Description:

Josef Stalin
Molotov, May 30, 1940
Josef Stalin DS Re: "Contamination by Trotskyists" Right After His First Trotsky Assassination Attempt - Superb!
TDS
A fine content document on official letterhead, Molotov Region, May 30, 1940. Directed to Vyacheslav Molotov by Nikolai Stepanovich Sazykin (1910-1985), Chief of the NKVD for the Molotov Region, with the request to increase military personnel in the Molotov Region due to an increase in insurgent factions. Signed at left by Stalin in red pencil with initials "J.S.", and additionally signed by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD, and Vyacheslav M. Molotov, Chairman of the People's Council of Commissars. With receiving stamp at bottom reading "Received at the Secretariat of J. Stalin, June 1, 1940." File holes at left margin have been backed with white tape; else very good to fine, with excellent signatures. 1p. 8" x 11.75".

In full:

"In light of the significant contamination of the region by Trotskyists and Kulak-and White Guard elements, as well as church-sectarian organizations. In connection with this I ask for an increase in the limit for the first category by 150 people, the second category by 300 people. Sazykin."

More than 11 years after his exile, the Stalinist government still struggled to eradicate vestiges of the intellectual architect of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky. While the other factions mentioned in this document, the Kulaks (wealthy peasants who relied on hired labor at their household farms) and White Guard (anti-communist forces) would cause their share of troubles for Stalin - Trotsky and his followers created the biggest threat. Stalin's first - and failed - assassination attempt on Trotsky made on May 24, 1940 - a scant 6 days before this document. By May 30, Trotsky's followers would no doubt have heard of the attempt and may have been rallying accordingly.

Thus it made a lot of sense for Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria and Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's biggest and most terrifying henchman, to sign off on any document to quash any increase in Trotskyist activities.

For his part, Trotsky once dismissed Molotov as "mediocrity incarnate," but the dogged petty-bureaucrat had his own aspirations to glory. Permanently cleaving himself to Stalin following the death of Lenin, Molotov rose in the ranks to become head of the Soviet government in 1930, holding that job for 11 years until Stalin acceded to the position in 1941. Beria, too, enjoyed his own bloody rise to power under Stalin - imprisoning, exterminating and sexually predating his way to the top of NKVD.

Adding fuel to the anti-Bolshevik fire was a widely-publicized statement to the press about the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Act that Trotsky made less than a year before this directive. He stated: "The German-Soviet Pact is a capitulation of Stalin before fascist imperialism with the end of preserving the Soviet oligarchy." He also took a personal stab at Stalin's ability to integrate ideological divisions within the government: "The only 'merit' of the German-Soviet pact is that in unveiling the truth it broke the backbone of the Comintern. From all countries, particularly from France and the United States, come testimonies of a sharp crisis in the ranks of the Comintern, of departures of the imperialist patriots on the one hand, and of the internationalists on the other. No force in the world can stop this decomposition. The world proletariat will step over the treason of the Kremlin and also the cadaver of the Comintern." (Socialist Appeal, September 9, 1939).

For himself, Stalin had a few choice words about Trotsky which certainly echo the term "contamination" used in this document: "…Trotskyism has become a mad unprincipled gang of saboteurs, of agents or diversions, of assassins acting on the espionage services of foreign states" (qtd. In Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism).

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 8" x 11.75"
  • Medium: TDS

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