These days marks 80 years of events, the debate about which does not subside to this day. We are talking about 1937, when massive political repression began in the country. In May of that fateful year, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and a number of high-ranking military personnel were arrested, accused of a "military-fascist conspiracy." And already in June they were all sentenced to death …
Questions, questions …
Ever since perestroika, these events have been presented to us mainly as supposedly "unfounded political persecutions" caused solely by the personality cult of Stalin. Allegedly, Stalin, who wished to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to deal with everyone who doubted his genius in the slightest degree. And above all with those who, together with Lenin, created the October Revolution. They say that this is why almost the entire "Leninist guard", and at the same time the top of the Red Army, who were accused of a conspiracy against Stalin that never existed, innocently went under the ax …
However, upon closer examination of these events, many questions arise that cast doubt on the official version.
In principle, thinking historians have had these doubts for a long time. And doubts were sown not by some Stalinist historians, but by those eyewitnesses who themselves disliked the "father of all Soviet peoples."
For example, in the West, at one time, the memoirs of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Orlov, who fled our country in the late 30s, were published. Orlov, who knew well the "inner kitchen" of his native NKVD, directly wrote that a coup d'etat was being prepared in the Soviet Union. Among the conspirators, he said, were both representatives of the leadership of the NKVD and the Red Army in the person of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the commander of the Kiev military district Iona Yakir. Stalin became aware of the conspiracy, who took very harsh retaliatory actions …
And in the 1980s, the archives of Iosif Vissarionovich's most important enemy, Leon Trotsky, were declassified in the United States. From these documents it became clear that Trotsky had an extensive underground network in the Soviet Union. Living abroad, Lev Davidovich demanded from his people decisive action to destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union, up to the organization of mass terrorist actions.
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And in the 90s already our archives opened access to the protocols of interrogations of the repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. By the nature of these materials, by the abundance of facts and evidence presented in them, today's independent experts have made two important conclusions.
First, the overall picture of a broad conspiracy against Stalin looks very, very convincing. Such testimony could not be somehow orchestrated or faked to please the “father of nations”. Especially in the part where it was about the military plans of the conspirators. Here is what our author, well-known publicist historian Sergei Kremlev, said about this:
“Take and read the testimony given by Tukhachevsky after his arrest. The confessions themselves in the conspiracy are accompanied by a deep analysis of the military-political situation in the USSR in the mid-30s, with detailed calculations on the general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other capabilities.
The question is whether such testimony could have been invented by an ordinary NKVD investigator who was in charge of the Marshal's case and who allegedly set out to falsify Tukhachevsky's testimony ?! No, these testimonies, and voluntarily, could only be given by a knowledgeable person no less than the level of the deputy people's commissar of defense, which was Tukhachevsky.
Secondly, the very manner of the conspirators' handwritten confessions, their handwriting spoke of what their people wrote themselves, in fact, voluntarily, without physical pressure from the investigators. This destroyed the myth that the testimony was rudely knocked out by the force of the "Stalinist executioners" …
So what actually happened in those distant 30s?
Threats to both the right and the left
In general, it all began long before 1937 - or, to be more precise, at the beginning of the 1920s, when a discussion arose in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party about the fate of building socialism. I will quote the words of the famous Russian scientist, a great specialist in the Stalinist era, Doctor of Historical Sciences Yuri Nikolaevich Zhukov (interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta, article "Unknown 37th Year"):
“Even after the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and many others did not seriously think that socialism would triumph in backward Russia. They looked with hope at the industrialized United States, Germany, Great Britain, France. After all, tsarist Russia in terms of industrial development was after tiny Belgium. They forget about it. Like, ah-ah, what Russia was! But in World War I we bought weapons from the British, French, Japanese, Americans.
