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

“All of Moscow was talking with horror about these arrests: is 1937 really starting again? has begun... "(p. 568. Emphasis added. - VC.)

So, an ominous roll call is proposed: 1937 - 1947 ... However, on March 26 of that same 1947, a decree was issued abolishing the death penalty in the victorious country ... And there are completely reliable documents testifying that in 1948-1949 there were no was taken out no one death sentence. True, on January 12, 1950, a decree was issued that reinstated the death penalty, apparently in connection with the then preparation for 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 you compare it with the corresponding figure of 1937-1938, when 681,692 death sentences were passed, that is, about 1000 per day(and not in a year!) - Radzinsky's assertion about the new "1937" that began in 1947 appears as a completely irresponsible invention; in the figures just juxtaposed, to use the phrase that was fashionable at the time, "quantity turns into quality." Unfortunately, this kind of inventions have been introduced into the minds of people for more than forty years, since 1956.

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

The rulers who began to instill the darkest notions about the last years of Stalin's life, you can still understand and "justify" with a great desire. They strove to appear in the eyes of people as the saviors of the country from the previous one - monstrous in its scale and ruthlessness - Stalinist-Beriev(as it was then said) of political terror, which, moreover, over time supposedly increased more and more, and if, they say, Joseph Vissarionovich had lived for at least a year or two, or if power after his death would have been seized by Lavrenty Pavlovich, this terror led would be to the very 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 - the researcher of the GULAG, V.N. “... When Stalin died, there were up to 10 million people in the camps.” In reality, on January 1, 1953, 2,468,524 prisoners were held in the Gulag. N. S. Khrushcheva indicating exact number prisoners, including at the time of the death of I. V. Stalin. Consequently, NS 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, calling the figure "10 million" capable of shaking, also tried to suggest that it was mainly about political prisoners. True, fearing, one must think, completely lying, Nikita Sergeevich, following the quoted phrase about "10 million," said: "There (that is, in the ten-millionth GULAG. - VC.), of course, there were criminals ... ", but he clearly wanted these" were "to be understood in the sense that the" criminals "constituted a modest minority of prisoners. Evidently from the research of V.N. Zemskov, at the beginning of 1953 it was 21 percent of the total 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, "meant" that these are mainly victims Stalinist-Beriev 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 a kind of irony stories... The fact is that initiator denouncing 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 Stalin's death, Lavrenty Pavlovich took the second (first - G.M. Malenkov) place in the ruling hierarchy, and also headed the new Ministry of Internal Affairs, in which two previously (since 1943) independent departments were united - state security (NKGB-MGB) and Internal Affairs (NKVD-MVD).

In our time, a number of studies (and, I must say, of various authors) have been published, in which, on the basis of indisputable facts, it is shown that it was Beria who was the most decisive and consistent supporter of the "exposure of the cult" of Stalin, for which he, in particular, had personal motives: in 1951-1952, an investigation was launched on the so-called Mingrelian (Mingrelians, or, in other words, 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" are 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 undoubtedly energetic figure presented a draft to the Presidium of the Central Committee amnesties, according to which it was subject to immediate release about half of 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 is worth pointing out right away that state amnesties are not necessarily motivated by "humane" considerations; it is a method, practiced since ancient times, to attract the sympathies of the population to the side of the authorities. And, of course, Lavrenty Pavlovich was in no way a "humanist". In addition, many people, into whose consciousness the picture of the last years of Stalin's rule, proposed in 1956, was introduced, will say, in all likelihood, that Beria in 1953 hypocritically liberated those whom he himself had 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 in the Radzinsky detective, published in 1997, when, it would seem, it was so difficult to be convinced of her 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 beneficial to turn him into a scapegoat - hence the declaration of Beria as a kind of super-executioner, who, they say, not only fulfilled, but also far exceeded Stalin's instructions in terms of political repression.

In order to more clearly understand the essence of the matter, it should be remembered 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 in 1922 was transformed into the United State Political Administration (OGPU). The NKVD was essentially not engaged 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 contain anything "frightening"; True, the name of the People's Commissar in 1923-1927, A.G. Beloborodov, now causes 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. From July 1934, G.G. Yagoda was at the head of the new NKVD, and from October 1, 1936 to December 7, 1938, N.I. Yezhov, 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 stream of repression. This is clear even from the fact that in 1937 there were 353074 death sentences on political charges, in 1938 - 328618 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 "Yezhov's people" - 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 became the head of the NKVD (and not at all for "butchery"; in 1953, there was no talk of his role in the repressions - this topic was put forward and was 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 years and a quarter after Beria took the post of People's Commissar, the single NKVD was again divided into two departments (thus Thus, the order that had existed before July 1934 was restored) - the NKVD itself, headed by Beria, and the NKGB, headed by the former first deputy of Beria, V.N.Merkulov.

True, the Patriotic War that broke out in less than five months forced the "partition" of the People's Commissariat to be suspended, but on April 14, 1943, after the victorious turning point in the Battle of Stalingrad and the forced flight of the enemy to the west from the Rzhevsk border, the NKVD was finally divided into 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 positions 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 the State Security ", and this" was done out of distrust of Beria. "

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

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

It may be objected that from April 1943 to May 1946, the State Security was headed by his former deputy (and generally "Beria's man") Merkulov; however, now the People's Commissar of the GB 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 Stalin's death, 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) rejected.

There is no need to talk about the following years (May 1946 - March 1953), when the State Security was headed by people alien or even hostile to Beria - V.S.Abakumov and, then, S.D. speech). It should also be noted that almost all the closest "people of Beria" (B.Z. activities.

The transformation of Beria (in various statements of 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 Lavrentiy Pavlovich the main executioner. Thus, the famous writer Konstantin Simonov, who in 1952-1956 was a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee itself, wrote in 1979 - moreover, referring more to volumes than to 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 practically in one way or another oversee the Ministries of State Security and Internal Affairs."

It can be assumed that Beria somehow influenced the "practice" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose head from the end of 1945 to March 1953 was his former first deputy (for the NKVD) SN 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 they were arrested on charges of a "Zionist conspiracy" who remained close to Beria after 1946 in the service in the MGB - 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 posts 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 to the time of widespread "publicity", Lieutenant General of the GB P. A. Sudoplatov (1907-1996 ), unconditionally argued that in the post-war years Beria was "removed from overseeing any matters related to state security" - noting, however only through 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 tremendous energy and organizational abilities. , - as, 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 developed in such a way that, being twice - in December 1938 and in March 1953 - we were 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 at all involved in political repression.

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 deaths of millions or at least hundreds of thousands (this, as will be shown, absolutely exorbitant hyperbole) of political accused, although they usually add that Beria fulfilled - or, rather, "exceeded" - Stalin's instructions.

Beria as the main executioner of the post-war period is repeatedly spoken of in the essay of the notorious Volkogonov, and the strangest and even curious is the fact that this author, who had previously gained access to the secret archives, at the same time quotes the letter from the chief of Stalin's security, General - Lieutenant GB N.S. Vlasik. As one of the main figures of the GB, he could not but know the true state of affairs. And he wrote that Stalin, "being in the south after the war ... (in November-December 1945. - VC.), gave instructions to remove Beria from leadership in the MGB "(or rather, in the NKVD: Beria was officially dismissed from 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 years!

The very fact that the main (or, say, the second most important) role in post-war political repression is attributed to a person who has not been involved in this "activity" since 1943, indisputably speaks of the inconsistency of many current writings about that time. For example, Radzinsky's opus "Stalin", which was already mentioned more than once, published in 1997, 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 the Ministry of Internal Affairs" were supposedly "departments of Beria" (p. 571), while Lavrenty Pavlovich had not "been in charge" of the MGB (more precisely, the NKGB) since April 1943, and 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 ruled the repressions after the war, but some other "associates" of Stalin, but is that so important? The fact is, however, that the very attribution of Beria to the main role in the post-war repressions, to which he was not involved, clearly speaks of the deliberate lack of knowledge problems in general. If there is such an unfounded idea about the leader of the repressive apparatus of the post-war years, it is quite natural to believe that the current ideas about this apparatus itself and its activities. However, before turning to this activity, it is advisable to clarify the issue of its leaders.

In the period from mid-March to early May 1946, a cardinal replacement the leadership of the State Security. Almost all of the "people of Beria" who had previously held senior positions in the NKGB-MGB, then received other appointments. Moreover, he was relieved of two of his posts - the secretary of the Central Committee and the head of the personnel department of the Central Committee (which "supervised" the GB) - GM Malenkov, who had held these posts since 1939. Often this fact is interpreted as Malenkov's "disgrace", however, if we analyze the situation as a whole, it becomes clear that it was primarily about replacing the GB leadership, and not about "persecution" of Malenkov himself. Firstly, exactly then he was promoted from candidates for members of the Politburo to full members, and the loss of the title of secretary of the Central Committee was, as it were, compensated for by the appointment of Georgy Maximilianovich as deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers (that is, Stalin; this honor was shared with him then only eight persons). Secondly, after a relatively short time, on July 1, 1948, Malenkov was again approved as the secretary of the Central Committee, albeit without "supervising" the MGB.

