The total number of those repressed by Stalin. Political repression. victims of political repression in the USSR


Public interest in the Stalinist repression continues to exist, and this is no coincidence.
Many feel that today political issues are somewhat similar.
And some people think that Stalin's recipes might work.

This is, of course, a mistake.
But to justify why this is a mistake, scientific, and not by publicistic meansis still difficult.

Historians have dealt with the repression itself, with how it was organized and what was its scale.

Historian Oleg Khlevnyuk, for example, writes that "... now professional historiography has reached a high level of consensus based on an in-depth study of archives."
https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/06/29/701835-fenomen-terrora

However, from his other article it follows that the reasons for the "great terror" are still not entirely clear.
https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/07/06/712528-bolshogo-terrora

I have an answer, strict and scientific.

But first, about what the "agreement of professional historiography" looks like according to Oleg Khlevnyuk.
We immediately discard the myths.

1) Stalin had nothing to do with it, he, of course, knew everything.
Stalin not only knew, he directed the "great terror" in real time, down to the smallest detail.

2) The "Great Terror" was not an initiative of regional authorities or local party secretaries.
Stalin himself never tried to shift the blame for the repression of 1937-1938 onto the regional party leadership.
Instead, he suggested the myth of "enemies who got into the ranks of the NKVD" and "slanderers" from ordinary citizens who wrote statements against honest people.

3) The "Great Terror" of 1937-1938 was not at all the result of denunciations.
Denunciations of citizens against each other did not have a significant impact on the course and scale of repressions.

Now about what is known about the "Great Terror of 1937-1938" and its mechanism.

Terror and repression under Stalin were a constant phenomenon.
But the wave of terror in 1937-1938 was extremely large.
In 1937-1938. at least 1.6 million people were arrested, of whom more than 680,000 were shot.

Khlevnyuk gives a simple quantitative calculation:
"Taking into account that the most intensive repression was applied for a little over a year (August 1937 - November 1938), it turns out that every month about 100,000 people were arrested, of whom more than 40,000 were shot."
The scale of the violence was monstrous!

The opinion that the terror of 1937-1938 consisted in the destruction of the elite: party workers, engineers, military men, writers, etc. not entirely correct.
For example, Khlevnyuk writes that there were several tens of thousands of executives at various levels. Of the 1.6 million victims.

Here attention!
1) The victims of the terror were ordinary Soviet people who did not hold office and were not members of the party.

2) Decisions to conduct mass operations were made by the leadership, more precisely by Stalin.
The "Great Terror" was a well-organized, planned procession and went on orders from the center.

3) The goal was "to physically liquidate or isolate in the camps those groups of the population that the Stalinist regime considered potentially dangerous - former" kulaks ", former officers of the tsarist and white armies, clergymen, former members of parties hostile to the Bolsheviks - Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and other" suspicious " and also "national counter-revolutionary contingents" - Poles, Germans, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Afghans, Iranians, Chinese, Koreans.

4) All "hostile categories" were taken into account in the authorities, according to the available lists, and the first repressions took place.
Later, a chain was launched: arrest-interrogation - testimony - new hostile elements.
That is why the limits on arrests have been increased.

5) Stalin personally directed the repression.
Here are some of his orders the historian quotes:
"Krasnoyarsk. Regional Committee. The arson of the mill must be organized by the enemies. Take all measures to uncover the arsonists. The guilty ones are to be tried expeditiously. The verdict is execution"; "Beat Unshlicht for not handing over agents to Poland in the regions"; "T. Yezhov. Dmitriev seems to be acting sluggishly. We must immediately arrest all (both small and large) members of the" rebel groups "in the Urals"; "T. Yezhov. It is very important. You need to walk through the Udmurt, Mari, Chuvash, Mordovian republics, walk with a broom"; "T. Yezhov. Very good! Dig and clean up this Polish-spy dirt in the future"; "T. Yezhov. The line of Socialist-Revolutionaries (left and right together) is not unwound<...> It must be borne in mind that we have a lot of Socialist-Revolutionaries in our army and outside the army. Does the NKVD have a record of the SRs ("former") in the army? I would like to get it and soon<...> What has been done to identify and arrest all Iranians in Baku and Azerbaijan? "

I think that after reading such orders, there can be no doubts.

Now back to the question - why?
Khlevnyuk points out several possible explanations and writes that the controversy continues.
1) At the end of 1937, the first elections to the Soviets were held on the basis of secret ballot, and Stalin insured himself against surprises in a way that he understood.
This is the weakest explanation.

2) repression was a social engineering tool
The society was subject to unification.
A fair question arises - why exactly in 1937-1938 unification needed to be drastically accelerated?

3) "The Great Terror" pointed to the cause of the hardships and hard life of the people, at the same time letting off steam.

4) It was necessary to provide the growing economy of the GULAG with labor.
This is a weak version - there are too many executions of able-bodied people, while the GULAG was unable to master the new human income.

5) Finally, the version that is widely popular today: the threat of war emerged, and Stalin cleaned up the rear, destroyed the "fifth column".
However, after Stalin's death, the overwhelming majority of those arrested in 1937-1938 were found not guilty.
They were not the "fifth column" at all.

My explanation allows us to understand not only why there was this wave and why it was in 1937-1938.
It also explains well why Stalin and his experience have not yet been forgotten, but not implemented.

The "Great Terror" of 1937-1938 took place in a period similar to ours.
In the USSR in 1933-1945 there was a question about the subject of power.
IN modern history Russia is solving a similar issue in 2005-2017.

The subject of power can be either the ruler or the elite.
At that time, the sole ruler had to win.

Stalin inherited a party in which this very elite existed - Lenin's heirs, equal to Stalin or even more eminent than himself.
Stalin successfully fought for formal leadership, but he became the undisputed sole ruler only after the Great Terror.
As long as the old leaders - recognized revolutionaries, Lenin's heirs - continued to live and work, the prerequisites for challenging Stalin's power as the sole ruler remained.
The "Great Terror" of 1937-1938 was a means of destroying the elite and establishing the power of the sole ruler.

Why did the repressions affect people with a cold, and not limited to the top?
You need to understand the ideological base, the Marxist paradigm.
Marxism does not recognize individuals and the initiative of the elite.
In Marxism, any leader expresses the ideas of a class or social group.

