Notes on the new historical television series
It’s a paradox: the more dirt our blue screen dumps on the Soviet era, the less trust in this very screen and the more respect and interest in those legendary, tragic years. It seems that TV has finally understood something and has somewhat changed its tactics in depicting the Stalinist period of the country’s history.
Channel One surprised with unprecedented pluralism, presenting three points of view on the same characters. TV series “Vlasik. Shadow of Stalin", a documentary afterword to this series about the first head of the security service for state leaders (the prototype of the current FSO) - "Diary of a Leader's Security Guard" and episodes from the series "Forgotten Leaders", dedicated to Stalin's people's commissars.
Since the liberal public furiously attacked “The Shadow of Stalin” (primarily, apparently, because the “tyrant and his satraps” are depicted not as ghouls, from whose fangs the blood of hundreds of millions of innocent victims drips, but as mere mortals), we will not particularly scold him . Let us only note that the attempt to peer into a historical figure, to understand and show him, “entering the biography,” so to speak, from the back porch, through the nursery, dining room, bedroom, is very rich in possibilities, but also fraught with many dangers. The first of them is superficiality. The second is vulgarity.
The series is less about Vlasik and more about Stalin and his entourage. Korzhakov, for example, is interesting to us not in himself, but as a person who communicated around the clock with the leader of the country, who made decisions that were extremely important for everyone.
Stalin here is at first a burning brunette, moving for some reason in accordance with the third ballet position - not a large personality, but a petty, sentimental, unpredictable slow-witted figure, and his people's commissars are generally pitiful extras. And these people built a superpower?
The main problem with the series, which was partly confirmed by its documentary support and, of course, the “Forgotten Leaders” series, is the choice of the main villain and insidious intriguer. According to the tradition that has developed since Khrushchev times, Beria was appointed to blame for all the troubles (including the downfall of Vlasik, and therefore the death of Stalin). In the series, since the 30s, he has been plotting against the “shadow of the leader”, in the 40s he beats testimony against him from his subordinates, and in the early 50s he finally gets to him, orders him to be captured and tortured.
Why is Beria to blame for everything again? Is he Iago, Richard III, Macbeth? Why did the series invent scenes in which he shares with Vlasik a mistress from a secret NKVD brothel, as if borrowed from the Torgsin series with the Kabuki nightclub, which was allegedly run by People's Commissar Yagoda?
In reality, Beria, of course, could not order Vlasik to be tortured; at that time he devoted all his strength to the nuclear project and the rocket and space industry, where, largely thanks to his energy, enormous successes were achieved. Since December 1945, Lavrenty Beria had nothing to do with the NKVD; moreover, he was at enmity with all the leaders who replaced him: Kruglov, Abakumov and Ignatiev. Someone else was intriguing against Vlasik.
The head of the commission that removed Vlasik for financial irregularities was Malenkov; he was imprisoned in the “doctors’ case” by the head of the MGB, Ignatiev. He also headed Stalin’s security after Vlasik’s resignation, and if the leader was poisoned, which the series rightly views as a completely acceptable version, Ignatiev is primarily responsible for this. The same as for the fact that Stalin remained without medical care for more than a day after the attack.
After the reprisal of the “villain Beria” (where, who, when and how this happened? is still unknown for certain), Vlasik was kept in solitary confinement for two years, twice simulated execution, then sentenced to exile with deprivation of all awards and titles, after the twentieth Congress, although Vlasik wisely blamed Beria for all his troubles, Khrushchev did not rehabilitate him.
Of course, Beria had a motive, like many others - Stalin at the end of his life not only called: “Look for the big Mingrel,” but also publicly threatened Molotov, Mikoyan and others.
If you follow the logic of cui prodest, then the elimination of Vlasik, the sudden death of Stalin, the murder of Beria, the exposure of the cult of personality, the removal of Malenkov, Molotov and all those who joined them were beneficial only to Khrushchev, who in the series, by the way, is not shown at all as a simpleton, as in previous films O Stalin era, but a capable bastard for many things.
Let's hope that someday we will be shown a historical television study in every sense, in which Stalin's words “Look for the big Mingrel” and the mystery will be unraveled palace coup, which had such a strong impact on the fate of the USSR. Little Mingrelian Beria was not hiding anywhere; he was easily found and killed. But the big one...
Roy Medvedev
STALIN'S ENVIRONMENT
PREFACE
My work on a book about Stalin’s entourage began in the late 1970s, and the first essays about individual people from Stalin’s entourage were published in various newspapers and magazines in Western countries in 1980–1983. The first English edition of the book (“All Stalin’s Men”) was published in 1984, after which translations from both the English and Russian editions were published in many countries, including Japan, China, Poland and Hungary. Significantly expanded Soviet edition This book, entitled “They Surrounded Stalin,” was published in 1989. These were the years of perestroika and glasnost, and the author tried in the next two years to write a separate short book about each of the six main characters of the book. I was only able to complete part of this task. The book “Lazar Kaganovich” was published in the Kiev magazine “Vitchizna” (No. 5 and No. 6 for 1991) and in the Voronezh magazine “Rise” (No. 8 and No. 9 for 1991). The publishing house "Respublika" published in 1992 the book "The Gray Cardinal" about M. Suslov. In 1992, I also wrote an essay “All-Union Headman” - about Mikhail Kalinin. In this edition I have combined all these works under one cover. For the period from 1992 to 2005 in Russian Federation Many works were published about Stalin's entourage. Several volumes of Stalin’s correspondence with Molotov, Kaganovich and Kalinin have been published in Russia and the USA. A. I. Mikoyan’s memoirs, “So It Was,” were published, as well as recordings of conversations with Molotov and Kaganovich. The son of G. Malenkov wrote a book about his father. Molotov's grandson V. Nikonov published in two volumes detailed biography his grandfather. Most of this work, however, is of academic interest. The people around Stalin were not outstanding personalities or great politicians, and for the general public, for whom the ZhZL series is intended, there is no need to know all the details of the lives and activities of these people. Therefore, I did not expand the previously written texts, but limited myself to correcting some inaccuracies. In Russia, over the past 15 years, a new generation of readers has appeared, for whom, I hope, my book will be interesting.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues Vasilevsky Alexey Alexandrovich, Ermakov Dmitry Arturovich and Khmelinsky Peter Vadimovich for creative assistance in preparing the book materials.
October 2005
ABOUT ONE MOSCOW LONG-LIVER
(V. M. Molotov)
“I STILL HAVE A WATCH LEFT”
One of my friends, rushing to work, forgot her watch at home. Walking along Granovsky Street, she saw a small old man standing on the sidewalk. “Please tell me what time it is?” - the woman asked. “Thank God, I still have a watch,” said the old man and told the time. When he raised his face, a woman, the daughter of one of the old Bolsheviks executed in 1937, was surprised to recognize in the old man Molotov, the man who headed the Soviet government in the 30s and whose name was mentioned in the late 40s when listing members of the Politburo of the Central Committee The CPSU(b) invariably stood in second place after Stalin.
However, many of the young people I spoke with in Lately, they don’t even know Molotov’s name. This doesn’t seem strange to me, although it once surprised such a thoughtful American journalist as Hedrick Smith.
“People of the West forget,” he writes in his book “Russians,” “that from their distance they sometimes know more about some historical events in the Soviet Union than Russian youth. For me, the most clear example of this phenomenon is one episode that happened with Arkady Raikin, the famous Soviet pop actor. One winter he suffered a heart attack and was admitted to the hospital, where the actor was visited by his 18-year-old grandson. Suddenly Raikin jumped up on the bed, amazed that Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s closest surviving associate, former Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs, walked past the chamber.
It is he! - Raikin gasped.
Who? - asked the grandson; the face of the man walking along the corridor was unfamiliar to him...
Molotov,” muttered Raikin.
Who is this, Molotov? - asked the young man with stunning ignorance. This historical deafness, as one middle-aged scholar put it, has led to the development of a generation of young people who know neither villains nor heroes and worship only the stars of Western rock music.”
Of course, people of the older generation remember Molotov well. However, they, in essence, knew nothing about the fate of the ex-prime minister in the last 20 years and even whether he was alive. Therefore, with great surprise, they read at the end of 1986 a short notice from the Council of Ministers of the USSR about the death at the age of 97 of V. M. Molotov, who was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941. This sounded to many both as a notice of death and as the emergence of the name Molotov from political oblivion.
Molotov joined the Bolshevik Party in 1906, and he was probably, in the last year of his life, the oldest member of the party. Until the end of the 70s, the oldest member of the party in our country was Faro Riesel Knunyants, who joined the Social Democratic movement in 1903. However, she died at the end of 1980 at the age of 97. In 1983, at the age of 99, Timofey Ivanovich Ivanov, a member of the CPSU since 1904, died. In the summer of 1985, Anna Nikolaevna Bychkova, who joined the party in June 1906, also died at the age of 99. Now Molotov has died too...
But if Molotov was briefly the oldest member of the party, then he, undoubtedly, was for a long time the only surviving member of the Central Committee of the party of the early 20s. Only a few of them died a natural death; most were shot or died in prisons and camps. And Molotov made a lot of efforts to destroy all these people.
CAREER UNDER LENIN
Real name Molotov Scriabin. When he first began publishing in Bolshevik newspapers, his short notes and articles appeared under various pseudonyms. Only in 1919, on a brochure about the participation of workers in economic construction, the author put the pseudonym “Molotov”, which soon became his permanent surname.
