Those who have once tasted oolong milk tea with its delicate taste and delicate aroma...
In the spring of 1938, terrible accusations rained down on the heads of prominent Soviet leaders.
In 1988, Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov were posthumously reinstated into the CPSU. Let's remember why they were expelled from the party at one time.
Sing, counter-revolution
Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsk were the main accused open process in the case of the so-called right-wing Trotskyist anti-Soviet bloc. This was not their first encounter with Stalin and his supporters - but it was during the trial that it became clear whose side was strong. And power was on Stalin’s side and Yezhova; No one had any methods against the slander they encouraged.
So, in August 1936, during the trial of the “Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center” Zinoviev With Kamenev unexpectedly for everyone, they gave testimony according to which Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky participated in counter-revolutionary activities.
Tomsky was the first to break down, unable to withstand the bullying; in August of the same year, having read about what was happening in Pravda, he committed suicide without waiting for him to be arrested - he shot himself at his dacha in Bolshevo, near Moscow. In a farewell letter addressed to Stalin, he urged him not to believe “Zinoviev’s impudent slander.”
Untruth in Pravda
Rykov and Bukharin were constantly monitored. Their already imprisoned and exiled comrades were returned from camps and exile back to the capital and there they were interrogated according to all the laws of Stalin’s time; many, under torture, slandered the disgraced Bolsheviks, which Yezhov never tired of informing Stalin about.
At the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, Yezhov declared with all confidence that he had received evidence according to which Rykov and Bukharin could be considered guilty. Stalin immediately proposed removing both as candidates for membership in the Central Committee.
They were also soon expelled from the Communist Party and later arrested.
Beat Rykov
After the arrest, the case of Rykov and Bukharin began to be developed very quickly - without disdaining the methods characteristic of that era. “Beat Rykov” - this entry was preserved in Yezhov’s notebook.
“Now I think that today’s saboteurs, no matter what flag they hide behind, Trotskyist or Bukharinist, have long ceased to be a political trend in the labor movement,” Stalin speaks out regarding the case of yesterday’s revolutionaries. “They turned into an unprincipled and unprincipled gang of professional saboteurs, spies, and murderers.”
By the time the open court session began, Rykov and Bukharin had served more than a year in Lubyanka. All this time, propaganda made them enemies of the people, foreign intelligence officers, terrorists; all this time their torture and the torture of their comrades did not stop.
All prisoners, as a result of Yezhov’s “methods of persuasion,” admitted their guilt - as saboteurs seeking to destroy the country’s agriculture and industry, as organizers of the murders Kirov, Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Gorky, as participants in the attempt on Yezhov. Bukharin was even “persuaded” to admit that in the dining room he added crushed glass to the dishes.
No words needed
Prosecutor Vyshinsky, speaking at the trial, said: he has no words to describe the enormity of such crimes - and, in fact, words are not needed.
This is how Stalin dealt with those whom he considered his competitors for power. The absurdity of the charges brought against those arrested only proved what unlimited power was in the hands of the leader.
On March 15, 1938, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and 19 other government officials were shot.
He was a revolutionary with the face of a saint, an ideologist of the party line and a universal favorite. Stalin called him “bukharchik”, and Lenin treated him like a son.
Ideologist mockingbird
Bukharin was a talented cartoonist. His pencil is the only portrait of Stalin drawn from life, and not from a photograph. Bukharin drew everyone, and even published caricatures of top officials on the pages of the Pravda newspaper. He said about them that it is “fashionable and does not cause rejection by anyone.” In this way, he strengthened the closeness and recognition of power, and when evil tongues whispered to Stalin about the next caricature, he answered: “Don’t touch Bukharchik!” Bukharin's talent was passed on to his son, who became a scuba diver.
Friend and Rival
In his last days, Lenin called Bukharin his son. He actually died in his arms. They had a long, close, almost friendly relationship. Bukharin is the man who allowed himself to disagree with Lenin. They argued in meetings and in their work, but it was a duel of equals. Lenin valued Bukharin immensely and kept him with him. Both as a friend and as the main enemy. Nikolai Bukharin even managed to be an arbitrator in disputes between Trotsky and Lenin. He said that their discussions were reminiscent of the argument between a person calling a glass a glass cylinder and a person calling the same glass a drinking instrument. Lenin used the example of Bukharin with a glass to present some of the views of Marxism, which, from his point of view, were not understood by Trotsky and Bukharin. The reasoning was called “Dialectics of the glass.” Lenin introduced Bukharin to Stalin. Bukharin helped Stalin write a work on the national question, the very work that would form the basis of his course.
For the revolution! For NEP!
Trotsky was another “foreign” friend of Bukharin. They met in America, where they jointly published a magazine. They were both “late” for the revolution. Lenin arrived faster. But unlike Trotsky, Bukharin did not strive for absolute power. Their paths began to diverge immediately upon their return. Trotsky first “bent” war communism and world revolution, in which Bukharin even supported his friend, but if Trotsky was “stuck” on these ideas, then Bukharin was more dynamic in his views. They finally separated during the NEP. Bukharin saw that the NEP policy was bearing fruit, that the country now did not need to be “reared up” again, this could destroy it. Trotsky was adamant. As a result, Bukharin turned out to be the person who organized Trotsky’s exile. Nothing personal. Only revolution.
Dangerous Pet
Bukharin has a unique and tragic fate in many ways. He was not a typical Bolshevik, he did not fight on the Civil fronts, but of all his comrades-in-arms he was one of the greatest professionals of the revolution. He was a very lively person; Lenin called him “the favorite of the party.” Bukharin was an excellent speaker, which was highly valued, but at the same time he was very open in live human communication and joked a lot. They said about him that he looked more like a saint than a revolutionary. He was on friendly terms with everyone. He was respected, loved and feared, as any extraordinary mind is feared.
Nugget professional
Bukharin was a talented journalist. He returned to Russia from emigration with good journalistic training. He published a magazine in New York New world" Bukharin was the editor of Izvestia and Pravda for many years. He passed good school propaganda and masterfully mastered formats. Bukharin was known as a specialist not only in Soviet Russia, but also abroad. It’s no joke - the initiator and editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia... The French intellectual Andre Malraux had a project to put Bukharin at the head of the editorial board of the unrealized international “Encyclopedia of the 20th Century”. This is not surprising: Bukharin was fluent in several languages and had encyclopedic knowledge.
