The Gulag was, it is an indisputable historical fact, and it must be studied, like every historical phenomenon, and understand its causes, mechanisms, consequences. First you need to at least truthfully diagnose its scope, outline more or less accurate numbers. This research is carried out by the historian Alexander Nikolaevich Dugin (not “geopolitics”!), The author of the books “Unknown Gulag”, “Stalinism: Legends and Facts”. He shares his results in the article “If Not False: Do the Common Ideas of the Gulag Meet the Truth?” (Literaturnaya Gazeta, Moscow, May 11-17, 2011, No. 19/6321 /, p. 3: Present Past):
Where did the “Gulag land" come from?
One of the first publications on this subject in the West was the book of the former employee of the Izvestia newspaper I. Solonevich, who was sitting in camps and fled abroad in 1934. Solonevich wrote: “I do not think that the total number of all prisoners in these camps should be less than five million people. Probably a few more. But, of course, there can be no question of any accuracy of calculation. ”
The book of prominent figures of the Menshevik party D. Dalin and B. Nikolaevsky, who claimed that in 1930 the total number of prisoners was 622,257 people, in 1931 - about 2 million, in 1933-1935 - about 5, is also replete with numbers. millions. In 1942, according to their statements, there were from 8 to 16 million people in prison.
Other multimillion-dollar figures are cited by other authors. S. Cohen, for example, in his work on N. Bukharin, referring to the works of R. Conquest, notes that by the end of 1939 the number of prisoners in prisons and camps increased to 9 million compared to 5 million in 1933-1935 .
A. Solzhenitsyn in the "Gulag Archipelago" operates with numbers of tens of millions of prisoners. R. Medvedev holds the same position. V.A. showed even greater scope in her calculations. Chalikova, who claimed that from 1937 to 1950 more than 100 million people visited the camps, of which one in ten died. A. Antonov-Ovseenko believes that from January 1935 to June 1941, 19 million 840 thousand people were repressed, of which 7 million were executed.
Concluding a brief review of the literature on this issue, it is necessary to name another author - O.A. Platonov, who is convinced that as a result of the repressions of 1918-1955, 48 million people died in places of detention.
Once again, we have given here a far from complete list of publications on the history of criminal law policy in the USSR, but at the same time the contents of the vast majority of publications by other authors almost completely coincide with the views of many current publicists.
Let us try to answer a simple and natural question: on what, in fact, are the calculations of these authors based?
On the reliability of historical journalism
So were there really many tens of millions of repressed, about which many modern authors speak and write?
This article uses only genuine archival documents that are stored in leading Russian archives, primarily in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (former TsGAOOR of the USSR) and the Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History (former TsPA IML).
Let's try, based on documents, to determine the real picture of the criminal law policy of the USSR in the 30-50s of the twentieth century. To begin with, two tables compiled from archival materials.
Let us compare the archived data with those publications that appeared in Russia and abroad. For example, R.A. Medvedev wrote that “from 1937-1938, according to my estimates, from 5 to 7 million people were repressed: about a million party members and about a million former party members as a result of party purges of the late 1920s and the first half of the 1930s ; the remaining 3-5 million people are non-partisans, belonging to all segments of the population. Most of those arrested in 1937-1938. they ended up in forced labor camps, whose dense network covered the whole country. ”
Assuming that R.A. Medvedev is aware of the existence in the Gulag system of not only forced labor camps, but also forced labor colonies; we will first dwell in more detail on the forced labor camps about which he writes.
From table No. 1 it follows that as of January 1, 1937, 820881 people were in forced labor camps, as of January 1, 1938 - 996367 people, and as of January 1, 1939 - 1317195 people. But it is impossible, automatically adding up these figures, to get the total number of people arrested in 1937-1938.
One of the reasons is that every year a certain number of prisoners were released from the camps after serving the sentence or for other reasons. Let us cite these data: in 1937, 364437 people were released from the camps, in 1938 - 279966 people. Through simple calculations, we get that in 1937 539,923 people were sent to forced labor camps, and in 1938 - 600,724 people.
Thus, according to archival data, in 1937-1938, the total number of prisoners newly admitted to the Gulag labor camps amounted to 1,140,647, rather than 5-7 million.
But even this figure says little about the motives of the repressions, that is, about who the repressed were.
It should be noted the obvious fact that among the prisoners were arrested in both political and criminal cases. Among those arrested in 1937-1938 were, of course, “ordinary” criminals and those arrested under the infamous article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. It seems that, first of all, it is precisely these people who were arrested under article 58 that should be considered victims of political repressions of 1937-1938. How many were there?
In archival documents there is an answer to this question (see table No. 2). In 1937, under article 58 - for counter-revolutionary crimes - 104826 people, or 12.8% of the total number of prisoners, were in the Gulag camps, in 1938 - 185324 people (18.6%), in 1939 - 454432 people (34, 5%).
Thus, the total number of people who were repressed in 1937-1938 for political reasons and who are in forced labor camps, as can be seen from the above documents, should be reduced from 5-7 million at least ten times.
