Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

78. Dzerzhinsky’s letter to Lenin dated June 19, 1921. Cited in Selezneva and Yanshin, “Tsel’yu byla russkaya nauka,” pp. 823–824.

79. Bazhanov, Boris, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin , trans. and commentary by D. W. Doyle (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990), p. 240.

80. Cited in Selezneva and Yanshin, “Tsel’yu byla russkaya nauka,” p. 824.

81. Voznesenskii, “Iz rannikh svidetel’stv,” pp. 466–469.

82. Gerson, The Secret Police, pp. 183–184. More details in Avrich, P., Kronstadt, 1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).

83. Gerson, The Secret Police, p. 183.

84. Serge, Victor, Memoirs of a Revolutionary: 1901–1941, trans. Peter Sedgwick (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 131.

85. This was the beginning of the wide purges against the Red Army officers. According to recent data, approximately 43,000 officers were executed in 1937–1938. The number of executed generals was much higher than the number of Soviet generals killed in 1941–1945 during World War II. After Stalin’s death, it became clear that the accusation of Tukhachevsky and the other generals was based on forged documents created by the SD (the SS intelligence) under the supervision of the SD head, Reinhard Heydrich. See Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 182–213; Volkogonov, Dmitri, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, trans. Harold Shukman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), pp. 316–329.

86. Voznesenskii, “Iz rannikh svidetel’stv,” p. 468.

87. Ibid., pp. 469–470.

88. From a letter by Kyrtenkov, Chugaev, and Chernyaev to chairman of the Council of Commissars dated August 26, 1921 (RTsKhIDNI, F. 2. Op. 1. D. 20625. L. 1). Cited in Selezneva and Yanshin, “Tsel’yu byla russkaya nauka,” p. 826. On Gorbunov, see Parkhomenko, A. A., “Akademik N. P. Gorbunov: Vzlet i tragediya” [Academician N. P. Gorbunov: Ascension and tragedy], in Yaroshevskii, M. G., ed., Repressirovannaya nauka [Repressed Science] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991), pp. 409–423 (in Russian); Yeremina and Roginsky, Rasstrel’nye spiski , p. 112.

89. Lenin, Vladimir I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works] (Politizdat: Moscow), vol. 53, p. 169 (in Russian). The note was cited in Selezneva and Yanshin, “Tsel’yu byla russkaya nauka,” p. 824.

90. Voznesenskii, “Iz rannikh svidetel’stv,” p. 474.

91. Cited in Melgunov, S. P., Krasnyi terror v Rossii, 1918–1923 [The Red Terror in Russia, 1918–1923] (Moscow: Puico, 1990), p. 141 (in Russian). The first edition of this book was published in Berlin in 1923.

92. Cited in Selezneva and Yanshin, “Tsel’yu byla russkaya nauka,” p. 823.

93. Karpinsky’s letter to Lenin dated September 21, 1921 (RTsKhIDNI, F. 2, Op. 1, D. 20969, L. 1–2). Cited in Selezneva and Yanshin, “Tsel’yu byla russkaya nauka,” pp. 826–827.

94. Cited in Romanovsky, “Pervyi demokratichesky izbrannyi,” p. 1099.

95. See Agranov’s report about arrests, dated October 26, 1921. Reproduced in Revyakina and Selezneva, “Trudnye gody rossiiskoi nauki,” p. 937.

96. Voznesenskii, “Iz rannikh svidetel’stv,” pp. 472–473.

97. Chebrikov, V. M., G. F. Grigorenko, N. A. Dushin, and F. D. Bobkov, eds., Istoriya sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti: Uchebnik, “Sovershenno sekretno” [History of the Soviet Security Service: A Textbook, “Top Secret”] (Moscow: Vysshaya Shkola KGB, 1977), pp. 147–149 (in Russian).

98. Details in Latyshev, A. G., Rassekrechennyi Lenin [Declassified Lenin] (Moscow: Mart, 1996), pp. 201–226 (in Russian).

99. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, pp. 82–83 and 349–350.

