How many victims of "Stalinist repression" were in fact. family archive

“But Comrade Stalin made a toast to the Russian people!” - Stalinists usually answer any reproaches addressed to the Soviet leader. A good life hack for all future dictators: kill millions, rob, do whatever you want, the main thing is to say the right toast once.

The other day, the Stalinists in LiveJournal drove away the wave about the release of another book by Zemskov, a researcher of repressions in the USSR. This book was presented by them as a super-real truth about the mega lies of liberals and scoundrels about Stalin's repressions.

Zemskov was one of the first researchers to come to grips with the issue of repression, and has been publishing materials on this topic since the early 1990s, i.e. already 25 years. Moreover, the Stalinists usually claim that he was the first researcher to get into the KGB archives. It is not true. The archives of the KGB are still closed for the most part, and Zemskov worked in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution, now the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The records of the OGPU-NKVD are kept there from the 1930s to the 1950s.

In the book itself, no new shocking facts and figures are given, he has been writing about all this for many years - it is not clear why the Stalinists suddenly got so excited and even perceived Zemskov’s work almost as their victory. Well, let's analyze the most popular Stalinist post in LiveJournal, including Zemskov's numbers (in all cases of quoting this post, the spelling and punctuation of the original are preserved. - ed.).

no, that's a lie.

About 3.5 million were dispossessed, and about 2.1 million were deported (Kazakhstan, North).

in total, about 2.3 million passed during the period of 30-40, including the “declassed urban element” such as prostitutes and beggars.

(I noticed how many schools and libraries were in the settlements.)

many people successfully escaped from there, were released upon reaching 16 years of age, released due to admission to study at higher or secondary educational institutions.

The total number of dispossessed Zemskov was estimated at 4 million people. In his polemic with Maksudov, he explains that he took into account only the peasants who had been dispossessed. At the same time, he did not take into account those persons who indirectly suffered from the dispossession policy, that is, they themselves were not robbed by the state, but, for example, were unable to pay taxes and were subjected to fines. Approximately half of the dispossessed were sent to a special settlement, the other was simply confiscated property without being sent to the ends of the earth.

Together with the kulaks, the so-called. antisocial element: vagabonds, drunkards, suspicious individuals. All these people were sent to settle in the uninhabited regions. Special settlements were to be located no closer than 200 km from cities. The special settlers themselves were engaged in the arrangement and maintenance of the overseers, from whose salary a part of the funds for the maintenance of the settlements was deducted. The most popular places of deportation were Kazakhstan, Novosibirsk region, Sverdlovsk region and Molotovskaya (now Perm region). Since the peasants were often expelled during the cold season, transported in disgusting conditions without food, and often unloaded in a frozen bare field, the death rate among the dispossessed was enormous. Here is what Zemskov writes in his work “The Fate of the Kulak Exile. 1930-1954":

“The first years of the stay of special settlers in the “kulak exile” were extremely difficult. Thus, in a memorandum from the leadership of the Gulag dated July 3, 1933, to the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the RCT, it was noted: supply of dependents - from / settlers in the forest at the rate of issue per month: flour - 9 kg, cereals - 9 kg, fish - 1.5 kg, sugar - 0.9 kg. From January 1, 1933, by order of the Soyuznarkomsnab, the supply norms for dependents were reduced to the following sizes: flour - 5 kg, cereals - 0.5 kg, fish - 0.8 kg, sugar - 0.4 kg. As a result, the situation of special settlers in the timber industry, especially in the Ural region and the Northern Territory, has deteriorated sharply ... Everywhere in the household plots of Sevkrai and the Urals, there have been cases of eating various inedible surrogates, as well as eating cats, dogs and the corpses of fallen animals ... On the basis of hunger, sharply increased morbidity and mortality among migrants. In the Cherdynsky district, up to 50% of s/settlers fell ill from starvation... Because of the famine, a number of suicides took place, crime increased... Hungry s/settlers steal bread and livestock from the surrounding population, in particular, from collective farmers... Due to insufficient supply, labor productivity has sharply decreased, production rates have fallen in some household plots to 25%. Exhausted special settlers are not able to work out the norm, and in accordance with this they receive a smaller amount of food and become completely unable to work. Cases of death from starvation from / migrants at work and immediately after returning from work were noted ... "

The infant mortality rate was especially high. In the memorandum of G.G. Berries dated October 26, 1931 in the name of Ya.E. Rudzutak noted: “The morbidity and mortality from / immigrants is high ... Monthly mortality is 1.3% of the population per month in Northern Kazakhstan and 0.8% in the Narym Territory. Most of the dead are children junior groups. So, at the age of up to 3 years, 8-12% of this group dies per month, and in Magnitogorsk - even more, up to 15% per month. It should be noted that, in the main, high mortality does not depend on epidemic diseases, but on housing and domestic disorder, and child mortality increases due to the lack of necessary nutrition.

The newcomers to the “kulak exile” had birth and death rates that were always significantly worse than those of the “old-timers”. For example, as of January 1, 1934, out of 1,072,546 special settlers, there were 955,893 who entered the "kulak exile" in 1929-1932. and 116,653 in 1933. In total, in 1933, 17,082 were born in the "kulak exile" and 151,601 people died, of which 16,539 were born and 129,800 died respectively, "new settlers" - 543 and 21 801. If among the "old-timers" during 1933 the death rate was 7.8 times higher than the birth rate, then among the "new settlers" it was 40 times higher.

Concerning " huge amount schools," he cites the following figures:

“In September 1938, there were 1,106 primary, 370 incomplete secondary and 136 secondary schools, as well as 230 vocational education schools and 12 technical schools in the labor settlements. There were 8280 teachers here, 1104 of them were labor settlers. 217,454 children of labor settlers studied in educational institutions of labor settlements.

Now for the number of fugitives. Indeed, there were not so few of them, but a third was found. A large number of those who fled probably died, since the special settlements were located very far from the inhabited places.

“The desire of labor settlers to break free caused a mass exodus from the “kulak exile”, since it was incomparably easier to escape from a labor settlement than from a prison or camp. Only from 1932 to 1940, 629,042 people fled from the "kulak exile", and 235,120 people were returned from the run during the same period.

Later, special settlers were given small indulgences. So, their children could go to other places to study, if they “didn’t stain themselves with anything.” In the late 1930s, the children of kulaks were allowed not to register with the NKVD. Also in the 1930s, 31,515 "improperly deported" kulaks were released.

“Is it true that 40 million were convicted?

no, that's a lie.

from 1921 to 1954, 3,777,380 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, of which 642,980 people were sentenced to CMN.

During this entire period, the total number of prisoners (not only “political ones”) did not exceed 2.5 million, during this time about 1.8 million died, of which about 600 thousand were political. The lion's share of deaths occurred in 42-43 years.

Writers such as Solzhenitsyn, Suvorov, Lev Razgon, Antonov-Ovseenko, Roy Medvedev, Vyltsan, Shatunovskaya are liars and falsifiers.

You see, the Gulag or prisons were not "death camps" like the Nazis, every year 200-350 thousand people came out of them, the term of which ended.

The figure of 40 million comes from an article by historian Roy Medvedev in Moskovskiye Novosti in November 1988. However, there is a clear distortion here: Medvedev wrote about the total number of victims of Soviet policy over 30 years. Here he included the dispossessed, those who died of starvation, those convicted, deported, etc. Although, it must be admitted, the figure is significantly exaggerated. About 2 times.

However, Zemskov himself, for example, does not include the victims of the 1933 famine among the victims of repression.

“The number of victims of repression often includes those who died of starvation in 1933. Undoubtedly, the state, with its fiscal policy, then committed a monstrous crime against millions of peasants. However, their inclusion in the category of “victims of political repressions” is hardly justified. These are the victims of the economic policy of the state (an analogue is the millions of Russian babies who were not born as a result of the shock reforms of the radical democrats of Russia).

Here he, of course, wags very ugly. Hypothetical unborn, which simply cannot be counted, and people who actually lived, but died, are two big differences. If someone would undertake to count the unborn in Soviet times, there the numbers would be sky-high, in comparison with which even 40 million would seem small.

Now let's take a look at the numbers of those executed and convicted for counter-revolution. The above figures of 3,777,380 people convicted and 642,980 people shot are taken from a certificate prepared for Khrushchev by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko, the USSR Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov and the USSR Minister of Justice Gorshenin in 1954. At the same time, Zemskov himself in his work “Political Repressions in the USSR (1917-1990)” explains:

“At the end of 1953, another certificate was prepared by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. In it, on the basis of statistical reporting of the 1st Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of those convicted for counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes for the period from January 1, 1921 to July 1, 1953 was 4,060,306 people (January 5, 1954 in the name G. M. Malenkov and N. S. Khrushchev were sent letter No. 26/K signed by S. N. Kruglov with the content of this information).

This figure was made up of 3,777,380 convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes and 282,926 for other especially dangerous state crimes. The latter were convicted not under the 58th, but under other equivalent articles; first of all, according to paragraphs. 2 and 3 Art. 59 (especially dangerous banditry) and Art. 193 24 (military espionage). For example, part of the Basmachi was convicted not under the 58th, but under the 59th article.

In the same work, he refers to Popov's monograph "State terror in Soviet Russia. 1923-1953: sources and their interpretation. In the total number of convicts, their figures completely coincide, but, according to Popov, a little more was shot - 799,455 people. There is also a summary table by year. Very interesting numbers. Striking in the eye a sharp increase since 1930. Immediately 208,068 convicts. For example, in 1927 only 26,036 people were convicted. In terms of the number of those shot, the ratio also differs by 10 times in favor of 1930. Throughout the 1930s, the number of those convicted under Article 58 exceeded the number of those convicted in the 20s. For example, in the “softest” year of 1939, after large-scale purges, 63,889 people were convicted, while in the most “fruitful” year of 1929, 56,220 people. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that in 1929 the mechanisms were already moving mass terror. For example, in the first year after the Civil War, only 35,829 people were convicted.