Why is the peasantry dangerous, for example?
It’s not at all that it can rebel and start a peasant war.
The peasants are dangerous because they are the petty bourgeoisie.
This means that they will always support and / or nominate political leaders from their midst who will fight against the dictatorship of the proletariat, the power of workers and Bolsheviks.
It is not enough to root out famous leaders with questionable views.
It is necessary to destroy their social support, those very taken into account "hostile elements".
This explains why the terror affected ordinary people.

Why exactly in 1937-1938?
Because during the first four years of each period of social reorganization, a basic plan is formed and the driving force of the social process arises.
This is a law of cyclical development.

Why are we interested in this today?
And why do some dream about the return of the practices of Stalinism?
Because we are going through the same process.
But he:
- ends,
- has opposite vectors.

Stalin established his one-man power, actually fulfilling the historical social order, albeit with very specific methods, even excessively.
He deprived the elite of subjectivity and approved the only subject of power - the elected ruler.
Such imperious subjectivity existed in our Fatherland right up to Putin.

However, Putin, rather unconsciously than consciously, fulfilled a new historical social order.
We now have the power of the sole elective ruler being replaced by the power of the elected elite.
In 2008, just in the fourth year of the new period, Putin gave the presidency to Medvedev.
The sole ruler was de-subjectivized, there were at least two rulers.
And it’s impossible to return everything back.

Now it is clear why some part of the elite dreams of Stalinism?
They do not want many leaders, they do not want collective power, under which it is necessary to seek and find compromises, they want the restoration of individual rule.
And this can be done only by unleashing a new "great terror", that is, by destroying the leaders of all other groups, from Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky to Navalny, Kasyanov, Yavlinsky and our modern Trotsky - Khodorkovsky (although perhaps the Trotsky of the new Russia was Berezovsky), and out of habit of systemic thinking, their social base, at least some kreaklov and protest-opposition intelligentsia).

But none of this will happen.
The current vector of development is the transition to power of the elected elite.
The elected elite is a set of leaders and power as their interaction.
If someone tries to regain the sole power of an elected ruler, he will end his political career almost instantly.
Putin sometimes looks like the only, sole ruler, but he certainly isn't.

Practical Stalinism does not and will not have a place in modern social life in Russia.
And that's great.

The history of Russia, like that of other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “era of Stalin”. He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of "expediency." In reality, he was driven by completely different motives.

Talking about the beginning of the political career of a leader who became a tyrant, such authors shyly ignore one indisputable fact: Stalin was a recidivist convict with seven "walkers". Robbery and violence were the main forms of his social activity in his youth. Repressions have become an integral component of his state policy.

Lenin received a worthy successor in his person. “Having creatively developed his teaching,” Iosif Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that the country should be governed by the methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

The generation of people, whose lips the truth about Stalin's repressions can be expressed, is leaving ... Are the newfangled articles whitening the dictator a spit at their suffering, at their broken life ...

The leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Iosif Vissarionovich personally signed the execution lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin intensified the repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete lawlessness in the dungeons. He was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated 01/10/1939, which literally untied the hands of the punitive authorities.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from the letter of Komkor Lisovsky, who is being pushed around by the leader's satraps ...

"... Ten-day conveyor interrogation with severe vicious beating and without the possibility of falling asleep. Then - a twenty-day solitary confinement. Then - the compulsion to sit with arms raised up, and also stand bent over, with his head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours ..."

The desire of the detainees to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges caused an increase in torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Recall that Robert Eikhe, a candidate for membership in the Central Committee, suffered a broken spine during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher in the Lefortovo prison died of beatings during interrogation.

Leader motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repression was numbered not in tens, not in hundreds of thousands, but in seven million who died of starvation and four million arrested (general statistics will be presented below). Only the number of those executed was about 800 thousand people ...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, striving immensely for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in Children of the Arbat? Analyzing Stalin's personality, he shares his opinions with us. “The ruler whom the people love is weak, because his power is based on the emotions of other people. It's another matter when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on himself. This is a strong ruler! " Hence the leader's credo - to instill love in yourself through fear!

Steps adequate to this idea were taken by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

Iosif Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V.I. Lenin. He was robbing money for the party treasury. Fate gave him 7 exiles to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, indiscriminate means, harshness towards people, egocentrism. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party took part in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich receives a long-awaited career opportunity. Ailing and weakening Vladimir Ilyich, together with Kamenev and Zinoviev, introduced him to the Central Committee of the Party. Thus, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really claims to be the leader.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party undercover intrigue, which was useful to him further in the fight against competitors.

Stalin's positioning in the red terror system

The machine of the red terror was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues a Resolution "On the Red Terror". The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), acted under the Council of People's Commissars from 07.12.1917.

The reason for such a radicalization of domestic policy was the murder of M. Uritsky, chairman of the Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on V. Lenin by Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Both events took place on 08/30/1918. Already this year, the Cheka launched a wave of repression.

According to statistical information, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages were taken; shot 5544, imprisoned in concentration camps 1791.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, businessmen and landowners had already been repressed. First of all, a blow was struck to the classes, which are the pillars of the monarchical structure of society. However, "having creatively developed the teachings of Lenin," Iosif Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - the ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he substantiated theoretically.

His concept of strengthening the class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by the state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Joseph Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. From that time on, he actually became the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant has declared war on his own people.

The real meaning of Stalinism, hidden by slogans, manifests itself in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman showed very clearly that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. The dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal unlimited dictatorship.

Joseph Vissarionovich in 1928-1930 began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public processes that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, the cult of Stalin's personality began to emerge from the courts and the instilling of terror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured to sign the charges fabricated by the investigation. The brutal dictatorship imitated the class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal human morality ...

Three global lawsuits were falsified: "The Union Bureau case" (putting the managers at risk); "The case of the industrial party" (imitated the sabotage of the Western powers regarding the economy of the USSR); "The case of the working peasant party" (an obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays in mechanization). Moreover, they all united into a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against Soviet power and provide room for further falsifications of the OGPU-NKVD organs.

As a result, the entire economic leadership of the national economy was replaced from old "specialists" to "new cadres" who were ready to work according to the instructions of the "leader".