The Strangler and Friend of Writers
Bukharin was one of the most educated people of his time. He communicated a lot and fruitfully with writers, was friends and worked with Gorky and Pasternak. He appreciated Mandelstam very much. It was Bukharin who expressed support for the arrested poet, and his execution was replaced by exile. Bukharin had a difficult relationship with Yesenin. At one time he considered him a “harmful” poet, expressing in his work all the worst that is in the Russian person. Bukharin softened his attitude towards Yesenin after the poet’s suicide, which Nikolai Ivanovich, of course, condemned. Bukharin did a lot for Russian culture. He saw in Pasternak “a voice outside the choir” and recognized his genius. An indicative fact: during interrogations, Mandelstam listed everyone to whom he read his poem about Stalin (for which he was convicted), but Pasternak’s name is not in the interrogation records. It is not there precisely because of Nikolai Bukharin’s love for Pasternak’s poetry.
This article was first published in 1998 in Nezavisimaya Gazeta by V. Tretyakov, causing a storm of anger among our democrats. Almost all the central newspapers demanded the blood of the author, and even Tretyakov himself denounced him in print as a saboteur who had secretly infiltrated the venerable newspaper... Since then, a lot of tribunal water has flowed under the bridge, and the debate about Bukharin’s guilt, within the framework of the general discussion about Stalin and the USSR, has not subsided. But the arguments in them are most often from the area of general judgments, so I consider it worth repeating this article, which is addressed to the very texture of the unforgettable Bukharin trial.
Poet Sergei Alikhanov released a rather unexpected book. A thick, nearly 700-page tome under the terse title “Court Report” contains a transcript trial 1938 according to the Bukharin-Trotskyist bloc.
The history of this publication is slightly reminiscent of a detective story. The Bukharin trial was open, including to the Western press; Some of his materials were published in ours. But the case is so voluminous and complex (there are 21 people accused in it) that to this day for the general public it is - White spot. Although the most popular hypothesis was that the trial was fabricated, and Yakovlev’s commission acquitted all those convicted in it, with the exception of Yagoda, back in 1989. But on what basis - again, no one knew.
And in 1938, after the trial ended with the sentence of 18 central “co-trials” to death, its transcript was copied and distributed to the country’s NKVD departments for review. However, then our secret maniacs issued a circular: return all numbered copies to the center, and destroy them in remote locations.
But there was a brave man who kept his copy - and in his old age he told his grandson about his deed. They say that, foreseeing that our history would lie over time, he decided to save the whole truth for posterity. And he bequeathed: if the chance arises, to publish this extremely frank document of the era, which is what the grandson did in our time. But trusting Alikhanov with this publication, the costs of which he took upon himself, he asked to keep quiet about it until the publication of the edition. As a result of all these precautions, the book was published under such a title that does not say too much - so as not to appear in the wrong place in advance.
Now about herself. Already its volume and shorthand accuracy, which even preserved the manner of speech of the participants in the trial, give the reader the opportunity to feel its true atmosphere. And, comparing the masses of testimony and arguments, try, taking the place of an impartial judge, to decide what is true and what is not.
The presiding judge at the trial is the chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, military lawyer Ulrich. The state prosecutor is USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky. Among the defendants are senior government and party leaders: Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda, Krestinsky, Ikramov and others. They are accused of having “formed a conspiratorial group “right-Trotskyist bloc”, which set as its goal espionage, sabotage, sabotage, undermining the military power of the USSR and separating Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan from it and the overthrow of the existing political system..." That is, almost literally in what happened 55 years later - and this, of course, arouses the most lively interest in the book.
In addition, doctors Levin, Kazakov and others associated with the bloc through Yagoda are charged with bringing to death Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Gorky and his son Maxim Peshkov. In addition, the head of the OGPU-NKVD Yagoda attempted to poison his successor Yezhov with mercury vapor and organized the murder of Kirov.
Although Ulrich is formally heading the process, in essence the entire judicial investigation is being conducted, and very thoroughly, by Vyshinsky alone. A man of colossal drive, a brutal memory, not missing a single detail from the darkness of details on each of the accused, an outstanding polemicist of his kind. The latter is best seen from his constant clashes with his main and, perhaps, only opponent trying to fight back - Bukharin.
VYSHINSKY: I’m not asking about the conversation in general, but about this conversation.
BUKHARIN: In Hegel’s “Logic” the word “this” is considered the most difficult...
VYSHINSKY: I ask the court to explain to the accused Bukharin that he is not a philosopher here, but a criminal, and it is useful for him to refrain from talking about Hegelian philosophy, it will be better, first of all, for Hegelian philosophy...
BUKHARIN: He said “must”, but the meaning of these words is not “Solden”, but “Mussen”.
VYSHINSKY: Leave your philosophy. Must in Russian means must.
BUKHARIN: “Must” has two meanings in Russian.
VYSHINSKY: And here we want to have one meaning.
BUKHARIN: You wish it so, but I have the right to disagree with this...
VYSHINSKY: You are used to negotiating with the Germans in their language, but here we speak Russian..."
And Vyshinsky, with his “proletarian directness,” although by no means simplicity, in these duels, sometimes for entire pages, every now and then gains the upper hand, not allowing the enemy to transfer the game into the field of his favorite sophistry. This manner of his is well depicted by Bukharin’s former comrade-in-arms Yakovleva, a witness to the plan for Lenin’s arrest in 1918: “He spoke about this in passing, shrouding it in a series of confused and unnecessary theoretical reasoning, as he generally likes to do; he, as if in a cocoon, wrapped this thought in the sum of lengthy arguments.”
Of course, behind Vyshinsky’s back is the full power of the punitive machine. But Bukharin does not enter into a duel with her, realizing that “I may not be alive and I’m even almost sure of it.” His entire line at the trial, in places rising to the most dramatic pathos, has one amazing goal: to morally justify himself for the “things” he admits to himself for which “you can shoot ten times.” This duality of position - yes, he is terribly sinful, but let me show the full height of the delusions thrown into the criminal whirlpool - and does not give him victory over Vyshinsky’s destructive interpretation of his personality:
“Bukharin organizes sabotage, sabotage, espionage, and he looks humble, quiet, almost holy, and it’s as if one can hear the humble words of Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky: “Holy work, brothers!” from the lips of Nikolai Ivanovich. This is the height of monstrous hypocrisy, treachery, Jesuitism and inhuman meanness.”
There are no words, the cruel leaven of time here, as in the other catchphrase Vyshinsky, born at the same trial: “Crush the damned reptile!” – it’s very visible. But the picture of the crime, which the iron prosecutor drags out into the light over the course of ten days from a lot of confessions, denials and cross-examinations, is terrible.
“BUKHARIN: I answer as one of the leaders, and not the switchman of a counter-revolutionary organization. VYSHINSKY: What goals did this organization pursue? BUKHARIN: Its main goal was the restoration of capitalist relations in the USSR. VYSHINSKY: With help? BUKHARIN: In particular, with the help of the war, which was prognostically in the future. VYSHINSKY: On conditions? BUKHARIN: If we dot all the i’s, on the terms of the dismemberment of the USSR.”
