, country residences, special medical care, and jobs for members of the family."
            The simplicity of Stalin's life-style was not a pose.  He was interested in the substance not the trappings of power.  Bazhanov and other witnesses confirm this: "This passionate politician has no other vices.  He loves neither money nor pleasure, neither sport nor women.  Women, apart from his own wife, do not exist for him."
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 181
 
            Now, in 1952, Stalin is an old, white-haired man    .
            His private life is quiet and modest.   Luxury, sumptuous dwellings, adorned with works of art, brilliant receptions and recherche dinners, have no attraction for him.   In Moscow he is still living in the same small house, in the courtyard of the Kremlin, in which he received Matsuoka in 1941 and Churchill in 1942.
Delbars, Yves. The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 414
 
            Stalin and his family occupy a small two-room apartment within the Kremlin, formerly tenanted by the attaches at the palace.  One passes through a dark corridor and climbs up a stairway to reach the Stalin abode.  You enter an antechamber.  An army coat is on the rack.  Stalin is home.
            The dining-room, which is also the living-room, is rather small and elongated.  The Stalins are at the table.  All their meals are brought from the Kremlin restaurant, which supplies all the other high officials.  The dinner is perhaps superior to that of the ordinary Russian restaurant, but it is the kind of food that an American railway conductor would disdain.  No luxuries, no delicacies, with the exception of the fine wine.
            The furniture in the apartment is of the simplest character.  White canvas curtains are hanging over the windows.  On the couch in the dining-room the oldest son will go to sleep after dinner.  That is his bedroom.
            During the meal, there is little conversation.  Stalin is not loquacious.  He eats heartily.  After dinner he will sit down in an armchair near the window and puff away at his pipe.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 323-324
 
            His own savings were depreciated by the devaluation decree [of 1949]; but he had never been a materialistic man.  Unopened pay-packets were found at his dacha when he died.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 497
 
            Iremashvili informs us,...  "He was least of all concerned with his personal welfare.  He made no demands on life, regarding them as incompatible with Socialist principles.  He had sufficient integrity to make sacrifices for his ideal."  Koba was true to that vow of poverty which was taken unostentatiously and without any ado by all the young people who went into the revolutionary underground.
Trotsky, Leon, Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 51
 
            Volodya says, "I have read a lot of contemporary books and I disagree completely with the way he is described.  He was a man dedicated fully to his cause.  He never wanted anything for himself--he left no possessions after his death.  He gave his life to Russia, to the Soviet Union....
            Volodya says, "It is all too easy today to call Stalin a fool, a paranoiac and a mass- murderer.  It was not so at all!  
Richardson, Rosamond.  Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 274-275
 
STALIN HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR
 
            One always receives the impression with Stalin of a flaming enthusiasm kept in bounds by an iron will....
            Stalin has a good, if somewhat heavy footed, sense of humor.  Once Stalin received Arnold Kaplani and Boris Goldstein, youthful piano and violin stars, and awarded them each a government grant of 3000 rubles.  When the youngsters had the money in their hands, he quizzed them, "Now that you are capitalists will you recognize me on the street?"...
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 11
 
            He has a sense of humor, though it is heavy to Western ears;...  Addressing the 1930 congress of the party, he ticked off the Right Opposition of Bukharin and Rykov by asserting that if Bukharin saw a cockroach he proceeded at once to smell catastrophe, foreseeing the end of the Soviet Union in one month.  "Rykov supported Bukharin's theses on the subject," said Stalin, "with the reservation, however, that he had a very serious difference with Bukharin, namely that the Soviet government will perish, in his opinion, not in one month, but in one month and two days."
            At the 1934 congress he took time out to deal with those who indulged in the great Russian habit of talkativeness:
            "I had a conversation with one such comrade, a very respected comrade, but an incorrigible chatterbox, who was capable of submerging any living cause in a flood of talk.  Well, here is the conversation:
            I: How are you getting on with the sowing?
            He: With the sowing, Comrade Stalin?  We have mobilized ourselves.
            I: Well, and what then?
            He: We have put the question bluntly.
            I: And what next?
            He: There is a turn, Comrade Stalin; soon there will be a turn.
            I: But still?
            He: We can observe some progress.
            I: But for all that, how are you getting on with the sowing?
            He: Nothing has come of the sowing as yet, Comrade Stalin."
Gunther, John. Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 530
 
            Stalin has a sense of humor.  His cynicism is deep, his irony open.  He has a genuine appreciation of satire.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 327
 
STALIN STOOD FIRM WHEN OTHERS PANICKED
 
            In political debate Stalin's humor turns to acid--and it is most effective.  When attacking Rykov, Tomsky, Bukharin and the opposition from the right in the party, he ridiculed their fears of every new policy.  Said Stalin: "These features take on particularly ridiculous forms when difficulties appear, when the slightest cloud makes its appearance on the horizon.  If any difficulty or hitch has appeared anywhere, they fall into a panic, lest something may happen.  A cockroach somewhere stirs, without having time even to crawl out of its hole, and they are already starting back in terror, and beginning to shout about a catastrophe, about the ruin of the Soviet government."
            He continued: "We try to calm them down, we try to convince them that nothing dangerous has happened yet, that it is only a cockroach, and there is no need to be afraid, but all in vain.  They continue to shout as before: "What cockroach?  That's no cockroach, it's a thousand wild beasts!  It's not a cockroach, but the abyss, the ruin of the Soviet government!"  And volumes of paper begin to poor in."
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 11
 