Through the lips of Stalin, who provided the state apparatus loyal to repression with the conducted trials, the Party's adamant determination was further expressed: to oust and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, merchants, small and medium-sized; to ruin the basis of agricultural production - the well-to-do peasantry (indiscriminately calling it “kulaks”). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by "the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants."

Behind the scenes, parallel to this "general line", the "father of peoples" consistently, with the help of provocations and perjury, began to implement the line of eliminating his party competitors for the highest state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the 1928-1932 period testifies that the main target of repression has become the main social base of the village - an efficient agricultural producer. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (and those actually at that time were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) had to turn under the pressure of repression from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin's plans for industrialization and the maintenance of hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly identify the object of his repression, Stalin went for an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustifiably, he achieved the fact that obedient party ideologists single out a normal self-supporting (profitable) producer as a separate "class of kulaks" - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over the centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Resolution "On the liquidation of ... kulak farms" of 01/30/1930.

The Red Terror has come to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalin's trials - "troikas", in most cases ending in executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (which could include any persons subjectively defined as “rural assets”) were subjected to violent confiscation of property and eviction. A body of permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational management under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Migrants to the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were predetermined by registration in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931. 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, destruction and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all of Stalin's repression. A brief listing of them should be supplemented by the organization of hunger. Its real reason was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was the poor harvest.

His subjectively elaborated industrialization plan was under threat. It would be reasonable to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for a harvest year ... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded immediate food supply to the bloated security forces and new giant construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision - to confiscate grain from the peasants intended for sowing and consumption.

On 10/22/1932, two extraordinary commissions under the leadership of odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of "fighting the kulaks" to seize grain, which was accompanied by violence, swift triple ships and the eviction of wealthy agricultural producers in the Far North. It was genocide ...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not suppressed by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Stalin's massive repressions in 1932-1933 have documentary evidence. MA Sholokhov, author of The Quiet Don, appealed to the leader, defending his fellow countrymen, with letters, exposing the iniquity of the confiscation of grain. The famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya presented the facts in detail, indicating the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors. The bullying and violence against the peasants are terrifying: brutal beatings, breaking joints, partial strangulation, staged executions, eviction from houses ... In his reply letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader can be seen in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, "secretly" trying to disrupt the food supply ...

This voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the State Duma of Russia, published in April 2008, revealed previously classified statistics to the public (previously, propaganda in every possible way hid these repressions of Stalin.)

How many people died from hunger in the above regions? The figure set by the State Duma commission is terrifying: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

Let us also consider three more directions of Stalinist terror, and in the following table we will present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to oppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets should have read the Pravda newspaper, and not go to church ...

Hundreds of thousands of families of formerly productive peasants, fearing dispossession and exile to the North, have become an army providing the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to restrict their rights, to make them manipulated, it was at that time that the passportization of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. The peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full scope of civil rights (freedom to choose their place of residence, freedom to choose a job) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition of fulfilling workday norms.

The anti-social policy was accompanied by the destruction of families, an increase in the number of street children. This phenomenon has acquired such a scale that the state was forced to react to it. With the sanction of Stalin, the Politburo of the Land of Soviets issued one of the most inhuman decisions - punitive against children.

The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques - to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

With a repressive purpose, the certification of the urban population was carried out. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of Stalin's most cynical crimes is his sanctioning of a classified Politburo resolution of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from the age of 12 to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to the highest measure. In 1936 alone, 125 thousand children were placed in colonies of the NKVD. As of 01.04.1939, 10 thousand children were sent to the GULAG system.

Great terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum ... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, due to repressions over the entire society, became all-encompassing. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and already physical reprisals against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, there were also massive "purges of the state apparatus."

The terror took on unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (since 1938 - the NKVD) reacted to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was ruined for one inadvertently dropped word ... Even the Stalinist elite - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloschekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; Chekists Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on trumped-up cases "under an anti-Soviet conspiracy": 19 qualified corps-level commanders - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who came to replace them did not possess the necessary operational and tactical skills.

Stalin's personality cult was characterized not only by the shop-window facades of Soviet cities. The repressions of the "leader of the peoples" gave rise to the monstrous system of gulag camps, which provided the Land of Soviets with free labor, mercilessly exploited labor resources for extracting wealth from the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those held in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932, it was about 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the Kolyma convicts mined 35% of the allied gold, being in terrible conditions of detention. Let's list the main camps that are part of the GULAG system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (43 and 35 thousand, respectively); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); the development of the steppes - the Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

Basically, people stayed in the Gulag system in a typical way: after an overnight arrest and an unjust biased trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: "enemies of the people" - kulaks (in fact, an effective agricultural producer), or even entire evicted nationalities. The majority served terms from 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The process of the investigation on it involved torture and breaking the will of the convict.

In the event of the resettlement of kulaks and small peoples, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe, and the convicts themselves built a camp and a special-purpose prison (TON). Since the 1930s, prison labor has been mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours each. Tens of thousands of people died from backbreaking work, poor nutrition, and poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice, under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918 people were accused and shot by the revolutionary military tribunals. The inhuman system developed ... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. The executions as part of Article 58 lasted until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years of serving in the camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out on behalf of the workers 'and peasants' government, the revolution.

The powerless people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The beginning of the process of restoring justice was laid by the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

Every Russian should know this!

Discussion of the topic of Stalinist repressions, in addition to many ideological factors leading to the problem "beyond good and evil", is further complicated by the diversity of the myth of the "cult of personality", formed with different goals and in different periods of time.

For example, here is the assessment of Stalin's personality given by the current Prime Minister of Russia D.A. Medvedev:

In the 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev used the exposure of the personality cult as a kind of "shock therapy" to retain and legitimize his own power and avoid responsibility for his own contribution to repression.

In the 60s and 70s, this theme was used against himself, and in the 80s and 90s of the XX century, the theme stalinist repression was already inflated for the overthrow of the CPSU and the complete destruction of the USSR.

Let's try to figure it out a little bit

In February 1954, a certificate was prepared in the name of N. S. Khrushchev, signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, in which the number of persons convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954. According to this certificate, during this period 3,777,380 people were convicted by the OGPU Collegium, the NKVD troikas, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals, including, among them, sentenced to death penalty 642,980 people, and 2,369,220 people to detention in camps and prisons for a period of 25 years or less, 765,180 people to exile and deportation.