Let us turn to another publication already mentioned by V. Chalikova, which cites the following figures: “Calculations based on various data show that between 1937-1950 there were 8-12 million people in the camps, which occupied vast spaces. If we take a smaller figure out of caution, then with a camp mortality rate of 10 percent ... that would mean twelve million deaths in fourteen years. With a million shot “fists”, with victims of collectivization, famine and post-war repression, this will amount to at least twenty million. ”
We again turn to the archive table No. 1 and see how plausible this version is. Subtracting from the total number of prisoners the number of those released annually at the end of the sentence or for other reasons, we can conclude that in 1937-1950 about 8 million people visited forced labor camps.
It seems appropriate to remind once again that not all prisoners were repressed for political reasons. If we subtract from their total number of murderers, robbers, rapists and other representatives of the criminal world, it will become clear that about two million people went through forced labor camps for 1937-1950 under “political” articles.
About dispossession
We now turn to the consideration of the second large part of the Gulag - to forced labor colonies. In the second half of the 1920s, a system of serving sentences was established in our country, which provides for several types of deprivation of liberty: forced labor camps (as mentioned above) and general places of detention - colonies. The basis of this division was the sentence to which this or that prisoner was sentenced. When sentenced to short terms - up to 3 years - the punishment was served in the general places of imprisonment - colonies. And when sentenced to more than 3 years, in forced labor camps, to which in 1948 several special camps were added.
Returning to table No. 1 and bearing in mind that, on average, 10.1% of convicts for political reasons were in labor camps, we can get a preliminary figure for the colonies for the entire period of the 1930s and early 1950s.
In the period 1930-1953, 6.5 million people visited the labor camps, of which about 1.3 million people according to “political” articles.
Let's say a few words about dispossession. When they call the figure 16 million dispossessed, it seems that they use the “Gulag Archipelago”: “There was a stream of the 29-30s, into the good Ob, pushing fifteen million men into the tundra and taiga, but somehow not more.”
Let us again turn to archival documents. The history of special relocation begins in 1929-1930. On January 18, 1930, G. Yagoda sent a directive to the permanent representatives of the OGPU in Ukraine, Belarus, the North Caucasus, the Central Black Earth Region, and the Lower Volga Region, in which he instructed “to accurately take into account and telegraphically convey from which areas and how many kulak the White Guard element relies on eviction. ”
Based on the results of this “work”, a certificate was compiled by the Department of Special Settlements of the Gulag of the OGPU, which indicated the number of people evicted in 1930-1931: 381026 families, or 1803392 people.
Thus, relying on the archival data provided by the OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR, an intermediate, but it seems, very reliable conclusion can be made: in the 30-50s, according to "political" articles, 3.4- were sent to camps and colonies 3.7 million people.
Moreover, these figures do not mean at all that among these people there were no real terrorists, saboteurs, traitors, etc. However, to solve such a problem, it is necessary to study other archival documents.
Summing up the study of archival documents, you come to an unexpected conclusion: the scale of the criminal law policy associated with the Stalin period of our history does not differ too much from the similar indicators of modern Russia. At the beginning of the 90s, 765 thousand prisoners were in the system of the Main Directorate of Correctional Affairs of the USSR, and 200 thousand were in pre-trial detention centers. Almost the same indicators exist today. "
REFERENCE: Dugin, Alexander Nikolaevich. Born 1944 He graduated from the Moscow Historical and Archival State Institute. He taught at the Higher Correspondence Law School. Candidate of Historical Sciences (1988), thesis topic " Bodies of the Moscow City Police in 1917-1930».
APPENDIX 1.
O.V. Lavinskaya " Extrajudicial rehabilitation of victims of political repression in the USSR in 1953-1956. Candidate of Historical Sciences (2007).
A number of works contain digital calculations on the number of rehabilitated, while there is a serious scatter in the data: from 258 322 people in 1952-1962 (1) to 737 182 (2) and even 800 thousand people (3). According to the calculations of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office in 1954-1960. 530 thousand convicts were rehabilitated in the 30s, including more than 25 thousand repressed by extrajudicial bodies (4). Not relying on documented data, researchers sometimes overestimate their number. So, in the Black Book of Communism we read that "in 1956-1957 about 310,000" counter-revolutionaries "left the Gulag (5). According to the calculations of V.P. Naumov, as a result of the work of the 1956 commissions “hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the camps as political criminals were freed and returned to their homes” (6) In another place, he talked about a million prisoners and exiles who were freed after XX Congress (7). Although according to archival sources, the number of political prisoners in the camps as of January 1, 1956 was “only” 113 735 people (8), and during March-October 1956 51 thousand people were released from the camps (9)
1. From an interview with the head of the Rehabilitation Department of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, Kupets. // Moscow news. 1996. March 24-31. S.14.