STALIN COULD BE WITTY AND ASK SHARP QUESTIONS
 
            If at times his intent is softer his wit is no less pointed.  In our group interviews with Stalin in 1927, after we had questioned him for six hours, he finally turned to us and said, "If the delegation is not too tired, I would ask it to permit me to put several questions."  Stalin then slyly asked the sociologists and economists: "How you account for the small percentage of American workers organized in trade unions?"  I can still see Stalin chuckling to himself at our contradictory answers....
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 11
 
STALIN SUCCESSFULLY OVERCAME ONE CRISIS AFTER ANOTHER
 
            There is no question but that he is accustomed to facing and overcoming the most formidable obstacles.  There has not been a single year since 1899 but what has involved some sort of crisis for him.  First were the revolutionary struggles in Tsarist times  with consequent imprisonments and exile.  The civil war and intervention followed.  The death of Lenin came next, with the explosion of bitter rivalry within the party.  Almost numberless crises developed on the fronts of economic and social change.  There were three great Five-Year Plans--and the threat of war always lurked ominously in the background.  Hitler's march into Russia in 1941 precipitated the titanic struggle so long expected.  Now there is the herculean task of reconstruction.
            Experience has made Stalin intensely practical--and when theory does not workout in practice it's too bad for the theory....
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 11
 
            But, in spite of apparently insoluble difficulties, in spite of the fact that each spring the regime seemed to be tottering on its last legs, the man's [Stalin] indomitable energy did succeed in giving the USSR a new industrial equipment.  After a few more years of intense effort, the results of the terrific, almost superhuman strain, would show themselves in an increase of general prosperity and happiness.  In spite of everything, therefore, our devotion to Stalin was colored with a determined enthusiasm.  It was infectious: it penetrated even the ranks of the Opposition.  How else explain the frequent surrender of its members?  "Stalin's work, cruel and clumsy though his methods of carrying it out may be"--they argued--"is more important than our differences with him"; and they abjured their dissident faith.
Barmine, Alexandre. Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat. London: L. Dickson limited,1938, p. 237
 
STALIN DISLIKES ALL THE PRAISE HEAPED ON HIM
 
            Paradoxically enough, in view of his very real modesty and unassuming nature, Stalin permits his statue and his picture to be plastered from one end of the country to the other.  He has said the reason he does not object to pictures, memorials in his honor and the like, is because the people are merely using him as a symbol of the Soviet state.  There are indications, however, that he finds the fulsome tributes to him, which are regulation oratorical flourishes in Russia, somewhat distasteful.  In a speech to the workers of Tiflis he alluded to this in a half-mocking way:
            "I must, in all conscience, tell you, that I have not deserved half the praise that has been given me.  It appears that I am one of the heroes, the director of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union... a peerless knight and all sorts of other things.  This is mere fantasy, and a perfectly useless exaggeration.  This is the way one speaks at the funeral of a revolutionary.  But I'm not preparing to die...."
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 12
 
            Twice in my life I called Stalin a genius.  Once it was in some sort of a welcoming speech which I didn't write, and it was signed by a group of us.  Stalin got angry, ordered that it be deleted, and said, "How did you end up in this?"
            The second time was at his funeral.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 165
 
            Stalin regretted that he had agreed to become Generalissimo.  He always regretted it.  And that was right.  Kaganovich and Beria overdid it....  Well, the commanders also insisted on it....  He had no need for that title.  No, he regretted this very much.  ...Twicethey tried to give him that rank.  He rejected the first attempt, then agreed and came to regret it.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 175
 
            At one time there were persistent suggestions that Moscow be renamed the city of Stalin.  Very persistent!  I objected.  Kaganovich proposed it.  He said, "There's not only Leninism, there's Stalinism too!"
            Stalin was outraged.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 176
 
            After the Tehran conference, Stalin once told me he was sickened by the way they were deifying him, and that there were no saints.  He said there was no such man as Stalin as depicted, but if the people created such a Stalin, if they believed in him, it meant this was necessary in the interests of the proletariat and should therefore be supported.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 302
 
            He [Stalin] hated the futile homage the Georgians paid him.  He thought about Georgia only when he was an old man.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 67
 
            My father had unpleasant memories of his journey here [Kutaisi railway station] because he couldn't stand the sight of a crowd applauding him and shouting "Hurrah!"  His face would twitch with annoyance each time it happened.  Here, at the Kutaisi railway station, his Georgian countrymen had given him such a reception that he'd been unable to leave the train and get into his car.  People literally threw themselves under the wheels.  They crawled and shouted and threw flowers and carried their children on their shoulders.  Here if nowhere else, it was warm-blooded, unfeigned, and sincere.  Here if anywhere it was straight from the heart, but my father was angry anyway.  He was accustomed by this time to having the stations empty and cleared for his arrival and to the roads he traveled on being empty.  He wasn't used to people shouting and hurling themselves at his car.  He had altogether forgotten that feelings of this kind could be sincere and not put on.
            I was horribly embarrassed even by the more modest "homage" paid us when we went to the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and at the banquets in honor of my father's 70th birthday.  I was always afraid my father might at any moment say something that would throw cold water on everyone, and also I could see his face twitching with annoyance.  "They open their mouths and yell like fools," he would say in a tone of angry contempt.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 201
 
            ... Though he [Stalin] had been chairman at the recent meeting of the Party which had resolved to encourage the cult of his greatness he now remarked how wrong it was to ascribe the country's successes to any single leader!
Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press,1956, p. 34
 
