Stalin's real name is Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. He was born on December 9 (21 according to the new style) 1879 in the Georgian city of Gori.
For most immigrants, the years of Stalin’s reign and his personality are associated with the process of industrialization, victory in the Great Patriotic War, as well as with the terrifying scale of repression, the number of victims of which elevates him to the rank of the most cruel and merciless ruler of his country. More than three million people were shot or sentenced to prison on political charges. Numerous cases of deportation, dispossession, and exile bring the number of victims of the Stalinist regime to twenty million people.
In today's times, most psychologists unanimously declare the significant influence of children's upbringing and family environment on the individual as a whole. So what is the reason for such Stalin?
According to historians, the leader’s childhood was not joyful and cloudless. Frequent clarification of the parents' relationship, accompanied by beatings of the mother by the never-drying father, could not pass without leaving a trace and not affect the growing boy. In order to suppress the feeling of helplessness in front of a strong male fist, the mother looked for an emotional outlet with the future leader, therefore, Stalin learned what beatings and cruel treatment were as a child. Since then, he understood for himself the principle of life - the one who is stronger is right. It was this course that he adhered to throughout his life.
Stalin took his first political steps in 1902, organizing a demonstration in Batumi. Over time, he becomes the leader of the Bolsheviks, makes acquaintance with Lenin and is considered an ardent supporter of his revolutionary ideas. In 1913, Joseph Dzhugashvili signed his new pseudonym for the first time, which stuck with him until the very end of his life. So Stalin’s reign takes place under a name known to the whole world. And she was preceded by about thirty others who never took root.
The years of Stalin's reign as the sovereign leader of the state began in 1929 and were accompanied by a period of collectivization, which resulted in famine and numerous deaths. In 1932, a law was adopted, popularly known as the “three ears of corn.” In accordance with its norms, if a collective farmer dying of hunger stole ears of wheat that he had grown from the state, he was subject to execution. The saved grain was sent for export, thus preparing the ground for industrialization. The proceeds were used to purchase the latest equipment produced by various countries not only in Europe, but also in America.
The years of Stalin's reign were also characterized by numerous repressions that began in 1936, when Stalin's closest friend, Bukharin, was appointed to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in 1938. This period is characterized by mass executions and exiles to Gulag camps.
No matter how cruel the ruler may be, such a policy is carried out for the benefit of the state, for its further development. What are the positive events that happened to the country during the years of Stalin's rule?
During his period, his authorities formed the social system of the state, with its economic, political and social institutions; carried out the modernization of the country, abandoning the NEP policy, and carrying out industrialization at the expense of the countryside; strategic decisions ensured victory in World War II; turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. The USSR became one of the world powers, a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
In 1953, Stalin passed away. The era of the reign of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili came to an end, which was replaced by the changed course of N. Khrushchev.
Introduction
The era of Stalin is a period in the history of the USSR when its leader was actually I.V. Stalin.
Stalin's period in power was marked by:
On the one hand: the accelerated industrialization of the country, mass labor and front-line heroism, victory in the Great Patriotic War, the transformation of the USSR into a superpower with significant scientific, industrial and military potential, the unprecedented strengthening of the geopolitical influence of the Soviet Union in the world, the establishment of pro-Soviet communist regimes in Eastern Europe and a number of countries in Southeast Asia;
On the other hand: the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorial regime, mass repressions, sometimes directed against entire social strata and ethnic groups (for example, the deportation of Crimean Tatars, Chechens and Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, Koreans), forced collectivization, which at an early stage led to a sharp decline in agriculture and the famine of 1932-1933, numerous human losses (as a result of wars, deportations, German occupation, famine and repression), the division of the world community into two warring camps and the beginning of the Cold War.
The Stalin era ended with the death of Stalin, but the consequences of his rule for Russia and other countries that were previously part of the USSR have not been eliminated in the 21st century (see, for example, the problem of ownership of the southern Kuril Islands).
According to Trotsky’s point of view, set out in his book “The Revolution Betrayed: What is the USSR and Where is It Going?”, Stalin’s Soviet Union was a deformed workers’ state.
1. Characteristics of the era
An analysis of Politburo decisions shows that their main goal was to maximize the difference between output and consumption, which required mass coercion. The emergence of surplus in the economy entailed a struggle between various administrative and regional interests for influence on the process of preparing and executing political decisions. The competition of these interests partly smoothed out the destructive consequences of hypercentralization.
2. Collectivization and industrialization
From the beginning of the 1930s, collectivization of agriculture was carried out - the unification of all peasant farms into centralized collective farms. To a large extent, the elimination of land ownership rights was a consequence of the solution to the “class issue”. In addition, according to the prevailing economic views of the time, large collective farms could operate more efficiently through the use of technology and the division of labor. Kulaks were imprisoned in labor camps without trial or exiled to remote areas of Siberia and the Far East.
Kulaks were imprisoned in labor camps or exiled to remote areas of Siberia and the Far East ( see Law on protecting the property of state enterprises, collective farms and cooperatives and strengthening public property).
Real prices for wheat on foreign markets fell from 5-6 dollars per bushel to less than 1 dollar.
Collectivization led to a decline in agriculture: according to official data, gross grain harvests decreased from 733.3 million centners in 1928 to 696.7 million centners in 1931-32. Grain yield in 1932 was 5.7 c/ha compared to 8.2 c/ha in 1913. Gross agricultural production was 124% in 1928 compared to 1913, in 1929-121%, in 1930-117%, in 1931-114%, in 1932-107%, in 1933-101% Livestock production in 1933 was 65% of the 1913 level. But at the expense of the peasants, the collection of commercial grain, which the country so needed for industrialization, increased by 20%.
Stalin's policy of industrialization of the USSR required more funds and equipment obtained from the export of wheat and other goods abroad. Greater plans were established for collective farms to deliver agricultural products to the state. mass famine of 1932-33, according to historians Who?, were the result of these grain procurement campaigns. The average standard of living of the population in rural areas did not reach the levels of 1929 until Stalin’s death (according to US data).
Industrialization, which, due to obvious necessity, began with the creation of basic branches of heavy industry, could not yet provide the market with the goods necessary for the village. The supply of the city through normal trade was disrupted; in 1924, the tax in kind was replaced by a cash tax. A vicious circle arose: to restore the balance it was necessary to accelerate industrialization, for this it was necessary to increase the influx of food, export products and labor from the countryside, and for this it was necessary to increase the production of bread, increase its marketability, create in the countryside a need for heavy industry products (machines ). The situation was complicated by the destruction during the revolution of the basis of commercial grain production in pre-revolutionary Russia - large landowner farms, and a project was needed to create something to replace them.
This vicious circle could only be broken through radical modernization of agriculture. Theoretically, there were three ways to do this. One is a new version of the “Stolypin reform”: support for the growing kulak, redistribution in its favor of the resources of the bulk of middle peasant farms, stratification of the village into large farmers and the proletariat. The second way is the elimination of pockets of capitalist economy (kulaks) and the formation of large mechanized collective farms. The third way - the gradual development of labor individual peasant farms with their cooperation at a “natural” pace - by all accounts turned out to be too slow. After the disruption of grain procurements in 1927, when it was necessary to take emergency measures (fixed prices, closing markets and even repression), and an even more catastrophic grain procurement campaign of 1928-1929. the issue had to be resolved urgently. Extraordinary measures during procurement in 1929, already perceived as something completely abnormal, caused about 1,300 riots. The path to creating farming through the stratification of the peasantry was incompatible with the Soviet project for ideological reasons. A course was set for collectivization. This also implied the liquidation of the kulaks.
The second cardinal issue is the choice of industrialization method. The discussion about this was difficult and long, and its outcome predetermined the character of the state and society. Not having, unlike Russia at the beginning of the century, foreign loans as an important source of funds, the USSR could industrialize only at the expense of internal resources. An influential group (Politburo member N.I. Bukharin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A.I. Rykov and Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions M.P. Tomsky) defended the “sparing” option of gradual accumulation of funds through the continuation of the NEP. L. D. Trotsky - forced version. J.V. Stalin initially supported Bukharin’s point of view, but after Trotsky was expelled from the party’s Central Committee at the end of 1927, he changed his position to the diametrically opposite one. This led to a decisive victory for the supporters of forced industrialization.
The question of how much these achievements contributed to victory in the Great Patriotic War remains a matter of debate. During Soviet times, the view was accepted that industrialization and pre-war rearmament played a decisive role. Critics point out that by the beginning of the winter of 1941, the territory was occupied, in which 42% of the population of the USSR lived before the war, 63% of coal was mined, 68% of cast iron was smelted, etc. As V. Lelchuk writes, “victory had to be achieved cannot be forged with the help of the powerful potential that was created during the years of accelerated industrialization.” However, the numbers speak for themselves. Despite the fact that in 1943 the USSR produced only 8.5 million tons of steel (compared to 18.3 million tons in 1940), while the German industry that year smelted more than 35 million tons (including those captured in Europe metallurgical plants), despite the colossal damage from the German invasion, the USSR industry was able to produce much more weapons than the German industry. In 1942, the USSR surpassed Germany in the production of tanks by 3.9 times, combat aircraft by 1.9 times, guns of all types by 3.1 times. At the same time, the organization and technology of production quickly improved: in 1944, the cost of all types of military products was halved compared to 1940. Record military production was achieved due to the fact that all new industry had a dual purpose. The industrial raw material base was prudently located beyond the Urals and Siberia, while the occupied territories were predominantly pre-revolutionary industry. The evacuation of industry to the Urals, Volga region, Siberia and Central Asia played a significant role. During the first three months of the war alone, 1,360 large (mostly military) enterprises were relocated.
For the years 1928-1940, according to CIA estimates, the average annual growth of the gross national product in the USSR was 6.1%, which was inferior to Japan, was comparable to the corresponding figure in Germany and was significantly higher than the growth in the most developed capitalist countries experiencing the “Great Depression” . As a result of industrialization, the USSR took first place in terms of industrial production in Europe and second in the world, overtaking England, Germany, France and second only to the United States. The USSR's share in world industrial production reached almost 10%. A particularly sharp leap was achieved in the development of metallurgy, energy, machine tool building, and the chemical industry. In fact, a whole series of new industries arose: aluminum, aviation, automobile industries, bearing production, tractor and tank construction. One of the most important results of industrialization was overcoming technical backwardness and establishing the economic independence of the USSR.
The rapid growth of the urban population has led to a deterioration in the housing situation; a period of “densification” passed again; workers arriving from the villages were housed in barracks. By the end of 1929, the card system was extended to almost all food products, and then to industrial products. However, even with cards it was impossible to obtain the necessary rations, and in 1931 additional “warrants” were introduced. It was impossible to buy food without standing in huge lines. According to data from the Smolensk party archive, in 1929 in Smolensk a worker received 600 g of bread per day, family members - 300, fat - from 200 g to a liter of vegetable oil per month, 1 kilogram of sugar per month; a worker received 30-36 meters of calico per year. Subsequently, the situation (until 1935) only worsened. The GPU noted acute discontent among the workers.
