Once again about the number of those repressed and rehabilitated. How many victims of “Stalinist repressions” were there really?

At the liar's contest

Archival documents say

"To the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee

Comrade Khrushchev N.S.


Prosecutor General R. Rudenko
Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov
Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin"

Number of prisoners

Prisoner mortality

Special camps

Notes:

6. Ibid. P. 26.

9. Ibid. P. 169

24. Ibid. L.53.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid. D. 1155. L.2.

Repression

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The results of Stalin's rule speak for themselves. To devalue them, to form them into public consciousness negative assessment of the Stalin era, fighters against totalitarianism, willy-nilly, have to escalate the horrors, attributing monstrous atrocities to Stalin.

At the liar's contest

In an accusatory rage, the writers of anti-Stalin horror stories seem to be competing to see who can tell the biggest lies, vying with each other to name the astronomical numbers of those killed at the hands of the “bloody tyrant.” Against their background, dissident Roy Medvedev, who limited himself to a “modest” figure of 40 million, looks like some kind of black sheep, a model of moderation and conscientiousness:

“Thus, the total number of victims of Stalinism reaches, according to my calculations, approximately 40 million people.”

And in fact, it is undignified. Another dissident, the son of the repressed Trotskyist revolutionary A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko, without a shadow of embarrassment, names twice the figure:

“These calculations are very, very approximate, but I am sure of one thing: the Stalinist regime bled the people dry, destroying more than 80 million of its best sons.”

Professional “rehabilitators” led by former member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee A. N. Yakovlev are already talking about 100 million:

“According to the most conservative estimates of rehabilitation commission specialists, our country lost about 100 million people during the years of Stalin’s rule. This number includes not only the repressed themselves, but also members of their families doomed to death and even children who could have been born, but were never born.”

However, according to Yakovlev, the notorious 100 million includes not only direct “victims of the regime,” but also unborn children. But the writer Igor Bunich without hesitation claims that all these “100 million people were mercilessly exterminated.”

However, this is not the limit. The absolute record was set by Boris Nemtsov, who announced on November 7, 2003 in the “Freedom of Speech” program on the NTV channel about 150 million people allegedly lost Russian state after 1917.

Who are these fantastically ridiculous figures, eagerly replicated by the Russian and foreign media, intended for? For those who have forgotten how to think for themselves, who are accustomed to uncritically accepting on faith any nonsense coming from television screens.

It’s easy to see the absurdity of the multimillion-dollar numbers of “victims of repression.” It is enough to open any demographic directory and, picking up a calculator, make simple calculations. For those who are too lazy to do this, I will give a small illustrative example.

According to the population census conducted in January 1959, the population of the USSR was 208,827 thousand people. By the end of 1913, 159,153 thousand people lived within the same borders. It is easy to calculate that the average annual population growth of our country in the period from 1914 to 1959 was 0.60%.

Now let's see how the population of England, France and Germany grew in those same years - countries that also took an active part in both world wars.

So, the rate of population growth in the Stalinist USSR turned out to be almost one and a half times higher than in Western “democracies,” although for these states we excluded the extremely unfavorable demographic years of the 1st World War. Could this have happened if the “bloody Stalinist regime” had destroyed 150 million or at least 40 million inhabitants of our country? Of course no!

Archival documents say

To find out the true number of those executed under Stalin, it is not at all necessary to engage in fortune telling on coffee grounds. It is enough to familiarize yourself with the declassified documents. The most famous of them is a memo addressed to N. S. Khrushchev dated February 1, 1954:

"To the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee

Comrade Khrushchev N.S.

In connection with signals received by the CPSU Central Committee from a number of individuals about illegal convictions for counter-revolutionary crimes in past years by the OGPU Collegium, NKVD troikas, and the Special Meeting. By the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals and in accordance with your instructions on the need to review the cases of persons convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes and currently held in camps and prisons, we report:

According to data available from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, for the period from 1921 to the present, 3,777,380 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by the OGPU Collegium, NKVD troikas, the Special Conference, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals, including:

Of the total number of those arrested, approximately, 2,900,000 people were convicted by the OGPU Collegium, NKVD troikas and the Special Conference, and 877,000 people were convicted by courts, military tribunals, the Special Collegium and the Military Collegium.


Prosecutor General R. Rudenko
Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov
Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin"

As is clear from the document, in total, from 1921 to the beginning of 1954, 642,980 people were sentenced to death on political charges, 2,369,220 to imprisonment, and 765,180 to exile.

However, there are more detailed data on the number of those sentenced to death for counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes

Thus, between 1921 and 1953, 815,639 people were sentenced to death. In total, in 1918–1953, 4,308,487 people were brought to criminal liability in cases of state security agencies, of which 835,194 were sentenced to capital punishment.

So, there were slightly more “repressed” than indicated in the report dated February 1, 1954. However, the difference is not too great - the numbers are of the same order.

In addition, it is quite possible that among those who received sentences on political charges there were a fair number of criminals. On one of the certificates stored in the archives, on the basis of which the above table was compiled, there is a pencil note:

“Total convicts for 1921–1938. - 2,944,879 people, of which 30% (1,062 thousand) are criminals"

In this case, the total number of “victims of repression” does not exceed three million. However, to finally clarify this issue, it is necessary extra work with sources.