Bukharin explains the ideological origins of the conspiracy to overthrow the Stalinist elite as follows:
“In 1928, I myself gave a formula regarding the military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry... We began to shrug our shoulders, with irony, and then with embitterment, at our huge, gigantically growing factories, as if they were some kind of voracious monsters that take away the means of consumption from the general public..."
And already in the early 30s, a “contact bloc” was formed, controlled here by Bukharin, Pyatakov, Radek, Rykov and Tomsky, and from abroad by Trotsky. The coup was first conceived in the wake of mass protests within the country. But when hope for them did not come true, the emphasis shifted to “opening the borders” for foreign interventionists, who, for helping them, would put the leaders of the bloc in power in the Kremlin. Trotsky and Karakhan, a Soviet diplomat and participant in the conspiracy, negotiated on this matter with Nazi Germany:
“BUKHARIN: In the summer of 1934, Radek told me that Trotsky promised the Germans a whole series of territorial concessions, including Ukraine. If my memory serves me correctly, territorial concessions to Japan also appeared there..."
Tukhachevsky’s military group was supposed to open the front:
“KRESTINSKY: In one of the conversations, he (Tukhachevsky. - A.R.) named several people on whom he relies: Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eideman. Then he raised the question of accelerating the coup... The coup was timed to coincide with Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union...”
But since the conspirators saw the growth of patriotic sentiment in the country, they were preparing another Jesuit move. Shift the blame for the intervention onto the current government and “bring to justice those responsible for the defeat at the front. This will give us the opportunity to captivate the masses by playing with patriotic slogans.”
However, the intervention expected by the Bukharinites in 1937 did not happen, and then the last bet remained - on a “palace coup”:
“BUKHARIN: The power of the conspiracy is the forces of Yenukidze plus Yagoda, their organization in the Kremlin and the NKVD, and Yenukidze managed to recruit the former commandant of the Kremlin Peterson...
ROSENGOLTZ: Tukhachevsky indicated a deadline, believing that before May 15 (1937 - A.R.) he would be able to carry out this coup... One of the options is the opportunity for a group of military men to gather in his apartment, penetrate into the Kremlin, and seize the Kremlin telephone exchange and kill the leaders..."
In fulfillment of the main task of seizing power, the bloc carried out extensive work both within the USSR and abroad. Contacts were established with the intelligence services of Germany, France, Japan, and Poland, which supplied money to the foreign, Trotskyist part of the bloc:
“KRESTINSKY (diplomat, then deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs. - A.R.): Trotsky suggested that I offer Seeckt (Reichswehr General - A.R.) so that he would provide Trotsky with a systematic monetary subsidy... If Seeckt asks for services for him in area of espionage activity, then this is necessary and can be done. I raised the question with Seeckt and named the amount as 250 thousand gold marks per year. Seeckt agreed..."
But in addition, Trotsky also had a fair amount of support from the USSR:
"ROZENGOLTZ: I was the People's Commissar foreign trade, and with my sanction 15 thousand pounds were transferred to Trotsky, then 10 thousand pounds... According to Exportles since 1933, 300 thousand dollars... GRINKO (People's Commissariat of Finance - A.R.): I helped Krestinsky use foreign currency funds that accumulated on exchange rate differences abroad and which he needed to finance the Trotskyists... The Bukharin formula was given - to hit the Soviet government with the Soviet ruble. The work tended to undermine financial discipline and the possibility of using public funds for the purposes of a conspiracy... Zelensky (chairman of the Central Union - A.R.), according to the directives of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc,” brought a large mass of goods to low-income areas, and sent fewer goods to productive areas, which created overstocking in some areas and a shortage of goods in others.”
The Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, Sharangovich, and the leaders of Uzbekistan, Ikramov and Khodzhaev, abundantly admit to the same actions to incite the discontent of the masses and prepare for separation from the USSR. The vocabulary of the latter is quite remarkable:
“KHODZHAEV: Although it seemed to me that I had outlived nationalism, this turned out to be not enough... VYSHINSKY: So, I maneuvered? KHOJAEV: He maneuvered, he double-dealed... After that we submitted a statement that we were mistaken, that we acted incorrectly, that we agreed to follow the party line. VYSHINSKY: Did they maneuver a second time? KHODZHAEV: The second time he double-dealed..."
Then the organizer of political murders, Yagoda, ominously joins all this - the complete opposite of the ideological leader Bukharin. It is felt that Bukharin was pushed into the heat of treason most of all by political ambitions: to prove to the dead Lenin and the living Stalin that his, Bukharin’s, line of development of the country was truer and more fruitful. Hence his concern not only with the seizure of power itself, but also with everything that followed:
“GRINKO: He pointed out that since politics prevails in in this case, sabotage should be allowed; on the other hand, the establishment of broad economic ties with the capitalist world will make it possible to make up for the losses that will occur.”
But on the way to an ambitious goal, as Bukharin completely capitulates in his last word, “the naked logic of the struggle was accompanied by a degeneration of ideas, a degeneration of ourselves, which led us to a camp very close in its attitudes to kulak praetorian fascism.”
Yagoda was motivated by something completely different. Although he says “not in order to mitigate his guilt, but only in the interests of establishing the truth, that the attempts of some of the accused to present me as a professional terrorist are incorrect” and “that none of these (terrorist - A.R.) acts committed by me without a directive from the “center-right bloc,” - it’s hard to believe him. The very first murder charged to him – Gorky’s son Max in 1934 – generally had, as he admits elsewhere, a purely personal motive. Namely: a love affair with the wife of the murdered man.
Further. He then organized the murder of his boss Menzhinsky in order to head the OGPU after him, allegedly ordered by Yenukidze, who was already deceased by the time of the trial. But none of the “co-trials” confirm this. It most likely seems that Yagoda was driven by purely selfish interest to kill the boss, who was already dying from illness: to seize the chair promised to him before the maelstrom of events gave birth to another contender.
In the murder of Kirov in the same 1934, Yagoda admits himself only as an accomplice:
“Yenukidze insisted that I should not interfere with this... Zaporozhets (Leningrad security officer - A.R.) told me that the NKVD authorities detained Nikolaev, who was found with a revolver and Kirov's route, Nikolaev was (by order of Yagoda - A. R.) released. After that, Kirov was killed by this Nikolaev.”
