The Eurasian Knot

I contributed to a truly remarkable episode of the brilliant Eurasian Knot podcast. It’s all about the most disgusting mail that Stalin ever received…

Here’s the official description:

It’s Sunday, October 13, 1935, and someone, we don’t know who mails a letter from the outskirts of Moscow. It’s addressed: “Kremlin. To Comrade Stalin.” It arrives a few days later.

There was nothing odd about people writing Stalin. They wrote to him a lot. To plead for help. To give advice. To complain. To denounce. And to threaten.

The letters could be incredibly personal. And also incredibly irate. So many letters poured into Soviet officials, one historian called letter writing “a national pastime.”

So, when Comrade Sentaretskya, one of the secretaries sorting Stalin’s mail, got to this letter, she had no reason to worry . . . . that is until she opened it.