It should also be borne in mind that not all sentences were carried out. For example, of the 76 death sentences handed down by the Tyumen District Court in the first half of 1929, by January 1930, 46 had been changed or overturned by higher authorities, and of the remaining, only nine were carried out.

From July 15, 1939 to April 20, 1940, 201 prisoners were sentenced to capital punishment for disorganizing camp life and production. However, then for some of them the death penalty was replaced by imprisonment for terms of 10 to 15 years.

In 1934, there were 3,849 prisoners in NKVD camps who were sentenced to death and commuted to imprisonment. In 1935 there were 5671 such prisoners, in 1936 - 7303, in 1937 - 6239, in 1938 - 5926, in 1939 - 3425, in 1940 - 4037 people.

Number of prisoners

At first, the number of prisoners in forced labor camps (ITL) was relatively small. So, on January 1, 1930, it amounted to 179,000 people, on January 1, 1931 - 212,000, on January 1, 1932 - 268,700, on January 1, 1933 - 334,300, on January 1, 1934 - 510 307 people.

In addition to the ITL, there were correctional labor colonies (CLCs), where those sentenced to short terms were sent. Until the fall of 1938, the penitentiary complexes, together with the prisons, were subordinate to the Department of Places of Detention (OMP) of the NKVD of the USSR. Therefore, for the years 1935–1938, only joint statistics have been found so far. Since 1939, penal colonies were under the jurisdiction of the Gulag, and prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Main Prison Directorate (GTU) of the NKVD of the USSR.

How much can you trust these numbers? All of them are taken from the internal reports of the NKVD - secret documents not intended for publication. In addition, these summary figures are quite consistent with the initial reports; they can be broken down monthly, as well as by individual camps:

Let us now calculate the number of prisoners per capita. On January 1, 1941, as can be seen from the table above, the total number of prisoners in the USSR was 2,400,422 people. The exact population of the USSR at this time is unknown, but is usually estimated at 190–195 million.

Thus, we get from 1230 to 1260 prisoners for every 100 thousand population. On January 1, 1950, the number of prisoners in the USSR was 2,760,095 people - the maximum figure for the entire period of Stalin's reign. The population of the USSR at this time numbered 178 million 547 thousand. We get 1546 prisoners per 100 thousand population, 1.54%. This is the highest figure ever.

Let's calculate a similar indicator for modern USA. Currently, there are two types of places of deprivation of liberty: jail - an approximate analogue of our temporary detention centers, in which those under investigation are kept, as well as convicts serving short sentences, and prison - the prison itself. At the end of 1999, there were 1,366,721 people in prisons and 687,973 in jails (see the website of the Bureau of Legal Statistics of the US Department of Justice), which gives a total of 2,054,694. The population of the United States at the end of 1999 was approximately 275 million Therefore, we get 747 prisoners per 100 thousand population.

Yes, half as much as Stalin, but not ten times. It’s somehow undignified for a power that has taken upon itself the protection of “human rights” on a global scale.

Moreover, this is a comparison of the peak number of prisoners in the Stalinist USSR, which was also caused first by the civil and then by the Great Patriotic War. And among the so-called “victims of political repression” there will be a fair share of supporters of the white movement, collaborators, Hitler’s accomplices, members of the ROA, policemen, not to mention ordinary criminals.

There are calculations that compare the average number of prisoners over a period of several years.

The data on the number of prisoners in the Stalinist USSR exactly coincides with the above. According to these data, it turns out that on average for the period from 1930 to 1940, there were 583 prisoners per 100,000 people, or 0.58%. Which is significantly less than the same figure in Russia and the USA in the 90s.

What is the total number of people who were imprisoned under Stalin? Of course, if you take a table with the annual number of prisoners and sum up the rows, as many anti-Sovietists do, the result will be incorrect, since most of them were sentenced to more than a year. Therefore, it should be assessed not by the amount of those imprisoned, but by the amount of those convicted, which was given above.

How many of the prisoners were “political”?

As we see, until 1942, the “repressed” made up no more than a third of the prisoners held in the Gulag camps. And only then their share increased, receiving a worthy “replenishment” in the person of Vlasovites, policemen, elders and other “fighters against communist tyranny.” The percentage of “political” in correctional labor colonies was even smaller.

Prisoner mortality

Available archival documents make it possible to illuminate this issue.

In 1931, 7,283 people died in the ITL (3.03% of the average annual number), in 1932 - 13,197 (4.38%), in 1933 - 67,297 (15.94%), in 1934 - 26,295 prisoners (4.26%).

For 1953, data is provided for the first three months.

As we see, mortality in places of detention (especially in prisons) did not reach those fantastic values ​​that denouncers like to talk about. But still its level is quite high. It increases especially strongly in the first years of the war. As was stated in the certificate of mortality according to the NKVD OITK for 1941, compiled by the acting. Head of the Sanitary Department of the Gulag NKVD I.K. Zitserman:

Basically, mortality began to increase sharply from September 1941, mainly due to the transfer of convicts from units located in the front-line areas: from the BBK and Vytegorlag to the OITK of the Vologda and Omsk regions, from the OITK of the Moldavian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Leningrad region. in OITK Kirov, Molotov and Sverdlovsk regions. As a rule, a significant part of the journey of several hundred kilometers before loading into wagons was carried out on foot. Along the route there was absolutely no minimum provision necessary products food (they did not receive all the bread and even water), as a result of this confinement, the prisoners suffered severe exhaustion, a very high % of vitamin deficiencies, in particular pellagra, which caused significant mortality along the way and upon arrival at the corresponding OITK, which were not prepared to accept a significant number of replenishments. At the same time, the introduction of reduced food standards by 25–30% (order No. 648 and 0437) with an extended working day to 12 hours, and often the absence of basic food products, even at reduced standards, could not but affect the increase in morbidity and mortality

However, since 1944, mortality has decreased significantly. By the beginning of the 1950s, in camps and colonies it fell below 1%, and in prisons - below 0.5% per year.