In 1933, a counter-revolutionary conspiracy of the “society of pederasts” was discovered in Moscow and Leningrad, in which 130 people were arrested. The OGPU identified and suppressed the activities of several groups that were engaged in “creating a network of salons, centers, dens, groups and other organized formations of pederasts with the further transformation of these associations into direct spy cells.” On Stalin's direct orders:
“The scoundrels need to be roughly punished, and appropriate guidelines must be introduced into legislation.”
On March 7, 1934, Article 121 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR was introduced, according to which sodomy was punishable by imprisonment.
As a result of Stalin's collectivization policy, which led to a decline in agriculture, the standard of living of the vast majority of rural residents declined sharply, and malnutrition spread throughout the entire territory of the USSR. In 1932, a massive famine broke out in the grain-producing regions of Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga, the Southern Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan, which claimed the lives of 4 to 11 million people over two years. Despite the famine, the country's leadership continued to sell grain for export.
However, the decline in agriculture was then overcome. In 1935, the rationing system for providing the population with food was abolished; grain harvest in 1940 amounted to 95.6 million tons (against 86 million tons in 1913), raw cotton - 2.24 million tons (0.74 million tons in 1913)
2.1. Changes in living standards
Despite rapid urbanization starting in 1928, by the end of Stalin's life the majority of the population still lived in rural areas, far from large industrial centers. On the other hand, one of the results of industrialization was the formation of a party and labor elite. Taking these circumstances into account, the change in living standards during 1928-1952. characterized by the following features (see below for more details):
The average standard of living throughout the country underwent significant fluctuations (especially associated with the first Five-Year Plan and the war), but in 1938 and 1952 it was higher or almost the same as in 1928.
The greatest increase in living standards was among the party and labor elite.
According to various estimates, the standard of living of the vast majority of rural residents has not improved or has worsened significantly.
Introduction of the passport system in 1932-1935. provided for restrictions for residents of rural areas: peasants were prohibited from moving to another area or going to work in the city without the consent of the board of a state farm or collective farm, which thus sharply limited their freedom of movement.
Cards for bread, cereals and pasta were abolished from January 1, 1935, and for other (including non-food) goods from January 1, 1936. This was accompanied by an increase in wages in the industrial sector and an even greater increase in state ration prices for all types of goods. Commenting on the abolition of cards, Stalin uttered what later became a catchphrase: “Life has become better, life has become more fun.”
Overall, per capita consumption increased by 22% between 1928 and 1938. Cards were reintroduced in July 1941. After the war and famine (drought) of 1946, they were abolished in 1947, although many goods remained in short supply, in particular there was another famine in 1947. In addition, on the eve of the abolition of cards, prices for ration goods were raised. The restoration of the economy allowed in 1948-1953. repeatedly reduce prices. Price reductions significantly increased the standard of living of Soviet people. In 1952, the cost of bread was 39% of the price at the end of 1947, milk - 72%, meat - 42%, sugar - 49%, butter - 37%. As noted at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, at the same time the price of bread increased by 28% in the USA, by 90% in England, and more than doubled in France; the cost of meat in the USA increased by 26%, in England - by 35%, in France - by 88%. If in 1948 real wages were on average 20% lower than the pre-war level, then in 1952 they were already 25% higher than the pre-war level.
The average standard of living of the population in regions remote from large cities and specializing in crop production, that is, the majority of the country's population, did not reach the levels of 1929 before the start of the war. In the year of Stalin's death, the average calorie content of the daily diet of an agricultural worker was 17% lower than the level of 1928 of the year .
3. Demographics in the era
4. Stalin's repressions
On December 1, 1934, after the murder of Kirov, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution “On amendments to the current criminal procedural codes of the Union republics” with the following content, signed by the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR M. I. Kalinin and the Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR A. S. Enukidze:
|
Make the following changes to the current criminal procedural codes of the union republics for the investigation and consideration of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against employees of the Soviet government: 1. The investigation in these cases should be completed within no more than ten days; |
The mass terror of the Yezhovshchina period was carried out by the then authorities of the country throughout the entire territory of the USSR (and, at the same time, in the territories of Mongolia, Tuva and Republican Spain controlled at that time by the Soviet regime
), based on the figures of “planned targets” “released into place” by Yezhov to identify and punish people who harmed the Soviet government (the so-called “enemies of the people”).
During the Yezhovshchina, torture was widely used against those arrested; sentences that were not subject to appeal (often to death) were passed without any trial - and were carried out immediately (often even before the verdict was passed); all property of the absolute majority of arrested people was immediately confiscated; the relatives of the repressed themselves were subjected to the same repressions - for the mere fact of their relationship with them; Children of repressed persons left without parents (regardless of their age) were also placed, as a rule, in prisons, camps, colonies, or in special “orphanages for children of enemies of the people.” In 1935, it became possible to attract minors, starting from the age of 12, to capital punishment (execution).
In 1937, 353,074 people were sentenced to death (not all those sentenced were shot), in 1938 - 328,618, in 1939-2,601. According to Richard Pipes, in 1937-1938 the NKVD arrested about 1.5 million people, of whom about 700 thousand were executed, that is, on average, 1,000 executions per day.
Historian V.N. Zemskov names a similar figure, arguing that “in the most cruel period - 1937-38 - more than 1.3 million people were convicted, of whom almost 700,000 were shot,” and in another of his publications he clarifies: “according to documented data, in 1937-1938. 1,344,923 people were convicted for political reasons, of which 681,692 were sentenced to capital punishment.” It should be noted that Zemskov personally participated in the work of the commission, which worked in 1990-1993. and considered the issue of repression.
As a result of Yezhov’s activities, more than seven hundred thousand people were sentenced to death: in 1937, 353,074 people were sentenced to death, in 1938 - 328,618, in 1939 (after Yezhov’s resignation) - 2,601. Yezhov himself was subsequently arrested and sentenced to death. More than 1.5 million people suffered from repression in 1937-1938 alone.
As a result of famine, repression and deportations, mortality exceeded the “normal” level in the period 1927-1938. amounted, according to various estimates, from 4 to 12 million people.
In 1937-1938 Bukharin, Rykov, Tukhachevsky and other political figures and military leaders were arrested, including those who at one time contributed to Stalin’s rise to power.
The attitude of representatives of society adhering to liberal democratic values is reflected in particular in their assessment of the repressions carried out during the Stalin era against a number of nationalities of the USSR: in the RSFSR Law of April 26, 1991 No. 1107-I “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples”, signed by the President RSFSR B. N. Yeltsin, it is argued that in relation to a number of peoples of the USSR at the state level, on the basis of nationality or other affiliation “a policy of slander and genocide was pursued”.
5. War
According to modern historians, arguments about the quantitative or qualitative superiority of German technology on the eve of the war are unfounded. On the contrary, in terms of certain parameters (the number and weight of tanks, the number of aircraft), the Red Army grouping along the western border of the USSR was significantly superior to the similar Wehrmacht grouping.
6. Post-war period
However, human losses did not end with the war, in which they amounted to about 27 million. The famine of 1946-1947 alone claimed the lives of from 0.8 to two million people.
In the shortest possible time, the national economy, transport, housing stock, and destroyed settlements in the former occupied territory were restored.
State security agencies took harsh measures to suppress nationalist movements that were actively manifested in the Baltic states and Western Ukraine.
6.1. The fight against cosmopolitanism
All Jewish educational institutions, theaters, publishing houses and media were closed (except for the newspaper of the Jewish Autonomous Region “Birobidzhaner Shtern” ( Birobidzhan star) and the magazine "Soviet Gameland"). Mass arrests and dismissals of Jews began. In the winter of 1953, rumors circulated about the supposed impending deportation of Jews; the question of whether these rumors were true is debatable.
7. Science in the era of Stalin
Entire scientific fields, such as genetics and cybernetics, were declared bourgeois and banned, which slowed down the development of these areas of science in the USSR for decades. According to historians, many scientists, for example, academician Nikolai Vavilov and other most influential anti-Lysenkoists, were repressed with the direct participation of Stalin.
The first Soviet computer M-1 was built in May-August 1948, but computers continued to be created further, despite the persecution of cybernetics. The Russian genetics school, considered one of the best in the world, was completely destroyed. Under Stalin, state support was given to trends that were sharply condemned in the post-Stalin era (in particular, the so-called “Lysenkoism” in biology).
The development of Soviet natural sciences (except biology) and technology under Stalin can be described as taking off. The created network of fundamental and applied research institutes, design bureaus and university laboratories, as well as prison-camp design bureaus, covered the entire front of research. Names such as physicists Kurchatov, Landau, Tamm, mathematician Keldysh, creator of space technology Korolev, aircraft designer Tupolev are known all over the world. In the post-war period, based on obvious military needs, the greatest attention was paid to nuclear physics.
As stated by Yu.A., who communicated with Stalin. Zhdanov, “the decision to build Moscow State University was supplemented by a set of measures to improve all universities, primarily in cities affected by the war. Large buildings in Minsk, Voronezh, and Kharkov were transferred to universities. Universities in a number of Union republics began to actively create and develop.”
8. Culture of the Stalin era
List of films of the Stalin era
Bibliography:
Gregory P., Harrison M. Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archives // Journal of Economic Literature. 2005. Vol. 43. P. 721. (English)
See review: Khlevniuk O. Stalinism and the Stalin Period after the “Archival Revolution” // Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 2001. Vol. 2, No. 2. P. 319. DOI:10.1353/kri.2008.0052
The role of agriculture in economics… - Google Books
M. Geller, A. Nekrich History of Russia: 1917-1995
Allen R. C. The standard of living in the Soviet Union, 1928-1940 // Univ. of British Columbia, Dept. of Economics. Discussion Paper No. 97-18. August, 1997. (English)
Nove A. About the fate of the NEP // Questions of history. 1989. No. 8. - P. 172
Lelchuk V. Industrialization
MFIT Reform of the defense complex. Military Herald
victory.mil.ru The movement of the USSR's productive forces to the east
I. Economics - World revolution and world war - V. Rogovin
Industrialization
A. Chernyavsky Shot in the Mausoleum. Khabarovsk Pacific Star, 2006-06-21
See review: Demographic modernization of Russia 1900-2000 / Ed. A. Vishnevsky. M.: New publishing house, 2006. Ch. 5.
CHRONOLOGY OF IMPORTANT EVENTS AND DATES. 1922-1940 » World History
The national economy of the USSR in 1960. - M.: Gosstatizdat TsSU USSR, 1961
Chapman J. G. Real Wages in the Soviet Union, 1928-1952 // Review of Economics and Statistics. 1954. Vol. 36, No. 2. P. 134. DOI:10.2307/1924665 (English)
Jasny N. Soviet industrialization, 1928-1952. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Post-war reconstruction and economic development of the USSR in the 40s - early 50s. / Katsva L. A. Distance course in the History of the Fatherland for applicants.
Popov V. Passport system of Soviet serfdom // New world. 1996. No. 6.
Nineteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Bulletin No. 8, p.22 - M: Pravda, 1952.
Wheatcroft S. G. The first 35 years of Soviet living standards: Secular growth and conjunctural crises in a time of famines // Explorations in Economic History. 2009. Vol. 46, No. 1. P. 24. DOI:10.1016/j.eeh.2008.06.002 (English)
See review: Denisenko M. Demographic crisis in the USSR in the first half of the 1930s: estimates of losses and problems of study // Historical demography. Collection of articles / Ed. Denisenko M. B., Troitskaya I. A. - M.: MAKS Press, 2008. - P. 106-142. - (Demographic Studies, Vol. 14)
Documents on repression
Great Russian Encyclopedia. Volume 4. Great Terror.
