Bella Borodkina in the 1970s and early 1980s. She was in charge of the Gelendzhik catering industry and was considered a respected person. And then suddenly she was arrested and sentenced to death. This was done to women only twice in the period after Stalin’s repressions, and then only to serial killers. What the catering worker was guilty of is further in the review.
Bella Naumovna Borodkina began her path to success from the position of a simple barmaid in Gelendzhik. When her husband died a few years after the wedding, the woman threw herself into her work. Her career developed rapidly: in 10 years, Bella rose to the rank of restaurant director, and then she was entrusted with managing a local chain of canteens, cafes and restaurants.
When high-ranking guests visited Gelendzhik, only Bella Naumovna was trusted to treat them. After all, only she knew how to manage the kitchen in such a way that the tables were simply bursting with dishes and delicacies.
In exchange for such “hospitality,” Bella Borodkina received high-ranking patrons who turned a blind eye to the machinations that the owner of the Gelendzhik catering establishment was engaged in. But there was something to pay attention to.
Bella Borodkina started her career from the very bottom, so she knew very well how the “Soviet kitchen” worked. At that time, it was difficult to find an establishment where the portions were served full and the customers were not overweight. While in a high position, Bella herself taught workers how to dilute cognac with cheap starka (strong rye vodka), and tinted tea and coffee with burnt sugar. Such savings turned into tens of hundreds of rubles, which went into Borodkina’s pocket.
Moreover, all the canteens and restaurants of the trust, which Bella Naumovna managed, were supposed to bring her a daily “tribute.” If someone refused to pay, he was immediately removed from his position. Borodkina transferred part of her income “to the top,” and this made her confident in her invulnerability. Those around her nicknamed her “Iron Bella.”
This continued until 1982. Then VCRs and, accordingly, video cassettes began to appear in the Soviet Union. Films were shown to those who wanted them underground and for money. And those who wanted to watch the “strawberry” paid several times more for it. It is worth noting that there was a prison sentence for displaying pornographic products. When several distributors were detained in Gelendzhik cafes, they immediately pointed to Iron Bella, claiming that the films were shown with her knowledge.
It would seem that Bella screwed up on a mere trifle, if we compare the scale of her machinations. But for some reason the police seized on this particular episode. In fact, the “showdown” took place at the very top. Tension grew between supporters of Brezhnev and Andropov. And when Yuri Andropov took the helm of the USSR in November 1982, he immediately launched a campaign against corruption in Kuban.
The first secretary of the Krasnodar regional party committee, S. Medunov, was under the personal patronage of Leonid Ilyich, therefore, after his death, the prosecutor's office actively took up the affairs of Medunov and his immediate circle, which included Bella Borodkina.
The episode with banned films became the formal reason for the arrest of Iron Bella. When representatives of law enforcement agencies came for her, Mrs. Borodkina even grinned, saying that there would be no need to apologize to her. But the woman was not released the next day, or even a week later. The patrons who had allowed her to carry out large-scale fraud for so many years were now in an even worse situation.
When Bella's apartment was searched, the police were shocked by what they saw. Her home resembled a warehouse: everywhere there were piles of crystal, furs, scarce sets of linen, precious jewelry, and gold. And more money... a lot of money. Stacks of banknotes were found in clothes, rolled up cans, and batteries. In total, more than 500 thousand rubles were found. By Soviet standards, this was colossal money.
Bella Borodkina spent a whole year in prison. During this time, she was unrecognizable: from a respectable lady, she turned into a hunted old woman. In August 1983, the woman was shot; she knew too many “inconvenient” things about high-ranking officials from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Bella Borodkina was one of three women sentenced to capital punishment in the late period of the USSR. Became another one
In 1983, the court heard the case Bertha Borodkina, Honored Trade Worker of the RSFSR. The woman, whom her subordinates respectfully called Iron Bella, led the trust of canteens and Gelendzhik. In fact, Borodkina controlled the entire service sector there.
