Stalinist encirclement. History in faces

The apparatus created in the struggle for power is not yet an instrument of the leader, he considers himself an accomplice in victory ... The apparatus of a true leader is an apparatus created by himself after coming to power. This apparatus should not be eternal, permanent, otherwise it will cement mutual ties, acquire solidity and strength ... Creating such an apparatus is a more difficult task than eliminating rivals ...
(Anatoly Rybakov)

Even a brief acquaintance with the most loyal, closest and most influential employees of Stalin helps to better understand the character of the leader. All five - Molotov, Beria, Vyshinsky, Kaganovich and Zhdanov - are co-authors of Stalin in 1937 and at the same time the most famous politicians of this era. In their origin and character, they, of course, differed from each other, it cannot be said that their cooperation was conflict-free. Nevertheless, loyalty to the leader brought them into a single group, but, as Roy Medvedev wrote, Stalin did not value friendship. He appreciated other abilities that people from his immediate circle possessed. These people were not only persistent and energetic themselves, they could force their subordinates to work tirelessly, primarily with the help of violence and coercion. They often argued among themselves. Stalin himself contributed to fueling these disputes, and here he not only followed the principle of "divide and rule." He allowed a certain pluralism in his environment and received some benefit from discussions among members of the Politburo and from their mutual enmity, since this allowed him to more accurately formulate his own proposals and thoughts.

The first we will name the closest associate of Stalin - Molotov. His real name is Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Scriabin. He was born in 1890 into an intelligent family. Friendship with Stalin began with Molotov in 1917.

In the "five", Molotov was the only one who could call himself a member of the Leninist guard. He was the only one among the old Bolsheviks - with the exception of old Kalinin, who had only formal power - who remained with Stalin to the end. A convinced professional revolutionary, since 1917, Molotov was considered Stalin's loyal support in all discussions. Already from the end of the 1920s, he showed a strong craving for administrative and bureaucratic decisions. His antipathy to democratic methods, complete and unconditional uncritical subordination to Stalin, of course, had some basis. After the conflict between Stalin and the "right" escalated in the late 1920s and the leaders of the "right" were removed from the Politburo, Molotov was appointed to the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars instead of the removed Rykov. The events of the 1930s testify to the fact that as head of the government, Molotov had really strong power. When, in the early 1930s, Stalin undertook new efforts to create his personal dictatorship and the well-known alternative "terror or democratization" arose, Molotov followed Stalin without objection. Together with a group of new leaders who had risen at that time, he was ready to follow him on a campaign that resulted in the so-called "second revolution."

Molotov, as a tireless administrator, carried out a great deal of work during the years of collectivization, industrialization, and the first five-year plans. Although he often had conflicts with the people's commissars, who exercised the actual leadership of the industries National economy, he always felt Stalin's support behind him.

In 1930-1932, as an extraordinary commissioner, he often traveled to various regions of the Soviet Union to accelerate collectivization. In 1932, Molotov played a particularly sinister role in the Ukraine, where he directed grain procurements in the southern regions. The result of these "grain procurements" was a devastating famine in the south of Ukraine. As one of Stalin's strongholds in the top leadership, Molotov himself played an active role in the functioning of the mechanism of mass terror. He was by no means an indifferent observer of the repression. Very often the lists of persons subject to destruction, which were prepared by the NKVD apparatus, were endorsed by Molotov himself, approving the proposed decisions. It often happened that on these lists he put three letters - "VMN" (capital punishment). It is also related to the development of the concept of "big" political processes. An impassive and coldly rational administrator, he followed his teacher in all his political maneuvers without any doubts or objections.

Molotov played an important role in realizing the goals of the Soviet foreign policy... At the same time, he often had disagreements with MM Litvinov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. They treated each other without much respect, which on the part of Molotov was apparently explained by the fact that Litvinov was the only people's commissar who, during the years of terror, managed to preserve his human dignity and independence in judgment. On August 23, 1939, Molotov, on behalf of his country, signed the Soviet-German non-aggression pact.

Molotov also played an important role in how the Soviet ruling circles assessed the short-term and long-term prospects for the development of the situation in Europe after the conclusion of the Soviet-German treaty. In a speech on August 31, he declared that the Soviet-German treaty served the interests of world peace.

For many months before starting Soviet-German war Molotov ignored the preparation of the Germans for aggression. When at dawn on June 22, the German ambassador Schulenburg handed him a note declaring war, he asked him in amazement: "How did we deserve this?" In the afternoon of this tragic day, he had to speak on the radio and announce the German attack on the Soviet Union in place of Stalin, who was shocked to the extreme and was in a state of grave crisis. Molotov called on the population of the Soviet Union to the Patriotic War.

On May 6, 1941, Stalin replaced Molotov as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Molotov became his first deputy. He was also Stalin's deputy and in the State Defense Committee, created on June 30, 1941. But diplomacy remained the main area of his activity. In 1942, he flew to London and Washington on matters of a military alliance with Britain and the United States. He also attended conferences preparing the post-war peace settlement. In the fall of 1943, he played an important role in negotiations with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, as a result of which significant changes took place in the position of the church, including the convening of a local council, which elected the patriarch.

Molotov is responsible for the new repression that was unleashed in the post-war period, since he was a member of the Politburo. However, the so-called anti-Zionist campaign also affected him personally. Molotov's wife Polina Zhemchuzhina, a Jew by nationality, was once a close friend of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's wife. In 1939, she was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). During the war she was one of the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In 1948, Pearl supported good relationship with Israeli Ambassador to the Soviet Union Golda Meir. When the campaign against cosmopolitanism was launched, Molotov's wife was accused of betraying the Motherland, she was accused of having connections with international Zionist circles. The question of it was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo. After hearing the "evidence" presented by Beria, everyone voted for the arrest of this woman. Molotov abstained from voting, but did not say a word in defense of his wife. Polina Zhemchuzhina was arrested.

It was during these years, when he was still unanimously considered the second person in the leadership, that he gradually began to lose his authority and the location of the leader. The arrest of his wife was only one of the signs that confirmed Stalin's distrust. In 1949 he was relieved of his duties as Minister of Foreign Affairs and replaced by Vyshinsky. Less and less often he received invitations to Stalin's dacha. Once Stalin told Khrushchev that Molotov was an agent of the American imperialists. However, despite this, in the fall of 1952, it was he who opened the 19th Congress of the CPSU and was elected to the expanded Presidium of the Central Committee, consisting of 36 people. But Stalin did not nominate him as a candidate for the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

After the congress, there were many signs that Stalin was preparing for a new purge campaign in the highest spheres. His death created a new environment. Apparently, the shaken positions of Molotov and a compromise within the leadership led to the fact that Malenkov became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and Molotov was only one of his deputies. In official reports, his name followed the name of Beria. At the same time, he was again introduced to the new, narrower composition of the reorganized Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and was again appointed to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. In March 1953 P. Zhemchuzhina was released from prison.

After the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Molotov was expelled from the party in his primary organization. The former head of the Soviet government lived in Moscow as a pensioner, worked on his memoirs in State Library named after Lenin. In 1984, at the age of 94, while KU Chernenko was the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, he was reinstated in the party.

Among Stalin's closest associates, only Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich is alive. In 1988 he turned 95 years old. Kaganovich was an example of bureaucratic zeal in work and zealous service. He was ready to sacrifice anything and anyone, if the interests of the service and his Master demanded it. He had a reputation for being strong-willed, stubborn, with great self-control. In the 1930s, he was one of the leading ruthless promoters of the accelerated pace policy. His habits did not include thinking, weighing carefully. Using the terminology of those years, he was a "man of action", an excellent organizer of the Stalinist type.

