Pavel Morozov who is he, a hero or a traitor?
The story of Pavel Morozov is well known to the older generation. This boy was included in the ranks of pioneer heroes who performed feats for the sake of their country and people and entered the legends of the Soviet era.
According to the official version, Pavlik Morozov, who sincerely believed in the idea of socialism, told the OGPU about how his father helps kulaks and bandits. Morozov senior was arrested and convicted. But his son paid for his deed, and was killed by his father's relatives.
What is true in this story, and what is propaganda fiction, unfortunately, has not been figured out so far. Who, in reality, was Pavel Morozov, and what was done in reality?
Biography of Pavlik Morozov
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov was born on November 14, 1918 in the village of Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district of the Ural region. His father, Trofim Morozov, became chairman of the village council of his native village. It was a tough time.
Back in 1921, the peasants of Central Russia started a revolt, rebelling against the Bolshevik surplus appraisal, which took away the last grain from the people for the proletarians.
Those of the rebels who survived the battles went to the Urals or were convicted. Someone was shot, someone was amnestied after a few years. Under the amnesty two years later, five people, the Purtov brothers, who played their role in the tragedy of Pavel, also fell.
The boy's father, when Pavlik reached the age of ten, left his wife and children, leaving for another family. This event forced the young Morozov to become the head of the family, taking all the care of his relatives.
Knowing that the power of the Soviets was the only shield for the poor, with the advent of the 1930s, Pavel joined the pioneer organization. At the same time, his father, having taken a leading position in the village council, began to actively cooperate with the kulak elements and the Purtov gang. Here begins the story of the feat of Pavlik Morozov.
Feat (version of the times of the USSR)
The Purtovs, having organized a gang in the forests, hunted in the vicinity by robbery. Only 20 proven robberies are on their conscience. Also, according to the OGPU, the five brothers were preparing a local coup against the Soviets, relying on special settlers (kulaks). Trofim Morozov provided active assistance to them. The chairman provided them with blank documents, issuing fake certificates of poor condition.
In those years, such certificates were an analogue of a passport and gave the bandits a quiet life and legal residence. According to these documents, the bearer of the paper was considered a peasant of Gerasimovka and did not owe anything to the state. Pavel, who fully and sincerely supported the Bolsheviks, reported his father's deeds to the competent authorities. His father was arrested and sentenced to 10 years.
Pavlik paid for this report by losing his life, and his younger brother Fyodor was deprived of his life. While picking berries in the forest, they were slaughtered by their own relatives. At the end of the investigation, four people were convicted for the murder: Sergey Morozov - paternal grandfather, Ksenia Morozova - grandmother, Danila Morozov - cousin, Arseniy Kulukanov - Pavel's godfather and his uncle.
Kulukanov and Danila were shot, grandparents died in custody. The fifth suspect, Arseniy Silin, was acquitted.
Interesting facts (new version)
After all these events, Pavlik Morozov took first place in the future numerous series of pioneer heroes. But over time, historians began to ask questions and question the facts that were considered indisputable. By the beginning of the 90s, people appeared who called the boy not a hero, but a traitor and informer. One version says that Morozov Jr. tried not for the sake of Bolshevik power, but following the persuasion of his mother. According to this version, she persuaded her son to slander, offended by the fact that her husband left her with her children. This option is not relevant, the father still helped his family a little, supporting them financially.
Another interesting fact is the documents of the OGPU. According to some of them, the denunciation was not necessary. The authorities had evidence of the participation of Trofim Morozov in the activities of the gang. And Pavlik was only a witness in his father's case. The boy was threatened with an article for complicity! His father, unsurprisingly then, was illiterate. And Pavel wrote out those very certificates with his own hand, on sheets of student notebooks. These leaflets are present in the archives, but he remained only a witness, assuring these facts before the OGPU officers.
Causes controversy and one more thing. Was the first pioneer hero in the ranks of the pioneers at all? It is definitely difficult to answer this question. In the thirties, there was still no document in use certifying belonging to the pioneers of the Soviet Union. Also, no evidence of Pavlik Morozov's belonging to the pioneer community was found in the archives. The pioneers of the village of Gerasimovka are known only from the words of the school teacher Zoya Kabina.
Trofim Morozov, Pavlik's father, was locked up for ten years. But, according to some reports, he was released after three years for successful work on the Belomor Canal, and even awarded. It's hard to believe it. Other versions are more plausible. One of them says that the former chairman was shot in 1938. But there is no confirmation of such an event. The most common opinion says that the elder Morozov served time and left for the Tyumen region. There he lived out his years, keeping a secret relationship with the famous son.
Such is the story of Pavlik Morozov, who became the first pioneer hero. Subsequently, the Soviet government was accused of false propaganda, denying or misrepresenting the events of those distant times. But everyone is free to draw conclusions and determine their attitude to those old cases.
Morozov Pavlik (Pavel Trofimovich) (1918-1932). Pioneer, glorified by the media as a participant in the struggle against the kulaks during the collectivization of the USSR. Born in with. Gerasimovka, Sverdlovsk region, in a large family (five children) of special settlers from Belarus. He was the organizer and chairman of the first pioneer detachment in the village , who helped the communists in campaigning for the creation of a collective farm. The kulaks, opposing this, decided to disrupt the grain procurements. Pavlik, having accidentally learned about the plot, and not being afraid of his father (he was at one with the fists), exposed their intentions, for which, together with his younger brother, he was brutally killed by fists in the forest.
One of the methods of expanding the social base of Stalinism and ensuring mass support for repressions was the active propaganda of the ideas of the absolute priority of the interests of the party and class interests over the norms of human morality, family, comradely duty. Large-scale propaganda events, numerous rallies, where everyone had to vote for the death penalty, study meetings, where they had to denounce their comrades, friends, relatives, repent, swear allegiance to the party and intransigence towards its enemies, gradually shook the moral foundations of society.
Cooperation with the authorities in suppressing "enemies of the people" was presented as a patriotic and unequivocally noble act. As examples, the images of "heroes-whistleblowers" like Pavlik Morozov were raised on the shield.
The name of Pavlik Morozov was the first to be entered in the book of honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. Lenin. A.M. Gorky wrote: "The memory of him should not disappear - this little hero deserves a monument, and I am sure that the monument will be erected."