See Explanation to the court and prosecutor's office dated 04/20/1935 and the previous Resolution of the Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated 04/07/1935 “On measures to combat juvenile delinquency”
STATISTICS OF THE REPRESSIVE ACTIVITIES OF THE SECURITY BODIES OF THE USSR FOR THE PERIOD FROM 1921 TO 1940.
Richard Pipes. Communism: A History (Modern Library Chronicles), p. 67.
Internet vs TV screen
On the issue of the scale of repression in the USSR // Viktor Zemskov
http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2001/zemskov.html
The case of the “Iron Commissar”
Meltyukhov M. I. Stalin's missed chance. The Soviet Union and the struggle for Europe: 1939-1941. - M.: Veche, 2000. - Ch. 12. The place of the “Eastern Campaign” in the German strategy of 1940-1941. and the forces of the parties at the start of Operation Barbarossa
Ginzberg L. I. Review of the book: G. V. Kostyrchenko. Stalin's secret politics: power and anti-Semitism. - M., 2001. // “Questions of History”, No. 2, 2002, pp. 164-166
Nikolai Krementsov (1997). "Stalinist science", p. 54-253, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
Alexei Kojevnikov, 1998, “Rituals of Stalinist Culture at Work: Science and the Games of Intraparty Democracy circa 1948”, Russian Review 57, 25-52
Alexei Kojevnikov, 2008, “The Phenomenon of Soviet Science”, OSIRIS 23, 115-135
Nikolai Krementsov (1997). "Stalinist science", p. 232, 325, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
Esakov V.D. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov. Biography pages. - M.: Nauka, 2008, p. 228-229, 255
http://www.mk.ru/9759/9759.html Electronic great-grandmother. Alexander Dobrovolsky.
Yu.A. Zhdanov Stalin and the construction of the Main Building of Moscow State University
Why is she so hated by the authorities in the Kremlin, the home-grown “liberal democrats” and the masters of the “civilized world”.
I live in Mordovia and have witnessed the historical events of the last 35 years. Now it is fashionable to remember, and mostly invent, about the blue blood or at least the kulak origin of family ancestors.
My parents’ generation in pre-revolutionary Russia consisted entirely of workers and peasants, and therefore I am proud of them. It was they who created the great Soviet state, where social justice was not an empty word, where people had confidence in the future. Everything is relative. I have something to compare with, past and present. There is something to compare with other eyewitnesses. That is why it is so important for the enemies of Russia to destroy this memory. They give a special place to the Stalin era, therefore our historical past is a cudgel in the political struggle.
From my childhood, I remember my grandmother, a Mordovian by nationality. She, like my grandfather, were illiterate peasants from the poor. Nowadays they are called drunks and parasites. I remember her soft, calm character, how she rejoiced and fussed when my father and I came to visit her from the city, to the Mordovian village of Otradnoye.
I didn't notice that she ever prayed, obviously she was an atheist. A special place, I remember her words when the conversation turned to the death of Stalin. She explained that when he died, the whole village cried. She also cried, because she was sure that the landowners and kulaks would now come to power. Not much wrong.
You think the kulaks of the Soviet era, as they are now called, were hard workers and honest entrepreneurs. You are wrong. These were ordinary world-eaters or “effective owners.” They received their main income from the needs of fellow villagers, giving them grain on credit at 250-300%, and for agricultural rent. inventory, burdening them with various quitrents. The kulak created reserves of grain, buying it from fellow villagers and really influenced prices on the market. It was economic power, and therefore, in many ways, political power in the countryside. Having caused a grain procurement crisis in 1927, withholding grain from sale, because The international situation became more complicated and the smell of war was in the air. No hard feelings, just business. As they say, they got caught up in greed and got collectivization. And when they started killing collective farm activists and burning collective farm barns, they deserved to be dispossessed.
Now it is fashionable to condemn terrorists, but it was the kulaks who carried out mass terror, both against fellow villagers who joined the collective farm, and against party activists in the countryside. Realizing the power floats away from their hands. True, now this terror is considered legitimate and justified. Do you think that their fellow villagers felt sympathy for them during dispossession? You are wrong again. My grandmother hated them. Ask yourself how you feel about a person who is in debt bondage and he is sucking all the juice out of you. Remember those evicted by banks from mortgaged apartments.
A similar exile or dispossession was carried out by Stolypin, only the peasants were driven to a new place by hunger and need. According to many historians, the Stolypin reform failed because was not prepared by the authorities, so most of the settlers returned, but they had already lost what little they had previously had. This means that, apart from fate, they become farm laborers, they had no food for the stew. Nobody was waiting for them in the cities.
Stolypin dreamed of eliminating communities and creating more kulaks. I didn’t understand that I was digging the grave of tsarism and my class when I destroyed the community. Now they try not to remember that during this period of time, 7 million farmers in the United States were kicked out of their land by banks for non-payment of debts. Most of them died of hunger. By the way, almost all the photographs shown at the exhibitions of “Nezalezhnaya”, as victims of “Stalin’s tyranny” and the “Holodomor” he organized in 32-33, are photographs of precisely the consequences of famine in the USA during the Great Depression. The more monstrous the lie, the more truthful it is.
According to official data, about 380 thousand families, total number of 1,803,392 hours., of which were resettled on specific plots of land 1,421,380 h., the rest mostly fled, because... The passport system was introduced in the USSR in 1934. This is a note to those who claim that peasants under Soviet rule were serfs.
Tvardovsky’s father was also dispossessed and ran away from exile to join his son in Moscow. Tvardovsky sent him back at his own expense. During Stalin’s lifetime, this writer praised him to the skies; after his death, he was in the forefront of denunciations of the “cult of personality.”
Immigrants before 1934 were exempt from taxes.. These special. migrants by 1938, according to the “Certificate on the state of the GULAG labor settlements in the NKVD of the USSR”: They had 1,106 primary, 370 junior high and 136 secondary schools, 12 technical schools and 230 vocational schools. A total of 217,456 students are children of labor settlers. For cultural and mass work in these villages, there was 813 clubs, 1202 reading rooms, 440 cinemas, 1149 libraries. Gradually they were restored to all civil rights. With special status migrants by 1950, there were about 20 thousand people.
You say innocent people suffered. The concept of innocent is different for everyone. I believe that guilt is determined by the law of that era. If you don’t like the law, then call those convicted of that time fighters against “Stalin’s tyranny,” but not innocent.
The Bolsheviks did not call themselves innocent victims of tsarism; these words would have sounded stupid and ridiculous. Yes, there have been and always will be innocent people, both here and throughout the world. But many who committed chaos during dispossession are now recorded as victims of “Stalin’s tyranny.” These victims of “Stalin's tyranny” committed terror and abuse of power; now many of their actions can safely be called terrorist acts.
And many “innocent” people dreamed and sought to divide the USSR, for their loved ones, in order to settle down at the feeding trough, new “independent” states, as happened in 1991. Or squander state lands, that is, donate them to the “civilized world” in order to receive them recognition and support. How do you feel about them? Everyone relates differently. Many terrorist attacks by Chechen religious obscurantists, ISIS, and Binder’s Nazis are considered justified by the struggle for democracy and freedom. They just forget to say that in the USSR at that time, as now in the Russian Federation, the laws are more humane than in “civilized countries.” Eg. On May 16, 1918, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the Espionage Act, according to which anyone “speaks orally or in writing in a disloyal, slanderous, rude or insulting tone about the form of government or in relation to the Constitution of the United States or in relations with the armed forces forces,” faces up to 20 years in prison or a fine of up to $10,000. This is what “democracy” is like there. What is prohibited among them is encouraged and considered democracy among others. Currently, the legislation there and in other “civilized countries” has been sufficiently improved, that is, the concept of a crime against the state has been expanded, and the punishment has become more severe.
Many “liberal democrats” argued that there were no saboteurs, spies, or terrorists in the USSR. I give statistics only for the RSFSR, but there were other republics of the USSR. In the period from 1921 to June 22, 1941, over 936 thousand people, approximately 128 people each, were detained for violators of the USSR border alone. in a day! In addition, during this period, over 30 thousand spies, saboteurs, over 40 thousand armed bandits were detained, and 1,119 gangs were liquidated. So little things. Even from these figures, it is obvious what kind of living conditions the “civilized guys” suited us.
Our Mordovian family of 8 people, before the war, had two cows, piglets, and chickens. Grandmother worked on a collective farm. Grandfather was a hired shepherd. In his free time, in the artel he dug wells in the villages. These people are now called shabashniks or small entrepreneurs. And he was never a member of any collective farm. This is about a fairy tale, about serfs before the war. The fields of collective farms were cultivated by tractors, and the harvest was harvested by MTS combines. The experience with MTS is currently being used in the USA. Why should a farm buy expensive equipment if it can be hired during the agricultural period without the risk of ruin? works This was the case in WWII. Our family sold the surplus milk through the collective farm, to the Consumer Cooperation (KOPTORG). Even in perestroika times, scarce products were sold there without problems, naturally more expensive than in state stores. But most importantly, collective farmers could sell the products from their personal farms, because there were markets. Who understands how much food these animals need? He will understand that without the support of the collective farm, this is not possible.
The older children studied at a seven-year school. In 1935, the card system was abolished and there were no problems with food and basic goods. Even in August 1941 in Leningrad, sausage was freely available in stores. My mother's half-sister told me about this. She lived in Leningrad and was a member of the militia that defended the city. I didn’t believe it and asked to confirm what was said. She confirmed that food was on sale in stores in August, even sausage, but it never occurred to her to buy more than she could immediately eat.
Many people now tell tales about the insignificance of the size of personal plots of that era. In 1935, at the 11th Congress of Collective Farmers - Shock Workers, the size of collective farmers' private farms was established from 0.2 to 0.5 hectares, and in some areas - up to 1 hectare. Household land did not include residential buildings. The quantity was set: up to 2 - 3 cows, 2 - 3 pigs, sows, from 20 - 25 sheep and goats, etc., an unlimited number of poultry and rabbits, up to 20 beehives. And only under Khrushchev these plots were cut right under the walls of the villagers’ houses.
Yes, there was starvation during and immediately after the war. My father told me that they made dung from cow dung and subsequently used it to heat the stoves in the huts. Weaved bast shoes, because... there was nothing to wear. We ate bread with quinoa. The first cow was slaughtered because... there was no feed, the second died in 1944. I remembered how their children stole spikelets from the collective farm fields and how they were persecuted for this, how their younger brother died of exhaustion and illness. He also remembers that his father went missing near Kharkov in 1942, so the pension was paid in a smaller amount than those recognized as dead. And I think it's right. He remembers that they cut down the apple trees, because... Before 1947, there was a tax on literally all household plots. But most importantly, with rare exceptions, it was hard for everyone, and therefore no one complained, everyone brought victory closer as best they could. Children studied in schools. Despite the difficulties they survived the war. How do you think? Now a single woman can raise and raise five children.
