Its official beginning in 1937. Then they said: tight gloves

Mass repressions in the USSR were carried out in the period 1927 - 1953. These repressions are directly associated with the name of Joseph Stalin, who led the country during these years. Social and political persecution in the USSR began after the end of the last stage of the civil war. These phenomena began to gain momentum in the second half of the 30s and did not slow down during the Second World War, as well as after its end. Today we will talk about what the social and political repressions of the Soviet Union were, consider what phenomena underlie those events, and what consequences this led to.

They say: an entire people cannot be suppressed endlessly. Lie! Can! We see how our people have become devastated, gone wild, and indifference has descended on them not only to the fate of the country, not only to the fate of their neighbor, but even to their own fate and the fate of their children. Indifference, the last saving reaction of the body, has become our defining feature . That is why the popularity of vodka is unprecedented even on a Russian scale. This is terrible indifference when a person sees his life not chipped, not with a corner broken off, but so hopelessly fragmented, so corrupted along and across that only for the sake of alcoholic oblivion is it still worth living. Now, if vodka were banned, a revolution would immediately break out in our country.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Reasons for repression:

• Forcing the population to work on a non-economic basis. There was a lot of work to be done in the country, but there was not enough money for everything. The ideology shaped new thinking and perceptions, and was also supposed to motivate people to work for virtually nothing.
• Strengthening personal power. The new ideology needed an idol, a person who was unquestioningly trusted. After Lenin's assassination this post was vacant. Stalin had to take this place.
• Strengthening the exhaustion of a totalitarian society.

If you try to find the beginning of repression in the union, then the starting point, of course, should be 1927. This year was marked by the fact that massacres of so-called pests, as well as saboteurs, began to take place in the country. The motive for these events should be sought in the relations between the USSR and Great Britain. So, at the beginning of 1927 Soviet Union became involved in a major international scandal, when the country was openly accused of trying to transfer the seat of the Soviet revolution to London. In response to these events, Great Britain broke off all relations with the USSR, both political and economic. Inside the country this step was presented as preparation by London for a new wave of intervention. At one of the party meetings, Stalin declared that the country “needs to destroy all remnants of imperialism and all supporters of the White Guard movement.” Stalin had an excellent reason for this on June 7, 1927. On this day, the political representative of the USSR, Voikov, was killed in Poland.

As a result, terror began. For example, on the night of June 10, 20 people who were in contact with the empire were shot. These were representatives of ancient noble families. In total, in June 27, more than 9 thousand people were arrested, accused of high treason, complicity with imperialism and other things that sound menacing, but are very difficult to prove. Most of those arrested were sent to prison.

Pest Control

After this, a number of major cases began in the USSR, which were aimed at combating sabotage and sabotage. The wave of these repressions was based on the fact that in most large companies who worked within the Soviet Union, leadership positions were occupied by immigrants from imperial Russia. Of course, these people for the most part did not feel sympathy for the new government. Therefore, the Soviet regime was looking for pretexts on which this intelligentsia could be removed from leadership positions and, if possible, destroyed. The problem was that this required compelling and legal reasons. Such grounds were found in a number of trials that swept across the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Among the most bright examples Such cases can be distinguished as follows:

• Shakhty case. In 1928, repressions in the USSR affected miners from Donbass. This case was turned into a show trial. The entire leadership of Donbass, as well as 53 engineers, were accused of espionage activities with an attempt to sabotage the new state. As a result of the trial, 3 people were shot, 4 were acquitted, the rest received prison sentences from 1 to 10 years. This was a precedent - society enthusiastically accepted the repressions against the enemies of the people... In 2000, the Russian prosecutor's office rehabilitated all participants in the Shakhty case, due to the absence of corpus delicti.
• Pulkovo case. In June 1936, a major solar eclipse was supposed to be visible on the territory of the USSR. Pulkovo Observatory appealed to the world community to attract personnel to study this phenomenon, as well as to obtain the necessary foreign equipment. As a result, the organization was accused of espionage ties. The number of victims is classified.
• The case of the industrial party. Those accused in this case were those whom the Soviet authorities called bourgeois. This process took place in 1930. The defendants were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization in the country.
• The case of the peasant party. The Socialist Revolutionary organization is widely known under the name of the Chayanov and Kondratiev group. In 1930, representatives of this organization were accused of attempting to disrupt industrialization and interfering in agricultural affairs.
• Union Bureau. The case of the union bureau was opened in 1931. The defendants were representatives of the Mensheviks. They were accused of undermining the creation and implementation of economic activities within the country, as well as connections with foreign intelligence.

At this moment, a massive ideological struggle was taking place in the USSR. The new regime tried its best to explain its position to the population, as well as justify its actions. But Stalin understood that ideology alone could not restore order in the country and could not allow him to retain power. Therefore, along with ideology, repression began in the USSR. Above we have already given some examples of cases from which repression began. These cases have always raised big questions, and today, when documents on many of them have been declassified, it becomes absolutely clear that most of the accusations were unfounded. It is no coincidence that the Russian prosecutor's office, having examined the documents of the Shakhty case, rehabilitated all participants in the process. And this despite the fact that in 1928, no one from the country’s party leadership had any idea about the innocence of these people. Why did this happen? This was due to the fact that, under the guise of repression, as a rule, everyone who did not agree with the new regime was destroyed.

The events of the 20s were just the beginning; the main events were ahead.

Socio-political meaning of mass repressions

A new massive wave of repressions within the country unfolded at the beginning of 1930. At this moment, a struggle began not only with political competitors, but also with the so-called kulaks. In fact, a new blow by the Soviet regime against the rich began, and this blow affected not only wealthy people, but also the middle peasants and even the poor. One of the stages of delivering this blow was dispossession. Within the framework of this material, we will not dwell in detail on the issues of dispossession, since this issue has already been studied in detail in the corresponding article on the site.

Party composition and governing bodies in repression

A new wave of political repressions in the USSR began at the end of 1934. At that time, there was a significant change in the structure of the administrative apparatus within the country. In particular, on July 10, 1934, a reorganization of the special services took place. On this day, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR was created. This department is known by the abbreviation NKVD. This unit included the following services:

• Main Directorate of State Security. It was one of the main bodies that dealt with almost all matters.
• Main Directorate of Workers' and Peasants' Militia. This is an analogue of the modern police, with all the functions and responsibilities.
• Main Directorate of Border Guard Service. The department dealt with border and customs affairs.
• Main Directorate of Camps. This administration is now widely known by the abbreviation GULAG.
• Main Fire Department.

In addition, in November 1934, it was created special department, which was called “Special Meeting”. This department received broad powers to combat enemies of the people. In fact, this department could, without the presence of the accused, prosecutor and lawyer, send people into exile or to the Gulag for up to 5 years. Of course, this applied only to enemies of the people, but the problem is that no one reliably knew how to identify this enemy. That is why the Special Meeting had unique functions, since virtually any person could be declared an enemy of the people. Any person could be sent into exile for 5 years on simple suspicion.

Mass repressions in the USSR

The events of December 1, 1934 became the reason for mass repressions. Then Sergei Mironovich Kirov was killed in Leningrad. As a result of these events, a special procedure for judicial proceedings was established in the country. In fact, we are talking about expedited trials. All cases where people were accused of terrorism and aiding terrorism were transferred under the simplified trial system. Again, the problem was that under this category treated almost all people who came under repression. Above, we have already talked about a number of high-profile cases that characterize repression in the USSR, where it is clearly visible that all people, one way or another, were accused of aiding terrorism. The specificity of the simplified trial system was that the verdict had to be passed within 10 days. The accused received a summons a day before the trial. The trial itself took place without the participation of prosecutors and lawyers. At the conclusion of the proceedings, any requests for clemency were prohibited. If during the proceedings a person was sentenced to death, this penalty was carried out immediately.

Political repression, party purge

Stalin carried out active repressions within the Bolshevik Party itself. One of illustrative examples The repressions that affected the Bolsheviks occurred on January 14, 1936. On this day, the replacement of party documents was announced. This move had been discussed for a long time and was not unexpected. But when replacing documents, new certificates were not awarded to all party members, but only to those who “earned trust.” Thus began the purge of the party. If you believe the official data, then when new party documents were issued, 18% of the Bolsheviks were expelled from the party. These were the people to whom repression was applied primarily. And we are talking about only one of the waves of these purges. In total, the cleaning of the batch was carried out in several stages:

• In 1933. From senior management 250 people were expelled from the party.
• In 1934 - 1935, 20 thousand people were expelled from the Bolshevik Party.