The year 1937 beats all records: 790,665 convicts and 353,074 executed, almost every second of those convicted. But in 1938 the proportions of those convicted and executed were even higher: 554,258 convicted and 328,618 sentenced to capital punishment. After that, the figures return to the beginning of the 30s, but with two bursts: in 1942 - 124,406 convicts and in the post-war years 1946 and 1947 - 123,248 and 123,294 convicts, respectively.

Lytvyn in the text " Russian historiography Great Terror" refers to two more documents:

“Another document that is often resorted to is the final certificate “On violations of the law during the period of the cult” (270 pages of typewritten text; signed by N. Shvernik, A. Shelepin, Z. Serdyuk, R. Rudenko, N. Mironov, V. Semichastny; compiled for the Presidium of the Central Committee in 1963).

The certificate contains the following data: in 1935-1936. 190,246 people were arrested, 2,347 of them were shot; in 1937-1938 1,372,392 people were arrested, 681,692 of them were shot (according to the decision of extrajudicial bodies - 631,897); in 1939-1940 121,033 people were arrested, 4,464 of them were shot; in 1941-1953 (i.e. over 12 years) 1,076,563 people were arrested, of which 59,653 were shot. In total, from 1935 to 1953, 2,760,234 people were arrested, of which 748,146 were shot.

The third document was compiled by the KGB of the USSR on June 16, 1988. The number of those arrested in 1930-1935 indicated in it. - 3,778,234, of which 786,098 people were shot.

In all three sources, the figures are approximately comparable, so it would be logical to focus on 700-800 thousand shot during the years of Soviet power. At the same time, it is important to take into account that the countdown is only from 1921, when the Red Terror began to decline, and the victims of the Bolsheviks in 1918-1920, when they actively used the institution of hostages and mass executions, are not taken into account at all. However, the number of victims is rather difficult to calculate for a number of reasons.

Now for the Gulag. Indeed, the maximum number of prisoners did not exceed 2.5 million people. At the same time, the highest number of prisoners was observed in the post-war years, from 1948 to 1953. This is due to both the abolition of the death penalty and the tightening of legislation (especially in the section on theft of socialist property), as well as an increase in the number of prisoners from annexed Western Ukraine and the Baltics.

“You mean the Gulag or prisons were not “death camps” like the Nazis, every year 200-350 thousand people came out of them, the term of which ended.”

Here Comrade Stalinist confuses something. The same Zemskov in his work “The Gulag (Historical and Sociological Aspect)” gives figures for all years from the moment the camp system appeared until 1953. And according to these figures, the reduction in the number of prisoners is not noticeable. Maybe every year 200-300 thousand were released, only they were brought in to replace even more. How else to explain the constant increase in the number of prisoners? For example, in 1935 there were 965,742 prisoners in the Gulag, and in 1938 - 1,881,570 people (do not forget about the record number of those who were shot). Indeed, 1942 and 1943 saw a record rise in prison deaths, with 352,560 and 267,826 deaths respectively. At the same time, the total number of the camp system in 1942 was 1,777,043 people, that is, a quarter of all prisoners died (!), Which is comparable to the German death camps. Maybe it was due to the difficult food conditions? But Zemskov himself writes:

“During the war, with a decrease in food standards, output standards simultaneously increased. A significant increase in the level of intensification of the work of prisoners is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that in 1941 in the Gulag the output per one man-day worked was 9 rubles. 50 kopecks, and in 1944 - 21 rubles.

Not "death camps"? Oh well. Somehow there are no noticeable differences from the German camps. There, too, they were forced to work more and more, and fed less and less. And what, by the way, with the 200-300 thousand released annually? Zemskov has an interesting passage on this subject:

“During the war in the Gulag, the previously existing practice of applying by the courts on conditional early release of prisoners on the basis of credits for the term of the served sentence of working days, on which the prisoners fulfilled or exceeded the established production standards, was canceled. The procedure for the full serving of the sentence was established. And only in relation to individual prisoners, excellent students of production, who gave high performance indicators for a long period of stay in places of deprivation of liberty, a special meeting at the NKVD of the USSR sometimes applied parole or a reduction in the sentence.

From the first day of the war, the release of those convicted of treason, espionage, terror, sabotage was stopped; Trotskyists and rightists; for banditry and other especially grave state crimes. The total number of detainees with release until December 1, 1944 was about 26 thousand people. In addition, about 60,000 people whose term of imprisonment had ended were forcibly left at camps for “free hire”.

Parole was canceled, some who served time were not released, and those who were released were forcibly left as civilian employees. Good idea, Uncle Joe!

“Is it true that the NKVD repressed our prisoners and repatriates?

no, that's a lie.

Of course, Stalin did not say: "We do not have retreated or captured, we have traitors."

The policy of the USSR did not put an equal sign between "traitor" and "captured". The traitors were considered "Vlasovites", policemen, "Krasnov's Cossacks" and other scum that the traitor Prosvirnin slandered. And even then, the Vlasovites did not receive not only VMN, but even prisons. They were sent into exile for 6 years.

Many traitors did not receive any punishment when it turned out that they had joined the ROA under torture by starvation.

Most of those who were forcibly taken to work in Europe, having successfully and quickly passed the check, returned home.

A myth is also a statement. that many repatriates did not want to return to the USSR. Another blatant lie about the total repression of repatriates. In reality, only a few percent were convicted and sent to serve time. I think it is obvious that among the repatriates there were former Vlasovites, punishers, policemen.

The question of the repatriation of Soviet citizens is indeed shrouded in a significant number of myths. Starting from "they were shot right at the border" and ending with "the humane Soviet government did not touch anyone and even treated everyone to delicious gingerbread." This is due to the fact that all data on the topic remained classified until the end of the 80s.

In 1944, the Office of the Authorized Council of People's Commissars (Council of Ministers) of the USSR for Repatriation Affairs was established. It was headed by Fedor Golikov. Before the war, he served as the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army, but immediately after the outbreak of the war, he was removed from his post and sent as head of the military mission to Britain and the United States. A few months later he was recalled and appointed to command the army. The military leader from him turned out to be so-so, and in 1943 Golikov was recalled from the front and never returned.

Golikov's department was faced with the task of transporting approximately 4.5 million Soviet citizens from Europe to the USSR. Among them were both prisoners of war and those sent to work. There were also those who retreated with the Germans. At the talks in Yalta in February 1945, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on the mandatory forced repatriation of all Soviet citizens. The desire of Soviet citizens to remain in the West was not taken into account.

Moreover, Western countries and the USSR lived in different civilizational dimensions. And if in the USA and Britain it was unconditionally recognized that a person can live in any country where he wants, then in the Stalinist USSR even an attempt to escape to another country was considered the gravest counter-revolutionary crime and was punished accordingly:

Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR as amended in 1938

58-1a. Treason to the Motherland, i.e. actions committed by citizens of the USSR to the detriment of the military power of the USSR, its state independence or the inviolability of its territory, such as: espionage, extradition of military or state secret, going to the side of the enemy, flight or flight abroad are punishable by capital punishment- execution by firing squad with confiscation of all property, and under extenuating circumstances - imprisonment for a term of 10 years with confiscation of all property.

In those countries that were occupied by the Red Army, the issue was resolved simply. Indiscriminately, all Soviet citizens and White Guard emigrants were sent to the USSR. However, most of the Soviet citizens were by that time in the zone of the Anglo-American occupation. All Soviet citizens were divided into three categories: the smallest - soldiers of the ROA, Khivs and simply haters of the Soviet regime, either collaborating with the Germans, or simply hating collective farms and other Soviet dirty tricks. Naturally, they tried with all their might to avoid extradition. The second group is Western Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians who became Soviet citizens in 1939. They also did not want to return to the USSR and became the most privileged group, since the United States did not officially recognize the annexation of the Baltic states and practically none of this group was extradited. The third, most numerous, are ordinary Soviet citizens, either captured or Ostarbeiters. These people were born and raised in the Soviet system of coordinates, where the word "emigrant" was a terrible curse. The fact is that in the 1930s there was a wave of "defectors" - people in responsible Soviet positions who refused to return to the Stalinist USSR. Therefore, an attempt to escape abroad began to be considered the gravest counter-revolutionary crime, and defectors were defamed in the Soviet press. An emigrant is a traitor, a Trotskyist hireling, a Judas and a cannibal.

Ordinary Soviet citizens quite sincerely did not want to stay abroad, many of them realistically assessed their low chances of getting a good job without knowledge of languages ​​and education. In addition, there were fears for relatives, because they could suffer. However, this category agreed to return only if they were not threatened with any punishment.

For the first few months, the Americans, and especially the British, willingly betrayed everyone indiscriminately, with the exception of the Ukrainians and the Balts. Then the famous took place. But already from the end of 1945, with the beginning of a sharp deterioration in relations between the USSR and Western countries, extradition became predominantly voluntary. That is, only those who themselves wanted to repatriate. In parallel, the camps were checked by the British and Americans for the presence of people capable of useful intellectual work. They were looking for engineers, designers, scientists, doctors, offering them to move to the West. The Office of Repatriation was very unhappy with these proposals. A struggle has begun for the minds of the inhabitants of the camps for displaced persons. And the struggle with comic shades. Each side sought to supply the camps with their own propaganda media and to prevent the infiltration of enemy media. It got to the point of absurdity: in one camp, the Western press began to spread: “Soviet man, in the USSR Stalin will shoot you right on the border,” after which the mood in the camp changed in favor of staying. As soon as the Soviet press appeared in the same camp: “A Soviet citizen, an American political instructor is lying, in a Soviet country they don’t beat you, but they feed you well” - and the mood in the camp immediately changed in favor of returning.

In 1958, a book by Bryukhanov, who served as an officer in this Directorate, was published in the USSR. It is entitled "That's how it was: On the work of the mission for the repatriation of Soviet citizens (Memoirs of a Soviet officer)." Bryukhanov recalled:

“When we happened to be in the camps, we used every opportunity to distribute newspapers and magazines to people. I confess that we did this in defiance of the British ban, but deliberately violated the British instructions, because we knew that our compatriots were under the constant influence of anti-Soviet propaganda. We considered it our duty to counter the floods of intoxicating lies with the word of truth. The displaced, hungry for news from their homeland, snapped up newspapers with lightning speed and immediately hid them. The displaced looked forward to the distribution of newspapers with such impatience that the British authorities tried to put an end to it.

