The history of the Old Believers is inextricably linked with the history of Russia. During the mass political repression 1930s First of all, the “counter-revolutionary classes” suffered: the clergy, the peasantry, the Cossacks. Almost all the Old Believer bishops were repressed, in 1938 only one bishop remained free. It seemed that a little more, and the Old Believer hierarchy in Russia would disappear.
Despite the persecution and repression, the Old Believers have always remained patriots of their homeland. Already in the first days of the war, the Old Believer Archdiocese addresses its children with an appeal to stand up for the defense of the Fatherland. The Old Believers with weapons in their hands defended their homeland, worked in the rear and collected donations for the defense of the country.
2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the bloodiest military conflict of all time - Second World War. 72 states participated in it, and hostilities were conducted on the territory of 40 countries. During the fighting, about 70 million people died from bombing, shelling, starvation and in the camps. According to official figures, the losses of the Soviet Union amounted to 26.6 million people, with a significant part of the dead, more than half, attributed to civilian population of the country.
For comparison, the decline in the population of Russia in the First world war(losses of military personnel and civilians) amounted to 4.5 million people, and a similar loss in the Civil War - 8 million people.
Such great losses of the country, especially in the first years of the war, were due not only to the extreme brutality of hostilities, but also, as it turned out, the lack of readiness of the Soviet Union for a military conflict of this magnitude. IN prewar years there were massive political repressions in the country. They hit not only the so-called "counter-revolutionary classes": the peasantry, the clergy, the Cossacks, but also the very Soviet administrative, party and military institutions. So, for example, from 1937 to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 40 thousand commanders of all levels were repressed. Mass arrests, executions gave rise to uncertainty commanders fear of making responsible decisions on their own. It is no coincidence that in the first hours and even days of the war, unit commanders could not make decisions adequate to the military situation, waiting for orders from higher authorities. Marshal Vasilevsky later wrote:
Without the thirty-seventh year, perhaps there would have been no war at all in the forty-first year. In the fact that Hitler decided to start the war in the forty-first year, an important role was played by the assessment of the degree of defeat of the military cadres that we had.
Of course, the repressions affected not only the military and party workers, but also representatives of all other segments of the population. In the second half of the 1930s, most of the Old Believer clergy were repressed, and in 1937-1938 a company of closing and destroying churches swept across the country. To make this process irreversible, church buildings were usually blown up. In 1938, the only Old Believer bishop who remained at large was the elderly Bishop of Kaluga-Smolensk Sava(Simeon Ananiev), consecrated in 1922. The Old Orthodox hierarchy on the territory of the USSR was under the threat of complete disappearance. Trying to avoid this, expecting arrest and execution every day, Vladyka Sava single-handedly ordained a bishop in 1939. Paisia(Petrova) as his successor to the Kaluga-Smolensk diocese. However, there was no arrest, and in 1941, between Easter and Trinity, the Bishop of Samara (Parfyonov), who returned from prison, was elevated by Vladyka Sava, at the request of the Rogozh Old Believers, to the dignity of an archbishop, taking control of the Church.
I occupied the orphaned primatial throne not of my own will,” Archbishop Irinarkh later said. - This post was very embarrassing for me, my soul trembled to accept such a great responsibility. I did not look for him, but was found, because at that time I was only one single bishop. The second bishop, Sava of Kaluga, was ill. Thus, by the will of God, I came to you on the Moscow throne. I have come not to be served, but to serve you, according to the word of the Lord: “Though he be the first in you, let him be a servant to all” (Mt. XX, 26).
The following year, 1942, the bishop (Lakomkin) returned from prison, becoming an assistant to the archbishop.
In 1940, the USSR annexed the territory of Moldova occupied by Romania, where a large number of Old Believers lived. The Old Believer Bishop of Chisinau (Usov), who at one time fled from Soviet Russia, moves to Romania. Belaya Krinitsa, after the annexation of Bessarabia and Bukovina, ceased to be the residence of the Belokrinitsky metropolitans. The department was moved to Braila. In order to establish diocesan administration in Moldova, the Moscow Archdiocese had neither the time nor the opportunity: the Great Patriotic War soon began. On May 8, 1941, at the Consecrated Cathedral in Braila, Vladyka Innokenty (Usov) was elected Archbishop Belokrinitsky and all Old Orthodox Christians Metropolitan(died in 1942).
After the German attack on the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Old Believers, as in 1812 and 1914, stood up to defend the Fatherland. Already in the first days of the war, the Old Believer Archdiocese addresses its children with an appeal to stand up for the defense of the Fatherland:
In the silence of the night, when the peaceful Russian people were sleeping, locusts attacked him. The free and peace-loving small peoples of European countries were drowned in blood, turned into slaves, given over to the desecration of evil spirits. Great sorrow, the cry of the elderly, children and mothers tremble the whole world ...
The time has come, the hour has come for every believing Old Believer to direct all his strength and thoughts to the fight against the enemy who has settled and not sparing his stomach to stand up for his friends sincerely, to defend the great, peaceful and beautiful Motherland with his chest!
Let us make the sign of the cross in the name of the honest and life-giving cross, the holy and indivisible Trinity, and following the examples of past years, following the examples of our holy warriors, with the blessings and prayers of all the saints, I bless you for feats of arms.
The sword of victory may be in your hands, crushing a foreign enemy!
In the autumn of 1941, when the Germans approached Moscow, the state authorities decide to evacuate the leadership of religious denominations. Archbishop Irinarkh of Moscow and All Rus' is evacuated to Ulyanovsk.
However, the Old Believer archpastors did not remain aloof from the tragic events of the war. In 1942, during one of the most difficult periods of the war, the Primate of the Church, Archbishop Irinarch, addressed the inhabitants of the occupied territories with a message. In it he said:
Beloved children of the Old Believer Church of Christ, who are in German captivity and occupation... From the center of the Old Believers — from the glorious Moscow, from the Rogozhskaya Zastava — I, your archpastor and pilgrimage, appeal to you with words of consolation and hope and an appeal to provide all possible resistance to the enemy.
Help the partisans, join their ranks, be worthy of your ancestors who fought for their holy Rus'. Remember how our glorious ancestors, driven by love for the motherland, all as one, with pitchforks and horns, exterminated and drove from their land the twelve tongues of the proud conqueror. And how many of them left Russia? Pitiful bunch! The liberation of our motherland from the primordial enemy and destroyer of the Russian people - the German - is a sacred cause of all people.
Help our army to exterminate and drive the enemy from our sacred land and thereby bring closer the joyful hour of union with you. Here we offer unceasing prayers to the Lord God so that he saves you from evil and destruction and gives you the strength of our ancestors in the struggle to liberate our homeland from the invaders.
In July 1942, the bishop returns from prison Gerontius(Lakomkin), Petrograd and Tver. In the fall, he arrives in the Kostroma region (lives in Strelnikov and Durasovo) and begins to manage the Yaroslavl-Kostroma diocese.
One million two hundred thousand rubles were collected by the Archdiocese of Moscow and All Rus' for the defense of the country; the amount may be small, but we remember how highly Christ appreciated the widow's mite. " It was touching to tears to watch with what readiness, with what hot impulse, hands were stretched out to the plate “For the Defense of the Motherland” in order to put their feasible contribution to it.”, - recalls the secretary of the archdiocese, Galina Marinicheva, about the services during the war years.
During the war years, many thousands of Old Believers fell on the battlefield, defending the Fatherland, died of hunger and disease. In the winter of 1942/43 Bishop died of typhoid Paisios(Petrov), and the archpriest Andrey Popov was shot in the occupied Rzhev by the German invaders. Old Believer Bishop of Kiev-Vinnitsa (Vologzhanin), archpriests Markel Kuznetsov(Kaluga), Lazar Turchenkov(Ivanovo, Rzhev) and others were awarded medals " For valiant labor in the Great Patriotic War", Bishop Alexander(Chunin) Volga-Donskoy and Caucasian - medals " For the defense of Stalingrad" And " For victory over Germany». Legendary Scout Nikolai Kuznetsov came from an old family...
Having barely finished school, he worked 16 hours a day as a welder at the Yaroslavl Locomotive Repair Plant, where armored trains were produced and repaired, the future archbishop (Vitushkin). The incessant work with welding deprived the future archbishop of sight. At the age of 24, he became an invalid of the second group, and only through prayers to the Lord was the young man healed.
Many, very many did not return from the fronts. All four years the archbishop Irinarch(Parfyonov) and Bishop Gerontius(Lakomkin) addressed the flock with a patriotic sermon. It was oral, from the pulpit of the temple, and in the form of leaflets flew to the communities liberated and captured by the enemy. Saints Alexander Nevsky, Sergius of Radonezh, Patriarch Hermogenes, Dimitry Donskoy, Minin, Pozharsky - these names, with which the Old Believers are closely connected, inspired military labor and military feat.
In 1943, changes began in the attitude of the Soviet authorities towards religious associations. Last but not least, the patriotism shown by believers during the most difficult period of the war played in this. On September 14, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution on the formation of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church. Somewhat later, on October 7, the Regulation " On the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR". These organizations were in charge of the affairs of the New Believers. At the direction of the General Secretary of the CPSU (b) I. Stalin, a bishops' council was convened and a patriarch was elected. Renovationist and Sergian church organizations, as well as a number of smaller religious groups, were united under the auspices of the newly formed Moscow Patriarchy.
In 1944, Soviet troops liberate Ukraine, Bessarabia, Bukovina and cross the pre-war border of the USSR. Belaya Krinitsa ended up on the territory of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, this led to the destruction of this ancient monastery and the ruin of the surrounding Old Believer villages. Metropolitan Belokrinitsky was forced to leave the primatial see and depart for the interior regions of Romania.
In May 1944, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decided to create another state body - Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR tasked with communicating between the Government of the USSR and the leaders of religious associations: Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist denominations, Armenian-Gregorian, Old Believer, Greek Catholic, Catholic and Lutheran churches and sectarian organizations on issues of these cults requiring permission from the Government of the USSR". Thus, the Old Orthodox Church came under the control of the Council for Religious Cults.
However, there were also small indulgences in relation to the Old Believer Church. By the end of the war, some priests were released from prison. In 1945, the publication of the church calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church resumed. It was supposed to start issuing the magazine " Bulletin of the Moscow Archdiocese', but this idea was not realized. On September 9, 1945, actually a week after the end of the Second World War, the first post-war episcopal consecration took place in the Pokrovsky Cathedral in Moscow: a monk (Ivan Mikhailovich Morzhakov) was ordained a bishop in the Chisinau-Odessa diocese.
» Documents about the repressed
I asked my good friend Vitaly Sosnitsky to write this section.
The thirty-seventh year will forever remain in the memory of people, especially the older generation. For some, he brought grief for the loss of loved ones, for someone he was remembered by the atmosphere of fear and an oppressive foreboding of trouble. Of course, the repressions did not arise under Stalin - they began immediately after the October coup, but it was 1937 that became the year of mass terror. During 1937-1938 more than 1.7 million people were arrested on political charges. And together with the victims of deportations and convicted “socially harmful elements”, the number of repressed exceeds two million.
Repression is any loss of rights and benefits, legal restrictions associated with illegal prosecution, imprisonment, unjustified conviction, sending children to orphanages after the arrest of parents, illegal use of coercive medical measures.
I. The first mass category is people arrested by state security agencies (VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB) on political charges and sentenced by judicial or quasi-judicial (OSO, “troika”, “two”, etc.) instances to the death penalty or to various terms of imprisonment in camps and prisons or to exile. According to preliminary estimates, for the period from 1921 to 1985, from 5 to 5.5 million people fall into this category. Most often, memory books included information about people who suffered in the period 1930-1953. This is explained not only by the fact that during this period the most massive repressive operations were carried out, but also by the fact that the rehabilitation process, which began in the Khrushchev era and resumed during perestroika, primarily affected the victims of the Stalinist terror. The databases contain victims of repressions of an earlier (before 1929) and later (after 1954) periods less frequently: their cases have been reviewed to a much lesser extent.
The earliest repressions of the Soviet government (1917-1920), dating back to the era of the revolution and the Civil War, are documented so fragmentarily and contradictorily that even their scale has not yet been established (and they can hardly be established correctly, since during this period mass extrajudicial reprisals against "class enemies" often took place, which, of course, was not recorded in any way in the documents). Available estimates of the victims of the "Red Terror" range from several tens of thousands (50-70) to more than a million people.
II. Another mass category of those repressed for political reasons is the peasants, who were administratively expelled from their place of residence during the campaign to "destroy the kulaks as a class." In total, in 1930-1933, according to various estimates, from 3 to 4.5 million people were forced to leave their native villages. A minority of them were arrested and sentenced to death or imprisonment in a camp. 1.8 million became "special settlers" in the uninhabited areas of the European North, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. The rest were deprived of their property and settled within their own regions, in addition, a significant part of the "kulaks" fled from repression in big cities and industrial buildings. The consequence of the Stalinist agricultural policy there was a massive famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which claimed the lives of 6 or 7 million people (average estimate), however, neither those who fled collectivization nor those who died of hunger are formally considered victims of repression and are not included in memory books. The number of dispossessed "special settlers" in the memory books is growing, although they are sometimes registered both in the regions from which they were deported and in those where they were deported.
III. The third mass category of victims of political repressions is the people who were completely deported from their places of traditional settlement to Siberia, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. These administrative deportations were most extensive during the war, in 1941-1945. Some were evicted preventively as potential accomplices of the enemy (Koreans, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians), others were accused of collaborating with the Germans during the occupation (Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, peoples of the Caucasus). The total number of those expelled and mobilized into the "labor army" reached 2.5 million people. To date, there are almost no books of memory dedicated to the deported national groups (as a rare exception, one can name the Kalmyk book of memory, which was compiled not only from documents, but also from oral interviews).
All these repressions were reflected in certain documents, archival and investigative files, which are still kept in the departmental archives of law enforcement agencies and special services. Only a small part of them was transferred to the state archives for storage.
In order to preserve the memory of the victims of repression and help people restore the history of their families, in 1998 the Memorial Society began work on creating a single database, bringing together information from the Books of Memory, already printed or just prepared for publication in different regions former USSR.
The result of this work was the 1st album “Victims of Political Terror in the USSR” released in early 2004, which featured more than 1,300,000 names of victims of repression from 62 regions of Russia, from all regions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, two regions of Ukraine - Odessa and Kharkov.
Despite the huge changes that have taken place in last years in all countries on the territory of the former USSR, the problem of perpetuating the memory of victims of state terror remains unresolved.
This applies to all aspects of the problem - whether it is the rehabilitation of illegally convicted, or the publication of documents related to repressions, their scale and causes, or the identification of burial places of the executed, or the creation of museums and the installation of monuments. The issue of publishing lists of victims of terror has not yet been resolved. Hundreds of thousands of people in different regions of the former USSR (and in many countries where our compatriots live) want to find out the fate of their relatives. But even if a person's biography is included in some of the books in memory of the victims of political repression, it is very difficult to find out: such books are usually published in a small edition and almost never go on sale - even in the main libraries of Russia there is no complete set of published martyrology.
There are several on-line databases in the network. As practice shows, these databases contain information that is not available in Memorial's publication Victims of Political Terror in the USSR.
Here are some of them:
1) Project "Returned Names" http://visz.nlr.ru:8101
2) List of citizens repressed in the 1920s on the territory of the Ryazan province, rehabilitated by the prosecutor's office of the Ryazan region http://www.hro.org/ngo/memorial/1920/book.htm. There is information on convicts on probation or released.
3) Website of the Krasnodar "Memorial" http://www.kubanmemo.ru
5) Surnames of those shot on the Stele of the Central Cemetery of Khabarovsk http://vsosnickij.narod.ru/news.html , http://vsosnickij.narod.ru/DSC01230.JPG .