After the war, life became better every year. After the monetary reform in 1947, taxes on personal plots and personal agriculture were abolished. animals. People began to acquire farming. animals, from that time there were luxurious gardens, I remember the cherry orchard on seven acres, planted by my father and his older brother in 1951. Every year until 1953, prices for literally everything were reduced, salary. increased. And prices on average fell 2.5 times for almost all products and goods. My parents said that everyone had already gotten used to it and was looking forward to the New Year with joy. The elder brother moved to the village of Chamzinka, the sisters moved to Nizhny Tagil in the late 40s. years. This is a note to those who tell the tale about collective farm serfdom after wartime.
But then Khrushchev came to power, the denouncer of “Stalin’s tyranny”, and during Stalin’s life, his main public admirer and sycophant. He was in the forefront, kissing Stalin in one place, and he kissed this place less than thirty times during one performance. Khrushchev, along with Eikhe, Kasior, Postyshev, Chubar, Kosarev, were the most active initiators of “mass repressions” in 1937 - 1938. It was they who, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) in 1937, demanded for themselves special powers to fight with "enemies of the people". They were given these powers. They distinguished themselves by destroying their opponents and those who disagreed with their policies in the party. For their bloody lawlessness and abuse, they were shot. There were no untouchables then. You earned it, so get what you deserve.
It was for them that Khrushchev shed tears at the 20th Congress, as innocent victims of “Stalin’s tyranny.” Now these guys have naturally been rehabilitated; how else could they be victims of a “tyrant”. He had shed tears before. He himself recalled:
“When Stalin was buried, I had tears in my eyes. These were sincere tears."
As they say, super hypocritical scum, how can one not believe such a thing, the Lord God himself “recommends” believing such a thing. He himself wrote denunciations:
“Dear Joseph Vassarionovich! Ukraine monthly sends 17-18 thousand repressed enemies of the people, and Moscow approves no more than 2-3 thousand. I ask you to take urgent measures. N. Khrushchev, who loves you.”
He talked about approving sentences. And when Stalin reproachfully asked him whether he had found too many enemies in Ukraine, he replied that there were “in fact much more”
After coming to power, Khrushchev told a fairy tale that Stalin was going to increase the tax on collective farmers and only the death of this “tyrant” saved the peasants from poverty, that is, he showed himself to be a defender of the peasants. But Khrushchev started with personal plots, almost completely took them away from collective farmers and established taxes on agriculture. animals. Collective farmers put the animals under the knife. This led to a shortage of meat products. He explained his policy by saying that collective farmers should not be distracted by personal farming, because the USSR should build communism. Then at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU he announced the construction of Communism in 2000, not forgetting to tell another tale about the “tyrant Stalin”, who destroyed 2/3 of the participants in the 17th Congress of the CPSU (b) in 1934, this congress is called the “Congress of Winners” .
The corn saga has begun. She was planted where needed and where not needed. As Khrushchev said, corn is food for animals and people. MTS was disbanded and transferred equipment to collective farms, of course for money, which led not only to downtime due to breakdowns, because... there was no repair base, but also to the debt bondage of collective farms, and subsequently to their miserable existence. Stalin in his work: "Economic problems of socialism". He warned that the transfer of agricultural equipment to collective farms will lead to their bankruptcy and their forced consolidation, which will lead to the formation of unpromising villages. Like looking into the water.
After Khrushchev’s art, a shortage began, from bread and meat to shoes. Prices have skyrocketed. They raised prices, naturally, on behalf of and for the people, just as they are now planning to raise the retirement age for the people. It was not for nothing that Stalin called him an ever-experimenting agronomist, which means he must be looked after. At that time, Khrushchev repented and promised to improve. I didn’t forget to give a speech of praise to the “teacher.” Yes, he was a rare piece of rot, like most of the Soviet creative intelligentsia, and even the modern Russian intelligentsia, he is not particularly different from them.
It’s not surprising that modern “democrats” and “liberals” value Khrushchev so much, but the people then really hated him. But our fighters for “democracy” and “free enterprise” forget to say that before Stalin’s death, in the USSR they produced products, 114,000 workshops and industrial enterprises, they were called an artel, at the moment they are called small and medium-sized businesses. But the difference was that the artels were engaged in the production and marketing of their products, but the prices were no more than 10-15% of the state ones. There were 2 million such entrepreneurs. And they produced mainly consumer goods, which amounted to 6% of GDP. Which made up 40% of furniture, 1/3 of knitwear, almost all children's toys. Stalin understood that some industries needed rapid changes in the products themselves. For example, tailoring of clothes and shoes, because... fashion changes quickly. Having come to power, Khrushchev determined that artels are a relic of capitalism. The result, many remember, was that stores sold products in excess, which no one wanted to buy, these are the consequences of Khrushchev’s “thaw.” With him, the gradual destruction of socialism and its gains began; it was no longer communists who fought for social justice, but animal careerists who began to penetrate into the party. As they say, such is the priest, such is the arrival. The result is known. Showing off and deception have become everyday life, including in real Russia.
Before perestroika, the Mordovian village of Otradnoe, my father’s homeland, had about 300 households, almost every family had a cow and piglets, many had calves. There were three herds, which were tended by fellow villagers in turns. Collective farms provided feed and the opportunity to prepare it. The potatoes were sold. Now there is devastation in Otradnoye and neighboring villages. I ask one of my relatives why you don’t raise livestock. I received the answer that at such a price for feed, raising animals is not profitable. Potatoes are not sold because... purchase prices are too low.
It's the same story with milk. Now they are creating landowner farms, the same slippage, there are no honest slaves who are ready to work for a bowl of stew, cheap loans are not available, expensive equipment, mostly imported. Where is the domestic one? They tell us the equipment is not of high quality. So “effective owners” and the existing government, why do we need you if you cannot create high-quality equipment, under socialism it was high-quality. They created a state where all the people and entrepreneurs work on the profits of commercial banks, which, with the help of the authorities, put almost all enterprises and the majority of the population into debt bondage. Where will high-quality equipment come from, miracles cannot happen.
They sing to us that the farmer will feed us, Stalin is to blame, he slaughtered the hard-working peasants and destroyed the gene pool. My grandmother has already spoken about these men. But what about the gentlemen, the Soviet men and women who fed the country and the army during the Second World War and the entire Soviet people under socialism. Why haven’t you created the government in 30 years of “hard-working peasants”? No one needs these “hard-working men” except you. The state and the people need agronomists, livestock specialists, machine operators, agricultural specialists...
We do not live in the 19th century, when we plowed on horses with plows and mowed with sickles. Expensive equipment will pay for itself only if the production is large-scale. In the USA, more than 10 thousand small and medium-sized farmers go bankrupt every year. Nothing better than a large collective farm has been invented. In Israel, 90% is agricultural. Products are not even produced by collective farms, something similar to communes. You choose, the revival of landowners or, as in Israel, collective farms. But for this, very little to the state was led by a patriot and business executive, and not by a colonial manager and the great swindler of Russia. I have not personally met an agricultural resident. localities, namely workers who dreamed of working for landowners or as farm laborers for farmers. If they had a choice, they would prefer something similar to a collective farm.
Why is the Stalin era hated by the enemies of the country from the “civilized world” and the modern “democratic-liberal” public of Russia? Statistics are stubborn things. Everything is relative. According to the agricultural census:
- In 1927 (basically the USSR was equal in GDP volume to Russia in 1913), the gross grain harvest was 40.8 million, in 1940 - 95.6 million tons, peasants owned 29.9 million heads of cows,
- in 1941 - 54.8 million cows.
In 1942, 10 million heads of cattle were evacuated from Ukraine. Now there are only 5 million heads on the Square. This is food for thought for some.
Granulated sugar production increased in 1927 - from 1283 thousand tons to 2421 thousand tons in 1937.
By industry: Cars were produced by 1913 (screwdriver production) - 0.8 thousand units. In 1937 alone - 200 thousand units were produced.
Email energy, in 1913 they produced 2 billion kW, in 1940 - 48.37 billion kW.
Between 1932 and 1936, collective farms received 500 thousand tractors and more than 150 thousand combines. Since 1934, the country has completely abandoned agricultural imports. equipment and cars.
In 1928, 0.8 thousand machine tools were produced (before 1913, machine tools were imported), in 1940 - 48.5 thousand machine tools.
Now lathes are imported from Bulgaria. We've reached it. And it should be especially interesting for our “liberal democrats” who claim that growth was due to heavy industry. In 1913, 58 million pairs were produced, and already in 1940 -183 ml. steam. leather shoes. The list can be endless.
In the period from 1913 (1927), GDP grew more than 10 times. Everything is relative. In 1913, the Russian Empire ranked fifth in the world in terms of GDP, that is, 5.3% of the world. In 1938, the USSR occupied second place in the world in terms of GDP, that is, in production, namely 13.7%. Second only to the United States, which produced 41.9% of the world.
Who doesn’t understand what achievements there were. I'll try to explain. Money is paper. The equivalent of this paper is GDP, which is mainly production. How could the population live worse in the Stalinist era, as we are constantly told, compared to 1913, if the money supply backed by products, and therefore the purchasing power of the population, increased almost 10 times. Under Stalin, capital was not exported abroad; Soviet workers did not have accounts there. Guys like Pyatakov, who received kickbacks for purchasing technology in the “civilized world,” were put up against the wall.
Man does not live by bread alone. In 1914, there were 91 universities in the Russian Empire and 112 thousand students studied there, most of them with paid education, as in gymnasiums. In 1939, there were 750 universities in the USSR, with 620 thousand students studying there. This does not include technical schools.
Nowadays there is a lot of “broadcast” that the Russian Empire before 1913 was industrialized and fed the whole world. I indicated above what kind of industry it was. A country cannot have a scientific and technical base and developed industry if during this period about 15% of the population lived in rural areas, if 80% of the population was illiterate. For comparison.
In the United States during this period, 50% were literate, only among black US citizens. We are also “broadcast” that Russia ranked first in terms of growth rates. For some reason, Russia did not show its growth during the First World War (WWII). Here are the official statistics. During the WWII period, weapons were manufactured in units, I will give an example: 1. For machine guns; Russia – 28 thousand, England – 23.9 thousand, USA – 75 thousand, Germany – 280 thousand, Austria-Hungary – 40 thousand..2. Artillery; Russia – 11.7 thousand, England – 25.4 thousand, USA – 4 thousand, Germany – 64 thousand, Austria – 15.9 thousand; 3. Airplanes - Russia - 3.5 thousand (80% of engines are imported), England - 47.8 thousand, USA - 13.8 thousand, Germany - 4.73 thousand, Austria - Hungary 5.4 thousand. , 4. Tanks; Russia - 0, England - 3 thousand, France - 4.5 thousand, Germany - 70. Even Italy produced 4.5 thousand aircraft.
The result of such industrial development is known. Yes, there were those who fought valiantly, there were also heroes. But everything is learned by comparison. And the truth is this. According to Tsentrollenbezh, 3.9111 million former military personnel of the Russian army were captured by the enemy. Of these, there are 2.385 million in Germany, of which more than 70 are generals. Compared. On September 1, 1918, the Russian army captured more than half as many prisoners. You will say that there were the same number of prisoners during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). But you forget about 2 million Russian military personnel died in WWI. Empire, and in the Second World War there were about 8 million spacecraft and self-propelled forces of the USSR. The difference is significant. There is something to compare with. This is called the concept of courage.
