Justification after repression. Stalin's repressions: what was it? The beginning of revolutionary activity
Even 20-30 years ago, when the flow of information about Stalin’s repressions fell on the heads of the inhabitants of the USSR, it seemed that it was impossible to forget all this, and it was unthinkable to allow a repetition. Of course, today no one has such confidence.
There are fewer and fewer people who remember this time and can talk about it, and fewer and fewer people know (and believe!) that under Stalin, political arrests were the norm. Cases were often fabricated and based on denunciations, without any other evidence. Anyone could be arrested - both an ordinary citizen and a prominent figure in science and art.
This list includes poets, scientists, actors, directors - they are “passed” in school, the country is proud of them. They have not committed any crimes - think about it: none! Some shared their views with friends, some wrote a seditious poem, and some didn’t even do that. There are also ardent supporters on the list Soviet power, who were sure that all this would definitely not affect them. And, of course, there are those who are only to blame for being born into the “wrong” family.
Let us, without any reason or reason, just with respect and gratitude, remember the guilty without guilt wonderful people who felt the full horror of repression.
Ariadna Ephron
Translator of prose and poetry, memoirist, artist, art critic, poet... The daughter of Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva was the first of the family to return to the USSR.
After returning to the USSR, she worked in the editorial office of the Soviet magazine “Revue de Moscou” (in French); wrote articles, essays, reports, made illustrations, translated.
On August 27, 1939, she was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced under Article 58-6 (espionage) to 8 years in forced labor camps; under torture she was forced to testify against her father.
Since 1948, upon her release, she worked as a graphics teacher at the Art School in Ryazan. The thirst for communication with friends - after many years of isolation - was brightened by active correspondence with them, including Boris Pasternak, who sent her new poems and chapters from Doctor Zhivago.
She was arrested again on February 22, 1949 and sentenced, as previously convicted, to lifelong exile in the Turukhansky district Krasnoyarsk Territory. Thanks to the “nursing” specialty acquired in France, she worked in Turukhansk as a graphic designer at the local regional cultural center. She left a series of watercolor sketches about life in exile, some of which were first published only in 1989.
In 1955 she was completely rehabilitated for lack of evidence of a crime.
Georgy Zhzhenov
The public's favorite, People's Artist of the USSR Georgy Zhzhenov, during the filming of the film “Komsomolsk” (1938), traveled by train to Komsomolsk-on-Amur. During the trip, on the train, he met an American diplomat who was traveling to Vladivostok to meet a business delegation.
This acquaintance was noticed by film workers, which served as a reason for accusing him of espionage activities. On July 4, 1938, he was arrested on charges of espionage and sentenced to 5 years in forced labor camps.
In 1949, Zhzhenov was arrested again and exiled to the Norilsk ITL (Norillag), from where he returned to Leningrad in 1954.
In 1955 he was completely rehabilitated for lack of evidence of a crime
Alexander Vvedensky
Russian poet and playwright from OBERIU (Union of Real Art), along with other members of which was arrested at the end of 1931. In addition to Vvedensky, the group included Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Konstantin Vaginov, Yuri Vladimirov, Igor Bakhterev, Doivber (Boris Mikhailovich) Levin.
Vvedensky received a denunciation that he had made a toast in memory of Nicholas II. There is also a version that the reason for the arrest was Vvedensky’s performance of the “former anthem” at one of the friendly parties.
He was exiled in 1932 to Kursk, then lived in Vologda, in Borisoglebsk. In 1936 the poet was allowed to return to Leningrad.
On September 27, 1941, Alexander Vvedensky was again arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation. According to one of latest versions, in connection with the approach of German troops to Kharkov, he was transported on a train to Kazan, but on December 19, 1941 he died of pleurisy on the way.
He was buried, presumably, in the Arskoye or Arkhangelskoye cemeteries in Kazan.
Osip Mandelstam
In November 1933, one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century wrote an anti-Stalin epigram “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” (“Kremlin Highlander”), which he reads to one and a half dozen people. Boris Pasternak called this act suicide.
One of the listeners reported on Mandelstam, and on the night of May 13-14, 1934, he was arrested and sent into exile in Cherdyn (Perm region).
After a short-term release on the night of May 1-2, 1938, Osip Emilievich was arrested a second time and taken to Butyrka prison.
On August 2, a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced Mandelstam to five years in a forced labor camp. On September 8, he was sent by convoy to the Far East.