Instead of Malenkov, the oversight of the MGB was entrusted to the new (since March 18, 1946) secretary and head of the Central Committee's personnel department A.A. Kuznetsov, who was previously 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, served in the NKVD under the leadership of Beria until 1943, 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 of Defense (NKO) of the USSR and was directly subordinate to Stalin as the People's Commissar of Defense; Abakumov then became 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) arose, reflected in a number of documents and evidence. Meanwhile, to this day, the writings of other "historians" speak of the unchanging cooperation of Beria and Abakumov - although it has long been known that, having become Minister of Internal Affairs again in March 1953, Beria not only did not release from prison (how he released a number of his former co-workers), arrested in July 1951, Abakumov, but, on the contrary, brought new grave charges against him.

And after the arrest of Beria at the end of June 1953, Khrushchev and others, for their own selfish purposes, without any reason, enlisted Abakumov as Beria's "associates", who, as already mentioned, since December 1945 had nothing to do with the so-called "organs". But for Khrushchev and others, who turned Beria into a scapegoat, it was very profitable to attach Abakumov to him, so that it turned out that in 1946-1951 Beria was in charge of all repressions, albeit with necessary assistance Abakumov. In fact, since 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, less than three years had passed, and on January 28, 1949, Kuznetsov was removed from his post as secretary of the Central Committee, on October 27, arrested 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 strange to say the least. True, the authors of many works do not care about the problem, because they still believe that the MGB was permanently "supervised" by Beria.

Meanwhile, there is sufficient reason 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, the 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, Stalin in especially "secret" cases tried to do without documents at all, limiting himself to oral directives; finally, there are many indirect confirmations of this role of Khrushchev.

As you know, Khrushchev ruled Ukraine since January 1938. But almost twelve years later, in December 1949, Stalin unexpectedly summoned him to Moscow, and he became one of the five (Stalin, Malenkov, Ponomarenko, Suslov, Khrushchev) then secretaries of the Central Committee (and, at the same time, 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 - early 1970s on a tape recorder, he returned to this story several times.

According to him, Stalin explained the reason and meaning of his new appointment as follows: "We are doing badly in Moscow and very badly in Leningrad, where we carried out the arrests of the conspirators. The conspirators also turned out to be 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, having said 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 not doing well in Leningrad; conspiracies have been revealed. It is also unsuccessful 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 "Stalin appointed Abakumov to the State Security when Beria was released from this job." But, according to him, “Stalin might not have known” that “Abakumov did not pose a single question to Stalin without asking Beria ... Beria gave instructions, and then Abakumov reported without referring to Beria” (p. 224 ).

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

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

In his thorough analysis of the Abakumov case, based on the available documents, K. A. Stolyarov mentions that in December 1949 Khrushchev "took charge of personnel work in the Central Committee" - that is, he began to perform the functions that he performed in 1939 - early 1946 Malenkov, and in 1946 - early 1949 A.A. Kuznetsov. Apparently, due to the lack of accurate documentary information, KA 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 only natural to assume that the commission, in one way or another, "checked" the "work" of the curator (that is, Khrushchev).

And the place in the book of K. A. Stolyarov, in which we are talking about the trial of Abakumov in December 1954, when Khrushchev actually already belonged to all power in the country, is highly significant. 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, a man of Khrushchev, rushed the investigation and tried to force events. ... Khrushchev tried to deal with Abakumov as quickly as possible - he was shot an hour and a quarter after the verdict was announced ... Immediately after the trial over Abakumov, the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko called from Leningrad to Moscow, reported to Khrushchev with a cut phrase about the completion of the assignment and asked , can I wrap up ... During this telephone conversation, next to Rudenko was N.M. Polyakov, then the secretary of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, from whom I learned the details ... Why did Khrushchev so energetically send Abakumov to the other world? It is extremely difficult to answer these questions definitely - while in power, Khrushchev made sure that the documents that exposed him were destroyed ... Khrushchev - the path is not torn, she is waiting for her study "(ibid., P. 120, 121, 122. - Highlighted by me. - VC.).

Above, Khrushchev's assurances were cited, 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 also include my signature among others."

How so? "I have not seen the documents," but I put the signature under them, "I admit," ?! Or another contradiction: Stalin transfers Khrushchev (by his own admission) to Moscow as the secretary of the Central Committee because of the Leningrad affair, but then does not tell him a word about this affair!

This awkwardness can be explained by the fact that Nikita Sergeevich dictated the quoted phrases at the age of about (or even more) 75 years old, already finding it difficult to make ends meet, and involuntarily "let slip" something about the true state of affairs. Here is another probable "disclaimer" in Khrushchev's memoirs concerning the well-known "case of doctors": "The interrogations of the" guilty "began, - Khrushchev said. not once(Emphasis added. - VC.) ringing silt to 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). the question arises, why did Stalin repeatedly call the Minister of the State Security 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 MGB curator?

I repeat once again that the documents that would make it possible to indisputably show Khrushchev's "supervision" over the MGB in last years Stalin's lives were either destroyed or did not exist at all: Khrushchev himself testified about Stalin's desire to confine himself to oral directives to members of the Politburo (Presidium) of the Central Committee, and the order for Khrushchev to patronize the GB, quite possibly, was not recorded in any way.

The above statement was quoted according to which Khrushchev officially was in charge of "personnel work" - as Malenkov and, then, Kuznetsov. But the historian Yu. N. Zhukov assures that as early as 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 branch departments" (see book: N. S Khrushchev (1894-1971). - M., 1994, p. 149). It is not excluded that this was the case, and Khrushchev at the end of 1949 - beginning of 1953 supervised the GB 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 the State Security ...

At the well-known Plenum of the Central Committee in June 1957, which "exposed" Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich, Prosecutor General R.A. Abakumov was not subordinate to me. " At the same Plenum, Malenkov was accused of interrogating people arrested in the Leningrad case in a "special prison". Malenkov admitted that he "went to prison on the instructions of Comrade Stalin in the presence of comrades who are sitting here" (that is, other members of the Politburo of 1949). To which the remark followed:

"Khrushchev: I am sitting here too, but I didn’t go there and I don’t know who went there.

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

Malenkov at this plenum clearly feared to completely anger Khrushchev, but nevertheless, it seems, he could not resist and, as one might suppose, hinted that not to him, but to Khrushchev, since December 1949, Abakumov was "subordinate"; Moreover, the phrase: "You are completely pure with us, Comrade Khrushchev," clearly had the opposite meaning. Subsequently, for Malenkov (of course, according to his words), his son Andrei Georgievich finished speaking, who wrote:

"At the end of the forties ... Khrushchev served as secretary of the Central Committee for personnel and, by duty, supervising the activities of the repressive organs, he bore personal guilt for the deaths of A. Kuznetsov and other Leningrad leaders. - VC.) over Malenkov his own unsightly role in the "Leningrad affair" did not emerge, Khrushchev had ... to blame Malenkov for all the blame. "

Certain confirmation of Khrushchev's oversight of the MGB is the story of an eyewitness, P. Deryabin, about how, after the arrest of Abakumov, it was Khrushchev explained why this happened to the employees of the ministry and called one of the main reasons "the belated discovery of the Leningrad conspiracy" (Abakumov). At the same time, it is important to note that Deryabin, in his story, pursued the goal not to "denounce" Khrushchev, but only to convey his version of Abakumov's collapse.

It is highly indicative that after the arrest of Abakumov and many of his colleagues, the "vacated" leading posts in the MGB were taken, as the first-class historian G.V. Kostyrchenko established, a number of "Khrushchev's people" 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, Kirovogradsky - N.R. N. G. Ermolov, Odessa - A. A. Epishev. Especially significant in this respect is the figure of Yepishev, 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 the secretary of the Central Committee of Ukraine for personnel, and after Khrushchev's transfer to Moscow, having spent a short time as the 1st secretary of the Odessa regional committee, he went to a hundred, that is, he followed Khrushchev like a thread after 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 the 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). Khrushchev would hardly have been able to introduce such a number of "his people" into high posts in the MGB in 1951 if he had not been in charge of this ministry.

PA Sudoplatov testified to this: “During the last years of Stalin's rule, Khrushchev ... placed his people in influential posts. Serov, Savchenko, Ryasnoy and Epishev became. The first three worked with him in Ukraine. The fourth served under his command as the regional committee secretary in Odessa and Kharkov "(cit. cit., pp. 543-544).

It is also worth citing Khrushchev's remark at the July 1953 plenum of the Central Committee, dedicated to "exposing" Beria. In particular, NN Shatalin spoke at it, who since 1938 was in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the party and in one way or another was in charge of the MGB, having even been the 1st deputy head of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee. He, obviously, was too involved in repressive affairs, and four years later, at the June 1957 Central Committee Plenum, when Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich were "exposed", A. A. Gromyko declared that "if triplet (above named .- VC.) and their accomplices, then, probably, the shadow of Shatalin or some of his equivalent would appear again. And these people do not need to be taught how to deal with personnel. "

But in July 1953, Shatalin was not yet considered the mastermind 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 an obvious 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 for working with personnel. Beria has recently become so insolent that ... in many cases he appointed and dismissed people without the decision of the Central Committee ... I tried to murmur, expressing dissatisfaction ...

Khrushchev. There was this.

Shatalin. But Nikita Sergeevich told me that in given conditions manifestation of dissatisfaction in this form is nothing more, nothing less than waving your hands and leaving them in the air ... "(Emphasis added. - VC.)

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

Of course, the problem needs further research, 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 Stalin's leadership - who was in charge of MGB affairs and, attributing this role to Beria or Malenkov, as they say, cast a shadow over the fence.

