Vladimir Ivanovich Terebilov worked for 10 years, from 1939 to 1949, in the prosecutor's office of Leningrad and the region, and then in the General Prosecutor's Office. Later he was Minister of Justice and Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Our hero’s memories of the siege years and the work of supervisory authorities during this terrible time for Leningrad are unique.
Over the years of my life, I have experienced the prickly polar winter, seen terrible collapses in the mountains and mines, and the severe consequences of air and railway accidents,” said Terebilov. - But there was no picture more difficult than the cold and hungry winter of 1941-1942.
“The old woman is mine!”
For us, prosecutors, in the first days of the war, the main operational task was to urgently complete investigative cases and verify materials. Everyone is busy preparing firing points and trenches, broken line which runs exactly along the slope of the hill on which the building of the Pargolovsky Prosecutor's Office is located. Mass evacuation of the population began. The order to evacuate citizens of German and Finnish nationality was especially adamantly carried out. A significant part of them are economic and party assets of collective farms and district institutions. Crying, begging, complaining. Many categorically refused to leave, but
imposed the harsh law of war.
The difficult situation also gave rise to extraordinary criminal situations. I will mention the case of the former editor-in-chief of the magazine “Rural Life in Russia”, who was patronized by Tsarevich Alexei. I think his last name was Steinberg. He attracted attention by the fact that, imitating a dog, he barked in the evenings! Yes, he barked on the porch of his house. As it turned out, he ate the dog, but by imitating a dog barking, he apparently wanted to hide this fact. During a search, pieces of a human body were found in the cast iron along with the liquid. This is what remains of his maid who disappeared a few days earlier. There was no need to interrogate the unfortunate man; he died in our presence. One can only imagine the horror last hours his life. Later, we gave a relative of the deceased, her last name is Grushko, several kilograms of frozen potatoes that Steinberg had kept. Through the window I saw how an emaciated woman, barely moving, was pulling a pitiful, but at that time valuable inheritance on a sled. After all, this may have been her last load, or perhaps her last chance to survive.
Undoubtedly, hunger and dystrophy often lead to serious changes in the psyche. For example, during interrogation, old man V., who used parts of the corpse of his deceased wife for food, said: “What’s wrong with that, my old woman!”
Couldn't take it away
By the end of winter, the city's supply situation improved somewhat; supplies began to be delivered across Ladoga. But there were also cases of theft. Here's one episode. In order to somehow support scientists, it was allowed to involve them in unloading food. Sometimes they got something there. Three, as it turned out, engineers, could not resist, took away and hid three bags of flour in the dugout. This is where they were discovered. But how?! They dropped the burden, and two found themselves under the bags, and the third, who was dystrophic like them, did not have enough strength to free them. All three were quietly crying... Looking at their exhausted faces, we, hiding our tears, helped them get out.
It would be untrue to say that hunger is the only reason for all crime in the city. No, it wasn’t just because of hunger that they looted and even killed. Serious crimes were investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice. True, not everyone survived. In the pre-trial detention cells there was subzero temperature, and this meant death from cold and hunger.
Not human
The blockade and war did not allow us to forget about ourselves for a long time in the post-war years. One day, a front-line soldier, a young woman demobilized from the army, came to my prosecutor’s office. She asked to return the apartment occupied during the blockade. According to the law, the living space must be returned, but what if the family of blockade survivors who settled there has nowhere to relocate?! He delayed the eviction and asked the woman to come back in a month. Then he extended the delay for another 3 weeks, another two... As luck would have it, the issue was not resolved for a long time. The woman, apparently, assessed the red tape in her own way, put an envelope on my desk, and ran out of the office. And then - a trial in the case of attempting to bribe an official. Her two brothers, who also went through the entire war, were present at the trial. She was punished with imprisonment. Formally, everything is correct, but in essence it is not humane, not according to conscience. You have to carry this sin in your soul.
Several months passed, and again a similar episode. An old man came and asked to be released before trial for his son, who was arrested for minor theft. I promised to talk to the investigator. When the old man left, he left a package near the door. He was detained and brought back. The package contained a small amount of money, cereal, and vodka. What to do? The old man insists: this is a sign of “gratitude.” He ordered the old man to be released, and the package was returned. At parting, I threatened him with all possible punishments, but we still released his son before the trial.
The history of criminal gangs is much broader than the judicial chronicles of their deeds. It is inseparable from the historical moment that the country is going through. It is not for nothing that the best gangster films in world cinema are always epic, reflecting the spirit of the times. After the release of Stanislav Govorukhin’s film “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed,” based on the novel by the Weiner brothers, the “Black Cat” gang became a symbol of the post-war hard times in the USSR. She is legendary in every sense of the word.
Still from the film "The meeting place cannot be changed"
Various creatures have swollen
The end of the Great Patriotic War in the USSR was accompanied by a monstrous surge in crime. It was not only caused by hunger and poverty, which drove people to the last limit. After Stalin's amnesty in honor of the victory over Germany, thousands of criminals were released from the camps, for whom it was not difficult to arm themselves - after the war, the population still had a lot of firearms. Crowds of former policemen, deserters, and street children flocked to various gangs and gangs.
By 1947, crime had increased by almost half compared to 1945: a total of 1.2 million different types of criminal offenses were registered. Daring raids on savings banks, armed robberies of shops and warehouses, attacks on cash-in-transit vehicles, burglaries and murders of ordinary citizens sowed panic among ordinary people and gave rise to many rumors. One of the main "horror stories" of that time was the Black Cat gang. This name thundered throughout the country, making people freeze with horror.
Some experts consider "Black Cat" a hoax. Others are confident that it was a well-organized structure with a developed branch network. But everyone agrees on one thing: it was a high-profile criminal brand that both teenage pranksters and professional criminals willingly latched on to.
