Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation

Federal State Educational Institution

Higher professional education

"SAINT PETERSBURG STATE UNIVERSITY OF CULTURE AND ARTS"

Library and Information Faculty

Department of Contemporary History of the Fatherland

Course: Modern history of the Fatherland

Mass political repressions in the 30s. Attempts to resist the Stalinist regime.

Artist: Meerovich V.I.

BIF correspondence student

262 groups

Lecturer: Sherstnev V.P.

Saint Petersburg

Introduction

dispossession

The fight against "sabotage"

Mass terror

Conclusion

Introduction

Political repressions of the 20-50s. The twentieth century left a big imprint on Russian history. These were years of arbitrariness, lawless violence. Historians evaluate this period of Stalin's rule in different ways. Some of them call it a "black spot in history", others - a necessary measure to strengthen and increase the power of the Soviet state.

The very concept of "repression" in Latin means "suppression, punitive measure, punishment." In other words, suppression through punishment.

At the moment, political repression is one of the hot topics, as they have affected almost many residents of our country. Recently, terrible secrets of that time have very often surfaced, thereby increasing the importance of this problem.

Versions about the causes of mass repressions

When analyzing the formation of the mechanism of mass repression in the 1930s, the following factors should be taken into account.

The transition to the policy of collectivization of agriculture, industrialization and the cultural revolution, which required significant material investments or the attraction of free labor (it is indicated, for example, that grandiose plans for the development and creation of an industrial base in the regions of the north of the European part of Russia, Siberia and the Far East required the movement of huge human wt.

Preparations for war with Germany, where the Nazis who came to power proclaimed their goal the destruction of communist ideology.

To solve these problems, it was necessary to mobilize the efforts of the entire population of the country and ensure absolute support for state policy, and for this - to neutralize the potential political opposition on which the enemy could rely.

At the same time, at the legislative level, the supremacy of the interests of society and the proletarian state in relation to the interests of the individual was proclaimed and more severe punishment for any damage caused to the state, compared to similar crimes against the individual.

The policy of collectivization and accelerated industrialization led to a sharp drop in the standard of living of the population and to mass starvation. Stalin and his entourage understood that this increased the number of those dissatisfied with the regime and tried to portray "saboteurs" and "enemies of the people" responsible for all economic difficulties, as well as accidents in industry and transport, mismanagement, etc. According to Russian researchers, demonstrative repressions made it possible to explain the hardships of life by the presence of an internal enemy.

Stalinist repression dispossession collectivization

As the researchers point out, the period of mass repression was also predetermined by the "restoration and active use of the political investigation system" and the strengthening of the authoritarian power of I. Stalin, who moved from discussions with political opponents on the choice of the country's development path to declaring them "enemies of the people, a gang of professional wreckers, spies, saboteurs, murderers", which was perceived by the state security agencies, the prosecutor's office and the court as a prerequisite for action.

The ideological basis of repression

The ideological basis of Stalin's repressions was formed during the years of the civil war. Stalin himself formulated a new approach at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in July 1928.

It cannot be imagined that socialist forms will develop, ousting the enemies of the working class, and the enemies will retreat silently, making way for our advance, that then we will again advance, and they will retreat again, and then "suddenly" all without exception social groups, both kulaks and the poor, both workers and capitalists, will find themselves "suddenly", "imperceptibly", without struggle or unrest, in socialist society.

It has not happened and will not happen that the moribund classes voluntarily give up their positions without trying to organize resistance. It has not happened and will not happen that the advance of the working class towards socialism in a class society can do without struggle and unrest. On the contrary, the advance towards socialism cannot but lead to the resistance of the exploiting elements to this advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable intensification of the class struggle.

dispossession

In the course of the forced collectivization of agriculture carried out in the USSR in 1928-1932, one of the directions of state policy was the suppression of anti-Soviet actions of the peasants and the associated "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" - "dispossession", which implied the forcible and extrajudicial deprivation of wealthy peasants, using wage labor, all means of production, land and civil rights, and eviction to remote areas of the country. Thus, the state destroyed the main social group of the rural population, capable of organizing and financially supporting the resistance to the measures taken.

Almost any peasant could get on the lists of kulaks compiled locally. The scale of the resistance to collectivization was such that it captured not only the kulaks, but also many middle peasants who opposed collectivization. The ideological feature of this period was the widespread use of the term "podkulaknik", which made it possible to repress any peasant population in general, up to farm laborers.

The protests of the peasants against collectivization, against high taxes and the forced seizure of "surplus" grain were expressed in its harboring, arson and even the murder of rural party and Soviet activists, which was regarded by the state as a manifestation of the "kulak counter-revolution".

On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization." According to this decree, kulaks were divided into three categories:

The heads of kulak families of the 1st category were arrested, and cases of their actions were referred to special construction units consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (krai committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor's office. Family members of kulaks of the 1st category and kulaks of the 2nd category were subject to eviction to remote areas of the USSR or remote areas of a given region (krai, republic) to a special settlement. The kulaks, assigned to the 3rd category, settled within the district on new lands specially allocated for them outside the collective farms.

On February 2, 1930, the order of the OGPU of the USSR No. 44/21 was issued, which provided for the immediate liquidation of "counter-revolutionary kulak activists", especially "cadres of active counter-revolutionary and insurgent organizations and groups" and "the most malicious, terry loners."

The families of those arrested, imprisoned in concentration camps or sentenced to death were subject to deportation to the remote northern regions of the USSR.

The order also provided for the mass eviction of the richest kulaks, i.e. former landlords, semi-landlords, "local kulak authorities" and "the entire kulak cadre, from which the counter-revolutionary activist is formed", "kulak anti-Soviet activist", "churchmen and sectarians", as well as their families to the remote northern regions of the USSR. As well as the priority conduct of campaigns for the eviction of kulaks and their families in the following regions of the USSR.

In this regard, the OGPU bodies were entrusted with the task of organizing the resettlement of the dispossessed and their labor use at the place of new residence, suppressing unrest of the dispossessed in special settlements, and searching for those who had fled from places of exile. The direct management of the mass resettlement was carried out by a special task force under the leadership of the head of the Secret Operational Directorate E.G. Evdokimov. The spontaneous unrest of the peasants in the field was suppressed instantly. Only in the summer of 1931 did it take the involvement of army units to reinforce the OGPU troops in suppressing major unrest of special settlers in the Urals and Western Siberia.

In total, in 1930-1931, as indicated in the certificate of the Department for Special Settlers of the Gulag of the OGPU, 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent to a special settlement. For 1932-1940. 489,822 dispossessed people arrived in special settlements.

The fight against "sabotage"

The solution of the problem of accelerated industrialization required not only the investment of huge funds, but also the creation of numerous technical personnel. The bulk of the workers, however, were yesterday's illiterate peasants who did not have sufficient qualifications to work with complex equipment. The Soviet state was also heavily dependent on the technical intelligentsia, inherited from tsarist times. These specialists were often rather skeptical of communist slogans.

The Communist Party, which grew up under conditions of civil war, perceived all the failures that arose in the course of industrialization as deliberate sabotage, which resulted in a campaign against the so-called "wrecking". In a number of sabotage and sabotage trials, for example, the following accusations were made:

Sabotage of the observation of solar eclipses (Pulkovo case);

Preparation of incorrect reports on the financial situation of the USSR, which led to the undermining of its international authority (the case of the Labor Peasant Party);

Sabotage on the instructions of foreign intelligence services through the insufficient development of textile factories, the creation of disproportions in semi-finished products, which should have led to the undermining of the USSR economy and general discontent (the case of the Industrial Party);

Damage to seed material through its contamination, deliberate sabotage in the field of mechanization of agriculture by insufficient supply of spare parts (case of the Labor Peasant Party);

Uneven distribution of goods by region on assignment from foreign intelligence agencies, which led to the formation of surpluses in some places and shortages in others (the case of the Menshevik "Union Bureau").

Also, the clergy, freelancers, small businessmen, merchants and artisans were victims of the "anti-capitalist revolution" that began in the 1930s. From now on, the population of cities was included in the category of "working class, builder of socialism", however, the working class was subjected to repressions, which, in accordance with the dominant ideology, turned into an end in itself, hindering the active movement of society towards progress.

In four years, from 1928 to 1931, 138,000 industrial and administrative specialists were excluded from the life of society, 23,000 of them were written off in the first category ("enemies of the Soviet regime") and deprived of their civil rights. The persecution of specialists took on enormous proportions at enterprises, where they were forced to unreasonably increase output, which led to an increase in the number of accidents, defects, and machine breakdowns. From January 1930 to June 1931, 48% of Donbass engineers were fired or arrested: 4,500 "specialist saboteurs" were "exposed" in the first quarter of 1931 in the transport sector alone. The advancement of goals that obviously cannot be achieved, which led to the failure to fulfill plans, a strong drop in labor productivity and work discipline, to a complete disregard for economic laws, ended up upsetting the work of enterprises for a long time.

The crisis emerged on a grandiose scale, and the leadership of the party was forced to take some "corrective measures." On July 10, 1931, the Politburo decided to limit the persecution of specialists who became victims of the hunt declared on them in 1928. The necessary measures were taken: several thousand engineers and technicians were immediately released, mainly in the metallurgical and coal industries, discrimination in access to higher education for the children of the intelligentsia was stopped, the OPTU was forbidden to arrest specialists without the consent of the relevant people's commissariat.

From the end of 1928 to the end of 1932, the Soviet cities were flooded with peasants, whose number was close to 12 million - these were those who fled from collectivization and dispossession. Three and a half million migrants appeared in Moscow and Leningrad alone. Among them were many enterprising peasants who preferred to flee the countryside to self-dispossession or join collective farms. In 1930-1931, countless construction projects swallowed up this very unpretentious workforce. But beginning in 1932, the authorities began to fear a continuous and uncontrolled flow of population, which turned cities into villages, when the authorities needed to make them the showcase of a new socialist society; population migration jeopardized this entire elaborate ration card system, beginning in 1929, in which the number of "entitled" to the ration card increased from 26 million at the beginning of 1930 to almost 40 by the end of 1932. Migration turned factories into huge camps of nomads. According to the authorities, "new arrivals from the village can cause negative phenomena and ruin production by an abundance of truants, a decline in work discipline, hooliganism, an increase in marriage, the development of crime and alcoholism."

In the spring of 1934, the government took repressive measures against juvenile homeless children and hooligans, whose number in the cities increased significantly during the period of famine, dispossession and exacerbation of social relations. under the law, sanctions against minors who have reached the age of 12, convicted of robbery, violence, bodily harm, self-mutilation and murder. A few days later, the government sent a secret instruction to the prosecutor's office, which specified the criminal measures that should be applied to adolescents, in particular, it was said that any measures should be applied, "including the highest measure of social protection", in other words, the death penalty. Thus, the previous paragraphs of the Criminal Code, which prohibited the death penalty for minors, were repealed.

Mass terror

On July 30, 1937, the NKVD Order No. 00447 "On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements" was adopted.

According to this order, the categories of persons subject to repression were determined:

A) Former kulaks (previously repressed, hiding from repression, escaping from camps, exile and labor settlements, as well as those who fled from dispossession to cities);

B) Former repressed "churchmen and sectarians";

C) Former active participants in anti-Soviet armed uprisings;

D) Former members of anti-Soviet political parties (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Georgian Mensheviks, Armenian Dashnaks, Azerbaijani Musavatists, Ittihadists, etc.);

E) Former active "participants in bandit uprisings";

E) Former White Guards, "punishers", "repatriates" ("re-emigrants"), etc.;

g) criminals.

All the repressed were divided into two categories:

1) "the most hostile elements" were subject to immediate arrest and, after considering their cases in troikas, to execution;

2) "less active, but still hostile elements" were subject to arrest and imprisonment in camps or prisons for a period of 8 to 10 years.