2. XX Congress of the CPSU and its historical realities. M. 1991. S. 63
3. The book of memory of victims of political repression. Kazan. 2000.
4. Violence. The prosecutor's fate. M., 1990.S. 317.
5. The black book of communism. M. 1999. S. 248.
6. Naumov V.P. N.S. Khrushchev and the rehabilitation of victims of political repression. // Questions of history. 1997. No. 4. P.31.
7. Naumov V.P. On the history of a secret report by N.S. Khrushchev. // New and recent history. 1996. No4.
8. Data taken from the report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR to the CPSU Central Committee of April 5, 1956. In the book: GULAG: General Directorate of Camps. 1918-1960. M. 2000. S. 165.
9. See: GA of the Russian Federation. F. P-7523. Op. 89. D. 8850. L. 66. Rogovin, referring to the publication in No. 4 of the “Historical Archive” for 1993, names the figure - 50,944 people. See: Rogovin V. Uk. Op. S.472.
APPENDIX 2:
Since 1992, about 640,000 people have been rehabilitated in the Russian Federation by decision of the commissions.
28 years ago - on August 13, 1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev signed a decree "On the restoration of the rights of all victims of political repression of the 1920-1950s."
This decree was the final admission of guilt of the state against citizens repressed during the Stalin period. For the first time, the decree called unjustified repressions "political crimes motivated by abuse of power."
In accordance with the decree, the repressions carried out against peasants during the period of collectivization, as well as against all other citizens for political, social, national, religious and other reasons in 1920-1950 were declared illegal, contrary to basic civil and socio-economic human rights. Years, whose rights must be fully restored.
"Stalin and his entourage appropriated virtually unlimited power, depriving the Soviet people of freedoms that are considered natural and inalienable in a democratic society ... The restoration of justice, begun by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was carried out inconsistently and essentially ceased in the second half of the 60s." , - the text of the presidential decree said.
At the same time, Gorbachev was definitely not ready to rehabilitate traitors such as General Vlasov and others like them: the rehabilitation did not extend to traitors and punishers of the Great Patriotic War, Nazi criminals, members of gangs and their accomplices, workers involved in falsifying criminal cases, as well as persons committed intentional killings and other criminal offenses.
“The spot of injustice has not yet been removed from the Soviet people who were innocently injured during forced collectivization, imprisoned, evicted with their families to remote areas without a livelihood, without the right to vote, even without declaring a term of imprisonment. Representatives of the clergy and citizens persecuted for religious reasons should be rehabilitated, ”the decree said.
The process was launched, and mass rehabilitation of Soviet citizens began. And not only party leaders, but also ordinary citizens of the Soviet Union.
According to preliminary data from Memorial, from 1921 to 1953, about 11-12 million people were repressed in the USSR for political reasons. Moreover, 4.5-5 million of them were convicted for political reasons, another 6.5 million people were punished in an administrative order - we are talking about deported peoples, dispossessed peasants and other categories of the population.
On October 30, 1990, on the Lubyanka Square in Moscow, in front of the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Solovetsky Stone was erected - a monument to the victims of political repression made of a boulder that for many years lay on Solovki in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (ELEPHANT), which from 1937 to 1939 was called the Solovetsky prison special purpose (STON). A year later, the “iron Felix” was dismantled, and October 30 was the day of political prisoners of the USSR.
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PRESIDENT OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
ON RESTORING THE RIGHTS OF ALL VICTIMS
POLITICAL REPRESSIONS OF THE 20-50S
The mass repressions, arbitrariness and lawlessness, which were committed by the Stalinist leadership on behalf of the revolution, party, people, were a heavy legacy of the past. The abuse of the honor and life of compatriots, begun in the mid-1920s, continued with cruel succession for several decades. Thousands of people were subjected to moral and physical torture, many of them exterminated. The lives of their families and loved ones were turned into a hopeless zone of humiliation and suffering.
Stalin and his entourage appropriated virtually unlimited power, depriving the Soviet people of freedoms, which in a democratic society are considered natural and inalienable.
Mass repressions were carried out mainly through extrajudicial killings through the so-called special meetings, collegiums, "troika" and "deuces". However, even the courts violated the basic rules of the proceedings.
The restoration of justice, begun by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was carried out inconsistently and essentially ceased in the second half of the 60s.
Thousands of innocent prisoners were rehabilitated by a special commission for the additional study of materials related to repression; illegal acts against peoples who have been resettled from their native lands have been repealed; the decisions of the extra-judicial bodies of the OGPU-NKVD-MGB in the 30-50s on political affairs were declared illegal; other acts were adopted to restore the rights of victims of arbitrariness.
But today, thousands of court cases have not yet been raised. The spot of injustice has not yet been removed from the Soviet people who were innocently injured during forced collectivization, imprisoned, evicted with their families to remote areas without a livelihood, without the right to vote, even without declaring a term of imprisonment. Representatives of the clergy and citizens persecuted for religious reasons must be rehabilitated.
The speedy overcoming of the consequences of lawlessness, political crimes on the basis of abuse of power is necessary for all of us, the whole society, which has embarked on the path of moral rebirth, democracy and the rule of law.