For some reason, many believed that Molotov came from a noble family. This is wrong. He was born on March 9, 1890 in the settlement of Kukarka, Vyatka province, and was the third son of the tradesman Mikhail Scriabin from the city of Nolinsk. Molotov's father was a wealthy man and gave his sons a good education. Vyacheslav graduated from a real school in Kazan and even received musical education. A revolution was taking place in Russia, and the majority of Kazan youth were very radical. Molotov joined one of the self-education circles, where they studied Marxist literature. Here he became friends with Viktor Tikhomirov, the son of a wealthy merchant and heir to a large fortune, who nevertheless joined the Bolshevik group in Kazan back in 1905. Under the influence of Tikhomirnoff, Molotov also joined this group in 1906. In 1909, Molotov was arrested and exiled to Vologda. At the end of his exile, he came to St. Petersburg and entered the Polytechnical Institute. In 1912, the first legal Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, began publishing in the capital. One of its organizers was Tikhomirovnov, who donated a large sum of money for the needs of the newspaper. Tikhomirov also attracted Molotov to work in the newspaper, who published several articles here. Later, already in the 30s, Molotov in every possible way patronized the daughter of his friend, the ballerina I. Tikhomirnova, who danced at the Bolshoi Theater.
The apparatus created in the struggle for power is not yet the leader’s instrument; he considers himself a participant in the victory... The apparatus of a true leader is an apparatus created by himself after coming to power. This apparatus should not be eternal, permanent, otherwise it will cement mutual connections, acquire solidity and strength... Creating such an apparatus is a more difficult task than eliminating rivals...
(Anatoly Rybakov)
Even a brief acquaintance with Stalin’s most loyal, closest and most influential employees helps to better understand the leader’s character. All five - Molotov, Beria, Vyshinsky, Kaganovich and Zhdanov - are Stalin's co-authors in 1937 and at the same time the most famous politicians of this era. In their origin and character, they, of course, differed from each other; it cannot be said that their cooperation was without conflict. Nevertheless, loyalty to the leader brought them together into a single group, but, as Roy Medvedev wrote, Stalin did not value friendship. He appreciated the other abilities that the people in his immediate circle possessed. These people were not only persistent and energetic themselves, they could force their subordinates to work tirelessly, primarily through violence and coercion. They often argued among themselves. Stalin himself helped fuel these disputes, and here he not only followed the principle of “divide and conquer.” He tolerated a certain pluralism in his environment and gained some benefit from the discussions among the members of the Politburo and from their mutual hostility, since this allowed him to formulate his own proposals and thoughts more accurately.
First we will name Stalin's closest ally, Molotov. His real name is Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Scriabin. He was born in 1890 into an intelligent family. Molotov began his friendship with Stalin in 1917.
Among the “five,” Molotov was the only one who could call himself a member of the Leninist Guard. He was the only one among the old Bolsheviks - with the exception of old Kalinin, who had only formal power - who remained with Stalin to the end. A convinced professional revolutionary, Molotov since 1917 was considered Stalin's faithful support in all discussions. Already from the late 20s, his strong desire for administrative and bureaucratic decisions became apparent. His antipathy to democratic methods, complete and unconditional uncritical subordination to Stalin, of course, had some basis. After the conflict between Stalin and the “right” escalated in the late 20s and the leaders of the “right” were removed from the Politburo, Molotov was appointed to the post of chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars instead of the removed Rykov. The events of the 1930s indicate that as head of government, Molotov had truly strong power. When Stalin made new efforts to create his personal dictatorship in the early 1930s and the well-known alternative “terror or democratization” arose, Molotov followed Stalin without objection. Together with a group of new leaders who had risen at that time, he was ready to follow him in a campaign that resulted in the so-called “second revolution.”
Molotov, as a tireless administrator, did a lot of work during the years of collectivization, industrialization, and the first five-year plans. Although he often had conflicts with the people's commissars, who exercised actual leadership over sectors of the national economy, he always felt Stalin's support.
In 1930 - 1932, as an extraordinary commissioner, he often traveled to various areas Soviet Union to speed up collectivization. In 1932, Molotov played a particularly sinister role in Ukraine, where he oversaw grain procurements in the southern regions. The result of these “grain procurements” was a devastating famine in southern Ukraine. Being one of Stalin's strong supporters in the top leadership, Molotov himself played an active role in the functioning of the mechanism of mass terror. He was by no means an indifferent observer of the repressions. Very often, the lists of persons to be destroyed, which were prepared by the NKVD apparatus, were endorsed by Molotov himself, approving the proposed decisions. It often happened that he put three letters on these lists - “CMN” (capital punishment). It is also relevant to the development of the concept of “large” political processes. A dispassionate and coldly rational administrator, he followed his teacher in all his political maneuvers without any doubt or objection.
Molotov played important role in realizing the goals of the Soviet foreign policy. At the same time, he often had disagreements with M. M. Litvinov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. They treated each other without much respect, which on Molotov’s part was apparently explained by the fact that Litvinov was the only people’s commissar who, during the years of terror, managed to maintain his human dignity and independence in judgment. On August 23, 1939, Molotov, on behalf of his country, signed the Soviet-German non-aggression pact.
The way in which Soviet leadership circles assessed the short-term and long-term prospects for the development of the situation in Europe after the conclusion of the Soviet-German treaty also big role played by Molotov. In a speech on August 31, he stated that the Soviet-German treaty served the interests of world peace.
For many months before the start of the Soviet- German war Molotov ignored the Germans' preparations for aggression. When, at dawn on June 22, the German Ambassador Schulenburg handed him a note declaring war, he asked him in amazement: “What have we done to deserve this?” In the second half of this tragic day, he had to go on the radio and announce the German attack on the Soviet Union instead of Stalin, who was extremely shocked and in a state of severe crisis. Molotov called on the population of the Soviet Union to Patriotic War.
Back on May 6, 1941, Stalin replaced Molotov as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Molotov became his first deputy. He was also Stalin's deputy in the State Defense Committee, created on June 30, 1941. But diplomacy remained his main area of activity. In 1942, he flew to London and Washington on matters of the military alliance that was developing with England and the United States. He also attended conferences preparing the post-war peace settlement. In the fall of 1943, he played an important role in negotiations with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, which resulted in significant changes in the position of the church, including the convening of a local council that elected the patriarch.
Molotov was responsible for the new repressions that were unleashed in post-war period, since he was a member of the Politburo. However, the so-called anti-Zionist campaign also affected him personally. Molotov's wife Polina Zhemchuzhina, a Jewish nationality, was once a close friend of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's wife. In 1939, she was elected as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. During the war she was one of the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In 1948, Zhemchuzhina maintained good relations with the Israeli Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Golda Meir. When the campaign against cosmopolitanism was launched, Molotov’s wife was accused of betraying the Motherland and was accused of having connections with international Zionist circles. The issue was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo. After hearing the “evidence” that Beria presented, everyone voted for the arrest of this woman. Molotov abstained from voting, but did not say a word in defense of his wife. Polina Zhemchuzhina was arrested.
It was during these years, when he was still unanimously considered the second man in leadership, that he gradually began to lose his authority and favor with the leader. The arrest of his wife was only one of the signs that confirmed Stalin's mistrust. In 1949, he was relieved of his duties as Minister of Foreign Affairs and replaced by Vyshinsky. He received invitations to Stalin’s dacha less and less often. Stalin once told Khrushchev that Molotov was an agent of the American imperialists. However, despite this, in the fall of 1952 it was he who opened the 19th Congress of the CPSU and was elected to the expanded Presidium of the Central Committee consisting of 36 people. But Stalin did not propose his candidacy for the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
After the congress there were many signs indicating that Stalin was preparing for a new campaign of purges in the highest spheres. His death created a new situation. Apparently, Molotov’s shaky positions and a compromise within the leadership led to the fact that Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and Molotov became only one of his deputies. In official communications, his last name followed that of Beria. At the same time, he was again introduced into the new, narrower composition of the reorganized Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and was again appointed to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. In March 1953, P. Zhemchuzhina was released from prison.
After the XXII Congress of the CPSU, Molotov was expelled from the party in his primary organization. The former head of the Soviet government lived in Moscow as a pensioner and worked on his memoirs in the Lenin State Library. In 1984, at the age of 94, at a time when K.U. Chernenko was the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, he was reinstated in the party.
Among Stalin's closest associates, only Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich is alive. In 1988 he turned 95 years old. Kaganovich was an example of bureaucratic zeal in work and zealous service. He was ready to sacrifice anything and anyone if the interests of the service and his Master required it. He had a reputation as a strong-willed, stubborn man with great self-control. In the 1930s he was one of the leading ruthless proponents of the policy of accelerated tempo. His habits did not include thinking or careful weighing. Using the terminology of those years, he was a “man of action”, an excellent organizer of the Stalinist type.
