It was during the years of the civil war that the foundation began to form for the elimination of class enemies, adherents of building states on a national basis, and counter-revolutionaries of all stripes. This period can be considered the birth of the soil for future Stalinist repressions. At the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928, Stalin voiced the principle, guided by which millions of people would be killed and repressed. He envisaged an increase in the struggle between classes as the construction of a socialist society was completed.

Stalinist repressions began in the early twenties of the twentieth century, and lasted for about thirty years. They can certainly be called the centralized policy of the state. Thanks to the thoughtless machine created by Stalin from the internal affairs bodies and the NKVD, the repressions were systematized and put on stream. Sentencing for political reasons was generally carried out in accordance with Article 58 of the Code and its subparagraphs. Among them were accusations of espionage, sabotage, treason, terrorist intentions, counter-revolutionary sabotage and others.

Causes of Stalin's repressions.

There are still many opinions about this. According to some of them, the repressions were carried out to clean up the political space from the opponents of Stalin. Others adhere to a position based on the fact that the purpose of terror was to intimidate civil society and, as a result, to strengthen the regime of Soviet power. And someone is sure that the repressions were a way to raise the level of the country's industrial development with the help of free labor in the form of convicts.

The initiators of the Stalinist repressions.

According to some testimonies of those times, it can be concluded that the perpetrators of the mass imprisonments were Stalin's closest associates, such as N. Yezhov and L. Beria, who had under their command unlimited state security and internal affairs structures. They deliberately conveyed to the leader biased information about the state of affairs in the state, for the unhindered implementation of repression. However, some historians are of the opinion that Stalin's personal initiative in carrying out large-scale purges and his possession of complete data on the scale of arrests.

In the thirties, a huge number of prisons and camps located in the north of the country for better management are combined into one structure - the Gulag. They are engaged in a wide range of construction work, as well as working in the extraction of minerals and precious metals.

More recently, thanks to the partially declassified archives of the NKVD of the USSR, a wide range of people began to know the true numbers of repressed citizens. They amounted to almost 4 million people, of which approximately 700 thousand were sentenced to capital punishment. Only a small part of the innocently convicted were subsequently acquitted of charges. Only after the death of Joseph Vissarionovich did rehabilitation gain tangible proportions. The activities of comrades Beria, Yezhov, Yagoda and many others were also revised. They were convicted.

The question of the repressions of the thirties of the last century is of fundamental importance not only for understanding 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 The Childhood Disease of Leftism in Communism, he wrote: We are afraid of an excessive expansion of the party, because careerists and rogues inevitably strive to cling to the government party, who deserve only to be shot».

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 17th Congress of the CPSU (b) (March 1934). In his Report, the Secretary General described a certain type of workers who interfere with the party and the country: “... These are people with well-known merits in the past, people who believe that party and Soviet laws were written not for them, but for fools. These are the same people who do not consider it their duty to carry out the decisions of Party organs... 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 is unfinished primary), washed with blood 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 recognition of ardent critics of the USSR. For the first time in Russian history, secret alternative elections were to be held. By secret ballot. Despite the fact that the party elite tried to put a spoke in the wheel even at the time when the draft constitution was being created, Stalin managed to bring the matter to an end.

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

Understand something they understood, but what to do? I don't want to part with my chairs. And they perfectly understood one more circumstance - in the previous period they had done such a thing, especially during the Civil War and collectivization, that the people with great pleasure would not only not have chosen them, but also would have broken their heads. The hands of many high regional party secretaries were up to the elbows in blood. During the period of collectivization in the regions there was complete arbitrariness. In one of the regions Khataevich, this nice man, actually declared a civil war in the course of collectivization in his particular region. As a result, Stalin was forced to threaten him that he would shoot him immediately if he did not stop mocking people. Do you think that comrades Eikhe, Postyshev, Kosior and Khrushchev were better, were less "nice"? Of course, the people remembered all this in 1937, and after the elections, these bloodsuckers would have gone into the woods.

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

The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in June 1936, directly aimed the party elite at new times. When discussing the draft of the new constitution, A. Zhdanov spoke quite unambiguously in his extensive report: “ The new electoral system ... will give a powerful impetus to the improvement of the work of Soviet organs, the elimination of bureaucratic organs, the elimination of bureaucratic shortcomings and distortions 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 ACTIVITIES, 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 with a "list", to ensure "an unlimited right to challenge the candidates put forward by party members and an unlimited right to criticize these candidates." The last phrase referred entirely to the elections of purely party bodies, where there had not been a shadow of democracy for a long time. But, as we see, the general elections to the Soviet and party bodies have not been forgotten either.

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

And how do the party nobles who gathered at the plenum react to Zhdanov's report - the first secretaries of the regional committees, regional committees, 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") passes the irony on deaf ears and habitually crackles about the fact that the electoral activity of the masses, so you know, 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 PUT THE PAST ERRORS IN THE LINE. And the party boyars are all about the same thing: to look for and catch enemies with all the ardor! Eradicate deeper, plant more! For a change, they enthusiastically and loudly begin to drown each other: Kudryavtsev - Postysheva, Andreev - Sheboldaeva, Polonsky - Shvernik, Khrushchev - Yakovlev.

Molotov, unable to stand it, openly says:
- In a number of cases, listening to the speakers, one could come to the conclusion that our resolutions and our reports went past the ears of the speakers ...
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, as soon as they give such an opportunity, former white officers and nobles, hidden kulak underdogs, clergymen 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, supposedly 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 it's in best case...

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 from now on, there will be only one candidate in each ballot - for the sake of rebuffing intrigues. And in addition - another verbose verbiage about the need to identify the masses of entrenched enemies.

Stalin also made another mistake. He sincerely believed that N.I. Yezhov 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?

Memories are interesting in this regard. famous poet Nikolai Zabolotsky: " A strange certainty was growing in my head that we were in the hands of the Nazis, who, under the nose of our government, had found a way to destroy the 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, 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 - they realized, but how to curb the monster? It is clear that by that time the People's Commissariat 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. Coming Nazi troops the peoples of the USSR would have perceived it as happiness.

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

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 is a political scientist, doctor historical sciences, a prominent neo-liberal, in one of the recent TV programs with V. Solovyov, argued that in Russia it is necessary to create a DICTATORY OF TEN PERCENT 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, in the West, memoirs of the former Soviet spy Alexander Orlov (Leiba Feldbin), who fled our country at the end of the 30s, taking a huge amount of government dollars. 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 the general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other capabilities.

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

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

Thirdly, Western Sovietologists and the emigre public, having no access to archival materials, 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 get acquainted 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.