Kaganovich belonged to the generation of the old Bolsheviks. He was born on November 22, 1893 in the Kiev province into a poor Jewish family, he began working at the age of 14. In 1911 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. At the beginning of 1918, he first received a party assignment in the capital, becoming the commissar of the organizational and propaganda department of the All-Russian Collegium for the organization of the Red Army. At the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets, he was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In the fall of 1919 he was sent to Voronezh, where he became chairman of the provincial revolutionary committee, then the executive committee. During that period, he established close ties with the political and military leaders of the Southern Front - Stalin, Voroshilov, Budyonny, as well as with Ordzhonikidze. In September 1920, Kaganovich was sent to Turkestan. He became a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), at the same time, the People's Commissar of the RKI of the Turkestan Soviet Republic and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Front. At the same time, he was the chairman of the Tashkent City Council. A few years after the revolution, Kaganovich, a previously inconspicuous party worker, was already carrying out significant party assignments. In the course of Kaganovich's activities in Voronezh and Tsaritsyn, the future leader of the party drew attention to his abilities.

In June 1922, two months after Stalin's election as General Secretary of the Central Committee, Kaganovich began working in the apparatus of the Central Committee, having immediately received significant assignments. At first he was appointed head of the organizational and instructor department, later the organizational and distribution department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). The importance of these posts at that time can hardly be overestimated. From that moment on, his career took off. In 1923 he was a candidate member of the Central Committee, a year later - a member of the Central Committee of the party. Then, in 1924, Kaganovich was elected secretary of the Central Committee. In 1925 he was sent to Ukraine and for three years served as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. During his work in Ukraine, the policy of Russification was revived again. In 1927, a number of Ukrainian political figures were removed from the leadership on charges of nationalism. However, Kaganovich was soon recalled from Ukraine. Stalin decided that it was more important for him to temporarily enlist the support of the Ukrainian party leaders in the fight against Bukharin. Since 1928, Kaganovich again works in Moscow, being the secretary of the Central Committee of the party. In 1930 he became a member of the Politburo and was made head of the Moscow Party Committee. After the 17th Party Congress, he became chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In 1934 he headed the transport commission of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, later the transport department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). He began to deal with the organization of transport in 1931. Then the construction of the Moscow metro began. Official public opinion and the press unambiguously ascribed to him the main merits in the creation of the Moscow metro. In May 1935, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided to assign the name of Kaganovich to the Moscow Metro. It was a reward for him not only as a transport specialist and organizer of urban economy, because it was Kaganovich who assured Stalin at the 17th Party Congress that the leader could continue to rule without any hindrances.

“A man of action,” being the secretary of the Central Committee, he was one of the first to learn that during the voting at the 17th Congress against Stalin, 300 votes were cast. According to the memoirs of V.M. Verkhovykh, a member of the counting commission, published in 1957, after the chairman of the commission Zatonsky decided that this fact should be discussed with Kaganovich, asking for patience from the members of the commission, the latter left the room. Then, returning, he asked: "How many votes against did Kirov receive?" “Three,” Zatonsky replied. "Well, let Stalin have the same, destroy the rest." " Grey Cardinal»Was present at all important decisions.

Since 1935, retaining the post of secretary of the Central Committee, he was the people's commissar of railways, at the same time from 1937 - the people's commissar of heavy industry, since 1939 the people's commissar of the fuel industry. In 1939-1940 he also headed the People's Commissariat of the Oil Industry. During the Great Patriotic War, Kaganovich was a member of the State Defense Committee. He was deputy chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars. After the war, he headed the Ministry of Industry building materials, held a number of other major party and government posts.

Quite characteristic of Stalin was the decision to put a political adventurer at the head of the USSR People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs in 1938. Apparently, it will not be easy to find documents about L.P. Beria, because, having unlimited power, he had the opportunity to destroy materials incriminating him. However, in the light of recently published memoirs, a rather vivid portrait of this figure appears. Beria deftly exploited Stalin's suspicious character. Having played a scene with an attempt on the life of the leader during Stalin's vacation in the Caucasus, he opened the way for his rise. His unlimited personal power was of such a kind that it was impossible to maintain it without crime.

“He began to behave very cleverly, taking up his post as People's Commissar,” recalls the stories of his father Sergo Mikoyan. - His first step was a question that stunned everyone - maybe it’s time to plant less, otherwise soon there will be no one to plant? ”

Hearing such statements, many people who lived in constant fear that will soon come for them. And only a few thought at that moment that Beria was simply slightly loosening the reins that Yezhov had pulled so tightly. It took him time to improve the same mechanism, to make it omnipotent and universal, but at the same time not only not to frighten Stalin, but, on the contrary, to convince him that it is in this form that the NKVD can serve as a reliable protection for the leader. This was the true meaning and purpose of the work undertaken by Beria. Extraordinary diplomatic and organizational skills were needed, a real art of weaving intrigues, so that in an astonishingly short time, of course, with the hidden support of Stalin, the machine of repression was re-launched at full speed.

The widow of the executed Marshal Blucher describes the methods of government of Beria as follows: “I spent seven months in solitary confinement on the Lubyanka. And I will never forget the first interrogation conducted by Beria himself. I was not beaten, not tortured, like many wives of the military, in order to squeeze fictitious testimony from them about their husbands. Only it doesn't make it easier for me. The dearest person was taken away from me. Then I realized why there was no need for torture: all the documents on Blucher had already been concocted. I was just isolated like loved one famous marshal. Beria himself conducted the interrogation, apparently out of sadistic curiosity. He was arrogant. He did not look, but as if he was examining a person, as one examines a small insect through a magnifying glass. His appearance was disgusting. From him breathed cold, indifference to everything human in his sacrifice ... "

And here is the testimony of another woman: “Bulging eyes behind the glasses of pince-nez. And like a half-smirk pasted on ... I remember the women in my environment looked at this face in the pages of newspapers, in portraits with fear. Then persistent rumors circulated in the capital about the disappearance of the young beautiful women, after his car stopped near them, insinuatingly nestling close to the sidewalk. Rumors can be trusted or not. When it's scary to believe, you try to dismiss them. So it was with me, until ... Once with my classmate I was walking along the Arbat. Suddenly a car stopped nearby, two hefty young men got out of it and quickly walked towards us. Before we had time to really figure out anything, they took their friend by the arms and forcibly pushed her into the car. From the momentary thought of where and why they were taking her, I felt bad. Screaming, crying, complaining? We knew - then it was useless and dangerous ... "

"Yes Yes! Everything was so, - confirms the sad story of Maya Ivanovna Koneva, the daughter of a famous Soviet commander, under whose chairmanship the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR in 1953 pronounced a verdict on Beria. - I remember my father was full of hatred for this villain. Including for everything that he happened to hear from the crying mothers of those girls who became victims of a debauchee. I will never forget the passionate words of my father: “During the war I was worried about the fate of every young woman, piously remembering that after the war she would become someone's beloved, wife, mother ... And he, bastard, acted so inhumanly with them ...”

Beria met Stalin personally only in 1931. His ascent up the ladder of the party hierarchy occurred despite the protests of almost all leaders of the Transcaucasus. Everyone knew that he was a spoiled man, an unbridled careerist.

L. P. Beria was born on March 29, 1899 in Abkhazia, in the village of Merkheuli, not far from Sukhumi. After graduating from primary school in Sukhumi, Beria entered a technical school in Baku. He studied with Merkulov, Bagirov, Goglidze, Kobulov and Dumbadze (who later emigrated), who later became major ranks in the NKVD.

In the biography of Beria, published in 1950, it is written that already in 1915 he organized an illegal Marxist circle at the school, and in March 1917 he was admitted to the Bolshevik Party. Later sources do not note these points.

Beria at that time did not openly carry out political functions... However, he had unspoken assignments: according to the official verdict of the Soviet court in December 1953, then, in 1919, he became a traitor - he worked as an agent of the secret service of the Azerbaijani nationalist government. This document does not mention what a number of sources claim, namely that Beria supplied information back to the tsarist secret police. But the 1953 verdict marks another fact that in 1920 Beria was an agent of the political police of the Menshevik government of Georgia.

In April 1921, Beria was summoned to Ordzhonikidze, who informed him that the party was sending him to work in the apparatus of the internal affairs bodies. Having accepted this assignment, Beria worked for 10 years in leading positions in the state security bodies of the Transcaucasus.

In 1931, L.P. Beria approached an important stage in his political career. In the autumn of that year, Stalin came to rest in Tskhaltubo. Beria was next to the Secretary General until his departure.