We asked the British command to give us the opportunity to address our compatriots by radio. As expected, the case dragged on. In the end, we were allowed to speak only in Russian. The British authorities explained this again by the fact that they do not recognize Ukraine as a separate republic, and do not consider the Baltic states to be part of the Soviet Union.

The work on repatriation was carried out on the basis of Golikov's order of January 18, 1945, which read:

“Prisoners of war and civilians liberated by the Red Army were subject to direction:

The soldiers of the Red Army (private and non-commissioned officers) who were in captivity - to the army SPP, after checking them in the established order - to the army and front-line spare parts;

- officers who were in captivity - in the special camps of the NKVD;

Those who served in the German army and special combatant German formations, Vlasovites, policemen and other suspicious persons - in the special camps of the NKVD;

The civilian population - to the front-line SPP and border PFP of the NKVD; of them, after verification, men of military age - to the spare parts of the fronts or military districts, the rest - to the place of permanent residence (with a ban on sending to Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv);

- residents of border areas - in the PFP of the NKVD;

- orphans - to children's institutions of the People's Commissariat of Education and the People's Commissariat of Health of the Union Republics.

Some Soviet citizens managed to marry foreigners during their stay abroad. In their case, a simple instruction worked. If the family does not yet have children, then women should be forcibly returned to the Soviet Union without a spouse. If a couple has children, do not return a Soviet citizen, even if she and her husband themselves express a desire to come.

Zemskov in his work “Repatriation of Displaced Soviet Citizens” gives the following figures as of March 1, 1946:

“Repatriated - 4,199,488 people. Sent to the place of residence (with the exception of the three capitals) - 57.81%. Sent to the army - 19.08%. Sent to work battalions - 14.48%. Transferred to the disposal of the NKVD (i.e. subjected to repression) - 6.50%, or 272,867 people of the total.

Basically, these were officers who were taken prisoner, as well as military personnel of the ROA and other similar units, village elders, etc. The LiveJournal post states that they received 6 years of settlement, but this is a lie. They were received only by ordinary military personnel, and even then in those cases when they excused themselves by the fact that they entered the service under duress. In the event that there was even the slightest suspicion of deliberate treasonous activity, they were given from 10 to 25 years in the camps. The officers of these formations were automatically convicted under a counter-revolutionary article and also received from 10 to 25 years. In 1955, those who survived were amnestied. As for the prisoners, they were sent to labor battalions, and the captured officers were carefully checked and often sent either to a camp or to a special settlement if there were suspicions that they had surrendered voluntarily. There were also such cases as with major generals Kirillov and Ponedelin, who were captured in August 1941, were declared traitors in absentia, after the war they spent 5 years under investigation and were eventually shot. Together with them, Lieutenant General Kachalov was also declared a traitor in absentia. But it turned out that Kachalov died in battle and was not taken prisoner. His grave was found and his identity established, but Comrade Stalin could not be mistaken, therefore, until Stalin's death, Kachalov was considered a traitor and traitor and was not rehabilitated. These are the Soviet paradoxes.

Approximately every tenth Soviet citizen was able to avoid returning. In total, 451,561 people managed to get away from the Soviet comrades. Most of them were Western Ukrainians - 144,934 people, Latvians - 109,214 people, Lithuanians - 63,401 people and Estonians - 58,924 people. As already mentioned, the Allies provided them with patronage and did not consider them Soviet citizens, so none of them were handed over to the Soviet side if they themselves did not want to leave. All the OUN members who were in the Soviet camps got there from the territories occupied by the Soviet army. Russians are in the minority on this list. Only 31,704 people escaped extradition.

The main wave of repatriation ended by 1946, but until the 1950s, the Soviet authorities did not give up trying to return Soviet citizens. However, those who were forcibly repatriated remained suspicious in the USSR. Golikov wrote to Abakumov:

“At present, the repatriation of Soviet citizens from the British and American zones of occupation in Germany has completely distinctive features from the repatriation carried out earlier. Firstly, people enter our camps who, in most cases, had guilt before the Motherland; secondly, for a long time they were and are in the territory of British and American influence, they were subjected there and are subjected to intense influence of all kinds of anti-Soviet organizations and committees that have built their nests in the western zones of Germany and Austria. In addition, Soviet citizens who served in Anders' army are currently entering the camps from England. In 1947, 3269 people were admitted to the camps of Soviet citizens from the British and American zones. repatriates and 988 people who served in the army of Anders. There is no doubt that among these citizens, trained intelligence officers, terrorists, and agitators who have gone through the appropriate schools in the capitalist countries are arriving in the USSR.

In the same place, Zemskov testifies that the fate of the officers was worse. If the captured privates, as a rule, were released and sent back to the army, then the officers were interrogated with prejudice and looked for a reason to punish them:

“It should be noted that the “competent authorities”, while maintaining the principle of non-application of Article 193, at the same time stubbornly tried to put many repatriate officers behind bars under Article 58, charging them with espionage, anti-Soviet conspiracies, etc. The officers sent to the 6-year-old special settlement, as a rule, had nothing to do with General A.A. Vlasov, or anyone like him. Moreover, the punishment in the form of a special settlement was determined by him only because the state security and counterintelligence agencies could not find compromising material sufficient to imprison them in the Gulag. Unfortunately, we were unable to establish the total number of officers sent to the 6-year special settlement (according to our estimates, there were about 7-8 thousand of them, which was no more than 7% of the total number of officers identified among the repatriated prisoners of war). In 1946-1952. some of those officers who in 1945 were reinstated in the service or transferred to the reserve were also repressed. They did not leave alone the officers who were lucky enough to avoid repressions, and they were periodically summoned for “interviews” to the MGB bodies until 1953.

Moreover, from the content of the documents of the departments of L.P. Beria, F.I. Golikov and others, it follows that the top Soviet leaders, who decided the fate of the repatriate officers, were confident that they had treated them humanely. Apparently, by "humanism" they meant that they refrained from the Katyn method (execution of Polish officers in Katyn) of solving the problem of Soviet repatriate officers and, saving their lives, went along the path of isolating them in various forms (PFL, Gulag , "reserve divisions", special settlement, worker battalions); according to our estimates, at least half were even left free.”

However, in this case the abolition of the death penalty and the renunciation of persecution of most of the repatriates were not based on suddenly acquired humanism, but on forced necessity. Due to huge losses, the USSR needed workers to restore the destroyed infrastructure. In addition, most of the conditional “Vlasovites” did not serve on the Eastern Front at all and could not commit any crimes with all their will.

Let's summarize some figures: 3.8 million convicted under the counter-revolutionary article, 0.7 million sentenced to death, 4 million subjected to dispossession. Approximately half of them were sent to a special settlement or camps, the rest were simply deprived of their property with a ban on living in them. locality, but without a link to Siberia. About a million and a half more deported Kalmyks, Chechens, Balkars, Greeks, Latvians, etc. Thus, about 9.3 million inhabitants of the USSR suffered directly for political reasons. This does not take into account the victims of the Red Terror during the Civil War, since no one has established their exact number due to the peculiarities of the terror itself.

If we also add indirect damage, for example, the famine caused by the surplus appraisal of 1921-22 - about 5 million people, the famine of 1932 caused by collectivization - from 3 to 7 million victims for various researchers, add people who are forced to give up everything and flee from Bolsheviks in emigration, -1.5-3 million people after the Civil War (according to Polyan "Emigration: who and when left Russia in the 20th century") plus 0.5 million after World War II, then the figure is 19.3 - 24.8 million people, one way or another affected by the actions of the Bolsheviks.

This figure does not include people convicted under the extremely harsh criminal legislation of the Stalinist era (“the law on three spikelets”, criminal liability for being late for work or absenteeism), which were later considered excessive even by Stalinist standards and the punishment for those convicted was reduced ( for example, according to the same “three spikelets”). There are still hundreds of thousands of people.

In any case, the joy of the Stalinists is not entirely clear. If Zemskov proved that there were no victims at all, this could be understood, but he only corrected the figures for the victims of repression, and the Stalinists celebrate this correction as a victory. As if something had changed from the fact that under Stalin they shot not a million, but 700 thousand people. For comparison, under fascism in Italy - yes, yes, the very FASCISM that the Russian Federation is still fighting against - during the entire reign of Mussolini, 4.5 thousand people were convicted on political matters. Moreover, the repression there began after street fighting with the communists, and in 1926 alone, 5 (!) assassination attempts were made on Mussolini. With all this, the main punishment was not imprisonment, but exile. For example, the leader of the Italian communists, Bordiga, was sent into exile for three years, after which he lived quietly in Italy and was not persecuted. Gramsci was sentenced to 20 years, but later reduced to 9 years, and he is not in the Far North as a crowbar permafrost hollowed, and wrote books in prison. Gramsci wrote all his works while in prison. Palmiro Togliatti spent several years in exile, after which he calmly left for France, and from there to the USSR. The death penalty in Italy was used, but only for murder or political terror. In total, under Mussolini, 9 people were executed during his 20 years in power.

Just think about what a broken world we live in if the state is still fighting the corpse of fascism, who killed 9 people in 20 years, and at the same time openly glorifies the dictator, under whom more than 600 thousand citizens of the USSR were killed in just two years, not counting indirect victims of Stalin's policy!

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, who declared that the further advancement of communism would meet with increasing resistance from hostile, anti-Soviet elements and they need to be dealt with harshly. 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.

Start Stalinist repressions It 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 vivid example is the Pulkovo case, when a huge number of astronomers, mathematicians, engineers and other scientists suffered. 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. For objective reasons, it was far from always and not always 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. The affairs of the Geological Committee and the Academy of Sciences, Vesna, the Siberian Brigade ... A complete and detailed description can take 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 educational institutions on trumped-up charges. 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 frostbitten, 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 looks like black irony. Jewish nationality. 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. In general, the exact number of 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 fascist regime 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 can be distinguished several characteristic features that only emphasize what they were. It:

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, errors in production, marriage and, in general, are very low level qualities - 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, beyond any doubt it is clear that this is one of the worst pages of world history.

