Repressions against railroad workers in the 30s. Repression in the USSR. comparative analysis
Federal Agency for Education
State educational institution
higher professional education
"KUBAN STATE UNIVERSITY"
Department of National History
Test
Mass political repressions in the USSR
in the 30s and 40s
The work was done by Shunyaeva E.Yu.
Faculty of FISMO, 4th year,
Specialty - 030401 - History
Checked by ________________________________________________________
Krasnodar, 2011
Introduction
You have no criminal record
not your merit, but our flaw ...
The 30s-40s are one of the most terrible pages in the history of the USSR. So many political processes and repressions were carried out that for many years historians will not be able to restore all the details of the terrible picture of this era. These years cost the country millions of victims, and the victims, as a rule, were talented people, technical specialists, leaders, scientists, writers, intellectuals. The "price" of the struggle for a "happy future" was getting higher and higher. The country's leadership sought to get rid of all free-thinking people. Carrying out one process after another, state bodies have actually decapitated the country.
Terror embraced indiscriminately all regions, all republics. The execution lists included the names of Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Georgians and other representatives of large and small peoples of the country. Its consequences were especially severe for those regions that were distinguished by cultural backwardness before the revolution and where in the 1930s a layer of intelligentsia and specialists quickly formed. Great damage was borne not only by Soviet people, but also by representatives of foreign parties and organizations working in the USSR. The "purge" touched the Comintern as well. They were sent to prisons and concentration camps, and specialists who conscientiously helped the country in raising the economy were expelled from the country in disgrace.
Feeling the approaching disaster, some Soviet leaders fled abroad. A “red” wave of Russian emigration appeared, although not numerous.
The second total crisis of power testified to the growth of distrust, alienation, hostility around the party and state organizations. In response - a policy of suppression, violence, mass terror. The leaders of the ruling party preached that all aspects of society should be imbued with an irreconcilable spirit of class struggle. Although the revolution grew further with each passing year, the number of people convicted of "counter-revolutionary" activities grew rapidly. Millions of people were in the camps, millions were shot. Near a number of large cities (Moscow, Minsk, Vorkuta, etc.), mass graves of the tortured and shot appeared.
The very concept of repression in Latin means suppression, punitive measure, punishment. In other words, suppression through punishment.
At the moment, political repression is one of the hot topics, as they have affected almost every inhabitant of our country. Everyone is inextricably linked to this tragedy. Recently, terrible secrets of that time have very often surfaced, thereby increasing the importance of this problem.
The purpose of this work is to identify the scale of mass political repressions in the USSR in this period.
The ideological basis of repression
The ideological basis of Stalin's repressions (the destruction of "class enemies", the fight against nationalism and "great-power chauvinism", etc.) was formed back in the years of the civil war. Stalin himself formulated a new approach (the concept of “intensifying the class struggle as socialism is completed”) at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in July 1928:
“We often say that we are developing socialist forms of economy in the field of trade. What does it mean? This means that we are thus ousting thousands and thousands of small and medium traders from trade. Is it possible to think that these merchants, ousted from the sphere of circulation, will sit silently, not trying to organize resistance? It is clear that it is impossible.
We often say that we are developing socialist forms of economy in the field of industry. What does it mean? This means that we are ousting and ruining, perhaps without noticing it ourselves, by our progress towards socialism, thousands upon thousands of small and medium capitalist industrialists. Is it possible to think that these ruined people will sit in silence, not trying to organize resistance? Of course not.
We often say that it is necessary to limit the exploitative encroachments of the kulaks in the countryside, that high taxes must be imposed on the kulaks, that the right to rent must be limited, that the right to elect kulaks to the Soviets must be prevented, and so on and so forth. And what does this mean? This means that we are gradually crushing and ousting the capitalist elements in the countryside, sometimes bringing them to ruin. Can we assume that the kulaks will be grateful to us for this, and that they will not try to organize part of the poor or middle peasants against the policy of Soviet power? Of course not.
Is it not clear that all our progress forward, each of our success of any kind in the field of socialist construction, is an expression and result of the class struggle in our country?
But it follows from all this that, as we advance, the resistance of the capitalist elements will increase, the class struggle will intensify, and the Soviet government, whose strength will grow more and more, will pursue a policy of isolating these elements, a policy of disintegrating the enemies of the working class. and, finally, the policy of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters, creating the basis for the further advancement of the working class and the bulk of the peasantry.
It cannot be imagined that socialist forms will develop, ousting the enemies of the working class, and the enemies will retreat silently, making way for our advance, that then we will again move forward, and they will retreat again, and then "suddenly" all without exception social groups, both kulaks and the poor, both workers and capitalists, will "suddenly", "imperceptibly", without struggle or unrest, find themselves in the bosom of socialist society. Such fairy tales do not exist and cannot exist at all, especially in a proletarian dictatorship.
It has not happened and will not happen that the moribund classes voluntarily give up their positions without trying to organize resistance. It has never happened and never will be that the advance of the working class towards socialism in a class society can do without struggle and unrest. On the contrary, the advance towards socialism cannot but lead to the resistance of the exploiting elements to this advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable intensification of the class struggle. one
dispossession
During the forced collectivization of agriculture, which was carried out in the USSR in the period from 1928 to 1932, one of the directions of state policy was the suppression of anti-Soviet speeches by the peasants and the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class", in other words, "dispossession". It involved the forcible and extrajudicial deprivation of wealthy peasants of all means of production, land and civil rights, and their subsequent eviction to remote regions of the country.
Thus, the state destroyed the main social group of the rural population.
Any peasant could get on the lists of kulaks. The scale of resistance to collectivization was so great that it captured not only the kulaks, but also many middle peasants who opposed collectivization.
The protests of the peasants against collectivization, against high taxes and the forced seizure of "surplus" grain were expressed in its harboring, arson, and even the murders of rural party and Soviet activists.
On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization." According to the decree, kulaks were divided into three categories:
1. Counter-revolutionary asset, organizers of terrorist acts and uprisings
2. The rest of the counter-revolutionary asset of the richest kulaks and semi-landlords
3. The rest of the fists
The heads of kulak families of the first category were arrested, and cases of their actions were referred to special construction teams consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (district committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor's office. Family members of kulaks of the first category and kulaks of the second category were subject to eviction to remote areas of the USSR or remote areas of the region, territory, republic to a special settlement.
On February 2, 1930, order No. 44/21 of the OGPU of the USSR was issued, which provided for the immediate liquidation of "counter-revolutionary kulak activists", especially "cadres of active counter-revolutionary and insurgent organizations and groups" and "the most malicious, terry loners."
The families of those arrested, imprisoned in concentration camps or sentenced to death were subject to deportation to the remote northern regions of the USSR.
The order also provided for the mass eviction of the richest kulaks, i.e. former landlords, semi-landlords, "local kulak authorities" and "the entire kulak cadre, from which the counter-revolutionary activist is formed", "kulak anti-Soviet activist", "churchmen and sectarians", as well as their families to the remote northern regions of the USSR. As well as the priority conduct of campaigns for the eviction of kulaks and their families in the following regions of the USSR.
In this regard, the OGPU bodies were entrusted with the task of organizing the resettlement of the dispossessed and their labor use at the place of their new residence, suppressing unrest of the dispossessed in special settlements, and searching for those who had fled from places of exile. The direct management of the mass resettlement was carried out by a special task force under the leadership of the head of the Secret Operational Directorate E.G. Evdokimov. The spontaneous unrest of the peasants in the field was suppressed instantly. Only in the summer of 1931 did it take the involvement of army units to reinforce the OGPU troops in suppressing major unrest of special settlers in the Urals and Western Siberia.
In total, in 1930-1931, as indicated in the certificate of the Department for Special Settlers of the Gulag of the OGPU, 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent to a special settlement. For 1932-1940. 489,822 dispossessed people arrived in special settlements.
"Lightning rod" - Shakhty process
The growing dissatisfaction of the workers - an inevitable consequence of the "belt-tightening policy" - the party-state leadership managed to channel "special eating" into the mainstream. The role of a lightning rod was played by the "Shakhty trial" (1928). According to it, engineers and technicians of the Donetsk basin were held liable, accused of deliberate wrecking, of organizing explosions in mines, of criminal ties with the former owners of Donetsk mines, of purchasing unnecessary imported equipment, violating safety regulations, labor laws, etc. e. In addition, some leaders of the Ukrainian industry were involved in this case, allegedly constituting the “Kharkov center”, which led the activities of wreckers. The "Moscow center" was also "revealed". According to the prosecution, the wrecking organizations of Donbass were financed by Western capitalists.
Sessions of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR on the "Shakhty case" were held in the summer of 1928 in Moscow under the chairmanship of A. Ya. Vyshinsky. At trial, some of the defendants admitted only part of the charges brought against them, while others completely rejected them; There were also those who pleaded guilty to all charges. The court acquitted four of the 53 defendants, sentenced four of them to suspended sentences, nine people to imprisonment for a term of one to three years. Most of the accused were sentenced to long-term imprisonment - from four to ten years, 11 people were sentenced to death (five of them were shot, and six of them were commuted by the Central Executive Committee of the USSR).
What really happened in the Donbass? R. A. Medvedev cites an interesting testimony of the old Chekist S. O. Gazaryan, who worked for a long time in the economic department of the NKVD of Transcaucasia (and was arrested in 1937). Gazaryan said that in 1928 he came to the Donbass in order to “exchange experience” in the work of the economic departments of the NKVD. According to him, criminal mismanagement was a common occurrence in the Donbass at that time, which caused many serious accidents with human casualties (flooding and explosions in mines, etc.). Both in the center and in the localities, the Soviet and economic apparatus was still imperfect, there were many random and unscrupulous people, bribery, theft, and neglect of the interests of the working people flourished in a number of economic and Soviet organizations. For all these crimes it was necessary, of course, to punish the guilty. It is possible that there were isolated cases of sabotage in the Donbass, and one of the engineers received letters from some former owner of the mine who had fled abroad. But all this could not serve as a basis for a high-profile political process. In most cases, accusations of sabotage, in connection with various kinds of “centers” and foreign counter-revolutionary organizations were added during the course of the investigation to various criminal charges (theft, bribery, mismanagement, etc.). Promising prisoners for "necessary" testimony to mitigate their fate, the investigators resorted to such forgery, allegedly for "ideological" reasons: "it is necessary to mobilize the masses", "raise their anger against imperialism", "increase vigilance". In reality, these forgeries pursued one goal: to divert the discontent of the broad masses of working people from the party leadership, which encouraged the race for maximum performance industrialization.
The "Shakhty case" was discussed at two plenums of the Central Committee of the party. “The so-called Shakhty case cannot be considered an accident,” Stalin said at the plenum of the Central Committee in April 1929. “Shakhtintsy” are now sitting in all branches of our industry. Many of them have been caught, but not all of them have been caught yet. The wrecking of the bourgeois intelligentsia is one of the most dangerous forms of resistance against developing socialism. Wrecking is all the more dangerous because it is connected with international capital. Bourgeois sabotage is an undoubted indication that the capitalist elements are far from laying down their arms, that they are accumulating strength for new actions against the Soviet regime.
"Specialism"
The concept of "Shakhtintsy" has become a household word, as if a synonym for "wrecking". The "Shakhty case" served as a pretext for a lengthy propaganda campaign. The publication of materials about "sabotage" in the Donbass caused an emotional storm in the country. The collectives demanded the immediate convening of meetings, the organization of rallies. At the meetings, the workers spoke out in favor of increased attention from the administration to the needs of production, for strengthening the protection of enterprises. From the observations of the OGPU in Leningrad: “The workers are now carefully discussing every malfunction in production, suspecting malicious intent; expressions are often heard: “isn’t the second Donbass with us?” In the form of "special eating", the extremely painful question for the workers about social justice splashed to the surface. Finally, the specific culprits of the outrages being created were “found”, people who, in the eyes of the workers, embodied the source of numerous cases of infringement of their rights, neglect of their interests: old specialists, engineering and technical workers - “specialists”, as they were then called . The intrigues of the counter-revolution were announced in the collectives, for example, a delay in the payment of wages for two or three hours, a reduction in prices, etc.
In Moscow, at the Trekhgornaya Manufactory factory, the workers said: “The Party trusted the specialists too much, and they began to dictate to us. They pretend to help us in our work, but in fact they are carrying out a counter-revolution. Specialists will never come with us.” And here are the characteristic statements recorded at the Krasny Oktyabr factory in the Nizhny Novgorod province: “Specialists were given freedom, privileges, apartments, huge salaries; live like in the old days. In many collectives there were calls for severe punishment of "criminals". A meeting of workers in the Sokolnichesky district of Moscow demanded: "Everyone must be shot, otherwise there will be no peace." At the Perov ship base: "You need to shoot this bastard in batches."
Playing on the worst feelings of the masses, in 1930 the regime inspired a number of political trials against "bourgeois specialists" who were accused of "sabotage" and other mortal sins. So, in the spring of 1930, an open political trial took place in Ukraine in the case of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. The head of this mythical organization was declared the largest Ukrainian scientist, vice-president of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) S. A. Efremov. In addition to him, there were over 40 people on the dock: scientists, teachers, priests, leaders of the cooperative movement, medical workers.
In the same year, the disclosure of another counter-revolutionary organization, the Labor Peasant Party (TKP), was announced. The outstanding economists N. D. Kondratiev, A. V. Chayanov, L. N. Yurovsky, the outstanding agronomist A. G. Doyarenko and some others were announced as its leaders. In the autumn of 1930, the OGPU was announced to be a wrecking and espionage organization in the field of supplying the population with the most important food products, especially meat, fish and vegetables. According to the OGPU, the organization was headed by the former landowner - Professor A.V. Ryazantsev and the former landowner General E.S. Karatygin, as well as other former nobles and industrialists, Cadets and Mensheviks, to responsible positions in the Supreme Council of National Economy, the People's Commissariat of Trade, Soyuzmyaso, Soyuzryba, Soyuzplodovoshch, etc. As reported in the press, these "pests" managed to upset the food supply system of many cities and workers' settlements, organize famine in a number of regions of the country, they were blamed for the increase in prices for meat and meat products, etc. Unlike other similar trials, the sentence in this case was extremely severe; all 46 people involved were shot by order of a closed court.
On November 25 - December 7, 1930, a trial took place in Moscow over a group of prominent technical specialists accused of wrecking and counter-revolutionary activities of the process of the Industrial Party. Eight people were brought to trial on charges of sabotage and espionage: L.K. I. A. Kalinnikov, I. F. Charnovsky, A. A. Fedotov, S. V. Kupriyanov, V. I. Ochkin, K. V. Sitnin. At the trial, all the defendants pleaded guilty and gave detailed testimonies about their espionage and sabotage activities.
A few months after the trial of the Industrial Party, an open political trial was held in Moscow in the case of the so-called Allied Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Mensheviks). V. G. Groman, a member of the Presidium of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, V. V. Sher, a member of the board of the State Bank, N. N. Sukhanov, a writer, A. M. Ginzburg, an economist, M. P. Yakubovich, a responsible worker of the People's Commissariat of Trade of the USSR, V. K. Ikov, a writer, I. I. Rubin, a professor of political economy, and others, 14 people in total. The defendants pleaded guilty and gave detailed testimony. Convicted in "anti-specialist" trials (with the exception of the executed "supplies") received various terms of imprisonment.
How did investigators get "confessions"? MP Yakubovich later recalled: “Some ... succumbed to the promise of future blessings. Others who tried to resist were “admonished” with physical methods of influence - they beat (they beat them in the face and head, in the genitals, threw them on the floor and trampled them with their feet, strangled those lying on the floor by the throat until their face was filled with blood, etc. . p.), kept awake on the “conveyor”, put in a punishment cell (half-dressed and barefoot in the cold or in unbearably hot and stuffy without windows), etc. For some, one threat of such exposure was enough - from the appropriate demonstration -tion. For others, it was applied to varying degrees - strictly individually - depending on the resistance of each.
"Socially alien elements"
If the peasantry paid the heaviest tribute to the voluntaristic Stalinist plan for a radical change of society, then other social groups, called "socially alien", were, under various pretexts, thrown to the sidelines of the new society, deprived of civil rights, expelled from work, left homeless, lowered down the stairs. social ladder, sent to the link. The clergy, freelancers, small entrepreneurs, merchants and artisans were the main victims of the "anti-capitalist revolution" that began in the 1930s. The population of cities was now included in the category of "working class, builder of socialism", however, the working class was also subjected to repression, which, in accordance with the dominant ideology, became an end in itself, hindering the active movement of society towards progress.
The famous trial in the city of Shakhty* marked the end of the "respite" in the confrontation between the authorities and specialists started in 1921. On the eve of the "launch" of the first five-year plan, the political lesson of the process in Shakhty became clear: skepticism, indecision, indifference to the steps taken by the party, could only lead to sabotage. To doubt is to betray. The "persecution of the specialist" was deeply embedded in the Bolshevik consciousness, and the trial in Shakhty became the signal for other similar trials. Specialists have become scapegoats for the economic setbacks and hardships generated by falling living standards. Since the end of 1928, thousands of industrial personnel, "old-mode engineers" have been fired, deprived of food cards, free access to doctors, sometimes evicted from their homes. In 1929, thousands of officials from the State Planning Commission, Narkomfin, Narkomzem, Commissariat for Trade were dismissed under the pretext of "right deviation", sabotage, or belonging to "socially alien elements." Indeed, 80% of Narkomfin officials served under the tsarist regime.
The campaign to “purge” individual institutions intensified in the summer of 1930, when Stalin, wanting to put an end to the “rightists” forever, and in particular Rykov, who at that moment held the post of head of government, decided to demonstrate the connections of the latter with “specialist saboteurs”. In August-September 1930, the OGPU greatly increased the number of arrests of well-known specialists who held important positions in the State Planning Committee, the State Bank and the People's Commissariats of Finance, Trade and Agriculture. Among those arrested were, in particular, Professor Kondratiev, the discoverer of the famous Kondratiev cycles, Deputy Minister of Agriculture for Food in the Provisional Government, who headed the institute adjacent to Narkomfin, as well as Professors Chayanov and Makarov, who held important posts in the Narkomzem, Professor Sadyrin, member board of the State Bank of the USSR, professors Ramzin and Groman, who was one of the prominent economists and the most famous statisticians in the State Planning Commission, and many other well-known specialists.
