IN THE USSR. I have tried to answer the nine most common questions about political repression.

1. What is political repression?

In the history of different countries, there have been periods when the state authorities, for some reason - pragmatic or ideological - began to perceive part of their population either as direct enemies, or as superfluous, "unnecessary" people. The principle of selection could be different - according to ethnic origin, according to religious views, according to material condition, according to political views, according to the level of education - but the result was the same: these "unnecessary" people were either physically destroyed without trial or investigation, or were subjected to criminal prosecution, or became victims of administrative restrictions (expelled from the country, sent to exile within the country, deprived of civil rights, and so on). That is, people suffered not for some personal fault, but simply because they were unlucky, simply because they ended up in a certain place at some time.

Political repressions were not only in Russia, but in Russia - not only under Soviet rule. However, remembering the victims of political repressions, we first of all think about those who suffered in 1917-1953, because they make up the majority among the total number of Russian repressed.

2. Why, speaking of political repressions, are they limited to the period of 1917-1953? There were no repressions after 1953?

The demonstration of August 25, 1968, also called the "demonstration of the seven", was held by a group of seven Soviet dissidents on Red Square and protested against the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. Two of the participants were declared insane and subjected to compulsory treatment.

This period, 1917-1953, is singled out because it accounted for the vast majority of repressions. After 1953, repressions also took place, but on a much smaller scale, and most importantly, they mainly concerned people who, to one degree or another, opposed the Soviet political system. We are talking about dissidents who received prison terms or suffered from punitive psychiatry. They knew what they were getting into, they were not random victims - which, of course, does not justify what the authorities did to them.

3. Victims of Soviet political repression - who are they?

They were very different people, different in social origin, beliefs, worldview.

Sergei Korolev, scientist

Some of them are the so-called former”, that is, nobles, army or police officers, university professors, judges, merchants and industrialists, clergy. That is, those whom the communists who came to power in 1917 considered interested in the restoration of the former order and therefore suspected them of subversive activities.

Also, a huge proportion among the victims of political repression were " dispossessed“peasants, for the most part, strong owners who did not want to go to the collective farms (some, however, were not saved by joining the collective farm).

Many victims of repression were classified as " pests". This was the name given to specialists in production - engineers, technicians, workers, who were credited with the intent to inflict logistical or economic damage on the country. Sometimes this happened after some real production failures, accidents (in which it was necessary to find the perpetrators), and sometimes it was only about hypothetical troubles that, according to prosecutors, could have happened if the enemies had not been exposed in time.

The other part is communists and members of other revolutionary parties who joined the Communists after October 1917: Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Anarchists, Bundists, and so on. These people, who actively fit into the new reality and participate in the construction of Soviet power, at a certain stage turned out to be superfluous due to the intra-party struggle, which in the CPSU (b), and later in the CPSU, never stopped - at first openly, later - hidden. They are also communists who were hit because of their personal qualities: excessive ideological commitment, insufficient servility…

Sergeev Ivan Ivanovich Before his arrest, he worked as a watchman at the Chernivtsi collective farm "Iskra"

In the late 1930s, many were repressed military, starting with the highest command staff and ending with junior officers. They were suspected of potential participants in conspiracies against Stalin.

It is worth mentioning separately employees of the GPU-NKVD-NKGB, some of which were also repressed in the 30s during the "fight against excesses." "Excesses on the ground" - a concept that Stalin introduced into circulation, implying the excessive enthusiasm of the employees of the punitive bodies. It is clear that these "excesses" naturally followed from the general state policy, and therefore, in the mouth of Stalin, the words about excesses sound very cynical. By the way, almost the entire top of the NKVD, which carried out repressions in 1937-1938, was soon repressed and shot.

Naturally, there were many repressed for their faith(and not only Orthodox). This is the clergy, and monasticism, and active laity in the parishes, and just people who do not hide their faith. Although formally the Soviet government did not prohibit religion and the Soviet constitution of 1936 guaranteed freedom of conscience to citizens, in fact the open confession of faith could end sadly for a person.

Rozhkova Vera. Before her arrest, she worked at the Institute. Bauman. Was a secret nun

Not only certain people and certain classes were subjected to repressions, but also individual peoples- Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush, Germans. It happened during the Great Patriotic War. There were two reasons. Firstly, they were seen as potential traitors who could go over to the side of the Germans during the retreat of our troops. Secondly, when the German troops occupied the Crimea, the Caucasus and a number of other territories, some of the peoples living there really cooperated with them. Naturally, not all representatives of these peoples collaborated with the Germans, not to mention those who fought in the ranks of the Red Army - however, subsequently all of them, including women, children and the elderly, were declared traitors and sent into exile (where, by virtue of inhuman conditions, many died either on the way or on the spot).

Olga Berggolts, poetess, future “muse of besieged Leningrad”

And among the repressed there were many townsfolk, who seemed to have a completely safe social origin, but were arrested either because of a denunciation, or simply because of the distribution order (there were also plans to identify "enemies of the people" from above). If some major party functionary was arrested, then quite often his subordinates were also taken, right down to the lowest positions, such as a personal driver or a housekeeper.

4. Who cannot be considered a victim of political repression?

General Vlasov inspects ROA soldiers

Not all those who suffered in 1917-1953 (and later, until the end of Soviet power) can be called victims of political repression.

In addition to the “political”, people were also imprisoned in prisons and camps under ordinary criminal articles (theft, fraud, robbery, murder, and so on).

Also, one cannot consider as victims of political repression those who committed obvious treason - for example, "Vlasovites" and "policemen", that is, those who went to the service of the German invaders during the Great Patriotic War. Even regardless of the moral side of the matter, it was their conscious choice, they entered into a struggle with the state, and the state, accordingly, fought with them.

The same applies to various kinds of rebel movements - Basmachi, Bandera, "forest brothers", Caucasian abreks, and so on. One can discuss their rightness and wrongness, but the victims of political repressions are only those who did not take the path of war with the USSR, who simply lived an ordinary life and suffered regardless of their actions.

5. How were the repressions legally formalized?

Information about the execution of the death sentence of the NKVD troika against the Russian scientist and theologian Pavel Florensky. Reproduction ITAR-TASS

There were several options. Firstly, some of the repressed were shot or imprisoned after the institution of a criminal case, investigation and trial. Basically, they were charged under article 58 of the Criminal Code of the USSR (this article included many points, from treason to the motherland to anti-Soviet agitation). At the same time, in the 1920s and even in the early 1930s, all legal formalities were often observed - an investigation was carried out, then there was a trial with debates by the defense and the prosecution - just the verdict was a foregone conclusion. In the 1930s, especially since 1937, the judicial procedure turned into a fiction, since torture and other illegal methods of pressure were used during the investigation. That is why at the trial the accused massively admitted their guilt.

