As has been said many times, the first post-war years- perhaps the most mysterious period of our history, which, in particular, makes it possible for one or another current author to compose any fables about this time. So, in the popular (alas!) detective story by E. Radzinsky "Stalin" (1997), after reporting on two people arrested in 1946 and 1947, the author presents the following "clarification":

“All of Moscow spoke with horror about these arrests: is 1937 really beginning again? has begun..." (p. 568. Highlighted by me. - VC.)

So, an ominous roll call is proposed: 1937 - 1947 ... However, on March 26 of that same 1947, a decree was issued to abolish the death penalty in the victorious country ... And there are completely reliable documents showing that in 1948-1949 there were no was rendered no one death sentence. True, on January 12, 1950, a decree was issued that restored the death penalty, apparently in connection with the then-prepared trial of the so-called Leningrad case (which will be discussed later). And during 1950-1953 there were 3894 death sentences. Of course, the figure is terrible - on average, about a thousand sentences per year ... But if we compare it with the corresponding figure in 1937-1938, when 681,692 death sentences were pronounced, that is, about 1000 per day(and not in a year!), - Radzinsky's statement about the new "1937" that began in 1947 appears as a completely irresponsible fiction; in the figures just compared, to use the once fashionable phrase, "quantity turns into quality." Unfortunately, this kind of fiction has been inculcated into the minds of people for more than forty years, since 1956.

There is no doubt that in 1946-1953 there were quite a lot of all sorts of cruelties, injustices, and violence. But, as is clear from the facts, the "political climate" in the country has become much less severe and cruel than in the pre-war period - not to mention the time of collectivization and the revolution itself.

The rulers who began in the second half of the 1950s to inculcate the darkest ideas about recent years of Stalin's life, it is still possible, with a great desire, to understand and "justify". They sought to appear in the eyes of the people as the saviors of the country from the previous one - monstrous in its scale and ruthlessness - Stalin-Beria(as it was then said) of political terror, which, moreover, allegedly grew more and more over time, and if, they say, Iosif Vissarionovich lived for at least another year or two, or if Lavrenty Pavlovich seized power after his death, this terror would lead to absolutely total death of the population ...

The most thorough and at the same time the most objective - by no means closing his eyes to arbitrariness and cruelty - researcher of the Gulag, V. N. Zemskov, noted that N. S. Khrushchev, "in order to present his own role as a liberator of the victims of Stalinist repressions on a larger scale, wrote: "... When Stalin died, there were up to 10 million people in the camps." In reality, on January 1, 1953, 2,468,524 prisoners were kept in the Gulag. And, according to V.N. N. S. Khrushchev, indicating the exact number of prisoners, including at the time of the death of I. V. Stalin. Consequently, N. S. Khrushchev was well informed about the true number of Gulag prisoners and deliberately exaggerated it four times.

To this judgment of V. N. Zemskov it is necessary to add the following. Khrushchev, naming the shocking figure "10 million", also sought to suggest that it was mainly about political prisoners. True, fearing, one must think, to be completely lying, Nikita Sergeevich, following the quoted phrase about "10 million", stipulated: "There (that is, in the ten million Gulag. - VC.), of course, there were criminals ... ", but he clearly wanted these "were" to be understood in the sense that "criminals" constituted a modest minority of prisoners. Meanwhile, in reality, the proportion of political prisoners at the beginning of 1953, how immutably appears from the study of V. N. Zemskov, at the beginning of 1953 was 21 percent of total number prisoners (ITL and ITK), that is, a little more than 1/5 ... And, therefore, Khrushchev, who, naming the figure of 10 million prisoners by the time of Stalin's death, of course, "implied" that these were mainly victims Stalin-Beria political terror, exaggerated not four, but twenty times!

But we will talk about the political repressions of 1946-1953. First, it is advisable to pay attention to the kind irony stories. The fact is that initiator The denunciation of the post-war Stalinist terror and the practical elimination of its consequences was none other than L.P. Beria, who was then declared the main executor of Stalin's villainous will, and in many ways even the "inspirer" of this will.

After the death of Stalin, Lavrenty Pavlovich took the second (the first - G. M. Malenkov) place in the ruling hierarchy, and also headed the new Ministry of Internal Affairs, which merged two previously (since 1943) independent departments - state security (NKGB-MGB) and Internal Affairs (NKVD-MVD).

In our time, a number of studies have been published (and, I must say, by a variety of authors), in which, on the basis of indisputable facts, it is shown that it was Beria who was the most resolute and consistent supporter of the "exposing the cult" of Stalin, for which, in particular, he had personal motives: in 1951-1952, an investigation was launched into the so-called Mingrelian (Mingrelians, or, otherwise, Mingrelians, one of the Georgian tribes) case, which posed a formidable danger to Beria himself. And it was he who was the first to publicly state that the "rights of citizens" were being violated in the country, mentioning this in his speech delivered directly over Stalin's coffin on March 9, 1953!

Beria was officially approved as Minister of Internal Affairs on March 15, but ten days later, on March 26, this, no doubt, the most energetic figure presented a project to the Presidium of the Central Committee amnesties, according to which they were subject to immediate release about half people who were then imprisoned. On March 27, the project was approved by the Presidium of the Central Committee and, in general, was implemented by August 10, 1953.

It should be said at once that state amnesties are by no means necessarily conditioned by "humane" considerations; this is a method practiced since ancient times to attract the sympathy of the population to the side of power. And, of course, Lavrenty Pavlovich was by no means a "humanist". In addition, many people into whose minds the picture of the last years of Stalin’s rule proposed in 1956 is implanted will say, in all probability, that Beria in 1953 hypocritically freed those whom he himself imprisoned earlier ...

However, the version according to which it was Beria who led the political repressions post-war period, or at least played a very large role in them, is completely untrue - although to this day this version is presented in many works, including the Radzinsky detective, published in 1997, when, it would seem, no it was so hard to be convinced of its fiction.

The arrest and execution of Beria, who was the second person in state power, which took place in 1953, needed "justification", and besides, it was extremely profitable to turn him into a scapegoat - hence the announcement of Beria as a kind of super-executioner, who, they say, not only fulfilled, but also far exceeded Stalin's instructions regarding political repressions.

In order to more clearly imagine the essence of the matter, it should be recalled that after October 1917, two different departments were created - the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), which was turned into the United State Political Administration (OGPU) in 1922. The NKVD did not in essence engage in political repression; it is characteristic that the names of the people's commissars of internal affairs of the late 1910s - early 1930s - A. I. Rykov, G. I. Petrovsky, V. N. Tolmachev - do not carry anything "frightening" in themselves; True, the name of the People's Commissar in 1923-1927 A. G. Beloborodov is now causing a negative reaction, but this is not due to his activities as head of the NKVD, but to the fact that earlier, in 1918, he played one of the leading roles in the destruction of the royal family .

The abbreviation "NKVD" acquired an ominous halo only after the OGPU, now called the "Main Directorate of State Security - GUGB", joined the NKVD on July 10, 1934. G. G. Yagoda was at the head of the new NKVD from July 1934, and N. I. Yezhov from October 1, 1936 to December 7, 1938, that is, for about two years and a quarter each, after which both were removed from their posts and then arrested and executed. Beria, who replaced Yezhov, was called upon, as is well known, to resolutely tame the flow of repressions. This is clear even from the fact that in 1937 there were 353,074 death sentences on political charges, in 1938 - 328,618 such sentences, and in 1939 - only 2552 and in 1940 - 1649; besides, a significant part of those sentenced to death in 1939-1940 belonged to the "people of Yezhov" - led by him ... And their destruction was, obviously, the inevitable result of the repressions they carried out ...

Beria played a different, largely opposite role, and the execution befell him only fifteen years after he headed the NKVD (and not at all for "butchery"; in 1953 there was no talk of his role in repressions - this topic was put forward and widely deployed only in 1956!) But Beria stayed at the head of the repressive apparatus no longer than Yezhov: on February 3, 1941, that is, exactly two and a quarter years after Beria took the post of People's Commissar, the unified NKVD was again divided into two departments (thus Thus, the order that had taken place before July 1934 was restored) - the NKVD proper, headed by Beria, and the NKGB, headed by Beria's former first deputy V.N. Merkulov.

True, the Patriotic War, which broke out less than five months later, forced the "section" of the People's Commissariat to be suspended, but on April 14, 1943, after a victorious turning point in Battle of Stalingrad and the forced flight of the enemy to the west from the Rzhev line, the NKVD was finally divided into the people's commissariats of internal affairs and state security (only in March 1953 they were briefly reunited at the suggestion of the same Beria).

By the way, during the "exposure" of Beria in July 1953, A. I. Mikoyan, who during the war years occupied one of the highest places in the state hierarchy and was naturally aware of what was happening, testified: "During the war, Comrade Stalin divided the Ministry of Internal Affairs (or rather, the NKVD. - VC.) and State Security", and this "was done out of distrust of Beria".

It seems to me that the matter was not so much in distrust of Beria's personality itself, but in Stalin's unwillingness to trust the State Security for a long time to one person. Merkulov, who replaced Beria, was removed (considering his first appointment to the post of People's Commissar of the State Security Service in February 1941) five years later, in May 1946; the same five years "lasted" and his successor - V. S. Abakumov, who, however, was not only removed from his post in 1951, but also arrested.

So, since April 1943, Beria has not led the apparatus of political repression - the NKGB (since 1946 - the MGB); until December 29, 1945, he remained People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, and then left this post, concentrating on activities as head (from August 20, 1945) of the "Special Committee" on atomic energy.

It may be objected that from April 1943 to May 1946, his former deputy (and in general "Beria's man") Merkulov was at the head of the State Security; however, now the People's Commissar of the State Security Service was directly subordinate not to his former patron, but to the "curator" of the NKGB - the secretary of the Central Committee and the head of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee, G. M. Malenkov. And it is known that Merkulov immediately had conflicts with Beria, which had a very expressive ending: when Beria in March 1953, after the death of Stalin, became the head of the newly united Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, he appointed almost all of his closest associates of the end to responsible posts. 1930s - early 1940s, but Merkulov (despite his request) was rejected.

There is no need to talk about subsequent years (May 1946 - March 1953), when people alien or even hostile to Beria were at the head of the State Security - V. S. Abakumov and, then, S. D. Ignatiev (more will be about them speech). It should also be noted that almost all the closest "Beria's people" (B. Z. Kobulov, L. E. Vlodzimirsky, P. Ya. Meshik and others), who held high positions in the NKGB under him, were transferred to other spheres in 1946 activities.

The transformation of Beria (in various statements by Khrushchev and others) into the culprit of all political repressions from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, as well as the general atmosphere of secrecy, led to the fact that even seemingly well-informed authors saw in Lavrenty Pavlovich the main executioner. Thus, the famous writer Konstantin Simonov, who in 1952-1956 was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, wrote in 1979, moreover, addressing his descendants rather than his contemporaries (his memoirs were published ten years after his death, in 1989): "For some time before Stalin's death, Beria was not in the post of Minister of State Security, although he continued to supervise the Ministries of State Security and Internal Affairs in one way or another."

It can be assumed that Beria somehow influenced the "practice" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the head of which from the end of 1945 to March 1953 was his former first deputy (for the NKVD) S. N. Kruglov. But there is no reason to believe that Beria in 1946-1952 had the opportunity to influence the practice of the MGB. This is clearly indicated, for example, by the fact that in 1951, people close to Beria, who remained in the MGB service after 1946, were arrested on charges of a "Zionist conspiracy" - Lieutenant General L. Ya. Raikhman, Major General N. I. Eitingon, Colonel A. Ya. Sverdlov and others - but only after becoming the head of the united Ministry of Internal Affairs in March 1953, Beria was able to release them from prison and appoint them to responsible positions in his ministry ...

One of those very, very few people who held high positions in the NKGB-MGB from the late 1930s to 1953 and at the same time survived until the time of wide "glasnost", Lieutenant General of the GB P. A. Sudoplatov (1907-1996 ), unconditionally asserted that in the post-war years Beria was "removed from overseeing any matters related to state security" - noting, however, that since Lavrenty Pavlovich led the "Special Committee" on the atomic bomb, he still dealt with the MGB - but only along the line of foreign intelligence, which obtained information about the atomic program of the West (ibid., p. 503).

Much of what is known about L.P. Beria does not give grounds to see in him (and some current authors are inclined to this) a "positive" figure, although sometimes even those who cursed him did not deny him great energy and organizational abilities. , - like, for example, academician A. D. Sakharov, who worked for eight years under his leadership. But regardless of the personal qualities of Beria themselves historical circumstances It turned out that, being twice - in December 1938 and in March 1953 - we appointed the head of the State Security, both times he had the task not to fan the flame of repression, but, on the contrary, to extinguish it. And between April 1943 and March 1953, Beria, as already mentioned, was not involved in political repression at all.

Nevertheless - and this clearly expresses the mystery or, let's say, the nebulousness of our history post-war years - to this day they write about Beria as a kind of super-executioner of that time, the direct culprit of the death of millions or at least hundreds of thousands (this, as will be shown later, completely exorbitant hyperbole) of political accused - although it is usually added that Beria carried out - or, rather, "overfulfilled" - Stalin's instructions.

Beria as the main executioner of the post-war period is repeatedly mentioned in the work of the notorious Volkogonov, and the most strange and even curious is the fact that this author, who previously received access to secret archives, at the same time he quotes a letter from the head of Stalin's security, lieutenant general of the State Security Service N. S. Vlasik, preserved in them. As one of the main figures of the GB, he could not help but know the true state of affairs. And he wrote that Stalin, "being in the south after the war ... (in November-December 1945. - VC.), instructed to remove Beria from leadership in the MGB "(or rather, in the NKVD: Beria was officially relieved of the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs on December 29, 1945). Nevertheless, Volkogonov attributed to Beria almost all the political" affairs "of 1946 - the beginning 1953!

The very fact that the main (or, say, second most important) role in the post-war political repressions is attributed to a person who has not been engaged in this “activity” at all since 1943, indisputably speaks of the inconsistency of many current writings about that time. Here, for example, Radzinsky's opus "Stalin", published in 1997, has been mentioned more than once, the author of which, shamelessly declaring his thorough study of even inaccessible archival documents, at the same time claims that in post-war the years of the “MGB and MVD” were supposedly “Beria’s departments” (p. 571), while Lavrenty Pavlovich had not been “in charge” of the MGB (more precisely, the NKGB) since April 1943, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs (NKVD) since December 1945 !