During the Brezhnev stagnation, no one dared to touch Bertha, and many resort workers in the Kuban and Krasnoyarsk Territory became entangled in the networks of the insidious speculator. People expected that high-ranking bribe-taker will be imprisoned for 15 years. But the judges who worked under the conditions of “Andropov’s purge” had other plans...
Bertha Korol was born in the city White church near Kyiv. After getting married, the woman moved to Odessa and changed her last name for the first time. In total, Bertha had four husbands, and the investigation does not rule out that the catering queen purposefully got one of them drunk.
Borodkin, a retired sea captain to whom a woman became engaged in Gelendzhik, eagerly drank alcohol that his waitress wife brought home from work. Soon the man, who knew no limits, gave up, and all his property went to his wife.
Bertha, who eventually changed her name to Bella, began working in the retail industry waitress and barmaid. The woman quickly realized what prospects a large resort city promised her.
Having received a specialized education, the clever and cunning Borodkina quickly climbed the career ladder, at the same time acquiring acquaintances and contacts. The scheme of the speculator’s corrupt connections drawn up by the investigation was amazing!
By 1974, Bertha-Bella became director of the trust. High-ranking officials valued her subordinate, because she not only ensured the smooth flow of tribute from restaurants and cafes in Gelendzhik, but also knew how to organize for dear guests like no one else decent leisure.
Rumor has it that the matter was not limited to culinary masterpieces: Borodkina was also in charge of local priestesses of love, and films for adults were shown clandestinely in restaurants and cafes.
Brezhnev personally liked to relax at the resorts where Bella reigned supreme, so during the reign of the browed General Secretary, no one dared to touch the woman. Accustomed to power, Borodkina stole astronomical amounts.
When the head of the trust was finally arrested in 1982, the police who searched her apartment gasped. The law enforcement officers had the feeling that they were not in a residential building, but in the storerooms of some museum!
Sables, crystal vases, jewelry and money - Bertha had all this beyond all measure. The speculator, zealous to the point of impossibility, also stored any scarce things.
This, for example, explains the huge amount of bedding found in her home. Armfuls of banknotes were stuffed into three-liter jars at Borodkina’s, stuffed into radiator pipes, and hidden in stacks of bricks piled in the yard.
According to her subordinates, Bertha has achieved perfection in the art of weighing down ordinary people. Meat disappeared from soups, and cheap cereals appeared in its place. I diluted the sour cream and milk with water, but very carefully.
Catering workers recalled: at the planning meeting the director of the trust could arrange terrible demolition for the fact that the product was diluted with raw rather than boiled water. The cautious Borodkina came to trial only when her patrons collapsed!
The protégé of the owner of the Kuban, who had fallen out of favor, who had stolen goods worth a million Soviet rubles, was an ideal target for “ Andropov's purges" Bella's case became a landmark case, and the speculator was treated with little ceremony.
The woman herself did not fully understand why all her high-ranking friends refused to shield her. The officials simply handed the careerist over to the court, thus trying to save their own skins.
Nevertheless, received by Borodkina capital punishment came as a complete surprise to most who followed her case. The most severe prognosis for Bella was a 15-year prison sentence with confiscation of property. But the judges, guided by Andropov’s instructions, were determined to go to the end.
Berta Naumovna Borodkina by nickname Iron Bella(nee Korol; 1927-1983) - head of the trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik, Honored Worker of Trade and Public Catering of the RSFSR.
One of three women executed in the USSR between 1960 and 1983 was sentenced to death for systematic theft of socialist property.
Brief biographical information
She began working in the trade sector as a barmaid and waitress, and was subsequently appointed to the position of canteen director. She headed the above-mentioned trust in 1974.
Arrested in 1982. According to investigative authorities, in the period from 1974 to 1982. engaged in speculation on an especially large scale.
