In the early 30s. completed the process of creating a totalitarian machine of violence. Under the conditions of the monopoly of state property and the alienation of the worker from the means of production, with an acute shortage of capital, the possibility of material incentives for labor was extremely limited. All this led to a drop in the living standards of the population, contributed to the growth of tension in society and discontent ruling circles. Not only powerful political and ideological pressure, but also a particularly emerging repressive apparatus, a system of violence against a person, was called upon to raise such a society to the implementation of the proclaimed socialist goals and at the same time secure the power of the nomenklatura.
The beginning of mass terror in relation to all segments of the population falls on December 1934, when SM was killed. Kirov. aim mass repression there were the remaining political opponents of the power of Stalin and the nomenklatura elite close to him. A major role in the deployment of terror was played by the decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of December 1, 1934, which amended the Criminal Code for the investigation of cases "on terrorist organizations and terrorist acts." It was determined that the investigation of these cases should be completed within 10 days; the indictment must be served on the accused one day before the case is heard in court; the case is heard without the participation of the parties; cassation appeal and petitions for pardon are not allowed; a sentence of capital punishment is carried out immediately.
Since that time, literally every day, all Soviet newspapers and radio stations reported on the struggle of the NKVD with the "enemies of the people", on the course of political trials, on the imposition of death sentences, etc., whipping up hysteria in society.
The February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937 and Stalin's report at it were not only a broad program, but also a methodology for repression against internal and external enemies. After the plenum, a special letter from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks authorized the use of physical measures, that is, torture, in the practice of the NKVD.
Mass repressions of the 30s. are characterized by the fact that they were carried out in relation to all segments of the population and throughout the country. Under the pretext of fighting enemies, Stalin's regime cracked down on all statesmen who could lay claim to supreme power. Representatives of the so-called "exploiting classes" were practically exterminated. Defeated command staff Red Army. The policy of the final liquidation of the old educated class in Russia was also continued, the cadres of the scientific, technical and creative intelligentsia were repressed. In the 30s. began the mass deportation of a number of peoples to use them in forced labor.
The true meaning of the terror organized in the country was that the ruling elite set itself the goal of suppressing the slightest resistance to their actions and instilling fear in society before any attempts to do anything in the future against the existing order.
The question of the repressions of the thirties of the last century is of fundamental importance not only for understanding the history of Russian socialism and its essence as a social system, but also for assessing the role of Stalin in the history of Russia. This question plays a key role in the accusations not only of Stalinism, but, in fact, of the entire Soviet government.To date, the assessment of the “Stalinist terror” has become in our country a touchstone, a password, a milestone in relation to the past and future of Russia. Do you judge? Decisively and irrevocably? - Democrat and common man! Any doubts? - Stalinist!
Let's try to deal with a simple question: did Stalin organize the "great terror"? Maybe there are other causes of terror, about which common people - liberals prefer to remain silent?
So. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks tried to create a new type of ideological elite, but these attempts stalled from the very beginning. Mainly because the new "people's" elite believed that by their revolutionary struggle they fully earned the right to enjoy the benefits that the "elite" anti-people had by birthright. In the noble mansions, the new nomenclature quickly settled in, and even the old servants remained in place, they only began to call them servants. This phenomenon was very wide and was called "kombarstvo".
Even the right measures proved ineffective, thanks to massive sabotage by the new elite. I am inclined to attribute the introduction of the so-called "party maximum" to the correct measures - a ban on party members receiving a salary greater than the salary of a highly skilled worker.
That is, a non-party plant director could receive a salary of 2000 rubles, and a communist director only 500 rubles, and not a penny more. In this way, Lenin sought to avoid the influx of careerists into the party, who use it as a springboard in order to quickly break into the grain places. However, this measure was half-hearted without the simultaneous destruction of the system of privileges attached to any position.
By the way, V.I. Lenin opposed in every possible way the reckless growth in the number of party members, which was later taken up in the CPSU, starting with Khrushchev. In his work “Childhood disease of leftism in communism,” he wrote: “We are afraid of the excessive expansion of the party, because careerists and rogues who deserve only to be shot inevitably strive to cling to the government party.”
Moreover, in the conditions of the post-war shortage of consumer goods, material goods were not so much bought as distributed. Any power performs the function of distribution, and if so, then the one who distributes, he uses the distributed. Especially clingy careerists and crooks. Therefore, the next step was to update the upper floors of the party.
Stalin stated this in his usual cautious manner at the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b) (March 1934). In his Report, the General Secretary described a certain type of workers interfering with the party and the country: “... These are people with well-known merits in the past, people who believe that party and Soviet laws are not written for them, but for fools. These are the same people who do not consider it their duty to carry out the decisions of Party bodies... What do they count on, violating Party and Soviet laws? They hope that the Soviet authorities will not dare to touch them because of their old merits. These arrogant nobles think that they are irreplaceable and that they can violate the decisions of the governing bodies with impunity ... ".
The results of the first five-year plan showed that the old Bolshevik-Leninists, with all their revolutionary merits, are not able to cope with the scale of the reconstructed economy. Not burdened with professional skills, poorly educated (Yezhov wrote in his autobiography: education - unfinished primary), washed in the blood of the Civil War, they could not "saddle" the complex production realities.
Formally, the real power in the localities belonged to the Soviets, since the party did not have any legal authority. But the party bosses were elected chairmen of the Soviets, and, in fact, they appointed themselves to these positions, since the elections were held on a non-alternative basis, that is, they were not elections. And then Stalin undertakes a very risky maneuver - he proposes to establish real, and not nominal, Soviet power in the country, that is, to hold secret general elections in party organizations and councils at all levels on an alternative basis. Stalin tried to get rid of the party regional barons, as they say, in a good way, through elections, and really alternative ones.