Expressing a fundamental condemnation of mass repressions, considering them incompatible with the norms of civilization, and on the basis of Articles 127.7 and 114 of the Constitution of the USSR I decide:
1. To recognize as unlawful, contrary to fundamental civil and socio-economic human rights, repressions carried out against peasants during the period of collectivization, as well as against all other citizens for political, social, national, religious and other reasons in the 20-50s, and fully restore the rights of these citizens.
The Council of Ministers of the USSR, the governments of the Union republics, in accordance with this Decree, should submit proposals to the legislative bodies by October 1, 1990 on the procedure for restoring the rights of citizens affected by repressions.
2. This Decree does not apply to persons justifiably convicted of crimes against the Motherland and Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War in the prewar and postwar years.
The USSR Council of Ministers must submit to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR a draft legislative act defining the list of these crimes and the procedure for recognizing in court persons convicted of their commission not subject to rehabilitation on the grounds provided for by this Decree.
3. Given the political and social significance of the complete solution of all issues related to the restoration of the rights of citizens unreasonably repressed in the 1920s and 1950s, assign the monitoring of this process to the Presidential Council of the USSR.
President of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics
M. GORBACHEV
Moscow Kremlin
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I invite everyone to the group "Perestroika - the era of change"
Estimates of the number of victims of Stalinist repression are fundamentally different. Some call the numbers tens of millions of people, others are limited 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 call attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, while the latter call not to forget about the huge numbers of victims of the repressions of the Stalin regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repression, however, note their limited nature and even justify it by political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repression with the name of Stalin.
The historian Nikolai Kopesov writes that in most of the investigative cases there were no Stalin resolutions on the repressed in 1937-1938 - everywhere there were sentences of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. According to the Stalinists, this is proof that the heads of the punitive bodies were engaged in arbitrariness and cite Yezhov in confirmation: “Whom we want - we will execute, whom we want - we have mercy”.
For the part of the Russian public that sees in Stalin the ideologist of repression, these are just particulars that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other arbiters of human destiny themselves were victims of terror. Who but Stalin was behind all this? They ask a rhetorical question.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the State Archive of the Russian Federation Oleg Khlevnyuk notes that despite the fact that Stalin's signature was not in many death lists, it was he who authorized almost all mass political repressions.
Who was hurt?
The issue of victims has become even more significant in the controversy surrounding the Stalinist repressions. Who and in what capacity suffered during the period of Stalinism? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is rather vague. Historiography has not developed clear definitions on this subject.
Of course, convicts imprisoned in prisons and camps, executed, deported, and deprived of property should be counted among those affected by the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to “interrogations with bias” and then released? Should criminal and political prisoners be separated? To which category can be attributed “nonsuns” found to have been involved in petty theft and equated with state criminals?
The deportees deserve special attention. To which category of them belong - repressed or administratively deported? It is even more difficult to determine those who, without waiting for dispossession or deportation, fled. They were sometimes caught, but someone was lucky to start a new life.
So different numbers
Uncertainties in the question of the person 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 numbers. The most impressive figures were called by the economist Ivan Kurganov (Solzhenitsyn referred to this data in the Gulag Archipelago novel), who estimated that 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against their people from 1917 to 1959.
This number includes Kurgan victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, as well as "neglectful and sloppy waging of the Second World War."
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalinist repressions? The economist, in fact, himself answers this question, using the expression "victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime." It is worth paying attention that Kurganov counted only the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could appear if the economist took into account all the victims of the Soviet regime in the indicated period.
The figures cited by the head of the human rights society Memorial, Arseniy Roginsky, are more realistic. He writes: “Throughout the entire Soviet Union, 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression,” but he adds that up to 30 million people can be considered repressed in a broad sense.
The leaders of the Yabloko movement, Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov, calculated all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in the camps from illnesses and difficult working conditions, deprived people, victims of hunger, who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and received excessively severe punishment for minor offenses in the force of the repressive nature of legislation. The total figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes on this subject that if the counting of victims of repression has been carried out since 1921, this means that for a significant part of the crimes it’s not Stalin’s responsibility at all, but the “Lenin Guard”, which immediately after the October Revolution launched terror against the White Guards , clergy and fists.
How to count?
Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the counting methodology. If we take into account those convicted only under political articles, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, cited in 1988, 4,308,487 people were arrested by Soviet bodies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB), of which 835,194 were executed.
When counting victims of political processes, employees of the Memorial society are close to these figures, although their data are still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were executed. If we consider all who went through the Gulag system as victims of the Stalin regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will range from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often, Stalinist repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of "Great Terror", the peak of which occurred in 1937-1938. According to the commission, led by academician Petr Pospelov, the following figures were announced to establish the causes of mass repressions: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activity, of which 681,692 thousand were sentenced to death.
One of the most respected experts on the demographic aspects of political repressions in the USSR, historian Viktor Zemskov, calls the smaller number of convicts during the Great Terror years - 1,344,923 people, although his figures coincide with those shot.