The Bolshevik leadership hoped (as Zinoviev wrote especially vividly in Pravda) only for a revolution in Germany. Like, when Russia unites with it, it will be able to build socialism.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1923, Stalin wrote to Zinoviev: if even the Communist Party of Germany falls from the sky, it will not keep it. Stalin was the only person in the leadership who did not believe in the world revolution. I thought that our main concern was Soviet Russia.
What's next? The revolution did not take place in Germany. We accept NEP. After a few months, the country howled. Businesses are closed, millions are unemployed, and those workers who have retained their jobs receive 10-20 percent of what they received before the revolution. The peasants were replaced by a surplus tax in kind, but it was such that the peasants could not pay it. Banditry is growing: political, criminal. An unprecedented economic emerges: the poor, in order to pay taxes and feed their families, attack trains. Gangs arise even among students: money is needed to study and not die of hunger. They are obtained by robbing the Nepmen. This is what the NEP resulted in. He corrupted the party and Soviet cadres. Bribery is everywhere. For any service the chairman of the village council, the policeman take a bribe. Factory directors repair their own apartments at the expense of enterprises,buy luxury. And so from 1921 to 1928.
Trotsky and his right hand in the field of economics, Preobrazhensky, decided to transfer the flame of the revolution to Asia, and to train personnel in our eastern republics, urgently building factories there to “breed” the local proletariat.
Stalin proposed another option: building socialism in one, separately taken country. However, he never said when socialism would be built. He said construction, and a few years later he clarified: it is necessary to create an industry in 10 years. Heavy industry. Otherwise we will be destroyed. This was spoken in February 1931. Stalin was not much wrong. After 10 years and 4 months, Germany attacked the USSR.
The fundamental differences were between the Stalin group and the rock-solid Bolsheviks. It doesn't matter if they are leftists like Trotsky and Zinoviev, rightists like Rykov and Bukharin. Everyone relied on the revolution in Europe … So the point is not in retaliation, but in an acute struggle to determine the course of the country's development."
NEP was curtailed, complete collectivization and forced industrialization began. This gave rise to new difficulties and difficulties. Mass peasant riots swept across the country, and workers went on strike in some cities, dissatisfied with the meager rationing system for distributing food. In a word, the internal socio-political situation has deteriorated sharply. And as a result, according to the apt remark of the historian Igor Pykhalov: "Party oppositionists of all stripes and colors, those who like to" fish in troubled waters ", yesterday's leaders and bosses who yearned for revenge in the struggle for power immediately became more active.
First of all, the Trotskyist underground became more active, which had vast experience of underground subversive activities since the Civil War. In the late 1920s, the Trotskyists united with the old comrades-in-arms of the deceased Lenin - Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, dissatisfied with the fact that Stalin removed them from the levers of power due to their managerial mediocrity.
There was also the so-called "Right Opposition", which was supervised by such prominent Bolsheviks as Nikolai Bukharin, Abel Yenukidze, Alexei Rykov. These sharply criticized the Stalinist leadership for "improperly organized collectivization of the countryside." There were also smaller opposition groups. All of them were united by one thing - hatred of Stalin, with whom they were ready to fight by any methods familiar to them since the revolutionary underground times of the tsarist era and the era of the brutal Civil War.
In 1932, practically all the opposition united into a single, as it would later be called, bloc of Rights and Trotskyites. Immediately on the agenda was the question of overthrowing Stalin. Two options were considered. In case of the expected war with the West, it was supposed to contribute in every possible way to the defeat of the Red Army, so that later, in the wake of the chaos that had arisen, to seize power. If the war does not happen, then the option of a palace coup was considered.
Here is the opinion of Yuri Zhukov:
“Directly at the head of the conspiracy were Abel Yenukidze and Rudolf Peterson - a participant in the Civil War, took part in punitive operations against the insurgent peasants in the Tambov province, commanded Trotsky's armored train, and since 1920 - the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin. They wanted to arrest the entire "Stalinist" five at once - Stalin himself, as well as Molotov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov."