On December 27, 1938, Osip died in a transit camp. Mandelstam's body, along with the other deceased, lay unburied until spring. Then the entire “winter stack” was buried in a mass grave.
Vsevolod Meyerhold
The theorist and practitioner of theatrical grotesque, author of the “Theatrical October” program and creator of the acting system called “biomechanics” also became a victim of repression.
On June 20, 1939, Meyerhold was arrested in Leningrad; At the same time, a search was carried out in his apartment in Moscow. The search protocol recorded a complaint from his wife, who protested against the methods of one of the NKVD agents. Soon (July 15).
“...They beat me here - a sick sixty-six-year-old man, they put me on the floor face down, they beat me on my heels and back with a rubber band, when I was sitting on a chair, they beat me on my legs with the same rubber [...] the pain was such that it seemed boiling water was poured onto the sore sensitive areas of the legs...” - from Meyerhold’s statement to Molotov.
(Quote: " Soviet culture" 1989, February 16 )
After three weeks of interrogations, accompanied by torture, Meyerhold signed the testimony required by the investigation, and the board sentenced the director to death. On February 2, 1940, the sentence was carried out.
In 1955, the Supreme Court of the USSR posthumously rehabilitated Meyerhold.
Nikolay Gumilyov
The Russian poet of the Silver Age, the creator of the school of Acmeism, prose writer, translator and literary critic did not hide his religious and political views- he openly baptized himself in churches and declared his views. So, at one of the poetry evenings, he answered a question from the audience - “what are your political beliefs?” replied, “I am a convinced monarchist.”
On August 3, 1921, Gumilev was arrested on suspicion of participation in the conspiracy of the “Petrograd Combat Organization of V.N. Tagantsev.” For several days the comrades tried to help their friend, but despite this, the poet was soon shot.
Nikolay Zabolotsky
The poet and translator was arrested on March 19, 1938 and then convicted in the case of anti-Soviet propaganda.
The incriminating material in his case included malicious critical articles and a slanderous review “review” that distorted the essence and ideological orientation of his work. From death penalty He was saved by the fact that, despite torture during interrogation, he did not admit the accusation of creating a counter-revolutionary organization.
He served his sentence from February 1939 to May 1943 in the Vostoklag system in the Komsomolsk-on-Amur region, then in the Altailaga system in the Kulunda steppes.
Sergey Korolev
On June 27, 1938, Korolev was arrested on charges of sabotage. He was subjected to torture, according to some sources, during which both his jaws were broken.
The future aircraft designer was sentenced to 10 years in the camps. He will go to Kolyma, to the Maldyak gold mine. Neither hunger, nor scurvy, nor unbearable living conditions could break Korolev - he will calculate his first radio-controlled rocket right on the wall of the barracks.
In May 1940, Korolev returned to Moscow. At the same time, in Magadan he did not get on the Indigirka steamship (due to all the seats being occupied). This saved his life: traveling from Magadan to Vladivostok, the ship sank off the island of Hokkaido during a storm.
After 4 months, the designer is again sentenced to 8 years and sent to a special prison, where he works under the leadership of Andrei Tupolev.
Andrey Tupolev
The legendary creator of the aircraft himself was also hit by a car. Stalin's repressions.
Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev, who throughout his life developed over a hundred types of aircraft on which 78 world records were set, was arrested on October 21, 1937.
He was accused of sabotage, belonging to a counter-revolutionary organization and of transferring drawings of Soviet aircraft to foreign intelligence.
This is how the great scientist’s working trip to the USA came back to haunt him. Andrei Nikolaevich was sentenced to 15 years in the camps.
Tupolev was released in July 1941. He created and headed TsKB-29 in Moscow.
The great designer died in 1972. The country's main design bureau bears his name. Tu aircraft are still one of the most popular in modern aviation.
Nikolay Likhachev
The famous Russian historian, paleographer and art historian, at his own expense, Likhachev created a unique historical and cultural museum, which he then donated to the state.
Academician Likhachev was arrested on January 28, 1930. The sentence is exile to 5 years in Astrakhan. Likhachev was expelled from the USSR Academy of Sciences and, of course, fired from his job.
The verdict did not say a word about confiscation, but the OGPU took away absolutely all the valuables, including books and manuscripts that belonged to the academician’s family.
In Astrakhan, the family was literally dying of hunger. In 1933, the Likhachevs returned from Leningrad. Nikolai Petrovich was not hired anywhere, not even for the position of an ordinary research assistant. The scientist died in 1936 and only in 1968 was posthumously restored to the rank of academician.
