Memoirs of former employees of the Cheka NKVD. List of main executioners - camp commanders

Mikhail Pavlovich Schrader

NKVD from the inside. Notes of a security officer

Introduction

From the publisher

The author of the memoirs, M.P. Schrader, worked in the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD system for about twenty years: starting from civil war and up to 1938 inclusive. He held various positions in the central apparatus of the OGPU-NKVD, served in some regional departments, and in 1938 he was appointed to the post of Deputy Minister of the NKVD of the Kazakh SSR. In the same year he was arrested on the direct orders of Yezhov.

Due to his official position, for many years the author was associated with a huge number of people whose activities directly influenced the life of the country as a whole. Describing his life in detail, the author gives the reader a rare opportunity to see from the inside the Stalinist punitive machine through the eyes of a man who himself was an integral part of this machine and looked through it from top to bottom: literally - from the execution basements to Beria’s office. Moving after the author inside the repressive system, the reader has the opportunity to see the work of the “organs” not just in any particular period, but in the historical dynamics of many pre-war years. Specifically, this means that you can observe how the punitive machine was programmed, debugged, improved, how it was tested in “trial” launches before it was launched at full speed, how it forced out from within and replaced Soviet, party and economic structures, taking it into its own hands all the functions of state control and management, and, finally, how, having become absolutely closed and virtually uncontrollable - a “state within a state” - it began to work for itself and went into chaos...

There is no exaggeration in all of the above.

Before us is a unique testimony, one of a kind. It was also unique because such a “leak” of information should not have happened: the system destroyed witnesses of this rank - “its own” - with special care. People who, like M.P. Schrader held quite high positions in the central apparatus of the NKVD and in the regions (at the level of heads of regional departments and their deputies), usually they were shot without trial in the basements of those prisons where the investigation was carried out. The author survived thanks to an incredible coincidence of circumstances.

Many years ago, several books were published in the West written by former Chekist defectors. But in those days, evidence of this kind could not have a significant resonance: German fascism, much more open in all its manifestations, in pre-war years attracted much more attention than the secretly tortured Soviet people. And the stories of the fugitives did not contain the professional completeness of information that M.P. possessed. Schneider thrown into the millstones of the Stalin-Yezhov mill.

Today's reader is already armed with some historical completeness of a view of the thirties. Today, the testimony of M.P. Schneider helps to understand not only the features of the Stalinist punitive machine, but also the structural nature of totalitarianism in general, when the very concepts of “state” and “repressive system” essentially become identical. Suffice it to say that after Yezhov’s appearance in the leadership of the NKVD, not a single secretary of the regional committee, not a single chairman of the regional executive committee, not a single leader of a republican scale was appointed to a position without the prior consent of the head of the regional (or republican) department of the NKVD (which, of course, did not at all guarantee personal safety for the manager from the same repressive authorities).

A thoughtful reader will certainly pay attention to the fact that the number of “enemies of the people” was already planned in advance at the center in 1936, after which the “exposure” program was expanded to the republics, territories and regions and became mandatory for execution. There were (under Yezhov) pre-established limits on executions without trial. This meant that the head of the regional department of the NKVD, at his discretion, had the right to shoot hundreds of people without trial. “Over-fulfillment” was actively encouraged (cash bonuses, orders, promotions). What in the eyes of an innocent person appeared as pure absurdity (and this gave many arrested people hope that the absurdity would quickly come to light and the innocent person would be released), inside the punitive machine turned out to be a logically complete and well-thought-out system of incentives and rewards. As a result, all incentives came down to one thing: destruction for the sake of destruction... The reader will probably also remember the fact that gas gas machines, which were written about in our post-war literature as one of the most inhuman inventions of fascism, were used by domestic executioners (in the same Ivanovo, for example) long before the war with the Nazis.

Let us not, however, get ahead of events. Let us only note that the author was a man of his time. Like millions of his peers, whose worldview was formed in the years of revolutionary youth, he was not able to understand all the utopianism and historical futility of Bolshevik ideas and perceived everything he saw and wrote about as a distortion of these ideas. Subconsciously, he stood in the position of “revolutionary legal consciousness”, the measure of which - in the absence of an elementary legal framework in the state - was considered to be “honest professionalism”. In other words, he did not recognize “false” cases and the people who fabricated such cases before his eyes. He does not deal with “enemies of the people” and does not “drive linden.” He is engaged in his direct business: the fight against criminal crime, which grew by leaps and bounds during the years of mass repression. But the police, which in those years were an integral part of the Ministry of State Security, did not play an independent role. The author, for moral and professional reasons at his official level, forbade his subordinates to engage in activities unusual for them, and this contradicted the program, but which the punitive machine was already working on.

However, today we (giving the author his due) certainly perceive this aspect, which is extremely important for the author, as subjective. The objective value, as was noted at the beginning, lies elsewhere: in the stunning completeness of information that even today, sixty years after the events described, researchers are extracting bit by bit from the most secret and seemingly forever hidden from society archives...

In conclusion, a few words about future fate author.

In 1940 he was transferred to a camp. When the war with Nazi Germany began, he wrote dozens of letters asking to be sent to the front. Eventually, with the rank of private, he found himself at the forefront.

M.P. Schrader died in the seventies, leaving a very voluminous manuscript about his life. “Return” considered it expedient to first publish that part of the memoirs that describes the events of the thirties.

A letter from the artist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from a Mordovian colony about the unbearable conditions of detention of Russian women in prisons and colonies caused consternation among the public: it turns out that the damned Gulag Archipelago has not gone away, it turns out that the NKVD’s methods of using slave labor of prisoners are still in force. And this is not just an exaggeration. Today, Istoricheskaya Pravda publishes the memoirs of several prisoners of the Stalinist Gulag, collected in the archives of the A.D. Center. Sakharov. It seems like many of these stories were written just yesterday.

Valentina Yasnopolskaya: “The girl decided to fight the GPU!”

Valentina Yasnopolskaya. Born in 1904. She worked in Leningrad as an economist in the Main Telegraph Directorate. Arrested in 1930 in the case of the “anti-Soviet monarchical center True Orthodox Church.” Verdict of the OGPU board: 3 years in the camps.

...I was taken to Kresty, but it turned out that this was only a men’s prison and there were no women’s cells in it. Again - the “black raven” and the internal prison of the GPU on Shpalernaya Street. There I was received by a seemingly very angry and noisy matron, nicknamed “granny.” When she was on duty, her scream could be heard in all the corridors. The usual thorough search at reception followed, during which they stripped naked. “Take off the cross,” she commanded. I prayed: “Leave me the cross.” “Take off, don’t talk,” she shouted angrily. Having finished writing, the grandmother led me away, as if forgetting about the cross, and I entered the prison gates, rejoicing that the cross remained on me.

They brought me to a common cell designed for 15-17 people, in which there were 45 prisoners. The cell had its own warden, and a strict order was observed when placing people. The newcomers lay down in a small free area near the toilet and then, as places became available, they moved further; the old-timers reached the bed. I got to the bed, or rather the board placed on the ledges between the two beds, two and a half months later, before transferring alone. But that wasn't what was scary. Terrible was the grief and suffering of innocent people, mothers who left their infants at home, people guilty only of being born to unsuitable parents. There were also criminals in the cell, but they were a minority, and mostly the Petrograd intelligentsia languished there, people of great culture of spirit, in whose presence, despite their usual restraint and unpretentiousness, the criminals and uncultured inhabitants did not dare to curse or be rude, feeling them spiritual superiority and unwittingly submitting to it.

After being transferred to this cell, interrogations began, always at night. I had no fear of the investigators, but only bitterness caused by the suffering of innocent people. I thought that one day I too would be taken to execution, but I would not die in silence, but would say everything I thought about the executioners. “You were like a little animal,” the investigator later told me.

The first investigator was Makarov. He charged me under Article 58, paragraphs 10 and 11, which meant “counter-revolutionary organization and agitation.” “Where did I campaign?” - I asked. “Well, they could have done it on the trams,” he replied matter-of-factly. After each of my answers to subsequent similar questions, he buried his nose in his papers and muttered: “Yes, you are well savvy.” He was soon replaced by a second investigator, Medvedev. This one made it clear that Makarov was promoted from the workers, and he was from higher education. But he had no more intelligence. There was talk of some large counter-revolutionary organization in which, according to the investigator, I played a prominent role, and I was required to talk about it in detail and name all the participants. From Medvedev’s statements I remember the statement that in 10-15 years we will have no believers left and everyone will forget about religion.

One of the following nights, I was taken to a huge office No. 16, on the door of which hung a sign “Head of the Special Department of the Leningrad GPU.” I was met by a tall, intelligent-looking man, Rudkovsky, who immediately started yelling at me: “The girl decided to fight the GPU. We will take us by storm." He subsequently told me that two previous investigators refused to work with me, “and I took on you because my reputation was too strong.” (Apparently, this should have been understood in such a way that a possible failure in “working” with me would not shake his reputation.)

On November 9, 1931, late in the evening, we, surrounded by a dense ring of convoy, were taken to the Finland Station. It was raining and the mud squelched underfoot. When they approached the Neva, one of the prisoners broke out and threw himself into the river. We were ordered: “Lie down with your face to the ground.” We fell into mud and water. They said that this unfortunate man was hacked to death in the river with swords. Panic began again at the station. One prisoner was missing. And suddenly it turned out that we were talking about me. Among the noise and screaming, I heard my last name, which does not have a generic ending, and only with difficulty in this panic did I manage to prove that it was me, a woman, and not a man. Finally we were put into the so-called Stolypin carriages. These are compartment-type carriages, but only the doors from the compartments to the corridor are covered with bars, as are the windows in the corridor. Light still passes through the dense window grille, but it is impossible to see what is happening outside the window. In the compartment the windows are in the form of small slits.

In the first compartment they placed me and two other elderly women - members of the church twenty. The men were taken to the rest. There were so many of them that they probably had to take turns sitting. These were persons of clergy rank. Everyone is in priestly robes. It was the Petrograd Church. Probably none of them returned. At least none of those I knew returned.

When the train started moving, they sang the Great Doxology. But they were quickly silenced.

In the morning, one of the guards moved the bars and opened the window into the corridor opposite my compartment, and I saw Pines (I deliberately write with a capital letter). After almost a year spent in prison, I became very homesick for nature. Several more times I asked to open the window and enjoyed the view of the forest: apparently, I was caught in the wind and got sick. “I kept looking at the pine trees,” I heard the guards talking. Their compartment was next to mine. The Russian soul is very multifaceted. These guards were also executioners, and when I asked them how they could shoot defenseless people, they answered: “Since they were sentenced, it means they deserved it.” And at the same time, these same people showed so much care and even tenderness towards me, especially when I got sick. “And what is she for?” - everyone asked my neighbors.

I was getting worse. Heat. Coughing. There was obvious pneumonia. Of course, there was no question of any bed or blanket. The guards raised the alarm and reported to their superiors. In the nearest city, Vologda, it seems, they called a doctor to determine whether I could continue. The doctor diagnosed pneumonia and said: “Of course, in such conditions you cannot follow, but if you are removed, then you will end up in a transit prison, where all the sick, including typhoid ones, are lying on the floor in straw, and there your faithful death, but here your young body may be able to survive. I will report to your superiors as you wish.” And I asked him to tell me that I could move on. Exactly the same conversation happened with a doctor in the next big city.

One of the hardships of the stage was the lack of water. They gave herring for the road, which everyone pounced on after the boring prison cabbage soup. I, no matter how great the temptation, fortunately, refused it. People were suffering from thirst, drank all the water in the toilets, came to us from other cars in search of water... And on the table of the guards there was a decanter of water, but they did not drink it themselves and answered all requests: “No, that’s water for ours.” doves."

At intermediate stations it was forbidden to take raw water and they promised boiled water only in Perm. Finally, through the crack from my compartment I see the bridge over the Kama and the station big city. The guards run with buckets, but soon return without water. “It’s not Perma, it’s Reyam station,” I hear. Through my crack I saw that the name of the station was written in Latin letters - “PERM” (at that time Perm was the capital of the Zyryan Republic). I quickly called the guards and explained to them that this was Perm. “And we are heaving, for some reason “I” have my foot in the wrong direction,” and they ran for water.

(...) The Usolsky camp was created to provide labor for the construction of a number of factories in the Urals, primarily a large soda plant (this was the “building of socialism,” as my investigator said). Our group got there at a favorable moment, shortly after the audit, as a result of which the terribly cruel camp commander Stukolov was removed. He ordered prisoners who displeased him to be hanged right at the entrance to the barracks, and the corpses of the unfortunates hung at the doors for many days. His other favorite pastime was the “perch”. In the winter, in thirty-degree frost, the unfortunate man, undressed, was seated on a pole fixed between the walls in a cold barn for the whole night. The guards made sure that he did not jump off or fall. The man, of course, died. Thus, everyone still remembered the death of an intelligent Muscovite, punished for the fact that during a performance in the camp theater, she, as a prompter, sat down so poorly that a piece of her white scarf could be seen from the prompter’s booth. Much was also said about Stukolov’s cruelty. In the end, a commission was appointed to investigate and it was removed.

Upon arrival at the camp, all our things were immediately taken away for disinfection, and we were sent to the bathhouse. Instead of our clothes, they gave us some shirts and skirts in the form of bags, which we had to hold with our hands so that they did not fall off.

Do not forget the sorrowful face of the priest from Bobruisk, where my parents lived then, who recognized me and came up to me. Simeon Biryukovich. He sadly pointed at his shaved face and head. I didn't see him again. I immediately went to the hospital, and he, apparently, went with other prisoners to the Vishera camp: in winter, in severe frost, he had to walk 60 kilometers. There he died.

The women, my companions in the carriage, later told me that in the few days before the departure of the train he kept asking about me, but they avoided him, since in the camps communication between men and women is prohibited.

After the bath, I was pushed into some room where there was a table and a stool in front of it. I sat on it, put my head on the table and immediately fell asleep. When I woke up, I found a scarf on my head; Above him, several women were scratching their heads, and insects were falling on me. My head was under the lamp, and that's why they chose it. I screamed in horror: “What are you doing?” They calmly replied: “Don’t worry, they won’t come to you, they know their own.” And indeed, I later did not find a single alien in myself. Then I found myself in a barracks, where there were two-story bunks on both sides of the passage. I was shown a place in the front corner at the very top.

A new stage of my life was beginning. Even earlier, I firmly decided to go the whole way of a Russian convict without any allowance for age or health. Although I felt completely sick, after all the troubles I had experienced, I fell asleep. At 4 o'clock in the morning there was a wake-up call. I stood up, ready to begin my hard labor journey, observing from the height of the bunk what was happening in the barracks. Amid the noise and uproar, foreman Katya tried to distribute the barracks' inhabitants into teams in order to send them to work on the construction of a plant located a few kilometers from the camp.

“Oh, new girl,” Katya cried out when she saw me, “get up for work,” and she went to my bunk. “What’s on your neck?” she asked. “Cross,” I answered. "Show me." I showed. Katya didn’t say anything, and I started to get down from the bunk to go to work. Katya took out decent felt boots from somewhere and handed them to me, but they were immediately intercepted - I didn’t even have time to touch them. Katya shook her head, but without saying a word, she brought me others, older and larger. I got down from the bunk and immediately coughed violently. “Yes, you’re sick,” said Katya. - No, I won’t hire you. Go to the doctor". A doctor, also a prisoner, was somewhere nearby, he confirmed pneumonia, and I was sent to the hospital.