Stalin actively destroyed people who could lay claim to power, who had power. To demonstrate this fact, it is only necessary to say that of all the members of the Politburo of 1917, after the purge, only Stalin survived (4 members were shot, and Trotsky was expelled from the party and expelled from the country). In total, there were 6 members of the Politburo at that time. In the period between the revolution and the death of Lenin, a new Politburo of 7 people was assembled. By the end of the purge, only Molotov and Kalinin remained alive. In 1934, the next congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) party took place. 1934 people took part in the congress. 1108 of them were arrested. Most were shot.

The murder of Kirov exacerbated the wave of repression, and Stalin himself made a statement to party members about the need for the final extermination of all enemies of the people. As a result, changes were made to the criminal code of the USSR. These changes stipulated that all cases of political prisoners were considered in an expedited manner without prosecutors' lawyers within 10 days. The executions were carried out immediately. In 1936, a political trial of the opposition took place. In fact, Lenin's closest associates, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were in the dock. They were accused of the murder of Kirov, as well as the attempt on Stalin's life. A new stage of political repression against the Leninist Guard began. This time Bukharin was subjected to repression, as was the head of government, Rykov. The socio-political meaning of repression in this sense was associated with the strengthening of the cult of personality.

Repression in the army

Beginning in June 1937, repressions in the USSR affected the army. In June, the first trial of the high command of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), including the commander-in-chief Marshal Tukhachevsky, took place. The army leadership was accused of attempting a coup. According to prosecutors, the coup was supposed to take place on May 15, 1937. The accused were found guilty and most of them were shot. Tukhachevsky was also shot.

An interesting fact is that out of 8 members judicial trial, who sentenced Tukhachevsky to death, later the five themselves were repressed and shot. However, from then on, repressions began in the army, which affected everything management team. As a result of such events, 3 marshals of the Soviet Union, 3 army commanders of the 1st rank, 10 army commanders of the 2nd rank, 50 corps commanders, 154 division commanders, 16 army commissars, 25 corps commissars, 58 divisional commissars, 401 regiment commanders were repressed. In total, 40 thousand people were subjected to repression in the Red Army. These were 40 thousand army leaders. As a result, more than 90% of the command staff was destroyed.

Increased repression

Beginning in 1937, the wave of repressions in the USSR began to intensify. The reason was order No. 00447 of the NKVD of the USSR dated July 30, 1937. This document stated the immediate repression of all anti-Soviet elements, namely:

• Former kulaks. All those whom the Soviet authorities called kulaks, but who escaped punishment, or were in labor camps or in exile, were subject to repression.
• All representatives of religion. Anyone who had anything to do with religion was subject to repression.
• Participants in anti-Soviet actions. These participants included everyone who had ever actively or passively opposed Soviet power. In fact, this category included those who did not support the new government.
• Anti-Soviet politicians. Domestically, anti-Soviet politicians defined everyone who was not a member of the Bolshevik Party.
• White Guards.
• People with a criminal record. People who had a criminal record were automatically considered enemies of the Soviet regime.

• Hostile elements. Any person who was called a hostile element was sentenced to death.
• Inactive elements. The rest, who were not sentenced to death, were sent to camps or prisons for a term of 8 to 10 years.

All cases were now considered in an even more accelerated manner, where most cases were considered en masse. According to the same NKVD orders, repressions applied not only to convicts, but also to their families. In particular, the following penalties were applied to the families of those repressed:

• Families of those repressed for active anti-Soviet actions. All members of such families were sent to camps and labor camps.
• The families of the repressed who lived in the border strip were subject to resettlement inland. Often special settlements were formed for them.
• A family of repressed people who lived in major cities THE USSR. Such people were also resettled inland.

In 1940, a secret department of the NKVD was created. This department was engaged in the destruction of political opponents of Soviet power located abroad. The first victim of this department was Trotsky, who was killed in Mexico in August 1940. Subsequently, this secret department was engaged in the destruction of participants in the White Guard movement, as well as representatives of the imperialist emigration of Russia.

Subsequently, the repressions continued, although their main events had already passed. In fact, repressions in the USSR continued until 1953.

Results of repression

In total, from 1930 to 1953, 3 million 800 thousand people were repressed on charges of counter-revolution. Of these, 749,421 people were shot... And this is only according to official information... And how many more people died without trial or investigation, whose names and surnames are not included in the list?

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

Questions, questions...

Since the time of perestroika, these events have been presented to us mainly as supposedly “unfounded political persecution” caused solely by the cult of Stalin’s personality. Allegedly, Stalin, who wanted to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to deal with everyone who more or less doubted his genius. And above all, with those who, together with Lenin, created the October Revolution. Like, that’s why almost the entire “Leninist Guard” innocently went under the ax, and at the same time the top of the Red Army, who were accused of a never-existent conspiracy against Stalin...

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

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

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

Orlov, who knew well the “inner kitchen” of his native NKVD, directly wrote that in the Soviet Union he was preparing coup d'etat. Among the conspirators, according to him, were both representatives of the leadership of the NKVD and the Red Army in the person of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the commander of the Kyiv Military District, Jonah Yakir. The conspiracy became known to Stalin, who took very tough retaliatory actions...

And in the 80s, the archives of Joseph Vissarionovich’s most important opponent, Leon Trotsky, were declassified in the United States. From these documents it became clear that Trotsky had an extensive underground network in the Soviet Union. Living abroad, Lev Davidovich demanded from his people decisive action to destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union, even to the point of organizing mass terrorist actions.

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

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

“Take and read the testimony of Tukhachevsky, given by him after his arrest. The confessions of the conspiracy themselves are accompanied by a deep analysis of the military-political situation in the USSR in the mid-30s, with detailed calculations on general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other capabilities.

The question arises: could such testimony be invented by an ordinary NKVD investigator who was in charge of the marshal’s case and who allegedly set out to falsify Tukhachevsky’s testimony?! No, this testimony, and voluntarily, could only be given by a knowledgeable person no less than the level of Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense, which is what Tukhachevsky was.”

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

So what really happened in those distant 30s?

Threats from both the right and the left

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the opinion of Yuri Zhukov:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stalin's failed democratization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, this is a completely different story...

The main purpose of this post is to analyze the “neo-Stalinist concept” circulating in various incarnations and variants that the number of sentences to capital punishment during the terror of 1937-1938. supposedly fundamentally and radically different from actually executed sentences, downwards.

I’ll start, according to tradition, a little from Adam.

Watching the endless, pointless and merciless discussions about the scale of mass shootings in Soviet period, I come to the banal conclusion that the average person in the era of crazy media always needs to very carefully read and critically filter materials about 1937-1938.

Before and during perestroika, crazy anti-Sovietists (exaggeratedly) ruled the roost in the public consciousness; after perestroika and the so-called “archival revolution” (opening of archives) of the 90s - as a reaction to crazy anti-Sovietists - no less insane “pro-advisers” began to appear for sure also distorting the texture and statistics, but with the opposite sign.
After the revolution, a counter-revolution and reaction arises, after the reaction, another revolution against the reaction.

Significant exaggerations of the figures of those repressed in pre-perestroika, perestroika and samizdat memoir literature are an absolute fact. As well as the fact that now the same “samizdatists” have appeared, on the contrary, with the opposite ideological sign, who are trying in every possible way to justify, rationalize and downplay the repressions. Why, who, how much and for what reasons these figures were exaggerated in the 1930s-1980s separate question, which deserves a detailed article and will not be considered here by me.

But I have always been interested in the curious process of fighting falsifications with other falsifications. In other words, toppling the anti-Soviet myth from its pedestal, ardent fighters (and sometimes reputable academic historians) erect in its place another “pro-Soviet” myth, sometimes downplaying and demagoguing, and often simply inventing facts that are no worse than the most odious ones representatives from the other flank.

For the common man and non-specialist, of course, it is becoming more and more difficult to understand this stunning flow of mutually exclusive information in the era of media quackery. A gigantic stream of opinions, facts, versions merges into one monolithic lump that no longer means anything. Verified sources, numbers, statistics lose meaning for the general reader. People are already beginning to believe only what fits into their “ideologically verified” picture of the world. Everything else seems like a distortion, a falsification. Publics in VKontakte and other social networks, reposts become the limit beyond which the argument does not extend.