Secondly, starting from 1937, along with the usual court proceedings, a simplified procedure began to operate, when there were no judicial debates at all, the presence of the accused was not required, and sentences were passed by the so-called Special Conference, in other words, the “troika”, literally for 10-15 minutes.

Thirdly, some of the victims were repressed administratively, without investigation or trial at all - the same “dispossessed”, the same exiled peoples. The same often applied to family members of those convicted under Article 58. The official abbreviation CHSIR (a member of the family of a traitor to the motherland) was in use. At the same time, no personal charges were brought against specific people, and their exile was motivated by political expediency.

But besides, sometimes the repressions did not have any legal formalization at all, in fact they were lynchings - starting from the shooting in 1917 of a demonstration in defense of the Constituent Assembly and ending with the events of 1962 in Novocherkassk, where a workers’ demonstration protesting against the increase in prices for food.

6. How many people were repressed?

Photo by Vladimir Eshtokin

This is a difficult question to which historians still do not have an exact answer. The numbers are very different - from 1 to 60 million. There are two problems here - firstly, the inaccessibility of many archives, and secondly, the discrepancy in the methods of calculation. After all, even based on open archival data, one can draw different conclusions. Archival data is not only folders with criminal cases against specific people, but also, for example, departmental reporting on food supplies for camps and prisons, statistics on births and deaths, records in cemetery offices about burials, and so on and so forth. Historians try to take into account as many different sources as possible, but the data sometimes diverge from each other. The reasons are different - and accounting errors, and deliberate juggling, and the loss of many important documents.

It is also a very controversial issue - how many people were not just repressed, but exactly what was physically destroyed, did not return home? How to count? Only sentenced to death? Or plus those who died in custody? If we count the dead, then we need to deal with the causes of death: they could be caused by unbearable conditions (hunger, cold, beatings, overwork), or they could be natural (death from old age, death from chronic diseases that began long before the arrest). In certificates of death (which were not even always kept in a criminal case), “acute heart failure” most often appeared, but in fact it could be anything.

In addition, although any historian should be impartial, as a scientist should be, in reality, each researcher has his own worldview and political preferences, and therefore the historian may consider some data more reliable, and some less. Complete objectivity is an ideal to be strived for, but which has not yet been achieved by any historian. Therefore, when faced with any specific estimates, one should be careful. What if the author voluntarily or involuntarily overestimates or underestimates the numbers?

But in order to understand the scale of repression, it is enough to give an example of the discrepancy in numbers. According to church historians, in 1937-38 more than 130 thousand clergy. According to historians committed to the communist ideology, in 1937-38 the number of arrested clergymen is much less - only about 47 thousand. Let's not argue about who is more right. Let's do a thought experiment: imagine that now, in our time, 47,000 railway workers are arrested in Russia during the year. What will happen to our transport system? And if 47,000 doctors are arrested in a year, will domestic medicine survive at all? What if 47,000 priests are arrested? However, we don't even have that many now. In general, even if we focus on the minimum estimates, it is easy to see that the repressions have become a social catastrophe.

And for their moral assessment, the specific numbers of victims are completely unimportant. Whether it's a million or a hundred million or a hundred thousand, it's still a tragedy, it's still a crime.

7. What is rehabilitation?

The vast majority of victims of political repression were subsequently rehabilitated.

Rehabilitation is an official recognition by the state that this person was convicted unjustly, that he is innocent of the charges against him and therefore is not considered convicted and gets rid of the restrictions that people who have been released from prison may be subject to (for example, the right to be elected a deputy, the right to work in law enforcement organs, etc.).

Many believe that the rehabilitation of the victims of political repression began only in 1956, after the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, N.S. Khrushchev, at the 20th Party Congress, exposed Stalin's personality cult. In fact, this is not so - the first wave of rehabilitation took place in 1939, after the country's leadership condemned the rampant repressions of 1937-38 (which were called "excesses on the ground"). This, by the way, is an important point, because in this way the existence of political repressions in the country was recognized in general. Recognized even by those who launched these repressions. Therefore, the assertion of modern Stalinists that repression is a myth looks simply ridiculous. What about the myth, even if your idol Stalin recognized them?

However, few people were rehabilitated in 1939-41. And mass rehabilitation began in 1953 after the death of Stalin, its peak was in 1955-1962. Then, until the second half of the 1980s, there were few rehabilitations, but after the perestroika announced in 1985, their number increased dramatically. Separate acts of rehabilitation took place already in the post-Soviet era, in the 1990s (since the Russian Federation is legally the successor of the USSR, it has the right to rehabilitate those who were unjustly convicted before 1991).

But, shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, she was officially rehabilitated only in 2008. Prior to that, the Prosecutor General's Office resisted rehabilitation on the grounds that the murder of the royal family had no legal formalization and became the arbitrariness of local authorities. But the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in 2008 considered that even though there was no court decision, the royal family was shot by decision of the local authorities, which have administrative powers and therefore are part of the state machine - and repression is a measure of coercion by the state.

By the way, there are people who undoubtedly became victims of political repressions, who did not commit what they were formally accused of - but there is no decision on the rehabilitation of which and, apparently, never will be. We are talking about those who, before falling under the rink of repression, were themselves the drivers of this rink. For example, the "iron Commissar" Nikolai Yezhov. Well, what kind of innocent victim is he? Or the same Lavrenty Beria. Of course, his execution was unjust, of course, he was not any English and French spy, as he was hastily attributed - but his rehabilitation would be a demonstrative justification for political terror.

The rehabilitation of victims of political repression did not always happen “automatically”, sometimes these people or their relatives had to be persistent, write letters to state bodies for years.

8. What is being said about political repressions now?

Photo by Vladimir Eshtokin

In modern Russia there is no consensus on this topic. Moreover, in relation to it, the polarization of society is manifested. The memory of the repressions is used by various political and ideological forces for their own political interests, but ordinary people, not politicians, can perceive it in very different ways.

Some people are convinced that political repression is a shameful page in our national history, that it is a monstrous crime against humanity, and therefore one must always remember the repressed. Sometimes this position is primitivized, all victims of repression are declared equally sinless righteous, and the blame for them is laid not only on the Soviet government, but also on the modern Russian one as the legal successor of the Soviet one. Any attempts to figure out how many were actually repressed are a priori declared to justify Stalinism and are condemned from a moral standpoint.

Others question the very fact of the repressions, claim that all these “so-called victims” are really guilty of the crimes attributed to them, they really harmed, blew up, plotted terrorist attacks, and so on. This extremely naive position is refuted, if only by the fact that the fact of the existence of repressions was recognized even under Stalin - then it was called "excesses" and at the end of the 30s, almost the entire leadership of the NKVD was condemned for these "excesses". The moral inferiority of such views is just as obvious: people are so eager to wishful thinking that they are ready, without any evidence in their hands, to slander millions of victims.

