Statistics of losses in the USSR (on the topic "repressions in the USSR"). Stalinist repressions (briefly)

In a contest of liars

archival documents say

"To the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU

Comrade Khrushchev N. S.

…
Prosecutor General R. Rudenko
Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov
Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin

Number of prisoners

Mortality of prisoners

Special Camps

Notes:

6. Ibid. S. 26.

9. Ibid. S. 169

24. Ibid. L.53.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid. D. 1155. L.2.

Repression

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The history of Russia, as well as other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “Stalin era”. He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of "expediency." In fact, they were driven by completely different motives.

Talking about the beginning of the political career of the leader who became a tyrant, such authors shyly hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a recidivist convict with seven “walkers”. Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the state course pursued by him.

Lenin received in him a worthy successor. “Creatively developing his teachings,” Iosif Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that he should rule the country by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

The generation of people whose mouths can speak the truth about Stalin's repressions is leaving... Are the newfangled articles that whitewash the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken life...

Leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Iosif Vissarionovich personally signed the death lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin toughened repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete lawlessness in the dungeons. It was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 10, 1939, which literally unleashed the hands of the punitive authorities.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from the letter of commander Lisovsky, who is being abused by the satraps of the leader ...

"... A ten-day conveyor interrogation with a cruel, vicious beating and no way to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Then - forcing to sit with arms raised up, and also to stand bent over, with his head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours ..."

The desire of the detainees to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges caused an increase in torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Recall that Robert Eikhe, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher died from beatings during interrogations in Lefortovo prison.

Leader's motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was not tens, not hundreds of thousands, but seven million starved to death and four million arrested (general statistics will be presented below). Only the number of those shot was about 800 thousand people ...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, boundlessly striving for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in Children of the Arbat? Analyzing the personality of Stalin, he shares with us his judgments. “A ruler who is loved by the people is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. Another thing is when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on him. This is a strong ruler!” Hence the leader's credo - to inspire love through fear!

Steps adequate to this idea were taken by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

Iosif Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V. I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate took him 7 links to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, promiscuity in means, rigidity towards people, egocentrism from a young age. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party participated in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich received a long-awaited career opportunity. Sick and weakening, Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. Thus, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really claims to be the leader.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party undercover intrigues, which was useful to him later in the fight against competitors.

Stalin's position in the system of red terror

The red terror machine was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues a Decree "On the Red Terror". The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), operated under the Council of People's Commissars from 12/07/1917.

The reason for such a radicalization of domestic politics was the assassination of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on the life of V. Lenin, Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Both events took place on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka unleashed a wave of repression.

According to statistics, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 shot, imprisoned in concentration camps 1791.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landlords had already been repressed. First of all, a blow was dealt to the classes that are the backbone of the monarchical structure of society. However, "creatively developing the teachings of Lenin", Iosif Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - the ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he substantiated theoretically.

His concept of the intensification of the class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Iosif Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. Since that time, he actually becomes the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.

Hidden by slogans, the real meaning of Stalinism is manifested in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman showed very clearly that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal unlimited dictatorship.

Iosif Vissarionovich in 1928-1930 began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public trials that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, Stalin's cult of personality began its formation with trials and instilling horror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured into signing accusations fabricated by the investigation. The cruel dictatorship imitated the class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...

Three global lawsuits were rigged: the “Union Bureau Affair” (putting managers at risk); "The Case of the Industrial Party" (the sabotage of the Western powers against the economy of the USSR was imitated); "The Case of the Labor Peasant Party" (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays with mechanization). Moreover, they all united in a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against the Soviet government and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD.

As a result, the entire economic management of the national economy was replaced from the old "specialists" to "new cadres" ready to work on the instructions of the "leader".

Through the mouths of Stalin, who provided the state apparatus loyal to repressions with the courts, the adamant determination of the Party was further expressed: to oust and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, merchants, small and medium; destroy the basis of agricultural production - the prosperous peasantry (indiscriminately calling it "kulaks"). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by "the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants."