100. Latyshev, Rassekrechennyi Lenin, p. 221.

101. The text of Unshlikht’s report is cited in ibid., p. 215, and Volkov and Kulikova, “Rossiiskaya professura,” p. 73.

102. Latyshev, Rassekrechennyi Lenin, p. 214.

103. Volkov, A. V., “‘Preussen’ plyvet: K istorii vysilki iz Rossii ‘antisovetskoi intelligentsii’ 1922” [The “Preussen” swims: On the history of deportation of the “anti-Soviet intelligentsia” from Russia in 1922], Priroda [Nature] 5 (1999): 124–128 (in Russian).

104. For more details, see Kassow, Samuel D., Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 288–298.

105. Ibid., pp. 353–357; Bailes, Science and Russian Culture, pp. 116–118.

106. Schnol, Simon E., Geroi i zlodei rossiiskoi nauki [Heroes and Villains of Russian Science] (Moscow: Kron-Press, 1997), pp. 15–36 (in Russian).

107. Astaurov, Boris L., and Pyotr F. Rokitsky, Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), p. 18 (in Russian).

108. Lenin, Vladimir I., Collected Works , vol. 44 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), p. 284: in a letter from Petrograd dated September 15, 1919.

109. Letter of Vladimir Vernadsky to his son George, dated 1921. Columbia University, Bakhmeteef’s Humanities, Vernadsky Collection, box 11. Cited in Kolchinsky, V poiskakh, p. 224.

110. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54, p. 270.

111. The Entente was the anti-Bolshevik coalition of Britain, United States, and France. In spring 1918, approximately 5,000 Allied troops occupied the city of Arkhangelsk in the northern part of European Russia (see, for instance, Lincoln, W. Bruce, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War [New York: Touchstone, 1989] , pp. 163–193).

112. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54, pp. 265–266.

113. Ibid., p. 364.

114. Possibly, Varvara Yakovleva (1884–1941?) was put in charge of the high school because she was more educated than other Bolshevik leaders; at least she had studied math and physics.

115. In February 1922, the VCheKa (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission), which since December 1917 was under the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars), was merged with the NKVD and renamed GPU (State Political Directorate) within the NKVD. On December 30, 1922, after the creation of the Soviet Union from the RSFSR (Russian Federation), the GPU was reorganized into the OGPU (United State Political Directorate) within the NKVD. See Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka, pp. 8–11.

116. Recently discovered at the Archive of the Bureau of the Secretariat of the Bolshevik (Communist) Party Central Committee, the “Draft Resolution” of the Politburo Meeting is now kept at the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Most Recent History (RTsKhIDNI) in Moscow (F. 17, Op. 86, D. 17, L. 50–51). Cited in Selezneva, I. N., “Dokumenty iz fonda Byuro Sekretariata TsK VKP(b)” [Documents from the Archive of the Bureau of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 66 (10) (1996): 927–931 (in Russian), document no. 5 (p. 930).

117. From Agranov to Dzerzhinsky, Top Secret, June 1, 1922. Cited in Selezneva, “Dokumenty iz fonda Byuro Sekretariata TsK VKP(b),” pp. 927–929, document no. 1 (RTsKhIDNI, F. 17, Op. 86, D. 17, L. 55–59).

118. Excerpt from the Protocol No. 10 of the Politburo meeting on June 8, 1922. Cited in Selezneva, “Dokumenty iz fonda Byuro Sekretariata TsK VKP(b),” pp. 927–929, document no. 3 (RTsKhIDNI, F. 17, Op. 86, D. 17, L. 49).

119. Selezneva, I. N., “Tsel’ GPU” [The GPU’s target], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 66 (10) (1966): 925–927 (in Russian).

120. For details, see McClelland, “The Professorate in the Russian Civil War,” pp. 251–256.

121. Draft Resolution of the Presidium of VtsIK dated June 1922. In Selezneva, “Dokumenty iz fonda Byuro Sekretariata TsK VKP(b),” p. 931, document no. 7 (RTsKhIDN, F. 17, Op. 86, D. 17, L. 53).