AND THERE IS CLINICAL PSYCHIATRY - THE MILLNESS OF INVESTIGATORS AND THE MILLNESS OF INFORMERS (four million denunciations were written in 1937-38). But what has not been found is the cases concocted at the direction of the Kremlin. There are reverse examples - when, at the will of Stalin, someone was taken out from under execution, or even released altogether.

There is one more thing to be understood. The term “repression” is a medical term (suppression, blocking) and was introduced specifically to remove the question of guilt. Imprisoned in the late 30s, which means he is innocent, as he was “repressed”. In addition, the term "repressions" was put into circulation to be used initially in order to give an appropriate moral coloring to the entire Stalinist period, without going into details.

The events of the 1930s showed that the main problem for the Soviet government was the party and state "apparatus", which consisted to a large extent of unprincipled, illiterate and greedy co-workers, leading party members-talkers, attracted by the fat smell of revolutionary robbery. Such an apparatus was exceptionally inefficient and uncontrollable, which was like death for the totalitarian Soviet state, in which everything depended on the apparatus.

It was from then on that Stalin made repression an important institution. government controlled and a means of restraining the "apparatus" in check. Naturally, the apparatus became the main object of these repressions. Moreover, repression has become an important instrument of state building.

Stalin assumed that it was possible to make a workable bureaucracy out of the corrupted Soviet apparatus only after SEVERAL STAGES of repressions. Liberals will say that this is the whole of Stalin, that he could not live without repressions, without the persecution of honest people. But here is what American intelligence officer John Scott reported to the US State Department about who was repressed. He caught these repressions in the Urals in 1937.

“The director of the construction office, who was engaged in the construction of new houses for the workers of the plant, was not satisfied with his salary, which amounted to a thousand rubles a month, and a two-room apartment. So he built himself a separate house. The house had five rooms, and he was able to furnish it well: he hung silk curtains, set up a piano, covered the floor with carpets, etc. Then he began to drive around the city in a car at a time (this happened in early 1937) when there were few private cars in the city. At the same time, the annual construction plan was completed by his office by only about sixty percent. At meetings and in the newspapers, he was constantly asked questions about the reasons for such poor performance. He answered that there were no building materials, not enough labor, and so on.

An investigation began, during which it turned out that the director embezzled state funds and sold building materials to nearby collective farms and state farms at speculative prices. It was also discovered that there were people in the construction office whom he specially paid to do his "business".
An open trial took place, lasting several days, at which all these people were judged. They talked a lot about him in Magnitogorsk. In his accusatory speech at the trial, the prosecutor did not speak about theft or giving bribes, but about sabotage. The director was accused of sabotaging the construction of workers' housing. He was convicted after he fully admitted his guilt, and then shot.”

And here is the reaction of the Soviet people to the purge of 1937 and their position at that time. “Often, workers are even happy when they arrest some “important bird”, a leader whom they for some reason disliked. Workers are also very free to express their critical thoughts both in meetings and in private conversations. I've heard them use the strongest language when talking about bureaucracy and poor performance by individuals or organizations. ... in the Soviet Union, the situation was somewhat different in that the NKVD, in its work to protect the country from the intrigues of foreign agents, spies and the onset of the old bourgeoisie, counted on the support and assistance from the population and basically received them.

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

Readers who are interested in this issue are aware of the incessant moaning of liberals that during the years of the purge, " the best people, the smartest and most capable. Scott also hints at this all the time, but, nevertheless, he seems to sum it up: “After the purges, the administrative apparatus of the entire plant was almost one hundred percent young Soviet engineers. There are practically no specialists from among the prisoners, and foreign specialists have actually disappeared. However, by 1939 most of the departments, such as the Railroad Administration and the coking plant of the plant, began to work better than ever before.

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

But to clean out the snickering scoundrels from the high offices is half the battle, it was also necessary to replace them with worthy people. It is very curious how this problem was solved in the NKVD.

Firstly, a person was placed at the head of the department who was alien to the kombartvo, who had no ties with the capital's party top, but a proven professional in business - Lavrenty Beria.

The latter, secondly, ruthlessly cleared out the Chekists who had compromised themselves,
thirdly, he carried out a radical downsizing, sending people to retire or to work in other departments of people who seemed to be not vile, but unsuitable for professional use.

And, finally, the Komsomol conscription to the NKVD was announced, when completely inexperienced guys came to the bodies instead of deserved pensioners or shot scoundrels. But ... the main criterion for their selection was an impeccable reputation. If in the characteristics from the place of study, work, place of residence, along the Komsomol or party line, there were at least some hints of their unreliability, a tendency to selfishness, laziness, then no one invited them to work in the NKVD.

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

Professionalism is a gainful business, but in order to punish any bastard, a person must be absolutely not dirty. Well, yes, clean hands, a cold head and a warm heart - this is all about the youth of the Beria draft. The fact is that it was at the end of the 30s that the NKVD became a truly effective special service, and not only in the matter of internal cleansing.

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

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

Unfortunately, immediately after the end of the great purge, alternative elections were not allowed to be held, which began in 1939. World War. And again, the question of democratization was put on the agenda by Iosif Vissarionovich in 1952, shortly before his death. But after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev returned the leadership of the entire country to the party, without answering for anything. And not only.

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

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

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

But how did Khrushchev act as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks? In 1937-1938. out of 38 top leaders of the Moscow City Committee, only three people survived, out of 146 party secretaries - 136 were repressed. Where he found 22,000 kulaks in the Moscow region in 1937, you can’t explain soberly. In total, for 1937-1938, only in Moscow and the Moscow region. he personally repressed 55,741 people.

But, perhaps, speaking at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev was worried that innocent ordinary people were shot? Yes, Khrushchev did not care about the arrests and executions of ordinary people. His entire report at the 20th Congress was devoted to Stalin's accusations that he imprisoned and shot prominent Bolsheviks and marshals. Those. elite. Khrushchev in his report did not even mention the repressed ordinary people. What kind of people should he worry about, “women are still giving birth”, but the cosmopolitan elite, the lapotnik Khrushchev, was oh, what a pity.

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

First, without trampling his predecessor in the dirt, it was unthinkable to hope for Khrushchev's recognition as a leader after Stalin. No! Stalin, even after his death, remained a competitor for Khrushchev, who had to be humiliated and destroyed by any means. Kicking a dead lion, as it turned out, is a pleasure - it does not give back.

