Abstract
Amongst Stalin’s lieutenants Molotov is conspicuous for his commitment to and consistent support of the Terror. He not only supported it during the 1930s, but convinced of its necessity, he sought to justify it even in old age. In 1982 he told Chuev:
I consider that we had to go through a period of terror, because we had conducted a struggle for more than ten years. This cost us dearly, but without it things would have been worse.… I believe the terror carried out towards the end of the 1930s was essential. Of course, there would have been fewer victims if we had operated more cautiously. But Stalin insisted on playing safe: spare no one but guarantee absolute stability in the country for a long period of time — through the war and post-war years which was certainly achieved. I don’t deny I supported that line.1
Molotov saw the origins of the Terror of the 1930s in Lenin’s call for a merciless struggle against the opposition at the XI Congress and argued that, with Lenin removed from the scene, Stalin had to take the lead.2 At another time, he said that the policy of repression was the only policy in accordance with the basic principles of Leninism.3
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Notes
Mandelstam, N.Y., Hope Against Hope, New York: 1970, p. 13.
See for instance Conquest, R., The Great Terror: a Reassessment, London: 1990, p. 37.
Chuev, Molotov, p. 373. More than a hundred delegates allegedly did not vote for Molotov and Kaganovich, 125 or 126 refrained from voting for Stalin, i.e. their names were deleted from the ballot paper, ‘V komissii Politbyuro TsK KPSS’, Izvestiya TsK, no 7, 1989, p. 114.
Chuev, Molotov, p. 374. Cf. Davies, R. W., Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, Basingstoke: 1989, p. 85.
Brackman, R. The Secret File on Joseph Stalin, p. 233; Basseches, N. trans. Dicker, E. W., Stalin, London: 1952, p. 188. Other possibilities for this incident are in 1932, after the death of Stalin’s wife; or in connection with repression in the countryside; or in connection with the Ryutin affair.
Knight, A., Who Killed Kirov? The Kremlin’s GreatestMystery, New York: 1999, pp.176–8.
See Benvenuti, F., ‘The Reform of the NKVD, 1934’, Europe—Asia Studies, vol. 49, no. 6, 1997, p. 1046, quoting RGAS-PI, 17/165/47, 154–64.
Report of Court Proceedings m the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre, Moscow: 1937, p. 17; Pravda, 26 October 1961. In his Memoirs Molotov ascribed this to 1932, Chuev, Molotov, p. 452.
Korotkov, A. V. and Chernobaev, A. A., eds, ‘Posetiteli kremlevskogo kabineta I.V. Stalina’, (hereinafter ‘Stalin’s Office Diary’) IA, no. 3, 1995, p. 144; Knight, Who Killed Kirov, p. 197. Conquest, R., Stalin and the Kirov Murder, London: 1989, p. 38, makes no mention of Kaganovich. In his memoirs, Molotov claimed that it was Medved, head of the Leningrad NKVD, who telephoned, Chuev, Molotov, p. 376.
Kurtsov, V. I. ed., Stranitsy istorii KPSS. Fakty, problemy, uroki, Moscow: 1989, vol. 2, pp. 647–50; ‘Poshchadite zhe rodinu i nas’, Istochnik, no. 1., 1995, pp. 138–45.
Rittersporn, G. T., ‘The State against Itself: Social Tension and Political Conflicts in the USSR, 1936–1938’, Telos, no. 41, Fall 1979, p. 90; Siegelbaum, L. H., Stakhanovism and thePolitics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941, Cambridge: 1988, pp. 127–35; Khlevnyuk, O., Stalin i Ordzhonikidze, pp. 63, 65–6; Rees, E. A., The Purge on the Soviet Railways 1937, unpublished paper, CREES, University of Birmingham: 1992, p. 2; Rees, E. A., Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 1928–1941, pp. 138–9.
Pravda, 21, June 1936. Molotov may have accompanied Stalin twice to see the dying Gorky, see Spiridonova, L., ‘Gorky and Stalin (According to New Materials from A.M. Gorky’s Archive)’, The Russian Review, vol. 54, no. 3, 1995, p. 423.
Montefiore, S. S., Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar, London: 2003, p. 168.