Special camps

Let's say a few words about the notorious Special Camps (special camps), created in accordance with Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 416-159ss of February 21, 1948. These camps (as well as the Special Prisons that already existed by that time) were supposed to concentrate all those sentenced to imprisonment for espionage, sabotage, terrorism, as well as Trotskyists, right-wingers, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white emigrants, members of anti-Soviet organizations and groups and “individuals who pose a danger due to their anti-Soviet connections.” Prisoners of special prisons were to be used for hard physical work.

As we see, the mortality rate of prisoners in special detention centers was only slightly higher than the mortality rate in ordinary correctional labor camps. Contrary to popular belief, the special camps were not “death camps” in which the elite of the dissident intelligentsia were supposedly exterminated; moreover, the largest contingent of their inhabitants were “nationalists” - the forest brothers and their accomplices.

Notes:

1. Medvedev R. A. Tragic statistics // Arguments and facts. 1989, February 4–10. No. 5(434). P. 6. The well-known researcher of repression statistics V.N. Zemskov claims that Roy Medvedev immediately renounced his article: “Roy Medvedev himself even before the publication of my articles (meaning Zemskov’s articles in “Arguments and Facts” starting with no. 38 for 1989. - I.P.) placed in one of the issues of “Arguments and Facts” for 1989 an explanation that his article in No. 5 for the same year is invalid. Mr. Maksudov is probably not entirely aware of this story, otherwise he would hardly have undertaken to defend calculations that are far from the truth, which their author himself, having realized his mistake, publicly renounced” (Zemskov V.N. On the issue of the scale of repression in THE USSR // Sociological research. 1995. No. 9. P. 121). However, in reality, Roy Medvedev did not even think of disavowing his publication. In No. 11 (440) for March 18–24, 1989, his answers to questions from a correspondent of “Arguments and Facts” were published, in which, confirming the “facts” stated in the previous article, Medvedev simply clarified that responsibility for the repressions was not the entire Communist Party as a whole, but only its leadership.

2. Antonov-Ovseenko A.V. Stalin without a mask. M., 1990. P. 506.

3. Mikhailova N. Underpants of counter-revolution // Premier. Vologda, 2002, July 24–30. No. 28(254). P. 10.

4. Bunich I. Sword of the President. M., 2004. P. 235.

5. Population of the countries of the world / Ed. B. Ts. Urlanis. M., 1974. P. 23.

6. Ibid. P. 26.

7. GARF. F.R-9401. Op.2. D.450. L.30–65. Quote by: Dugin A.N. Stalinism: legends and facts // Word. 1990. No. 7. P. 26.

8. Mozokhin O. B. Cheka-OGPU Punishing sword of the dictatorship of the proletariat. M., 2004. P. 167.

9. Ibid. P. 169

10. GARF. F.R-9401. Op.1. D.4157. L.202. Quote by: Popov V.P. State terror in Soviet Russia. 1923–1953: sources and their interpretation // Domestic archives. 1992. No. 2. P. 29.

11. About the work of the Tyumen District Court. Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR of January 18, 1930 // Arbitrage practice RSFSR. 1930, February 28. No. 3. P. 4.

12. Zemskov V. N. GULAG (historical and sociological aspect) // Sociological studies. 1991. No. 6. P. 15.

13. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D. 1155. L.7.

14. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D. 1155. L.1.

15. Number of prisoners in the correctional labor camp: 1935–1948 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.2; 1949 - Ibid. D.1319. L.2; 1950 - Ibid. L.5; 1951 - Ibid. L.8; 1952 - Ibid. L.11; 1953 - Ibid. L. 17.

In penal colonies and prisons (average for the month of January):. 1935 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L. 17; 1936 - Ibid. L. ZO; 1937 - Ibid. L.41; 1938 -Ibid. L.47.

In the ITK: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1145. L.2ob; 1940 - Ibid. D.1155. L.30; 1941 - Ibid. L.34; 1942 - Ibid. L.38; 1943 - Ibid. L.42; 1944 - Ibid. L.76; 1945 - Ibid. L.77; 1946 - Ibid. L.78; 1947 - Ibid. L.79; 1948 - Ibid. L.80; 1949 - Ibid. D.1319. L.Z; 1950 - Ibid. L.6; 1951 - Ibid. L.9; 1952 - Ibid. L. 14; 1953 - Ibid. L. 19.

In prisons: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1145. L.1ob; 1940 - GARF. F.R-9413. Op.1. D.6. L.67; 1941 - Ibid. L. 126; 1942 - Ibid. L.197; 1943 - Ibid. D.48. L.1; 1944 - Ibid. L.133; 1945 - Ibid. D.62. L.1; 1946 - Ibid. L. 107; 1947 - Ibid. L.216; 1948 - Ibid. D.91. L.1; 1949 - Ibid. L.64; 1950 - Ibid. L.123; 1951 - Ibid. L. 175; 1952 - Ibid. L.224; 1953 - Ibid. D.162.L.2ob.

16. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.20–22.

17. Population of the countries of the world / Ed. B. Ts. Urlaisa. M., 1974. P. 23.

18. http://lenin-kerrigan.livejournal.com/518795.html | https://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Die_meisten_Gefangenen_weltweit_leben_in_US-Gef%C3%A4ngnissen

19. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D. 1155. L.3.

20. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.26–27.

21. Dugin A. Stalinism: legends and facts // Slovo. 1990. No. 7. P. 5.

22. Zemskov V. N. GULAG (historical and sociological aspect) // Sociological studies. 1991. No. 7. pp. 10–11.

23. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L.1.

24. Ibid. L.53.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid. D. 1155. L.2.

27. Mortality in ITL: 1935–1947 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.2; 1948 - Ibid. D. 1190. L.36, 36v.; 1949 - Ibid. D. 1319. L.2, 2v.; 1950 - Ibid. L.5, 5v.; 1951 - Ibid. L.8, 8v.; 1952 - Ibid. L.11, 11v.; 1953 - Ibid. L. 17.

Penal colonies and prisons: 1935–1036 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L.52; 1937 - Ibid. L.44; 1938 - Ibid. L.50.

ITK: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L.60; 1940 - Ibid. L.70; 1941 - Ibid. D.2784. L.4ob, 6; 1942 - Ibid. L.21; 1943 - Ibid. D.2796. L.99; 1944 - Ibid. D.1155. L.76, 76ob.; 1945 - Ibid. L.77, 77ob.; 1946 - Ibid. L.78, 78ob.; 1947 - Ibid. L.79, 79ob.; 1948 - Ibid. L.80: 80rpm; 1949 - Ibid. D.1319. L.3, 3v.; 1950 - Ibid. L.6, 6v.; 1951 - Ibid. L.9, 9v.; 1952 - Ibid. L.14, 14v.; 1953 - Ibid. L.19, 19v.

Prisons: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9413. Op.1. D.11. L.1ob.; 1940 - Ibid. L.2ob.; 1941 - Ibid. L. Goiter; 1942 - Ibid. L.4ob.; 1943 -Ibid., L.5ob.; 1944 - Ibid. L.6ob.; 1945 - Ibid. D.10. L.118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133; 1946 - Ibid. D.11. L.8ob.; 1947 - Ibid. L.9ob.; 1948 - Ibid. L.10ob.; 1949 - Ibid. L.11ob.; 1950 - Ibid. L.12ob.; 1951 - Ibid. L.1 3v.; 1952 - Ibid. D.118. L.238, 248, 258, 268, 278, 288, 298, 308, 318, 326ob., 328ob.; D.162. L.2ob.; 1953 - Ibid. D.162. L.4v., 6v., 8v.

28. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1.D.1181.L.1.

29. System of forced labor camps in the USSR, 1923–1960: Directory. M., 1998. P. 52.

30. Dugin A. N. Unknown GULAG: Documents and facts. M.: Nauka, 1999. P. 47.

31. 1952 - GARF.F.R-9414. Op.1.D.1319. L.11, 11 vol. 13, 13v.; 1953 - Ibid. L. 18.

All tables in Excel file, can be downloaded from the link

In the USSR, the term “rehabilitation” became especially widespread under N. S. Khrushchev in connection with the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of people repressed under I. V. Stalin, most of them posthumously. Listed below are only a small part of the rehabilitated people - known both in Russia and abroad.

The process of rehabilitation of repressed persons in the USSR began in 1953 - 1954. , illegal acts against peoples subjected to resettlement and deportation were canceled, decisions of extrajudicial bodies of the OGPU-NKVD-MGB made in political cases were recognized as illegal. However, already in the early 60s. the number of those rehabilitated is gradually decreasing, the reason for which is the relapse of the totalitarian policies of the state, including attempts to return to Stalinist ideological principles. Then the rehabilitation process, however, was continued in the late 80s. By the resolution of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee of July 11, 1988, “On additional measures to complete the work related to the rehabilitation of those unreasonably repressed in the 30s, 40s and early 50s,” an instruction was given to the USSR Prosecutor’s Office and the USSR KGB in connection with local authorities authorities will continue to work on reviewing cases against persons repressed in the 30-40s. , without the need for applications for rehabilitation and complaints from repressed citizens. On January 16, 1989, the Decree of the Presidium was issued Supreme Council USSR, overturning out-of-court decisions made in the period of the 30s - early 50s. extrajudicial “troikas” of the NKVD-UNKVD, collegiums of the OGPU and “special meetings” of the NKVD-MGB-MVD of the USSR. All citizens who were subjected to repression by these bodies were rehabilitated, excluding traitors to the Motherland, punishers, Nazi criminals, workers involved in falsifying criminal cases, as well as persons who committed murders.

According to information provided by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, over the entire period of rehabilitation as of January 1, 2002, over 4 million citizens were rehabilitated, including 2,438,000 people who were convicted judicially and extrajudicially to criminal penalties.