…Repeatedly received bribes from a large group of subordinates at work. From the bribes received, Borodkina herself transferred bribes to responsible employees for assistance provided in work and other services that created an environment for committing crimes in the trust. So, over the past two years, 15 thousand rubles worth of valuables, money and products were transferred to the secretary of the city party committee Pogodin...Extract from the criminal case
During the search of Borodkina B.N., many valuable things were found, as well as large sums of money. Borodkina’s housing, according to Anton Lopatin, senior assistant to the prosecutor of the Krasnodar region for interaction with the media, resembled museum storerooms, which contained numerous precious jewelry, furs, crystal products, and sets of bed linen that were then in short supply. In addition, Borodkina, according to the testimony of a veteran of the prosecutor's office of the Krasnodar region, Honored Lawyer of the RSFSR Vladimir Nagorny, kept large sums of money at home, which investigators found in the most unexpected places - in water heating radiators and under carpets in rooms, rolled up cans in the basement, in stored there are bricks in the yard. The total amount seized during the search amounted to more than 500,000 rubles.
It is believed that in total, during her activities, she received goods and funds worth more than a million rubles from her accomplices. In 1982 she was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out in August 1983.
The case is kept in the State Archives of the Russian Federation.
Image in art
- Documentary series “The investigation was carried out...” - """ Vladyka Kuban"""(issue No. 16, dated June 9, 2006), NTV
These three women were sentenced to death.
They were not pardoned - these three of all women sentenced to death were not pardoned during the entire post-war period. That's what they say, at least. Their sentences were carried out - and in 1979, 1983 and 1987 shots were fired that stopped their lives. Why did they treat a school dishwasher, an honored trade worker and an ordinary, seemingly retired, war veteran so harshly?
In the first photo - Tamara Ivanyutina
, born in 1942, worked as a dishwasher in a Kyiv school, known as the “Poisoner”.
45-year-old Tamara Ivanyutina started working at the school in September 1986. The position of dishwasher in the school cafeteria brought her considerable income: food waste. And this is not a joke: she lived in her own house and kept a large household. Schoolchildren with poor appetites provided free food for their pigs and chickens. To make their appetite even worse, the dishwasher would add poison to their food. Well, for “bad behavior” too.
She also dealt with those who prevented her from stealing in the school cafeteria, made comments - and in general, with everyone who did not like her. And with the help of poison, she always kept her husband in a state of sexual weakness, so that he would not go on a spree. And she poisoned his parents to death, just like her first husband: she didn’t love him, but his apartment was useful to her.
Ivanyutina’s entire family (parents, sister) was also involved in poisoning - for 11 years (since 1976) for selfish interests, as well as for reasons of personal hostility. In total, 40 episodes of poisoning committed by this family were proven, 13 of them were fatal. Moreover, the largest number of fatal poisonings (9) and attempted murders (20) were committed personally by Tamara Ivanyutina.
Ivanyutina’s mother, already in prison, instructed her cellmates this way: “To achieve what you want, you don’t need to write complaints, but be friends with everyone, treat them. But add poison to especially harmful food.” The poisoners used “Clerici liquid” - a highly toxic solution based on thallium - it is used in some branches of geology to separate minerals by density, and it can also be used to kill rats and mice. It was under this pretext that they asked a familiar laboratory assistant from the Kyiv geological exploration expedition.
Relatives of Tamara Ivanyutina were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and the “Poisoner” herself was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out in 1987.
In the second photo - Antonna Makarova -"Tonka the Machine Gunner" (1921 —1979) - female punitive officer who served with the German occupation authorities Lokotsky district (Bryansk region) in 1941, during the Great Patriotic War. Tonya was 19 years old when she volunteered for the front. As a nurse, she found herself surrounded, from which she ended up in the service of the Germans. The Nazis preferred to entrust the dirtiest work - executions - to such punishers.
Before the first execution, she was given a drink for courage, and then she drank on her own. She shot with a Maxim machine gun, and if necessary, she finished off with a control shot. “What nonsense that you are then tormented by remorse. That those you kill come at night in nightmares. I still haven’t had a single dream,” she told her investigators during interrogations. The discovered remains number about 1,500 executed, but it was possible to restore the passport data of only about two hundred people shot by the Thin Machine Gunner.
