Estimates of the number of victims of Stalin's repressions differ dramatically. Some call numbers in the tens of millions of people, others are limited to hundreds of thousands. Which of them is closer to the truth?

Who is guilty?

Today our society is almost equally divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists. The former draw attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, the latter urge not to forget about the huge numbers of victims of the repressions of the Stalinist regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repressions, however, they note their limited nature and even justify them with political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repressions with the name of Stalin.
Historian Nikolay Kopesov writes that in the majority of investigative cases on those repressed in 1937-1938 there were no resolutions of Stalin - everywhere there were sentences of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. According to the Stalinists, this is evidence that the heads of the punitive organs were engaged in arbitrariness and, in confirmation, they quote Yezhov: “Who we want, we execute, whom we want, we have mercy.”
For that part of the Russian public that sees Stalin as the ideologist of repression, these are just particulars that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other arbiters of human destinies themselves became victims of terror. Who but Stalin was behind all this? they ask rhetorically.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the State Archives of the Russian Federation Oleg Khlevnyuk notes that despite the fact that Stalin's signature was not on many hit lists, it was he who sanctioned almost all mass political repressions.

Who got hurt?

Even more significant in the controversy surrounding the Stalinist repressions was the question of the victims. Who and in what capacity suffered during the period of Stalinism? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is rather vague. Historiography has not worked out clear definitions on this matter.
Undoubtedly, convicts, imprisoned in prisons and camps, shot, deported, deprived of property should be counted among the victims of the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to "hard interrogations" and then released? Should there be a separation between criminal and political prisoners? In what category should we classify the “nonsense” caught in petty single thefts and equated with state criminals?
The deportees deserve special attention. To what category do they belong - repressed or administratively deported? It is even more difficult to decide on those who fled without waiting for dispossession or deportation. They were sometimes caught, but someone was lucky enough to start a new life.

Such different numbers

Uncertainty in the issue of who is responsible for the repressions, in identifying the categories of victims and the period for which the victims of repressions should be counted lead to completely different figures. The most impressive figures came from the economist Ivan Kurganov (referenced by Solzhenitsyn in his novel The Gulag Archipelago), who estimated that between 1917 and 1959, 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against its own people.
This number of Kurgans includes the victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, as well as "the neglectful and slovenly conduct of the Second World War."
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalin's repressions? The economist, in fact, answers this question himself, using the expression "victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime." It is worth noting that Kurganov counted only the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could appear if the economist took into account all those affected by Soviet power during the specified period.
The figures cited by the head of the human rights society "Memorial" Arseniy Roginsky are more realistic. He writes: “On the scale of everything Soviet Union 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression,” but adds that in a broad sense, up to 30 million people can be considered repressed.
The leaders of the Yabloko movement, Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov, counted all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in the camps from diseases and harsh working conditions, the dispossessed, the victims of hunger, those who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and received excessively severe punishment for minor offenses in the force of the repressive nature of the legislation. The final figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes on this occasion that if the number of victims of repression has been counted since 1921, this means that it is not Stalin who is responsible for a significant part of the crimes, but the “Lenin Guard”, which immediately after the October Revolution unleashed terror against the White Guards , clergy and kulaks.

How to count?

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the method of counting. If we take into account those convicted only under political articles, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, given in 1988, the Soviet authorities (VChK, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB) arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot.
Employees of the "Memorial" society, when counting the victims of political trials, are close to these figures, although their figures are still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were shot. If we consider everyone who went through the Gulag system as victims of the Stalinist regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will range from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often, Stalinist repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of the "Great Terror", which peaked in 1937-1938. According to the commission headed by academician Pyotr Pospelov to establish the causes of mass repressions, the following figures were announced: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities, of which 681,692 thousand were sentenced to capital punishment.
One of the most authoritative experts on the demographic aspects of political repression in the USSR, historian Viktor Zemskov, names a smaller number of those convicted during the years of the Great Terror - 1,344,923 people, although his data coincides with the figure of those executed.
If the dispossessed kulaks are included in the number of those subjected to repressions in Stalin's time, then the figure will grow by at least 4 million people. Such a number of dispossessed is given by the same Zemskov. The Yabloko party agrees with this, noting that about 600,000 of them died in exile.
The victims of Stalinist repressions were also representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forcible deportation - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars. Many historians agree that total number about 6 million people were deported, while about 1.2 million people did not live to see the end of the journey.

Trust or not?

The above figures are mostly based on the reports of the OGPU, NKVD, MGB. However, not all documents of the punitive departments have been preserved, many of them were purposefully destroyed, many are still in the public domain.
It should be recognized that historians are very dependent on statistics collected by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only the officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to verify it from primary sources only in the rarest cases.
The acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to name radically different figures in favor of their position. “If the “rights” exaggerated the scale of the repressions, then the “lefts”, partly from dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, were in a hurry to make them public and did not always ask themselves whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives ", - notes the historian Nikolai Koposov.
It can be stated that estimates of the scale of Stalinist repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in the federal archives would be a good help for modern researchers, but many of them have been re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.

In 1950, in the execution cellars of Moscow, shots rang out with might and main: Chekists, who had trained their hands back in the years of the Great Terror, habitually “snacked” at the back of the head of Soviet generals.
Although the death penalty was abolished in the USSR in May 1947, but on January 12, 1950, "meeting", as usual, numerous requests "from the national republics, from trade unions, peasant organizations, and also from cultural figures," the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to allow the application of the death penalty "to traitors to the motherland, spies, subversive saboteurs."

KGB shots were especially frequent in August 1950. On August 24, Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union were shot Grigory Kulik and Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel General Vasily Gordov. The next day, August 25, three more generals were shot: major generals Philip Rybalchenko, Nikolai Kirillov and Pavel Ponedelin. On August 26, 1950, KGB bullets in the back of the head were taken by another general's troika - Major General of Aviation Michael Beleshev, major general Mikhail Belyanchik and brigade commander Nikolai Lazutin. On August 27, somewhat tired judges and executioners took a Sunday break, and on August 28 the following were led to the basement - major generals Ivan Krupennikov, Maxim Sivaev and Vladimir Kirpichnikov. Another high-ranking military man, brigvrach (corresponding to the title of "brigade commander") Ivan Naumov, almost fell short of the KGB bullet "put" to him - he died on August 23, 1950 in Butyrka, tortured by Abakumov's "guys". In total, according to Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, who worked with the materials of the Military Collegium Supreme Court USSR, only from August 18 to August 30, 1950, 20 generals and marshals were sentenced to death.

However, the extermination of generals did not begin in August, not in August (and not even in 1950) and was limited. Say, on June 10, 1950, Major General Pavel Artemenko, and on October 28, 1950, in the Sukhanovskaya prison of the MGB, Rear Admiral Pyotr Bondarenko. On the same day and in the same Sukhanovka, Lieutenant General killed by Chekists died. tank troops Vladimir Tamruchi, languishing in prison since 1943. The "pioneer" of the application of the decree of January 12, 1950 was the air marshal Sergei Khudyakov, arrested back in December 1945: he was shot on April 18, 1950, accusing, as usual, of "treason."

Execution by installments

According to the same decree, in April and June 1950, at least six more military leaders went under execution: brigade commanders Ivan Bessonov and Mikhail Bogdanov and four major generals - Alexander Budykho, Andrey Naumov, Pavel Bogdanov and Evgeny Egorov. But here the story seems to be special: these six, according to the documents, paid for their cooperation with the Germans in captivity.