Properly instructed by Stalin himself on the subject of "bourgeois specialists", the OGPU prepared files that were supposed to demonstrate the existence of a network of anti-Soviet organizations within the supposedly existing Workers' and Peasants' Party headed by Kondratiev and the Industrial Party headed by Ramzin. Investigators succeeded in extracting “confessions” from some of the arrested, both in their contacts with the “right deviators” Rykov, Bukharin and Syrtsov, and in their participation in imaginary plots aimed at overthrowing Stalin and the Soviet government with the help of anti-Soviet émigré organizations and foreign intelligence services. The OGPU went even further: it snatched "confessions" from two instructors of the Military Academy about an impending conspiracy led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. As evidenced by a letter addressed by Stalin to Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the leader then did not dare to remove Tukhachevsky, preferring other targets - "specialist saboteurs."
The above episode clearly shows how, starting from 1930, the cases of the so-called terrorist groups, which included representatives of the anti-Stalinist opposition, were fabricated. At that moment, Stalin could not and did not want to go further. All the provocations and maneuvers of this moment had a narrowly defined goal: to completely compromise his last opponents within the party, to intimidate all the indecisive and vacillating ones.
September 22, 1930 "Truth" published "confessions" of 48 officials of the People's Commissariat of Trade and Narkomfin, who pleaded guilty "to difficulties with food and the disappearance of silver money." A few days earlier, in a letter addressed to Molotov, Stalin thus instructed him: “We need: a) to radically clean up the apparatus of the Narkomfin and the State Bank, despite the cries of dubious communists like Pyatakov-Bryukhanov; b) shoot two or three dozen saboteurs who penetrated the apparatus.<...>c) to continue the operations of the OGPU throughout the entire territory of the USSR, aimed at returning silver money into circulation. On September 25, 1930, 48 specialists were executed.
Several similar trials took place in the following months. Some of them took place behind closed doors, such as, for example, the process of the "specialists of the Supreme Council of National Economy" or about the "Workers' and Peasants' Party". Other trials were public, such as the “Industrial Party Trial,” in which eight people “confessed” to building a vast network of 2,000 specialists to stage an economic revolution with money from foreign embassies. These processes supported the legend of sabotage and conspiracies, which were so important for the strengthening of Stalin's ideology.
In four years, from 1928 to 1931, 138,000 industrial and administrative specialists were excluded from the life of society, 23,000 of them were written off in the first category (“enemies of the Soviet government”) and deprived of their civil rights. The persecution of specialists took on enormous proportions at enterprises, where they were forced to unreasonably increase output, which led to an increase in the number of accidents, defects, and machine breakdowns. From January 1930 to June 1931, 48% of Donbass engineers were fired or arrested: 4,500 "specialist saboteurs" were "exposed" in the first quarter of 1931 in the transport sector alone. The advancement of goals that obviously cannot be achieved, which led to the failure to fulfill plans, a strong drop in labor productivity and work discipline, to a complete disregard for economic laws, ended up upsetting the work of enterprises for a long time.
The crisis emerged on a grandiose scale, and the leadership of the party was forced to take some "corrective measures." On July 10, 1931, the Politburo decided to limit the persecution of specialists who became victims of the hunt declared on them in 1928. The necessary measures were taken: several thousand engineers and technicians were immediately released, mainly in the metallurgical and coal industries, discrimination in access to higher education for the children of the intelligentsia was stopped, the OPTU was forbidden to arrest specialists without the consent of the relevant people's commissariat.
Among other social groups sent to the margins of the "new socialist society" was also the clergy. In 1929-1930, the second great attack of the Soviet state on the clergy began, following the anti-religious repressions of 1918-1922. At the end of the 1920s, despite the condemnation by some higher hierarchs of the clergy of the “loyal” statement of Metropolitan Sergius, the successor of Patriarch Tikhon, to the Soviet authorities, the influence of the Orthodox Church in society remained quite strong. Of the 54,692 active churches in 1914, 39,000 remained in 1929. Emelyan Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Union of Militant Atheists, founded in 1925, admitted that only about 10 million out of 130 million believers had "broken with religion."
The anti-religious offensive of 1929-1930 unfolded in two stages. The first one - in the spring and summer of 1929 - was marked by the tightening of the anti-religious legislation of the period 1918-1922. On April 8, 1929, a decree was issued strengthening the control of local authorities over the spiritual life of parishioners and adding new restrictions on the activities of religious associations. From now on, any activity that goes beyond the "satisfaction of religious needs" fell under the law on criminal liability, in particular, 10 paragraphs. 58 art. The Criminal Code, which provides for punishment from three years in prison to the death penalty for "using religious prejudices to weaken the state." On August 26, 1929, the government established a five-day work week - five days of work and one day of rest, a day off; thus, the decree eliminated Sunday as a day of rest for all sections of the population. This measure was supposed to help "extirpate religion".
In October 1929, church bells were ordered to be taken down: "The ringing of bells violates the right of the broad atheistic masses of towns and villages to a well-deserved rest." Cultists were equated with kulaks: crushed by taxes (which increased tenfold in 1928-1930), deprived of all civil rights, which meant, first of all, the deprivation of ration cards and free medical care, they also began to be arrested, deported or deported. According to existing incomplete data, more than 13,000 clergymen were repressed in 1930. In most villages and towns, collectivization began with the symbolic closure of the church, the "dispossession of the priest." It is very symptomatic that about 14% of the riots and peasant unrest recorded in the 1930s had the root cause of the closure of the church and the confiscation of bells. The anti-religious campaign reached its peak in the winter of 1929-1930. By March 1, 1930, 6715 churches were closed, some of them were destroyed.
In subsequent years, an open active offensive against the church was replaced by a covert, but harsh administrative persecution of the clergy and believers. Loosely interpreting the sixty-eight points of the Decree of April 8, 1929, exceeding their powers in closing churches, local authorities continued to fight under various “plausible” pretexts: old, dilapidated or “unsanitary buildings” of churches, lack of insurance, non-payment of taxes and numerous other requisitions were presented as sufficient grounds to justify the actions of the authorities.
As for the Orthodox Church as a whole, the number of ministers and places of worship has greatly decreased under constant pressure from the authorities, despite the fact that the 1937 census, later classified, showed the presence of 70% of believers in the country. As of April 1, 1936, only 15,835 functioning Orthodox churches remained in the USSR (28% of the number in operation before the revolution), 4,830 mosques (32% of the pre-revolutionary number) and several dozen Catholic and Protestant churches. When the ministers of worship were re-registered, their number turned out to be 17,857 instead of 112,629 in 1914 and about 70,000 in 1928. The clergy became, according to the official formula, "a fragment of the dying classes."
From the end of 1928 to the end of 1932, the Soviet cities were flooded with peasants, whose number was close to 12 million - these were those who fled from collectivization and dispossession. Three and a half million migrants appeared in Moscow and Leningrad alone. Among them were many enterprising peasants who preferred to flee the countryside to self-dispossession or join collective farms. In 1930-1931, countless construction projects swallowed up this very unpretentious workforce. But beginning in 1932, the authorities began to fear a continuous and uncontrolled flow of population that turned cities into villages, when the authorities needed to make them the showcase of a new socialist society; population migration jeopardized this entire elaborate ration card system from 1929, in which the number of "entitled" to the ration card increased from 26 million at the beginning of 1930 to almost 40 by the end of 1932. Migration turned factories into huge camps of nomads. According to the authorities, "new arrivals from the countryside can cause negative phenomena and ruin production with an abundance of truants, a decline in work discipline, hooliganism, an increase in marriage, the development of crime and alcoholism."
During 1933, 27 million passports were issued, with passportization accompanied by operations to "cleanse" cities from undesirable categories of the population. The first week of passportization of workers at twenty industrial enterprises of the capital, which began in Moscow on January 5, 1933, helped "identify" 3,450 former White Guards, former kulaks and other "alien and criminal elements." In closed cities, about 385,000 people did not receive passports and were forced to leave their places of residence for up to ten days with a ban on settling in another city, even an "open" one.
During 1933, the most impressive "passportization" operations were carried out: from June 28 to July 3, 5470 gypsies from Moscow were arrested and deported to their places of work in Siberia. From 8 to 12 July, 4,750 "declassed elements" from Kyiv were arrested and deported; in April, June and July 1933, raids were carried out and three convoys of “declassed elements from Moscow and Leningrad” were deported, which totaled more than 18,000 people. The first of these trains ended up on Nazino Island, where two-thirds of the deportees died in one month.
In the spring of 1934, the government took repressive measures against juvenile homeless children and hooligans, whose number in the cities increased significantly during the period of famine, dispossession of kulaks and bitterness of social relations. On April 7, 1935, the Politburo issued a decree, according to which it was provided "to prosecute and apply the sanctions necessary by law to adolescents who have reached the age of 12, convicted of robbery, violence, bodily harm, self-mutilation and murder." A few days later, the government sent a secret instruction to the prosecutor's office, which specified the criminal measures that should be applied to adolescents, in particular, it was said that any measures should be applied, "including the highest measure of social protection", in other words, the death penalty. Thus, the previous paragraphs of the Criminal Code, which prohibited the death penalty for minors, were repealed.
However, the scale of child crime and homelessness was too great, and these measures did not give any result. In the report "On the elimination of juvenile delinquency in the period from July 1, 1935 to October 1, 1937" noted:
“Despite the reorganization of the network of receivers, the situation has not improved<...>
In 1937, starting from February, there was a significant influx of neglected children from rural areas in the districts and regions affected by the partial shortage of 1936.<...>
A few figures will help to imagine the scope of this phenomenon. In the course of 1936 alone, more than 125,000 child vagrants passed through the NKVD; From 1935 to 1939, more than 155,000 minors were hidden in the NKVD colony. 92,000 children between the ages of twelve and sixteen went through the judiciary in 1936-1939 alone. By April 1, 1939, more than 10,000 minors were inscribed in the Gulag camp system.
In the first half of the 1930s, the scope of the repressions that were carried out by the state and the party against society either gained strength or weakened a little. A series of terrorist attacks and purges, followed by a lull, made it possible to maintain a certain balance, somehow organize the chaos that could give rise to a constant confrontation or, worse, an unplanned turn of events.
Great terror
On December 1, 1934, at 4:37 pm Moscow time, the first head of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Sergei Mironovich Kirov, was killed in Smolny. This murder was used to the maximum by Stalin for the final liquidation of the opposition and gave rise to a new wave of repressions deployed throughout the country.
From December 1934, arrests began of former leaders of opposition groups, primarily Trotskyites and Zinovievites. They were accused of killing S.M. Kirov, of preparing terrorist acts against members of the Stalinist leadership. In 1934-1938. a number of open political trials were fabricated. In August 1936, the process of the “Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center” took place, through which 16 people passed. The main actors among them were the former organizer of the Red Terror in Petrograd, a personal friend of V.I. Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev, one of the most prominent party theorists Lev Kamenev. All defendants were sentenced to death. In March 1938, the trial of the "Anti-Soviet Center-Right Bloc" took place. Among the defendants were the former “party favorite” Nikolai Bukharin, the former head of the Soviet government Alexei Rykov, the former chief of the main punitive organ of Bolshevism, the OGPU, Genrikh Yagoda, and others. The trial ended with the death sentences being passed on them. In June 1937, a large group of Soviet military leaders headed by Marshal M.N. Tukhachevsky was sentenced to death.
Almost all the defendants in open trials lied about themselves, confirmed the absurd accusations against them, glorified the Communist Party and its leadership, led by Stalin. This is obviously due to pressure on them by the investigation, false promises to save the lives of them and their relatives. One of the main arguments of the investigators was: "it is necessary for the party, for the cause of communism."
The trials of the opposition leaders served as a political justification for unleashing an unprecedented wave of mass terror against the leading cadres of the party, the state, including the army, the NKVD bodies, the prosecutor's office, industry, agriculture, science, culture, etc., ordinary workers. The exact number of victims during this period has not yet been calculated. But the dynamics of the repressive policy of the state is evidenced by the data on the number of prisoners in the NKVD camps (on average per year): 1935 - 794 thousand, 1936 - 836 thousand, 1937 - 994 thousand, 1938 - 1313 thousand, 1939 - 1340 thousand, 1940 - 1400 thousand, 1941 - 1560 thousand
The country was seized by a mass psychosis of the search for "pests", "enemies of the people", and whistleblowing. The party members did not hesitate, openly, took credit for the number of exposed "enemies" and written denunciations. For example, a candidate member of the Moscow city party committee Sergeeva-Artyomov, speaking at the IV city party conference in May 1937, proudly said that she had exposed 400 "White Guards". Denunciations were written against each other, friends and girlfriends, acquaintances and colleagues, wives against their husbands, children against their parents.
Millions of party, economic workers, scientists, cultural figures, military, ordinary workers, employees, peasants were repressed without trial, by the decision of the NKVD. Its leaders at that time were some of the darkest figures in Russian history: a former St. Petersburg worker, a man of almost dwarf growth, Nikolai Yezhov, and after his execution, a party worker from the Transcaucasus, Lavrenty Beria.
The peak of repression came in 1937-1938. The NKVD received tasks on the organization and scale of repressions from the Politburo of the Central Committee and Stalin personally. In 1937, a secret order was given to use physical torture. Since 1937, repressions have fallen upon the organs of the NKVD. The leaders of the NKVD G. Yagoda and N. Yezhov were shot.
The Stalinist repressions had several goals: they destroyed possible opposition, created an atmosphere of general fear and unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader, ensured the rotation of personnel through the promotion of young people, weakened social tensions, blaming the "enemies of the people" for the difficulties of life, provided the labor force to the Main Directorate of Camps ( GULAG).
However, it should be remembered that in the course of terror, retribution overtook many Bolshevik leaders who committed bloody mass atrocities, both during the years of the civil war and in subsequent times. High-ranking party bureaucrats who perished in the dungeons of the NKVD: P. Postyshev, R. Eikhe, S. Kosior, A. Bubnov, B. Shcheboldaev, I. Vareikis, F. Goloshchekin, the military, incl. Marshal V. Blucher; Chekists: G. Yagoda, N. Yezhov, Ya. Agranov and many others were themselves the organizers and inspirers of mass repressions.
By September 1938, the main task of repression was completed. The repressions have already begun to threaten the new generation of party and Chekist leaders who came to the fore during the repressions. In July-September, a mass shooting of previously arrested party functionaries, communists, military leaders, NKVD officers, intellectuals and other citizens was carried out, this was the beginning of the end of terror. In October 1938, all extrajudicial sentencing bodies were dissolved (with the exception of the Special Meeting at the NKVD, as it received after Beria joined the NKVD).
camp empire
The 1930s, years of unprecedented repression, marked the birth of a monstrously expanded camp system. The archives of the Gulag, made available today, make it possible to accurately describe the development of the camps during these years, the various reorganizations, the influx and number of prisoners, their economic suitability and distribution to work according to the type of imprisonment, as well as gender, age, nationality, level of education.
In mid-1930, about 140,000 prisoners were already working in camps run by the OGPU. The huge construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal alone required 120,000 workers, in other words, the transfer of tens of thousands of prisoners from prisons to camps was significantly accelerated. At the beginning of 1932, more than 300,000 prisoners were serving their service on the construction sites of the OGPU, where the annual mortality rate was 10% of the total number of prisoners, as was the case, for example, on the White Sea-Baltic Canal. In July 1934, when the reorganization of the OGPU into the NKVD was taking place, the Gulag included in its system 780 small correctional colonies, in which only 212,000 prisoners were kept; they were considered economically inefficient and poorly managed, and then depended only on the People's Commissariat of Justice. To achieve labor productivity approaching that of the country as a whole, the camp had to become large and specialized. On January 1, 1935, more than 965,000 prisoners were kept in the unified Gulag system, of which 725,000 ended up in “labor camps” and 240,000 in “labor colonies”, there were also small units where less “socially dangerous elements” were sentenced to two or three years.
By this time, the map of the Gulag had basically taken shape for the next two decades. The Solovki correctional complex, which numbered 45,000 prisoners, gave rise to a system of "business trips", or "flying camps", which moved from one felling site to another in Karelia, on the coast of the White Sea and in the Vologda region. The large Svirlag complex, which accommodated 43,000 prisoners, was supposed to supply Leningrad and the Leningrad region with forest, while the Temnikovo complex, which had 35,000 prisoners, was supposed to serve Moscow and the Moscow region in the same way.
Ukhtapechlag used the labor of 51,000 prisoners in construction work, in coal mines, and in the oil-bearing regions of the Far North. Another branch led to the north of the Urals and to the chemical plants of Solikamsk and Berezniki, and in the southeast the path went to the complex of camps in Western Siberia, where 63,000 prisoners provided free labor to the large Kuzbassugol plant. Further south, in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, Steplaga's agricultural camps, which housed 30,000 prisoners, developed the fallow steppes according to a new formula. Here, it seems, the authorities were not as strict as at large construction sites in the mid-30s. Dmitlag (196,000 prisoners), upon completion of work on the White Sea-Baltic Canal in 1933, ensured the creation of the second grandiose Stalinist canal, the Moscow-Volga.
Another large construction project, conceived on an imperial scale, is BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline). At the beginning of 1935, about 150,000 prisoners of the Bamlag camp complex divided into thirty "camps" and worked on the first stage of the railway. In 1939, Bamlag had 260,000 prisoners, it was the largest united Soviet ITL.
Beginning in 1932, the complex of northeastern camps (Sevvostlag) worked for the Dalstroykombinat, which mined an important strategic raw material - gold for export, so that it would be possible to purchase Western equipment necessary for industrialization. The gold veins are located in an extremely inhospitable area - in Kolyma, which can only be reached by sea. The completely isolated Kolyma became a symbol of the Gulag. Its "capital" and the entrance gate for the exiles is Magadan, built by the prisoners themselves. The main life artery of Magadan, the road from camp to camp, was also built by prisoners whose inhuman living conditions are described in the stories of Varlam Shalamov. From 1932 to 1939, gold mining by prisoners (in 1939 there were 138,000) increased from 276 kilograms to 48 tons, i.e. accounted for 35% of the total Soviet production of this year.
In June 1935, the government began a new project, which could only be implemented by the prisoners, the construction of a nickel plant in Norilsk beyond the Arctic Circle. The concentration camp in Norilsk had 70,000 prisoners during the heyday of the Gulag in the early 1950s.
