Vladimir Lenin, whose next non-anniversary is celebrated today, is still a symbolic person. The debate over whether to remove the leader’s body from the Mausoleum flares up with seasonal frequency. Like any modern star, Ilyich has blogs of his fans on the Internet. Russian business travelers, finding themselves in an unfamiliar city, look for a wine and vodka store in a proven way: stand with their backs to the Lenin monument and go where it points. And young cultural experts have created a group on Facebook and, with the care of scientists, are trying to calculate how many monuments to the leader have been opened around the world, and how many have been demolished. In general, the image of the leader has not left the public consciousness. How do modern historians see him? RG talked about this with Vladimir Buldakov, chief researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Photo by RIA Novosti
Should Lenin be buried or not? Is this really the key question that splits our memory of the Revolution and prevents reconciliation?
Vladimir Buldakov: The hopes that Lenin will be buried, and all the difficult questions of history, will be resolved by themselves, from my point of view, from the realm of bad magic. We deserve the past we have, along with all its ritual absurdities. History must be understood, and not conjured about historical characters and events that seem key to us. We must learn to understand Lenin and his era. And only on this basis is reconciliation possible. If you understand the logic of another, then you forgive him to a greater or lesser extent. You understand that he is also a victim of events or his own ignorance.
But Lenfilm proposed its own way to understand the events and reconcile the whole world with the Revolution: to cast DiCaprio in the role of Lenin. They say he is very similar to the young Ulyanov...
Vladimir Buldakov: Funny... This is again from the realm of some magical utopian things. Of course, cinematic methods do not cure the neuroses of history. However, there are more than enough scenic scenes from the life of the leader. I personally would really like to understand what Lenin was thinking on the way from Finland to Petrograd. Were you afraid of arrest?
- And why did he change the bowler hat to the now famous cap?
Vladimir Buldakov: He “borrowed” the “proletarian” cap from the Parisian chansonniers. This is a known fact. So he wanted to become “closer to the masses.” Quite naive!
- Leonard DiCaprio is great at romantic scenes, remember at the bow of “Titanic”?
Vladimir Buldakov: Well, how long can you procrastinate on the “novel” of Vladimir Ilyich, who seemed to be supposed to think exclusively about the revolution? (As it really was). Is it impossible for a person to fall in love with Inessa Armand - also a revolutionary? Ordinary adultery, but revolutionary. For that matter, you can play with the plot of Lenin’s wife being childless against the backdrop of Inessa, who has many children. Ilyich really loved children (as well as cats and dogs)! But seriously, passions for revolution are completely combined with sexual irrepressibility. But here Lenin looks, alas, modestly.
You once said that Lenin was appointed as the culprit of the revolution? And he himself has nothing to do with it? Didn’t you write any “April Theses” or other guidelines for action, and didn’t you sign any execution lists?
Vladimir Buldakov: Not only Lenin was appointed. With the same success they “appointed” Nicholas II. In Soviet times there was this joke: “Nicholas II should be awarded the Order of the October Revolution for creating the preconditions for this revolution.” There is some truth in this joke. Historical guilt lies not only and not so much with the instigator or organizer of the unrest, but also with the person in power who behaves like a fatalist. In Russia, the government is not so much being overthrown as it is becoming obsolete and falling apart before our eyes. It can be difficult to believe in such a possibility, and therefore the search for the “culprits” becomes inevitable. By 1917, the people had completely lost faith in the authorities. Not without known clues, of course.
- Who, in your words, suggested who was confusing these crowds in 1917?
Vladimir Buldakov: Demagogues from all sides bombarded the people with a variety of slogans. But it does not at all follow from this that the people acted on their orders. Nothing like this. The peasant, and the peasantry formed the basis of the movement, was guided, on the one hand, by his “interest”, on the other, he was in the grip of uncontrollable emotions. The masses were driven by hatred - irrational, accumulating long before the First World War. And as soon as the government discovered its inconsistency, it spontaneously spilled over. That is why the Civil War took on such multidimensionality and length. No one can provoke this.
- But Lenin was the leader of the “troublemakers”?
Vladimir Buldakov: Leave Lenin alone. He's not the biggest villain. He had a lot of much more radical predecessors, he was “helped” by all kinds of anarchists and maximalists who were ready to slaughter and hang “bourgeois” without trial, being confident that they were clearing the way for the construction of socialism. Lenin came ready. However, unlike the bulk of overly emotional revolutionaries, Lenin was more “rationalistic” and believed in the immutability of Marxist theory. For him, Marxism was the ultimate truth. But at the same time, he continually retreated from Marxism in the name of “revolutionary creativity of the masses.”
According to some modern historians, Lenin was too bourgeois and gray to be a symbol of October, did not shine with transcendental analytical abilities, did not leave behind a trail of heroic or romantic stories, and lacked mystery and evil charm. The only novel, an unsuccessful career as a lawyer. In a word, not Robespierre...
Vladimir Buldakov: He had other, much more important qualities for a revolutionary. He had the ability to infect those around him with his faith, not only his party comrades, but also the most diverse public. This seems paradoxical, since he was an average speaker. However, the conviction that ran through his every word truly infected and charged people.
Every now and then he would stun his associates with some incredible idea, and then somehow manage to convince them that it could and should be implemented. There were times when semi-magical gestures and spells were in demand. The clouded human consciousness could not resist them.
What kind of impossible ideas did he come up with? He conceived a coup d’etat, outlined the path to it in his punctual “April Theses”, and everything worked out...
Vladimir Buldakov: When he pronounced these very “April Theses”, all mouths opened: they did not correspond to Marxist theory. According to the classics, a relatively long intermediate stage was necessary between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the movement further. And he kept repeating: “We are moving on to the next stage of the revolution!” At first, this caused irritation even in those closest to me. But then the April crisis happened. He was provoked by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, Pavel Milyukov, who assured the Entente allies that Russia would continue the war until victory. This caused an explosion of indignation among the war-weary, especially the soldiers. It turns out that chance helped Lenin.
However, in July everyone seemed ready to believe that the Bolsheviks were German spies and belonged in prison. But when, after the inglorious failure of the offensive of the Russian armies, Kornilov wanted to restore order in the country by force, Ilyich again found himself on the horse. Everyone was afraid of the military dictatorship, even liberals. This is how the course of events itself helped Lenin.
- All that remained was to whistle and - “We are marching with revolutionary lava. Above the rows there is a flag of fires al...”?
Vladimir Buldakov: Not at all like that. It took Lenin a lot of work to convince his party comrades of the need to prepare for an armed uprising. It was difficult: the Petrograd garrison least of all wanted to obey anyone. And the workers were faced with the problem of not losing their jobs. Few people wanted to storm the government, despite their dissatisfaction with it. The people, out of long-standing habit, hoped that someone else would “overthrow the bourgeoisie.” The counter-revolution was also at a loss. A determined minority was enough to overthrow the government. And you shouldn’t make up fairy tales about a “perfectly prepared conspiracy.” Fears of a mythical counter-revolution could have played a much larger role - it was not for nothing that Lenin frightened with the second Kornilovism. As a result, in front of the dumbfounded moderate socialists, the Bolsheviks managed to simply push the Provisional Government into oblivion, declaring themselves a Provisional (!) Workers' and Peasants' Government. That’s the whole “secret” of the victory of the “Great October Revolution”!
Vladimir Prokhorovich, listen to you, somewhere the leader was lucky, somewhere he said something stupid, but someone answered even more stupidly... This image is not at all similar to the one to which the older generation is accustomed (the younger generation knows Lenin mainly from jokes). Where is the truth?
Vladimir Buldakov: The man was outstanding and powerful. Another thing is that he is a utopian. But the era of that time itself gave rise to utopias and corresponding “prophets.” The world war brought all this to a boiling point. Madness and bloodshed on such a scale lead to the fact that the chimeras of the imagination become an effective force in history. Hence the desire for world revolution.