Still others admit that there were repressions, they agree that the victims of them were innocent, but they perceive all this quite calmly: they say, it was impossible otherwise. Repression, it seems to them, was necessary for the industrialization of the country, for the creation of a combat-ready army. Without repression, it would not have been possible to win the Great Patriotic War. Such a pragmatic position, regardless of how it corresponds to historical facts, is also morally flawed: the state is declared the highest value, in comparison with which the life of each individual person is worth nothing, and anyone can and should be destroyed for the sake of higher state interests. Here, by the way, one can draw a parallel with the ancient pagans, who brought human sacrifices to their gods, being one hundred percent sure that this would serve the good of the tribe, people, city. Now this seems fanatical to us, but the motivation was exactly the same as that of modern pragmatists.

One can, of course, understand where such motivation comes from. The USSR positioned itself as a society of social justice - and indeed, in many respects, especially in the late Soviet period, there was social justice. Our society is socially much less fair - plus now any injustice instantly becomes known to everyone. Therefore, in search of justice, people turn their eyes to the past - naturally, idealizing that era. This means that they are psychologically trying to justify the dark things that happened then, including repressions. Recognition and condemnation of repressions (especially those declared from above) goes with such people in conjunction with the approval of the current injustices. One can show the naivete of such a position in every possible way, but until social justice is restored, this position will be reproduced again and again.

9. How should Christians perceive political repression?

Icon of the New Martyrs of Russia

Among Orthodox Christians, unfortunately, there is also no unity on this issue. There are believers (including those who are churched, sometimes even in holy orders) who either consider all the repressed guilty and unworthy of pity, or justify their suffering with the benefit of the state. Moreover, sometimes - thank God, not very often! - You can also hear such an opinion that the repressions were a boon for the repressed themselves. After all, what happened to them happened according to God's Providence, and God will not do bad things to a person. This means, such Christians say, that these people had to suffer in order to be cleansed of heavy sins, to be spiritually reborn. Indeed, there are many examples of such a spiritual revival. As the poet Alexander Solodovnikov, who passed the camp, wrote, “The grate is rusty, thank you! // Thank you, bayonet blade! // Such a will could be given // Only for long centuries to me.

In fact, this is a dangerous spiritual substitution. Yes, suffering can sometimes save a human soul, but it does not at all follow from this that suffering in itself is good. And even more so, it does not follow that the executioners are righteous. As we know from the Gospel, King Herod, wishing to find and destroy the baby Jesus, ordered to preventively kill all the babies in Bethlehem and the surrounding area. These babies are canonized by the Church as saints, but their murderer Herod is not at all. Sin remains sin, evil remains evil, the criminal remains a criminal even if the long-term consequences of his crime are beautiful. In addition, it is one thing to talk about the benefits of suffering from personal experience, and quite another to talk about other people. Only God knows whether this or that trial will turn out for good or for worse for a particular person, and we have no right to judge this. But here is what we can and what we must do - if we consider ourselves Christians! is to keep God's commandments. Where there is not a word about the fact that for the sake of the public good it is possible to kill innocent people.

What are the conclusions?

First and the obvious - we must understand that repression is evil, evil, and social, and personal evil of those who arranged them. There is no justification for this evil - neither pragmatic nor theological.

Second- this is the right attitude towards the victims of repression. They should not be considered ideal in a crowd. They were very different people, both socially, culturally and morally. But their tragedy must be perceived without regard to their individual characteristics and circumstances. All of them were not guilty before the authorities that subjected them to suffering. We do not know which of them is a righteous man, who is a sinner, who is now in heaven, who is in hell. But we must pity them and pray for them. But what exactly should not be done is that it is not necessary to speculate on their memory, defending our own political views in polemics. The repressed should not become for us means.

Third- It is necessary to clearly understand why these repressions became possible in our country. The reason for them is not only the personal sins of those who were at the helm in those years. The main reason is the worldview of the Bolsheviks, based on godlessness and on the denial of all previous traditions - spiritual, cultural, family, and so on. The Bolsheviks wanted to build a paradise on earth, while allowing themselves any means. Only that which serves the cause of the proletariat is moral, they argued. It is not surprising that they were internally ready to kill by the millions. Yes, there were repressions in different countries (including ours) even before the Bolsheviks - but still there were some brakes that limited their scale. Now there are no more brakes - and what happened happened.

Looking at the various horrors of the past, we often say the phrase "this must not happen again." But this maybe repeat, if we discard moral and spiritual barriers, if we proceed solely from pragmatics and ideology. And it does not matter what color this ideology will be - red, green, black, brown ... It will still end in a lot of blood.

Stalinist repressions:
What was it?

To the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions

In this material, we have collected the memories of eyewitnesses, fragments from official documents, figures and facts provided by researchers in order to provide answers to questions that excite our society again and again. The Russian state has not been able to give clear answers to these questions, so until now, everyone is forced to look for answers on their own.

Who was affected by the repression

Representatives of various groups of the population fell under the flywheel of Stalinist repressions. The most famous are the names of artists, Soviet leaders and military leaders. About peasants and workers often only the names from the execution lists and camp archives are known. They did not write memoirs, tried unnecessarily not to recall the camp past, their relatives often refused them. The presence of a convicted relative often meant an end to a career, study, because the children of arrested workers, dispossessed peasants might not know the truth about what happened to their parents.

When we heard about another arrest, we never asked, “Why was he taken?”, but there were few like us. Crazed with fear, people asked each other this question for pure self-consolation: they take people for something, which means they won’t take me, because there’s nothing for it! They refined themselves, coming up with reasons and justifications for each arrest, - “She really is a smuggler”, “He allowed himself such a thing”, “I myself heard him say ...” And one more thing: “You should have expected this - he has such terrible character”, “It always seemed to me that something was wrong with him”, “This is a complete stranger”. That is why the question: “Why did they take him?” has become taboo for us. It's time to understand that people are taken for nothing.

- Nadezhda Mandelstam , writer and wife of Osip Mandelstam

From the very beginning of terror to this day, attempts have not stopped to present it as a fight against "sabotage", enemies of the fatherland, limiting the composition of the victims to certain classes hostile to the state - kulaks, bourgeois, priests. The victims of terror were depersonalized and turned into "contingents" (Poles, spies, wreckers, counter-revolutionary elements). However, political terror was total in nature, and representatives of all groups of the population of the USSR became its victims: “the cause of engineers”, “the cause of doctors”, persecution of scientists and entire areas in science, personnel purges in the army before and after the war, deportation of entire peoples.