A prominent statesman who from 1944 to 1985 played a primary role in the development of the country's economy, N.K. ... he deflected accusations primarily from himself ... It was he who is known for the massive "Moscow" (1936-1937 years. - VC.) trials "over" enemies of the people ", exposing and executions, in which he was one of the most responsible and proactive figures. It was he who was the main instigator of the mass terror in Ukraine ... he exposed, arrested and executed people louder and fiercely than anyone else ... 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 a certain supreme judge of the entire "Stalinist time" ... "

And if so, Khrushchev fully shares with Stalin responsibility for the repressions since December 1949, including for the Leningrad case and the "multi-faceted" case of the "Zionist conspiracy." Since Nikita Sergeevich was inclined to all kinds of "improvisations", for example, on August 29, 1956 - that is, six months after the sharply "anti-Stalinist" report he read at the XX Congress of the CPSU, while talking with the pro-communist guests from Canada, he unexpectedly expressed his full agreement with Stalin on one of the main charges 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. What kind of state would it be? It would be an American bridgehead in the south of our country. I was against this idea and fully agreed on this issue with Stalin "(emphasis mine. - VC.).

Subsequently, Khrushchev, in his dictated memoirs, asserted something exactly the 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 to be the assistant to the director of the plant, AF 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. create a union Jewish republic in Crimea ... "

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

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

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

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

The version about the main (apart from 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 was expressed here with such certainty for the first time. In particular, in the mass consciousness there is still (and is expressed in a whole number of current works) the idea that Beria's actions (albeit "secret" ones) were of decisive importance in these repressions; but we should not forget that this version was put forward by it was Khrushchev, and in this regard, it is appropriate to recall the well-known trick - the loud cry of "Stop the thief!"

One cannot fail to mention one more significant fact. In his very lengthy memoirs, Khrushchev tells in detail about his activities before December 1949 and after March 1953, and, telling about this period, he also describes in detail the actions of a number of persons, but almost does not mention his own, appearing rather as " the contemplator "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 has important meaning not at all because it gives 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 in scale and cruelty of the post-war repressive policy of Stalin and allegedly "helped" him (and even surpassed him in cruelty) Beria, extremely exaggerated the political terror of that time, arguing, for example, that by the time of Stalin's death there were 10 million prisoners - moreover, mostly political. In reality, as already mentioned, there were 20 times less of them, and those of them who were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment - 45 times less! In a highly 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 also in the late 1930s, or during the war, or immediately after its end (more on this below).

Therefore, the version according to which from the end of 1949 until Stalin's death the "work" of the MGB was directed by Khrushchev, does not mean at all that with his participation it was repressed (on political charges) great amount people; after all, 10 million prisoners (mostly political) are his, Khrushchev's, fiction, designed to show what immense 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 the role in the repressive apparatus that he without any reason attributed (for these years) to Beria, does not turn him into a "super-executioner" like Khrushchev himself portrayed Beria.

But the reasons for this are not at all in the personal qualities of Khrushchev, but in the change in the "political climate" itself, which took place in the post-war years. In 1946, 123,294 people were convicted on political charges, in 1947 the number of political sentences decreased by more than one and a half times (78,810), and in 1952 (compared to 1946) by more than four times (28,800).

Meanwhile, to this day, many works in one way or another inspire readers that Stalin in his last years became more and more ferocious. It should be said right away that the reasons for the reduction of political repression in oats are not 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, ultimately - in the course of history itself. Attempts to explain this move by these or those "changes" in the individual consciousness and behavior of Stalin are all the same personality cult in its "negative" version.

Since this cult of Stalin "inside out" still gravitates over the consciousness of people, the post-war period appears in today's writings as almost the "apogee" of political repression.

In this regard, I will turn to a recent (1997) extensive article entitled "GULAG: State within a State", devoted mainly to the post-war period and belonging to the pen of a professional historian - candidate historical sciences G.M. Ivanova. The fact that she refers as a supposedly reliable "source" to the very popular works of Anton Antonov-Ovseenko ten years ago, the son of a famous revolutionary figure, who, incidentally, played a significant role in the repressions of the 1920s and 1930s, is embarrassing. and then shot; his son ended up in the GULAG as a ChSIR ("a member of the family of a traitor to the motherland").

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

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

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

These figures are the fruit of unbridled imagination. According to completely reliable new estimates, of the population of the beginning of 1929, which amounted to 154.7 million people, by 1934, 18.4 million had died, that is, 11.9%. 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: from the 137.8 million population of the beginning of 1923 to the beginning of 1928, 10.7 million died, 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 it were not for the "collectivization" repression and severe famine - 7.8% of 154.7 million (population at the beginning of 1929), that is, 12 million people, and, consequently, the "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 "killed" at this 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 there is 6.1% - share, by 1.7% lesser than in the "peaceful" years 1923-1928! This decrease was obviously due to the very significant growth and improvement of medical care, health improvement and education of the population of the USSR in the second half of the 1930s. The "observer" who was hardly inclined to "idealize" the situation in the USSR, the German general Guderian, wrote on September 14, 1941, when his tank army invaded the Sumy region after an almost three-month campaign across the country: "I spent the night ... in the building schools in Lokhvits ... The school was in a solid building and was well equipped, like all schools in Soviet Russia which were almost everywhere in good condition. For schools, hospitals, orphanages and sports grounds a lot has been done in Russia. 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 therefore, Antonov-Ovseenko, having named the figure of 20 million, exaggerated almost 30 times!

It seems clear from this that it makes no sense to rely on the works of Antonov-Ovseenko as any reliable "source". However, oddly enough, the professional historian G. M. Ivanova finds it possible to refer to the "information" of Antonov-Ovseenko. He argued, for example, that the "enemies of the people" who were 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(emphasis added by Antonov himself. - VC.) months "(ibid., p. 103). Quoting this" testimony ", G. M. Ivanova draws the following conclusion from it:

“Apparently, it is this circumstance that can primarily explain the high turnover of camp personnel. For example, in 1947, the Gulag received 1,490,959 newly convicted, 1012,967 prisoners dropped out of 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 a monstrous one, capable of crushing the soul, especially if one considers that in the same article, recognizing the fact that there were prisoners not only in the USSR, but also "in each 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 in three months turned into corpses ...

So, according to Ivanova, about million prisoners for a year ... The blatant absurdity of this "picture" is irrefutably revealed in the fact that, according to completely reliable estimates, by 1948 there were 121 million 141 thousand people over 14 years old in the USSR, and five years later, by the beginning of 1953 - th, there were 115 million 33 thousand of them, that is, over these five years 6 million 108 thousand people died in the country (not counting child deaths), but, according to Ivanova, about 5 million of them died not by their own 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, five times a large 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 (about which in more detail below), not 1,012,967 prisoners died, but 35,668 - almost 30 times (!) Less. People "dropped out" - which is quite natural - after the expiration of their term of imprisonment. In many current writings it is argued that for the post-war period, an almost "eternal" term of imprisonment - 25 years - was typical. But here is the declassified information about prisoners related to 1951: only 4.8 percent of prisoners had sentences of more than 20 years, and 81.9 percent of prisoners had terms from 1 to 10 years. Incidentally, 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 "left" in 1947 from the Gulag.

True, in 1948, due to the general aggravation of the political situation (see below), 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 "repeats"... But the number of these people is inclined to greatly exaggerate: we are talking about almost millions ... Meanwhile, according to exact information, the number of political prisoners by 1949 increased, in comparison with the beginning of 1948, by only 4540 people.

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

Unfortunately, the already cited and many other provisions of this article do not stand up to the 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 "legend" she cited from the works of Antonov-Ovseenko ... And here is a number of groundless provisions of her article (which is typical for many other current authors) ...

1) Reporting that 1,490,959 people were convicted in 1947, G.M. Ivanova clearly seeks to suggest that this is about political accused (for example, in her words, about "dissidents and free-thinkers"). In fact, as is obvious from the declassified documents of the MGB five years ago (and this department kept the strictest records), 78,810 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 in general is explained by the fact that in 1947 the "Law on Strengthening Responsibility for Property Crimes" was adopted - the law is undoubtedly very cruel: even for minor embezzlement of state, public and personal property, imprisonment - often very long - in camps was envisaged 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 besides, undermined elementary moral norms in their minds, gave rise to an extremely wide wave of all kinds of embezzlement, and the state sought to suppress this wave. it is true - which cannot be denied - often by truly merciless measures. And, for example, in January 1951 there were 1,466,492 people in places of confinement convicted of all kinds of "property" (and not at all political!) Crimes.

It is impossible not to notice that Ivanova, clearly contradicting her own - purely tendentious - general posing the question, she nevertheless mentioned that since 1947, "the collective farmer who stole a sack of potatoes became ... almost the main the figure of the GULAG "(p. 224); that is, it was mainly not the political accused who were sent to the camps (in 1947, as it was said, only a little over five percent of the convicts), but all sorts of plunderers, it is true, often too severely punished ...

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

For those who are not familiar with crime 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 the abundance of convicted people.

2) The most absurd and, I must say 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 each 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; so, during 1946 (famine in the country reached its highest point only at its end) in the Gulag died almost twice less people than 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 policy monstrous 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 of 1946-1953. But an objective study of the real state of affairs shows that, in comparison 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, however, doing it as if through clenched teeth or even tendentiously reinterpreting the facts she reports. So, for example, she talks about the 1947 decree abolishing the death penalty, but immediately claims that this decree only "worsened" the situation: "... the abolition of the death penalty untied the hands of the criminal world" (p. 227). Further, speaking about the restoration 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 others pre-war years, not one thousand, but three hundred thousand death sentences were passed!