By order of the NKVD, for the accelerated consideration of thousands of cases, "operational troikas" were formed at the level of republics and regions. The troika usually included: the chairman - the local head of the NKVD, the members - the local prosecutor and the first secretary of the regional, regional or republican committee of the CPSU (b).

For each region of the Soviet Union, limits were set for both categories.

Part of the repression was carried out against people who had already been convicted and were in the camps. Limits of the "first category" (10 thousand people) were allocated for them, and triples were also formed.

The order established repressions against family members of the sentenced:

Families "whose members are capable of active anti-Soviet actions" were subject to deportation to camps or work settlements.

The families of the executed, living in the border zone, were subject to resettlement outside the border strip within the republics, territories and regions.

The families of the executed, living in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Baku, Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog and in the areas of Sochi, Gagra and Sukhumi, were subject to eviction to other areas of their choice, with the exception of border areas.

All families of the repressed were subject to registration and systematic observation.

The duration of the "kulak operation" (as it was sometimes called in the documents of the NKVD, since the former kulaks made up the majority of those repressed) was extended several times, and the limits were revised. So, on January 31, 1938, by a resolution of the Politburo, additional limits of 57,200 people were allocated for 22 regions, including 48,000 for the "first category". On February 1, the Politburo approves an additional limit for camps in the Far East of 12,000 people. "first category", February 17 - an additional limit for Ukraine of 30 thousand for both categories, July 31 - for the Far East (15 thousand for the "first category", 5 thousand for the second), August 29 - 3 thousand for Chita region.

In total, during the operation, 818 thousand people were convicted by troikas, of which 436 thousand were sentenced to death.

Former employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway accused of spying for Japan were also repressed.

On May 21, 1938, by order of the NKVD, "militia troikas" were formed, which had the right to sentence "socially dangerous elements" to exile or terms of imprisonment for 3-5 years without trial. These troikas delivered various sentences to 400,000 people. The category of persons under consideration included, among other things, criminals - recidivists and buyers of stolen goods.

Repression against foreigners and ethnic minorities

On March 9, 1936, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution "On measures protecting the USSR from the penetration of espionage, terrorist and sabotage elements." In accordance with it, the entry of political emigrants into the country was complicated and a commission was created to "purge" international organizations on the territory of the USSR.

On July 25, 1937, Yezhov signed and put into effect order No. 00439, which ordered the local NKVD bodies to arrest all German subjects, including political emigrants, working or previously working in military factories and factories with defense workshops, within 5 days, as well as in railway transport, and in the process of investigating their cases, "to achieve an exhaustive opening of the German intelligence agents that have not been exposed so far." On August 11, 1937, Yezhov signed order No. local organizations of the "Polish Military Organization" and complete it within 3 months. In these cases, 103,489 people were convicted, including 84,471 people sentenced to death.

August 17, 1937 - an order to conduct a "Romanian operation" against emigrants and defectors from Romania to Moldova and Ukraine. 8292 people were convicted, including 5439 people sentenced to death.

November 30, 1937 - Directive of the NKVD to conduct an operation against defectors from Latvia, activists of Latvian clubs and societies. 21,300 people were convicted, of which 16,575 shot.

December 11, 1937 - Directive of the NKVD on the operation against the Greeks. 12,557 people were convicted, of which 10,545 people. sentenced to be shot.

December 14, 1937 - Directive of the NKVD on the spread of repression along the "Latvian line" to Estonians, Lithuanians, Finns, and Bulgarians. 9,735 people were convicted on the "Estonian line", including 7,998 people sentenced to death, 11,066 people were convicted on the "Finnish line", of which 9,078 people were sentenced to death;

January 29, 1938 - Directive of the NKVD on the "Iranian operation". 13,297 people were convicted, of which 2,046 were sentenced to death. February 1, 1938 - NKVD directive on the "national operation" against the Bulgarians and Macedonians. February 16, 1938 - NKVD directive on arrests along the "Afghan line". 1,557 people were convicted, of which 366 were sentenced to death. On March 23, 1938, the Politburo issued a resolution on the cleansing of the defense industry from persons belonging to nationalities against whom repressions are being carried out. June 24, 1938 - Directive of the People's Commissariat of Defense on the dismissal from the Red Army of military nationalities not represented on the territory of the USSR.

On November 17, 1938, by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the activities of all emergency bodies were terminated, arrests were allowed only with the permission of a court or prosecutor. By the directive of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Beria of December 22, 1938, all sentences of the emergency authorities were declared null and void if they were not carried out or declared convicted before November 17.

The Stalinist repressions had several goals: they destroyed possible opposition, created an atmosphere of general fear and unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader, ensured the rotation of personnel through the promotion of young people, weakened social tensions, blaming the "enemies of the people" for the difficulties of life, provided the labor force to the Main Directorate of Camps ( GULAG).

By September 1938, the main task of repression was completed. The repressions have already begun to threaten the new generation of party and Chekist leaders who came to the fore during the repressions. In July-September, a mass shooting of previously arrested party functionaries, communists, military leaders, NKVD officers, intellectuals and other citizens was carried out, this was the beginning of the end of terror. In October 1938, all extrajudicial sentencing bodies were dissolved (with the exception of the Special Meeting at the NKVD, as it received after Beria joined the NKVD).

Conclusion

Massive repressions, arbitrariness and lawlessness, which were committed by the Stalinist leadership on behalf of the revolution, the party, and the people, were a heavy legacy of the past.

The desecration of the honor and life of compatriots, begun in the mid-1920s, continued with the most severe consistency for several decades. Thousands of people were subjected to moral and physical torture, many of them were exterminated. The life of their families and loved ones was turned into a hopeless period of humiliation and suffering. Stalin and his entourage appropriated practically unlimited power, depriving the Soviet people of the freedoms that were granted to them during the years of the revolution. Mass repressions were carried out for the most part by extrajudicial reprisals through the so-called special meetings, boards, "troikas" and "twos". However, the elementary norms of legal proceedings were also violated in the courts.

The restoration of justice, begun by the XX Congress of the CPSU, was carried out inconsistently and, in essence, ceased in the second half of the 60s.

Today, thousands of lawsuits have not been raised yet. The stain of injustice has not yet been removed from the Soviet people, who suffered innocently during the forced collectivization, were imprisoned, evicted with their families to remote areas without a livelihood, without the right to vote, even without an announcement of a term of imprisonment.

List of used literature

2) Aralovets N.A. Losses of the population of the Soviet society in the 1930s: problems, sources, methods of study in Russian historiography // Otechestvennaya istoriya. 1995. No. 1. P.135-146

3) free encyclopedia

4) Lyskov D.Yu. "Stalin's repressions". Great lie of the XX century, 2009. - 288 p.

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1. Creation of the NKVD of the USSR, its structure, functions At a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on February 20, 1934, after the report of I.V. Stalin, it was decided to organize an allied people's commissariat of internal affairs with the inclusion of the reorganized OGPU. The fundamental changes were that the project ...

Considering industrialization as a plan to strengthen the country's defense capability and ensure its economic independence. The study of the essence of collectivization as the main task of the party in the countryside. Characteristics of the stages of evolution of Stalinist totalitarianism.

Versions about the causes of mass repressions, their ideological basis. The reason for the destruction of the kulak class. Solving the problem of accelerated industrialization. Repressions in the organs of state security, against foreigners and ethnic minorities.

The question of the repressions of the thirties of the last century is of fundamental importance not only for understanding the history of Russian socialism and its essence as a social system, but also for assessing the role of Stalin in the history of Russia.

This question plays a key role in the accusations not only of Stalinism, but, in fact, of the entire Soviet government. To date, the assessment of the “Stalinist terror” has become in our country a touchstone, a password, a milestone in relation to the past and future of Russia. Do you judge? Decisively and irrevocably? Democrat and common man! Any doubts? - Stalinist!

Let's try to deal with a simple question: did Stalin organize the "great terror"? Maybe there are other causes of terror, about which common people - liberals prefer to remain silent?

So. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks tried to create a new type of ideological elite, but these attempts stalled from the very beginning. Mainly because the new "people's" elite believed that by their revolutionary struggle they fully earned the right to enjoy the benefits that the "elite" anti-people had by birthright.

In the noble mansions, the new nomenclature quickly settled in, and even the old servants remained in place, they only began to call them servants. This phenomenon was very wide and was called "kombarstvo".

Even the right measures proved ineffective, thanks to massive sabotage by the new elite. I am inclined to attribute the introduction of the so-called "party maximum" to the correct measures - a ban on party members receiving a salary greater than the salary of a highly skilled worker.

That is, a non-party plant director could receive a salary of 2000 rubles, and a communist director only 500 rubles, and not a penny more.

In this way, Lenin sought to avoid the influx of careerists into the party, who use it as a springboard in order to quickly break into the grain places. However, this measure was half-hearted without the simultaneous destruction of the system of privileges attached to any position.

By the way. V.I. Lenin strongly resisted the reckless growth in the number of party members, which was later taken up in the CPSU, starting with Khrushchev. In his work “Childhood disease of leftism in communism,” he wrote: “We are afraid of the excessive expansion of the party, because careerists and rogues who deserve only to be shot inevitably strive to cling to the government party.”

Moreover, in the conditions of the post-war shortage of consumer goods, material goods were not so much bought as distributed. Any power performs the function of distribution, and if so, then the one who distributes, he uses the distributed.

Therefore, the next step was to update the upper floors of the party.

Stalin stated this in his usual cautious manner at the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b) (March 1934).

In his Report, the Secretary General described a certain type of workers who interfere with the party and the country: “... These are people with well-known merits in the past, people who believe that party and Soviet laws are not written for them, but for fools. These are the same people who do not consider it their duty to carry out the decisions of the party organs...

What are they counting on by violating Party and Soviet laws? They hope that the Soviet authorities will not dare to touch them because of their old merits. These arrogant nobles think that they are irreplaceable and that they can violate the decisions of the governing bodies with impunity ... ".

The results of the first five-year plan showed that the old Bolshevik-Leninists, with all their revolutionary merits, are not able to cope with the scale of the reconstructed economy. Not burdened with professional skills, poorly educated (Yezhov wrote in his autobiography: education - unfinished primary), washed in the blood of the Civil War, they could not "saddle" the complex production realities.

Formally, the real power in the localities belonged to the Soviets, since the party did not have any legal authority. But the party bosses were elected chairmen of the Soviets, and, in fact, they appointed themselves to these positions, since the elections were held on a non-alternative basis, that is, they were not elections.

And then Stalin undertakes a very risky maneuver - he proposes to establish real, and not nominal, Soviet power in the country, that is, to hold secret general elections in party organizations and councils at all levels on an alternative basis.

Stalin tried to get rid of the party regional barons, as they say, in a good way, through elections, and really alternative ones. Considering Soviet practice, this sounds rather unusual, but it is true nonetheless. He expected that the majority of this public would not overcome the popular filter without support from above.

In addition, according to the new constitution, it was planned to nominate candidates to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR not only from the CPSU (b), but also from public organizations and groups of citizens.

What happened next? On December 5, 1936, the new Constitution of the USSR was adopted, the most democratic constitution of that time in the whole world, even according to the ardent critics of the USSR. For the first time in Russian history, secret alternative elections were to be held. By secret ballot.

Despite the fact that the party elite tried to put a spoke in the wheel even at the time when the draft constitution was being created, Stalin managed to bring the matter to an end.

The regional party elite understood very well that with the help of these new elections to the new Supreme Soviet, Stalin plans to carry out a peaceful rotation of the entire ruling element. And there were about 250 thousand of them. By the way, the NKVD was counting on about this number of investigations.

Understand something they understood, but what to do? I don't want to part with my chairs. And they perfectly understood one more circumstance - in the previous period they had done such a thing, especially during the Civil War and collectivization, that the people with great pleasure would not only not have chosen them, but also would have broken their heads. The hands of many high regional party secretaries were up to the elbows in blood.