            Stalin was, in fact, not a vain, self-obsessed man who had to be surrounded by fawning and flattery.  He detested this mass adulation of his person, and throughout his life he went to great lengths to avoid demonstrations in his honor.  Indeed, he was to be seen in public only at party congresses and at ceremonial occasions on Red Square, when he was a remote figure standing on Lenin's mausoleum.  He had the same lack of personal vanity as Peter the Great and Lenin, but like them he had the same supremely arrogant conviction, transcending mere vanity, that he was the man of destiny, who held the key to the future....
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 234
 
            I must, in all conscience, tell you, that I have not deserved half the eulogy that has been given me.  It appears that I am one of the heroes, the director of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the head of the Communist International, the peerless knight, and all sorts of other things.  This is mere fantasy, and a perfectly useless exaggeration.  That is the way one speaks at the grave of a revolutionary.  But I am not preparing to die.
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 3
 
            [Despite Stalin’s opposition to hero worship] nothing could be allowed to jeopardize the facade.  When in 1938 Stalin criticized the cult of personality, it was necessary to suppress his remarks.  In a letter to a minor publishing house, Stalin advised against the publication of a hagiographical Stories about Stalin's Childhood:
            Stalin stated, "The book abounds in a mass of factual improbabilities, alterations, and unearned praise.  The author is led astray by lovers of fables, by impostors (even by impostors "in good faith"), by flatterers...the book tends to instill... the cult of personalities, of leaders, of infallible heroes.  This is dangerous and harmful.  The theory of "heroes" and masses is not a Bolshevist theory...  I recommend burning the book."
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 205
 
            In 1937, when the Children's Publishing House (Detgiz) produced a book of "Stories about Stalin's Childhood" and sent it to Stalin for approval, he sent Detgiz the following letter:
            "February 16, 1938
            I am strongly opposed to the publication of "Stories about Stalin's Childhood."  The book is filled with a mass of factual distortions, untruths, exaggerations, and undeserved encomia.  The author has been misled by lovers of fairy tales--by liars (perhaps "honest liars") and timeservers.  A pity for the author, but facts remain facts.  But that isn't the main thing.  The main thing is that the book has the tendency to inculcate in Soviet people (and people in general) the cult of the personality of chiefs and infallible heroes.  That is dangerous, harmful.  The theory of "heroes and the mob" is not Bolshevik but Socialist-Revolutionary.  The Socialist-Revolutionaries say the "Heroes make a people, turn it from a mob into a people."  "The people make heroes," reply the Bolsheviks.  The book is grist for the Socialist-Revolutionaries mill; it will harm our general Bolshevik cause.  My advice is to burn the book.
Signed J. Stalin
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 818
 
            Stalin even denounced the cult of personality.  In 1932, when the Society of Old Bolsheviks asked for permission to open an exhibition of documents concerning his life and activity, he refused.  "I am against it because such enterprises lead to the establishment of a 'cult of personality,' which is harmful and incompatible with the spirit of the party."...  In 1930 he wrote a letter to a certain Shatunovsky, urging him not to speak of devotion to Stalin or to any individual.  "That is not a Bolshevik principle.  Have devotion to the working-class, to its party, to its state, but don't mix that up with devotion to individuals, which is an inane and unnecessary toy of the intelligentsia."...
            In a 1928 speech Stalin uttered the following words,...
            "The fact that the chiefs rising to the top become separated from masses, while masses begin to look up at them from below, not daring to criticize them--this fact cannot but create a certain danger of isolation and estrangement between the chiefs and masses.  This danger may reach the point where the chiefs get conceited and consider themselves infallible.  And what good can come of the leaders on top growing conceited and beginning to look down on the masses from above?  Clearly nothing but disaster for the party can come from this."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 850
 
            It is manifestly irksome to Stalin to be idolized as he is, and from time to time he makes fun of it.
Feuchtwanger, Lion. Moscow, 1937. New York: The Viking Press, 1937, p. 75
 
            The story goes that at a little dinner which he gave on New Year's Day to a circle of intimate friends, he raised his glass and said: "I drink to the health of the incomparable leader of the people, of the great genius Comrade Stalin.  There, friends; and that is the last time I shall be toasted here this year."
            Of all the men I know who have power, Stalin is the most unpretentious.  I spoke frankly to him about the vulgar and excessive cult made of him, and he replied with equal candor.  He grudged, he said, the time which he had to spend in a representative capacity, and that is easy to believe, for Stalin is, as many well-documented examples have proved to me, prodigiously industrious and attentive to every detail, so that he really has no time for the stuff and nonsense of superfluous compliments and adoration.  On an average, he allows to be answered no more than one of every hundred telegrams of homage which he receives.  He himself is extremely objective, almost to the point of incivility, and welcomes a like objectivity from the person he is talking to.
            He shrugs his shoulders at the vulgarity of the immoderate worship of his person.  He excuses his peasants and workers on the grounds that they have had too much to do to be able to acquire good taste as well, and laughs a little at the hundreds of thousands of enormously enlarged portraits of a man with a mustache which dance before his eyes at demonstrations.
            He thinks it is possible even that the "wreckers" may be behind it in an attempt to discredit him.  "A servile fool," he said irritably, "does more harm than 100 enemies."  If he tolerates all the cheering, he explained, it is because he knows the naive joy the uproar of the festivities affords those who organize them, and is conscious that it is not intended for him personally, but for the representative of the principle that the establishment of socialist economy in the Soviet Union is more important than the permanent revolution.
Feuchtwanger, Lion. Moscow, 1937. New York: The Viking Press, 1937, p. 76-77
 
            With the same aim of protecting himself, Yezhov initiated the plan to rename Moscow "Stalinodar" in the beginning of 1938.  This aim inspired an appeal by all categories of workers to change Moscow's name.  The question was raised at a session of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.  Stalin, however, reacted entirely negatively to this idea, and, for this reason, the city remained Moscow.
Getty and Manning. Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 37
 