As S. Mikoyan notes, “they understood each other well, although they had never seen each other before. It is so good that an order was sent directly from Tskhaltubo to Moscow to prepare a hearing in the Central Committee - beyond any plan - of the reports of the party and Soviet leadership of the Zakraikom and all three republics. No one could understand why? In connection with what? .. "

A. V. Snegov, a participant in the meeting, who at that time headed the organizational department of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee, recalls that the absence of Sergo Ordzhonikidze struck everyone. “Seizing the right moment,” writes A. V. Snegov in his memoirs, “I asked Mikoyan, who was sitting next to me:“ Why is there no Sergo? ”He answered in my ear:“ Why on earth would Sergo participate in the coronation of Beria? He knows him well. " So that's the thing! Thus, I was the first of those who came to know what was to come. "

The meeting itself was ordinary, various issues were discussed. Stalin said the main thing at the end of his speech, having practically finished it. Stuffing the pipe, which later became famous, he suddenly said: "What if we form the new leadership of the regional committee in this way: first secretary Kartvelishvili, second secretary - Beria?" It is curious that at this time, it turns out, there could still be disagreement. Opponents who are able to openly object and defend other points of view have not yet disappeared.

Kartvelishvili reacted immediately and emotionally in a Caucasian manner: "I will not work with this charlatan!" Orakhelashvili asked: "Koba, what did you say, maybe I misheard?" “We cannot bring such a surprise to the party organizations,” Ter-Gabrielyan said. Nobody supported the proposals. Then the "democratic discussion" was instantly crumpled. Stalin said angrily: "Well, then we will solve the issue in a working order."

Within several months, the leadership of the region was reshuffled ... Mamiya Orakhelashvili became the first secretary of the Zakraikom, and Beria, of course, became the second. But not for long: soon Orakhelashvili was summoned to Moscow and appointed deputy director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. And Beria remained the first secretary. After the reorganization of the Transcaucasian Federation, he became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. Then there is an even steeper and more unambiguous turn. “Two months later, new first secretaries of district committees appeared in 32 regions of Georgia,” Snegov says. - Before that, they held the posts of chiefs of the district departments of the NKVD. It seems to me that this is very typical. It is no less characteristic than the fact that none of those who were summoned to Moscow died of natural causes. I alone survived after 18 years in the camps ... "

In February 1935, Abel Yenukidze, an old Bolshevik who had been secretary of the CEC Presidium in Moscow since 1918, was appointed chairman of the CEC of the Transcaucasian Federation, and in that capacity had broad administrative power. Behind this shift was the fact that from the memoirs of Yenukidze, some of which were published by Pravda on January 16, 1935, it was clear that Stalin did not play an exclusive role in early stage revolutionary movement in Transcaucasia. In a letter to the editorial board of the journal "Proletarian Revolution" at the end of 1931, Stalin called for the revision of questions of the history of the party "in a new way." At the beginning of 1932, many well-known Bolsheviks, authors of previously published memoirs, "corrected" the description of some events. In the processing of Beria (or, according to some information, on his recommendation, but under his name), a new version of the history of the party organizations of Transcaucasia came out, in which the main place was given to Stalin as the leader of the revolutionary movement recognized from the very beginning, while the real merits of others the leaders were belittled or not noted at all. The Caucasian party organization was presented as the second center of the party, the newspaper Brdzola, published in only four issues, was placed on a par with Iskra, and the creation of a well-known printing house in Baku was fully attributed to Stalin.

Beria presented the main theses of his work at a meeting of the party activists in Tbilisi on July 21-22, 1935, then it was published under the title "On the question of the history of Bolshevik organizations in the Transcaucasus."

Until 1939, this book went through five editions. Thus, Beria became a co-author of the falsified history of the party, to which new chapters were constantly added.

Along with this, Beria did not forget about the elimination of real witnesses of historical events and honest politicians. Most of the party leaders in Transcaucasia did not survive the era of the "great purges". Beria was such a typical representative of the "new generation" that he did not hesitate to personally participate in the massacres. Reliable data indicate that Beria personally shot the head of the Communist Party of Armenia A. Khanjyan in his office. In July 1936, this case was presented as a suicide. He was the organizer of the assassination of Nestor Lakoba, a member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. A few days after Ordzhonikidze's suicide in February 1937, Mdivani and Okudzhava were arrested, and in July they were shot.

On December 20, it was reported that four days earlier, a similar fate befell Yenukidze and Orakhelashvili. In 1938, Kartvelishvili became a victim of terror. The same end was waiting for lesser-known figures. Along with the witnesses of the first steps of the revolutionary movement, those who were credited with participating in the Marxist circles led by Stalin were silenced. Beria was directly involved in the preparation of these repressions.

After a year and a half of "Yezhovism", especially ten months after March 1937, a kind of turn began, which brought the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in January 1938. It adopted a resolution "On the mistakes of party organizations when expelling communists from the party, on the formal bureaucratic attitude towards appeals of those expelled from the CPSU (b) and on measures to eliminate these shortcomings." This was a new example of Stalin's political cynicism.

During the period of Yezhov's terror, the General Secretary remained in the background, he pushed forward, first of all, his closest employees, thereby preserving the freedom of maneuver. And now one might think that the decree was adopted on his initiative, that he was stopping the car of reprisals, which he had been directing until now, although from the outside it seemed that it was not he who did it, but the NKVD apparatus.

The newspapers published articles on the revision of individual sentences, on bringing the perpetrators to justice, on the reinstatement of individual communists in the party. One of component parts these diversionary maneuvers was the further advance of Beria, his appearance at the head of the apparatus of the internal affairs bodies.

He was summoned to Moscow at the end of June 1938, then in July he was appointed First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. When, in December, he took Yezhov's place, Stalin was able to shift responsibility for the terror to the former people's commissar in front of the public. In the person of Beria, the leader acquired, if you can imagine it at all, an even more accommodating performer than Yezhov. Stalin knew about some of the dark moments in Beria's biography. People's Commissar of Health Kaminsky, at one of the plenums of the Central Committee in 1937, revealed Beria's connections with the Musavat secret police, and Yezhov had collected a thick dossier on his future successor by the spring of 1938.

With the changing of the guard, the NKVD began to purge those who carried out the purges themselves. Yezhov's employees were removed, in their place came Beria's people, mainly from Georgia. After 1953, they were officially called the "Beria gang". It seemed that the situation had softened somewhat, there were fewer arrests, but none of the repressed prominent party leaders were released, and almost no one was released from the forced labor camps. The operation of the terror mechanism then, from the end of the 30s, was also regulated on the basis of economic considerations. The whole system of labor camps was aimed at making the most of the labor force of the inmates. What Yezhov was unable to complete was brought to an end by Beria. In 1939, 1940 and even 1941 many became victims of terror - from R.I. Eikhe, A.S.Bubnov and Marshal A.I. Egorov to V.E.Meyerhold, M.E. ... A number of prominent intellectuals and military leaders were killed.

Beria managed to significantly strengthen his position. As the sovereign leader of the punitive organs, he was part of the country's top leadership until the death of Stalin.

On December 17, 1953, the Izvestia newspaper published the text of the indictment against Beria and his six accomplices - V. N. Merkulov, V. G. Dekanozov, B. Z. Kobulov, S. A. Goglidze, P. Ya. Meshik, L. E. Wlodzimirsky. On December 24, Pravda reported that all the accused had been sentenced to death, and the day before that they had been executed.

It is noteworthy that in foreign literature there are several versions of Beria's death.

