(By the way, I have the impression that, due to their mental limitations, Koba’s current fans do not really understand the meaning of the word “liberal”, using it as a label to designate everyone who dares to criticize their absurd constructions. Apparently, it is a fact that Comrade Stalin can be criticized not only the Novodvorskys and Nemtsovs - it just doesn’t fit in the minds of the adherents).
And we will not dissuade them - because... There is no point in arguing with fanatics. However, it is necessary and necessary to show the cannibalistic nature of their fabrications, so that various gullible and impressionable people do not inadvertently “join” this poison.
Because I’m currently working on new material on Crimea, which is why I have to refer a lot to the results of the research of my fellow local historians, in particular, to books in memory of victims of political repression. The second volume is just at hand, open it and read it.
- Gagin Ivan Karlovich, born in 1905, place of birth: Dzhankoy district, German, from peasants - “kulaks”, non-party, not married, low education, place of residence before arrest: Dzhankoy district, member of the Hofnungsfeld collective farm, arrested 04.02 .1938 Dzhankoysky District NKVD of Crimea, Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: religious propaganda, illegal performance of religious rites.
Condemned on 02/15/1938 by the “troika” of the NKVD of Crimea to execution with confiscation of property, executed on 04/03/1938, rehabilitated on 05/15/1989 by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Crimean Region.
Rehabilitated by history. Autonomous Republic Crimea. Book two - Simferopol, Antiqua, 2006. - p.114.
I’m just anticipating the enthusiastic cries of the red “Murzilkas”: “they shot correctly, there’s no need to spread religious dope!”
Of course, it’s a very terrible crime - a person retained faith in God and offered his prayers to Him.
And here is another “enemy of the people”:
- Guy (Nartov, Ivanov, Sergeev) Petr Grigorievich, born in 1912, born in Rostov-on-Don, Ukrainian, from a peasant background, unemployed, married, secondary education, place of residence before arrest - Kerch, hydraulic engineer of Azovvodstroy, arrested on November 20, 1937 by the Kerch GO NKVD of Crimea, Article 58-7, 10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: slander about the life of workers, a call against signing up for a loan, praise of life in the USA. Condemned to death on November 25, 1937. Rehabilitated on February 20, 1961 by the Crimean Regional Court.
Ibid., p.117
You can get an idea of how workers and peasants lived in the USSR, at least from these letters http://community.livejournal.com/ru_history/2437092.html. Moreover, we note that the letters were quite loyal, in which people were simply trying to draw the attention of management to pressing problems.
Naturally, some people lost their nerves when contemplating injustice every day, and they wrote completely different letters, not at all embarrassed in their expressions. And it is quite logical that those who had the courage to express their attitude towards the Soviet order did not believe the propaganda and understood that if the authorities shout about the difficult situation of the workers, for example, in England, then in fact it is not so difficult at all.
In any case, criticism of the bestial living conditions created by the communists is not slander, which in this case the Soviets themselves admitted by rehabilitating the Crimean man they shot in 1961.
Well, this man, from the point of view of apologists, is definitely guilty:
Gershits Egor Kondratievich, born in 1871, born: Saratov region, German, from a peasant background, unemployed, married, low education, place of residence before arrest in Evpatoria, watchman of the Rest House of the Central Committee of the Railways of the South, arrested on 07/05/1937 by the Evpatoria RO NKVD of Crimea, Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, wrote letters to Germany about the famine in the USSR. Condemned to death on August 8, 1937. Rehabilitated on November 30, 1989 by the Prosecutor's Office of the Crimean Region.
Ibid., p.154
After all, is it really possible to write abroad that people are dying of hunger on collective farms? No, this is completely unacceptable!!! After all, it is known that the Holodomor was invented by enemies in order to discredit Soviet history. And how can one imagine that in the “land of happy childhood” people would die of hunger?And then it is necessary to say with a learned look that “under the kings there was a famine and a famine.”Let's move on.
Gladky Ivan Karpovich, born in 1880, born in Kerch, Russian, clergy, b/p, married, arr. secondary, theological seminary, place of residence before arrest - Karasubazar, priest of the Greek church, arrested on 02/20/1938 by the Karasubazar RO NKVD of Crimea, Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: counter-revolutionary agitation, sentenced by the troika on 04/17/1938 to execution with confiscation of property, shot on 05/05/1938. Rehabilitated on 05/29/1989 by the Prosecutor's Office of the Crimean Region.
There. same, p.161
And here too everything is clear. Firstly, an Orthodox priest is a priori an enemy of the Soviet system, and therefore cannot help but agitate. I read a sermon in church, even if I didn’t say anything about the regime in it - it’s still propaganda. And since the priests at that time were already the most courageous and zealous, they could not be hypocrites, saying that everything was wonderful, looking at Soviet reality. What was the martyr's crown accepted for?
The only question that arises is: why were the “comrades” so frightened that the anti-religious policy of the authorities was curtailed on the eve of the war? On the contrary, as we can see from this example, if in previous years more and more priests were expelled and all sorts of difficulties were created for them, then during the years of the “great Stalinist cleansing” they began to be shot en masse.
Therefore the so-called “Orthodox Stalinists,” with their insane eclecticism, personally anger me even more than their atheistic counterparts. This is about the same as trying to combine Christianity and Satanism.
Note that the above examples are only a small part of the long list of names published in the book. You can continue quoting, but the publication format does not allow this. Let us briefly note the following facts about the Bolshevik terror in Crimea in 1937-1938:
- non-party members predominate among those repressed;
- party workers make up an insignificant percentage of the total number of repressed people;
- in social terms, the “working people” - workers and peasants - suffered the most. In particular, representatives of German and Greek nationalities. Almost all of them were classified as spies and agents of influence.
Therefore, when 1937 is reduced only to the massacre of a handful of party members, this is a deliberate understatement of the scale of the tragedy. Everything is clear with those who thoughtlessly replicate such fabrications, and one can feel sorry for them. But I cannot call those who deliberately disseminate such information and at the same time declare that “few were shot” anything other than moral monsters.
04.08.2016 09:04
It is necessary to say that in Russia in the 20th century innocent people were massacred, said the head of the diocesan department for relations between the Church and society, Abbot Feodosius (Nesterov), who led the traditional Arkhangelsk religious procession to the burial places of victims of political repression.