In the second half of the 1930s, the population of the Gulag more than doubled, from 965,000 prisoners at the beginning of 1935 to 1,930,000 at the beginning of 1941. During the year 1937 alone, it increased by 700,000. The mass influx of new prisoners disorganized the production of 1937 to such an extent that its volume decreased by 13% compared to 1936! Until 1938, production was in a state of stagnation, but with the advent of the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrenty Beria, who took vigorous measures to "rationalize the work of prisoners", everything changed. In a report dated April 10, 1939, sent to the Politburo, Beria outlined his program for the reorganization of the Gulag. The food allowance for prisoners was 1,400 calories per day, i.e. it was calculated "for those in prison." The number of people suitable for work gradually dwindled, 250,000 prisoners by March 1, 1939, were not able to work, and 8% of the total number of prisoners died during 1938 alone. In order to fulfill the plan outlined by the NKVD, Beria proposed an increase in the ration, the destruction of all indulgences, an exemplary punishment of all fugitives and other measures that should be used against those who interfere with an increase in labor productivity, and, finally, lengthening the working day to eleven hours; rest was supposed to be only three days a month, and all this in order to "rationally exploit and maximize the physical capabilities of prisoners."
The archives have preserved the details of many deportations of socially hostile elements from the Baltic states, Moldavia, Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, carried out in May-June 1941 under the leadership of General Serov. A total of 85,716 people were deported in June 1941, of which 25,711 were Balts. In his report dated July 17, 1941, Merkulov, "man number two" in the NKVD, summed up the Baltic part of the operation. On the night of June 13-14, 1941, 11,038 family members of "bourgeois nationalists", 3,240 family members of former gendarmes and policemen, 7,124 family members of former landowners, industrialists, officials, 1,649 family members of former officers and 2,907 "others" were deported.
Each family was entitled to one hundred kilograms of luggage, including food for one month. The NKVD did not burden itself with providing food during the transportation of the deportees. The echelons arrived at their destination only at the end of July 1941, mostly in the Novosibirsk region and Kazakhstan. One can only guess how many exiles, stuffed fifty at a time into small cattle cars with their belongings and food taken on the night of their arrest, died during these six to twelve weeks of the journey.
Also, contrary to popular belief, the Gulag camps accepted not only political prisoners sentenced for counter-revolutionary activities under one of the points of the famous Article 58. The “political” contingent fluctuated and amounted to either a quarter or a third of the entire composition of the GULAG prisoners. The other prisoners were also not criminals in the usual sense of the word. They ended up in the camp under one of the many repressive laws that surrounded almost all areas of activity. The laws concerned “theft of socialist property”, “violation of the passport regime”, “hooliganism”, “speculation”, “unauthorized absences from the workplace”, “sabotage” and “shortage of the minimum number of workdays” on collective farms. Most of the Gulag prisoners were neither political nor criminals in the true sense of the word, but only ordinary citizens, victims of the police approach to labor relations and social norms.
Statistics of repressions of the 30s-50s
For clarity, I would like to present a table in which the statistics of political repressions in the 30-50s of the XX century are given. It displays the number of prisoners in corrective labor and corrective labor colonies on January 1 of each year. Analyzing this table, it is clear that the number of prisoners in the Gulag camps grew with each.
Conclusion
Massive repressions, arbitrariness and lawlessness, which were committed by the Stalinist leadership on behalf of the revolution, the party, and the people, were a heavy legacy of the past.
The desecration of the honor and life of compatriots, begun in the mid-1920s, continued with the most severe consistency for several decades. Thousands of people were subjected to moral and physical torture, many of them were exterminated. The life of their families and loved ones was turned into a hopeless period of humiliation and suffering. Stalin and his entourage appropriated practically unlimited power, depriving the Soviet people of the freedoms that were granted to them during the years of the revolution. Mass repressions were carried out for the most part through extrajudicial reprisals through the so-called special meetings, collegiums, “troikas” and “twos”. However, the elementary norms of legal proceedings were also violated in the courts.
The restoration of justice, begun by the XX Congress of the CPSU, was carried out inconsistently and, in essence, ceased in the second half of the 60s.
Today, thousands of lawsuits have not been raised yet. The stain of injustice has not yet been removed from the Soviet people, who suffered innocently during the forced collectivization, were imprisoned, evicted with their families to remote areas without a livelihood, without the right to vote, even without an announcement of a term of imprisonment. 2
The mass political repressions of 1937-1938 had serious negative consequences for the life of society and the state, some of which are still evident. We indicate the most important of them:
Terror has caused enormous damage to all spheres of society. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were subjected to arbitrariness. Repression decapitated industry, the army, education, science and culture. Party, Komsomol, Soviet, law enforcement agencies suffered. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, about 40,000 officers were illegally repressed in the Red Army. 3
During the years of the "great terror" the policy of mass forced resettlement was "tested". The first victims were Koreans, and in subsequent years, dozens of deported peoples.
Political terror had a pronounced economic aspect. All large industrial facilities of the first five-year plans were built using cheap, forced labor of prisoners, including political ones. Without the use of slave power, it was impossible to commission an average of 700 enterprises a year.
In the 1920s-1950s, tens of millions of people went through camps, colonies, prisons and other places of deprivation of liberty. 4 Only in the 1930s, about 2 million people convicted for political reasons were sent to places of detention, exile and deportation. The subculture of the criminal world, its values, priorities, language were imposed on society. It was forced to live for decades not according to the law, but according to "concepts", not according to Christian precepts, but according to the thoroughly false communist postulates. Blatnaya "fenya" successfully competed with the language of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy.
What determined the atmosphere of society in 1937-1938 - state lawlessness and arbitrariness, fear, double morality, unanimity - have not been fully overcome even today. The "birthmarks" of totalitarianism that we inherited are also a direct consequence of the "Great Terror".
List of used literature:
Kropachev S.A. Chronicles of communist terror. Tragic fragments of the modern history of the Fatherland. Developments. Scales. Comments. Part 1. 1917 - 1940 - Krasnodar, 1995. - S. 48.
Lunev V.V. Crime of the XX century: global, regional and Russian trends. - M., 2005. - S.365-372
Lyskov D. Yu. Stalin's repressions: The Great Lie of the XX century. - M, 2009. -288 p.
The population of Russia in the XX century. In 3 volumes. T. 1. - S. 311-330; T. 2. - S. 182 - 196.
Ratkovsky I. S. Red terror and the activities of the Cheka in 1918. - St. Petersburg, 2006. - 286 p.
The system of labor camps in the USSR, 1923-1960: A Handbook. - M., 1998.
The Black Book of Communism. Crime, terror, repression . - M., 2001. – 780 p.
www.wikipedia.org - free encyclopedia
1 www.wikipedia.org - free encyclopedia
2Decree of the President of the USSR "On the restoration of the rights of all Victims of political repressions of the 20-50s" No. 556 August 13, 1990
3 During 1418 days and nights of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army lost 180 senior command personnel from the division commander and above (112 division commanders, 46 corps commanders, 15 army commanders, 4 front chief of staff and 3 front commanders), and in several pre-war years ( mainly in 1937 and 1938) more than 500 commanders in the rank of brigade commander to Marshal of the Soviet Union were arrested and disgraced on far-fetched trumped-up political charges, 29 of them died in custody, and 412 were shot // Suvenirov O.F. The tragedy of the Red Army. 1937-1938. M, 1998. S. 317.
Year. In 1994 year Decree of the President was issued... - No. 35. - Art. 3342. 40 See: Collection of Legislation of the Russian Federation...
Rehabilitation of victims political repression 1917 1991 years
Test work >> HistoryV.A. Kryuchkov "On anti-constitutional practice 30 -X - 40 -x and early 50s years" dated December 25, 1988 ... main, most massive categories of victims political repression in USSR. one). First mass category - people political arrested on charges...
Military-industrial complex USSR in the 1920s–1950s years: economic growth rates, structure, organization of production and management
Book >> Informatics, programmingMilitary equipment 20– 40 -X years and its production- ... was enough. Preparing for massive repression regarding leadership... politically monolithic society, militarily strong state. In the first place in the developed USSR in 30 -e years ...
Answers on the history of the fatherland
Cheat sheet >> HistoryIn this direction was made by them in 40 -X years 15th century conclusion of an agreement with the Polish king ... the harshest means, in particular mass terror (cf. Mass political repression in USSR in 30 -x - early 50s), leads ...
The massive political repressions of the 1930s were a manifestation of the Stalinist terror and led to a weakening of the defense capability of the USSR.
Losses of senior military personnel during the repressions of 1937-1939. amounted significantly large quantity casualties than the losses in four years of the Great Patriotic War. For example, three of the five marshals died during the repressions, and not one of the 13 marshals died during the Great Patriotic War. During the repressions, out of 14 army commanders, 13 were shot; during the war, three died at the hands of the enemy: I.R. Apanasenko, N.F. Vatutin, I.D. Chernyakhovsky.
The chief of the German General Staff, General von Beck, wrote in 1938: “One can not count with the Russian army
to tinker with as with military force, because the bloody repressions undermined its spirit, turned it into an inert machine.
Before the repressions, the Soviet army was considered the strongest in the world. The Soviet military school of the times of Tukhachevsky created a progressive theory of conducting offensive and defensive operations on a front and army scale. The role of aviation, tanks and airborne assault forces was correctly assessed. Under the leadership of Yegorov, the theory of deep combat was thoroughly developed. Here is a review of the Red Army deputy. Chief of the General Staff of the French Army, General JIyazo, expressed after the famous Kyiv maneuvers in September 1935. Then, for the first time in the world, a landing force of 800 paratroopers was thrown from aircraft. Jiya-
zo said: “I saw a powerful, serious army, of a very high quality both technically and morally. Her moral level and physical condition are admirable. With regard to tanks, I would think it right to consider the army of the Soviet Union in the first place. I consider the parachute landing of a military unit to be a fact that had no precedent in the world ... I have not seen such a powerful, exciting, beautiful sight in my life ”(Kyiv VO newspaper“ Red Army ”, September 18, 1935). student of the academy Frunze, who participated in these maneuvers, wrote: “And now it is striking how far-sighted the goals were formulated. The initial period of the war showed that if we could act in accordance with the principles that were worked out in these maneuvers, things would take a completely different turn ”(A.I. Eremenko. At the beginning of the century. M., 1964. p. 8) .
The Germans successfully took advantage of our ideas of interaction between mobile troops and aviation, as well as the idea and experience of using paratroopers, which they do not hide (Heidt. Parachute troops in the Second World War. - In the book: Results of the Second World War. M., 1957 , p.240).
"The case of the military" - this is how the world press called the trial of the Red Army commanders, which took place in Moscow in the summer of 1937 - had far-reaching and tragic consequences. The mass repressions carried out by I.V. Stalin and his inner circle in the army on the eve of World War II caused enormous damage to the Soviet Armed Forces.
nym Forces, the entire defense capability of the Soviet state.
The internal political situation in the country in the second half of the 1930s, the aggravation and expansion of repressions caused I.V. Stalin certain concerns regarding the position of major military leaders, whose authority among the people and the army had been very high since the civil war. Their deep professionalism, independence in judgments, open criticism of I.V. Stalin's nominees - K.E. Voroshilov, S.M. Budyonny, G.I. Kulik, E.A. Shchadenko and others, who did not understand the need to create a modern army, caused irritation, suspicion and certain fears that the army might show hesitation in supporting the course pursued by him. Hence the desire to remove from the army all the vacillators, all those who aroused even the slightest doubt in I.V. Stalin and his inner circle.
The “disclosure” by the NKVD in the second half of the 1930s of the so-called “anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization” came as a complete surprise to Soviet people, who were accustomed to seeing in M.N. Tukhachevsky, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich and other major military leaders of the famous commanders of the Red Army, whose names were known to everyone, the faithful sons of their people.
It should be said that the repressions had shaken the Red Army more than once before, but before that they did not affect military leaders of such a high rank. In the mid 20s. a purge of commanding officers and political workers suspected of sympathizing with the Trotskyist opposition was carried out. A few years later - in the late 20's - early 30's. - Measures were taken to purge the Red Army from former officers of the old army. The matter was not limited to their dismissal from the Armed Forces. Cases of a conspiracy of former officers were fabricated on falsified charges. More than three thousand commanders of the Red Army were convicted on them. And in just the 20s and the first half of the 30s, according to K.E. Voroshilov, 47 thousand people were dismissed from the army, including 5 thousand former oppositionists.
From the second half of 1936, the arrests of the commanding staff of the Red Army resumed again.
I.V. Stalin daily personally dealt with the investigation into the case of the “military conspiracy”, received protocols of interrogations of those arrested and almost daily received N.I. in falsifying charges.
From June 1 to June 4, 1937, in the Kremlin, at an expanded meeting of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR with the participation of members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the report of K.E. Voroshilov "On the counter-revolutionary conspiracy uncovered by the NKVD in the Red Army" was discussed ...
K.E. Voroshilov in his report called for "checking and purge the army literally to the very last cracks ...", warning in advance that as a result of this purge, "maybe, in quantitative terms, we will suffer great damage."
Before the trial, the defendants were allowed to make their last statements of repentance addressed to I.V. Stalin and N.I. Yezhov, creating the illusion that this could save their lives. The arrested wrote such statements. What was the attitude towards them, shows this fact. I.E.Yakir's statement contains the following resolutions: “A scoundrel and a prostitute. I.St.»; “Perfectly accurate definition. K. Voroshilov and Molotov”; “Bastards, bastards ... one punishment is the death penalty. JI. Kaganovich.
On June 11, 1937, in Moscow, the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR in a closed court session considered the case on charges of M.N. Tukhachevsky and others.
The fate of the defendants was predetermined. The former secretary of the court, I.M. Zaryanov, reported in 1962: “The chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Ulrich, informed I.V. Stalin about the course of the trial. Ulrich told me about this, he said that there was an instruction from Stalin to apply capital punishment to all defendants - execution ... "
At 11:35 p.m. on June 11, 1937, the presiding V.V. Ulrich announced the verdict of shooting all eight convicts. The sentence was carried out on June 12, 1937...
Already nine days after the trial of M.N. Tukhachevsky, 980 commanders and political workers were arrested as participants in a military conspiracy, including
brigade commanders, 37 division commanders, 21 commanders, 16 regimental commissars, 17 brigade and 7 divisional commissars.
With the knowledge and permission of I.V. Stalin, the NKVD authorities widely used physical measures of influence, blackmail, provocation and deceit in relation to those arrested, as a result of which they obtained false testimony about the “criminal activities” of a number of prominent military workers who were at large. The testimonies of many of those arrested were sent to I.V. Stalin, who single-handedly, without any trial, decided the issue of arrest.
In total, during this period, 408 people of the leading and commanding staff of the Red Army and the Navy were arrested and convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, 386 of them were party members. 401 people were sentenced to capital punishment - execution, 7 - to various terms of corrective labor camps.
The study of documentary materials stored in the party and state archives, as well as a survey of persons involved in the events of those years, made it possible to establish that the case on charges of M.N. Tukhachevsky and other military men was falsified, and the confessions of the accused during the investigation were obtained from them by unauthorized methods.
In the 20-30s. foreign intelligence agencies systematically sent through various channels the disinformation material they had fabricated, which was supposed to testify to the betrayal of M.N. Tukhachevsky and other Soviet military leaders.
Materials of foreign intelligence services were largely designed for such character traits of I.V. Stalin as morbid suspiciousness and extreme suspicion, and, in all likelihood, they played their role in this.
By the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of January 31, 1957, the sentence against M.N. Tukhachevsky, A.I. Kork, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich, V.K. Putna, R.P. Eideman, V.M. Primakov and B.M. Feldman was canceled and the criminal case was dismissed due to the absence of corpus delicti in their actions. By the decision of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU of February 27, 1957, they were reinstated in the party. In the 1950s and 1960s, others of the 408 military men convicted in the case so far were also rehabilitated.
called "anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization". (News of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1989, No. 4, p. 42 - 62).
Stalin's punitive organs carried out the defeat of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR.
The Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR was formed in accordance with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of November 19, 1934. It included 80 people. On November 24, 1934, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved the Regulations on the Military Council. The Chairman of the Military Council was the People's Commissar of Defense, he approved all the decisions of the council, they were implemented by his orders and instructions. On January 16, 1935, by decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee, the Military Council was supplemented to 85 people.
Already on September 26, 1936, V.M. Primakov and S.A. Turovsky were excluded from the Military Council as enemies of the people. In total, out of 85 of these top military leaders and political workers, 76 people were repressed.
Of these, 68 were shot: M.N. Tukhachevsky, A.I. Egorov, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich, I.P. Belov, V.M. Orlov, M.V. Viktorov, Ya.I. Alksnis, I.A. Khalepsky, I.N. Dubovoi, P.E. Dybenko, N.D. Kashirin, A.I. Kork, M.K. .F.Fedko, A.I. Sedyakin, I.K. Kozhanov, M.P. Amelin, L.N. Aronshtam, A.S. Bulin, G.I. Veklichev, G.I. Gugin, B.M. Ippo, A.I. G.S. Okunev, G.A. Osepyan, I.E. Slavin, P.A. Smirnov, A.L. Shifres, E.F. An-poga, I.M. Vasilenko, M.D. Velikanov, I.I. Garkavy, Ya.P. Gailit, M.Ya. Germanovich, B.S. Gorbachev, S.E. Gribov, I.K. Gryaznov, N.A. Efimov, F.A. Ingaunis, G.I. Kulik, E.I. Kovtyukh, N.N. Krivoruchko, I.S. Kutyakov, V.N. Levich, S.A. Mezheninov, N.N. Petin, V.M. Primakov, M.V. Sangursky, S.A. Turovsky, S.P. Uritsky, B.M. Feldman, V.V. Khripin, R.P. Eideman, I.M. Ludri, Ya.K. Prokofiev, V.N. Shestakov, A.P. Yartsev, M.I. Baranov, P.M. Oshley, E.S. Kazinsky, D.A. Kuchinsky, N.M. M. Stern, S. P. Obysov, N. M. Sinyavsky, I. F. Tkachev.
Unable to withstand the accusations, committed suicide: Ya.B.Gamarnik and A.Ya.Lapin. They died: during the investigation in the Lefortovo prison - V.K.
At the end of August 1939, it was as if a bomb exploded over the world: until recently, the USSR and Germany, who had recently stigmatized each other, signed a non-aggression pact unexpectedly for everyone.
It is now difficult to establish exactly when Berlin and Moscow took the first steps towards establishing an understanding between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that would lead to such huge consequences for the whole world. One of the first attempts was in October 1938, four days after the Munich Agreement, when an adviser to the German embassy in Moscow informed that Stalin would draw certain conclusions from the Munich settlement, from which the Soviet Union was excluded, and perhaps become more positive about Germany. . The diplomat spoke out strongly in favor of broader economic cooperation. At the end of October, the German ambassador in Moscow, Schullenburg, informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that he "intends in the near future to apply to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars S.I. Molotov in an attempt to reach a settlement of issues that complicated German-Soviet relations." The ambassador could hardly have conceived such an initiative on his own in view of Hitler's extremely hostile attitude towards Moscow. The hint, apparently, was from Berlin.
