home Pregnancy and children Repressions in the USSR: socio-political meaning. Has it ever happened that a person was arrested, and then they realized that they were mistaken and were released? Stalin's failed democratization

Repressions in the USSR: socio-political meaning. Has it ever happened that a person was arrested, and then they realized that they were mistaken and were released? Stalin's failed democratization

The famous Russian historian and writer Yuri Emelyanov exposes liberal myths: What is the year 1937 remembered for? A look after 75 years

Memories and remarks of a man born in June 1937. Like many people born in 1937, the author of this article more than once had to enter into conversations about the history of our country as soon as his year of birth was mentioned. At the same time, sometimes they asked me if my parents or relatives were arrested that year. Some people wondered if I was born in prison or in a Gulag camp. This has been the case since the mid-50s, when the idea that 1937 was almost the darkest year in Russian history took root in the minds of a significant part of Soviet society.

The year 1937 did not evoke such associations for the author and his classmates, when on September 1, 1944 we became students of the 56th Moscow School. 1937 was ours hallmark, but we knew that there were a lot of people like us. Because in addition to our class “A”, there were also classes “B”, “C”, “D”, “D”, “E” and even “F”, and in each of them there were more than 40 people. The years 1936, 1937 and 1938 were marked by an unprecedented increase in the birth rate in the USSR, and therefore so many parallel classes were created in schools for those born in these years. Then our huge age cohorts created difficulties for military registration and enlistment offices, which sometimes did not always have time to notify everyone born in 1936-1938 on time. summonses about the need to register for military service or arrive for service.

1937 was the year of birth for millions of my peers, and at least for that reason they were not inclined to consider it a gloomy year. Until the mid-50s, it was not customary to consider this year as such even among the older people around us. At that time, when those born in 1937 became first-grade students, ideas about the “dark time” were firmly associated with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

At that time it was hardly possible to find a family in our country that did not have war victims. The overwhelming majority of children of the 1937 generation in our country received news of the death of their relatives and friends during the war. For many of my peers, the war crippled their destinies. At that time you could meet many disabled children of the war. The physical and mental trauma they received in childhood remained with them for the rest of their lives. Scary stories eyewitnesses about the horrors of war and the atrocities of the occupiers became part of the first impressions of the world around those who were born in 1937.

At the same time, the year 1937, which remained outside of personal memory, merged in our ideas about the pre-war period. They were formed on the basis of their own vivid, but fragmentary memories of the pre-war months and under the influence of the stories of adults who, in contrast to the ongoing war, often spoke of the suddenly lost pre-war life as a bright, cloudless time. Apparently, it is no coincidence that in almost every Soviet film dedicated to the beginning of the war, the peaceful life that preceded it was depicted as a joyful holiday. Of course, this could not be the case in principle. However, this film image was in tune with the ideas of millions of Soviet people.

Reports of the invasion of a treacherous enemy, bombs falling on Soviet cities, Red Army soldiers and civilians who died from enemy bullets, shells and bombs, the inhumane atrocities of the Nazi occupiers shaped not only our ideas about the present, but also about the suddenly ended peaceful past. The howl of sirens, the sight of an unusually empty street, a cramped bomb shelter, the words of the announcer: “Citizens! Air raid alert!” and then the long-awaited words: “All clear!” have become signs of a new time.

In contrast, pre-war pictures of the same street were recalled, along which festive demonstrations took place on November 7 and May 1. Music was blaring, people were singing songs, shouting something. In their hands there were many banners, banners, and portraits. Posters and portraits made of fabric decorated the walls of houses. Now on these walls there were paper posters depicting Red Army soldiers. They fought with huge snakes, wriggling like swastikas, or with Hitler crawling through the text of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. The window through which I watched holiday demonstrations as a pre-war child was now crossed out with white paper strips that my mother had glued to prevent the glass from flying out during the bombing.

Although during the war new lyrical songs and even songs with cheerful melodies appeared, then for the first time songs were heard about “harsh autumn, the grinding of tanks and the glare of bayonets,” about the “cherished stone” held in the hands of the dying hero of the defense of Sevastopol, about the soldier who knows that from his dugout “there are four steps to death.” Leonid Utesov, who before the war sang about how “the heart is light from a cheerful song,” during the war sang a gloomy song about a sailor whose family was destroyed by the invaders and his beloved girlfriend was violated. Immediately after the war, a sad song about a soldier returning to a ruined house and the grave of his wife became popular. And from the pre-war era, joyful songs about the “cheerful wind”, festive May Moscow, happy life"in the vastness of the wonderful Motherland." One of the songs said: “I don’t know any other country where people can breathe so freely.” Sometimes in pre-war songs the words sounded like energetic patter: “oh, it’s good to live in the Soviet country,” “we were born to make a fairy tale come true,” “we have no barriers either at sea or on land.” The songs cheerfully called for "oh, let's thunder, harder...", "physical education! hurray! hurray! and be ready!"

Magazines and books written for children during the war differed sharply in their content from books and magazines of the pre-war era. If Lev Kassil's book "Your Defenders", published during the war, talked about pilots, tank crews, mortarmen, sailors, signalmen and many other Soviet soldiers of various branches of the military, then the pre-war book talked about a boy who wanted to be like " Chkalov, or maybe Gromov, familiar to all citizens.”

These names were well known to wartime children thanks to the postage stamps that almost everyone collected back then. A series of postage stamps were issued on the occasion of the landing of the expedition led by I. Papanin on North Pole, the flight of V. Chkalov, G. Baidukov and A. Belyakov, and then - of M. Gromov, A. Yumashev and S. Danilin through the North Pole to the USA. All these events took place in 1937.

The year 1937 was also mentioned in a series of postage stamps dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the death of A.S. Pushkin. Two dates - 1837 and 1937 - were marked on the box with a board game that required a good knowledge of Pushkin's fairy tales. Therefore, the year 37 was reminiscent of Tsar Saltan, Tsarevich Guidon, the Golden Cockerel, Prince Elisha, Balda and other characters from the fairy-tale world. Even those who saw their birth certificate in 1937, with the words “People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR” written at the top, did not think of anything sinister. At the same time, back in our school years, many of us heard the word “Yezhovshchina.”

Since childhood, I knew that many people were unjustly arrested on Yezhov’s orders. My mother’s brother and sister were imprisoned: Leonid Vinogradov, an engineer at the Litsetsk Metallurgical Plant, and Ekaterina Vinogradova, who worked in the Ryazan Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. And although they all lived in different cities and had rarely seen each other for many years, my mother was expelled from the party “for loss of political vigilance.”

Despite the fact that our family remembered the year 1937 not only for joyful events, it was perceived as part of the happy pre-war time. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this is how the overwhelming majority of Soviet people who experienced the Great Patriotic War at least as children perceived 1937.

But maybe outside our country the year 1937 was perceived differently? What, for example, did the authors of “The Complete Chronology of the 20th Century,” written in Oxford and published by the Veche publishing house in 1999, remember about the year 1937? In this voluminous book, more than five pages in close font were devoted to the events of 1937 on our planet. In the “Complete Chronology” it was said that in 1937 the paintings “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso and “The Dream” by Salvador Dali were presented to the audience, Carl Orff’s opera “Carmina Burana” and “Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge” by Benjamin Britten were performed for the first time, and were released in film distribution of films "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Lost Horizon", "Flame over England".

Ernst Hemingway “To Have and Have Not”, A. Cronin “The Citadel”, D. Steinbeck “Of Mice and Men”, Y. Kawabata “Snow Country”. Scientific discoveries and inventions of 1937 were named: the advent of xerography, the first use of insulin to treat diabetes, the synthesis of vitamin B, the creation of the first prototype of a jet engine, and DuPont obtaining a patent for the production of nylon. It was said that in 1937 the longest suspension bridge across the Golden Gate Strait was opened in the United States. It was reported that in 1937 a Pithecanthropus skull was found on the island of Java. Many of these achievements of culture, science and technology are still remembered, although people often do not know when they were realized.

“Full Chronology” also reported on the coronation of King George VI of Great Britain on May 12, 1937, the nationalization of oil fields in Mexico, the explosion of the German airship Hindenburg in New York, Muslim unrest in Albania, and the adoption by Ireland of the first constitution of an independent state. There was talk of severe floods in the US Midwest, during which millions of people lost their homes. It was mentioned that on July 7, 1937, a British royal commission recommended dividing Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab. Few people now remember that one of the milestones of modern confrontation in this region of the world was passed in 1937.

"Full Chronology" paid a lot of attention to the strengthening of Nazi terror in Germany. It was also said about Italy's entry into the Anti-Comintern Pact on November 6, 1937, the riots provoked by the Nazis in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia on October 17, the amnesty of the Nazis in Austria on January 15, the merger of fascist groups in Hungary into the National Socialist Party on October 16, Hitler's meeting with Mussolini in September 1937 and other events that became harbingers of the coming world war.

However, of all the countries in the world, Spain took the greatest place in the events of 1937. More than a dozen events related to the ongoing civil war in that country were mentioned in the Complete Chronology. This was no accident. A three-year bloody war, in which the armed forces of Germany and Italy participated, ravaged and devastated Spain. According to rough estimates, the number of deaths in this war was more than half a million people (with the then population of the country about 25 million). This war became a test of the strength of the fascist aggressors in Europe.

In "Complete Chronology" a lot was said about the war that Japan unleashed in China. Special mention was made of the entry of Japanese troops into the city of Nanjing, northwest of Shanghai, on December 5. It was noted that “as a result of the ensuing Nanjing Massacre, about a quarter of a million Chinese were killed (the killings continued until December 13).” This “massacre” was far from the only one committed by the Japanese occupiers. During the eight years of war, 37 million Chinese were killed. It is obvious that among the many world events of 1937 listed in the “Complete Chronology”, the largest place was occupied by those that were associated with the movement of humanity towards a grandiose global conflict.

The events in our country in 1937 did not take up much space in the “Complete Chronology”. It was reported that on July 17, a naval agreement was signed between the USSR and Great Britain, and on August 3, a trade agreement was concluded between the USA and the USSR. In the section “Science, technology, discoveries” it was said: “The USSR opens a scientific station on a drifting ice floe near the North Pole.” In the section “Painting, sculpture, fine arts, architecture” it was said that “Vera Mukhina shows “Worker and Collective Farmer” (a monumental sculpture in the style of socialist realism, which is installed above the Soviet pavilion”). In the "Music" section, Dmitry Shostakovich's 5th symphony, created in 1937, was mentioned.

And yet, out of seven events related to the life of our country in 1937, three directly or indirectly related to the political struggle in the USSR and trials. It was said that on January 9, 1937, “after a short stay in Turkey and Paris, the former prominent communist figure Trotsky comes to Mexico.” (This information was not accurate, since Trotsky lived in Turkey for quite a long time and traveled to Mexico from Norway “after a short stay” in this country.) It was said that on January 23, “the trial of Karl Radek and 16 other prominent communists accused of organizing a conspiracy involving Trotsky, Germany and Japan. Radek and three other defendants are sentenced to prison, and the rest to death." It was also mentioned in the “Full Chronology” that in June “in the USSR, several military leaders were arrested on charges of collaboration with Germany, put on trial and executed. Following this, a purge of the armed forces began.” (The information did not make it clear that the arrests of Tukhachevsky and other military leaders occurred mainly in May 1937 and even earlier.)

The list of these three events did not give the authors of the “Complete Chronology” any reason to believe that 1937 went down in history as a year of repressions unprecedented in the world that happened in the USSR, or became the darkest year in the history of our country.

Of course, from Soviet books on the history of the USSR you can learn much more about the life of our country in 1937 than from the Complete Chronology. Although, contrary to current claims in the media, Soviet time from the mid-50s wrote repeatedly about the repressions of 1937-38. in various books on the history of our country, they contained detailed information about the enormous achievements of the country of the Soviets. In the short list of events of 1937, placed in the essay “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” from the 13th volume of “SIE”, it was stated:

"1937, April 28 - resolution of the Council of People's Commissars "On the third five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR" (1938 - 1942); June 18 - 20 - the world's first non-stop flight of Heroes of the Soviet Union V.P. Chkalova, G.F Baidukova and A. V. Belyakova Moscow - Portland (USA) via the North Pole; July 15 - opening of the Moscow Canal; December 21 - non-aggression treaty between the USSR and China; December 12 - first elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR according to the new Constitution; 1937 - 1938 - work of the 1st Soviet drifting scientific station (I. D. Papanin, P. P. Shirshov, E. K. Fedorov, E. T. Krenkel) on the ice of the Arctic Ocean in the area North Pole".

In the 9th volume" World history" (VI), released in 1962, and various volumes of the "Soviet Historical Encyclopedia" (SIE), published from 1961 to 1976, first of all, emphasized that 1937 was the year of successful completion of the second five-year plan. Data were given on the completion of construction and commissioning of many industrial enterprises in the country, the growth of mechanization and power supply Agriculture. Much has been said about achievements in the field of science, technology, education, and the introduction of huge masses of the population to cultural achievements.

During the second five-year plan, the USSR overtook Great Britain and France in terms of production of iron, steel, and electricity. In the report of the Central Committee to the 18th Party Congress, Stalin presented a table from which it followed that the USSR was ahead of all capitalist countries in growth rates. Commenting on the table data, Stalin noted: “Our industry has grown more than nine times compared to the pre-war level, while the industry of the main capitalist countries continues to stagnate around the pre-war level, exceeding it by only 20-30 percent. This means that In terms of growth rates, our socialist industry ranks first in the world."

In the 9th volume of "VI" it was noted that during the years of the second five-year plan, "4,500 new large industrial enterprises were built... Mechanical engineering developed especially rapidly. During the years of the second five-year plan, its production increased almost 3 times instead of the 2.1 times planned The production of ferrous metallurgy tripled, and the production of electric steel increased 8.4 times; the USSR overtook all capitalist countries in the production of electric steel. The production of copper increased more than 2 times, aluminum - 41 times; an industry was created for the production of nickel, tin, "The output of the chemical industry has tripled, and new major industries have emerged - the production of synthetic rubber, nitrogen and potassium fertilizers and apatites."

The essay “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, published in the 13th volume of “SIE”, said: “The production of the entire industry of the USSR by the end of 1937 increased 2.2 times compared to 1932, 4.5 times compared to 1928 (It took the USA almost 40 years for such industrial growth - from approximately 1890 to 1929), 5.9 times compared to 1913. The output of large-scale industry increased 8.1 times compared to 1913 and 2.4 times compared since 1932. 80% of all industrial products were obtained from new enterprises or radically reconstructed during the 1st and 2nd five-year plans... Industry in 1937 produced about 200 thousand cars (in 1932 about 24 thousand), more than 176 thousand tractors ( in terms of 15-horsepower)... Just by exceeding the plan in the field of increasing labor productivity, in 1937 it produced almost the same amount as the entire factory industry of Russia in 1913. The USSR turned into a powerful industrial country, economically independent of the capitalist world and providing the national economy and the Armed Forces with new equipment and weapons. In terms of industrial growth rates (average annual rate for the 2nd Five-Year Plan - 17.1%), the USSR overtook the main capitalist states, and in terms of volume it came out on top. In terms of industrial output, it took 1st place in Europe and 2nd place in the world. after the USA. The USSR's share in world production was 10%."

Summing up the results of the country's industrial development over the years of the second five-year plan, the authors of the 9th volume of VI stated that “the decisive victory won by the Soviet people in the field of industry made it possible to finally eliminate the country’s former dependence in technical and economic terms on advanced capitalist countries. USSR "now fully provided the necessary equipment for its industry, agriculture and defense needs. The import of tractors, agricultural machines, steam locomotives, wagons, cutters and almost completely - steam boilers, lifting transport equipment stopped."

The completion of the second five-year plan made it possible to significantly strengthen the defense capability of the Soviet country. 10 years before 1937, the People's Commissar for Military Affairs of the CCCH K.E. Voroshilov informed the delegates of the XV Party Congress that in terms of the number of tanks the USSR (less than 200 including armored cars) lagged behind not only the advanced countries of the West, but also Poland. The Red Army had less than a thousand aircraft of obsolete designs and only 7 thousand guns of various calibers, which in 1927 was completely insufficient to defend one sixth of the earth's surface from attacks by foreign armies, which were rapidly increasing their reserves military equipment.

The number of Soviet Armed Forces by 1937 was increased to 1,433 thousand people. During the Second Five-Year Plan, the army was armed with 51 thousand machine guns and 17 thousand artillery pieces, and by 1939 the number of machine guns increased to 77 thousand, and artillery pieces to 45,790. The number of tanks and aircraft increased at an equally rapid pace. Foreign-made tanks were withdrawn from service. Instead, the army received domestic tanks, the armor of which became increasingly stronger. If in 1929 82% of the aircraft in the Armed Forces were reconnaissance aircraft, then by the end of the second five-year plan there were 52 thousand bombers and attack aircraft, 38.6 thousand fighters and 9.5 thousand reconnaissance aircraft.

During the years of the Second Five-Year Plan, dozens of new cities appeared and old ones were rebuilt. Describing Moscow in 1937 in his book, Lion Feuchtwanger wrote: “Everywhere they are constantly digging, digging, knocking, building, streets disappear and appear; what seemed big today, tomorrow seems small, because suddenly a tower appears nearby - everything flows, everything changes ".

Talking about the results of the development of agriculture during the years of the second five-year plan, the authors of the essay in SIE wrote: “In the second five-year plan, the collectivization of agriculture was completed. Collective farms united 93% of peasant households and had over 99% of all sown areas. Major successes were achieved in technical equipment and in the organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms. 456 thousand tractors, 129 thousand combines, 146 thousand trucks. Cultivated areas increased from 105 million hectares in 1913 to 135.3 million hectares in 1937."

The volume “VI” stated: “Together with the tractor, new equipment came to the fields: a tractor plow, a tractor seeder, tractor harvesting machines... This was a genuine technical revolution in agriculture.”

In the SIE essay it was written: “The well-being of the working people has improved. The number of workers and employees in 1937 reached 26.7 million people; their wage fund increased 2.5 times. On January 1, 1935... the card system was abolished. Cash income of collective farms increased 3 times."

In 1937, the results of the cultural revolution, which began in the USSR after 1917, were summed up. The SIE essay noted that “by 1937, over 20 years of Soviet power, illiteracy had been completely eliminated (in 1930-32 alone, 30 million people studied in educational literacy schools). In 1930, universal compulsory primary education was introduced in rural areas and seven years in cities and workers' settlements in the languages of 70 nationalities. Between 1929 and 1937, 32 thousand schools were built. The number of students in primary and secondary schools in 1938 amounted to over 30 million people (in 1914 - 9.6 million, in 1928 - 11.6 million). and vocational education."

The successes of the USSR aroused admiration throughout the world. Even in Latvia, where the Communist Party was banned, communists were in prison, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary October revolution bourgeois newspapers published articles that highly praised the achievements of Soviet power.

A demonstration of the successes of the USSR in 1937 was the pavilion of the Soviet country at the World Exhibition in Paris. The figures of the Worker and the Collective Farm Woman, created by V. I. Mukhina, symbolized the power and dynamism of the young Land of the Soviets. It so happened that the German pavilion was located opposite the Soviet pavilion. The architect of the German pavilion, future Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, managed to find out a sketch of the Soviet pavilion that had been kept secret. Speer recalled: “A sculptural pair ten meters high was moving victoriously towards the German pavilion. Therefore, I created a sketch of a cubic mass, which was raised on powerful supports. This mass seemed to stop the advance of the figures. At the same time, on the cornice of the tower I placed "an eagle holding a swastika in its claws. The eagle looked down at Russian sculpture. I received a gold medal at the exhibition for the pavilion." But Speer admitted that “our Soviet colleagues also received the same award.”

The silent confrontation between the two powers at the 1937 World's Fair seemed to foreshadow things to come. The successes of the USSR in 1937, as well as in the previous and subsequent years, ensured the victory of the Worker and the Collective Farm Woman over the Hitlerite swastika.

Yuri Emelyanov, historian, writer, Sholokhov Prize laureate

There is, perhaps, no more odious date in the history of Russia than “37.” This is not even a date, but some kind of formula, a spell denoting a terrible disaster, like the “Berezina” of the French. Who among us has not heard: “this is not your 37th year,” or vice versa, “this is a real 37th year”? Moreover, the following information has firmly established itself in the general consciousness: in 1937, the evil tyrant Stalin unleashed a bloody terror against his people, killing millions of people.

The reasons why Stalin unleashed this terror are explained simply: he fought for his power.

However, no one can explain why, in order to strengthen his power, Stalin needed to destroy people so different in their social, social, property and class status.