Father Theodosius said: “The names of those who lie in these graves are unknown. They have one thing in common: they are all innocent murderers. Who repented of their death? Nobody. They slaughtered, brutalized, brutalized, and staged a mass slaughter. And to all this there is only one answer: “It happened!”
The world knows about the Nuremberg trials and its verdict. What do we have? Someone will say that the atheist sect is to blame for everything, which has devalued human life. One thing is certain: Russia has undergone a terrible social experiment. And it is necessary not to turn your face away from this truth. It is necessary to say that in the North in the twentieth century people were killed en masse. This is a fact, eyewitnesses remember it. We must know that less than a hundred years ago in our country people were drowned on barges, impaled, and skinned. It was".
It is impossible to calculate the exact number of victims of Soviet-era repression. According to some estimates, since October 1917, up to 50 million citizens suffered from political repression, who were shot, dispossessed or exiled. The peak of repression occurred during the years of the Great Terror unleashed by Stalin in 1937-1938. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, during the entire period of validity of the law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression,” 636,302 criminal cases against 901,127 people were reviewed, of which 637,614 were rehabilitated as a result.
As the priest noted, recognition is an attempt to treat honestly historical events, a sober attitude to the facts. " Procession- This is also a kind of step towards repentance. We are used to lying and keeping silent,” Father Theodosius emphasized. - What is our attitude towards those executed? Like trash! Why? Did these people really not suffer, but simply not live?”
Father Theodosius noted that a person who remembers his family and history treats his homeland more carefully: “Our land preserves a huge number of murdered people. The memory of this should be nationwide. Civil War It’s not over, we haven’t decided who’s on which side yet. Many still justify their actions. In light of this, it is necessary, but at the same time difficult, to preserve memory. Few people do this."
There has not yet been a noticeable shift in society’s attitude towards Soviet-era repression. The memory of them never became a natural part historical memory.
Two forces are trying to support it: firstly, the Church (we mention, in particular, the annual patriarchal service at the Butovo training ground), and secondly, the heirs of the “dissident” intelligentsia of the late Soviet years (here one cannot help but recall the “Return of Names” - the annual reading of lists executed, taking place on Lubyanka Square). But these efforts find little support in educational programs, information policy of the media and the activities of other institutions (museums, commissions for the installation of monuments, etc.; exceptions are rare).
On the other hand, there is no shortage of assertions that there were no mass repressions at all, or that they were completely justified by the internal and external political situation and were carried out for the benefit of the state.
Let us add that the “private”, family memory of these events is weakened: in the Soviet years, those who had one of their relatives suffer most often avoided talking about it, and their children and grandchildren usually simply did not know about it.
“In your opinion, do people in Russia remember enough about the repressions of the pre- and post-war era? Who and what efforts should be made to correct this imbalance?
Opening Soviet archives forced Solzhenitsyn’s unlucky followers to change tactics in denouncing the “crimes of Stalinism.” Now, agreeing with the truthful figures of the scale of repression, these gentlemen declare: “Let not tens of millions be shot, but 800 thousand - this is no less criminal, because all of them suffered innocently!” However, is this so?
TEMPLAR WITH REVOLVER
Official propaganda diligently imposes on us the stereotype that any charges brought against anyone during the time of Stalin are obviously absurd, invented by “executioners from the NKVD” in order to imprison and shoot as many citizens as possible. For example, this is what the writer Andrei Nikitin says, who in the late 1980s wanted to get acquainted with the investigative file of his parents, who were sentenced on January 13, 1931 by a Special Meeting of the OGPU Collegium in the case of the counter-revolutionary organization “Order of Light” to 5 and 3 years in the camps, respectively:
“The state security major, whose lot it fell to “look after” me and who himself carefully studied these materials before the meeting, at the end of our conversation, as if apologizing for his predecessors, said: “... well, what’s written there, special don't pay attention. None of this, of course, actually happened. You know what was happening then!..” (Nikitin A. Templars in Moscow // Science and Religion. 1992. No. 4/5. P. 8).
At first glance, this is indeed the fruit of the unbridled imagination of OGPU investigators, who could not come up with anything better than accusing a group of Moscow intellectuals of belonging to the Order of the Templars. However, after this, Nikitin, over the course of more than a dozen issues of the journal Science and Religion, talks about the fact that the Moscow Templars really existed! Moreover, in addition to the confessions of the accused, the case contains a lot of material evidence in the form of literature seized during searches, notebooks with manuscripts, etc., including a magazine with the very eloquent name “Red Terror”. Moreover, during a search of the apartment, an entire arsenal was confiscated from one of the members of the “order” A.V. Uyttenhoven - two Nagan revolvers and two pistols of an unknown system, and from his wife I.N. Uyttenhoven-Ilovaiskaya - a leaflet written by her with a call for mass strikes and uprisings.
« RIGHT TROTSKYISTS TAKE REVENGE
The crowning argument of the Khrushchev-Gorbachev denouncers of Stalin is about the destroyed “Leninist guard”. They say, how could they former leaders the Bolshevik party to suddenly take and betray the cause they served? However, the criterion of truth is practice. At the end of the 1980s. life itself set up an experiment that showed that betrayal “from above” is quite feasible. What the leaders of perestroika did to the country coincides almost word for word with the confessions of their spiritual fathers.
Let’s take, for example, the indictment heard on March 2, 1938, at the trial of the “right-Trotskyist bloc”:
“An investigation carried out by the NKVD authorities established that, on instructions from intelligence services hostile to the USSR foreign countries the defendants in the present case organized a conspiratorial group called the “right-Trotskyist bloc”, which set as its goal the overthrow of the existing socialist social and state system in the USSR, the restoration of capitalism and the power of the bourgeoisie in the USSR, the dismemberment of the USSR and separation from it in favor of the above-mentioned states of Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asian republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Primorye."
(Judicial report on the case of the anti-Soviet “right-Trotskyist bloc” considered by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court USSR March 2-13, 1938. Full text of the verbatim report. M., 1938. P.11)
Let’s imagine that a similar trial is taking place today, and in the dock instead of Bukharin, Rykov and Yagoda sit Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Yakovlev and Shevardnadze. Let's look at the points:
1. The overthrow of the existing socialist social and state system in the USSR certainly took place. Moreover, a number of the “accused” themselves admit that they deliberately acted in this direction. For example, here is what former Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper:
“And yet, you served in this system for a long time and held large positions.
