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Stalin's Terror Stalin’s Terror Also by Kevin McDermott: THE CZECH RED UNIONS, 1918–1929 THE COMINTERN: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (co-author) POLITICS AND SOCIETY UNDER THE BOLSHEVIKS (co-editor) Stalin’s Terror High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union Edited by Barry McLoughlin Lecturer Vienna University and Kevin McDermott Senior Lecturer in Political History Sheffield Hallam University Selection, editorial matter and Chapter 1 © Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott 2003 Chapter 6 © Barry McLoughlin 2003 Remaining chapters © Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-0119-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in hardcover 2003 First published in paperback 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-3903-6 ISBN 978-0-230-52393-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230523937 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stalin’s terror: high politics and mass repression in the Soviet Union/edited by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Political purges – Soviet Union. 2. Kommunisticheskaëì partiëì Sovetskogo Soëìza – Purges. 3. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953. 4. Soviet Union – Politics and government – 1936–1953. I. McLoughlin, Barry, 1949– II. McDermott, Kevin, 1957– DK267 .S6955 2002 947.0842’2–dc21 2002074847 10987654321 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 To Susanne and Susan and our fantastic kids Siobhán, Frances and Alex This page intentionally left blank Contents Notes on Contributors ix Preface and Acknowledgements xii Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations xv List of Archives and Archival Abbreviations xviii 1 Rethinking Stalinist Terror 1 Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott Part I: The Politics of Repression 19 2 Party and NKVD: Power Relationships in the Years of the Great Terror 21 Oleg Khlevniuk 3 Ezhov’s Scenario for the Great Terror and the Falsified Record of the Third Moscow Show Trial 34 Wladislaw Hedeler 4 Dimitrov, the Comintern and Stalinist Repression 56 Fridrikh I. Firsov Part II: The Police and Mass Repression 83 5 Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD during the 1930s 85 David Shearer 6 Mass Operations of the NKVD, 1937–8: A Survey 118 Barry McLoughlin 7 The “Polish Operation” of the NKVD, 1937–8 153 Nikita Petrov and Arsenii Roginskii Part III: Victim Studies 173 8 Foreign Communists and the Mechanisms of Soviet Cadre Formation in the USSR 175 Berthold Unfried vii viii Contents 9 Stalinist Terror in the Moscow District of Kuntsevo, 1937–8 194 Aleksandr Vatlin and Natalia Musienko 10 The Fictitious “Hitler-Jugend” Conspiracy of the Moscow NKVD 208 Hans Schafranek and Natalia Musienko 11 Terror against Foreign Workers in the Moscow Elektrozavod Plant, 1937–8 225 Sergei Zhuravlev Select Bibliography 241 Index 244 Notes on Contributors Fridrikh Firsov has over 40 years’ experience of extensive research in the history of the Comintern. Among his many publications are: ‘Stalin and the Comintern’, Voprosy istorii, nos 8 and 9 (1989); ‘Die “Säuberungen” im Apparat der Komintern’, in Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten (1993); Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934–1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives, co-edited with Alexander Dallin (2000). Wladislaw Hedeler has translated the prison writings of Nikolai Bukharin and Dimitrov’s diary into German and co-edited three volumes of documents on the “purging” of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in the 1930s. He is currently researching the history of the Karaganda Gulag complex. Oleg Khlevniuk is the internationally acclaimed expert on Stalin’s leadership during the 1930s and is currently working in the Department of Public Administration at Moscow State University. His studies of Stalinism have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. At present he is preparing a volume of documents on the history of the Gulag system up to 1941. Kevin McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Political History at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of The Czech Red Unions, 1918–1929 (1988), co-author of The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (1996), and co-editor of Politics and Society under the Bolsheviks (1999). He is at present working on a study of Stalin. Barry McLoughlin is Dozent at the Institute of Contemporary History, Vienna University, where he offers seminars on Irish and Soviet history. He has co-authored two volumes on the history of Austrian political refugees in the Soviet Union and has written arti- cles on the history of the Comintern and its schools. Dr McLoughlin is currently working on a biographical study of Irish victims of Stalinist terror. Natalia Musienko studied German at Moscow University and is a teacher of the German language. She collaborated with other volun- teers in compiling the data of victims shot in Moscow during the late 1930s. She is preparing a book of documents on the history of the Karl ix x Notes on Contributors Liebknecht secondary school in Moscow, which lost most of its teach- ers and not a few pupils to the Stalinist terror of 1936–8. Nikita Petrov is Vice-Chairman of the Board of ‘Memorial’, the most prominent Russian organisation dedicated to uncovering the crimes of Soviet communism. He has co-edited volumes of documents on the Gulag system, and on the leading cadres and structures of Stalin’s secret police. His study (together with Marc Jansen) of Nikolai Ezhov will appear shortly in the English language. Arsenii Roginskii is Chairman of the Board of ‘Memorial’ and the editor of the historical almanac Zven’ia (Links). His most recently pub- lished work, based on intensive research in the archives of the former KGB, centres on the annihilation of foreigners and non-Russian ethnics in 1937–8. Hans Schafranek is a freelance historian in Vienna. His most impor- tant publications focus on Austrians in Stalin’s Russia, especially those handed over to the Gestapo in 1939–41 or the young inhabitants of Children’s Home No. 6 in Moscow (together with Natalia Musienko). At present he is completing a research project about Soviet parachutist agents behind German lines during the Second World War. David Shearer is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware, USA. His publications include Industry, State, and Society in Stalin’s Russia, 1926–1934 (1996/7) and articles on Soviet historiogra- phy and social history of the 1920s and 1930s. Professor Shearer is cur- rently working on two monograph-length research projects: social order and repression in the Soviet Union under Stalin and the history of Siberia during the first half of the twentieth century. Berthold Unfried lectures at Vienna University on cultural studies in the Stalinist era, specialising in the phenomenon of “speaking about oneself” in Catholic and Communist cultures. He recently published (with Brigitte Studer) the volume Der stalinistische Parteikader. Aleksandr Vatlin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern History at Moscow’s Lomonosov University. His studies on the history of the Comintern have appeared in German and English. Dr Vatlin has written extensively in the Russian press about the Great Terror in the Moscow region. Sergei Zhuravlev is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He has co- Notes on Contributors xi authored volumes of documents on everyday life under Stalin, includ- ing Stalinism as a Way of Life (2000), and published a monograph on foreign workers in the Moscow electro-technical plant Elektrozavod, which will shortly appear in a German translation. Dr Zhuravlev is continuing his social history studies of everyday life in the Soviet Union. Preface and Acknowledgements Three hundred years ago Lord Orrery, the planter magnate, observed that the Ireland outside his estate walls was like “Vulcan’s forging- shop, enlivening to observe but death to live in”. A decade ago that seemed an apposite description of post-communist Russia; that is, until one recognised that sensationalist Western reports about the former USSR underplayed the resilience of the Russian people to survive by adapting, as so often in the past, to conditions over which they had little control. For an historian from western Europe, working in the new Russian Federation was not only enlivening in respect of the untold bounties made possible by access to archival documents. Equally rewarding was the exchange of opinion with Russian col- leagues, in particular with those involved in studies of Stalinist mass repression. Such volunteers, frequently activists of the human rights association Memorial, were assembling data from the secret police files opened on the victims of the Great Terror.
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