On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whom, according to the official version, the Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan tried to shoot. However, there are numerous inconsistencies in the case, which to this day leave the question of Kaplan's involvement in the crime open.
The name Fanny Kaplan in Soviet times was associated with almost universal evil, because she raised her hand against the leader of the world proletariat, whose authority was enormous. Nevertheless, she will forever remain among the "Leninist women" along with Nadezhda Krupskaya and Inessa Armand. Some researchers believe that her crime was not politically motivated, but was the revenge of a rejected woman. So who is Fanny Kaplan really and why did she shoot Lenin?
The beginning of the way
Feiga Haimovna Roytblat (real name Fanny) was born on February 10, 1890 in the Volyn province of Ukraine in the family of a teacher of a Jewish religious elementary school. She had a freedom-loving, conflicting character. In the family, which was interrupted from penny to penny, besides Fanny, there were seven more children. At that time in Russia, anti-Semitism was in full bloom, so it is not surprising that Feigu was drawn to the anarchists.
The first Russian revolution found her in their ranks. The girl received the party nickname Dora and plunged headlong into the revolutionary struggle. Youth is the time of love, and no political situation can interfere with this feeling. Fanny's chosen one was Viktor Garsky, a wrestling comrade-in-arms, aka Yakov Schmidman. There is an opinion that Garsky managed to amass decent capital on contract killings, that is, in fact, he was a robber and murderer who covered up his crimes with noble revolutionary ideals.
Common interests fueled a flared feeling in the girl. Together with Garsky, they prepared in December 1906 an attempt on the life of the Kiev governor-general Sukhomlinov, which ended in failure. This was Kaplan's first terrorist experience. During the explosion in the Kiev hotel "Kupecheskaya" Fanny was seriously wounded and fell into the hands of the gendarmes, and her lover, leaving her at the crime scene, fled. However, despite this, Kaplan took the blame for what she had done.
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Lifetime hard labor
The tsarist authorities at that time suppressed revolutionary manifestations in every possible way. And 16-year-old Fanny Kaplan was sentenced to death, but she was given a discount on her age, replacing the punishment with indefinite hard labor. Even under the threat of such a terrible sentence, Fanny did not betray either Garsky or her other associates to the authorities. So, the girl, who had not had time to see anything in life, ended up in the most terrible Akatuisk hard labor in Russia.
Severe injury and hard labor undermined her health, in 1909 Fanny became so blind that she needed books in Braille. It was difficult to come to terms with this, and she attempted suicide, though unsuccessful. But in connection with the loss of vision, she was given some relief in her work, and only three years later her vision partially returned. Fanny did not leave thoughts of politics in hard labor, especially since there were many political prisoners with her. Under the influence of Maria Spiridonova, who in 1918 would raise a revolt of the Left SRs against the Bolsheviks, Kaplan began to consider herself not an anarchist, but an SR.
The February revolution brought her and many other political prisoners the long-awaited freedom. But the best part of life: from 16 to 27 years for Fanny had already passed, and after the trials she had fallen out she looked like a deep old woman, almost blind and half deaf.
Meeting in Crimea
In 1911, the Kaplan family moved to America, perhaps that is why those with whom Fanny went through hard labor became such close people to her, replacing relatives. In 1917, in order to improve her health, she received a ticket to Yevpatoria, where a rest house for former convicts was organized. The climate of Crimea had a beneficial effect on Fanny, and it was there that she met with Dmitry Ulyanov, Lenin's younger brother, who served as People's Commissar for Health and Social Security in the government of the Crimean Soviet Republic. The house of convicts was under his jurisdiction.
They say that Dmitry had two passions: wine and women - and even drunk at government meetings. Exhausted by hard labor, but surrounded by a revolutionary aura, the young woman attracted the attention of the minister. Whether they had a love affair is difficult to say: the information of contemporaries diverges on this issue. Nevertheless, thanks to Ulyanov Jr., Fanny received a referral to the Kharkov eye clinic, where she underwent an operation and partially restored her vision. Paradoxically, it turns out that Kaplan was able to shoot her older brother thanks to the younger one. It is not known why Fanny broke up with Dmitry, and a month later the same shot rang out. It may well have been the revenge of an abandoned woman.
In Crimea, Fanny Kaplan got a job as head of training courses for workers in volost zemstvos. Of course, this is not at all what the young Socialist Revolutionary woman dreamed of. She kept hoping for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly with a Social Revolutionary majority, but the 1917 revolution destroyed all her hopes. For the Socialist Revolutionary Party, terrorism was a habitual method of struggle, but for a former convict who had nothing to lose, risk was a common thing. If at the dawn of her revolutionary career she did not kill the Governor-General, then why not make up for this omission by killing Lenin. It is possible that the Social Revolutionaries had planned in advance the meeting of young people in order to provoke the woman to revenge. Or maybe these two events are not connected in any way, because the revolutionaries perfectly knew how to separate personal from duty.
