We inherited from Stalinism. Stalin's legacy. The life of Joseph Stalin, about which we knew nothing at all
![We inherited from Stalinism. Stalin's legacy. The life of Joseph Stalin, about which we knew nothing at all](https://i2.wp.com/ic.pics.livejournal.com/matveychev_oleg/27303223/3852308/3852308_900.jpg)
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Hello, I’m Natella Boltyanskaya. You listen to “Echo of Moscow”, you watch the RTVi channel. This is a series of programs “In the Name of Stalin” together with the publishing house “Russian Political Encyclopedia” with the support of the foundation named after the first president of Russia Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin. Our guest today is historian Nikita Sokolov. Hello.
N. SOKOLOV: Good evening.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: And you know, we formulated the topic very interestingly. “We are with you,” I said loudly. Regarding the fact that some part of the mythologized history has been left to us as an inheritance. Moreover, I really like the idea of a Commission to combat the falsification of history. I think so, and so do you. But maybe we can talk in more detail about what exactly we inherited in connection with the mythologization of history?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, yes. Actually, I was going to talk about this specifically. Now, if suddenly it opened somewhere - I really want to organize such a virtual museum - a museum of Comrade Stalin’s gifts to the Russian people.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: The main gift?
N. SOKOLOV: There would be a lot of different things. And it’s typical that your program is called “In the Name of Stalin.” Many things are obviously decorated with the name of Stalin as a sign of quality, and they are easily recognized. But in this museum, first of all, I placed what was especially close to me and what was absolutely not associated with the name of Stalin in the mass consciousness.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Namely?
N. SOKOLOV: The fact is that one of the main gifts of Comrade Stalin to the modern Russian people, in my opinion, is the image of history that is contained in the heads of the majority of our compatriots. He is the exact work of Comrade Stalin.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But have mercy. After all, our compatriots argue quite objectively that just as we were in the ring of enemies, so we remained in the ring of enemies. Just as they were envious of our conquests and our successful industrialization in just a couple of decades from Sakha to advanced technologies, they continue to be envious. We have oil, but others don’t. What's going on here? What does Comrade Stalin have to do with this? We were unlucky with our surroundings.
N. SOKOLOV: The fact is that this very construction, that Russia is always a besieged fortress, and therefore it cannot live except as a besieged garrison, this construction itself was established not just during Stalin’s rule, but under his personal and extremely active participation.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Come on, Nikit. Even Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin wrote in “The Peasant Lady” that Russian bread will not be born in someone else’s manner, through the mouth of one of his positive heroes. What does Stalin have to do with it?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, okay. We are still talking about the image of history that is transmitted, say, by the school. And, of course, a lot of patriotic twists of Russian writers can be found in this.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: That’s it, I sweep it aside, I take all my words back. Come on, prove it.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. But this, after all, is a kind of literary license, historical journalism. And besides, what you quote seems to be even the words of the hero, and not the writer himself. Although, I'm afraid to lie, I don't remember exactly. But there is a certain normative image of history that is broadcast by the school.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Namely?
N. SOKOLOV: The school textbook contains some construction of Russian history. So this is the construction of Russian history, the most general outline of it, which leads to the most general conclusions about what experience this society has and what is natural for it, this is the work of Comrade Stalin. Let me outline it for you in a nutshell.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Please.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. And you tell me... I’ll caricature it a little for clarity, but not much. What kind of idea do we have about Russian history? I have checked this many times with the help of surveys. I taught at the University, students came with this knowledge, so I guarantee that this is the case. So, for people who are not specifically interested in history, what does it look like? There was a great powerful state, it was called Kievan Rus, now it is simply called Ancient Rus, so as not to be associated with Kiev. United, powerful, the Kiev prince ruled everything there with an iron hand, the people prospered. Then a lot of princes divorced, these fools, for the sake of their ambitions and squabbles, tore the great power into shreds, and then terrible disasters came for the people, and the people became so angry that even the wild steppe nomads overpowered them, the terrible Mongol yoke came and full of people reproach and weakening.
And then the great and wise Moscow princes, with an iron fist, gathered all these people together and established a reliable vertical of power. And we, the Russian people, are obliged to love this vertical avidly, no matter how disgraceful it may sometimes be, because without this vertical of power, without this authoritarian, monarchical or simply authoritarian power, we are ultimately destroyed; we cannot live otherwise. This design is, strictly speaking...
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Introduced by Comrade Stalin?
N. SOKOLOV: Of course. You won’t find it in any pre-revolutionary literature... Dynamics are very important here. There was a pre-revolutionary school, until 1917. In none of this literature will you find a monarchy in Ancient Rus'; there is a completely clear idea that this is a different, much more complex society in which there is no single power.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But have mercy, Nikit. After all, you must agree that among those who share this kind of concept, not everyone is, so to speak, the schoolchildren of yesterday and today. This concept is generally very easy to understand, am I not right? Moreover, in my opinion, another concept is automatically and simply attached to it as a complete set - the price does not matter.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes, definitely.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But this is already... You know, when you read, they say, why do you protect traitors? If someone accidentally ended up innocent, then it’s okay - the result was achieved. Your will. This is what they write to us very often. I can’t perceive it, is this how it is? A person takes and forgives someone the life of another person, or the lives of another person, or the lives of other people. Like this? So here it is. Why do you think that this is all the result of Stalin’s influence?
N. SOKOLOV: Because people mainly get this information from a school textbook, but popular historical literature broadcasts exactly the same, cinema broadcasts exactly the same, and in recent decades television has been extremely active. Exactly the same model. And when this process lasted extremely briefly, history was freed from political tutelage, this happened somewhere on the border around 1987-1988, and historians were able to present what they really know about the historical process, then this scheme instantly collapsed, and new different history textbooks with a completely different picture. Where Russia is not a besieged fortress, where it is a much more complex society, where equal institutions played a much more important role at different times.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, look. If we assume, if we agree with your position, then what do we get? That from the moment Joseph Vissarionovich finally came to power, without questions, without doubts, without fears, he was faced, to a certain extent, with the PR task of giving the people the opportunity to justify everything that would be done to them by the authorities. So?
N. SOKOLOV: I don’t know to what extent...
N. SOKOLOV: I do not undertake to judge to what extent Comrade Stalin was consciously and clearly aware of this. We have no sources for this, since Comrade Stalin, according to his closest friends, for example, Kaganovich, was a great conspirator - he did not even fully inform his closest collaborators about his plans, they had to guess about them. But everything he did clearly indicates that he prepared it intentionally and on purpose. This is the famous story of the compilation of the first school textbook. How was historical science actually born in our country? First, Comrades Zhdanov, Stalin and Kirov wrote a wonderful summary of the textbook, then they compiled a textbook for schools, and then Comrade Stalin himself personally rewrote it for 3 months and added a lot to it.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: For example?
N. SOKOLOV: Can we do it a little later?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Yes.
N. SOKOLOV: More details a little later. And only then, a year later, the Institute of History was created as the main party historical department, which for 50 years later this textbook tried to support with scientific developments. Without much success.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Let's give an example?
N. SOKOLOV: What exactly did Comrade Stalin contribute?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Yes.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. Mainly, Stalin's editing proceeded in several directions. First and foremost, he emphasized those places where firm power, authoritarian power, deeply centralized power had to be shown as salutary and the only possible one. This idea that the oprichnina of Grozny was an instrument of state centralization, this phrase was directly written by Comrade Stalin personally into the school textbook. It was not there, not a single pre-revolutionary historian would have undertaken it, and now not a single honest historian will undertake to assert this.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: You know, as sad as it is, everything you said inexorably leads to one sad conclusion. The conclusion is that. Yes, there was Comrade Stalin, who tried to implant into the minds of his compatriots what he considered necessary. And we, in modern language?.. That is, society gratefully accepted all this and continues to accept it, and will continue to accept it. And no luck, it turns out, with the people?