Nikolay Vavilov
At the time of his arrest in August 1940, the great biologist was a member of the Academies in Prague, Edinburgh, Halle and, of course, the USSR.
In 1942, when Vavilov, who dreamed of feeding the whole country, was dying of hunger in prison, he was accepted in absentia as a Member of the Royal Society of London.
The investigation into the case of Nikolai Ivanovich lasted 11 months. He had to endure about 400 interrogations with a total duration of about 1,700 hours.
In between interrogations, the scientist wrote a book in prison, “The History of the Development of Agriculture” (“World Agricultural Resources and Their Use”), but everything written by Vavilov in prison was destroyed by the investigator, an NKVD lieutenant, as “of no value.”
For “anti-Soviet activities” Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was sentenced to death. At the last moment the sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison.
The great scientist died of starvation in a Saratov prison on January 26, 1943. He was buried in a common grave along with other deceased prisoners. The exact burial place is unknown.
What do you need to know about a repressed person?
It is unlikely that the search will be crowned with success if you only know the last name, first name and patronymic of the repressed person. We need data at least about what year and where he was born.
Biographical information about a person can be found in the regional registry office archives. Information of this kind about Muscovites is stored in the State Archives of Moscow.
Where to start searching?
The best place to start searching is on the Internet. For example, in the archive database of the Memorial Society, on the Open List resource, based on open data from the regional “Books of Memory”, which collected information from the KGB archives opened in the early 1990s. There you can find information about where and when a person was convicted, under what article, sometimes even information about the number of his criminal case.
You can also turn to genealogists searching for information about your ancestors. They will help you find the necessary archives, make requests, and, if necessary, go to look for the necessary documents.
Memorial helps everyone“If you want to find information about your repressed relative, contact us,” they say at the international historical and educational society “Memorial”. One of the goals of Memorial is the preservation and collection of historical data on political repressions in the post-Soviet space.
Here they help for free everyone who wants to find out what happened to their repressed ancestors: why they were shot, why they were sent to a camp, exiled, for what reason they fell under the wheels of the repressive machine. Help at Memorial is provided regardless of the form of application: in person, by mail, and by telephone.
“When you start looking, you can first go to the website of Memorial’s special project - “Everyone’s Personal Business,” says IrinaOstrovskaya, head of the society's archives.
On the project website you can use the online constructor, which will tell you which archives of which organizations you should contact with requests, depending on what information you have.
In addition, “Everyone’s Personal File” is a collection of search stories and stories about how people gain access to the files of those repressed.
Where is information about repressed people stored?
In addition to open databases about the repressed, on various forums: the forum of the All-Russian family tree, forums on individual camps and places of exile, deported peoples.
Data on repressions are stored in the archives of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Penitentiary Service. However, in the regional divisions of the Federal Penitentiary Service there are practically no personal files left of prisoners - from there all information is transferred to the information centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the region.
In addition, information about those repressed can be stored in GARF (state archive Russian Federation), state regional archives. For example, cases of judicial proceedings of the revolutionary tribunal, emergency commissions during the period of the so-called “Red Terror” in the 1920s in Saratov region stored in the regional archive.
In what case and where should requests be written?
If you are interested in the details of the investigation of a repressed person, then you need to contact the FSB archives of the region where the person was arrested. It is the investigative files that are kept in the archives of the Federal Security Service.
You need to write requests to the information centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs if you want to find out about a person’s stay in the camp: for example, what complaints, statements and letters he wrote, when he died and where he was buried. In addition, inquiries about special settlers (for example, dispossessed and evicted peasants) and deported peoples should also be sent there.
If the repressed person was rehabilitated, then information about him may be contained in the archives of the prosecutor's office. But, for example, rehabilitation in the 1950s was carried out through regional courts - and in this case you need to go there. It would be good if the cases were duplicated in the FSB archive, but this may not be the case in all regions.
In this case, experts advise starting in any case with the FSB archives, but also duplicating requests to any other bodies through which repressions were carried out - you will never guess where you can find a trace.
In what form should requests be written?
If you write a request the old fashioned way, on paper, then you can formulate it in free form. It is enough to explain who you are, what you want, and on the basis of which you are asking for access to the case. The same rule is true for a request by e-mail, if the archive accepts requests electronically.