6) Website of the Lviv Memorial- http://www.poshuk-lviv.org.ua
7) Books of memory of victims of political repressions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, volume 1 (A-B), volume 2 (C-D) http://www.memorial.krsk.ru
8) New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the XX century, http://193.233.223.18/bin/code....html?/ans
9) St. Petersburg Martyrology of the Clergy and Laity, http://petergen.com/bovkalo/mart.html
10) The project "Open Archive", which the newspaper "Moskovskaya Pravda" is implementing with the Office of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for Moscow and the Moscow Region, nine years
11) Project "Repressed Russia" - 1422570 personalities, http://rosagr.natm.ru
12) Thematic database on the repressed Poles who lived in the Altai Territory and were convicted in 1919-1945. under article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, http://www.archiv.ab.ru/r-pol/repr.htm
What does such a variety of sources say? First of all, that many thousands of names of the repressed still, in spite of everything, remain unknown. You and only you can find out unknown pages the lives of your relatives and restore their honest name from oblivion.
Search procedure (general case, from my own experience and using the recommendations of the site www.memo.ru) :
1) If you unknown where the relative lived at the time of the arrest. In this case, you must send a request to the Main Information Center (GIC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (117418, Moscow, Novocheremushkinskaya st., 67).
The request must specify: last name, first name, patronymic of the repressed person, year and place of his birth, date of arrest, place of residence at the time of arrest. The request must contain a request to indicate the place where the investigation file is kept.
After receiving an answer, you should write to the institution where this very investigative file is stored. In this request, it will already be necessary to indicate what you want - to receive some specific certificate, extract or the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the investigation file.
2) If you known where the relative was born (and/or lived) at the time of arrest.
In this case, you need to send a request to the FSB Department of the region where your relative was born and / or lived at the time of arrest.
The request contains the same data of the repressed person as in the previous case.
At the same time, it does not matter whether this region is now part of Russia or not - the mechanism is the same throughout the entire territory of the former USSR. The only difference is that if the case is kept on the territory of Russia, then it can be sent to the FSB of the region where you live, so that you can familiarize yourself with it on the spot.
Cases are not sent from abroad (although there are exceptions), but a certificate or an extract is made. Alternatively, you can ask the case holders to send it for review to the regional city closest to your place of residence.
If the answer from the FSB is negative (that is, they do not have such a person), then you should write to the Information Center (IC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the same region. If the answer is negative there, write to the GIC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.
Remember that according to the law, you have the right "to receive manuscripts, photographs and other personal documents preserved in files" of your repressed relatives.
If your situation is special and goes beyond this general case - please ask questions, we will try to help you. Requests can be posted on the forum. www.vgd.ru (section "Repressed") or on the website http://www.vsosnickij.narod.ru .
Here are examples of what can be learned from the archival and investigative files of the repressed:
- Date and place of birth (arrested person's profile, interrogation protocols);
- Patronymic (there was a case when even the daughter of the repressed believed that her father's patronymic was Andreevich, and from his profile it turned out - Andronovich);
- Composition of the family, place of residence and composition of property before 1917 (questionnaire of the arrested person, protocols of interrogations, certificates, metrics and other documents of a personal nature filed with the case);
- Composition of the family, place of residence and composition of property up to repression;
- Information about the arrested person (height, eye color, hair), information about the family, place of work, composition of property and place of residence in the special settlement and / or arrest (arrested person's profile);
- Information about the place (places) and the nature of work in custody, fingerprints, date and cause of death (prisoner's personal file);
- Photos, letters from relatives, metrics, birth (death) certificates, autobiographies, information about training, assignment to the active army, removal from the special settlement and other documents.
Friends, please click on the buttons of social networks, this will help the development of the project!
WWII veteran I. Golovinov still has not received housing. Moreover, before the holidays, from the newspapers (!) he learned that his turn had changed from the second to the sixth. Since the fact that he was pushed back in line in a peculiar interpretation of the president's words about the poor, the Veteran was deeply offended!
AND THIS IS BEFORE VICTORY DAY!
The fact is that some Veterans were denied apartments with the reference to the fact that they are not poor. The President corrected this and gave instructions, as I understand it, to provide an apartment, regardless of property status. Officials understood this in a peculiar way and decided to adjust the queues. Is that what it's called? That is, there are precedents when they pushed the poor Veterans aside and put forward those who are not included in the group of the poor, but also should be provided with housing? As a result, Veteran had the following impression: “. Well, for some reason, he doesn’t like the authorities of the former repressed ... Probably, nevertheless, on their part, this is revenge for the fact that I am so actively defending my rights ”
The veteran sent more photos. I didn’t even imagine that things were so bad. After the holidays, I’ll post them on my website “Rus and Swans”www. yaroslavova. en
Hello, dear Natalya Borisovna. I have news. In the latest issue of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper in Novosibirsk (No. 17 dated April 21, 2010) under the heading “Ask the authorities a question” (material by Vladimir Ivanov) http://www.mk.ru/regions/novosib/article/2010/04/27/476909-v-poiskah-otvetov.html
my short letter was published in which I told how they did not give me medals, housing, a car. The editorial office of the newspaper published a response from the administration of the Bolotninsky district, Novosibirsk region. In which the head of the district, Viktor Frank, said: - In the 1st quarter, the Bolotninsky district received federal budget funds to provide housing for three veterans, we have already purchased housing for two veterans. Housing for the third veteran in the process of registration. These veterans were registered in 2009 as living in dilapidated (emergency) housing. Golovinov Pavel Ivanovich was registered in need of better housing conditions on January 11, 2010 (Decree of the Administration of the Kunchuruksky Village Council of the Bolotninsky District of January 11, 2010 No. 1) after the entry into force of the Federal Law of December 21, 2009 No. 327-FZ “On Amendments to the federal law"On Veterans", according to which, after 01/03/2010, when registering veterans of the Second World War, authorities local government subject to paragraph 3 of Article 49 of the Housing Code Russian Federation classifying WWII veterans as poor citizens is not taken into account. That is, the previous queue, in which Golovinov was second, turned out to be revised allegedly strictly in accordance with the law.
In accordance with the minutes of the meeting on adjusting the priority order for improving housing conditions for veterans of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 in the Bolotninsky district, Golovinov P.I. is listed under No. 6 in the lists of veterans of the Great Patriotic War who need to improve their living conditions, who were registered after 03/01/2005. There are 19 people on the waiting list. As funds are received from the regional budget, all war veterans will be provided with housing. Well, for some reason, the authorities do not like the former repressed.
The administration of the Bolotninsky district deliberately misled the correspondent of the newspaper, V. Ivanov, that I supposedly had good living conditions and prosperous material well-being. At one time, the prosecutor's office established that throughout my life in Russian state there was no housing at all. And I currently live in a house with stove heating, without running water (there is a running water in the village), which my son, having retired from service, illegally from the point of view of the authorities (therefore, they do not carry out running water) installed for himself in my garden, and from the front part, that is, from the street, there is a dilapidated house that once belonged to my late mother-in-law. And why didn’t the authorities notify me in writing against signature that they moved me in line. Probably, nevertheless, on their part, this is revenge for the fact that I am so actively defending my rights.
I am also sending photographs of my mother-in-law's house, on which there is a sign saying that a veteran of the Great Patriotic War lives in this house. And on the fence was nailed plate No. 47. For some reason, on the son’s house in the garden, the authorities did not begin to nail this plate.
Respectfully repressed and rehabilitated, invalid of the Second World War, awarded with three orders, Golovinov Pavel Ivanovich and his son Mikhail.
Page 4 of 6
Part 3
STALIN'S REPRESSION DURING WWII
Chapter 17
A few words about Khrushchev's globe
The Great Patriotic War has undergone total mythologization in the last 60 years. The multi-stage and multi-level nature of the formation of the black myth about Stalinist repressions is fully characteristic for displaying the events of the Great Patriotic War as a key stage of Stalin's rule. These processes were started, as we noted, by N.S. Khrushchev on the wave of exposure of the cult of personality. The tasks facing Khrushchev did not require deep study by ideologists and their correlation with historical reality or even common sense. Thus, he contrasted the glorifications of Stalin's genius with the statement made from the rostrum of the 20th Congress of the CPSU that Stalin led the troops on the globe.
“I will allow myself to cite in this connection one characteristic fact showing how Stalin led the fronts. [...] And I must say that Stalin planned operations on the globe. (Animation in the hall.) Yes, comrades, he will take a globe and show the front line on it.
Before us is a document of direct control of the front, establishing the lines of attack and the lines of demarcation between the troops of the armies. Take any globe and try to find on it the settlements indicated in the directive.
Concluding the picture, I will only note that Stalin did not plan operations at all - the General Staff exists for this.
From the report "On the cult of personality ..." and Khrushchev's memoirs, the myth widely known today that Stalin fell into prostration in the first days of the war, did not lead the country until members of the Politburo came to him with the intention of almost arresting him, originates from the memoirs of Khrushchev.
Even with an appeal to the peoples of the USSR in connection with the outbreak of the Second World War, Molotov was forced to speak.
In Khrushchev's memoirs, this episode looks like this (Khrushchev faced a serious problem, since he personally could not participate in the events described; he quotes them from the words of Beria, who had already been shot for "anti-Stalinism"):
“Beria told the following: when the war began, members of the Politburo gathered at Stalin's. I don’t know, all or only a certain group, which most often met with Stalin. Stalin was morally completely depressed and made the following statement: “The war has begun, it is developing catastrophically. Lenin left us the proletarian Soviet state, and we pissed it off.” Literally said so. “I,” he says, “refuse leadership,” and left. He left, got into the car and drove to the nearest dacha.
According to this legend, Stalin retired from work for a long period, did not appear in the Kremlin and did not lead anything until members of the Politburo decided to go to him and ask him to return to governing the country. Khrushchev continues:
“When we arrived at his dacha, I (says Beria) saw from his face that Stalin was very frightened. I believe that Stalin thought if we had come to arrest him because he refused to give up his role and did nothing to organize a rebuff to the German invasion? .
In the memoirs of Mikoyan, supplementing the Khrushchev version, we read:
“We arrived at Stalin's dacha. We found him in a small dining room sitting in an armchair. Seeing us, he sort of squeezed himself into an armchair and looked inquiringly at us. Then he asked: “Why did you come?” He looked wary, somehow strange, and the question he asked was no less strange. After all, in fact, he himself had to convene us. I had no doubts: he decided that we had come to arrest him.
Molotov, on our behalf, said that we need to concentrate power in order to put the country on its feet. To do this, create the State Defense Committee. "Who's in charge?" Stalin asked. When Molotov replied that he, Stalin, was at the head, he looked surprised, but did not express any considerations.
Mikoyan has a big plus - he personally attended this meeting and does not need references to Beria or anyone else from Stalin's entourage. It would seem that Anastas Ivanovich fully confirms the version of N.S. Khrushchev. However, it should be noted that his official memoirs have undergone serious "literary processing" in order to better comply with the party line. The two-volume collection of documents "1941", prepared by A. Yakovlev's Democracy Foundation, contains the original text of A. Mikoyan's memoirs:
“We arrived at Stalin's dacha. We found him in a small dining room sitting in an armchair. He looks at us questioningly and asks: why did you come? He looked calm, but somehow strange, no less strange was the question he asked. After all, in fact, he himself had to convene us.
Molotov, on behalf of us, said that it was necessary to concentrate power so that everything would be decided quickly, in order to put the country on its feet. Stalin should be at the head of such an organ.
As we can see, “only” a couple of phrases were added to the original “squeezed into a chair” and “I had no doubts: he decided that we had come to arrest him” ...
These statements are firmly embedded in contemporary literature and journalism. Following them, we can conclude that Stalin's prostration lasted from the first day of the war until the creation State Committee defense, that is, from June 22 to June 30, 1941. Fortunately, the archives have preserved for us the logs of visits to Stalin's Kremlin office. The duty officer in the reception room scrupulously noted who, when and at what time entered the office and at what time he left it.
For comparison, here are the records of the pre-war period:
On March 1, 1941, Stalin received Timoshenko, Zhukov, Kulik, Rychagov, Zhigarev, Goremykin in his office. The reception lasted from 20:05 to 23:00.
The next entry is dated March 8, Timoshenko, Kulik, Zhukov, Meretskov, Rychagov were received, the reception lasted from 20:05 to 23:30.
On March 17, Stalin heard the reports of Timoshenko, Zhukov, Budyonny, Rychagov and Zhigarev from 17:15 to 23:10.
The last reception day in March is the 18th. From 19:05 to 21:10 Stalin listened to Timoshenko, Zhukov, Rychagov and Kulik.
In total, in March 1941, Stalin had 4 reception days in his Kremlin office, he received up to 6 people a day - exclusively in the evening and even at night.
Let us turn to the logs of a visit to Stalin's office in June 1941:
Until June 22, Stalin's reception days were June 3, 6, 9, 11, 17, 19, 20 and 21. The reception traditionally took place in the evening, the maximum number of visitors was in the office on June 1 - 8 people, and on June 21 - 12 people. That day ended for Stalin, according to the visitation log, at 23:00. Directive No. 1 was signed to the Western Border Military Districts.
June 22, the day the Great Patriotic War began, I.V. Stalin begins the reception in his Kremlin office at 5:45 am. Until 16:45 he received 28 people.
On June 23, Stalin's reception begins at 3:20 am and continues until 0:55 the next day. During this time, 21 people visited Stalin.
On June 24, 1941, Stalin begins the reception in his Kremlin office at 4:20 pm and continues until 9:30 pm. It accepts 20 people.
On June 25, the reception begins at 1 am and lasts until 1 am the next day. 29 people passed through Stalin's office.
On June 27, from 16:30 to 2:35 on June 28, he received 29 people, including Mikoyan at 19:30 and Beria at 21:25.
On June 28, the reception was resumed at 19:35, ended at 00:15 on the 29th, “only” 25 people passed through the office, including Beria and Mikoyan.
After that, the view of I.V. Stalin, who, according to Mikoyan's memoirs, seemed to him "kind of strange" on the 30th, should not be surprised. It is not clear what time Stalin slept on those days, with the exception of the 29th, when there are no entries in the book of visits to his office. It should be noted that Stalin's work was not limited to receptions in the Kremlin office, he visited, in particular, the People's Commissariat of Defense, one of these visits ended in a notorious sharp conversation with G. Zhukov.
It is interesting to correlate the descriptions of this episode with Khrushchev's memoirs. As we remember, when the war began, Stalin was allegedly completely depressed and made the following statement: “The war has begun, it is developing catastrophically. Lenin left us the proletarian Soviet state, and we pissed it off.” “I,” he says, “refuse leadership,” and left for a nearby dacha.
And here is how A. Mikoyan describes Stalin's visit to the People's Commissariat of Defense in his memoirs:
“On the evening of June 29, Molotov, Malenkov, myself and Beria gathered at Stalin’s in the Kremlin. Detailed data on the situation in Belarus had not yet been received ... Alarmed by such a course of affairs, Stalin suggested that we all go to the People's Commissariat of Defense ... ".
“There were Timoshenko, Zhukov, Vatutin in the People's Commissariat. Stalin kept calm, asking where the command of the Belarusian military district was, what kind of connection was there.
Zhukov reported that the connection was lost and they could not restore it for the whole day. [...]
We talked for about half an hour, quite calmly. Then Stalin exploded: what kind of General Staff, what kind of chief of staff, who is so confused, has no connection with the troops, does not represent anyone and does not command anyone [...]
Zhukov, of course, experienced the state of affairs no less than Stalin, and such a shout from Stalin was insulting to him. And this courageous man burst into tears like a woman and ran out into another room. Molotov followed him...
After 5-10 minutes, Molotov brought in an outwardly calm Zhukov.
When we left the People's Commissariat, he (Stalin. - Auth.) said the following phrase: "Lenin left us a great legacy, we - his heirs - pissed it all off."
Khrushchev, referring to the words of Beria, from whom you can no longer ask, moved this episode to the day the war began, placed the events in Stalin's Kremlin office and added details about leaving for a nearby dacha.