If the number of those subjected to repression in Stalin's time includes dispossessed people, then the figure will grow by at least 4 million people. Such a number of dispossessed leads the same Zemskov. The Yabloko party agrees with this, noting that about 600 thousand of them died in exile.
Representatives of some peoples subjected to forced deportation - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, also became victims of Stalinist repressions. Many historians agree that the total number of deportees is about 6 million people, while about 1.2 million people have not survived to the end of their journey.
Trust or not?
The above figures are mostly based on the reports of the OGPU, NKVD, and the MGB. However, not all documents of punitive departments were preserved, many of them were deliberately destroyed, many are still in the public domain.
It should be recognized that historians are very dependent on statistics compiled by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to verify it from the source only in rare cases.
The acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to call radically different numbers in favor of their position. “If the“ right ”exaggerated the scale of the repression, the“ left ”, partly from dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, were in a hurry 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 the Stalinist repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in the federal archives would be of great help to modern researchers, but many of them were re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.
personality cult political repression rehabilitation
Until the second half of the 1980s, it was not customary to think, much less talk about the rehabilitation of victims of mass political repressions as a process of moral purification of society, restoration of historical justice. A whole period of the country's life, and quite significant, fell out of Russian history.
Formally, the rehabilitation process took place in the late 1930s. He was associated with the coming to the leadership of the NKVD Beria and the dismissal of Yezhov. Then a significant number of short-term prisoners were released from places of detention. But on this, however, the whole thing ended. Here we are not talking about genuine rehabilitation, but only about certain political and even just tactical motives.
If we talk about real rehabilitation, then it must be reckoned from 1956, that is, from the XX Party Congress. But, again, it was a purely legal rehabilitation: the public was not informed of the extent of the tragedy that was happening in the country. In addition, there was no material compensation for the victims: two salaries, which everyone is aware of, do not compensate for 15-20 years spent in prisons, camps, and exiles. Nevertheless, the process began and before 1962-1963 was quite active. Although, again, he touched mainly on persons who were in custody at that time. Special commissions were created to review the cases of convicts, and many of them were released. Indeed, a great and important business has been launched. But then the rehabilitation process, due to well-known political events, began to stop. In the late 1970s, the name of Stalin began to revive, nostalgic films and books appeared, where he was assigned not the last role, the restoration of historical justice was completely forgotten. The rehabilitation process can conditionally be divided into the following stages:
- - 1939-1940 - the first wave or partial rehabilitation associated with the cessation of mass arrests, the review of a number of cases of arrested and convicted persons;
- - 1953-1954 - revision of archival criminal cases convicted for political reasons in the postwar period;
- - 1956 - the mid-1960s - the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, resulting from the decisions of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 4, 1956;
- - the mid-1960s - early 1980s - the gradual suspension of the rehabilitation process, the review of archival criminal cases only at the request of citizens;
- - since the second half of the 1980s - mass rehabilitation of victims of political repression, carried out on a clear legal basis.
The final period of rehabilitation has both common features with the previous stages: it began “from above” by decision of the country's top party leadership and, above all, by the will of its leader, was at first half-hearted, and its own peculiarities. Rehabilitation has become widespread. On its wave, public organizations were created throughout the country, for example, Memorial in Moscow, bringing together hundreds of thousands of innocently injured people or their relatives. Books were published of memory of those who died during the years of arbitrariness. The search for burial places was carried out. The declassification of documents and materials of the period of repression from the archives of the special services was carried out.
Finally, a solid legal framework has been created. The Law of the Russian Federation "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions", Presidential Decrees and Government of the Russian Federation not only allowed to return the honest name to all victims of repression for political, social and religious reasons in the country, starting in 1917, including dispossessed, Soviet prisoners of war, dissidents, but also provided for the full restoration of the rights of the rehabilitated, including material compensation for confiscated or confiscated property.
The resumption of the rehabilitation process was made possible thanks to the socio-political changes in the country, democratization and publicity, which stirred society, caused an unprecedented interest in historical science.
The second half of the 1980s was a time of critical reflection on the past and the present. Already after the publication of the first results of the rehabilitation, many survived the shock, even the shock of reading the terrible pages of Stalin's crimes. But there were many who demanded to stop further filling in the “white spots”, who went out and still go out into the streets with portraits of Stalin. Therefore, it is necessary to fully limit the influence of neo-Stalinists on our political life in order to prevent a recurrence of past mistakes. Indeed, in the conditions of reforming modern society, burdened by crisis phenomena, it is not difficult to find new enemies of the people.
