Estimates of the number of victims of Stalin's repressions vary dramatically. Some cite numbers in the tens of millions of people, others limit themselves to hundreds of thousands. Which of them is closer to the truth?
Who is to blame?
Today our society is almost equally divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists. The former draw attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, the latter call not to forget about the huge number of victims of the repressions of the Stalinist regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repression, but note its limited nature and even justify it as political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repressions with the name of Stalin.
Historian Nikolai Kopesov writes that in most investigative cases against those repressed in 1937-1938 there were no resolutions of Stalin - everywhere there were verdicts of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. According to the Stalinists, this is proof that the heads of the punitive bodies were engaged in arbitrariness and in support of this they cite Yezhov’s quote: “Whoever we want, we execute, whoever we want, we have mercy.”
For that part of the Russian public that sees Stalin as the ideologist of repression, these are just details that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other arbiters of human destinies themselves turned out to be victims of terror. Who else but Stalin was behind all this? - they ask a rhetorical question.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the State Archive of the Russian Federation Oleg Khlevnyuk notes that despite the fact that Stalin’s signature was not on many execution lists, it was he who sanctioned almost all mass political repressions.
Who was hurt?
The issue of victims acquired even greater significance in the debate surrounding Stalin's repressions. Who suffered and in what capacity during the period of Stalinism? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is quite vague. Historiography has not yet developed clear definitions on this matter.
Of course, those convicted, imprisoned in prisons and camps, shot, deported, deprived of property should be counted among those affected by the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to “biased interrogation” and then released? Should criminal and political prisoners be separated? In what category should we classify the “nonsense”, convicted of minor isolated thefts and equated to state criminals?
Deportees deserve special attention. What category should they be classified into – repressed or administratively expelled? It is even more difficult to determine those who fled without waiting for dispossession or deportation. They were sometimes caught, but some were lucky enough to start a new life.
Such different numbers
Uncertainties in the issue of who is responsible for the repression, in identifying the categories of victims and the period for which the victims of repression should be counted lead to completely different figures. The most impressive figures were given by the economist Ivan Kurganov (Solzhenitsyn referred to these data in his novel The Gulag Archipelago), who calculated that from 1917 to 1959, 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against its people.
In this number, Kurganov includes victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, as well as “the neglectful and sloppy conduct of the Second World War.”
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalin's repressions? The economist, in fact, answers this question himself, using the expression “victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime.” It is worth noting that Kurganov counted only the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could have appeared if the economist had taken into account all those affected by the Soviet regime during the specified period.
The figures given by the head of the human rights society “Memorial” Arseny Roginsky are more realistic. He writes: “Across the entire Soviet Union, 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression,” but adds that in a broad sense, up to 30 million people can be considered repressed.
The leaders of the Yabloko movement, Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov, counted all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, those dispossessed, victims of hunger, those who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and those who received excessively harsh punishment for minor offenses in the force of the repressive nature of legislation. The final figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes in this regard that if the count of victims of repression has been carried out since 1921, this means that it is not Stalin who is responsible for a significant part of the crimes, but the “Leninist Guard,” which immediately after the October Revolution launched terror against the White Guards , clergy and kulaks.
How to count?
Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the method of counting. If we take into account those convicted only on political charges, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, given in 1988, the Soviet bodies (VChK, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB) arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot.
Employees of the Memorial Society, when counting the victims of political trials, are close to these figures, although their data is still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were executed. If we consider everyone who went through the Gulag system as victims of the Stalinist regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will range from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often, Stalin’s repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of the “Great Terror,” which peaked in 1937-1938. According to the commission led by academician Pyotr Pospelov to establish the causes of mass repressions, the following figures were announced: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activity, of which 681,692 thousand were sentenced to capital punishment.
One of the most authoritative experts on the demographic aspects of political repression in the USSR, historian Viktor Zemskov, names a smaller number of those convicted during the years of the “Great Terror” - 1,344,923 people, although his data coincides with the number of those executed.
If dispossessed people are included in the number of those subjected to repression during Stalin’s time, the figure will increase by at least 4 million people. The same Zemskov cites this number of dispossessed people. The Yabloko party agrees with this, noting that about 600 thousand of them died in exile.
Representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forced deportation also became victims of Stalin's repressions - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars. Many historians agree that the total number of deportees is about 6 million people, while about 1.2 million people did not live to see the end of the journey.