In 1948 in Moscow in the children's park. A monument was erected to the young hero Pavlik Morozov (sculptor I.A. Rabinovich), and the former Novovagankovsky lane was renamed Pavlik Morozov lane. Interestingly, in 1935-1936. The Politburo several times considered the issue of installing a monument to Pavlik Morozov near Red Square (Khlevnyuk O.V. 1937: Stalin, the NKVD and the Soviet society. M., 1992. P. 70).
N. Berdyaev, arguing about the socialist "religion", he says that "the revolution, by its spiritual nature, is a rupture of the paternal and son hypostasis."
Notes
) Regarding this statement, see the article below "Not "Pavlik", but Pashka".
1 ) We have given the traditional presentation of the plot. More about the tragedy in Gerasimovka is told by the editor of the department of the magazine "Man and Law" V. Kononenko in the essay "Pavlik Morozov: Truth and Fiction" (Komsomolskaya Pravda. 1990. April 5). She, in particular, cites a letter from Alexei Morozov, who writes: “What kind of trial did they arrange for my brother? It's embarrassing and scary. My brother was called an informer in the magazine. Lie it! Pavel always fought openly. Why is he insulted? Has our family suffered a little grief? Who is being bullied? Two of my brothers were killed. The third, Roman, came from the front disabled, died young. I was slandered during the war as an enemy of the people. He spent ten years in the camp. And then they rehabilitated. And now slander on Pavlik. How to endure all this? They doomed me to torture worse than in the camps. It is good that my mother did not live to see these days ... I am writing, but tears are choking. So it seems that Pashka is again defenseless on the road.
2 ) ON THE. Berdyaev (1874-1948) - Russian philosopher. In 1922 he was sent abroad.
Materials of the book were used: Torchinov V.A., Leontyuk A.M. around Stalin. Historical and biographical reference book. St. Petersburg, 2000
Not "Pavlik", but "Pashka"
Born in the family of a Belarusian migrant Trofim Sergeevich Morozov and Tatyana, nee Baidakova, and was the eldest son. There were 4 boys in the family. Father - a red partisan, later chairman of the Gerasimovsky village council. In 1928, he left the family and began to live with a certain Antonina Amosova. At the beginning of 1932, he was sentenced to 10 years for selling false certificates to special settlers (dispossessed from the Kuban) about their alleged belonging to the Gerasimov village council. At the end of the same year, after the murder of his son, he was shot.
According to the official version, Pavlik Morozov, being a conscious pioneer, denounced his father to the authorities for ideological reasons, and then also systematically denounced the “kulaks” hiding grain from the state. Like, for this, he and his younger brother, 9-year-old Fedya, were stabbed to death by their own grandfather Sergei and cousin Danila at the instigation of the "fist" Arseny Kulukanov (godfather and relative of Pavel). At a show trial held in the regional center of Tavda, Sergei and Danila Morozov, Arseny Kulukanov and Ksenia Morozova (Sergei's wife and Pavlik's grandmother, who was accused of non-information) were sentenced to death. The murder of Pavel was qualified as a counter-revolutionary terrorist act.
In fact, the official version reveals a number of inconsistencies with the real circumstances of that time.
According to the writer Yuri Druzhnikov, who interviewed in the 1970s. fellow villagers and relatives of Pavel, the latter was not a pioneer, since there was no pioneer organization in Gerasimovka at all (the nearest one was in the regional center of Tavda, 120 km from Gerasimovka). Memoirs depict Pavel as a physically weak, nervous, unbalanced, tongue-tied, pedagogically neglected and almost weak-minded child who, by the age of 14, barely managed to finish two classes, learned to read and write with difficulty.
According to the materials of the murder case, on November 25, 1931, Morozov Pavel, during the investigation of the previous case (on the fact that the Gerasimovsky village council had issued a certificate to a special settler), filed a statement with the investigating authorities that his father Morozov Trofim Sergeevich, being the chairman of the village council and being associated with local kulaks, is engaged in forging documents and selling them to kulaks-special settlers. Subsequently, Pavel also spoke at the trial, testifying after his mother, but was stopped by the judge due to his youth. It is believed that Pavel's mother taught him to make a denunciation, hoping to intimidate her husband and return him to the family. I emphasize: Pavel filed an application as part of the investigation into the issuance of a certificate by the Gerasimovsky village council to a special settler. A certificate with a fake signature of Trofim Morozov was issued after he left the post of chairman of the village council, but the testimony of Pavlik (to be precise, the villagers called him Pashka) made it possible to involve Trofim in this case.
Both before and later, Pavel really denounced the peasants who hid bread, unregistered weapons, etc. As follows from the materials of the case, in the winter of 1932 he denounced his uncle Arseniy Silin, who, “without completing a firm task, sold special settlers a cartload of potatoes ", and the previous autumn - to the peasant Mizyukhin, in whose place his grandfather Sergei allegedly hid a "walker" (a cart; a search was made at Mezyukhin, but nothing was found). However, in reality, the main scammer in the village was his cousin Ivan Potupchik, who by that time had already become a candidate member of the CPSU (b) (an indicative feature of his moral decay was the rape of a pioneer committed later by the honorary pioneer Ivan Potupchik, for which he was convicted).
On September 2, 1932, Pavel and his 9-year-old brother Fedya, in the absence of their mother (who had left for the district center), went into the forest for cranberries; On September 6, their bodies were found in the forest with stab wounds. The murder was declared the result of a kulak conspiracy. In view of the obvious bias of the investigation and the court, the guilt of imaginary fists is in doubt. According to Yu. Druzhnikov, the murder with provocative aims was organized by Spiridon Kondrashov, an assistant to the OGPU commissioner, and Potupchik. At the same time, Druzhnikov relies on the protocol of the interrogation of Potupchik discovered by him as a witness in the murder case, compiled by Kondrashov on September 4 (that is, 2 days before the official discovery of the fact of the murder).
Pavlik Morozov was declared a pioneer hero, an example of loyalty to communist ideals and patriotism. On his example, it was considered necessary to educate the younger generation; streets, schools, pioneer squads, etc. were named after him, monuments were erected to him (the first one was in Moscow in 1948)
It should also be noted that the form of the name "Pavlik" was invented by the journalists of Pionerskaya Pravda. During his lifetime, the boy was called "Pashka". And "Pavlik Morozov" is a character, rather a virtual one, who had nothing to do with a real person.