Kaganovich belonged to the generation of old Bolsheviks. He was born on November 22, 1893 in the Kyiv province into a poor Jewish family, and began working at the age of 14. In 1911 he joined the Russian Social Democratic workers' party. At the beginning of 1918, he first received a party assignment in the capital, becoming commissar of the organizational and propaganda department of the All-Russian Collegium for the organization of the Red Army. At the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets, he was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In the fall of 1919, he was sent to Voronezh, where he became the chairman of the provincial revolutionary committee, then the provincial executive committee. During that period, he established close ties with political and military leaders Southern Front- Stalin, Voroshilov, Budyonny, and also with Ordzhonikidze. In September 1920, Kaganovich was sent to Turkestan. He became a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), at the same time the People's Commissar of the RCI of the Turkestan Soviet Republic and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Front. At the same time, he was the chairman of the Tashkent City Council. A few years after the revolution, Kaganovich, a previously unnoticed party worker, was already carrying out significant party assignments. During Kaganovich’s activities in Voronezh and Tsaritsyn, the future leader of the party drew attention to his abilities.
In June 1922, two months after Stalin was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee, Kaganovich began working in the Central Committee apparatus, immediately receiving significant assignments. First, he was appointed head of the organizational and instructional, and later the organizational and distribution department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The significance of these posts at that time is difficult to overestimate. From that moment on, his career took off. In 1923 he was a candidate member of the Central Committee, and a year later he became a member of the party Central Committee. Then, in 1924, Kaganovich was elected secretary of the Central Committee. In 1925, he was sent to Ukraine and for three years served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. During his work in Ukraine, the policy of Russification was again revived. In 1927, a number of Ukrainian political figures were removed from leadership on charges of nationalism. However, Kaganovich was soon recalled from Ukraine. Stalin decided that it was more important for him to temporarily gain the support of Ukrainian party leaders in the fight against Bukharin. Since 1928, Kaganovich again worked in Moscow, being the Secretary of the Party Central Committee. In 1930, he became a member of the Politburo and was placed at the head of the Moscow Party Committee. After the XVII Party Congress, he became chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1934, he headed the transport commission of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, subsequently the transport department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He began organizing transport in 1931. Then the construction of the Moscow metro began. Official public opinion and the press unequivocally attributed to him the main achievements in the creation of the Moscow metro. In May 1935, the USSR Central Executive Committee decided to name the Moscow Metro after Kaganovich. This was a reward for him not only as a specialist in transport and organizer of the urban economy, because it was Kaganovich who, at the 17th Party Congress, assured Stalin that the leader could continue to rule without any interference.
“A man of action,” he, being the secretary of the Central Committee, was one of the first to learn that 300 votes were cast against Stalin during the voting at the XVII Congress. According to the memoirs of V. M. Verkhov, a member of the counting commission, published in 1957, after the chairman of the commission, Zatonsky, decided that this fact needed to be discussed with Kaganovich, asking the commission members for patience, the latter left the room. Then, returning, he asked: “How many negative votes did Kirov receive?” “Three,” Zatonsky answered. “Well, let Stalin have the same number, destroy the rest.” The “gray cardinal” was present at all the most important decisions.
Since 1935, retaining the post of Secretary of the Central Committee, he was People's Commissar of Railways, at the same time since 1937 - People's Commissar of Heavy Industry, and since 1939 - People's Commissar of the Fuel Industry. In 1939 - 1940, he also headed the People's Commissariat of the Oil Industry. During the Great Patriotic War, Kaganovich was a member of the State Defense Committee. He was deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. After the war, he headed the Ministry of Construction Materials Industry and held a number of other major party and government posts.
Very characteristic of Stalin was the decision to put a political adventurer at the head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR in 1938. Apparently, it will not be easy to find documents about L.P. Beria, because, having unlimited power, he had the opportunity to destroy materials compromising him. However, in the light of recently published memoirs, a rather lively portrait of this figure appears. Beria cleverly exploited Stalin's suspicious character. Having staged a scene with an assassination attempt against the leader during Stalin's vacation in the Caucasus, he opened the way for his rise. His unlimited personal power was of such a nature that it could not be maintained without crime.
“He began to behave very cleverly, taking his post as People’s Commissar,” Sergo Mikoyan recalls the stories of his father. “His first step was a question that stunned everyone: maybe it’s time to plant less, otherwise soon there will be no one to plant at all?”
Hearing such statements, many people sighed with relief, living in constant fear that they would soon come for them. And only a few had the thought at that moment that Beria was simply slightly loosening the reins that Yezhov had pulled so tightly. It took him time to improve the same mechanism, to make it omnipotent and universal, but at the same time not only not to frighten Stalin, but, on the contrary, to convince him that it was in this form that the NKVD could serve as a reliable defense for the leader. This was the true meaning and purpose of the work started by Beria. What was needed was extraordinary diplomatic and organizational skills, a real art of weaving intrigues, so that in an amazingly short time, of course, with the hidden support of Stalin, the machine of repression could be put into full swing again.
The widow of the executed Marshal Blucher describes Beria’s methods of rule as follows: “I spent seven months in solitary confinement in Lubyanka. And I will never forget the first interrogation, which was conducted by Beria himself. I was not beaten or tortured, like many military wives, in order to extract fictitious testimony against their husbands from them. But this doesn’t make it any easier for me. The most dear person was taken from me. Then I understood why there was no need for torture: all the documents on Blucher had already been prepared. I was simply isolated as a close friend of the famous marshal. Beria himself conducted the interrogation, apparently simply out of sadistic curiosity. He acted arrogantly. He didn’t look, but as if he was examining a person the way one examines a small insect through a magnifying glass. His appearance was disgusting. He emanated coldness, indifference to everything human in his sacrifice...”
And here is the testimony of another woman: “Protruding eyes behind the glasses of pince-nez. And as if there was a half-smirk glued on... I remember the women around me looked at this face on the pages of newspapers, in portraits with fear. Then persistent rumors circulated around the capital about the disappearance of young people without a trace. beautiful women, after his car stopped near them, ingratiatingly pressing close to the sidewalk. You can believe or not believe rumors. When you are afraid to believe, you try to brush them aside. So it was with me, until... One day I was walking along Arbat with my classmate. Suddenly a car stopped nearby, two hefty guys got out and quickly walked towards us. Before we had time to really understand anything, they took my friend by the arms and forcibly shoved her into the car. The instant thought of where and why they were taking her made me feel sick. Scream, cry, complain? We knew that then it was useless and dangerous...”
"Yes Yes! “Everything was so,” confirms the sad story of Maya Ivanovna Koneva, the daughter of the famous Soviet commander, under whose chairmanship the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Beria in 1953. “I remember my father was full of hatred for this scoundrel. Including for everything that he happened to hear from the crying mothers of those girls who became victims of the libertine. I will never forget my father’s passionate words: “During the war, I worried about the fate of every young woman, sacredly remembering that after the war she would have to become someone’s beloved, wife, mother... And he, the bastard, treated them so inhumanely...”
Beria personally met Stalin only in 1931. His ascent up the ladder of the party hierarchy occurred despite the protests of almost all the leaders of Transcaucasia. Everyone knew that he was a spoiled man, an unrestrained careerist.
L.P. Beria was born on March 29, 1899 in Abkhazia, in the village of Merkheuli, not far from Sukhumi. After graduating from primary school in Sukhumi, Beria entered a technical school in Baku. He studied with Merkulov, Bagirov, Goglidze, Kobulov and Dumbadze (later emigrated), who later became major ranks in the NKVD.
In the biography of Beria, published in 1950, it is written that already in 1915 he organized an illegal Marxist circle at the school, and in March 1917 he was accepted into the Bolshevik Party. Later sources do not note these points.
Beria did not openly exercise political functions at that time. However, he had secret assignments: according to the official verdict of the Soviet court, issued in December 1953, then, in 1919, he became a traitor - he worked as an agent of the secret service of the Azerbaijani nationalist government. This document does not mention what is stated in a number of sources, namely that Beria supplied information to the Tsarist secret police. But the 1953 verdict also notes another fact: in 1920, Beria was an agent of the political police of the Menshevik government of Georgia.
In April 1921, Beria was summoned to see Ordzhonikidze, who informed him that the party was sending him to work in the internal affairs apparatus. Having accepted this assignment, Beria worked for 10 years in senior positions in the state security agencies of Transcaucasia.
In 1931, L.P. Beria approached an important stage in his political career. In the fall of that year, Stalin came to Tskhaltubo on vacation. Beria was next to the General Secretary until his departure.
As S. Mikoyan notes, “they understood each other well, although they had never seen each other before. So good that an order was sent directly from Tskhaltubo to Moscow to prepare a hearing in the Central Committee - outside of any plan - of the reports of the party and Soviet leadership of the Trans-Kray Committee and all three republics. Nobody could understand why? In connection with what?..”
A.V. Snegov, a participant in the meeting who at that time headed the organizational department of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee, recalls that everyone was struck by the absence of Sergo Ordzhonikidze. “Having seized a convenient moment,” writes A.V. Snegov in his memoirs, “I asked Mikoyan, who was sitting next to me: “Why isn’t Sergo?” He answered in my ear: “Why on earth would Sergo take part in Beria’s coronation?” He knows him well." So that's the thing! Thus, I was the first of those who arrived to know what was in store for us.”
The meeting itself was ordinary, various issues were discussed. Stalin expressed the main thing at the end of his speech, having practically finished it. While filling his pipe, which later became famous, with tobacco, he suddenly said: “What if we form a new leadership of the regional committee like this: the first secretary is Kartvelishvili, the second secretary is Beria?” It is curious that at this time, it turns out, there could still be disagreement. Until there are no more opponents capable of openly objecting and defending other points of view.
