Causes of mass repressions in the 30s of the Unified State Examination. Story. Briefly. Stalinist repressions

As historical experience shows, any state uses open violence to maintain its power, often successfully disguising it under the protection social justice(see Terror). As for the totalitarian regimes (see Totalitarian regime in the USSR), the ruling regime, in the name of its consolidation and preservation, resorted, along with sophisticated falsifications, to gross arbitrariness, to massive cruel repressions (from Latin repressio - “suppression”; punitive measure, punishment applied government bodies).

1937 Painting by artist D. D. Zhilinsky. 1986 The struggle against the “enemies of the people” that unfolded during the life of V. I. Lenin subsequently assumed a truly grandiose scope, claiming the lives of millions of people. No one was immune from the night invasion of the authorities into their home, searches, interrogations, torture. The year 1937 was one of the most terrible in this struggle of the Bolsheviks against their own people. In the picture, the artist depicted the arrest of his own father (in the center of the picture).

Moscow. 1930 Column Hall of the House of the Unions. Special presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, considering the "case of the industrial party". Chairman of the Special Presence A. Ya. Vyshinsky (center).

To understand the essence, depth and tragic consequences of the extermination (genocide) of one's own people, it is necessary to turn to the origins of the formation of the Bolshevik system, which took place in the conditions of a fierce class struggle, hardships and hardships of the First World War and the Civil War. Various political forces of both monarchist and socialist orientation (Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, etc.) were gradually forcibly removed from the political arena. The consolidation of Soviet power is associated with the elimination and "reforging" of entire classes and estates. For example, the military service class - the Cossacks (see Cossacks) - was subjected to "decossackization". The oppression of the peasantry gave rise to the "Makhnovshchina", "Antonovshchina", the actions of the "greens" - the so-called "small civil war in the early 20s. The Bolsheviks were in a state of confrontation with the old intelligentsia, as they said at that time, "specialists." Many philosophers, historians, and economists were exiled from Soviet Russia.

The first of the "high-profile" political processes of the 30s - early 50s. the “Shakhty case” appeared - a major trial of “pests in industry” (1928). In the dock were 50 Soviet engineers and three German specialists who worked as consultants in the coal industry of Donbass. The court pronounced 5 death sentences. Immediately after the trial, at least 2,000 more specialists were arrested. In 1930, the “case of the industrial party” was examined, when representatives of the old technical intelligentsia were declared enemies of the people. In 1930, prominent economists A. V. Chayanov, N. D. Kondratiev and others were convicted. They were falsely accused of creating a non-existent "counter-revolutionary labor peasant party." Well-known historians - E. V. Tarle, S. F. Platonov and others were involved in the case of academicians. In the course of forced collectivization, dispossession was carried out on a massive scale and tragic in consequences. Many of the dispossessed ended up in forced labor camps or were sent to settlements in remote areas of the country. By the autumn of 1931, over 265,000 families had been deported.

The reason for the start of mass political repressions was the murder of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the leader of the Leningrad communists S. M. Kirov on December 1, 1934. J. V. Stalin took advantage of this opportunity to “finish off” the oppositionists - followers of L. D. Trotsky , L. B. Kameneva, G. E. Zinoviev, N. I. Bukharin, to shake up the cadres, to consolidate their own power, to plant an atmosphere of fear and denunciation. Stalin brought cruelty and sophistication in the fight against dissent to the construction of a totalitarian system. He turned out to be the most consistent of the Bolshevik leaders, skillfully using the mood of the masses and rank and file members of the party in the struggle to strengthen personal power. Suffice it to recall the scenarios of the "Moscow trials" over "enemies of the people". After all, many shouted "Hurrah!" and demanded to destroy the enemies of the people, like "filthy dogs." The millions of people involved in historical action (“Stakhanovists”, “shock workers”, “nominees”, etc.) were sincere Stalinists, supporters of the Stalinist regime not out of fear, but out of conscience. General Secretary party served for them as a symbol of the revolutionary people's will.

The mindset of the majority of the population of that time was expressed by the poet Osip Mandelstam in a poem:

We live, not feeling the country beneath us, Our speeches are not heard ten steps away, And where there is enough for half a conversation, They will remember the Kremlin highlander. His thick fingers, like worms, are fat, And the words, like pood weights, are true, The cockroaches laugh with their mustaches, And his tops shine.

Mass terror, which the punitive authorities applied to the "guilty", "criminals", "enemies of the people", "spies and saboteurs", "disorganizers of production", required the creation of extrajudicial emergency bodies - "troikas", "special meetings", simplified (without participation of the parties and appeal against the verdict) and an accelerated (up to 10 days) procedure for conducting cases of terror. In March 1935, a law was passed on the punishment of family members of traitors to the Motherland, according to which close relatives were imprisoned and deported, minors (under 15 years old) were sent to orphanages. In 1935, by decree of the Central Executive Committee, it was allowed to prosecute children from the age of 12.

In 1936-1938. "open" trials of opposition leaders were fabricated. In August 1936, the case of the "Trotskyist-Zinoviev United Center" was heard. All 16 people who appeared before the court were sentenced to death. In January 1937, the trial of Yu. L. Pyatakov, K. B. Radek, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, L. P. Serebryakov, N. I. Muralov and others (“parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center”) took place. At the court session on March 2-13, 1938, the case of the “anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky bloc” (21 people) was heard. N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov and M. P. Tomsky, the oldest members of the Bolshevik Party, associates of V. I. Lenin, were recognized as its leaders. Blok, as stated in the verdict, "unified underground anti-Soviet groups ... striving to overthrow the existing system." Among the falsified trials are the cases of the “anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization in the Red Army”, the “Union of Marxist-Leninists”, the “Moscow Center”, the “Leningrad counter-revolutionary group of Safarov, Zalutsky and others”. As the commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, established on September 28, 1987, established, all these and other major trials are the result of arbitrariness and blatant violation of the law, when the investigative materials were grossly falsified. Neither "blocs", "nor centers" actually existed, they were invented in the bowels of the NKVD-MGB-MVD at the direction of Stalin and his inner circle.