And it is here that unscrupulous journalistic characters of different ideological shades, who are usually called folk historians in our country, get caught on politicized, controversial topics. A great number of them have proliferated recently, and traditionally academic historians very rarely enter into polemics with them. As you know, sometimes I still do this, no, no, and I sin, following a simple principle - if you don’t sort out all these verses, they will pile up to such monstrous Ridges of Madness that Howard Loughcraft will write the book The Great Slandered Cthulhu.

Moreover, there are different gradations and forms of such foolishness. There is scientific stuff, and there is one for reposting. Scientific buckwheat is the most dangerous, from my point of view. There they immediately postulate with aplomb such a maxim - “Everyone has been lied to. And we know the Truth (necessarily with a capital T). Everything with us is based on archives. We are unbiased, we have a scientific approach, numbers, statistics, dry facts, documents, with your consciousness “they are manipulating, but I am not manipulating your consciousness at all, I am honest, unemotional and objective.” And people are being led. They pass off their own bias as “impartiality.” They fight the manipulation of consciousness by manipulating consciousness. They put out fire with fire, and so on. It's as eternal as the world.

An ideal illustration of such profanation is the well-known “Manipulation of Consciousness” by the chemist S.G. Kara-Murza, where the author, being neither a professional historian, nor even just a person savvy in the history of repression, fights with insidious manipulation technologies with a flagellating verb, using exactly the same the very methods that he declaratively opposes.

But closer, in fact, to the essence of the post. If we think logically: what do modern radical neo-Stalinists dislike, who “objectively”, “impartially” and “unprejudicedly” try to save our history from “denigration” and “spitting” with “reliance on archives”? They are very uncomfortable with the figure of about 700 thousand executed in 1937-1938.

I will not retell in detail the facts, chronology and outline of the Great Terror; it is well known and its detailed coverage is not included in the topic of this essay. I will limit myself to the most general strokes. Operational order people's commissar Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 00447 "On the operation of repression former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements" (CA FSB RF, F.66, Op. 5. D. 2. L.155-174. Original.) after approval of its text by the Politburo and lengthy preparation of procedural nuances, it was signed by People's Commissar N.I. Yezhov and sent to the territorial bodies of the NKVD at the end of July 1937.

This order marked the beginning of the “kulak operation” and was supplemented by a whole series of other orders that began the so-called “national operations”.

Especially for carrying out the repressive action at the highest possible speed and in a simplified manner, the so-called special troikas were formed locally, which included the prosecutor, the head of the local NKVD and the secretary of the regional committee (in addition to the special troikas, other quasi-judicial and judicial bodies operated during these years: the so-called “twos”, special troikas created chronologically later, ordinary courts, military tribunals, and the Military Collegium also worked Supreme Court USSR, Special Meeting). They were given the right to pass sentences. The accused was not entitled to any defense or even personal presence. The volume of cases being considered was so great that often “special teams” made decisions on 200-300 cases per day, and sometimes more.

The operation was carried out (planned, financed, coordinated and directed) in the strictest secrecy and clearly according to plan, certain quotas were allocated from the center to the regions for execution (the so-called 1st category) and for imprisonment (2nd category).

Based on the “kulak” order, from August 1937 to November 1938, 390 thousand people were executed, 380 thousand were sent to the ITL. Accordingly, the initially established “limits”—to repress 268.95 thousand people, of whom 75.95 thousand were to be shot—were exceeded several times. The duration of the operation was repeatedly extended by Moscow, and the regions were given additional “quotas” for execution and imprisonment. In total, during the “kulak operation,” which was largely completed by the spring-summer of 1938, no less than 818 thousand people were convicted, of whom no less than 436 thousand were shot. All increases in “limits” were coordinated with the center through top-secret telegraph messages.

Taken together, all the operational work of the GB (with the support of the police, the prosecutor’s office and party bodies) developed into the so-called “mass operations” of the NKVD of 1937-1938: the largest one-time repressive action of the Soviet government in the 20th century in peacetime.

In total, for all operations (there were 12 in total) in 1937-1938. about 700 thousand people were shot. In accordance with the instructions of the Politburo they were started, in accordance with the instructions of the Politburo they were completed.

So, what does classical historiography know about the statistics of the so-called “mass operations” of the NKVD of these two peak years? According to the “Certificate of the 1st special department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the number of those arrested and convicted in the period 1921-1953 in cases of the NKVD bodies.” (i.e. only through state security, without the workers’ and peasants’ militia, the prosecutor’s office and ordinary inheritors) dated December 11, 1953 ., the total number of arrests was between 1921 and 1938. 4,835,937 people (c/r - 3,341,989, other crimes - 1,493,948), of which 2,944,879 were convicted, of which 745,220 were convicted of criminal offenses. In 1939-1953, 1,115,247 were convicted of criminal offenses, of which to VMN 54,235 (of which 23,278 in 1942)

This is the same document, which is a set of four reference tables printed on five sheets.
They are stored in GARF, f.9401, op.1, d.4157, l.l.201-205.
Here is a scan of it in the part that interests us.

In February 1954, the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, in a memorandum addressed to Khrushchev, named the figure of 642,980 people sentenced to military detention from 1921 to the beginning of 1954.
In 1956, Pospelov’s commission put the figure at 688,503 executed during the same period. In 1963, the report of the Shvernik Commission named an even higher figure - 748,146 executed during the period 1935-1953, of which 681,692 - in 1937-38. (including 631,897 by decision of extrajudicial bodies.) In 1988, a certificate from the KGB of the USSR presented to Gorbachev named 786,098 executed in 1930-55. In 1992, according to the head of the department of registration and archival forms of the MBRF for 1917-90. There are data on 827,995 people sentenced to VMN for state and similar crimes.

There are also summary data in the FSB Central Asia. According to Certificate 1 of the special department of the NKVD of the USSR on the number of those arrested and convicted during the period from October 1, 1936 to November 1, 1938 (CA FSB of the Russian Federation. F. 8 os. Op. 1. D. 70. L. 97-98. Original ..Published: The tragedy of the Soviet village. Collectivization and dispossession. 1927-1939. In 5 volumes. T. 5. Book 1, 2. M.: ROSSPEN, 2006.) signed by Deputy. the head of the 1st special department of the NKVD of the USSR, captain of state security Zubkin, and the head of the 5th department, senior lieutenant of state security Kremnev, from October 1, 1936 to November 1, 1938, 668,305 people were sentenced to heavy duty.

Now I don’t want to go into the nuances and explain these discrepancies; in general, they are quite understandable and verifiable.
So this order of numbers makes me nervous. Usually do big eyes and use the phrase "just". Not 7 million were shot, but “only” 700 thousand. Allegedly, this “decrease” turns what happened in the USSR over these two years into “not so terrible and special.”

This demagogic technique, by the way, is actively used by Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis of all stripes. In Mathausen, not 1.5 million people died, but “only” 320 thousand people.
(Nota Bene: neo-Stalinists are also very uncomfortable and nervous about the unprecedented excess mortality in 1932-1933, this is why they invent crazy stories about the American / tsarist famine in order to highlight the unique nature of the catastrophe and prove that “under the tsar it was even worse, this is the legacy of the rotten tsarism / in other developed countries of that time it was the same, therefore the responsibility for the uniqueness of the disaster is completely (or at least partially) removed from the Bolsheviks; on the contrary, they saved everyone).

On average, for two years in 1937-1938. Around the country, between 1,000 and 1,200 people were executed per day. Never in the entire history of our justice have there been so many executions in Peaceful time did not have. This is a medical, clear fact. Such an intensity of executions even completely stubborn person, but has not yet atrophied to the perception of the numbers and scale of the phenomenon, it can make you think. In a couple of weeks in 1937, more people were shot than all the military district and military courts of Tsarist Russia in 100 years. How then can one talk about the bloodiness of tsarism, about the whips of the policeman, the hooves of the Cossacks and Colonel Riman (and without this there is nowhere), if there is not so much a log in the eye, but a whole ship’s forest.

Since the figure of 700 thousand physically destroyed in two years is definitely not pleasant, the radical Stalinists urgently need to somehow lower it. Place a shadow on the fence. But how? The common technique of “only” 700 thousand” only works on very dense individuals.