You can now send a request to the FSB archives through the State Services website and through the Web Reception. Or use the detailed description of where and how to apply for archival information on the department’s portal.
Do I need to pay for providing archival information about repressed people?
The archives provide all information concerning people who suffered from Soviet repression free of charge.
How long should I wait for a response to a request?
Any response to your request will definitely come within one to two months.
It may also happen that it will contain an indication that your request has been forwarded to the archives of another department. But such a service depends largely on the responsibility of the archive workers, where you applied initially.
Why may they refuse to provide information?
The main reason for the refusal is that there is no information about the repressed person.
The refusal may also be motivated by the fact that the case contains information of national importance that constitutes a state secret, for example, if the repressed person was a high-ranking official.
What will they be allowed to see in the case of a repressed person?
The investigative file of a repressed person, as a rule, contains a prisoner's form, arrest warrants, search warrants, and interrogation records. And direct relatives (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren) are allowed to see almost everything or make a copy if they provide documents confirming their relationship.
But in most cases, they do not provide access to protocols of interrogations of witnesses or denunciations that may be stored in the case, citing the law on personal data adopted in 2006.
When in the 1990s cases were reported almost openly, there were cases of revenge - the repressed person or his relatives harmed the relatives of the informer or himself.
How to gain access to the case of a repressed person in case of refusal?
The refusal to see part of the repressed person’s case related to the law on personal data can be appealed by contacting the leadership of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation or the court, but this case has little prospects. Although one can refer to the fact that almost all of those repressed, witnesses in their case, informers are already dead, and the law on personal data does not apply to the dead.
Who are the politically repressed?Explains Tatiana Polyanskaya, senior researcher at the Gulag History Museum.
Politically repressed are, first of all, those convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR with all its subparagraphs (there were 14 subparagraphs of Article 58; it established responsibility for counter-revolutionary activities; it was introduced in 1927, abolished in 1958. - N .IN.). In the camps they accounted for 25 percent of the total number of all convicts.
It would be fair to include in this category also all those who became victims of the punitive policies of the Soviet state. These are the so-called “pointers”, convicted by decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. For example, those who were convicted by decree of August 7, 1932 (known as the “Law of Three Spikelets”) for absenteeism, for not working days, and so on. This also includes special settlers and deported peoples.
The exact number of those repressed is difficult to determine. It is known that about 20 million people passed through the system of the Main Administration of Camps from 1930 to 1956. Of these, there are about 5 million people convicted under Article 58.
How can archival information help?
In response to a request, the archive can send archival information on the case of the repressed person. It will contain basic information about the person, information about the article under which he was convicted, the term, the sentence.
An archival certificate is an official document that allows the repressed person’s closest relatives (children) to receive social benefits (if the repressed person has been rehabilitated).
In addition, based on archival information, you can request access to the archive file of the repressed person in person or receive copies of archival materials by mail.
What is rehabilitation?
At the stand in memory of those illegally repressed in the USSR. Photo: Fred Grindberg / RIA Novosti
Rehabilitation is the recognition that a person was brought to justice, was arrested, exiled, or executed illegally. Usually the decision on rehabilitation is made by the court, reviewing the decisions of the authorities on the basis of which the person was subjected to criminal prosecution or repression.
What to do if your repressed relative is not rehabilitated?
You need to write a statement to the regional prosecutor's office (which has departments for repressed persons), based on information about the existence of repression. The prosecutor's office will go to court.
You can also go to court on your own - to a direct relative of the repressed person or to a lawyer on behalf of a relative. The court will review the case and reach a verdict.
Denial of rehabilitation is possible if the court considers the punishment for a once convicted person to be lawful.
For example, under the “Law of Three Spikelets” people were convicted who actually committed large-scale thefts of socialist property. They can hardly be rehabilitated, unlike the collective farmer who stole several potatoes from the collective farm field for a starving family and received 25 years for it.
October 30 is the Day of Victims of Political Repression. It was established in 1991 by a resolution of the Supreme Council of Russia. Since then, every year throughout the country on this day they remember those who died and suffered during political repressions in the Soviet Union.
In Moscow, since 2007, on the initiative of the Memorial Society, the “Return of Names” campaign has been held at the Solovetsky Stone, installed on Lubyanka Square. From the morning until the evening of October 29, protesters take turns reading out the names of people shot in the capital during the years of Soviet terror.
The history of the Day of Victims of Political Repression began back in 1974. Then the political prisoners of the Mordovian and Perm camps declared October 30 as the Day of Political Prisoners in the USSR.