Two elderly inhabitants of the barracks told me later: “How stupid you are, you immediately took and showed the cross. We had to hide it." I was probably stupid then, but if I had hidden it, they would have torn it off me anyway at night or pulled it out, and so those around me seemed to recognize my right to wear a cross. Subsequently, when, out of pity, they wanted to give me, as a “literate” person, an easier, “cultural and educational” job, there was always someone who said: “But what about, she’s wearing a cross?” But no one ever demanded that it be removed. Only an elderly, intelligent-looking Moscow poetess performed during the New Year’s concert with the poem “The Economist with a Cross.” But the poem did not make much of an impression. Later, some kind of misfortune happened to this poetess, I helped her, and we became friends, but we didn’t remember the poem.

The hospital consisted of two wards - men's and women's - and was located in a separate barracks. The medical staff consisted of a physician and two nannies. Lekpom, as it turned out later, had no medical education; It was simply easier to live at the hospital than to go to physical work every day. He knew how to do some things: for example, place cups and even give intravenous infusions, and most importantly, he tried to help the sick, and when they brought frostbitten people, he himself gave them hot baths and provided other assistance within his power. He offered me an intravenous infusion of salvarsan84, saying that this would immediately help me a lot. I had no idea what it was then, and I agreed.

The girl lying next to me asked me: “Are you taking a course here?” I replied that no, that I had pneumonia. “Yes, but are you taking the course here?” - she did not let up. I told her everything, that my sentence was three years, that I was from Leningrad, but she kept going on and on about some kind of course. Finally she couldn’t stand it and exclaimed: “What a stupid thing!” - and named a certain disease, a course of treatment for which they were all taking here. I didn’t know then that the majority of prisoners in the women’s barracks were prostitutes. Not long ago there was a cleansing of the cities, and they were all expelled from there. Among them there were many patients with occupational diseases. Another challenge was the nanny - a simple nun. She came up to me, began to peer at me intently and suddenly clasped her hands: “But you are of the royal family!” I again began to prove that I was from Leningrad, that I was a prisoner, that I had a three-year sentence. She didn’t want to hear anything and kept repeating: “Don’t say, anyone who looks at you will immediately say that you belong to the royal family.” In the Urals, where the camp was located, the memory of the death was still alive royal family, and the people could not come to terms with the death of innocent children. There were many legends about their rescue.

A thin wall separated the women's ward from the men's, from which wild screams could be heard from time to time. Lekpom explained that it was a prisoner screaming with a very heavy neurological disease causing severe pain. He, suffering from pneumonia, was forced to play in another performance at a temperature of 40 degrees, and as a result he received a new complication. At this time, another, very weak, voice was heard: “I hear intelligent speech. Tell my relatives in Moscow how I died here.” Unfortunately, I didn't remember his last name. But I myself had no hopes of getting to Moscow. I thought my life was over.

* * *
Irina Piotrovskaya - Yankovskaya: “The investigator took the bottle and hit me on the head: “Here’s the truth!”

Irina Piotrovskaya - Yankovskaya. Born in 1924 in the city of Saratov. In 1941, she was arrested following a denunciation by a classmate for reading Yesenin’s “counter-revolutionary” poem (“Return to the Motherland”).

The investigation lasted a very long time, seven months. They beat us, beat us, they pierced my head, I still have a scar here, my teeth were knocked out. I couldn’t stand it and said: “Lord, but is there some kind of truth?!” And the investigator had such a large bottle, like a champagne bottle, with Borjomi, wrapped in the Pravda newspaper. That was the last thing I heard. Lost consciousness. After that, I was not called in for questioning for several days. I was in prison, where there were a lot of all sorts of so-called “Trotskyists” who had been imprisoned since 1937 (all Moscow prisons were evacuated to Saratov during the war), and they prepared me a lot. They advised me how to behave: I don’t know, I didn’t hear, I didn’t see, I won’t sign anything, I can’t “work” with this investigator. That's what I did. I come in so important, covered in bruises, silent. "Why are you silent?" “I won’t work with you and I need a prosecutor.” The investigator invited the prosecutor. Comes: “Did you call me?” "Yes! Look at me, what did my investigator turn me into?! You see that he’s beating me!” “Does it hit?” "Yes. He broke his head and needed stitches.” The prosecutor says: “Give it!” and extends his hand to the investigator. He gives me a document signed by the guards, which states that I fell down the stairs. Then I realized that everything was useless. The investigator comes up to me and says: “Well, don’t you like Soviet power?” I say: “Go to hell with your power!” Oh, he was so happy! I wrote everything down right away, I signed that I said it. This was included as a red line in my accusation.

We were tried by a military tribunal, a terrible thing! They divided us into groups. Four or five boys and me: this was our “terrorist group.” At the trial they brought charges: an attempt on the life of one of the leaders of the state (that is, Stalin). Tolya Grigoriev was given the death penalty and was shot. The boys were all given 10 years, I was given five.

We were building some kind of Stalingrad railway, carried stones. We were not fed at all. They gave us some kind of gruel and we were all “goons”. People fell and died from powerlessness. Then they didn’t take us out of the zone anymore. And after another fall, I was given easy work.

In the zone, dead naked bodies of Germans were stacked in stacks. The corpses of German soldiers had to be loaded onto a cart (cart) drawn by two oxen, taken to a dug trench and dumped there. The norm was established - three trips per day.

And so, when I was unloading these light, completely dried corpses (I tried to very carefully remove them from the cart and push them into the trench with a plank), my Budenovka fell into the trench. I couldn’t get it out of the trench, I was scared to climb there, and they wrote down a “promo” for me: the loss of government-issued uniform.

In the camp we were divided into brigades according to article criteria. I ended up in a brigade of intellectuals. Everyone was very weakened; they did not have the strength to perform even moderately heavy work. But doing nothing was impossible, and we were forced to do aimless work that could not be explained by common sense.

We had food pots tied to our belts. We were forced to spend the whole day collecting pebbles around the zone in these pots and pouring them into a pile. The next day, these pebbles were scattered throughout the zone, and we were again forced to collect them and pour them into a pile, and then transfer them to another pile, which was located a few meters from the first...

A stream flowed through the zone. They blocked it with a plank and forced them to scoop up water with pots on one side, carry it and pour it out on the other side. Moreover, they put marks: take water here, and here, after passing through the board, pour it out.

My health was deteriorating every day. I began to have unbearable headaches again, and the scar on my head that I received during the interrogation began to fester. I was sent to the camp hospital, where the general practitioner was prisoner Elena Vladimirovna Bonch-Bruevich. She treated me and treated me very well, and even wrote a letter to my mother that she raised me well and that, having fallen into such horror, I remained the well-bred girl that I was before. She fed me, and I began to get better. In addition, she taught me to understand medicines, she wanted to make me something like a nurse, a physician! I was still listed as sick, but I helped her, and was already on duty as an evening nurse.

One summer, walking past a morgue that was closing for the night, I heard a knock coming from the morgue. The orderly and I went to the morgue; I was afraid alone. We open the door, and there, completely naked, but for some reason wearing glasses and with a tag already attached to his leg, stands a Leningrader - Koshkadamov... He rushes towards us and shouts: “Again they took me off the payroll, again they didn’t leave me any rations!” This is not the first time he has come to life in the morgue, and he no longer cares that he is among the dead. He has only one thought: he was taken off his pay, and this is worse than death.

How did those still alive end up in the morgue? Most of us were all “pellagriks.” Pellagra is a wasting disease. The exhaustion of the body was such that the pulse was completely inaudible and in such a situation the orderly’s command is enough: a-a-a! ...drag, drag...

* * *
Nina Gagen-Thorn: “It is easier to save the life of the weak”


Nina Gagen-Thorn. Born in St. Petersburg in 1901. She graduated from St. Petersburg University and worked at the Academy of Sciences (ethnographer). Arrested in 1936 in the “Academy of Sciences case.” Sentence: 10 years in camps.

Profit by stage. Released for divorce. The fat worker came out with a list. They started calling out names: “Get your things together!”

Stage?! Where?.. They ran around the camp: they pulled laundry from the lines, looked for their saucepans, shook out their bags and beds. Gray-haired Valeria Rudolfovna, in her white socks and a neat blouse, hurriedly tied up the parcel, Nadya Lobova helped her. Our entire group and many more of the previous ones were called.

There was a line at the storeroom; they were renting out beds. Everything in the barracks is torn apart. They hit the gate rail: gathering!

Behind the gate there are arrows with shepherd dogs on a leash. They started calling out names: “First name, patronymic? Year of birth? Term? Article?"

We were taken to the bathhouse along a wide road lined with trees. She's not heated hot water no, but it’s not winter! We are glad to have water to wash away the dust, we are glad to sit on the damp wood of the benches, to dip our sore feet in the water. Someone is already laughing, happily splashing water. We wash ourselves.

- Well, come out! Sanitary examination! Get in line in the waiting room!

- Where are the things and the clothes?

- They’ll examine you, then get dressed. They'll bring it cooked... Form up!

A hundred naked people line up women's bodies. Those who didn’t think to take towels with them are wet.

The commission is underway. A gray-haired major with sunken cheeks in a casually thrown white robe. A fat woman, also in a white robe. Without dressing gowns: the head of the regime, an orderly with a folder of papers.

Women are confused:

- Let me get dressed! How are we naked!

- I told you, a health check... Doctors.

- But these aren’t doctors here!.. The orderly, the shooter is at the door!

- No one will jinx you... You need to register... Stand up!

Bodies: young - girls', women's - with long sacks of breasts that sag from thinness, old women's, yellowing with wrinkles. Long-haired people try to cover their chests with their hair, the girls’ cheeks glow. Old women are indifferently submissive.

The major walks along the line, quickly looking at the bodies. Selects goods - for production, to the sewing room! To the agricultural sector! In the zone! In hospital! The contractor writes down the names.

We didn’t know then why young and healthy people needed to work in the sewing shop. Then we realized: the conditions were such that within a year or two even healthy people fell ill with tuberculosis.

It is easier for the weak to keep alive in the camps: bad goods are consumed less - turnuts are used as guards or orderlies. Look, a person has adapted and will survive. A strong, healthy workforce entered the meat grinder of production and was ground up.

After the first round, I was a mediocre commodity, almost not worth attention. (...)

There are 12 barracks in the zone. Dining room, bathhouse, hospital, storeroom, management office. At the end of the zone there is a separate part: a garment factory. It has a special entrance with a watchman. Only production workers are allowed in and out of there. They sit for 10 hours, sewing parts together on a conveyor belt. They go out in formation for lunch, for dinner, and after dinner - to their barracks. Their barracks are located right next to the factory. They are considered the best, they were “created” there living conditions": the bunk linings are not so crowded; there is a bedside table for every two people. The table in the middle of the barracks is covered with a white tablecloth, and there are gauze curtains on the windows. Only there is no one except the orderly to sit at this table: after returning from work, having washed in the washroom, the girls collapse on their bunks from fatigue.

We, the camp servants, cleaned the area at the production site. It was a cleanup day - to clear the land of debris, dig up the beds, and plant flowers along the three buildings of the garment factory.

I entered the building: the same wooden barracks, no different from residential ones. Long tables in two rows. On the tables - sewing machines. The machines are placed in a row with a density that allows you to turn the handle and throw back the stitched part to your neighbor: a sleeve, a pocket, a collar.

Under the low ceiling, bright lamps blind the eyes. Cars rumble. The air is full of dust and small fibers from quilted peacoats. It's hard to breathe. There is no time to breathe, the conveyor belt is moving, demanding norms, norms, norms. If it is not completed within 10 hours, it is left for another hour or two. In case of systematic failure to comply, a penalty ration is imposed: the ration of bread is reduced, the second course is removed. For overfulfillment, they promise to give a day off at the end of the month, to organize a “dance with the boys” - to bring under escort those who also exceeded the norm to the furniture factory from the men’s camp.

And how tempting this opportunity is for many. Meet with prisoners from another zone! Find out news, maybe see a brother, a groom, whose trace has been lost. Maybe just forget yourself, dancing to the accordion. No person can survive without a moment of joy, just as no person can survive without food and drink. Minutes of laughter are physiologically necessary. The camp management understands this: in order for the girls to work well, they allow amateur performance evenings - this way they can exceed the plan.

Two hundred girls are ground in a meat grinder that takes 10 to 12 hours of hard work. They are compressed into a mass controlled by someone else's will. Deprived of relatives, movement, freedom, thrown into terrible loneliness and melancholy. If you completely deprive them of entertainment, they will become sluggish in their work, and the factory’s plan will fail. The management announces: at the end of the month, if the plan is exceeded, there will be a day off.

The girls work until they faint, pushing each other on - they overfulfill. Sometimes they are deceived, they are not given a day off, sometimes they are given.

The men come in formation, stomping with heavy boots, under escort. There is a stage in the camp canteen. A curtain made of activated blankets is decorated with appliqués by artists who participated in amateur performances.

They move tables away and put benches in rows. The guard orders the men to sit on one side of the aisle, and the women on the other side: just like in church once upon a time. Both perform in turn. The male choir sings. Low male voices sound booming and strange, hitting the dark ceiling of the dining room. We are unaccustomed to hearing men's speech and seeing men's faces. They are looking at us. There is tenderness in their eyes. “Poor girls, it’s hard for them,” someone whispers. And the girls’ hearts pierce: patched padded jackets, shaved heads, washed-out pants: “You guys, lads!”

A women's choir rings with tears and sings Ukrainian songs. Men's faces frown with pity. There is a silent conversation.

Sometimes the favor of the authorities follows - dancing. There is no silent communication here: you can talk, pass notes, there is a camp post office that carries news hundreds of kilometers away.

- Get in line!

The button accordion breaks. The gray-black figures of men form a formation, stomping along the road through the watch, to their zone.

- Goodbye!

Such meetings happened in the first half of our stay in the 6th camp department. At that time, a men's camp and a furniture factory were just beginning to be built nearby. Before they had time to build the dining room, the men were led into ours in formation after the women had dined.

(...) Women who could not be used at work, but who could move on their own, filled a huge barrack, as we called it - the barracks of “young people” (from 60 to 80 years old). There they swarmed. Sitting on the bunks next to each other, sometimes they did not notice each other - a person is not noticeable in a crowd. Sometimes quarrels broke out: there was shouting and cursing over a thrown shoe, a lost rag, a broken spoon. Screams fell and they talked peacefully again. Some were crying quietly. They consoled, sighed, shook their heads. The other one got sick. The neighbors hobbled after the doctor. They whispered: the heart stops completely.

Somewhere an angry woman was grumbling:

- Stops? He's playing the fool! Everything hurts for me too, I’m silent.

- What are you, what are you!.. It’s a sin to say that! If we don’t feel sorry for each other, who will feel sorry for us?

The bell will ring for lunch in their barracks (after the workers). They will stretch from the barracks to the dining room: old women, old women, old women. Three hundred: shaking their heads, watering eyes, wrinkles moving; crooked, moving with crutches and sticks. Almost blind people are led by the hand.

A terrible procession from Goya's fantasies?

No, living reality: a system of “enemies of the people” serving their sentences.

Here are the enemies: the 80-year-old abbess of the monastery is sitting on a stool. She hardly recognizes anyone, doesn’t remember. Silently dozing. (...)

Here is a former ballerina:

“I studied together with Kshesinskaya, I got better grades than her at school,” she says, wiping her black, watery eyes; her hands and legs are trembling, but, remembering, she grins coquettishly.