“In fact, the archives of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs contain traces of about a dozen gangster groups with the same name, operating in different cities of the country in the mid-40s of the last century,” writes military lawyer and historian Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev in the book “War on the Scales of Themis.” The symbol of a black cat drawn at the scene of a crime turned out to be attractive not only for youngsters keen on thieves’ romance, but also for hardened criminals. It was this “brand name”, borrowed from street children of the 20s, that contributed to the rapid spread of numerous rumors and conjectures among the people about the cruelty and elusiveness of the "Black Cat".
Photo from old.moskva.com
Joke written in blood
Actually, the majority of these gangs were teenagers, street punks, who mainly traded in petty thefts. The “rejuvenation” of crime in general was a trend in the post-war period. For example, in 1946, minors made up 43 percent of all those prosecuted. They were tried for theft, robbery, hooliganism, and less often - for murder.
As for the young “black cat people,” they were let down by their love for special effects: warning notes, tattoos in the form of cats. The operatives split up such teenage gangs quite quickly. For example, in Leningrad in 1945, police officers investigating a series of burglaries in house No. 8 on Pushkinskaya Street, within a few weeks, were on the trail of a teenage gang and caught its top red-handed - students of vocational school No. 4 Vladimir Popov, nicknamed Chesnok, Sergei Ivanov and Grigory Shneiderman. During the search, the leader, 16-year-old Popov, was found to have a most curious document - the “Black Cat” oath of the Caudla, under which eight signatures were signed in blood. But since only three participants managed to commit crimes, they went to the dock. In January 1946, at a meeting of the people's court of the 2nd section of the Krasnogvardeisky district of Leningrad, the verdict was announced: the teenagers received from one to three years in prison.
But more often than not, the antics of the young “black cats” turned out to be ordinary practical jokes, which, however, required the departure of a task force, or even a lengthy investigation. Such hooligan antics spread the word among the people about the terrible gang. Somehow, rural boys put the whole of Samara on edge by hanging leaflets with the following text: “Hello to the thieves, kaput to the fraers.” On April 6, 1945, several members from the “Black Cat” gang arrived. They acted for five days. “Black Cat” secretary Paleny ".
Gangster epic in Odessa style
A truly cinematic story unfolded in Odessa, where after the war its own “Black Cat” operated, consisting of 19 people, most of them repeat criminals. The gang was noted for its high-profile robberies of confectionery factories (flour, sugar and butter were worth their weight in gold in the hungry 1947s) and numerous murders. Among those killed were a local inspector, a state security officer, and several military officers. The criminals used their weapons and uniforms when they went to work. Although there may have been other reasons for the murders. There is information that the leader of the gang, Nikolai Marushak, and his assistant Fyodor Kuznetsov, nicknamed Kogut, had contacts with the Gestapo during the occupation.
The gang was hunted by employees of the Odessa Criminal Investigation Department, led by David Kurlyand (by the way, this man became the prototype for the main character of another popular television series about post-war gangs - “Liquidation” by Sergei Ursulyak). It was not easy to take it - in the intervals between robberies, the bandits hid in the catacombs. They also hid the corpses of the dead there.
Finally, during a raid on Privoz, operatives captured one of the leader’s accomplices - he was identified by a former policeman captured there. He was arrested and indicated the place where the gang’s “headquarters” was located. The criminal investigation officers set up an ambush, and when the encircled criminals opened fire, they began shooting to kill. There was a clear directive regarding the leader: take him alive. However, the seriously wounded Maruschak did not fall into the hands of justice. He committed suicide by biting into an ampoule of poison. Those who survived received 25 years in prison (after the abolition of the death penalty in 1947, this was the capital punishment).
Photo from the site www.statehistory.ru
From the army they "mowed down" in a gang
According to a number of versions, the first large group under the name “Black Cat” began to form even before the war, and over time its core consisted mainly of educated young people without a criminal record - deserters who sought to evade front-line service. Their average age was 25 years. The lack of criminal records and connections in the criminal world allowed them to remain out of sight of law enforcement for a long time.
By the middle of the war, “Black Cat” had grown to a national scale. As one of the researchers of its activities, Alexey Shcherbakov, writes, its “various “links” were relatively autonomous, but there was a general leadership, a common fund and, most importantly, an extensive infrastructure.” The gang included criminals of all stripes - rollers, scammers, thugs, pluckers, gop-stoppers. But the main source of income was the theft of products using forged documents (an entire staff of highly qualified specialists worked on their production) with subsequent resale on the black market.
In 1945, when the gang reached its peak and attracted the attention of investigative authorities, it was decided to shift its center to Kazan as to a safer place that would provide a wide field of activity, primarily due to the many evacuated enterprises. Here, “Black Cat” was noted for its grandiose theft from the Kazan distillery: bandits dressed in military uniforms received five tons of products using forged documents, but no traces of the stolen goods were found. And they found the criminals thanks to luck - the sister of one of the people they killed identified his coat at a flea market.
By pulling this thread, the police learned names, passwords, and appearances. Raids began in the city, during which more than sixty people were arrested and subsequently convicted. During the investigation, the scale of this criminal group became clear. The trial was open. It took place in the House of Culture of the Sverdovsky district and lasted a month. According to the court verdict, twelve people were shot, the rest received long sentences. The trials of the “Black Cat” also took place in other republics of the USSR.
The leaders remained in the shadows
But how did it happen that such a serious criminal structure began to be called a myth, a fiction? The reason is that researchers believe that law enforcement officers of that time had no experience working with organized criminal groups. “According to the laws of war, criminals were not treated on ceremony for a long time,” writes Alexey Shcherbakov in the essay “The Truth about the Black Cat.” - During the arrest they shot to kill. And there was no time to track the gang’s entire chain of connections. The leaders remained in the shadows. But according to the assessments of the police officers who dealt with the exploits of the bandits, they worked calmly and methodically.”