Behind the scenes, in parallel with this "general line", the "father of the peoples" consistently, with the help of provocations and false evidence, began to implement the line of liquidating their party competitors for the highest state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. testifies that the main social base of the village - an efficient agricultural producer - became the main object of repression. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (which in fact at that time were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was to turn under the pressure of repression from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin's industrialization plans and the maintenance of hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly indicate the object of his repressions, Stalin went on an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustified, he managed to ensure that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profitable) producer into a separate "class of kulaks" - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over the centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Decree "On the liquidation of ... kulak farms" of 01/30/1930

The Red Terror came to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalinist trials - "troikas", in most cases ending in executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (any persons subjectively defined as “rural activists” could fall into the category) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body of permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational management under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Settlers in the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list basis in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931. 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, ruin and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all Stalin's repressions. Their brief enumeration should be supplemented by the organization of famine. The real reason for it was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was crop failure.

His subjective plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be wise to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for the harvest year ... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded the immediate provision of food for the swollen power structures and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision - to withdraw from the peasants the grain intended for sowing and for consumption.

On October 22, 1932, two emergency commissions led by the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of "fighting the kulaks" to seize bread, which was accompanied by violence, quick to punish by troika courts and the deportation of wealthy agricultural producers to the regions of the Far North. It was genocide...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not stopped by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932-1933. are documented. M. A. Sholokhov, the author of The Quiet Flows the Don, addressed the leader, defending his countrymen, with letters, exposing lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. In detail, with an indication of the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors, the famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya stated the facts. Bullying and violence against the peasants are horrifying: brutal beatings, breaking out of joints, partial strangulation, staging execution, eviction from houses ... In a response letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader can be seen in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, "quietly" trying to disrupt the provision of food...

Such a voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the State Duma of Russia, published in April 2008, disclosed to the public previously classified statistics (previously, propaganda concealed these repressions of Stalin in every possible way.)

How many people died of starvation in the above regions? The figure set by the State Duma commission is appalling: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

We will also consider three more directions of Stalinist terror, and in the following table we will present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to oppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the Pravda newspaper, and not go to church ...

Hundreds of thousands of families of formerly productive peasants, fearful of dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights, to make them manipulated, it was at that time that passportization of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. Peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full range of civil rights (freedom to choose their place of residence, freedom to choose work) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition that they fulfill workday norms.

Antisocial policy was accompanied by the destruction of families, an increase in the number of homeless children. This phenomenon has acquired such a scale that the state was forced to respond to it. With the sanction of Stalin, the Politburo of the Land of Soviets issued one of the most inhuman decrees - punitive in relation to children.

The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques - to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

Passportization of the urban population was carried out for repressive purposes. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of the most cynical crimes of Stalin is his sanctioning of the secret resolution of the Politburo of 04/07/1935, which allows bringing teenagers from 12 years old to trial and determining their punishment up to the death penalty. In 1936 alone, 125,000 children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10,000 children were exiled to the Gulag system.

Great terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum ... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, as a result of repressions over the whole society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and already physical reprisal against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - mass "purges of the state apparatus" were carried out.

Terror has gained unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (since 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was broken for one carelessly dropped word ... Even the Stalinist elite was repressed - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; Chekists Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on fabricated cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified commanders at the corps level - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not possess the proper operational and tactical art.

Stalin's cult of personality was characterized not only by the showcase facades of Soviet cities. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to a monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, a mercilessly exploited labor resource for extracting wealth from the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those held in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 it was about 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the convicts of Kolyma mined 35% of the allied gold, being in terrible conditions of detention. We list the main camps that are part of the GULAG system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (respectively 43 and 35 thousand); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); development of the steppes - Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

For the most part, people stayed in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night of arrest and an ill-judged prejudiced trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: “enemies of the people” - kulaks (in fact, an effective agricultural producer), or even entire deported nationalities. Most served a sentence of 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The process of investigation on it involved torture and a break in the will of the convict.

In the case of the resettlement of kulaks and small peoples, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe, and the convicts themselves built a camp and a special purpose prison (TON). From the 1930s, the labor of prisoners was mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours a day. Tens of thousands of people died from overwork, poor nutrition, poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice, which is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by the revolutionary military tribunals. An inhuman system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. Executions as part of the 58th article were valid until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years of serving in camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out on behalf of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.

The disenfranchised people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The beginning of the process of restoring justice was laid by the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

In the 20s and ended in 1953. During this period, mass arrests took place, and special camps for political prisoners were created. No historian can name the exact number of victims of Stalinist repressions. More than a million people were convicted under Article 58.

Origin of the term

The Stalinist terror affected almost all sectors of society. For more than twenty years, Soviet citizens lived in constant fear - one wrong word or even gesture could cost their lives. It is impossible to unequivocally answer the question of what the Stalinist terror rested on. But of course, the main component of this phenomenon is fear.

