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Conversing with Stalin, Surviving the Terror: The Diaries of Aleksandra Kollontai and the Internal Life of Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Beatrice Farnsworth
Beatrice Farnsworth*
Affiliation:
history at Wells College
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Abstract

In this article, Beatrice Farnsworth suggests that Aleksandra Kollontai, Old Bolshevik, socialist-feminist, and former leader of the Workers' Opposition, survived Iosif Stalin's terror largely because in her effort to assure Stalin that she was no longer an oppositionist, she nurtured a friendly dynamic with him. Indeed, in their conversations, she pursued a gendered strategy of warm deference and flattery. Yet, while publicly serving the Soviet regime, even ingratiating herself with the party leadership, Kollontai, in diaries written for history, privately, and at risk to her life, mourned the regime's failure to develop "communist humanism." With their interlocking themes of emotion and personalities, her diaries not only provide insight into Kollontai's uncanny survival and the personal responses of an Old Bolshevik to political changes and people but offer a rare and intimate portrait of the internal life of Soviet politics at their highest level.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , Winter 2010 , pp. 944 - 970
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2010

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References

For their insightful suggestions and comments, I would like to thank Martin Bernal, Robert V. Daniels, Lynne Viola, and, especially, Mark D. Steinberg and my anonymous reviewers. I thank Ninel Schiff for her indispensable aid in helping to decipher handwriting. Sergei Zhuravlev's help in locating documents was invaluable.

1. Handwritten, unpublished diary entries, 25 March 1938, in Kollontai's personal fond in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (hereafter RGASP1), f. 134, op. 3, d. 62,1. 6. Aleksandr A. Satkevich, mathematician, was “suppressed“ in 1937. Satkevich and Kollontai were in a relationship during the prerevolutionary era. For “other criteria,” see Halfin, Igal, “Looking into the Oppositionists’ Souls: Inquisition Communist style,” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July 2001): 317–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Halfin contends that “the mental state of the offender, not his objective behavior … was the key to the determination of his guilt.” Stephen Kotkin, along this same line, refers to “thought-crimes“ as being analogous to medieval heresy. Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), 305 Google Scholar. Also see Gregory, Paul R., Terror by Quota: State Security from Lenin to Stalin (New Haven, 2009), 258–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Kollontai in the Workers’ Opposition in 1921-22, see Allen, Barbara, “A Proletarian from a Novel: Politics, Identity and Emotion in the Relationship between Alexander Shliapnikov and Alexandra Kollontai, 1911-1935,“ Soviet and Post-Soviet Review $b, no. 2 (2008): 181–85Google Scholar.

2. Daniels, Robert V., The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 389 Google Scholar. Daniels noted that K I. Nikolaeva, another oppositionist in 1925, also survived. For Nikolaeva, see Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik Women (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)Google Scholar.

3. Montefiore, Simon, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar (New York, 2004), 240 Google Scholar.

4. Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990), 69 Google Scholar. “Old Bolshevik” refers to those who joined the party before the revolution. The women who survived included: N. Krupskaia, E. Stasova, L. A. Fotieva, K. I. Nikolaeva, and R. S. Zemliachka.

5. Tucker, Robert, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 (New York, 1990), 527 Google Scholar.

6. Medvedev, Roy, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, trans. Taylor, Colleen (New York, 1973), 308–9Google Scholar. For Medvedev's list of victims, see 198.