“Arrived”, “coming”, “rising” - I can still hear this whisper that suddenly swept through. I remember: anxiously and sweetly my heart skipped a beat when its noble gray hair appeared below, almost merging with a mouse-colored uniform and shoulder straps the color of polished steel - then this strange outfit of a diplomat seemed the height of taste and an example of elegance. All Soviet jurisprudence stretched along the stairs, forming a wide passage. The guest cheerfully (folder under his arm) climbed step by step and - wow! - suddenly stopped. “I can't again today. And tomorrow, ”he said to someone who was standing very close to me. "Forgive me generously, I just can't." What could he not, to whom did he apologize? Do not know. Didn't look. I saw only him, standing a stone's throw from me: short, tightly knit, fragrant. Beautiful gray. A brush of a thin mustache. Elegantly framed glasses. Behind the glass - a tenacious, prickly, piercing gaze. Slightly narrowed eyes are also steel. " So in memory Soviet writer A. Vaksberg, Andrei Yanuarevich Vyshinsky remained.

Vyshinsky was a talented, well-educated person who possessed all the abilities to rise to the heights of power. This man, naturally gifted with an analytical mind, was not, as many now believe, a murderer from birth.

It should be said that in general, among the well-known politicians around Stalin, there were many real revolutionaries, whose character was deformed later under the shadow of his power.

Vyshinsky took part in revolutionary movement since 1902. The political ambitions of the young lawyer manifested themselves very early. The chances of getting into Stalin's entourage were, first of all, people whose reputation was tarnished for some reason, who could remain in power only at the cost of complete subordination of their personality, complete loss of their own independence. Guided by these considerations, Stalin elevated more than one Menshevik and placed them in important posts. Vyshinsky, like, for example, the well-known diplomat I. M. Maisky or the functionary of the Comintern A. S. Martynov, was a Menshevik. With such a past, Vyshinsky could not remain at the pinnacle of power in the late 1920s without bending his back. One of the typical Stalinist apparatchiks, Vyshinsky was a "classic" careerist. His views and principles changed in accordance with the wishes of the leader, the needs of his policy. As for the role of Vyshinsky in major political processes, the main choice for him already then became extremely simplified - to stay alive and take on the role of the choreographer - the Prosecutor General, or to perish. He was not a hero, so he chose life. But, even in retrospect, you see that, as Prosecutor General, Vyshinsky did a job perfect of its kind during these trials. By sending his former political opponents, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party, to death, he fully implemented Stalin's wishes. The accused went through all forms of human humiliation, Vyshinsky took care of this with pedantic thoroughness. He, of course, was more than just executing the director's will. He was a co-author like Beria or Molotov. The confident prosecutor played, of course, his role in the conditions of the "vicissitudes of fear." But he did not try to save even his own family members from death. Vyshinsky, until the death of the leader, every minute he himself awaited arrest, because he knew too much, almost everything ...

Here are the major milestones life path Vyshinsky.

Was born in Odessa in 1883. Pole by nationality, a relative of Cardinal Stefan Vyshinsky, head catholic church Poland. The official biography sparingly talks about his activities and political work until 1920. It was noted that after graduating from the Faculty of Law Kiev University, he was left to prepare for a professorship, but for political reasons he was rejected tsarist authorities and was engaged in literary and teaching activities... Of course, the biography does not say that in June 1917, as chairman of the district council, Vyshinsky signed an order on the strict execution of the order of the Kerensky government to arrest Lenin. In 1920 he joined the Bolshevik Party.

Vyshinsky's career as a lawyer since 1928 has developed along an ascending line - this year he became chairman of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the "Shakhty case", then in the case of the "Industrial Party". These were the first trials - tragic performances. During them, the prosecutor of the RSFSR, the old Bolshevik N.V. Krylenko, was the public prosecutor, and it was clear that he was no longer suitable for performing such a role at subsequent similar events. In 1931, Vyshinsky was appointed Prosecutor of the RSFSR and Deputy People's Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR. Since 1933, he has been the Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR, in the same year he acted as a public prosecutor at the Metro-Vickers trial. In 1935, he was already the prosecutor of the USSR. Since January 1935, as a public prosecutor, he was one of the main actors in major political trials. From this moment on, we seem to see the same performance - the main characters unchanged, the participants in the episodes change. Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR - Ulrich, state prosecutor - Vyshinsky, chief organizer, "playwright" - Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Zakovsky. The play goes according to a pre-written script in the usual place - the House of Unions. They say that sometimes the chief director also appeared there, observing the progress of the process from the box.

In speeches of accusation at court hearings in the cases of Kamenev-Zinoviev, Pyatakov-Radek and at the Bukharin trial, Vyshinsky demanded a death sentence for almost all the defendants. In order to feel the atmosphere of the court and the style of the prosecutor, it is enough to quote his words from the speech at the end of the trial of the so-called "anti-Soviet right-Trotskyist bloc":

“Our people and all honest people around the world are awaiting your just judgment. Let your verdict ring throughout our great country like an alarm, calling for new exploits and new victories! Let your verdict thunder like a refreshing and all-purifying thunderstorm of just Soviet punishment!

Our entire country, from small to old, is waiting and demanding one thing: to shoot the traitors and spies who sold our homeland to the enemy, like filthy dogs!

Our people demand only one thing: crush the accursed reptile!

Time will pass. The graves of the hated traitors will be overgrown with weeds and thistles, covered with the eternal contempt of the honest Soviet people, the entire Soviet people.

And over us, over our happy country, our sun will continue to shine clearly and joyfully with its bright rays. We, our people, will continue to march along the road cleared of the last evil spirits and abominations of the past, led by our beloved leader and teacher - the great Stalin - forward and forward, towards communism! "

Stalin was very pleased with his student, for his work he repeatedly received government awards.

Vyshinsky is the author of many books on the problems of criminal law. In his main work "The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law", the main theoretical conclusion was that the confession of the accused at the trial has the force of proof. This situation is reminiscent of the times of the Inquisition, medieval methods of investigation.

The powerful Attorney General has held senior positions in the diplomatic apparatus since 1940. Until 1949, he was first deputy commissar, then minister of foreign affairs of the USSR. In 1949 - 1953 - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, then until his death in November 1954 - Deputy Minister. Vyshinsky was buried in Red Square.

The reason for his visit was a letter from the first secretary of the Bashkir regional committee, Ya. B. Bykin, to Stalin, full of despair. Bykin wrote: “I ask one thing: send an intelligent security officer. Let him figure it out objectively! "

Zhdanov appeared in Ufa with his “team” and threw Bikin, who was meeting him, with an ominous grin: “So I have arrived! I think that I will show myself as a sensible security officer. "

At the urgently assembled plenum of the Bashkir Regional Committee, Zhdanov was brief. He said that he had arrived "on the issue of checking the leadership." Read out ready-made solution: "The Central Committee decided - to remove Bykin and Isanchurin (second secretary) ...". Bykin and Isanchurin were taken directly from the hall, without waiting for the end of the plenum. Bykin managed to shout: "I am not guilty of anything!" Isanchurin was courageous: "I believed in Bykin and I still believe." Both were shot. Bykin's pregnant wife was also shot.

In his concluding remarks, Zhdanov was again brief: “The moral burden was discharged. The pillars have been cut down, the fences will fall down by themselves. "

Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, an intellectual of the Stalinist type, for decades was one of the most bright stars in the sky of the country. He was considered, perhaps, Stalin's most beloved employee, for a short time they were even tied by family ties, when the leader's daughter, Svetlana, married Zhdanov's son, but this marriage was short-lived.

The personality of Zhdanov combined the type of party secretary-organizer and ideologist-esthete. As a co-author, he left us in inheritance one of his most “enduring works” - 1937.

Zhdanov was born on February 14, 1896 in Mariupol (until 1989 this city was called Zhdanov). His father was an inspector of public schools. After Kirov was killed, A.A. Zhdanov headed the Leningrad party organization. In accordance with Stalin's instructions, he "cleared" the city of his predecessor's supporters. During the war, he proved himself to be a leader with a stiff hand. As an ideologue-esthete, he caused extreme damage to cultural life Soviet country... Wherever he appeared, from Leningrad to the Urals, waves of repression rose high everywhere. Zhdanov is responsible for the death of many thousands of people. The Stalinist esthete was also a murderer.