Of course, they will tell us that he did this for mass terror. But what is terrorism, when and why is it used? Today, the concept of “international terrorism” is a necessary political camouflage, as in Stalin times there was "fascism". For example, President V.V. Putin, for one reason or another, cannot name the states or political forces acting today against Russia, and he calls them “international terrorism.” As a politician he is absolutely right. But from the point of view of a historian, the concept “ international terrorism"is some kind of vague and obscure definition. In fact, terrorism and terror cannot be the goal, they are always a means to achieve the goal. Behind any terror there are specific states or regimes that use terror to achieve their goals. For example: the goal of the Jacobin terror was the destruction of Christian France, the goal of the Socialist Revolutionary terror was the overthrow of the Russian monarchy, the goal of the so-called “red terror” was the genocide of the Russian People and the destruction of Orthodox Russia. Individual terror also pursues specific goals, which are not always clear to ordinary perpetrators. Of course, the goal, say, Chechen militants who take hostages are not these same hostages, but the demands that the militants put forward. So, terrorists, carrying out mass or individual terror, set themselves a specific task and achieve this task through physical extermination or intimidation of estates, classes, population groups or specific people. Moreover, terror is always aimed at destruction, destruction and never at creation.

Thus, the Nazi regime in Germany set as its task the destruction of foreign peoples: Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Jews, Gypsies. In addition, Nazi terror was also aimed at those classes and social groups within Germany that were dangerous to the regime: Catholic Church, communists, social democrats. The Nazis launched a bloody reign of terror against these peoples and these segments of the population. But the Nazis did not set out to destroy the German people as such, and therefore most Germans were not persecuted and did not even know about the existence of death camps.

On the contrary, the Bolsheviks in the 1918-1920s unleashed a bloody terror against the entire Russian people, against all groups of the population, primarily against the nobility, clergy, officers, but also against workers, peasants, and intelligentsia. The terror of the Cheka affected Russians, Little Russians, Belarusians, Cossacks, Balts, Jews, Kazakhs and representatives of hundreds of other peoples inhabiting the former Russian Empire. They killed with particular cruelty, methodically and purposefully: women, teenagers, old people, even infants. This terror was carried out by a special caste, a special secret order, whose representatives mainly came from abroad and who were united primarily by an irreconcilable hatred of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, everything Russian, but at the same time also everything national in general. This secret order hid behind the name of the Bolshevik Party, but with the same success it manifested itself in the terror of the Socialist Revolutionary Party or the “independent” Petliura.

It is well known that the leaders and main executioners of this secret order came from a Jewish background. From this, some researchers incorrectly conclude that the Red Terror was Jewish. But if we carefully analyze the crimes of Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, Goloshchekin, Yakir and the like, we will see that the common Jewish population of Russia also suffered from them. There is a lot of evidence of Jews being shot as hostages and subjected to all kinds of violence and oppression by their fellow Bolsheviks.

Thus, the Trotskyist-Leninist regime waged a total war of extermination against all peoples, estates, classes, groups of Russia, that is, it carried out, as we have already said, the genocide of the Russian People.

It would seem that in 1937 something similar to the Red Terror happened: during the “Great Purge,” all classes and strata of Soviet society without exception were subjected to repression: the party nomenklatura, workers, peasants, military, and clergy. At first glance, this allows us to come to the conclusion that in 1937-1938 Stalin carried out the second wave of “Red Terror”. But this may seem so only at first glance.

The fact is that the so-called Bolshevik regime, or rather its American-Jewish group, which captured in October 1917, did not set itself the task of building any state on the territory of the former Russian Empire. According to the plan of Sverdlov and Trotsky, Russia was supposed to die, disintegrate into hundreds of small states, and disappear. Millions of yesterday's subjects of Russia were supposed to become dumb slaves, fuel for the World Revolution. The satanic plan envisaged destroying, by the hands of the Russians themselves, not only the Orthodox faith within Russia, not only their own state, not only Christian Europe, but in general the entire previous world order. “To the grief of all bourgeois, we will fan the world fire, the world fire is in the blood!” In this line from Blok, it is necessary to replace the word “bourgeois” with the word “humanity” so that he begins to accurately express the goals of the most monstrous regime in world history.

In essence, this regime was an occupation one. Its leaders acted as occupiers. Relying on accomplices and punitive forces, they waged war on the Russian people.

Here are the words of Leon Trotsky, spoken by him in the summer of 1917, that is, even before the Bolsheviks came to power: “We must turn Russia into a desert inhabited by white blacks, to whom we will give such tyranny that the most terrible despots of the East have never dreamed of. The only difference is that this tyranny will not be on the right, but on the left, and not white, but red. In the literal sense of the word, red, for we will shed such streams of blood, before which all the human losses of capitalist wars will shudder and turn pale. The largest bankers from overseas will work in close contact with us. If we win the revolution and crush Russia, then on its funeral ruins we will become such a force before which the whole world will kneel.”

But here are the words of Heinrich Himmler, spoken by him in 1943: “What happens to the Russians is completely indifferent to me. ...Whether other peoples live in contentment or die of hunger interests me only insofar as our culture needs them as slaves, otherwise it does not interest me. Whether 10,000 Russian women will die from exhaustion during the construction of anti-tank fortifications or not, interests me insofar as anti-tank fortifications are being built for Germany.”

As you can see, there is no difference. For both, Russia does not exist; moreover, they hate it and strive for its destruction. But Stalin did not seek to destroy Russia. Moreover, his views and actions were strikingly different from the actions of the Trotskyist occupiers. Thus, we have to figure out what real historical events are hidden behind the numbers 1937, which became a bloody symbol of the history of Russia in the twentieth century.

Today in our country they talk and write a lot about Stalin. They write enthusiastically, they write with hatred, they write with deification or mockery, but almost never objectively.

Recently, the author of these lines has had to listen to accusations against him more than once that he is a “monarchist”, but “stumbled on Stalinism”, “defends Dzhugashvili”, etc. What can I say? There is only one thing: our society still lives by different “-isms”, just like under Bolshevik rule. Our society does not like to think, does not like to analyze. It is still only ready to denounce, curse and glorify, while consuming the ideological chewing gum that is slipped to it. During the years of perestroika, the concept of “Stalinist repressions” was actively introduced into the consciousness of society. And various representatives of our society repeat this term like asses, without thinking that behind the name of Stalin they want to hide all the crimes of the Bolshevik regime. This summer, television went so far as to state in its news that the “Red Terror” began in 1937. And we thought that the “Red Terror” began in 1918 with a savage murder Royal Family, from decossackization, from hostages, from the basements of the Cheka! But no, we are assured that the “red terror” is Stalinist repression! In this regard, it was gratifying to hear President V.V. Putin’s speech at the Butovo training ground. As the President emphasized, “we all know well that 1937, although it is considered the peak of repression, was well prepared by previous years of cruelty. Suffice it to recall the execution of hostages during the civil war, the destruction of entire classes - the clergy, the Russian peasantry, the Cossacks."

Our goal is not to justify Stalin by any means, but to understand what happened to our country in the 30s - 50s. Of course, we must remember and take into account that for hundreds of thousands of people the name of Stalin is associated with the death and torment of their relatives and friends, associated with the White Sea Canal, the Gulag, with blown up churches, with hunger and lawlessness.

But in the same way, we must remember and take into account that for hundreds of thousands of people the name of Stalin is associated with success, with outstanding achievements, with the development of industry, with breakthroughs in science, and finally, with the Great Victory. Stalin, no matter how he was treated, was the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of our victorious army in the bloodiest and most difficult war. Stalin's image is minted on the medal "For Victory over Germany". Stalin, the only one of the Soviet, and even post-Soviet, figures, said a toast “to the health of the Russian people.” Therefore, constant insulting of Stalin’s name, and even more so mocking him, insults Russia. In E. Rostand's play "The Eaglet", a French officer of the royal army challenges a man to a duel who has insulted the memory of Napoleon. And when this officer is asked in bewilderment: “How, you are the king’s envoy, do you stand up for Bonaparte?”, the officer replies:

No, this is about France.
And France is insulted.
Who dares to insult someone
Who did she love?

So it is in the case of Stalin. When everything that happened in the era of the 30s - 50s, good and terrible, is reduced only to his name, this is not historical, not fair and harmful for the future of the Russian state. And it is about this, about the future of Russia, about its prosperity and well-being that we must think first of all.

The biggest mistake, in our opinion, when assessing Stalin is that he is viewed throughout his life as something unchangeable and frozen. Meanwhile, Stalin, like almost any personality, changed, was shaped, and adapted under the influence of external and internal factors. The Stalin of 1917 is not the Stalin of 1945. Just like the revolutionary Russia of 1917, this is not the victorious Soviet Union. The era changed, and Stalin changed too. But in turn, he also changed the era, changed the worldview and spirit of the Soviet state.

Stalin is a natural consequence of the apostasy of Russian society from God and the Tsar that occurred in 1917. It is necessary to understand that Soviet Russia was not Tsarist Russia, that Soviet society of the 20s and 30s was generally cruel and godless, and that the new martyrs of the 20th century denounced this society with their feat. Stalin was as cruel as all his tough times. But, being cruel and even sometimes merciless, Stalin, nevertheless, was not a hater of Russia. Moreover, unlike Trotsky and Lenin, Stalin saw the future of Soviet power precisely in a strong state, in that state that is commonly called the “Soviet empire.” And this “Soviet empire” could only be based on Russian patriotism. Stalin understood this perfectly and gradually gave the USSR the appearance of Russia. Of course, this was not Orthodox monarchical Russia, but in comparison with the bloody Soviet of Trotsky and Sverdlov, a huge step was taken towards national self-awareness.

It should be said that Stalin was always the closest of all the Bolsheviks to understanding the need to preserve the Russian state. On this issue, he had a fundamental dispute with Lenin, during which Stalin advocated retaining the name of Russia in the name of the state and against the formation of the USSR.

Claims that Stalin created in the 30s. totalitarian system, do not find factual confirmation. This system was created long before Stalin, created by Lenin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Bukharin, Frenkel. It was they, and not Stalin, who created the first concentration camps. Stalin did a lot to change, at least externally, this system towards its softening. In 1936, a new constitution of the USSR was adopted. For the first time, at the insistence of Stalin, the practice of defeating the rights of the so-called “disenfranchised”: the clergy, former officers, nobles, and so on was abolished. Thanks to the Stalinist constitution, hundreds of thousands of people, who yesterday were still powerless, were able to enter universities, vote, be elected to government bodies, and so on. This, of course, did not mean that lawlessness and reprisals did not stop in relation to these categories of people, but, of course, even their legal recognition as equal Soviet citizens meant a big step forward for them.

In 1937-1938, again on Stalin’s initiative, a number of events were carried out that today may seem insignificant to us, but which then were of enormous importance for Soviet society. We mean the return of the names that constituted Russian national glory. In 1937, the Pushkin anniversary was celebrated on a grand scale. In order to understand the full significance of this event, one must remember that the name of Pushkin was actually outlawed in Bolshevik Russia. Mayakovsky’s proposal to throw Pushkin out of the “ship of history” was very popular among the Bolsheviks. Therefore, Pushkin’s honorable return to the life of Soviet society meant swipe according to Russophobic ideology.

Eisenstein’s film “Alexander Nevsky,” which began filming in 1937, dealt an even greater blow to this ideology. The Holy Blessed Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky aroused pathological hatred among the Bolsheviks. His name was mentioned until the end of the 30s only in offensive lampoons by Demyan Bedny and others like him. The powerful image of the noble defender of the Russian Land, created by Cherkasov, returned to Russia not only national hero, but glorified by the Church as a saint.

In the 30s, the names of P. I. Tchaikovsky, A. V. Suvorov, Peter the Great, F. F. Ushakov returned. In a harsh form, Stalin reprimands Demyan Bedny for his Russophobic rhymes and poems. All this happens long before the war. Therefore, the claims of many researchers that Stalin’s patriotic rhetoric was caused only by the Great Patriotic War are unfair.

The state principle is felt in all spheres of Soviet society. Stalin restores classical pre-revolutionary education in school. The so-called “school” of Academician M.N. Pokrovsky, the famous Russophobe and falsifier, one of the main slanderers of the Royal Family tortured by the Bolsheviks, was subjected to severe criticism. In 1934-1936, a new unified textbook on the history of the USSR was created. Today, few people know that before 1934, Russian history was practically not taught in Soviet schools. There was a kind of “short course” by Pokrovsky, where the entire pre-revolutionary Russian history was reduced to slanderous gags, and then there were praises of “the revolution and its leaders.”

Stalin does not even hesitate to criticize the classics of Marxism. In the same 1934, Stalin sharply criticized Friedrich Engels’s work “The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsarism”, in fact accusing Engels of hating Russia.

Being essentially the editor-in-chief of a new textbook on Russian history, Stalin came out in defense of Orthodox monasteries, which he called the source of culture and enlightenment, and in defense of the Baptism of Rus'. Now this Stalinist position may seem insignificant to us, but then it had the effect of a bomb exploding. After all, according to the plans of Lenin, Trotsky and their clique, the history of the Church was to be perceived only as the history of “obscurantism.”

In general, Stalin was never a zealous advocate of the fight against the Church. At the height of collectivization, on March 2, 1930, in his article “Dizziness from Success,” Stalin condemned the removal of bells from churches. “Remove the bells - just think how revolutionary!” - he wrote. Thus, Stalin spoke out against those who were too zealous in the fight against religion. The congress of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in March 1930, condemned the practice of forcibly closing churches. It is noteworthy that the Central Committee Resolution spoke about the fight against “religious prejudices”, and not “anti-religious propaganda”, as was the case before.

In 1934, the Union of Soviet Writers was created. In the USSR, the so-called “socialist realism” was developing, which in fact was a return to the principles of morality and patriotism in fiction, painting, theater and cinema. The victory of the Bolshevik regime in 1917 marked not only bloody murders, but also a complete collapse of the moral foundations of society. The mortality rate far exceeded the birth rate. Drunkenness, smoking, abortion, divorce, sexual perversion, and venereal diseases flourished in the country. In 1919, the so-called “12 sexual commandments of the proletarian” were published in the newspaper “Evening Petrograd”. The author of the article was psychoneurologist A. B. Zalkind, a fan of Marx and Freud. Here are the most revealing “commandments” of Zalkind: “The working class serves the people, the revolution and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and not the sexual whims of our physiology. Physiology must be emasculated by politics. History is made on the barricades, and not in bed, not on the trestle bed of a communal apartment. Only a traitor to the revolution can obtain sexual satisfaction with a class-alien element. Down with the kiss - this dirty and unhygienic relic of the past. Down with Love and Jealousy - this is a clearly possessive relationship. If your wife left you for a socially valuable comrade, and especially a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) with pre-revolutionary experience, be proud of it. And if you become proud, you have conquered your animal sense of ownership. Hurray for you! Revolution and social relations are higher than all others, and even more so base sexual relations. The class, in the interests of revolutionary expediency, has the right to interfere in the sexual life of its members. The sexual must be subordinate to the class in everything, without interfering with the latter, serving it in everything.”

Zalkind's commandments are a striking example of the introduction of anti-Christian pseudo-morality into human consciousness. The mockery of Christianity is evident in the very name of the “12 Commandments” and in the preaching of fornication and adultery. Zalkind was echoed by Academician Pokrovsky, who called for “not to spare religious feelings.”

The “commandments” of Zalkind and Pokrovsky reigned supreme in literature and art. Here is one of the poems of the Latvian security officer A.V. Eiduk from his poetry collection “The Smile of the Cheka”:

There's no greater joy, no best music,
Like the crunch of broken lives and bones.
That's why, when our eyes languish
And passion begins to boil violently in my chest,
I would like to take note of your verdict
One fearless: “To the wall! Shoot!"
In 1938, Eiduk was shot as an “enemy of the people.”

Russophobia was the basis of Bolshevik art. Here are the lines of the Komsomol poet Jack Altauzen:

“I propose to melt Minin and Pozharsky.
Why do they need a pedestal?
Enough for us to praise two shopkeepers,
October found them behind the counters.
It’s a shame we didn’t break their necks.
I know it would fit.
Just think, they saved Russia
Or maybe it would be better not to save?

Altauzen was echoed by the Small Soviet Encyclopedia. The article about Minin reported: “bourgeois history idealized Minin as a class fighter for a united “Mother Russia” and tried to make him a national hero.”

Speaking today about the fate of Soviet writers in the 30s, about Stalin’s relationship with writers, they often want to present the picture as if writers and poets were subjected to merciless repression precisely for their works of art, that is, for freedom of speech. However, this is a very simplified approach. The fate of each writer must be considered separately. Then we will see that very often this or that writer was condemned not for his literary work, but for his political activity. Let's take, for example, the fate of I. S. Babel. Few people know that this singer of the Odessa bandits and the first Red Cavalry Army was an active security officer. Babel loved to gloatingly recall how in 1919, in the Alexander Palace, he took apart the children's toys of the murdered Tsarevich Alexei. Babel dedicated his book “Cavalry” to “the hero of the revolution, Comrade Trotsky.” Like his idol, Babel was pathologically bloodthirsty. In the 30s, being an active participant in collectivization, Babel told the poet Bagritsky: “And you know, Eduard Georgievich, I began to watch completely indifferently as people were shot.” From this phrase one can only guess how many innocent people this writer destroyed. But Babel himself was shot not for this cruelty, but for his involvement in Trotskyist activities. Until his arrest, Babel did not hide his sympathies for Trotskyists and oppositionists. Here is what he wrote about Stalin’s struggle with them: “The existing leadership of the CPSU (b) understands perfectly well, but does not openly express who people like Rakovsky, Sokolnikov, Radek, Koltsov, etc. are. These are people marked with the stamp of high talent , and rise many heads above the surrounding mediocrity of the current leadership, but once the matter arises that these people have even the slightest contact with the forces, then the leadership becomes merciless: “arrest, shoot.”

Babel was also close to a group of Red commanders, supporters of Trotsky: Primakov, Kuzmichev, Okhotnikov, Schmidt, Zyuk. All of them belonged to the left opposition. Babel, in his words, “was a close person among them, enjoyed their love, dedicated his stories to them.”

During his trips abroad, Babel openly talked with foreign anti-Stalinist left-wing figures who showed special interest in the fate of the repressed oppositionists. Babel told them everything he knew about the life of the Trotskyists Rakovsky, Zorin and others in exile, “trying to portray their situation in tones sympathetic to them.”

Therefore, the reasons for the execution of Babel in 1939 are completely obvious and understandable. He was an active supporter of Stalin's worst enemies, who were also worst enemies Russian people and state.

In the same way, the writer Boris Pilnyak was shot for Trotskyist activities. We were told tales for a long time that he was allegedly shot by Stalin for “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon,” in which Pilnyak told how the leader vilely forced People’s Commissar Frunze to do surgery, during which Frunze was killed. True, for some reason no one asks the question why Pilnyak wrote his story in 1926, and he was shot 12 years later - in 1938? In fact, the reasons for the execution of Pilnyak were completely different.

Boris Pilnyak was always close to Trotsky. The narcissistic Trotsky, who did not recognize any authorities other than his own, wrote about Pilnyak with respect, and Pilnyak, in turn, dedicated his books to him. After Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, Pilnyak continued to be on friendly terms with many oppositionists. Often traveling abroad, Pilnyak, like Babel, met with leading Trotskyists, in particular with Victor Serge (Kibalchich).

So, in Babel and Pilnyak, Stalin saw, first of all, Trotskyists and conspirators, and not dissidents. It is noteworthy that Andrei Platonov, whom Stalin subjected to derogatory criticism several times, was never arrested. He was not allowed to publish; he was criticized, but not repressed. During the war, the writer served as a war correspondent and collaborated with the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

It is interesting that Stalin supported, and behind the scenes, the most anti-Soviet writers, such as M. A. Bulgakov and M. A. Sholokhov. It is quite obvious that if it were not for Stalin’s support, the above-mentioned writers would have been destroyed by the Bolsheviks. Again, Stalin supported Bulgakov and Sholokhov primarily not because of their literary talent, but because their talent worked for the Stalinist idea of building a strong state. Stalin was closer to Bulgakov with his monarchism and White Guard past than to Babel or Pilnyak with their Trotskyism and “revolutionary romanticism.” It’s interesting that Stalin called Bulgakov an “anti-Soviet writer”!

It is well known that Trotskyists hounded Bulgakov to death from literature and would have hounded him if not for Stalin’s constant interventions. Was it easy for Stalin to do this? No, it's not easy. He did not then have full power, he was not completely free in his actions. It would have been much easier for him to sacrifice Bulgakov, to let him be torn to pieces by the bloodthirsty Trotskyist pack. But he did not allow this to be done.

Instead, Stalin did not hide the fact that he really liked Bulgakov’s play “Days of the Turbins,” which he watched dozens of times. Let us remind the reader how this Bulgakov work ends:

“Studzinski: We had Russia - a great power!
Myshlaevsky: And it will be! And will be!"