Mass repressions in the USSR were carried out in the period 1927-1953. These repressions are directly associated with the name of Joseph Stalin, who during these years led the country. Social and political persecution in the USSR began after the completion of the last stage civil war. These phenomena began to gain momentum in the second half of the 1930s and did not slow down during the Second World War, as well as after its end. Today we will talk about what the social and political repressions of the Soviet Union were, consider what phenomena underlie those events, and also what consequences this led to.

They say: a whole people cannot be suppressed without end. Lie! Can! We see how our people have become devastated, run wild, and indifference descended on them not only to the fate of the country, not only to the fate of their neighbor, but even to their own fate and the fate of children. Indifference, the last saving reaction of the body, has become our defining feature . That is why the popularity of vodka is unprecedented even in Russia. This is a terrible indifference, when a person sees his life not punctured, not with a broken corner, but so hopelessly fragmented, so up and down filthy that only for the sake of alcoholic oblivion is it still worth living. Now, if vodka were banned, a revolution would immediately break out in our country.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Reasons for repression:

• Forcing the population to work on a non-economic basis. A lot of work had to be done in the country, but there was not enough money for everything. The ideology formed new thinking and perception, and also had to motivate people to work practically for free.
• Strengthening personal power. For the new ideology, an idol was needed, a person who was unquestioningly trusted. After the assassination of Lenin, this post was vacant. Stalin had to take this place.
• Strengthening the exhaustion of a totalitarian society.

If you try to find the beginning of repression in the union, then the starting point, of course, should be 1927. This year was marked by the fact that mass executions began in the country, with the so-called pests, as well as saboteurs. The motive of these events should be sought in the relations between the USSR and Great Britain. So, at the beginning of 1927, the Soviet Union was involved in a major international scandal, when the country was openly accused of trying to transfer the seat of the Soviet revolution to London. In response to these events, Great Britain severed all relations with the USSR, both political and economic. Domestically, this step was presented as a preparation by London new wave interventions. At one of the party meetings, Stalin declared that the country "needs to destroy all remnants of imperialism and all supporters of the White Guard movement." Stalin had an excellent reason for this on June 7, 1927. On this day, the political representative of the USSR, Voikov, was killed in Poland.

As a result, terror began. For example, on the night of June 10, 20 people who contacted the empire were shot. They were representatives of ancient noble families. In total, in June 27, more than 9 thousand people were arrested, who were accused of treason, aiding imperialism and other things that sound menacing, but are very difficult to prove. Most of those arrested were sent to prison.

Pest control

After that, a number of major cases began in the USSR, which were aimed at combating sabotage and sabotage. The wave of these repressions was based on the fact that in most large companies that operated within the Soviet Union, senior positions were occupied by people from imperial Russia. Of course, most of these people did not feel sympathy for the new government. Therefore, the Soviet regime was looking for pretexts by which this intelligentsia could be removed from leadership positions and, if possible, destroyed. The problem was that this required significant and legal grounds. Such grounds were found in a number of lawsuits that swept through the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Among the most striking examples of such cases are the following:

• Shakhty business. In 1928, repressions in the USSR affected miners from Donbass. A show trial was staged from this case. The entire leadership of Donbass, as well as 53 engineers, were accused of espionage with an attempt to sabotage the new state. As a result of the trial, 3 people were shot, 4 were acquitted, the rest received prison terms from 1 to 10 years. It was a precedent - society enthusiastically accepted the repressions against the enemies of the people ... In 2000, the Russian prosecutor's office rehabilitated all the participants in the Shakhty case, in view of the lack of corpus delicti.
• Pulkovo case. In June 1936, a large solar eclipse. The Pulkovo Observatory appealed to the world community to attract personnel to study this phenomenon, as well as to obtain the necessary foreign equipment. As a result, the organization was accused of espionage. The number of victims is classified.
• The case of the industrial party. The defendants in this case were those whom the Soviet authorities called bourgeois. This process took place in 1930. The defendants were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization in the country.
• The case of the peasant party. The Socialist-Revolutionary organization is widely known, under the name of the Chayanov and Kondratiev groups. In 1930, representatives of this organization were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization and interfering in agricultural affairs.
• Union Bureau. The Union Bureau case was opened in 1931. The defendants were representatives of the Mensheviks. They were accused of undermining the creation and implementation of economic activity within the country, as well as having links with foreign intelligence.

At that moment, a massive ideological struggle was taking place in the USSR. The new regime tried with all its might to explain its position to the population, as well as to justify its actions. But Stalin understood that ideology alone could not bring order to the country and could not allow him to retain power. Therefore, along with ideology, repressions began in the USSR. Above, we have already given some examples of cases from which repressions began. These cases have always raised big questions, and today, when the documents on many of them have been declassified, it becomes absolutely clear that most of the accusations were unfounded. It is no coincidence that the Russian prosecutor's office, having examined the documents of the Shakhtinsk case, rehabilitated all participants in the process. And this despite the fact that in 1928 none of the party leadership of the country had any idea about the innocence of these people. Why did this happen? This was due to the fact that, under the guise of repression, as a rule, everyone who did not agree with the new regime was destroyed.

The events of the 1920s were only the beginning, the main events were ahead.

Socio-political meaning of mass repressions

A new massive wave of repression within the country unfolded at the beginning of 1930. At that moment, the struggle began not only with political competitors, but also with the so-called kulaks. In fact, a new blow of the Soviet power against the rich began, and this blow caught not only wealthy people, but also the middle peasants and even the poor. One of the stages of delivering this blow was dispossession. Within the framework of this material, we will not dwell on the issues of dispossession, since this issue has already been studied in detail in the corresponding article on the site.

Party composition and governing bodies in repression

A new wave of political repressions in the USSR began at the end of 1934. At that time, there was a significant change in the structure of the administrative apparatus within the country. In particular, on July 10, 1934, the special services were reorganized. This day was created people's commissariat internal affairs of the USSR. This department is known by the acronym NKVD. This division included the following services:

• Main Directorate of State Security. It was one of the main bodies that dealt with almost all cases.
• Main Directorate of Workers' and Peasants' Militia. This is an analogue of the modern police, with all the functions and responsibilities.
• Main Directorate of the Border Service. The department was engaged in border and customs affairs.
• Headquarters of the camps. This department is now widely known under the acronym GULAG.
• Main Fire Department.

In addition, in November 1934, a special department was created, which was called the "Special Meeting". This department received broad powers to combat the enemies of the people. In fact, this department could, without the presence of the accused, the prosecutor and the lawyer, send people into exile or to the Gulag for up to 5 years. Of course, this applied only to the enemies of the people, but the problem is that no one really knew how to define this enemy. That is why the Special Meeting had unique functions, since virtually any person could be declared an enemy of the people. Any person could be sent into exile for 5 years on one simple suspicion.

Mass repressions in the USSR

The events of December 1, 1934 became the reason for mass repressions. Then Sergei Mironovich Kirov was killed in Leningrad. As a result of these events, a special procedure for judicial proceedings was approved in the country. Actually we are talking on expedited litigation. Under the simplified system of proceedings, all cases where people were accused of terrorism and complicity in terrorism were transferred. Again, the problem was that this category included almost all people who fell under repression. Above, we have already talked about a number of high-profile cases that characterize the repressions in the USSR, where it is clearly seen that all people, one way or another, were accused of aiding terrorism. The specificity of the simplified system of proceedings was that the sentence had to be pronounced within 10 days. The defendant received the summons the day before the trial. The trial itself took place without the participation of prosecutors and lawyers. At the conclusion of the proceedings, any request for clemency was prohibited. If in the course of the proceedings a person was sentenced to death, then this measure of punishment was executed immediately.

Political repression, purge of the party

Stalin staged active repression within the Bolshevik Party itself. One of the illustrative examples of repression that affected the Bolsheviks happened on January 14, 1936. On this day, the replacement of party documents was announced. This step has long been discussed and was not unexpected. But when replacing documents, new certificates were not awarded to all party members, but only to those who "deserved trust." Thus began the purge of the party. According to official data, when new party documents were issued, 18% of the Bolsheviks were expelled from the party. These were the people to whom the repressions were applied, first of all. And we are talking about only one of the waves of these purges. In total, the cleaning of the batch was carried out in several stages:

• In 1933. 250 people were expelled from the top leadership of the party.
• In 1934-1935, 20,000 people were expelled from the Bolshevik Party.

Stalin actively destroyed people who could claim power, who had power. To demonstrate this fact, it is only necessary to say that of all the members of the Politburo of 1917, only Stalin survived after the purge (4 members were shot, and Trotsky was expelled from the party and expelled from the country). In total, there were 6 members of the Politburo at that time. In the period between the revolution and the death of Lenin, a new Politburo of 7 people was assembled. By the end of the purge, only Molotov and Kalinin survived. In 1934, the next congress of the VKP(b) party took place. The congress was attended by 1934 people. 1108 of them were arrested. Most were shot.

The assassination of Kirov aggravated the wave of repressions, and Stalin himself addressed the party members with a statement about the need for the final extermination of all enemies of the people. As a result, the Criminal Code of the USSR was amended. These changes stipulated that all cases of political prisoners were considered in an expedited manner without attorneys for prosecutors within 10 days. The executions were carried out immediately. In 1936 took place political process over the opposition. In fact, Lenin's closest associates, Zinoviev and Kamenev, ended up in the dock. They were accused of murdering Kirov, as well as an attempt on Stalin's life. A new stage of political repressions against the Leninist guards began. This time, Bukharin was subjected to repressions, as well as the head of the government, Rykov. The socio-political meaning of repression in this sense was associated with the strengthening of the personality cult.

Repression in the army

Beginning in June 1937, repressions in the USSR affected the army. In June, the first trial took place over the high command of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), including the commander-in-chief, Marshal Tukhachevsky. The leadership of the army was accused of attempting a coup. According to the prosecutors, the coup was to take place on May 15, 1937. The accused were found guilty and most of them were shot. Tukhachevsky was also shot.

