Key person in this story - Pavlik's father Trofim Sergeevich Morozov. He was a hero civil war, commander of the red partisan detachment. And the chairman of the village council of this very village. And a member of the CPSU (b). That is, he was the Soviet government. At the same time, a gang of the Purtov brothers operated in the Tavdinsky district, with which Morozov was associated. Being the chairman of the Gerasimov village council since 1930, he sold food and false documents to bandits.

It would be a mistake to think that the Purtovs were ideological fighters against the Soviets, avenging their desecrated freedom. In 1919, Osip, Mikhail and Grigory Purtov were mobilized into the Kolchak army, but they immediately surrendered to the Reds and were released home. In 1921, Gregory was drafted into the Red Army, but he deserted from there three days later. Soon in Siberia blazed peasant uprising and the Purtovs, who put together a gang, became famous for the massacres of supporters Soviet power. On March 10, 1921, caught in their lair in the forest, the bandits surrendered without a fight to a detachment of seven Bolsheviks from the Yelan party cell.

The voice of reason tells me that it was necessary to slap the bandits on the spot, and write in the report that, they say, they put up desperate resistance and were eliminated. But the Yelan Bolsheviks turned out to be humanists and decided to do everything according to the law: first the trial, and then the execution. The court turned out to be fantastically lenient towards a gang of murderers and robbers: taking into account the poor origin and crocodile tears of repentant bandits, they were given only 10 years in the camps.

But they did not stay in the camps either. Two years later, they were released as reformed and because of the alleged illness of their father. Returning home, the brothers immediately returned to their robbery. They were detained, but escaped from custody. With the beginning of collectivization, the dispossessed from the European part of the country began to be exiled to Siberia, and this contingent willingly joined the Purtov gang.

Remarkably, until the early 1930s, the bandit families were not persecuted, and only in 1931, by decision of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court, the Purtovs' father with his younger sons Peter and Pavel and their wives were evicted from their native village. The youngest son of Purtov, Peter, received five years in prison for harboring his older brothers, but six months later he escaped and returned to his native places, where he lived under false documents. Pavel also escaped from exile and joined the gang.

The Purtov gang, which accounted for at least 20 corpses, was liquidated only in 1933. The last straw that overflowed the patience of the authorities was the very brutal murder of Pavlik and Fedya Morozov, which received a wide response. The Purtovs were not directly involved in this, but the very fact of the existence of a gang in the area, which enjoyed elusive fame, looked defiant. An operational group of the OGPU under the command of an experienced security officer Krylov was sent to the area, which completed the task.

So, such a long epic of the Purtov gang became possible thanks to, as they would say now, corruption, since the bandits have established close ties with the heads of local village councils, including Trofim Morozov. As they say, money does not smell, so the chairman put the trade in certificates of the poor on a grand scale - they were bought by dispossessed fellow villagers and exiled special settlers (the presence of a certificate allowed them to leave their place of exile).

The security officers seized the certificates issued by Trofim Morozov from captured bandits and found them in bandit caches. So they took the “corrupt” chairman under white hands, no denunciation of Pavlik was required for this. There was no point in locking Trofim Sergeevich.

You ask - what does Pavlik Morozov have to do with it? The fact is that his father was illiterate, and all the certificates that he traded were written in a neat childish handwriting by his son Pavlik. That is, it turns out that the father "surrendered" his son, and not vice versa. Pavlik only confirmed his father's confession to the district representative of the OGPU.

There was no trial at which, according to legend, the young pioneer delivered a diatribe. As the Tyumen local historian and writer Alexander Petrushin writes, who unearthed this story, “Trofim Morozov’s fate was decided by the meeting of the“ troika ”at the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU in the Urals on February 20, 1932. It is indicated: “He was engaged in the fabrication of forged documents with which he supplied members of the K / R of the insurgent group and persons hiding from the repression of Soviet power.” Resolution of the "troika": "Imprison him in a labor camp for a period of ten years."

For the attention of the schoolchildren: the corrective labor camp is not a prison and not the Kolyma zone. The convict was only sent to work at one of the many construction sites of socialism, where he lived and worked without protection. The whole difference with an ordinary worker was that he could not quit before the end of the term of the ZK ITL, and part of his earnings was confiscated in favor of the state. These are the "atrocities" committed by the Soviet government!

Trofim Sergeevich Morozov was lucky - he got to the construction of the White Sea Canal, where he proved himself with better side, and not only was released three years later, but was even awarded the order. After his release, he lived and worked in Tyumen.

So why were Pavlik Morozov and his four-year-old brother stabbed to death? The fact is that Pavel's father left his family (wife with four children) and began to cohabit with a woman who lived next door - Antonina Amosova. And then he decided to divorce his old wife and marry a twenty-year-old girl. According to the then law, in this case, all the land and other property went to the father in a new family. And the old wife, along with the children, became homeless.

The wife, of course, demanded the division of property before the divorce. And - again, according to the then legislation - for three male children (Pavlik with a little brother and brother Alexei) they had to cut off a noticeable piece of land allotment from the father's plot, who, although he was the chairman of the village council, could not so clearly shove against the law, but when he was arrested, his father's relatives realized that the partition was about to happen.

It was then that the plan was ripe to bang the kids - after which the divorce would be left without land. It was not possible to bang all three at once - but it is clear that Alexei would also have been taken. According to the recollections of Pavel's teacher, his father regularly beat and beat his wife and children both before and after leaving the family. Grandfather Pavlik also hated his daughter-in-law because she did not want to live with him on the same farm, but insisted on a division. According to Alexei (Pavel's brother), the father "loved only himself and vodka", he did not spare his wife and sons.

Suspicions immediately fell on the family of the father of those killed. Yes, in fact, they are not particularly hidden. According to Tatyana Baydakova, “when my slaughtered children were brought from the forest, grandmother Aksinya met me on the street and said with a grin: “Tatyana, we made meat for you, and now you eat it!”. The initiator of the murder was the uncle of Pavlik and Fedya Arseniy Kulukanov, and the 76-year-old grandfather Sergey and 19-year-old Danila, the cousin of Pavlik and Fedya, became the direct perpetrators of the murder. Grandma Aksinya helped hide the evidence.