Roy Medvedev

ENVIRONMENT OF STALIN

FOREWORD

My work on a book about Stalin's entourage began in the late 1970s, and the first essays on individual people from Stalinist entourage were published in various newspapers and magazines in Western countries in 1980-1983. The first English edition of the book ("All Stalin's Men") was published in 1984, after which translations from both English and Russian editions were published in many countries, including Japan, China, Poland and Hungary. A significantly expanded Soviet edition of this book, entitled They Surrounded Stalin, was published in 1989. These were the years of perestroika and glasnost, and the author tried to write a separate small book about each of the six main characters of the book over the next two years. I was able to accomplish only part of this task. The book "Lazar Kaganovich" was published in the Kiev magazine "Vitchizna" (No. 5 and No. 6 for 1991) and in the Voronezh magazine "Podyom" (No. 8 and No. 9 for 1991). The publishing house "Respublika" published in 1992 the book "The Gray Cardinal" about M. Suslov. In 1992 I also wrote an essay "All-Union Headman" - about Mikhail Kalinin. In this edition, I have combined all of these works under one cover. For the period from 1992 to 2005 in Russian Federation many works were published about Stalin's entourage. Several volumes of Stalin's correspondence with Molotov, Kaganovich and Kalinin have been published in Russia and the United States. The memoirs of A. I. Mikoyan - "So it was", as well as recordings of conversations with Molotov and Kaganovich were published. The book about his father was written by G. Malenkov's son. Molotov's grandson V. Nikonov published a detailed biography of his grandfather in two volumes. Most of this work is, however, of academic interest. People from Stalin's entourage were not outstanding personalities or great politicians, and for the general public, for which the series "ZhZL" is designed, there is no need to know all the details of the life and work of these people. Therefore, I did not begin to expand the texts written earlier, but limited myself to correcting some inaccuracies. In the last 15 years, a new generation of readers has appeared in Russia, for whom, I hope, my book will be interesting.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues Alexei Alexandrovich Vasilevsky, Dmitry Arturovich Ermakov and Petr Vadimovich Khmelinsky for their creative assistance in preparing the materials for the book.

October 2005

ABOUT ONE MOSCOW LONGER

(V.M. Molotov)

"I STILL HAVE HOURS"

One of my acquaintances, hurrying to work, forgot her watch at home. Walking along Granovsky Street, she saw a small old man standing on the sidewalk. "Please tell me what time it is?" the woman asked. “Thank God, I still have a watch,” said the old man and said the time. When he raised his face, the woman, the daughter of one of the old Bolsheviks who were shot in 1937, was surprised to recognize in the old man Molotov, the man who in the 30s headed the Soviet government and whose name back in the late 40s when listing members of the Politburo of the Central Committee The CPSU (b) has invariably ranked second after Stalin.

However, many young people with whom I have had occasion to talk lately do not even know the name of Molotov. This does not seem strange to me, although it once surprised such a thoughtful American journalist as Hedrick Smith.

“People of the West forget,” he writes in his book “Russians”, “that from their distant places they sometimes know about some historical events there are more in the Soviet Union than Russian youth. For me, the most vivid example of this phenomenon is one episode that happened with Arkady Raikin, the famous Soviet pop actor. One winter, he had a heart attack, and he was admitted to the hospital, where the actor was visited by his 18-year-old grandson. Suddenly Raikin jumped on the bed, amazed that Vyacheslav Molotov, the closest of Stalin's surviving comrades-in-arms, former chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs, walked past the chamber.

It's him! - gasped Raikin.

Who? - asked the grandson; the face of the man who passed along the corridor was unfamiliar to him ...

Molotov, - muttered Raikin.

And who is this, Molotov? - asked the young man with stunning ignorance. This historical deafness, as one middle-aged scholar put it, has led to the development of a generation of young people who know no villains or heroes and worship only the stars of Western rock music. "

Of course, people of the older generation remember Molotov well. However, they, in essence, did not know anything about the fate of the ex-prime minister in the past 20 years, and even about whether he was alive. Therefore, at the end of 1986, they read with great surprise a short notice from the Council of Ministers of the USSR about the death, at the age of 97, of VM Molotov, who was chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941. This sounded for many both as a notice of death and as the emergence of the name of Molotov from political oblivion.

Molotov joined the Bolshevik Party in 1906, and he was probably in the last year of his life the oldest member of the party. Until the end of the 70s, the oldest party member in our country was Faro Rizel Knunyants, who joined the Social Democratic movement in 1903. However, she died at the end of 1980 at the age of 97. In 1983, at the age of 99, Timofey Ivanovich Ivanov died, a member of the CPSU since 1904. In the summer of 1985, Anna Nikolaevna Bychkova, who joined the party in June 1906, also died at the age of 99. Now Molotov has also died ...

But if Molotov was little the oldest member of the party, then he undoubtedly was for a long time the only surviving member of the Central Committee of the party of the early 1920s. Only a few of them died of natural causes, most were shot or died in prisons and camps. And Molotov put a lot of effort into the destruction of all these people.

CAREER UNDER LENIN

The real name of Molotov is Scriabin. When he first began to appear in Bolshevik newspapers, his small notes and articles appeared under different pseudonyms. Only in 1919, on a brochure about workers' participation in economic construction, the author put the pseudonym "Molotov", which soon became his permanent surname.

For some reason, many believed that Molotov came from a noble family. This is not true. He was born on March 9, 1890 in the Kukarka settlement of the Vyatka province and was the third son of the tradesman Mikhail Scriabin from the city of Nolinsk. Molotov's father was a wealthy man and gave his sons a good education. Vyacheslav graduated from a real school in Kazan and even received a musical education. A revolution was taking place in Russia, and most of the Kazan youth were in a very radical mood. Molotov joined one of the self-education circles where they studied Marxist literature. Here he became friends with Viktor Tikhomirnov, the son of a wealthy merchant and heir to a large fortune, who nevertheless entered the Bolshevik group in Kazan back in 1905. Under the influence of Tikhomirnov, Molotov also entered this group in 1906. In 1909, Molotov was arrested and exiled to Vologda. After the end of his exile, he came to St. Petersburg and entered the Polytechnic Institute. In 1912, the first legal Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, began to appear in the capital. One of its organizers was Tikhomirnov, who donated a large sum of money for the needs of the newspaper. Tikhomirnov also attracted Molotov to work in the newspaper, who published several articles here. Later, in the 30s, Molotov in every possible way patronized the daughter of his friend - the ballerina I. Tikhomirnova, who danced at the Bolshoi Theater.

Due to the arrests and emigration of many leaders of the party, not only the St. Petersburg, but also the entire Russian organization of the Bolsheviks was at the beginning of the war without leaders. Only in the fall of 1915, under the leadership of A. Shlyapnikov, the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee was re-established in Petrograd. A year later, 26-year-old Molotov also joined it. Naturally, in the early days February revolution he turned out to be a prominent figure. In March 1917 he was a member of the editorial board of Pravda and the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

But after returning from exile and emigration of the leaders of the party, Molotov stepped back into secondary roles. He had neither oratorical talent, nor strong will, nor revolutionary energy. Therefore, he could not distinguish himself in any way either in the stormy months of the 1917 revolution, or in the years of the Civil War that followed. But Molotov showed himself to be an executive, assiduous and diligent person. In addition, he had an almost complete technical education... In 1918, Molotov headed the Council of National Economy of the Northern Region, which then included 7 provinces of former Russia and the Karelian Labor Commune. In 1919, he led the restoration of the economy and Soviet organizations in the Volga region. In the summer of 1919, during a joint trip on the Krasnaya Zvezda agitation steamer, Molotov met NK Krupskaya. Acquaintance with Lenin happened even earlier, in April 1917.

Soon, Molotov began to have acute conflicts with local workers. This led to the fact that he was recalled from the Volga region and sent to Ukraine, where he worked for only a few months. During this period, the central apparatus of the RCP (b) increased significantly, which was natural under the conditions of a one-party system. In addition, in March 1919, Ya. M. Sverdlov died, who until then had almost single-handedly and operatively led the party apparatus. It was decided to create a secretariat of the Central Committee on a collegial basis, and in 1920 a plenum of the Central Committee elected N. N. Krestinsky, E. A. Preobrazhensky and L. P. Serebryakov as secretaries of the Central Committee. All of them were supporters of Trotsky, and after the "trade union discussion" Lenin made a decision ...