During the period of collectivization in the regions there was complete arbitrariness. In one of the regions Khataevich, this nice man, actually declared a civil war in the course of collectivization in his particular region.

As a result, Stalin was forced to threaten him that he would shoot him immediately if he did not stop mocking people. Do you think that comrades Eikhe, Postyshev, Kosior and Khrushchev were better, were less "nice"? Of course, the people remembered all this in 1937, and after the elections these bloodsuckers would have gone into the woods.

Stalin really planned such a peaceful rotation operation, he openly told the American correspondent in March 1936, Howard Roy, about this. He stated that these elections would be a good whip in the hands of the people to change the leadership, he said it directly - "a whip." Will yesterday's "gods" of their districts tolerate the whip?

The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in June 1936, directly aimed the party elite at new times. When discussing the draft of the new constitution, A. Zhdanov, in his extensive report, spoke quite unambiguously: “The new electoral system ... will give a powerful impetus to improving the work of Soviet bodies, eliminating bureaucratic bodies, eliminating bureaucratic shortcomings and perversions in the work of our Soviet organizations.

And these shortcomings, as you know, are very significant. Our party organs must be ready for the electoral struggle...”. And he went on to say that these elections would be a serious, serious test of Soviet workers, because the secret ballot gives ample opportunities to reject candidates who are undesirable and objectionable to the masses, that party organs are obliged to distinguish such criticism from hostile activity, that non-party candidates should be treated with all support. and attention, because, to put it delicately, there are several times more of them than party members.

In Zhdanov's report, the terms "intra-party democracy", "democratic centralism", "democratic elections" were publicly voiced. And demands were put forward: to ban the "nomination" of candidates without elections, to ban voting at party meetings by a "list", to ensure "an unlimited right to challenge the candidates put forward by party members and an unlimited right to criticize these candidates."

The last phrase referred entirely to the elections of purely party bodies, where there had not been a shadow of democracy for a long time. But, as we see, the general elections to the Soviet and party bodies have not been forgotten either.

Stalin and his people demand democracy! And if this is not democracy, then explain to me what, then, is considered democracy ?!

And how do the party nobles who gathered at the plenum react to Zhdanov's report, the first secretaries of the regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the national communist parties? And they miss it all! Because such innovations are by no means to the taste of the very “old Leninist guard”, which has not yet been destroyed by Stalin, but is sitting at the plenum in all its grandeur and splendor.

Because the vaunted "Leninist guard" is a bunch of petty satrapchiks. They are used to living in their estates as barons, single-handedly managing the life and death of people. The debate on Zhdanov's report was practically disrupted.

Despite Stalin's direct calls to discuss the reforms seriously and in detail, the old guard with paranoid persistence turns to more pleasant and understandable topics: terror, terror, terror! What the hell are reforms?!

There are more urgent tasks: beat the hidden enemy, burn, catch, reveal! The people's commissars, the first secretaries - all talk about the same thing: how they recklessly and on a large scale reveal the enemies of the people, how they intend to raise this campaign to cosmic heights ...

Stalin is losing patience. When the next speaker appears on the podium, without waiting for him to open his mouth, he ironically throws: - Have all the enemies been identified or are there still? The speaker, the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee, Kabakov, (another future "innocent victim of the Stalinist terror") lets the irony fall on deaf ears and habitually crackles about the fact that the electoral activity of the masses, so that you know, is just "quite often used by hostile elements for counter-revolutionary work ".

They are incurable!!! They just don't know how! They don't want reforms, they don't want secret ballots, they don't want a few candidates on the ballot. Foaming at the mouth, they defend the old system, where there is no democracy, but only the "boyar volushka" ...

On the podium - Molotov. He says practical, sensible things: you need to identify real enemies and pests, and not throw mud at all, without exception, "captains of production." We must finally learn to DIFFERENTIATE THE GUILTY FROM THE INNOCENT.

It is necessary to reform the bloated bureaucratic apparatus, IT IS NECESSARY TO EVALUATE PEOPLE ON THEIR BUSINESS QUALITIES AND DO NOT LIST THE PAST ERRORS. And the party boyars are all about the same thing: to look for and catch enemies with all the ardor! Eradicate deeper, plant more! For a change, they enthusiastically and loudly begin to drown each other: Kudryavtsev - Postysheva, Andreev - Sheboldaeva, Polonsky - Shvernik, Khrushchev - Yakovlev.

Molotov, unable to stand it, openly says:

- In a number of cases, listening to the speakers, one could come to the conclusion that our resolutions and our reports went past the ears of the speakers ...

The bull's eye! They didn't just pass - they whistled... Most of those gathered in the hall do not know how to work or reform. But they perfectly know how to catch and identify enemies, they adore this occupation and cannot imagine life without it.

Doesn't it seem strange to you that this "executioner" Stalin directly imposed democracy, and his future "innocent victims" ran away from this democracy like hell from incense. Yes, and demanded repression, and more.

In short, it was not the “tyrant Stalin,” but precisely the “cosmopolitan Leninist party guard,” who ruled the roost at the June 1936 plenum, buried all attempts at a democratic thaw. She did not give Stalin the opportunity to get rid of them, as they say, in a GOOD way, through the elections.

Stalin's authority was so great that the party barons did not dare to openly protest, and in 1936 the Constitution of the USSR was adopted, and nicknamed Stalin's, which provided for the transition to real Soviet democracy. However, the party nomenklatura reared up and carried out a massive attack on the leader in order to convince him to postpone the holding of free elections until the fight against the counter-revolutionary element was completed.

Regional party bosses, members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, began to whip up passions, referring to the recently discovered conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military: they say, it is only necessary to give such an opportunity, as hidden kulak shortcomings, clergymen, former white officers and nobles, Trotskyists-saboteurs will rush into politics .

They demanded not only to curtail any plans for democratization, but also to strengthen emergency measures, and even introduce special quotas for mass repressions in the regions - they say, in order to finish off those Trotskyists who escaped punishment. The party nomenklatura demanded the powers to repress these enemies, and it won these powers for itself.

And then the small-town party barons, who made up the majority in the Central Committee, frightened for their leadership positions, begin repressions, first of all, against those honest communists who could become competitors in future elections by secret ballot.

The nature of the repressions against honest communists was such that the composition of some district committees and regional committees changed two or three times in a year. Communists at party conferences refused to be members of city committees and regional committees. We understood that after a while you can be in the camp. And that's the best...

In 1937, about 100,000 people were expelled from the party (24,000 in the first half of the year and 76,000 in the second). About 65,000 appeals accumulated in district committees and regional committees, which there was no one and no time to consider, since the party was engaged in the process of denunciation and expulsion.

At the January plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, Malenkov, who made a report on this issue, said that in some areas the Party Control Commission restored from 50 to 75% of those expelled and convicted.

Moreover, at the June 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee, the nomenclature, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually gave Stalin and his Politburo an ultimatum: either he approves the lists submitted "from below" subject to repression, or he himself will be removed.

The party nomenklatura at this plenum demanded authority for repression. And Stalin was forced to give them permission, but he acted very cunningly - he gave them a short time, five days. Of these five days, one day is Sunday. He expected that they would not meet in such a short time.

But it turns out that these scoundrels already had lists. They simply took lists of kulaks, former white officers and nobles, wrecking Trotskyites, priests, and simply ordinary citizens who had served time in prison, and sometimes not who did, classified as class alien elements.

Literally on the second day, telegrams from the localities went - the first comrades Khrushchev and Eikhe. Then, in 1954, Nikita Khrushchev was the first to rehabilitate his friend Robert Eikhe, who was shot in justice for all his cruelties in 1939.

Ballot papers with several candidates were no longer discussed at the Plenum: reform plans were reduced solely to the fact that candidates for elections would be nominated “jointly” by communists and non-party people. And from now on, there will be only one candidate in each ballot - for the sake of rebuffing intrigues.

And in addition - another verbose verbiage about the need to identify the masses of entrenched enemies.

Stalin also made another mistake. He sincerely believed that N.I. Yezhov was a man of his team. After all, for so many years they worked together in the Central Committee, shoulder to shoulder. And Yezhov has long been the best friend of Evdokimov, an ardent Trotskyist.

For 1937-38 troikas in the Rostov region, where Evdokimov was the first secretary of the regional committee, 12,445 people were shot, more than 90 thousand were repressed. These are the figures carved by the "Memorial" society in one of the Rostov parks on the monument to the victims of ... Stalinist (?!) repressions.

Subsequently, when Yevdokimov was shot, an audit found that in the Rostov region he lay motionless and more than 18.5 thousand appeals were not considered. And how many of them were not written! The best party cadres, experienced business executives, the intelligentsia were destroyed ... But what, he was the only one like that.

In this regard, the memoirs of the famous poet Nikolai Zabolotsky are interesting: “A strange confidence ripened in my head that we were in the hands of the Nazis, who, under the nose of our government, found a way to destroy Soviet people, acting in the very center of the Soviet punitive system.

I told this guess of mine to an old party member who was sitting with me, and with horror in his eyes he confessed to me that he himself thought the same thing, but did not dare to hint about it to anyone. And indeed, how else could we explain all the horrors that happened to us ... "

But back to Nikolai Yezhov. By 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, G. Yagoda, staffed the NKVD with scum, obvious traitors and those who replaced their work with hack work. N. Yezhov, who replaced him, followed the lead of the hacks and, in order to distinguish himself from the country, turned a blind eye to the fact that NKVD investigators opened hundreds of thousands of hack cases against people, mostly completely innocent. (For example, Generals A. Gorbatov and K. Rokossovsky were sent to prison.)

And the flywheel of the “great terror” began to spin with its infamous extrajudicial triples and limits on the highest measure. Fortunately, this flywheel quickly crushed those who initiated the process itself, and Stalin's merit is that he made the most of the opportunities to clean up the upper echelons of power from all kinds of bastards.

Not Stalin, but Robert Indrikovich Eikhe proposed the creation of extrajudicial reprisals, the famous "troikas", similar to Stolypin's, consisting of the first secretary, the local prosecutor and the head of the NKVD (city, region, region, republic). Stalin was against it. But the Politburo voted.

Well, in the fact that a year later it was precisely such a trio that leaned Comrade Eikhe against the wall, there is, in my deep conviction, nothing but sad justice. The party elite directly joined in the massacre with rapture!

And let's take a closer look at him, the repressed regional party baron. And, in fact, what were they like, both in business and moral, and in purely human terms? What did they cost as people and specialists? ONLY THE NOSE FIRST CLAMP, I RECOMMEND SOULLY.

In short, party members, military men, scientists, writers, composers, musicians and everyone else, up to noble rabbit breeders and Komsomol members, enthusiastically ate each other (four million denunciations were written in 1937-38). Who sincerely believed that he was obliged to exterminate the enemies, who settled scores. So there is no need to talk about whether the NKVD beat on the noble physiognomy of this or that “innocently injured figure” or not.

The party regional nomenklatura has achieved the most important thing: after all, in conditions of mass terror, free elections are not possible. Stalin was never able to carry them out. The end of a brief thaw. Stalin never pushed through his block of reforms. True, at that plenum he said remarkable words: “Party organizations will be freed from economic work, although this will not happen immediately. This takes time."

But, again, back to Yezhov N.I. Nikolai Ivanovich was a new man in the "bodies", he started well, but quickly fell under the influence of his deputy: Frinovsky (former head of the Special Department of the First Cavalry Army). He taught the new People's Commissar the basics of Chekist work right "in production." The basics were extremely simple: the more enemies of the people we catch, the better. You can and should hit, but hitting and drinking is even more fun.