The rampant state terror (“great terror”) fell on 1937-1938. It led to disorganization government controlled, to the destruction of a significant part of the economic and party cadres, the intelligentsia, caused serious damage to the economy and security of the country (on the eve of the Great Patriotic War 3 marshals, thousands of commanders and political workers were repressed). The totalitarian regime finally took shape in the USSR. What is the meaning and purpose of mass repressions and terror (“great purges”)? First, relying on the Stalinist thesis about the intensification of the class struggle with the progress of socialist construction, the government sought to eliminate real and possible opposition to it; secondly, the desire to get rid of the “Leninist guard”, from certain democratic traditions that existed in communist party during the life of the leader of the revolution ("The revolution devours its children"); thirdly, the fight against the corrupt and decomposed bureaucracy, the mass promotion and training of new cadres of proletarian origin; fourthly, the neutralization or physical destruction of those who could become a potential enemy from the point of view of the authorities (for example, former white officers, Tolstoyans, Social Revolutionaries, etc.), on the eve of the war with Nazi Germany; fifthly, the creation of a system of forced, actually slave labor. Its most important link was the Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG). Gulag gave 1/3 of the industrial output of the USSR. In 1930, there were 190 thousand prisoners in the camps, in 1934 - 510 thousand, in 1940 - 1 million 668 thousand. minors.

Repression in the 40s. Entire peoples were also subjected - Chechens, Ingush, Meskhetian Turks, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans. Many thousands of Soviet prisoners of war ended up in the Gulag, deported (evicted) to the eastern regions of the country, residents of the Baltic states, the western parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

The policy of a "hard hand", of combating what was contrary to official guidelines, with those who expressed and could express other views, continued in postwar period until the death of Stalin. Those workers who, in the opinion of Stalin's entourage, adhered to parochial, nationalist and cosmopolitan views, were also subjected to repression. In 1949, the "Leningrad case" was fabricated. Party and economic leaders, mainly associated with Leningrad (A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov and others), were shot, over 2 thousand people were released from work. Under the guise of a struggle against cosmopolitans, a blow was dealt to the intelligentsia: writers, musicians, doctors, economists, linguists. Thus, the work of the poetess A. A. Akhmatova and the prose writer M. M. Zoshchenko was subjected to defamation. Figures of musical culture S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, D. B. Kabalevsky and others were declared the creators of the “anti-people formalist trend”. In the repressive measures against the intelligentsia, an anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) orientation was visible (“the cause of doctors”, “the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”, etc.).

The tragic consequences of mass repressions of the 30-50s. are great. Their victims were both members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party, and ordinary workers, representatives of all social strata and professional groups, ages, nationalities and religions. According to official data, in 1930-1953. 3.8 million people were repressed, of which 786 thousand were shot.

Rehabilitation (reinstatement of rights) of innocent victims in a judicial proceeding began in the mid-1950s. For 1954-1961 more than 300 thousand people were rehabilitated. Then, during the political stagnation, in the mid-60s - early 80s, this process was suspended. During the period of perestroika, an impetus was given to restore the good name of those who were subjected to lawlessness and arbitrariness. There are now more than 2 million people. The restoration of the honor of those unjustifiably accused of political crimes continues. Thus, on March 16, 1996, the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On Measures for the Rehabilitation of Priests and Believers Who Became Victims of Unjustified Repressions” was adopted.

Repressions in the USSR: socio-political meaning

Mass repressions in the USSR were carried out in the period 1927-1953. These repressions are directly associated with the name of Joseph Stalin, who during these years led the country. Social and political persecution in the USSR began after the end of the last stage of the civil war. These phenomena began to gain momentum in the second half of the 1930s and did not slow down during the Second World War, as well as after its end. Today we will talk about what the social and political repressions of the Soviet Union were, consider what phenomena underlie those events, and also what consequences this led to.

They say: a whole people cannot be suppressed without end. Lie! Can! We see how our people have become devastated, run wild, and indifference descended on them not only to the fate of the country, not only to the fate of their neighbor, but even to their own fate and the fate of children. Indifference, the last saving reaction of the body, has become our defining feature . That is why the popularity of vodka is unprecedented even in Russia. This is - terrible indifference when a person sees his life not stabbed, not with a broken corner, but so hopelessly fragmented, so up and down filthy, that only for the sake of alcoholic oblivion is it still worth living. Now, if vodka were banned, a revolution would immediately break out in our country.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Beginning of repressions in the Soviet Union

Reasons for repression:

Forcing the population to work on a non-economic basis. A lot of work had to be done in the country, but there was not enough money for everything. The ideology formed new thinking and perception, and also had to motivate people to work practically for free.

Strengthening personal power. For the new ideology, an idol was needed, a person who was unquestioningly trusted. After the assassination of Lenin, this post was vacant. Stalin had to take this place.

Strengthening the exhaustion of a totalitarian society.

If you try to find the beginning of repression in the union, then the starting point, of course, should be 1927. This year was marked by the fact that mass executions began in the country, with the so-called pests, as well as saboteurs. The motive of these events should be sought in the relations between the USSR and Great Britain. So, at the beginning of 1927, the Soviet Union was involved in a major international scandal, when the country was openly accused of trying to transfer the seat of the Soviet revolution to London. In response to these events, Great Britain severed all relations with the USSR, both political and economic. Inside the country, this step was presented as London's preparation for a new wave of intervention. At one of the party meetings, Stalin declared that the country "needs to destroy all remnants of imperialism and all supporters of the White Guard movement." Stalin had an excellent reason for this on June 7, 1927. On this day, the political representative of the USSR, Voikov, was killed in Poland.

As a result, terror began. For example, on the night of June 10, 20 people who contacted the empire were shot. They were representatives of ancient noble families. In total, in June 27, more than 9 thousand people were arrested, who were accused of treason, aiding imperialism and other things that sound menacing, but are very difficult to prove. Most of those arrested were sent to prison.

Pest control

After that, a number of major cases began in the USSR, which were aimed at combating sabotage and sabotage. The wave of these repressions was based on the fact that in most large companies that operated within the Soviet Union, senior positions were occupied by people from imperial Russia. Of course, most of these people did not feel sympathy for the new government. Therefore, the Soviet regime was looking for pretexts by which this intelligentsia could be removed from leadership positions and, if possible, destroyed. The problem was that it needed a weighty and legal basis. Such grounds have been found in a number of litigation that swept through the Soviet Union in the 20s.

Among the most clear examples such cases are as follows:

Shakhty case. In 1928, repressions in the USSR affected miners from Donbass. A show trial was staged from this case. The entire leadership of Donbass, as well as 53 engineers, were accused of espionage with an attempt to sabotage the new state. As a result of the trial, 3 people were shot, 4 were acquitted, the rest received prison terms from 1 to 10 years. It was a precedent - society enthusiastically accepted the repressions against the enemies of the people ... In 2000, the Russian prosecutor's office rehabilitated all the participants in the Shakhty case, in view of the lack of corpus delicti.