The interests of the individual, society and the state require complete truth, no matter how difficult and difficult it is. And therefore, there should not be inaccessible archival documents for specialists. In accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation "On the removal of restrictive vultures from legislative and other acts that served as the basis for mass repression and encroachment on human rights," decisions of government and party bodies, instructions and orders of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD, which constituted the legal basis of lawlessness, were declassified and terror, minutes of meetings of extrajudicial bodies, information on the number of persons unjustifiably subjected to criminal and administrative procedures for political and religious convictions, official correspondence ska and other archive material relating to the period of mass repression. A large number of documents from the archives of special services opened during rehabilitation work allows us to include new information and facts in the historical information space. They clearly show that at certain stages the activities of the Cheka-KGB bodies were regulated by the norms of Soviet law. Unfortunately, the existence of the above listed acts could not prevent the committing by the security organs of gross violations of the law. To a large extent, this became possible as a result of the Stalin personality cult, the loss of control over the work of the Cheka-KGB officers by the supreme bodies of state power.
It is well known that the greatest number of repressions occurred in the mid-1930s. Documents from the FSB archive say that preparations for the "great terror" took many years. For example, the state system of total observation of the spiritual life of people, control of their thoughts and statements began back in the 1920s, when there was some freedom of existence of public organizations, there was an internal party struggle in the leadership of the CPSU (b), and the OGPU, on the instructions of the party center, already "tracked" social and political moods.
Restoring historical justice today, of course, one should not shift all blame for crimes and mistakes to Stalin alone. Many of his entourage voluntarily or involuntarily contributed to the creation of the Stalinist cult, although later they themselves became its victims.
In our country, the problem of restoring historical justice and protecting the individual from lawlessness has become the backbone of democratization, and its resolution is one of the pillars of the new political mechanism. The protest against the excessive arbitrariness of the state from the very beginning turned into a core around which a wider anti-Stalinist wave was objectively formed. Condemnation of the past was one of the most important levers for moving forward the policy of transforming society. Mass rehabilitation, carried out from the second half of the 1980s, made it possible to open up unknown pages of our history, to take a different look and evaluate the events of those distant years. At the same time, she posed a number of new questions. Rehabilitation means restoration and, therefore, along with the abolition of illegal decisions, involves the restoration of the socio-political and property rights of the victims. However, if in the first case the results are obvious, then in the second, despite the increasing flow of requests and statements, the issues of material compensation to rehabilitated citizens or their relatives are still not fully resolved.
Mass repressions in the USSR were carried out in the period 1927 - 1953. These repressions are directly connected with the name of Joseph Stalin, who in those years carried out the leadership of the country. Social and political persecution in the USSR began after the end of the last stage of the civil war. These phenomena began to gain momentum in the second half of the 30s and did not slow down during the Second World War, as well as after its end. Today we will talk about what constituted the social and political repressions of the Soviet Union, consider what phenomena underlie those events, and also what consequences this led to.
They say: an entire nation cannot be suppressed endlessly. Lying! Can! But we see how our people were devastated, run wild, and indifference came upon him, not only to the fate of the country, not only to the fate of a neighbor, but even to their own fate and the fate of children. Indifference, the last saving reaction of the body, has become our defining feature . That’s why the popularity of vodka is unprecedented even on a Russian scale. This is a terrible indifference when a person sees his life not in a puncture, not with a broken corner, but so hopelessly fragmented, so far and wide worn out that it’s still worth living to live for the sake of alcoholic oblivion. Now, if vodka were banned, a revolution would immediately flare up.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Reasons for repression:
- Forcing the population to work on a non-economic basis. There was a lot of work to be done in the country, but there was not enough money for everything. Ideology shaped new thinking and perception, and also had to motivate people to work almost for free.
- Strengthening personal power. For the new ideology, an idol was needed, a person whom they implicitly trust. After the murder of Lenin, this post was vacant. Stalin was to take this place.
- Strengthening the depletion of a totalitarian society.
If you try to find the beginning of repression in the union, then the starting point, of course, should be 1927. This year was marked by the fact that massacres, with so-called pests, as well as saboteurs, began to take place in the country. The motive for these events should be sought in the relations between the USSR and Great Britain. So, at the beginning of 1927, the Soviet Union was implicated in a major international scandal when the country was openly accused of trying to transfer the center of the Soviet revolution to London. In response to these events, Great Britain broke all relations with the USSR, both political and economic. Domestically, this step was presented as the preparation by London of a new wave of intervention. At one of the party meetings, Stalin declared that the country “needs to destroy all the remnants of imperialism and all supporters of the White Guard movement.” An excellent reason for this from Stalin appeared on June 7, 1927. On this day in Poland, the political representative of the USSR, Voikov, was killed.
As a result, terror began. For example, on the night of June 10, 20 people who were connected with the empire were shot. These were representatives of ancient noble families. In total, in June of the 27th year, more than 9 thousand people were arrested, who were accused of treason, complicity with imperialism and other things that sound menacingly, but are very hard to prove. Most of those arrested were sent to prisons.