Drunk on vodka, blood and impunity, the People's Commissar soon frankly "floated". He did not particularly hide his new views from others. “What are you afraid of? he said at one of the banquets. After all, all power is in our hands. Whom we want - we execute, whom we want - we pardon: - After all, we are everything. It is necessary that everyone, starting from the secretary of the regional committee, walk under you.

If the secretary of the regional committee was supposed to go under the head of the regional department of the NKVD, then who, one wonders, was supposed to go under Yezhov? With such personnel and such views, the NKVD became mortally dangerous for both the authorities and the country.

It is difficult to say when the Kremlin began to realize what was happening. Probably somewhere in the first half of 1938. But to realize - they realized, but how to curb the monster? It is clear that by that time the People's Commissar of the NKVD had become deadly dangerous, and it had to be "normalized".

But how? What, raise the troops, bring all the Chekists to the courtyards of the administrations and line them up against the wall? There is no other way, because, having barely sensed the danger, they would simply have swept away the authorities.

The same NKVD was in charge of protecting the Kremlin, so the members of the Politburo would have died without even having time to understand anything. After that, a dozen “blood-washed” would be put in their places, and the whole country would turn into one large West Siberian region with Robert Eikhe at the head. THE COMING OF THE HITLER TROOPS THE PEOPLES OF THE USSR WOULD BE ACCEPTED AS HAPPINESS.

There was only one way out - to put your man in the NKVD. Moreover, a person of such a level of loyalty, courage and professionalism that he could, on the one hand, cope with the management of the NKVD, and on the other, stop the monster. It is unlikely that Stalin had a large selection of such people. Well, at least one was found. But what - Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich.

The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, a former Chekist, a talented manager, in no way a party idler, a man of action. And how it appears! For four hours, the "tyrant" Stalin and Malenkov persuade Yezhov to take Lavrenty Pavlovich as First Deputy. Four o'clock!!!

Yezhov is being pressured slowly - Beria is slowly taking control of the People's Commissariat of State Security into his own hands, slowly placing loyal people in key positions, just as young, energetic, smart, businesslike, not at all like the former barons who have been snickering.

Elena Prudnikova, a journalist and writer who devoted several books to researching the activities of L.P. Beria, said in one of the TV programs that Lenin, Stalin, Beria are three titans whom the Lord God in His great mercy sent to Russia, because, apparently He still needed Russia. I hope that she is Russia and in our time He will need it soon.

In general, the term "Stalin's repressions" is speculative, because it was not Stalin who initiated them. The unanimous opinion of one part of the liberal perestroika and current ideologists that Stalin thus strengthened his power by physically eliminating his opponents is easily explained.

These wimps simply judge others by themselves: if they have such an opportunity, they will readily devour anyone they see as a danger. No wonder Alexander Sytin, a political scientist, doctor of historical sciences, a prominent neo-liberal, in one of the recent TV programs with V. Solovyov, argued that in Russia it is NECESSARY TO CREATE A DICTATORY OF TEN PERCENT LIBERAL MINORITY, which then will definitely lead the peoples of Russia into a bright capitalist tomorrow.

Another part of these gentlemen believes that allegedly Stalin, who wanted to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to crack down on everyone who had the slightest doubt about his genius. And, above all, with those who, together with Lenin, created the October Revolution.

Like, that's why almost the entire "Leninist guard" innocently went under the ax, and at the same time the top of the Red Army, who were accused of a never-existing conspiracy against Stalin. However, a closer study of these events raises many questions that cast doubt on this version.

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

For example, the memoirs of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Orlov (Leiba Feldbin), who fled from our country in the late 1930s, having taken a huge amount of state dollars, were published in the West at one time. Orlov, who knew well the "inner kitchen" of his native NKVD, wrote directly that a coup d'état was being prepared in the Soviet Union.

Among the conspirators, according to him, were both representatives of the leadership of the NKVD and the Red Army in the person of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the commander of the Kiev military district, Iona Yakir. The conspiracy became known to Stalin, who took very tough retaliatory actions ...

And in the 80s, the archives of Joseph Vissarionovich's main opponent, Lev Trotsky, were declassified in the United States. From these documents it became clear that Trotsky had an extensive underground network in the Soviet Union.

Living abroad, Lev Davidovich demanded from his people decisive action to destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union, up to the organization of mass terrorist actions.

In the 1990s, our archives already opened up access to the protocols of interrogations of the repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. By the nature of these materials, by the abundance of facts and evidence presented in them, today's independent experts have drawn three important conclusions.

First, the overall picture of a broad conspiracy against Stalin looks very, very convincing. Such testimonies could not be orchestrated or faked to please the “father of nations”. Especially in the part where it was about the military plans of the conspirators.

Here is what the well-known historian and publicist Sergei Kremlev said about this: “Take and read the testimony of Tukhachevsky given to him after his arrest. The very confessions of a conspiracy are accompanied by a deep analysis of the military-political situation in the USSR in the mid-30s, with detailed calculations on the general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other capabilities.

The question is whether such testimony could have been invented by an ordinary NKVD investigator who was in charge of the marshal's case and who allegedly set out to falsify Tukhachevsky's testimony?! No, these testimonies, and voluntarily, could only be given by a knowledgeable person no less than the level of the deputy people's commissar of defense, which was Tukhachevsky.

Secondly, the very manner of the conspirators' handwritten confessions, their handwriting spoke of what their people wrote themselves, in fact voluntarily, without physical influence from the investigators. This destroyed the myth that the testimony was rudely knocked out by the force of "Stalin's executioners", although this was also the case.

Thirdly. Western Sovietologists and the emigre public, having no access to archival materials, were forced to actually suck their judgments about the scale of repressions. At best, they contented themselves with interviews with dissidents who either themselves had been imprisoned in the past, or cited the stories of those who had gone through the Gulag.

A. Solzhenitsyn set the highest bar in assessing the number of “victims of communism”, when in 1976 in an interview with Spanish television about 110 million victims. The ceiling of 110 million announced by Solzhenitsyn was systematically reduced to 12.5 million people of the Memorial society.

However, based on the results of 10 years of work, Memorial managed to collect data on only 2.6 million victims of repression, which is very close to the figure announced by Zemskov almost 20 years ago - 4 million people.

After the archives were opened, the West did not believe that the number of those repressed was much less than R. Conquest indicated. In total, according to archival data, for the period from 1921 to 1953, 3,777,380 were convicted, of which 642,980 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

Subsequently, this figure was increased to 4,060,306 people at the expense of 282,926 shot under paragraphs. 2 and 3 Art. 59 (especially dangerous banditry) and Art. 193 24 (military espionage and sabotage). Where the blood-washed Basmachi, Bandera, Baltic "forest brothers" and other especially dangerous, bloody bandits, spies and saboteurs entered. There is more human blood on them than there is water in the Volga. And they are also considered innocent victims of Stalinist repressions. And Stalin is blamed for all this.

(Let me remind you that until 1928, Stalin was not the sole leader of the USSR. AND HE RECEIVED FULL POWER OVER THE PARTY, THE ARMY AND THE NKVD ONLY FROM THE END OF 1938).

These figures are at first glance scary. But only for the first. Let's compare. On June 28, 1990, an interview with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR appeared in the national newspapers, where he said: “We are literally being overwhelmed by a wave of criminality. Over the past 30 years, 38 MILLION OUR CITIZENS have been under trial, investigation, in prisons and colonies. It's a terrible number! Every ninth…”.

So. A crowd of Western journalists came to the USSR in 1990. The goal is to familiarize yourself with open archives. We got acquainted with the archives of the NKVD - they did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat of Railways. We got acquainted - it turned out 4 million. They did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat of Food. We got acquainted - it turned out 4 million repressed. We got acquainted with the clothing allowance of the camps. It turned out - 4 million repressed.

Do you think that after that, articles with the correct numbers of repressions appeared in the Western media in batches. Yes, nothing of the sort. They still write and talk about tens of millions of victims of repressions.

I want to note that the analysis of the process called “mass repressions” shows that this phenomenon is extremely multi-layered. There are real cases there: about conspiracies and espionage, political trials against hard-nosed oppositionists, cases about the crimes of the presumptuous owners of the regions and the Soviet party officials who “floated” from power.

But there are also many falsified cases: settling scores in the corridors of power, intriguing at work, communal squabbles, literary rivalry, scientific competition, persecution of clergy who supported the kulaks during collectivization, squabbles between artists, musicians and composers.

AND THERE IS ALSO CLINICAL PSYCHIATRY - THE MILLNESS OF THE INVESTIGATORS AND THE MILLNESS OF THE INFORMERS. But what has not been found is the cases concocted at the direction of the Kremlin. There are reverse examples - when, at the will of Stalin, someone was taken out from under execution, or even released altogether.

There is one more thing to be understood. The term “repression” is a medical term (suppression, blocking) and was introduced specifically to remove the question of guilt. Imprisoned in the late 30s, which means he is innocent, as he was “repressed”.

In addition, the term "repression" was put into circulation to be used initially in order to give an appropriate moral coloring to the entire Stalinist period without going into details.

The events of the 1930s showed that the main problem for the Soviet government was the party and state "apparatus", which consisted to a large extent of unscrupulous, illiterate and greedy co-workers, leading party members-talkers, attracted by the fat smell of revolutionary robbery.

Such an apparatus was exceptionally inefficient and uncontrollable, which was like death for the totalitarian Soviet state, in which everything depended on the apparatus.

It was from then on that Stalin made repression an important institution of state administration and a means of keeping the "apparatus" in check. Naturally, the apparatus became the main object of these repressions. Moreover, repression has become an important instrument of state building. Stalin assumed that it was possible to make a workable bureaucracy out of the corrupted Soviet apparatus only after SEVERAL STAGES of repressions.

Liberals will say that this is the whole of Stalin, that he could not live without repressions, without the persecution of honest people. But here is what American intelligence officer John Scott reported to the US State Department about who was repressed. He found these repressions in the Urals in 1937.

“The director of the construction office, who was engaged in the construction of new houses for the workers of the plant, was not satisfied with his salary, which amounted to a thousand rubles a month, and a two-room apartment. So he built himself a separate house. The house had five rooms, and he was able to furnish it well: he hung silk curtains, set up a piano, covered the floor with carpets, etc.

Then he began to drive around the city in a car at a time (this happened in early 1937) when there were few private cars in the city. At the same time, the annual construction plan was completed by his office by only about sixty percent. At meetings and in the newspapers, he was constantly asked questions about the reasons for such poor performance. He answered that there were no building materials, not enough labor, and so on.

An investigation began, during which it turned out that the director embezzled state funds and sold building materials to nearby state farms at speculative prices. It was also discovered that there were people in the construction office whom he specially paid to do his "business".

An open trial took place, lasting several days, at which all these people were judged. They talked a lot about him in Magnitogorsk. In his accusatory speech at the trial, the prosecutor spoke not about theft or bribery, but about sabotage. The director was accused of sabotaging the construction of workers' housing. He was convicted after he fully admitted his guilt, and then shot.”

And here is the reaction of the Soviet people to the purge of 1937 and their position at that time. “Often, workers are even happy when they arrest some “important bird”, a leader whom they for some reason disliked. Workers are also very free to express their critical thoughts both in meetings and in private conversations.

I've heard them use the strongest language when talking about bureaucracy and poor performance by individuals or organizations. ... in the Soviet Union, the situation was somewhat different in that the NKVD, in its work to protect the country from the intrigues of foreign agents, spies and the onset of the old bourgeoisie, counted on the support and assistance from the population and basically received them.

Well, and: “... During the purges, thousands of bureaucrats trembled for their seats. Officials and administrative employees who had previously come to work at ten o'clock and left at half past four and only shrugged their shoulders in response to complaints, difficulties and failures, now sat at work from sunrise to sunset, they began to worry about the successes and failures of the led enterprises, and they actually began to fight for the implementation of the plan, savings and for good living conditions for their subordinates, although before this they did not bother at all.