For example, brigade commander Bessonov is a personnel security officer, on the eve of the war, due to discrediting circumstances and with a very strong demotion, he was transferred to the Red Army: he was the head of the combat training department of the Main Directorate of the NKVD Border Troops and then the commander of the Trans-Baikal Border District, and became the chief of staff of the 102nd rifle division. At the end of August 1941, when nothing was left of the division, brigade commander Bessonov surrendered. Almost immediately he began to cooperate with the Germans, and there he even offered them his services in creating punitive anti-partisan formations and pseudo-partisan detachments - to discredit real partisans in the eyes of the population. Here, undoubtedly, the KGB school and the rich practice of Bessonov himself had an effect: he participated in the special operation of the OGPU of 1933-1934 in Xinjiang - when several brigades and regiments of the OGPU, dressed in White Guard and Chinese uniforms, fought against "Chinese Muslims" and Chiang troops Kaishi. Surely Bessonov was also aware of some details of the False Cordon operation - when Chekists in the border zone recruited local residents, transporting them "abroad" - as scouts. On the "other" side - on the false "Manchurian" ("Polish", "Finnish", "Romanian", etc.) outposts, they were caught by the Chekists, dressed in the uniform of the local border guards, they were tortured to beat out confessions in work for the NKVD, "re-recruited" and sent back. Where the unfortunate "scouts" were already taken as natural "spies" ... At least, Bessonov's counter-guerrilla proposals too clearly followed from the richest practice of the school of Chekist provocations. But the most interesting thing is that Bessonov suggested that the Germans throw out troops from former prisoners of war in the areas of the NKVD camps - up to 50 thousand paratroopers who were supposed to destroy the camp guards, raise the prisoners of the Gulag to revolt, launching a guerrilla war in the Soviet rear. The energetic security officer also managed to work in his specialty - as a "brood hen", in the cell of Yakov Dzhugashvili ...

Major-General Pavel Bogdanov, commander of the 48th Infantry Division, apparently surrendered voluntarily and, according to the documents, betrayed his political workers to the Germans, offering his services in the fight against the Red Army along the way. In 1942, he joined the “Russian squad of the SS”, took part in punitive operations, in 1943 he headed the counterintelligence of the “1st Russian National SS Brigade” Gil-Rodionov, but ... was handed over to the partisans. Major General Alexander Budykho, former commander of the 171st Rifle Division, was captured in the fall of 1941, collaborated with the Germans - joined the ROA, formed the "eastern battalions". The commander of the 13th Infantry Division, Major General Andrei Naumov, was also captured in the fall of 1941. He agreed to work for the Germans, recruited prisoners of war into the "Eastern battalions" and, as documented, wrote a denunciation of the captured generals who were conducting anti-German agitation - Thor and Shepetov ... The Germans shot them according to that denunciation.

The commander of the 4th Corps of the 3rd Army of the Western Front, Major General Yevgeny Yegorov, has been in captivity since the end of June 1941: the documents of the MGB claimed that he was conducting “pro-fascist agitation” among the prisoners of war. It is difficult to verify this, but he was not posthumously rehabilitated. Brigade commander Mikhail Bogdanov was captured in August 1941, being the head of artillery of the 8th Rifle Corps of the 26th Army of the Southwestern Front. He worked in the Todt organization, then joined the ROA, rising there to the rank of chief of artillery.

It would seem that everything is clear with these military leaders: betrayed - answer. But it's full of mysteries. For example, what prevented them from being convicted much earlier, why were they kept in the stash for so long in order to be taken out of there precisely in 1950?

"He knew too much..."

But generals Artemenko, Kirillov, Ponedelin, Beleshev, Krupennikov, Sivaev, Kirpichnikov and brigade commander Lazutin no longer fit into this company. Although they were captured, they did not cooperate with the enemy. However, Aviation Major General Mikhail Beleshev was guilty for Stalin, apparently, by the fact that he was the commander of the Air Force of the 2nd shock army - the same one commanded by Vlasov, although there is no data on his cooperation with the Germans. Major General Pavel Artemenko, deputy commander of the 37th Army for the rear, was captured in the "Kiev Cauldron". When the Americans released him, the general was literally dying of dystrophy (read: from hunger). He successfully passed the Chekist special check, already in 1945 he was reinstated in the cadres of the Armed Forces of the USSR, he retained the rank of major general. Moreover, in addition to the Order of the Red Banner that he already had since 1938, in 1946 General Artemenko was awarded two more orders: the Red Banner - for 20 years of impeccable service, and Lenin - for 25 years of service. If the Chekists had even a shadow of doubt about the impeccability of Artemenko's behavior in captivity, there could be no talk of such an award! However, perhaps it was his speeches that let him down - seditious stories (and reasoning) in his circle about the reasons for the defeat in 1941, about being in captivity ...
The head of artillery of the 61st Rifle Corps of the 13th Army of the Western Front, brigade commander Nikolai Lazutin, was captured in July 1941, after defeating the remnants of the corps near Mogilev. If there had been real dirt on the brigade commander, he would not have been rehabilitated in 1956. The head of military communications of the 24th Army of the Reserve Front, Major General Maxim Sivaev, was captured after the encirclement of the army in October 1941 near Vyazma. The Chekists accused him of treason in the form of voluntary surrender and giving the Germans the secret of military transportation, but not a single fact proving this was found, which was also evidenced by the posthumous rehabilitation of the general in 1957. Major General Ivan Krupennikov, chief of staff of the 3rd Guards Army of the Southwestern Front, was captured, of course, at the wrong time (if there is a good hour for this at all!) - in the final Battle of Stalingrad, in December 1942: German units, breaking through from the encirclement on the middle Don, captured the headquarters of the 3rd Guards Army. But the captured general did not cooperate with the Germans. As well as did not cooperate with the Finns who captured him, and Major General Vladimir Kirpichnikov, commander of the 43rd Infantry Division. The combat commander, who received the Order of the Red Star for Spain and the Order of the Red Banner for the Finnish War, "pierced" in only one thing: when he was interrogated by the Finns, he spoke too well of the Finnish army. As Abakumov later wrote in a note to Stalin, “he slandered the Soviet government, the Red Army, its high command and praised the actions of the Finnish troops.” With such a "diagnosis" it was unrealistic to survive.
And with Generals Ponedelin, who commanded the 12th Army of the Southern Front, which disappeared near Uman, and Kirillov, commander of the 13th Rifle Corps of the same army, it was even more difficult - Comrade Stalin personally had a grudge against them. As early as August 16, 1941, the infamous order No. 27 of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command was signed by him, which read: Generals Ponedelin and Kirillov are traitors, traitors and deserters who voluntarily surrendered and violated their oath. According to Stalin (if not the entire order, then he himself wrote or dictated the bulk of it), Ponedelin allegedly “had every opportunity to break through to his own, as did the vast majority of parts of his army. But Ponedelin did not show the necessary perseverance and the will to win, succumbed to panic, chickened out and surrendered to the enemy, deserted to the enemy, thus committing a crime against the Motherland as a violator of the military oath.
Here the leader frankly and impudently lied: the “overwhelming majority” perished in the Uman pocket, having been captured, so in this case the commander, who shared the fate of the soldiers of his army, was captured while trying to break out of the encirclement. As well as Major General Kirillov, about whom the Stalinist order stated that he, “instead of fulfilling his duty to the Motherland, to organize the units entrusted to him for a staunch rebuff to the enemy and exit from the encirclement, deserted from the battlefield and surrendered to the enemy . As a result of this, parts of the 13th Rifle Corps were defeated, and some of them surrendered without serious resistance. The order also mentioned the commander of the 28th Army, Lieutenant-General Vladimir Kachalov, whose headquarters "came out of the encirclement", but he himself allegedly "showed cowardice and surrendered to the German fascists ... he preferred to surrender, he preferred to desert to the enemy." Although, in reality, Lieutenant General Kachalov died near Roslavl almost two weeks before this order was issued - from a direct hit by a shell in a tank in which the commander, at the head of the remnants of his army, was going to break out of the encirclement. But reality, as you know, interested the leader only when it suited him. Therefore, the heroically deceased general was not only personally slandered by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, but on September 26, 1941, he was sentenced to death in absentia (and posthumously!) and his family was repressed.
On October 13, 1941, Ponedelin and Kirillov were also sentenced to death in absentia. Their families were also subjected to repression - in full accordance with the same Stalinist order No. 270, which stated that the families of these generals "are subject to arrest as families of deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland." The order actually read: all those who were captured are traitors. And therefore, everyone is obliged to “destroy them by all means, both ground and air, and deprive the families of Red Army soldiers who have surrendered of state benefits and assistance.” And although this cannibalistic document was not formally published then, its last line read: "The order is read in all companies, squadrons, batteries, squadrons, commands and headquarters."
So since 1941, the entire active (and inactive) army knew: Ponedelin and Kirillov were traitors and traitors, sentenced to death in absentia. Fuel to the fire was added by the fact that the Germans tried with might and main to use the very fact of the capture of the generals, photographing Ponedelin and Kirillov together with German officers and then scattering leaflets with these photographs in the location Soviet troops. And after the victory, it suddenly turned out that everything was wrong - the generals behaved courageously in captivity, refusing any cooperation with the Germans and Vlasov, although they knew very well that they had been declared cowards, traitors, traitors and had already been sentenced to death in absentia. But could the infallible Comrade Stalin admit that he was so cruelly mistaken, personally and throughout the country, calling them traitors? Could he “forgive” them, thereby recognizing that it was he who bore the lion's share of the blame for the terrible tragedy of 1941? Comrade Stalin, as you know, never errs, and indeed, those who have already been shot in absentia should not be released!

