The development of disputes about the period of Stalin's rule is facilitated by the fact that many NKVD documents are still classified. There are different data on the number of victims of the political regime. That is why this period remains to be studied for a long time.

How many people did Stalin kill: years of rule, historical facts, repressions during the Stalin regime

Historical figures who built a dictatorial regime have distinctive psychological characteristics. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili is no exception to this. Stalin is not a surname, but a pseudonym that clearly reflects his personality.

Could anyone imagine that a single mother-washer (later a milliner - a fairly popular profession at that time) from a Georgian village would raise a son who would defeat Nazi Germany, establish an industrial industry in a huge country and make millions of people shudder just with the sound of his name?

Now that our generation has access to ready-made knowledge from any field, people know that a harsh childhood shapes unpredictably strong personalities. This happened not only with Stalin, but also with Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan and the same Hitler. What is most interesting is that the two most odious figures in the history of the last century had similar childhoods: a tyrant father, an unhappy mother, their early death, education in schools with a spiritual bias, and a love of art. Few people know about such facts, because basically everyone is looking for information about how many people Stalin killed.

The path to politics

The reins of government of the largest power in the hands of Dzhugashvili lasted from 1928 to 1953, until his death. Stalin announced what policy he intended to pursue in 1928 at an official speech. For the rest of the term he did not deviate from his own. Evidence of this is the facts about how many people Stalin killed.

When it comes to the number of victims of the system, some of the destructive decisions are attributed to his associates: N. Yezhov and L. Beria. But at the end of all documents there is Stalin’s signature. As a result, in 1940, N. Yezhov himself became a victim of repression and was shot.

Motives

The goals of Stalin's repressions were pursued by several motives, and each of them achieved them in full. They are as follows:

1. Reprisals followed the leader's political opponents.
2. Repression was a tool to intimidate citizens in order to strengthen Soviet power.
3. A necessary measure to boost the economy of the state (repressions were carried out in this direction as well).
4. Exploitation of free labor.

Terror at its peak

The years 1937-1938 are considered to be the peak of repression. Regarding how many people Stalin killed, statistics during this period provide impressive figures - more than 1.5 million. NKVD order number 00447 was distinguished by the fact that it chose its victims according to national and territorial characteristics. Representatives of nations different from the ethnic composition of the USSR were especially persecuted.

How many people did Stalin kill because of Nazism? The following figures are given: more than 25,000 Germans, 85,000 Poles, about 6,000 Romanians, 11,000 Greeks, 17,000 Latvians and 9,000 Finns. Those who were not killed were expelled from their territory of residence without the right to assistance. Their relatives were fired from their jobs, military personnel were expelled from the ranks of the army.

Numbers

Anti-Stalinists do not miss the opportunity to once again exaggerate the real data. For example:

• The dissident believes that there were 40 million of them.
• Another dissident A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko did not waste time on trifles and exaggerated the data by two times - 80 million.
• There is also a version belonging to the rehabilitators of victims of repression. According to their version, the number of those killed was more than 100 million.
• The audience was most surprised by Boris Nemtsov, who in 2003 announced on live television that there were 150 million victims.

In fact, only official documents can answer the question of how many people Stalin killed. One of them is a memo by N. S. Khrushchev from 1954. It provides data from 1921 to 1953. According to the document, more than 642,000 people received the death penalty, that is, a little more than half a million, and not 100 or 150 million. The total number of convicts was over 2 million 300 thousand. Of these, 765,180 were sent into exile.

Repressions during the Second World War

The Great Patriotic War forced the rate of extermination of the people of their country to slow down slightly, but the phenomenon as such was not stopped. Now the “culprits” were sent to the front lines. If you ask the question of how many people Stalin killed at the hands of the Nazis, then there is no exact data. There was no time to judge the culprits. The catchphrase about decisions “without trial or investigation” remains from this period. The legal basis now became the order of Lavrentiy Beria.

Even emigrants became victims of the system: they were returned en masse and sentenced. Almost all cases were qualified by Article 58. But this is conditional. In practice, the law was often ignored.

Characteristic features of the Stalin period

After the war, repressions acquired a new mass character. The “Doctors' Plot” testifies to how many people from among the intelligentsia died under Stalin. The culprits in this case were doctors who served at the front and many scientists. If we analyze the history of the development of science, then that period accounts for the vast majority of “mysterious” deaths of scientists. The large-scale campaign against the Jewish people is also the fruit of the politics of the time.

Degree of cruelty

Speaking about how many people died in Stalin’s repressions, it cannot be said that all the accused were shot. There were many ways to torture people, both physically and psychologically. For example, if relatives of the accused are expelled from their place of residence, they are deprived of access to medical care and food products. Thousands of people died this way from cold, hunger or heat.

Prisoners were kept for long periods in cold rooms without food, drink or the right to sleep. Some were left handcuffed for months. None of them had the right to communicate with the outside world. Notifying loved ones about their fate was also not practiced. No one escaped the brutal beating with broken bones and spine. Another type of psychological torture is to be arrested and “forgotten” for years. There were people “forgotten” for 14 years.

Mass character

It is difficult to give specific figures for many reasons. Firstly, is it necessary to count the relatives of the prisoners? Should those who died even without arrest be considered “under mysterious circumstances”? Secondly, the previous population census was carried out before the start of the civil war, in 1917, and during the reign of Stalin - only after the Second World War. There is no exact information about the total population.

Politicization and anti-nationality

It was believed that repression would rid the people of spies, terrorists, saboteurs and those who did not support the ideology of the Soviet regime. However, in practice, completely different people became victims of the state machine: peasants, ordinary workers, public figures and entire nations who wished to preserve their national identity.

The first preparatory work for the creation of the Gulag began in 1929. Nowadays they are compared to German concentration camps, and quite rightly so. If you are interested in how many people died in them during Stalin’s time, then figures are given from 2 to 4 million.

Attack on the “cream of society”

The greatest damage was caused by an attack on the “cream of society.” According to experts, the repression of these people greatly delayed the development of science, medicine and other aspects of society. A simple example: publishing in foreign publications, collaborating with foreign colleagues, or conducting scientific experiments could easily end in arrest. Creative people published under pseudonyms.

By the middle of the Stalin period, the country was practically left without specialists. Most of those arrested and killed were graduates of monarchist educational institutions. They closed only about 10-15 years ago. There were no specialists with Soviet training. If Stalin led an active struggle against classism, then he practically achieved this: only poor peasants and an uneducated layer remained in the country.

The study of genetics was prohibited, as it was “too bourgeois in nature.” The attitude towards psychology was the same. And psychiatry was engaged in punitive activities, imprisoning thousands of bright minds in special hospitals.

Judicial system

How many people died in the camps under Stalin can be clearly imagined if we consider the judicial system. If at an early stage some investigations were carried out and cases were considered in court, then after 2-3 years of the start of repression a simplified system was introduced. This mechanism did not give the accused the right to have a defense present in court. The decision was made based on the testimony of the accusing party. The decision was not subject to appeal and was put into effect no later than the next day after it was made.

The repressions violated all the principles of human rights and freedoms, according to which other countries had already lived for several centuries at that time. Researchers note that the attitude towards those repressed was no different from how the Nazis treated captured military personnel.

Conclusion

Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili died in 1953. After his death, it became clear that the entire system was built around his personal ambitions. An example of this is the cessation of criminal cases and prosecutions in many cases. Lavrenty Beria was also known by those around him as a hot-tempered person with inappropriate behavior. But at the same time, he significantly changed the situation, prohibiting torture against the accused and recognizing the groundlessness of many cases.

Stalin is compared to the Italian dictator Benetto Mussolini. But a total of about 40,000 people became victims of Mussolini, as opposed to Stalin’s 4.5 million plus. In addition, those arrested in Italy retained the right to communication, protection, and even to write books behind bars.

It is impossible not to note the achievements of that time. Victory in the Second World War, of course, is beyond any discussion. But thanks to the labor of Gulag residents, a huge number of buildings, roads, canals, railways and other structures were built throughout the country. Despite the hardships of the post-war years, the country was able to restore an acceptable standard of living.

(excerpt from O. Matveychev’s book “The Imperative Mood of History”)

But here the question of repressions arises: they say, millions of people died in them, completely innocently, and the magnitude of these victims makes Stalin’s victory a “Pyrrhic victory”: they say, we ourselves killed more of our own people than our enemies...

At the same time, not only Russia’s enemies, but also its greatest patriots compete in hatred of Stalin. In one of the most “Russian” encyclopedias, compiled with great love by the most thorough patriots, it is written that 60 million citizens died from the Bolshevik regime, and Stalin was personally responsible for as many as 17 million! Like this: not 18 and not 16, but exactly 17!

The figures for the so-called Stalinist repressions were given differently. Ask 10 people, and they will tell you 10 different figures, from 4 to 100 million executed and repressed... Although, it would seem, it would be easy to calculate over so many years, at least orders of magnitude... Although, it would seem, it would not be difficult to calculate over so many years, at least orders of magnitude...

In fact, everything has been calculated a long time ago.

The world's most recognized specialist in the field of repression, anti-Stalinist, but a decent scientist Viktor Zemskov, who began to deal with this issue back in “perestroika,” having studied the volumes of Stalin’s accountants, for any mistake in which these accountants themselves would have gone to prison, back in 1991, in the Sotsis magazine, published genuine data on the scale of repression (see. Nos. 6 and 7). Here is extensive data from these studies:

“The Soviet and foreign public for the most part are still under the influence of far-fetched statistical calculations that do not correspond to historical truth, contained both in the works of foreign authors (R. Conquest, S. Cohen, etc.) and in the publications of a number of Soviet researchers ( R. A. Medvedev, V. A. Chalikova, etc.). Moreover, in the works of all these authors, the discrepancy with genuine statistics never goes in the direction of understatement, but exclusively in the direction of manifold exaggeration. It seems that they are competing with each other to amaze readers with numbers, so to speak, more astronomically...