State educational institution of higher vocational education

SAINT PETERSBURG STATE UNIVERSITY OF SERVICE AND ECONOMY

Institute of CiUSP

Department of "History and Political Science"

DISCIPLINE: National history

TOPIC: Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and his entourage

Speciality: Social work.

Work completed:

1st year student 30505, B / L

Zhuchkova N.V.

St. Petersburg

1. Introduction

2. Biography of Dzhugashvili - Koba - Stalin

3. Official reference to a member of the Central Committee

4. Joseph as a child and his first education. Gori Theological School

6. Georgian social-democratic organization "Mesame-dasi" in 1898.

7. I.V. Stalin heads the work of the Caucasian Union Committee of the RSDLP

8.In 1917-1922 the People's Commissar for Nationalities

9. The new Secretariat of the Central Committee, formed after the XI Congress of the Party. Lenin Guard

10. Stalinist terror with henchmen

11. Red Army. Great Patriotic War

12. Historical reference

13. Opening of the second front in Europe

14. Tehran - 43

15. Victory

16. Military camp of Socialism 17. Soviet society after the war 18. Strengthening of totalitarianism

19. Struggle for power surrounded by Stalin

20. Stalin and creation atomic bomb

21. Death of Stalin.

22. Historical background. General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party 1922 - 1953

23. List of sources used

1. Introduction

The largest historical personality century past Joseph Vissarionovich STALIN, life and state activity which left a deep mark not only on the fate of the people of the USSR, but also of all mankind, will be the subject of careful study of historians for more than one century. The biography of Dzhugashvili - Koba - Stalin, a political long-liver of the 20th century, contains an uncountable number conflicting each friend characteristics: where cruel, but also the father's own; the leader of the communist party, authoritarian and ruthless, the leader of a great communist country.

No one can give a better characterization than his contemporaries. His personality spoke for itself.

Stalin's Russia is not the old Russia that perished with the monarchy. But the Stalinist state without successors worthy of Stalin is doomed ...

Stalin spoke there (in Tehran - Ed.) As a person who has the right to demand an account. Without revealing the Russian plans to the other two participants in the conference, he made sure that they presented their plans to him and amended them in accordance with his requirements. Roosevelt joined him in rejecting Churchill's idea of a broad offensive by Western military forces through Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece to Vienna, Prague and Budapest. On the other hand, the Americans, in agreement with the Soviets, rejected, despite the insistence of the British, the proposal to consider at the conference political issues related to Central Europe, and especially the question of Poland, where the Russian armies were about to enter.

Benes informed me about his talks in Moscow. He portrayed Stalin as a man with restraint in his speeches, but firm in his intentions, with his own idea, hidden but quite definite, regarding each of the European problems.

Wendel Wilkie made it clear that Churchill and Harriman returned from their trip to Moscow unsatisfied. They found themselves in front of the mysterious Stalin, his mask remained impenetrable for them. " ...

Charles de Gaulle (France).

"Brave, but cautious, easily angry and suspicious, but patient and persistent in achieving his goals. Able to act with great decisiveness or expectant and secretive - depending on the circumstances, outwardly modest and simple, but jealous of the prestige and dignity of the state ... Principled and ruthlessly realistic, decisive in his demands for loyalty, respect and obedience. Sharply and unsentimentally studying people - Stalin could be like a real Georgian hero, big and good friend or an implacable, dangerous enemy. It was difficult for him to be somewhere in the middle between the two. ”(Dialogue, 1996, No. 10, p. 74).

George Cannon (USA).

"Stalin preserved Russia, showed what it means to the world. Therefore, as an Orthodox Christian and a Russian patriot, I bow low to Stalin."

Archbishop Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky).

“I came to know JV Stalin close after 1940, when I worked as Chief of the General Staff, and during the war as Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief. JV Stalin made a strong impression. Deprived of posturing, he bribed the interlocutor with the simplicity of communication. Free manner of conversation, the ability to clearly formulate ideas, natural analytical mind, great erudition and rare memory, even very sophisticated and significant people were forced during a conversation with I.V. Stalin was able to get together internally and be alert. (...) He knew Russian perfectly well and liked to use figurative literary comparisons, examples, metaphors. (...) He wrote, as a rule, by hand himself. his amazing efficiency, ability to quickly grasp the material allowed him to view and assimilate so many different facts in a day. ological material that only an extraordinary person could do. It is difficult to say which character trait prevailed in him. A versatile and talented person, he was not even. He had a strong will, a secretive and impetuous character. Usually calm and judicious, he sometimes became irritated. Then his objectivity changed, he literally changed before his eyes, paled even more, his gaze became heavy and hard. I didn't know many daredevils who could withstand Stalin's anger and parry the blow. (...) I worked a lot, 12-15 hours a day.

As a military leader, I studied Stalin thoroughly, since I went through the whole war with him. JV Stalin was in charge of the organization of front-line operations and operations of front groups and directed them from full knowledge affairs, well versed in major strategic issues ... In the leadership of the armed struggle as a whole, JV Stalin was helped by his natural mind, rich intuition. He knew how to find the main link in a strategic situation and, seizing on it, counter the enemy, conduct one or another major offensive operation. Undoubtedly, he was a worthy Supreme Commander-in-Chief "(Zhukov GK Memoirs and Reflections. M., 1969, pp. 295-297).

Marshal G.K. Zhukov.

“It was a great happiness for Russia that during the years of the hardest trials the country was led by the genius and unshakable commander Stalin. He was the most outstanding person, impressed by our changeable and cruel time of the period in which his whole life passed.

Stalin was a man of extraordinary energy and unbending willpower, harsh, cruel, merciless in conversation, to whom even I, brought up here in the British Parliament, could not oppose anything. Stalin, above all, had a great sense of humor and sarcasm and the ability to accurately perceive thoughts. This power was so great in Stalin that he seemed unique among the leaders of states of all times and peoples.

Stalin made the greatest impression on us. He possessed a deep, non-panic, logical wisdom. He was an invincible master of finding ways out of the most hopeless situation in difficult moments. In addition, Stalin in the most critical moments, as well as in moments of triumph, was equally restrained and never succumbed to illusions. He was an unusually complex person. He created and subjugated a huge empire. This was a man who destroyed his enemy with his own enemy. Stalin was the greatest unparalleled dictator in the world who took Russia with a plow and left it with nuclear weapons. Well, history, the people do not forget such people. "(U. CHERCHILL. Speech in the House of Commons December 21, 1959).

Winston Churchill (Great Britain).

“Stalin,” wrote Trotsky, after Lenin’s death, was the main weapon of this coup. He is gifted with practical meaning, endurance and perseverance in pursuing the set goals. His political horizons are extremely narrow. The theoretical level is completely primitive. His compilation book "Foundations of Leninism", in which he tried to pay tribute to the theoretical traditions of the party, is teeming with student errors. Unfamiliarity with foreign languages forces him to follow the political life of other countries only from hearsay. By his mentality, he is a stubborn empiricist, devoid of creative imagination. To the upper layer of the party (in broader circles they did not know him at all), he always seemed to be a man created for second and third roles. And the fact that he is now playing the first role characterizes not him, but rather a transitional period of political slide. " (Leon Trotsky. In memoirs, events covering the period up to 1929. "My life"). Lev Davidovich Trotsky.