N. SOKOLOV: No. In my opinion, the mechanics are completely different, because Comrade Stalin, in order to implement this program, to implement the program of such a historical concept, still needed to do a lot of preliminary work. In order for this program to be carried out, it was necessary to destroy the historical community and historians. This was done soon after the revolution and culminated in the 1929-1930 trials of the Leningrad historians Oldenburg and Platonov. The academic corporation of historians as a corporation of bearers of a certain standard, a standard of truth, a standard of relationships, a conscientious attitude towards a subject - this corporation was destroyed. That is, he instilled monstrous fear, and everyone got down on all fours, looked the authorities in the mouth and waited for a command from it. Only those who were ready to write what they said remained - only after that it became possible to create such a textbook.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: And this is one of the gifts, as you put it, in our virtual museum of Joseph Vissarionovich’s gifts to modern Russian society. What other gifts can we talk about? Despite the fact that this gift, in fact, to some extent, it truly spreads and fragrantly pervades all aspects of our lives. So?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, I will talk about historical gifts, about gifts in the sense of historical concepts. In recent years, already in the last 5 years, it has become more active in the public consciousness, well, again, at the instigation of the authorities, which have been extremely concerned, since 2001, with the issue of the national idea. The question of the turmoil of the 17th century arose sharply. We had already come up with a national holiday on November 4th, which suddenly became the day we beat the Poles. Never in your life will you find the words “Polish intervention” in any pre-revolutionary literature. What is the turmoil of the 17th century? In general, “turmoil” is a Russian word meaning civil war. And the turmoil of the 17th century was a civil war in Russian society. Different parties of this society - yes, they looked for allies outside, and some found Swedes, some Poles, some Cossacks, but this civil war was inside. And personally, Comrade Stalin, again, included in this textbook this idea of the turmoil of the 17th century as a foreign intervention - as if this was not an internal problem, as if all Russian people were absolutely unanimous about their future, and all the turmoil and regarding the existing state order are absolutely unanimous. And all troubles come from foreigners.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, of course. Those who play jackals near the embassies, with their hands.
N. SOKOLOV: Those who play jackals - well, in modern language. (laughs)
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Simply incredibly modern.
N. SOKOLOV: And yet our current government uses it in an amazing way... Probably, this is natural, when the government takes such tools into its hands, then, naturally, one can begin to copy both words and manner.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Again, I want to return to society. You know, yesterday I read an absolutely wonderful story on the Internet. That when in one of the Scandinavian countries during the Nazi occupation there was a decision to dissolve the Supreme Court, there were protests against this matter. And they said it was illegal. When, nevertheless, it was said that the heads of the court would be appointed by the government, all members of this Supreme Court resigned. Also a lovely modern example, right?
N. SOKOLOV: Yes, we have not heard and will not hear anything similar from our Constitutional Court.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: No, we’ve already heard. But now we are dealing with a slightly earlier era in the life of our society. And still. Convenient myths are clothed in a convenient form, that is, let’s say, events are given a convenient coloring, a convenient shape, a convenient hairstyle, and they are used in a modern, I don’t even know what to call it, influence. So?
N. SOKOLOV: I think that there is a slightly different mechanism here. After this scheme has been introduced and after with the help of this scheme after this scheme has been introduced into the consciousness of several generations. And it was implemented, look, the first school textbook was published there in 1936. From 1936 to 1986, this scheme was continuously hammered in for 50 years. Then there was a short break, about 2 years from 1995, an era of some historical freedom, and at school too. And then the backward movement began. Historians noticed it earlier, and the general public noticed it after Mikhail Kasyanov’s speech about the school textbook - this was 2001.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Do you know what I’m thinking about now, listening to you? I think it's a blasphemous thing. At some point, it turns out that it makes sense to agree with the people who write us text messages like “Comrade Stalin did not jail enough.” It turns out that I planted little. Because it seems to me that not a single person who went through all this, of those who were brought up in orphanages as the son of an enemy of the people, of those who lived in territories where entire nations were resettled, of those who found themselves... Very many, let's say, ways to one way or another crush an unnecessary and redundant group of the population. So it turns out that the more people who went through this crucible, the less danger there would be to return to this now. Is not it so?
N. SOKOLOV: ....
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: The same idea that was expressed in the film “Repentance”.
N. SOKOLOV: The fact is that historical memory - and society lives by historical memory, it does not live by scientific memory - is very short. This is 2-3 generations, while grandfathers are telling stories. Then direct continuity ceases, and great-grandchildren may be complete Stalinists and not remember the torment of their grandfather.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Why doesn’t this happen with Nazism in Germany?
N. SOKOLOV: In Germany, for many decades, government programs were specifically implemented to implement public consensus. So a public consensus was reached, it was even formally legitimized at a meeting in the town (INAUDIBLE) and issued a special document. The first point of this consensus is that the teaching of the humanities, and history in particular, should under no circumstances be subject to indoctrination.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: How can one determine whether this or that part of science is indoctrinated or not?
N. SOKOLOV: To monitor compliance with the terms of this consensus in Germany, there is an entire special government department that very carefully monitors that no party, no ideology seeps into the teaching of the humanities.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Varangians to reign again?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, I don’t know. Not the Varangians, of course, but foreign experience should be used as usefully as possible. Our actions are completely opposite - for some time now, since 2001 for sure, all the power of the state machine has been aimed at restoring the Stalinist model of history.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But wait. After all, you are talking about the restoration of the Stalinist model? Most people who turn with reproaches to those who divulge certain dark, terrible aspects, pages of that era, they say that you are trying to belittle the significance of the great victory, you are trying to belittle the significance of the gigantic feat of our people, which in a few decades has covered a century-long path. What does Stalin have to do with it, it would seem? Because as far as I understand. Among those who say that Stalin was bad, no one says that it is bad that the Soviet Union won the Great Patriotic War. Not so bad! The question is, at what cost?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, in fact, this is the main historical question - the question of price. I generally don’t like this way of putting the question, but here is one of the ever-present arguments of Stalin and his historians: the great Soviet government created the aviation industry in Russia. What if Rebushinsky would not have created the aviation industry?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, history does not know the subjunctive mood.
N. SOKOLOV: There is no answer to this question, but many types of industry were created without the Bolsheviks and without such a terrible mobilization, and no chips fell. And somehow they got by. I think we could do it again. In general, this whole model of a mobilization country, which is like Ilya Muromets... What format of behavior is prescribed for us, for Russian people in general? That we harness for a long time, like Ilya Muromets, we lie on the stove for 30 years, but then as soon as we get up, we’ll do everything in an instant. Well, it's not all the same.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, that probably doesn’t happen.
N. SOKOLOV: Russia lived for a thousand years, developing completely in a completely harmonious way, until the power - this happened during the time of Peter the Great - until the power usurped absolutely all methods of action, paralyzed the will and freedom of the people to act at their own discretion. And here we begin a series of reforms and counter-reforms. The authorities are limited by one thing: let’s do this now, in 25 years – no, let’s do counter-reform.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But, nevertheless, supporters of some positive pages of Stalin’s activities say: “Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was an international state. What do we have today? And today we have a lot of difficult, hot spots in the space of the former Soviet Union, right?”
N. SOKOLOV: One of Comrade Stalin’s gifts to the school textbook is the concept of the entry of peoples into Russia as the least evil. Yes, Russia was a prison of peoples - this could not be denied then, this was Lenin’s main thesis and the revolution, in fact, arose from this, was largely fueled by it, a national conflict, and therefore it was impossible to deny that Russia was a prison of peoples. But Stalin figured out how to avoid this completely. He spent a lot of effort trying to rehabilitate old Russia with its firm monarchical power. And in particular, this concept of small nations joining Russia as the least evil was invented, otherwise things would have been much worse for them. But in fact, all modern national problems in the space of the former Union are a product of Stalin’s national policy. This cannot be denied.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, this probably cannot be denied, but on the other hand, to say that this is now reflected... I have the impression that, after all, this is what contemporaries use in a form convenient for themselves.
N. SOKOLOV: Well, of course. But if we continue this story about internationalism. When people say this, what do they mean? Do they mean the formal ban that followed in 1942 from publishing data on the exploits of Soviet Jewish soldiers? Is this what they mean? Do they even know about this?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: I think that they a) don’t know about it, b) don’t want to count and c) think that you’re all lying.
N. SOKOLOV: Hmm!
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, so what?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, God be with them, let them think so. But it is there. This is a historically material fact.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: I think that we will now pause on this optimistic note. Let me remind you that historian Nikita Sokolov is our guest, and we are discussing gifts. This is our virtual museum of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin’s gifts to modern Russian society. And it seems to me that we still have exhibits that are worth stopping at in this museum, literally we will do this in a couple of minutes.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: So, we continue the conversation with historian Nikita Sokolov about “gifts”, about the legacy of Stalinism, which, let’s say, we have and can observe today. Well, I shook 2 points out of you. But at the same time, our listeners write to us: “You are afraid of Stalin. Don’t you have anything else to talk about?” or “Don’t you think,” the following question came over the Internet, “that, they say, you are only raising this person’s rating? May be enough?"
