Table of Contents Title Page Epigraph Acknowledgments LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CHRONOLOGY PREFACE ONE - THE LONG ROAD TO POWER Childhood and Family Being Georgian Stalin as a Thinker Political Initiation Prison and Exile The Lone Sadist TWO - STALIN, , AND THE CHEKA Prelude to Power Feliks : The First Forty Years The Extraordinary Commission Poles, Latvians, and Jews The Chekist as Intellectual and Organizer Stalin and in Tandem From Cheka to State Political Directorate THREE - THE EXQUISITE INQUISITOR A False Dawn Viacheslav Menzhinsky’s Belated Rise Repressing Peasants and Intellectuals Control of the Church Stalin’s Struggle for Sole Control A New Role for OGPU FOUR - STALIN SOLO Clearing the Terrain The First Show Trials Bringing the Writers to Heel Operations Abroad Enslaving the Peasantry The Peasantry: The Final Solution FIVE - IAGODA’S RISE Toward Sole Dictatorship Bringing Up a Guard Dog The Trophy Writer Fellow Travelers Abroad and Dissent at Home From Unity to Uniformity SIX - MURDERING THE OLD GUARD The Killing of Sergei Kirov Removing Zinoviev and Kamenev Hitler’s Lessons Women and Children Pigs in the Parlor, Peacocks on Parade Iagoda’s Fall Monolithic Power SEVEN - THE EZHOV BLOODBATH The Birth of the Great Terror How the Hedgehog Got Its Prickles Purging of the Guard Targets for Extermination The Last Show Trials Disarming the Army Martyrdom for Poets Disposing of Ezhov EIGHT - THE RISE OF LAVRENTI BERIA Why Beria? Beria in the Caucasus Beria as Satrap Mopping Up After Ezhov The Last of the Intellectuals Ethnic Cleansing The Katyn Massacres Trotsky’s End NINE - HANGMEN AT WAR “Brothers, Sisters!” Beria Shares Power Evacuation, Deportation, and Genocide Prisoners of War Liberating Europe The Scent of Freedom TEN - THE GRATIFICATION OF CRUELTY Senescence Exploding the Bomb Crushing the Last of the Literati Jews and Cosmopolitans Vengeance on Leningrad Stalin’s End Beria’s Hundred Days The Hangmen’s End NOTES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY About the Author Also by Donald Rayfield Copyright Page Allen Knechtschaffenen An alle Himmel schreib ich’s an, die diesen Ball umspannen: Nicht der Tyrann ist ein schimpflicher Mann, aber der Knecht des Tyrannen. To All the Enslaved I write it all over the heavens That encompass our earthly sphere: It’s not the tyrant we should abuse, But the serf who works for the tyrant. Christian Morgenstern ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have many people to thank for their assistance: among them Mikhail Voroshilov in the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, Natalia Volkova in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, and Rezo Kverenchkhiladze of the Georgian Union of Writers. The staff of the Memorial Society in Moscow, as well as the manuscript department of the Russian State Library, and the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg who compiled the Leningrad Martyrology, have been very helpful, as has Memed Jikhashvili of Batum. Olga Makarova, Vika Musvik, and other friends located ephemeral periodical material I would have missed otherwise. Boris Ravdin helped me with texts in Latvian, as well as with certain sources. Anna Pilkington lent me help, linguistic and ideological, with hundreds of bits of text, not to mention an objective critical eye.