As we can see, there was no prostration either in the first or subsequent days of the war. Beria could not tell Khrushchev about prostration in any way, since all these days he visited Stalin's office several times. The same applies to Anastas Mikoyan. The story of Stalin's prostration, his refusal to govern, his fear that they had come to arrest him, is fiction from beginning to end.
As for the statements about Molotov, who was forced to speak instead of Stalin with an appeal to the peoples of the USSR about the beginning of the war. First of all, Stalin, who finished work at 23:00 on June 21 and started at 5 in the morning on the 22nd, simply did not have time for such a speech.
Secondly, the need for Stalin to speak on the day the war began is usually explained by the fact that the head of state needed to address the people in connection with the tragedy that had befallen the country. This is the transfer of today's knowledge about the entire period of 1941-1945 to the events of the morning of June 22. There is no reason to believe that from the first hours of the war I.V. Stalin could define it as a great tragedy. Still was not complete information about the situation on the border, about the development of the offensive German troops. The situation could turn in any direction.
Thirdly, the candidacy of Molotov instead of Stalin looks strange only from the point of view of modern politics. Stalin was not public. His radio appearances throughout his reign can be counted on the fingers. He was not too eager to speak and just in front of a large audience, party events do not count. Stalin did not need to increase his popularity rating with appeals to the people, and the means for such an appeal at a time when newspapers were the main carrier of information were clearly lacking. Nor was Stalin a great orator. It is enough to listen to his speech on the radio on July 3, 1941.
War myths about Stalin are of the same nature as the myths about Stalin's repressions in general. Works of art And historical research, released after 1956, could not ignore the emerging "party line", which added confusion to the question of the events of the Second World War.
Further layers of myths led to the formation of the post-perestroika image of the Great Patriotic War, filled with detachments, penal battalions, special officers, former prisoners of war and encirclement going to the Gulag, as well as massively exterminated Cossacks and Vlasovites.
A number of serious studies that have appeared literally in recent years have been devoted to the theme of the mythologization of military history. In this book, we will focus only on those moments that are directly related to the image of Stalin's repressions.
Chapter 18
Deportation of the Germans
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, ethnic Germans (Volga region, Crimea) were subjected to mass migration from the western regions into the interior of the country. There are no internal laws or international legal norms regulating such actions, which is why some modern researchers (the same Memorial Society or the Democracy Foundation of Academician Yakovlev) unequivocally record them as victims of political repression.
As a rule, it is forgotten that the war itself is very different from the usual peacetime relations, including in the legal field. During the war period, you can meet many phenomena that are unacceptable from the point of view of ordinary law and generally accepted morality. Is it legal, justified to introduce a 12-hour working day in factories and factories? And what about the mass exploitation in the period 1941-1945 of female and child labor in the shops?
It is even strange that Stalin has not yet been charged with this along with other crimes. After all, 12-year-old children worked at the machine for one factory stew.
Another thing is that without this work, the survival of both children and the country as a whole would be in question. But legal formalities would be fully observed.
In the conditions of war, incredible, from the point of view of a peaceful society, changes take place. The right of the personal recedes into the background, yielding to the requirements of the general. The basic human right, the right to life, is also called into question. The State may require everyone to give his life to save the lives of many others.
Sometimes it is required to give one's life in a senseless attack on a nameless skyscraper. And only decades later it turns out that this completely “senseless” attack on foot on machine guns, repeated several times, was part of an offensive plan that would occur 300 kilometers away and would be successful due to the fact that the attack fettered enemy forces. Thousands of lives will be saved at the cost of hundreds - such is the arithmetic of war.
Wartime deportations were not a Soviet invention. The closest analogue of national history is the resettlement of Russian Germans from the frontline zone of the First World War. The campaign that took place in 1914 bears little resemblance to the modern understanding of humanism. Suffice it to mention that the Germans were deported at their own expense. Further, in 1915, the decrees “On the liquidation of landownership of subjects and natives of hostile states” and “On the liquidation of enterprises with the participation of German capital” followed.
During the Second World War, expulsions, deportations and arrests were applied to representatives of warring states or natives of them throughout Europe. Great Britain, having arrested the "undesirable elements", deported them to Canada. Belgium and France isolated in camps all refugees and emigrants from Germany, along with citizens of the Third Reich. The Netherlands has taken similar measures.
The most famous ethnic deportation in the history of World War II was carried out in 1942 by the United States. February 19, 1942 F.D. Roosevelt signed an emergency decree according to which all ethnic Japanese living in the United States (120 thousand people) were placed in ten specially created concentration camps, from which they were released only in 1946-1947 and sent, as we would say, "to a special settlement." The "special legal status" was removed from them only in 1952.
Deportation or restriction of freedom, being extrajudicial repression and illegal, from the point of view of peaceful law, a measure, nevertheless, was actively used by all countries throughout the conflicts of the 20th century. IN modern world the situation has not changed much. The British educational film Threads (1984), which demonstrates one of the scenarios for the start of a thermonuclear war, explains one of the natural measures of the pre-war period - the preventive arrest of all unreliable elements in the country. How broadly this concept is interpreted can be concluded already from the fact that participants in anti-war demonstrations also fall into their number.
In the Soviet Union in 1941, the evictions of Germans from the western regions began from the first days of the war, however, due to the rapid advance fascist troops this campaign was not fully completed, many ethnic Germans of Belarus and Ukraine fell under occupation.
The first mass resettlement was the deportation of the Crimean Germans, which began on August 20, 1941. It is interesting that it was carried out under the pretext of evacuation in connection with the approaching front line. More than 30 thousand people were taken by sea through the Kerch Strait to the Krasnodar Territory, and from there to Kazakhstan.
The most massive operation to resettle Soviet Germans took place in September-November 1941. were evicted Volga Germans(446,480 people), the Volga German ASSR was liquidated. The Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 28, 1941 "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region" stated:
“According to reliable data received by the military authorities, among the German population living in the regions of the Volga region, there are thousands and tens of thousands of saboteurs and spies who, on a signal given from Germany, should carry out explosions in areas inhabited by Volga Germans. About the existence of such a large number none of the Germans living in the Volga regions reported saboteurs and spies among the Volga Germans to the Soviet authorities, therefore, the German population of the Volga regions hides among themselves the enemies of the Soviet people and Soviet power. In the event that there are acts of sabotage initiated by German saboteurs and spies in the Republic of the Volga Germans and adjacent areas on orders from Germany, bloodshed will occur.
In order to avoid such undesirable phenomena and to prevent serious bloodshed, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the need to resettle the entire German population living in the regions of the Volga region to other regions, so that the resettled were provided with land and that they were provided with state assistance in settling in new regions.
Areas of Novosibirsk, Omsk regions, Altai Territory, Kazakhstan and other neighboring areas, abundant in arable land, have been allocated for resettlement. In this regard, the State Defense Committee was instructed to urgently resettle all Volga Germans and provide the resettled Volga Germans with land and lands in new areas.
How justified are the suspicions of hiding thousands of saboteurs by the population of the ASSR of the Volga Germans? There is still no answer to this question. Due to the established practice of dismissing all accusations of the Soviet government as far-fetched, research in this direction has simply not been carried out. On the one hand, the Great Patriotic War really began for the USSR with a wave of sabotage acts that disrupted communications, railway communication, etc., and not all such excesses can be attributed to sabotage groups that had just been abandoned from Germany. On the other hand, it turns out that during the deportation of Soviet Germans, thousands of hypothetical accomplices of the enemy were simply deported with the bulk of the population?
Logic suggests that the accusations of the Volga Germans were just a pretext for the standard procedure of isolation or deportation of the war period. Previously, the Crimean Germans were resettled without any charges, and these are clearly elements of one process. But the unpleasant default figure in this case is still present.
This is not about violating the presumption of innocence, the Soviet Germans do not need to prove that they did not commit crimes. It would be good for us, for a comprehensive understanding of the problem, to answer this question for ourselves.
In the same period, in the western regions of the USSR, there was a mass evacuation beyond the Urals and into Central Asia of the population and industrial enterprises. Hundreds of thousands of people stormed the departing echelons in the hope of escaping from the bombardments and running away from the front line. In 1941-1942, a total of 17 million people were evacuated, 60-70 million fell under occupation.
The conditions under which the evacuation took place can be imagined from the article “War and evacuation in the USSR 1941 -
1942" Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences G.A. Kumanev. In particular, he cites the memoirs of the first secretary of the Chelyabinsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, N.S. Patolichev:
“It happened that people rode in open gondola cars or on platforms. Well, if there was a tarp that could cover from the rain. Sometimes this was not. There are also machines or materials, some of the things evacuated. Just something. People were fleeing from the invasion of the barbarians, and, of course, there was no time for things. Under more favorable conditions, two or three covered wagons were allocated for women with children. Instead of 36 people, they packed 80-100. Of course, no one grumbled - grief united people whose shelter was seized by the Nazis.
Among the rest evacuated into the interior of the country were deported Soviet Germans. It is unlikely that the conditions for their transportation were very different from the conditions in which all the rest were selected from the frontline zone. One undoubted plus in their situation was still present - they were taken in an organized manner to a new place of residence, while thousands and thousands of Soviet people were forced by hook or by crook to seek a place in the echelons departing to the east.
Chapter 19
Gulag during WWII
In 1941, the GULAG of the NKVD was in charge of corrective labor camps (ITL), corrective labor colonies (ITK), and prisons. Also, under the Gulag, since 1940, BIRs were formed - the Correctional Labor Bureau, which was in charge of the execution of sentences under the article "on absenteeism." These convicts, although formally under the jurisdiction of the Main Directorate, were nevertheless not prisoners, serving their sentences at their place of work with a deduction of 25 percent of their earnings. In order to avoid further confusion, they should not be attributed to the GULAG contingent on an equal footing, for example, with those convicted under the same article to six months in prison for leaving the enterprise without permission.
In the camps and colonies of the Gulag, according to V. Zemskov, in 1941 there were 1,929,729 people, in prisons - 487,739 people (at the beginning of the year). In 1942, there was a reduction in the number of prisoners in camps and colonies - up to 1,777,043 people. The most indicative is the two-fold reduction of prisoners in prisons during 1941 - already in July their number drops to 216,223 people.
On July 12 and November 24, 1941, decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR were issued on the early release of certain categories of prisoners, with the transfer of persons of military age to the Red Army. In accordance with the decrees, 420,000 prisoners were released, including those convicted of absenteeism (with serving sentences in prisons), domestic and minor official and economic crimes.
In the period 1942-1943, another 157 thousand people were released early, in total, during the years of the Second World War, 975 thousand prisoners were transferred to the Red Army (including those released after serving their sentences). For military exploits shown on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, former prisoners of the Gulag Breusov, Efimov, Retired, Sergeants and others were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In 1942, by a decree of the State Defense Committee (April 11, 1942), conscription was allowed for military service including special settlers. The order of the NKVD of the USSR of October 22 established the norm on the restoration of civil rights and the deregistration of not only special settlers drafted into the army, but also members of their families. More than 60,000 people who had been in special settlements before the war were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army and construction battalions.
Contrary to popular belief, the GULAG prisoners and special settlers who were released early were not formed into specific "black" units, just as they were not sent straight to the penal battalions. If only for the reason that penal battalions and companies appeared in the Red Army only in July 1942, and the first and most massive wave of liberations occurred in 1941. Former prisoners entered either ordinary combat units or production in their specialty.
The GKO decree of April 11, 1942, mentioned above, on drafting into the army, including special settlers, says: “To oblige the head of the Glavupraform, comrade GTsadenko, to use the 500,000 people allocated in accordance with this decree to staff spare parts for the preparation of marching reinforcements and to resupply rifle divisions withdrawn from the front, as well as to form tank and other special units.”
In contrast to the prisoners of these categories who did not pose a serious social danger, the situation was completely different with those convicted of grave and especially grave crimes. Already on June 22, 1941, a joint directive of the NKVD of the USSR and the USSR Prosecutor's Office No. 221 was adopted, ordering to stop the release from places of detention (even after serving the term of imprisonment) of bandits, recidivists and other dangerous criminals, including those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes under Article 58 of the Criminal Code. The specified category was ordered to be taken under enhanced protection, to stop using it at work without escort.
In this regard, V. Zemskov notes: “During the war in the Gulag, the number of those convicted of counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous crimes increased by more than 1.5 times. [...] The total number of detainees with release until December 1, 1944 was about 26 thousand people. In addition, about 60,000 people whose term of imprisonment had ended were forcibly left at camps for “free hire”.
The popular topic in popular culture today about the mass of "thieves" on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, as we see, is completely unfounded. First of all, about a million former prisoners who passed through the camps were transferred to the ranks of the Red Army during the entire war, with the size of the active army in 1944 of 6.7 million people (the total composition of the army and navy by the end of the war was 12,839,800 people).
The “Gulag contingent” in the troops was thus less than 1/6.
The bulk of the prisoners released and transferred to the Red Army were convicted for petty crimes (in particular, for absenteeism) for short periods and could not establish "camp procedures" in the units. Especially dangerous criminals, including recidivist criminals, were not subject to release and transfer to the troops, as well as political prisoners. The stories that serve as the leitmotif of modern films about the Great Patriotic War, where a good "political" prisoner comes into conflict with a mass of lessons in the echelon going to the front, are pure, uncomplicated fiction. Neither one nor the other could be in the echelon.
It should be noted separately moral condition Gulag prisoners during the Great Patriotic War. “In the reports of the Gulag on the mood of the prisoners, it was noted that only an insignificant part of them hoped for release with the help of the Nazis,” V. Zemskov notes in his work. Most of them were patriotic.
In 1944, 95% of working prisoners of the Gulag were covered by labor competition, the number of “refuseees” from work decreased by five times compared to 1940 and amounted to only 0.25% of the total number of able-bodied prisoners.
Chapter 20
Stalin, commissars and modern democrats
As is known from late Soviet and post-Soviet mythology, the commanders of the Red Army were distinguished by incompetence, the commissars - by their disregard for human life, the soldiers - by their general unwillingness to fight for the regime that brought them so much evil.
The officers were massively repressed before the war by Stalin. Commissars were brutal in their very essence. The soldiers, whose families were subjected to persecution, repression and Bolshevik experiments for 24 long years, hated Stalin and the Soviet system with all their hearts.
Naturally, order in the troops under these conditions could only be maintained by mass terror. Zagrad detachments, detached for this purpose from the ranks of the NKVD, lined up behind the ranks of the advancing armies and fired in the back from Maxim machine guns. This image is depicted in volume, for example, in the film Enemy at the Gates, a landmark for its time, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (2001).
It is understood that the NKVD troops were recruited from some completely different people, fundamentally different from ordinary Soviet ones.
These statements are intertwined into such a tight ball of myths that it is hardly rational to separate them. Their main feature is still the demonic figure of Stalin, the image of Stalinist repressions and their continuation on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In subsequent chapters, we will look at their components in more detail.
Analyzing the defeats of 1941, Vadim Belotserkovsky, an analyst at Novaya Gazeta and part-time correspondent for Radio Liberty, notes in the article “War. Hitler. Stalin":
“The defeat was a consequence of the rottenness of the Stalinist dictatorial regime. The military leaders and all officials were paralyzed by the fear of responsibility before Stalin...
A weighty reason for the defeat was probably the fact that in 1937-1938 Stalin's "strong hand" knocked out more than 70 percent of the top and middle command personnel, including the most talented commanders...
The third most important reason for the German victories is the hardest to recognize for the leavened patriots. It is that a huge mass of the population of the Soviet Union had no desire to fight for the regime that brought them so much suffering. Indisputable proof of this is more than two million soldiers who surrendered already in the first two or three months of the war. History did not know this, if you do not climb into hoary antiquity!
No less vivid evidence is the creation in the summer of 1941 of barrage detachments, which were supposed to shoot at the retreating soldiers. The fact is as unique as the mass surrender.