Especially for CHRONOS, an article about P. Morozov was sent by Pavel Shekhtman.
Enterprises, courts, schools, orphanages are named after him
Pavlik Morozov (1919-1932) - a teenager who denounced his father and was "canonized" by Soviet propaganda as a model for educating future builders of communism. He was portrayed as a victim of "fists" who took revenge on him for exposing their intrigues. But what really happened?
The Morozov family lived near the city of Tavda (now the Sverdlovsk region), in the village of Gerasimovka, where Pavlik's grandfather, Sergei Morozov, moved from Belarus at the end of the 19th century. Pavlik's father, Trofim Sergeevich, who served as chairman of the village council, left his wife Tatyana with four children and went to a neighbor. The rest were also not friendly: Pavlik's grandfather and grandmother did not like his daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and they paid the same.
According to some reports, it was Tatyana Morozova, wanting to take revenge on her ex-husband, who taught her son to write a denunciation against him. On November 25, 1931, the boy filed a statement with the police that Trofim Morozov, using his official position, was selling certificates to special settlers - dispossessed peasants from European Russia. Trofim was convicted and sent to serve his term in the Far North, where he died.
In September 1932 (that is, almost a year later), Pavlik and his younger brother Fedya went to the forest for berries and disappeared. The mother, who arrived from Tavda the next day, called a policeman; he gathered the people, and the whole village went in search. The brothers were found on the road; they were dead, there was blood all around and a pile of scattered cranberries.
The grandfather and grandmother of the dead children, their uncle Arseniy Kulukanov and cousin Daniil were accused of the murder. According to his mother's later testimony, during a search, Sergei Morozov "found a bloody shirt and pants." The grandfather allegedly brought the knife home and hid it behind the icon (strange behavior for those who want to hide the traces of the crime; the corpses could also not be left in a conspicuous place, but thrown into the swamp, where they would disappear without a trace). Later, “two knives, a shirt and pants stained with blood” were allegedly found in his house. Son Alexei told his mother that on the day of the murder, "he saw Daniil Morozov walking out of the forest"; policeman Poputchik testified that Daniil's pants, shirt and knife were found covered in blood. The same Aleksey reported to his grandmother Aksinya that she went for berries in the same direction as Pavlik and Fedya, and "could hold" them until the killers approached. What role the uncle played, the investigation did not come up with.
During the process, Tatyana's testimony was edited by someone. Now they already stated that the grandfather, grandmother and cousin of the killed, “this whole kulak gang ... gathered together as a group, and their conversations were about hatred for the Soviet government ... my son Pavel, no matter what he saw or heard about this kulak gang , always informed the village council or other organizations. In view of what the kulaks hated him and tried in every possible way to bring ... the young pioneer off the face of the earth. Thus, the murder of the Morozov brothers was attributed to the "intrigues of class enemies", which were found in the person of their closest relatives. Sergei, Aksinya and Daniil Morozov, as well as Arseny Kulukanov were shot.
This process was very useful for Soviet propaganda. On the eve of the Great Terror, when entire institutions and enterprises were declared "enemies of the people", it was important to present an individual family as a terrorist group, to inspire citizens that enemies could lurk everywhere. The cult of Pavlik Morozov taught Soviet citizens (especially children) to suspect everyone, even close relatives, of intent to harm, poison, blow up, and kill. The “meeting of the poor in the village of Gerasimovka”, which demanded “to apply capital punishment to the murderers”, became the prototype of mass “demonstrations of workers” and “letters from labor collectives”, calling for merciless reprisal against the “Trotskyist-Zinovievite rabble” and other enemies.
After the trial, Tatyana Morozova and her children were hated in the village. She herself recalled that the grave of Pavlik and Fedya "was trampled down, the star was broken, half the village went there to defecate." And although the authorities instilled her in a good house, the owners of which had been "dispossessed" before, Tatyana preferred to move to the regional center - away from her fellow villagers. The NKVD took the "hero's mother" to the barracks, she did not work. Later, Stalin ordered to settle her in the Crimea, in Alupka, appointed a personal pension. Pavlik's younger brother, Alexei, was accused of treason during the war, but thanks to his mother's efforts and kinship with the "hero" he escaped execution.
Pavlik himself had a reputation in the village as a bully, embittered and unscrupulous. Tongue-tied and sickly, he showed all the signs of retarded development. The future "pioneer-hero" entered the first class only a year before his death, and at the age of thirteen he hardly learned to read in syllables. “He spoke with interruptions, barking ... in a half-Russian-half-Belarusian language,” his teacher recalled. According to eyewitnesses, Pavlik was the dirtiest student in the school; he smelled of urine, since the Morozov children used to urinate on each other to annoy or just have fun. He was presented by Soviet propaganda as a smart agitator, intelligibly explaining to the "dark" fellow villagers the policy of the party.
Pavlik's denunciation of his father was used by the Soviet authorities to instill morality that denied all biblical commandments - primarily the commandment to honor parents. After the Morozov case, special groups of pioneers began to form, called upon to watch over their parents and neighbors. Young scammers were rewarded with new boots, bicycles, and trips to the Artek pioneer camp. By the way, there is no evidence that Pavlik Morozov was a member of a pioneer organization.
Enterprises, courts, schools, orphanages, and other, mostly children's, institutions were named after this wretched teenager. Many false performances, films, musical works, poems and stories have been created about him. A street in Moscow even in the new district of Yuzhnoye Butovo is named after the parricide, who is also largely fictional.
The black book of names that have no place on the map of Russia. Comp. S.V. Volkov. M., "Posev", 2004.
Literature:
Yu.I. Druzhnikov. Informer 001, or the Ascension of Pavlik Morozov. (Published in the Moshkov Library, as well as at http://www.unilib.neva.ru/dl/327/Theme_10/Literature/Drujnikov/index.html)
The book "Informer 001, or the Ascension of Pavlik Morozov", written by the writer, professor at the University of California Yuri Druzhnikov, according to the annotation, is "the first independent investigation into the brutal murder of a teenager who denounced his father, and the process of creating the most famous Soviet hero from a boy, carried out through fifty years after the tragic and mysterious events by a Moscow writer who dared to compare the official myth with historical documents and the testimony of the last eyewitnesses.