This is evidenced by the captured archives of the German Foreign Ministry.
The first step, according to the Germans, was to improve trade relations between the two countries. The Soviet-German economic agreement was due to expire at the end of the year, and German documents cover in detail the uneven course of negotiations for its renewal. Negotiations went on for several weeks, but by February 1939, they actually reached a dead end. Although Germany was eager to get materials from Russia and Goering constantly insisted on this, the Reich was simply not in a position to supply the goods that the Soviet Union demanded in return.
On the first day of 1939, at a New Year's reception at the Reich Chancellery, Hitler, bypassing the diplomatic corps, unexpectedly for everyone stopped in front of the Soviet charge d'affaires and for a long time, almost half an hour,
monstrously kindly talked with him, which immediately became a sensation for the world press. April Goering, at a meeting with Mussolini in Rome, drew the Duce's attention to Stalin's last speech at the 18th Congress of the CPSU (b). Goering was visibly impressed by Stalin's statement that the Russians would not allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder by the capitalist powers. The Duce, according to the report of the meeting, warmly welcomed the idea of a German and Italian rapprochement with the Soviet Union. He believed that rapprochement would be achieved easily.
But, as E. von Weizsacker, State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, noted in his diary, the soundings of the Germans, their "courting" for Moscow, remained unanswered for a long time.
The Soviet Union, true to the idea of collective security, under these conditions sought to ensure the security of its western borders by reaching an equal agreement with Great Britain and France on mutual assistance. However, the governments of these countries, preparing, according to W. Churchill, half-measures and legal compromises, dragged out the negotiations in every possible way. The Western powers, where the Versailles mentality of dictate dominated, saw in the USSR the leader of the forces of the "world revolution", they were afraid of the "left alternative" no less than fascism. In addition, they believed that Stalin's repression had weakened the Soviet Union and made it an ineffective ally in the war. May on the last page of Soviet newspapers in the section "Chronicle" was published famous message: "M.M. Litvinov relieved of his duties as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs at his request."
A study of archival documents shows that this decision was finally made on May 3, somewhere around 4 p.m. On this usual day for M.M. Litvinov, he received the British Ambassador W. Seeds, sent several telegrams, including to Chita, Harbin (China), and others. department at 5 pm. 20 minutes. signed by Deputy head of the Eastern Department S.K. An hour later, a telegram went to Prague, where Litvinov's name was again crossed out and the badge "V.M." appeared for the first time, which became well known
to a whole generation of Soviet diplomats during the war and the first post-war years.
Everything became clear late in the evening, when at 11 p.m. on May 3 a circular telegram was sent to all plenipotentiaries and temporarily acting on business, in which Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks I.V. Stalin announced:
“In view of the serious conflict between the Chairman of the CHK Comrade. Molotov and People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs comrade. Litvinov, which arose on the basis of the disloyal attitude of Comrade. Litvinov to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, comrade. Litvinov appealed to the Central Committee with a request to release him from the duties of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks granted the request of comrade. Litvinov and relieved him of his duties as People's Commissar. Naokomchndel was appointed concurrently as Chairman of the Tejb CHK Union CCP comrade. Molotov.
It was unusual in Stalin's telegram that a person removed from such a high post is still called "comrade". After all, this continued in the 30s, when even members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and world-famous military leaders immediately became “enemies of the people” “heads flew”. Apparently, Stalin's personal attitude towards Litvinov had an effect here.
According to the plenipotentiary of the USSR in Great Britain I.M. Maisky, the resignation of the people's commissar was preceded by a stormy explanation in Stalin's office between V.M. Molotov and M.M. Litvinov, when the situation "was tense to the limit."
Television agencies around the world carried the sensational announcement of Litvinov's resignation. Although the Soviet plenipotentiaries were instructed to declare in their respective capitals the immutability of Soviet foreign policy, and the plenipotentiaries explained, referring to Litvinov himself, that politics in the USSR was determined not by individual people's commissars, but by the Central Committee and the top leadership of the party and state, politicians and journalists understood that the resignation Litvinov from his post means the end of the era of struggle for collective security.
Litvinov's place at the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs was taken by V.M. Molotov. Since Molotov played a leading role in the signed pact and was Stalin's closest collaborator, let's turn to the facts of his pre-war biography.
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (real name Skryabin) was born on March 9, 1890 in the settlement of Kukar-
ka (now the city of Sovetsk) of the Vyatka province in a large family of clerk Mikhail Prokhorovich Skryabin, who served in the trading house of the wealthy merchant Yakov Nebogatikov. His mother, Anna Yakovlevna, is the daughter of the mentioned merchant. The family had ten children, three of whom died at an early age.
As the children grew up, the parents began to think about their education, the family moved to the city: first to Vyatka, then to Ho Linek. It should be noted a characteristic feature of the Scriabin family: their love for music and art in general. Already in his school years, Vyacheslav played the violin and "it's not bad, - noted the future writer and Soviet diplomat A.Ya. Arosev, - with great power of feeling and expressiveness." He also dabbled in poetry. By the way, his brother Nikolai became a famous Soviet composer.
Together with his older brothers, Vyacheslav went to study in Kazan in 1902, where he entered the 1st Kazan real school, which provided a secondary education and allowed him to go to a technical institute. All four brothers lived together in one room: one of them studied at the gymnasium, the other - at the art school, and two - in the real one. In the summer of 1906, he joined the RSDLP and created in Kazan, together with the self-determined Bolshevik V.A. Tikhomirov, an illegal revolutionary organization of students of secondary and higher educational institutions, which, under the guise of non-party enlightenment, began to work to promote Marxism, publish proclamations, and provide assistance to political prisoners. In April 1909 he was arrested and exiled to the Vologda province. For V.M. Scriabin, the life of a professional revolutionary began.
Being in exile under police supervision, in 1910-1911 he conducted illegal propaganda work among the railway workers of Vologda, restored the Vologda Bolshevik party organization that had been destroyed by the tsarist gendarmes.
After serving his exile, Vyacheslav arrived in St. Petersburg in 1911, passed the exam for a real school and entered the economic department of the Polytechnic Institute. Student card allowed him to appear with students and workers, among whom he conducted party work.
At the beginning of 1912, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich worked in the legal Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda, took part in the creation of the daily newspaper Pravda. With the financial assistance of his friend V.A. Tikhomirov, with whom he worked in Kazan, V.M. Molotov became a member and secretary of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper, and, as editorial secretary, corresponded with V.I. Lenin, who was abroad .
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich combines legal work in Pravda with illegal activities as a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the Party. During this period, he first met I.V. Stalin and even lived with him in the same room for some time. The friendship proved to be lasting.
Ahead of him were new arrests, exile in the Irkutsk province, escapes, illegal work. February Revolution he met in Petrograd. He was a member of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party. He also entered the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet. During the October days he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee.
After the establishment of Soviet power, V.M. Molotov works as chairman of the Council of the National Economy northern region. At the end of 1919, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) sent him to Nizhny Novgorod, where he became chairman of the provincial executive committee. From Nizhny Novgorod, he was transferred to work in the Donbass as a secretary of the provincial committee. Then he was elected in 1920 Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In March 1921, he went as a delegate to the X Congress of the RCP (b), where, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin, he was elected a member of the Central Committee, a candidate member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee of the party. Since that time, V.M. Molotov, who fully supported Stalin, who soon became Secretary General, for more than thirty years was continuously in the highest echelon of power, determining the domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet state.
In 1930, Molotov became Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
V.M. Molotov, having come to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, observed extreme caution, trying to coordinate with I.V. Stalin all the questions that arose. Considering himself a politician, he did not prepare for diplomatic activity, did not speak foreign languages, except for the fact that he could read and understand a little in German and French, and in last years their activities in English.
Repressions in the NKVD continued. The new people's commissar carried out the leader's instructions and freed the people's commissariat from "all sorts of dubious semi-party elements." Thus, he deprived himself of a competent and experienced working apparatus, which had a negative impact on the activities of the NKVD in the context of the impending international political crisis.
Having proclaimed the continuity of Soviet foreign policy, Molotov did not react for some time to the soundings of the German country. This is evidenced by the message of the German ambassador von Schullenburg that Molotov told him about the possibility of resuming economic negotiations if the necessary political basis was created for them. When Schullenburg asked what was meant by "political foundations", the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs replied that both governments should think about it. All the ambassador's attempts to draw the cautious people's commissar into further discussion of this issue yielded nothing.
For the last 10 days of May, Hitler and his advisers could not decide what to do on the delicate issue of establishing relations with Moscow in order to disrupt the Anglo-Russian negotiations. In Berlin, it was believed that Molotov, in his last conversation with Ambassador von Schullenburg, poured out a tub cold water German approaches, and the next day the ambassador received a telegram saying: "We must now show restraint, wait and see if the Russians speak out more frankly."
Schullenburg himself did not evaluate the results of his conversation with Molotov. He wrote to the secretary of the German Foreign Office on 5 May 1939:
“Dear Herr von Weizsacker!
It seemed to me that in Berlin the impression was that Mr. Molotov, in a conversation with me, rejected the German-Soviet settlement. I re-read all my telegrams and compared them with my letter to you and with my memorandum. I cannot understand what led Berlin to such a conclusion. In fact, the fact is that Mr. Molotov almost called us to a political dialogue. Our assumption of holding only economic negotiations did not satisfy him. Of course, there was and is a danger that the Soviet government will use Ger-Zak. 1381
the Manx proposal to put pressure on the British and French ... Therefore, caution on our part was and remains necessary, but it seems to me obvious that the door is not slammed and that the way is open for further negotiations.
Shullenburg".
In early July, Hitler made the final decision to attack Poland. Secret orders were issued to the armed forces to prepare for the offensive at the end of August. Then an eloquent signal was given about the possibility of holding negotiations with the Soviet government. From this moment, big politics in the most sinister sense of the word begins.
On July 26, Schnurre, an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the direction of Ribbentrop, invited the Soviet attorney Astakhov and Babarin to dinner at a fashionable Berlin restaurant to find out their views.
In a secret account of the meeting, Schnurre wrote that "the Russians spoke animatedly and with interest about political and economic problems of interest to us."
Astakhov, with the full approval of Babarin, declared that the improvement of Soviet-German political relations was in the vital interests of both countries. Moscow, he said, never fully understood why Nazi Germany was so hostile to the Soviet Union. The German diplomat, in turn, explained that "German policy in the East has now taken a completely different course."
“On our side there can be no question of a threat to the Soviet Union. Our aims lie in a completely different direction... German policy is directed against Britain.. I can imagine a far-reaching settlement of mutual interests with due regard for important Russian problems.
However, this opportunity would be closed as soon as the Soviet Union entered into an alliance with Britain against Germany. Now is the right time for an understanding between Germany and the Soviet Union, but it will no longer be so after the conclusion of the treaty with London.
What can Britain offer Russia? At best, participation in a European war and the hostility of Germany. What can we offer as a counterweight to this
mu? Neutrality and non-participation in a possible European conflict and, if Moscow wishes, a German-Russian understanding of mutual interests, which, as in past times, will benefit both countries ... In my opinion, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and on Far East there are no contentious issues (between Germany and Russia). In addition, despite all the differences in our views on life, there is one common feature in the ideology of Germany and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies of the West".
Thus, late on the evening of July 26, the first serious German attempt was made to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union.
On July 31, Schullenburg received an urgent dispatch. “Inform by telegram the date and time of your next meeting with Molotov...
We look forward to seeing you soon…”
There were good reasons for the haste in Berlin. July France and Great Britain agreed to the Soviet proposals for the immediate holding of military staff talks to develop a military convention that would specifically determine how the three states would fight against the Nazi army.
But did Britain take these negotiations seriously?
Here is what the memoirs of the Soviet ambassador Maisky testify to:
On July 31 Chamberlain announced in Parliament that the Cabinet had entrusted the leadership of the British military delegation to Sir Reginald Drax.
I confess that I had never heard his name before in all the seven years of my previous work as Soviet ambassador in London. Yes, and not surprising: it turned out that Sir Reginald Plunket Drake had no operational relationship with the British armed forces at that time, but he was close to court and had a Chamberlain mood. Even if desired, it was difficult to find a candidate more unsuitable for negotiating with the USSR than this aged admiral of the British fleet. The other members of the delegation (Air Marshal Burnett and Major General Haywood) did not rise above the average level of leadership in the British Army.
When I learned about the composition of the British delegation, I could draw only one conclusion: "Everything remains as it was, the sabotage of the Tripartite Pact continues."
The French government followed the path blazed by its London counterparts: Corps General Doumenc was appointed head of the French delegation, and aviation general Valen and sea captain Vuillaume were members. Here, too, there was not a single person who could speak with authority on behalf of all the armed forces of his country. In early August, a French delegation arrived in London. From here, both delegations were to go together to Moscow. I decided to arrange breakfast for them. Disappointed as I was by the composition of the delegation, the duty of diplomatic courtesy demanded such a gesture from me. In addition, I wanted to personally talk with members of the delegations. Breakfast took place in the conservatory of the embassy... To my right, as the senior guest, sat Admiral Drake, a tall, thin, gray-haired Englishman, with calm movements and unhurried speech. When everything was eaten and coffee was served, the following conversation took place between me and Drax:
ME: Tell me, Admiral, when are you leaving for Moscow?
Drake. This has not been finalized yet, but soon.
ME: Are you sure you're flying? Time does not endure: the atmosphere in Europe is tense! ..
Drake. Oh no! There are about 40 of us in both delegations, together with the attendants, a lot of luggage ... It's inconvenient to fly on an airplane!
Z. If the plane doesn't fit, maybe you will go to the Soviet Union on one of your fast cruisers? .. That would be very impressive: military delegations on a warship ... And it would take a little time from London to Leningrad.
Drake (with a sour look on his face). No, and the cruiser is no good. After all, if we went on a cruiser, it would mean that we would have to evict two dozen of his officers from their cabins and take their places ... Why make people uncomfortable? .. No, no! We're not going on a cruiser...
I. Ho, in that case, perhaps you could take one of your high-speed commercial steamers?
I repeat, the time is hot, you should be in Moscow as soon as possible!
Drake (with obvious unwillingness to continue this conversation). Really, I can’t tell you anything ... The Ministry of Trade is in charge of organizing transport ... Everything is in his hands ... I don’t know how it will turn out ...
And it turned out like this: on August 5, military delegations set sail from London on the passenger-and-freight ship City of Exeter, which made 23 knots per hour, and only on August 10 finally arrived in Leningrad. It took five whole days to sail at a time when hours and even minutes were counted on the scales of history! ..
When meetings of military missions began in Moscow, it turned out that Admiral Drake did not have a written authority, he was only authorized to negotiate, but not to sign a pact. On August 14, negotiations actually reached an impasse.
Meanwhile, the German side acted decisively.
“Very urgent.
Sent from Berlin on August 14, 1939 - 10 p.m. 53 min.
Received in Moscow on August 15, 1939 - 4 hours. 40 min.
Ambassador personally.
I ask you to personally contact Herr Molotov and convey the following to him: The ideological differences between National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union were the only reason why in previous years Germany and the USSR were divided into two hostile, opposing camps. The events of the last period seem to have shown that the difference in worldviews does not prevent business relations between the two states and the establishment of new friendly cooperation. The period of confrontation in foreign policy may end forever, once and for all; the road to a new future is open to both countries. In reality, the interests of Germany and the USSR do not collide anywhere. The living spaces of Germany and the USSR are adjacent to each other, but in clashes there is no natural need. Thus, there are no reasons for the aggressive behavior of one country in relation to another. Germany has no
aggressive intentions towards the USSR. The imperial government is of the opinion that there are no issues between the Baltic and Black Seas that could not be settled to the full satisfaction of both states... There is no doubt that today German-Soviet relations have reached a turning point in their history. The decisions that will be taken in the near future in Berlin and Moscow regarding these relations will be of decisive importance for the German and Soviet peoples for generations ... Before, when they were friends, it was beneficial to both countries, and everything became bad, when they became enemies. It is true that Germany and the Soviet Union, as a result of many years of hostility in their worldview, today treat each other with distrust. A lot of accumulated debris must be cleaned off. It must be said, however, that even during this period the natural sympathies of Germans and Russians for each other never disappeared. On this basis, a two-state policy can be built anew. The Imperial Government and the Soviet Government must, on the basis of all their experience, reckon with the fact that the capitalist democracies of the West are implacable enemies of both National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union. Today, having concluded a military alliance, they are again trying to draw the USSR into the war against Germany. The crisis in German-Polish relations, provoked by the policy of England, makes it desirable to sort out German-Russian relations as soon as possible. Otherwise, regardless of Germany's actions, things may take such a turn that both governments will lose the opportunity to restore German-Soviet friendship and jointly resolve territorial issues related to Eastern Europe...
The Imperial Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop is ready to come to Moscow on a short visit in order to present the views of the Fuhrer to Herr Stalin on behalf of the Fuhrer...
Addendum: I ask you not to hand these instructions to Herr Molotov in writing, but to read them to him. I consider it important that they reach Mr. Stalin as accurately as possible, and I
I authorize you at the same time to ask Mr. Molotov on my behalf for an audience with Mr. Stalin, so that you can also convey this important message directly to him. In addition to the conversation with Molotov, the condition of my visit is extensive negotiations with Stalin.
This is the content of the telegram of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany J. von Ribbentrop.
Schullenburg begins active negotiations with Molotov. On August 19, he reported to the German Foreign Ministry:
“The conversation with Molotov began at two in the afternoon and lasted an hour. Molotov stated that the Soviet government understood the importance of Ribbentrop's trip, but insisted on its opinion that at the moment it was impossible to even approximate the time of the trip, since it required careful preparations.
The content of the protocol is a very serious matter, and the Soviet government expects the German government to state more specifically which articles the protocol provides for.
On the same day, the second meeting with Molotov took place. He passed soviet project non-aggression pact and said that Ribbentrop could arrive a week after the publication of the signed economic agreement. Thus, if this happens tomorrow, Ribbentrop may arrive in Moscow on August 26 or 27.