Please note that these are statistics for 32 years. And this is the Civil War, this is a very difficult era after it. This is four years of a terrible war with the Nazis. This is the most difficult period after the Great Patriotic War. This is a fight against numerous gangs of Bandera and the so-called "forest brothers". Among these repressions and Yagoda with Yezhov, and other bloody executioners. Among these are the traitors of the Vlasovites. There are also deserters and marauders, self-gunners, alarmists. Members of the gangster underground. Nazi collaborators who shed blood. Here is the "Leninist Guard", which destroyed the great country to the delight of the enemies of Russia. Zinoviev and Kamenev are here. The rest of the Trotskyists are also in this number. Workers of the Comintern. The executioner Bela Kun, who drowned officers in the Crimea by thousands with stones around his necks. That is, the total number of repressed over these 32 years is very multifaceted, polysyllabic.

If we divide the total number of people executed in the USSR by the number of years, we get less than 22,000 people a year. Is it a lot?

Of course a lot. But let's not forget how difficult these years were. And there were no 10 million executed!

This is certainly a deliberate lie!

Remember this number: for the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954, 642,980 people were sentenced to death, and this is for 32 years.

This is what it really was. This must be known and remembered!

About the allegedly repressed commanding staff of the Red Army from May 1937 to September 1939 in the amount 40 thousand man. It was this round figure that was first named by the Ogonek magazine (No. 26, 1986), followed by Moskovskie Novosti and other publications.

Where did it come from such a figure?

And here's where. The fact is that on May 5, 1940, the head of the Main Directorate of Personnel of the People's Commissariat of Defense, Lieutenant General E. Shchadenko, presented to JV Stalin the "Report on the work of the department" for 1939. It said that for 1937-1939, from the ranks of the Red Army there were fired 36898 commanders. I emphasize - FIRED !!!

Of these, in 1937, 18,658 people were dismissed. (13.1% of the payroll of the command and control and political personnel), in 1938, 16,362 people were dismissed, (9.2% of the command personnel), in 1939, 1878 people were dismissed (0.7% of the command personnel).

The motives were as follows: 1) by age; 2) for health reasons; 3) for disciplinary offenses; 4) for moral instability; 5) 19 106 were dismissed for political reasons (9247 of them were reinstated in 1938-1939 after complaints filed and inspections were carried out); 6) arrested, that is, repressed, there were 9579 command personnel (of which 1457 people were reinstated in 1938-1939).

Thus, it can be stated that the number of officers arrested in 1937-1939 (excluding the Air Force and the Navy) is 8122 people (3% of the total number of command personnel in 1939).

Of these, about 70 were sentenced to death, 17 were shot - mostly the highest ones, for example, two out of five marshals (Tukhachevsky for organizing a Trotskyist military conspiracy, Yegorov for taking part in espionage, preparing terrorist attacks and participating in a revolutionary organization), more one Marshal Blucher was arrested for participating in a military-fascist conspiracy that led to unjustified losses and the willful failure of the operation on Lake Hasan, but he died in prison. Also, for similar especially dangerous crimes, 5 out of 9 commanders of the 1st rank (Belov, Yakir, Uborevich, Fedko, Frinovsky) and other representatives of the "fifth column" were shot.

And, finally, the most striking testimony, from the lips of the enemy:

"... The Wehrmacht simply betrayed me, I am dying at the hands of my own generals. Stalin performed a brilliant act by organizing a purge in the Red Army and getting rid of the rotten aristocracy." (from an interview given by A. Hitler to journalist K. Speidel at the end of April 1945)

Used as a source:

Certificate of the 1st special department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs on the number of arrested and convicted in the period 1921-1953. " of December 11, 1953, signed by the head of the archival department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Pavlov, on the basis of which, apparently, a certificate was drawn up sent to Khrushchev for the period from 1921 to 1938 on the affairs of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD and from 1939 from mid-1953

Report E. Shchadenko presented to IV Stalin "Report on the work of the department" for 1939. A. Hitler's interview with journalist K. Speidel at the end of April 1945.

Notes:

1. To the death penalty 642 980 people in 32 years.

This number includes the executed gangs civil war, murderers, robbers, policemen of the Second World War, Vlasovites, deserters, forest brothers and criminals, such as those that we saw in the film "The meeting place cannot be changed."

2.For 1937-1939, 36,898 commanders were dismissed from the ranks of the Red Army

During the same period, about 250,000 officers were trained at military departments.

3. Hitler: I am dying at the hands of my own generals:

During the Second World War, in the USSR there was not a single coup attempt.

In Germany there were several attempts on Hitler's life, and several attempts to enter a separate world without Hitler.

These figures are confirmed by the historian Igor Pykhalov, who studied a lot of documents stored in state archives. You can see its identical results.

NOW WHEN STATISTICAL FIGURES gave us a real idea of \u200b\u200bthe STALIN REPRESSIONS, a natural question arises:

AND WHO IS STILL SPREADING RUMORS THAT "STALIN WAS A TYRAN, WHO WAS ATTENDED WITH OWN PEOPLE" ??? After all, the numbers show that STALIN DIDN'T MAKE ANY GENOCIDE IN THE USSR! On his part there was a struggle with an internal enemy, which was by no means numerous!

I found the answer to this question as a result of a long study of the most diverse aspects of our life: this By false witness in a relationship STALIN studied and is still doing THAT PART JEWISH, and mostly only she, which is usually called LIQUID (or JIDES) - that is, this is what she demonic part jewish people, which in all its "glory" has already shown itself in the years of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, as well as during the Civil War of 1918-1922 in Russia.

However, I propose now to return mentally to the times post-revolutionary, to the first decades of the twentieth century.

Imagine, here in Russia there has been a terrible bloody Civil War for two years, and in England the future Prime Minister Winston Churchill is writing a note "Bolshevism and Zionism", in which there are words and thoughts:

"The conflict between good and evil, constantly occurring in the human heart, has nowhere reached such intensity as in the Jewish race. This is the most striking and powerful example of the dual nature of humanity. The Jews gave us in Christian revelation an ethical system that, even if it is completely separated from supernatural, is the most precious of all that mankind possesses, surpassing all other fruits of wisdom and knowledge combined.On this system, and this faith, since the fall of the Roman Empire, our entire civilization has been built.