The motives for this murder are unclear from the trial, but much is said about Gorky in detail. The Bukharinites feared that the world authority of Gorky, who stood strongly behind Stalin, would interfere with them after “ palace coup“put on the togas of the deliverers of the fatherland. The old man will begin to trumpet God knows what to the whole world - and thereby spoil their victorious mass.
The motive according to Yezhov is also clear. In 1936, he supervised the investigation into Kirov from the Central Committee, was close to the truth, and then completely took over Yagoda’s post. And he, vacating the office, ordered his secretary Bulanov to sprinkle a solution of mercury there:
“BULANOV: I prepared large vials of this solution and handed them over to Savolainen. He sprayed it from a spray bottle. I remember it was a large metal balloon with a large bulb. It was in Yagoda’s restroom, a foreign spray bottle.”
Pictures equal in power to Shakespeare's Macbeth emerge from the descriptions of how Yagoda drew doctors into his plot:
“VYSHINSKY: Yagoda puts forward a cunning idea: to achieve death, as he says, from illness... To slip some kind of infection into a weakened body... to help not the patient, but the infection, and thus bring the patient to the grave.”
And so, playing the devil skillfully and variedly on the vile human strings, Yagoda turns the Kremlin Sanupr into a kind of squad of “killers with a guarantee of non-discovery”:
“LEVIN: He gave me a very valuable gift: he gave me ownership of a dacha near Moscow... He let the customs know that they could let me through from abroad without inspection. I brought things to my wife, the wives of my sons... He told me: Max is not only a worthless person, but also influences his father bad influence. He further said: do you know which institution’s head is speaking to you? I am responsible for the life and activities of Alexei Maksimovich, and therefore, since it is necessary to eliminate his son, you must not stop before this sacrifice... You cannot tell anyone about this. Nobody will believe you. They will believe not you, but me.”
And first, smeared with insidious gifts, and then frightened to death, Doctor Levin has a hand in the death of Max and Menzhinsky. But after this, his soul is not released to repentance, but is drawn even deeper, as he says, “into the satanic dance”:
“LEVIN: Yagoda said: “Well, now you have committed these crimes, you are entirely in my hands and must go to something much more serious and important (the murder of Gorky - A.R.) ... And you will reap the fruits when the new government comes ... »
And doctors Levin and Pletnev, under the cover of Gorky’s secretary Kryuchkov, prescribe obviously vicious treatment to the classic, which leads him to the grave. Another luminary, Doctor Kazakov, emphasizes his pride, which does not leave him even in court:
“KAZAKOV: I still have to say that at the congresses I was not even given the final word... I final word not given, for the first time in the history of medicine!.. You ask why I didn’t report this (helping Levin in the murder of Menzhinsky - A.R.) to the Soviet authorities? I must say - the motives are base fear. And the second point: in the medical unit there were most of the doctors - my scientific opponents. I thought maybe the moment would come when Yagoda would be able to stop them.
VYSHINSKY: As a reward for your crime?
KAZAKOV: Yes...
VYSHINSKY: Did the Soviet state give you an institute?
KAZAKOV: But publishing my works...
VYSHINSKY: The government cannot order the publication of your works. And I ask you, was the institute given?
KAZAKOV: It was.
VYSHINSKY: The best in the Union?
KAZAKOV: The best..."
To Kryuchkov, Yagoda, who knows about the ins and outs of everyone, selects the following key:
“KRYUCHKOV: I wasted Gorky’s money, using his full confidence. And this made me dependent on Yagoda... Yagoda said that Alexey Maksimovich might die soon, and his son Max would remain the manager of the literary heritage. You are used to living well, Yagoda said, but you will remain in the house as a hanger-on.”
And Kryuchkov, unable to withstand the insidious pressure, first helps send Max to the next world, then his father. At the same time, the extraordinary magnitude of the crime promises him an extraordinary dividend:
“KRYUCHKOV: I will remain a person to whom Gorky’s large literary legacy can go, which will give me funds and an independent position in the future...”
It seems that through these murders, Yagoda wanted, in addition to everything, to gain himself some special capital and weight among the conspirators, aiming in the future for the main post in the country:
“BULANOV: He was keen on Hitler, said that his book “My Struggle” was really worthwhile... He emphasized that Hitler rose from non-commissioned officers to become such people... He said that Bukharin would be no worse than Goebbels... He, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, under such a secretary like Goebbels, and with a Central Committee completely obedient to him, will govern as he wants.”
In any case, it seems that Yagoda actually managed to achieve one thing. The conspirators point out every now and then that they traveled abroad, where they came into contact with agents of foreign intelligence services, for treatment. Although our medicine, with a lot of famous names from pre-revolutionary times, was no worse than Western medicine. But one feels that, knowing about the tricks of the real owner of the Kremlin Sanupr, the patients assigned to him were simply panicky afraid to go there.
Their second security official, Tukhachevsky, caused the same concern among the conspirators:
“BUKHARIN: Since we are talking about a military coup, there will be an unusually large specific gravity namely a military group, and from here a unique Bonapartist danger may arise. And the Bonapartists, I, in particular, meant Tukhachevsky, will first of all deal with their allies... I always in conversations called Tukhachevsky “a potential Napoleon,” and it is known how Napoleon dealt with the so-called ideologists.”
Now, finally, the main thing: how much can you trust the confessions of the participants in the process? For there is a version that they were simply tortured in prison to the point of indiscriminate self-incrimination. But the transcript hardly leaves the possibility that the two dozen people meticulously interrogated by Vyshinsky took upon themselves the false accusation that someone had made up.
Firstly, in order to compose and connect such a darkness of factual, psychological, lexical details, a whole brigade of Shakespeare initiated into all the intricacies of geopolitics would be needed. The preliminary investigation was conducted by Sheinin, who was later known for his “Notes of an Investigator.” But in those “Notes” of his, dedicated to all kinds of everyday life, there was not even a tenth of the depth and drama of the collisions that emerged at the trial, which could most likely have been created only by life itself.
But even if we allow the performance to be written by someone else, it still had to be brilliantly performed in front of Western spectators by those whose reward for success was quite clear in the fate of the condemned Tukhachevsky group a little earlier. And the conspirators are revolutionaries, hardened by the tsarist prisons, and breaking them is a piece of cake. And judging by their activity, the struggle for every fact in court, the lengthy arguments that Bukharin turns into entire lectures, it is not clear that they were ironed to the point of complete self-oblivion.
“BUKHARIN: I accidentally received a book by Feuchtwanger from the prison library... It made a great impression on me... PLETNEV: I was delivered from my library over 20 books in four languages. I managed to write a monograph in prison..."