Roy Medvedev

ENVIRONMENT OF STALIN

FOREWORD

My work on a book about Stalin's entourage began in the late 1970s, and the first essays about individual people from Stalin's entourage were published in various newspapers and magazines in Western countries in 1980-1983. The first English edition of the book ("All Stalin's Men") was published in 1984, after which translations from both English and Russian editions were published in many countries, including Japan, China, Poland and Hungary. A significantly expanded Soviet edition of this book, entitled They Surrounded Stalin, was published in 1989. These were the years of perestroika and glasnost, and the author tried to write a separate small book about each of the six main characters of the book over the next two years. I was able to accomplish only part of this task. The book "Lazar Kaganovich" was published in the Kiev magazine "Vitchizna" (No. 5 and No. 6 for 1991) and in the Voronezh magazine "Podyom" (No. 8 and No. 9 for 1991). The publishing house "Respublika" published in 1992 the book "The Gray Cardinal" about M. Suslov. In 1992 I also wrote an essay "All-Union Headman" - about Mikhail Kalinin. In this edition, I have combined all of these works under one cover. During the period from 1992 to 2005, many works about Stalin's entourage were published in the Russian Federation. Several volumes of Stalin's correspondence with Molotov, Kaganovich and Kalinin have been published in Russia and the United States. The memoirs of A. I. Mikoyan - "So it was", as well as recordings of conversations with Molotov and Kaganovich were published. The book about his father was written by G. Malenkov's son. Molotov's grandson V. Nikonov published a detailed biography of his grandfather in two volumes. Most of this work is, however, of academic interest. People from Stalin's entourage were not outstanding personalities or great politicians, and for the general public, for which the series "ZhZL" is designed, there is no need to know all the details of the life and work of these people. Therefore, I did not begin to expand the texts written earlier, but limited myself to correcting some inaccuracies. In the last 15 years, a new generation of readers has appeared in Russia, for whom, I hope, my book will be interesting.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues Vasilevsky Alexey Alexandrovich, Ermakov Dmitry Arturovich and Khmelinsky Peter Vadimovich for creative assistance in preparing the materials for the book.

October 2005

ABOUT ONE MOSCOW LONGER

(V.M. Molotov)

"I STILL HAVE HOURS"

“The people of the West forget,” he writes in his book “The Russians”, “that from their distance they sometimes know more about certain historical events in the Soviet Union than Russian youth. For me, the most graphic example of this phenomenon is one episode that happened with Arkady Raikin, the famous Soviet pop actor. One winter he had a heart attack, and he was admitted to the hospital, where the actor was visited by his 18-year-old grandson. Suddenly Raikin jumped on the bed, amazed that Vyacheslav Molotov, the closest of Stalin's surviving comrades-in-arms, former chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs, walked past the chamber.

It's him! - gasped Raikin.

Who? - asked the grandson; the face of the man who passed along the corridor was unfamiliar to him ...

Molotov, - muttered Raikin.

CAREER UNDER LENIN

Molotov's real name Scriabin. When he first began to appear in Bolshevik newspapers, his small notes and articles appeared under different pseudonyms. Only in 1919, on a brochure about the participation of workers in economic construction, the author put the pseudonym "Molotov", which soon became his permanent surname.

Federal Agency for Education

Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Department of History

Discipline: Domestic history

I.V. Stalin and his entourage: Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, etc.

Student of group 2-A-II

D.P. Chuprikova

Supervisor

Cand. ist. Sciences, Associate Professor

V.Yu. Zhukov

Saint Petersburg 2008

Introduction

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is a political long-liver, one of the "record holders" of his stay in power. For 31 years (from April 1922 to March 1953) Stalin was the official party leader of our country. Moreover, the position of a party leader was equated to the status of a national leader. And there is hardly a ruler in world history who would be so exalted and heaped with curses, loved and hated. A figure, in all respects, controversial. But it was all the more interesting to read materials about him, about his political career, about his entourage, about that era, which is usually called Stalinism - a derivative of "Stalin" and "Marxism-Leninism".

1. Youth and the beginning of revolutionary activity

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was born on December 21 (9, O.S.), 1879 in the Georgian town of Gori. His father, Vissarion Nikolaevich, was a shoemaker, his mother, Ekaterina Georgievna, was a simple Georgian. The family lived quite poorly, the father often drank and often beat his wife and son. The real date of birth indicated in the metric book of the Assumption Cathedral Church in Gori for 1878: December 6 (according to the Art. Art.) 1878. In 1888, Joseph Vissarionovich entered the Gori Theological School. He studied diligently and, in 1894, having finished it brilliantly, entered the 1st class of the Tiflis Theological Seminary.

At that time, many Russian revolutionaries, who were forbidden to live in the capital, chose the blessed Tiflis for residence. Several people stood out among the public enlighteners in their circles at that time. Pyotr Tkachev, a publicist, one of the main "masters of thought" of Russian populism, said that the revolution is the business of a narrow circle of people, its success may be the result of a successful conspiracy of revolutionary leaders. They must seize power and only then transform the Russian society, accustomed to slavish obedience, at all times begin to convert the Russian people to socialism. But in the name of a brighter future, it was supposed to exterminate the majority of the population, which, due to its underdevelopment, would interfere with going to the paradise of socialism. Also, among the pillars of revolutionary populism was Mikhail Bakunin - the father of Russian anarchism. His ideas formed the basis of the famous "Catechism of a Revolutionary", written by Sergei Nechaev.

Many revolutionaries often met clever seminary boys. So, the above-described revolutionary thoughts reached Joseph Vissarionovich. He received the Catechism from the revolutionaries and began to study new material.

Then the minds of the revolutionaries were seized by Marxism, which also easily penetrated into theological seminary. Joseph Vissarionovich became a constant listener of all Marxist disputes. And the great promise of the revolution sounded more and more tempting for the proud, impoverished boy: "Who was nothing, he will become everything." In 1898, the name of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili became one of the main students in the journal of misconduct. By that time, he had decided for himself that wasting time on study was wasting it. The seminary was then divided into his friends and enemies. In 1899, owing to Joseph Vissarionovich's failure to appear for the exam as the apotheosis of all his antics, he was expelled from the seminary.

Arriving in the center and joining the ranks of the revolutionaries, Stalin mainly wrote campaign articles or articles praising Lenin and the Party. It is worth noting that Joseph Vissarionovich signed his pseudonym "Stalin" under an article about the bright future of the proletariat. "Stalin", a man of steel. "Stalin" in the manner of "Lenin".

During that period, he survived 7 exiles, 6 of which ended up in flight. So, during the period of another exile, ending in 1917, he understood a lot, rethought all his previous activities. He understood that the party did not value much and could do without him. He had complete apathy: he did not eat, did not clean his room by the end of the exile. Of course, during that period he changed a lot and by the time he returned to Petrograd, he was a completely new person. Yes, he still seemed quiet, somewhat unsure of himself, as before this exile. However, this is just an illusion. He tried many people as mentors until his own vision of revolution and power took shape. “We learn a little, we learn,” he said in those years.

2. Rise to power

In 1921, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin suffered his first stroke. During a long illness, power passed to a collective body - the Politburo, which included V.I. Lenin, L.D. Trotsky, L.B. Kamenev, G.E. Zinoviev, I.V. Stalin, A.I. Rykov and M.P. Tomsk. Stalin began to lead the Secretariat of the Central Committee, created at the end of 1921 to conduct party work. The secretariat consisted of the general secretary Stalin and two secretaries V.V. Kuibyshev and V.M. Molotov. It is believed that it was from this bridgehead that Stalin began the struggle for power already in the spring-summer of 1922, when it became clear that Lenin was no longer a tenant. On May 27, 1922, Lenin was paralyzed for the first time and Stalin, who visited him on May 30, took under control everything that happened in Gorki. In fact, he isolated him from outside world, kept in the dark about many things going on in the party.

The main struggle for power was waged by Stalin and Trotsky. They were completely different in upbringing, education, people, but they were absolutely equally eager for power. On the side of Trotsky were his merits as a successful winner in civil war, an experienced leader, a bright speaker. But on the side of Stalin - were almost all members of the Politburo, and most importantly, he had the phenomenal gift of a subtle intriguer. Trotsky is narcissistic, positioning himself as the only leader worthy of the throne. He did not put a penny on his colleagues in the Politburo and did not hide it. By the way, by that time, capricious and authoritarian with most of them, he ruined relations. They were afraid of him. But Stalin was not. He did not have political weight, although he was the "general secretary", but with a full-fledged Politburo, this did not mean anything. He seemed to all of them gray, and not at all claiming power, perhaps even a little silly. Stalin's inherent rudeness, rancor, stubbornness, firmness seemed very useful in the fight against Trotsky and other enemies.