In general, a typical "dispute between business entities", as they would say now. A special piquancy to which is given by the fact that all this was done by BELARUSIANS, who came to Siberia according to the Stolypin recruitment even under the sovereign emperor.

This is what the happy Stalinist USSR looked like in real life. Corruption, which even the heroes of the civil war did not shun, banditry and merging local authorities with bandits, lawlessness, murders based on hostility or property claims, and everything on such a scale that the authorities did not know what to grab onto - if they put everyone in jail, then half of the country should be sent to camps.

Now you can appreciate what Stalin had to deal with, and from what pipets he dragged the country. At the same time, it will become more clear where the prisoners in the camps came from, all these “innocent inmates” who were screaming about rehabilitation. Even 68 years later, the Prosecutor General’s Office, after checking the investigative file, decided “to recognize Sergey Sergeevich Morozov and Daniil Ivanovich Morozov as reasonably convicted in this case for committing a counter-revolutionary crime and not subject to rehabilitation” - everything in this case is so obvious from the evidence.

Who is Pavlik Morozov? AT post-war years around him legendary person a lot of controversy erupted. Some saw a hero in his face, others claimed that he was an informer and did not accomplish any feat. The information that is established reliably is not enough to restore all the details of the event. Therefore, many of the nuances were added by the journalists themselves. Official confirmation is only the fact of his death from a knife, date of birth and death. All other events are subject to discussion.

Official version

In the Soviet Union, Pavel belonged to a host of so-called pioneer heroes. Pavlik Morozov was born in the Urals in 1918. He studied well at school and was a ringleader among his peers testify to the fact that he was an excellent student and was a leader among his peers. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia contains information that Pavel Morozov organized the first pioneer detachment in his village. The boy grew up in a large family. At an early age, he lost his father, who left for another woman, leaving the children in the care of his mother. Despite the fact that many worries after the departure of his father fell on the shoulders of Paul, he showed a great desire to study. This was later told by his teacher L.P. Isakova.

At his young age, he firmly believed in communist ideas. In 1930, according to the official version, he denounced his father, who, being the chairman of the village council, forged certificates to the kulaks that they were allegedly dispossessed.

As a result, Father Pavel was sentenced to 10 years. For his heroic deed, the boy paid with his life: he and his younger brother were slaughtered in the forest when the boys were picking berries. All members of the Morozov family were later accused of the massacre. His own paternal grandfather Sergey and 19-year-old cousin Danila, as well as grandmother Ksenia (as an accomplice) and Pavel's godfather - Arseniy Kulukanov, who was his uncle (as a village kulak - as the initiator and organizer of the murder) were found guilty of the murder of Yuyli . After the trial, Arseny Kulukanov and Danila Morozov were shot, octogenarian Sergei and Ksenia Morozov died in prison. Another uncle of Pavlik, Arseniy Silin, was also accused of complicity in the murder, but during the trial he was acquitted.

Interestingly, Pavlik's father, convicted of forgery, returned from the camps three years later. He participated in the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and, after working for three years, returned home with an order for hard work, and then settled in Tyumen.

The act of Pavel Morozov was regarded by the Soviet authorities as a feat for the benefit of the people. He believed in a bright future and made a significant contribution to the building of communism, for which he paid with his life. They made a real hero out of Pavlik, while hiding some dubious facts from his life. Over time, this whole story turned into a legend, which became an example for many compatriots.

November 14, he could have turned 90 years old, but he forever remained 13 years old. Pavlik Morozov, over the past 76 years after his death, managed to be elevated to the rank of a pioneer hero and overthrown to a banal juvenile informer.

Pioneer Hero

To fully understand what happened in the early 30s of the last century in the remote Ural village of Gerasimovka, even the archives of the criminal case opened in 2002 did not help. It is only known for certain that Pavlik Morozov really existed. But there was a time when, in the wake of exposing communist myths, the most desperate heads even questioned this fact.

Recall: according to the official version, on which more than one generation grew up, Pavlik Morozov denounced his father at the GPU that he was hiding bread. Father was given 10 years. Some time later, thirteen-year-old Pavlik and his nine-year-old brother Fedya were found dead in the forest. Relatives of the boys were accused of the murder: grandfather, grandmother and cousin. They were shot, and Pavlik Morozov was made a pioneer hero.

During perestroika, historians and journalists rushed to investigate this case again. 20 years ago, some eyewitnesses to this story were still alive, and their testimony, backed up by old interviews with Pavlik's mother, Tatyana Morozova, divided the researchers into two camps. Some are sure that the child was slandered, while others were found in long history the bloody hand of the Chekists...

Father Reveler

So, on September 3, 1932, the bodies of Pavlik and his younger nine-year-old brother Fedya were found in the forest near the village. “Paul was dealt a fatal blow to the belly. The second blow was struck in the chest near the heart, - the district police officer wrote in the protocol of the inspection of the scene. “Fyodor was stabbed to death with a knife in the belly above the navel, where the intestines came out, and his hand was cut with a knife to the bone ...”

In 1997, the administration of the Tavdinsky district, in which the village of Gerasimovka is located, turned to the Prosecutor General's Office with a request to review the decision of the court that sentenced Pavlik's killers to death. The Prosecutor General's Office decided that the Morozovs were not subject to rehabilitation on political grounds, since the case was a criminal one. Similar conclusions were made later by the Supreme Court.

As it became known, in the case of Father Pavlik, Trofim Morozov, there was no question of any bread. The chairman of the Gerasimovsky village council was tried for selling blank forms with seals to the dispossessed. For such trade, Trofim was imprisoned along with five other chairmen of the village councils of the district. Pavlik's younger brother Alexei recalled in the late 80s: “They really sent us to us. They brought settlers in the fall of the thirtieth year. Do you think their father felt sorry for them? Not at all. He is our mother, he did not spare his sons, let alone strangers. He loved only himself and vodka. And they tore three skins from the settlers for forms with seals.