Here we see the entire array of statements, set out in just a couple of paragraphs. There are no commissars in it, however, in other works they appear as personified expressions of the “putrid” Stalinist regime of the WWII period, its visible embodiment at the front.
It is interesting that the descriptions of this regime in the modern democratic press practically coincide with the propaganda from the fascist leaflets of the Great Patriotic War. The most famous of them is “Beat the Jew - political officer, the face asks for a brick!” just depicted the commissar, who hid with a revolver behind the backs of the soldiers whom he was driving into the attack. “The commissars and political commissars are forcing you to senseless resistance,” reads the text of the leaflet. - Drive the commissars and go to us!
This is an exceptional example, by no means all Hitler's leaflets were so stupidly straightforward. Much attention was paid to the "enlightenment" of the soldiers of the Red Army about the essence of the regime, the commissars were only a close and visible manifestation of it. Much more instructive is the leaflet signed "Russian Committee: ROA":
"Friends and brothers!
In 1932, the Judeo-Bolshevik authorities drove the best peasants into exile, camps and prisons, and the rest of the peasantry were herded into collective farms. There was still plenty of bread in the country. Stalin and his solicitors sent motorcades all over Rus', they pumped out grain from deep places and brought it to the cities on the square, fenced the walls of grain sacks on a larger square and poured bread there. It rained, bread was lost in tens of thousands of tons, and the GPU was looking for the culprits.
For the economic counter-revolution, "switchmen" were driven into prisons, and the culprits were: Stalin himself and the Jews.
Have you, comrades, forgotten this? No! You remember this well and are in solidarity with me, but your trouble is that Stalin knows how to keep you under fear and sends you to die for the system you hate.
If discard sick for fascist propaganda Jewish question, isn't it, surprisingly familiar words? In another leaflet, the soldiers of the Red Army explained that the offensive of the Red Army was a temporary phenomenon, achieved at the cost of incredible losses. “The Germans are very strong and very far from exhaustion. They do not attack only because it is more profitable for them that the Red Army advances and suffers huge losses. The reason why the Soviet regime nonetheless drives the soldiers on the offensive is also stated here: “Stalin, throwing his regiments over and over again on the German defense line, regardless of any losses, pursues not military, but political goals. The fact is that Stalin does not need a victory over the Germans in general, but he needs such a victory in which he and his clique will retain their dominance.
Is it necessary to be surprised when reading in 2005 in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper an article by Alexander Minkin “Whose victory?”:
"We won. Thinking about it, you understand: Stalin won. Not a hair fell from his head, neither the barbecue, nor Khvanchkara, nor Herzegovina-Flor disappeared from the ration. He did not care about the millions who died (including his own son). This is certain; and he himself confirmed this: to the millions who died in the war with Hitler, he added our prisoners, now killed in their native concentration camps. There was such a term "displaced persons" - almost enemies of the people.
On Stalin's account ... 30,000,000 victims of the war, another 20-30 million - camps and executions. Total: more than 60 million. Our military sacrifices are entirely on Stalin's account.
You see how easy it is to bring out 60 million victims of Stalinism. It is enough to announce that all the victims of the Great Patriotic War are on his account. Fascists have nothing to do with it.
But even these are flowers. The next leaflet of the ROA (1943, Smolensk, personally signed by the "Chairman of the Russian Committee, Lieutenant General" A. Vlasov) says:
“The Russian people are an equal member of the family of the free peoples of New Europe!
The Russian people must know the truth about what awaits them after the overthrow of Stalin's power and the establishment of peace. The Bolsheviks, in order to force the Russian people to fight for the interests of others, falsely assert that Germany brings slavery to the peoples of the USSR ...
What is the truth about New Europe, which Great Germany seeks to build together with other peoples? .. All the peoples of Europe are members of a single large family. In one of the speeches in the German Reichstag, the leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler, said:
“How many worries would humanity, and especially the peoples of Europe, avoid if, with the political organization of the modern living space, as well as with economic cooperation, natural, self-evident, life principles were respected. The observance of these principles seems to me absolutely necessary if we want to achieve better results in the future than we do now. First of all, this applies to Europe. The peoples of Europe are one family."...
There is only one choice - either a European family of free, equal peoples, or slavery under the rule of Stalin.
70 years ago, the Soviet people did not believe in the promises of a common European home (they believed them later, in the late 80s and early 90s). Too obviously terrible was this “family of equal peoples”, who came to Soviet soil with execution ditches, gallows everywhere and villages burned to the ground. Goebbels and Vlasov tried in vain, what was happening was obvious to the Soviet people.
Today it is again not obvious to A. Minkin. In the article already cited, he asks:
“But what if it would be better if it weren’t for Stalin who defeated Hitler, and Hitler for Stalin?
It was not Germany that perished in 1945. Fascism is dead.
Similarly: not Russia would perish, but the regime. Stalinism.
Maybe it would be better if Nazi Germany defeated the USSR in 1945. And even better b - in 1941! We would not have lost our 22 or 30 million people. And this is not counting the post-war "Beria" millions.
We have liberated Germany. Maybe it would be better to release us?
Previously, such defeatist arguments (if they did arise) were immediately interrupted by a spiritual protest: no! Stalin is better than a thousand years of slavery under Hitler!
It is a myth. This is a false choice, planted by propaganda.”
The study of fascist leaflets from the Great Patriotic War is very instructive. We must pay tribute to the Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, his works find fans to this day, and fans in completely unexpected places. It seems that it was not without reason that in one of his interviews, the rector of the Russian State Humanitarian University, the well-known democrat of the first wave, Yuri Afanasiev, said: "Fascism is hypertrophied liberalism."
The incompetence of the commanders of the Red Army, who “filled up the enemy with corpses,” is explained by Stalinist repressions, during which all talented officers were destroyed. The tone of this campaign, as usual, was set by N.S. Khrushchev from the podium of the XX Congress:
“Very grave consequences, especially for the initial period of the war, were also the fact that during the years 1937-1941, as a result of Stalin's suspicion, numerous cadres of army commanders and political workers were exterminated on slanderous accusations. During these years, several layers of command personnel were repressed, starting literally from a company and a battalion to the highest army centers, including almost completely destroyed those command personnel who had gained some experience in waging war in Spain and the Far East.
For material confirmation of these words, they usually give out the statements of V. Anfilov, a professor at MGIMO, formerly a senior researcher General Staff, published in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on June 22, 1988. Referring to the data of the meeting of the top command and political staff of the Red Army in 1940, he writes:
“The last check carried out by the infantry inspector,” the head of the combat training department, Lieutenant General V. Kurdyumov, said at a meeting in December 1940, “showed that of the 225 regiment commanders involved in the training, only 25 people were graduates of military schools, the remaining 200 people are people who graduated from junior lieutenant courses and came from the reserve.”
The incident happened in 1993, when the materials of the meeting referred to by V. Anfilov were declassified and published. The modern historian I. Pykhalov notes that if you look at the transcript of the meeting of the top command and political staff of the Red Army held on December 23 - 31, 1940, it turns out that Lieutenant General V.N. Kurdyumov said nothing of the sort. If we take the official data of the Main Directorate of Personnel of the Red Army, it turns out that as of January 1, 1941, out of 1833 regiment commanders, 14% graduated from military academies, 60% from military schools, and only 26% had an accelerated military education.
The writer Viktor Rezun (Suvorov) is deservedly considered a storehouse of myths on this topic. Here are the data of speeches, and officers who had accelerated training courses for junior lieutenants, and it is not clear where the corps commanders and commanders came from in the first period of the war - after all, by that time general ranks had been introduced into the Red Army. But what does "incomprehensible" mean? Naturally, with the outbreak of the war, they were released from the camps in order to somehow compensate for the consequences of the repressions of the command staff of the Red Army.
The "historian", in accordance with his method of research, "forgets" that the army of the USSR was growing rapidly. From the 1930s to the early 1940s, its numbers increased several times. Authoritative military historian M. Meltyukhov in the study “Stalin's Missed Chance. Soviet Union and the struggle for Europe: 1939-1941 "Despite the expansion of the network of military educational institutions, significantly increase educational level the command staff failed, because in the conditions of its shortage, it was necessary to use reserve officers, who basically did not have a higher military education. Therefore, the number of officers with higher and secondary military education decreased from 79.5% on January 1, 1937 to 63% on January 1, 1941.
True, in absolute terms, with an increase in the officer corps by 2.8 times, the number of officers with higher and secondary military education increased by 2.2 times - from 164,309 to 385,136 people.
The “researcher” also forgets about the practice of introducing general ranks in the Red Army in 1940. Everything, however, is much more prosaic and has nothing to do with Stalin's repressions. The introduction of new ranks did not mean automatic renaming in accordance with the position held. The assignment of general ranks was carried out personally, the decision on each issue was made by a special commission - the commission of the Main Military Council of the Red Army for the presentation of candidates for assignment military ranks. Moreover, individual military leaders were denied the assignment of the rank of general.
The reasons for the appearance of officers with archaic ranks on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War were, therefore, not the Gulag camps at all (at most, not only the Gulag camps), but the fact that they did not disappear anywhere at the time of the start of the Second World War.
"Research" by Viktor Suvorov is a separate big topic, a massive layer of anti-Soviet ideology. Unfortunately, we cannot dwell on them here in more detail, although some methods of his work are worth noting for the future. For all their internal illogicality, they nevertheless have an amazing influence on the masses. What is even worth the thesis about offensive weapons and the Soviet tank industry: why did the USSR mass-produce wheeled tanks? After all, it was impossible to use them inside the country, we had no roads. It is clear that Stalin set his sights on the German autobahns.
Even ignoring the fact that autobahns in Germany appeared later than wheeled tanks in the USSR, it remains unclear why the Soviet Union, among other things, mass-produced wheeled vehicles, wheeled tractors, and even wheeled bicycles. We didn't have roads.
Let's return to the assessment of the scale of repressions in the Red Army in the 30s and 40s, let's try to find out what effect they had on the combat effectiveness of the army on the eve of the war. Fortunately, archives open to researchers allow us to assess not only the scale of the pre-war purges in the army, but also the reasons that gave rise to them.
I. Pykhalov notes the confusion that developed around the concept of purges in the Red Army in 1930-1940. Some authors, speaking of tens of thousands of officers repressed during this period, do not take into account their future fate. Colonel-General D. Volkogonov claims that, “according to available data, from May 1937 to September 1938, i.e. within a year and a half, 36,761 people were repressed in the army, and more than 3,000 in the navy.” However, he honestly notes that "some of them were, however, only dismissed from the Red Army." In other publications, such clarifications are not found. Nevertheless, I. Pykhalov emphasizes, it is already obvious that “the number of “repressed” includes not only those who were shot or at least arrested, but also people simply dismissed from the army” .
The question of the reasons for the purges in the Red Army stands apart, its consideration, if it occurs, is only in specialized literature. An idea about them is given by the following document, which is also cited by I. Pykhalov:
"REFERENCE
Over the past five years (from 1934 to October 25, 1939), the following number of command personnel were fired from the cadres of the Red Army annually:
In 1934, 6596 people were dismissed, or 5.9% of the payroll, of which:
a) for drunkenness and moral decay - 1513;
b) due to illness, disability, death, etc. - 4604;
c) as arrested and convicted - 479. Total - 6596.
In 1935, 8560 people were dismissed, or 7.2% of the payroll, of which:
a) for political and moral reasons, official discrepancy, at will, etc. - 6719;
b) due to illness and death - 1492;
c) as convicts - 349. Total - 8560;
In 1936, 4918 people were fired, or 3.9% of the payroll, of which:
a) for drunkenness and political and moral inconsistency - 1942;
b) due to illness, disability and death - 1937;
c) for political reasons (exclusion from the party) - 782;
d) as arrested and convicted - 257. Total - 4918.
In 1937, 18,658 people were fired, or 13.6% of the payroll, of which:
a) for political reasons (exclusion from the party, connection with enemies of the people) - 11,104;
b) arrested - 4474;
c) for drunkenness and moral decay - 1139;
d) due to illness, disability, death - 1941.
Total - 18 658.
In 1938, 16,362 people were fired, or 11.3% of the payroll, of which:
a) for political reasons - expelled from the CPSU (b), who, according to the directive of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), were subject to dismissal from the Red Army and for communication with the conspirators - 3580;
b) foreigners (Latvians - 717, Poles - 1099, Germans - 620, Estonians - 312, Koreans, Lithuanians and others), natives of foreign countries and related to it, who are dismissed according to the directive People's Commissar defense dated 24.6.1938 No. 200/sh. - 4138;
c) arrested - 5032;
d) for drunkenness, embezzlement, theft, moral decay - 2671;
e) due to illness, disability, death - 941.
In total - 16 362.
In 1939, on October 25, 1691 people were dismissed, or 0.6% of the payroll, of which:
a) for political reasons (exclusion from the party, connection with the conspirators) - 277;
b) arrested - 67;
c) for drunkenness and moral decay - 197;
d) due to illness, disability - 725;
e) excluded due to death - 425.
The total number of dismissed people for 6 years is 56,785 people.
Total dismissed in 1937 and 1938. - 35,020 people, of which:
a) natural loss (dead, dismissed due to illness, disability, drunkards, etc.) is 6692, or 19.1% of the number of dismissed;
b) those arrested - 9506, or 27.2% of those dismissed;
c) dismissed for political reasons (excluded from the AUCP(b) - by directive of the Central Committee of the AUCP(b) - 14,684, or 41.9% of those dismissed;
d) foreigners dismissed under the directive of the People's Commissar of Defense - 4138 people, or 11.8% of those dismissed.
Thus, in 1938, 7718 people, or 41% of those dismissed in 1938, were fired on the directive of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the People's Commissar of Defense.
Along with the cleansing of the army from hostile elements, part of the command staff was also dismissed for unreasonable reasons. After being reinstated in the party and establishing the groundlessness of the dismissal, 6650 people were returned to the Red Army, mainly captains, senior lieutenants, lieutenants and their equals, constituting 62% of this number.
In place of the dismissed, 8154 people from the reserve came to the army, from one-year-olds - 2572 people, from the political staff of the reserve - 4000 people, which covers the number of those dismissed.
The dismissal in 1939 comes at the expense of natural attrition and the cleansing of the army from drunkards, whom the people's commissar of defense, by his order of December 28, 1938, demands to be mercilessly expelled from the Red Army.
Thus, in two years (1937 and 1938) the army was seriously cleansed of politically hostile elements, drunkards and foreigners who did not inspire political confidence.
As a result, we have a much stronger political and moral state. The rise in discipline, the rapid advancement of cadres, promotion in military ranks, as well as an increase in salaries of maintenance raised the interest and confidence of cadres and<обусловили>the high political upsurge in the Red Army, shown in practice in the historic victories in the area of Lake Khasan and the river. Khalkhin Gol, for distinction in which the Government awarded 96 people with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and 23,728 people with orders and medals.
As we can see, by no means all military personnel were dismissed for political reasons, far from all were arrested, of those illegally accused in 1939, 6,650 people were reinstated in the party and returned to the Red Army. A considerable part of the officer corps was dismissed (and, apparently, partially convicted) for service inconsistency, drunkenness, moral decay, theft, embezzlement.
A certain idea of the scale of the problem is given by an excerpt from the order of the People's Commissar of Defense K.E. Voroshilov No. 0219 dated December 28, 1938 on the fight against drunkenness in the Red Army:
“Here are some examples of the most serious crimes committed while drunk by people who, by misunderstanding, are dressed in military uniform. On October 15, in Vladivostok, four lieutenants, drunk to the point of losing their human form, staged a brawl in a restaurant, opened fire and wounded two citizens. On September 18, two lieutenants of the railway regiment, under the same circumstances, in a restaurant, quarreled among themselves, shot themselves. The political instructor of one of the units of the 3rd SD, a drunkard and a brawler, fraudulently collected 425 rubles from junior commanders, stole a watch and a revolver and deserted from the unit, and a few days later raped and killed a 13-year-old girl.