So Pletnev, in his last word, wants to show that he has already begun to atone for his guilt by serving his native science. But both comments are touches on how the “co-trials” were kept in captivity. And why they admitted a lot, although by no means everything they were accused of, one of them explained this way:
“BULANOV: ...Here, in the dock, they are not ashamed to drown their own accomplice, to sell them with their guts and legs, in order to get out of their own way for at least one thousandth of a second...”
And, of course, it is difficult not to correlate the Bukharinites’ confessions of their preparation to “open the front” with what actually happened in 1941, when the Germans, the main allies and recipients of the secret information of the traitors, broke into the USSR unhindered.
It's hard not to draw a parallel with modern history, when the collapse of the USSR occurred exactly as Bukharin and Trotsky imagined. But in the late 30s, the attempt to dismember the country was brutally suppressed. In the late 80s and early 90s, there was not even a hint of that state cruelty. And yet, all the terrible cruelty, as if inscrutably, despite all the slogans, one more humane than the other, poured out. Only first and foremost on those for whom everything was supposedly done: millions of refugees, hungry, homeless, killed in interethnic fights, and so on.
That is, Stalinist cruelty, open, under the slogan “Crush the reptile!” - or liberal-hypocritical cruelty - but the result is cruelty all the same.
And there is also an involuntary effect that arises after reading everything. Already knowing after the fact how many millions of lives the treacherous “opening of the front” cost, I would like, against everything that has been confirmed, to mentally reproach Stalin not for going too far in the fight against adversaries who are ready to do anything for power, but for being ineffective!
It was this impression, apparently, that made this process, which has not been officially declassified to this day, even more closed, precisely in the era of democracy and glasnost. But how, without reliably understanding your past, can you reliably build your future?
P.S. A few years after the first publication of this article, the historical work of Grover Furr (USA) and Vladimir Bobrov (Russia) “The First Confession of N.I. Bukharin at Lubyanka” was published, where my hypothesis was already scientifically confirmed.
Alexander Roslyakov
Not even the richest imagination could imagine that intra-party ideological disagreements would be presented as gangster crimes, although after 1929, after the defeat of the so-called right-wing opposition, since Bukharin ceased to occupy a leading position in the party, he was always under Stalin’s gunpoint and Stalin’s shelling, and this depressed him. Stalin bullied Bukharin, instilling in him that his former students, whom they began to call humiliatingly “shkolka” and dispersed, sending many to work outside Moscow, had turned into counter-revolutionaries. He set the press department of the Central Committee and the editor of Pravda Mehlis, with whom Bukharin had frequent clashes, against Bukharin. Stalin occasionally called Nikolai Ivanovich, gave any instructions to the editors of Izvestia, for example: “devastating” articles (“devastating” - that’s how he put it) about the historian, Bolshevik revolutionary Mikhail Nikolaevich Pokrovsky must be written to Bukharin and Radek. He called and snubbed Bukharin because, in a stream of praise, the author of one article wrote that Stalin’s mother called him Coco.
What kind of Coco is this? - asked an angry Stalin. It's not clear what made him angry. Was it a reference to his mother, to whom he never paid attention (as I heard), or did he believe that the mother, too, should have called her son “the father of all nations” and “the luminary of science.”
At the same time, he “caressed” Nikolai Ivanovich and showed “attention” to him. At a banquet organized for graduates of military academies in the spring of 1935, he made a toast in honor of Bukharin. “Let’s drink, comrades, to Nikolai Ivanovich, we all love him and know him, and whoever remembers the old will be out of sight!” The toast at the banquet of graduates of military academies is not even for the military leader, but for the civilian, for the already overthrown, but still beloved Bukharin! We drank and there was thunderous applause, as we say, turning into an ovation. Bukharin was taken aback by surprise. Stalin seemed to be measuring the temperature of his attitude towards Bukharin. Everything was calculated for him, every step, no, every centimeter of step. This is clear now; then no one, including Bukharin himself, suspected it. The toast was perceived as sincere, expressing Stalin's attitude towards Bukharin.
Stalin called to congratulate Bukharin on a good report on poetry at the First Congress of Writers in the summer of 1934. He especially liked the statement about Demyan Bedny, that he was in danger of falling behind the times. Once Stalin called late at night, he was drunk, and congratulated Bukharin on his marriage. The bell woke us up. I went to the phone and heard three words.
Stalin. Ask Nicholas!"
Some kind of trouble again,” said Nikolai Ivanovich and excitedly picked up the phone. But it turned out there was no trouble at all. Stalin said:
Nikolay, I congratulate you! You surpassed me in this too.
Why “and in this”, N.I. didn’t ask, but in what way he surpassed, he still asked.
A good wife, a beautiful wife, young - younger than my Nadya!
He said this when Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva was no longer alive. After such antics, trouble could be expected the next day. All this hassle, to which, I would say N.I. to some extent he even got used to it, and until August 1936 he overcame it thanks to his inherent cheerfulness. Starting from August 1936, that is, from the Zinoviev trial, the accusations against Bukharin became so terrible that his vitality dried up before our eyes. I was sent to a camp before Bukharin was convicted.
I waited a long time for the process - a whole year. I understood that the sentence would be death, I didn’t expect anything else and prayed for soonest end so that Nikolai Ivanovich’s torment would stop. But I had a faint hope that Bukharin would die proudly. That he, just like at the February-March Plenum of 1937, will loudly declare to the whole world: “No, no, no! I won’t lie to myself!” This hope was unfounded and was born only from great love for Nikolai Ivanovich
In the camp, I already understood well that all the accused who went through the process confessed to crimes that they could not commit. Usually we didn't receive newspapers in the camp. In early March 1938, the warden brought newspapers that covered the trial. "Read, honor who you are!" He looked at me with disgust and anger, gave the newspapers to the head of the barracks, slammed the door and left. This headman, whose last name is Zemskaya (I have her last name and appearance always associated with a snake), of course, there was also someone’s wife, she used to work as a prosecutor in Leningrad, and was an informant in the camp. Once, even before the trial, Zemskaya had already managed to make trouble for me by informing the 3rd investigative unit that I had a book with the stamp “N.I. Bukharin’s library” and the very suspicious title “Dangerous Liaisons”. It was a book by a French writer and politician 18th century Choderlos de Laclos, a very lively and witty novel written in letters. It was beautifully published in the early 30s by the Soviet publishing house "Academia". It is difficult now to say why this particular book ended up with me. After Zemskaya’s denunciation, a personal search was conducted on me, and an old French novel about social mischief-makers was taken away as counter-revolutionary. This is how they explained it to me when I asked to return the book.