Someone might think about the insignificance of the issue under discussion and say something like this: well, let's say, it was not Beria who ran the repressions after the war, but some other "comrades-in-arms" of Stalin, but is this really so important? The fact is, however, that in itself attributing to Beria the main role in the post-war repressions, in which he was not involved, clearly speaks of a deliberate unexplored problems in general. If there is such an unfounded idea about the head of the repressive apparatus of the post-war years, it is quite natural to believe that the current ideas about this device itself and his activities. However, before turning to this activity, it is advisable to clarify the question of its leaders.

In the period from mid-March to early May 1946, a cardinal replacement State Security leadership. Almost all of the "people of Beria", who previously held senior positions in the NKGB-MGB, then received other appointments. Moreover, G. M. Malenkov, who had held these posts since 1939, was relieved of his two posts - Secretary of the Central Committee and Head of the Personnel Directorate of the Central Committee (which "supervised" the GB). Often this fact is interpreted as Malenkov's "disgrace", however, if we analyze the situation as a whole, it becomes clear that the matter was primarily about replacing the leadership of the State Security Service, and not about "persecuting" Malenkov himself. Firstly, exactly then he was elevated from candidate member of the Politburo to full member, and the loss of the title of secretary of the Central Committee was, as it were, compensated a few months later (October 8, 1946) by the appointment of Georgy Maximilianovich as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (that is, Stalin; this honor was shared with him then only eight people). Secondly, after a relatively short time, on July 1, 1948, Malenkov was again approved as Secretary of the Central Committee, although without "supervision" of the MGB.

Instead of Malenkov, the supervision of the MGB was entrusted to the new (since March 18, 1946) Secretary and Head of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov, who had previously been the 1st Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee. Further, on May 4, 1946, Minister of State Security V.N. Merkulov was removed from his post, and his main colleagues were also transferred to other departments.

The new (from 1946 to 1951) Minister of State Security, V. S. Abakumov, until 1943 served in the NKVD under the leadership of Beria, but on April 14 of this year he was appointed head of the Main Directorate of Counterintelligence (GUKR), better known as SMERSH ("Death to spies"), which was not part of the NKVD or the NKGB, but the People's Commissariat for Defense (NPO) of the USSR and reported directly to Stalin as the People's Commissar for Defense; Abakumov then became the deputy people's commissar of defense (that is, Stalin). And naturally, rivalry and even direct enmity between Abakumov and Beria (as well as Merkulov and others), reflected in a number of documents and evidence, naturally arose. Meanwhile, to this day, the writings of other "historians" speak of the unchanging cooperation between Beria and Abakumov, although it has long been known that, having become the Minister of Internal Affairs again in March 1953, Beria not only did not release from prison (as he released a number of his former colleagues) arrested in July 1951 Abakumov, but, on the contrary, presented him with new grave charges.

And after the arrest of Beria at the end of June 1953, Khrushchev and others, for selfish purposes, without any reason, enrolled Abakumov as Beria's "companions", who, as already mentioned, since December 1945 had nothing to do with the so-called "organs". But it was very beneficial for Khrushchev and others who turned Beria into a scapegoat to attach Abakumov to him, so that it turned out that in 1946-1951 Beria was in charge of all repressions, albeit with the necessary help of Abakumov. In fact, starting from the spring of 1946, the repressive apparatus had such a supreme hierarchy (quite clear from the surviving documents): Minister Abakumov, Secretary of the Central Committee Kuznetsov, and directly above him - Stalin himself.

However, not even three years had passed, and on January 28, 1949, Kuznetsov was removed from his post as secretary of the Central Committee, arrested on October 27 and, later, on October 1, 1950, shot. The MGB seems to be left without a "curator" in the secretariat of the Central Committee. And this is at least strange. True, the authors of many essays do not care about the problem, because they still believe that the MGB permanently "supervised" Beria.

Meanwhile, there are sufficient grounds to believe that from December 1949 to March 1953, the "curator" of the MGB in the Central Committee was none other than Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev!

True, there is no direct documentary evidence of this (or, at least, documents have not yet been found). But, as already noted, a lot of documents were destroyed at the direction of Khrushchev; in addition (which was also discussed), in his last years, in especially "secret" cases, Stalin strove to do without documents at all, confining himself to verbal directives; finally, various kinds of indirect confirmation of this role of Khrushchev are available in considerable quantity.

As you know, Khrushchev ruled Ukraine from January 1938. But almost twelve years later, in December 1949, Stalin unexpectedly calls him to Moscow, and he becomes one of the five (Stalin, Malenkov, Ponomarenko, Suslov, Khrushchev) then secretaries of the Central Committee (and, at the same time, the 1st secretary of the Moscow Committee) . What happened, of course, was a very important change for Khrushchev, and in his oral memoirs, recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s on a tape recorder, he returned to this plot several times.

According to him, Stalin explained the reason and meaning of his new appointment as follows: “Things are bad with us in Moscow and very bad in Leningrad, where we arrested conspirators. There were conspirators in Moscow ...” And further: “When I became secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ... The Leningrad party organization was in full swing. Stalin, saying that I needed to go to Moscow, then referred to the fact that a conspiracy had been uncovered in Leningrad "(ibid., p. 216). And elsewhere: “Stalin says: “We want to transfer you to Moscow. We are unfavorable in Leningrad, conspiracies have been revealed. It is also unfavorable in Moscow..." (ibid., p. 260), etc.

There is hardly any reason to interpret all this otherwise than Stalin's decision to entrust Khrushchev with the fight against these very "conspiracies", for which, of course, Nikita Sergeevich had to rely on the MGB, that is, to be its "curator".

But Khrushchev, in the same memoirs, claims that the MGB had then secret curator. He admits that Abakumov "was appointed by Stalin to the State Security Service when Beria was released from this job." But, according to him, "Stalin might not have known" that "Abakumov did not put a single question to Stalin without asking Beria ... Beria gave directives, and then Abakumov reported without referring to Beria" (p. 224 ).

And Khrushchev assures that the "secret" curator Beria carried out the Leningrad case, while he himself was in no way involved in it. By the time of the trial of the "Leningraders" Khrushchev had been secretary of the Central Committee for about ten months, but, according to his recollections, he not only did not participate in this case, but knew almost nothing about it: "... they accused the" Kuznetsov group " in Leningrad, as if they showed "Russian nationalism" and opposed themselves to the all-Union Central Committee. Something along these lines, I don't remember exactly, but I didn't see the documents... Stalin never spoke to me about the "Leningrad affair" (p. 219, 225).

So, Stalin, having called Khrushchev to Moscow to fight the "conspiracies", either suddenly forgot about it, or abandoned his intention; True, Khrushchev does not report any other Stalinist instructions to himself as Secretary of the Central Committee. Moreover, he does not name any other secretary of the Central Committee, whom Stalin then instructed to lead the investigation of "conspiracies" (after all, Beria allegedly dealt with this matter secretly from Stalin).

In his thorough analysis of the Abakumov case, based on available documents, K. A. Stolyarov mentions that in December 1949 Khrushchev "headed the personnel work in the Central Committee" - that is, he began to perform the functions that he performed in 1939 - early 1946 Year Malenkov, and in 1946 - early 1949 A. A. Kuznetsov. Apparently, due to the lack of accurate documentary information, K. A. Stolyarov does not specify this "personnel work" of Khrushchev. At the same time, he mentions that in 1951 Stalin "created a commission to check the work of the MGB in the following composition: Malenkov, Beria, Shkiryatov and Ignatiev" (ibid., p. 63). But in any of the members of this temporal commission is hardly appropriate to see permanent curator of the MGB; it is natural just to believe that the commission somehow "checked" the "work" of the curator (that is, Khrushchev).

And highly significant is the place in the book by K. A. Stolyarov, which refers to the trial of Abakumov in December 1954, when Khrushchev actually already owned all the power in the country. Abakumov, states K. A. Stolyarov, "was one of the few who knew about all the atrocities of those in power, including Khrushchev ... I rely on the fact that Colonel General Serov, Khrushchev's man, hurried the investigation and tried to force events ... Khrushchev sought to deal with Abakumov as quickly as possible - he was shot an hour and a quarter after the verdict was announced ... Immediately after the end of the trial of Abakumov, the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko called from Leningrad to Moscow, in a chopped phrase reported to Khrushchev about the assignment and asked , can I wrap it up ... During this telephone conversation, standing next to Rudenko was N. M. Polyakov, then secretary of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, from whom I learned the details ... Why did Khrushchev send Abakumov to the other world so energetically? It is extremely difficult to give a definite answer to these questions - while in power, Khrushchev made sure that the documents incriminating him were destroyed ... Illegal actions Khrushchev - the path is not torn, it is waiting to be explored" (ibid., p. 120, 121, 122. - Highlighted by me. - VC.).

Khrushchev's assurances were cited above, according to which he had absolutely nothing to do with the Leningrad case, even "did not see the documents." But just in case, Nikita Sergeevich nevertheless made the following reservation: "Not knowing the details of this case, I admit that the investigative materials on it may contain, among others, my signature."

How so? “I didn’t see the documents,” but I, “I admit,” put a signature under them ?! Or another contradiction: Stalin transfers Khrushchev (by his own admission) to Moscow as secretary of the Central Committee because of the Leningrad affair, but then does not say a word to him about this matter!

This inconsistency can be explained by the fact that Nikita Sergeevich dictated the quoted phrases at the age of about (or even more than) 75 years old, already finding it difficult to make ends meet, and involuntarily "let slip" about the true state of affairs in some way. Here is another likely "talk" in Khrushchev's memoirs regarding the well-known "doctors' case": "Interrogations of the 'guilty' began," Khrushchev said. "I personally heard how Stalin not once(Emphasis mine. - VC.) called Ignatiev. Then the Minister of State Security was Ignatiev. I knew him ... I treated him very well ... Stalin calls him ... loses his temper, yells, threatens ", etc. ("Questions of History", 1991, 12, p. 72). Naturally The question arises why did Stalin repeatedly call the Minister of State Security precisely in the presence of Khrushchev, could he not choose another time, or did he deliberately conduct these conversations with Ignatiev with the participation of the curator of the MGB?

I repeat once again that the documents that would make it possible to indisputably show Khrushchev's "curatorship" of the MGB in last years Stalin's life was either destroyed or did not exist at all: Khrushchev himself testified to Stalin's desire to limit himself to verbal directives to members of the Politburo (Presidium) of the Central Committee, and Khrushchev's assignment to patronize the State Security Committee, quite possibly, was not recorded in any way.

The statement above was quoted according to which Khrushchev officially knew " personnel work", - like Malenkov and, then, Kuznetsov. But the historian Yu. N. Zhukov assures that on July 10, 1948, the Politburo decided to reorganize the Central Committee, as a result of which, in particular, "The personnel department was split into seven independent production and industry departments" (see book: N. S. Khrushchev (1894-1971). - M., 1994, p. 149). It is possible that this was the case, and Khrushchev in late 1949 - early 1953 supervised the State Security Service not according to his "position", but on the personal instructions of Stalin; however, Nikita Sergeevich could be in charge of that of the seven departments, which was entrusted with the "branch" of State Security ...

At the famous Plenum of the Central Committee in June 1957, which "exposed" Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich, Prosecutor General R. A. Rudenko claimed that Abakumov organized the Leningrad case "with the knowledge" of Malenkov, but he reasonably objected: "Why, with my knowledge, when Abakumov was not subordinate to me." At the same Plenum, Malenkov was accused of having once interrogated people arrested in connection with the Leningrad case in a "special prison". Malenkov admitted that he "went to prison on behalf of Comrade Stalin in the presence of his comrades who are sitting here" (that is, other members of the 1949 Politburo). What was the response:

"Khrushchev: I am also sitting here, but I did not go out and I do not know who went there.

Malenkov: You are completely clean with us, comrade. Khrushchev" (ibid., p. 48).

Malenkov at this plenum was clearly afraid of completely angering Khrushchev, but still, it seems, he could not resist and, as one might assume, hinted that Abakumov had been "subordinate" to Khrushchev and not to him since December 1949; At the same time, the phrase: "You are completely clean with us, Comrade Khrushchev," clearly had the opposite meaning. Subsequently, for Malenkov (of course, from his words) his son Andrey Georgievich finished speaking, who wrote:

“At the end of the forties ... Khrushchev served as secretary of the Central Committee for personnel and, on duty controlling the activities of repressive bodies, bore personal responsibility for the death of A. Kuznetsov and other Leningrad leaders. Fearing, as if at the impending trial (in 1957. - VC.) his own unsightly role in the "Leningrad case" did not surface over Malenkov, Khrushchev should have ... put all the blame on Malenkov "

A definite confirmation of Khrushchev's supervision over the MGB is the eyewitness account, P. Deryabin, about how, after the arrest of Abakumov Khrushchev explained why this happened to the employees of the ministry and named one of the main reasons "the belated discovery of the Leningrad conspiracy" (by Abakumov). At the same time, it is important to note that Deryabin in his story did not aim to "denounce" Khrushchev, but only to report his version of the collapse of Abakumov.

Highly indicative is the fact that after the arrest of Abakumov and many of his colleagues, the “vacated” leading positions in the MGB were occupied, as the first-class historian G.V. Kostyrchenko established, by a number of “Khrushchev’s people” who were transferred to Moscow from Ukraine (where he , as we remember, was the 1st secretary of the Central Committee from January 1938 to December 1949) - secretary of the Vinnitsa regional party committee V. A. Golik, Kherson - V. I. Alidin, Kirovograd - N. R. Mironov, Voroshilovgrad - N. G. Ermolov, Odessa - A. A. Epishev. Especially significant in this regard is the figure of Epishev, who since 1940 was the 1st secretary of the Kharkov Regional Committee, and since 1943 - a member of the Military Council of the 40th Army, which was part of the 1st Ukrainian Front, of which Khrushchev was a member of the Military Council; after the war, Epishev became secretary of the Central Committee of Ukraine for personnel, and after Khrushchev’s transfer to Moscow, having briefly been the 1st secretary of the Odessa regional committee, he went to the capital, that is, he followed Khrushchev like a thread behind a needle. And in September 1951, Epishev took one of the most important posts in the MGB - Deputy Minister for Personnel. It is no less characteristic that in 1953, after Beria became head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Epishev returned to the post of 1st secretary of the Odessa Regional Committee (later Khrushchev would appoint him head of the Main Political Directorate of the Army and Navy). It is unlikely that Khrushchev would have been able to introduce so many "his people" to high positions in the MGB in 1951 if he had not supervised this ministry.