But the most important thing is something else. In fact, the absolute majority of post-war prisoners appear in Ivanova's article as absolutely innocent victims of "mass lawlessness", "criminal violation of human rights", etc., besides, their very number, by her definition, is "monstrous in scale "(although, as already mentioned, the number of those convicted 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 already cited fluent phrase, she says that since 1947 the "main figure of the Gulag" has been none other than a thief, but this message is essentially completely drowned out by loud general statements about "mass lawlessness", "criminal violation of rights" and etc.

Yes, embezzlement was often punished too harshly, and this is understandable: the "revolutionary" ruthlessness had not yet been eradicated. But the cruel law on embezzlement, passed in 1947, was nevertheless a law, the consequences of the violation of which were brought to the attention of the population, and therefore it is incorrect to call many hundreds of thousands of convicted robbers the victims of a "criminal violation 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 7697 (1.5 percent) received death sentences (in 1946 - early 1947 and in 1950 - 1952), 461,017 people sent in conclusion, the rest - in the link.

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 out of seven years (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 toughening of punitive policy, the spearhead of which was directed by the repressive organs primarily against those who, for various reasons, communicated or collaborated with the enemy "(p. 217. Emphasis added. - VC.).

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

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

Cooperation with the enemy of certain people in our country, which for four years fought this enemy for life and death, had a fundamentally different meaning. Therefore, to see (as Ivanova does) some uniquely inhuman "tightening of punitive policy" in the fact that in our country accomplices of the enemy were sent to prison, it is possible only from a deliberately tendentious point of view, which is essentially dictated by the desire to the greatest extent to denigrate the life of the country in those days. I repeat once again: repressions against accomplices of the enemy in the USSR were, if you like, much more "legal" than similar repressions in France, which, after all, on the whole submitted in 1940 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 use the notorious double counting(as many "native" and foreign authors do) - the account according to which what is being done in the West is, as it were, "normal", and what is happening here is unjustifiable cruelty.

As already mentioned, 490,000 people were convicted on political charges in 1946-1952, the overwhelming 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 "first of all" against those who "collaborated with the enemy") huge.

But, sadly, only "the number of national formations from among the peoples of the USSR who fought on the side of the Nazi troops was more than 1 million people" (according to various estimates - from 1.2 to 1.6 million), moreover, it was directly who fought on the side of the enemy, and not just "collaborating" with him. So a large number of repressed for cooperation 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 were 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 talk about them below), but in comparison with the pre-war period, the scale of such repressions has significantly decreased, and besides (as already mentioned), the number of death sentences.

In connection with the above, one cannot but 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 of Volga Germans". Here again the question of "double counting" arises.

For example, in a three-volume edition published in mass circulation in 1993 entitled "This is how it was. National repressions in the USSR. 1919-1952" besides, it was directed against the nation, that is, meaningful genocide. It is especially unheard of, they say, the following (I quote the specified edition "So it was"): "Long before the arrival of the invaders, urgent in capital letters. -VC.) measures against Soviet Germans in the Volga region ... All - to the east. "This is" the facet of our Soviet history. "

Indeed, in fact, the enemy came close to the Republic of the Volga Germans only a year later, and the "preventive" repression could seem to 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 3500 km (!) From the coast of America, special attention was paid to people of Japanese origin who lived 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.) into special concentration camps(and not their resettlement to the west of the country! - VC.). Officially, this was due to the threat of a Japanese landing on the Pacific coast of the United States. Soldiers of the American army, with the assistance of local authorities, quickly carried out this operation. A tough 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 m inland, and he had to go 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 by the authorities of the USSR.

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

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

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

"When the German armed forces entered the Karachay region, they were met general jubilation... They surpassed themselves in their willingness to help the Germans. For example, the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD, which arrived in early September in the south of Kislovodsk Karachai the village was received with enthusiasm comparable to the days of the annexation of the Sudetenland. Team members were hugged and lifted onto their shoulders. They offered gifts and made speeches, which ended with a toast in honor of the Fuhrer ... Representatives of Balkars... Notable is the desire of about 60,000 Balkars to secede from Kabardians and join the 120,000 Karachais. Both tribal groups expressed their unity with the Great German Empire. "Mention will also be made of a completely different" experience ... gained ... in the Baksan place populated by Kabardians ... stepped aside and in the end they did with the enemy forces (enemy for the Germans. - VC.) common cause" .

Especially expressive here is the distinction between Balkars and Karachais and, on the other hand, Adyghe, Circassians and Kabardians, who clearly had no intention of "uniting with the German Empire" and, naturally, were not subject to later resettlement, just 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 face of a mortal struggle with the enemy.

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

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

I will repeat once again that for a long time I considered the resettlement of peoples as a whole 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 suddenly he resolutely objected to me. Sergei Georgievich from a young age knew from his Crimean relatives that the resettlement in 1944 of the Tatar people as a whole was perceived by many in the people themselves as a "wise" and even "happy" decision ( later the attitude of the Crimean Tatars to the 1944 action is another matter). For a very significant part of men really cooperated with the enemy in one way or another. According to German information from January 14, 1945, 10 thousand Crimean Tatars still served in the enemy's armed forces, that is, a very, very significant proportion; after all, the Crimean Tatars by 1941 numbered a little more than 200 thousand people and, therefore, there were no more than 50 thousand men of military age. And, therefore, 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 at that time there was an awareness of the resettlement of the people as a whole as a "lesser" trouble, because if young and mature men were "isolated" from it, the growth of the people would have stopped. , that is, in fact, the end of his natural life would come ... And by 1951, the resettled Crimean Tatar people had already born 18830 children, that is, 10 percent of the total number of migrants. To assess this figure, you should know that by 1951 there were 20.9 million children under the age of five in the USSR, that is, 12 percent of the country's population at the beginning of 1946, not much more than among the resettled Crimean Tatars ...

There is reason to believe that the migration of peoples as a whole was explained not by someone's "wisdom" (as some 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 by Stalin personally, was not the most destructive ...

As you know, in 1956-1957, the resettled peoples were "forgiven" and returned to their territory. In this regard, to this day, they praise Khrushchev, who was then in power, opposing him to the villain Stalin. However, Khrushchev in this case was not at all "more humane" than Stalin.

The fact is that the stay of the resettled peoples on "foreign" lands created its own considerable difficulties and collisions, 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. A real danger could be the return of only two peoples - the same Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, 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 "gave" Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, and the return of the Tatars would significantly "devalue" this gift).

However, we will talk about Khrushchev later; 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 "whitewashing" Stalin (in the last period of his life), moreover, some will remain satisfied with this, while others will be indignant. But I, I repeat once more, see main vice the overwhelming majority of writings characterizing the "Stalinist era" are not in how estimated Stalin, but that his personal role in the life of the country is extremely exaggerated; in a positive or negative sense - this is the second, less essential question.

Noting 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 (albeit to a lesser extent) 1936-1938, I tried to show the gradual dissipation of the "revolutionary" atmosphere, which openly 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 viewed as "superfluous".

The first volume of my essay quoted a message from Korney Chukovsky to Stalin written in May 1943, urging the creation of "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 "friend of children" would hardly write something like that, for, I repeat once again, the political climate itself was changing.

And the point here is not at all about Stalin himself, who at the end of his life, on the contrary, “changed” in one way or another, as they say, not for the better. It has already been noted that many of the provisions of the famous Khrushchev report at the XX 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 his suspicion developed ... "and so on.

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

All this manifested itself in the so-called Leningrad affair (1949-1950), as a result of which N.A.Voznesensky and A.A. to some kind of anti-Stalinist "opposition" (if only because of their relative youth). These "shifts" were just as sharply expressed in the multifaceted case of the "Zionist conspiracy" (1948 - early 1953), which nestled 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 guard, Lieutenant General of the State Security Service NS Vlasik, who had been with the leader for many years, was arrested in this "case". It is on these two "cases" that the essays concerning the Stalinist terror of the post-war period are concentrated, for there were no other major "cases" at that time.

Both "cases" were initiated directly by Stalin himself, and they clearly expressed those dying "shifts" in his consciousness and behavior, which were discussed. True, they were all the same, so to speak, "palace", "courtiers" cases that do not affect any broad masses of people.

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

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

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

"Nikolai Bulganin confirmed the rumors circulating for many years about the planned mass deportation of Jews to Siberia and Far East... 1) Relevant documents were prepared. 2) Bulganin, then Minister of Defense, received instructions from Stalin to drive several hundred military trains to Moscow and other major centers of the country to organize the expulsion of Jews. 3) At the same time, according to him, it was planned to organize train wrecks. 4) Bulganin believed that the main organizers of the planned anti-Jewish actions were Stalin, Malenkov and Suslov, who, as he put it, were "helped" by a group of other responsible party and state leaders. I asked who exactly. He chuckled 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 traces of "relevant documents" have been found, while about real"Doctors' file" documents abound.

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 the country, since in 1953 the railways carried out (except for the period of summer navigation on waterways) almost all transportation of both means of production and means of consumption. In addition, the failure of several hundred locomotives and tens of thousands of carriages would cause grave damage to the country. Finally, it is well known that, as a rule, not so many people in the carriages die in train crashes (let alone in plane crashes ...).

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 called the name of M.A.Suslov, who was in 1970 second(after Leonid Brezhnev) a person in the party hierarchy and remained them for another twelve years, until his death in 1982!

In a word, all without exception"information" turns out to be, to use the modern word, virtual... I have no intention of accusing J. 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 stripped of all his posts and, as reported recently in the press, suffered from severe alcoholism.