            Enthusiasm for a leader is a characteristic effect of successful leadership.  Stalin's leadership during the last nine years produced for him a wave of enthusiasm which, because his triumphs have been spectacular in creating, for example, a record-breaking heavy industry and progressively raising the standard of living, has exceeded in cumulative strength even that felt for Lenin.  The hangers-on of the Revolution, place-seekers, and bureaucrats have at times, by their motivated flattery, exceeded reason and justification.  For that reason it is all the more important to distinguish between such spurious flattery, which many have mistaken for currency between the masses and Stalin, and the genuine praise which the masses lavish on him.  If a newspaper critic can refer to a tennis player, a boxer, an actor, or a buffoon as great, is it unreasonable that millions of people supporting and benefiting from the Stalin policy should refer to him as "Bolshoi Stalin"--the great Stalin?  Stalin has himself repeatedly deprecated complacent praise of himself, and insisted on a critical approach to all questions of policy and administration.
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 135
 
            In August 1931,... there were attempts to immortalize Stalin in works of political biography.  There is a letter in Stalin's archive from Yaroslavski [to Stalin], which includes the following: "As he was leaving today, Ordjonikidze rang to say he'd spoken to you [Stalin] about the book called Stalin that I [Yaroslavski] want to write..." Stalin's customary pencilled remark on the note reads: "Comrade Yaroslavski, I'm against it.  I think the time has not yet come for biographies."
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 191
 
            He [Stalin] was on the whole punctilious about awards.  For instance, in 1949 he would not agree to Malenkov's suggestion that his 70th birthday be marked by conferring on him his second Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union.  He decided enough was enough after receiving the Order of Victory and he stopped the flow of decorations,...  In all, Stalin had about as many decorations as, say, Mekhlis, and four or five times fewer than Brezhnev.  He was similarly punctilious about the indiscriminate award of medals to others and would cancel decorations if he thought them undeserved.  'Medals are for fighters who distinguish themselves in battle with the German aggressors, and not to be dished out to anyone who comes along,' he wrote to the commander-in-chief of the 1st Baltic front on November 16, 1943, when he was told that general Yeremenko had been awarding medals without the agreement of the War Council.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 477
 
            Stalin's 70th birthday was approaching.  He knew that from the Politburo down, everyone was hectically making arrangements.  He called in Malenkov and said, 'Don't even think of presenting me with another Star!'
            'But, Comrade Stalin,' Malenkov protested, 'for a jubilee like this, the people won't understand...."
            'Leave the people out of this.  I've no intention of arguing about it.  Don't insist!  Got it?'
            Mention of the 'Star' had not been accidental.  After the Victory Parade and reception in honor of the front commanders in June 1945, a group of marshals had suggested to Molotov & Malenkov that they should mark the 'leader's extraordinary contribution' by conferring on him the country's highest award, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.  They referred to the fact that for his 60th birthday Stalin had been awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and that during the war he had received three decorations, the Victory Order No. 3--numbers one and two having gone to Zhukov and Tolbukhin--the Suvorov 1st Class, and the Red Banner, which he was given 'for service in the Red Army'.
            Over the next day and half, Molotov and Malenkov had debated the matter with their colleagues and on June 26 two decrees were issued by the Supreme Soviet ordering that the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and a second Victory Order be conferred on Marshal of the Soviet Union, Stalin.  The same day, the title of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union was created and on the 27th it was conferred on Stalin.  This was probably the only occasion when they disobeyed their leader.  That morning before breakfast, Stalin unfolded his copy of Pravda as usual and flew into a rage.  They had not consulted him!  They had not asked him!
            'Say what you like,' Stalin had said conclusively, 'I will not accept the decoration.  Do you hear me, I will not!'
            The comrades tried another two or three times to persuade him, even recruiting Poskrebyshev and Vlasik in their cause.  But in vain....  Finally, on the eve of the May Day celebrations of 1950, Shvernik managed to hand Stalin the medals he had been awarded in 1945, plus an Order of Lenin for his 70th birthday of 1949.
            'You're indulging an old man,' Stalin muttered.  'It won't do anything for my health.'
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 525-526
 
 
            The Politburo resolved to celebrate Stalin's birthday with a splash.  Shvernik was appointed to handle the festivities....
            The organizers also prepared a surprise in the form of the Stalin Prize, the cost of which was calculated at 7 rubles 64 kopeks per medal, while the total quantity of metal for one million medals was worked out at 24 tons of bronze and six tons of nickel.  There was also to be an international Stalin Peace Prize.  Thirteen versions of the medal were submitted for Stalin's approval by the artists.  Everything was set for the presentation of this most prestigious decoration, when at the last moment Stalin dug his heels in, despite having given his preliminary approval of the idea.
            Having looked over all the designs and read all the draft decrees (while his comrades-in-arms were waiting in hopes of being the first to receive the new prize), Stalin suddenly declared: 'I will only approve the decree on the international prize.'  After a pause he added: 'And orders of this kind are only to be given posthumously.'
            Nearly an hour before the ceremony was due to start, the carefully selected and screened audience had filled the Bolshoi Theatre.  Half an hour later Stalin entered the room set aside for the Presidium (as the Politburo was now called) where he exchanged greetings with such luminaries of the Communist world as Togliatti, Mao Tse-tung, Walter Ulbricht, Dolores Ibarruri, and Rakosi, among others.
            When the Presidium went out on to the stage, the audience could not contain themselves.  The day before, Stalin had altered Malenkov's seating plan, which had placed him [Stalin] in the center, but he compromised over his usual custom of sitting 'modestly' in the second row at all such meetings and put himself well to the right of the chairman, placing Mao on his right and Khrushchev on his left.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy.  New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 527-528
 