For assistance in preparing the article, the editors thank bibliographer and literary historian Alexander Sobolev, member of the commission for canonization of devotees of piety of the Saratov Metropolis priest Maxim Plyakin, Moscow lawyer Andrei Grivtsov and senior researcher at the Gulag History Museum Tatyana Polyanskaya.
Thus, simply by the meaning of the word “fist”, these were completely criminal elements. Not to mention the fact that any moneylender needs the services of “collectors”, who in the villages were called “podkulakniks”, and in general, one can imagine what they did.
And just think about it, drug trafficking is prohibited in our country, for example. And the traders are imprisoned. Is this political repression? What is the correct name for this? You will say that I am “exaggerating”, that this is something outrageous. But in some countries, this activity is permitted with certain reservations. In my opinion, the analogy is quite appropriate: some were banned from one type of economic activity that harms society - drug trafficking, others were banned from another type of economic activity that harmed society, and which society called “world-eating.” By the way, the dispossession of the 2nd (largest) category of kulaks took place by decision of the same “society”: “Lists of kulak households (second category) evicted to remote areas are established by district executive committees based on decisions of collective farmers’ meetings, farm laborers’ and poor peasants’ meetings and approved by the regional executive committees" .
By the way, I think that the activities of modern “kulaks” (“microcredit”) should be outlawed...
The conversation about fists will continue.
Stalin's repressions:
What was it?
On the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression
In this material we have collected the memories of eyewitnesses, fragments from official documents, figures and facts provided by researchers in order to provide answers to questions that haunt our society again and again. Russian state was never able to give clear answers to these questions, so until now, everyone is forced to look for answers on their own.
Who was affected by the repression?
Representatives of various groups of the population fell under the flywheel of Stalin's repressions. The most famous names are artists, Soviet leaders and military leaders. About peasants and workers, often only names are known from execution lists and camp archives. They did not write memoirs, tried not to remember the camp past unnecessarily, and their relatives often abandoned them. The presence of a convicted relative often meant the end of a career or education, so the children of arrested workers and dispossessed peasants might not know the truth about what happened to their parents.
When we heard about another arrest, we never asked, “Why was he taken?”, but there were few like us. People distraught with fear asked each other this question for pure self-comfort: people are taken for something, which means they won’t take me, because there’s nothing! They became sophisticated, coming up with reasons and justifications for each arrest - “She really is a smuggler,” “He allowed himself to do this,” “I myself heard him say...” And again: “You should have expected this - he has such terrible character”, “It always seemed to me that something was wrong with him”, “This is a complete stranger.” That’s why the question: “Why was he taken?” – became forbidden for us. It's time to understand that people are taken for nothing.
- Nadezhda Mandelstam , writer and wife of Osip Mandelstam
From the very beginning of terror to this day, attempts have not ceased to present it as a fight against “sabotage”, enemies of the fatherland, limiting the composition of the victims to certain classes hostile to the state - kulaks, bourgeois, priests. The victims of terror were depersonalized and turned into “contingents” (Poles, spies, saboteurs, counter-revolutionary elements). However, the political terror was total in nature, and its victims were representatives of all groups of the population of the USSR: the “cause of engineers”, the “cause of doctors”, persecution of scientists and entire areas in science, personnel purges in the army before and after the war, deportations of entire peoples.
Poet Osip Mandelstam
He died during transit; the place of death is not known for certain.
Directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold
Marshals Soviet Union
Tukhachevsky (shot), Voroshilov, Egorov (shot), Budyony, Blucher (died in Lefortovo prison).
How many people were affected?
According to the estimates of the Memorial Society, there were 4.5-4.8 million people convicted for political reasons, and 1.1 million people were shot.
Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary and depend on the calculation method. If we take into account only those convicted on political charges, then according to an analysis of statistics from the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, carried out in 1988, the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot. According to the same data, about 1.76 million people died in the camps. According to the estimates of the Memorial Society, there were more people convicted for political reasons - 4.5-4.8 million people, of which 1.1 million people were shot.
The victims of Stalin's repressions were representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forced deportation (Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and others). This is about 6 million people. Every fifth person did not live to see the end of the journey - about 1.2 million people died during the difficult conditions of deportation. During the dispossession, about 4 million peasants suffered, of which at least 600 thousand died in exile.