An interesting fact is that out of 8 members judicial trial, who sentenced Tukhachevsky to be shot, later five were themselves repressed and shot. However, from that time on, repressions began in the army, which affected the entire leadership. As a result of such events, 3 marshals of the Soviet Union, 3 army commanders of the 1st rank, 10 army commanders of the 2nd rank, 50 corps commanders, 154 division commanders, 16 army commissars, 25 corps commissars, 58 divisional commissars, 401 regimental commanders were repressed. In total, 40 thousand people were subjected to repressions in the Red Army. It was 40 thousand leaders of the army. As a result, more than 90% of the command staff was destroyed.

Strengthening repression

Beginning in 1937, the wave of repressions in the USSR began to intensify. The reason was order No. 00447 of the NKVD of the USSR of July 30, 1937. This document declared the immediate repression of all anti-Soviet elements, namely:

• Former kulaks. All those whom the Soviet government called kulaks, but who escaped punishment, or were in labor camps or in exile, were subject to repression.
• All representatives of religion. Anyone who had anything to do with religion was subject to repression.
• Participants in anti-Soviet actions. Under such participants, everyone who had ever acted actively or passively against the Soviet regime was involved. In fact, this category included those who did not support the new government.
• Anti-Soviet politicians. Inside the country, all those who were not members of the Bolshevik Party were called anti-Soviet politicians.
• The White Guards.
• People with a criminal record. People who had a criminal record were automatically considered enemies of the Soviet regime.

• hostile elements. Any person who was called a hostile element was sentenced to be shot.
• Inactive elements. The rest, who were not sentenced to death, were sent to camps or prisons for a term of 8 to 10 years.

All cases were now dealt with in an even more expedited manner, where most cases were dealt with en masse. According to the same order of the NKVD, repressions applied not only to convicts, but also to their families. In particular, the families of the repressed were subjected to the following measures punishments:

• Families of those who were repressed for active anti-Soviet actions. All members of such families were sent to camps and labor camps.
• The families of the repressed, who lived in the border zone, were subject to resettlement inland. Often special settlements were formed for them.
• The family of the repressed, who lived in large cities of the USSR. Such people were also resettled inland.

In 1940, a secret department of the NKVD was created. This department was engaged in the destruction of political opponents of Soviet power abroad. The first victim of this department was Trotsky, who was killed in Mexico in August 1940. In the future, this secret department was engaged in the destruction of members of the White Guard movement, as well as representatives of the imperialist emigration of Russia.

In the future, repressions continued, although their main events had already passed. In fact, repressions in the USSR continued until 1953.

The results of repression

In total, from 1930 to 1953, 3,800,000 people were repressed on charges of counter-revolution. Of these, 749,421 people were shot ... And this is only for official information... And how many more people died without trial or investigation, whose names and surnames are not included in the list?

Ours with D.R. Khapaeva's article, devoted to the collective ideas of post-Soviet people about Soviet history, caused a series of letters to the editor demanding that the following phrase contained in it be refuted:

“73% of respondents are in a hurry to take their place in the military-patriotic epic, indicating that there were those who died during the war years in their families. And although twice as many people suffered from Soviet terror than died during the war , 67% deny the presence of victims of repression in their families.”

Some readers a) found it incorrect to compare the number affected from repression with the number dead during the war, b) found the very concept of victims of repression blurred, and c) were indignant at the extremely overestimated, in their opinion, estimate of the number of repressed. If we consider that 27 million people died during the war, then the number of victims of repression, if it were twice as large, should have been 54 million, which contradicts the data given in the well-known article by V.N. Zemskov "GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)", published in the journal "Sociological Research" (No. 6 and 7, 1991), which says:

“... In fact, the number of those convicted for political reasons (for "counter-revolutionary crimes") in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, amounted to about 3.8 million people ... Statement ... of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is in full agreement with the current Gulag statistics that we studied in the second half of the 1930s.

In February 1954, in the name of N.S. Khrushchev, a certificate was prepared signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, which indicated the number of those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954. this period was condemned by the Collegium of the OGPU, the "troikas" of the NKVD, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals of 3,777,380 people, including capital punishment - 642,980, to detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2,369,220, in exile and exile - 765,180 people.

In the article by V.N. Zemskov also cites other data based on archival documents (first of all, on the number and composition of the Gulag prisoners), which in no way confirm the estimates of the victims of terror by R. Conquest and A. Solzhenitsyn (about 60 million). So how many victims were there? This is worth understanding, and by no means only for the sake of evaluating our article. Let's start in order.

1. Is the quantity matching correct? affected from repression with the number dead during the war?

It is clear that the injured and the dead are different things, but whether they can be compared depends on the context. We were interested not in what cost the Soviet people more - repressions or war - but in how much today the memory of the war is more intense than the memory of repressions. Let's put aside a possible objection in advance - the intensity of memory is determined by the strength of the shock, and the shock from mass death is stronger than from mass arrests. Firstly, it is difficult to measure the intensity of the shock, and it is not entirely known what the relatives of the victims suffered more from - from the "shameful" - and posing a very real threat to them - the fact of the arrest of a loved one or from his glorious death. Secondly, the memory of the past is a complex phenomenon, and it depends only in part on the past itself. No less does it depend on the conditions of its own functioning in the present. I believe that the question in our questionnaire was formulated quite correctly.

The concept of “victims of repression” is indeed vague. It can sometimes be used without comment, and sometimes not. We could not specify it for the same reason that we could compare the killed with the injured - we were interested in whether compatriots remember the victims of terror in their families, and by no means what percentage of them had injured relatives. But when it comes to how many “actually” there were victims, who should be considered victims, it is necessary to stipulate.

Hardly anyone will argue that those who were shot and imprisoned in prisons and camps were victims. But what about those who were arrested, subjected to "interrogations with prejudice", but by a happy coincidence were released? Contrary to popular belief, there were many. They were not always re-arrested and convicted (in this case, they fall into the statistics of convicts), but they, as well as their families, certainly retained the impressions of the arrest for a long time. Of course, one can see the triumph of justice in the fact of the release of some of the arrested, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that they were only hurt, but not crushed by the machine of terror.

It is also appropriate to ask the question whether it is necessary to include in the statistics of repressions those convicted under criminal articles. One of the readers said that he was not ready to consider criminals victims of the regime. But not all who were convicted by ordinary courts under criminal articles were criminals. In the Soviet kingdom of distorting mirrors, almost all criteria were shifted. Looking ahead, we say that the cited V.N. Zemskov in the passage quoted above, the data relate only to those convicted under political articles and therefore are deliberately underestimated (the quantitative aspect will be discussed below). In the course of rehabilitation, especially during the perestroika period, some convicted under criminal articles were rehabilitated as actually victims of political repression. Of course, in many cases it is possible to understand here only individually, however, as you know, the numerous "carriers" who picked up spikelets on the collective farm field or took a pack of nails home from the factory also went into the category of criminals. During campaigns to protect socialist property at the end of collectivization (the famous Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of August 7, 1932) and in the post-war period (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947), as well as in the course of the struggle to improve labor discipline in the pre-war and war years (the so-called wartime decrees), millions were convicted under criminal articles. True, most of those convicted under the Decree of June 26, 1940, introducing serfdom at enterprises and forbidding unauthorized departure from work, received minor terms of corrective labor (ITR) or were sentenced to probation, but a fairly significant minority (22.9% or 4,113 thousand people in 1940-1956, judging by the statistical report Supreme Court USSR 1958) was sentenced to imprisonment. With these latter, everything is clear, but what about the former? It seems to some of the readers that they were just treated a little cool, and not repressed. But repression - this is going beyond the limits of generally accepted severity, and such an excess was the terms of the engineer for absenteeism, of course. Finally, in some cases, the number of which is impossible to estimate, those sentenced to the ITR due to a misunderstanding or due to the overzealousness of the guardians of the law still ended up in the camps.

A special issue concerns war crimes, including desertion. It is known that the Red Army largely held on to methods of intimidation, and the concept of desertion was interpreted extremely broadly, so that some, but it is not known which part of those convicted under the relevant articles is quite appropriate to consider victims of the repressive regime. The same victims, of course, can be considered soldiers who fought their way out of the encirclement, escaped or released from captivity, who usually immediately, due to the prevailing spy mania and for "educational purposes" - so that others would be discouraged from surrendering - fell into the filtration camps of the NKVD, and often even further to the Gulag.

Further. Victims of deportations, of course, can also be classified as repressed, as well as administratively deported. And what about those who, without waiting for dispossession or deportation, hurriedly packed up during the night what they could carry, and ran until dawn, and then wandered, sometimes was caught and convicted, and sometimes began new life? Again, everything is clear with those who were caught and convicted, but with those who were not? In the broadest sense, they also suffered, but here, again, one must look individually. If, for example, a doctor from Omsk, warned of his arrest by his former patient, an NKVD officer, took refuge in Moscow, where it was quite possible to get lost if the authorities announced only a regional wanted list (this happened to the author’s grandfather), then perhaps it would be more correct to say about him that he miraculously escaped reprisals. There were, apparently, many such miracles, but it is impossible to say exactly how many. But if - and this is just a well-known figure - two or three million peasants flee to the cities, fleeing dispossession, then this is more like repression. After all, they were not only deprived of their property, which they sold in a hurry at best, for as much as they could, but they were forcibly torn out of their habitual habitat (it is known what it means for a peasant) and often actually declassed.

A special question is about "members of the families of traitors to the motherland." Some of them were "definitely repressed", others - a lot of children - were exiled to colonies or imprisoned in orphanages. Where are these children to be found? Where are the people, most often the wives and mothers of convicts, who not only lost loved ones, but also evicted from apartments, deprived of work and registration, who were under surveillance and awaiting arrest? Shall we say that terror - that is, the policy of intimidation - has not touched them? On the other hand, it is difficult to include them in the statistics - their number is simply not taken into account.