            He [Stalin] seldom went back to Georgia after the Revolution, and particularly after a stunning rebuff he received there in 1921.  But when he did (especially in later life), he would stay at such secluded spots as the Likani Palace in the mountain spa of Borzhomi, on a gorge of the upper Kura--never going to nearby Gori, or even to Tiflis (though at one point he did set off for Gori, but was so disgusted by the uproarious welcome of villages in between that he turned back).
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 14
 
            The open hardness and trust of Georgians irritate my father....when during his trip through Georgia in 1952 he was met on the roads by entire villages.  He couldn't bring himself to have a good talk with those sincere peasants--maybe he was already afraid of everything.  He refused to accept their offerings, their greetings, and, turning the car around, would leave them behind.
            ...In him everything was the other way round, and cold calculation, dissimulation, a sober, cynical realism became stronger in him with the years.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Only One Year. New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p. 360
 
            My father alone [compared to other Politburo members] was in the habit of giving to museums the numerous gifts sent by workers to their leaders.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Only One Year. New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p. 401
 
            On a few occasions, Stalin himself was mildly critical of the excessive praise heaped on him as unbecoming to the Bolshevik tradition.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 16
 
            From the stories of his guards Stalin appears to have been a self-effacing, fatherly person.  On various occasions he angrily protested having watched documentary films showing him in situations that had never taken place.  When Beria and Malenkov argued that the scenes were "needed for history," he opposed them, saying: "Leave me alone with such history."
            ... Beria's book on the history of Bolshevism in the Caucasus, which heaped praise on Stalin, was not written (as generally believed) upon Stalin's request; rather, it was written on Beria's initiative, because Beria wanted to ingratiate himself with Stalin.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 149
 
            The Central Committee had decided to award Stalin the medal of Socialist Hero.  Stalin appreciated this honor since he was so heavily involved in all of the five-year plans.  The Politburo also wanted to give him the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for his role in the Great Patriotic War.  When Stalin heard about this from Tukov, he called this disgraceful:
            This is toadyism by jesters!  Such a high award must be only given to soldiers, who showed heroism on the battlefield!  I was never in the front lines with a rifle in my hands and did not show any heroism!
            Finding out Stalin's unceremonious feelings towards this, Malenkov was elected to approach Stalin on this... but being very cagey he asked Poskrebyshev to do this instead.  Poskrebyshev was also afraid, since he knew that Stalin does not approve of such "ceremonious glorification."  He assigned this task to Orlov, the Commandant of the personal bodyguards of Stalin…let him do it.  Orlov knew better than that... the medal was never given and Stalin never accepted it.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 48
 
            Before the Victory Parade in 1945, the Central Committee decided to make Stalin happy by designing him a new parade-oriented uniform as Generalissimo.  Khalev, head of the bodyguards now, was given the task of getting three different uniforms designed and sewn.  He got a young, well-built soldier to model for the uniform and showed it to the assembled Central Committee.  Stalin, coming from his office, seeing this young athletic man in a General's uniform with sashes, epulets, gold braid and gold buttons asked:
            What is this peacock doing here?
            Comrade Stalin, these are three proposed designs for your uniform for the Victory Parade, that you will wear.
            Stalin refused all of them, had them taken away.  He received the parade in his usual uniform.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 49
 
            Stalin loved to fish and there were many rivers there [the lake at Ritsa], so in some free time, we managed to fish and cook, together, as one family, not as head of the USSR and his bodyguards.  He never wanted us to raise a glass of wine to his health.  In this case, he proposed that we should raise a glass to the health of Elizarov, the one who caught the most fish.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 53
 
            In private, for example, he [Stalin] repeatedly affected disdain for adulation.   In 1930, for example, he ended a letter to Shatunovsky, an Old Bolshevik, by saying, "You speak of your 'devotion' to me.   Perhaps that phrase slipped out accidentally.   Perhaps.   But if it isn't an accidental phrase, I'd advise you to thrust aside the 'principle' of devotion to persons.   It isn't the Bolshevik way.   Have devotion to the working class, its party, its state.   That's needed and good.   But don't mix it with devotion to persons, that empty and needless intellectuals' bauble."
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 146
 
August 1930: "You speak of your devotion' to me. . . I would advise you to discard the `principle' of devotion to persons. It is not the Bolshevik way.  Be devoted to the working class, its Party, its state.  That is a fine and useful thing.  But do not confuse it with devotion to persons, this vain and useless bauble of weak-minded intellectuals".
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 20.
 