The retreat of the fascist troops forced Tonya to look for ways to further survive - using false documents, Antonina began to live on: already on the Soviet side. In Koenigsberg, in a military hospital, she met her future husband, a front-line soldier, and took his last name. “A family of front-line soldiers,” they said about them with respect. The ceremonial portrait of the aged Tonka the Machine Gunner hung on the Board of Honor for a long time.
For more than thirty years, the KGB could not find the legendary Tonka. But they were looking! Only 250 Antonin Makarovs of suitable age were identified in the USSR and they themselves and their immediate circle were secretly checked. There was no result. And they would not have found it if not for an accident - her brother, going on a trip abroad, indicated in the questionnaire all his brothers and sisters - all had the surname Parfenov, and only one sister - Makarov. Antonina Makarova. As a child, when she entered school, she was written down like this - by accident: Makarova instead of Makarovna (last name instead of patronymic).
She was arrested in the summer of 1978 in Lepel (Belarusian SSR), convicted as a war criminal and, by a court verdict, sentenced to capital punishment - the death penalty. On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out. She was 58 years old.
“I don’t know them, they don’t know me, the main thing is money, they pay. And the war will write off everything,” Tonka said about her victims. Life didn't write it off.
If the first two women account for dozens of human lives, then Berta Borodkina (1927 -1983) and l And "Iron Bella" didn't kill anyone. She was the head of the trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik, an honored trade worker. She was shot for speculation and theft of Soviet property (from 1974 to 1982) on an especially large scale. This case was connected with a series of other major cases of abuse in the Kuban - the initiator of “restoring order” and the fight against corruption (and at the same time ousting Brezhnev personnel from leadership positions) was then Yu.V. Andropov, having entered into a fight with the owner of Kuban, Brezhnev’s front-line friend, S. Medunov.
As a result, more than 5,000 officials were dismissed from their posts and expelled from the ranks of the CPSU, approximately 1,500 people were convicted and received considerable sentences. Many died a strange death, and the first secretary of the Gelendzhik city committee of the CPSU Pogodin N.F. completely disappeared without a trace...
Among the corrupt officials was Iron Bella. She began working in the trade sector as a barmaid and waitress, and was later appointed to the position of canteen director.
Receptions of “dear and distinguished guests” from Moscow on the Black Sea coast cost a lot of money: the tables were luxurious, and trade and catering workers had to provide all this hospitality. And how to write off all this - this was also their “headache”, not the party leadership. And there were a lot of ways. From illegal body kit to completely legal tricks and savings. They say that Iron Bella came up with a special way to cook meat. By-Gelendzhik in 7 minutes- in which the meat at the exit in grams and volume is almost equal to its original amount at the entrance (not fried). And the difference, relying on frying in the usual way, could be put in your pocket, apparently. However, in this case the cooks were left with nothing - they had nothing to take home.
Berta Borodkina was arrested in 1982.
During the search, Borodkina was found to have many valuables, as well as large sums of money. It is believed that in total, during her activities, she received goods and funds worth more than a million rubles from her accomplices.
In 1982 she was sentenced to death. Her sister says that Berta complained that she was tortured in prison, that they beat her in the evenings and had her teeth removed without anesthesia. They say that she suffered from insanity in prison, but she was denied pardon due to non-participation in cultural events, etc. events. Probably, "Iron Bella" knew too much - and being alive, she was dangerous to someone...
The sentence was carried out in August 1983. Her ashes were not given to her relatives.
And S. Medunov lived to the end of his days in Moscow.
Materials and photographs from the program screen were used
Neither money nor high patrons for whom she worked devotedly saved her.
In the Soviet Union after 1950, the death penalty was the highest penalty. This punishment was mainly applied to male criminals - however, there were three women who were sentenced to death in the late USSR. Two of them were serial killers. Third, Bella Naumovna Borodkina, didn’t kill people. She managed the Gelendzhik public catering establishment and was an honored worker of trade and public catering of the RSFSR.