So, they brought us all the newspapers that covered the trial, except the one where Bukharin’s last word was published. I was very interested in whether this was just a coincidence, or whether there was something behind it? Newspapers were not given to prisoners; the warden read them aloud, sitting on the top bunk, just opposite me. While reading the indictments, she would sometimes break away and glance in my direction, so that she could then convey how I was reacting.
Before the trial, I thought that I was more or less psychologically prepared for it thanks to reading the preliminary testimony against Bukharin, which was sent to him when Nikolai Ivanovich had not yet been arrested, but was already under investigation. But the trial, in terms of the impudence and enormity of the accusations, exceeded all my expectations. The criminal fantasy of his creator (the others were the perpetrators) reached its climax. Not a single criminal could commit such a number of crimes in his life, not only because life would not be enough for all this, but also because he would definitely fail in the first few.
Espionage and sabotage; dismemberment of the USSR and organization of kulak uprisings; connections with German fascist circles, with German intelligence, with Japanese intelligence; unfulfilled terrorist aspirations to kill Stalin, the murder of Kirov; a terrorist attack in 1918 against Lenin, and not just committed by the right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan, but Kaplan’s hand is the hand of Bukharin, the killing of Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Gorky, who had not worked for a long time due to illness, even the attempt to poison Yezhov (“Well, how can you not please your dear fellow !").
After the indictment was announced, the Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, Ulrich, questioned the accused whether they pleaded guilty. And only Nikolai Nikolaevich Krestinsky was able to declare.
I don't admit it. Tears flowed out of my eyes. It was a moment of enlightenment and pride for him. It seemed to me that I saw his good-natured face with short-sighted, very short-sighted eyes, wearing glasses. And although Krestinsky’s denial of guilt did not last long - he was forced to “confess”, that is, to lie - this circumstance became a fundamental crack in the course of the trial.
At first I listened to the report on the trial while sitting, then, in order to avoid the glances of curious women, I lay down on the bunk and covered my head with a blanket. I felt a severe headache and my nose began to bleed. Sarah Lazarevna Yakir was always near me. She wetted cold water a towel, put it to my nose and spoke quietly.
Be dumb, be dumb, you must try not to perceive anything, take my example, I have already become dumb!
Suddenly Zemskaya interrupted her reading and shouted in an authoritative voice.
Bukharin! Go wash the corridor, today is your turn!
And it wasn’t my turn, and the headman saw the position I was in and understood that I wouldn’t be able to clean the corridor. This was done on purpose so that the informant could report my refusal, which would complement my “counter-revolutionary” characterization
Don’t worry,” said S. L. Yakir, “I’ll wash it for her.” And although she herself was exhausted, she went to wash the long, dirty corridor. At that time and in the state in which I was, in the barracks, where no less than a hundred women were looking at me, when I could not pick up a newspaper and think about it, make at least an elementary analysis of this vile trial, all the accused seemed to me all look the same, except for Krestinsky.
Nikolai Ivanovich looked much more humiliating in my eyes than many years later, when I was able to read the court report and his last word for myself. In the Tomsk camp I even had doubts whether it was really Bukharin, or whether it was a figurehead disguised as Bukharin. His confessions seemed so monstrous to me that if he had expressed them to me in private, I would have considered him insane. Many then believed that there were dummies at the trial and Bukharin was not Bukharin either. But my initial doubts quickly dissipated as I read. I knew Nikolai Ivanovich too well not to recognize both his style and his character. Figureheads would be too crude and dangerous a fake in general, and in relation to Bukharin in particular.
And the very course of the trial - along with the admissions of the clash with Vyshinsky - made this assumption unconvincing.
Many years later, when I returned to Moscow, I.G. Ehrenburg, who was present at one of the sessions of the trial and sat close to the accused, confirmed that Nikolai Ivanovich was probably at the trial. He told me that during court session At certain intervals, a guard approached Bukharin, took him away, and after a few minutes brought him back again. Ehrenburg suspected that Nikolai Ivanovich was being subjected to some kind of will-weakening injections; except for Bukharin, no one else was taken away.
Maybe because they were afraid of him more than the others,” noted Ilya Grigorievich. Ehrenburg said that Mikhail Koltsov gave him a ticket to the trial with the words: “Go, Ilya Grigorievich, look at your friend!” And this was said, as it seemed to Ehrenburg, in a hostile tone. But Koltsov himself did not escape the same fate.
The lineup of defendants struck me incredibly. And at the first two Bolshevik trials, apparently, there were also defendants who were not connected by political activities, common goals, or opposition sentiments with either Kamenev and Zinoviev, or with Pyatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov, but there were much fewer such outsiders. The previous trials included many people who worked in various institutions in responsible positions, were previously expelled, then reinstated in the party, former Trotskyists who had long ago broken with Trotsky. Of those who belonged to the “right” opposition, only Alexei Ivanovich Rykov went through the last trial with Bukharin. Tomsky immediately realized that you couldn’t prove anything, because evidence of innocence was not needed, and with his firm working hand put a bullet in your temple. When I thought about him, I imagined those strong, wide hands, remembered in that hour when Tomsky carried the urn with my father’s ashes to the Kremlin wall. I imagined that supporters of Bukharin’s views would go through the trial. D. Maretsky, A. Slepkov, Y. Stan, Zaitsev, V. Astrov, A. Aikhenvald, I. Kraval, E. Tsetlin and others. Those who by this time were called humiliatingly “shkolka”, and Bukharin himself, like a robot, repeated this word during the trial. Those who were once defended from Kamenev’s attacks - who would have thought - Molotov! “A “democrat” like Comrade Kamenev speaks of them only in a condescending manner. The Stetsky-Maretskys. He cannot express himself otherwise about the youth who are beginning to grow up around the party and around its governing bodies, who are bringing enormous benefit to our party. .."
But there were no supporters of Bukharin’s views at the trial in 1928-1929. There was no Frumkin, whom Stalin considered to be more right than Bukharin, there was no Uglanov... Supporters of Bukharin during the Brest-Litovsk disagreements, who allegedly committed crimes together with Bukharin - V.V. Osinsky (Obolensky), V.N. Yakovlev were taken through the trial as witnesses, and not as accused. But along with Bukharin were “poisoner doctors” who had never had anything to do with politics. These were very knowledgeable doctors, among them Professor Pletnev, widely known here and abroad.
It was necessary to “make “right-wingers.” Who became them? It’s monstrous, but one of the central figures in the trial was Yagoda, the former People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, under whom the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial was carried out, and earlier the non-Bolshevik trials. Yagoda, to whom Nikolai Ivanovich, except contempt and hatred, I haven’t had any other feelings lately.
Bukharin believed that Yagoda had decayed, forgotten his revolutionary past, and turned into an adventurer, careerist and official. Yagoda could never be either right or left, he always held on to his post, he strictly followed the instructions of the Master, not understanding how the latter would “repay” him!