The émigré writer did not confine himself to exposing Stalin's propaganda, which made a pioneer hero out of a victim, but tried to mold him into an "exemplary" traitor anti-hero, presenting him in the most unattractive light. Apparently, he understood that, otherwise, the sympathies of a normal person would be on the side of a child who was brutally murdered along with his younger brother. Therefore, Yuri Druzhnikov tried to present Pavlik Morozov as a mentally handicapped, moral monster who “knocked” on his relatives and neighbors. At the same time, he was guided by the image of a scammer, a traitor, traditionally negative in the public mind. However, he does not provide any evidence of denunciations, except for Soviet propaganda materials, which he himself recognized as false.
Review from the site http://sarmata.livejournal.com/132057.html?view=1862617#t1862617
During the investigation and trial of his father, who left their family, Trofim Morozov, chairman of the Gerasimovsky village council, testified against him in support of his mother's testimony. A few months later, Pavel and his 8-year-old brother Fyodor, who went to the forest for berries, were found dead with stab wounds.
Their own grandfather Sergey (Trofim Morozov's father) and 19-year-old cousin Danila were accused of murder, as well as grandmother Ksenia (as an accomplice) and Pavel's godfather, Arseniy Kulukanov, who was his uncle (as a village "fist" - as an initiator and organizer of the murder). After the trial, Arseny Kulukanov and Danila Morozov were shot, octogenarian Sergei and Ksenia Morozov died in prison. Another uncle of Pavlik, Arseniy Silin, was also accused of complicity in the murder, but during the trial he was acquitted.
According to the official version, the young pioneer Pavlik Morozov bravely exposed the crimes of the kulaks against the Soviet regime and was killed by them out of revenge.
Biography
Official portrait of Pavlik Morozov. Made on the basis of a photograph with classmates - the only one in his life.
Family
Born in the family of Trofim Morozov, a red partisan, then chairman of the village council, and Tatyana Semyonovna Morozova, nee Baidakova. The father, like all the inhabitants of the village, was an ethnic Belarusian (a family of Stolypin immigrants, in Gerasimovka with). Subsequently, the father left the family (wife with four sons) and started a second family with Antonina Amosova; as a result of his departure, all the worries about the peasant economy fell on the eldest son Pavel. According to the recollections of Pavel's teacher, his father regularly drank and beat his wife and children both before and after leaving the family. Grandfather Pavlik also hated his daughter-in-law because she did not want to live with him on the same farm, but insisted on a division. According to Alexei, Pavel's brother, the father "loved only himself and vodka", he did not spare his wife and sons, not like foreign migrants, from whom "he tore three skins for forms with seals." Pavel's grandfather and grandmother also treated the family abandoned by their father to the mercy of fate: “Grandfather and grandmother were also strangers to us for a long time. Never offered anything, never greeted. Grandfather did not let his grandson, Danilka, go to school, we only heard: “You can manage without a letter, you will be the master, and Tatiana's puppies you have laborers."
According to the memories collected and presented in his book by Yuri Druzhnikov, Pavel was a physically weak, sickly, nervous and unbalanced boy. According to Solomein's entry, Pavlik "loved to hooligan, fight, quarrel, sing bad songs, smoke." Druzhnikov, referring to the words of Zoya Kabina, writes that Pavel studied poorly and rarely attended school, liked to play cards for money and sing thieves' songs. He liked to tease, poison someone: “No matter how much you persuade, he will take revenge, he will do it his own way. Out of spite, he often fought, simply out of a tendency to quarrel. In view of the family's poverty, he wore bast shoes and a tattered father's coat; was the dirtiest in the class, rarely washed. He was tongue-tied: he spoke with interruptions, gekaya, it is not always clear, in a half-Russian-half-Belarusian language, like: “But you can’t get past anymore.” Druzhnikov points out that in 1931 Pavel entered the first grade for the third time and was transferred to the second grade in the middle of the year, as he finally learned to read and write. However, it should be noted that often Pavel was not up to studying - as the eldest in the family, he had to work hard to feed the large family left by his father and try to escape from poverty.
Pavel's teacher recalled the general appalling poverty in the village of Gerasimovka:
The school I was in charge of worked in two shifts. At that time we had no idea about the radio, electricity, we sat by the torch in the evenings, we took care of the kerosene. There was no ink either, they wrote with beetroot juice. Poverty in general was appalling. When we, teachers, began to go from house to house, enrolling children in school, it turned out that many of them did not have any clothes. The children sat naked on the beds, covered themselves with some rags. The kids climbed into the oven and warmed themselves in the ashes.
We organized a reading room, but there were almost no books, and local newspapers came very rarely. To some, Pavlik now seems like a kind of boy stuffed with slogans in a clean pioneer form form and did not see it in the eyes, did not participate in pioneer parades and did not wear portraits of Molotov, like Amlinsky, and did not shout “toast” to the leaders.
Forced in such difficult conditions to provide for his family instead of his father, Paul nevertheless invariably showed a desire to learn. According to his teacher L.P. Isakova:
He was very eager to learn, took books from me, only he had no time to read, he often missed his lessons because of work in the field and housework. Then he tried to catch up, managed to do well, and even taught his mother to read and write ...
Doom
Pavel and Fyodor went to the forest, intending to spend the night there, on September 2 (in the absence of their mother, who had gone to Tavda to sell the calf). On September 6, their bodies were found. The protocol, drawn up by the district policeman Yakov Titov, reports:
Morozov Pavel was lying from the road at a distance of 10 meters, with his head to the east. There is a red bag over his head. Paul was given a fatal blow to the stomach. The second blow was delivered to the chest near the heart, under which there were scattered cranberries. Near Pavel there was one basket, the other was thrown aside. His shirt was torn in two places, and there was a purple blood stain on his back. Hair color - light brown, white face, blue eyes, open, mouth closed. There are two birches at the feet (...) The corpse of Fyodor Morozov was fifteen meters from Pavel in a swamp and a small aspen forest. Fedor was stabbed in the left temple with a stick, his right cheek was stained with blood. A mortal blow was inflicted with a knife in the belly above the navel, where the intestines came out, and the arm was also cut with a knife to the bone.