“But of course, we had to end things with her somehow.” There are different ways, for example, dissidence. But it is hopeless. It was necessary to act from within. The only way we had was to undermine the totalitarian regime from within through the discipline of the totalitarian party. We did our job” (Alexander Yakovlev: “Russian fascists were created by the KGB” // Izvestia. June 17, 1998, No. 108 (25208), p. 5).
As we see, speaking about his treacherous activities, the main ideologist of the CPSU Central Committee constantly uses plural: “we had the only way”, “we did our job.” That is, there is a group of conspirators in the party leadership. At the same time, it is quite logical to assume that all these actions were carried out on the instructions of the intelligence services of foreign states hostile to the USSR.
2. The restoration of capitalism and the power of the bourgeoisie in the USSR has been completed in full.
3. Dismemberment of the USSR and separation from it of Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asian republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Primorye. The only difference is that in the 1930s the Baltic states and Moldova were not yet part of the Soviet Union. And the current “perestroikas” and “reformers” have not yet managed to give Primorye to anyone. However, work is also underway in this direction - let us remember the huge areas of the Pacific shelf donated by Gorbachev and Shevardnadze to the United States in 1990, the border territories ceded to China, as well as the manic desire of the Russian leadership to “achieve the normalization of Russian-Japanese relations” by surrendering the Southern Kuril Islands to the Japanese.
So, in the 1980s, in the highest echelon of the leadership of the CPSU, a group of degenerate traitors was formed, which, acting in the interests of the West, destroyed its own country and destroyed Soviet power. Why should the existence of a similar group in the 1930s be considered obviously impossible?
On the contrary, there are good reasons to assume that if Stalin’s opponents win Soviet Union would have been destroyed 50 years earlier, and the “faithful Leninists” would have found cozy places for themselves in various “Bukharin foundations”, earning a living by advertising pizza.
"TEN RUSSIANS WITH BOMBS"
When in the works of Kuprin or Pikul there is a mention of mass Japanese espionage during the Russo-Japanese War, readers do not have any doubts about this. However, it is worth talking about Stalin era, How common sense disappears somewhere. Any words that this or that character was a Japanese or, for example, a Polish spy, cause mocking giggles, are perceived as something absurd and, in principle, impossible, like finding a louse in the hair of a hereditary intellectual.
And really, where would a spy come from in the Soviet Union? This is in Tsarist Russia espionage may have taken place. But as soon as the Bolshevik power was established, the same Japanese agents died out naturally, like cockroaches in the cold. Despite the fact that for the Country rising sun The USSR remained a potential enemy.
Back in 1929, at a meeting of Japanese military attaches convened in Berlin, methods of sabotage that were to be carried out from European countries in the proposed war against the USSR were discussed. Ten years later, Reichsführer SS Himmler reported the following about his meeting with the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, Lieutenant General Hiroshi Oshima, on January 31, 1939:
“Today I visited General Oshima... We discussed the conclusion of an agreement, thanks to which the Germany-Italy-Japan triangle took a certain solid form. He also told me that, together with German counter-espionage (Abwehr), he was carrying out a lot of work to bring corruption to Russia through the Caucasus and Ukraine. However, this organization can only become effective in the event of war... To do this, he managed to send ten Russians with bombs across the Russian border. These Russians had orders to kill Stalin. A large number of other Russians, whom he also sent, were shot at the border...” (The Hunt for the Red Leader // Independent Military Review. March 24-30, 2000, No. 10 (183), p. 7).
Indeed, Soviet border guards regularly caught Japanese agents. For example, this is what the head of the NKVD reported: Khabarovsk region Commissar of State Security 3rd Rank I.F. Nikishov in the NKVD of the USSR on August 22, 1939:
“In July of this year, in the area of the 63rd border detachment, Japanese agents were detained while illegally crossing the border: Vasily Andreevich Trofimov, born in 1912, a native of the Jewish Autonomous Region, fled to Manchuria in 1933; Rogach Ivan Efimovich, born in 1914, native of Harbin; Khizhin Leonid Alekseevich, born in 1916, a native of Blagoveshchensk, whose parents emigrated to Harbin in 1919, where Khizhin was raised. All three admitted that in April of this year they were recruited by representatives of the Japanese military mission in Harbin as part of a sabotage and terrorist group, transferred to our territory with the main tasks: to carry out a terrorist attack against Army Commander Stern, organize military train crashes, etc. During arrest, weapons were confiscated from one terrorist - a revolver with live ammunition, 2 rifles with 120 rounds of ammunition. The leader of the group, Trofimov, was given three appearances on our territory. The interrogation continues in the direction of opening all the Japanese agents known to them who were transferred to the USSR" (Authorities state security USSR in the Great Patriotic War. T.1. The day before. Book 1. November 1938 - December 1940. M., 1995. P.58-59).
On February 13, 1940, by the military tribunal of the 2nd Separate Red Banner Army, Trofimov, Rogach and Khizhin were sentenced to death. On July 12, 1940, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR replaced the death penalty for Rogacha and Khizhina with 10 years of imprisonment. Khizhin soon died in prison, and Rogach lived to see Khrushchev’s “rehabilitation.” By the ruling of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on June 4, 1959, the case against Trofimov, Rogach and Khizhin was revised, their actions were reclassified under Article 84 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (illegal entry into the USSR) and the sentence for all three was set at 3 years in prison. And how could Stalin’s guardsmen even think of declaring three young people as Japanese agents who illegally crossed the border with weapons in their hands from Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the midst of the fighting at Khalkhin Gol!
However, if you believe the liberal public, having gotten rid of communism, Russia still retains a mysterious immunity to foreign espionage. In the current Russian Federation, in principle, there cannot be spies. And those who seem so are actually human rights activists, environmental activists, or, at worst, honest Western businessmen.