A cautious assessment of the scale of the purges in the Red Army is given by the military historian I. Meltyukhov. In the cited study “Stalin's Missed Chance. The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Europe: 1939-1941 (Documents, Facts, Judgments)" he notes:
“The greatest disagreement was caused by the question of the scale of repression in the Red Army. So, V.S. Koval believes that the entire officer corps died, and L.A. Kirchner believes that only 50% of the officers were repressed. According to V.G. Klevtsov, in 1937-1938. 35.2 thousand officers were physically destroyed. YES. Volkogonov and D.M. The projector writes about 40 thousand repressed, A.M. Samsonov - about 43 thousand, N.M. Ramanichev - about 44 thousand, Yu.A. Gorkoe - about 48 773, G.A. Kumanev increases this figure to 50 thousand, and A.N. Yakovlev - up to 70 thousand.
In the book by V.N. Rapoport and Yu.A. Geller refers to about 100 thousand officers, however, personal information is given only about 651 repressed officers, who accounted for 64.8% of the top command staff as of January 1, 1937. O.F. Suvenirov first published a list of 749 people, and then expanded it to 1,669 officers who died in 1936-1941. Information about the rest of the repressed is still missing.”
A problem with general assessment the number of victims of repression, as we see, is completely repeated in the question of Stalin's purges in the Red Army. The number of the repressed inevitably increases from author to author. However, attempts to create lists of victims lead to the emergence of bases with a negligible number of names, compared to the previously announced data.
The historian in his study notes the inadmissibility of mixing the concepts of "dismissed" and "repressed" and, similarly to Zemskov, attempts to introduce a definition of the concept of "repression". These, according to Meltyukhov, should include only those arrested and dismissed for political reasons. True, he notes, officers were also arrested for various crimes, which should also be taken into account.
Speaking about the quantitative assessment of repressions in the Red Army, I. Meltyukhov notes: “A.T. Ukolov and V.I. Ivkin, on the basis of data from the judicial authorities of the Red Army, note that in 1937-1939. about 8,624 people were convicted for political crimes, while indicating that it is hardly worth counting those convicted of criminal and moral crimes among the repressed. In his latest research O.F. Suvenirov writes about 1634 dead and 3682 convicted by military tribunals in 1936-1941. officers for counter-revolutionary crimes.
So far, the limited source base does not allow unequivocally solving this key issue. Available materials show that in 1937-1939. over 45,000 people were dismissed from the armed forces (36,898 in the ground forces, 5,616 in the air force and over 3,000 in the navy). However, only those dismissed for their connection with the conspirators and on a national basis, as well as those arrested for political reasons, can be attributed to the repressed. But, unfortunately, it is precisely the data on the reasons for layoffs that are still not exactly known.”
I. Meltyukhov is extremely cautious in assessing the consequences of purges in the Red Army:
“Many authors believe that the repressions affected the level of military scientific developments and this led to the abandonment of many provisions of military theory developed in the late 1920s and 1930s. So, D.M. Projector believes that the repression led to the rejection of the theory of "deep offensive operation”, to which they returned again only in 1940. The author not only does not explain why this turnaround occurred, but also does not provide any evidence that it took place at all. After all, if this were really the case, then the army would receive new military regulations and instructions, radically different from those adopted before 1937 [...]
L.A. Kirchner argues that the rejection of the "deep operation" theory led to an exaggerated position of the cavalry in the Red Army. But from these positions, the reduction of cavalry from 32 cavalry divisions on January 1, 1937 to 26 on January 1, 1939 is completely inexplicable. Despite the fact that by the beginning of the war only 13 cavalry divisions remained in the Red Army, statements about the prevalence of cavalry look somewhat strange.
Other authors, in support of their point of view, give only general arguments. The most serious argument is the indication that the military-scientific works of "enemies of the people" were withdrawn from libraries. However, we should not forget that the troops are trained not according to the work of individual military leaders, even if they are brilliant, but according to military regulations and instructions that no one canceled. [...]"
“A comprehensive review of studies on the issue of repressions in the Red Army shows that the widespread version of their catastrophic consequences for the army has not been proven and requires further careful study,” the historian sums up.
The most difficult, in terms of evidence (both on the one hand and on the other), is the thesis put forward by the propagandists that "the vast mass of the population of the Soviet Union had no desire to fight for the regime that brought them so much suffering." For apologists for the topic of hundreds of millions of victims of Stalinist repressions, it seems self-evident:
“We are united by common sacrifices. Just as in almost every Russian family someone died during the Great Patriotic War, so in almost every Russian family someone suffered from the Great Terror, Novaya Gazeta reports in its issue of February 21, 2008.
“There is practically not a single family in Russia that did not suffer from Stalinist repressions. As evidenced historical documents, millions of people passed through the Gulag system, millions died in camps and special settlements, about a million were executed, ”the intelligentsia echoed her in June 2008 in an appeal for the creation of a nationwide memorial to the victims of Stalinist repressions. Among the signatories are poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev, writers Daniil Granin, Boris Strugatsky, actor Yuri Solomin.
Let's turn our attention back to the question.
The first quote easily equates the Stalinist repressions with the tragedy of the Great Patriotic War. The second contains the traditional statement about millions, millions and millions - executed, passed through the Gulag, etc. No attempt is being made to separate the entire mass of prisoners, to single out at least those convicted under Article 58 (although this will not be entirely accurate, but nonetheless). Unfortunately, in recent years this technique has been used so often (better to say - everywhere) that it must apparently be considered as being used deliberately.
If the repressions touched every family, every person, there can be no doubt about the exasperation of society. Numerous "camp prose", memoirs of the intelligentsia, books by A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Shalamov, followed by A. Rybakov's "Children of the Arbat" and similar ones, telling about the Stalinist period, serve as confirmation.
How it was possible to hide this bitterness during all the years of Stalin's rule, presenting the world with a blissful picture of the film "Volga, Volga" is a separate question. However, he also receives authoritative answers: in the country there was a classic, according to Orwell, doublethink (everyone knew everything, but did not notice). In addition, people were intimidated by terror.
Yegor Gaidar writes in an article for the New Times magazine: “The threat of repression forces tens of millions of people who are not in the Gulag ... to come to terms with the fact that they do not have the right to choose their place of work and residence, that everything produced in excess of the minimum necessary to ensure life can be confiscated, that they cannot even dream of rights and freedoms and perceive this as an inevitable reality.”
These statements already contradict the reaction of the delegates of the XX Congress of the CPSU to the report of N.S. Khrushchev. It is meticulously marked in the transcript. People who allegedly existed all previous years in fear of terror are sincerely amazed and indignant at the “facts” that the First Secretary reads out. But we are not talking about ordinary citizens, these are party members, delegates of the central party body. Could they be in fear and at the same time unaware of its existence?
The distortion in the vision of the events of the Stalin period is largely due to the formation of his image precisely through the perception of events by the intelligentsia. At first, through the "camp prose", then, already in the late Soviet period, under the influence of the revelations of N.S. Khrushchev. Millions were sitting in the Gulag, only a few described their misadventures, but it was their point of view that prevailed in public opinion. It is difficult to say what those events would look like today if someone decided to experiment with publishing the memoirs of people representing a more or less representative sample of the “camp population” of the 1930s and 1940s. Obviously, along with the reflection of the intelligentsia, we would read many interesting lines from authors who take other positions.
We are not necessarily talking about criminals for whom the “zone” is their home, although they should not be discounted either. The author knows the opinions of people who, being repressed in the Stalin period on the basis of accusations that today would accurately be labeled as “political”, did not consider themselves political prisoners or repressed (as in the case of dispossession, for example). Objectively considering the life they lived, they paid tribute to the Soviet government, which gave housing, medicine, education and a position in society to their children.
The situation with the representation of the processes taking place in society developed similarly. And here the main tone in the post-Stalin period was set by the "ruler of thoughts" of the intelligentsia - articles, literature, and subsequently television programs. The peasant or worker with eight grades of education generally did not participate in this process, and his voice is almost non-existent.
We see the image of the Stalin period through the prism of a limited number of authors and experts, who are unlikely to represent a representative section of the society of that time.
Not wanting to offend anyone, I will nevertheless note an unpleasant feature of the domestic "educated layer", which is subject to a kind of intellectual "herd feeling" - much more than the bulk of the population. Moreover, this potential of theirs, as a rule, is directed in a destructive direction: during the Khrushchev “thaw”, the intelligentsia creatively destroyed the cult of personality, during the Brezhnev stagnation in the kitchens, they lamented the horrors of the regime. Having risen with Gorbachev, she began to violently break the Soviet Union. It did not stop even when there was nothing left of the USSR, the phrase that was born then was indicative: “They aimed at communism, but ended up in Russia.” Since the early 2000s, these people have been lamenting again. You involuntarily wonder: do they know how, just in case, anything else?
Despite the objective difficulties, we will make an attempt to analyze the mood of Soviet society in the pre-war period. First of all, let's try to understand the attitude of people towards the dominant ideology. Were they “Soviet people”, communists, or remained “pre-revolutionary” - outwardly mimicking the requirements of the authorities and ideology, but with a fiddle in their pocket, just waiting for the opportunity to go to a capitalist paradise - even if they surrendered to the Nazi troops in the first days of the war.
The bitterness of the part of the society that went through the Gulag is generally known to us. Let's try to more generally define the mood of the intelligentsia in the 1930s and 1940s. Find out for yourself whether there was an understanding of the processes taking place in the country in this environment, whether opposition to Stalin was possible, on what it was built.
It is known that a world-famous physicist, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labor L. Landau was repressed in 1938 on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and the creation anti-Soviet organization(according to Article 58). Only the intervention of Academician P. Kapitza and the Danish physicist N. Bohr, who took him on bail, made it possible to save Landau from the camps. He was released in 1939.
It is much less known (and this is also a common feature of reports of repressions) for what exactly L. Landau was arrested. The fact is that in his case there really was anti-Soviet agitation and the creation of an anti-Soviet organization. Project "Social History domestic science”cites the text of leaflets produced and distributed by L. Landau in 1938:
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Comrades!
great deal October revolution meanly betrayed. The country is flooded with blood and mud. Millions of innocent people are thrown into prison, and no one can know when his turn will come. The economy is falling apart. Hunger is coming. Don't you see, comrades, that the Stalinist clique has carried out a fascist coup. Socialism remained only on the pages of definitively lied newspapers. In his furious hatred of real socialism, Stalin compared himself to Hitler and Mussolini. Destroying the country for the sake of maintaining his power, Stalin turns it into an easy prey for brutal German fascism. The only way out for the working class and all the working people of our country is a resolute struggle against Stalinist and Hitlerite fascism, the struggle for socialism.
Comrades, get organized! Do not be afraid of executioners from the NKVD. They are capable of beating only defenseless prisoners, catching innocent innocent people, plundering people's property and inventing ridiculous lawsuits about non-existent conspiracies.
Comrades, join the Anti-Fascist Workers' Party. Get in touch with her Moscow Committee.
Organize at the enterprises of the ARP group. Set up underground equipment. Prepare the mass movement for socialism by agitation and propaganda.
Stalinist fascism rests only on our disorganization. The proletariat of our country, having overthrown the power of the tsar and the capitalists, will be able to overthrow the fascist dictator and his clique.
Moscow Committee of the Anti-Fascist Workers' Party.
This is an interesting document. It should be noted a number important features: Landau does not dispute communism at all, on the contrary, he appeals to the fact that "the cause of the October Revolution is meanly betrayed." He strives for "true socialism", which, in his opinion, was perverted by Stalin.
The leaflet is filled with Trotskyist ideologies. It may seem to the reader that it differs little from the statements of modern democrats, but it is not. First of all, Landau does not talk about the identity of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. According to him, Stalin, "in his rabid hatred of real socialism ... compared with Hitler and Mussolini." And at the same time, “destroying the country for the sake of maintaining his power, Stalin turns it into an easy prey for brutal German fascism.”
Statements that Stalin has departed from real socialism, the cause of the October Revolution is betrayed, references to Hitler and Mussolini clearly indicate his rejection of the Stalinist course of building socialism in a single country.
It is important that in 1938 the comparison with Hitler and Mussolini did not have the negative connotations that appeared after the Great Patriotic War. Hitler has not yet become a monster and a murderer, remaining a completely respectable European politician (World War II has not even begun yet). Here Landau merely draws analogies between Stalin's concept of building socialism in a single country and the concept of building national socialism in Germany or fascism in Italy. And he opposes them to Trotsky's idea of a permanent revolution, to the idea of a world revolution.
This is the essence of the statements "The great cause of the October Revolution has been basely betrayed." Following orthodox Marxism, only with the victory of the revolution of the working people throughout the world can a socialist and communist state be built. This is "real socialism".
As for the phrase about millions of people thrown into prison, I do not think that young Landau had any objective data on the scale of repressions. The same applies to the very interesting phrase in an anti-Stalinist leaflet "to invent ridiculous lawsuits about non-existent conspiracies." Obviously, L. Landau considered his organization to be truly Soviet and did not attribute these words to his own account.
In any case, the physicist was one of the intelligentsia, who "knew everything." The more interesting is his example. We see his obvious communist sentiments, so bright that for "true socialism" he is ready to fight against the Stalinist distortions of the idea.
He does not look like a person frightened by the repressive machine, just as he did not look like after his release in 1939. Landau never returned to political activity, he focused on science and worked fruitfully in the Soviet state for many years, received recognition, in 1946 he became an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a laureate of the USSR State Prize for 1946, 1949 and 1953, in 1954 he was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor.
An important conclusion from the case of Lev Landau, whom modern researchers present as a “democrat” of his time, a predecessor of Academician Sakharov, is the deep communist nature of his views. He was not a secret White Guard or a hidden liberal, he was precisely a Soviet man. His disagreement with the current party line did not mean a rejection of the workers' and peasants' state or Lenin's line. Landau's desire to correct mistakes on the path of the country's development (as he saw them) in no way means his unwillingness to fight for the fatherland or his desire to go over to the Nazis at the first opportunity.
It is much more difficult to give the modern reader an idea of the social relations of that time. How did people perceive the events taking place in the pre-war period? There was a preparation for the war, goods disappeared from the shelves, liability for absenteeism was introduced, employees were attached to enterprises.
How did people react to the repression? Did you believe that there were enemies around? Everyone understood, but remained silent? How were their relations with the Soviet government built?
A certain idea about this is given by written appeals of citizens to the leaders of the state. They are kept in the Russian state archive Economics (RGAE). These letters are cited in his study “Soviet Civilization” by S.G. Kara-Murza.
Unlike other sources, they did not pass literary editing and are direct evidence of the late 30s, which makes them invaluable sources of information. We will give some of these references with reasonable abbreviations where it is permissible without losing the general meaning. In addition to an idea of people's lives, of the difficulties they had to face, of the life of the pre-war period, they provide deep material for analyzing people's worldview. S.G. Kara-Murza writes: “The letters show well that the Soviet system was exactly native to people, and they expected relief from their difficult situation with a sense of their right.” Let the reader judge that:
"WITH. Abuladze - V.M. Molotov.
Dear Vyacheslav Mikhailovich!
Again, someone's criminal paw upset the supply of Moscow. Again queues from the night for fats, potatoes disappeared, no fish at all. There is everything on the market, but it is also scarce and at a quadruple price. As for consumer goods, there are more and more non-working people in endless queues, some kind of flint uncles and janitors, early cleaners or unemployed. Now they are collective farmers who often put what they buy into chests as currency. How to be a servant? We don't have time to stand in line for hours or pay outrageous prices in the market. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich! Is it really impossible to regulate the supply of food and consumer goods? We ask you, as our deputy, to help eliminate all sorts of machinations and lack of culture in supply, because queues develop the worst qualities in people: envy, anger, rudeness, and exhaust people's whole soul.
With perfect respect, S. Abuladze.
“G.S. Bastynchuk - I.V. Stalin.
Dear Joseph Vissarionovich!