Here is what, for example, S. Cohen writes (with reference to R. Conquest’s book “The Great Terror”, published in 1968 in the USA): “... By the end of 1939, the number of prisoners in prisons and individual concentration camps increased to 9 million people (compared to 30 thousand in 1928 and 5 million in 1933-1935).”

In reality, in January 1940, there were 1,334,408 prisoners in Gulag camps, 315,584 in Gulag colonies, and 190,266 in prisons. In total, there were 1,850,258 prisoners in camps, colonies and prisons at that time, i.e. The statistics given by R. Conquest and S. Cohen are exaggerated by almost five times.

R. Conquest and S. Cohen are echoed by the Soviet researcher V. A. Chalikova, who writes: “Based on various data, calculations show that in 1937-1950 there were 8-12 million people in camps that occupied vast spaces.” .. In fact, for the period 1934-1953. The maximum number of prisoners in the Gulag, which occurred on January 1, 1950, was 2,561,351 people. Consequently, V.A. Chalikova... exaggerates the true number of prisoners by approximately five times.

N.S. Khrushchev also made his contribution to the confusion of the issue of the statistics of Gulag prisoners, who, apparently in order to present on a larger scale his own role as a liberator of victims of Stalin’s repressions, wrote in his memoirs: “... When Stalin died, there were up to 10 million people." In reality, on January 1, 1953, there were 2,468,524 prisoners in the Gulag: 1,727,970 in camps and 740,554 in colonies. The TsGAOR of the USSR stores copies of memos from the leadership of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs addressed to N. S. Khrushchev, indicating the exact number of prisoners, including at the time of J. V. Stalin’s death. Consequently, N.S. Khrushchev was well informed about the true number of Gulag prisoners and deliberately exaggerated it four times.

Available publications about the repressions of the 30s - early 50s, as a rule, contain distorted, greatly exaggerated data on the number of people convicted for political reasons or, as it was officially called then, for “counter-revolutionary crimes”, i.e. under the notorious Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. This also applies to the data provided by R. A. Medvedev on the scope of repressions in 1937-1938. Here is what he wrote: “In 1937-1938, according to my calculations, from 5 to 7 million people were repressed: about a million party members and about a million former party members as a result of party purges of the 20s and the first half of the 30s , the remaining 3-5 million people are non-party people, belonging to all segments of the population. Most of those arrested in 1937-1938. ended up in forced labor camps, a dense network of which covered the entire country.” If you believe R. A. Medvedev, then the number of prisoners in the Gulag for 1937-1938. should have increased by several million people, but this was not observed. From January 1937 to January 1, 1938, the number of Gulag prisoners increased from 1,196,369 to 1,881,570, and by January 1, 1939 it dropped to 1,672,438 people. For 1937-1938 the Gulag did experience a surge in prison population growth, but by several hundred thousand rather than several million. And this was natural, because... in fact, the number of people convicted for political reasons (for “counter-revolutionary crimes”) in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. over 33 years, there were about 3.8 million people. R. A. Medvedev’s statements that it was only in 1937-1938. 5-7 million people were repressed, do not correspond to the truth. The statement of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is quite consistent with the current Gulag statistics we studied for the second half of the 30s.

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

It must be emphasized: from the above official government document it follows that for the period from 1921 to 1953. Less than 700 thousand of those arrested for political reasons were sentenced to death. In this regard, we consider it our duty to refute the statement of the former member of the Party Control Committee under the CPSU Central Committee O. G. Shatunovskaya, who, referring to a certain document of the KGB of the USSR, which subsequently allegedly mysteriously disappeared, writes: “... From January 1, 1935 to On June 22, 1941, 19 million 840 thousand “enemies of the people” were arrested. Of these, 7 million were shot. Most of the rest died in the camps." In this information, O. G. Shatunovskaya allowed a more than 10-fold exaggeration of both the scope of the repressions and the number of those executed. She also claims that most of the rest (presumably 7-10 million people) died in the camps. We have absolutely accurate information that during the period from January 1, 1934 to December 31, 1947, 963,766 prisoners died in the forced labor camps of the Gulag, and this number includes not only “enemies of the people,” but also criminals... In In the pre-war years, mortality among Gulag prisoners had a noticeable downward trend. In 1939, in the camps it remained at the level of 3.29% of the annual contingent, and in the colonies - 2.30%...

During the first three years of the war, more than 2 million Gulag prisoners worked in construction projects under the jurisdiction of the NKVD, including 448 thousand people assigned to the construction of railways, 310 thousand to industrial construction, 320 thousand to timber industry camps, and 171 thousand to mining and metallurgical camps. , airfield and highway construction - 268 thousand. In the first period of the war, the Gulag transferred 200 thousand prisoners to work on the construction of defensive lines.

In addition, in mid-1944, 225 thousand Gulag prisoners were used at enterprises and construction sites of other people's commissariats, including the arms and ammunition industry - 39 thousand, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy - 40 thousand, aviation and tank industries - 20 thousand. , coal and oil - 15 thousand, power plants and the electrical industry - 10 thousand, forestry - 10 thousand, etc. From the beginning of the war until the end of 1944, the NKVD of the USSR transferred about 3 billion rubles to the state income, received from other People's Commissariats for the labor provided to them.

By the beginning of the war, the number of prisoners in the Gulag camps and colonies amounted to 2.3 million people. On June 1, 1944, their number decreased to 1.2 million. During the three years of the war (until June 1, 1944), 2.9 million left the Gulag camps and colonies and 1.8 million convicts re-entered... In general Among those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, 57.7% were serving sentences on charges of treason, 17.1% - anti-Soviet agitation, 8.0% - participation in anti-Soviet conspiracies, anti-Soviet organizations and groups, 6.4% - counter-revolutionary sabotage, 3. 2 - espionage, 2.2% - insurgency and political banditry, 1.7% - terror and terrorist intentions, 0.8% - sabotage and sabotage activities, 0.6% - family members of traitors to the Motherland. The remaining 2.3% of the “counter-revolutionaries” were serving sentences in correctional labor camps and correctional labor camps on a number of other charges of a political nature.”

Let’s add here an excerpt from an interview with Viktor Zemskov:

“What can you say about the number of those repressed and killed in the USSR, which were called during the Cold War?

It was about discrediting the enemy. Western Sovietologists argued that victims of repression, collectivization, famine, etc. became 50-60 million people. In 1976, Solzhenitsyn stated that 110 million people died in the USSR between 1917 and 1959. It's hard to comment on this stupidity. In fact, the population growth rate was more than 1%, which exceeded that of England or France. In 1926, the USSR had 147 million inhabitants, in 1937 - 162 million, and in 1939 - 170.5 million. These figures are credible, and they are not consistent with the murder of tens of millions of citizens.

- What was the reaction to the numbers you mentioned?

The famous writer Lev Razgon entered into a debate with me. He claimed that in 1939 there were more than 9 million prisoners in the camps, while the archives give a different figure: 2 million. He was driven by emotions, but he had access to television, and I was not invited there. Later they realized that I was right and fell silent.

- And in the West?

In the forefront of my critics was Robert Conquest, whose figures of those repressed were five times higher than the documentary evidence. In general, the reaction from historians was recognition. Nowadays, universities study according to my numbers.

- To what extent are the archives of the Gulag, NKVD, etc., to which you first gained access thanks to Gorbachev, accurate?

The Gulag statistics are considered by our historians to be one of the best.”

Here is another short quote from V. Zemskov, his reaction to the publication of the famous anti-Stalinist Antonov-Ovseenko, who, referring to certain documents, writes that after the war 16 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag: “In the list of people who used this document (about 16 million prisoners), the name Antonov-Ovseenko is not present. Consequently, he has not seen this document and quotes it from someone else’s words, and with a gross distortion of the meaning. If A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko had seen this document, he would probably have paid attention to the comma between numbers 1 and 6, since in reality in the fall of 1945, not 16 million, but 1.6 million were kept in the camps and colonies of the Gulag. prisoners" (see V.N. Zemskov. Prisoners, special settlers, exiled settlers, exiles and deportees (Statistical and geographical aspect) // History of the USSR. 1991, No. 5. pp. 151-152).

This is how “Stalin’s whistleblowers” ​​are caught lying, and what kind of lies at that – as many as 10 times!

A few more quotes from V. Zemskov’s response to the American historian S. Maksudov, who was indignant at Zemskov’s publication in the Socis magazine:

“Mr. Maksudov’s reaction... to the publication of my articles can hardly be called anything other than a pathological deviation from the general rule. Instead of gratitude for the introduction into scientific circulation of a whole complex of new sources, which historical science was extremely in need of, we are seeing a reaction that can hardly be called an expression of gratitude even with the most daring flight of fancy...

Estimating the increased decline of the Soviet population at 40-50 million, Mr. Maksudov concludes: “This huge figure is the price of a monstrous experiment of power over the population.” Of course, we are not going to deny the obvious fact that a certain part of these people became victims of repression and all kinds of “experiments”... But my opponent includes in this number 10-12 million dead during the civil war and even all human losses during the period Great Patriotic War (26.6 million). I wonder since when did human losses in difficult and bloody wars begin to be included in the category of “the cost of a monstrous experiment of power over the population”?

Or perhaps Mr. Maksudov believes that in 1941 the ruling circles of the USSR deliberately started a war with Germany and its allies in order to exterminate more of their own population? Only if we accept this absurd thought can we seriously talk about including human losses in the Great Patriotic War as victims of the regime. However, the Soviet leadership, of course, never set such a goal. One can discuss the issue of the possible expansion of the Soviet Union under the guise of fanning the fire of the “world proletarian revolution” (in contrast, one can draw a number of statements by Lenin and his associates, indicating their negative attitude towards the idea of ​​​​exporting the revolution, and as for Stalin, he generally avoided using the term "world revolution"). The fact remains: it was not the Soviet Union that started this war.