N. SOKOLOV: Well, in a sense, it might be enough if, like with a war, if all the dead were buried. God be with him, standing Stalin, but the thing is that in our society his ideology is not buried, it should be buried. And until this ideology is buried, moreover, until the elements of this ideology are adopted by the authorities, we will have to talk about it - this is my deepest conviction.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But, again. You will agree that the authorities are adopting certain, let’s say, techniques – at their discretion. And the people eat them with pleasure - it’s up to them. What did the father of all nations say? “I have no other people for you,” right?
N. SOKOLOV: There is no other people.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: And what do you want? If society accepts it.
N. SOKOLOV: Firstly, what does society accept?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, how? Society accepts, the mouth barely opens to some critical remark, and immediately numerous voices are heard: “Why do you dislike our homeland so much?”
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. “You are slanderers of Russia.”
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Yes, “You are slanderers of Russia.” So what? Everyone is out of step, only Nikita Pavlovich Sokolov is out of step? Well, relatively speaking, in this situation.
N. SOKOLOV: So, firstly, I am a historian, and it’s easier for me to answer historically. And secondly, the argument here, it seems to me, can only be historical. The argument is of this order. Russian society, the people you are talking about, and from which I do not exclude myself at all. Russian society has been carried away by its own greatness several times. Several times over the past 200 years, Russian society has fallen ill with this severe patriotic fever. Herzen even spoke about patriotic syphilis, since it is a virus transmitted from person to person. And as a result, they lost a real idea of themselves and their capabilities, and their place in the world, which is very important. As soon as... This same patriotic fever - in what way does it develop? At first it is defensive in nature: “Why did you attack us? We are no worse than others"
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, for example.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes, this is the first stage.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: “But we make rockets and blocked the Yenisei, and also in the field of ballet we are ahead of the rest.”
N. SOKOLOV: We are no worse than others. Well, really, no worse, no better. An era of such normal patriotic self-awareness is coming, in Russia associated, say, with the war of 1812, with the generation of the Decembrists. When yes, it was clear that there were problems in the country, there was serfdom, and there was no properly structured political system. The normal ways to solve these problems are known, and it is known how to solve them. But then, when the war was won, another point of view prevailed. The point of view is overwhelming - everyone remembers it, but not everyone remembers whose it is: “Russia’s past is magnificent, its present is brilliant, and its future exceeds its wildest expectations.”
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, naturally.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. But many people don’t remember that this is the point of view of Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf, the chief of gendarmes. So he said that from this point of view Russian history should be viewed and written. This is the gendarme's point of view of history.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: How, from your point of view, should this whole story be treated? I didn’t mention “history” now as a science.
N. SOKOLOV: I would like to talk about this historical fever. As soon as they enter the stage of national complacency, as soon as serfdom and autocracy become the sins of the nation and become its main achievements, Europe must be taught this. Now we have found the truth, our serfdom is not a sin, Gogol wrote so, this is our main advantage. “Landowners can raise the cultural level of their peasants, which Europe lacks,” Gogol directly writes in correspondence with friends.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Opponents of abolitionism also wrote that since she cared about slaves...
N. SOKOLOV: Yes, great. Such were human relationships, subtle, delicate. But as soon as this patriotic fever leads to the point where reality is lost and Constantinople should be ours, and the task of internal improvement of the country is replaced by the need to care about its external image, about its external power, disaster immediately ensues.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, what does Stalin have to do with it?
N. SOKOLOV: How else do you think society is brought to its senses? This is the first time it has come to its senses about the terrible Sevastopol disaster of 1856. And then the most ardent patriots began to write that only slaves praise the order of this Nicholas Russia, and this is the order of a cemetery in which nothing living can exist. Right now we are experiencing another surge of this patriotic blindness, which will probably inevitably end in disaster.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, it turns out that it’s impossible to treat him?
N. SOKOLOV: Other people who hurt themselves will be treated.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But, do you understand how? Someone will get hurt, but someone will feel great. Who's reading there? Stalin's dialogues will never be buried, rather they will bury you - you are not slanderers, you are traitors.
N. SOKOLOV: Well, yes, in a sense.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Or, for example, if I don’t count, but I know that you are lying, not all, but a lot - that’s also very nice. “With your ideology, Russia and all of Europe would now be under the Germans.” In my opinion, this is a classic example, by the way, of that very gift. I understand that the science of history does not know the subjunctive mood, but, nevertheless, is it possible, even for a second, to try to promote an alternative historical line?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, I’m not a big fan of such designs, but I have experience of quite realistic attempts to build such a program. It is believed that if the Germans had dissolved the collective farms in the occupied territories, then most likely they would have won the war. Well, in any case, there is such a hypothesis. Not unreasonable.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Okay. Let's go with you...
N. SOKOLOV: But this is what I would like to object to. But what, only a society like this, total authoritarian and repressive, can win a war?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, how? From the point of view of people who profess this theory, this is confirmed by the fact that, let’s say, European regimes of varying degrees of liberality were unable to oppose anything to Hitler.
N. SOKOLOV: Great Britain failed to counter anything?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, how? It wasn't the British soldiers who reached Berlin and hoisted the red flag on the Reichstag?
N. SOKOLOV: British soldiers did not enter Berlin, like American ones, for one reason, which is also documented. The Americans refused to take several major cities, including Berlin, because it would require terrible loss of life. And American generals counted human lives. And they could not afford to kill almost a million people on the Seelow Heights for the sake of the happiness of hoisting a flag over the Reichstag.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Here I want to say, here, note bene. Attention! It is very important.
N. SOKOLOV: Well, they have a different idea about the acceptable price of any victory. This does not mean that they fight less effectively.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, that is, you, let’s say, confirm the thesis published not so long ago in Novaya Gazeta, repeatedly voiced by the writer Astafiev, that he simply threw corpses at him.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. And any mentally healthy front-line soldier will tell you this.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, as I understand, many of our compatriots are not afraid of this, especially when it comes to the corpses of people who are not their loved ones.
N. SOKOLOV: Are they ready with their own corpses and their own children?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: No. No one is ever ready to throw their own corpses at anyone - you understand that.
N. SOKOLOV: No. Now this is no longer obvious to me. So these people who write this, are they trying this opportunity on themselves?
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Why should we try it on ourselves? We are fed well here too, as one cartoon character said. Everything is fine, you know? Everything is great.
N. SOKOLOV: This inability to try on oneself is completely analogous and even stems from the inability to perceive historical experience. Inability to perceive history not as a source of pride, but as a historical experience. And this experience is valuable precisely because it contains mistakes and crimes, and only from them do people learn. If we remove dark places from this historical experience and leave only a source of pride, then we will stop learning from history. And these people who say that they are still ready to throw corpses at them...
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: They are not ready to throw corpses at them. They forgave those who had already been attacked.
N. SOKOLOV: If they have forgiven, if they are ready to morally forgive those who have already been pelted, then next time they will be pelted with corpses.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Here is a message from Alexey from Kazan: “We are doomed to return to Stalin when everything is bad, we want order and a strong hand. When it’s good, we want greatness and recognition.” And immediately followed by another message: “Stalin carried out selection, destroying all the waste unnecessary to society. By killing hundreds of thousands of people, Stalin gave a future to millions. Sometimes you can and should kill for the good of society,” Cyrus signed this man. Here, different poles, right?
N. SOKOLOV: That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, just in slightly different words - that modern Russian society, its mentality, its ways of solving things, how it assumes it is correct and possible to solve problems - this is largely the work of Comrade Stalin, in particular his historical doctrine.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Nikit, forgive me very much. But a person who today is a hypothesis, this is not the ultimate truth - a person who today professes exactly such a story, he says to himself what? That perhaps he was wrong about someone, perhaps. But I survived, my ancestors survived, I was born? And I seem to be a completely average ordinary person. So what happens? It turns out that they destroyed what was unnecessary, it turns out that it was precisely in the name of my beloved that all this selection was carried out. I'm exaggerating, perhaps?
N. SOKOLOV: No, you are not exaggerating at all. And this is a completely unconscious problem in our fatherland, but the problem has long been recognized by Europeans. Survivors have no right to talk about the Holocaust because they do not have the full experience of it. Only the dead could testify to this, but this is impossible.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, only the survivors saw how it all happened.
N. SOKOLOV: What did you see? This... There was a wonderful book recently, what remains of Auschwitz? All that was left of Auschwitz were 2 blurry photographs – that’s all. We have nothing more documented about this. Something remains in the memory, but not for long, we talked about this - that memory is short.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: But, again, returning to those very, as you put it, “gifts”. You will, of course, excuse me, but to some extent it turns out, for example, that the fact that neither Russia nor Ukraine undertook to try a person suspected of being a Nazi criminal is also a gift of that era?