- They write that Vladimir Ilyich despised the leaders of the Paris Commune because half the city was not shot...
Vladimir Buldakov: He, of course, was not the “good grandfather Lenin” that we were told about in kindergarten. People who lived through the experience of the World War sincerely believed that the destruction of several hundred thousand and even millions of people was a completely commensurate price to pay for stepping into a wonderful future. This is the way of thinking of that time. In addition, the colossal demographic boom throughout Europe and Russia played its destructive role. In Russia, the “rejuvenation” of the population - let us remember Blok’s: “Youth is retribution” - has merged with the so-called agrarian overpopulation in the center of the country. The accumulated feeling of hopelessness gave rise to truly bestial hatred among the starving people. In Russia, too much depends not on theories and laws, but on spontaneous emotions. As for Lenin, for some he is a bright genius, for others he is a fiend of hell. However, something similar happens to all great people. The confused human mind demands cults. Lenin, with certain personal qualities, turned out to be in demand by his time. Just like the Bolsheviks, by the way.
- Some kind of special bloodthirstiness of the leader of the revolution - myth or reality?
Vladimir Buldakov: A person of the present “peaceful” time really does not like the “bloodthirstiness” of people of the past. Unfortunately, the story is riddled with violence. What about the calls to “shoot more” in Lenin’s times? This is “just” a question about the price of a “bright future” - the imaginary antipode of the unbearable present. “Better a terrible end than endless horror!” And if we talk about Lenin’s cruelty, then we should take into account that it is one thing to declare that in the name of an idea one can and should be shot, and another thing to give a specific order. “Book” violence is one thing, reprisals are another. In the revolution, people were shot not so much according to orders, but “at the call of the heart.” The willingness to kill - both in the name of an idea and in the form of everyday brutality - was more than enough. No wonder people are still wondering: was the royal family shot by order from above or by initiative from below? At that time, this act did not cause either regret or shudder among the mass of the people.
-Which terror was more bloodthirsty: red or white?
Vladimir Buldakov: Revolutionary terror is more massive by definition. Revolutionaries, these “hostages of the idea,” having failed, can always say: we lost because we didn’t kill enough. This is the logic. But if we talk specifically about the Red Terror, it was more orderly and “understandable”: the bourgeoisie must be destroyed, period. But the White Guards acted rather emotionally. These were people who lost themselves in the “Red Troubles” and had no idea where the “fate” of events was leading. That's why they suspected everyone and everything. Echoes of this are still felt today - hence the mass of conspiracy theories.
Are we, after almost a hundred years, able to look at the meaning of the revolution without anger and partiality? And without private grievances?
Vladimir Buldakov: People want an "understandable" past. We still live by emotions unbridled by reason. Hence the “grievances” against the unknown past. As for grievances against rulers who turned history in a “dead-end” direction, this is the lot of people who are obviously unfree, alienated or weaned from their own history. Hence all sorts of morbid fantasies on the subject of “heroes and villains.”
“Almost a hundred years later, it is appropriate to talk about the “world-historical significance” of the October Revolution.”
Vladimir Buldakov: As a response to the First World War, the revolution was understood and even accepted in its own way by the whole world. This is one of the possibilities for a natural resolution of the global conflict, the socialists of the Second International believed. In this sense, October was truly a world-historical event. And I found a lot of imitators on all continents. The trouble is that humanity is still moving forward through shocks. And politicians will never learn to act proactively.
-Are we today able to look at the revolution without anger and partiality? No private grievances?
Vladimir Buldakov: Ordinary people did not get rid of the current hardships then. However, estates were eliminated and an impetus was given to the formation of civil society. Social elevators started working, although they also worked in Tsarist Russia - for those who wanted to study. After the revolution, peasant youth rushed not only to the Komsomol, but also to educational institutions - for knowledge. There is a real opportunity to change the lives of the lower classes. Although the revolution threw many outstanding people outside Russia, it gave new talented people the opportunity to realize themselves. It shook up the centuries-old layers of Russian life - this is its absolute advantage. Of course, the price of such changes was too high in everyday terms. However, history does not take into account the “noble” human emotions - too often they stem from civic incapacity.
Dossier "RG"
The last monuments to Lenin appeared in Russia in 2007 - in Tsarskoe Selo and Lipetsk. But formally, the most “recent” monument is the monument to the world leader of the proletariat in Richmond, Canada; it was erected in January 2010. On Lenin's head is a balancing Mao Zedong. The composition is made of chromed steel. The authors of this monument are the Chinese Gao brothers. It stood until January 2012. After which Lenin and Mao Zedong went to China.
The reaction of the party and the people to the “secret” report of N.S. Khrushchev.
Analyzing the actions of N.S. Khrushchev on “exposing the personality cult of I.V. Stalin”, the course and results of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, we have to admit that he, N.S. Khrushchev managed to achieve his goals: to avoid a widespread “internal party revolt” of ordinary party members against the vile slander that he unleashed from the rostrum of the congress against I.V. Stalin, to deceive the people, passing off as the truth the dirty lie that he read from the rostrum of the congress, to deceive people regarding the real goals that guided him in developing the anti-Stalin campaign. He managed to present himself as a “fiery fighter” against Stalin’s “bloody political repressions” - the lives of many tens of thousands of people who were ruined by him both in Moscow and in Ukraine - remember Stalin’s address to him - “Calm down, Nikita!” - were taken aside .
The methods he used were simple and reliable: for party members - an appeal to party discipline - this is necessary, depriving people of the opportunity to make reasoned criticism - at the congress, after the report was read out, the moderator said - there will be no discussions on this issue, at party meetings, where a slanderous pamphlet about the cult of personality was read out, it did not fall into the hands of ordinary communists - it is impossible! There was a case when this brochure disappeared - so the comrade responsible for the disappearance was expelled from the party! At the same time, Enver Hoxha told the Soviet ambassador in Tirana about volume, that in Warsaw the full text of the report of Comrade N.S. Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU about the “cult of personality” could be bought from private individuals for 20 zlotys, although this is a top secret document
The goal of N.S. Khrushchev was to “suppress” any protests both in the party and among the people in defense of I.V. Stalin. It turned out that the report of N.S. Khrushchev about the “cult of personality of I.V. Stalin" was published in dozens of languages around the world, and the Soviet people were able to familiarize themselves with it only three decades after it was read. Many thousands of honest Soviet communists were deprived of the opportunity to refute that utter slander against I.V. Stalin, which was contained in the report of N.S. Khrushchev.
In this article, I will try, based on documents from the Archive of the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee (now it is RGANI - Russian State Archive of Contemporary History), to illuminate the issue of the “passing” of N.S.’s report. Khrushchev through party authorities - the Presidium of the Central Committee, the Plenum of the Central Committee, the congress, and, The main thing, - based on reports from the field received by the Central Committee, talk about the reaction in the party and the people to the “secret” report of N.S. Khrushchev about the “cult of personality” of I.V. Stalin.
But, from the beginning, those few lines about N.S.’s report. Khrushchev, which are contained in the book “XX Congress of the CPSU. February 14-25, 1956. Verbatim report. T.2., M., 1956.” Page 401. Pervukhin: “...At 6 o’clock there will be a closed evening meeting of the congress. At this meeting there are delegates with a casting vote and delegates with an advisory vote.” Right there. Page 402. “The Congress, at a closed meeting, heard a report by the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Comrade. N.S. N.S. Khrushchev “On the cult of personality and its consequences” and adopted a resolution on this issue. After the break, an open meeting of the congress took place.” At this (last) meeting of the congress, the “Draft Directives for the Sixth Five-Year Plan” was approved, the counting commission on the results of elections to the central bodies of the party (members of the Central Committee, candidates for members of the Central Committee, members of the Central Audit Commission) was heard, and the resolution of the congress on the preparation of a new Program was adopted parties. From these short messages it is clear - the “secret” report of N.S. Khrushchev was read out as part of the work of the 20th Congress.