We cannot agree with the inclusion of the total human losses during the civil war in the number of victims of repression. There is no reason to assert that the Soviet government deliberately started a civil war precisely for the purpose of exterminating its own people. On the contrary, the facts indicate that the political forces that came to power in October 1917 tried to avoid any war - both with Germany or the Entente countries, and within the country.

A large-scale civil war began 2-3 months after the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with a series of White Guard uprisings. As a result of the civil war, the population of the country (within the borders of the USSR until September 17, 1939) decreased by almost 13 million by 1922. The vast majority of these losses were those who died from hunger, cold, disease (especially typhus), who died on the war fronts of all warring parties. White emigration is also a factor in the country's population decline. All these losses were a consequence of the war with all its costs.

In our opinion, only those arrested and convicted by the punitive bodies of the Soviet government for political reasons, including victims of lynchings of “counter-revolutionaries”, can be considered victims of the Bolshevik regime (Red Terror). The victims of the Red Terror numbered in the tens of thousands, but in the total mass of human losses they did not occupy the first place and were significantly inferior to the above-mentioned components of the loss.

Mr. Maksudov is ironic about my exposure of the total losses (40 million) that Roy Medvedev spoke about. In this case, the author did R. A. Medvedev a disservice. The fact is that the latter published in “Arguments and Facts” (1989. No. 5) an article on statistics of Stalinist repressions for the period from the late 20s to 1953, which cited these 40 million and a number of other figures (none of them they were not true). Subsequently, the editorial board of the publication found out from various sources that they had made a mistake by publishing this article, since all of Roymedvedev’s figures (including, of course, the mentioned 40 million) are complete “bullshit”. In order to somehow rehabilitate myself in the eyes of more or less competent readers, the editorial board of Argumenty i Fakty published (Nos. 38, 39, 40, 45 for 1989 and No. 5 for 1990) a series of my articles with the content of genuine, documented confirmed statistics of those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, prisoners, special settlers, exiled settlers, etc. Roy Medvedev himself, even before the publication of my articles, published in one of the issues of “Arguments and Facts” for 1989 an explanation that his article in No. 5 for the same year is invalid... Mr. Maksudov is probably not entirely aware of this story, otherwise he would hardly have undertaken to defend calculations that were far from the truth, which their author himself, having realized his mistake, publicly renounced...

During the Cold War, Western historiography studying repressive policies in the USSR developed a whole system of templates, clichés and stereotypes, beyond which it was considered indecent. If, for example, the total number of victims of repression in the USSR was usually determined as 40 million and above, the number of Gulag prisoners in the late 30s was 8 million and above, the number of repressed people in 1937-1938. - from 7 million and above, etc., then calling lower numbers was actually tantamount to committing an indecent act.

The very fact of publishing statistics, the reliability of which Mr. Maksudov doubts, has ceased to be a purely Soviet or Russian phenomenon. In 1993, these statistics were published on the pages of the American journal American Historical Review, an authoritative journal in the academic world. It is important to emphasize that neither the members of the editorial board of this journal, nor my co-authors A. Getty (USA) and G. Rittersporn (France) can be suspected of being interested in downplaying the scale of repression in the USSR.

I cannot agree with the inclusion of all 900 thousand military personnel who were subjected to judicial punishment in the army during the war among the repressed. After all, here we are talking mainly about punishments for crimes and misdemeanors of a purely criminal or domestic nature. The armies of other states also had corresponding judicial bodies that passed sentences on military personnel for certain crimes. As for the Red Army soldiers who were facing serious charges of a political nature, they were often dealt with not by the judicial authorities in the army, but by completely different departments (NKVD, NKGB, Special Meeting, Military Collegium of the Supreme Court). Take, for example, the story of the conviction of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. Arrested at the front by SMERSH counterintelligence officers on charges of conducting anti-Soviet agitation, he was transported to Moscow, where he was subsequently convicted by a Special Meeting. Military tribunals also passed sentences against military personnel who were charged with a political nature (most often with the wording “treason”). All military personnel convicted under the political 58th and equivalent articles are included in the summary statistics of those convicted of counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes.

And finally, Mr. Maksudov receives the required 10 million victims in 1941-1946. from the repressive machine of the NKVD, including almost 5 million Soviet displaced persons who, in his words, passed “through NKVD filtration camps with a stay ranging from several weeks to several months.” In fact, in 1944-1946. More than 4.2 million repatriates entered the USSR, of which only 6.5% (the so-called special contingent of the NKVD) passed through the NKVD testing and filtration camps (PFL). The remaining 93.5% of the repatriates (they were not a special contingent of the NKVD) passed through front-line and army camps and assembly and transfer points (SPP) of NPOs, as well as through check-filtration points (PFP) of the NKVD. This bulk of repatriates was not repressed either politically or criminally. The fact that they were for some time in the camps and SPP NKO and PFP NKVD only meant their concentration in a network of collection points (the term “camp” in this case corresponds to the term “assembly point”), without which the organized dispatch of such large masses of people was impossible to the homeland.

However, Mr. Maksudov does not limit himself to this and includes several million more people among those who suffered from the repressive machine of the NKVD in 1941-1946. Who are these people? It turns out that they were German and Japanese prisoners of war who “ended up in special camps.” Where then should they be kept? As far as I know, it is not customary in any country to keep prisoners of war in fashionable hotels. It is a generally accepted practice to keep this category of people in special camps. German, Japanese and other prisoners of war were exactly where they were supposed to be. As for the German prisoners of war, with their labor they partially compensated for the enormous damage caused to our country and thereby, to some extent, atoned for their guilt. Compared to how the Nazis treated Soviet prisoners of war, the treatment of German and other prisoners of war in Soviet captivity was in all respects more humane.

The question of the scale of deaths from famine in 1932-1933 remains controversial. The fact that the data I cited from the TsUNKHU of the USSR State Planning Committee on fertility and mortality in Ukraine (in 1932, 782 thousand were born and 668 thousand died, in 1933, 359 thousand and 1309 thousand, respectively) are incomplete, I know even without Maksudov, since the poor performance of the registry offices at that time is a fairly well-known fact for specialists. The Union TsUNKHU was not directly involved in counting deaths in Ukraine and based its statistics on the basis of reports from the Ukrainian UNKHU. Ukraine in the 20-30s in favorable conditions (without war, famine, epidemics, etc.) was characterized by an approximately twofold excess of birth rates over deaths. In 1932, there was still a positive balance between birth rates and deaths, but by no means double the size, i.e. the consequences of the famine made themselves felt, and in 1933 the mortality rate was almost 4 times higher than the birth rate. This suggests that in 1933 some kind of disaster struck Ukraine. Which one, Maksudov and I know very well.

I remind you once again that here we are talking only about registered births and deaths... As for the mortality rate from famine in 1932-1933 in the USSR as a whole, I consider the most reliable data and calculations carried out by V.V. Tsaplin, former director today Central State Archive of the National Economy of the USSR. According to his information, obtained from the study of archival documents, in 1932-1933. In the USSR, at least 2.8 million people died from hunger and its consequences (registered in the registry office). Unrecorded deaths in 1933 were estimated at about 1 million people. It is unknown how many deaths were not counted in 1932, but clearly significantly less than in 1933. In our opinion, the death rate from famine in 1932-1933 in the USSR amounted to 4-4.5 million people (of course, these figures are not final and need clarification) ... In light of this, we have reason to assert that estimates significantly exceeding these figures , are greatly exaggerated. Does Mr. Maksudov really think that the corresponding data in the propaganda materials of the Ukrainian Rukh can be called unexaggerated - up to 11-12 million people allegedly died of hunger in 1932-1933! And this is only in Ukraine. What if we determine mortality from famine in other regions of the USSR in the same spirit? You can imagine what a fantastic figure this will turn out to be. It is possible that it will exceed the total population of the USSR at that time.

S. Maksudov and I are in unequal conditions. I studied a huge layer of sources such as statistical reports of the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD for the period of the 30-50s, but he did not work with these sources at all. I recommend that S. Maksudov arrange a scientific trip to Moscow and work with these documents himself in the special storage facility of the Russian Civil Aviation. The Directorate of the Civil Aviation of the Russian Federation, without any doubt, will not only not create obstacles, but will also assist in this goal.”(Published in the journal Sociological Research, 1995, No. 9).

In addition, the above-mentioned newspaper “AiF” (No. 5, 1990) contains a table “Movement of the Gulag camp population.” “Political” accounted for, for example, 12.8% in the “famous” year of 1937, and 38% in 1947. There were 12 thousand “members of families of traitors to the Motherland” before the Great Patriotic War, after the war: in 1945 - 6000, in 1947 - a little more than a thousand.

Undoubtedly, the following objection: some historians have some figures, others have others, where is the evidence that these figures are genuine, and in five years new ones will not emerge?

Let's imagine that all the numbers are initially false and biased. That Stalinists underestimate the scale of repression, and anti-Stalinists overestimate. You can't trust anyone. Let's just use our common sense without numbers!

In the book “Antimyth” by S. G. Kara-Murza and his co-authors, there is an interesting text that dispels the myth about the large number of repressed people, based on common sense:

“You don’t have to be a professional tailor to prove that the king is naked. It is enough to have eyes and not be afraid to think at least a little. After repeatedly rewriting history and using abstruse statistical methods to prove anything, people no longer believe anything. Therefore, I will not bore the reader with statistical calculations, but will simply turn to common sense. Speaking about the repressions that took place during the Stalin years, anti-Soviet propaganda claims the following:

- 10 million people were shot;

- 40, 50, 60 up to 120 (!) million who passed the camp;

- almost all those arrested were innocent, they were imprisoned because the mother plucked 5 ears of corn for hungry children in the field or took a spool of thread from production and received 10 years for this;

- almost all those arrested were driven to camps for the construction of canals and logging, where most of the prisoners died.