On the other hand, how can one underestimate the funded figure if numerous archival, authentic and easily verifiable documents deposited in the state archive of the Russian Federation, the Central Archive of the FSB, certificates with summary statistics of the activities of state security agencies and Soviet justice contain approximately this order of numbers and no other ? Very easy.

A simple but effective idea came to a certain Italian communist Mario Sousa at the turn of the 2000s. This is how his book is annotated in the Russian edition: “Despite a number of fundamental work, built on factual material from archives that showed the inconsistency of Stalin’s accusations of mass repressions, evil slanderers like Radzinsky, Suvorov, Solzhenitsyn, Yakovlev (now deceased - ed.) continue their dirty work of denigrating Soviet history. This slander causes indignation among honest researchers of foreign countries. The proposed brochure, which is a translation from English of the work of Mario Sousa, published in the Canadian magazine Northstar compass (1999, December), refutes the fiction about the deliberateness of the famine in Ukraine, about the excessive cruelty of the Soviet punitive system, and, most importantly, about the fantastic scale of repression against kulaks and conspirators" (Doctor of Philosophy, Professor I. Changli).

Honest researcher Mario Souza decided to provide fraternal international assistance to our neo-Stalinists of all iterations and falsify the number of victims of the NKVD mass operations in 1937-1938. He succeeded. The help was gladly accepted. And it was scattered across the RuNet and “true” public pages on social networks. Found its countless epigones.

The essence of Mario Souza’s “objective, unbiased, unemotional and taking into account the bad and the good, certainly based on the archives” is that in his work Gulag: Archives against Lies, carefully published in Moscow in 2001, he literally states the following: “Other information comes from the KGB: according to information provided to the press in 1990, 786,098 people were sentenced to death for counter-revolutionary activities in the 23 years from 1930 to 1953. Of these sentenced, according to KGB data, 681,692 were convicted in 1937-1938 This cannot be verified, and although these are KGB figures, the latest information raises doubts.

It is indeed very strange that in just 2 years so many people were sentenced to death. But should we expect more correct data from the capitalist KGB than from the socialist one? Thus, we can only check whether the statistics on prisoners for 23 years, used by the KGB, applied to ordinary criminals and counter-revolutionaries, or to counter-revolutionaries only, as the perestroika KGB claims in a press release for February 1990. From the archives also it follows that the number of ordinary criminals and counter-revolutionaries sentenced to death was approximately the same. Based on the above, we can conclude that the number of people sentenced to death in 1937-1938. there were about 100 thousand, and not several million, as Western propaganda claims.
It must also be taken into account that not all those sentenced to death were actually shot. A huge proportion of death sentences were commuted to terms in labor camps."

This sensational statement by Souza not only does not even have formal logic, it is not confirmed by a single reference to the archive, and this despite the fact that the title pathetically declared: the author fights against lies with archives. And that's how it is with them.
In the Western world, Sousa’s book was ignored, but here you can find his book on any site with a corresponding “objective” and “unbiased” focus. For example: http://www.greatstalin.ru/truthaboutrep risals.aspx.

And the province went to write.

On one website, to the creation of which the well-known publicist I.V. Pykhalov had a hand in creating and where for some reason there is a section “Sacred” with the article “The Eyes of Stalin”), an article by a certain Mikhail Pozdnov was published" The death penalty in the USSR in 1937-1938." There the author again tries to somehow shake the figure of 700 thousand executed by the Stalinists, who really did not like it, with the following reasoning: "Another, more inexplicable inconsistency is the following circumstance. According to the Help, about 635 thousand people were sentenced to imprisonment in correctional labor camps, correctional labor camps and prisons over two years, however, according to Gulag statistics, 539,923 prisoners were admitted to correctional labor camps alone in 1937 (364 thousand were released), in 1938 - 600,724 ( 280 thousand were released). In addition, during 1937-1938 the number of people serving sentences in correctional colonies and prisons increased. Who condemned the “extra” hundreds of thousands of people who ended up in camps and prisons? As one of the versions, it can be assumed that some of the alleged convicts were in the camps, and the number of those actually executed in 1937-1938. in fact, much less than official statistics suggest."

For Mikhail Pozdnov, who is certainly not engaged, it will probably be a wonderful discovery, that in addition to the cases conducted by the state security agencies (and the progress of which is reflected in the certificate to which he refers), in the USSR, ordinary people's investigators and the prosecutor's office conducted criminal cases, and sentenced to imprisonment not only by extrajudicial bodies of the State Security Service, but also by “ordinary” courts all levels and types, as well as military tribunals (the movement on which is not reflected in the Help), and it is clear that not only in “counter-revolutionary” cases. But ignorance helps conspiracy theorists. If you don’t know something, you can always generalize and come up with a mysterious explanation about what the authorities are hiding.

I never understood. Well, you don’t know the justice system of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the types of courts and quasi-judicial bodies operating at that time, you are not familiar with the primary reporting of state security and the People’s Ministry of Justice with summary statistics, you have not spent a day in the archives, you have not delved into the procedural features of office work of those years , you are not interested in real numbers and facts, and only the ideological struggle is interesting - so why go into those areas where you are initially incompetent, simultaneously waving flashy statements that I am fighting for the Truth against falsifications with archival data, in fact distorting and falsifying? It turns out to be a classic self-shot from a gun.

Further, Souza’s transcendental discovery about the “fictitious” number of those executed at 700 thousand and only those allegedly sentenced is embodied in another article from another “truth teller,” this time a certain S. Mironin, whose work was published on the website Stalinism.ru.

Quote from his “work”: “For the entire period from the 1930s to 1953, no more than 300 thousand people were shot. So, all the numbers from the memory books, from my calculations and the allowed figure coincide well with each other. Therefore, I personally consider the following opinion to be documented: the number of those executed in 1937-1938 did not exceed 250-300 thousand and these victims were concentrated mainly among the elite.”

Naturally, there are no links to documents, and the 33rd link leads us all the way to the same “breaking of the veil” from M. Souza. IN this statement By the way, two lies are concentrated at once: in addition to understating the number of executed people, there is also an extremely popular maxim in certain circles that in 1937-1938 it was mainly party bureaucrats, embezzlers, Leninist guards, Trotskyists, etc. who suffered, that again, it does not coincide at all with the archive data. But why do we need archives if we can engage in myth-making and fight anti-Soviet propaganda with yet another pro-Soviet propaganda?

The already mentioned “specialist” S.G. Kara-Murza also added wood to the fire in his Soviet civilization: “The exact statistics of the execution of sentences have not yet been published. But the number of executions is known less number death sentences. The reason is that the OGPU workers, who themselves constituted a very vulnerable group, scrupulously followed the instructions and documented their actions."

So, let's get acquainted with the documents in order to once and for all put an end to speculation about the real number of those executed and the execution of sentences to VMN during the mass operations of the NKVD in 1937-1938.

1. Accept the proposal of the NKVD to transfer the remaining outstanding investigative cases against those arrested under the criminal code. national contingents, according to orders of the NKVD of the USSR NN 00485, 00439 and 00593 - 1937 and NN 302 and 326 - 1938, for consideration by Special Troikas on the ground.

2. Special Troikas are formed consisting of: the first secretary of the regional committee, regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks or the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties, the Head of the corresponding department of the NKVD and the Prosecutor of the region, territory, republic. In the Ukrainian and Kazakh SSR and the Far Eastern Territory, Special Troikas are created by region.

3. Special Troikas consider cases against persons arrested only before August 1, 1938, and complete their work within 2 months.

4. Cases against all persons indicated by national authorities. k.-r. contingents arrested after August 1, 1938, should be sent for consideration to the relevant judicial authorities, according to jurisdiction (Military Tribunals, Linear and Regional Courts, Military Collegium of the Supreme Court), as well as to a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR.

5. Grant the right to the Special Troikas to pass sentences in accordance with the order of the NKVD of the USSR N 00485 of August 25, 1937 in the first and second categories, as well as to return cases for further investigation and make decisions on the release of the accused from custody if there are no sufficient evidence to convict the accused.

