Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (The Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War)

344 Pages·2008·1.8 MB·English

by  Oleg V. Khlevniuk

the yale-hoover series on stalin,stalinism,and the cold war
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MASTER OF
THE HOUSE
STALIN AND HIS INNER CIRCLE
OLEG V. KHLEVNIUK
Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford,California
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
Copyright © 2009by Yale University and the Board of Trustees
of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107and 108of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Sabon type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc., Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Khlevniuk, Oleg V.
Master of the house : Stalin and his inner circle /Oleg V. Khlevniuk ; translated by
Nora Seligman Favorov.
p. cm.—(Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-11066-1(alk. paper)
1. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1917–1936. I. Title.
DK266.K4562008
947.084(cid:1)2—dc22
2008017715
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992(Permanence of Paper).
It contains 30percent postconsumer waste (PCW) and is certified by the Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction xiii
List of Abbreviations xxvii
1. The Stalinization of the Politburo, 1928–1930 1
2. Power in Crisis, 1931–1933 39
3. A Facade of Liberalization, 1934 85
4. Terror and Conciliation, 1935–1936 127
5. Stalin and the Great Terror, 1937–1938 166
6. On the Eve of War: The New Structure of Stalin’s
Government 203
Conclusion: Master of the House 246
Appendix 1: Politburo Membership 263
Appendix 2: Visits to Stalin’s Office by Politburo
Members and Central Committee Secretaries 266
Notes 273
Index 303
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Acknowledgments
This book has taken shape over fifteen years of research in the archives
of the Soviet government and the administrative structures of the Soviet
Communist Party. Every time a new body of previously top secret
archival material was opened to researchers, work on this manuscript
entered a new stage. This publication represents the culmination of this
work, and I am extremely pleased that it will be part of a new series,
the Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War, being
launched by two leading institutions in the study of Soviet archives—
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace,
whose director is John Raisian, and Yale University Press, whose direc-
tor is John Donatich. I am also grateful to the series editors, Jonathan
Brent and Paul Gregory, for their advice and assistance in bringing this
book to fruition. I wish as well to express my thanks to the Hoover In-
stitution for its support of the latest phase of my work, including its
sponsorship with the Russian State Archive of Social and Political His-
tory (RGASPI) of the publication of Politburo stenograms by the Rus-
sian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN). These stenograms are an im-
portant new source that has illuminated questions addressed in this
book.
Let me turn to the more distant origins of this publication. Since
1992, under the auspices of two projects—Decision-Making Mecha-
viii Acknowledgments
nisms within the Stalinist Command Economy in the 1930s and the
series Documents of Soviet History—I have been investigating the
archives of the Politburo and the Council of People’s Commissars,
which were opened to researchers in the former Central Party Archive
(now RGASPI) and the Central State Archive of the October Revolution
and the Supreme Organs of State Power of the USSR (now the State
Archive of the Russian Federation—GARF). This research led to several
articles and a collection entitled Stalinskoe politburo v 30-e gody(Sta-
lin’s Politburo in the 1930s) (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1995). Even more
than these (undoubtedly important) publications, I value the personal
and scholarly relationships I developed over the course of this work.
Thanks to these relationships, for many years now I have considered
myself a member of two extraordinarily interesting teams. The first is
the Birmingham University team headed by R. W. Davies. The members
of this team—Arfon Rees, the late Derek Watson, Melanie Ilicˇ, Mark
Harrison, Stephen Wheatcroft—have become valued colleagues. I have
derived great pleasure and benefit from the discussions we shared con-
cerning the problems of Soviet history of the 1930s. My participation in
the second team came about thanks to the involvement of Andrea
Graziosi and Moshe Lewin in the Documents of Soviet History series,
which is supported by the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici. It has
provided me with invaluable experience in the study and publication of
archival materials. Suffice it to say that over the course of fifteen years’
work on this project, thirteen collections of documents have been pub-
lished, many of which are directly tied to the political history of the So-
viet Union.
My first monograph dealing with the highest echelons of power in the
Soviet Union of the 1930s was devoted to the conflict between Stalin
and his close comrade-in-arms Grigory “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze. The
book was first published in Russian and has come out in an English-
language edition thanks to the efforts of Donald J. Raleigh (Oleg V.
Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo”Ordzhonikidze
[New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995]).
Nicolas Werth proposed writing a book about Stalin’s Politburo for
his series of Soviet historical studies (O. Khlevniouk, Le Cercle du
Kremlin.Staline et le Bureau politique dans les années 1930: Les jeux du
pouvoir [Paris, Seuil, 1996]). Also in 1996, an expanded and revised
Russian version of this book was put out by the publisher ROSSPEN
Acknowledgments ix
under the title Politbiuro. Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e
gody (The Politburo: Mechanisms of political power in the 1930s).
Markus Wehner, Reinhard Müller, and the scholars and directors of the
Hamburg Institute of Social Research arranged to have my work pub-
lished in German translation. For this edition (Oleg W. Chlewnjuk, Das
Politbüro.Mechanismen der politischen Macht in der Sowjetunion der
dreißiger Jahre, Hamburger Edition [Hamburg: Hamburg Institute of
Social Research, 1998]) I again revised and expanded the manuscript.
This additional work on the book was necessitated by rapid growth in
the historiography of the Soviet period and by the constant emergence
of documents that shed light on the subject, primarily from the Presi-
dential Archive of the Russian Federation (APRF). The book you now
hold in your hands is substantially different from the previous versions
in terms of its sources. While I was researching it the opportunity arose
to work with exceptionally important archival documents (primarily
from Stalin’s personal papers) that were moved from APRF to RGASPI
in recent years, as well as a number of other sources from Politburo the-
matic folders, which continue to be held by APRF.
Several recent projects greatly influenced the writing of this book.
First among them is the collaboration between the Hoover Institution
and RGASPI, which culminated in the publication of a three-volume
collection of Politburo stenograms (Stenograms of the TsK RKP[b]-
VKP[b] Politburo Meetings,1923–1938 [Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007]),
which facilitates further study into the period. The driving force behind
this project was Paul Gregory. The second project that should be men-
tioned was carried out by my friend Yoram Gorlizki and me and was
devoted to the highest bodies of Stalinist power during their heyday
(Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet
Ruling Circle,1945–1953[New York: Oxford University Press,2004]).
This project provided new opportunities for a comparative study of the
development of the Soviet system and, consequently, for a better under-
standing of each development stage. Yoram proved to be a patient and
wise coauthor who not only bravely endured my shortcomings but took
upon himself the main burden of preparing the book. Third, together
with Viktor Danilov and Aleksandr Vatlin, I edited five volumes of Cen-
tral Committee plenum stenograms for 1928–1929 (Kak lomali nep.
Stenogrammy plenumov TsK VKP[b] 1928–1929 gg. [How NEP was
broken: TsK VKP(b) plenum stenograms, 1928–1929] [Moscow: MDF,