The word terror in translation from Latin is "horror". The method of governing the country, based on instilling fear, has been used by rulers since ancient times. Ivan the Terrible served as a historical example for the Soviet leader. The Stalinist terror is in some way a more modern version of the Oprichnina.

Ideology

The midwife of history is what Karl Marx called violence. The German philosopher saw only evil in the safety and inviolability of members of society. Marx's idea was used by Stalin.

The ideological basis of the repressions that began in the 1920s was formulated in July 1928 in the Short Course on the History of the CPSU. At first, the Stalinist terror was a class struggle, which was supposedly needed to resist the overthrown forces. But the repressions continued even after all the so-called counter-revolutionaries ended up in camps or were shot. The peculiarity of Stalin's policy was the complete non-observance of the Soviet Constitution.

If at the beginning of the Stalinist repressions the state security agencies fought against the opponents of the revolution, then by the mid-thirties, the arrests of old communists began - people selflessly devoted to the party. Ordinary Soviet citizens were already afraid not only of the NKVD officers, but also of each other. Denunciation has become the main tool in the fight against "enemies of the people."

Stalin's repressions were preceded by the "Red Terror", which began during the Civil War. These two political phenomena have many similarities. However, after the end of the Civil War, almost all cases of political crimes were based on the falsification of charges. During the "Red Terror", those who did not agree with the new regime were imprisoned and shot, first of all, there were many of them at the stages of creating a new state.

Case of lyceum students

Officially, the period of Stalinist repressions begins in 1922. But one of the first high-profile cases dates back to 1925. It was in this year that a special department of the NKVD fabricated a case on charges of counter-revolutionary activities of graduates of the Alexander Lyceum.

On February 15, over 150 people were arrested. Not all of them were related to the above-named educational institution. Among the convicts were former students of the School of Law and officers of the Life Guards of the Semenovsky Regiment. Those arrested were accused of assisting the international bourgeoisie.

Many were shot already in June. 25 people were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. 29 arrested were sent into exile. Vladimir Schilder - a former teacher - at that time was 70 years old. He died during the investigation. Nikolai Golitsyn, the last chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, was sentenced to death.

Shakhty case

The accusations under Article 58 were ridiculous. A person who does not speak foreign languages ​​and has never communicated with a citizen of a Western state in his life could easily be accused of colluding with American agents. During the investigation, torture was often used. Only the strongest could withstand them. Often, those under investigation signed a confession only in order to complete the execution, which sometimes lasted for weeks.

In July 1928, specialists in the coal industry became victims of the Stalinist terror. This case was called "Shakhtinskoe". The heads of Donbas enterprises were accused of sabotage, sabotage, the creation of an underground counter-revolutionary organization, and assistance to foreign spies.

There were several high-profile cases in the 1920s. Until the beginning of the thirties, dispossession continued. It is impossible to calculate the number of victims of Stalinist repressions, because no one in those days carefully kept statistics. In the nineties, the KGB archives became available, but even after that, researchers did not receive exhaustive information. However, separate execution lists were made public, which became a terrible symbol of Stalin's repressions.

The Great Terror is a term applied to a small period of Soviet history. It lasted only two years - from 1937 to 1938. About the victims during this period, the researchers provide more accurate data. 1,548,366 people were arrested. Shot - 681 692. It was a struggle "against the remnants of the capitalist classes."

Causes of the "Great Terror"

In Stalin's time, a doctrine was developed to intensify the class struggle. It was only a formal reason for the destruction of hundreds of people. Among the victims of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s were writers, scientists, military men, and engineers. Why was it necessary to get rid of representatives of the intelligentsia, specialists who could benefit the Soviet state? Historians offer different answers to these questions.

Among modern researchers there are those who are convinced that Stalin had only an indirect relation to the repressions of 1937-1938. However, his signature appears on almost every execution list, in addition, there is a lot of documentary evidence of his involvement in mass arrests.

Stalin strove for sole power. Any indulgence could lead to a real, not fictional conspiracy. One of the foreign historians compared the Stalinist terror of the 1930s with the Jacobin terror. But if the latest phenomenon, which took place in France at the end of the 18th century, involved the destruction of representatives of a certain social class, then in the USSR often unrelated people were subjected to arrest and execution.

So, the reason for the repression was the desire for sole, unconditional power. But what was needed was a wording, an official justification for the need for mass arrests.