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

The third motive, and perhaps the most important, was the terrible fear of the remnants of the "Leninist Guard" for what they had done. After all, all of their hands, as Khrushchev himself put it, were up to the elbows in blood. Khrushchev and people like him wanted not only to rule the country, but also to have guarantees that they would never be dragged on the rack, no matter what they did while in leadership positions. The 20th Congress of the CPSU gave them such guarantees in the form of indulgence for the release of all sins, both past and future. The whole riddle of Khrushchev and his associates is not worth a damn thing: it is THE IRRESSIBLE ANIMAL FEAR SITTING IN THEIR SOULS AND THE PAINFUL THIRST FOR POWER.

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

Here, historicism of assessments is also necessary: ​​one cannot judge a person of one era by the standards of another era (especially of that new era, which he created with his work and genius). For the beginning of the 20th century, the horrors in the position of the peasantry were so commonplace that many contemporaries practically did not notice them. The famine did not begin with Stalin, it ended with Stalin. It seemed like forever - but the current liberal reforms are again dragging us into that swamp, from which we seem to have already got out ...

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

It must be understood that many of those shot under Stalin themselves were going to quite seriously kill him, and if he hesitated even for a minute, he himself would have received a bullet in the forehead. The struggle for power in the era of Stalin had a completely different sharpness than now: it was the era of the revolutionary "Praetorian Guard" - accustomed to rebellion and ready to change emperors like gloves. Trotsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and a whole crowd of people who were accustomed to killings, as to peeling potatoes, claimed the supremacy.

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

Well, God bless him with Khrushchev and the 20th Congress. Let's talk about what the liberal media are constantly talking about, let's talk about Stalin's guilt.
Liberals accuse Stalin of shooting about 700,000 people in 30 years. The logic of the liberals is simple - all the victims of Stalinism. All 700 thousand.

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

Meanwhile, even the CIA analytical center Rand Corporation, based on demographic data and archival documents, calculated the number of repressed people in the Stalin era. This center claims that less than 700,000 people were shot between 1921 and 1953. At the same time, no more than a quarter of cases fall to the share of those sentenced to an article under the political article 58. By the way, the same proportion was observed among the prisoners of the labor camps.

“Do you like it when they destroy their people in the name of a great goal?” the liberals continue. I will answer. THE PEOPLE - NO, BUT THE BANDITS, THIVES AND MORAL FRACTIONS - YES. But I DON'T LIKE anymore when their own people are destroyed in the name of filling their pockets with loot, hiding behind beautiful liberal-democratic slogans.

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

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

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

As for the first and second, the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938 openly recognized the lawlessness committed against honest communists and non-party people, adopting a special resolution on this matter, published, by the way, in all central newspapers. Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, noting "provocations on an all-Union scale", demanded: Expose careerists who seek to distinguish themselves ... on repression. To expose a skillfully disguised enemy ... seeking to kill our Bolshevik cadres by carrying out measures of repression, sowing uncertainty and excessive suspicion in our ranks.

Just as openly, the entire country was told about the harm caused by unjustified repressions at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) held in 1939. Immediately after the December Plenum of the Central Committee in 1938, thousands of illegally repressed people, including prominent military leaders, began to return from places of detention. All of them were officially rehabilitated, and Stalin personally apologized to some.

Well, and about, thirdly, I have already said that the NKVD apparatus almost suffered the most from repressions, and a significant part was held accountable precisely for abuse of official position, for reprisals against honest people.

What are the liberals not talking about? About the rehabilitation of innocent victims.
Immediately after the December Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1938, they began to revise
criminal cases and release from the camps. It was produced: in 1939 - 330 thousand,
in 1940 - 180 thousand, until June 1941 another 65 thousand.

What liberals are not talking about yet. About how they fought the consequences of the great terror.
With the advent of Beria L.P. In November 1938, 7,372 operational officers, or 22.9% of their payroll, were dismissed from the state security agencies for the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD in November 1938, of which 937 went to jail. And since the end of 1938, the country's leadership has achieved the prosecution of more than 63 thousand NKVD workers who allowed falsification and created far-fetched, fake counter-revolutionary cases, OF WHICH EIGHT THOUSAND WAS SHOT.

I will give only one example from the article by Yu.I. Mukhin: “Minutes No. 17 of the Meeting of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on court cases". There are more than 60 photographs. I will show in the form of a table a piece of one of them. (http://a7825585.hostink.ru/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=752.)

In this article Mukhin Yu.I. writes: " I was told that this kind of documents had never been posted on the Web due to the fact that they were very quickly denied free access to them in the archive. And the document is interesting, and something interesting can be gleaned from it ...».

Lots of interesting things. But most importantly, the article shows what the NKVD officers were shot for after L.P. Beria. Read. The names of those shot in the photographs are shaded.

Top secret
P O T O C O L No. 17
Meetings of the Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on Judicial Affairs
dated February 23, 1940
Chairman - comrade Kalinin M.I.
Present: t.t.: Shklyar M.F., Ponkratiev M.I., Merkulov V.N.

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

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

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

Conclusion N1. Judging Stalin's time only by repressions is the same as judging the activities of the chief physician of a hospital only by the hospital's morgue - there will always be corpses there. If you approach with such a measure, then every doctor is a bloody ghoul and a murderer, i.e. deliberately ignore the fact that the team of doctors successfully cured and prolonged the life of thousands of patients and blame them only for a small percentage of those who died due to some inevitable misdiagnosis or died during serious operations.

The authority of Jesus Christ with Stalin's is incomparable. But even in the teachings of Jesus, people see only what they want to see. Studying the history of world civilization, one has to observe how wars, chauvinism, the "Aryan theory", serfdom, and Jewish pogroms were substantiated by Christian doctrine. This is not to mention the executions "without the shedding of blood" - that is, the burning of heretics. And how much blood was shed during crusades and religious wars? So, maybe because of this, to ban the teachings of our Creator? Just like today, some wimps propose to ban the communist ideology.

If we consider the mortality graph of the population of the USSR, no matter how hard we try, we cannot find traces of “cruel” repressions, and not because they did not exist, but because their scale is exaggerated. What is the purpose of this exaggeration and inflation? The goal is to instill in the Russians a guilt complex similar to the guilt complex of the Germans after the defeat in World War II. The "pay and repent" complex. But the great ancient Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius, who lived 500 years before our era, said even then: “ Beware of those who want to make you feel guilty. For they want power over you».

Do we need it? Judge for yourself. When the first time Khrushchev stunned all the so-called. truth about Stalin's repressions, then the authority of the USSR in the world immediately collapsed to the delight of the enemies. There was a split in the world communist movement. We have quarreled with great China, AND TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD HAVE LEFT THE COMMUNIST PARTIES. Eurocommunism appeared, denying not only Stalinism, but also, what is scary, the Stalinist economy. The myth of the 20th Congress created distorted ideas about Stalin and his time, deceived and psychologically disarmed millions of people when the question of the fate of the country was being decided. When Gorbachev did this for the second time, not only the socialist bloc collapsed, but our Motherland - the USSR collapsed.