P. A. Sudoplatov testified to this: “During the last years of Stalin’s rule, Khrushchev ... placed his people in influential posts. It is rarely noticed that Khrushchev managed ... to introduce four of his proteges into the leadership of the MGB-MVD: deputy ministers became Serov, Savchenko, Ryasnoy and Epishev. The first three worked with him in Ukraine. The fourth served under him as secretary of the regional committee in Odessa and Kharkov "(op. cit., pp. 543-544).

It is also worth quoting Khrushchev's remark at the July plenum of the Central Committee in 1953, dedicated to the "exposing" of Beria. In particular, N. N. Shatalin, who since 1938 was in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Party and was in charge of the MGB in one way or another, even being the 1st Deputy Head of the Personnel Directorate of the Central Committee, spoke at it. He was obviously too involved in repressive affairs, and four years later, at the June Plenum of the Central Committee of 1957, when Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich were "unmasked", A. A. Gromyko declared that "if I took the leadership into my own hands triple (above named. - VC.) and their accomplices, then, probably, the shadow of Shatalin or some equivalent would appear again. And these people do not need to be taught how to deal with cadres.

But in July 1953, Shatalin was not yet considered the perpetrator of "reprisals against cadres" and in every possible way denounced Beria at the Plenum. He stated, in particular: “We in the apparatus of the Central Committee felt a clear abnormality in relations with the Ministry of Internal Affairs (headed by Beria since March 1953 - that is, during the previous three and a half months. - VC.), especially in relation to human resources. Beria in recent times so insolent that... in many cases he appointed and dismissed people without the decision of the Central Committee... I tried to grumble, expressing dissatisfaction...

Khrushchev. It was.

Shatalin. But Nikita Sergeevich told me that in given conditions the manifestation of dissatisfaction in this form is nothing more nor less than waving your hands leaving them in the air ... "(Emphasis mine. - VC.)

Shatalin in this text clearly compared the nature of the control of the Central Committee (or rather, its corresponding division) over the "organs" before Beria and under Beria, when he, Shatalin, and Khrushchev, who stood above him, essentially lost this control altogether. And from this it is appropriate to conclude that both Khrushchev and Shatalin subordinate to him supervised (and reliably!) The MGB until March 1953.

Of course, the problem needs further study, but still there are substantial grounds to conclude from the above that since December 1949 it was the secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev - of course, under the leadership of Stalin - who was in charge of the affairs of the MGB and, attributing this role to Beria or Malenkov, as they say, cast a shadow on the wattle fence.

Prominent statesman, from 1944 to 1985, who played a paramount role in the development of the country's economy, N.K. Baibakov - a man, of course, knowledgeable about many things - subsequently wrote: "Cursing and vilifying Stalin ... hysterically exposing his cult, Khrushchev ... averted accusations primarily from himself ... It was he who is known for the mass "Moscow" (1936-1937. - VC.) processes" over "enemies of the people", exposures and executions, in which he was one of the most responsible initiative figures. It is he who is the main instigator of mass terror in Ukraine ... he exposed, arrested and executed people loudest and most furiously ... in Ukraine, and then in Moscow (from December 1949. - VC.) ... It was necessary to divert people's attention from themselves, from personal involvement in arbitrariness ... and Khrushchev ... hastened to take the pose of some kind of supreme judge of the entire "Stalinist era" ... "

And if so, Khrushchev shares with Stalin the responsibility for the repressions since December 1949, including the Leningrad case and the "multifaceted" case of the "Zionist conspiracy." Since Nikita Sergeevich was prone to all sorts of "improvisations", for example, on August 29, 1956 - that is, six months after the sharply "anti-Stalinist" report he read at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU - talking with pro-communist guests from Canada, he unexpectedly expressed his full agreement with Stalin on one of the main accusations against the "Zionists":

“When the Tatars were evicted from Crimea,” Khrushchev said, “then some Jews began to develop the idea of ​​resettling Jews there in order to create a Jewish state in Crimea. And what kind of state would it be? It would be an American foothold in the south of our country. I was against this idea and fully agreed in this matter with Stalin" (emphasis mine. - VC.).

Subsequently, Khrushchev, in his dictated memoirs, asserted something directly opposite. It was about one of the offshoots of the "Zionist conspiracy" - a group of Jews who worked at the Moscow Automobile Plant named after Stalin (ZIS), the head of which was considered the assistant director of the plant A.F. Eidinov. The "case" of this group was investigated by G.V. Kostyrchenko, whose book contains, in particular, the words of the chief auditor of the ZIS, E.A. Sokolovskaya, "recorded" by the MGB: "Soviet Jews do not need a small, uncomfortable Birobidzhan. create a federal Jewish republic in the Crimea..."

Khrushchev in his memoirs said: "When I returned to Moscow (in December 1949. - VC.), large arrests were made among the workers of the ZIS (Stalin Automobile Plant). The "conspiratorial organization of American spies" was headed by assistant director of the ZIS Likhachev. I don’t remember his last name now (Eidinov. - VC.), but I personally knew this guy - a frail, thin Jew ... I didn’t even know that he was, as he was later called, the head of the American Zionists ... But they dealt with the Zisovites. Abakumov, that is, People's Commissar (Minister. - VC.) of state security, he himself conducted the inquiry ... And they were all shot. This is the kind of atmosphere that existed in Moscow at the time when I returned there from Ukraine for the second time.

Poor Nikita Sergeevich, forced to live in Moscow, where there is such a gloomy atmosphere! However, he forgot that, as is clear from the surviving documents, she did not prevent him from acting very energetically and at a good pace:

"In February 1950 (that is, soon after the transfer to Moscow. - VC.) Stalin appointed Khrushchev chairman of the commission to investigate the state of affairs at the ZIS. A check was promptly carried out and a final note was prepared, which proposed the most radical and severe measures. And then Stalin ordered the MGB to act. On March 18, 1950, Eidinov was taken to the Lubyanka ... Then, over the course of several months, dozens of other workers of the plant were arrested, "and in November of the same year," the most severe "sentences" were handed down.

And it is significant that even as early as August 1956 (see above quote from a conversation with Canadians) Khrushchev "completely agreed" with the accusations against "certain Jews" who wanted to create their own state in the Crimea - he agrees, apparently, because six years earlier, he himself had made decisions in the "Zionist conspiracy" case.

The version about the main (besides Stalin) role of Khrushchev in the repressions of 1950 - early 1953, as it is easy to foresee, may seem unconvincing to many, especially since it is expressed here with such certainty for the first time. In particular, in the mass consciousness there is still (and is expressed in a number of current writings) the idea that Beria's actions (albeit "secret") played a decisive role in these repressions; but we should not forget that this version was put forward by Khrushchev, and in this regard it is appropriate to recall the well-known trick - the loud cry "Stop the thief!"

It is impossible not to mention one more significant fact. In his very lengthy memoirs, Khrushchev talks in detail about his activities before December 1949 and after March 1953, and, talking about this period, also characterizes in detail the actions of a number of people, but hardly mentions his own, presenting himself rather as " contemplative" than the doer. From this point of view, the titles of the chapters devoted to the time of the end of 1949 - the beginning of 1953 are very indicative: "Around famous personalities", "Beria and others", "Stalin's family", "My reflections on Stalin", "Once again about Beria" etc. All this is at least strange ...

A detailed discussion of Khrushchev's role in the repressions of the early 1950s makes sense not because it provides grounds for discrediting this figure; it is necessary for a correct understanding of the entire historical situation in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

The fact is that Khrushchev, trying to present himself as the savior of the country from the monstrous scale and cruelty of the post-war repressive policy of Stalin and Beria, who allegedly "helped" him (and even surpassed him in cruelty), extremely exaggerated political terror of that time, claiming, for example, that by the time of Stalin's death there were 10 million prisoners, mostly political ones. In reality, as already mentioned, there were 20 times less of them, and those who were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment - 45 times less! In a strictly secret document of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, drawn up in March 1953, it was stated that "out of the total number of prisoners, the number of especially dangerous state criminals ... is only 221,435 people" - moreover, most of them were convicted not in the last years of Stalin's life, but even in the late 1930s, or during the war, or immediately after it ended (more on that below).

Therefore, the version according to which from the end of 1949 until the death of Stalin Khrushchev led the "work" of the MGB does not mean at all that with his participation a huge number of people were repressed (on political charges); after all, 10 million prisoners (mostly political) are his, Khrushchev’s, fiction, designed to show what immeasurable horror he saved the country from ...

In a word, the above considerations that it was Khrushchev who, from the end of 1949 to the beginning of 1953, played in the repressive apparatus the role that he attributed without any reason (for these years) to Beria, does not turn him into a "super-executioner" like Khrushchev himself portrayed Beria.

But the reasons for this are by no means in Khrushchev's personal qualities, but in the change in the very "political climate" that took place in the post-war years. In 1946, 123,294 people were convicted on political charges, in 1947 the number of political convictions decreased by more than one and a half times (78810), and in 1952 (compared to 1946) by more than four times (28800).

Meanwhile, to this day, many writings in one way or another inspire readers that Stalin in his last years became more and more ferocious. It should immediately be said that the reasons for the reduction in political repressions are not at all in the "softening" of Stalin himself ( personally he, as is clear from a number of facts, by no means "softened" in his dying years), but in the evolution of the regime as a whole, and ultimately in the course of history itself. Attempts to explain this move by certain "changes" in Stalin's individual consciousness and behavior are still the same cult of personality in its "negative" version.

Since this cult of Stalin "inside out" still weighs heavily on people's minds, the post-war period appears in current writings as almost the "climax" of political repression.

In this regard, I will turn to a recent (1997) extensive article entitled "Gulag: a state within a state", devoted mainly to the post-war period and written by a professional historian - candidate of historical sciences G. M. Ivanova. It is embarrassing at least the fact that she refers as a supposedly reliable "source" to the very popular writings of Anton Antonov-Ovseenko ten years ago, the son of the most famous revolutionary figure, who, by the way, played a significant role in the repressions of the 1920-1930s, and then shot; his son ended up in the Gulag as a CHSIR ("a member of the family of a traitor").

By the way, in a brief preface to one of the works of A. Antonov-Ovseenko, Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Loginov rightly argued that this work, in addition to presenting real facts, included (I quote) "a whole layer of oral stories and legends" characteristic "for Stalin's times ", - although this "layer" is "value as a reflection of the era in the minds of its contemporaries" .

Undoubtedly, this is the "consciousness of contemporaries", these "oral traditions" deserve both attention and study, but at the same time, it is still necessary to fundamentally distinguish between historical reality and one or another of its "reflection in the minds of contemporaries", and V. Loginov is absolutely right considered it obligatory for himself to introduce the quoted words into his extremely laconic (1/2 page) preface to Antonov-Ovseenko's work.

Among the contemporaries of the "Stalin era" there were people who perceived it all as an era of total "destruction of the people", and Antonov-Ovseenko stated in the essay in question that Stalin managed to "destroy" in 1929-1933 (that is, during the years of collectivization) 22 million people, the Stalinist terror of 1937 and neighboring years "claimed another 20 million ... And ahead is a war, with tens of millions in vain(highlighted by Antonov. - VC.) victims, and a new strip of repression "(that is, already post-war).

These figures are the fruit of unrestrained imagination. According to completely reliable latest estimates, out of the population of 154.7 million at the beginning of 1929, by 1934, 18.4 million, that is, 11.9%, had died. The number of 18.4 million seems to be close to the 22 million indicated by Antonov-Ovseenko. But let us turn to the previous more or less "peaceful" - "NEP" - five-year period of 1923-1927: out of 137.8 million people in the beginning of 1923, 10.7 million died by the beginning of 1928, that is, 7.8% of the population - only 4.1% less than in 1929-1933.

This means that in 1929-1933 "should" have died - if there were no "collectivization" repressions and severe famine - 7.8% of 154.7 million (the population of the beginning of 1929), that is, 12 million people, and, consequently, "supermortality" in these years amounted to 6.4 million people (approximately the same number of deaths during the period of collectivization is indicated by all serious demographers). Thus, Antonov-Ovseenko overestimated the number of "destroyed" at that time by 15.6 million people, three and a half times ...

As for the 20 million allegedly destroyed during the repressions of "1937", this figure is simply ridiculous, because out of the population of the beginning of 1934, which amounted to 156.8 million people, by the beginning of 1939, 9.6 million people had died, then have 6.1% - share, by 1.7% lesser than in the "peaceful" years 1923-1928! This decrease was obviously due to a very significant increase and improvement in medical care, health improvement and education of the population of the USSR in the second half of the 1930s. An "observer" who was hardly inclined to "idealize" the situation in the USSR, the German General Guderian, recorded on September 14, 1941, when his tank army, after an almost three-month campaign across the country, invaded the Sumy region: "I spent the night ... in the building schools in Lokhvitsa ... The school was in a solid building and was well equipped, like all schools in Soviet Russia, which were almost everywhere in good condition. hospitals, orphanages and sports grounds in Russia, a lot has been done. These institutions were kept clean and in perfect order" (emphasis mine. - VC.).

According to accurate information that has long been declassified, less than 0.7 million death sentences were passed during the terror of "1937", and, consequently, Antonov-Ovseenko, citing the figure of 20 million, exaggerated almost 30 times!

From this it seems to be clear that there is no point in relying on the works of Antonov-Ovseenko as any kind of reliable "source". However, oddly enough, the professional historian G. M. Ivanova finds it possible to refer to Antonov-Ovseenko's "information". He argued, for example, that the “enemies of the people”, whom he sent to the Gulag in the post-war years, according to Antonov, of course, none other than Beria, could live in the conditions created there “no more three(highlighted by Antonov himself. - VC.) months" (ibid., p. 103). Citing this "evidence", G. M. Ivanova draws the following conclusion from it:

“Apparently, it is precisely this circumstance that can primarily explain the high turnover of camp personnel. For example, in 1947 the Gulag received 1,490,959 newly convicted prisoners, 1,012,967 prisoners left the Gulag during the same period ... Approximately the same picture was observed in other years. .." (that is, in 1948-1952).