Considering Soviet practice, this sounds rather unusual, but it is true nonetheless. He expected that the majority of this public would not overcome the popular filter without support from above. In addition, according to the new constitution, it was planned to nominate candidates to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR not only from the CPSU (b), but also from public organizations and groups of citizens.
What happened next? On December 5, 1936, the new Constitution of the USSR was adopted, the most democratic constitution of that time in the whole world, even according to the ardent critics of the USSR. For the first time in Russian history, secret alternative elections were to be held. By secret ballot. Despite the fact that the party elite tried to put a spoke in the wheel even at the time when the draft constitution was being created, Stalin managed to bring the matter to an end.
The regional party elite understood perfectly well that with the help of these new elections to the new Supreme Soviet, Stalin plans to make a peaceful rotation of everything ruling element. And there were about 250 thousand of them. By the way, the NKVD was counting on about this number of investigations.
Understand something they understood, but what to do? I don't want to part with my chairs. And they perfectly understood one more circumstance - during the previous period they had done such a thing, especially during the period of the Civil War and collectivization, that the people with great pleasure would not only not have chosen them, but also would have broken their heads. The hands of many high regional party secretaries were up to the elbows in blood. During the period of collectivization in the regions there was complete arbitrariness. In one of the regions Khataevich, this nice man, actually declared a civil war in the course of collectivization in his particular region. As a result, Stalin was forced to threaten him that he would shoot him immediately if he did not stop mocking people. Do you think that comrades Eikhe, Postyshev, Kosior and Khrushchev were better, were less "nice"? Of course, the people remembered all this in 1937, and after the elections, these bloodsuckers would have gone into the woods.
Stalin really planned such a peaceful rotation operation, he openly told the American correspondent in March 1936, Howard Roy, about this. He stated that these elections would be a good whip in the hands of the people to change the leadership, he said it directly - "a whip." Will yesterday's "gods" of their districts tolerate the whip?
The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in June 1936, directly aimed the party elite at new times. When discussing the draft of the new constitution, A. Zhdanov spoke quite unambiguously in his extensive report: “The new electoral system ... will give a powerful impetus to improving the work of Soviet bodies, eliminating bureaucratic bodies, eliminating bureaucratic shortcomings and perversions in the work of our Soviet organizations. And these shortcomings, as you know, are very significant. Our party organs must be ready for the electoral struggle...”. And he went on to say that these elections would be a serious, serious test of Soviet workers, because the secret ballot gives ample opportunities to reject candidates who are undesirable and objectionable to the masses, that party organs are obliged to distinguish such criticism FROM HOSTILE ACTIVITY, that non-party candidates should be treated with all support. and attention, because, to put it delicately, there are several times more of them than party members.
In Zhdanov's report, the terms "intra-party democracy", "democratic centralism", "democratic elections" were publicly voiced. And demands were put forward: to ban the "nomination" of candidates without elections, to ban voting at party meetings by a "list", to ensure "an unlimited right to reject candidates nominated by party members and an unlimited right to criticize these candidates." The last phrase referred entirely to the elections of purely party bodies, where there had not been a shadow of democracy for a long time. But, as we see, the general elections to the Soviet and party bodies have not been forgotten either.
Stalin and his people demand democracy! And if this is not democracy, then explain to me what, then, is considered democracy ?!
And how do the party nobles who gathered at the plenum react to Zhdanov's report - the first secretaries of the regional committees, regional committees, the Central Committee of the national communist parties? And they miss it all! Because such innovations are by no means to the taste of the very “old Leninist guard”, which has not yet been destroyed by Stalin, but is sitting at the plenum in all its grandeur and splendor.
Because the vaunted "Leninist guard" is a bunch of petty satrapchiks. They are used to living in their estates as barons, single-handedly managing the life and death of people.
The debate on Zhdanov's report was practically disrupted.
Despite Stalin's direct calls to discuss the reforms seriously and in detail, the old guard with paranoid persistence turns to more pleasant and understandable topics: terror, terror, terror! What the hell are reforms?! There are more urgent tasks: beat the hidden enemy, burn, catch, reveal! The people's commissars, the first secretaries - all talk about the same thing: how they recklessly and on a large scale reveal the enemies of the people, how they intend to raise this campaign to cosmic heights ...
Stalin is losing patience. When the next speaker appears on the podium, without waiting for him to open his mouth, he ironically throws: - Have all the enemies been identified or are there still? The speaker, the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee, Kabakov, (another future "innocent victim of the Stalinist terror") lets the irony fall on deaf ears and habitually crackles about the fact that the electoral activity of the masses, so you know, is just "quite often used by hostile elements for counter-revolutionary work ".
They are incurable!!! They just don't know how! They don't want reforms, they don't want secret ballots, they don't want a few candidates on the ballot. Foaming at the mouth, they defend the old system, where there is no democracy, but only the "boyar volushka" ...
On the podium - Molotov. He says practical, sensible things: you need to identify real enemies and pests, and not throw mud at all, without exception, "captains of production." We must finally learn to DIFFERENTIATE THE GUILTY FROM THE INNOCENT. It is necessary to reform the bloated bureaucratic apparatus, IT IS NECESSARY TO EVALUATE PEOPLE ON THEIR BUSINESS QUALITIES AND DO NOT LIST THE PAST ERRORS. And the party boyars are all about the same thing: to look for and catch enemies with all the ardor! Eradicate deeper, plant more! For a change, they enthusiastically and loudly begin to drown each other: Kudryavtsev - Postysheva, Andreev - Sheboldaeva, Polonsky - Shvernik, Khrushchev - Yakovlev.
Molotov, unable to stand it, openly says:
In a number of cases, listening to the speakers, one could come to the conclusion that our resolutions and our reports have passed the ears of the speakers ...