And a strong 70-year-old woman in a good cloth scarf says: “They brought me to court: “Guilty of anti-Soviet activities.” They gave 25 years. I bowed to the judges and said: “Thank you! I’ll serve as long as I live, and I’ll leave the rest to you, sons.” They didn’t want to do that: they changed the sentence to ten.

* * *
Anna Larina: “I know what it’s like to be the wife of a publicly cursed husband...”


Anna Larina. Born in 1914. Wife of N.I. Bukharin. Arrested in 1937 as ChSIR - “a member of the family of a traitor to the Motherland.” Sentence: 8 years in camps.

On the second day after my arrival at the camp, they gathered “ordinary” ChSIRs in a circle in front of the barracks, put me and Yakir’s wife in the center of the circle, and the chief, who came from the Gulag (Main Administration of the Camps), shouted at the top of his voice: “You see these women, these are wives worst enemies people; they helped the enemies of the people in their treacherous activities, but here, you see, they are still snorting, they don’t like everything, everything is wrong for them.” Yes, we didn’t even have time to snort, although no one could like it there. We were even relatively pleased that after a long painful stage and transit prisons we had finally (as we thought) reached our destination.

Having furiously shouted these terrible words, the healthy, red-cheeked, self-satisfied chief headed towards the gates of the Tomsk prison. The prisoners dispersed in horror. There were those who began to shun us, but the majority were indignant. Shocked, we could not move - it felt as if we had been let through a gauntlet. So we stood in a daze in the forty-degree frost, until someone took us to the barracks, to our cold corner by the window, overgrown with thick terry snow. The two-story bunks were crammed with women. The night is a complete torment: few people managed to get comfortable, almost everyone lay on their side, and when they wanted to change their position, they had to wake up their neighbor to turn over at the same time, and a chain reaction of universal awakening began.

On this day, the barracks looked like a torn up beehive. Everyone was excitedly discussing what had happened. Others were angry: “What these Bukharins and Yakirs have done, and our husbands and we are suffering because of them.” The rest scolded the boss from the Gulag, and many advised us to write a complaint to Moscow, but we understood that this was useless.

In the morning, Sarra Lazarevna and I left the musty barracks and went into the zone to take our minds off our thoughts and get some air. In the frosty haze the crimson-bloody Siberian sun shone (the sun is like this for war, the women said) and the snow, which right next to the fence, where no one had gone before (it was forbidden to go there), retained its virgin purity, slightly blushed. At the corners of the fence, hastily knocked together from slabs, there were towers, from where the guards on duty watched us (they were also called shooters), and if we approached the fence a little closer, a cry was immediately heard: “Stop! Who goes?" The road leading from the squalid barracks to the kitchen became the only route and was always full of women. The faces of many were marked with bewilderment, fear and suffering. Jokingly, we called this road “Nevsky Prospekt” (there were many Leningraders among us) or “the main street in a mad panic.” In order not to freeze, crowds of unfortunate people ran along it. Most are in torn padded jackets and cold boots. Those who were arrested in the summer covered themselves with camp cloth blankets, replacing skirts or scarves. (...)

Anna Bukharina-Larina in the 70s.

In the camp, the women languished from both appalling conditions and idleness. There was no work. They did not provide books or newspapers. Later, many were sent threads for knitting and embroidery in parcels. Ukrainian women were especially distinguished; their handicrafts were worthy of art exhibitions.

The busiest place was the area near the kitchen. Work was in full swing there: they carried out barrels of gruel and porridge, sawed and chopped wood, the saw hummed and the ax clattered. The lively, sharp-eyed Tanya Izvekova was particularly adroit. ex-wife Lazar Shatskin, organizer of the Komsomol, beloved, authoritative, intellectual leader of the Komsomol in the first years of the Revolution. In the cold, logs fell with a ringing sound from under the ax. People always gathered around the workers to help. Optimists brought joyful “parashas” (rumors - in camp jargon): there will be an amnesty for the New Year, an amnesty for May 1, and definitely for Stalin’s birthday.

Dean's working kitchen will forever remain in my memory. She was an exception among us. A double injustice was committed against her. Dina not only was not the wife of a “traitor to the Motherland,” but at the time of her arrest she was not married at all. A woman of strong build, a former Odessa loader. Dina separated from her husband many years before her arrest. He was also a port worker then. Only during the investigation did Dina find out that her ex-husband then occupied a high position in some city. He never let her know about himself. Dina was a proud woman, she did not look for her husband and raised her children without receiving a penny from her father. She did not bother about divorce either. This circumstance drove Dina into a trap. No explanations during the investigation helped.

In Tomsk, Dina was used as a draft force - she replaced the horse. We received food from the Tomsk prison. Dina's duties included loading food onto a cart and delivering it to the kitchen. She brought potatoes, cabbage, cereals and meat carcasses - so skinny, as if this unfortunate beast had been raised especially for us.

Our delicious food L.K. Shaposhnikova felt hot and cold: she didn’t know how to feed all of us with such food - cabbage and potatoes were frozen. But her organizational skills showed up here too. One day she came to our barracks and said:

- Girls! - that’s what she called all women, regardless of age. “I came up with this: nothing good will come of this meat anyway, it will be gruel with frozen potatoes without any fat.” Let's, while it's freezing, collect these carcasses in a week and by Sunday we'll prepare a real meat soup, and maybe even a cutlet. Do you agree?

- We agree, we agree! - everyone shouted in unison. They did the same in other barracks; there were, it seems, eight of them. On Sunday we really got good soup and a small cutlet. But preparing such a dinner, as it turned out, was very difficult, and, despite the huge number of free hands, the work turned out to be difficult: the kitchen could not accommodate so many “cooks”. And the experiment was never repeated, at least in front of me.

The Sverdlovsk transfer differed from others in that the prisoners were no longer placed in the cells either on the bunks, or under the bunks, or between the bunks - so we were accommodated in the corridor. The corridor is not wide, bright, since there were no “muzzles” on the windows, and very cold. Sarra Lazarevna Yakir and I sat down on the floor, laying down Nikolai Ivanovich’s flannelette blanket, and covered ourselves with a warmer, woolen one from Yakirov. A crazy Leningrad woman was lying next to me. She would either sit down and silently tear at her black winter coat, tearing it into small ribbons, plucking out the batting, then suddenly suddenly raise a cry throughout the entire corridor: “They killed Sergei Mironovich, they killed them, they killed us all, we’re still sitting!”... By nightfall she calmed down, At night she had another occupation: she pulled lice out of her head, which was not difficult for her - there were such huge numbers of them. He puts his hand into his head and the catch is guaranteed. She sprinkled lice on my head, saying: “Everyone equally, everyone equally, let’s go to communism.”

In the corridor of the Sverdlovsk transfer station, an ancient old woman caught my attention. She sat quietly, looking at everyone carefully from the height of her old wisdom. Speckled with wrinkles, like baked apple, tiny, dried out, incomprehensibly clean for prison conditions, in a snow-white lace cap that sat neatly on her head, she took up the least space of all. I heard her voice for the first time when she turned to the lung doctor (a nurse - usually one of the household workers who got a job in a “warm” place, who knew nothing about medicine, but who provided light medical care; criminals more often called it “lepok” for ease of pronunciation, not understanding the meaning of the word).

“Son, could you give me something for my lower back,” the old woman asked.

- What will I give you, when you are one hundred and ten years old, that will help you!

Everyone gasped: is it really one hundred and ten?

- So why were you imprisoned, grandma?

- For what - I don’t know. The investigator said that I had read the Gospel, but it was poorly written about Lenin.

- Well, you got something mixed up, grandma, it can’t be.

“It wasn’t me who confused it, it was he who confused it.”

Grandmother received five years in the camps for Lenin in the Gospel.

The Sverdlovsk transfer was also remembered for the fact that the gruel there was always with cockroaches. There were always a couple in the bowl. These two circumstances - a cockroach gruel and a crazy Leningrad woman - marked the beginning of my acquaintance and friendship with Victoria Rudina. The wife of a military man, she taught Russian language and literature at school before her arrest. I saw her for the first time when she, making her way through the bodies closely lying in the corridor, approached the locked door and energetically began to knock on it, demanding that the prison warden come. Finally he appeared. She looked down on him and, as it seemed to me, looking him up and down with disgust, said in such a tone as if he was subordinate to her:

- First of all, remove the crazy woman, she needs to be treated, but here she doesn’t let you sleep and infects with lice. Secondly, stop cooking gruel with cockroaches, since the usefulness of these insects for human body not yet proven. Got it?

The warden listened in silence and left. By evening the madwoman was taken away. At lunchtime, there were fewer cockroaches; they were not swimming in everyone’s bowls—they were probably caught in the cauldron. (...)

In the Tomsk camp there were sixty women arrested with their newborn children. Only one Yura was two years old. I often came to see him. He lived with his mother in the “mother’s” barracks and reminded me of my Yura - by that time, by the spring of 1938, he was the same age and even looked somewhat like him.

The children were growing up, and it was necessary to dress them. Lyudmila Kuzminichna made sure that they gave us stories, and we sewed clothes for the children. We called mothers by the names of their children: Lyubochkina’s mother, Vaskina’s mother, Vankina’s mother. Vankina also approached Victoria to relieve herself.

“Victoria, think about it,” she says, “Telmansha (senior warden Telman) comes up to me and says: “You see how the Soviet government takes care of children. You’re sitting in prison, and they’ve made a suit for your Vanka.” And what do you think I answered her? “But for me, they would give me a matting, I would wrap up my Vanka and I would go home, and I don’t need any of your suit.”

Nekrasov wrote about the cruel morals of serf Russia: “And on the sides all the bones are Russian... so many of them! Vanechka, do you know? But how many of those bones are there compared to ours? They could be stacked in countless pyramids of those who died from executions, hunger and cold. What are those tears compared to the tears of our women in the camp, torn away from their children and husbands - humiliated and innocently destroyed. "Russian women"? Princesses Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya, who left the luxurious Petersburg life and went on carriages to their Decembrist husbands in Siberia? There are no words - a feat! A theme for a poet! But how did they travel? On six horses, in fur coats, in a wonderfully coordinated cart, “the count himself straightened the pillows, laid the bear’s cavity at his feet.” Yes, and they were going to their husbands! Our women - Russian and non-Russian - Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, Jewish, Polish, German from the Volga region and communists who fled from Nazi Germany - employees of the Comintern and others (Stalin is an “internationalist”!) - were delivered by stage, in hevkas or “Stolypin” , well, and then from the station to the camp, kilometers on foot, under escort with shepherd dogs, exhausted, barely dragging their pitiful belongings - suitcases or bundles - under the shouts of the escort: “Step to the side - I’ll shoot without warning!” or “Sit down!” - even in the snow, even in the mud, still sit down! And they weren’t going to their husbands! Although there were dreamers among us who naively hoped that in that camp other world they would be united with their husbands - those who had ten years without the right to correspondence, which meant they were shot.

Nekrasov wrote about “Orina - the soldier’s mother.” Her son died of consumption after a long and difficult soldiering. Indeed: “There are few words, but a river of grief!” During the harsh years of the war, our sons also died at the front, and the grief of the mothers was immeasurable. But the son died as a hero, defending his homeland, and was not innocently cursed. Motherland, by you! What can we say about the one whose son was taken away at night in a “black crow”?! But even this sufferer could be envied by that mother, whose son was known not only to acquaintances, colleagues and neighbors, but only yesterday he was the pride of the entire people, and now he is exposed to general shame. And we have not yet read a poem about this eternal mental torment, immense depression and the eternal question in the eyes: “Is it true and how could this happen?” And many had to bear this heavy cross for a disgraced and destroyed son, even if only for a short time.

Fate brought me together with my mother, whose son the whole country was proud of. But the country cursed him unanimously. I knew what it was, although I was not the mother of such a son, but the wife of a publicly cursed husband. A nationwide curse, a nationwide mockery - what could be more terrible than this? Only death is salvation from such torment!

The one I met was not “Orina, the soldier’s mother,” but Mavra, the marshal’s mother, also a simple peasant woman. I met the Tukhachevsky family in the most tragic days for them, on the Moscow-Astrakhan train, June 11, 1937, on the way to exile. I was taken by car to the station and put into a carriage (without a reserved seat, but free) by an NKVD officer, who deliberately politely said goodbye to me and, as if in mockery, wished me all the best. Along the way, at stations, passengers got out of the carriages and grabbed newspapers with sensational news. They reported that “the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR at a closed court session considered...”, that “all the accused pleaded guilty” and “the sentence was carried out.” On that day, the largest military leaders died - Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eideman, Feldman, Putna, Primakov. Head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army Ya.B. Gamarnik committed suicide on May 31, 1937.

It was a warm June day, I looked out the window and quietly wiped away my tears. And suddenly, at the opposite window, I noticed an old woman and a woman of about thirty-five, and with them a teenage girl. They, like me, listened carefully to those reading the newspaper and to the reactions of those around them. The old woman's face reminded me of someone with its features. I was drawn to them like a magnet. I jumped out of my seat and asked the passenger sitting opposite them to switch with me. He agreed. All that remained was to explain. I understood that in such a situation they would not identify themselves until I explained to them who I was. But how can I say it? I could have been mistaken in my assumptions that they are our own - now more than family. I came close to the young woman and said very quietly:

“I am Nikolai Ivanovich’s wife.” At first I decided not to name the last name; Bukharin's first and patronymic names were as popular as his last name. Well, if she doesn’t understand who I am, I decided to give my last name. But the answer came instantly: “And I am Mikhail Nikolaevich.”

This is how I met the Tukhachevsky family: his mother Mavra Petrovna, wife Nina Evgenievna and daughter Svetlana.

Passengers vigorously expressed their hatred of the “traitors”:

- Will they be condemned in vain?

- There’s no reason, only damage!

And right there, among the angry people, sat the mother of Marshal Tukhachevsky, petrified with grief and horror. How generous nature was to him, how merciless fate turned out to be! Extraordinary talent, rare leadership abilities, spiritual beauty were combined with amazing external data. (...)

Mavra Petrovna could not express her grief. Who would sympathize with her? It burned her from the inside. After all, on the day when the tragic events of 1937 brought us together, she received a funeral for her son - the worst that could have happened.

But I saw Mavra Petrovna crying. She came to me already in Astrakhan, after the arrest of Tukhachevsky’s wife, Nina Evgenievna. For some reason, Yakir’s wife and I were arrested two weeks later. Mavra Petrovna wanted to make a transfer to Nina Evgenievna in the Astrakhan prison. She said: “I write poorly” and asked me to write what she was conveying. “Write: “Ninochka. I give you onions, herring and a loaf of bread.” I wrote. Suddenly Mavra Petrovna burst into tears and, laying her head on my shoulder, began repeating: “Mishenka! Misha! Misha, son! You are no more, you are no more!”

She didn’t know then, and maybe she never knew, that two more sons - Alexander and Nikolai - were also shot only because the same Mavra gave birth to them as Mikhail. She did not yet know that her daughters had also been arrested and sentenced to eight years in the camps. I was in the Tomsk camp with two, Olga Nikolaevna and Maria Nikolaevna. Mikhail Nikolaevich’s third sister, Sofya Nikolaevna, was also repressed, expelled from Moscow and disappeared without a trace. And the fourth sister, Elizaveta Nikolaevna, had to endure no less. Mavra Petrovna died in exile.