Occasion

On December 1, 1934, Kirov was killed. This event became the formal reason for the murderer to be arrested. According to the results of the investigation, again fabricated, Leonid Nikolaev did not act independently, but as a member of an opposition organization. Stalin subsequently used the assassination of Kirov in the fight against political opponents. Zinoviev, Kamenev and all their supporters were arrested.

Trial of officers of the Red Army

After the assassination of Kirov, trials of the military began. One of the first victims of the Great Terror was G. D. Gai. The commander was arrested for the phrase "Stalin must be removed," which he uttered while intoxicated. It is worth saying that in the mid-thirties, denunciation reached its zenith. People who worked in the same organization for many years stopped trusting each other. Denunciations were written not only against enemies, but also against friends. Not only for selfish reasons, but also out of fear.

In 1937, a trial took place over a group of officers of the Red Army. They were accused of anti-Soviet activities and assistance to Trotsky, who by that time was already abroad. The hit list included:

• Tukhachevsky M. N.
• Yakir I. E.
• Uborevich I. P.
• Eideman R.P.
• Putna V.K.
• Primakov V. M.
• Gamarnik Ya. B.
• Feldman B. M.

The witch hunt continued. In the hands of the NKVD officers was a record of the negotiations between Kamenev and Bukharin - it was about creating a "right-left" opposition. In early March 1937, with a report that spoke of the need to eliminate the Trotskyists.

According to the report of General Commissar of State Security Yezhov, Bukharin and Rykov were planning terror against the leader. A new term appeared in Stalinist terminology - "Trotsky-Bukharin", which means "directed against the interests of the party."

In addition to the aforementioned politicians, about 70 people were arrested. 52 shot. Among them were those who were directly involved in the repressions of the 1920s. Thus, state security officers and politicians Yakov Agronomist, Alexander Gurevich, Levon Mirzoyan, Vladimir Polonsky, Nikolai Popov and others were shot.

In the "Tukhachevsky case" Lavrenty Beria was involved, but he managed to survive the "purge". In 1941, he took the post of General Commissar of State Security. Beria was already shot after the death of Stalin - in December 1953.

Repressed scientists

In 1937, revolutionaries and politicians became victims of the Stalinist terror. And very soon, arrests of representatives of completely different social strata began. People who had nothing to do with politics were sent to the camps. It is easy to guess what the consequences of Stalin's repressions were by reading the lists below. The "Great Terror" became a brake on the development of science, culture, and art.

Scientists who became victims of Stalinist repressions:

• Matthew Bronstein.
• Alexander Witt.
• Hans Gelman.
• Semyon Shubin.
• Evgeny Pereplyokin.
• Innokenty Balanovsky.
• Dmitry Eropkin.
• Boris Numerov.
• Nikolay Vavilov.
• Sergei Korolev.

Writers and poets

In 1933, Osip Mandelstam wrote an epigram with obvious anti-Stalinist overtones, which he read to several dozen people. Boris Pasternak called the poet's act a suicide. He turned out to be right. Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile in Cherdyn. There he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt, and a little later, with the assistance of Bukharin, he was transferred to Voronezh.

Boris Pilnyak wrote The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon in 1926. The characters in this work are fictitious, at least, as the author states in the preface. But to anyone who read the story in the 1920s, it became clear that it was based on the version about the murder of Mikhail Frunze.

Somehow Pilnyak's work got into print. But soon it was banned. Pilnyak was arrested only in 1937, and before that he remained one of the most published prose writers. The writer's case, like all similar ones, was completely fabricated - he was accused of spying for Japan. Shot in Moscow in 1937.

Other writers and poets subjected to Stalinist repressions:

• Viktor Bagrov.
• Julius Berzin.
• Pavel Vasiliev.
• Sergey Klychkov.
• Vladimir Narbut.
• Petr Parfenov.
• Sergei Tretyakov.

It is worth telling about the famous theatrical figure, accused under Article 58 and sentenced to capital punishment.

Vsevolod Meyerhold

The director was arrested at the end of June 1939. His apartment was later searched. A few days later, Meyerhold's wife was killed. The circumstances of her death have not yet been clarified. There is a version that the NKVD officers killed her.

Meyerhold was interrogated for three weeks, tortured. He signed everything the investigators demanded. February 1, 1940 Vsevolod Meyerhold was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out the next day.