To trust or not?
The above figures are mostly based on reports from the OGPU, NKVD, and MGB. However, not all documents of the punitive departments have been preserved; many of them were purposefully destroyed, and many are still in restricted access.
It should be recognized that historians are very dependent on statistics collected by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only those officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to verify it from primary sources only in the rarest cases.
An acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to name radically different figures in favor of their position. “If the “right” exaggerated the scale of repression, then the “left”, partly out of dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, hastened to make them public and did not always ask themselves the question of whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives,” – notes historian Nikolai Koposov.
It can be stated that estimates of the scale of Stalin’s repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in federal archives would be a good help for modern researchers, but many of them were re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.
MASS REPRESSIONS OF THE 1920s AND EARLY 1950s in the USSR - coercive measures against large groups of the population, used by the Soviet government and the Communist Party in solving economic and political problems, to suppress dissent and protests against the government, non-economic forced labor.
For-tro-well-are all social, political, religious, and national. groups The proceedings were carried out both in co-ordination with the criminal law, and in accordance with special regulations. on-sta-nov-le-ni-yam desks. and owls organization (ITL), exiles and exiles to distant regions of the country, deportations, deportations abroad. A large role in the development of M. r. syg-ra-whether the processes of the 1920s - in the 1950s. Osu-sche-st-v-la-li su-deb-ny-mi, and also outside-su-deb-ny-mi or-ga-na-mi (Kol-le-gi-ey GPU - OGPU , A special co-member under the OGPU - the NKVD of the USSR, through the "three", "double" - the NKVD committee and pro-ku-ra-tu-ry).
Repressions during the Stalinist period
In the second case, the scale of mortality from hunger and repression can be judged by demographic losses, which were only in the period 1926-1940. amounted to 9 million people.
“In February 1954,” it appears further in the text, “a certificate was prepared in the name of N. S. Khrushchev, signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, in which the number of those convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes was named for the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954. In total, during this period, 3,777,380 people were convicted by the OGPU Collegium, the NKVD “troikas”, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals, including to capital punishment - 642,980, to detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2,369,220, to exile and deportation - 765,180 people.”
Repressions after 1953
After Stalin's death, general rehabilitation began, and the scale of repressions decreased sharply. At the same time, people of alternative political views (the so-called “dissidents”) continued to be persecuted by the Soviet government until the end of the 80s. Criminal liability for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda was abolished only in September 1989.
According to historian V.P. Popov, the total number of people convicted of political and criminal crimes in 1923-1953 is at least 40 million. In his opinion, this estimate “is very approximate and greatly underestimated, but it fully reflects the scale of repressive state policy... If we subtract from the total population persons under 14 years of age and over 60, as those with little capacity for criminal activity, it turns out that within the life of one generation - from 1923 to 1953 - almost every third capable member of society was convicted.” In the RSFSR alone, general courts passed sentences on 39.1 million people, and in different years, from 37 to 65% of those convicted were sentenced to actual terms of imprisonment (not including those repressed by the NKVD, without sentences passed by judicial panels in criminal cases Supreme, regional and regional courts and permanent sessions operating at the camps, without sentences of military tribunals, without exiles, without deported peoples, etc.).
According to Anatoly Vishnevsky, “ the total number of citizens of the USSR who were subjected to repression in the form of deprivation or significant restriction of freedom for more or less long periods"(in camps, special settlements, etc.) from the end of the 's to the year" amounted to at least 25-30 million people”(that is, those convicted under all articles of the USSR Criminal Code, including also special settlers). According to him, with reference to Zemskov, “in 1934-1947 alone, 10.2 million people entered the camps (minus those returned from exile). However, Zemskov himself does not write about newly arrived contingents, but describes the general movement of the camp population of the Gulag, that is, this number includes both newly arrived convicts and those who are already serving prison terms.
According to the chairman of the board of the international society “Memorial” Arseniy Roginsky, for the period 1918 to 1987, according to surviving documents, there were 7 million 100 thousand people arrested by security agencies in the USSR. Some of them were arrested not on political charges, since the security agencies arrested them in different years for crimes such as banditry, smuggling, and counterfeiting. These calculations, although he made them by 1994, were deliberately not published by him, as they contradicted the much larger arrest figures that existed in those years.
