Whether it’s one Person, Thousands or Millions Stalin’s Going to Kill you should he so Choose

UPDATE: Alternate title: “Killing Kulik as well as kulaks”.

Further to this post about the Katyn Massacre and thousands,

Stalin the Pole-Slayer…Murderer Actually

here’s the Vozhd murdering at the individual level–from p. 367 of Alexander Hill’s The Red Army and the Second World War (review here by Robert Farley who tweets here):

…[Marshal Kulik’s (more here)] relative closeness to Stalin could not save him from Stalin’s ire when contrary to direction from the Stavka [the Soviet high command] he ordered the evacuation of Kerch [in the Crimea] which subsequently fell into enemy hands on 15 November [1941]. The punishment–demotion from Marshal and removal from his position as a deputy People’s Commissar for Defence, expulsion from the Party and loss of orders and medals–was by Stalin’s standard of 1941-42 far from severe [NO SHOOT], but served to highlight that personal loyalty only went so far. Nonetheless, Kulik was given more opportunities to redeem himself at lower rank, firstly with operational commands. After his performance had not been deemed satisfactory–and a later less than satisfactory role in the formation and equipping of new units–in June 1945 he still held the rank of General-Major. He was subsequently executed in 1950 after having been arrested in 1947…

Then consider what had happened to Kulik’s wife:

…

In November 1939, the phone rang at the dacha of Kulik, the bungling Deputy Defence Commissar who had commanded the Polish invasion. He and his long-legged, green-eyed wife, Kira Simonich, said to be the finest looking in Stalin’s circle, were holding his birthday party attended by an Almanac de Gotha of the élite [see end of this post], from Voroshilov and the worker-peasant-Count Alexei Tolstoy, to the omnipresent court singer, Kozlovsky, and a flurry of ballerinas. Kulik answered it.

“Quiet!” he hissed. “It’s Stalin!” He listened. “What am I doing? I’m celebrating my birthday with friends.”

“Wait for me,” replied Stalin who soon arrived with Vlasik and a case of wine. He greeted everyone and then sat at the table, where he drank his own wine while Kozlovsky sang Stalin’s favourite songs, particularly the Duke’s aria from Rigoletto.

Kira Kulik approached Stalin, chatting to him like an old friend. The most unlikely member of Stalin’s circle was born Kira Simonich, the daughter of a count of Serbian origins…

In May [1940], Stalin ordered the kidnapping of Kulik’s wife, Kira, at whose house he had been a guest in November…

Two days after Kira’s kidnapping, on 7 May, Stalin promoted her husband to Marshal, along with Timoshenko and Shaposhnikov, in what can only be called a stroke of ironical sadism. Next day, Kulik’s delight at his Marshalate was tempered by worry about his wife. He called Beria, who invited him to the Lubianka.

While Kulik sipped tea in his office, Beria called Stalin: “Marshal Kulik’s sitting in front of me. No, he doesn’t know any details. She left and that’s all. Certainly, Comrade Stalin, we’ll announce an all-Union search and do everything possible to find her.” …A month later, Countess Simonich-Kulik, mother of an eight-year-old daughter, was moved to Beria’s special prison, the Sukhanovka, where Blokhin murdered her in cold blood with a shot to the head…

The public search for Kira Kulik continued for twelve years but the Marshal himself had long since realized that her dubious connections had destroyed her. He soon married again…

The quote above is from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore. As for millions, see this post:

Reporting on Ukraine’s Holodomor: The good and the very bad about Stalin’s murders

But pas d’ennemis à gauche, eh? As for the Bolshevik elite, see Curzio Malaparte’s (the nom de plume is a pun) novel about late 1920s high society in Moscow; it goes a ways to provide background for Stalin’s purges:

The Kremlin Ball

Mark Collins

Twitter: @Mark3ds