During the war years

In 1941, the illusion of the abolition of repression appeared. In Stalin's pre-war times, there were many officers in the camps, who were now needed at large. Together with them, about six hundred thousand people were released from places of deprivation of liberty. But it was a temporary relief. At the end of the forties, a new wave of repressions began. Now the ranks of the "enemies of the people" have been replenished by soldiers and officers who have been in captivity.

Amnesty 1953

On March 5, Stalin died. Three weeks later, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree according to which a third of the prisoners were to be released. About a million people were released. But the first to leave the camps were not political prisoners, but criminals, which instantly worsened the criminal situation in the country.

MASS REPRESSIONS OF THE 1920s EARLY 1950s in the USSR - coercive measures against large groups of the population, used by the Soviet government and the Communist Party in solving economic and political problems, to suppress dissent and speeches against the authorities, non-economic coercion to work.

For-tro-well-whether all social-qi-al-nye, in-li-tich., Confessional-nal-nye and nat. groups. Pro-in-di-lis both in co-ot-vet-st-wii with an angle-lov-ny for-no-da-tel-st-vom, and according to special. in a hundred-nov-le-ni-yam part. and owls. or-ga-nov, in the form of-me for-key-che-niya in prison-we, on-right-le-niya in right-vi-tel-no-work-to-vye la-ge-rya (ITL), links and you-syl-ki to from-da-len-ny districts of the country, de-port-ta-tion, you-syl-ki abroad. A big role in the development of M. p. syg-ra-whether in-li-ti-che-sky pro-cesses of the 1920s - on-cha-la of the 1950s Osu-sche-st-in-la-li-su-deb-ny-mi, as well as outside-su-deb-ny-mi or-ha-na-mi (Kol-le-gi-her GPU - OGPU , A special co-thing with the OGPU - the NKVD of the USSR, through-you-tea-we-mi "three-ka-mi", "double-koy" - ko-miss-si-her NKVD and pro-ku-ra-tu-ry).

The question of the repressions of the thirties of the last century is of fundamental importance not only for understanding the history of Russian socialism and its essence as a social system, but also for assessing the role of Stalin in the history of Russia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore, the next step was to update the upper floors of the party.

Stalin stated this in his usual cautious manner at the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b) (March 1934).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Molotov, unable to stand it, openly says:

- In a number of cases, listening to the speakers, one could come to the conclusion that our resolutions and our reports went past the ears of the speakers ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In short, party members, military men, scientists, writers, composers, musicians and everyone else, up to noble rabbit breeders and Komsomol members, enthusiastically ate each other (four million denunciations were written in 1937-38). Who sincerely believed that he was obliged to exterminate the enemies, who settled scores. So there is no need to talk about whether the NKVD beat on the noble physiognomy of this or that “innocently injured figure” or not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the 1990s, our archives already opened up access to the protocols of interrogations of the repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. By the nature of these materials, by the abundance of facts and evidence presented in them, today's independent experts have drawn three important conclusions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professionalism is a gain, but in order to punish any bastard, a person must be completely unstained. Well, yes, clean hands, a cold head and a warm heart - this is all about the youth of the Beria draft. The fact is that it was at the end of the 1930s that the NKVD became a truly effective special service, and not only in the matter of internal cleansing.

Soviet counterintelligence outplayed German intelligence during the war with a devastating score - and this is the great merit of those very Beria Komsomol members who came to the bodies three years before the start of the war.

Purge 1937-1939 played a positive role - now not a single boss felt his impunity, there were no more untouchables. Fear did not add intelligence to the nomenklatura, but at least warned it against outright meanness.

Unfortunately, immediately after the end of the great purge, the world war that began in 1939 prevented the holding of alternative elections. And again, the question of democratization was put on the agenda by Iosif Vissarionovich in 1952, shortly before his death. But after Stalin's death, Khrushchev returned the leadership of the entire country to the party. And not only.

Almost immediately after Stalin's death, a network of special distributors and special rations appeared, through which the new elites realized their predominant position. But in addition to formal privileges, a system of informal privileges quickly formed. Which is very important.

Since we touched on the activities of our dear Nikita Sergeevich, let's talk about it in a little more detail. With a light hand or the language of Ilya Ehrenburg, the period of Khrushchev's rule was called the "thaw". Let's see what Khrushchev did during the Great Terror?