Based on materials
Zvyagintsev V.E., War on the scales of Themis: The War of 1941 - 1945 in the materials of investigative and judicial cases. - M.: TERRA - Book Club, 2006
The authorities preferred not to advertise the truth about the tragic situation in besieged Leningrad. Even during the war, the Museum of Defense and Siege was opened, the exhibits for which were collected by Leningraders themselves. But in 1952, the museum was closed during the repressions of the “Leningrad case”. The first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU, Grigory Romanov, despite the requests of Leningraders, did not allow the reopening of the city defense exposition. Only in 1989 the museum began to receive visitors again.
I recently visited the Leningrad Defense Museum and viewed the exhibition “Execution as a Reward,” dedicated to the victims of the “Leningrad Affair.” I was able to talk with the director of the museum, Sergei Yuryevich Kurnosov. I was interested in the question: was the blockade a crime of the country’s leadership or were the enemies to blame for everything?
Some modern German historians consider the siege of Leningrad a war crime by Germany and the allied armies.
As a child, I read the novel “Blockade” by Alexander Chakovsky, and realized that in many ways we ourselves are to blame. Analyzing historical and literary sources, I came to the conclusion that the fact that Leningrad found itself in a blockade ring was not only to blame for the German blitzkrieg, but also for the country’s leadership, which made unforgivable mistakes. The result of such mistakes was the death of more than a million people. Only 3% of them died from bombing and shelling; the remaining 97% died of starvation.
There was no “emergency reserve” in Leningrad, contrary to all the rules for ensuring the life of the metropolis before the war.”
“Our government and Leningrad leaders were abandoned to the mercy of fate,” wrote the “siege muse” Olga Berggolts in her diary. “People are dying like flies, and no one is taking action against it.”
“We met the war unprepared,” said writer Daniil Granin, a participant in the battles, in an interview. - They moved towards Leningrad at a speed of 80 km per day - an unprecedented speed of attack! And we should have lost this war. And this is a miracle."
“The city was wide open... The Germans had to enter the city. Nothing, there were no outposts. Why didn't they come in? I ended the war with this riddle and lived for many years.”
“According to conservative estimates, more than 1 million citizens died during the blockade. Marshal Zhukov gives a figure - 1 million 200 thousand deaths from starvation.”
Daniil Granin, together with Ales Adamovich, interviewed about 200 siege survivors and wrote the “Siege Book.” But the whole truth about the blockade, as it turned out, could not be disclosed. It was impossible to write about looting, about cannibalism, or to name the true number of victims. Soviet censorship proposed 65 exemptions. The then secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, Romanov, generally forbade the publication of the book.
Only 18 years later they were able to publish the “Siege Book” without cuts. However, there is still no complete and true history of the battle for Leningrad. Much of the data is classified. Therefore, it is useless to argue about the accuracy of the numbers; we can only talk about facts.
According to official data, 671 thousand 635 people died during the blockade - these figures were presented at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.
From November 20, Leningraders began to receive the lowest ration of bread during the entire blockade - 250 g for a work card and 125 g for an employee and children's card. In November - December 1941, only a third of the population received work cards. Leningrad bread contained 40% flour. The rest is cake, cellulose, malt.
A Leningrad hydrological engineer, who attended a reception with the first secretary of the city committee A.A. Zhdanov, recalls: “I visited Zhdanov on water supply matters. He barely arrived, he was staggering from hunger... It was the spring of 1942. If I saw a lot of bread and even sausage there, I wouldn't be surprised. But there were cakes in the vase.”
Daniil Granin in his book “The Man Is Not From Here” writes:
“When Ales Adamovich and I were collecting material for the “Siege Book,” we were repeatedly told about special rations for Smolny: “There is caviar, and there are crabs, ham, fish ...” - all kinds of delicacies were not listed.
We could not imagine that among the townspeople dying of hunger, among the corpses on the streets, the city leaders could afford luxurious food.
After the release of The Siege Book, they brought me photographs of a confectionery shop in 1941. They assured me that it was the very end, December, that famine was already in full swing in Leningrad.”
In the photo: V.A. Abakumov checks the baking of “Viennese cakes”. 12/12/1941. Leningrad. Photo by A.A. Mikhailov. TASS.
Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky (Doctor of Historical Sciences) publicly on the air of the Echo of Moscow program on January 31, 2014 called the data published by the writer about the baking of rum baba for the city leadership during the blockade a lie.
Fifty years after the siege, the situation almost repeated itself. In December 1991, basic products were sold using cards (coupons), but it was difficult to stock them.
The wife of the then mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, Lyudmila Narusova, recalls: “The terrible winter of 1991-1992. All economic ties collapsed. I remember very well how he came, clasping his head in his hands, and saying: “There is only two days’ worth of bread left in the city, and there is no flour. But the city should not know this, because the city that experienced the blockade should not know this, panic will begin.” And he personally called Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand, called the Swedes, called the British. And at night in Kronstadt, military sailors unloaded ships with stewed meat, flour, and canned goods, which were used to purchase ration cards the next day.”
So was the blockade a crime or were the enemies to blame for everything?
Comrade Stalin decided that the leaders of Leningrad were guilty and should be punished. As a result of the “Leningrad Affair” of 1949–1950. several dozen people from the top leadership of Leningrad were executed, over 200 received various prison terms. After Stalin's death, they were rehabilitated "for lack of corpus delicti."
In May 1945, a Russian soldier wrote on the walls of the Reichstag: “Germany, we came to you so that you would not come to us.”