The legality of commissions for the rehabilitation of political prisoners, however, seems highly questionable. Thus, the first commission created by Khrushchev, along with his personal appointee Shvernik, included persons convicted of anti-Soviet activities: O. Shatunovskaya, who provided deliberately false figures for the number of prisoners and executed. Subsequently, the Commission was headed by the ardent anti-Salinist A. N. Yakovlev, who also presented false data on both the number of those imprisoned and the number of those rehabilitated. Extremely often for propaganda purposes, like Western ones. Likewise, in Russian anti-Stalin literature, the number of prisoners in general is identified with the number of “political” prisoners. Even if the number of political prisoners includes only those convicted under Article 58 (their number never exceeded 25% of the total number of prisoners), it is not taken into account that the overwhelming part of this article was included in all later versions of the Criminal Code of the USSR and the modern Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, because it is de- in fact, included entire sections of the modern Criminal Code.

Decisions on rehabilitation were made by extrajudicial bodies on the basis of voluntary ideas about the legality of the leaders and members of the Commission, who do not have not only judicial powers, but even legal education. Yes, comrade. Shvernik had no higher education, and A.N Yakovlev had a historical education.

More on topic 30. Rehabilitation of victims of political repression:

  1. Social and psychological rehabilitation of disabled people. Rehabilitation of children and adolescents with developmental disabilities. activities of MSEC services and rehabilitation of disabled people.

The process of rehabilitation of those convicted in the period from the 20s to the early 50s began immediately after Stalin's death. According to the 1953 decree “On Amnesty” of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, up to one and a half million people were released.

Mass legal rehabilitation began in 1961. Then, due to the lack of evidence of a crime, 737,182 people were rehabilitated; from 1962 to 1983, 157,055 people were rehabilitated. The rehabilitation process was resumed in the late 80s. Then almost all the repressed leaders of the CPSU (b) were rehabilitated, and many of those who were declared “class enemies”. In 1988-89, cases involving 856,582 people were reviewed, and 844,740 people were rehabilitated. And finally, in 1991, the Victims Rehabilitation Act was signed into law. political repression" From the start of this law until 2015, more than 3.7 million people were rehabilitated. And yet, even with such a large-scale effort, which involved reviewing millions of cases, not all of those repressed were found innocent. Who never received rehabilitation? The 1991 law prohibits the rehabilitation of those who themselves participated in the repression.

Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda

From 1934 to 1936 he served as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. It was under the leadership of Yagoda that the Gulag was created. He also began the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal with the help of prisoners. He officially bore the title of “the first initiator, organizer and ideological leader of the socialist industry of the taiga and the North.” The machine he created eventually crushed him too: in 1937 he was arrested, and a year later he was shot. Yagoda was accused of committing “anti-state and criminal crimes”, of “connections with Trotsky, Bukharin and Rykov, organizing a Trotskyist-fascist conspiracy in the NKVD, preparing an assassination attempt on Stalin and Yezhov, preparing a coup and intervention.”

Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov

This man, as you know, headed the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs from 1936 to 1938. It is he who holds the dubious honor of organizing the repressions of 1937-38, known as the “Great Terror.” These repressions were popularly called “Yezhovshchina.” In 1939 he was arrested, and in 1940 he was executed on charges of preparing an anti-Soviet coup d'etat and espionage in favor of five foreign intelligence services.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria

Since 1941 Lavrentiy Beria - general secretary state security. Beria – “ right hand Stalin,” a man from the inner circle of the “Father of Nations,” became almost a symbol for many generations of Soviet people Stalin's repressions, despite the fact that during the period of the “Great Terror” it was not Beria who held the post of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs. Lavrentiy Pavlovich was not spared the fate of his predecessors; he also became a victim of the flywheel of arrests and executions launched in the early 30s on strange charges. Beria was arrested in 1953, found guilty of espionage and conspiracy to seize power, and executed.

Dekanozov, Meshik, Vlodzimirsky, Merkulov

These are people from Beria’s inner circle, security officers, active participants in Stalin’s repressions. And Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov, and Pavel Yakovlevich Meshik, and Lev Emelyanovich Vladzimirsky, and Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov were arrested in the Beria case, found guilty of espionage with the aim of seizing power, and executed in 1953.

Legal incident

Experts say: with regard to these and other similar persons, there is a certain legal incident. It is obvious that neither Yagoda, nor Yezhov, nor Beria, nor his henchmen committed the crimes that were accused of them. They were not spies of countless foreign intelligence services and none of them attempted to seize power in the country. However, the rehabilitation commission refused to find these people innocent. The basis for the refusal was the indication that they themselves were the organizers mass repression, and therefore cannot be considered their victims. From a legal point of view, there may be some inaccuracy in the wording; in any case, there are lawyers who insist on this. However, to be fair, everything is true.

Over the years Soviet power millions of people became victims of the tyranny of a totalitarian state, were subjected to repression for political and religious beliefs, according to social, national and other characteristics. IN Russian Federation The law was adopted on October 18, 1991. “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression.”

What is rehabilitation? For the answer to this question, we turned to the Small Academic Dictionary. “Rehabilitation is the restoration of the honor and reputation of an incorrectly accused or defamed person.”