Readers interested in this issue are aware of the incessant moaning of liberals that during the years of the purge, the "best people", the most intelligent and capable, perished. Scott also hints at this all the time, but, nevertheless, he seems to sum it up: “After the purges, the administrative apparatus of the entire plant was almost one hundred percent young Soviet engineers.

There are practically no specialists from among the prisoners, and foreign specialists have actually disappeared. However, by 1939 most of the departments, such as the Railroad Administration and the coking plant of the plant, began to work better than ever before.

In the course of party purges and repressions, all prominent party barons, drinking away the gold reserves of Russia, bathing with prostitutes in champagne, seizing noble and merchant palaces for personal use, all disheveled, drugged revolutionaries disappeared like smoke. And this is FAIR.

But to clean out the snickering scoundrels from the high offices is half the battle, it was also necessary to replace them with worthy people. It is very curious how this problem was solved in the NKVD. Firstly, a person was placed at the head of the department, who was alien to the kombartvo, who had no ties with the capital's party top, but a proven professional in business - Lavrenty Beria.

The latter, secondly, mercilessly cleared out the Chekists who had compromised themselves, and thirdly, he carried out a radical reduction in staff, sending people who seemed to be not vile, but professionally unsuitable, to retire or work in other departments. And, finally, the Komsomol conscription to the NKVD was announced, when completely inexperienced guys came to the bodies instead of deserved pensioners or shot scoundrels.

But ... the main criterion for their selection was an impeccable reputation. If in the characteristics from the place of study, work, place of residence, along the Komsomol or party line, there were at least some hints of their unreliability, a tendency to selfishness, laziness, then no one invited them to work in the NKVD.

So, here is a very important point that you should pay attention to - the team is formed not on the basis of past merits, professional data of applicants, personal acquaintance and ethnicity, and not even on the basis of the desire of applicants, but solely on the basis of their moral and psychological characteristics.

Professionalism is a gain, but in order to punish any bastard, a person must be completely unstained. Well, yes, clean hands, a cold head and a warm heart - this is all about the youth of the Beria draft. The fact is that it was at the end of the 1930s that the NKVD became a truly effective special service, and not only in the matter of internal cleansing.

Soviet counterintelligence outplayed German intelligence during the war with a devastating score - and this is the great merit of those very Beria Komsomol members who came to the bodies three years before the start of the war.

Purge 1937-1939 played a positive role - now not a single boss felt his impunity, there were no more untouchables. Fear did not add intelligence to the nomenklatura, but at least warned it against outright meanness.

Unfortunately, immediately after the end of the great purge, the world war that began in 1939 prevented the holding of alternative elections. And again, the question of democratization was put on the agenda by Iosif Vissarionovich in 1952, shortly before his death. But after Stalin's death, Khrushchev returned the leadership of the entire country to the party. And not only.

Almost immediately after Stalin's death, a network of special distributors and special rations appeared, through which the new elites realized their predominant position. But in addition to formal privileges, a system of informal privileges quickly formed. Which is very important.

Since we touched on the activities of our dear Nikita Sergeevich, let's talk about it in a little more detail. With a light hand or the language of Ilya Ehrenburg, the period of Khrushchev's rule was called the "thaw". Let's see what Khrushchev did during the Great Terror?

The February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of 1937 is underway. It is from him, as it is believed, that the great terror began. Here is the speech of Nikita Sergeevich at this plenum: “... We need to destroy these scoundrels. Destroying a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, we are doing the work of millions. Therefore, it is necessary that the hand does not tremble, it is necessary to step over the corpses of enemies for the benefit of the people.

But how did Khrushchev act as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks? In 1937-1938. out of 38 senior leaders of the MGK, only 3 survived, out of 146 party secretaries, 136 were repressed. It's hard to understand where in the Moscow region he managed to find 20,000 kulaks who fell under repression. In total, in 1937-1938, he personally repressed 55,741 people.

But, perhaps, speaking at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev was worried that innocent ordinary people were shot? Yes, Khrushchev did not care about the arrests and executions of ordinary people. His entire report at the 20th Congress was devoted to Stalin's accusations that he imprisoned and shot prominent Bolsheviks and marshals. Those. elite.

Khrushchev in his report did not even mention the repressed ordinary people. What kind of people should he worry about, “women are still giving birth”, but the cosmopolitan elite, the lapotnik Khrushchev, was oh, what a pity.

What were the motives for the appearance of the revealing report at the 20th Party Congress?

First, without trampling his predecessor in the dirt, it was unthinkable to hope for Khrushchev's recognition as a leader after Stalin. Not! Stalin, even after his death, remained a competitor for Khrushchev, who had to be humiliated and destroyed by any means. Kicking a dead lion, as it turned out, is a pleasure - it does not give back.

The second motive was Khrushchev's desire to return the party to managing the economic activities of the state. To lead everything, for nothing, without answering and not obeying anyone

The third motive, and perhaps the most important, was the terrible fear of the remnants of the "Leninist Guard" for what they had done. After all, all of their hands, as Khrushchev himself put it, were up to the elbows in blood. Khrushchev and people like him wanted not only to rule the country, but also to have guarantees that they would never be dragged on the rack, no matter what they did while in leadership positions.

The 20th Congress of the CPSU gave them such guarantees in the form of indulgence for the release of all sins, both past and future. The whole riddle of Khrushchev and his associates is not worth a damn thing: it is THE IRRESSIBLE ANIMAL FEAR SITTING IN THEIR SOULS AND THE PAINFUL THIRST FOR POWER.

The first thing that strikes the de-Stalinizers is their complete disregard for the principles of historicism, which everyone seems to have been taught in the Soviet school. No historical figure can be judged by the standards of our contemporary era. He must be judged by the standards of his era - and nothing else. In jurisprudence, they say this: "the law has no retroactive effect." That is, the ban introduced this year cannot apply to last year's acts.

Historicism of assessments is also necessary here: one cannot judge a person of one era by the standards of another era (especially the new era that he created with his work and genius). For the beginning of the 20th century, the horrors in the position of the peasantry were so commonplace that many contemporaries practically did not notice them.

The famine did not begin with Stalin, it ended with Stalin. It seemed like forever - but the current liberal reforms are again dragging us into that swamp, from which we seem to have already got out ...

The principle of historicism also requires the recognition that Stalin had a completely different intensity of political struggle than in later times. It is one thing to maintain the existence of the system (although Gorbachev failed to do so), but it is another thing to create a new system on the ruins of a country ravaged by civil war.

The resistance energy in the second case is many times greater than in the first.

It must be understood that many of those killed under Stalin themselves were going to quite seriously kill him, and if he hesitated even for a minute, he himself would have received a bullet in the forehead. The struggle for power in the era of Stalin had a completely different sharpness than now: it was the era of the revolutionary "Praetorian Guard" - accustomed to rebellion and ready to change emperors like gloves.

Trotsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and a whole crowd of people who were accustomed to killings, as to peeling potatoes, claimed the supremacy ...

For any terror, not only the ruler is responsible before history, but also his opponents, as well as society as a whole. When the outstanding historian L. Gumilyov was asked already under Gorbachev if he was not angry at Stalin, under whom he was in prison, he answered: “But it was not Stalin who imprisoned me, but colleagues in the department” ...

Well, God bless him with Khrushchev and the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Let's talk about what the liberal media are constantly talking about, let's talk about Stalin's guilt.

Liberals accuse Stalin of shooting about 700,000 people in 30 years. The logic of the liberals is simple - all the victims of Stalinism. All 700 thousand.

Those. at that time there could be no murderers, no bandits, no sadists, no molesters, no swindlers, no traitors, no wreckers, etc. All victims for political reasons, all crystal clear and decent people.

Meanwhile, the CIA analytical center Rand Corporation, based on demographic data and archival documents, calculated the number of repressed people in the Stalin era. It turned out that less than 700 thousand people were shot from 1921 to 1953. Stalin had real power somewhere from 1927-29.

At the same time, no more than a quarter of cases fall to the share of those sentenced to an article under the political article 58. By the way, the same proportion was observed among the prisoners of the labor camps.

“Do you like it when they destroy their people in the name of a great goal?” the liberals continue. I will answer. The people - no, BUT THE BANDITS, THIVES AND MORAL FREAKS - YES. BUT I DON'T LIKE IT ANY MORE WHEN YOUR OWN PEOPLE ARE DESTROYED IN THE NAME OF FILLING THEIR POCKETS WITH BUBBLE, hiding behind beautiful liberal-democratic slogans.

Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya, a great supporter of reforms, who at that time was part of the administration of President Yeltsin, admitted a decade and a half later that in just three years of shock therapy in Russia alone, middle-aged men died 8 million (!!!). Yes, Stalin stands on the sidelines and nervously smokes a pipe. Didn't improve.

However, your words about Stalin's non-involvement in the massacres of honest people are not convincing, the LIBERALS continue. Even if this is allowed, then in this case he was simply obliged, firstly, to honestly and openly admit to the whole people in the committed lawlessness, secondly, to rehabilitate the unjustly affected and, thirdly, to take measures to prevent such lawlessness in the future. None of this has been done.

Again a lie. Dear. You just do not know the history of the USSR.

As for the first and second, the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938 openly recognized the lawlessness committed against honest communists and non-party people, adopting a special resolution on this matter, published, by the way, in all central newspapers.

Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, noting "provocations on an all-Union scale", demanded: Expose careerists who seek to distinguish themselves ... on repression. To expose a skillfully disguised enemy ... seeking to kill our Bolshevik cadres by carrying out measures of repression, sowing uncertainty and excessive suspicion in our ranks.

Just as openly, the entire country was told about the harm caused by unjustified repressions at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) held in 1939.

Immediately after the December Plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, thousands of illegally repressed people, including prominent military leaders, began to return from places of detention. All of them were officially rehabilitated, and Stalin personally apologized to some.

Well, and about, thirdly, I have already said that the NKVD apparatus almost suffered the most from repressions, and a significant part was brought to justice precisely for abuse of office, for reprisals against honest people.

What liberals do not talk about is the rehabilitation of innocent victims.

Immediately at the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938, criminal cases began to be reviewed and released from the camps. It was produced: in 1939 - 230 thousand, in 1940 - 180 thousand, until June 1941 another 65 thousand.

What liberals are not talking about yet. About how they fought the consequences of the great terror. With the advent of Beria L.P. In November 1938, 7,372 operational officers, or 22.9% of their payroll, were dismissed from the state security agencies for the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD in November 1938, of which 937 went to jail.

And since the end of 1938, the country's leadership has achieved the prosecution of more than 63 thousand NKVD workers who allowed falsification and created far-fetched, fake counter-revolutionary cases, OF WHICH EIGHT THOUSAND WAS SHOT.

I will give only one example from the article by Yu.I. Mukhina: "Minutes No. 17 of the Meeting of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on Judicial Affairs"

In this article Mukhin Yu.I. writes: “I was told that this type of documents was never laid out on the Web due to the fact that free access to them was very quickly banned in the archive. And the document is interesting, and something interesting can be gleaned from it ... ".

Lots of interesting things. But most importantly, the article shows what the NKVD officers were shot for after L.P. Beria came to the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD. Read. The names of those shot on the slides are shaded.

Note: You can view the slide in full size by clicking on the picture and selecting the "Original" link.

P O T O C O L No. 17

Meetings of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on Judicial Affairs

Chairman - comrade Kalinin M.I.

Present: t.t.: Shklyar M.F., Ponkratiev M.I., Merkulov V.N.

1. Listened

G ... Sergey Ivanovich, M ... Fedor Pavlovich, by the decision of the military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Moscow Military District of December 14-15, 1939, were sentenced to death under Art. 193-17 p. b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for making unreasonable arrests of command and Red Army personnel, actively falsifying investigation cases, conducting them using provocative methods and creating fictitious K / R organizations, as a result of which a number of people were shot according to the fictitious ones they created materials.