There is a lot of confusion regarding the questions of who is N.S. Khrushchev authorized to read this report? After all, such an issue was not on the previously approved agenda of the congress! The fact is that these issues were considered at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, held on February 13, 1956, i.e. - on the eve of the opening of the XX Congress of the CPSU. AND the very fact of holding the Plenum of the Central Committee and its decisions, which are directly related to the report of N.S. Khrushchev about Stalin were classified for decades!
I quote archival materials about the Plenum. Extract from minutes No. 187 of the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of February 9, 1956 “On the holding of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee. The plenum of the CPSU Central Committee will be convened on February 13, 1956 at 3 pm in the Sverdlovsk Hall. At the Plenum of the Central Committee, consider issues related to the opening of the 20th Party Congress” (RGANI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 182, l. 1).
Extract from the minutes of the 188th meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of February 13, 1956 “On the opening of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee. Instruct the opening of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee to the First Secretary of the Central Committee, Comrade N.S. Khrushchev. Submit a proposal to the Plenum of the Central Committee that the Presidium of the Central Committee considers it necessary to make a report on the cult of personality at a closed meeting of the congress. Approve Comrade N.S. Khrushchev as speaker.” (RGANI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 182, l. 2).
The entire transcript of the Central Committee Plenum of February 13, 1956 fits into one and a half pages of typewritten text. According to the report of N.S. that interests us. Khrushchev says:
“There is one more issue that needs to be mentioned here. Presidium of the Central Committee after repeated exchange of opinions and study of the situation and materials after the death of Comrade Stalin feels and considers it necessary to put it at the 20th Party Congress, at a closed meeting (apparently this will be at the time when reports will be discussed and candidates for the leading bodies of the Central Committee will be approved: members of the Central Committee, candidates and members of the audit commission, when there are no guests) a report from the Central Committee on the cult of personality.
At the Presidium we agreed that the report would be entrusted to me, the First Secretary of the Central Committee. Any objections?
Presiding comrade N.S. KHRUSHCHEV. Then, in my opinion, we resolved all the issues that should have been resolved at our Plenum. Let me close the meeting of the plenum at this point” (RGANI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 181, pp. 2 - 5).
All the above documents are printed on the letterhead of the Central Committee of the CPSU and are marked “strictly secret” and next to them are stamped “declassified”.
What do these documents say? About the fact that N.S. Khrushchev (with the active support of Mikoyan, an equally convinced hater of I.V. Stalin), “pushed” the report on the “cult of personality” both through the Presidium of the Central Committee and through the Plenum of the Central Committee - without encountering any real resistance. Here it is appropriate to give a list of the Presidium of the Central Committee of that time (these “heroes” of Khrushchev’s time): G.M. Malenkov, V.M. Molotov, K.E. Voroshilov, N.A. Bulganin, L.M. Kaganovich, N.S. Khrushchev, A.I. Mikoyan, M.Z. Saburov, M.G. Pervukhin, M.A. Suslov, A.I. Kirichenko. From the above documents it is clear that the then leadership of the party (Presidium, Central Committee of the CPSU), unlike ordinary delegates of the congress, was well aware of the upcoming “secret” report of N.S. even before the start of the congress. Khrushchev, and decided the issue of the report completely “consciously”!
After reading the “secret” report by N.S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress - in the spring and summer of 1956, the Central Committee held a campaign to read this report at closed meetings of local party organizations. The communists did not receive any printed materials at these meetings - they only “listened” to them. During this campaign, the Central Committee received numerous and detailed reports from the regions, information from which was not published in the open press, and the reports themselves “settled” for storage in the Archive of the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee - the current RGANI. The inaccessibility of this information to wide circles of communists and the entire Soviet people for many decades led to the widespread opinion that there was no reaction to the anti-Stalin bacchanalia, that “everything was silently swallowed.” For example, in a work published in 2016, Professor V.A. Atsyukovsky writes: “it is not known that anyone publicly objected to the defamation of I.V. Stalin at the 20th Congress in 1956." So what? “The people are silent”? No! This was far from true! This is evidenced by the declassified documents of the RGANI below.
To keep the publication at a reasonable length, we will present archival material in excerpts, grouping it into topics that are surprisingly close to the topics that were the focus of attention during the destruction of the Soviet Union thirty years later, during Gorbachev’s “perestroika.” Each excerpt is given exactly according to archival materials, without any changes; its specific archival details in the RGANI archive can be found in the book “Report of N.S. Khrushchev about Stalin’s personality cult at the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Documentation. Moscow. ROSSPEN, 2002".
Of course, at most local party meetings that heard information about the results of the 20th Congress, resolutions were adopted with a full “approval, sir”! Any deviations from “we approve,” sir, were immediately suppressed by higher party bodies: re-elections of the leadership of local party organizations were held, repeated party meetings with “repentance” were “those who blurted out too much,” those who did not repent (and there were hundreds of them) were miserably “kicked out of the party.” No matter how bitter it is to talk about it, it was this “we approve, sir” that became the “highway” in the further evolution of both the party and the country; it was he who inevitably led to the collapse of the great work of building communism, which began in October 1917.
We begin to quote archival documents. All date references refer to 1956! “It should be noted that in the first days after the 20th Congress of the CPSU there were many instances of public removal and destruction of portraits, busts and monuments of Stalin, reaching in some cases to open hooliganism. Thus, the secretary of the party organization of the Tallinn city telephone network, Comrade Kavelich, after familiarizing himself with the report of N.S. Khrushchev about the cult of personality, when he came home, he burned “A Short Course in the History of the Party,” Stalin’s book “On the Great Patriotic War,” and a portrait of Stalin that was in the apartment. In the city of Brest on March 29, the front part of the bust of Stalin installed in the fence of the regional library was damaged by a hammer blow. On March 17, in the Pioneer Park in Petroza-vodsk, the face on the monument to Stalin was doused with tar. The same facts took place in Stalinabad and a number of other cities.” “In schools it is now customary to tear out portraits of Comrade Comrade from all textbooks. Stalin and destroy, or rather, burn them. This phenomenon is not isolated, but massive (across Leningrad).” Soon this hooliganism - the destruction of monuments, busts of I.V. Stalin became part of state policy. That's what! “According to the belief of a teacher from Belarus, there should be a second letter from the Central Committee about Stalin’s personal life, since the latter, being a friend of Beria, apparently was engaged in the same debauchery as Beria.” All these phenomena and thoughts were fully consistent with the spirit of N.S.’s report. Khrushchev - after all, according to this report, Stalin became a “fiend of hell”, capable of anything.
The minds of the party members painfully tried to understand what this report was, how to treat it? Was it alarming that at the 20th Congress of the CPSU there was no discussion of the report on the cult of personality? Why is the report on the cult of personality not discussed in the primary party organizations, but only read out? Assessments at party meetings: “The 20th Congress of the CPSU just heard the report of Comrade N.S. Khrushchev about the cult of personality, did not discuss it, and, therefore, did not understand this issue in detail. When considering this issue there was neither self-criticism from above nor criticism from below.” “Where is the self-criticism that we have talked and talk about so much”?
Following the question about the debate, the question arose naturally - and where was the Politburo (Presidium) of the Central Committee, because there are people who have worked with I.V. for decades. Stalin and, of course, knowing the ins and outs of everything that was said in N.S.’s report. Khrushchev? In the reports of the Central Committee from the field they wrote: “How can we understand that members of the Politburo knew about Stalin’s actions, but did not take action”? “Why did members of the government earlier during Stalin’s life not stepped against the “cult of personality”? “In the report of Comrade. N.S. Khrushchev, at a closed meeting of the congress about the “cult of personality,” unconvincingly answered the question: “Where were the members of the Presidium? It is very difficult for us propagandists to explain this issue to the Soviet people! Alas! Neither the Soviet people nor the party received a clear, seriously reasoned answer to this question, either in 1956 or later.