How did the process of rehabilitation of the dispossessed go? The rehabilitation process in the 1930s. was complicated by the need to collect a whole package of documents, as well as by the fact that the peasants’ applications were considered by various authorities. From 70 to 90% of decisions made on complaints were negative. In fact, the “stigma of a kulak” remained, despite the restoration of voting rights, the partial return of property, the process of restoring the rights of the dispossessed, which stopped after 1937 and was resumed in 1985. - Perestroika and the policy of glasnost began. Attempts to move away from “stagnation” in society could not but lead to a rethinking of the historical past. As it turned out after a detailed study, they first started talking about the closed pages of history only in 1985. Since 1987 the rehabilitation process began, which affected politicians, in 1990 repressions against peasants during the period of collectivization were declared illegal.

According to the law “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression” (Article 3), the following are subject to rehabilitation:

· convicted of state and other crimes;

· repressed by decision of the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, UNKVD, NKVD, MGB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, prosecutor's office, commissions, “special meetings”, “twos”, “troikas” and other bodies;

· unjustifiably placed in psychiatric institutions for compulsory treatment;

· unjustifiably brought to criminal liability with the case terminated for non-rehabilitating reasons;

· recognized as socially dangerous political reasons and subjected to imprisonment, exile, deportation without being charged with committing a specific crime.

Rehabilitated, previously dispossessed persons are also given back the real estate necessary for living (or its value), if it was not nationalized or (municipalized) destroyed during the Great Patriotic War and in the absence of other obstacles provided for in Article 16.1 of the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression”.

In the generally accepted sense of the word, rehabilitation means any restoration of a citizen to his rights. In accordance with established legal concepts, the rehabilitation of a person who was brought in as an accused is considered to be an acquittal during a review of the case, a decision to terminate a criminal case due to the absence of a crime, for the absence of corpus delicti or lack of proof of participation in the commission of a crime, as well as a decision to terminate cases of administrative offense.

The Law of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression of October 18, 1991, supplemented by a number of laws and by-laws, may have served as the basis for the rehabilitation of dispossessed and deported peasants. The implementation of rehabilitation revealed practical problems associated with confirming the facts of dispossession.

Undoubtedly, the rehabilitation of the dispossessed played a significant role in terms of restoring historical justice in relation to the great social group. There is no doubt that the consequences of dispossession and the losses suffered by the peasantry will affect the life of society and the state for a long time.

In 1993, my grandmother Lidiya Nikolaevna sent a request for the rehabilitation of her relatives to the Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Tambov Region. In 1994, she received a letter informing her that case No. 7219 about the stay under the supervision of Ivan Ignatievich Nikitin and his family was in the archives of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Chelyabinsk Region. Lidiya Nikolaevna sent the following request to the Information Center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Chelyabinsk Region. In April 1994, she received a certificate of rehabilitation of Nikitin Ivan Ignatievich, who was repressed in 1931. The certificate was issued by the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Tambov Region. In June of the same year, a response came from the information center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Chelyabinsk Region, in addition to a certificate of being under supervision with restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Ivan Ignatievich Nikitin, a certificate of rehabilitation of Anna Ivanovna Polyanskaya (Nikitina), a questionnaire for the evicted kulak household, and a questionnaire were sent. Based on these documents, Anna Ivanovna received a certificate stating that she is a victim of political repression and has the right to benefits established by Article 16 of the Federal Law “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression.” In 1996, Lidiya Nikolaevna Parshukova (Polyanskaya) received the same certificate and certificate. Volodar Nikolaevich Polyansky was recognized as a victim of political repression. At the ATC information center Sverdlovsk region Archival materials are stored on the case of repressions against Arseny Andreevich Polyansky and his family.

Polyanskaya (Nikitina) Anna Ivanovna died in 2005 at the age of 93.

Three incomplete years without Stalin preceded Khrushchev’s report “On the cult of personality and its consequences” at a closed meeting of the 20th Party Congress. But these years were extremely eventful, containing a fierce struggle for power between the leader’s heirs, and carried out in the traditions of the mid-1930s. the reprisal against Beria, Abakumov, and other executioners, and the bashful silence of the names of the organizers, the reasons, the scale of previous repressions, and the difficult reassessment of values ​​that began, and the activities of the first rehabilitation commissions of the CPSU Central Committee under the leadership of Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Pospelov.

Paradoxically, the first acts of rehabilitation were initiated by a man whose name was strongly associated by public opinion with the punitive authorities and the arbitrariness that was happening in the country. In the spring of 1953, Beria showed increased activity, literally bombarding the Presidium of the Central Committee with his notes and proposals. They, however, affected only some of his closest employees, relatives of senior party dignitaries, as well as those sentenced to up to 5 years, i.e. on mild charges. It was proposed to reconsider the cases of the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. (the so-called cases of Kremlin doctors, the Mingrelian nationalist group, the heads of the artillery department and the aviation industry, the murder of the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee Mikhoels and others). But there was no talk of mass repressions of the 30s. or the deportations of peoples during the Great Patriotic War, to which Stalin’s henchman had a direct connection. And it's clear why: main goal Beria's initiatives were a desire to strengthen his own position in power structures, to raise his personal authority by any means, excluding himself from number of persons responsible for the crimes of the Stalinist regime.

Beria's removal, it seemed, was supposed to facilitate the process of political rehabilitation. But that did not happen.

Malenkov, who still remained the formal leader of the country, at the July (1953) Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee introduced the words about the “cult of Stalin’s personality.” But for Malenkov, this cult meant, first of all, the defenselessness of the party and state nomenklatura from the arbitrariness of the leader. Being involved in organizing mass repressions, he, of course, could not take a large-scale approach to this problem.