N. SOKOLOV: Of course. And Germany took over, which is consistently carrying out its denazification. In our country, de-Stalinization was not carried out. And the current society is, of course, the result of Stalin’s selection. Another thing is, to what extent has a society of this type, which Comrade Stalin created for himself with great success, shaped this society for himself, how viable is it in the modern world? It is my deep conviction, and there are historical arguments for this, that societies of this type are ineffective and unviable. They will always lag behind. Because they absolutely kill the element of human free initiative, which is the only engine of development in the long term.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: The history of Stalin is propaganda when assessments of historical events begin to be made. I’m not interested in your opinion, I’m interested in historical facts, writes another of our listeners. Normal, right?
N. SOKOLOV: Normal. Absolutely normal, but only when you are talking about facts, I am addressing the listener, then keep in mind that for a historian it is extremely important to have an idea of the completeness of the factual base. If you take only some facts, and deliberately somehow lead some into the shadows and do not consider them, then this is falsification. At least all the facts you cited were true. The absence of certain factors in this scheme makes it falsification.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, do you understand how? Again, it turns out that when you give a specific example, it may seem to someone that the connection between these two facts, or between these two events, or between these two concepts, does not really exist, right? That is, let’s say, the connection between Stalin’s rewriting of history, which you talked about, gave examples and, let’s say, I have no reason not to trust what you said. And meanwhile, today we are struggling to get up from our knees - and, no, we’re not getting up anymore, the price of oil has already fallen. So, to some it will seem true. And someone will say, “What does one and the other have to do with it?”
N. SOKOLOV: There is certainly a connection. Because how society thinks about itself is how it acts. Now, if you uproot from Russian history - and this was done precisely with the help of Stalin’s textbook - if you uproot from the national memory all the elements and all the institutions of the rule of people... After all, in our school they only talk about Novgorod, which is presented as some kind of strange exception . And that’s only because he was big, lived a long time, and there’s no way to erase this from history. Well, there was some strange exception, democratic Novgorod. After all, this was the case everywhere. And the princes uprooted these institutions for several centuries. And the Russian people gave up these institutions not without a fight. Our modern schoolchild does not have the slightest idea about this. When he does not have this idea, Zhirinovsky can say that autocracy is natural for us. Why natural? Completely unnatural.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, you know, Andrei from St. Petersburg writes: “Our society, of course, is infected at an embryonic stage with the virus of indifference, indifference to its own history. Serious shocks can trigger the mechanism of enlightenment,” Andrey from St. Petersburg. I have the feeling, of course, that God forbid that only serious shocks trigger this mechanism, but I will ask you this question. Moreover, one more point about the fact that there must be some kind of will, perhaps? And there is no other society. I read somewhere that when, let’s say, they created the state after 1945 in Germany, you still had to somehow continue to live, nevertheless, there were practically no people who were not related to the Nazi Party , Yes? Well, there were simply no others. And somehow it was possible from these fragments, from these bricks. You can build a concentration camp out of physical bricks, or you can build a maternity hospital, right?
N. SOKOLOV: Of course. And there is no historical track or matrix at all that would oblige us to act in a certain direction. Here is one of the main lies of historical propaganda now - this is the existence of some kind of civilizations, matrices, which supposedly dictate our course of action. Nothing like this has been established by science - there are no civilizations, there are no matrices, man in history is completely free. Absolutely free, and within the framework of the circumstances in which he lives. And he can quite calmly - we are seeing this everywhere now - he can choose one path of movement, he can choose another. And the interest in history and its revision is, of course, associated with historical upheavals, and we went through this quite recently, only 20 years ago. After all, Gorbachev’s Perestroika, to a large extent its energy and will, was fueled by the publication of historical data about the crimes of the Stalinist regime.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, yes. It turns out that all this can only be launched from above. That as soon as the command was given, “So, guys, this man was a criminal, and he has many human lives on his conscience,” everyone immediately lined up and said, “Yes, this is real.” And as soon as the team was changed, we obediently...
N. SOKOLOV: No. The mechanism here is a little more complicated - it’s not about the team. It’s just that when there’s absolutely nothing to eat, like in the Soviet Union around 1988, then the public starts scratching its head and thinking, why is there nothing to eat? And he begins to realize that, after all, the system is ineffective, and not just some local excesses. Well, they mentioned oil. As long as oil is like this, well, yes. But you can somehow plug the holes. But 20 years have been wasted, the economy is ineffective.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, okay. And what does Joseph Vissarionovich have to do with it? Here we go again? He definitely has nothing to do with it, right? And you all return to the fact that those grimaces, those, let’s say, distortions that we see today are a) often welcomed by many of us, b) this is all the result of his unconstructive activities. Do you understand? After all, if it comes to that, then when the wave began, when there was the Gorbachev wave that you mentioned. Well, since it was the ultimate truth, well, you can live and die with this truth. But did society allow the truth to change?
N. SOKOLOV: Society did not allow the truth to be changed. But only the second main gift of Comrade Stalin in terms of history is the very model of Soviet historical science, which was also created by Comrade Stalin. In 1937, which is typical, the Institute of History was formed, a special department that should be alone in developing the historical concept, and everyone else should repeat after it - such a drive belt from the ideological department of the Central Committee further to all historians and universities. And this model, that there is a special department authorized to decide what is right in history, we now clearly see that it is being reproduced again. Just like in the entire civilized world, there is no historical corporation that would judge history itself. We have a government department. The head of this department, Mr. Sakharov, could afford to publish an article 2 years ago stating that the Varangians of the Russian chronicles are Baltic and from Baltic-Slavic tribes. Historians are raising their eyebrows because this text reveals that the head of the history institute has no idea how to work with sources, what historical evidence is - that is, he is not a historian at all. And there’s no one to make a sound. Because everyone is somehow built into this system, the system of institutions in which historical science now exists - they were all created during Stalin’s time and continue to function.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, it turns out that medicine is powerless in the current realities? It turns out that, indeed, as one of our listeners wrote, we need to wait for serious and bloody mechanisms that can somehow trigger a different course of events. Right?
N. SOKOLOV: Well, somehow, God admonishes the proud, there is no other mechanism. When they start to get very arrogant and say that we will show Kuzka’s mother to the whole world, then something like that is sent to these people as punishment. And admonition.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, you know what? This is already mystic.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes, there is no mysticism, I just moved on...
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: That is, flies? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
N. SOKOLOV: Yes. Religious people will say so, but since I am a completely secular historian, I am ready to demonstrate how this mechanism works without any divine intervention. When they begin to become arrogant and show everyone Kuzkin’s mother, this is where Russophobia begins in the world, which, in the normal state of national consciousness in Russia, generally speaking, does not exist in the world. But as soon as we are going to teach everyone to live correctly - in the time of Nicholas, in the era of Alexander III, it does not matter - then the world begins to look askance at us, Russophobia is formed, and then a coalition against Russia.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Behind the scenes, again, a ring of enemies.
N. SOKOLOV: Not at all behind the scenes, but completely normal...
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: An open ring of enemies.
N. SOKOLOV: Right at the ramp, a coalition hostile to Russia is lining up and telling them to reason strongly.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: That is, let’s say, the anti-Russian behavior of some states, which today’s powers that be speak about quite often, is also the result of Stalin’s criminal activities. Is this how it works out your way? Well look, I just missed one link. They left us a legacy, so to speak, we perceive it that way. And this is the same patriotic fever - it causes some kind of outright Russophobia.
N. SOKOLOV: Well, something like that, yes.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well, that is, it turns out that as soon as a ring of enemies forms around us, there are, I don’t know, economic ones, countries that do not behave very well with us in terms of economics, politics or some other things, Joseph Vissarionovich is to blame for everything again. Am I really taking the story to the point of absurdity?
N. SOKOLOV: Why so absurd? So I immediately remember recent history during the era of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, when we ourselves were clearly aware of our historical sins and crimes, there was no Russophobia in the world.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: Well... I want, firstly, to remind you that our guest today is historian Nikita Sokolov. Secondly, I want to say that, in my opinion, Yevtushenko had poems about how while this and that was happening, Stalin did not die, Stalin did not die? In fact, probably many of us still have to find and evaluate these sprouts in ourselves and squeeze out that same slave drop by drop.
N. SOKOLOV: Squeezing out - I also wanted to say.
N. BOLTYANSKAYA: It seems to me that this is exactly what Nikita was talking about today. I thank our guest. Let me remind you that this is a series of programs “In the Name of Stalin” together with the publishing house “Russian Political Encyclopedia” with the support of the foundation named after the first President of Russia Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin on the air of “Echo of Moscow”, RTVi TV channel, and the program was hosted by Natella Boltyanskaya. Thank you.
