Let us continue our consideration of the false statements attributed to V. I. Lenin. Fashionable "historical" writers-denunciators of the Soviet period of our Motherland are based on them. They write fiery, passionate articles and books in which they pass judgment on the founder of our state, V. I. Lenin. Shamelessly using lies to prove their unclean libels.
They are listened to not only by young people who did not know that period, but also matured people who were formed at that time as individuals who grew up during the Soviet Union.
Recall that the concept of the destruction of the USSR by one of the architects of Perestroika, A. Yakovlev, implied a sequence of the following influences on the minds of compatriots:
"To hit Lenin with the authority of Stalin", after which to strike a blow at the Plekhanovs and the social democracy at Lenin, if successful, with liberalism and "moral socialism" at revolutionaryism in general. According to the same Yakovlev, a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU - "using totalitarian methods to fight totalitarianism."
Meaning by this the possession of all the power of the media of a country condemned to dismemberment.
Like the one considered in the material "on the confiscation of church valuables", the fake considered here began its life after the first blow - the blow "Lenin on Stalin". It has been disclosed for a long time already in the work of a senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph. D. I. Kurlyandsky.
Here is a short version. (full can be viewed here)
Often in the network there is a mention of the "terrible" instruction of V. I. Lenin under the significant number 13666/2 from Zverev, stating that “the priests should be arrested and mercilessly shot”. The purpose of this publication is not to assess, apologize or criticize the very figure of Lenin, but to consider a specific false document, in the manufacture of which the fabricators spent a lot of effort.
Promotional video:
I want to point out right away that I am not going to claim primacy in the study of this issue; various authors have reviewed this document on several occasions. In my post, I mainly rely on the article by Ph. D., senior researcher. IRI RAS Igor Kurlyandsky.
So, here is a facsimile copy of this "instruction" signed by Lenin. Its text is as follows:
May 1, 1919
Top secret
Chairman V. Ch. K. No. 13666/2 tov. Dzerzhinsky F. E.
NOTE
In accordance with the decision of V. Ts. I. K. and Sov. bunk bed the commissars need to put an end to priests and religion as soon as possible.
Popov should be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as much as possible.
Churches are to be closed. The premises of the temples should be sealed and converted into warehouses.
Chairman V. Ts. I. K. Kalinin
Chairman of the Sov. bunk bed Komissarov Ulyanov (Lenin)
For the first time this text was revealed to the world in the book of the publicist A. Latyshev "Declassified Lenin", and subsequently wandered through the pages of various books and magazines. It is worth noting that the document is not attributed in any way (there is no indication of the archive in which the author found it, links to the volume and the case sheet).
In 1991, the author received admission to some "secret archives", and so commented on his research:
“I sat in the archives from morning till night, and my hair stood on end. After all, I always believed in Lenin, but after the first thirty documents I read I was simply shocked."
Let's leave aside the fact that working in an archive, especially one such as the archives of central government bodies, is a very dull, tedious and ungrateful business, and the chance that it is in the first 30 documents that hair-raising facts will be found tends to absolute zero. We are more interested in text analysis.
1. "Instruction". The All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars for the entire period of their activity have not published a single document with the heading "Direction". These bodies issued decrees and decrees. All documents were published a long time ago in the books "Decrees of the Soviet Power", and anyone can see for themselves. No "instructions" at all existed in the accepted norms of Soviet party-state office work.
2. Issued decrees and regulations were not assigned numbers (this is also easy to verify by looking through the above-mentioned collections). Even if we imagine for a moment that such an instruction was in fact, the archives should contain at least 13665 other instructions of Lenin, which, of course, are absent. If we assume that, in accordance with the norms of Soviet office work, the number of documents was "reset" on January 1 and started anew, from No. 1, by May 19 Ilyich had to famously sign at least a hundred instructions a day (after all, fractional parts - 13666/2)!
3. All documents of the RGASPI Lenin Foundation, except for the case history, are declassified and open to researchers, which was officially confirmed by the head of the archive, K. Anderson. The repositories of the State Archives of the Russian Federation were opened, which contain the funds of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars. All these archives do not contain this document, just as the Central Archives of the FSB of the Russian Federation and the Archives of the President of the Russian Federation gave a negative opinion about its presence in official letters.
4. Among the papers of the Leninist fund RAGSPI, relating to May 1, 1919, there are no anti-religious - these are several resolutions of the Small Council of People's Commissars, signed by him, concerning economic issues.
5. Mentioned in the text “the secret decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of 1917-1919. about the need to "put an end to priests and religion as soon as possible" as well as not attributed (there is no link to the fund or the archive inventory). In all the archives specified in clause 3, this "solution" is not. The design itself is absolutely uncharacteristic for the documents of the highest leading Soviet bodies - they always contain the full name and date of the decree or resolution to which they refer.
6. In the same way, any departmental archives of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs lack any instructions with references to this "instruction", as well as reports on implementation, and this would be a direct violation of a government order.
7. Finally, M. I. Kalinin was physically absent from Moscow in May 1919, and therefore could not sign this document with his own hand:
April 29 - May 18 - Mikhail I. Kalinin with the October Revolution train, organized on the initiative of V. I. Lenin, travels to the Eastern Front along the route Murom - Arzamas - Alatyr - Kazan.
In another publication, Latyshev “supplements” and “confirms” the document's authenticity with the following reference:
Characteristic is the publication in the communist Pravda of the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated November 11, 1939, signed by I. Stalin: “The instruction of Comrade. Lenin dated May 1, 1919 for No. 13666/2 "On the fight against priests and religion", addressed to Pre. The Cheka to FE Dzerzhinsky, and all the relevant instructions of the OGPU-NKVD concerning the persecution of the ministers of the Church and Orthodox believers - CANCEL.
Naturally, 1. The reference to the unattributed "publication of Pravda" is meaningless (it is proposed to shovel the entire file?).
There is no such text in the issues of November-December 1939, although there are references to meetings of various bodies of the state apparatus.
2. In party and state documents, Lenin was never called "Comrade Ulyanov (Lenin)". The accepted forms of mentioning only "Comrade Lenin", "V. I. Lenin ".
3. Apparently, the author did not assume that the decisions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) -VKP (b) of the USSR for 1919-1952 would be declassified. Including materials from secret "special folders" are offered for free access to researchers in the same RGASPI.
So, the minutes of the meeting of November 11 does not contain the "quoted" text.
4. In a number of publications of the aforementioned Stalinist “decree”, the stamp “Special folder” is indicated.
There is a special folder for the decisions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on November 11, 1939, but religious issues were not considered there either. On this day, under the heading "Special folder", questions were raised "about increasing the number and material support of the NKVD convoy troops", "about revising the guard service" and the question of the Defense Commission.
I hope this report convincingly shows that Lenin's "instruction" is fake and fabricated, and rather sloppy. In no case can it be considered genuine or "partially incorrect", it is false from beginning to end.
PS The ancient Romans believed that one should always start with the question "Qui prodest?" - "Who benefits?", I'll finish them. Exclusively in the order of thought.
Extract from the budget of the Yeltsin campaign headquarters-96 (newspaper "Zavtra", November 19, 1996):
The book "Declassified Lenin". 95 million rubles Approved. Paid.