Resolved:

Agrees with the use of execution to G ... S.I. and M…F.P.

17. Listened. And ... Fedor Afanasyevich was sentenced to death under Art. 193-17 p.b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for being an employee of the NKVD, making mass illegal arrests of citizens of railway workers, falsifying interrogation protocols and creating artificial C/R cases, as a result of which over 230 people were sentenced to death and to various terms of imprisonment for more than 100 people, and of the latter, 69 people have been released at this time.

Resolved:

Agree with the use of execution against A ... F.A.

Have you read? Well, how do you like the dearest Fedor Afanasyevich? One (one!!!) investigator-falsifier summed up 236 people under execution. And what, he was the only one like that, how many of them were such scoundrels? I gave the number above. That Stalin personally set tasks for these Fedors and Sergeys to destroy honest people?

By the way. These 8,000 executed NKVD investigators are also included in the MEMORIAL list as victims of "Stalin's repressions".

What are the conclusions?

Conclusion N1. Judging Stalin's time only by repressions is the same as judging the activities of the chief physician of a hospital only by the hospital's morgue - there will always be corpses there.

If you approach with such a measure, then every doctor is a bloody ghoul and a murderer, i.e. deliberately ignore the fact that the team of doctors successfully cured and prolonged the life of thousands of patients and blame them only for a small percentage of those who died due to some inevitable errors in diagnosis or died during serious operations.

But even in the teachings of Jesus, people see only what they want to see. Studying the history of world civilization, one has to observe how wars, chauvinism, the "Aryan theory", serfdom, and Jewish pogroms were justified by Christian doctrine.

This is not to mention the executions "without the shedding of blood" - that is, the burning of heretics. And how much blood was shed during the crusades and religious wars? So, maybe because of this, to ban the teachings of our Creator? Just like today, some wimps propose to ban the communist ideology.

If we look at the mortality graph of the population of the USSR, with all the desire, it is impossible to find traces of "cruel" repressions, and not because they did not exist, but because their scale is exaggerated.

What is the purpose of this exaggeration and inflation? The goal is to instill in the Russians a guilt complex similar to the guilt complex of the Germans after the defeat in World War II. The "pay and repent" complex.

But the great ancient Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius, who lived 500 years before our era, even then said: “Beware of those who want to impute guilt to you. For they want power over you."

Do we need it? Judge for yourself. When the first time Khrushchev stunned all the so-called. truth about Stalin's repressions, then the authority of the USSR in the world immediately collapsed to the delight of the enemies. There was a split in the world communist movement. We have quarreled with great China, and tens of millions of people in the world have left the communist parties.

Eurocommunism appeared, denying not only Stalinism, but also, what is scary, the Stalinist economy. The myth of the 20th Congress created distorted ideas about Stalin and his time, deceived and psychologically disarmed millions of people when the question of the fate of the country was being decided.

When Gorbachev did this for the second time, not only the socialist bloc collapsed, but our Motherland - the USSR collapsed.

Now the team of Putin V.V. he is doing this for the third time: again he speaks only of repressions and other "crimes" of the Stalinist regime. What this leads to is clearly seen in the Zyuganov-Makarov dialogue. They are told about development, new industrialization, and they immediately begin to switch arrows to repression. That is, they immediately break off a constructive dialogue, turning it into a squabble, a civil war of meanings and ideas.

Conclusion N2. Why do they need it? To prevent the restoration of a strong and great Russia. It is more convenient for them to rule a weak and fragmented country, where people will pull each other's hair at the mention of the name of Stalin or Lenin. So it is more convenient for them to rob and deceive us. The policy of "divide and conquer" is as old as the world. Moreover, they can always dump from Russia to where their stolen capital is stored, children, wives and mistresses live.

Conclusion N3. And why do the patriots of Russia need it? It’s just that we and our children don’t have another country. Think about this first before you start cursing our history for repressions and other things. After all, we have nowhere to fall and retreat. As our victorious ancestors said in similar cases: there is no land for us behind Moscow and beyond the Volga!

Only, after the return of socialism to Russia, one must be vigilant and remember Stalin's warning that as the socialist state is built, the class struggle intensifies, that is, there is a threat of degeneration. And so it happened, and certain segments of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Komsomol and the KGB were among the first to be reborn.

The Stalinist party inquisition did not work properly.

Based on materials from books and articles by Elena Anatolyevna Prudnikova, Yuri Ignatievich Mukhin and other authors.

Copy of someone else's materials

characteristic features of society. 70 years ago, on August 5, 1937, large-scale political repressions, known as the Great Terror, began in the USSR.

By the second half of the 30s. Soviet society was a highly controversial social phenomenon. Formally, it was divided into two "friendly classes": the working class and the collective farm peasantry, as well as the social "stratum" - the working intelligentsia. From 1926 to 1936 the population of the cities increased by 30 million, of which at least 25 million were peasants who had fled the countryside. Cities were unusually overcrowded, cellars, attics and barracks were populated. No more than 3% of the urban population had the opportunity to live in separate apartments. In general, the urban population has not acquired, despite industrialization, the features characteristic of urbanized (that is, accustomed to comfortable conditions) residents. It had a dual character, breaking away from the earth, but never absorbing the urban lifestyle. Such an intermediate psychology was explosive, but in the presence of a powerful repressive machine, it found a way out in the criminal sphere. Modernization did not affect the village. Collective farm property was not theirs. Collective farmers dreamed of moving to the city as a better life for their children, a way to somehow guarantee their future. And yet, in the countryside, the traditions of peasant dedication and mutual assistance were still preserved.

The change of social status and its increase could occur only in the presence of education. Therefore, the most energetic, active, successful young people had incentives to improve their educational level. And although representatives of the "people's intelligentsia" were under constant control and the threat of reprisals in the event, for example, that a workshop or department did not fulfill planned targets, their higher material well-being was guaranteed. A psychological model of adaptation to them was developed: people who remained outside the repressions, who survived several waves of repressive actions, along with deep-seated fear, began to feel gratitude to the authorities for the fact that repressions did not touch them. This itself was perceived as gratitude to the authorities, recognition of trustworthiness. Hence the emergence in many people of the complex "unity of the party and the people." They tried not to notice the repressed and their family members, and most often they were treated, at least, with suspicion. In combination with powerful propaganda, this developed a totalitarian type of personality with its drug addiction to instructions "from above", a refusal to analyze both the actions of the "tops" and their own.

The beginning of the repression

Completion of the formation of totalitarian political structures of the state. In January 1934, the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks worked in Moscow. About two thousand communists gathered for the party congress, but when the next party congress convened 5 years later, only 59 delegates from the previous congress remained among its participants. About a thousand were arrested and shot. Of the 139 people who were elected to the Central Committee of the Party in 1934, hardly more than 30-40 people survived the next five-year period. Even more brutal was the reprisal against the party leadership in other regions of the country, and, in particular, where the non-Russian population predominated. For example, in Georgia in 1935, 644 delegates were present at the Congress of the Communist Party. Two years later, 425 of them were shot and sent to camps.

The 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks differed from the previous ones in that for the first time in the history of such events there was not even a hint of any opposition at it. On the contrary, the remaining opposition communists unanimously repented of their past sins. All speakers sang praises to Stalin as a "great leader." Perhaps the most striking in this respect was the speech of the leader of the Communists of Leningrad, S. Kirov. He demonstrated personal over-loyalty to Stalin. Stalin himself, either with joy or with regret, noted in his speech that now "there is no one to beat." At the same time, he also spoke about personnel policy, hinting that many executives had calmed down too much. Thus, the stabilization of the regime, according to Stalin, was far from complete.

The party leaders who sat on the podium next to Stalin in 1934 were devoted to him and to the communist ideology that he personified. However, many of them were rather extraordinary personalities and did not fully fit into the totalitarian scheme. Therefore, the beginning of repressions in the party and state apparatus was inevitable. It just needed to find a reason. The reason for them was the assassination of S. Kirov at the end of 1934. There is no reason to consider the proven version of Stalin as the organizer of the assassination of Kirov. Most likely, he died from the bullet of a lone neurasthenic from among the communists, who considered themselves undeservedly deprived. This murder was declared evidence of a large-scale conspiracy, in which all groups opposed to Stalinism allegedly participated, with the support of foreign intelligence services. The first result of this murder was the repressions against all those who survived the "Red Terror": former nobles, clergymen, officers, merchants, the old intelligentsia. At the same time, a massive purge of the party took place, during which the survivors were required to unquestioningly prove their loyalty to the leadership. Repression reached its peak in the second half of the 1930s.

To combat this "conspiracy", a simplified procedure was established (without the participation of the prosecutor and defense counsel, and sometimes even without the participation of the accused themselves) with the immediate execution of sentences. The main and sufficient evidence was the confession of the suspect; these confessions were obtained by NKVD investigators through beatings, torture, and threats of reprisal against the families of those under investigation. Family members of convicted “enemies of the people” were deprived of their civil rights without trial and sent to special camps.

In 1934, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was created, which united under its leadership the state security agencies, police, border and internal troops, GUL. The leaders of the NKVD G. G. Yagoda, N. I. Yezhov, L. P. Beria each other in this post. Under these conditions, in the USSR in 1936 the Constitution of the USSR was adopted, which for the first time during the years of Soviet power, fixed the personal rights and obligations of Soviet citizens. The very fact of the adoption of such a document gave the importance of the USSR in the international arena. However, the Constitution was declarative in nature. Many of its provisions, especially those relating to personal rights, in fact did not have a mechanism for implementation, therefore they were inactive and peacefully coexisted with a ruthless repressive machine, mass arrests, and executions.

Everywhere there was an intervention of the party-state apparatus in the sphere of justice. The content of sentences, especially in political cases, was determined in advance. In real life, all citizens of the USSR turned out to be equally deprived of rights and equally defenseless against the repressive machine, in spite of any merits to the party and the state.

Repressions in the command-administrative system were aimed at creating an atmosphere of general fear, suppressing the will of people to resist the regime. Gradually, they grew into the "great terror", which peaked in 1937-1938. The reason for it was Stalin's proposition in 1937 of the thesis that the class struggle would intensify in the course of building socialism in connection with the intensification of the activities of "the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes." On July 30, 1937, the head of the office of the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b) A. N. Poskrebyshev received a 19-page typewritten text - operational order No. in a pre-war situation.

Section 1 contained a list of the objects of the operation: a motley huge mass of enemies of the Soviet system. It is important to note that economic leaders and party workers, the military and writers, that is, the elite, whose representatives were on trial during the famous Moscow trials and who formed our initial idea of ​​​​the victims of the Great Terror, were not mentioned in this directive.

Section 2 of the order established the measure of punishment (death penalty - the first category, from 8 to 10 years in camp or prison - the second) and determined the quotas of the repressed by regions, republics of the USSR. The total contingent included 268,950 "anti-Soviet elements". A mechanism was set in motion that encouraged regional leaders to compete for the highest performance and at the same time gave the center a tool for dosing. One of the apparatchiks of the NKVD later explained: "The one from the chiefs who quickly implemented the limit of so many thousand people given to him received a new, additional limit from the people's commissar and was considered as the best worker." So, in Karelia on November 20, 1937, the troika convicted 705 people, of which 629 were sentenced to death. The result was surpassed by the Omsk troika, which on October 10, 1937 convicted 1301, and on March 15, 1938 - 1014 people, of which 937 and 354, respectively, were sentenced to death.

Order No. 00447 lists the names of the "judges" of 67 extrajudicial "troikas". What did the trio meetings look like? Along with the "judges" were the secretary and a representative of the agency investigating the case. After the report of the speaker and on the basis of the description of the case, the "judges" delivered a verdict. As a rule, this happened at night, behind closed doors. The "judges" did not see or hear the accused. There was no provision for an appeal against the verdict. Those sentenced to death died without even reading the sentence.

