Lenin's Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives

180 Pages·2007·2.93 MB·English

by  Paul R. Gregory

Lenin’s Brain

Lenin’s Brain
Other Tales
and
Secret Soviet Archives
from the
p a u l r . g r e g o ry

by
hoover institution press
stanford university • stanford, california
the hoover institution on war, revolution and peace
, founded at
Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the thirty-fi rst
president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on
domestic and international a!airs. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of
the authors and do not necessarily refl ect the views of the sta!, o"cers, or Board of Overseers
of the Hoover Institution.
www.hoover.org
Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 555
Copyright © 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
First printing, 2008
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Set in Celeste and Meta Plus with Senator display by Graphic Composition, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
Illustrations are from the collections of the Hoover Institution Archives.
All rights reserved. Please see page 155 for illustration source notes.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gregory, Paul R.
Lenin’s brain and other tales from the secret Soviet archives / by Paul R. Gregory.
p. cm. — (Hoover Institution Press publication series ; 555)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8179-4811-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8179-4812-2 (pbk : alk. paper)
1. Soviet Union—History—Anecdotes. I. Title.
dk266.3.g74 2008
947.084—dc22 2007007691
Dedicated to
Robert Conquest,
a true pioneer,
on his ninetieth birthday.

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Foreword by john raisian xi
Acknowledgments xiii
chapter 1 “Scurrilous Provocation”: The Katyn Massacre 1
chapter 2 The Four Faces of Stalin 14
chapter 3 Lenin’s Brain 24
chapter 4 Marginals and Former People 36
chapter 5 The Great Terror: Directive 00447 43
chapter 6 A Tale of Two Sons: Yakov and Vasilii Dzhugashvili
(Stalin) 62
chapter 7 Relatives and Falsifying Death Certifi cates 73
chapter 8 The Ship of Philosophers 80
chapter 9 Who Is the Prisoner Here? 90
chapter 10 Reasoning with Stalin on Zero Tolerance 99
chapter 11 Bolshevik Discourse: Before and After 107
chapter 12 Invading Afghanistan 119
chapter 13 “Arbeit Macht Frei” Soviet Style 135
chapter 14 Vladimir Moroz: Stalin’s Orphans 140
Notes 147
Illustration Source Notes 155
Index 157
About the Author 163
vii

List of Illustrations
page 2 Photograph of site of Katyn massacre
page 16 Stalin at the hunt with his comrades
page 32 Sketch of Lenin (showing his prominent forehead)
page 37 Painting by Vladimirov of a former person
page 45 Photograph of Nikolai Ezhov on top of the Lenin
Mausoleum
page 64 Photograph of Yakov Dzhugashvili (Stalin’s son) in
German captivity
page 76 Poet Anna Akhmatova and family
page 77 Akhmatova’s Requiem (English translation) and
portrait photograph of Anna Akhmatova
page 83 Poster of Lenin sweeping away marginals and former
people
page 102 Poster featuring Stalin with a happy group of collective
farmers
page 110 Sketches of the United Opposition: Leon Trotsky,
Grigory Zinovyev, and Lev Kamenev
page 126 Handwritten document written at Brezhnev’s dacha
with Politburo member signatures of authorization of
Afghan war
page 143 Photographic portrait of Stalin
ix