An award-winning account of Stalin’s reign of terror when 1. 5 million people lost their lives in a single year. Karl Schlögel reconstructs the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the ‘Great Terror’. * An award-winning account of Stalin s reign of terror when 1. 5 million people lost their lives in a single year. * Karl Schlogel reconstructs the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the Great Terror . Translator’s Note ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Preface Introduction 1 NAVIGATION: MARGARITA’S FLIGHT Margarita’s flight - Manuscripts don’t burn. A writer in 1937 - Relief map of the city, locations, staging posts - Dramatis personae and their portrayal, dual characters - NKVD, the organization - ‘People vanished from their apartments without trace’ - Sudden deaths, execution as spectacle - ‘That can’t be!’ 2 MOSCOW AS A CONSTRUCTION SITE: STALIN’S GENERAL PLAN IN ACTION Aleksandr Medvedkin’s New Moscow- A new cityscape: Stalin’s General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow - Moscow as a construction site: between demolition and new construction - Moscow beyond the Ring Roads - Human landscape, struggle for survival 3 A TOPOGRAPHY OF THE DISAPPEARED: THE MOSCOW DIRECTORY OF 1936 Snapshot of the status quo. Directories as documents of their age - Topography of power and other locations - Traces of the disappeared - Lists of people to be shot and the posthumous reconstruction of their addresses 4 THE CREATION OF ENEMIES: THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF THE TROTSKYITE AND ZINOVIEVITE TERRORIST CENTRE 19-24 AUGUST 1936 World-historical criminal cases: the rhetoric of the first Moscow show trial - The echo of violence: how a latent civil war comes to be articulated in language - ‘Double-dealers’ - The birth of the show trial from the spirit of lynch-law - The ideal enemy 5 ‘TIRED OF THE EFFORT OF OBSERVING AND UNDERSTANDING’: LION FEUCHTWANGER’S ‘MOSCOW 1937’ A key scene in European intellectual history: Feuchtwanger’s meeting with Stalin - The impotence of the anti-fascist movement: how to generate a point of view - The end of the flâneur: journey in the shadow of the NKVD - The phenomenology of confusion and the creation of unambiguous meaning: credo quia absurdum - Leave-taking at Belorussky Station 6 INTHE GLARE OF BATTLE: SPAIN AND OTHER FRONTS Moscow maps: the scene is Spain - A world in meltdown, war scare - The Soviet nation as a patriotic fighting unit - Metastases: show trial in Barcelona, the NKVD abroad - Barcelona transfer: Moscow experiences 7 BLINDNESS AND TERROR: THE SUPPRESSED CENSUS OF 1937 A journey into the interior of society - 6 January 1937: snapshot of an empire - Ten years after the census of 1926: balance sheet after the Great Transformation - Self-analysis, self-education, data acquisition- The shock of the missing millions - Statistics as crime 8 A STAGE FOR THE HORRORS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION: THE SECOND MOSCOW SHOW TRIAL IN JANUARY 1937 ‘Business-like atmosphere’ - The language of expert witnesses - The topography of the Five-Year Plan - Human sacrifice, nemesis, chorus - Postscript 9 ‘A FEAST IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE.’ THE PUSHKIN JUBILEE OF 10 FEBRUARY 1937 The New York Times: ‘All Russia was Pushkin-mad today’ - ‘Comrade Pushkin’: consecration of a classic - A feast in the time of plague: coded discourses - Platitudes of a new culture - Russian genius and Imperial rule 10 PUBLIC DEATH: ORDZHONIKIDZE’S SUICIDE AND DEATH RITES The shock: Sergo is dead - Escape into ritual - Suicide as a weapon - A hopeless situation and protest - Death as a group experience: speaking of death in times of mass murder 11 THE ENGINE ROOM OF THE YEAR 1937: THE FEBRUARY/MARCH PLENUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE A leadership at its wits’ end. The voice of panic - Testing the limits and exceeding them: the Party indicts Bukharin and Rykov - The shock: ‘universal, free, secret elections’ - Audit report: ungovernability and fear of chaos - Wreckers at work in the NKVD - Dissolution of the Party and the creation of a new one - Setting the machinery in motion 12 MOSCOW IN PARIS: THE USSR PAVILION AT THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF 1937 The exhibition trail: a journey through the map of the Soviet Union - The theme park of Twentieth Century civilization - Marginal encounters 13 RED SQUARE: PARADE GROUND AND PLACE OF EXECUTION 14 CHOPIN CONCERT AND KILLING RITUAL. RADIO AND THE CREATION OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY Radiofikatsia: the two faces of progress - Radio as the background noise of the new age - The sphere of feelings - Radio listeners as ‘citizens of the world’ - Stalin: the original soundtrack. The direction of the historical moment - Wreckers at work in the ether 15 SOVIET ART DECO. TIME PRESERVED IN STONE The First All-Union Congress of Architects, 16-26 June 1937 - Moscow as a building site - Chaos and stress - The Soviet universe as exhibition - The creation of a new style during a state of emergency - Closing