Exactly! They didn't just pass - they whistled... Most of those gathered in the hall do not know how to work or reform. But they perfectly know how to catch and identify enemies, they adore this occupation and cannot imagine life without it.
Doesn't it seem strange to you that this "executioner" Stalin directly imposed democracy, and his future "innocent victims" ran away from this democracy like hell from incense. Yes, and demanded repression, and more.
In short, it was not the “tyrant Stalin,” but precisely the “cosmopolitan Leninist party guard,” who ruled the roost at the June 1936 plenum, buried all attempts at a democratic thaw. She did not give Stalin the opportunity to get rid of them, as they say, in a GOOD way, through the elections.
Stalin's authority was so great that the party barons did not dare to openly protest, and in 1936 the Constitution of the USSR was adopted, and nicknamed Stalin's, which provided for the transition to real Soviet democracy.
However, the party nomenklatura reared up and carried out a massive attack on the leader in order to convince him to postpone the holding of free elections until the fight against the counter-revolutionary element was completed.
Regional party bosses, members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, began to whip up passions, referring to the recently uncovered conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military: they say, one has only to give such an opportunity, as former white officers and nobles, hidden kulak underdogs, clergy and Trotskyists-saboteurs will rush into politics .
They demanded not only to curtail any plans for democratization, but also to strengthen emergency measures, and even introduce special quotas for mass repressions by region - they say, in order to finish off those Trotskyists who escaped punishment. The party nomenklatura demanded the powers to repress these enemies, and it won these powers for itself. And then the small-town party barons, who made up the majority in the Central Committee, frightened for their leadership positions, begin repressions, first of all, against those honest communists who could become competitors in future elections by secret ballot.
The nature of the repressions against honest communists was such that the composition of some district committees and regional committees changed two or three times in a year. Communists at party conferences refused to be members of city committees and regional committees. We understood that after a while you can be in the camp. And that's the best...
In 1937, about 100,000 people were expelled from the party (24,000 in the first half of the year and 76,000 in the second). About 65,000 appeals accumulated in district committees and regional committees, which there was no one and no time to consider, since the party was engaged in the process of denunciation and expulsion.
At the January plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, Malenkov, who made a report on this issue, said that in some areas the Party Control Commission restored from 50 to 75% of those expelled and convicted.
Moreover, at the June 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee, the nomenklatura, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually delivered an ultimatum to Stalin and his Politburo: either he approves the lists submitted "from below" subject to repression, or he himself will be removed.
The party nomenklatura at this plenum demanded authority for repression. And Stalin was forced to give them permission, but he acted very cunningly - he gave them a short time, five days. Of these five days, one day is Sunday. He expected that they would not meet in such a short time.
But it turns out that these scoundrels already had lists. They simply took lists of kulaks who had previously served time, and sometimes not even served time, former white officers and nobles, wrecking Trotskyites, priests and simply ordinary citizens classified as class alien elements. Literally on the second day, telegrams from the localities went: the first were comrades Khrushchev and Eikhe.
Then Nikita Khrushchev was the first to rehabilitate his friend Robert Eikhe, who was shot in justice for all his cruelties in 1939, in 1954.
Ballot papers with several candidates were no longer discussed at the Plenum: reform plans were reduced solely to the fact that candidates for elections would be nominated “jointly” by communists and non-party people. And in each bulletin from now on there will be only one candidate - for the sake of rebuffing the intrigues. And in addition - another verbose verbiage about the need to identify the masses of entrenched enemies.
Stalin also made another mistake. He sincerely believed that N.I. Yezhov is a man of his team. After all, for so many years they worked together in the Central Committee, shoulder to shoulder. And Yezhov has long been the best friend of Evdokimov, an ardent Trotskyist. For 1937-38. triplets in Rostov region, where Evdokimov was the first secretary of the regional committee, 12,445 people were shot, more than 90 thousand were repressed. These are the figures carved by the "Memorial" society in one of the Rostov parks on the monument to the victims of ... Stalinist (?!) repressions. Subsequently, when Yevdokimov was shot, an audit found that in the Rostov region he lay motionless and more than 18.5 thousand appeals were not considered. And how many of them were not written! The best party cadres, experienced business executives, intelligentsia were destroyed ... But what, was he the only one like that?
In this regard, the memoirs of the famous poet Nikolai Zabolotsky are interesting: “A strange confidence was ripening in my head that we were in the hands of the Nazis, who, under the nose of our government, found a way to destroy Soviet people, acting in the very center of the Soviet punitive system. I told this guess of mine to an old party member who was sitting with me, and with horror in his eyes he confessed to me that he himself thought the same thing, but did not dare to hint about it to anyone. And indeed, how else could we explain all the horrors that happened to us ... ".
But back to Nikolai Yezhov. By 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, G. Yagoda, staffed the NKVD with scum, obvious traitors and those who replaced their work with hack work. N. Yezhov, who replaced him, followed the lead of the hacks and, in order to distinguish himself from the country, turned a blind eye to the fact that NKVD investigators opened hundreds of thousands of hack cases against people, mostly completely innocent. (For example, Generals A. Gorbatov and K. Rokossovsky were sent to prison.)
And the flywheel of the “great terror” began to spin with its infamous extrajudicial triples and limits on the highest measure. Fortunately, this flywheel quickly crushed those who initiated the process itself, and Stalin's merit is that he made the most of the opportunities to clean up the upper echelons of power of all kinds of crap.
Not Stalin, but Robert Indrikovich Eikhe proposed the creation of extrajudicial reprisals, the famous "troikas", similar to the "Stolypin" ones, consisting of the first secretary, the local prosecutor and the head of the NKVD (city, region, region, republic). Stalin was against it. But the Politburo voted. Well, in the fact that a year later it was precisely such a trio that leaned Comrade Eikhe against the wall, there is, in my deep conviction, nothing but sad justice.