Comrades!
It cannot be denied that we have made great strides in recent times both in the field of construction and in the field of management. In this regard, we talk too much about the merits of leaders, about the merits of leaders. They are credited with everything, almost all of our achievements. This is, of course, false and incorrect. It's not just the leaders. But that is not what I would like to talk about today. I would like to say a few words about the personnel, about our personnel in general and in particular about the personnel of our Red Army.
You know that we inherited from the old days a technically backward and semi-impoverished, ruined country. Devastated by four years of imperialist war, devastated again by three years of civil war, a country with a semi-literate population, with low technology, with isolated oases of industry drowning among a sea of tiny peasant farms - this is the kind of country we inherited from the past.
The task was to transfer this country from the tracks of the Middle Ages and darkness to the tracks of modern industry and mechanized agriculture. The task, as you can see, is serious and difficult. The question was: EITHER we will solve this problem in the shortest possible time and strengthen socialism in our country, OR we will not solve it, and then our country - weak technically and dark culturally - will lose its independence and turn into an object of play by the imperialist powers. Our country was then experiencing a period of severe hunger in the field of technology. There were not enough machines for the industry. There were no machines for agriculture. There were no cars for transport. There was no elementary technical base, without which the industrial transformation of the country is unthinkable. There were only certain prerequisites for creating such a base. It was necessary to create a first-class industry. It was necessary to direct this industry so that it would be able to technically reorganize not only industry, but also agriculture, but also our railway transport. And for this it was necessary to make sacrifices and introduce the most severe savings in everything, it was necessary to save on food, and on schools, and on manufacturing in order to accumulate the necessary funds to create an industry. There was no other way to overcome the hunger in the field of technology. This is what Lenin taught us, and we followed in Lenin’s footsteps in this matter. It is clear that in such a large and difficult matter one could not expect continuous and rapid success. In such a matter, success can only appear after a few years. It was therefore necessary to arm oneself with strong nerves, Bolshevik endurance and stubborn patience in order to overcome the first failures and steadily move forward towards the great goal, not allowing hesitation and uncertainty in one’s ranks. You know that we conducted this matter in exactly this way. But not all of our comrades had the nerve, patience and endurance. Among our comrades there were people who, after the first difficulties, began to call for a retreat. They say that “whoever remembers the old, look out.” This is of course true. But a person has a memory, and you involuntarily remember the past when summing up the results of our work. So, we had comrades who were afraid of difficulties and began to call on the party to retreat. They said: “What do we need your industrialization and collectivization, cars, ferrous metallurgy, tractors, combines, cars? It would be better if they gave us more manufacturing, they would better buy more raw materials for the production of consumer goods and they would give the population more of all those little things that make people’s lives beautiful. Creating an industry in our backwardness, and even a first-class industry, is a dangerous dream.” Of course, we could use 3 billion rubles of currency, obtained through the most severe economy and spent on creating our industry, to import raw materials and strengthen the production of consumer goods. This is also a kind of “plan”. But with such a “plan” we would have no metallurgy, no mechanical engineering, no tractors and cars, no aviation and tanks. We would find ourselves unarmed in the face of external enemies. We would undermine the foundations of socialism in our country. We would be captured by the bourgeoisie, internal and external. Obviously, it was necessary to choose between two plans: between the retreat plan, which led and could not but lead to the defeat of socialism, and the offensive plan, which led and, as you know, has already led to the victory of socialism in our country. We chose a plan of attack and went forward along the Leninist path, brushing aside these comrades as people who saw something just under their noses, but turned a blind eye to the immediate future of our country, to the future of socialism in our country. But these comrades did not always limit themselves to criticism and passive resistance. They threatened us with raising an uprising in the party against the Central Committee. Moreover, they threatened some of us with bullets. Apparently, they hoped to intimidate us and force us to deviate from the Leninist path. These people obviously forgot that we Bolsheviks are a special breed of people. They forgot that the Bolsheviks cannot be intimidated either by difficulties or threats. They forgot that we were forged by the great Lenin, our leader, our teacher, our father, who did not know and did not recognize fear in the struggle. They forgot that the more the enemies rage and the more the opponents within the party fall into hysterics, the more the Bolsheviks become excited for a new struggle and the more rapidly they move forward. It is clear that we did not even think of turning away from Lenin’s path. Moreover, having strengthened ourselves on this path, we moved forward even more rapidly, sweeping away any and all obstacles from the road. True, we had to crush the sides of some of these comrades along the way. But there's nothing you can do about it. I must admit that I also had a hand in this matter. Yes, comrades, we have confidently and rapidly followed the path of industrialization and collectivization of our country. And now this path can be considered already passed. Now everyone recognizes that we have achieved enormous success along this path. Now everyone recognizes that we already have a powerful and first-class industry, powerful and mechanized agriculture, expanding and expanding transport, an organized and well-equipped Red Army. This means that we have already largely overcome the period of famine in the field of technology. But having overcome the period of hunger in the field of technology, we have entered a new period, a period, I would say, of hunger in the field of people, in the field of personnel, in the field of workers who know how to ride technology and move it forward. The fact is that we have factories, factories, collective farms, state farms, an army, we have the equipment for all this work, but there are not enough people with sufficient experience necessary to squeeze out of the technology the maximum that can be squeezed out of it . We used to say that “technique is everything.” This slogan has helped us in that we have eliminated the hunger in the field of technology and created the broadest technical base in all sectors of activity to equip our people with first-class technology. This is very good. But this is far and away not enough. To set technology in motion and use it to its fullest, we need people who have mastered the technology, we need personnel capable of mastering and using this technology according to all the rules of art. Technology without people who have mastered technology is dead. Technology, led by people who have mastered technology, can and should produce miracles. If our first-class plants and factories, our collective and state farms, and our Red Army had a sufficient number of personnel capable of mastering this technology, our country would receive three and four times more effect than it now has. That is why the emphasis must now be placed on people, on personnel, on workers who have mastered technology. That is why the old slogan “technology decides everything,” which is a reflection of a period that has already passed when we had a hunger in the field of technology, must now be replaced by a new slogan, the slogan that “personnel decide everything.” This is the main thing now. Can we say that our people have understood and fully realized the great significance of this new slogan? I wouldn't say that. Otherwise, we would not have that ugly attitude towards people, towards personnel, towards workers, which we often observe in our practice. The slogan “personnel decides everything” requires that our leaders show the most caring attitude towards our employees, “small” and “big”, in whatever field they work, raise them with care, help them when they need support, encourage when they showed their first successes, they were pushed forward, etc. Meanwhile, in fact, in a number of cases we have evidence of a soulless, bureaucratic and downright ugly attitude towards employees. This, in fact, explains that instead of studying people and only after studying placing them in positions, people are often thrown around like pawns. We have learned to value cars and report on how much equipment we have in factories. But I don’t know of a single case where they would report with the same eagerness how many people we raised over such and such a period and how we helped people to grow and harden in work. What explains this? This is explained by the fact that we have not yet learned to value people, value workers, value personnel. I remember an incident in Siberia, where I was in exile at one time. It was in the spring, during the flood. About thirty people went to the river to catch timber, carried away by the raging huge river. By evening they returned to the village, but without one comrade. When asked where the thirtieth was, they indifferently replied that the thirtieth “stayed there.” To my question: “How come, did you stay?” - they answered with the same indifference: “What else is there to ask, he drowned, therefore.” And then one of them began to hurry somewhere, declaring that “we should go and water the mare.” To my reproach that they feel sorry for cattle more than people, one of them replied, with the general approval of the others: “Why should we feel sorry for them, people? We can always make people, but a mare... try making a mare ". Here's a touch, perhaps insignificant, but very characteristic. It seems to me that the indifferent attitude of some of our leaders towards people, towards personnel and the inability to value people is a relic of that strange attitude of people towards people, which was reflected in the episode just told in distant Siberia. So, comrades, if we want to successfully overcome the famine in the field of people and ensure that our country has a sufficient number of personnel capable of moving technology forward and putting it into operation, we must first of all learn to value people, value personnel, value everyone an employee who can benefit our common cause. We must finally understand that of all the valuable capital available in the world, the most valuable and most decisive capital is people, personnel. We must understand that under our current conditions, “personnel decide everything.” We will have good and numerous personnel in industry, agriculture, transport, and the army, our country will be invincible. If we don’t have such personnel, we will limp on both legs. Concluding my speech, allow me to propose a toast to the health and success of our academic graduates from the Red Army! I wish them success in organizing and leading the defense of our country! Comrades! You graduated from high school and received your first training there. But school is only a preparatory stage. Real training of personnel comes from live work, outside of school, from struggling with difficulties, from overcoming difficulties. Remember, comrades, that only those cadres are good who are not afraid of difficulties, who do not hide from difficulties, but, on the contrary, go towards difficulties in order to overcome and eliminate them. Only in the fight against difficulties are real cadres forged. And if our army has enough real, seasoned personnel, it will be invincible. To your health, comrades!