"My attempt to persuade Molotov to agree to an earlier date for the arrival of the Reich Foreign Minister was, unfortunately, unsuccessful." By Telegram No. 190 of August 19, Schullenburg transmitted the Soviet draft non-aggression pact to Berlin. The draft was accompanied by the following postscript: “This treaty shall enter into force only in the event of the simultaneous signing of a special protocol on foreign policy issues of interest to the high contracting parties. The protocol is an integral part of the pact.”
The final stage was a telegram from Hitler to Stalin.
Ribbentrop to Schullenburg. Telegram No. 189 of 20 August.
“The Fuehrer authorizes you to report immediately to Molotov and hand him the following telegram from the Fuehrer for Herr Stalin:
Verbatim text of Stalin's reply:
“August 21, 1939.
To the Chancellor of the German state, Mr. A. Hitler.
I thank you for your letter.
I hope that the German-Soviet non-aggression pact will be a decisive turning point in the improvement of political relations between our countries.
The peoples of our countries need peaceful relations with each other. The consent of the German Government to the conclusion of a non-aggression pact creates the foundation for the liquidation of political tension and for the establishment of peace and cooperation between our countries.
The Soviet Government has authorized me to inform you that it agrees to the arrival of Herr Ribbentrop in Moscow on August 23rd. I. Stalin.
Stalin's reply was handed over to the Führer at the Berghof at 10.30 pm. Shortly thereafter, the German radio music broadcast was suddenly interrupted and the announcer announced: “The Imperial Government and the Soviet Government have agreed to conclude a non-aggression pact with each other. The Imperial Foreign Minister will arrive in Moscow on Wednesday 23 August to complete the negotiations."
The next day, August 22, 1939, Hitler, having received Stalin’s personal assurance that Russia would observe friendly neutrality, again summoned the top military commanders to Obersalzberg, where he lectured them: “From the autumn of 1938 ... I decided to go along with Stalin ... Stalin and I are the only ones who look only to the future. So, in the coming weeks, I will shake hands with Stalin on the German-Soviet border and together with him I will begin a new division of the world ... Colonel-General Brauchitsch promised me to end the war with Poland within a few weeks ... We cannot wage a long war. I recognized the unfortunate worms Daladier and Chamberlain in Munich. They are too cowardly to attack us. They can't blockade. On the contrary, we have Russian raw materials. Poland will be devastated and settled by Germans. My agreement with Poland was only a gain in time. In general, gentlemen, what I did with Poland will happen to Russia. After Stalin's death, he
sick man, we'll break Soviet Russia. Then the sun of German world domination will rise...
Circumstances are favorable for us as never before. I have only one concern, that Chamberlain or some other scoundrel will come to me with an offer
about mediation. He will fly down the stairs."
On August 22, Pravda published an article about Ribbentrop's visit.
Joachim von Ribbentrop became the only Hitlerite politician whose photographs went around all Soviet newspapers. At the trial in Nuremberg, he was put next to Goering and Hess.
Ribbentrop was born in 1893. In his youth he lived in Switzerland, studied English in London. World War I found him in the USA. Ribbentrop hurried to his homeland and entered the military service. In 1919, as an adjutant to General Seeckt, he was in Versailles at the signing of a peace treaty.
After the war he went into business. Ribbentrop became the owner of an export-import wine trading company. He married the daughter of the owner of a champagne company. Thanks to his political connections, he acquired acquaintances in different countries.
Ribbentrop met Hitler before 1933, and in 1933 a closer rapprochement took place between them. Ribbentrop provided his mansion for Hitler's business meetings. Immediately after Hitler came to power, the so-called "Ribbentrop Bureau" appeared.
Joachim von Ribbentrop was very vain. His devotion to pomp and ceremony reached its zenith when he took the ministerial office. When the minister returned from foreign trips, the entire staff of the ministry lined up at the airport or train station. If Ribbentrop returned with his wife, then not only employees, but also their wives, should have met them.
On one occasion, Ribbentrop forbade the publication of a communique on the negotiations between Hitler and Mussolini because in the final paragraph of this document the name of the foreign minister was after Keitel.
The Reichsminister did not limit his activity only to the sphere of foreign policy. He was directly involved in the resolution of the entire complex
questions connected with the preparation and implementation of aggressive wars. Together with other closest henchmen of Hitler, Ribbentrop developed plans for the colonization of the occupied countries, robbery, enslavement and mass extermination of their citizens, actively contributed to the implementation of these plans in practice. On his instructions, in particular, a “special purpose battalion” was created under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, following the advanced units of the Wehrmacht, robbed the museums and libraries of the occupied territories. On August 1939, Ribbentrop, armed with Hitler's written authority to conclude a non-aggression pact and other agreements, flew to Moscow.
The fact that the German side decided to reach an agreement at all costs is evidenced by the story told to K. Simonov by Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky:
“When in 1939 Ribbentrop flew to Moscow on his plane, on the way, in the Velikiye Luki region, he was fired upon by our anti-aircraft battery. The commander of the anti-aircraft battery ordered to open fire on this aircraft - firing was opened; on the plane, as it later turned out after landing in Moscow, there were holes from fragments.
I know the whole story because I was sent with a commission to investigate this case on the spot. But the most interesting thing is that although we were waiting for a statement from the Germans, there was no protest from them, neither a statement nor a protest from their side. Neither Ribbentrop, nor the persons accompanying him, nor the employees of the German embassy in Moscow told anyone a single word about this fact.
Negotiations began on 23 August. The first stage of negotiations lasted 3 hours. Ribbentrop's dispatch testifies that no special difficulties arose during this period.
Ribbentrop - German Foreign Ministry.
Telegram No. 204 of 23 August. Sent from Moscow at 20:00. 05 min.
“Please inform the Führer immediately that the first three-hour meeting with Stalin and Molotov has just ended. During the discussion, which proceeded positively in our spirit, it also became clear that the last obstacle to the final decision is the Russian demand that we recognize the ports of Libava (Liepaja) and Vindava (Ventspils), which are
us into their sphere of influence. I would be grateful for confirmation before 20 o'clock German time of the Führer's consent. The signing of a secret protocol on the mutual delimitation of spheres of influence in the entire eastern zone, to which he agreed in principle, is being discussed.
Telephone message from the Office of the Minister to Ribbentrop, received in Moscow on August 23 at 23:00. 00 min.
Answer: Yes, I agree.
The non-aggression pact and the secret protocol were signed later that evening at the second meeting. The Germans and Russians reached an agreement so easily that this feasting meeting, which lasted almost until the morning, was for the most part devoted not to some kind of persistent bargaining, but to a lively discussion international position, all this was captured by the official report of the German delegation, which was marked "state secret".
“Mr. Stalin and Molotov commented hostilely on the behavior of the British mission in Moscow, which never told the Soviet government what it really wanted.
The Reich Foreign Minister stated in this connection that Britain had always tried, and still is trying, to undermine the good relations between Germany and the Soviet Union. England is weak and wants others to support her arrogant claim to world domination.
Mr. Stalin readily agreed with this and observed the following: the British army is weak, the British navy no longer deserves its former reputation. English air fleet, you can be sure, is increasing, but England does not have enough pilots. If, despite all this, England still dominates the world, it is only due to the stupidity of other countries, which have always allowed themselves to be deceived. It's funny, for example, that only a few hundred Britons rule India...
The Reich Foreign Minister noted that the Anti-Comintern Pact was, in general, directed not against the Soviet Union, but against Western democracies. He knew and could guess from the tone of the Russian press that the Soviet government was fully aware of this.
Mr. Stalin inserted that the Anti-Comintern Pact frightened mainly city of london and small English merchants.
“I have just received the following telegram from Molotov:
“I have received your message that German troops have entered Warsaw. Please convey my congratulations and greetings to the government of the German Empire. Molotov. September, the Polish ambassador was invited to Molotov, where he was officially informed that the transit of military cargo through the territory of the USSR to Poland was prohibited. As it has now become known, the Minsk radio station was used as a radio beacon to guide German aircraft to carry out military operations on Polish territory, for which Goering first conveyed official gratitude to the People's Commissar of Defense Voroshilov, and then sent him a plane as a gift.
On September 10, the Nazi leadership circulated an appeal to the population of Western Ukraine, which stated that the Germans intended to create there " independent state". However, this caused a categorical protest from Moscow. Molotov told Schullenburg that the USSR would not allow the spread of German influence in this territory.
Meanwhile, on September 17, 1939, German troops entered Brest and Lvov.
On the same day, an order was given to the High Command of the Red Army for the Soviet troops to cross the border with Poland.
On September 22, Soviet troops occupied Brest and Lvov. By order of Hitler, parts of the Wehrmacht had to leave these cities. But before their departure, joint parades of Soviet and German units took place in Brest and Lvov. In Brest, the parade was hosted by Guderian, the tank strategist of the Reich, who would soon lead his troops to Moscow, and brigade commander Krivoshein. September Schullenburg sent a telegram to his leadership:
“Stalin and Molotov asked me to come to the Kremlin today at 20:00. Stalin stated the following: in the final settlement of the Polish question, everything that in the future could cause friction between Germany and the Soviet Union must be avoided. From this point of view, he considers it wrong to leave the remainder of the Polish state independent. He proposes the following: from the territory east of demar
On the cationic line, the entire Lublin Voivodeship and that part of the Warsaw Voivodeship that reaches the Bug must be added to our portion. For this, we renounce claims to Lithuania.
Stalin pointed to this proposal as a subject for future negotiations with the Reich Foreign Minister and added that if we agree, the Soviet Union will immediately take up the solution of the problem of the Baltic states, in accordance with the protocol of August 23, and expects in this matter the full support of side of the German government. Stalin emphatically pointed to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but did not mention Finland.
On September 28, a Soviet-German treaty of friendship and border was signed in Moscow, together with the traditional already secret protocol. It specified the division of spheres of influence, but the main significance of the September treaty was different. In fact, having secured the partition of previously sovereign Poland between the USSR and Germany, the treaty symbolized a new stage in which Soviet-German relations entered after this action. They were given the official status of "friendship" - it is not for nothing that the word appeared in the title of the agreement. Less than three months later, in a telegram to Ribbentrop, Stalin formulated this even more shamelessly: "The friendship of the peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union, sealed by blood, has every reason to be long and lasting." October 1939, speaking at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the CCP Union, Molotov stated:
“The ruling circles of Poland boasted a lot about the “strength” of their state and the “power” of their army. However, a short blow to Poland, first by the German army, and then by the Red Army, turned out to be enough to leave nothing of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty, which lived off the oppression of non-Polish nationalities.
And further:
“Recently the ruling circles of England and France have been trying to portray themselves as fighters for the democratic rights of the peoples against Hitlerism. Moreover, the British government announced that for it the goal of the war against Germany was nothing more and nothing less than "the destruction of Hitlerism."
It turns out that the British, and with them the French supporters of the war, declared something like an "ideological war" against Germany, reminiscent of the old religious wars.
But this kind of war has no justification for itself. The ideology of Hitlerism, like any other ideological system, can be recognized or denied, this is a matter of political views. But any person will understand that ideology cannot be destroyed by force, it is impossible to end it with war. July 1940, at a secret meeting at the Bernghof, Hitler said: “The Russian problem will be solved by an offensive. A plan for the upcoming operation should be thought out. At this meeting, the decision to attack the USSR was approved.
In the summer and autumn of 1940, an intensified transfer of German troops to Poland began. It was planned to throw 120 divisions against the USSR, leaving 60 in the West. August 1940, the first version of the war against the Soviet Union was discussed. On this day, at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Molotov spoke about the policy towards Germany:
“Our relations with Germany, which took a turn almost a year ago, continue to be fully maintained, as stipulated by the Soviet-German agreement. This agreement, which our government strictly adheres to, eliminated the possibility of friction in Soviet-German relations in the course of Soviet measures along our western frontier and at the same time ensured Germany's calm confidence in the East. The course of events in Europe not only did not weaken, but, on the contrary, emphasized the importance of its implementation and further development. Recently, the foreign press, and especially the British and Anglo-filtering press, have often speculated on the possibility of disagreements between the Soviet Union and Germany, an attempt to frighten us with the prospect of increasing Germany's might. Both on our side and on the German side, these attempts were repeatedly exposed and discarded as unsuitable. We can only confirm that, in our opinion, the existing good-neighborly and friendly Soviet-German relations are based not on random opportunistic considerations, but on the fundamental state interests of both the USSR and Germany.
On June 14, 1940, Lithuania, and on June 16, Latvia and Estonia, statements were made by the USSR government, which in form and in essence were in the nature of ultimatums. The Soviet government claimed that the governments of these Baltic states grossly violated the mutual assistance treaties concluded in September-October 1939 and were preparing an attack on the Red Army units stationed on the territory of the three countries in accordance with these treaties. It was alleged that in order to coordinate their actions, the Baltic governments created the anti-Soviet military-political alliance "Baltic Entente".
In this regard, the government of the USSR demanded the resignation of the governments of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the formation of new governments capable, as stated in the statements, "to ensure the honest implementation" of the mutual assistance pacts, as well as the admission of additional large contingents of Soviet troops to the territory of the three countries. In case of refusal to comply with these demands, Molotov warned that the Soviet government would take appropriate measures.
The Lithuanian government was given ten hours to respond (the night of June 14-15), while the Latvian and Estonian governments were given ten hours in the daytime on June 16. At the same time, the diplomatic representatives of the three countries were told that Soviet representatives would take part in the formation of new governments.
When Molotov presented these ultimatums, he did not have, as Soviet archival documents testify, any evidence of the existence of such plans. They were not discovered even later, when all the archives of the Baltic governments fell into the hands of the Soviet country.
By the end of May, the imminent outcome of hostilities in Western Europe became clear: France would be defeated, and Great Britain was driven to her island. On June 6, Paris fell. Germany emerged from this campaign not exhausted and weakened, but even stronger economically and militarily, even more self-confident and aggressive. In July 1940, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht command to develop a plan for an attack on the USSR in the autumn of that year, which, however, turned out to be unrealistic.
Moscow might not have known about these plans for sure, although certain information did come in. But the fact that after the defeat of France and Great Britain, Germany lost its strategic interest in maintaining "friendship" with the USSR, Moscow could not but understand. It was then that it was decided to complete the "territorial and political reorganization" of the Baltic countries, the "right" to which the Soviet Union received under secret protocols signed with Germany in August-September 1939.
The Baltic governments knew that if they refused to meet Soviet demands, the issue would be settled by force. In early June, appropriate training was carried out for this case through the People's Commissariat of Defense, the border troops and the NKVD. Salvation could only come to them in the form of a German protest against Soviet actions in the Baltics. However, Germany did not consider it expedient to quarrel with the USSR ahead of time and therefore firmly adhered to the policy of non-intervention.
Under these conditions, the Baltic governments had no choice but to accept the Soviet ultimatum. The old governments resigned, significant Red Army forces were introduced into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, several times larger than the armies of these countries.
To form new governments and subsequently manage their activities, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. Dekanozov arrived in Lithuania, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A. Vyshinsky arrived in Latvia, and A. Zhdanov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, arrived in Estonia.
The crisis ended with the creation of governments that acted in the time allotted to them by history on the basis of the directive of Moscow and its representatives on the ground.
The question of the repressions of the thirties of the last century is of fundamental importance not only for understanding the history of Russian socialism and its essence as a social system, but also for assessing the role of Stalin in the history of Russia. 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 opposed in every possible way the reckless growth in the number of party members, which was later taken up in the CPSU, starting with Khrushchev. In his work The Childhood Disease of Leftism in Communism, he wrote: We are afraid of an excessive expansion of the party, because careerists and rogues inevitably strive to cling to the government party, who deserve only to be shot».
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. Therefore, the next step was to update the upper floors of the party.
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 interfering with the party and the country: “... These are people with well-known merits 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 Party bodies... What do they count on, 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 spoke quite unambiguously in his extensive report: “ New electoral system... will give a powerful impetus to the improvement of the work of Soviet organs, the elimination of bureaucratic organs, the elimination of bureaucratic shortcomings and distortions 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 reject candidates nominated 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, 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") passes the irony on deaf ears and habitually crackles about the fact that the electoral activity of the masses, so you know, 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 all, without exception, "captains of production." 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 uncovered conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military: they say, one has only to give such an opportunity, as former white officers and nobles, hidden kulak underdogs, clergy and 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 by region, supposedly 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 nomenklatura, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually delivered an ultimatum to Stalin and his Politburo: 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 a short time, 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 who had previously served time, and sometimes not even served time, former white officers and nobles, wrecking Trotskyites, priests and simply ordinary citizens classified as class alien elements. Literally on the second day, telegrams from the localities went: the first were comrades Khrushchev and Eikhe.
Then Nikita Khrushchev was the first to rehabilitate his friend Robert Eikhe, who was shot in justice for all his cruelties in 1939, in 1954.
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 is 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 troikas in the 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, intelligentsia were destroyed ... But what, was he the only one like that?
In this regard, the memoirs of the famous poet Nikolai Zabolotsky are interesting: “ A strange certainty was growing in my head that we were in the hands of the Nazis, who, under the nose of our government, had found a way to destroy the 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 of all kinds of crap.
Not Stalin, but Robert Indrikovich Eikhe proposed the creation of extrajudicial reprisals, the famous "troikas", similar to the "Stolypin" ones, 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 enthusiastically joined in the massacre!
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 impossible. 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 let's get back to Yezhov. Nikolai Ivanovich was a new man in the "bodies", he started well, but quickly fell under the influence of his deputy: Frinovsky (former head of the 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 peoples of the USSR would have perceived the arrival of the Nazi troops 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.
Elena Prudnikova is a journalist and writer who has devoted several books to researching the activities of L.P. Beria and I.V. Stalin, in one of the TV programs she said that Lenin, Stalin, Beria are three titans whom the Lord God in His great mercy sent to Russia, because, apparently, he still needed Russia. 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, a political scientist, doctor of 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 LIBERAL MINORITY, which then will definitely lead the peoples of Russia into a bright capitalist tomorrow. He was modestly silent about the price of this approach.
Another part of these gentlemen believes that supposedly 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 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 Kyiv 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 1990s, our archives already opened up 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 somehow be staged 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 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 whether such testimony could have been 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, and voluntarily, could only be given by a 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' handwritten confessions, their handwriting spoke of what their people wrote themselves, in fact voluntarily, without physical influence from the investigators. This destroyed the myth that the testimony was rudely knocked 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, had 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.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn set the highest bar in assessing the number of "victims of communism" when he announced 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, based on 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 announced by 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 - 24 (military espionage). This included the blood-washed Basmachi, Bandera, the Baltic "forest brothers" and other especially dangerous, bloody bandits, spies and saboteurs. There is more human blood on them than there is water in the Volga. And they are also considered "innocent victims of Stalin's 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 get acquainted with open archives. We studied the archives of the NKVD - they did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat of Railways. We got acquainted - it turned out four 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, sitting around 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 "repressions" 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 unprincipled, 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 construction plan 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 embezzled state funds and sold building materials to nearby collective farms and 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. 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 five 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 living conditions for their subordinates, although before this they did not bother at all.