Kartvelishvili reacted immediately and emotionally in a Caucasian way: “I will not work with this charlatan!” Orakhelashvili asked: “Koba, what did you say, maybe I misheard?” “We cannot bring such a surprise to party organizations,” Ter-Gabrielyan said. Nobody supported the proposals. Then the “democratic discussion” was instantly crumpled. Stalin angrily said: “Well, then, we will resolve the issue in a working manner.”
Over the course of several months, the leadership of the region was shuffled... Mamia Orakhelashvili became the first secretary of the Regional Committee, and Beria, naturally, became the second. But not for long: soon Orakhelashvili was summoned to Moscow and appointed deputy director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. And Beria remained the first secretary. After the reorganization of the Transcaucasian Federation, he became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. Next is an even sharper and more unambiguous turn. “Two months after this, new first secretaries of district committees appeared in 32 regions of Georgia,” says Snegov. - They previously held the posts of heads of regional departments of the NKVD. I think this is very typical. No less characteristic than the fact that none of those who were summoned to Moscow died a natural death. I am the only one who survived after 18 years in the camps..."
In February 1935, Avel Enukidze, an old Bolshevik who had been secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee in Moscow since 1918 and in this capacity had broad administrative power, was appointed chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasian Federation. Behind this movement was the fact that from Yenukidze’s memoirs, some of which were published by Pravda on January 16, 1935, it was clear that Stalin did not at all play an exceptional role in the early stage of the revolutionary movement in Transcaucasia. In a letter to the editor of the magazine Proletarian Revolution at the end of 1931, Stalin called for reworking the issues of party history “in a new way.” At the beginning of 1932, many well-known Bolsheviks, authors of previously published memoirs, “corrected” the description of some events. In Beria's processing (or, according to some information, on his recommendation, but under his name), a new version of the history of the party organizations of Transcaucasia was released, in which the main place was given to Stalin as the leader of the revolutionary movement, recognized from the very beginning, while the actual merits of others leaders were downplayed or not recognized at all. The Caucasian party organization was presented as the second center of the party, the newspaper Brdzola, published in only four issues, was placed on a par with Iskra, and the creation of the famous printing house in Baku was entirely attributed to Stalin.
Beria outlined the main theses of his work at a meeting of party activists in Tbilisi on July 21 - 22, 1935, then it was published under the title “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia.”
Until 1939, this book went through five editions. Thus, Beria became a co-author of the falsified history of the party, to which new chapters were constantly added.
Along with this, Beria did not forget about eliminating real witnesses historical events and honest politicians. Most party leaders in Transcaucasia did not survive the era of the “great purges.” Beria was such a typical representative of the “new generation” that he did not hesitate to personally participate in reprisals. Reliable data indicate that Beria personally shot and killed the leader of the Communist Party of Armenia A. Khanjyan in his office. In July 1936, the case was presented as a suicide. He was the organizer of the murder of Nestor Lakoba, a member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. A few days after Ordzhonikidze’s suicide in February 1937, Mdivani and Okudzhava were arrested and shot in July.
On December 20, a message appeared that four days earlier a similar fate befell Enukidze and Orakhelashvili. In 1938, Kartvelishvili became a victim of terror. The same end awaited lesser-known figures. Along with witnesses to the first steps of the revolutionary movement, those who were believed to have participated in Marxist circles led by Stalin were also silenced. Beria was directly involved in the preparation of these repressions.
After a year and a half of “Yezhovshchina”, especially ten months following March 1937, a peculiar turn came, which brought the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in January 1938. It adopted a resolution “On the mistakes of party organizations in expelling communists from the party, on the formal bureaucratic attitude towards appeals of those expelled from the CPSU (b) and on measures to eliminate these shortcomings.” This was a new example of Stalin's political cynicism.
During the period of Yezhov's terror, the General Secretary remained in the background; he brought forward, first of all, his closest employees, thereby maintaining freedom of maneuver. And now one might think that the resolution was adopted on his initiative, that he was stopping the machine of reprisals that he had been directing until now, although from the outside it seemed that it was not he who was doing this, but the NKVD apparatus.
Newspapers published articles about the revision of individual sentences, about bringing the perpetrators to justice, and about the restoration of individual communists to the party. One of the components of these diversionary maneuvers was the further promotion of Beria, his appearance at the head of the apparatus of the internal affairs bodies.
He was summoned to Moscow at the end of June 1938, then in July he was appointed first deputy people's commissar of internal affairs. When he took Yezhov’s place in December, Stalin was able to shift the responsibility for terror to the former People’s Commissar in front of the public. In the person of Beria, the leader acquired, if this can be imagined at all, an even more accommodating performer than Yezhov. Stalin knew about some dark moments in Beria's biography. People's Commissar of Health Kaminsky, at one of the plenums of the Central Committee in 1937, revealed Beria's connections with the Musavat secret police, and by the spring of 1938, Yezhov had collected a thick dossier on his future successor.
With the changing of the guard in the NKVD, the purge of those who themselves carried out the purges began. Yezhov's employees were removed, and they were replaced by Beria's people, mainly from Georgia. After 1953, they officially began to be called “Beria’s gang.” It seemed that the situation had softened somewhat, there were fewer arrests, but none of the repressed well-known party leaders were released, and almost no one was released from forced labor camps. The operation of the terror mechanism then, from the late 1930s, was also regulated on the basis of economic considerations. The entire system of labor camps was aimed at maximizing the use of the prison labor force. What Yezhov failed to complete, Beria completed. In 1939, 1940 and even 1941, many became victims of terror - from R. I. Eikhe, A. S. Bubnov and Marshal A. I. Egorov to V. E. Meyerhold, M. E. Koltsov and I. E. Babel . A number of prominent intellectuals and military leaders were killed.
Beria managed to significantly strengthen his position. As the absolute head of the punitive authorities, he was part of the country's highest leadership until Stalin's death.
On December 17, 1953, the Izvestia newspaper published the text of the indictment against Beria and his six accomplices - V. N. Merkulov, V. G. Dekanozov, B. Z. Kobulov, S. A. Goglidze, P. Ya. Meshik, L E. Wlodzimirsky. On December 24, Pravda reported that all the accused had been sentenced to death, and the day before it was carried out.
It is noteworthy that in foreign literature there are several versions of Beria’s death.
“He has arrived”, “he is coming”, “he is rising” - I can still hear this suddenly rushing whisper. I remember: my heart sank with alarm and sweetness when his noble gray hair appeared below, almost merging with his mouse-colored uniform and shoulder straps the color of polished steel - then this strange outfit of a diplomat seemed the height of taste and a model of elegance. The entire Soviet jurisprudence stretched along the stairs, forming a wide passage. The guest cheerfully (folder under his arm) climbed step by step and - wow! - suddenly stopped. “I can’t do it again today. And tomorrow,” he said to someone who was standing very close to me. “Forgive me generously, I just can’t.” What could he not do, to whom did he apologize? Don't know. Didn't look. I only saw him, standing two steps from me: short, tightly built, fragrant. Beautiful gray hair. Brush of thin mustache. Glasses with elegant frames. Behind the glass is a tenacious, prickly, piercing gaze. Slightly narrowed eyes are also steely.” This is how Andrei Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky remained in the memory of the Soviet writer A. Vaksberg.
Vyshinsky was a talented, well-educated person who had all the abilities to rise to the heights of power. This man, naturally gifted with an analytical mind, was not, as many now believe, a killer from birth.
It should be said that, in general, among the famous politicians around Stalin there were many real revolutionaries, whose character was later deformed under the shadow of his power.
Vyshinsky participated in revolutionary movement since 1902. The young lawyer’s political ambitions appeared very early. The chances of getting into Stalin's entourage were primarily people whose reputation was tarnished for some reason, who could remain in power only at the cost of complete subjugation of their personality, the complete loss of their own independence. Guided by these considerations, Stalin elevated more than one Menshevik to important positions. Vyshinsky, like, for example, the famous diplomat I.M. Maisky or the Comintern functionary A.S. Martynov, was a Menshevik. With such a past, Vyshinsky could not remain at the top of power in the late 20s without bending his back. One of the typical Stalinist apparatchiks, Vyshinsky was a “classical” careerist. His views and principles changed in accordance with the wishes of the leader and the needs of his policy. As for Vyshinsky’s role in large political processes, the main choice for him was already extremely simplified - to stay alive and take on the role of a choreographer - the Prosecutor General, or to die. He was not a hero, so he chose life. But even thinking in retrospect, you see that as Prosecutor General, Vyshinsky did a perfect job of its kind during these trials. By sending his former political opponents, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party, to death, he fully implemented Stalin's wishes. The accused went through all forms of human humiliation, Vyshinsky took care of this with pedantic care. He, of course, was something more than just an executor of the director's will. He was a co-author like Beria or Molotov. The confident accuser, of course, played his role in the conditions of “the vicissitudes of fear.” But he did not try to save even members of his own family from death. Vyshinsky, until the leader’s death, waited every minute for arrest, because he knew too much, almost everything...
Here are the main milestones life path Vyshinsky.