Reading the declassified materials of the NKVD and the KGB, you begin to understand and evaluate differently - those people who made an uneducated Russia into a Superpower with nuclear weapons.
Myth: Stalin allegedly deliberately put talented scientists behind bars, where they created the latest weapons in specially created “sharashkas”.
"Dirty" and vile myth. If only because it was NOT Stalin who put them behind bars, but their own colleagues. No matter the biography of any major scientist or scientist who visited the Gulag, his case is usually based on the denunciation and slander of his colleagues. Moreover, for the most part, for such vile and selfish motives as personal and scientific envy of the talents of the one in respect of whom the slanderous denunciation was written.
As the outstanding Soviet test pilot M.M. later recalled. Gromov, “the arrests occurred because aircraft designers wrote denunciations against each other, each praised his plane and sank the other.”
But this happened not only with aircraft designers, but was simply a general phenomenon, especially in various circles of the scientific and creative intelligentsia.
Stalin's personal security officer A. Rybin later recalled:
“Reflecting in the intelligence department on the investigative cases of those repressed in the thirties, we came to the sad conclusion that millions of people participated in the creation of these ill-fated cases. Psychosis literally gripped everyone. Almost everyone was zealous in searching for the enemies of the people. People themselves drowned each other with denunciations about enemy intrigues or accomplices of various intelligence services.”
Take, for example, the biography of our outstanding creator of space rockets, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. After all, he was imprisoned because of a denunciation. Moreover. It is well known who wrote this denunciation. This is the chief engineer of the Jet Research Institute (RNII), Georgy Erikhovich Langemak, a protégé of Tukhachevsky himself.
Having been thrown into jail soon after his patron, Langemak, in order to save his own skin, began to write denunciations against his colleagues. One of the first denunciations concerned Korolev. The same denunciation against Sergei Pavlovich was written by the former head of the RNII, Ivan Terentyevich Kleimenov (also a protege of Tukhachevsky), with whom Korolev did not get along back in the early 30s, when he was his deputy.
It should be borne in mind here that Kleimenov and Langemak actively supported Tukhachevsky’s crazy idea of developing so-called gas-dynamic guns, for which enormous financial and material resources were spent. As a result, they left the Red Army without artillery. But they desperately hindered the creation in the future of the legendary “Katyushas”, which the outstanding Russian scientist Ivan Platonovich Grave (1874-1960) invented before the revolution, but received a patent only in November 1926. Despite all the efforts of I.P. Grave, until the end of the 30s. he could not get the question of creating Katyushas off the ground.
Korolev’s future colleague in astronautics, V.P., also contributed to the denigration of Korolev before the authorities. Glushko. At that time, three denunciations were more than serious grounds for arrest. It cannot be said that Korolev did not know by whose mercy he ended up behind bars. Knew. And he directly wrote about this to the USSR Prosecutor A.Ya. Vyshinsky: “I was vilely slandered by the director of the institute Kleimenov, his deputy Langemak and engineer Glushko...”(from Korolev’s letter dated September 15, 1939).
Of course, even such an example does not mean that everyone went to jail only through denunciations. Thus, the outstanding aircraft designer A.N. Tupolev ended up in jail in a very prosaic way. He was accused of causing serious economic damage to Soviet industry. The fact is that in 1936 he was sent to the USA with the task of selecting the most efficient and economical designs of civil aircraft for organizing their production in the USSR on a licensed basis. Upon arrival in the USA, he was so carried away by buying up all sorts of junk that he recommended concluding an agreement on the supply of technical documentation to the USSR for selected aircraft designs in inches.
For information: already at that time, the technical documentation for one aircraft exceeded 100 thousand sheets of various drawings, and depending on the type of aircraft, it could be up to 250-300 or more thousand sheets.
As is known, the Soviet Union used the metric system. That is, all drawings must be in millimeters. And thanks to Tupolev, the money was almost wasted. Not only was all the documentation in inches, it was also in English. Worse than that. All this documentation still had to be translated not only into Russian, but also into millimeters. And this, I must say, is a hell of a job, especially when we are talking about hundreds of thousands of sheets of technical documentation. Not to mention the fact that it costs a lot of money. This is what the respected aircraft designer was imprisoned for in the first place, about which, by the way, he preferred to remain silent until the end of his life, but to make jokes about Lubyanka.
Of course, it was not only in this way that scientists, specialists and designers ended up behind bars. And in those years there was a problem of combating espionage. State security agencies have repeatedly identified all sorts of leaks of secret and top secret information abroad. And almost any such check ended in arrests.
Here is the most typical case of that time. At the very beginning of 1938, the German military magazine “DEUTSCHE WEHR” (“German Weapons”) published a series of articles about the situation of Soviet military aviation. However, to say “published” means to say nothing. The author of the articles, Luftwaffe pilot Major L. Schettel, gave a complete breakdown of the production of Soviet military factories that served the aviation industry. Even now, few people know that at that time there were 74 aircraft factories in the USSR: 28 aircraft factories, 14 engine factories and 32 for the production of auxiliary instruments for aircraft.
Shettel gave brief characteristics of the main plants:
No. 1 "Dux", in Moscow, produces 30-35 aircraft (fighter and reconnaissance) per month;
No. 22 - in Fili, near Moscow, produces heavy four-engine bombers TB-3 and TB-3 bis in the amount of 150-180 per month;
No. 21, in Gorky, produces 5 fighters per day;
No. 31, in Taganrog - up to 1000 aircraft per year;
No. 46, in Rybinsk, and plant No. 29 in Zaporozhye are engaged in the construction of engines under Bristol and Hispano 12-V licenses.
Shettel further pointed out in his articles that the construction of aircraft was facilitated by a system of “serial production”, when the plant produced the same model of aircraft. And in confirmation of the effectiveness of this conclusion, he reported that in 1929 500 aircraft were produced, in 1932 - 1500, in 1934-3100, in 1936-5000, and in 1937 - 8000 aircraft.
In addition, Shettel cited a lot of other data that characterize in detail the entire system of aircraft production - from the design of aircraft to the nature of the use of machine tools at aircraft factories.
Naturally, such a publication did not go unnoticed by either the state security agencies, or even more so by Stalin. A sharp showdown began in the aviation industry and with designers. After all, such a publication testified to the extremely depressing state of affairs with regard to ensuring secrecy in one of the most important defense branches of science and production. Many famous designers ended up behind bars. And they would have been there for a long time if not for Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria.
Fortunately, if not all, then very many scientists and specialists who fell under criminal prosecution in different ways, as soon as he headed the Lubyanka, the outstanding ace not only of intelligence and counterintelligence, but also of Soviet industry and science, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, solved the most difficult problem in a very original way and with the benefit of everyone task.
Realizing that the rehabilitation of such prisoners as scientists and technical specialists, especially those convicted in court and already serving a sentence, is a protracted matter and requires specific efforts from the Lubyanka, Beria, in parallel with a thorough check of the cases against them, initiated the creation of a Special Technical Bureau under the NKVD of the USSR in order to use them knowledge for its intended purpose, and not for hard physical work, for which they were not adapted.
As a result, on January 10, 1939, that is, just 46 days after the official confirmation in the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, signed by L.P. Beria and classified top secret, order No. 0021 appeared with the following content:
“Order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 0021 on the organization of the Special Technical Bureau on January 10, 1939. Top secret:
1. Create a Special Technical Bureau under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR to employ specialists with special technical knowledge.
2. Approve the “Regulations on the Special Technical Bureau”.
3. Approve the structure and staff of the Special Technical Bureau.
4. Leave plant No. 82 at the Special Technical Bureau as an experimental and auxiliary base.
5. To the Head of the Administration, Commissar of State Security 3rd Rank Comrade. Sumbatov, within a month, provide the Special Bureau with the necessary office space, and also allocate 6 M-1 passenger cars for the Special Bureau.
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria.”
The order was accompanied by the “Regulations on the Special Technical Bureau under the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR” with the following content:
1. In order to use prisoners who have special technical knowledge and experience, a Special Technical Bureau is organized under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.
2. The task of the Special Technical Bureau is to organize the design and introduction into production of new weapons for the army and navy.