Crime of the century
At that time, the protection of the first persons was far from modern ideas about security. Suffice it to recall the series of assassination attempts that took place then: Alexander II almost died from the bullet of the terrorist Karakozov; the death of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand; and Lenin himself was more than once exposed to danger. In such conditions, in order to destroy the famous politician, it was enough only to gain determination, and Fanny had enough of this quality, moreover, it was necessary to shoot from close range.
That evening, Lenin was supposed to speak at two Friday rallies at factories: first in the Basmanny district, at the former Bread Exchange, and then in Zamoskvorechye, at the Mikhelson plant. Even the fact that Uritsky was killed on August 30 in the morning in Petrograd did not serve as a reason for canceling the plans of the leader. After a speech to the workers of the Michelson plant, Lenin, surrounded by people, moved to the exit. He almost got into the car, but then some worker approached him with a question, and while Lenin was talking to her, Kaplan came very close to him and fired three shots. Two bullets hit the leader's neck and arm, and the third wounded his interlocutor.
However, the information that has come down to us illustrates the events of that day in a very contradictory way: staging, conspiracy, second shooter, etc. Moreover, the main character, Kaplan, admitted her guilt and again did not betray her accomplices during interrogation, explaining her actions by the fact that Lenin betrayed the ideals of the revolution and had to be removed as an obstacle to the advance of socialism.
Fast reprisal
The investigation was outrageously short, only three days, which suggests that Fanny knew too much and was in a hurry to remove her. The reason could be that the Bolsheviks, furious with two terrorist acts: the murder of Uritsky and the attempt on Lenin's life, announced the beginning of the Red Terror. And during the terror, as you know, they do not stand on ceremony with the guilty. On September 3, 1918, Sverdlov gave an oral order to shoot Kaplan. According to the official version, Fanny Kaplan was shot by Pavel Malkov, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, commandant of the Moscow Kremlin. The woman's corpse was burned in an iron barrel, after having poured gasoline over it. All this was done secretly - right under the windows of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin, in the Aleksandrovsky Garden, under the noise of cars with engines running. Only a few people knew about the execution. The poet Demyan Bedny became an involuntary witness.
To date, the Prosecutor General's Office has established that it was Kaplan who shot Lenin. The well-known criminalist prosecutor V. Solovyov says: “We have raised the interrogation protocols, drawn up in August 1918. The main subject of study was Browning, which was demonstrated for several decades at one of the stands of the Lenin Museum, and then kept in its funds. The weapon was in excellent condition. And then they decided to test it. The ballistic examination was carried out in one of the basements of the Lefortovo prison. The cartridges and casings were subjected to microscopic analysis. The single bullet was also carefully examined. She was in Lenin's body for several years. It was taken out only after his death. Such a detailed and thorough survey has never been carried out. As a result, experts came to a certain conclusion:the attempt on Ilyich was made from this Browning. Thus, in August 1918 it was Fanny Kaplan who shot at Ulyanov-Lenin."
But another opinion is also interesting, which was voiced by the famous writer Polina Dashkova on the basis of a study of archival documents: “By the way, why not remove these bullets immediately? The version that they were poisoned arose only in 1922, when the well-known trial of the Right Social Revolutionaries began. They called an expert and asked: "Can a bullet be impregnated with curare poison?" To which the expert replied: "And how to soak it, it is lead!" Can I soak a spoon with tea? Suppose a bullet was cut and a piece of wax mixed with curare poison was inserted into it, but they did not calculate that the bullet heats up, and at high temperatures the poison is destroyed. So: it does not collapse! He would have died instantly from poisoned bullets! Four years later, it was as if they decided to remove one bullet, although if they were encapsulated there and do not interfere with health,why get them suddenly? But at the trial it was necessary to present at least some material evidence. Why was it necessary to write out the German doctor Borchard and pay him 220 thousand marks for a trifling operation, in which Dr. Rozanov, one of the best surgeons in the country, was only an assistant? It is also strange that it was decided to remove exactly the bullet that was sitting in the neck. It would be more logical to remove then the second one, which is in the shoulder, everything is much simpler there: there are fewer vessels and arteries - but they did not do this. I don't think there were any bullets at all. "that sat in the neck. It would be more logical to remove then the second one, which is in the shoulder, everything is much simpler there: there are fewer vessels and arteries - but they did not do this. I don't think there were any bullets at all. "that sat in the neck. It would be more logical to remove then the second one, which is in the shoulder, everything is much simpler there: there are fewer vessels and arteries - but they did not do this. I don't think there were any bullets at all."
Were there any shots?
For many years the official version of the assassination attempt on V. I. Lenin did not raise any doubts among the Soviet people. Everyone believed that the crime was organized by the Social Revolutionaries, and the performer was fanatical Fanny Kaplan, who became one of the most famous women of the Land of the Soviets - any first grader knew that "this is the aunt who killed Lenin's grandfather." But from the beginning of the 90s of the XX century, publications began to appear in the press refuting this version.
