Notes to Pages 179–182 241
- Individual agency is one of the principal themes of Jochen Hellbeck’s Revolu-
tion on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2006).
- Koreans were rejected for Red Army ser vice during the Second World War.
However, many managed to get in by convincing local authorities that they were of mixed
race/nationality and through other maneuvers.
- Lenin posited the idea that Asian peasants were the proletariats of Asia, as they
were the revolutionary ele ment in society and urban proletariats were a small minority; see
Carrère d’Encausse and Schram, Marxism and Asia, 154.
CHAPTER 8 : VOICES IN THE FIELD
- From 2008 to 2010 and 2014, I conducted nearly all of my interviews in Rus sian or
with the help of local interpreters, from Korean (Hamgyong dialect/Koryo Mar) to Rus-
sian. In 2006, I was assisted by some local Bishkek students.
- I have seen several books (in Rus sian) that contain biographies of Soviet GPU/
OGPU/NKVD officers. I did not find one Korean or Chinese officer in any of these books
(through 2015). The books portray the officers as state heroes. Therefore, there is an oblit-
eration of the contribution of the Soviet national minorities from the 1930s until Stalin’s
death due to their ethnic profiles as “ enemy nations” or as “po liti cally suspect.”
- See notes in Chapter 5 on A. A. Khisamutdinov’s correspondence with this au-
thor. Khisamutdinov is a professor of history at the Far Eastern State Technical University
in Rus sia.
- However, there have been exceptional works of research into the inner lives of Soviet
cadres and CP members during the Stalinist period. Their depiction of the “war of the mind”
and a psychological history of the Soviet citizen [in a personal] strug gle to refashion oneself is
phenomenal in its detail, depth, and originality. See Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My
Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); and
Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
- Ronald G. Suny views history as being primarily constructed by actors who are the
social and po liti cal elites of a country or community. I see a balance between actors (con-
struction) and structural limits/material bases. For Suny’s views, see Suny, Revenge of the
Past, 3–4, and Suny, Structure of Soviet History, 50.
- For an example of the “pruning” at the archives, see Khlevniuk, History of the Gu-
lag, 3–5.
- This assumes that the subjects are common citizens rather than experts in the field
and public figures.
- In 2009, Dr. J. Otto Pohl brought three Rus sian speakers (Turkmen students from
AUCA) with him to conduct interviews with Karachai el derly deportees outside of Bish-
kek, Kyrgyzstan. The deportees were immediately suspicious that the students might be
local SNB (the name for the internal security agencies). This anecdote corresponds with my
experiences as well. Some of the el derly deportees who lost relatives (and especially those
who lost parents) during the Terror, had a deep- seated fear that one day the same po liti cal
police would come for them.
- This statement occurred during my interviews with Lyubov Kim, Anna Vasilevna
Ti, and Evgenia Tsakhai.
- I did not impose any checklists on my interviewees/narrators. All relatives were
welcome to sit in and listen to the interview.