When asked why the people did not rebel when they were exterminated, they usually answer: “The people did not know this.” Moreover, the fact that the people were unaware of the scale of the repressions is confirmed not only by almost all the people who lived at that time, but also by numerous written sources. Only Solzhenitsyn told the “truth” 20 years later!

In this regard, it makes sense to note several important questions to which there are not only intelligible, but no answers at all.

1. It is known, and this is not questioned even by the most ardent anti-Sovietists, that the overwhelming majority of those repressed were arrested in the period from 36 to 39, which means that at the same time there should have been several tens of millions of people in camps and prisons! The fact of the arrest and transportation of several thousand (!!!) Ingush and Chechens was noted by contemporaries of the deportation as a shocking event, and this is understandable. Why was the arrest and transportation of many times more people not noted by eyewitnesses?

2. During the famous evacuation to the east in 41-42. 10 million people were transported to the rear. The evacuees lived in schools, temporary shelters, wherever. All the older generations remember this fact. It was 10 million, what about 40 and even more so 50, 60 and so on?

3. Almost all eyewitnesses of those years note the massive movement and work of captured Germans on construction sites; they could not be ignored. People still remember that, for example, this road was built by captured Germans. There were about 4 million prisoners on the territory of the USSR, this is a lot and it is impossible not to notice the fact of the activities of such a large number of people. What can we say about the number of prisoners, which is approximately 10 times greater? Only that the very fact of moving and working on construction sites of such an incredible number of prisoners should simply shock the population of the USSR. This fact would be passed on from mouth to mouth even after decades. Was it? No.

4. How to transport such a huge number of people to remote areas off-road, and what type of transport available in those years was used? Large-scale construction of roads in Siberia and the North began much later. Moving huge multi-million (!) masses of people across the taiga and without roads is generally unrealistic; there is no way to supply them during a multi-day journey. 5. Where were the prisoners housed? It is assumed that in the barracks, hardly anyone will build skyscrapers for prisoners in the taiga. However, even a large barracks cannot accommodate more people than an ordinary five-story building, which is why multi-story buildings are built, and 40 million is 10 cities the size of Moscow at that time. Traces of gigantic settlements would inevitably remain. Where are they? Nowhere. If such a number of prisoners are scattered across a huge number of small camps located in inaccessible, sparsely populated areas, then it will be impossible to supply them. In addition, transport costs, taking into account off-road conditions, will become unimaginable. If they are placed close to roads and large populated areas, then the entire population of the country will immediately become aware of the huge number of prisoners. In fact, around cities there should be a large number of very specific structures that are impossible to miss or confuse with anything else.

6. The famous White Sea Canal was built by 150 thousand prisoners, the Kirov hydroelectric complex - 90 thousand. The whole country knew that these objects were built by prisoners. And these numbers are nothing compared to the tens of millions. Tens of millions of slave prisoners must have left behind truly cyclopean buildings. Where are these structures and what are they called? Questions that will not be answered can be continued.

7. How were such huge masses of people supplied in remote, difficult areas? Even if we assume that the prisoners were fed according to the norms of besieged Leningrad, this means that to supply the prisoners a minimum of 5 million kilograms of bread per day, 5000 tons, is needed. And this is assuming that the guards do not eat anything, do not drink anything and do not need weapons or uniforms at all. Probably everyone has seen photographs of the famous Road of Life. In an endless line, one and a half and three-ton trucks go one after another - practically the only vehicle of those years outside the railways (it makes no sense to consider horses as a vehicle for such transportation). The population of besieged Leningrad was about 2 million people. The road across Lake Ladoga is approximately 60 kilometers, but delivering goods even over such a short distance has become a serious problem. And the point here is not the German bombing; the Germans did not manage to interrupt supplies for a day. The trouble is that the capacity of the country road (which, in essence, was the Road of Life) is small. How do supporters of the hypothesis of mass repression imagine supplying 10-20 cities the size of Leningrad, located hundreds and thousands of kilometers from the nearest roads?

8. How were the products of the labor of so many prisoners exported, and what type of transport available at that time was used for this? You don’t have to wait for answers, there won’t be any.

9. Where were the detainees housed? Detainees are rarely held together with those serving sentences; there are special pre-trial detention centers for this purpose. It is impossible to keep prisoners in ordinary buildings, special conditions are needed, therefore, large numbers of investigative prisons, each designed for tens of thousands of prisoners, had to be built in every city. These must have been structures of monstrous size, because even the famous Butyrka housed a maximum of 7,000 prisoners. Even if we assume that the population of the USSR was struck by sudden blindness and did not notice the construction of giant prisons, then a prison is a thing that cannot be hidden and cannot be quietly converted into other buildings. Where did they go after Stalin? After Pinochet's coup, 30 thousand arrested had to be placed in stadiums. By the way, the very fact of this was immediately noticed by the whole world. What can we say about millions?

10. To the question: “Where are the mass graves of the innocently killed, in which millions of people are buried?”, you will not hear any intelligible answer at all. After perestroika propaganda, it would be natural to open secret places of mass burial of millions of victims; obelisks and monuments should have been installed in these places, but there is no trace of any of this. Please note that the burial site at Babi Yar is now known throughout the world. According to various estimates, from seventy to two hundred thousand people were killed there. It is clear that if it was not possible to hide the fact of the execution and burial of such a scale, what can we say about numbers 50-100 times larger? I believe that the above facts and reasoning are more than enough. No one has been able to refute them. Even if any of the above facts could be explained in some way by stretching the data by the ears, they cannot be explained all together. Simultaneous fulfillment of not only all, but even part of the conditions we talked about is impossible in principle.”.

Let us briefly summarize what has been said and focus on the most significant figures.

1. Over the 33 years from 1921 to 1954, 642,980 people were sentenced to death for political reasons by all possible courts.

2. From 1934 to 1947, 963,766 people died in the camps, including criminals. If we take into account that there were from 12% political, as, for example, in 1937, to 38%, as in 1947, then we can assume that about 250 thousand more “politicals” will be added directly to those sentenced to death. If we increase the time amplitude, also from 1921 to 1954, then, most likely, it will be necessary to double this figure. Thus, we will get no more than 1 million 300 thousand people destroyed. Wherein to say that they were all innocent is absurd. Surely there were some percentage, several thousand people, who were truly innocent.

3. Over 33 years, there were 3 million 777 thousand 380 people sentenced to various terms for political reasons.

4. The number of GULAG convicts on average was 1.5 million people at a time, only closer to the 1950s it rose to a maximum of 2.5 million people, and this was due to the fact that there were criminals, spies, traitors, and deserters , and pests, and saboteurs, and looters, and so on. It must be remembered that criminals in the total number of prisoners have always accounted for from 60% to 90%!

5. And finally, the myth that “the whole country was built by prisoners, their slave labor made industrialization” and so on has no basis. A little more than 2 million people were brought into the national economy from the Gulag, while the working population in the USSR was then over 70 million, the labor of prisoners was a drop in the bucket. There are even figures that their contribution to GDP has never exceeded 4%.

6. All the data of the Conquests, Cohens, Medvedevs, Kurganovs, Solzhenitsyns, Razgons, Antonovs-Ovseenkos and others, which exceed the real figures by 5-10-50 times, are pure falsifications, which were deliberately set up in order to present the USSR as no less, and even greater evil than Hitler. President Medvedev announced a fight against the falsification of history, but this means that all books by Solzhenitsyn and others like him, almost all political authors who wrote during the era of perestroika and in the 1990s, must be removed from libraries and other collections.

These are the numbers. To some they will seem terribly large, to others terribly small, but in order to understand their true meaning, we will use the old saying: “everything is known by comparison.”

For example, this comparison: during Yeltsin’s reforms alone, excess unplanned mortality in Russia amounted to 3 million! But Stalin was preparing for war, increased GDP three times and created and created a great power, and won the war. Why did Yeltsin pay 3 million? For the GDP to become two times smaller? Because the country's territory has decreased? It was people like Yeltsin, potential Yeltsins and Chubais, who were shot then, in the 1930s, mostly.

Or here's another wonderful comparison: Today, about 2.4 million people are incarcerated in the United States.. The population of the USA is larger than the population of the Stalinist USSR by one third. If we take that on average there were 1.5 million people in the Gulag per year, it turns out that in the USA today there are as many sedentary people per capita as under Stalin. Where our numbers were higher in different years, this is justified, it was post-war, there are always a bunch of looters, deserters and traitors. But why doesn’t anyone write about the American Gulag now? Where are the American Solzhenitsyns? Why aren't they given the Nobel Prize? I won’t remind you at all about the blood of American history, about tens of millions of killed blacks and Indians, this is a thing of the past, but Now there is a GULAG on the planet, and everyone is silent!

So, of the 1,300 people who were shot and died in the camps, some percentage were probably “innocent.” Let’s say that this is even 10-20% (contrary to the talk that they were shot “for nothing,” it must be said that the investigation was carried out very carefully: a simple denunciation, especially for execution, was not enough, as was a simple confession). Thus, there may be up to 200 thousand innocent people over the entire 30 years. Maximum. But the United States killed 250 thousand people in two bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truly innocent civilians. Far from the front. And this is in two days. And not in 30 years. And no one considers Truman a symbol of totalitarianism and cruelty. And if now various Baltic states demand the condemnation of Hitlerism and Stalinism, then let’s add the condemnation of Trumanism. Although it was he who said in the American Senate: “We must alternately help the Russians and the Germans, and then they kill as many as possible.” It was the United States that influenced England and Poland so that they would connive with Hitler and not enter into a non-aggression pact with the USSR. It was the United States that delayed the opening of the Second Front. It was the United States that could have stopped Hitler back in 1939, and there would have been no casualties of 60 million.

And finally, let's look at the main comparison, the comparison with Nazi Germany.

According to the Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities of the Nazi Invaders and Their Accomplices (ChGK), the number of Soviet citizens - victims of fascist genocide in the occupied territory of the USSR is 10.7 million.