The “picture”, of course, is monstrous, capable of crushing the soul, especially if one takes into account that in the same article, recognizing the fact of the presence of prisoners not only in the USSR, but also “in every country”, the historian G. M. Ivanova speaks of a specific the role of our places of detention, which, in her words, were intended to "destroy in the bud ... the germs of dissent and freethinking" (p. 216). From this judgment, the reader, quite naturally, will conclude that the Gulag was filled in 1947, 1948 and subsequent years. political prisoners who, due to specially created camp conditions three months turn into corpses...

So, according to Ivanova, in the post-war Gulag, about million prisoners per year ... The blatant absurdity of this "picture" is irrefutably revealed in the fact that, according to completely reliable estimates, by 1948 in the USSR there were 121 million 141 thousand people over 14 years old, and five years later, by the beginning of 1953 - th, there are 115 million 33 thousand of them left, that is, during these five years 6 million 108 thousand people died in the country (not counting children's deaths), but, according to Ivanova, about 5 million of them died not "their" death, but were actually killed in places of detention

The absurdity in this case is obvious, because it turns out that if 5 million people had not been killed in the Gulag, in five years (1948-1952) out of 121.1 million people, only 1.1 million people would have died - on average in one year, 220 thousand, that is, 0.18 percent ... Meanwhile, in the modern United States, for example, an average of 0.9 percent of the population dies within one year - that is, a five times larger proportion! And, of course, of the 6.1 million people who died in the USSR in 1948-1952, only a very small part died in custody, because in reality the word "dropped out" in relation to prisoners did not mean "died" at all. In 1947 (more on that below), not 1012967 prisoners died, but 35668 - almost 30 times (!) less. People "dropped out" - which is quite natural - after the expiration of the term of imprisonment. In many current writings it is asserted that almost "eternal" terms of imprisonment - 25 years - were typical for the post-war period. But here is declassified information about prisoners relating to 1951: only 4.8 percent of prisoners had sentences of over 20 years, and 81.9 percent had sentences of 1 to 10 years. By the way, in 1947, the ten-year terms of many of those who were repressed in 1937 ended, and therefore there is no reason to be surprised at the multitude of those who “dropped out” of the Gulag in 1947.

True, in 1948, due to the general aggravation (more on that below) of the political situation, some of the people who had already served their terms of imprisonment were returned to the Gulag; in literature, the word that arose then is often used "repeaters". But the number of these people tend to greatly exaggerate: we are talking about almost millions ... Meanwhile, according to accurate information, by 1949 the number of political prisoners had increased by only 4,540 people compared to the beginning of 1948.

But let us return to the article by G. M. Ivanova - and not because it is some kind of original article, but just because of its typicality for the current historiography of the post-war period.

Unfortunately, the already cited and many other provisions of this article do not withstand elementary verification of facts - and, as they say, in all respects. At the very beginning of her article, G. M. Ivanova speaks of the advantages of a "modern historian": "Today he has at his disposal a huge corpus of previously classified documents" (p. 207). However, she herself hardly uses this “corpus”, and sometimes refers to “information” similar to the “tradition” she quoted from the works of Antonov-Ovseenko ... And here are a number of baseless provisions of her article (which is typical of many other current authors) .

1) Reporting that 1,490,959 people were convicted in 1947, G. M. Ivanova clearly seeks to suggest that we are talking about political accused (for example, according to her, about "dissenters and freethinkers"). In fact, as it is obvious from declassified documents of the MGB five years ago (and this department kept the strictest records), 78 thousand 810 people were convicted on political charges in 1947 - that is, only 5.2 percent of the total number of convicts this year . The abundance of convicts is generally explained by the fact that in 1947 the "Law on Strengthening the Responsibility for Property Crimes" was adopted - the law, no doubt, is very cruel: even for petty theft of state, public and personal property, imprisonment was provided - often for a very long time - in camps and colonies. The fact is that the war, which brought millions of people to extreme poverty and even put them on the brink of starvation, and in addition, undermined elementary moral norms in their minds, gave rise to an extremely wide wave of all kinds of theft, and the state sought to suppress this wave, true - which cannot be denied - often by truly merciless measures. And, let's say, in January 1951, there were 1,466,492 people convicted of all kinds of "property" (and not at all political!) crimes in places of detention.

It is impossible not to notice that Ivanova, clearly contradicting her own - purely tendentious - general posing the question, nevertheless mentioned that starting from 1947, "the collective farmer who stole a bag of potatoes became ... almost main figure of the GULAG" (p. 224); that is, the camps were sent, in the main, not to political defendants (in 1947, as it was said, they made up only a little more than five percent of those convicted), but various kinds of plunderers - however, often too severely punished...

By 1959 - that is, twelve years after the adoption of the law of 1947 and six years after the death of Stalin - the number of prisoners on this kind of charges was greatly reduced, but still amounted to 536 thousand 839 people!

For those who are not familiar with criminal statistics, these figures may seem too grandiose, but, according to information published in 1990, the number of convicts, say, in 1985, when there was no state "lawlessness", was 1 million 269 thousand 493 people , - that is, not much less than in 1947, which G. M. Ivanova is trying to present as a kind of unprecedented in terms of the abundance of people who turned out to be convicted.

2) The most absurd and, frankly, shameful thing in Ivanova's article (which has already been discussed) is an attempt to convince readers that in 1947 and subsequent years a million people died in the Gulag. For exact information is known: in 1947, 35,668 camp prisoners died, that is, 2.3 percent of those 1,490,599 people who were sent to the Gulag in 1947. Let me remind you that it was in that year that the country experienced the most severe famine, which, quite understandably, could not but affect the fate of the prisoners; Thus, during 1946 (the famine in the country reached its highest point only at the end of it), almost half as many people died in the Gulag as in 1947 - 18,154 prisoners.

3) G. M. Ivanova defines the post-war GULAG as "a symbol of mass lawlessness", "criminal violation of human rights", "a monstrous policy in its cruelty and scale", etc. (p. 209). There is no doubt that these definitions are appropriate in relation to certain specific facts from the "practice" of the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1946-1953. But an objective study of the real state of affairs shows that, compared with the immediate time of the revolution and civil war, collectivization and what is usually called "thirty-seventh", in the post-war years the situation is completely different.

By the way, Ivanova herself admits this in some phrases of her article, although she does it as if through her teeth or even tendentiously reinterprets the facts she reports. So, for example, she speaks of the 1947 decree on the abolition of the death penalty, but immediately asserts that this decree only "worsened" the situation: "... the abolition of the death penalty has untied the hands of the criminal world" (p. 227). Further, speaking about the reinstatement of the death penalty on January 12, 1950, she reports that over the next four years "about four thousand people were shot, convicted of counter-revolutionary and state crimes" (p. 231), but does not consider it necessary to remind the reader that in other pre-war for years, not one thousand, but three hundred thousand death sentences were passed!

But the most important thing is something else. In fact, the vast majority of post-war prisoners appear in Ivanova's article as absolutely innocent victims of "mass lawlessness", "criminal violation of human rights", etc., moreover, their very number, according to her definition, is "monstrous in scale "(although, as already mentioned, the number of convicts in 1985 under Gorbachev was almost the same as in 1947 under Stalin ...). In general, the camps themselves existed in 1946-1953 in order, according to Ivanova, to "destroy" "dissent and freethinking" in the country. True, in one of the already quoted phrases, she reports that since 1947 the "main figure of the Gulag" has been none other than a robber, but this message is essentially drowned out by loud general provisions about "mass lawlessness", "criminal violation of rights" and etc.

Yes, theft was often punished too harshly, and this is understandable: "revolutionary" ruthlessness has not yet been overcome. But the cruel law on embezzlement, adopted in 1947, was still a law, the consequences of the violation of which were brought to the attention of the population, and therefore many hundreds of thousands of convicted embezzlers are incorrectly called victims of "criminal violations of human rights."

4) But let's turn to political prisoners. In just seven years (1946-1952), 490,714 people were convicted on political charges, of which 7,697 (1.5 percent) received (in 1946 - early 1947 and in 1950 - 1952) death sentences, 461,017 people sent in conclusion, the rest - in exile.

The numbers, of course, are terrible, but you should know that most of these people were repressed for cooperation with the enemy during the war; it is characteristic that more than 40 percent of this number were convicted in the first two years out of seven (1946 and 1947). Ivanova also speaks about this (since it is impossible to deny indisputable facts) in her article, but she speaks very "specifically": "... in the first post-war years, there was a clear tightening of punitive policy, the tip of which the repressive authorities directed primarily against those who, for various reasons, communicated or collaborated with the enemy "(p. 217. Emphasis by me. - VC.).

Here the word "communicated" is especially false, because it essentially suggests that any "communication with the enemy" is severely punished. The notorious falsehood lies in the fact that one way or another "communicated with the enemy" tens of millions people in the occupied territories...

But worst of all, Ivanova defines repression against people who collaborated with the enemy as a "toughening of the punitive policy" inherent, they say, only in our terrible country. After all, she seems to know that after the war and in European countries, the so-called collaborators(from the French word "cooperation"), although, if you think about it, there were much fewer reasons for this in the West than in our country. So, for example, in France, even the head of state in 1940-1944, Pétain, and the prime minister in 1942-1944, Laval, were sentenced to death, although the country officially capitulated on June 22, 1940 and, basically, entered the Third Reich .

Collaboration with the enemy of certain people in our country, which for four years fought with this enemy not for life, but for death, had a fundamentally different meaning. Therefore, to see (as Ivanova does) some uniquely inhuman "tightening of the punitive policy" in the fact that in our country the enemy's accomplices were sent to prison is possible only from a deliberately tendentious point of view, which in fact is dictated by the desire to denigrate the life of the country to the greatest extent possible. those times. I repeat once again: the repressions against the accomplices of the enemy in the USSR were, if you like, much more "legitimate" than similar repressions in the same France, which, after all, in 1940, on the whole, submitted to the new European empire.

It cannot be denied that the repressions against the accomplices of the enemy were often excessively cruel in the USSR, but the cruelty generated by the World War took place, as we see, not only in our country, and it is simply immoral to apply the notorious double count(as many both "native" and foreign authors do) - an account according to which what is done in the West is, as it were, "normal", and what is done in our country is cruelty that cannot be justified.

As already mentioned, 490,000 people were convicted on political charges in 1946-1952, the vast majority of whom were accused of collaborating with the enemy; it is possible that such a number of accomplices of the enemy (and even G. M. Ivanova admitted - albeit in one cursory phrase - that political repressions were then directed "primarily" against those who "collaborated with the enemy") will seem too much huge.

But, regrettably, only "the number of national formations from among the peoples of the USSR who fought on the side of the Nazi troops was over 1 million people" (according to various estimates - from 1.2 to 1.6 million) - moreover, directly who fought on the side of the enemy, and not just "cooperating" with him. So a large number of those repressed for collaborating with the enemy is understandable ...

The scrupulous and truly objective researcher of the Gulag V. N. Zemskov showed that almost the majority of political prisoners of the post-war years belonged to those peoples who for a long time occupied enemy of the country's territory (Ukrainians, Balts, Moldovans, etc.) and had, so to speak, complete freedom of cooperation with the enemy ...

This does not mean that in those years there were no other political repressions at all (and we will discuss them below), but compared to the pre-war period, the scale of such repressions was very significantly reduced, and in addition (as already mentioned), the number of death sentences.

In connection with the foregoing, it is impossible not to touch upon another acute problem - resettlement("deportation") to the east of the country of a number of peoples accused of collaborating with the enemy - starting with the Germans who had long lived in Russia, who after 1917 created the "Autonomous Soviet republic Germans of the Volga region". Here again the question of "double counting" arises.

For example, in a three-volume book published in mass circulation in 1993 entitled "So it was. National repressions in the USSR. 1919-1952" The decree of August 28, 1941 on the resettlement of the Volga Germans is interpreted as a completely unprecedented action, possible only in our monstrous country and moreover, directed precisely against nation, that is, having the meaning of genocide. Especially unheard of, they say, is the following (I quote the indicated publication "So it was"): "Long before the arrival of the occupiers, urgent WARNINGS were adopted (and typed - in capital letters. - VC.) measures against the Soviet Germans of the Volga region ... All - to the east. "This is the" facet of our Soviet history ".

And in fact, in fact, the enemy came close to the Republic of the Volga Germans only a year later, and the "preventive" repression, it seems, can be interpreted in terms of the "savagery" of our "abnormal" history. However, after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941 on the US naval base in the Hawaiian Islands, located 3,500 km (!) from the coast of America, special attention was paid to people of Japanese origin living in this multi-ethnic country:

"On February 19, 1942, the President ordered the placement of 112 thousand such persons (meaning all those who were in the United States. - VC.) to special concentration camps (and not their resettlement to the west of the country! - VC.). Officially, this was explained by the threat of a Japanese landing on the Pacific coast of the United States. US Army soldiers assisted local authorities the operation was carried out quickly. A strict regime was established in the camps."

The assumption of a Japanese landing on the territory of the United States was completely unfounded, and in the USSR the enemy in two months, by August 28, 1941 (when the decree on the Volga Germans was issued), had already advanced 600-700 km inland, and he had to pass about the same to the Volga region ... And it is clear that the action of the US authorities was much less justified than a similar action of the USSR authorities.

I do not at all want to say that one should not grieve over the suffering experienced by the Volga Germans, and also, of course, by other peoples of the country resettled to the east during the war; we are only talking about the fact that it is wrong (and shameless!) to interpret these actions as expressions of a not then state of the world in general, but the "villainous" essence of our country.

It may be objected that the Japanese were sent to a concentration camp in the United States, and not representatives of any other nation that did not directly and directly attack the United States, and in the USSR, for example, four Caucasian peoples were resettled to the east - Balkars, Ingush, Karachays and Chechens. In the already cited edition So It Was... the task was set to categorically reject "the concept of motivation for this resettlement, the 'justification' of Stalin's action" (p. 10).