6. The decisions of the Special Triples in the first category should be carried out IMMEDIATELY.

() - BEGINNING and CHAIN.
There was terror (OR MAYBE NOT?) and I am not going to join the rails of Stalin’s “lovers” here, denying those terrible processes. But why was he there? Answering this question is difficult and easy at the same time. But in order to advance on the path to the truth, you need to understand a lot about that time. What we have been told these years cannot satisfy a thinking person. After all, what actually happens? In 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, came to power and created a system for the destruction of their own people. And darkness surrounds us after the military events in the country of 1941-1945. Many people know the leaders of the USSR, some can list them in order of reign, but few people know the history of the USSR after the war, as well as the events of the 17th year. It all comes down to 1937. It is by assessing Stalin and his time that this year emerges, which is even used in political discussions of our time. It turns out that until 1937, the country was relatively quiet and calm, but this year chaos began. It was chaos, and there is no doubt about it. But why exactly ’37? And not the subsequent ones. There were three years left before the war, and we will also keep this fact in mind.

Numbers first, because you can’t go anywhere without them. These data are known today and are accurate. So, in 1937 there really was a surge in both judicial processes and the number of prisoners in the camps. In 1937 and 1938, many people were shot. More than 350 thousand in ’37 and slightly less in ’38. The number is truly scary. After all, in the same In 1935, for example, just over one thousand two hundred people were executed, and in 1939 two and a half thousand. Notice the difference? Back in 1938 they were shooting, and the next year the number of executed people went down sharply. Since 1935, the number of prisoners has increased, reaching its peak in 1937, and the following year, halved. 429,311 people in 1937 and 205,509 in 1938, respectively. In subsequent years, the picture is sharply different and even during the war years, it did not exceed 80 thousand people. Here's what's interesting. Who was shot in '37 and '38? What exactly is an execution? After all, the end of the thirties is no longer the twentieth, and the system more or less worked. Shooting a person is not as easy as it seems at first glance.
Let's say a peasant who doesn't fit the bill at all this article, since his activities, even if they pose a danger to the state in peacetime, are only in the actions of economic sabotage, but for execution, there are hundreds of other methods. Well, you really shouldn’t shoot a peasant for being a peasant. Or a worker. But here there are already prerequisites, since the NKVD used the method of sticking political labels on simple events. But the number of executed people is very high, even for the country of the Soviets with a huge population. Let’s say that some percentage of those destroyed were guilty, because in the USSR there was a struggle against the system, both in the regions and in Russia itself. Terror and underground organizations on the eve of the war posed a serious danger, and any state will act in exactly the same way. They acted.


If in the USSR all those convicted, one way or another, were sentenced by the court and the judiciary. The West did not stand on ceremony on this issue. Let’s say in the USA, if a person even had a relative who belonged to the Japanese nation, they did not stand on ceremony with him, and he quickly ended up in a concentration camp. Did you think we were the only ones with such camps? (WHAT IS THE QUESTION?) And the very invention of such camps belongs to England. In the West, they didn’t bother with the investigation; everything was done clearly and smoothly. The NKVD conducted the investigation, another thing is that there were cases of falsification of cases and re-qualification of articles of punishment. But more on that below. Numerous executions? The camps could not accommodate such a number of prisoners, and they were simply destroyed. (For I repeat, by 1937 the law enforcement agencies were not ready - why?) This also happened. But the conclusion suggests itself. The camps really could not digest the flood of 1937, which means they were not prepared in advance, and the terror of this year looks like an unexpected phenomenon for the country. I don't see any other explanation. But what’s interesting is, why, while carrying out such repressions, did its ideologists not think about the future? After all, they would have to answer, and they understood this. So there was a reason to take such a risk.
So, 1937.
Of the 429,311 people convicted, 370,422 people were kulaks. This more than a half of all those convicted this year. Well, a little more than one hundred and eleven thousand “formers”, more than thirty thousand priests. Where are the communists? The fact is that party members, it turns out, did not suffer that much this year. It turns out that the party began to fight with its own people. And the same party brought this mortal sin up for discussion at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. What kind of masochism is this? Well, there were communists among those convicted, but their number was only two-thirds of the total. total number. So what was it?
Let's put everything in its place. What could you have suffered for in that terrible year? Of course, we will not go into detail about the real enemies of the state, of which there were quite a few. They fought with them quite successfully. After all, what, in essence, was the USSR at that time? This is a new state where the system of exploitation and financial dictatorship of certain structures has been destroyed. Where money played a secondary role, and political elite was not formed on this basis. Today money gives a pass to power, but back then a person was assessed according to completely different criteria. It was a state in which a system was created to prevent such public relations in all sectors and areas of life, from economics to everyday life. Let's be honest. The state had a fair system of organization, in contrast to the entire enlightened West, which could not allow the existence of such a power for a simple reason. The example was really contagious. This threatened the entire established system of relations in the West, where a person was assessed by the amount of money in his pocket. Against such a threat, the security system in the Union united and acted together, since we were talking about the existence of everything and everyone. They acted harshly and sometimes cruelly. They did not spare the enemies. Since 1935, Trotsky It became clear for the first time where Stalin was leading the country. He noticed the counter-revolution a thousand kilometers away and began sounding the alarm. The turn in society from revolutionary ideas to patriotism and from the denial of everything to family values ​​was a blow below the belt for Trotsky. The party of the 20s was not a monolith.


She clearly maintained the vertical of power, but there were currents and streams in her midst, and members of these dissenters fought and had influence on party members. Stalin was a threat to such people, but they could not exist without Stalin, since there was no leader capable of taking responsibility for everything. It’s one thing to govern and shout, implementing this or that directive in every possible way, but to govern such a country as Russian empire, this was not given to everyone. All this was understood and realized. Where can you find allies in the struggle for power? It was possible to deprive Stalin of power only with the help of the West and direct betrayal, and such people were not noticed in patriotism. Their element is revolution. Such ideas could be realized subject to support from the authorities themselves. And there were such people. And the political elite itself was not something of an angelic creation. All of them went through the harsh school of death, and human life was valued according to special standards. The moment the conspiracy became a reality and information about it became known, Stalin realized who he was dealing with. The scale of those involved was amazing. Therefore, Stalin could not stop the machine called the NKVD, since he himself could burn in this inferno.
It was possible to go to jail through a denunciation, since with its help, a simple man in the street could solve his problems, from seizing additional living space to career aspirations. There were also ideological ones who saw in every act of a neighbor or colleague some kind of sabotage methods. (Let us tactfully remain silent about the intelligentsia who wrote at each other like a 24-hour secretariat)
Repressions on the eve of the war, this natural process in any state. And these repressions took place. For example, the eviction of the same Germans who had German citizenship. There was something for everyone, and everyone was in development. These are the Poles, since Poland was enemy number one for our country. The Polish authorities never hid their attitude towards the USSR and were ready to rush into battle even tomorrow, which they constantly stated. And finally, ordinary people who committed criminal offenses went to prison.

Few people know today under what order the repressions of 1937 took place. Nikita Sergeevich was silent about this order during an act of sadomasochism at the Twentieth Congress. It would seem that this order No. 00447 dated July 30, 1937, should be heard in the first lines of that report, but not a word about it. We will not analyze this order, since it is not so terrible that it would lead to such consequences. Surprisingly different. This order negates Stalin's entire policy. Yes, he moved from revolutionary fervor to statehood and to establishing order on civilizational foundations. This is a fact. And here is this order. Moreover, the regionals began to declare that from now on the prosecutor’s office is limited in its actions. It was like declaring a national emergency in a year when the country's internal affairs had been settled. Vyshinsky remained silent this time. As a result, power in the country passed to the NKVD. And the village went to dance. Again, the regionals, giving instructions to their subordinates, directly said that from now on there is no need for many formalities, and the fight against the underground should be waged in all directions. The order contained limits for territories and regions, but this was not enough for the regional authorities. Khrushchev simply demands that the number of people to be shot be added to him. And he gets his way. The pace of work in the regions is staggering. Leningrad, where the troikas work, in just one day carries out more than six hundred death sentences, which for the most part were carried out quickly. In Omsk on October 10 per day, the troika handles 1,300 cases, of which more than 900 people are sentenced to death. And this is the picture in all corners of the country. After December 1937, when the order was already in effect, the repressions were extended into the next year. At first glance, this looks like a clouding of the minds of the party leaders, who suddenly realized that only enemies were around them. Ukraine sends and sends arrestees, who are three times more than the lowered limit; Nikita Khrushchev works there. Arrests based on passports, when representatives of the NKVD sat in the passport office and checked the documents and issued a verdict. Entire families and children, pregnant women and disabled people were arrested. This time gives us many cynical and incomprehensible examples. The cells are full and overcrowded, the investigation is carried out very quickly, some of the condemned are not even familiar with the verdict and do not know their guilt.