(...) In those days, I especially attracted the attention of others. They treated me differently. This depended mainly on political development, intellectual level, on how they perceived Bukharin before the trial, how closely they knew Nikolai Ivanovich and his co-trials. Therefore, I felt the evil gaze of those who accepted the confessions of the accused at face value. Unfortunately, there were many of these. But I also saw the eyes of those who understood everything looking at me with pain, and the suffering of many who knew Bukharin, and not only him.

The wife of one Ukrainian party worker came up to me and said: “What a fool! History will justify Bukharin, but no one will ever know about our husbands.”

Sukhanov Pavel Emelyanovich, 1918-1992 Mine named after S. Ordzhonikidze, electrician, 10 years of labor camp and 5 years of disqualification.

Before my arrest by the Stalinist NKVD, I worked at the mine named after. Ordzhonikidzhe as an electrician on duty. I really liked the work, and, on the advice of good man, master Torochin, went to study at the Prokopyevsky Mining College. Entered the correspondence department of mining energy. Everything was going well! I got married on the October holidays. We got a room and went to a resort in 1940. After the declaration of war, about fifty young workers were immediately taken from the mine, given payment and sent to the station with their things. But the deputy The head of the mine, Makovsky, quickly ran along the column and took away summons from eleven people. I was included in this number too. He booked us, and I returned to the mine again. Studying at a technical school took a lot of effort and time. There were no electric trains then, I didn’t get on passenger trains - I rode passing cars loaded with coal. I went often - twice a week. In 1943, I was already finishing my fourth year and got an apartment.

On April 9, 1943, the unexpected happened: at three o’clock in the morning the commandant, senior lieutenant and two other people burst into our room. I was immediately handcuffed and forbidden to go near the window. They conducted a search and for some reason took away rubber gloves, plumbing tools, and a hammer. I myself carried all this belongings to the tram. And while I was walking, I kept thinking: who did I offend so much? perhaps the locksmith Ivannikov? After I was crushed in the mine, surgeon Titov demanded that I be transferred to light work. Mechanic Razdolsky directed me to the battery room. Unfortunately for me, the rectifier on one horn soon burst. We received a new one. When they were installing it with Belov (he was later hired too), the mechanic Ivannikov came and started showing us. As usual, I sent it in Russian. Did he really slander?

- 49 -

A tram arrived, we got on and went to the First House, where they pushed me into a cell in which nine people were sitting. They didn’t give me time to come to my senses; they immediately called me to see Senior Lieutenant Lomov. This was not a person: an animal or a fascist. In the first hour he knocked out my teeth with the handle of his revolver. I stood dumbfounded with a bloody mouth, and he shouted: “You wanted to kill Stalin, you wanted to blow up the mine!” And every day there were interrogations and beatings. And they beat me shamelessly.

In the cell I met Hoffman, the director of the Abagursky timber mill (I don’t know if it was called that then?), and his son-in-law. Nearby lay a beaten, broken engineer from a design institute. Apparently, he had been sitting for a long time and did not give the testimony they needed. It looked like he had gone crazy from the torture. After the interrogations, they brought him in a tent and abandoned him. Hoffman once pointed him out to me and said: “Sign everything that they present to you, otherwise they will kill you.” The last time I was interrogated by investigator Kiselev, senior lieutenant. This one was younger and more humane. I signed everything.

And the interrogations stopped. I stayed here for five months. The food was poor: 400 grams of bread (chaff) and gruel. On July 24, a trial was held against me. They took me into a closed room. Two women were sitting in the distance, and two guards stood behind them. None of them said a word for ten minutes. Without asking anything, they took me back, and soon they brought a piece of paper into the cell, from which I learned that I was sentenced to ten years of correctional labor and five years of disqualification. After the trial, I spent a whole month in solitary confinement - in a bathhouse with a sloping floor, rats crawled out of a hole in the floor, I constantly chased them - they were completely eaten. Slept on the windowsill. The warden Fedya (I don’t remember his last name) took me to the kitchen during his duty. He gave me a hammer and an axe. I broke the bones, extracted the brain, put it in a saucepan and ate it in the cell. Thank you good man, supported!

Somewhere around September 10, an indictment arrived from Kemerovo, and I was officially warned that I was under Article 58, paragraph 10a. They sent me to Starokuznetsk prison in a closed car. In prison they were assigned to a cell where about forty people slept on the floor in jacks. The treatment here was not rude; every two days we were taken out for a walk in the courtyard for 15 minutes. When we were taken from prison to the station, we met a car with people. In it were acquaintances from the Dimitrov mine, I managed to shout: “They gave me ten years!”

Fifteen days later I was already in the Mariinsky camp. Two wagons of male and female prisoners were unloaded. Either for fun

- 50 -

ourselves, or maybe the guards had to do it that way - they arranged a quarantine for us, and one that I remember all my life: they stripped everyone naked and pushed us indiscriminately into the bathhouse. Criminals began to grab and rape women. Without dividing them, they rolled out into the street in a ball and fights began. Then the guards began to water from above with machine guns. Several people were killed. The fighters scattered in all directions.

The brigade in which I worked was commanded by repeat offender Ragulin. He put me to work digging silos. He was not a bad person. I ordered a bread ration of 800 grams, but took away my new raincoat. The criminals generally took away all the best from the “political” ones.

Seven kilometers from Mariinsk there was the Antibes camp. I was transferred there for the winter and immediately joined the brigade to also dig silage holes. The work was hard, the pits were two meters deep. The soil is wet, heavy, sticks to the shovel, and you have to tilt it up and then transport it in wheelbarrows.

Seasonal work is no easier: until March at the logging site, in March the team is sent to pile up manure and drag it across the fields. Even worse than at the logging site. How much strength is needed! And there was haymaking - forty-six acres per person. After haymaking, the grain is harvested, and again you wave the scythe by hand, twenty-five acres per brother. In autumn - digging potatoes, loading them onto carts. But working in a peat bog was especially unbearable. It was supposed to cut seven cubes! Not everyone can do this. It’s good that at least all two hundred people lived next to this swamp in barracks. It was impossible to get sick. It was only necessary to lie in the barracks for one day - three hundred grams of bread were already given out.

So I worked (with forced breaks!) until 1953. And there were breaks like this. One morning I wake up and see that my shoes are gone. The American boots were so strong and disappeared. Repeat offenders stole, but they have to go to work. He wrapped his legs with whatever came to hand and walked away. I caught a cold, of course, and came down with pneumonia. They put him in the hospital. The doctors were among those who had served their sentences but remained to settle. Head The medical unit Sentyabova asked me to repair the autoclave. I repaired it. There was a lot of electrical work. When I repaired the electric bath, going through forty lamps, Sentyabova decided to leave me at the hospital. How can I leave it if I have already recovered? She drew up a document that I was crazy, and they began to lock me in a storage room with iron bars during the day. At night they let us out, I heated the stoves, repaired what was broken. So he survived the winter, got stronger, recovered and went back to the zone for general work.

The following winter, Sentyabova asked me to join the medical unit as an electrician. I did everything, even looked after the cows and horses. This winter I met the woman who became my wife. She was sitting behind the ears of corn. She had a baby girl who soon

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died (on the way to the camp they fell through the ice and caught a cold). Our son was born, and she was immediately sent to Yurga to a garment factory, and I was sent to Taishet, to Ozerlag. Fortunately, I met a Polish friend there. He worked as a pharmacist and had weight. He helped me and got me a job as a timber removal foreman. Eight people each were harnessed like horses to a cart, loaded, and back again, a 2.5-kilometer journey. They walked like this for almost six months.

When construction of the village began, a sawmill was launched. I was lucky - I was appointed as an electrician at the sawmill. It’s still good that I acquired the profession of an electrician at a mining technical school. I was often approached with requests to fix the iron and tiles. Sometimes the bosses' wives invited them home to fix something. There they will feed you, here they will give you a piece of bread. I could already help the very weak - I shared with them.

And yet nothing is wasted. My stomach hurt, and I was sent to the hospital in Novochumka, outside Taishet. There were about a hundred people in the room. But in cramped conditions, don’t be offended, everything is better than in a logging camp. The doctors were prisoners in the Gorky case. People are cultured and experienced. I remember Professor Makatinsky, his daughter. They treated me a little and decided to send me to the kitchen, but I refused and became the head of the ward. My duties included receiving and distributing food. I tried to get extra money for those who were weaker. And suddenly one night, like a bolt from the blue: “Get your things together!” Again the station, again the train. While driving to Taishet, we packed a full carriage. They brought me to Krasnoyarsk and pushed me into the gatehouse with repeat offenders. They stripped all of us, thirty of us, and robbed us completely. Five days later they took me from the gatehouse and took me somewhere. Where we go? For what? Nobody says anything. Finally, with adventures, with stops, half-starved, they brought us to the Long Bridge chemical forestry Krasnoyarsk Territory. On the twenty-fourth of May the commandant announced to us that we were in a settlement. In this form, liberation came to me.

It was a small village: one grandfather and three exiles.

We, 25 people, were forced to cut down wood and build houses for ourselves. We built a lot of things: a kindergarten, a store, a bakery, and installed a power plant. By the end of my term there were already a hundred people in the village. There is a lot of work, and I worked everywhere: I assembled Izhitsa, I was a blacksmith, and then, until I was completely free, I worked as an electrician at a power plant.

My wife came to me at my call. But without a son, he died in Yurga... They set up a farm: they bought a cow, piglets, twenty-five chickens, and built flocks. We prepared hay for the cow ourselves. We lived well.

- 52 -

In 1956, complete liberation came. They immediately sold everything they had acquired and went home, I am Kuzbass, to my relatives. For some reason I always wanted to go back to the taiga, but I stayed here. I liked my work - I was an electrician working on tower cranes. I worked in the construction department of the Kuibyshevugol trust for 22 years, retired in 1968, but worked for another eight years. Raised two daughters.

My profession and my hands, which were not afraid of work, saved me from death in the camps.

In previous posts (links at the end) we became acquainted with the brutal conditions of detention of civilians and Soviet prisoners of war in Finnish concentration camps. Unfortunately, the suffering of our prisoners during their release did not end there. The most humane and dear Soviet government, just in case, sent most of the Red Army soldiers to the Gulag, some were shot - a common Soviet practice.

Original taken from langohrigel V

Original taken from allin777 in Special message L.P. Beria I.V. Stalin about prisoners of war of the Yuga camp of the NKVD of the USSR. With continuation...

Sov. secret

Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) - comrade. STALIN

In the Southern camp of the NKVD of the USSR there are 5,175 former prisoners of war of the Red Army and 293 commanding officers transferred by the Finns during the exchange of prisoners of war.

An operational security group created by the NKVD of the USSR to check prisoners of war established that Finnish intelligence agencies carried out work among Red Army prisoners of war and command personnel to recruit them for enemy work in the USSR.

The operational security group identified and arrested 414 people exposed in active treacherous work in captivity and recruited by Finnish intelligence for enemy work in the USSR.

Of this number, investigative cases for 344 people were completed and transferred by the Prosecutor of the Moscow Military District to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. 232 people were sentenced to death (the sentence was carried out against 158 ​​people).

The NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary to carry out the following measures in relation to the remaining prisoners of war held in the South camp:

1. Arrest additionally and bring him to trial before the Military Collegium Supreme Court USSR - 250 people exposed in treacherous work.

2. Former prisoners of war, among 4,354 people, who do not have sufficient material to bring to trial, who are suspicious due to the circumstances of captivity and behavior in captivity, - by the decision of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, be sentenced to imprisonment in forced labor camps for a period of 5 to 8 years.

3. Former prisoners of war in the amount of 450 people who were captured being wounded, sick or frostbite, for whom there is no incriminating material, should be released and transferred to the disposal of the People's Commissariat of Defense.

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs USSR L. BERIA

Thanks to my colleague for the letter supermitter

I will add that this note from Beria has an archival code: AP RF. F. 3. Op. 66. D. 581. L. 78-79. Script. Typescript

The story didn't end there...

Below is a letter dated October 31, 1940, a letter to “the first deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the leader of the peoples Soviet Union Comrade I.V.Stalin”, signed by A.N.Smirnov, A.M.Svetikov, M.Volokhovich, A.G.Samoilov, K.P.Gichak, T.F.Nikulin and A.F.Zubov “on behalf of 230 former prisoners of war, commanders of the Red Army,” now “located in the Vorkuta NKVD camp.”

"...To you, Comrade Stalin, we decided to write this letter and ask you to respond to it. We want to tell you about the imprisonments and ordeals that we endure for unknown reasons and in the name of what. We, a group of middle and senior command and control personnel The Red Army, captured by the White Finns during the war and returned to the USSR after the conclusion of peace, have been kept in custody for six months now in conditions of strict isolation, even without the right to write to their families and in complete uncertainty about their fate, as people who have committed the gravest crime against their homeland, although none of us is to blame for this, neither in deed, nor in word, nor in thought.

After our exchange (April 20-25) and until August 29, 1940, we were kept in the Yuzhsky camp of the NKVD Ivanovo region, where the NKVD authorities investigated the circumstances of our captivity and behavior there. Our isolation was also explained to us as a temporary measure, carried out with the aim of preventing the possibility of spies and saboteurs entering our country under the guise of prisoners of war. Which we, of course, fully understand and approve of. With our active assistance from the NKVD, all hostile and anti-Soviet elements who had shown themselves to be such during their time in White Finnish captivity were exposed and brought to justice. In our group there remained absolutely honest and trusted people, whom, as the NKVD workers and the camp command assured, should have been sent to their units and home.

On August 29th, supposedly for the transfer of NGOs, under heavy escort and secretly, we were brought to the station, searched, locked in a carriage and taken to Arkhangelsk, where we were transferred to a ship and, like the most dangerous criminals, brought to the Vorkuta camp, where we were placed, forced make a 250-kilometer march on foot, almost barefoot and half-starved.

I must say that all the way we were driven in military uniform with Red Army stars on our caps, called comrades, hidden from people and carefully concealed the destination and purpose of the trip.

In Vorkuta, they took off our stars, took away our money and valuables, subjected us to fingerprinting and photographed us like common criminals, then they told us. That we were arrested and essentially banned from now on calling “comrade” to the authorities. To our questions, what caused our transformation into prisoners and its basis for this. The authorities replied that he knew nothing about us. The grounds for imprisonment will come later, and if we end up in a camp, then we are nothing more than prisoners.

Yes, comrade. Stalin, we became prisoners without charge, arrest or trial, so we were made comrades of criminals and not comrades of all citizens of the USSR. To this day we still don’t know what our fault is, by whom and how we were punished. It is known that we were recommended to the prisoners and the people as Red Army soldiers who voluntarily came here. In one case, and as traitors to the motherland who voluntarily came to the White Finns, in another. We don’t know who needs this lie and why. Here in the Vorkuta camp they applied the general prison regime to us, dressed us in prison uniforms and sent us to work on rations for prisoners. The result of all this is already affecting us: scurvy has appeared among us and there are cases of tuberculosis. Apparently, in our midst they will find a sufficient harvest for themselves.

We want, comrade. Stalin, tell you about what kind of people we are, under what circumstances we were captured, and how, finally, we behaved there.

Of the 230 people among us, 185 are personnel commanders with a service life in the Red Army from 7 on average to 20-22 years. Of us by rank: 12 captains, Art. lieutenants 32, lieutenants 72, political instructors 23, ml. 91 lieutenants, medical personnel and others, of the commanders of 66 pilots shot down by the White Finns while performing combat missions.

In terms of party membership among us: members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - 82, candidates of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - 40, and Komsomol members 58 people, i.e. 78% of the total composition.