But all the undead internal party enemies sensed their “finest hour”. At the suggestion of N.S. Khrushchev again started talking about “Lenin’s will”, hints about the mystery of the murder of S.M. Kirov, Trotskyist conversations began to revive about Stalin’s involvement in the murder of Kirov, about letters from V.I. Lenin and N.K. Krupskaya! From information in the Central Committee: “A certain group of comrades, in connection with the materials of the 20th Congress and the experience of socialist construction in other countries, formed the opinion that a mistake was made in pursuing the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class in the USSR - ignoring the possibility involve kulaks in socialist construction”, “Do you think the liquidation of the kulaks as a class in our country, such measures as the general eviction of kulaks, confiscation of property and other repressive measures were correct? Isn’t this a manifestation of despotism?” “In connection with the recognition of the thesis about the possibility of different ways to build socialism, is it not a duty of historical justice to reconsider the assessment of the various oppositions that opposed Stalin’s line with their own line of building socialism? For example, an assessment of the line of the Bukharin group? Perhaps this path would involve fewer sacrifices. Isn’t this the way that is being pursued in Yugoslavia?INPresidium of the XX Congress of the CPSUletters were received from the Executive Committee of the IV (Trotskyist) Internationaldemanding the rehabilitation of L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinovieva, L.B. Kamenev and other repressed, letterN. Sedova-Trotskaya with a request for the rehabilitation of L. D. Trotsky. Gossip spread intensely:« Who wrote the works of Comrade Stalin that are included in his complete collected works? “Who is the author of “Economic problems of socialism in the USSR”? “Are all the works written by Stalin? Who wrote the oath at Lenin’s tomb?
Bourgeois, nationalist elements also became more active. In Armenia, heated discussions broke out between teachers and scientists about the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian SSR. Tuva Regional Committee: “We inform you that during the period of studying the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the report of Comrade N.S. Khrushchev’s “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,” anti-Soviet elements began to raise their heads and hostile statements began to intensify. At the end of March and beginning of April, several anonymous notes were discovered in mailboxes in which obscene and slanderous attacks were made against some members of the Presidium of the Central Committee.” Enemy propaganda from abroad intensified significantly. “The insolent Lithuanian bourgeois nationalists speaking on the Voice of America radio station are openly inciting the population of Lithuania to anti-Soviet actions.”
Next question -whose goals are served by the “secret” report of N.S. Khrushchev and what he really is?From reports received by the Central Committee: “Another group of notes, on the contrary, considers it inappropriate to reconsider the role of “the deceased Stalin” and expresses dissatisfaction with the “defamation and mockery of Stalin’s name.” “How can we understand that in the society’s brochures for the dissemination of political and scientific knowledge, published after Stalin’s death, a number of his statements were cited about the need to strengthen collective leadership and about the dangers of the cult of personality (meaning Petrov’s brochure “Marxism” -Leninism in Action", issue 1955)". “Reading the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On the Cult of Personality,” I was repeatedly indignant. This resolution was written by N.S. Khrushchev to humiliate Stalin, but Stalin will forever live in history, in the hearts of progressive humanity.”
“It’s still unclear with this “cult of personality.” I am a simple Soviet person. Worker. He lived no less than 36 years under the Soviet system. I love our party and my system. But now you read newspapers, listen to the radio, and your soul becomes restless. The people say: isn’t our Central Committee currying favor with the capitalists? Stalin was truly an enemy of the capitalists. And his general line was correct. And everyone makes mistakes. This is known. And Lenin was also not an entirely infallible person. If we talk about the “cult of personality,” then why cultivate personality and bow to Lenin? As for Stalin’s intelligence, now, perhaps, not a single one of our leaders, or even colleagues, has such intelligence. Don't our leaders want to eclipse the glory of Stalin and prepare the way for their own? The actions of the Central Committee in relation to Stalin are wrong.”
At a party meeting of the party organization of school No. 36 of the Leninsky district of Tashkent, the director, Comrade Vodolazova, said: “If we talk about the cult of personality, then who created it around Stalin, if not those who worked with him. Some members of the CPSU are currently beginning to create a cult of personality of Comrade. N.S. Khrushchev." In the primary party organization of the Pochalsky district industrial complex of the Ternopil region of Ukraine, a member of the CPSU, Comrade Yakimchuk, while reading a report on the cult of personality, said to the instructor of the district party committee, Comrade Markovich: “Why are you reading? After all, no one believes this.” In the same area, a member of the CPSU from the party organization of the Zbarazh railway station, Comrade Mekhalashvili, stated that “the report of N.S. Khrushchev is a fake." The foreman of the fire department of the 71st detachment of the 1st department of convoy and internal security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Danilov, in a conversation on March 13, 1956, stated: “I will not be surprised if tomorrow another document of the CPSU Central Committee is published, completely opposite to the report “On the cult of personalities.” -ti and its consequences."
Thoughts expressed in 1956 as guesses were that the essence of N.S.’s report. Khrushchev was to be slandered “stronger” by I.V. Stalin and to climb up on the shoulders of the deceased giant, to build his own “cult”, became a reality already in the next 1957, when only the intervention of the scoundrel G.K. Zhukov was saved by N.S. Khrushchev from complete collapse. However, G.K. Zhukov was thrown out by N.S. Khrushchev in the same year to the landfill “as unnecessary.”
Well, I.V. Stalin? How did the Soviet people treat him in 1956?Let's listen to their statements. Communist Comrade Tuzhikov, a member of the CPSU since 1918 (Alma-Ata), says: “Stalin emerged as a leader in a difficult time for us, the difficult years of struggle for socialism are associated with the name of Stalin, together with him we went to overcome any difficulties, they knew him as undoubtedly an outstanding personality, and this deeply entered the consciousness and heart of every Soviet person. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to debunk him in the eyes of the people. People may think: what to believe? Is it what was taught for 30 years, or what we just read in the report?
Pletter to the editor of the magazine "Communist": « Did the party really make a grave mistake by promoting Stalin to a leadership position? Take, for example, this question: who could lead the Central Committee after Lenin’s death? The party then entrusted the steering wheel to Stalin, and this was the only correct decision. The logic of things is that at that time, in order to implement Lenin’s behests, a man of iron will was required, completely devoted to Lenin’s ideas. Stalin was such a person. It must be said frankly that ordinary people often perceive criticism of Stalin as a surrender of the ideological positions we have conquered. After all, the name of Stalin was, first of all, our banner, under which so many victories were won. What is the point now in trampling this banner into the dirt? It's just not clear."
Retired Colonel Chursin: “I read the closed letter of the CPSU Central Committee and was indignant at its content. I don’t particularly believe all the facts that are presented in the closed letter. Stalin did a lot for the Soviet state, and his merits cannot be diminished. He transformed our country from a backward one into an advanced industrial power. Thanks to Stalin, we won during the Patriotic War and managed to defeat Hitler's Germany, which fought against us with almost all European states. Stalin raised me from childhood on his ideas, and I will not give up these ideas of his even now. I have and will have the best opinions about Stalin. His merits are great in all directions, our people believed in him as in God, and thanks to this we won the war. Of course, he made mistakes, but those who don’t work don’t make them. We believe that I.V. Stalin is the great successor of Lenin. Under his leadership, industrialization and collectivization of our country were carried out, socialism was built, and world fascism was defeated. Why do some delegates try to belittle the role of I.V. Stalin?
The “Short Course” of the history of the party is one of the best textbooks on the history of our party, its struggle and organization in terms of content and clarity of the presented materials. Why, according to Comrade. Mikoyan, does its content require radical revision? I.V. Stalin did a lot for the people during the Great Patriotic War. Everyone knows that many people died for Stalin. In his name they went into battle and won victories.”