Way to success
Bella Borodkina was once called Bertha King. She was born in 1927 into a fairly wealthy family in the Ukrainian city of Bila Tserkva. If you believe the rumors, during the war she was the mistress of a Romanian deserter and even worked for German intelligence - but this data has never been confirmed. After the war, I decided to change my passport to change from Bertha to Bella. In 1951, she moved to Gelendzhik, got a job as a barmaid and married a middle-aged military man named Borodkin.
Her husband died a few years later. And Bella, a young, striking widow, began to make a career. Within ten years, she rose to decent heights - first becoming a restaurant director, and then heading a local catering chain.
Dear guests
Sergey Medunov, first secretary of the Krasnodar regional committee of the CPSU, greatly appreciated Bella Naumovna. If high-ranking officials from Moscow came to Kuban, their meals could be safely entrusted to Borodkina - she knew how to set tables for distinguished guests with such skill that even the most fastidious of those in power were more than satisfied.
pixabay.com As gratitude from a high patron, Bella Naumovna received the opportunity to sell scarce goods through the catering network; it was a real gold mine. And not the only one. Having started her career as a simple barmaid, Bella knew very well that meat can be under-served, that restaurant visitors, as a rule, do not notice if they are being overweight, and the drunk and wealthy can also be shortchanged. Bella quietly sold the meat saved on vacationers, without any reports, for barbecue. She personally taught the staff how to dilute drinks, tint weak coffee and tea with burnt sugar, and add inexpensive zubrovka to prestigious Armenian cognac. At meetings, she publicly reprimanded those who did not want to engage in counting and weighing vacationers. And she collected daily tribute from the heads of cafes, canteens and restaurants. Everyone paid - Bella was all-powerful. As a deputy, she went to regional meetings, was acquainted with many very influential people - and was confident in her unsinkability.
pixabay.com Fatal pornography
They took Iron Bella in 1982 because of pornographic films. Then, in the early eighties, VCRs and cassettes with foreign films had just begun to appear in the USSR; people made very good money by showing films for money, and erotic films for even more money. The problem was that the latter were banned: for owning a cassette with a film “about this” you could get a prison sentence. When several would-be film distributors were arrested, they quickly pawned Borodkina - they say that the films were shown in the cafe with her knowledge, and she received her share from each showing.
Perhaps no one would have thought of arresting Iron Bella because of such testimony, if not for the confrontation between the Andropov and Brezhnev clans. Under Medunov, Borodkina’s high patron, they were very actively digging at that time; there was a wave of fight against corruption in the Kuban. Bella's puncture was received with interest upstairs. And how inspired Medunov’s opponents were when during a search in Borodkina’s apartment, something like a museum storeroom was discovered - piles of gold and jewelry, mountains of furs, scarce crystal in abundance... And literally everywhere there were stacks of money stuffed - in closets, in pockets clothes, in glass jars and even under carpets. In total, about half a million rubles were found on Bella.
Retribution that no one expected
Bella Naumovna, when they came to arrest her, was calm and slightly ironic. She had breakfast, put on her makeup, and warned the police that tomorrow they would ask her for forgiveness. At first, she behaved just as calmly, even slightly impudently, during interrogations. But pretty soon she realized that she would not get out of prison - at least not in the near future. The very connections that had kept Bella afloat for many years were now dragging her down.
Borodkina spent a year in prison. During this time, she turned from a luxurious, albeit middle-aged, woman, always surrounded by impressive men, into a gray-haired, toothless old woman. On dates, she complained to her sister that they were beating her and pulling out her teeth without anesthesia. She tried to pretend to be crazy when she found out that she was facing capital punishment - and maybe she really became mentally damaged, losing everything and risking losing even her life itself. However, psychiatrists declared Bella sane.
Borodkina was sentenced to death and executed in August 1983.