Pre-battle cleanup

It would seem, from which side then are Khudyakov, Kulik, Gordov, Rybalchenko, Belyanchik, Bondarenko or, for example, Tamruchi? None of them were captured, but all of them were destroyed on charges of mythical “treason”, anti-Soviet slander, terrorist intent against the Soviet leadership, etc., etc.
There is no point in looking for a formal logic here: even after the war, Stalin continued to destroy his military leaders for the same reasons that he had destroyed them both before the war and at the height of it. The executions of 1950 became a natural development of the pogrom of the marshal-general group, begun by Stalin immediately after the victory, as part of a whole series of cases then developed. Stalin needed to besiege the military leaders, who not only imagined themselves to be the winners (of course, only Comrade Stalin could be such!), but also dared to chat in their circle about how much in vain and about anything. For example, about the bad role of the leader in the fateful 1941, about the deplorable situation in the country.
The first lesson was given to the obstinate by arresting Air Marshal Khudyakov in December 1945, and in 1946 a full-fledged “aviation business” was launched, costing posts (and freedom) to a bunch of air marshals and generals. In the summer of 1946, a “trophy case” was initiated against Marshal Zhukov, in addition to this, the marshal was accused of “Bonapartism” and inflating merit in the defeat of Germany, removed from the post of commander-in-chief of the Ground Forces, sent to a low-honor exile - to the Odessa military district. Then there was the "case of the admirals" - and the legendary Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Kuznetsov fell into disgrace ... In general, everything is in the best traditions of the 37th, although on a slightly different scale. True, Comrade Stalin considered it premature to shoot Marshal Zhukov for the time being: he (like a number of other military leaders) was still needed by the leader - in the types of a war planned very seriously (and just as seriously prepared) by him against the United States.
In 1950, preparations for this war were in full swing, and, as can be assumed, Comrade. Stalin needed to show the slightly “softened” military elite again that his hand was firm, as in the unforgettable 1937. That is why he began to mercilessly shoot the "talkers" who turned up under this hand - such as Kulik and Gordov, the recording of whose conversations showed how they, ungrateful, obscenely bark personally Comrade. Stalin! And it’s okay that the first one has long been in circulation - everyone to whom this lesson needs to be conveyed remembers that he was a real marshal. They also remember that it was Gordov who commanded the Stalingrad Front - there are no inviolable heroes ... In general, a typical Stalinist multi-move: The owner always tried to kill several birds with one stone. With the executions of that August, and indeed of the whole of 1950, he seemed to make it clear to the military that this was a traditional cleansing on the eve of the next big war. During which there will be no indulgence for anyone - neither chatterboxes who doubted the wisdom of the leader, nor those who think to "sit out in captivity" or, like Vlasov, hope, on occasion, to swipe at the sacred - Soviet power (read: Stalin's personal dictatorship), switching to side of democracies.
It is no coincidence that in the death sentence to Major General Philip Rybalchenko, who was in the same connection with Kulik and Gordov, it was said that he was "a supporter of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, declared the need to overthrow the Soviet regime", and even "sought to abolish the political apparatus for enemy purposes V Soviet army". And Comrade Stalin cannot be denied a certain logic: he perfectly understood that only the military could really threaten his authorities. Therefore, it permanently cut their corporate cohesion in the bud. For with his bestial instinct he felt that in the coming war - already with the Americans - the second edition of Vlasov and Vlasovism could not be mastered by him. That the new prisoners new war(and there are no wars without them) will surely become the backbone of the anti-Stalinist army, which the exhausted population of the country, and ... a considerable part of the army elite, will readily support, the Owner had no doubt. Therefore, he protected himself as best he could and knew how, crushing the nape of the general's head with KGB bullets in August 1950.

Hidden Pages Soviet history. Bondarenko Alexander Yulievich

"...Stalin would have shot you all"

On October 14, 1964, the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU dismissed Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev from all his posts: first secretary of the Central Committee, member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The last of the Mohicans, Stalin, was ruthlessly thrown down from the political Olympus, and a group of party functionaries reigned on one-sixth of the earth's land, eventually leading great power to a national disaster.

Many books and articles have been written about Khrushchev, and he himself left multi-volume memoirs - so everyone is able to independently form an opinion about this outstanding and controversial personality who managed to survive in the never-ending struggle for power in the Kremlin and rise to the very heights. He survived under Stalin, defeated the master of political intrigues Beria, outplayed a whole cohort of Kremlin titans - Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Bulganin ... struggle for the survival of the state, which constantly experienced military pressure from the powers of the West and the East in the 1920s–1950s. Judging by his statements and actions, Nikita Sergeevich intuitively felt the need to adapt the Soviet state to new geopolitical and technological realities, the need for changes in the economic system, the mechanism of government, external and military policy. But the narrowness of thinking did not allow him to generate fundamentally new ideas, adequate to the trends of world development, on the basis of which it would be possible to develop a concept for the country's movement forward and a strategy for its implementation.

More than enough is known about Khrushchev's mistakes in the political arena. Let us mention only some of them, which tragically affected the fate of the Soviet state in the future.

Khrushchev and his inner circle failed to realize that for the majority of the population, communism was more than just an ideology. The Kremlin leaders ruled a country that had almost a thousand years of spiritual culture based on the Christian worldview, so most people subconsciously perceived the communist idea as a kind of secular understanding of life according to the precepts of Jesus Christ with his universal philanthropic ideas of kindness, justice and love for one's neighbor. We can say that it had a sacred meaning for the population, and Stalin himself was perceived as an infallible leader, a kind of demigod, surrounded by an area of ​​mystery.