A war cannot be won if a country is economically backward. When its elite is rotting and it is not able to think adequately, it is not able to create a scientific and technical base and industry. And at the same time, she believes that bad people, who are brilliant and kind, always owe something. And therefore, according to their views, it is the people who are to blame for the country’s troubles. That is, the boyars are good, the tsar is good, the people are not full-fledged. There is also ideological research - the king is good, the boyars are bad, the people are also good. Nowadays this theory is often applied to V.V. and Putin.
By the way, the same ideology is professed by the Chief Euro - the communist Zyuganov. The same theory is professed by the Euro communist Zyuganov. The third indoctrination of the consciousness of the people - the bad and stupid Russian people can only be ruled by tyrants, and since its king and its elite are soft and fluffy, therefore, these people need to be introduced to the “democratic values” of the “civilized world”. The last “brilliant idea” comes from over the hill. Who reads the statements of Kyiv trolls on social media? networks will understand me. This is exactly what the Russian Empire was like at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The same situation is in the modern former USSR, that is, Russia.
It doesn’t work out with the great agricultural power that fed the whole world. Yes, indeed, Russia exported a significant part of grain crops. In 1913, it ranked first in the world in exports, that is, 22.10%. Argentina – 21.34%. USA – 12.15%, Canada – 9.58%. But they forget to clarify that this year, with a record harvest in Russia, 30.3 pounds of grain were collected per capita, in the USA - 64.3 pounds, Argentina - 87.4 pounds, Canada - 121 pounds. And this is all grain, including for feeding livestock. That is, Russia itself did not have enough bread and at the same time it exported, mainly at the expense of landowners’ farms. What else could Russia export besides grain and raw materials?
China also exported rice during the Cultural Revolution, as did the USSR until 1941. Food shortages often led to famine when the harvest failed, even in certain areas of the country. The main periods of the Tsarina - famine occurred in 1901, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1911 - 1912.
In the winter of 1900/01, 42 million starved, 2 million 813 thousand Orthodox souls died of hunger. And in 1911 (after the much-praised Stolypin reforms), 32 million people were starving, with losses of 1 million 613 thousand people. By the way, Stolypin himself told us this while speaking before the State Duma. Information about the hungry and those who died of hunger was provided from church parishes, elders and landowners. And how many were not taken into account, Old Believers and non-Orthodox.
By the way, in 1912, 54.4% of all grain was exported, because prices on the world market for these products have increased. Some “historians” claim that Russia at that time was selling a record amount of butter on the world market. As they say, the more monstrous the lie, the more truthful it is. Interesting. How exactly were these products imported if the shelf life of butter is several days. Refrigerated containers were almost non-existent back then. I quote the words of the Minister of Agriculture of Russia. Empire from 1915 - 16: “Russia actually does not get out of the state of hunger, in one or another province, both before the war and during the war.”
The “broadcasters” don’t even have the power of the gold ruble. Vvito, or as Witte - Polusakhalinsky then began to call him, he was something like a mixture of Kudrin and Greff, so the “liberals” pray to him, with his “brilliant” reforms, he put Russia on a debt needle, subsequently the debt increased, and with debts and interest on them from 4.5 to 6%. By 1913, the external state. The Empire's debt was 8.85 billion, and by the summer of 1917 it reached 15.507 billion gold rubles. Who doesn't understand what kind of money these are? Let me remind you that the gold reserves of the Russian Empire amounted to about 3 billion gold rubles. That is, Russia was in debt bondage. You've probably heard about Kolchak's gold.
Facts are stubborn things, they are difficult to refute. Then they came up with another story. The achievements of the Stalin era were achieved by monstrous methods, innocent prisoners and their slave labor. The USSR had no enemies or swindlers, only angels. The population of the USSR, naturally, during collectivization and industrialization, was subjected to repression by tens of millions. There were achievements due to their inhumane exploitation, but tens of millions of children were not born because of the “tyrant Stalin”. A special place in this tale is given to the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars dated August 7, 1932, now called the “Law on Three Spikelets”, naturally they were shot and imprisoned for 5 to 10 years, for three spikelets. Only the denouncers of “Stalin’s tyranny” forget to clarify that these punishments were applied for major thefts, while for small things the criminal law of the Union Republics was in effect. According to the official version of the authorities of the Russian Federation, the most monstrous and bloodiest year of 1937, in the ITR, ITC and prisons (prisons were then pre-trial detention centers), then 1,196,246 people were kept, with a population of about 164 million. In 1934 - 511 thousand prisoners, that is, by the end of the first five-year plan. This means that there was no one to carry out industrialization on the scale of the “liberal democrats” who “broadcast” to us. In the Russian Federation in 1998, with a population of about 145 million, there were 1.8 million prisoners. According to official data, now there are about 800 thousand prisoners, hundreds of thousands of suspended prisoners, in reality there are more. At the moment, for theft of state property on an especially large scale, they are given suspended sentences. Everyone knows Vasilyeva, who is always singing and drawing pictures, and who does not understand what kind of documents Serdyukov signed. Yes, these guys under the “tyrant” Stalin, at best, have long been waving their picks in Magadan, mining for gold, because they love him so much. Now they have found a warm place for Serdyukov again. Surely because of his “professionalism,” how could it be otherwise, the criminal case against him for negligence was dropped due to an amnesty. And therefore, he can again be called an irreplaceable specialist.
I cited official statistics. And where is the incredible number of prisoners here? And who told you that tongues should not work, they did not come to the resort and on the necks of the Soviet people, then it was forbidden to sit. This has always been the case everywhere, especially in the countries of the “civilized world.” There was a difference, of course, in the USSR, even in the GULAG system, labor law was in force, that is, a 40-hour work week and a system of clubs and other cultural institutions. There are even private prisons in the USA, try not to work there, the administration will immediately add to your sentence, this is allowed by law, they are such “democrats”. Now, in the Russian Federation, prisoners indulge in excesses out of idleness, and the taxpayer feeds them.
The denouncers of “tyranny” also fail with a monstrous mortality rate. According to the census, about 164 mln. people lived in the Russian Empire in 1912. subjects, taking into account the lost territories in 1920, about 138 million subjects. Censuses in the USSR showed in 1926 - 147 million, 1937 - 164 million, 1939 - 170 million. citizens, without annexed territories. On average, population growth is about 1.36% per year. In the countries of the “civilized world”, during this period the population growth was: in England - 0.36%, Germany - 0.58%, France - 0.11%, USA - 0.66%, Japan - 1.37%. And as luck would have it, the “tyrant” Stalin was not there. According to the 1989 census, the RSFSR population was 147.6 ml. citizens, in the Russian Federation in 2009 - 142 mln., and this is with a million refugees from Kazakhstan and other republics of the former USSR. At the moment, without the annexed Crimea, according to ROSSTAT estimates there are about 144 million, and according to unofficial estimates, about 139 million of its citizens live in the Russian Federation. Explain, gentlemen, “democrats-liberals”, the authorities of the Russian Federation and the intelligentsia that feeds them, who carried out and is carrying out genocide and famine of their people. Everything is relative.
In conclusion, I will quote Stalin’s famous saying:
“I know when I’m gone, more than one bucket of dirt will be poured on my head, a heap of garbage will be placed on my grave. But I’m sure that the winds of history will scatter everything!”
Eremkin V.V.
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Historians call the dates of Stalin's reign from 1929 to 1953. Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was born on December 21, 1879. Many contemporaries of the Soviet era associate the years of Stalin’s reign not only with the victory over Nazi Germany and the increasing level of industrialization of the USSR, but also with numerous repressions of the civilian population.
During Stalin's reign, about 3 million people were imprisoned and sentenced to death. And if we add to them those sent into exile, dispossessed and deported, then the victims among the civilian population in the Stalin era can be counted at about 20 million people. Now many historians and psychologists are inclined to believe that Stalin’s character was greatly influenced by the situation within the family and his upbringing in childhood.
The emergence of Stalin's tough character
It is known from reliable sources that Stalin’s childhood was not the happiest and most cloudless. The leader's parents often argued in front of their son. The father drank a lot and allowed himself to beat his mother in front of little Joseph. The mother, in turn, took out her anger on her son, beat and humiliated him. The unfavorable atmosphere in the family greatly affected Stalin's psyche. Even as a child, Stalin understood a simple truth: whoever is stronger is right. This principle became the future leader’s motto in life. He was also guided by him in governing the country.
In 1902, Joseph Vissarionovich organized a demonstration in Batumi; this step was his first in his political career. A little later, Stalin became the Bolshevik leader, and his circle of best friends includes Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov). Stalin fully shares Lenin's revolutionary ideas.
In 1913, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili first used his pseudonym - Stalin. From that time on, he became known by this last name. Few people know that before the surname Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich tried on about 30 pseudonyms that never caught on.
Stalin's reign
The period of Stalin's reign begins in 1929. Almost the entire reign of Joseph Stalin was accompanied by collectivization, mass death of civilians and famine. In 1932, Stalin adopted the “three ears of corn” law. According to this law, a starving peasant who stole ears of wheat from the state was immediately subject to capital punishment - execution. All saved bread in the state was sent abroad. This was the first stage of industrialization of the Soviet state: the purchase of modern foreign-made equipment.
During the reign of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, massive repressions of the peaceful population of the USSR were carried out. The repressions began in 1936, when the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR was taken by N.I. Yezhov. In 1938, on the orders of Stalin, his close friend Bukharin was shot. During this period, many residents of the USSR were exiled to the Gulag or shot. Despite all the cruelty of the measures taken, Stalin's policy was aimed at raising the state and its development.
Pros and cons of Stalin's rule
Minuses:
- strict board policy:
- the almost complete destruction of senior army ranks, intellectuals and scientists (who thought differently from the USSR government);
- repression of wealthy peasants and the religious population;
- the widening “gap” between the elite and the working class;
- oppression of the civilian population: payment for labor in food instead of monetary remuneration, working day up to 14 hours;
- propaganda of anti-Semitism;
- about 7 million starvation deaths during the period of collectivization;
- the flourishing of slavery;
- selective development of sectors of the economy of the Soviet state.
Pros:
- creation of a protective nuclear shield in the post-war period;
- increasing the number of schools;
- creation of children's clubs, sections and circles;
- space exploration;
- reduction in prices for consumer goods;
- low prices for utilities;
- development of industry of the Soviet state on the world stage.
During the Stalin era, the social system of the USSR was formed, social, political and economic institutions appeared. Joseph Vissarionovich completely abandoned the NEP policy and, at the expense of the village, carried out the modernization of the Soviet state. Thanks to the strategic qualities of the Soviet leader, the USSR won the Second World War. The Soviet state began to be called a superpower. The USSR joined the UN Security Council. The era of Stalin's rule ended in 1953. He was replaced as Chairman of the USSR Government by N. Khrushchev.