In what condition were we captured: 93 wounded, including several times, 46 shell-shocked, 70 frostbitten and burned. While in captivity, we, as a rule, did not hide our party affiliation and rank and the overwhelming majority were captured with party documents, endured bullying, did not receive medical care and were repeatedly beaten by the White Finns. We knew very well that the continuation of the war would entail the defeat of the White Finns, the flight of the government and reprisals by the Nazis against us, which the Finns themselves did not hide, saying that in this case we “would be judged by the crowd.” However, we were ready to die properly to the Soviet people and did not compromise the dignity of a citizen and soldier of the USSR. Fascist captivity hardened us even more, further strengthened our confidence in the rightness of the Lenin-Stalin cause and our readiness to fight for it without sparing our blood and lives. In this light, we cannot understand in any way who is mocking us and why, who is making us outcasts in their country.

We ask ourselves: are the Party and Government really punishing us? If the fact of our captivity is regarded as treason, then why are we not judged and openly accused of this?

We ask ourselves: have we really betrayed our homeland by staying and partly leaving the wounded, shell-shocked, frostbitten, burnt during the battle, and in this state were captured.

We ask ourselves: can we really, the commanders of the Red Army, who fought for two or three months with the enemies, the Communists and Komsomol members for the most part, be seriously accused of voluntarily going over to the White Finns in order to thus hide from the war and save our lives. Is it really because of this that they isolate us like lepers, insult us and lie to us?

Didn’t the military difficulties and hardships at the front, our wounds and shed blood also serve to defeat the White Finns and the brilliant victory of the country of Socialism over them?

We don't know, comrade. Stalin, how can you explain that in a country where the constitution you wrote is in force, you can treat people the same way they treated us: silently expel them from the Party and the Komsomol, deprive them of military ranks, exile them to the far north and imprison them in camps. We understood the reasons and, as expected, endured the bullying of the Finnish fascists in captivity. But it’s bitter and insulting, comrade. Stalin, to be guiltlessly guilty for everything that was experienced in the name of the homeland at the front and in fascist captivity. be imprisoned in their own country. We ask you, dear comrade. Stalin, take measures to ensure that if we betrayed our homeland by being captured, we are judged according to the law or stop what is still being done to us..."

GURK "NA RK". p-1875, op.-1, d-13, l.21-24

________________________________________ _______________________________
Let's continue:
Southern camp for Red Army soldiers
728 people who returned from the Finnish war were shot in Ivanovo
The declassification of the “Katyn case” revealed the truth about the NKVD Yuzhsky camp. In 1939, Polish officers were held here and later shot in the forest near Smolensk. In 1940, their place on the bunks was taken by 5.5 thousand Red Army soldiers who returned from captivity after the “winter war” with Finland.
Every seventh of them was shot on the territory of the Ivanovo region. The NKVD camp was so secret (in the documents it was called “Yuzhsky”) that the southerners knew nothing about it. There have been no publications on this topic in the Ivanovo press so far.
November 27, 1939, a statement from the Pravda newspaper about the shelling of Soviet troops located on the Karelian Isthmus near the border of Finland. “Seven gun shots were fired from Finnish territory, as a result of which three privates and one junior commander were killed.”
On November 1, 1939, the Soviet-Finnish war began, which lasted 104 days. More than 150 thousand people died on both sides.
At the end of December 1939, the head of the Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs of the NKVD P. Soprunenko reported to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs about the readiness of six camps to receive Finnish prisoners of war with a total limit of 27 thousand people.
In the winter of 1939, the readiness of one of the camps was checked by the head of the special department of the NKVD. He visited “Yuzhsky” - after which he stated in a memo: “... the camp is not prepared for the normal maintenance of military prisoners of war.” However, the Finnish prisoners never appeared either in the Yuzhsky camp or in the four others - there were very few of them. Everyone “fit” in the Gryazovets camp (Vologda region).
Much more Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner by Finns. The war was fought on foreign territory. From the memoirs of Ivan Sidorov:
“On February 23, 1940, our battalion was ambushed. Before we could return fire, only 5-9 people were left alive. The commander of the communications platoon, Comrade Lysenko, who was next to me, shot himself in the temple. The survivors were taken prisoner ". I had two tickets in my pocket: a party ticket and a Komsomol ticket. I would have been shot, but our artillery struck, and we were quickly driven deep into Finnish territory." "The prisoners were fed oatmeal in the morning, and soup with meat from horses killed at the front for lunch. , tea with saccharine. They didn’t give me water, only a liter a day: if you want, wash, if you want, wash the dishes, if you want, drink.” (Sidorov I.P. graduated from the regimental airborne school in Kyiv in the fall of 1939. In November, his entire graduating class - about 100 people, after two weeks of ski training, was sent to war.)
On March 12, 1940, a peace treaty was signed between the USSR and Finland. Among other things, it provided for the exchange of prisoners of war. From April 14 to April 28, six meetings of the interstate commission were held in Vyborg (which became part of the USSR after the war). According to the parties: the total number of Soviet prisoners of war in Finland was 5.5 thousand people, in the USSR - 806 Finnish army personnel.
Finns returning from captivity were greeted in their homeland as heroes, they received orders and awards. A completely different fate awaited the Soviet Red Army soldiers. Before returning home Soviet authorities They were informed that they would first be sent to the hospital for examination.
On April 19, a decision of the Politburo signed by the Secretary of the Central Committee I. Stalin (top secret) ordered all prisoners of war returned by the Finnish authorities to be sent to the NKVD Yuzhsky camp. “Within three months, ensure thorough implementation of operational security measures to identify among prisoners of war persons processed by foreign intelligence services, dubious and alien elements and those who voluntarily surrendered to the Finns and then bring them to trial.”
April 24. Without wasting time, already on the train they began operational work with former Red Army prisoners of war. A striking example is the report of junior political instructor A. Khramov dated April 24: “Pavel Kovalets, junior lieutenant, says that Sharonov from the 75th division, 1 battalion, 3 rubles, was a correspondent for the newspaper Friend of Prisoners. In his notes, he accused the leadership of the Land of Soviets.” . “Yantsevich Semyon stated that a certain Dronov, a Russian, was close friends with a Finnish officer and said in front of everyone that “Stalin should be stabbed to death, and Molotov should be shot.”
25th of April. The train has arrived at its destination. From the memoirs of I.T. Sidorova: “...We were brought to the Ivanovo region, to the Yuzhsky camp. We were placed in two-story wooden barracks, “well” fenced with barbed wire, behind which soldiers with German shepherds walked.”
From a certificate addressed to the head of the political department of the Moscow Military District (MVO), Commissar Lobachev: “The South camp began its work from the moment former prisoners of war arrived on April 25, 1940. People arrived in trains of 500-600 people. 29 people were sent to the hospital in Vyazniki. "Arrived - 314 command personnel from junior lieutenant to major inclusive. People are housed in barracks of 200-400 people each."
May 17. Confidential, Commissar of the Yuzhsky camp of the NKVD Art. to Lieutenant G. Korotkov from the UPVI (Office for Prisoners of War and Internees): “In connection with the arrival of a special military contingent, the political department of the camp is assigned a serious and responsible task of working with them. When working among this contingent, one must proceed from the instructions of Comrade. Stalin at the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): “Do not forget about the capitalist encirclement, remember that foreign intelligence services will send spies, murderers, saboteurs into our country...” The machinations of Finnish counter-revolutionaries must be neutralized by the exceptional Bolshevik vigilance of the entire camp apparatus.”
And the work began to boil. It turned out, for example, that upon arrival at the camp, many kept Finnish newspapers for Soviet prisoners of war ("Friend of Prisoners" and "Dear Friend", published for the Easter holidays), which "characterizes traces of the priest's intoxication and counter-revolutionary work on the part of the Finnish White Guard ". Every day, thanks to the denunciations of the Red Army soldiers, more and more traitors and enemies were revealed.
May, 23rd. Report by L. Beria addressed to I. Stalin (Soviet secret): “In the process of the work of the operational group of 1448 prisoners of war, 106 people were identified as spies and suspects of espionage, 166 people were members of an anti-Soviet volunteer detachment, 54 provocateurs who mocked our prisoners of war - 13 people who voluntarily surrendered - 72."
May 25. The prisoners still did not believe that they had gone from Finnish captivity to a new one - Soviet captivity. From the report of the Yuzhsky camp administration to UPVI Commissioner S. Nekhoroshev: “Former prisoner of war Borisov G.A. said: “We are not in a hospital, but in a prison under guard, we are not allowed to open the windows, we are not allowed to send letters home. We were at the front, shedding blood, and here the bastards are holding us and treating us like prisoners." He categorically refused to treat his wound and carry out the doctor’s orders, despite the fact that the wound was purulent."
The same report states that the camp administration is struggling with decadent sentiments, establishing cultural and educational work among the contingent. 186 illiterate people were identified, three of whom were Komsomol members. ABC books were specially ordered for them, and educational programs were held regularly.
July 12, 1940. NKVD report (Soviet secret). “The government commission accepted from the Finnish authorities former prisoners of war of Soviet citizens - 5468 people. Of this number, they were sent to
NKVD in the Ivanovo region 294 people. 4 people died, 1 person committed suicide. 5172 people are kept in the Yuzhsky NKVD camp. Of these, 18 people. senior command staff, middle and junior command staff -938. Privates - 4066. Doctors and medical staff - 84 people.
July 29. Special message from L. Beria addressed to I. Stalin (Soviet secret): “In the Yuzhsky camp, an operational security group identified and arrested 414 people exposed in active treacherous work in captivity and recruited by Finnish intelligence for enemy work in the USSR. Of this number, completed investigative cases for 344 people. 232 people were sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out against 158 ​​people. The NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary to carry out the following measures in relation to the remaining prisoners of war held in the Yuzhsky camp:
1. Arrest additionally and bring to trial the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR - 250 people exposed in treasonous work.
2. Former prisoners of war, among 4,354 people, who do not have sufficient material to bring to trial, who are suspicious due to the circumstances of captivity and behavior in captivity, - by decision of a special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, be sentenced to imprisonment in forced labor camps for a period of 5 to 8 years.
3. Former prisoners of war in the amount of 450 people who were captured being wounded, sick or frostbite, for whom there is no incriminating material, should be released and transferred to the disposal of the People's Commissariat of Defense."
August 22. From the memoirs of I.T. Sidorova: “After the purges, those who remained were dressed in new military uniforms and transported in “calf” cars to Murmansk. There we (2,300 people - N.G.) were put on the cargo ship “Rodina”, supposedly to carry out a government task. And only in a stuffy They announced in the hold that we were now under investigation. Five-story bunks were built in the hold, the entrance was tightly closed with a tarpaulin, there was no air flow. As a result, several people died, and only after that the hold began to be opened. There was no toilet on the ship. They relieved themselves behind the deck, thereby creasing the entire board, where the name “Motherland” was written. And now they have already passed the Barents Sea, the Kara Sea”...
September 14, 1940
the column unloaded ashore. “We were led to trailers on a narrow-gauge railway. We were seated closely, almost “strung” on top of each other. On the last platform there were machine guns. In the middle of the journey, a military man in a blue cap warned that from now on we should not call him “comrade”, but “citizen chief.” And then a friend sitting next to him quietly said: we were brought to the camp, and not at all for a special task. Now we are prisoners..." Southern camp prisoners were sent to build Norilsk. After liberation, Ivan Sidorov also stayed to live there. His memories were recorded by teachers and students of Norilsk gymnasium No. 4.
Another group of Soviet prisoners of war (1942 people) left the Yuzhsky camp on August 29, 1940. They were taken to Arkhangelsk, and from there to the Vorkuta camp, forced to walk 250 km “almost barefoot and hungry.” “They were driven all the way in uniform and called comrades. In Vorkuta they tore off the stars, took photographs, and took fingerprints.” Without trial or charge, the former prisoners were put under general prison conditions, dressed in prison uniforms, sent to work, and deprived of the right to correspondence.”
At the end of August 1940, 570 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army transported from the Yuzhsky camp to Ivanovo were shot.
On September 1, the head of the Yuzhsky camp reported to the UPVI: “There are no former prisoners of war directly in the camp zone.” Only 360 wounded remained in the Vyaznikovsky hospital, 132 in the Kovrov hospital.
November 23, 1954 deprived military rank Alexander Blinov “as having discredited himself during his time working in the authorities.” Blinov A.S. (1904-1961), Lieutenant General of the NKVD/MGB. From December 1938 to December 1941. headed the NKVD department of the Ivanovo region. “He oversaw and directed the operational work of the Yuzhsk camp, and, together with Stalin and Beria, is responsible for the reprisal against Soviet soldiers who were filtered in the Yuzhsk camp after Finnish captivity.” Afterwards he led the work of the Kuibyshev NKVD and the secret political department of the NKVD. Since 1946 - deputy. Minister of State Security. Participated in the deportation of Russian Greeks living outside Crimea (1949), expelled from the authorities in 1951.
By now
Most of the cases against Soviet military personnel who were in Finnish captivity were reviewed and they were terminated. In total, 728 Red Army soldiers who returned from Finnish captivity were shot on the territory of the Ivanovo region.
(Based on materials from the collections "Katyn. Documents", published on the initiative of the presidents of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Poland)

**--**--**
In general, even if we take the real document as a basis (i.e. do not immediately take on faith the figure of 728 executed, but 232)
It turns out that out of 5468 people:
Released: 8% (450 people)
Sentenced to 5 to 8 years: 80% (4,354 people)
The fate of the remaining 12%, who were “put on trial” (and at the time of the creation of the document, 232 people (i.e. 4%) were sentenced to death), I think, is even more unenviable.

The fate of the Red Army soldiers, against the backdrop of confirmed reports about the Finns, who, according to the text: “the Finns returning from captivity were greeted at home as heroes, they received orders and awards,” then everything looks, to put it mildly, like a waking nightmare.
________________________________________ __________
“Operational work continued in the South camp. By June 1940, there were 5,175 Red Army soldiers and 293 commanders and political workers transferred by the Finns. In his report to Stalin, Beria noted: “...among the prisoners of war, 106 people were identified as spies and those suspected of espionage, 166 people as members of an anti-Soviet volunteer detachment, 54 as provocateurs, 13 people as mockers of our prisoners, 72 as voluntarily surrendered.” For the security officers, all prisoners of war were a priori traitors to the Motherland. Senior Lieutenant 18th rifle division Ivan Rusakov recalled these interrogations as follows:<... Следователи не верили, что большинство из нас попали в плен в окружении... Спрашивает: - Ранен? Я контужен и обморожен, - отвечаю. Это не ранение. Говорю: - Скажите, я виновен в том, что попал в плен? Да, виновен. А в чем моя вина? Ты давал присягу сражаться до последнего дыхания. Но когда тебя взяли в плен, ты же дышал. Я даже не знаю, дышал я или нет. Меня подобрали без сознания... Но когда ты очухался, ты же мог плюнуть финну в глаза, чтоб тебя пристрелили" А смысл-то в этом какой?! So as not to disgrace. Soviets do not surrender"
from the Monograph of Professor D. D. Frolov, working at the National Archives of Finland, presents a unique scientific study of the problems of the capture, detention and return of Soviet and Finnish prisoners of war from two wars of the 20th century. The book is based on real facts, obtained primarily as a result of a painstaking study of archival materials, many of which are published for the first time, and extensive historiography is involved.