But today German troops are again standing in the Baltic states on the border of the Leningrad and Pskov regions, just like in 1941.
Why then did our grandfathers and fathers die?!
The fight against crime in besieged Leningrad
LENINGRAD. 1943 December 26. /TASS/.The fight against crime has become especially acute in the city, all of whose forces were thrown into resisting the Nazis. In Leningrad, closed in the blockade ring, crime had its own specifics: there were no alien bandits - only “our own”. The Leningrad police, who knew the reporting contingent well, dealt with them quite quickly. However, another task, characteristic of wartime, was more difficult - to identify and neutralize enemy infiltrators.
In the last days of December 1943, military correspondent. LenTASS reported the capture of two spies: “A group of border guards led by Senior Lieutenant Shifrin walked around their area. One of the fighters was leading his service dog Alpa on a leash. The border guards' path lay past one building standing away from the road. There had never been any military there before. And now the border guards noticed that there was a sentry at the entrance to the building. He was dressed in full military uniform, armed with a machine gun and grenades. Senior Lieutenant Shifrin found this suspicious. Seeing the approach of the border guards, the “sentry” began to get nervous, grabbed his weapon and wanted to use it without any warning. Acting skillfully and decisively, the soldiers disarmed the “sentry.” He tried to run, but was quickly overtaken by the dog Alpa.
The escape of the imaginary “sentry” did not distract the attention of the border guards from the building. The soldiers watching the house noticed how a man in a military uniform ran out from the opposite exit. A few minutes later he was also caught. Both detainees—the “sentry” and his partner in crime turned out to be enemy bandits.”
A few days earlier, newspapers wrote about how vigilant a police officer showed: “The local police department commissioner, junior lieutenant A. Savelyev, while checking the documents of the residents of one of the apartments, discovered a hidden man. When trying to detain him, the unknown person showed stubborn resistance; on the street he started to run. After a warning, Comrade Savelyev wounded the unknown man in the leg with a revolver shot.
The detainee turned out to be an enemy spy who had made his way across the front line. The Leningrad police department expressed gratitude to Comrade Savelyev for his vigilance.”
STRUCTURE AND TASKS OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS BODIES DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
During the Great Patriotic War, the system of internal affairs bodies underwent some changes. In February 1941, the People's Commissariat was separated from the NKVD. state security USSR, but in July 1943 it was again merged with the NKVD of the USSR. In April 1943, the NKVD was divided into three departments: the NKVD of the USSR itself, the People's Commissariat of State Security (NKGB) and the RKK counterintelligence department (Smersh).
In Leningrad, the police were entrusted with tasks caused by wartime requirements: participating in the internal defense of the city and organizing anti-landing defense, ensuring the evacuation of the population, placing children who had lost their parents (almost all police departments in besieged Leningrad had their own sponsored orphanages), fighting deserters, alarmists, distributors of provocative rumors, assisting other NKVD units in identifying enemy agents and provocateurs, combating theft.
The leadership of the Leningrad police during the siege. Sitting (from left to right): E.S. Grushko, I.A. Averianov, M.P. Nazarov. Standing (from left to right): A.S. Dryazgov, P.V. Petrovsky. 1942
In the city, as can be seen from news reports of that time, training sessions for the rank and file of the Leningrad city police were regularly held. Periodically, police officers received new instructions on how to recognize spies and enemy agents. Everything was taken into account - for example, from time to time orders were issued requiring changes in the order of wearing orders, and by the location of the awards on the uniform, police officers during patrols and checking documents could identify those who wore these awards illegally.
Police officers in Leningrad. 1942
Since the beginning of the war, the volume of police work has increased many times. In the first months, when the evacuation of enterprises, museums, cultural property, scientific and industrial equipment was underway, it was important to monitor this process in order to prevent theft. The police also took part in cleaning the city, and in the first months of the war - in hiding monuments, including Klodt’s famous horses, buried in the Anichkov Garden. Since the winter of 1941, the police had to closely monitor " Bronze Horseman" - the monument to the founder of the city was covered with boards, and the townspeople, who were disassembling all the light ones for firewood wooden structures, they tried to use it for heating and sheltering the famous monument.
Bronze Horseman in protective forests during the siege of Leningrad
The police also had to protect the townspeople from the emerging gangster communities. In a confined space, Leningrad police quickly solved crimes, so there were no “long-term” gangs in the city, as well as numerous criminal communities— mostly these were groups of 2-3 people. There were also single bandits.
FROM THE HEAD OF THE UNKVD LO DATED OCTOBER 1, 1942According to the NKVD, it is known that fascist intelligence, in its intelligence schools located on the territory of the Baltic republics and in the occupied areas of our region, is training a significant number of intelligence officers, intending to send them to the rear of the Leningrad Front.
One of the most common types of crime was theft. Theft in besieged Leningrad was of two types: domestic, when neighbors stole their neighbors’ property, including escheat, and criminal, in which entire gangs were involved. Among those detained for theft were many employees of the housing and communal services sector. It happened, for example, that an unscrupulous building manager robbed the entire house entrusted to him, and janitors were also caught in thefts. Residents' apartments were attacked not only by gangs of criminal thieves, but also by groups of teenagers, including both boys and girls.
REFERENCEIn the 1940s, the Leningrad NKVD department was located next to the Hermitage - on Uritsky Square (Dvortsovaya), occupying former premises Tsarist Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In December 1941, after most of the police officers were called up to the front, the Department was left with 5,600 people. There were many women among them.
1,236 Leningrad policemen died during the siege from hunger, disease, artillery shelling and while performing their official duty. A policeman in besieged Leningrad received rations on a work card.