With his impulsive actions, largely dictated by personal hostility towards the deceased leader - although it was the "Boss" who, beyond his merit, elevated Nikita Sergeevich to the Olympus of power and more than once forgave him failures in his work - Khrushchev inflicted a mortal wound on the "communist project" in the USSR.

At the XX Congress of the CPSU, he initiated a hasty and inept exposure of the "cult of personality of Stalin", which in fact was a blow to the basis of the state structure of the USSR, its ideocratic foundation. Under the leadership of Stalin, the Soviet state was created, the industrialization of the country was carried out, Great War- no matter how you remember Winston Churchill here: "He took the country with a plow, but surrendered with a nuclear bomb." Therefore, in the public consciousness, his name was inevitably identified with the Soviet power, with the very idea of ​​​​communism. For the Soviet people, it was a shock to hear that Stalin, whom they idolize, was not “the glorious successor of the great cause of Marx - Engels - Lenin”, but a vicious and mediocre tyrant, almost a criminal, guilty of the death of millions of people.

Five years later, at the XXII Congress, Khrushchev took - probably unconsciously - one more step along the path of "desacralization" of the highest state power and the communist idea itself. Driven by the desire to cheer up society, to show him the near prospect of a "bright life", he named a completely unrealistic timeline for the implementation of the communist idea, promised that "already this generation of people" would live under communism. It is difficult to say whether Khrushchev's assistants themselves came up with this or they were prompted "from behind a hillock". The names of the representatives of the "fifth column" in the USSR are securely hidden in the archives and file cabinets of the CIA and Mi-6.

The fact remains that by the beginning of the 1970s, when the unreality of Khrushchev's promises became obvious, another blow was dealt to the Soviet people's belief in the infallibility of the Kremlin, which led to the discrediting of the entire "communist project". The society was gradually losing its ideals, and it was not possible to work out a reasonable concept of its development, despite the presence of many dozens of academic institutions and research centers ...

After the death of Stalin and the subsequent removal of Beria from the political arena, re-ideologization took place public policy, the model of governing the country was revived, suggesting that the decision-making center was located not in the government, but in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Party functionaries, put "in their place" by Stalin as a result of the purge of 1937-1938 and the "Leningrad Affair", again became the dominant force in state system management, subjugated the structures of executive power, including the military department, security agencies and public order.

Unlike the pragmatist Beria, Khrushchev was a staunch supporter of Lenin's teachings - although he understood his basic postulates primitively and dogmatically. This also applied to the thesis about the inevitability of the victory of communism on a world scale. Hence, his excessive enthusiasm for the burdensome support for the USSR of foreign communist parties and national liberation movements, which took the form of "export of socialism", which more than once aggravated relations with Western countries, put the world on the brink of nuclear war.

In fairness, it must be admitted that it was impossible for the USSR to win in economic competition with the West without depriving geopolitical competitors of the "neo-colonial rent" that provided them with cheap raw materials and additional opportunities compared to our country, which was also in more unprofitable climatic conditions- hence the problems with crop failures, high energy consumption, etc. But this strategic task should have been solved in cold blood and thoughtfully ...

Again, for ideological reasons, Khrushchev quarreled with China, whose leader Mao Zedong - unlike Nikita Sergeevich and subsequent general secretaries - managed to understand the perniciousness of blindly following the "universal precepts of the classics" and led the state in its own national way. History has shown the correctness of the Chinese elite, which managed to differentiate in the implementation of the postulates of the Marxist-Leninist theory, without rejecting the huge spiritual heritage of their country and taking into account national specifics. Ultimately, the impoverished and humiliated China turned into world power No. 2 ... Khrushchev did not understand that it was in the interests of the Soviet state not to start scholastic ideological disputes with a promising geopolitical ally and make concessions in matters of theory, for the sake of creating a lasting alliance between the USSR and China , allowing the two Eurasian powers to determine the course of world history.

Another tragic mistake of Nikita Khrushchev was the attitude towards the peasantry, which in any country, being the most conservative social group, preserving the original ties of man with the earth, with Nature, acts as a kind of custodian of national traditions, the “spirit of the people”. Faced with the need to increase agricultural production in the country, the Soviet leader decided not to finance the revival of primordially Russian regions, but to invest in the "development of virgin lands", which, as it turns out decades later, turned out to be futile. At the same time, under the pretext of enlargement of collective farms, thousands of small villages, islands of true, "primordial Rus'", were destroyed. The oppression of Russa began again Orthodox Church, which, with the silent consent of Stalin, began to gradually restore its influence on the minds and souls of people. Under Khrushchev, the struggle of party ideologists against "church obscurantism" was often carried out using the primitive methods of militant atheists of the 1920s.

However, Khrushchev's political portrait cannot be painted exclusively in black colors. In his work, whether someone likes him or not, there was a lot of positive. Khrushchev tried to bring humanity into the politics of the Soviet state, to give it a social dimension.

The nomenclature was forced to think not only about the abstract - for " common man”- public interests, but also about the needs of specific people. Tens of millions of citizens are indebted to Nikita Khrushchev for separate apartments and improved financial conditions. There has been a democratization of inner-party life, people have ceased to be afraid to express their innermost thoughts aloud. The practice of mass repressions, political assassinations was put an end to... Under Khrushchev, a good time came.

True, even here it was not without stupidity and excesses. We repeat: the process of de-Stalinization, the fight against the “cult” could have been carried out politically more flexibly and gradually so as not to cause such negative consequences for the international reputation of the USSR and the cohesion of Soviet society itself. In addition, having proclaimed peaceful coexistence with the West and opened the floodgates for it mass culture, our ideologists turned out to be unprepared for information confrontation and propaganda protection of their way of life. On the other hand, Western intelligence services received more favorable opportunities for deploying psychological warfare against the USSR ...

In the early 60s, the heads of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Alexander Shelepin and Vladimir Semichastny, should take care of this, and not participate in the Kremlin's intrigues. Yuri Andropov, to his credit, realized mortal danger, outgoing for the Soviet state in the spiritual sphere, and created the now widely known 5th Directorate, but it was too late ...

Under Khrushchev, the implementation of large-scale programs for the creation of a nuclear missile shield began, depriving the United States of any hopes of the possibility of military blackmail of the USSR and allowing post-Soviet Russia to continue to enter the club of great powers - although in many economic and technological indicators it lost this right in the 1990s. e years. Khrushchev's ambitious plans to "catch up and overtake America", although they carried an element of demagoguery and adventurism, nevertheless stimulated the Soviet elite and society. Our country, as some political scientists correctly noted, cannot live without its own national project, and there was such a project in the 60s.

The period of Khrushchev's "reign" was a time of great expectations for the people, who then felt sincere pride in their country, trusted the leadership and believed in their happy tomorrow.

Since the resignation of Khrushchev, it has become fashionable to talk about his voluntarism, explaining it by the insufficient level of education of the ruler (although, we note, he successfully studied in 1929-1931 at the Industrial Academy), psychological characteristics an elderly and impulsive person, prone to tyranny. Yes, there was that too. But it must be borne in mind that Khrushchev's "volitional impulses", "improvisations" could also stem from his desire to make the flywheel of power spin faster, to overcome the inertia of the bureaucratic machine, which has the ability to "drown" any initiatives of the leader.