Fifty years have passed since Stalin's death. But Stalin and everything connected with his activities did not become a distant, indifferent past for living people. There are still quite a few representatives of generations alive for whom the Stalin era was and remains their era, regardless of how they feel about it. And most importantly, Stalin is one of those great historical figures who forever remain significant phenomena of our time for all subsequent generations. So the round half-century anniversary is only an occasion to speak out on eternally relevant topics. In this essay, I intend to consider not specific facts and events of the Stalin era and Stalin’s life, but only their social essence.
Stalin era.
To give an objective description of the Stalin era, it is necessary first of all to determine its place in the history of Russian (Soviet) communism. Now we can state as a fact the following four periods in the history of Russian communism: 1) origins; 2) youth (or maturation); 3) maturity; 4) crisis and death. The first period covers the years from the October Revolution of 1917 until Stalin's election as General Secretary of the Party Central Committee in 1922 or until Lenin's death in 1924. This period can be called Leninist by the role that Lenin played in it. The second period covers the years after the first period until Stalin's death in 1953 or until the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. This is the Stalinist period. The third began after the second and. continued until Gorbachev came to supreme power in the country in 1985. This is the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period. And the fourth period began with the seizure of supreme power by Gorbachev and ended with the anti-communist coup in August 1991, led by Yeltsin, and the destruction of Russian (Soviet) communism. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956), the idea of the Stalinist period as a period of villainy was firmly established, and about Stalin himself - as the most villainous villain of all the villains in the history of mankind. And now only the exposure of the ulcers of Stalinism and Stalin’s defects is accepted as truth. Attempts to speak objectively about this period and about the personality of Stalin are regarded as apologetics of Stalinism. And yet I will risk stepping back from the revealing line and speaking out in defense of... no, not Stalin and Stalinism, but their objective understanding. I think that I have a moral right to this, since from my early youth I was a convinced anti-Stalinist, in 1939 I was a member of a terrorist group that intended to assassinate Stalin, was arrested for publicly speaking out against the cult of Stalin, and until Stalin’s death conducted illegal anti-Stalinist propaganda. After Stalin's death, I stopped it, guided by the principle: even a donkey can kick a dead lion. Dead Stalin could not be my enemy. Attacks on Stalin became unpunished, common and even encouraged. And besides, by this time I had already embarked on the path of a scientific approach to Soviet society, including the Stalin era. Below I will briefly outline the main conclusions regarding Stalin and Stalinism, which I came to as a result of many years of scientific research.
Lenin and Stalin.
Soviet ideology and propaganda during the Stalin years presented Stalin as “Lenin today.” Now I think this is true. Of course, there were differences between Lenin and Stalin, but the main thing is that Stalinism was a continuation and development of Leninism both in theory and in the practice of building real communism. Stalin gave the best presentation of Leninism as an ideology. He was a faithful student and follower of Lenin. Whatever their specific personal relationships, from a sociological point of view, they form a single historical person. The case is unique in history. I don’t know of another case where one large-scale political figure literally raised his predecessor in power to divine heights, as Stalin did with Lenin. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Stalin began to be contrasted with Lenin, and Stalinism began to be seen as a retreat from Leninism. Stalin really “retreated” from Leninism, but not in the sense of betraying it, but in the sense that he made such a significant contribution to it that we have the right to talk about Stalinism as a special phenomenon.
Political and social revolution.
The great historical role of Lenin was that he developed the ideology of the socialist revolution, created an organization of professional revolutionaries designed to seize power, led the forces to seize and retain power when the opportunity presented itself, assessed this opportunity and took the risk of seizing power, used power to destruction of the existing social system, organized the masses to defend the gains of the revolution from counter-revolutionaries and interventionists, in short, to create the necessary conditions for building a communist social system in Russia. But this system itself took shape after him, during the Stalinist period, and took shape under the leadership of Stalin. The role of these people is so enormous that we can safely say that without Lenin the socialist revolution would not have won, and without Stalin the first communist society of enormous scale in history would not have arisen. Someday, when humanity, in the interests of self-preservation, nevertheless again turns to communism as the only way to avoid destruction, the twentieth century will be called the century of Lenin and Stalin. I distinguish between political and social revolutions. In the Russian Revolution they merged into one. But in the Leninist period the first dominated, in the Stalinist period the second came to the fore. The social revolution did not consist in the fact that the classes of capitalists and landowners were eliminated, that private ownership of land, factories and plants, and the means of production was eliminated. This was only a negative, destructive aspect of the political revolution. The social revolution as such, in its positive, creative content, meant the creation of a new social organization of the masses of the country's multi-million population. It was a grandiose and unprecedented process of uniting millions of people into communist collectives with a new social structure and new relationships between people, a process of creating many hundreds of thousands of business cells of a hitherto unprecedented type and uniting them in the same way into a hitherto unprecedented single whole. It was a grandiose process of creating a new way of life for millions of people with a new psychology and ideology. I would like to draw special attention to the following circumstance. Both critics and apologists of Stalinism portray this process as if Stalin and his associates were only implementing Marxist-Leninist projects. This is a deep misconception. There were no such projects at all. There were general ideas and slogans that could be interpreted and which were actually interpreted, as they say, at random. Neither the Stalinists nor Stalin himself had such projects. Historical creativity in the full sense of the word took place here. The builders of the new society had specific tasks to establish public order, fight crime, combat homelessness, provide people with food and housing, create schools and hospitals, create means of transport, build factories for the production of necessary consumer goods, etc. They did due to vital necessity, due to available resources and conditions, due to objective social laws, about which they did not have the slightest idea, but which they were forced to reckon with in practice, acting on the principle of trial and error. They did not think that they were thereby creating cells of a new social organism with their natural structure and objective social relations independent of their will. Their activities were successful to the extent that they, one way or another, took into account the objective conditions and laws of social organization. In general, Stalin and his comrades acted in accordance with vital necessity and objective trends of real life, and not with some ideological dogmas, as the falsifiers of Soviet history attribute to them. I note by the way that the material and cultural values created during the Stalin years were so enormous that the values inherited from pre-revolutionary Russia look like a drop in the ocean in comparison. What was nationalized and socialized after the revolution was in fact not as significant as is commonly said. The material and cultural basis of the new society had to be created anew after the revolution, using a new system of power. Over time, the specific tasks that forced the builders of the new society to carry out collectivization, industrialization and other large-scale measures faded into the background or exhausted themselves, and the unconscious and unplanned social aspect declared itself as one of the main achievements of this period in the history of Russian communism. The most important, Perhaps the result of the social revolution, which attracted the overwhelming majority of the country's population to the side of the new system, was the formation of business groups, thanks to which people became involved in public life and felt cared for by society and the authorities. The desire of people for a collective life without private owners and with the active participation of everyone was unheard of anywhere and never before. Demonstrations and meetings were voluntary. They were treated like holidays. Despite any difficulties, the illusion that power in the country belonged to the people was the overwhelming illusion of those years. The phenomena of collectivism were perceived as indicators of democracy. Democracy not in the sense of Western democracy, but literally. Representatives of the lower strata of the population (and they were the majority) occupied the lower floors of the social stage and took part in the social performance not only as spectators, but also as actors. The actors on the higher floors of the stage and in more important roles then also for the most part came from the people. History had never known such vertical population dynamics as in those years.
Collectivization and industrialization.
There is a strong opinion that collective farms were invented by Stalinist villains for purely ideological reasons. This is monstrous absurdity. The idea of collective farms is not a Marxist idea. It has nothing in common with classical Marxism at all. It was not brought into life from theory. She was born in the very practical life of real, not imaginary, communism. Ideology was only used as a means of justifying one’s historical creativity. Collectivization was not malicious intent, but a tragic inevitability. The process of people fleeing to the cities still could not be stopped. Collectivization accelerated it. Without her, this process would have become, perhaps, even more painful, stretching over several generations. It was not at all as if the top Soviet leadership had the opportunity to choose a path. For Russia, in historical conditions, there was only one choice: to survive or die. And there was no choice regarding the ways of survival. Stalin was not the inventor of Russian tragedy, but only its exponent. Collective farms were evil, but far from absolute. Without them, in those real conditions, industrialization was impossible, and without the latter, our country would have been defeated already in the thirties, if not earlier. But the collective farms themselves had not only disadvantages. One of the temptations and one of the achievements of real communism is that it frees people from the worries and responsibilities associated with property. Although in a negative form, collective farms played this role for tens of millions of people. Young people got the opportunity to become tractor drivers, mechanics, accountants, and foremen. Outside the collective farms, “intellectual” positions appeared in clubs, medical centers, schools, and machine and tractor stations. The joint work of many people became a social life, bringing entertainment through the very fact of being together. Meetings, deliberations, conversations, propaganda lectures and other phenomena of the new life associated with collective farms and accompanying them made people's lives more interesting than before. At the level of culture at which the mass of the population was, all this played a huge role, despite the wretchedness and formality of these events. The industrialization of Soviet society was as poorly understood as collectivization. Its most important aspect, namely the sociological one, fell out of sight of both apologists and critics of Stalinism. Critics viewed it, firstly, according to the criteria of Western economics, as economically unprofitable (according to their concepts, meaningless) and, secondly, as voluntaristic, dictated by ideological considerations. But the apologists did not notice that a qualitatively new phenomenon of the super-economy was being born here, thanks to which the Soviet Union in a surprisingly short time became a powerful industrial power. And what is most striking is that they did not notice the role industrialization played in the social organization of the masses of the population.
Organization of power.