Born in Odessa in 1883. He is a Pole by nationality, a relative of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, head of the Catholic Church in Poland. The official biography talks sparingly about his activities and political work until 1920. It is noted that after graduating from law school Kyiv University, he was left to prepare for the professorship, but for political reasons he was taken away by the tsarist authorities and was engaged in literary and pedagogical activity. Of course, the biography does not say that in June 1917, as chairman of the district government, Vyshinsky signed an order on the strict execution of the order of the Kerensky government to arrest Lenin. In 1920 he joined the Bolshevik Party.
Vyshinsky’s career as a lawyer has developed in an ascending line since 1928 - this year he became chairman of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the “Shakhty case”, then in the “Industrial Party” case. These were the first trials - tragic performances. During them, the state prosecutor was the prosecutor of the RSFSR, the old Bolshevik N.V. Krylenko, and it was clear that he was no longer suitable for performing such a role at subsequent similar events. In 1931, Vyshinsky was appointed prosecutor of the RSFSR and deputy people's commissar of justice of the RSFSR. Since 1933, he has been a deputy prosecutor of the USSR, and in the same year he acted as a state prosecutor in the trial of the Metro-Vickers case. In 1935, he was already a prosecutor of the USSR. Since January 1935, as a state prosecutor, he was one of the main characters in major political trials. From this moment on, it is as if we are seeing the same performance - the main characters remain unchanged, the participants in the episodes change. Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR - Ulrich, state prosecutor - Vyshinsky, main organizer, “playwright” - Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Zakovsky. The performance takes place according to a pre-written script in the usual place - the House of Unions. They say that sometimes the chief director appeared there, watching the proceedings from the box.
In accusatory speeches at court hearings in the cases of Kamenev - Zinoviev, Pyatakov - Radek and at the Bukharin trial, Vyshinsky demanded a death sentence for almost all the defendants. In order to feel the atmosphere of the court and the style of the prosecutor, it is enough to quote his words from the speech at the end of the trial of the so-called “anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc”:
“Our people and all honest people around the world are waiting for your fair verdict. Let your verdict ring throughout our great country like an alarm bell, calling for new exploits and new victories! Let your verdict thunder like a refreshing and all-purifying thunderstorm of fair Soviet punishment!
Our entire country, from small to old, is waiting and demanding one thing: traitors and spies who sold our Motherland to the enemy, to be shot like filthy dogs!
Our people demand one thing: crush the damned reptile!
Time will pass. The graves of the hated traitors will be overgrown with weeds and thistles, covered with the eternal contempt of the honest Soviet people, the entire Soviet people.
And above us, above our happy country, our sun will continue to sparkle with its bright rays clearly and joyfully. We, our people, will continue to walk along the road cleared of the last evil spirits and abominations of the past, led by our beloved leader and teacher - the great Stalin - forward and forward, towards communism!
Stalin was very pleased with his student; he repeatedly received government awards for his work.
Vyshinsky is the author of many books on problems of criminal law. In his main work, “The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law,” the main theoretical conclusion was that the confession of the accused at trial has the force of evidence. This situation is reminiscent of the times of the Inquisition and medieval methods of investigation.
The powerful Prosecutor General held senior positions in the diplomatic apparatus since 1940. Until 1949, he was first deputy people's commissar, then minister of foreign affairs of the USSR. In 1949 - 1953 - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, then until his death in November 1954 - Deputy Minister. Vyshinsky is buried on Red Square.
The reason for his arrival was a letter from the first secretary of the Bashkir regional committee, Ya. B. Bykin, to Stalin, full of despair. Seeing what is going on around him, seeing that clouds are gathering over him, seeing that provocateurs are already tearing his throat from the stands, accusing him of “softness” in relation to “enemies of the people”, to the Leningraders exiled to Ufa, whom he employed, Bykin wrote: “I ask one thing: send an intelligent security officer. Let him look into everything objectively!”
Zhdanov appeared in Ufa with his “team” and said to Bykin, who was meeting him, with an ominous grin: “So I’ve arrived! I think that I will prove myself to be an intelligent security officer.”
At the urgently assembled plenum of the Bashkir Regional Committee, Zhdanov was brief. He said that he came “on the issue of checking the management.” I read out the finished decision: “The Central Committee decided to remove Bykin and Isanchurin (second secretary) …”. Bykin and Isanchurin were taken straight from the hall, without waiting for the end of the plenum. Bykin managed to shout: “I’m not guilty of anything!” Isanchurin held himself courageously: “I believed and believe in Bykin.” Both were shot. Bykin's pregnant wife was also shot.
IN closing remarks Zhdanov was again brief: “The moral burden has been discharged. The pillars have been cut down, the fences will fall down on their own.”
Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, an intellectual of the Stalinist type, was for decades one of the brightest stars in the country's sky. He was considered, perhaps, Stalin’s most beloved employee; for a short time they were even connected by family ties, when the leader’s daughter, Svetlana, married Zhdanov’s son, but this marriage turned out to be short-lived.
Zhdanov’s personality combined the type of party secretary-organizational worker and ideologist-aesthete. As a co-author, he left us a legacy of one of his most “enduring works” - 1937.
Zhdanov was born on February 14, 1896 in Mariupol (until 1989 this city was called Zhdanov). His father was an inspector of public schools. After Kirov was killed, A. A. Zhdanov headed the Leningrad party organization. In accordance with Stalin's instructions, he "cleansed" the city of his predecessor's supporters. During the war, he showed himself to be a leader with a tough hand. As an esthete ideologist, he caused extreme damage to the cultural life of the Soviet country. Wherever he appeared - from Leningrad to the Urals, waves of repression rose high everywhere. Zhdanov is responsible for the death of many thousands of people. The Stalinist esthete was also a murderer.
Federal Agency for Education
St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering
Department of History
Discipline: National history
I.V. Stalin and his entourage: Molotov, Malenkov, Beria and others.
Student of group 2-A-II
D.P. Chuprikova
Supervisor
Ph.D. ist. Sciences, Associate Professor
V.Yu. Zhukov
St. Petersburg 2008
Introduction
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is a political long-liver, one of the “record holders” for being in power. For 31 years (from April 1922 to March 1953) Stalin was the official party leader of our country. Moreover, the position of the party leader was equated to the status of the national leader. And there is hardly a ruler in world history who would be exalted and showered with curses, loved and hated to such an extent. The figure is, in all respects, contradictory. But it was all the more interesting to read materials about him, about his political career, about his environment, about that era that is commonly called Stalinism - a derivative of “Stalin” and “Marxism-Leninism.”
1. Youth and the beginning of revolutionary activity
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was born on December 21 (9 in the old style) 1879 in the Georgian town of Gori. His father, Vissarion Nikolaevich, was a shoemaker, his mother was Ekaterina Georgievna, a simple Georgian. The family lived quite poorly, the father often drank and often beat his wife and son. The real date of birth indicated in the metric book of the Assumption Cathedral Church in Gori for 1878: December 6 (Old Art.), 1878. In 1888, Joseph Vissarionovich entered the Gori Theological School. He studied diligently and, in 1894, having graduated brilliantly, he entered the 1st grade of the Tiflis Theological Seminary.
At that time, many Russian revolutionaries, who were forbidden to live in the capital, chose blessed Tiflis to live. Among public educators, several people stood out in their circles at that time. Pyotr Tkachev, a publicist, one of the main “masters of thought” of Russian populism, said that revolution is the work of a narrow circle of people, its success may be the result of a successful conspiracy of revolutionary leaders. They must seize power and only then transform Russian society, accustomed to slavish obedience, and begin at all times to convert the Russian people to socialism. But in the name of a bright future, it was planned to exterminate the majority of the population, which, due to its lack of development, would hinder the path to the paradise of socialism. Also, among the pillars of revolutionary populism was Mikhail Bakunin, the father of Russian anarchism. His ideas formed the basis of the famous “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” written by Sergei Nechaev.
Many revolutionaries often met with smart seminary boys. Thus, the revolutionary thoughts described above reached Joseph Vissarionovich. He received the Catechism from the revolutionaries and began studying new material.
Then Marxism took over the minds of the revolutionaries, which also easily penetrated the theological seminary. Joseph Vissarionovich became a regular listener to all Marxist debates. And the great promise of the revolution sounded more and more tempting to the proud, poor boy: “He who was nothing will become everything.” In 1898, the name of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili became one of the main ones in the journal of student misconduct. By that time, he had decided for himself that spending time studying meant wasting it. The seminary was then divided into his friends and enemies. In 1899, due to Joseph Vissarionovich’s failure to appear for the exam as the apotheosis of all his antics, he was expelled from the seminary.
Having arrived in the center and joining the ranks of the revolutionaries, Stalin mainly wrote propaganda articles or articles praising Lenin and the Party. It is worth noting that Joseph Vissarionovich signed the article on the bright future of the proletariat under the pseudonym “Stalin”. "Stalin", the man of steel. "Stalin" in the manner of "Lenin".
During that period, he experienced 7 exiles, 6 of which ended in flight. So, during the period of his next exile, ending in 1917, he understood a lot and rethought all his previous activities. He realized that the party did not value him very much and could do without him. He was completely apathetic: he did not eat, did not clean his room by the end of his exile. Of course, during that period he changed a lot and by the time he returned to Petrograd, he was a completely new person. Yes, he still seemed quiet, somewhat unsure of himself, as before this exile. However, this is just an illusion. He tried many people as mentors until his own vision of revolution and power took shape. “We learn little by little, we learn,” he said in those years.