The higher nomenclature, which had come to its senses psychologically after thirty years of permanent purges and had tasted the delights of “life after Stalin,” wanted peace and stability. The explosive and rude Khrushchev, who did not choose expressions in communication with his comrades-in-arms - perhaps because he knew well the true value of their administrative and intellectual abilities and human qualities - began to irritate the Kremlin "boyars". They needed another, their own tsar: calm, predictable, to some extent manageable - behind the screen of the "Leninist style of leadership", collegiality in decision-making.

A conspiracy against the first secretary of the Central Committee began to mature in the spring of 1964, when he himself began to think about resigning due to age - he was 70, and started looking for a successor. To the misfortune of Nikita Sergeevich, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU Frol Kozlov, close to him and actually the second person in the party, fell seriously ill in 1963, and, according to doctors, there was no chance of restoring his full working capacity.

Our reference:

Frol Romanovich Kozlov born in 1908, graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, in 1953-1957 - First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU, 1957-1958 - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, 1958-1960 - First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, since 1960 - Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU . Removed from the Presidium of the Central Committee and relieved of his duties as Secretary of the Central Committee on November 16, 1964.

As Khrushchev's son Serey Nikitich recalled,“In connection with Kozlov’s illness, the problem of not only the future successor, but also today’s candidacy for the post of second secretary of the Central Committee, has become even more acute for the father. And there was no solution. There was no one to talk to...

It happened at the dacha in the deep autumn of 1963. Went out for a walk in the evening. We were walking in the light of lanterns along the front paved road leading from the gate to the house, when suddenly my father started talking about the situation in the Presidium. As far as I remember, he regretted that Kozlov could not return to work. According to him, he really counted on Frol Romanovich: he was on the spot, independently resolved issues, knew the economy well. The father did not see a replacement, and he himself already has a hole to think about retiring. The forces are not the same, and the way must be given to the young. “I will make it to the 23rd Congress and resign,” he said then.

Then he began to say that he had grown old, and the rest of the members of the Presidium were grandfathers of retirement age. There are almost no young people. My father became a member of the Politburo at the age of forty-five. The right age for big things - there is strength, there is time ahead. And at sixty you no longer think about the future. It's time to babysit your grandchildren. He puzzled over the candidacy for Kozlov's place. After all, you need to know the national economy, and defense, and ideology, and most importantly - to understand people. I would like to find someone younger.

Previously, the father was counting on Shelepin. He seemed the most suitable candidate: he was young, went through the Komsomol school, worked in the Central Committee. True, he is poorly oriented in economic affairs. All the time in bureaucratic positions. His father hoped that he would learn a little, gain experience in living work. To do this, he offered him to go to Leningrad as the secretary of the regional committee. The largest organization, modern industry, huge revolutionary traditions. After such a school one can hold any position in the Central Committee. Shelepin unexpectedly refused. He was offended: he considered it a demotion to change the bureaucratic chair of the secretary of the Central Committee to the post of secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee. - It's a pity, apparently, I overestimated him, - complained the father. - Maybe it's for the best, you can't go wrong here. And he would sit for several years in Leningrad, fill his hand, and he could be recommended for Kozlov's place. And now he is still a bureaucrat. Doesn't know life. No, Shelepin is not suitable, although it is a pity. He is the youngest in the Presidium.”

And it was the secretary of the Central Committee, Alexander Shelepin, who took an active part in behind-the-scenes conversations of the Kremlin leaders about the advisability of replacing Khrushchev. However, contrary to popular belief, he did not have a decisive word among the conspirators, since he was then only a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. At the origins of the overthrow of Nikita Sergeevich were "heavyweights".

The very idea of ​​removing the first secretary of the Central Committee began to arise in the Kremlin in the spring of 1964, when his 70th birthday was celebrated. By autumn, the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee became stronger in the opinion that "Nikita needs to be changed." Historians are inclined to believe that the secretaries of the Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny played a key role in the overthrow of Khrushchev. Although Brezhnev, right up to the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee on October 12, tried to be in the background.

In this regard, the memoirs of a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Gennady Voronov are interesting:

“Shortly before the October (1964) plenum, Brezhnev called me and said that he started, they say, hunting for ducks in Zavidovo and it would be nice to shoot together. I confess that I loved this occupation, I was a passionate hunter and agreed immediately. In Zavidovo, besides Brezhnev, I was met by Polyansky, Andropov, Gromyko... After the hunt, the feast was unusually brief. When we were getting ready to go home, Andropov (at that time secretary of the Central Committee in charge of the socialist countries. - Ed.) suggested that I go to Moscow with him and Brezhnev. As soon as we got to the highway, Andropov lifted the window separating the back seat from the driver and security guard in the cabin, and informed me about the impending overthrow of Khrushchev ... Brezhnev only inserted remarks into the conversation. Putting glasses on his nose, all the way he rustled sheets with a list of members of the Central Committee, put pluses against some names, minuses against others, counted, crossed out badges, changed minuses to pluses and muttered: "It will be, the balance will be win-win" ... "

The palace coup has a chance of success if the head of the military department and the chief of the secret police can be lured into it. The conspirators had no problems with the latter: KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny, a former Komsomol worker, agreed without hesitation to an offer to assist in the overthrow of Khrushchev, to whom he owed his career. Such "moral scrupulousness" of Semichastny rather objectively characterizes both him and other conspirators, whom Nikita Sergeevich himself "pulled" to the top.

With Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovsky, too, put elk safely, although, apparently, Brezhnev had some doubts. It is no coincidence that the conversation with Malinovsky, according to Alexander Shelepin, took place only on October 10. He immediately agreed. Military leadership, in principle, one could understand - Khrushchev repeatedly carried out significant reductions in the Armed Forces, while organizational events (according to the "national tradition") were not accompanied by concern for hundreds of thousands of military personnel being transferred to the reserve. The officers were forced to leave for low-paid work as turners, swineherds, drivers. The prestige of the officer's profession was falling. The generals were tired of the demagogy and rudeness of the ruler and did not see him as a politician capable of maintaining the country's defense capability.

With the accession to the Malinovsky conspiracy, Khrushchev was doomed. But Brezhnev himself, whom like-minded people had scheduled for the post of first secretary of the Central Committee (a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee since Stalin's time, Alexei Kosygin, was intended to be the chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers), continued to hesitate literally until last day. He was afraid of Khrushchev, well knowing his fighting qualities. Therefore, he was in no hurry to take the initiative: apparently, he remembered the sad fate of Molotov and Malenkov.

The oppositionists did not have a single plan of action, much was born impromptu. The speech was scheduled for mid-October, when Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, were vacationing on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. In the first ten days of October, Leonid Ilyich flew away for several days on a visit to the GDR, but hesitated to return and flew to Moscow only after phone call like-minded people. On the evening of the 12th, all members, candidate members of the Presidium and secretaries of the Central Committee gathered for a conference in the Kremlin. It was decided to call Khrushchev on VC and announce the convening of a plenum of the Central Committee on October 14 "on agriculture". Brezhnev, who remained "on the farm" in Khrushchev's absence, did not dare to call Pitsunda for a long time and contacted the first secretary only under pressure from his comrades-in-arms.

Khrushchev agreed, not without hesitation, and on the night of October 13, nevertheless, he called a plane to Adler to return to the capital. Information about the intrigues of the members of the Presidium reached him, and if he wished, he could take countermeasures, all the more so since he had many supporters both in Moscow and in regional party committees, especially in Ukraine. The first secretary could also count on the support of 50-60 KGB officers devoted to him, who carried out his protection.