Trial
The case of the murder of pioneer Pavel Morozov
Demonstration trial of the chairman of the village council with. Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district, Morozov Trofim gathered hundreds of people.
Read the indictment. The interrogation of witnesses began. Suddenly, the condensed silence of the measured course of the trial was pierced by a sonorous childish voice:
- Uncle, let me tell you!
There was a commotion in the hall. The spectators jumped up from their seats, the back rows poured into those sitting, there was a stampede at the doors. The chairman of the court with difficulty restored order ...
- It was I who filed a lawsuit against my father. As a pioneer, I refuse my father. He created a clear counter-revolution. My father is not the defender of October. He helped kulukanov Arsentiy in every possible way. It was he who helped the fists escape. It was he who hid the kulak property so that the collective farmers would not get it ...
- I ask that my father be brought to severe responsibility so that others will not be given the habit of defending the kulaks.
The 12-year-old pioneer witness Pavel Morozov finished his testimony. No. It was not a witness statement. It was a merciless indictment by the young defender of socialism against those who stood on the side of the frenzied enemies of the proletarian revolution.
Trofim Morozov, exposed by his pioneer son, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for liaising with local kulaks, fabricating false documents for them, and hiding kulak property.
Pioneer Pavel Morozov, after the trial, came to the family of his grandfather Sergey Morozov. Unfriendly met in the family of a fearless whistleblower. A blank wall of hidden enmity surrounded the boy. The native was a pioneer detachment. Pasha ran there as if he were his own family, there he shared joys and sorrows. There they taught him a passionate intolerance for the kulaks and their sing-alongs.
And when Pasha's grandfather, Sergei Morozov, hid kulak property, Pasha ran to the village council and exposed his grandfather.
In winter, Pasha brought the kulak Silin Arseniy to fresh water, who did not fulfill a firm task, and sold a cartload of potatoes to the kulaks. In the fall, the dispossessed Kulukanov stole 16 pounds of rye from the village Soviet field and again hid them from his father-in-law, Sergei Morozov. Pavel again exposed his grandfather and kulukanov.
At meetings during sowing, at the time of grain procurements, everywhere the pioneer activist Pasha Morozov exposed the intricate machinations of kulaks and sub-kulakists...
And gradually, thoughtfully, preparations began for a terrible and bloody reprisal against the pioneer activist. First, Danila Morozov, Pavel's cousin, was dragged into the criminal conspiracy, and then his grandfather, Sergei. For a fee of 30 rubles, Danila Morozov, with the help of his grandfather, undertook to kill his hated relative. Kulukanov's fist skillfully fueled Danila's and grandfather's hostility towards Pavel. Pavel was increasingly met with brutal beatings and unequivocal threats.
“If you don’t leave the detachment, then I’ll slaughter you, the damned pioneer,” Danila wheezed, beating Pavel until he lost consciousness ...
On August 26, Pavel submitted a statement of threats to the district police officer. Either due to political myopia, or for other reasons, the district policeman did not have time to intervene in the matter. On September 3, on a clear autumn day, Pavel, together with his 9-year-old brother Fedya, ran into the forest for berries ...
In the evening, calmly in front of everyone, Danila Morozov and grandfather Sergei finished their harrowing and sat down and headed home.
Dear imperceptibly turned into the forest. We met Fedya and Pasha quite close ...
The reprisal was short. The knife stopped the rebellious heart of the young pioneer. Then, just as quickly, they finished with an unnecessary witness - nine-year-old Fedya. Danila and grandfather calmly returned home and sat down to dinner. Grandmother Ksenya also calmly and busily began to soak her bloody clothes. A knife was hidden behind the holy images in a dark corner...
One of these days, the case of the murder of pioneer activist Pavel Morozov and his nine-year-old brother will be heard on the spot in a show trial.
Active instigators of the murder are sitting on the dock - kulukanov, Silin, killers Sergei and Danila Morozov, their accomplice Ksenya Morozova ...
Pavel Morozov is not alone. People like him are legions. They unmask the grain-huggers, the plunderers of public property, they, if necessary, bring their fist-fisted fathers to the dock...
Morozov's role in his father's case is not entirely clear. Together with his mother, he testified at the preliminary investigation, stating that his father beat his mother and brought into the house things received as payment for the issuance of false documents (in fact, he could not see this, because his father had not lived with his family for a long time). In the murder case, it is noted that “On November 25, 1931, Pavel Morozov filed a statement with the investigating authorities that his father, Trofim Sergeevich Morozov, being the chairman of the village council and being connected with local kulaks, was engaged in forging documents and selling them to special settlers.” The denunciation was connected with the investigation into the case of a false certificate issued by the Gerasimovsky village council to a special settler; he allowed Trofim to be involved in the case. Trofim Morozov was arrested and tried in February next year.
Pavel, following his mother, spoke in court, but in the end was stopped by the judge due to his infancy. In the case of the murder of Morozov, it is said: “At the trial, son Pavel outlined all the details about his father, his tricks.” The speech allegedly delivered by Pavlik is known in 12 versions, mainly dating back to the book of the journalist Pyotr Solomein. In the record from the archive of Solomein himself, this accusatory speech is transmitted as follows:
| Uncles, my father created a clear counter-revolution, I, as a pioneer, am obliged to say this, my father is not a defender of the interests of October, but is trying in every possible way to help the kulak escape, he stood up for him with a mountain, and not as a son, but as a pioneer, I ask that my father be held accountable , because in the future I will not give the habit to others to hide the kulak and clearly violate the party line, and I will also add that my father will now appropriate the kulak property, took the bed of the kulak Arseny Kulukanov (the husband of T. Morozov’s sister and Pavel’s godfather) and wanted to take from him a haystack, but Kulukanov's fist did not give him hay, but said, let him take it better x ... |
The underlying reason, it is believed, was domestic: Tatyana Morozova wanted to take revenge on her husband who had left her and hoped, by scaring her, to return to her family.