Overall, as a result Stalin's policy about 39 million people were affected. The number of victims of repression includes those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, those deprived of their money, victims of hunger, victims of unjustifiably cruel decrees “on absenteeism” and “on three ears of corn” and other groups of the population who received excessively harsh punishment for minor offenses due to repressive the nature of the legislation and the consequences of that time.
Why was this necessary?
The worst thing is not that you are suddenly taken away from a warm, well-established life like this overnight, not Kolyma and Magadan, and hard labor. At first, the person desperately hopes for a misunderstanding, for a mistake by the investigators, then painfully waits for them to call him, apologize, and let him go home to his children and husband. And then the victim no longer hopes, no longer painfully searches for an answer to the question of who needs all this, then there is a primitive struggle for life. The worst thing is the senselessness of what is happening... Does anyone know what this was for?
Evgenia Ginzburg,
writer and journalist
In July 1928, speaking at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin described the need to fight “alien elements” as follows: “As we move forward, the resistance of capitalist elements will increase, the class struggle will intensify, and Soviet power, forces which will increase more and more, will pursue a policy of isolating these elements, a policy of disintegrating the enemies of the working class, and finally, a policy of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters, creating a basis for the further advancement of the working class and the bulk of the peasantry.”
In 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. Yezhov published order No. 00447, in accordance with which a large-scale campaign to destroy “anti-Soviet elements” began. They were recognized as the culprits of all the failures of the Soviet leadership: “Anti-Soviet elements are the main instigators of all kinds of anti-Soviet and sabotage crimes, both on collective and state farms, and in transport, and in some areas of industry. Before the authorities state security The task is to defeat this entire gang of anti-Soviet elements in the most merciless way, to protect the working Soviet people from their counter-revolutionary machinations and, finally, to put an end to their vile subversive work against the foundations of the Soviet state once and for all. In accordance with this, I order - from August 5, 1937, in all republics, territories and regions, to begin an operation to repress former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals.” This document marks the beginning of an era of large-scale political repression, which later became known as the “Great Terror.”
Stalin and other members of the Politburo (V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, K. Voroshilov) personally compiled and signed execution lists - pre-trial circulars listing the number or names of victims subject to condemnation by the Military Collegium Supreme Court with a predetermined punishment. According to researchers, the death sentences of at least 44.5 thousand people bear Stalin’s personal signatures and resolutions.
The myth of the effective manager Stalin
Still in the media and even in textbooks one can find justification for political terror in the USSR by the need to carry out industrialization in short time. Since the release of the decree obliging those sentenced to more than 3 years to serve their sentences in forced labor camps, prisoners have been actively involved in the construction of various infrastructure facilities. In 1930, the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps of the OGPU (GULAG) was created and huge flows of prisoners were sent to key construction sites. During the existence of this system, from 15 to 18 million people passed through it.
During the 1930-1950s, GULAG prisoners carried out the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow Canal. Prisoners built the Uglich, Rybinsk, Kuibyshev and other hydroelectric power stations, erected metallurgical plants, objects of the Soviet nuclear program, the most extensive railways and freeways. Dozens of Soviet cities were built by Gulag prisoners (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Dudinka, Norilsk, Vorkuta, Novokuibyshevsk and many others).
Beria himself characterized the efficiency of prisoners’ labor as low: “The existing food standard in the Gulag of 2000 calories is designed for a person sitting in prison and not working. In practice, even this reduced standard is supplied by supplying organizations only by 65-70%. Therefore, a significant percentage of the camp workforce falls into the categories of weak and useless people in production. In general, labor utilization is no higher than 60-65 percent.”
To the question “is Stalin necessary?” we can give only one answer - a firm “no”. Even without taking into account the tragic consequences of famine, repression and terror, even considering only economic costs and benefits - and even making all possible assumptions in favor of Stalin - we get results that clearly indicate that Stalin's economic policies did not lead to positive results. Forced redistribution significantly worsened productivity and social welfare.
- Sergey Guriev , economist
The economic efficiency of Stalinist industrialization at the hands of prisoners is also rated extremely low by modern economists. Sergei Guriev gives the following figures: by the end of the 30s, productivity in agriculture reached only the pre-revolutionary level, and in industry it turned out to be one and a half times lower than in 1928. Industrialization led to huge losses in welfare (minus 24%).