Sorry to bother you, but let me express my thoughts to you.
It may be wrong, but I think that free trade in the country of the Soviets does not correspond to the socialist structure, especially with the current demand of the consumer.
I think that it is not a secret for you that many of us shout at the top of their lungs that we have a lot of everything and that everything can be bought in any store of our Union. In fact, it is not entirely correct, and, in my opinion, these exclamations come from those criminal elements for whom free trade is a profitable article of a wild life. The question is why approximately gr. Bastynchuk - a worker from the age of 14, with a work experience of 17 years, with a small family of 3 people, with a salary of 500-600 rubles a month, not a drunkard, not a gambler - cannot buy at least a meter of chintz or woolen material in free trade for four years! Doesn't he need it? Or not able to? No, that's not the point. The reason lies in free trade, from which honest workers in line suffocate in vain, and underworld intertwined with the trading elements, and although "hidden", but freely - unaccounted for, they squander everything that only comes into their possession for free trade. And on this criminal speculation they arrange for themselves all the blessings of life.
It seems to me that the question of free Soviet trade must be dealt with immediately and built and organized also on socialist principles—planning and accurate accounting, so that we citizens of the Soviet Union can have effective workers' control and correct accountability in the distribution of human vital needs.
Let the enemies of the people, the servants of capitalism, be ashamed, because in the capitalist system this is impossible to do, but in our country of Soviets, a country building a communist society, on the basis of planning, equality and accurate accounting, everything can be done, not excluding Soviet trade, which is feasible under a card system or something like it.
Let the apparatus of the distribution and trading organizations increase for this purpose, but we will be sure that we will remove thousands of speculators and thousands of criminal workers associated with them of the present free trade. In addition, we will be sure that every citizen of the USSR will receive as much as he needs and is supposed to receive for such and such a period of time. And we will not have that some make a reserve for 20 years ahead, while others need it today.
I am more than sure that all the honest workers of our Soviet Union will raise their hands for such a guaranteed planned distributive Soviet accounting trade. I hope you will let me know when you receive your letter.
4.1.1940. Worker of the mechanical workshop No. 2 of the Automobile Plant. Molotov Bastynchuk Grigory Saverianovich. Address: Gorky, 4, Komsomolskaya street, 11-a, apt. 1".
“P.S. Klementyev - to I.V. Stalin.
Dear Joseph Vissarionovich!
I am a housewife. Currently I live in Nizhny Tagil on the street. Dzerzhinskoy d. 45 sq. 10. Praskovya Stepanovna Klementieva. I have a husband and two sons, age 3.5 years and 9 months. Before the elections to the deputies of the Soviets, the husband worked in the Stalin District Council as a head. otd. frames. After the elections, they found that the position could be abolished - they fired him. But it's nothing. Now he, that is, from 25.1-40, got a job at Osoaviakhim as an instructor. This is not bad either, I am very pleased that he is in military work. All my life I have been striving to study military affairs, but my situation is unimportant, I have two small children, except for my husband, I have no relatives and relatives, which means that there is absolutely no one to leave the children to. True, my eldest son goes to kindergarten No. 4, where he has recovered well and is developing well, but with the younger Borenka, the situation is very serious. There is absolutely nothing to feed the child. Earlier though at consultation the dairy kitchen worked. Now it is closed. Nothing to prepare. All stores are empty, except for a small amount of herring, occasionally if a sausage appears, then into a fight. Sometimes there is such a crush in the store that they endure in unconsciousness.
Iosif Vissarionovich, something really terrible has begun. Bread, and then, you have to go at 2 am, stand until 6 am and get 2 kg of rye and white is very difficult to get. I no longer speak for people, but I will speak for myself. I have already exhausted so much that I don’t know what will happen to me next. It became very weak, the whole day salt with bread and water, and the child is only on one breast, you can’t get milk anywhere. If someone makes it, then the queue will not rise. The worst meat - 15 rubles, better - 24 rubles. at the collective farmers. That's how you want - and live. Not enough for existence, for life. Pushes already on the bad. It's hard to look at a hungry child. What in the dining room, and then you can’t buy dinner home, but only eat in the dining room. And then it works intermittently - there is nothing to cook from. Iosif Vissarionovich, we hear from many mothers that they want to destroy the children. They say I will flood the stove, close the pipe, let them fall asleep and not get up. There is absolutely nothing to feed. I already think about it too. Well, how to get out of this situation I can no longer think. It is very scary, because I so want to raise two sons. And you only aspire to this - to educate, to learn. My husband and I set ourselves the task - the elder Valery should be a pilot, the younger Borenka - a lieutenant. But the food is scary and very serious. Iosif Vissarionovich, why did it become so bad with food. In addition, even today they announced that dumplings were 7 rubles. now there will be 14 rubles, sausage was 7 rubles, now - 14 rubles. How are we going to live now? In my opinion, Iosif Vissarionovich, there is something like that here. After all, recently there was everything and suddenly in a few time there was nothing, there was nothing to exist further. Iosif Vissarionovich, it would be better if it was from books. At least I would get a little, but I would get everything, but you won’t get it for speculators. They disappear in stores all day long.
Iosif Vissarionovich, maybe there are bad people somewhere else, and you have to suffer like this. Write to me, Iosif Vissarionovich, will it really be such a life. There is absolutely nothing to eat. It's already 12 o'clock, and I still haven't eaten anything, ran around all the shops and came with nothing. Iosif Vissarionovich, I am waiting for an answer, do not refuse to write.
Klementieva P. S.
“N.S. Neugasov - People's Commissariat of the USSR.
Dear comrades! Alapaevsk, Sverdlovsk region, is experiencing a crisis in the grain and flour supply, unprecedented in history. People, children - the flowers of the future freeze in lines from evening to morning in 40-degree frosts for two or 4 kilograms of bread.
Who will believe! If you don't believe me, then I assure you. We are told by the local authorities that according to the plan everything has been used up and that the cattle are fed with bread, and the center cannot let go any more. We, the workers of the mountains. Alapaevsk, in no case do we believe and will not believe that the center has not been notified of this machination of the local authorities. On 15/XII-39 I sent a letter personally to Comrade. Stalin, but it did not reach, because there was no answer for me. Neither bread nor flour is thrown into Alapaevsk so much as to destroy the queues. I am sure that the Government of the USSR, represented by Comrade. Stalin will respond to this letter and take urgent measures, i.e., he will throw flour into flour shops and baked bread will be baked as much as necessary, and the people in charge of this business will be brought to severe responsibility, as was the case in 1937.
My address: city. Alapaevsk, Sverdlovsk region. Working town, barrack No. 11, apt. 73. Neugasov Nick (olay) Sem (enovich).
I am sure that the party and the government will not allow anyone to mock the working class in the way they are mocked here, and I want to know if my first letter has reached me.
"Working artels" Our technique "- the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
This decision, either of the government or of the Tula regional workers, is sabotage for the complete indignation of the masses. In Tula, they introduced a card system, no worse than there were cards. What is currently being done in Mt. Thule, it's terrible to even think about it, let alone talk about it. Firstly, from the 23rd, all the shops in Tula were given to the workers of the arms factory, the workers of the cartridge factory, etc. In the artel, as well as other institutions, they did not give books at all. And the children go and ask, standing near the store: "Uncle, let me take at least some bread."
“Anonymous - People's Commissar of Trade of the USSR.
We have a big account for the Soviet country. All people are equal. This is one of the basics. Did only Moscow or Kyiv workers fight for Soviet power? Other cities also fought against the bourgeoisie. Why should they now suffer for lack of bread? IN short course party history we read that Soviet authority gave the land to the peasants and the factories to the workers, and that the position of everyone would be improved. No matter how they oppressed the worker and peasant before, he had bread. Now in the young Soviet country, which is rich in bread, for people to die of hunger? The one who works gets 1 kilo of bread.
What is a worker who has 3 or 4 children to do. Everyone cherishes his children, who now all want to grow up as engineers and pilots, and he gives them bread. How can such a worker work when he is hungry? In Berdichev, no amount of money can buy bread. People stand in line all night and many get nothing. You also have to stand in line for 1 kilo of potatoes, so that the worker, when he comes home, can at least eat something. Indeed, it is military time. The country is dear enough to all of us. You have to deny yourself a lot. Let there be no sugar, salty. But not to have bread? We must give bread to the Germans, but first we must feed our people so that they do not starve, so that if we are attacked, we can fight back. It is necessary to introduce cards so that everyone who has children can receive bread on them. And not so that the old people withered from hunger, and the children grew up with tuberculosis.
Now the worker cannot change jobs at will in order to find a better wage. Before introducing this law, it was necessary to do so in order to provide for every family person. It is necessary to improve the condition of the workers, not by agitation, which will be good, but by making it better now. After the introduction of the 8-hour working day, many were laid off and now they cannot even get a kilo of bread. Where can they find a living with their families? And they are not to blame for anything. Where can the old people who live dependent on children get bread?
It is also difficult in the artel. The rules are the same for young and old. Stalin said that from each - according to his ability and to each - according to his work, and the old cannot keep up with the young. Why do they not need to live in their old age?
Translation from Hebrew".
Chapter 24
Other "repressive" elements of the Second World War
Historical falsifications are rarely based on fiction from beginning to end. As a rule, to build a myth, a little bit of revelation from among the traditional defaults (which they try not to remember), a few facts, followed by their large-scale interpretations, is enough. And far-reaching conclusions are made, amazing worldview foundations.
“The more we learn about the war, the more inexplicable is the Victory. In 1964 - almost twenty years after the war - I first heard about detachments - about the ingenious system of selfless courage. You go on the attack - maybe you're lucky, the Germans won't kill you. Retreat - they will surely kill their own "(A. Minkin. “Whose victory?” MK. 06/22/2005.)
The existence of detachments is an element of silence, a "revelation" that Minkin brings. “They will definitely kill their own” - this is a fact. “The more inexplicable the Victory” is a far-reaching conclusion that calls into question both the heroism of the veterans and the victory itself at such a price. Minkin writes: “Maybe it would be better if Nazi Germany defeated the USSR in 1945. And even better b - in 1941.
Ideologists, bringing to light the dirty linen of history, do not say everything. Informing is not included in their duties, their task is demonization. In order not to complicate the picture (the myth must be simple, otherwise people will not be drawn to it), they are silent about a significant part of the facts, creating a picture that is convenient and easy to perceive.
About detachments and penal battalions, as separate elements of the repressive machine of the Great Patriotic War, solid works have been written in recent years, which are based on archival documents and memoirs of participants in the events. A certain catalyst for the interest of researchers in this topic was the release in the 2000s of a number of films that presented the events of the Great Patriotic War in a very specific way. The most odious of them should be recognized as the series "Penal Battalion", an ideological craft that brought together all conceivable and unthinkable myths of our time.
Works with a detailed analysis of this "movie masterpiece", studies that recreate the true state of affairs are available to the general reader. To avoid unnecessary repetitions, we will dwell only on the basic facts and documents that regulated the actions of barrage detachments and penal divisions during the years of the Second World War. Already these facts make it possible to understand how mythologized the modern idea of them is.
In the case of detachments, there is an obvious confusion in the mass consciousness, combining two concepts - the NKVD barrier detachments and similar army structures. The first were created with the beginning of the war. On June 27, 1941, the Third Directorate (counterintelligence) of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR issued a directive on the work of its bodies in wartime. In particular, they were ordered to organize mobile control and barrage detachments on roads, railway junctions, to clear forests, etc. It was also the responsibility of the barrier detachments to detain deserters, detain all suspicious elements that had penetrated the front line, conduct a preliminary investigation and transfer materials along with detainees under jurisdiction.
A well-known confusion arises in the question of the subordination of the barrage detachments of the first days of the war. In February 1941, the state security system of the USSR underwent a reform, as a result of which the People's Commissariat of State Security (NKGB) was separated from the unified NKVD, and military intelligence and counterintelligence were transferred from the NKVD to the People's Commissariat of Defense (this is how the Third Directorate of the NPO appeared). Again, these structures were united under the jurisdiction of the NKVD in July 1941, the Third Directorate was transformed into Special Departments.
Barrage detachments, originally created by the Third Directorate of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, were almost immediately re-incorporated into the structure of the NKVD and then were under the jurisdiction of the Special Departments.
The activities of the NKVD barrage detachments were finally regulated by the order of the NKVD of the USSR of July 19, 1941, which ordered the formation of separate rifle platoons under the Special Divisions of divisions and corps, and separate rifle brigades from the NKVD troops under the Special departments of the armies. Their immediate tasks included, acting in the rear of the troops, to set up a barrier on military roads, the routes of movement of refugees, to identify enemy saboteurs abandoned in the rear, alarmists, soldiers who had fallen behind their units and deserters.
If the soldiers who lagged behind the units were ordered to be sent in squadrons and platoons, under the command of a proven commander, to send columns to the location of their units, then deserters and alarmists were waiting for arrest, a speedy investigation (its time was limited to 12 hours) and their transfer to the courts of the military tribunal. In exceptional cases, when the situation so required, the execution of deserters and alarmists was allowed, but each such case was considered extraordinary, it was required to immediately report it to the head of the Special Front Department.
In general, the NKVD barrage detachments were engaged in counterintelligence support for the rear of the troops, preventing panic and confusion during the movement of units and columns of refugees, identified deserters and sent servicemen who had fallen behind their units to their duty stations. Of course, there is no question of any shooting in the back of the advancing troops - sometimes more than a hundred kilometers of front-line rear areas separated from the advancing soldiers the detachments, which solved completely different tasks.
The allegations about the NKVD troops, who were holed up in the rear, are also incorrect. Ensuring the rear of the army was the most important task. It is not easy for the average person to imagine the huge infrastructure, the efforts of which are aimed at creating the conditions for successful operations on the front line. Operations planning, communications, the supply of ammunition, clothing allowances, food, logistics and linking transport routes to the nearest railway junctions, medical and sanitary support are an incomplete list of problems facing the rear units of the army. The disorganization of this most complex mechanism has always been a tidbit for the enemy, who did not miss the opportunity to make the troops of the other side incapacitated without a single shot.
In the difficult months of 1941, the NKVD barrage detachments were often used as ordinary army units, they were thrown to the front line to eliminate the next German breakthrough.
The second type of barrage detachments - army - appeared a little later. It traces its history back to September 12, 1941. On this day, a directive was issued by the headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the creation of barrage detachments of rifle divisions. In it, in particular, it was said:
“The experience of fighting German fascism has shown that in our rifle divisions there are quite a few panicked and directly hostile elements who, at the first pressure from the enemy, drop their weapons and start shouting: “We are surrounded!” and drag the rest of the fighters with them. As a result of such actions of these elements, the division takes to flight, abandons its materiel, and then, alone, begins to leave the forest. Similar phenomena take place on all fronts. If the commanders and commissars of such divisions were at the height of their task, alarmist and hostile elements could not gain the upper hand in the division. But the trouble is that we do not have so many firm and stable commanders and commissars.
In order to prevent the above undesirable phenomena at the front, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command orders:
1. In each rifle division, have a barrage detachment of reliable fighters, no more than a battalion in number (calculated as 1 company per rifle regiment), subordinate to the division commander and having at its disposal, in addition to conventional weapons, vehicles in the form of trucks and several tanks or armored vehicles.
2. The tasks of the barrage detachment should be considered direct assistance to the command staff in maintaining and establishing firm discipline in the division, stopping the flight of panic-stricken military personnel without stopping before using weapons, eliminating the initiators of panic and flight, supporting honest and combat elements of the division, not subject to panic, but carried away by a general flight ... "
The army barrage detachments, as we can see, were formed not from some selected cutthroats, but from the fighters of the same units in which they were supposed to operate. Their tasks included personal example and when and by force of arms to prevent panic among the soldiers. It can be seen from the order that the fighters of the army barrage detachments were empowered to use weapons against individual alarmists capable of demoralizing the advancing troops. This required their direct participation in the offensive.