Crime intensified in conditions of catastrophic food shortages, especially after the fourth reduction in grain standards. In November 1941, a wave of terrible murders due to hunger swept through the city. Some people were so desperate that they completely lost control of themselves, and as a result, the police received materials on those who before the war did not even know where the nearest plot was located - parents killed children, adult children - elderly parents, neighbors - neighbors. In December, the first cases of cannibalism were mentioned in criminal case materials. There was no corresponding article in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, so such manifestations were often classified as banditry. Police statistics show that by the spring of 1942, these phenomena had almost completely stopped - food standards in the city were increased, and people came to their senses. In general, as the researchers note, such facts were isolated, and for the most part people remained at the height of the situation.
ABOUT THE CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES OF SPECULATIVE-PREDATORY ELEMENTS DURING THE PATRIOTIC WAR OF 1941-1945. IN THE CITY OF LENINGRADFrom the Report of the Deputy Chief of the Leningrad City Police Department, Comrade. Dryazgova
The criminal element - currency traders during the Patriotic War actively carried out their criminal activities. A currency-speculative organized group of 15 active currency traders engaged in the purchase of diamonds, currency, gold coins of royal minting, household gold and bullion was discovered and liquidated. Speculative-predatory elements, taking advantage of the difficult food situation during the blockade and having at their disposal a significant amount of food, in 1942-43 on a large scale used marauding exchange of food products for industrial products and valuables. Predatory speculators exchanged three kilograms of bread for a piano, a good men's suit was received for a kilogram of bread, etc.
Crimes related to the extraction of food were common in besieged Leningrad. In January 1942, attacks on stores in the food trade management system became more frequent: from a report submitted during this period to the head of the Leningrad food trade management P. Popkov, it follows that in just two weeks about a dozen raids and robberies were committed. Shops and trade workers were attacked by groups of criminals who stole bread and other food. There were also facts when individual citizens, gathered in groups, stole bread during delivery from bakeries to bakeries on sleds and carts. The entire police apparatus was mobilized to prevent such crimes. Operational squads included bakeries and grocery stores on their patrol routes; at night, some transports were accompanied by the police.
The activities of the organizations themselves involved in trade, supply and distribution of food were also the subject of the closest attention of law enforcement agencies.
FROM THE HEAD OF THE UNKVD LO TO THE GC VKP(B) ABOUT THE NUMBER OF ARRESTED AND EXPELLED DURING THE WAR (OCTOBER 1, 1942)During the Patriotic War, the NKVD of the Leningrad Region arrested 9,574 people, including 1,246 spies and saboteurs sent by the enemy.
625 counter-revolutionary groups and formations were discovered and liquidated, of which:
The number of recidivist thieves, due to the systematic cleansing of the city from the criminal element, has completely decreased.
- spy-treason - 169
- terrorist - 31
- rebel - 34
- nationalist - 26
- church-sectarian - 7
- Among those arrested:
- former kulaks, traders, landowners, nobles and officials - 1238
- declassed element - 1243
- workers - 2070
- employees - 2100
- intelligentsia - 559
- collective farmers - 1061
- individual farmers - 258
- others - 1045
The police arrested and tried 22,166 people, including 940 for banditry and robbery.
During the war there was a huge increase in crimes related to forgery of documents. They did not print counterfeit money, since the money had almost no value, nothing could be bought with it in stores, and traders in the “black market”, buy-ups and “flea markets” easily recognized counterfeits. But counterfeit food cards, coupons, as well as various documents granting exemption from military and labor service, “fake” health certificates were in active demand, and huge amounts of money were paid for them. 
Money and items made of precious metals seized by criminal investigation officers from criminals in besieged Leningrad
The greatest risk was the appearance of counterfeit cards, so every two weeks something was changed on them - pins, drawing, grid design, etc. This also ensured that such counterfeits were not made in the German rear - with such frequent changes appearance cards, the enemy simply physically could not have had time to reorganize the work of his printing houses so quickly. Therefore, in the archives of the Leningrad police there is no mention of the fact that counterfeit cards printed by the Germans were sent to Leningrad. 
Food and products made of precious metals seized by criminal investigation officers from criminals in besieged Leningrad
The Road of Life was also guarded by police forces. Its official name was Military Highway N101 of the NKVD of the USSR.
The report on the work of the combined detachment of the Police Department under the VAD dated March 24, 1942 stated that the main attention of the police was paid to ensuring uninterrupted traffic on the roads connecting Leningrad with the shore of Lake Ladoga and leading to the north-eastern regions of the Leningrad region. 
Security duty on the road of life
The tasks of the combined detachment were to combat the theft of food cargo, ensure uninterrupted traffic along the highway, prevent accidents and combat pointless downtime, as well as technical control over the condition of vehicles.
The combined detachment included employees of the State Traffic Inspectorate and operational investigative units. It was divided into operational inspection groups located on the route line and in places where cargo theft was most likely - at loading and unloading bases and vehicle parking lots. The police detained 586 military personnel and 232 civilians for theft of goods on the Road of Life. 33.4 tons of food were seized and found from the detainees. 
Items seized by criminal investigation officers from criminals in besieged Leningrad
At the beginning of the work of the VAD, due to poor traffic organization, traffic jams arose in some of its sections, causing pointless downtime of vehicles. Bad condition cars and drivers’ failure to comply with basic traffic rules in winter conditions led to the fact that at first a large number of cars got stuck in ditches, on roadsides and in ice cracks; drivers abandoned such cars unattended. Motor vehicle inspection teams removed these vehicles and handed them over to motor vehicle battalions. By December 26, 1941, congestion had been largely eliminated, traffic was streamlined, which greatly contributed to the increase bandwidth tracks.