Stalin applauded these words, he applauded this idea - Russia, a great power! Today we can hardly imagine what courage it was on Stalin’s part, when the very word “Russia” was banned.

But Stalin went much further. There is some convincing evidence that in 1932, during the play “Days of the Turbins”, which was attended by the highest party leadership, during the scene when the officers sing “God Save the Tsar”, most of the audience stood up and began to sing the Russian Anthem! Modern Bulgakov scholars write that it was a miracle, “a protest of the people against Bolshevism” and other nonsense. For some reason, neither before this performance nor after it did anyone sing “God Save the Tsar” on the streets or in performances, and no one expressed protests in this way! It is absolutely clear that without Stalin’s will there could be no singing of the Russian Anthem. It is noteworthy that no one was punished for singing “God Save the Tsar,” and “Days of the Turbins” continued to be performed on stage.

Bulgakov and Sholokhov were staunch supporters of Stalin until the end of their days. Bulgakov directly said that Stalin was retribution for the revolution. In the first edition of the novel, known throughout the world as “The Master and Margarita,” Bulgakov ends the work with the scene when Woland leaves Moscow. Suddenly a comet appears in the sky, quickly approaching Moscow. Woland looks at her and says: “This iron man with a mustache. He has a courageous face, he does his job correctly, and in general it’s all over here. It is time!"

Again, most researchers who consider Bulgakov’s novel to be praise for Woland believe that the writer unites the devil with Stalin. But in our opinion, the meaning of this scene is exactly the opposite: Stalin’s comet expels Woland and his retinue from Moscow with a fiery whirlwind.

Sholokhov had a heated correspondence with the Leader about the progress of collectivization. In this correspondence, Sholokhov directly called the actions of the Soviet government in specific villages a crime and demanded an immediate stop to this genocide of the peasantry and Cossacks. It is noteworthy that Stalin, although he did not agree with Sholokhov’s assessments, nevertheless ordered checks to be carried out on his letters, which revealed the very real crimes of those responsible. Thanks to Sholokhov, thousands of people were saved from starvation.

In the 30s, Stalin destroyed the work of Demyan Bedny (Pridvorov). Demyan Bedny devoted all his work to mocking everything that was sacred to the Russian people. He mocked the Russian Church, the Russian tsars, and Russian history. Demyan Bedny’s mockery of the Savior was especially vile. Sergei Yesenin dedicated the following lines to Bedny:

You insulted a whole workshop of poets.
And he covered his small talent with great shame.
But you, Demyan, did not insult Christ,
You didn’t hurt Him with your pen at all,
There was Judas, there was a robber, you, Demyan, were just missing.
You, a blood clot at the Cross, dug your nostrils like a fat hog,
You just grunted at Christ, Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov...

Stalin put an end to Pridvorov's work. The reason for this was Demyan Bedny’s libretto for the opera “Bogatyrs”. In this libretto, the author, in his characteristic spirit, mocked Russian history and in particular the Baptism of Rus'. However, instead of the former support, Bedny received the most severe reprimand from the authorities in the person of Stalin. On November 14, 1936, the Committee on Arts issued a resolution “On the play “Bogatyrs” by Demyan Bedny.” In this resolution, the fabulist was accused of trying to humiliate the Russian people. Bedny's career ended there. It’s interesting that no matter how Bedny tried to return to literature, no matter how much he kowtowed to Stalin, it was all in vain. When, during the war, he nevertheless managed to publish his poem “Hell” (about fascism), Stalin, with his characteristic humor, said: “Tell the newly-minted Dante not to write anymore.”

Unlike the Leninist-Trotskyist clique, Stalin understood the mystical meaning of the state. Spiritual education could not pass without a trace: it left in Stalin’s soul a sacred idea of the supreme bearer of state power. In the early 30s, Stalin told a fairly wide party circle how, after the February revolution, a congress of peoples of the Caucasus met. There were endless debates about which party program was better. Suddenly a mullah came to the podium and said: “What are these Socialist-Mocrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks? The people need a tsar, Russia needs a tsar!”

While telling this, Stalin laughed, and it was clear that he approved of the words of this mullah.

In 1934, by decree of Stalin, the Soviet Union introduced criminal penalties for homosexuality. This sexual perversion was widespread among the Soviet elite in the first decades of Soviet power. It united many representatives of the party, military, and theater elite. Homosexuality flourished especially strongly in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. For a long time this commissariat was headed by the sodomite Chicherin.

Stalin always treated sodomy with undisguised contempt. When he received a letter from a Danish homosexual communist who asked him to be accepted into the ranks of the CPSU (b), the Leader wrote in the margin: “Bastard and degenerate. To the archive." But besides contempt for perverts, Stalin had more important reasons to start fighting them. And these reasons were again political. The fact is that there were a large number of oppositionists among homosexuals. Homosexual orgies were also meeting places for Stalin's enemies. Yagoda, who was himself a homosexual, reported to Stalin in 1933 that “the activist pederasts, using the caste isolation of pederast circles for directly counter-revolutionary purposes, politically corrupted various social strata of youth, in particular working youth, and also tried to penetrate the army and navy.” .

On June 3, 1934, the deputy chairman of the OGPU, Agranov, reported to Stalin that “during the liquidation of hotbeds of homosexuals in Moscow, the head of the protocol department of the NKID, D. T. Florinsky, was identified as a homosexual.” Many cases of close communication between homosexual Soviet diplomats and their foreign colleagues, many of whom were representatives of foreign intelligence services, were also revealed.

On Yagoda’s report, Stalin wrote a resolution: “The scoundrels must be roughly punished, and the corresponding governing decree must be introduced into legislation.”

Thus, we can state that in the early 30s, Stalin pursued a progressive policy to change the ideological and political component of the Bolshevik system, as it was created by Lenin and Trotsky.

But perhaps even more interesting is economic policy Stalin in the 30s. In 1925, on the initiative of Trotsky, the Lena gold mines were leased and operated for a period of 30 years to the English company Lena Goldfils Limited. The terms of the lease were very interesting: the English campaign took most of the profits for itself, leaving the USSR with pitiful crumbs. Few people knew that the American banking house Loeb, Kuhn & Co. was actually behind the English company. The same banking house that was behind the destruction of Russia in 1917. Already at the end of the 20s, Stalin began to fight to break the contract with Lena Goldfils Limited. It was possible to do this only in 1934 at the cost of incredible efforts of the Stalinist leadership.

Why did Stalin do this? Many researchers explain this by saying that Stalin did this to strengthen his power. This is partly true, although somewhat primitive. Indeed, the above actions strengthened Stalin’s power in certain party and Soviet circles. But if Stalin had only strived for this, he would not have needed to play such a complex game. He could calmly continue their ideological policies without Lenin and Trotsky. Moreover, he could continue their economic policy. By and large, Western financial circles did not care who would be the main supplier of Russian raw materials: Trotsky or Stalin. By changing the domestic and foreign policies of the USSR, defending its economic independence, Stalin did not strengthen his power, but, on the contrary, created many additional enemies for himself.

In our opinion, Stalin’s actions are explained not by a manic desire to seize and maintain absolute power in the country, but by Stalin’s ideological and political convictions. In our time, when corruption and unscrupulousness have become the norms of life, including political life, it may seem that this has always been the case for everyone. But this is far from true. Stalin had his own beliefs and his own view on the development of the country. In general terms, these beliefs boiled down to the fact that Stalin was a supporter of building a strong state, sovereign and based on traditional Russian ideas about this state: autocracy, order, discipline, social justice, strong family. The only thing that Stalin did not have in his list of these values was Orthodoxy and churchliness. In any case, even if Stalin believed that the Church should play an important role in the history of the state, he was never, even in 1943, able to return to Orthodoxy as part of the state ideology. This, in fact, doomed both Stalin himself and the state he created. Despite all Stalin's changes, the deadening and disgusting cult of Lenin, with its false relics in the center of Red Square, always remained at the core of Soviet ideology.

The more Stalin removed the old Bolsheviks from power, the more he concentrated the fullness of power in his hands, the more enemies he became, who were also very powerful. The destruction of these enemies was necessary for Stalin. But large-scale terror against the common population was completely unnecessary for Stalin. In conditions of a tough struggle against the Trotskyists, Stalin needed inner peace. It is quite obvious that the mass murders of the clergy, workers, and peasants did not make Stalin’s power more durable, but, on the contrary, exposed it to serious danger. However, this large-scale terror began and reached its peak in 1937. How did the country come to this terror, who carried it out and for what purpose?

Speaking about the role that Stalin played in the history of our country in the 30s, of course, it would be absurd to portray this role only as positive. We have already said that Stalin was part of a cruel era and, therefore, like his era, he was cruel. Today's statements by some researchers, in which Stalin appears as a meek and kind ruler who only thinks about the welfare of the working people, are as false as the portrayal of Stalin as a bloody monster. Stalin, as we already wrote, wanted to create a powerful, united and independent state on the ruins of the Russian Empire. But this does not mean at all that Stalin intended to recreate the Russian Empire itself in its previous form. Stalin understood the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church and its role in the life of the state. At the end of the war, this understanding turned into a clear conviction for Stalin, and his ideology became imperial. But this does not mean at all that Stalin in the 30s was a conscious Orthodox statist. To recreate the destroyed economy, to equip the army with modern military equipment, and in the shortest possible time, Stalin needed bread to sell it abroad and build factories and factories with the proceeds. Stalin did not have the money to buy this bread from the peasant, and he took this bread from him, driving the peasantry into collective farms and deporting hundreds of thousands of peasant families to Siberia. During collectivization, Stalin considered the Church a dangerous ideological rival and he mercilessly persecuted the Church. Stalin openly said that “we are striving to destroy the reactionary clergy.” The 1937 census showed that most Soviet people considers herself a believer in God, and the Soviet regime responded to this with massacres of hundreds of thousands of clergy and laity, many of whom suffered martyrdom. Moreover, the terror was directed not only at Orthodox believers, but also at other religions. After the Orthodox, the main victims of this terror were Muslims. For example, in Tatarstan it was in the 1930s that mass closures of mosques and arrests of mullahs took place. Therefore, the quoted supposedly existing Stalinist decisions on the abolition of the “Leninist decree” on the fight against the clergy and religion are, in our opinion, nothing more than a fake.

But speaking about the Stalinist persecution of the Church that certainly took place, it is necessary to note the following. Unlike Sverdlov and Trotsky, who destroyed the Church out of hatred of Christ and Russia and to destroy any statehood on its territory, Stalin was a persecutor of the Church in order to build a powerful state, which at the beginning he considered possible to build without the participation of the Church. Stalin's persecution of the Church was caused not by fighting against God, but by his misunderstood state interests. But very soon Stalin became convinced of the impossibility of such construction. Stalin already at the end of the 30s, that is, at the very height of anti-church repressions, as we have already said, set a different tone for Soviet ideology. It is barely noticeable, but every year the contours of Orthodoxy are drawn more and more clearly. It is noteworthy that since the late 20s, Stalin supported the so-called “Sergian”, that is, Orthodox, church, and not the “renovationists”.

In 1924, M.I. Kalinin wrote to Stalin:
“Central Committee of the RCP comrade. STALIN
Neither the circular of the Central Committee of the RCP dated 16/VIII-23, nor the corresponding instructions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, nor a number of instructions of the 5th department of N.K.Yu. did not lead to a calm conduct of church issues on the ground, which is proven by daily appeals to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee...
I would like you, comrade. Stalin, having read the documents, would have given a strict directive on behalf of the Central Committee on the mandatory implementation of the Central Committee’s directives.
By the way, the desire to seize more and more churches and back is growing - the force of resistance is growing, and the irritation of the broad masses of believers is growing.
Appropriate measures must be taken.
At the same time, I am enclosing a summary of the GPU and a document of exceptional importance, emanating from the Communists, without a signature.
M. Kalinin."

From this letter it is clear that Stalin and Kalinin were opponents of the Trotskyist approach to the Church.

On August 16, 1923, Stalin signed Circular Letter of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) No. 30 “On attitude towards religious organizations.” It says in particular:
“Strictly - Secret to ALL GUBKOMS, REGIONAL COMMITTEES, TERRITORY COMMITTEES, NATIONAL] Central Committee and BURO of the Central Committee. CIRCULAR LETTER of the Central Committee of the RCP No. 30 (On attitude towards religious organizations).

The Central Committee invites all party organizations to pay the most serious attention to a number of serious violations committed by some organizations in the field of anti-religious propaganda and, in general, in the field of relations towards believers and their cults. Some of our local organizations systematically violate these clear and specific directives of the Party program and Party Congress. Numerous examples clearly demonstrate how carelessly, frivolously, and frivolously some local Party organizations and local authorities treat such an important issue as the question of freedom of religious belief. These organizations and authorities apparently do not understand that by their rude, tactless actions against believers, who represent the vast majority of the population, they are causing incalculable harm to the Soviet government, threatening to disrupt the party’s achievements in the field of decomposing the church and risk playing into the hands of the counter-revolution.

Based on the above, the Central Committee decides:
1) prohibit the closure of churches, places of worship... based on failure to comply with administrative orders on registration, and where such closures have taken place, cancel them immediately;
2) prohibit the liquidation of prayer premises, buildings, etc. by voting at meetings with the participation of non-believers or outsiders to the group of believers that entered into an agreement for the premises or building;
3) prohibit the liquidation of prayer premises, buildings, etc. for non-payment of taxes, since such liquidation was not allowed in strict accordance with the instructions of the People's Commissariat of Justice of 1918, paragraph II;
4) prohibit arrests of a “religious nature”, since they are not related to clearly counter-revolutionary acts of “church ministers” and believers; 5) when renting premises to religious societies and determining rates, strictly observe the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee dated 29/III-23;
6) explain to party members that our success in the decomposition of the church and the eradication of religious prejudices does not depend on persecution of believers - persecution only strengthens religious prejudices - but on a tactful attitude towards believers with patient and thoughtful criticism of religious prejudices, with serious historical coverage of the idea God, cult and religion, etc.;
7) responsibility for the implementation of this directive should be assigned to the secretaries of provincial committees, regional committees, regional bureaus, national Central Committees and regional committees personally.
At the same time, the Central Committee warns that such an attitude towards the church and believers should not, however, in any way weaken the vigilance of our organizations in the sense of carefully monitoring so that the church and religious societies do not turn religion into a weapon of counter-revolution.
Secretary of the Central Committee I. Stalin. 16/VIII-23.”

This was Stalin’s direct opposition to Trotsky and the defense of the Orthodox Church. Neither the congress nor Stalin note the personal responsibility of Trotsky and the Trotskyists for the identified shortcomings and deviations from the party program, because all instructions came on behalf of the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Kalinin and the Politburo, and all the names of the real perpetrators of the pogrom of the Russian Church, as is known, “to avoid chauvinistic attacks" were hidden, conspiratorial.

Carrying out a radical change in Bolshevik ideology, restoring the Cossacks and banning the Society of Old Bolsheviks, Stalin had to constantly make curtsies towards the revolution, had to constantly swear allegiance to Leninism, otherwise he would simply be overthrown by the Trotskyists.

Despite his struggle with the Church, Stalin, however, was not personally the initiator of the massacres of the clergy and the destruction of churches. Stalin rather accepted these murders and destruction as a fact. According to eyewitnesses, the explosion of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior made such a depressing impression on Stalin that he refused to listen to the end of the report on the circumstances of the demolition of the cathedral. This may seem strange, since it would seem that Stalin himself gave the order for this barbarity. But this may seem so only at first glance. This view is based on the false idea of Stalin’s omnipotence in the 1930s and the fact that only he controlled the situation in the country. In fact, we can verify that this was far from the case.

As you know, the beginning of the so-called “Stalinist repressions” is considered to be the same 1934, or rather December 1, 1934, that is, the murder of the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee S. M. Kirov. WITH light hand It is customary to blame Khrushchev for this murder of Stalin. However, all the circumstances of this crime and its investigation today allow us to draw the exact opposite conclusion. Kirov always supported Stalin and had absolutely no ambitious plans to seize power. In the person of Kirov, Stalin lost a faithful comrade-in-arms, which, in the difficult conditions of the 1930s, noticeably weakened Stalin's power. In addition, if Stalin had been the organizer of the murder of Kirov, he would have taken care to immediately eliminate possible witnesses. In fact, Stalin, who personally arrived in Leningrad to investigate the crime, himself interrogated Kirov’s killer Nikolaev and gave orders for his protection. However, Nikolaev himself and other witnesses to the crime were killed under mysterious circumstances, just when Stalin wanted to get the important information he needed from them. So, the security officer Borisov was killed, who was summoned for interrogation to Stalin in Smolny. Borisov had important information about the murder and, according to some evidence, he was killed with the knowledge or even on the direct order of Zaporozhets. Today we can say with confidence that the murder of Kirov was a retaliatory blow to Stalin by the Trotskyist opposition and its foreign leaders.

The forces that brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917 watched with alarm what was happening in the USSR. They reacted quite calmly to Trotsky's removal from power. Ultimately, this did not directly threaten their interests in Russia. On the contrary, the talkative, narcissistic and narrow-minded Trotsky could not reliably ensure control over the resources of the USSR under the new conditions. Smart and cold-blooded Stalin seemed to the world behind the scenes to be a more promising protege. Stalin, being at the beginning very dependent on this backstage, for the time being was in no hurry to disappoint her. However, by continuing to increase the rate of industrial production every year and at the same time removing the Soviet economy from Western control, Stalin began to cause serious concern in the West. The “pro-Russian” orientation of Stalin’s course caused the same concern there. Essentially, in 1934, Stalin began to carry out a counter-revolution, reliably covering it with revolutionary slogans. In response, the Trotskyists and their behind-the-scenes conductors began to fight against the Stalinist counter-revolution.

Certain circles in the West began to look for ways to remove Stalin from power. A conspiracy is organized against Stalin, which went down in history under the name “Klubok”. At the head of this conspiracy were Zinoviev, Yagoda, Enukidze, Peterson. Yagoda told his accomplice, security officer Artuzov: “With a device like ours, you won’t get lost. Eagles will do everything at the right moment. In no country will the Minister of the Interior be able to produce palace coup. And we can do this too, if necessary, because we have not only police, but also troops.”

The conspirators intended to arrest the leading “five” of the Politburo, headed by Stalin. After which the plenum of the Central Committee was supposed to appoint some major military man as the interim dictator of the country.

The goals of the conspirators were expressed quite clearly by the same Yagoda. He said: “It is absolutely clear that we have not built any socialism, there can be no Soviet power surrounded by capitalist countries. We need a system that would bring us closer to Western European democracies. Enough shock! We must finally live a calm, prosperous life, openly enjoy all the benefits that we, as leaders of the state, should have.”

This was said quite frankly and surprisingly resembles our “perestroika” and the “reforms” that followed it with their privatizations and vouchers.

But about the “Western democracies” in the “Club” it was not all simple. Today it is known that this “Club” was financed, among other things, from Nazi Germany.

Yagoda was well aware of the impending assassination attempt on Kirov. His protege in Leningrad, the head of the local NKVD Zaporozhets, a few days before the murder, ordered the release of Nikolaev, detained by state security officers, in whose briefcase a revolver and a map of Kirov’s route were found.

The preparation of the conspiracy was to be accompanied by the unleashing of terror and sabotage, with the aim of causing severe discontent among the broad masses. Immediately after the murder of Kirov, the NKVD controlled by Yagoda carried out extrajudicial executions of innocent citizens. At the same time, the NKVD used tougher conduct of investigations in cases of political terrorism. Following the murder of Kirov, the USSR Central Executive Committee issued a resolution “On the procedure for conducting cases of preparation or commission of terrorist acts.” This resolution established the speed of conducting all cases of persons accused of preparing or committing terrorist acts. The essence of this document was as follows:
1. The investigation in these cases was completed in no more than ten days.
2. The indictment was supposed to be served on the accused no more than one day before the hearing of the cases in court.
3. Cases were heard without the participation of the parties.
4. Do not allow cassation appeals against sentences, as well as filing petitions for pardon.
5. A sentence of capital punishment shall be carried out immediately upon the pronouncement of the sentences.

Thus, in Leningrad, 95 so-called “White Guards” who were allegedly involved in the murder were immediately shot. This was done without Stalin's knowledge. The latter was furious when he found out about this. In total, after the murder of Kirov, 12 thousand people, mostly former nobles and officers, were convicted mainly on trumped-up charges by the NKVD. Today it is absolutely clear that Stalin was not the initiator of these massacres. On the contrary, on his initiative, Prosecutor General A. Ya. Vyshinsky filed a protest against the actions of the NKVD, and many convicts were released.

In 1936, a wave of explosions swept through Siberian mines, leading to the death of 12 people.

By 1937, the country found itself on the eve of a decisive battle between Stalin and the old Leninist guard...