But one cannot but be indignant that the quoted nonsense was published in the apparently reputable magazine Novoye Vremya, whose employees did not bother to check the "facts" reported on the magazine pages. This is already a kind of insanity ... The magazine, founded in 1943, often published deliberately tendentious materials, but nevertheless 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 it 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 antihero (which continues to this day), had (and has) deplorable consequences.

The new government, in essence, could not but oppose the cult of Stalin, for it seemed to millions of people that without a deceased man-god, the life of the country was, as it were, inconceivable. K. Simonov later recalled the extreme indignation caused at the top by his article published on March 19, 1953 in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, which he edited, according to which the "most important" task of literature was "to capture in all its grandeur and in all its fullness... . 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; somewhat later, in August 1953 - that is, after the overthrow of Beria - he was really dismissed.

Alexander Tvardovsky was hardly not aware of what happened to Simonov, but nevertheless, in the next year, 1954, in the March issue (that is, on the first anniversary of Stalin's death) the Novy Mir magazine he headed published a new fragment from his composing since 1950 of the poem "Beyond the Distance", in which he essentially spoke against the lines of the then supreme power:

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

And may the memory of those days gone by
Captured our features
Its not easy at times
Cool and domineering rightness.

Anything else, maybe more
There was a road to us in life
That righteousness and will,
When under enemy tanks

The dear earth was humming
Carrying a roaring shaft of fire,
When our whole life is a matter
He called it right short.

Him who led us into battle and knew
What are the days to come
We all owe victory
How he owes it to us.

Yes, the world did not know such power
A father loved 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 his post as editor-in-chief of Novy Mir and replaced by ... did not stutter.

True, Tvardovsky was officially condemned not for his cited stanzas, but for the articles “free-thinking” in one way or another by V. Pomerantsev (December 1953), M. Lifshitz (February 1954), etc., which appeared in the journal he edited, criticized in the press from the very beginning of 1954. But there is reliable reason to believe that the poet's "Stalinist" poetry played a major role in his rate. The fact is that "Novy Mir" has already been subjected to no less harsh criticism earlier, in February-March 1953, for the publication of the novel "For a Just Cause" by V. Grossman, also marked by "freethinking", the story of E. Kazakevich "The Heart of a Friend", articles by A. Gurvich, V. Ognev, etc., but the question of Tvardovsky's resignation did not even arise at that time. And the "justification" of Stalin in his poems at that moment affected the vital interests of the top authorities, and Tvardovsky was removed at the beginning of August 1954 and replaced by ... Simonov, who by that time had "reformed" in sharp criticism of the "Stalinist era" and four years later, in June 1958, he was replaced in "Novy Mir" 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 initial period the undivided power of Stalin, and were not only literary figures, were involved in ideology and even politics (both of them, by the way, were part of the Central Committee of the CPSU), that is, they were literally figures stories country. 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 dominant this moment ideology; in his writings (as well as actions) did not express belief, and this or that 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 published from 1943 to 1964 about Patriotic War that "each new novel criticizes those ideas about war ... which were expressed in one way or another in the previous novel by the author himself ... It changes along with the change in public opinion, and ... takes a new position." And I reproached the literary critic of the time that it "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 who were her idols ... "

Tvardovsky, on the other hand, relied on his beliefs and that is precisely why in 1954 - contrary to the line of the supreme power - he "acquitted" Stalin. It may be objected that later, after Khrushchev's 1956 report, Tvardovsky wrote differently about Stalin. In 1960, he really rewrote that fragment from the poem "Beyond the 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 about the mournful excessiveness of the "cult ".

But a certain basis of the previous text is still preserved in the new version:

No wonder, must be the son of the east,
He showed the features to the end
Its cool, its cruel
Wrongs
And right ...

But in the tests of our lot
There was, however, a road
That steadfastness of the father's will,
What are we with on the battlefield
At the bitter hour we met the enemy ...

We went with her to save the world,
To defend life from death,
There is no subtracting
Not to add, -
You remember everything, motherland-mother.

To him, who seemed to know everything,
Charting a 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 is in the family country.
There is no subtracting
Not to add, -
So it was on earth.

In the "country-family" ... Here one cannot but refer to the recent work of S.G. Kara-Murza, deeply analyzing 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 a family ... What human rights are there? On the market, everyone is free, no one owes anything to anyone ... "Without at all claiming that the" family "is something" better "than the" market ", Sergei Georgievich very convincingly proves that our country simply could not be" a family "...

Twardowski 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?
We are talking about people, but people
Do not they themselves create gods? ..

Whom to blame! Country, power
In the harsh everyday life of labor
She kept that glory of the name
On the construction towers of the world ...

It should be noted that Tvardovsky republished the lines just quoted until his death (the last lifetime edition was published in 1970). The poet's convictions, of course, developed, but 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 spheres of the country's life, in particular, in literature, and the most regrettable was the impact of the immeasurable cult on the consciousness and behavior of those who were then only still embarked on a literary path.

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

Recently, a section dedicated to Yevtushenko from Stanislav Kunyaev's "Book of Memories and Reflections" was 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 the cult of Stalin. "This, as will become clear from what follows, does not" justify "him, but explains a lot in his writings and actions.

Stanislav Kunyaev quoted Yevtushenkov's lines praising Stalin and stood out from the polyphonic chorus with their "cordiality", thanks to which their author was immediately admitted to a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR for his first, published in 1952, bypassing the then stage of "candidate for membership. SP ", and without a maturity certificate (a unique case!), Became a student Literary Institute SP. It is worth citing his downright "intimate" lines about Stalin (see also other lines quoted by Stanislav Kunyaev):

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

Goes to the window. Admiring the sun
He smiles warmly.
And I fall asleep and I dream
the nicest dream.

So, we owe even good dreams to the leader! Now Yevtushenko "justifies himself": "... 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 publishing 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". Let me also refer to my literary path: appearing in print since 1946, during Stalin's life I never mentioned him, and again not because at that time I "denied" the leader, but because I considered praising him something unworthy ...

Yevtushenko, "sincerely" extolling Stalin, of course, realized that this was a way to achieve resounding "success" without genuine creative work ... And he immediately acquired the status of a "leading young poet", began to appear "on a par with" those of that time. " 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 alongside the poems of the most" venerable "(of course, from the 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, for 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, because it was up to each person to embark on such a "path" or not.

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

Above, it was said that even after Stalin's "exposure", without fear of persecution, Tvardovsky embodied his convictions in poetry - and this exposes all the insignificance of Yevtushenko, for when he later began to "expose" Stalin in the most harsh way, it was the same opportunistic business (by the way, the same Vladimir Sokolov was not engaged in this), as well as his previous eulogies. Rather, even more unworthy, for Yevtushenko was now achieving new success, rejecting exactly what the previous one had ensured for him! Now Yevtushenko talks about how his "anti-Stalinist" rhymes (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 CPSU Central Committee "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 the matter. Especially if you consider that in this same memoir, he declares with utterly arrogant deceit: "... I wrote and miraculously struck through the censorship "Stalin's Heirs" (ibid., p. 9. - Emphasis added. - VC.). After all, this is the same as the boast of a hare who defeated de fox, for a bear came 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 writing his "anti-Stalinist" rhymes in 1962 - that is, after the final "condemnation" of Stalin at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, but half of January-February 1953, when he wrote poems about "killer doctors". As he now explains in an ironic tone, “I ... believed that the doctors still wanted to poison our dear comrade Stalin, and wrote poetry on this topic” (p. 434); however, he says, good friends dissuaded him from giving them to print.

Talking about this now, Yevtushenko clearly wants to show off his "repentant" sincerity. However, in the professional literary environment, this fact became known at the same time, in 1953, because in fact Yevtushenko did put 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 news in the press (January 13, 1953) about the Kremlin "killer doctors", the atmosphere in Moscow (I remember this well) was extremely disturbing and unclear, and the press workers were afraid of harsh gestures. Yevtushenkov's composition was not without sharpness; so, about the Kremlin doctors, it said:

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

that is, it turned out that the killer doctors had been doing their dirty work with impunity for seventeen years! those who belonged to the most "important" - V. N. Vinogradov, M. S. Vovsi, E. M. Gelshtein, V. F. Zelenin and B. B. Kogan - in 1937 accused the prominent doctor D. D. Pletnev in the "wrecking methods" of treating Gorky, and Dmitry Dmitrievich was sentenced to imprisonment for 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 there were killer doctors under investigation, who had previously exposed the killer doctors themselves, shows the severity 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: “... so openly anti-Semitic that they did not even dare to publish it "(p. 433). Exactly they did not dare! - 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, writing poems about doctors, rather than when he wrote poems against Stalin, whose remains were thrown out of the Mausoleum shortly before, in 1961. True, Yevtushenkov's "courage" in 1953 was dictated by his still rather limited notions of the political situation; in 1962, he would hardly have dared to take such a risk ...

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

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

It should be borne in mind that Yevtushenko, who is overly greedy for easy successes, as is clear from a number of evidences, no later than the beginning of the 1960s was closely associated with the KGB, playing the role of a kind of "agent of influence" - I do not exclude that to some extent and up to a certain point, doing it not quite "consciously". In the 1990s, Lieutenant General of the GB P. A. Sudoplatov said in his memoirs that in the early 1960s the Lieutenant Colonel of the GB Ryabov, known to him, decided to “use the popularity, connections and acquaintances of Yevgeny Yevtushenko 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." It is not surprising, therefore, that, as Yevtushenko now boastfully reports, he "visited 94 (!) Countries" (p. 9) - perhaps none of his contemporaries can compare with him in this respect. on going abroad, the KGB played a decisive role in the "pre-perestroika" times ...