It turns out that the moral character of Trofim could play an important role in this story. Pavlik's first teacher, Larisa Isakova, who arrived in Gerasimovka as a 17-year-old girl, could not stand the revelatory wave of perestroika and wrote an open letter: how to write and count. As soon as Trofim sat down at his post, he completely abandoned his household, his wife and Pavlik were alone overstrained. He came home drunk, where did he get money only for vodka? Apparently, he was already receiving offerings.”

offended mother

Professor of the University of California Yuri Druzhnikov, who died this year, called for attention to the only surviving character in the Morozov family saga - the boys' mother Tatyana. She was not repressed, and, according to him, as compensation for everything that happened, the party even provided the woman with an apartment in the Crimea. Druzhnikov claims that Morozova told him that it was her idea to denounce her husband. It was revenge for the fact that he left for another woman. She, according to the researcher, persuaded her son Pavlik to “punish dad.” In his research, Druzhnikov went as far as to say that the killers of the boys were NKVD officers. They committed such a terrible crime in order to untie their hands in the fight against the fists, and at the same time present the hero-martyr to the younger generation. Documentary evidence of this has not been found. And Tatyana Morozova really moved to live in Alupka. The woman died in 1983, but the neighbors remember the pioneer hero's mother and brother.

She was a normal woman and a good mother. I remember her son Alexei very well, we worked together, ”said Tatiana’s neighbor Alexandra Yegorovna to the Sobesednik. - He often told us that there was no politics in the Pavlik case. Their grandfather went crazy, so he killed the brothers. And the mother was very worried about that tragedy. When Aleksey also called his son Pavlik, she cried a lot ... She was simple, in the summer she rented out housing to vacationers, at one time she traded fruit in the market.

Grandfather-murderer

By the way, there is not a word about the denunciation of Pavlik Morozov in the materials of the court. And when Trofim Morozov was tried, this fact was not mentioned. It is only known that Pavlik acted as a witness at the trial.

During interrogation, his grandfather Sergey, who was arrested on suspicion of killing Pavlik, admitted that the idea of ​​​​the murder belonged to him, since “Pavel brought out of patience, did not let pass, reproached me for being the keeper of the confiscated kulak things.” But at the same time he stated, however, that “he himself did not kill the brothers. Only kept Fedor. The grandson of Danila stabbed the guys.” 19-year-old Danila confirmed this: “We killed Fedya only so that we would not be extradited. He cried, asked not to kill, but we did not regret it ... ”The grandmother of the killed boys, Aksinya, was accused of inciting. Allegedly, she knew about the plan of the killers, approved of it and repeatedly said to her grandson Danila: “Kill this snotty communist!”

No one can figure out how strong the ideological component is in this story. Too many myths have wound around the tragedy. Fellow villagers, who were children at that time, recalled that the Morozov family was very pious, and Pavlik and Fedya were killed when they returned from the local priest.

And his teacher Larisa Isakova wrote in an open letter: “Now Pavlik seems like a kind of boy stuffed with slogans in a clean pioneer uniform. And because of our poverty, he never saw this uniform, he did not participate in pioneer parades. He did not know about any Stalin then ...

I did not have time to organize a pioneer detachment in Gerasimovka then, it was created after me, but I told the guys about how children are fighting for better life in other cities and villages. Once I brought a red tie from Tavda, tied it to Pavel, and he joyfully ran home. And at home, his father tore off his tie and beat him terribly.

On November 14, 1918, a boy was born in the Urals, who was destined to become the first pioneer hero of the USSR, and one of the most controversial figures in Soviet history.

For today's Russian youth, the word "pioneers" sounds about the same as "dinosaurs". The existence of a mass children's organization in the Soviet Union, in which practically all schoolchildren were involved, starting from the 3rd grade, young Russians know only by hearsay.

The first hero of the pioneer

At the same time, almost everyone over the age of 30 had a chance to personally see this special layer of Soviet culture associated with the ideological education of young people.

The Soviet pioneers, in addition to adults, whose examples were recommended to be followed, had their own heroes - teenagers with red ties who sacrificed their lives for their own ideals, beliefs and in the name of the Motherland.

Pavlik Morozov (center, with a book) with a group of fellow practitioners. Photo: Public Domain

The beginning of the gallery of pioneer heroes laid, of course, Pavlik Morozov. Unlike many others, Pavel Trofimovich Morozov remained in folklore, although the glory of the “traitor of the father” that was attached to him in no way reflects the real state of affairs.

According to the canonical Soviet version, Pavlik Morozov was one of the organizers of the first pioneer detachment in the village of Gerasimovka, Tobolsk province. In 1931, at the height of the fight against the kulaks, 13-year-old Pavel testified against his father, Trofima Morozova, who, as chairman of the village council, collaborated with the kulaks, helped them evade taxation, and also hid bread to be handed over to the state. On the basis of these testimonies of the principal pioneer, Trofim Morozov was sentenced to 10 years.

In September 1932, kulaks, among whom were Pavel's grandfather and the boy's cousin, brutally killed the pioneer and his own younger brother Fyodor in the forest.

In the case of the murder of Pavlik Morozov, four people were convicted - the grandfather and grandmother of the dead boys, as well as a cousin Danila and godfather Arseny Kulukanov who was his uncle. The direct perpetrator of the crime, Danila Morozov, and one of the "customers" of the murder, Arseniy Kulukanov, were shot, and the elderly Kseniya and Sergey Morozov sentenced to prison. Interestingly, one of the accused Arseniy Silin was fully justified.

If in Soviet time Pavlik Morozov was presented as "an unbending fighter for ideals", then during the perestroika period, critics characterized him as "a snitch who betrayed his own father." The circumstances of the pioneer's death were also called into question.