The activity of detachments came closest to the myth exploited in the mass consciousness in 1942 in connection with the events on the Stalingrad front. The famous order of I.V. Stalin No. 227, also known as “Not a step back”, ordered the creation of 3-5 well-armed barrage detachments of 200 people each within the armies, put them in the immediate rear of unstable units and oblige, in case of panic and disorderly flight, to shoot alarmists and cowards on the spot “and thereby help the honest fighters of the divisions to fulfill their duty to the Motherland.” These detachments were subordinate to the Special Departments of the armies, that is, the structures of the NKVD, but were formed from the fighters of the armies in which they operated.
The practice of using detachments formed in accordance with order No. 227 is given by the message of the Special Department of the NKVD of the Stalingrad Front to the Office of Special Departments of the NKVD of the USSR dated August 14, 1942 “On the implementation of order No. 227 and the response to it of the personnel of the 4th tank army”:
“In total, 24 people were shot during the specified period of time. So, for example, the commanders of the departments of the 414th joint venture, the 18th SD, Styrkov and Dobrnin, were scared during the battle, abandoned their squads and fled from the battlefield, both were detained by barriers. detachment and the resolution of the Special Division were shot in front of the ranks.
In total, by October 15, 1942, 193 army barrage detachments were formed, including 16 on the Stalingrad front. At the same time, from August 1 to October 15, 1942, 140,755 military personnel were detained by detachments. Of the detainees, 3,980 people were arrested. 1189 people were shot, 2776 people were sent to penal companies, 185 people were sent to penal battalions, 131,094 people were returned to their units.
Stories about mass executions of Soviet units by detachments do not correspond to reality, based both on their general practice and the essence of the tasks being solved, and on the correlation of the number of detachments with the number of operating armies. Which, of course, does not exclude individual excesses, which were apparently subsequently inflated to the scale of a general phenomenon. * * *
No less confusion accompanies the history of penal divisions of the Red Army. Their appearance is connected with the already mentioned order of I.V. Stalin No. 227. It prescribed:
"1. To the Military Councils of the fronts, and above all to the commanders of the fronts:
c) to form within the front from one to three (depending on the situation) penal battalions (800 people each), where to send medium and senior commanders and relevant political workers of all branches of the armed forces who are guilty of violating discipline due to cowardice or instability, and put them on more difficult sectors of the front in order to give them the opportunity to atone for their crimes against the Motherland with blood.
2. To the Military Councils of the armies and, above all, to the commanders of the armies:
c) to form within the army from five to ten (depending on the situation) penal companies (from 150 to 200 people each), where to send ordinary soldiers and junior commanders who are guilty of violating discipline due to cowardice or instability, and put them in difficult sectors of the army in order to give them the opportunity to atone for their crimes against the Motherland with blood.
The states of the penal battalion and company, as well as the practice of their formation and use, were detailed by order of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR G. Zhukov of September 26, 1942. The goals of the formation of penal units were indicated in it as follows:
“Penal battalions are intended to enable persons of middle and senior command, political and commanding staff of all branches of the armed forces who are guilty of violating discipline due to cowardice or instability, to atone for their crimes against the Motherland with a brave fight against the enemy in a more difficult area of combat operations.”
“Penal companies are intended to enable ordinary soldiers and junior commanders of all branches of the armed forces, guilty of violating discipline through cowardice or instability, to atone for their guilt before the Motherland with a brave fight against the enemy in a difficult area of combat operations.”
The order set the time for a serviceman to stay in a penal unit - from one to three months. Officers sent to penal battalions were to be demoted to the rank and file. Orders and medals from the penalized were taken away for the duration of their stay in the penal battalion and transferred for storage to the personnel department of the front.
Penal officers could be appointed to the positions of junior officers with the ranks of corporal, junior sergeant and sergeant. In this case, they were paid salaries for their positions. The rest of the fines were paid maintenance in the amount of 8 rubles. 50 kop. per month. The payment of money to the family according to the money certificate of the officer demoted to the ranks was stopped, the family was transferred to the allowance established for the families of Red Army soldiers and junior commanders.
The release from the penal part occurred for one of three reasons: for a particularly outstanding military distinction (in this case, the penal, in addition, was presented to government award), by injury (redeemed by blood) and after the expiration of the term of punishment. Upon release from the penal unit, the former penalists were restored in rank and in all rights, they were returned military awards, references to a criminal record were removed from their personal files.
Penitentiaries who received a disability were assigned a pension from the salary of the maintenance of the last position, the families of the dead penalists were assigned a pension on a general basis, like all the families of the dead military personnel.
There was nothing fundamentally punitive or deliberately cruel in the formed penal units. The command during their creation proceeded from the maximum possible humanity in conditions of total war. It is interesting that the clothing and food allowances of the penal units, according to the memoirs of veterans, were better than the average for the army. This situation developed as a result of several curious circumstances: penal companies and penal battalions were under army subordination and were supplied directly from army warehouses, while the supply of front units was carried out along the chain from army warehouses and further, up to the quartermaster of a particular unit. In a longer chain, of course, there was a certain “shrinkage”, and not so much because of theft, although it did take place, but due to the fact that in the process of distribution the best things managed to be taken apart.
Until now, the feat of the permanent composition of penal companies and penal battalions remains little known. For some reason, it is generally accepted that the same penalty box commanded the same penalty box and the convicts stewed in their own juice. This is not true. Penalties did not stay in the subdivisions for more than a month, while officers of these units was constant and changed, mainly in connection with the death of the commander, who fought along with the penalized.
In the order of G.K. Zhukov dated September 26, 1942, the permanent composition of penal units is said
... the defendant TONKONOGOV, remaining to live in the territory that was temporarily captured by the enemy, voluntarily entered the service of the German punitive police and worked from April 1942 to August 1942 as an inspector of the city police, adjutant to the chief of police, and then was appointed to the post of chief of police with. Bottles.
Working in these positions, TONKONOGOV carried out arrests of Soviet citizens, as follows: in the summer of 1942, he arrested the Kostyanenko family for their connection with partisan detachment. During the arrest of Kostyanenko and his family - Kostyanenko Maria, TONKONOGOV personally severely beat them both [...] In August 1942, he arrested 20 people. women whom he took into custody ... He repeatedly interrogated detained Soviet citizens, while mocking and beating them and threatening to shoot them. So, in April 1942, interrogating an unknown detained Soviet citizen, together with the Germans, he led him to be shot. In July 1942, he beat an unknown citizen with a ramrod who turned to him about the fishing nets taken from her.
Here is such a "major Pugachev" appears before us in the book of the Magadan journalist A. Biryukov. In the summer of 1948, he really accomplished his last "feat". The Soviet authorities saved his life - only to shoot him with new victims, pursuing him during the escape.
Chapter 27
Exploitation of the myth: “raped Germany”, or what is the point of falsifying history?
Having considered the most popular myths of military history, let's digress for a while from the question of Stalin's repressions and take a broader look at the problem.
What is the meaning of historical falsifications, and in particular the falsification of the history of the Great Patriotic War? What technologies are propagandists using and how true are their claims? Before our eyes, a large operation is being carried out to introduce mass consciousness myth of "raped Germany". It passes clearly, without too much mystery, it's a sin not to use it as a teaching material.
What threat do such myths pose to us? I will give an example that is important for understanding the problem. Not so long ago, I witnessed an Internet discussion on the partition of Poland in 1939. The dispute was intelligent, with references to documents, agreements and norms of international law. At a certain stage, the interlocutors realized that they were operating with the same texture, but disagreed in its assessments. Here, a question unique in its completeness was raised: “Legislatively, everything is clear. Moral consideration is unacceptable on the basis that for the Poles it will be a stab in the back, for Ukrainians and Belarusians - liberation, but what about us? For the citizens of modern Russia?”
This is a very precise and logically formulated question about self-identification. The Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians have a national, if you like, generally accepted vision of the issue. We don't have it. Numerous works of falsifying historians support this state of society.
It is not surprising that special attention of propagandists of all stripes is concentrated on the topic of the Second World War. Even the Victory itself is disputed. A prime example is one of the "final" questions that history rewriters like to ask: "Why then do the victors fare worse than the vanquished"?
In response, one can hear arguments about the Marshall Plan, comparing the economies of the USSR and the Western bloc, even the largely absurd argument "because we are the defeated."
This does not lead to a full answer, which is not surprising. There is a catch in the very formulation of the question; it does not imply an analysis of the competition between economic systems of the second half of the 20th century. The concepts of "winner" and "vanquished" set strict boundaries for the area of reasoning, reducing it to the period of the end of the Second World War, on the one hand, and the abstract "standard of living", on the other.
In fact, it is obvious that the Soviet Union, devastated by a total war on its territory, physically could not live better than defeated Germany. At most, both devastated countries could be in approximately equal conditions of devastation.
There are, however, conditions under which the victorious USSR could drastically improve the standard of living of its citizens as a result of the Victory. Having plundered Germany, having taken out valuables, livestock and crops, leaving the Germans to swell from hunger on potato peelings. But this is the motive of the Nazis, who planned to "live better than the defeated" (moreover, most of the defeated were not supposed to live at all).
The Soviet Union, on the contrary, set the supply of the local population as one of the main tasks in the occupied territories. On May 2, 1945 (let me remind you that the fighting for the Reich Chancellery stopped only at 3 pm on May 2), a member of the Military Council of the 5th Shock Army, Lieutenant General Bokov, determined the main tasks of the military commandant's offices in Berlin:
“Identification and accounting of food stocks to supply the population of the region, launching public utilities and food enterprises: water supply, power plants, sewers, mills, bakeries, bakeries, canneries, confectioneries, etc., organizing trade in bread, potatoes, meat and light industry products to meet the needs of the population, opening baths, hairdressers, hospitals, pharmacies, sewing and shoe shops [...] Food products are sold to the population through stores using cards points issued by burgomasters of districts (bread 150 g, potatoes 300 g per person).
On May 11, a resolution of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front appeared on the supply of food to the population of Berlin. It stated in particular:
"1. Based on the norms established by the GOKO for food supply in Berlin, on average per person per day: bread - 400 - 450 g, cereals - 50 g, meat - 60 g, fat - 15 g, sugar - 20 g, natural coffee - 50 g (author's note), tea - 20 g, potatoes and vegetables, dairy products, salt and other food products - according to the norms established on the spot, depending on availability of resources...
2. To the quartermaster of the front by 20.00 on May 14 with. to report to the Military Council their views on the possible norms and procedure for issuing dairy products to the population of Berlin, as well as on the possibility of transferring the minimum necessary dairy cattle from among the trophy cattle to the Berlin self-government (ed. ed.) "(hereinafter, unless otherwise indicated, documents are cited at ).
Did the USSR have an installation to plunder Germany? Was there a motive in the Great Patriotic War to raise the living standards of the population at the expense of enslaved or robbed Germans?
It is significant that this cunningly formulated question uses precisely fascist, and not Soviet, motivation. The truth is hidden in it under several semantic layers and goes unnoticed at first glance.
There are many such examples. Before our eyes, a multi-stage campaign is unfolding under the code name "Soviet soldiers in the occupied territories committed atrocities no less than the Wehrmacht in the USSR." Particular attention within the framework of this topic is given to the mass rape of German women, which allegedly took place in Germany in 1945.
The impact of the topic of mass rape on public opinion It has long been known to propagandists that it demonizes the enemy, taking him beyond the framework of morality, ethics, and the concept of “man” in general. It is not for nothing that the Goebbels department actively exploited precisely this topic, and more recently we could personally observe the use of the same argument in the course of preparing the bombing of Yugoslavia.
But in this case, our grandfathers, the warrior-liberators, are taken out of the scope of morality and humanity.
“The Red Army men, for the most part poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women ...” - writes in an article with a telling title “They raped all German women aged 8 to 80 years old,” the well-known British instigator of the topic Anthony Beevor.
The article is replete with terrible details about violence within the walls of a monastery, a maternity hospital (“pregnant women and those who had just given birth were all raped without pity”), statistical data: “Although at least 2 million German women were raped, a significant part of them, if not most, became victims of gang rape.”
Beevor's work is not distinguished by references to documents, and the above figures appear in his work with this preface: "A doctor calculated that ..." This, however, does not interfere with the means mass media disseminate his ideas widely.
The fact that they achieve the goal is evident from modern Russian-language Internet discussions of Beevor's work. Here you can find a very patriotic, at first glance, position: “I don’t care about the suffering of the Germans during the victorious march Soviet troops!" Or this one: “I am convinced that this was of a systemic nature. And I don't see anything special about it. A war of gigantic proportions...” And even: “Why feel sorry for the Germans? And there’s really no need to discuss this, and Russia has nothing to repent of…”
These words already contain justifications, and the most unreasonable plan at that. Deprived of concrete historical knowledge, young people say: "The Germans themselves are to blame!" If you think about it for a second, this means an automagic recognition of the mass violence that our grandfathers perpetrated. “Yes, they raped, but for the cause” - this is how this thesis sounds, if it is reformulated. Justification turns into confession.
But was there a fact on which these assertions are based? Let's try to figure it out. First, let's find out who entered the territory of Germany, who are these "mostly poorly educated" Red Army soldiers, how they are brought up, what values they profess, what they consider proper and what is unacceptable.
How things were with the education of the soldiers of the Red Army, shows the report of the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front on political and educational work with new replenishment from among the citizens released from fascist captivity dated April 7, 1945:
“During the fighting on the territory of Germany, formations and parts of the front somewhat made up for their combat losses in people at the expense of Soviet citizens of military age released from German captivity. On March 20, more than 40,000 people were sent to the units. [...] Almost all young fighters have incomplete or complete secondary education, and only a small part with higher and primary education. The illiterate or semi-literate make up the few. Among the 3,870 people who arrived in February to replenish the units of the formation, where the head of the political department, Major General Voronov, 873 former military personnel, 2,997 newly drafted into the army, including 784 women. By age: up to 25 years old - 1922, up to 30 years old - 780, up to 35 years old - 523, up to 40 years old - 422 and over 40 years old - 223 people. By nationality: Ukrainians - 2014, Russians - 1173, Azerbaijanis - 221, Belarusians - 125, Armenians - 10, Uzbeks - 50 and other nationalities - 125 people.
40 thousand people different ages and nationalities - a fairly representative cross-section in order to form an opinion about the education of a Soviet person in the 40s. However, education is not the determining factor. The Nazis committed unthinkable atrocities on the territory of the USSR - although there is a general secondary education in
Germany since Bismarck. It is important what moral guidelines a person follows, what is behind his soul, if you like.
We meet words important for our topic in the order of I.V. Stalin, dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the founding of the Red Army (Order No. 55 dated February 23, 1942). It says:
“Sometimes they talk in the foreign press that the Red Army aims to exterminate the German people and destroy the German state. This, of course, is stupid nonsense and stupid slander against the Red Army. [...] it would be ridiculous to identify the Hitler clique with the German people, with the German state. The experience of history tells us that Hitlers come and go, but the German people, but the German state remains.
The strength of the Red Army lies, finally, in the fact that it does not and cannot have racial hatred towards other peoples, including the German people, that it has been brought up in the spirit of equality of all peoples and races, in the spirit of respect for the rights of other peoples. .
But maybe these are just words? Did Stalin know the Red Army well or wishful thinking? In the memoirs of WWII veteran Zimakov Vladimir Matveyevich we read:
“In Austria, not far from German Munich, we met with the Americans and the British. First, they drank for 3-4 days, and then an episode occurred. Our guys fought with them because of a black man. We saw how one of them hit a black man, and let's beat him. [...] Our commandant's platoon pulled them all apart and drew the border, withdrawing the troops from the village to the forest.
Indeed, it is now difficult to imagine such behavior (upbringing has seriously changed since then), but we must pay tribute - with regard to the moral character of the Red Army soldiers, Stalin was generally not mistaken. Actually, there is nothing surprising in this, given the volume and thoroughness of the reports of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army on the "political and moral state of the soldiers." I think they would be the envy of today's sociologists.