The history of Russia, like other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “era of Stalin.” He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of “expediency.” In reality, he was driven by completely different motives.
When talking about the beginning of the political career of a leader who became a tyrant, such authors bashfully hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a repeat offender with seven prison sentences. Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the government course he pursued.
Lenin received a worthy successor in his person. “Having creatively developed his teaching,” Joseph Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that the country should be ruled by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.
A generation of people whose lips can speak the truth about Stalin’s repressions is leaving... Are not newfangled articles whitening the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken lives...
The leader who sanctioned torture
As you know, Joseph Vissarionovich personally signed execution lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin tightened the repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete chaos in the dungeons. He was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 10, 1939, which literally gave the punitive authorities a free hand.
Creativity in introducing torture
Let us recall excerpts from a letter from Corps Commander Lisovsky, a leader bullied by the satraps...
"...A ten-day assembly-line interrogation with a brutal, vicious beating and no opportunity to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Next - forced to sit with your hands raised up, and also stand bent over with your head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours..."
The detainees' desire to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges led to increased torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Let us remember that Robert Eiche, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher in Lefortovo prison died from beatings during interrogation.
Leader's motivation
The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was calculated not in tens or hundreds of thousands, but in seven million who died of starvation and four million who were arrested (general statistics will be presented below). The number of those executed alone was about 800 thousand people...
How did Stalin motivate his actions, immensely striving for the Olympus of power?
What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in “Children of Arbat”? Analyzing Stalin's personality, he shares his judgments with us. “The ruler whom the people love is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. It's another matter when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on himself. This is a strong ruler! Hence the leader’s credo - to inspire love through fear!
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin took steps adequate to this idea. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.
The beginning of revolutionary activity
Joseph Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V.I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate sent him 7 exiles to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, unscrupulousness in means, harshness towards people, and egocentrism from a young age. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party participated in the Civil War.
Stalin in the Central Committee
In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich received a long-awaited opportunity for career growth. The ill and weakening Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. In this way, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really aspires to leadership.
Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party behind-the-scenes intrigue, which later came in handy in his fight against competitors.
Positioning of Stalin in the system of red terror
The machine of red terror was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.
09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues the Resolution “On Red Terror”. The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), operated under the Council of People's Commissars from December 7, 1917.
The reason for this radicalization of domestic politics was the murder of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the assassination attempt on V. Lenin by Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Both events occurred on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka launched a wave of repression.
According to statistical information, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 were shot, 1791 were imprisoned in concentration camps.
By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, police officers, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landowners had already been repressed. First of all, the blow was dealt to the classes that are the support of the monarchical structure of society. However, having “creatively developed the teachings of Lenin,” Joseph Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.
Stalin since 1928 - ideologist of violence
It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he justified theoretically.
His concept of intensifying class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Joseph Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. From that time on, he actually became the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.
Hidden by slogans, the real meaning of Stalinism manifests itself in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman made it very clear that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal, unlimited dictatorship.
Joseph Vissarionovich in 1928-1930. began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public trials that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, the cult of Stalin’s personality began its formation with trials and the instillation of terror throughout society... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as “enemies of the people.” People were brutally tortured to sign charges fabricated by the investigation. The brutal dictatorship imitated class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...
Three global trials were falsified: the “Union Bureau Case” (putting managers at risk); “The Case of the Industrial Party” (the sabotage of the Western powers regarding the economy of the USSR was imitated); “The Case of the Labor Peasant Party” (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays in mechanization). Moreover, they were all united into a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against Soviet power and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD bodies.
As a result, the entire economic leadership of the national economy was replaced from old “specialists” to “new personnel” ready to work according to the instructions of the “leader”.
Through the lips of Stalin, who ensured that the state apparatus was loyal to repression through the trials, the Party’s unshakable determination was further expressed: to displace and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, traders, small and medium-sized ones; to ruin the basis of agricultural production - the wealthy peasantry (indiscriminately calling them “kulaks”). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by “the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants.”
Behind the scenes, parallel to this “general line,” the “father of peoples” consistently, with the help of provocations and false testimony, began to implement the line of eliminating his party competitors for supreme state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).
Forced collectivization
The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. indicates that the main object of repression was the main social base of the village - an effective agricultural producer. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (and in fact at that time these were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was supposed to, under the pressure of repression, turn from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin’s plans for industrialization and maintaining hypertrophied power structures.