The conspiracy managed to involve the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, offended by Stalin for the fact that he allegedly could not appreciate the "great abilities" of the Marshal. The People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda also joined the conspiracy - he was an ordinary unprincipled careerist, who at some point thought that the chair under Stalin was seriously swaying, and therefore he hastened to get closer to the opposition.
In any case, Yagoda conscientiously fulfilled his obligations to the opposition, slowing down any information about the conspirators that periodically came to the NKVD. And such signals, as it later turned out, regularly fell on the table of the country's chief security officer, but he carefully hid them "under the cloth" …
Most likely, the conspiracy was defeated because of the impatient Trotskyists. Fulfilling the instructions of their leader on terror, they contributed to the murder of one of Stalin's associates, the first secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee, Sergei Kirov, who was shot dead in the Smolny building on December 1, 1934.
Stalin, who had already heard alarming information about the conspiracy more than once, immediately took advantage of this murder and took decisive retaliatory measures. The first blow fell on the Trotskyists. There were mass arrests in the country of those who at least once had contact with Trotsky and his associates. The success of the operation was also largely facilitated by the fact that the Party Central Committee took the activities of the NKVD under strict control. In 1936, the entire top of the Trotskyite-Zinoviev underground was condemned and destroyed. And at the end of the same year, Yagoda was removed from the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD and shot in 1937 …
Next came Tukhachevsky's turn. As the German historian Paul Carell writes, referring to sources in German intelligence, the marshal planned his coup on May 1, 1937, when many military equipment and troops were drawn to Moscow for the May Day parade. Under the cover of the parade, military units loyal to Tukhachevsky could also be brought to the capital …
However, Stalin already knew about these plans. Tukhachevsky was isolated, and at the end of May he was arrested. A whole cohort of high-ranking military leaders went on trial with him. Thus, the Trotskyite conspiracy was liquidated by the middle of 1937 …
Failed Stalinist democratization
According to some reports, Stalin was going to end the repression on this. However, in the summer of the same 1937, he faced another hostile force - "regional barons" from among the first secretaries of the regional party committees. These figures were greatly alarmed by Stalin's plans to democratize the country's political life - because the free elections planned by Stalin threatened many of them with inevitable loss of power.
Yes, yes - free elections! And it's not a joke. First, in 1936, on the initiative of Stalin, a new Constitution was adopted, according to which all citizens of the Soviet Union, without exception, received equal civil rights, including the so-called "former", previously deprived of voting rights. And further, as the expert on this issue Yuri Zhukov writes:
“It was assumed that simultaneously with the Constitution, a new electoral law would be adopted, which spells out the procedure for elections from several alternative candidates at once, and immediately the nomination of candidates to the Supreme Council, the elections to which was scheduled for the same year, will begin. Samples of ballots have already been approved, money has been allocated for campaigning and elections."
Zhukov believes that through these elections, Stalin not only wanted to carry out political democratization, but also to remove the party nomenklatura from real power, which, in his opinion, was too fed up and was cut off from the life of the people. Stalin generally wished to leave only ideological work to the party, and delegate all real executive functions to the Soviets of different levels (elected on an alternative basis) and the government of the Soviet Union - so, back in 1935, the leader expressed an important idea: "We must free the party from economic activity." …
However, Zhukov says, Stalin revealed his plans too early. And at the June 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee, the nomenklatura, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually delivered an ultimatum to Stalin - either he would leave everything as before, or he himself would be removed. At the same time, the nomenklatura officials referred to the recently revealed conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military. They demanded not only to curtail any plans for democratization, but also to strengthen emergency measures, and even to introduce special quotas for massive repression in the regions - they say, to finish off those Trotskyists who escaped punishment. Yuri Zhukov:
“The secretaries of regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties requested the so-called limits. The number of those whom they can arrest and shoot or send to places not so distant. Most zealous was such a future “victim of the Stalinist regime” as Eikhe, in those days - the first secretary of the West Siberian regional party committee. He asked for the right to shoot 10,800 people. In second place is Khrushchev, who headed the Moscow Regional Committee: “only” 8,500 people. In third place is the first secretary of the Azov-Black Sea Regional Committee (today it is the Don and the North Caucasus) Evdokimov: 6644 - to shoot and almost 7 thousand - to send to the camps. Other secretaries also sent bloodthirsty applications. But with smaller numbers. One and a half, two thousand …
Six months later, when Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, one of his first dispatches to Moscow was a request to allow him to shoot 20,000 people. But we have already walked there for the first time …”.