Months were spent on yet another redistribution of power within the Presidium of the Central Committee, reprisals against supporters and relatives of Beria and other heads of punitive services, and reshuffle of personnel in security agencies, Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office, review of the results of the amnesty announced on Beria's initiative. The military was thanked for their active role in the arrest of Beria: the rehabilitation of 54 convicted generals and admirals took place Soviet army, including those close to Zhukov - Telegin, Kryukov and Varennikov. But numerous letters received from prisoners, exiles and special settlers remained unanswered. The decisions taken during this period were distinguished only by a more definite indication of the supposedly main culprits of the repressions - former senior officials of the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were hastily tried.

Only at the beginning of 1954, when Khrushchev’s leading position in the party and state elite was clearly identified, rehabilitation received a new impetus, although, having set a course to expand the rehabilitation process, to establish the causes and consequences of repression, Khrushchev, like the overthrown Beria, was far from guided by selfless motives. This is evidenced, on the one hand, by the secrecy of statistical data on those arrested by the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB for 1921-1953. (they were counted, probably on behalf of the first secretary of the Central Committee, already in December 1953), and on the other hand, the rapid rehabilitation of the participants in the “Leningrad case.” Khrushchev became well versed in Stalin's methods of using compromising materials to weaken rivals in the struggle for power. Restoring justice in relation to the Leningraders compromised Malenkov, one of the culprits in the death of Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and their comrades. Conducted with wide publicity among the party apparatus, this rehabilitation strengthened Khrushchev’s authority, paving the way for him to gain sole power.

But no matter what the motives of the rulers, the aspirations and hopes of political prisoners and exiles began to gradually come true. Along with the establishment of a judicial procedure for reviewing cases (according to the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 1, 1953, the Supreme Court of the USSR received the right to review, upon the protest of the Prosecutor General of the USSR, the decisions of the OGPU board, the Special Meeting and twos and threes), in May 1954 the Central a commission to review the cases of those convicted of “counter-revolutionary crimes” held in camps, colonies, prisons and in exile in settlements; similar commissions were created locally. The Central Commission received the right to review the cases of persons convicted by the Special Meeting of the NKVD-MGB or the OGPU Collegium; local commissions were given the functions of reviewing the cases of those convicted with twos and threes. To study the situation of special settlers, a commission was formed under the chairmanship of Voroshilov, the result of which was the well-known resolution “On the lifting of some restrictions on the legal status of special settlers” dated July 5, 1954. Those previously sentenced to up to 5 years for “anti-Soviet activities” were released from exile. restrictions on special settlements were lifted for dispossessed people and citizens of German nationality who lived in areas from which evictions were not carried out.

The mechanism for making decisions about rehabilitation was not simple. Only in 1954 did the prosecutor's office gain the right to request archival and investigative files from the KGB, which made it possible to increase the number of considered personal files of victims of repression convicted in court. Prosecutors, investigators, and military lawyers were supposed to conduct a so-called review of the case, during which various information about the repressed person was collected, witnesses were called, and archival information was requested. A special role was played by certificates from the Central Party Archive, which noted the affiliation of the repressed person with one or another opposition or the absence of such data.

The employee who conducted the inspection drew up a conclusion. On the basis of this document, the Prosecutor General of the USSR, his deputies, the Chief Military Prosecutor submitted (or may not have done so) to the plenum, the Criminal Collegium or the Military Collegium Supreme Court USSR protest on the case. The court made a ruling. It was not necessarily rehabilitative. The court, for example, could reclassify the presented articles (political into criminal and vice versa), could leave the previous sentence in force, and finally could limit itself to only reducing the penalty.

Due to the complicated procedure for rehabilitation, by the beginning of 1956 the volume of unrevised cases remained enormous. In order to somehow speed up the process of release from the camps, the country's leadership decided to create special traveling commissions, which were allowed to make decisions on the release of prisoners on the spot, without waiting for a determination on rehabilitation.

One more important circumstance should be taken into account. In accordance with the established procedure in the country, all fundamental issues of the rehabilitation of especially famous people in the country were first submitted to the Presidium of the Central Committee. It was this all-powerful body that was the highest “prosecutorial” and “judicial” authority, determining the fates of not only the living, but also the dead. Without his consent, the prosecutor's office did not have the right to submit proposals for reviewing cases to the courts, and the courts did not have the right to make decisions on rehabilitation.

However, one should not think that the decisions of the Presidium of the Central Committee were always immediately implemented. For example, when special camps were transformed into ordinary forced labor camps, they retained the old internal rules that regulated the behavior of “especially dangerous state criminals.” Instead of their last name, they still called their number, which they wore on their clothes. Another example is the fate of those convicted in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. After the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee, their rehabilitation lasted for several years. Moreover, in the second half of the 1980s. I had to return to this problem again.

The Presidium of the Central Committee received generalized and varied information about the progress of rehabilitation. With each note, with each revised case, an increasingly sinister picture of crimes emerged, which was further difficult to hide from the people. The scale of the atrocities defied description. The more documents were revealed, the more pressing difficult and unpleasant questions arose, and first of all - about the causes and culprits of the tragedy, about the attitude towards Stalin and his policies, about making the bloody facts public.