In the city of Vologda in the premises of the Main Department Store on April 11 this year. (1956 - S.V. Khristenko) a handwritten note was discovered with the following content: “Chattering. Stalin is with us. Komsomol". Private Geladze, who kept a portrait of Stalin intact in his military unit: “Stalin is considered an enemy! They themselves, who consider him an enemy, are fascists.” In the Gomel region of Belarus, near a well in the village of Kontakuzovka, on March 6 (1956 - S.V. Khristenko) in the morning, an announcement was found nailed to the wall, which warned the population that “enemies of the people” want to destroy its leaders, “ disgrace the name of Stalin,” who “was a friend of Lenin and saved the Soviet people from Hitler’s executioners.” The ad says: “Comrades, citizens, don’t believe this, it’s a lie, that Stalin is the enemy, Stalin is with us, Stalin will always be with us.”.
S.V. Khristenko
No matter how diametrically the attitude towards Lenin has changed, many are still convinced of his genius, only if they previously considered him a good genius, now more often they considered him an evil one. Fyodor Gaida, candidate of historical sciences, associate professor at Moscow State University, laureate of the first prize of the Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) Foundation in the “History of Russia” nomination for 2005, in principle doubts his genius.
— Since Soviet times, it has been generally accepted that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a huge figure not only in Russian but also in world history. Genius! Then this idea was transformed in the minds of the Russian intelligentsia, but it is still considered that he is a genius, only now with a minus sign. It's hard for me to agree with this. I don't see any special genius in him. One can, of course, say that genius and villainy are incompatible, but the point is not even that, but the fact is that if you look at Lenin’s contemporaries, they did not somehow highlight Ilyich’s genius, they were attracted (or repelled) by his other features.
Let's figure it out. Lenin, indeed, thanks to certain of his talents and, first of all, thanks to fanaticism, the ability to sacrifice everything for the sake of political struggle, becomes the leader of one of the currents of Russian social democracy - Bolshevism. No one challenged his leadership or opposed him. But what does this mean?
Yes, this is one of the parties that was generally underground in Russia; almost all the time until 1917, the party leaders were in forced emigration. Before the February Revolution, this party had no chance of success in Russia; everyone, including the leaders of the Bolshevik Party, understood this very well. They had certain hopes during the revolution of 1905, but these hopes quickly faded away and, as you know, at the beginning of 1917 (a month before the February Revolution!) Lenin, speaking to the Swiss Social Democratic youth, said: our generation before the revolution will not survive, we are passing the baton to you.
Sometimes in intellectual circles they say that Nicholas II was too liberal, he spared Lenin, and if he had staged a special operation and eliminated him, everything would have been fine in Russia. But the fact is that the Russian police, fighting revolutionary circles, the last thing they would do was eliminate Lenin. Such a task was never set; the Bolsheviks were always perceived as an absolutely destructive force in the revolutionary movement. If all revolutionaries in one way or another sought to unite in the fight against the autocracy, then the Bolsheviks were the only force that tried to split the entire movement. And the police had instructions to arrest the Bolsheviks last, because they were working for a split and thereby becoming kind of allies of the police. In fact, they act as provocateurs.
But the February Revolution occurred, and it created a completely new political reality. The revolution took place during the World War, when socio-economic conditions in the country naturally worsened. The situation itself provokes a catastrophe, provokes increased social conflict and pushes the majority of the population towards the most radical slogans. As a result, power actually falls into the hands of the Bolsheviks. As they said then, in 1917, it lies on the street, and anyone who dares can take it into their own hands.
In that difficult situation, not a single political force wanted to take power, that is, take responsibility for the fate of the country. Who could take it? Those who really didn’t care about the country, for whom power is not responsibility, Russia is not a space that needs to be developed, but a starting point from which the fire of the world revolution will ignite. And for this it was necessary to fanatically, no matter what, move forward.
Lenin did this until 1921, before the NEP. But by the end of the civil war, it became clear that the world revolution was not working, and the country in which the Bolsheviks had gained a foothold was so drained of blood that the previous policy was simply impossible. And for Lenin the time comes for a rational political choice: what to do in this situation? And in this situation, only one thing can be done: to gain a foothold and let the country breathe more or less freely again, free the peasants from surplus appropriation, let them work in peace, let them gain a little fat. And then it will be clear what to do.
And in 1921, Lenin advocated a change of political course, but not because he realized that war communism had ceased to be his ideal. He remained his ideal, it’s just that now, at the moment, this ideal cannot be realized. And then the problems did not decrease at all, Ilyich finds himself faced with problems that he himself could not solve. Indeed, in 1921, the state apparatus of the young Soviet Republic began to literally burst at the seams due to terrible corruption. Those who waved sabers during the civil war cannot work in the state apparatus; they do not know how to do anything other than what they did during the civil war. That is, they only know how to wave a sword and use a Mauser to knock out grain from the peasants.
Who can work? Former civil servants, representatives of the intelligentsia. But these people are not used to working for an idea. Their salary is small, but now Nepmen have appeared who are amassing some capital. As a result, a “wonderful” barter begins: power is exchanged for money. A wonderful breeding ground for corruption emerges, and in 1921 its scale grows exponentially. It's not clear what to do.
Lenin is trying to fight this in his traditional intelligentsia ways: the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate is created, which is supposed to cleanse the state apparatus and attract conscious workers into this very state apparatus to control the Soviet bureaucracy. Nothing works out, Lenin is at a dead end. He has nothing else to offer as an alternative.
It was at this time that Stalin appeared in the first roles. Who was Stalin before 1921-1922? Yes, one of the important Bolsheviks, even before the revolution he was one of Lenin’s loyalists. Before the revolution, Lenin had two such people on whom he could rely. One of them is Stalin, who organized the newspaper Pravda, but at a certain moment found himself in exile and dropped out of the political struggle for some time. The second was Roman Malinovsky, who gave fiery revolutionary speeches in the State Duma. All these speeches were written in the Police Department, because he was an agent of the security branch. But Lenin trusted him one hundred percent; even in 1917, for a long time he did not want to believe that Malinovsky was an agent. And the speeches were written by the police, because these speeches worked to split the revolutionary movement. They were completely harmless.
In the early twenties, Stalin began to advance to new roles; he, unlike many Bolsheviks, turned out to be a good administrator. More precisely, he can oversee administrative personnel work. In reality, it was not carried out by Stalin himself, he had assistants: Molotov, Kaganovich, and a number of others. But Stalin realized that the time for fiery revolutionary activity - waving sabers, rallies - was gone. And he begins to create a completely different system.
Since 1922, when Stalin became the General Secretary of the Central Committee, powerful (secret, but powerful!) activities began to change the appearance of the party, and then the state. A system is being created, which will later be called nomenklatura, when people loyal to the party and the state are taken from the bottom and promoted to certain positions, and this work is carried out by the secretariat of the Central Committee and local personnel departments. The party is simply changing its appearance. Then the old Bolshevik party will not exist at all; as we know, it will simply be destroyed during the purges. And in this sense, we can say that Stalin’s communists dealt with Lenin’s Bolsheviks.
Thus, the state arises. Not some space in which a world revolution is being prepared, but a state with a very rigid centralized structure, which is no longer preparing for a powerful external outburst and, although it speaks of a world revolution, the world revolution is understood in a completely different way - as an expansion of influence in the world. In this sense, despite his criminal approach to the matter, Stalin, of course, was a statist. He is, in general, not a revolutionary, but a personnel officer, an administrator.
It is difficult to say what would have happened to Soviet Russia if Stalin had not appeared. Most likely, she would have fallen apart in her twenties. It would collapse due to corruption, instability, and unprofessionalism of the administration. Stalin rebuilt it so that it existed for several more decades. In this sense, he is, of course, a counter-revolutionary. The Stalinist counter-revolution occurred, and here Trotsky, of course, is right: Stalin, being a faithful disciple of Lenin, ultimately built an absolutely non-Leninist system. And largely thanks to this system, Russia was able to withstand the Second World War. Despite its system, its immoral, bloody character.