Historian V. Zemskov writes:

“The war of Nazi Germany against the USSR was of a destructive nature. This made it fundamentally different from previous military campaigns of 1939-1941. in Europe. Although the Nazis did not formally extend the methods of “solving Jewish and Gypsy issues” to “solving Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian issues,” in practice they came closer to this. On the occupied Soviet lands they purposefully exterminated millions of people... It should be borne in mind that... the ChGK data relate only to the occupied Soviet territory. This does not take into account the millions of deported Soviet citizens (civilians and prisoners of war), killed and tortured in fascist captivity outside the USSR. In total, the victims of fascist genocide firmly occupy first place among all components of the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. They far exceed even the irretrievable losses of the Soviet armed forces, which are also by no means small...

The summary data of the ChGK is built on the basis of primary and consolidated materials from a wide network of district, regional, regional, and republican ChGKs, which carried out truly titanic work to identify the killed and tortured Soviet citizens in the occupied territory. Previously, I had doubts whether the total human losses were hidden under the term “killed and tortured.” However, in the process of working with the acts and protocols of district and regional ChGKs, this doubt disappeared. The term “killed and tortured by fascist invaders and their accomplices” is adequate to its content, since the acts of district and regional ChGK did not include those who died of natural causes, losses of collaborators, etc. The total results of this work - 10.7 million victims of fascist genocide on occupied Soviet territory - have been confirmedgiven by numerous documents and evidence. This means that this particular figure is documented.”

So, almost 11 million were killed and tortured alone. And not in 33 years, but in four. And this is only the beginning of what they wanted to do, only the beginning of the implementation of the Ost plan. This does not include those killed outside the USSR, those taken into slavery, as well as combat losses of our army. According to various sources, the total losses of the USSR range from 20 to 26 million people.

The total number of victims of World War II, unleashed by Hitler, is about 60 million. Some put the figure at 70 million. The history of the Earth has never known such blood, and this is not surprising: Hitler wanted a lot of blood and the destruction of quantity for the sake of the survival of quality. And if several times less blood was required to stop the maniac, then that’s how the world works: it was impossible to do this in any other way except through victims.

There will be those who want to exclaim: “How can you count corpses so cynically?” They say that the grief of one person (the notorious “tear of a child”) is already grief, and it makes no difference whether 10 million or 100 thousand were killed. If there is no difference, great! Then write down all the English kings and all American presidents as the great dictators of mankind... And as for the “tear of a child,” it was not Dostoevsky, but Ivan Karamazov who came up with this theme, and he, as you know, was in communication with the devil.

It is impossible to put Hitler next to Stalin, not only because on the conscience of one there are about 60 million victims, and on the conscience of the other less: one or two hundred thousand truly innocent ones. It's not just that. The projects of fascism and communism themselves are radically opposite. Fascism is a project of transforming all nations into a resource for one, and Stalinist communism is a project of sacrifice of one nation for the sake of saving the rest; the Christian commandment is recognized in it: he will be saved “who lays down his life for his friends.”

Of course, communism has its shortcomings; along with fascism and liberalism, it is one of the versions of the philosophical and socio-political problems of the New Age and must be overcome along with all these problems. The true shortcomings of communism are a matter for a separate work, but here we are getting rid of slander for now.

The figures mentioned above have been partially known for half a century, and partially became known in the early 1990s. But who remembers the publications in AIF almost 20 years ago? Who read the Socis magazine, published in small circulation? But slander is sold in millions of copies. It is still difficult to imagine at least one liberal or democrat who would not share the myth of Stalin’s multimillion-dollar repressions. “Echo of Moscow” and “Radio Liberty” talk about these tens of millions killed by the regime every day, as if there were no publications by Zemskov!

The “Yeltsin Foundation” began financing a huge publication “The History of Stalinism”, financing 100 volumes of slander and dirt on Stalin. Why can't they all calm down? Why was it so important both during perestroika and now to mind your filthy business? They are not fighting the past... No. They are fighting our future!

During the voting on the “Name of Russia” project, our broadcast stars and public opinion leaders did not hesitate to say that they were shocked that so many people chose Stalin, because Stalin destroyed millions of fellow citizens, naturally innocent ones...

Anti-Stalin films “Children of the Arbat” and “Doctor Zhivago” based on the novels of Rybakov and Pasternak were filmed and broadcast. This also happened after Zemskov’s publications, when it would seem historical consultants simply must stop slander... No one stopped and no artistic councils on TV channels banned this...

The famous defector V. Suvorov-Rezun, who used to use English money to shock the reader with stories that in fact Stalin wanted to attack Hitler and the unfortunate Hitler was simply forced to defend himself with an attack. This wild nonsense was read and absorbed by millions, but in the end the wave of reasoned criticism against Suvorov turned out to be greater, and even he changed his mind and wrote the book “I Take My Words Back.” And what? Has he really become objective? No, he abandoned only the most ridiculous fictions, but still on every page he continues to suggest that Stalin killed more people than Hitler. And this was in 2007, and again it is published in huge quantities and sold in our stores!

OK… This is journalism, and it comes from an English spy. But in 2008, the novelist, perhaps the most popular in Russia, Boris Akunin, aka Chkhartishvili, wrote the novel “Quest”, where as<одного из>the positive heroes are brought out by Rockefeller, who sends a sabotage group to the USSR to take away the “genius serum” from Stalin. They arrived in the 1930s to stop Stalin from preparing for war with Hitler. Readers are invited to root for them, because Stalin is a paranoid, a tyrant, and a monster, and the USSR is generally a cancerous tumor that must be cut out from the body of humanity. Then the positive hero Rockefeller gives the “genius serum” to Hitler so that he can stop Stalin... This is published in the country that saved the world from fascism!

This is now being absorbed in thousands of copies, like Akunin’s other books, each of which falsifies history, in concept and in every single line, breathes Russophobia and poisons our historical consciousness. It’s amazing: for 10 years an author has been living in Russia, who is published in large numbers, films are made based on his books... And this author openly craps on our entire history, primarily through the description of small details, customs, everyday life, the speech of the characters, and the entire elite and the intelligentsia don’t even notice this!

Well, this is a minor demon, but based on the books of a major demon - Solzhenitsyn - Russian state television channels produce series and show them in prime time (“In the First Circle” shown in 2007). Until now, the Russian elite does not know the true numbers and thinks that in World War II “two evils collided.” And if the elite knows and allows historical slander, it means that it puts itself in opposition to Stalin and thereby on the same side with Hitler; there can be no middle ground. No wonder and Suvorov and Solzhenitsyn they don’t just write that “both were bad,” only “one with a mustache, the other with a mustache,” no, they stubbornly try to rehabilitate those who fought on Hitler’s side, for example, the Vlasovites and Banderaites. The warmest lines are dedicated to them.

Excuse me, if both Stalin and Hitler are “totalitarian evil” and you hate everyone who served, for example, Stalin, then why don’t you equally hate those who served Hitler? No, it doesn’t work: the Vlasovites turn out to be almost saints, Hitler’s atrocities are always downplayed, and even some kind of fascist humanitarian activity is emphasized in every possible way: here, they say, here and there the Krauts built a road that the Soviet government could not do for 10 years build, what great guys!

This is not accidental: everyone must understand that by speaking against Stalin, he is speaking for Hitler - this is an extreme situation in which there is no middle ground. This is the tragedy of the tragic moments of history.

It is always difficult to argue about this issue with those who have affected relatives. By the way, there are few of them. Significantly less than, for example, relatives who died at the front. In my class at school, almost everyone in their family had someone killed in the war, and there were only a couple of people in whom someone was repressed. Moreover, he was repressed, not shot. This indicates a significantly smaller scale of repression than the numbers of war victims, at least by an order of magnitude.

Half of those who say this actually do not have any affected relatives. It’s just that in the early 1990s it was fashionable to show off and call oneself a descendant of the repressed and dispossessed. Now you can also trace your origins back to nobles or kulaks. Well, really, shouldn’t an intelligent person boast that his ancestors were simple bast peasants?

Not all of those repressed and injured actually suffered innocently. As already mentioned, all kinds of Khrushchev commissions were tasked with rehabilitating everyone precisely in order to specifically show how large the number of innocent victims was. By the way, so far the number of these rehabilitated has not exceeded 2 million (counting together with Khrushchev’s times), which once again indicates that there simply were no 20 million repressed.

I personally had the opportunity a couple of times to see the criminal cases of rehabilitated repressed people. These are pure saboteurs, criminals and speculators, people who, in difficult years, really profited from the misfortune of the people. They were imprisoned correctly, but they were rehabilitated in vain. Naturally, it is difficult for the descendants of these people to admit that their grandfathers were scoundrels, while the rest of the country accomplished a feat. It would be better for them to take an objective position, and not try to be against the country, but with their relatives.

I also came across a couple of people, relatives of the victims, quite “innocently”, that is, not for themselves, but simply for company. One, a descendant of a dispossessed man, said: “They evicted us from our house, but in this beautiful house they made their own hospital “... Well, really, aren’t they scum? They would have thought of creating a school or kindergarten! Is there a limit to the cynicism of these Stalinist Bolsheviks?

I see no point in arguing with those who argue this way. I think their distant ancestors thought the same way, for which they were “tenderly loved” by their fellow villagers. Most of the kulaks, by the way, were saved from lynchings thanks to the eviction, and the community knew better who was a good person in the village and who was a world-eater. Let us remember that the community did not consist of penny-pinchers, those who could be torn by envy of other people's goods (as they often like to explain to us), but those who actually later died in the war without sparing their lives, in whom the remnants of Christian morality and communal morality were still preserved.

Finally, I had the opportunity to communicate with a girl whose Ingush parents were born during deportation, and she was very indignant that her people were deported. To this I could answer her only one thing: my grandfather’s three brothers did not return from the war and they had no children at all, but of her ancestors, who were subject to conscription into the Red Army in 1942, in the Chechen-Ingush Republic, out of 3,000 came to the draft points only 200 people. As they say, feel the difference.