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

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

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

Only, after the return of socialism to Russia, taking into account all the advantages and disadvantages of the USSR, one must be vigilant and remember Stalin's warning that as the socialist state is built, the class struggle intensifies, that is, there is a threat of degeneration. And so it happened, and certain segments of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Komsomol and the KGB were among the first to be reborn. The Stalinist party inquisition did not work properly.

The history of Russia, as well as other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “Stalin era”. He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of "expediency." In fact, they were driven by completely different motives.

Talking about the beginning of the political career of the leader who became a tyrant, such authors shyly hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a recidivist convict with seven “walkers”. Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the state course pursued by him.

Lenin received in him a worthy successor. “Creatively developing his teachings,” Iosif Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that he should rule the country by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

The generation of people whose mouths can speak the truth about Stalin's repressions is leaving... Are the newfangled articles that whiten the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken life...

Leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Iosif Vissarionovich personally signed the death lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin toughened repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete lawlessness in the dungeons. It was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 10, 1939, which literally unleashed the hands of the punitive authorities.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from the letter of commander Lisovsky, who is being abused by the satraps of the leader ...

"... A ten-day conveyor interrogation with a cruel vicious beating and no opportunity to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Then - forcing to sit with arms raised up, and also to stand bent over, with his head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours ..."

The desire of the detainees to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges caused an increase in torture and beatings. social status detainees did not play a role. Recall that Robert Eikhe, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher died from beatings during interrogations in Lefortovo prison.

Leader's motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was not tens, not hundreds of thousands, but seven million starved to death and four million arrested (general statistics will be presented below). Only the number of those shot was about 800 thousand people ...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, boundlessly striving for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in Children of the Arbat? Analyzing the personality of Stalin, he shares with us his judgments. “A ruler who is loved by the people is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. Another thing is when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on him. This is a strong ruler!” Hence the leader's credo - to inspire love through fear!

Steps adequate to this idea were taken by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

Iosif Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V. I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate took him 7 links to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, promiscuity in means, rigidity towards people, egocentrism from a young age. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party participated in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich received a long-awaited opportunity career development. Sick and weakening, Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. Thus, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really claims to be the leader.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party undercover intrigues, which was useful to him later in the fight against competitors.

Stalin's position in the system of red terror

The red terror machine was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues a Decree "On the Red Terror". The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), operated under the Council of People's Commissars from December 7, 1917.

The reason for such a radicalization of domestic politics was the assassination of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on the life of V. Lenin, Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Both events took place on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka unleashed a wave of repression.

According to statistics, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 shot, imprisoned in concentration camps 1791.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landlords had already been repressed. First of all, a blow was dealt to the classes that are the backbone of the monarchical structure of society. However, having "creatively developed the teachings of Lenin", Iosif Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - the ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he substantiated theoretically.

His concept of the intensification of the class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Iosif Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. Since that time, he actually becomes the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.

Hidden by slogans, the real meaning of Stalinism is manifested in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman showed very clearly that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal unlimited dictatorship.

Iosif Vissarionovich in 1928-1930 began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public trials that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, Stalin's cult of personality began to form with trials and instilling horror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured into signing accusations fabricated by the investigation. The cruel dictatorship imitated the class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...

Three global litigation: "The case of the Union Bureau" (putting managers at risk); "The Case of the Industrial Party" (the wrecking of the Western powers against the economy of the USSR was imitated); "The Case of the Labor Peasant Party" (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays with mechanization). Moreover, they all united in a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against the Soviet government and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD.

As a result, the entire economic management was replaced national economy from the old "specialists" to the "new cadres" ready to work on the instructions of the "leader".

Through the mouths of Stalin, who provided the state apparatus loyal to repressions with the courts, the adamant determination of the Party was further expressed: to oust and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, merchants, small and medium; destroy the basis of agricultural production - the prosperous peasantry (indiscriminately calling it "kulaks"). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by "the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants."

Behind the scenes, in parallel with this "general line", the "father of peoples" consistently, with the help of provocations and false evidence, began to implement the line of liquidating their party competitors for the highest state power(Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. testifies that the main social base of the village - an efficient agricultural producer - became the main object of repression. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (which in fact at that time was Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was to turn under the pressure of repression from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin's industrialization plans and the maintenance of hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly indicate the object of his repressions, Stalin went on an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustified, he managed to ensure that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profitable) producer into a separate "class of kulaks" - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over the centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Decree "On the liquidation of ... kulak farms" of 01/30/1930

The Red Terror came to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalinist trials - "troikas", in most cases ending in executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (any persons subjectively defined as “rural activists” could fall into the category) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body of permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational management under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Settlers in the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list basis in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931. 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, ruin and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all Stalin's repressions. Their brief enumeration should be supplemented by the organization of famine. The real reason for it was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? main reason there was a crop failure.

His subjective plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be wise to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for the harvest year ... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded the immediate provision of food for the swollen power structures and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision - to withdraw from the peasants the grain intended for sowing and for consumption.

On October 22, 1932, two extraordinary commissions led by the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of “fighting the kulaks” to seize bread, which was accompanied by violence, quick to punish by troika courts and the eviction of wealthy agricultural producers to the regions of the Far North. It was genocide...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not stopped by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932-1933. are documented. M. A. Sholokhov, the author of The Quiet Flows the Don, addressed the leader, defending his countrymen, with letters, exposing lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. In detail, with an indication of the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors, the famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya stated the facts. Bullying and violence against the peasants are horrific: brutal beatings, breaking out of joints, partial strangulation, mock execution, eviction from houses ... In a response letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader can be seen in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, "quietly" trying to disrupt the provision of food...

Such a voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the Russian State Duma, published in April 2008, revealed to the public previously classified statistics (previously, propaganda concealed these repressions of Stalin in every possible way.)

How many people died of starvation in the above regions? The figure set by the State Duma commission is appalling: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

We will also consider three more directions of Stalinist terror, and in the following table we will present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to oppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the Pravda newspaper, and not go to church ...

Hundreds of thousands of families of formerly productive peasants, fearful of dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights, to make them manipulated, it was at that time that passportization of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. Peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full range of civil rights (freedom to choose their place of residence, freedom to choose work) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition that they fulfill workday norms.

Antisocial policy was accompanied by the destruction of families, an increase in the number of homeless children. This phenomenon has acquired such a scale that the state was forced to respond to it. With the sanction of Stalin, the Politburo of the Land of Soviets issued one of the most inhuman decrees - punitive in relation to children.