Pulkovo case. In June 1936, a large solar eclipse. The Pulkovo Observatory appealed to the world community to attract personnel to study this phenomenon, as well as to obtain the necessary foreign equipment. As a result, the organization was accused of espionage. The number of victims is classified.

Industrial Party case. The defendants in this case were those whom the Soviet authorities called bourgeois. This process took place in 1930. The defendants were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization in the country.

The case of the peasant party. The Socialist-Revolutionary organization is widely known, under the name of the Chayanov and Kondratiev groups. In 1930, representatives of this organization were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization and interfering in agricultural affairs.

Union Bureau. The Union Bureau case was opened in 1931. The defendants were representatives of the Mensheviks. They were accused of undermining the creation and implementation economic activity within the country, as well as in relations with foreign intelligence.

At that moment, a massive ideological struggle was taking place in the USSR. The new regime tried with all its might to explain its position to the population, as well as to justify its actions. But Stalin understood that ideology alone could not bring order to the country and could not allow him to retain power. Therefore, along with ideology, repressions began in the USSR. Above, we have already given some examples of cases from which repressions began. These cases have always raised big questions, and today, when the documents on many of them have been declassified, it becomes absolutely clear that most of the accusations were unfounded. It is no coincidence that the Russian prosecutor's office, having examined the documents of the Shakhtinsk case, rehabilitated all participants in the process. And this despite the fact that in 1928 none of the party leadership of the country had any idea about the innocence of these people. Why did this happen? This was due to the fact that, under the guise of repression, as a rule, everyone who did not agree with the new regime was destroyed.

The events of the 1920s were only the beginning, the main events were ahead.

Repressions in the USSR in the 30s

A new massive wave of repression within the country unfolded at the beginning of 1930. At that moment, the struggle began not only with political competitors, but also with the so-called kulaks. In fact, a new blow of the Soviet power against the rich began, and this blow caught not only wealthy people, but also the middle peasants and even the poor. One of the stages of delivering this blow was dispossession.

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Monument to the victims of Stalinist repressions .

Moscow. Lyubyanskaya Square. The stone for the monument was taken from the territory of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. Installed October 30, 1990.

Repression- this is a punitive measure of punishment by state bodies in order to protect the state system, public order. Often, repressions are carried out for political reasons against those who threaten society with their actions, speeches, publications in the media.

During the reign of Stalin, mass repressions were carried out

(late 1920s to early 1950s)

Repressions were seen as a necessary measure in the interests of the people and the building of socialism in the USSR. This was noted in « short course history of the CPSU (b)", which was reprinted in 1938-1952.

Goals:

Destruction of opponents and their supporters

Intimidate the population

Shift responsibility for failures in politics to "enemies of the people"

Establishment of the autocratic rule of Stalin

The use of free labor of prisoners in the construction of production facilities during the period of forced industrialization

The repressions were the result of the fight against the opposition which began in December 1917.

July 1918 - the bloc of the Left SRs is put to an end, establishment of a one-party system.

September 1918 - the implementation of the policy of "war communism", the beginning of the "red terror", the tightening of the regime.

1921 - creation of revolutionary tribunals ® Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, Cheka ® NKVD.

Creation State political administration (GPU). Chairman - F.E. Dzerzhinsky. November 1923 - GPU ® United GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. Previous - F.E. Dzerzhinsky, since 1926 - V.R. Menzhinsky.

August 1922 XIIconference of the RCP (b)- all anti-Bolshevik movements are recognized as anti-Soviet, i.e. anti-state, therefore they are subject to defeat.

1922 - Resolution of the GPU on the expulsion from the country of a number of prominent scientists, writers, specialists National economy. Berdyaev, Rozanov, Frank, Pitirim Sorokin - "philosophical ship"

Main events

1 period: 1920s

Stalin's competitors I.V..(since 1922 - General Secretary)

Trotsky L.D..- People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council

Zinoviev G.E.- Head of the Leningrad party organization, chairman of the Comintern since 1919.

Kamenev L.B. - head of the Moscow party organization

Bukharin N.I.- editor of the newspaper "Pravda", the main party ideologist after the death of Lenin V.I.

All of them are members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

2 period: 1930s

3 period: post-war years

Such is far from full list political processes, as a result of which many prominent scientists, political and military figures of the country were convicted.

The results of the policy of repression:

Conviction on political grounds, charges of “sabotage, espionage. Relations with foreign intelligence2 more than a pier. Man.

For long years - period the reign of Stalin I.V. - a harsh totalitarian regime was established, there was a violation of the Constitution, an encroachment on life, deprivation of freedoms and rights of the people.

The appearance in society of fear, fear of expressing one's opinion.

Strengthening the autocratic rule of Stalin I.V.

The use of numerous free labor in the construction of industrial facilities, etc. So the White Sea-Baltic Canal was built by the prisoners of the GULAG (State Administration of Camps) in 1933

Stalinist repressions- one of the darkest and most terrible pages of Soviet history.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation - this is the release, the removal of charges, the restoration of an honest name

The process of rehabilitation began already in the late 1930s, when Beria became the head of the NKVD instead of Yezhov. But it was a small number of people.

1953 - Beria, having come to power, conducts a large-scale amnesty. But most of the approximately 1 million 200 thousand people are convicted of criminal offenses.

In 1954-1955, the next mass amnesty took place. Approximately 88,200 thousand people were released. human citizens, convicted for cooperation with the invaders during the Great Patriotic War.

Rehabilitation took place in 1954-1961 and in 1962-1983.

Under Gorbachev M.S. rehabilitation resumed in the 1980s, with more than 844,700 people rehabilitated.

On October 18, 1991, the Law " On the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions” Until 2004, more than 630 thousand people were rehabilitated. Some of the repressed (for example, many leaders of the NKVD, persons involved in terror and committed non-political criminal offenses) were recognized as not subject to rehabilitation - in total, more than 970 thousand applications for rehabilitation were considered.

September 9, 2009 novel Alexander Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" included in the compulsory school curriculum in literature for high school students.

