Stalin and His Hangmen (2 page)

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, Lysenko’s victim, late 1930s

57
. Marina Tsvetaeva and her daughter Ariadna, 1925

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

59.
Nine NKVD men:

a
. Leonid Zakovsky (Štubis), head of Leningrad NKVD, 1937

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

c
. Baron Romuald Pillar von Pilchau, last aristocrat in NKVD

d
. Anatoli Esaulov, who interrogated Ezhov

e
. Vsevolod Merkulov, physics graduate and Beria’s deputy

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

g
. Bogdan Kobulov, Beria’s associate and NKVD representative East Germany

h
. General Vlasik, chief of Stalin’s household and tutor to his children, after his arrest, 1952

i
. Iakov Agranov, NKVD specialist for intellectuals and associate of Mayakovsky

ILLUSTRATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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, USA, 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, 1922–36
, Moscow, ROSSPÈN, 1998; 35 from Memorial Society, Moscow; 39 from
Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska, 1931–6 gg,
Moscow, ROSSPÈN, 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 1934–41: spravochnik
, Moscow, Zven’ia, 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 i pis’makh
, Moscow, Vagrius, 1998; 58 from
Marina Tsvetaeva, a Pictorial Biography
, Ann Arbor, USA, 1980

Chronology

Preface

Everything might have come right in the course of time. Russian life could have been pulled into order… What bitch woke up Lenin? Who couldn’t bear the child sleeping?

There is no precise answer to this question…

Anyway, he himself probably didn’t know, although his supply of vengeance never dried up… And spiteful in his failure, he immediately started a revolution for all, so that nobody escaped punishment.

And our fathers followed him to Golgothas with banners and songs…

In Russia you mustn’t wake anybody.

Naum Korzhavin

I have tried, rather than write a new biography of Stalin or another history of the USSR, to examine Stalin’s path to total power and the means – and the men – which enabled him to hold on to it. The careers and personalities of Stalin’s henchmen occupy the foreground, especially the five who headed the security forces and secret police which we call by a sequence of different names: the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission), GPU and OGPU ((United) State Political Directorate), NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and MGB (Ministry of State Security). After Stalin, the latter became known as the KGB and is today the Russian FSB.

Of these five – Feliks Dzierżyński, Viacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrikh Iagoda, Nikolai Ezhov and Lavrenti Beria – the last two were appointed by Stalin, while the first three were induced to do his bidding. They were the instruments of a mind more malevolent than theirs. They looked after the means, while Stalin looked after the end. A study of their motivations and actions sheds a very strong light on Stalin’s tyranny.