2. Coming to power
In 1921, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin suffered his first stroke. During a long illness, power passed to a collective body - the Politburo, which included V.I. Lenin, L.D. Trotsky, L.B. Kamenev, G.E. Zinoviev, I.V. Stalin, A.I. Rykov and M.P. Tomsky. The Secretariat of the Central Committee, created at the end of 1921 to conduct party work, was led by Stalin. The secretariat included general secretary Stalin and two secretaries V.V. Kuibyshev and V.M. Molotov. There is an opinion that it was from this bridgehead that Stalin began the struggle for power already in the spring-summer of 1922, when it became clear that Lenin was no longer a survivor. On May 27, 1922, Lenin was paralyzed for the first time and Stalin, who visited him on May 30, took everything that happened in Gorki was under control. In fact, he isolated him from the outside world and kept him in the dark about many things going on in the party.
The main struggle for power was waged by Stalin and Trotsky. They were completely different people in terms of upbringing and education, but they were absolutely equally eager for power. On Trotsky's side were his merits as a successful winner in civil war, an experienced leader, a bright speaker. But almost all members of the Politburo were on Stalin’s side, and most importantly, he had a phenomenal gift for being a subtle intriguer. Trotsky was narcissistic and positioned himself as the only leader worthy of the throne. He didn’t give a damn about his Politburo colleagues and didn’t hide it. By the way, by that time he was capricious and authoritarian with most of them, he ruined the relationship. They were afraid of him. But Stalin is not. He had no political weight, although he was the “Secretary General”, but with a full-fledged Politburo this did not mean anything. He seemed to all of them gray, and not at all aspiring to power, perhaps even a little stupid. Stalin's inherent rudeness, rancor, stubbornness, and firmness seemed very useful in the fight against Trotsky and other enemies.
On January 21, 1924, Lenin died. Against the will of his widow, they gave him a grand funeral and built a mausoleum in which the “relics” of the new political saint were placed in an open coffin. The sacred name of Lenin, the creative legacy of a brilliant superman, a far-sighted, wise, indisputable and always right leader became the support of the entire ideology of Stalinism, a screen for Stalin.
Stalin's alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev, concluded during the internal party struggle during the last two years of Lenin's life, fell apart immediately after Trotsky's position weakened. Since 1925, a struggle for power developed between Stalin and the “new opposition” led by Kamenev and Zinoviev. At the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b) in December 1925, Kamenev and Zinoviev lost the discussion with Stalin - 65 people voted for them, and 559 for Stalin. Having united with Trotsky at the XV Congress in 1927, they lost again. Stalin and his supporters achieved complete victory by expelling from the party the oppositionists who fought against the “general Leninist line.”
In party intrigues, Stalin turned out to be more inventive and unprincipled than his opponents. It was impossible to win a discussion with him - he clung to every word his opponent said, deftly labeling his opponent. At the same time, Stalin was not a dogmatist, a fanatical believer in the power of Marxism (unlike Trotsky).
4. The era of Stalin
In 1926, at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b), a decision was made to industrialize the country. From Stalin's point of view, industrialization based on the NEP was impossible and a market economy was unsuitable for the USSR. It is necessary to strengthen the state administrative system, which can itself develop and implement a plan for rapid industrialization. Finally, he believed that the first stage economic policy it is necessary to start with the transformation of the village. Everyone who objected to Stalin and argued with him were called supporters of the “right deviation” and paid for it with their lives. In 1929, a five-year development plan for the country was developed. Slogans appeared: “Pace is everything!”, “There are no fortresses that we would not take” and “Five to four!”, which essentially became a call to increase the pace of work of citizens. Also in 1929, the collectivization of agriculture began. As a result of its implementation, the “kulaks” were destroyed as a class. Personal equipment and livestock were taken away from the peasants, and all this was sent to collective farms. The people themselves were sent to remote areas. In total, about 3.5 million people died during the collectivization period. In 1931-1932, all the grain was taken away from those who remained, because there was simply no one to produce it. At that moment, Comrade Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov often traveled as an extremely authorized person during such grain procurements, carrying out numerous repressions. But even this did not save the country from the 1933 famine. It was Molotov who was personally responsible for the famine in Ukraine, which claimed millions of lives. In the same year, 1929, an unusually magnificent celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Joseph Vissarionovich took place. This event is the beginning of the personality cult of Stalin.
By the mid-30s, the so-called “Great Terror” began. Stalin carried out a massive purge of personnel - he got rid of old enemies, replacing them with new, “his” people, and simply pursued a policy of intimidating the population. Ordinary citizens lived in constant fear, almost on the verge of hysteria, because any denunciation could put an end to everything. The accused had political articles, most of the repressed were sentenced to death, others were sent to the Gulag system, founded in 1930. Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD, without flinching, destroyed quite a few people personally with his iron hand. At the height of the repressions in 1937, he worked literally tirelessly. Of course, he was a very useful person for Stalin. He replaced the previous head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda. Naturally, in the course of his activities, Yezhov destroyed many personnel who worked with Yagoda, including the KGB. Then Stalin, who so diligently guarded his power, became necessary to remove those who advanced under Yezhov. In 1938 he was replaced by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. Beria carried out a purge of the NKVD, destroying the old cadres, putting his own people in their place, began reviewing some old “cases” and briefly eased the regime in the camps.
On August 23, 1939, Soviet and German foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact and a secret protocol, according to which Germany provided the USSR with “freedom of action” in its zone of influence (in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, as well as in the eastern part of Poland and Bessarabia). Despite this and all sorts of friendly gestures from Stalin to Hitler, on June 22, 1941, Germany attacked the USSR. There is no point in describing all the horrors of that war. We all know about it almost from childhood. The main points are, of course, the blockade of Leningrad, the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Rzhev, the Battle of Stalingrad, then the Battle of Kursk, the Battle of Berlin. On May 8, 1945, the war ended with unconditional surrender armed forces Germany. After defeating Nazi Germany The USSR became one of the great powers, and Stalin became the leader of the “communist part” of the world, which now included countries of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia (in 1949 in China, North Korea and the communists won in Vietnam). The USSR enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the world, being the “big brother” and a role model for many states where the left and communists won. Stalin seriously counted on establishing the communist system in “old Europe” in a legal way - through elections. Ordinary people were inspired by the victory in the war. It seemed to many that, meeting the wishes of society, the authorities would certainly carry out liberal economic reforms, but these hopes were in vain. For a long time the harsh spirit of wartime remained. The Gulag continued to function as before the war.
On December 21, 1949, the country magnificently celebrated Stalin's seventieth birthday. The USSR had never known such a magnificent event. There were so many gifts to Joseph Vissarionovich that in the building of the closed Museum Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin, the “Museum of Gifts to Stalin” was created.
IN last years Stalin's life, when he began to rapidly age, a hidden but persistent struggle for power began behind the leader's back. However, even in 1952-1953, despite the fierce struggle of groups vying for power, he firmly held power in his hands and even began an operation to change the composition of the ruling comrades, i.e. repression. However, he did not have time to change anything radically. On the night of March 2, 1953, Stalin lying on the floor in the small dining room of the Near Dacha (one of Stalin’s residences) was discovered by security officer Lozgachev. On the morning of March 2, doctors arrived at Nizhnyaya Dacha and diagnosed paralysis. right side body. On March 5 at 21:50 the patient died. Stalin's death was announced on March 5, 1953. According to the medical report, death was caused by a cerebral hemorrhage. There are numerous conspiracy theories suggesting the unnaturalness of death and the involvement of Stalin's entourage in it. One at a time (Radzinsky), Lavrentiy Beria, N.S. Khrushchev and G.M. Malenkov contributed to his death without providing assistance. According to another, Stalin was poisoned by his closest associate Beria. There is also a version that in reality the leader died a few days before March 5th. At Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953, due to the huge number of people wanting to say goodbye to Stalin, a stampede arose. The exact number of victims is still unknown, although it is estimated to be significant. Stalin's embalmed body was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called the “Mausoleum of V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin.” On October 30, 1961, the XXII Congress of the CPSU decided that “Stalin’s serious violations of Lenin’s covenants ... make it is impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Mausoleum." On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961, Stalin’s body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near Kremlin wall. Subsequently, a monument to a bust by N.V. was unveiled at the grave. Tomsky.
Conclusion
Summing up the results of Stalin's reign, I can say that it was a time filled to the limit with attempts to radically reorganize the foundations of life in the gigantic expanses of the country, spread over two continents. A time filled with seemingly incompatible events: NEP, industrialization, the drama of collectivization, the horrors of famine, the cruelty of political repression, the cultural aspect public life, the joy of victories and records, victory in the Great Patriotic War, economic recovery after it, the beginning of the country’s transformation into a superpower.
Joseph Vissarionovich is one of the most significant figures in the history of mankind. All of Stalin's actions, being pure politics, were nevertheless undertaken in an eccentric style, but with conscious reliance on the bureaucratic apparatus generated by Soviet power, in all its manifestations. Stalin could not have succeeded in any other government, then or now. But in the revolutionary government of Russia, surrounded by cruel and unprincipled people, Stalin managed to become the most unprincipled and most cruel, and managed to retain power over the great country in his hands for 31 years.