Whose cross was heavier - those who ran away from the army, flirted with the Krauts, and then were deported (instead of being shot, by the way) away from the battles and had the opportunity to give birth to children, or the cross of those who shed blood and defended the country? By the way, the same applies to those who were in the camps. Their fate (and to be honest, many were better off being in the camp than dying at the front) was not much different from those who remained free during this difficult time.

And one more vivid memory I read in the memoirs of a priest who went through the war. He describes a case when a special officer shot a soldier for absolutely no reason, and not only the special officer but also the members of the field court did not take long to understand the topic. So: the next day there was a battle to the death, and everyone who shot died themselves, and the special officer died heroically. He survived his sacrifice for a short time and redeemed everything with his feat.

What does all this mean? About a tragic era that ground people in its millstones, about an era where such events took place every day that today one of them would be enough for six months of discussion in the media. Who is right, who is wrong, why and why. This was not a time of reflection and abstract moralizing, but a time of quick decisions. And the solution is that you had to quickly decide who you are with, otherwise the decision will be made for you. Trying to “not choose” threw you into someone else’s camp, even if you didn’t want it. You could be with Stalin or against, there was no third option. This was the imperative of fate. Those who did not understand him, willingly committing betrayal, or simply deciding that “my hut is in the end,” or frivolously told jokes about the leader in wartime, they all ended up in the same camp - the camp of historical outcasts and losers.

The history of Russia, like other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “era of Stalin.” He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of “expediency.” In reality, he was driven by completely different motives.

When talking about the beginning of the political career of a leader who became a tyrant, such authors bashfully hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a repeat offender with seven prison sentences. Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the government course he pursued.

Lenin received a worthy successor in his person. “Having creatively developed his teaching,” Joseph Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that the country should be ruled by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

A generation of people whose lips can speak the truth about Stalin’s repressions is leaving... Are not newfangled articles whitening the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken lives...

The leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Joseph Vissarionovich personally signed execution lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin tightened the repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete chaos in the dungeons. He was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 10, 1939, which literally gave the punitive authorities a free hand.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from a letter from Corps Commander Lisovsky, a leader bullied by the satraps...

"...A ten-day assembly-line interrogation with a brutal, vicious beating and no opportunity to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Next - forced to sit with your hands raised up, and also stand bent over with your head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours..."

The detainees' desire to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges led to increased torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Let us remember that Robert Eiche, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher in Lefortovo prison died from beatings during interrogation.

Leader's motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was calculated not in tens or hundreds of thousands, but in seven million who died of starvation and four million who were arrested (general statistics will be presented below). The number of those executed alone was about 800 thousand people...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, immensely striving for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in “Children of Arbat”? Analyzing Stalin's personality, he shares his judgments with us. “The ruler whom the people love is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. It's another matter when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on himself. This is a strong ruler! Hence the leader’s credo - to inspire love through fear!

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin took steps adequate to this idea. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

Joseph Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V.I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate sent him 7 exiles to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, unscrupulousness in means, harshness towards people, and egocentrism from a young age. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party participated in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich received a long-awaited opportunity for career growth. The ill and weakening Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. In this way, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really aspires to leadership.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party behind-the-scenes intrigue, which later came in handy in his fight against competitors.

Positioning of Stalin in the system of red terror

The machine of red terror was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues the Resolution “On Red Terror”. The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), operated under the Council of People's Commissars from December 7, 1917.

The reason for this radicalization of domestic politics was the murder of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the assassination attempt on V. Lenin by Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Both events occurred on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka launched a wave of repression.

According to statistical information, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 were shot, 1791 were imprisoned in concentration camps.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, police officers, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landowners had already been repressed. First of all, the blow was dealt to the classes that are the support of the monarchical structure of society. However, having “creatively developed the teachings of Lenin,” Joseph Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he justified theoretically.

His concept of intensifying class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Joseph Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. From that time on, he actually became the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.

Hidden by slogans, the real meaning of Stalinism manifests itself in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman made it very clear that power for this ruler was not a means, but a goal. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal, unlimited dictatorship.

Joseph Vissarionovich in 1928-1930. began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public trials that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, the cult of Stalin’s personality began its formation with trials and the instillation of terror throughout society... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as “enemies of the people.” People were brutally tortured to sign charges fabricated by the investigation. The brutal dictatorship imitated class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...

Three global trials were falsified: the “Union Bureau Case” (putting managers at risk); “The Case of the Industrial Party” (the sabotage of the Western powers regarding the economy of the USSR was imitated); “The Case of the Labor Peasant Party” (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays in mechanization). Moreover, they were all united into a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against Soviet power and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD organs.

As a result, the entire economic management of the national economy was replaced from old “specialists” to “new personnel”, ready to work according to the instructions of the “leader”.

Through the lips of Stalin, who ensured that the state apparatus was loyal to repression through the trials, the Party’s unshakable determination was further expressed: to displace and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, traders, small and medium-sized ones; to ruin the basis of agricultural production - the wealthy peasantry (indiscriminately calling them “kulaks”). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by “the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants.”

Behind the scenes, parallel to this “general line,” the “father of peoples” consistently, with the help of provocations and false testimony, began to implement the line of eliminating his party competitors for supreme state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. indicates that the main object of repression was the main social base of the village - an effective agricultural producer. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (and in fact at that time these were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was, under the pressure of repression, to transform from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin’s plans for industrialization and maintaining hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly identify the object of his repressions, Stalin resorted to an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustifiably, he achieved that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profit-making) producer into a separate “class of kulaks” - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Resolution “On the liquidation of ... kulak farms” dated January 30, 1930.

The Red Terror has come to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalin's “troika” trials, which in most cases ended with executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (the category of which could include any persons subjectively defined as a “rural asset”) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body for permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational department under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Migrants to the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, ruin and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all of Stalin’s repressions. A brief listing of them should be supplemented by the organization of famine. Its real reason was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was crop failure.

His subjectively developed plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be reasonable to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for a harvest year... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded immediate provision of food to the bloated security forces and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision to confiscate grain intended for sowing and consumption from the peasants.

On October 22, 1932, two emergency commissions under the leadership of the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of “fight against the fists” to confiscate grain, which was accompanied by violence, quick-to-death troika courts and the eviction of wealthy agricultural producers to the Far North. It was genocide...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not stopped by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Well-known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932 -1933. have documentary evidence. M.A. Sholokhov, the author of “The Quiet Don,” addressed the leader, defending his fellow countrymen, with letters exposing lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. The famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya presented the facts in detail, indicating the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors. The abuse and violence against the peasants is horrifying: brutal beatings, breaking out joints, partial strangulation, mock executions, eviction from houses... In his response Letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader is visible in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, “secretly” trying to disrupt the food supply...

This voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the Russian State Duma published in April 2008 revealed previously classified statistics to the public (previously, propaganda did its best to hide these repressions of Stalin.)

How many people died from hunger in the above regions? The figure established by the State Duma commission is terrifying: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

Let's also consider three more areas of Stalin's terror, and in the table below we present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to suppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the newspaper Pravda, and not go to church...

Hundreds of thousands of families of previously productive peasants, fearing dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights and make them manipulable, it was at that time that passporting of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. Peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full scope of civil rights (freedom to choose a place of residence, freedom to choose a job) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition of fulfilling workday norms.

Antisocial policies were accompanied by the destruction of families and an increase in the number of street children. This phenomenon has become so widespread that the state was forced to respond to it. With Stalin's sanction, the Politburo of the Country of Soviets issued one of the most inhumane regulations - punitive towards children.

The anti-religious offensive as of April 1, 1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

For repressive purposes, passportization of the urban population was carried out. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of Stalin’s most cynical crimes is his authorization of the secret Politburo resolution of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from 12 years of age to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to capital punishment. In 1936 alone, 125 thousand children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10 thousand children were exiled to the Gulag system.

Great Terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, as a result of repressions over the entire society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and physical reprisals against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - massive “cleansings of the state apparatus” were carried out.

Terror has reached unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (from 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was ruined for one carelessly dropped word... Even the Stalinist elite - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis - were repressed; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; security officers Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on trumped-up cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified corps-level commanders - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not adequately master operational and tactical art.

It was not only the shopfront facades of Soviet cities that were characterized by the personality cult of Stalin. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to a monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, mercilessly exploited labor resources to extract the wealth of the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those kept in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 there were 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the prisoners of Kolyma mined 35% of the Union's gold, while living in terrible conditions. Let us list the main camps included in the Gulag system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (43 and 35 thousand, respectively); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); development of the steppes - Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of the BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

Basically, people arrived in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night arrest and an unfair, biased trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: “enemies of the people” - kulaks (essentially effective agricultural producers), and even entire evicted nationalities. The majority served sentences from 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The investigation process involved torture and the breaking of the will of the convicted person.

In the case of the resettlement of kulaks and small nations, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe and the convicts built a camp and a special purpose prison (TON) for themselves. Since 1930, the labor of prisoners was mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours a day. Tens of thousands of people died from overwork, poor nutrition, and poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice and is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by revolutionary military tribunals. The inhumane system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. Executions under Article 58 were in effect until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years in camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out in the name of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.

The powerless people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The process of restoring justice began with the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

The share and number of USSR citizens who were subjected to repression during the years of Stalin’s rule:

no, that's a lie.

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

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

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

many people successfully escaped from there, were released upon reaching the age of 16, or were released due to enrolling in higher or secondary educational institutions.

"Stalin's repressions"

Is it true that 40 million were convicted?

no, that's a lie.

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

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

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

Of course, the Gulag or prisons were not “death camps” like the Nazi ones; every year 200-350 thousand people left them and their sentences ended.