The party elite directly enthusiastically joined in the massacre!
And let's take a closer look at him, the repressed regional party baron. And, in fact, what were they like, both in business and moral, and in purely human terms? What did they cost as people and specialists? ONLY THE NOSE FIRST CLAMP, I RECOMMEND SOULLY. In short, party members, military men, scientists, writers, composers, musicians and everyone else, right up to noble rabbit breeders and Komsomol members, ate each other with rapture. Who sincerely believed that he was obliged to exterminate the enemies, who settled scores. So there is no need to talk about whether the NKVD beat on the noble physiognomy of this or that “innocently injured figure” or not.
The party regional nomenklatura has achieved the most important thing: after all, in conditions of mass terror, free elections are impossible. Stalin was never able to carry them out. The end of a brief thaw. Stalin never pushed through his block of reforms. True, at that plenum he said remarkable words: “Party organizations will be freed from economic work, although this will not happen immediately. This takes time."
But let's get back to Yezhov. Nikolai Ivanovich was a new man in the "bodies", he started well, but quickly fell under the influence of his deputy: Frinovsky (former head of the Special Department of the First Cavalry Army). He taught the new People's Commissar the basics of Chekist work right "in production." The basics were extremely simple: the more enemies of the people we catch, the better. You can and should hit, but hitting and drinking is even more fun.
Drunk on vodka, blood and impunity, the People's Commissar soon frankly "floated".
He did not particularly hide his new views from others. “What are you afraid of? he said at one of the banquets. After all, all power is in our hands. Whom we want - we execute, whom we want - we pardon: - After all, we are everything. It is necessary that everyone, starting from the secretary of the regional committee, walk under you.
If the secretary of the regional committee was supposed to go under the head of the regional department of the NKVD, then who, one wonders, was supposed to go under Yezhov? With such personnel and such views, the NKVD became mortally dangerous for both the authorities and the country.
It is difficult to say when the Kremlin began to realize what was happening. Probably somewhere in the first half of 1938. But to realize - realized, but how to curb the monster? It is clear that by that time the People's Commissar of the NKVD had become deadly dangerous, and it had to be "normalized". But how? What, raise the troops, bring all the Chekists to the courtyards of the administrations and line them up against the wall? There is no other way, because, having barely sensed the danger, they would simply have swept away the authorities.
After all, the same NKVD was in charge of protecting the Kremlin, so the members of the Politburo would have died without even having time to understand anything. After that, a dozen “blood-washed” would be put in their places, and the whole country would turn into one large West Siberian region with Robert Eikhe at the head. The peoples of the USSR would have perceived the arrival of the Nazi troops as happiness.
There was only one way out - to put your man in the NKVD. Moreover, a person of such a level of loyalty, courage and professionalism, so that he could, on the one hand, cope with the management of the NKVD, and on the other hand, stop the monster. It is unlikely that Stalin had a large selection of such people. Well, at least one was found. But what - Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich.
Elena Prudnikova is a journalist and writer who has devoted several books to researching the activities of L.P. Beria and I.V. Stalin, in one of the TV programs she said that Lenin, Stalin, Beria are three titans whom the Lord God in His great mercy sent to Russia, because, apparently, he still needed Russia. I hope that she is Russia and in our time He will need it soon.
In general, the term "Stalin's repressions" is speculative, because it was not Stalin who initiated them. The unanimous opinion of one part of the liberal perestroika and current ideologists that Stalin thus strengthened his power by physically eliminating his opponents is easily explained. These wimps simply judge others by themselves: if they have such an opportunity, they will readily devour anyone they see as a danger.
No wonder Alexander Sytin - political scientist, doctor historical sciences, a prominent neoliberal, in one of the recent TV programs with V. Solovyov, argued that in Russia it is necessary to create a DICTATORY OF TEN PERCENT OF A LIBERAL MINORITY, which then will definitely lead the peoples of Russia into a bright capitalist tomorrow. He was modestly silent about the price of this approach.
Another part of these gentlemen believes that supposedly Stalin, who wanted to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to crack down on everyone who had the slightest doubt about his genius. And, above all, with those who, together with Lenin, created October revolution. Like, that's why almost the entire "Leninist guard" innocently went under the ax, and at the same time the top of the Red Army, who were accused of a never-existing conspiracy against Stalin. However, a closer study of these events raises many questions that cast doubt on this version. In principle, thinking historians have had doubts for a long time. And doubts were sown not by some Stalinist historians, but by those eyewitnesses who themselves did not like the "father of all Soviet peoples."
For example, the memoirs of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Orlov (Leiba Feldbin), who fled our country in the late 1930s, having taken a huge amount of state dollars, were published in the West at one time. Orlov, who knew well the "inner kitchen" of his native NKVD, wrote directly that a coup d'état was being prepared in the Soviet Union. Among the conspirators, according to him, were both representatives of the leadership of the NKVD and the Red Army in the person of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the commander of the Kyiv military district, Iona Yakir. The conspiracy became known to Stalin, who took very tough retaliatory actions ...
And in the 80s, the archives of Joseph Vissarionovich's main opponent, Lev Trotsky, were declassified in the United States. From these documents it became clear that Trotsky had an extensive underground network in the Soviet Union. Living abroad, Lev Davidovich demanded from his people decisive action to destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union, up to the organization of mass terrorist actions.
In the 1990s, our archives already opened up access to the protocols of interrogations of the repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. By the nature of these materials, by the abundance of facts and evidence presented in them, today's independent experts have drawn three important conclusions.
First, the overall picture of a broad conspiracy against Stalin looks very, very convincing. Such testimonies could not somehow be staged or faked to please the "father of nations." Especially in the part where it was about the military plans of the conspirators. Here is what the well-known historian and publicist Sergei Kremlev said about this: “Take and read the testimony of Tukhachevsky given to him after his arrest. The very confessions of conspiracy are accompanied by a deep analysis of the military-political situation in the USSR in the mid-30s, with detailed calculations on general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other opportunities.