The repressions of 1937 are invariably called “Stalinist repressions.” However, a careful study of this era reveals that Stalin personally signed sanctions for the death sentences of several tens of thousands of people, and many more were shot. By the way, many myths have been created about the number of people killed in 1937-38. Here is a typical example of such myth-making. Professor A. Kozlov writes: “In fact, during that time “under the wise leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) headed by its leader I.V. Stalin" exterminated millions of people. How much exactly? Nobody knows this. Only the most general estimates are known, apparently, however, not far from the truth. According to them, in the peaceful thirties the USSR lost more people, significantly more, than during the four years of the unprecedentedly bloody Great Patriotic War. Maybe 50 or even 60 million people.”

Just like that. Nobody “knows”, there are “the most general estimates”, but 60 million people died! It is noteworthy that, despite the fact that such statements are replete with such words as “nobody knows”, “apparently” and so on, in the minds of millions of Russian citizens the idea is firmly established that during the years of the “Great Terror” exactly about 100 people died million people. Although a basic analysis of demographic changes in the USSR convinces us that these figures are absurd. As established by modern researchers, in January 1937, that is, on the eve of the “Great Terror,” the population of the USSR was 168 million people. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, this figure increased to 196,716,000. That is, the population grew by almost 30 million people. It is clear that if during the terror of 1937-38 50-60 million people had been destroyed, not to mention 100 million, such population growth in the USSR could not have happened, and certainly not during the Great Patriotic War. they wouldn’t be able to win, there would simply be no one to fight.

Of course, this does not mean at all that the “Great Terror” had no impact at all on changes in the population in the USSR. Serious and objective researchers directly point out this: “The change in the population of our country could have been significantly influenced by what happened in the 30s. Among these factors, one should, first of all, highlight mass repressions, although far in scale from what has been written about with such persistence in recent years.”

Today the scale of the repressions of 1937-1938 has been established quite accurately. According to declassified archives, 1.5 million people were convicted during these years, of which approximately 700 thousand people were shot. Despite the fact that the figure of 700 thousand killed is not comparable with the mythical 50 million, it is still absolutely huge. And there were a great many innocent, random people, martyrs for the Faith, out of these seven hundred thousand killed. It is enough to look at the lists of those killed at the Butovo training ground in Moscow, or at the Levashovskaya wasteland near St. Petersburg, to be convinced of this. The majority of these lists are made up of ordinary Russian people, most often workers, peasants, clergy, the so-called “former”, even children. The conscience of an Orthodox Christian, or even just a decent person, can never come to terms with these terrible murders. But our conscience can never come to terms with the fact that all these murders are attributed to Stalin alone, and often with the help of direct distortions of facts, forgeries and falsifications.

In 1935, the son of Russian poets N.S. Gumilyov, who was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921, and A.A. Akhmatova, L.N. Gumilyov, was arrested. Akhmatova addressed a letter to Stalin, in which she wrote: “Dear Joseph Vissarionovich, knowing your attentive attitude towards the cultural forces of the country and in particular towards writers, I decide to address you with this letter.

October 23, N.K.V.D. was arrested in Leningrad. my husband Nikolai Nikolaevich Punin (professor at the Academy of Arts) and my son Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (student of L.G.U.). Joseph Vissarionovich, I don’t know what they are accused of, but I give you my word of honor that they are neither fascists, nor spies, nor members of counter-revolutionary societies. I have lived in S.S.R.) since the beginning of the Revolution, I have never wanted to leave the country with which I am connected in mind and heart. /…/ In Leningrad I live very alone and am often sick for a long time. The arrest of the only two people close to me deals me such a blow that I can no longer bear it.

I ask you, Joseph Vissarionovich, to return my husband and son to me, confident that no one will ever regret this. Anna Akhmatova. November 1, 1935."

On Akhmatova’s letter, Stalin imposed the following resolution: “t. Berry. Release both Punin and Gumilev from arrest and report execution. I. Stalin."

In November 1935, Akhmatova’s son and husband were released, and Gumilyov was reinstated at the Faculty of History. In 1938, Lev Gumilyov was arrested again. The reason for the arrest was the following incident, which is well described in the memoirs of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov himself. At one of the lectures on Russian literature, Professor L.V. Pumpyansky “...began to make fun of my father’s poems and personality. “The poet wrote about Abyssinia,” he exclaimed, “but he himself was no further than Algeria... Here he is - an example of our domestic Tartarin!” Unable to bear it, I shouted to the professor from my seat: “No, he was not in Algeria, but in Abyssinia!” Pumpyansky condescendingly parried my remark: “Who should know better - you or me?” I replied: “Of course, me.” About two hundred students in the audience laughed. Unlike Pumpyansky, many of them knew that I was Gumilyov’s son. Everyone turned to look at me and realized that I really should know better. Pumpyansky immediately after the call ran to complain about me to the dean’s office. Apparently he continued to complain. In any case, the very first interrogation in the internal NKVD prison on Shpalernaya, investigator Barkhudaryan began by reading me a paper in which he reported in every detail about the incident that occurred at Pumpyansky’s lecture.”

Gumilyov and two of his comrades were accused of attempting a counter-revolutionary coup and sentenced to long prison terms. Gumilyov's mother Akhmatova again wrote a letter to Stalin. As L.N. Gumilyov himself writes, it remained unanswered. However, after Akhmatova’s letter, L.N. Gumilyov’s case was sent for further investigation, and soon the war began and Gumilyov was mobilized into the active army.

After the war, in 1948, Lev Gumilev was arrested again. Here is what he writes about this: “When I was young, more precisely, when I had just entered the first year of the history department of Leningrad University, I was already interested in history Central Asia. “Honored Worker of Kyrgyz Science” Alexander Natanovich Bernshtam agreed to talk with me, who began the conversation with warnings, saying that the most harmful teaching on this issue was formulated by “Eurasianism”, theorists of the White emigrant direction, who say that real Eurasians, that is, nomads, were different two qualities - military courage and unconditional loyalty. And on these principles, that is, on the principle of their heroism and the principle of personal devotion, they created great monarchies. I replied that, oddly enough, I really liked it and it seemed to me that it was said very smartly and efficiently. In response I heard: “Your brain is askew. Obviously, you are just like them." Having said this, he went to write a denunciation against me. This is where my acquaintance with Eurasianism and the scientist Bernshtam began...”

So, let's ask the reader who is to blame for Gumilyov's arrests: informers Bernshtam and Pumpyansky, or Stalin, who pulled Gumilyov out of prison? This does not prevent modern “debunkers of Stalinism” from claiming that Stalin “rotted” in Lev Gumilyov’s prison.

In general, on the issue of I.V. Stalin’s personal participation in the repressions, there are a lot of strange things, to put it mildly. For example, the well-known decision “On Anti-Soviet Elements” dated July 2, 1937, which states the need to shoot the most active hostile elements, is available only in the form of an extract typed on a typewriter. Stalin’s signature on this extract was not even forged, but simply handwritten by someone.

Stalin’s notorious coded telegram “about torture” also exists in the form of a typewritten copy. This is her story. At the 20th Party Congress, the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N. S. Khrushchev stated that there allegedly was a “telegram” dated January 10, 1939, signed by J. V. Stalin on the use of torture during the investigation. This “telegram” supposedly ended like this: “The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks explains that the use of physical force in the practice of the NKVD has been allowed since 1937 with the permission of the Central Committee. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) believes that the method of physical coercion must be used in the future, as an exception, in relation to obvious and undisarmed enemies of the people, as a completely correct and appropriate method.”

This “telegram” is stored in the Presidential Archives. There is no Stalin's signature on it. According to the notes on the archival copy, typewritten copies were sent to: Beria, Shcherbakov, Zhuravlev, Zhdanov, Vyshinsky, Golyakov, and others (10 recipients in total). But I have not seen a single signature of these addressees confirming receipt or familiarization. As well as the original text of this very telegram with Stalin’s original signature. V. M. Molotov, in conversations with the writer F. Chuev, categorically denied the existence of such a telegram. Therefore, it is likely that this telegram was fabricated by Khrushchev for the 20th Party Congress.

Stalin's involvement in the sanctions on the execution of tens of thousands of people has been documented; the so-called “Stalinist lists” number 44.5 thousand, but not 700 thousand. Who was the main conductor of the bloody massacres that entered our public consciousness under the name of “repression”? D. A. Bystroletov, who found himself in the same cell with the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs A. I. Nasedkin, recalled how he spoke about his predecessor B. Berman: “In Minsk he was a real devil who had escaped from the underworld. He shot more than 80 thousand people in Minsk in less than a year of work. He killed the best communists of the republic. Beheaded the Soviet apparatus. He carefully sought out, found, pulled out all the people who stood out in the slightest degree for intelligence or devotion from the working people - Stakhanovites in factories, chairmen in collective farms, the best foremen, writers, scientists, artists. On Saturdays, Berman held production meetings. Six people from among the investigators were called onto the stage according to a prepared list - the three best and the three worst. Berman began like this: “Here is one of our best workers, Ivan Nikolaevich Ivanov. In a week, Comrade Ivanov completed a hundred cases, of which forty were for the highest measure, and sixty for a total period of a thousand years. Congratulations, Comrade Ivanov. Thank you! Stalin knows and remembers about you. You are nominated for an award, and now you will receive a cash bonus in the amount of five thousand rubles! Here's the money. Sit down!" Then Semyonov was given the same amount, but without presentation to the order, for completing 75 cases: with the execution of thirty people and a total sentence of seven hundred years for the rest. And Nikolaev - for two thousand five hundred for twenty executed. The hall trembled with applause. The lucky ones proudly went to their places. There was silence. Everyone's faces turned pale and stretched out. My hands began to tremble. Suddenly, in dead silence, Berman loudly called his name: “Mikhailov Alexander Stepanovich, come here to the table.” General movement. All heads turn. One man makes his way forward with unsteady steps. The face is twisted in horror, the sightless eyes are wide open. “Here is Alexander Stepanovich Mikhailov. Look at him, comrades! He completed three cases in a week. Not a single execution, sentences of five and seven years are proposed.” Deathly silence. Berman slowly approaches the unfortunate man. "Watch! Take him!” The investigator is taken away. “It has become clear,” Berman says loudly, looking into space over their heads, “it has become clear that this man was recruited by our enemies, who set themselves the goal of disrupting the work of the authorities, disrupting the fulfillment of Comrade Stalin’s tasks. The traitor will be shot!”

From the above passage we see how Berman, with the hands of the NKVD, destroys the color of the nation, the best people, both from the people and from the NKVD itself. At the same time, he specifically emphasizes that he is acting on Stalin’s orders. The goal of Berman and others like him was simple: by exterminating innocent people, to arouse people’s hatred of Stalin. The image of Stalin as a bloody executioner, a tyrant, a monster was consciously and purposefully formed, that is, the same image that is implanted in the minds of our society today. Who is Berman?

Boris Davidovich Berman was born in 1901 in Chita district into the family of the owner of a brick factory. In 1918 he served in the commandant's office of the Red Army as a private.

He took part in searches and confiscations of property from the “bourgeoisie”. At the beginning of 1919, using a false passport, he went to Manchuria and went to serve as a white private. He did not participate in battles or campaigns. In 1921, he unexpectedly became secretary of the propaganda department of the Semipalatinsk district committee of the RCP (b). In 1921 he fell into the hands of the Cheka-GPU. In 1931 he was sent abroad, under the “roof” of the embassy in Germany and was a resident of Soviet intelligence. Since 1935, first deputy head of the Foreign Department of the Main Directorate of State Security. Berman's brother, M.D. Berman, was the head of the Gulag in 1932-36, deputy and confidant of People's Commissar Yagoda. Both Berman brothers were Yagoda's promoters, which did not prevent them from later becoming associates of N. I. Ezhov.

In March 1937, Yezhov appointed B.D. Berman People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Belarusian SSR. In this position, Berman unleashed a bloody terror against the population of Belarus, which killed at least 60 thousand people.

In May 1938 he was recalled to Moscow. At this time, a special commission created by I.V. Stalin from members of the Central Committee - lawyers, began to check the work of all NKVD bodies operating on the territory of the BSSR. The commission identified significant violations in the work of the NKVD in terms of illegal actions leading to casualties on a large scale. Upon returning to Minsk, Berman was arrested. During the investigation, he testified that, while in Germany as an intelligence officer on special assignments, he was recruited as an agent. On February 22, 1939, Berman was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court to death and executed. It is noteworthy that Stalin called Berman “a scoundrel and a scoundrel.”

Again, let’s ask ourselves: did Berman carry out Stalin’s instructions in Belarus? Of course not! On the contrary, he harmed Stalin. Stalin never called for mass terror. Moreover, he was afraid of its consequences. In his report, entitled “On the shortcomings of party work and measures to eliminate Trotskyists and other double-dealers,” in March 1937, Stalin not only did not orient the party towards mass terror, but, on the contrary, put forward demands “in this matter, as in all other issues, observe an individual, differentiated approach. You can't put everyone under the same brush. Such a sweeping approach can only harm the cause of the fight against real Trotskyist saboteurs and spies. The fact is that some of our party leaders suffer from a lack of attention to people, to party members, to workers. Moreover, they do not study the party members, do not know how they live and how they grow, and do not know the workers at all. Therefore, they do not have an individual approach to party members, to party workers. And precisely because they do not have an individual approach when assessing party members and party workers, they usually act at random: either they praise them indiscriminately, without measure, or they also beat them indiscriminately and without measure, expelling them from the party in thousands and tens of thousands.

Such leaders generally try to think in tens of thousands, without caring about the “units,” about individual party members, about their fate. They consider expelling thousands and tens of thousands of people from the party a trivial matter, consoling themselves with the fact that we have a party of two million and tens of thousands expelled cannot change anything in the position of the party. But only people who are essentially deeply anti-Party can approach party members in this way.

As a result of such a soulless attitude towards people, towards party members and party workers, discontent and embitterment are artificially created in one part of the party, and Trotskyist double-dealers cleverly pick up such embittered comrades and skillfully drag them along with them into the swamp of Trotskyist sabotage.” It is said very precisely and convinces us that Stalin well understood what goals were pursued by types like Berman. It was they who were the “double-dealers” who sowed anger towards the Stalinist leadership.

Former Stalin's Minister of Agriculture I. A. Benediktov writes in his memoirs: “Stalin, without a doubt, knew about the arbitrariness and lawlessness that was allowed during the repressions, and took specific measures to correct the mistakes made and release innocent people from prison. Back in January, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938 openly admitted that lawlessness had been committed against honest communists and non-party members, having adopted a special resolution on this matter, published in all central newspapers. The harm from unjustified repressions was also openly discussed in front of the whole country at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) in 1939... Immediately after the January Plenum, thousands of illegally repressed citizens, including prominent military leaders, were released from the camps. All of them were officially rehabilitated, and Stalin personally apologized to some of them.”

Stalin understood perfectly well that there was a hidden struggle going on against him, that the real instigators of repression were trying to discredit him in the eyes of the people. But due to other objective circumstances, he could not interfere in the activities of each of these skirmishers. Of course, Stalin, as the head of state, is objectively responsible, including for these skirmishers, since they acted during his reign. But he cannot bear subjective responsibility for all their crimes, since they were also directed against Stalin himself.

Just like Berman, another instigator of repressions, the first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, the former Trotskyist N. S. Khrushchev, also harmed Stalin. In May 1937, at the plenum of the Moscow State Committee of the Party, he said: “These scoundrels must be destroyed. By destroying one, two, ten, we do the work of millions. Therefore, you need to keep your hand from shaking, you need to step over the corpses of the enemy for the good of the people.”

And Khrushchev destroyed. Back in 1936, he lamented: “Only 308 people were arrested; for our Moscow organization this is not enough.” Therefore, Khrushchev submitted the following proposal note to the Politburo: “to be shot: 2 thousand kulaks, 6.5 thousand criminals, to deport: 5869 kulaks, 26,936 criminals.”

A note from Khrushchev from Kyiv addressed to Stalin, six months after his election as first secretary of the Ukrainian party organization, dated June 1938, has been preserved: “Dear Joseph Vissarionovich! Ukraine sends 17-18 thousand repressed people monthly, and Moscow approves no more than 2-3 thousand. I ask you to take urgent measures. N. Khrushchev, who loves you.”

Stalin’s response is noteworthy: “Calm down, you fool!”

And here are the actions of another “former” Trotskyist and “victim” of “Stalinist” repressions, P. Postyshev. In the fight against “enemies of the people,” he dissolved 30 district committees in the Kuibyshev region, whose members were declared enemies of the people and repressed only because they did not notice the alleged image of the Nazi swastika on the covers of student notebooks in the ornament!

Postyshev was echoed by R.I. Eikhe, who was also subsequently shot by Stalin for unjustified repressions. In his speeches in 1937, he called: “We must reveal, expose the enemy, no matter what hole he has buried himself in. After checking and exchanging (party cards), even more sworn enemies were exposed and expelled from the party... Not all of the enemies have been exposed, we must intensify the work to expose the Trotskyist-Bukharin bandits in every possible way.”

Stalin gave instructions for repressions against active enemies of the regime and criminals. But here is an excerpt taken from the list of people executed in the city of Leningrad in 1937.

- Abanin Alexander Dmitrievich, born in 1878, Russian, non-party member, blacksmith of the 4th mountain section of the mine named after. Kirov trust "Apatit", Arrested on August 8, 1937. On September 3, 1937, by a special troika of the UNKVD LO, sentenced under Art. Art. 19-58-8; 58-10 to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on September 6, 1937.
- Abbakumov Pavel Fedorovich, born 1885 Russian, non-partisan, auditor of the 9th precinct of the financial department of the Kirov railway. d., resided: st. Kem Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, no. 2. Arrested on June 11, 1937. On August 19, 1937, a special troika of the UNKVD Leningrad Region sentenced him under Art. Art. 19-58-9; 58-7-10-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on August 20, 1937.
- Abramov Alexander Semenovich, born in 1880, Russian, non-party member, saddler at the Novinsky logging station, lived in: Art. New product from Oredezhsky district Len. region Arrested on August 5, 1937. On August 22, 1937, by a special troika of the UNKVD LO, sentenced under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on August 24, 1937.
- Abramova Maria Alekseevna, born in 1894, Russian, non-party member, collective farmer. Arrested on August 1, 1937. On September 23, 1937, she was sentenced under Art. 58-6 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on September 28, 1937.
- Abramchik Vladimir Andreevich, born in 1882, Pole, non-partisan, senior gardener at the Botanical Institute. Arrested on July 7, 1937 by the Commission of the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor's Office on August 25, 1937, sentenced under Art. Art. 58-6-10-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on August 27, 1937.
- Abulkhanov Mustafa Abulkhanovich, born in 1888, Tatar, non-party member, salesman of the Kirov department store in Leningrad. Arrested on August 15, 1937. On August 26, 1937, a special troika of the UNKVD Leningrad Region sentenced him under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on August 29, 1937.
- Averin Ivan Andreevich, born in 1885, native of the village of Navolok, Volkhov district, Leningrad. region, Russian, non-party member, paramedic of the Masselga district, resided: Usadishte village, Volkhov district. Arrested on August 6, 1937. On August 22, 1937, by a special troika of the UNKVD LO, he was sentenced under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. Shot in Leningrad on August 24, 1937.

Let us ask ourselves: what did these non-party accountants, paramedics, gardeners, and collective farmers hinder Stalin’s rule? Nothing. But all of them were convicted under Article 58 (treason). How could they betray their Motherland? It is clear that nothing. So, who needed their death? Their death was not needed by Stalin, but by the Bermans, Khrushchevs, Postyshevs and the like. But the question arises: why did the Bermans and Khrushchevs suddenly need such sacrifices in 1937? Why did they need to “take down” Stalin so seriously in 1937?

We find the answer to this in the actions of Stalin, which he persistently carried out starting in 1934. And these actions consisted of the consistent removal of the party leadership from the levers of state power. Stalin changed the very essence of the Bolshevik Leninist-Trotskyist state system and ideology. Historian Yu. N. Zhukov directly writes: “Stalin wanted to remove the party from power altogether. That’s why I first conceived a new Constitution, and then, on its basis, alternative elections. According to the Stalinist project, the right to nominate their candidates, along with party organizations, was granted to almost all public organizations in the country: trade unions, cooperatives, youth organizations, cultural societies, even religious communities. However, Stalin lost the last battle and lost in such a way that not only his career, even his life was under threat. From the end of ’33 to the summer of ’37, at any Plenum, Stalin could have been accused, and from the point of view of orthodox Marxism, accused quite correctly, of revisionism and opportunism.”