SPRAGOVSKY Anatoly Ivanovich(1925 – 1993) – employee of the investigative department (investigator) of the USSR KGB Directorate for the Tomsk Region.

From the memoirs of an employee of the investigation department of the Tomsk regional department of the KGB in 1955-1960. Anatoly Ivanovich SPRAGOVSKY (author of the memoirs "Notes of a KGB Investigator")

Employees of the Investigative Directorate of the KGB of the USSR for the Tomsk Region, who took part in the filtration and verification work of the Tomsk archival and investigative cases * (Tomsk GO UNKVD for the NSO ZSK USSR 1937-1938) in the 1950s: BABIKOVA, GUZNYAEV, GOLOSKOV, GREKHOV, GOVORUKHIN, ELSUKOV , ELUFERYEV, KOMAROV, LINOV, LESHCHEV, LEZHENKO, MAKAROV, PODOPLEEV, PECHENKIN, RUPTSOV, SPRAGOVSKY Anatoly Ivanovich (in the period 1955-1956 - leader in the number of cases examined = 72 and persons worked out = 438) , SKRYABIN (worked on the case of Stepan Ivanovich KARAGODIN) , SERGEEV and CHELNOKOV (in the period 1955-1956 - leader in the number of cases examined = 51 and persons processed = 348).

As well as the assistant to the Military Prosecutor of the Siberian Military District and employees of the special department of the Regional Prosecutor's Office of the Tomsk Region of the USSR.

* (Order No. 220c ("Order of the Prosecutor General of the USSR No. 220c and the joint explanation of the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 223c/140c dated December 31, 1954 established a one-month period for the bodies of the State Security Committee to verify complaints and cases."))

"<...>In this direction, the archival investigative file on charges of BER and others was most fully and comprehensively verified, from the materials of which a clear picture of a simple, but at the same time sophisticated method of obtaining “self-confession” from those arrested through deception was presented.

Text No. 1

Anatoly SPRAGOVSKY

PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS

Recently, the periodical press has begun to cover the events of Stalin's repressions, and many historians are turning to living witnesses in order to restore the truth as it really was.

I consider myself one of those witnesses who know about the repressions of the 30s from the documentary materials with which I had the opportunity to work from 1955 to 1960, i.e. the time of rehabilitation of Soviet citizens, announced by the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

At that time, I was a senior investigator in the investigative department of the KGB Directorate for the Tomsk Region.

It fell to my lot to review and draw up conclusions on the rehabilitation of tens of thousands of Soviet citizens who were unjustifiably executed in 1937-38. A picture of blatant lawlessness, the art of falsifying cases by former employees of the NKVD of Zapsibkrai, the Tomsk City Department and the Narym District Committee of the NKVD, was revealed to me.

As you know, until 1946 the Tomsk region was part of the Zapsibskaya region, and then the Novosibirsk region.

The mass repressions in 37-38 were carried out under the leadership of the NKVD in Zapsibkrai.

Until 1940, he was one of the most active employees of the NKVD, who carried out the isolation of many thousands of Tomsk residents, for which he was awarded the Order of Lenin. And in 1940, he himself was accused of gross violations of social law and shot.

In the OVCHINNIKOV case there was transcript of the meeting conducted by the head of the Zapsibkrai Department of Internal Affairs MIRONOV with all the heads of the Raygoroddepartments of the NKVD of the region on organizing the operation on the ground.

I only retain certain moments from this document in my memory. More than 30 years have passed since I had the opportunity to meet him in connection with the review of a number of cases.

The main ones are Stalin’s thesis that as we move forward towards the victory of socialism, the resistance of the remnants of the exploiting classes increases. This led to the goal of isolating all former kulaks, White Guards, settlers, Kolchakites, Germans, Poles, Latvians, i.e. all those who were considered former people.

In what environment, or as they used to say - atmosphere - did we have to work?

Now about some specific cases of that period that remain in my memory.

The Military Prosecutor's Office of the Siberian Military District received a case accusing Ivan Pushnin, Tatyrzhi and others, a total of 32 or 34 people, of belonging to the counter-revolutionary organization “Party of Heroes of Poland”.

All the accused, and this belonged to the period 1932-33, were sentenced to military tribunal by the Judicial Collegium of the Military Tribunal, and in relation to Ivan Pushnin, on the recommendation of the NKVD, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a pardon resolution. Capital punishment was replaced by 10 years of imprisonment.

However, in court, all the accused did not plead guilty to the charges brought against them and referred to PUSHNINA as a representative of the 2nd General Staff, but they do not know whether there was a named organization. And PUSHNIN, as they saw on the photograph, died.

The question before the court was how to deal with the case under consideration? A solution was found. FYODOROV carried out a series of “operational search actions”, proved the deliberate escape of PUSHNINA and a photo in the coffin, allegedly with the aim of escaping “retribution”. PUSHNINA was again promised freedom on the condition that in court he would expose all those accused of involvement in the “Party of People's Heroes”.

The military board sentenced all defendants in the case to capital punishment - execution. As mentioned above, PUSHNIN escaped execution. For a long time after the trial he remained free, and in 1937-38. was actively used as a provocateur by employees of the Tomsk GO NKVD in the cells of prisoners.

He had a satisfying life; as an investigator, PUSHNIN himself falsified cases against those arrested in 37-38.

When the arbitrariness ended, a resolution was issued on the violation of social services. legality and PUSHNINA were sent to a stage and a camp to serve his sentence, which he did not expect.

Taking into account the provocative activities described above, at the time of the review of the case, the prosecutor and the Military Collegium decided to leave the verdict against PUSHNINA in force.

To illustrate the practice of falsifying cases of that period, we can focus on a group case of over 200 people in the Zyryansky district.

In the village of Okuneevo, closer to Taezhka, former lawyer Popov and his wife lived in a settlement. It was he who was made the leader of the “rebel organization.” Popov’s arrest was preceded by a massive operation to confiscate firearms from the population living in the Zyryansky district. Under conditions of the strictest secrecy, NKVD workers buried the seized weapons near Popov’s house in the forest. Then, according to the developed scheme, an operation was carried out to arrest the “alien element” in the area.

At night, a group of NKVD workers arrested Popov; conducted a thorough search, during which a service dog led to a weapons storage warehouse, i.e. what was buried in the forest near Popov’s house by the NKVD workers themselves. At the same time, mass arrests began in the area. Everyone whose guns, shotguns, knives, etc. were confiscated was arrested. If you read the materials of this voluminous case, you can imagine that a deeply secret rebel organization was operating in the Zyryansky region, headed by Popov.

During the verification process, all the facts of the accusation were refuted, and the people involved in the case, over two hundred people, were posthumously rehabilitated.

And how was the isolation of the party and Soviet apparatus in 1937-38? This category of cases is also completely falsified.

Secretary of the West Siberian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks EIHE Robert Indrikovich.

Once upon a time, the secretary of the Western Siberian Regional Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of Belarus was EIKHE. By 1937 he became People's Commissar of Agriculture. In Moscow, EIHE, among others, was arrested as an “enemy of the people” and accused of involvement, it seems, in the right-wing Trotskyist center. A wave of arrests of all the secretaries of the City Committees, District Committees, Regional Committees, as well as representatives of the executive committees who worked during the period of EIHE's tenure as secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, rolled across the Western Siberian Territory. A few from this category were sentenced to 10 years, like MALYSHEV, the secretary of the Tomsk City Committee, the rest were sentenced to death - execution. During the review, it was established that the charges against these people were untenable, and the cases were dismissed due to the lack of corpus delicti in their actions.

The party-Soviet apparatus, which was subjected to repression in 1937-38. in Western Siberia, was completely rehabilitated.

A similar wave of arrests swept through higher educational institutions in Tomsk.

Outstanding scientists from Tomsk universities and technical schools were unjustifiably arrested and shot. As a result of the provocative activities of the secretary of the party committee of the Tomsk Electromechanical Institute of Transport and Communications Engineers Luka Grigorievich FEDOSEEV, many scientists of this institute were arrested.

Soon there was a reorganization in the bodies of the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a meeting of the operational staff of the newly created KGB department was held, at which the head of the department N. S. Velikanov reported on new tasks and on the control of party bodies over the activities of the KGB. Article 58 of the Criminal Code continued to absorb those who did not agree with the party line or spoke hostilely about its leaders.

WHITE BEARD SPY

In the early 50s, construction of a nuclear energy giant began in Tomsk. It's 30 km away. from the city. The construction site was called, or rather encrypted, under mailbox No. 5. Then, with the launch of the main facilities, the enterprise was listed under the name mailbox 153, and more recently - “Siberian Chemical Plant”. People still call it the “fifth post office”. This event made certain changes in the activities of the KGB. It was necessary to ensure a regime of secrecy, access to work for workers, security measures, etc. Foreign radio voices were broadcasting about the construction of secret facilities for the creation of atomic weapons in the area of ​​Belaya Boroda (the village of Beloborodovo). The source of the information was not known. The operational department of the KGB took a series of investigative measures to identify a foreign intelligence agent. Every citizen who had been abroad was considered a potential spy. The efforts of the KGB were directed towards its development.

One of these alleged spies turned out to be Konstantin Anatolyevich Kargin, who worked as the head of the capital construction department of the enterprise, post office box 5. Before arriving in Tomsk, he was in the USA. During the development of the Kargin version, materials were collected indicating that the Predzavodskaya site had accumulated several million worth of unidentified industrial equipment. It stood idle in the open air for years, was subject to corrosion and, in some cases, was dismantled. It was Kargin who was the official who was responsible for ensuring the safety of this equipment and its installation. The head of the KGB S. Prishchepa, the head of the department Yakovlev - a colonel serving post office box 5, and the head of the department Mikhail Leontyevich Portny, who later became the head of the department, decided to arrest Kargin and bring him to criminal responsibility for sabotage under Art. 69 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. No direct evidence of his espionage was obtained. The above-mentioned troika, somewhere in 1957-58, invited me to Prishchepa’s office and set the task of exposing Kargin as an American intelligence spy who allegedly carried out sabotage activities at the enterprise. The tailor gave me the materials he had, and I then made a decision to accept the case for my proceedings and initiate criminal proceedings. At the direction of Prishchepa, I prepared a special message addressed to the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, in which it was reported in advance that the KGB in the Tomsk region had exposed the American intelligence spy Kargin. This was the custom in those years, and this emphasized the role of the department’s leadership in the successes achieved, and Prishchepa especially needed this to receive the rank of general. But the operation to catch the spy failed. The post of mailbox prosecutor was filled with honest and principled senior justice adviser Pavel Ivanovich Osypkin. I gave him all the materials I had on Kargin to study and obtain an arrest warrant. The prosecutor sanctioned Kargin's arrest on the grounds of Art. 69 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR did not give it. He just said that it was the wrong times that made us stupid. At the same time, Pavel Ivanovich explained that according to the Decree, responsibility for damage to installed equipment should be borne by the director and chief engineer of the enterprise. As for the sabotage and Kargin’s involvement in foreign intelligence, “these are just your assumptions without concrete evidence. The mere fact of being abroad cannot serve as a basis for charges of espionage.” I, of course, completely agreed with the prosecutor’s opinion. However, Prishchepa, Yakovlev and Portnoy were not happy with this. Attempts were made to circumvent Osypkin and obtain Moscow's sanction. However, from the explanations of the management of the plant and the builders, it emerged that it was impossible to install industrial equipment, since the builders were lagging behind in commissioning the facilities under construction. In a word, the same vices were noted as at the present time. The deputy was ultimately found guilty. Minister of Medium Engineering Zavenyagin.

After another special message to Moscow about the progress of the investigation of this case, I was asked to send it to the first special department of the KGB of the USSR. And, as it turned out, that was the end. His further fate is unknown to me. Kargin, if it had been a little earlier, could, like many, have become a victim of the tyranny of the KGB. The principled position of prosecutor Osypkin saved the day. You may ask, what have you done as an investigator to comply with the law? Yes, I did everything possible to establish the truth. He collected a lot of documents from correspondence during the construction of the facilities, about the timing of the delivery of equipment, and carried out a number of other investigative actions that provided grounds for releasing Kargin from responsibility, which caused another anger against himself on the part of the management. Kargin is no longer alive.

INNOCENT VICTIMS

IN 1953-56, the Committee's attention turned to Jehovah's Witness sectarians from among the special settlers from Moldova living in the Asinovsky, Pyshkino-Troitsky (now Pervomaisky), Zyryansky and Tugansky districts of the Tomsk region. The operational department of the KGB Directorate conducted developments for this category of people.

From the perspective of that time, it seemed that the Jehovah's Witness sectarians opposed the socio-political events taking place in the country. They refused to serve in the Soviet Army, to sign for a government loan, or to participate in elections. The activities of the Jehovah's Witnesses were indeed of an organized, conspiratorial nature. During the arrests of active participants, a lot of Jehovah's literature published abroad was confiscated, for example, the magazine “Tower of the Guardians”, a home-made printing press made in the city of Asino, and other evidence. Among those arrested, I remember Nikolai Lung, Mikhail Burlaka, and Peter Kultasov. Bercha Fedor - in the Pyshkin-Truitsky district; Kekutis and Yurgis in the Tugansky district and Pytnya in the Asinovsky district. In total, over 30 were arrested over the course of 3-4 years.
Human. I had to conduct an investigation into the cases of Mikhail Lakatush and Peter Kultasov from the Pyshkino-Troitsk group of sectarians, as well as the case of Kekutis and Yurgis from the Tugansky district. In order to prove the reactionary and anti-Soviet nature of their activities, an ideological examination was carried out on the cases, which drew its conclusions from the analysis of literature and correspondence confiscated from Jehovah's Witnesses.

As a rule, all the accused did not deny their involvement in the organization of Jehovah God and work to spread Jehovah's teachings. Prominent scientists from Tomsk universities were invited to conduct the examination. All cases were then considered by the Tomsk Regional Court, and, as a rule, each of the accused was sentenced to 25 years in the camps.

Considering the affairs of the Jehovah's Witnesses from the standpoint of today, of course, the measures taken against the sectarians then can be considered too harsh. But it’s not for me to judge this. I did what was required of me. I should note that during interrogations no measures of physical coercion were used against those arrested. Although Jehovah's Witnesses are quite stubborn people. They had a frank conversation 30-40 days after the arrest. And at first, in response to all questions, they repeat: “This is a theocratic secret, which Jehovah God and his son Jesus Christ know about.” Well, at every conversation they assured that there would soon be a fiery war - Armageddon, in which all non-believers would die, and believers would live in paradise.

THE CASE OF YAKOVLEV – THE GREAT

A special mark on my work was left by the case of Yakovlev the Great being accused of treason and punitive activities during the Patriotic War. I was engaged in it somewhere in 1957-58. An employee of the operational department, Georgy Ilyin, using the lists of persons put on the all-Union wanted list for state criminals, identified Yakovlev as living in the village of Baturino, Asinovsky District, Tomsk Region. I don’t remember my first and last name now. According to the search data, from the first days of the Patriotic War, Yakovlev, having betrayed his Motherland, joined the German team as a policeman in the occupied territory, where he tortured Soviet citizens and carried out executions.