The official version of the prosecution
The version of the prosecution and the court was as follows. On September 3, the “fist” Arseniy Kulukanov, having learned about the boys leaving for berries, conspired with Danila Morozov, who came to his house, to kill Pavel, giving him 30 rubles and asking him to invite Sergey Morozov, “with whom Kulukanov had previously colluded”, to kill him. Returning from Kulukanov and having finished the harrowing (i.e., harrowing, loosening the soil), Danila went home and relayed the conversation to grandfather Sergei. The latter, seeing that Danila was taking a knife, left the house without a word and went with Danila, telling him: "Let's go kill, look, don't be afraid." Finding the children, Danila, without saying a word, took out a knife and hit Pavel; Fedya rushed to run, but was detained by Sergei and also stabbed to death by Danila. " Convinced that Fedya was dead, Danila returned to Pavel and stabbed him several more times.».
The murder of Morozov was presented as a manifestation of kulak terror (against a member of the pioneer organization) and served as a pretext for widespread repressions on an all-Union scale; in Gerasimovka itself, it finally made it possible to organize a collective farm (before that, all attempts were frustrated by the peasants). In Tavda, in the club named after Stalin, a show trial of the alleged murderers took place. At the trial, Danila Morozov confirmed all the accusations, Sergei Morozov was contradictory, either confessing or denying his guilt. According to other sources, he did not confess to the murder at all. All other defendants pleaded not guilty. The main evidence was a household knife found at Sergey Morozov's, and Danila's bloodied clothes, soaked but not washed by Xenia (before that, Danila had slaughtered a calf for Tatyana Morozova). Of the accused, Arseniy Silin was acquitted, the rest were sentenced to death; Kulukanov and Danila were shot, octogenarian Sergei and Ksenia Morozov died in prison.
Yuri Druzhnikov's version
| There was no consequence. The corpses were ordered to be buried before the arrival of the investigator without examination. Journalists also sat on the stage as accusers, speaking about the political importance of shooting kulaks. The lawyer accused the defendants of murder and left to applause. Different sources report different methods of murder, the prosecutor and the judge were confused about the facts. A knife with traces of blood found in the house was called the murder weapon, but Danila was slaughtering a calf that day - no one checked whose blood it was. The accused grandfather, grandmother, uncle and cousin of Pavlik Danila tried to say that they were beaten and tortured. The shooting of the innocent in November 1932 was the signal for a massacre of peasants throughout the country. |
The decision of the Supreme Court of Russia
However, the attempt to present the murderers of the Morozov brothers as victims of political repression and subject to immediate rehabilitation ended in failure. The Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, having carefully considered the case, having studied all the documents, having weighed all the pros and cons, taking into account all the attendant circumstances, came to the following conclusion:
The verdict of the Ural Regional Court dated November 28, 1932 and the ruling of the judicial cassation board of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR dated February 28, 1933 in relation to Kulukanov Arseny Ignatievich and Morozova Xenia Ilyinichna should be changed: re-qualify their actions from Art. 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR at Art. Art. 17 and 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, leaving the previous measure of punishment. To recognize Sergey Sergeevich Morozov and Daniil Ivanovich Morozov as justifiably convicted in the present case for committing a counter-revolutionary crime and not subject to rehabilitation.
This conclusion, together with the materials of the additional verification of case No. 374, was sent to the Supreme Court of Russia, which in 1999 made a final decision and refused rehabilitation to the murderers of Pavlik Morozov and his brother Fyodor.
Reaction to Druzhnikov's book
| What kind of trial did they put on my brother? It's embarrassing and scary. My brother was called an informer in the magazine. Lie it! Pavel always fought openly. Why is he insulted? Has our family suffered a little grief? Who is being bullied? Two of my brothers were killed. The third, Roman, came from the front disabled, died young. I was slandered during the war as an enemy of the people. He spent ten years in the camp. And then they rehabilitated. And now slander on Pavlik. How to endure all this? They doomed me to torture worse than in the camps. It is good that my mother did not live to see these days ... I am writing, but tears are choking. So it seems that Pashka is again defenseless on the road. ... The editor of "Ogonyok" Korotich at the radio station "Freedom" said that my brother is a son of a bitch, which means my mother ... Yuri Izrailevich Alperovich-Druzhnikov worked his way into our family, drank tea with my mother, sympathized with us, and then published in London a vile book - a bunch of such disgusting lies and slander that, after reading it, I got a second heart attack. Z. A. Kabina also fell ill, she kept trying to sue the author in an international court, but where is she - Alperovich lives in Texas and laughs - try to get him, the teacher's pension is not enough. The chapters from the book “The Ascension of Pavlik Morozov” by this scribbler were circulated by many newspapers and magazines, no one takes my protests into account, no one needs the truth about my brother ... It seems that I have only one thing left - to douse myself with gasoline, and that's it! |
Yuri Druzhnikov stated that Kelly used his work not only in valid references, but also by repeating the book's composition, selection of details, descriptions. In addition, Dr. Kelly, according to Druzhnikov, came to the exact opposite conclusion about the role of the OGPU-NKVD in the murder of Pavlik.
According to Dr. Kelly, Mr. Druzhnikov considered the Soviet official materials unreliable, but used them when it was advantageous to support his account. According to Catriona Kelly, instead of a scientific presentation of criticism of her book, Druzhnikov published a "denunciation" with the assumption of Kelly's connection with the "organs". Dr. Kelly did not find much difference between the conclusions of the books and attributed some of Mr. Druzhnikov's criticisms to his lack of knowledge of the English language and English culture.
Disagreements
Veronika Kononenko claims, with reference to Morozov's teacher Zoya Kabina, "that it was she who created the first pioneer detachment in the village, which was headed by Pavel Morozov." According to the testimony of a professor at the University of California, Yuri Druzhnikov, however, the cabin told him: “There was no talk of pioneers. I couldn’t tell Solomein about joining the pioneers.” He also cites a phrase from Solomein’s archive: “And if we stick to the historical truth, then Pavlik Morozov not only never wore, but also never saw a pioneer tie,” which contradicts the memoirs of Pavel’s first teacher Larisa Isakova: “I didn’t have a pioneer detachment in Gerasimovka then I managed to organize it, Zoya Kabina created it after me, but I also told the guys about how children are fighting for a better life in other cities and villages. Once I brought a red tie from Tavda, tied it to Pavel, and he joyfully ran home. And at home, his father tore off his tie and beat him terribly. It is also possible that Pavel did not see a pioneer tie, but a pioneer form: “To some now Pavlik seems like a kind of boy stuffed with slogans in a clean pioneer form. And he, because of our poverty, this form and did not see in the eye ... ".