Fedor Gaida
Orthodoxy and peace
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The unique role of Lenin in the Russian catastrophe of 1917 and in subsequent global cataclysms of the twentieth century is indisputable. The enormity of what he did provokes the creation of a majestic mythology: it is no coincidence that the author of the bloodiest dictatorship in history was recently called the most humane of people. But even now you can often hear that he is a great humanist, a brilliant politician, and a most cultured person.
To truly understand the phenomenon of Lenin, it is necessary, without being distracted by “humanistic” nuances, to determine what no one but him possessed. The main thing about Lenin is ideological mania, obsession with destruction, absolute cynicism and unprincipledness, thanks to which he was the first in a series of bloody dictators of the 20th century. All of them were Lenin's students - they continued what Lenin decided to do for the first time in history. But no one surpassed the teacher, because no one could subsequently repeat some of Lenin’s actions.
First of all, Lenin was the first party leader who built and maintained a political party with money from bloody robberies (expropriations - “ex”) and financial scams; At the same time, he himself lived comfortably on the stolen funds for many years. Lenin brought to perfection the concept of a revolutionary seizure of power, for which he effectively used all the necessary developments of the classics of socialism and Marxism and mercilessly discarded everything “outdated” or too humane. On the basis of this guide to action, Lenin, for the first time in history, created a mass revolutionary party, welded together by strict discipline and blood.
Lenin developed the tactics of a revolutionary coup, taking into account the experience of all previous revolutions; its infinitely cynical algorithm makes it possible to identify the weak points of the overthrown state, all possible social supports, as well as all real opponents who are suppressed or destroyed in a preemptive mode. No one before Lenin had seized power so cynically and harshly, sweeping away all principles and shrines along the way and destroying all those who interfered. Then Lenin managed to bridle the country into an incredibly cruel and bloody Civil War, the victims of which reach fifteen million people.
For the complete victory of the revolution, Lenin was the first (albeit based on an effective generalization of all previous experience) to develop a theory and put into practice a system of total state terror. Compared to the Bolshevik terror, all its preceding and subsequent types were limited in space and time, in the degree of cruelty and in mass. Lenin introduces concentration camps (by the 1920s there were about 90 of them) and regular mass executions of hostages, that is, the extermination of a large number of people who were innocent of anything even from the point of view of “revolutionary legality.” For the first time in history, Lenin initiated a mass famine to punish the rebellious population of his country: the terrible famine of 1921-1922 claimed the lives of about five million people.
No one except Lenin used the international lumpen in such quantities for internal terror: shock, barrage, security and punitive detachments were formed from prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian, German, Czech, Turkish armies, from Latvian riflemen, Chinese volunteers, and internationalist revolutionaries - " The formation of a German-Hungarian division from persistent and disciplined elements is extremely advisable" (telegram to the chairman of the Sibrevkom).
For the first time in history, the Lenin regime used chemical weapons to exterminate the citizens of its country; subsequently, only the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein decided to do this. On Lenin's orders, all members of the imperial family, including children, as well as many relatives and servants (more than forty people in total) were killed without investigation or trial. The bloody massacre of the overthrown head of state and his family is unprecedented in New and Contemporary history. More than a hundred years earlier, during the Great French Revolution, the king of France was executed, but after Lenin not a single usurper or dictator decided to do anything like that.
Stalin destroyed people incomparably more than Lenin, but Lenin was more infernal. Stalin, as a faithful student, only used and improved Lenin's original methodology. Moreover, one can imagine that Lenin would have been unsurpassed if he had acted not for five years, but for decades.
It must be said that all dictators committed atrocities for the sake of some sublime and positive mythology, expressed in the language of their national culture. For Hitler, his cherished dream was “Greater Germany” as a “thousand-year Reich”; he revered the German epic of the Nibelungs and the music of Wagner. For Mao Zedong - “Great China” as “The Celestial Empire” with some remarks of Confucianism. All dictators were either sentimentally attached to something or someone, or artificially created an image of the manifestation of their human qualities. Lenin is unprecedented in this too: he hated everything in Russia and did not recognize anything valuable in humanity. Even the bloody Stalin had children and sometimes favored them. Lenin subjected all values and shrines, types and forms of the world order, all people to cynical ridicule and dirty blasphemy. Berdyaev called Lenin a “genius of abusive speech”, which was awarded not only to enemies, but also to his closest associates: “We will always have time to take shit as experts... Trash and bastards who do not want to provide reports... Teach these bastards to answer seriously... Idiot ... fool" (all this is on official documents, the last one is about Rosa Luxemburg). He constantly swore at meetings of the “most educated” government. Thus, in everything Lenin behaved like a man for whom the only value was total destruction in itself. Lenin was the first ideological maniac in history to fully realize his pathological phantasmagoria.
To implement projects of demonic possession, the power of state power is necessary, concentrated in one hand and aimed at the coveted blood-drinking, that is, an unlimited dictatorship is necessary: “The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing more than unrestricted, by no laws, absolutely not constrained by any rules, directly power based on violence." It is clear that this definition has nothing to do with any science, except for the science of shoulder work, of which Ilyich was an unsurpassed master. But the assertion of the “scientific nature of the concept” is necessary to create some semblance of validity - for intellectuals thirsting for self-deception. The notorious formula “dictatorship of the proletariat” meant the personal dictatorship of the leader in the party and in the country, which Lenin did not hide: “Speech about equality, freedom and democracy in the current situation is nonsense... Already in 1918 I pointed out the need for one-man rule, the need recognition of the dictatorial powers of one person from the point of view of the implementation of the Soviet idea... There is absolutely no contradiction between Soviet (ie, socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power of individuals... How can the strictest unity of will be ensured by subordinating the will of thousands to the will of one? ... The will of the class is sometimes carried out by a dictator, who sometimes alone will do more and is often more necessary.” In this, Lenin followed not Russian traditions, but the teachings of Marx, who predicted twenty, and, if necessary, fifty years of class battles and civil war for the proletariat “not only in order to change existing conditions, but in order to change themselves.” War communism is the “Communist Manifesto” of K. Marx and F. Engels in action. But if Lenin’s followers were only his epigones, then his predecessors look like mossy theorists in comparison with Lenin’s satanic titanism in action.
Professor S.G. wrote about Lenin’s unprecedented cynical deceit. Pushkarev: “Of course, politics is a profession in which it is difficult to maintain moral purity. Many political figures made promises that they later did not fulfill, or directly deceived the people, but there was no such versatile and skillful master of political deception as Lenin was. All slogans , proclaimed by him in 1917, all his promises on the main issues of domestic and foreign policy represented a deliberate deception - in full accordance with his morality. Here are some examples of these false slogans and promises. The main slogan (and main goal): “All power to the soviets. workers' and peasants' deputies elected by the entire working population." Intentions: unlimited power ("dictatorship") of the Communist Party. Slogan: "All the land for the peasants"; program: nationalization of the land, that is, its transfer into state ownership. Slogan (in 1917) : an army with elected commanders and the right of soldiers to “check every step of the officer and general.” Implementation: the strictest discipline in the Red Army with the right of appointed commanders to use weapons against disobedient soldiers. Slogan: "Universal democratic peace." Intention: to organize "revolutionary wars" to conquer Europe."
When the pre-October anarcho-communist slogans (power to the soviets, land to the peasants, factories to the workers), aimed at destroying the old regime, fulfilled their role, Lenin demanded that the party overcome the period of revolutionary disorder and mobilize to create a new, revolutionary order. It must be said that Lenin never changed his strategic goals, but he was a virtuoso of the political situation; in the name of seizing and maintaining power, he was always ready to change tactics - even the opposite. Therefore, after the October coup, the slogans changed radically. Ilyich’s Jesuitical, principled deceit amazed even his close associates. It can be said that Lenin was the first postmodernist in politics.