The question is whether such testimony could have been invented by an ordinary NKVD investigator who was in charge of the marshal's case and who allegedly set out to falsify Tukhachevsky's testimony?! No, these testimonies, and voluntarily, could only be given by a knowledgeable person no less than the level of the deputy people's commissar of defense, which was Tukhachevsky.
Secondly, the very manner of the conspirators' handwritten confessions, their handwriting spoke of what their people wrote themselves, in fact voluntarily, without physical influence from the investigators. This destroyed the myth that the testimony was rudely knocked out by the force of "Stalin's executioners", although this was also the case.
Thirdly, Western Sovietologists and the emigre public, having no access to archival materials, had to actually suck their judgments about the scale of repressions. At best, they contented themselves with interviews with dissidents who either themselves had been imprisoned in the past, or cited the stories of those who had gone through the Gulag.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn set the highest bar in assessing the number of "victims of communism" when he announced in 1976 in an interview with Spanish television about 110 million victims. The ceiling of 110 million announced by Solzhenitsyn was systematically reduced to 12.5 million people of the Memorial society. However, based on the results of 10 years of work, Memorial managed to collect data on only 2.6 million victims of repression, which is very close to the figure announced by Zemskov almost 20 years ago - 4 million people.
After the archives were opened, the West did not believe that the number of repressed people was much less than R. Conquest or A. Solzhenitsyn indicated. In total, according to archival data, for the period from 1921 to 1953, 3,777,380 were convicted, of which 642,980 people were sentenced to capital punishment. Subsequently, this figure was increased to 4,060,306 people at the expense of 282,926 shot under paragraphs. 2 and 3 Art. 59 (especially dangerous banditry) and Art. 193 - 24 (military espionage). This included the blood-washed Basmachi, Bandera, the Baltic "forest brothers" and other especially dangerous, bloody bandits, spies and saboteurs. There is more human blood on them than there is water in the Volga. And they are also considered "innocent victims of Stalin's repressions." And Stalin is blamed for all this. (Let me remind you that until 1928, Stalin was not the sole leader of the USSR. AND HE RECEIVED FULL POWER OVER THE PARTY, THE ARMY AND THE NKVD ONLY FROM THE END OF 1938).
These figures are at first glance scary. But only for the first. Let's compare. On June 28, 1990, an interview with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR appeared in the national newspapers, where he said: “We are literally being overwhelmed by a wave of criminality. Over the past 30 years, 38 MILLION OUR CITIZENS have been under trial, investigation, in prisons and colonies. It's a terrible number! Every ninth…”.
So. A crowd of Western journalists came to the USSR in 1990. The goal is to familiarize yourself with open archives. We studied the archives of the NKVD - they did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat of Railways. We got acquainted - it turned out four million. They did not believe it. They demanded the archives of the People's Commissariat of Food. We got acquainted - it turned out 4 million repressed. We got acquainted with the clothing allowance of the camps. It turned out - 4 million repressed. Do you think that after that, articles with the correct numbers of repressions appeared in the Western media in batches. Yes, nothing of the sort. They still write and talk about tens of millions of victims of repressions.
I want to note that the analysis of the process called “mass repressions” shows that this phenomenon is extremely multi-layered. There are real cases there: about conspiracies and espionage, political trials against hard-nosed oppositionists, cases about the crimes of the presumptuous owners of the regions and the Soviet party officials who “floated” from power. But there are also many falsified cases: settling scores in the corridors of power, sitting around at work, communal squabbles, literary rivalry, scientific competition, persecution of clergymen who supported the kulaks during collectivization, squabbles between artists, musicians and composers.
In the recent history of the Fatherland under Stalinist repressions understand the mass persecution for political and other reasons of citizens of the USSR from 1927 to 1953 (the period of leadership of the Soviet Union by I. V. Stalin). Then the repressive policy was considered in the context of the necessary measures for the implementation of socialist construction in the USSR, in the interests of the broad working masses.
In the general sense of the concept repression(from Latin repressio - constraint, suppression) is a system of punitive sanctions applied by the authorities to reduce or eliminate the threat to the existing state system and public order. The threat can be expressed both in open actions and speeches, and in the hidden opposition of the opponents of the regime.
Repression in the fundamental theory of Marxism-Leninism was not envisaged as an element in the construction of a new society. Therefore, the goals of Stalinist repressions are visible only after the fact:
Isolation and elimination of opponents Soviet power and their henchmen.
The desire to shift responsibility to political opponents for failed projects and other clear failures of industrialization, collectivization and the cultural revolution.
The need to replace the old party-Soviet elite, which has shown its inconsistency in solving the problems of industrialization and socialist construction.
Concentrate all power in the hands of one party leader.
Use forced labor of prisoners in the construction of industrial facilities in places with an acute shortage of labor resources.
Prerequisites for repression
With the establishment of Soviet power in November 1917, the political struggle in Russia did not end, but moved into the plane of the struggle of the Bolsheviks with any opposition. There were clear prerequisites for future mass repressions:
In early January 1918, the Constituent Assembly was dispersed, and active supporters of the All-Russian Forum were repressed.
In July 1918, the bloc with the Left SRs collapsed, and a one-party dictatorship of the CPSU (b) was established.
Since September 1918, the policy of "war communism" began to tighten the regime of Soviet power, accompanied by the "Red Terror".
In 1921 were created revolutionary tribunals both directly in the Cheka (then the NKVD), and the Supreme (general jurisdiction).
In 1922, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission was reorganized into the State Political Administration (GPU, from 1923 - OGPU), chaired by Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.