Of course, we have strong doubts about alternative elections and Stalin’s liberalism. Stalin was a realist and certainly knew Russian history well. Of course, he could not fail to understand that liberalism in Russia is doomed. But there is no doubt that Stalin sought, through a new electoral system, to end the dictatorship of the party and establish autocracy in the USSR. Alternative elections to the Supreme Council were supposed to drive out the party apparatchiks from its ranks. And this was a direct violation of the “Leninist norms” of party life, that is, the end of lawlessness and permissiveness for the party Bolshevik bosses, who, like ghouls, sucked the blood of the people they enslaved. The party nomenklatura felt mortal danger for itself and, with the help of its henchmen in the regional and city committees, as well as in the NKVD, began to wage a bloody war with Stalin.

It was these people, like Berman, Khrushchev, Postyshev, Eikha, who were the initiators and inspirers of bloody terror in the country. As the historian Yu. N. Zhukov correctly writes: “in 1937 there was no all-powerful dictator Stalin, there was an all-powerful collective dictator named Plenum. The main stronghold of the orthodox party bureaucracy, represented not only by the first secretaries, but also by the People's Commissars of the USSR, major party and government officials. At the January Plenum of 1938, the main report was made by Malenkov. He said that the first secretaries did not even draw up lists of those convicted in “troikas,” but only two lines indicating their number. He openly accused the first secretary of the Kuibyshev regional party committee, P. P. Postyshev: you have imprisoned the entire party and Soviet apparatus of the region! To which Postyshev responded in the spirit that he was arresting, arresting, and will continue to arrest until I destroy all enemies and spies!”

The blow to Stalin from the party elite was dealt precisely at the Plenum of the Central Committee in June 1937. At this Plenum, Stalin sought to consolidate his dominant position both in the country and in the party and to ensure that the new electoral law was adopted by the party majority. This electoral law was supposed to bring new people to power and remove the old party leadership. During the Plenum, Eikhe, already known to us, relying on the conspiracy of the regional committee secretaries, turned to the Politburo with a request to temporarily grant him emergency powers in the territory under his jurisdiction. In the Novosibirsk region, he wrote, a powerful, huge in number, anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization had been uncovered, which the NKVD authorities were unable to completely liquidate. It is necessary to create a “troika” consisting of the following: the first secretary of the regional party committee, the regional prosecutor and the head of the regional NKVD department, with the right to make operational decisions on the expulsion of anti-Soviet elements and the imposition of death sentences on the most dangerous of these individuals. That is, in fact, a military court: without defenders, without witnesses, with the right to immediate execution of sentences. That is, Eikhe and the party apparatus tried to prevent the consolidation of Stalin’s power and disrupt the approval of the new electoral law.

Stalin and his supporters were then forced to accept Eiche's proposal. The reasons for this Stalinist retreat are well explained by Yu. N. Zhukov: “if the Stalinist group had gone against the majority, it would have been immediately removed from power. It would have been enough for the same Eiche, if he had not received a positive resolution on his appeal to the Politburo, or for Khrushchev, or Postyshev, or anyone else, to rise to the podium and quote Lenin, what he said about the League of Nations or about Soviet democracy... it was enough to take in hand the program of the Comintern, approved in October 1928, where they wrote down as a model the system of governance that was enshrined in our Constitution of 1924 and which Stalin tore to shreds when adopting the new Constitution... it was enough to present all this as an accusation of opportunism, revisionism, betrayal of the cause of October, betrayal of the interests of the party, betrayal of Marxism-Leninism - and that’s all! I think Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov would not have lived to see the end of June. They would have been unanimously removed from the Central Committee at that very moment and expelled from the party, transferring the case to the NKVD, and the same Yezhov would have carried out a lightning-fast investigation into their case with the greatest pleasure. If the logic of this analysis is carried to the end, then I do not rule out the paradox that today Stalin would be listed among the victims of the repressions of 1937, and Memorial and the commission of A. N. Yakovlev would have long ago secured his rehabilitation.

Having gone to their places, the most nimble party secretaries already by July 3 sent similar requests to the Politburo about the creation of extrajudicial “troikas”. Moreover, they immediately indicated the intended scale of repression. During July, such encrypted telegrams came from all territories of the Soviet Union. No one abstained! This irrefutably proves that there was a conspiracy at the Plenum and it was only important to create a precedent. Here in front of me is a photocopy of several cipher telegrams from the Russian State Archive modern history, which were recently declassified for purely propaganda purposes. Already on July 10, 1937, the Politburo reviewed and approved twelve applications that came first. Moscow, Kuibyshev, Stalingrad regions, Far Eastern Territory, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Belarus... I added up the numbers: on that one day alone, permission was given to subject one hundred thousand people to repression. One hundred thousand! Such a terrible scythe has never walked across our Russia.”

It is safe to say that in 1937, mass terror against the people was started not by Stalin and his leadership, but by a certain part of the party elite, the top of the NKVD and the army.

The purpose of this terror was to maintain the dominance of the party in the upper echelons of power, to prevent Stalin from concentrating all power in his hands. In 1937, it was the party elite that carried out mass executions of those groups of people to whom Stalin a year ago had given the opportunity to get into the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and thereby oust the party elite from the state Olympus. At the same time, another dangerous and formidable force came out against Stalin - a group of military conspirators.

When we talk about what happened in 1937, about conspiracies, repressions, political assassinations, we must not forget for a second in what foreign policy situation they took place. We must not forget that, starting from 1933, the West was preparing for war with the USSR at a frantic pace. At the same time, it was a mistake to think that the danger came only from Nazi Germany. Few people pay attention to the fact that until 1938-39, Germany was not considered by the Soviet leadership as the only likely enemy. Much more dangerous for the USSR was the so-called “Little Entente”, consisting of Poland, Romania, the Baltic states and supported by France and Great Britain, and potentially Germany. The united front of the West against the USSR - this was the main danger for Stalin. In the 1930s, Stalin knew that the Soviet Union was catastrophically unprepared for war. In 1931 he prophetically stated: “We are 50-100 years behind advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do this or we will be crushed.". Pay attention to the year of Stalin's speech - 1931! As we know, exactly 10 years later the Great Patriotic War began.

Based on the foregoing, one can understand the danger that internal instability and all kinds of conspiracies, the peak of which occurred in 1937, posed to the state security of the USSR. And, perhaps, the greatest danger was posed by a military conspiracy, military sabotage. It was the military conspiracy that V. M. Molotov had in mind when he said that 1937 was necessary, because “without him we would not have won the war”.

Indeed, the military conspiracy of 1937, the very fact of whose existence with the light hand of Khrushchev, has been denied or questioned for more than half a century, is acquiring more and more details as the archives are declassified. As these details become known, the mortal danger that this conspiracy posed to the Soviet state on the eve of World War II becomes apparent. It also becomes clear that this conspiracy had deep roots in the ranks of the Red Army and that the danger of this conspiracy was not stopped when the main conspirators were shot in the summer of 1937, and the consequences of this conspiracy continued to be felt in 1941 and, in all likelihood, in 1942. However, there is still no clear understanding of what motivated the conspirators when planning the coup, who they relied on, and whose interests they represented.

When talking about a military conspiracy, the first person always remembered is Marshal of the Soviet Union M.N. Tukhachevsky. It is no coincidence that the 1937 conspiracy itself is usually called the “Tukhachevsky Conspiracy.” Since the death of Tukhachevsky in 1937, there have been several completely opposite myths around his name. The first myth arose in the 60s, when Khrushchev led a frenzied campaign to debunk Stalin. Tukhachevsky was then portrayed as a “brilliant strategist” who, of course, would have won a brilliant victory over Hitler in 1941 if he had not been untimely killed by Stalin. As this myth blossomed into a new lush flower during the years of the notorious “perestroika”, a significant number of people grew in rejection of this myth, and in contrast to it another myth arose, the meaning of which is that Tukhachevsky was a complete idiot and saboteur who planned build hundreds of thousands of tanks for the Red Army, which would certainly ruin the Soviet economy. Both of these myths, in our opinion, are equally false. Tukhachevsky was certainly not a “brilliant strategist,” but he was not a total idiot, and his sabotage was not something permanent and complete. By 1937, Tukhachevsky had become a dangerous and cunning enemy of Stalin and objectively the Soviet Union, but this does not mean that he was such an enemy from the very beginning of his Bolshevik career. In order to understand Tukhachevsky’s role in the military conspiracy, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with his biography, since the fateful year of 1937 was the logical end of his life’s journey.

Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky was born on February 04 (16), 1893 in the Aleksandrovskoye estate, Dorogobuzh district, Smolensk province. The Tukhachevskys are an ancient, albeit impoverished, noble family. In the Court Calendar for 1917, the Tukhachevsky surname appears twice in the list of those close to the Highest Court. Tukhachevsky's father, nobleman Nikolai Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky, cohabited with an illiterate peasant woman, Mavra Petrovna Milokhova, with whom he had three children out of wedlock. In the end, Nikolai Tukhachevsky married Mavra, and they had another son, Mikhail. Tukhachevsky's father was a man “without social prejudices” and an atheist. From childhood, he instilled in his children hatred of God. So, the children had three dogs, whose names were God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We consider it impossible here to give examples of the blasphemy that the children of Nikolai Tukhachevsky, “devoid of social prejudices,” showed. Let's just say that this blasphemy caused rejection in Tukhachevsky's mother, who, unlike his father, was a believer.

As the sisters of the future marshal recalled: “Mikhail became the most militant atheist. He made up all sorts of anti-religious stories and sometimes even “over-sold”, unwittingly offending the devout dressmaker Polina Dmitrievna who lived in our house. But if Polina Dmitrievna forgave her favorite everything, mother sometimes tried to calm down the anti-religious fervor of her unruly son. True, she did not always succeed in this. One day, after several unsuccessful remarks, getting seriously angry, she poured a cup of iced tea on Misha’s head. He wiped himself off, laughed cheerfully and continued as if nothing had happened...”

Tukhachevsky’s dislike for Orthodoxy was also noticed in the gymnasium, which threatened to become a serious obstacle to continuing education. A priest who taught at the Penza gymnasium where Tukhachevsky studied complained: “Mikhail Tukhachevsky is not concerned with the Law of God”.

According to the testimony of V. G. Ukrainsky, a gymnasium friend of Tukhachevsky, he “I did not believe in Christ and during the lessons of the law of God I took some liberties in relation to the teachers. For this he was punished several times and was even removed from the class.”.

The same memoirist claims that the gymnasium authorities only found out in the fifth year that Tukhachevsky had never taken communion or been to confession.

Later, in the service of the Bolsheviks, Tukhachevsky openly called Christianity a false religion. Once Tukhachevsky built a stuffed animal of Perun from colored cardboard and arranged a “comic” worship of him, saying that the Slavs needed to return to natural religion, to paganism. Later, he submitted to the Council of People's Commissars a draft resolution on the abolition of Christianity and the replacement of Christianity with paganism for the benefit of the revolutionary cause.

"Latin-Greek culture, - said Tukhachevsky, - this is not for us. I consider the Renaissance, along with Christianity, one of the misfortunes of mankind. Harmony and moderation are what must be destroyed first of all. We will sweep away the ashes of European civilization that has littered Russia, we will shake it up like a dusty rug, and then we will shake up the whole world. I hate Saint Vladimir because he baptized Rus' and handed it over to Western civilization. It was necessary to preserve our crude paganism, our barbarism, intact. But both will return. I have no doubt about it!” It is no coincidence that during the Civil War, Tukhachevsky received the nickname “demon of the revolution.” The author of this nickname was Leon Trotsky, who himself was called in a similar way.

Naturally, in Tukhachevsky, anti-godism was combined with hatred of the reigning Emperor. Tukhachevsky’s sisters recalled a typical incident:

“Once during a walk, the nanny took us to see the Tsar who had arrived in Moscow. When Misha found out about this, he began to explain to us that the Tsar was a person like anyone else, and it would be stupid to go and look at him on purpose. And then through the wall we heard Mikhail, in a conversation with his brothers, calling the Tsar an idiot.”

Since childhood, Mikhail Tukhachevsky did not think of himself as anything other than a military man. Tukhachevsky's sister-in-law Lydia Nord recalled how the marshal himself told her that at a young age he became infected with military affairs from his great-uncle, a general, a warrior to the core:
“I always looked at him with admiration and respect, listening to his stories of battles. Grandfather noticed this, and once, sitting me on his lap, I was then seven or eight years old, he asked: “Well, Mishuk, what do you want to be?” “General,” I answered without hesitation. “Look! - he laughed. “Yes, you’re just Bonaparte with us - you’re aiming straight away to be a general.” And from then on, when my grandfather came to see us, he asked: “Well, Bonaparte, how are you?” With his light hand, they nicknamed me Bonaparte at home... Of course, I didn’t aim to become a Bonaparte, but I admit, I really wanted to become a general.”

Other eyewitnesses recall that in his early youth Tukhachevsky stood in front of a mirror in a Napoleonic pose and posed like that for a long time.

In an effort to give his son a metropolitan education, Nikolai Tukhachevsky moved with his family to Moscow. Mikhail enters the Moscow gymnasium. Mikhail studied poorly at the gymnasium and kept asking his father to send him to a cadet school. The father initially resisted this desire of his son, but then gave in to him. The main reason for this concession was the catastrophic financial situation of the family, which became poorer every year. On August 16, 1911, Mikhail Tukhachevsky entered the 1st Moscow Cadet Corps of Empress Catherine the Great.

The 1st Moscow Corps was a privileged institution. Here, the teaching of not only special military subjects, but also general education subjects was well organized. The 18-year-old boy was fascinated by military affairs. He was quite accustomed to the Spartan life within the walls of the building, willingly engaged in drill training, went on Boy Scout excursions and walks, being physically strong and dexterous, he was first in the gymnastics class. They said that Tukhachevsky could, sitting in the saddle, pull himself up with his hands along with the horse. In the cadet corps, Mikhail immediately stood out “brilliant abilities, excellent zeal in service, a genuine vocation for military affairs”.

In August 1912, Tukhachevsky entered the Alexander Military School in Moscow. He did not enroll in more prestigious St. Petersburg schools, like Pavlovsky: life in the capital of the empire, far from his parents, was unaffordable. Junker Tukhachevsky studied hard: he had to finish the course as one of the best in order to be able to choose a vacancy in the guards regiment and give a good start to his career. Already at school, he studied military disciplines especially carefully, with an eye to future entry into the Academy General Staff. In 1912, Tukhachevsky met N.N. Kulyabko, with whom they soon became friends. IN official biography Tukhachevsky Kulyabko is usually called a Bolshevik. However, most likely, Kulyabko joined the Bolshevik party only after the October coup. One thing is certain: Kulyabko, even before the revolution, was closely associated with the enemies of the Throne.

For his “zeal for service,” Tukhachevsky was presented to Emperor Nicholas II.

A colleague of Tukhachevsky recalled: “During the days of the Romanov celebrations, when the Alexander and Alekseevsky military schools had to carry out responsible and difficult guard duty in the Kremlin Palace during the arrival of the Sovereign Emperor and his family in Moscow, the harness cadet Tukhachevsky excellently, conscientiously and with distinction performed the guard duties assigned to him.

Here, for the first time, Tukhachevsky was introduced to His Majesty, who drew attention to his service and especially to the truly rare occasion for a junior cadet to receive a cadet rank. The Emperor expressed his pleasure after reading the company commander’s brief report on the official activities of the harness cadet Tukhachevsky.” The presentation to the Emperor once again revealed one of the main qualities of Tukhachevsky’s soul: hypocrisy. Stretching out to the front in front of the Emperor, within a few hours Tukhachevsky was saying nasty things about the Monarch.

During his years at the school, another quality of Tukhachevsky emerged: careerism. As his colleagues recalled, “In his service he had neither relatives nor pity for others. Everyone knew for sure that in case of a mistake one could not expect mercy. Tukhachevsky communicated with the junior year in a completely despotic manner.”.

Remi Roure, who knew Tukhachevsky well during his captivity, wrote the same thing: “He had a cold soul, which was warmed only by the heat of ambition. In life, he was only interested in victory, and at the cost of what sacrifices it would be achieved, he did not care. It's not that he was cruel, he just had no pity.".

On July 12, 1914, Mikhail Tukhachevsky graduated from the Alexander Military School first in academic performance and discipline. He was promoted to second lieutenant and, according to the rules, given a free choice of duty station. Tukhachevsky, as his grandfather-general bequeathed to him, preferred the Semenovsky regiment to the Life Guards. The Semenovsky regiment was one of the best regiments of the Russian Empire. In 1905-1906, it was the Semyonovites who distinguished themselves in suppressing the Moscow rebellion, showing courage and devotion to the Sovereign. It was a great honor to serve in such a regiment. But Tukhachevsky considered service in the regiment only as a temporary step for a future career. According to Tukhachevsky’s uncle, Colonel Balkashin, his nephew was going to continue his military education: “He was very capable and ambitious, intended to make a military career, dreamed of entering the Academy of the General Staff”.

After graduating from college, Tukhachevsky went on vacation, which, however, soon ended: the First World War began. Tukhachevsky caught up with his regiment near Warsaw. The young second lieutenant was appointed junior officer of the 7th company, commanded by Captain Veselago. Soon the regiment was transferred to the area of Ivangorod and Lublin against the Austro-Hungarian troops. On September 2, 1914, a company of captain Veselago and second lieutenant Tukhachevsky near the town of Krzeshov fought across the San River across a bridge set on fire by the Austrians, and then safely returned to the eastern bank with trophies and prisoners. For this feat, the company commander received the Order of St. George, 4th degree, and the junior officer received the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree with swords. Then other battles followed with the Austrians and the German units that came to their aid. Tukhachevsky fought well. Subsequently, he indicated that during the First World War he was awarded all the orders “from Anna IV degree to Vladimir IV degree inclusive”. Some researchers believe that Tukhachevsky attributed some of the orders to himself. Maybe that's true. But this does not at all detract from Tukhachevsky’s personal bravery, since the Order of St. Vladimir with swords, an award of which there is no doubt, was the second most important military award after the Order of St. George. On November 5, 1914, Tukhachevsky was wounded in a battle near the town of Skala and sent to a hospital in Moscow. Having recovered from his wound, Tukhachevsky returned to the front, but in February 1915 he was captured near Lomza. The circumstances of his capture are still very vague. Historian V. Leskov writes: “Lieutenant Tukhachevsky did not go to the front to fight for Russia, like many others, but, in his own words, simply to make a career, a brilliant career. He firmly intended to become a general - already at the age of 30! And such bad luck, the end of all ambitious dreams! Since in this desperate situation it was not the general’s shoulder straps or at least the order that “shone”, but a German bayonet or bullet, he decided to show prudence, consoling himself with a completely understandable thought: “You can still escape from captivity, brother, but you won’t be able to escape from the other world.” ».

The fact that Tukhachevsky surrendered on his own, without a serious fight, is evidenced by two absolutely indisputable facts:
1. He did not receive a single wound, not a single scratch;
2. And here is his boss, company commander Veselago, participant Russo-Japanese War, who had the St. George Cross for his bravery, he really fought fiercely to the end. He was bayoneted by four German grenadiers. More than 20 (!) bullet and bayonet wounds were later counted on the body of the valiant captain.”

Captivity is one of the darkest and most mysterious pages of Tukhachevsky’s life. The official Khrushchev biography of the Red Marshal depicts to us the heroic life of Tukhachevsky in captivity, constant attempts to escape from this captivity. In fact, the circumstances of these “escapes,” as well as being in captivity in general, are very strange. Firstly, escaping five times from German captivity was quite difficult, almost impossible. True, Tukhachevsky escaped for the fifth time from the gloomy Ingolstadt prison during a walk, which the Germans allowed only after the captured officers gave their honest officer's word not to escape from captivity. Tukhachevsky, without blinking an eye, broke his word. Well, this is very similar to Tukhachevsky: as we remember, he was a man “without social prejudices,” and it was not difficult for Tukhachevsky to step over some kind of “anachronism,” like an officer’s honor. But here's what's interesting. One of the officer-prisoners of Ingolstadt recalled later: “Tukhachevsky and his comrade Captain of the General Staff Chernyavsky somehow managed to arrange for others to sign their documents. And one day they both ran away. For six days the fugitives wandered through forests and fields, hiding from pursuit. And the seventh ones came across the gendarmes. However, the hardy and physically strong Tukhachevsky escaped from his pursuers... After some time, he managed to cross the Swiss border and thus return to his homeland. And Captain Chernyavsky was sent back to camp.".

So, note that only Tukhachevsky managed to escape. A lot of questions arise here. For example, how did Tukhachevsky manage to cross the German-Swiss border without documents, without papers? And this was during the war, when the German gendarmes were looking for him? Then, after Tukhachevsky’s escape, the Germans in Ingolstadt hastened to recognize him as dead for a ridiculous reason: a note was written in a Swiss newspaper that the corpse of a Russian officer had been found on the shores of Lake Geneva. For some reason, everyone decided that this must certainly be Tukhachevsky’s corpse!