However, the Kremlin leader preferred to surrender to Providence and arrived in Moscow in the middle of the day on October 13, accompanied by only five personal guards. Perhaps he hoped for the support of Semichastny and Malinovsky. But, most likely, the elderly Nikita Sergeevich was simply tired of the endless struggle for power - which, by the way, is the lot of any ruler.

The meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, at which his fate was decided, was led by Khrushchev himself. Brezhnev was the keynote speaker. Nikita Sergeevich tried at first to snap, but soon realized that he had lost. The meeting participants were unanimous in their criticism of the leader, they spoke about the mistakes of the first secretary of the Central Committee, his rudeness. Under their psychological pressure, Khrushchev signed a retirement statement already prepared for him. Saying goodbye, he remarked: “It was not you who removed me, it was I who prepared the ground for my removal - Stalin would have shot you all.” He was probably right...

From the memoirs of S. N. Khrushchev.

Once in the editorial office of the "Red Star" a bell rang: "You are worried about Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev," said an unfamiliar voice. “If you are interested in my father’s memories of my grandfather, then I can give them to you.” Memories, in which the "disgraced" first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU appeared not at all the person whose image was created by idle rumor and official Soviet propaganda, we were really interested.

Before proceeding to a detailed account of what happened at the Defense Council, I would like to briefly dwell on the history of the exercises-displays new technology, which played a significant role in shaping the military worldview of Nikita Khrushchev. It all started with a meeting in Sevastopol in October 1955, where it turned out that most generals had a vague idea about modern weapons, especially nuclear and missile.

At the insistence of Nikita Sergeevich, they decided to hold reviews of the latest achievements every two years military equipment so that generals (up to corps commanders) and those responsible for the development of armaments can get acquainted with what they will have to fight in the event of a war. Such exhibitions and exercises took place in 1958 and 1960 in Kapustin Yar, in 1959 in Sevastopol, in 1962 in Severomorsk and Arkhangelsk, in 1964 in Baikonur and in Kubinka near Moscow.

By the way, it was in Kapustin Yar in September 1958, in my presence, that the military literally begged Khrushchev for his consent to resume nuclear testing. The last straw was a carefully prepared comparative demonstration of the bulky nuclear weapons in service and their miniature counterparts requiring testing. The military pressed on: if the Americans unansweredly completed their series of explosions, they would leave us far behind. Nikita Sergeevich did not want to remain in the tail.

I attended most of these demonstration exercises, where we demonstrated our missiles, and listened to what was said during the debriefing. Beginning in 1958, Khrushchev constantly returned to the role of branches of the Armed Forces, based on the message of the annihilation of nuclear war. Will it end with the destruction of civilization? He did not talk about this with the military. It is up to the politicians, not the military, to do everything possible to avoid a catastrophe. But if nuclear war does it still explode? Will all these planes, helicopters, tanks, guns and other weapons, the production of which devours a lot of money, affect its outcome? He sought to limit himself to the bare minimum.

Unlike Western strategists, Nikita Sergeevich did not believe in the possibility of local wars arising in the context of a global nuclear confrontation between two worlds, two superpowers. In his opinion, any local conflict, involving more and more forces in a clash, will inevitably develop into a nuclear clash between the USSR and the USA. And since the doctrine of Nikita Khrushchev did not allocate place to local wars, then, as a result, he did not consider it necessary to produce the weapons necessary for their conduct. The generals took a diametrically opposed position.

Was Nikita Khrushchev wrong? History seems to answer this question in the affirmative. And perhaps the opposite is true - the hoops tightening the military-political groupings have slightly weakened, and the accumulated weapons of local wars have given rise to the wars themselves ...

And one more fundamental issue on which Nikita Khrushchev disagreed with the military. He no longer considered it expedient for the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of our Warsaw Pact allies. “The regimes existing there should not rely on bayonets, but on the support of their peoples. If the people do not support them, then who needs such rulers? - I heard these words from my father repeatedly. He also had no doubt that the people stood for socialist governments, as he was sure of the advantages of socialism over capitalism. “Then why give our enemies a reason to claim that the local authorities are held only by the presence of our troops?” - got excited father.

In addition, Nikita Khrushchev did not want, he simply could not put up with the huge expenses that we incurred in maintaining troops in foreign territories. In 1962-1964, he repeatedly returned to discussing the need for the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Hungary, Poland, and possibly even East Germany. Of the latter, however, only after the West recognized its independent statehood.

The military stood their ground, did not want to leave the lines won in World War II. Their defense, according to the generals, served as a guarantee of the security of the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev considered their point of view outdated, not meeting the realities of nuclear confrontation. “In modern conditions, with modern means of delivery,” he objected, “the outcome of the war will not be decided in border battles. From a strategic point of view, the presence of Soviet ground troops on the western borders is useless, and their withdrawal will give us huge political and economic advantages. In addition, he believed that, if necessary, modern vehicles and aviation would make it possible to quickly transfer troops to the borders.

However, the problem of the withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe was not destined to grow into a conflict between Nikita Khrushchev and the generals. She died on her own, after the withdrawal was opposed by the leaders of Hungary and Poland - Janos Kadar and Wladyslaw Gomulka.

So what happened in Fili? Due to the importance of what happened, I decided not to limit myself to a concentrated account of the events of that day, but to quote in full from my notes on this meeting.

So, March 1963, an off-site meeting of the Defense Council in the design bureau of Vladimir Chelomey and at the same time an exhibition of advanced weapons developments. The purpose of the meeting: "To choose the best of two applications for the development of a new intercontinental ballistic missile rapid response filed by Mikhail Yangel and Vladimir Chelomey. In other words, to determine the basis of future nuclear deterrence forces. The distinguished guests began their visit with a visit to the exhibition. The story of the entire exhibition will take up too much space, I'll start from the middle.

In one of the halls, samples of nuclear and conventional weapons from the battlefield were piled up. Grechko brought his father to the layout of the improved "Moon" - tactical rocket launcher. A poster depicting a long-necked cannon hung on the wall nearby. Those present guessed what was going to be discussed. Grechko has long "punched" nuclear weapons army formations at the corps and even divisional level.

Now he gave the latest American data: in addition to the Honest John, they abundantly equipped their ground troops long-range cannons capable of firing nuclear projectiles. Infantry units received at their disposal atomic mines and land mines. There was almost talk about a portable nuclear projectile fired from the "shoulder" like a bazooka.

In our country, according to Grechko, things were catastrophic. In addition to the "Moon", there is practically nothing to count on. True, the R-13 was recently adopted, but in terms of its parameters it already claimed the next, operational level. Grechko began to get excited, to convince his father that without tactical nuclear weapons, the army would not be able to resist a potential enemy. “Without the use of tactical atomic charges on the battlefield, very small,” he brought the palms of his long arms together, demonstrating their miniature, “with the equivalent of one or two kilotons, it is impossible to win a modern battle.”

This time his eyes did not laugh, it was a serious matter, and not about all sorts of space things. Grechko did not particularly believe in them - toys. Having puffed up, he pressed on his father, hanging over him from the height of his almost two meters tall. Father stepped back, he did not like to address the interlocutor, raising his head high.

Yes, move back two steps, - my father is tired of backing away.

The situation has loosened up somewhat.

And do not persuade me, I have no money, - continued the father, - you can’t get enough for everything.

He clearly did not want to enter into an argument, everything had long been said and negotiated. My father did not favor tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons served him not as an instrument of war, but as an argument in political battles, a means of pressure, intimidation, even blackmail. But apply it?