The instruction on "mandatory complete secrecy of the time and place of the execution of the sentence" was observed by the NKVD for a long time for half a century. It was prescribed to respond to requests from relatives with the notorious wording "10 years of forced labor camps without the right to correspond." It was only as part of the rehabilitation that began after 1989 that many learned the real cause and date of death of their relatives and friends. Places of execution and mass graves were also discovered only in the 90s. In the Republic of Altai, a burial place of the repressed village of Kyzyl-Ozek was discovered.

In the resolution accompanying order No. 00447, important points regarding the conduct of the operation were settled. Operating expenses amounted to 75 million rubles. 25 million rubles were allocated for the transportation of prisoners by rail, and 10 million rubles for the construction of new camps.

The results of the "kulak operation" on December 31, 1937 looked like this: 555,641 arrested and 553,362 convicted. Of these, 239,252 were sentenced to death (former kulaks - 105,124; criminals - 36,063; "other counter-revolutionary elements" - 78,237; 138 588, criminals - 75 950, "other counter-revolutionary elements" - 83 591, without specifying the group - 16 001). 14,600 camp prisoners were sentenced to death.

The repressions of the first half of the 1930s affected our native village of Tengu. Argymay Kuldzhin sek maiman, born in 1870.

Argymay, who, together with his brother, owned several thousand heads of cattle and had 60 thousand rubles. capital. "Supplier of the Yard", who visited England to study horse breeding and repeatedly traveled to St. Petersburg. In Tenge, he artificially irrigated fields. Engaged in trade in Mongolia. He built a butter factory, cheese and butter were supplied to St. Petersburg. A. Kuldzhin was engaged in cattle breeding, every year he sold 200 fattened bulls.

Argymai was a hardworking entrepreneur. A church was built on the site of the modern school. The church building has been preserved to this day. After the October Revolution, as old-timers recall, there was a shop and a club in the church. The first school in Tenga was built by Argymy Kuldzhin. When the October Revolution began, the gradual advancement of Soviet power in 1918, Argymay Kuldzhin participated in the Constituent Congress of foreign and peasant deputies on February 22, where the issue of creating the Republic of Oirota was resolved. Anuchin was elected kagan, authorized by Tyukin and A. Kuldzhin. This secured the sole ownership of land in Tenga in favor of Argymay, with permission to hire tenants. 1929 - Argymay Kuldzhin created a partnership, in his household there were: 330 horses, 350 sheep. In 1931 he was arrested because of the refusal to provide 10 carts of grain to Ulalu. Only in 1995, the case against Argymay Kulzhin was reviewed, he was posthumously rehabilitated.

"Great Terror"

The drafting of a new constitution, called the Constitution of "Victorious Socialism", begins.

Some recent "deviators" were involved in its preparation. It was adopted without any referendum on December 5, 1936. However, even if the referendum took place, there can be no doubt that it was unanimously approved. The new Constitution declared universal suffrage by direct, equal and secret ballot, freedom of speech, assembly, and unions. She formally abolished the institution of "deprived". These general democratic declarations were designed for external use, and were also used for internal propaganda purposes. Reservations about the use of political freedoms "in the interests of the working people" provided the basis for completely leveling these declarations.

The adopted Constitution of 1936 legislated the implementation of the so-called "great terror". A series of trials took place in Moscow in which the "leaders" of "traitors and pests" were identified. Three "Moscow trials" in August 1936, January - February 1937 and March 1938 physically finished with Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov, Bukharin and other "old revolutionaries". The revolution devoured its children and creators. However, the trials were open, all the accused to one degree or another admitted the crimes they were accused of. Firstly, the sophisticated system of torture and psychological influence, which only a few people withstood, had an effect. Secondly, the defendants went to any confession for the sake of "the highest interests of the party."

Large-scale repression unfolded in the Red Army. In June 1937, a secret trial against the "red marshals" M. Tukhachevsky, A. Yegorov began mass repressions against the cadres of army and navy commanders. Later, V. K. Blyukher, I. A. Yakir, I. L. Uborevich and many other prominent military leaders were repressed. In general, more than 40 thousand officers were repressed. Of the 825 representatives of the highest command staff, 720 people became victims of terror, as well as 74 military prosecutors who refused to authorize illegal arrests. Of the five marshals of the USSR, only two survived. The reason for the repression was the position of a number of representatives of the highest command staff (M. N. Tukhachevsky, I. E. Yakir, Ya. B. Gamarnik), who advocated the technical re-equipment of the Red Army. They criticized the views of K. E. Voroshilov and S. M. Budyonny, who relied on the cavalry, as during the civil war. Stalin's close associates, fearing to lose authority in the army, accused eight "conspirators" led by Tukhachevsky of treason. After their execution, thousands of servicemen were repressed. As a result, the command staff of the army, up to the battalion and company level, was destroyed. Strife began in the repressive organs, affecting tens of thousands of their employees. Party and economic leaders, scientists and cultural figures - not a single category of the "nomenklatura" and persons adjoining them remained, bypassed by the "great terror". In total, 75% of party leaders who were members of the Politburo in 1917-1934 became victims of repression. Members of the communist parties of Germany, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic countries, Finland, Romania, Italy, and Greece, who lived in the USSR, were also repressed. This significantly undermined the authority of the Comintern. Gorny Altai did not bypass the repressions either. Only one name - Grigory Ivanovich Choros-Gurkin. G. I. Choros-Gurkin was born on January 12, 1870 in the village. Ulala (now the city of Gorno-Altaisk). He is from the Choros clan, the surname is formed on behalf of his father Kurke Tydykov.

In 1896, G. I. Choros-Gurkin met A. V. Anokhin, who studied the cultural traditions of Altai. Anokhin convinces him to go to St. Petersburg to go through a real art school.

A year later, Gurkin entered the Academy of Arts, became a student of I. I. Shishkin. However, the apprenticeship did not last long. Shishkin died in 1898. G. I. Choros-Gurkin continues to study. He lives either in St. Petersburg or at home, persistently improving his skills as a painter. In 1903, he participated in an exhibition of works by the Wanderers. In 1905, the artist again leaves for Altai, where the flowering of his work, both pictorial and literary, begins.

The most famous are the following works by G. I. Choros-Gurkin: “The Lament of an Altaian in a Foreign Land” (it expressed the artistic idea of ​​the unity of man and the earth), “Altai and Katun” (the idea was expressed of “cleansing from eternal suffering”), “Lake Kara-Kol" (the artist draws a picture of the onset of sunset), "Altai" (the author returns to the idea of ​​the unity of man and his homeland). Choros-Gurkin devoted a lot of time and energy to educational and pedagogical activities. On his initiative, a museum, a national publishing house, and an art school were opened in Gorny Altai. He illustrates the first textbooks in the Altai language, books, draws posters.

However, on July 12, 1937, the 67-year-old artist was arrested on trumped-up charges of "counter-revolutionary insurrection". As it was established relatively recently, Grigory Ivanovich was shot on October 11, 1937. For many years the name of the remarkable son of the Altai people was erased from history. Only in 1956, the case against G. I. Choros-Gurkin was reviewed, and the artist was posthumously rehabilitated.

Controversial thirties. The difference between the "great terror"

The difference between the "great terror" of 1935-1938. from the "Red Terror" is that the "Red Terror" was directed against those who actually or potentially resisted or could resist the communist regime. The continuation of the "Red Terror" was the collectivization and forcible transfer of millions of people to the Gulag to be used as free labor. The "Great Terror" was internal in nature and affected tens of thousands of people raised by the communist regime and devoted to it. With the help of the "great terror", the totalitarian regime kept the country in a state of mobilization anxiety, created a comprehensive system of control over people's behavior. In the second half of the 30s. "Red Terror" and "Great Terror" merged into a single stream. Considering that the main task in the personnel revolution carried out during the “Great Terror” had been completed, Stalin handed over its main executors to be torn to pieces, accusing them, as always, of “excesses”. On the eve of the “Great Terror”, the place of the head of the NKVD was occupied by N. Yezhov (“Yezhovshchina”), after his execution, L. Beria was nominated for this post. Several thousand people were even released, although this was an insignificant fraction of the death toll and those held in concentration camps. The life of people in the thirties of the last century was full of contradictions. It coexisted labor enthusiasm and lack of professionalism and qualifications; revolutionary romance of the masses and a low level of education; faith in the creative forces of the people and the deification of the leader; constitutional rights and political processes; glorification of heroes and mass repressions.

In the Soviet Union, an attempt was made to implement the slogan "who was nobody - he will become everything." Peasants and workers with all selflessness gave their strength to the construction of a new state. The children of those who wore bast shoes all their lives and could not sign, are now entrusted with mastering equipment, building giant factories, and managing collective farms!

Inspiration gave birth to daily heroism. The whole country learned about the heroes, their names did not leave the pages of newspapers. The conquerors of the sky BC Grizodubova, P. D. Osipenko, M. M. Raskova (the first female pilots who laid the air route Moscow - the Far East), V. P. Chkalov, A. V. Belyakov, G. F Baidakov (carried out the first non-stop flight to the USA through the Pole); glorious Chelyuskinites and their rescuers. The whole country sympathized with Chelyuskintsev. In April 1934, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR issued a decree approving the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The repressive authorities repeatedly used information supplied by neighbors. Snitching on relatives was encouraged. Parents or children were required to renounce the "enemy of the people." Their family members, often close and even distant relatives, could also be repressed. Children from the age of 12 could receive the death penalty as a sentence. For work in enterprises, digging canals, building power plants, the workforce of labor camps was used, in which millions of victims of collectivization and political persecution languished. It was not so easy among free people to recruit workers for dangerous mining work in Siberia, for felling trees in endless forests, or for digging a gigantic canal between the White and Baltic seas.

In the Republic of Altai, the Chuysky tract was built by prisoners. By 1930, construction work was launched along the entire length of the tract, which was built according to the project of V. Ya. Shishkov with some additions. The tract was built mainly by prisoners. For them, along the highway at a distance of 15-20 km from each other, "business trips" were built - concentration camps designed for 300-400 people. Dispossessed Siberian peasants became road builders. In the Myyuta area on the banks of the Sema there was a women's camp. 10-12 thousand prisoners punched a road in multi-meter snowdrifts and fell trees along the entire route. Pay great attention to the construction of bridges. In 19341, the largest floating pontoon bridge in the Soviet Union was built by prisoners. In 1934, the construction of a bridge across the Katun River near the village of Inya began. The author of the project is S. A. Tsaplin. For the bridge, first-class larch wood was selected. The ropes were twisted in place. Right on the ice of the frozen Katun. With the help of cars. In 1936 the bridge was put into operation. The bridge was built by the prisoners of the 7th department of the NKVD Siblager. After the completion of the work, all of them were promised amnesty. Therefore, the bridge had the name "demobilization". Dozens of people worked tirelessly. Therefore, the Ininsky bridge is not only a monument of engineering, but also a monument of the Stalin era.

Great terror

The secret police, censorship and oppression have been known to the people since the days of tsarism and the first years of the revolution. However, during the reign of terror in the 1930s, party purges, political trials, concentration camps, and massacres took place on a scale that no one could have imagined before. Together with the centralization of all political power in the country, this brutal oppression of the people was called the Stalinist system. Political dissent was seen as a serious crime. No one felt safe, there were scammers and informers all around. If a person was arrested, then the most famous leaders of the revolution were in danger, were branded as enemies of the people and condemned to death. If the whites won in the civil war, who would begin to crack down on their opponents, then it seems that the lists of the executed would not be very different from the Bolsheviks. There was only one exception - Stalin himself. Both Soviet and Western historians agree that if people who died during the famine of the thirties are added to the victims of party purges and collectivization, then the number of victims during this period will reach 30-35 million. Of these, probably half lost their lives. Among the victims of terror were many skilled workers, technicians and heads of state industrial enterprises. Reshuffles were also made in the top positions of local party organizations.