The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques - to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

Passportization of the urban population was carried out for repressive purposes. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of the most cynical crimes of Stalin is his sanctioning of the secret resolution of the Politburo of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from 12 years old to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to the death penalty. In 1936 alone, 125,000 children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10,000 children were exiled to the Gulag system.

Great terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum ... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, as a result of repressions over the whole society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and already physical reprisal against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - mass "purges of the state apparatus" were carried out.

Terror has gained unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (since 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was broken for one carelessly dropped word ... Even the Stalinist elite was repressed - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; Chekists Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on fabricated cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified commanders at the corps level - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not possess the proper operational and tactical art.

Stalin's personality cult was characterized not only by the showcase facades of Soviet cities. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to the monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, a mercilessly exploited labor resource for extracting wealth from the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those held in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 it was about 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the convicts of Kolyma mined 35% of the allied gold, being in terrible conditions of detention. We list the main camps that are part of the Gulag system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (respectively 43 and 35 thousand); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry- Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); development of the steppes - Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

For the most part, people stayed in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night of arrest and an ill-judged prejudiced trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: “enemies of the people” - kulaks (in fact, an effective agricultural producer), or even entire deported nationalities. Most served a sentence of 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The process of investigation on it involved torture and a break in the will of the convict.

In the case of the resettlement of kulaks and small nations, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe, and the convicts themselves built a camp and a special prison (TON). From the 1930s, the labor of prisoners was mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours a day. Tens of thousands of people died from overwork, poor nutrition, poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice, which is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by the revolutionary military tribunals. An inhuman system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. The executions as part of the 58th article were valid until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years of serving in camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out on behalf of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.

The disenfranchised people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The beginning of the process of restoring justice was laid by the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

One of the blackest pages in the history of the entire post-Soviet space was the years from 1928 to 1952, when Stalin was in power. Biographers for a long time hushed up or tried to distort some facts from the tyrant's past, but it turned out to be quite possible to restore them. The fact is that the country was ruled by a recidivist convict who was in prison 7 times. Violence and terror, forceful methods of solving the problem were well known to him from early youth. They are also reflected in his policies.

Officially, the course was taken in July 1928 by the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. It was there that Stalin spoke, declaring that the further advancement of communism would meet with increasing resistance from hostile, anti-Soviet elements, and they must be fought hard. Many researchers believe that the repressions of the 30s were a continuation of the policy of the Red Terror, adopted as early as 1918. It is worth noting that no one includes those who suffered during the Civil War from 1917 to 1922 among the victims of repression, because no census was conducted after the First World War. And it is not clear how to establish the cause of death.

The beginning of Stalin's repressions was directed at political opponents, officially - at saboteurs, terrorists, spies engaged in subversive activities, at anti-Soviet elements. However, in practice, there was a struggle with wealthy peasants and entrepreneurs, as well as with certain peoples who did not want to sacrifice their national identity for the sake of dubious ideas. A lot of people dispossessed themselves of the kulak and were forced to resettle, but usually this meant not only the loss of their homes, but also the threat of death.

The fact is that such settlers were not provided with food and medicine. The authorities did not take into account the time of year, so if it happened in winter, people often froze and died of hunger. The exact number of victims is still being established. In society, and now there are disputes about this. Some defenders of the Stalinist regime believe that we are talking about hundreds of thousands of "all". Others point to millions of forcibly displaced, and of them died due to the complete absence of any conditions for life, from about 1/5 to a half.

In 1929, the authorities decided to abandon the usual forms of imprisonment and move on to new ones, reform the system in this direction, and introduce corrective labor. Preparations began for the creation of the Gulag, which many rightly compare with the German death camps. It is characteristic that the Soviet authorities often used various events, for example, the assassination of Voikov's plenipotentiary representative in Poland, to crack down on political opponents and simply objectionable ones. In particular, Stalin reacted to this by demanding the immediate liquidation of the monarchists by any means. At the same time, no connection was even established between the victim and those to whom such measures were applied. As a result, 20 representatives of the former Russian nobility were shot, about 9 thousand people were arrested and subjected to repression. The exact number of victims has not yet been established.

Sabotage

It should be noted that the Soviet regime was completely dependent on specialists trained in the Russian Empire. Firstly, not much time had passed at the time of the 1930s, and in fact, our own specialists were absent or were too young and inexperienced. And without exception, all scientists received training in monarchical educational institutions. Secondly, very often science frankly contradicted what the Soviet government was doing. The latter, for example, denied genetics as such, considering it too bourgeois. There was no study of the human psyche, psychiatry had a punitive function, that is, in fact, it did not fulfill its main task.

As a result, the Soviet authorities began to accuse many specialists of sabotage. The USSR did not recognize such concepts as incompetence, including those that arose due to poor training or incorrect appointment, mistake, miscalculation. The real physical condition of the employees of a number of enterprises was ignored, due to which common mistakes were sometimes made. In addition, mass repressions could arise on the basis of suspiciously frequent, according to the authorities, contacts with foreigners, the publication of works in the Western press. A striking example is the Pulkovo case, when huge number astronomers, mathematicians, engineers and other scientists. And in the end, only a small number were rehabilitated: many were shot, some died during interrogations or in prison.

The Pulkovo case very clearly demonstrates another terrible moment of Stalinist repressions: the threat to loved ones, as well as slandering others under torture. Not only scientists suffered, but also the wives who supported them.

Grain procurement

Constant pressure on the peasants, a half-starved existence, weaning of grain, a shortage of labor negatively affected the pace of grain procurement. However, Stalin did not know how to admit mistakes, which became official state policy. By the way, it is for this reason that any rehabilitation, even of those who were convicted by accident, by mistake or instead of a namesake, took place after the death of the tyrant.

But back to the topic of grain procurement. By objective reasons it was far from always and not everywhere possible to fulfill the norm. And in connection with this, the “guilty” were punished. Moreover, in some places, completely entire villages were repressed. Soviet power also fell on the heads of those who simply allowed the peasants to keep grain for themselves as an insurance fund or for sowing the next year.

Cases were for almost every taste. Cases of the Geological Committee and the Academy of Sciences, "Spring", the Siberian Brigade ... Complete and detailed description can take up many volumes. And this despite the fact that all the details have not yet been disclosed, many documents of the NKVD continue to remain classified.

Some relaxation that came in 1933 - 1934, historians attribute primarily to the fact that the prisons were overcrowded. In addition, it was necessary to reform the punitive system, which was not aimed at such mass character. This is how the Gulag was born.

Great terror

The main terror occurred in 1937-1938, when, according to various sources, up to 1.5 million people suffered, and more than 800 thousand of them were shot or killed in some other way. However, the exact number is still being established, there are quite active disputes on this matter.