List of used literature
1. Anisimov E.V. History of Russia from Rurik to Putin: People. Events. Dates. St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007.588 p.
2. Radzinsky E.S. Stalin. M.: Ast Moscow, 2007.750 p.
3. Dantsev A.A. Rulers of Russia. XX century Series "Historical silhouettes". Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 2000.512 p.
4. Montefiore Simon Sebag Stalin: the court of the Red Monarch. M.: Olma-Press, 2005.767 p.
5. http://www.chrono.ru/
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06-07-2008
[Short review"forbidden" literature]
Oddly enough, it was the Russian “reformers” who in the 90s revived interest in the figure of Stalin. And this is despite the fact that most Russians know that the social experiment launched by the Bolsheviks cost the people of the country millions of human lives.
Particularly controversial is the question of the relationship of the “leader of the peoples” to the Semitic tribe. Meanwhile, Stalin's position towards the Jews is not as simple as it seems at first glance. To say that Stalin was simply an anti-Semite and wanted to destroy the entire Jewish people is to say nothing. Moreover, this is not true. But current discussions in the media boil down to just this. In reality, everything was far from being so and much more complicated than it seems at first glance. But in order to at least slightly understand what was happening, one should turn not only to “canonical” literature, but also to works that for some reason are classified as “anti-Semitic.”
In particular, I mean the publications of Sergei Semanov, Vladimir Bondarenko and some other authors, the reaction to whose works by some researchers is sharply negative. Thus, it turns out that the majority of ordinary readers have no idea what is being published in the world today on issues that interest them, and are entirely guided only by the opinions of those who consider themselves the only “interpreters” of these problems. And these people are sometimes merciless. I personally experienced their anger in connection with the publication of discussions about the books of Burovsky, Vikhnovich, Strelnikov and some other researchers who consider the history of the Jews of Russia from slightly different positions that do not coincide with their opinion, and therefore classified by them as “Jewish-phobic.” However, let’s look at some of these books and articles, and the reader will determine for himself whether they can be considered “seditious.”
The list of sources is given in the text
EXTRACT FROM TWO DOCUMENTS.
FROM THE INTERVIEW OF WRITER SERGEY SEMANOV WITH THE CONSUL GENERAL OF ISRAEL IN MOSCOW ARYE LEVIN. JULY 1991
Two words about you and your family.
My parents left Ukraine for Israel in 1924, then it was Palestine. But circumstances turned out to be such that they ended up in Iran.
That's where I was born. We lived in Tehran, in the Russian Jewish community, and had many Russian friends. Everyone in our family spoke Russian. Since childhood, I was taught the Russian language, instilled in me a love for Russian literature...
What are your main activities in Moscow?
It is important to understand that Israel has never been an enemy of the USSR, an enemy of the Russian people. On the contrary, in spite of everything, hostility towards the USSR was never shown in Israel. Israel did not participate in alliances against the USSR. It seems to me that there is no other country that has such sincere feelings for the USSR as in Israel. Come visit us and you will be able to see this...
Queues at the Consulate: what does it mean, what are the results?
In the USSR, Jews, it seems to me, feel the absence of their national culture. Jewish culture was banned for many years, and there was a long period of official anti-Semitism. All this creates a collective memory among the people; Jews think about the future of their children. Israel is an independent Jewish state, where a Jew is a full-fledged citizen...
What is the impact of Russian culture on the culture of your country?
Russian culture deeply influenced the formation of the Israeli intelligentsia. The works of major Russian writers have been translated into Hebrew and are studied at school. National Israeli poets Bialik and Chernyakhovsky, immigrants from Russia, worked under the great influence of Russian culture. Our political system has absorbed the ideas of leaders who came from Russia. This is President H. Weizmann, Prime Ministers Ben-Gurion, Sharett (Chertok), L. Eshkol (Schoolboy). "Habima", our national theater, was created under the influence of Vakhtangov and Stanislavsky. A. Beck’s book “Volokolamsk Highway” was a reference book and textbook in our military schools. Israeli culture has close contact with the culture of Russia. This connection is emotional and deep...”
More than a decade and a half have passed since the publication of this interview.
I think that ties with Israel have become even larger and closer.
DATA OF SOCIOLOGICAL SURVEYS ON THE ROLE OF STALIN IN THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA.
Famous Russian historian Kirill Aleksan
Drov, a leading expert on the history of anti-Stalin movements in Russia, in one of his articles for the American newspaper Russian Life, published data from a sociological survey on the role of Stalin in the history of the country. According to these data, Stalin is considered “the most outstanding politician in the history of Russia in the twentieth century” by up to 48% of respondents - all other political and historical figures remain far behind, including Marshal Zhukov. In the mass consciousness, Aleksandrov notes, Stalin is perceived as a political leader who “took over the country with a plow and left with an atomic bomb” and ensured victory in 1945. Only 31% of citizens perceive Stalin as a cruel and inhuman tyrant, 29% of respondents believe that Stalin’s main act was victory in the war and it is through the prism of victory that the role of the generalissimo in history should be assessed.
21% of respondents called Stalin a “wise leader” who led the USSR to power and prosperity.
One of the Duma deputies, Vladimir Ryzhkov, commented on the results of the survey very succinctly: “This is pure madness.” Why did I bring up these two different documents, which at first glance are not at all related to each other? This was done on purpose. First of all, in order to show those who are trying to push Israel and Russia together today that this attempt is simply hopeless. The connections between them are so deep that it is simply impossible to separate them. These countries are components of a single cultural whole. This is first of all. Now secondly. As Kirill Mikhailovich Alexandrov quite rightly notes, the growth in society of an unconscious longing for the “leader and father” should be considered not only as a consequence of the historical illiteracy of the majority of citizens of the Russian Federation. No and no again! This is an indicator of complete alienation from everything that the so-called. "right-wing forces" in Russia. This is also an indicator of Putin’s attitude towards inconsistency. But in fairness, we note that this inconsistency can be explained by the obstacles to reforms that he encountered within the country, including in the person of these same “right-wing forces,” and in the international arena - with those who support them there. And since Stalin remained exactly like this in the historical memory of the people, then, apparently, there was something that contributed to this. Therefore, it makes sense to pay attention to one of the most painful problems - Stalin’s attitude towards Jewry.
The examples and facts below show that not everything was as simple as they are trying to explain to us today. For this purpose, we use the work of Sergei Semanov “Russian-Jewish showdowns”, the publication of A. S. Chernyaev “On Old Square. From diary entries,” article by A. V. Golubev “Welcome or no entry to outsiders”: on the issue of the closedness of interwar Soviet society,” and a number of other studies.
JEWS IN STALIN'S LEADERSHIP
Analyzing the composition of Stalin’s entourage from the very early period his activities, you notice a very interesting detail: most of those with whom he had to work were either Jews or were married to Jews. Actually it’s an amazing thing! Moreover, in the relatives of the leader himself and many of his associates there were many people of Jewish origin. Here is some very interesting data. As of April 26, 1923, the members of the highest sovereign body in the country - the Politburo - were G. Zinoviev, L. Kamenev, V. Lenin, A. Rykov, I. Stalin, M. Tomsky, L. Trotsky - candidates N. Bukharin, F. Dzerzhinsky, M. Kalinin, V. Molotov, J. Rudzutak. Total, twelve people. There were only three Jews, so to speak, “according to the passport”: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky... Dzerzhinsky, Semanov reports, was a Pole.
His mother was a Polish noblewoman. The father is a Jew baptized into Catholicism.
Wife: Sofia Muskat, a Warsaw native from a wealthy Jewish family. Lenin's grandfather was a baptized Jew - Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. Molotov was married to a Jewish woman. She was an influential party lady with whom he lived his entire difficult life in harmony. Rykov and Kalinin married Jewish women for the second time.
(According to my information, Kalinin’s wife was Estonian V.L.). Bukharin had all three of his official wives (from two of them he had a son and a daughter) were Jewish (According to my information, Bukharin’s first wife was Russian). Subsequently, a significant number of people close to Stalin were also connected by marriage with representatives of the Jewish tribe. Many of these wives were modest housewives (Voroshilova - Gorbman), others were prominent in their time as active
itsami (Marcus - Kirova, Zhemchuzhina - Molotova, Kogan Kuibysheva, etc.). Interesting story happened to Stalin’s personal secretary and assistant Poskrebyshev. The famous writer Galina Serebryakova told A.S. Chernyaeva about it at one time.
She said: “In the 30s, his own story happened to him.” Suddenly his wife, Bronya, a beauty who worked as a doctor in the Kremlin hospital, was arrested. Poskrebyshev rushed to Stalin - on his knees... He told him: “Drop it. Forget it, otherwise you will feel bad.” Returning home, Poskrebyshev found a “huge Latvian woman” in the apartment. She stood up and said: “I was ordered to be your wife.” And he lived with her for about 30 years and had a daughter.”
We can add to this that Poskrebyshev’s first wife was the sister of the wife of Trotsky’s son Sergei. Sergei and his wife died.. Such a relationship with Trotsky was clearly not to the liking of the leader. Y. Sverdlov was very close to Stalin before his early death, then L. Kaganovich, E. Yaroslavsky, Mekhlis and many other political figures. But he began to harbor fierce hatred for others, which manifested itself especially clearly in the era of the so-called. fight against the opposition. And Semanov believes that the issue was not Stalin’s anti-Semitism, but a fundamentally different approach to the problems being solved.
