The older generation of our readers probably still remembers the film Lenin in 1918. There is an episode of an attempt on the life of the leader of the world proletariat, terrorist Fanny Kaplan: Lenin leaves the plant, talking to a girl, approaches his car … And then a woman shoots him in the back - an evil woman with eyes sparkling with hatred. The official version of the attempt on V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin is well known. But how much does it correspond to the truth?
Guilty without guilt?
During interrogations, Kaplan testified that she had planned to kill Lenin back in February 1918, sincerely considering the leader of the Soviet state a traitor to socialism. In her opinion, the power of the Bolsheviks did not bring the working masses anything but a new enslavement. But why did Fanny Kaplan take all the blame for Lenin's assassination attempt on herself, denying that she was acting on behalf of any political party? Most likely, in this way she wanted to protect her fellow Socialist-Revolutionaries from massive Bolshevik repressions. Or maybe she just had no choice?
To understand whether Fanny Kaplan could shoot Lenin, it is worth referring to her biography.
The year of her birth is not known exactly: 1890 or 1893, place of birth - Volyn province. The real surname is Roydman or Roitbalt, the name is Feiga or Fayvel. At the age of 16, she, a girl from a wealthy Jewish family with many children, ended up in a life-long penal servitude in Akatui, the most terrible in tsarist Russia. What did she do? Never mind. Feiga simply fell in love, and her lover turned out to be the then-famous bandit Viktor Garsky (aka Yashka Shmidman). Somehow he came up with the idea to kill the Kiev governor-general, and the girl accidentally ended up with Victor in a hotel room, where he was making a bomb, which accidentally exploded right there in the room. Wounded and shell-shocked, Feiga became the scapegoat in this story, for her lover managed to escape. Roydman was sentenced to death by hanging, but given her young age, the judges commuted her sentence.replacing the hanging with life-long penal servitude.
However, other sources claim that Feiga was still a member of the underground Kiev organization of anarchists, where she received two party nicknames: Fanny Kaplan and Dora, and it was she who was instructed by the anarchists to organize an attempt on the life of the Kiev governor-general.
Promotional video:
Almost blind shooter
Be that as it may, in 1906, already under the name of Kaplan, Fanny went to Akatui. There she began to go blind and was transferred to Chita and Irkutsk for treatment. She quickly lost her sight. They tried to treat her, even operated on, but her vision was not restored.
Liberated by the February Revolution, Kaplan moved to Moscow, where she joined the underground anti-Bolshevik organization of the Social Revolutionaries. However, she could hardly be useful to her party comrades: her eyesight was deteriorating, and Fanny was forced to constantly be treated.
Fanny had never held a pistol before. Then, with a high degree of myopia, she practically did not go out into the street unaccompanied. It is impossible to imagine that Kaplan could shoot in the dark and hit Lenin three times.
Document drawn up in advance
On the day of the attempt on V. I. Lenin - August 30, 1918 - another terrorist act was committed in Petrograd, as a result of which the chairman of the Cheka M. S. Uritsky. The Petrograd tragedy was immediately reported to Moscow and Lenin was asked to refrain from traveling to meetings. Vladimir Ilyich hesitated, but the words of Ya. M. Sverdlov that the Bolsheviks, they say, have no right to be weak, decided the matter. Ilyich decided to go to the Michelson plant, and without protection! Strange, isn't it?
The time of the assassination attempt has not been finally established. Kaplan said during interrogation that she shot Lenin at 20.00. Official documents indicate the time is half an hour earlier, while in the newspaper Pravda, on the contrary, it is later - 21 hours. The driver of Ilyich said that "he arrived with Lenin at the Mikhelson plant at about ten o'clock in the evening, and the leader's speech lasted at least an hour," and Bonch-Bruevich, the head of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR VD, claims in his memoirs that he learned about the assassination attempt at six o'clock in the evening. The appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, signed by Sverdlov at 10:40 pm, says: “Several hours ago a villainous attempt was made on Comrade. Lenin … Two shooters were detained. Their personalities are being specified. " Apparently, the appeal was drawn up … in advance, and Sverdlov, most likely, was well aware of the planned assassination attempt!
In any case, the assassination attempt took place in the evening and it was already dark outside.