What is known today?

Father and son

Pavlik Morozov was indeed one of the first pioneers in the village of Gerasimovka. The village was split - on the one hand, the extreme poverty of some, on the other, the prosperity of the so-called "kulaks", opponents of the Soviet regime, which included some relatives of Pavel Morozov.

Pavel's father, Trofim Morozov, became the head of the Gerasimovsky village council, and in this position he left a very bad reputation about himself. He was noted for what is now called "corruption" - he appropriated the property of the dispossessed, helped wealthy fellow villagers evade taxes, speculated on certificates issued to special settlers.

Portrait of Pavlik Morozov based on the only known photograph of him. Photo: Public Domain

Pavel could not feel warm feelings for his father also because Trofim Morozov left his family, leaving for another woman. Paul's mother Tatiana, was left with four children in her arms, virtually without a livelihood. Trofim's parents, Sergey and Ksenia Morozov, hated Tatyana because she had refused to live in a common house with them and insisted on a division. They did not have warm feelings for Tatyana's children either, calling them, according to the recollections of Pavel's brother, Alexei Morozov, nothing more than "puppies."

And after Pavlik joined the pioneers, in the eyes of his grandfather, he completely turned into the main object of hatred.

At the same time, Pavel himself had no time for pioneer training: after the departure of his father, he became the main man in the family and helped his mother with the housework.

In 1931, the notoriety of Trofim Morozov, who had already left the post of chairman of the village council, reached the ears of the competent authorities. Morozov was charged with abuse. At the trial, Tatyana Morozova testified about the illegal acts of her husband known to her, and Pavel only confirmed the words of his mother, and was stopped by the judge, who did not consider it necessary to demand extensive testimony from the minor. As a result, Trofim Morozov was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

massacre

There is conflicting information about his fate. "Whistleblowers" Pavlik Morozov claim that his father was allegedly shot in the camp in 1938, but there is no evidence for this. According to other sources, Trofim Morozov, after serving his sentence, settled in the Tyumen region, where he lived until the end of his days, trying not to advertise his relationship with Pavlik Morozov.

Considering that Tatyana Morozova gave the main testimony against her ex-husband, Trofim's relatives took revenge not on Pavlik, but on her. On September 2, 1932, Tatyana left on business, and the next day, Pavel and his younger brother Fedor went to the forest for berries. The father's relatives considered that this was a convenient opportunity, and, after lying in wait for the boys in the forest, they dealt with them.

Pavel was stabbed in the stomach and heart, and his brother Fedor, who tried to escape, was first hit in the temple with a stick, and then finished off with a stab in the stomach.

The search for the children began on September 5, upon the return of the mother. Already on September 6, the bodies were found in the forest. The killers did not particularly try to hide the fact of the massacre. Pavel's mother, Tatyana Morozova, later recalled that when the bodies of the brutally murdered children were brought to the village, Ksenia Morozova, the mother of her ex-husband and the grandmother of the dead, told her with a grin: “Tatyana, we made meat for you, and now you eat it!”

The investigation into the murder made it possible to fully prove the guilt of the suspects. Later attempts to see the murder of the Morozov brothers as a “provocation of the OGPU” do not stand up to scrutiny.

In 1999, representatives of the Memorial movement and relatives of the Morozov brothers convicted of murder tried to have their sentences reviewed. However, the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, having considered the case, came to the conclusion that the murder of Pavlik Morozov is purely criminal in nature, and the killers were convicted justifiably and are not subject to rehabilitation on political grounds.

Hero and victim

So, the pioneer Pavlik Morozov, objectively speaking, was not "a snitch and a traitor to his father." Pavel's father, Trofim Morozov, in fact, was a corrupt official and an extremely dishonest person who left his own children to their fate.

Reproduction of "Pavlik Morozov" painting by artist Nikita Chebakov (1952). Photo: Public Domain

I really don’t want to say anything about the relatives of Pavel and Fyodor Morozov, who organized and carried out the brutal murder of minors out of revenge - everything is said about them in the verdict, the validity of which was confirmed by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.

The whole trouble of Pavlik Morozov is that in the midst of an acute confrontation in society in the early 1930s, his tragic death became a banner for the authorities, a symbol of the struggle against those who do not share its ideals and values.

Half a century later, another political force with an anti-Soviet orientation will, with no less zeal, use tragic fate Pavlik for his own purposes, pouring dirt on the memory of a teenager.

From the point of view of his era, Pavlik Morozov was a teenager with strong convictions, who opposed the enemies of the existing system and was killed for this. From today's point of view. Pavlik Morozov is a teenager with strong views on life, who, as a law-abiding citizen, testified in court against a local administration employee mired in corruption, for which he was killed by criminals.

Pavlik helps

After the death of two sons, 13-year-old Pavel and 8-year-old Fedor, Tatyana Morozova left Gerasimovka forever. Her other children also had a hard fate - Grisha died in childhood, Roman fought the Nazis and died of wounds after the war, and Alexei was convicted as an “enemy of the people”, spent several years in prison and was only later rehabilitated.

Pavlik Morozov's mother was lucky - she died before perestroika, but Alexei Morozov had to fully feel the streams of dirt and outright lies that fell upon his brother during the period of democratic changes.

The paradox lies in the fact that in the homeland of Pavel in the village of Gerasimovka, where the young pioneer, according to the whistleblowers, “betrayed and knocked,” his memory is treated extremely carefully. Both the monument to Pavlik and his museum have been preserved there. locals come to the monument, leave notes with their most secret desires. They say Pavlik helps them.

Country Father Trofim Sergeevich Morozov. Mother Tatyana Semyonovna Baidakova Media at Wikimedia Commons

Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (Pavlik Morozov; November 14, 1918, Gerasimovka, Turinsky district, Tobolsk province, RSFSR - September 3, 1932, Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district, Ural region, RSFSR, USSR) - a Soviet student, a student of the Gerasimov school of the Tavdinsky district of the Ural region, who in Soviet times gained fame as a pioneer a hero who opposed the kulaks in the person of his father and paid for it with his life.