In order to clearly identify the object of his repressions, Stalin resorted to an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustifiably, he achieved that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profit-making) producer into a separate “class of kulaks” - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Resolution “On the liquidation of ... kulak farms” dated January 30, 1930.
The Red Terror has come to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalin's “troika” trials, which in most cases ended with executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (the category of which could include any persons subjectively defined as a “rural asset”) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body for permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational department under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.
Migrants to the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.
In 1930-1931 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.
Organization of hunger
However, executions, ruin and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all of Stalin’s repressions. A brief listing of them should be supplemented by the organization of famine. Its real reason was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was crop failure.
His subjectively developed plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be reasonable to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for a harvest year... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded immediate provision of food to the bloated security forces and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision to confiscate grain intended for sowing and consumption from the peasants.
On October 22, 1932, two emergency commissions under the leadership of the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of “fight against the fists” to confiscate grain, which was accompanied by violence, quick-to-death troika courts and the eviction of wealthy agricultural producers to the Far North. It was genocide...
It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not stopped by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.
Well-known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin
Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932 -1933. have documentary evidence. M.A. Sholokhov, the author of “The Quiet Don,” addressed the leader, defending his fellow countrymen, with letters exposing the lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. The famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya presented the facts in detail, indicating the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors. The bullying and violence against the peasants is horrifying: brutal beatings, breaking out joints, partial strangulation, mock executions, eviction from houses... In his response Letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader is visible in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, “secretly” trying to disrupt the food supply...
This voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the Russian State Duma published in April 2008 revealed previously classified statistics to the public (previously, propaganda did its best to hide these repressions of Stalin.)
How many people died from hunger in the above regions? The figure established by the State Duma commission is terrifying: more than 7 million.
Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror
Let's also consider three more areas of Stalin's terror, and in the table below we present each of them in more detail.
With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to suppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the newspaper Pravda, and not go to church...
Hundreds of thousands of families of previously productive peasants, fearing dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights and make them manipulated, it was at that time that passporting of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. Peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full scope of civil rights (freedom to choose a place of residence, freedom to choose a job) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition of fulfilling workday norms.
Antisocial policies were accompanied by the destruction of families and an increase in the number of street children. This phenomenon has become so widespread that the state was forced to respond to it. With Stalin's sanction, the Politburo of the Country of Soviets issued one of the most inhumane regulations - punitive towards children.
The anti-religious offensive as of April 1, 1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.
For repressive purposes, passportization of the urban population was carried out. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.
One of Stalin’s most cynical crimes is his authorization of the secret Politburo resolution of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from 12 years of age to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to capital punishment. In 1936 alone, 125 thousand children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10 thousand children were exiled to the Gulag system.
Great Terror
The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, due to repression over the entire society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and physical reprisals against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - massive “cleansings of the state apparatus” were carried out.
Terror has reached unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (from 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was ruined for one carelessly dropped word... Even the Stalinist elite - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis - were repressed; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; security officers Yagoda, Yezhov.
On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on trumped-up cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified corps-level commanders - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not adequately master operational and tactical art.
It was not only the shopfront facades of Soviet cities that were characterized by Stalin’s personality cult. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to a monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, mercilessly exploited labor resources to extract the wealth of the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.
The dynamics of the increase in those kept in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 there were 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.
In particular, ironically, the prisoners of Kolyma mined 35% of the Union's gold, while living in terrible conditions. Let us list the main camps included in the Gulag system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (43 and 35 thousand, respectively); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); development of the steppes - Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of the BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).
Basically, people arrived in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night arrest and an unfair, biased trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: “enemies of the people” - kulaks (essentially an effective agricultural producer), and even entire evicted nationalities. The majority served sentences from 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The investigation process involved torture and the breaking of the will of the convicted person.
In the case of the resettlement of kulaks and small nations, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe and the convicts built a camp and a special purpose prison (TON) for themselves. Since 1930, the labor of prisoners was mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours a day. Tens of thousands of people died from overwork, poor nutrition, and poor medical care.
Instead of a conclusion
The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice and is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by revolutionary military tribunals. The inhumane system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. Executions under Article 58 were in effect until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years in camps.
In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.
Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out in the name of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.
