The Unknown Stalin

338 Pages·2003·14.12 MB·english

by  Roy Medvedev

THE UNKNOWN STALIN

THE UNKNOWN
S T A L I N
ZHOREAS . MEDVEDEAVN D ROY A. MEDVEDEV
Translated D~ET.T,I:ND AIIKENDORF
LONDON. NEW YORK
Published in 2003 by 1.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
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Copyright O 2003 Zhores A. Medvedev and Roy A. Medvedev
Translated by Ellen Dahrendorf
English translation O 2003 1.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
The rights of Zhores A. Medvedev and Roy A. Medvedev to be identified as
the authors of this work have been asserted by the authors in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 1-86064-768-5
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Typeset in Carmine by A. & D. Worthington, Newmarket, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin
Contents
Glossary
lntroduclion
PART I AFTCKWARIIS
Rlddlas Surroundmg Slalin's Death
ZIIOMTMSe dveri'cv
Stalin's Secret He~r
L11omc M~*dvedt.v
Stalin's Per5onal Arclwe Ihdden or Ikstroyed? Facts and
I lleorlcr
Zllorcr clntf Ro,v il/lcdvt>d(v
Illc Twentieth Party Congrcsr Before and After
Rov Medvedev
PAR1 11. S l A1 IN ANL> NUCLEAR \YEAPONS
Stalin and the Atomic Bomb
Lhorcs M~dvctfr-v
Stalln and the Hydrogen Bomb
Zllrnw Medvedcv
Slahn and the Atomic Gulag
Zhores Mcdvc.dcv
PART I11 STALIN AND 4CItNCC
C~eneralis~imSota lm, General Clausewlt~a nd Coloncl Ra7in
Roy Mcdvedt.v
Stalin and Lywnko
Lhrcr Mttdvcci'ev
Stalin md I ~ngu~sticAsn Episodc from the Hlstory of Sovret
bclcnce
Roy Mcci'vcclc v
IJAl<l IV SlALIN AND THC WAR
Stalm and tlie Bllt7krieg
Lhores and Rov Medvcdcv
Stalln and Apnasenko The Far La5tern Front in the Second
World War
KO v Medvcdcv
PART V T11t llNKNOWN 5TAI IN
Stalln ar a liussian Nationahst
L~IOI-Mcre dvedcv
1l ie Murder of Bukharin
Roy Mdvedcv
Stnlm's Motllcr
Rn y Mcdvcdrv
Notes
Index
Glossary
Agitprop Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the
Central Committee.
apparat, apparatus The machine or organization of offices and office-
holders (for example, the Party apparat, the state
apparat, etc .) .
APRF Presidential archive.
Central Committee The chief policy-making body of the Communist
Party during periods between congresses.
Central Executive The chief policy-making body of the Soviet govern-
Committee ment from 1917-36, when it was replaced by the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
Cheka The first political police (1917-22) established by the
new Soviet government to combat counter-revolution
and sabotage. This Soviet acronym was taken from
the initials of the organization - Extraordinary
Commission.
Chekist A member of Soviet security police. Although origi-
nally it meant 'agent of the Cheka', the term
continued to be used for any operative of the security
police agencies that succeeded the Cheka.
Council of People's The highest government body in USSR, equivalent to
Commissars (Sov- a cabinet in Western governmental structure. In 1946
narkom) the term 'people's commissar' was dropped in favour
of the more traditional term, 'minister', and this body
became the Council of Ministers. The chairman of the
Council had a position roughly equivalent to that of
prime minister in Western countries.
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In this book,
'the Party' refers to the CPSU.
dacha Holiday house, usually in the country or at a resort.
For officials it usually meant a special state-owned
villa, given either for a certain period or indefinitely
as the property of a family.
Dalstroi Main Directorate for Construction in the Far East.
DVF Far Eastern Front.
DVO Far Eastern Military District.
FIAN Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences.
fond A collection of documents. Each fond is divided into
collections, collections into files, and files into num-
bered sheets. A reference to archive materials is
therefore of the form: Fond No. 8, Collection No. 130,
File 18, Sheet 21.
GKO State Defence Committee.
Glavlit The censorship organization.
Glavpromstroi Main Directorate for Industrial Construction Camps
of the MVD.
gorkom The Party committee of a city or town (gorod)
Gosbank The State Bank.
vii
Gosplan 1l lc St ate Plannmg Committee
GPU sr'c State Secur~tyA genc~cs The ln~tlals stand for
State Pol~ticdA dministration
gulag llle prlson and labour camp network in the Sovlet
Union
Central government newspaper, second in impcrtance
to Pravcia.
KGB 1h e Committee of State Securit y.
kolklloz Collect~vef arm An agrarlan producers' cooperative
wllich was obliged to make dehver~est o the state at
pri~esf ixed by the st'ltc Members also had small
private plots around thew fam~lyh omes
Komsomol The Sovlct Commun~sty outh orgmlzatmn for ages
14 to 28, to w h ~ hth e major~tyo f young people
belonged
krai 5omct1mes translated as 'territory', a larga adminir
trativc un~tu, sually in outlying part of the USSR
near a past or present border, In wlllch non-liuss~m
ethnic minorities lived in autonomous regions.
kraikom The Party committee of a krai.
MGB Ministry of State Security; scr' Stale Security Agen-
cies.
Ministry of Internal Affairs; sr'c State Security Agen-
cies.
narkom People's Commissar.
NEP New Economic Policy. Introduced by Lenin in 1 92 1 in
order to revive the economy after the Clvll War and
the system of War Commun~sm( a policy followed by
the Sov~etg overnment dur~ngt he Civil Wx, 1918-
21, involving nolably a ban on privatc trade, forcible
requisitioning of grain and centralization of economic
lnst~tutions and activities). It permitted private