It is of fundamental importance that different forms repression were elements unified system, and that is how they were perceived (or, more precisely, experienced) by contemporaries. For example, local punitive bodies often received orders to toughen the fight against the enemies of the people from among those exiled to their districts, condemning such and such a number of them “in the first category” (that is, to be shot) and such and such in the second category (to imprisonment). ). No one knew which rung of the ladder leading from "working out" in the meeting labor collective to the Lubyanka basement, he was destined to linger - and for how long. Propaganda introduced into the mass consciousness the idea of ​​the inevitability of the beginning of the fall, since the bitterness of the defeated enemy is inevitable. Only by virtue of this law could the class struggle intensify as socialism was built. Colleagues, friends, and sometimes relatives recoiled from those who stepped on the first step of the stairs leading down. Being fired from a job, or even simply “working through” under conditions of terror, had a completely different, much more formidable meaning than they can have in ordinary life.

3. How can you assess the scale of repression?

3.1. What do we know and how?

To begin with, about the state of the sources. Many documents of the punitive departments were lost or purposefully destroyed, but many secrets are still kept in the archives. Of course, after the fall of communism, many archives were declassified and many facts made public. Many - but not all. Moreover, for last years a reverse process was outlined - the re-secretization of archives. With the noble goal of protecting the sensitivity of the descendants of the executioners from exposing the glorious deeds of their fathers and mothers (and now rather their grandfathers and grandmothers), the declassification dates for many archives have been pushed back into the future. It is amazing that a country with a history similar to ours carefully guards the secrets of its past. Probably because it is the same country.

In particular, the result of this situation is the dependence of historians on statistics collected by “relevant bodies”, which can be verified on the basis of primary documents in the rarest cases (though, when it is possible, verification often gives a rather positive result). These statistics were presented in different years by different departments, and it is not easy to bring them together. In addition, it concerns only the “officially” repressed and is therefore fundamentally incomplete. For example, the number of those repressed under criminal articles, but in fact political reasons in principle, it could not be indicated in it, since it proceeded from the categories of understanding of reality by the above-mentioned bodies. Finally, there are inexplicable discrepancies between different "references". Estimates of the scale of repression based on available sources can be very approximate and cautious.

Now about the historiographical context of V.N. Zemskov. The cited article, as well as the even more famous joint article written on its basis by the same author with the American historian A. Getty and the French historian G. Rittersporn, are characteristic of the 1980s. the so-called "revisionist" direction in the study of Soviet history. Young (then) Western historians of leftist views tried not so much to whitewash the Soviet regime as to show that the "right" "anti-Soviet" historians of the older generation (such as R. Conquest and R. Pipes) wrote unscientific history, since they were not allowed into the Soviet archives. Therefore, if the “rightists” exaggerated the scale of repressions, then the “leftists”, partly from dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, were in a hurry to make them public and did not always ask themselves the question whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives. Such "archival fetishism" is generally characteristic of the "tribe of historians", including the most qualified ones. It is not surprising that the data of V.N. Zemskov, who reproduced the figures cited in the documents he found, in the light of a more careful analysis, turn out to be underestimated indicators of the scale of repression.

To date, new publications of documents and studies have appeared, which, of course, give a far from complete, but still more detailed idea of ​​the scale of repression. These are, first of all, books by O.V. Khlevnyuk (as far as I know, it exists only in English), E. Applebaum, E. Bacon and J. Paul, as well as the multi-volume " History of Stalin's Gulag" and a number of other publications. Let's try to comprehend the data given in them.

3.2. Sentence statistics

Statistics were kept by different departments, and today it is not easy to make ends meet. Thus, the Certificate of the Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs on the number of those arrested and convicted by the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB of the USSR, compiled by Colonel Pavlov on December 11, 1953 (hereinafter - Pavlov's certificate), gives the following figures: for the period 1937-1938. 1,575,000 people were arrested by these bodies, of which 1,372,000 were for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 1,345,000 were convicted, including 682,000 sentenced to capital punishment. Similar figures for 1930-1936. amounted to 2,256 thousand, 1,379 thousand, 1,391 thousand and 40 thousand people. In total, for the period from 1921 to 1938. 4,836,000 people were arrested, 3,342,000 of them for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 2,945,000 were convicted, including 745,000 sentenced to death. From 1939 to mid-1953, 1,115,000 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, of which 54,000 were sentenced to death. In total, in 1921-1953. 4,060,000 were convicted under political articles, including 799,000 sentenced to death.

However, these data relate only to those convicted by the system of "extraordinary" bodies, and not to the entire repressive apparatus as a whole. So, this does not include those convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals of various kinds (not only the army, navy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also railway and water transport, as well as camp courts). For example, a very significant discrepancy between the number of arrests and the number of those convicted is due not only to the fact that some of the arrested were released, but also to the fact that some of them died under torture, while others were transferred to ordinary courts. As far as I know, there are no data to judge the relationship between these categories. The statistics of arrests of the NKVD were better than the statistics of sentences.

Let us also pay attention to the fact that in the “Rudenko reference”, quoted by V.N. Zemskov, the data on the number of those convicted and executed by the verdicts of all types of courts turn out to be lower than the data of Pavlov’s certificate only on “emergency” justice, although Pavlov’s certificate was presumably only one of the documents used in Rudenko’s certificate. The reasons for such discrepancies are unknown. However, on the original of Pavlov's certificate, stored in the State Archive Russian Federation(GARF), to the figure of 2,945 thousand (the number of convicts for 1921-1938), an unknown hand made a note in pencil: “30% angle. = 1062". "Corner." They are, of course, criminals. Why 30% of 2,945 thousand amounted to 1,062 thousand, one can only guess. Probably, the postscript reflected some stage of "data processing", and in the direction of underestimation. It is obvious that the indicator of 30% is not derived empirically on the basis of a generalization of the initial data, but is either given by a high rank " expert assessment”, or estimated “by eye” equivalent of the figure (1,062 thousand), by which the indicated rank considered it necessary to reduce the reference data. Where such an expert assessment could come from is unknown. Perhaps it reflected the ideologeme widespread among high officials, according to which criminals were actually condemned “for politics” in our country.

With regard to the reliability of statistical materials, the number of those convicted by "extraordinary" bodies in 1937-1938. is generally confirmed by the research conducted by Memorial. However, there are cases when the regional departments of the NKVD exceeded the "limits" allocated to them by Moscow for convictions and executions, sometimes having time to get a sanction, and sometimes not having time. In the latter case, they risked getting into trouble and therefore might not show the results of excessive diligence in their reports. According to a rough estimate, such “unrevealed” cases could be 10-12% of the total number of convicts. However, it should be noted that the statistics do not reflect repeated convictions, so these factors could well be approximately balanced.

The number of those repressed in addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB can be judged by the statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. ("Babukhin's reference"). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand to imprisonment. person to corrective labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted for war crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted under political articles (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Robbers of socialist and personal property - including here an unknown number of "non-bearers" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% accounted for "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well have been in the nature of repression - for unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases a year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to the authorities (several thousand cases a year), violation of the feudal passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group was made up of punishments for unauthorized leaving work - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest - to fines or ITR. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually reached the camps.

So, 1,074,000 convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by military tribunals and ordinary courts. True, if we add up the figures of the Department of Judicial Statistics of the Supreme Court of the USSR (“Khlebnikov’s certificate”) and the Office of Military Tribunals (“Maximov’s certificate”) for the same period, we get 1,104 thousand (952 thousand convicted by military tribunals and 152 thousand - ordinary courts), but this, of course, is not a very significant discrepancy. In addition, Khlebnikov's certificate contains an indication of another 23,000 convicts in 1937-1939. Taking this into account, the total sum of Khlebnikov's and Maksimov's certificates gives 1,127,000. True, the materials of the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of the USSR allow us to speak (if we summarize different tables) either about 199,000, or about 211,000 convicted by ordinary courts for counter-revolutionary crimes for 1940–1955 and, respectively, about 325 or 337 thousand for 1937-1955, but even this does not change the order of the numbers.

The available data do not allow us to determine exactly how many of them were sentenced to death. Ordinary courts in all categories of cases handed down death sentences relatively rarely (as a rule, several hundred cases a year, only for 1941 and 1942 we are talking about several thousand). Even long terms of imprisonment in large numbers (on average 40-50 thousand per year) appear only after 1947, when the death penalty was briefly abolished and penalties for theft of socialist property were toughened. There is no record of military tribunals, but presumably in political cases they were more likely to resort to harsh punishments.

These data show that to 4,060 thousand convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by the organs of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB for 1921-1953. one should add either 1,074 thousand convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals for 1940-1955. according to Babukhin’s certificate, or 1,127 thousand convicted by military tribunals and ordinary courts (the aggregate result of Khlebnikov’s and Maksimov’s certificates), or 952 thousand convicted for these crimes by military tribunals for 1940-1956. plus 325 (or 337) thousand convicted by ordinary courts for 1937-1956. (according to the statistical collection of the Supreme Court). This gives respectively 5,134 thousand, 5,187 thousand, 5,277 thousand or 5,290 thousand.

However, ordinary courts and military tribunals did not sit idly by until 1937 and 1940, respectively. So, there were mass arrests, for example, during the period of collectivization. Given in " Stories Stalin's Gulag "(Vol. 1, p. 608-645) and in" Stories of the Gulag» O.V. Khlevniuk (pp. 288-291 and 307-319) statistical data collected in the mid-50s. do not concern (with the exception of data on those repressed by the organs of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB) this period. Meanwhile, O.V. Khlevnyuk refers to a document stored in the GARF, which indicates (with a reservation about incomplete data) the number of those convicted by ordinary courts of the RSFSR in 1930-1932. - 3,400 thousand people. For the USSR as a whole, according to Khlevniuk (p. 303), the corresponding figure could be at least 5 million. This gives approximately 1.7 million per year, which is in no way inferior to the average annual result of the courts of general jurisdiction of the 40s and early 50s gg. (2 million per year - but population growth should be taken into account).

Probably, the number of those convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes for the entire period from 1921 to 1956 was hardly much less than 6 million, of which hardly many less than 1 million (but rather more) were sentenced to death.