The XII Party Conference of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in August 1922, recognized all parties and political organizations that opposed the Bolsheviks. anti-Soviet(anti-state). On this basis, they were subject to defeat.
In 1922, by a decree of the GPU, they were expelled to " philosophical steamer» from the RSFSR to the West, a number of prominent scientists, specialists and artists.
The struggle for power in the 20-30s, in the conditions of forced industrialization and collectivization, was carried out with the use of political repression.
Political repression These are measures of state coercion, including different types restrictions and punishments. In the Soviet Union, political repression was used against individuals and even social groups.
Reasons for repression
In modern historiography, political repressions are associated with the period when the supreme power was associated with the name of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1926-1953). The event line predetermined the causal series of repressions, conventionally designated as Stalinist:
First, to create conditions for the concentration of power in one hand, eliminating all those who claimed the first role in the party and state administration.
Secondly, it was necessary to remove the obstacles on the path of colossal transformations, posed by the opposition and outright enemies.
Thirdly, to isolate and liquidate the "fifth column" on the eve of formidable military upheavals and aggravation of hostility with the Western world.
Fourth, to demonstrate to the people the will and determination in tackling grandiose tasks.
Thus, repression objectively becomes the most important instrument of the policy of the Soviet state, regardless of the desires and personal aspirations of specific figures.
Political competitors of I. V. Stalin
After the death of V. I. Lenin, a situation arose in the Soviet establishment of a competitive struggle for the first role in government. At the very pinnacle of power, a stable group of political competitors, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, has formed:
- General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks I. V. Stalin.
- Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar of the Navy L. D. Trotsky.
- Chairman of the Comintern and head of the Leningrad party organization GE Zinoviev.
- L. B. Kamenev, who headed the Moscow Party organization.
- Chief ideologist and editor of the party newspaper Pravda N. I. Bukharin.
They all accepted Active participation in the intrigues of the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s, which ultimately led Stalin to absolute power in the USSR. This struggle was "not for life, but for death", so all sentimentality was excluded.
The course of the main events of the Stalinist repressions
First stage
The 1920s is the path to the sole power of I.V. Stalin.
Political moments | Main events, participants and result |
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|---|---|---|
Liquidation of open Trotskyist opposition | JV Stalin, in alliance with G. E. Zinoviev and L. B. Kamenev, sought to remove L. D. Trotsky from all posts and began political persecution against his prominent followers. |
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The confrontation with the "new opposition" (1925) and the defeat of the "united opposition" (1926-1927) | JV Stalin, in alliance with N. I. Bukharin and A. I. Rykov, sought to expel G. E. Zinoviev and L. B. Kamenev from the party and deprive him of all posts. L. D. Trotsky completely lost political influence (exiled in 1928 to Kazakhstan, and in 1929 expelled from the USSR). |
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elimination from political power"right opposition" | N. I. Bukharin and A. I. Rykov lost their posts and were expelled from the CPSU(b) for speaking out against forced industrialization and for maintaining the NEP. It was decided to expel from the party all those who had ever supported the opposition. |
At this stage, I. V. Stalin skillfully used the differences and political ambitions of his competitors, and his post Secretary General Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to seize absolute power.
Second phase
Strengthening the unlimited regime of Stalin's personal power.
Political processes | ||
|---|---|---|
The case of the economic counter-revolution in the Donbass (Shakhty case). | The accusation of a group of leaders and engineers of the coal industry of Donbass in sabotage and sabotage. |
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Process of the "Industrial Party" | The case of sabotage and sabotage in industry. |
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Chayanov-Kondratiev case | Trial on counter-revolutionary activities of kulaks and socialist-revolutionaries in agriculture |
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The case of the Union Bureau of the Mensheviks | Repressions against a group of old members of the RSDLP. |
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Assassination of Sergei Kirov | The reason for the deployment of repression against Stalin's opponents. |
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"Great Terror"(the term was put into use by R. Conquest) is a period of large-scale repression and persecution against Soviet and party cadres, the military, industry experts, intellectuals and other persons disloyal to the existing government from 1936 to 1938. |
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August 1936 | The process of ""united Trotskyist-Zinoviev opposition" | G. E. Zinoviev and L. B. Kamenev and L. D. Trotsky were sentenced to VMN (in absentia). |
January 1937 | The trial of members of the "united Trotskyist-Zinoviev opposition" | G. L. Pyatakov, K. B. Radek and others were convicted. |
The first trial of the "anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization" | M. N. Tukhachevsky, I. P. Uborevich, I. E. Yakir and others were convicted. |
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Trials of the Right Opposition | N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov and others were repressed. |
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The second cycle of trials on the "military conspiracy" | A. I. Egorov, V. K. Blyukher and others were subjected to repressions. In total, over 19 thousand people were dismissed from the Red Army in cases related to the “military conspiracy”. (more than 9 thousand people were restored), 9.5 thousand people were arrested. (almost 1.5 thousand people were later restored). |
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As a result, by 1940 a regime of unlimited power and a personality cult of I. V. Stalin were established.
Third stage
Repressions in the post-war years.
Political processes | ||
|---|---|---|
August 1946 | Decree of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad" | Persecution of figures of culture and art. |
Soviet and statesmen, former and current leaders of the Leningrad organizations of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government. |
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The Case of the "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" | The fight against "cosmopolitanism" |
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Doctors' case process | The accusation of prominent doctors of involvement in the deaths of Soviet and party leaders. |
The above list of the processes of the period of Stalinist repressions does not fully reflect the picture of the tragic time, only key cases are recorded. On the other hand, there is a tendency to exaggerate the number of victims, and this makes the attitude towards the times of Stalinism far ambiguous.
The results of Stalin's repressions
- There was an establishment of the sole power of I. V. Stalin.
- A rigid totalitarian regime was established.
- Over 2 million people, opponents of Soviet power, overt, covert, and often innocent were subjected to mass repression.