Readers interested in this issue are aware of the incessant moaning of liberals that during the years of the purge, the "best people", the most intelligent and capable, perished. 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 in champagne with prostitutes, 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, ruthlessly cleared out the Chekists who had compromised themselves,
thirdly, he carried out a radical downsizing, sending people to retire or to work in other departments of people who seemed to be not vile, but unsuitable for professional use.
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 is a very important point that 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 characteristics.
Professionalism is a gainful business, but in order to punish any bastard, a person must be absolutely not dirty. Well, yes, clean hands, a cold head and a warm heart - this is all about the youth of the Beria draft. The fact is that it was at the end of the 1930s that the NKVD became a truly effective special service, and not only in the matter of internal cleansing.
During the war, the Soviet counterintelligence outplayed German intelligence with a devastating score - and this is the great merit of those very Beria Komsomol members who came to the bodies three years before the start of the war.
Purge 1937-1939 played a positive role - now not a single boss felt his impunity, there were no more untouchables. Fear did not add intelligence to the nomenklatura, but at least warned it against outright meanness.
Unfortunately, immediately after the end of the great purge, the world war that began in 1939 prevented the holding of alternative elections. And again, the question of democratization was put on the agenda by Iosif Vissarionovich in 1952, shortly before his death. But after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev returned the leadership of the entire country to the party, without answering for anything. And not only.
Almost immediately after Stalin's death, a network of special distributors and special rations appeared, through which the new elites realized their predominant position. But in addition to formal privileges, a system of informal privileges quickly formed. Which is very important.
Since we touched on the activities of our dear Nikita Sergeevich, let's talk about it in a little more detail. With a light hand or language of Ilya Ehrenburg, the period of Khrushchev's rule is called the "thaw". Let's see, what did Khrushchev do before the thaw, during the "great terror"?
The February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of 1937 is underway. It is from him, as it is believed, that the great terror began. Here is the speech of Nikita Sergeevich at this plenum: “... These villains must be destroyed. Destroying a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, we are doing the work of millions. Therefore, it is necessary that the hand does not tremble, it is necessary to step over the corpses of enemies for the benefit of the people».
But how did Khrushchev act as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks? In 1937-1938. out of 38 top leaders of the Moscow City Committee, only three people survived, out of 146 party secretaries - 136 were repressed. Where he found 22,000 kulaks in the Moscow region in 1937, you can’t explain soberly. In total, for 1937-1938, only in Moscow and the Moscow region. he personally repressed 55,741 people.
But, perhaps, speaking at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev was worried that innocent ordinary people were shot? Yes, Khrushchev did not care about the arrests and executions of ordinary people. His entire report at the 20th Congress was devoted to Stalin's accusations that he imprisoned and shot prominent Bolsheviks and marshals. Those. elite. Khrushchev in his report did not even mention the repressed ordinary people. What kind of people should he worry about, “women are still giving birth”, but the cosmopolitan elite, the lapotnik Khrushchev, was oh, what a pity.
What were the motives for the appearance of the revealing report at the 20th Party Congress?
First, without trampling his predecessor in the dirt, it was unthinkable to hope for Khrushchev's recognition as a leader after Stalin. Not! Stalin, even after his death, remained a competitor for Khrushchev, who had to be humiliated and destroyed by any means. kick it dead lion, as it turned out, it’s a pleasure - it doesn’t give back.
The second motive was Khrushchev's desire to return the party to managing the economic activities of the state. To lead everything, for nothing, without answering and not obeying anyone.
The third motive, and perhaps the most important, was the terrible fear of the remnants of the "Leninist Guard" for what they had done. After all, all of their hands, as Khrushchev himself put it, were up to the elbows in blood. Khrushchev and people like him wanted not only to rule the country, but also to have guarantees that they would never be dragged on the rack, no matter what they did while in leadership positions. The 20th Congress of the CPSU gave them such guarantees in the form of indulgence for the release of all sins, both past and future. The whole riddle of Khrushchev and his associates is not worth a damn thing: it is THE IRRESSIBLE ANIMAL FEAR SITTING IN THEIR SOULS AND THE PAINFUL THIRST FOR POWER.
The first thing that strikes the de-Stalinizers is their complete disregard for the principles of historicism, which everyone seems to have been taught in the Soviet school. No historical figure can be judged by the standards of our contemporary era. He must be judged by the standards of his era - and nothing else. In jurisprudence, they say this: "the law has no retroactive effect." That is, the ban introduced this year cannot apply to last year's acts.
Historicism of assessments is also necessary here: one cannot judge a person of one era by the standards of another era (especially the new era that he created with his work and genius). For the beginning of the 20th century, the horrors in the position of the peasantry were so commonplace that many contemporaries practically did not notice them. The famine did not begin with Stalin, it ended with Stalin. It seemed like forever - but the current liberal reforms are again dragging us into that swamp, from which we seem to have already got out ...
The principle of historicism also requires the recognition that Stalin had a completely different intensity of political struggle than in later times. It is one thing to maintain the existence of the system (although Gorbachev failed to do so), but it is another thing to create a new system on the ruins of a country ravaged by civil war. The resistance energy in the second case is many times greater than in the first.
It must be understood that many of those shot under Stalin themselves were going to quite seriously kill him, and if he hesitated even for a minute, he himself would have received a bullet in the forehead. The struggle for power in the era of Stalin had a completely different sharpness than now: it was the era of the revolutionary "Praetorian Guard" - accustomed to rebellion and ready to change emperors like gloves. Trotsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and a whole crowd of people who were accustomed to killings, as to peeling potatoes, claimed the supremacy.
For any terror, not only the ruler is responsible before history, but also his opponents, as well as society as a whole. When the outstanding historian L. Gumilyov, already under Gorbachev, was asked if he was angry at Stalin, under whom he was in prison, he answered: “ But it was not Stalin who imprisoned me, but colleagues in the department»…
Well, God bless him with Khrushchev and the 20th Congress. Let's talk about what the liberal media are constantly talking about, let's talk about Stalin's guilt.
Liberals accuse Stalin of shooting about 700,000 people in 30 years. The logic of the liberals is simple - all the victims of Stalinism. All 700 thousand.
Those. at that time there could be no murderers, no bandits, no sadists, no molesters, no swindlers, no traitors, no wreckers, etc. All victims for political reasons, all crystal clear and decent people.
Meanwhile, even the CIA analytical center Rand Corporation, based on demographic data and archival documents, calculated the number of repressed people in the Stalin era. This center claims that less than 700,000 people were shot between 1921 and 1953. At the same time, no more than a quarter of cases fall to the share of those sentenced to an article under the political article 58. By the way, the same proportion was observed among the prisoners of the labor camps.
“Do you like it when they destroy their people in the name of a great goal?” the liberals continue. I will answer. THE PEOPLE - NO, BUT THE BANDITS, THIVES AND MORAL FRACTIONS - YES. But I DON'T LIKE anymore when their own people are destroyed in the name of filling their pockets with loot, hiding behind beautiful liberal-democratic slogans.
Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya, a great supporter of reforms, who at that time was part of the administration of President Yeltsin, admitted a decade and a half later that in just three years of shock therapy in Russia alone, middle-aged men died 8 million (!!!). Yes, Stalin stands on the sidelines and nervously smokes a pipe. Didn't improve.
However, your words about Stalin's non-involvement in the massacres of honest people are not convincing, the LIBERALS continue. Even if this is allowed, then in this case he was simply obliged, firstly, to honestly and openly admit to the whole people the iniquities committed against innocent people, secondly, to rehabilitate the unjustly victims and, thirdly, to take measures to prevent similar iniquities in the future. None of this has been done.
Again a lie. Dear. You just do not know the history of the USSR.
As for the first and second, the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938 openly recognized the lawlessness committed against honest communists and non-party people, adopting a special resolution on this matter, published, by the way, in all central newspapers. Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, noting "provocations on an all-Union scale", demanded: Expose careerists who seek to distinguish themselves ... on repression. To expose a skillfully disguised enemy ... seeking to kill our Bolshevik cadres by carrying out measures of repression, sowing uncertainty and excessive suspicion in our ranks.
Just as openly, the entire country was told about the harm caused by unjustified repressions at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) held in 1939. Immediately after the December Plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, thousands of illegally repressed people, including prominent military leaders, began to return from places of detention. All of them were officially rehabilitated, and Stalin personally apologized to some.
Well, and about, thirdly, I have already said that the NKVD apparatus almost suffered the most from repressions, and a significant part was held accountable precisely for abuse of official position, for reprisals against honest people.
What are the liberals not talking about? About the rehabilitation of innocent victims.
Immediately after the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938, they began to revise
criminal cases and release from the camps. It was produced: in 1939 - 330 thousand,
in 1940 - 180 thousand, until June 1941 another 65 thousand.
What liberals are not talking about yet. About how they fought the consequences of the great terror.
With the advent of Beria L.P. In November 1938, 7,372 operational officers, or 22.9% of their payroll, were dismissed from the state security agencies for the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD in November 1938, of which 937 went to jail. And since the end of 1938, the country's leadership has achieved the prosecution of more than 63 thousand NKVD workers who allowed falsification and created far-fetched, fake counter-revolutionary cases, OF WHICH EIGHT THOUSAND WAS SHOT.
I will give only one example from the article by Yu.I. Mukhin: “Minutes No. 17 of the Meeting of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on court cases". There are more than 60 photographs. I will show in the form of a table a piece of one of them. (http://a7825585.hostink.ru/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=752.)
In this article Mukhin Yu.I. writes: " I was told that this kind of documents had never been posted on the Web due to the fact that they were very quickly denied free access to them in the archive. And the document is interesting, and something interesting can be gleaned from it ...».
Lots of interesting things. But most importantly, the article shows what the NKVD officers were shot for after L.P. Beria. Read. The names of those shot in the photographs are shaded.
Top secret
P O T O C O L No. 17
Meetings of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on Judicial Affairs
dated February 23, 1940
Chairman - comrade Kalinin M.I.
Present: t.t.: Shklyar M.F., Ponkratiev M.I., Merkulov V.N.
1. Listened
G ... Sergey Ivanovich, M ... Fedor Pavlovich, by the decision of the military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Moscow Military District of December 14-15, 1939, were sentenced to death under Art. 193-17 p. b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for making unreasonable arrests of command and Red Army personnel, actively falsifying investigation cases, conducting them using provocative methods and creating fictitious K / R organizations, as a result of which a number of people were shot according to the fictitious ones they created materials.
Decided.
Agrees with the use of execution to G ... S.I. and M…F.P.
17. Listened
And ... Fedor Afanasyevich was sentenced to death under Art. 193-17 p.b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for being an employee of the NKVD, making mass illegal arrests of citizens of railway workers, falsifying interrogation protocols and creating artificial C/R cases, as a result of which over 230 people were sentenced to death and to various terms of imprisonment for more than 100 people, and of the latter, 69 people have been released at this time.
Decided
Agree with the use of execution against A ... F.A.
Have you read? Well, how do you like the dearest Fedor Afanasyevich? One (one!!!) investigator-falsifier summed up 236 people under execution. And what, he was the only one like that, how many of them were such scoundrels? I gave the number above. That Stalin personally set tasks for these Fedors and Sergeys to destroy innocent people? What conclusions suggest themselves?
Conclusion N1. Judging Stalin's time only by repressions is the same as judging the activities of the chief physician of a hospital only by the hospital's morgue - there will always be corpses there. If you approach with such a measure, then every doctor is a bloody ghoul and a murderer, i.e. deliberately ignore the fact that the team of doctors successfully cured and prolonged the life of thousands of patients and blame them only for a small percentage of those who died due to some inevitable misdiagnosis or died during serious operations.
The authority of Jesus Christ with Stalin's is incomparable. But even in the teachings of Jesus, people see only what they want to see. Studying the history of world civilization, one has to observe how wars, chauvinism, the "Aryan theory", serfdom, and Jewish pogroms were substantiated by Christian doctrine. This is not to mention the executions "without the shedding of blood" - that is, the burning of heretics. And how much blood was shed during crusades and religious wars? So, maybe because of this, to ban the teachings of our Creator? Just like today, some wimps propose to ban the communist ideology.
If we consider the mortality graph of the population of the USSR, no matter how hard we try, we cannot find traces of “cruel” repressions, and not because they did not exist, but because their scale is exaggerated. What is the purpose of this exaggeration and inflation? The goal is to instill in the Russians a guilt complex similar to the guilt complex of the Germans after the defeat in World War II. The "pay and repent" complex. But the great ancient Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius, who lived 500 years before our era, said even then: “ Beware of those who want to make you feel guilty. For they want power over you».
Do we need it? Judge for yourself. When the first time Khrushchev stunned all the so-called. truth about Stalin's repressions, then the authority of the USSR in the world immediately collapsed to the delight of the enemies. There was a split in the world communist movement. We have quarreled with great China, AND TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD HAVE LEFT THE COMMUNIST PARTIES. Eurocommunism appeared, denying not only Stalinism, but also, what is scary, the Stalinist economy. The myth of the 20th Congress created distorted ideas about Stalin and his time, deceived and psychologically disarmed millions of people when the question of the fate of the country was being decided. When Gorbachev did this for the second time, not only the socialist bloc collapsed, but our Motherland - the USSR collapsed.
Now Putin's team is doing this for the third time: again, they only talk about repressions and other "crimes" of the Stalinist regime. What this leads to is clearly seen in the Zyuganov-Makarov dialogue. They are told about development, new industrialization, and they immediately begin to switch arrows to repression. That is, they immediately break off a constructive dialogue, turning it into a squabble, a civil war of meanings and ideas.
Conclusion N2. Why do they need it? To prevent the restoration of a strong and great Russia. It is more convenient for them to rule a weak and fragmented country, where people will pull each other's hair at the mention of the name of Stalin or Lenin. So it is more convenient for them to rob and deceive us. The policy of "divide and conquer" is as old as the world. Moreover, they can always dump from Russia to where their stolen capital is stored and where children, wives and mistresses live.
Conclusion N3. And why do the patriots of Russia need it? It’s just that we and our children don’t have another country. Think about this first before you start cursing our history for repressions and other things. After all, we have nowhere to fall and retreat. As our victorious ancestors said in similar cases: there is no land for us behind Moscow and beyond the Volga!
Only, after the return of socialism to Russia, taking into account all the advantages and disadvantages of the USSR, one must be vigilant and remember Stalin's warning that as the socialist state is built, the class struggle intensifies, that is, there is a threat of degeneration. And so it happened, and certain segments of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Komsomol and the KGB were among the first to be reborn. The Stalinist party inquisition did not work properly.
One of the blackest pages in the history of the entire post-Soviet space was the years from 1928 to 1952, when Stalin was in power. Biographers for a long time hushed up or tried to distort some facts from the tyrant's past, but it turned out to be quite possible to restore them. The fact is that the country was ruled by a recidivist convict who was in prison 7 times. Violence and terror, forceful methods of solving the problem were well known to him from early youth. They are also reflected in his policies.
Officially, the course was taken in July 1928 by the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. It was there that Stalin spoke, declaring that the further advancement of communism would meet with increasing resistance from hostile, anti-Soviet elements, and they must be fought hard. Many researchers believe that the repressions of the 30s were a continuation of the policy of the Red Terror, adopted as early as 1918. It is worth noting that no one includes those who suffered during the Civil War from 1917 to 1922 among the victims of repression, because no census was conducted after the First World War. And it is not clear how to establish the cause of death.
The beginning of Stalin's repressions was directed at political opponents, officially - at saboteurs, terrorists, spies engaged in subversive activities, at anti-Soviet elements. However, in practice, there was a struggle with wealthy peasants and entrepreneurs, as well as with certain peoples who did not want to sacrifice their national identity for the sake of dubious ideas. A lot of people dispossessed themselves of the kulak and were forced to resettle, but usually this meant not only the loss of their homes, but also the threat of death.
The fact is that such settlers were not provided with food and medicine. The authorities did not take into account the time of year, so if it happened in winter, people often froze and died of hunger. The exact number of victims is still being established. In society, and now there are disputes about this. Some defenders of the Stalinist regime believe that we are talking about hundreds of thousands of "all". Others point to millions of forcibly displaced, and of them died due to the complete absence of any conditions for life, from about 1/5 to a half.
In 1929, the authorities decided to abandon the usual forms of imprisonment and move on to new ones, reform the system in this direction, and introduce corrective labor. Preparations began for the creation of the Gulag, which many rightly compare with the German death camps. It is characteristic that the Soviet authorities often used various events, for example, the assassination of Voikov's plenipotentiary representative in Poland, to crack down on political opponents and simply objectionable ones. In particular, Stalin reacted to this by demanding the immediate liquidation of the monarchists by any means. At the same time, no connection was even established between the victim and those to whom such measures were applied. As a result, 20 representatives of the former Russian nobility were shot, about 9 thousand people were arrested and subjected to repression. The exact number of victims has not yet been established.
Sabotage
It should be noted that the Soviet regime was completely dependent on specialists trained in the Russian Empire. Firstly, not much time had passed at the time of the 1930s, and in fact, our own specialists were absent or were too young and inexperienced. And without exception, all scientists received training in monarchical educational institutions. Secondly, very often science frankly contradicted what the Soviet government was doing. The latter, for example, denied genetics as such, considering it too bourgeois. There was no study of the human psyche, psychiatry had a punitive function, that is, in fact, it did not fulfill its main task.
As a result, the Soviet authorities began to accuse many specialists of sabotage. The USSR did not recognize such concepts as incompetence, including those that arose due to poor training or incorrect appointment, mistake, miscalculation. The real physical condition of the employees of a number of enterprises was ignored, due to which common mistakes were sometimes made. In addition, mass repressions could arise on the basis of suspiciously frequent, according to the authorities, contacts with foreigners, the publication of works in the Western press. A vivid example is the Pulkovo case, when a huge number of astronomers, mathematicians, engineers and other scientists suffered. And in the end, only a small number were rehabilitated: many were shot, some died during interrogations or in prison.
The Pulkovo case very clearly demonstrates another terrible moment of Stalinist repressions: the threat to loved ones, as well as slandering others under torture. Not only scientists suffered, but also the wives who supported them.