Soon, Pavel's father left his family (wife with four children) and began to cohabit with a woman who lived next door - Antonina Amosova. According to the recollections of Pavel's teacher, his father regularly beat his wife and children both before and after leaving the family. Grandfather Pavlik also hated his daughter-in-law because she did not want to live with him on the same farm, but insisted on a division. According to Alexei (Paul's brother), father "I loved only myself and vodka", he did not spare his wife and sons, not like foreign migrants, from whom “Three skins were torn for forms with seals”. The parents of the father also treated the family abandoned by the father to the mercy of fate: “Grandfather and grandmother were also strangers to us for a long time. Never offered anything, never greeted. Grandfather did not let his grandson, Danilka, go to school, we only heard: “You can manage without a letter, you will be the owner, and Tatiana’s puppies are your laborers” ”.

In 1931, the father, who was no longer in office, was sentenced to 10 years for “As the chairman of the village council, he was friends with the kulaks, hid their farms from taxation, and upon leaving the village council, he contributed to the flight of special settlers by selling documents”. He was charged with issuing fake certificates to the dispossessed of their belonging to the Gerasimov village council, which gave them the opportunity to leave the place of exile. Trofim Morozov, being imprisoned, participated in the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and, after working for three years, returned home with an order for hard work, and then settled in Tyumen.

According to the teacher Pavlik Morozov L.P. Isakova, cited by Veronika Kononenko, Pavlik's mother was "pretty face and very kind". After the murder of her sons, Tatyana Morozova left the village and, fearing a meeting with her ex-husband, for many years did not dare to visit her native places. Ultimately, after the Great Patriotic War, she settled in Alupka, where she died in 1983. Pavlik's younger brother Roman, according to one version, died at the front during the war, according to another, he survived, but became disabled and died shortly after it ended. Alexei became the only child of the Morozovs who married: from different marriages he had two sons - Denis and Pavel. Having divorced his first wife, he moved to his mother in Alupka, where he tried not to talk about his relationship with Pavlik, and spoke about him only in the late 1980s, when a campaign of persecution of Pavlik began at the height of Perestroika (see below his letter).

Life

Pavel's teacher recalled poverty in the village of Gerasimovka:

The school I was in charge of worked in two shifts. At that time we had no idea about the radio, electricity, we sat by the torch in the evenings, we took care of the kerosene. There was no ink either, they wrote with beetroot juice. Poverty in general was appalling. When we, teachers, began to go from house to house, enrolling children in school, it turned out that many of them did not have any clothes. The children sat naked on the beds, covered themselves with some rags. The kids climbed into the oven and warmed themselves in the ashes. We organized a reading room, but there were almost no books, and local newspapers came very rarely. To some, Pavlik now seems like a kind of boy stuffed with slogans in a clean pioneer form. And he, because of our poverty, this form and didn't see it with my eyes.

Forced to provide for his family under such difficult conditions, Paul nevertheless consistently showed a desire to learn. According to his teacher L.P. Isakova:

He was very eager to learn, took books from me, only he had no time to read, he often missed his lessons because of work in the field and housework. Then he tried to catch up, managed to do well, and even taught his mother to read and write ...

After his father left for another woman, all the worries about the peasant economy fell on Pavel - he became the eldest man in the Morozov family.

The murder of Pavlik and his younger brother Fyodor

Pavlik and his younger brother went to the forest for berries. They were found dead with stab wounds. From the indictment:

Morozov Pavel, being a pioneer throughout the current year, waged a devoted, active struggle against the class enemy, the kulaks and their sub-kulakists, spoke at public meetings, exposed the kulak tricks and repeatedly stated this ...

Pavel had a very difficult relationship with his father's relatives. M. E. Chulkova describes such an episode:

... Once Danila hit Pavel with a shaft on the arm so hard that it began to swell. Mother Tatyana Semyonovna stood between them, Danila and she was hit in the face so that blood came out of her mouth. The grandmother who came running screamed:

Slaughter this snotty communist!

Let's skin them! Danila yelled...

On September 2, Pavel and Fyodor went to the forest, intending to spend the night there (in the absence of their mother, who had gone to Tavda to sell the calf). On September 6, Dmitry Shatrakov found their corpses in an aspen forest.

The mother of the brothers describes the events of these days in a conversation with the investigator as follows:

On the second of September I left for Tavda, and on the 3rd Pavel and Fyodor went to the forest for berries. I returned on the 5th and found out that Pasha and Fedya had not returned from the forest. I began to worry and turned to the policeman, who gathered the people, and the people went into the forest to look for my children. Soon they were found stabbed to death.

My middle son Aleksey, he is 11 years old, said that on September 3 he saw Danila walking very quickly from the forest, and our dog was running after him. Alexei asked if he had seen Pavel and Fyodor, to which Danila did not answer and only laughed. He was dressed in self-woven trousers and a black shirt - Alexey remembered this well. It was these trousers and shirt that were found at Sergey Sergeevich Morozov's during the search.

I can’t help but note that on September 6, when my slaughtered children were brought from the forest, grandmother Aksinya met me on the street and said with a grin: “Tatiana, we made meat for you, and now you eat it!”.

The first act of examination of the bodies, drawn up by district police officer Yakov Titov, in the presence of the paramedic of the Gorodischevsk medical center P. Makarov, witnesses Pyotr Ermakov, Avraam Kniga and Ivan Barkin, reports that:

Morozov Pavel was lying from the road at a distance of 10 meters, with his head to the east. There is a red bag over his head. Paul was given a fatal blow to the stomach. The second blow was delivered to the chest near the heart, under which there were scattered cranberries. Near Pavel there was one basket, the other was thrown aside. His shirt was torn in two places, and there was a purple blood stain on his back. Hair color - light brown, white face, blue eyes, open, mouth closed. There are two birches at the feet (...) The corpse of Fyodor Morozov was fifteen meters from Pavel in a swamp and a small aspen forest. Fedor was stabbed in the left temple with a stick, his right cheek was stained with blood. A mortal blow was inflicted with a knife in the belly above the navel, where the intestines came out, and the arm was also cut with a knife to the bone.