As historical experience shows, any state uses open violence to maintain its power, often successfully disguising it under the protection of social justice. As for the totalitarian regimes, the ruling regime, in order to consolidate and preserve itself, resorted, along with sophisticated falsifications, to gross arbitrariness, to massive cruel repressions (from Latin repressio - “suppression”; punitive measure, punishment applied by state bodies).

1937 Painting by artist D. D. Zhilinsky. 1986 The struggle against the "enemies of the people" that unfolded during the life of V. I. Lenin subsequently assumed a truly grandiose scope, claiming the lives of millions of people. No one was immune from the night invasion of the authorities into their home, searches, interrogations, torture. The year 1937 was one of the most terrible in this struggle of the Bolsheviks against their own people. In the picture, the artist depicted the arrest of his own father (in the center of the picture).

Moscow. 1930 Column Hall of the House of the Unions. Special presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, considering the "case of the industrial party". Chairman of the Special Presence A. Ya. Vyshinsky (center).

To understand the essence, depth and tragic consequences of the extermination (genocide) of one's own people, it is necessary to turn to the origins of the formation of the Bolshevik system, which took place in the conditions of a fierce class struggle, hardships and hardships of the First World War and the Civil War. Various political forces of both monarchist and socialist orientation (Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, etc.) were gradually forcibly removed from the political arena. The consolidation of Soviet power is associated with the elimination and "reforging" of entire classes and estates. For example, the military service class - the Cossacks - was subjected to "decossackization". The oppression of the peasantry gave rise to the "Makhnovshchina", "Antonovshchina", the actions of the "greens" - the so-called "small civil war" in the early 1920s. The Bolsheviks were in a state of confrontation with the old intelligentsia, as they said at that time, "specialists." Many philosophers, historians, and economists were exiled from Soviet Russia.

The first of the "loud" political processes of the 30s - early 50s. the “Shakhty case” appeared - a major trial of “pests in industry” (1928). In the dock were 50 Soviet engineers and three German specialists who worked as consultants in the coal industry of Donbass. The court pronounced 5 death sentences. Immediately after the trial, at least 2,000 more specialists were arrested. In 1930, the “case of the industrial party” was examined, when representatives of the old technical intelligentsia were declared enemies of the people. In 1930, prominent economists A. V. Chayanov, N. D. Kondratiev and others were convicted. They were falsely accused of creating a non-existent "counter-revolutionary labor peasant party." Well-known historians - E. V. Tarle, S. F. Platonov and others - were involved in the case of the academicians. In the course of forced collectivization, dispossession was carried out on a massive scale and tragic in consequences. Many of the dispossessed ended up in forced labor camps or were sent to settlements in remote areas of the country. By the autumn of 1931, over 265,000 families had been deported.

The reason for the start of mass political repressions was the murder of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the leader of the Leningrad communists S. M. Kirov on December 1, 1934. I. V. Stalin took advantage of this opportunity to “finish off” the oppositionists - followers of L. D. Trotsky , L. B. Kameneva, G. E. Zinoviev, N. I. Bukharin, to shake up the cadres, to consolidate their own power, to plant an atmosphere of fear and denunciation. Stalin brought cruelty and sophistication in the fight against dissent to the construction of a totalitarian system. He turned out to be the most consistent of the Bolshevik leaders, skillfully using the mood of the masses and rank and file members of the party in the struggle to strengthen personal power. Suffice it to recall the scenarios of the "Moscow trials" over "enemies of the people". After all, many shouted "Hurrah!" and demanded to destroy the enemies of the people, like "filthy dogs." Millions of people involved in historical action (“Stakhanovists”, “shock workers”, “nominees”, etc.) were sincere Stalinists, supporters of the Stalinist regime not out of fear, but out of conscience. The general secretary of the party served for them as a symbol of the revolutionary people's will.

The mindset of the majority of the population of that time was expressed by the poet Osip Mandelstam in a poem:

We live, not feeling the country under us, Our speeches are not heard in ten steps, And where it is enough for half a conversation, They will remember the Kremlin mountaineer. And his bootlegs shine.

Mass terror, which the punitive authorities used against the "guilty", "criminals", "enemies of the people", "spies and saboteurs", "disorganizers of production", required the creation of extrajudicial emergency bodies - "troikas", "special meetings", simplified (without participation of the parties and appeal against the verdict) and an accelerated (up to 10 days) procedure for conducting cases of terror. In March 1935, a law was passed on the punishment of family members of traitors to the Motherland, according to which close relatives were imprisoned and deported, minors (under 15 years old) were sent to orphanages. In 1935, by decree of the Central Executive Committee, it was allowed to prosecute children from the age of 12.

In 1936-1938. "open" trials of opposition leaders were fabricated. In August 1936, the case of the "Trotskyist-Zinoviev United Center" was heard. All 16 people who appeared before the court were sentenced to death. In January 1937, the trial of Yu. L. Pyatakov, K. B. Radek, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, L. P. Serebryakov, N. I. Muralov and others (“parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center”) took place. At a court session on March 2–13, 1938, the case of the “anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky bloc” (21 people) was heard. N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov, and M. P. Tomsky, the oldest members of the Bolshevik Party, associates of V. I. Lenin, were recognized as its leaders. Blok, as stated in the verdict, "unified underground anti-Soviet groups ... striving to overthrow the existing system." Among the falsified trials are the cases of the “anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization in the Red Army”, the “Union of Marxist-Leninists”, the “Moscow Center”, “the Leningrad counter-revolutionary group of Safarov, Zalutsky and others”. As the commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, established on September 28, 1987, established, all these and other major trials are the result of arbitrariness and blatant violation of the law, when the investigative materials were grossly falsified. Neither "blocs" nor "centers" actually existed; they were invented in the bowels of the NKVD-MGB-MVD at the behest of Stalin and his inner circle.

The rampant state terror (“great terror”) fell on 1937-1938. It led to the disorganization of state administration, to the destruction of a significant part of the economic and party personnel, the intelligentsia, caused serious damage to the economy and security of the country (on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, 3 marshals, thousands of commanders and political workers were repressed). The totalitarian regime finally took shape in the USSR. What is the meaning and purpose of mass repressions and terror (“great purges”)? First, relying on the Stalinist thesis about the aggravation of the class struggle as socialist construction progressed, the government sought to eliminate real and possible opposition to it; secondly, the desire to get rid of the "Leninist guard", from some democratic traditions that existed in the Communist Party during the life of the leader of the revolution ("The revolution devours its children"); thirdly, the fight against the corrupt and decomposed bureaucracy, the mass promotion and training of new cadres of proletarian origin; fourthly, the neutralization or physical destruction of those who could become a potential enemy from the point of view of the authorities (for example, former white officers, Tolstoyans, Social Revolutionaries, etc.), on the eve of the war with Nazi Germany; fifthly, the creation of a system of forced, actually slave labor. Its most important link was the Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG). Gulag gave 1/3 of the industrial output of the USSR. In 1930, there were 190 thousand prisoners in the camps, in 1934 - 510 thousand, in 1940 - 1 million 668 thousand. minors.

Repression in the 40s. Entire peoples were also exposed - Chechens, Ingush, Meskhetian Turks, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans. Many thousands of Soviet prisoners of war ended up in the Gulag, deported (evicted) to the eastern regions of the country, residents of the Baltic states, the western parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

The policy of a "hard hand", the struggle against what was contrary to official guidelines, with those who expressed and could express other views, continued in the post-war period, until the death of Stalin. Those workers who, in the opinion of Stalin's entourage, adhered to parochial, nationalist and cosmopolitan views, were also subjected to repression. In 1949, the "Leningrad case" was fabricated. Party and economic leaders, mainly associated with Leningrad (A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov and others), were shot, over 2 thousand people were released from work. Under the guise of a struggle against cosmopolitans, a blow was dealt to the intelligentsia: writers, musicians, doctors, economists, linguists. Thus, the work of the poetess A. A. Akhmatova and the prose writer M. M. Zoshchenko was subjected to defamation. Figures of musical culture S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, D. B. Kabalevsky and others were declared the creators of the “anti-people formalist trend”. In the repressive measures against the intelligentsia, an anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) orientation was visible (“the case of doctors”, “the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”, etc.).

The tragic consequences of mass repressions of the 30-50s. are great. Their victims were both members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party, and ordinary workers, representatives of all social strata and professional groups, ages, nationalities and religions. According to official data, in 1930-1953. 3.8 million people were repressed, of which 786 thousand were shot.

Rehabilitation (reinstatement of rights) of innocent victims in a judicial proceeding began in the mid-1950s. For 1954-1961 more than 300 thousand people were rehabilitated. Then, during the political stagnation, in the mid-1960s and early 1980s, this process was suspended. During the period of perestroika, an impetus was given to restore the good name of those who were subjected to lawlessness and arbitrariness. There are now more than 2 million people. The restoration of the honor of those unjustifiably accused of political crimes continues. Thus, on March 16, 1996, the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On Measures for the Rehabilitation of Priests and Believers Who Became Victims of Unjustified Repressions” was adopted.

Stalin refers to the political repressions carried out in the Soviet Union during the period when the country's government was headed by I.V. Stalin (late 20s - early 1950s).
Political persecution acquired a massive character with the beginning and forced (late 20s - early 30s), and reached its peak in the period dating back to 1937-1938. - The Great Terror.
During the Great Terror, the NKVD arrested about 1.58 million people, of which 682 thousand were sentenced to death.
Until now, historians have not come to a consensus regarding the historical background of the Stalinist political repressions of the 1930s and their institutional basis.
But for most researchers, it is an indisputable fact that it was the political figure of Stalin that played a decisive role in the punitive department of the state.
According to declassified archival materials, mass repressions on the ground were carried out in accordance with the “planned tasks” lowered from above to identify and punish “enemies of the people”. Moreover, on many documents the demand to “shoot everyone” or “beat again” was written by the hand of the Soviet leader.
It is believed that the ideological basis for the "Great Terror" was the Stalinist doctrine of intensifying the class struggle. The very mechanisms of terror were borrowed from the time of the civil war, during which non-judicial executions were widely used by the Bolsheviks.
A number of researchers evaluate the Stalinist repressions as a perversion of the policy of Bolshevism, emphasizing that among the repressed there were many members of the Communist Party, leaders and the military.
For example, in the period 1936-1939. more than 1.2 million communists were repressed - half of the total number of the party. Moreover, according to existing data, only 50 thousand people were released, the rest died in the camps or were shot.
In addition, according to Russian historians, Stalin's repressive policy, based on the creation of extrajudicial bodies, was a gross violation of the laws of the Soviet Constitution that were in force at that time.
Researchers identify several main causes of the "Great Terror". The main one is the Bolshevik ideology itself, which tends to divide people into “us” and “enemies”.
It should be noted that the difficult economic situation that prevailed in the country during the period under review (numerous industrial accidents, train wrecks, interruptions in goods and products), it was beneficial for the current government to explain as a result of the wrecking activities of the enemies of the Soviet people.
In addition, the presence of millions of prisoners made it possible to solve serious economic problems - for example, providing cheap labor for large-scale construction projects in the country.
Finally, many tend to consider Stalin's mental illness, who suffered from paranoia, to be one of the reasons for political repression.
Fear, sown among the masses, has become a reliable foundation for complete subordination to the central government. Thus, thanks to the total terror in the 30s, Stalin managed to get rid of possible political opponents and turn the remaining workers of the apparatus into thoughtless performers.
The policy of the "Great Terror" caused enormous damage to the economy and military power of the Soviet state.

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