However, thanks successful work NKVD intelligence networks of foreign powers on the eve of the Great Patriotic War were almost completely destroyed. Here is what the West German historian Paul Carell writes about this: “What was the situation with German espionage against Russia? What did the German leadership know from the secret service? The answer is in a nutshell: very little!.. It knew nothing about the military secrets of the Russians... Before the start of the war, we counted 200 divisions in the Red Army. 6 weeks after the start of the war, we were forced to establish that there were 360 of them" (State security bodies of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. Vol. 1. On the eve. Book 2. January 1 - June 21, 1941. M., 1995. P. 160).
The same fate befell Japanese intelligence. If during the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Tokyo knew about every step of the Russian army, but this time they didn’t even notice the massive transfer of troops from Far East to the Soviet-German front. This happened thanks to the work carried out in 1937-1938. "cleansing" of the border area from potential unreliable elements, and as a result purposeful work NKVD to identify Japanese agents.
CONVEYOR REHABILITATION
In Russians folk tales Various language cliches are constantly used, such as “a beautiful maiden” and “a good fellow.” The “fairy tales” told by Stalin’s denouncers also contain stable phrases: their repressions are necessarily “illegal,” and the victims of repressions are “innocent.” However, what determines the “legality” or “illegality” of a sentence, if we put aside emotions? Obviously, by following or not following a formal legal procedure. That is, if a person is convicted in accordance with the legislation in force at that time for committing an act that was considered criminal at that time, then he was convicted legally. Well, if his guilt is not proven, then it is illegal. When we talk about “guilty” or “innocence,” the question here is posed as follows: did this character deserve a wall or prison from the point of view of justice?
Ideally, both approaches should produce the same result. However, in practice this does not always happen. In fact, does the act of Mikhail Malyukov, for example, who slapped Gorbachev in the face during his arrival in Omsk on April 24, 1996, deserve condemnation? However, he was prosecuted under Article 206, part 2 for hooliganism. On the other hand, isn’t it obvious that almost all of the current “owners of factories, newspapers, ships” should rightfully immediately go to their bunks, since the property that they “legally own” was simply stolen by them?
It is easy to see that from a legal point of view, the procedure for “rehabilitating victims of repression” is completely incorrect. Let's take the fundamental document - the Law of the Russian Federation “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression” dated October 18, 1991:
"Article 5.
The following acts are recognized as not containing a public danger and persons convicted of:
a) anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda;
b) dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state or social system;
c) violation of laws on the separation of church and state and school and church;
d) encroachment on the personality and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rituals;
e) escape from places of imprisonment, exile or special settlement, places of forced labor under conditions of restriction of freedom of persons who were in these places in connection with unjustified political repression.”
As we see, the category of innocent victims subject to rehabilitation includes persons who were reasonably accused of committing a number of acts that were considered illegal in Stalin’s times. What actions, in the opinion of our rehabilitators, “do not contain a public danger”?
First of all, this is the spread of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state or social system. What are the denunciators of Stalinism guided by, not considering such actions to be criminal? Maybe they believe that the state should not defend its honor and dignity at all? That is, anyone can spread any slander against government bodies, vilify the existing system, call for its overthrow, and in return the authorities are obliged to follow the principle of non-resistance to evil, turning the other cheek?
However, such a position contradicts world practice. Let's take the “citadel of democracy” represented by the United States. On May 16, 1918, the US Congress passed an amendment to the Espionage Act, according to which those who "express orally or in writing in a disloyal, slanderous, rude or insulting tone about the uniform government structure or with respect to the Constitution of the United States, or with respect to armed forces"faced up to 20 years in prison or a fine of up to 10 thousand dollars (Kostin P.V. FBI - full-length portrait. M., 1970. P.29-30).
Another option: the authors of the law on rehabilitation, recognizing in principle the right of the state to self-defense, deny this to the USSR personally. That is, they believe that the “totalitarian regime” had to be fought by all available means, including violating its laws. This point of view also has a right to exist. For example, in Soviet time revolutionaries condemned by tsarism were considered heroes. However, the Bolsheviks did not even think that the Decembrists or Narodnaya Volya should be “rehabilitated” - because they did not recognize the autocracy as a legitimate government.
After all, what is rehabilitation from a legal point of view? According to Article 5 of the current Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, this is “the procedure for restoring the rights and freedoms of a person illegally or unreasonably subjected to criminal prosecution, and compensation for the harm caused to him” (Criminal Procedure Code Russian Federation. M., 2002. P.6). Who can subject a citizen to criminal prosecution? Only legitimate power. What if this power is not recognized as legitimate in principle? This means there can be no talk of rehabilitation. For example, those who were executed by Dudayev’s militants according to sentences of Sharia courts, or by the German occupation authorities during the Great Patriotic War, are not subject to rehabilitation - regardless of whether or not they did anything against “independent Ichkeria” or the “new order”. Because we do not recognize the right to judge and pass sentences on either the Chechen bandits or the German occupiers.
So, gentlemen, if you want to consider Soviet power criminal, consider it. Praise as much as you like your heroes who fought against totalitarianism. Just don’t call them innocent victims and don’t demand rehabilitation for them. Otherwise you will sit in a puddle. As happened recently with a group of citizens who tried to achieve the rehabilitation of Admiral Kolchak. As a result, it turned out that by doing so they recognized the legal right of the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee to judge “ Supreme ruler Russia." It seems that the deceased would hardly have approved of such an initiative.
The next two points from the “Rehabilitation Law” concern freedom of conscience: “c) violation of the laws on the separation of church and state and school from church; d) encroachment on the personality and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rituals.” According to our Stalinophobes, one can encroach on the personality and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rituals as much as one wants - it does not pose any social danger. It’s just not clear why then the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation contains Article 239 “Organization of an association that encroaches on the personality and rights of citizens,” according to which:
"1. The creation of a religious or public association, the activities of which are associated with violence against citizens or other harm to their health, or with inducing citizens to refuse to fulfill civil duties or to commit other illegal acts, as well as the management of such an association -
is punishable by a fine in the amount of two hundred to five hundred minimum wages or in the amount wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of two to five months or imprisonment for a term of up to three years.
2. Participation in the activities of the said association, as well as propaganda of acts provided for in the first part of this article, -
shall be punishable by a fine in the amount of one hundred to three hundred times the minimum wage, or in the amount of wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of one to three months, or by imprisonment for a term of up to two years" (Commentary to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation / Responsible editor. B .I.Radchenko; Scientific ed. A.S.Mikhlin. M., 2000. P.544).