And until 1937 there were enough abuses, but they were fought against, and letters sent to Vyshinsky were examined and sorted out. But 1937 is incomprehensible and mysterious. This is the mystery we have to solve.
So, in two years, 1,344,943 people were convicted across the country. Calculate your daily work rate yourself. More 681 thousand were shot. () The numbers make any person shudder. It was they who were later increased hundreds of times to please the politician, who is an oak in history. They began to manipulate them and insert them where they needed to and where they didn’t. The dancing on the bones began. But who are the tears about? This is where it gets interesting. Basically, what about those 93% ordinary people who ended up in that terrible year? Only 7% of the total number of those repressed were communists. So, It was precisely about these 93% that Khrushchev was silent at the Twentieth Party Congress; it was this order that was a sealed secret during the years of Soviet power. The party understood perfectly the situation in the country that arose after these two years. Neighbors disappeared, and at the production site there were only revealing meetings. How is your psychological climate? The more I think about it, the more confused I become. But we will figure it out gradually.
Yes, there are objective laws of development of any society, and if they are violated, the effect will be terrible and uncontrollable. Any revolution ends with actions against revolutionaries and harsh internal struggle. A country that is historically called upon to develop according to certain laws, like Russia, copying other people's models, will come to collapse sooner or later. Europe initially developed horizontally, and the Catholic faith was initially ready for reforms, since serving a person means adapting to him. And to serve at the expense of the law, which can only be forced, is a separate revolution of consciousness. Protestantism made loan capital and money the basis of everything, and progress began to gain momentum. The horizontal suggests the power of the people. Russia had a vertical structure, and Orthodoxy served not man, but God. Therefore, the monarchy and Russia are created for each other, they are an integral part of the world. And Stalin was an exponent of Russia’s historical heritage, because monarchy is not only the presence of a tsar in the country. This is a model of power that has a vertical structure, which is why Stalin was understood and accepted in the country, which is why democrats are not accepted today, and the number of voters in the elections means the number of people deceived with the help of advertising videos. But that's not all.
The West and the model of their power and relations is a kind of mentality of a believer, this is the concept of Christianity. And our liberal kisses the West wherever possible, has nothing to do with it. “He simply betrays one Christ in the person of Russia and does not accept the other.” Money thus becomes the main evaluation criterion. This conclusion is important to us for this reason. On the one hand, Stalin was the spokesman for Russia and his rule was good for Russia, because so far no one has disputed either his wisdom or his intelligence. He is great for both opponents and supporters. He is also great for foreign figures of that time. Even Churchill, the sworn enemy of the USSR, noted Stalin's wisdom after his death. No one can bring charges against him in the field of economics. Everyone agrees that Russia under Stalin accomplished the impossible both in economic achievements and in the spiritual unity of peoples. The only charges that, according to liberals, will outweigh all the achievements are repression. And here the shadow of 1937 appears again. The events of this year are etched in the memory of the peoples of the country and there is still a resonance from those events. But Stalin has nothing to do with it. To believe that Stalin could control the party, and that in turn could allow it to be done with itself whatever you want, is naive. The party is a kind of sect that fulfilled its historical destiny and saved Russia after the liberal February. The party turned into a monster that could crush anyone, and a press that few could withstand. The government in the country was only considered the dictatorship of the proletariat; in fact, it was a harsh dictatorship of the party.


The fact is that there actually was a conspiracy, and materials about the conspiracy were known to the NKVD, and therefore to Stalin. The top authorities prepared this conspiracy, including the top of the NKVD. Not responding to it means losing the country. Yes, there was a cult of personality and a well-deserved cult. But Stalin was hanging by a thread, he was challenged by a powerful machine, which, on the one hand, saw that without Stalin they could not manage the country, and on the other, was looking for a way out of the situation. These were people of the revolution, so they slipped into methods of terror, talked and planned such an act, having connections with the West and Trotsky. But there was no monolith within the party.
Let's take a trial in which everyone pleads guilty except for Krestinsky. The modern interpretation of those events is simple: Krestinsky is taken away from the hall, beaten, and then everything falls into place. In fact, there was no break in the meeting, and Krestinsky himself admits guilt during cross-examination. But journalists from Europe are present at the trials. Nothing escapes them. Stalin realized the danger not for himself personally, but for the country. Come out in the open?
The Cheka had no control over itself from the very beginning. The Cheka, which was created during the revolution, retained all the attributes of a leading fighter for the ideals of the revolution. Such issues cannot be resolved in one generation. The fiery fighters must be replaced by a new generation of security officers, who were not easy to educate. This is exactly what the NKVD approached in 1937. And letters were sent to Moscow, where, as if in an instant photograph, the fates of people who fell into the millstones of the NKVD were captured. There was everything: the impudence of the managers of this office, and expensive banquets during Yagoda’s time, and debauchery and simply theft. These are the two faces of the country’s law enforcement agency. And by the spring of 1937, Yezhov became the first person in the state. Not the party, but Yezhov, with a party card in his pocket. And those same iron fists came into use. Torture as a method of extracting testimony. And torture is not a thing of the past. Talk to those who have been through modern prisons, I repeat again. But what did the security officers count on? It was not necessary to have an analytical mind to understand that the matter could not continue for so long. There was a problem with literacy in the ranks of the NKVD, but these people had intelligence and experience. The authorities saw that the NKVD was getting out of control, but the scope of these actions became clear in 1938, when Andreev toured the country with an inspection. Andreev was a member of the Politburo, and he did not hide the results of the trip and laid bare the truth. It was then that the full picture in the country became visible. The NKVD received its first blow in the fall of 1938, when arrests began to occur in their ranks. During 1939, more than twenty percent of people were purged from the authorities, and more than 60% of senior officials. It was a complete redesign of organs, starting from the head of the organization.


At the same time, another natural process was taking place in the country. He expressed himself in the fact that the party began to cleanse itself. I repeat, this was a natural process, since the party and state interests, became increasingly antagonistic. The party began to interfere with public administration, and the rigid vertical power structure now began to play the role of a brake. Stalin also understood this. How to cope with the party? This was not realistic, since there was also such a factor as the faith of the people of the country in the party. After all, all events in the country were connected with the communists.
December 4 and 7, 1936, a plenum of the Central Committee was held. Two issues discussed there were of paramount importance. The first one, about the constitution, took a little time, but the second one was a serious debate. It was Yezhov's report on the Trotskyists and other oppositionists. Here's what we need to figure out. What is the opposition? The question is important, since only the most desperate and brave man. Today there has been no opposition for a long time, and the rhetoric of these political parties is only advertising and nothing more. The opposition at that time was a threat to Russia, since their actions and goals could lead to the end of the country's existence. And they fought the opposition as best they could. But who was going to fight? Stalin alone? Only the cult of personality saved me. So, after the report, the plenum was divided into those who were with Stalin and those who were for repression. Stalin simply mocked people. His comments are interesting Kaganovich when the one leading an example of a connection between Tomsky and Zinoviev, suggests that they went together to choose a dog. Stalin sometimes interrupts his report, inserting his own questions about this dog. He asks about the breed of the dog, whether it is good or bad. Kaganovich babbles excuses.
The party wanted blood. Comrade Eiche, who was the first to be forgiven by Khrushchev, demands death for everyone, he laments the softness of actions. Sarkisov, who arrived from Donetsk, praises his way of working when he expels people even if he has a dark spot in his biography. Kosior from Ukraine boasts of experience in fighting the Trotskyists. And all the speakers demand and demand. Why did they need so much blood? After all, it was clear that their personal power was not threatened, or maybe it was? At this time, the process of repression was already gaining momentum in the country, and the speakers had already launched this machine. What was this threat to these people? Speaker at the plenum Zhdanov, who gave a report on the new system of electing power in the country. He directly said that almost half of the regional committees are not elected at all, and their members get there by various reasons. This meant that the party was governed only to please individuals. Therefore, new elections based on secret ballot were planned for the spring and summer. Who was threatened by such a system? The only person who could sleep peacefully was Stalin. As a result, the NKVD and the party turned into a killing machine.