But along with 6 million "repressed in the narrow sense of the word" there were a considerable number of "repressed in the broad sense of the word" - primarily those convicted under non-political articles. It is impossible to say how many of the 6 million "nesuns" were convicted under the decrees of 1932 and 1947, and how many of the approximately 2-3 million deserters, "invaders" of collective farm lands, who did not fulfill the norm of workdays, etc. should be considered victims of repression, i.e. punished unfairly or disproportionately to the gravity of the crime due to the terrorist nature of the regime. But 18 million convicted under serf decrees in 1940-1942. all were repressed, even if "only" 4.1 million of them were sentenced to imprisonment and ended up, if not in a colony or camp, then in prison.

3.2. Gulag population

The assessment of the number of repressed people can be approached in another way - through the analysis of the "population" of the Gulag. It is generally accepted that in the 1920s prisoners for political reasons numbered rather in the thousands or a few tens of thousands. There were about the same number of exiles. The year of the creation of the "real" Gulag was 1929. After that, the number of prisoners quickly exceeded one hundred thousand and by 1937 had grown to about a million. Published data show that from 1938 to 1947. it was, with some fluctuations, about 1.5 million, and then exceeded 2 million and in the early 1950s. amounted to about 2.5 million (including colonies). However, the turnover of the camp population (due to many reasons, including high mortality) was very high. Based on the analysis of data on the entry and exit of prisoners, E. Bacon suggested that between 1929 and 1953. about 18 million prisoners passed through the Gulag (including the colonies). To this we must add those held in prisons, of whom at any given moment there were about 200-300-400 thousand (minimum 155 thousand in January 1944, maximum 488 thousand in January 1941). A significant part of them probably ended up in the Gulag, but not all. Some were released, others could receive minor sentences (for example, most of the 4.1 million people sentenced to imprisonment under wartime decrees), so it did not make sense to send them to camps and perhaps even to colonies. Therefore, probably, the figure of 18 million should be slightly increased (but hardly more than 1-2 million).

How reliable are the Gulag statistics? Most likely, it is quite reliable, although it was carried out carelessly. The factors that could have led to gross distortions, both exaggerated and understated, roughly balanced each other, not to mention that, with the partial exception of the Great Terror period, Moscow took seriously the economic role of the forced labor system, monitored statistics and demanded a reduction in the very high death rate among prisoners. Camp commanders had to be prepared for accountability checks. Their interest, on the one hand, was to underestimate the mortality and escape rates, and on the other hand, not to overestimate the total contingent so as not to get unrealistic production plans.

What percentage of prisoners can be considered "political", both de jure and de facto? E. Applebaum writes about this: “Although indeed millions of people were convicted under criminal articles, I do not believe that any significant part of the total number were criminals in any normal sense of the word” (p. 539). Therefore, she considers it possible to speak of all 18 million as victims of repression. But the picture was probably more complex.

Table of data on the number of Gulag prisoners, cited by V.N. Zemskov, gives a wide variety of percentage of "political" of the total number of prisoners in the camps. The minimum figures (12.6 and 12.8%) are in 1936 and 1937, when the wave of victims of the Great Terror simply did not have time to reach the camps. By 1939, this figure increased to 34.5%, then decreased slightly, and from 1943 it began to grow again to reach its apogee in 1946 (59.2%) and again decrease to 26.9% in 1953 The percentage of political prisoners in the colonies also fluctuated quite significantly. Attention is drawn to the fact that the highest rates of the percentage of "political" fall on the war and especially the first post-war years, when the Gulag was somewhat depopulated due to the especially high death rate of prisoners, their sending to the front, and some temporary "liberalization" of the regime. In the "full-blooded" Gulag of the early 50s. the proportion of "political" was from a quarter to a third.

If we turn to absolute figures, then usually there were about 400-450 thousand political prisoners in the camps, plus several tens of thousands in the colonies. This was the case in the late 30's and early 40's. and again in the late 40s. In the early 1950s, the number of political figures was rather 450-500 thousand in the camps, plus 50-100 thousand in the colonies. In the mid 30s. in the Gulag, which had not yet gained strength, there were about 100 thousand political prisoners a year, in the mid-40s. - about 300 thousand. According to V.N. Zemskov, as of January 1, 1951, there were 2,528,000 prisoners in the Gulag (including 1,524,000 in camps and 994,000 in colonies). Of these, 580 thousand were “political” and 1,948 thousand “criminal”. If we extrapolate this proportion, then out of the 18 million prisoners of the Gulag, hardly more than 5 million were political.

But even this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminal cases were still de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal articles, 778 thousand were convicted of embezzlement of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - by Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - by Decree of June 7, 1947). August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized leaving the place of work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s - early 40s. there were usually about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 1950s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (they almost disappeared by the 1950s). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed under political articles. One and a half to two percent of the prisoners were serving a camp term for violating the passport regime. Convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the population of the Gulag was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with a special role persecution of "nesuns" in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts over the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and given that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately three times compared with 1934 and one and a half times compared with 1936, then, perhaps, there is reason to assume that the victims of repression among the plunderers of socialist property were at least two-thirds.

If we sum up the number of de jure political prisoners, their family members, socially harmful and socially dangerous elements, violators of the passport regime and two-thirds of the embezzlers of socialist property, it turns out that at least a third, and sometimes more than half of the population of the Gulag were actually political prisoners. E. Applebaum is right that there were not so many “real criminals”, namely those convicted of serious criminal offenses such as robbery and murder (2-3% in different years), but still, in general, hardly less than half of the prisoners cannot be considered political.

So, the rough proportion of political and non-political prisoners in the Gulag is about fifty to fifty, and of the political ones, about half or a little more (that is, about a quarter or a little more of the total number of prisoners) were political de jure, and half or a little less - political de facto.

3.3. How do the statistics of sentences and the statistics of the population of the Gulag agree?

A rough calculation gives approximately the same result. Of the approximately 18 million prisoners, about half (about 9 million) were de jure and de facto political, and about a quarter or slightly more were de jure political. It would seem that this coincides quite accurately with the data on the number of those sentenced to imprisonment under political articles (about 5 million). However, the situation is more complicated.

Despite the fact that the average number of de facto political in the camps at a certain moment was approximately equal to the number of de jure political ones, in general, over the entire period of repression, de facto political repressions should have been significantly more than de jure political ones, because usually the terms for criminal cases were significantly shorter. Thus, about a quarter of those convicted under political articles were sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 10 years or more, and another half - from 5 to 10 years, while in criminal cases most of the terms were less than 5 years. It is clear that various forms of prisoner turnover (first of all, mortality, including executions) could somewhat smooth out this difference. Nevertheless, de facto political ones should have been more than 5 million.

How does this compare with a rough estimate of the number of those sentenced to imprisonment under criminal articles for actually political reasons? The 4.1 million wartime convicts probably did not make it to the camps for the most part, but some of them could well have made it to the colonies. On the other hand, out of 8-9 million convicted of military and economic crimes, as well as for various forms of disobedience to the authorities, the majority made it to the Gulag (mortality during transit was, presumably, quite high, but there is no exact estimate of it). If it is true that about two-thirds of these 8-9 million were in fact political prisoners, then together with those convicted under wartime decrees who reached the Gulag, this probably gives at least 6-8 million.

If this figure was closer to 8 million, which is in better agreement with our understanding of the relative lengths of political and criminal sentences, then it should be assumed that either the estimate total population The Gulag for the period of repressions of 18 million is somewhat underestimated, or the estimate of the total number of de jure political prisoners of 5 million is somewhat overestimated (perhaps both of these assumptions are correct to some extent). However, the figure of 5 million political prisoners, it would seem, exactly matches the result of our calculations of the total number of those sentenced to imprisonment under political articles. If, in reality, there were less than 5 million de jure political prisoners, then this most likely means that many more death sentences were handed down for war crimes than we assumed, and also that death in transit was a particularly frequent fate. namely de jure political prisoners.

Probably, such doubts can be resolved only on the basis of further archival research and at least a selective study of “primary” documents, and not just statistical sources. Be that as it may, the order of magnitude is obvious - we are talking about 10-12 million convicted under political articles and under criminal articles, but for political reasons. To this must be added about a million (and possibly more) executed. This gives 11-13 million victims of repression.

3.4. In total, the repressed were ...

To 11-13 million shot and imprisoned in prisons and camps should be added:

About 6-7 million special settlers, including more than 2 million "kulaks", as well as "suspicious" ethnic groups and entire peoples (Germans, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, etc.), as well as hundreds of thousands of "socially alien" deported from those captured in 1939-1940. territories, etc. ;

About 6-7 million peasants who died as a result of an artificially organized famine in the early 1930s;

About 2-3 million peasants who left their villages in anticipation of dispossession, often declassed or, at best, actively involved in the "building of communism"; the number of dead among them is unknown (O.V. Khlevniuk. p.304);

The 14 million who received sentences to labor and fines under wartime decrees, as well as most of the 4 million who received short sentences under these decrees, allegedly served them in prisons and therefore were not taken into account in the statistics of the population of the Gulag; in general, this category probably adds at least 17 million victims of repression;

Several hundred thousand arrested on political charges, but for various reasons acquitted and not arrested subsequently;

Up to half a million servicemen who were captured and, after being released, passed through the NKVD filtration camps (but not convicted);

Several hundred thousand administrative exiles, some of whom were subsequently arrested, but by no means all (O.V. Khlevniuk, p.306).

If the last three categories taken together are estimated at approximately 1 million people, then the total number of victims of terror, at least approximately taken into account, will be for the period 1921-1955. 43-48 million people. However, this is not all.

The Red Terror did not begin in 1921, and it did not end in 1955. True, after 1955 it was relatively sluggish (by Soviet standards), but still the number of victims of political repression (suppression of riots, the fight against dissidents and etc.) after the 20th Congress is calculated as a five-digit figure. The most significant wave of post-Stalinist repression took place in 1956-69. The period of revolution and civil war was less "vegetarian". any exact numbers does not exist here, but it is assumed that we can hardly talk about less than one million victims - counting the dead and repressed during the suppression of numerous popular uprisings against the Soviet regime, but not counting, of course, forced emigrants. Forced emigration, however, took place after the Second World War, and in each case it was calculated in the seven-figure figure.