A very knowledgeable 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 a direct telephone from the chief of the KGB and permission to call when necessary. Back in 1968, Yevtushenko made a harsh statement protesting against the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia ... In 1974 the same situation was repeated when Yevtushenko publicly spoke out against the expulsion of A.I. Solzhenitsyn from the USSR ... Yevtushenko admitted that in both cases he called Andropov first. "

That is, Yevtushenko's "daring" protests were actually actions sanctioned by the KGB, designed to inspire the world that there is freedom of speech in the USSR (look, they say: Yevtushenko is protesting, but no reprisals are applied against him, and he still travels around 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 about modern poetry, the transcript of which - albeit, unfortunately, greatly abridged - was published in early 1966. In particular, during the publication they threw out my words that Yevtushenko, in spite of this or that criticism addressed to him, is an "official singer of the Khrushchev regime" - as it was before Stalin's.

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

And 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. need to was to express in the second half of the fifties - the first half of the sixties ").

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

Above, it was said about the "unique falsity" of today's Yevtushenkov's 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 falsity 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 ready-to-print books were "smashed", and he was sure: "I will be arrested "(p. 301). However, as if "through an oversight" Yevtushenko in the same book boasts that he soon visited (continuing to move towards the "record" in "94 countries") in Burma (p. 246) and Chile (p. 364), and in the next, 1969 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 in his praise of Stalin, and in 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 again ... , of course, represented his own "choice", but nevertheless 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 said, is his "victim". His later collaboration with the KGB is a natural consequence of the beginning of his "path" ...

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

NOTES

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

2) Zemskov V. N. 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. Beria's case: lives and wins? - "Spy", 1993, 1, p. 73-80 and 2, p. 45-52; Boris Starikov. One hundred days of the "Lubyanka 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 on with modernity. - "Questions of Literature", 1966, 10, p. 29.

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

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

56) Evtushenko Evgeniy. Wolf passport. - M., 1998, p. 73.

57) Ibid, p. 242.

58) Kostyrchenko G.V., op. cit., 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. - "Voprosy literatury", 1966, 3, p. 35.

In the social and political life of the USSR in 1945-47. very noticeable was the influence the democratic impulse of the war(some tendency towards weakening of the Soviet totalitarian system). The main reason for the democratic impulse was the relatively close acquaintance of the Soviet people with the Western way of life (during the liberation of Europe, in the process of communicating with the allies). An important role was played by the horrors of war endured by our people, which led to a revision of the value system.

The response to the democratic impulse was twofold:

1. Minimal steps were taken towards the "democratization" of society. In September 1945, the state of emergency was ended and the unconstitutional body of power, the GKO, was abolished. The congresses of social and political organizations of the USSR resumed. In 1946 the Council of People's Commissars was transformed into the Council of Ministers, and the People's Commissariats into ministries. In 1947, a monetary reform was carried out and the rationing system was canceled.
2. There has been a significant tightening of the totalitarian regime. A new wave of repression began. The main blow, this time, was inflicted on repatriates - prisoners of war returning to their homeland and forcibly displaced persons. Also suffered were cultural figures who felt the influence of new trends more acutely than others (see the section "Cultural Life of the USSR 1945-1953"), and the party-economic elite - "Leningrad Affair" (1948), in which more than 200 people were shot , the chairman of the State Planning Committee N.A. was shot. Voznesensky. The last act of repression was the "Doctors' Plot" (January 1953), accused of attempting to poison the country's top leadership.

The deportations of entire peoples of the USSR on charges of collaboration with the Nazis (Chechens, Ingush and Crimean Tatars), which began in 1943, became a characteristic feature of the first post-war years. All these repressive measures allow historians to call 1945-1953. " the apogee of Stalinism". The main economic tasks of the post-war period were the demilitarization and restoration of the destroyed economy.

Sources of resources for recovery were:

1. High mobilization abilities of a directive economy (due to new construction, additional sources raw materials, fuel, etc.).
2. Reparations from Germany and its allies.
3. Free labor of GULAG prisoners and prisoners of war.
4. Redistribution of funds from light industry and the social sphere in favor of industrial sectors.
5. Transfer of funds from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector.

In March 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a reconstruction plan, which outlined the main directions and indicators. The demilitarization of the economy ended mainly by 1947, accompanied at the same time by the modernization of the military-industrial complex, which played an increasingly prominent role in the cold war... Another priority industry was heavy industry, mainly mechanical engineering, metallurgy, and the fuel and energy complex. In general, during the years of the 4th five-year plan (1946-1950), industrial production in the country increased and in 1950 exceeded the pre-war indicators - the restoration of the country was on the whole completed.

Agriculture came out of the war very weakened. However, despite the drought of 1946, the state began to reduce household plots and enacted a number of decrees punishing encroachments on state or collective farm property. Taxes were significantly increased. All this led to the fact that agriculture, which, in the early 50s. hardly reached the pre-war level of production, entered a period of stagnation (stagnation).

Thus, the post-war development of the economy continued along the path of industrialization. Alternative options providing for the preferential development of light industry and agriculture (project of G.M. Malenkov - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR) were rejected due to the difficult international situation.

Foreign policy of the USSR in 1945-1953. The beginning of the cold war

Signs of the Cold War:

1. Existence is relatively stable bipolar world- the presence in the world of two superpowers balancing the influence of each other, to which the other states gravitated to one degree or another.
2. "Bloc politics" - the creation of opposing military-political blocs by the superpowers. 1949 d. - creation of NATO, 1955 city ​​- ATS (Organization of the Warsaw Pact).
3. « Arms race"- building up the number of armaments by the USSR and the USA in order to achieve qualitative superiority. The "arms race" ended by the early 1970s. in connection with the achievement of parity (balance, equality) in the number of weapons. From this moment begins " detente policy"- a policy aimed at eliminating the threat of nuclear war and reducing the level of international tension. "Detente" ended after the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan ( 1979 G.)
4. Formation of the "enemy image" of its own population in relation to the ideological enemy. In the USSR, this policy was manifested in the creation of “ iron curtain"- systems of international self-isolation. In the United States, "McCarthyism" is being carried out - the persecution of supporters of "left" ideas.
5. Periodically emerging armed conflicts that threaten the escalation of the "cold war" into a full-scale war.

Causes of the Cold War:

1. The victory in World War II led to a sharp strengthening of the USSR and the USA.
2. The imperial ambitions of Stalin, who sought to expand the zone of influence of the USSR in Turkey, Tripolitania (Libya) and Iran.
3. US nuclear monopoly, attempts to dictate in relations with other countries.
4. The ineradicable ideological contradictions between the two superpowers.
5. Formation of a socialist camp controlled by the USSR in Eastern Europe.

March 1946 is considered to be the date of the beginning of the Cold War, when W. Churchill delivered a speech in Fulton (USA) in the presence of President H. Truman, in which he accused the USSR of “the unlimited spread of its power and its doctrines” in the world. Soon President Truman announced a program of measures to "save" Europe from Soviet expansion (" Truman doctrine"). He offered to provide large-scale economic assistance to European countries ("Marshall plan"); create a military-political alliance of Western countries under the auspices of the United States (NATO); deploy a network of US military bases along the borders of the USSR; support internal opposition in countries of Eastern Europe... All this was supposed not only to prevent further expansion of the sphere of influence of the USSR ( containment doctrine), but also to force the Soviet Union to return to its former borders ( the doctrine of the rejection of socialism).

By this time, communist governments existed only in Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria. However, from 1947 to 1949. socialist systems are taking shape in the same way in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, China. The USSR provides them with enormous material assistance.

V 1949 the economic foundations of the Soviet bloc took place. For this purpose, was created Council for Mutual Economic Assistance... For military-political cooperation, the Warsaw Pact Organization was formed in 1955. No "independence" was allowed within the framework of the commonwealth. Relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia (Joseph Broz Tito), which was looking for its own path to socialism, were severed. In the late 1940s. relations with China deteriorated sharply (Mao Zedong).

The first serious clash between the USSR and the United States was the Korean War ( 1950-53 biennium). Soviet state supports communist regime North Korea (DPRK, Kim Il Sung), USA - the bourgeois government of the South. The Soviet Union supplied modern species to the DPRK military equipment(including jet aircraft MiG-15), military specialists. As a result of the conflict, the Korean Peninsula was officially divided into two parts.

Thus, the international position of the USSR in the first post-war years was determined by the status won during the war years as one of the two world superpowers. The confrontation between the USSR and the United States and the outbreak of the Cold War marked the beginning of the division of the world into two warring military-political camps.

Cultural life of the USSR 1945-1953

Despite the extremely tense situation in the economy, the Soviet government is seeking funds for the development of science, public education, and cultural institutions. General primary education has been restored, and since 1952 education in the volume of 7 classes has become compulsory; open evening schools for working youth. Television starts broadcasting regularly. At the same time, control over the intelligentsia, weakened during the war, is being restored. In the summer of 1946, a campaign began to fight "petty-bourgeois individualism" and cosmopolitanism. It was led by A.A. Zhdanov. 14 august 1946 were adopted by the Central Committee of the party on the magazines " Leningrad" and " Star”, Which were persecuted for the publication of works by A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko. A.A. was appointed the first secretary of the board of the Writers' Union. Fadeev, who was instructed to restore order in this organization.