7. See editor's note in Kollontai, A. M., Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1922-40 v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 2001), 1:30 Google Scholar. Earlier requests for permission to publish were not successful. Kollontai's collected letters were published in 1989. See Kollontai, A. M., “Revoliulsiia- Velikaia Miatezhnitsa“: hbrann'ie pis'ma, 1901-1952 (Moscow, 1989)Google Scholar. Kollontai's typed “meetings and conversations with Stalin, 1922-1934” are in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,11.48-106. The “conversations” are also in Kollontai's personal fond, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 31, notebook 16a. Most of the “conversations” appear in Diplomaticheskie dnevniki with only occasional differences (e.g., n. 147). Beginning in March 1951, Kollontai began depositing in her archival fond her typed manuscript, later published as Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, as well as her handwritten diary notes. See “Istoriia fonda,” RGASPI, f. 134. The last deposit to the Kollontai archive occurred on 8 March 1952, the eve of her death on 9 March 1952. This information comes from Kollontai's grandson, Vladimir Kollontai, and his wife, Ritta, interview, New York, 1 April 2006. The issue of how and when all of Kollontai's handwritten diaries arrived in the archive is further complicated by the existence of a copy of an undated letter to I. M. Maiskii (judged by the archivist to have been written no earlier than March 1952) that Maiskii transmitted to the archive in June 1962, presumably in the interest of encouraging the publication of Kollontai's typed memoirs. In the letter, Kollontai gave Maiskii charge of all her personal archive. Kollontai referred to material in a “sealed envelope” that Maiskii could read but whose contents were not to be published without permission of the Central Committee. See letter to Maiskii, RGASP1, f. 134, op. 1, d. 393,11. 1-3. Among the materials in the “sealed envelope” were, presumably, Kollontai's emotional diary entries, 1936-38.

8. Tucker, Stalin inPoxver, 527. Kollontai quotes Stalin directly in the “conversations,“ but it is more likely that she was remembering his remarks. Few such descriptions of Stalin's conversations with colleagues are preserved. Notable exceptions are: Taubman, William, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Khrushchev Remembers, trans, and ed. Strobe Talbot (Boston, 1970); Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Conversations with Felix Chuev, ed. Albert Resis (Chicago, 1993); Tali govoril Kaganovich (Moscow, 1992); Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York, 1962); Anastas Mikoian, Tak bylo: Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999); and Georgi Dimitrov, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949 (New Haven, 2003).

9. On burning diaries, see Hellbeck, Jochen, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. The writer Lidiia Chukovskaia's comment is cited in Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 4.

11. The NKVD knew that Kollontai was keeping a diary and in the early 1940s sent agents to spy on her in Sweden. When they learned about her diary is not clear. See Vladimir, and Petrov, Evdokia, Empire of Fear (New York, 1956), 190–93Google Scholar.

12. See Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 8, for his application of the concept of safe limits to the diaries of Soviet citizens in the Stalin era. And for another diary pushing beyond “safe” boundaries, see the diary of Liubov Shaporina, a member of the artistic intelligentsia, analyzing the on-going repression in 1937 and condemning Stalin. Garros, Veronique, Korenevskaya, Natalia, and Lahusen, Thomas, eds., Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s, trans. Flath, Carol A. (New York, 1995), 333–81Google Scholar.

13. Kollontai, Aleksandra, The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman, trans. Attanasio, Salvator, ed. Fetscher, Iring (New York, 1971), 4–5 , 43 Google Scholar. For “new woman” themes in Kollontai's writings, see, for example, Liubov’ pchel trudovykh (Moscow, 1923) which contains Vasilisa Malygina (largely autobiographical, based on Kollontai's breakup with Pavel Dybenko). For a complete listing, see Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Aleksandra Kollontai (Bloomington, 1978)Google Scholar; Farnsworth, Beatrice, Aleksandra Kollontai: Socialism, Feminism, and the Bolshevik Revolution (Stanford, 1980)Google Scholar; Porter, Cathy, Alexandra Kollontai, a Biography: The Lonely Struggle of the Woman Wlw Defied Lenin (London, 1980)Google Scholar.

14. See “Bolshevik Views of the Diary” in Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 37-52, 74. See also Ronald Suny's review of jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind in Slavic Review 66, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 106-8.