But that's not all. The number of people who lost their jobs and became outcasts, but happily escaped a worse fate, as well as people whose world collapsed on the day (or more often on the night) of the arrest of a loved one, does not lend itself to any accurate calculation. But "not countable" does not mean that there were none. In addition, some considerations can be made about the last category. If the number of those repressed under political articles is estimated at 6 million people and if we consider that only in a minority of families more than one person was shot or imprisoned (for example, the proportion of “members of the family of traitors to the motherland” in the population of the Gulag, as we have already noted, did not exceed 1%, while we estimated the proportion of the “traitors” themselves at approximately 25%), then we should be talking about several million more victims.

In connection with the assessment of the number of victims of repressions, one should dwell on the question of those who died during the Second World War. The fact is that these categories partly intersect: we are talking primarily about people who died in the course of hostilities as a result of the terrorist policy of the Soviet government. Those who were convicted by the military justice authorities are already included in our statistics, but there were also those whom commanders of all ranks ordered to be shot without trial or even personally shot, based on their understanding of military discipline. Examples are probably known to everyone, and there are no quantitative estimates here. Here we do not touch on the problem of the justification of purely military losses - senseless frontal attacks, which many famous commanders of the Stalinist era were eager for, were also, of course, a manifestation of the state’s complete disregard for the lives of citizens, but naturally, their consequences should be taken into account in the category of military losses.

The total number of victims of terror during the years of Soviet power can thus be approximately estimated at 50-55 million people. The vast majority of them, of course, account for the period up to 1953. Therefore, if the former chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov, with whom V.N. Zemskov, not too much (only 30%, towards underestimation, of course) distorted the data on the number of people arrested during the Great Terror, then in the general assessment of the scale of repressions A.I. Solzhenitsyn was, alas, closer to the truth.

By the way, I wonder why V.A. Kryuchkov was talking about a million, and not about a million and a half repressed in 1937-1938? Maybe he did not so much fight for the improvement of terror indicators in the light of perestroika, but simply shared the aforementioned "expert assessment" of the anonymous reader of "Pavlov's reference", who was convinced that 30% of the "political" ones are in fact criminals?

We said above that the number of those executed was hardly less than a million people. However, if we talk about those who died as a result of terror, then we get a different figure: death in the camps (at least half a million in the 1930s alone - see O.V. Khlevniuk, p. 327) and in transit (which is incalculable), death under torture, suicides of those awaiting arrest, death of special settlers from starvation and disease both in places of settlements (where about 600 thousand kulaks died in the 1930s - see O.V. Khlevniuk. С.327), and on the way to them, executions "alarmists" and "deserters" without trial or investigation, and finally, the death of millions of peasants as a result of a provoked famine - all this gives a figure hardly less than 10 million people. "Formal" repressions were only the surface part of the iceberg of the terrorist policy of the Soviet government.

Some readers - and, of course, historians - are wondering what percentage of the population were victims of repression. O.V. Khlevnyuk in the above book (p. 304) in relation to the 30s. says that among the adult population of the country, one in six suffered. However, he proceeds from an estimate of the total population according to the 1937 census, not taking into account the fact that the total number of people living in the country for ten years (and even more so throughout the almost thirty-five years of mass repression from 1917 to 1953 .) was greater than the number of people living in it at any given moment.

How can you estimate the total population of the country in 1917-1953? It is well known that Stalin's population censuses are not entirely reliable. Nevertheless, for our purpose - a rough estimate of the scale of repression - they serve as a sufficient guideline. The 1937 census gives a figure of 160 million. Probably, this figure can be taken as the "average" population of the country in 1917-1953. 20s - first half of the 30s. characterized by "natural" demographic growth, significantly exceeding the losses as a result of wars, famines and repressions. After 1937, growth also took place, including due to the accession in 1939-1940. territories with a population of 23 million people, but repression, mass emigration and military losses in more balanced it out.

In order to move from the “average” number of people living in the country at a time to the total number of people living in it for a certain period, it is necessary to add to the first number the average annual birth rate multiplied by the number of years that make up this period. The birth rate, which is understandable, varied quite significantly. Under the conditions of the traditional demographic regime (characterized by the predominance of large families), it usually amounts to 4% per year of the total population. The majority of the population of the USSR ( middle Asia, the Caucasus, and indeed the Russian village itself) still lived to a large extent under the conditions of such a regime. However, in some periods (the years of wars, collectivization, famine), even for these regions, the birth rate should have been somewhat lower. During the war years, it was about 2% of the national average. If we estimate it at 3-3.5% on average over the period and multiply it by the number of years (35), it turns out that the average "one-time" indicator (160 million) should be increased by a little more than two times. This gives about 350 million. In other words, during the period of mass repressions from 1917 to 1953. every seventh inhabitant of the country, including minors (50 out of 350 million), suffered from terror. If adults accounted for less than two-thirds of the total population (100 out of 160 million, according to the 1937 census), and among the 50 million victims of repression we counted there were “only” a few million, then it turns out that according to at least one in five adults has been a victim of the terrorist regime.

4. What does it all mean today?

It cannot be said that fellow citizens are poorly informed about the mass repressions in the USSR. The answers to the question of our questionnaire about how it is possible to estimate the number of repressed were distributed as follows:

• less than 1 million people - 5.9%
• from 1 to 10 million people - 21.5%
• from 10 to 30 million people - 29.4%
• from 30 to 50 million people - 12.4%
• over 50 million people - 5.9%
• find it difficult to answer - 24.8%

As you can see, the majority of respondents have no doubt that the repressions were large-scale. True, every fourth respondent is inclined to look for objective reasons for repression. This, of course, does not mean that such respondents are ready to remove any responsibility from the executioners. But they are hardly ready to unequivocally condemn these latter.

In modern Russian historical consciousness, the desire for an “objective” approach to the past is very noticeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the word "objective" is not accidentally put in quotation marks. The point is not that complete objectivity is hardly achievable in principle, but that the call for it can mean very different things - from the honest desire of a conscientious researcher - and any interested person - to understand that complex and contradictory process that we call history, to the irritated reaction of the layman planted on the oil needle to any attempts to embarrass his peace of mind and make him think that he inherited not only valuable minerals that ensure his - alas, fragile - well-being, but also unresolved political, cultural and psychological problems , generated by seventy years of experience of "endless terror", his own soul, which he fears to look into - perhaps not without reason. And, finally, the call for objectivity may hide the sober calculation of the ruling elites, who are aware of their genetic connection with the Soviet elites and are not at all inclined to “let the lower classes engage in criticism in a row.”

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the phrase from our article, which aroused the indignation of readers, concerns not just an assessment of repressions, but an assessment of repressions in comparison with the war. The myth of the "Great Patriotic War" in recent years, as once in the era of Brezhnev, has again become the main unifying myth of the nation. However, in its genesis and functions, this myth is largely a "protective myth", trying to replace the tragic memory of repressions with an equally tragic, but still partly heroic memory of the "nationwide feat". We will not go into a discussion of the memory of the war here. Let us only emphasize that the war was not least a link in the chain of crimes committed by the Soviet government against its own people, which aspect of the problem is almost completely obscured today by the “unifying” role of the myth of the war.

Many historians believe that our society needs "cliotherapy", which will save it from an inferiority complex and convince it that "Russia is a normal country." This experience of "normalizing history" is by no means a unique Russian attempt to create a "positive self-image" for the heirs of the terrorist regime. Thus, in Germany, attempts were made to prove that fascism must be considered "in its era" and in comparison with other totalitarian regimes in order to show the relativity of the "national guilt" of the Germans - as if the fact that there was more than one killer justified them. In Germany, however, this position is held by a significant minority. public opinion, while in Russia it has become predominant in recent years. Only a few will decide to name Hitler among the sympathetic figures of the past in Germany, while in Russia, according to our survey, every tenth respondent names Stalin among his sympathetic historical characters, and 34.7% believe that he played a positive or rather positive role in the history of the country (and another 23.7% find that "today it is difficult to give an unambiguous assessment"). Other recent polls speak of close - and even more positive - assessments by compatriots of the role of Stalin.

Russian historical memory today is turning its back on repressions, but this, alas, does not mean at all that "the past has passed." The structures of Russian everyday life to a large extent reproduce the forms social relations, behavior and consciousness that came from the imperial and Soviet past. This, it seems, is not to the liking of the majority of respondents: more and more imbued with pride in their past, they perceive the present quite critically. So, to the question of our questionnaire, is it inferior to modern Russia The West in terms of culture level or surpasses it, the second answer option was chosen by only 9.4%, while the same indicator for all previous historical eras (including Muscovite Russia, the Soviet period) ranges from 20 to 40%. Fellow citizens probably do not bother to think that the "golden age of Stalinism", as well as the subsequent, albeit somewhat more faded period of Soviet history, may have something to do with what does not suit them in our society today. To turn to the Soviet past in order to overcome it is possible only on the condition that we are ready to see the traces of this past in ourselves and recognize ourselves as the heirs not only of glorious deeds, but also of the crimes of our ancestors.

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 robbing Money 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 career opportunity. 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, "creatively developing 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. So, Stalin’s personality cult began to form with trials and instilling horror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition committed non-existent crimes "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured into signing accusations fabricated by the investigation. A brutal dictatorship imitated class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all the norms of universal morality ...

Three global lawsuits were rigged: the “Union Bureau Affair” (putting managers at risk); "The Case of the Industrial Party" (the sabotage 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 Soviet power and provide scope for further falsification 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 Party's adamant determination 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 object of repression was the main social base villages are an efficient agricultural producer. 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 direction 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%? The main reason was crop failure.

His subjective plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be wise to reduce 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 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 horrifying: 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 State Duma of Russia, published in April 2008, disclosed 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 cult of personality 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, but 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 peoples, 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.