Poet Osip Mandelstam

He died in transit, the place of death is not known for certain.

Directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold

Marshals of the Soviet Union

Tukhachevsky (executed), Voroshilov, Egorov (executed), Budeny, Blucher (died in Lefortovo prison).

How many people were hurt

According to the estimates of the Memorial Society, there were 4.5-4.8 million people convicted for political reasons, 1.1 million people were shot.

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary and depend on the method of counting. If we take into account only those convicted under political articles, then according to an analysis of the statistics of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, carried out in 1988, the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot. According to the same data, about 1.76 million people died in the camps. According to the calculations of the Memorial Society, there were more people convicted for political reasons - 4.5-4.8 million people, of which 1.1 million people were shot.

The victims of Stalinist repressions were representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forcible deportation (Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and others). This is about 6 million people. One in five did not live to see the end of the journey - about 1.2 million people died during the difficult conditions of the deportations. During dispossession, about 4 million peasants suffered, of which at least 600 thousand died in exile.

In general, about 39 million people suffered as a result of Stalin's policies. The victims of repression include those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, the dispossessed, the victims of hunger, the victims of the unjustifiably cruel decrees "on absenteeism" and "on three spikelets" and other groups of the population who received excessively severe punishment for minor offenses due to repressive the nature of the legislation and the consequences of that time.

Why was it necessary?

The worst thing is not that you are suddenly suddenly taken away from a warm, well-established life, not Kolyma and Magadan, and hard labor. At first, a person desperately hopes for a misunderstanding, for a mistake by the investigators, then painfully waits for them to call, apologize, and let them go home, to their children and husband. And then the victim no longer hopes, does not painfully search for an answer to the question of who needs all this, then there is a primitive struggle for life. The worst thing is the meaninglessness of what is happening ... Does anyone know what it was for?

Evgenia Ginzburg,

writer and journalist

In July 1928, speaking at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin described the need to fight "foreign elements" as follows: "As we move forward, the resistance of the capitalist elements will increase, the class struggle will intensify, and Soviet power, forces which will grow more and more, will pursue a policy of isolating these elements, a policy of disintegrating the enemies of the working class, and finally, a policy of crushing the resistance of the exploiters, creating a basis for the further advancement of the working class and the bulk of the peasantry.

In 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. Yezhov published Order No. 00447, in accordance with which a large-scale campaign was launched to destroy "anti-Soviet elements." They were recognized as the culprits of all the failures of the Soviet leadership: “Anti-Soviet elements are the main instigators of all kinds of anti-Soviet and sabotage crimes, both on collective farms and state farms, and in transport, and in some areas of industry. The state security organs are faced with the task of crushing this entire gang of anti-Soviet elements in the most merciless way, protecting the working Soviet people from their counter-revolutionary intrigues, and finally, once and for all, putting an end to their vile subversive work against the foundations of the Soviet state. In accordance with this, I order - from August 5, 1937, in all republics, territories and regions, to begin an operation to repress former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals. This document marks the beginning of an era of large-scale political repression, which later became known as the Great Terror.

Stalin and other members of the Politburo (V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, K. Voroshilov) personally compiled and signed execution lists - pre-trial circulars listing the number or names of victims to be convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court with a predetermined punishment. According to researchers, under the death sentences of at least 44.5 thousand people are Stalin's personal signatures and resolutions.

The myth of the effective manager Stalin

Until now, in the media and even in textbooks, one can find the justification of political terror in the USSR by the need for industrialization in a short time. Since the release of the decree obliging convicts to serve their sentences in forced labor camps for more than 3 years, prisoners have been actively involved in the construction of various infrastructure facilities. In 1930, the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps of the OGPU (GULAG) was created and huge flows of prisoners were sent to key construction sites. During the existence of this system, from 15 to 18 million people have passed through it.

During the 1930-1950s, the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow Canal, was carried out by the forces of the Gulag prisoners. The prisoners built Uglich, Rybinsk, Kuibyshev and other hydroelectric power stations, erected metallurgical plants, facilities of the Soviet nuclear program, the longest railways and highways. Gulag prisoners built dozens of Soviet cities (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Dudinka, Norilsk, Vorkuta, Novokuibyshevsk and many others).

Beria himself characterized the labor efficiency of the prisoners as low: “The existing ration of 2,000 calories in the Gulag is designed for a person who is in prison and not working. In practice, this underestimated norm is also released by supplying organizations only by 65-70%. Therefore, a significant percentage of the camp labor force falls into the category of weak and useless people in production. In general, the labor force is used no more than 60-65 percent.”

To the question "Is Stalin needed?" we can only give one answer - a firm "no". Even without taking into account the tragic consequences of famine, repression and terror, even considering only the economic costs and benefits - and even making every possible assumption in favor of Stalin - we get results that clearly show that Stalin's economic policy did not lead to positive results. Forced redistribution significantly worsened productivity and social welfare.

- Sergei Guriev , economist

The economic efficiency of Stalinist industrialization by the hands of prisoners is extremely lowly assessed by modern economists. Sergey Guriev cites the following figures: by the end of the 1930s, productivity in agriculture had only reached the pre-revolutionary level, while in industry it was one and a half times lower than in 1928. Industrialization led to huge losses in welfare (minus 24%).

Brave new world

Stalinism is not only a system of repression, it is also the moral degradation of society. The Stalinist system made tens of millions of slaves - morally broke people. One of the most terrible texts that I have read in my life is the tortured "confessions" of the great biologist Academician Nikolai Vavilov. Only a few can endure torture. But many - tens of millions! – were broken and became moral freaks out of fear of being personally repressed.

- Alexey Yablokov , corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Philosopher and historian of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt explains that in order to turn Lenin's revolutionary dictatorship into a fully totalitarian government, Stalin had to artificially create an atomized society. For this, an atmosphere of fear was created in the USSR, and whistleblowing was encouraged. Totalitarianism did not destroy real "enemies", but imaginary ones, and this is its terrible difference from ordinary dictatorship. None of the destroyed sections of society were hostile to the regime and probably would not become hostile in the foreseeable future.

In order to destroy all social and family ties, the repressions were carried out in such a way as to threaten the same fate of the accused and everyone in the most ordinary relations with him, from casual acquaintances to closest friends and relatives. This policy penetrated deeply into Soviet society, where people, out of selfish interests or fearing for their lives, betrayed neighbors, friends, even members of their own families. In their desire for self-preservation, the masses of people abandoned their own interests, and became, on the one hand, a victim of power, and on the other, its collective embodiment.