The problem of crime among law enforcement agencies is one of the most pressing today. A stable negative attitude towards law enforcement agencies and, above all, towards the police, has formed in the minds of the population. The majority of Russian citizens perceive a policeman not as a defender of the law and a fighter against crime, but as an extortionist in uniform, using his shoulder straps and identification to obtain illegal income. This topic has been discussed publicly over the last fifteen years, however, the problem of corruption of law enforcement agencies has existed since its inception Russian state. Police pre-revolutionary Russia in the eyes of society, it was associated with a system of small bribes, free service in stores, shops, studios, restaurants, etc. Having taken power in 1917, the Bolsheviks tried to create a new state system, free from protectionism and corruption, however, it soon became infected with the same diseases. Even during the years of the Stalinist regime, when control over the life of society seemed to be comprehensive, the NKVD-MVD bodies were forced to get rid of “criminal and morally corrupt elements.” In the first half of 1947 alone, over 150 employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region were convicted of criminal offenses, and over the next 3 months of the same year - 171 people. About 30% of them were employees of prisoner of war camps, 25% were Leningrad police officers and 20% were from the system of correctional labor colonies (ITC) and camps. The most common crime was the appropriation and squandering of state property (about 30% of those convicted, half of which were employees of prisoner of war camps), theft of state property (over 20% of those convicted, mainly officers of prisoner of war camps, correctional colonies and individual camp units ), desertion and unauthorized absences from service (24.5% of crimes). They were mainly typical for ordinary police officers, fire department workers and security departments of the Department of Correctional Labor Camps and Colonies (UITLK) 1. The leadership of the NKVD-MVD was concerned about cases of bribery in the police environment. Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR I. Serov noted in the spring of 1947: “I have information that there is an unofficially established fee for registration in sensitive areas, for purchasing a passport, for a passport for a car, etc.” 2. Thus, the inspector of the administrative group of the Leningrad City Police Department, Lieutenant Kazanin, and the detective officer of the Vasileostrovsky regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, police lieutenant Tukhvatulin, organized in 1945-1946 the issuance of passes for bribes to leave Leningrad. Kazanin wrote out the passes, and Tukhvatulin looked for people who needed to leave , received money from them and issued passes received from Kazanin. Both were sentenced in May 1946 by a military tribunal to five years in prison. Igor Vasilievich Govorov - candidate of historical sciences, associate professor, doctoral student at St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia .sentenced in 1947, passport officer of the 19th police department. Leningrad Chamov, who carried out illegal registration of citizens for bribes 3. Among the employees of operational services, embezzlement of money and things seized during arrests and searches became widespread. During an inspection by employees of the Leningrad Police Department, employees of the Leningrad Police Department discovered confiscated and stored property without registration. Thus, the head of the OBKhSS department Morozov confiscated gold coins of royal minting worth 160 rubles from the detained Neskvich. gold. These coins were kept by Morozov without any documentation for over 13 months, as a result of which one of the five-ruble coins disappeared without a trace. Having seized 300 g of gold from speculator Kosyrev, Morozov illegally used it in an operational combination. The gold was sold by Morozov's informant. Morozov embezzled part of the proceeds and only handed them over to the financial department after an investigation into his activities began. During an inspection of his office, objects made of gold were found, the origin of which Morozov could not explain. 4. There were repeated cases when police officers, having detained citizens allegedly for speculation, took money and things from them and disappeared with them. The relationship between operatives and their agents provided a fairly wide field for abuse. The operative officer of the Petrograd RO NKVD of Leningrad, senior police lieutenant Smirnov, practiced the appropriation of food and money intended to be given to secret informants for good work (for example, he took a receipt from the secret informant Znamenskaya that he had given her 7 kg of food, although he gave only 2 kg ) 5. Inspections of the work of the criminal investigation department and the OBHSS of Leningrad and the region have repeatedly revealed facts when monetary and food rewards were allegedly given to agents who in fact either left the region or were in prison. It is characteristic that in such cases the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs limited itself to disciplinary punishment, without initiating criminal cases. Excessively close cooperation with secret informants led some officers of the operational police services to the brink of crime. Thus, the assistant to the head of the Tikhvin Regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vorobiev, recruited the speculator Saigina as a secret informant. Business relationship between them became friendly, and then intimate. Saigina introduced Vorobyov to her speculator friends. He became a regular participant in the feasts organized by the Dyelets, and then began to take money and food from them. Essentially, one of the leaders of the regional department became the patron of a criminal group. Several times, when OBKhSS workers caught speculators red-handed, Vorobiev saved his “d,ruz” from troubles. When employees of the regional department, who did not share their boss’s favorable attitude towards speculators, arrested Saygina for committing a large illegal transaction, Vorobiev organized a provocation, accusing them of appropriating valuables seized during the search. In the spring of 1947, Vorobiev was arrested and tried by a military tribunal. 6. The most characteristic manifestation of corruption in the law enforcement agencies of Leningrad was the Scorpions intelligence operation. In the center of it was A.I. Karnakov. who was a professional swindler. Posing as a responsible employee (district prosecutor, deputy director of the labor distribution bureau, head of the aviation industry supply department, deputy director of the Leningrad City Council complaints bureau, etc.), Karnakov acted as the organizer of many large scams in Leningrad back in the 1930s. He was repeatedly prosecuted. After the start of World War II, Karnakov was evacuated to Sverdlovsk, where he continued to engage in criminal activities. In 1943, he was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in labor camp. However, within six months he is free and appears in Leningrad. Here Karnakov establishes close ties with black market dealers and a number of government officials. Such vigorous activity could not escape the attention of state security agencies. In August 1944, the NKGB Directorate handed over compromising materials on Karnakov to the Leningrad police department, and he was taken into intelligence work. For about two years, Karnakov’s case wandered around the safes of various department employees, but no action was taken on it. This was explained quite simply. The head of one of the OBKhSS departments, Nelidov, turned out to be a very good friend of Karnakov. For