Monuments to the victims of Stalinist repressions

Stalin refers to the political repressions carried out in the Soviet Union during the period when the country's government was headed by I.V. Stalin (late 20s - early 1950s).
Political persecution acquired a massive character with the beginning of collectivization and forced industrialization (late 20s - early 30s), and reached its peak in the period dating from 1937-1938. - The Great Terror.
During the Great Terror, the NKVD arrested about 1.58 million people, of which 682 thousand were sentenced to death.
Until now, historians have not come to a consensus regarding the historical background of the Stalinist political repressions of the 1930s and their institutional basis.
But for most researchers, it is an indisputable fact that it was the political figure of Stalin that played a decisive role in the punitive department of the state.
According to declassified archival materials, mass repressions on the ground were carried out in accordance with the “planned tasks” lowered from above to identify and punish “enemies of the people”. Moreover, on many documents, the requirement “to shoot everyone” or “hit more” was written by hand. Soviet leader.
It is believed that the ideological basis for the "Great Terror" was the Stalinist doctrine of intensifying the class struggle. The very mechanisms of terror were borrowed from the time of the civil war, during which non-judicial executions were widely used by the Bolsheviks.
A number of researchers evaluate the Stalinist repressions as a perversion of the policy of Bolshevism, emphasizing that among the repressed there were many members of the Communist Party, leaders and the military.
For example, in the period 1936-1939. more than 1.2 million communists were repressed - half total strength parties. Moreover, according to existing data, only 50 thousand people were released, the rest died in the camps or were shot.
In addition, according to Russian historians, Stalin's repressive policy, based on the creation of extrajudicial bodies, was a gross violation of the laws of the Soviet Constitution that were in force at that time.
Researchers identify several main causes of the "Great Terror". The main one is the Bolshevik ideology itself, which tends to divide people into “us” and “enemies”.
It should be noted that the difficult economic situation that prevailed in the country during the period under review (numerous industrial accidents, train wrecks, interruptions in goods and products), it was beneficial for the current government to explain as a result of the wrecking activities of the enemies of the Soviet people.
In addition, the presence of millions of prisoners made it possible to solve serious economic problems - for example, providing cheap labor force major construction projects in the country.
Finally, many tend to consider one of the reasons for political repression mental illness Stalin, who suffered from paranoia.
Fear, sown among the masses, has become a reliable foundation for complete subordination to the central government. Thus, thanks to the total terror in the 30s, Stalin managed to get rid of possible political opponents and turn the remaining workers of the apparatus into thoughtless performers.
The policy of the "Great Terror" caused enormous damage to the economy and military power of the Soviet state.

This question plays a key role in the accusations not only of Stalinism, but, in fact, of the entire Soviet government. To date, the assessment of the “Stalinist terror” has become in our country a touchstone, a password, a milestone in relation to the past and future of Russia. Do you judge? Decisively and irrevocably? Democrat and common man! Any doubts? - Stalinist!

Let's try to deal with a simple question: did Stalin organize the "great terror"? Maybe there are other causes of terror, about which common people - liberals prefer to remain silent?

So. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks tried to create a new type of ideological elite, but these attempts stalled from the very beginning. Mainly because the new "people's" elite believed that by their revolutionary struggle they fully earned the right to enjoy the benefits that the "elite" anti-people had by birthright.

In the noble mansions, the new nomenclature quickly settled in, and even the old servants remained in place, they only began to call them servants. This phenomenon was very wide and was called "kombarstvo".

Even the right measures proved ineffective, thanks to massive sabotage by the new elite. I am inclined to attribute the introduction of the so-called "party maximum" to the correct measures - a ban on party members receiving a salary greater than the salary of a highly skilled worker.

That is, a non-party plant director could receive a salary of 2000 rubles, and a communist director only 500 rubles, and not a penny more.

In this way, Lenin sought to avoid the influx of careerists into the party, who use it as a springboard in order to quickly break into the grain places. However, this measure was half-hearted without the simultaneous destruction of the system of privileges attached to any position.

By the way. V.I. Lenin strongly resisted the reckless growth in the number of party members, which was later taken up in the CPSU, starting with Khrushchev. In his work “Childhood disease of leftism in communism,” he wrote: “We are afraid of the excessive expansion of the party, because careerists and rogues who deserve only to be shot inevitably strive to cling to the government party.”

Moreover, in the conditions of the post-war shortage of consumer goods, material goods were not so much bought as distributed. Any power performs the function of distribution, and if so, then the one who distributes, he uses the distributed. Especially clingy careerists and crooks.

So it was up to the update. upper floors parties.
Stalin stated this in his usual cautious manner at the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b) (March 1934).

In his Report, the Secretary General described a certain type of workers who interfere with the party and the country: “... These are people with famous merit in the past, people who believe that party and Soviet laws were written not for them, but for fools. These are the same people who do not consider it their duty to carry out the decisions of the party organs...

What are they counting on by violating Party and Soviet laws? They hope that the Soviet authorities will not dare to touch them because of their old merits. These arrogant nobles think that they are irreplaceable and that they can violate the decisions of the governing bodies with impunity ... ".

The results of the first five-year plan showed that the old Bolshevik-Leninists, with all their revolutionary merits, are not able to cope with the scale of the reconstructed economy. Not burdened with professional skills, poorly educated (Yezhov wrote in his autobiography: education - unfinished primary), washed in the blood of the Civil War, they could not "saddle" the complex production realities.

Formally, the real power in the localities belonged to the Soviets, since the party did not have any legal authority. But the party bosses were elected chairmen of the Soviets, and, in fact, they appointed themselves to these positions, since the elections were held on a non-alternative basis, that is, they were not elections.

And then Stalin undertakes a very risky maneuver - he proposes to establish real, and not nominal, Soviet power in the country, that is, to hold secret general elections in party organizations and councils at all levels on an alternative basis.

Stalin tried to get rid of the party regional barons, as they say, in a good way, through elections, and really alternative ones. Considering Soviet practice, this sounds rather unusual, but it is true nonetheless. He expected that the majority of this public would not overcome the popular filter without support from above.

In addition, according to the new constitution, it was planned to nominate candidates to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR not only from the CPSU (b), but also from public organizations and groups of citizens.

What happened next? On December 5, 1936, the new Constitution of the USSR was adopted, the most democratic constitution of that time in the whole world, even according to the ardent critics of the USSR. For the first time in Russian history, secret alternative elections were to be held. By secret ballot.

Despite the fact that the party elite tried to put a spoke in the wheel even at the time when the draft constitution was being created, Stalin managed to bring the matter to an end.

The regional party elite understood very well that with the help of these new elections to the new Supreme Soviet, Stalin plans to carry out a peaceful rotation of the entire ruling element. And there were about 250 thousand of them. By the way, the NKVD was counting on about this number of investigations.

Understand something they understood, but what to do? I don't want to part with my chairs. And they perfectly understood one more circumstance - in the previous period they had done such a thing, especially during the Civil War and collectivization, that the people with great pleasure would not only not have chosen them, but also would have broken their heads. The hands of many high regional party secretaries were up to the elbows in blood.