The corollary of the simple and ingenious device of "guilt for association with the enemy" is such that, as soon as a person is accused, his former friends immediately turn into his worst enemies: in order to save their own skin, they hasten to jump out with unsolicited information and denunciations, supplying non-existent data against accused. Ultimately, it was by developing this device to its latest and most fantastic extremes that the Bolshevik rulers succeeded in creating an atomized and fragmented society, the like of which we have never seen before, and whose events and catastrophes in such a pure form would hardly have happened without it.

- Hannah Arendt, philosopher

The deep disunity of Soviet society, the lack of civil institutions were inherited by the new Russia, and became one of the fundamental problems hindering the creation of democracy and civil peace in our country.

How the state and society fought the legacy of Stalinism

To date, Russia has experienced "two and a half attempts at de-Stalinization." The first and largest was deployed by N. Khrushchev. It began with a report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU:

“They arrested without the sanction of the prosecutor... What else could be a sanction when everything was allowed by Stalin. He was the chief prosecutor in these matters. Stalin gave not only permission, but also instructions on arrests on his own initiative. Stalin was a very suspicious person, with morbid suspicion, as we were convinced while working with him. He could look at a person and say: “something your eyes are running around today,” or: “why do you often turn away today, don’t look directly into your eyes.” Painful suspicion led him to sweeping distrust. Everywhere and everywhere he saw "enemies", "double-dealers", "spies". Having unlimited power, he allowed cruel arbitrariness, suppressed a person morally and physically. When Stalin said that such and such should be arrested, one should have taken it on faith that he was an "enemy of the people." And the gang of Beria, who was in charge of the state security organs, climbed out of their skin to prove the guilt of the arrested persons, the correctness of the materials they fabricated. And what evidence was put into play? Confessions of the arrested. And the investigators got these "confessions".

As a result of the fight against the cult of personality, sentences were revised, more than 88 thousand prisoners were rehabilitated. Nevertheless, the era of the “thaw” that came after these events turned out to be very short-lived. Soon, many dissidents who disagree with the policy of the Soviet leadership will become victims of political persecution.

The second wave of de-Stalinization occurred in the late 80s - early 90s. Only then did the public become aware of at least approximate figures characterizing the scale of the Stalinist terror. At this time, sentences passed in the 30s and 40s were also reviewed. In most cases, the convicted were rehabilitated. Half a century later, posthumously dispossessed peasants were rehabilitated.

A timid attempt at a new de-Stalinization was made during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. However, it did not bring significant results. Rosarkhiv, at the direction of the president, posted on its website documents about 20,000 Poles shot by the NKVD near Katyn.

Programs to preserve the memory of the victims are being phased out due to lack of funding.

Immediately after the end of World War II, in September 1945, the state of emergency was lifted and the State Defense Committee was abolished. In March 1946 the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was transformed into the Council of Ministers. At the same time, there was an increase in the number of ministries and departments, and the number of their apparatus grew.

At the same time, elections were held to local councils, the Supreme Soviets of the republics and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as a result of which the deputies corps was updated, which did not change during the war years. By the beginning of the 50s. collegiality in the activities of the Soviets was strengthened as a result of more frequent convening of their sessions, an increase in the number of standing committees. In accordance with the Constitution, direct and secret elections of people's judges and assessors were held for the first time. However, all power still remained in the hands of the party leadership.

After a thirteen-year break, in October 1952, the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks took place, which decided to rename the party into the CPSU. In 1949, congresses of trade unions and Komsomol were held (also not convened for 17 and 13 years). They were preceded by reporting and election party, trade union and Komsomol meetings, at which the leadership of these organizations was renewed. However, despite outwardly positive, democratic changes, in these very years the political regime was tightened in the country, a new wave of repressions was growing.

The Gulag system reached its apogee precisely in the post-war years, since to those who had been sitting there since the mid-30s. "enemies of the people" added millions of new ones. One of the first blows fell on prisoners of war, most of whom (about 2 million) after being released from fascist captivity were sent to Siberian and Ukhta camps. Tula was exiled "foreign elements" from the Baltic republics, Western Ukraine and Belarus. According to various sources, during these years the "population" of the Gulag ranged from 4.5 to 12 million people.

In 1948, "special regime" camps were set up for those convicted of "anti-Soviet activities" and "counter-revolutionary acts", in which particularly sophisticated methods of influencing prisoners were used. Not wanting to put up with their situation, political prisoners in a number of camps raised uprisings, sometimes held under political slogans. The most famous of them were performances in Pechora (1948), Salekhard (1950), Kingir (1952), Ekibastuz (1952), Vorkuta (1953) and Norilsk (1953).

Along with the political prisoners in the camps after the war, there were also quite a few workers who did not fulfill the existing production norms. Thus, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 2, 1948, local authorities were granted the right to deport to remote areas persons who maliciously evade labor activity in agriculture.

Fearing the increased popularity of the military during the war, Stalin authorized the arrest of Air Marshal A.A. Novikov, generals P.N. Ponedelina, N.K. Kirillov, a number of colleagues of Marshal G.K. Zhukov. The commander himself was charged with putting together a group of disgruntled generals and officers, ingratitude and disrespect for Stalin. The repressions also affected some of the party functionaries, especially those who aspired to independence and greater independence from the central government. At the beginning of 1948, almost all the leaders of the Leningrad party organization were arrested. The total number of those arrested in the "Leningrad case" was about 2,000 people. After some time, 200 of them were put on trial and shot, including Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia M. Rodionov, member of the Politburo and Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR N. Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. Kuznetsov. The "Leningrad case" was supposed to be a stern warning to those who, at least in some way, thought differently than the "leader of the peoples."

The last of the trials being prepared was the "case of doctors" (1953), accused of improper treatment of top management, which led to the death of a number of prominent figures. Total victims of repression in 1948-1953. almost 6.5 million people became. The flywheel of repression was stopped only after the death of Stalin.

The Sakharov Center hosted a discussion "Stalin's terror: mechanisms and legal assessment", organized jointly with the Free Historical Society. Leading researcher at the HSE International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences Oleg Khlevnyuk and Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Memorial Center Nikita Petrov took part in the discussion. Lenta.ru recorded the main theses of their speeches.

Oleg Khlevnyuk:

Historians have long been deciding whether the Stalinist repressions were necessary from the point of view of elementary expediency. Most experts are inclined to believe that such methods are not needed for the progressive development of the country.

There is a point of view according to which terror has become a kind of response to the crisis in the country (in particular, the economic one). I believe that Stalin decided on repression on such a scale precisely because in the USSR by that time everything was relatively good. After the completely disastrous first five-year plan, the policy of the second five-year plan was more balanced and successful. As a result, the country entered the so-called three good years (1934-1936), which were marked by successful industrial growth, the abolition of the rationing system, the emergence of new incentives for work, and relative stabilization in the countryside.