The February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of 1937 is underway. It is from him, as it is believed, that the great terror began. Here is the speech of Nikita Sergeevich at this plenum: “... We need to destroy these scoundrels. Destroying a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, we are doing the work of millions. Therefore, it is necessary that the hand does not tremble, it is necessary to step over the corpses of enemies for the benefit of the people.

But how did Khrushchev act as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks? In 1937-1938. out of 38 senior leaders of the MGK, only 3 survived, out of 146 party secretaries, 136 were repressed. It's hard to understand where in the Moscow region he managed to find 20,000 kulaks who fell under repression. In total, in 1937-1938, he personally repressed 55,741 people.

But, perhaps, speaking at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev was worried that innocent ordinary people were shot? Yes, Khrushchev did not care about the arrests and executions of ordinary people. His entire report at the 20th Congress was devoted to Stalin's accusations that he imprisoned and shot prominent Bolsheviks and marshals. Those. elite.

Khrushchev in his report did not even mention the repressed ordinary people. What kind of people should he worry about, “women are still giving birth”, but the cosmopolitan elite, the lapotnik Khrushchev, was oh, what a pity.

What were the motives for the appearance of the revealing report at the 20th Party Congress?

First, without trampling his predecessor in the dirt, it was unthinkable to hope for Khrushchev's recognition as a leader after Stalin. Not! Stalin, even after his death, remained a competitor for Khrushchev, who had to be humiliated and destroyed by any means. Kicking a dead lion, as it turned out, is a pleasure - it does not give back.

The second motive was Khrushchev's desire to return the party to managing the economic activities of the state. To lead everything, for nothing, without answering and not obeying anyone

The third motive, and perhaps the most important, was the terrible fear of the remnants of the "Leninist Guard" for what they had done. After all, all of their hands, as Khrushchev himself put it, were up to the elbows in blood. Khrushchev and people like him wanted not only to rule the country, but also to have guarantees that they would never be dragged on the rack, no matter what they did while in leadership positions.

The 20th Congress of the CPSU gave them such guarantees in the form of indulgence for the release of all sins, both past and future. The whole riddle of Khrushchev and his associates is not worth a damn thing: it is the IRRESSIBLE ANIMAL FEAR SITTING IN THEIR SOULS AND THE PAINFUL THIRST FOR POWER.

The first thing that strikes the de-Stalinizers is their complete disregard for the principles of historicism, which everyone seems to have been taught in the Soviet school. No historical figure can be judged by the standards of our contemporary era. He must be judged by the standards of his era - and nothing else. In jurisprudence, they say this: "the law has no retroactive effect." That is, the ban introduced this year cannot apply to last year's acts.

Historicism of assessments is also necessary here: one cannot judge a person of one era by the standards of another era (especially of the new era that he created with his work and genius). For the beginning of the 20th century, the horrors in the position of the peasantry were so commonplace that many contemporaries practically did not notice them.

The famine did not begin with Stalin, it ended with Stalin. It seemed like forever - but the current liberal reforms are again dragging us into that swamp, from which we seem to have already got out ...

The principle of historicism also requires the recognition that Stalin had a completely different intensity of political struggle than in later times. It is one thing to maintain the existence of the system (although Gorbachev failed to do so), but it is another to create a new system on the ruins of a country ravaged by civil war.

The resistance energy in the second case is many times greater than in the first.

It must be understood that many of those killed under Stalin themselves were going to quite seriously kill him, and if he hesitated even for a minute, he himself would have received a bullet in the forehead. The struggle for power in the era of Stalin had a completely different severity than now: it was the era of the revolutionary "Praetorian Guard" - accustomed to rebellion and ready to change emperors like gloves.

Trotsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and a whole crowd of people who were accustomed to killings, as to peeling potatoes, claimed the supremacy ...

For any terror, not only the ruler is responsible before history, but also his opponents, as well as society as a whole. When the outstanding historian L. Gumilyov was asked already under Gorbachev if he was not angry at Stalin, under whom he was in prison, he answered: “But it was not Stalin who imprisoned me, but colleagues in the department” ...

Well, God bless him with Khrushchev and the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Let's talk about what the liberal media are constantly talking about, let's talk about Stalin's guilt.

Liberals accuse Stalin of shooting about 700,000 people in 30 years. The logic of the liberals is simple - all the victims of Stalinism. All 700 thousand.

Those. at that time there could be no murderers, no bandits, no sadists, no molesters, no swindlers, no traitors, no wreckers, etc. All victims for political reasons, all crystal clear and decent people.