            On June 8, 1926, he [Stalin] talked in Tiflis to the workers in the local railroad shops....   He said, "In all honesty I should tell you, comrades, that I do not deserve as much as half of those praises which here have been bestowed upon me.   It would appear that I was the hero of October, the leader of the Communist Party and the Comintern, a veritable miraclemaker.   All that is fantasy, comrades, a completely needless exaggeration.   One talks in such terms over the grave of a revolutionary....   But I am not ready for the grave."
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 288
 
            ...writers and artists vie in idolizing him unreservedly.   But the admiration of the crowd irritated him.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 148
 
            Some title you've [Koniev suggested to Molotov and Malenkov that Stalin be called Generalissimo] thought up!   Chang Kai-shek's a Generalissimo.   Franco's a Generalissimo--find company I find myself in!"   Kaganovich, proud inventor of "Stalinism," also suggested renaming Moscow as Stalinodar, an idea that had first been suggested by Yezhov in 1938.   Beria seconded him.   This simply "outraged" Stalin: "What do I need this for?"
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 494
 
            Three days after the parade [in June 1945] , Pravda announced Stalin's new rank and medals.   He was furious and summoned Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Zhdanov, and old Kalinin, who was already extremely ill with stomach cancer.   "I haven't led regiments in the field....   I'm refusing the star as undeserved."   They argued but he insisted.   "Say what you like.   I won't accept the decorations."
            ...Malenkov and Beria were left with the gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union: how to get him to accept it?   Here Stalin's court dissolves into an opera bouffe farce in which the cantankerous Generalissimo was virtually pursued around Moscow by courtiers trying to pin the medal on him.   First Malenkov agreed to try but Stalin would not listen.   Next he recruited Poskrebyshev who accepted the mission but gave up when Stalin resisted energetically.   Beria and Malenkov tried Vlasik but he too failed.   They decided it was best to ambush Stalin when he was gardening because he loved his roses and lemon trees so they persuaded Orlov, the Kuntsevo commandant, to present it.   When Stalin asked for the secateurs to prune his beloved roses, Orlov brought the secateurs but kept the star behind his back, wondering what to do with it.
            "What are you hiding?" asked Stalin.   "Let me see."   Orlov gingerly brought out the star.   Stalin cursed him: "Give it back to those who thought up this nonsense!"
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 495
 
            There is little doubt that this Stalin-worship--for that is what it amounts to--could be stopped by him if he so desired, but that does not necessarily mean that he likes it.  In point of fact on more than one occasion he has shown displeasure at excessive flattery.  The Bolshevik (the official Party monthly) in March, 1947, reported Stalin's comment on a military history written by one Colonel Razin, in which the Soviet leader said "the panegyrics" (of himself) " grate upon the ear," and "it is really uncomfortable to read them."  The New York Times, March 9, 1947, reports that Stalin had recently used a blue pencil on a biography of Lenin in which he (Stalin) was praised excessively.  He left only one sentence about himself, that "he was and remains a loyal disciple of Lenin."
Duranty, Walter. Stalin & Co. New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1949, p. 50
 
            [In reply to the railway workers in Tiflis on June 8, 1926 Stalin stated] I must say in all conscience, comrades, that I do not deserve a good half of the flattering things that have been stated here about me.  I am, it appears, a hero of the October Revolution, the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the leader of the Communist International, a legendary warrior-knight and all the rest of it.  That is absurd, comrades, and quite unnecessary exaggeration.  It is the sort of thing that is usually said at the graveside of a departed revolutionary.  But I have no intention of dying yet.
            ...I really was, and still am, one of the pupils of the advanced workers of the Tiflis railway workshops.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 8, p. 182
 
            “And what is Stalin?  Stalin is only a minor figure.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 10, p. 176
 
            “Your congratulations and greetings I place to the credit of the great Party of the working class which bore me and raised me in its own image and likeness.”
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 12, p. 146
 
            [In a December 30, 1926 letter to Ksenofontov Stalin stated] I object to your calling yourself "a disciple of Lenin and Stalin."  I have no disciples.  Call yourself a disciple of Lenin; you have the right to do so, notwithstanding Shatskin’s criticism.  But you have no grounds for calling yourself a disciple of a disciple of Lenin's.  It is not true.  It is out of place.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 9, p. 156
 
            [In a letter to Comrade Shatunovsky in August 1930 Stalin stated] You speak of your "devotion" to me.  Perhaps it was just a chance phrase.  Perhaps....  But if the phrase was not accidental I would advise you to discard the "principle" of devotion to persons.  It is not the Bolshevik way.  Be devoted to the working class, its Party, its state.  That is a fine and useful thing.  But do not confuse it with devotion to persons, this vain and useless bauble of weak-minded intellectuals.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 20
 
            He asked for limits to the praise [being heaped upon him] and muttered to his propagandists that they were overstepping them.  In 1945, discussing plans for the first volume of his collected works, he proposed to restrict the print run to 30,000 copies because of the paper shortage.  Other participants in the meeting got him to agree to 300,000 copies, arguing that the public demand would be enormous.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 541
 
            He both loved and detested excesses of flattery.  For such reasons he chose to place technical limits on his iconography to a greater extent than did most contemporary foreign rulers.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 545
 
STALIN KEEPS VERY CLOSE WATCH ON PUBLIC OPINION
 
            It would be an error to consider the Soviet leader a willful man who believes in forcing his ideas upon others.  Everything he does reflects the desires and hopes of the masses to a large degree.  He always has his ear to the ground, making it his business to find out what people are really thinking.  Peasants and workers are encouraged to write their frank opinions.  A large staff reads and reports on all the correspondence that comes in.  Stalin himself takes samplings of the letters, and, in addition, sees many visitors from remote districts of the Union.  There are some 20,000 full-time party secretaries scattered throughout the country who keep him constantly informed about "public opinion."  Stalin is very responsive to the state of mind of the people.  This does not, however, prevent him from initiating policies he considers necessary although the populace has not asked or is not ready for them.  He both leads and follows public opinion. 
            The forced collectivization of 1932 was an instance of something which Stalin felt simply could not wait for public opinion.  At that time I asked why it would not be better to set up a model demonstration collective, equipped with modern machinery and methods, and convince the peasants by example, and by showing them the concrete benefits that collectivization would hold.  The answer given me was that if the Soviets had 50 years of assured peace this would be preferable, but unfortunately, there would probably be a war within ten years and enforced collectivization was necessary if the Soviet state was to survive.  There are few Russians, and few foreign observers, who would not now agree with this.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 12
 
