Donald Rayfield - Stalin and his hangmen : an authoritative portrait of a tyrant and those who served him

Table of Contents

Allen Knechtschaffenen An alle Himmel schreib ichs an, die diesen Ball umspannen: Nicht der Tyrann ist ein schimpflicher Mann, aber der Knecht des Tyrannen.To All the Enslaved I write it all over the heavens That encompass our earthly sphere: Its not the tyrant we should abuse, But the serf who works for the tyrant.

Christian Morgenstern

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have many people to thank for their assistance: among them Mikhail Voroshilov in the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, Natalia Volkova in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, and Rezo Kverenchkhiladze of the Georgian Union of Writers. The staff of the Memorial Society in Moscow, as well as the manuscript department of the Russian State Library, and the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg who compiled the Leningrad Martyrology, have been very helpful, as has Memed Jikhashvili of Batum. Olga Makarova, Vika Musvik, and other friends located ephemeral periodical material I would have missed otherwise. Boris Ravdin helped me with texts in Latvian, as well as with certain sources. Anna Pilkington lent me help, linguistic and ideological, with hundreds of bits of text, not to mention an objective critical eye.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Section One

1. Koba Stalin, police photograph, Baku, 1910

2. Suren Spandaryan and Koba, c. 1911

3. Stalin with fellow exiles, Monastyrskoe (Siberia), July 1915

4. , Peterss, and senior chekisty, 1918

5. s funeral, 1926

6. Menzhinsky with his first wife, Iulia; his two daughters; and his son, Rudolf, Iaroslavl, 1904

7. Menzhinsky in the Cheka, c. 1919

8. American Relief Agency clinic, Volga famine, 1921

9. Stalin, Rykov, Zinoviev, and Bukharin at dacha, 1924

10. Sergei Kirov and Sergo Orjonikidze, north Caucasus, 1920

11. Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, mid-1920s

12. Delivering prisoners to the Lubianka, 1928

13. Boris Savinkov, 1922

14. Menzhinsky, 1925

15. Menzhinskys funeral, 1934

16. Stalin relaxing at dacha, c. 1930

17. Mayakovsky shortly after his suicide, 1930

18. Pavel Dybenko and Aleksandra Kollontai with Dybenkos sister and parents, 1918

Section Two

19. Genrikh Iagoda and Maxim Gorky, 1934

20. Famine, Kharkov province, 1932

21. Stalin and Voroshilov fishing, Abkhazia, 1933

22. Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Allilueva-Stalina, c. 1928

23. Stalin, his daughter, Svetlana, and second son, Vasili, 1936

24. Stalins NKVD guards, Sukhum, 1933

25. Molotov and his daughter, Svetlana, c. 1930

26. Leonid Nikolaev, killer of Sergei Kirov, c. 1933

27. OGPU boss Filipp Medved, White Sea canal, 1931

28. Kirov in his coffin, December 1934

29. Prisoners at work, White Sea canal, 1933

30. Svirlag corrective labor camp, Leningrad province, 1936

31. Judges at Menshevik trial, 1931

32. Andrei Vyshinsky, chief prosecutor in 1930s show trials

33. Faina Niurina, acting chief prosecutor of the Russian Federation in the 1930s

34. Rykov and Bukharin on their way to trial, 1938

35. Nikolai Ezhov with his brother Ivan

36. Ezhov conferring with Stalin, 1937

37. Ezhov and Orjonikidze at dacha, 1936

38. Red Army leaders in the late 1920s

39. Lazar Kaganovich, early 1930s

40. Orjonikidze very shortly after his suicide or murder, February 1937

Section Three

41. Lavrenti Beria, mid-1920s

42. Berias guards, chauffeurs, and pimps Nadaraia and Sarkisov

43. Caucasian party caucus 1935: Pilipe Makharadze, Mir-Jafar Bagirov, Beria

44. The Beria and Lakoba families sailing, Black Sea, 1933

45. Party conference, 1935: Lakoba, Beria, and head of Armenian party Agasi Khanjian

46. Lakobas funeral, January 1937

47. Vasili Blokhin, chief executioner at the Lubianka, 1940s

48. Meeting, 1936: Khrushchiov, Zhdanov, Lazar Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Stalin, Georgi Malenkov, and others

49. Head of SMERSH Viktor Abakumov, c. 1946

50. Abakumov after his arrest, 1951

51. Latvians being deported to Siberia, 1946

52. Show trial, 1938

53. Vsevolod Meierkhold

54. Meierkhold and a portrait of his wife, Zinaida Raikh

55. Charlatan biologist Trofim Lysenko, late 1930s

56. Geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, Lysenkos victim, late 1930s

57. Marina Tsvetaeva and her daughter, Ariadna, 1925

58. Nuclear physicist Piotr Kapitsa with the Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels, 1946

59. Nine NKVD men:

Leonid Zakovsky (Stubis), head of Leningrad NKVD, 1937

Genrikh Liushkov, head of secret political section, defected to Japan in 1938

Baron Romuald Pillar von Pilchau, last aristocrat in NKVD

Anatoli Esaulov, who interrogated Ezhov

Vsevolod Merkulov, physics graduate and Berias deputy

Akvsenti Rapava, head of Georgian NKVD, after his second arrest, 1953

Bogdan Kobulov, Berias associate and NKVD representative in East Germany

General Vlasik, chief of Stalins household and tutor to his children, after his arrest, 1952

Iakov Agranov, NKVD specialist for intellectuals and associate of Mayakovsky

Illustration Acknowledgments

Except where indicated in the following list, all the photographs are reproduced courtesy of the David King Archive, London.

3. from Ostrovsky, Aleksandr, Kto stoial za spinoi Stalina, St. Petersburg, Neva, 2002

13. from Litvin, A. L. et al. (eds.), Boris Savinkov na Lubianke. Dokumenty

18. from Kollontai, A. M., Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, Moscow, Academia, 2001

21, 24, 44, 45, 46. from Lakoba Archive, Hoover Institute, Stanford, California, courtesy of Memed Jikhashvili

25. from Chuev, Feliks, Molotov: poluderzhavnyi vlastelin, Moscow, Olma, 2002

26, 27, 28. from Kirilina, Alla, Neizvestnyi Kirov, St. Petersburg, Neva, 2001

33. from Zviagintsev, A. G., Orlov Iu. G., Raspiatye revoliutsiei:rossiiskie i sovetskie prokurory, 192236, Moscow, ROSSPN, 1998

35. from Memorial Society, Moscow

39. from Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska, 19316 gg, Moscow, ROSSPN, 2001

41, 43, 59 a, b, e, g, h. from Antonov-Ovseenko, A., Beriia, Moscow, AST, 1999

42, 50, 51, 59f. from Stoliarov, Kirill, Igry v pravosudie, Moscow, Olma, 2000

47. from Petrov, N. V., Skorkin, K. V., Kto rukovodil NKVD 193441: spravochnik, Moscow, Zvenia, 1999

48. from Gusliarov, Evgeni, Stalin v zhizni, Moscow, Olma, 2003

55, 56. from Rokitianskii, Ia. G., Vavilov, Iu., N., Goncharov, V. A., Sud palacha. Nikolai Vivilov, v zastenkakh NKVD, Moscow, Academia, 1999

57. from Andreev A. F. (ed.), Kapitsa, Tamm, Semionov v ocherkakh ipismakh, Moscow, Vagrius, 1998

58. from Marina Tsvetaeva, a Pictorial Biography, Ann Arbor, USA, 1980

CHRONOLOGY