15. Letter to A. N. Pantielev, 18 December 1946, in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia-Velikaia Miatezhnitsa,” 391.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., 391, 492. For a contrasting view of a Soviet woman guilty over her own individualism that underscores the novelty of Kollontai's interpretation, see “Intelligentsia on Trial: Zinaida Denisevskaya” in Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 154.

18. Entry of 1927 in KoUontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:355. But note also her doubts expressed years later to her friend, T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik: would future generations in 50-100 years really be interested in the emotion of her romance with Dybenko? Letter of 18 August 1947 in KoUontai, “Revoliutsiia-Velikaia Miatezhnitsa, “396. She need not have worried; see Rosenwein, Barbara H., “Worrying about Emotions in History,” American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (June 2002): 821–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the cluster “Emotional Turn? Feelings in Russian History and Culture,” Slavic Review 68, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 229-334.

19. For Kollontai's awareness of the need to curb her individualism in publications, see her deletion of passages in KoUontai, Autobiography. Autobiography includes the original galleys with passages Kollontai later deleted from the book when she prepared it for final publication in Germany in 1926. When she wrote initially, Kollontai was contemplating leaving government service to live as a writer and she felt less constraint.

20. For her support of the General Line, see, for example, Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:418. Kollontai's diary entries for the period of her involvement in the Workers' Opposition when she criticized the government are in her archive but not in her published memoirs. See Allen, “A Proletarian from a Novel,” 185.

21. Letter to Ada Nilsson, 22 September 1947, Nilsson Archive, University of Gothenburg.

22. Chernysheva, O. V. and Roginskii, V. V., “Sud'ba ‘Diplomaticheskie dnevniki’ A. M. Kollontai,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, 2002, no. 5:183 Google Scholar. Chernysheva offers useful information on Kollontai's archive.

23. From Kollontai's “meetings and conversations with Stalin, 1922-1934,” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 58.

24. Odinnadtsatyi S“ezd(b). Mart-Aprel’ 1922 goda. Stenograficheskii olchet (Moscow, 1961), 702-10. A three-man commission, Stalin, Grigorii Zinov'ev, and Feliks Dzherzhinskii, recommended that the three “unrepentant leaders” of the Workers’ Opposition be removed. The Eleventh Party Congress rejected their decision. The Workers’ Opposition also appealed unsuccessfully to the Comintern in 1922. See Farnsworth, Aleksandra Kollontai, 258-59.

25. Kollontai, Autobiography, 40.

26. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 2.

27. Kollontai, Autobiography, 40; diary entry in “conversations,” 11 October 1922, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 51.

28. Letter to T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, 4 October 1922, in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia- Velikaia Miatezhnilsa, “ 177-78, 484.

29. Diary entry, 11 October 1922, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 52.

30. Diary entry, 6 November 1924, ibid., 1. 64. Kollontai added a footnote in 1948 indicating that this was the only time she met Stalin in his private apartment in the Kremlin.

31. Ibid., 11. 66-67.

32. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:332 Google Scholar.

33. April 1923, ibid., 1:108. Dybenko was living with a young woman, the immediate cause of Kollontai's decision to end their marriage. In a letter to her friend Zoia Shadurskaia, Kollontai reported that Dybenko, unbeknownst to her, had used Kollontai's name to request women's clothing from Narkomprod (Commissariat of Supply) in order to provide for his young lover. Never had she been so angry in her life, Kollontai wrote. She had always u-ied to protect Dybenko but not now. Diary entry, 20 October 1923, ibid., 1:59-60. See letter to M. N. Kisliakova, 28 May 1924, in which Kollontai talks about her pain over the end of her marriage, in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia- Velikaia Mialezhnilsa,” 189. On the same theme of suffering and seeking healing in work, see undated letter to Shadurskaia, quoted in Itkina, A. M., Revoliutsioner, Tribun, Diplomat (Moscow, 1970), 194 Google Scholar. This letter is not included in “ Revoliutsiia-VelikaiaMiatezhnitsa.“

34. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:19, 190 Google Scholar. By 1926, the “testament” written in December 1922 with a postscript added in January 1923 had been leaked abroad; it was published in the Neiu York Times on 19 November 1926.

35. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:366–67Google Scholar.

36. Ibid., 1:113.

37. See Uldricks, Teddy J., “The Impact of the Great Purges on the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” Slavic Review 36, no. 2 (June 1977): 195 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for die type of diplomat in the ranks of diplomacy in the early years.

38. They argued that Kollontai's idea for a General Fund to replace individual alimony was too radical for the “transitional” era. Farnsworth, Aleksandra Kollontai, 365. The more socially conservative Sofia Smidovich of the Zhenotdel headed the campaign against Kollontai. The two women had clashed earlier. See ibid., chap. 10, “Socialist Feminism.“ For the writer Polina Vinogradskaia's attacks on Kollontai's “feminism,” see the chapter “Winged Eros” in Clements, Bolshevik Feminist.

39. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:330 Google Scholar. For Kollontai's grief at being !uded from the direction of the women's movement, see letter to Zoia Shadurskaia, April 1924, and to T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, 15 October 1927, both in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia- Velikaia Miatezhnitsa, “187-88 and 219. Her letter to Shchepkina-Kupernik follows the Second All-Union Congress of Worker and Peasant Women, 15 October 1927, at which she was not chosen as a member of the presidium or of any directing organs. Referring to her anguish, Kollontai compared it to learning that a husband was unfaithful or that a child no longer wanted to know you.

40. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,1. 8.

41. Ibid., 1.9.

42. Diary entry, Autumn 1926, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749, 1. 71; in her diary, Kollontai called Zinov'ev a “mean-spirited soul,” see handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44, 1. 9; in diary entry from 11 October 1922, Kollontai refers to her letter to Stalin explaining that she could not work in the International Women's Secretariat because of Zinov'ev's presence. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1.51.

43. SeeTaubman, Khrushchev, 105.

44. Diary entry, Autumn 1926, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 71. This conversation with Stalin appears in Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:249–52Google Scholar.

45. Diary entry, Autumn 1926, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,11. 71-72.

46. Ibid., 11. 73-74.

47. For Stalin's self-image, see Tucker, Stalin in Power, 147 and chap. 7, “The Cult and Its Creator.“

48. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,11. 8-9.

49. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:252 Google Scholar; diary entry, Autumn 1926, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1.74.

50. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:323 Google Scholar. Yet Kollontai knew she was very good at what she was doing. At large diplomatic events, colleagues tried to sit next to her so that she could translate speeches for them into several languages, “two, three at once.” Ibid., 1:339.

51. Ibid., 1:323.

52. Ibid., 1:22. For Kollontai's influence on young Soviet women, see Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 125-26.

53. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:354 Google Scholar.

54. Ibid., 1:330. Ironically, the regime, six years later, in 1933, would award Kollontai its highest honor, the Order of Lenin, recognizing her “revolutionary work” among women, an activity from which she was nevertheless permanendy !uded. Kollontai called the award “almost unbelievable” and “especially welcome.” Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:153.

55. Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:330.

56. A year earlier, she had written from Mexico to her friend Fredrik Ström, alluding to the troubles in Moscow yet noting that she still had “hopes for the big goals … if there were just some other way!” Undated letter in Strom Archive, University of Gothenburg (emphasis in the original).

57. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:330 Google Scholar. For Stasova, see Clements, Bolshevik Women.

58. See “The Workers’ Opposition,” in Daniels, Robert V., A Documentary History of Communism (New York, 1960), 202–3Google Scholar.

59. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:329 Google Scholar. For Stal', see Clements, Bolshevik Women.

60. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:333.

61. Ibid., 1:329.

62. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry from 1927, incorrectly filed with notes to 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,1. 10. One page is missing.

63. A. Kollontai, “Oppositsiia i partiinaia massa,” Pravda, 30 October 1927.

64. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry from 1927, incorrectly filed with notes to 3 February 3, 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,1. 10; Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:329.

65. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:330 Google Scholar.

66. Ibid.

67. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry from 1927, incorrectly filed with notes to 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,1. 10.

68. Ibid.

69. Maiskii, Ivan, Journey into the Past (London, 1962), 9 Google Scholar.

70. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:330 Google Scholar; for Mikoian and Stalin, see Tucker, Stalin in Poxver, 86.

71. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,11. 6-7.

72. For Stalin's order, see Tucker, Stalin in Power, 82, 631. Stalin's hard line was criticized by moderates; even his follower Mikoian called in Pravdz for restraint, 12 February 1928. See Lewin, Moshe, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization, trans. Nove, Irene with the assistance of John Biggart (New York, 1975), 231–32Google Scholar.

73. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:482–84Google Scholar.

74. Ibid., 1:482.

75. On “speaking Bolshevik,” see Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 220.

76. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:482 Google Scholar.

77. Ibid. For “Dizzy with Success” and letters of protest in Pravda, see Tucker, Stalin in Power, 184-86,207.

78. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:484 Google Scholar. As one example Kollontai noted Lenin's order that to “avoid excesses,” Tseretelli (a Menshevik) be found and sent under protection to Finland.

79. Chernysheva and Roginskii, “Sud'ba,” 180.

80. She deleted the phrase, “magnificent illusions,” from galley proofs. See KoUontai, Autobiography, 35.

81. Diary entry, November 1929, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 80.

82. Ibid., 11. 80-83; in fact, Chicherin was ill. He resigned from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in 1930 and died in 1936.

83. Diary entry, November 1929, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 84.

84. Ibid.

85. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheshie dnevniki, 1:427 Google Scholar.

86. Ibid., 1:401.

87. Ibid., 1:330-31.

88. Letter to T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, 29 November 1925, in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia- Velikaia Miatezhnitsa,” 199.

89. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheshie dnevniki, 1:354–55Google Scholar. Jochen Hellbeck notes a “spiritual dimension” of the purges, the need for “self-purification,” a conformity to “communist morality in thoughts and deeds.“Jochen Hellbeck, “Writing the Self in the Time of Terror,“ in Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler, eds., Self and Story in Russian History (Ithaca, 2000), 70-71. Kollontai appears uninfluenced by such considerations.

90. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheshie. dnevniki, 1:355 Google Scholar; for instances of Kollontai intervening on behalf of the arrested in the late 1920s, ibid., 1:354-55, 426. Kollontai would try intervening to the end of her life. In March 1952, she received a demand from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs that she cease sending appeals to the Central Committee requesting the release of friends, ibid., 1:23-24.

91. Ibid., 1:354, 356. For the terrorizing of the old technical intelligentsia, see Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York, 1975), 343 Google Scholar.

92. Kollontai, , Diplomalicheskie dnevniki, 2:21 Google Scholar.

93. Ibid., 1:23, 358.

94. Ibid., 2:122-23. Kollontai described an “indifferent warmth” toward Dybenko, as to a “distant relative.” She quoted from 1923 diary notes to show that she overcame the pain of their breakup, alone as a single woman, achieving self-worth through creative work.

95. Tucker, Stalin in Poioer, 97.

96. Taubman, Khrushchev, 74.

97. Diary entry, Summer 1934, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,11. 100, 102.

98. Ibid., II. 105.

99. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 31 January 1936, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62,1. 1.

100. Ibid.

101. Ibid., 11. 1-2. Referring to Stalin's widely circulated phrase, December 1935.

102. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 1937, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62, 1. 3.

103. Ibid., 11. 3-4.

104. See letters to Zoia Shadurskaia, 4 May 1930 and 29 June 1930, in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia-Velikaia Miatezhnitsa, “248, 253.

105. Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 360.

106. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 1937, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62,1. 4.