But here is a document dated November 6, 1942 (that is, in the midst of the battles for Stalingrad and the Caucasus) of the German security service "General situation and mood in the operational region of the North Caucasus", compiled on the basis of reports from the western part of this "area". Stating the "uncertainty" of behavior Adyghe and Circassians, the document at the same time emphasizes (highlighting a number of words) the following:

"When the German armed forces entered the Karachaev region, they were met general rejoicing. In their willingness to help the Germans, they outdid themselves. So, for example, the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and the SD, which arrived in early September in Kislovodsk, located south of Karachay village, was received with enthusiasm comparable to the days of the annexation of the Sudetenland. Team members were hugged and lifted on their shoulders. Gifts were offered and speeches were made that ended with a toast in honor of the Fuhrer ... Representatives of Balkars... Notable is the desire of approximately 60,000 Balkars to secede from Kabardians and join the Karachays, numbering 120,000 inhabitants. Both tribal groups expressed their unity with the Great German Empire. "They will also mention a completely different" experience gained ... in the place Baksan populated by Kabardians ... more and more residents stepped aside and in the end they worked with enemy forces (enemy for the Germans. - VC.) common cause" .

Particularly expressive here is the distinction between the Balkars and Karachays and, on the other hand, the Adyghes, Circassians and Kabardins, who clearly had no intention of "uniting with the German Empire" and, naturally, were not later resettled, like the Ossetians. And it should also be remembered that from November 1943 to March 1944, when the resettlement of the Balkars, Karachais, Ingush and Chechens to the east was undertaken, the front passed relatively close to the Caucasus ...

I repeat once again that one cannot but sympathize with the ordeals that befell the resettled peoples, but it is hardly appropriate to speak of the complete "groundlessness" of this action in the conditions of a mortal struggle with the enemy.

However, I must admit that until recently character this action seemed to me unreasonable and not capable of being justified, for they were resettling peoples in general, including children and women, although it is quite clear (especially because these peoples belong to Islam) that only men could be guilty of real cooperation with the enemy.

We must not forget, however, that in the United States in February 1942 they also sent to concentration camps all the Japanese living in the country, along with their children (not to mention the purely potential "guilt" even of those men who could become accomplices of Japan's obviously incredible military landing ).

I repeat once again that for a long time I considered the migration of peoples in general to be a kind of savagery and lawlessness. But relatively recently, I discussed this topic with the outstanding modern political scientist and publicist S. G. Kara-Murza, and unexpectedly he resolutely objected to me. Sergei Georgievich from a young age knew from his Crimean relatives that the resettlement in 1944 Tatar people in general, it was perceived by many among the people themselves as a "wise" and even "happy" decision ( later attitude Crimean Tatars to the action of 1944 is another matter). For a very significant part of the men really collaborated with the enemy in one way or another. According to German information from January 14, 1945, 10,000 Crimean Tatars were still serving in the armed forces of the enemy, that is, a very, very significant proportion; after all, by 1941 there were a little more than 200 thousand Crimean Tatars and, consequently, there were no more than 50 thousand men of military age. And that means everyone fifth of these men in January 1945 was in the enemy army!

It is hardly appropriate to deny that this fact characterizes the "orientation" of the people as a whole. And according to the decree of May 11, 1944, the men who were in Crimea, along with women and children, were resettled without any "investigation" (mainly to Uzbekistan).

In the already mentioned conversation, S. G. Kara-Murza said that among the Crimean Tatars then there was an awareness of the resettlement of the people as a whole as a “lesser” disaster, because with any “isolation” of young and mature men from him, the growth of the people would stop , that is, in fact, the end of its natural existence would come ... And by 1951, the resettled Crimean Tatar people had already had 18,830 children, that is, 10 percent of the total number of immigrants. To estimate this figure, one should know that by 1951 in the USSR there were 20.9 million children under five years old, that is, 12 percent of the population of the country at the beginning of 1946 - not much more than the resettled Crimean Tatars ...

There is reason to believe that the resettlement of peoples as a whole was explained not by someone's "wisdom" (as certain Crimean Tatars thought in 1944), but by the desire to "solve the problem" in one fell swoop (let's not forget that the most difficult war continued). But, so to speak, objectively this decision, approved personally by Stalin, was not the most disastrous...

As is known, in 1956-1957 the resettled peoples were "forgiven" and returned to their territories. In this regard, Khrushchev, who was then in power, is praised to this day, contrasting him with the villain Stalin. However, Khrushchev in this case was by no means "more humane" than Stalin.

The fact is that the stay of resettled peoples on "foreign" lands created its own considerable difficulties and conflicts, and, on the other hand, the return to their native places of almost all these peoples by 1957 was no longer fraught with any significant dangers. The return of only two peoples - the same Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks - could represent a real danger, since they had to be returned to the border zones of the country. And the "humanist" Khrushchev left these peoples in "exile" (the fate of the Crimean Tatars also depended on the fact that Khrushchev "gifted" Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, and the return of the Tatars would largely "depreciate" this gift).

However, we are talking about Khrushchev ahead; Let us now turn to Stalin.

Much of what is said on the previous pages about the situation in the country in 1946-1953 will certainly be perceived, among other things, as the "whitewashing" of Stalin (in the last period of his life), moreover, some will remain satisfied with this, while others will be indignant. But, I repeat, I see major vice the predominant part of the writings that characterize the "Stalin era", not in how evaluated Stalin, but in the fact that his personal role in the existence of the country is extremely exaggerated; in a positive or negative sense - this is the second, less significant question.

Stating that the "political climate" in the country in 1946-1953 "softened", that the death of people no longer had mass character inherent in the periods 1918-1922, 1929-1933 and (though to a lesser extent) 1936-1938, I tried to show the gradual dissipation of the "revolutionary" atmosphere, which frankly and completely rejected any legal and moral standards(as is inherent in every revolution) and dictated ruthlessness in relation not only to those who were considered "harmful", but even to those who were considered as "superfluous".

In the first volume of my work, I quoted Korney Chukovsky's message to Stalin, written in May 1943, urging him to create "labor colonies with a harsh military regime" for "socially dangerous" children, starting from the age of seven ... However, in the late 1940s - early 1950s - x the famous "children's friend" would hardly write something like that, because, I repeat once again, the political climate itself was changing.

And the point here is not at all in Stalin himself, who at the end of his life, on the contrary, “changed” in one way or another, as they say, not in better side. It has already been noted that many of the provisions of the famous Khrushchev report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 clearly did not correspond to reality, but, based on the facts, there is every reason to recognize the following statement from this report as fair: "... in the post-war period, Stalin became more capricious, irritable, rude, especially developed his suspicion ... ", etc.

The reasons here, obviously, are the fact that after the Victory the cult of the leader became truly boundless, and he himself finally believed in his omnipotence and omniscience, and also that in 1948 Joseph Vissarionovich exchanged his eighth decade (as recently established, he was born a year earlier than hitherto thought), he had an extremely stressful life behind him, and the unfortunate shifts in his consciousness and behavior, so to speak, are natural.

All this manifested itself in the so-called Leningrad case (1949-1950), as a result of which N.A. Voznesensky and A.A. to any anti-Stalinist "opposition" (if only because of their comparative youth). These "shifts" were just as sharply expressed in the multifaceted case of the "Zionist conspiracy" (1948 - early 1953), which supposedly nested in the MGB itself (!), As well as in the Kremlin department, including medical care and security; On December 15, 1952, even the head of Stalin's personal bodyguard, Lieutenant-General of the State Security Service N.S. Vlasik, who had been with the leader for many years, was arrested in this "case". These two "cases" are the focus of writings concerning the Stalinist terror of the post-war period, because there were no other major "cases" at that time.

Both "deeds" were initiated directly by Stalin himself, and they clearly expressed those near-death "shifts" in his consciousness and behavior that were discussed. True, it was all the same, so to speak, "palace", "court" matters that do not affect the broad masses of people.

It may be resolutely objected that, attached in 1951-1952 to the case of the "Zionist conspiracy" as his component a business Kremlin doctors if Stalin had not died “on time”, it would have turned into almost the extermination of all the Jews of the USSR, who were then (according to passport data) more than two million people.

However, this is just an ideological myth with absolutely no real basis. More will be said in detail about the case of the Kremlin doctors (as well as about other "offshoots" of the "Zionist conspiracy" case), but it is advisable to immediately give a characteristic example of the "substantiation" of the actively propagandized myth about the total deportation or even liquidation of the Jews of the USSR allegedly planned by Stalin.

One of those involved in 1951 in the case of the Kremlin doctors (in the future - Doctor of Historical Sciences), Ya. Ya. Etinger, published his study of this case in 1993, and, as for the presentation real events, the study is well documented. But his epilogue, entitled "The Confessions of Nikolai Bulganin," is capable of literally striking with its complete inconsistency. all the "information" contained in it (they are numbered by me for clarity). Ya. Ya. Etinger "reports":

"Nikolai Bulganin confirmed the rumors that had been circulating for many years about the planned mass deportation of Jews to Siberia and the Far East. 1) Relevant documents were prepared. 2) Bulganin, then Minister of Defense, received instructions from Stalin to bring several hundreds of military trains to organize the expulsion of Jews. 3) At the same time, according to him, it was planned to organize the collapse of trains. 4) Bulganin believed that the main organizers of the planned anti-Jewish actions were Stalin, Malenkov and Suslov, who, as he put it, "helped " a group of other responsible party and state officials. I asked who exactly. He grinned and replied: "Do you want me to name a number of the current leaders of the country? (The conversation took place in 1970. - I.E.). Many of the people of 1953 still play a key role. I want to die in peace."

Let's consider these "information" in order.

1) Absolutely no trace of "relevant documents" was found, while about real"Doctors' file" documents are available in very large quantities.

2) N. A. Bulganin was removed from the post of Minister of Defense (more precisely, of the armed forces) four years earlier, in March 1949, and A. M. Vasilevsky held the post of Minister of Defense in 1953.

3) Several hundred train wrecks would mean economic collapse countries, since in 1953 railways(except for the period of summer navigation on waterways) almost all transportation of both means of production and means of consumption was carried out. In addition, the most severe damage to the country would have been caused by the failure of several hundred locomotives and tens of thousands of wagons. Finally, it is well known that, as a rule, not so much of the people in the cars die in railway crashes (let alone in aviation accidents ...).

4) Bulganin refused to mention among the "organizers" of the 1953 action those people who in 1970 continued to play a "key role" in power. But after all, he named the name of M. A. Suslov, who was in 1970 second(after L. I. Brezhnev) a person in the party hierarchy and remained so for another twelve years, until his death in 1982!

In a word, all without exception"information" turns out, using a modern word, virtual. I have no intention of accusing Ya. Ya. Etinger of lying; perhaps he quite accurately reproduced the statements of N. A. Bulganin, who turned 75 in 1970 and who, moreover, ten years earlier had been deprived of all his posts and, as recently reported in the press, suffered from severe alcoholism.

But one cannot but be indignant at the fact that the nonsense cited was published in the Novoye Vremya magazine, which seemed to have a solid reputation, and its staff did not bother to verify the "facts" reported on the magazine's pages. This is already a kind of insanity ... The magazine, founded in 1943, often published deliberately tendentious materials, but still did not present such nonsense to its readers in the "pre-reform" time ...

In the previous chapter of my essay, it was already said that myth about Stalin played a much more significant role than Stalin himself. And, of course, liberation from the so-called cult was truly essential. However, the way it was carried out after the death of the leader, who is now being transformed from a hero into an equally powerful anti-hero (which continues to this day), had (and still has) unfortunate consequences.

The new government, in essence, could not but oppose the cult of Stalin, because it seemed to millions of people that without the deceased man-god, the life of the country was, as it were, inconceivable at all. K. Simonov later recalled the extreme indignation caused at the top by his article published on March 19, 1953 in the Literaturnaya Gazeta edited by him, according to which the “most important” task of literature was “to capture in all its grandeur and in its entirety .. ... the image of the greatest genius of all times and peoples - the immortal Stalin." For this article, Simonov, according to his story, was almost immediately removed from his post; a little later, in August 1953 - that is, after the overthrow of Beria - he was indeed dismissed.

Alexander Tvardovsky was hardly not aware of what happened to Simonov, but nevertheless, in the following year, 1954, in the March issue (that is, on the first anniversary of Stalin's death) of the Novy Mir magazine headed by him, he published a new fragment from his own poem "For the distance distance", in which, in fact, he spoke against lines of the then supreme power:

And all share the same glory,
We were heart with him in the Kremlin.
Here neither subtract nor add -
So it was on earth.

And let those days of the past memory
Captured our features
Its hard times
Steep and domineering rightness.

Anything else, maybe more
We had a road in life
That rightness and will,
When under enemy tanks

The native land hummed,
Carrying a roaring shaft of fire,
When our whole life is business
He called right briefly.

To him who led us into battle and knew
What will the days to come be
We all owe victory
How he owes it to us.

Yes, the world did not know such power
Father, beloved in the family.
Yes, it was our happiness
That he lived with us on earth.

Soon, from the beginning of June 1954, a loud critical campaign was launched against Tvardovsky, and in August he was removed from the post of editor-in-chief of Novy Mir and replaced by ... Simonov, who, after being punished for a "Stalinist" article, is more about the leader didn't stutter.

True, Tvardovsky was officially condemned not for his quoted stanzas, but for the “free-thinking” articles in one way or another by V. Pomerantsev (December 1953), M. Lifshitz (February 1954) and others that appeared in the journal he edited, criticized in the press from the very beginning of 1954. But there are reliable reasons to believe that the "Stalinist" poems of the poet played a major role in his dismissal. The fact is that Novy Mir was already subjected to no less sharp criticism earlier, in February-March 1953, for the publication of V. Grossman's novel For a Just Cause, also marked by "free-thinking", E. Kazakevich's story "The Heart of a Friend", articles by A. Gurvich, V. Ognev, etc., but the question of Tvardovsky's resignation did not even arise then. And the "justification" of Stalin in his poems at that moment affected the most pressing interests of the top authorities, and Tvardovsky was removed in early August 1954 and replaced by ... Simonov, who had "corrected" by that time (although later Simonov in sharp criticism of the "Stalin era" and four years later, in June 1958, he was replaced in the "New World" by the same Tvardovsky ...).

Pondering these facts, one can understand a lot in the then situation. Tvardovsky and Simonov belonged, in general, to the same generation that entered literature in the initial period of Stalin's undivided power, and were not only literary figures, they were involved in ideology and even politics (both of them, by the way, were members of the Central Committee of the CPSU), then are, in the truest sense of the word, figures stories countries. But there was a fundamental difference between them, which, however, was not expressed sharply and openly. Tvardovsky ultimately proceeded from his own deep convictions (how true they were is another question), and Simonov from the ideology prevailing at the moment; in his writings (as well as actions) was not expressed belief, and one or the other position, which changed depending on changes in the dominant ideology.