- A state system of forced labor camps, the Gulag, was created.
- Labor relations have tightened. The forced and low-paid labor of Gulag prisoners was widely used.
- There was a radical replacement of the old party-Soviet elite with young technocrats.
- The fear of openly expressing one's own opinion was entrenched in Soviet society.
- The declared rights and freedoms of citizens of the USSR were not fulfilled in practice.
The period of Stalinist repressions remained in national history one of the darkest and most controversial pages.
"Thaw". Rethinking the Stalin period. Rehabilitation
The situation that developed in the USSR after the death of Stalin with the "light hand" of I. Ehrenburg was called " thaw". In addition to the revitalization of public life, the thaw led to rethinking achievements and shortcomings Stalin period Soviet history:
- Achievements were called into question.
- The shortcomings bulged out and multiplied.
A large-scale process of rehabilitation of victims of political repressions has been launched.
Rehabilitation is the removal of false accusations, release from punishment and the return of an honest name.
Partial rehabilitation was carried out on the initiative of L.P. Beria in the late 30s. He repeated the infamous amnesty in 1953. A year later, N. S. Khrushchev granted amnesty to collaborators and war criminals. Companies for the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist repressions took place from 1954 to 1961. and in 1962-1982. In the late 1980s, the rehabilitation process resumed.
Since 1991, the Law " On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression».
Since 1990 in Russian Federation noted Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repressions.
Introduced in 2009 school curriculum based on the literature of A. Solzhenitsyn's novel " Gulag Archipelago' is still perceived ambiguously.
Stalin refers to the political repressions carried out in the Soviet Union during the period when the country's government was headed by I.V. Stalin (late 20s - early 1950s).
Political persecution acquired a massive character with the beginning and forced (late 20s - early 30s), and reached its peak in the period dating back to 1937-1938. - The Great Terror.
During the Great Terror, the NKVD arrested about 1.58 million people, of which 682 thousand were sentenced to death.
Until now, historians have not come to a consensus regarding the historical background of the Stalinist political repressions of the 1930s and their institutional basis.
But for most researchers, it is an indisputable fact that it was the political figure of Stalin that played a decisive role in the punitive department of the state.
According to declassified archival materials, mass repressions on the ground were carried out in accordance with the “planned tasks” lowered from above to identify and punish “enemies of the people”. Moreover, on many documents the demand to “shoot everyone” or “beat again” was written by the hand of the Soviet leader.
It is believed that the ideological basis for the "Great Terror" was the Stalinist doctrine of intensifying the class struggle. The very mechanisms of terror were borrowed from the time of the civil war, during which non-judicial executions were widely used by the Bolsheviks.
A number of researchers evaluate the Stalinist repressions as a perversion of the policy of Bolshevism, emphasizing that among the repressed there were many members of the Communist Party, leaders and the military.
For example, in the period 1936-1939. more than 1.2 million communists were repressed - half of the total number of the party. Moreover, according to existing data, only 50 thousand people were released, the rest died in the camps or were shot.
In addition, according to Russian historians, Stalin's repressive policy, based on the creation of extrajudicial bodies, was a gross violation of the laws of the Soviet Constitution that were in force at that time.
Researchers identify several main causes of the "Great Terror". The main one is the Bolshevik ideology itself, which tends to divide people into “us” and “enemies”.
It should be noted that the difficult economic situation that prevailed in the country during the period under review (numerous industrial accidents, train wrecks, interruptions in goods and products), it was beneficial for the current government to explain as a result of the wrecking activities of the enemies of the Soviet people.
In addition, the presence of millions of prisoners made it possible to solve serious economic problems - for example, providing cheap labor force large-scale construction projects countries.
Finally, many tend to consider Stalin's mental illness, who suffered from paranoia, to be one of the reasons for political repression.
Fear, sown among the masses, has become a reliable foundation for complete subordination to the central government. Thus, thanks to the total terror in the 30s, Stalin managed to get rid of possible political opponents and turn the remaining workers of the apparatus into thoughtless performers.
The policy of the "Great Terror" caused enormous damage to the economy and military power of the Soviet state.
Repressions of the 30s - an important phenomenon in the fate of the country and the Soviet people. His objective analysis has not yet been and could not be. The pain of loss is still too great, and any attempt at a cold-blooded analysis looks immoral.
The sons of those who died in the 1930s play an important role in the political arena. politicians. The very image of repression is such an important instrument of politics that all means of creating or changing this image are protected by strict, although not always explicit, censorship. As a result, public consciousness is not yet ready to accept not only logical analysis, but simply reliable information about the phenomenon*1*.
Because in this training course it is impossible to avoid covering this topic, we will first present the factual data, and then we will make methodological remarks that can help everyone streamline their personal ideas.
The sentencing statistics are accurate and unambiguous. The exact statistics of the execution of sentences has not yet been published, but the number of executions is known less than number death sentences. The reason is that the employees of the OGPU, who themselves constituted a very vulnerable group, scrupulously followed the instructions and documented their actions. No one was shot "without a piece of paper."
From fragmentary data it is difficult to create a coherent picture, but in some years the discrepancies were large. So, in the first half of 1933, according to the law on embezzlement, 2,100 people were sentenced to death, in 1 thousand cases the sentence was carried out, the rest were replaced with various terms of imprisonment.
Created in 1930, the GULAG system (Main Directorate of Camps) included special settlements (exile), colonies (for those sentenced to less than 3 years) and camps. “Stalinist repressions” include sentences under Art. 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR on counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes (banditry, robbery, etc.). These are sentences to the highest measure or imprisonment in the camp.