Brave New World
Stalinism is not only a system of repression, it is also the moral degradation of society. The Stalinist system made tens of millions of slaves - it broke people morally. One of the most terrible texts I have read in my life is the tortured “confessions” of the great biologist Academician Nikolai Vavilov. Only a few can endure torture. But many – tens of millions! – were broken and became moral monsters for fear of being personally repressed.
- Alexey Yablokov , Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Philosopher and historian of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt explains: in order to turn Lenin's revolutionary dictatorship into a completely totalitarian rule, Stalin had to artificially create an atomized society. To achieve this, an atmosphere of fear was created in the USSR and denunciation was encouraged. Totalitarianism did not destroy real “enemies,” but imaginary ones, and this is its terrible difference from an ordinary dictatorship. None of the destroyed sections of society were hostile to the regime and probably would not become hostile in the foreseeable future.
In order to destroy all social and family ties, repressions were carried out in such a way as to threaten the same fate to the accused and everyone in the most ordinary relations with him, from casual acquaintances to closest friends and relatives. This policy penetrated deeply into Soviet society, where people, out of selfish interests or fearing for their lives, betrayed neighbors, friends, even members of their own families. In their quest for self-preservation, masses of people refused own interests, and became, on the one hand, a victim of power, and on the other, its collective embodiment.
The consequence of the simple and ingenious device of "guilt for association with the enemy" is that, as soon as a person is accused, his former friends immediately turn into his worst enemies: To save their own skin, they rush out with unsolicited information and incrimination, supplying non-existent evidence against the accused. Ultimately, it was by developing this technique to its latest and most fantastic extremes that the Bolshevik rulers succeeded in creating an atomized and fragmented society, the likes of which we have never seen before, and whose events and catastrophes in such pure form It is unlikely that they would have happened without this.
- Hannah Arendt, philosopher
The deep disunity of Soviet society, the absence civil institutions were inherited by the new Russia and became one of the fundamental problems hindering the creation of democracy and civil peace in our country.
How the state and society fought the legacy of Stalinism
To date, Russia has survived “two and a half attempts at de-Stalinization.” The first and largest was launched by N. Khrushchev. It began with a report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU:
“They were arrested without the prosecutor’s sanction... What other sanction could there be when Stalin allowed everything. He was the chief prosecutor in these matters. Stalin gave not only permission, but also instructions for arrests on his own initiative. Stalin was a very suspicious man, with morbid suspicion, as we became convinced of when working with him. He could look at a person and say: “something is wrong with your eyes today,” or: “why do you often turn away today, don’t look straight into the eyes.” Morbid suspicion led him to sweeping mistrust. Everywhere and everywhere he saw “enemies”, “double-dealers”, “spies”. Having unlimited power, he allowed cruel arbitrariness and suppressed people morally and physically. When Stalin said that so-and-so should be arrested, one had to take it on faith that he was an “enemy of the people.” And the Beria gang, which ruled the state security agencies, went out of its way to prove the guilt of the arrested persons and the correctness of the materials they fabricated. What evidence was used? Confessions of those arrested. And the investigators extracted these “confessions.”
As a result of the fight against the cult of personality, sentences were revised, more than 88 thousand prisoners were rehabilitated. However, the “thaw” era that followed these events turned out to be very short-lived. Soon many dissidents who disagreed with the policies of the Soviet leadership would become victims of political persecution.
The second wave of de-Stalinization occurred in the late 80s and early 90s. Only then did society become aware of at least approximate figures characterizing the scale of Stalin’s terror. At this time, the sentences passed in the 30s and 40s were also revised. In most cases, the convicts were rehabilitated. Half a century later, the dispossessed peasants were posthumously rehabilitated.
A timid attempt at a new de-Stalinization was made during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. However, it did not bring significant results. Rosarkhiv, on the instructions of the president, posted on its website documents about 20 thousand Poles executed by the NKVD near Katyn.
Programs to preserve the memory of victims are being phased out due to lack of funding.
Estimates of the number of victims of Stalin's repressions vary dramatically. Some cite numbers in the tens of millions of people, others limit themselves to hundreds of thousands. Which of them is closer to the truth?
Who is to blame?
Today our society is almost equally divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists. The former draw attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, the latter call not to forget about the huge number of victims of the repressions of the Stalinist regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repression, but note its limited nature and even justify it as political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repressions with the name of Stalin.
Historian Nikolai Kopesov writes that in most investigative cases against those repressed in 1937-1938 there were no resolutions of Stalin - everywhere there were verdicts of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. According to the Stalinists, this is proof that the heads of the punitive bodies were engaged in arbitrariness and in support of this they cite Yezhov’s quote: “Whoever we want, we execute, whoever we want, we have mercy.”