Pest control
After that, a number of major cases began in the USSR, which were aimed at combating sabotage and sabotage. The wave of these repressions was based on the fact that in the majority of large companies that worked within the Soviet Union, leading positions were occupied by immigrants from imperial Russia. Of course, these people for the most part did not feel sympathy for the new government. Therefore, the Soviet regime was looking for pretexts on which this intelligentsia could be removed from leading posts and destroyed if possible. The problem was that this required substantial and legitimate reasons. Such reasons were found in a number of lawsuits that swept the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
Among the most striking examples of such cases are the following:
- Shakhty affair. In 1928, the repression in the USSR affected miners from the Donbass. From this case arranged a show trial. The entire leadership of Donbass, as well as 53 engineers, were accused of espionage activity with an attempt to wreck the new state. As a result of the trial, 3 people were shot, 4 acquitted, the rest received a prison term of 1 to 10 years. This was a precedent - the society enthusiastically accepted the repression against enemies of the people ... In 2000, the Russian prosecutor's office rehabilitated all participants in the Shakhty case, in view of the lack of corpus delicti.
- Pulkovo affair. In June 1936, a large solar eclipse was to be seen on the territory of the USSR. The Pulkovo Observatory appealed to the world community to attract personnel to study this phenomenon, as well as to obtain the necessary foreign equipment. As a result, the organization was accused of espionage links. The number of victims is classified.
- The cause of the industrial party. The defendants in this case involved those whom the Soviet government called the bourgeois. This process took place in 1930. The defendants were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization in the country.
- The case of the peasant party. The Socialist-Revolutionary organization is widely known, under the name of the group Chayanov and Kondratyev. In 1930, representatives of this organization were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization and interfering in agricultural affairs.
- Union Bureau. The Union Bureau case was opened in 1931. The accused were representatives of the Mensheviks. They were accused of undermining the creation and implementation of economic activities within the country, as well as of relations with foreign intelligence.
At this moment, a massive ideological struggle was taking place in the USSR. The new regime did its best to explain to the population its position, as well as to justify its actions. But Stalin understood that ideology alone could not restore order in the country and could not allow him to maintain power. Therefore, along with ideology, repression began in the USSR. Above, we have already given some examples of cases with which the repression began. These cases have always raised big questions, and today, when documents have been declassified on many of them, it becomes absolutely clear that most of the charges were unfounded. It is no coincidence that the Russian prosecutor’s office, having examined the documents of the Shakhty case, rehabilitated all participants in the process. And this despite the fact that in 1928 none of the party leadership of the country had any thoughts about the innocence of these people. Why did this happen? This was due to the fact that under the guise of repression, as a rule, all those who did not agree with the new regime were destroyed.
The events of 20 years were only the beginning, the main events were ahead.
The socio-political meaning of mass repression
A new massive wave of repression within the country unfolded in early 1930. At this moment, the struggle began not only with political rivals, but also with the so-called fists. In fact, a new strike of the Soviet regime against the rich began, and this strike caught not only wealthy people, but also the middle peasants and even the poor. One of the stages of delivering this blow was dispossession. In the framework of this material, we will not dwell on the issues of dispossession, as this issue has already been studied in detail in the corresponding article on the site.
Party composition and governing bodies in repressions
A new wave of political repression in the USSR began at the end of 1934. At that time, there was a significant change in the structure of the administrative apparatus within the country. In particular, on July 10, 1934, reorganization of special services took place. On this day, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR was created. This department is known by the acronym NKVD. This unit included services such as:
- General Directorate of State Security. It was one of the main organs, which dealt with almost all matters.
- General Directorate of Workers 'and Peasants' Police. This is an analogue of modern police, with all the functions and responsibilities.
- General Directorate of the Border Service. The department was engaged in border and customs affairs.
- General Directorate of the camps. This management is today widely known under the abbreviation Gulag.
- General Directorate of Fire Protection.
In addition, in November 1934 a special department was created, which was called the "Special Meeting". This department received broad powers to combat the enemies of the people. In fact, this department could send people to exile or to the Gulag for up to 5 years without the presence of the accused, the prosecutor and the lawyer. Of course, this applied only to the enemies of the people, but the problem is that no one knew for sure how to identify this enemy. That is why the Special Meeting had unique functions, since any person could be declared an enemy of the people. Anyone could be sent to a link for 5 years on one simple suspicion.
Mass repressions in the USSR
The reason for the mass repression was the events of December 1, 1934. Then in Leningrad, Sergei Mironovich Kirov was killed. As a result of these events, a special judicial procedure was approved in the country. In fact, we are talking about expedited litigation. Under the simplified system of proceedings, all cases were transferred where people were accused of terrorism and aiding terrorism. Again, the problem was that almost all people who came under repression belonged to this category. We have already talked about a number of high-profile cases that characterize repression in the USSR, where it is clearly visible that all people, one way or another, were accused of complicity in terrorism. The specificity of the simplified system of proceedings was that the sentence was to be pronounced within 10 days. The accused received a summons a day before the trial. The trial itself took place without the participation of prosecutors and lawyers. At the conclusion of the proceedings, any request for clemency was prohibited. If in the course of the proceedings a person was sentenced to be shot, then this measure of punishment was executed immediately.