According to the logic of the “rehabilitators,” it turns out that today it is impossible to encroach on the identity and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rituals, but under Stalin it was possible.
Finally, point e) - escape of a wrongfully convicted person from places of imprisonment, exile or special settlement. The current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation contains Article 313 “Escape from a place of imprisonment, from arrest or from custody,” the comments to which say: “The subject of an escape cannot be a person illegally sentenced to imprisonment, as well as a person in in respect of whom a preventive measure in the form of detention was illegally chosen. If the illegality of his detention became clear after his conviction for escape, the case is subject to review and termination based on newly discovered circumstances” (Ibid. pp. 753-754).
At least here we do not observe a double standard, although such a rule of law does not at all seem reasonable - if all prisoners who believe themselves to be illegally convicted, instead of filing appeals, begin to escape from custody, this will not lead to anything good .
How does rehabilitation work in practice? This is what Galina Vesnovskaya, head of the rehabilitation department of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, said about this, speaking to members of the Memorial society:
“For the first time in legal practice, the prosecutor’s office was given exceptional powers: the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in criminal cases, even if there were court decisions. Of course, this applies only to a certain category of criminal cases - those where we are talking about the rehabilitation of victims of political repression under a list of criminal charges defined by law. This is anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, almost the entire 58th article of the old Code, 190th note, 70th article and charges related to religious activities. And the last article is escape in case of illegal stay in places of deprivation of liberty, exile, deportation and in special settlements. This is a category of cases in which prosecutors are given the right, after assessing the case materials, to independently make decisions about rehabilitation. Denial of rehabilitation if there is an application is possible only in court. If the prosecutor's office receives an application for rehabilitation, and when checking the materials of the criminal case, the prosecutor comes to the conclusion that the person's guilt in the crime has been proven or his actions contain another element of the crime - not political, but criminal, these cases are sent to court. In the first case - with a conclusion on refusal of rehabilitation, in the second - with a protest about the reclassification of the actions of the convicted person from political to ordinary criminal. In such cases, only the court can give a final assessment of the cases” (There is still a lot of work ahead // News bulletin Board of the Memorial Society. 2002. No. 26).
As we see, if in ordinary criminal practice prosecutors can only appeal court decisions in higher courts, then in matters related to “victims of political repression” they have the right to single-handedly overturn the decisions of the judiciary. And only refusal of rehabilitation is carried out in court. It is not difficult to guess that it is much easier for the prosecutor to make a decision on rehabilitation than to prove through the court that this citizen not subject to rehabilitation. Especially if you take into account the emergency pace of work of the rehabilitators, who whitewashed the “victims” at the speed of good assemblers on Ford automobile assembly lines. According to the same Galina Vesnovskaya:
“In the first years of the law, there were slightly more of us, and the figures were much higher - we considered 180 thousand criminal cases a year. By the way, if we applied that personnel potential today, our work could be completed in a year or two. Today, in the regions (and we have 89 regions) there are only 120 operational workers and 18 in the central office” (Ibid.).
Thus, taking into account weekends and holidays, in those years 700 criminal cases were considered daily. Today there are 138 workers involved in rehabilitation, but then there were “slightly more” of them. Vesnovskaya does not specify how much more, but one must assume that it is not ten or twenty times. That is, each employee still had to do several things a day. In such a situation, is it possible to talk about some kind of careful consideration of the materials? Besides, who will hold the prosecutor accountable if he “by mistake” rehabilitates someone unnecessary? Nobody!
REHABILITATION, WHAT'S DONE
We should not forget that many cases that were considered “counter-revolutionary crimes” at one time were, in fact, pure criminality. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the review of the 6th Department of the 3rd Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR on anti-Soviet manifestations and the most important incidents that took place in the USSR in April 1941:
“In the Uzbek SSR, Yusupov, expelled from the collective farm as a decomposed element, in 1938 convicted of embezzlement of collective farm funds, killed the deputy chairman of the collective farm Daminova (his ex-wife) because the latter exposed Yusupov as an enemy and a swindler.
On April 3 of this year, a worker of plant No. 342 in Gorky, Karabanov, killed the foreman of the same plant, Sharapov, because Sharapov put Karabanov on trial as a truant" (State security bodies of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. Vol. 1. The day before. Book 2. January 1 - June 21, 1941. M., 1995. P. 196).
From a similar review for May 1941:
“On May 14, Moiseev, a member of the collective farm “Krasny Poloskov” in the Ulyanovsk district of the Oryol region, inflicted two fatal wounds on the head of the collective farm chairman, secretary of the primary party organization Panov, with an ax on the grounds that the latter refused to let him leave the collective farm to earn extra money. Moiseev was arrested.
May 2 collective farmer village. Durasovka, Ternovsky district, Penza region, Ignat Vasilievich Mitrokhin attempted to murder the collective farm foreman A.Ya. Mitrokhin. because the latter exposed him as a quitter. Mitrokhin Ignat disappeared.
May 30, former tractor driver of Gulyai-Borisov MTS Rostov region Kravtsov shot through the window and wounded the chairman of the Lenin's Path collective farm, Perelygin, in the head out of revenge for exposing him as a quitter and truant. Kravtsov was arrested” (Ibid. P.243).
Let us assume that all of the listed actions are not “anti-Soviet manifestations”. Does it follow from this that husbands can kill their ex-wives with impunity, workers can kill foremen, and collective farmers can kill collective farm chairmen and foremen? Theoretically, such cases should be reclassified from political to criminal and sent back to court. However, in the vast majority of cases nothing like this happens.
If current fighters against totalitarianism treat criminals who suffered from the Soviet regime in a downright paternalistic manner, applying to them a kind of “presumption of rehabilitation,” then with regard to the other category of convicts, the approach is exactly the opposite. Here is what the already mentioned Alexander Yakovlev says about this in one of his interviews:
“—I would like to ask you a question as the chairman of the Commission under the President of Russia for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression. Relatively recently - almost a month before his death - Beria's son Sergo filed a petition for the rehabilitation of his father. Have you considered this application?