The powerless people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The process of restoring justice began with the 20th Congress of the CPSU.
Public interest in Stalin's repressions continues to exist, and this is no coincidence.
Many feel that today's political problems are somewhat similar.
And some people think that Stalin's recipes might be suitable.
This is, of course, a mistake.
But it is still difficult to justify why this is a mistake using scientific rather than journalistic means.
Historians have figured out the repressions themselves, how they were organized and what their scale was.
Historian Oleg Khlevnyuk, for example, writes that “...now professional historiography has reached a high level of agreement based on in-depth research of archives.”
https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/06/29/701835-fenomen-terrora
However, from another of his articles it follows that the reasons for the “Great Terror” are still not entirely clear.
https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/07/06/712528-bolshogo-terrora
I have an answer, strict and scientific.
But first, let’s talk about what “the agreement of professional historiography” looks like according to Oleg Khlevnyuk.
Let's discard the myths right away.
1) Stalin had nothing to do with it; he, of course, knew everything.
Stalin not only knew, he directed the “great terror” in real time, down to the smallest detail.
2) The “Great Terror” was not an initiative of regional authorities or local party secretaries.
Stalin himself never tried to blame the regional party leadership for the repressions of 1937-1938.
Instead, he proposed a myth about “enemies who infiltrated the ranks of the NKVD” and “slanderers” from ordinary citizens who wrote statements against honest people.
3) The “Great Terror” of 1937-1938 was not at all the result of denunciations.
Denunciations of citizens against each other did not have a significant impact on the course and scale of repressions.
Now about what is known about the “Great Terror of 1937-1938” and its mechanism.
Terror and repressions under Stalin were a constant phenomenon.
But the wave of terror of 1937-1938 was exceptionally large.
In 1937-1938 At least 1.6 million people were arrested, of whom more than 680,000 were executed.
Khlevnyuk gives a simple quantitative calculation:
“Taking into account the fact that the most intensive repressions were used for just over a year (August 1937 - November 1938), it turns out that about 100,000 people were arrested every month, of which more than 40,000 were shot.”
The scale of violence was monstrous!
The opinion that the terror of 1937-1938 consisted of the destruction of the elite: party workers, engineers, military men, writers, etc. not entirely correct.
For example, Khlevnyuk writes that there were several tens of thousands of managers at different levels. Of the 1.6 million victims.
Here's attention!
1) The victims of terror were ordinary Soviet people who did not hold positions and were not members of the party.
2) Decisions to conduct mass operations were made by the leadership, more precisely by Stalin.
The “Great Terror” was a well-organized, planned procession and followed orders from the center.
3) The goal was to “liquidate physically or isolate in camps those groups of the population that the Stalinist regime considered potentially dangerous - former “kulaks”, former officers of the tsarist and white armies, clergy, former members of parties hostile to the Bolsheviks - Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and other “suspicious” , as well as “national counter-revolutionary contingents” - Poles, Germans, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Afghans, Iranians, Chinese, Koreans.
4) All “hostile categories” were taken into account in the authorities, according to the available lists, and underwent the first repressions.
Subsequently, a chain was launched: arrest-interrogations - testimony - new hostile elements.
That is why arrest limits have increased.
5) Stalin personally directed the repressions.
Here are his orders quoted by the historian:
"Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk. The arson of the flour mill must be organized by enemies. Take all measures to uncover the arsonists. The perpetrators will be judged expeditiously. The sentence is execution"; “Beat Unschlicht for not handing over Polish agents to the regions”; “To T. Yezhov. Dmitriev seems to be acting rather sluggishly. It is necessary to immediately arrest all (both small and large) participants in the “rebel groups” in the Urals”; "To T. Yezhov. Very important. We need to walk through the Udmurt, Mari, Chuvash, Mordovian republics, walk with a broom"; "To T. Yezhov. Very good! Keep digging and cleaning out this Polish spy dirt"; "To T. Yezhov. The line of the Socialist Revolutionaries (left and right together) is not unwound<...>It must be borne in mind that we still have quite a few Socialist-Revolutionaries in our army and outside the army. Does the NKVD have a record of the Socialist Revolutionaries (“former”) in the army? I would like to receive it as soon as possible<...>What has been done to identify and arrest all Iranians in Baku and Azerbaijan?"
I think there can be no doubt after reading such orders.
Now let's return to the question - why?