It is possible that this amazing race is currently in the process of creating a new system of morality and philosophy, as vicious as Christianity was godly, which, if not stopped, will irrevocably undermine everything that was made possible by Christianity. It seems that both the gospel of Christ and the gospel of the Antichrist were to be spawned by the same people, and that this mystical and mysterious race was chosen for the highest manifestation of both divine and devilish ...

<...>

Russian Jews played an honorable and successful role in the national life of Russia. As bankers and industrialists, they greatly advanced the economic development of Russia, and they were among the first founders of such remarkable organizations as the Russian Cooperative Societies. In politics, they supported for the most part liberal and progressive movements. They were among the most determined supporters of the friendship with France and Great Britain.

The strongest opposition to all these spheres of Jewish activity was provided by Jewish internationalists. The adherents of their eerie confederation are the dregs of society in those countries where Jews are persecuted as a race. Most of them, if not all, abandoned the faith of their ancestors and abandoned all hopes for life in another world. This movement is not new among Jews. From the days of Spartacus (Weishaupt) to Karl Marx, and further to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world conspiracy to overthrow civilization and establish society, .. . which is based on envy and impossible equality, gradually expanded. He played a prominent role in the tragedy of the French Revolution, as the modern writer Mrs. Webster has brilliantly shown. He was the main source of every subversive movement in the 19th century. Now, this group of exceptional personalities from the scum of large cities in Europe and America grabbed the Russian people by the hair and established their rule over the huge empire.

<...>

There is no need to exaggerate the role played by these mostly non-religious Jewish internationalists in the creation of Bolshevism and in the accomplishment of the Russian Revolution. Undoubtedly, this role is very large, probably outweighing all the others. With the exception of Lenin, most of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, Jewish leaders inspire and are driving force... Thus, the influence of Chicherin, a Russian by nationality, is inferior to the power of Litvinov, who is formally subordinate to him, and the influence of such Russians as Bukharin or Lunacharsky cannot be compared with the power of the Jews of Trotsky or Zinoviev (the dictator of Petrograd), or Krasin, or Radek. The dominance of Jews in Soviet institutions is even more surprising. I see, if not main role the terror of the Cheka is played by Jews, and in some cases by Jews.

The Jews played an equally prominent role during the period when Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. We see the same insane phenomenon in Germany (especially in Bavaria), where it was promoted by the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews who are just as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the role of these latter, given the small percentage of Jews among the population of these countries, is surprisingly great ... "

With regard to these DEMONIC JEWS (Zhidov), who committed in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century numerous BLOOD CRIMES, and were produced in the mid-30s STALIN'S REPRESSIONS!

Here is a document, the so-called historical source of these thoughts and these words of W. Churchill - a newspaper publication for February 8, 1920:


For those readers who only learns to think and reason logically, explaining: Winston Churchill described FOR THE FIRST REASONwhich subsequently caused STALIN'S REPRESSIONS.

First Jewish Jews committed their own ZHIDOVSKY SHABASHunder the leadership of Trotsky and Lenin, and then Stalin, when he came to power, arranged for them PURGATORY.

I hope there is no need to explain to anyone what is causal relationship?

If someone still does not know, I explain: causation in criminal law, it is an objectively existing connection between a criminal act and the socially dangerous consequences that have occurred, the presence of which is a prerequisite for bringing a person to criminal liability ...

Additional material explaining WHAT WAS BEFORE STALIN, WHAT PREFERENCED the so-called STALIN REPRESSIONS, can be read in a separate article:

Comment Alexandra Fomina:

They explain the hatred of the Jews towards Stalin themselves in their Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia in the article "Stalin Joseph"... I will give only a fragment of this article:

“During the years of the“ Great Terror ”(1936–38), most of the Jews who held prominent party and government posts fell victim to repression. The party apparatus that actually ruled the country was almost completely“ cleared ”of Jews. Among the apparatchiks of the“ draft of 1937 "There were almost no Jews. Only two Jews remained in Stalin's immediate circle - L. Kaganovich and L. Mekhlis. Although Jews were among those who directly carried out the terror of the late 1930s, especially at its first stages (G. Yagoda , Ya. Agranov and others), N. Yezhov, who took the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in 1937, consistently purged the NKVD organs from Jews. parallel Trotskyist center ”contributed to the spread of anti-Semitic sentiments: on one of them about half, on the other two-thirds of the defendants were Jews, among them were Jews - German emigrants accused not only of Trotskyism, but also of connections with the Gestapo. "

Stalin's policy of cleansing the State apparatus of Jews led to the fact that by 1939 only about 4% of Jews remained in the leadership of the NKVD and, lo and behold, for some reason the repressions practically stopped.

I want to explain one more dark nuance in our amazing and full of tragic pages of history.

As I indicated above, demonic part of Jewry, which really exists and which is not at all difficult to calculate from "to its fruits", inherent PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, and with her this jew are inherent in: sexual perversion, sadism, shamelessness, arrogance, megalomania... and this characteristic series is crowned by the JIDES 'BENDING TO False Witness, to Mimicry and the writing of FALSE (DISINFORMATION) MYTHS.

Sexual perversion and sadism are two faithful companions. No wonder the Nazi Adolf Hitler was sexually active pervert, although he lived with a woman - Eva Braun, but he came to power in Germany, as you know, with the active support homosexual Ernst Rohm, one of the leaders of the German National Socialists and the leader of the "assault squads" ("SA").

Reference: National Socialism(German Nationalsozialismus, abbreviated Nazism) is a form of social structure that combines socialism with extreme nationalism and racism, as well as the name of the ideology that justifies this kind of social order. National Socialism in the head of the homosexual Ernst Rohm was a very paradoxical ideology that combined various elements of socialism, nationalism, racism, fascism and anti-Semitism, moreover, selective anti-Semitism, which allowed German National Socialists to hate not all Jews in a row, but only a certain part of them ...