The situation inside the Presidium of the Central Committee gradually became tense. Members of the party Areopagus did not argue during the rehabilitation of Chubar, Rudzutak, Kosior, Postyshev, Kaminsky, Gamarnik, Eikhe, and other famous Bolsheviks, Bulgarian or Polish communists. Voting on these resolutions, as the minutes show, was always unanimous. They did not argue even when the security ministers and the Prosecutor General of the USSR proposed issuing false certificates about the circumstances and date of death to the relatives of those executed and killed in the camps, in order to thereby obscure the true scale and course of the repressions. They also agreed that it was impossible to question the results of the internal party struggle and to rehabilitate the Trotskyists, opportunists, as well as the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and representatives of other socialist parties; that it is necessary, if possible, to refrain from returning to former special settlers and exiles the property confiscated from them during the repressions; that Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists should continue to remain in places of exile under administrative control.

Disputes arose around another, close and sick person - personal responsibility for crimes. Of course, the question was not raised in such a direct formulation at meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee and, for obvious reasons, could not be raised. However, the question of responsibility was invisibly present at meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee, as soon as the discussion came up about the attitude towards Stalin’s legacy and the publication of information about repressions.

On November 5, 1955, a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee was held, at which events in connection with the celebration of the next anniversary were considered October revolution. The question was raised about Stalin's upcoming birthday in December. In previous years, this day was always celebrated with a ceremonial meeting. And for the first time, a decision was made not to hold the celebrations. Khrushchev, Bulganin, Mikoyan spoke for this. Kaganovich and Voroshilov objected, emphasizing that such a decision “would not be well received by the people.”

A new heated debate unfolded on December 31, 1955, when discussing the circumstances of Kirov’s murder. It was suggested that security officers had a hand in the murder. It was decided to review the investigative files of former NKVD leaders Yagoda, Yezhov and Medved. At the same time, to clarify the fate of the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, elected at the 17th Party Congress, a commission was created headed by the Secretary of the Central Committee Pospelov. Its members included Secretary of the Central Committee Aristov, Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Shvernik, Deputy Chairman of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee Komarov. The commission received the right to request all materials necessary for work.

The issue of repression was also raised at meetings on February 1 and 9, 1956. During a heated discussion of materials about the so-called military conspiracy in the Red Army and the actual guilt of Tukhachevsky, Yakir and other military leaders, members of the Presidium considered it necessary to personally interrogate one of the investigators in this case - Rhodes. After his revelations, after the members of the Presidium and the secretaries of the Central Committee became acquainted with the horrific facts presented in the report of Pospelov’s commission about the barbaric methods of investigation and mass extermination in the 1930s. members of the party, Khrushchev ensured that the issue of Stalin’s personality cult and repressions was included on the agenda of the upcoming 20th Congress of the CPSU. The objections of Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich could no longer be taken into account either politically or morally.

What motives determined the position of the majority of the Presidium of the Central Committee, which supported Khrushchev? Mikoyan later wrote that it would have been better to tell the party leaders themselves about the repressions and not wait for anyone else to take charge of it. Such information, Mikoyan believed, could show the congress delegates that his former comrades had recently learned the whole truth about Stalin’s crimes, as a result of a special study undertaken by Pospelov’s commission. Thus, members of the Presidium of the Central Committee tried to absolve themselves of blame for the bloody terror.

Confessions of this kind are also contained in the memoirs of Khrushchev, who not only expected to evade personal responsibility, but also understood that the publication of facts about Stalin’s crimes would primarily discredit the oldest and still authoritative members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, who had long worked side by side with Stalin. For some reason, Khrushchev was convinced that they would not talk about his involvement in the repressions.

When assessing the reasons that prompted us to choose a course towards criticizing Stalinism, in addition to subjective aspects, one more circumstance should be taken into account. By this time, the majority of the Presidium of the Central Committee had come to the understanding that using previous methods it was unlikely to be able to keep the country in obedience and maintain the regime in difficult material conditions. population situation, low level life, acute food and housing crises. The recent uprisings of prisoners in the Mountain camp in Norilsk, in the River camp in Vorkuta, in Steplag, Unzhlag, Vyatlag, Karlag and other “islands of the Gulag archipelago” forced us to remember this. In unfavorable conditions, uprisings could become the detonator of great social upheavals. Therefore, in reality, the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee had a limited choice of options.

The famous report on the cult of personality and its consequences, delivered on February 25, 1956 in deathly silence at a closed session of the 20th Congress, made a stunning impression on the delegates. This bold, revealing document for its time, despite the initial plans to keep it secret, was brought to the attention of the entire party, workers of the Soviet apparatus, and activists of Komsomol organizations. The heads of delegations of foreign communist and workers' parties present at the congress were familiarized with it. Then, in an adjusted and somewhat abbreviated form, the report was sent for review to the chairmen and first secretaries of all friendly communist parties in the world.

From that moment on, criticism of Stalinism and the crimes inextricably linked with it became public. Opened new stage in the rehabilitation of victims of repression.

A.N.Artizov

Documents and scientific reference materials for them are published in the publication: Rehabilitation: how it happened . Documents of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and other materials. In 3 volumes. T. 1. March 1953 – February 1956. Comp. ARTIZOV A.N., SIGACHEV Y.V., KHLOPOV V.G., SHEVCHUK I.N. M.: International Foundation "Democracy", 2000.