The second act of inspection, made by the city paramedic Markov after washing the bodies, states that:

Pavel Morozov has one superficial wound measuring 4 centimeters on the chest from the right side in the region of 5-6 ribs, a second superficial wound in the epigastric region, a third wound from the left side to the stomach, hypochondrium measuring 3 centimeters, through which part of the intestines came out, and the fourth wound from the right side (from the pupart ligament) measuring 3 centimeters, through which part of the intestines came out, and death followed. In addition, a large wound 6 centimeters long was inflicted on the left hand, along the metacarpus of the thumb.

Pavel and Fyodor Morozov were buried at the Gerasimovka cemetery. An obelisk with a red star was placed on the grave hill, and a cross was dug next to it with the inscription: “On September 3, 1932, two Morozov brothers, Pavel Trofimovich, born in 1918, and Fyodor Trofimovich, died from the evil of a man from a sharp knife.”

Trial in the case of the murder of Pavlik Morozov

In the process of investigating the murder, his close connection with the previous case of Pavlik's father, Trofim Morozov, was revealed.

Early trial of Trofim Morozov

Pavel testified at the preliminary investigation, confirming his mother's words that his father beat his mother and brought into the house things received as payment for issuing false documents (one of the researchers, Yuri Druzhnikov, suggests that Pavel could not see this, because his father had not lived with family). According to Druzhnikov, in the murder case it is noted that “On November 25, 1931, Pavel Morozov filed a statement with the investigating authorities that his father Trofim Sergeevich Morozov, being the chairman of the village council and being connected with local kulaks, was engaged in forging documents and selling them to kulaks- special settlers". The application was related to the investigation into the case of a false certificate issued by the Gerasimovskiy village council to a special settler; he allowed Trofim to be involved in the case. Trofim Morozov was arrested and tried in February next year.

In the indictment in the case of the murder of the Morozovs, investigator Elizar Vasilyevich Shepelev recorded that "Pavel Morozov filed an application with the investigating authorities on November 25, 1931." In an interview with journalist Veronika Kononenko and Senior Counsel for Justice Igor Titov, Shepelev said:

I can’t understand why on earth I wrote all this, there is no evidence in the case that the boy applied to the investigating authorities and that it was for this that he was killed. Probably, I meant that Pavel testified to the judge when Trofim was tried ... It turns out that because of my inaccurately written words, the boy is now accused of denunciation?! But is it a crime to help the investigation or to act as a witness in court? And is it possible to accuse a person of anything because of one phrase?

Trofim Morozov and other village council chairmen were arrested on November 26 and 27, the day after the "denunciation". According to the results of a journalistic investigation by Evgenia Medyakova, published in the Ural magazine in 1982, it was found out that Pavel Morozov was not involved in the arrest of his father. On November 22, 1931, a certain Zworykin was detained at the Tavda station. Two blank forms with the stamps of the Gerasimov Village Council were found on him, for which, according to him, he gave 105 rubles. The certificate attached to the case states that before his arrest, Trofim was no longer the chairman of the village council, but "the clerk of the Gorodischensky general store." Medyakova also writes that, “Tavda and Gerasimovka have repeatedly received requests from the construction of Magnitogorsk, from many factories, plants and collective farms about whether citizens (a number of surnames) are really residents of Gerasimovka.” Consequently, the verification of the holders of false certificates began. “And most importantly, Medyakova did not find the boy’s testimony in the investigation file! Tatyana Semyonovna has testimonies, but Pavlik does not! For he did not make any “statements to the investigating authorities!”

Pavel, following his mother, spoke in court, but in the end was stopped by the judge due to his infancy. In the case of the murder of Morozov, it is said: “At the trial, son Pavel outlined all the details about his father, his tricks.” The speech delivered by Pavlik is known in 12 versions, mainly dating back to the book of the journalist Pyotr Solomein. In the record from the archive of Solomein himself, this accusatory speech is transmitted as follows:

Uncles, my father created a clear counter-revolution, I, as a pioneer, am obliged to say this, my father is not a defender of the interests of October, but is trying in every possible way to help the kulak escape, he stood up for him with a mountain, and not as a son, but as a pioneer, I ask that my father be held accountable , because in the future not to give the habit to others to hide the kulak and clearly violate the party line, and I will also add that my father will now appropriate the kulak property, took the bed of kulukanov Arseny Kulukanov (husband of T. Morozov’s sister and Pavel’s godfather) and wanted to take from him a haystack, but Kulukanov's fist did not give him hay, but said, let him take it better x ...

Version of the prosecution

The version of the prosecution and the court was as follows. On September 3, fist Arseny Kulukanov, having learned about the boys leaving for berries, conspired with Danila Morozov, who came to his house, to kill Pavel, giving him 5 rubles and asking him to invite Sergey Morozov, "with whom Kulukanov had previously colluded," to kill him. Returning from Kulukanov and having finished the harrowing (that is, harrowing, loosening the soil), Danila went home and relayed the conversation to grandfather Sergei. The latter, seeing that Danila was taking a knife, left the house without a word and went with Danila, telling him: “Let's go kill, look, don't be afraid.” Finding the children, Danila, without saying a word, took out a knife and hit Pavel; Fedya rushed to run, but was detained by Sergei and also stabbed to death by Danila. " Convinced that Fedya was dead, Danila returned to Pavel and stabbed him several more times.».