Khlevnyuk points out several possible explanations and writes that the debate continues.
1) At the end of 1937, the first elections to the Soviets were held on the basis of secret ballot, and Stalin insured himself against surprises in a way that he understood.
This is the weakest explanation.
2) Repression was a means of social engineering
Society was subject to unification.
A fair question arises: why did unification need to be sharply accelerated in 1937-1938?
3) The “Great Terror” pointed out the reason for the difficulties and hard life of the people, while at the same time allowing them to let off steam.
4) It was necessary to provide labor for the growing Gulag economy.
This is a weak version - there were too many executions of able-bodied people, while the Gulag was unable to absorb new human intake.
5) Finally, a version that is widely popular today: the threat of war emerged, and Stalin was clearing out the rear, destroying the “fifth column”.
However, after Stalin's death, the vast majority of those arrested in 1937-1938 were found innocent.
They were not a “fifth column” at all.
My explanation allows us to understand not only why there was this wave and why it was in 1937-1938.
It also explains well why Stalin and his experience have not yet been forgotten, but have not been implemented.
The “Great Terror” of 1937-1938 took place in a period similar to ours.
In the USSR of 1933-1945 there was a question about the subject of power.
In the modern history of Russia, a similar issue is resolved in 2005-2017.
The subject of power can be either the ruler or the elite.
At that time, the sole ruler had to win.
Stalin inherited a party in which this very elite existed - the heirs of Lenin, equal to Stalin or even more eminent than himself.
Stalin successfully fought for formal leadership, but he became the undisputed sole ruler only after the Great Terror.
As long as the old leaders - recognized revolutionaries, Lenin's heirs - continued to live and work, the preconditions remained for challenging Stalin's power as the sole ruler.
The "Great Terror" of 1937-1938 was a means of destroying the elite and establishing the power of a single ruler.
Why did the repression affect the common people and not be limited to the top?
You need to understand the ideological basis, the Marxist paradigm.
Marxism does not recognize loners and the initiative of the elite.
In Marxism, any leader expresses the ideas of a class or social group.
Why is the peasantry dangerous, for example?
Not at all because it can rebel and start a peasant war.
The peasants are dangerous because they are the petty bourgeoisie.
This means that they will always support and/or promote political leaders from among themselves who will fight against the dictatorship of the proletariat, the power of the workers and the Bolsheviks.
It is not enough to root out prominent leaders with dubious views.
It is necessary to destroy their social support, those same “hostile elements” that have been taken into account.
This explains why the terror affected ordinary people.
Why exactly in 1937-1938?
Because during the first four years of each period of social reorganization, the basic plan is formed and the leading force of the social process emerges.
This is such a law of cyclical development.
Why are we interested in this today?
And why do some dream of a return to the practices of Stalinism?
Because we are going through the same process.
But he:
- ends,
- has opposite vectors.
Stalin established his sole power, in fact fulfilling the historical social order, albeit with very specific methods, even excessively.
He deprived the elite of its subjectivity and established the only subject of power - the elected ruler.
Such power subjectivity existed in our Fatherland until Putin.
However, Putin, more unconsciously than consciously, fulfilled a new historical social order.
In our country now the power of a single elected ruler is being replaced by the power of an elected elite.
In 2008, just in the fourth year of the new period, Putin gave presidential power to Medvedev.
The sole ruler was desubjectivized, and there were at least two rulers.
And it’s impossible to return everything back.
Now it’s clear why some part of the elite dreams of Stalinism?
They don’t want there to be many leaders, they don’t want collective power in which compromises must be sought and found, they want the restoration of individual rule.
And this can be done only by unleashing a new “great terror”, that is, by destroying the leaders of all other groups, from Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky to Navalny, Kasyanov, Yavlinsky and our modern Trotsky - Khodorkovsky (although perhaps the Trotsky of the new Russia was after all Berezovsky), and out of habit of systemic thinking, their social base, at least some crackers and protest-opposition intelligentsia).
But none of this will happen.
The current vector of development is the transition to the power of an elected elite.
The elected elite is a set of leaders and power as their interaction.
If someone tries to return the sole power of an elected ruler, he will end his political career almost instantly.
Putin sometimes looks like the only, sole ruler, but he certainly is not.
Practical Stalinism has and will not have a place in modern social life in Russia.
And that's great.