During the period of collectivization in the regions there was complete arbitrariness. In one of the regions Khataevich, this nice man, actually declared a civil war in the course of collectivization in his particular region.

As a result, Stalin was forced to threaten him that he would shoot him immediately if he did not stop mocking people. Do you think that comrades Eikhe, Postyshev, Kosior and Khrushchev were better, were less "nice"? Of course, the people remembered all this in 1937, and after the elections these bloodsuckers would have gone into the woods.

Stalin really planned such a peaceful rotation operation, he openly told the American correspondent in March 1936, Howard Roy, about this. He stated that these elections would be a good whip in the hands of the people to change the leadership, he said it directly - "a whip." Will yesterday's "gods" of their districts tolerate the whip?

The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in June 1936, directly aimed the party elite at new times. When discussing the draft of the new constitution, A. Zhdanov, in his extensive report, spoke quite unambiguously: “The new electoral system ... will give a powerful impetus to improving the work of Soviet bodies, eliminating bureaucratic bodies, eliminating bureaucratic shortcomings and perversions in the work of our Soviet organizations.

And these shortcomings, as you know, are very significant. Our party organs must be ready for the electoral struggle...”. And he went on to say that these elections would be a serious, serious test of Soviet workers, because the secret ballot gives ample opportunities to reject candidates who are undesirable and objectionable to the masses, that party organs are obliged to distinguish such criticism from hostile activity, that non-party candidates should be treated with all support. and attention, because, to put it delicately, there are several times more of them than party members.

In Zhdanov's report, the terms "intra-party democracy", "democratic centralism", "democratic elections" were publicly voiced. And demands were put forward: to ban the "nomination" of candidates without elections, to ban voting at party meetings by a "list", to ensure "an unlimited right to challenge the candidates put forward by party members and an unlimited right to criticize these candidates."

The last phrase referred entirely to the elections of purely party bodies, where there had not been a shadow of democracy for a long time. But, as we see, the general elections to the Soviet and party bodies have not been forgotten either.

Stalin and his people demand democracy! And if this is not democracy, then explain to me what, then, is considered democracy ?!

And how do the party nobles who gathered at the plenum react to Zhdanov's report, the first secretaries of the regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the national communist parties? And they miss it all! Because such innovations are by no means to the taste of the very “old Leninist guard”, which has not yet been destroyed by Stalin, but is sitting at the plenum in all its grandeur and splendor.

Because the vaunted "Leninist guard" is a bunch of petty satrapchiks. They are used to living in their estates as barons, single-handedly managing the life and death of people. The debate on Zhdanov's report was practically disrupted.

Despite Stalin's direct calls to discuss the reforms seriously and in detail, the old guard with paranoid persistence turns to more pleasant and understandable topics: terror, terror, terror! What the hell are reforms?!

There are more urgent tasks: beat the hidden enemy, burn, catch, reveal! The people's commissars, the first secretaries - all talk about the same thing: how they recklessly and on a large scale reveal the enemies of the people, how they intend to raise this campaign to cosmic heights ...

Stalin is losing patience. When the next speaker appears on the podium, without waiting for him to open his mouth, he ironically throws: - Have all the enemies been identified or are there still? The speaker, the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee, Kabakov, (another future "innocent victim of the Stalinist terror") lets the irony fall on deaf ears and habitually crackles about the fact that the electoral activity of the masses, so that you know, is just "quite often used by hostile elements for counter-revolutionary work ".

They are incurable!!! They just don't know how! They don't want reforms, they don't want secret ballots, they don't want a few candidates on the ballot. Foaming at the mouth, they defend the old system, where there is no democracy, but only the "boyar volushka" ...

On the podium - Molotov. He says practical, sensible things: you need to identify
real enemies and pests, and not throw mud at everyone without exception
production captains. We must finally learn to DIFFERENTIATE THE GUILTY FROM THE INNOCENT.

It is necessary to reform the bloated bureaucratic apparatus, IT IS NECESSARY TO EVALUATE PEOPLE ON THEIR BUSINESS QUALITIES AND DO NOT LIST THE PAST ERRORS. And the party boyars are all about the same thing: to look for and catch enemies with all the ardor! Eradicate deeper, plant more! For a change, they enthusiastically and loudly begin to drown each other: Kudryavtsev - Postysheva, Andreev - Sheboldaeva, Polonsky - Shvernik, Khrushchev - Yakovlev.

Molotov, unable to stand it, openly says:
- In a number of cases, listening to the speakers, one could come to the conclusion that our resolutions and our reports went past the ears of the speakers ...

Exactly! They didn't just pass - they whistled... Most of those gathered in the hall do not know how to work or reform. But they perfectly know how to catch and identify enemies, they adore this occupation and cannot imagine life without it.

Doesn't it seem strange to you that this "executioner" Stalin directly imposed democracy, and his future "innocent victims" ran away from this democracy like hell from incense. Yes, and demanded repression, and more.

In short, it was not the “tyrant Stalin,” but precisely the “cosmopolitan Leninist party guard,” who ruled the roost at the June 1936 plenum, buried all attempts at a democratic thaw. She did not give Stalin the opportunity to get rid of them, as they say, in a GOOD way, through the elections.

Stalin's authority was so great that the party barons did not dare to openly protest, and in 1936 the Constitution of the USSR was adopted, and nicknamed Stalin's, which provided for the transition to real Soviet democracy. However, the party nomenklatura reared up and carried out a massive attack on the leader in order to convince him to postpone the holding of free elections until the fight against the counter-revolutionary element was completed.

Regional party bosses, members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, began to whip up passions, referring to the recently discovered conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military: they say, it is only necessary to give such an opportunity, as hidden kulak shortcomings, clergymen, former white officers and nobles, Trotskyists-saboteurs will rush into politics .

They demanded not only to curtail any plans for democratization, but also to strengthen emergency measures, and even introduce special quotas for mass repressions in the regions - they say, in order to finish off those Trotskyists who escaped punishment. The party nomenklatura demanded the powers to repress these enemies, and it won these powers for itself.

And then the small-town party barons, who made up the majority in the Central Committee, frightened for their leadership positions, begin repressions, first of all, against those honest communists who could become competitors in future elections by secret ballot.

The nature of the repressions against honest communists was such that the composition of some district committees and regional committees changed two or three times in a year. Communists at party conferences refused to be members of city committees and regional committees. We understood that after a while you can be in the camp. And that's the best...