— There are two situations here. Strictly speaking legally, Beria, Yezhov, Yagoda, and Abakumov must be - and this is scary to even say - rehabilitated. Because they were shot for something they did not do: they were not spies for several intelligence services, nor saboteurs and the like. But these are executioners who killed millions of people! This means that they must be tried anew and, as it were, shot anew. But as long as I am alive, as long as I remain the chairman of the said commission, I will not only not raise this question, but also discuss it. We still have about 400 thousand unexamined cases for the rehabilitation of innocent people convicted on the orders of Beria and others like him. I understand the filial feelings of the late Sergo Beria, but I must take into account the feelings of the children and relatives of millions of innocent people killed!” (Alexander Yakovlev, political scientist: “I told Gorbachev there would be a putsch. But he didn’t believe me.” // Nevskoe time. August 18, 2001 No. 147(2508). S.3).
So, Mr. Yakovlev admits without a shadow of embarrassment that he did not intend and does not intend to approach the issues of rehabilitation “strictly legally.” One thing is not clear - what source of secret knowledge does the former chief ideologist of the CPSU Central Committee use when, without considering cases on the merits, without waiting for a court decision or at least a “fifty letter” in the form of a resolution of his own commission, he declares some executioners who killed millions of people, and others - innocently convicted? So it turns out, slightly paraphrasing the old saying: rehabilitation, whatever the drawbar, where you turned, that’s where it came out!
Yezhovshchina AMERICAN STYLE
A couple of words should be said about one of the favorite arguments of the denouncers of “Stalin’s tyranny” - they say that all the accusations of that time were based solely on personal confessions of “enemies of the people”, and there was supposedly no material evidence.
But how, exactly, is this known? The investigations of the “repressed” remain classified, we cannot verify the validity of the accusations, and it is hardly worth taking the word of traitors like Yakovlev. One can only guess: is there really no material evidence there? Or maybe there still is? Or did they exist, but disappeared after Khrushchev’s or Gorbachev’s rehabilitation commissions dug into these cases?
And most importantly, what kind of evidence are the “rehabilitators” waiting for? Or do they believe that conspirators should keep minutes of their meetings and spies should write regular reports on their espionage activities? Let us recall, for example, the conspiracy against Emperor Paul I, which obviously took place and was crowned with success. Moreover, all the “documentation” was reduced to a piece of paper with a list of conspirators, which the organizer of the conspiracy, the St. Petersburg military governor Count Palen, carried in his pocket and, there is no doubt, would have been able to destroy in case of failure.
It is extremely difficult to collect material evidence in such cases, and in practice they are often dispensed with. Including in the bastion of world democracy, the United States.
Robert Stephen Lipka. In 1965-1967 while serving with the Agency National Security(NSA) collaborated with Soviet intelligence, then broke off contacts due to demobilization. Issued by the traitor, former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin. To get Lipka convicted, an FBI agent was sent to him, who, introducing himself as “Captain Nikitin,” offered to continue cooperation. And although, having received a deposit of 5 thousand dollars, Lipka never conveyed any information to “Captain Nikitin,” he was arrested on February 23, 1996. During his trial, he admitted to collaborating with the KGB and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Ronald William Pelton, former NSA employee. In 1980 he began cooperation with Soviet intelligence. He was extradited by defector Vitaly Yurchenko, but then Yurchenko unexpectedly returned to the USSR. Despite the fact that FBI agents installed listening devices on Pelton's work phone, his apartment, his car, and his mistress's apartment, they were unable to obtain any evidence against him. I had to resort to the help of the “queen of evidence.” On November 24, 1985, Pelton was summoned for questioning, where he was familiarized with Yurchenko’s testimony and asked to confess to transferring classified information to Soviet intelligence, promising to treat his actions “with leniency.” However, after receiving Pelton's confession, the FBI immediately arrested him. Despite the fact that other than a conversation with the FBI, there was no other evidence against Pelton, in June 1986, a jury found him guilty, and the judge sentenced him to three life sentences.
Finally, Aldrich Hazen Ames, a high-ranking CIA official who collaborated with Soviet intelligence starting in 1985, providing them with a lot of valuable information. American counterintelligence did not have any legal evidence against him. According to the official version, Ames was suspected of espionage because his expenses exceeded his official income. But most likely, he was betrayed by someone in Moscow. The FBI hoped to catch Ames red-handed, but nothing came of it. As a result, on February 21, 1994, he was arrested, and then, in accordance with existing practice in the United States, made a deal with the court, pleading guilty to espionage. On April 28, 1994, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the right of pardon.
So, in the modern United States, those guilty of espionage, as a rule, are exposed as a result of provocation, and are convicted on the basis of their own confessions in accordance with the judicial bargaining procedure. What scope for future revelations by the American Yakovlevs!
The history of Russia, like other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “era of Stalin.” He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of “expediency.” In reality, he was driven by completely different motives.
Talking about the beginning political career leader who became a tyrant, such authors bashfully hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a repeat offender with seven “walks.” Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the government course he pursued.
Lenin received a worthy successor in his person. “Having creatively developed his teaching,” Joseph Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that the country should be ruled by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.
A generation of people whose lips can speak the truth about Stalin’s repressions is leaving... Are not newfangled articles whitening the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken lives...
The leader who sanctioned torture
As you know, Joseph Vissarionovich personally signed execution lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin tightened the repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete chaos in the dungeons. He 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 gave the punitive authorities a free hand.
Creativity in introducing torture
Let us recall excerpts from a letter from Corps Commander Lisovsky, a leader bullied by the satraps...
"...A ten-day assembly-line interrogation with a brutal, vicious beating and no opportunity to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Next - forced to sit with your hands raised up, and also stand bent over with your head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours..."
The detainees' desire to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges led to increased torture and beatings. Social status the detainees did not play a role. Let us remember that Robert Eiche, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher in Lefortovo prison died from beatings during interrogation.
Leader's motivation
The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was calculated not in tens or hundreds of thousands, but in seven million who died of starvation and four million who were arrested (general statistics will be presented below). The number of those executed alone was about 800 thousand people...
How did Stalin motivate his actions, immensely striving for the Olympus of power?
What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in “Children of Arbat”? Analyzing Stalin's personality, he shares his judgments with us. “The ruler whom the people love is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. It's another matter when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on himself. This is a strong ruler! Hence the leader’s credo - to inspire love through fear!