The murder of Morozov was widely publicized as a manifestation of kulak terror (against a member of the Pioneer organization) and served as a pretext for widespread repressions on an all-Union scale; in Gerasimovka itself, it finally made it possible to organize a collective farm (before that, all attempts were frustrated by the peasants). In Tavda, in the club named after Stalin, a show trial of the alleged murderers took place. At the trial, Danila Morozov confirmed all the accusations, Sergei Morozov was contradictory, either confessing or denying his guilt. All other defendants pleaded not guilty. The main evidence was a household knife found at Sergey Morozov's, and Danila's bloodied clothes, soaked but not washed by Ksenia (allegedly Danila had slaughtered a calf for Tatyana Morozova before).

Verdict of the Ural Regional Court

By the decision of the Ural Regional Court, their own grandfather Sergey (Trofim Morozov's father) and 19-year-old cousin Danila, as well as grandmother Ksenia (as an accomplice) and Pavel's godfather - Arseny Kulukanov, who was his uncle, were found guilty in the murder of Pavel Morozov and his brother Fyodor (as a village fist - as the initiator and organizer of the murder). After the trial, Arseny Kulukanov and Danila Morozov were shot, octogenarian Sergei and Ksenia Morozov died in prison. Another uncle of Pavlik, Arseniy Silin, was also accused of complicity in the murder, but during the trial he was acquitted.

Yu. I. Druzhnikov's version and criticism of the version

Druzhnikov's version

According to the writer Yuri Druzhnikov, who published the book “Informer 001, or the Ascension of Pavlik Morozov” in 1987 in the UK, many circumstances related to the life of Pavel Morozov are distorted by propaganda and are controversial.

In particular, Druzhnikov questions that Pavlik Morozov was a pioneer. According to Druzhnikov, he was declared a pioneer almost immediately after his death (the latter, according to Druzhnikov, was important for the investigation, as it brought his murder under the article on political terror).

Druzhnikov claims that, having testified against his father, Pavlik deserved to "general hatred"; they began to call him "Pashka-kumanist" (communist). Druzhnikov considers official claims that Pavel actively helped to identify "Bread Clamps", those who hide weapons, plot crimes against the Soviet government, etc. According to the author, according to fellow villagers, Pavel was not "serious whistleblower", because “to inform is, you know, a serious job, but he was like that, a nit, a petty dirty trick”. According to Druzhnikov, only two such cases were documented in the murder case. "denunciation" .

He considers it illogical the behavior of the alleged killers who did not take any measures to hide the traces of the crime (they did not drown the corpses in the swamp, leaving them by the road; they did not wash the bloody clothes in time; they did not clean the knife from traces of blood, while putting it in the place in which the first thing they look at during a search). All this is especially strange, given that Morozov's grandfather was a gendarme in the past, and his grandmother was a professional horse thief.

According to Druzhnikov, the murder was the result of a provocation by the OGPU, organized with the participation of an assistant authorized by the OGPU, Spiridon Kartashov, and Pavel's cousin, Ivan Potupchik, an informer. In this regard, the author describes a document that he claims to have found in the case file no. 374 (about the murder of the Morozov brothers). This paper was compiled by Kartashov and is a record of the interrogation of Potupchik as a witness in the case of the murder of Pavel and Fyodor. The document is dated September 4, that is, according to the date, it was drawn up two days before the discovery of the corpses.

According to Yuri Druzhnikov, expressed in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta:

There was no consequence. The corpses were ordered to be buried before the arrival of the investigator without examination. Journalists also sat on the stage as accusers, speaking about the political importance of shooting kulaks. The lawyer accused the defendants of murder and left to applause. Different sources report different methods of murder, the prosecutor and the judge were confused about the facts. A knife with traces of blood found in the house was called the murder weapon, but Danila was slaughtering a calf that day - no one checked whose blood it was. The accused grandfather, grandmother, uncle and cousin of Pavlik Danila tried to say that they were beaten and tortured. The shooting of the innocent in November 1932 was the signal for a massacre of peasants throughout the country.

Criticism and rebuttals of Druzhnikov's claims

Outrage of brother and teacher

What kind of trial did they put on my brother? It's embarrassing and scary. My brother was called an informer in the magazine. Lie it! Pavel always fought openly. Why is he insulted? Has our family suffered a little grief? Who is being bullied? Two of my brothers were killed. The third, Roman, came from the front disabled, died young. I was slandered during the war as an enemy of the people. He spent ten years in the camp. And then they rehabilitated. And now slander on Pavlik. How to endure all this? They doomed me to torture worse than in the camps. It is good that my mother did not live to see these days ... I am writing, but tears are choking. So it seems that Pashka is again defenseless on the road. ... The editor of "Ogonyok" Korotich at the radio station "Freedom" said that my brother is a son of a bitch, which means my mother ... Yuri Izrailevich Alperovich-Druzhnikov worked his way into our family, drank tea with my mother, sympathized with us, and then published in London a vile book - a bunch of such disgusting lies and slander that, after reading it, I got a second heart attack. Z. A. Kabina also fell ill, she still wanted to sue the author in an international court, but where is she - Alperovich lives in Texas and chuckles - try to get him, the teacher's pension is not enough. The chapters from the book “The Ascension of Pavlik Morozov” by this scribbler were circulated by many newspapers and magazines, no one takes my protests into account, no one needs the truth about my brother ... It seems that I have only one thing left - to douse myself with gasoline, and that's it!

Criticism of the author and his book

Druzhnikov's words contradict the memoirs of Pavel's first teacher, Larisa Pavlovna Isakova: “I didn’t manage to organize the pioneer detachment in Gerasimovka then, it was created after me by Zoya Kabina<…>. Once I brought a red tie from Tavda, tied it to Pavel, and he joyfully ran home. At home, his father tore off his tie and beat him terribly. [..] The commune collapsed, and my husband was beaten half to death with fists. Ustinya Potupchik saved me, she warned me that Kulakanov and his company were going to be killed. [..] So, probably, since then Pavlik Kulakanov began to hate, he was the first to join the pioneers when the detachment was organized.. Journalist V.P. Kononenko, citing Pavel Morozov's teacher Zoya Kabina, confirms that “it was she who created the first pioneer detachment in the village, which was headed by Pavel Morozov” .