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Companions of Joseph Stalin last years the life of the leader fought for power and influence. One of the consequences of this very struggle was the "Leningrad case" that began 65 years ago. They arrested and then repressed many senior officials - Leningraders and immigrants from the Northern capital. Seven people were sentenced to death and shot. Among them: Alexei Kuznetsov (last position - Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), Pyotr Popkov (First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), Nikolai Voznesensky (Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR).

The impetus for the unwinding of the case was minor fraud during the elections in December 1948 of the members of the regional committee at the party conference and the holding of a wholesale fair in Leningrad in January of the following year, which, without agreement with the country's leadership, was turned from an all-Russian into an all-union one. The latter, it was argued, led to large financial losses.

Specialists and historians are still arguing about what really caused the “Leningrad case” and what consequences it had. This became the topic of a conversation between Komsomolskaya Pravda and a candidate of historical sciences Kirill Boldovsky.

NOT A WORD ABOUT SPY

It is assumed that Joseph Stalin wanted to make Leningraders his successors: on the party line - Alexei Kuznetsov, and on the state line - Nikolai Voznesensky. This caused alarm among those close to the leader Georgy Malenkov and Lavrenty Beria, who promoted the "Leningrad case" ...

So far, not a single documentary source has been found that testifies in favor of this version. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Stalin could have made such an assumption as a trial balloon. In order to test the reaction of the “comrades” and increase the rivalry between them. But it is obvious that such close associates of the leader as Beria and Malenkov, well knew the value of these words and were unlikely to take them at face value. For example, immediately after the 19th Party Congress, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU was held, where Stalin proposed to relieve him of the post of General Secretary, leaving behind him the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers and a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The reaction of Georgy Malenkov, who chaired the meeting, was described by an eyewitness as follows: “I saw a terrible expression on Malenkov’s face.<…>, this can happen to a person<…>aware of the mortal danger that hangs over everyone's heads. Everyone who gathered literally begged the leader to stay.”

Aleksey Kuznetsov, as a person not very experienced in intrigues at the highest level, could believe in the sincerity of Stalin, who in reality was not going to share power with anyone.

Were there real reasons to accuse the participants of the "Leningrad case" of espionage and economic crimes?

Both the verdict and the indictment are now available to investigators. We are talking about the main process, which took place at the end of September 1950 in the Leningrad House of Officers.

There is no mention of espionage in these documents at all. But there are indeed allegations of what could be called economic abuses. And more specifically:

Attempts to obtain additional material funds for the city and region at the expense of other regions. But so did many local leaders. After all, well-being often depended on the ability to knock out the necessary resources from the center.

Personal corruption abuses: the use of public funds for organizing various banquets, making gifts, as well as distributing trophy goods among the top leaders of Leningrad. But it is no secret that many state and party leaders of various levels were noticed in such misconduct then. Including Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

The investigators who conducted the "Leningrad case" carefully searched for facts of abuse during the years of the blockade. But for the most part, they didn't find anything. They did not reveal gigantic losses during the All-Union Fair. They only established that funds were unreasonably spent on the travel and stay of participants, as well as on organizational expenses.

RUSSIA WITH THE CAPITAL ON THE NEVA

Researchers claim that Popkov, Kuznetsov and Voznesensky wanted to organize the Communist Party of the RSFSR and make Leningrad the capital of the republic. According to the country's leadership, this could lead to the collapse of the Union. That is, the scenario of 1991 would have played out much earlier ...

On February 22, 1949, under the leadership of Malenkov, a joint plenum of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Party Committee was held. On it, Pyotr Popkov admitted that he participated in conversations about the formation of the Communist Party of the RSFSR, which at one time were conducted in the reception room of Andrei Zhdanov. There is evidence that middle-level employees of the Leningrad party apparatus also discussed this topic.

However, everything remained only at the level of conversations, no organizational actions were taken. The only known document is a memorandum by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Mikhail Rodionov addressed to Joseph Stalin on the possibility of creating a Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the RSFSR.

In the indictment, the question of the plans for the creation of the RCP (KP RSFSR) is present. The investigation believed that in this way the defendants wanted to "defame the Central Committee, to show that the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Soviet government do not show due attention and concern for the RSFSR, putting other union republics in a privileged position." The mention that the Leningrad leaders tried to present themselves as the main defenders of the interests of the Russian regions is also contained in the handwritten notes that Malenkov kept during the plenum. But there is no information that the defendants intended to "destroy the USSR" by creating the RCP, in the documents. This is not surprising. At the end of the forties, in contrast to the end of the eighties, there were no prerequisites for the collapse of the state.

In Stalin's opinion, the RCP, which the members of the "Leningrad group" spoke about, would be a completely unnecessary element in the structure of power. The imperial strategy, formalized already by the mid-thirties, provided for the unification of the union republics around Russia, and not into "one whole with it."

For participants in the “Leningrad case”, the death penalty, which was abolished in 1947, was returned. Does this not indicate that they really committed serious crimes?

This is an erroneous assumption. The death penalty was introduced by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on January 13, 1950 - more than nine months before the main trial in the "Leningrad case". The document stated: “In view of the statements received from the national republics, trade unions, peasant organizations, as well as from cultural figures about the need to amend the Decree on the abolition of the death penalty so that this decree does not apply to traitors to the motherland, spies and subversive bombers, The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decides: to allow the application of the death penalty to traitors to the motherland, spies, subversives-saboteurs as the highest measure of punishment. The “Leningraders” were not the first here: even before their trial, several people were shot, including senior officers of the Soviet Army.

INFORMATION FOR THINKING

"Kuznetsov called Alyosha"

- What were the true causes of the "Leningrad case"?

The Great Patriotic War formed a new type of leader. Initiative leaders were put forward who were not afraid to take responsibility for the fate of the common cause, were weary of every minute guardianship and constant instructions from above. Remaining for the most part adherents of the Stalinist system, these people offered new ideas for its improvement and were not afraid to defend them. Such leaders were many Leningraders, primarily Alexei Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesensky.

They put forward numerous initiatives and proposals. These are the new Charter and the Party Program, and the Plan for the fifteen-year development of the Soviet economy, and measures aimed at enhancing the role of economic mechanisms, which were later called self-supporting.

Until 1948, Stalin supported such leaders. For a long time, he treated most of the defendants in the "Leningrad case" quite loyally, not to say friendly. Kuznetsov called Alyosha, during the years of the blockade, as eyewitnesses say, he sent him a personal note with words of trust. He singled out Voznesensky among other “heads” - this is how the father of the peoples called his deputies on the Council of Ministers of the USSR for their desire to clearly and uncompromisingly defend their position. According to information that has not yet been documented, the supreme leader hesitated until the last moment about the need for execution. An interesting fact: in the early summer of 1950, at the Leningrad City Party Conference, members of the "anti-party group" were called "Don Quixotes on rickety legs." It is clear that such a definition, which was strikingly different from the terminology of the trials of the thirties, could not have been made without Stalin's sanction.

But this, as they say, is poetry. But the reality is that at the end of the forties the situation in the country and the world began to change. For various reasons, the supreme leader has taken a course of tightening both in international and international domestic politics. And the growing influence of new leaders began to worry him greatly.

The so-called "Leningrad case" is a set of repressive measures taken by Joseph Stalin with the support of his inner circle in order to prevent the formation of an independent elite group among regional party and state leaders. Naturally, the main blow was directed against the leaders of Leningrad, where the desire for "regional independence" was most pronounced and relied on the support of the head of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Alexei Kuznetsov.