During these years, on the one hand, there was a unification of various peoples scattered over a vast territory into a single social organism, and on the other hand, internal differentiation and structural complication of this organism took place. This process necessarily gave rise to the growth and complexity of the system of power and management of society. And in the new conditions it gave rise to new functions of power and management. It was during the Stalin era that that system of party-state power and administration was created. But she was not born immediately after the revolution. It took many years to create it. And the country needed governance from the very first days of the existence of the new society. How was it managed? Of course, before the revolution there was a Russian state apparatus. But it was destroyed by the revolution. Its wreckage and work experience were used to create a new state machine. But again, something else was needed to do this. And this other means of governing the country in the conditions of post-revolutionary devastation and a means of creating a normal system of power was the democracy born of the revolution. When I use the expression “democracy” or “power of the people,” I do not put any evaluative meaning into them. I do not share the illusion that people's power is good. I mean here only a certain structure of power in certain historical circumstances and nothing more. These are the main features of democracy. The vast majority of leadership positions from the very bottom to the very top were occupied by people from the lower strata of the population. And these are millions of people. A leader who comes from the people addresses in his leadership activities directly to the people themselves, ignoring the official apparatus. For the masses of the people, this apparatus appears as something hostile to them and as an obstacle to their leader-leader. Hence the voluntaristic methods of leadership. Therefore, the top leader can, at his own discretion, manipulate officials of the lower apparatus of official power, remove them, arrest them. The leader looked like a people's leader. Power over people was felt directly, without any intermediate links or disguises. Democracy is the organization of the masses of the population. The people must be organized in a certain way so that their leaders can lead them according to their will. The will of the leader is nothing without appropriate preparation and organization of the population. There were certain means for this. These are, first of all, all kinds of activists, founders, initiators, shock workers, heroes... The mass of people is, in principle, passive. To keep it in tension and move it in the desired direction, you need to isolate a relatively small active part in it. This part should be encouraged, given some advantages, and de facto power over the rest of the passive part of the population should be transferred to it. And in all institutions, unofficial groups of activists formed, which actually kept the entire life of the collective and its members under their supervision and control. It was almost impossible to manage the institution without their support. Activists were usually people who had a relatively low social position, and sometimes the lowest. Often these were disinterested enthusiasts. But gradually this grassroots activist grew into a mafia that terrorized all employees of institutions and set the tone for everything. They had support from the team and from above. And this was their strength. The highest power in the Stalinist system of power was not the state, but the super-state apparatus of power, not bound by any legislative norms. It consisted of a clique of people who were personally obliged to the leader (leader) for their position in the clique and the share of power granted to him. Such cliques formed at all levels of the hierarchy, from the highest, headed by Stalin himself, to the level of districts and enterprises. The main levers of power were: the party apparatus and the party as a whole, trade unions, the Komsomol, state security agencies, internal order forces, the army command, the diplomatic corps, heads of institutions and enterprises performing tasks of special national importance, the scientific and cultural elite, etc. State power (the soviets) was subordinate to the superstate. An important component of Stalin’s power was what came to be called the word “nomenklatura”. The role of this phenomenon was greatly exaggerated and distorted in anti-Soviet propaganda. What is nomenclature actually? In the Stalin years, the nomenclature included specially selected and reliable party workers from the point of view of the central government, who led large masses of people in various regions of the country and various spheres of social life. The leadership situation was relatively simple, the general guidelines were clear and stable, the methods of leadership were primitive and standard, the cultural and professional level of the masses being led was low, the tasks of the masses and the rules of their organization were relatively simple and more or less uniform. So almost any party leader included in the nomenclature could with equal success lead literature, an entire territorial region, heavy industry, music, and sports. The main task of this kind of leadership was to create and maintain the unity and centralization of the country's leadership, to accustom the population to new forms of relationships with the authorities, and to solve certain problems of national importance at any cost. And the nomenklatura workers of the Stalin period completed this task.
Repression.
The question of repression is of fundamental importance for understanding both the history of the formation of Russian communism and its essence as a social system. In them there was a coincidence of factors of various kinds, associated not only with the essence of the communist social system, but also with specific historical conditions, as well as with the natural conditions of Russia, its historical traditions and the nature of the available human material. There was a world war. The tsarist empire collapsed, and the communists were least to blame for this. A revolution has occurred. The country is in disorganization, devastation, hunger, poverty, and crime is flourishing. A new revolution, this time a socialist one. Civil war, intervention, uprisings. No government could establish basic social order without mass repression. The very formation of a new social system was accompanied by a literal orgy of crime in all spheres of society, in all regions of the country, at all levels of the emerging hierarchy, including the authorities themselves, management and punishment. Communism entered life as liberation, but liberation not only from the shackles of the old system, but also the liberation of the masses of people from elementary restraining factors. Hackwork, fraud, theft, corruption, drunkenness, abuse of official position, etc., which flourished in pre-revolutionary times, literally turned into norms of the general way of life of Russians (now Soviet people). Party organizations, Komsomol, collectives, propaganda, educational authorities, etc. made titanic efforts to prevent this. And they really achieved a lot. But they were powerless without punitive authorities. The Stalinist system of mass repression grew up as a self-protective measure of the new society against the epidemic of crime born by the totality of circumstances. It became a constantly operating factor of the new society, a necessary element of its self-preservation.
Economic revolution.
It is too little to say about the economy of the Stalin era that collectivization and industrialization took place in it. It developed a specifically communist form of economy, I would even say a super-economy. I will name its main features. During the Stalin years, a huge number of primary business collectives (cells) were created, which together formed a specifically communist super-economy. These cells were not created spontaneously, not privately, but by decisions of the authorities. The latter decided what these cells were supposed to do, how many hired workers to have and which ones, how to pay them and all other aspects of their life. This was not a matter of complete arbitrariness by the authorities. The latter took into account the real situation and real possibilities. The created economic (economic) cells were included in the system of other cells, i.e. they were parts of large economic associations (both sectoral and territorial) and, ultimately, the economy as a whole. They, of course, had some kind of autonomy in their activities. But basically they were limited by the tasks and conditions of the mentioned associations. Above the economic cells, a hierarchical and network structure of institutions of power and management was created, which ensured their coordinated activities. It was organized according to the principles of command and subordination, as well as centralization. In the West, this was called a command economy and was considered the greatest evil, opposing it to its market economy, glorifying it as the greatest good. The communist super-economy, organized and controlled from above, had a specific goal. The last one was as follows. First, to provide the country with material resources that allow it to survive in the outside world, maintain independence and keep up with progress. Secondly, to provide the country's citizens with the necessary means of subsistence. Thirdly, provide all able-bodied people with work as the main and, for the majority, the only source of livelihood. Fourth, to involve the entire working population in labor activities in primary collectives. With this attitude was organically connected the need to plan the activities of the economy, starting from the primary cells and ending with the economy as a whole. Hence the famous Stalinist five-year plans. This planned nature of the Soviet economy caused especially strong irritation in the West and was subject to all sorts of ridicule. And yet it is completely groundless. The Soviet economy had its shortcomings. But the reason for them was not planning as such. On the contrary, planning made it possible to contain these shortcomings and achieve successes that in those years were recognized throughout the world as unprecedented. It is generally accepted that the Western economy is more efficient than the Soviet one. This opinion is simply meaningless from a scientific point of view. It is necessary to distinguish between economic and social criteria for assessing the efficiency of the economy. The social efficiency of the economy is characterized by the ability to exist without unemployment and without the ruin of unprofitable enterprises, easier working conditions, the ability to concentrate large amounts of money and effort on solving large-scale problems, and other characteristics. From this point of view, it was the Stalinist economy that turned out to be as efficient as possible, which became one of the factors in victories of an epoch-making and global scale.
Cultural revolution.
The Stalinist period was a period of cultural revolution unprecedented in the history of mankind, which affected millions of people in all countries. This revolution was absolutely necessary for the survival of the new society. The human material inherited from the past did not meet the needs of the new society in all aspects of its life, especially in production, in the management system, in science, in the army. Millions of educated and professionally trained people were needed. In solving this problem, the new society demonstrated its advantage over all other types of social systems! The most easily accessible for him turned out to be what was most difficult to access in previous history - education and culture. It turned out that it was easier to give people a good education, to give them access to the heights of culture, than to give them decent housing, clothing and food. Access to education and culture was the most powerful compensation for everyday squalor. People endured everyday difficulties that are now scary to remember, just to get an education and join culture. The craving of millions of people for this was so strong that no force in the world could stop it. Any attempt to return the country to its pre-revolutionary state was perceived as the most terrible threat to this gain of the revolution. In this case, everyday life played a secondary role. You had to personally experience this time to appreciate this state. Then, when education and culture became something taken for granted, familiar and everyday, this state disappeared and was forgotten. But it existed and played its historical role. It didn't come by itself. It was one of the achievements of Stalin's social strategy. It was created deliberately, systematically, systematically. A high educational and cultural level of people was considered a necessary condition for communism in the very foundations of Marxist ideology. At this point, as at many others, practical life needs coincided with the postulates of ideology. During the Stalin years, Marxism as an ideology was still adequate to the needs of the real course of history.
Ideological revolution.
Everyone who writes about the Stalin era pays a lot of attention to collectivization, industrialization and mass repression. But during this era, other events of enormous scale also took place, about which little or nothing is written about. These include primarily the ideological revolution. From the point of view of the formation of real communism, it is, in my opinion, no less important than other events of the era. Here we were talking about the formation of the third main support of any modern society, along with the system of power and the economy - a single state secular and non-religious) ideology and a centralized ideological mechanism, without which the success of building communism would have been unthinkable. In the Stalin years, the content of ideology was determined, its functions in society, methods of influencing the masses of people, the structure of ideological institutions was outlined and rules for their work were developed. The culmination of the ideological revolution was the publication of Stalin's work “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism.” There is an opinion that this work was not written by Stalin himself. But even if Stalin appropriated someone else’s work, in its appearance he played a role immeasurably more important than the composition of this rather primitive, from an intellectual point of view, text: he understood the need for such an ideological text, gave it his name and imposed on it a huge historical role. This relatively small article was a real ideological (not scientific, but ideological) masterpiece in the full sense of the word. After the revolution and the Civil War, the party that seized power was faced with the task of imposing its party ideology on the entire society. Otherwise she would not have remained in power. And this practically meant the ideological indoctrination of the broad masses of the population, the creation for this purpose of an army of specialists - ideological workers, the creation of a permanent apparatus of ideological work, the penetration of ideology into all spheres of life. What did you have to start with? The population is illiterate and about ninety percent religious. Ideological chaos and confusion among the intelligentsia. Party workers are half-educated, bookish and dogmatic, entangled in all sorts of ideological trends. And they knew Marxism itself so-so. And now, when the vitally primary task arose of reorienting ideological work towards the masses of a low educational level and infected with the old religious-autocratic ideology, the party theorists turned out to be completely helpless. We needed ideological texts with which they could confidently, persistently and systematically address the masses. The main problem was not the development of Marxism as a phenomenon of abstract philosophical culture, but the search for the simplest way to compose Marxist-shaped phrases, speeches, slogans, articles, and books. It was necessary to lower the level of historically given Marxism so that it became the ideology of the intellectually primitive and poorly educated majority of the population. By understating and vulgarizing Marxism, the Stalinists thereby removed from it the rational core, the only thing worthwhile that it had at all. Let the reader pay attention to the ideological chaos that is taking place in today's Russia, to the fruitless search for a certain “national idea”, to the endless complaints about the lack of effective ideology! But the educational level of the population is immeasurably higher than it was at the beginning of the Stalin era, enormous intellectual forces are involved in the search for ideology, and we have decades of experience in this area of world progress! And the result is zero. To appreciate Stalinism in this regard, it is enough to compare those times with the present. Of course, Marxism has become a subject of ridicule over time. But this happened several decades later, and in relatively narrow circles of intellectuals, when the Stalinist ideological revolution had already fulfilled its great historical mission. And the Soviet ideology, born during the Stalinist years, did not die a natural death, but was simply discarded as a result of the anti-communist coup. The ideological state that replaced it was a colossal spiritual degradation of Russia.
Stalin's national policy.
One of the many injustices in the assessment of Stalin and Stalinism is that they are also blamed for those national problems that arose as a result of the defeat of the Soviet Union and the Soviet (communist) social system in the countries of this region. Meanwhile, it was during the Stalin years that the best solution to national problems took place out of everything that was known in the history of mankind. It was during the Stalin years that the formation of a new, supranational and truly fraternal (in terms of attitudes and in the main tendency) human community began. Now that the Stalin era has become a part of history, it is more important not to look for its shortcomings, but to emphasize the successes of internationalism that have actually been achieved. I do not have the opportunity to dwell on this topic in this article. I will note only one thing: for my generation, formed in the pre-war years, national problems were considered solved. They began to be artificially inflated and provoked in the post-Stalin years as one of the means of the West’s “cold” war against our country.
Stalin and international communism.