            Stalin took the attitude that, while he might have more education than the people he worked with, they knew more of the realities of life, and this is the key to much of his success.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 16
 
            That Stalin listens to opinions was indicated by two changes of policy that occurred at times when he was wielding his power to maximum effect.
            The first was in March, 1930, when the Communists, under Stalin's leadership were rushing the peasants headlong to collectivization at a rate and to an extent which the peasants did not like.  At that moment Stalin wrote an article called "Dizziness from Success," in which he said that this hasty drive for collectivization was exaggerated and unwise....  This was not wholly a defeat for the collective-farm program, but it did mean that Stalin was sufficiently acute to realize that the peasant masses had been pushed too fast and far along the road of collectivization and did not like it.  Later on, it is true, the farms were collectivized and Stalin won, but he had to do it more slowly and more carefully because of the pressure of public opinion....
            Beria, who was devotedly attached to Stalin, had approached the Soviet leader on a mission identical to that of Kaganovich and Voroshilov, mainly to point out to him that the Purge was literally ruining the country.  Stalin apparently had not realized how unpopular the Purge was and into what an intolerable fog of dismay and confusion it had plunged the Russian people.  However, once he was informed of this by Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and Beria, he took immediate and vigorous action, not only to stop the Purge but to correct its evils as far as possible.
Duranty, Walter. Stalin & Co. New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1949, p. 23-24
 
STALIN DENOUNCES THOSE REJECTING THE USE OF ARMS
 
            Stalin strongly attacked those he thought guilty of dilatory tactics and opportunism.  A friend described a speech by Stalin at this time.  He wrote that Comrade Stalin mounted the platform and addressed the audience; "You have one bad habit," he said, "of which I must plainly warn you.  No matter who comes forward, and no matter what he says, you invariably greet him with hearty applause.  If he says, 'Long live freedom' you applaud; if he says 'Long live revolution' you applaud.  And that is quite right.  But when somebody comes along and says, 'Down with arms,' you applaud too.  What chance is there of a revolution succeeding without arms?  And what sort of a revolutionist is he who cries 'Down with arms'?  The speaker who said that is probably a Tolstoian, not a revolutionary.  But, whoever he is, he is an enemy of the revolution, an enemy of liberty for the people....  What do we need in order to really win?  We need three things, understand that and bear it well in mind.  The first is arms, the second is arms, and the third is arms."
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 17
 
STALIN SYMPATHIZED WITH THE PEASANTS AFTER LENIN’S DEATH
 
            Besides this central issue there were a host of others scarcely less important.  Stalin had long been concerned regarding the attitude of the peasants.  He reported, "Our agents in the villages were killed and their houses set on fire by the peasants...in some places, especially in the border regions we had to fight the activities of organized bands; and we had to suppress a real peasant uprising in Georgia."  Stalin therefore urged, in 1925, an easier peasant policy, declaring that it was absolutely necessary to win the sympathies of the middle class of peasants.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 26
 
            It is no less clear that it will be possible to solve the cardinal questions of the revolution only in alliance with the peasantry against the Tsarist power and the liberal bourgeoisie.
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 35
 
 
WRITER SAYS HE SAW DOCUMENTS PROVING SABOTAGE
 
            What remained of the Trotsky-Zinoviev movement had consistently fought against the reforms and policies proposed by Stalin and approved by the Party.  The Rykov group violently opposed collectivization of agriculture.  Sabotage in industry and in mining began to break out.  Henri Barbusse, the well-known French writer, who visited Russia at this time, made the following observations, "What subterranean maneuvers; what scheming and plotting!  I am still bewildered by all the photographs of documents which I have seen personally.  For years one could search in any corner of the Union and one would infallibly discover the English, French, Polish, or Romanian microbe of spying and foul play mixed with the virus of the 'white' plague.  A certain amount of it still remains.  The same people who blew up the bridges and whatever public works still remained in liberated Russia, gasping for breath, who threw emery into the machines and put the few remaining railway engines out of action--these same people put powdered glass into cooperative food supplies in 1933."
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 28
 
            The sabotage of budding industry, which the USSR made super human efforts to revive, has been raised to the level of an international institution, in which important personages, military officers, technical experts, political agents and the diplomacy and police of the Great Powers have all taken part.  What subterranean maneuvers, what scheming and plotting!  I am still bewildered by all the photographs of documents which I have seen personally.  For years one could search in any corner of the Union and one would infallibly discover the English, French, Polish, or Rumanian microbe of spying and foul play, mixed with the virus of the White plague.  A certain amount of it still remains.  The same people who blew up the bridges and whatever public works still remained in liberated Russia, gasping for breath, who threw emery into the machines and put the few remaining railway engines out of action--these same people put powdered glass into cooperative food supplies in 1933, and in December 1934 appointed one of their number to blow out Kirov's brains from behind, in the middle of the Smolny Institute in Leningrad.  They unearthed nests of vipers and found that assassins and terrorists have been streaming into the country from Finland, Poland, and Lithuania where they swarm,...
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 114
 