The main witness to the assassination attempt is the same Lenin's driver Stepan Gil. He allegedly saw a woman's hand with a Browning and heard three shots (then he changed his testimony five times). But Ilyich, when he was picked up from the ground and put in the car, immediately asked the question: "Was he caught?" Why was he sure it was a man? Didn't they shoot in the back?
No witnesses
As it turned out later, there was not a single witness at all who would have seen the shooter. Someone talks about men, someone describes a woman (and with a very different appearance). Why Fanny Kaplan was detained is also not entirely clear. In the minutes of the investigation it is written that, allegedly, shouts were heard from the crowd of workers that it was she who shot at Lenin, but she was not with the revolver. At first she did not plead guilty, and then she suddenly confessed …
The pistol will appear later - one of the workers will bring it in a few days, claiming that he found it in the yard of the factory. Moreover, in Browning, only two bullets will be missing (while they were shot three times) and, as the ballistic examination will show, the bullets that allegedly hit Lenin were fired from another weapon! And one more thing: the coat that Lenin was wearing on the day of the assassination has survived, with bullet holes. They are so close together that you can feel the hand of a professional shooter. But these marks … do not coincide with the wounds on the body of the leader!
Instant judgment
The investigation was carried out superficially and hastily. All interrogations of the unfortunate woman were aimed only at obtaining a confession. There was no question of evidence of the crime, confrontations!
Already on September 3 (!) Fanny Kaplan was shot by the commandant of the Kremlin Pavel Malkov. Without waiting for a medical opinion about the onset of death, the woman was doused with gasoline and burned. Malkov was helped by the proletarian fabulist Demyan Bedny, who apparently drew inspiration from such events.
Lenin's reaction to what happened is also interesting. With his causticity, he should have been constantly interested in the Kaplan case, but Ilyich showed amazing indifference to the course of the investigation.
But what about the poison?
After the assassination attempt, Gil immediately took Lenin to his Kremlin apartment (why not to the hospital, after all, the leader was bleeding?), And he himself, without outside help, climbed to the third floor along a rather steep staircase.
One of the doctors summoned to Lenin (there were eight of them), V. Obukh, when asked by a Pravda correspondent about the wounds, replied that “the bullets were explosive and, moreover, were smeared with curare poison. However, there is no need to remove them now, they are not dangerous because they are stuck under the skin, and the complete absence of inflammatory reactions makes it possible to postpone their removal until the bandage is removed."
But what about the poison? After all, curare works, and instantly! And why didn't the explosive bullets explode?
The bullet will be removed from the leader's neck only after four years. For this, the German professor Borchard will be invited. For a trivial operation he will be paid a huge fee - 220 thousand marks. However, this story also contains white spots: there is no such doctor in the catalog of Berlin doctors of those years!
The second bullet was removed two years later; moreover, it did not coincide with the first one either in caliber or in weapon belonging, and most importantly, both of these bullets did not coincide with the Browning from which Kaplan allegedly shot!
An X-ray of Lenin's chest and neck has been preserved, taken shortly after the assassination attempt. So, it can be seen on it that the bullets were drawn much later and in general their position is such that they could not pass through the body without touching the vital organs. Well, a bullet cannot go in a zigzag fashion, carefully bypassing the heart, arteries, and lungs.
And further. Antibiotics were not yet invented, and blood poisoning often occurred when injured. But Vladimir Ilyich never even had a fever, and three days later he had already started his duties as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars!
Staging or ordering the Kremlin?
Why was it necessary to play this monstrous performance? Let's remember history and turn to the summer of 1918. The Soviets were rapidly losing their authority, the authorities were in crisis, and Lenin's authority was falling catastrophically. The country was shaken by peasant uprisings, workers' strikes and military failures. Bolshevik leaders prepared to flee abroad by straightening foreign passports and transferring money to Swiss banks.
The Bolsheviks understood that it was possible to stay in power only thanks to the “big shake-up”. It, in fact, was the attempt on the leader, which made it possible to deploy the "red terror" throughout the country and, in particular, to get rid of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, to unleash the Civil War.
Today, most historians agree that the attempt on Lenin's life was a masterful staging with the active participation of the leader himself. Fanny was simply framed.
And the last thing. There is eyewitness testimony that Fanny Kaplan … was not shot. Until 1945, she roamed around prisons and camps, then was released and died in 1947.
Nikolay Johansson. Secrets of the XX century magazine