But then even stranger things happen! Tukhachevsky again crosses the Franco-Swiss border without documents and without money, and then travels from Switzerland to Paris! Again, according to what documents, with what money? But I wonder where he's going. And he goes to the Russian military agent in Paris, Count A. A. Ignatiev, the same one who would later go into service with the Soviets and write the book “50 Years in Service.” In order for the reader to understand what Ignatiev was doing in Paris, let us explain: in modern terms, he was a legal resident of Russian intelligence in France. Ignatiev himself is a dark personality, and in terms of the degree of renegadeism and double-dealing, he is not much different from Tukhachevsky. It is clear that he had to curry favor with the Bolsheviks in order to later earn a general's pension and the rank of general from them. According to emigrant A. Markov, through the hands of Ignatiev “Billions of Russian money passed to repay orders made by the War Ministry in France, and of these enormous sums so much stuck to his hands that by the end of the war Ignatiev was no longer able to provide an account.”. The count's support for the Bolsheviks was associated precisely with these wastes.

It was no longer clear who Ignatiev worked for in 1917, but not for Russia. There is also no doubt that by that time Tukhachevsky was working for anyone, but not for Russia. As befits a person devoid of “social prejudices,” Tukhachevsky, without any regret, forgot about the oath he had given to the Tsar as soon as he learned about February Revolution. Even before the revolutionary events, Tukhachevsky shared his thoughts with a captured French officer: “ Yesterday we, Russian officers, drank to the health of the Russian Emperor. Or perhaps this dinner was a funeral. Our Emperor is a narrow-minded person... And many officers are tired of the current regime... However, a constitutional regime in the Western style would be the end of Russia. Russia needs a firm, strong government...”

It is not difficult to guess what the ambitious Tukhachevsky was ready for after February 1917 with such thoughts in his head. He was ready to do anything to end up in Russia. He saw himself as Napoleon, suppressing the revolution. It was he, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who should have become the head of the “firm, strong power”! But how to get to Russia from Ingolstadt, Germany? Only with the help of some influential force. Only the Germans could be such a force. Here it would be logical to assume that Tukhachevsky was trivially recruited by German intelligence. But Tukhachevsky’s further actions and the plan of his movements make us think that the matter was more serious than simple German recruitment. It is clear that Tukhachevsky did not just “escap” from captivity, but went to Paris to see Ignatiev, having some papers of recommendation in his hands. Ignatiev, of course, was not a German spy and papers from German intelligence would not have impressed him. Further, from Ignatiev Tukhachevsky for some reason is not going to Russia, which would be logical, but for some reason to London. Therefore, on September 29 (October 12), 1917, Ignatiev wrote the following letter to London to military agent General N. S. Ermolov:
“At the request of Second Lieutenant Tukhachevsky, who escaped from German captivity in the Semenovsky Guard Regiment, I was ordered to give him money in the amount necessary for the trip to London. I also ask you not to refuse to help him in his further journey.”.

We will, of course, be told that he could only travel through London, since all other countries were under German occupation. Let's say. But they don’t take into account only one thing: getting to England from France in 1917 was incredibly difficult: Belgium and part of northern France were occupied by the Germans, the English Channel was plied by German cruisers and submarines. It was even more difficult to get from England to Russia. It was necessary to sail by ship across the North and Baltic seas, stuffed with mines and enemy combat ships, to “neutral” Sweden, which was essentially on the side of Germany, and from there, at best, by train, to Russian Finland. The journey is not only long, but also very dangerous. In addition, Tukhachevsky left for London on October 12, when he arrived there is unknown, but already on October 16, that is, after 4 (!) days he was already in Petrograd! It seems that Tukhachevsky did not move around war-torn Europe, but flew on an airplane in peacetime! Let us recall that Lenin’s journey from Switzerland to Russia in the spring of 1917, and the journey overland and the shortest, directly through the territory of Germany, took less than 10 days.

It is noteworthy that, having arrived in Russia shortly before the October Revolution, Tukhachevsky, shortly after the Bolsheviks came to power, in March 1918, met with their leading leaders: Sverdlov, Kuibyshev, and then Lenin and Trotsky. What explains such popularity in the highest Bolshevik circles of an unknown second lieutenant?

There are good reasons to believe that cooperation between Tukhachevsky and the Bolsheviks began during German captivity. The French officer Pierre Fervax, in a book published in 1928, claims that Tukhachevsky told him while still in the prisoner of war camp: “If Lenin turns out to be able to rid Russia of the rubbish of old prejudices and help her become a free and strong power, I will follow him.”

If we consider that in Paris Tukhachevsky hurried to Ignatiev, who was already associated with the Bolsheviks, then suspicions about the secret collaboration of Tukhachevsky and the Bolsheviks become even more significant. We also must not forget that part of the Bolshevik leadership was closely connected with German intelligence and that Tukhachevsky could be used by both the Germans and the Bolsheviks.

Be that as it may, after the meeting with the leaders of Bolshevism, Tukhachevsky’s rapid military career begins. But one should not think that Tukhachevsky seriously believed in Bolshevik propaganda. No, the same ambitious plan to become a Russian Bonaparte dominated his mind. Lydia Brozhovskaya, the wife of a good friend of the future Red Marshal, recalled: “In 1917, Tukhachevsky had breakfast with us, in the wing of the Semenovsky regiment... Tukhachevsky made the most gratifying and indelible impression on me. Beautiful radiant eyes, a charming smile, great modesty and restraint. At breakfast, the husband joked and drank to Napoleon’s health, to which Tukhachevsky only smiled. He didn't drink much himself. After breakfast, my husband, I and several other of our officers went to accompany him to the station, as he was leaving for Moscow. He was dressed in a black civilian coat and a tall astrakhan hat, which increased his height. After previous conversations, I was full of enthusiasm and for some reason it seemed to me that he was capable of becoming a “Hero”. In any case, he was above the crowd. I rarely make mistakes in people, and it was especially hard for me when I later found out that he supposedly quite sincerely became a Bolshevik.”.

Brozhovskaya was wrong: Tukhachevsky never sincerely became a Bolshevik. All his life he was a fan of one person: himself. Power, personal uncontrolled power - that is what guided all the actions and feelings of Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The Bolsheviks, like the tsarist army earlier, were only a means to achieve this power, random fellow travelers who were supposed to help him pave the way to this power.

In the same March 1918, Tukhachevsky joined the Bolshevik Party, at the same time Tukhachevsky submitted to the Council of People's Commissars his project to ban Christianity, a project that they are trying to present to us as an “innocent joke.” By the way, this project of Tukhachevsky was seriously considered in the Council of People's Commissars. In addition to this project, Tukhachevsky proposes to create a special “Bolshevik worship service.” In general, the notorious blasphemer Tukhachevsky came to the court of the blasphemous Bolsheviks. He is recognized as one of their own and appointed commissioner. Commissar Tukhachevsky's duties included spying on the generals of the Russian army who went over to serve the Bolsheviks. On June 19, 1918, Tukhachevsky received his first military appointment in the Red Army: he became the commander of the 1st revolutionary army, which acted against the rebellious Czechoslovak corps. The first thing Tukhachevsky did was to agitate former officers to join the Red Army. There was only one alternative to refusal - execution. But even those officers who expressed a desire to serve with the Reds had family members taken hostage. Tukhachevsky also did not stand on ceremony with ordinary Red Army soldiers. Executions were commonplace. The army commander acted in strict accordance with the orders of People's Commissar Trotsky, who said: “You cannot build an army without repression. You cannot lead masses of people to death without having the death penalty in your command arsenal. As long as the evil tailless monkeys, proud of their technology, called people, build armies and fight, the command will put soldiers between possible death ahead and inevitable death behind".

For Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, people were only “tailless monkeys” who could and should be killed mercilessly if the interests of Trotsky and Tukhachevsky required it.

But Tukhachevsky knew how not only to shoot mindlessly. He knew how to attract people to his side. With special orders, he forbade the shooting of white prisoners and, on the contrary, began to attract them into the ranks of the Red Army. Tukhachevsky was especially successful in agitation among white officers. The very appearance of Tukhachevsky - fit, with the military bearing of the old army, made a positive impression on the officers.

Tukhachevsky fought successfully, after the 1st revolutionary war, he commanded the 8th Army of the Southern Front. His units beat both the Czechoslovaks and the Kolchakites. But at the same time, there was an active “promotion” of Tukhachevsky. Meanwhile, as the army commander was just a capable executor of the strategic plans of the Red Army headquarters, in which the main role was played by former tsarist generals, Tukhachevsky was persistently made into a “great commander.” Someone really needed this image.

When talking about Tukhachevsky’s secret patrons, they usually name Leon Trotsky. However, the relationship between Trotsky and Tukhachevsky was far from idyll and constancy. Since the relationship between the two “demons” of the revolution is extremely important for our topic, let us dwell on them in a little more detail.

Indeed, Trotsky at the beginning of the Civil War spoke extremely flatteringly of Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky’s energy and management, his readiness to use tough measures to establish revolutionary order in his units impressed Trotsky. He sets an example for other army commanders “the glorious name of Comrade Tukhachevsky”.

Trotskyist A. I. Boyarchikov testified: “Military advisers of that time knew that Trotsky loved Tukhachevsky for his enormous military talent, combat experience and creative initiative during battle. His personal charm endeared him to his subordinates and people who encountered him in his career.”.

During the conflict between Tukhachevsky and Commissar Medvedev, when Tukhachevsky allowed himself an insolence unheard of for an army commander and spoke out against the commissar’s interference in his, the army commander’s, activities, Trotsky took Tukhachevsky’s side, and Medvedev was removed from the army.

At a meeting of Red Army political workers in December 1919, Trotsky called Tukhachevsky “one of the best army commanders,” especially noting his “strategic talent”

But Trotsky and Tukhachevsky were distinguished by pathological ambition. Moreover, it seems that Tukhachevsky had this ambition even more developed than Trotsky. Tukhachevsky physically could not tolerate any authority over himself. Lydia Nord cites Tukhachevsky’s story about one of the clashes with the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic: “Trotsky came to the front to visit Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky was drawing a battle plan on the map at this time. Trotsky made several comments. The army commander stood up, put the pencil he was using on the map in front of him, and left. “Where are you going?” - Trotsky shouted out the window. “To your carriage,” Tukhachevsky answered calmly. “You, Lev Davidovich, apparently decided to change places with me.”.

Then Trotsky outwardly resigned himself and even apologized to Tukhachevsky. But I remembered this incident. Already by the time of the Polish campaign of 1920, Trotsky saw Tukhachevsky as a potential military dictator.

As S. Minakov writes: “By this time, relations between Trotsky and Tukhachevsky were far from friendly. The reports of the GPU reported on the “anti-Trotskyist”, “nationalist” position of the commander. It is very important for understanding Tukhachevsky’s interests that he united around himself the so-called. “red commanders” who competed with Trotsky’s “military experts”.

Trotsky, quite rightly, perceived Tukhachevsky as an extremely ambitious man, greedy for flattery, loving luxury and striving for power. To understand the weight of Tukhachevsky at that time, let us cite the information published in July 1923 in the weekly Military Herald: “The following telegram has been received addressed to the commander of the Western Front. To the leader of the fifth army - the liberator of the Urals from the White Guards and Kolchak - on the day of the fourth anniversary of the capture of the Urals by the Red Army, the Miass City Council sends them proletarian greetings; to commemorate the day, the city of Miass is renamed the city of Tukhachevsk - your name".

After Lenin's death, Trotsky's position became more and more vulnerable. Therefore, Trotsky tried to be with Tukhachevsky in good relations, seeking to use it in the event of a coup as a “sword.” Politburo members opposed to Trotsky had every reason to expect that Tukhachevsky, as the leader of the “red generals”, supporters of the army’s participation in the world revolution, would unite with Trotsky on this basis.

However, Trotsky himself hoped that after the success of his coup, he would immediately remove the dangerous Tukhachevsky. However, Tukhachevsky himself had no intention of paving the way for Trotsky to power. He needed power. Therefore, in the 20s, Tukhachevsky opposed Trotsky on the side of Stalin. “One of the main reasons for the “fall” of L. Trotsky and his refusal to fight, to use such powerful weapon, at his disposal, like the Red Army, it seems, was a position occupied by the military elite, the commanders of the main military districts and, above all, the commander of the Western Front, M. Tukhachevsky. Let me remind you that back in March 1923. Colonel P. Dilaktorsky spoke about widespread misconceptions regarding the high authority and strong influence of L. Trotsky in the Red Army and, conversely, the “fashion” for M. Tukhachevsky.”(S. Minakov).

But in the 30s a new round begins great game Tukhachevsky, during which he will again find himself in an alliance with Trotsky, who had already been expelled from the USSR...

The famous historian Yuri Zhukov does not give interviews very often, so a fresh interview on the topic of Stalin’s repressions is especially relevant in light of the cries of the liberal public about the “new 1937” and recent attempts by liberals to celebrate the holiday of the “Great Terror” with cheerful PR for Comrade Stalin and Twitter. Zhukov’s work as a whole is characterized by a departure from clearly light or dark assessments of Stalin and his era.

Yuri Nikolaevich Zhukov (born January 22, 1938)- Soviet Russian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief researcher of the Institute Russian history RAS. After graduating from the Institute of History and Archives, he worked as a journalist at the Novosti press agency.

In 1976 he defended his candidate's dissertation, in 1992 - his doctoral dissertation, and supervised the creation of the encyclopedias "Moscow", "Civil War and Foreign Intervention in the USSR".

Known for scientific and scientific-journalistic works about Stalin and the “Stalin era”.

More than 30 years ago, I, a young journalist, talked with an old test pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, and they talked about the 37th. I asked where he was then. Parubkom, he replied, he was and lived in a village near Kiev. Songs returned to the villages, hunger went away. “We drank a lot and enjoyed life.” And when I asked on the phone how people perceived the second half of the thirties, you said: “With joy!” Somehow all this doesn't fit...

- This is fine! After all, we are still a country of largely mythologized history. Significant events sometimes fade into the background, and facts that are striking or politically advantageous to the authorities are exaggerated. And the picture must be seen in all its colors. Look at the main object of criticism today among any opposition, and among people. Official. He seems to be no longer a communist, not a Bolshevik. But everyone, from the right to the left, including those who sit in the Kremlin, agree that the official is a disaster for the country. And so, when in 1937-1938 officials began to be arrested, and the blow fell primarily on them...

- Almost 500 thousand officials at all levels (primarily party members) were removed from work and punished.

- Yes, yes... And everyone was happy. After all, two things were connected. An attack, in modern jargon, on officials and the published Constitution of 1936, which is called Stalinist. I held drafts in my hands in the archives and saw that several articles, the most important ones, were written by Stalin personally. And so people received the Basic Law and the news that those who stood over them and mocked them were being removed and imprisoned. And the people started singing.

The previous Constitution (drafted in 1923) included two parts. The preamble stated: the world is divided into two hostile camps - socialism and imperialism. They will inevitably and soon come together in a fight, and it is clear who will win. The World Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will emerge. The main part is also in the spirit of the 17-18s. According to the law, a significant part of the population (it changed every year) was included in the lists of so-called disenfranchised people, people deprived of voting rights. Firstly, by social origin - children of landowners, gendarmes, aristocrats by blood. In addition - Nepmen, kulaks...

There was no hint in the new Constitution of dividing the world into two warring camps. Secondly, the party was mentioned only in Article 126. In the 10th chapter, where we talked about the rights and responsibilities of citizens. In particular, their right to create public organizations, the core of which or the majority of them may be the same public organization - the Communist Party. Article 126. Remember the Brezhnev Constitution...

- Article 6.

- Yes. Further. Electoral system. Previously, some had, others did not have the right to elect and be elected. There was also inequality. The worker's voice was equated with the three voices of the peasants: formally - purely formally - the dictatorship of the proletariat was being implemented. This was cancelled. The elections themselves. According to the Constitution of 1923, they were three-stage (which made freedom of choice difficult) and had no alternative.

What did the 1936 Constitution and the electoral law adopted in July 1937 offer?

First. No disenfranchisement. Except for those who are deprived of this right by court. Universal suffrage. Direct voting. Each person votes for a specific candidate for the Supreme Council, which both Stalin and Molotov openly called parliament. Elections are secret, alternative. The law stipulated that there were at least 2-3 candidates for one seat. And it was this provision of the law that led to what people then called Yezhovshchina, and today they incorrectly call it mass repressions.

- Why is it suddenly wrong?

- The word “repression” means “punishment, punitive measure.” It is not only applicable to political opponents, but also provides for the conviction of a person for murder, violence, banditry, robbery, bribery, and theft. And now the term is used in order to classify all those arrested under it, including criminals, Vlasovites, those who served in SS units during the war, Banderaites... Everyone is lumped together. Killed, raped - you are also repressed, a victim of Stalin's terror. A very clever move.

The figures that were given by Solzhenitsyn, Razgon, Antonov-Ovseenko are in circulation. The latter, in his book “Portrait of a Tyrant,” reports that the number of those repressed amounted to almost 19 million people only from 1935 to 1940.

As far as I know, real numbers others. They are huge though. About 800 thousand people were sentenced to death.

- Yes, that much, but from 1921 to 1953. Of these, 681,692 people - in 1937-1938.

- A large city of our fellow citizens who were shot. Including innocent people.

- Solzhenitsyn named absolutely fantastic figures. In total, during the years of Soviet power, he believed, 110 million people were repressed. Western Sovietologists during the Cold War used the figure of 50-60 million. When perestroika began, they lowered it to 20 million.

Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov works at our institute. As part of a small group, he checked and double-checked in the archives for several years what the real numbers of repressions were. In particular, under Article 58. We came to concrete results. The West immediately started screaming. They were told: please, here are the archives for you! We arrived, checked, and were forced to agree. Here's what.

In ’37, more than 790 thousand were arrested and convicted under Article 58, over 353 thousand were shot, in ’38 – more than 554 thousand and more than 328 thousand were shot. Then - a decrease. In 1939, about 64 thousand were convicted and 2,552 people were sentenced to death; in ’40, about 72 thousand and 1,649 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

In total, during the period from 1921 to 1953, 4,060,306 people were convicted, of which 2,634,397 people were sent to camps and prisons.

It remains to understand what, how, why? And why do 1937-1938, especially, produce such terrible things?

- Of course, it still worries me.

- To begin with: who is to blame? They say: Stalin. Yes, as the leader of the country, he bears the main responsibility. But how did it all happen?

June 1937. A Congress of Soviets must take place. Before him, a plenum of the Party Central Committee was held, where the election law was discussed. Before him, telegrams regularly came from the first secretaries of regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the Union Republics asking for permission to arrest engineers and plant managers.

Stalin answered briefly and categorically every time: I don’t allow it. And after the plenum he began to agree. With what? With what our “democrats” are diligently forgetting today.

Immediately after the plenum, which supported the new electoral law with alternative candidates, encrypted telegrams began pouring into Moscow. Secretaries of regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties requested so-called limits. The number of those whom they can arrest and shoot or send to places not so remote. The most zealous was the “victim of the Stalinist regime” Eikhe, in those days the first secretary of the West Siberian regional committee of the party. He asked for the right to shoot 10,800 people. In second place is Khrushchev, who headed the Moscow Regional Committee: “only” 8,500 people. In third place is the first secretary of the Azov-Black Sea Regional Committee (today it is the Don and the North Caucasus) Evdokimov: 6644 - shot and almost 7 thousand - sent to camps. Other secretaries also sent bloodthirsty applications. But with smaller numbers. One and a half, two thousand...

Six months later, when Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, one of his first dispatches to Moscow was a request to allow him to shoot 20,000 people. But we already walked there for the first time.

- How did they motivate the requests?

- One: just now The NKVD, they wrote, had uncovered an armed underground organization, and it was preparing an uprising. This means that under these conditions it is impossible to hold alternative elections. Until these supposedly conspiratorial organizations are eliminated.

It is also curious what happened at the plenum itself when discussing the electoral law. No one spoke out directly against it, but for some reason almost all of the most “bloodthirsty” ones, one after another, went to Stalin’s office on the eve of the plenum. One at a time, two at a time, three at a time... After these visits, Stalin capitulated.

Why? You can understand. By that time, he realized that Yezhov, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, was in fact not subordinate to him.

- It's impossible to believe!

- Why? As the former first secretary of the regional committee, Yezhov was at one with the others. This meant: if Stalin refused to support their demands, one of the members of the Central Committee would rise to the podium and say: “Dear comrades! All of Stalin’s recent actions proved that he was a revisionist, an opportunist, betrayed the cause of October, the behests of Lenin, betrayed our Revolution.” And they would give more than one, a dozen examples.

This means that Stalin either chickened out, fearing losing power, or was simply playing his game. How else can I explain it? But I interrupted you...