Reference: in 1920, replacing Karl Mayr as head of the propaganda department of the IV military district, Ernst Rohm met Hitler and became one of the first members of the NSDAP. At that time, Rohm, together with a member of the Land Hunting Council, Georg Escherich, created the Bavarian people's militia (German: Einwohnerwehren), designed to circumvent the number of restrictions armed forcesimposed by the Treaty of Versailles. To provide him with weapons and ammunition, Rohm created huge caches, which were later enough to arm a third of the Wehrmacht created in 1935. However, in 1921 the organization was banned. After this failure, Rohm came to the conclusion that the support of wide sections of the population was necessary to seize power. Hitler turned out to be the most suitable candidate for solving this problem. To ensure Hitler's safety, Rohm organized a mobile group from the soldiers of the 19th mortar company. On its basis, the party order service was created, later renamed into the physical culture and sports department, and then into the assault detachment (German Sturmabteilung, abbreviated SA). Rohm was also looking for officers for command positions. The basis of the SA leadership was made up of people from the headquarters of the 2nd naval brigade, disbanded for participation in the Kapp coup, led by its commander, Captain 3rd Rank Herman Erhardt. Almost immediately, disagreements began to arise between Rohm and Hitler over the goals and objectives of the SA. Hitler saw groups of fighters in the assault detachments, ready to carry out any task of the party leadership. Rohm saw the SA as the core of the future revolutionary army. In this he was supported by the military authorities of Bavaria, who considered the attack aircraft as reserve units. In addition, for the latter, the only authorities were Rohm and Erhardt, and they ignored the NSDAP. In order to strengthen his influence in the SA, Hitler appointed Hermann Goering as commander of the detachments, and then, as a counterweight, created his own personal guard, which later turned into the SS ... " .

1933 year. Adolf Hitler and the famous homosexual stormtrooper Ernst Rohm.

Homosexual scandals in Germany in the 30s of the twentieth century

Reference: in 1931, Erns Rohm found himself at the center of a scandal. Supporters of Walter Stennes, the ousted commander of Berlin's stormtroopers, expressed clear dissatisfaction with the appointment to a leading post of a homosexual who, in their opinion, dishonored the Sturmabteilung ("storm troopers", abbreviated SA). Rem was also convicted of using his official position for personal gain. Trusted persons from among the stormtroopers found sexual partners for him, whom Rohm later appointed to positions in the SA. If the chosen one showed disloyalty or discontent, he was severely beaten. The meetings took place in the Bratwurstglökl beer hall. Rohm openly visited the favorite places of homosexuals "Kleist Casino" and "Silhouette", together with the new leadership of the assault squads in Berlin. Hitler, in response to information that came to him that compromised Rohm, said that he would make a decision when he was provided with evidence. And the evidence soon emerged. The social-democratic newspaper "Munchner Post" began to publish stories about the adventures of Rohm and publish his letters. Trying to find the source of the information leak, Rohm instructed the journalist Georg Bell to meet with Karl Mayr, who had become a Democrat by that time. Mayr reported that some of the NSDAP leaders are planning to physically eliminate Rohm. And, indeed, the supreme judge of the Bukh party, after Hitler's next refusal to remove Rohm from his post, conceived the murder of some top SA leaders, but due to the indecision of the executors, the plan failed. Nevertheless, after it became known about Ryom's contacts with Mayr, a new scandal erupted ... " .

What parallels with this topic are there in our recent history, I told in a separate article:

It would be appropriate to say that Stalin and all of his inner circle knew very well about the close connection between homosexuality and fascism. In particular, Stalin more than once talked about this topic with the writer Maxim Gorky. And after Hitler suspected Erst Rohm and his "assault brigades" of preparing the coup and arranged a counter "night of the long knives" , as a result of which on July 1, 1934, Rem was killed along with thousands of his associates, Gorky formulated a kind of RECIPE, "how can you defeat fascism"! He published it in May of the same year in the Izvestia newspaper:


Look now through this "prism" to the events taking place in Ukraine today!

For recent years there follow one after another homosexual scandals!

Moreover buggerswho found themselves in the Kiev leadership now give their "colleagues from the people" arrange in Kiev gay pride parades, and their opponents are openly beaten by the forces of the Ukrainian police, so as not to interfere with the gay pride parades!

The shout of the people beaten by the Ukrainian OMON is noteworthy: "homosexuals defend homosexuals !!!" This happened on May 25, 2013.

Make a conclusion: if we are talking about revival of Fascism in Ukraine, then it is reborn at the post office homosexuality, and a leading role in the revival FASCISM plays again DEMONIC PART of world Jewry, so called JIDES with very characteristic, recognizable faces.


President of Ukraine - Petro Poroshenko (Valtsman on his father's side), Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk - "the famous Jew of Ukraine", Head of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Groisman.

At the end of this topic - news from Russia: THE JIDES BOOM: IF THE PEOPLE RUNS UP, THE OVERVIEW OF FORCES WILL BE ON THE SIDE OF THE STALINISTS!

Estimates of the number of victims of Stalin's repressions differ dramatically. Some cite numbers in tens of millions of people, others limit themselves to hundreds of thousands. Which of them is closer to the truth?

Who is guilty?

Today, our society is almost equally divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists. The former draw attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, the latter urge not to forget about the huge numbers of victims of the repression of the Stalinist regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repression, but note their limited nature and even justify it by political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repression with the name of Stalin.
Historian Nikolai Kopesov writes that in most of the investigative cases on the repressed in 1937-1938 there were no resolutions of Stalin - everywhere there were sentences of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. In the opinion of the Stalinists, this is proof that the heads of the punitive bodies were engaged in arbitrariness and in support of this they quote Yezhov's quote: "Whoever we want, we execute, whoever we want, we have mercy."
For that part of the Russian public that sees Stalin as the ideologue of repression, these are just particulars that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other rulers of human destinies themselves turned out to be victims of terror. Who else but Stalin was behind all this? - they ask a rhetorical question.
Doctor historical sciencesOleg Khlevnyuk, chief specialist of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, notes that despite the fact that Stalin's signature was not on many execution lists, it was he who sanctioned almost all mass political repressions.

Who was hurt?

The issue of victims acquired even more weighty significance in the controversy surrounding the Stalinist repressions. Who suffered during the Stalinist period and in what capacity? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is rather vague. Historiography has not worked out clear definitions on this matter.
Of course, convicts, imprisoned in prisons and camps, shot, deported, deprived of property should be counted among the victims of the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to "interrogation with partiality" and then released? Should we distinguish between criminal and political prisoners? To what category should we classify "thugs" caught in small single thefts and equated with state criminals?
The deported deserve special attention. To what category should they be classified - repressed or administratively deported? It is even more difficult to decide on those who fled without waiting for dispossession or deportation. They were sometimes caught, but someone was lucky enough to start a new life.