The topic of the international role of Stalin and Stalinism is also beyond the scope of the purpose of my article. I will limit myself to just a brief remark. Stalin began his great mission to build a real communist society with a decisive rejection of the generally accepted dogma of classical Marxism, that communism can only be built in many advanced Western countries at the same time, and with the proclamation of the slogan of building communism in one single country. And he carried out this intention. Moreover, he deliberately took the path of using the achievements of communism in one country to spread it throughout the planet. Towards the end of Stalin's rule, communism really began to rapidly conquer the planet. The slogan of communism as the bright future of all humanity began to look more real than ever. And no matter how we feel about communism and Stalin, the fact remains indisputable that no other political figure in history achieved such success as Stalin. And hatred of him still does not fade away, not so much because of the evil he caused (many in this regard surpassed him), but because of this unparalleled personal success of his.
The triumph of Stalinism.
The war of 1941-1945 against Nazi Germany was the greatest test for Stalinism and personally for Stalin himself. And it must be recognized as an indisputable fact that they passed this test: the greatest war in the history of mankind against the strongest and most terrible enemy, militarily and in all other aspects, ended in the triumphant victory of our country, and the main factors of victory were, firstly, the communist social system , established in our country as a result of the October Revolution of 1917, and, secondly, Stalinism as the builder of this system and Stalin personally as the leader of this construction and as the organizer of the country’s life during the war years and the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces. It would seem that all the battles Napoleon as a whole is nothing in comparison with this battle of Stalin. Napoleon was ultimately defeated, and Stalin won a triumphant victory, and contrary to all the forecasts of those years, which predicted an early victory for Hitler. It would seem that the winner is not judged. But with regard to Stalin, everything is done the other way around: the darkness of pygmies of all sorts is making titanic efforts to falsify history and steal this great historical act from Stalin and Stalinism. To my shame, I must admit that I paid tribute to such an attitude towards Stalin as the leader of the country during the years of preparation for the war and during the war, when I was an anti-Stalinist and an eyewitness to the events of those years. Many years of study, research and reflection passed before the question “What would you do if you were in Stalin’s place?” I answered myself: I could not have done better than Stalin. And why not accuse Stalin in connection with the war! To listen to these “strategists” (a poet said about them back in the 19th century: “Everyone fancies himself a strategist, looking at the battle from the outside”), you couldn’t imagine a more stupid, cowardly, etc. person at the pinnacle of power than Stalin in those years . Stalin allegedly did not prepare the country for war. In fact, from the first days of his stay in power, Stalin knew that we could not avoid an attack from the West. And with Hitler coming to power in Germany, I knew that we would have to fight the Germans. Even we, schoolchildren of those years, knew this as an axiom. And Stalin not only foresaw this, he prepared the country for war. But it is one thing to organize and mobilize available resources to prepare for war. And it's another thing to create these resources. And in order to create them in the conditions of the country of those years, industrialization was needed, “and for industrialization, collectivization of agriculture was needed, a cultural and ideological revolution was needed, education of the population was needed, and much more. And all this required titanic efforts over many years. I doubt that any other leadership of the country other than Stalin would have coped with this task. Stalin's did it. It has literally become a cliché to attribute to Stalin that he missed the start of the war, that he did not believe intelligence reports, that he believed Hitler, etc. I don’t know what is more in such statements - intellectual idiocy or deliberate meanness. Stalin was preparing the country for war. But not everything depended on him. We simply did not have time to prepare properly. And the Western strategists who manipulated Hitler, like Hitler himself, were not fools. They needed to defeat the Soviet Union by attacking it before it was better prepared to repel the attack. It's all banal. Could it be that one of the most outstanding political strategists in the history of mankind did not understand such platitudes?! I understood. But he also participated in the global strategic “game” and sought to delay the outbreak of war at any cost. Let's say he lost at this stage of history. But he more than compensated for the failure in other steps. History did not stop there. Stalin is blamed for the defeat of the Soviet army at the beginning of the war and much more. I will not bore the reader with an analysis of this kind of phenomena. I will only formulate my general conclusion. I am convinced that in understanding the overall situation on the planet during the Second World War, including as part of the war of the Soviet Union against Germany, Stalin was head and shoulders above all the major politicians, theorists and commanders who were in one way or another involved in the war. It would be an exaggeration to say that Stalin foresaw and planned everything during the war. Of course, there was foresight, there was planning. But there was no less unforeseen, unplanned and unwanted. It is obvious. But something else is important here: Stalin correctly assessed what was happening and used even our heavy defeats in the interests of victory. He thought and acted, one might say, like Kutuzov. And this was a military strategy that was most adequate to the real and concrete, rather than imaginary, conditions of those years. Even if we assume that Stalin succumbed to Hitler’s deception at the beginning of the war (which I cannot believe), he brilliantly used the fact of Hitler’s aggression to attract world public opinion to his side, which played a role in the split of the West and the formation of the anti-Hitler coalition. Something similar happened in other difficult situations for our country. Stalin's merits in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 are so significant and indisputable that it would be a manifestation of elementary historical justice to return Stalin's name to the city on the Volga where the most important battle of the war took place. The fiftieth anniversary of Stalin's death is a suitable occasion for this.
Stalin and Hitler.
One of the ways to falsify and discredit Stalin and Stalinism is to identify them with Hitler and, accordingly, with German Nazism. The fact that there are similarities between these phenomena does not provide grounds for their identification. On this basis, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Bush and many others can be accused of Stalinism. Of course, there was influence here. But Stalin's influence on Hitler was greater than the latter's on the former. In addition, the social law of mutual assimilation of social opponents was in effect here. Such a similarity was once recorded by Western sociologists in relation to the Soviet and Western social systems - I mean the theory of convergence (rapprochement) of these systems. But the main thing is not the similarity of Stalinism and Nazism (and fascism), but their qualitative difference. Nazism (and fascism) is a phenomenon within the Westernist (capitalist) social system, in its political and ideological spheres. And Stalinism is a social revolution in the very foundations of the social system and the initial stage of the evolution of the communist social system, and not just a phenomenon in politics and ideology. It is no coincidence that there was such hatred of the Nazis (fascists) for communism. The masters of the Western world encouraged Nazism (fascism) as anti-communism, as a means of fighting communism. And do not forget that Hitler suffered a shameful defeat, and Stalin won a victory unprecedented in history. And it would not hurt today’s anti-Stalinists to think about the specific historical conditions in which this happened and what tremendous impact this victory had on humanity and on the course of world history. And if we draw analogies with historical figures, then the historical giant Mao Zedong became a follower of Stalin, and Hitler's follower is the historical pygmy Bush Jr. But today’s anti-Stalinists remain silent about such a deep and far-reaching analogy.
De-Stalinization.
The actual struggle against the excesses of Stalinism began in the Stalin years, long before Khrushchev’s exorbitantly inflated report at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. It was going on in the depths of Soviet society. Stalin himself noticed the need for change, and there was enough evidence of this. Khrushchev's report was not the beginning of de-Stalinization, but the result of the beginning of the struggle for it among the mass of the population. Khrushchev used the de-Stalinization of the country that had actually begun in the interests of personal power. Having come to power, he partly contributed to the process of de-Stalinization, and partly made efforts to keep it within certain limits. He was, after all, one of the figures of the Stalinist ruling elite. On his conscience there were no less crimes of Stalinism than on other close associates of Stalin. He was a Stalinist to the core. And he even carried out de-Stalinization using voluntaristic Stalinist methods. De-Stalinization was a complex and controversial process. And it is absurd to attribute it to the efforts and will of one person with the intellect of an average party official and the habits of a clown. What did de-Stalinization essentially mean, from a sociological point of view? Historical Stalinism as a certain set of principles for organizing the business life of the country, the masses of the population, management, maintaining order, indoctrination, education and training of the country's population, etc. played a great historical role, building the foundations of a communist social organization in the most difficult conditions and protecting them from attacks from outside. But it has exhausted itself, becoming an obstacle to the normal life of the country and its further evolution. The country, partly thanks to and partly in spite of it, has matured the forces and capabilities to overcome it. Precisely to overcome in the sense of moving to a new, higher stage of the evolution of communism. During the Brezhnev years, this stage was called developed socialism. But no matter what they call it, the rise actually happened. During the war years and in the post-war years, the country's enterprises and institutions began to function in many ways in ways that were not Stalinist. Suffice it to say that the number of business collectives of national importance (factories, schools, institutes, hospitals, theaters, etc.) by the middle of the Brezhnev years increased hundreds of times compared to the Stalin years, so the assessment of the Brezhnev years as stagnant is an ideological lie. Thanks to the Stalinist cultural revolution, the human material of the country changed qualitatively. In the sphere of power and management, a state bureaucratic apparatus and a party super-state apparatus have developed, more effective than the Stalinist democracy, and making the latter unnecessary. The level of state ideology no longer corresponds to the increased educational level of the population. In a word, de-Stalinization occurred as a natural process of the maturation of Russian communism, its transition to a routine mature state. The removal of Khrushchev and the coming to his place of Brezhnev occurred as an ordinary performance in the ordinary life of the party ruling elite, as the replacement of one ruling clique by another. Khrushchev's “coup,” despite the fact that it was the highest in terms of changing personalities in power, was, first of all, a social revolution. Brezhnev’s “coup” was such only in the highest spheres of power. It was directed not against the state of society that developed during the Khrushchev years, but against the absurdities of the Khrushchev leadership, against Khrushchev personally, against Khrushchev’s voluntarism, which developed into adventurism. From a sociological point of view, the Brezhnev period was a continuation of the Khrushchev period, but without the extremes of the transition period. As a result of de-Stalinization, the communist dictatorship of the Stalin period was replaced by the communist democracy of the Khrushchev and then Brezhnev periods. I associate this period with the name of Brezhnev, and not Khrushchev, since the Khrushchev period was only a transition to the Brezhnev period. It was the second that presented an alternative to Stalinism, and the most radical one within the framework of communism. Stalin's style of leadership was voluntaristic: the highest power sought to force those under its power to live and work the way it, the power, wanted. Brezhnev’s style of leadership turned out to be opportunistic: the highest authorities themselves adapted to objectively developing circumstances... Another feature of Brezhnevism is that the Stalinist system of democracy gave way to an administrative-bureaucratic system. And the third feature is the transformation of the party apparatus into the basis, core and skeleton of the entire system of power and management. Stalinism did not collapse, as anti-Stalinists, anti-communists, and anti-Sovietists claimed and still claim. He left the arena of history, having won his great role and exhausted himself in the post-war years. He came down ridiculed and condemned, but misunderstood even in the Soviet years. And now, in conditions of rabid anti-communism and the unrestrained falsification of Soviet history, one cannot count on an objective understanding of it at all. The triumphant pygmies of post-Sovietism, who destroyed Russian (Soviet) communism, in every possible way belittle and distort the actions of the giants of the Soviet past in order to justify their betrayal of this past and themselves look like giants in the eyes of their duped contemporaries.
Alexander Zinoviev
The text of this report was published in the book. “The End of the Prehistory of Humanity: Socialism as an Alternative to Capitalism” (Omsk, 2004, pp. 207-215) - a collection of materials from the international scientific and practical conference of the same name, held on the basis of the open academic theoretical seminar “Marxian Readings” at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (27-29 May 2003).