Druzhnikov claims that after the events described, Morozov earned general hatred in the village; they began to call him "Pashka-kumanist" (communist). According to official biographies, Pavel Morozov actively helped to identify bread-crowders, those who hide weapons, plot crimes against the Soviet regime, etc. . Druzhnikov considers these descriptions to be too exaggerated both in terms of the number and duration of Pavel's cooperation with the authorities; according to fellow villagers, Pavel was not a serious scammer, since “to inform is, you know, a serious job, but he was like that, a nit, a petty dirty trick.” In the murder case, only two such denunciations were documented: “In the winter of 1932, Pavel Morozov informed the village council that Silin Arseniy<его дядя>, having not completed a solid task, he sold a cartload of potatoes to special settlers. Another denunciation was against the peasant Mizyukhin, in whose place Pavel's grandfather Sergei allegedly hid a "walker" (a cart; a search was made at Mezyukhin, but nothing was found).
In fact, the main informant in the village was Pavel's cousin Ivan Potupchik (later an honorary pioneer; convicted of raping a minor).
Similar processes
During the days of the campaign associated with the murder of Pavlik, another well-known case was opened about the murder of Kolya Myagotin, a pioneer in the village of Kolesnikovo, Kurgan Region, on October 25 with fists. In this case, 12 people were convicted, 3 of them were shot. In 1996, the convicts were rehabilitated, as it turned out that Kolya, who had never been a pioneer, was shot dead at night by a watchman while stealing sunflower seeds. Yuri Druzhnikov counted in 1932 (after the murder of Pavel and Fedya) - 3, in 1933 - 6, in 1934 - 6 and in 1935 - 9 cases of murders of children, qualified by the authorities as the murder of pioneers for denunciations; in total, during the Stalin era, he noted 56 such cases.
Among the "pioneer-heroes" of this kind, there were also simply fictitious figures, like Grisha Hakobyan from Ganja, allegedly killed by "kulak sons" in October 1930 (invented on the instructions of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Azerbaijan).
glorification
Pavlik Morozov denounces his father. Rice. from the newspaper "Pionerskaya Pravda"
Morozov's name was given to Gerasimov and other collective farms, schools, and pioneer squads. Monuments were erected to Pavlik Morozov in Moscow (, in the children's park named after him on Krasnaya Presnya; demolished in), the village of Gerasimovka () and in Sverdlovsk (). Poems and songs were written about Pavlik Morozov, an opera of the same name was written. In 1935, film director Sergei Eisenstein began working on the script for Alexander Rzheshevsky's Bezhin Meadow about Pavlik Morozov. The job could not be completed. Maxim Gorky called Pavlik "one of the little miracles of our era."
Pavlik Morozov in the public mind
Estimates of the personality of Pavlik Morozov and especially the propaganda campaign around his name have always been ambiguous. Along with glorification, there was a widespread negative attitude towards him, although in Soviet times it could not be expressed publicly.
In the adult environment, the attitude towards Pavlik Morozov was determined by the fact that he turned into a symbol of such a phenomenon that permeated Soviet society as denunciation. So, Galina Vishnevskaya wrote:
| And a worthy role model appears - the twelve-year-old traitor Pavlik Morozov, “heroically fallen in the class struggle”, awarded monuments, portraits for his betrayal, glorified in songs and poems, on which the next generations will be brought up. Pavlik Morozov, whom even today millions of Soviet children praise for denouncing his own father and grandfather. Just as in Nazi Germany they taught German children to inform on their parents, so here in Russia they began to consciously educate a generation of informers, already starting from school. |
With the beginning of perestroika, this attitude found public expression and became dominant. Pavlik Morozov began to act as a symbol of betrayal, along with Judas. In this spirit, for example, pastor Stanislav Vershinin mentions him in a sermon on the theme of Judas sin: “Nevertheless, few people want to see Judas Iscariot in themselves - it’s better to admit the nature of a murderer, Cain, in their “I” than such a vile traitor ! Is it so? Have you never betrayed yourself or your neighbor? Is there Pavlik Morozov among us?» . In the song of the same name by the rock group "Crematorium" Pavlik Morozov is presented as an indestructible evil, passing from one era to another:
Not everything is for sale, but everything Buy or rent. On occasion, a janitor can become a prince, And the killer becomes the judge. All new verses are torn from the old ones, The new priests blame everything on the dead. And all because Pavlik Morozov is alive Pavlik Morozov is alive Pavlik Morozov is alive Pavlik Morozov is more alive than all the living ...Nowadays, the perception of Pavlik Morozov as a victim of political "games" of adults is becoming dominant. It must be emphasized that the overwhelming majority of those who argue are extremely politically biased and biased persons, uninterested in establishing an objective picture of what happened.
| Patriotic, spiritual and moral education of schoolchildren | Young heroes of the Great Patriotic War | Pioneers-heroes of the Great Patriotic War | Pavlik Morozov
Pioneers-heroes of the Great Patriotic War
Pavlik Morozov
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (Pavlik Morozov; November 14, 1918, Gerasimovka, Turin district, Tobolsk province, RSFSR - September 3, 1932, Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district, Ural region, RSFSR, USSR) - Soviet schoolboy, student of the Gerasimov school of the Tavdinsky district of the Ural region, in Soviet era, who gained fame as a pioneer hero who opposed the kulaks in the person of his father and paid for it with his life.
According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Pavlik Morozov was “the organizer and chairman of the first pioneer detachment in the village. Gerasimovka. Monuments were erected to Pavlik Morozov in many cities and pioneer camps of the Soviet Union.
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov was born on November 14, 1918 in the village of Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district of the Ural region. His father, Trofim Morozov, became chairman of the village council of his native village. It was a tough time.
Back in 1921, the peasants of Central Russia started a revolt, rebelling against the Bolshevik surplus appraisal, which took away the last grain from the people for the proletarians.
Those of the rebels who survived the battles went to the Urals or were convicted. Someone was shot, someone was amnestied after a few years. Under the amnesty two years later, five people, the Purtov brothers, who played their role in the tragedy of Pavel, also fell.
The boy's father, when Pavlik reached the age of ten, left his wife and children, leaving for another family. This event forced the young Morozov to become the head of the family, taking all the care of his relatives.