Getty and Naumov, The Road to Terror, p. 303; ‘V komissii Politbyuro TsK KPSS’, Izvestiya TsK, 1989, no. 5, p. 71. The Politburo representatives consisted of Kaganovich, Ezhov and Vyshinskii.
Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 136; ‘V komissii Politbyuro TsK KPSS’, Izvestiya TsK, 1989, no. 8, p. 92.
Shearer, D. R., ‘Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD during the 1930s’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, vol. 42, 2001, pp. 523–4, 527–8; Shearer, D. R., ‘Crime and Social Disorder in Stalin’s Russia’, ibid., vol. 39, 1996, pp. 119–48.
See for instance Fischer, L., Men and Politics: an Autobiography, New York: 1946, p. 98 who quotes Bukharin as saying in the late 1920s ‘Molotov … is a fool. He tries to teach me Marxism’.
Medevedev, R., ‘The Murder of Bukharin’, in Medvedev, Z. A. and Medvedev, R. A., The Unknown Stalin, London: 2003, p. 277.
Marina, Yu., ‘Vse, chto govorit Radek, — eto absolyutno zlostnaya kleveta …’, Istochnik, no. 1, 2001, pp. 64–71.
Medvedev, R., Let History Judge: the Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, Manchester: 1976, p. 180.
Ibid. pp. 99, 112–13.
Khlevniuk, O., ‘The Reasons for the “Great Terror”: the Foreign Political Aspects’, in Pons, S. and Romano, A., eds, Russia in the Age of Wars, Milan: 2000, p. 165.
Starkov, B., ‘Narkom Ezhov’ in Getty, J. Arch and Manning, R. T., Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge: 1993, p. 27.
Ibid., p. 469; Kovaleva, N.V. et al. ‘Poslednyaya “antipartiinaya” gruppa: Stenograficheskii otchet iyun’skogo (1957g) plenuma TsK KPSS’, (hereinafter ‘Poslednyaya “antipartiinaya” gruppa …’) IA, no. 3, 1993, pp. 88–9.
Main, S. J., ‘The Arrest and Testimony of Marshal of the Soviet Union M. N. Tukhachevsky (May–June 1937)’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 1997, p. 153.
Kumanev, G. A., ‘V ogne tyazhelykh ispytanii (iyun 1941—noyabr’ 1942g.)’, Istoriya SSSR, no. 2, 1991, p. 6.
Reese, R. A., ‘The Red Army and the Great Purges’, in Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, p. 213.
See for instance Khlevnyuk, O., ‘The Objectives of the Great Terror, 1937–1938’, in Cooper, J., Perrie, M. and Rees E. A. eds, Soviet History 1917–1953: Essays in Honour of R.W. Davies, Basingstoke: 1995, pp. 172–3.
Starkov, B. A., ‘Ar’ergardnye boi staroi partiino gvardii’, in Afanas’ev, A. V. ed., Oni ne molchali, Moscow: 1991, p. 221; cf. Moscow News, no. 15, 1988, quoting Kaganovich’s account of this incident.
Uldricks, T. J., ‘The Impact of the Great Purges on the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs’, Slavic Review, vol. 36, 1977, pp. 188–92. A Soviet had replaced the kollegiya in each commissariat in 1934.
Martin, T., ‘The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 70, no. 4, 1998, pp. 848–9.
Martin, ‘The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, p. 851. In the light of Stalin’s belief in the increased threat of war and the dangers of a ‘fifth column’, this swing in the later stages of the ‘mass operation’ against national groups is not surprising. See Petrov, N. and Roginskii A., ‘The “Polish Operation” of the NKVD, 1937–8’, in McLoughlin, B., and McDermott, K. eds, Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union, Basingstoke: 2003, pp. 163–5.
Jansen, M., and Petrov, N., Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940, Stanford, CA: 2002, p. 146.
Chuev, Molotov, p. 465.
Aroseva, O. A., and Maksimova, V. A., Bez grima, Moscow: 1999, pp. 19–50.
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© 2005 Derek Watson
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Watson, D. (2005). Molotov and the Terror 1934–1938. In: Molotov. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514522_9
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