The author of this essay wrote back in 1966, exactly a third of a century ago, about the series of Simonov's novels about the Patriotic War published from 1943 to 1964, that "everyone new novel criticizes those ideas about the war ... which were expressed one way or another in the previous novel of the author himself ... It changes along with the change in public opinion, and ... takes on a new position. "And I reproached literary criticism of that time for "often brings this kind of work to the fore, sees in them almost the basis of literature. True, ten years later, or even five years later, criticism often does not even remember those works that were its idols ... "

Tvardovsky relied on his beliefs and that is why in 1954 - contrary to the line of the supreme power - "justified" Stalin. It may be objected that later, after Khrushchev's 1956 report, Tvardovsky wrote differently about Stalin. In 1960, he actually rewrote that fragment from the poem "For the Far Distance", which was quoted above, and published it as a chapter entitled "So it was", mentioning in it both the repressions of Stalin's times and the mournful excess of the "cult ".

But a certain basis of the old text was still preserved in the new version:

Not in vain, it must be, the son of the east,
He showed features to the end
His cool, his cruel
Wrong
And right...

But in the trials of our share
There was, however, a road
That inflexibility of the father's will,
With which we are on the battlefield
In a bitter hour we met the enemy...

We went with her to save the world,
To save life from death
Not to subtract here
Not to add -
You remember everything, Motherland.

He, who seemed to know everything,
Setting the course for the days to come
We all owe victory
How he owes it to us.

The theme of "father" is especially significant:

We called - will we dissemble? -
His father in the country-family.
Not to subtract here
Not to add -
So it was on earth.

In a "country-family" ... Here one cannot but refer to the recent work of S. G. Kara-Murza, which deeply analyzes two types of civilization: "In short, a country can arrange the life of its people as family- or how market. Which is better is a matter of taste, it is useless to argue. After all, there is a tyrant father in the family ... What kind of human rights are there. On the market, everyone is free, no one owes anything to anyone ... " Without at all arguing that the "family" is something "better" than the "market", Sergei Georgievich very convincingly proves that our country simply could not be a "family "...

Tvardovsky essentially asserted the same poetically; no less significant is his poetic realization that the essence of the matter was not in Stalin, but in the myth of Stalin:

But which of us is fit to be a judge -
Decide who is right and who is wrong?
It's about people, and people
Don't they create gods themselves?

Who to blame! Country, state
In the harsh working days
That glory of the name held
On the construction towers of the world ...

It should be noted that Tvardovsky reprinted the lines just quoted until his death (the last lifetime edition was published in 1970). The poet's convictions, of course, developed, but they did not represent an easily replaceable "position" depending on the ideological course...

It has already been said that the cult of Stalin after the Victory of 1945 became truly boundless, and this had grave consequences in many areas of the country's life, in particular, in literature, moreover, the most regrettable was the impact of the immeasurable cult on the consciousness and behavior of those who then only embarked on a literary path.

A striking example in this regard is the figure of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who achieved extraordinary popularity, due to which he became a rather significant phenomenon in the world. stories 1950-1970s (another question is how evaluate this phenomenon), although it is in no way possible to rank what he composed among the significant phenomena of poetry.

A section dedicated to Yevtushenko from the "Book of Memories and Reflections" by Stanislav Kunyaev was recently published. I agree with all his judgments, but I consider it appropriate to add that from an objective historical point of view, Yevtushenko is a kind of " sacrifice Stalin's cult." This, as will become clear from what follows, by no means "justifies" him, but explains a lot in his writings and actions.

Stanislav Kunyaev quoted Yevtushenkov's lines praising Stalin and standing out from the many-voiced choir with their "heartfeltness", thanks to which their author was immediately accepted as a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR for his first, published in 1952, thin book, bypassing the then stage of a "candidate member SP", and became, without a matriculation certificate (a unique case!), A student of the Literary Institute of the SP. It is worth quoting his downright "intimate" lines about Stalin (see also other lines cited by Stanislav Kunyaev):

In the sleepless night
He thinks about the country, about the world,
He thinks of me.

Approaches the window. Loving the sun
He smiles warmly.
And I fall asleep, and I dream
the best dream.

So, even good dreams we owe to the leader! Now Yevtushenko is "justified": "... I learned very well: so that the poems pass (that is, they could get into print in 1949-1952. - VC.), they should contain lines about Stalin". But this is a shameless lie; for example, the true poet Vladimir Sokolov, who began to publish almost simultaneously with Yevtushenko, in 1948, did not write about Stalin, and not because he was an "anti-Stalinist", and not wanting to achieve "success" unrelated to creativity"achievements". I will allow myself to refer to my own literary path: speaking in the press since 1946, during Stalin's lifetime I never mentioned him, and again, not because in those days I "denied" the leader, but because I considered the chanting of him something worthless...

Yevtushenko, "sincerely" extolling Stalin, of course, realized that this was a way to achieve a resounding "success" without genuine creative work ... And he immediately acquired the status of "leading young poet", began to perform "in the same row" with the then " masters" - for example, at the most important discussion about Mayakovsky in January 1953, where he, the only one of his generation, was given the floor - his poems began to be published in newspapers next to the poems of the most "venerable" (of course, from an official point of view) and etc. In particular, being "illegally" (without a certificate) admitted to the Literary Institute, he did not consider it necessary to study there, because he himself had already become, in essence, "venerable".

I called Yevtushenko a "victim of the Stalin cult", meaning that it was this cult that created the conditions in which a resounding "success" could be achieved in an extremely easy way. This, I repeat, does not in the least justify Yevtushenko, for each person decided for himself whether or not to embark on such a "path".

It may be recalled that before Yevtushenko, many truly significant poets sang Stalin: in 1935 Pasternak did it (by the way, the first of the Russian poets), in 1945 - Isakovsky, in 1949 - Tvardovsky. But there is a fundamental difference here, because these poets already had by that time undeniable recognition achieved on the path of creativity. An entirely different matter is the exaltation of a leader by an author who has not yet created anything: such a “debut” made it difficult or even blocked the path to genuine creativity ...

It was said above that Tvardovsky, even after "exposing" Stalin, without fear of persecution, embodied his convictions in poetry - and this exposes all the insignificance of Yevtushenko, for when he later began to "expose" Stalin in the sharpest way, it was just as opportunistic business (by the way, the same Vladimir Sokolov did not do this), as well as his previous praises. Indeed, even more unworthy, for Yevtushenko was now achieving a new success, rejecting exactly what had provided him with the former! Now Yevtushenko is talking about how his "anti-Stalinist" poems (the definition is quite adequate, because from the point of view of artistic value they are insignificant) were published in the main organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU "Pravda" by order of Khrushchev himself. Having got used to his "way", he simply does not realize that it is at least indecent to brag about such a turn of affairs. Especially when you consider that in the same memoir of his, he declares with very impudent deceit: "... I wrote and miraculously struck through censorship "Stalin's Heirs" (ibid., p. 9. - Highlighted by me. - VC.). After all, it's like the boast of a hare who has defeated a de fox, because a bear has come out on his side!

Probably, my next judgment will be perceived as a paradox, but if you think about it, Yevtushenko showed more "courage" not when composing his "anti-Stalinist" poems in 1962 - that is, after the XXII Congress of the CPSU that finally "branded" Stalin - but in the second mid-January-February 1953, when he composed poems about "killer doctors". As he now explains in an ironic tone, "I ... believed that the doctors wanted to poison our dear comrade Stalin, and wrote poems on this subject" (p. 434); however, he reports, good friends dissuaded him from giving them to the press.

Talking now about this, Yevtushenko clearly wants to show off his "repentant" sincerity. However, in a professional literary environment, this fact became known at the same time, in 1953, because in fact Yevtushenko did give his essay on doctors to the press, but the editors did not dare to publish it, and already on March 5 Stalin died, and on April 4 the doctors were declared innocent...

The fact is that after the press report (January 13, 1953) about the Kremlin "killer doctors", the atmosphere in Moscow (I remember this well) was extremely disturbing and unclear, and press workers were afraid of harsh gestures. Yevtushenkov's work was not without harshness; so, about the Kremlin doctors it said:

Let Gorky be killed by others,
killed, it seems, the same -

that is, it turned out that the killer doctors had been doing their dirty deeds with impunity for seventeen years already! V. N. Vinogradov, M. S. Vovsi, E. M. Gelshtein, V. F. Zelenin and B. B. Kogan, who belonged to the most “important” ones, in 1937 accused the prominent doctor D. D. Pletnev in the "sabotage methods" of treating Gorky, and Dmitry Dmitrievich was sentenced to imprisonment for a period of 25 years, and on September 11, 1941 he was shot in Orel (on October 3, Guderian's tanks entered the city).

The mere fact that killer doctors were under investigation, who previously exposed the killer doctors themselves, shows the acuteness and complexity of the situation. And, by the way, Yevtushenko himself, in his current memoirs, reveals knowledge of the complexity of the situation in 1949 - early 1953: "... went from hand to hand," he recalls, "a parody poem by Sergei Vasiliev" Without whom it is good to live in Russia "- so openly anti-Semitic that they did not even dare to publish it" (p. 433). That's exactly what they didn't decide! - just like Yevtushenko's poems about doctors ...

Needless to say, the general political situation in 1953 was much more "harsh" than in 1962. And, I repeat, Yevtushenko showed much greater courage and riskiness by composing poems about doctors than when he wrote poems against Stalin, whose remains shortly before, in 1961, were thrown out of the Mausoleum. True, Yevtushenkov's "courage" in 1953 was dictated by his still quite limited concepts about the political situation; in 1962, he would hardly have dared to take such a risk ...

Many years after 1953, I ended up in a cafe at the Central House of Writers at the same table with Yevtushenko's old close friend Yevgeny Vinokurov, who is known for the lyrics he wrote in 1957, "In the fields beyond the Vistula sleepy ...", - the text, I must say, weird. He drank too much, besides, he was then probably angry with his old friend for something and unexpectedly expressed regret that those same poems about poisoning doctors did not dare to be published at the beginning of 1953.

If Stalin had lived a little longer - you see, poems about doctors would have been published, and then there would have been no Yevtushenko! Vinokurov announced not without causticity. And he was probably right...

It is impossible not to take into account that Yevtushenko, who was excessively greedy for easy successes, as is clear from a number of testimonies, was closely connected with the KGB no later than the beginning of the 1960s, playing the role of a kind of "agent of influence" - I do not exclude that, to some extent, until some point, doing it not quite "consciously". In the 1990s, P. A. Sudoplatov, Lieutenant-General of the State Security Service, said in his memoirs that in the early 1960s, Lieutenant Colonel of State Security Service Ryabov, known to him, decided "to use Yevgeny Yevtushenko's popularity, connections and acquaintances for operational purposes and in foreign policy propaganda," and soon he was sent "accompanied by Ryabov to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Finland". Therefore, one should not be surprised that, as Yevtushenko now boastfully reports, he "visited 94 (!) Countries" (p. 9) - perhaps none of his contemporaries can compare with him in this respect, and yet in the question about going abroad decisive role in "pre-perestroika" times, the KGB played ...

A well-informed publicist, Roy Medvedev, reported in 1993: "Andropov (Chairman of the KGB in 1967-1982. - VC.) helped the poet Yevtushenko in organizing his numerous trips abroad. The poet received from the chief of the KGB a direct telephone and permission to call if necessary. Back in 1968, Yevtushenko made a sharp statement protesting against the introduction of Soviet troops to Czechoslovakia ... In 1974, the same situation repeated itself, when Yevtushenko publicly spoke out against the expulsion of AI Solzhenitsyn from the USSR ... Yevtushenko admitted that in both cases he first called Andropov ".

That is, Yevtushenko's "impudent" protests were in fact actions sanctioned by the KGB, designed to convince the world that there is freedom of speech in the USSR (look, they say: Yevtushenko protests, but no repressions are applied against him, and he still travels all over countries!).

Of course, such facts became known much later, but even in the 1960s one could guess about them. In 1965 I spoke at a discussion on modern poetry, the transcript of which - though, unfortunately, greatly truncated - was published in early 1966. In particular, when publishing, they threw out my words that Yevtushenko, despite this or that criticism addressed to him, is the "official singer of the Khrushchev regime" - as he used to be Stalin's.

From the hall in which I spoke, I was immediately asked a question:

Who then is Nikolai Gribachev?

"The history of literature, I am sure, will "remove" from Yevtushenko and his associates the far-fetched accusation that there were some gross "mistakes" in their poems. They expressed exactly what need was expressed in the second half of the fifties - the first half of the sixties ").

Meaning: you need power. And Yevtushenko was defined in my published text as a representative of "light poetry", fundamentally different from "serious" - that is, true poetry, to which, in the Yevtushenk generation, I then ranked Vladimir Sokolov, Nikolai Rubtsov, Anatoly Peredreev. Genuine poetry "is born when the word becomes, as it were, the behavior of an integral human personality, recognizing and protecting its integrity" (ibid., p. 36).

It was said above about the "unique falsity" of the current Yevtushenkov memoirs. This definition may seem like an exaggeration to some. However, in order to be convinced of the correctness of such a "verdict", one does not even need to compare these memoirs with any documents. The deceit is clearly revealed in the memoirs themselves. Yevtushenko claims that after his statement protesting against the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (as already mentioned, this protest was sanctioned by the chairman of the KGB Andropov), "the matrices" of his books ready for printing were "smashed", and he was sure: "I arrested" (p. 301). However, as if “by oversight”, Yevtushenko in the same book boasts that he soon visited (continuing to move towards the “record” in “94 countries”) Burma (p. 246) and Chile (p. 364), and in the next, In 1969 he published his voluminous "one-volume" (p. 247).

Returning to what I started with, it should be concluded that Yevtushenko could not or did not want to preserve "creative behavior" in himself, being tempted by "easy" successes; this was equally expressed both in his praise of Stalin and in his later curses against him, and the second, in essence, followed from the first: having achieved an easy success once, Yevtushenko was quite ready to do the same thing again ... This , of course, represented his own "choice", but still the very possibility of choosing the "easy" path was rooted in what was called a "cult", and therefore, from a certain point of view, Yevtushenko, as it is said, is his "victim". His later cooperation with the KGB is a natural consequence of the beginning of his "path" ...

In order to understand the period 1946-1953 more clearly, I had to jump far - perhaps even too far - forward into the future. But the next chapter of this work will return to those post-war years when (this, I hope, is clear from what has just been stated) a kind of historical knots, which were then untied for a very long time - and, perhaps, have not been untied to the end to this day ...