- So here are examples. '34, September. The USSR joins the League of Nations, which until then had been characterized by our propaganda as an instrument of imperialism. In May 1935, the USSR signed agreements with France and Czechoslovakia on joint defense in the event of German aggression.

In January 1935, reports appeared about a revision of the Constitution. And soon the “group of comrades” already knew what changes were coming.

In July 1935, the Seventh and last Congress of the Comintern meets, its leader Georgiy Dimitrov declares that from now on the Communists, if they want to come to power, must achieve this not through revolutions, but through democratic means. At the elections. Proposes creating popular fronts: communists together with socialists and democrats. From the point of view of the die-hard Bolsheviks, such a turn is a crime. The communists are allegedly conspiring with the enemies of communism - the Social Democrats.

- The rigid scheme: communism-imperialism is collapsing.

- Well, yes. Go ahead. 36th year. Borodin's comic opera "Bogatyrs" with a new libretto by Demyan Bedny is being removed from the stage of the Tairov Chamber Theater. A statement of reasons is published. They explain that Poor mockingly characterized the heroes of the epic Russian epic and denigrated a positive phenomenon in our history - the Baptism of Rus'. And then there’s a competition for a history textbook, which was forgotten in ’17, and the restoration of history departments that were closed in ’18. In 1934, the title Hero of the Soviet Union was introduced. This is contrary to the ultra-left. A year later, the Cossack units were recreated... And that’s not all. Russia was returned to Russia...

At the end of 1935, Stalin gave an interview to the American journalist Howard. He said that soon there will be a new Constitution, new system elections and a fierce struggle between candidates, since they will be nominated not only by the party, but also by any public organization, even a group of people.

Immediately there was talk among the members of the Central Committee: what is this, and priests can nominate? They are answered: why not? And fists? It’s not the kulaks, it’s the people who are telling them. All this frightened the partyocracy.

Most of the first secretaries understood that they had made a lot of mistakes. Firstly, there were gigantic excesses during collectivization. Second: serious mistakes at the beginning of the first five-year plan.

Many party secretaries were semi-literate people. It’s good if you have a parish school background, if you are Russian, and cheders if you are Jewish. How could such people control the construction of industry giants? They tried to lead without really understanding anything. Therefore, dissatisfaction grew on the part of peasants, workers, engineers, they felt it all themselves.

- The engineering corps was being formed, a lot was changing, it was difficult to hide the awl in the bag.

“And local party leaders were afraid that if there were alternative elections, one or two more candidates would appear next to them. You can fail. If you don’t become a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, then you have to expect that in Moscow, in the Personnel Directorate of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, they will say: “Comrade, the people didn’t support you. Come on, dear, look for a job that’s up to you, or go study". Stalin said more than once in those years that for some reason a person, having got into a high position, believes that he knows everything, although in fact he knows nothing. This was a direct hint, and the partycrats became wary.

And they rallied, like any corporation, forcing Stalin to refuse alternative elections in 1937, and, in fact, thereby discredited him.

They tried to stop the repressions in February 1938 at the next plenum. Malenkov, then the head of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee, spoke and openly criticized those who were especially zealous. I turned to Postyshev (he previously worked in Ukraine, at that moment he was the first secretary of the Kuibyshev regional committee) and asked: have you already transplanted the entire Soviet, Komsomol, party apparatus to the region, as much as possible? Postyshev replied: “I planted, I plant and will plant. This is my responsibility.” M Alenkov turned to Bagirov, the first secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan: how can you sign documents for arrests and executions, where there are not even names, but only numbers of those subject to arrest and execution? He remained silent. Stalin urgently needed to remove Yezhov, through whose hands the unbridled repressions were carried out.

- Then they said: iron fists. Here, they say, what it is!

- They called Beria from Tbilisi, who had just been elected secretary of the Transcaucasian regional party committee, and was appointed head of the Main Directorate of State Security - the punitive component of the NKVD. But Beria could not cope with Yezhov. At the end of November 1938, Yezhov was invited to see Stalin. Voroshilov and Molotov were present in the office. As far as one can judge, Yezhov was forced to leave his post for several hours.

I managed to find options for his “renunciation”. They are written on different paper. One was an ordinary white sheet, the other was lined, the third was checkered... They gave me whatever was at hand, just to fix it. At first, Yezhov was ready to give up everything except the People's Commissar position. It didn't work out. Beria was appointed to the post of People's Commissar.

Soon over a million people left the camps. Remember the story of Rokossovsky, there are many of them. In the areas where there were the most odious repressions, NKVD members who falsified cases were arrested, tried, and the courts were open. Messages - in the local press. This was no longer the case when rehabilitation took place under Khrushchev. At the same time, Beria carried out a purge of the NKVD. You can take any personnel guide - there are several of them published. In the NKVD, at the upper and middle levels there were a majority of semi-literate Jews. Almost everyone is removed. Both to the next world and to the camps. They recruit new ones either with higher education or with incomplete education - from the third, fourth year, mainly Russians. Then a sharp decline in arrests began.

- Just a decline. They were not stopped.

- At the same time, when we talk about Article 58, we should not forget one circumstance. Colleague Galina Mikhailovna Ivanova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, managed to make an interesting discovery from the point of view of understanding of that time. Both before and after the war, professional criminals, according to their rules, were not supposed to work. And they didn't work. But a traveling court visited the camps every six months and considered cases of violations of the regime by prisoners. And those who refused to work were tried for sabotage. And sabotage is the same as Article 58. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that not only political enemies of the “Stalin group” or those assigned to it passed through it, but also criminal conscientious objectors. And, of course, real spies and saboteurs, and there were many of them.

It should be noted that in May 1937 there was a trial of the so-called NGO conspiracy, this is the People's Commissariat of Defense.

There is an idea that almost the entire command staff of the army and navy was repressed. Researcher O.F. Suvenirov published a book with data (down to a single person) about military personnel arrested in 1935-1939: full name, date of birth, rank, position, when arrested, sentence. A thick book. It turned out that 75 percent of those repressed by NGOs were commissars, military lawyers, military commanders, military doctors, and military engineers. So this is also a legend, as if the entire command was destroyed.

They say what would have happened if Tukhachevsky, Yakir, and so on had remained. Let's ask the question: "What battles with foreign armies did these marshals and generals of ours win?"

- We lost the Polish campaign.

- All! We didn't fight anywhere else. And, as you know, any civil war is very different from wars between countries.

There is an interesting detail in the “NGO case”. When Stalin reported “On the Military-Political Conspiracy” at the Military Council, he focused on the fact that the conspiracy in the NGO was the completion of a case that in 1935 received the name “Tangle.”

- I think not everyone knows what is behind this.

- At the end of 1934, Stalin’s brother-in-law by his first wife, Svanidze, who worked in the financial sector, wrote a note to Stalin, indicating that there was a conspiracy against his centrist group. Who was part of it? Stalin himself, Molotov - the head of government, Ordzhonikidze - who led the creation of heavy industry, Voroshilov - People's Commissar of Defense, Litvinov - People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, who pursued an active policy of rapprochement with Western democracies, Vyshinsky - since 1935, the prosecutor of the USSR, who returned all those expelled from Leningrad after the murder of Kirov, he freed about 800 thousand peasants who suffered because of the so-called three ears of corn. The group also included Zhdanov, who replaced Kirov in Leningrad, and two very important people from the Central Committee apparatus: Stetsky, head of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, and Yakovlev (Epstein), the creator of the most popular publications - "Peasant Newspaper" and "Bednota", a talented journalist. He, like Stetsky, is a member of the constitutional commission, and most importantly, the author of the electoral law.

After the aforementioned plenum of 1937, at which the partycrats only formally supported the electoral law, Stetsky and Yakovlev were arrested and shot. They are not remembered, but they cry over Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Yakir, and others.

- It turns out that Stalin was even forced to sacrifice them.

- It turns out. There was a fierce struggle. Bukharin is a hero for everyone. And when he was invited to the Central Committee for a serious conversation, he began by providing a list of his own students, whom he had sacrificed. That is, as soon as he felt that he might feel bad, he hastened to hand over others in his place.

I heard the definition: the 37th year is a holiday of retribution against the Leninist guard, and the 34th and 35th are preparation for it.

- This is how a poet who thinks in images can speak. But it’s easier here. Even after the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and many others did not seriously think that socialism would win in backward Russia. They looked with hope at the industrialized United States, Germany, Great Britain, and France. After all, tsarist Russia was behind tiny Belgium in terms of industrial development. They forget about it. Like, ah-ah, what Russia was like! But during the First World War we bought weapons from the British, French, Japanese, and Americans.

The Bolshevik leadership hoped (as Zinoviev wrote especially vividly in Pravda) only for a revolution in Germany. They say that when Russia unites with it, it will be able to build socialism.

Meanwhile, Stalin wrote to Zinoviev in the summer of 1923: even if power falls from the sky to the German Communist Party, it will not retain it. Stalin was the only person in the leadership who did not believe in world revolution. I thought that our main concern was Soviet Russia.

What's next? The revolution did not take place in Germany. We accept the NEP. A few months later the country howled. Enterprises are closing, millions are unemployed, and those workers who retained their jobs receive 10-20 percent of what they received before the revolution. For the peasants, the surplus appropriation system was replaced with a tax in kind, but it was such that the peasants could not pay it. Banditry is intensifying: political, criminal. An unprecedented economic situation arises: the poor, in order to pay taxes and feed their families, attack trains. Gangs even arise among students: in order to study and not die of hunger, you need money. They are obtained by robbing Nepmen. This is what the NEP resulted in. He corrupted party and Soviet cadres. Bribery everywhere. The chairman of the village council and the policeman take a bribe for any service. Factory directors renovate their own apartments and buy luxury items at their enterprises’ expense. And so from 1921 to 1928.

Trotsky and his right hand in the field of economics, Preobrazhensky planned to transfer the flame of revolution to Asia, and train personnel in our eastern republics, urgently building factories there to “breed” the local proletariat.

Stalin proposed another option: building socialism in one, separate country. However, he never said when socialism would be built. He said - construction, and a few years later he clarified: it is necessary to create an industry in 10 years. Heavy industry. Otherwise we will be destroyed. This was said in February 1931. Stalin was not much mistaken. After 10 years and 4 months, Germany attacked the USSR.

The differences between Stalin’s group and the die-hard Bolsheviks were fundamental. It doesn’t matter whether they are leftists, like Trotsky and Zinoviev, or rightists, like Rykov and Bukharin. Everyone relied on the revolution in Europe... So the point is not retribution, but an intense struggle to determine the course of the country's development.

Do you want to say that the period, which in the eyes of many is represented as the time of Stalinist repressions, on the other hand, became an attempt to build democracy that was not realized for many reasons?

- The new Constitution should have led to this. Stalin understood that for a person of that time, democracy was something unattainable. After all, you cannot demand knowledge of higher mathematics from a first-grader. The Constitution of 1936 was clothes for growth. Here is the village. Street committee, residents of 10-20 houses elect someone responsible for the condition of the street. Sami. No one can tell them. Behind this is the desire to learn to worry about what is there, behind your fence, what order is there. And then further, further... People gradually became involved in self-government. That is why, under Soviet rule, the rigid vertical power structure was gradually eliminated.

Yes, it’s a paradox, but we lost all this as a result of the pseudo-democratic reforms of the early 90s. We must realize: we have lost the foundations of democracy. Today they say: we are returning the elections of heads of administrations, mayors, elections in the ruling party... But this happened, guys, we had all this.

Stalin, starting political reforms in 1935, expressed an important thought: “We must free the party from economic activities.” But I immediately made a reservation: it won’t be soon. Malenkov spoke about the same thing at the XVIII Party Conference in February 1941. And it was also January 1944. Before the plenum of the Central Committee, the only one during the war years, the Politburo met. Considered the draft resolution signed by Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov. In it, if the five-page text is summarized briefly, it said: party committees of the edge, region, district, city hire the smartest and most talented, but there is no use. They give orders on all issues of life, and if something goes wrong, the Soviet authorities - the executors - are responsible. Therefore, the draft proposed, it is necessary to limit the activities of party committees only to agitation and propaganda, and participation in the selection of personnel. Everything else is the work of the Soviet authorities. The Politburo rejected the proposal, although it was the meaning of reforming the party.

Even earlier, in 1937, when discussing the electoral law, Stalin threw out the phrase: "Fortunately or unfortunately, we only have one batch." Obviously, for a long time he returned to the idea that it was necessary to remove state authorities from the minute-by-minute control of the party. And, if possible, create a competitor to the existing party. Stalin died without achieving this.

- By the way, in connection with his death, the focus of attention usually shifts to events such as the arrest and execution of Beria. This is the most significant thing

- After Stalin’s death, the head of the USSR government, Malenkov, one of his closest associates, abolished all benefits for the party nomenklatura. For example, the monthly distribution of money (“envelopes”), the amount of which was two to three, or even five times higher than the salary and was not taken into account even when paying party dues, Lechsanupr, sanatoriums, personal cars, “turntables”. And he raised the salaries of government employees by 2-3 times.

Party workers, according to the generally accepted scale of values (and in their own eyes), have become much lower than government workers. The attack on the rights of the party nomenklatura, hidden from prying eyes, lasted three months. Party cadres united and began to complain about the infringement of their “rights” to the Secretary of the Central Committee, Khrushchev. They asked to leave at least something that others didn’t have.

He achieved the reversal of the decision, and all the “losses” were more than returned to the nomenklatura. And Khrushchev was unanimously elected first secretary at the September plenum of the Central Committee. Although at the March plenum they decided to abolish this position and move to collective leadership.

Soon Malenkov was sent to work outside the Urals. A bloodless, compromise period began - if we talk about the system of internal structure of power - when the party nomenclature (moving in zigzags from Soviet bodies to party bodies and back) became more and more self-governing. And she lost the ability to sense time and stopped developing the country. The consequence is stagnation, degradation of power, which led to the events of 1991 and 1993.

- It turns out that the mentioned decisions of Malenkov are Stalin’s unrealized aspirations?

- In response - actual revenge of the then party nomenklatura.

- Certainly. Assessing those years, it can be argued that Stalin sought to create a powerful economy, and achieved this. We became one of the two superpowers, even after his death, but he laid the foundations.

He sought to limit the power of officials, tried to begin to teach democracy to the people, so that, albeit through generations, it would enter their blood and flesh. All this was rejected by Khrushchev. And then Brezhnev, judging even by the article of the Constitution in which the party is mentioned. As a result, the party and state apparatuses merged with the morals of the partyocracy: to lead, but not to be responsible for anything. Remember, in the film "Volga-Volga" Byvalov says to the water carrier: "I will scream, and you will answer." It was this system that seemed to collapse, although in fact it not only survived, but strengthened a hundredfold. Before there were levers of control. Let's say, if something is wrong where you live, and this is on the conscience of government agencies, you could complain to the district committee, they would react. There was a Committee of Soviet Control and a Committee of People's Control. This was a means of control over officials.

As a result of the counter-revolution of 1991-1993, officials removed all types of possible control, unbridled. Now we have a system that has been ripening since ancient times: let us remember the works of Pushkin and Gogol, Sukhovo-Kobylin and Saltykov-Shchedrin... They tried to break the system, but it was preserved and blossomed in full bloom.

- When you say “tried to break,” do you mean ’34 and ’35 or ’37?

- The years 1937 and 1938 were resistance to the partyocracy. Managed. The State Defense Committee fought against it in 1941. It was successful during the war. The 44th was a complete failure, repeated in the 53rd. Yeltsin, as everyone thought, succeeded...

- Didn't understand! Is Yeltsin a plus for us, for the country, or a minus?

- Under the guise of breaking the bureaucratic system, he destroyed all methods of control over officials. They became completely uncontrollable. And a clear expression is our system of power, in which officials, even if only by one vote, have an advantage in parliaments and carry out any laws only in their favor.

Well, if we go back to 1937, I would like to remind the readers of LG: then for every person arrested there were at least two denunciations. That's it.

- To inform or not to inform is a personal choice. But passing a sentence is a completely different matter...

Who were the repressions of 1937–1938 directed against? Who fell under the definition of “anti-Soviet elements” according to NKVD order No. 00447? What reasons do historians identify?

Historian Oleg Khlevnyuk about anti-Soviet elements and the role of Stalin in the Great Terror.

It is difficult to imagine a person in our country who would not know the concept of “1937”. Of course, different people, depending on their political preferences, level of knowledge, and interests, interpret this concept differently. And historians did not immediately come to any consensus about what happened in 1937–38, during the so-called Great Terror.

To understand what we knew before and what we know now, it’s a good idea to compare the old concept - Khrushchev’s concept, the concept of the 20th Party Congress - with what we know now based on new documents. Khrushchev's concept was based on the fact that in 1937–38 mass repressions were carried out; these repressions, as a rule, concerned nomenklatura workers. Much was said about prominent party members who suffered, about business executives, military men, writers, and so on.

However, today we know that in 1937-38 repressions, that is, executions and imprisonment in camps, fell on at least 1 million 600 thousand people, 680 thousand of them, according to official statistics, were shot. We are talking about only two years of our history. And of this huge number of people, at best, about 100 thousand were Komsomol members, party leaders, or simply party members. That is, a fairly small percentage of people among the victims of terror were so-called nomenklatura workers and well-known figures in the country.

The bulk of the victims of terror are ordinary citizens of the country, who suffered for reasons that remained unknown to us for a long time. We also did not understand what terrorism was, because for a long time it was believed that these were some chaotic and not very controlled actions that arose spontaneously and ended just as spontaneously.

In the early 90s, in connection with the opening of archives, historians became aware of all the key documents about the organization and conduct of the terror of 1937–38. First of all, these are the so-called operational orders of the NKVD, which were approved by the Politburo and Stalin personally, orders to conduct mass operations. The most famous of these operations was carried out on the basis of order No. 00447 on the destruction of anti-Soviet elements, and this operation began on August 1, 1937.

Who are the anti-Soviet elements according to this order? These are former kulaks, members of parties hostile to the Bolsheviks, for example, former Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks; these are various kinds of employees of the tsarist administration, former officers of the tsarist army, and so on. Thanks to this order, it became clear which groups the terror was aimed at, which risk groups were, which segments of the population were primarily targeted by repression. We saw that we're talking about about those categories, about those citizens of the country who were perceived by the regime as potentially dangerous, potentially hostile to Soviet power. It is important to emphasize that, as a rule, these people did not commit anything illegal and were considered potentially hostile solely due to their origin, due to their belonging to one or another party unfriendly to the Bolsheviks, social strata, and so on.

We learned how these operations were carried out. They were carried out on orders from Moscow, according to certain plans - each region was given certain tasks for execution, for imprisonment in camps. And in accordance with these tasks, local NKVD workers carried out arrests, troikas worked, and mass executions were carried out.

During these operations, citizens of the country who belonged to counter-revolutionary nationalities were destroyed: Poles, Germans - that is, representatives of those nationalities, those countries that had rather tense, conflictual relations with the Soviet Union during this period. And, accordingly, these people were considered as a potential fifth column, as potential ground for espionage.

Having learned almost everything about the organization of these operations and the number of those repressed, historians came to the following question: why? Why was it precisely in 1937–38 that decisions were made to organize the Great Terror, the mass operations that were the essence of the Great Terror? Almost everyone agreed that those social elements that the regime considered potentially hostile were destroyed. And why all this happened in 1937–38 - opinions were divided. Some believe this was related to the decision to hold elections. Others draw attention to the fact that the threat of World War II really intensified - this was connected with events in the Far East, with Japan’s attack on China, and with the Spanish War, and with many other events that indicated that peace was getting closer and closer to another disaster.

I think that there is no sharp contradiction between the concept of pre-election purge and the concept of purge on the eve of an impending war. We are still talking about the fact that a certain preventive social cleansing was carried out against the fifth column. By the way, the term “fifth column” itself appeared at this time during the civil war in Spain.

There are, of course, exotic points of view that serious historians do not accept. This is the point of view that Stalin was allegedly forced to carry out repressions by certain forces in the party, namely the leaders of regional party committees, in order to maintain his power, so as not to be exposed to additional political risks in connection with the elections. This concept is not supported by any documents and does not seem logical, if only because these secretaries were the first victims of repression.

As for Stalin himself, he also gave an explanation for why these events happened and why it turned out that too many people were repressed; as was recognized already in the 30s, at least some of them were repressed without reason. Stalin stated - or rather, this was formulated in many documents that were issued on behalf of the party leadership - that the main culprits of this tragedy were the enemies who made their way into the NKVD. Accordingly, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov was arrested and soon shot, and many of his employees were also arrested. Historians checked this version and tried to figure out how the operations were actually carried out, and to what extent the NKVD could act independently. Documents do not support this version. Now we know for sure that the NKVD acted on direct and literally daily instructions from the country’s leadership. In particular, Yezhov received constant instructions from Stalin.