Stalin, according to Zhukov, had no choice but to accept the rules of this terrible game, because the party at that time was too much of a force that he could not directly challenge. And the Great Terror spread across the country, when both the real participants in the failed conspiracy and simply suspicious people were destroyed. It is clear that many people who had nothing to do with conspiracies at all fell under this "cleansing" operation.
However, here we will not go too far, as our liberals are doing today, pointing to "tens of millions of innocent victims." According to Yuri Zhukov:
“At our institute (Institute of History, RAS - IN), Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov works. As part of a small group, he checked and rechecked in the archives for several years what the real numbers of repression were. In particular, under the 58th article. We came to concrete results. The West immediately yelled. They were told: please, here are the archives! We arrived, checked, were forced to agree. Here's what.
1935 - a total of 267 thousand were arrested and convicted under Article 58, 1229 of them were sentenced to capital punishment, in 36, respectively, 274 thousand and 1118 people. And then a splash. In the 37th, more than 790 thousand were arrested and convicted under Article 58, over 353 thousand were shot, in the 38th - more than 554 thousand and more than 328 thousand were shot. Then a decline. In the 39th - about 64 thousand were convicted and 2552 people were sentenced to death, in the 40th - about 72 thousand and to the highest measure - 1649 people.
In total, for the period from 1921 to 1953, 4,060,306 people were convicted, of which 2,634,397 people were sent to camps and prisons."
Of course, these are terrible figures (because any violent death is also a great tragedy). But still, you see, we are not talking about many millions …
However, let's go back to the 30s. In the course of this bloody campaign, Stalin finally succeeded in directing terror against its initiators, the regional first secretaries, who were eliminated one by one. Only by 1939 he was able to take the party under his full control, and the mass terror immediately subsided. The social and living situation in the country has also sharply improved - people really began to live much more satisfying and prosperous than before …
… Stalin was able to return to his plans to remove the party from power only after the Great Patriotic War, at the very end of the 40s. However, by that time, a new generation of the same party nomenklatura had grown up, which stood on the previous positions of its absolute power. It was its representatives who organized a new anti-Stalinist conspiracy, which was crowned with success in 1953, when the leader died under circumstances that have not yet been clarified.
Curiously, some of Stalin's associates nevertheless tried to implement his plans after the death of the leader. Yuri Zhukov:
“After Stalin's death, Malenkov, the head of the USSR government, one of his closest associates, canceled all privileges for the party nomenklatura. For example, the monthly payment of money ("envelopes"), the amount of which was two, three, or even five times higher than the salary and was not taken into account even when paying party contributions, Lechsanupr, sanatoriums, personal cars, "turntables". And he raised the salaries of government officials 2-3 times. According to the generally accepted scale of values (and in their own eyes), party workers have become much lower than government workers. The attack on the rights of the party nomenklatura, hidden from prying eyes, lasted only three months. Party cadres have united, began to complain about the infringement of "rights" to the Secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev."
Further - it is known. Khrushchev "hung" on Stalin all the blame for the repression of 1937. And the party bosses were not only given back all the privileges, but in general they were actually eaten away from the Criminal Code, which itself began to rapidly disintegrate the party. It was precisely the completely decayed party elite that ultimately ruined the Soviet Union.
However, this is a completely different story …
Igor Nevsky, specially for the "Ambassador Prikaz"