3. The Bureau includes the following groups by specialty:
a) group of aircraft manufacturing and aircraft propellers;
b) a group of aircraft engines and diesel engines;
c) naval shipbuilding group;
d) group of gunpowders;
e) a group of artillery, shells and fuses;
f) group of armor steels;
g) group of chemical warfare agents and anti-chemical protection;
h) a group for the introduction of the AN-1 aviation diesel engine into the series (at plant No. 82).
As necessary, other groups can be created either by dividing existing groups or by organizing groups in specialties not provided for above.
4. A special technical bureau is headed by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
5. Specialty groups are headed by assistants to the head of the Special Bureau. The responsibilities of the assistant manager include: organizing a workplace for the group; material and everyday services for those working in the group; organizing technical consultations for group workers and preparing for the production of prototypes and prototypes.
6. Thematic plans of the Special Technical Bureau are submitted for approval to the Defense Committee.
7. Thematic plans of the Special Technical Bureau are drawn up both on the basis of proposals from prisoners and on applications.
8. Manufactured technical projects are submitted for approval by the Defense Committee to obtain permission to manufacture prototypes. The transfer of tested samples into mass production is carried out after approval of these samples by the Defense Committee.
9. A special technical bureau attracts civilian specialists, primarily from among young specialists, to work in groups.
10. To review the work plans of groups and technical projects, a permanent meeting is created under the head of the Special Technical Bureau consisting of: the head of the bureau (chairman), his deputies and the secretary of the bureau with the participation of the head of the group.”
Understanding full well that the specialists gathered under the auspices of the Special Technical Bureau were most eager to resolve the issue of their release, a little later - on July 4, 1939 - Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria turned to I.V. Stalin with a special letter - a proposal for organizing the work of convicted specialists and resolving legal issues, which stated:
“The Special Technical Bureau, organized in 1939 under the NKVD of the USSR, currently consists of 7 main production groups:
1) aircraft manufacturing,
2) aircraft diesel production,
3) shipbuilding,
4) artillery,
5) gunpowder,
6) toxic substances,
7) armor steels.
316 specialists who were arrested by the NKVD in 1937-1938 work in these groups. for participation in anti-Soviet, sabotage, espionage, sabotage and other counter-revolutionary organizations. The investigation into the cases of these arrestees was suspended back in 1938 and they are being held in custody as pretrial detainees without sentences.
It is inappropriate to resume the investigation in these cases and transfer them to court in the usual manner, since, firstly, this will distract the arrested specialists for a long time from work on the design of the most important facilities and will actually disrupt the work of the Special Technical Bureau, and, secondly, the investigation will not give essentially positive results due to the fact that the arrested persons, having been in mutual communication for a long time during work, agreed among themselves on the nature of the testimony they gave during the preliminary investigation. Meanwhile, the guilt of the arrested was confirmed during the preliminary investigation by the personal confessions of the arrested, the testimony of accomplices (many of whom have already been convicted) and witnesses.
Based on this, the NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary:
1) the arrested specialists, numbering 316 people, used at work in the OTB of the NKVD of the USSR, without resuming the investigation, to be brought to trial by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR;
2) depending on the severity of the crime committed, those arrested are divided into three categories: those subject to conviction for terms of up to 10 years, up to 15 years and up to 20 years;
4) in order to encourage the work of arrested specialists in the OTB, to secure them in this work on the design of the most important defense facilities, grant the NKVD of the USSR the right to submit a petition to the Presidium of the Armed Forces of the USSR to apply to convicted specialists who have proven themselves to work in the OTB as full parole (that is, parole), and reducing the terms of serving the sentence.”
Within the framework of the legislation in force at that time, Beria’s proposal was more than humane and, what is especially important, legally very well justified and legal.
Of course, for all these people this decision was not so easy. But still, it was thousands, or even tens of thousands of times better than cutting down a coal somewhere in a northern mine with a pick in your hands or felling a forest with an ax in your hands.
But Beria was Beria. In agreement with Stalin, already in the summer of 1940, scientists, designers and specialists began to be amnestied at the request of the NKVD of the USSR, signed personally by Beria. Tupolev, Petlyakov, Myasishchev and 18 other people were released. By the way, already in January 1941 Petlyakov was awarded the Stalin Prize.
As for Korolev, in one of the writings about him there was the following ending to the description of his ordeals behind bars: “Something else saved him. Lavrentiy Beria became the head of the NKVD, who came up with the brilliant idea of creating “sharashki”, prison design bureaus.
Specialist prisoners were supposed to work in them. Korolev found himself in such a “sharashka”, and this was preceded by the following indication of events: “No one answered him to this letter.” This meant his letter of September 15, 1939, mentioned above. However, this is not the case. His letter was noticed and they paid very serious attention to it, because at the very end of that letter he wrote: “... I want to continue working on missile aircraft for the defense of the USSR.”
And they paid attention to this letter only because L.P. Beria, in agreement with Stalin, introduced a simple, but precisely for this reason, ingenious order to suppress abuses in the camps, the essence of which is as follows. Usually, letters from prisoners were handed over unsealed to the camp authorities and checked by the camp censor. But letters addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General, the “All-Union Elder” Kalinin, members of the Politburo and especially Stalin himself had to be sealed, and the camp authorities were forbidden to open them under pain of serious criminal punishment.
And many prisoners took advantage of this order.
There was a forced design bureau in Moscow, on the corner of Radio Street and Saltykovskaya Embankment. The designers worked behind bars, but slept in clean beds, ate in a normal canteen, and the food was enhanced even during the war years.
PS. Stalin's legacy.
After Stalin's death, his relatives were given as an inheritance:
6 - salaries lying in Stalin’s desk, a new jacket, felt boots, a smoking pipe, boots, a new overcoat.
Stalin was quite modest in terms of financial requests. His salary was almost 3 times less than the national average. By the mid-30s, it was doubled, which is comparable to the national average of that time. By the end of the thirties, Stalin’s salary increased by almost 1.5 times and amounted to 1,200 rubles. This was practically the highest salary in the country. For comparison, the average wage of a worker at the depot was 750 rubles.
“It’s important to go in the right direction, and when you fall, it doesn’t matter.”
“I cannot join the party because some of its actions in the past seem wrong to me, and I don’t know if I will have new doubts in the future.” (1948)
“I don’t believe in any dogmas, I don’t like official churches (especially those that are strongly fused with the state or are distinguished mainly by ritualism or fanaticism and intolerance). At the same time, I cannot imagine the Universe and human life without some kind of beginning that comprehends them, without a source of spiritual “warmth” that lies outside of matter and its laws. Probably, such a feeling can be called religious.”
“When I remember some of the people with whom life has brought me into contact, it begins to seem to me that this unfortunate, muzzled, corrupted and drunken people, who are now not even people in the literal sense of the word, are still not completely lost, not completely dead. »
“We inherited from Stalinism a national-constitutional structure that bears the stamp of imperial thinking and the imperial policy of “divide and rule.” The victims of this legacy are the small union republics and small national formations... They have been subjected to national oppression for decades. Now these problems have dramatically spilled to the surface. But large nations also became victims of this legacy, including the Russian people, on whose shoulders fell the main burden of imperial ambitions and the consequences of adventurism and dogmatism in foreign and domestic policy.”
“Our society is infected with apathy, hypocrisy, petty-bourgeois egoism, and hidden cruelty. The majority of representatives of its upper stratum - the party-state administrative apparatus, the highest prosperous layers of the intelligentsia - tenaciously cling to their overt and secret privileges and are deeply indifferent to violations of human rights, to the interests, to the security and future of humanity. Others, being concerned deep down in their souls, cannot allow themselves any “free thinking” and are doomed to a painful discord with themselves... For the spiritual healing of the country, it is necessary to eliminate the conditions that push people into hypocrisy and opportunism, creating in them a feeling of powerlessness, dissatisfaction and disappointments. In the country, in the context of an impending economic catastrophe and a tragic aggravation of interethnic relations, powerful, dangerous processes are taking place, one of the manifestations of which is a general crisis of people’s confidence in the country’s leadership. If we go with the flow, lulling ourselves into the hope of gradual changes for the better, the growing tension can explode our society with the most tragic consequences.”
“The only true guarantee of the preservation of human values in the chaos of uncontrollable changes and tragic upheavals is a person’s freedom of belief, his moral aspiration for good.”
“Strong and conflicting feelings engulf everyone who thinks about the future of the world in 50 years - about the future in which our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live... I believe that humanity will find a reasonable solution to the difficult task of achieving grandiose, necessary and inevitable progress with preserving the human in man and the natural in nature.”