Stalin put forward another concept during this period. More precisely, this concept was formulated by his comrades at the XVIII Party Congress in early 1939. The so-called slanderers were accused of terror, that is, informers who wrote denunciations against honest Soviet citizens and thus contributed to the spread of terror. This is a kind of theory of a non-commissioned officer's widow who flogged herself, in this case the Soviet people acted in this capacity, who allegedly informed on each other, and thus the terror acquired enormous uncontrollable forms.

Unfortunately, we still use this concept, we use it somewhat uncritically. Meanwhile, historians, based on a large number of documents, have shown that, of course, denunciations existed during this period; they were mass denunciations, however, they did not play the significant role that is now attributed to them.

Denunciations existed, but the security officers, as a rule, ignored them.

The centralized nature of these events, that the terror was organized from above and controlled from above, was also evidenced by the fact that it was stopped as centrally as it was organized. One fine November day in 1938, a resolution was adopted and the repressions stopped. The so-called stage of emerging from terror began, during which some of the organizers and perpetrators of terror were arrested, and some, a very small number, victims of terror were rehabilitated. The large majority of those who were arrested or shot during these years were left as enemies for many years, until the process of rehabilitation began after Stalin’s death.

Oleg Khlevnyuk – Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the International Center for History and Sociology of the Second World War and its Consequences at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, professor of the Department of Russian History of the 20th-21st centuries at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, chief specialist of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, corresponding member of the Royal Historical Society (Great Britain).

Documents from the “Special” folder of the NKVD

How NKVD workers fulfilled and exceeded plans for executions and deportations (scans of telegrams)

Order No. 00447 of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov established limits on executions and deportations for each republic and region. Both were ordered to be carried out without trial or investigation by decision of extrajudicial bodies - “troikas”, consisting of the chairman of the regional or republican committee of the Communist Party, the head of the local NKVD and the chief prosecutor.

According to the initial limits, it was planned to shoot up to 75,950 people, and send up to 193,000 people to concentration camps. Here are telegrams “from the ground” to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to Comrade Stalin. The part is marked with the summer months of 1937. The text shows that the estimates were serious: in some places they were ready to shoot four thousand, and in others all ten. Each telegram bears Stalin’s signature - in blue pencil “Approve I.St.” Below, everyone to whom the telegram was signed for review put their names - Kaganovich, Molotov, Kalinin, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Kosior, Andreev... As the direct executor of the encryption, the messages were sent to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, his signature is also present everywhere.

Another part of the encryption dates back to the year 1938. They also go to the Kremlin, but they are talking about increasing limits. “We ask the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to allow an additional limit for the first category for the Irkutsk region of 4 thousand people.” “I ask you to additionally approve 1000 for execution. 1500 for condemnation.” The frontline workers exceeded the norm. Some increased milk yields, others melted steel beyond schedule. And someone killed in the Stakhanov style. Ten thousand people were safely shot, but a couple thousand more need to be spent, so if you would be so kind as to allow it, raise the limit. The resolutions on these encryptions are the same as before. Stalin is in favor. Everyone else, of course, is also in favor. Not a single one wrote “against”. Look at these documents.

Read the words that are written in them. These yellowed pages tell more about the history of our country than any living person can tell. No additional words are needed, everything is clear.

From the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI):

1) Encryption from Irkutsk entrance no. 472/sh departure. 15-54 26.4.1938
Request by Filippov and Malyshev for limits on 4 thousand executions in the Irkutsk region - signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Yezhov + for: Mikoyan and Chubar

2) Encryption from Omsk, entry No. 2662/Sh departure. 13-30 11/19/1937
Naumov's request for additional limits in the Omsk region. for executions (1 thousand to the selected 10 thousand) and concentration camps (1.5 thousand to the selected 4.5 thousand) - signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Yezhov.

3) Encryption from Sverdlovsk entrance No. 1179/sh departure. 23-23 8.7.1937
Stolyar's request for limits on executions, exiles and concentration camps in the Sverdlovsk region. - 5 thousand to be shot, 7 thousand to be sent into exile and concentration camps. Signatures: Stalin, (Molotov?), Kaganovich + for: Voroshilov, Chubar, Mikoyan

4) Encryption 1157/Sh from Novosibirsk entry no. 1157/Sh outp. 11-56 8.7.1937
Eikhe's request for limits on executions in the West Siberian Territory - 11 thousand. Signatures: Stalin, (Molotov?), (???), Kaganovich, Voroshilov + for: Chubar, Kalinin, Mikoyan

7) Encryption from Grozny entrance no. 1213/sh departure. 23-20 10.7.1937
Egorov’s request for limits in the Chechen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on executions (1.417) and deportations (1.256). Russian Cossacks are clearly called kulaks. Signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Voroshilov + for: Kalinin, Chubar, Mikoyan

8.) Encryption from Tbilisi, entrance No. 1165/sh, departure 14-55 8.7.1937
Beria's request for limits in Georgia on executions (1,419) and deportations/concentration camps (1,562+2,000). Signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich + for: Voroshilov, Chubar, Mikoyan
A direct indication in the text of the encryption that it is a response to encryption No. 863/sh

9) Encryption from Dnepropetrovsk, Margolin, request for execution of 2500, concentration camps 3000. Sent. 14-01 22.7.1937 – Signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Chubar, Mikoyan, Voroshilov + for: Kalinin
A direct indication in the text of the encryption that it is a response to encryption No. 863/sh

10) Encryption from Minsk, Sharangovich (to Stalin - “To your telegram...”) entry No. 1186/sh dep. 7-15 9.7.37 Signatures: Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Chubar, Molotov + for: Kalinin (two times)

Send the following telegram to the secretaries of regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties:
“It has been noticed that most of the former kulaks and criminals expelled at one time from different areas to the northern and Siberian regions, and then after the expiration period, returning to their regions, are the main instigators of all kinds of anti-Soviet and sabotage crimes, both on collective and state farms, and in transport and in some industries.
The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks invites all secretaries of regional and territorial organizations and all regional, territorial and republican representatives of the NKVD to register all kulaks and criminals who returned to their homeland so that the most hostile of them would be immediately arrested and shot as part of their administrative execution. cases through troikas, and the remaining less active, but still hostile elements would be rewritten and sent to the districts on the instructions of the NKVD.
The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks proposes to submit to the Central Committee within five days the composition of the troikas, as well as the number of those subject to execution, as well as the number of those subject to deportation.”
SECRETARY OF THE Central Committee I. STALIN.
[AP, 3-58-212, l. 32]

These days mark the 80th anniversary of events, disputes about which continue to this day. We are talking about 1937, when mass massacres began in the country political repression. In May of that fateful year, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and a number of other high-ranking military men were arrested, accused of a “military-fascist conspiracy.” And already in June they were all sentenced to death...

Questions, questions...

Since the time of perestroika, these events have been presented to us mainly as supposedly “unfounded political persecution” caused solely by the cult of Stalin’s personality. Allegedly, Stalin, who wanted to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to deal with everyone who more or less doubted 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-existent conspiracy against Stalin...

However, upon closer examination of these events, many questions arise that cast doubt on the official version.

In principle, these doubts have arisen among thinking historians 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.”

Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (in the personnel department of the NKVD was listed as Lev Lazarevich Nikolsky, in the USA - Igor Konstantinovich Berg, real name - Lev (Leib) Lazarevich Feldbin; August 21, 1895, Bobruisk, Minsk province - March 25, 1973, Cleveland, Ohio ) - Soviet intelligence officer, Major of State Security (1935). Illegal resident in France, Austria, Italy (1933-1937), resident of the NKVD and advisor to the Republican government on security in Spain (1937-1938). Since July 1938 - a defector, lived in the USA, taught at universities.

Orlov, who knew well the “inner workings” of his native NKVD, directly wrote that a coup 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, Jonah Yakir. The conspiracy became known to Stalin, who took very tough retaliatory actions...

And in the 80s, the archives of Joseph Vissarionovich’s most important opponent, Leon 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, even to the point of organizing mass terrorist actions.

And in the 90s, our archives already opened access to interrogation reports of repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. Based on the nature of these materials and the abundance of facts and evidence contained in them, today’s independent experts have made two important conclusions.

Firstly, the overall picture of a broad conspiracy against Stalin looks very, very convincing. Such testimony could not be somehow staged or faked to please the “father of nations.” Especially in the part where it was about the military plans of the conspirators. Here's what our author, the famous historian-publicist Sergei Kremlev, said about this:

“Take and read the testimony of Tukhachevsky, given by him after his arrest. The confessions of the conspiracy themselves 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 arises: could such testimony be invented by an ordinary NKVD investigator who was in charge of the marshal’s case and who allegedly set out to falsify Tukhachevsky’s testimony?! No, this testimony, and voluntarily, could only be given knowledgeable person no less than the level of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, which Tukhachevsky was.”

Secondly, the very manner of the conspirators’ handwritten confessions, their handwriting indicated that their people wrote themselves, in fact voluntarily, without physical pressure from the investigators. This destroyed the myth that testimony was brutally extracted by the force of “Stalin’s executioners”...

So what really happened in those distant 30s?

Threats from both the right and the left

In general, it all began long before 1937 - or, to be more precise, in the early 1920s, when a discussion arose within the leadership of the Bolshevik Party about the fate of building socialism. I will quote the words of a famous Russian scientist, a great expert on the Stalin era, Doctor of Historical Sciences Yuri Nikolaevich Zhukov (interview “ Literary newspaper", article "Unknown 37th year"):

“Even after the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and many others did not seriously think that socialism would win in backward Russia. They looked with hope at the industrialized United States, Germany, Great Britain, and France. After all, tsarist Russia was behind tiny Belgium in terms of industrial development. They forget about it. Like, ah-ah, what Russia was like! But during the First World War we bought weapons from the British, French, Japanese, and Americans.

The Bolshevik leadership hoped (as Zinoviev wrote especially vividly in Pravda) only for a revolution in Germany. They say that when Russia unites with it, it will be able to build socialism.

What's next? The revolution did not take place in Germany. We accept the NEP. A few months later the country howled. Enterprises are closing, millions are unemployed, and those workers who retained their jobs receive 10–20 percent of what they received before the revolution. For the peasants, the surplus appropriation system was replaced with a tax in kind, but it was such that the peasants could not pay it. Banditry is intensifying: political, criminal. An unprecedented phenomenon arises - economic: the poor, in order to pay taxes and feed their families, attack trains. Gangs even arise among students: in order to study and not die of hunger, you need money. They are obtained by robbing Nepmen. This is what the NEP resulted in. He corrupted party and Soviet cadres. Bribery everywhere. The chairman of the village council and the policeman take a bribe for any service. Factory directors renovate their own apartments and buy luxury items at their enterprises’ expense. And so from 1921 to 1928.

Trotsky and his right hand in the field of economics, Preobrazhensky, planned to transfer the flame of revolution to Asia, and train personnel in our eastern republics, urgently building factories there to “breed” the local proletariat.

The differences between Stalin’s group and the die-hard Bolsheviks were fundamental. It doesn’t matter whether they are leftists, like Trotsky and Zinoviev, or rightists, like Rykov and Bukharin. Everyone relied on the revolution in Europe... So the point is not retribution, but an intense struggle to determine the course of the country’s development.”

The NEP was curtailed, complete collectivization and forced industrialization began. This gave rise to new difficulties and difficulties. Massive peasant riots swept across the country, and in some cities workers went on strike, dissatisfied with the meager rationing system for food distribution. In short, the internal socio-political situation has sharply worsened. And as a result, according to the apt remark of historian Igor Pykhalov: “party oppositionists of all stripes and colors, those who like to “fish in troubled waters,” yesterday’s leaders and bosses who longed for revenge in the struggle for power immediately became more active.”.

First of all, the Trotskyist underground, which had extensive experience in underground subversive activities since the Civil War, became more active. At the end of the 20s, the Trotskyists united with the old comrades of the deceased Lenin - Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, dissatisfied with the fact that Stalin removed them from the levers of power due to their managerial mediocrity.

There was also the so-called “right opposition,” which was supervised by such prominent Bolsheviks as Nikolai Bukharin, Avel Enukidze, and Alexei Rykov. These sharply criticized the Stalinist leadership for the “improperly organized collectivization of the countryside.” There were also smaller opposition groups. All of them had one thing in common - hatred of Stalin, with whom they were ready to fight using any methods familiar to them since the revolutionary underground times of tsarist times and the era of the brutal Civil War.

In 1932, almost all oppositionists united into a single, as it would later be called, right-Trotskyist bloc. The issue of overthrowing Stalin immediately came up on the agenda. Two options were considered. In the event of an expected war with the West, it was planned to contribute in every possible way to the defeat of the Red Army, in order to then seize power in the wake of the resulting chaos. If war does not happen, then the option of a palace coup was considered.

Here is the opinion of Yuri Zhukov:

“Directly at the head of the conspiracy were Avel Enukidze and Rudolf Peterson - a participant in the Civil War, took part in punitive operations against rebel peasants in the Tambov province, commanded Trotsky’s armored train, and since 1920 - commandant of the Moscow Kremlin. They wanted to arrest the entire “Stalinist” five at once - Stalin himself, as well as Molotov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov.”

It was possible to involve in the conspiracy the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was offended by Stalin for allegedly not being able to properly appreciate the “great abilities” of the marshal. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda also joined the conspiracy - he was an ordinary unprincipled careerist, who at some point thought that the chair under Stalin was seriously swaying, and therefore he hastened to get closer to the opposition.

In any case, Yagoda conscientiously fulfilled his obligations to the opposition, inhibiting any information about the conspirators that periodically came to the NKVD. And such signals, as it later turned out, regularly fell on the table of the country’s chief security officer, but he carefully hid them “under the carpet”...

Most likely, the plot was defeated due to impatient Trotskyists. Carrying out the order of their leader on terror, they contributed to the murder of one of Stalin’s comrades, the first secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee, Sergei Kirov, who was shot dead in the Smolny building on December 1, 1934.

Stalin, who had already received alarming information about the conspiracy more than once, immediately took advantage of this murder and took decisive measures in response. The first blow fell on the Trotskyists. The country witnessed mass arrests of those who had at least once come into contact with Trotsky and his associates. The success of the operation was greatly facilitated by the fact that the Party Central Committee took strict control over the activities of the NKVD. In 1936, the entire leadership of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist underground was convicted and destroyed. And at the end of the same year, Yagoda was removed from the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD and executed in 1937...

Next came Tukhachevsky’s turn. As the German historian Paul Carell writes, citing sources in German intelligence, the marshal planned his coup on May 1, 1937, when a lot of military equipment and troops were gathered in Moscow for the May Day parade. Under the cover of the parade, military units loyal to Tukhachevsky could be brought to the capital...

However, Stalin already knew about these plans. Tukhachevsky was isolated, and at the end of May he was arrested. A whole cohort of high-ranking military leaders went to trial with him. Thus, the right-wing Trotskyist conspiracy was liquidated by mid-1937...

Stalin's failed democratization

According to some reports, Stalin was going to stop the repressions at this point. However, in the summer of the same 1937, he encountered another hostile force - the “regional barons” from among the first secretaries of the regional party committees. These figures were greatly alarmed by Stalin's plans for democratization political life countries- because the free elections planned by Stalin threatened many of them with an inevitable loss of power.

Yes, yes – exactly free elections! And it's not a joke. First, in 1936, on Stalin’s initiative, a new Constitution was adopted, according to which all citizens of the Soviet Union, without exception, received equal civil rights, including the so-called “former” ones, who were previously deprived of voting rights. And then, as Yuri Zhukov, an expert on this issue, writes:

“It was assumed that simultaneously with the Constitution, a new electoral law would be adopted, which would spell out the procedure for electing several alternative candidates at once, and that the nomination of candidates to the Supreme Council would immediately begin, elections to which were scheduled to be held in the same year. Samples of ballot papers have already been approved, money has been allocated for campaigning and elections.”

Zhukov believes that through these elections, Stalin not only wanted to carry out political democratization, but also to remove the party nomenklatura from real power, which, in his opinion, was too greedy and out of touch with the life of the people. Stalin generally wanted to leave only ideological work to the party, and transfer all real executive functions to the Soviets different levels(elected on an alternative basis) and the government of the Soviet Union - so, back in 1935, the leader expressed an important thought: “We must free the party from economic activities.”

However, Zhukov says, Stalin revealed his plans too early. And at the June 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee, the nomenklatura, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually set An ultimatum to Stalin - either he will leave everything as before, or he himself will be removed. At the same time, the nomenklatura referred to recently discovered conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military. They demanded not only that any plans for democratization be curtailed, but also that emergency measures be strengthened, and even the introduction of special quotas for mass repressions in the regions - they say, in order to finish off those Trotskyists who escaped punishment. Yuri Zhukov:

“The secretaries of regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties requested so-called limits. The number of those whom they can arrest and shoot or send to places not so remote. The most zealous was such a future “victim of the Stalinist regime” as Eikhe, in those days the first secretary of the West Siberian regional committee of the party. He asked for the right to shoot 10,800 people. In second place is Khrushchev, who headed the Moscow Regional Committee: “only” 8,500 people. In third place is the first secretary of the Azov-Black Sea Regional Committee (today it is the Don and the North Caucasus) Evdokimov: 6644 - shot and almost 7 thousand - sent to camps. Other secretaries also sent bloodthirsty applications. But with smaller numbers. One and a half, two thousand...

Robert Indrikovich Eiche. One of the organizers of Stalin's repressions. He was part of the special troika of the NKVD of the USSR.

Stalin, according to Zhukov, had no choice but to accept the rules of this scary game- because the party at that time was too great a force that he could not directly challenge. And the Great Terror spread across the country, when both real participants in the failed conspiracy and simply suspicious people were destroyed. It is clear that this “purge” also included many who had nothing to do with the conspiracies at all.

However, here too we will not go too far, as our liberals do today, pointing to “tens of millions of innocent victims.” According to Yuri Zhukov:

“At our institute (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences - I.N.), Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov works. As part of a small group, he checked and double-checked in the archives for several years what the real numbers of repressions were. In particular, under Article 58. We came to concrete results. The West immediately started screaming. They were told: please, here are the archives for you! We arrived, checked, and were forced to agree. Here's what.

1935 - a total of 267 thousand were arrested and convicted under Article 58, of which 1,229 people were sentenced to capital punishment, in 36, 274 thousand and 1,118 people, respectively. And then a splash. In ’37, more than 790 thousand were arrested and convicted under Article 58, over 353 thousand were shot, in ’38 – more than 554 thousand and more than 328 thousand were shot. Then - a decrease. In 1939, about 64 thousand were convicted and 2,552 people were sentenced to death; in ’40, about 72 thousand and 1,649 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

In total, during the period from 1921 to 1953, 4,060,306 people were convicted, of which 2,634,397 people were sent to camps and prisons».

Of course, these are terrible numbers (because any violent death is also a great tragedy). But still, you must agree, we are not talking about many millions at all...

However, let's go back to the 30s. During this bloody campaign, Stalin finally managed to direct terror against its initiators - the regional first secretaries, who were liquidated one after another. Only by 1939 was he able to take full control of the party, and mass terror immediately subsided. The social and living situation in the country has also sharply improved - people really began to live much more satiatedly and prosperously than before...

... Stalin was able to return to his plans to remove the party from power only after the Great Patriotic War, at the very end of the 40s. However, by that time a new generation of the same party nomenklatura had grown up, standing in the previous positions of its absolute power. It was its representatives who organized a new anti-Stalin conspiracy, which was crowned with success in 1953, when the leader died under circumstances that have not yet been clarified.

It’s curious, but some of Stalin’s comrades still tried to implement his plans after the leader’s death. Yuri Zhukov:

“After the death of Stalin, the head of the USSR government Malenkov, one of his closest associates, abolished all benefits for the party nomenklatura. For example, the monthly distribution of money (“envelopes”), the amount of which was two to three, or even five times higher than the salary and was not taken into account even when paying party dues, Lechsanupr, sanatoriums, personal cars, “turntables”. And he raised the salaries of government employees by 2–3 times. Party workers, according to the generally accepted scale of values (and in their own eyes), have become much lower than government workers. The attack on the rights of the party nomenklatura, hidden from prying eyes, lasted only three months. Party cadres united and began to complain about the infringement of “rights” to the Secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev.”

Further - it is known. Khrushchev “pinned” Stalin with all the blame for the repressions of 1937. And the party bosses were not only returned all their privileges, but were actually removed from the scope of the Criminal Code, which in itself began to rapidly disintegrate the party. It was the completely decomposed party elite that ultimately ruined the Soviet Union.

However, this is a completely different story...

Diagnostics and diseases. Medicines from A to Z

Repressions in the USSR: socio-political meaning. Has it ever happened that a person was arrested, and then they realized that they were mistaken and were released? Stalin's failed democratization

Documents from the “Special” folder of the NKVD