NOTES

1) Zemskov Viktor. Political repression in the USSR (1917-1990) - "Russia. XXI", 1994, 1-2, p. 110.

2) Zemskov VN GULAG (historical and sociological aspect). - "Sociological Research", 1991, 6, p. eleven.

3) Memoirs of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. - "Questions of History", 1990, 3, p. 82.

4) See: Andrey Vorontsov. Case of Beria: lives and wins? - "Spy", 1993, 1, p. 73-80 and 2, p. 45-52; Starikov Boris. One Hundred Days of the "Lubyansk Marshal". - "Motherland", 1993, 11, p. 78-84; Executioners and victims. - M., 1997.

52) Simonov Konst. Through the eyes of a man of my generation. Reflections on I. V. Stalin. - M., 1989, p. 284-286.

53) Kozhinov Vadim. Art lives in the present. - "Questions of Literature", 1966, 10, p. 29.

54) "Our contemporary", 1998, 11-12, p. 133.

55) Ibid., 1999, 5, p. 127-135.

56) Yevtushenko Evgeny. Wolf Passport. - M., 1998, p. 73.

57) Ibid., p. 242.

58) Kostyrchenko G.V., op. op., p. 324-325.

59) Sudoplatov Pavel. Special operations. Lubyanka and the Kremlin, 1930-1950. - M., 1997, p. 637.

60) Medvedev Roy. General Secretary from Lubyanka (Political biography of Yu. V. Andropov). - M., 1993, p. 80.

61) Kozhinov Vadim. Poets and poets. - "Questions of Literature", 1966, 3, p. 35.

People who endured the hardships and deprivations of wartime counted on changes for the better. The demobilized and evacuees returned with hope. More than 4 million repatriates returned to their homeland - prisoners of war, inhabitants of the occupied regions driven into captivity, and part of the emigrants. However, most of them became prisoners of the Gulag. Many were shot. Those who remained at large had difficulties with work and registration. Everyone who was in captivity or in the occupied territory was under suspicion. Contradictory processes took place in the newly annexed territories. Armed detachments of nationalists operated in Western Ukraine and the Baltic states. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the anti-government struggle here.

After the end of the war, the authorities began to restore the former political system. A special place in the strengthening of the totalitarian regime belonged to the repressive organs, which were under the control of Stalin and Beria.

First repression attacked the military, whose increased influence Stalin feared. Even a trial against Zhukov was being prepared. After Zhdanov's death in 1948, Stalin's old entourage won. The so-called "Leningrad case" is being fabricated. The main defendants were Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Rodionov and others. The organizers of the non-existent anti-party group were sentenced to death, about 2 thousand Leningrad communists were repressed.

In 1952, the so-called « case of poisoning doctors» . A group of prominent medical professionals who served prominent government officials were accused of being involved in a spy organization and intending to commit terrorist acts against the leaders of the country.

Under the conditions of the command-administrative system, a deep contradiction arose between the need for changes in the socio-political and economic spheres and the inability of the state apparatus to recognize and implement these changes.

Review questions:

What enabled the peoples of our country to achieve rapid economic recovery in the post-war years and successful implementation of the Fourth Five-Year Plan?

How did the policy pursued in the Soviet Union in relation to the peasantry, workers, and intelligentsia differ?

What do you know about the mass repressions of the late 1940s and early 1950s?

Culture in the USSR in the first post-war decade

The development of science and culture in the USSR in the postwar years was combined with a tougher fight against any, even the slightest, deviations from “ tasks of socialist construction”.

The war and repressions of the 30s dealt a heavy blow to the intelligentsia, so in the 40s - early 50s Soviet Union had a huge shortage of specialists with higher and secondary education. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Soviet science and technology achieved a number of successes, primarily in areas that contributed to building up the military power of the world's first "socialist" state. In 1949, an atomic bomb was tested in the USSR, and research was intensively carried out in the field of chemical and bacteriological weapons.

At the same time began persecution of genetics and cybernetics which were declared sciences contrary to the laws of materialism.

Also negatively affected the development of science, literature and art and campaign against cosmopolitanism, which unfolded in the late 40's - early 50's. Its goal was to denigrate everything non-Soviet, non-socialist, to put a barrier between the Soviet people and the achievements of the culture of Western countries.

The resolution of the Central Committee (1946) on the journal Zvezda and Leningrad is notorious, directed mainly against A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, whose work was classified as anti-people. He was deprived of the opportunity to live by the literary work of A. Platonov. Later, there were decrees on the repertoire of theaters, on the film "Big Life", Muradeli's opera "Great Friendship". Then the struggle against cosmopolitanism began, the main victim of which was the Jewish intelligentsia - Mikhoels, Perets, Markish.

All this led to a sharp reduction in the number of new films, performances and works of art, an increase in mediocrity, and a deliberate destruction of the great Russian artistic tradition of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Review questions:

What areas of science developed most intensively in the second half?

What new features in the development of culture can be named, speaking about the second half of the twentieth century?

Victory over Nazi Germany gave the Soviet Union hope for a better life, the weakening of the pressure of the totalitarian state, which influenced the individual, as well as the liberalization of the economic, political and cultural life of the country. This was facilitated by the revision of the value system associated with the horrors of war and familiarity with the Western way of life.

However, the Stalinist system only grew stronger during the years of hard times, because the people of the two concepts - "Stalin" and "victory" - were tied together.

Period 1945-1953 entered history under the name of late Stalinism, when in political life there was an increase in the repressive role of the state with the formal democratization of the political system.

Before Stalin and the state as a whole, the main task was to transfer the country to a peaceful track.

Demobilization, displacement

Already on June 23, 1945, in accordance with the law on demobilization, soldiers of the older age group began to return to the country. At the end of the war, 11.3 million people served in the USSR Armed Forces. But abroad also turned out to be:

• 4.5 million soldiers in the armies of other countries;
• 5.6 million citizens driven away for forced labor in Germany and other European countries.

At the same time, there were 4 million prisoners of war on the territory of the USSR who needed repatriation. 2.5 million soldiers and 1.9 million civilians ended up in concentration camps, where they could not bear the severity of their stay and died. The exchange of citizens continued until 1953. As a result, 5.4 million people returned to the country, but 451 thousand turned out to be defectors due to fear of persecution by the authorities.

Restoration of the national economy

During the discussions of 1945 -1946. two ways of the recovery period were discussed, presented in the table:

Stalin's point of view won. The country, which had lost a third of its national wealth, restored its economy during the years of the 4th Five-Year Plan (1945-1950), although Western experts believed that this would take at least 20 years. By 1950, the following tasks were completed:

The demilitarization of the economy was carried out, including the abolition of some military people's commissariats (1946-1947).

Enterprises in the occupied territory have been restored, primarily in the coal and metallurgical industries, and power plants. Dneproges gave the first current in 1947.

New defense enterprises have been built. In 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant appeared (Obninsk, 1954). The invention of atomic weapons in 1949 brought the Soviet Union to the position of the 2nd superpower.

The restoration of the pre-war level was achieved already in 1947.

Agricultural recovery

If heavy industry developed rapidly and by 1950 exceeded the level of 1940 by 20%, then light industry and agriculture did not cope with the tasks set. This imbalance in development was aggravated by the famine of 1946-1947, which claimed the lives of 1 million people in Ukraine, Moldova and part of the territories of the RSFSR. During the years of the five-year period:

• Non-economic coercion of peasants increased, the number of which decreased by 9.2 million people.
• Purchase prices for agricultural products have been reduced, which put the village in unequal conditions.
• There was an enlargement of collective farms.
• The process of dispossession was completed in Belarus, the Baltic states, Western Ukraine, and Moldova.

Monetary reform

Among the measures to normalize life - the abolition of strict labor discipline, the rationing system, etc. - the monetary reform of 1947 occupies a special place. The population accumulated financial resources that were not provided with goods. In December 1947, they were exchanged in a ratio of 10:1, which in fact led to the confiscation of savings. The winners were those who kept deposits in savings banks. Amounts up to 3 thousand were exchanged at the rate: 1:1. The money supply was reduced by 3.5 times.

Strengthening the regime and reforming the political system

Goal: strengthening the Stalinist regime with the formal democratization of society.

Democratic tendencies	Strengthening totalitarianism
	A new wave of repressions: a blow to repatriates, cultural figures, the party elite (“purges” commanders army, navy, ministries of state security, "Leningrad case", "doctors' case")
Resumption of congresses of public and political organizations (1949-1952)	Rise of the Gulag system
	Mass deportations and arrests. 12 million people were resettled from the Baltic States, Ukraine and Belarus.
Elections to Soviets at all levels, as well as to people's judges (1946)	Resettlement of "small" peoples, pressure on their traditions and culture, return to the idea of ​​autonomization
Work on the draft Constitution of the USSR and the program of the CPSU (b)
Convening the 19th Congress of the CPSU (b), renaming the party into the CPSU (1952)	Establishment of special regime camps (1948).

Strengthening repression

In 46-48 years. there was a "tightening the screws" in relation to the creative intelligentsia. The real persecution of M. Zoshchenko and A. Akhmatova began. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a number of resolutions in the field of theater, music and cinema, which provided for administrative intervention in culture. The most notorious in the last years of Stalin's rule were the repressions against the party elite of Leningrad and doctors.

"Leningrad business"

It began in January 1949 after an anonymous report about vote-rigging during the elections of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Committee of the Party. Several fabricated litigation. Not only local party leaders were subjected to persecution, but also nominees from Leningrad to Moscow and other territories. As a result:

• More than 2 thousand people were removed from their posts.
• Convicted - 214.
• Sentenced to death - 23.

Among those subjected to repression were: N. Voznesensky, who headed the State Planning Commission, A. Kuznetsov, secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, M. Rodionov, who headed the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR and others. Subsequently, all of them will be rehabilitated.

"Doctors' Case"

The campaign against prominent figures in medicine was launched in 1948, after the death of A. Zhdanov, who allegedly died due to an erroneous diagnosis. The mass character of the repression took place in 1953 and was clearly anti-Semitic in nature. In the 50s. began to carry out the arrests of doctors who were responsible for providing assistance to the top leaders of the USSR. The case was fabricated due to the intensification of the struggle for power in a single campaign against "cosmopolitanism" - contempt for Russian culture on the part of the Jews. On January 13, 1953, Pravda reported on the "poisoners", but after the death of the leader, all those arrested were acquitted and released.

Problems in the country

Ideology

From the middle of 1946, an attack began on the influence of the "West" on national culture. The country returned to party-political control and the restoration of the Iron Curtain, being isolated from the rest of the world. This was especially facilitated by the unfolding struggle against "cosmopolitanism" since 1948.

At the center of communist ideology is Stalin, whose cult reached its apogee in 1949, during the celebration of the leader's 70th birthday. The term “party spirit” appeared, which was also applied to science. Stalin's works were cited in research papers, he and the party leadership took part in scientific discussions, which led to the emergence of "pseudoscience" and pseudoscientists - T. Lysenko, O. Lepeshinskaya, N. Marr and others.

Intra-party struggle

In the postwar years, the alignment of forces in the Politburo changed: the positions of the “Leningrad group” — A. Zhdanov, A. Kuznetsov, N. Voznesensky, M. Rodionov — strengthened. In parallel, G. Malenkov, V. Molotov, K. Voroshilov, L. Kaganovich and A. Mikoyan became less authoritative. However, the situation of the "Leningraders" was not stable due to their proposals to strengthen the position of the RSFSR, transfer its government to Leningrad, etc. After the appointment of G. Malenkov as Secretary of the Central Committee and the death of A. Zhdanov, the loss of the Leningraders became a foregone conclusion, which ended with the "Leningrad case" . On a number of issues they were supported by A. Mikoyan and V. Molotov, which practically led to the leveling of their influence on political life.

But the positions of G. Malenkov, N. Bulganin, L. Beria again became convincing. In December 1949, N. Khrushchev was elected secretary of the Central Committee, and L. Beria turned out to be associated with a group accused of creating a Mingrelian organization, the purpose of which was to separate Georgia from the USSR. On the night of March 1, 1953, Stalin suffered a stroke. Shortly before his death, he was elected head of government, K Voroshilov - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council. In the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU - L. Beria, V. Molotov, N. Bulganin, L. Kaganovich and others.

Stalin's foreign policy in 1945-1953.

After the victory of the allies, the USSR became one of the leaders of world civilization, which was reflected in the receipt of a seat in the UN as a permanent member of the Security Council. However, the new position of the country strengthened its territorial claims and revived the idea of ​​world revolution. This led to a bipolar world. The diagram shows that by 1947 Europe was divided into the allies of the USSR and the allies of the United States, between which began " cold war". It culminated in 1949-1950. And the most serious clash is the military conflict in Korea.

The results of Stalin's rule

The second most powerful world power was created on the blood and enthusiasm of tens of millions of people. But the Soviet was faced with two problems put forward by the capitalist West, which he could not cope with:

• In the field of economics, there has been a technological gap with the leading European countries, where the next stage of the scientific and technological revolution has begun.
• There has been a lag in social and political life. The USSR could not keep up with the rise in the standard of living in the West, accompanied by the expansion of democratic rights and freedoms.

If the system is not able to respond to the challenge of time, it will certainly enter a period of crisis and decay.

Consequences for the country of late Stalinism

• The absence of legislatively fixed mechanisms for the transfer of supreme power caused its protracted crisis.
• The cessation of repressions did not mean the destruction of the political and economic system based on the leadership of the country by the party nomenklatura and the over-centralization of power. It will last until the 80s. 20th century
• The term "Stalinism" will appear in 1989 in one of the legislative acts and will remain in historical literature to characterize the period of government. I. Stalin.

Used Books:

1. Ostrovsky V.P., Utkin A.I. History of Russia. XX century 11 cells. M, Bustard, 1995
2. We go to communism - on Sat. Children's Encyclopedia vol. 9. M, Enlightenment, 1969, p. 163-166.

The Great Patriotic War ended with a victory, which the Soviet people achieved for four years. Men fought on the fronts, women worked on collective farms, at military factories - in a word, they provided rear. However, the euphoria caused by the long-awaited victory was replaced by a sense of hopelessness. Continuous hard work, hunger, Stalinist repressions, renewed with renewed vigor - these phenomena overshadowed the post-war years.