It was terror that plunged the country's economy and the social well-being of society into a new crisis. If there had been no Stalin, then there would have been not only mass repressions (at least in 1937-1938), but also collectivization in the form in which we know it.

Terror or fight against the enemies of the people?

From the very beginning, the Soviet authorities did not try to hide the terror. The government of the USSR tried to make the trials as public as possible not only within the country, but also in the international arena: transcripts of court sessions were published in the main European languages.

The attitude towards terror was not unambiguous from the very beginning. For example, the American ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davis, believed that enemies of the people really got into the dock. At the same time, the Left defended the innocence of their fellow Old Bolsheviks.

Later, experts began to pay attention to the fact that terror was a broader process, embracing not only the top of the Bolsheviks - after all, people of intellectual labor also fell into its millstones. But at that time, due to the lack of sources of information, there were no clear ideas about how all this was happening, who was being arrested and why.

Some Western historians continued to defend the theory of the significance of terror, while revisionist historians said that terror is a spontaneous, rather random phenomenon, to which Stalin himself had nothing to do. Some wrote that the number of those arrested was low and numbered in the thousands.

When the archives were opened, more accurate figures became known, departmental statistics from the NKVD and the MGB appeared, in which arrests and convictions were recorded. The statistics of the Gulag contained figures on the number of prisoners in the camps, mortality, and even the ethnic composition of the prisoners.

It turned out that this Stalinist system was extremely centralized. We saw how, in full accordance with the planned nature of the state, mass repressions were planned. At the same time, it was not routine political arrests that determined the true scope of the Stalinist terror. It was expressed in large waves - two of them are associated with collectivization and the Great Terror.

In 1930, it was decided to launch an operation against the peasant kulaks. The relevant lists were prepared on the ground, the NKVD issued orders on the course of the operation, the Politburo approved them. They were performed with certain excesses, but everything happened within the framework of this centralized model. Until 1937, the mechanics of repression was worked out, and in 1937-1938 it was applied in the most complete and detailed form.

Prerequisites and basis of repression

Nikita Petrov:

All the necessary laws on the judiciary were adopted in the country in the 1920s. The most important can be considered the law of December 1, 1934, which deprived the accused of the right to defense and cassation appeal against the verdict. It provided for the consideration of cases in the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in a simplified manner: behind closed doors, in the absence of a prosecutor and defenders, with the execution of a death sentence within 24 hours after its pronouncement.

According to this law, all cases received by the Military Collegium in 1937-1938 were considered. Then about 37 thousand people were convicted, of which 25 thousand were sentenced to death.

Khlevniuk:

The Stalinist system was designed to suppress and instill fear. The Soviet society of that time needed forced labor. Various campaigns, such as elections, also played their part. However, there was a certain unified impulse that gave a special acceleration to all these factors precisely in 1937-38: the threat of war was already quite obvious at that time.

Stalin considered it very important not only to build up military power, but also to ensure the unity of the rear, which involved the destruction of the internal enemy. Therefore, the idea arose of getting rid of all those who could stab in the back. The documents leading to this conclusion are the numerous statements of Stalin himself, as well as the orders on the basis of which the terror was carried out.

Enemies of the regime fought out of court

Petrov:

The decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 2, 1937, signed by Stalin, marked the beginning of the “kulak operation”. In the preamble to the document, the regions were asked to set quotas for future extrajudicial sentences for execution by firing squad and imprisonment of those arrested in camps, as well as to propose compositions of "troikas" for sentencing.

Khlevniuk:

The mechanics of operations in 1937-1938 were similar to those applied in 1930, but it is important to note here that by 1937 there were already records of the NKVD on various enemies of the people and suspicious elements. The center decided to liquidate or isolate these accounting contingents from society.

The limits on arrests set in the plans were in fact not limits at all, but minimum requirements, so the NKVD officials set a course to exceed these plans. This was even necessary for them, since internal instructions focused them on identifying not single individuals, but unreliable groups. The authorities believed that a lone enemy is not an enemy.

This led to the constant exceeding of the original limits. Requests for the need for additional arrests were sent to Moscow, which regularly satisfied them. A significant part of the norms was approved personally by Stalin, the other - personally by Yezhov. Some were changed by decision of the Politburo.

Petrov:

It was decided once and for all to put an end to any hostile activity. It is this phrase that was inserted into the preamble of the order of the NKVD No. 00447 dated July 30, 1937 on the “kulak operation”: he ordered it to begin in most of the regions of the country from August 5, and on August 10 and 15 - in Central Asia and the Far East.

There were meetings in the center, the heads of the NKVD came to Yezhov. He told them that if an extra thousand people were injured during this operation, then there would be no big trouble in this. Most likely, Yezhov did not say this himself - we recognize here signs of Stalin's great style. The leader regularly had new ideas. There is his letter to Yezhov, in which he writes about the need to extend the operation and gives instructions (in particular, regarding the Socialist-Revolutionaries).

The attention of the system then turned to the so-called counter-revolutionary national elements. About 15 operations were carried out against counter-revolutionaries - Poles, Germans, Balts, Bulgarians, Iranians, Afghans, former workers of the CER - all these people were suspected of espionage in favor of those states to which they were ethnically close.

Each operation is characterized by a special mechanism of action. The repression of the kulaks did not become the invention of the bicycle: "troikas" as an instrument of extrajudicial reprisals were tested back in the days of the Civil War. According to the correspondence of the top leadership of the OGPU, it is clear that in 1924, when the unrest of the Moscow students took place, the mechanics of terror had already been perfected. “We need to assemble the “troika”, as it was always in troubled times,” one functionary writes to another. "Troika" is an ideology and partly a symbol of the Soviet repressive organs.

The mechanism of national operations was different - they used the so-called deuce. No limits were set for them.

Similar things happened when the Stalinist execution lists were approved: their fate was decided by a narrow group of people - Stalin and his inner circle. In these lists there are personal notes of the leader. For example, opposite the name of Mikhail Baranov, head of the Sanitary Directorate of the Red Army, he writes "beat-beat." In another case, Molotov wrote “VMN” (capital punishment) opposite one of the female surnames.

There are documents according to which Mikoyan, who left for Armenia as an emissary of terror, asked for an additional 700 people to be shot, and Yezhov believed that this figure should be increased to 1,500. Stalin agreed with the latter on this issue, because Yezhov knows better. When Stalin was asked to give an additional limit on the execution of 300 people, he easily wrote "500".

There is a debatable question about why limits were set for the "kulak operation", but not for, for example, national ones. I think that if the “kulak operation” had no boundaries, then terror could become absolute, because too many people fit the category of “anti-Soviet element”. In national operations, clearer criteria were established: people with connections in other countries who arrived from abroad were repressed. Stalin believed that here the circle of people was more or less understandable and delineated.