107. Kollontai's grandson, Vladimir Kollontai, and his wife, Ritta, interview, New York, 1 April 2006. Kollontai's son, Mikhail, living in New York in 1937, hearing incorrectly that his mother had been arrested, became temporarily blind. Ibid. The purges of 1937-38 decimated the Soviet diplomatic corps. For the list of victims, see Uldricks, “Impact of the Great Purges,” 188-89.

108. For Kollontai's awareness that she was being watched, see Ada Nilsson, “Det Stora Uppdraget,” Vi, 1961, no. 36:16; for comment on agents’ reports, Vi, 1936, no. 35:38. Kollontai asked Nilsson to save all her personal letters, notes, and diaries for ten years in case “I become the victim of an unfortunate accident.” Letter to Nilsson, 4 July 1937, Nilsson Archive, University of Gothenburg.

109. Kollontai's grandson, Vladimir Kollontai, and his wife, Ritta, interview, New York, 1 April 2006.

110. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:360.

111. Ibid., 2:366.

112. Ibid., 2:367.

113. Tucker, Stalin inPowei; 434, 437; Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, trans. Harold Shukman (Rocklin, Calif., 1992), 324.

114. Taubman, Khrushchev, 100; Tucker, Stalin in Power, 437.

115. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:369-70; on Voroshilov and Stalin, see Tucker, Stalin in Power, 148.

116. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:370.

117. Ibid.

118. Volkogonov, Stalin, 324-25.

119. See Tidens Tegn, 28 December 1937; Folkets Dagblad Politiken, 12 January 1938; Kaare Hauge, “Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai: The Scandinavian Period, 1922-1945“ (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1971), 197.

120. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 25 March 1938, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62,1. 6.

121. Kollontai to Nilsson, 21 July 1938, Nilsson Archive, University of Gothenburg.

122. Handwritten, unpublished diary entry, July 1938, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62,1. 7 (emphasis in the original).

123. Ibid., 1.8.

124. See M. M. Mukhamedzhanov, “Introduction,” in Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:19.

125. For Kollontai's participation, presumably for safety, in the Stalin cult, see the aforementioned, handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 3 February 1926, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 44,11. 8-9; and handwritten, unpublished, undated entry (but written after 1945), RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 31,11. 61-72. In 1937, Kollontai began the obligatory, public distorting of Bolshevik party history, see Farnsworth, Aleksandra Kollontai, 380-81.

126. For example, A. G. for A. G. Shliapnikov and D. for Dybenko.

127. Letter to T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, 23January 1952, in Kollontai, “Revoliutsiia- Velikaia Miatezhnitsa, “ 429.

128. Petrov, Empire ojFear, 190-93. Kollontai's notes concerning Dybenko's execution are neither in the 1936-38 file nor in her published memoirs.

129. Elisei Sinitsyn, Rezident Svidetel'stvuet (Moscow, 1996), 162-63.

130. Ibid., 162. Kollontai's suitcases of memoir material were eventually returned after she retired to Moscow. Upon initially being informed that her material could not be found, Kollontai sent a request to Stalin. For Kollontai's letter to Stalin and her letter of thanks when the material was returned to her, see Chernysheva and Roginskii, “Sud'ba,“ 174-75.

131. Sinitsyn, Rezident Svidetel'stvuet, 162-63.

132. Ibid.

133. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:462 Google Scholar.

134. Ibid., 2:460-63.

135. Ibid., 2:465. Kollontai's grandfather had a country estate, Kuuza, in Finland where the young Kollontai spent summers.

136. Ibid., 2:464. See Clements, Bolshevik Feminist, for Kollontai's diplomatic activity in Scandinavia.

137. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:464 Google Scholar, 467.

138. For Stalin's attacks on Molotov, see Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers, 160; Khlevniuk, Oleg V., Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle, trans. Favorov, Nora Seligman (New Haven, 2009), 238–44, 259-60Google Scholar.

139. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:467 Google Scholar.

140. Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers, 111-12.

141. Montefiore, Stalin, 240.

142. Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers, 111-12. The interlocutor's observation that Kollontai's two husbands were shot and Molotov's reply appears only in the Russian edition: Sto sorok besed sMolotovym (Moscow, 1991), 188-89.

143. Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers, 111-12. Although Molotov called Kollontai not a true revolutionary, her role in Lenin's circle belies this view. For Kollontai in 1917, see Farnsworth, Aleksandra Kollontai, and Clements, Bolshevik Feminist.

144. Kollontai, , Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:123 Google Scholar. Trotskii remembered, disapprovingly, that Stalin was “titillated” in a ‘Vulgar” way by the Kollontai-Dybenko relationship. Trotsky, Leon, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence, trans. Malamuth, Charles (New York, 1941), 243–44Google Scholar.

145. From “Letter of an Old Bolshevik,” in Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Power and the Soviet Elite (New York, 1965), 57, 60-66.

146. Kollontai's letter to Stalin, 1 January 1952, is in Chernysheva and Roginskii, “Sud'ba,” 177-78.

147. In the opening paragraph of the “conversations” packet, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749, 1. 51. Whether Stalin read the “conversations” is not indicated; no marginal jottings appear on the archival documents. Most of the conversations with Stalin are printed in Diplomaticheskie dnevniki with only occasional differences. For example, lines praising Stalin, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749, 1. 100, do not appear in Kollontai's prepared memoirs. See Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 2:240. Did Kollontai add them to the copy sent to Stalin or did an editor omit them from her prepared memoirs in the 1980s? Omitted in the “conversations” sent to Stalin is a reference to Bukharin (Kollontai substituted “kto-to“). Contrast RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 749,1. 77, with the same episode including Bukharin's name in Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1:333.

148. For Kollontai's serious, skeptical tone in speaking with other male comrades, see Maiskii, I. M., “A. M. Kollontai,” Okliabr, no. 7 (1962): 109–10Google Scholar.

149. For “communist humanism,” see handwritten, unpublished diary entry, 1937, RGASPI, f. 134, op. 3, d. 62,1. 3.

150. Letter from Boris Souvarine, 26 March 1974, stating that Kollontai remained an oppositionist.

151. After returning to Moscow, Kollontai still feared accusations of disloyalty to Stalin and the likely repercussions for herself and her family. I am indebted to Sergei Zhuravlev who discussed this with M. M. Mukhamedzhanov and with RGASPI archivist Iuri N. Amiantov in January 2009.

152. For rejection of Stalin, Semen Mirnyi, interview, Moscow, August 1973.

153. Bertram Wolfe, letter to author, January 1974.

154. For further interactions among Soviet leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, see Gregory, Paul R. and Naimark, Norman, eds., The Lost Politburo Transcripts: From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship (New Haven, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

155. R. Tucker in Introduction to Lih, Lars T., Naumov, Oleg V., and Khlevniuk, Oleg V., eels., Stalin's Letters to Molotov: 1925-1936 (New Haven, 1995)Google Scholar, xii. For Stalin, based on writings in his personal archive, see “Stalin's Hand,” in Brent, Jonathan, Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the Nexu Russia (New York, 2008)Google Scholar.

156. Politburo members, survivors in the late 1930s, were all “obsequious” but the devoted Molotov could be “intractable.” Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 219.

157. Lenin's “testament,” in which he called Stalin “too rude” to colleagues, was never published in the Soviet Union in Stalin's lifetime, but “the notion of Stalin's ‘rudeness' remained alive in party circles until all those who knew or talked about it were dead.“ Gregory and Naimark, eds., Lost Politburo Transcripts, 13. Stalin's rudeness extended to women: Lenin's charge was prompted by Stalin's rudeness to Krupskaia. Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers, 132-33. Stalin referred to E. Stasova as “scum.” Montefiore, Stalin, 240.