Characteristic was the order of the NKVD No. 00447, which officially launched the mechanism of mass repression against former kulaks, socialist-revolutionaries, monarchists, re-emigrants, and so on. At the same time, everyone was divided into 2 categories: more and less dangerous. Both groups were subject to arrest, the first had to be shot, the second was given a term of 8 to 10 years on average.

Among the victims of Stalin's repressions there were quite a few relatives taken into custody. Even if family members could not be convicted of anything, they were still automatically registered, and sometimes forcibly relocated. If the father and (or) mother were declared "enemies of the people", then this put an end to the opportunity to make a career, often - to get an education. Such people often found themselves surrounded by an atmosphere of horror, they were subjected to a boycott.

The Soviet authorities could also persecute on the basis of nationality and the presence, at least in the past, of the citizenship of certain countries. So, only in 1937, 25 thousand Germans, 84.5 thousand Poles, almost 5.5 thousand Romanians, 16.5 thousand Latvians, 10.5 thousand Greeks, 9 thousand 735 Estonians, 9 thousand Finns, 2 thousand Iranians were shot, 400 Afghans. At the same time, people of the nationality against which the repressions were carried out were dismissed from the industry. And from the army - persons belonging to a nationality not represented on the territory of the USSR. All this happened under the leadership of Yezhov, but, which does not even require separate evidence, no doubt, it was directly related to Stalin, constantly personally controlled by him. Many of the hit lists are signed by him. And we are talking about, in total, hundreds of thousands of people.

Ironically, recent stalkers have often been the victim. So, one of the leaders of the described repressions Yezhov was shot in 1940. The verdict was put into effect the very next day after the trial. Beria became the head of the NKVD.

Stalinist repressions spread to new territories along with the Soviet government itself. Purges were going on constantly, they were an obligatory element of control. And with the onset of the 40s, they did not stop.

Repressive mechanism during the Great Patriotic War

Even the Great Patriotic War could not stop the repressive machine, although it partially extinguished the scale, because the USSR needed people at the front. However, now there is a great way to get rid of objectionable - sending to the front line. It is not known exactly how many died following such orders.

At the same time, the military situation became much tougher. Just a suspicion was enough to shoot even without the appearance of a trial. This practice was called "unloading prisons." It was especially widely used in Karelia, in the Baltic States, in Western Ukraine.

The arbitrariness of the NKVD intensified. So, the execution became possible not even by the verdict of the court or some extrajudicial body, but simply by order of Beria, whose powers began to increase. They do not like to cover this moment widely, but the NKVD did not stop its activities even in Leningrad during the blockade. Then they arrested up to 300 students of higher education on trumped-up charges. educational institutions. 4 were shot, many died in isolation wards or in prisons.

Everyone is able to say unequivocally whether detachments can be considered a form of repression, but they definitely made it possible to get rid of unwanted people, and quite effectively. However, the authorities continued to persecute in more traditional forms. All those who were in captivity were waiting for the filtration detachments. Moreover, if an ordinary soldier could still prove his innocence, especially if he was captured wounded, unconscious, sick or frostbite, then the officers, as a rule, were waiting for the Gulag. Some were shot.

As Soviet power spread across Europe, intelligence was engaged there, returning and judging emigrants by force. Only in Czechoslovakia, according to some sources, 400 people suffered from its actions. Quite serious damage in this regard was caused to Poland. Often, the repressive mechanism affected not only Russian citizens, but also Poles, some of whom were shot extrajudicially for resisting Soviet power. Thus, the USSR violated the promises that it gave to the allies.

Post-war developments

After the war, the repressive apparatus turned around again. Too influential military men, especially those close to Zhukov, doctors who were in contact with the allies (and scientists) were under threat. The NKVD could also arrest Germans in the Soviet zone of responsibility for trying to contact residents of other regions that were under the control of Western countries. The unfolding campaign against persons of Jewish nationality looks like a black irony. The last high-profile trial was the so-called "Doctors' Case", which fell apart only in connection with the death of Stalin.

Use of torture

Later, during the Khrushchev thaw, the Soviet prosecutor's office itself was engaged in the study of cases. The facts of mass falsification and obtaining confessions under torture were recognized, which were used very widely. Marshal Blucher was killed as a result of numerous beatings, and in the process of extracting evidence from Eikhe, his spine was broken. There are cases when Stalin personally demanded that certain prisoners be beaten.

In addition to beatings, sleep deprivation, placement in a too cold or, conversely, excessively hot room without clothes, and a hunger strike were also practiced. The handcuffs were periodically not removed for days, and sometimes for months. Forbidden correspondence, any contact with the outside world. Some were “forgotten”, that is, they were arrested, and then they did not consider the cases and did not make any specific decision until Stalin's death. This, in particular, is indicated by the order signed by Beria, which ordered amnesty for those who were arrested before 1938, and for whom no decision has yet been made. We are talking about people who have been waiting for the decision of their fate for at least 14 years! This can also be considered a kind of torture.

Stalinist statements

Understanding the very essence of Stalinist repressions in the present is of fundamental importance, if only because some people still consider Stalin an impressive leader who saved the country and the world from fascism, without which the USSR would have been doomed. Many try to justify his actions by saying that in this way he raised the economy, ensured industrialization or defended the country. In addition, some try to downplay the number of victims. At all, exact amount victims is one of the most contested points today.

However, in reality, to assess the personality of this person, as well as all those who carried out his criminal orders, even the recognized minimum of those convicted and shot is enough. During the fascist regime of Mussolini in Italy, a total of 4.5 thousand people were repressed. His political enemies were either expelled from the country or placed in prisons where they were given the opportunity to write books. Of course, no one says that Mussolini is getting better from this. Fascism cannot be justified.

But what assessment at the same time can be given to Stalinism? And taking into account the repressions that were carried out on a national basis, he, at least, has one of the signs of fascism - racism.