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin took steps adequate to this idea. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.
The beginning of revolutionary activity
Joseph 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 sent him 7 exiles to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, unscrupulousness in means, harshness towards people, and 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 for career growth. The ill and weakening Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. In this way, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really aspires to leadership.
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 behind-the-scenes intrigue, which later came in handy in his fight against competitors.
Positioning of Stalin in the system of red terror
The machine of red terror was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.
09/05/1918 Council People's Commissars issues the Decree “On 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 radicalization domestic policy was the murder of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on V. Lenin by Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Both events occurred on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka launched a wave of repression.
According to statistical information, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 were shot, 1791 were imprisoned in concentration camps.
By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, police officers, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landowners had already been repressed. First of all, the blow was dealt to the classes that are the support of the monarchical structure of society. However, having “creatively developed the teachings of Lenin,” Joseph 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 - ideologist of violence
It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he justified theoretically.
His concept of intensifying 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 Joseph Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. From that time on, he actually became the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.
Hidden by slogans actual meaning Stalinism manifests itself in the unbridled pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman made it very clear that power for this ruler was not a means, but a goal. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal, unlimited dictatorship.
Joseph 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, the cult of Stalin’s personality began its formation with trials and the instillation of terror throughout society... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as “enemies of the people.” People were brutally tortured to sign charges fabricated by the investigation. The brutal dictatorship imitated class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...
Three global ones were falsified trial: “The Case of the Union Bureau” (putting managers at risk); “The Case of the Industrial Party” (the sabotage of the Western powers regarding the economy of the USSR was imitated); “The Case of the Labor Peasant Party” (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays in mechanization). Moreover, they were all united into a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against Soviet power and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD organs.
As a result, the entire economic management was replaced national economy from old “specialists” to “new personnel” ready to work according to the instructions of the “leader”.
Through the lips of Stalin, who ensured that the state apparatus was loyal to repression through the trials, the Party’s unshakable determination was further expressed: to displace and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, traders, small and medium-sized ones; to ruin the basis of agricultural production - the wealthy peasantry (indiscriminately calling them “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, parallel to this “general line,” the “father of peoples” consistently, with the help of provocations and false testimony, began to implement the line of eliminating his party competitors for supreme state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).
Forced collectivization
The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. indicates that the main object of repression was the main social base of the village - an effective agricultural producer. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (and in fact at that time these were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was supposed to, under the pressure of repression, turn from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin’s plans for industrialization and maintaining hypertrophied power structures.
In order to clearly identify the object of his repressions, Stalin resorted to an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustifiably, he achieved that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profit-making) 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 centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Resolution “On the liquidation of ... kulak farms” dated January 30, 1930.
The Red Terror has come to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalin's “troika” trials, which in most cases ended with executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (the category of which could include any persons subjectively defined as a “rural asset”) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body for permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational department under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.
Migrants to the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list 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 of Stalin’s repressions. A brief listing of them should be supplemented by the organization of famine. Its real reason was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was crop failure.
His subjectively developed plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be reasonable to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for a harvest year... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded immediate provision of food to the bloated security forces and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision to confiscate grain intended for sowing and consumption from the peasants.
10/22/1932 two emergency commissions under the leadership of the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov, they launched a misanthropic campaign of “fight against the fists” to confiscate grain, which was accompanied by violence, quick-to-death 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.
Well-known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin
Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932 -1933. have documentary confirmation. M. A. Sholokhov, author “ Quiet Don", addressed the leader, defending his fellow countrymen, with letters exposing the lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. The famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya presented the facts in detail, indicating the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors. The abuse and violence against the peasants is horrifying: brutal beatings, breaking out joints, partial strangulation, mock executions, eviction from houses... In his response Letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader is visible in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, “secretly” trying to disrupt the food supply...
This 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 previously classified statistics to the public (previously, propaganda did its best to hide these repressions of Stalin.)
How many people died from hunger in the above regions? The figure established by the State Duma commission is terrifying: more than 7 million.
Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror
Let's also consider three more areas of Stalin's terror, and in the table below we present each of them in more detail.
With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to suppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the newspaper Pravda, and not go to church...
Hundreds of thousands of families of previously productive peasants, fearing dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights and make them manipulable, it was at that time that passporting 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 scope of civil rights (freedom to choose a place of residence, freedom to choose a job) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition of fulfilling workday norms.
Antisocial policies were accompanied by the destruction of families and an increase in the number of street children. This phenomenon has become so widespread that the state was forced to respond to it. With Stalin's sanction, the Politburo of the Country of Soviets issued one of the most inhumane regulations - punitive towards children.
The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction Orthodox churches up to 28%, mosques - up to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.
For repressive purposes, passportization of the urban population was carried out. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.
One of Stalin’s most cynical crimes is his authorization of the secret Politburo resolution of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from 12 years of age to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to capital punishment. In 1936 alone, 125 thousand children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10 thousand 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 entire society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and physical reprisals against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - massive “cleansings of the state apparatus” were carried out.
Terror has reached unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (from 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person’s life was ruined for one carelessly dropped word... Even the Stalinist elite were repressed - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; security officers Yagoda, Yezhov.
On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on trumped-up cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified corps-level commanders - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not adequately master operational and tactical art.
It was not only the shopfront facades of Soviet cities that were characterized by the personality cult of Stalin. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to a monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, mercilessly exploited labor resources to extract the wealth of the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.
The dynamics of the increase in those kept in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 there were 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.
In particular, ironically, the prisoners of Kolyma mined 35% of the Union's gold, while living in terrible conditions. Let us list the main camps included in the Gulag system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (43 and 35 thousand, respectively); 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 the BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).
Basically, people arrived in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night arrest and an unfair, biased 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 (essentially effective agricultural producers), and even entire evicted nationalities. The majority served sentences from 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The investigation process involved torture and the breaking of the will of the convicted person.
In the event of the resettlement of kulaks and small peoples, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe and the convicts built a camp and prison for themselves special purpose(TONE). Since 1930, 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, and 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 and is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by revolutionary military tribunals. The inhumane system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. Executions under Article 58 were in effect until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years in camps.