Not a word was said at the trial about any of Yagoda’s true crimes. He was just as slandered and slandered as his victims. Perhaps only one fact, told by Yagoda at the trial and confirmed by Rykov and Bukharin, actually took place: when peasant unrest began in the village in connection with collectivization and difficult news from the localities reached Rykov and Bukharin, one of them turned to Yagoda as to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs for accurate digital data on the unrest for a report to the Politburo or, perhaps, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in order to prevent their further growth and to substantiate their position. Better Berries no one could know this data. Yagoda was never in the “right” opposition, but the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars approached him, and he was obliged to provide him with information. At the trial they appeared as tendentious. Yagoda did not calculate the weights on the scales; Apparently, if he had not given such information, he would have received only approval. But Stalin did not forgive him for this oversight. I know about the above fact with Yagoda, since I was present when N.I. talked about it. Bukharin with Yu. Larin.
The second person made "right" was Akmal Ikramov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Uzbekistan. Ikramov has also never been in the “right” opposition. Moreover, he opposed her. It is difficult to say what potential supporters Nikolai Ivanovich had, but they certainly were. Kalinin, for example, once met N.I. in the Kremlin (this was before the XVI Congress of the CPSU(b)) and told him
“You, Nikolai Ivanovich, are two hundred percent right, but there is nothing more useful than the monolithic nature of the party. We have missed time, our general secretary has too much power, understand the rest yourself.” Shvernik also expressed sympathy for Nikolai Ivanovich’s position, but only personally. And perhaps Ikramov was a silent supporter of the views of Nikolai Ivanovich, although he opposed the “right” opposition. Both Akmal Ikramov and Fayzulla Khodjaev were convenient for the falsifiers because Nikolai Ivanovich stayed with Akmal Ikramov in Tashkent when he spent his vacation in the Pamir or Tien Shan mountains, at the same time he saw F. Khodjaev. Wherever Bukharin’s foot set, she would certainly bring “counter-revolution” with her. But the Tashkent meetings were not enough for this, they had to come up with something else, and they did. I'll tell you more about this episode later. Bukharin’s “recruitment” of Ikramov is as incredible as Ikramov’s false testimony about himself about sabotage, and so on, is incredible. But if you don’t lie to yourself, you won’t lie to Bukharin, and this was undoubtedly demanded of him during the investigation.
Rudzutak, Enukidze and many others mentioned at the trial, who did not share the views of Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky in 1928 - 1930, were never “right”.
1. N.I. Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, M.P. Tomsky.
1) development of cooperation, development of large collective farms in grain regions;
2) industrialization Agriculture(creation of small enterprises for processing agricultural products in the village);
3) the basis of the agricultural sector is individual peasant farms;
4) understanding the five-year plan as a forecast of the main trends in economic development with inevitable amendments in the future.
It was a strategy of a regulated market with the mandatory use of commodity-money relations, the balanced development of the industrial and agricultural sectors in the economy and overcoming imbalances using economic methods.
2. In the works of the largest economists of that time I.D. Kondratyev and A.V. Chayanov proposals were put forward for the development of a commodity-socialist economic system and for economic balance.
3. I.V. Stalin, V.V. Kuibyshev, V.M. Molotov.
Main provisions of the program:
1) accelerated development of heavy industry due to the tension of the entire economic system, pumping funds from “secondary” industries (from agriculture and light industry);
2) after the modernization of heavy industry - technical re-equipment of temporarily “disadvantaged” agriculture and light industry;
3) collectivization of the village (as a source of industrialization);
4) affirmation of the inevitability of an intensification of the class struggle.
The Stalinist model is a variant of leapfrog development, based on the maximum concentration of resources in the main direction - in heavy industry. This meant a course towards strengthening the party-state system, a readiness to make significant sacrifices in order to achieve a “bright future”.
Each of the groups had its own social and political base. But the majority of party members sided with Stalin. The party and state bureaucracy did not want to part with the levers of power.
1. Political system of the USSR. Strengthening the regime of Stalin's personal power.
2. Socio-economic transformations in the 30s.
3. Consolidation of the results of socialist reconstruction. Constitution of 1936
4. Foreign policy USSR in the 20s.
Question 1. Modern researchers have different assessments of the nature of the changes that occurred in the political system of the Soviet state in the 20-30s. Most call this time the victory of the command-administrative bureaucratic system and introduce the term “totalitarianism.”
In modern literature on the history of Russia, the term “Stalinist totalitarianism” or its synonym “Stalinism” is used. The essence of this concept is revealed in two contexts:
1) a synonym for personal dictatorship and tyranny, violation of human rights, the use of extreme forms of coercion of the individual in the name of achieving utopian ideals and strengthening the regime of Stalin’s personal power;
2) a long period in the life and history of Soviet society, during which the main Stalinist models of social development were most fully manifested.
1. In the field of economics:
Complete subordination of the manufacturer to the state;
The actual appropriation by the state of the means of production and complete control over the workforce;
State regulation of working hours, wages;
Effective ban on strikes;
Militarization of the economy;
State regulation of property relations.
2. In the political sphere:
Forceful establishment of a one-party political system;
Unlimited party power in the state;
Destruction of political opponents (both in the person of other parties and within the ruling elite);
Leader's personality cult;
Merging of the party and state apparatus;
Creation of a system of official mass organizations; the inability of public organizations to make fundamental changes;
Powerful repressive apparatus; reliance on the army and punitive authorities.
3. In spiritual life:
Transformation of party ideology into state ideology;
Full state control over the media;
Party-state control over the education system;
Activities of pro-party creative unions;
Disunity of people; an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, general surveillance, denunciation;
Ideological isolation of the country.
4. In the field of national relations:
Strengthening the unitary state;
Introduction of the Slavic alphabet in the national republics;
Tendency towards Russification of the peoples of the USSR;
Ranked nation-state building: formation of autonomous republics, autonomous regions, national districts, national regions.
In the development of Stalinist totalitarianism, researchers distinguish four stages:
1) 1923-1934 - the process of formation of Stalinism.
2) Mid-30s - 1941 - implementation of the Stalinist model of social development and the creation of a bureaucratic basis for power.
3) 1941-1945 - partial retreat of Stalinism, expectation of democratic changes in the internal life of the country after the victory over fascism.
4) 1946-1953 - the peak of Stalinism, developing into a crisis of the system.
The origins of the Stalinist system go directly to the events of October 1917, as well as to the peculiarities of the political history of autocratic Russia. What were the most important prerequisites for the emergence of this system?