Characteristic signs of repression

Stalinist repressions have several characteristic features that only emphasize what they were. This:

1. mass character. Accurate figures depend heavily on estimates, whether relatives are taken into account or not, internally displaced persons or not. Depending on the method of counting, we are talking about 5 to 40 million.
2. Cruelty. The repressive mechanism did not spare anyone, people were subjected to cruel, inhuman treatment, starved to death, tortured, their relatives were killed before their eyes, loved ones were threatened, forced to abandon family members.
3. Orientation to protect the power of the party and against the interests of the people. In fact, we can talk about genocide. Neither Stalin nor his other henchmen were at all interested in how the constantly decreasing peasantry should provide everyone with bread, which is actually beneficial to the production sector, how science will move forward with the arrest and execution of prominent figures. This clearly demonstrates that the real interests of the people were ignored.
4. Injustice. People could suffer simply because they had property in the past. Wealthy peasants and the poor, who took their side, supported, somehow protected. Persons of "suspicious" nationality. Relatives who returned from abroad. Sometimes academics, prominent scientists, who contacted their foreign colleagues to publish data on invented drugs after they received official permission from the authorities, could be punished.
5. Connection with Stalin. The extent to which everything was tied to this figure is eloquently evident even from the termination of a number of cases immediately after his death. Lavrenty Beria was rightly accused by many of cruelty and inappropriate behavior, but even he, by his actions, recognized the false nature of many cases, the unjustified cruelty used by the NKVD. And it was he who forbade physical measures against prisoners. Again, as with Mussolini, this is not about justification. It's just about underlining.
6. illegality. Some executions were carried out not only without a trial, but also without the participation of the judiciary as such. But even when there was a trial, it was only about the so-called "simplified" mechanism. This meant that the consideration was carried out without defense, only with the hearing of the prosecution and the accused. There was no practice of reviewing cases, the court decision was final, often carried out the next day. At the same time, widespread violations of even the legislation of the USSR itself, which was in force at that time, were observed.
7. inhumanity. The repressive apparatus violated the basic human rights and freedoms proclaimed in the civilized world at that time for several centuries. Researchers do not see a difference between the treatment of prisoners in the dungeons of the NKVD and how the Nazis behaved towards the prisoners.
8. groundlessness. Despite the attempts of the Stalinists to demonstrate the existence of some underlying reason, there is not the slightest reason to believe that anything was directed to any good goal or helped to achieve it. Indeed, a lot was built by the forces of the prisoners of the Gulag, but it was the forced labor of people who were greatly weakened due to the conditions of detention and the constant lack of food. Consequently, production errors, defects and a generally very low level of quality - all this inevitably arose. This situation also could not but affect the pace of construction. Given the costs that the Soviet government incurred for the creation of the Gulag, its maintenance, as well as such a large-scale apparatus in general, it would be much more rational to simply pay for the same work.

The assessment of Stalin's repressions has not yet been finally made. However, no doubt it is clear that this is one of the worst pages of world history.

Stalinist repressions:
What was it?

To the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions

In this material, we have collected the memories of eyewitnesses, fragments from official documents, figures and facts provided by researchers in order to provide answers to questions that excite our society again and again. The Russian state has not been able to give clear answers to these questions, so until now, everyone is forced to look for answers on their own.

Who was affected by the repression

Under the flywheel of Stalinist repression fell representatives of the most different groups population. The most famous are the names of artists, Soviet leaders and military leaders. About peasants and workers often only the names from the execution lists and camp archives are known. They did not write memoirs, tried unnecessarily not to recall the camp past, their relatives often refused them. The presence of a convicted relative often meant an end to a career, study, because the children of arrested workers, dispossessed peasants might not know the truth about what happened to their parents.

When we heard about another arrest, we never asked, “Why was he taken?”, but there were few like us. Crazed with fear, people asked each other this question for pure self-consolation: they take people for something, which means they won’t take me, because there’s nothing for it! They refined themselves, coming up with reasons and justifications for each arrest, - “She really is a smuggler”, “He allowed himself such a thing”, “I myself heard him say ...” And one more thing: “You should have expected this - he has such terrible character”, “It always seemed to me that something was wrong with him”, “This is a complete stranger”. That is why the question: “Why did they take him?” has become taboo for us. It's time to understand that people are taken for nothing.

- Nadezhda Mandelstam , writer and wife of Osip Mandelstam

From the very beginning of terror to this day, attempts have not stopped to present it as a fight against "sabotage", enemies of the fatherland, limiting the composition of the victims to certain classes hostile to the state - kulaks, bourgeois, priests. The victims of terror were depersonalized and turned into "contingents" (Poles, spies, wreckers, counter-revolutionary elements). However, political terror was total in nature, and representatives of all groups of the population of the USSR became its victims: “the cause of engineers”, “the cause of doctors”, persecution of scientists and entire areas in science, personnel purges in the army before and after the war, deportation of entire peoples.

Poet Osip Mandelstam

He died in transit, the place of death is not known for certain.

Directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold

Marshals Soviet Union

Tukhachevsky (executed), Voroshilov, Egorov (executed), Budeny, Blucher (died in Lefortovo prison).

How many people were hurt

According to the estimates of the Memorial Society, there were 4.5-4.8 million people convicted for political reasons, 1.1 million people were shot.

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary and depend on the method of counting. If we take into account only those convicted under political articles, then according to an analysis of the statistics of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, carried out in 1988, the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot. According to the same data, about 1.76 million people died in the camps. According to the estimates of the Memorial Society, there were more people convicted for political reasons - 4.5-4.8 million people, of which 1.1 million people were shot.

The victims of Stalinist repressions were representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forcible deportation (Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and others). This is about 6 million people. One in five did not live to see the end of the journey - about 1.2 million people died during the difficult conditions of the deportations. During dispossession, about 4 million peasants suffered, of which at least 600 thousand died in exile.

In general, about 39 million people suffered as a result of Stalin's policies. The victims of repression include those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, the dispossessed, the victims of hunger, the victims of the unjustifiably cruel decrees "on absenteeism" and "on three spikelets" and other groups of the population who received excessively severe punishment for minor offenses due to repressive the nature of the legislation and the consequences of that time.

Why was it necessary?

The worst thing is not that you are suddenly suddenly taken away from a warm, well-established life, not Kolyma and Magadan, and hard labor. At first, a person desperately hopes for a misunderstanding, for a mistake by the investigators, then painfully waits for them to call, apologize, and let them go home, to their children and husband. And then the victim no longer hopes, does not search painfully for the answer to the question of who needs all this, then goes primitive struggle for life. The worst thing is the meaninglessness of what is happening ... Does anyone know what it was for?

Evgenia Ginzburg,

writer and journalist

In July 1928, speaking at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin described the need to fight "foreign elements" as follows: "As we move forward, the resistance of the capitalist elements will increase, the class struggle will intensify, and Soviet power, forces which will grow more and more, will pursue a policy of isolating these elements, a policy of disintegrating the enemies of the working class, and finally, a policy of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters, creating a basis for the further advancement of the working class and the bulk of the peasantry.