Such different numbers

Uncertainties in the question of who is responsible for the repression, in identifying the categories of victims and the period for which the victims of repression should be counted lead to completely different figures. The most impressive figures were given by the economist Ivan Kurganov (this data was referred to by Solzhenitsyn in the novel The Gulag Archipelago), who calculated that from 1917 to 1959, 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against its people.
This number includes Kurganov victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, as well as "the scornful and sloppy conduct of the Second World War."
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalin's repression? The economist, in fact, himself answers this question, using the expression "victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime." It is worth noting that Kurganov only counted the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could have appeared if the economist had taken into account all the victims of the Soviet regime during the specified period.
The figures cited by the head of the human rights society "Memorial" Arseniy Roginsky are more realistic. He writes: “In all Soviet Union 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression ”, but he adds that in a broad sense, up to 30 million people can be considered repressed.
The leaders of the Yabloko movement Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov counted all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in camps from diseases and harsh working conditions, the disenfranchised, victims of hunger who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and received excessive severe punishment for minor offenses due to the repressive nature of the legislation. The final figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes in this regard that if the counting of victims of repression has been conducted since 1921, this means that it is not Stalin who is responsible for a significant part of the crimes, but the "Leninist Guard", which immediately after the October Revolution launched terror against the White Guards , clerics and kulaks.

How to count?

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the method of counting. If we take into account the convicts only on political charges, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, cited in 1988, the Soviet authorities (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB) arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot.
When counting the victims of political trials, the employees of the Memorial Society are close to these figures, although their figures are still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were shot. If everyone who went through the GULAG system is considered as victims of the Stalinist regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will fluctuate from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often Stalinist repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of the "Great Terror", which peaked in 1937-1938. According to a commission led by academician Pyotr Pospelov to establish the causes of mass repressions, the following figures were announced: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities, of which 681,692,000 were sentenced to capital punishment.
Historian Viktor Zemskov, one of the most authoritative experts on the demographic aspects of political repression in the USSR, names a smaller number of those convicted during the Great Terror - 1,344,923, although his data coincide with the number of those executed.
If the dispossessed people are included in the number of those subjected to repressions during Stalin's time, then the figure will grow by at least 4 million people. Such a number of dispossessed people is cited by the same Zemskov. The Yabloko party also agrees with this, noting that about 600 thousand of them died in exile.
The victims of the Stalinist repressions were also representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forced deportation - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars. Many historians agree that the total number of deportees is about 6 million, while about 1.2 million people did not live to see the end of the journey.

Trust or not?

The above figures are mostly based on the reports of the OGPU, NKVD, MGB. However, not all the documents of the punitive departments have survived, many of them were purposefully destroyed, many of them are still in closed access.
It should be admitted that historians are very dependent on statistics collected by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only the officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to check it by primary sources only in the rarest cases.
An acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to name radically different figures in favor of their position. “If the“ rightists ”exaggerated the scale of repressions, then the“ leftists ”, partly from dubious youth, finding much more modest figures in the archives, rushed to make them public and did not always ask themselves whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives”, - notes the historian Nikolai Koposov.
It can be stated that estimates of the scale of Stalinist repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in federal archives would be a good help for modern researchers, but many of them have been re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.

The history of Russia, like that of other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “era of Stalin”. He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of "expediency." In reality, he was driven by completely different motives.

Talking about the beginning of the political career of a leader who became a tyrant, such authors shyly ignore one indisputable fact: Stalin was a recidivist convict with seven "walkers". Robbery and violence were the main forms of his social activity in his youth. Repressions have become an integral component of his state policy.

Lenin received a worthy successor in his person. “Having creatively developed his teaching,” Iosif Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that the country should be governed by the methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

The generation of people, whose lips the truth about Stalin's repressions can be expressed, is leaving ... Are the newfangled articles whitening the dictator a spit at their suffering, at their broken life ...

The leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Iosif Vissarionovich personally signed the execution lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin intensified the repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete lawlessness in the dungeons. He was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated 01/10/1939, which literally untied the hands of the punitive authorities.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from the letter of Komkor Lisovsky, who is being pushed around by the leader's satraps ...

"... Ten-day conveyor interrogation with severe vicious beating and without the possibility of falling asleep. Then - a twenty-day solitary confinement. Then - the compulsion to sit with arms raised up, and also stand bent over, with his head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours ..."

The desire of the detainees to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges caused an increase in torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Recall that Robert Eikhe, a candidate for membership in the Central Committee, suffered a broken spine during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher in the Lefortovo prison died of beatings during interrogation.

Leader motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repression was numbered not in tens, not in hundreds of thousands, but in seven million who died of starvation and four million arrested (general statistics will be presented below). Only the number of those executed was about 800 thousand people ...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, striving immensely for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in Children of the Arbat? Analyzing Stalin's personality, he shares his opinions with us. “The ruler whom the people love is weak, because his power is based on the emotions of other people. It's another matter when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on himself. This is a strong ruler! " Hence the leader's credo - to instill love in yourself through fear!

Steps adequate to this idea were taken by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

Iosif Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V.I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate gave him 7 exiles to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, indiscriminate means, harshness towards people, and egocentrism. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party took part in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich receives a long-awaited career opportunity. Ailing and weakening Vladimir Ilyich, together with Kamenev and Zinoviev, introduced him to the Central Committee of the Party. Thus, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really claims to be the leader.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party undercover intrigue, which was useful to him further in the fight against competitors.

Stalin's positioning in the red terror system

The machine of the red terror was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues a Resolution "On the Red Terror". The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), acted under the Council of People's Commissars from 07.12.1917.

The reason for such a radicalization of domestic policy was the murder of M. Uritsky, chairman of the Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on V. Lenin by Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Both events took place on 08/30/1918. Already this year, the Cheka launched a wave of repression.

According to statistical information, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages were taken; shot 5544, imprisoned in concentration camps 1791.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, businessmen and landowners had already been repressed. First of all, a blow was struck to the classes, which are the pillars of the monarchical structure of society. However, "having creatively developed the teachings of Lenin," Iosif Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - the ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he substantiated theoretically.