In 1937, about 100,000 people were expelled from the party (24,000 in the first half of the year and 76,000 in the second). About 65,000 appeals accumulated in district committees and regional committees, which there was no one and no time to consider, since the party was engaged in the process of denunciation and expulsion.

At the January plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, Malenkov, who made a report on this issue, said that in some areas the Party Control Commission restored from 50 to 75% of those expelled and convicted.

Moreover, at the June 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee, the nomenclature, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually gave Stalin and his Politburo an ultimatum: either he approves the lists submitted "from below" subject to repression, or he himself will be removed.

The party nomenklatura at this plenum demanded authority for repression. And Stalin was forced to give them permission, but he acted very cunningly - he gave them short term, five days. Of these five days, one day is Sunday. He expected that they would not meet in such a short time.

But it turns out that these scoundrels already had lists. They simply took lists of kulaks, former white officers and nobles, wrecking Trotskyites, priests, and simply ordinary citizens who had served time in prison, and sometimes not who did, classified as class alien elements.

Literally on the second day, telegrams from the localities went. Comrades Khrushchev and Eikhe were the first. Then, in 1954, Nikita Khrushchev was the first to rehabilitate his friend Robert Eikhe, who was shot in justice for all his cruelties in 1939.

Ballot papers with several candidates were no longer discussed at the Plenum: reform plans were reduced solely to the fact that candidates for elections would be nominated “jointly” by communists and non-party people. And from now on, there will be only one candidate in each ballot - for the sake of rebuffing intrigues.

And in addition - another verbose verbiage about the need to identify the masses of entrenched enemies.

Stalin also made another mistake. He sincerely believed that N.I. Yezhov was a man of his team. After all, for so many years they worked together in the Central Committee, shoulder to shoulder. And Yezhov has long been best friend Evdokimov, an ardent Trotskyist.

For 1937-38 triplets in Rostov region, where Evdokimov was the first secretary of the regional committee, 12,445 people were shot, more than 90 thousand were repressed. These are the figures carved by the "Memorial" society in one of the Rostov parks on the monument to the victims of ... Stalinist (?!) repressions.

Subsequently, when Yevdokimov was shot, an audit found that in the Rostov region he lay motionless and more than 18.5 thousand appeals were not considered. And how many of them were not written! The best party cadres, experienced business executives, the intelligentsia were destroyed ... But what, he was the only one like that.

In this regard, the memoirs of the famous poet Nikolai Zabolotsky are interesting: “A strange confidence ripened in my head that we were in the hands of the Nazis, who, under the nose of our government, found a way to destroy Soviet people, acting in the very center of the Soviet punitive system.

I told this guess of mine to an old party member who was sitting with me, and with horror in his eyes he confessed to me that he himself thought the same thing, but did not dare to hint about it to anyone. And indeed, how else could we explain all the horrors that happened to us ... "

But back to Nikolai Yezhov. By 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, G. Yagoda, staffed the NKVD with scum, obvious traitors and those who replaced their work with hack work. N. Yezhov, who replaced him, followed the lead of the hacks and, in order to distinguish himself from the country, turned a blind eye to the fact that NKVD investigators opened hundreds of thousands of hack cases against people, mostly completely innocent. (For example, Generals A. Gorbatov and K. Rokossovsky were sent to prison.)

And the flywheel of the “great terror” began to spin with its infamous extrajudicial triples and limits on the highest measure. Fortunately, this flywheel quickly crushed those who initiated the process itself, and Stalin's merit is that he made the most of the opportunities to clean up the upper echelons of power from all kinds of bastards.

Not Stalin, but Robert Indrikovich Eikhe proposed the creation of extrajudicial reprisals, the famous "troikas", similar to Stolypin's, consisting of the first secretary, the local prosecutor and the head of the NKVD (city, region, region, republic). Stalin was against it. But the Politburo voted.

Well, in the fact that a year later it was precisely such a trio that leaned Comrade Eikhe against the wall, there is, in my deep conviction, nothing but sad justice. The party elite directly joined in the massacre with rapture!

And let's take a closer look at him, the repressed regional party baron. And, in fact, what were they like, both in business and moral, and in purely human terms? What did they cost as people and specialists? ONLY THE NOSE FIRST CLAMP, I RECOMMEND SOULLY.

In short, party members, military men, scientists, writers, composers, musicians and everyone else, right up to noble rabbit breeders and Komsomol members, ate each other with rapture. Who sincerely believed that he was obliged to exterminate the enemies, who settled scores. So there is no need to talk about whether the NKVD beat on the noble physiognomy of this or that “innocently injured figure” or not.

The party regional nomenklatura has achieved the most important thing: after all, in conditions of mass terror, free elections are not possible. Stalin was never able to carry them out. The end of a brief thaw. Stalin never pushed through his block of reforms. True, at that plenum he said remarkable words: “Party organizations will be freed from economic work, although this will not happen immediately. This takes time."

But, again, back to Yezhov N.I. Nikolai Ivanovich was a new person in the “organs”, he started well, but quickly fell under the influence of his deputy: Frinovsky ( former boss Special Department of the First Cavalry Army). He taught the new People's Commissar the basics of Chekist work right "in production." The basics were extremely simple: the more enemies of the people we catch, the better. You can and should hit, but hitting and drinking is even more fun.

Drunk on vodka, blood and impunity, the People's Commissar soon frankly "floated". He did not particularly hide his new views from others. “What are you afraid of? he said at one of the banquets. After all, all power is in our hands. Whom we want - we execute, whom we want - we pardon: - After all, we are everything. It is necessary that everyone, starting from the secretary of the regional committee, walk under you.

If the secretary of the regional committee was supposed to go under the head of the regional department of the NKVD, then who, one wonders, was supposed to go under Yezhov? With such personnel and such views, the NKVD became mortally dangerous for both the authorities and the country.

It is difficult to say when the Kremlin began to realize what was happening. Probably somewhere in the first half of 1938. But to realize - they realized, but how to curb the monster? It is clear that by that time the People's Commissar of the NKVD had become deadly dangerous, and it had to be "normalized".

But how? What, raise the troops, bring all the Chekists to the courtyards of the administrations and line them up against the wall? There is no other way, because, having barely sensed the danger, they would simply have swept away the authorities.

After all, the same NKVD was in charge of protecting the Kremlin, so the members of the Politburo would have died without even having time to understand anything. After that, a dozen “blood-washed” would be put in their places, and the whole country would turn into one large West Siberian region with Robert Eikhe at the head. THE COMING OF THE HITLER TROOPS THE PEOPLES OF THE USSR WOULD BE ACCEPTED AS HAPPINESS.