On September 4, 1946, a resolution of the Central Committee of the party "On unprincipled films" was issued - a ban was imposed on the distribution of films "Big Life" (Part 2), "Admiral Nakhimov" and the second series of "Ivan the Terrible" by Eisenstein.

Composers are the next target of persecution. In February 1948, the Central Committee adopted a resolution "On decadent tendencies in Soviet music," which condemned V.I. Muradeli, later a campaign against the "formalist" composers - S.S. Prokofiev, A.I. Khachaturian, D.D. Shostakovich, N. Ya. Myaskovsky.

Ideological control covers all spheres of spiritual life. The party actively intervenes in the research of not only historians and philosophers, but also philologists, mathematicians, biologists, condemning some sciences as "bourgeois". Wave mechanics, cybernetics, psychoanalysis and genetics were severely defeated.

The outbreak of World War II was the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939. The war began to rage in one or another state. From the Vistula River, the war began to march through the countries of Western and Northern Europe, and reached the Balkans. Military operations were conducted in the Atlantic, North Africa, and also in the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, Japan's aggressive actions against China and Southeast Asia became more and more active.

1.The USSR during the Great Patriotic War. (1941-1945)
2. Political repressions in the USSR 1945-1953
3. "Doctors' case"

Files: 1 file

4. Russia's foreign policy during the war

The emergence of new moments in domestic politics was also calculated on international public opinion. The Stalinist regime tried to create the impression, especially at the initial stage of the war, which was especially difficult for it, that it was capable of moving towards Western democracies. The concession to religion, and not only to the Orthodox, was also made under pressure from the United States, which insisted, if assistance was provided, on the exercise of freedom of conscience in the USSR. In addition, the flirting with the religion of the German authorities in the temporarily occupied Soviet territories, which was one of the sides of the "new order", was taken into account.

Odious in the eyes of the Western world was the course of the Soviet leadership towards the world revolution. The instrument of this course was the Comintern, the existence of which caused concern in Western countries and disbelief in the sincerity of the Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence. In order to calm down his allies in the anti-Hitler coalition I.V. Stalin decided to liquidate this body and on May 15, 1943, the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern adopted a resolution on the dissolution of the Communist International.

According to I.V. Stalin, to serve and the fact of the expansion of rights union republics in foreign policy. In January 1944, at a session of the Supreme Soviet, the issue of amendments to the Constitution of the USSR was discussed, giving the Union republics great rights in the field of defense and foreign policy. To consider this issue, the only plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was convened in the entire war, which recommended the creation of appropriate union-republican people's commissariats to exercise these powers.

The specific reason for this was that in 1944, at a conference in Dumbarton Oaks, representatives of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and China were developing the Charter of the United Nations. The USSR insisted that all Soviet republics that had the right to independent diplomatic activity should be considered the founders of the UN. Stalin managed to insist on his own and the founders of the UN became, along with the USSR, the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet republics.

The effectiveness of Soviet foreign policy during the Great Patriotic War should be recognized. Its main goal was to break the blockade Soviet Union and assisting him in the war with Germany. After the German attack, the USSR became an equal member of the anti-Hitler coalition and played an important role in it. Although his efforts to open a second front in Europe were crowned with success only in the summer of 1944, however, the USSR was able to convince the Western countries to provide him with diplomatic and especially economic support already in 1941.

It is known that at the beginning of World War II, the United States adopted a law on lend-lease, that is, the transfer on a loan or lease of weapons, ammunition, strategic raw materials, foodstuffs, and other countries to allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. This law was extended to the USSR after the trip to Moscow of the adviser and special assistant to President F. Roosevelt G. Hopkins at the end of July 1941.October 1, 1941, the first trilateral agreement was signed during the war, a protocol on deliveries, which stipulated over 70 main types supplies and over 80 medical supplies.

The victory in the bloody war opened a new page in the history of the country. She gave rise to hopes among the people for better life, the weakening of the pressure of the totalitarian state on the individual, the elimination of its most odious costs. The potential for changes in the political regime, economy, and culture was opening up.

The "democratic impulse" of the war, however, was opposed by the full might of the System created by Stalin. Its positions were not only not weakened during the war years, but, it seemed, were even stronger in the post-war period. Even the victory in the war itself was identified in the mass consciousness with the victory of the totalitarian regime.

Under these conditions, the struggle between the democratic and totalitarian tendencies became the leitmotif of social development.

RESTORING THE ECONOMY: THE PRICE OF SUCCESS.

The state of the USSR economy after the end of the war.

The war turned into huge human and material losses for the USSR. It claimed nearly 27 million lives. 1710 cities and urban-type settlements were destroyed, 70 thousand villages and villages were destroyed, 31850 factories and factories, 1135 mines, 65 thousand km of railway lines were blown up and put out of action. The sown area decreased by 36.8 million hectares. The country has lost approximately one third of its national wealth.

The country began to restore the economy back in the year of the war, when in 1943. a special party and government resolution was adopted "On urgent measures to restore the economy in areas liberated from the German occupation." The colossal efforts of the Soviet people by the end of the war in these regions managed to restore industrial production by a third of the 1940 level. The liberated regions in 1944 yielded more than half of the nationwide grain procurement, a quarter of cattle and poultry, and about a third of dairy products.

However, only after the end of the war, the country faced the central task of reconstruction.

Economic Discussions 1945-1946

In August 1945, the government instructed the State Planning Committee (N. Voznesensky) to prepare a draft of the fourth five-year plan. During its discussion, proposals were made about a certain softening of the voluntarist pressure in the management of the economy, the reorganization of collective farms. The "democratic alternative" also manifested itself in the course of a closed discussion of the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR, prepared in 1946. In it, in particular, along with the recognition of the authority of state property, the existence of small private farms of peasants and handicraftsmen, based on personal labor and excluding the exploitation of other people's labor, was allowed. During the discussion of this project, nomenklatura workers in the center and at the local level sounded the idea of ​​the need to decentralize economic life, to grant more rights to regions and people's commissariats. "From below" there were more and more calls for the liquidation of collective farms due to their inefficiency. As a rule, two arguments were presented to justify these positions: first, the relative weakening of state pressure on the manufacturer in

years of war, which gave a positive result; secondly, a direct analogy was drawn with the recovery period after the civil war, when the economic revival began with the revitalization of the private sector, the decentralization of management and the priority development of the light and food industries.

However, in these discussions, the point of view of Stalin, who announced at the beginning of 1946 that he would continue the course taken before the war, towards completing the construction of socialism and building communism, won out. This also meant a return to the pre-war model of over-centralization in planning and managing the economy, and at the same time to the contradictions and imbalances between the sectors of the economy that developed in the 1930s.

STRENGTHENING TOTALITARISM

"Democratic impulse" of the war.

The war managed to change the socio-political atmosphere that developed in the USSR in the 30s. the very extreme situation at the front and in the rear forced people to think creatively, to act independently, to take responsibility at the decisive moment.

In addition, the war broke through the "iron curtain" with which the country was fenced off from the rest of the world, "hostile" to it. Participants in the European campaign of the Red Army (and there were almost 10 million people), numerous repatriates (up to 5.5 million) saw firsthand the bourgeois world, which they knew only from propaganda materials that "exposed" its vices. The differences in attitudes towards the individual, in the standard of living in these countries and in the USSR were so great that they could not but sow doubts among the Soviet people who found themselves in Europe about the correctness of the assessments that sounded in the mouths of propagandists, about the expediency of the path along which the country was going all these years.

The victory of the Soviet people in the war gave rise to hopes among the peasants for the dissolution of collective farms, among the intelligentsia - for weakening the political diktat, among the population of the Union republics (especially in the Baltic States, Western Ukraine and Belarus) - for a change in national policy. Even among the party and state nomenklatura, which was renewed during the war years, an understanding of the inevitability and necessity of changes was ripening. In 1946-1947, during a closed discussion of the drafts of the new Constitution of the USSR, the Program and Charter of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, very characteristic proposals were made aimed at a relative democratization of the regime: on the liquidation of special wartime courts, the release of the party from the function of economic management, limiting the term of office in leading Soviet and party work, on alternative elections, etc. The "democratic impulse" of the war also manifested itself in the emergence of a number of anti-Stalinist youth groups in Moscow, Voronezh, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk. Discontent was also expressed by those officers and generals who, having felt the relative independence in decision-making during the war years, found themselves, after its end, the same "cogs" in the Stalinist system.

The authorities were worried about such sentiments. However, the absolute majority of the country's population perceived the victory in the war as a victory for Stalin and the system headed by him. Therefore, in an effort to suppress the emerging social tension, the regime went in two directions: on the one hand, along the path of decorative, visible democratization, and on the other, intensifying the struggle against "free-thinking" and strengthening the totalitarian regime.

Changes in power structures.

Immediately after the end of World War II, in September 1945, the state of emergency was lifted and the State Defense Committee was abolished. In March 1946, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was transformed into the Council of Ministers. At the same time, the number of ministries and departments increased and the number of their staff grew.