His concept of strengthening the class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by the state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Joseph Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. From that time on, he actually became the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant has declared war on his own people.

The real meaning of Stalinism, hidden by slogans, manifests itself in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman showed very clearly that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. The dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal unlimited dictatorship.

Joseph Vissarionovich in 1928-1930 began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public processes that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, the cult of Stalin's personality began to emerge from the courts and the instilling of terror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured to sign the charges fabricated by the investigation. The brutal dictatorship imitated the class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal human morality ...

Three global lawsuits were falsified: "The Union Bureau case" (putting the managers at risk); "The case of the industrial party" (imitated the sabotage of the Western powers regarding the economy of the USSR); "The case of the working peasant party" (an obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays in mechanization). Moreover, they all united into a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against Soviet power and provide room for further falsifications of the OGPU-NKVD organs.

As a result, the entire economic leadership of the national economy was replaced from old "specialists" to "new cadres" who were ready to work according to the instructions of the "leader".

Through the lips of Stalin, who provided the state apparatus loyal to repression with the conducted trials, the Party's adamant determination was further expressed: to oust and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, merchants, small and medium-sized; to ruin the basis of agricultural production - the well-to-do peasantry (indiscriminately calling it “kulaks”). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by "the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants."

Behind the scenes, parallel to this "general line", the "father of peoples" consistently, with the help of provocations and perjury, began to implement the line of eliminating his party competitors for the highest state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the 1928-1932 period testifies that the main target of repression has become the main social base of the village - an efficient agricultural producer. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (and those actually at that time were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) had to turn under the pressure of repression from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin's plans for industrialization and the maintenance of hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly identify the object of his repression, Stalin went for an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustifiably, he achieved the fact that obedient party ideologists single out a normal self-supporting (profitable) producer as a separate "class of kulaks" - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over the centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Resolution "On the liquidation of ... kulak farms" of 01/30/1930.

The Red Terror has come to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalin's trials - "troikas", in most cases ending in executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (which could include any persons subjectively defined as “rural assets”) were subjected to violent confiscation of property and eviction. A body of permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational management under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Migrants to the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were predetermined by registration in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931. 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, destruction and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all of Stalin's repression. A brief listing of them should be supplemented by the organization of hunger. Its real reason was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was the poor harvest.

His subjectively elaborated industrialization plan was under threat. It would be reasonable to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for a harvest year ... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded immediate food supply to the bloated security forces and new giant construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision - to confiscate grain from the peasants intended for sowing and consumption.

On 10/22/1932, two extraordinary commissions under the leadership of odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of "fighting the kulaks" to seize grain, which was accompanied by violence, swift triple ships and the eviction of wealthy agricultural producers in the Far North. It was genocide ...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not suppressed by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Stalin's massive repressions in 1932-1933 have documentary evidence. MA Sholokhov, author of The Quiet Don, appealed to the leader, defending his fellow countrymen, with letters, exposing the iniquity of the confiscation of grain. The famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya presented the facts in detail, indicating the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors. The bullying and violence against the peasants are terrifying: brutal beatings, breaking joints, partial strangulation, staged executions, eviction from houses ... In his reply letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader can be seen in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, "secretly" trying to disrupt the food supply ...

This voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the State Duma of Russia, published in April 2008, revealed previously classified statistics to the public (previously, propaganda in every possible way hid these repressions of Stalin.)

How many people died from hunger in the above regions? The figure set by the State Duma commission is terrifying: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

Let us also consider three more directions of Stalinist terror, and in the following table we will present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to oppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets should have read the Pravda newspaper, and not go to church ...

Hundreds of thousands of families of formerly productive peasants, fearing dispossession and exile to the North, have become an army providing the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to restrict their rights, to make them manipulated, it was at that time that the passportization of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. The peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full scope of civil rights (freedom to choose their place of residence, freedom to choose a job) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition of fulfilling workday norms.

The anti-social policy was accompanied by the destruction of families, an increase in the number of street children. This phenomenon has acquired such a scale that the state was forced to react to it. With the sanction of Stalin, the Politburo of the Land of Soviets issued one of the most inhuman decisions - punitive against children.

The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques - to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

With a repressive purpose, the certification of the urban population was carried out. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of Stalin's most cynical crimes is his sanctioning of a classified Politburo resolution of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from the age of 12 to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to the highest measure. In 1936 alone, 125 thousand children were placed in colonies of the NKVD. As of 01.04.1939, 10 thousand children were sent to the GULAG system.

Great terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum ... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, due to repressions over the entire society, became all-encompassing. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and already physical reprisals against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, there were also massive "purges of the state apparatus."

The terror took on unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (since 1938 - the NKVD) reacted to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was ruined for one inadvertently dropped word ... Even the Stalinist elite - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloschekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; Chekists Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on trumped-up cases "under an anti-Soviet conspiracy": 19 qualified corps-level commanders - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who came to replace them did not possess the necessary operational and tactical skills.

Stalin's personality cult was characterized not only by the shop-window facades of Soviet cities. The repressions of the "leader of the peoples" gave rise to the monstrous system of gulag camps, which provided the Land of Soviets with free labor, mercilessly exploited labor resources for extracting wealth from the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those held in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932, it was about 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the Kolyma convicts mined 35% of the allied gold, being in terrible conditions of detention. Let's list the main camps that are part of the GULAG system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (43 and 35 thousand, respectively); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); the development of the steppes - the Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

Basically, people stayed in the Gulag system in a typical way: after an overnight arrest and an unjust biased trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: "enemies of the people" - kulaks (in fact, an effective agricultural producer), or even entire evicted nationalities. The majority served terms from 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The process of the investigation on it involved torture and breaking the will of the convict.

In the event of the resettlement of kulaks and small peoples, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe, and the convicts themselves built a camp and a special-purpose prison (TON). Since the 1930s, prison labor has been mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours each. Tens of thousands of people died from backbreaking work, poor nutrition, and poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice, under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918 people were accused and shot by the revolutionary military tribunals. The inhuman system developed ... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. The executions as part of Article 58 lasted until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years of serving in the camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out on behalf of the workers 'and peasants' government, the revolution.

The powerless people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The beginning of the process of restoring justice was laid by the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

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