Another point, in the USSR - Nikolaev, who killed Kirov, is clearly political, but in the USA, Oswald, the killer of Kennedy, is criminal.

Another blatant lie about the total repression of repatriates. In reality, only a few percent were convicted and sent to serve time. I think it is obvious that among the repatriates there were former Vlasovites, punitive forces, and policemen.

The Holodomor, of course, was not planned; the number of victims was about 3 million in 1933-34.

The losses during the eviction of peoples have been greatly exaggerated: Chechens, Crimean Tatars, they amounted to about 0.13%.

Zemskov does not assess the reasons for the eviction.

Zemskov estimates the number of repressed people (deported “kulaks”, resettled peoples, convicted under Article 58, victims for religious reasons, Cossacks, etc.) at 10 million. (Memorial has 14 million).

During the period from 1918 to 1958, about 400 million people lived on the territory of the USSR, that is, 2.5% of the population of the USSR was subjected to repression.

Accordingly, 97.5% of the population of the USSR was not subjected to any repression.

On the eve of the war.

Is it true that the Soviet people feared and hated the authorities?

no, that's a lie.

Before the war, people understood its inevitability and prepared, but hoped that it would not happen.

The attitude towards the Red Army was wonderful. "The army is the best school for peasant youth."

The civilization of the USSR was a young, healthy, unique organism, with enormous potential for development and complexity. Her spirit was militancy, readiness for work, exploits, and self-sacrifice.

One can only be surprised at the myopia of Hitler, who believed that it would fall apart at the first press.

Of course, the USSR had groups with anti-Soviet sentiments, but they made up an insignificant number of the population. The USSR was the embodiment of the ideals of October, a country with great social achievements, a state of workers and peasants with the highest passionarity. The peoples of the USSR were ready to defend not only their land, the lives of their loved ones, but also the state and social system of the USSR. The USSR regime was assessed by contemporaries as the fairest and best.

The survival of the regime was not at stake; what was at stake was the fate and physical survival of the peoples of the USSR, primarily the Russians.

During the war years

Is it true that the people wanted to throw off the “yoke of Bolshevism”?

no, that's a lie.

Soviet peasants regarded collective farm land as their own. The German fascists were deeply struck by peasant patriotism and peasant support for the Soviet army. Western researchers mistakenly believe that the matter is the miscalculations of the German command, which did not restrain the atrocities of its army and thus “miscalculated” in the policy of “attracting” the peasants to its side. The most worthless historians write that “Soviet peasants extended their hand to the fascists, but they did not accept it.”

The Soviet people, the peasants, in their overwhelming majority, did not extend any hand to the fascists, the Soviet government was their power, they saw the Germans as murderers and invaders. The collaboration of some peasants is a rare exception, even among the exiled “kulaks”.

Another lie is the statement about forced labor on collective farms/state farms. (Of course, even earlier people joined collective farms voluntarily; a collective farm/state farm is a more progressive and effective form of organization than an individual or private farm)

People accomplished the feat of labor not under pain of punishment, but due to the highest motivation to help the front, the country, and their loved ones fighting the enemy. Many initiatives emerged from among the peasants: shock labor, new ones. more effective methods of work, social. competition, social obligations. This all happened against the backdrop of a sharp reduction in the number of working equipment, labor, and agricultural space. They said: “The tractor is our tank on which we go into battle for the harvest!”

It is this work, when a child or an old man fulfills 50% of an adult’s norm, and an adult fulfills several norms, that is an indicator of the greatness of a people, his feat.

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

no, that's a lie.

Of course, Stalin did not say: “we do not have those who retreated or were taken prisoner, we have traitors.”

The policy of the USSR did not equate “traitor” with “captured.” The "Vlasovites", policemen, "Krasnov's Cossacks" and other scum that the traitor Prosvirnin swears at were considered traitors. And even then, the Vlasovites did not receive not only VMN, but even prison. They were sent into exile for 6 years.

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

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

A statement is also a myth. that many repatriates did not want to return to the USSR.

On my own, I’ll add a couple of figures for Chapter 5: after the liberation of Soviet prisoners of war from Nazi camps, out of 1.8 million survivors, 333 thousand people were not tested for cooperation with the Germans. They received punishment in the form of exile and life in settlements for a period of 6 years.

Ours with D.R. Khapaeva article “ People, have pity on the executioners.", dedicated to the collective ideas of post-Soviet people about Soviet history, prompted a number of letters to the editor demanding that the following phrase contained in it be refuted:

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

Some readers a) considered the comparison of quantities incorrect victims from repressions with numbers dead during the war, b) found the very concept of victims of repression blurred and c) were outraged by the extremely inflated, in their opinion, estimate of the number of repressed people. If we assume that 27 million people died during the war, then the number of victims of repression, if it were twice as large, would have to be 54 million, which contradicts the data given in the famous article by V.N. Zemskov “GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)”, published in the journal “Sociological Research” (No. 6 and 7 for 1991), which says:

“...In fact, the number of people convicted for political reasons (for “counter-revolutionary crimes”) in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, there were about 3.8 million people... Statement... of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is quite consistent with the current Gulag statistics we studied for the second half of the 30s.

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

In the article by V.N. Zemskov also provides other data based on archival documents (primarily on the number and composition of Gulag prisoners), which in no way confirms the estimates of the victims of terror by R. Conquest and A. Solzhenitsyn (about 60 million). So how many victims were there? This is worth understanding, and not only for the sake of evaluating our article. Let's start in order.

1.Is the quantity comparison correct? victims from repressions with numbers dead during the war?

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

The concept of “victims of repression” is indeed blurred. Sometimes you can use it without comment, and sometimes you can’t. We could not specify it for the same reason that we could compare the killed with the injured - we were interested in whether compatriots remembered the victims of terror in their families, and not at all in what percentage of them had injured relatives. But when it comes to how many “actually” were injured, who is considered injured, it is necessary to stipulate.

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

It is also appropriate to ask the question whether those convicted under criminal charges should be included in the statistics of repression. One of the readers said that he was not ready to consider criminals as victims of the regime. But not everyone who was convicted by ordinary courts on criminal charges were criminals. In the Soviet kingdom of distorting mirrors, almost all criteria were shifted. Looking ahead, let's say that V.N. Zemskov in the passage quoted above concerns only those convicted under political charges and is therefore obviously underestimated (the quantitative aspect will be discussed below). During rehabilitation, especially during the perestroika period, some people convicted of criminal charges were rehabilitated as actually victims of political repression. Of course, in many cases it is possible to understand this only individually, however, as is known, numerous “nonsense” who picked up ears of corn on a collective farm field or took home a pack of nails from a factory were also classified as criminals. During the campaigns to protect socialist property at the end of collectivization (the famous Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of August 7, 1932) and in the post-war period (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947), as well as during the struggle to improve labor discipline in the pre-war and war years (the so-called wartime decrees), millions were convicted of criminal charges. True, the majority of those convicted under the Decree of June 26, 1940, which introduced serfdom in enterprises and prohibited unauthorized departure from work, received minor sentences of corrective labor (ITR) or were given suspended sentences, but a fairly significant minority (22.9% or 4,113 thousand people for 1940-1956, judging by the statistical report of the Supreme Court of the USSR in 1958) were sentenced to imprisonment. Everything is clear with these latter ones, but what about the former? Some readers feel that they were simply treated a little harshly, and not repressed. But repression means going beyond the limits of generally accepted severity, and the sentences of technical and technical personnel for absenteeism, of course, were such an excess. Finally, in some cases, the number of which is impossible to estimate, those sentenced to technical labor force due to a misunderstanding or due to the excessive zeal of the guardians of the law ended up in camps.

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

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

A special question concerns “members of the families of traitors to the motherland.” Some of them were “definitely repressed”, others – a lot of children – were exiled to colonies or imprisoned in orphanages. Where to count such children? Where to count people, most often wives and mothers of convicted persons, who not only lost loved ones, but were also evicted from apartments, deprived of work and registration, were under surveillance and awaiting arrest? Shall we say that terror - that is, the policy of intimidation - did not touch them? On the other hand, it is difficult to include them in statistics - their numbers simply cannot be taken into account.

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

3. How can you assess the scale of repression?

3.1. What do we know and how do we know it?

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

In particular, the result of this situation is the dependence of historians on statistics collected by the “relevant bodies”, which are verified on the basis of primary documents in the rarest cases (although when it is possible, verification often gives a rather positive result). These statistics were presented in different years by different departments, and it is not easy to bring them together. In addition, it concerns only the “officially” repressed and is therefore fundamentally incomplete. For example, the number of people repressed under criminal charges, but for actual political reasons, in principle could not be indicated in it, since it was based on the categories of understanding of reality by the above authorities. Finally, there are difficult to explain discrepancies between different “certificates”. Estimates of the scale of repression based on available sources can be very rough and cautious.

Now about the historiographical context of V.N.’s work. Zemskova. The cited article, as well as the even more famous joint article written on its basis by the same author with the American historian A. Getty and the French historian G. Rittersporn, are characteristic of the formation that took shape in the 80s. the so-called “revisionist” trend in the study of Soviet history. Young (then) left-wing Western historians tried not so much to whitewash the Soviet regime as to show that the “right-wing” “anti-Soviet” historians of the older generation (such as R. Conquest and R. Pipes) wrote unscientific history, since they were not allowed into the Soviet archives. Therefore, if the “right” exaggerated the scale of repression, the “left”, partly out of dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, hastened to make them public and did not always ask themselves whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives. Such “archival fetishism” is generally characteristic of the “tribe of historians,” including the most qualified. It is not surprising that the data of V.N. Zemskov, who reproduced the figures cited in the documents he found, in the light of a more careful analysis turn out to be underestimated indicators of the scale of repression.