According to Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for 1930-1939. 2.8 million people were convicted, of which 1.35 million were convicted in 1937-1938. Over a decade, 724.4 thousand people were sentenced to capital punishment, and 684.2 thousand people were sentenced to capital punishment in the two years indicated. Personally, staying in the camp was a terrible ordeal, but how social institution The GULAG was not a “death camp” - the mortality rate in it did not greatly exceed the mortality rate of the same age categories in the wild (about 3%; only in 1937-1938 it jumped to 5.5 and 5.7%, when the appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov ordered to reduce the diet). Thus, about 700 thousand people died directly from the “Stalinist repressions”. According to the latest data, from 1930 to 1953, 786,098 people were shot on charges of state crimes. This is a huge value, and it is a sin to exaggerate it out of political interest.
*1*After a short-term disclosure of the archives, accurate and detailed quantitative information was published in the specialized literature in several ways. The media and those circles of the intelligentsia for which this information has become available are simply hushed up. Once created, the distorted image of repression is stable and protected.
Let's get to the heart of the problem. It is necessary to distinguish between what is at stake: about repression as a real phenomenon or about the image of repression formed in the mass consciousness*1*.
These are different things, but both of them exist in our social existence and influence it. From the point of view of historical reality, the version of A. I. Solzhenitsyn about “43 million shot” is absurd, but from the point of view of reality of the 70-90s. , - part of the destructive force that the state could not cope with.
All large-scale repressions known in history, which seem to posterity as inexplicable outbreaks of mass psychosis, are in fact only the culmination of more or less long process"aging". This process always has a beginning, a “seed”, imperceptible against the backdrop of a grandiose result. To understand the result, one must see the whole system: its origin and all critical points - the crossroads at which the process pushed into the fatal corridor. After the climax, the system "burns out", and in this society there can be no repetition of mass repressions.
The greatest historian of our century A. Toynbee, speaking about the place of repression in history, noted that "the sword of repression, having tasted blood, cannot sit in its sheath." In other words, having once begun bloody repressions, it is difficult to stop this process until it reaches its climax: at each step of this process, motives for the next, expanded stage are generated. In Russia, this process was apparently started. Bloody Sunday” 1905 and the executions of peasants during the Stolypin reform. L. N. Tolstoy wrote about them in an excitement that was not understood at that time. He prophetically saw in those executions the seed of future tragedies. Then there were milestones: white and red terror, civil war, brutal suppression of peasant unrest in 1921, executions of priests in the early 20s. , dispossession and collectivization, the terrible famine of 1933. All this accumulated a huge “potential for revenge” in society.
*1* This can be explained by the example of an old phenomenon already studied: the repressions of Ivan the Terrible. During the 35 years of his reign, from 3 to 4 thousand people were executed. In those same years, in Paris, in one night (“Varfolomeevsky”), according to various sources, from 4 to 12 thousand people were executed, and in Holland in a short time - about 100 thousand. However, for a number of reasons, the image of Ivan IV as a bloodthirsty beast was created in the public mind, and nothing unusual is seen in the actions of the French or Spanish kings. It is striking that from mass consciousness this idea has passed into the history books, even the fundamental ones.
Such potential is accumulated in the course of all large, civilizational scale, social transformations, namely, these were the shifts that took place in the USSR. In comparison with other similar phenomena of repression of the 30s. quantitatively small. The formation of bourgeois society in the West (Reformation) gave rise to incongruous repressions - the burning of about a million "witches" by Protestant governments alone. Broad (relatively larger than in the USSR) repressions were carried out by the Great French Revolution.
The potential for revenge in the USSR broke through as soon as the civil war (in crumpled form) moved inside the ruling party*1* itself. There was a beating of the “Leninist guard”, in which many innocent people were also injured. The most important aspect of the “Stalinist repressions” is that the actions of the authorities received massive support, which could not be organized or imitated.
The repressions made it possible, in one fell swoop, without observing the usual administrative procedures, to replace a whole generation of the old nomenklatura with a new one, prepared already in modern conditions and brought up outside of party factionalism. In 1939, in the leadership of the nomenklatura, a quarter of the workers were 20-29 years old, 45% were 30-39 years old, and only 6.5% were over 50 years old. In the same years, a “purge” of the party was carried out: in 1933-1937. over 1 million members were excluded from it.
At the same time, the repressions destroyed all the nomenklatura clans that began to take shape through self-organization, focused on group goals and eluding control. After we observed the actions of such clans, which in the late 80s. cold-bloodedly liquidated the USSR, the fears of I. V. Stalin also cannot be considered absurd.
*1* It was inevitable, and the split was fundamental. Bolshevism initially contained two projects: one globalist, in its most pure form, was presented by L. D. Trotsky (“world revolution”), the other was a sovereign Russian one, represented by I. V. Stalin (“building socialism in one country”). V. I. Lenin, balancing, connected both forces while they were allies in civil war. After the end of the war and the death of V.I. Lenin, the union was broken.
However, all this is only an attempt at a possible rational explanation of the generally terrible and cruel case, which, even if it solved urgent and extraordinary problems, laid a time bomb under the Soviet statehood.
From January 1938, the flywheel of repression began to slow down, a number of “cooling” decisions were adopted: leading NKVD workers led by people’s commissars (Yagoda, Yezhov) were removed, tried and shot, and the work of “troikas” in the field was stopped. The People's Commissar of Justice demanded that the courts strictly observe procedural norms, and the courts began to return cases to the NKVD for additional investigation (50% of cases on political charges), the number of acquittals increased sharply, despite the protests of the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, L.P. Beria. In 1939, mass rehabilitation was carried out (837 thousand people were released, including 13 thousand officers who were reinstated in the army). Many events (not only sentences and executions, but also the unexpected release and rapid promotion of certain groups of workers) have not yet found a convincing explanation; many conclusions drawn under the pressure of political factors require verification.
On the whole, repressions remain a little-studied phenomenon in the history of Russia and require a responsible, painstaking study free from ideological predilections.