For that part of the Russian public that sees Stalin as the ideologist of repression, these are just details that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other arbiters of human destinies themselves turned out to be victims of terror. Who else but Stalin was behind all this? - they ask a rhetorical question.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the State Archive of the Russian Federation Oleg Khlevnyuk notes that despite the fact that Stalin’s signature was not on many execution lists, it was he who sanctioned almost all mass political repressions.
Who was hurt?
The issue of victims acquired even greater significance in the debate surrounding Stalin's repressions. Who suffered and in what capacity during the period of Stalinism? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is quite vague. Historiography has not yet developed clear definitions on this matter.
Of course, those convicted, imprisoned in prisons and camps, shot, deported, deprived of property should be counted among those affected by the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to “biased interrogation” and then released? Should criminal and political prisoners be separated? In what category should we classify the “nonsense”, convicted of minor isolated thefts and equated to state criminals?
Deportees deserve special attention. What category should they be classified into – repressed or administratively expelled? It is even more difficult to determine those who fled without waiting for dispossession or deportation. They were sometimes caught, but some were lucky enough to start a new life.
Such different numbers
Uncertainties in the issue of who is responsible for the repression, in identifying the categories of victims and the period for which the victims of repression should be counted lead to completely different figures. The most impressive figures were cited by the economist Ivan Kurganov (Solzhenitsyn referred to these data in his novel The Gulag Archipelago), who calculated that from 1917 to 1959, 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against its people.
This number of Kurgans includes victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, and the “neglectful and sloppy handling of the Second World War.”
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalin's repressions? The economist, in fact, answers this question himself, using the expression “victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime.” It is worth noting that Kurganov counted only the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could have appeared if the economist had taken into account all those affected by the Soviet regime during the specified period.
The figures given by the head of the human rights society “Memorial” Arseny Roginsky are more realistic. He writes: “Across the entire Soviet Union, 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression,” but he adds that in in a broad sense Up to 30 million people can be considered repressed.
Leaders of the Yabloko movement Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov counted all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, those dispossessed, victims of hunger, those who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and those who received excessively harsh punishment for minor offenses in the force of the repressive nature of legislation. The final figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes in this regard that if the count of victims of repression has been carried out since 1921, this means that it is not Stalin who is responsible for a significant part of the crimes, but the “Leninist Guard”, which immediately after October revolution launched terror against the White Guards, clergy and kulaks.
How to count?
Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the method of counting. If we take into account those convicted only on political charges, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, given in 1988, the Soviet bodies (VChK, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB) arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot.
Employees of the Memorial Society, when counting the victims of political trials, are close to these figures, although their data is still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were executed. If we consider everyone who went through the Gulag system as victims of the Stalinist regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will range from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often, Stalin’s repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of the “Great Terror,” which peaked in 1937-1938. According to the commission led by academician Pyotr Pospelov to establish the causes of mass repressions, the following figures were announced: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activity, of which 681,692 thousand were sentenced to capital punishment.
One of the most authoritative experts on the demographic aspects of political repression in the USSR, historian Viktor Zemskov, names a smaller number of those convicted during the years of the “Great Terror” - 1,344,923 people, although his data coincides with the number of those executed.
If dispossessed people are included in the number of those subjected to repression during Stalin’s time, the figure will increase by at least 4 million people. The same Zemskov cites this number of dispossessed people. The Yabloko party agrees with this, noting that about 600 thousand of them died in exile.
Representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forced deportation also became victims of Stalin's repressions - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars. Many historians agree that the total number of deportees is about 6 million people, while about 1.2 million people did not live to see the end of the journey.
To trust or not?
The above figures are mostly based on reports from the OGPU, NKVD, and MGB. However, not all documents of the punitive departments have been preserved; many of them were purposefully destroyed, and many are still in restricted access.
It should be recognized that historians are very dependent on statistics collected by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only those officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to verify it from primary sources only in the rarest cases.
An acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to name radically different figures in favor of their position. “If the “right” exaggerated the scale of the repressions, then the “left”, partly out of dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, hastened to make them public and did not always ask themselves the question of whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives, – notes historian Nikolai Koposov.
It can be stated that estimates of the scale of Stalin’s repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in federal archives would be a good help for modern researchers, but many of them were re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.
Loading...