1) The monopoly power of one party, which emerged after the summer of 1918. In addition, the decisions of the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b) led to the curtailment of internal party democracy, the suppression of the interests of the minority, the inability for them to defend their views and, ultimately, to the transformation of the party into an appendage party apparatus.
2) An additional role was played by the change in the composition of the party in the 20s. Already the “Leninist call” (the admission of about 240 thousand people into the RCP (b) after Lenin’s death) indicated a tendency to admit into the party, along with skilled workers, young workers with a low level of literacy and culture, who were socially marginal layers of society.
3) The dictatorship of the proletariat turned into the dictatorship of the party, which, in turn, already in the 20s became the dictatorship of the Central Committee.
4) A system was formed that controlled the political sentiments of citizens and shaped them in the direction desired by the authorities. For this purpose, the organs of the OGPU (since 1934 - the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, NKVD) were widely used, informing the leadership through censorship of correspondence and secret agents.
5) The liquidation of the NEP provided an opportunity for the penetration of the bureaucratic system into all structures of society and the establishment of the dictatorship of the leader. Its ideological expression was the cult of personality.
6) The most important element of this system was the party, which turned the party and state apparatus into the dominant force of society. It relied on a centralized system of planned economy. Party committees were responsible to higher authorities for the results of the activities of economic organizations on their territory and were obliged to monitor their work. At the same time, while issuing directives to state and economic bodies, the party as a whole did not bear direct responsibility for them. If the decisions were wrong, all responsibility was shifted to the performers.
7) The right to make decisions belonged to the “first persons”: directors of large enterprises, people's commissars, secretaries of district committees, regional committees and the Central Committee of the republics within the limits of their powers. On a national scale, only Stalin possessed it.
8) Even the formal appearance of collective leadership gradually disappeared. Party congresses, which met annually under Lenin, were convened less and less often. For the period from 1928 to 1941. Three party congresses and three party conferences took place. Plenums of the Central Committee and even meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee became irregular.
9) The workers were in fact alienated from power. Democratic bodies provided for by the USSR Constitution of 1924 and 1936. (local Soviets, congresses of Soviets and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, according to the Constitution of 1924, the Supreme Council - after 1936), fulfilled the role of a “democratic screen”, approving a pre-arranged decision of the party bodies. Attempts in accordance with the 1936 Constitution to nominate alternative candidates were suppressed by the NKVD. All this completely contradicted the ideas of democracy proclaimed during the creation of the Soviet state.
10) The economic basis of the totalitarian system was monopoly state-bureaucratic property.
Features of Stalinism:
1. Stalinism sought to act under the brand of Marxism, from which it drew individual elements. But he was alien to the humanistic ideal of Marxism, which, like any ideology, was historically limited, but played an important role in the development of scientific thought and ideas about social justice.
2. Stalinism combined the strictest censorship with the primitiveness of formulas that were easily perceived by the mass consciousness, trying to cover all areas of knowledge with its influence.
3. An attempt was made to turn “Marxism-Leninism” into a new religion. Connected with this was the struggle against Orthodoxy and other religious denominations, which unfolded especially widely in the late 20s.
One of the most important ideas Stalinism was a statement about the preservation and continuous intensification of the class struggle both within the country and in international relations. It served as the basis for the formation of an “enemy image,” internal and external, as well as for carrying out mass repressions. Moreover, as a rule, mass repressions were preceded and accompanied by ideological campaigns. They were called upon to justify arrests and executions in the eyes of the general public.
Campaign of mass repression in 1928-1941 had a certain periodization:
The end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s - repressions against the “old” intelligentsia;
The beginning of the 30s - repressions against peasants (the so-called “dekulakization”), persecution of former oppositionists;
The second half of the 30s - massive political repressions (of party, economic personnel, military specialists).
The establishment of the Stalinist system and its activities were met resistance in various sectors of society. This resistance can be divided into several levels:
1. Massive resistance of the people. This became most acute during collectivization.
2. Creation of illegal, most often youth, student organizations.
3. Resistance to the totalitarian system, coming from the ranks of the ruling party itself:
Group S.I. Syrtsova-V.V. Lominadze. Syrtsov (Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee), Lominadze (Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee) and their comrades, discussing the problems of the country's development in 1930, believed that the country was on the brink of an economic crisis, and advocated the removal of Stalin from his post ;
The illegal “Union of Marxists-Leninists” under the leadership of M.N. Ryutina (a party member since 1914, former secretary of the Krasnopresnensky district party committee of Moscow) condemned the “adventuristic pace of industrialization and collectivization”;
A group of leading officials of the RSFSR (A.P. Smirnov, V.N. Tolmachev, N.B. Eismont) also opposed the pace of industrialization and collectivization, which “led the country to a deep crisis,” “monstrous impoverishment of the masses and hunger”;
People's Commissar of Health G.N. Kaminsky and member of the Central Committee I.A. Pyatnitsky in June 1937 at the plenum of the Central Committee spoke out against mass repressions and accused the NKVD of fabricating cases and using unauthorized methods of inquiry;
Ambassador to Bulgaria F.F., who refused to return to the USSR, published articles criticizing Stalinism in the foreign press. Raskolnikov, Ambassador to Greece A.G. Barmin, one of the leaders of Soviet intelligence V.G. Krivitsky. Such resistance, being unable to resist Stalinism, at the same time had enormous moral significance and forced this system to make some concessions. Thus, the text of the Constitution, adopted in December 1936, contained many democratic norms: restrictions on the rights of citizens based on class were abolished, universal, direct, equal secret voting was introduced, and the rights of citizens were proclaimed (personal integrity, privacy of correspondence, etc.). But the Constitution did not have a mechanism for implementation and remained a document at odds with real life.
The “Great Terror” meant the establishment of a totalitarian regime in the USSR and pursued the following goals:
1) destruction of any, even potential, opposition;
2) the elimination of the “old party guard” and the remnants of the former (“non-socialist”) social groups that interfered with the new leader with their knowledge real story and capable of independent thinking;
3) withdrawal social tension through the punishment of “switchmen” - the “culprits” of mistakes and negative phenomena in society.
At the end of the 1930s, these goals were largely realized. A totalitarian regime was formed in the country, Stalin became the sole ruler of the Soviet Union, its economy, politics, ideology, as well as the international communist movement.
In addition, the destructive consequences of mass terror for the national economy were revealed (for the army this was discovered later - during the Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars). In December 1938, Yezhov was replaced as head of the NKVD by L.P. Beria, and then (like his predecessor Yagoda) was shot. A new purge of the NKVD was carried out, during which many prominent participants and eyewitnesses of the “Great Terror” of 1937-1938, dangerous for Stalin, were destroyed.