Yuri Druzhnikov stated that Kelly used his work not only in valid references, but also by repeating the book's composition, selection of details, descriptions. In addition, Dr. Kelly, according to Druzhnikov, came to the exact opposite conclusion about the role of the OGPU-NKVD in the murder of Pavlik.

According to Dr. Kelly, Mr. Druzhnikov considered the Soviet official materials unreliable, but used them when it was advantageous to support his account. According to Catriona Kelly, instead of a scientific presentation of criticism of her book, Druzhnikov published a "denunciation" with the assumption of Kelly's connection with the "organs". Dr. Kelly did not find much difference between the conclusions of the books and attributed some of the points of criticism of Mr. Druzhnikov to a lack of knowledge of him. of English language and English culture.

Investigation of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, personal requests of Alexander Liskin

Alexander Alekseevich Liskin took part in an additional investigation of the case in 1967 and requested murder case No. H-7825-66 from the archives of the KGB of the USSR. In an article published between 1998 and 2001, Liskin pointed to the "scuffle" and "falsification" on the part of Inspector Titov, uncovered during the investigation. In 1995, Liskin requested official certificates of the alleged criminal record of Father Pavlik, but the internal affairs bodies of Sverdlovskaya and Tyumen regions found no such information. Liskin suggested checking the "secret corners of the dusty archives" to find the real killers of the Morozov brothers.

Liskin agreed with the arguments of the editor of the department of the magazine "Chelovek i Zakon" Veronika Kononenko about the witness nature of Pavlik's speech at his father's trial and about the absence of secret denunciations.

The decision of the Supreme Court of Russia

In the spring of 1999, the co-chairman of the Kurgan Memorial Society, Innokenty Khlebnikov, on behalf of Arseny Kulukanov's daughter Matryona Shatrakova, sent a petition to the Prosecutor General's Office to review the decision of the Ural Regional Court, which sentenced the teenager's relatives to death. The General Prosecutor's Office of Russia came to the following conclusion:

The verdict of the Ural Regional Court dated November 28, 1932 and the ruling of the judicial-cassation board of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated February 28, 1933 in respect of Kulukanov Arseny Ignatievich and Morozova Xenia Ilyinichna to change: re-qualify their actions from Art. 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the USSR at Art. 17 and 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the USSR, leaving the previous measure of punishment.

To recognize Sergey Sergeevich Morozov and Daniil Ivanovich Morozov as reasonably convicted in the present case for committing a counter-revolutionary crime and not subject to rehabilitation.

Prosecutor General's Office dealing with the rehabilitation of victims political repression, came to the conclusion that the murder of Pavlik Morozov is purely criminal in nature, and the killers are not subject to rehabilitation on political grounds. This conclusion, together with the materials of the additional verification of case No. 374, was sent to the Supreme Court of Russia, which decided to refuse rehabilitation of the alleged murderers of Pavlik Morozov and his brother Fyodor.

Opinions on the decision of the Supreme Court

According to Boris Sopelnyak, “in the midst of the perestroika hysteria [..] the so-called ideologists, who had been let into the dollar feeder, tried the hardest [to knock out love for the Motherland from the youth] . According to Sopelnyak, the General Prosecutor's Office carefully considered the case.

According to Maura Reynolds, Matryona Shatrakova died three months before the Supreme Court's decision arrived in 2001, and the postman refused to deliver the decision to her daughter.

Name immortalization

• On July 2, 1936, a resolution was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the construction of a monument to Pavlik Morozov in Moscow at the entrance to Red Square.
• Monuments were erected to Pavlik Morozov: in Moscow (in 1948, in the children's park named after him on Krasnaya Presnya; demolished in 1991), the village of Gerasimovka (1954), in Sverdlovsk (1957), the city of Ostrov, in the city of Glazov, in the city of Ukhta (Komi Republic), in Kaliningrad.
• The name of Pavlik Morozov was given to Gerasimov and other collective farms, schools, and pioneer squads.
• Novovagankovsky pereulok in Moscow was renamed Pavlik Morozov Street in 1939, and a club named after him was organized in the Temple of St. Nicholas on the Three Mountains.
• The Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Puppet Theater bore the name of Pavlik Morozov.
• In 1935, film director Sergei Eisenstein began working on the script for Alexander Rzheshevsky's Bezhin Meadow about Pavlik Morozov. The work could not be completed, because on the basis of the draft version of the film, Eisenstein was accused of "deliberate understatement of the ideological content" and "exercises in formalism."
• Maxim Gorky called Pavlik "one of the little miracles of our era."
• In 1954, the composer Yuri Balkashin composed the musical poem Pavlik Morozov.
• In 1955, he was listed under No. 1 in the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after. V. I. Lenin. Under number 2, Kolya Myagotin was listed in the same book.
• In Yekaterinburg there is a park named after Pavlik Morozov. There was a monument depicting Pavlik in the park. In the 90s, the monument was torn off its pedestal, lay in the bushes for some time and disappeared.
• In Turinsk Sverdlovsk region there was Pavlik Morozov Square, in the center of the square there was a monument depicting Pavlik in full growth and with a pioneer tie. In the 90s, the monument was stolen by unidentified persons. Now the square has been renamed the "Historical Square".
• There is a station named after Pavlik Morozov in Chelyabinsk on the Malaya South Ural Railway.
• In the Children's Park of Simferopol there is a bust of P. Morozov on the alley of pioneer heroes.
• In the Children's Park of the city of Ukhta (Komi Republic), a monument to P. Morozov was opened on June 20, 1968. According to other sources in 1972. The author is the sculptor A. K. Ambruliavius.

In honor of Pavlik Morozov, many streets were named in the cities and villages of the former Soviet Union, many streets bear this name even now: in Perm and Krasnokamsk (streets), in Ufa (street and lane), Tula (street and passage), Ashe - the district center of the Chelyabinsk region,