Of course, the introduction of a new order could not but cause resistance in society, although at first it was weak and unorganized. But the main ideologist had long foreseen that a new system could not be imposed without mass repression: back in 1914, he demanded “the transformation of the imperialist war into a merciless civil war.” And the Bolsheviks are unleashing it in the country with all possible cruelty. As a result, Lenin launched the repressive pendulum of the Great Terror in full force: deception and violence, violence and deception alternately and simultaneously forged a new man and exterminated the rebellious.
The inhuman cruelty with which Lenin imposed the Red Terror is known, sending directives to the Bolshevik leaders: “It is necessary to carry out merciless mass terror against kulaks, priests, and White Guards. Those who are dubious should be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city... We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror... Openly exhibit a fundamentally and politically truthful (and not just legally narrow) position motivating the essence and justification of terror... The court should not eliminate terror... but justify and legitimize it in principle, clearly, without falsehood and without embellishment." As the head of the government, Lenin constantly demanded tougher repressions: “Introduce mass terror, shoot and take out hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers, former officers, etc. Not a minute of delay” (to Nizhny Novgorod); “Shoot the conspirators and hesitant ones, without asking anyone and without allowing idiotic red tape” (in Saratov); “hang officials, rich people, priests, kulaks, landowners under the guise of “green” (we will then blame them on them). Pay the murderers 100 thousand rubles each”; “I propose to appoint an investigation and shoot those responsible for roteness”; “It was a shame to hesitate and not shoot for failure to appear”; “appoint your bosses and shoot conspirators and hesitant ones, without asking anyone, without allowing idiotic red tape” (to the authorized representative of the People's Commissariat for Food); “Hang (certainly hang, so that the people can see) no less than a hundred notorious kulaks, rich people, bloodsuckers. Publish their names. Take away their bread. Appoint hostages... Make it so that hundreds of miles around people see, tremble, know, shout : they will strangle and strangle the bloodsucking fists" (indication to Penza). In the resolution on the letter to Dzerzhinsky about a million captured Cossacks: “Shoot every single one.”
Lenin, more than anyone else, reined in the atmosphere of bloodsucking, and the Bolshevik leaders did not lag behind each other in the degree of cruelty. In the document signed by Sverdlov, the main provisions of which clearly came from Lenin, “all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions” were instructed: “It is necessary to recognize as the only correct the most merciless struggle with all the top of the Cossacks through their wholesale extermination... Carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks who took any direct or indirect part in the fight against Soviet power."
Under Lenin’s cannibalistic regime, M. Tukhachevsky’s order to suppress the Tambov peasant uprising looked ordinary: “The forests where the bandits are hiding are to be cleared with poisonous gases, precisely calculated so that a cloud of suffocating gases spreads throughout the entire forest, destroying everything that was hidden in it.” Tukhachevsky ordered to shoot all the boys who were above the man’s waist. In general, Lenin purposefully put into practice his directive: “Let 90% of the Russian people die out, if only 10% remain by the time of the world revolution.”
Lenin is unsurpassed as a theorist and practitioner of theomachism. The religious sphere was the subject of his strict tutelage: “Pops should be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as many as possible. Churches should be closed. Temple premises should be sealed and turned into warehouses” (May 1, 1919, Dzerzhinsky). Religious holidays bothered the leader so much that regarding the celebration of the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker on December 25, 1919, he points out: “It’s stupid to put up with “Nikola”, you need to put everything on your feet to shoot those who do not show up for work because of “Nikola.” In his famous letter to Molotov for members of the Politburo dated March 19, 1922, Lenin categorically demands: “It is now and only now, when people are being eaten in hungry places and hundreds, if not thousands, of corpses are lying on the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation church valuables with the most furious and merciless energy, not stopping at suppressing any resistance... We must at all costs carry out the confiscation of church valuables in the most decisive and fastest way, than we can secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (we must remember the gigantic wealth of some monasteries and laurels)... If it is necessary to carry out a series of cruelties in order to achieve a certain political goal, then they must be carried out in the most energetic manner and in the shortest possible time, because the masses will not tolerate the prolonged use of cruelty... We must now... give the most decisive and merciless battle to the Black Hundred clergy and suppress their resistance with such cruelty that they will not forget this for several decades... The Politburo will give a detailed directive to the judicial authorities, also oral, so that the trial against the Shuya rebels, resisting aid to the starving, was carried out with maximum speed and ended in no other way than the execution of a very large number of the most influential and dangerous Black Hundreds of the city of Shuya, and, if possible, also not only of this city, but also of Moscow and several other spiritual centers... Than The more representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better. We must now teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance." As a result, Lenin initiated in Russia the most massive and bloody religious persecution and extermination of believers in history, and imposed a regime of state atheism. Vile abuse of religion and the Church at every opportunity, as well as cannibalistic pathos in the fight against the clergy and believers, speak of Lenin’s obsession with the mania of godless titanism.
The scale and consequences of Lenin's activities are undoubtedly enormous. But to call him on this basis a “great politician” and a “genius” means not to understand his essence. The main distinguishing quality of Lenin was the unprecedented bloodiness of his deeds: in terms of the enormity, gravity and sophistication of his atrocities, he is unique. Therefore, Lenin is, first of all, the greatest villain in history. And arguments on the topic of how “humane”, “intelligent”, “crystal honest” and so on can be can seem convincing only to people with defective morality or lack of intelligence. Many of those who recognize the monstrosity of what Lenin did are characterized by a romanticization of the image of a villain: if a person committed global acts, while rejecting all signs of humanity, trampling all traditions, laws, moral commands, shrines, shedding a sea of blood, then although he is a villain, he is genius. This means that he “has the right” and is largely justified. The cult of Napoleon was exposed by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, but the syndrome of Napoleonism, deeply embedded in the spiritual underground of the “little man,” forces one to justify the villainy: the larger it is, the easier it is to remove it from the category of crimes, and legitimize it as a genius.
Meanwhile, if you take an unbiased look at Lenin’s appearance, you can see that he did not possess any of the qualities of genius. He was allowed to do what he did by bestial cruelty and malice, absolute cynicism, and frantic energy of destruction. Lenin's average intelligence and unremarkable abilities were not an obstacle to this. On the contrary, the inability to think broadly and universally, the absence of many human qualities made it easier to concentrate entirely on the main business of life - trivial defamations, coups, massacres. The great masters of the Russian language found mercilessly harsh images to describe Lenin, depicting a sub-man, an anti-man: “In essence,” I thought, “this man, so simple, polite and healthy, is much more terrible than Nero, Tiberius, Ivan the Terrible. Those, for all that in their spiritual deformity, they were still people susceptible to the whims of the day and the fluctuations of character. This one is something like a stone, like a cliff that has broken away from a mountain ridge and is rapidly rolling down, destroying everything in its path. a stone, by some magic, thinking. It has no feelings, no desires, no instincts. One sharp, dry, invincible thought: when I fall, I destroy" (A.I. Kuprin). The rude words of Ivan Bunin most adequately characterize Lenin: “A degenerate, a moral idiot from birth, Lenin showed the world just at the very height of his activity something monstrous, amazing; he ruined the greatest country in the world and killed several million people - and yet the world is so Has he gone crazy that they are arguing in broad daylight whether he is a benefactor of humanity or not? The great Pushkin is right here too: indeed, “genius and villainy are two incompatible things.”
Informational partner.
May. 11, 2013 03:41 pm Lenin is the executioner of Russia and the Russian people.If we knew the whole truth about Lenin, his monuments would have long ago ended up in a landfill
Lenin paid the killers bonuses of 100 thousand rubles and called the Russians “shits.”
In Russia there are about 1,800 monuments to Lenin and up to twenty thousand busts. More than five thousand streets are named after revolutionary No. 1. In many cities, sculptures of Vladimir Ilyich rise in central squares. Although, if we knew the whole truth about the great leader, these monuments would have ended up in a landfill long ago.
Anatoly Latyshev is a famous historian and Leninist. Throughout his life he has been studying the biography of Ilyich. Recently he managed to obtain documents from Lenin's secret fund and the closed KGB archives.