G. Ilyin identified Yakovlev from a photograph through his wife, a former classmate, and received testimony about Yakovlev’s punitive activities during the war. Everything pointed to the fact that Yakovlev, the technical director of the timber industry enterprise, living in Baturino, is the Yakovlev who was put on the wanted list. The search materials were received by my proceedings for the arrest of Yakovlev and further investigation into his case. Together with the leadership of the Department, a decision was made - before Yakovlev’s arrest, to conduct a secret identification with his wife and school classmate, for which they were summoned to Tomsk from Ukraine. I, with a group of workers and together with the witnesses who arrived for identification, went to Baturino. It was agreed with the director of the timber industry enterprise to hold an operational meeting with the participation of Yakovlev, the technical director of the timber industry enterprise, where, depending on the circumstances, an arrest would be made. Before the meeting began, Yakovlev’s wife and his classmate took places among the office workers in such a way that they could see everyone going to the meeting in the director’s office.
And then Yakovlev appeared on the way to the office. From the appearance of the wife, it became clear that she had met her husband, whom she had not seen for over 15 years, and
recognized him. It was agreed with her that during identification she should restrain herself and not give herself away. A classmate also recognized Yakovlev. However, Yakovlev himself, passing by the witnesses, did not pay attention to them and was calm. While the meeting was going on, I exchanged impressions with witnesses about the meeting that took place. Both of them claimed that they identified Yakovlev. After that I had no doubts. I decided to warn the director of the private household plot so that after the meeting he would leave Yakovlev in the office for a conversation. Which is what was done. As soon as people began to leave the meeting, I, along with witnesses, entered the director’s office. There I asked Yakovlev several questions of a production nature and explained to the director the purpose of my visit. When Yakovlev saw the arrest warrant, he was somewhat confused. However, during the identification parades carried out right there in the office of the private farmer, he categorically denied acquaintance with the witnesses, that is, with his wife and classmate. He insisted that this was the first time he had seen them, and that the treasonous punitive activities they were talking about were the fruit of their imagination. Yakovlev’s wife, losing any further self-control, jumped out of her seat, quickly approached him and hit him in the face, shouting out everything that was painful in her soul. She immediately spoke about the circumstances of her acquaintance with Yakovlev, how they got married, how they lived in the countryside before the occupation began, and then about what she learned after Yakovlev’s betrayal of his Motherland. To top it all off, she named a special sign that Yakovlev should have on the heel of his right foot - a small scar. Yakovlev denied everything that the witness said and claimed that he was seeing this citizen for the first time.

To check for a special sign from among the medical workers of the local hospital, I ordered an examination. After examining Yakovlev, the experts concluded that Yakovlev actually has a scar on the heel of his right foot (the dimensions were indicated). When asked about the origin of the scar, Yakovlev explained that as a child, while jumping through a window, he stepped on a broken glass bottle, which is why the scar formed. In the presence of such a seemingly convincing fact, my opinion was finally confirmed that there was no mistake in identifying Yakovlev. Moreover, it was reinforced during the next identification parade by his classmate. This witness, as soon as he had the opportunity to identify a person he knew among the sitting three men, immediately approached Yakovlev, called him by name and reproachfully asked how he could betray his homeland and commit such a crime. In response, Yakovlev made a surprised expression on his face, claiming that he was seeing the witness who identified him as a classmate and spoke about his criminal activities for the first time.

We were all inclined to think that Yakovlev took the path of denying his guilt, regardless of the evidence collected in his case. Upon returning to Tomsk, I issued a resolution to reimburse witnesses for the costs associated with their summons, and I announced charges of treason against Yakovlev and his punitive activities during the war. I had at my disposal not only the testimony of these two witnesses about Yakovlev’s crimes, but also of some other citizens of Ukraine who knew about his affairs during the war.

Consistently, for two months - the period established for conducting the case - I tried to expose Yakovlev using the available materials, that is, to prove to him that his refusal to admit the above facts was unfounded. After all, he could not bring anything in refutation. Naturally, the progress of the investigation into the case was monitored by the prosecutor and the management of the Department. When the materials were examined, it was necessary to present the entire proceedings in the case to Yakovlev and announce to him the end of the investigation and the transfer of the case to jurisdiction. In the end, it turned out that Yakovlev’s guilt on all counts of the accusation was proven, however, despite all the obviousness and indisputability of this, he unfoundedly denied everything. On the day when I presented the entire production to Yakovlev for review, he made a completely unexpected statement. His real name is Veliky, not Yakovlev... That Yakovlev, who is accused of the above-mentioned crimes, is a different person, obviously, in appearance he is very similar to him. He took Yakovlev’s surname as easy to remember, retaining his patronymic name, which actually belonged to him. During the war years, he, the Great, also committed a crime: he deserted from the army. For a long time he hid under the name Yakovlev, and after the war, fearing exposure, he came to Siberia and calmly worked in the timber industry. In Baturin he started a family - a wife and two children. Next, Yakovlev named all his close relatives who live in Kirovograd and do not know about his fate, just like he does about them.

At our request, all necessary investigative actions were carried out in Kirovograd to double-check Yakovlev’s statement. His parents, his now real wife, and other residents of Kirovograd fully confirmed Yakovlev’s testimony. The news that their son showed up 15 years later caused indescribable delight. Hiding as a deserter from the army for many years, Yakovlev did not know that these individuals had long been amnestied. Only the fear of retribution for this crime did not allow him to reveal himself immediately after his arrest.

The inspection confirmed the fact of the Great’s desertion from the army. As a deserter, he was also wanted. However, after the amnesty, the search was stopped, and the Great continued to hide. Due to newly discovered circumstances, the case against Yakovlev was further discontinued. He was restored to his previous surname, Velikiy, and given the opportunity to choose his place of residence. After the Great went to visit his parents and former wife in Kirovograd, he decided to return to his new family in Baturino. Which is what I did.

After returning from Kirovograd, the Great asked for a meeting. He expressed gratitude for the successful outcome of his case. He was simply happy! What makes me happy about this case is that we have ruled out the possibility of an innocent victim. It turns out that there are situations in life when people can be mistaken in good faith, recognizing one for another, as was the case in the case of Yakovlev the Great. After all, the amazing similarity between two strangers could turn out to be fatal for one of them.

And the scar on the heel? Apparently, the real Yakovlev also had it, only its origin remained unknown to us.

ABOUT REHABILITATION OF THE 90s

In November 1988, I made an attempt to describe the practice of falsifying investigative cases during the period of Stalinist repressions of 1937-1938 from memory, guided by the documentary materials that I once used when reviewing cases in 1955-1960. Naturally, such a large gap in time - more than 30 years - does not allow us to reconstruct individual events and facts with reliable accuracy. I don't rule out mistakes either.
The Krasnoe Znamya newspaper reports that over 34 years the Tomsk Regional Court has rehabilitated 5,132 people who were victims of arbitrariness. I have no reason to dispute this figure. However, the bulk of people at that time were convicted in cases under the jurisdiction of the military prosecutor's office: for treason, espionage, sabotage.

I think that taking into account the data from the military prosecutor’s office, the number of victims will increase by 2-3 times. As we now know, in 1969 the process of reviewing cases was suspended. Now it has resumed.

The sad outcome will be known only after this entire epic is completed.

ABOUT THE REPRESSIONS OF THE 30s

Particularly noteworthy are the cases against a number of scientific workers at the Tomsk Technological (now Polytechnic) Institute and the Tomsk Electromechanical Institute of Transport Engineers. Most of them were revised by me. I remember among them the names of Usov, Bazhenov, Kotyukov. If you bring up one of these cases, a circle of all the others will immediately appear. The charges in these cases were also far-fetched, although the “testimonies” of all the accused were covered by “confessions.”

A fatal role in the cases of TEMIIT workers was played by Luka Grigorievich Fedoseev, whose interrogation protocol was attached to almost every case against these workers. L. Fedoseev, being the secretary of the party committee of the institute, testified that they (the accused) adhered to different, it seems, Trotskyist or Zinovievian views. This was enough to accuse, say, Bazhenov of involvement in a counter-revolutionary right-wing Trotskyist organization. I believe that through these universities, Memorial can easily identify all the persons convicted in 1937-38, and the KGB can provide detailed information on the essence of the charges against each of them. It would be nice to take a copy of L. Fedoseev’s interrogation and use his example to show how he ensured his well-being on the bones of others, reaching the high party position of secretary of the Tomsk regional committee of the CPSU.

Now about Kolpashevo Yar. From newspaper publications it is clear that the washing away of the corpses of those executed in 1937-38 in Kolpashevo began in 1979. I dare say that this process began in the spring of 1959. At that time, I was on a business trip to Kolpashevo on the issue of rehabilitation, I saw how the Ob was washing away the ravine where there had previously been a fence near the NKVD building, and the remains of the previous burial were floating along the river. Then the question of strengthening this part of the ravine with a concrete fence was discussed, but they came to the conclusion that it would be very expensive and there was no necessary equipment. During the flood, pickets were posted near the ravine to keep out the curious. Dmitry Pavlovich Davydov, who worked in Kolpashevo at that time and is now a pensioner of the KGB, should know about this.

DECOY DUCK

In the article “Testimony of a man who went through the hell of Stalin’s camps” (Red Banner, January 29, 1989), a living witness to those lawlessness, Vladimir Kapishnikov, mentions a certain Pushnin:

“In the morning, the “elder” Pushnin, a criminal prisoner, woke us up and had a “preventative” conversation: “I unquestioningly demand that we sign any
a paper that investigator Galushka will present. Otherwise you will have to deal with me.”

In a number of cases of that period, the investigation of which was led by Velikanov Nikolai Sergeevich, the head of the Tomsk city department of the NKVD, the name of the “decoy duck” Pushnin was used. It was Velikanov who then directed the activities of Pushnin, entrusted him with the management of cases, that is, the interrogation of the accused, and Velikanov managed to get rid of Pushnin, sending him to a prison camp to serve his sentence, it seems, near Magadan.

SCREEN CLOSED

In order not to be unfounded in my narrative, I decided to confirm the events I am writing about by studying specific cases to which I had access back in the fifties. It was necessary to raise the case of the former head of the Tomsk NKVD Ovchinnikov Ivan Vasilyevich, Pushnin Ivan and others. Only by examining the Ovchinnikov case can one understand how the mass repressions unfolded in 1937-38 in Tomsk and the Narym district department of the NKVD. Believing that the period of openness and truthful coverage of the history of the past had arrived, in February 1990 I turned to the KGB of the Tomsk region, introduced Yuri Petrukhin, lieutenant colonel, head of the accounting sector, to my memoirs and asked to raise these cases. I was mistaken in my hopes. Until now, the screen behind which arbitrariness and lawlessness took place has not been parted. Obviously, there are still people who do not benefit from this. It will take some time for the NKVD archives to be opened. In the meantime, while I’m alive, I’ll try to tell you what I know.

In the cases against “members of Trotskyist formations,” a peculiarity was the fact that the “Testament of V. I. Lenin” was added to the materials as evidence. It was a text written on half a piece of paper on some kind of duplicating machine using blue dye. As a rule, the “Will” was in an envelope filed with the file. It was believed that the presence of such a case would expose one’s involvement in a counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization. From his text it followed that Lenin recommended considering a way to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary. It also said that Stalin was rude and cruel. All participants in the Trotskyist organization were sentenced to capital punishment (CM). In the cases involving collective farmers, the main points of accusation were the jokes they told. They qualified as slander against the collective farm system. I remember, for example, this joke: Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were driving along the road. A bull blocked their path and, despite any persuasion, did not leave the road. Churchill promised him free pastures in Scotland, Roosevelt promised to send him to the United States. However, the bull stood stubbornly. Then Stalin, turning to the bull, said: “Go away, otherwise I’ll send you to the collective farm.” The bull, frightened, immediately cleared the way.
Many have paid with their lives for such jokes.

I AM JUDGING, YOU ARE JUDGING

And here's how the teacher was accused of counter-revolutionary agitation. In a Russian language lesson, she hung posters in front of the students with the conjugation of the verb “we judge” and explained how this verb is conjugated: I judge; you are judged: he is judged; we are judged; you have a criminal record; they will be judged. Next - a little imagination of the investigator, so that such explanations can be traced to the facts of practical subversion on the part of the teacher.

In each specific case, the facts of subversive or sabotage activities were selected depending on the occupation of those arrested. If there were employees of the thermal power plant, then facts about sabotage were invented (explosion of the boiler, failure of pipes). Many residents of Tomsk were accused of breaking a dam on the banks of the Tom River in the Cheremoshnikov area, as a result of which the city was allegedly flooded. Anyone involved in agriculture was accused of infecting horses with scabies, cows with foot-and-mouth disease, and grooms with damaging harnesses and carts. And the former kulaks - in the conscious or deliberate destruction of agricultural machinery that previously belonged to them (threshers, seeders, winnowers), and arson. Those who worked at the Asinovsky flax mill engaged in sabotage by setting flax on fire and disabling machinery and equipment.

The fate of the Poles in Siberia is as sad as the fate of many other nations subjected to genocide in their own country.

Even before the start of mass repressions in Tomsk in 1932-1933, a group of Poles, an entire refugee settlement, was exterminated on charges of belonging to the so-called “Party of People's Heroes of Poland.” This case was falsified by a former employee of the Tomsk city department of the NKVD Fedorov and his agent provocateur Pushnin. When Ivan Ovchinnikov, the former head of the Tomsk city department of the NKVD, returned from Novosibirsk from a regional meeting of leading officials of Zapsibkrai at the beginning of 1937, work began in Tomsk on compiling lists of “counter-revolutionary elements” to be isolated. Poles living in Tomsk and the regions of Zapsibkrai, where most of them came from the West during the famine in Ukraine and Belarus, also fit into this category. The lists included mainly men aged 17 years and older. There were also women. Judging by the content of the accusation, the existence of a counter-revolutionary organization, its scale and organizational structure were developed within the regional NKVD Directorate in Novosibirsk. It was called the “counter-revolutionary Polish Military Organization”, created by the second Polish General Staff. Abbreviated as "POV". It was this imaginary organization that absorbed the bulk of the Poles in the 37-38s.

The “conspiracy” was allegedly led by Father Gronsky. The case against Gronsky, like all others, was also fabricated.

Lists of Poles were compiled on a territorial basis, and then they were arrested. The charge was standard, that is, of belonging to the counter-revolutionary “Polish Military Organization”. The “practical activities” of the accused were also fabricated and imputed
depending on what position he occupied in society before his arrest.

As a rule, all the accused “confessed” to the accusation, and on each page at the bottom of the text typed on a typewriter, they put their fingerprints. After all, the bulk of those arrested are illiterate, poverty-stricken men. As it was established, investigators prepared interrogation protocols in advance. Copies of the interrogation protocols of other accused, also typed, were attached to the case, from the text of which it is clear that the “confessional” testimonies of the accused overlapped.

And so - for every case, both individual and group. It began with a certificate drawn up by an NKVD employee, which categorically stated that, for example, Leszczynski was a member of the counter-revolutionary “Polish Military Organization”, then one or two protocols of the interrogation of the accused, a copy of the protocol of the interrogation of the accused, a copy of the protocol of the interrogation of another accused, a small indictment conclusion, and at the end of the case an extract from the decision of the NKVD troika on the execution was attached. Here, in brief, is all about the fate of the Poles in the 37-38s.