There was only one way out - to put your man in the NKVD. Moreover, a person of such a level of loyalty, courage and professionalism that he could, on the one hand, cope with the management of the NKVD, and on the other, stop the monster. It is unlikely that Stalin had a large selection of such people. Well, at least one was found. But what - Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich.

The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, a former Chekist, a talented manager, in no way a party idler, a man of action. And how it appears! For four hours, the "tyrant" Stalin and Malenkov persuade Yezhov to take Lavrenty Pavlovich as First Deputy. Four o'clock!!!

Yezhov is being pressured slowly - Beria is slowly taking control of the People's Commissariat of State Security into his own hands, slowly placing loyal people in key positions, just as young, energetic, smart, businesslike, not at all like the former barons who have been snickering.

Elena Prudnikova, a journalist and writer who devoted several books to researching the activities of I.V. Stalin and L.P. Beria, said in one of the TV programs that Lenin, Stalin, Beria are three titans whom the Lord God sent in His great mercy Russia, because, apparently, he still needed Russia then. I hope that she is Russia and in our time He will need it soon.

In general, the term "Stalin's repressions" is speculative, because it was not Stalin who initiated them. The unanimous opinion of one part of the liberal perestroika and current ideologists that Stalin thus strengthened his power by physically eliminating his opponents is easily explained.

These wimps simply judge others by themselves: if they have such an opportunity, they will readily devour anyone they see as a danger. No wonder Alexander Sytin is a political scientist, doctor historical sciences, a prominent neo-liberal, in one of the recent TV programs with V. Solovyov, argued that in Russia it is NECESSARY TO CREATE A DICTATORY OF TEN PERCENT OF A LIBERAL MINORITY, which then will definitely lead the peoples of Russia into a bright capitalist tomorrow. He modestly kept silent about the price of this campaign.

Another part of these gentlemen believes that allegedly Stalin, who wanted to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to crack down on everyone who had the slightest doubt about his genius. And, above all, with those who, together with Lenin, created the October Revolution.

Like, that's why almost the entire "Leninist guard" innocently went under the ax, and at the same time the top of the Red Army, who were accused of a never-existing conspiracy against Stalin. However, a closer study of these events raises many questions that cast doubt on this version.

In principle, thinking historians have had doubts for a long time. And doubts were sown not by some Stalinist historians, but by those eyewitnesses who themselves did not like the "father of all Soviet peoples."

For example, the memoirs of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Orlov (Leiba Feldbin), who fled from our country in the late 1930s, having taken a huge amount of state dollars, were published in the West at one time. Orlov, who knew well the "inner kitchen" of his native NKVD, wrote directly that a coup d'état was being prepared in the Soviet Union.

Among the conspirators, according to him, were both representatives of the leadership of the NKVD and the Red Army in the person of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the commander of the Kiev military district, Iona Yakir. The conspiracy became known to Stalin, who took very tough retaliatory actions ...

And in the 80s, the archives of Joseph Vissarionovich's main opponent, Lev Trotsky, were declassified in the United States. From these documents it became clear that Trotsky had an extensive underground network in the Soviet Union.

Living abroad, Lev Davidovich demanded from his people decisive action to destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union, up to the organization of mass terrorist actions.

In the 90s, our archives already opened access to the protocols of interrogations of the repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. By the nature of these materials, by the abundance of facts and evidence presented in them, today's independent experts have drawn three important conclusions.

First, the overall picture of a broad conspiracy against Stalin looks very, very convincing. Such testimonies could not be orchestrated or faked to please the “father of nations”. Especially in the part where it was about the military plans of the conspirators.

Here is what the well-known historian and publicist Sergei Kremlev said about this: “Take and read the testimony of Tukhachevsky given to him after his arrest. The very confessions of a conspiracy are accompanied by a deep analysis of the military-political situation in the USSR in the mid-30s, with detailed calculations on the general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other capabilities.

The question is, could such testimony be invented by an ordinary NKVD investigator who was in charge of the marshal's case and who allegedly set out to falsify Tukhachevsky's testimony?! No, these testimonies, moreover, voluntarily, could only be given by knowledgeable person no less than the level of the deputy people's commissar of defense, which was Tukhachevsky.

Secondly, the very manner of the conspirators' own handwritten confessions, their handwriting spoke of what their people wrote themselves, in fact voluntarily, without physical impact by the investigators. This destroyed the myth that testimony was always rudely beaten out by the force of "Stalin's executioners", although this was also the case.

Thirdly. Western Sovietologists and the emigre public, having no access to archival materials, were forced to actually suck their judgments about the scale of repressions. At best, they contented themselves with interviews with dissidents who either themselves had been imprisoned in the past, or cited the stories of those who had gone through the Gulag.

A. Solzhenitsyn set the highest bar in assessing the number of “victims of communism”, when in 1976 in an interview with Spanish television about 110 million victims. The ceiling of 110 million announced by Solzhenitsyn was systematically reduced to 12.5 million people of the Memorial society.

However, according to the results of 10 years of work, "Memorial" managed to collect data on only 2.6 million victims of repression, which is very close to the figure voiced by V. Zemskov almost 20 years ago - 4 million people.

After the archives were opened, the West did not believe that the number of repressed people was much less than R. Conquest or A. Solzhenitsyn indicated. In total, according to archival data, for the period from 1921 to 1953, 3,777,380 were convicted, of which 642,980 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

Subsequently, this figure was increased to 4,060,306 people at the expense of 282,926 shot under paragraphs. 2 and 3 Art. 59 (especially dangerous banditry) and Art. 193 p.24 (military espionage and sabotage). Where the blood-washed Basmachi, Bandera, Baltic "forest brothers" and other especially dangerous, bloody bandits, spies and saboteurs entered. There is more human blood on them than there is water in the Volga. And they are also considered innocent victims of Stalinist repressions. And Stalin is blamed for all this.

(Let me remind you that until 1928, Stalin was not the sole leader of the USSR. AND HE RECEIVED FULL POWER OVER THE PARTY, THE ARMY AND THE NKVD ONLY FROM THE END OF 1938).

These figures are at first glance scary. But only for the first. Let's compare. On June 28, 1990, an interview with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR appeared in the national newspapers, where he said: “We are literally being overwhelmed by a wave of criminality. Over the past 30 years, 38 MILLION OUR CITIZENS have been under trial, investigation, in prisons and colonies. It's a terrible number! Every ninth…”.