Meanwhile, the CIA analytical center Rand Corporation, based on demographic data and archival documents, calculated the number of repressed people in the Stalin era. It turned out that less than 700 thousand people were shot from 1921 to 1953. Stalin had real power somewhere from 1927-29.

At the same time, no more than a quarter of cases fall to the share of those sentenced to an article under the political article 58. By the way, the same proportion was observed among the prisoners of the labor camps.

“Do you like it when they destroy their people in the name of a great goal?” the liberals continue. I will answer. The people - no, BUT THE BANDITS, THIVES AND MORAL FREAKS - YES. BUT I DON'T LIKE IT ANY MORE WHEN YOUR OWN PEOPLE ARE DESTROYED IN THE NAME OF FILLING THEIR POCKETS WITH BUBBLE, hiding behind beautiful liberal-democratic slogans.

Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya, a great supporter of reforms, who at that time was part of the administration of President Yeltsin, admitted a decade and a half later that in just three years of shock therapy in Russia alone, middle-aged men died 8 million (!!!). Yes, Stalin stands on the sidelines and nervously smokes a pipe. Didn't improve.

However, your words about Stalin's non-involvement in the massacres of honest people are not convincing, the LIBERALS continue. Even if this is allowed, then in this case he was simply obliged, firstly, to honestly and openly admit to the whole people in the committed lawlessness, secondly, to rehabilitate the unjustly affected and, thirdly, to take measures to prevent such lawlessness in the future. None of this has been done.

Again a lie. Dear. You just do not know the history of the USSR.

As for the first and second, the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938 openly recognized the lawlessness committed against honest communists and non-party people, adopting a special resolution on this matter, published, by the way, in all central newspapers.

Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, noting "provocations on an all-Union scale", demanded: Expose careerists who seek to distinguish themselves ... on repression. To expose a skillfully disguised enemy ... seeking to kill our Bolshevik cadres by carrying out measures of repression, sowing uncertainty and excessive suspicion in our ranks.

Just as openly, the entire country was told about the harm caused by unjustified repressions at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) held in 1939.

Immediately after the December Plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, thousands of illegally repressed people, including prominent military leaders, began to return from places of detention. All of them were officially rehabilitated, and Stalin personally apologized to some.

Well, and about, thirdly, I have already said that the NKVD apparatus almost suffered the most from repressions, and a significant part was brought to justice precisely for abuse of office, for reprisals against honest people.

What liberals do not talk about is the rehabilitation of innocent victims.

Immediately at the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938, criminal cases began to be reviewed and released from the camps. It was produced: in 1939 - 230 thousand, in 1940 - 180 thousand, until June 1941 another 65 thousand.

What liberals are not talking about yet. About how they fought the consequences of the great terror. With the advent of Beria L.P. In November 1938, 7,372 operational officers, or 22.9% of their payroll, were dismissed from the state security agencies for the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD in November 1938, of which 937 went to jail.

And since the end of 1938, the country's leadership has achieved the prosecution of more than 63 thousand NKVD workers who allowed falsification and created far-fetched, fake counter-revolutionary cases, OF WHICH EIGHT THOUSAND WAS SHOT.

I will give only one example from the article by Yu.I. Mukhina: "Minutes No. 17 of the Meeting of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on Judicial Affairs"

In this article Mukhin Yu.I. writes: “I was told that this type of documents was never laid out on the Web due to the fact that free access to them was very quickly banned in the archive. And the document is interesting, and something interesting can be gleaned from it ... ".

Lots of interesting things. But most importantly, the article shows what the NKVD officers were shot for after L.P. Beria came to the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD. Read. The names of those shot on the slides are shaded.

Note: You can view the slide in full size by clicking on the picture and selecting the "Original" link.

P O T O C O L No. 17

Meetings of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on Judicial Affairs

Chairman - comrade Kalinin M.I.

Present: t.t.: Shklyar M.F., Ponkratiev M.I., Merkulov V.N.

1. Listened

G ... Sergey Ivanovich, M ... Fedor Pavlovich, by the decision of the military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Moscow Military District of December 14-15, 1939, were sentenced to death under Art. 193-17 p. b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for making unreasonable arrests of commanders and Red Army personnel, actively falsifying investigation cases, conducting them using provocative methods and creating fictitious K / R organizations, as a result of which a number of people were shot according to the fictitious ones they created materials.

Resolved:

Agrees with the use of execution to G ... S.I. and M…F.P.