Grain procurement
Constant pressure on the peasants, a half-starved existence, weaning of grain, a shortage of labor negatively affected the pace of grain procurement. However, Stalin did not know how to admit mistakes, which became the official public policy. By the way, it is for this reason that any rehabilitation, even of those who were convicted by accident, by mistake or instead of a namesake, took place after the death of the tyrant.
But back to the topic of grain procurement. For objective reasons, it was far from always and not always possible to fulfill the norm. And in connection with this, the “guilty” were punished. Moreover, in some places, completely entire villages were repressed. Soviet power also fell on the heads of those who simply allowed the peasants to keep grain for themselves as an insurance fund or for sowing the next year.
Cases were for almost every taste. The affairs of the Geological Committee and the Academy of Sciences, Vesna, the Siberian Brigade ... A complete and detailed description can take many volumes. And this despite the fact that all the details have not yet been disclosed, many documents of the NKVD continue to remain classified.
Some relaxation that came in 1933 - 1934, historians attribute primarily to the fact that the prisons were overcrowded. In addition, it was necessary to reform the punitive system, which was not aimed at such mass character. This is how the Gulag was born.
Great terror
The main terror occurred in 1937-1938, when, according to various sources, up to 1.5 million people suffered, and more than 800 thousand of them were shot or killed in some other way. However, the exact number is still being established, there are quite active disputes on this matter.
Characteristic was the order of the NKVD No. 00447, which officially launched the mechanism of mass repression against former kulaks, socialist-revolutionaries, monarchists, re-emigrants, and so on. At the same time, everyone was divided into 2 categories: more and less dangerous. Both groups were subject to arrest, the first had to be shot, the second was given a term of 8 to 10 years on average.
Among the victims of Stalin's repressions there were quite a few relatives taken into custody. Even if family members could not be convicted of anything, they were still automatically registered, and sometimes forcibly relocated. If the father and (or) mother were declared "enemies of the people", then this put an end to the opportunity to make a career, often - to get an education. Such people often found themselves surrounded by an atmosphere of horror, they were subjected to a boycott.
The Soviet authorities could also persecute on the basis of nationality and the presence, at least in the past, of the citizenship of certain countries. So, only in 1937, 25 thousand Germans, 84.5 thousand Poles, almost 5.5 thousand Romanians, 16.5 thousand Latvians, 10.5 thousand Greeks, 9 thousand 735 Estonians, 9 thousand Finns, 2 thousand Iranians were shot, 400 Afghans. At the same time, people of the nationality against which the repressions were carried out were dismissed from the industry. And from the army - persons belonging to a nationality not represented on the territory of the USSR. All this happened under the leadership of Yezhov, but, which does not even require separate evidence, no doubt, it was directly related to Stalin, constantly personally controlled by him. Many of the hit lists are signed by him. And we are talking about, in total, hundreds of thousands of people.
Ironically, recent stalkers have often been the victim. So, one of the leaders of the described repressions Yezhov was shot in 1940. The verdict was put into effect the very next day after the trial. Beria became the head of the NKVD.
Stalinist repressions spread to new territories along with the Soviet government itself. Purges were going on constantly, they were an obligatory element of control. And with the onset of the 40s, they did not stop.
Repressive mechanism during the Great Patriotic War
Even the Great Patriotic War could not stop the repressive machine, although it partially extinguished the scale, because the USSR needed people at the front. However, now there is a great way to get rid of objectionable - sending to the front line. It is not known exactly how many died following such orders.
At the same time, the military situation became much tougher. Just a suspicion was enough to shoot even without the appearance of a trial. This practice was called "unloading prisons." It was especially widely used in Karelia, in the Baltic States, in Western Ukraine.
The arbitrariness of the NKVD intensified. So, the execution became possible not even by the verdict of the court or some extrajudicial body, but simply by order of Beria, whose powers began to increase. They do not like to cover this moment widely, but the NKVD did not stop its activities even in Leningrad during the blockade. Then they arrested up to 300 students of higher educational institutions on trumped-up charges. 4 were shot, many died in isolation wards or in prisons.
Everyone is able to say unequivocally whether detachments can be considered a form of repression, but they definitely made it possible to get rid of unwanted people, and quite effectively. However, the authorities continued to persecute in more traditional forms. All those who were in captivity were waiting for the filtration detachments. Moreover, if an ordinary soldier could still prove his innocence, especially if he was captured wounded, unconscious, sick or frostbitten, then the officers, as a rule, were waiting for the Gulag. Some were shot.
As Soviet power spread across Europe, intelligence was engaged there, returning and judging emigrants by force. Only in Czechoslovakia, according to some sources, 400 people suffered from its actions. Quite serious damage in this regard was caused to Poland. Often, the repressive mechanism affected not only Russian citizens, but also Poles, some of whom were shot extrajudicially for resisting Soviet power. Thus, the USSR violated the promises that it gave to the allies.
Post-war developments
After the war, the repressive apparatus turned around again. Too influential military men, especially those close to Zhukov, doctors who were in contact with the allies (and scientists) were under threat. The NKVD could also arrest Germans in the Soviet zone of responsibility for trying to contact residents of other regions that were under control Western countries. The unfolding campaign against persons of Jewish nationality looks like a black irony. The last high-profile trial was the so-called "Doctors' Case", which fell apart only in connection with the death of Stalin.
Use of torture
Later, during the Khrushchev thaw, the Soviet prosecutor's office itself was engaged in the study of cases. The facts of mass falsification and obtaining confessions under torture were recognized, which were used very widely. Marshal Blucher was killed as a result of numerous beatings, and in the process of extracting evidence from Eikhe, his spine was broken. There are cases when Stalin personally demanded that certain prisoners be beaten.
In addition to beatings, sleep deprivation, placement in a too cold or, conversely, excessively hot room without clothes, and a hunger strike were also practiced. The handcuffs were periodically not removed for days, and sometimes for months. Forbidden correspondence, any contact with the outside world. Some were “forgotten”, that is, they were arrested, and then they did not consider the cases and did not make any specific decision until Stalin's death. This, in particular, is indicated by the order signed by Beria, which ordered amnesty for those who were arrested before 1938, and for whom no decision has yet been made. We are talking about people who have been waiting for the decision of their fate for at least 14 years! This can also be considered a kind of torture.
Stalinist statements
Understanding the very essence of Stalinist repressions in the present is of fundamental importance, if only because some people still consider Stalin an impressive leader who saved the country and the world from fascism, without which the USSR would have been doomed. Many try to justify his actions by saying that in this way he raised the economy, ensured industrialization or defended the country. In addition, some try to downplay the number of victims. In general, the exact number of victims is one of the most contested points today.
However, in reality, to assess the personality of this person, as well as all those who carried out his criminal orders, even the recognized minimum of those convicted and shot is enough. During the fascist regime of Mussolini in Italy, a total of 4.5 thousand people were repressed. His political enemies were either expelled from the country or placed in prisons where they were given the opportunity to write books. Of course, no one says that Mussolini is getting better from this. Fascism cannot be justified.
But what assessment at the same time can be given to Stalinism? And taking into account the repressions that were carried out on a national basis, he, at least, has one of the signs of fascism - racism.
Characteristic signs of repression
Stalinist repressions have several characteristic features that only emphasize what they were. It:
- mass character. Accurate figures depend heavily on estimates, whether relatives are taken into account or not, internally displaced persons or not. Depending on the method of counting, we are talking about 5 to 40 million.
- Cruelty. The repressive mechanism did not spare anyone, people were subjected to cruel, inhuman treatment, starved to death, tortured, their relatives were killed before their eyes, loved ones were threatened, forced to abandon family members.
- Orientation to protect the power of the party and against the interests of the people. In fact, we can talk about genocide. Neither Stalin nor his other henchmen were at all interested in how the constantly decreasing peasantry should provide everyone with bread, which is actually beneficial to the production sector, how science will move forward with the arrest and execution of prominent figures. This clearly demonstrates that the real interests of the people were ignored.
- Injustice. People could suffer simply because they had property in the past. Wealthy peasants and the poor, who took their side, supported, somehow protected. Persons of "suspicious" nationality. Relatives who returned from abroad. Sometimes academics, prominent scientists, who contacted their foreign colleagues to publish data on invented drugs after they received official permission from the authorities, could be punished.
- Connection with Stalin. The extent to which everything was tied to this figure is eloquently evident even from the termination of a number of cases immediately after his death. Lavrenty Beria was rightly accused by many of cruelty and inappropriate behavior, but even he, by his actions, recognized the false nature of many cases, the unjustified cruelty used by the NKVD. And it was he who forbade physical measures against prisoners. Again, as with Mussolini, this is not about justification. It's just about underlining.
- illegality. Some executions were carried out not only without a trial, but also without the participation of the judiciary as such. But even when there was a trial, it was only about the so-called "simplified" mechanism. This meant that the consideration was carried out without defense, only with the hearing of the prosecution and the accused. There was no practice of reviewing cases, the court decision was final, often carried out the next day. At the same time, widespread violations of even the legislation of the USSR itself, which was in force at that time, were observed.
- inhumanity. The repressive apparatus violated the basic human rights and freedoms proclaimed in the civilized world at that time for several centuries. Researchers do not see a difference between the treatment of prisoners in the dungeons of the NKVD and how the Nazis behaved towards the prisoners.
- groundlessness. Despite the attempts of the Stalinists to demonstrate the existence of some underlying reason, there is not the slightest reason to believe that anything was directed to any good goal or helped to achieve it. Indeed, a lot was built by the forces of the prisoners of the Gulag, but it was the forced labor of people who were greatly weakened due to the conditions of detention and the constant lack of food. Consequently, production errors, defects and a generally very low level of quality - all this inevitably arose. This situation also could not but affect the pace of construction. Given the costs that the Soviet government incurred for the creation of the Gulag, its maintenance, as well as such a large-scale apparatus in general, it would be much more rational to simply pay for the same work.
The assessment of Stalin's repressions has not yet been finally made. However, beyond any doubt it is clear that this is one of the worst pages of world history.
You have no criminal record
not your merit, but our flaw ...
Introduction.
The 20s - 30s are one of the most terrible pages in the history of the USSR. So many political processes and repressions were carried out that for many years historians will not be able to restore all the details of the terrible picture of this era. These years cost the country millions of victims, and the victims, as a rule, were talented people, technical specialists, leaders, scientists, writers, intellectuals. The "price" of the struggle for a "happy future" was getting higher and higher. The country's leadership sought to get rid of all free-thinking people. Carrying out one process after another, state bodies have actually decapitated the country.
Terror embraced indiscriminately all regions, all republics. The execution lists included the names of Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Georgians and other representatives of large and small peoples of the country. Its consequences were especially severe for those regions that were distinguished by cultural backwardness before the revolution and where in the 1920s and 1930s a layer of intelligentsia and specialists was rapidly forming. Great damage was borne not only by Soviet people, but also by representatives of foreign parties and organizations working in the USSR. The “purge” also affected the Comintern. They were sent to prisons and concentration camps, specialists who conscientiously helped the country in raising the economy were expelled from the country in disgrace.
Feeling the approaching disaster, some Soviet leaders fled abroad. A “red” wave of Russian emigration appeared, although not numerous.
The second total crisis of power testified to the growth of distrust, alienation, hostility around the party and state organizations. In response - a policy of suppression, violence, mass terror. The leaders of the ruling party preached that all aspects of society should be imbued with an irreconcilable spirit of class struggle. Although the revolution grew further with each passing year, the number of people convicted of "counter-revolutionary" activities grew rapidly. Millions of people were in the camps, millions were shot. Near a number of large cities (Moscow, Minsk, Vorkuta, etc.) appeared mass graves of the tortured and executed.
"Socialist Offensive"
Forced economic growth in the face of an acute shortage of capital, the growing danger of war limited the possibilities of material incentives for labor, led to a gap in economic and social aspects development, to stagnation, even a drop in living standards, which could not but lead to an increase in psychological tension in society. accelerated industrialization, complete collectivization sharply intensified migration processes, a sharp break in the way of life, the value orientations of huge masses of people (“ great break"). Powerful political and ideological pressure was called upon to condense the excess socio-psychological energy of the people, direct it to solving key development problems, and compensate to some extent for the weakness of material incentives. In the 1930s, the already fragile line between political and civil society broke down: the economy was subject to total state control, the party merged with the state, and the state became ideologized.
The “socialist offensive” of the late 1920s and early 1930s, expressed in an increase in planned targets in industry, in complete collectivization, is an attempt to cut the Gordian knot of problems in the economy and, at the same time, to remove the social tension that has accumulated in society. Throughout the 1920s, the understanding of NEP as a "respite", a "retreat" followed by a new "offensive" was fairly stable in the working environment.
The situation escalated towards the end of the 1920s. In connection with the acceleration of industrialization with insignificant financial incentive funds, attempts are being made to intensify labor process, rationalization of production at the expense of workers. As a result of the re-conclusion in the winter of 1927-1928 and 1928-1929. collective agreements, tariff reform, revision of production standards, leveling is intensified, and wages are reduced for certain categories of workers. As a consequence, many party organizations note "political tension among the masses." The dissatisfaction of the workers, mostly highly qualified, was expressed in the form of collective appeals to the governing bodies in order to obtain clarifications on the essence of the campaigns, submit applications in connection with the infringement of rights, and mass withdrawals from general meetings. There were short-term strikes, however, not distinguished by a significant number of participants. There were no direct anti-Soviet speeches at the enterprises. At a number of working meetings, resolutions were adopted by representatives of the Left Opposition, containing demands for an increase in wages, cancellation of the new tariff scale, revision of norms and prices. “For 10 years the party has been leading to no one knows where, the party is deceiving us,” the “organs” recorded the statements of the workers. “The Ford system was invented by the communists.”
The dissatisfaction of the workers assumed very significant proportions. Data on re-elections of factory committees in the Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesenskaya, Leningrad regions and the Kharkov district indicate that "less than half of the workers were present at meetings at a number of large enterprises, and at some of them ... up to 15%." “As a result of poor attendance, meetings were disrupted at many enterprises.”
"Lightning rod" - Shakhty process
The growing dissatisfaction of the workers - an inevitable consequence of the "belt-tightening policy" - the party-state leadership managed to channel "special eating" into the mainstream. The role of a lightning rod was played by the "Shakhty trial" (1928). Under it, engineers and technicians of the Donetsk basin were held accountable, accused of deliberate wrecking, of organizing explosions in mines, of criminal ties with the former owners of Donetsk mines, of purchasing unnecessary imported equipment, violating safety regulations, labor laws, etc. In addition, some leaders of the Ukrainian industry were involved in this case, allegedly constituting the “Kharkov center”, which led the activities of pests. The "Moscow center" was also "revealed". According to the prosecution, the wrecking organizations of Donbass were financed by Western capitalists.
Sessions of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR on the "Shakhty case" were held in the summer of 1928 in Moscow under the chairmanship of A. Ya. Vyshinsky. At trial, some of the defendants admitted only part of the charges brought against them, while others completely rejected them; There were also those who pleaded guilty to all charges. The court acquitted four of the 53 defendants, sentenced four of them to suspended sentences, nine people to imprisonment for a term of one to three years. Most of the accused were sentenced to long-term imprisonment - from four to ten years, 11 people were sentenced to death (five of them were shot, and six of them were commuted by the Central Executive Committee of the USSR).
What really happened in the Donbass? R. A. Medvedev cites an interesting testimony of the old security officer S. O. Gazaryan, who worked for a long time in the economic department of the NKVD of Transcaucasia (and was arrested in 1937). Gazaryan said that in 1928 he came to the Donbass in order to “exchange experience” in the work of the economic departments of the NKVD. According to him, criminal mismanagement was a common occurrence in the Donbass at that time, which caused many serious accidents with human casualties (flooding and explosions in mines, etc.). Both in the center and in the localities, the Soviet and economic apparatus was still imperfect, there were many random and unscrupulous people, bribery, theft, and neglect of the interests of the working people flourished in a number of economic and Soviet organizations. For all these crimes it was necessary, of course, to punish the guilty. It is possible that there were isolated cases of wrecking in the Donbass, and one of the engineers received letters from some former owner of the mine who had fled abroad. But all this could not serve as a basis for a high-profile political process. In most cases, accusations of sabotage, links with various kinds of “centers” and foreign counter-revolutionary organizations were added during the course of the investigation to various criminal charges (theft, bribery, mismanagement, etc.). Promising prisoners for "necessary" testimony to mitigate their fate, the investigators resorted to such forgery, allegedly for "ideological" reasons: "it is necessary to mobilize the masses", "raise their anger against imperialism", "increase vigilance". In reality, these forgeries pursued one goal: to divert the discontent of the broad masses of working people from the party leadership, which encouraged the race for the maximum industrialization indicators.
The "Shakhty case" was discussed at two plenums of the Central Committee of the party. “The so-called Shakhty affair cannot be considered an accident,” Stalin said at the plenum of the Central Committee in April 1929. “Shakhtintsy” are now sitting in all branches of our industry. Many of them have been caught, but not all of them have been caught yet. The wrecking of the bourgeois intelligentsia is one of the most dangerous forms of resistance against developing socialism. Wrecking is all the more dangerous because it is connected with international capital. Bourgeois wrecking is an undoubted indication that the capitalist elements are far from laying down their arms, that they are accumulating strength for new actions against the Soviet regime.
"Specialism"
The concept of "Shakhtintsy" has become a household word, as if a synonym for "wrecking". The "Shakhty affair" gave rise to a lengthy propaganda campaign. The publication of materials about "sabotage" in the Donbass caused an emotional storm in the country. The collectives demanded the immediate convening of meetings, the organization of rallies. At the meetings, the workers called for increased attention from the administration to the needs of production, for strengthening the protection of enterprises. From the observations of the OGPU in Leningrad: “The workers are now carefully discussing every malfunction in production, suspecting malicious intent; expressions are often heard: “isn’t the second Donbass with us?” In the form of "special eating", the extremely painful question for the workers about social justice splashed to the surface. Finally, the concrete perpetrators of the outrages being created were “found”, people who embodied in the eyes of the workers the source of numerous cases of infringement of their rights, neglect of their interests: old specialists, engineering and technical workers - “specialists”, as they were then called. The intrigues of the counter-revolution were announced in the collectives, for example, a delay in the payment of wages for two or three hours, a reduction in prices, etc.