bribes, he ensured Karnakov’s safety and, at his requests, organized the termination of criminal cases and release from custody. He also involved two of his subordinates in a criminal connection with Karnakov - detectives Zakusov and Antonov 7. At the beginning of 1946, the swindler came to the attention of the Department for Combating Banditry (OBB) as a liaison to one of the objects of development of the OBKhSS. Having established undercover surveillance of him, OBB operatives found out that Karnakov maintained close ties not only with the criminal element, but also with a number of officials from various departments. Soon, the employees involved in this case received information that Karnakov, through several police officers from the regional departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was organizing the release from prison of persons arrested for profiteering. Workers of the Special Inspectorate and the department of the counterintelligence department "SMERSH" of the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs were involved in the case, and when it was established that among Karnakov's criminal connections, employees of the prosecutor's office and the city executive committee - the Regional MGB Directorate were noticed. The operational-investigative group was headed by one of the deputy chiefs of the KMGB. This case received the code name "Scorpions". Karnakov created a group of corrupt officials who solved a variety of issues - from obtaining an apartment and exemption from military service to the termination of criminal cases. About 700 connections of Karnakov with officials and illegal businessmen were revealed. Evidence sufficient to bring him to trial, were collected for 316 people. Of those brought to criminal responsibility, 59 people were police officers, 47 - prosecutors, lawyers and courts, 10 - city departments and social security, 7 - housing systems, 8 - officers of the Leningrad Military District (including the deputy head of the personnel department L VO Nikolaev), a number of officials of the VTEK and more than one and a half hundred bribe-payers (business executives, trade workers, employees of artels, bases, catering systems, etc.) 8. At the same time, unlike today, the facts of betrayal of official interests on the part of police officers were sufficient a rare occurrence. Each such case was regarded as an emergency and was necessarily reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs to clarify the causes and factors contributing to crimes of this kind. The leadership of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs identified a number of reasons that give rise to crime in the police environment. The weak work of the local staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in personnel selection was put forward in one of the first places. Often, enrollment into the Ministry of Internal Affairs took place without a thorough special check. As a result, people with low moral and professional qualities ended up in the police. Another reason leading to the increase in crime in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, its leaders considered weak political and educational work with personnel, especially with those recently hired. The majority of criminal cases were committed by persons who had worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for less than two years. Of the 59 people brought to justice in the first half of 1947 by the Special Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region, 27 worked in the police for less than 1 year and 11 from a year to two years. For example, policemen of the Leningrad river police detachment Balmont and Shvetsov, recruited to serve in December 1946, were convicted of robbery less than six months later. They took 1,300 rubles from two train passengers on the Sabli-no-Toshio section. and 3 kg of flour. The “defenders of law and order” drank this money away. Balmont was sentenced to 18 years in prison, and Shvetsov - to 6. Policemen of the cavalry squadron Trofimov and Khvoenko, without having worked in the police for even three months, stole 170 kg of oats from a food warehouse. Trofimov was convicted of In the first half of 1947, command personnel accounted for 27%, members and candidate members of the CPSU (b) - 29%. Overall Soviet Union in 1947, commanding officers represented 43% of police officers prosecuted 10. According to documents and orders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, alcohol abuse had a serious negative impact on the state of police crime. In six months, in 1947, 204 people were punished for drunkenness by the Leningrad police (24% of all violations), and 57 people by the regional police. In the second quarter of 1947, compared to the first quarter, the number of penalties for drunkenness in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region increased from 208 to 255 cases. 11. All of the above reasons had an impact on the crime rate in law enforcement agencies. However, they were subjective. The leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs deliberately turned a blind eye to whole line objective reasons, pushing law enforcement officers to break the law. These first of all include the financial situation of law enforcement officials and the general degree of corruption state system. In 1946, the salary of a city policeman was 450 rubles. rural police officer - 200 rubles. district commissioner - 600 rubles. detective - 700 rubles 12. At the same time, a family of four in Leningrad (with two working members and two children) spent on buying food and paying utilities about 1800 rub. and after the abolition of food cards living wage V major cities(Leningrad and Moscow) was approximately 1900 rubles. of which 946 rubles were spent on groceries. 720 rub. - for clothes, 98 rub. - to pay for housing. A significant part of the police (including their families) lived in dormitories, in extremely difficult living conditions. The police were the least resourced unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The salaries of police officers, their supply of food and clothing, and socio-cultural support lagged significantly behind other services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1946, former military personnel transferred to the police were not issued a new police uniform until the time limit for wearing the old combined arms uniform expired. This instruction was canceled only after reports began to arrive en masse from the field that citizens were refusing to comply with the demands of police officers in uniform. In fact, police officers in the post-war period, like the majority of the country's population, lived in poverty. Their income level did not exceed the subsistence level. Did not promote the honesty and integrity of police officers and general situation in the state apparatus. It is widely believed that Stalinism, by establishing total control in society, made corruption impossible. The facts refute this statement. Spreading government controlled on all sectors of the national economy gave impetus to the formation of the shadow economy. In the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, dedicated to the problem of bribery, in particular, it was noted: “Bribery, which is a grave and completely intolerable crime in the Soviet state, has recently become widespread, especially in transport, in trade, supply and household organizations, where in a number of cases, the giving and receiving of bribes by officials is carried out in a hidden form under the guise of “gifts”, illegal “bonuses” for early completion of orders, for unscheduled shipment of goods, for unscheduled stocking of funds and orders, release of goods best quality etc." 14. During the financial audit of the Leningrad region in 1949, the Ministry of