In 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. Yezhov published Order No. 00447, in accordance with which a large-scale campaign was launched to destroy "anti-Soviet elements." They were recognized as the culprits of all the failures of the Soviet leadership: “Anti-Soviet elements are the main instigators of all kinds of anti-Soviet and sabotage crimes, both on collective farms and state farms, and in transport, and in some areas of industry. The state security organs are faced with the task of crushing this entire gang of anti-Soviet elements in the most merciless way, protecting the working Soviet people from their counter-revolutionary intrigues, and finally, once and for all, putting an end to their vile subversive work against the foundations of the Soviet state. In accordance with this, I order - from August 5, 1937, in all republics, territories and regions, to begin an operation to repress former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals. This document marks the beginning of an era of large-scale political repression, which later became known as the Great Terror.

Stalin and other members of the Politburo (V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, K. Voroshilov) personally compiled and signed execution lists - pre-trial circulars listing the number or names of victims to be convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court with a predetermined punishment. According to researchers, under the death sentences of at least 44.5 thousand people are Stalin's personal signatures and resolutions.

The myth of the effective manager Stalin

Until now in the media and even in teaching aids one can meet the justification of political terror in the USSR by the need to carry out industrialization in a short time. Since the release of the decree obliging convicts to serve their sentences in labor camps for more than 3 years, prisoners have been actively involved in the construction of various infrastructure facilities. In 1930, the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps of the OGPU (GULAG) was created and huge flows of prisoners were sent to key construction sites. During the existence of this system, from 15 to 18 million people have passed through it.

During the 1930-1950s, the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow Canal, was carried out by the forces of the Gulag prisoners. The prisoners built the Uglich, Rybinsk, Kuibyshev and other hydroelectric power stations, erected metallurgical plants, objects of the Soviet nuclear program, the longest railways and freeways. Gulag prisoners built dozens of Soviet cities (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Dudinka, Norilsk, Vorkuta, Novokuibyshevsk and many others).

The effectiveness of the work of prisoners was not highly characterized by Beria himself: “The existing ration in the Gulag of 2000 calories is designed for a person sitting in prison and not working. In practice, this underestimated norm is also released by supplying organizations only by 65-70%. Therefore, a significant percentage of the camp labor force falls into the category of weak and useless people in production. In general, the labor force is used no more than 60-65 percent.”

To the question "Is Stalin needed?" we can only give one answer - a firm "no". Even without taking into account the tragic consequences of famine, repression and terror, even considering only the economic costs and benefits - and even making every possible assumption in favor of Stalin - we get results that clearly show that Stalin's economic policy did not lead to positive results. Forced redistribution significantly worsened productivity and social welfare.

- Sergei Guriev , economist

The economic efficiency of Stalinist industrialization by the hands of prisoners is extremely lowly assessed by modern economists. Sergey Guriev gives the following figures: by the end of the 30s, productivity in agriculture reached only the pre-revolutionary level, and in industry it turned out to be one and a half times lower than in 1928. Industrialization led to huge losses in welfare (minus 24%).

Brave new world

Stalinism is not only a system of repression, it is also the moral degradation of society. The Stalinist system made tens of millions of slaves - morally broke people. One of the most terrible texts that I have read in my life is the tortured "confessions" of the great biologist Academician Nikolai Vavilov. Only a few can endure torture. But many - tens of millions! – were broken and became moral freaks out of fear of being personally repressed.

- Alexey Yablokov , corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Philosopher and historian of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt explains that in order to turn Lenin's revolutionary dictatorship into a fully totalitarian government, Stalin had to artificially create an atomized society. For this, an atmosphere of fear was created in the USSR, and whistleblowing was encouraged. Totalitarianism did not destroy real "enemies", but imaginary ones, and this is its terrible difference from ordinary dictatorship. None of the destroyed sections of society were hostile to the regime and probably would not become hostile in the foreseeable future.

In order to destroy all social and family ties, the repressions were carried out in such a way as to threaten the same fate with the accused and everyone in the most ordinary relations with him, from casual acquaintances to closest friends and relatives. This policy penetrated deeply into Soviet society, where people, out of selfish interests or fearing for their lives, betrayed neighbors, friends, even members of their own families. In their desire for self-preservation, the masses of people abandoned their own interests, and became, on the one hand, a victim of power, and on the other, its collective embodiment.

The corollary of the simple and ingenious device of "guilt for association with the enemy" is such that, as soon as a person is accused, his former friends immediately turn into his worst enemies: in order to save their own skin, they hasten to jump out with unsolicited information and denunciations, supplying non-existent data against accused. Ultimately, it was by developing this device to its latest and most fantastic extremes that the Bolshevik rulers succeeded in creating an atomized and fragmented society, the like of which we have never seen before, and whose events and catastrophes in such a pure form would hardly have happened without it.

- Hannah Arendt, philosopher

The deep disunity of Soviet society, the absence of civil institutions were inherited and new Russia have become one of the fundamental problems hindering the creation of democracy and civil peace in our country.

How the state and society fought the legacy of Stalinism

To date, Russia has experienced "two and a half attempts at de-Stalinization." The first and largest was deployed by N. Khrushchev. It began with a report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU:

“They arrested without the sanction of the prosecutor... What else could be a sanction when everything was allowed by Stalin. He was the chief prosecutor in these matters. Stalin gave not only permission, but also instructions on arrests on his own initiative. Stalin was a very suspicious person, with morbid suspicion, as we were convinced while working with him. He could look at a person and say: “something your eyes are running around today,” or: “why do you often turn away today, don’t look directly into your eyes.” Painful suspicion led him to sweeping distrust. Everywhere and everywhere he saw "enemies", "double-dealers", "spies". Having unlimited power, he allowed cruel arbitrariness, suppressed a person morally and physically. When Stalin said that such and such should be arrested, one should have taken it on faith that he was an "enemy of the people." And the gang of Beria, who was in charge of the state security organs, climbed out of their skin to prove the guilt of the arrested persons, the correctness of the materials they fabricated. And what evidence was put into play? Confessions of the arrested. And the investigators got these "confessions".

As a result of the fight against the cult of personality, sentences were revised, more than 88 thousand prisoners were rehabilitated. Nevertheless, the era of the “thaw” that came after these events turned out to be very short-lived. Soon, many dissidents who disagree with the policy of the Soviet leadership will become victims of political persecution.

The second wave of de-Stalinization occurred in the late 80s - early 90s. Only then did the public become aware of at least approximate figures characterizing the scale of the Stalinist terror. At this time, sentences passed in the 30s and 40s were also reviewed. In most cases, the convicted were rehabilitated. Half a century later, posthumously dispossessed peasants were rehabilitated.

A timid attempt at a new de-Stalinization was made during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. However, it did not bring significant results. Rosarkhiv, at the direction of the president, posted on its website documents about 20,000 Poles shot by the NKVD near Katyn.

Programs to preserve the memory of the victims are being phased out due to lack of funding.