WHEN STALIN AND HIS ALLIES TRIED TO BE LENIENT THEY WERE STABBED
 
            It is no more than just to observe the Stalin was patient and acted slowly.  Against those who wanted to execute Trotsky he urged exile, then banishment from the country.  When Zinoviev  and Kamenev committed acts which according to both Communist Party rules and Soviet law were treason, they were permitted to make repeated pledges to change their ways and given positions of some responsibility.  Their pledges were found to be insincere.  Their word of "honor" was continually violated.
            Then, on December 1, 1934, Stalin received a wire that Kirov had been murdered.  Stalin's patience was exhausted.
            Stalin's attitude can be determined from statements he had made earlier.  In reply to a question from the German writer Emil Ludwig as to why he was governing with such severity, Stalin had said that it was because they had been too lenient at certain times.  He cited the fact that when General Krasnov marched on Leningrad and was arrested, his action merited death.  But the Bolsheviks gave the General freedom on his pledged word that he would not take up arms again.  He promptly went over to the counter-revolution.  "It became clear," Stalin said, "that with this policy we were undermining the very system we were endeavoring to construct."
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 28
 
            If one leaves rumor and gossip aside, one finds numerous signs that Stalin favored what the Old Bolshevik would have called liberal policies.  Indeed, as one scholar has recently shown, Stalin had identified himself with more relaxed social and educational policies as early as 1931.  Stalin made conciliatory gestures to the "bourgeois specialists" and relaxed educational restrictions that had excluded sons and daughters of white-collar specialists.  In May 1933, Stalin and Molotov ordered the release of half of all labor inmates whose infractions were connected with collectivization.  The following summer, the political police (NKVD) were forbidden to pass death sentences without the sanction of the procurator of the USSR.  The November 1934 plenum of the Central Committee abolished food rationing and approved new collective farm rules that guaranteed kolkhozniki the right to "private plots" and personal livestock.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 94
 
            As a member of the war council of the 32nd Army on the Western front, he [Zhilenkov] had been encircled and taken prisoner.  As a time-server with no principles and suddenly finding himself among senior party officers, he soon became a collaborator.  The same was true of another of Vlasov's aides, Lt. Gen. Malyshkin, chief of staff 19th Army.  He had been arrested in 1938 and released at the beginning of the war.  When Beria reported on a number of generals who had been condemned and then released, Stalin wanted to know who had petitioned on Malyshkin's behalf.  He begrudged the time wasted on having to hear about all the traitors he had overlooked in the 1930s.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 446
 
            One of the first decrees of the Council of Commissars abolished the death sentence, in spite of Lenin's protests.  The Cossack General Krasnov who marched on Petersburg to overthrow the Bolsheviks and disperse the Soviets was taken prisoner by the Red Guards and released on his solemn pledge that he would not resume the fight.  Later Krasnov headed one of the White armies in southern Russia.  It took time before the revolution, amid the gruelling experiences of civil war, wiped away its tears, ceased to trust the pledges of its foes, and learned to act with that fanatical determination which gave it some new and repulsive features, but to which it owed its survival.  We shall soon find the 'man of steel' among those who weaned the revolution from its sensitive--or was it sentimental?--idealism.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 178
 
            A few days later these Yunkers were released.  A second time they were paroled and a second time they broke faith with their liberators--they went South and joined the White Guard Armies mobilizing against the Bolsheviks.
            With like acts of treachery thousands of Whites repaid the Bolsheviks for their clemency.  Over his own signature general Krasnov solemnly promised not to raise his hand against the Bolsheviks, and was released.  Promptly he appeared in the Urals at the head of a Cossack army destroying the Soviets.  Burtsev was liberated from Peter-Paul prison by order of the Bolsheviks.  Straightway he joined the Counter-Revolutionists in Paris and became editor of a scurrilous anti-Bolshevik sheet.  Thousands, who thus went forth to freedom by mercy of the Bolsheviks, were to come back later with invading armies to kill their liberators without ruth or mercy. 
            Surveying battalions of comrades slaughtered by the very men whom the Bolsheviks had freed, Trotsky said: "The chief crime of which we were guilty and those first days of the Revolution was excessive kindness."
Williams, Albert. Through the Russian Revolution. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967, p. 160
 
            [In a talk with the German author Emil Ludwig on December 13, 1931 Stalin stated] When the Bolsheviks came to power they at first treated their enemies mildly.  The Mensheviks continued to exist legally and publish their newspaper.  The Socialist-Revolutionaries also continued to exist legally and had their newspaper.  Even the Cadets continued to publish their newspaper.  When General Krasnov organized his counter-revolutionary campaign against Leningrad and fell into our hands, we could at least have kept him prisoner, according to the rules of war.  Indeed, we ought to have shot him.  But we released him on his "word of honor."  And what happened?  It soon became clear that such mildness only helped to undermine the strength of the Soviet Government.  We made a mistake in displaying such mildness towards enemies of the working class.  To have persisted in that mistake would have been a crime against the working class and a betrayal of its interests.  That soon became quite apparent.  Very soon it became evident that the milder our attitude towards our enemies, the greater their resistance.  Before long the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries--Gotz and others--and the Right Mensheviks were organizing in Leningrad a counter-revolutionary action of the military cadets, as a result of which many of our revolutionary sailors perished.  This very Krasnov, whom we had released on his "word of honor," organized the whiteguard Cossacks.  He joined forces with Mamontov and for two years waged an armed struggle against the Soviet Government.  Very soon it turned out that behind the whiteguard generals stood the agents of the western capitalist states--France, Britain, American--and also Japan.  We became convinced that we had made a mistake in displaying mildness.  We learnt from the experience that the only way to deal with such enemies is to apply the most ruthless policy of suppression to them.
Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 110
 
            The period of increasing tolerance in Soviet history ended abruptly on December 1, 1934, when Kirov, the head of the Leningrad Party organization, and probably the second most influential party leader in the country, was assassinated at the Leningrad party headquarters by a discontented young party member.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 235