Chill from the past

On 19th May I featured two anecdotes from Osbert Sitwell. Then last evening he offered another odd fact, to wit that the composer Scriabin was a nephew of the Soviet politician and long time ally of J. Stalin, V. Molotov. Odd, despite the fact that I knew nothing of Scriabin beyond the fact of his being a composer; I doubt whether I would have even got his nationality right.

Odd enough that I was moved to look it up on Google, to find that the odd fact is not a fact at all, rather a common mistake, at least according to Wikipedia, arising from the fact that Molotov's family name was Scriabin before he changed it to Molotov. So don't believe everything that you read in Osbert.

But Wikipedia also offered a picture, reproduced left, which I found chilling, described as a 'list of persons to be tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Union of the SSR. April 1937. Approving signatures: Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, Andrei Zhdanov, Vyacheslav Molotov. The first page of a typical trial (de facto execution) list from the time of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union. This particular list, compiled by Senior Major of State Security Gendin, Deputy Chief of the 4th Department of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, itself contains 145 names in the first category (to be executed by firing squad), 50 names in the second category (to be imprisoned for 10 years) and one name in the third category (to be imprisoned for 5 to 8 years). Stored in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation'.

The chill was probably enhanced by my having taken on more wine than I am used to these days, but chill nevertheless, arising I think from the cold blooded bureaucracy of the thing. The contrast between the uncontrolled savagery of the deed with the decorum of the word. Thinking about it this morning I suppose the Stalin's and Hitler's only get away with the deed because of the cloaking decorum of the word: remove the cloaking words and one descends into chaos where anything might happen.

PS: I also sweep away another illusion. I had thought that Molotov the revolutionary invented the cocktail during the revolutionary wars, but Wikipedia tells me that the Finns invented it during the winter war, naming it for Molotov as an insult. At least he was insulted and he hated the fact that the things, which became ubiquitous, were named for him.