So. A crowd of Western journalists came to the USSR in 1990. The goal is to familiarize yourself with open archives. We got acquainted with the archives of the NKVD - they did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat railways. We got acquainted - it turned out 4 million. They did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat of Food. We got acquainted - it turned out 4 million repressed. We got acquainted with the clothing allowance of the camps. It turned out - 4 million repressed.

Do you think that after that, articles with the correct numbers of repressions appeared in the Western media in batches. Yes, nothing of the sort. They still write and talk about tens of millions of victims of repressions.

I want to note that the analysis of the process called “mass repressions” shows that this phenomenon is extremely multi-layered. There are real cases there: about conspiracies and espionage, political trials against hard-nosed oppositionists, cases about the crimes of the presumptuous owners of the regions and the Soviet party officials who “floated” from power.

But there are also many falsified cases: settling scores in the corridors of power, intriguing at work, communal squabbles, literary rivalry, scientific competition, persecution of clergymen who supported the kulaks during collectivization, squabbles between artists, musicians and composers.

AND THERE IS CLINICAL PSYCHIATRY - THE MILLNESS OF THE INVESTIGATORS AND THE MILLNESS OF THE INFORMERS (four million denunciations were written in 1937-38). But what has not been found is the cases concocted at the direction of the Kremlin. There are reverse examples - when, at the will of Stalin, someone was taken out from under execution, or even released altogether.

There is one more thing to be understood. The term “repression” is a medical term (suppression, blocking) and was introduced specifically to remove the question of guilt. Imprisoned in the late 30s, which means he is innocent, as he was “repressed”.

In addition, the term "repression" was put into circulation to be used initially in order to give an appropriate moral coloring to the entire Stalinist period without going into details.

The events of the 1930s showed that the main problem for the Soviet government was the party and state "apparatus", which consisted to a large extent of unscrupulous, illiterate and greedy co-workers, leading party members-talkers, attracted by the fat smell of revolutionary robbery.

Such an apparatus was exceptionally inefficient and uncontrollable, which was like death for the totalitarian Soviet state, in which everything depended on the apparatus.

It was from then on that Stalin made repression an important institution of state administration and a means of keeping the "apparatus" in check. Naturally, the apparatus became the main object of these repressions. Moreover, repression has become an important instrument of state building. Stalin assumed that it was possible to make a workable bureaucracy out of the corrupted Soviet apparatus only after SEVERAL STAGES of repressions.

Liberals will say that this is the whole of Stalin, that he could not live without repressions, without the persecution of honest people. But here is what American intelligence officer John Scott reported to the US State Department about who was repressed. He caught these repressions in the Urals in 1937.

“The director of the construction office, who was engaged in the construction of new houses for the workers of the plant, was not satisfied with his salary, which amounted to a thousand rubles a month, and two-room apartment. So he built himself a separate house. The house had five rooms, and he was able to furnish it well: he hung silk curtains, set up a piano, covered the floor with carpets, etc.

Then he began to drive around the city in a car at a time (this happened in early 1937) when there were few private cars in the city. At the same time, the annual plan construction works was completed by his office by only about sixty percent. At meetings and in the newspapers, he was constantly asked questions about the reasons for such poor performance. He answered that there were no building materials, not enough labor, and so on.

An investigation began, during which it turned out that the director appropriated state funds for himself and sold building materials to nearby state farms at speculative prices. It was also discovered that there were people in the construction office whom he specially paid to do his "business".

An open trial took place, lasting several days, at which all these people were judged. They talked a lot about him in Magnitogorsk. In his accusatory speech at the trial, the prosecutor spoke not about theft or bribery, but about sabotage. The director was accused of sabotaging the construction of workers' housing. He was convicted after he fully admitted his guilt, and then shot.”

And here is the reaction of the Soviet people to the purge of 1937 and their position at that time. “Often the workers even rejoice when they arrest some “ important bird”, the leader, whom they for some reason disliked. The workers are also very free to express their critical thoughts both in meetings and in private conversations...

I've heard them use the strongest language when talking about bureaucracy and poor performance by individuals or organizations. ... in the Soviet Union, the situation was somewhat different in that the NKVD, in its work to protect the country from the intrigues of foreign agents, spies and the onset of the old bourgeoisie, counted on the support and assistance from the population and basically received them.

Well, and: “... During the purges, thousands of bureaucrats trembled for their seats. Officials and administrative employees who had previously come to work at ten o'clock and left at half past four and only shrugged their shoulders in response to complaints, difficulties and failures, now sat at work from sunrise to sunset, they began to worry about the successes and failures of the led enterprises, and they actually began to fight for the implementation of the plan, savings and for good conditions life for their subordinates, although before it did not bother them at all.

Readers who are interested in this issue are aware of the incessant moaning of liberals that during the years of the purge, " the best people, the smartest and most capable. Scott also hints at this all the time, but, nevertheless, he seems to sum it up: “After the purges, the administrative apparatus of the entire plant was almost one hundred percent young Soviet engineers.

There are practically no specialists from among the prisoners, and foreign specialists have actually disappeared. However, by 1939 most of the departments, such as the Railroad Administration and the coking plant of the plant, began to work better than ever before.

In the course of party purges and repressions, all prominent party barons, drinking away the gold reserves of Russia, bathing with prostitutes in champagne, seizing noble and merchant palaces for personal use, all disheveled, drugged revolutionaries disappeared like smoke. And this is FAIR.

But to clean out the snickering scoundrels from the high offices is half the battle, it was also necessary to replace them with worthy people. It is very curious how this problem was solved in the NKVD. Firstly, a person was placed at the head of the department, who was alien to the kombartvo, who had no ties with the capital's party top, but a proven professional in business - Lavrenty Beria.

The latter, secondly, mercilessly cleared out the Chekists who had compromised themselves, and thirdly, he carried out a radical reduction in staff, sending people who seemed to be not vile, but professionally unsuitable, to retire or work in other departments. And, finally, the Komsomol conscription to the NKVD was announced, when completely inexperienced guys came to the bodies instead of deserved pensioners or shot scoundrels.

But ... the main criterion for their selection was an impeccable reputation. If in the characteristics from the place of study, work, place of residence, along the Komsomol or party line, there were at least some hints of their unreliability, a tendency to selfishness, laziness, then no one invited them to work in the NKVD.

So here's a very important point which you should pay attention to - the team is formed not on the basis of past merits, professional data of applicants, personal acquaintance and ethnicity, and not even on the basis of the desire of applicants, but solely on the basis of their moral and psychological