Considering the topic of "atrocities on German territory", it is important to remember how "overorganized" (as they would call it now) the structure of the Red Army was. The observance of military discipline, the moral and political state of the fighters was monitored by both direct commanders and political workers. Compliance with the law was controlled by special departments and bodies of the military prosecutor's office. In addition, party and Komsomol organizations operated in the units.
Serious responsibility was assigned to the fighters by the home front workers. “We showed our discipline, the workers of the Southern Urals gave us an order: no looting. And there was nothing like that, because our army, the corps were monitored, the first secretary of the Chelyabinsk regional committee came to the front, ”recalls veteran Kuleshov Pavel Pavlovich.
The age composition of units and formations also had an impact on the morale of the fighters. Fathers, sons and grandfathers found themselves in the same trenches at the front. Many veterans remember about the peculiar "uncles" with the soldiers. Artilleryman Markov Nikolai Dmitrievich says:
“With this replenishment, a soldier named Pyotr Andreevich Peretyatko came to us, born 13, from the Dubrovka farm, Chernihiv region... It was really a warrior. The real gunner! He tells me: “Katsap you! I'll teach you how to fight!" And indeed, he taught us boys how to fight ...
There was such a case. Petrov, a soldier from Gorky, a nimble lad, had worn out his boots, and there were many beaten Germans there. He went and took off the boots of the dead German. He comes and says: “I found the boots!” Petya asks him: “Where did you get it?” - "I took it off the German." And then Petya pointed a machine gun at him: “Where you got it, put it there. Do you know what it's called? Marauding! Walk barefoot, but don't take it."
Basically, veterans in their memoirs agree that relations between the Red Army and the civilian population in the occupied territories developed normally - as far as it is generally possible in the conditions of hostilities. Artilleryman Nazarov Boris Vasilievich recalls: “The rear services were engaged in looting and violence ... Those who were at the forefront, as a rule, did not offend the population, and the population treated us well ...” “There were a lot of German refugees around our batteries, unarmed German soldiers who lost their units. The relationship with them was peaceful, they even fed us.
Tanker Rodkin Arsenty Konstantinovich recalls how in January 1945 a German came to their unit and brought boxes with undistributed New Year's gifts. And Pyotr Ilyich Kirichenko recalls such an incident that happened to him in Prussia: “I'm going down to the basement. At first it's dark, I can't see anything. When my eyes got used a little, I saw that these Germans were sitting in a huge room, there was a rumble, the kids were crying. They saw me, everyone calmed down and looked with horror - the Bolshevik beast has come, now it will rape us, shoot, kill us. I feel that the situation is tense, I address them in German, I said a couple of phrases. How happy they were! They reached out to me, holding out some kind of watch, gifts. I think: “Unfortunate people, what have you brought yourself to. The proud German nation, which spoke of its superiority, and here such servility. There was a mixed feeling of pity and dislike."
There were also funny cases. So, in the report of the head of the political department of the 8th guards army about the behavior of the German population in the occupied suburbs of Berlin on April 25, 1945, it says: “In settlements Restaurants in Wilhelmshagen and Ransdorf sell spirits, beer and snacks. Moreover, restaurant owners are willing to sell all this to our soldiers and officers for occupation stamps. On April 22, some soldiers and officers went to restaurants and bought alcoholic drinks and snacks. Some of them acted cautiously - in one of the restaurants in Ransdorf, tankers, before drinking wine, asked the owner of the restaurant to drink it first. But some servicemen are clearly doing the wrong thing, scattering occupation stamps. For example, a liter of beer costs 1 mark, while individual servicemen pay 10-20 marks each, and one of the officers gave a banknote worth 100 marks for a liter of beer. Head of the political department of the 28th Guards. sk colonel Borodin ordered the owners of Ransdorf's restaurants to close the restaurants for a while until the battle was over.
Of course, the topic of relationships Soviet soldiers and the German population is by no means so unambiguous. In the report of a member of the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front dated April 4, 1945, we read: “The attitude of the German population towards the Red Army in the past occupied territory Germany remains hostile. They commit acts of sabotage and help to hide German soldiers, remaining in the rear of the front troops. So, during the fighting, the German population of the city of Strengau harmed our units in every possible way ... "
From the report of the head of the political department of the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps dated April 30, 1945: “In the city of Rathenov, where the 14th Guards. cavalry division, there were many cases of clearly hostile attitude of Germans from the civilian population towards our military personnel. [...]
April 27, deputy. commander of the 54th Guards. cavalry regiment for political affairs guards. Major Yakunin... went out into the street. From the attic of a neighboring house there was a burst of machine-gun fire. A German woman shot from a machine gun. Yakunin was seriously wounded in the arm, after which he died. [...]
On April 28, the battery commander of 76-mm guns of the 54th Guards. cavalry regiment of the 14th Guards. cavalry divisions Art. lieutenant Sibirtsev, being ... in the liberated part of the city of Rathenov, was shot from the attic by a German 58 years old. On the same day, a Red Army soldier of the 318 gmn Karpov and guards were wounded. foreman m / s Boys (54th Guards Cavalry Regiment) under the following circumstances: ...behind, from the house, a machine gun burst was heard, as a result of which Karpov and Boys were wounded. During a search of the house, a German family was found. The owner of the house, an old man, was captured with a machine gun in his hands.
It is impossible to deny individual crimes on the part of the soldiers of the Red Army. I.V. On January 19, 1945, Stalin signed an order that demanded that no rude attitude towards the local population be allowed. This order dealt mainly with the problem of "robbery and thrift", as it was customary then to call it, but Stalin's attention to the problem is quite revealing.
On April 20, 1945, signed by Stalin, the Directive of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command was issued on changing the attitude towards German prisoners of war and civilian population. In it, the commanders of the troops and members of the Military Councils were required to “change their attitude towards the Germans, both prisoners of war and civilians. It's better to deal with the Germans. The harsh treatment of the Germans makes them afraid and makes them stubbornly resist.
Similar, but more detailed directives went to the troops from the Military Councils of the fronts.
The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command had serious reasons for such orders. Here is a fragment of a recording of the memoirs of veteran Borisov Mikhail Fedorovich: “There was a desire to take revenge when they entered German territory. The guys will sometimes come to the house, fire a burst from a machine gun at various portraits, at cupboards with dishes... And at the same time, I saw with my own eyes how the field kitchens fed the local residents. [...] Shortly after crossing the German border, an order was issued regulating conduct in the occupied territory. Although before that we knew one thing - kill a German, and for four years we lived by this. This transition was very difficult. Many have been judged."
His words are confirmed by the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front on the implementation of the directive of the Headquarters of the Supreme Command on changing the attitude towards the German population of May 2, 1945: “In relation to the German population on the part of our military personnel, of course, a significant turning point has been achieved. The facts of aimless and [unjustified] executions of Germans, looting and rape of German women have significantly decreased, however, even after the issuance of directives from the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the Military Council of the front, a number of such cases are still recorded.
If executions of Germans are almost not observed at present, and cases of robbery are isolated, then violence against women still takes place; the junk work has not stopped yet, which consists in our servicemen walking around junk apartments, picking up all sorts of things and objects, etc. ”
At the same time, the military prosecutor's office, and, consequently, the Headquarters were not inclined to complacency or self-deception. The report continues:
“I think it is necessary to emphasize a number of points:
1. The commanders of the formations and the Military Councils of the armies are taking serious measures to eliminate the facts of the ugly behavior of their subordinates, nevertheless, individual commanders are complacent that a certain turning point has been reached, completely forgetting that reports come to their attention only about a part of the violence, robberies and other outrages committed by their subordinates [...] ".
It was also noted here:
"2. Violence, and especially robbery and hoarding, is widely practiced by repatriates who go to repatriation points, and especially by Italians, Dutch and even Germans. At the same time, all these outrages are being blamed on our servicemen.
3. There are cases when the Germans engage in provocation, claiming rape, when this did not take place. I myself have established two such cases.
It is no less interesting that our people sometimes, without verification, report to the authorities about the violence and murders that took place, while when verified, this turns out to be fiction.
Indeed, in the occupied territory, the soldiers of the Red Army committed crimes. For example, in the above-cited report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front, 6 such cases were identified during the period from 22 to 25 April. “A number of such facts can also be cited for other compounds,” he writes.
A very revealing case, which gives an idea of the measures to combat crimes on the part of military personnel, is recalled by veteran Vasily Pavlovich Bryukhov. He talks about the fate of his colleague, tank commander Lieutenant Ivanov from the Belgorod region. The Romanians burned his village, Ivanov's wife and two small children died in the barn set on fire.
Part ended up on the territory of Romania, in the city of Craiovo: “We drank and went with the mechanic to look for a pullet ... We went into the house, a pullet of about twenty-five was sitting in the room, drinking tea. She has a one and a half year old child in her arms. The lieutenant handed over the child to the parents, she said: "Go to the room," and the mechanic: "You go, fuck her, and then I." He went, but the boy himself had no connection with the girl. He started messing around with her. She, seeing such a thing, jumped out the window and ran. And Ivanov heard a knock ... Well, he gave her a burst from a machine gun after her. She fell. They didn't care and left...
The next day, her parents come with the local authorities to our brigade. And a day later, the authorities identified them and took them - "SMERSH" worked well ... On the third day, the court. The entire brigade was lined up in the clearing, the burgomaster and father and mother were brought in ... The verdict was announced: “To be shot before the formation. Build a brigade. Sentence to carry out "...
The brigade special officer, colonel, says to our battalion special officer, standing in the ranks of the brigade: "Comrade Morozov, carry out the sentence." He doesn't come out. "I order you!"... He went. He approached the convict ... he said to him: "Kneel down" ... He knelt down, folded his cap into his belt: "Bend your head." And when he bowed his head, the special officer shot him in the back of the head. The lieutenant's body has fallen and is convulsing..."
In this quote, the pattern is clearly traced: after receiving a message from the local authorities, a special department conducted an investigation, identifying the culprit. The court sentenced him to death in front of the formation, despite the title, authority (Vasily Pavlovich emphasizes that Ivanov enjoyed great authority in part), awards and heroism shown in battles. The veteran, telling this episode, describes what a depressing impression the execution had on the brigade.
“Of course, manifestations of cruelty, including sexual, happened. They simply could not have been after what the Nazis had done on our land. But such cases were decisively suppressed and punished. And they didn't become mainstream."- says in an interview with the newspaper "Trud" Army General, President of the Academy of Military Sciences Makhmut Gareev.
The problem of the relationship between the soldiers of the Red Army and the civilian population of Germany is no less multifaceted and complex than assessments of other stages of our history. In the above examples, we see how easily propagandists from history reduce huge, complex phenomena to one denominator and mold labels on them: Stalinism, repressions, poorly educated Red Army soldiers, winners do not live like that, etc.
It is easy to see that the same methods are used in all cases, and the myths of military history often intersect with myths from the history of the country, and vice versa. The black myth, which we consider as “Stalinist”, is in fact much broader, it is aimed at demonizing much larger sections of history. Extremely important elements of our life, around which the worldview of society is built, are under attack. And this should not be forgotten.
The consequences of such demonization are very serious. Strikes on the history of the Second World War, as well as a strike on Stalin period, caused irreparable damage to the elements that hold us together as a people. We will consider in detail the essence of these processes and their consequences in the following chapters.
NOTES
1. Report "On the cult of personality and its consequences." Cit. at http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/doklad20.htinl
2. Collection of military documents of the Great Patriotic War. M., military publishing house. 1947-1960. T.28. S. 12.
3. N.S. Khrushchev. "Time. People. Power (Memories). Book 1. M., Moscow news. 1999. P. 300 - 301.
5. L.I. Mikoyan. "It was". M., Vagrius. 1999, op. but el. book.
6. "1941". M., International Foundation"Democracy". 1998. V. 2, with reference to RTSKhIDNI. F. 84. He. 3. D. 187. L. 118-126, op. by email versions.
7. Yu.A. Gorkoe, Kremlin. Bid. General Staff. Tver. 1995, op. according to http://militera.lib.ru/research/gorkov2/
8. A.I. Mikoyan. "It was". M., Vagrius. 1999.
9. "1941". M., International Fund "Democracy". 1998. V. 2, with reference to RTSKhIDNI. F. 84. He. 3. D. 187. L. 118-126.
10. Quoted. on the Internet project "Russian Germans" http://www.rdinfo.ru/ article.php?mode=view&own_menu_id=33041
11. "New and recent history”, 2006, No. 6.
12. V. Zemskoe. "GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)".
14. "Russia and the USSR in the wars of the XX century, the loss of the armed forces." Ed. G.F. Krivosheev. M., Olma-Press, 2001.
16. Moskovsky Komsomolets, June 22, 2005, cited at http://www.mk.ru/blogs/idmk/2005/06/22/mk-daily/56220/
17. See Mikhail Remizov's interview with Rector of the Russian State Humanitarian University Yury Afanasiev. Russian Journal, February 13, 2001, http://old.russ.ru/politics/interview/20010212_af-pr.html
18. I. Pykhalov. "Great slandered war". M., Yauza, Eksmo. 2005, op. by email version http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/02.html
19. M. Meltyukhov. Stalin's missed chance. The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Europe: 1939-1941 (Documents, Facts, Judgments). M., Veche. 2000, op. http://militera.lib.ru/research/meltvukhov/index.html
20. Ibid.
21. I. Pykhalov. "The Great Blasted War", op. by email version http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/02.html
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. The New Times, 11/19/2007, op. via http://www.gaidar.org/smi/2007_l l_19_nt.htm
25. "Social history of domestic science", http://www.ihst.ru/projects/sohist/ with reference to "News of the Central Committee of the CPSU". 1991. No. 3. P. 146-147.
26. S.G. Kara-Murza. "Soviet Civilization" (vol. I), op. but http://www.kara-murza.rU/books/sc_a/sc_allO.htm#hdr_156
27. I. Pykhalov. The Great Blasted War, op. by email version http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/02.html
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Russian archive: Great Patriotic War: Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR June 22, 1941 - 1942 M., Terra. 1997, op. by email version http://militera.lib.ru/docs/da/nko/index.html
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. See I. Pykhalov. Great slanderous war. With reference to TsKhIDK. F. 1 / P. He. 23a. D. 2. L. 27.
34. See V. Zemskoe. "GULAG", (historical and sociological aspect). Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. V. Zemskoe. "Repatriation of Soviet Citizens and Their Further Destiny". Sociological research. May 1995. No. 5. S. 3-13, op. by email version http://www.ecsocman.edu.ru/socis/msg/210092.html
37. See I. Pykhalov. Great slanderous war.
38. Ibid.
39. I. Sukhikh. Life after Kolyma. Zvezda, No. 6, 2001, op. by email version http://magazines.rHss.ru/zvezda/2001/6/suhuh.html
41. A.M. Biryukov. Kolyma stories: essays. Novosibirsk. 2004.
42. http://vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/archive/1392/1392332.htm
43. Russian archive: Great Patriotic War: Battle for Berlin (Red Army in defeated Germany). M., Terra, 1995, cit. according to http://militera.lib.ru/docs/da/berlin_45/index.html
44. The Guardian, 05/01/02, op. at http://www.inosmi.ru/stories/ 01/12/06/3034/140671.html.
45. Russian archive: Great Patriotic War: Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR June 22, 1941 - 1942 M., Terra, 1997, op. according to http://militera.lib.ru/docs/da/nko/index.html
46. A. Drabkin. I fought with the Panzerwaffe, M „YAUZA, EKSMO. 2007. P.213.
47. A. Drabkin. I fought on the T-34, Book. 2. M., YAUZA, EKSMO. 2008. S, 32.
48. A. Drabkin. I fought with the Panzerwaffe. pp. 85 - 86.
49. A. Drabkin. I fought with the Panzerwaffe. pp. 147, 152.
50. A. Drabkin. I fought on the T-34. pp. 175-176.