In Moscow, at the Trekhgornaya Manufactory factory, the workers said: “The Party trusted the specialists too much, and they began to dictate to us. They pretend to help us in our work, but in fact they are carrying out a counter-revolution. Specialists will never come with us.” And here are the characteristic statements recorded at the Krasny Oktyabr factory in the Nizhny Novgorod province: “Specialists were given freedom, privileges, apartments, huge salaries; live like in the old days. In many collectives there were calls for severe punishment of "criminals". A meeting of workers in the Sokolnichesky district of Moscow demanded: "Everyone must be shot, otherwise there will be no peace." At the Perovskaya shipyard: "You need to shoot this bastard in batches."
Playing on the worst feelings of the masses, the regime in 1930 inspired a number of political trials against "bourgeois specialists" who were accused of "sabotage" and other mortal sins. So, in the spring of 1930, an open political trial took place in Ukraine in the case of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. The head of this mythical organization was declared the largest Ukrainian scientist, vice-president of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) S. A. Efremov. In addition to him, there were over 40 people in the dock: scientists, teachers, priests, leaders of the cooperative movement, medical workers.
In the same year, the disclosure of another counter-revolutionary organization, the Labor Peasant Party (TKP), was announced. The outstanding economists N. D. Kondratiev, A. V. Chayanov, L. N. Yurovsky, the outstanding agronomist A. G. Doyarenko and some others were announced as its leaders. In the autumn of 1930, the OGPU announced that it had been exposed as a wrecking and espionage organization in the sphere of supplying the population with the most important foodstuffs, especially meat, fish and vegetables. According to the OGPU, the organization was headed by the former landowner - Professor A.V. Ryazantsev and the former landowner General E.S. Soyuzmyaso, Soyuzryba, Soyuzplodovoshch, and others. As reported in the press, these "pests" managed to upset the food supply system of many cities and workers' settlements, organize famine in a number of regions of the country, they were blamed for the increase in prices for meat and meat products and etc. Unlike other similar trials, the sentence in this case was extremely severe; all 46 people involved were shot by order of a closed court.
On November 25 - December 7, 1930, a trial took place in Moscow over a group of prominent technical specialists accused of wrecking and counter-revolutionary activities of the Industrial Party trial. Eight people were brought to trial on charges of wrecking and espionage activities: L. K. Ramzin, director of the Thermal Engineering Institute and a prominent specialist in the field of heat engineering and boiler building, as well as prominent specialists in the field of technical sciences and planning V. A. Larichev, I. A. Kalinnikov, I. F. Charnovsky, A. A. Fedotov, S. V. Kupriyanov, V. I. Ochkin, K. V. Sitnin. At the trial, all the defendants pleaded guilty and gave detailed testimonies about their espionage and sabotage activities.
A few months after the trial of the Industrial Party, an open political trial was held in Moscow in the case of the so-called Allied Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Mensheviks). V. G. Groman, a member of the Presidium of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, V. V. Sher, a member of the board of the State Bank, N. N. Sukhanov, a writer, A. M. Ginzburg, an economist, M. P. Yakubovich, an executive People's Commissariat of Trade of the USSR, V. K. Ikov, writer, I. I. Rubin, professor of political economy, etc., a total of 14 people. The defendants pleaded guilty and gave detailed testimony. Convicted in "anti-special" trials (with the exception of the executed "supplies") received various terms of imprisonment.
How did investigators get "confessions"? MP Yakubovich later recalled: “Some ... succumbed to the promise of future blessings. Others who tried to resist were “reasoned” with physical methods of influence - they were beaten (beaten in the face and head, on the genitals, knocked to the floor and trampled under foot, those lying on the floor were strangled by the throat until their face was filled with blood, etc.) , kept without sleep on the "conveyor", put in a punishment cell (half-dressed and barefoot in the cold or unbearably hot and stuffy without windows), etc. For some, one threat of such exposure was enough - with a corresponding demonstration. For others, it was applied to varying degrees - strictly individually - depending on the resistance of each.
The political processes of the late 1920s and early 1930s served as a pretext for mass repressions against the old ("bourgeois") intelligentsia, whose representatives worked in various people's commissariats, educational institutions, the Academy of Sciences, museums, cooperative organizations, and the army. The punitive organs dealt the main blow in 1928-1932. according to the technical intelligentsia - "specialists". Prisons at that time were called by wits "rest houses for engineers and technicians."
"New Workers" - the cornerstone of the cult of personality
The anti-specialist campaign exploited a complex of anti-bourgeois sentiments that were immanent in the labor movement in the early stages of industrialization and that took on especially sharp forms in Russia during the class battles of 1905-1907 and 1917-1921. In contrast, the slogan of the "socialist offensive" was rather focused on the "new workers" - politically less sophisticated representatives of the rural youth. As early as 1926, there was an acute shortage of skilled proletarians, and the unemployed were dominated by lower-skilled clerical workers and unskilled laborers. In 1926-1929. the working class was replenished by people from peasant families by 45%, from employees - by almost 7%. And during the years of the first five-year plan, the peasantry became the predominant source of replenishing the ranks of the proletariat: of the 12.5 million workers and employees who came to the national economy, 8.5 million were peasants.
Finding themselves “in a big and alien world”, the “new workers” had to go through a long period of socio-psychological adaptation to an industrial, largely conveyor type of production (as opposed to seasonal agricultural production) and to new living conditions. The "new workers" for the most part were far from conscious participation in public life, were a convenient object of political and ideological manipulation.
The slogan of "acceleration" promised the "new workers" a rapid elimination of unemployment, which had been on the rise throughout the twenties. On the eve of the first five-year plan, the unemployed accounted for 12% of the number of workers and employees employed in the national economy (1,242,000). And in 1930, on April 1, for the first time, a decrease in the number of unemployed was recorded - 1081 thousand, and on October 1 - only 240 thousand unemployed. In 1931, unemployment in the USSR was completely eliminated. Millions of industry recruits have benefited tangibly from the Industrial Leap. And this win was associated in their minds with the name of the party and state leader I. V. Stalin.
The "new workers" served as one of the cornerstones of the "cult of personality" pedestal. Being unrooted in a new environment, especially with a low level of literacy, led to the fact that they began the development of a different culture from the very beginning. Thus, favorable ground arose for the appearance of a leader-teacher, capable of giving the "disciples" general guidelines in their new life in a simple accessible form. In conditions of concentration of real political power in party committees, emergency, and sometimes punitive bodies, the Soviets carried out secondary economic functions in general, carried out cultural and organizational work. Under them, branch sections were created - cultural, financial and tax, public education, health care, RCT, etc. - which included hundreds of thousands of workers (in the first half of 1933, 1 million people worked in 172 thousand sections across the RSFSR).
In such a situation, the participation of the population in the electoral process became more and more not an expression of its political will, but, as it were, a test for political loyalty, and then a new socialist "rite". During the re-elections of the Soviets, the average percentage of voters in the country was: in 1927 - 50.7%, in 1929 - 62.2, in 1931 - 72, in 1934 - 85%; in the elections of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on December 12, 1937, 96.8% of voters participated, in the elections to local Soviets (December 1939) - 99.21% of voters. In the conditions of the actual anarchy of the official power - the Soviets, the curtailment of democracy in the bodies of real power (the parties, the NKVD) adopted
On December 5, 1936, the outwardly rather democratic Constitution of the USSR was in fact nothing more than a “democratic facade” of a totalitarian state.
Massacre over former leaders opposition.
The fact that this was exactly the case is clearly evidenced by a series of trials in the second half of the 1930s against former leaders of the internal party opposition.
The case of the so-called "Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center" (considered by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on August 19-24, 1936;
16 people were put on trial: G. E. Zinoviev, L. B. Kamenev, G. E. Evdokimov, I. P. Bakaev, S. V. Mrachkovsky, V. A. Ter - Vaganyan, I. N. Smirnov. E. A. Dreitser, I. I. Reingold, R. V. Pikel, E. S. Goltsman, Fritz - David (I. - D. I. Kruglyansky), V. P. Olberg, K. B. Berman - Yurin, M. I. Lurie, N. L. Lurie; all were sentenced to capital punishment).
The case of the so-called "Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" (considered by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on January 23-30, 1937; 17 people were put on trial: Yu. L. Pyatakov, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, K. B. Radek, L P. Serebryakov, Ya. B. Livshits, N. I. Muralov, Ya. N. Drobnis, M. S. Boguslavsky, I. A. Knyazev, S. A. Rataychak, B. O. Norkin, A. A Shestov, M. S. Stroilov, I. D. Turk, I. I. Grashe, G. E. Pushin, V. V. Arnold, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, K. B. Radek, and V. V. Arnold were sentenced to ten, M. S. Stroilov - to eight years in prison, the rest - to death: in 1941, V. V. Arnold and M. S. Stroilov were also shot in absentia; G. Ya. Sokolnikov and K. B. Radek in May 1939 were killed by fellow inmates in prison.
The case of the so-called "Anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky bloc" (considered by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on March 2-13, 1938): 21 people were put on trial: N. 14. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov, A. P. Rozengolts, M. A. Chernov, P. P. Bulanov, L. G. Levin, V. A. Maksimov-Dikovsky, I. A. Zelensky, G. F. Grinko, V. I. Ivanov, G. G. Yagoda, N. N. Krostinsky, P. T. Zubarev, S. A. Bessonov, V. F. Sharantovich,
X. G. Rakovsky, A. Ikramov, F. Khodzhasv, P. P. Kryuchkov, D. D. Pletnev. I. N. Kazakov and some others; most of the defendants were sentenced to death.
Those who went through the trials were accused of counter-revolutionary, anti-Soviet, wrecking and sabotage, espionage and coloristic activities. In the reasons, the secret springs, as it is now officially recognized, the falsification of other processes is still not all clear.
The wave of terror grew especially rapidly after the tragedy that broke out in Leningrad on December 1, 1934. The terrorist L. V. Nikolaev killed the first secretary of the Leningrad city committee and the regional party committee, a member of the Politburo, the Orgburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the party S. M. Kirov. Around this attempt, a number of versions arose about his inspirers, accomplices in the crime. However, many documents that shed light on the circumstances of the attempt were destroyed, and the workers who took part in the investigation were repressed. One thing is clear: the attempt was used by the country's leadership to organize a large-scale political action. The investigation of the case was headed by Stalin himself, who immediately pointed to the culprits - the Zinovievites. The lone terrorist was presented by propaganda as a member of a counter-revolutionary underground anti-Soviet and anti-party group headed by the Leningrad Center. There was no documentary evidence of the existence of such a "center", and they did not need them. The arrested group of local party, state, military figures was hastily shot.
There are still more questions than answers in the Kirov murder case. But regardless of the reasons for organizing the processes, the mechanism for their preparation testifies to the non-legal, anti-democratic nature of the political system of Soviet society in the 1930s. In violation of all legal norms, the prosecution was built on the basis of only one type of evidence - the confession of those under investigation. And the main means of obtaining "confessions" were torture and torture. As reported in their explanations in 1961 by former employees of the NKVD of the USSR L.P. Gasov, Ya.A. Iorsh and A.I. opening by any means of the enemy work of the Trotskyists and other arrested former oppositionists and obligated to treat them as enemies of the people. The arrested were persuaded to give the necessary testimony to the investigation, provoked, and threats were used. Night and exhausting interrogations with the use of the so-called "conveyor system" and many hours of "racks" were widely used. According to R. A. Medvedev, a member of the CPSU (b) N. K. Ilyukhov in
In 1938, he ended up in the Butyrskaya prison in the same cell with Bessonov, who was convicted at the trial of the “right-Trotsky bloc”. Bessonov told Ilyukhov, whom he knew well from their joint work, that before the trial he was subjected to many days of severe torture. For almost 17 days he was forced to stand in front of the investigators, not allowing him to sleep and sit down - it was the notorious "conveyor line". Then they began to methodically beat, beat off the kidneys and turned a previously healthy person into an exhausted invalid. Those arrested were warned that they would be tortured even after the trial if they refused to testify that had been beaten out of them. Numerous methods of psychological influence were also used: from threats to deal with relatives in case of refusal to cooperate with the investigation, to an appeal to the revolutionary consciousness of those under investigation.
The whole system of interrogations was designed for the moral, psychological and physical exhaustion of the accused. This was also evidenced in 1938 by the former Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR MP Frinovsky. In particular, he testified that the persons conducting the investigation into the case of the so-called “parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center” began interrogations, as a rule, with the use of physical measures of influence, which continued until the persons under investigation agreed to give the dacha imposed on them testimony. Prior to the recognition of their guilt by the arrested, the protocols of interrogations and confrontations were often not drawn up. It was practiced to draw up many interrogations in one protocol, as well as to draw up protocols in the absence of those being interrogated. The protocols of interrogations of the accused, drawn up in advance by the investigators, were “processed” by the NKVD workers, after which they were reprinted and given to the arrested for signature. The explanations of the accused were not checked, serious contradictions in the testimonies of the accused and witnesses were not eliminated. Other violations of procedural norms were also allowed.
Despite the torture, the investigators did not immediately manage to break the will of those under investigation. Thus, the majority of those involved in the case of the so-called “parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center” denied their guilt for a long time. N. I. Muralov gave evidence with a confession of guilt only 7 months 17 days after his arrest, L. P. Serebryakov - after 3 months 16 days, K. B. Radek - after 2 months 18 days, I. D. Turk - after 58 days, B. O. Norkin and Ya. A. Livshits - after 51 days, Ya. N. Drobnis - after 40 days, Yu. L. Pyatakov and A. L. Shestov - after 33 days.
In the final "victory" of the investigation over the most staunch defendants, I think, an important role was played by the fact that the "old Bolsheviks" could not imagine their life outside the party, outside serving their cause. And faced with a dilemma: either to defend their rightness to the end, recognizing and thereby proving the criminality of the state, to the construction of which they gave all of themselves without a trace, or to admit their “criminality”, so that the state, idea, deed remain impeccably clean in the eyes of the people, the world , - they preferred to "take sin on the soul." A characteristic testimony of N. I. Muralov at the trial: “And I said to myself then, after almost eight months, that my personal interest should submit to the interests of that state for which I fought for twenty-three years, for which I fought actively in three revolutions, when dozens of times my life hung in the balance ... Suppose they even lock me up or shoot me, then my name will serve as a collector both for those who are still in the counter-revolution and for those who will be brought up from the youth ... The danger of remaining on these positions, a danger to the state, to the party, to the revolution, because I am not a simple ordinary member of the party ... "
Terror
The anti-democratic offensive was accompanied by the expansion of the sphere of activity of the punitive organs. All political decisions were carried out with the continuous participation of the Chekists. Mass terror in peacetime became possible as a result of the violation of the law. Bypassing the organs of the court and the prosecutor's office, an extensive network of extrajudicial bodies was created (Special meeting at the Collegium of the OGPU, "troikas" of the NKVD, Special meeting at the NKVD, etc.). Decisions on the fate of those arrested, especially those charged with counter-revolutionary activities, were made in violation of all procedural norms. The broad powers of the punitive bodies actually put them even above the state, party bodies; the latter also fell into the orbit of mass repressions. Almost three-quarters of the 1961 delegates to the 17th Party Congress (1934) were shot in subsequent years. In all divisions of the army, special departments (divisions of the state security service) received unlimited rights. Many employees of central and local party organs, ministries, heads of departments, deputies of the Soviets of all levels died on the "tips" of helpful, sometimes dishonest workers of the punitive bodies. For the death of many party members, the blame lay with the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Kaganovich, Malenkov, Andreev. To replace the dead from below, more and more new ranks of functionaries rose. In this situation, the future general secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, N. S. Khrushchev, L. I. Brezhnev, quickly advanced in the service.
The trials of the opposition leaders served as a political justification for unleashing an unprecedented wave of mass terror against the leading cadres of the party, the state, including the army, the NKVD bodies, the prosecutor's office, industry, agriculture, science, culture, etc., ordinary workers. The exact number of victims during this period has not yet been calculated. But the dynamics of the repressive policy of the state is evidenced by the data on the number of prisoners in the NKVD camps (on average per year): 1935 - 794 thousand, 1936 - 836 thousand, 1937 - 994 thousand, 1938 - 1313 thousand, 1939 - 1340 thousand, 1940 - 1400 thousand, 1941 - 1560 thousand
According to updated data cited by the Collegium of the KGB of the USSR, “in 1930-1953, on charges of counter-revolutionary. 3,778,234 people were sentenced and decreed against state crimes by judicial and all kinds of non-judicial bodies, of which 786,098 people were shot.
In total, from 1930 to 1953, about 18 million people visited the barracks of the camps and colonies, of which 1/5 were for political reasons.
Repressions from above were supplemented by massive denunciations from below. The denunciations testified to the serious illness of society, generated by the planted suspiciousness, enmity, and spy mania. Denunciation, especially of superiors, chiefs, became a convenient means of promotion for many envious, career-minded promoters. 80% of those repressed in the 30s died due to denunciations by neighbors and colleagues in the service. The denunciation was used by those who took revenge on the ruling elite for the desecrated "bourgeois" intelligentsia, for the former owners and recent Nepmen, for the dispossessed, for all those who fell into the cruel millstones of the "class struggle". Recent Civil War responded with another bloody harvest, only now for the "winners".
Church and sectarian organizations were included in the number of "enemies". In the growth of the influence of the church, in particular on the youth, in its new ideas and forms of work for the faithful, the party saw a great danger for itself. At the Eighth Congress of the Komsomol (May 1928), it was said with concern that sectarian organizations unite no less youth than the Komsomol. The problems of spirituality, morality, culture, traditions, freedom of choice for a person did not bother the new leaders. They became routine "trash" in comparison with the "great plans for the construction of socialism."
However, it would be wrong to reduce the political and economic mechanism of the 1930s to purges, repressions, and the dictates of the center. The "effectiveness" (if one can speak of effectiveness here at all) of repression has its limits. Punitive measures can reduce absenteeism, but not organize production; to identify "pests", but not to train qualified specialists; to increase the shaft, but not to ensure the quality. In the 1930s, in the field of methods of organizing production, forms of social life, with a general increase in administration, we are faced with a kind of pendulum: from the "administrative bias", the strengthening of repressions to a truncated cost accounting, limited political liberalization; from truncated cost accounting, limited political liberalization to "administrative bias", increased repression...
1. Introduction
2. "Socialist offensive"
3. "Lightning rod" - Shakhty process
4. "Specialism"
5. "New Workers" - the cornerstone of the cult of personality
6. Massacre of former opposition leaders.
7. Open terror
List of used literature.
1. History of the fatherland: people, ideas, decisions. M, 1991.
2. History of the fatherland. XX century. M, 1997.
3. History of the Soviet Union. M, 1994.