I HAVE FOLLOWED LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TRANSLITERATION RULES, except for substituting “y” for the final “ii” in male proper names, dropping the extra “i” that strict transliteration would require in names like Maria and Evgenia, and using “y” instead of “i” in front of vowels in names like Vyacheslav and Nadya to make pronunciation easier. Where there is a familiar Anglicization of a proper name, like Allilyueva or Alexander, I have used it, and I have rendered Iurii as Yury and Iosif as Joseph. For women, I have kept the feminine version of Russian last names: for example, Molotova (Molotov), Krupskaya (Krupsky).
Before the Second World War, ministries in the Soviet government were called “People’s Commissariats” and the ministers were called “People’s Commissars.” For clarity, I will use the term “ministry” and “minister” throughout. For convenience, I call the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) “the government.” I use the term “Supreme Soviet” for the body that until 1938 was called the Executive Committee of the All-Union Congress of Soviets. Its chairman was the title “head of state,” sometimes referred to as “president,” of the Soviet Union.
When I cite visits to Stalin’s Kremlin office, no reference is given in the endnotes because they always come from his office log, published as Na prieme u Stalina: Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V.Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.), ed. A. A. Chernobaev (Moscow: Novyi Khronograf, 2008). (I used the earlier journal version, “Posetiteli kremlevskogo kabiineta Stalina,” ed. A. V. Korotkov, A. D. Chernev, and A. A. Chernobaev, published in Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1994, no. 6–1997 no. 1.)
A useful summary of this data for the 1930s (Politburo members and Central Committee secretaries only) may be found in Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), appendix 2, 266–71. Data on Politburo attendance in the 1930s are from the table in Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody: Sbornik dokumentov, comp. O. V. Khlevniuk et al. (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1995), 183–255. My quick reference for the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretariat_of_the_Central_Committee _of_the_Soviet_Union, but I have tried to check this information against other sources.
Russian archival locations are identified by fond (collection), opis’ (inventory), delo (file), and list (folio), but I have rendered this in abbreviated form. Thus, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 1, d. 100,l.1 appears as RGASPI 17/1/100,l.1.
Regarding dates, in February 1918, Russia switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, thirteen days ahead. I give dates in the Julian style before the switch and Gregorian after. This means that the Bolshevik Revolution occurred in October 1917, not early November (as in the Gregorian calendar).