Knowing that the power of the Soviets was the only shield for the poor, with the advent of the 1930s, Pavel joined the pioneer organization. At the same time, his father, having taken a leading position in the village council, began to actively cooperate with the kulak elements and the Purtov gang.
Here begins the story of the feat of Pavlik Morozov.
The Purtovs, having organized a gang in the forests, hunted in the vicinity by robbery. Only 20 proven robberies are on their conscience. Also, according to the OGPU, the five brothers were preparing a local coup against the Soviets, relying on special settlers (kulaks). Trofim Morozov provided active assistance to them. The chairman provided them with blank documents, issuing fake certificates of poor condition.
In those years, such certificates were an analogue of a passport and gave the bandits a quiet life and legal residence. According to these documents, the bearer of the paper was considered a peasant of Gerasimovka and did not owe anything to the state. Pavel, who fully and sincerely supported the Bolsheviks, reported his father's deeds to the competent authorities. His father was arrested and sentenced to 10 years.
Pavlik paid for this report by losing his life, and his younger brother Fyodor was deprived of his life. While picking berries in the forest, they were slaughtered by their own relatives. At the end of the investigation, four people were convicted for the murder: Sergey Morozov - paternal grandfather, Ksenia Morozova - grandmother, Danila Morozov - cousin, Arseniy Kulukanov - Pavel's godfather and his uncle.
Kulukanov and Danila were shot, grandparents died in custody. The fifth suspect, Arseniy Silin, was acquitted.
What is the real story of Pavlik Morozov? August 22nd, 2017
Many people mention it very often, but often know very little. And if they know, it is not the fact that the truth.
He twice became a victim of political propaganda: in the era of the USSR, he was presented as a hero who gave his life in the class struggle, and in perestroika times, as an informer who betrayed his own father.
Modern historians question both myths about Pavlik Morozov, who became one of the most controversial figures in Soviet history.
The house where Pavlik Morozov lived, 1950
This story took place at the beginning of September 1932 in the village of Gerasimovka, Tobolsk province. Grandmother sent her grandchildren for cranberries, and a few days later the bodies of the brothers with traces of violent death were found in the forest. Fedor was 8 years old, Pavel - 14. According to the canonical version generally accepted in the USSR, Pavlik Morozov was the organizer of the first pioneer detachment in his village, and in the midst of the struggle against the kulaks, he denounced his father, who collaborated with the kulaks. As a result, Trofim Morozov was sent to a 10-year exile, and according to other sources, he was shot in 1938.
In fact, Pavlik was not a pioneer - a pioneer organization appeared in their village only a month after his murder. The tie was later simply added to his portrait. He did not write any denunciations about his father. His ex-wife testified against Trofim at the trial. Pavlik only confirmed the testimony of his mother that Trofim Sergeevich Morozov, being the chairman of the village council, sold certificates to migrant kulaks about being registered with the village council and that they had no tax debts to the state. These certificates were in the hands of the Chekists, and Trofim Morozov would have been tried even without the testimony of his son. He and several other district chairmen were arrested and sent to prison.
N. Chebakov. Pavlik Morozov, 1952
Relations in the Morozov family were not easy. Pavlik's grandfather was a gendarme, and his grandmother was a horse thief. They met in prison, where he guarded her. Pavlik's father, Trofim Morozov, had a scandalous reputation: he was a reveler, cheated on his wife and, as a result, left her with four children. The chairman of the village council was indeed dishonest - that he earned on fictitious certificates and appropriated the property of the dispossessed, all the villagers knew. There was no political subtext in Pavlik's act - he simply supported his mother, who was unjustly offended by his father. And the grandmother and grandfather for this hated both him and his mother. In addition, when Trofim left his wife, according to the law, his allotment of land passed to his eldest son Pavel, since the family was left without a livelihood. By killing the heir, relatives could count on the return of the land.
Relatives accused of killing Pavlik Morozov
An investigation began immediately after the murder. Bloody clothes and a knife were found in the grandfather's house, with which the children were stabbed to death. During interrogations, Pavel's grandfather and cousin confessed to the crime: allegedly the grandfather held Pavel while Danila stabbed him. The case had a huge impact. This murder was presented in the press as an act of kulak terror against a member of a pioneer organization. Pavlik Morozov was immediately hailed as a pioneer hero.
Only many years later, many details began to raise questions: why, for example, Pavel's grandfather, a former gendarme, did not get rid of the murder weapon and traces of the crime. The writer, historian and journalist Yuri Druzhnikov (aka Alperovich) put forward the version that Pavlik Morozov denounced his father on behalf of his mother - in order to take revenge on his father, and was killed by an OGPU agent in order to cause mass repressions and the expulsion of kulaks - this was the logical conclusion to the story about villainous fists who are ready to kill children for their own benefit. Collectivization took place with great difficulty, the pioneer organization was poorly received in the country. In order to change people's attitudes, new heroes and new legends were needed. Therefore, Pavlik was just a puppet of the Chekists, who sought to arrange a show trial.
Yuri Druzhnikov and his sensational book about Pavlik Morozov
However, this version caused massive criticism and was crushed. In 1999, the Morozovs' relatives and representatives of the Memorial movement secured a review of this case in court, but the Prosecutor General's Office concluded that the murderers had been justifiably convicted and were not subject to political rehabilitation.
Monument to Pavlik Morozov in the Sverdlovsk region, 1968. Pavlik's mother Tatyana Morozova with her grandson Pavel, 1979
Pioneers visit the site of the death of Pavlik Morozov, 1968
Writer Vladimir Bushin is sure that it was a family drama without any political overtones. In his opinion, the boy only counted on the fact that his father would be frightened and returned to the family, and could not foresee the consequences of his actions. He only thought about helping his mother and brothers, since he was the eldest son.
The school where Pavlik Morozov studied, and now there is a museum named after him
Museum of Pavlik Morozov
No matter how the story of Pavlik Morozov is interpreted, his fate does not become less tragic. His death served the Soviet government as a symbol of the struggle against those who do not share its ideals, and in the perestroika era it was used to discredit this government.
Monuments to Pavlik Morozov
Monument to Pavlik Morozov in the city of Ostrov, Pskov region
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