Finance established numerous facts of illegal expenditure of public funds by city and regional authorities and the use of official position for personal purposes. The leadership of the regional committee, city committee, regional and city executive committees spent state money for organizing grand banquets, maintaining a hunting farm where representatives of the nomenklatura vacationed, purchasing expensive gifts for “patrons” from Moscow (A Kuznetsov, N. Voznesensky, etc.). The leaders of the city and region were also accused of appropriating the furnishings of the Mariinsky Palace, issuing benefits to staff employees of the executive committee from funds intended to help needy citizens, etc. 15. A similar situation was typical for all regions of the country. The atmosphere of “war of morality” within the state apparatus could not but affect the situation in law enforcement agencies. , city, regional and republican Directorates of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, just like the party-Soviet apparatus, were engaged in self-supply, wasting public funds on personal needs, using police officers as watchmen, gardeners, etc. The former head of the Yaskinsky district of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region, Chernyshev, together with the head of the financial unit of the regional department, squandered over 15 thousand rubles 16. Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, future chairman of the KGB and head of the GRU I. Serov, who demanded to “burn out with a hot iron” cases of bribery in the police, did not consider It is shameful to appropriate and export from Germany over 50 tons of captured property, mainly furs, carpets, paintings, and jewelry. As the former chief testified during interrogation at the MGB operations center NKVD in Berlin, Major General A. Sidnev: “... There is hardly a person in Germany who would not know that Serov is, in fact, the main tycoon in terms of appropriating the loot... Serov only from me received about a million German marks... I simultaneously handed over to Serov's office approximately 3 kilograms of gold and other valuables in items... Serov took over ten of the most precious things for himself... Besides me, other bosses also gave Serov many gold items sectors... Serov’s wife and his secretary Tuzhlov repeatedly came to the warehouse of the Berlin operational sector, where they selected large quantities carpets, tapestries, the best linen, silver dishes and cutlery, as well as other things, and took them with them... Repeatedly seeing Serov off from the airfield in Berlin, I myself saw how his plane was loaded with chests, suitcases, bales and bundles. Serov took a lot of property from Germany, and I can’t even imagine where he could have placed it..." 17. Naturally, ordinary employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs followed the example of high-ranking officials. It became the norm for guard police officers to fleece street vendors, collect fines without receipts or drawing up receipts with an underestimated amount of the fine. Precinct and operational commissioners drank with the sub-account element and informants at their expense, embezzled the property of detainees and funds allocated for agents. The heads of departments and departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received free food, alcoholic beverages, manufactured goods from trading institutions, collective farms and etc. The leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs considered the fight against " negative phenomena"one of the main tasks of their activities. The investigation of crimes committed by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the consideration of complaints and statements about their misconduct were carried out by the Special Inspections of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the local Directorates of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Criminal cases against ordinary police officers were initiated with the consent of the head of the Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, against officers - with sanctions of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Agent-operational services to the police, i.e., prompt identification of bribe-takers, were assigned in 1943-1946. to 2 departments of the Counterintelligence Directorate "SMERSH" NKVD-UNKVD, and after the liquidation of "SMERSH" - to the corresponding departments of the MGB Directorates. Cases of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs convicted of criminal offenses were considered in military tribunals of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was widely practiced to announce sentences of Military Tribunals to all personnel police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The most common punishment was arrest (it was used in 60–70% of cases). The dismissal of discredited employees was also widely used. In 1946, 1,775 people were dismissed from the Leningrad police. for 9 months of 1947 there were already 3823 people. including 948 - from operational and management positions 18. Responsibility for the behavior of employees was assigned personally to the heads of departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They were pointed out the need to know about the behavior of their employees both at work and at home. However, all these measures did not produce a significant effect. The level of malfeasance in the police remained quite high. Along with the above reasons, this was also facilitated by the fact that many local heads of services and divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based on false concepts of “uniform honor”, the need to preserve personnel composition the police, or even personal preferences, often “covered up” for guilty subordinates. Thanks to “patrons” in the authorities, some police officers violated the law for a long time, even in the case of openly criminal acts (theft, bribery) they got off with disciplinary punishments. Thus, the problem of crime in the police is traditional for the Russian state apparatus. In many ways, it is related to the standard of living of society as a whole. Crimes committed by law enforcement officers differ little from crimes committed by others social groups. In the post-war period, police crime as a whole can be characterized as “poor”. The main targets of acquisitive crimes were food, alcohol, and clothing. The amounts of bribes were mostly small. The fight against dishonesty in the law enforcement system can only be successful along with the fight against crime in general. Notes 1. Department of Special Funds of the Information Center of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (OSF IC of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region), f. 1, d. 130, l. 459.2. Ibid., no. 122, l. 321; d. 87, l. 153.3. Ibid., no. 122, l. 321; d. 130, l. 460.4. Ibid., 110, l. 231-232.5. Ibid., l. 166.6. Ibid., l. 130, 460.7. Ibid., no. 122, l. 321.8. IVANOV V.A. "Scorpions": corruption in post-war Leningrad. Political investigation in Russia: history and modernity. St. Petersburg 1997, p. 247.9. OSF IC GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 2, d. 130. l. 461.10. Ibid., 102, l. 159.11. Ibid., 130, l. 461.12. Ibid., f. 1, d. 121, l. 173.13. VAXER A. “Miracle” of the revival or History without retouching. - Neva. 1992, - 11 - 12, p. 337.14. OSF IC GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 2, d. 76, l. 418.15. ZUBKOVA ELO. Personnel policy and purges in the CPSU (1949-1953). - Free thought. 1999, - 4, p. 196.16. OSF IC GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 1, d. 130, l. 460.17. ZHUKOV G.K. Unknown pages of history. - Military archives of Russia, 1993, issue. 1, p. 201-204.18. OSF IC GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 2, d. 93, l. 120.