Why did Khrushchev hate three people so much? Beria and Vyshinsky under the leadership of Stalin, all of them were, first of all, statesmen and only then members of the party. One gets the impression that the Twentieth Congress itself was some kind of act of revenge on the part of Khrushchev. But we'll talk about this later. In the meantime, what I saw Andreev in Kuibyshev, he was shocked. There was a leadership there Comrade Postyshev, who has already cleansed Ukraine. This region was literally overwhelmed by a wave of revelations. Everything was checked, from notebooks where a hidden swastika was found, to sweets, the wrappers of which were examined especially carefully. 34 district committees ceased to exist, and Postyshev was shot. I was not interested in whether he was rehabilitated or not, most likely yes. And there were many such regions. The rehabilitation of those communists is hidden behind seven seals, and the process of forgiveness itself is oh, how interesting.
Let's cement the situation. So, the party that came to power in 1917 was a radical party, and they did not make the revolution. They took power, began to restore order and preserved the country as a civilization, destroying the foundations of the old system. More precisely, it was not they who destroyed it, but the liberals, and the party rather restored the country on a common foundation for it. No wonder Stalin saw a model in Ivan the Terrible. Both of them played a huge role in Russian history. Let's think about this. Let's look at the map and ask ourselves a question. How can such a country be governed after a devastating civil war? What idea should you give people? The question is complex. I'll tell you the main thing. Let’s say that the idea of ​​a revolutionary fire in the world embraces the majority of people. How long will this impulse last? Well, a year or two, and then? The peasants of Russia did not want power at all; the worker can be fooled, but not for long. Well, a million people rebelled in 1930, so what? The remaining 120 lived quietly and did not interfere anywhere. And that million calmed down quite quickly. What idea should we give to the country?


You can also talk about the future of communism, but again, all this is temporary. The country was ready to collapse from the breeze of the same national ideas that the West was throwing up. But the USSR existed and worked, surrounded by enemies, and built its future without relying on anyone. And he built it so successfully that by the beginning of the war, our country was no longer the ear of clay it was imagined to be in Europe. There were no fools in Europe, and they could not assume that the entire country was capable of a feat; they calculated based on their considerations about life, which had no contact with Russia.. I will express it, but it’s up to you to agree or not. To understand this, you need to go a little beyond the scope of the question.
Shocking as it may seem, the new government as a whole expressed all the aspirations of the people of the country. This was a kind of continuation of a special Christianity in Rus' under the guise of atheism. (For interest, an assessment of Orthodoxy....) It is not for nothing that I introduce the term “Christianity” here, because there is no other way to say it. But Christianity is only an assessment of declared Orthodoxy, as its main core. Have you forgotten what kind of Orthodoxy we have in our country? Over time, Stalin began to pay attention to the church, and the history of Orthodoxy in Russia during his reign has its own characteristics. Let’s not go deeper into the question; I’ll note the main thing. Stalin's success was that he managed to preserve Russia in its ideological field, in its historical needs. Was this done consciously or not? Now it’s difficult to answer this question; most likely, it’s both. But the fact remains that Russia under Stalin began to develop in such a way that there was no talk of unrest, and even a threat in the prospect of the development of revolutionary sentiments was not visible. It was only later, after Khrushchev, that such a prospect became clear to everyone, and especially in the West, which clearly responded to the change in ideological attitudes in the USSR itself. Therefore, other methods of waging war against Russia were chosen, calculated for the future. The people of the country helped the Bolsheviks not because they were afraid, but because they saw that all their actions corresponded to their mentality and ideas of justice. And the natural process in the party led to the fact that the talking shops began to be replaced by statist people, whom the party only interfered with. And it was not the Bolsheviks who began to destroy the church, but the same people, as soon as they saw their ideals. He cannot explain to the people that the role of Orthodoxy in the country and in the world is different, namely in the salvation of the human soul. The people saw only a wrapper on which were drawn servants of the faith, exploiting the people and leading a way of life that was not at all established by God. That's the whole reason. Man as a unit of society demands little from the authorities. First of all, he must be confident in his future and in the future of his children. And if the actions of the authorities correspond to his ideas of justice, he can move mountains. The collectivism of society was able to do this, and this fact is being deliberately forgotten today, since it contradicts the new attitudes. There is only one person and a private trader who sees his neighbor as a competitor, and therefore an enemy. Power cannot serve a person, since it is a dead end leading to disaster. The government is obliged to serve the universe called Russia. It was Russia that Stalin served. After all, what actually happened? Russia has always relied on a system of duties; this was its distinctive feature, which prevented the development of feudalism in the country. Russia has passed this period in its history. At the head of this pyramid was a king who could do anything. In the twentieth century, when distances between regions began to shrink both in time and in the flow of information, such a king could only be a practitioner. There was no way for another cult king to make money. Moreover, the Provisional Government left only hatred among the people for such a system of power. So how was Stalin different? His main difference was that he was a hard worker, and he was not an intellectual. That's all the differences. It was they who singled him out from among the contenders for Russian throne. And now for leaflets! (see below) Do you now understand who was the teacher of the destroyers of the USSR?

The Bolshevik Party consisted of talkers who learned to use terms and were savvy in Marxism. How they managed to hold on to Russia is largely a mystery. All its leaders who worked in the regions were poorly educated people. They became people of action and were not afraid of anyone or anything when it came not just to their own safety, but also when it came to the danger of the entire system. And such they saw danger in the 1936 Constitution.


This danger was not immediately recognized and understood by them. But here one more nuance needs to be taken into account. The party barons quite quickly began to turn into a kind of elite, which began to stand out for its needs. This is a kind of new layer of rich people for whom the law is not written and who they could spin as they wanted. The elite lived for their own pleasure, and Stalin saw this danger. There were so many of these dangers, and everyone played the main role, that anyone would have given up, but not Stalin. The clan system was quickly destroyed. The clan is not a viable system, and having kicked the leaders out of the party, the pyramid collapsed on its own. This is an impossible task for the authorities today, since liberal consciousness does not allow them to take extreme measures. And then Stalin did not stand on ceremony. But Russia began to be divided into a kind of clans in the regions. Let's look at the methods of government of such clans.


Here is Ukraine, where there are all conditions for harvesting and for the development of agriculture. 1 932, the plan provided for giving Ukraine a little more than forty percent of the entire harvest. It was real plan, and did not expect any difficulties. The leaders of the regions of Ukraine managed to plow only half of the sown areas, and the result was famine. And what, is the Russian people to blame for this? Today it was he who was made the whipping boy. Kosior then demanded the implementation of the plan, and he was not interested in the authorities’ excuses. And the authorities learned about the famine only from Sholokhov. Kosior was destroyed, and who can say what was wrong? The party was not a government body at all, if you read the Constitution of that time, but it was the party that ruled the country. At the same time, Stalin was considered the head of state in the world. Today everyone would do this in order to give legitimacy to the ruler; that is why there is a system of deception called elections. But in the USSR, according to the law, Stalin did not have power. There was a cult of personality, popularity and influence, but there was no power. And now it’s time to say what power is? There is a head of any system, but does he have real power? Did Gorbachev have power in the country?

Of course not, therefore the system of power exists not according to written laws, but according to its own special laws of existence. Power is, first of all, the opportunity to be a ruler not by law but by historical choice. This is a kind of metaphysical force, and I am not afraid of this conclusion. Power cannot be explained in words, and it is given only to those who are called to it by a force beyond the control of man. So was Ivan the Terrible, who left the throne, and it immediately became clear that the tasks that modernity posed could be solved by him. This situation requires complete independence of the ruler from all factors. Today, power depends on those who helped get out and on money, as well as on the West, since Russia today has nothing of its own and is completely dependent on supplies from the West. In this case, only a person sick with liberalism can talk about the independent policy of the authorities. Stalin did not depend on external factors. He depended on the part, which he gradually turned into his instrument. The process was going to be long, and Stalin understood that the successor to his post must be, like him, a statesman. And here history put a barrier to him. We will also try to solve this riddle.