LOYED TO THE PARTY AND GOVERNMENT

Now about the counterfeiters. The people demand that their names be revealed and they be subjected to moral condemnation. Of course, the bulk of these individuals died out, many were shot (according to some sources, 20 thousand employees of the NKVD were shot - this is in the Union). At the same time, many former counterfeiters in the fifties remained in the service of the KGB with promotion in position and rank. At the KGB in the Tomsk region, in the period from 52 to 60, I had to work with such former falsifiers as Nikolay Sergeevich Velikanov, Stepan Adamovich Prishchepa, Ivan Nikolaevich Pechenkin, Pavel Avdeevich Kazantsev, Lev Abram Isaakovich, Dmitry Kondratievich Saltymakov. I knew Iran Vasilyevich Bolshakov, Safron Petrovich Karpov, Alexander Vasilyevich Smirnov, who were also former counterfeiters, who worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs at that time. All of them, I believe, were loyal to the party and government and acted taking into account the political situation and according to instructions from above. Obviously, this was inherent in everyone living in one or another period of the country’s existence.
Changes in the leadership of the party and the country and the line pursued in all directions of political, economic or social life have always found support and approval among the people. This was the case under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and now under Gorbachev. Dissidents were persecuted. How it will be now - time will tell.

DON'T BE DILIGENT...

Therefore, the falsifiers of that period explained their actions by the requirements of the political situation, when the basis of their thinking was the theory of “exacerbation of the class struggle” imposed by Stalin. If they had not shown zeal in the fight against “class enemies,” they themselves would have been accused of aiding the “enemies.” The interrogation reports often contained the following phrases: “The enemy tends to lock himself away,” “The enemy does not sleep,” “The enemy is cunning.” Therefore, by falsifying investigative cases, they managed to survive, go through that difficult life path, and, each in their own way, complete it. Somewhere in 59-60, the USSR government decided to reduce by 50 percent the pensions of workers who had compromised themselves in the service of the NKVD. I don't think we can take more from them.

As for the presence of falsifiers in the party and the continuation of their work in the KGB bodies, this question aroused an irresistible desire not only in me, but also among other workers who had comprehended the truth, to expel them from the party and dismiss them from the bodies. Life has shown that I was hasty in resolving this issue, for which I seriously paid.

I CAN SAY THE FOLLOWING

So, we have no grounds for bringing former falsifiers to trial
we'll find it. And I’ll try to name names other than those I’ve already mentioned: in Tomsk these are Anton Kartashev, Dotsenko, Gorbenko. In the fifties, Anton Kartashev worked at the Tomsk Bar Association; Dotsenko - head of the fuel industry department of the regional executive committee; Gorbenko - Director of the Tomsk Communal and Construction College; Stepan Stepanovich MARTON - Head of the Narym District Department of the NKVD for NSO ZSK USSR; mass murderer. Under investigation in Novosibirsk. Investigator: LEV Abram Isaakovich.

According to the Narym district NKVD, I called Karpov Safron Petrovich. He now lives in Tomsk-7, is engaged in beekeeping at his dacha in Protopopovo. Vedeshkin Ivan Fedorovich also in Tomsk-7, retired. When meeting me he avoids talking about the past. The head of the NKVD district committee, Marton, was convicted, and his deputy Galdilin was also arrested, but later released. I had to interrogate him on matters of that period. I simply forgot the other names. Salov and Yagodkin operated in the Asinovsky district. As for other former senior officials of the KGB in the Tomsk region from among the falsifiers, I can say the following: Velikanov, somewhere in 1953-54, from the post of head of the MGB department, was transferred to Riga with the rank of colonel, where he was chairman of the KGB of the republic, subsequently became general Then, according to rumors, he died in a car accident. His case was handled by the military prosecutor's office, after which he was stripped of all awards and ranks. Prishchepa, who replaced Velikanov in a leadership position, was relieved of his post as head of the KGB for the Tomsk region in 1960 and worked as head until the summer of 1988. special department at the Institute of Personnel Training of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building in Obninsk, then died. Lev Abram Isaakovich, a retired lieutenant colonel, lived in Tomsk on Belentsa Street and also recently died. Pechenkin, Kazantsev, Saltymakov are no longer alive. Bolshakov Ivan Vasilyevich in the last years of his life was the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Tomsk region; he died in the fifties. Smirnov A.V. worked in the ATC system, his fate is unknown. In the cases of a large number of rehabilitated persons, the names of the presiding officer at the judicial Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Ulrikh V.V. and state prosecutor Vyshinsky. Their activities dating back to that period are well covered in our press. They are among the main culprits in the tragic destinies of millions of Soviet people.

ABOUT THE CHIEF - FALSIFIER

At the end of 1960, the assistant military prosecutor of the Siberian Military District I. A. Larionov gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with the materials of the falsification of the case in 1938 against employees of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade by the then detective in Moscow S. Prishchepa. This circumstance struck me greatly. None of us thought that Prishchepa was involved in cases of this category. It turns out, like many others, Prishchepa fabricated a group case accusing Vneshtorg employees of involvement in Japanese intelligence. One of the defendants in this case, I don’t remember his last name, at the moment the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court was carried out, that is, executed, ended up in a prison hospital. Having shot the bulk of the accused, they forgot about the patient. His VMN was replaced after leaving the hospital for 10 years in the camps, then, according to the USSR Ministry of State Security Directive No. 66, he was convicted again, and only in the 50s did he turn to the USSR Military Prosecutor's Office regarding the issue of rehabilitation. I. Larionov had instructions to interrogate Prishchepa in this case. The case turned out to be “bogus”. The surviving witness told under what circumstances it was fabricated, and all the workers of the People's Commissariat of Vneshtorg who passed through it were rehabilitated. The USSR Military Prosecutor's Office submitted a submission to the USSR KGB regarding Prishchepa. The center decided to relieve Prishchepa from the post of head of the KGB Directorate for the Tomsk Region. However, S. Prishchepa was also a member of the bureau of the regional committee of the CPSU.

I remember how all the communists were gathered into a conference room in the building of the KGB on 18 Kirova Street, where the first secretary of the regional committee, I. Marchenko, who replaced V. Moskvin, spoke to S. Prishchepa to announce the materials. Like all falsifiers, S. Prishchepa referred to the peculiarities of that period, the established practice of falsifying cases, and continued to assert his devotion to the Leninist party. On the podium, repenting of what he had done, he cried. He told that as a young man he tended cows and went through a difficult path from a shepherd to the head of the Department. When I asked how many cases he had fabricated in Moscow, Prishchepa replied that this was the only one. Of course, none of us believed it. Those NKVD workers who fabricated more cases moved up the career ladder faster. Remember I talked about the competition in this indicator between Tomsk and Novokuznetsk? The party meeting of the KGB Directorate decided to severely reprimand Prishchepa and put it on his registration card. At the same time, they took into account that he had already suffered serious punishments, was relieved of his post as head of the KGB and removed from the bureau of the regional committee of the CPSU. After this story, it became clear to us, the investigative workers, why Prishchepa so zealously defended the former counterfeiters D.K. Saltymakov, I.N. Pechenkin, P.A. Kazantsev, A.I. Lev, who were at the top of the departments. As soon as the conclusion of the case referred to the name of the falsifier who had concocted this or that case, it was immediately crossed out. That is why Prishchepa did not allow interrogation of people like L. Fedoseeva, E. Sokokolova, who at that time worked as the secretary of the Tomsk CPSU Civil Committee, and during the years of repression accused party workers of Trotskyism. As far as I remember, Sokolova in 1937-38 was a teacher in the Parabelsky district, got mixed up there with NKVD employees, and the protocols of her interrogation as a witness were added to the cases of those arrested for connections with EIKHE.

PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW EVERYTHING

Having the facts of malicious falsification, vile provocation in cases of that period on the part of the leadership of the Directorate, I decided to speak at one of the party meetings demanding the dismissal and party responsibility of the Forgers. But it was not there! The falsifiers remained at work, and I received a punishment - a severe reprimand: “For slandering the management staff and badmouthing the old KGB cadres.” So much for social justice. And at the end of 60, under a plausible pretext, I was laid off under the “Law on Significant Reduction of the Armed Forces of the USSR.” As they say, “got through.” I don't mean to say I regret what happened. I want to warn others about the inadmissibility of hasty decisions in the conditions of our socialist democracy.

Everything would be fine if it all ended there. S. Prishchepa left the Office, but the followers of his actions remained. In this regard, I would like to tell you what intrigues were perpetrated on me during my employment after my dismissal. At first, I got a job as a senior investigator at the Tomsk prosecutor's office with a salary of 105 rubles. This was 2.5 times lower compared to the previous work. Soon the opportunity arose to find a job at a sensitive enterprise in Tomsk-7, where material conditions were much better.

It took three months to overcome the barrier that was put up by the KGB apparatus. Thanks to the sympathy of Major I.P. Tungusov, we managed to find the direct culprits who were causing the obstacles, and through the commission of the CPSU Central Committee, created based on my complaint, to break this knot. The head of the 2nd department was Avdzeiko, a colonel who had worked with Prishchepa for many years. In his calendar, Tungusov found an entry: “Spragovsky was taken to the 1st department to check and protest.” Tungusov, mastering the methods of forensic science, photographed this recording and gave it to me. Only with the use of this material evidence was I able to expose the personnel department employees and the people who put pressure on them of unreasonable obstacles to entry and further establishment in the system of the Siberian Chemical Plant, where I worked for the next 27 years.

Strict reprimand

Again I return to the mass repressions of 1937-38. People want to know how they were carried out in our region. The Memorial Historical and Educational Society is trying to establish this by interviewing surviving witnesses of that period. I am convinced that such an attempt will not reveal the true picture of lawlessness and arbitrariness. The surviving former falsifiers, and there are only a few of them, are afraid to talk about it. They are oppressed by moral responsibility to the people.

Everything they knew they would take with them to the grave.
Therefore, the main source for revealing the truth can be specific archival investigative files on former leaders of the NKVD apparatus: in Tomsk - Ivan Vasilyevich Ovchinnikov and Istvan Martyn - in Kolpashev, that is, the former Narym district. The documents available in these cases can answer the questions of how the events unfolded, where the instructions came from, how to falsify the cases, how many people to shoot and how many camps for 10 years, and so on.

Why am I convinced of this? Because I personally studied these cases and made the appropriate inquiries during the rehabilitation of citizens in 1956-1960. But that was over 30 years ago. Therefore, I believe that the Memorial society should receive access to these cases. The current leadership of the KGB in the Tomsk region takes a strange position on this issue. It refers to the ban and is waiting for instructions from the center to open the archives. But since it is impossible to issue a case against the same Ovchinnikov, let the employees of the KGB, based on the available materials, highlight the history of mass repressions in the past, basing it on the documents on the mentioned cases. It's high time to reveal the secrecy. This is the demand of the people. When I interrogated former forgers Gorbenko, Dotsenko, Smirnova, Karpov and presented them with specific cases against those sentenced to VMN, they did not deny their involvement in the falsification of these cases. However, they claimed that they did this at the direction of the leadership from above.. As for the use of illegal investigative methods, they did not give intelligible answers to the question of how they achieved “confession” in committing crimes such as the explosion of bridges across the Ob and Tom, which did not exist in nature.

The practice of using such methods was spoken about by the accused themselves, who were able to survive. I remember Zinoviev from Parabel with deformed fingers of both hands. They were broken between the door and the jamb. The former secretary of the Tomsk city party committee, MALYSHEV, who returned to Tomsk in the 50s, spoke about the beating during the investigation.. It was a pity to look at this man's face. As it turned out, he was not guilty of anything. He walked through the “organization” of EIHE. He survived purely by chance, because he endured all the torment and did not succumb to the provocations caused by the investigation. He cried and trembled with his entire senile body, talking about himself and fate, befell his comrades in the Tomsk City Committee. I remember that Nikulkov’s name was also there, about whom the Red Banner newspaper had already written. Now that I have read Khrushchev’s report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” dated February 25, 1956, I have no doubt about the use of physical methods of influence on those arrested through torture, deprivation of reason and consciousness in order to extract imaginary “confessions.”

On page 145 of the magazine “Izvestia of the Central Committee of the CPSU”, number 3, 1989 we read: “When the wave of mass repressions in 1939 began to weaken, when the leaders of local party organizations began to blame the NKVD workers for using physical force on those arrested, STALIN sent 10 January 1939, an encrypted telegram to the secretaries of regional committees, regional committees, the Central Committee of Communist Parties, People's Commissars of Internal Affairs, and heads of NKVD departments. This telegram said: “ The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks explains that the use of physical force in the practice of the NKVD was allowed since 1937 with the permission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks)... " And further: “ The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks) believes that the method of physical coercion must be used in the future, as an exception, in relation to obvious and non-disarming enemies of the people as a completely correct and appropriate method “, from here it should be clear to everyone that the confessions in the cases of those accused of involvement in counter-revolutionary formations and about their practical sabotage activities were a consequence of the physical pressure on them by NKVD workers . In what form this was expressed must be looked at separately for each specific case. Reviewing the cases against the workers of the party apparatus for relations with EIHE, I allowed doubts to be expressed at that time about the validity of the accusations against Kamenev and Zinoviev. This was somewhere in 1956. According to the denunciation of Elizaveta Nikolaevna Babikova, an employee of the KGB, I was called “on the carpet” to the head of the department Prishchepa S.A. In the presence of a number
senior officials, the core of whom were falsifiers, S. Prishchepa expressed political distrust to me after the scolding. He accused me of not understanding the political aspects of the events that took place, of distorting the issues of political struggle in the party and with the enemies of the people. Without having at that time materials on the unfounded accusation of Kamenev and Zinoviev, I could not oppose Prishchepa with anything.

When the majority of the investigation department workers became convinced that all the counter-revolutionary organizations, in which thousands of executed residents of the region were accused of involvement, were far-fetched, I took personal initiative and turned to the Central Committee to Khrushchev with a proposal to adopt a legislative act that would rehabilitate all persons convicted extrajudicially. bodies (troikas, deuces, Special Meeting). In the letter, I outlined and summarized the practice of reviewed cases. I received an answer from the head of the investigation department of the KGB of the USSR, Comrade Malyarov, to whom my letter was forwarded from the Central Committee. The latter explained that he considered the adoption of such an act premature. As is now known, it followed only more than 30 years later. It is noteworthy that I sent such a letter without the knowledge of Comrade Prishchepa, and he did not know about it. And the answer came through him. I've fallen out of favor again! “How dare you, click-feathered one, contact Nikita Sergeevich without my knowledge?” - approximately in this way another scolding was arranged for me. Such obstacles were raised due to the fact that Prishchepa and the heads of departments were themselves falsifiers, and they were extremely concerned about how the rehabilitation process was going.

SUMMARIZING

APPLICATION to the primary party organization of workshop No. 20 of the Siberian Chemical Plant from Anatoly Ivanovich Spragovsky, a member of the CPSU since 1950.

At the age of 25, I consciously decided to join the party.
Even at Komsomol age, I was instilled with the belief in the inevitability of building communism in our country...

Only in the 55-60s, working in the investigative department of the KGB in the Tomsk region and reviewing cases of mass repressions of the 30s-40s, I came to the idea that countless victims, the genocide of the Soviet people are a consequence of lawlessness and arbitrariness of the authorities The NKVD and the top authorities leading them, including the CPSU.

Back in 1959, I openly expressed my voice of protest, for which I was broken, receiving a severe reprimand “for slandering the leadership and badmouthing the old KGB cadres.” Then I was dismissed from the KGB. Right up until the XXVIII Congress of the CPSU, I had a glimmer of hope that the Politburo would tell the people the terrible truth about hidden criminal acts. However, this did not happen.

Over 40 years of party experience, I have constantly encountered the practice of deception, all kinds of perversions on the way to renewing the party. All this led me to the conclusion about the need to break with the CPSU, which I inform you about with this statement.

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