Political repression, party purge
Stalin staged active repression within the Bolshevik Party itself. One of the illustrative examples of repression that affected the Bolsheviks happened on January 14, 1936. On this day, the replacement of party documents was announced. This step has long been discussed and was not a surprise. But when replacing documents, new certificates were not given to all party members, but only to those who “earned trust”. Thus began the purge of the party. According to official figures, when issuing new party documents, 18% of the Bolsheviks were expelled from the party. These were those people to whom repression was applied, first of all. And this we are talking only about one of the waves of these purges. In total, the party was cleaned in several stages:
- In the year 1933. 250 people were expelled from the party’s top leadership.
- In 1934 - 1935, 20 thousand people were expelled from the Bolshevik party.
Stalin actively destroyed people who could claim power, who possessed power. To demonstrate this fact, it is only necessary to say that of all the members of the 1917 political bureau, only Stalin survived after the purge (4 members were executed, and Trotsky was expelled from the party and expelled from the country). In total, then there were 6 members of the Politburo. In the period between the revolution and the death of Lenin, a new political bureau of 7 people was assembled. By the end of the purge, only Molotov and Kalinin survived. In 1934, the next congress of the VKP (b) party took place. 1934 people participated in the congress. 1108 of them were arrested. Most are shot.
Kirov’s murder exacerbated the wave of repression, and Stalin himself made a statement to party members about the need for the final extermination of all enemies of the people. As a result, the Criminal Code of the USSR was amended. These changes stipulated that all cases of political prisoners were examined in an expedited manner without attorneys for prosecutors within 10 days. The executions were carried out immediately. In 1936, a political trial of the opposition took place. In fact, the closest associates of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, appeared on the dock. They were accused of killing Kirov, as well as of assassination of Stalin. A new stage of political repression over the Leninist guard began. This time, Bukharin, as well as the head of the Rykov government, were subjected to repression. The socio-political meaning of repression in this sense was associated with the strengthening of the cult of personality.
Repression in the army
Since June 1937, repression in the USSR affected the army. In June, the first trial of the high command of the workers 'and peasants' red army (RKKA), including the commander in chief Marshal Tukhachevsky, took place. Army leaders were accused of attempting a coup. According to the prosecutors, the coup was to take place on May 15, 1937. The defendants were found guilty and most of them were shot. Tukhachevsky was also shot.
An interesting fact is that of the 8 members of the trial who sentenced Tukhachevsky to be shot, five were subsequently repressed and shot. However, from then on, repression began in the army, which affected the entire leadership team. As a result of such events, 3 marshals of the Soviet Union, 3 commanders of 1 rank, 10 commanders of 2 ranks, 50 corps commanders, 154 division commanders, 16 army commissars, 25 commissar corps, 58 division commissars, 401 regiment commanders were repressed. In total, 40 thousand people were subjected to repression in the Red Army. It was 40 thousand army leaders. As a result, more than 90% of the command staff was destroyed.
Increased repression
Since 1937, the wave of repression in the USSR began to intensify. The reason was order No. 00447 of the NKVD of the USSR of July 30, 1937. This document also stated the immediate repression of all anti-Soviet elements, namely:
- Former fists. All those whom the Soviet government called fists, but who escaped punishment, or were in labor villages or in exile, were subject to repression.
- All representatives of religion. Everyone who has at least some relation to religion was subject to repression.
- Participants in anti-Soviet actions. Under such participants were all who have ever actively or passively opposed the Soviet regime. In fact, this category included those who did not support the new government.
- Anti-Soviet politicians. Inside the country, everyone who was not part of the Bolshevik party was called anti-Soviet politician.
- White Guards.
- People with a criminal record. People who had a criminal record were automatically considered enemies of the Soviet regime.
- Hostile elements. Any person who was called a hostile element was sentenced to be shot.
- Inactive items. The rest, who were not sentenced to death, were sent to camps or prisons for a term of 8 to 10 years.
All cases were now considered in an even more expedited manner, where most cases were considered in droves. According to the same decree of the NKVD, repressions applied not only to convicts, but also to their families. In particular, the following penalties were applied to the families of the repressed:
- Families repressed for active anti-Soviet actions. All members of such families went to camps and labor villages.
- Families of the repressed who lived in the border zone were subject to resettlement inland. Often, special settlements were formed for them.
- A family of repressed people who lived in large cities of the USSR. Such people were also resettled inland.
In 1940, the secret department of the NKVD was created. This department was engaged in the destruction of political opponents of the Soviet government, located abroad. The first victim of this department was Trotsky, who was killed in Mexico in August 1940. Subsequently, this secret department was engaged in the destruction of participants in the White Guard movement, as well as representatives of the imperialist emigration of Russia.
Further repression continued, although their main events have already passed. In fact, repression in the USSR continued until 1953.
Results of repression
From 1930 to 1953, a total of 3 million 800 thousand people were repressed on charges of counter-revolution. Of these, 749,421 people were shot ... And this is only according to official information ... And how many more people died without trial, whose names and surnames are not listed?