17. Listened. And ... Fedor Afanasyevich was sentenced to death under Art. 193-17 p.b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for being an employee of the NKVD, making mass illegal arrests of citizens of railway workers, falsifying interrogation protocols and creating artificial C/R cases, as a result of which over 230 people were sentenced to death and to various terms of imprisonment for more than 100 people, and of the latter, 69 people have been released at this time.

Resolved:

Agree with the use of execution against A ... F.A.

Have you read? Well, how do you like the dearest Fedor Afanasyevich? One (one!!!) investigator-falsifier summed up 236 people under execution. And what, he was the only one like that, how many of them were such scoundrels? I gave the number above. That Stalin personally set tasks for these Fedors and Sergeys to destroy honest people?

By the way. These 8,000 executed NKVD investigators are also included in the MEMORIAL list as victims of "Stalin's repressions".

What are the conclusions?

Conclusion N1. Judging Stalin's time only by repressions is the same as judging the activities of the chief physician of a hospital only by the hospital's morgue - there will always be corpses there.

If you approach with such a measure, then every doctor is a bloody ghoul and a murderer, i.e. deliberately ignore the fact that the team of doctors successfully cured and prolonged the life of thousands of patients and blame them only for a small percentage of those who died due to some inevitable errors in diagnosis or died during serious operations.

But even in the teachings of Jesus, people see only what they want to see. Studying the history of world civilization, one has to observe how wars, chauvinism, the "Aryan theory", serfdom, and Jewish pogroms were justified by Christian doctrine.

This is not to mention the executions "without the shedding of blood" - that is, the burning of heretics. And how much blood was shed during the crusades and religious wars? So, maybe because of this, to ban the teachings of our Creator? Just like today, some wimps propose to ban the communist ideology.

If we look at the mortality graph of the population of the USSR, with all the desire, it is impossible to find traces of "cruel" repressions, and not because they did not exist, but because their scale is exaggerated.

What is the purpose of this exaggeration and inflation? The goal is to instill in the Russians a guilt complex similar to the guilt complex of the Germans after the defeat in World War II. The "pay and repent" complex.

But the great ancient Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius, who lived 500 years before our era, even then said: “Beware of those who want to impute guilt to you. For they want power over you."

Do we need it? Judge for yourself. When the first time Khrushchev stunned all the so-called. truth about Stalin's repressions, then the authority of the USSR in the world immediately collapsed to the delight of the enemies. There was a split in the world communist movement. We have quarreled with great China, and tens of millions of people in the world have left the communist parties.

Eurocommunism appeared, denying not only Stalinism, but also, what is scary, the Stalinist economy. The myth of the 20th Congress created distorted ideas about Stalin and his time, deceived and psychologically disarmed millions of people when the question of the fate of the country was being decided.

When Gorbachev did this for the second time, not only the socialist bloc collapsed, but our Motherland - the USSR collapsed.

Now the team of Putin V.V. he is doing this for the third time: again he speaks only of repressions and other "crimes" of the Stalinist regime. What this leads to is clearly seen in the Zyuganov-Makarov dialogue. They are told about development, new industrialization, and they immediately begin to switch arrows to repression. That is, they immediately break off a constructive dialogue, turning it into a squabble, a civil war of meanings and ideas.

Conclusion N2. Why do they need it? To prevent the restoration of a strong and great Russia. It is more convenient for them to rule a weak and fragmented country, where people will pull each other's hair at the mention of the name of Stalin or Lenin. So it is more convenient for them to rob and deceive us. The policy of "divide and conquer" is as old as the world. Moreover, they can always dump from Russia to where their stolen capital is stored, children, wives and mistresses live.

Conclusion N3. And why do the patriots of Russia need it? It’s just that we and our children don’t have another country. Think about this first before you start cursing our history for repressions and other things. After all, we have nowhere to fall and retreat. As our victorious ancestors said in similar cases: there is no land for us behind Moscow and beyond the Volga!

Only, after the return of socialism to Russia, one must be vigilant and remember Stalin's warning that as the socialist state is built, the class struggle intensifies, that is, there is a threat of degeneration. And so it happened, and certain segments of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Komsomol and the KGB were among the first to be reborn.

The Stalinist party inquisition did not work properly.

Based on materials from books and articles by Elena Anatolyevna Prudnikova, Yuri Ignatievich Mukhin and other authors.

Copy of someone else's materials