In the history of the USSR, the term "cold war" is found. Used in relation to the period of military, ideological and economic confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. It begins in 1946, that is, in the post-war years. The USSR emerged victorious from World War II, but, unlike the United States, it faced long haul recovery.

Construction

According to the plan of the fourth five-year plan, the implementation of which began in the USSR in the postwar years, it was necessary, first of all, to restore the cities destroyed fascist troops. More than 1.5 thousand settlements were affected in four years. Young people quickly received various construction specialties. However, there was not enough manpower - the war claimed the lives of more than 25 million Soviet citizens.

To restore normal working hours, overtime work was canceled. Annual paid holidays were introduced. The working day now lasted eight hours. Peaceful construction in the USSR in the postwar years was headed by the Council of Ministers.

Industry

Plants and factories destroyed during the Second World War were actively restored in the post-war years. In the USSR, by the end of the forties, old enterprises began to work. New ones were also built. The post-war period in the USSR is 1945-1953, that is, it begins after the end of the Second World War. Ends with the death of Stalin.

The recovery of industry after the war proceeded rapidly, partly due to the high working capacity of the Soviet people. The citizens of the USSR were convinced that they had a great life, much better than the Americans living in the conditions of decaying capitalism. This was facilitated by the Iron Curtain, which isolated the country culturally and ideologically from the whole world for forty years.

They worked hard, but their life did not get easier. In the USSR in 1945-1953 there was a rapid development of three industries: rocket, radar, nuclear. Most of the resources were spent on the construction of enterprises that belonged to these areas.

Agriculture

The first post-war years were terrible for the inhabitants. In 1946, the country was gripped by famine caused by destruction and drought. Especially plight was observed in Ukraine, in Moldova, in the right-bank regions of the lower Volga region and in the North Caucasus. New collective farms were created throughout the country.

In order to strengthen the spirit of Soviet citizens, directors, commissioned by officials, shot a huge number of films telling about the happy life of collective farmers. These films enjoyed wide popularity, they were watched with admiration even by those who knew what a collective farm really was.

In the villages, people worked from dawn to dawn, while living in poverty. That is why later, in the fifties, young people left the villages, went to the cities, where life was at least a little easier.

Standard of living

In the post-war years, people suffered from hunger. In 1947, but most of the goods remained in short supply. The hunger has returned. The prices of rations were raised. Nevertheless, over the course of five years, starting in 1948, products gradually became cheaper. This somewhat improved the standard of living of Soviet citizens. In 1952, the price of bread was 39% lower than in 1947, and that of milk was 70%.

The availability of essential goods did not make life much easier ordinary people, but, being under the Iron Curtain, most of them easily believed in the illusory idea of best country in the world.

Until 1955, Soviet citizens were convinced that they owed Stalin their victory in the Great Patriotic War. But this situation was not observed throughout. In those regions that were annexed to the Soviet Union after the war, far fewer conscious citizens lived, for example, in the Baltic states and in Western Ukraine, where anti-Soviet organizations appeared in the 40s.

Friendly states

After the end of the war in countries such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, the GDR, the communists came to power. The USSR developed diplomatic relations with these states. At the same time, the conflict with the West escalated.

According to the 1945 treaty, Transcarpathia was transferred to the USSR. The Soviet-Polish border has changed. Many former citizens of other states, such as Poland, lived on the territory after the end of the war. The Soviet Union concluded an agreement on the exchange of population with this country. Poles living in the USSR now had the opportunity to return to their homeland. Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians could leave Poland. It is noteworthy that in the late forties only about 500 thousand people returned to the USSR. In Poland - twice as much.

criminal situation

In the postwar years in the USSR, law enforcement agencies launched a serious fight against banditry. 1946 saw the peak of crime. About 30,000 armed robberies were recorded this year.

To combat rampant crime, new employees, as a rule, former front-line soldiers, were accepted into the ranks of the police. It was not so easy to restore peace Soviet citizens, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic States, where the criminal situation was the most depressing. In the Stalin years, a fierce struggle was waged not only against "enemies of the people", but also against ordinary robbers. From January 1945 to December 1946, more than three and a half thousand bandit organizations were liquidated.

Repression

Back in the early twenties, many representatives of the intelligentsia left the country. They knew about the fate of those who did not have time to escape from Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, at the end of the forties, some accepted the offer to return to their homeland. Russian nobles were returning home. But to another country. Many were sent immediately upon their return to the Stalinist camps.

In the post-war years, it reached its apogee. Wreckers, dissidents and other "enemies of the people" were placed in the camps. Sad was the fate of the soldiers and officers who found themselves surrounded during the war years. At best, they spent several years in the camps, until which they debunked the cult of Stalin. But many were shot. In addition, the conditions in the camps were such that only the young and healthy could endure them.

In the post-war years, Marshal Georgy Zhukov became one of the most respected people in the country. His popularity annoyed Stalin. However, he did not dare to put the national hero behind bars. Zhukov was known not only in the USSR, but also abroad. The leader knew how to create uncomfortable conditions in other ways. In 1946, the "Aviator Case" was fabricated. Zhukov was removed from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces and sent to Odessa. Several generals close to the marshal were arrested.

culture

In 1946, the fight against Western influence began. She expressed herself in the popularization national culture and a ban on everything foreign. were persecuted Soviet writers, artists, directors.

In the forties, as already mentioned, a huge number of war films were shot. These films were heavily censored. The characters were created according to a template, the plot was built according to a clear scheme. The music was also under strict control. Only compositions praising Stalin and a happy Soviet life. Is not in the best way influenced the development of national culture.

The science

The development of genetics began in the thirties. In the postwar period, this science was in exile. Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet biologist and agronomist, became the main participant in the attack on geneticists. In August 1948, academicians who made a significant contribution to the development of domestic science lost the opportunity to engage in research activities.

Difficulties economic development The USSR in the post-war period was determined by the gigantic scale of destruction (which no country had in any war). The Extraordinary State Commission estimated the damage at 2,569 billion rubles. The country has lost 1/3 of the national wealth. But the main loss is the death of almost 27 million people. (moreover, the most able-bodied part of the population - about 20 million people - 76% - men born in 1901-1931). This alone created serious demographic problems in the state for decades to come. Restoring the economy of the USSR after the war depended on the solution of three main tasks:
1) reconversion - the transfer of military production to the production of peaceful products;
2) actual reconstruction - restoration of destruction;
3) improvement of the financial situation.

The transfer of the entire national economy of the USSR to a peaceful track (a very complicated and painful process) was basically carried out within one year. A major role in restoring the destruction was played by the fact that reconstruction in the liberated areas had begun during the war. In 1942, the Moscow coal basin was the first to be restored; in total, by the end of the war - 7.5 thousand industrial enterprises, about 85 thousand collective farms, etc. On March 18, 1946, the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Law on the five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy (for 1946-1950). The main task of the Fourth Five-Year Plan was defined as follows: "To restore the affected areas of the country, to restore the pre-war level of industry and agriculture, and then to surpass this level on a significant scale."

The restoration of the destroyed industry, thanks to the heroic efforts of the people, was basically completed in 1948. After the dismissal of the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Voznesensky (without trial, he was shot in 1949) and his employees, a revision of the relatively balanced plan of the fourth five-year plan was observed - a priority, as in the 30s , was given to heavy industry, "large facilities and industries" (a number of new buildings remained unfinished). The development of agriculture in the USSR remained difficult. The war undermined the technical base of the village; the drought of 1946 also had an effect (it surpassed the drought of 1921 in terms of the size of the affected territory). In addition, the rural population decreased - about 8 million people, mostly young people, in 1946–1953. moved to the cities. In general, the fourth five-year plan for agriculture was not fulfilled (for example, the gross grain harvest was planned to be increased in 1950 to 127 million tons, in reality it amounted to 81.2 million tons, etc.). The stabilization of the financial system in the USSR was facilitated by the monetary reform of December 1947 (the exchange of old money for new ones at a ratio of 10:1) and the abolition of the card system in 1947 (the press noted that the USSR was the first country in Europe to abolish the card system). The consumption level of pre-war 1940 was reached in 1951.

Of great importance for strengthening the security of the USSR was the creation and testing of atomic (in 1949) and then hydrogen (in 1953) bombs. The US monopoly on atomic weapons was abolished.

Civil and military ranks, abolished after October, were recreated. In 1946 the people's commissariats were transformed into ministries; SNK - to the Council of Ministers of the USSR; The Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) was renamed the Soviet Armed Forces. The Bolshevik Party since 1952 became known as the CPSU.

Historians believe that it was in the post-war years that Stalin's "cult of personality" reached its climax. The leading bodies of the party itself were completely ignored: congresses were not convened for 13 and a half years (from March 1939 to October 1952), plenums of the Central Committee were not convened for more than 5 years, etc. Political life in the USSR was characterized by an ideological tightening that pursued the restoration of control over a society weakened during the war years. This is also the treatment of repatriated prisoners of war (only 20% of the 2 million 270 thousand received permission to return to mine; the rest were either sent to camps or sentenced to exile for at least 5 years). These are campaigns against creative workers, attempts to stop any intellectual dissent (in 1946, the accusation of the Leningrad and Zvezda magazines of carrying out "alien ideologies" - after the publication of the works of the poetess A. Akhmatova and the satirist M. Zoshchenko; the latter are excluded from Union of Writers of the USSR, in the same 1946, a new resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) criticized the "unprincipled" films "Admiral Nakhimov" by Pudovkin, the second series of "Ivan the Terrible" by S. Eisenstein, etc.). A number of sciences (cybernetics, wave mechanics, psychoanalysis, etc.) were condemned as "bourgeois"; genetics, quantum mechanics, probability theory are prohibited. Serious damage was done to science by pseudo-scientists like T. Lysenko (President of VASKhNIL). The persecution of geneticists and biologists, which began even before the war, resumed in 1947-1948. (expulsion from the academy, universities of hundreds of scientists). By the end of 1945-1946. many prominent military leaders - heroes of the Great Patriotic War - were assigned to remote regions of the country. G.K. Zhukov was appointed commander of the Odessa Military District, then transferred to the Urals.

"Purges" resumed in the party, organization political processes(“Leningrad case” in 1948, which cost the lives of several hundred political workers of Leningrad and employees of the State Planning Commission; in 1951–1952, the entire leadership of Georgia was removed; “the case of doctors” in 1953 was terminated after the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953) .

Despite the fact that the Stalinist political system in the post-war years entered the crisis period of its existence, significant social forces that could resist the regime did not exist in the country. The injustice of the post-war period was keenly felt by the front-line soldiers. Part of the students also tried to understand the existing realities and ideological postulates of the then stage in the development of society. Some of the most competent economic leaders gradually realized the need for changes in the super-centralized system of economic management. And although this was not an official protest, the regime already sensed a possible danger. It is no coincidence that after the war they began to dismiss leaders, who during the war years showed the ability to take responsibility for themselves, creatively, with the initiative to act in non-standard situations. The system needed such people, because it was terribly afraid of the emergence of initiative, thinking people who did not want to see themselves as just vague "cogs".

Scientists, writers, and publicists have become the most critical part of society, because the intelligentsia has always personified the spirit of the people. She was the most sensitive nerve public consciousness, easily perceived new trends, new needs of society, which sometimes were still fully realized by the majority of the people.

The Soviet people were also greatly impressed by their stay in European countries during the hostilities and in the post-war period. It is no coincidence that the political leadership of the USSR, along with priority measures to restore the destroyed economy after the war, began to fight the penetration of "bourgeois influence on the consciousness of Soviet people."

The Stalinist leadership felt even the slightest fluctuations in the mood of the Soviet people, therefore, in his opinion, the threat of the state could not be worse than the appearance of dissent. That is why the main blow of the repressive machine of the Stalinist system was directed precisely at the intelligentsia. This policy developed in two main directions: along the line of strengthening the ideological influence on consciousness and in the form of direct repressive measures against dissidents.

The main task of the post-war period was the restoration of the destroyed economy. In March 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a plan for the reconstruction and restoration of the national economy.

The demilitarization of the economy and the modernization of the military-industrial complex began. Heavy industry was declared a priority area, mainly engineering, metallurgy, and the fuel and energy complex.

By 1948, production reached pre-war levels thanks to the heroic labor of the Soviet people, the free labor of Gulag prisoners, the redistribution of funds in favor of heavy industry, the transfer of funds from the agricultural sector and light industry, the attraction of funds from German reparations, and strict economic planning.

In 1945, the gross agricultural output of the USSR was 60% of the pre-war level. The government tried to bring the industry out of the crisis by punitive measures.

In 1947, a mandatory minimum of workdays was established, the law “For encroachment on collective farm and state property” was tightened, the tax on livestock maintenance was increased, which led to its mass slaughter.

The areas of individual allotments of collective farmers have been reduced. Reduced wages in kind. Collective farmers were denied passports, which limited their freedom. At the same time, farms were enlarged and control over them was tightened.

These reforms were not successful, and only by the 1950s did they manage to reach the pre-war level of agricultural production.

The post-war situation required the government to put into practice the democratic principles of the state structure.

In 1945 the State Defense Committee was abolished. Re-elections of Soviets at all levels were held and their convocations and sessions became more frequent. Increased the number of standing commissions. The work of public and political organizations has been resumed

In 1946, the Council of People's Commissars was transformed into the Council of Ministers, and the people's commissariats into ministries. In accordance with the Constitution, direct and secret elections of people's judges were held. The 19th Party Congress was held. Since 1946, the drafting of a new Constitution of the USSR began. In 1947, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks submitted the question “On the project new program VKP(b)".

There have been changes in science and culture. Compulsory seven-year education was introduced in 1952, evening schools were opened. The Academy of Arts and the Academy of Sciences with its branches in the republics were formed. Postgraduate courses are open in many universities. Television began to broadcast regularly.

Against the backdrop of positive developments in the field of science and culture, active intervention in their development began. The government and the party began to orient Scientific research historians, philosophers, philologists.

Historical science was based solely on the "Course of the History of the CPSU (b)". Studies and scientific supervisors such areas of science as cybernetics, genetics, psychoanalysis, wave mechanics.

Composers Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Muradeli and others became objects of persecution and criticism from the party. In 1948, they were expelled from the Union of Composers for creating "odious" works.

In 1948, the persecution of "cosmopolitans" began. Bans were imposed on contacts and marriages with foreigners. A wave of anti-Semitism swept across the country.