Dear people's deputies!
I must explain why I voted against the approval of the final document of the Congress. This document contains many correct and very important provisions, many fundamentally new, progressive ideas. But I believe that the Congress did not solve the key political task facing it, embodied in the slogan: “All power to the Soviets!” The Congress even refused to discuss the “Decree on Power”.
Until this political challenge is resolved, it is virtually impossible to effectively address the full range of pressing economic, social, national and environmental problems.
The Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR elected the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the very first day without broad political discussion and even symbolic alternativeness. In my opinion, the Congress made a serious mistake by significantly reducing its ability to influence the formation of the country's policy, thereby doing a disservice to the elected Chairman.
According to the current Constitution, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR has absolute, practically unlimited personal power. The concentration of such power in the hands of one person is extremely dangerous, even if this person is the initiator of perestroika. In particular, behind-the-scenes pressure is possible. What if someday it will be someone else?
The construction of the state house started from the roof, which is clearly not the best course of action. The same thing happened during the elections of the Supreme Council. For most delegations, there was simply an appointment, and then formal approval by the Congress of people, many of whom were not ready for legislative activity. Members of the Supreme Council must leave their previous jobs, “as a rule” - a deliberately vague formulation, in which “wedding generals” end up in the Supreme Council. Such a Supreme Council will be - as one may fear - simply a screen for the Real power of the Chairman of the Supreme Council and the party-state apparatus.
In the country, in the context of an impending economic catastrophe and a tragic aggravation of interethnic relations, powerful and dangerous processes are taking place, one of the manifestations of which is a general crisis of people’s confidence in the country’s leadership. If we go with the flow, lulling ourselves with the hope of gradual changes for the better in the distant future, the growing tension can explode our society with the most tragic consequences.
Comrade deputies, it’s on you now - right now! - bears a huge historical responsibility. Political decisions are needed, without which it is impossible to strengthen the power of local Soviet bodies and solve economic, social, environmental, and national problems. If the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR cannot take power into its own hands here, then there is not the slightest hope that I can? take Soviets in republics, regions, districts, villages. But without strong local councils, land reform and, in general, any effective agricultural policy that differs from senseless resuscitation injections to unprofitable collective farms are impossible. Without a strong Congress and strong, independent Councils, it is impossible to overcome the dictates of departments, develop and implement laws on enterprises, and fight environmental madness. The congress is called upon to defend the democratic principles of democracy and thereby the irreversibility of perestroika and the harmonious development of the country. I again appeal to the Congress to adopt the “Decree on Power”.
Decree on power
Based on the principles of democracy, the Congress of People's Deputies declares:
1. Article 6 of the USSR Constitution is repealed.
2. The adoption of Laws of the USSR is the exclusive right of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. On the territory of the Union Republic, the Laws of the USSR acquire legal force after approval by the highest legislative body of the Union Republic.
3. The Supreme Council is the working body of the Congress.
4. Commissions and Committees for the preparation of laws on the state budget, other laws and for constant monitoring of the activities of government bodies over the economic, social and environmental situation in the country are created by the Congress and the Supreme Council on a parity basis and are accountable to the Congress.
5. Election and recall of senior officials of the USSR, namely:
1) Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR,
2) Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR,
3) Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR,
4) Chairman and members of the Constitutional Oversight Committee,
5) Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR,
6) Prosecutor General of the USSR,
7) Supreme Arbiter of the USSR,
8) Chairman of the Central Bank,
1) Chairman of the KGB of the USSR,
2) Chairman of the State Committee on Television and Radio Broadcasting,
3) The editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Izvestia” - the exclusive right of the Congress.
The officials named above are accountable to the Congress and independent of the decisions of the CPSU.
6. Candidates for the post of Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR are proposed by the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and, alternatively, by people's deputies. The right to propose candidates for the remaining named posts belongs to people's deputies.
7. The functions of the KGB are limited to the tasks of protecting the international security of the USSR.
Note. In the future, it is necessary to provide for direct nationwide elections of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and his Deputy on an alternative basis.
I ask the deputies to carefully study the text of the Decree and put it to a vote at an emergency meeting of the Congress. I ask that an editorial commission be created from people who share the main idea of the Decree. I appeal to the citizens of the USSR with a request to support the Decree individually and collectively, just as they did when trying to discredit me and divert attention from the issue of responsibility for the Afghan war.
I would like to object to those who frighten us with the impossibility of discussing laws with two thousand people. Commissions and Committees will prepare formulations, discuss them in the first and second readings at meetings of the Supreme Council, and all transcripts will be available to the Congress. If necessary, the discussion will continue at the Congress. But what is really unacceptable is if we, the deputies, having a mandate from the people to power, transfer our rights and responsibilities to our one-fifth, and in fact to the party-state apparatus and the Chairman of the Supreme Council.
I continue. There has long been no danger of a military attack on the USSR. We have the largest army in the world, larger than the US and China combined. I propose to create a commission to prepare a decision on reducing the length of service in the army (approximately by half for privates and non-commissioned officers, with a corresponding reduction in all types of weapons, but with a significantly smaller reduction in the officer corps), with the prospect of a transition to a professional army. Such a solution would have enormous international significance for confidence-building and disarmament, including a complete ban on nuclear weapons, as well as enormous economic and social significance. A personal note: by the beginning of this academic year, all students who were drafted into the army a year ago must be demobilized.
National problems. We inherited from Stalinism a national-constitutional structure that bears the stamp of imperial thinking and the imperial policy of “divide and rule.” The victims of this legacy are the small Union republics and small national entities that are part of the Union republics on the principle of administrative subordination. They have been subjected to national oppression for decades. Now these problems have dramatically spilled to the surface. But no less a victim were large nations, including the Russian people, on whose shoulders fell the main burden of imperial ambitions and the consequences of adventurism and dogmatism in foreign and domestic policy. In the current acute interethnic situation, urgent measures are needed. I propose a transition to a federal (horizontal) system of national-constitutional structure. This system provides for the provision of equal political, legal and economic rights to all existing national-territorial entities, regardless of their size and current status, while maintaining current borders (over time, clarification of the boundaries of entities and the composition of the federation is possible and likely will be necessary, which and should become the most important content of the work of the Council of Nationalities) "This will be a Union of equal republics, united by a Union Treaty, with a voluntary limitation of the sovereignty of each republic to the minimum necessary limits (in matters of defense, foreign policy and some others). The difference in the size and population of the republics and the absence of external borders should not be confusing. People of different nationalities living within the same republic should legally and practically have equal political, cultural and social rights. Oversight of this should be entrusted to the Council of Nationalities. An important problem in national policy is the fate of forcibly resettled peoples. Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Meskhi Turks, Ingush and others should be given the opportunity to return to their homes. The work of the commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on the problem of the Crimean Tatars was clearly unsatisfactory.
Religious ones are related to national problems. Any infringement of freedom of conscience is unacceptable. It is completely unacceptable that the Ukrainian Catholic Church has not yet received official status.
The most important political issue is the establishment of the role of Soviet bodies and their independence. It is necessary to carry out elections of Soviet bodies at all levels in a truly democratic way. The electoral law should be amended to take into account the experience of elections of people's deputies of the USSR. The institution of district assemblies must be abolished and all candidates must be given equal access to the media.
The Congress should, in my opinion, adopt a resolution containing the principles of the rule of law. These principles include: freedom of speech and information, the possibility of judicial challenge by citizens and public organizations of the actions and decisions of all government bodies and officials in the course of independent proceedings; democratization of judicial and investigative procedures (admission of a lawyer from the beginning of the investigation, trial by jury; the investigation should be removed from the jurisdiction of the prosecutor's office: its only task is to monitor the implementation of the Law). I call for a review of the laws on rallies and demonstrations, on the use of internal troops and not to approve the Decree of April 8.
The congress cannot immediately feed the country. Cannot immediately solve national problems. Cannot immediately eliminate the budget deficit. He cannot immediately return our air, water and forests. But creating political guarantees for these problems is what he must do. This is exactly what the country expects from us! All power to the Soviets!
Today, the world's attention is turned to China. We must take a political and moral position that corresponds to the principles of internationalism and democracy; the resolution adopted by the Congress does not contain such a clear position. Participants in the peaceful democratic movement and those who carry out bloody reprisals against them are placed on the same level. A group of deputies drafted and signed an appeal calling on the Chinese government to stop the bloodshed.
The presence of the USSR Ambassador in Beijing can now be seen as implicit support for the actions of the Chinese government by the government and people of the USSR. Under these conditions, the recall of the USSR Ambassador from China is necessary! I demand the recall of the USSR Ambassador from China!