In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.
Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, essentially lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out in the name of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.
The powerless people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The process of restoring justice began with the 20th Congress of the CPSU.
On April 7, 1935, Resolution No. 3/598 of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On measures to combat juvenile delinquency” was adopted; according to this document, people were subject to criminal liability, including capital punishment. “starting from the age of 12, convicted of committing thefts, causing violence, bodily harm, mutilation, murder or attempts to murder.”
The decree was signed by Stalin. It didn’t matter that propaganda created an image and bombarded the population with posters that depicted the leader next to smiling children. At the same time, the word “execution” itself was not indicated in the press, only the general wording was left.
Apparently, discussions arose in the NKVD about what should be considered “all measures” in relation to 12-year-old children, because already on April 26, at a meeting of the Politburo, the law was explained in more detail. At the same time, persons who incited or forced minors to participate in speculation, prostitution and vagrancy faced only imprisonment of 5 years.
For the country, 12-year-olds were not considered children. At this age, they officially became suitable for work and filled the labor reserves of enterprises and workshops. And since they are no longer children, it is obvious criminal liability was the same as for adults.
With such harsh methods, Stalin tried to maintain the shameful statistics of child homelessness, and therefore crime - two indicators that were a direct consequence of domestic policy - forced collectivization, the famine of 1932-1933 and mass repression with deportation to the Gulag.
After the April decree, all institutions for young street children and criminals were transferred from the people's commissariats to the NKVD officers.
The measure was caused by the fact that many street children, whose parents were repressed, died of hunger, or simply labored in factories and spent little time with their children, flocked to well-fed Moscow. Initially, this problem was ignored, propaganda claimed that the problem of homelessness in the socialist state had been defeated long ago, but complaints from Muscovites about the lawlessness of teenagers attacking people and taking away their food, money, raping women and killing everyone in a row reached the top leadership. People's Commissar Voroshilov read in the newspaper "Working Moscow" how two teenagers committed two murders and told Stalin about this and many other cases.
“I am sending a clipping from the newspaper “Working Moscow” No. 61 dated March 15, 1935, illustrating, on the one hand, the monstrous forms into which teenagers’ hooliganism develops in Moscow, and on the other, the almost complacent attitude of the judicial authorities to these facts (commutation of sentences by half, etc.). Comrade Vul (chief of the Moscow police - “Power”), with whom I spoke on the phone about this, said that this case is not only not isolated, but that he has registered up to 3,000 malicious teenage hooligans, of which about 800 are undisputed bandits, capable of anything. On average, he arrests up to 100 hooligans and street children a day, whom he does not know where to put (no one wants to accept them). The 13-year-old son of the Deputy Prosecutor of Moscow, Comrade Koblenz, was wounded by a 9-year-old boy. The commissions of Comrade Zhdanov (on schools) and Comrade Kalinin (on homeless and neglected children) will submit their proposals to the Central Committee in the next few days. However, the question of clearing Moscow of the homeless and criminal child population will not be removed, since not only Vul, but also Khrushchev, Bulganin and Yagoda declare that they have no opportunity to accommodate street children due to the lack of orphanages, and therefore fight this disease. I think that the Central Committee should oblige the NKVD to organize the placement of not only street children, but also neglected children immediately and thereby protect the capital from the ever-increasing “childish” hooliganism. As for this case, I don’t understand why these scoundrels aren’t shot. Is it really necessary to wait until they grow into even greater robbers?”
The Criminal Code seemed to prohibit the execution of minors. Therefore, already on April 20, 1935, the USSR Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky and the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR Alexander Vinokurov signed a special clarification No. 1/001537-30/002517 under the heading “Top Secret. In which the executions were specifically discussed:
“... In view of incoming requests, in connection with the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated April 7, this year.
“On measures to combat juvenile delinquency”, we explain:
The issue of shooting minors was once again discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on April 26, 1935. Judging by the minutes of the meeting signed by Stalin, among other topics on the agenda is the following: “On measures to combat crime among minors.” There is also a completely unambiguous explanation that the number of criminal penalties applied to juvenile offenders includes: “The capital punishment (execution) also applies.”
Another paragraph of the Politburo decision speaks of the abolition of the provisions of the Criminal Code, “for which execution is not applied to persons under 18 years of age.”
Of course, not all young children were shot and most of them ended up in colonies, orphanages and other institutions of this type.
While in prison, juvenile Soviet criminals in every possible way ignored the Pioneer organization and the Komsomol, which their teachers suggested they join, played cards for different rates, some got anti-Soviet tattoos in the form of swastikas, double-headed eagles or a Black cat. Outraged by the disrespect Soviet power On the part of the children, officials created a children's Gulag for them, which performed functions similar to those of adults. Here is data from the NKVD report on the number of juvenile criminals. “The 162 reception centers operating in the GULAG system passed 952,834 teenagers during the four and a half years of their work... Currently, there are 50 closed and open labor colonies operating in the GULAG system... Since the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars 155,506 teenagers aged 12 to 18 years were passed through labor colonies, of which 68,927 were tried and 86,579 were not tried... On March 1, 1940, there were 4,126 pioneers and 1,075 members of the Komsomol in the Gulag colonies."
Juvenile criminals did not act alone and they had older comrades who did more big things than a banal gop-stop.
Misha Shamonin was shot at the Butovo training ground at the age of 13
It is documented that 15-17-year-old teenagers were also shot at the Moscow Butovo execution range in 1937-1938. It is estimated that among those 20,761 shot and buried at the Butovo training ground, whose names were able to be established, there were 196 minors. This is only at one of hundreds (if not thousands) of execution sites in the country and in just over a year - from August 1937 to October 1938.
Of course, some of those minors received a bullet in the back of the head for crimes not mythical - “counter-revolutionary”, but for very specific, criminal ones: millions of street children wandered around the country, earning their living in the only way possible for them - criminal. But then we have to ask the question: where did millions of juvenile delinquents suddenly come from in the country of “victorious socialism”? Where did their parents go, whose count also then should have run into millions? Who finally deprived these millions of children of everything - parents, home, a piece of bread - was not the same comrade Stalin with his collectivization, which exterminated the peasantry, industrialization, famine and the “law of three ears of corn”?
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