Mass operations were centralized

A corresponding propaganda campaign was carried out. The enemies of the people, who had made their way into the NKVD, and slanderers were accused of unleashing terror. Interestingly, the idea of ​​denunciations as a reason for repression is not documented. During mass operations, the NKVD functioned according to completely different algorithms, and if they reacted to denunciations there, it was quite selective and random. Basically, they worked according to pre-prepared lists.

Mass repressions in the USSR were carried out in the period 1927-1953. These repressions are directly associated with the name of Joseph Stalin, who during these years led the country. Social and political persecution in the USSR began after the end of the last stage of the civil war. These phenomena began to gain momentum in the second half of the 1930s and did not slow down during the Second World War, as well as after its end. Today we will talk about what the social and political repressions of the Soviet Union were, consider what phenomena underlie those events, and also what consequences this led to.

They say: a whole people cannot be suppressed without end. Lie! Can! We see how our people have become devastated, run wild, and indifference descended on them not only to the fate of the country, not only to the fate of their neighbor, but even to their own fate and the fate of children. Indifference, the last saving reaction of the body, has become our defining feature . That is why the popularity of vodka is unprecedented even in Russia. This is a terrible indifference, when a person sees his life not punctured, not with a broken corner, but so hopelessly fragmented, so up and down filthy, that only for the sake of alcoholic oblivion is it still worth living. Now, if vodka were banned, a revolution would immediately break out in our country.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Reasons for repression:

• Forcing the population to work on a non-economic basis. A lot of work had to be done in the country, but there was not enough money for everything. The ideology formed new thinking and perception, and also had to motivate people to work practically for free.
• Strengthening personal power. For the new ideology, an idol was needed, a person who was unquestioningly trusted. After the assassination of Lenin, this post was vacant. Stalin had to take this place.
• Strengthening the exhaustion of a totalitarian society.

If you try to find the beginning of repression in the union, then the starting point, of course, should be 1927. This year was marked by the fact that mass executions began in the country, with the so-called pests, as well as saboteurs. The motive of these events should be sought in the relations between the USSR and Great Britain. So, at the beginning of 1927, the Soviet Union was involved in a major international scandal, when the country was openly accused of trying to transfer the seat of the Soviet revolution to London. In response to these events, Great Britain severed all relations with the USSR, both political and economic. Inside the country, this step was presented as London's preparation for a new wave of intervention. At one of the party meetings, Stalin declared that the country "needs to destroy all remnants of imperialism and all supporters of the White Guard movement." Stalin had an excellent reason for this on June 7, 1927. On this day, the political representative of the USSR, Voikov, was killed in Poland.

As a result, terror began. For example, on the night of June 10, 20 people who contacted the empire were shot. They were representatives of ancient noble families. In total, in June 27, more than 9 thousand people were arrested, who were accused of treason, aiding imperialism and other things that sound menacing, but are very difficult to prove. Most of those arrested were sent to prison.

Pest control

After that, a number of major cases began in the USSR, which were aimed at combating sabotage and sabotage. The wave of these repressions was based on the fact that in most large companies that operated within the Soviet Union, senior positions were occupied by people from imperial Russia. Of course, most of these people did not feel sympathy for the new government. Therefore, the Soviet regime was looking for pretexts by which this intelligentsia could be removed from leadership positions and, if possible, destroyed. The problem was that it needed a weighty and legal basis. Such grounds were found in a number of lawsuits that swept through the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Among the most striking examples of such cases are the following:

• Shakhty business. In 1928, repressions in the USSR affected miners from Donbass. A show trial was staged from this case. The entire leadership of Donbass, as well as 53 engineers, were accused of espionage with an attempt to sabotage the new state. As a result of the trial, 3 people were shot, 4 were acquitted, the rest received prison terms from 1 to 10 years. It was a precedent - society enthusiastically accepted the repressions against the enemies of the people ... In 2000, the Russian prosecutor's office rehabilitated all the participants in the Shakhty case, in view of the lack of corpus delicti.
• Pulkovo case. In June 1936, a large solar eclipse was supposed to be visible on the territory of the USSR. The Pulkovo Observatory appealed to the world community to attract personnel to study this phenomenon, as well as to obtain the necessary foreign equipment. As a result, the organization was accused of espionage. The number of victims is classified.
• The case of the industrial party. The defendants in this case were those whom the Soviet authorities called bourgeois. This process took place in 1930. The defendants were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization in the country.
• The case of the peasant party. The Socialist-Revolutionary organization is widely known, under the name of the Chayanov and Kondratiev groups. In 1930, representatives of this organization were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization and interfering in agricultural affairs.
• Union Bureau. The Union Bureau case was opened in 1931. The defendants were representatives of the Mensheviks. They were accused of undermining the creation and implementation of economic activity within the country, as well as having links with foreign intelligence.

At that moment, a massive ideological struggle was taking place in the USSR. The new regime tried with all its might to explain its position to the population, as well as to justify its actions. But Stalin understood that ideology alone could not bring order to the country and could not allow him to retain power. Therefore, along with ideology, repressions began in the USSR. Above, we have already given some examples of cases from which repressions began. These cases have always raised big questions, and today, when the documents on many of them have been declassified, it becomes absolutely clear that most of the accusations were unfounded. It is no coincidence that the Russian prosecutor's office, having examined the documents of the Shakhtinsk case, rehabilitated all participants in the process. And this despite the fact that in 1928 none of the party leadership of the country had any idea about the innocence of these people. Why did this happen? This was due to the fact that, under the guise of repression, as a rule, everyone who did not agree with the new regime was destroyed.

The events of the 1920s were only the beginning, the main events were ahead.

Socio-political meaning of mass repressions

A new massive wave of repression within the country unfolded at the beginning of 1930. At that moment, the struggle began not only with political competitors, but also with the so-called kulaks. In fact, a new blow of the Soviet power against the rich began, and this blow caught not only wealthy people, but also the middle peasants and even the poor. One of the stages of delivering this blow was dispossession. Within the framework of this material, we will not dwell on the issues of dispossession, since this issue has already been studied in detail in the corresponding article on the site.

Party composition and governing bodies in repression

A new wave of political repressions in the USSR began at the end of 1934. At that time, there was a significant change in the structure of the administrative apparatus within the country. In particular, on July 10, 1934, the special services were reorganized. On this day, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR was created. This department is known by the acronym NKVD. This division included the following services:

• Main Directorate of State Security. It was one of the main bodies that dealt with almost all cases.
• Main Directorate of Workers' and Peasants' Militia. This is an analogue of the modern police, with all the functions and responsibilities.
• Main Directorate of the Border Service. The department dealt with border and customs affairs.
• Headquarters of the camps. This department is now widely known under the acronym GULAG.
• Main Fire Department.