On January 21, 1924, Lenin died. Against the wishes of his widow, a grand funeral was arranged for him, a mausoleum was built, in which the "relics" of a new political saint were laid in an open coffin. The sacred name of Lenin, the creative legacy of the brilliant superman, far-sighted, wise, indisputable and always right-wing leader became the support of the entire ideology of Stalinism, a screen for Stalin.

Stalin's alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev, concluded during the internal party struggle during the last two years of Lenin's life, collapsed immediately after the weakening of Trotsky's positions. Since 1925, a struggle for power unfolded between Stalin and the "new opposition" headed by Kamenev and Zinoviev. At the 14th Congress of the CPSU (b) in December 1925, Kamenev and Zinoviev lost the discussion with Stalin - 65 people voted for them, and 559 voted for Stalin. Having united with Trotsky at the 15th Congress in 1927, they lost again. Stalin and his supporters achieved complete victory by expelling from the party the oppositionists who fought against the "general Leninist line."

In party intrigues, Stalin turned out to be more inventive, more unprincipled than his opponents. It was impossible to win the discussion from him - he clung to every word said by the opponent, deftly hanging labels on the opponent. At the same time, Stalin was not a dogmatist fanatically believing in the power of Marxism (unlike Trotsky).

4. The era of Stalin

In 1926, at the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), a decision was made to industrialize the country. From Stalin's point of view, industrialization based on the NEP was impossible and the market economy was unsuitable for the USSR. It is necessary to strengthen the state-administrative system, which can itself develop and implement a plan for the fastest industrialization. Finally, he believed that the first stage of economic policy should begin with the transformation of the countryside. All who objected to Stalin and argued with him were called supporters of the "right deviation" and paid for it with their lives. In 1929, a five-year plan for the country's development was drawn up. The slogans appeared: "The pace decides everything!", "There are no such fortresses that we would not take" and "Five - in four!", Which in fact became a call to increase the pace of work of citizens. In the same year, 1929, the collectivization of agriculture began. As a result of its implementation, the "kulaks" were destroyed as a class. Personal equipment, livestock were taken from the peasants, and all this was sent to collective farms. The people themselves were sent to remote areas. In total, about 3.5 million people died during the collectivization period. In 1931-1932, all the grain was taken away from the rest, because there was simply no one to produce it. At that moment, Comrade Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhailovich often traveled as an extremely authorized person during such grain procurements, carrying out numerous repressions. But even this did not save the country from the famine of 1933. It is Molotov who is personally responsible for the famine in Ukraine, which claimed millions of lives. In the same 1929, an unusually magnificent celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Joseph Vissarionovich took place. This event is the beginning of the Stalin personality cult.

By the mid-30s, the so-called "Great Terror" began. Stalin carried out a massive purge of personnel - he got rid of old enemies, replacing them with new ones, "his" people, and he simply pursued a policy of intimidating the population. Ordinary citizens lived in constant fear, almost on the verge of hysteria, because any denunciation could put an end to everything. The accused had political articles, most of the repressed were sentenced to death, others were sent to the GULAG system, founded in 1930. Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD, with his iron hand, without flinching, destroyed quite a few people personally. In the midst of the repression in 1937, he literally worked tirelessly. Of course, he was very useful person for Stalin. He replaced the previous head of the NKVD, Heinrich Yagoda. Naturally, Yezhov, in the course of his activities, destroyed many personnel who worked with Yagoda, including the KGB. Then Stalin, who so diligently protected his power, became necessary to remove those who had come forward under Yezhov. In 1938 he was replaced by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. Beria purged the NKVD, destroying the old cadres, putting his own people in their place, began reviewing some of the old "cases" and briefly eased the regime in the camps a little.

On August 23, 1939, the Soviet and German Foreign Ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact and a secret protocol, according to which Germany granted the USSR "freedom of action" in its zone of influence (in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, as well as in the eastern part Poland and Bessarabia). Despite this and all sorts of friendly gestures from Stalin to Hitler on June 22, 1941 Germany attacked the USSR. It makes no sense to describe all the horrors of that war. We all know about her almost from childhood. The highlights are of course the blockade of Leningrad, the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Rzhev, the Battle of Stalingrad, then the Battle of Kursk, the Battle of Berlin. 8 May 1945 the war ended unconditional surrender armed forces Germany. After the victory over Nazi Germany, the USSR turned into one of the great powers, and Stalin became the leader of the "communist part" of the world, which now included the countries of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia (in 1949, the communists won in China, North Korea and Vietnam). The USSR enjoyed tremendous popularity all over the world, being the "big brother", a role model for many states where the left and the communists won. Stalin seriously counted on the establishment of the communist system in "old Europe" by legal means - through elections. Ordinary people were inspired by the victory in the war. It seemed to many that, meeting the desires of society, the authorities would certainly carry out liberal economic reforms, but these hopes were in vain. For a long time, the harsh spirit of wartime remained. The gulag continued to function as it had before the war.

On December 21, 1949, the country magnificently celebrated Stalin's 70th anniversary. The USSR did not know such a magnificent event. There were so many gifts to Joseph Vissarionovich that in the building of the closed Museum Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin, the "Museum of Gifts to Stalin" was created.

V last years of Stalin's life, when he began to age rapidly, a hidden but stubborn struggle for power began behind the leader's back. However, even in 1952-1953, despite a fierce struggle between groups claiming power, he firmly held power in his hands and even began an operation to change the composition of his ruling comrades-in-arms, i.e. repression. However, he did not have time to radically change anything. On the night of March 2, 1953, Stalin, lying on the floor in the small dining room of Blizhnyaya dacha (one of Stalin's residences), was discovered by security officer Lozgachev. On the morning of March 2, doctors arrived at Blizhnyaya Dacha and diagnosed paralysis of the right side of the body. On March 5, at 9.50 pm, the patient died. Stalin's death was announced on March 5, 1953. According to the medical report, the death was caused by a cerebral hemorrhage. There are numerous conspiracy theories suggesting the unnaturalness of death and the involvement of Stalin's entourage in it. One each (Radzinsky), Lavrenty Beria, N.S. Khrushchev and G.M. Malenkov contributed to his death without providing assistance. According to another, Stalin was poisoned by his closest associate Beria. There is also a version that in reality the leader died a few days before March 5. At Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953, a stampede arose due to the huge number of people who wanted to say goodbye to Stalin. The exact number of victims is still unknown, although it is estimated to be significant. Stalin's embalmed body was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called "The Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin." it is impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Mausoleum. " On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961, Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall. Subsequently, a bust monument was unveiled at the grave by N.V. Tomsk.

Conclusion

Summing up the results of Stalin's rule, I can say that this was a time filled to the limit with attempts to radically reorganize the foundations of life in the gigantic expanses of a country spread over two continents. A time filled with seemingly incompatible events: NEP, industrialization, the drama of collectivization, the horrors of hunger, the brutality of political repression, the cultural aspect of public life, the joy of victories and records, victory in the Great Patriotic War, economic recovery after it, the beginning of the country's transformation into a superpower.

Joseph Vissarionovich is one of the most significant figures in the history of mankind. All of Stalin's actions, being pure politics, were undertaken, nevertheless, in an eccentric style, but with a conscious reliance on the bureaucratic apparatus generated by the Soviet regime in all its manifestations. Stalin could not have succeeded in any other government, then or now. But in the revolutionary government of Russia, surrounded by cruel and unprincipled people, Stalin managed to become the most unprincipled and most cruel, he managed to keep power over the great country in his hands for 31 years.

List of used literature

1. Anisimov E.V. History of Russia from Rurik to Putin: People. Developments. Dates. Saint Petersburg: Peter, 2007, 588 p.

2. Radzinsky E.S. Stalin. Moscow: Ast Moscow, 2007, 750 p.

3. Dantsev A.A. The rulers of Russia. XX century. Series "Historical Silhouettes". Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 2000, 512 p.

4. Montefiore Simon Sebag Stalin: the courtyard of the Red Monarch. Moscow: Olma-Press, 2005, 767 p.

5.http: //www.hrono.ru/

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