speech: Frank Lloyd Wright 16 ‘BROWN BODIES, GAILY COLOURED SHORTS’: SPORTS PARADE ‘The glorious beauty of young people’ - ‘Fizkulturnik’, ‘Fizkulturnitsa’: icons of the new age - ‘Stalin’s tribe’: Tableaux vivants in Red Square 17 WEALTH AND DESTRUCTION: THE SEVENTEENTH INTERNATIONAL GEOLOGY CONGRESS IN MOSCOW The emergence of Soviet geologists: science and the dream of an affluent nation - Pioneers the nation does not need: geologists as enemies of the people - Vladimir Vernadsky: A patriot without fear - Excursion to the Moscow-Volga Canal: science and slave labour 18 A CITY BY THE SEA. THE OPENING OF THE MOSCOW-VOLGA CANAL After the White Sea - Baltic Sea Canal: Stalin’s second arterial highway - A canal as a Gesamtkunstwerk: the aesthetics of a man-made riverscape - Dmitlag: the Gulag Archipelago at the gates of the capital. The parallel society of the camp zone - Perekovka/ Reforging: the laboratory of the new man - ‘I have seen a country that has been transformed into one great camp’ 19 YEAR OF ADVENTURES 1937: A SOVIET ICARUS Triumphs, records: a city in a fever - Non-stop to America - The conquest of the Arctic - Twentieth-century adventures - Heroes of the age: Stalin’s aviators - ‘There are thousands of dreamers like me’ - ‘Bolshevik romanticism’ and terror 20 MOSCOW AS SHOP-WINDOW: THE ABUNDANCE OF THE WORLD, HUNGRY FOR GOODS AND DIZZY WITH HUNGER André Gide: On luxury and shortages - Advertisements, window displays: objects of desire and how to present them - Dizzy with hunger - A hopeless struggle: a nation of speculators -The queue as grapevine 21 OPEN SPACES, DREAM LANDSCAPES: CRUISING ON THE VOLGA, HOLIDAYING ON THE RED RIVIERA, CONSPIRACIES IN THE DACHAS 22 THE NATIONAL BOLSHEVIK NIKOLAY USTRYALOV: HIS RETURN HOME AND DEATH Returning home from exile: establishing contact with the new Russia - National Bolshevism and Stalin’s ‘Socialism in One Country’ - The world of ‘former people’ and 1937 - A double reading: a diary with comments by the NKVD 23 CELEBRATING THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION ON 7 NOVEMBER 1937 In the diplomats’ box - Conversations in the inner circle of power 24 A MINIATURE OF HIGH SOCIETY BEFORE THE MASSACRE The bombs come closer - Beau monde, illustrious society - Masked ball at the American Embassy - Interior with piano and nursemaid - Yezhov’s salon: art and the secret police - Postscript: inventory of luxury and fashion 25 SOVIET HOLLYWOOD. MIRACLES AND MONSTERS ‘Lenin in October’: the Revolution corrected - The USSR as a land of film, picture palaces and stars - Mosfilm 1937: chaos in the film factory - ‘Volga-Volga’: directors as conspirators, actors as spies - Terror and good entertainment 26 DEATH IN EXILE Dimitrov’s diary: a record of self-destruction - Vanishing point Moscow. Biotope - Foreign comrades - Vulnerability: world communism as world conspiracy - Lists, dossiers and card indexes 27 ARCADIA IN MOSCOW, STALIN’S LUNA PARK ‘A centre of culture and rest’ - ‘What a summer!’ - The locus of public opinion 28 ‘AVTOZAVODTSY’. THE WORKFORCE OFTHE STALIN CAR FACTORIES ‘Shanghai’: city of immigrants, city on the periphery - Ivan Likhachev, captain of industry - Factory patriotism: the factory as melting pot - ‘Mass criticism’ or the orchestration of hatred and despair 29 DZHAZ. THE SOUND OF THE THIRTIES Dzhaz (Utyosov) - Songs for the masses (Dunayevsky) - Classical music (Shostakovich) 30 CHANGING FACES, CHANGING TIMES 31 AMERICA, AMERICA: THE OTHER NEW WORLD Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s journey to America - Special relations: Soviet Americanism and the New Deal - The American Way of Life in 1937 - Utopia as present-day reality 32 ‘I KNOW OF NO OTHER COUNTRYÉ’ 1937 AND THE CREATION OF SOVIET SPACE The birth of the Soviet Union from the spirit of songs for the masses - Moscow as an image-making machine - Homogenizing labour: purges and the unity of the Soviet nation 33 THE BUTOVO SHOOTING RANGE. TOPOGRAPHY OF THE GREAT TERROR Looking for traces: the archaeology of the graveyard - Mass murder on the outskirts of the city - Sociology of the mass grave - Killing by quota. Order No. 00447 - World war, civil war 34 ‘LONELY WHITE SAILÉ’ DREAMTIME, CHILDREN’S WORLDS 35 YEZHOV AT THE BOLSHOI THEATRE. CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF THE CHEKA At the heart of Moscow: power made visible - Celebratory speeches and music between the mass murders - Ovations for the executioners. Morituri salutant 36 BUKHARIN TAKES HIS LEAVE Bukharin’s final plea - The show trial: exercises in dialectics - The Lubyanka: prison as a production site - Letter to Koba - A Moscow childhood in 1900 37 ‘FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY’ MOSCOW AS A CITY ON THE ENEMY MAP 38 THE FOUNDATION PIT The imaginary centre. A support for the Empire - The dome that disappeared: Russian Byzantium - Labouring away at a vacuum. Fantasies of the building of the century - Rome, New York, Moscow. The genius of Boris Iofan - War, post-war, and the end of the state of emergency 39 INSTEAD OF AN EPILOGUE NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS INDEX