enlerprise and wa5 expected to last many years It
was terminated by Stalln at the end of tlie 1920s and
replaced by collect1v17at1ona nd the hvc Year Plans
LIsually occurring with the adlcctive vocnnv and
translated as 'mililary d~strict' Not the same as
ramn,w llicll 1s also translated as 'd~str~ct'
PGU First Mam Directorate of the Sovnarkom to ovcisce
the atom~cpr oject
Politburo Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the
CPSU The top dcc~sion-mak~ngb ody In the Sovlet
political system It was called the Pres~d~ubme tween
1952 and 1966 It tons~stedo f full members wlth
voting rights and cand~datem embers who attended
meetings but could not vote.
Presidium of the The name of the Politburo from 1952 to 1966.
Central Committee
rnikom The Party committee of a rCaion.
raion Usually translated as 'district', it is a smaller unit, a
viii THE UNKNOWN STALIN
number of which make up an oblasc a city may also
have several raiony.
RSDRP Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party.
RSFSR Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the
official name of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1922,
when the USSR was formed.
The Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of
Documents of Most Recent History.
SNK or Sovnarkom see Council of People's Commissars.
soviet The Russian word for 'council', the basic govern-
mental unit of the Soviet system.
sovkhoz A state farm.
State Security The Cheka, 191 7-22, was succeeded by the GPU (also
Agencies called OGPU), which in turn was reorganized in 1934
as the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal
Affairs). In 1941 a separate NKGB (People's Commis-
sariat of State security) was established, while police
duties not directly involving 'state security' were left
to the NKW. In 1946 the NE;VD was changed to the
M W (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the NKGB to
the MGB (Ministry of State Security). In 1954, after
Stalin's death, the MGB was reorganized as the KGB
(Committee of State Security) under the Council of
Ministers; that is, it was reduced in status from a
ministry to a 'committee' while still remaining very
powerful.
Stavka General headquarters of the Soviet high command.
Supreme Soviet The Soviet parliament, consisting of elected deputies
in two chambers, one based on nationalities, the
other on demographic electoral constituencies. Only
one candidate, usually proposed by the local Party
organization, stood for each seat.
troika A general term in Russian, meaning 'threesome'; in
the Stalin era, a three-member board with special
powers to sentence people without following normal
legal procedures.
TsIK Central Executive Committee.
VASKhNIL Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Vlasovites Russian soldiers commanded by General Vlasov who
served in the German army during the war. Vlasov
recruited his men from Soviet prisoners of war and
from Russian and Ukrainian exiles. After the German
defeat the Vlasovites were tried as traitors and sent to
the labour camps.
All-Union Central Executive Committee (replaced TsIK
after the creation of the USSR in 1923).
Introduction
More than a hundred biographics of Stalin have been written in the
USSR, ill the new Russia and in other countries in the decades fol-
lowing his death in 1953. When Communist Party and state archives
began to open after thc collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, yet
more books and articles appeared, some examining specific aspects of
the Stalin era: industrialization, collectivization, policies during the
war, the terror, etc. Some authors havc attempted to rehabilitate
Stalin and justify his policies. Several pseudo-biographies lldve also
been published, largely bascd on fictional 'information'. Thcrc havc
becn books about Stalin's family, about his daughter Svctlana and
his sons, Yakov and Vasily, as well as other relatives. Richard Har-
ris's novcl Arrhangd was a British bcstscllcr in 1999. Stalin is thc
central figure in a number of mcmoirs, often published posthu-
mously, by his close and not so close colleagucs, ministers, generals,
intclligcncc officers, interpreters and even his personal servants and
bodyguards.
111 view of this flow of literature about Stalin, thc title wc have
chosen for the present volume, Tfw UI~~IIIOSWtafIiIk , may seem
rather surprising. However, after studying much of what has becn
written about Stalin since the opening of formerly top-secret ar-
chives, we remain coilviilced that so far only a surface layer of the
new materials has been explored; a truly informecl uilderstandiilg of
Stalin's era and his role in history is just beginning.
Lcniil was the protagonist in a revolutionary process that lcd to
the creation of an innovative social and political structure in a new
type of state, the Soviet Union. The development of this state into a
highly centralized, totalitarian, iildustrially developed military power
was accomplished by Stalin. It was also Stalin who after 1945 estab-
lished an external empire that extended from Berlin to Beijing. There
is a certain irony in the fact that it was the disappearance of this
cmpirc and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself that madc it
possiblc for scholars to arlalyse the role of the USSR in history morc
objcctively and to arrive at a more accurate assessment of thc histori-
cal significance of its founders. Until recently, the study of history in
the USSR was less an academic discipline than a tool of state and
Party ideology. Therefore the restoration of a morc autl~cnticp icture