Analyzing the documents related to the activities of the tyrant, you begin to understand that from a certain time he began to highlight not the interests of the so-called. world revolution, but the Soviet Union. Consequently, patriotic politicians began to be nominated for leadership positions. Trotsky's supporters - Joffe, Pyatakov, Radek, Rakovsky and many other associates of Lenin considered Russia only as a springboard for the accomplishment of the world revolution. “In the minds of these people, even the question of “homeland” did not arise; only the place of residence changed (“the proletariat has no fatherland!”) while the goal remained unchanged (“ world revolution"). Their leader Trotsky, having traveled all over the globe, wherever he lived! For him to move from Europe to Canada or then from Norway to the then unimaginably distant Mexico, etc. - all this was just a movement in space and nothing more... Yes, the difference between rivals in the struggle for power... it was impossible not to notice...", - notes Sergei Semanov.. Due to this alone, Stalin and his supporters, who had never emigrated, were very suspicious of those who spent half their lives abroad.
Already at the beginning of the 30s, there were practically no Bolsheviks who had emigrated either in the Politburo or in key positions in the government. The exception was Litvinov. Stalin, in a conversation with the German writer E. Ludwig (making an exception for Lenin), said that the Bolsheviks who did not emigrate, “of course, had the opportunity to bring more benefit to the revolution than the emigrants who were abroad” and added that of the 70 members of the Central Committee no more than three or four lived in exile. In 1935, at a meeting with the leadership of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics, the chairman of the Party Control Committee, Yezhov, directly said, “that he does not trust political emigrants and those who have been abroad.” But the Jews Kaganovich, Mehlis and others, like Molotov and Andreev, considered Russia their homeland and did not imagine themselves outside of it. So they became comrades-in-arms of the new leader. It was by order of the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army L.Z. Mehlis on October 10, 1941 that the slogan in military newspapers “Workers of all countries, unite” was replaced by another “Death to the German occupiers.” And the definition of the Soviet-German war as a “Great Patriotic War” (as it was written at the beginning - with a small letter) belongs to E. Yaroslavsky.
That's what he called her on the second day of the war.
It should be noted that already in the pre-war period this turn led to the flourishing of national culture, to the development of which patriotic Jews made a huge contribution. It was then that the Lebedev-Kumach-Dunaevsky song “The song helps us build and live”, “He who seeks will always find” sounded. Svetlov’s (Shenkman) song “Kakhovka” has become a classic. And Blanter’s lovely “Katyusha”, which still sounds today!
This list can be continued indefinitely. Patriotic-minded representatives of a number of other professions were also in demand. “In this field,” writes Semanov, “Jewish energy has generally found worthy application. Let us remember Vannikov, Zaltsman, Ioffe and many, many others, they, together with the Russian people, built...industry. Stalin seemed to have switched the destructive spirit of revolutionary Jewry in Russia to
positive things in the economic sphere.” But at the same time, during the war there were enough cases of anti-Semitism. Thus, in 1943, its legendary editor David Ortenberg - Vadimov and many journalists were removed from the Red Star, the central newspaper of the army. In the same year, a mass purge of Jews began in the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army. This happened in the same year when the Comintern was dissolved and the anthem of the USSR was no longer “International”. Apparently, Stalin was haunted by the international connections of Jewry, which especially expanded with the creation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. But this is still an assumption. It still needs to be proven. But the events of the post-war period were explained by other reasons.
STALIN'S POST-WAR ANTI-JEWISH POLICY.
After the war, Stalin's anti-Jewish policies reached their apogee. In part, this was caused by the rise of Jewish patriotism in connection with the creation of the State of Israel. As Semanov notes, this manifested itself even among the Jewish elite. Pearl Karpovskaya - Pearl, Molotov's wife, maintained very close relations with Golda Meir, who called her a faithful daughter of the Jewish people. Even Voroshilov’s wife, Golda Gorbman, who was never featured anywhere, said that “Now we have a homeland.” This became known to the leader of the peoples. And then the author of the quoted book reports on the peculiar environment of E. Alliluyeva, the wife of Pavel, the brother of Stalin’s late wife Nadezhda: “I. " were her friends. Naturally, Jewish problems were raised more than once in conversations. In addition, Stalin's daughter was also married to a Jew and had a son from him. And the wife of the deceased Yakov, the leader’s daughter-in-law, turned out to be Jewish and gave birth to Stalin’s granddaughter before the war.
Malenkov had an interesting relationship. His only daughter was married to V. M. Schomberg, the grandson of a famous revolutionary, and then head of the Profintern, Sovinformburo, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, member of the JAC A. Lozovsky (Dridzo), who was then involved in the JAC case. Malenkov, after Lozovsky’s arrest, insisted on his daughter’s divorce from the grandson of the arrested politician. On December 10, 1947, E. Alliluyeva was also arrested. Somewhat later, Deputy Minister of Textile Industry D. Khazan, the wife of Politburo member and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers A. Andreev, was removed from her post. A number of major leaders of Jewish origin were removed from their posts. At the same time, for some reason today they name only Zaltsman, director of the Chelyabinsk Tank Plant. although he was not the largest figure. There were more significant ones. In June 1950, the director of the aviation plant in Saratov I. Levin, the deputy minister of aviation industry S. Sandrets, the director of the aircraft engine plant Zhezlov, the director of the Institute of Rocket Technology L. Gonor, the director of the Moscow Dynamo plant N. Orlovskaya and many, many others were fired. The cultural sphere was also “cleaned up”. Semanov tries to explain this by the growing sympathy of Jews for the state of Israel. For law enforcement and political authorities, he notes, this indicated the unreliability of Jewry in general. This was one of the reasons for the massacre of the remaining Jews.
After Stalin's death, some liberalization began. And above all, this was evidenced by the cessation of the investigation and rehabilitation in the “doctors’ case,” who had previously been accused not only of preparing terrorist acts, but also of having connections with world Zionism (i.e., the indictment was prepared with a nationalist background). The rehabilitation of doctors signaled the end of the anti-Semitic campaign. Khrushchev, who replaced Stalin, according to Semanov, also did not like Jews. He unconditionally supported the Arabs in their “struggle against world Zionism.” There were no longer Jews in the highest party and government positions under him. Moreover, there were unspoken, but well-known and quite strict restrictions on the admission of Jews to scientific or educational institutes related to the defense industry, some military schools, as well as to the ideological faculties of Moscow State University, Leningrad State University and a number of other major universities. Even the “fifth point” stated in the questionnaire was sometimes checked with considerable care. This, naturally, was a violation of human rights. And many Russian people, especially among the intelligentsia, sympathized with the Jews. The Brezhnev era is considered liberal. His wife, Victoria Pinkhusovna Goldberg, according to Semanov, may have even been a relative of Zinoviev. It was rumored that it was at her request that the Secretary General abolished the collection of fees for education from Jews traveling to Israel. The quoted author also claims that Suslov, Ponomarenko and Kapitonov (the entire ideological elite of the party) were also married to Jewish women. Regarding Suslov, the largest specialist on the history of Russian Jewry, G.V. Kostyrchenko, whom I trust absolutely, told me about the same. Andropov, who came after Brezhnev, is undoubtedly of Jewish origin, as his biographers now claim. I would like to conclude the article with the thoughts of the famous Russian writer Vladimir Bondarenko, who was also ranked among the host of “anti-Semites.”
So, in an article under the shocking title “A Jew is not a Jew, a Russian is not a cattle” he writes: “You admit your guilt for Jewish sins against Russia, and we recognize Jewish participation in the creation of our powerful Power, we recognize the merits in our physics and chemistry, in the creation of nuclear weapons. History connects the incompatible, and unexpectedly for the peoples themselves, the red Jewish messianism...created the best intelligence service in the world...and Russia was placed at the center of this world system, acquiring unprecedented power and the role of a superstate...We cannot find a new idea of world domination they were able to, the Russian national idea does not need “the Turkish coast and we do not need Africa.” Russia's retreat to regional positions may have begun with the rejection of the Jewish red super-statehood. But this throw into the future, this breakthrough into the vastness of the world was carried out by Russia, precisely by the Russian people involved in Jewish space messianic projects. It was carried out on Russian blood and on Jewish blood...Jewish boys lit the fire of the world revolution to establish the Russian superpower. And this was not a deception of either the Jews or the Russians. It was the most ambitious project in world history...”
I note that this tirade followed the words of Mark Rudinshtein, a famous Russian filmmaker, who said: “I have a feeling of guilt before this state. Jewish guilt." This is how the editor of Literary Russia speaks out, whom some Russian figures certainly classify as “anti-Semites.” I'll keep my opinion to myself. Although reference to the works of the named authors speaks for itself. But the last word the reader must say. I understand that this is not easy. The arguments of the authors that I cited are more complex and ambiguous than those used by their opponents. That's why they are more difficult to perceive. But still, they encourage discussions and searches for truth. And this is important. And there is no need to be afraid that much of what the researchers I cited write about is rejected by us. It's not scary. It is more important to find something that helps unite people and increase their mutual understanding. After all, the fate of Jews and Russians was and is still common. This is what we need to proceed from. So the Jewish problem is so complex that we will have to return to it more than once if we want to get acquainted with the true history of Russian Jews.