Mysteries of history: secrets of the repressions of 1937

As you know, the beginning of the so-called “Stalinist repressions” is considered to be the same 1934, or rather December 1, 1934, that is, the murder of the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee S. M. Kirov. With Khrushchev's light hand, it is customary to blame Stalin for this murder. However, all the circumstances of this crime and its investigation today allow us to draw the exact opposite conclusion. Kirov always supported Stalin and had absolutely no ambitious plans to seize power. In the person of Kirov, Stalin lost faithful ally, which in the difficult conditions of the 30s noticeably weakened Stalin’s power. In addition, if Stalin had been the organizer of Kirov’s murder, he would have taken care to immediately eliminate possible witnesses. In fact, Stalin, who personally arrived in Leningrad to investigate the crime, himself interrogated Kirov’s killer Nikolaev and gave orders for his protection. However, Nikolaev himself and other witnesses to the crime were killed under mysterious circumstances, just when Stalin wanted to get the important information he needed from them. So, the security officer Borisov was killed, who was summoned for interrogation to Stalin in Smolny. Borisov had important information about the murder and, according to some evidence, he was killed with the knowledge or even on the direct order of Zaporozhets. Today we can say with confidence that the murder of Kirov was a retaliatory blow to Stalin by the Trotskyist opposition and its foreign leaders.

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

Very similar to Putin's actions, isn't it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stalin's involvement in the sanctions on the execution of tens of thousands of people has been documented; the so-called “Stalinist lists” number 44.5 thousand, but not 700 thousand.

Who was the main conductor of the bloody massacres that entered our public consciousness under the name of “repression”?

D. A. Bystroletov, who found himself in the same cell with the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs A. I. Nasedkin, recalled how he talked about his predecessor B. Berman:

“In Minsk [B. Berman] it was a real devil who escaped from the underworld. He shot more than 80 thousand people in Minsk in less than a year of work. He killed the best communists republics. Beheaded the Soviet apparatus. He carefully sought out, found, pulled out all the people who stood out in the slightest degree for intelligence or devotion from the working people - Stakhanovites in factories, chairmen in collective farms, the best foremen, writers, scientists, artists.

On Saturdays, Berman held production meetings. Six people from among the investigators were called onto the stage according to a prepared list - the three best and the three worst. Berman began like this: “Here is one of our best workers, Ivanov Ivan Nikolaevich. In a week, Comrade Ivanov completed a hundred cases, of which forty were for the highest measure, and sixty for a total period of a thousand years. Congratulations, Comrade Ivanov. Thank you! Stalin knows and remembers about you. You are nominated for an award, and now you will receive a cash bonus in the amount of five thousand rubles! Here's the money. Sit down!" Then Semyonov was given the same amount, but without presentation to the order, for completing 75 cases: with the execution of thirty people and a total sentence of seven hundred years for the rest. And Nikolaev - for two thousand five hundred for twenty executed. The hall trembled with applause. The lucky ones proudly went to their places. There was silence. Everyone's faces turned pale and stretched out. My hands began to tremble. Suddenly, in dead silence, Berman loudly called his name: “Mikhailov Alexander Stepanovich, come here to the table.” General movement. All heads turn. One man makes his way forward with unsteady steps. The face is twisted in horror, the sightless eyes are wide open. “Here is Alexander Stepanovich Mikhailov. Look at him, comrades! He completed three cases in a week. Not a single execution, sentences of five and seven years are proposed.” Deathly silence. Berman slowly approaches the unfortunate man. "Watch! Take him!” The investigator is taken away. “It has become clear,” Berman says loudly, looking into space over their heads, “it has become clear that this man was recruited by our enemies, who set themselves the goal of disrupting the work of the authorities, disrupting the fulfillment of Comrade Stalin’s assignments. The traitor will be shot!”

From the above passage we see how Berman, with the hands of the NKVD, destroys the color of the nation, the best people, both from the people and from the NKVD itself. At the same time, he specifically emphasizes that he is acting on Stalin’s orders.

The goal of Berman and others like him was simple: by exterminating innocent people, to arouse people’s hatred of Stalin. The image of Stalin as a bloody executioner, a tyrant, a monster was consciously and purposefully formed, that is, the same image that is implanted in the minds of our society today. Who is Berman?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just like Berman, another instigator of repressions, the first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, the former Trotskyist N. S. Khrushchev, also harmed Stalin. In May 1937, at the plenum of the Moscow State Committee of the Party, he said: “These scoundrels must be destroyed. By destroying one, two, ten, we do the work of millions. Therefore, it is necessary that the hand does not tremble, it is necessary to step over the corpses of the enemy for the good of the people.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The blow to Stalin from the party elite was dealt precisely at the Plenum of the Central Committee in June 1937. At this Plenum, Stalin sought to consolidate his dominant position both in the country and in the party and to ensure that the new electoral law was adopted by the party majority. This electoral law was supposed to bring new people to power and remove the old party leadership.

During the Plenum, Eikhe, already known to us, relying on the conspiracy of the regional committee secretaries, turned to the Politburo with a request to temporarily grant him emergency powers in the territory under his jurisdiction. In the Novosibirsk region, he wrote, a powerful, huge in number, anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization had been uncovered, which the NKVD authorities were unable to completely liquidate. It is necessary to create a “troika” consisting of the following: the first secretary of the regional party committee, the regional prosecutor and the head of the regional NKVD department, with the right to make operational decisions on the expulsion of anti-Soviet elements and the imposition of death sentences on the most dangerous of these individuals. That is, in fact, a military court: without defenders, without witnesses, with the right to immediate execution of sentences. That is, Eikhe and the party apparatus tried to prevent the consolidation of Stalin’s power and disrupt the approval of the new electoral law.

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

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

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

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

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

The decision to wind down the NEP, to accelerate Reforms in agriculture (Collectivization) and in Industry (Industrialization) was made by Stalin’s Team precisely under the influence of the factor of Promotion and Hitler’s rise to Power in Germany - the only country and nation in Europe capable of war, and especially since that Hitler never hid that he was striving for Power precisely to start a New World War to Create Greater Germany and his main Goal in these Plans was Russia, which he intended to fraternally share with England. World Wars without Russia’s “participation” do not and cannot happen at all. Hitler could really solve Germany's problems only by destroying Russia, taking control of its Resources and, above all, the most important thing at that time - the Territory of Russia-Eurasia itself, through which it is possible to deliver goods from Asia and the East to the West, to Europe by rail at a cheaper price. roads than by sea routes, which were then controlled by England and the growing strength of the United States. In this case, he could make England a second-class country.

Now there is a struggle for Russia and its trade routes between USA and China

So, under these conditions, Stalin had to carry out Accelerated Reforms in agriculture, or leave everything as it is - fists and plows tinkering with their plots? Or was it necessary to wait until tractors appeared in the country by themselves and “distribute” them at preferential prices to “kulak farmers”, so that in 30 years machine cultivation would appear in the countryside? It’s just not clear - where would Hitler’s rise to power and his specifically stated aspirations for the Destruction of Russia have gone, with such “reforms”, relying on kulaks (sorry - private farmers)? In 1931, Stalin said that if Russia does not make it from feudalism with a plow to an Industrial Power in 10 years, then it will simply be crushed and destroyed. 10 years is a purely economic calculation of the required time for the Restoration of Germany, its rearmament and the beginning of the War for the Redivision of the World.

(Accelerated collectivization was carried out locally in a couple of months, instead of the 3-4 years he indicated, by the Mendeli Khataevichs and the like. The reaction of the people to the Khataevichs, and the same explosions of churches carried out by them, which Stalin did not ask these “faithful Leninists” and steel popular riots(which was the goal of the friends of Trotsky-Bronstein who remained in Russia - the right-wing Bukharinites), which, like it or not, must be extinguished. It’s a pity Stalin’s haters don’t like to say - why weren’t there any riots in the countryside against collective farms in the late 30s? But you won’t be able to stop the Tambov men, or even more so the Mordovian ones, if they are dissatisfied and seriously stage a rebellion against the authorities.)

Reforms in rural areas and in industry were carried out at an accelerated pace, primarily in connection with the specific situation around Russia in those years. If there were no specific Threat of War against Russia, for its Destruction and Dismemberment, there would be no need to accelerate these Reforms. After the reforms as a whole were carried out, it never occurred to anyone in the village to organize riots against the collective farms. And there is no need to moan about the “destroyed village.” Russia received cars to the villages and received food security in the conditions of the approaching War.

Thus, I conclude that the repressions of 1937 - 1938. in the USSR were initiated and carried out by foreign intelligence services, as well as by recruited party nomenklatura and party functionaries who did not want to part with their powers of power. The repressions were supposed to weaken the USSR before the start of the war, which is what they actually achieved.