The Kremlin and the People Book

Walter Durantf THE KREMLIN AND THE PEOPLE Reynal Hitchcock, Inc. New York COPYRIGHT, 1941, BY WALTER DURANTY All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any - form Second Printing PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE CORNWALL PRESS, CORNWALL, N. Y. To my friend, John Cooper Wiley, the quot ablest of the younger American diplomats who has served in the U. S. S. R. and knows Europe better than I do, but seldom agrees with me about either. amp gt O, r CONTENTS I. The Whys and Wherefores of the U. S. S. R i II. Kirof s Murder 21 III. The Kamenef-Zinovief Trial ... 38 IV. The Execution of the quot Generals quot. . 54 V. The Bukharin-Yagoda Trial ... 70 VI. The Great Purge 116 VII. The U. S. S. R. and Munich .... 136 VIII. The Hearts of the Russian People . 155 IX. The Period of quot Neutrality quot . ... 166 X. The U. S. S. R. at War 190 Index 217 THE KREMLIN AND THE PEOPLE I. THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES OF THE U. S. S. R. I AM SUPPOSED to know about Russia, because I ve been there twenty years and speak the language fluently and have interviewed Stalin twice, and ought to know about Russia. Well, I don t know all. The Russians have a saying, quot What man in his little head can compass mighty Russia quot I fear that saying is true. I know enough o the U. S. S. R. to know how little I know, and I can t explain quot What quot or quot How. quot If you want that, you must read Russian books, like one called Red Planes Fly East, by Piotr Pavlenko, which has been translated and published in New York. Or Cement and Quiet Flows the Don, which have also been translated or Tolstoy s War and Peace, THE KREMLIN AND THE PEOPLE about Napoleon, which is truer today, far truer, than when it was written, in 1864, and gives you a vision seen and depicted by an artist of something which happened a hundred and thirty years ago and is being repeated, miraculously. The essential question is quot Why, quot and few books certainly no short books can pretend to ex pound the quot What. quot That of course is best done by fiction. I say Chekov and Dostoyevsky will teach you more about Russia than twenty long-winded books. Because people, you know, don t change, at least they do not change quickly, their nature does not change. The Russians are always Rus sians, and the wonderful thing about them is that they are so Russian, so alike in character, although there are seventy-nine different major languages in the U. S. S. R., and hundreds of minor dialects. They act alike and think alike, and this goes for the Tsarist emigres as it goes for the Bolsheviks at home. I say Russians are always Russians, and every Russian is the same Russian, kind, cruel, hospitable, envious, suspicious, affectionate, gen erous, will shoot you as soon as look, and if he hap pens to miss might kiss you the next minute on both cheeks.Read More