In addition, in November 1934, a special department was created, which was called the "Special Meeting". This department received broad powers to combat the enemies of the people. In fact, this department could, without the presence of the accused, the prosecutor and the lawyer, send people into exile or to the Gulag for up to 5 years. Of course, this applied only to the enemies of the people, but the problem is that no one really knew how to define this enemy. That is why the Special Meeting had unique functions, since virtually any person could be declared an enemy of the people. Any person could be sent into exile for 5 years on one simple suspicion.

Mass repressions in the USSR

The events of December 1, 1934 became the reason for mass repressions. Then Sergei Mironovich Kirov was killed in Leningrad. As a result of these events, a special procedure for judicial proceedings was approved in the country. In fact, we are talking about accelerated litigation. Under the simplified system of proceedings, all cases where people were accused of terrorism and complicity in terrorism were transferred. Again, the problem was that this category included almost all people who fell under repression. Above, we have already talked about a number of high-profile cases that characterize the repressions in the USSR, where it is clearly seen that all people, one way or another, were accused of aiding terrorism. The specificity of the simplified system of proceedings was that the sentence had to be pronounced within 10 days. The defendant received the summons the day before the trial. The trial itself took place without the participation of prosecutors and lawyers. At the conclusion of the proceedings, any request for clemency was prohibited. If in the course of the proceedings a person was sentenced to death, then this measure of punishment was executed immediately.

Political repression, purge of the party

Stalin staged active repression within the Bolshevik Party itself. One of the illustrative examples of repression that affected the Bolsheviks happened on January 14, 1936. On this day, the replacement of party documents was announced. This step has long been discussed and was not unexpected. But when replacing documents, new certificates were not awarded to all party members, but only to those who "deserved trust." Thus began the purge of the party. According to official data, when new party documents were issued, 18% of the Bolsheviks were expelled from the party. These were the people to whom the repressions were applied, first of all. And we are talking about only one of the waves of these purges. In total, the cleaning of the batch was carried out in several stages:

• In 1933. 250 people were expelled from the top leadership of the party.
• In 1934-1935, 20,000 people were expelled from the Bolshevik Party.

Stalin actively destroyed people who could claim power, who had power. To demonstrate this fact, it is only necessary to say that of all the members of the Politburo of 1917, only Stalin survived after the purge (4 members were shot, and Trotsky was expelled from the party and expelled from the country). In total, there were 6 members of the Politburo at that time. In the period between the revolution and the death of Lenin, a new Politburo of 7 people was assembled. By the end of the purge, only Molotov and Kalinin survived. In 1934, the next congress of the VKP(b) party took place. The congress was attended by 1934 people. 1108 of them were arrested. Most were shot.

The assassination of Kirov aggravated the wave of repressions, and Stalin himself addressed the party members with a statement about the need for the final extermination of all enemies of the people. As a result, the Criminal Code of the USSR was amended. These changes stipulated that all cases of political prisoners were considered in an expedited manner without attorneys for prosecutors within 10 days. The executions were carried out immediately. In 1936, a political trial took place over the opposition. In fact, Lenin's closest associates, Zinoviev and Kamenev, ended up in the dock. They were accused of killing Kirov, as well as an attempt on Stalin. A new stage of political repressions against the Leninist guards began. This time, Bukharin was subjected to repressions, as well as the head of the government, Rykov. The socio-political meaning of repression in this sense was associated with the strengthening of the personality cult.

Repression in the army

Beginning in June 1937, repressions in the USSR affected the army. In June, the first trial took place over the high command of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), including the commander-in-chief, Marshal Tukhachevsky. The leadership of the army was accused of attempting a coup. According to the prosecutors, the coup was to take place on May 15, 1937. The accused were found guilty and most of them were shot. Tukhachevsky was also shot.

An interesting fact is that of the 8 members of the trial who sentenced Tukhachevsky to death, later five were themselves repressed and shot. However, from that time on, repressions began in the army, which affected the entire leadership. As a result of such events, 3 marshals of the Soviet Union, 3 army commanders of the 1st rank, 10 army commanders of the 2nd rank, 50 corps commanders, 154 division commanders, 16 army commissars, 25 corps commissars, 58 divisional commissars, 401 regimental commanders were repressed. In total, 40 thousand people were subjected to repressions in the Red Army. It was 40 thousand leaders of the army. As a result, more than 90% of the command staff was destroyed.

Strengthening repression

Beginning in 1937, the wave of repressions in the USSR began to intensify. The reason was order No. 00447 of the NKVD of the USSR of July 30, 1937. This document declared the immediate repression of all anti-Soviet elements, namely:

• Former kulaks. All those whom the Soviet government called kulaks, but who escaped punishment, or were in labor camps or in exile, were subject to repression.
• All representatives of religion. Anyone who had anything to do with religion was subject to repression.
• Participants in anti-Soviet actions. Under such participants, everyone who had ever acted actively or passively against the Soviet regime was involved. In fact, this category included those who did not support the new government.
• Anti-Soviet politicians. Inside the country, all those who were not members of the Bolshevik Party were called anti-Soviet politicians.
• The White Guards.
• People with a criminal record. People who had a criminal record were automatically considered enemies of the Soviet regime.

• hostile elements. Any person who was called a hostile element was sentenced to be shot.
• Inactive elements. The rest, who were not sentenced to death, were sent to camps or prisons for a term of 8 to 10 years.

All cases were now dealt with in an even more expedited manner, where most cases were dealt with en masse. According to the same order of the NKVD, repressions applied not only to convicts, but also to their families. In particular, the following punishments were applied to the families of the repressed:

• Families of those who were repressed for active anti-Soviet actions. All members of such families were sent to camps and labor settlements.
• The families of the repressed, who lived in the border zone, were subject to resettlement inland. Often special settlements were formed for them.
• The family of the repressed, who lived in large cities of the USSR. Such people were also resettled inland.

In 1940, a secret department of the NKVD was created. This department was engaged in the destruction of political opponents of Soviet power abroad. The first victim of this department was Trotsky, who was killed in Mexico in August 1940. In the future, this secret department was engaged in the destruction of members of the White Guard movement, as well as representatives of the imperialist emigration of Russia.

In the future, repressions continued, although their main events had already passed. In fact, repressions in the USSR continued until 1953.

The results of repression

In total, from 1930 to 1953, 3,800,000 people were repressed on charges of counter-revolution. Of these, 749,421 people were shot ... And this is only according to official information ... And how many more people died without trial or investigation, whose names and surnames are not included in the list?