The file contains the testimony of the military commissar SN Baturin: “I heard three sharp dry sounds, which I took not for revolver shots, but for ordinary motor sounds. And after these sounds, I saw a crowd of people, before that calmly stood by the car, scattering in different directions, and I saw Comrade Lenin, lying motionless with his face to the ground. The man who shot at Comrade. Lenin, I have not seen. " But on September 5, that is, 6 days after the assassination attempt, Baturin changes his testimony and claims that he caught up and detained Kaplan. And someone saw it differently: she stood, huddled against a tree, watching how shouting people ran from the gates of the Michelson factory, how sailors rushed and boys shouted: "Get it!" She has an umbrella and a briefcase in her hands, her feet bloody with uncomfortable boots. In the afternoon, Kaplan went to the commissariat and there asked for a piece of paper - to put an insole instead, the nails so pierced the heels. She squints half-blindly, peering into the darkness. And then someone shouts: “Yes, it's her! She shot!"
The next controversial point is the main evidence of the crime - the weapon. Chekist Z. Legonkaya recalled that during the search they did not find anything on the woman: “During the search I stood with a revolver at the ready. I watched Kaplan's hand movements. In the purse they found a notebook with torn off sheets, eight head pins, cigarettes. But a year later, Legonkaya also changes her testimony and claims that they found a seven-shot Browning at Kaplan, which the Chekist took (!) For herself. And in the case there is information that the pistol was brought to the investigator by a factory worker Kuznetsov a few days after the assassination attempt. In addition, four cartridges remained in the Browning, and four spent cartridges were found at the crime scene, not three. It turns out that there could be two arrows.
It seems very strange that Sverdlov, immediately after the assassination attempt, signed the document “On the villainous attempt on com. Lenin , which claimed that this was the work of the right SRs. And this is even an hour before Kaplan was questioned. The next day, he ordered an end to the investigation altogether, transfer the terrorist to the Kremlin, remove her from the Chekists and shoot her. In addition, the investigator in charge of this case was acquainted with the decision of Sverdlov retroactively, after the execution of the criminal, on September 7.
When Fanny Kaplan was serving hard labor, she was only 16 years old and she was in love with Garsky. When, after a couple of years, Garsky was still caught in some kind of robbery, he suddenly wrote a statement to the attorney general that the girl Kaplan was not to blame for the explosion. But this paper went to the authorities and got lost. Yes, and it is difficult to imagine that a person who underwent eye surgery at that time received his sight so that he could shoot in the dark and hit the target. Moreover, how could she have learned to shoot after ten years in hard labor?
It is impossible to argue with medical documents.
According to them, the bullet entered Lenin's left shoulder blade for a year and, passing obliquely, got stuck on the right collarbone, while not damaging any organs. It turns out that the bullet followed a strange trajectory - a zigzag, otherwise it must have touched either the heart, or the lungs, or, finally, important arteries and blood vessels. If this had happened, Vladimir Ilyich would hardly have been able to get to bed on his own. As for the second bullet, everything is simpler there: it shattered the humerus and got stuck under the skin. Bullet wounds are dangerous sepsis. There were no antibiotics then, but Lenin never even had a fever! Modern doctors believe that, according to these documents, a person could have died ten times already.
Who benefits from this?
First of all, making Kaplan guilty was beneficial to Lenin and his associates. After all, this fully justified the subsequent Red Terror and the leader's illness. This assumption is supported by the way Lenin reacted to events: he was not interested in the investigation, which seems rather strange given his punctuality and corrosiveness. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, as soon as a conversation about Kaplan came up in his presence, he became gloomy and withdrawn into himself, and Krupskaya cried.
Some historians believe that at least three were interested in Lenin's death: Sverdlov, Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky. But these people would hardly have used the blind Socialist Revolutionary as a tool, they would have found a more effective way. However, who knows how it really was. Perhaps by coincidence, the wounds inflicted by Kaplan were not fatal. They didn’t even put Lenin out of action for a long time, and he seemed to understand perfectly well that his associates had almost carried out a conspiracy against him. In any case, already on October 8, seven new members were introduced to the Revolutionary Military Council, in which Trotsky wanted to gather his adherents, who were Trotsky's opponents, including JV Stalin.
If we talk about the version of the staged assassination attempt, then here it was necessary to shoot so as not to touch the vital organs, and this is much more difficult to do in the dark than to kill. Now that we know about so many inconsistencies, it can be assumed that Kaplan was simply framed or used in the dark.
Pardon?
In the bowels of the GULAG in 1930-1940 there were persistent rumors that Fanny Kaplan survived and was seen on Solovki, allegedly working in the prison office. In the old criminal case, the protocol of the interrogation of a certain V. A. Novikov, who was in charge of Kaplan's actions, was preserved. Twenty years later, Novikov claimed to have met Fanny on a walk in one of the transfer prisons in the Sverdlovsk region. The NKVD began a large-scale check, but no trace of Kaplan was found. Nevertheless, rumors that Fanny Kaplan lived to a ripe old age still circulate to this day. If by some miracle she really escaped execution and burning, then only one person could cancel her murder by his secret order - Vladimir Lenin.
However, it is difficult to imagine that the Jewish Socialist-Revolutionary who shot at the leader of the world proletariat was not executed by the Bolsheviks. The only thing that has not yet been established is the fate of Kaplan's remains.
Galina BELYSHEVA