At the same time, elections were held to local councils, the Supreme Soviets of the republics and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as a result of which the deputy corps, which had not changed during the war years, was renewed. By the beginning of the 50s. increased collegiality in the activities of the Soviets as a result of the more frequent convocation of their sessions, an increase in the number of standing commissions. In accordance with the Constitution, direct and secret elections of people's judges and assessors were held for the first time. However, all power remained in the hands of the party leadership as before. After a thirteen-year break, the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) took place in October 1952, which decided to rename the party to the CPSU. In 1949, congresses were held

trade unions and the Komsomol (also not convened for 17 and 13 years). They were preceded by reporting and election party, trade union and Komsomol meetings, at which the leadership of these organizations was renewed. However, despite the seemingly positive, democratic changes, during these very years the political regime in the country was tightened, a new wave of repressions was growing.

A new round of repression.

The GULAG system reached its apogee precisely in the post-war years, since those who were sitting there since the mid-30s. "enemies of the people" added millions of new ones. One of the first strikes fell on prisoners of war, most of whom (about 2 million), after their release from Nazi captivity, were sent to the Siberian and Ukhta camps. Tula, "alien elements" were exiled from the Baltic republics, Western Ukraine and Belarus. According to various sources, during these years the "population" of the Gulag ranged from 4.5 to 12 million people.

In 1948, "special regime" camps were created for those convicted of "anti-Soviet activities" and "counterrevolutionary acts", in which especially sophisticated methods of influencing prisoners were used. Not wanting to put up with their position, political prisoners in a number of camps raised uprisings, sometimes under political slogans. The most famous of them were performances in Pechora (1948), Salekhard (1950), Kingir (1952), Ekibastuz (1952), Vorkuta (1953) and Norilsk (1953).

Along with the political prisoners in the camps after the war, there were also quite a few of those workers who did not fulfill the existing production standards. So, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 2, 1948, the local authorities were granted the right to evict to remote areas persons who maliciously evade work in agriculture... Fearing the increased popularity of the military during the war, Stalin authorized the arrest of Air Marshal A.A. Novikov, generals P.N. Ponedelina, N.K. Kirillov, a number of colleagues of Marshal G.K. Zhukov. The commander himself was charged with putting together a group of disgruntled generals and officers, ingratitude and disrespect for Stalin. Repression also affected some of the party functionaries, especially those who strove for independence and greater independence from the central government. At the beginning of 1948, almost all the leaders of the Leningrad Party organization were arrested. The total number of those arrested in connection with the "Leningrad case" was about 2,000. After some time, 200 of them were put on trial and shot, including the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia M. Rodionov, a member of the Politburo and Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR N. Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) A. Kuznetsov. The "Leningrad affair" was supposed to be a stern warning to those who at least in some way thought differently from the "leader of the peoples."

The briefly described events of 1945-1953 give an idea of ​​the life of the country during this period. The beginning of 1945 was the end of the Great Patriotic War, the battles were fought outside the Soviet Union. In May 1945, the war started by Nazi Germany ended. With the end of hostilities, the Allies decided to mark out the occupation zones on the territory of the defeated country. Due to Germany, upon surrendering, transferred its entire military and merchant fleet to the United States and Great Britain, the Soviet Union raised the question of transferring at least a third of the German fleet to it. The contradictions between the allies, pushed aside for the period of hostilities with a common enemy, are becoming more acute.

Transition to peaceful construction.

The end of the war put before the government the issues of solving economic, diplomatic, political, military-political problems. The enormous destruction caused by the war required great efforts to rebuild the country. Already May 26, 1945 the decree on restructuring industry in a peaceful manner, having conditioned the beginning of the release of peaceful products, re-equipping military factories, while it was indicated that the capacity must be kept ready to resume the production of weapons if necessary. Already with June 1, 1945 years for the workers of the People's Commissariat of Defense were restored weekends and vacations... July began demobilization, new military districts began to be organized.

The beginning of the cold war.

But the battles have not stopped yet, fulfilling the allied agreement The Soviet Union declares war on Japan, which ends with its surrender in September 1945.
After the end of the war began reforming the army and special services... US use of the atomic bomb during the war with Japan encourages the Soviet Union to create nuclear weapons... Industrial centers and research institutions are being created to develop this direction.
Since the beginning of 1946 The United States is tightening its rhetoric of communication with the USSR, Great Britain joins it, since these states have always fought against a strong state on the continent. From this period begin cold war countdown.
After the end of the war it began "Battle" for Antarctica: Americans sent a military squadron to Antarctica, the Soviet Union sent its fleet to this region. There is no exact information about how the events took place so far, but the US flotilla returned incomplete. Later, according to an international convention, it was fixed that Antarctica does not belong to any state.

Development of the country in the post-war period.

Post-war changes affected all spheres of life: the war tax was abolished, the nuclear industry was created, the construction of new railway lines, pressure structures on hydraulic structures, a number of pulp and paper enterprises on the Karelian Isthmus, and aluminum plants began.
Already in May 1946 year, a decree was issued on the creation of a rocket industry, design bureaus were created.
At the same time, there are changes in the management of the country and the army. A decree was adopted on the training and retraining of leading Party and Soviet workers. The government was structured according to the party-nomenklatura scheme. The need for the safety of state property caused decrees on criminal liability for theft and strengthening the protection of personal property of citizens.
The construction of a peaceful life is proceeding with difficulty, there is not enough materials, the labor resource was greatly reduced during the war. However, in 1947 year aircraft construction marked by the test of the SU-12 aircraft. Military spending forced the state to issue a large amount of money, while the output of consumer goods dropped sharply. Financial problems had to be solved, and for this in December 1947, a financial reform was carried out. At the same time, the card system was canceled.
The post-war period was not without struggle at all levels of life. The infamous session of the All-Union Agricultural Academy of Sciences of the USSR 1948 years, for many years closed the development of genetic science, laboratories and research on hereditary diseases were closed.

The state of internal affairs in the USSR.

V 1949 year was started "Leningradskoe Delo", significantly thinning the leadership of the Leningrad region. Officially, nowhere and never was it reported what the crime of the leading workers of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU was, nevertheless this was reflected in the destruction of the Museum of the Heroic Defense of Leningrad, the unique exposition of which was destroyed.
The arms race imposed by the West on the Soviet Union led to the creation of the atomic bomb, which was tested in August 1949 in the Semipalatinsk region.
The financial system was strengthened. Decree 1950 year settlement in international transactions between the CMEA countries was transferred to a gold basis, independent of the dollar. The development of science, culture, improvement of economic indicators show that the development of the country in the post-war period was stable. Completed in May 1952, the construction of the Volga-Don Canal, provided the possibility of irrigation of dry lands, obtaining electricity for agricultural and industrial areas.
The course of government taken by Stalin after the war is total bureaucratization. New organizations were created to monitor the implementation of decisions and instructions.
Restoring the country, the people were in poverty, starving, but Stalin believed that the construction of socialism is impossible without great sacrifices, hence little attention to the needs of the people. By the end 1952 of the year the company for the enlargement of collective farms ended, MTSs were created, capable of serving these collective farms.
In March 1953, Stalin I.V. died... The period of development of the state has ended, which has absorbed both the heroic times of victory over fascist Germany, industrialization, the restoration of the country after the terrible war years, and the dark pages of repression, neglect of the needs of the people.

National History: Cheat Sheet Author unknown

95. REPRESSIONS 1946-1953 SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN THE FIRST POST-WAR YEARS

After the end of the war, many Soviet citizens counted on changes in the socio-political life of society. They stopped blindly trusting the ideological dogmas of Stalinist socialism. Hence the numerous rumors about the dissolution of collective farms, the permission of private production, etc., which were actively circulating among the population in the first post-war years. Hence the growth in the social activity of society, especially among young people.

However, it was pointless to count on the democratization of society under the conditions of harsh authoritarian rule. The authorities responded with repressions aimed primarily at the intelligentsia and youth. The starting point for a new series of political trials was the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) "On the magazines" Zvezda "and" Leningrad "" (August 1946). In the same year, several trials were held over "anti-Soviet" youth groups in Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Voronezh and others. The most famous of the fabricated political cases of the period 1946-1953. - "Leningrad", "Mingrelian" and "the case of doctors-poisoners."

In addition to the political opposition, the Soviet government had opponents with weapons in their hands. First of all, these are members of partisan detachments in Western Ukraine and the Baltic states, who fought against the new government until the mid-50s. In addition, in the first post-war years, trials took place over members of the Russian Liberation Army, General A.A. Vlasov, as well as over Nazi war criminals and accomplices of the occupiers. In addition to the real traitors, thousands of innocent citizens were convicted, including former prisoners of war, prisoners of concentration camps. Actions continued to evict people to remote areas of the country on a national basis.

Despite the difficult economic situation in the post-war period, the Soviet government paid considerable attention to development of science and education. In 1946-1950. spending on education increased by 1.5 times, and on science - by 2.5 times. At the same time, the emphasis was placed on those branches of science that worked for the needs of the military-industrial complex. In this area, design bureaus ("sharashki") continued to function, in which prisoners worked; a number of research institutes were opened. Together with the active work of foreign intelligence, this allowed the USSR to destroy the US monopoly on the possession of nuclear weapons by 1949.

At the same time, a difficult situation is developing in branches of science that are not directly related to the military industry. The hardest hit falls on cybernetics and genetics, which were virtually prohibited. The humanities, literature and art have seriously suffered from the ideological dictatorship and pressure from the authorities. A decisive role in this was played by the campaign to combat "cosmopolitanism" launched after 1946. Under the slogan of opposing the "reactionary policy of the West", they were repressed as individual cultural figures (D. Shostakovich, A. Akhmatova, M. Zoshchenko, etc.), and entire creative teams (magazines "Zvezda", "Leningrad", etc.)

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