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

3.2. Sentence statistics

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

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

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

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

In addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB, the number of those repressed can be judged by statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. (“Babukhin’s certificate”). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand. person to forced labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted of military crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted of political offenses (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Thefts of socialist and personal property - including an unknown number of "nonsense" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% were accounted for by "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well have been in the nature of repression - for the unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases per year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to power (several thousand cases per year), violation of the serfdom passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group included penalties for leaving work without permission - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest to fines or technical technical regulations. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually made it to the camps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.2. Population of Gulag

Estimating the number of repressed people can be approached in another way - through an analysis of the “population” of the Gulag. It is generally accepted that in the 20s. prisoners for political reasons were more likely to number in the thousands or a few tens of thousands. There were about the same number of exiles. The year the “real” Gulag was created was 1929. After this, the number of prisoners quickly exceeded one hundred thousand and by 1937 had grown to approximately a million. Published data show that from 1938 to 1947. it was, with some fluctuations, about 1.5 million, and then exceeded 2 million in the early 1950s. amounted to about 2.5 million (including colonies). However, the turnover of the camp population (caused by many reasons, including high mortality) was very high. Based on an analysis of data on the admission and departure of prisoners, E. Bacon suggested that between 1929 and 1953. About 18 million prisoners passed through the Gulag (including colonies). To this we must add those kept in prisons, of which at any given moment there were about 200-300-400 thousand (minimum 155 thousand in January 1944, maximum 488 thousand in January 1941). A significant portion of them probably ended up in the Gulag, but not all. Some were released, but others may have received minor sentences (for example, most of the 4.1 million people sentenced to imprisonment under wartime decrees), so there was no point in sending them to camps and perhaps even to colonies. Therefore, the figure of 18 million should probably be increased slightly (but hardly by more than 1-2 million).

How reliable are Gulag statistics? Most likely, it is quite reliable, although it was not maintained carefully. The factors that could lead to gross distortions, either in the direction of exaggeration or understatement, roughly balanced each other, not to mention the fact that, with the partial exception of the period of the Great Terror, Moscow took the economic role of the forced labor system seriously and monitored statistics and demanded a reduction in the very high mortality rate among prisoners. Camp commanders had to be prepared for reporting checks. Their interest, on the one hand, was to underestimate mortality and escape rates, and on the other, not to overinflate the total contingent so as not to obtain unrealistic production plans.

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

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

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

But this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminals were de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal charges, 778 thousand were convicted of theft of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - according to the Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - according to the Decree of 7 August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized departure from work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s and early 40s. usually there were about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 50s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (by the 50s there were almost none left). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed for political reasons. One and a half to two percent of prisoners served camp sentences for violating the passport regime. Those convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the Gulag population was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with the special role persecution of the “nonsuns” in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts during the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and if we consider that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately threefold compared to 1934 and one and a half times compared to 1936, then perhaps there is reason to assume that at least two-thirds of the victims of repression were among the plunderers of socialist property.

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

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

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

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

Despite the fact that the average number of de facto political people in the camps at a particular moment was approximately equal to the number of de jure political ones, in general, for the entire period of repression, de facto political ones should have been significantly greater than de jure political ones, because usually the sentences in criminal cases were significantly Briefly speaking. Thus, about a quarter of those convicted on political charges were sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 10 years or more, and another half - from 5 to 10 years, while in criminal cases the majority of terms were less than 5 years. It is clear that various forms of prisoner turnover (primarily mortality, including executions) could somewhat smooth out this difference. Nevertheless, de facto there should have been more than 5 million political ones.

How does this compare with a rough estimate of the number of people sentenced to imprisonment under criminal charges for actually political reasons? Most of the 4.1 million people convicted under wartime decrees probably did not make it to the camps, but some of them could well have made it to the colonies. But of the 8-9 million convicted for military and economic crimes, as well as for various forms of disobedience to authorities, the majority made it to the Gulag (the death rate during transit was supposedly quite high, but there are no accurate estimates of it). If it is true that about two-thirds of these 8-9 million were actually political prisoners, then together with those convicted under wartime decrees who reached the Gulag, this probably gives no less than 6-8 million.

If this figure was closer to 8 million, which is better consistent with our ideas about the comparative length of terms of imprisonment under political and criminal articles, then it should be assumed that either the estimate of the total population of the Gulag for the period of repression at 18 million is somewhat underestimated, or the estimate the total number of de jure political prisoners of 5 million is somewhat overestimated (perhaps both of these assumptions are correct to some extent). However, the figure of 5 million political prisoners would seem to exactly coincide with the result of our calculations of the total number of those sentenced to imprisonment on political charges. If in reality there were fewer than 5 million de jure political prisoners, then this most likely means that many more death sentences were handed down for war crimes than we assumed, and also that death in transit was a particularly common fate namely de jure political prisoners.

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

3.4. In total there were repressed...

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

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

About 6-7 million peasants who died as a result of an artificially organized famine in the early 30s;

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

The 14 million who received sentences of ITR and fines under wartime decrees, as well as the majority of those 4 million who received short prison sentences under these decrees, presumably served them in prisons and therefore were not counted in the Gulag population statistics; Overall, this category probably adds at least 17 million victims of repression;

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

Up to half a million military personnel who were captured and, after liberation, passed through NKVD filtration camps (but not convicted);

Several hundred thousand administrative exiles, some of whom were subsequently arrested, but not all (O.V. Khlevniuk. P.306).

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

The Red Terror did not begin in 1921, and it did not end in 1955. True, after 1955 it was relatively sluggish (by Soviet standards), but still the number of victims of political repression (suppression of riots, fight against dissidents and etc.) after the 20th Congress amounts to a five-digit figure. The most significant wave of post-Stalinist repressions took place in 1956-69. The period of revolution and civil war was less “vegetarian”. There are no exact figures here, but it is assumed that we can hardly talk about less than one million victims - counting those killed and repressed during the suppression of numerous popular uprisings against Soviet power, but not counting, of course, forced emigrants. Forced emigration, however, also occurred after World War II, and in each case it amounted to seven figures.

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

In connection with assessing the number of victims of repression, we should also dwell on the question of those killed during the Second World War. The fact is that these categories partially overlap: we are primarily talking about people who died during hostilities as a result of the terrorist policies of the Soviet regime. Those who were convicted by the military justice authorities are already taken into account in our statistics, but there were also those whom commanders of all ranks ordered to be shot without trial or even personally shot, based on their understanding of military discipline. Examples are probably known to everyone, but quantitative estimates do not exist here. We are not touching here on the problem of justification for purely military losses - senseless frontal attacks, which many famous commanders of Stalin’s ilk were eager for, were also, of course, a manifestation of the state’s complete disregard for the lives of citizens, but their consequences, naturally, have to be taken into account in the category of military losses.

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

By the way, I wonder why V.A. Kryuchkov spoke about a million, and not about one and a half million, repressed in 1937-1938? Perhaps he was not so much fighting to improve terror indicators in the light of perestroika as simply sharing the above-mentioned “expert assessment” of the anonymous reader of Pavlov’s certificate, convinced that 30% of the “political” are actually criminals?

We said above that the number of those executed was hardly less than a million people. However, if we talk about those killed as a result of terror, we will get a different figure: death in the camps (at least half a million in the 1930s alone - see O.V. Khlevniuk. P. 327) and in transit (which cannot be calculated), death under torture, suicides of those awaiting arrest, death of special settlers from hunger and disease both in settlement areas (where about 600 thousand kulaks died in the 1930s - see O.V. Khlevniuk, p. 327), and on the way to them, executions “alarmists” and “deserters” without trial or investigation, and finally, the death of millions of peasants as a result of a provoked famine - all this gives a figure hardly less than 10 million people. “Formal” repressions were only the tip of the iceberg of the terrorist policy of the Soviet regime.

Some readers - and, of course, historians - wonder what percentage of the population were victims of repression. O.V. Khlevnyuk in the above book (P.304) in relation to the 30s. suggests that one in six of the country's adult population was affected. However, he proceeds from an estimate of the total population according to the 1937 census, without taking into account the fact that the total number of people living in the country for ten years (and even more so throughout the almost thirty-five year period of mass repressions from 1917 to 1953 .) was greater than the number of people living in it at any given moment.

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

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

4. What does all this mean today?

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

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

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

In modern Russian historical consciousness, the desire for an “objective” approach to the past is very noticeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is no coincidence that we put the word “objective” in quotation marks. The point is not that complete objectivity is hardly achievable in principle, but that a call for it can mean very different things - from the honest desire of a conscientious researcher - and any interested person - to understand the complex and contradictory process that we call history, to the irritated reaction of an average person stuck on an oil needle to any attempts to disturb his peace of mind and make him think that he inherited not only valuable minerals that ensure his - alas, fragile - well-being, but also unresolved political, cultural and psychological problems , generated by seventy years of experience of “endless terror”, his own soul, which he is afraid to look into - perhaps not without reason. And, finally, the call for objectivity may hide the sober calculation of the ruling elites, who are aware of their genetic connection with the Soviet elites and are not at all inclined to “allow the lower classes to engage in criticism.”

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

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

Russian historical memory today turns away from repressions - but this, alas, does not mean at all that “the past has passed.” The structures of Russian everyday life to a large extent reproduce forms of social relations, behavior and consciousness that came from the imperial and Soviet past. This does not seem to be to the liking of the majority of respondents: increasingly imbued with pride in their past, they perceive the present quite critically. Thus, when asked in our questionnaire whether modern Russia is inferior to the West in terms of culture or superior to it, only 9.4% chose the second answer, while the same figure for all previous historical eras (including Moscow Rus' during the Soviet period) ranges from 20 to 40 %. Fellow citizens probably do not bother to think that the “golden age of Stalinism,” as well as the subsequent, albeit somewhat more faded period of Soviet history, may have something to do with what they are not happy with in our society today. Turning to the Soviet past in order to overcome it is possible only on the condition that we are ready to see the traces of this past in ourselves and recognize ourselves as heirs not only of glorious deeds, but also of the crimes of our ancestors.