Why was it necessary to remove from office, to bring to justice those natives of Leningrad who worked in other regions of the country?

As the analysis of the repressions shows, it was not abstract “natives of Leningrad” who were punished, but those party leaders who were guided by Alexei Kuznetsov.

Meanwhile, many Leningrad leaders did not suffer at all. For example, the future head of the Soviet government Alexei Kosygin. Some have even strengthened their positions in the power system. Among the latter is the future Minister of Defense of the USSR Dmitry Ustinov.

FINALLY

Late rehabilitation

The City Defense Museum became a victim of the “Leningrad case”: it was closed and has not yet been fully restored. Did those who really worked in besieged Leningrad party and economic leaders used the exposition for their exaltation?

After February 1949, it was unacceptable for the new party leadership of the city to leave an exposition in which the names of dismissed figures appeared. At the same time, a decision was made to confiscate all, without exception, printed materials in which they were mentioned. It was not possible to leave the museum in this form: it would have raised too many questions among the population. The allegations of exaltation came from the indictment.

Why was one of the first rehabilitations in the country, which began after the death of Stalin, carried out in relation to the participants in the “Leningrad case”? Nikita Khrushchev was also a member of the "anti-party group", but in 1949-1950 he was not exposed?

We need to make some clarification. "Leningraders" were rehabilitated in May 1954 and far from the first. The process began in March 1953 with the wife of Vyacheslav Molotov, Polina Zhemchuzhina.

But Nikita Khrushchev was really in a hurry to justify the participants in the "Leningrad case". There is no reliable information that he was a member of the “anti-party group”. He had other reasons. First of all, those party workers who sought to make the party apparatus the main element in the system of power were subjected to repression. The aforementioned draft Charter of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, developed in 1947 by a commission led by Alexei Kuznetsov, provided for the transfer of all local power to regional party leaders. The idea of ​​party priority was very close to Khrushchev personally. After all, relying on the party apparatus, whose representatives made up the majority in the Central Committee of the party, he first managed to legitimize the arrest and execution of Beria, and then achieve the removal of Malenkov from the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The rehabilitation of the "Leningraders" and the recognition of the case itself as lawlessness dealt a serious blow to the reputation of Georgy Malenkov, who was sometimes called Stalin's heir.

Due to the fact that once again a memorandum to Khrushchev on the number of convicted people from 1921 to 1953 came to light, I cannot ignore the topic of repressions.

The memorandum itself, and most importantly, the information it contains, became known to many people interested in politics - quite a long time ago. The note contains absolutely exact numbers of repressed citizens. Of course, the numbers are not small and they will frighten and horrify a person who knows the topic. But as you know - everything is known in comparison. Let's do this and compare.

Those who have not yet had time to remember the exact figures of repression by heart - now you have such an opportunity.

So, from 1921 to 1953, 642,980 people were executed. 765,180 people were exiled.

Placed in custody - 2,369,220 people.

Total - 3,777,380

Anyone who dares to say a figure that is at least somewhat large, about the scale of repression, is blatantly and shamelessly lying. Many people have questions, why such large numbers? Well, let's figure it out.

Amnesty of the Provisional Government.

One of the reasons why so many people were repressed by the Soviet authorities was the general amnesty of the provisional government. And to be more precise, Kerensky. You don’t have to go far for this data, you don’t have to rummage through the archives, just open Wikipedia and type “Provisional Government”:

In Russia, a general political amnesty has been declared, and the terms of imprisonment for persons held in custody on the basis of sentences of courts for general criminal offenses have also been halved. About 90 thousand prisoners were released, among which were thousands of thieves and raiders, popularly nicknamed "Kerensky's chicks" (Vicki).

On March 6, the Provisional Government adopted a Decree on political amnesty. In general, as a result of the amnesty, more than 88 thousand prisoners were released, of which 67.8 thousand people were convicted of criminal offenses. As a result of the amnesty, the total number of prisoners from March 1 to April 1, 1917 was reduced by 75%.

On March 17, 1917, the Provisional Government issued a Decree "On alleviating the fate of persons who have committed criminal offenses", i.e. on the amnesty of those convicted of common crimes. However, only those convicts who expressed their readiness to serve their Motherland on the battlefield were subject to amnesty.

The calculation of the Provisional Government to recruit prisoners into the army did not materialize, and many of the liberated, if possible, fled from the units. - Source

Thus, a huge number of criminals, thieves, murderers and other asocial elements turned out to be free, with whom in the future the Soviet government will have to fight directly. What can we say about the fact that all the exiled people who are not in prison, after the amnesty, quickly scattered throughout Russia.

Civil War.

There is nothing worse in the history of a people and civilization than a civil war.

A war in which brother goes against brother and son goes against father. When citizens of one country, subjects of one state kill each other on the basis of political, ideological differences.

We still have not departed from this civil war, to say nothing of the state in which society was immediately after the civil war ended. And the realities of such events are such that after the civil war, in any, the most democratic country in the world, the winning side will repress the loser.

For the simple reason that in order for a society to continue to develop, it must be integral, united, it must look forward to a brighter future, and not engage in self-destruction. That is why, those who did not accept defeat, those who did not accept new order, those who continue direct or covert confrontation, those who continue to incite hatred and encourage people to fight - are to be destroyed.

Here you have political repression and persecution of the church. But not because pluralism of opinions is unacceptable, but because these people actively participated in the civil war and did not stop their "struggle" after it ended. This is another reason why so many people ended up in the Gulags.

Relative numbers.

And now, we come to the most interesting, to comparison and transition from absolute numbers to relative numbers.

The population of the USSR in 1920 - 137,727,000 people The population of the USSR in 1951 - 182,321,000 people

An increase of 44,594,000 people despite the civil and second world war which claimed much more lives than repressions.

On average, we get that the population of the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1951 was 160 million people.

In total, 3,777,380 people were convicted in the USSR, which is two percent (2%) of the total average population of the country, 2% - in 30 years!!! Divide 2 by 30 and you get 0.06% of the total population per year. This is despite civil war and the fight against accomplices of the Nazis (collaborators, traitors and traitors who sided with Hitler) after the Great Patriotic War.

And this means that every year 99.94% of the law-abiding citizens of our Motherland worked quietly, worked, studied, received medical treatment, gave birth to children, invented, rested, and so on. In general, they lived the most that neither is a normal human life.

Half the country was sitting. Half the country guarded.

Well, the last and most important thing. Many people like to say that we are saying that half a third of the country was sitting, a third of the country was guarding, a third of the country was knocking. And the fact that in the memorandum only counter-revolutionary fighters are indicated, and if you add up the number of those who were imprisoned for political reasons and those who were imprisoned for a criminal offense, then these are generally terrible numbers.

Yes, the numbers are scary until you compare them with anything. Here is a table that shows the total number of prisoners, both repressed and criminals, both in prisons and in camps. And their comparison with the total number of prisoners in other countries

According to this table, it turns out that on average, in the Stalinist USSR there were 583 prisoners (both criminal and repression) per 100,000 free people.

In the early 90s, at the height of crime in our country, only in criminal cases, without political repression, there were 647 prisoners per 100,000 free.

The table shows the United States of the times of Clinton. Fairly quiet years even before the global financial crisis, and even then, it turned out that 626 people per 100 free people are sitting in the United States.

I decided to dig a little into modern numbers. According to WikiNews, there are currently 2,085,620 prisoners in the United States, which is 714 prisoners per 100,000.

And in Putin's stable Russia, the number of prisoners has dropped sharply in relation to the dashing 90s, and now we have 532 prisoners per 100,000.