Anatoly Grigorievich, how did you manage to penetrate secret funds?
This happened after the August 1991 events. I was given a special pass to familiarize myself with secret documents about Lenin. The authorities thought to find the reason for the coup in the past. I sat in the archives from morning to evening, and my hair stood on end. After all, I always believed in Lenin, but after the first thirty documents I read, I was simply shocked.
What exactly?
Lenin from Switzerland in 1905 called on young people in St. Petersburg to pour acid on police officers in the crowd, pour boiling water on soldiers from the upper floors, use nails to mutilate horses, and throw “hand bombs” at the streets. As head of the Soviet government, Lenin sent out his orders throughout the country. A paper arrived in Nizhny Novgorod with the following content: “Introduce mass terror, shoot and take away hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers and former officers... Not a minute of delay.” What do you think of Lenin’s order to Saratov: “Shoot conspirators and hesitant, without asking anyone and without allowing idiotic red tape”?
They say that Vladimir Ilyich generally disliked the Russian people?
Lenin's Russophobia is little studied today. All this comes from childhood. There was not a drop of Russian blood in his family. His mother was German with a mixture of Swedish and Jewish blood. My father is half Kalmyk, half Chuvash. Lenin was brought up in the spirit of German accuracy and discipline. His mother constantly told him “Russian Oblomovism, learn from the Germans,” “Russian fool,” “Russian idiots.” By the way, in his messages Lenin spoke about the Russian people only in a derogatory manner. One day, the leader ordered the plenipotentiary Soviet representative in Switzerland: “Give the Russian fools a job: send clippings here, not random numbers (as these idiots have done until now).”
Are there letters in which Lenin wrote about the extermination of the Russian people?
Among those terrible Leninist documents, there were particularly harsh orders for the extermination of compatriots. For example, “burn Baku completely, take hostages in the rear, put them in front of the advancing Red Army units, shoot them in the back, send red thugs to the areas where the “greens” operated, hang them under the guise of “greens” (we will then blame them on them) officials, rich people, priests, kulaks, landowners. Pay the murderers 100 thousand rubles each...” By the way, the money for the “secretly hanged man” (the first “Lenin Prizes”) turned out to be the only bonuses in the country. And to the Caucasus, Lenin periodically sent telegrams with the following content: “We will slaughter everyone.” Remember how Trotsky and Sverdlov destroyed the Russian Cossacks? Lenin then remained on the sidelines. Now an official telegram from the leader to Frunze has been found regarding the “total extermination of the Cossacks.” And this famous letter from Dzerzhinsky to the leader dated December 19, 1919 about about a million Cossacks being held captive? Lenin then imposed a resolution on him: “Shoot every last one.”
Could Lenin so easily give orders to shoot people?
Here are some of Lenin’s notes I managed to get: “I propose to appoint an investigation and shoot those guilty of roteness”; “Rakovsky demands a submarine. We need to give two, appointing a responsible person, a sailor, putting it on him and saying: we will shoot if you don’t deliver it soon”; “Give Melnichansky (signed by me) a telegram that it was a shame to hesitate and not shoot for failure to appear.” And here is one of Lenin’s letters to Stalin: “Threaten with execution that slob who, in charge of communications, does not know how to give you a good amplifier and ensure that the telephone connection with me is fully operational.” Lenin insisted on executions for “negligence” and “slowness.” For example, on August 11, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Bolsheviks in Penza: “to hang (certainly hang) so that the people can see” no less than 100 wealthy peasants. Select “tougher people” to carry out the execution. At the end of 1917, when Lenin headed the government, he proposed shooting every tenth parasite. And this during a period of mass unemployment!
Did he also have a negative attitude towards Orthodoxy?
The leader hated and destroyed only the Russian Orthodox Church. So, on the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, when it was impossible to work, Lenin issued an order dated December 25, 1919: “It is stupid to put up with “Nikola”, we need to put all the checks on their feet in order to shoot those who do not show up for work because of “Nikola” (t .e. missed the cleanup day when loading firewood into the cars on the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker on December 19).” At the same time, Lenin was very loyal to Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and even sectarians. At the beginning of 1918, he intended to ban Orthodoxy, replacing it with Catholicism.
How did he fight Orthodoxy?
For example, in a letter from Lenin to Molotov for members of the Politburo dated March 19, 1922, Vladimir Ilyich insisted on the need to use the mass famine in the country to rob Orthodox churches, while shooting as many “reactionary clergy” as possible. Few people know about Lenin’s document No. 13666/2 dated May 1, 1919, addressed to Dzerzhinsky. Here is its content: “...it is necessary to put an end to priests and religion as quickly as possible. Popovs should be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, and shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as much as possible. Churches are subject to closure. The temple premises should be sealed and turned into warehouses.”
Anatoly Grigorievich, is it confirmed that Lenin had mental disorders?
His behavior was more than strange. For example, Lenin often fell into depression, which could last for weeks. He could do nothing for a month, and then he would be overwhelmed by vigorous activity. About this period, Krupskaya wrote: “Volodya fell into a rage...”. He also had absolutely no sense of humor.
Was Lenin's style crude enough?
Berdyaev called him a genius of swearing. Here are a few lines from Lenin’s letter to Stalin and Kamenev dated February 4, 1922: “We will always have time to take shit as experts.” You can’t “bring in trash and bastards who don’t want to submit reports...”. “Teach these assholes to answer seriously...” In the margins of Rosa Luxemburg’s articles, the leader wrote “idiot” and “fool.”
They say that Stalin organized grandiose drinking parties in the Kremlin during Lenin’s lifetime?
And repeatedly. In connection with this, Lenin often summoned and reprimanded him. But most often Ilyich scolded Ordzhonikidze. He wrote him notes: “Who did you drink and hang out with today? Where do you get your women from? I don't like your behavior. Moreover, Trotsky complains about you all the time.” Ordzhonikidze was still a party! Stalin was more indifferent to women. Lenin scolded Joseph Vissarionovich for drinking a lot, to which Stalin replied: “I’m a Georgian and I can’t live without wine.”
By the way, did Ilyich like banquets?
Feature films often show the leader drinking carrot tea without sugar with a piece of black bread. But documents have recently been discovered testifying to the leader’s abundant and luxurious feasts, about the huge quantities of black and red caviar, delicious fish and other delicacies that were regularly supplied to the Kremlin nomenklatura throughout the years of Lenin’s reign. In the village of Zubalovo, by order of Ilyich, luxurious personal dachas were built in conditions of the most severe famine in the country!
Did Lenin himself like to drink?
Before the revolution, Ilyich drank a lot. During the years of emigration, I never sat down at the table without beer. Since 1921, he quit due to illness. Since then I have not touched alcohol.
Is it true that Vladimir Ilyich loved animals?
Hardly. Krupskaya wrote in her notes: “... the hysterical howl of a dog was heard. It was Volodya, returning home, who always teased the neighbor’s dog...”
Do you think Lenin loved Krupskaya?
Lenin did not like Krupskaya; he valued her as an irreplaceable comrade-in-arms. When Vladimir Ilyich fell ill, he forbade Nadezhda Konstantinovna to come to him. She rolled on the floor and sobbed hysterically. These facts were described in the memoirs of Lenin's sisters. Many Lenin scholars claim that Krupskaya was a virgin before Lenin. It is not true. Before her marriage to Vladimir Ilyich, she was already married.
Today, probably, there is nothing unknown about Lenin?
There is still a lot that is not declassified, since Russian archivists are still hiding some data. So, in 2000, the collection “V.I. Lenin. Unknown documents." Some of these documents produced denominations. Before the publication of this collection, our archives sold falsified documents abroad. One American Sovietologist said that, having bought Lenin’s works for his book from the management of Russian archives, he then paid the publishers a fine of four thousand dollars because Russian archivists removed some lines from Lenin’s documents.